Erik's "The cool side of Magic" cube

[Erik Twice]

Fire Imp works, but it's a very uninspiring design, the real card doesn't match its functionality and it's pretty much a small Flametongue Kavu. In other words, It's a purely aesthethic issue hahaha

The problem I have had with broad archetypes is that they weren't truly broad. As in, they covered several colours in theory but, in reality, it just meant the same boring 2-colour archetype had a lot of splash options. So I have to work harder to make that a reality. For example, I should expand artifact support to cover more colours:

For example, all these cards like big artifacts:



An archetype that I could see also existing is green Mega Ramp. Why not combine cards like this?



I wonder how cubable these cards are:



I've seen the latter in a few lists so it's not out of the question.

I also have a lot of 1/1 Servo tokens in my cube so artifacts and tokens should be made to have a larger overlap:

 

[Erik Twice]

By the way, I want to note: All removal in the cube is a placeholder. Its power level is way higher than it should be and it probably makes all those nifty decks and large creatures unplayable in practice. I'll tone it down once everything else is sorted.

 

[Nanonox]

The problem I have had with broad archetypes is that they weren't truly broad. As in, they covered several colors in theory but, in reality, it just meant the same boring 2-colour archetype had a lot of splash options.

I agree with this, you have to go deep!

RG: maybe you could have ramp tokens with Earthcraft, Grand Warlord Radha, Emrakul's Hatcher, Tempt With Vengeance, Awakening Zone, Nest Invader and Kozilek's Predator.

Then you could have a Mirari's Wake and a March of the Multitudes in Selesyna to encourage tokens and big mana there as well.
Maybe white can have +1/+1 counters as a theme where tokens benefit from it with cards like Mikaeus the Lunarch who can also play well in the big mana deck. If so, then you can start going into an artifact direction with Walking Ballista, Hangarback Walker and Stonecoil Serpent and that artifacts can be another broad theme to work into the cube.
Red ties in here with Krenko, Tin Street Kingpin and Legion Warboss.

Also since you have Eldrazi tokens, black sacrifice decks and effects become interesting. Conveniently, Judith, Scourge Diva boosts your team and plays with sacrifice decks. Add an Evolutionary Leap in green and you have sacrifice there too that also lets you trade tokens for actual card. All of a sudden your token theme is in 4 colors and with a bunch of strategies overlapping and no one deck looks exactly the same.

 

[Erik Twice]

I just drafted this very neat deck on CubeTutor and I wanted to share it here:

Selesnya Control from CubeTutor.com

I love the interaction between the enchantments and Skyfisher/Flickerwisp. I do think the cube needs more mana sinks as a whole, Mirari's Wake doesn't do enough without targets.

I agree with this, you have to go deep!

RG: maybe you could have ramp tokens with Earthcraft, Grand Warlord Radha, Emrakul's Hatcher, Tempt With Vengeance, Awakening Zone, Nest Invader and Kozilek's Predator.

Then you could have a Mirari's Wake and a March of the Multitudes in Selesyna to encourage tokens and big mana there as well.
Maybe white can have +1/+1 counters as a theme where tokens benefit from it with cards like Mikaeus the Lunarch who can also play well in the big mana deck. If so, then you can start going into an artifact direction with Walking Ballista, Hangarback Walker and Stonecoil Serpent and that artifacts can be another broad theme to work into the cube.
Red ties in here with Krenko, Tin Street Kingpin and Legion Warboss.

Also since you have Eldrazi tokens, black sacrifice decks and effects become interesting. Conveniently, Judith, Scourge Diva boosts your team and plays with sacrifice decks. Add an Evolutionary Leap in green and you have sacrifice there too that also lets you trade tokens for actual card. All of a sudden your token theme is in 4 colors and with a bunch of strategies overlapping and no one deck looks exactly the same.

I'm not sure if Red would move into ramp tokens, but it does welcome some ramp to move into "big things". I like Red Green decks ala Fires of Yavimaya, with 4 and 5 drops.

The issue I had with my cross-archetype support is that it wasn't real support. It was parasitic cards that did not actually move the themes into other colours. Take flicker. Flicker's failure to cover more colours in my cube was simple: All the enablers are UW. No matter how much I "support" it in other colours, it's always going to be UW!

It's not always as obvious. You might have all payoffs in all colours, but if some are much better than others, does it matter? And not all colour combinations in a supported archetype work with each other. For example, lands can easily be UG or GR. But it's very difficult for it to be UR.

