Agree to disagree on Linarch Veteran, I guess--its performance in MID was definitely not because of the lifegain deck--and agreed on Covetous Castaway not quite getting there. I really wish that card had an ETB trigger rather than a death trigger. Time for customs, right? As for the Hermit, I haven't had the same issues do to it being an occasional and fairly telegraphed, but you're absolutely right that it's obnoxious in Standard, lol.
Highball: Legacy of the Rails
- Thread starter TrainmasterGT
- Start date
Oh I totally agree that Lunarch Veteran was a nice roleplayer in Midnight Hunt limited. I just don't think the price structure is really conducive to where my white creatures want to be. 1/1 creatures in this format need to have some relevant synergies or else they just get left behind in this format, unfortunately.
Theorycrafting some Improvements.
Before we begin, It's important to note that the version of the cube I will be discussing can be found at the link below:
So, first I want to go over several things that have worked well.
What Worked
1) The Uneven Gold Section and Asymmetrical Land Cycles have been a Huge SuccessI purposefully added 2 more cards per enemy-color gold section compared to their allied color counterparts to help push Wedge-color decks without completely invalidating ally-focused strategies. This has let me maintain an experience that is still essentially color-balanced while effectively doubling the number of possible cards per enemy color deck. Sultai, Abzan, and Golgari players won't have to fight tooth and nail for the efficient GB spells that are important to these decks. Likewise, it lets me play cool enemy-colored cards such as Bring to Light without having to worry as much about "wasting" a slot that could be spent on interaction or signposts.
As for the lands, I decided to not include full cycles for certain land types because some cycles are not complete or are fundamentally imbalanced. For example, I run the Horizon Lands, which are only available in the enemy colors and GW. Instead of excluding these cards for perfect balance, I chose to include the enemy horizon lands only and add the ally checklands to balance things out. Likewise, I wanted to run the manlands, but the UR and RW members of this cycle don't mesh with what those color pairs want to be doing. So, I replaced those two cards with more checklands. This seems to work pretty well, as it gives players access to better mana for what they need.
2) Increased Consistency is Great
A main focus of this version of the Cube was trying to enable the most consistent play patterns for my main archetypes. This has worked very well. Multiple versions of key effects and high redundancy for cantrips and filter spells has really helped to streamline the experience. This leads decks to operate like their specific constructed counterparts, which was a huge priority. Likewise, players can skip on less interesting key effects earlier in the draft in favor of more unique "cool" cards and not be punished because there is enough redundancy to let everything even out. Obviously skipping a Ponder for Soulflayer will probably make your deck worse, but skipping Serum Visions for Hooting Mandrills won't
3) The Tight, High Power Band is Wonderful
I was worried that raising the power level of the Cube would make the gameplay become too bomb-oriented. I've been finding the opposite to be true. Games seem very focused on interaction and efficient resource usage and not who can slam the better 6-drop, something which has actually been an issue in some of my previous Cubes. I'm partially chalking this up to the high density of roughly similar removal and the overall tempo orientation of the format. Even some cards which are often considered to be GRBS by many have been perfectly healthy here. I really like the way the format is currently balanced.
Obviously, there are still some Power Outliers, but they're not cards that "ruin the game" in a way a bomb permanent can. They're mostly just cards that fuel other cool cards and make decks run at maximum efficiency, which I view as a net positive.
4) The Gameplay Feels Right
Above all else, the gameplay feels right! I remember sitting down for my first game with this variant of the Cube and feeling like I was playing through a match at the Standard FNM when I was 12. "Feel" is maybe a bit subjective, but I still think I got it right.
All that having been said, there's a reason why the Cubecobra link refers to this as a "sketch," and that's because the Cube is still heavily unpolished. There are still several imperfections that I wish to work out at some point in the near future.
What needs to Change
1) Early Draft Picks are too HardAs I stated in a discussion in Landofmordor's Cube Thread, I think early picks in my Cube are too difficult right now. The power level of the cards is very consistent. This leads to great gameplay, but it can lead to situations where players will think "every card in this pack is roughly the same quality and I don't know what to pick." While having packs full of good cards is usually a good thing, in this case, it's just making it harder to draft the Cube. If a pack doesn't have a fetchland or Ponder, it can be tough to choose a first card.
Take a look at this pack:
Is there really a clear pick here? Every one of these cards are good role players in multiple decks. However, none of them really jump off the page as "I want to draft in a certain direction because of this card." I think the best P1P1 here is probably Waterlogged Grove, which isn't exactly providing a great direction other than "vaguely simic." I think this is a problem. While many of my players can correctly identify the "obvious" picks (Fixing),
The same issue can be seen with this pack:
This brings me to a philosophical point that I think is important to discuss that I have not yet had a good place to mention. When you're building a Cube that feels like playing constructed, it is important to have a reason to justify drafting. Otherwise, you'd likely be able to get better results by simply building a deck library/gauntlet. While there are a few reasons why I think a draftable Cube is most amicable to my goals, above all else, Drafting is fun! It's a cool experience to get to sit down and build a deck on the fly without knowing what you'll be getting in the first place. That element of discovery is really unique in 2022 Magic. Cubes are a great way to facilitate this medium of the game because they can usually provide a more balanced and more interesting experience than simply using the latest retail limited set. However, if the draft portion isn't fun, then it kind of undermines the rest of the experience. I don't want players sitting down and having to make anxiety-inducing decisions in what is ultimately a casual format. While I'm ok with people saying "every card in this pack is good!," I don't want them following that up with "I don't know what to take." If packs look like the two examples above on average, where everything is ok but nothing stands out, the draft experience can be cheapened. The worst experience in the world is to draft a deck and be unsatisfied with the results when there were several other viable options you could have picked.
"Hard packs" isn't a universal problem, though, as packs can and do have cool first pickable cards quite often. Take this pack:
A recurring theme of these packs is that there is an awful blue card that just doesn't mesh well with the power level of the Cube. This brings me to my next point...
2) The Blue section is a Mess
I'll be honest, I think I did a poor job constructing my Blue section here. Blue isn't bad by any stretch of the imagination, but it does have a bunch of individually bad cards. As a result, Blue has ended up being the most powerful supporting color in the entire Cube, but isn't an inspiring base color in it's own right. I guess this is kind of true to Theros-Khans Standard, where all of the "blue" decks were basically just excuses to play Dig Through Time (until Dragons of Tarkir released and printed some toys for Mono-Blue devotion again and Magic Origins gave us the Thopter deck, but I wouldn't exactly call either of those decks defining features of the era). However, some of the "Gen X Modern" influences I'm hoping to capture really should have blue as a main component. Dig Through Time and Treasure Cruise were running amok in Delver and Scapshift decks, Infect and Splinter Twin were both powerful archetypes abusing blue, control was popular, and even a version of Affinity that still ran actual cards with the affinity for artifacts keyword were all tearing up tables. I think my Blue section could play into this diversity better.
I didn't have a clear vision for my Blue section when I was constructing the Cube, and I was dealing with some medical issues when I was finishing the first version to be drafted. As such, my Blue section feels very under-developed compared to the other colors. While my Cantrip, Card Draw, and Countermagic Suites are all pretty well-rounded (there are some weird cantrips but as a whole it works), the rest of the section is not. I ported a lot of cards into this version of the Cube from previous iterations. Things like Nightveil Sprite and Champion of Wits were perfectly good cards in my older Cubes, but they aren't particularly competitive here. About 25-30 of the Mono-Blue Cards are good fits, another 10-15 are decent but not great, and the rest are bad and simply shouldn't be here. Even a couple of the thematically appropriate "nostalgia plants" like Pearl Lake Ancient and Sinister Sabatoge (which is a second copy of Dissolve) are just not working. While leaning into nostalgia a bit is fine when building a cube that is supposed to invoke the feeling of an era, the Blue section has essentially proven that gameplay still needs to come first. Even if something is a good thematic fit or has good gameplay elsewhere, that doesn't mean it's good here. That leads me to my next point...
3) Sphinx's Tutelage isn't Sparking Joy Anymore
I was really excited to finally make the Sphinx's Tutelage deck work. After being impressed with Teferi's Tutelage in the MTG Arena holiday Cube and crunching the numbers, I thought I would be able to make this deck work. There are enough redundant copies of Sphinx's Tutelage or similar cards to let players have a deck with roughly similar ratios to the original Standard variant. A significant portion of the work I did on my Blue section before my health issues was to ensure Tutelage could work as a turbo-mill deck. Unfortunately, I dropped the ball a bit. While Tutelage+Raw Card Draw is a good way to win the game, it needs to be backed up by board wipes to stop it from dying to aggro and midrange. This wasn't an issue in the Arena Cube because Teferi's Tutelage was a control card through and through. Here, though, the Tutelages are meant to be played more as engines instead of pillowfort wincons. I purposefully didn't include any Red or Blue board wipes as I thought they were too parasitic to be good. As such, the Tutelage deck ended up falling flat. While it still can do its thing, the singleton version of this deck really can't compete without getting a lucky faithless looting opener and drawing well into removal. After realizing my error, I've come to the conclusion that I should probably cut the deck. As much as it pains me, I don't think I can justify taking the steps to make this deck fully functional. I would have to play super parasitic cards like Dictate of Kruphix and Monastery Siege or niche effects like Anger of the Gods which don't mesh well with many decks in order to pull this off. While going non-singleton on Faithless Looting would absolutely help, I still don't think it's going to get me where I want to be with this deck. With this change, I'm unfortunately eliminating an archetype that was really cool and unique to this Cube. This leads me to my next issue...
4) Certain Archetypes feel too Generic.
Some decks just don't feel all that closely tied to the theme of the Cube. Some of the archetypes which were designed as broader versions of semi-specialized constructed decks don't quite hit the mark. For example, the Esper Dragons archetype has a similar play pattern to the deck that inspired it, but it doesn't "feel" like a Dragons deck. It has the correct gameplay loop (stall in the early game, wipe the board, and then refuel with Dig Through Time), but it doesn't feel like a Dragon deck. Many of the dragon-specific cards are just not good at this power level, and I don't currently have enough good dragons for people to win with dragons consistently. So even though playing Esper control feels like a deck that could have existed in 14/15, it doesn't feel like the deck it's supposed to emulate, Esper Dragons. The biggest offender is Mono-White, which saw fringe Standard play and was decent in Modern in 2014/15, but doesn't look like the version in the Cube. While the White deck is fun, it doesn't quite feel like anything specific. While this isn't an issue for every deck, I would like more decks to mirror their past counterparts a little bit closer. I'm ok with decks like Mono-White being a bit off the beaten trail as long as most of the other decks feel right, but I don't think that's entirely the case right now. I know achieving this goal is possible, because decks like Abzan Midrange and Sultai Whip feel perfect, and Red Aggro is very close to being right. I simply must continue the refining process until I can get the archetypes to a position I'm satisfied with.
5) White needs more Three Drops.
This point is exactly what it says on the tin. White is supposed to be a very proactive aggressive color, but there's a noticeable hole in "things that can punch through damage" portion of the 3 mana value slot. Right now, the best cards to this are Ranger-Captain of Eos and Flickerwisp, neither of which are exactly damage powerhouses. This is an easy fix, but still something I wanted to note.
With that, we're on to the changes that could help the Cube.
