Grid Cube

[inscho]

Hi guys,

I've been tinkering with a grid cube since Chris posted his epic thread a couple of months ago. The current draft can be found here:

http://www.cubetutor.com/viewcube/70642

I've definitely taken some pointers from Chris's designs, and I've gotten some feedback from him on this project. I'm getting surprisingly frustrated at developing this idea...mostly due to the range of strategies I'm trying to support within such a small card pool.

Rough Archetypes:
UB: Skies, Ooze Value
UR: Super Friends, Spells-Matter
UG: Proliferate Ramp, Counters-Matter Tempo
BR: Aggro/Sacrifice Tokens, "Sneak Attack" Reanimator
BG: Value Recursion, Token Buff
RG: Berserkers, Ramp

Trying to balance the counters theme alongside the graveyard theme of Apprentice Necromancer and Necrotic Ooze has also been a challenge.

I had my first test run of the grid a few days ago, and the decks were very interesting, competitive, and dynamic. The two winning decks were:

Creatures (14) 2 Heir of Falkenrath 1 Apprentice Necromancer 1 Blood Artist 1 Feldon of the Third Path 1 Crater Elemental 1 Weaponcraft Enthusiast 1 Doomed Necromancer 1 Necrotic Ooze 1 Murderous Redcap 1 Triskelion 1 Spitebellows 1 Gurmag Angler 1 Scion of Darkness Instants (3) 1 Tragic Slip 1 Blast from the Past 1 Murderous Cut Sorceries (4) 2 Blackmail 2 Faithless Looting Enchantment (2) 1 Quest for the Gravelord 1 Diabolic Servitude

Lands (17) 2 Evolving Wilds 1 Rakdos Carnararium 6 Mountain 8 Swamp

That edged out a Gruul Bersekers deck (primarily due to a greedy misbuild). Ooze was great at adding value as an additional necromancer. I was a fatty shy of having a true haymaker reanimator deck and rather this came out a lot grindier than I was aiming for.

and

Creatures: (8) 1 Thrummingbird 1 Chasm Skulker 1 Eternal Witness 1 Spike Weaver 2 Fatestitcher 1 Mulldrifter 1 Deepglow Skate Instants: (3) 1 Miscalculation 1 Volt Charge 1 Stroke of Genius Sorceries: (5) 1 Clutch of Currents 1 Tezzeret's Gambit 1 Verdant Confluence 1 Savage Twister 1 Crater's Claws Planeswalkers: (2) 1 Jace, the Living Guildpact 1 Ral Zarek Artifacts (5) 2 Everflowing Chalice 2 Ratchet Bomb 1 Vessel of Endless Rest

Lands (17) 2 Evolving Wilds 1 Simic Growth Chamber 1 Izzet Boilerworks 1 Temple of Abandon 6 Island 4 Forest 2 Mountain

That went to 5 games against a Rakdos Token deck. This deck came out with some big plays revolving around growing Everflowing Chalice and winning via X-Spell. The planeswalkers felt very fair during each appearance, and they rarely lasted more than a couple turns.

All in all I feel like the list is off to a good start, but there's a lot of room for improvement. Thanks for looking!

 

[inscho]

To delve a little deeper into things that I'm addressing right now with this design:



I'm considering Plunderer over Thrummingbird as it would have greater appeal to the tempo decks in the grid. Deepglow Skate and Tezzeret's Gambit already to a great job at supporting slower builds, and the 2/1 body might be a nice way to bring some more emphasis to aggro strategies.




This is a slot very much up for debate. I think Flesh Carver may be the best fit for this cube with the abundance of proliferate and apprentice necromancer (leaving a body behind). Yahenni could offer some valuable protection for Necrotic Ooze, but Carver still seems better.



I'm very torn about Cabal Therapy. It's not friendly to newcomers, and I really don't see many people getting familiar enough with the grid that they'll get full value out it. I've considered bringing in something like Man-o-War to make it a little more intuitive. Contrast to Phyrexian Revoker which is very approachable and has a lot of value with all of the activated abilities in the cube.




In development, I've wavered from a fully supported madness theme, cutting it completely, and now I'm including a minimal amount of support. The focus on reanimator in the black section necessitates discard outlets in all pairings. I'd love to find a more elegant way to incorporate the theme, or eliminate it without adversely affecting the reanimator decks.




I'm also presently debating over how much I want Necrotic Ooze to be doing in the cube. The above cards are a little clunky and didn't make any of the first round of decks. I think Oozes should be more value oriented, acting as functional duplicates (sac outlets: Carrion Feeder, reanimation: Apprentice Necromancer, Doomed Necromancer, etc) than explosive game-enders.

An archetype that I cut, but may still bring back is a meta-control deck:




There wasn't a lot of crossover potential, card options felt very limited, and it largely stayed in Dimir colors.


Other cards I'm looking into: