Golvin's 360 Singleton Cube

[Golvin]

I recently came to the realiztion that I have yet to post my primary cube to the Riptide. So here it is:

http://www.cubetutor.com/viewcube/23844

I would be very appreciative for any and all feed back as I have recently noticed that I am primarily getting feedback in only two areas: Its very good and ban cards X,Y, and Z. (The first is appreciated, but not helpful in improving the cube. The second would hold more sway if my group did not change their opinions every draft and could agree on what cards to ban.)

About The Cube
Originally inspired and created during Khans block this cube has been updated consistently since 2014 from what was initially a pile of cards I owned plus a few proxies. The idea driving idea that shaped the cube for me was to create a fun and interactive draft format that gave drafters the ability to draft a wide variety of interesting decks. (That and my long list of pet cards/mechanics. )

Stats

• 360 Cards (Small)
• Singleton - I still need to take that final step, but my drafters have resisted the idea. So, not yet.
• Unpowered

Philosophy:
I do not remove cards due to having a high power level in a vacuum compared to other cards in my cube. Instead I look to remove cards that consistently under perform, are frequently ignored, or tend to be overly game warping. (The only time I enacted the second one was the removal of skull clamp. Smuggler's Copter may follow suit.)

I know there is a bit of sophism in there. I draw the line based on public perception more than what the card actually does in the cube.

Archetypes
W - Allies
U - Durdle Mill (Sphinx's Tutelage)
B - Zombies
R - Burn
G - Elves
WU - Blink, Tempo, Control, Flash
UB - Self-mill/Reanimator, Control, Mill, Grave Robber (version of reanimator that focuses stealing from your opponents' grave).
BR - Madness, Aggro
RG - Landfall/Lands Matter, Bloodrush
GW - Convoke/Go Wide (Sprout Swarm), Life Gain
WB - Aristocrats, Life Drain, Weenie Reanimator
UR - Spells Matter, Surge, Aggro-Control
BG - Meren of Clan Nel Toth, Midrange. Sacrifice
RW - Battalion
GU - Miracle Grow/+1/+1 Counters Matter, Tempo (Edric, Spy Master of Trest)

These are some three color decks that tend to come together. They are not particularly important, but do tend to pop up frequently.
Bant - A deck focused around Roon of the Hidden that prefers to have a few creatures and follow up by growing and/or protecting them. Ranges from aggro to control, but is generally midrange.
Esper - A classic control deck that focuses on card advantage and one-for-ones until it drops a bomb. It can remove anything.
Grixis - Plays very similarly to Grixis Midrange/Control in modern. A madness version will also pop up from time to time using looters.
Jund - Reanimator that tries to make every play a two-for-one. Very value oriented.
Naya - Sprout Swarm at its finest. Not a very popular deck.
Mardu - Weenie Reanimator epitomized by Alesha, Who Smiles at Death. Highly aggressive.
Temur - A tempo deck that looks to use blue's card advantage to find what ever it needs.
Abzan - Heavily value oriented version of Aristocrats.
jeskai - Spells Matter/Tempo.
Sultai - Self mill style deck that treats the graveyard like a second hand at times. Essentially Zombies.

Four/Five color decks also tend to come up a surprisingly high amount of the time. Entertainingly with a fairly large variety between them depending on who is drafting. (The default is a Converge/Sunburst deck that uses Atraxa, Praetor's Voice.)

Thank you for reading and whatever input you may give.

 

[Fulcrum]

I drafted your cube blind and ended up in UW Control. My first pick was Draining Whelk and after that came Mystic Confluence and Comeuppance. Comeuppance seems very strong unless I'm reading the card wrong. Sphinx's Tutelage seems like a very fun win condition, especially with Sphinx's Revelation. I had Fervered Visions and almost took Dictate of Kruphix but I decided to stay in conditional control rather than try to switch into Owling Mine mid draft.

UW Control from CubeTutor.com

The curve of the cards I saw go around seemed high so that was neat. I feel like that translates to a format that's slower and more bomby? (Is this right?). There were three big things I took away from my draft.

1. There's a lot of multicolored cards so that makes me want to draft more fixing than I saw available.

2. I wish there were 1-cmc mana elves going around with how many high cmc cards I saw going around.

3. I don't think Deus of Calamity is going to get played, I hope the entire cycle isn't in here.

 

[Golvin]

I drafted your cube blind and ended up in UW Control. My first pick was Draining Whelk and after that came Mystic Confluence and Comeuppance. Comeuppance seems very strong unless I'm reading the card wrong. Sphinx's Tutelage seems like a very fun win condition, especially with Sphinx's Revelation. I had Fervered Visions and almost took Dictate of Kruphix but I decided to stay in conditional control rather than try to switch into Owling Mine mid draft.

UW Control from CubeTutor.com

The curve of the cards I saw go around seemed high so that was neat. I feel like that translates to a format that's slower and more bomby? (Is this right?). There were three big things I took away from my draft.