Improvement Strategy
1) Include more Aspirational PicksI want to include some more cool flashy cards that can serve as solid first picks that provide easy direction for drafters. As @landofMordor called them in the previously mentioned discussion in his Cube thread, "aspirational picks" seem to be exactly what I need to get the ball rolling in more drafts. I want my players to be confident in their first couple picks, and including some splashier early picks can help. While some of these cards may be bombs, the format can probably handle it because of the aforementioned high removal density and similar card quality. Likewise, some of the potential aspirational picks are aspirational not because they're more powerful than existing options, but instead because they're simply cool cards. Here are some of the options I'm considering right now:
This specific group of cards also works to address one of the "too generic archetypes" as well, because they're all cool dragons! This change is a bit of a double-edged sword. Some of these "cool" cards I'm picking do seem to be a little bit lower in the power band. I don't think they're bad early picks because they're decent finishers, but I think taking some of these Pack 1 Pick 1 isn't great. However, I feel these cards are good enough that if someone takes a "cool dragon" as their first pick, they're going to be able to have a decent deck. These cards are here to help give players who don't know what to do a direction, even if that's not the most competitive direction. I don't know if this line of reasoning is overly contradictory or not, but I'm still interested in giving it a try.
2) More Theros-Khans era Staples
This one is pretty simple, but I would like to acquire some more cards that were popular in 2014/15. The main pickups I'm looking to get are Brimaz, King of Oreskos and Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx. As with the aspirational dragons above, these cards help to make some errant archetypes feel a little bit closer to the originals because more of the card pool overlaps. I'm also looking at some cards that were Modern staples at the time such as Snapcaster Mage (if I can ever afford one
) and cards with similar function to old cards, such as Soul Transfer and Borrowed Time. I'd love to hear any ideas you may have on this front, such as other cool removal that used to see play that I'm not running, or cards that can be functionally similar to other cards I'm running.3) Nonsingleton
I was theorycrafting how to make Mono-Blue devotion work in my Cube the other day, and I came to the realization that I could do in singleton... if there was another card that could fill the role of Master of Waves. Between my cheap interaction and the wealth of potentially playable small Blue creatures with multiple mana pips, it would not be hard to make a "mono blue deck" work... provided there was a redundant copy of Master of Waves. There are a ton of great cards that lend themselves nicely to a blue-heavy tempo-deck. There just aren't a ton of great rewards for doing that in a way that still feels like mono-blue devotion outside of Master of Waves. If I had two copies of Master, the deck would probably work! Without it, though? I don't think so.
My revelation about Master of Waves got me thinking about other cards that would make sense in multiples. Right now, I run a bunch of cards like Tormenting Voice and Cathartic Reunion as red card selection and enablers for Rakdos/Mardu builds of reanimator. These cards always felt worse than Faithless Looting, which is a legitimately great card even outside of archetypes that are specifically interesting in shifting cards between zones. Playing extra lootings would open up doors for Red which having bad filtration currently blocks. From now on, if a card makes me think "wow, I wish I could play more of this card" or "this deck would work if I had one more copy of that card," I'm going to go ahead and simply add another copy. I had been resistant to the idea of removing the singleton restriction on the Cube since one of my initial goals was to write an article series about the design of this Cube, where the final result would be a "platonic ideal" 360 Cube. The fact is though, that I've been working on this project for over a year and I am still not to a place where I'm ready to write an article series. I think I'm close to a place where I can begin the series, but until then, I don't need to restrict my gameplay so people on the internet won't complain about design choices I made for articles I haven't even written.
As for mono-blue devotion, I'm not completely certain it's a deck implement, but I the theorycrafting has lead me to an interesting place.
4) Artifact and Enchantment Pile Testing
I purposefully avoided adding artifact and enchantment decks to my Cube this time around. I had spent a lot of time trying to make these decks work in the past, and I wasn't too pleased with the results. The things that made these decks good in constructed didn't translate into my Cube, so I was left with sub-par cards taking up space without actually improving the formats. This is actually the first Cube I've had in years where either "artifacts" or "enchantments" is not a major theme. However, I think the winds may be shifting back towards those archetypes.
Recently, some of my friends throughout the community have been testing "artifact pile" and "enchantment pile" archetypes in their Cubes. This has led me to re-evaluate my decision to exclude artifacts and enchantments matter themes from my Cube. Artifact pile uses powerful engine pieces like Urza, Lord High Artificer and Emry, Lurker of the Loch to generate absurd amounts of value in conjunction with good glue artifacts like Chromatic Star and the Spellbombs that are playable in other decks. Some people have even built configurations where super niche and normally uncubable cards like Thought Monitor are powerful additions. These decks would benefit from a non-singleton world because of the ability to play multiple copies of key enablers. I think it would be cool to have 3x Chromatic Stars powering an Oni-Cult Anvil, or Emry looping Mishra's Baubles. These turbocharged new cards are a little off-theme (although both Modern Affinity and Standard Thopter Scissors were actual decks at the time), but I think they look like enough fun to test out.
Enchantment pile, on the other hand, tends to be a cross between Modern/Legacy Enchantress and Enigmatic Incarnation combo decks that have seen play in Pioneer recently. I swore off enchantress after being thoroughly unimpressed by the new additions offered by Theros: Beyond Death, but honestly, I think it could work in non-singleton. Sethis, Harvest's Hand is a good card, and even though she's multicolor and not mono-green like I would have hoped, I think doubling up on her and adding a few other enchantresses might get the deck across the finish line. I'm thinking of using Argothian Enchantress, Setessan Champion, Enchantress's Presence, Eidolon of Blossoms, 2x Sethis, and the new Jukai Naturalist as the core of a potent enchantments archetype. A ton of the good 2014/15 creatures that I already play are enchantments, as are some of the Theros: Beyond Death additions and about a third of the cards from Kamigawa: Neon Dynasty. While I'm not particularly interested in the Enigmatic Incarnation stuff, I think "play a bunch of enchantments and draw cards with them" could be a good archetype for G/W or Abzan. I certainly like the sound of it more than the Counters deck I have in those colors right now. The only thing I don't like about enchantress is that the majority of the cards just feel super parasitic. Urza, Lord High Artificer is a card that begs you to draft an artifact deck, and something you might still play even if you don't have a ton of artifacts simply because of his rate. Eidolon of Blossoms is a four mana half-sized Owl Bear. Enchantress sort of feels like a "get in this lane because all of the enchantress cards are being passed to me" sort of deck than a "I will start building this direction from pack 1" plan. However, I still want to try it because I love enchantments, it's thematically appropriate, and people I trust have had good experiences with the new enchantress cards.
5) Bridges lands in the basic box?
Many of the successful artifact pile builds I have seen put the Bridges in the basic land box as a way to help decks reach the density of necessary artifacts to make stuff like Thought Monitor actually good. Since my Cube already has an emphasis on multicolor Midrange and Control decks, I think adding the bridges could help these decks run more smoothly in addition to making the artifact pile decks stronger.
6) Possible 384 Cube Size?
I think I would like to go up to 384 cards in the Cube with 16 card draft boosters so that packs wheel twice per round. This also gives me an extra 24 card slots to work with while not meaningfully changing the card ratios I need to be running in the Cube. This seems like a win-win for the near future.
The Path Forwards
I have a draft coming up this weekend so I would appreciate some feedback now. I don't have all the cards I want out of Neon Dynasty or pieces to make the version of the Enchantment Pile deck I'm looking at work, so I'm going to be making these changes in a couple of stages. First, my update for this weekend is going to be including mostly Midnight Hunt and Neon Dynasty cards I acquired (I do not have any Crimson Vow cards right now because I did not draft that set in paper due to Covid) and removing the problem cards addressed above. I don't have all of the new "aspirational" cards I mentioned above other than Kiari, the Swirling Sky, but I do have some other cards I can test to fill the spot. The bigger changes (nonsingleton and the pile archetypes) will be coming once I'm done with school and have a better idea of how I want to implement them.Until then, thank you for reading, and I appreciate any feedback you may provide!
-GT
landofMordor
Administrator
Sick post, Train. I have some thoughts about Blue.
Tempest Djinn is a "devotion for blue" payoff just as much as Master of Waves. You get paid off for having blue pips because that's the only way you can afford to cast the thing. And it's really quite strong. Archmage's Charm, Coralhelm Commander, Tidebinder Mage, Tempted by the Oriq are all in this vein of "implied" Devotion just because mono-blue is required to cast them consistently.
The bigger tension for me is that blue aggro is a critical-mass, proactive creature deck, and even if you manage to draft every blue creature in your current list, that's not going to yield the ability to be consistently proactive. But mostly I think blue aggro-control just needs more warm bodies in the 1-2 mana slots whose power is contained in their ability to get into the red zone -- and the design cost here is the squeeze it puts on cube slots.
You express hesitancy about red board wipes for supporting Tutelage, and I think there might be some overcaution here. Yes, Radiant Flames is not usable by red aggro decks (or midrange to some extent), but Control really will use it (Jeskai control, e.g.) and so will Tutelage. So it's parasitic, but not any more than Tutelage itself, or any other board wipe in White or Black. I'd suggest just jamming Flames, Pyroclasm (maybe), Storm's Wrath for a couple drafts, if you think Tutelage could still fit your goals. Because really, 3 red board wipe slots that open up one of your pillar archetypes seems like it could be worthwhile.
Otherwise, I'm totally on board with these changes. Love the aspirational picks, as you might have guessed. I am interested to see how Enchantress goes. And best of luck with your upcoming drafts!
Tempest Djinn is a "devotion for blue" payoff just as much as Master of Waves. You get paid off for having blue pips because that's the only way you can afford to cast the thing. And it's really quite strong. Archmage's Charm, Coralhelm Commander, Tidebinder Mage, Tempted by the Oriq are all in this vein of "implied" Devotion just because mono-blue is required to cast them consistently.
The bigger tension for me is that blue aggro is a critical-mass, proactive creature deck, and even if you manage to draft every blue creature in your current list, that's not going to yield the ability to be consistently proactive. But mostly I think blue aggro-control just needs more warm bodies in the 1-2 mana slots whose power is contained in their ability to get into the red zone -- and the design cost here is the squeeze it puts on cube slots.
You express hesitancy about red board wipes for supporting Tutelage, and I think there might be some overcaution here. Yes, Radiant Flames is not usable by red aggro decks (or midrange to some extent), but Control really will use it (Jeskai control, e.g.) and so will Tutelage. So it's parasitic, but not any more than Tutelage itself, or any other board wipe in White or Black. I'd suggest just jamming Flames, Pyroclasm (maybe), Storm's Wrath for a couple drafts, if you think Tutelage could still fit your goals. Because really, 3 red board wipe slots that open up one of your pillar archetypes seems like it could be worthwhile.
Otherwise, I'm totally on board with these changes. Love the aspirational picks, as you might have guessed. I am interested to see how Enchantress goes. And best of luck with your upcoming drafts!
Looking at your list I noticed you have a lot of of enchantment based ramp. I imagine these are there as resilient sources of ramp. However, looking at your Temur colors, I notice you have
Jace, Vryn's Prodigy
Stormwing Entity
Young Pyromancer
Bedlam Reveler
Dragonsguard Elite
Quandrix Apprentice
The 1 mana value ones are too efficient to be replaced, but I am thinking the 2 mana ones could probably be some sorceries to help trigger these cards more reliably.
are my favorite, since they they let you get either an untapped Forest to play something else or a Triome/shockland for fixing. They have the bonus of triggering your Landfall cards as well.
That's it for now, list looks super cool. Have fun drafting!
