Inscho's Graveyard Combo Cube

inscho

inscho

dbs said:
I'm very sympathetic to this. I had one too many narrow artifact support cards and since those cards were concentrated in UR it made it less natural to run artifacts outside that color combination. I may more drastically cut back on "artifact only" cards in the future to let people focus on adding an artifact dimension to other archetypes instead, which I find more interesting from a draft perspective. But to start I've just cut a few like



These were all fun cards that saw play, but they fit into too few decks, and resulted in way too many redundant pieces. I do really want to put Emry in, but since I play (and like) Sai, I feel I just don't have the space without exacerbating that same problem.
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I've noticed the recent edits to your cube, and like what I've seen....definitely facing some similar issues in our respective cubes (shocker). I am surprised to see Aethermage being cut as it seemed quintessentially "mox cube".

Maybe both Engineer and Trading Post should go....

I've also taken a page out of Dom's book and added more Artifact aggro options - some colorless attackers and a small equipment suite. The equipment in particular has felt quite good - it really helps the aggro decks have a little extra play while providing natural artifact synergies. Again, this is less focused on an "artifact archetype" as such.
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Artifact integration into aggro archetypes and to a lesser extent reanimator was a big revelation for my cube. Definitely cool to see you exploring that.

I've now gotten quite a bit of testing with Urza, and the card is busted. I think right now (if I'm drafting to win) it's at virtually the top of my pick order. Strong enough to pull me in a different direction halfway through pack two. It's generically good without combo elements, and with even a little bit of combo potential you get huge turns. Right now I wouldn't cut it because we're having a lot of fun exploring what the card can do in different combo shells... but I have a pretty distinct feeling he'll get the axe in a couple months. Kind of reminds me of Titania which I cut for similar reasons, but she stayed around for quite a while because we liked playing her.
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Urza did give me some Titania vibes....a card I'm reluctantly trying again. I needed a straight forward way for the midrange lands matter decks to end the game. They were too often snails-paced, focusing on gaining incremental advantage. You can only end so many games on the back of recurred manlands and Loam-fed Zombie Infestation tokens. I'll have to think on Urza some more....I'm not sure the artifact decks need the same juice.
 
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Dom Harvey

Dom Harvey

Contributor
I'm going to be scaling back on a lot of the narrower artifacts and 'artifacts matter' cards as I found they were harder to make work than I hoped. Scrap Trawler is one of my favourite cards of all time but it never came together in practice. Even my beloved Goblin Welder has been more demanding than I expected (I think Emry is in that category too but I like it as a rare crossover between the artifact and self-mill themes).

I don't think Urza is one of those, though - the card is perfectly fine with a handful of artifacts in your deck and incredible with more. The base rate on the card is solid and that makes it easier to justify chasing the highs you can get with it. By contrast, Titania was always a boom or bust card for me - either I had one or two fetchlands and it was lacklustre even in the lands-themed green decks it's meant to shine in or I had some absurd combo deck with Gargadon or Zuran Orb or the like and lots of ways to find Titania where it was the centrepiece of the entire deck.

I can't endorse Thassa's Oracle enough, btw - it's hard to convey how much stronger and more interesting it is than Laboratory Maniac
 
inscho

inscho

Dom Harvey said:
I'm going to be scaling back on a lot of the narrower artifacts and 'artifacts matter' cards as I found they were harder to make work than I hoped. Scrap Trawler is one of my favourite cards of all time but it never came together in practice. Even my beloved Goblin Welder has been more demanding than I expected (I think Emry is in that category too but I like it as a rare crossover between the artifact and self-mill themes).
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Oddly enough, I'm having too much success with my artifact enablers.....the deck is just too easy to draft with the current volume of support. Scrap Trawler has been an mvp for me, but I run more graveyard support than the average cube. The one I had the most difficulty integrating that you supported at one time was Arcbound Ravager. Which offers great lines of play an interesting decision trees, but proved to be just too narrow for me.

