Dom Harvey
Contributor
We Need to Talk About Cubing
I love (shit-)posting here but it's hard to contribute if people can't cross-reference your posts with your list to see the context for your ideas, and it helps my design process if I have a place to collect and share my thoughts. I'm trying to overhaul my Cube at the moment so there's a lot to talk about, and I even get to draft it occasionally! I decided to get my act together and actually make a topic here at last (ignore the failed experiments of 2013/2014! I'm glad RL didn't exist when my Cube had Bearscape and Giant Harbinger, though perhaps that was when I needed you all most...)
Most recent list (doesn't necessarily reflect irl list): http://www.cubetutor.com/viewcube/49755
'Core': http://www.cubetutor.com/viewcube/56540
Philosophy:
- I've been dissatisfied with traditional aggro for a long time. It tends to create scripted games, is as poisonous as a lot of strategies we discourage but on an even larger scale, takes up a lot of slots, and places firm constraints on what else I can do in the Cube - it's hard to go deep on tokens, or fill up on solid midrange creatures, when you have to keep Elite Vanguard viable.
- I still want to have some aggressive strategies, and cutting normal aggro frees up slots for 'themed' aggro decks that have a more coherent identity: sacrifice, tokens, prowess, Voltron, and so on. Many cheap creatures in the Cube either have fun interactions elsewhere (Anafenza, Kin-Tree Spirit) or are excellent in the late game too (Figure of Destiny/Warden of the First Tree). Between this, the 'combo' elements in the aggro decks, and a careful pruning of the oppressive late-game cards that control decks in enjoy in most Cubes, every stage of the game is contested.
- I want to have combo support in the Cube without abandoning interactive gameplay, and I think the way to do this is to fold 'combo' into both aggro and control. This adds a new dimension to decks like these that stops them from seeming like 'just another' aggro or control deck, asks for fewer slots for narrow combo cards, and often makes them easier to interact with. Combos centred around creatures are easier to both assemble and fight using existing tools in the Cube, so that's where most of them lie.
Aggro specifically becomes stronger and more interesting. Aggro-combo decks tend to be a lot more resilient than normal aggro, and they can keep pace at any stage of the game. You don't just get your entire start blanked by a Kitchen Finks and you have actual sequencing decisions. There's also much greater satisfaction in having/facing the nut draw when that involves lots of moving parts working together instead of a simple 1-2-3-4 curve.
As Ari Lax said about the RG Landfall deck:
- This has massive implications for the colour pie. In most Cubes, aggro is red's primary strategy and its removal is strong for being able to gun down small creatures; without it, red needs a new identity and burn is a lot worse against tokens, large creatures, and creatures with ETB effects. Similarly, green's strength against aggro is blunted in a world where two-drops are routinely bigger than your 4/4. This forced a shift in what those colours want to do, which in turn spilled over into the other colours.
- I don't have many ways to cheat things out early. I've cut all the fast artifact mana, including one of my darlings in Coalition Relic. The only non-creature cards that can reanimate something large for less than four mana are conditional in some way (or on the watch-list), and there's nothing like Sundering Titan or Griselbrand that ends the game on the spot.
- I don't want any one card to be unanswerable if it resolves; I'm taking care to ensure that everything has a natural foil. The few planeswalkers that I do have aren't good at defending themselves and are weak to haste/trample creatures and removal, tokens have lots of sweepers and ways to fly over or go through them, large creatures have Clones and Threatens, and so on. I've cut most of the cards that destroy multiple lands (and with them the opponent's ability to compete in the game), and the ones that remain require a fair bit of setup.
- I want as many games as possible to feel competitive, which means smoothing out some of the variance that's inherent to Magic. The wide variety of mana sinks mean that even the low curve decks can justify a higher land count. I've sought out cards like Read the Bones and Nissa, Vastwood Seer that help 'bridge the gap' between different stages of the game, as well as lots of 'incidental' deck manipulation like scry (Temples, Magma Jet) and cycling. I make an effort to ensure blue doesn't have a near-monopoly on good card draw and filtering; the only colour that's lacking in that department is white, but there's not much I can do until they print cards that fix it.
I also want those games to remain competitive for as long as possible. The issue I have with the all-in Savannah Lions/Jackal Pup aggro decks as well as the Ulamog/Tooth and Nail ramp decks is that they dominate one phase of the game but are weak in the others so, if that phase is shortened/extended by too much, the game isn't interesting. I've tried to make it so that the midrange and control decks are still doing relevant things in the early game while the aggressive decks can still contest the mid/late game.
Part of this is stocking the Cube with cards that let you play from behind and overturn a losing position without pushing you even further ahead if you're winning. Sweepers, purely defensive removal like Condemn, cards like Firestorm that offer cheap ways to convert resources into something that affects the board, well-sized midrange creatures that won't always get removed instantly, and ways of turning the opponent's cards against them (Zealous Conscripts, Puppeteer Clique, Phantasmal Image) all help here. Planeswalkers are the biggest offender for letting the player in front cement their lead (Gideon in Standard exemplifies this to an absurd degree and warps the format around itself in the process) so I've benched most of them.
This also means capping the overall power level of the Cube. If you can't afford to take a turn off, stumble for a moment, or have your land come in tapped, you get a lot of non-games. I'm fine with the occasional blowout or Turn 4 kill as long as it's the exception rather than the rule.
- The cute themes and interactions I want to support in the Cube need to actually be good. When I supported Constellation, I learned quickly that it couldn't ever beat an Ugin: it's fine for cards to be strong, but not for one card's presence in the Cube or a deck to singlehandedly neuter a strategy. One of the least enjoyable aspects of Constructed is that a single card can easily define a format and kick out its competitors in a way that decreases overall diversity: Dromoka's Command and Reflector Mage are recent examples. The depth and breadth of a Limited card pool means that those cards can coexist: I can have a Dromoka's Command and powerful enchantments, or Reflector Mage and non-value creatures. I don't want to curtail that. Still, I don't want players to feel that their hard work in doing what the Cube encourages them to do is all for nothing.
- Supporting my chosen themes and ideas means having a lot of gold cards, which necessitates a lot of manafixing. As I've argued before I think this is a necessary part of Cube anyway, so I have no reservations about it. When there are too many, gold cards restrict your options during the draft; when they are backed with enough fixing and are interesting in their own right, they act as excellent bridges into other colours and lead to decks that look and feel very impressive.
- Creatures have become much, much stronger and more integral to the game in recent years. Effects that could pass as cards on their own are increasingly being attached to creatures. Some of the results are obvious - we have many more cheap blink and reanimation targets - but its main consequence is that one-for-one removal has become weaker. This is especially true in my Cube, where the tokens and sacrifice themes as well as the abundance of ETB creatures all line up well against Doom Blade and cards like Hero of Bladehold that demand an immediate answer are less common. However, the synergy-based decks are more vulnerable to a specific piece being taken and decks like Berserkers are naturally weak to cheap removal. It's hard to strike the right balance, and I don't claim to have done so yet.
I also support the 'move in on one creature' strategy, which is highly vulnerable to those cards. This sets up a RPS dynamic of going wide > point removal > building a creature; for this to be sustainable, we have to complete the loop by making 'building a creature > going wide' true, which isn't always a natural result. Alternatively, we can invert this dynamic by giving the 'build a creature' decks enough tools to beat removal and finding ways to not lose value on point removal by attaching it to creatures or getting additional value from prowess and the like.