Jace, Vryn's Prodigy
Stormwing Entity
Young Pyromancer
Bedlam Reveler
Dragonsguard Elite
Quandrix Apprentice
The 1 mana value ones are too efficient to be replaced, but I am thinking the 2 mana ones could probably be some sorceries to help trigger these cards more reliably.
are my favorite, since they they let you get either an untapped Forest to play something else or a Triome/shockland for fixing. They have the bonus of triggering your Landfall cards as well.
That's it for now, list looks super cool. Have fun drafting!
Change (For the Better?)
It's been about four months since my last post here and two months since my last draft. I've drafted a couple of times and made some pretty major structural changes that I think have improved the environment.
So, let's go over what's new.
Snow Duals in the Basic Land Box.
This is probably the biggest and most important change for right now. I wanted to increase the amount of fixing available to the drafters without significantly increasing the number of slots dedicated to land cards. When drafting with six players, the amount of fixing in the cube felt about right, meaning that to adequately fix every player in an eight-player pod I would have needed to add roughly 25% more lands. Since I was already running 49 lands before, I would have needed to add at least 13 more lands to reach the numbers I truly desired, probably more like 20 when accounting for full cycles. The fact is, I just didn't want to dedicate that much extra space to lands, even if it would have improved my Cube on the occasions that I had a full pod. There is a very simple reason for this: whatever lands I would have added could not have been as good as the lands I was already playing. Let's say I chose to add fast lands. Not only would I have been out about 100 bucks (this Cube is partially a way for me to play with my collection, so I use real cards except for when I'm using customs), but they would never have been as good as the Shocklands and Fetchlands. Sure, low curve decks would enjoy early game untapped lands, but the lack of fetchability just makes them worse than almost everything else in the Cube right now. While I could have added more shocklands or fetchlands, that would have been even more expensive and still eat into space for spells. Likewise, it wouldn't alleviate the biggest issue I'm having right now: the high pick priority of lands. I feel like it is almost never correct to pass a Fetchland or on-color shockland right now. This is a problem because I don't want to be forcing people to take lands over spells they may want to play. The fact is, fixing is a premium in this format, and that will often mean having to sacrifice the thing you want to do in order to make sure the thing you end up doing actually works. Also, even in the event that a player is taking the fixing as they should, they still may not end up with lands matching their colors. If the Abzan Midrange player is at the same table as someone playing Sultai Graveyard and someone playing Esper Control, they may not get any of the
or fixing they need despite the fact that their Abzan cards are likely flowing.I decided the best solution for me would be to take the route some of my discord friends like Zolthux have used and simply hand out some free fixing at the end of the draft. The Snow Dual Lands are perfect for this, because they have a real drawback to being played in that they enter the battlefield tapped, but they can fill any holes in the mana base left open from the draft. The hypothetical Abzan player from the previous example could grab a Snowfield Sinkhole and a Woodland Chasm to complement the Windswept Heath and Temple Garden they picked up during the draft. These lands aren't better than a basic for people that were able to get enough fixing, but for the people who need them, they're a great way to keep decks consistent while providing more choices during the draft. The best part is that these lands still require aggressive decks to draft the untapped fixing they need. Aggro decks can get a lot of their low-cost cards very easily, since those cards often only go into aggro strategies. Outside of Powerful Interaction or Synergy Peices, other players aren't going to be fighting for common aggro staples. By making aggro decks still need to draft their fixing, it helps to ensure that players can't always build amazing aggressive decks that hate out the slower archetypes in the format. The choice between the Sacred Foundary that lets the red/white player cast their Lightning Helix and the Dragon's Rage Channeler that is going to turbo-fuel their early game is a lot more interesting than the choice between Temple Garden and the Siege Rhino it would need to help cast. In essence, players will be offered more interesting choices no matter what kind of deck they are playing simply because the demand for cards with the "land" type is decreased.
The only thing that won't change based on this update is the high priority of fetchlands. People are still going to want to take fetches highly, perhaps even more highly than before, because the Snow Duals are fetchable. I could see myself adding another set of the enemy fetches in the future to account for the still-high demand for fetchlands, but as of right now, I am going to bide my time for a little longer. I want to see how this change pans out first.
384 Size
I added an extra 24 cards to the Cube so every pack wheels twice during a full 8-player draft. I think this makes the draft experience a little smoother because it removes the "will this pack wheel" mental gymnastics players sometimes have to go through. Likewise, it gives me an extra 24 slots to work with for my design, making it a little easier to offer the redundancy I desire while still allowing for a wide variety of cards and effects. A little bit of extra real estate goes a long way!
Nonsingleton.
This Cube was always supposed to feel like constructed. The use of advanced techniques to reduce negative variance and a heavy focus on redundancy for key effects has been useful in creating gameplay with a constructed feel. So far, everything has worked pretty well. Heavy redundancy for important effects has meant that skilled drafters can consistently get the right number of the right cards they need to work. Likewise, decks like the delve and reanimation strategies don't feel like traps because it's easy to get enough enablers to prevent fizzling often. When coupled with the Cube's generally tight power band, the net result is a more balanced and healthy environment compared to other Cubes I've worked on.
However, my strategy isn't perfect. I keep finding myself in a position where there simply aren't enough cards of a certain type of effect at the correct power level to make a deck I want to include actually work. This was most apparent with the various Faithless Looting decks that I have been trying to incorporate into the format. Pretty much every Riptider worth their salt at this point knows the value of Faithless Looting as a glue card. It goes into every red deck that cares about draw triggers, discard, the graveyard, and even spellcasting. The problem is, in an environment with a singleton restriction, you can only use one copy of Faithless Looting. Decks that I wanted to make work, such as the Prowess decks, R/B reanimator shells, and the now-defunct Sphinx's Tutelage deck, really wanted Faithless Looting, and multiple copies at that. While I tried to fill the gaps with cards such as Cathartic Reunion and Tormenting Voice, they aren't nearly as effective due to their increased cost and lack of flashback. The fact is: nothing could fill the holes at the cost and power level I needed other than more copies of Faithless Looting.
Originally I was apprehensive about dropping the singleton restriction for this Cube. One of my initial goals was to write an article series about the design process for this Cube, culminating in a "platonic 360" list that people could copy and play. I desperately want to teach aspiring Cubers strategies to build better Cubes without falling into the same 2007 era traps that most Cube names in the broader Magic world still seem to pedal as good design. I think using advanced design tactics like eschewing singleton and adding Snow Duals to the basic land box is somewhat against that goal, as some random person who doesn't know a Baron deck from a Brushwagg might not understand why these strategies can lead to superior outcomes. The thing is, I'm nowhere near a position where I'm ready to write these articles. Even if I were, that platonic ideal of a 360 Cube just doesn't do what I need it to do anymore. I like the extra fixing from the snow lands, the packs wheeling twice from 384, and the new design opportunities opened up by including nonsingleton cards. Nonsingleton lets me do things like include several faithless looting decks, power a blink strategy with multiple Ephemerates, or cut down the power band of the Cube's cantrips without having to sacrifice density. Even though I still want to write those articles and try to make a difference in the world, for now, I'm going to do what gives me the most fulfillment as a designer. When I eventually write the articles, I'll make a "platonic 360" version of the cube (and probably a platonic 384 version as well) to tide over people who think two copies of a card with the same English name can't be in the same Cube. But until then, I'm just going to make the best design possible.
Assorted Issues (and things I may need to change).
Blue.
People have an odd aversion to Blue in this Cube, and I can't figure out why. Other than control decks drafted by @kactuus and me, there really haven't been any people drafting heavily Blue decks. I can't understand. The only cards in my Cube which are remotely broken as of right now are Cantrips. Ponder, Preordain, and Brainstorm are often broken in Constructed because of the raw card filtering they provide. Their powers of filtration have proven themselves to be strong here, too, and the increased consistency they provide helps make the Cube feel the way I want it to. None of this even mentions the Counterspells, Big Draw, Planeswalkers, and other Finishers. I have literally no idea why Blue is going so under drafted. The only thing I can think of is Blue's light creature count: 14 out of 53 cards. But that shouldn't be enough to tank a whole color. When I have drafted Blue, it felt extremely powerful. When I have played against blue, it has felt above average. Even people who have never played this Cube think the blue is good. As @Grace said, "I beleive this may be a Blube." I do not know why people don't want blue. It might be a small sample size; it might be the low creatures, it might just be that my regular drafters would prefer to be playing Green.
On the other end of the spectrum in Blue, I think Counterspell may be too good. Two mana counters are generally where I think I need to be in this format. Dissolve and friends just felt a little below the line in terms of power level. A lot of the things you need to counter are cheap, and spending more mana to stop a spell than the cost of that spell usually isn't worth it. Because of this, I thought Counterspell would be fine. But then, after my last post, I received this comment on discord that kind of got under my skin.
Theopolist said:
This person was referring to my lack of "dragons matter" cards for the Esper Dragons archetype. Other than Crux of Fate, the support cards that made the Dragon synergy package worthwhile in Standard aren't good enough for this format. Foul-Tongue Invocation is a bad cruel edict that sometimes gains life, and Silumgar's Scorn is sometimes counterspell, except when you don't have a dragon, in which case it's Force Spike but 100% more expensive. Because the additional dragon support is so bad, I opted to design the section so that it would have similar play patterns to Esper Dragons but without the junky tribal cards. A dragons player will still be casting Dig Through Time and winning with Dragonlord Ojutai; they just won't be killing goblin tokens with Foul-Tongue Invocation. I still needed spells that could do the things that Scorn and Invocation could do, but I needed them to be more consistent, so I included interaction like Counterspell in order to keep control competitive without forcing players to draft a critical mass of dragons.
The problem here isn't that two mana to counter a spell is too good. Mana Leak, Lose Focus, and Miscalculation have all been absolutely fine so far. The big issue is that counterspell is hard to play around even if you suspect it's coming. With the Mana Leak and Quench variants, you can wait until you have the extra mana to cast your spell. But with counterspell? All you can do is not cast your spell until they're tapped out or try to bait out the counter with something worse.
I think while Blue is having play rate issues cutting counterspell probably isn't the best idea. Even if I suspect it may be too good for the Cube, I would be cutting from the color that "needs" the power spike the most. Likewise, I think may literally just be reeling from some random discord comment from some random person who I don't even know. As I said, the other two-mana counters seem reasonable in this format. In fact, stuff like Make Dissapear and Jwari Disruption has felt a little below the power curve. I guess the perfect power level for Counterspells in this format is Lose Focus, but that's really the only card that fits that bill. I suppose I could go nonsingleton there, but an obscure counterspell isn't necessarily what I want to be doubling or tripling up on. Only time will tell, but I felt it was worth saying.
More Aggressive Nonsingleton
Speaking of Nonsingleton, I want to try adding duplicate cards more aggressively. Right now, I only added the three copies of Faithless Looting to the Cube. When I made that change, I didn't have the time or mental bandwith to fully explore every other nonsingleton option– I simply added the lootings because I knew they were cards I wanted to play in multiples. However, I've been a bit unsure about what else to play. I'm thinking I mostly want my nonsingleton choices to either be flexible cards that a wide range of decks will demand, or be engine peices that don't have enough redundancy to support a given deck I want to play. Right now, I'm looking at the following options to run in multples. The creatures would receive two total copies while the spells would receive three.
I plan to discuss the Young Pyromancer-Unearth-Inquisition of Kozilek shell in another post in the coming days, but I figured I'd get a head start and post about some duplicate choices here.