 

[Nanonox]

It's not always as obvious. You might have all payoffs in all colours, but if some are much better than others, does it matter? And not all colour combinations in a supported archetype work with each other. For example, lands can easily be UG or GR. But it's very difficult for it to be UR.

For me that is the whole point though. The broad archetypes allow for such weird color combinations to work. Maybe not as full blown decks but as packages. As you said earlier, Wildfire goes great with artifact ramp. Add in a Crucible of Worlds and maybe Windfall (since you dump your hands with fast artifact mana) and you have a small UR "lands" package.

Or maybe you play Tectonic Reformation or Seismic Assault and a Drake Haven. Now you have a discard matters package in UR that cares about lands. It doesn't and shouldn't be your typical GR/UG land deck. It should be some hybrid monstrosity that you didn't even think existed.

I guess my point about broad archetypes is to seed elements that overlap together and release control. Let your drafters build the decks they imagine in ways you possibly couldn't!

Edit:
Your GW deck you posted is a good example! You have disruption (Glare, Sovereign, Wave), tokens (Wake, Glare), landfall (Angel, Cobra, KotR) and even blink (Skyfisher, Wave and Flickerwisp). You melded a bunch of themes together into a solid deck that you probably didn't plan out when building your cube. The only thing missing is a ramp payoff as you mentioned, but that is pretty minor.
I would argue that this is (in part at least) a GW blink deck.

 

[Erik Twice]

I think the disruption is the most important part of that deck. The problem with green, creature-based decks is that their spells do not interact with the opponent´s plan. But this list has quite a few spells that do, even the Voracious Hydra matters.

I've gone back and forth on the third colour of my lands archetype but it's really GR with splashes. UR with Drake Haven, as you mention, could work but I never managed to make Drave Haven playable when I had it on the cube. I think what I'm going to do is revise my creature sets like I did with red and see what support options open up

 

[Erik Twice]

I've worked a bit more on my red creatures. I'm very happy with my 3-drops but the others could see changes. I decided to add Seasoned Pyromancer.



Seems like it's in a good spot to support several decks in the cube. His addition pushes me to 31 creatures, but two of them are "fake". Bonecrusher Giant is also a spell and Squee is not even an actual card half of the time.



I drafted this, which I'm pretty sure folds to any sort of disruption:

Grixis Reanimator from CubeTutor.com

This deck also shows the problem with Goblin Engineer: It can serve as an expensive Entomb and not much else. And while Entomb is good, decks aren't exactly lacking in ways to put things into the graveyard. I think I'll replace him with something else.

I also wonder which Reanimation spells to move towards. I've capped how good the targets are so I'm not scared of potential effects:

Currenly running:



Potential



I dislike Exhume because it can't be played for value. Reanimate is both very weak and very strong. I like that it has a neat interaction with Dreadhorde Arcanist, but that's it. I actually wish Torrential Gearhulk could be used on Reanimation spells. Note that Sun Titan does work how I want Torrential Gearhulk to, even if it's off-colour.

 

[Erik Twice]

We are in lockdown and can't get out of my house for several days so it's a good time to work on the cube. Let's be honest, I love working on the cube. It's fun, more fun than actually playing. When I "finish" this one I want to build one without proxies in real life, using only cheap, low-power cards.



Not the most interesting card but c'mon, I love the concept.

Anyways, so the first thing I've done is to reduce the number of cards in the cube slighty. I kept looking and Inscho's cube as well a others and wondering why my list didn't work as well when I had a similar amount of support. The trick is that they play fewer cards and, hence, synergetic builds are easier. I went and cut down a bunch of multicolour cards and I'm going to try to reduce elsewhere.

I'm very happy with my red creatures, which I've tweaked slighty. The cards I'm unsure of are:
vs

Getting rid of Kiki-Jiki would also allow me to run Restoration Angel, but it's such an iconic card and I love its design. My nostalgia matters, too.




I just like this because it's an artifact fattie.



Redundant with Pia and Kira Nalaar?

On the spell side, I'm mostly happy with everything except with:



Gamble is just greedy and I've never managed to make Sneak Attack, well, actually good. I'm still trying, though.

I also wonder if I should replace one of my copies of Wildfire with Devastating Dream just for variety purporses.

+

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With Red almost "complete", I've moved into black. I think it's the colour that will benefit the most from a reduction in size because there are surprisingly few good options. I've also taken to heart the idea that I should more heavily support the archetypes in my cube and adding more variety in roleplayers rather than just add more and more stuff.

