Eric Chan's Modern cube (405)

Lucre

Lucre

Man i think I wana engage in some serious discussion (/talking at you/nonesense) about your cube next time I have some good time to pour over the list changes! I think I've noticed the power level drop out a little again eh and there are like way more 4x than I remember!

I really dig the human synergies so far and the tension around removal relevance. One thing I'm also starting to notice way more of is that shocklands are waaaay higher picks than I've been valuing them at. I've had a lot of poor drafts where my fetch land count was through the roof and I had painlands-a-plenty to give me all my colours but because I was missing shocklands reasonable hands would just not come together.

Drafting green was also really interesting for me this week because I would notice the wraths and infests of the world and get little shudders and see if I had more than one rampant growth yet or if it was all elves. I was also despairing a little because I didn't have any reason to want 1/1s in play, besides chumping, but maybe I'm not used to taking overrun yet.

Can't wait to play again. Never played a format like it!
 
Eric Chan

Eric Chan

Hyalopterous Lemure
Staff member
Awesome, awesome post Lucas. You don't realize how valuable and helpful detailed feedback like that is. Thank you!

And not to worry, I'm bumping up the power level again eeeeever so slightly for the next go round. I figured Bonfire was game ruining horse manure, but apparently you people love it. And who am I but a crowd pleaser?

I was just commiserating with Calvin this morning on how unhappy I still am with green in my cube. I looked back through the 3-0 thread, and it appears that only one of the winning decks in my last ~10 events came within ten feet of green, and even then it was primarily based in blue. After my recent overhaul, there’s two primary archetypes I’m trying to support at the moment, with varying degrees of success: ramp, and token overrun. In a sense, they're both midrangy decks, though ramp wants to go as big as possible, bypassing the midgame, while tokens wants to flood the board with an assortment of riff raff, and then either finish with regular beatdowns or 'combo' off with one of the various Overrun effects.

As I see it, the issue with ramp is that while it never, ever loses to another midrange deck, thanks to its multitude of ways to go over the top, aggro can swarm under it any day of the week, while control can sweep away all its hard work with the wave of a hand. To be sure, the payoffs of hitting seven and eight mana to drop an Avenger of Zendikar or Sheoldred are huge, but getting to that stage is a challenge.

The token overrun archetype is newer, and theoretically should have a bigger game against aggro, what with its plethora of small bodies gumming up the ground. At this early stage, it's hard to gauge whether the deck has legs or not, but I suspect its primary challenge will be assembling all of its constituent pieces: lands, mana dorks, token generators, and an overrun finisher, each at the correct stage of the game. Say, like in this here sample deck. It's not a trivial task!

How it played out last night from my eyes was that Wilson was in the tokens archetype, and you were squarely in the ramp camp. It's true that 1/1 mana dorks are a little more vulnerable in your deck than his, because while he's looking to finish the game quickly and with a bang, you're looking to amass all of your resources for a couple big plays. Stuff like Wall of Roots, Farseek, and Growth Spasm work better in the pure ramp deck, though I would guess that it's not uncommon for both decks to dip their toe in both types of ramp.

So, after that long treatise, I gotta ask: Do you feel like your deck was missing anything? Could you have used more mana elves, midgame dorks (a la Obstinate Baloth), or high end fat?

And while I've got you here, got any other ideas for injecting some juice into green? ;)
 
Chris Taylor

Chris Taylor

Contributor
Yeah I think I found your problem: Way too many targets, not enough ways to get there.

[TJS]Dandy_Lions's draft of Modern Cube on 06/11/2013 from CubeTutor.com












So after a look at your visual spoiler it confirmed what I suspected: there's a million ramp targets and you've severely curtailed your acceleration.

In green only (take a good look at other colors too) we have as ramp targets:




All this, and I'm still seeing lots of high drops in other colors pass by, like Karn Liberated, Angel of Serenity, and Maelstrom Wanderer. Notice how many of them are 7 and 8 mana, and the ones that aren't are very heavy green.
Try Primeval Titan or Rampaging Baloths. Being a turn earlier helps tremendously.

in my 540 I've got 5 total cards (not creatures) at 6+ mana in green, and 5 at 5 mana. Trim the fatties man :p

Also: REALLY? 5 PIECES OF ARTIFACT ACCELLERATION? I know industry wisdom is hate the signet, but seriously man. They aren't the plague, just 10 is usually too many for the typical cube that also wants to run things like grim monolith and moxen, and they're a little too good at fixing mana since you can splash a 2 color card off them (Mono Green splash Vindicate with no swamps/plains)

I push wildfire as an archetype, so take this with a grain of salt, but my artifact section (60 cards of 540) has 12 (13 if you count AEther Vial :p)



and a custom 4 mana one.
 
