Attack on Cube (2021 Update)

Chris Taylor

Chris Taylor

Contributor
I like the change on Jace to Tamiyo. The card's power level is still fine and fateseal is certainly the least fun part of that card, even if brainstorming is the right play most of the time.

A bit odd to see Arcum's Astrolabe with modified text and no name change, but Jace TMS changed and became Tamiyo. I'm the kinda person who would come up with new names to help illustrate the change, but I am empathetic to not having time for that shit.
I will say new art alone doesn't really signal a change on its own, especially given A) the alters you yourself have put in and B) holy shit there are so many alt treatments these days I as a fan have trouble keeping track*




*I do think this is a positive. More options means something is bound to stick with someone, and as long as it doesn't have gameplay negatives like that from the vault dryad arbor, I'm all for it.
83f625aa-d229-40b7-a1c6-69549bc46789.png
 
B

blacksmithy

yeah, i get what you mean about the astrolabe. i’m not terribly worried about it throwing people, because most of my group has never seen the original anyway, and the change is just to make it castable in a cube with no snow lands. (of course given infinite resources id absolutely use all snow basics, they’re so pretty)
 
Zoss

Zoss

I'm sorry to nitpick, but Mononoke doesn't feel like a soldier to me at all--she's way more of a warrior, and for that matter is definitely red-green. I feel like Ashitaka is more white-green, if you want to take the unsolicited advice of someone on the internet.

Offerings of pictures, because I feel like if I'm going to criticize I should at least do some of the legwork:

1642217646166.png

1642217662788.png





Either of the old dudes from Nausicaa would work, for my two cents. Unfortunately, the resolution on that one doesn't lend itself to something this high-fidelity.

1642217398115.png





-----

I know you like the human token, but my favorite has to be the radish spirit. The colors just work so well, and he's such a humorous character I feel like he works in RW. The bounty is also precious.
 
B

blacksmithy

Zoss said:
I'm sorry to nitpick, but Mononoke doesn't feel like a soldier to me at all--she's way more of a warrior, and for that matter is definitely red-green. I feel like Ashitaka is more white-green, if you want to take the unsolicited advice of someone on the internet.

Offerings of pictures, because I feel like if I'm going to criticize I should at least do some of the legwork:

View attachment 6314

View attachment 6315





Either of the old dudes from Nausicaa would work, for my two cents. Unfortunately, the resolution on that one doesn't lend itself to something this high-fidelity.

View attachment 6313





-----

I know you like the human token, but my favorite has to be the radish spirit. The colors just work so well, and he's such a humorous character I feel like he works in RW. The bounty is also precious.
Click to expand...
Ashitaka is actually being used for this already:
https://imgur.com/a/dFd0U0s

EDIT: and yeah the radish makes me happy. he’s white with a red hat, he’s a red and white spirit!
 
B

blacksmithy

by the way, i completely agree that San isn’t green/white, but my only red and green tokens are Elementals, Goblins, and various animals… and you can’t just do Ghibli tokens and not have San in there! in fact i worked her into a couple other tokens too… plus here’s my red and green ones cuz they cute

https://imgur.com/a/TEtFwxO
 
B

blacksmithy

@Zoss got me thinking about archetypes in my cube for the first time in a while on the discord today so i’m gonna copy over my musings on that here for easy reference later…

there’s basically four routes you can go in my cube for your archetype focus:
1. go DEEP into one color but splash a few golds/super good cards of whatever other colors you want. i do this route often in test drafts and have done it twice in live drafts, once as “mono green” splashing everything but blue and once as “mono blue” splashing 2-3 other colors. stuff like Cryptic Command and Werewolf Pack Leader might pull you in this direction.
2. build mostly around a specific guild’s theme and splash a couple/few really good cards outside that guild. while i try to support most themes in most colors, guild sections are starting to coalesce around a central theme per guild with. a couple generic “good cards” in the mix for each guild as well (usually the generic gold cards are the good removals like vindicate and lightning helix).
guild themes right now are:
WU- flash control/tempo. build around Moderation and have a mix of instants and activated mana sinks (often Clues) to be able to respond to opponent’s plays without wasting mana.
UB-mulldrifter control. Lots of inherent 2-for-1 effects like Baleful Strix and Zyym to accrue value while chipping away with evasive threats.
BR-Arcanist burn! lots of discard value engines in these two colors, and lots of ways to eat up the enemy life total. often, both are combined in a single card, like Kroxa, Cut to Ribbons, and Kommand.
RG-Stompy! RG decks get big fast and dominate the combat step, with lots of snowballing threats like Territorial Kavu, Laelia, and Chariot. This deck really likes having some mana dorks to get bigger faster.
GW-this is the Crucible guild, with Rallier, KotR, and many other ways to maximize the value of your lands. a perfect home for Titania or Timeless Dragon.
WB-this combination has the classic Rock style of grindy aggression, with Priest of Fell Rites and Lingering Souls both providing recursive value. disruptive effects like Mother of Runes and targeted discard will go great here to help speed up the attrition war.
BG-this deck wants to fill up the yard and take advantage of effects like Grim Flayer, Tarmogoyf, and Tasigur.
GU-This deck is the classic “draw cards make mana” style, and will make the best use of the multiple cantrips in U and G plus the payoffs for having lots of cantrips like Uro, Jolrael, and Quandrix Apprentice.
UR-Spellslinger! Almost every creature in U and R have some kind of value in connection with noncreature spells (Sea Gate Stormcaller, Spellseeker, Magmatic Channeler, Pyromancer, etc) and UR features some very strong spells such as Expressive Iteration to give those creatures more ways to go off
RW-while it’s certainly possible to blitz with WR, you can also go over the top quite easily with strong removal and wipes in both colors (Helix, DoJ, Unholy Heat) mixed with big board value engines like Ferrous and Monastery Mentor.
one thing that’s going to totally shake the environment is that i’m injecting a total of TWENTY planeswalkers (some real some custom) into it where there were ZERO before as part of the upsize from 224 to 384. i am hoping the walkers will be strong pulls for various archetypes (one is literally built as a Sunforger control package in a can) and keep combat in the spotlight. i’ll edit this later with a link to a bunch of my customs, which are sometimes meant to add redundancy to a core effect i want (“i need more green 1 mana cantrips that don’t suck” for example) but usually the customs are there to fill design gaps for archetypes i wanna push.
 