I don't think Urza is one of those, though - the card is perfectly fine with a handful of artifacts in your deck and incredible with more. The base rate on the card is solid and that makes it easier to justify chasing the highs you can get with it. By contrast, Titania was always a boom or bust card for me - either I had one or two fetchlands and it was lacklustre even in the lands-themed green decks it's meant to shine in or I had some absurd combo deck with Gargadon or Zuran Orb or the like and lots of ways to find Titania where it was the centrepiece of the entire deck.
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Perhaps Urza is worth testing then. So you've officially moved away from Titania? What lands matter support cards are you currently interested in? I really enjoy the aggro loam decks, and don't want the land support to be exclusively regulated to Stax strategies. I did like Countryside Crusher when I ran it, but was a little narrow and I ended up cutting it for Seasoned Pyromancer

I can't endorse Thassa's Oracle enough, btw - it's hard to convey how much stronger and more interesting it is than Laboratory Maniac
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I haven't played it yet, but this has been my assumption...value in reanimating and flickering...wins on the spot...baseline defensive body....the only time I don't prefer Oracle over Maniac is in decks that would combo out via Wheel effects which is a fairly successful deck in my cube. Hopefully Jace WoM will fill that static win condition need, although I'm a little turned off by the triple blue color commitment.
 
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Dom Harvey

Dom Harvey

Contributor
I'll write this up in my thread at some point but the lands matter question comes down to whether you want your decks to care about specific utility/build-around lands or just having a bunch of lands to shuffle between zones. If you care about certain lands you can dig for them quite consistently between Vessel of Nascency, Satyr Wayfinder, Once Upon a Time, Primeval Titan, and so on. If you just want to have a lot of lands, the usual suspects like Multani, Yavimaya Avatar's or Avenger of Zendikar are great as they scale with the number of lands you have but are still fine top-end cards in a normal green deck with a smattering of ramp. I've liked Cavalier of Thorns as a useful midgame card that's generally playable and supports graveyard mechanics as well as both quality and quantity approaches to lands.
 
inscho

inscho

Over the last couple weeks, Bonzo's cube has properly poisoned my brain and sent me hurtling towards an existential cube crisis. I was already feeling a little exhausted with this cube, spending the better part of quarantine poking around with the Peasant format. The peasant experiment was as enlightening as it was limiting, and Alf's cube came in at the perfect time to help guide me back to this project.

When I settled into the basic structure for this cube, a lot of the power level was dictated by the Azorius and Selesnya archetypes. At the time, I felt that those decks were predominately goodstuff blink and value decks that weren't that interesting. So I added gobs of cheat into play cards to increase my interest in the guild's archetypes: show and tell, tinker, oath of druids, academy rector, dream halls, etc and while Artisan of Kozilek is no Emrakul, it still very much governed the power level of the rest of the cube.....once you have dream halls in your cube, you're legally obligated to support storm, right?

Fast forward to today, and an awful lot of cards have been printed that cover many of those glaring holes that I'd faced before the great "Combo Winter" of my cube's development.

My primary gripe with this version of the cube was how much of an esoteric on rails drafting experience it fostered: While I supported over 40 distinct archetypes with the cube, there were essentially one optimal way to draft each of those archetypes. There was no exploration or intuition just fastbond and gifts ungiven ( ;) ). If you weren't pulling from the dense history of magic, you likely weren't aware of half of the archetypes. The result was an alienating headache of a format....an unwelcoming puzzle box rather than a friendly cube. My friends would sit down with their beers, and spend the next 6 hours with furrowed brows, scratching their heads in silence.

Where does that bring me to now? Maybe a bit closer to the cube I started out with four years ago.


Cubecobra WIP List


A quick summary of changes I'm tinkering reshaping (I'm aware I need help) with:
  • Restructured landbase:Triomes, Bouncelands, Bicyle Lands, Fetches and ODY Cycle Lands. Oddly similar to my jumping off point for this cube in 2016:
    The other defined aspect of this cube is the mana base:
    [*]full sets of both bounce lands
    [*]full sets of both cycle lands
    [*]full set of fetches
    Click to expand...
This emphasizes hand and graveyard interactions as a foundation of the cube. Magic is a game of resource management, and this is amplified in many of the cube's archetypes as lands, hand, library, and graveyard are leveraged for value.
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  • Less combo: there still is quite a bit of "combo" but there are bound to creature form and don't result in an noninteractive gaming experience. No Overwhelming Splendor, Mindslaver, Thousand Year Storm, etc.
  • Less tutors: Between looting and tutors there was a lot less meat to decks, because a smaller pool of cards were leveraged to work for more decks. The redundancy reduced the sense of imagination and creativity, and was all about optimization and streamlining.
  • Increased nuance and card interactivity: This is something I pulled from Alf's cube that he does so well. I want there to be more subtly sophisticated interactions.
  • Lower power level: The power level is still fairly high, but with the removal of a lot of the format's boogeymen and value critters, things are a lot more reasonable. Land destruction while still present, has been toned down quite a bit.
  • Doubling down on primary themes: Discard, sacrifice, and land based mechanics have been increased. Cycling is now a subtheme.
  • Greater intuitiveness: I hope that by nuking the fringe archetypes and oblique combos, and doubling down on the primary themes, it will result in an easier drafting experience for my friends, and the process of drafting will be more of discovery than solving.
Some new archetypes:
Yidaro's Astral Approach:

