General Eldrazi Domain CubeTutor decks

Ughhhhhhhh I dunno. You want Delve -> Pod -> Eldrazi to be the line?


Delve? cubetutor doesn't have a way for me to ctrl+f through card text, but I couldn't find anything with high enough cmc to pod into eldrazi. Regardless, I don't think 1 pod would ever reach the point of being GRBS consistently. If someone can put together that level of shenanigans, it seems fine.

Also, one more unrelated musing. I had never looked at your cube list before those 4 drafts. I found myself a little unsure of what I should be doing as a drafter. Some strategies/archetypes were fairly obvious, but there was definitely stuff floating around I was unsure about. In the same line, I'm still not completely sure how to draft aggro properly. It feels like it needs to bleed into midrange a bit, but I look at cards and wonder "is this good enough?"

Any new draft set requires some learning, and I don't mean these as serious criticisms to your design, but I wonder how much time wizards will spend looking at each cube for the contest? I'm guessing they'll receive thousands of submissions. I'm afraid that a lot of riptide cubes will be a bit daunting in general and that wizards may not "get it" in the time they have to look at the cube. Especially since everyone is having to dilute (and reducing some duplication) on the road to 540.
 

James Stevenson

Steamflogger Boss
Staff member
Ughhhhhhhh I dunno. You want Delve -> Pod -> Eldrazi to be the line?

I dunno man, you just seem excited about letting people cheat fatties into play. Is this too easy? Then don't run delve creatures. I still think pod is a great archetype that's great fun to draft. Even more so in a big cube, where you'll get very different pod decks when you draft it. I think this is the kind of card people come to mtgo cube to brew with, but since they never broke singleton on it, it was too hard to put together properly.
 

Jason Waddell

Administrator
Staff member
Design is hard, man.

The original thought behind Elementals was to have random Evoke guys setting off Morbid triggers, some tech with Undying Evil, then Horde of Notions as kind of a one-off incentive card to rebuy Mulldrifters and that kind of nonsense. Perhaps many of the other incentive cards are not super effective.
 

James Stevenson

Steamflogger Boss
Staff member
Design is hard, man.

The original thought behind Elementals was to have random Evoke guys setting off Morbid triggers, some tech with Undying Evil, then Horde of Notions as kind of a one-off incentive card to rebuy Mulldrifters and that kind of nonsense. Perhaps many of the other incentive cards are not super effective.

The evoke guys still fit without the elemental theme, and they work well with both graveyard abuse and birthing pod. Hey, Living Death would be awesome in this cube!
 

Onderzeeboot

Ecstatic Orb
I've been doing a few drafts to train the AI, but making decklists is kinda annoying on iPad, let alone posting the decklist here. One question though, what does Abeyance do for this cube? Card looks pretty useless, there isn't even an Isochron Scepter for the soft lock. Not that that would be a good and fun idea, by the way.
 
I did a thing: http://www.cubetutor.com/cubedeck/592854

I couldn't really figure out how to make Scapeshift work, but I guess its silly with Tireless Tracker. I think this deck wants to stall for awhile then drop big things or swing with lands maybe. Not sure if the deck works though.

As for things people have brought up on this thread:

As far as the elementals go, I like Nevermaker here because its versatile, cares about dying, combos with Crystal Shard. Slithermuse is also a pretty sweet way for fast decks to have a late game vs slow decks. Tornado Elemental seems pretty cool, not sure if its good enough.

Pod is cool but it is a bit of a color pie break and I feel like WotC is going to have a hard-on for submissions that conform to the color pie in some meaningful ways. You're probably going to have to explain that there isn't enough fixing for the format to be full 5 color like the legendary cube was.

Random thinky thoughts about the cube:
Joraga Treespeaker feels like it ramps a lot faster than the rest of the format's ramp. I'd rather have other colors in this format than a Sol elf.
Coalition Relic is really good ramp and 5c fixing, this might be bad because its outside of the color that does ramp and fixing well. One of the Legacy Cube updates butchered the mana rocks for this reason. Maybe its fine, I just have bad memories of what that card did to my environment.
Naya Hushblade 1 of with the rest of the cycle 2 of?
Ajani Steadfast is bothering me because its breaking 1 walker per color symmetry :p I'm also biased against lifelink and pump on the same card.
Only 2 Brainstorm?
Ritual of the Machine exists? Huh...
Splatter Thug feels meh and boring. No love for Rockslide Elemental or even Lavacore Elemental?
Is Hunger of the Howlpack worth spending a card on in this format?
Shadowmage Infiltrator is so uninteractive and blatantly powerful. No love for Psychatog?
Is the format really grindy enough for Increasing Ambition? Why not Diabolic Intent for the sac theme?
We can definitely be more creative than Coralhelm Commander without a Merfolk subtheme. No love for Chasm Skulker?
Multiple Zulaport Cutthroat over Blood Artist to support the sac deck more by not hating on it? Is that a thing?
Rally the Ancestors is playable in this cube right? I feel like that deck is almost completely here.
 

Onderzeeboot

Ecstatic Orb
Ignore Tzen on Splatter Thug and Shadowmage Infiltrator, those are fine! :p

I think your fetch : fetchables ratio is off. I have picked up an early fetch multiple times, only to fail at finding the corresponding dual. Maybe replace the Flood Plains cycle with another fetchable cycle?
 

Jason Waddell

Administrator
Staff member
Fist of Suns feels like it does basically nothing in this format. You need a high density of cards with costs that are a lot harder than {R}{G}{W}{U}{B} to make it a thing.

Crpyt Ghast and Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth feel off. What deck in this cube is going to want a ton of black mana and why?

The idea was originally to have a few cards that care about super ramping to Eldrazi via Swamps matters. It's a small card package, but I could see replacing it, especially at 540.
 

Jason Waddell

Administrator
Staff member
Ignore Tzen on Splatter Thug and Shadowmage Infiltrator, those are fine! :p

I think your fetch : fetchables ratio is off. I have picked up an early fetch multiple times, only to fail at finding the corresponding dual. Maybe replace the Flood Plains cycle with another fetchable cycle?

Hmmmm... how would you configure the mana here?
 

Jason Waddell

Administrator
Staff member
I did a thing: http://www.cubetutor.com/cubedeck/592854

I couldn't really figure out how to make Scapeshift work, but I guess its silly with Tireless Tracker. I think this deck wants to stall for awhile then drop big things or swing with lands maybe. Not sure if the deck works though.

As for things people have brought up on this thread:

As far as the elementals go, I like Nevermaker here because its versatile, cares about dying, combos with Crystal Shard. Slithermuse is also a pretty sweet way for fast decks to have a late game vs slow decks. Tornado Elemental seems pretty cool, not sure if its good enough.

Pod is cool but it is a bit of a color pie break and I feel like WotC is going to have a hard-on for submissions that conform to the color pie in some meaningful ways. You're probably going to have to explain that there isn't enough fixing for the format to be full 5 color like the legendary cube was.

Random thinky thoughts about the cube:
Joraga Treespeaker feels like it ramps a lot faster than the rest of the format's ramp. I'd rather have other colors in this format than a Sol elf.
Coalition Relic is really good ramp and 5c fixing, this might be bad because its outside of the color that does ramp and fixing well. One of the Legacy Cube updates butchered the mana rocks for this reason. Maybe its fine, I just have bad memories of what that card did to my environment.
Naya Hushblade 1 of with the rest of the cycle 2 of?
Ajani Steadfast is bothering me because its breaking 1 walker per color symmetry :p I'm also biased against lifelink and pump on the same card.
Only 2 Brainstorm?
Ritual of the Machine exists? Huh...
Splatter Thug feels meh and boring. No love for Rockslide Elemental or even Lavacore Elemental?
Is Hunger of the Howlpack worth spending a card on in this format?
Shadowmage Infiltrator is so uninteractive and blatantly powerful. No love for Psychatog?
Is the format really grindy enough for Increasing Ambition? Why not Diabolic Intent for the sac theme?
We can definitely be more creative than Coralhelm Commander without a Merfolk subtheme. No love for Chasm Skulker?
Multiple Zulaport Cutthroat over Blood Artist to support the sac deck more by not hating on it? Is that a thing?
Rally the Ancestors is playable in this cube right? I feel like that deck is almost completely here.



