Future Cycle

[GalacticTraveler12]

New list: http://www.cubetutor.com/cubeblog/99585


Welcome to the Future Cycle cube! Drawing from Time Spiral design ideas and Amonkhet/Innistrad graveyard themes, this is a very low-powered format designed around Deserts. The culmination of many Cubetutor prototypes, I am preparing to buy this cube within a few days.

Cubetutor link: http://www.cubetutor.com/cubeblog/90917

Deserts are the backbone of the format, serving many defining purposes. The Desert lineup:
-3 each of the monocolored "Sac Deserts": Ipnu Rivulet, Ramunap Ruins, Shefet Dunes, Ifnir Deadlands and Hashep Oasis
-3 each of the monocolored Cycling Deserts (Desert of the Indomitable, etc.)
-10 Painted Bluffs
-3 Cradle of the Accursed
-2 Dunes of the Dead
-1 Scavenger Grounds

Graveyard themes such as land recursion, sacrifice and Cycling/discard-matters are natural extensions of Deserts. Cards that sacrifice permanents such as Lunarch Mantle help bridge the gap from lands to artifact and creature sacrifice, while the Zombie token-making Deserts support a BUw Zombies theme. Undead Alchemist, Brain Freeze and other cards that mill target player contribute to both self-milling for value, and the possibility of decking the opponent.

The other major ramification of a Desert manabase is color screw, and its mitigation. Efficient fixing lands are excluded to so that Deserts have room to breathe, and this results in consistent 2-color decks being something you have to work for. True 3-color is nigh impossible but clever splashes through Aftermath, Cycling and Emerge cards are often used. Painted Bluffs, Chromatic Star and other universal fixers aid in this. While at first glance Painted Bluffs is very weak they actually go quickly here, because everyone needs fixing and more fodder for their Sac Deserts.

On to archetypes! Here they are by color pair:

WU: Lantern/Prison, Embalm Control
WB: Tokens/Sacrifice
WR: Artifacts, Go-wide Aggro
WG: Deserts, Counters
UB: Zombies Mill
UR: Storm, Artifact Combo
UG: Self-mill/Desert Sacrifice Combo
BR: Madness Aggro, Sacrifice
BG: Counters Aggro
RG: Deserts Aggro, Sacrifice

I'm feeling pretty good about most of the guilds, but BG and RG could use a little polishing. The aggressive decks in this format are more midrange than in most cubes; they are about a reach plan rather than killing them early. RW and RB, the other aggressive pairs, have clearly defined identities, but BG and RG are a little trickier, with vague counters and sacrifice themes. I'm looking to refine them a little by trimming redundant cards while giving them more generalized cards to improve pivoting.


Some sample decks:

WR Artifact Aggro from CubeTutor.com

BU Zombies z from CubeTutor.com

Gu Land Sacrifice Control from CubeTutor.com

UW Prison !! from CubeTutor.com

RB Madness from CubeTutor.com

 

[Grillo_Parlante]

Love it. Been eagerly waiting for you to post.

 

[inscho]

G/R Tokens from CubeTutor.com

I like a lot of what I see here, but the mana fixing is absolutely brutal.

 

[GalacticTraveler12]

Great draft! That is a prime example of what I want Gruul to do. However, I notice you don't have any Deserts; I would recommend picking them fairly highly. Every deck wants them, so similarly to removal they go fast. The games are slow enough that having basically a free spell in your land section is a big advantage.

I agree that fixing might be a little too cutthroat currently. Most control and midrange decks here have enough options that they can afford to spend early picks on fixing, so I'm not too worried about them. On the other hand aggro has to grab as much burn and efficient early drops as it can, resulting in sketchy mana. To combat this, there are a few options:

-Simply add a bunch of fixing lands, so that aggro can pick some up late.
-Replace some control cards with more aggro-friendly alternatives, giving it more options.
-Add fixing specific to aggro.

The first possibility can be quickly dismissed: I am unwilling to add so many fixing lands. There is simply not enough space, and control would still have superior fixing. However I think the second option has a lot of merit. Overall I think that because the format is so slow, control and midrange have been favored, while aggro is a bit wanting for support. Giving it some space to breathe should allow for more picks to be spent on fixing.

 

[Grillo_Parlante]

This guys format provides a pretty good blueprint.

Basically, what he does is make it so that either color fixing dosen't come from the mana base (mana rocks,land cycling), or you don't care about fixing (artifacts/morphs). The natural drafting pattern is to focus on 1-2 color decks, so to challenge the drafter out of that, you have sunburt or domain cards.

The moral of the cube is that the colors that your lands produce shouldn't matter, so the poor fixing from the mana base shouldn't matter.

 

[inscho]

Great draft! That is a prime example of what I want Gruul to do. However, I notice you don't have any Deserts; I would recommend picking them fairly highly. Every deck wants them, so similarly to removal they go fast (in fact, Ifnir Deadlands is removal). The games are slow enough that having basically a free spell in your land section is a large advantage.

I felt like I had enough things to tie up my mana and generate value into the late game that were more impactful than the deserts. I get the idea is that every deck wants them, but I wasn't enticed into biting for this build. Any chance I had to grab one, there was something more valuable for the archetype in the pack.

 

[Grillo_Parlante]

This might be a good format to make pocket decks for, to see what the game texture is like. Its really difficult for me to do a more standard cube commentary, because of how alien things are (which is exciting). I kind of imagine a sort of limited-esque games from these formats, but I would like a feeling of self consumption from them. I think thats kind of necessitated by the desert structure. Its an extreme low resource environment.

R/B Aggro from CubeTutor.com

 

[GalacticTraveler12]

So yesterday, I finally got the cube together IRL! So far, I've done a Sealed and a Grid with my brother.

The Sealed game, I put together a RW artifact aggro deck against my brother's UG vortex. It ended up being a slap to the face; Mana Vortex usually came down turn 4 and proceeded to do nothing except prevent you from playing more expensive spells, while the RW deck already had a few creatures to run you over. The UG recursion cards didn't really come together as an engine but isolated cards that in the end were inferior to just playing creatures. I was worried that the format would just boil down to just curving out with creatures, with synergy being incidental rather than a cohesive deck. The cube mostly consists of cards that barely point you in a direction, with the payoffs sometimes not being dedicated enough to make drafting around an idea really worth it. Most of the time, everyone is worried about cutting narrow cards and tightening the power band, but I thought I had gone too far in that direction, and sacrificed dynamic archetypes in the process. The Abzan colors seemed to have the biggest problem with this.

The grid gave me some hope. This time, it was GR Sacrifice vs. mono black Pox/Recursion, and the games were much closer, offering a lot more opportunity for skillful play. One match was a great comeback, in which the mono black deck repeatedly pressed its advantage until a Down // Dirty , fueled by a Treasure Map, discarded the Pox player's hand and recurred a chump blocker to survive a couple turns longer. To close out the game, RG's Mockery of Nature destroyed Blight Sickle and outsized the opponent's remaining creatures. With both decks being midrange value engines, the game was much more interactive.

Overall, these first drafts gave me some important revelations:

-This format is somewhat similar to early Magic; weak creatures and very few ETBs. A whopping 162 cards in the cube have activated abilities, making the games slow and grindy, like a really weird Limited format. I was impressed by the amount of mana sinks; despite games lasting 10+ turns they rarely went to topdeck wars.

-Because of the reduction in ETBs, aggro can basically be like Sligh, casting a lot of creatures to gain early game tempo. I was surprised this held true despite the relatively low number of one drops.

-The graveyard theme needs a stronger engine to back it up. When creatures don't have ETBs, control's game plan can't be to just survive until a high-CMC card gives them a two or three for one. They need a different way to win the long game, one that rewards you for playing less creatures. And therefore, spells need to be significantly more powerful than I thought. I am in the process of upgrading my looting and removal suite, while trying to improve the value of self-milling. The control decks I am looking to foster are graveyard engines in the vein of Spider Spawning and Burning Vengeance. These decks have a great dynamic; the spells you cast early game to survive become your win condition later. I think that UB Zombies is the closest to achieving this, where your Embalm creatures return with tribal payoffs late game. But I think my issue is that many of these payoffs are too powerful for the format; I would love to run Rise from the Tides and Spider Spawning, but they would probably be overpowered.

-Figuring out the optimal numbers of colorless lands will be very difficult. Right now I'm running:
10 Painted Bluffs
3 Cradle of the Accursed
2 Dunes of the Dead
1 Scavenger Grounds
1 Inventors' Fair
1 Sequestered Stash
But I could easily see those numbers changing. What about Sunscorched Desert? Endless Sands? Grasping Dunes? Maybe even original Desert would help out control. It's going to be a real headache to tweak.

-Mana Vortex needs more help. It may be a lost cause, but I spent $18 on that thing so I want to try to make it work. I've added Fade Away as a blue 'wrath', but I'm wary of it being obnoxiously strong/swingy. Adding UG blockers should also go a long way, but the core of that deck is running your opponent out of lands while ensuring you have a steady supply, and to support that a stronger graveyard engine and more removal seems necessary. As a UG control deck, you don't have access to much removal and that might really hamper a control archetype. Perhaps finding some way of translating land sacrifice to board presence is necessary, but Dunes of the Dead is the only thing I can think of (although maybe I should add a couple more). I'm thinking bounce could be effective since vortex should run them out of mana to recast their creatures. Would Withdrawal be tolerable, given the slower speed of the format and the fact that it is card disadvantage? Other cards I am considering are Elephant Grass, Drownyard Temple and Galestrike.

So yeah. I guess the bottom line is, stronger spells and graveyard enablers/payoffs need to come in, to make the archetypes more dynamic and support control.
Everythingamajig

 

[astraedm]

I would think that Scavenger Grounds is too niche to be useful as it is, and removing it for another Dunes of the Dead would help the land-sac deck and help your graveyard decks as well. Is OG Crucible of Worlds too far above the power band? Drownyard Temple is definitely something you want in, making it a sort of repeatable stone rain if you get both pieces and are ahead enough on mana to return it after the initial land sac for Vortex. That's enough hoops to do something fairly powerful. Groundskeeper perhaps?

 

[Grillo_Parlante]

-Because of the reduction in ETBs, aggro can basically be like Sligh, casting a lot of creatures to gain early game tempo. I was surprised this held true despite the relatively low number of one drops.

Isn't that interesting? I had the same experience, and its really difficult to articulate on a web forum, but it feels like a profoundly different form of magic from what we have today. I'm glad you got to have that experience. Modern era aggro is really parasitic and one drop focused, because it has to be hyper efficient to compete with the tempo that 4-6cc ETB creatures and planeswalkers can produce. Once those ETBs and walkers are removed, even relatively derpy 1-2cc threats, or a light selection of 1 drops, becomes very powerful, and things swing back the other way. Its a power band in tempo production I had previously been unaware of, but one that can either distort and invalidate most aggro strategies, or distort and invalidate more midrange strategies, depending on where the emphasis is placed.

I started picking spots to add ETBs that wouldn't feel too oppressive. I was shooting for that mirage/visions era feel, when they first started to appear, were important cards, but not dominating in density like occured in SOM era magic.

 

[GalacticTraveler12]

Its a power band in tempo production I had previously been unaware of, but one that can either distort and invalidate most aggro strategies, or distort and invalidate more midrange strategies, depending on where the emphasis is placed.

I started picking spots to add ETBs that wouldn't feel too oppressive. I was shooting for that mirage/visions era feel, when they first started to appear, were important cards, but not dominating in density like occured in SOM era magic.

That's a good way of approaching ETBs, sort of 'the best of both worlds'. I think to strike a balance between aggro and slower decks, there are two main knobs to turn: ETBs and removal/spell power. I might eventually end up using a similar configuration, but I want to explore the retro feel of weak creatures/ETBs and strong spells. I haven't mentioned this before, but I come from competitive Pokemon, which has very strong tutor and draw effects (some decks can go through their entire deck in one turn), and I really enjoy the consistency that provides. Being able to find the cards you want 80% of the time, gives games an open-deck feel where you are constantly analyzing your remaining resources, and gauging how reckless to be using them. Magic has greater synergy and depth, but I miss the engine-building in Pokemon, so it feels liberating being able to play a more robust draw package.

The accompanying update:

OUT​

IN


Aside from the spell upgrades, some balancing changes:

• Bosh was pretty insane with Sneak Attack and Tinker (potentially 14 damage by T5!). Either the enablers or the target had to be nerfed, so I've replaced Bosh with Grim Poppet which should be fairer. The removal buff should also help opponents deal with these cheated-in threats.
• As removal becomes stronger, high-cc creatures need ETBs/death triggers to mitigate tempo loss. I've replaced a few 6-7 mana creatures with slightly stronger versions, hopefully keeping things reasonable while reducing blowout potential.
• Vortex is just too narrow. I might come back to it later, but for now UG is going to be more tempo-focused.
• I was trying out a Storm subtheme, but UR control seems much happier as artifact combo. The Izzet spells archetype has now become a tempo build featuring cards like Curious Homunculus and Send to Sleep.

I'm really excited for these changes, and hopefully will be able to get some quality testing in over Christmas Break!

 

[Alfonzo Bonzo]

Most of these changes look good, but you need to be careful when making such big changes.

I'm a little sad about the removal of some of the cycling cards, particularly in your low fixing environment. Also bit sad to see brainspoil go too.

I'd also double check some of your statements against some of your swaps. Ug is more tempo focused? None of the new green cards really support that and you've removed some blue tempo cards. Izzet doesn't really shout artifact combo, more spells temp still.

Glad bosh has gone. I'm still very much on the fence is tinker can ever be fair so worth keeping an eye on.

 

[GalacticTraveler12]

I'm a little sad about the removal of some of the cycling cards, particularly in your low fixing environment. Also bit sad to see brainspoil go too.

Yeah, it's likely that some of the cycling cards will come back in, especially Chartooth Cougar, which I'm trying to find space for. Brainspoil has been feeling a bit weak, but it's possible I've been undervaluing the tutor mode?

I'd also double check some of your statements against some of your swaps. Ug is more tempo focused? None of the new green cards really support that and you've removed some blue tempo cards. Izzet doesn't really shout artifact combo, more spells temp still.

Sorry if my statements were a little unclear, let me clear them up: I do not want UG to only be a tempo deck, but I want to add support so that such a deck is possible. More like adding a facet than a complete replacement. Most of the blue tempo cards that left got upgrades, and although not pictured above I have recently added Psionic Blast and Pestermite to push Ux tempo. The archetype is definitely still a work in progress though.

My viewpoint on UR control here is that it has always been slanted towards artifact combo, rather than Storm as I was intending: I have had multiple UR decks, utilizing Tinker, Sneak Attack and/or Trash for Treasure to cheat out artifacts, crop up in play and online drafts. This was at odds with what I thought the color pair was going to do (Storm combo-control). Similarly, I had never meant for UR tempo to exist. My statement was trying to convey that I am embracing these archetypes; artifact combo and spells tempo, as UR identity in my cube.

I'm still very much on the fence is tinker can ever be fair so worth keeping an eye on.

I agree, Tinker is pretty edgy. I've yet to see it do anything truly ridiculous, but I'm sure it's a matter of time. Hopefully the removal buff can help decks deal with the threats it cheats in.

 

[Alfonzo Bonzo]

I think it's nice that you have brainspoil, as it's something that you don't often see and it's quite satisfying to construct something where you know you know you have something good to search for. Helps enable some of your deck themes or can just kill something. You can search for:



Amongst others.

 

[Alfonzo Bonzo]

I've been really enjoying drafting your cube, and I've been thinking about it a lot. I thought it might be useful to share some of what I've been thinking through, but please feel free to ignore it, as it's unsolicited, and might not be what you want to do with your design.

I think I'm right in thinking that this is/should be a synergy cube, because otherwise it's a good stuff cube, and if you're low power level, is it just a 'stuff' cube or even worse, a bad stuff cube?

It would be really helpful for you to expand a bit more on what you're trying to do with some of the archetypes. The desert design, and associated colour restriction support is fairly straight forward, but I'm not sure there is enough depth in some of the themes for them to be obvious and consistent. (BTW, I love the desert approach, this is one of the only cubes I really feel strongly behind breaking singleton restrictions).

For me, if you're building an archetype, there has to be some reason for you as the drafter to want to build an archetype. If it's your main archetype, there has to be reason for you select certain cards to
build a synergetic deck. This can either be build arounds, or cards that work well together to make a theme.

Before I start, a note on power level - I think this is probably quite a personal judgement call about what is appropriate, and you'd need to decide wht you thought was right for your format, but with most things being so low powered, some of the higher powered stuff really stands out as traditional bomb level. I think there is some benefit on bringing it up a little bit, but your call based on what you're trying to do.

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It was easiest for me to start with the backbone of your design, deserts. Starting with the monocoloured sac deserts, I asked the question what do these tell the drafter about what they should be doing?


You want to be attacking, and preferrably with multiple creatures in a go wide base. This would suggest that you want to be going for cards that make multiple creatures/tokens (Anointer Priest would also encourage you to look for tokens). In white this feels fairly tame with Dauntless Cathar, Propeller Pioneeer, Sensor Splicer, Cenn's Enlistment and Cogworker's Puzzleknot. I'd encourage you to maybe add something else. Senor Splicer feels particularly underwhelming and suggests a golem theme which isn't really there. I know you have tokens spread throughout the other colours, but maybe think if you need another? I like the recent Cenn's Enlistment add here.

As an aside you list the UW archetype as tokens control, not sure what that is or how a drafter would recognise it.


I find this really exciting as a way to support a genuine mill deck, and also the self mill deck. Here are a couple of decks that I drafted with them:

desert self mill from CubeTutor.com

simic mill you from CubeTutor.com

I guess I'd like to see some more cards that supported mill/self mill and rewarded you for self mill. Here are some enablers I thought might be interesting:



Some of these have cool synergies, but I'm particularly fond of vedalken entrancer from original ravnica when you could draft it as a genuine win condition. I like it a bit better than Drowner of Secrets that you already have, as it's tougher, more expensive, needs mana to activate and doesn't signal a non-existent merfolk theme.

When it comes to the self mill rewards, this is a bit harder, particularly at your power level, but there's something around just value, by uping the amount of flashback, eternalise, embalm and aftermath, but guess these would have to be carefully selected. I quite like the off colour flashback and aftermath cards here due to the large number of painted bluffs, but that also becomes another reason to push people into deserts.


This is fairly straightforward but worth noting that it suggests both aggro, midrange and control as a form of removal. You might want to consider proliferate cards, but not sure this readily suggests or needs a theme. Wroth noting that if you do up the number of morph creatures as a way to design around significant number of colourless land cards, this raises the value of the deadlands as a way to remove threats, but again not necessarily something to push for.


Fairly obvious that this suggests supporting aggressive decks with some form of reach, and there isn't a huge amount further to say on it. You may want to not have a huge number of other burn style reach cards to incentivise drafting these, but there is a balance that needs to be sought.


This one is really interesting, and I don't think there is much/enough support for this at the moment. As you can only activate as a sorcery you're liable to get whatever is attaching chump blocked and it going to waste. So if you were being aggressive and trying to push through then you'd be looking for creatures with some form of evasion. I'll let the other colours worry about that, but green has trample and can't be blocked by power or less. At the moment you only have Sifter Wurm for trample in green so I think you could benefit from more. Some things I thought might be interesting/relevant here:



Power level of these is obvious a bit mixed!

For power or less, you might want to consider:



The other thing you could look at is power (or toughness) matters. The difficulty you have is that it costs 4 in total to activate the oasis, so anything you 'combo' with has to be cheap to cast or have a cheap activation cost for it to be viable. Here's some thoughts:



Of course you could get cute and try and use the oasis on your opponents creatures and combine with:



-----


With 15 sac deserts, and other cards that ask/let you sac permanents I think you probably want to go up to three of these? As an aside, it feels like you've built in lots of ways to sac permanents/lands, when you only have two of these, which feels like an overreaction in design.

-----

I think having the one copy of this here is nice and probably right.

-----

You haven't got one of these yet, but I think one copy would be nice with all the cycling and sacrifice stuff. Incentivises these cards as well.

-----

With all the colourless deserts, have you thought about using cards that require colourless mana as an incentive to draft deserts?:



-----
You describe some of your archetypes as 'zombies'. There are lots of cards that create zombies, but that doesn't mean it's an archetype. You have two cards that support them - Graf Harvest and Undead Alchemist, but I think you could benefit from a lord maybe?



-----
I had a brief look through at threshold and delirum cards as well that would support you theme that you're not already playing or have already mentioned. Some of these might be of interest:



-----
Thoughts on individual cards:

Salvaging station: much as I love it, I just don't think you have enough cogs to actively support it. Unless you grab it early in pack one you usually don't end up with enough. Your cogs are relatively specialised, so not everybody takes them all the time (like you might with pyrite spellbomb) and it feels like it's just there to support the lantern deck. I think you'd probably need to remove it or add more cogs.

Gaea's Blessing: I feel a bit nervous about this recent add when you have self mill/mill as a theme. Having one trump card against that deck, (or undermining your own self mill) makes me wonder if it shouldn't go back to being Krosan Restoration or something similar).

Glareweilder, Meteorite: Two of my pet cards, and it's nice to see them here.

Cliffside Lookout: This doesn't do anything until you have five mana, and can't really get there. I wonder if Selfless Cathar might be better as it can be used earlier, used as a threat and works with death triggers/recursion.

Composite Golem: I'm interested what your thinking behind this is. It's a cool card, but what did you see it achieving in the cube?

Cartographer: Could this be tilling treefolk?

 

[Grillo_Parlante]

Went through a draft and saw sneak attack. and it occured to me how interesting the cheaty cards might be in this context. Sneak attack's main value might come from solving the fixing problem, being used to force through spells with heavy color requirements, rather than putting in broken cards that just win the game. Not that there is color complexity in the format, but it was a cool and new perspective to have on a card that tends to generally be very established in cube formats.

 

[GalacticTraveler12]

First of all, thanks for taking the time to write all that up! Lots of great suggestions to unpack.

I'm not sure there is enough depth in some of the themes for them to be obvious and consistent.

I've been thinking about this too lately, and I think the crux of that is the overly minimalist approach I've taken towards archetype design. I think I need more payoffs for a lot of archetypes; only artifacts I feel has the proper support.

With most things being so low powered, some of the higher powered stuff really stands out as traditional bomb level. I think there is some benefit on bringing it up a little bit, but your call based on what you're trying to do.

I'm curious as to which cards you would identify as bombs. If I had to name a few cards that are pushing the power level, I'd say Triskelavus, Grim Poppet, Tinker, and Pearl Lake Ancient. The colorless threats are consistent 2 or 3-for-ones, and have the benefit of artifact support. As a result they are probably the easiest first picks in the format. To remedy this, there are a few options:

• Replace these cards with weaker alternatives: This is the simplest option, but I find the artifact 7-drops at this power level pretty lacking. I'm open to any suggestions.
• Bring the power level of the other creatures up to match: This is sort of what you're suggesting with the power level increase. However I'm not the biggest fan of this, because it comprimises the strong spells/weak creatures feel I'm going for, and might necessitate more ETBs.
• Strengthen each color's top end to compete: I think I prefer this option; it's sort of a compromise and should preserve the dynamics I want. A removal upgrade could help balance this out.

