Graveyard-matters cube

[Brockford]

Howdy everyone. This is my first post here. I've been deep in the tank lately thinking about what sort of theme I want to built my next cube around (I'm fairly new at the art), and I decided that graveyard-matters would be quite sweet, as there are a ton of directions to take it.

This is what I have so far (numbers not final and these are just ideas, and no one poke fun at my inclusion of taigam's scheming. I'm aware that the card is horrible, but if a cube is pushed to its furthest with a graveyard theme I wonder if it could be playable).
http://www.cubetutor.com/viewcube/27241

EDIT: Today I jotted down some synergies that are undoubtedly going to be integral to the success of this cube:

• Burning Vengeance synergies:
• Flashback, retrace, mill
• Mill and retrace fuel Delve strategies
• Dredge further fuels delve strategies and acts as self-mill for burning vengeance decks
• Since we have a high density of dredge and other self mill (ala satyr wayfinder we can include support for graveyard decks besides just burning vengeance and delve, like spider spawning decks (and worm harvest
• Spells matter cards like young pyromancer and monastery mentor are supported by flashback and retrace cards, and with token producers such as these we can support a sacrifice theme which is also supported by graveyard cards like gravecrawler and bloodghast

Thanks for reading and I'd love some suggestions!

EDIT: One of the biggest issues i'm having is designing white to interact with its graveyard. Every other color has a ton of playable flashback spells, graveyard enablers etc. Cards like reveillark, karmic guide and sun titan are pretty sweet. I suppose I'll start there.

 

[spicewitch]

White's graveyard interactions mostly involve recovering weenies and enchantments. You could go the other way and make white a graveyard hate color. Instant speed graveyard hate like Beckon Apparition can cause a spell that was targeting the card in the yard to fizzle.

 

[Onderzeeboot]

Retrace cards (like Flame Jab) are nice. These also work well together with stuff like Life from the Loam and Worm Harvest (which is itself a retrace spell). You probably want to abandon the singleton paradigm, as I really think a cube like this would benefit from multiple copies of things like Burning Vengeance, River Kelpie and Life from the Loam. In white there's a dearth of graveyard matters cards, so you'll probably want to double up on some stuff there as well (Eternal Dragon?).

 

[Brockford]

Thanks for the comments guys. I hadn't put much thought into retrace. That's a great idea. Having some cycles is also a good idea and eternal dragon seems just about perfect for white with this cube. I think I will have some of the white graveyard interaction cards like stonecloaker. That may be the best direction for white.

And yeah, no way can this cube be singleton, I never even considered it, lol.

 

[safra]

For white graveyard stuff there's also:

 

[Onderzeeboot]

This is pretty cute with Lotus-Eye Mystics

 

[Brockford]

So I'm thinking about having white and black be reanimator-style colors with cards like the above as targets for cards like karmic guide and zombify. I realized after doing some draft simulations on cubetutor that I went a bit too deep into the graveyard enablers for green, so I'll cut them down a bit. I've also added a couple of colorless discard outlets in Jalum Tome and deal broker (which may just be the best first pick in the cube), and I'm considering adding sliversmith as another option. These are the cards that are now in the list to be specific (in addition to the above):

 

[Brockford]

So turns out there isn't much of a reason to include discard outlets when you're running all of the creature cyclers, so most of them have been removed. I'm now working on what will be my final rough draft before I start making it. You can find it here:
http://www.cubetutor.com/editcube/27311

The biggest issue i'm having, now that I have the color identities all figured out, is power balancing. How powerful should my creatures and spells be if I want cards like burning vengeace and skywise teachings to be good? vengevine is too strong, but what about a generic card that has no interaction with graveyards, like boon satyr?

A secondary issue is the subthemes of each color. White, black and green are all creature based graveyard decks, with white and black having cyclers to reanimate and green having cards that fill up their graveyard to then delve for hooting mandrills, or cast a ghoultree or nemesis of mortals. Blue and red are graveyard based spell decks, in contrast, with cards like talrand, the sky summoner, treasure cruise, thought scour, burning vengeance, young pyromancer and firebolt.

Basically I'm not sure what type of filler I should have in each color. There's no getting around filler; we need to have it, but I would like to make it more dynamic.

 

[Onderzeeboot]

I think what would help is not defining what each color does, but what each color pair does. This worked wonders for Innistrad for example. I'll redirect you to this excellent overview! You'll probably be able to draw quite some inspiration from that list, as there's a heavy graveyard theme already there. for example is the color of zombies, but the cute thing is that the blue zombies want you to exile cards from your graveyard. Tadah! Graveyard interaction! Blurbs like this will also tell you what filler you can use, as each of the four combinations a color makes has its own variation on the overarching graveyard theme.

 

[James Stevenson]

One of my pet cards:

With my own graveyard tinkerings I'm trying to make sure there's plenty of ways to get stuff back from the graveyard:

Especially ones that you can use even if you've milled them. Flashback spells and dredge spells are great for this too.

 

[Dom Harvey]

 

[spicewitch]

One of my pet cards:
all Suns' dawn

Oooooh, this is perfect for an "Everyone Loves Green" cube I've been daydreaming about. One where all the officially-supported archetypes have green in them.

There's no getting around filler; we need to have it,

I don't think I agree with this. At the risk of having a Lorwyn/Shadowmoor style environment where every turn sees you chugging through a giant pile of decisions with somewhat-unclear ramifications, you should be able to fill every single slot with something interesting. Make sure your single-target removal spells have kicker, convoke, delve, or overcharge, or something. If a creature is nothing more than a body with a vanilla keyword, make sure it is of great interest to one of your archetypes - or replace it with a different vanillin that is!

 

[Brockford]

The issue im currently having is how to balance the power level of the cube in aggregate. I have made a pseudo-innistrad-DKA cube with sprinkles of khans block for prowess and delve. I think I will more explore this idea.

 

[Jovial]

I just thought of this card:


Sometimes I surprise myself!

 

[Brockford]

Lol, that card's pretty sweet.