Selesnya Astral Ramp:

Azorius Blinkets:


Would appreciate any test drafts, and comments. I'm still corralling this list a bit, and I'm sure I overlooked some good cards, and that some unnecessarily powerful remnants from the previous version remain.
 
Nemo

Nemo

I drafted a welder deck. I passed on Saheeli, Sublime Artificer in this deck since I wanted all the creatures. I took Makeshift Munitions, but I don't think any deck would prefer that over Goblin Bombardment. Welder artifact decks are my idea of a good time, so that was fun to draft.

My other draft ended up like this:

Astral Drakes











That's all five of the triomes, which is entertaining. This deck might be too slow, but it looks like a pretty fun list to me.
 
inscho

inscho

Thanks for the drafts!


Just sharing a couple spicy draft decks from other folks:


Dom's UG Self Mill:










(broken images = Barrin, Tolarian Archmage and Waker of Waves)


Zubat's UB Lab Maniac Control:










(broken images = Barrin, Tolarian Archmage and Waker of Waves)


These two mill decks take full advantage of the increased flexibility of all the new blue cycling cards which are easily some of my favorite new cube cards. It's hard to express how profoundly they alter gameplay in a positive way. It feels like we are entering the gilded age of cube design with all of these new releases. So many possibilities, and subtle dynamism.


Dom's Sneak Rielle:










I really like this use of sneak attack in a control build, and how much leverage you can get out of rielle. That card is crazy good. Similar to my affinity for all of the new blue cycling spells, Yidaro was such a welcomed addition in my cube, and it subtly adds a lot of dimension to the cycle and sneak decks.


Dom's BRu Rielle Combo:









(Broken image = Ghostly Pilferer)

Love how quickly Dom exploited the explosiveness of the discard matters suite. Rielle is again leveraged to full effect here. I can't wait to see something like this in action. You know you're in for some big turns with this deck.


Minox's UW Spells Tokens










I'm a big fan of the azorius prowess token deck. Another great card in this deck is Dusk // Dawn. Minox had the beginnings of a blink pool in his sideboard which is an easy pivot for this archetype. I'm a bit leery of the mana curve in azorius in particular. The cycling cards help, but when you need to actually play stuff to impact the board, it can feel bit congested as I have it designed. Not sure if Increasing Devotion is the right card for my cube, and I've temporarily cut Conjecture.


I appreciate y'all taking it for a spin!
 
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inscho

inscho

Dom Harvey said:
Was going to post my decks myself but couldn't access Cubecobra! I really like how the Cube has evolved and how it looks right now - it feels more deep and streamlined
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Thanks! I'm pretty pleased with how much tidier the last few sets have made things. I really struggled to find interesting identities in Bant and resorted to Show and Tell, Tinker, Dream Halls, Oath of Druids type cards to create interest. So Bant was essentially governing the overall power level of the cube, and forcing me to weaponize the other guilds in ways I didn't love. With the introduction of a larger pool of playable cycling spells and deeper artifact synergies, I was able to drop the power level down and still keep things interesting. Things feel less dichotomous now, and I agree that things tie together in a much cleaner way.

(incoming thought diarrhea)

I still feel that Selesnya could still use some tweaking....I don't feel 100% confident in the way the token deck manifests right now.

It has a little ramp angle:


Little pump:


A little ramp and pump


These feel like they work together in a positive way

But then I just added Champion of Lambholt to play on the creaturefall of the tokens....and it makes me want to bring back:



Which makes me want to bring back convoke cards:



The trouble is finding the space for it all!

Do I want Triplicate Spirits over Increasing Devotion? Devotion is a buildaround, game-changer which feels very needed.....and is spicy in it's own right with the earthcraft effects.

Maybe I need a different combo payoff that's not so centered on the creaturefall angle?

I was slotting in Eidolon of Countless Battles, but if felt like an odd-duck, because I wanted another companion for it like:



Which feels a little too generically good for the cube and Appeal // Authority and Angelic Exaltation feels a little too weak and out of place.

