CoopsVBD's Cube

[CoopsVBD]

http://cubetutor.com/viewcube/13428

This is a cube I have been playing around with for quite a while. The goal was to create a challenging cube to both draft and play, that focuses on interactions over raw power level. Please keep in mind that this is a budget cube and no single card is over $5 dollars. A big thank you to the Innistrad Theme Cube and the Modal Cube for inspiration.


In General...
-I previously cut many cards that were too strong and game-warping. If a card can win a game all by itself, it has to go. That being said, game-warping 2+ card combos are encouraged!
-All cards have to either be 1. a central card for an archetype or 2. viable in multiple archetypes. I tried to cram as much as I could into 360 cards, and crossover should help with replayability.
-The power of removal and card draw is especially low. This prevents good-stuff decks and forces people to get creative.
-No custom cards.
-No tribal.

Card Choices
-Every card should have multiple ways to interact with the board. For example, I originally had cards like Krosan Reclamation for grave hate, but they were too narrow. Instead I opted for Loaming Shaman for the body + hate. This applies to mill as well.
-I included several "mini archetypes" like artifactsand madness to dabble in. I tried to choose cards that play well even if the support doesn't show up.
-No "sit around" guys. I cut Enclave Cryptologist for Research Assistant because I didn't like how the Cryptologist sat around generating advantage. The Assistant is a decent blocker and gives a tougher choice on how to spend your mana (at least that's the idea).
-Trying to avoid easy first picks. The best cards should be build-around-me stuff with high risk and high reward.
-Packing as many activated abilities in as I can.


The Archetypes (for hints look at the multicolor section)
-W/U: Flyers, Control, The possible Booby Trap deck (It will happen eventually!)
-U/B: Mill, Reanimator, Control
-B/R: AGGRO, Self-Discard
-R/G: Super Ramp/X spell galore, midrange good-guys
-G/W: Tokens+Overrun, Aggro
-W/B: Tokens+Sacrifice, Aggro
-U/R: Flashback Spells, Control
-B/G: Dredge, Reanimator, Midrange
-R/W: Aggro, Equipment
-G/U: +1/+1 counters, 5-color

Some cards to give you an idea:


Questions:
-I am thinking of breaking singleton, but haven't made up my mind where yet. Is it necessary?
-It was hard to find Aggro guys that also make cool interactions. Unleash guys work great, but any other suggestions? Delver seemed too reliant on luck.
-Are there any themes that need more support or have too much support?

So far this cube has been a blast and a refreshing break from the "standard" cube. I would really appriciate any and all feedback. Thanks for checking it out!

 

[Grillo_Parlante]

I like this. To answer your questions. I don't think it’s necessary to break singleton, but sometimes its desirable to do so when you are trying to encourage certain interactions and have an extremely limited pool of cards capable of supporting those interactions. Some of the more interesting archetype pieces are potential places to break singleton. Aggro one drops are also a natural place to consider breaking singleton (or running multi-picks).

For this list, I would be drawn to considering cloudfin raptor, jace's phantasm, basking rootwalla, and maybe reckless waif. Having multiple carrion feeders can also help an aggressive red/black sacrifice deck. Wild Mongrel, thrummingbird, and maybe young pyromancer also look like potential singleton break points, depending on how the cube plays.

Steppe lynx and adventuring gear look a little disappointing in this list due to the lack of ways to tutor up lands into play. You could also consider going a bit deeper into the level-up aggro plan, break singleton there, and also run some of the ROE level-up support cards.

I think you are correct not to run Krosan reclamationin this list, as it looks much narrower here than it does in mine. However, Loaming Shaman still makes me a bit uneasy.

I agree that this looks like it would be a poor delver list, due to the relatively low spell count in blue and red, and its low enough to make me question the inclusion of some of the other "spells matter" cards: talrand, kiln fiend, wee dragonauts, and young pyromancer. How has that deck been playing? I am also dying to know how nivmagus elemental has been.

 

[CoopsVBD]

I'm keeping singleton around for the time being. I have a theory that for low powered cubes, fun aggro decks shouldn't win off of one-drops but off a healthy pool of two-drops and equipment. I don't have enough data to prove it but here are my reasons:
1. Lower power means games take longer than normal. This is a good thing - the defensive player has more time to build their combo and interact. Instead of the aggro player in a race against the clock I want them to scale up with the game and have a shot at winning even in the late game.
2. Due to the lack of board wipes, control decks need to draft early blockers to gum up the board. 1 drops just fall flat too often.
3. Creatures should offer utility at all stages of the game. A one-drop with high utility usually means it's on a 1 power body, or unaggressive.
One-drops have their place, I'm just trying to find it.