1. There's a lot of multicolored cards so that makes me want to draft more fixing than I saw available.

2. I wish there were 1-cmc mana elves going around with how many high cmc cards I saw going around.

3. I don't think Deus of Calamity is going to get played, I hope the entire cycle isn't in here.

Thank you for drafting and the feedback! I think that you have made one of the truest control deck to ever come out of my cube. But, that is also why I put Sphinx's Tutelage in the cube - to be a card that rewards going full on control. To address your points:

1. I can definitely see where you are coming from. I run fewer lands than most other people in my cube. The ironic part is that there is a tenancy for at least one person to go four colors with another three to five going three colors. From what I have seen it is primarily a product of green's direct color fixing and blue's draw.(You are actually surprisingly close to a four color deck that is one of my regular's favorite. )

2. I agree, but I also trained the bots to pick them up relatively early. There are currently three in the cube (Birds of Paradise, Elvish Mystic, and Llanowar Elves) with Llanowar Elves being a recent addition. Not sure I want to increase the density just yet.

3. Don't worry Deus is the only one. And, thank you for bringing him up. While he does see play every now and again, there are better things I could be doing with that slot. Atarka's Command maybe? Borborygmos Enraged is in the same position.

Random other thought: I would not describe the format to be bomb oriented/bomby. Most of them are surprisingly conditional and generally easy to remove. Typically, I use them as build arounds to nudge drafters into archetypes without it feeling like they are tracks. (Synergy is king to me at least.) These are also the reasons that I am interested in breaking singleton - lower possible curve and better synergy.

 

[Golvin]

I forgot to mention that one of the pressures that is placed on my cube is that my regular play group likes to play a lot of multiplayer. This puts my format in the strange place of having to be able to work well as both a regular draft format and multiplayer format. See Gray Merchant of Asphodel and Edric, Spymaster of Trest for examples of cards that transition well.

 

[Grillo_Parlante]

Ok, that makes so much more sense than. Thats why you can have such a broad power band, as multi-player formats are very forgiving.

It seems entirely reasonable for multi-player. You've correctly slimmed down on sweepers, so most of the rest of the work is in tweaking removal density/quality, and providing ways for people to quickly force damage through/negate removal, to make the games more dynamic than just a bomb threat->answer grind fest.

As a two player format though it could use a lot of work fwiw.

 

[Fulcrum]

I think Grillo has some pretty good advice here. I can see this being a super fun format if you design it for multiplayer games while keeping an eye on the includes so it can still be a reasonable 2 player format.

Thank you for drafting and the feedback! I think that you have made one of the truest control deck to ever come out of my cube. But, that is also why I put Sphinx's Tutelage in the cube - to be a card that rewards going full on control. To address your points:

1. I can definitely see where you are coming from. I run fewer lands than most other people in my cube. The ironic part is that there is a tenancy for at least one person to go four colors with another three to five going three colors. From what I have seen it is primarily a product of green's direct color fixing and blue's draw.(You are actually surprisingly close to a four color deck that is one of my regular's favorite. )

2. I agree, but I also trained the bots to pick them up relatively early. There are currently three in the cube (Birds of Paradise, Elvish Mystic, and Llanowar Elves) with Llanowar Elves being a recent addition. Not sure I want to increase the density just yet.

3. Don't worry Deus is the only one. And, thank you for bringing him up. While he does see play every now and again, there are better things I could be doing with that slot. Atarka's Command maybe? Borborygmos Enraged is in the same position.

Random other thought: I would not describe the format to be bomb oriented/bomby. Most of them are surprisingly conditional and generally easy to remove. Typically, I use them as build arounds to nudge drafters into archetypes without it feeling like they are tracks. (Synergy is king to me at least.) These are also the reasons that I am interested in breaking singleton - lower possible curve and better synergy.

This is kind of funny. I wanted to splash for Brutal Expulsion and Ethersworn Adjucator. I would have definitely done it if I had better fixing. The adjucator splash would have been the more defensible splash since 4/4 flyer with psuedo vigilance as baseline seems not bad.

Here are some Gruul cards I think are neat

Atarka's Command could be interesting since it supports your land fall theme as well as pumps a bunch of little creatures. The 3 damage hitting every player seems powerful in muliplayer as well.

Sarkhan Vol is similar to Atarka's Command in that it does multiple things. The pump and haste on the +1 is powerful both for giving a go wide strategy some extra reach as well as giving midrangey decks a leg up with some hasty threats. The -2 seems very powerful when you have multiple boardstates to choose from.

Clan defiance seems like it can have a lot of targets in multiplayer games as well as being an occasional 2 for 1 in single player games. I think the length of multiplayer games can make this do a lot of damage.

Rosheen Meanderer plays well with Clan Defiance as well Grenzo, Dungeon Warder, Genesis Hydra, Decree of Justice, Sphinx's Revelation, Repeal, Logic Knot, and Broken Ambititons. If you decide to add any Fireball variants this will power them up as well.

I did another draft with the prompt that I would be playing a muliplayer game this time. My first pick was Innocent Blood as that has the potential to be a many for one. that led me towards cards that like Sacrifice effects like Catacomb Sifter and Zulaport Cutthroat.