One-drops



Two-drops



Three-drops



I decided to keep Stronghold Assassin over Woe Strider for now.

Four-Drops



Five-Drops



Six-Drops



That's 23 creatures. I can and want to add a few more, but I'm still not sure of which.




These two are good roleplayers for all I do in my cube. I dislike Imp a bit, but it works.



I feel I need one more discard outlet for Asylum Visitor but the closest one is Heir of Falkenrath which just looks bad.




Cute, but unnecessary.



Good-stuff card with some minor synergies.

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On the spells side, black is messy. I have a bunch of questionable cards like:



Black is weird because it's both the colour that does it all (removal, card draw, cheat) and the colour that is inherently weaker. What do you think? Any suggestions?

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Lastly, I'm not sure I should support Berskerkers. I mean, the cards are fun and mostly non-parasitic but I resent running
.

 

[inscho]

Berserkers is cool, and this is better:

 

[Erik Twice]

Berserkers is cool, and this is better:

It IS better, but it's not a human and I really like my human theme. That's why I haven't included it so far. I might, mind you. I replaced Solemn Recruit with Silverblade Paladin as a test so if I do put the cat in, I fixed

Still, the reason why I'm not sold on Berserkers is that I think I could better allocate those slots to other cards or strategies. Which is a bit unfair, since Berserkers is a very compact archetype and it covers valuable ground (Aggro, Naya colours, etc.) but hey, space is tight.

I've actually reduced my cube by about 20 cards, which has has a largely positive impact on the cube. The best proof for me has been the fact that I can't really remember many of the cards I've cut. The thing with reducing cube size is that the need to support archetypes goes down, because the better, more obvious support cards pop up more often.

The black creature suite I mention is a good example. I can tweak a couple of them, but I feel most possible choices are a step down. If I increase cube size, I either break singleton or I see how fewer Blood Artist or Braids decks come up. So while I can see myself putting Archfiend of Ifnir into my cube, you won't see me scrapping the barrel for more questionable picks when variety is not a concern.

 

[Erik Twice]

Focus. I've reduced the size of my cube to 380 cards and I'm working to make things tighter and tighter.

I'm already seeing results with Pox-style decks that mix artifacts, reanimator and Wildfire all in one.

Mardu Pox from CubeTutor.com

I'm taking a hint from Inscho and I'm trying Devasting Dreams as my second copy of Wildfire. I'm not sure if this deck really works, and it has a bunch of questionable card choices (Scroll rack?) but the core seems strong: Mix some denial with reanimator to get ahead.

I also see decks like this becoming more common:

Sultai Midrange from CubeTutor.com

Pure midrange. Love all the small interactions and ways of getting value.

I do miss this card:





But I fear it might be very annoying with Oversold Cemetery.

 

[Erik Twice]

I added my cube on Cube Cobra just for fun. I dislike how the bots are much poorer that on Cube Tutor but if it gets me some more drafting info, that's good enough for me.

https://cubecobra.com/cube/list/9xc

I've also tweaked cards here and there. Nothing huge, but I think the cube flows better now. I'm really happy with most of my creatures and there's far, far less "jank" than there used to be. I know I've said it several times, but I truly feel I'm close to having it done. Being on Lockdown helps, I suppose. When things go to normal, one of the first things I want to do is draft it in person.

 

[Erik Twice]

More little changes. For example:


->

->

I used to have Alesha, who Smiles at Death in Rakdos, I moved her to Boros. Boros Reckoner always seemed meh.

->

Here's a controversial one. As I've mentioned in other threads, I'm not too fond of Pelakka Wurm. Gaining 7 life is worthwhile, but a 7/7 trampler is a bad pay-off for Reanimator and other similar strategies. You pay a big cost to build your entire deck around reanimation spells and it doesn't do anything midrange can't do. Half of the time, it attempts to swing into a developed board and it doesn't matter. The other half, it just gets killed and you don't have another reanimation spell to try again. Reanimator is weak to counterspells, discard, bounce and a bunch of other stuff. Pelakka Wurm doesn't do what I want it to do.

So why Hornet Queen? The Reanimator I like the most is control-based, with creatures such as Crater Hellion and interaction with your opponent. Hornet Queen seems a similarly defensive card and while it's very high power, I'm not sure it's worrysome on a power level perspective. A bit annoying to play against for some decks? Perhaps. But the decks that it's best against, Aggro, are the ones that already hit Reanimator the hardest while Control can blow them all away with a sweeper.

