Genericco's Generic Cube Blog Spotlight Shitpost Megathread

[genericco]

We're bloggers now. We blogging. I've been given a responsibility to post inner musings, to expiriment, possibly even post whatever I want - which I interpret to mean 'annoy your reader', 'disregard norms of grammar and punctuation' and 'shitpost excessively'. So let's get right to it with

MAGIC CARDS I LIKE



The greatness of this card, I feel, is evident. They could hang it in museums. There's no poet that ever lived that could describe how elegant this card is so why would I try?



Now THAT's what I call music (Wake Me Up Inside (CAN'T WAKE UP)). It's a little bit too good with everything, a little bit too pickable, but that I'm running two should tell you how I feel about it. Can be a tech sac outlet in times of need but it's more evasive 2 drop + this = 4 turn clock



A card that seems like it should always have been around. Just directly hits the sweet spot for cube, flexible and tricky and cheap and plays nice with etbs and sacrifices in the color where those are strongest.



Maybe he's old hat to you all but I'm like look five mana haste on turn three how cool is that? Good thing I cut Kalonian Hydra long time go

AND HERE'S ONE WHERE I GO HMM IT JUST DIDN'T WORK



Me and Purphoros, God of the Forge have decided to just be friends but yeah he won't be in my cube anymore and there's no blame, really, it just didn't work out and that's just how it goes sometimes with build-around and environments I suppose it's part of growing as a cube without getting too personal about it I'll just say it never really worked between us

That's all for today fam gotta save some for tomorrow morning's blog

Posted at: 11:37 PM (no really)
Mood: Prehensile Listening To: Interpold

 

[genericco]

So seems like I have more to say about Undying Evil. One more time,



This is a ranking of some of the stuff it's nuts with in my cube, from extra nuts to mixed nuts:

NUTTIEST

Spoiler

3/3 flying ETB draw three cards seems pretty good

STILL NUTTY

Spoiler

Granted, these cards do most of the work of being busted on their own, but undying is even easier to link up with echo costs than reanimation is

WE'RE GOING IN, YOU KNOW, DECREASING ORDER, SO A FULL CATEGORY LESS NUTTY THAN THE CATEGORY ABOVE THIS ONE

Spoiler

You can even search for Undying Evil with rune-scarred if you have a left up and know your opponent's removal will send it to the graveyard, since you're leaving up a second tutor

So basically If you didn't click any of those it's good with echo costs, keyword evoke and other instances of sacrifice. And of course it's broadly useful as a combat trick and counter-removal in a way that other ETB abuse categories like cloudshift effects is not

 

[Onderzeeboot]

I feel compelled to make a "deez nuts!" joke...

 

[Kirblinx]

I feel compelled to make a "deez nuts!" joke...

Dude, they are no joke. They at the forefront of the Australian Hardcore scene.

If anything it sounds like a great name for a rapper, but I'll take hardcore over rap any day.

 

[genericco]

Quick notes from prerelease, first one I've gone to:

Went 2-0-1 with the above deck, with every match going to time. I even decked myself a game in the match that ended up being a draw, before I realized Pieces of the Puzzle had no business being in my deck and sided it out for Wicker Witch/Manic Scribe.

Overall was a pretty sweet time with mostly charming opponents - round one kid couldn't have been older than nine years old and was clearly enjoying himself. When I played out the 3/1 fox on turn two he exclaims, "I have one of those too!" and it's like "haha yeah kid but don't tell me stuff like that, you're supposed to keep it a surprise".

I sat next to him again in match three and he was doing a good job keeping his spirits up despite the games being basically unfair, from what I could tell. Do stores ever separate really young kids into their own pairings? Sure looked like enough 12-and under showed up to do something like that.

