http://riptidelab.com/cubetutor-champion-contest-champion/
Kiblinx's Entry:
I am not that great at designing, I am just here to draft and make bad jokes (most of the time). I decided to throw an entry in just so you have more to look at. So may you observe my entry:
http://www.cubetutor.com/viewcube/21689
Now to start my rabble on how I got it to this point...
Start With the Lands
The main starting point was the double fetch package as it seemed to be the driving force behind your old cube. I wanted to run double battle (tango) lands but due to the enemy ones not being out yet I had to settle for shock lands (for the enemy section). Once the rest get released in Oath of the Gatewatch I will be swapping them around. They require a little more thinking than the shock lands, which is why I prefer them.
After doing the rest of the cube I noticed I wanted more fetches, so I threw in 5 making sure the colour spread was even then threw in 5 shocks for the other colour pairings to make a nice round number. Also put in 3 wastelands as a sort of midrange safety valve if you will. Would have loved to add more lands (like Shelldock Isle) but then again, that is what the ULD is for.
- Landfall (GW ur)
So what do you do when you have lands that come in twice? Get some sweet triggers! With double Steppe Lynx, Scythe Leopard and Snapping Gnarlid there is a decent GW aggro route to take, with the larger combination of Emeria Angel, Rampaging Baloths and Avenger of Zendikar to support a more ramp orientated version.
I also bled it a little into Red for the two aggro two drops and blue for Meloku and Retreat to Coralhelm for a bit of spice.
Brainstorm
The next most obvious card in the list was brainstorm, as you did have 6 copies of the card. It does work well in a fetch-heavy environment so I added 4 but found I wanted more and ended up at 5 copies. It helped come up the the next archetypes:
- Delver (URw)
So brainstorm helps setup Delver of Secrets, who knew? While this would fit into any Ux archetype the double Abbot of Keral Keep help push toward the top-of-library and spell heavy deck construction. Young Pizzy sometimes helps too. Can splash white to gain access to Seeker of the Way and Monastery Mentor if they are so inclined.
- TOL Midrange (UGr)
Sort of the same premise as Delver but doesn't have to be as spell focussed. Just wants to get value from brainstorm/fetches by changing the top card of your library. Lets cards like Courser of Kruphix, Oracle of Mul Daya and Conundrum Sphinx generate obscene value. Also allows other cards such as Mindshreiker, Evolutionary Leap and Collected Company produce known quantities. Also allows some miracles to work and makes manifests better.
- Delve Control (BU)
Fetchlands and 1-mana blue cantrips also have this neat side-effect of filling up your graveyard. This allows delve cards to get powered out quickly like the master of the golden banana, gurmag angler and other breaker of formats.
VS
The Great Sacrifice
There were only 2 more cards that you 'squadroned' so to speak, and those were Birthing Pod and Gravecrawler. Having Collected Company felt that pod wasn't required as much but it still has great gameplay that I decided to include it and work alongside the company. The 'crawlers on the other hand now have competition in the form of Bloodsoaked Champion, which doesn't have the problem of requiring a creature type only (really) in one colour to bring back.
- Pod (BGr)
This is the ideal colour combination for Pod, due to the amount of decent creatures with EtB effects and the fact they usually want to die unlike white's or blue's creatures. Podding Nest Invader into Reclamation Sage into Skinrender are the lines you look forward to and the bits of reanimation help bring back things to go around again. The curves of these colours are low enough that CoCo should fit in these creature heavy decks.
- Sac Aggro (BRg)
So the champion won out over the 'crawler and gets 3 copies in the cube. It works well along side pod but red has the best free sac outlets in Goblin Bombardment and Greater Gargadon. With Blood Artist, Zulaport Cutthroat, Smothering Abomination and Goblin Sharpshooter rewarding the reckless throwaways. Alesha is even there to get the expendables back if you so desire.
- Humans (WB)
So the other positive of Bloodsoaked Champion is that is a human. This allows the mighty white one drop in Champion of the Parish get multiple triggers from him coming back and with these 1-drops, you know things will get aggressive. There is enough incidental humans that it doesn't need too much archetypical support but I threw in a Xathrid Necromancer in case someone wanted some sweet value from their champions.