I think removing Steppe Lynx and Adventuring Gear is great; they're in every list so I just took them for granted. Maybe looking at Benevolent Bodyguard (?)

Loaming Shaman does seem unfun is some situations, but I'm giving it a shot. Sunblast Angel and Renegade Krasis are on watch too

Nivmagus Elemental has been great here. It's already a solid 1/2 creature, but it keeps your opponent on their toes in combat and has the potential to scale up. All of the flashback spells floating around really helps it. It keeps true with myidea of maximizing the number of choices players can make. However, I wouldn't recommend it in higher power cubes as the spells you're chucking away usually are better than the 2 counters.

The spell-matters deck has been doing fine since I replaced guys like Nucklavee for Nivix Cyclops. The deck really is about getting bonus value off of spells rather than late-game card advantage or comboing off. It needs bodies and the spells are bonus

Any opinions on ?

 

[Grillo_Parlante]

I gave the drafter a whirl a little while back, to try to force the spells matter archetype, and it came out pretty reasonably, I think. It’s always hard to tell how a deck will do in a vacuum, but this seemed ok, if a little greedy on my part. The battle screech is a bit ambitious. As long as I have silent departure in a list though, I figure I’ll be ok.

U/R/w spells from CubeTutor.com

Same Archetype, but not forcing it:

U/R/W spells from CubeTutor.com

I had one nuts draft that went p1p1 pride of the clouds into battle screech, triplicate spirits, and than I picked up a burning vengeance and young pyromancer, but cube tutor freaked out on me and I lost that draft, of course. I really liked pride of the clouds though, great build around card.

If you get a nivmagus list I would love to see it.

I ran gutter grime for a while but ended up cutting it. It just seems much weaker over here compared to a lot of other things you could be doing in green. The 5cc to get your combo going was a bit much for this meta. It might be fine over your ways though, it just depends if your decks have time to set up a board state to abuse it.

Its always hard to judge cards like that though, since metas evolves, and it could just be an issue of people not exploring that part of the game space yet, or exploring it poorly.

A card I’ve not been really happy with over here, has been death or glory. It seems really hard to create an advantageous graveyard state where its powerful.

Overall, I was pretty happy with the feel of the actual draft. There are cards that feel strong, but nothing that feels like such a power spike where its an unfun bomb. I also think your distribution of themes and sub themes worked out great: when I was drafting I never felt like one color was clearly superior to another. I also don't think there was anything on the list that was a slam first pick, accept maybethe angel and mikaeus. Again, hard to tell from a draft.

My only other question would be whether you have been having board stalls? You seem to have a good number of tempo generators, but most of your evasion seems to be in flyers.

 

[CoopsVBD]

Hey thanks for your feedback. I drafted up a quick nivmagus list here:

UWR flashback from CubeTutor.com

The deck seems reasonable, a lot going on. The elemental seems fair here and can certainly eat a random flashbacked Volcanic Spray or whatever.

On an aside, I put together a sweet Booby Trap deck with top of library shenanigans:

UR Booby Trap Control from CubeTutor.com

I really love how easy it is to draft a crazy red-blue deck - something that's completely nuts.

I'm standing behind Death or Glory being that the two post popular decks here are dredge and mill. White has a chance to sneak in on a splash in graveyard-theme decks, but the support really isn't there yet. White is a bit one-dimensional now that I think about it, drop guys then pump guys. Probably time for a graveyard rework.

There have been board stalls around here but just the stuff I would expect from creature combat. I can only remember a particular case when my BW token deck couldn't draw a overrun and eventually got outscaled, that just seems like the risk of drafting lots of small creatures though. It might be less of a problem here because the bombs aren't untargetable death balls. I've regularly traded bear tokens for Etched Oracles and whatnot.

I have a few creatures that run past each other (Inkfathom Infiltrator), but i'm not gung-ho for evasion. I'd rather have combat tricks that put bluffing on the table, part of the reason I have the guild charms in.

 

[CoopsVBD]

One other note about this cube: No tribal whatsoever. NOT ONE. It may be harsh, but I don't like the way tribal plays out where you can just draft a pile of the same creature type and call it a day. It might just be me, sick of the casual decks that throw together a pile and a tribal lord, but I stand by it. That means no marginal cases like Deranged Outcast; I'll just have to live with it. Plus it makes it easier for me to avoid scraping the bottom of the zombie barrel. I'm going to fix the first post.

"Hey I drafted Undead Alchemist, now all I need to do is draft every zombie I see then GG."

If I was to put in a tribal element, I think it takes most of the deck design away from the player and into my (the cube designer's) hands. My job is to make sure the tribe is viable, and all the player has to do is assemble it because of the "more is better" philosophy. With other themes, players have a chance to get creative and discover - one of the best things about being a cube designer.