While I'm talking about Reanimator here, the same is true about Ramp and any other non-value based strategies I try to support. I'm very happy with Bogardan Hellkite and Artisan of Kozilek. Both are strong, not overpowering and fun to play with and against.

 

[Erik Twice]

I haven't said anything in a long time, but I've kept working on my cube. In fact, I think it's practically "complete". There are a couple flaws, like how Gruul Madness aggro via Wild Mongrel isn't really there but I think it's 95% the way I want it to be.

Feel free to make any suggestions, cuts, whatever. Something to replace Ancient Tomb or to boost Wild Mongrel would be nice.

Anyways, I might start looking into another, cheap cube soon

 

[inscho]

Perhaps...



I really enjoy this card. It's a terrific madness glue card, and leads to some explosive sequences. It's great with Mongrel....4 power for Flamewake Phoenix, a cheap cast to help you resurrect Vengevine. Bin it for Living Death, an easy welder target....cast it for free off of a wheel effect or survival of the fittest, etc

 

[Erik Twice]

Yeah, I should try Hollow One again. It's a cool, powerful card that fits in many archetypes. The card I'm less happy with right now is:



I wonder if there's another red three-drop that could replace it. I should also replace the greedy Tinker Mage with Bazaar Mage or something.

 

[dbs]

Perhaps...



I really enjoy this card. It's a terrific madness glue card, and leads to some explosive sequences. It's great with Mongrel....4 power for Flamewake Phoenix, a cheap cast to help you resurrect Vengevine. Bin it for Living Death, an easy welder target....cast it for free off of a wheel effect or survival of the fittest, etc

This card has been rising steadily for me. We don't pick it often, but the few times when someone has, I've noticed it performing well but also very flexibly - being colorless, and artifact, and having cycling cranks up the scenarios where Hollow One works. I think I've been underrating it a bit.

Yeah, I should try Hollow One again. It's a cool, powerful card that fits in many archetypes. The card I'm less happy with right now is:



I wonder if there's another red three-drop that could replace it. I should also replace the greedy Tinker Mage with Bazaar Mage or something.

But this really surprises me! Over here we have two drafters who pick this card pretty aggressively and every time I'm across the table from it, I'm surprised at how well it plays. The base body is good (the number of times I've picked the card up because I forgot it has 3 toughness!), but the effect does a lot of work. Even playing against it - as combo or control - the wheel often feels actively disruptive because I'll lose an engine piece or a key removal spell. At least since it doesn't have haste you can plan accordingly. But for the active player, I've seen high velocity decks get a crazy amount of value out of the wheel without any explicit synergies by dumping cards both right before and right afterward. In green decks with fast etbs like Burning-Tree Emissary and Elvish Visionary, in artifact decks with cheap colorless spells like Chromatic Star, or in blue decks with Frantic Search and one time memorably a follow up Windfall. It gives low-curve decks a nice way to push their advantage when they're ahead on board but since it still gives the opponent 7 cards it doesn't feel game ending the way an Armageddon would in a similar spot.

In the decks with synergies but especially in decks with small creature recursion (e.g. Unearth) suddenly the Magus can really chew through your library, fill up the yard, and get you those discard triggers. I think this two-part appeal - to both low curve decks and decks that explicitly want to care about discard and the yard - makes the card so functional from a drafting perspective that I'll be keeping it in for the foreseeable future.

 

[Erik Twice]

Would you mind sharing a deck or idea with Magus of the Wheel? I may simply be building the wrong way around it. Would love any ideas or examples.

 

[Erik Twice]

I've been doing some testing and small tweaks. I ran the numbers on Cubecobra and it seems white is the most drafted color, followed by red and black. This makes me think Mardu Aggro and variants is the most drafted archetype, followed by other WBR-centric combinations. UG seems to be drafted less with the other colours and they seem rather weak on their own.

I suspect the reason is that U does not have many strong pulls into the colour. It has good archetype cards but they go in WBR archetypes (Spells matter, blink, artifacts). Beyond that, it's mostly a "cheap spells" colour, I'm tempted to run a planeswalker or something a bit busted to make U more appealing as a central colour. I have a couple slots I can change (Tinker Mage, Think Twice, etc.)

G just doesn't work. There are a bunch of mediocre discard-matter cards that don't pull their weight. There's good ramp and some excellent cards but the creature suite is poor. This makes the color follow others, most notably black, instead of having its own pull.