Filling in the Rest
The other archetypes weren't coming to me right away so I added a little power in the form of all the flip-walkers as they all play really nicely and a normal planeswalker for each colour. The colourless section just got added with some cool cards. Unsure if I needed to support any archetypes from this section it just just been thrown together with some cards I like/would like to try. Added some generic removal to all colours and then added some random pivot cards to help for the last colour pairings.
- Go Wide/Tokens (WR)
Already had some tokens in red to support the sacrifice decks so adding some anthems in white should be enough to encourage the colour pair. Although being the colours with the best one drops makes the go wide and low strategy appealing for the aggro at heart. A couple of drops for this were firefist striker, accorder paladin and hallowed spiritkeeper, which all help the swarm in different ways.
- Tapout Control (UW)
So the usual tactic of throwing some wraths in white so go along with blues card draw generally makes people interested enough to go these colours. This colour combination can also go the tempo route if so desired. Mainly all due to Geist of Saint Traft because with a bit of removal/bounce that guy can win games all by himself. My fist draft of the cube ended up in UW control, which isn't even a archetype I like that much. So it must have been tempting enough to end up there.
- Ramp Control (RG)
Going off one of Grillo's suggestions in the Gruul thread decided to add some red sweepers that work well when you have large creatures. Crater Hellion almost exists exclusively for this archetype as a large guy to quickly ramp into and clear the board at the same time, sort of similar to wildfire. Works off of the base landfall package in green so only needed to add a couple of red sweepers and some splashy gold cards. Probably the roughest archetype but still should function fine if a player ends up stumbling into it (which I did in one of my drafts).
Also, a last little note, I have a removed some of the 1 turn must answer threats such as: Inferno Titan, Baneslayer Angel, Consecrated Sphinx, in favour for some less powerful top ends. Eaach of my inclusions all do something when the enter so you don't feel too bad when they are removed and should take a couple of chump blocks before taking over the game. I don't know if this is a good thing or not for the environment or if any of the cards I have put into this cube are on that higher power level but thought it was worth the experiment.
I have also included a couple of two card combos for some meta-drafting (or something):
Knight of the Reliquary + Retreat to Coralhelm
Reveillark + Saffi Eriksdotter
Palinchron + Phantasmal Image
Hopefully this gives enough of an insight as to how the cube came to be and isn't over some sort of word limit. Was a fun process building and look forward to seeing the other entries.
Kiblinx's Entry:
I am not that great at designing, I am just here to draft and make bad jokes (most of the time). I decided to throw an entry in just so you have more to look at. So may you observe my entry:
http://www.cubetutor.com/viewcube/21689
Now to start my rabble on how I got it to this point...
Start With the Lands
The main starting point was the double fetch package as it seemed to be the driving force behind your old cube. I wanted to run double battle (tango) lands but due to the enemy ones not being out yet I had to settle for shock lands (for the enemy section). Once the rest get released in Oath of the Gatewatch I will be swapping them around. They require a little more thinking than the shock lands, which is why I prefer them.
After doing the rest of the cube I noticed I wanted more fetches, so I threw in 5 making sure the colour spread was even then threw in 5 shocks for the other colour pairings to make a nice round number. Also put in 3 wastelands as a sort of midrange safety valve if you will. Would have loved to add more lands (like Shelldock Isle) but then again, that is what the ULD is for.
- Landfall (GW ur)
So what do you do when you have lands that come in twice? Get some sweet triggers! With double Steppe Lynx, Scythe Leopard and Snapping Gnarlid there is a decent GW aggro route to take, with the larger combination of Emeria Angel, Rampaging Baloths and Avenger of Zendikar to support a more ramp orientated version.
I also bled it a little into Red for the two aggro two drops and blue for Meloku and Retreat to Coralhelm for a bit of spice.
Brainstorm
The next most obvious card in the list was brainstorm, as you did have 6 copies of the card. It does work well in a fetch-heavy environment so I added 4 but found I wanted more and ended up at 5 copies. It helped come up the the next archetypes:
- Delver (URw)
So brainstorm helps setup Delver of Secrets, who knew? While this would fit into any Ux archetype the double Abbot of Keral Keep help push toward the top-of-library and spell heavy deck construction. Young Pizzy sometimes helps too. Can splash white to gain access to Seeker of the Way and Monastery Mentor if they are so inclined.
