Got together with some friends for a 3 player draft of my pre-pandemic cube:
https://cubecobra.com/cube/list/fnmp
It follows the spirit of my main cube by pushing a low curve and having synergy decks compete with good stuff decks. However, the card pool is mostly limited to Eldraine (late 2019) and before since that's when we stopped cubing a lot.
We played 3 free-for-all MP games, with these lists:
Pat (2 wins)
A solid control deck with cheap removal and great finishers. The finishers all felt answerable, but pushed the game towards its conclusion.
Griselbrand was disappointing during the games, as Pat was always too low on life to use the card draw, so it was a 7/7 lifelink dork on defense.
Med (1 win)
Med had a super grindy deck, with lots of recursion which made it difficult to attack him and deal with his threats. With some more disciplined cuts down to 40 cards, I think his deck would have been amazing. He was missing some card draw (a
Painful Truths or two) and was forced to rely on top decks more than Pat or me.
Me (0 wins)
My deck had it all! Broken equipment, reach, card draw and protection. So why didn't I win? I misplayed pretty badly a couple of times and lacked the killer instinct during the games to win with aggro. For example, there was a board stall and I had
Winds of Abandon in hand to clear the way. But it was a cool game and I decided to try and win without cheesing everyone out. I'm not sure why I don't go for those types of plays if I chose to play aggro, but here we are!
Cool plays
I won't go into full game recaps, because it takes a lot of time. I will post some cool plays though!
Pat cast a
Syr Konrad the Grim with
Kess, Dissident Mage on the battlefield and a
Living Death in the GY. Upon realizing the damage potential, we were going to team up with Med and take him out. before he could cast the Living Death. He then decides to cast a one mana
Treasure Cruise exiling the problematic card and greatly diminishing his threat level. We still took 3 damage from Konrad, but that was fine.
I have a huge board and just need to untap to win. I can deal with any sort of attacks no problem. So Pat uses
Ob Nixilis, the Fallen and domes me for 3. He then attacks with a
Creeping Tar Pit for 3 and finishes me off with the draw option from
Wretched Confluence for a total of 9 unblockable damage when I was at 8 life.
I cast
Krenko, Tin Street Kingpin. Med says "Oh, I was afraid it was the good 4 mana Krenko!". On my turn,
Showdown of the Skalds adds a +1/+1 counter,
Skullclamp gives it +1/-1 and two Jitte activations add another +4/+4 for a total of 8 power and 8 goblins and obviously an attack towards Med. The three mana version isn't so bad after all!
Probably the biggest blunder of the night. I have a
Winds of Abandon to clear the board and set up lethal with
Throne of the God-Pharoah. I forgot about
Felidar Retreat on Med's side of the board and instead of wiping his stuff, I ramp him and give him 6 landfall triggers. Doh!
I have the Monarchy thanks to a
Palace Jailer which has one of Meds creatures under it. He negotiates with me to let him get the Monarch to deal with Pat. As soon as he gets to draw his bonus card he starts going off, running his mouth and trash talking everybody since he was now king. It was really fun to see and I should probably get a crown for the next draft night.
Gameplay
The games were fun with a lot of back and forth. Win or lose, each player had his moment to shine and threaten victory. The games were close too, with players ready to win within a turn of each other. All the early drops assured that life totals weren't too high in the late game, mitigating board stalls.
The amount of removal also felt right as not everything was removed on sight, meaning you had a chance to make some cool plays (like with Krenko), but you could also remove must kill things, like a
Consecrated Sphinx.
I am super happy with how the cube felt and this reinforces that I am on the right track with my current design choices.
Synergy
This is a little less encouraging, because while our decks had pockets of synergy, they weren't the crazy beasts I had imagined. I can think of several explinations:
- Lack of familiarity with the environment. This is our first draft of this cube in a year or so.
- The cube we played is a watered-down version of my actual cube. I intentionally made it easier to navigate the draft by removing some build arounds.
- Player experience. We usually play my friend's power max cube which is more about drafting good cards than building a cohesive deck.
All that being said, one of the goals of the cube is to have synergy decks and good stuff decks both being viable. Med was a
Blood Artist +
Altar of Dementia away from being a grindy/combo Orzhov midrange deck. Pat had all the pieces for an artifact deck except the payoff. Finally, I had a little Blink package that I could have pushed harder during the draft.
Equipments
A lot of the aggro cards that I included certainly fit the archetype and are powerful enough to challenge the midrange/control decks. However, they tend to make the game resolve around them once they resolve.
I'm talking about some usual suspects
This was exacerbated by two factors:
1. I have less enchantment/artifact removal in this version of the cube. Missing
Skyclave Apparition,
Loran of the Third Path and
Cathar Commando was definitely an issue.
2. I drafted 2 copies of
Stoneforge Mystic. With how powerful the tutor targets are, I think I will go back to singleton in both cubes.
So I think they are still worthwhile includes, but the answers need to be there to make the games more interesting and dynamic. My opponents still found ways to pressure me and take the wins despite my overpowered equipment which was encouraging (MP formats are pretty forgiving in that regard). I am now looking for more artifact removal in Red with
Embereth Shieldbreaker as a candidate among others. I want to avoid the
Vandal Blasts of the world as that would be too much for the artifact deck to deal with.
Strong performers
The evasive body and steady card advantage made this a real threat, but not so much that you have to remove it. Chipping in for 3 damage a turn was perfect too.
These had a really good showing. The vigilance and flying are great abilities to have in addition to the rest of the card text. Med had an
Altar of Dementia in the SB which would have taken these cards to the next level (infinite even with
Animate Dead and the Titan).
An oppressive mechanic in 1vs1, but a really fun one for MP games. So much so, that I want to include more of it. I'm considering
Court of Cunning and
Fall from Favor as options. Not because Blue needs help drawing cards, but because the color could use more incentives to attack. The Initiative on the other hand still doesn't appeal to me because of the complexity.
The flexibility on this is definitely worth the mana cost. Pat usually removed 2 threats and recured a
Snapcaster Mage or
Baleful Strix for a ton of value. Then flashed it back with said Mage or Kess which was difficult to compete with. It never felt unfair though and the options allow the caster to feel smart which is a nice bonus.
Activation costs
It was very difficult to find the time and mana to equip a
Bloodforged Battle-Axe or level up a
Figure of Destiny. I was afraid of the blowout potential of spending mana and getting the card removed, so I prioritized adding to the board instead. I never ran out of cards and things to do which seems crazy to me in a Boros aggressive deck. On the other hand, Med with his BW midrange deck was lacking card draw and used
Batterskull to great effect. Swinging in with 10/10 lifelinking
Sun Titans or turning his dorky Cat tokens into threats.
I am using this draft as a data point that I may have included too many mana sinks for the aggressive decks and not enough for the slower ones. I am looking at some of the new Eldraine adventure cards to give incidental card draw in addition to a threat.
Thanks for reading!
) is already very good. Then making artifact tokens for each noncreature spell is exactly the type of open-ended card that I love. In this cube, you don't even need to be transforming the tokens into creatures for them to have utility, since they feed various artifact payoffs. I haven't decided if I want to be including double-sided tokens to the cube yet. If I do, it will be for this card.