B

blacksmithy

big big update incoming…
i am largely retooling my mana base and delving further into custom designs to pull the cube up to an 8-player size, using lessons learned from drafts of the current environment.

the big two lessons so far:
1. aggression is STRONG when decks have excellent, painful mana. domain zoo was a consistent high performer, using a variety of strong 1-2 mana threats with topouts like Omnath and Laelia. which is great! the new update will give the zoo deck some more threats at 1-2 mana, but is also geared towards giving control decks more defensive speed with free interaction like Force of Will and Solitude.

2. while great fixing is great, there’s a complexity cost to having great fixing that also does other stuff. the creature shocks in particular were causing a lot board state analysis paralysis while also being very strong picks and top priority fetch targets. my mana base is moving towards simpler modes of utility, focused on smoothing games while fixing rather than providing spell effects while fixing. this should cut board complexity while still providing the “better mana than Vintage” experience i want to give.

with that in mind, here’s the “spoilers” for the new cards!

first and most important, the mana base!

https://imgur.com/a/jivV4eA

my goal is for each drafter to have access to ~10 fixing lands out of their ~15 lands in decks. i’m going to give out a Prismatic Vista and a “universal basic land” (you’ll see that further down, it’s so cool) to each drafter at the start of draft, which gets you 2/10 fixers right off the bat. this little cheat code allows me to cut back a bit on lands in the draft and still have decks able to cast their spells on time.
i am still working out the exact numbers but essentially there will be 3-4 cycles of fetches (not pictured above), 1 cycle of horizons, 1 cycle of campuses, and 1-2 cycles of ABURs.

up next, the custom creatures and spells! (that “universal basic” is hidden in here too)

https://imgur.com/a/SE514xl

as many of you may have heard, i like a low mana curve, and i also like to stay singleton. so i’m adding a LOT of 1-2 cost custom cards in this update to fill design gaps and support archetypes i want my cube to feature. i also LOVE the spellbook mechanic, so of course there’s a few of those in there, but in the interest of my own and my friends’ sanity i’ve restrained myself to one spellbook card per color, plus one gold spellbook card.

finally… the planeswalkers have arrived!

https://imgur.com/a/4kW8reH

so the cube is called Attack on Cube, and it’s not just an anime reference. despite the high power level, i want combat to matter. which is why it’s the only way to win (other than bolts to the face). and uh…. combat tricks don’t really fly at this level. but planeswalkers are modal value engines that affect the combat step! i sat on the fence for a while about running them, mostly due to budget and complexity concerns, but we are WAY past walkers being the most complicated thing in the environment, and with the magic of proxies, budget is meaningless, so here we go, all in! this injection of walkers brings us up to 20 total, 2 in each color and 1 in each guild.


so this isn’t everything that’s getting added, and the cube list is STILL not totally up to date, but this stuff is in production now and should be here in plenty of time for…
CubeConnnnnnnnnnn!!!!!!!
 
B

blacksmithy

draft day tomorrow! we’ve got 6 drafters and a 7th showing up later who will use the remaining cards in the cube as a sealed pool to jump into the games. can’t wait!
 