Promo was Westvale Abbey, which did work in my deck as a mana dump and win con. Thraben Gargoyle might have been better for me and more important overall, though, since getting to the point where I could save all my mana for their end-step was the hard part, not winning once I got there. Gargoyle also doesn't trap you the way the Abbey does, as there was plenty of relevant removal for Ormendahl in the games I saw. One game ended when my opponent, with an Abbey of his own, cashed in his own board for the demon in response to a main-phase Engulf the Shore and walked into Declaration in stone. My first impression of Abbey is Not Cube-able.

However set as a whole seems like a step in the right direction as far as limited environment goes. Nobody I played was jamming crazy madness plays but maybe that'll come in time.

 

[genericco]

Quick cuts and adds



got cut. Too all-around good to the point where I was considering it as the top pick of the cube. Interestingly enough when a cube owner removes only a single Golem, that cube owner does NOT have to remove each other different Golem he could remove; Lodestone Golem for example remains in the mix.



all got cut. This breaks the cycle of 2-color planeswalkers and in GW's case probably hurts a weak guild, but I think these three are too much and too boring. I imagine a lot of people are swaping in new Nahiri for poor old Ajani who just keeps getting fired, first from the Magic Story and now from everybody's cube.

and a swap:

removed, added

We'll have to see how puppeteer goes.

 

[Onderzeeboot]

I'm surprised that Ral Zarek is too much and too boring, it's pretty much the poster child for a fair and interesting planeswalker for me!

 

[genericco]

He has synergy with Stasis! Seriously though I like him better than Ajani vengeant, but he has the same problem where -2 the turn you play him to gain board control is a hard line of play to beat. It sucks enough to have your turn 3 or 4 wiped out by a skinrender or a flametongue kavu. But when a planeswalker enters the battlefield and clears it, it's way more devastating, even when they're not getting much value out of the turns where they use the plus ability.

And sadly for the Izzet guild I don't think Dack Fayden is a good fit either so they'll have to hang tight without a planeswalker champion for a while too.

 

[Coke No Ice]

I came for the shitposting and stayed for the Undying Evil.

I am interested in your Puppeteer Clique experiences because I have like 80 of that card and I want it to be cool and good in something but every time it's just kind of bad. The first pluck-from-the-yard is fine, but unless you've got some serious sac outlet going on the second one is awkward af and typically irrelevant. I don't want to color your experience though, he added as though it wasn't already too late.

 

[genericco]

Well it's an experiment for sure, and I'd have to say it's first time out wasn't a success. As a replacement for Phyrexian Delver it has a pretty low bar to clear, I'm mostly worried the 3/2 persist body might not be useful by the time you get to play it.

Maybe once in a blue moon it'll hit a creature with a useful ETB, like one of the splicers? At that point you've gotten your mana's worth: a 3/3 golem token, a 1/1 charger with psuedo-evasion (if they kill it, it goes back to their graveyard, risking you plucking it a second time) and the faerie body. I've been pushing ETB effects like that but there's only so many. And the hard part is getting them in the villain's yard...

It's cute but here I am talking myself out of it. It leans on stronger cards to durdle the game out long enough to have one or even two decent targets for it and at that point you probably want a proper win condition like Mikaeus, the Unhallowed. It's spot is probably safe until they spoil a sweet card in the next set I'd say

 

[genericco]

I've added even more SOI cards but haven't had much opportunity to test them. In the meantime, here are some hot takes on issues that have come up here recently:

• Reanimation

There aren't enough playable reanimator spells, I imagine because the mechanic is really strong in constructed. Right now my suite is:​

Unearth (value/ non-cheaty)​

Life // Death​

Exhume (jank)​

Coffin Queen (jank)​

Victimize (jank)​

Necromancy​

Diabolic Servitude (overcosted? recent add)​

Profane Command​

​

I really like the balance point on Life // Death and Necromancy, whose costs make a cheat-into-play reanimator strategy possible but unlikely, and work just fine in fair magic. My instinct is to not break singleton on any of these spells, but if were to it would be on one of these two.​

