Inscho's Graveyard Combo Cube

Grillo_Parlante

Grillo_Parlante

Contributor
Doing some drafts, this looks like a good selection of cards to work with.

Thought: really want to explore the idea of shifting reanimation into purely an artifact-centric place. Big artifacts tend to be somewhat more tame targets, and this intersects the blue artifact tutors in a UR package, with red based artifact reanimation in RB via welder effects, or maybe RW. There is something there, and could probably form the identity for a URB shard. All of those discard effects in red, with a slightly toned down blue draw suite, seems to lead there.

Low CC artifacts are the fuel for that, and this would be the baubles and trinkets and so forth that we've been running.

Sneak attack still seems like it signals poorly: you don't see a lot of things that scream "sneak attack me" like weatherseed treefolk does. Not that you should add weatherseed, just that people draft based on their past biases as a guide, and that means looking for the usual giant threats, unfortunately. No real deeper thoughts on that.

Still hate wasteland, and any cards where the design is to stop people from playing.
 
inscho

inscho

Thanks for the drafts!

I definitely think bringing artifacts into reanimator is a great path to explore further. I got the spark from Fulcrum's suggestion in the minimalist artifact theme thread. The Gearhulks really made this an option, and I've included the Grixis ones for that reason.

As far as Sneak Attack goes, I'm thinking of it more as an enabler....for looping effects:

White:


Blue:



Black:


Red:




Green:




Multi:


Colorless






In order to keep reanimator in check, I needed to tone down the sneak attack targets. Right now, I think each color brings something to archetype...usually by reusing creatures for value via bounce, recursion or reanimation.

Fatties I've also considered:


Some enablers I've considered:


Each of these have their advantages, and I'd be interested to hear your opinion on ways to better support the card. It's one of my favorites so I definitely want to give it a chance to shine.

Also on this topic, I've also picked up a:


that I'm really into seeing if I can find a fair way to utilize.
 
Grillo_Parlante

Grillo_Parlante

Contributor
Those are some really exciting ideas to unpack, and I will have to take a few days to really mull over them, along with some more drafts.

Karmic guide in particular really jumps out at me. I know we had a discussion months ago about a R/W reanimator deck, and it was founded on some cool reanimation chains, backed by, of course, red self-discard into reanimator bodies and reanimation spells. Cards like Karmic guide and reveillark though were key to making it work, which were beyond my power level, so I had to drop it.

At the time I was worried about overpowering blue draw suffocating out the red sifters, which would negate the deck to a fringe archetype--why go R/W when W/U is higher powered. You have toned down blue draw though, so the red sifters naturally become better, and sneak attack might be able to act as a redundant for a R/W/U reanimator shell.

That also kind of works well with some of the artifact reanimation pieces too, since they tend to have low p/t numbers, and get buffed by an ETB trigger. Pia and Kiran look like naturally enablers, both for that and tinker.

Their might still be signaling issues, and not saying you should do this, but its kind of interesting to think of a format where the kamagawa dragons are high picks, since that would naturally pull people into a sneak attack deck. Though I am still nervous abount those cards in any semi-modern format, due to the high mana expenditure, and vulnerability to specifically bounce.

Yosei is probably still good enough though.
 
inscho

inscho

I think Keiga, Yosei, and Kokusho are all pretty reasonable. All of them have been in the cube at some point. The struggle I had was if I ran them in the cube, I needed them to be the biggest things in the air. Angel of Serenity, Archfiend of Ifnir, Tombstalker, and Sphinx of Uthuun compete for their slots. I also play a decent amount of exiling removal which is an important component to balance out all the graveyard parties, and that type of removal really hinders the viability of the dragons.

I still love the idea of cubing with:


If Flayer worked with Living Death, I'd be rocking it right now.
 
inscho

inscho

Just picked up these:



Give me all the baubles. Mishra's is going right in. I'm not sure tezz has a place without a little retooling of my artifact section...but it could compliment tinker and welder. Are there any artifacts that are fun with the untap abilities outside of mana rocks?