B

blacksmithy

some basic thoughts from the draft and games…
-fixing felt about right in terms of supporting 3 color decks. players noted they could easily grok what the new land cycles did. was nice to see that my desired distribution of decks came through in the draft - most people on 3 colors, with a couple 4-5 color decks in the mix.
-Formless Void (my custom universal fetchable) was well received and had a lot of nice play to it, giving people an out for their half-on-color fetches and giving me this really goofy line where if i already had my mana right, i could put Vindicate into my BRGu deck from my sideboard seventh from the top with Dreamsight, then play Formless Void as my only Plains to able to cast it. this came up at least 3x in the night somehow.
-the planeswalkers felt like a positive addition overall to the environment. they were definitely powerful, but they seemed to have a stall-breaking effect in most games rather than stalling, as players would look for lines to be able to swing in at them once they came down. The top performing walker was probably GW Freyalise, which although the deck itself went 1-2, got a lot
of lines enabled by Freyalise’s ability to keep attacks open with the untap and buy back vista and Hall of Storm Giants with the static. (W6 and Kaito and Chandra were pretty good for me too.)
-games were still very much about tempo advantage and tended to be “small-board games,” which is how i’ve always wanted the cube to play, but within that space there was a lot more grinding going on than in earlier drafts, which is great! the walkers and additional high-tempo control tools seem to have opened up space for players to eke out some value without making it as easy to snowball and threaten instant death as the beatdown player. i still think Naya Zoo is the premier aggro deck of the format, and while it didn’t come together for anyone tonight, there was a good mix of proactive and reactive decks in the pod, and one of each did quite well with no 3-0 decks on the night. i am digging through sideboards later today to see if there are any small tweaks to be made, but in general i think the format is in a good place.
 
B

blacksmithy

finally got my cube cobra list about 99% accurate to what’s in the cube on paper, and have another live draft firing Saturday!
(i’ll try to get better photos of the decks this time)
 
B

blacksmithy

after several drafts, a couple more MPC orders, and lots of fiddling, my cube is now Jumpstarted again! i've got 20 two-color half-decks, each with 12 spells and 8 lands, and it's been a blast mashing them up.
the photos (linked) show all the spells and the duals, but not pictured is a second copy of the fetch and 3 basic lands.
have a look, i'd love to hear thoughts on possible card swaps or even totally new packs to try! (i really wanna figure out how to work all my 3-5-color cards into the mix.)

https://imgur.com/a/I0jbXWh
 
landofMordor

landofMordor

Administrator
Curious about the logistics of jumpstarting. How do you unshuffle afterwards? How do you track which card goes in which pack? How do you store and shuffle packs? Are you running 4 extra basics in each of these packs to make 40 total for 2 packs? (I now see the "3 extra basics and 1 fetch" thing)

And, to your 3-5 color question, what if each player got a stack of 10-15 tricolor cards and got to make 1 swap per deck? Like, if I combine RW and RB, then I get to swap {3 drop} for Mathas, Fiend Seeker.
 
Last edited:
B

blacksmithy

landofMordor said:
Curious about the logistics of jumpstarting. How do you unshuffle afterwards?
Click to expand...
thanks for asking! when taking the packs apart, i dont really unshuffle at all except to make sure ive got all the right cards in each pack, and to keep the "face card" in front. more on that later.
landofMordor said:
How do you track which card goes in which pack?
Click to expand...
i have a little $0.50 mini-steno pad that i scribbled all the packlists into so that i dont forget which card goes in which pack. it stays with the packs.

landofMordor said:
How do you store and shuffle packs?
Click to expand...
Cubeamajig booster packs! i got a "podamajig" for Christmas this past year. each half deck fits pretty much perfectly in a single "booster pack," and each pack has a "face card" (for example the face of RB Sac is Sarkhan, Dragon-Mad) which goes in the little front bit of the booster pack so that you can see the face card and know what the pack is basically about.

as far as shuffling packs, we just do blind pulls out the boxes the booster packs came in, then pull blind again until we get a second pack that matches at least one color with the first pack we pulled. beyond that i dont really bother with shuffling the set of packs.

landofMordor said:
And, to your 3-5 color question, what if each player got a stack of 10-15 tricolor cards and got to make 1 swap per deck? Like, if I combine RW and RB, then I get to swap {3 drop} for Mathas, Fiend Seeker.
Click to expand...
yeah this could work! so far weve just been jamming these as a side/pre-event during a buddy's peasant cube nights, but if we did a dedicated Jumpstart night i can also see giving folks tricolor cards after each round if they lost to give them (theoretically) a stronger deck in the next round.
 
B

blacksmithy

ALMOST had a pod draft this weekend so i slapped together a 384 "full list." no worries, the jumpstarts aren't going anywhere.
https://imgur.com/a/PCN48Sg

supported archetypes include lands, spells, graveyard stuff, other graveyard stuff, exalted zoo, drawgo, deaths shadow, rock, jund, xerox, loop de loop, trinket saga, topdecks, and niv pile... probably other stuff too. have a look and enjoy!
notable change in mechanics is that i removed almost all spellbooks and almost all references to the sideboard as both were causing memory issues in play. conjuring is still in though because it's tokens but cooler.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top