​

If that I'm more interested in replacing Exhume and Victimize than I am Coffin Queen counts as a lukewarm recommendation for her, count it. She also has a totally relevant errata as a Zombie (!!!).​

• Planeswalkers and 'control decks'

Planeswalkers, at least the typical ones, are engines unto themselves. The scramble to kill or preserve a PW can lead to memorable games, but most of the time when they come up in cube I find them too hard to kill and too independently strong. I love the flip-walker design for the window it gives you to kill Jace while he's still a prodigy or Lilliana while she's still a healer, because trying to remove PWs in combat is such an uphill battle.​

Some more recent adds/untested experiments:

Spoiler

already second-guessing this one



From the 'desperate for playable blue creatures' section



Trying to keep an open mind

 

[genericco]

Had a really silly heads-up draft today. Villain appeared to be building the Eureka deck, so for some reason I decided to build a pile that relied on turning over creatures with Mesmeric Orb and reanimating from both graveyards with Puppeteer clique and Diabolic Servitude.

Plan B was having huge guys of my own in hand for when he cast Eureka - Platinum Emperion and Rampaging Baloths are not as scary as the Kozileks he was running, but the removal advantage I had from being in black opened windows for me. You see some hilarious games of magic when both players opt to put one or more cards into play with Eureka.

I almost lived the dream of Puppeteer clique reanimating his Sundering Titan on turn five. Someday. Meanwhile Villain was making a MVP out of Orim's chant of all cards.

 

[RavebornMuse]

NUTTIEST

Spoiler

3/3 flying ETB draw three cards seems pretty good

STILL NUTTY

Spoiler

I just have to say re: nut level that I am deeply offended that Deranged Hermit was not given a "Nuttiest", nay, even a "Max Nut" ranking, given that he produces, at a minimum, 5 squirrels, and in the proposed Undying Evil scenario, a full 10.

Barring that reprehensible lapse in determinations of scale, this is undeniably the most lit and on fleek blog on the forums. Carry on.

 

[genericco]

I just have to say re: nut level that I am deeply offended that Deranged Hermit was not given a "Nuttiest", nay, even a "Max Nut" ranking, given that he produces, at a minimum, 5 squirrels

Fair enough. It was never my intention to offend. But while we're offended, who said Deranged Hermit was a 'he'? All I see depicted in the art is a Elf Hermit Creature of indeterminate gender with the rare all-leg-day workout routine.

----

We had a 4-player draft tonight, with some really strong players. This one guy was gangster gangster, top of the list, and when he built his deck it went something like this:

Spoiler

I probably don't have it exactly right because surely Ashiok wasn't part of the main deck. White borders, I know, deal with it.

Always nice to see a increasing confusion deck go 3-0. My 1-2 black aggro deck was probably the best chance we had against it, but I mulled to five and got decked with gangster at one life. Fun matches though.

This is only the second draft this cube has had with four or more players, and both times I went mono-black or close to it (tonight was an 10 swamp deck). I need to start branching to other colors and look for red aggro if I'm getting signals that everybody else wants to play mid rangey or durdley decks.

With 20/20 hindsight, BR aggro or monored burn would have been the best deck possible tonight with all the efficient damage that was wheeling around in packs two and three. There was also a p1p2 Rakdos's Return.

Always funny to see what cards wheel when the group is drafting a cube for the first time. Tonight the most egregious last pick was Chandra's Ignition. Now we'll never know what it means to be Chandra.

Which reminds me, Chandra Chandra Chandra.