Some other artifacts on my mind:



Vat seems like a great fit here. Graveyard hate, Sneak Attack support, and also pretty good in a control build.

And I keep going to dark places...wanting to sneak this back in if blue tezz comes in:



Which is an old favorite and probably the most interesting of the resource denial cards I just cut. It'd be nice to give tezz some direction for deck builds beyond drawing cards off baubles and ramping. I also heavily value a p1p1 card that incentivizes aggro. It's all to easy to get pulled into splashy haymakers and combos.

EDIT:

I've been thinking of some other ways to incentivize Sneak Attack:



I don't have any experience with either of these. Searcher seems pretty fine. Is Nahiri too powerful?
 
ahadabans

ahadabans

This list is sweet. Just drafted this. Cataclysm/Zuran Orb/Wasteland + Titania is pretty filthy.

GW Cataclysm from CubeTutor.com













A couple random comments thoughts...

I'm big fan of the Kamigawa dragons. That said, they are not as good as they once were. The best at this point is Yosei, The Morning Star. When it dies, it's a time walk which is almost always great. Keiga, the Tide Star can be amazing or it can be very underwhelming depending on what your opponent has going on. It's fine, but I prefer Palinchron because of the infinite mana combo (YMMV based on how fun that sounds to you). Kokusho, the Evening Star is probably the weakest and really needs to be abused (does go well with Feldon of the Third Path). All are pretty replaceable though, as much as it pains me to say that.

Karakas + Venser, Shaper Savant is very strong. There's some vintage cube matches with a few different drafters (including LSV if memory servers) basically dominating games with that combination.
 
inscho

inscho

ahadabans said:
This list is sweet. Just drafted this. Cataclysm/Zuran Orb/Wasteland + Titania is pretty filthy.


GW Cataclysm from CubeTutor.com













A couple random comments thoughts...

I'm big fan of the Kamigawa dragons. That said, they are not as good as they once were. The best at this point is Yosei, The Morning Star. When it dies, it's a time walk which is almost always great. Keiga, the Tide Star can be amazing or it can be very underwhelming depending on what your opponent has going on. It's fine, but I prefer Palinchron because of the infinite mana combo (YMMV based on how fun that sounds to you). Kokusho, the Evening Star is probably the weakest and really needs to be abused (does go well with Feldon of the Third Path). All are pretty replaceable though, as much as it pains me to say that.

Karakas + Venser, Shaper Savant is very strong. There's some vintage cube matches with a few different drafters (including LSV if memory servers) basically dominating games with that combination.
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Nice deck! There's a lot of ways to abuse Titania in the cube....enough that I debate its inclusion at times...For now, it's such a perfect fit that I feel like I have to run it.

I also like your Mono Black list:

Mono Black from CubeTutor.com













It's great to see there's enough options to run Pox in Mono Black. Add to that, there's tons of additional support that can bolster this archetype even further: Crucible of Worlds, Call the Bloodline, Tangle Wire, Scrapheap Scrounger, Eternal Scourge, etc.

I really do like the dragons, but I'd need to bump the power level down another notch before they'd really shine. I may give Yosei, the Morning Star a try after a few cube outings to see how I like it compared to Angel of Serenity.
 
ahadabans

ahadabans

I was trying to do a Golgari graveyard thing with that second deck but I made a few mistakes in the draft, especially passing lands I shouldn't have. And black was just so open. In the end, I could have still run that GB thing and had some some sweet lines with Vengevine, mongrel, etc. But I really didn't want to push the mana like that as I know it would have been inconsistent in actual play. I hate losing games to mana issues. So I just went all black. It's not an ideal list, but it has some nice synergy with discard outlets and if the game goes long, Death Cloud is just a ridiculous card.