I like your elemental suggestions.

Scapeshift is supposed to be a bit of a puzzle. There's a bunch of landfall, some creatures that get bigger when you sacrifice things, cards that care about having all five basic types, cards that care about lands dying or being in the graveyard. Maybe I should add in old Ob Nixilis?

Joraga Treespeaker is supposed to be faster. I want some ramp cards to feel more powerful than others.
Could see cutting Coalition Relic, but, it's kind of there for similar reasons as Treespeaker. In early drafts the "super ramp" cards needed some help.
The Blade cycle's biggest payoff is Civic Saber, which is often a nonbo with Hushblade.
Ajani Steadfast was actually the original one, it's baby-jani that's new!

Chasm Skulker was kind of annoying even in my main cube, I think it's too powerful here.
 

Jason Waddell

Administrator
Staff member
Re: Diabolic Intent, I like it, but also I feel like it's already hard to draft creature-lite control, because there are many things that want you to have creatures in play already, and I am hesitant to overload on them.
 

Jason Waddell

Administrator
Staff member
Ignore Tzen on Splatter Thug and Shadowmage Infiltrator, those are fine! :p

I think your fetch : fetchables ratio is off. I have picked up an early fetch multiple times, only to fail at finding the corresponding dual. Maybe replace the Flood Plains cycle with another fetchable cycle?

This is also something to do with being 540. I actually have a better ratio here than in my main cube (1:1 here, 1.25 fetches : fetchable in the main), but I think random shuffles of the 540 may be off. It's also possible that Riptiders are training the bots to take fetches too aggressively.
 

Onderzeeboot

Ecstatic Orb
I kind of also thought about Tri-lands and Vivid lands for this cube, but I'm not sure.
Those would be awesome for the five color decks. It's pretty hard to cast Etched Oracle for full. Alice at the moment. I see there should be about enough fetchables, but at 540 it's pretty hard to see both one of two or three fetches and one of three fetchables in your colors I guess? Maybe the answer is more land? How many mana fixing do you play in a 360 cube that's geared towards five color decks? That should be pretty easy to translate to 540, right? Even when I prioritized mana fixing lands at every opportunity, I ended up with less than 10!
 
First, the cube's idea is really cool and I just spent 4h looking at it and finding a lot of intricate interactions and overlaps, with a bunch of cards I didn't know (!) and actually work here. I have a lot of comments about aspects that need tuning, and I hope that doesn't sound too negative - we can shape this into a real gem.

Here it goes:
- First and most important, are we certain non-singleton will be accepted as a cube? In terms of risk, that's the biggest one.
- The power band seems really wide. 6 mana can get you Sun Titan or Rapacious One. At 4 mana Garruk Wildspeaker makes Rubblebelt Raiders look like stuff from Prophecy. Parallax Wave vs Crescendo of War. Mirror Entity vs Rootborn Defenses. Polukranos vs Mold Shambler.
- T1 Tinder Wall into T2 Garruk Wildspeaker is not pretty. In fact, any of the 14 1-2 mana green ramp cards into Garruk Wildspeaker is not pretty. The problem with midrange being pushed is that it kills aggro and, if the cards are resilient, puts pressure into control leaving with nothing to keep midrange in check. Then you put in high caliber removal to deal with the threats and creatures without ETB become bad. Arms race.
- Red has 3 Volt Charge and 3 Brimstone Volley. That's a lot of 3 mana instant speed burn. I'd scale back on Volleys because Charge is so unique.
- I don't know what blue is trying to do here. Is it supposed to be bad? I think it could be the base control color, is the cube not supposed to have control?
- 5 Evasive Actions?
- Liliana of the Dark Realms? Ok, so we have a mono black ramp archetype? Better make that more clear.
- Sacrifice, Counters and Spawn could use one or two extra copies of Bloodbriar
- Eldrazi Skyspawner is the sole card that makes Scions rather than Spawns
- Feels like mana sinks are missing.
- White's creatures are aggressive, white's spells are defensive. It's not bad per se, but a bit strange.
- Feel like the early picks really, really need to be lands. Adding some extra shocks, tri-lands or whatever other cycle of duals would help. I trainwrecked myself trying to draft domain and only got 4 duals + Mana Confluence and City of Brass on acts of desperation, and that's picking lands very highly.
- Elementals feels really weak like in MM2. Sadly, I see no way to fix it other than putting 4 copies of Smokebraider and switching some that are more aggressive for midrange ones making a rock-style deck.