 

[inscho]

Your list's overlap with my recently retired version of the GCC leaves me with a lot of opinions and possible suggestions. I guess my first question would be whether it is more important for you to jam powerful iconic cards, or is it more important to weave intricate synergies and depth?

 

[Erik Twice]

Your list's overlap with my recently retired version of the GCC leaves me with a lot of opinions and possible suggestions. I guess my first question would be whether it is more important for you to jam powerful iconic cards, or is it more important to weave intricate synergies and depth?

For me showcasing the history of the game is important, but I've already sacrificed quite a bit of it so feel free to make any suggestions you have in mind.

 

[inscho]

I can relate to wanting that history showcased. For me, that novelty wore off after a few years, and I became more interested in the overall structure of my cube than rekindling my nostalgia. But nostalgia remains a big part of the game for me.

The reason I wanted to start with this question is because I see the line being straddled in a way doesn't fully service either desire. Which was an issue I was having with the GCC, and one of the reasons I overhauled my list.

For instance, both of these are in your cube right now:


If you want to leverage a card like Fiery Temper to be strong, flavorful, and viable, it needs room to breathe. No one takes Temper over Lightning Bolt, and if you want a "mediocre discard-matters card" like Wild Mongrel to be exciting for green (and not a marginal role player), you want a card like Fiery Temper to be viable. Wild Mongrel's value is increased by it increasing the value of Fiery Temper. In turn, lowering the power level of removal (by removing bolt) makes Wild Mongrel stronger.

If Lightning Bolt chokes out Fiery Temper you can assume that other premium removal will have a similar impact on your more flavorful removal options.

If premium removal is nerfed, the power-band of your creature and ramp suites need to be adjusted to compensate. Everything ties into itself, and creates a domino effect.

If all that prospective change is on the table, then you can start to feel more enthusiastic running a card like:



over



(random example)

Which opens up overlap in green and red's madness suite. Confidant is a generically good aggro option, Visitor is objectively worse, but is flavorful and has some play to it....you can build around it, it reasserts a theme. It makes your Wild Mongrel's and Lightning Axe's more interesting.

I had to lower the power level of my cube to be able to extend the discard theme across all 5 colors which really unlocked a lot of complexity and tied everything together. My cube is less dichotomous now. Archetypes feel less compartmentalized and bleed into one another more. Drafting is more exploratory. The height of my highs has been lowered some, but it was an acceptable trade-off for me.

I'm projecting my own thought process here. Maybe you don't want that at all, but it's something to consider. If that's a road you are interested going down, I'm happy to delve in a little more thoroughly with you, but you'd have to want something quite a bit different than what you have right now.

Or you can just cut those inefficient flavorful role players. If you're happy with your cube overall, it would be much less disruptive. I don't have much advice there, because I couldn't find a way to keep the top end of my removal, creature, and ramp suites without sacrificing too much flavor. I was also never happy with my Simic and Selesnya sections at a higher power level.

 

[Erik Twice]

Thanks a lot for the thoughts inscho. I think you are right on all counts. Int he end my cube is very much a typical cube with some care put into archetypes. And I can see the historical angle is pretty much a novelty, though I don't play Magic enough for it to matter. Like you say, the easiest path is to simply cut the losers. It's worse than lowering the power level, but I'm pretty happy with how decks turn out and the matches are fun. I'm mostly going to play at a boardgame club or with my friends and most people aren't as invested or as good as you or I might be.

For me the biggest issue is that the draft railroads you into the same archetypes, even if there are equally good archetypes available. Part of this is just the result of me drafting my own cube on my own but it's dissapointing how easy is to move into Mardu Aggro compared to Tempo or traditional control.

So yeah, I think I'll just tweak green and remove some of the most questionable archetype support. I can also take out some standouts and tone down removal a notch, but I don't want to make very large changes at this point. I've been working on this cube for months and months and I just want it done. I think it's easier for me to just finish this cube and start another if I want to make large changes.

Regarding Simic and Selesnya, I think the issue is green. White is very powerful in my cube and it has a lot of room for support. Simic is a naturally good colour pair yet I never get those "ramp into Fact or Fiction" decks. Seems I would need to work on that.

 

[Chris Taylor]

T Simic is a naturally good colour pair yet I never get those "ramp into Fact or Fiction" decks. Seems I would need to work on that.

Just run things people can't interact with

 

[Erik Twice]

Just run things people can't interact with

They can't interact if they don't have any lands:



(No, I'm not running that)