I think Yosei is actually pretty legit. Again, the death trigger is very punishing for your opponent. If you can get that under Feldon, you just win the game. So tons of combo potential stapled onto a decent finisher as the floor.
 
inscho

inscho

ahadabans said:
Those changes look really good. Sad to see Phyrexian Arena go. I have a soft spot for the card.
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It might not be gone for long to be honest. I'm not sure if I want both Call of the Bloodline and Curse of Shallow Graves in here. I'd like to find another good black enchantment for Academy Rector, but I'm not really satisfied with the standard options: Yawgmoth's Bargain, Bitterblossom, and Recurring Nightmare. Bargain is my favorite of those as it makes a good Show and Tell target. Bitterblossom is too straight-forwardly good for my liking, and Recurring Nightmare is a one-card engine that would suppress all of the more nuanced value mechanics in the cube.
 
inscho

inscho

Got in a draft on Thursday, and aggro came out on top taking 1st and 2nd.

3-0










2-1









2-1










1-2












MVPs of the night:


I drafted the Tinker/Sneak Attack deck, and lost to both of aggro decks in a series of tight games...Zoo trounced me with 1st turn Nacatl, 2nd turn Sacred Foundry + Kari Zev both games. I almost turned around the second game, but my opponent's timely Wasteland put me 1 turn too late to deal him lethal with a Sneaked and recurred Doom Engine. My games against the token deck were equally close. Afterwards, my friend told me how much enjoyed our games and how he felt that at any turn he could lose despite maintaining a superior board advantage at all times. I loved hearing this...and reminds me of the feeling of racing a combo deck in modern. To capture that feeling in an idiosyncratic cube environment feels like an accomplishment.

It was also great to see a good aggro deck challenge a stacked combo deck. I designed zoo to be the deck that keeps people honest in the environment. With cheap efficient creatures, no susceptibility to graveyard hate, and access to a range of quality removal, zoo puts the uninteractive durdle decks in check. Admittedly, I got too greedy with all of my combo pieces at the expense of being able to deal with the board. I assumed my deck would be fast enough to not be a problem, but I was always a turn too slow in an outright race with the aggro decks.

Tezzeret, the Seeker is coming out. The support for the artifact deck is far too congested at 3,4,5 cmc cards. Future Sight will come back in. I may bring in Fatal Push in place of Ghastly Demise. The format is a little too fast for awkward removal. I have some other changes to make, but I'm going to sit on the results from Thursday a little bit before I do. I'm trying to decide on how I feel about the no-nonsense quality of aggro in the cube, and trying to find ways of complexifying those strategies a little more.

The Gearhulks were my bros all night. Combustible drew me 9 cards all night, and dealt over 20 damage on ETB triggers alone (once revealing Daretti and the other Gearhulk for 10).

A buddy of mine that hasn't played since Rise of Eldrazi, and never competitively, came out and handled the format very well. His deck went 0-2, but he picked up on the simic lands theme and drafted a great pool of cards. His deck wasn't built very well, but he still won a couple games, had a good time, and plans to come back out.

My group unanimously preferred this version to any of the previous versions we've drafted.
 
Grillo_Parlante

Grillo_Parlante

Contributor
This looks great. The 0-2 player still having a good time is the best feedback.

I suggest running something similar to this for about 6ish months, keeping track of what guild/wedge/shards are over performing or under performing, and making sure that as people grow into the format, that they aren't over focusing on certain gameplay elements, at the exclusion of gameplay elements you want to be prominent in the format. At the end of that 6 months, you'll probably find lots of things that are annoying you, and than you can refine from there. This is a really healthy position to be in.

I think that the cards that stop people from playing ultimately should go, and/or probably the bouncelands. There is too much infrastucture that punishes bounceland play for them to last long as non-punishing correct picks i.m.o.
 
inscho

inscho

Play experience is definitely the most valuable way to hone in a cube. I typically only get to cube once every 3 weeks, so it makes tweaks due to play experience a slow process.