- A related issue: when most effects are tied to creatures, and a lot of those creatures bring other bodies with them or give you more cards, it's easy for boards to stall out - as Standard over the past few years has shown. I'm giving extra credit to cards that can simplify boards, go through/around/over/under, or change the dynamic of the game so that it's not just about who's ahead on board.
- In a Cube where the majority of cards have a lot of different applications and there are themes that intersect in weird and unexpected ways, the cognitive burden on your drafters is pretty high. Even as the person who knows the most about the Cube, I still constantly learn new things - in my most recent draft, someone assembled Alhammarret's Archive + Trading Post and it blew my mind. My Cube is aimed at experienced players - I'm not making sacrifices on behalf of newer players - but it's helpful if everyone has some idea of what works and what doesn't and can fall back on a conventional strategy if their experiments aren't succeeding. My design process this time started by looking at successful Standard lists of the past few years to provide a 'core' of cards that can fill out a typical deck; any given drafter will have a frame of reference for many of these cards and, whatever the flaws of any one Standard format, WotC has done very well recently when it comes to printing powerful and reliable cards that are also fun and interesting to play with. For marginal card choices, simplicity will be a big tiebreaker: I recently cut Malicious Affliction for Doom Blade even though I'm pushing the sac theme in black because Doom Blade doesn't make you worry about the mana cost and how to eke out more value via Morbid, it just does what it says on the tin (and it looks great in foil). This isn't at odds with the overall desire for more complexity; on the contrary, you need a certain density of basic, universally playable effects to give you room to explore elsewhere.
I love it if someone wants to go off the deep end with Pyromancer's Goggles or assemble a complicated web of interactions with strange emergent properties, but there are always people at any draft table who just want to play the type of Magic they are familiar with. That's no less valid an approach, and you need people like that not just to fill out a draft pod but to keep the format sustainable; you can't have everyone going off the reservation, someone has to stick around to make sure things are ok.
- If someone does want to take a deep dive in the drafting process, they should be rewarded for it. Ideally, every pick should prompt you to reevaluate both individual cards and your larger strategy, adding new dimensions to your deck. Instead of just being a collection of good cards, the best decks should be systems that are more than the sum of their parts.
Maybe I have what looks like a normal WG aggro shell and I'm passed Vengevine. That's pretty good in my deck no matter what, but how can I use it to its full potential? The Wild Mongrel I have can bin it for free, and this Hangarback Walker in the next pack lets my Ranger of Eos return it on its own for no added cost. Mikaeus, the Lunarch is a '1-drop' for Vengevine and Ranger that works great with Hangarback, so I'll take that, and it also buffs the tokens from Hallowed Spiritkeeper which I'm already happy to see. Eidolon of Countless Battles is interesting, it's a lot of damage with these token makers and the tokens fly so it's easy to get a big hit in, and it's nice insurance against sweepers. With Eidolon and Hangarback, the Tarmogoyf I took earlier is looking better and better...
Equally, it's a ton of fun to take a card that wants a strong commitment and focus on it. This is especially true if there are multiple copies of that card: there have been lots of CubeTutor drafts where I've first-picked a Collected Company, quickly scooped up the second one, and frantically clicked through the remaining packs to see what my Company curve would be. When you know there's a card in the draft with your name on it but don't know if it will come to you, or when you pass it early and desperately hope to wheel it, the sweat becomes that much more exciting. If you can sense that an archetype is undrafted and move in, the glee at scooping up everything you want outweighs any boredom from being on autopilot.
- One of the most fun aspects of recent Standard is that decks can assume different positions both in-game and with their sideboarding: Brad Nelson played a RW Aggro deck (http://www.starcitygames.com/article/29537_RW-Aggro-At-The-Pro-Tour-30th.html) that would often SB into a control deck for Game 2, and then re-board into a proactive midrange deck with less removal and more threats for Game 3. I want to recreate that here if I can: we don't talk much about sideboarding in a Cube context, but the ability to adjust your deck's philosophy and be paid off for it is a mark of a good environment.
- It's clearly a problem if too many cards are very narrow, but I'm fine with having some cards that are 10s or 2s rather than 7s. I don't expect the Jeskai Ascendancy deck or the Hardened Scales deck to come together, but when they do it's a lot more memorable than UW Control deck #437
- My Cube should cater to a wide range of play styles and personalities and show off what Magic has been and can be. I love reading up on old decks and the general history of Magic; I want everyone to open a pack and be reminded of decks and formats from years ago that they truly loved and mastered; if I can please the aggro and control fans while also throwing a bone to the combo, prison, and 'I'll go down the rabbit hole while Yakety Sax plays on a loop in my head' folk, I should. Iconic or unique cards get leeway here that they wouldn't enjoy in a blind audition for a power-max Cube. At the same time, I like the direction of recent design even as I shake my head at specific decisions; you could open a pack and be forgiven for thinking it's a Modern Cube with a few old-bordered usurpers sneaking in. It's also my Cube, and any choices I make will necessarily reflect my own biases and preferences; a Cube is a labour of love and ought to have a personal touch to it.
-- As a general aim, I want every colour and colour combination to have a complex mix of identities. Most Cubes maintain a large overlap between the colour pie and the range of available archetypes:
White: Aggro, with some Wraths and planeswalkers
Blue: Control
Black: Often has an identity crisis (see the 'what's the matter with black' discussions of 2012); Carnophage and friends, when included, aren't supported strongly, so the colour is reduced to removal and some reanimation
Red: Heavy aggro with the occasional Sneak Attack or Wildfire; burn spells get co-opted by midrange or control
Green: Ramp and more ramp
Any deck that doesn't conform to its colours' primary role looks like a mess, and there's little room for pivoting and bridging between colours and roles. Ideally each colour should offer something to each strategy, with the understanding that some will do that better than others. I tried the approach that's popular here (and which Sam Black wrote about in his most recent foray into Cube) of assigning each colour pair or shard/wedge a task and building around that, but could never come up with something that satisfied me. For this I'm going to do the opposite: start with the deck types I want to push, and work out how the colours match up from there.
Major cleavages:
White: aggro, prowess/spells matter, tokens, control, creature shenanigans, blink
Blue: prowess/spells matter, top of library, control, 'engine', blink, artifacts?, ?
Black: sacrifice, reanimator, control, stax
Red: berserkers, prowess/spells matter, 'engine', artifacts, stax, sacrifice, creature shenanigans
Green: aggro, berserkers, creature shenanigans, 'engine', stax
Green/Black: creature-centric
White: split
Blue/Red: spell-centric
Aggro: white, red, green
Aggro-Control: white, blue, green
Aggro-Combo: white, black, red, green
Control: white, blue, black, (red)
Midrange-Combo/Combo-Control: white, blue, red, green
Prison: black, red, green
==
I'll go over the main archetypes I want to support, with separate notes for specific cards. I don't expect to run all of them at once, but I'd like to have a good idea of what the dependencies are and what ties the themes together so that mixing and matching is easier. UW Blink, UB Reanimator, and the like are still supported to varying degrees but we've all seen them before so I'll focus on the off-the-wall stuff.
Aggro:
GW Aggro/'Faeries'
Constructed analogues: GW Aggro (RTR/THS Standard), GhaziGlare (CHK/RAV Standard), GW Tokens (DTK/BFZ/SOI Standard), Bant Company (DTK/BFZ/SOI Standard)
This is the only pure 'aggro' deck here (though even that's a misnomer), but it has perhaps the most variety and depth of any archetype. The GW base is a solid and scary creature-based deck that marries early-game pressure with late-game power. Between flash creatures and instants, sticky threats like Voice of Resurgence and Kitchen Finks, utility lands, and every card being strong enough to demand an answer, GW can shrug off Damnation or Doom Blade and continue to do its thing.