No More Mono White
I don't like Mono-White aggro anymore. I really wanted to make a Death and Taxes style deck work in this Cube, but honestly I have not been able to put together a combination of cards that felt right here. Unlike Mono-Red, which has powerful reach and is complemented by good gold cards with splash minimal requirements, Mono-White all but requires a heavy splash of a second color to make up for the shortage of in-house reach. The lack of Aether Vial and some key lock peices enjoyed by Modern and Legacy Death and Taxes builds means that my White decks end up being simple curve out aggro decks. While there isn't inherently a problem with the White decks being curve out, the fact that the majority the Cube is midrange archetypes means that small creature decks are at a pretty big disadvantage. Likewise, since I don't run high-drop murderes like Path to Exile and Swords to Plowshares, it can be very hard for low curve white decks to stay ahead. As a result, Mono-White feels like the odd deck out.
There are a few ways I could remedy the situation. First, I could try constructing Mono-White more like the midrangy White Weenie decks in current Standard. These decks tend to run fewer one drops per-capita than the decks my current White archetype is supposed to emulate (8 instead of 12, or 6 instead of 8 at Cube deck size), and have a focus on Banisher Priest higher up the curve. Specifically, these decks make use of Brutal Cathar, Skyclave Apparation, and Elite Spellbinder to shut down expensive creatures, backed up by Thalia, Guardian of Thraben making removal more difficult to cast. The issue with this road is that I don't like the play patterns of Elite Spellbinder or Skyclave Apparation all that much, and I don't want to introduce day/night into the cube for Brutal Cathar. Even if I did go that route, I would still need to be nonsingleton on at least one of these cards and find additional support from other cards. This doesn't mean I can't go bigger on white. Adeline, Resplendant Cathar and my newly acquired Brimaz, King of Oreskos could help to make a white-based midrange deck a viable option.
I could also consider taking White a blink-based direction. Three copies of Ephemerate coupled with an extra Thraben Inspector or two and two copies of Inspiring Overseer could drown White in value if I so desire. The problem here is the insularity and lack of damage output of the blink cards. This deck would have to out-value Abzan and Sultai decks reanimating massive mulldrifters and Siege Rhinos, which may not be feasable, at least without re-working the mono-white removal. Finally, I could try a post-Neon Dynasty version of the Artifact Aggro deck. I've been meaning to try the artifact pile deck for a little while now, and this would help me solve both White Aggro's shortcomings along with giving Blue some more interesting pickups. The only trouble here is that the White Artifact Aggro cards aren't all that much better than the generic White Weenies, and still want to be in at least one other color to work. I won't say never, but it does seem like an uphill battle for white.
Conclusions...?
I like the direction the Cube is going, but it still feels unpolished. While I feel there is a lot of room for improvement, I can safely say these variations of the Cube have been the best limited formats I have designed so far. The balance is close to correct, I'm just working on making sure every deck is up to scratch.
Thanks for reading and talk to you soon!
–GT
landofMordor
Administrator
Hey, that's a great reason to break singleton!
Setting the bar high, wow! But I'm glad to read your realization that this goal may not be attainable -- at least, not at the same time that you're fulfilling your design goals and satisfying your own creative instinct.
If I just had to muse aloud about a "platonic ideal" cube, I'd say 1) the funny thing about platonic ideals is that Plato was wrong about nearly every mathematical/scientific theory he put forth, 2) probably most people would consider their own list as near-platonic for their own goals, or else they'd change their list, and 3) the only time people agreed about the platonic ideal cube was in the short interval between the invention of the Cube format and the creation of the second cube.
Actually, I've been doing some research, and it seems like back in the 2000s people talked about updating "The Cube" as if it were a single entity. Maybe that's one reason the cube community seems so fractious today: the originators of the format popularized the idea that they were optimizing a single platonic list, and therefore any disagreement about that list was tantamount to a disagreement about Magic's platonic nature. Maybe there are some OGs around here with a better perspective on that.
But like, on another level, who cares? because you've got some cool changes to be discussed.
I like the 8/9 cards you've chosen to break singleton on. No comments there.
Regarding Blue, I think low sample size definitely has a lot to do with it. It may also be playgroup preference -- I know people in my LGS who will never not draft 3-color piles in Retail Limited, even when it's a terrible idea. And I know even very good players who will draft 2 of 3 Mardu colors in 80% of their drafts. So, y'know, maybe it's nothing, or maybe it will come out in the wash after 1000 drafts, or maybe it won't ever change because you can't change your players. The only thing I noticed was a high density of blue gold cards that are "Rewards" more than "Reasons" (I'd first-pick Sprite Dragon, Expressive Iteration, or like maybe Ashiok) but that's endemic to all your gold sections, not just BlueX ones. So... I think it's probably a quirk.
Cool post! Good luck with this update
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I know it's been a while since we had this conversation (and I meant to follow up in text here earlier but I got a bit too busy with life, oops
), but I've had some musings on this topic that I thought might be a bit interesting.Part 1: "Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution."
Dr. Theodosius Dobzhansky once stated, "Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution." This is a generally true statement, as an understanding of evolutionary biology has helped us to uncover the relationships between organisms that drive global ecosystems.
Last semester, I took a class on Ichthyology, with an emphasis on the evolution of vertebrae, jaws, and bone. For those of you who don't know, all vertebrates, including things like birds and mammals, are technically fish, as we all evolved from Sarcopterygian fish. As a result, there was an entire lecture about how Ichthyology shaped early theories about evolution. Our modern understanding of evolution is largely influenced by Charles Darwin's seminal 1859 work On the Origin of Species. However, Darwin was not the first to conceptualize evolution, nor were his writings forged in a vacuum. To find the seeds of evolutionary biology, we would need to go back over 300 years. In the 16th century, French Naturalist Pierre Belon was the first person to note the homologous bone structures in the bodies of Humans and Birds.
This 1555 pamphlet shows the similarities between human and avian anatomy, with many of the same bones being found in Humans and in birds. Belon's observations served as the foundation for what would become the field of comparative anatomy: the study of homologous structures between organisms. There were several hundred years when people tried to make sense of the structural similarities between organisms. While many early works in this field focused on how comparative anatomy fit with biblical scripture, it would eventually be used to aid in the creation of early evolutionary biology.
Part 2: The Economy of Nature
Thomas Jefferson, amateur scientist and third President of the United States, once said: "Such is the economy of nature, that no instance can be produced of her having permitted any one race of her animals to become extinct; or her having formed any link in her great work so weak as to be broken." Jefferson's perspective is indicative of a common trend in science before the 19th century. The world was thought to be static, with things not often changing except as an act of some higher power. While enlightenment thinkers had begun to pose alternatives for the idea of a creator god, people had not really begun questioning how the world changed over time.
Everything changed in 1796 when Georges Cuvier published his paper On the species of living and fossil elephants. While some earlier thinkers called into question why, for example, fossils of marine creatures might be found on land, few assumed that these organisms were completely dead. Cuvier argued that some species of animal, specifically European Mammoths, had all died and become extinct. This revelation opened the doors to studying extinction: specifically how and why it happened. One thinker was Richard Owen. Owen was a biologist, comparative anatomist, and paleontologist. He described the first non-avian Dinosaurs, extinct Cambrian invertebrates, and many species of extinct mammals. By the 1840s, Owen came to the conclusion that an evolutionary process did occur. He proposed that all vertebrate organisms were developed from what he referred to as an Archetype.
According to Owen, an Archetype represented the common structural plan from which all vertebrates were derived in "ordained continuous becoming." Owen didn't believe a literal Archetype still existed somewhere in the world to be discovered. Instead, he believed the Archetype existed in a divine mind, which also "foreknew all its modifications." This model was capable of explaining extinction before the idea of natural selection was proposed by Darwin. Extinct species weren't truly gone: they represented a stage in the development of a species from the Archetype for all vertebrates into a new final Archetype for each individual class of vertebrate.
Owen's theory of Archetypes would later be dismissed once On the Origin of Species was published. Darwin's theory of natural selection, which was influenced by the works of cleric political scientist Thomas Robert Malthus and his writings on population growth and poverty, served as a more concrete explanation for the process of evolution. However, while Owen's thoughts on evolution may have no bearing on the field of Science, they could be useful in explaining trends in creative pursuits.
Part 3: Nothing in Cube makes sense in the light of Archetypes.
Natural selection is not a guided process. Evolution is driven simply by the needs of living organisms to survive in a specific ecological niche in a specific environment. There is no divine mind guiding the process toward a desired outcome. One example showing how natural selection can play out in nature can be seen in the 2003 paper What Darwin’s Finches Can Teach Us about the Evolutionary Origin and Regulation of Biodiversity. This study shows how the average beak size found in a population of finches increased after a drought destroyed most food on a remote island except for that which could be eaten exclusively by finches with a larger beak. As a result, Finches born in 1978 after the drought had an average beak size almost half a millimeter longer than cohorts born in 1976 before the drought.
Unlike natural selection, Cube design is an inherently guided process. Everyone has an idea of what they want their Cube to look like. While this idea can shift over time, many designers have some ideal Cube they are trying to build. Indeed, the early concept of "The Cube" as a monolithic format was essentially an attempt to find what could be called an "Owenian Archetype" for what a Cube should look like. This proved to be an impossible task for the early Cube community for a variety of reasons. For one, Cube design is a highly personal endeavor. Everyone has their own vision for their own Cube. As a result, one cannot force their ideas onto other designers who do not share the same vision for a Cube. Second, the "Archetype" is an abstract concept. While Owen was able to diagram what he thought the divine archetype for vertebrates might look like, his work is essentially speculation on what the archetype might look like. Archetypes for organisms do not exist in real life, so any "Archetype" someone invents in any context is going to be reflective of their own thoughts on a given subject and has no basis in objective reality. Third and finally, while Cube is not subject to true natural selection, it still faces some real selective pressures. Cubes can "go extinct" for reasons that don't always involve an active design choice. For example, a Cube's designer could quit playing Magic, leaving their ideal version of a given Cube unrealized. Design goals could shift, meaning that a Cube may no longer be built toward the same ideals as when it was started. Finally, new cards could be printed, which change what an ideal design might look like even with the same goals. Essentially, the singular Archetypal Cube can never come to fruition because the concept it represents fundamentally does not exist.
However, I would not be writing all of this just to come to the conclusion that the Archetype for a specific kind of Cube can't exist. While it is a fool's endeavor to try and fully encapsulate the entire Cube world in 360 cards, there are Cubes that essentially serve as the Archetype for most lists in a field. The best example is The Pauper Cube. The Pauper Cube is the brainchild of now-WOTC designer Adam Styborski. It was the first well-publicized rarity-restricted Cube in the Magic Community. After Styb's began employment at Wizards of the Coast, he handed development of the project to a board of prominent community members who are now responsible for updating and maintaining the Cube. While The Pauper Cube's goals have shifted over the years, it is essentially the Archetype for a whole branch of Cubes. Many designers in The Pauper Cube community refer to their Cubes as "mutations:" essentially evolutions of The Pauper Cube's Archetype to fit their own needs. Much like Owen's Vertebrate Archetype, each mutation of The Pauper Cube has split off from the mother list into a new unique variation.
Despite this, calling The Pauper Cube an Archetype for all Pauper Cubes is incredibly misleading. Looking at Lucky Paper's Cube Map, one can see that The Pauper Cube and its mutations make up only a small peninsula of a broader Pauper Cube island. While most of these Cubes share the same basic restriction (commons only), many are being built with entirely different purposes. Essentially, The Pauper Cube is an artificial Archetype. People use it as the Archetype for their own Cubes, but it's not representative of what all Pauper Cubes can or should be. Instead, The Pauper Cube serves as the Archetype for a community that all desire a similar type of gameplay. The main difference between The Pauper Cube and something like the old MTGSalvation Community's attempts at building an Archetypal Cube, therefore, is the fact that The Pauper Cube was designed by an individual (a "divine mind" in Owen's terms), and was later adopted by a community, rather than being created by a community and forced upon an individual.