As an aside you list the UW archetype as tokens control, not sure what that is or how a drafter would recognise it.

I probably should have called that Embalm control, that is what I was referring to. It's a UW deck that self-mills/discards to get Embalm/Eternalize creatures in the yard, then grinds out the late game with payoffs such as Aven Wind Guide.

I guess I'd like to see some more cards that supported mill/self mill and rewarded you for self mill...I'm particularly fond of vedalken entrancer from original ravnica when you could draft it as a genuine win condition. I like it a bit better than Drowner of Secrets that you already have, as it's tougher, more expensive, needs mana to activate and doesn't signal a non-existent merfolk theme.

I completely missed that, thanks! Currently I'm pretty starved for space, but once I find room I'll give some of those other cards a try.

As you can only activate as a sorcery you're liable to get whatever is attaching chump blocked and it going to waste. So if you were being aggressive and trying to push through then you'd be looking for creatures with some form of evasion. At the moment you only have Sifter Wurm for trample in green so I think you could benefit from more.

That's a good point, I think I'll try out Nylea's Emissary to increase trample density. However, I am running a few other forms of evasion in green:


Which have performed very well. I think that UG tempo especially is going to be very reliant on evasion, so adding some more should go a long way. I wonder if Nephalia Moondrakes would be appropriate? I like how it takes advantage of both Ipnu Rivulet and Hashep Oasis. Triangle of War also looks cool, I'll try and find space.

You haven't got one of these yet, but I think one copy would be nice with all the cycling and sacrifice stuff

Hostile Desert, while cool, seems too far above my power band. A 3/4 is pretty big in this format, and having one in a land slot seems really strong.

With all the colourless deserts, have you thought about using cards that require colourless mana as an incentive to draft deserts?

Yeah, I have considered them, but I feel like there are enough incentives to draft deserts and most of those cards aren't independently interesting. When most decks are running Deserts anyway I don't think they would feel like a unique payoff.

You describe some of your archetypes as 'zombies'. There are lots of cards that create zombies, but that doesn't mean it's an archetype. You have two cards that support them - Graf Harvest and Undead Alchemist, but I think you could benefit from a lord maybe?

I would argue that Anointer Priest and Aven Wind Guide are solid payoffs, since most Zombies here are tokens. I do agree I need another payoff in black though, I think I'll give Risen Executioner a spin.

Sneak attack's main value might come from solving the fixing problem, being used to force through spells with heavy color requirements, rather than putting in broken cards that just win the game. Not that there is color complexity in the format, but it was a cool and new perspective to have on a card that tends to generally be very established in cube formats.

I wonder if adding some color-intensive creatures would be a neat payoff for Sneak Attack and mono-colored decks? I'm thinking along the lines of Cloudthresher, although that would probably be a bit too strong.

 

[sigh]

Could run one of the original combo pieces alongside Sneak:

And has trample!

 

[GalacticTraveler12]

I think that niche is currently covered by Gigapede and Phytotitan, but definitely a good alternative! Maybe at some point I'll try cutting those two for the Treefolk and a Rampaging Hippo.

 

[Grillo_Parlante]

I really like cloudthresher as a green control card, if its ever runnable.

I would probably consider these morphs if I was going to go down that line:



tbh I keep on wanting to draft a 5 color deserts deck, but there isn't enough colorless spells to make that possible. Running off-color deserts to enable the desert engine seems sweet, but the deck has to have more colorless cards capable of taking advantage of off-color fixing.

 

[Grillo_Parlante]

This feels rough as hell, but intersting:

Desert Morphs from CubeTutor.com

Obviously, way too many 3 drops, and almost no removal, but the idea is to run on bad mana in the early-mid game, and by the late game, you should have drawn into the fixing to power up the deck.

I don't know if this is the setup or not, but I do feel that people are going to find themselves wandering around the colors (or wanting to wander around the colors), especially if they want to delve deep into the desert mechanics, and there should be some saftey valve in place when that happens.

