GiftsForgiven's Riptidian Synergy Cube

Grillo_Parlante

Grillo_Parlante

Contributor
Yeah, thats exactly what I mean: it looks like you would just power draft the format if you wanted to win. The synergy drafting seems like a tier 2 strat in comparison, which is odd given the billing of the format.

A synergy format is, at its core, a decks not cards format, which this is not. Maybe your intention was just a cheaper power max?
 
GiftsForgiven

GiftsForgiven

Chris: MTGO Academy said:
Maybe you could expect 2-3 aggro decks in a cube that has a sizable allotment of low CMC mono-red, multicolor and super Savannah Lion creatures. These decks are looking to glean advantage from leveraging a quick clock with some disruption (probably LD, removal and/or hatebear effects) with burn/haste plus an alpha strike on the final turn. To assemble the quick clock, they are looking for nearly 100% mana utilization on turns 1-3 (and I do not mean utilization from the lands coming into play tapped).

I assume the proposed land base of Scry / Tap / Check will slow down a large enough portion of aggro strategies that only the best/luckiest players will do well in this environment due to inefficient mana usage. Even with fetches, shocks, duals and 5-color lands, assembling a Naya deck, for example, with mana that can support a white, red and green one-drop creature is dubious.
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Awesome feedback, thanks! I think you're right on the money with the land base, tbh. I'm currently doing Scry/Check/Tapland, and that might be just too much for aggro to take. I'm thinking of bumping out the taplands for manlands due to the amount of vehicles in my cube, and maybe later the scrylands can come out for something more helpful to aggro. I'm going to ponder it, and try a few things out.

In terms of the 1-drop assessment, a lot of the 1 drops in my cube typically don't stay that way, due to how powerful the vehicles are. sky skiff, smuggler's copter, fleetwheel cruiser, untethered experess all give early creatures a way to either evade blockers, or bash right past them. There's also just the straight P/T upgrades, with renegade freighter, etc... I think you've correctly identified a few weak/not useful early drops, though. I'm going to have to find replacements for servant of the scale, kessig prowler, zurgo bellstriker and friends.

And boy oh boy do I love me a frenzied fugue... I need to get one of those. Do you have any suggestions for better aggro 1-drops? I'm not very good at building aggro tbh.
 
GiftsForgiven

GiftsForgiven

Grillo_Parlante said:
Yeah, thats exactly what I mean: it looks like you would just power draft the format if you wanted to win. The synergy drafting seems like a tier 2 strat in comparison, which is odd given the billing of the format.

A synergy format is, at its core, a decks not cards format, which this is not. Maybe your intention was just a cheaper power max?
Click to expand...


I think it's more that I'm just having trouble adapting to a synergy mindset, and my first attempt has clearly missed the mark a fair bit. I'd appreciate it if you could point out the most egregious 'power-draft' cards so that I can restructure a bit.
 
Grillo_Parlante

Grillo_Parlante

Contributor
The cards I mentioned are a good place to start. I think you'll do 3 or 4 drafts (however long for the novalty to wear off and the spikes to come out) than maybe another 2-3 drafts where spike power drafts it, before you up-power the removal or down power the cube as a whole (prob the former, as its easier). The timeline might be faster, if it ends up being hyper pressure focused, since people might vocally complain by the end of the first draft in that instance. I would expect removal complaints by the end of draft one or two if you ask for drafter input. I would personally just force a planeswalker based midrange deck every draft, in the best shell I could (U/x please) and bomb my opponents out with superior consistancy. Boom format.

Thus is my crystal ball.
 
GiftsForgiven

GiftsForgiven

Grillo_Parlante said:
The cards I mentioned are a good place to start. I think you'll do 3 or 4 drafts (however long for the novalty to wear off and the spikes to come out) than maybe another 2-3 drafts where spike power drafts it, before you up-power the removal or down power the cube as a whole (prob the former, as its easier). The timeline might be faster, if it ends up being hyper pressure focused, since people might vocally complain by the end of the first draft in that instance. I would expect removal complaints by the end of draft one or two if you ask for drafter input. I would personally just force a planeswalker based midrange deck every draft, in the best shell I could (U/x please) and bomb my opponents out with superior consistancy. Boom format.

Thus is my crystal ball.
Click to expand...


That makes perfect sense! I'm going to keep it mostly the same until I can get to new york for some serious testing, and take notes there.
 
GiftsForgiven

GiftsForgiven

Small update:

Out-



In-



Considering Skeletal vampire over Noxious Gearhulk atm. Also feel the need for a larger payoff for G/B self-mill. Or maybe I cube self-mill entirely, and just have it do +1/+1 counters? That would free up a lot of space to fill out other color pairs, like Selesnya and Simic...
 
sigh

sigh

I like those changes. I think I gotta echo grillo here, and to quote TCgplayer: "Get out and play!"