Having said all of that, I do think The Pauper Cube plays an important role in the Cube community. One of The Pauper Cube's main purposes is to be an easy on-ramp for people wishing to start playing Cube. It's intuitive, inexpensive to build, and fun! Thanks to The Pauper Cube, someone wishing to start Cubing has an easy on-ramp to the format, with a dedicated community that builds variations of the same Archetypal Cube. Something like that just doesn't exist right now for unrestricted Cubes. The WOTC Cubes are expensive, and most Cube communities are fractured enough that there isn't really anything that serves as a good on-ramp to the format otherwise. The closest thing is The Penny Puncher Cube 2.0, which is both unlike both other Cubes and is no longer updated by its original creator. One might even say it's extinct, at least in its original form.
What I've realized through this process is that my original goal of building my new Highball 4K Cube was never to serve as a "platonic 360" Cube. Instead, I was trying to build something that could serve as a guide for building Cubes, trying to emulate the feeling-specific constructed formats. Sure, I wanted to offer a "definitive list" that could be copied by new designers (much like The Pauper Cube), but I always knew this idea was too narrow to encapsulate all possible 360 unrestricted Cubes. After all: Cube is not a monolith! Even after writing this now, I still hesitate to call my original goal the creation of an "Archetype" for anything other than my specific goal of "Cube that feels like the way TrainmasterGT remembers Theros-Khans era Constructed."
Part 4: See the Unwritten
Luckily, I don't think the effort I have put in so far to chronicle the creation of my Cube from a designer's perspective has been wasted. I think there is a real appetite for building Cubes with a retro gameplay feel without restricting the card pool. Andy Mangold recently discussed his new Neoclassical Cube in an episode of the Lucky Paper Radio podcast. The Neoclassical Cube aims to capture the feeling of late 90s/early 2000s Magic but is updated using new cards and mechanics that fit the spirit of old-school design. Andy is also making several aesthetic and Cube-management level decisions (such as using old, beat-up cards and playing the Cube unsleeved) to hit home that retro feel. Andy's goals a remarkably similar to my own goals, albeit with very different design directions thanks to our divergent eras and intended play styles. Given the positive reception to Andy's Cube, I definitely think there would be a desire to see a full recounting of my project when I eventually have the time to put pen to paper and nail down the list.
This exploration has revealed to me some key insights into my goals.
1: I want to show people how to build an updated Cube with older cards, not simply give them a list.
2: Any Cube I write about doesn't need to fit everyone's ideal of what a Cube should be.
3: If I want to make something for people to copy, I can do that, but I shouldn't design my main Cube with that goal in mind.
I was trying to build a Cube that could simultaneously act as a noncontroversial on-ramp for the format while still aligning with my own personal design sensibilities. These two goals are at odds with each other because what I want and what the public wants are not necessarily the same. However, I can and should still formalize my accounting of the design process for this Cube, as there is an appetite for this type of project. Now that I know that what I'm writing is more than just my own screaming into the wind, I have found a renewed purpose to finish my project. My secondary goals have definitely shifted, but my driving motivation of "catalog the construction of your ultimate Cube" remains strong. I still think I could build a singleton 360 version of my Cube for copying, but I would need testing resources beyond what I currently have to bring that to fruition alongside my main Cube. After all, that would be an entirely separate project with an entirely different primary goal.
Thank you for reading!
–GT
The Frustrating Case of the Thopter Deck.
Background
I've wanted to support some sort of Blue/Red artifact deck in this Cube for a while. I still remember when the UR Thopters archetype came out of nowhere at Pro Tour Magic Origins, putting up a strong showing with two different versions of the deck showing up in the top 8. This deck captured my imagination as a Child due to it's uniqueness– the deck emerged due to some unique interactions between a handful of cards at the tail end of a standard season. The deck was built around the core interaction between Ensoul Artifact the combination of Darksteel Citadel and Ornithopter. The ability to create a 5/5 flier or indestructible creature on turn two was incredibly powerful. Although these cards had been in the format since the release of M15 in 2014, it wasn't until a year later with Magic Origins' entry into Standard, that there was finally enough artifact support in the format to create a strong deck in standard. Hangarback Walker proved to be a powerful tool to support an "artifacts matter" gameplan, especially when coupled with a reasonably good three-mana lord in Chief of the Foundary. Chief also had the upside of buffing Ornithopters into usable offensive creatures.
There are two competing schools of the UR Thopters archetype. While both were built around the "turn two 5/5" core, they used a different suite of support cards. The first was the more heavily Blue deck that only splashed Red for Shrapinel Blast, Collateral Damage, and some sideboard cards. The second deck played a significantly higher number of red cards, including high quality threats like Pia and Kiran Nalaar and great support cards such as Thopter Engineer. Both lists appeared in the top 8 of Pro Tour Magic Origins, with each variant continuing to see play until Ensoul Artifact finally rotated out of the format when Battle for Zendikar was released.
Second Place UR Scissors - Mike Sigrist, Pro Tour Magic Origins
20 CREATURES
4 Chief of the Foundry
4 Hangarback Walker
4 Ornithopter
4 Phyrexian Revoker
4 Whirler Rogue
11 OTHER SPELLS
4 Ensoul Artifact
4 Ghostfire Blade
3 Springleaf Drum
8 INSTANTS and SORC.
1 Collateral Damage
4 Shrapnel Blast
3 Stubborn Denial
21 LANDS
4 Darksteel Citadel
1 Foundry of the Consuls
6 Island
1 Mana Confluence
1 Mountain
4 Shivan Reef
4 Temple of Epiphany
SIDEBOARD
3 Disdainful Stroke
1 Negate
1 Rending Volley
4 Roast
3 Seismic Rupture
3 Thopter Spy Network
8th Place UR Thopters - Stephen Berrios, Pro Tour Magic Origins
24 CREATURES
4 Chief of the Foundry
4 Hangarback Walker
4 Ornithopter
3 Phyrexian Revoker
3 Pia and Kiran Nalaar
4 Thopter Engineer
2 Whirler Rogue
12 OTHER SPELLS
4 Ensoul Artifact
4 Ghostfire Blade
4 Springleaf Drum
4 INSTANTS and SORC.
4 Shrapnel Blast
20 LANDS
4 Darksteel Citadel
3 Island
1 Mana Confluence
3 Mountain
4 Shivan Reef
1 Swiftwater Cliffs
4 Temple of Epiphany
SIDEBOARD
3 Disdainful Stroke
2 Negate
2 Profaner of the Dead
3 Thopter Spy Network
2 Tomb of the Spirit Dragon
3 Wild Slash
The Problem with Porting the Ensoul Thopter Deck...
Although I have loved this archetype for a long time, it is very difficult to port into Cube in a clean manner. Even with singleton breaks, the deck is incredibly parasitic. Ensoul Artifact+Darksteel Citadel and Ornithopter core requires playing a bunch of cards that simply don't line up well with other decks. Breaking down each primary card, we're left with the following dilemmas:
Ensoul Artifact
Ensoul is just not a very powerful Magic card outside of decks that have good cards to enchant. This makes Ensoul one of the most parasitic finishers in the entire deck. Additionally, including enough good Ensoul basically requires breaking singleton. A big part of Ensoul Artifact's power level comes from the fact that it costs two mana. Although several ensoul artifact knockoffs such as Skilled Animator, Unctus's Retrofitter, and Mightstone's Animation have been printed since M15, they all cost more than two mana and often need to stay in play. There are a couple of powerful options in Oko, Thief of Crowns and Tezzeret, Agent of Bolas, but they both suffer from adding a third color to the deck and also Oko being broken. The only card that is really capable of filling the exact same role to ensoul is Rise and Shine, but it's arguably worse despite having Overload because it only makes a 4/4 creature and notably can't upgrade a Thopter or Hangarback Walker. Basically, supporting something similar to the Ensoul core requires going deep on Ensoul specifically, which is just incredibly parasitic.
Darksteel Citadel
Darksteel Citadel was actually relieved by the Bridges in Modern Horizons 2. Bridges are a bit weak to put in the draft pool, although they could technically be considered for Basic Land Box inclusion.
Ghostfire Blade, Springleaf Drum, and Shrapnel Blast
These cards were interesting support pieces for the deck. Ghostifre Blade helped to make Ornithopter a threat in Ensouless hands, while also helping to support the other artifact creatures in the deck. Springleaf Drum could turn a useless small creature into a mana dork. It also played a similar role in Modern affinity//robots decks. Shrapnel Blast is a lot of damage for two mana, and the additional cost was mitigated by the abundance of cheap artifact tokens and cards that have served their purpose by the late game running around.
Ornithopter
Almost no Cube deck is going to want to be playing a 0 mana 0/2, even if it has some synergy.
Pia and Kiran Nalaar, Hangarback Walker, and Whirler Rogue
The "generically good" cards. These were all once Cube staples, but all of them except Hangarback Walker are showing their age. They're all in my Cube right now, but they're hardly enough to make "artifacts" a deck by themselves.
When reviewing the sum of the parts of this deck, we begin to see the problem: many of the key pieces in this deck don't play well with others! Outside of the "generically good" category, the important cards are parasitic, significantly worse than other options outside of exactly this deck, or both. If I want to support this deck, I need to figure out how to reconcile the key elements of this deck with the realities of Cube design.
The Potential Plans...
Option 1: Port the Game Plan Exactly with Minor Changes for Diversity.
This plan would be pretty simple to enact: add the Ensouls, Bridges, and some Support Cards. This would be the "easiest" option because I know exactly what cards to include and can mathematically determine roughly how many copies of each card I would need. I would put the Bridges in the basic land box and probably include a copy of Rise and Shine in addition to two copies of Ensoul Artifact for diversity's sake.
Despite the relative ease of this approach, I don't love it because it still involves including a bunch of narrow, pretty bad cards. I could maybe make this work if I lowered the power level of the Cube to accommodate this deck, but that defeats the point of a constructed-like Cube in my opinion.
Option 2: Rebuild the Gameplan into something akin to Affinity.
Artifacts will always be parasitic, but what if we took the "glass cannon" aspect of suiting up an Ornithopter with an aura away and focus instead on building a deck with good cards that care about artifacts? One key element of this Cube that I think is often overlooked is that I'm drawing inspiration from my memories of Magic in general during the late 2013 to mid-2015 era, not just Standard. This includes formats like Limited, Modern, Pauper, and Legacy, which had other artifact decks at the time. If I steal elements from some of these other artifact-based archetypes, such as the big boards of modern Robots, the equipment of legacy Stoneblade, and the sacrifice elements of pauper Affinity, I can definitely make something work. Consider all of the great artifact engine peices that have been printed since these decks originally debuted: Thought Monitor, Sai, Master Thopterist, several Equipment Creatures... the list goes on and on! I can even speculate into the "artifact looping" of the Eggs deck with cards like Emry, Lurker of the Loch. Although Eggs was banned a little before my time, most of it's peices bar second sunrise have remained influential cube cards ever sense. Finally, the noncreature artifact support even helps to support Prowess and Goyf Decks.