That said ( :oops: ), I've been really thinking about how to complexify my aggro archetypes outside of Hellbent and Berserkers. Tokens, Prowess, Aristocrats, and Zoo all feel so ordinary compared to other archetypes. Right now my most promising lead is to commit a little more to artifacts like you do in the Penny Cube.



vs



Without bringing in inefficiently costed support like Cultivator of Blades or Marionette Master. When brainstorming of other ways to increase artifact interaction, I got to thinking about the Welder interactions and Land Recursion already present in the cube....the full suite of artifact lands could be great here:



Which have all sorts of additional applications. I also caught Alfonzo's use of this jawn in his Bonzo Cube:



Which could be very promising alongside Grim Flayer for a grindy artifact version of the Rock. Some other misc support:



I'm also considering foregoing the Living Death archetype, as it is a little discordant with all of the delve cards, and things like Scrapheap Scrounger.

I always want to include cards like:

Replenish
Scrap Mastery
Splendid Reclamation
Living Death
Rise from the Tides

But having an effect like this in almost every color sets up a formulaic interaction across all colors that I'd prefer to avoid = bin tons of cards and cast the haymaker spell. Cutting Living Death, could open me up to bringing in Scrap Mastery....relegating Black's relationship with the graveyard to be more about incremental value (Diabolic Servitude, Dread Return, Bloodghast, delve, scrounger) and one shot effects (Apprentice Necromancer, Makeshift Mannequin).

These are just thoughts for now. I'm going to be tweaking this idea to see if its promising before introducing the package into my environment. The test draft will reside here until then:

http://www.cubetutor.com/viewcube/61719
 
inscho

inscho

Got in a 5 man draft on Thursday. We drafted 4 packs of 15, burning the last four as there were a couple new guys to the cube. I do this as it makes things a lot easier for newcomers...you get to see more cards, get more first picks...more second chances in the drafting process.

Anyways, I finally successfully drafted the Lands Matters deck, and oof it was brutal.












Other decks were a Bant Control, Team America, Rakdos Aggro, and Golgari Midrange.



and



and



and



It was just ridiculous. I had enough life gain to keep aggro at bay, which has been historically the biggest problem for this deck. I've drafted the archetype 3-4 times previously and have always folded to aggro.

I've probably given this deck far too many bombs I'm going to give it a few more outings before I do any neutering, as I think I lucked out with my drafters dishing me all the good stuff this go around.

I lost the other draft decks so this is a pretty lean draft recap.
 
inscho

inscho

Rasmus Källqvist said:
Loam seems like such a fun techy card. How much support do you feel it needs to really start showing its potential?
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That's a difficult question to answer. In one sense, Loam is a one-card engine. It is a slow, but reasonable source of value by itself. If your cube supports graveyard synergies, its stock immediately goes up as you're binning Deep Analysis and Call of the Herd. The presence and density of fetchlands also add to its value as well as speed in effectiveness. Same for Cycle, Bicycle lands, and Man Lands. Same for delve, discard mechanics, threshold, etc. How much support you need for it to be impactful is directly proportionate to your cube's power level. It'll necessitate playtesting.

Some support in varying degrees of power:


and more.

To move LftL beyond pure value and highlight it as a pivotal archetype component you'll need a couple archetypes for which it plays an obvious role. For me, it plays a key role in the Wildfire, Stax, Lands, and Oath archetypes in my cube. I had a lot of support already present so it's a no-brainer for me, and has proven to be a favorite card in my cube.
 
inscho

inscho

Now with 100% more combo:

http://www.cubetutor.com/viewcube/86266

For the past year, I've tried tossing in Storm and Academy Rector Combos into my cube every couple months without finding a way to organically integrate them. Usually combo-oriented cubes are very "on-rails" drafting experiences to me, and I've been hunting for a way to reduce the amount of combo-only slots.