Then I was thinking maybe I should find a mana sink like Jade Mage, but I haven't found something that feels quite right. Sprout Swarm is a little too tediously repetitive.

I think I'd ideally have a non-tribal version of:


(but perhaps it's good enough?)


maybe?


I'm essentially agonizing over 2 cube slots, but it matters!
 
GalacticTraveler12

GalacticTraveler12

I have been eyeing Squirrel Wrangler myself, but I'm not totally sure it's strong enough for your cube. Compared to Goblin trenches, which is a fairly solid card but not overwhelmingly strong, you pay one more mana to get the effect on a 2/2 body and have the option to team pump, though the latter ability I'm sure would make the card stand out more in long games than the trenches. There aren't many ways to get +3/+3 on your whole team short of an Overrun, so at the end of your opponent's turn when you have 7 mana, making 4 dudes, and then on your own turn playing one more land and giving your Squirrels all +3/+3, overall representing at least four 4/4s, more if you already had some squirrels, is pretty respectable, as you're swinging for 16.

I think Wrangler, like the similar Soratami Mindsweeper, probably plays better than it looks, because Secure the Wastes and Increasing Confusion are after all powerful effects (at least, the latter is when you're playing 40-card decks, the format is somewhat slow, and you have other mill cards), but because you lose lands, they are definitely things you do either to close out the game, or in the case of Squirrel Wrangler, frantically use in an attempt to forestall your own demise and pray you'll draw into a Splendid Reclamation or something and turn the game around. This is all to say that Squirrel Wrangler will probably play either underwhelmingly, when your game plan doesn't end up revolving around it, rather depressing but subtly useful, when you're using it to buy time, or like a satisfying doomsday clock, when you win with it. Of course, all I did was describe a mana sink, but the fact that you reduce your own mana capacity by using the ability really amplifies the typical mana sink characteristics.
 
inscho

inscho

GalacticTraveler12 said:
I have been eyeing Squirrel Wrangler myself, but I'm not totally sure it's strong enough for your cube. Compared to Goblin trenches, which is a fairly solid card but not overwhelmingly strong, you pay one more mana to get the effect on a 2/2 body and have the option to team pump, though the latter ability I'm sure would make the card stand out more in long games than the trenches. There aren't many ways to get +3/+3 on your whole team short of an Overrun, so at the end of your opponent's turn when you have 7 mana, making 4 dudes, and then on your own turn playing one more land and giving your Squirrels all +3/+3, overall representing at least four 4/4s, more if you already had some squirrels, is pretty respectable, as you're swinging for 16.

I think Wrangler, like the similar Soratami Mindsweeper, probably plays better than it looks, because Secure the Wastes and Increasing Confusion are after all powerful effects (at least, the latter is when you're playing 40-card decks, the format is somewhat slow, and you have other mill cards), but because you lose lands, they are definitely things you do either to close out the game, or in the case of Squirrel Wrangler, frantically use in an attempt to forestall your own demise and pray you'll draw into a Splendid Reclamation or something and turn the game around. This is all to say that Squirrel Wrangler will probably play either underwhelmingly, when your game plan doesn't end up revolving around it, rather depressing but subtly useful, when you're using it to buy time, or like a satisfying doomsday clock, when you win with it. Of course, all I did was describe a mana sink, but the fact that you reduce your own mana capacity by using the ability really amplifies the typical mana sink characteristics.
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Yeah, it’s definitely not strong enough for my environment, but I do admire its design. I remember desperately trying to make it a thing in constructed almost 20(!) years ago :D

I’d love to see the design revisited and improved upon slightly
 
inscho

inscho

Tweaked some selections to open up Gruul and Izzet.

A couple more sample decks:

Izzet Lab Man Turbo Loot










Selesnya Land Tilling











Gruul Angry Birds & Wurms







 
inscho

inscho

I’ve almost run this a few times



And these will always have a special place in my heart:



But yeah prophecy is one of the worst sets for sure
 
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Onderzeeboot

Onderzeeboot

Ecstatic Orb
inscho said:


Forgot about this card....it could almost be decent in my cube :D

There's also:



(BTW I'm totally cool with my cube blog turning into a masques block nostalgia club)
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Mercadian Masques may be the only regular set where the reprinted commons are better than all of the new cards :')

vs.

I will love this set forever because of one card though...



What a legend! :D
 
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