 

[genericco]

There's been another round of cuts and adds. As usual cubetutor updates reflect the paper list accurately. Here are the ones I'm excited about:

IN:

Spoiler

-Reflector Mage (cautiously promoting value ETB flicker as the WU archetype. So a sweet Venser target, in the right colors, with the right body and tribe - this signpost should stick around)
Second copy of Undying Evil (yes this is for me and me only)
-Gaea's Revenge (fair Natural Order target?)
-Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth (One of the joys of being new to this - I didn't know this card existed until it came up in a search the other day. Oughtta be sweet support for the mono-black eleventh-guild section)
-Phyrexian Altar (An experiment - surely will be a last pick, and I'm not sure if it ever makes sense without Blood Artist. But I can't shake the idea that there could be something cool there)

OUT:

Spoiler

Diregraf Colossus. Did nothing for the zombie tribe. Soon enough I'll add relentless dead, which should do a lot better.
Lord of Shatterskull Pass for being on the weak side
polukranos, world eater, shriekmaw, binding grasp for being too strong.

So, there was a hijacking attempt in the Single Card Spotlight recently, where brigands stormed the Treasure Cruise discussion and tried to forcibly change the subject to Flametongue Kavu.

Having recently cut Kavu and Shriekmaw for balance reasons and for the health of the ETB spam theme, I'm of the mind that Riptide deserves a proper article on the subject of ETB first picks, ETB effects in general, and, assuming the author thinks it's a good idea, how to design an archetype around abusing them.

You could start with the observation that these cards are popular among drafters and cube designers. Sort creatures 3cmc+ by cube count on cubetutor and you'll see just how popular. At the top are abilities that are worth a card on their own (removal, draw, making multiple tokens) and so are reliably a two-for-one when given a relevant body and the creature typing. These are also the cards that are typical first picks so they're not going to be around for the ETB synergy deck to gather.

Eldrazi displacer might be a start as an enabler for people supporting colorless. I'm stuck wondering how bad the creature has to be overall for other drafters to pass a creature with an ETB effect (you need Thraben Inspector instead of Wall of Omens)

 

[genericco]

Proxied up five more shocklands today to bring it up to two complete sets. Then I wasn't satisfied with the ally colors having five lands each while the enemy colors had four, so I added a cycle of enemy filter/checklands. So now there's 5 full cycles of two-color lands, fifty cards, out of 461 total, and a few any-color sources in the form of Cities of Brass and artifacts.

This should improve the mana for two-color decks, even ones that aren't prioritizing fixing.

At one point I was pushing a sub-theme in green as being a home base for three-color decks and drafters who start off with fixing, and some vestiges of that remain: Birds of Paradise, Sylvan Caryatid, Farseek. These stuck around because they accelerate and fix at the same time, mana quantity and quality.

This is important since even though a lot of great cards are locked behind , a mono-green deck wouldn't be as strong or synergistic as any of the other monos you could realistically draft. If someone was drafting my list for the first time and sees two tarmagoyfs, a vengevine, strangleroot geist, rancor, & curse of predation, they might conclude I'm trying to make green an aggro color. And it should work fine as half of aggro deck, if you can pick up the right companion cards in white or black or red and the fixing to keep you from missing a beat.

We'll have to see how that goes. With the power level on creatures across the cube, it's hard to find green creatures pushed enough to make the color viable without them being complete horse-shit (sayonara, Polukranos, World Eater, just after I finally learned how to spell your stupid name).

 

[MDT12]

First off, this thread is hilarious! You have had some extended playtime with cards I was pondering over to include in my cube, so really helpful too. I got intrigued by Puppeteer Clique as a reanimate/sacrifice enabler, which is a theme I'm trying to support a bit more in my cube. How has the card been for you in real-life drafts so far? Also, I just can't get myself to cut Flametongue Kavu, although he's probably way over my cube's power level (he's also a favorite of everyone in my playgroup). You mentioned he got cut due to being overpowered in ETB strategies, but what strategies with red/x ETB strategies are prominent in your cube (R/W and R/B I presume?).

 

[genericco]

Thanks for the kind words.

Puppeteer Clique

We're up to two real-world deployments of this card, neither one of which was a smashing success. Without mill synergy from something like Mesmeric Orb you're just hoping your opponent's graveyard will have something worth targeting by the time you're obligated to trot it out. I can't really recommend it or say how long it'll stay.