One thing that I noticed and forgot to mention last time was the elf theme in the green section. It feels kind of awkward. From my many failed attempts at building a tribal cube, I think it's possible the build a green section that is heavily elf based that plays with other colors mostly for support spells, but you really have to go all in on it. Like, I kept seeing Dwynen and Elvish Harbinger going around and even though they were in my colors, I didn't want to pick them because they felt like they weren't supporting what I was trying to do, aside from Caller of the Claw. I would suggest either increasing the density of elves you're playing in the green section or cut some of the more narrow elf only cards that you have in your list. Unfortunately unlike humans which appear in every color, if you really want to support elves you really need a lot of them and need for a lot of them to fill specific utility niches.

Aside from that rant, I liked my deck. I would have liked more sacrifice outlets and fixing, but as it feels very midrangey, very rock.

GB Rock from CubeTutor.com

One final thing. Exhume seems a lot more fair in multiplayer.

 

[Golvin]

Ok, that makes so much more sense than. Thats why you can have such a broad power band, as multi-player formats are very forgiving.

As a two player format though it could use a lot of work fwiw.

Honestly, I would like to reduce the width of the power ban myself. It becomes apparent in two player every now and again. Shifting from singleton should help this a fair bit. It will also help me better support tribal archetypes (elves and allies primarily) without adding cards that would normally be laughably unplayable.

Thank you for bringing it up. There are a number of cards that I have been wanting to change while not finding anything preferable.

This is kind of funny. I wanted to splash for Brutal Expulsion and Ethersworn Adjucator. I would have definitely done it if I had better fixing. The adjucator splash would have been the more defensible splash since 4/4 flyer with psuedo vigilance as baseline seems not bad.

Here are some Gruul cards I think are neat

Atarka's Command could be interesting since it supports your land fall theme as well as pumps a bunch of little creatures. The 3 damage hitting every player seems powerful in muliplayer as well.

Sarkhan Vol is similar to Atarka's Command in that it does multiple things. The pump and haste on the +1 is powerful both for giving a go wide strategy some extra reach as well as giving midrangey decks a leg up with some hasty threats. The -2 seems very powerful when you have multiple boardstates to choose from.

Clan defiance seems like it can have a lot of targets in multiplayer games as well as being an occasional 2 for 1 in single player games. I think the length of multiplayer games can make this do a lot of damage.

Rosheen Meanderer plays well with Clan Defiance as well Grenzo, Dungeon Warder, Genesis Hydra, Decree of Justice, Sphinx's Revelation, Repeal, Logic Knot, and Broken Ambititons. If you decide to add any Fireball variants this will power them up as well.

I did another draft with the prompt that I would be playing a muliplayer game this time. My first pick was Innocent Blood as that has the potential to be a many for one. that led me towards cards that like Sacrifice effects like Catacomb Sifter and Zulaport Cutthroat.

One thing that I noticed and forgot to mention last time was the elf theme in the green section. It feels kind of awkward. From my many failed attempts at building a tribal cube, I think it's possible the build a green section that is heavily elf based that plays with other colors mostly for support spells, but you really have to go all in on it. Like, I kept seeing Dwynen and Elvish Harbinger going around and even though they were in my colors, I didn't want to pick them because they felt like they weren't supporting what I was trying to do, aside from Caller of the Claw. I would suggest either increasing the density of elves you're playing in the green section or cut some of the more narrow elf only cards that you have in your list. Unfortunately unlike humans which appear in every color, if you really want to support elves you really need a lot of them and need for a lot of them to fill specific utility niches.

Aside from that rant, I liked my deck. I would have liked more sacrifice outlets and fixing, but as it feels very midrangey, very rock.

One final thing. Exhume seems a lot more fair in multiplayer.

A lot of thing to touch on and ponder. Thank you for that.

For the moment I think that I will be taking your suggestions of Atarka's Command and Sarkhan Vol for the RG section. Preferably, GR would be more aggressive than it already is. This also ties into the idea of adding more Llanowar Elves. As for the elf lords, I would probably cut back to having 2-3 Imperious Perfect. Scute mob could easily transform into another sylvan advocate (lower ceiling, but higher floor) or other elf. There are other possibilities I am glossing over too.

I agree with you on the sac outlets. recently I added Ghoulcaller Gisa, Merciless Executioner, and Shadowborn Demon. Chances are that I will need to go for more repeatable sac outlets. Considering the lack of play Meren of Clan Nel Toth sees currently, it should not be too much of a problem. BW Aristocrats is also suffering from a lack of sack outlets and reach in the late game in two-player.

 

[Gladiatorw07f]

An issue i am running into while drafting your cube is that you have some creature token cards, but when trying to draft the deck it is hard to consistently draft those cards to form a deck. If this is an archetype you want to support i would suggest putting a more clean cut line on it, or if you dont want a token deck in the cube limiting the cards in the cube further. You actually have some nicer cards in the cube for a token deck and that can lead some drafters into trying into trying to make that deck.