There's an impressively wide range of subthemes that you can push in GW:
- Humans: Champion of the Parish/Thalia's Lieutenant/Mayor of Avabruck/Deranged Outcast, all the humans you'd expect in white and a surprising number in green (Saffi Eriksdotter, Den Protector, Tireless Tracker, Duskwatch Recruiter)
- Tokens: The natural direction to take GW and the best deck in Standard
- Lands: Lotus Cobra, Tireless Tracker, Knight of the Reliquary, Titania, Life from the Loam, lots of useful lands (Windbrisk Heights/Mosswort Bridge, Treetop Village/Stirring Wildwood, Horizon Canopy, Westvale Abbey). For a more aggressive slant, white and green both offer good landfall creatures
- Counters: One of the more self-contained themes but also one of the more viscerally satisfying ones. Key cards include Hardened Scales (!), Mikaeus, Ajani Goldmane/Nissa VoZ/Curse of Predation, Gavony Township, Avatar of the Resolute, Anafenza Kin-Tree Spirit
- Berserkers: see below, key cards: Rancor, Silverblade Paladin, Ajani CoP, Berserk, Become Immense, Selesnya Charm
There's a lot of overlap - the 'put counters on your whole team' cards are great with tokens, Tireless Tracker and Knight of the Reliquary are Humans that love lands, Experiment One is a Human that cares about counters, and so on - and most of these are easy enough to support.
This segment is about something larger, though: the GW macro-archetype that's one of the things I'm happiest with in my Cube. GW has a ton of playable instant-speed threats, which adds a subtle combo element to it: it may not seem like Restoration Angel and Advent of the Wurm (to use two of many examples) play together nicely, but the threat of one combines very well with the threat of the other. The line you take against one is often very different from the best line against the other; and what if they could also have Secure the Wastes, or Boon Satyr, or Archangel Avacyn? It's hard to play around Collected Company when you don't even know what it might hit! Maybe they have nothing and just want to make Fleecemane Lion monstrous or activate Gavony Township. It's reminiscent of the play pattern you would often see with Faeries, hence the title: you could either walk into Mistbind Clique or Cryptic Command, and if you somehow played around both you would often run into something else.
Even though this style of GW is proactive, it takes control by dictating the pacing of the game: you play cheap, hard-hitting threats that demand a reply, putting their life total low enough that there are always several plausible sequences of plays that can steal the game. If they survive the first wave, you can now pick fights at awkward times with your flash threats and force them to have the right answer at the right moment. Meanwhile, you have enough mana sinks that holding up mana doesn't waste your turn and you usually spend all your mana every turn (and spend it productively).
Aggro-Control:
UW Flash
Everything said above applies to UW Flash, but you also have actual countermagic to vex the Villain even further. UW can shift gears very quickly and often has to do so multiple times in one game; it demands tight play on both sides.
There's crossover here with spells matter (instant -speed prowess/Mentor triggers can turn a combat step in your favour, and you want to play cheap instants anyway) and blink (many of the good ETB effects are on flash triggers and the best blink effects are instant-speed), as the sample deck demonstrates.
Flash can easily touch green (or just go into Green - UG Flash is a deck that never seems to work when you push it but is fine when it occurs naturally) but staying in UW lets you make use of utility lands.
Aggro-Combo:
Berserkers
Constructed analogues: Brave Naya (RTR/THS Standard), RG Landfall (KTK/BFZ Standard), Death's Shadow Zoo (Modern)
The idea here is to back up a solid aggressive start with pump and Berserk/Temur Battle Rage effects for a surprise one-shot kill. Playing against these decks is terrifying: you might have a much more impressive board state and a bunch of cards in hand, but one misstep on your side or one topdeck on theirs can instantly end the game. You have to constantly reevaluate what you can afford to play around, when to remove their attackers, and if taking the shields down for a turn is safe; that dynamic doesn't really exist with most aggro decks, and I want to try recreating it in my Cube. Every attack step requires serious thought from both players. Normally, you have to run Zurgo into Polukranos and spend a Lightning Strike to finish it off; with this deck, Zurgo might outgrow Polukranos and trample over for a few points for good measure, or its friend who went unblocked might suddenly quadruple in size to steal the win. As above, there's more than one way to control a game, and this deck does it by throwing the opponent off curve in forcing it to react to its early pressure; eventually they have to take their shields down, and you can move in for the kill.
This deck is firmly grounded in Naya, which offers the biggest creatures and the best 'combo' cards. The UR prowess-based decks can look like variations on the theme, but they play out quite differently; I experimented with it in black, pushing bestow quite hard, but it's tough to find room alongside the black-heavy sacrifice package and all the other black cards. RG takes the 'sock full of pennies' approach, applying early and constant pressure with large creatures and then going in for the kill when the shields are down; WR relies more on temporary advantages in combat via effects like prowess and landfall, is the best at clearing the way for its attackers, and can diversify against removal by going wide instead of tall thanks to sharing a colour pair with the token theme; WG has the most long-term staying power and flexibility against interaction.
Note that I didn't link decks like Heroic or Infect, which can't really play a 'normal' game without committing to this plan. It's harder to commit to the strategy to the same degree in Limited, and I don't think it would be desirable anyway. You want a deck that can play the typical aggro game while building towards a sudden attempt to seize the day: more Kird Ape than Favored Hoplite.
Sample decks:
This deck has it all going on. You have some blisteringly fast starts - T1 Experiment One, T2 Porcelain Legionnaire, T3 Yasova or T1 Kird Ape T2 Wild Mongrel T3 discard Phoenix and another card, return Phoenix, attack! - thanks to well-costed attackers with burn and pump to back them up.
You have late-game power thanks to creature lands (with Sylvan Advocate!), Yasova, Boon Satyr, Den Protector with Deathmist Raptor alongside other sticky threats in Vengevine and Flamewake Phoenix, which in turn overlap with a collection of hasty threats that can kill out of nowhere. Wild Mongrel can pitch these to set up a future turn while pumping itself and Moldervine Cloak helps the small graveyard theme; there are lots of cheap creatures to pair towards Vengevine, notably the Dash on Zurgo; the sizing distribution is great for both Experiment One and Flamewake Phoenix (Mongrel is an all-star again here). Meanwhile, if you want to get some air and a drink, any combo of Ghor-Clan Rampager/Moldervine Cloak/Reckless Charge/Become Immense/Berserk can end the game while giving Timmy his dying wish.
You can see how this deck pivots between vertical and horizontal growth at a moment's notice: Raise the Alarm, Hordeling Outburst, and Battle Screech add to your force while triggering prowess and allow you to go wide against a Villain relying on spot removal or blockers, while your singular threats can quickly become lethal if you sense weakness. Anax and Cymede, Eidolon of Countless Battles, and Rally the Peasants bridge the gap between the two strategies.
Sacrifice
Constructed analogues: The Aristocrats (INN/RAV Standard), BR Tokens (TSP/LOR Standard), Ghost Husk (CHK/RAV Standard)
The darling of Riptide, the sacrifice deck has even gained traction in a lot of mainstream Cubes. This is less of an all-out aggro deck (though you do get starts that leave your opponents scooping up their cards in shock very quickly) and more of an intricate puzzle: you spend a few turns putting your pieces together and suddenly your opponent can't block profitably, can't attack through your ground forces, and can't protect their life total from the combo finish that's about to hit them. Sacrifice produces some of the most memorable turns of any deck in Cubes that feature it: many of us have tales of using Zealous Conscripts or Puppeteer Clique to OHKO a villain resting on their laurels.
The good news is that there are more options for this archetype than anyone could reasonably play, and many of them are powerful enough to find their way into other decks; the bad news is that it's very easy for the black and red sections to become devoted to this theme at the expense of everything else, and it encourages the board stalls that I'm working to avoid. For this update, I'll try to a) cut some of the marginal Sacrifice cards so that these colours have more breathing room and b) look for 'board simplifiers' that work either for or against Sacrifice.
The main colours are BR but that's by choice: BW and BG can host it too, but they have more going on and it's a more natural fit in BR. However, I want to have enough fixing that a Sacrifice deck of any stripe can borrow from other colour pairs despite the demanding mana requirements of black aggro: my BR Sac deck can splash Collected Company, my BW deck can splash Falkenrath Aristocrat, my BG deck can splash Reveillark...
This deck is everything I want to do in Magic. You're a reasonable aggro deck, buttressed by the Humans subtheme, that can also do silly things with Skirsdag High Priest, spin the wheel with Collected Company, and go off the rails with Earthcraft and Rally. There's a backdoor infinite combo with Saffi + Loyal Retainers + Xathrid Necromancer/Grim Haruspex too!
Midrange-Combo:
GW Creature Soup
Constructed analogues: Birthing Pod (lots of formats)
When you put the reanimation/blink effects in white, the creature searchers in green, and the great creatures in both colours together, you get this. You have the typical effects you'd want in a Cube deck - removal, lifegain, card draw - all attached to creatures and you shuttle them between zones to create an overwhelming advantage. Assembling this deck is an achievement, remembering all your triggers is an even bigger one.
Green adds to the copious manafixing already in the Cube to make splashing easy: you can snap up a creature or enabler in another colour and feel confident it will make the deck.
WR Shenanigans
Constructed analogues: Boat Brew (LOR/ALA Standard), kinda
Similar to the above with a more distinct flavour. Traditionally, WR has been the colour pair with by far the fewest ways to draw or filter cards or fight on that axis outside of planeswalkers; as a result, the rare WR control deck sticks to the tired 'planeswalkers + tons of removal' recipe and the vast majority of Boros decks try to beat down. As above, WR Aggro is certainly a fixture of this Cube and makes its presence known in a big way, but I want there to be more options.
Each example of this deck aims for something different: this one pairs Soulfire Grand Master and Boros Reckoner with damage-based sweepers, this one uses Imperial Recruiter and Alesha to loop Siege-Gang Commander or Fulminator Mage. Maybe you use Nahiri and looting/rummaging with Madness cards and hand fillers to churn through the deck and stock the yard for Feldon and friends, or put together a slower token deck that builds toward a Goblin Bombardment or Westvale Abbey turn. These ideas can coexist in the same deck without getting in each other's way: you can always cash in one half of a combo to Faithless Looting or Tormenting Voice and move in on the other plan.
Laying the foundation for all of this, we have a core of solid, dependable cards that do good work regardless of the details. I want Figure of Destiny and Mizzium Mortars in my opener, and I also want them when we're both topdecking on Turn 8.
Layers upon layers here, but note Nearheath Pilgrim + Avacyn, Nearheath Pilgrim + Boros Reckoner (+ Avacyn/Boros Charm for infinite life!), SFGM/Reckoner + Blasphemous Act, Karakas + Avacyn
WUR Spells
Constructed analogues: Ascendancy Tokens (THS-KTK Standard), Dark Jeskai (KTK-BFZ Standard)
Every deck featured so far relies heavily on creatures. Complicated boards, messy combat steps, and massive armies are all well and good, but there's something about the old-school style of Magic - passing the turn with a handful of cards and nothing but a wall of untapped lands - that appeals to many of us. The hedonists who want to trigger Jeskai Ascendancy ten times in one turn can get their fill here too.
Cubes where 'spells matter' often look to Delver of Secrets for an aggressive slant, but Delver can get a paper cut and have its pockets filled with lint for everything it's done to Constructed. The WR Prowess decks play the part instead, and blue - with all of its cheap cantrips/filtering and two premier threats in Stormchaser Mage and Shu Yun - can lend a hand.
The control decks tend to be more focused than normal UX Control and try to lock up the game with some engine rather than establishing total dominance (though playing Dig Through Time or Time Warp in back-to-back turns via Narset or Mizzix's Mastery blurs that line a bit). The top-of-library manipulation subs in for raw card draw (which is still plentiful) and helps to set up Miracles while the handful of planeswalkers means that the usual 'protect the queen' approach is still on the table.
The Jeskai Ascendancy decks are some beautiful weird combo-control-aggro-burn hybrid thing that shouldn't work but does. Ascendancy has one of the highest ceilings of any card in my list and I make decisions about my Cube based on it rather than the other way round.
RUG Engine
Constructed analogues: CAL (INV- Extended)
Lovers of value should check out this thread where this concept is explored in detail. The 10-second version is that this deck embodies the philosophy outlined above - acting like a system rather than a pile of cards - in a more specific and explicit way. The idea behind the graveyard decks is that, when enough cards in your deck care about the graveyard or can do something from there, anything that bins more cards represents virtual card advantage on top of whatever else it does. Here we apply the same principle to as many resources as possible: cards in hand, position of cards (e.g. top of library manipulation), lands, and so on.
This also houses the remains of the Ramp deck, which in this form is both more consistent and more competitive to play against.
Thanks to Safra for drafting this one! I swapped some of the MD/SB around to show some of the things the deck can do but any configuration of it looks sweet.
Lying halfway betwen this deck and the next one we have:
WUR Reanimator
Constructed analogues: Solar Fire (RAV-TSP Standard), UWR Reveillark (TSP-LOR Standard)
We think of Reanimator as intrinsically UB, or at the very least centred in black, but it doesn't have to be that way. Recent sensation Feldon headlines a reanimation package in red alongside unique Commander co-star Mizzix's Mastery (and the Welders showcased below), enabled by the rummaging and looting effects that make the 'engine' deck tick. White has its own bevy of reanimation: Breath of Life/Resurrection as the Zombify baseline, Miraculous Recovery as a souped-up Makeshift Mannequin, Karmic Guide for lots of silly loops, and Reveillark needs no introduction. Blue needed colourshifting to pick up its one reanimation spell, but cards like Jace VP and Compulsive Research are obviously fantastic here.
Ramp-Combo:
Red Artifacts/'Big X'
I wrote about this as part of a larger piece about red's role in Cube: check it
I'm unsure how deep I want to go: I think it requires a full commitment in order to work, and thus a greater injection of narrow cards, but that's a fine tradeoff to make for diversifying red as a colour with the useful side-effect of adding tools that any colour can use. I've included a theoretical example of a 'Big Black' deck to show off what that might look like; Big White, Big Blue, and so on should be possible too.
It also sets up the next deck:
Prison:
BRG Stax
This is likely to end up as a failed experiment - and 'success' means players being locked out or slowly grinded out of games. Still, these decks always look sweet on paper so I'll give it a try. The idea is to use cards that limit both players' resources - Smokestack, Smallpox, Death Cloud, Devastating Dreams, Wildfire - along with ways to break that symmetry. Many of the important pieces are artifacts, so there's a fair amount of flexibility, but it's hard to make it work outside of the Jund colours. Black and red offer sweepers, land destruction (insofar as that's something you want), and disruption while green lets you pull ahead on board (especially in land count), provides cheap and/or sticky threats, and makes the deck more consistent.
Upcoming posts: single card notes, draft reports, misc
Most recent list (doesn't necessarily reflect irl list): http://www.cubetutor.com/viewcube/49755
'Core': http://www.cubetutor.com/viewcube/56540
Philosophy:
- I've been dissatisfied with traditional aggro for a long time. It tends to create scripted games, is as poisonous as a lot of strategies we discourage but on an even larger scale, takes up a lot of slots, and places firm constraints on what else I can do in the Cube - it's hard to go deep on tokens, or fill up on solid midrange creatures, when you have to keep Elite Vanguard viable.
- I still want to have some aggressive strategies, and cutting normal aggro frees up slots for 'themed' aggro decks that have a more coherent identity: sacrifice, tokens, prowess, Voltron, and so on. Many cheap creatures in the Cube either have fun interactions elsewhere (Anafenza, Kin-Tree Spirit) or are excellent in the late game too (Figure of Destiny/Warden of the First Tree). Between this, the 'combo' elements in the aggro decks, and a careful pruning of the oppressive late-game cards that control decks in enjoy in most Cubes, every stage of the game is contested.
- I want to have combo support in the Cube without abandoning interactive gameplay, and I think the way to do this is to fold 'combo' into both aggro and control. This adds a new dimension to decks like these that stops them from seeming like 'just another' aggro or control deck, asks for fewer slots for narrow combo cards, and often makes them easier to interact with. Combos centred around creatures are easier to both assemble and fight using existing tools in the Cube, so that's where most of them lie.
Aggro specifically becomes stronger and more interesting. Aggro-combo decks tend to be a lot more resilient than normal aggro, and they can keep pace at any stage of the game. You don't just get your entire start blanked by a Kitchen Finks and you have actual sequencing decisions. There's also much greater satisfaction in having/facing the nut draw when that involves lots of moving parts working together instead of a simple 1-2-3-4 curve.
As Ari Lax said about the RG Landfall deck:
- This has massive implications for the colour pie. In most Cubes, aggro is red's primary strategy and its removal is strong for being able to gun down small creatures; without it, red needs a new identity and burn is a lot worse against tokens, large creatures, and creatures with ETB effects. Similarly, green's strength against aggro is blunted in a world where two-drops are routinely bigger than your 4/4. This forced a shift in what those colours want to do, which in turn spilled over into the other colours.
- I don't have many ways to cheat things out early. I've cut all the fast artifact mana, including one of my darlings in Coalition Relic. The only non-creature cards that can reanimate something large for less than four mana are conditional in some way (or on the watch-list), and there's nothing like Sundering Titan or Griselbrand that ends the game on the spot.
- I don't want any one card to be unanswerable if it resolves; I'm taking care to ensure that everything has a natural foil. The few planeswalkers that I do have aren't good at defending themselves and are weak to haste/trample creatures and removal, tokens have lots of sweepers and ways to fly over or go through them, large creatures have Clones and Threatens, and so on. I've cut most of the cards that destroy multiple lands (and with them the opponent's ability to compete in the game), and the ones that remain require a fair bit of setup.
- I want as many games as possible to feel competitive, which means smoothing out some of the variance that's inherent to Magic. The wide variety of mana sinks mean that even the low curve decks can justify a higher land count. I've sought out cards like Read the Bones and Nissa, Vastwood Seer that help 'bridge the gap' between different stages of the game, as well as lots of 'incidental' deck manipulation like scry (Temples, Magma Jet) and cycling. I make an effort to ensure blue doesn't have a near-monopoly on good card draw and filtering; the only colour that's lacking in that department is white, but there's not much I can do until they print cards that fix it.
I also want those games to remain competitive for as long as possible. The issue I have with the all-in Savannah Lions/Jackal Pup aggro decks as well as the Ulamog/Tooth and Nail ramp decks is that they dominate one phase of the game but are weak in the others so, if that phase is shortened/extended by too much, the game isn't interesting. I've tried to make it so that the midrange and control decks are still doing relevant things in the early game while the aggressive decks can still contest the mid/late game.
Part of this is stocking the Cube with cards that let you play from behind and overturn a losing position without pushing you even further ahead if you're winning. Sweepers, purely defensive removal like Condemn, cards like Firestorm that offer cheap ways to convert resources into something that affects the board, well-sized midrange creatures that won't always get removed instantly, and ways of turning the opponent's cards against them (Zealous Conscripts, Puppeteer Clique, Phantasmal Image) all help here. Planeswalkers are the biggest offender for letting the player in front cement their lead (Gideon in Standard exemplifies this to an absurd degree and warps the format around itself in the process) so I've benched most of them.
This also means capping the overall power level of the Cube. If you can't afford to take a turn off, stumble for a moment, or have your land come in tapped, you get a lot of non-games. I'm fine with the occasional blowout or Turn 4 kill as long as it's the exception rather than the rule.
- The cute themes and interactions I want to support in the Cube need to actually be good. When I supported Constellation, I learned quickly that it couldn't ever beat an Ugin: it's fine for cards to be strong, but not for one card's presence in the Cube or a deck to singlehandedly neuter a strategy. One of the least enjoyable aspects of Constructed is that a single card can easily define a format and kick out its competitors in a way that decreases overall diversity: Dromoka's Command and Reflector Mage are recent examples. The depth and breadth of a Limited card pool means that those cards can coexist: I can have a Dromoka's Command and powerful enchantments, or Reflector Mage and non-value creatures. I don't want to curtail that. Still, I don't want players to feel that their hard work in doing what the Cube encourages them to do is all for nothing.
- Supporting my chosen themes and ideas means having a lot of gold cards, which necessitates a lot of manafixing. As I've argued before I think this is a necessary part of Cube anyway, so I have no reservations about it. When there are too many, gold cards restrict your options during the draft; when they are backed with enough fixing and are interesting in their own right, they act as excellent bridges into other colours and lead to decks that look and feel very impressive.
- Creatures have become much, much stronger and more integral to the game in recent years. Effects that could pass as cards on their own are increasingly being attached to creatures. Some of the results are obvious - we have many more cheap blink and reanimation targets - but its main consequence is that one-for-one removal has become weaker. This is especially true in my Cube, where the tokens and sacrifice themes as well as the abundance of ETB creatures all line up well against Doom Blade and cards like Hero of Bladehold that demand an immediate answer are less common. However, the synergy-based decks are more vulnerable to a specific piece being taken and decks like Berserkers are naturally weak to cheap removal. It's hard to strike the right balance, and I don't claim to have done so yet.
I also support the 'move in on one creature' strategy, which is highly vulnerable to those cards. This sets up a RPS dynamic of going wide > point removal > building a creature; for this to be sustainable, we have to complete the loop by making 'building a creature > going wide' true, which isn't always a natural result. Alternatively, we can invert this dynamic by giving the 'build a creature' decks enough tools to beat removal and finding ways to not lose value on point removal by attaching it to creatures or getting additional value from prowess and the like.
- A related issue: when most effects are tied to creatures, and a lot of those creatures bring other bodies with them or give you more cards, it's easy for boards to stall out - as Standard over the past few years has shown. I'm giving extra credit to cards that can simplify boards, go through/around/over/under, or change the dynamic of the game so that it's not just about who's ahead on board.