The big problem here is that this version of the deck would feel more "fake" compared to the other potential versions of this deck. Sai, Thought Monitor, and Emry all didn't exist during the mid-2010s, and a lot of the support cards I will be using definitely feel a little newer. This isn't normally an issue in this Cube because other decks I'm trying to emulate usually just boil down to a "pile of good midrange cards," "regular control with flair," or "hypergeometric aggro deck." It's much easier to putLion Sash into Abzan or U/W Control and Lizard Blades into burn than it is to build an entire deck around Sai and pass it off as the same deck from Pro Tour Magic Origins.
I definitely think some version of this plan could work well, but I would need to figure out how to avoid the issue of "fakeness" while not falling into the traps of the Pro Tour Origins decks.
Option 3: Just Play the Good Cards and don't worry about the Deck.
Hangarback Walker, Pia and Kiran Nalaar, Whirler Rogue... they're all just good cards! I can put them in the Cube and have them all be absolutely fine. In fact, the only issue with this plan is that half of these cards showcase an artifact deck that isn't in the Cube. In fact, I have had people in the past see these cards in Cubes without major artifact themes and trainwreck their deck draft trying to make them work. I think there will be enough artifacts for someone feeling really feisty to make Pia and Kiran Nalaar a legitimate finisher. It's not really the same thing as building around Ensoul Artifact to kill the opponent with the world's swolest Ornithopter, but it definitely does the job. Of all the plans, I think this is definitely the one with the fewest flaws. However, I don't think it's particularly conducive to my design goals.
Option 4: Don't include any of the Cards.
I could realistically just not include any of the cards for the Thopter deck whatsoever. Most of the pieces are narrow or aging, to the point where the only real loss would be Hangarback Walker. Hell, Walker could even stick around as an Abzan card, as it was played in those decks! As much as I don't think Pia and Kiran Nalaar or Whirler Rogue would be missed if I cut them, I think they're still like B and C+ playables in this environment, respectively. As stated before, the biggest issue is them hinting at an artifact deck that isn't in the Cube, but these cards are good enough on their own that it shouldn't be an issue. Of the 4 major options, I think this is the one I am least likely to try in the short term.
So Many Choices... Not Enough Time!
Even beyond what I just listed, there are so many other paths I can take. For example, I could not worry about U/X artifacts and try to make R/W an artifact strategy that bleeds into U/R prowess. I could try to make an Urza's Saga package a thing in the Cube. I could take one out of my own playbook and try to build Hardened Scales Affinity in the Cube. Okay, that last idea is incredibly suspect, but the point still stands. I think that whatever artifact deck my Cube ends up having is going to look different from the decks at Pro Tour Magic Origins. I'm going to have baubles, colored artifact creatures, and random artifacts or artifact-adjacent cards that just didn't exist at the time which probably would have impacted this deck.
I think it's important to remember that this Cube is fundamentally about getting the nostalgic feel I am looking for without chaining the card pool to an arbitrary date or format. The point is to be an authentic exploration of my nostalgia, not a carbon copy of the past. The Cube is more of a Memoir than a Museum. What that means is, while a few key cards are shoo-ins, I'm not playing cards just because they existed back then. Even cards I like aren't going to be included if they don't fit the power level I want the Cube to achieve. The primary goal is to get the gameplay right, not to jam a bunch of old cards into a box. This means that new cards with good play patterns are going to make it in, especially if they fit with the cards from the past. The past is now... and history is written by the victors.
Hopefully, this has given some insight into how it can be difficult to support certain decks when you're trying to design for both "feel" and balance. This Cube is a lot of fun to build, but my design goals are hard to successfully achieve even with relatively lax card pool restrictions.
Thanks for reading!
–GT
Strong starting place here for some good theory. I like the essay! (I particularly enjoyed the distinction between the two builds of UR Ensoul - maybe there's actually more to discuss here?)
You write that you've long wanted "to support some sort of Blue/Red artifact deck", and that you "still remember" (have an emotional connection with) UR Ensoul. I think it's probably worth teasing out a little bit what you mean when you say "parasitic", because you say it a few different times about different cards, and I'm not sure it means the same thing in each case. Ensoul Artifact, you say, needs to go on a good creature, not just any artifact. Ghostfire Blade and Springleaf Drum work best - only work? - in concert with cheap (colourless) creatures. Darksteel Citadel taps for colourless, the bridges ETB tapped; none of the 11 of 'em are ideal for what i'll call 'gold zoo'. But reliable access to the Bridges does raise the floor of the animating effect, still allowing a turn 2 5/5 indestructible (tapped, natch), and I think maybe the stuff that all wants to play with cheap artifact creatures does actually play alright together. I don't think, though, that you should go with the '2 Ensoul, 1 Rise and Shine, Bridges, call it a day' idea.
You also write about
I think that if you want to support a fast, combo-y artifact deck that involves playing cheap artifact threats and then making them big/big (possibly a big/big with evasion), the cards are there to support it in your Cube, even without doubling up on Actual Factual Ensoul Artifact. Cube some artifact 1's with evasion, an aggressive aura that has no explicit on-theme support in UR colours (here's my favourite from back then), Ensoul and Rise and Shine, and only the good artifacty 3+'s (so yes to P+K but no to Whirler Rogue, yes to Master of Ethereum but no to Golem Foundry, etc)...I think drafters will see the value synergies and be tempted and interested.
Good luck!
You write that you've long wanted "to support some sort of Blue/Red artifact deck", and that you "still remember" (have an emotional connection with) UR Ensoul. I think it's probably worth teasing out a little bit what you mean when you say "parasitic", because you say it a few different times about different cards, and I'm not sure it means the same thing in each case. Ensoul Artifact, you say, needs to go on a good creature, not just any artifact. Ghostfire Blade and Springleaf Drum work best - only work? - in concert with cheap (colourless) creatures. Darksteel Citadel taps for colourless, the bridges ETB tapped; none of the 11 of 'em are ideal for what i'll call 'gold zoo'. But reliable access to the Bridges does raise the floor of the animating effect, still allowing a turn 2 5/5 indestructible (tapped, natch), and I think maybe the stuff that all wants to play with cheap artifact creatures does actually play alright together. I don't think, though, that you should go with the '2 Ensoul, 1 Rise and Shine, Bridges, call it a day' idea.
You also write about
This I think is the smarter, deeper pool of cards from which to design. In Legacy around that time, Affinity was playing 4x Ornithopter, and some builds reached for 4x Memnite as well. Zero mana creatures that can become real threats are actually pretty strong proactive cards, and I think you underestimate Ornithopter a little when you say that it needs specific combos of cards before it's good. In terms of artifact deck threats that saw play back then, think about multi-format all-stars like Stoneforge, Legacy threats like Signal Pest, Mr. Tezzerator, and Ethersworn Canonist, or Steel Overseer, Vault Skirge, or Master of Ethereum in Modern Affinity (in this era, one of Modern's best and highest-represented decks) - these are "good enough" to see play even in decks not entirely built around all-in wide or tall boards of artifact creatures. Reaching into Modern and Legacy affinity decks also provides a bunch of artifact-creature-deck-friendly lands, like the Moth Nexii, the Ancient Den cycle, or the 1-of value Academy Ruins, etc...
I think that if you want to support a fast, combo-y artifact deck that involves playing cheap artifact threats and then making them big/big (possibly a big/big with evasion), the cards are there to support it in your Cube, even without doubling up on Actual Factual Ensoul Artifact. Cube some artifact 1's with evasion, an aggressive aura that has no explicit on-theme support in UR colours (here's my favourite from back then), Ensoul and Rise and Shine, and only the good artifacty 3+'s (so yes to P+K but no to Whirler Rogue, yes to Master of Ethereum but no to Golem Foundry, etc)...I think drafters will see the value synergies and be tempted and interested.
Good luck!
I don’t have a good handle on how to tackle your nostalgia problem, but if you do go with small creatures, artifact trinkets and artifact lands, then these two cards (that I didn’t see mentioned) could be decent.
These have the advantage of being artifacts for a certain density and provide redundancy for the effects.
The Prototype being expensive bounce and being able to tap a random equipment makes it really cool IMO.
edit:
is perfect providing a noncreature artifact for Ensoul and a crab to tap to Drum.
Thank you! I love your new PFP as well
.I've been doing some additional research into the differences between the two builds of Thopthers, and I've realized something: they're basically just different flavors of the same deck. Every U/R Thopters deck was basically taking the core Ensoul Artifact+Darksteel Citadel/Ornithopter, adding Hangarback Walker, and then filling the rest of the deck with cards that amplify those two key elements. I'm struck by something Paulo Vitor Damo Da Rosa said in regard to this archetype in his 2015 strategy guide:
"This is a very aggressive deck that is very different from what I usually play (which explains part of my skepticism, I guess). Cards in this deck are either VERY GOOD (Ensoul Artifact, Ghostfire Blade, Hangarback Walker) or VERY BAD (Springleaf Drum, Phyrexian Revoker, Chief of the Foundry). Whether you draw the good or the bad part of the deck is going to influence your win percentage more than how you play or what you play against."
Basically, I think the differences between the two decks are changes in the so-called "bad" cards. The version with Thopter Engineers and Pia and Kiran Nalaar is basically just a more red-heavy version of the base-blue deck, swapping the Countermagic for Thopter Engineers and splitting the 4-drops split between P+Ks and Whirler Rogues. This means the red heavy version of the deck is trying to maximize damage from Hangarback Walkers, while the base-blue version is more of a generalist strategy. In general, though, the deck has many flex slots. This video even shows a Pro Tour list that was playing Keeper of the Lens, of all things:
I agree; I definitely think this type of deck needs support beyond just 3 enablers. I think it is possible to do it with that bare-bones core, but I don't think that will lead to the best experience.
I think I may be conflating "parasitic" with "narrow" in this context. These cards all require very specific support to function as intended, and I think they're hard to weave into a Cube without other extensive artifact themes. My Cube runs other cards, which I think are pretty narrow in the type of deck that wants to play them. However, with these cards, there are multiple supported decks that run them. For example, Satyr Wayfinder isn't a card every green deck is going to want to play: only decks with a graveyard component can fully utilize its effect! However, there are multiple decks that can use Wayfinder– Delve, Reanimator, and Goyf decks... one of these archetypes is certain to show up at the table, so it's not a big deal that Wayfinder is only good in that subset. By contrast, something like Ghostifre Blade is likely to only be good in the Ensoul deck, which makes it a very hard card to justify including.
I think this is part of the reason why the Thought Monitor plan appeals to me. If I can "hide" some of the artifact density in the basic land box, it is easier to justify including cards that want a boatload of artifacts without needing to build an extensive support structure into the Cube. It would mean I can focus more on selecting the best possible game pieces for my goals than worrying about density logistics.
I think this is where I'm starting to land as well. I definitely believe cards like Ensoul Artifact can work in the Cube with Bridges in the land box, but I don't think the direct port of the Standard U/R artifact deck would be as impactful as something leaning on inspiration from other sources. My big hold-up is things like Mr. Tezzerator and his apprentice don't necessarily have the play patterns I'm envisioning. By contrast, Affinity's plan that focuses on vomiting out a ton of cheap artifacts and either casting something massive or making something massive with Cranial Plating is a lot closer to both the actual U/R ensoul deck and the more value-thopter deck I (mis)remembered. I think this video series, despite being short, does a good job of showing how the UR deck works and how I came to that conclusion.