I know it's so tempting to fiddle and fiddle, but I highly recommend you freeze all changes until after you've sat down and ground out those critical first few drafts. You need a non-moving baseline to familiarize yourself with.

Where in New York are you visiting? City or upstate?


EDIT: I could see upping the land count. Your fixing is <10% as far as I can tell. For reference, my cube is exactly the same size aND has almost 60 total lands.
 
Chriskool

Chriskool

I am a big fan of theorycrafting updates and buying the cards each time. It results in a lot of unplayed cards to occupy box space. Next level is just buying cards for which you have no immediate plans to play, like 6 Sin Prodders, 6 Skinshifters, 6 Abbot of Keral Keep, 6 Undergrowth Champion, a Magus of the Will...
 
GiftsForgiven

GiftsForgiven

sigh said:
I like those changes. I think I gotta echo grillo here, and to quote TCgplayer: "Get out and play!"

I know it's so tempting to fiddle and fiddle, but I highly recommend you freeze all changes until after you've sat down and ground out those critical first few drafts. You need a non-moving baseline to familiarize yourself with.

Where in New York are you visiting? City or upstate?


EDIT: I could see upping the land count. Your fixing is <10% as far as I can tell. For reference, my cube is exactly the same size aND has almost 60 total lands.
Click to expand...


I'm going to be in the Queens area. This is all good advice, I'll stop my fiddling until those first drafts are actually done. It's so tempting to just keep tweaking tho >.<

In terms of lands, I'm trying for a little less fixing than normal to try and discourage super-deep tricolor value drafting. We'll see if it holds up. For now, it's an experiment!
 
GiftsForgiven

GiftsForgiven

Okay, going to head on out to NY early next week! I have 3 final changes based on all your guys' feedback. The list is now 'set in stone,' and will not change until testing demands it does.

The changes are:

Out:



In:



Reasoning:

Silvos existed because I needed a big fatty mcfat creature with trample, to theoretically help green's top end and break board stalls. Someone noted that he was super boring, though, and I agree. Vorapede fulfills a similar role, but has a little +1/+1 counter synergy, and while isn't quite as FAT as Silvos... is more interesting. The downside is that this further compresses CMC costs into the 3-5 mana range, making green progressively more midrange-ey.

Once I started cutting PWers down to 1 'true' PWer per color, red needed to follow suit. I like the suggestion of threaten effects as a bigger push for BR sacrifice, as I had a few complains from people who tried drafting the Cubetutor draft that B/R sacrifice wasn't intuitive enough. Hopefully the inclusion of Frenzied Fuge (a card that I hope will live up to it's interesting premise) and Z. Conscripts (bringing the total number of threaten effects up to 3) will make it more intuitive to draft. Berserk was just a placeholder card, it doesn't really promote the kind of gameplay I want. B. Defense is something I will try out in it's stead.

There is a surprising lack of good threaten effects, I learned. I am also considering wrangle and enthralling victor but those kinds of changes won't be made w/o testing.

Looking forward to getting some real data for you guys, and to streamlining this cube in general!

A few things to note:

I have my eye on a few cards for being too strong.



I am fine with having a reasonably wide power band, but these cards have the potential to warp the format more than I would like.

Additionally, this cube is meant to be a bit more budget-oriented. To that end, I am considering replacing monastery mentor and snapcaster mage. With what, we will see.
 
GiftsForgiven

GiftsForgiven

Finally did a draft!

Draft stats:

Eight Players. Decks represented were:

U/R Spells
W/B midrange/humans
W/B Reanimator
U/W control
Temur Pile
Grixis artifacts
B/G counters/self-mill
W/B Artifacts

As you can see, white and black were viciously fought over. It was a bit of a train wreck of signals, haha, probably due to players with a wide range of drafting experience. Unfortunately, due to the situation surrounding the draft, I could not record specific decklists >.<

U/W is way too strong. It, the U/R spells deck and the B/G counters deck dominated the competition, with Grixis Artifacts trailing in fourth.

The problem cards that I clearly saw during the draft were:



Cryptic command is particularly concerning when combined with torrential gearhulk. Of the two cards, I prefer having the gearhulk in the draft environment, and will seek to cut CC over it. I would also like to further hit U/W control, as it was just ridiculous. It is worth noting that the U/W control deck did -not- run Brago. I will likely attempt to cut sphinx's revelation, as it just sat there until it managed a gigantic revelation that put the game away. I think this might also be a symptom of perhaps too many 1/3s in a format where lightning bolt does not exist!

For all the imbalances however, drafters reported the draft and games to be very fun, which I appreciated! Everyone had a great time.

Will be having another draft soon. I have a few over-arching goals and some large changes I would like to implement, and I will post those once the second draft has been done, and those options solidified.
 
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