- In a Cube where the majority of cards have a lot of different applications and there are themes that intersect in weird and unexpected ways, the cognitive burden on your drafters is pretty high. Even as the person who knows the most about the Cube, I still constantly learn new things - in my most recent draft, someone assembled Alhammarret's Archive + Trading Post and it blew my mind. My Cube is aimed at experienced players - I'm not making sacrifices on behalf of newer players - but it's helpful if everyone has some idea of what works and what doesn't and can fall back on a conventional strategy if their experiments aren't succeeding. My design process this time started by looking at successful Standard lists of the past few years to provide a 'core' of cards that can fill out a typical deck; any given drafter will have a frame of reference for many of these cards and, whatever the flaws of any one Standard format, WotC has done very well recently when it comes to printing powerful and reliable cards that are also fun and interesting to play with. For marginal card choices, simplicity will be a big tiebreaker: I recently cut Malicious Affliction for Doom Blade even though I'm pushing the sac theme in black because Doom Blade doesn't make you worry about the mana cost and how to eke out more value via Morbid, it just does what it says on the tin (and it looks great in foil). This isn't at odds with the overall desire for more complexity; on the contrary, you need a certain density of basic, universally playable effects to give you room to explore elsewhere.
I love it if someone wants to go off the deep end with Pyromancer's Goggles or assemble a complicated web of interactions with strange emergent properties, but there are always people at any draft table who just want to play the type of Magic they are familiar with. That's no less valid an approach, and you need people like that not just to fill out a draft pod but to keep the format sustainable; you can't have everyone going off the reservation, someone has to stick around to make sure things are ok.
- If someone does want to take a deep dive in the drafting process, they should be rewarded for it. Ideally, every pick should prompt you to reevaluate both individual cards and your larger strategy, adding new dimensions to your deck. Instead of just being a collection of good cards, the best decks should be systems that are more than the sum of their parts.
Maybe I have what looks like a normal WG aggro shell and I'm passed Vengevine. That's pretty good in my deck no matter what, but how can I use it to its full potential? The Wild Mongrel I have can bin it for free, and this Hangarback Walker in the next pack lets my Ranger of Eos return it on its own for no added cost. Mikaeus, the Lunarch is a '1-drop' for Vengevine and Ranger that works great with Hangarback, so I'll take that, and it also buffs the tokens from Hallowed Spiritkeeper which I'm already happy to see. Eidolon of Countless Battles is interesting, it's a lot of damage with these token makers and the tokens fly so it's easy to get a big hit in, and it's nice insurance against sweepers. With Eidolon and Hangarback, the Tarmogoyf I took earlier is looking better and better...
Equally, it's a ton of fun to take a card that wants a strong commitment and focus on it. This is especially true if there are multiple copies of that card: there have been lots of CubeTutor drafts where I've first-picked a Collected Company, quickly scooped up the second one, and frantically clicked through the remaining packs to see what my Company curve would be. When you know there's a card in the draft with your name on it but don't know if it will come to you, or when you pass it early and desperately hope to wheel it, the sweat becomes that much more exciting. If you can sense that an archetype is undrafted and move in, the glee at scooping up everything you want outweighs any boredom from being on autopilot.
- One of the most fun aspects of recent Standard is that decks can assume different positions both in-game and with their sideboarding: Brad Nelson played a RW Aggro deck (http://www.starcitygames.com/article/29537_RW-Aggro-At-The-Pro-Tour-30th.html) that would often SB into a control deck for Game 2, and then re-board into a proactive midrange deck with less removal and more threats for Game 3. I want to recreate that here if I can: we don't talk much about sideboarding in a Cube context, but the ability to adjust your deck's philosophy and be paid off for it is a mark of a good environment.
- It's clearly a problem if too many cards are very narrow, but I'm fine with having some cards that are 10s or 2s rather than 7s. I don't expect the Jeskai Ascendancy deck or the Hardened Scales deck to come together, but when they do it's a lot more memorable than UW Control deck #437
- My Cube should cater to a wide range of play styles and personalities and show off what Magic has been and can be. I love reading up on old decks and the general history of Magic; I want everyone to open a pack and be reminded of decks and formats from years ago that they truly loved and mastered; if I can please the aggro and control fans while also throwing a bone to the combo, prison, and 'I'll go down the rabbit hole while Yakety Sax plays on a loop in my head' folk, I should. Iconic or unique cards get leeway here that they wouldn't enjoy in a blind audition for a power-max Cube. At the same time, I like the direction of recent design even as I shake my head at specific decisions; you could open a pack and be forgiven for thinking it's a Modern Cube with a few old-bordered usurpers sneaking in. It's also my Cube, and any choices I make will necessarily reflect my own biases and preferences; a Cube is a labour of love and ought to have a personal touch to it.
-- As a general aim, I want every colour and colour combination to have a complex mix of identities. Most Cubes maintain a large overlap between the colour pie and the range of available archetypes:
White: Aggro, with some Wraths and planeswalkers
Blue: Control
Black: Often has an identity crisis (see the 'what's the matter with black' discussions of 2012); Carnophage and friends, when included, aren't supported strongly, so the colour is reduced to removal and some reanimation
Red: Heavy aggro with the occasional Sneak Attack or Wildfire; burn spells get co-opted by midrange or control
Green: Ramp and more ramp
Any deck that doesn't conform to its colours' primary role looks like a mess, and there's little room for pivoting and bridging between colours and roles. Ideally each colour should offer something to each strategy, with the understanding that some will do that better than others. I tried the approach that's popular here (and which Sam Black wrote about in his most recent foray into Cube) of assigning each colour pair or shard/wedge a task and building around that, but could never come up with something that satisfied me. For this I'm going to do the opposite: start with the deck types I want to push, and work out how the colours match up from there.
Major cleavages:
White: aggro, prowess/spells matter, tokens, control, creature shenanigans, blink
Blue: prowess/spells matter, top of library, control, 'engine', blink, artifacts?, ?
Black: sacrifice, reanimator, control, stax
Red: berserkers, prowess/spells matter, 'engine', artifacts, stax, sacrifice, creature shenanigans
Green: aggro, berserkers, creature shenanigans, 'engine', stax
Green/Black: creature-centric
White: split
Blue/Red: spell-centric
Aggro: white, red, green
Aggro-Control: white, blue, green
Aggro-Combo: white, black, red, green
Control: white, blue, black, (red)
Midrange-Combo/Combo-Control: white, blue, red, green
Prison: black, red, green
==
I'll go over the main archetypes I want to support, with separate notes for specific cards. I don't expect to run all of them at once, but I'd like to have a good idea of what the dependencies are and what ties the themes together so that mixing and matching is easier. UW Blink, UB Reanimator, and the like are still supported to varying degrees but we've all seen them before so I'll focus on the off-the-wall stuff.
Aggro:
GW Aggro/'Faeries'
Constructed analogues: GW Aggro (RTR/THS Standard), GhaziGlare (CHK/RAV Standard), GW Tokens (DTK/BFZ/SOI Standard), Bant Company (DTK/BFZ/SOI Standard)
This is the only pure 'aggro' deck here (though even that's a misnomer), but it has perhaps the most variety and depth of any archetype. The GW base is a solid and scary creature-based deck that marries early-game pressure with late-game power. Between flash creatures and instants, sticky threats like Voice of Resurgence and Kitchen Finks, utility lands, and every card being strong enough to demand an answer, GW can shrug off Damnation or Doom Blade and continue to do its thing.
There's an impressively wide range of subthemes that you can push in GW:
- Humans: Champion of the Parish/Thalia's Lieutenant/Mayor of Avabruck/Deranged Outcast, all the humans you'd expect in white and a surprising number in green (Saffi Eriksdotter, Den Protector, Tireless Tracker, Duskwatch Recruiter)
- Tokens: The natural direction to take GW and the best deck in Standard
- Lands: Lotus Cobra, Tireless Tracker, Knight of the Reliquary, Titania, Life from the Loam, lots of useful lands (Windbrisk Heights/Mosswort Bridge, Treetop Village/Stirring Wildwood, Horizon Canopy, Westvale Abbey). For a more aggressive slant, white and green both offer good landfall creatures
- Counters: One of the more self-contained themes but also one of the more viscerally satisfying ones. Key cards include Hardened Scales (!), Mikaeus, Ajani Goldmane/Nissa VoZ/Curse of Predation, Gavony Township, Avatar of the Resolute, Anafenza Kin-Tree Spirit
- Berserkers: see below, key cards: Rancor, Silverblade Paladin, Ajani CoP, Berserk, Become Immense, Selesnya Charm
There's a lot of overlap - the 'put counters on your whole team' cards are great with tokens, Tireless Tracker and Knight of the Reliquary are Humans that love lands, Experiment One is a Human that cares about counters, and so on - and most of these are easy enough to support.
This segment is about something larger, though: the GW macro-archetype that's one of the things I'm happiest with in my Cube. GW has a ton of playable instant-speed threats, which adds a subtle combo element to it: it may not seem like Restoration Angel and Advent of the Wurm (to use two of many examples) play together nicely, but the threat of one combines very well with the threat of the other. The line you take against one is often very different from the best line against the other; and what if they could also have Secure the Wastes, or Boon Satyr, or Archangel Avacyn? It's hard to play around Collected Company when you don't even know what it might hit! Maybe they have nothing and just want to make Fleecemane Lion monstrous or activate Gavony Township. It's reminiscent of the play pattern you would often see with Faeries, hence the title: you could either walk into Mistbind Clique or Cryptic Command, and if you somehow played around both you would often run into something else.
Even though this style of GW is proactive, it takes control by dictating the pacing of the game: you play cheap, hard-hitting threats that demand a reply, putting their life total low enough that there are always several plausible sequences of plays that can steal the game. If they survive the first wave, you can now pick fights at awkward times with your flash threats and force them to have the right answer at the right moment. Meanwhile, you have enough mana sinks that holding up mana doesn't waste your turn and you usually spend all your mana every turn (and spend it productively).
Aggro-Control:
UW Flash
Everything said above applies to UW Flash, but you also have actual countermagic to vex the Villain even further. UW can shift gears very quickly and often has to do so multiple times in one game; it demands tight play on both sides.
There's crossover here with spells matter (instant -speed prowess/Mentor triggers can turn a combat step in your favour, and you want to play cheap instants anyway) and blink (many of the good ETB effects are on flash triggers and the best blink effects are instant-speed), as the sample deck demonstrates.
Flash can easily touch green (or just go into Green - UG Flash is a deck that never seems to work when you push it but is fine when it occurs naturally) but staying in UW lets you make use of utility lands.
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Aggro-Combo:
Berserkers
Constructed analogues: Brave Naya (RTR/THS Standard), RG Landfall (KTK/BFZ Standard), Death's Shadow Zoo (Modern)
The idea here is to back up a solid aggressive start with pump and Berserk/Temur Battle Rage effects for a surprise one-shot kill. Playing against these decks is terrifying: you might have a much more impressive board state and a bunch of cards in hand, but one misstep on your side or one topdeck on theirs can instantly end the game. You have to constantly reevaluate what you can afford to play around, when to remove their attackers, and if taking the shields down for a turn is safe; that dynamic doesn't really exist with most aggro decks, and I want to try recreating it in my Cube. Every attack step requires serious thought from both players. Normally, you have to run Zurgo into Polukranos and spend a Lightning Strike to finish it off; with this deck, Zurgo might outgrow Polukranos and trample over for a few points for good measure, or its friend who went unblocked might suddenly quadruple in size to steal the win. As above, there's more than one way to control a game, and this deck does it by throwing the opponent off curve in forcing it to react to its early pressure; eventually they have to take their shields down, and you can move in for the kill.
This deck is firmly grounded in Naya, which offers the biggest creatures and the best 'combo' cards. The UR prowess-based decks can look like variations on the theme, but they play out quite differently; I experimented with it in black, pushing bestow quite hard, but it's tough to find room alongside the black-heavy sacrifice package and all the other black cards. RG takes the 'sock full of pennies' approach, applying early and constant pressure with large creatures and then going in for the kill when the shields are down; WR relies more on temporary advantages in combat via effects like prowess and landfall, is the best at clearing the way for its attackers, and can diversify against removal by going wide instead of tall thanks to sharing a colour pair with the token theme; WG has the most long-term staying power and flexibility against interaction.
Note that I didn't link decks like Heroic or Infect, which can't really play a 'normal' game without committing to this plan. It's harder to commit to the strategy to the same degree in Limited, and I don't think it would be desirable anyway. You want a deck that can play the typical aggro game while building towards a sudden attempt to seize the day: more Kird Ape than Favored Hoplite.
Sample decks:
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This deck has it all going on. You have some blisteringly fast starts - T1 Experiment One, T2 Porcelain Legionnaire, T3 Yasova or T1 Kird Ape T2 Wild Mongrel T3 discard Phoenix and another card, return Phoenix, attack! - thanks to well-costed attackers with burn and pump to back them up.
You have late-game power thanks to creature lands (with Sylvan Advocate!), Yasova, Boon Satyr, Den Protector with Deathmist Raptor alongside other sticky threats in Vengevine and Flamewake Phoenix, which in turn overlap with a collection of hasty threats that can kill out of nowhere. Wild Mongrel can pitch these to set up a future turn while pumping itself and Moldervine Cloak helps the small graveyard theme; there are lots of cheap creatures to pair towards Vengevine, notably the Dash on Zurgo; the sizing distribution is great for both Experiment One and Flamewake Phoenix (Mongrel is an all-star again here). Meanwhile, if you want to get some air and a drink, any combo of Ghor-Clan Rampager/Moldervine Cloak/Reckless Charge/Become Immense/Berserk can end the game while giving Timmy his dying wish.
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You can see how this deck pivots between vertical and horizontal growth at a moment's notice: Raise the Alarm, Hordeling Outburst, and Battle Screech add to your force while triggering prowess and allow you to go wide against a Villain relying on spot removal or blockers, while your singular threats can quickly become lethal if you sense weakness. Anax and Cymede, Eidolon of Countless Battles, and Rally the Peasants bridge the gap between the two strategies.
Sacrifice
Constructed analogues: The Aristocrats (INN/RAV Standard), BR Tokens (TSP/LOR Standard), Ghost Husk (CHK/RAV Standard)
The darling of Riptide, the sacrifice deck has even gained traction in a lot of mainstream Cubes. This is less of an all-out aggro deck (though you do get starts that leave your opponents scooping up their cards in shock very quickly) and more of an intricate puzzle: you spend a few turns putting your pieces together and suddenly your opponent can't block profitably, can't attack through your ground forces, and can't protect their life total from the combo finish that's about to hit them. Sacrifice produces some of the most memorable turns of any deck in Cubes that feature it: many of us have tales of using Zealous Conscripts or Puppeteer Clique to OHKO a villain resting on their laurels.