- TOL Midrange (UGr)
Sort of the same premise as Delver but doesn't have to be as spell focussed. Just wants to get value from brainstorm/fetches by changing the top card of your library. Lets cards like Courser of Kruphix, Oracle of Mul Daya and Conundrum Sphinx generate obscene value. Also allows other cards such as Mindshreiker, Evolutionary Leap and Collected Company produce known quantities. Also allows some miracles to work and makes manifests better.
- Delve Control (BU)
Fetchlands and 1-mana blue cantrips also have this neat side-effect of filling up your graveyard. This allows delve cards to get powered out quickly like the master of the golden banana, gurmag angler and other breaker of formats.
VSThe Great Sacrifice
There were only 2 more cards that you 'squadroned' so to speak, and those were Birthing Pod and Gravecrawler. Having Collected Company felt that pod wasn't required as much but it still has great gameplay that I decided to include it and work alongside the company. The 'crawlers on the other hand now have competition in the form of Bloodsoaked Champion, which doesn't have the problem of requiring a creature type only (really) in one colour to bring back.
- Pod (BGr)
This is the ideal colour combination for Pod, due to the amount of decent creatures with EtB effects and the fact they usually want to die unlike white's or blue's creatures. Podding Nest Invader into Reclamation Sage into Skinrender are the lines you look forward to and the bits of reanimation help bring back things to go around again. The curves of these colours are low enough that CoCo should fit in these creature heavy decks.
- Sac Aggro (BRg)
So the champion won out over the 'crawler and gets 3 copies in the cube. It works well along side pod but red has the best free sac outlets in Goblin Bombardment and Greater Gargadon. With Blood Artist, Zulaport Cutthroat, Smothering Abomination and Goblin Sharpshooter rewarding the reckless throwaways. Alesha is even there to get the expendables back if you so desire.
- Humans (WB)
So the other positive of Bloodsoaked Champion is that is a human. This allows the mighty white one drop in Champion of the Parish get multiple triggers from him coming back and with these 1-drops, you know things will get aggressive. There is enough incidental humans that it doesn't need too much archetypical support but I threw in a Xathrid Necromancer in case someone wanted some sweet value from their champions.
Filling in the Rest
The other archetypes weren't coming to me right away so I added a little power in the form of all the flip-walkers as they all play really nicely and a normal planeswalker for each colour. The colourless section just got added with some cool cards. Unsure if I needed to support any archetypes from this section it just just been thrown together with some cards I like/would like to try. Added some generic removal to all colours and then added some random pivot cards to help for the last colour pairings.
- Go Wide/Tokens (WR)
Already had some tokens in red to support the sacrifice decks so adding some anthems in white should be enough to encourage the colour pair. Although being the colours with the best one drops makes the go wide and low strategy appealing for the aggro at heart. A couple of drops for this were firefist striker, accorder paladin and hallowed spiritkeeper, which all help the swarm in different ways.
- Tapout Control (UW)
So the usual tactic of throwing some wraths in white so go along with blues card draw generally makes people interested enough to go these colours. This colour combination can also go the tempo route if so desired. Mainly all due to Geist of Saint Traft because with a bit of removal/bounce that guy can win games all by himself. My fist draft of the cube ended up in UW control, which isn't even a archetype I like that much. So it must have been tempting enough to end up there.
- Ramp Control (RG)
Going off one of Grillo's suggestions in the Gruul thread decided to add some red sweepers that work well when you have large creatures. Crater Hellion almost exists exclusively for this archetype as a large guy to quickly ramp into and clear the board at the same time, sort of similar to wildfire. Works off of the base landfall package in green so only needed to add a couple of red sweepers and some splashy gold cards. Probably the roughest archetype but still should function fine if a player ends up stumbling into it (which I did in one of my drafts).
Also, a last little note, I have a removed some of the 1 turn must answer threats such as: Inferno Titan, Baneslayer Angel, Consecrated Sphinx, in favour for some less powerful top ends. Eaach of my inclusions all do something when the enter so you don't feel too bad when they are removed and should take a couple of chump blocks before taking over the game. I don't know if this is a good thing or not for the environment or if any of the cards I have put into this cube are on that higher power level but thought it was worth the experiment.
I have also included a couple of two card combos for some meta-drafting (or something):
Knight of the Reliquary + Retreat to Coralhelm
Reveillark + Saffi Eriksdotter
Palinchron + Phantasmal Image
Hopefully this gives enough of an insight as to how the cube came to be and isn't over some sort of word limit. Was a fun process building and look forward to seeing the other entries.