Eric Chan

Eric Chan

Hyalopterous Lemure
Staff member
Thanks for the input, Chris. Would you believe I used to have more fatties...? I actually just cut Woodfall Primus and Simic Sky Swallower before the most recent draft. But I think I might toss Sky Swallower back in! ;)

In addition to ramp, there's a minor reanimation theme in UB, which sometimes touches green as well. That's what all the extra fat is for. It's not often that a draft yields both a ramp player and a reanimation player, but.. the pieces are there, if anyone wants to attempt it.

Is the amount of green acceleration actually low, compared to a typical cube? I guess I'm not convinced by sample CubeTutor drafts, because the data on my particular cube is skewed after a couple hundred test drafts by various folks. In fact, I find I can't really use the CT mock draft function anymore, because it's veered so far from reality, that it doesn't help me test or prepare for a real life draft. I wish there was some way to reset the data, without just deleting my list and re-entering it. But anyways! Here's what I've got going in the acceleration department.



That doesn't include the Eldrazi-spawn generators, like Kozilek's Predator. Is this really too few? Of my 50 mono-colour green cards, 15 are dedicated to ramp in some form or fashion. I don't really want to just make green 50% acceleration.

I'm not really a big fan of artifact mana. It inevitably just goes to the blue control decks, so.. they're basically just blue cards the majority of the time. I figure five pieces is more than enough help for the slow blue decks. Would it be blasphemous if I said I was considering going down to four...?
 
Chris Taylor

Chris Taylor

Contributor
I dunno about a typical cube, I'm just using mine as a benchmark. We get the occasional ramp deck (One just 19'd me last draft: Maelstrom Wanderer --> Simic Sky Swallower and Crater Hellion) but it's nowhere near omnipreasent, and my cube group takes signet style things like they're candy (As they came from the cube of All 10 signets, 5 Moxen, 5 Talismans & Misc Ramp)

Maybe it's the deffinition, but I'd say Kozilek's Predator and Nest Invader are way more ramp guys than Oracle of Mul daya, who while great in the deck is more there for a card advantage engine by making more of your draws live. The problem is they're cards a ramp deck will take, but don't really like playing, like War Priest of Thune when there's no enchantments to kill. There's just usually more effective options.

I actually like the addition of SSS. I'm a huge fan of Prime Speaker Zegana, but all she'll do is reinforce the Blue/Green ramp you already see, where SSS might be splashed in a control deck or be the 3rd color in a ramp deck.
I've got 18 ramp cards in green, but my section is 74 cards, so the preportions seem to even out. Maybe it's just the specific ramp cards you're using? (Well, that and the low artifact count :p)

A few that stand out to me: Not a huge fan of explore, as it's far too luck based to be consistent ramp, and makes for a pretty sad cycling cost usually. Try Edge of Autum, I've loved it so far. I've never needed to ramp when it told me I couldn't, and the cycling cost hasn't been a problem.
Utopia Sprawl is excellent, as are the cultivate twins. They're subtly powerful, since they never power out the unstoppable plays like rofellos does, but they just keep your deck real consistent.
Lastly: Awakening Zone! Food for Eldrazi Monument, Furnace Celebration, Overrun goodies, you name it!


As for Cube Tutor data, do a few drafts just treating everything like P1P1. It should help, if nothing else.
 
Eric Chan

Eric Chan

Hyalopterous Lemure
Staff member
Fantastic advice and suggestions, Chris. Even after all these months, I'm still impressed that I can post my derpy questions on here, and get the quality and thoughtfulness of responses that you and others provide. Two big thumbs up! (Incidentally, taking you up over 99 likes. Hah!)

Would you believe I've tried most of the ramp cards you've mentioned, at some point? :D Edge of Autumn is indeed pretty sweet, and it only got cut when my cube went down from 405 to ~360. Fair point on Explore, though - it's best in high land count decks, but ramp decks are often shaving lands to make room for, well, ramp. I'll keep an eye on how often it's just a do-nothing cycler.

I thought I was one of the only people who'd heard of Utopia Sprawl! It was a little confusing for my new players at the time, as they would slap it on any old land, so I phased it out. But maybe it's safe to reintroduce at this point. Sprawl over Lotus Cobra, maybe? The Cobra doesn't gain much traction in either of my supported green archetypes, and while green aggro is a thing once in a blue moon, it's usually X/g with green being a light splash, making Cobra something of a liability.
 