 

[GalacticTraveler12]

So recently I've been working on an archetype based on repeatedly recurring creatures, similar to the Tortured Existence Pauper deck. The idea is you have a bunch of self-sacrificing creatures, and then an enchantment that allows you to reuse them. This produces a cool toolbox effect, where by self-milling you can 'tutor' for the creatures you want.

The issue, though, is choosing a recursion engine. Tortured Existence itself probably isn't great, requiring a constant supply of creatures. The only efficient way of providing discard fodder would be Dredge creatures, of which there are only a couple in the list. Plus, relying on Dredge so much could end up milling you out. So I'm not too enthusiastic about Existence.

Other options are also a bit lacking. Ideally our engine piece would be castable from the graveyard, so that self-mill cards could give the strategy redundancy. One of the reasons Spider Spawning was such a cool combo deck was because the goal of the deck innately gave its payoffs redundancy. By self-milling to get creatures in the yard, you also pseudo-tutor for flashback cards like Spider Spawning and Gnaw to the Bone. This way you can reliably draw your payoffs without needing a playset of them or a bunch of tutors.

Unfortunately, it seems none of the creature recursion is castable from the graveyard. The most promising payoffs I've found are:



But these have power level concerns. Phyrexian Reclamation is probably too strong, and perhaps Oversold Cemetery as well. I'm not really sure what to make of Oath of Druids, but it looks significantly weaker than the others.

Another way to take advantage of self-sacrificing creatures, is the low-CMC recursion often seen in white:



To reuse any of:


I'm especially intrigued by Rally the Ancestors. Any experiences with it? I'd imagine it's usually used to kill attacking creatures, but in this context it could allow you to reuse a couple sacrifice effects.

 

[Grillo_Parlante]

For whatever its worth, I lost to a UG/b labman deck this weekened using oversold cemetary as a recurssive engine. Its primary axis was UG pressure, but if the opponent started answering the pressure plan effectively, it could shift into a labman win pretty naturally, as repeat moldervine cloak or dark blast activations actively filled the yard. I thought it was pretty clever.

Oversold cemetary looked very good in that role. The important thing with cemetary, is that it wants a critical mass of creatures in the yard, so while its fairly reasonable as a late game aggro engine, creating a sort of slow card advantage in the face of removal, it becomes much better when you start deliberatly filling up the yard. I like the reasonable floor, that rewards deeply commiting in a direction.

Otherwise its a strong card, but I wouldn't call it impossible to beat. It ensures a consistent creature presence, but it has a hard time controling boards in the same way that a debtors' knell, or god-pharaoh's gift because it tends to deactivate itself by depleating its own yard.

 

[Alfonzo Bonzo]

I think the card you are looking for is



For rally, you either want global haste, self sacrificing creatures, other ways to sac creatures or a ton of enter the battlefield style effects. Best with other ways to sac creatures, becomes a bit of a combo enabler, but mostly limits it to Mardu colours.

 

[GalacticTraveler12]

Yeah, maybe I just need to test Cemetery and Genesis, before I assume they're too strong. I'll try to find room...

Anyways, I wanted to highlight some Cubetutor drafts:

sultai lantern mill from CubeTutor.com

Alfonzo's draft. This is a really cool concept; using the mill cards as a combo with Lantern to control your opponent's draws. Just needs an Ipnu Rivulet or two I feel to give the mill plan cohesion.

jeskai control from CubeTutor.com

Nice example of a more traditional control deck, also drafted by Alfonzo.

Simic Mill from CubeTutor.com

Here is another mill deck, drafted by inscho, this one being very focused on the Deserts angle.

Green Deserts Midrange from CubeTutor.com

I drafted this today, looks really neat. I love how Cloudthresher encourages players to find creative ways to cast it, and can lead to monocolored decks like this one. Plus if you don't have the necessary mana, the evoke prevents it from being a dead card.


Anyways, I feel like the list is approaching stability after all those swaps. Thanks to everyone who's drafted. I appreciate it.