Thanks everyone for your thoughts and drafts. I'm feeling better about my cube than I have in a long time, tbh. I've identified a few things that really helped me get out of the rut I was in with my cube:
1)
Increasing graveyard interaction: For the reason Grillo just stated, but also just pushing graveyard interaction to be more of a state of the cube environment rather than a singular strategy was important. As with anything, there's a point in which the graveyard interaction goes from being interesting and productive to becoming a hokey cartoon drafting experience....zeroing in on that line in the sand has been a process.
2)
Increasing the role of artifacts: Shifting the artifact deck from being a purely izzet deck to having a role in Reanimator, Stax, control and aggro strategies has been a revelation for me. Colorless pivot cards really free up cube real estate, and adds a dynamism to drafting thats counter to the generic p1p1
Wurmcoil Engine phenomenon.
Dom recently posted some good thoughts on this.
3)
Embracing combo: Most of my favorite formats had some kind of combo deck in the environment. Not as much because I love playing combo, but I appreciate how it demands the "self-awareness" other strategies....I have an affinity for durdling, but an environment that just lets decks spin their wheels without paying much mind towards disrupting your opponent's strategy is pure hellish misery to me. The presence of combo incentivizes disruption, and adds another layer of complexity to the drafting process.
4)
Embracing resource denial: If I was going to let decks do unfair things, I needed to give other strategies meaningful ways to interact beyond counterspells and discard which is purely focused on timing and chance. Previously, this meant just running
Braids, Cabal Minion,
Wildfire,
Tangle Wire, and
Smokestack and calling it a day, but that has been expanded on by quite a bit now.
Current things on my mind:
1) Shoring up the identity of Azorius. The main decks I see at the moment are Artifact Control, Prowess Tokens, and Rector/Show and Tell. There's a pretty uninspiring Skies deck. The guild is in better shape than its been in a while, but I feel like each archetype needs some tweaking.
2) Making control strategies more alluring. Increasing the presence of control in general, but specifically interpreting the old school draw-go deck into my environment. I feel like it's almost there with
Gifts Ungiven acting like
Intuition >
Accumulated Knowledge with all of the flashback and graveyard oriented cards, but it's needs to be fleshed out and refined
3) Exploring where the tipping point is for artifact density.
4) Identifying superfluous additions. A couple months ago, I sat down and wrote out every 2 color archetype I could imagine. I made three columns: one for each color in the archetype and one of colorless. I counted how many cards in each color were usable towards the archetype and notated that number in each corresponding column. It was a little arduous, but really helped me addressing where best to shift resources. I need to do that again. Just need a few free hours. Maybe I'll call in sick one day from work.
