Dom Harvey
Contributor
HOW DID I NOT KNOW ABOUT THIS CARD BEFORE
Dom's Cube(s)
- Thread starter Dom Harvey
- Start date
HOW DID I NOT KNOW ABOUT THIS CARD BEFORE
Dom Harvey
Contributor
Ok, another probably-failed ground-up redesign incoming. I tried the approach of assigning each colour pair a theme/strategy and building from there, but it was hard not to end up with a bunch of isolated subsets of cards that never really interacted with each other. Instead I'm going to try grouping the colours by shards/wedges, looking at possible themes for the pairs in that combo, and then tying them together; this way I can hopefully get more crossover between colours/archetypes.
I'll start with Bant, which is maybe the easiest shard to build with and therefore the only one I really know what to do with so far.
WU: Artifacts, Blink, Flash, Reanimator, Heroic
UG: Library manipulation, Ramp, their bastard child Turboland, Flash, Tempo
GW: Tokens, Enchantments, Flash (kinda)
WU: Blink is an obvious and pushed theme for WU and it works very nicely with Flash - many Blink enablers and effects are instant speed. It promotes a lot of fun interactions within WUG and can leech into red and black if needed (both have good ETB triggers, red has cards like Twinflame while black has reanimation). White may not seem like the home of reanimator but if Zombify is our baseline effect (which it probably should be for a Cube like this) then we have equivalents in Breath of Life/Resurrection, Blink-able reanimation in Reveillark/Karmic Guide/Sun Titan, and wacky stuff like Pyrrhic Revival or Tethmos High Priest. Artifacts requires a lot of support outside of WU, and if I'm trying to give colour combinations distinct identities then having too many universally playable artifacts detracts from that.
UG: Casting Brainstorm with Oracle of Mul Daya in play is basically the greatest thing in Magic, and I want to partake in that whenever I can. Jason and others have shown how doubling down on Brainstorm can be successful even without much explicit support, but you can go very deep with it if you want to. UG has given rise to many a brutal tempo deck in Constructed, and blue's heavy density of instants and evasive creatures lines up well with green's combat tricks and flash guys.
WG: Why do you suck so much, WG?
BLINK:
I'm a fan of sending statements via your choice of gold cards, and WU has some nice headline acts:
We want blink effects:
(+ Flickerwisp, Saffi Eriksdotter)
We want good things to blink:
that have flash:
some of them are green:
We also want some good finishers for control decks that happen to intersect with our themes:
Blink lets you avoid paying sticker price for Angel (and maybe Vesuvan Shapeshifter?). Draining Whelk may seem lacklustre in an era of Titans, but back in the day there were few scarier things than having your own finisher countered before immediately getting attacked for 6.
FLASH:
Some of this ground was covered just now since blink and flash play so well together, but there's more to do here.
We're in blue, so naturally we have a lot of good instants:
We can add a few cards that work especially nicely with all of these:
and reanimation:
Since we'll have a lot of manafixing and we're pushing themes rather than generically good cards, we can afford a few more gold instants:
There are lots of solid flash guys, some defensive:
(Ephara + Plumeveil is just the cutest thing)
some offensive:
some badass:
We also want threats that have some functionality at instant speed:
and ways to 'gain' more mana:
With the new Whitemane Lion-esque Faerie in M15, we might be able to support a small Faeries subtheme:
(+ Pestermite, VClique(s), GEA, Sower in Cube; Mutavault in land draft)
LIBRARY MANIPULATION/TURBOLAND:
Let's start with the obvious:
Miracles are polarizing but that means some people love them, and I'm one:
(shoutout to Bonfire of the Damned, love you sweetie)
I want to play lots of lands:
and have that matter:
+ [cis]Valakut, the Molten Pinnacle[/cis] (land draft)
Tying it together:
I'll start with Bant, which is maybe the easiest shard to build with and therefore the only one I really know what to do with so far.
BANT (WUG):
WU: Artifacts, Blink, Flash, Reanimator, Heroic
UG: Library manipulation, Ramp, their bastard child Turboland, Flash, Tempo
GW: Tokens, Enchantments, Flash (kinda)
WU: Blink is an obvious and pushed theme for WU and it works very nicely with Flash - many Blink enablers and effects are instant speed. It promotes a lot of fun interactions within WUG and can leech into red and black if needed (both have good ETB triggers, red has cards like Twinflame while black has reanimation). White may not seem like the home of reanimator but if Zombify is our baseline effect (which it probably should be for a Cube like this) then we have equivalents in Breath of Life/Resurrection, Blink-able reanimation in Reveillark/Karmic Guide/Sun Titan, and wacky stuff like Pyrrhic Revival or Tethmos High Priest. Artifacts requires a lot of support outside of WU, and if I'm trying to give colour combinations distinct identities then having too many universally playable artifacts detracts from that.
UG: Casting Brainstorm with Oracle of Mul Daya in play is basically the greatest thing in Magic, and I want to partake in that whenever I can. Jason and others have shown how doubling down on Brainstorm can be successful even without much explicit support, but you can go very deep with it if you want to. UG has given rise to many a brutal tempo deck in Constructed, and blue's heavy density of instants and evasive creatures lines up well with green's combat tricks and flash guys.