The printing of Crow Storm finally gave me enough incentive to stick to it, and what I have right now looks pretty good on paper to me. I hope that I can take it for a test drive soon. While most combos are finite, there are a couple infinite combos. However, these combos require assembling several pieces.

Other changes:

-This update solidifies the Simic section a bit more for me. Supported Archetypes are: Oath, Storm, Turboland, and Madness Aggro. I'm not sure why I hadn't pushed Madness in Simic previously, but it easily slots into a graveyard oriented cube. I'm excited for all of the flying Wurms in my future.

-Currently foregoing Living Death to push the Twilight's Call /Flayer of the Hatebound combo.

-At this point I'm pretty sold on incentivizing artifact themes in aggro. It gives Orzhov creature strategies a little more depth beyond hatebears and tokens.

-With a little bump in creature-based haymakers, removal has been powered up slightly to police.

-The density of cycling effects has been substantially increased.

One thing I'm trying to sort out:

-I feel that I need one or two cards that bridge the gap between Academy Rector and Show and Tell. So Overwhelming Splendor and something else might be making an appearance?
 
sigh

sigh

inscho said:
I've never seen this card in action. Is it not just ridiculously broken in half? I guess it might not be too much as I don't have an abundance of card-netting card draw available in the cube?
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TBH I'm not sure how it performs in cube either. Usually it's game-winning off the back of huge draw spells, so I dunno with just "normal" draw spells. My gut says it's a strong "ramp" effect, and maybe if your hand is stacked it's curtains, but it's certainly the most evocative enchant I can think of to get with the rector.
 
inscho

inscho

sigh said:
TBH I'm not sure how it performs in cube either. Usually it's game-winning off the back of huge draw spells, so I dunno with just "normal" draw spells. My gut says it's a strong "ramp" effect, and maybe if your hand is stacked it's curtains, but it's certainly the most evocative enchant I can think of to get with the rector.
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Well, I'm cubing tomorrow with Omniscience in the mix, along with Sandwurm Convergence, and maybe Overwhelming Splendor.

I also added an old pet card that I expect to have a lot of game:



I'm envisioning a scenario with Dream Halls or Omniscience that involves comboing out via careful sequencing and rationing of resources. Not to mention being fun with graveyard shenanigans, and Wild Mongrel and co.
 
inscho

inscho

4 man draft on Thursday. Drafted 4 Packs of 15, burned the last four. I like to do this if people are unfamiliar with the cube as it makes it a little easier to draft cohesive decks seeing that many cards. The decks:

3-0:











2-1:









1-2:










0-3:










Some notes:
The 3-0 Mono Blue deck had almost drafted all the pieces to go mono blue storm, but had no way to recycle his deck and not enough cheap cantrips. Sitting in his sideboard was:



Hard call, but at least Future Sight should've made the maindeck. There was an Academy Ruins that was burned that would've been perfect for this deck.

I drafted the Sneak Attackless Sneak Attack deck. EDIT: I had a lot of angles to explore left in the sideboard as I was ultimately a couple pieces shy of pushing artifacts or enchantments:




I got tripped up on mana against the mono-blue deck which gave him time to set up Rise from the Tides, and almost lost to the Gruul deck stumbling on mana. Flayer of the Hatebound was regularly comboing out people dealing between 9-18 damage in a single turn. It single-handedly won me at least 3 games over the course of the night.

I chalk up the Gruul and Golgari deck's performance to slight misbuilds due to an unfamiliarity with the cube environment. Gruul didn't grab the wheeling Become Immense and Berserk for game ending umph, and petered out a little after opponents stabilized. Golgari didn't get enough disruption and was stuck spinning its wheels sacrificing and recurring lands ad infinitum by letting Smallpox, Death Cloud, and Inquisition of Kozilek wheel, and not maindecking his Rude Awakening.

It was rewarding to see all theaters of play represented: Aggro, Midrange, Control, and Combo in such a small group of people. I think all decks were fairly competitive, and had the opportunity to excel against the others had some slightly different decisions been made.
 
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