I think I understand what your point is here (Ornithopter has a lot of desirable qualities in its own right, so it doesn't necessarily need a lot of help to be playable), but I just don't know if it can do what I want it to without a fair bit of help. When I look at the UR Ensoul or Affinity lists, a huge amount of the deck either directly benefits from Ornithopter or makes Ornithopter into a better threat. For example, the UR ensoul lists ran 4 Ensoul Artifact, 4 Chief of the Foundry, and 4 Ghostfire Blade, all of which make Ornithopter a real piece of board presence. In my Cube's context, I don't know if there are many decks beyond an artifact pile where thopter would be anything other than a 0 mana 0/2, and I don't think many decks are interested in that floor alone.
I think this gets to another point I would like to talk about...
These cards from Modern and Legacy are of a much higher power level than the UR Ensoul cards from Standard, but I think a lot of them still suffer from that same "narrowness" issue that I touched on earlier. For example, Master of Etherium is a lot better than Chief of the Foundry, but it doesn't really go into more decks. Even though the card being better provides a good reason to reach for Artifacts instead of playing something else, you still really want to be in a deck with an artifact component before it becomes very desirable. I don't think it's right to take Master before you know you're in an artifact deck. I think that could possibly be said of most of the cards specific to this Archetype– while you might play Pia and Kiran Nalaar in a red midrange or aggro deck, I don't believe that is the case for something like Steel Overseer. Even Ensoul Artifact would probably be a bad speculative pick if bridges aren't free.
I think part of the problem is that I don't want to include a density of artifacts to support more than one drafter per pod using it as an archetype. I don't necessarily want to change the entire dynamic of the Cube in order to fit in enough artifact cards to make the theme as dynamic as something like the graveyard decks. I can definitely mitigate the issue with artifacts matter cards that go into other decks, such as Ethersworn Canonist, Scrapwork Mutt, and non-singleton Mishra's Bauble, but I think that skirts the main point of the key support for the deck I'm looking for is not I want it to be. It's completely possible that I have unrealistic expectations about what this deck should look like, how it will play, and how much space it will require.
One direction I could see myself taking the deck is leaning into the "thopters" theme a little more. I think Sai, Master Thopterist is a really fun card, and I think it's easy enough to support a card like him by using more "general" cheap artifacts that go into more decks, like Chromatic Star, Spellbombs, and the aforementioned Mishra's Bauble. I can bleed this into a slightly larger "blue artifact creature tokens" deck with stuff like Urza, Lord High Artificer, and Third-Path Iconoclast. I don't think there are enough on-plan cards for that deck to be super competitive if I want to maintain a consistent power level, but it could work. Hell, at that point, Master of Etherium would probably have a low enough opportunity cost to include!
Thanks! One last thing that I was going to work into this but forgot where to put it:
This seems... very sweet.
This card is sweet! A friend on Discord showed this card to me yesterday as well. While I don't love that this can't animate tokens, the fact that it is basically a free stream of 4/4s with reduced risk compared to Ensoul Artifact makes this card very appealing. I think with the bridges in the basics box, this would be a force to be reckoned with.
I think the issue boils down to the fact that I have a very clear idea of what this Cube wants to be. While this particular deck is a part of that vision, a lot of the solutions I have tried to develop to make it work don't fit cleanly with the overall plan. Partially this is because of how I'm using nostalgia in this context. I feel like the word "nostalgia" in Cube design is often used to mean something akin to "I'm playing card X because I have nostalgia for when I was younger, not because I'm able to maximize it in my environment." But that's not how I'm using nostalgia. I have a good idea of what kind of Magic I enjoy and what type of cards and format parameters can help me to make that format work. I want to maximize these cards and decks to be as good as I remember them being back in the day. The key word there is remember. I have an idea of what I want these cards to play like, so I'm trying to maximize their effectiveness within the biodome of this Cube. This way, I can both re-capture the feeling that I used to have playing Magic as a game and share that experience with others! Essentially, I've assembled a group of components that I enjoy, and I'm using nostalgic memories as a blueprint to fit all of the pieces together.
I think there are a few key insights here that are potentially helpful. First, memories are fickle things. The Theros-Khans era was almost a decade ago, and I was no older than 13 when any of this stuff was happening. Not only am I bound to misremember a lot, but I also may have never had the experience of playing with these cards and archetypes in the first place! I played against a lot of Standard decks in my day, especially Mono-Blue devotion and various RDW/Prowess/Heroic lists, but I never played anything other than Temur Monsters. My first booster draft wasn't even until Magic Origins! It was an event I organized for my Scout Troop in which I played UR Thopters, for those that are wondering. I'm bound not to remember how good things were or not get things "right" in an empirical sense that I would have if I were a more seasoned player at the time. While I've done a lot of research to try and balance things to be how I remember them, I'm learning many of these decks for the first time almost a decade after the fact.
Second, I want to update things that I never liked about the way these formats played in order to make them more fun in a modern context. A lot of Theros-Khans Standard matches devolved into long, drawn-out top deck wars. I've never had more games go to turns than those old Standard FNM events! Meanwhile, formats like Modern weren't as interactive as they are today due to the worse interaction in the formats relative to the quality of the threats. One of the ways I have gone about mitigating these negative outcomes is by reinforcing the Cube with newer, more fun, and more efficient cards. While I still have certain format barometers that I'm using to set the power level of the environment, I can cut a lot of the Janky fat I didn't like and replace them more fun new cards. Modern value engines like Primordial Mist still feel like these older cards, but they help to mitigate the negative effects of top-deck wars. Additionally, good "new" aggro cards like Soul-Scar mage can alleviate the stress on the hypergeometric archetypes, which require high densities of certain effects to function.
Third and finally, my "nostalgia" extends beyond 2015. While I'm trying to make the Cube evoke the same emotions as playing during my formative Magic years, there are a lot of more recent sets I think are very fun which influence my design. For example, the sets released between Guilds of Ravnica and Theros: Beyond Death were triumphs of set design. Regardless of constructed balance issues, these sets were some of the most well-structured, mechanically interesting releases WOTC has ever printed. What's more, sets like Theros: Beyond Death hit the same emotions in some regards as I am trying to bring out with this Cube. Woe Strider feels like a card that would have been at home in the Abzan Midrange or Sultai Whip decks I remember from all those years ago. I suspect that I will feel the same way about the Modern Horizons 2 through Neon Dynasty era in the future, but I can't say for sure yet because we're still a little too close to those sets being new. This doesn't mean that I want to go off including a Field of the Dead deck or a Bant Food archetype in my Cube. However, I think contemporary mechanics are uniquely flavorful and resonant. As much as things like Adventures and Sagas aren't part of the "main" history I'm trying to showcase here, they are a key part of my Magic memories, and I think they make my Cube better.
The overall point here is that I have a vision, a drive, and a direction. It's just not neatly fitting together for this Artifact deck because I haven't figured out how to successfully execute it yet. I definitely think these posts have helped– I think something cool is around the corner. It will just take a little bit more time to perfect.
landofMordor
Administrator
Saf summarized my thoughts perfectly. This plan seems the most resonant, the most historically situated, and the most likely to preserve the deck you want to play.
I also think we could look for various Baubles -- Chromatic Star/Sphere, Expedition Map/Renegade Map, Mishra's Bauble, Spellbombs/Skullbombs, etc -- these are ways to use artifacts for the cube's bread-and-butter effects. You're already considering this with Bridges in the BLB -- why not extend that same thinking to other classes of effects?
So... you're saying Ensoul is a synergy deck
I think most synergies are probably an effort to make "bad" cards better than the sum of their parts. Your particular problem with Thopters/Scissors is that the bad cards care about a resource that other decks don't care about. Contrast to Satyr Wayfinder, who cares about the grave in a very open-ended way, in a format where a lot of things can utilize the grave. What are the enablers for artifacts which are equally open-ended? (Mishra's Bauble or Chromatic Star continue to set the standard here, IMO.)Agreed! Tezz and Oko are a tangent I'm not sure you'd want to take. (Well, Tezz is actually pretty modest on power level, but Oko has never been an "artifact synergy" card.) The Myr Enforcer (and that banned-in-pauper Salamander) plan is not only a safer ceiling, but also more aligned with your goals. But just because we ban Oko doesn't mean we suddenly can't play Enforcer, so I vote you just trim the stuff that's out of bounds and play the rest!
It's ok for a card to only be desirable in one deck. Ornithopter can be the kind of card you allow to wheel as information that your deck is open. But I also am with Saf that, if you broaden your scope on how to leverage Ornithopter, it will probably get better. (Big fan of Madcap Skills and just using Ornithopter as a Mox for old-school Affinity cards.)
Yep. These cards will continue to be narrow until the floor of their synergy can compete with the floor of the format's best effects on pure rate.
If you're running a million Brainstorm, then Mishra's Bauble is a bad cantrip on rate. But if Bauble is competing with Opt, then suddenly more decks will maindeck Bauble for its rate, meaning more decks will just incidentally have reasons to play Ensoul.
You've already done this with Wayfinder, in a way. Your 3 Unearths and many Delve and Delirium cards are good, so people will play them maindeck, and once you're priced into needing your graveyard to be full, Wayfinder starts to accidentally synergize with peoples' decks, and could be the very card a Green deck wants to tie the room together.
Ah, I see now that you are aware of all that
well, since you bring it up, I do perceive a tension in your expectations for a deck that will port a Constructed-level play pattern, yet is less supported than your typical Retail Limited draft archetype.Lol so clearly I didn't fully read your post before writing my own. I'll still leave the anachronisms, as evidence that I agree with your thought process even if we took different routes to get there.
Keep it up! Good luck.
If this list is still somewhat updated, then I think you have a good base to slip in artifact payoffs that care about the number of artifacts on the battlefield. This goes back to what Safra was saying about affinity being a good option. That way, you don't really need to play more artifacts per se, since your non-Black colors already have ways of producing artifacts.
I'd like to suggest this small artifact package:
The upside here is that the artifact payoffs are also enchantment payoffs broadening their applicability. You could swap the second copy of Nettlecyst with Cranial Plating if that is your jam. The Nettlecysts being colorless means they would fit into your UR shell, but also into Green with Tracker, Goose, Greeters and company.
I also think adding some more thopters would make sense (Pia could be Breya's Apprentice too). Vault Skirge would fit as well, essentially being a 1 mana thopter with lifelink.
You could also branch the theme into Black with
And some artifact creatures to suit up ( Scrapheap Scrounger, Triarch Praetorian and Blade of the Oni). I think Braids would fit into the grindy Black decks nicely and leave you open to going down different routes.
I'd like to suggest this small artifact package:
The upside here is that the artifact payoffs are also enchantment payoffs broadening their applicability. You could swap the second copy of Nettlecyst with Cranial Plating if that is your jam. The Nettlecysts being colorless means they would fit into your UR shell, but also into Green with Tracker, Goose, Greeters and company.
I also think adding some more thopters would make sense (Pia could be Breya's Apprentice too). Vault Skirge would fit as well, essentially being a 1 mana thopter with lifelink.
You could also branch the theme into Black with
And some artifact creatures to suit up ( Scrapheap Scrounger, Triarch Praetorian and Blade of the Oni). I think Braids would fit into the grindy Black decks nicely and leave you open to going down different routes.
Chris Taylor
Contributor
HUGE fan of Michigo's rein of terror
Double nettlecyst is quite strong BTW, I would (in the dark) recommend Cycst + Crainial rather than double Cyst
Plus sometimes you can just GET people if you manage to produce BB and that feels great
Double nettlecyst is quite strong BTW, I would (in the dark) recommend Cycst + Crainial rather than double Cyst
Plus sometimes you can just GET people if you manage to produce BB and that feels great
Lmao, love the implications of this typo.