Chris Taylor

Chris Taylor

Contributor
Eric Chan said:
Fantastic advice and suggestions, Chris. Even after all these months, I'm still impressed that I can post my derpy questions on here, and get the quality and thoughtfulness of responses that you and others provide. Two big thumbs up! (Incidentally, taking you up over 99 likes. Hah!)

Would you believe I've tried most of the ramp cards you've mentioned, at some point? :D Edge of Autumn is indeed pretty sweet, and it only got cut when my cube went down from 405 to ~360. Fair point on Explore, though - it's best in high land count decks, but ramp decks are often shaving lands to make room for, well, ramp. I'll keep an eye on how often it's just a do-nothing cycler.

I thought I was one of the only people who'd heard of Utopia Sprawl! It was a little confusing for my new players at the time, as they would slap it on any old land, so I phased it out. But maybe it's safe to reintroduce at this point. Sprawl over Lotus Cobra, maybe? The Cobra doesn't gain much traction in either of my supported green archetypes, and while green aggro is a thing once in a blue moon, it's usually X/g with green being a light splash, making Cobra something of a liability.
Click to expand...

Oh it's likes recieved? Fuck that then.

Cobra is probably second best ramp creature ever, and I'm only saying that because I'm not sure if he's better than rofellos. He'll be more consistent if you have all o da fetchlands, and the old ones are available as judgefoils, so you can cheat your own silly self imposed system :p
Even just playing a land each turn being steward of valeron that fixes mana is a sweet spot to be in.
I didn't actually know you were at 360, that might change a few of my comments about number, since the ratio between our cubes is now a consistent 2/3

Utopia Sprawl is no sylvan library, or ice cauldron. Throw it in, eventually they'll get it.
 
Eric Chan

Eric Chan

Hyalopterous Lemure
Staff member
I've got twenty fetchlands in a tight 360 list, along with twenty shocks. Even as such, people here have picked up on the value of fetches, without even having been exposed to Jason's excellent article on the subject. The days of me and Lucas casually tabling five fetches apiece are long over. If you really bear down and make an effort at taking fetches in the first five picks of each pack, you can maybe, maybe end with four. But even using the entire cube, twenty fetches over eight people comes out to an average of 2.5 per drafter. People have smartened up enough about fetches that Steppe Lynx and co. are no longer worth the effort to support; with much sadness, I've binned them all in favour of more Champions.

I think Lotus Cobra suffers from the same problem. This is from someone who played the Standard RUG deck in the Zendikar era, with 4x Cobra, 4x Jace, and 4x Avenger of Zendikar. The difference back then was you could load up your deck with twelve fetches to reaallllly break Cobra in half. When you can only count on getting two or three fetches, though, I've soured on landfall in cube in general. Again, the thing with Cobra is you want to be base green if you use him (or any other ramp card, really), but as far as cube archetypes go, his 2/1 body seems to fit best in aggro. Neither of my two base green archetypes has much use for a Cobra, as the pure ramp deck would prefer non-creature acceleration (a la Utopia Sprawl), while the tokens deck wants its two drops to make multiple bodies. Nor would a U/g aggro deck splashing, say, Tarmogoyf and Ooze really value a two-drop mana creature.

Jason, the ramp decks here try to go to seven minimum, and often eight or nine. I've banned all the Titans (save poor ol' Sun Titan), because they were promoting grindy midrange decks, at the expense of more interesting and varied archetypes. Like, why try and set up some really sweet shenanigans when you can just skip all that to power out a game dominating six drop?
 
Lucre

Lucre

I have so much more to read now!

Here are the points I remember from reading yesterday, I'll try to make them all "I" statements so I don't start making universal declarations about other people's stuff.