The good news is that there are more options for this archetype than anyone could reasonably play, and many of them are powerful enough to find their way into other decks; the bad news is that it's very easy for the black and red sections to become devoted to this theme at the expense of everything else, and it encourages the board stalls that I'm working to avoid. For this update, I'll try to a) cut some of the marginal Sacrifice cards so that these colours have more breathing room and b) look for 'board simplifiers' that work either for or against Sacrifice.
The main colours are BR but that's by choice: BW and BG can host it too, but they have more going on and it's a more natural fit in BR. However, I want to have enough fixing that a Sacrifice deck of any stripe can borrow from other colour pairs despite the demanding mana requirements of black aggro: my BR Sac deck can splash Collected Company, my BW deck can splash Falkenrath Aristocrat, my BG deck can splash Reveillark...
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This deck is everything I want to do in Magic. You're a reasonable aggro deck, buttressed by the Humans subtheme, that can also do silly things with Skirsdag High Priest, spin the wheel with Collected Company, and go off the rails with Earthcraft and Rally. There's a backdoor infinite combo with Saffi + Loyal Retainers + Xathrid Necromancer/Grim Haruspex too!
Midrange-Combo:
GW Creature Soup
Constructed analogues: Birthing Pod (lots of formats)
When you put the reanimation/blink effects in white, the creature searchers in green, and the great creatures in both colours together, you get this. You have the typical effects you'd want in a Cube deck - removal, lifegain, card draw - all attached to creatures and you shuttle them between zones to create an overwhelming advantage. Assembling this deck is an achievement, remembering all your triggers is an even bigger one.
Green adds to the copious manafixing already in the Cube to make splashing easy: you can snap up a creature or enabler in another colour and feel confident it will make the deck.
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WR Shenanigans
Constructed analogues: Boat Brew (LOR/ALA Standard), kinda
Similar to the above with a more distinct flavour. Traditionally, WR has been the colour pair with by far the fewest ways to draw or filter cards or fight on that axis outside of planeswalkers; as a result, the rare WR control deck sticks to the tired 'planeswalkers + tons of removal' recipe and the vast majority of Boros decks try to beat down. As above, WR Aggro is certainly a fixture of this Cube and makes its presence known in a big way, but I want there to be more options.
Each example of this deck aims for something different: this one pairs Soulfire Grand Master and Boros Reckoner with damage-based sweepers, this one uses Imperial Recruiter and Alesha to loop Siege-Gang Commander or Fulminator Mage. Maybe you use Nahiri and looting/rummaging with Madness cards and hand fillers to churn through the deck and stock the yard for Feldon and friends, or put together a slower token deck that builds toward a Goblin Bombardment or Westvale Abbey turn. These ideas can coexist in the same deck without getting in each other's way: you can always cash in one half of a combo to Faithless Looting or Tormenting Voice and move in on the other plan.
Laying the foundation for all of this, we have a core of solid, dependable cards that do good work regardless of the details. I want Figure of Destiny and Mizzium Mortars in my opener, and I also want them when we're both topdecking on Turn 8.
WR Tokens from CubeTutor.com
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Layers upon layers here, but note Nearheath Pilgrim + Avacyn, Nearheath Pilgrim + Boros Reckoner (+ Avacyn/Boros Charm for infinite life!), SFGM/Reckoner + Blasphemous Act, Karakas + Avacyn
WUR Spells
Constructed analogues: Ascendancy Tokens (THS-KTK Standard), Dark Jeskai (KTK-BFZ Standard)
Every deck featured so far relies heavily on creatures. Complicated boards, messy combat steps, and massive armies are all well and good, but there's something about the old-school style of Magic - passing the turn with a handful of cards and nothing but a wall of untapped lands - that appeals to many of us. The hedonists who want to trigger Jeskai Ascendancy ten times in one turn can get their fill here too.
Cubes where 'spells matter' often look to Delver of Secrets for an aggressive slant, but Delver can get a paper cut and have its pockets filled with lint for everything it's done to Constructed. The WR Prowess decks play the part instead, and blue - with all of its cheap cantrips/filtering and two premier threats in Stormchaser Mage and Shu Yun - can lend a hand.
The control decks tend to be more focused than normal UX Control and try to lock up the game with some engine rather than establishing total dominance (though playing Dig Through Time or Time Warp in back-to-back turns via Narset or Mizzix's Mastery blurs that line a bit). The top-of-library manipulation subs in for raw card draw (which is still plentiful) and helps to set up Miracles while the handful of planeswalkers means that the usual 'protect the queen' approach is still on the table.
The Jeskai Ascendancy decks are some beautiful weird combo-control-aggro-burn hybrid thing that shouldn't work but does. Ascendancy has one of the highest ceilings of any card in my list and I make decisions about my Cube based on it rather than the other way round.
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RUG Engine
Constructed analogues: CAL (INV- Extended)
Lovers of value should check out this thread where this concept is explored in detail. The 10-second version is that this deck embodies the philosophy outlined above - acting like a system rather than a pile of cards - in a more specific and explicit way. The idea behind the graveyard decks is that, when enough cards in your deck care about the graveyard or can do something from there, anything that bins more cards represents virtual card advantage on top of whatever else it does. Here we apply the same principle to as many resources as possible: cards in hand, position of cards (e.g. top of library manipulation), lands, and so on.
This also houses the remains of the Ramp deck, which in this form is both more consistent and more competitive to play against.
RUG Seasons Loam from CubeTutor.com
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Thanks to Safra for drafting this one! I swapped some of the MD/SB around to show some of the things the deck can do but any configuration of it looks sweet.
Lying halfway betwen this deck and the next one we have:
WUR Reanimator
Constructed analogues: Solar Fire (RAV-TSP Standard), UWR Reveillark (TSP-LOR Standard)
We think of Reanimator as intrinsically UB, or at the very least centred in black, but it doesn't have to be that way. Recent sensation Feldon headlines a reanimation package in red alongside unique Commander co-star Mizzix's Mastery (and the Welders showcased below), enabled by the rummaging and looting effects that make the 'engine' deck tick. White has its own bevy of reanimation: Breath of Life/Resurrection as the Zombify baseline, Miraculous Recovery as a souped-up Makeshift Mannequin, Karmic Guide for lots of silly loops, and Reveillark needs no introduction. Blue needed colourshifting to pick up its one reanimation spell, but cards like Jace VP and Compulsive Research are obviously fantastic here.
Ramp-Combo:
Red Artifacts/'Big X'
I wrote about this as part of a larger piece about red's role in Cube: check it
I'm unsure how deep I want to go: I think it requires a full commitment in order to work, and thus a greater injection of narrow cards, but that's a fine tradeoff to make for diversifying red as a colour with the useful side-effect of adding tools that any colour can use. I've included a theoretical example of a 'Big Black' deck to show off what that might look like; Big White, Big Blue, and so on should be possible too.
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It also sets up the next deck:
Prison:
BRG Stax
This is likely to end up as a failed experiment - and 'success' means players being locked out or slowly grinded out of games. Still, these decks always look sweet on paper so I'll give it a try. The idea is to use cards that limit both players' resources - Smokestack, Smallpox, Death Cloud, Devastating Dreams, Wildfire - along with ways to break that symmetry. Many of the important pieces are artifacts, so there's a fair amount of flexibility, but it's hard to make it work outside of the Jund colours. Black and red offer sweepers, land destruction (insofar as that's something you want), and disruption while green lets you pull ahead on board (especially in land count), provides cheap and/or sticky threats, and makes the deck more consistent.
Upcoming posts: single card notes, draft reports, misc