Flametongue Kavu

Kavu wound up in a lot of Birthing Pod decks. I seem to recall it being the target of a Phantasmal Image or two as well. Shame that nobody got to target it with Puppeteer Clique I suppose.

It being splashable was a big reason why it's gone and Skinrender is still around, the other being the need for serviceable zombies for the zombie tribe. With a single mana symbol, Kavu and Shriekmaw are so reliable and pickable - no surprise they're among the top 50 most cubed cards on cubetutor - that they were reducing the number and complexity of the decisions being made.

------

Outside of Sneak Attack, Alesha & maybe Flamerush Rider(!?), doesn't really get the enablers for the ETB value game the other colors do. There are fine payoffs in cards like Seige Gang Commander and still good Pod targets like Crater Hellion, but in general it was and is the color that doesn't get to play this particular reindeer game.

The whole theme is a small and subtle part of the cube anyway at this point, mostly it's about Venser. The quality of enablers for the ETB deck is not where I need it to be. Essence Flux, Turn to Mist and Cloudshift are probably not playable at this power level, and neither are Ghostly Flicker or Eerie Interlude.

Meanwhile the enablers I am running are too strong to get passed to the ETB drafter in the first place - Flickerwisp, Restoration Angel and Galepowder Mage. Sun Titan is an enabler and a payoff for the value ETB strategy, but he's overall enough of a goodstuff package that every white deck will be competing for him.

Blue and black have a better power curve for this kind of thing. has flicker effects but also clone effects which enable ETB value, ones that you can wheel like Cackling Counterpart. There aren't enough reanimation effects printed for my taste, but there are at least a few that hit the same sweet spot of pick worthy and wheel-able.

Considering adding: Glimmerpoint Stag, Mimic Vat, Eldrazi Displacer, Rally the ancestors

Considered too janky: Brago, King Eternal, Conjurer's closet

 

[genericco]

We're back with another edition of Genericco's Generic Single Perspective Spotlight Thread! Brought to you by this panel from Penny Arcade (from fifteen years ago now):

Wannabe Iconoclast edition.

Spoiler

Yes the art is awesome and gnarly but that's not what this is about.

Hoses tokens. Eats one drops. Incidental zombie. Mana dump thats you can use early. CMC-based removal that you can use repeatedly - having run both, this kicks the crap out of Exile into Darkness. A lot more fair and less swingy than Guul Draz Assassin.

It's pretty relevant around here. Out of some 400 non-land cards in the cube, 51 of them have the text creature token on them, or one out of eight.

Plaguebearer is in 291 cubetutor cubes.



So much cooler than Phyrexian Rager, but it's in 550 cubes vs. Rager's 7000.

 

[genericco]

Here's a swap I've made recently that I've been pleased with. This is in reference to the toning down ETB spam thread.

REPLACED WITH ​

I like this interface with the white token theme a lot more. Scion can eke out a little extra value by populating a Splicer or a Wingmate Roc token, but is intentionally left out of the flicker-your-way-to-an-army line of play.

Geist-Honored Monk is a keeper I think. I've found one and two damage board clears to be playable way beyond expectation in this cube. So you can recur the Monk for value and still be walking into a Electrickery or Drown in Sorrow, cards which aren't always starting out in the sideboard around here.

 

[genericco]

Got in a two-player draft of the cube today, it was a lot of fun and I was largely happy with the decks and relevant recent changes.

Here are some impressions of cards that have been recently added:



Pleasingly effective. The idea behind adding this to the cube was you'd be able to exploit a Gravecrawler or Bloodsoaked Champion in a aggro or mid-range deck. Today though it was doing work in a UB control deck targeting Shambling Goblin or Relentless Dead.

I was always happy to curve into it, the bodies did a good job of stabilizing and provided some options for blocking that you don't get with the other army in a can cards (like the two linked in the post above this one). A 3/6 and a 2/2 can, for example, block up to a 5/5 profitably.