Agreed that Nettlecyst is very strong and that two is likely egregious here. I've found one to be borderline in my own midpower cube.
Chris Taylor
Contributor
Oh it's fully intentional
I can't blame you for that, especially since there are probably over 3000 words between my two posts, and we're largely coming to similar conclusions anyway
.With this point, are you proposing to simply add more artifact glue cards to the Cube or expand the basic land box to include more than just the Bridges? I'm not 100% sure what you're referring to here. If you mean the former, then I certainly agree!
I think this a good point. It's possible I'm not being very creative in thinking about how to implement some of these cards.
I'd go a step further and say it's a synergy deck built around one very specific set of cards: Ensoul and the things that directly combo with it. The Ensoul deck can't be distilled into a pile of cards that say "artifact" in the same way that something like Sultai Whip can be distilled into a pile of cards that say "graveyard" and "return target creature from your graveyard to the battlefield." Ensoul worked because you could make an indestructible or flying 5/5 for 2 mana, and close out the game for free with Shrapnel Blast if you couldn't win off the back of your thick creature. I think open-ended enablers will help make the flex-spots better (getting rid of those crappy Chief of the Foundrys and extra Whirler Rogues in favor of sleek new old border Mishra's Baubles), but I think my gripe is more with the specificity of the core cards.So... you're saying Ensoul is a synergy deck
I wonder if this falls back to the creativity issue: Unburial Rites and Whip of Erebos are completely different, but I have them doing the same thing in the "Whip" decks to great effect. Also, the reanimation strategies do play a lot of cards that are basically worthless in other decks... you can definitely try to cast Apex Altisaur and Archon of Cruelty, but I don't think that's a great backup plan in a world without Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx.
Maybe I'm making a narrowness mountain out of a narrowness molehill?
Exactly! Part of the problem is that so many of the key cards are clustered into Blue. With most other archetypes, I can spread the narrow cards into the other potential colors that the deck wants to play. For example, with Reanimator, I can put some of the reanimation effects into white, the graveyard dump into red, blue, and, green, and the targets across the rainbow. With artifacts, the enablers are mostly colorless, but the best payoffs are mostly Blue. Ensoul, Urza, Sai, Thought Monitor... by the time this deck is all said and done, I would probably be spending between 10 and 20% of my Blue cards on this one deck. While high density requirements are definitely the cost of an archetype like this (I have similar card allotments of Mana Dorks in Green and Aggro cards in Red), Blue is not a great color to try and support an extra high-density thing in since it's the primary color for cantrips and the only color with good counterspells right now. I think it's possible given how much space has been wasted in Blue up to the present because it's low creature quality compared to other colors. However, I think fitting everything in will still be a challenge since I can't just throw extra density of support to make the deck better like I can with other colors. As much as I can try to skirt the issue by adding more artifacts matter cards to other colors, the core of this deck is going to be all Blue for the foreseeable future.Ah, I see now that you are aware of all that
Definitely! I can get reasonably expect people to start playing things like Mishra's Bauble right away, but I don't know at what point people are going to start reaching for Sais and Urzas over Siege Rhinos. Part of this is trial and error. I just don't like the "error" part of these equations. I don't want another Sphinx's Tutelage situation where the deck "works" but is too weak for the environment as a whole, which is a real concern for me.
Thank you for your reply!
I like Nettlecyst, and I almost added it a while back! I think it's a must-play if I try this route, especially with bridges in the basics box. Spike fits well with Stoneforge Mystic gaming, and Vault Skirge as a colorless one-drop is something I should probably be on as well.I'd like to suggest this small artifact package:
The upside here is that the artifact payoffs are also enchantment payoffs broadening their applicability. You could swap the second copy of Nettlecyst with Cranial Plating if that is your jam. The Nettlecysts being colorless means they would fit into your UR shell, but also into Green with Tracker, Goose, Greeters and company.
I also think adding some more thopters would make sense (Pia could be Breya's Apprentice too). Vault Skirge would fit as well, essentially being a 1 mana thopter with lifelink.
Pia Nalaar is a slightly different story, and I think she illustrates one of the problems Cubes like this can have in finding cards for synergy decks. Pia is obviously pretty good if you're artifact gaming: she's on rate and has decent abilities that synergize well with aggro and tempo-oriented artifact plans. But do you know what she isn't good at? Comparing well to other red 3s at this power level. Take a look at her competition:
Although there is somewhat of a range between the worst cards and the best, I think they're mostly pretty close. Outside of Fable of the Mirror Breaker being fantastic and Goblin Rabblemaster being better than its two variants, I think the rest of these cards are all close enough that you can kind of just pick your favorite if you're given the option between them in a pack and have made a good decision. I don't think that's necessarily true with Pia Nalaar– unless you're already in artifacts, she's not a great speculative pick, and she's probably the first three drop you would be cutting in anything other than artifacts.
I do think it's worth trying at least one of the non-PK red artifact support cards in the Cube, however. I think the other card you suggested, Breya's Apprentice might be a good option for me. Although I have never been too high on it, I was talking to @kactuus the other day and she said Breya's Apprentice was good in her powered Cube. I definitely like the 3/4 combined statline on the card and the fact that it is an artifact itself is also great. Maybe you've sold me.
Braids is cool but I think she's a little weak here. My removal and other threats are a little too efficient for her to thrive. I do like the Blade of the Oni idea.You could also branch the theme into Black with
Thank you!
Chris, I can't pin comments on the forums!
Not quite sure about that, I think my Cube has a much higher floor than yours so the average deck might be a bit more well-equipped to handle it. I don't know yet, though, and testing could absolutely prove you correct!
Unrelated– I hadn't looked at your Cube for a while until I went to write this comment, it's very cool!
Outliers like...
?
(I think this one looks like a lot of fun lol)
I didn’t want to mention the Saga as it is so unique and probably doesn’t fit into earlier Magic play patterns. That said, it’s fantastic especially if you add the Baubles and such. Green then becomes an artifact color if you have Saga and Nettlecyst alongside its artifact producers and Esika’s Chariot + land tutors.Outliers like...
?
is also a generically good card that nudges you into taking the artifact route.
Regarding your point about Pia Nalaar (or apprentice), I wholeheartedly agree it is a step below the others. But if you have 3 Rabblemaster variants, you could probably afford to lose one of them for a synergy piece if you want to promote a new archetype.
I’ve never played with Braids, should probably have mentioned that
That makes sense! Frankly I'm more worried about play patterns than the "modernness" of the design; I think WOTC has only gotten better on average at making cards over time. If you think something is cool, please let me know!
Anyway, I've been thinking a little more about why I'm apprehensive to cut Blue cards to do artifacts, and I think I've figured it out. I run a lot of Cantrips in Blue:
That's 21 cantrips in one color. Granted, like a third of these are cards you're playing for other reasons than being able to cantrip, but still, it's a lot. I like this cantrip density, so if I want to do artifacts, I'd have to cut into that number by quite a bit. However, some of these aren't actually very synergistic with anything else in the Cube– they just check the density box to help enable Control decks. The following seem pretty mid, or don't do anything to support the other major Cantrip decks, cheifly spell velocity stuff:
I like these cards flavorfully or play-pattern wise, they just don't do all that much. The thing is, part of supporting the artifact deck would be playing the following:
I can cut some of my "mid" cantrips for these cards, still have the same density of Cantrips, and lessen the burden on Blue. The only decks that really suffer from this move are the Young Pyromancer decks, but the cards I would be cutting don't contribute all that much to this plan and it already has three copies of Faithless Looting for support.
All told, I could probably carve out 10+ slots in Blue for extra cards if I really set my mind to it. I would have to lose some mediocre midrange cards, but I think that may be a small price to pay for salvation. Food for thought on my end.
Paging @Heymaker for opinions on these last few posts since you may actually play this Cube at some point.
Feeling Blue
Ok, so I'm trying to figure out what exact support I need for the artifact deck so I can work this in. I still need to do a full write-up about all of the Archetypes I want to support, as I never did that yet because I was trying to keep that under wraps when I was first starting this project as part of an article series that never existed. However, I'll list here what Blue is trying to do.
Right now, Blue is a part of three major archetypes: Esper Dragons (Control), Prowess, and Sultai Midrange (Reanimator/Self Mill/Delirium Shenanigans). Its main contribution to these decks are Cantrips and Counterspells, with some specific support pieces for each. Additionally, I want to add some sort of artifact deck to the color. All told, blue should have roughly 4 major supported archetypes by the end of this update.
One of Blue's big problems thus far has been that it isn't really the "core" color for any deck. While the Cantrips and Counterspells provide a ton of value (and some are arguably broken in this context), these cards are generally playing a supporting role for other colors. Blue helps Control find their Board Wipes and Finishers, Prowess keep a high spell velocity, and provides interesting payoffs, enablers, and synergy pieces for Sultai. My path forward needs to be twofold: give Blue options to be the core color for existing blue decks and give Blue a new deck for which it is the natural core.
First, let's look at some cards which can galvanize previous archetypes:
These cards all support various preexisting archetypes. Cryptic Command is a very powerful control spell that pushed a deck to be more heavily Blue, Haughty Djinn is a card that bolsters the Instant/Sorceries version of Prowess, and Snapcaster Mage is a great value card that synergizes with all three currently supported Blue archetypes. Mercurial Spelldancer is a great evasive two-drop that can double up on cantrips and burn. Murktide Regent may also be a good option. I don't own this card at present, but I have been considering it, and it is currently the least expensive it has ever been.
Next, let's look at some good cards for the artifact deck:
Ensoul Artifact is a key "flavor" card for this deck. With Birdges in the BLB and a couple of extra support cards elsewhere, Ensoul should be a pretty low-investment pick. Blackstaff of Waterdeep takes this a step further by providing "protection" to any animated creatures, essentially "drawing" another faux-ensoul every time the creature dies. Thought Monitor is a key hand-refill for the "artifact pile" version of this deck, often being a three or four mana mulldrifter. Sai, Master Thopterist is a Thopter factory. Emry, Lurker of the Loch is probably the most suspect here, but it plays well with the Baubles I want to use to support this deck. The big problem for her is that I don't want to change the blue section all that much, but there are at least 10 cards I want to add here. Emry or Sai may not make it just for space, but right now I'm leaning Sai for inclusion.
Finally, let's take a look at some cards which synergize with a build of artifacts or some other deck:
Urza, Lord High Artificer is a great value card. He's best in the Artifact deck but honestly, I think any midrange deck is fine with playing him as a mulldrifter type card. He's the full package. Hurkyl, Master Wizard is a beefy body that aligns nicely with any deck casting a large quantity of non-creature spells. Importantly, she can draw Artifact Creatures if you cast a non-creature artifact that turn. Lastly, Third Path Iconoclast is a nice early drop that provides value for casting noncreature spells, including artifacts.
Now, there is more I could add to support this deck. For example, artifact based counterspells such as Metallic Rebuke and Disruption Protocol would be decent disruptive additions to an artifact-based strategy. However, I feel that keeping the interactive cards more open-ended is a net positive for the Cube, so I want to avoid too many things that aren't good outside of a specific archetype. One option that may be interesting is:
Stubborn Denial
Stubbs is a Force Spike variant that goes well in the "Big/Big" version of artifacts matter and into decks built around playing/cheat in and protecting big creatures.
These are just some options. I'm still not 100% sold on what to play or cut, but I wanted to get this written down.
Thanks for reading!
–GT