Now for random suggestions, mostly lower power, but I'm just throwing things around and seeing if anything sticks.

Making Eldrazi Spawn matter:


Defending against Eldrazi Spawn (and other tokens/weenies):


Making big eldrazi worth it:


Defending against big eldrazi:


Increasing domain overlap:


Pushing domain:


Pushing sacrifice:


Monoblack ramp:


Pushing counters


Various:


I don't understand these choices:
 

Jason Waddell

Administrator
Staff member
Thanks for the comments. For the moment I've cut the Mono-black stuff, as it doesn't suit the cube super well. I can't see card images right now, so I'll address those later.

Re: power band. I know it's not perfect right now. BUT, one thing I've noticed, particularly with this cube is that sometimes the packs are a bit too flat in power. I want to sprinkle some good first-picks throughout the various archetypes, something that you crack and makes you excited to go play a certain archetype.

I can add more lands. More Shocks? Problem is lands should ideally support domain, and things like Manlands don't do that. It's possible that cutting all the manlands for another cycle of shocks is correct. Or just bolstering land count? I'm running the equivalent of like, 43-44 fixers if this were a 360 cube, but that could be bumped. On average it will be about 5-6 fixers per player, with the idea that you go to green and other stuff for further fixing if you need.

Replacement for Sun Titan?

White's design is pretty iffy at the moment, it's probably the weakest.

It's actually a really tricky task to balance aggro vs. ramp. I'll do playtesting this weekend, but my feeling is that right now aggro has the upper hand.

Suggested mana sinks?

Blue was kind of envisioned as the "base" domain color, along with green, if you will.
 

Onderzeeboot

Ecstatic Orb
I can add more lands. More Shocks? Problem is lands should ideally support domain, and things like Manlands don't do that. It's possible that cutting all the manlands for another cycle of shocks is correct. Or just bolstering land count? I'm running the equivalent of like, 43-44 fixers if this were a 360 cube, but that could be bumped. On average it will be about 5-6 fixers per player, with the idea that you go to green and other stuff for further fixing if you need.
Hmm... In my own 450 cube, I run 55 fixing lands (10 of which you get for drafting a multicolored card). To my own surprise I have a 1 : 1 ratio as well, as far as fetches vs. fetchables go. This translates to 66 lands at 540, which I personally would round up to 70. I wouldn't mind cutting the manlands. They're sweet, but it's also drafting on easy mode because they're just so good! They are, however, originally from Zendikar, so pretty flavorful for an Eldrazi Domain cube.

Replacement for Sun Titan?
Sentinel of the Eternal Watch
Linvala, the Preserver

Suggested mana sinks?
{R/G} needs more X-spells anyway, if you want to support Rosheen. There's not a single red-green X-spell in the cube, when there are a few very satisfying options!

Myth Realized
Sacred Mesa
Dawnglare Invoker
Jazal Goldmane
Azure Mage
Mystic Speculation
Gigantoplasm
Drana, Kalastria Bloodchief
Geth, Lord of the Vault
Plaguebearer
Soul of Shandalar
Jade Mage
Wildheart Invoker
Ant Queen
Centaur Glade
Silklash Spider
Oona, Queen of the Fey (stronk!)
Deepfire Elemental
Clan Defiance
Savageborn Hydra
Vitu-Ghazi Guildmage
Predator, Flagship
Staff of Domination

Blue was kind of envisioned as the "base"domain color, along with green, if you will.
Where are the Dreamscape Artists then?
 
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