WG: Why do you suck so much, WG?
BLINK:
I'm a fan of sending statements via your choice of gold cards, and WU has some nice headline acts:
We want blink effects:
(+ Flickerwisp, Saffi Eriksdotter)
We want good things to blink:
that have flash:
some of them are green:
We also want some good finishers for control decks that happen to intersect with our themes:
Blink lets you avoid paying sticker price for Angel (and maybe Vesuvan Shapeshifter?). Draining Whelk may seem lacklustre in an era of Titans, but back in the day there were few scarier things than having your own finisher countered before immediately getting attacked for 6.
FLASH:
Some of this ground was covered just now since blink and flash play so well together, but there's more to do here.
We're in blue, so naturally we have a lot of good instants:
We can add a few cards that work especially nicely with all of these:
and reanimation:
Since we'll have a lot of manafixing and we're pushing themes rather than generically good cards, we can afford a few more gold instants:
There are lots of solid flash guys, some defensive:
(Ephara + Plumeveil is just the cutest thing)some offensive:
some badass:
We also want threats that have some functionality at instant speed:
and ways to 'gain' more mana:
With the new Whitemane Lion-esque Faerie in M15, we might be able to support a small Faeries subtheme:
(+ Pestermite, VClique(s), GEA, Sower in Cube; Mutavault in land draft)
LIBRARY MANIPULATION/TURBOLAND:
Let's start with the obvious:
Miracles are polarizing but that means some people love them, and I'm one:
(shoutout to Bonfire of the Damned, love you sweetie)
I want to play lots of lands:
and have that matter:
+ [cis]Valakut, the Molten Pinnacle[/cis] (land draft)Tying it together:
It looks to me like the baseline power level of cards in your cube is pretty high. If you want synergistic strategies to emerge, I think you need to not make it possible just to draft a bunch of powerful cards.
Dom Harvey
Contributor
Yeah, it's possible some of this will have to be scaled back a bit, but it's hard for control decks to work if you can't draft a bunch of powerful cards.
Any ideas for other shards/wedges?
Any ideas for other shards/wedges?
You can check out a draft of the list I'm working on here: http://cubetutor.com/viewcube/13664
There's some mistakes in there, so not every card is actually supposed to be there, but you get the idea. There is a theme for each 2 color pair:
UW - blink/etb
BW - sacrificing your own stuff
BU - faeries and ninjas
RU - instants/sorceries matter
RB - hellbent/madness/discard
GB - graveyard matters
GR - ramp
WR - battalion/anthem/weenie
WG - tokens
UG - +1/+1 counters
In each color, there are 3x commons, 2x uncommons, and 1x rares.
My list isn't quite where I want it to be, but I think you want a relatively clear strategy for each color. To me, I don't think "library manipulation" is a clear enough strategy. While you want the cards to be useful outside the color pair, you also need the cards to come together into a strategy that can win.
As far as ideas for shards, here's some alternate ideas that could could do instead of what I have above:
Esper:
WU - you got this one
UB - mill, cipher/combat damage matters (could also work in rb)
BW - life gain/payment, constellation/enchantments matter (esp. if you have heroic as a theme elsewhere)
Jund
BR - "there will be blood" (blood lust, blood rush, combat damage matters), sacrificing your stuff
RG - suspend, storm, domain, big creatures/5+ power matters
GB - sacrifice (I really think GY is the best choice)
Grixis
UB - see above
BR - see above
RU - artifacts matter, storm, suspend
Naya
WR - radiance/color matters, tokens, soldier tribal
RG - see above
GW - you got this one
There's some mistakes in there, so not every card is actually supposed to be there, but you get the idea. There is a theme for each 2 color pair:
UW - blink/etb
BW - sacrificing your own stuff
BU - faeries and ninjas
RU - instants/sorceries matter
RB - hellbent/madness/discard
GB - graveyard matters
GR - ramp
WR - battalion/anthem/weenie
WG - tokens
UG - +1/+1 counters
In each color, there are 3x commons, 2x uncommons, and 1x rares.
My list isn't quite where I want it to be, but I think you want a relatively clear strategy for each color. To me, I don't think "library manipulation" is a clear enough strategy. While you want the cards to be useful outside the color pair, you also need the cards to come together into a strategy that can win.
As far as ideas for shards, here's some alternate ideas that could could do instead of what I have above:
Esper:
WU - you got this one
UB - mill, cipher/combat damage matters (could also work in rb)
BW - life gain/payment, constellation/enchantments matter (esp. if you have heroic as a theme elsewhere)
Jund
BR - "there will be blood" (blood lust, blood rush, combat damage matters), sacrificing your stuff
RG - suspend, storm, domain, big creatures/5+ power matters
GB - sacrifice (I really think GY is the best choice)
Grixis
UB - see above
BR - see above
RU - artifacts matter, storm, suspend
Naya
WR - radiance/color matters, tokens, soldier tribal
RG - see above
GW - you got this one