  • I love lotus cobra, I'm just sad there aren't more green decks that are excited about wrath x earthquake.
  • I like cobra more than most 1cc accelerators in your cube because the 3s I get excited about are white and blue and go really super early.
  • I wasn't sure I'd want to take equipment because at the end of the day I'm usually seeing one card at a time (unless I'm ditching one card for an additional land) in this green deck and it's my inability to draw out of things that is sorta what I'm trying to influence. Marginal equipment would solve some problematic situations but not most of them and is sorta just part of the same problem in many situations.
  • I think a lot of my funniness this week were due to my own poor play and planning, and the fact Wilson was doing some of the things I wanted. I am recognizing some patterns, but I'm looking forward to playing with green some more.
  • I'm really interested in ways to cash in lands or elves to get rolling again, I'm having trouble finding early solutions to this for the early game and in modern.
  • I keep thinking about boon satyr
  • I can't help but think Vitu-Ghazi, the City-Tree might be interesting in the land draft, it is a real durdler, but green decks will have mana to spend on odd turns and you've got an overrun theme but no army-in-a-cans
  • I've been finding the draw fixing / card generating spells tend to go pretty early or be kinda hard to ram in just anywhere. I'm not too steady on this because I got to see Wilson pull off the oracle + top trick and that was a real gas. I guess I felt like I could have a lot of access to onboard extra cards (finks for example) and they probably gave me some time to draw out of trouble, but it was not really as relevant as I would hope, and the amount of cards each of my finishers were worth didn't really feel that helpful because I felt like I was playing from behind whenever they hit and they were all going toward keeping my head above water. I'm really interested in exploring ways of giving non-blue decks access to more of their library and the ability to play with more resources. I can't imagine how though. Like, I was at no shortage for deck thinning.
  • Ramp didn't feel like it was playing at all like midranged. Neither did my 4 colour goodstuff deck. What I mean is, when I play a midranged goodstuff deck, say like jund, I'm topdecking pretty well through a decent portion of the game. I have a lot of cards that are not too expensive to set up quickly, but are usually relevant most of the game and tend to either do a couple things pretty efficiently or hit pretty hard. I find ramp plays way more like a combo deck where draws are much more dependent on context and usually have little value outside of their particular window. I forgot that about ramp decks.
Man that was more than I thought I had in me.
 
Lucre

Lucre

PS I'm always excited about more flash creatures! I was pretty impressed by how often my opponent would have a guy bigger than my Cloudthresher by the time I had six mana, but boy did it make me excited to play UG flash. Mystic Snake PLZ.
 
Eric Chan

Eric Chan

Hyalopterous Lemure
Staff member
Great points all round, Lucas. For someone who hasn't quite finished their first cube, you are unquestionably a heavyweight when it comes to cube design.

Okay, Lotus Cobra survives to see another day. I'll find something else to cut for Sprawl or Elder.

Would Primal Command help with the consistency & topdecking problem in ramp decks? Or Harmonize?

The more I think about it, the more I really want Boon Satyr in my cube. Until I acquire him, I'm going to use Wolfir Avenger as a poor man's flash three drop.

I didn't see your deck in its entirety, but it felt like your game plan would've been very strong if you loaded up on giant fatties, skipped over the mid-tier four and five drops (except the ones that gain you life or do a strong job stalling), and then dabbled in some of the reanimation spells for value. There's an inherent tension between wanting to build up a ground army for Overrun, and putting your head in the sand and ignoring the goings-on of world while accelerating straight to seven mana. There are some non-traditional army-in-a-can cards in green these days - Kozilek's Predator, Bestial Menace - but I agree that your work is cut out for you when you go down that route.
 
CML

CML

Contributor
Boon Satyr and Avenger are both lots of fun, not a lot going on at cmc=3 in mono-Green (though of course there's every G/x card in the universe from Edric to Putrefy to Ram-Gang to KOTR) but how about something like

Borderland Ranger
Reverent Hunter
Bow of Nylea
Santa Claus
Wolfir Avenger / Boon Satyr
Eternal Witness
Triumph of Ferocity

I wish Primal Command was good.
Harmonize is a neat effect to have in Green but I'm afraid the "4-mana durdle spell" spot in my Cube is already overfull. I cut Deep Analysis ffs.

GSZ will often be cast for X=2.

Cloudthresher is just fucking awesome but 2GGGG might make it a tough sell. Has anyone tried it?
 
Eric Chan

Eric Chan

Hyalopterous Lemure
Staff member
No, I actually just never thought to try him yet. I'd thought that Troll Ascetic served a similar purpose, but I'm hoping that flash provides better gameplay than hexproof.

Cloudthresher is kinda a new addition round these here parts, and I think Lucas might've been the first to give it a test drive. Nothing conclusive yet, but I'm hoping it's more popular than Rampaging Baloths was.
 
CML

CML

Contributor
Boon Satyr is very very good in Standard, it's your classic variance-reducing split card that's just pretty good all the time. Cube is richer with him in there. Avenger is cool too but probably only one of those flash 1GG dudes is best. Avenger is more of a constructed card as Flash and regenerate are both very good against Green's natural enemies, motherfuckers who play wraths

rampaging baloths is very popular around here i dunno why yall are beefin
 
Lucre

Lucre

Man I should really post more discussion here rather than just texting to get more ideas rolling.

Anyway I think I did a bad job of describing this card to you ages ago:
spectersshroud.jpg
 
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