I'd say it's better than it looks, and it loops nicely into all that Black is looking to do. Exploit has hooks in reanimation (Unearth) recursion (Undying Evil) and death triggers (Liliana, Heretical Healer), and as a powerful ETB effect it's a payoff for those strategies as well; Reanimate, blink or recur the ETB trigger for value, get three or four 2/2 zombies and we're pretty close to a poor man's Grave Titan.



Pretty sweet play on it. Was in my deck along both copies of Brainstorm as the only enablers, which made for a cool skill-testing and signal-sending game once I and the opponent figured out how the card worked in the matchup. I definitely didn't play it optimally but it seems like a keeper as far as inclusion in the cube is concerned.

 

[ahadabans]

Not sure if you are still running Puppeteer Clique, but I'll give you my 2 cents on how to play it because I don't think it's a combo card or a curve topper in aggressive builds. It's ideal slot is in control. Sounds wierd, but you are running a ton of removal and so you will always have targets. Wrath of God is especially nasty after Clique since it wipes the board and gives you two bodies. Even if it's just a road block card, you can sac it. Blink it. (for insane value) Chump with it. Don't underestimate the damage it does either (it flies and hits for 3). And one shots you get from the random dudes that you take from your opponents yard. Doesn't even really matter how janky it is. Most decks in cube these days are doing a lot of self damage. And the tide of a game can turn especially at high power. So this card can sometimes get in 2-3 extra damage and that can be the difference.

Slam it in your next Bx control build and tell me the card isn't way more useful than it reads.

 

[James Stevenson]

 

[genericco]

As a dog returns to his vomit, today I return to the topic of Enter The Battlefield creatures.

Earlier today in the Single Card Spotlight thread I suggested that the issue with 'ETB spam' is the payoff cards, not the enablers; in other words, the ETB creatures, not what spams the trigger.

I can't really imagine a modern cube without ETB effects or a way to recur them for value. It's not just blink aka 'flicker' that cares about ETB, it's reanimation and cloning any other kind of cheat-into-play trickery.

It is, if you don't mind me sounding like an asshole, a classic dilemma of cube design. Complexity is introduced through combining card types. Drafters make a bee-line for the creatures that come with a free spell attached, and as a bonus sometimes they recur/abuse this two-for-one for more value. You end up with a reductive, repetitive and unsatisfying meta based around simple value engines.

-------

What do?

My current approach is to police the shit out of creatures with ETB triggers, draw fine (likely incorrect) lines between them, limit certain effects to 5+ CMC and attempt to spread the enablers and payoffs a bit from white to the other colors. Here are some includes and excludes:

Spoiler

-------------------------------- FINE LINE ------------------------------

But wait! If you order army-in-a-can now, we'll include a free commander with your purchase! That's right - a 2/2 with an activated ability involving the token tribe you just created. It does two damage for one token or makes something evasive or some shit - who cares, with this much value, you'd be a fool not to pick it!

At five mana, I think Siege-gang is a little more palatable... but if I'm being honest I probably just like Goblins irrationally. At four mana with naturally evasive tokens P&K had a place in any red deck, which became a reason to cut it.

------------------------------------ FINE LINE ----------------------------

Shriekmaw's just the better pick, right? Too strong for me, even without getting it from your graveyard back into play for value. I think Mulldrifter is benign enough however and has clean and complex play to it that feels basically fair. I hope my thinly hidden disgust for cards like Wall of Omens and Phyrexian Rager gets through in these posts but I think Mully is one of the good ones.

----------------------------------- FINE LINE ---------------------------

I'd rather have this slot hook up with the gravecrawler recursive zombie theme than the reanimate for value theme, but there's still some opportunity for controlling antics with repeated Fleshbag triggers. I'm even thinking of doubling up on him (two artworks is always a plus).

Tune in next whenever for our upcoming topic: Don't be Afraid to be Hostile to Your Drafters