By now a sensible person would've stopped fiddling and let their revisions soak in, but I'm in too deep. If I pull away now, I'll forget a lot of the intricacies I'm weaving, and I'm just enjoying exploring this creative space for the moment. I've done a lot of sample drafts over the last couple days just to get a feel for the distribution of themes and in draft decision-making. In a lot of ways the adventure cards mimic the multiple modes of cycling, and I'm really enjoying the flexibility cycling affords...so adding a couple more adventure cards seems like a good idea:
Out:
In:
Fumigate was leftover synergy for the
Alhammarret's Archive deck. That's an easy swap. Cutting the Phoenix hurts a little more because I was pretty enchanted by the novelty of resurrecting it and
Phoenix of the Ash together, but I also have temporarily cut
Phoenix of the Ash to return an old favorite:
Out:
In:
I'm not sure if the phoenices will stay away for long, because the resiliency in red felt pretty great. For now, the red 3 drop section looks much more balanced, and I think will support a wider range of strategies. I've made a note to myself to think of the phoenixes anytime I see a red three drop and to consider whether I'd rather see one of them more.
With the addition of another control-based creature in white with
realm-cloaked giant, I felt comfortable cutting
Angel of Sanctions to make room to test:
Angel was initially included to fill a control void and to provide some spicy synergy with now cut
Selesnya Eulogist. Alf has given me enough fuel for my imagination to give the split card a nod for now.
Out goes more Eulogist fuel....
Out:
In:
At this point, I'm realizing that a lot of my edits last night bolster combo and explosive sequencing. Maybe that's a net negative, but I can always hit CTRL+Z and undo what I've written here. Neheb offers some tantalizing prospects, but the thing that is intriguing me the most is how it mechanically ties aggro madness with reanimator and ramp...maybe you don't have to cycle that
Yidaro, Wandering Monster after all, just cast it, etc. It also ties in land destruction and madness in a similar way to:
Wildfire Madness is one of my favorite decks in my cube, and having another piece that drives that home yet appeals to a wide range of other decks is pretty exciting. In general, I think my cube could use a little more in the midrange beef department....for that reason
Mindwrack Demon might be making an appearance soon.
Moved
Scrapheap Scrounger to colorless and cut the errant 4th orzhov card
Corpse Knight for:
Lose a little resiliency, gain a little. I want to see a little more aggro in the black decks, and I'm a big fan of the Champion. Anything that incentivizes attacking is always welcomed. There's enough off color fixing in the Triomes and fetching to make me feel comfortable in folks running scrounger off an incidental splash.
Out:
In:
I'm not sure how I forgot Memory Jar. My sneak/cheat decks have plenty of weapons outside of Vat. Pretty easy cut.
Out:
In:
No longer under the thumb of
Dreadhorde Arcanist's design constraints, I can now be a little more flexible with my discard suite, and the importance of exiling the card is at an all-time high.
Out:
In:
Blue's spells was having a lot of congestion, and I was noticing that some decks were going to have a hard time actually casting spells and impacting the board. You can't always just cycle away everything...you occasionally have to cast something to trigger that
Young Pyromancer or
Monastery Mentor. Commit is a little more clunky in the absence of
Torrential Gearhulk. Testing
Sidisi's Faithful, because I see some potential in blue's contribution to the sacrifice theme.
Slots currently in question:
Currently under consideration:
Thanks for reading!
