Inscho's Graveyard Combo Cube

[inscho]

Don't mind me, just shuffling things around again...

I threw Young Pyromancer, Murktide Regent, and Sedgemoor Witch into the cube without adjusting enough infrastructure for them to thrive. With that and the freshly spoiled Third Path Iconoclast in mind, I'm trying to carve out some extra support for spell density:

Out:


In:


I may find a slot for Body Launderer one of these days, but I underestimated how much I'd miss Dark Ritual. The sacrifice deck has plenty of toys.

 

[safra]

DRit is the way and the life

 

[inscho]

DRit is the way and the life

It took me a second to realize you meant Dark Ritual (brain is not firing on all cylinders this morning)....in that second I found this on google and got even more confused by your comment:

https://www.wordnik.com/words/drit

 

[safra]

see, as a storm player i don't have TIME for the full card names, because i have to play so many of them in a row. drit drit ad naus petal petal burning wish doomsday iu petal petal wraith oracle i win

 

[inscho]

see, as a storm player i don't have TIME for the full card names, because i have to play so many of them in a row. drit drit ad naus petal petal burning wish doomsday iu petal petal wraith oracle i win

It's like my dad expecting me to divine the meaning of his abbreviaton of full sentences in texts

him: hydwiluttys

me: ???????

But he's retired, and has nothing but time on his hands

 

[N0oh]

I like your changes overall (and it reminds me I need to find room for daze). I still like flame jab more than lava dart tho.
A bit sad to see spellbinder leaving, white aggro is usually the combo-nonsense-deck predator in my meta and spellbinder is a premium piece.

 

[inscho]

I like your changes overall (and it reminds me I need to find room for daze). I still like flame jab more than lava dart tho.

I'm excited to have Daze in the cube again. It's an especially nice addition for the dredge decks that slant towards tempo, and free spells are fun!

I like the idea of Flame Jab more. However, Jab started to feel slow a while ago, looks like I last ran it in v3. Once I cut Glint-Horn Buccaneer, Archfiend of Ifnir, Monastery Mentor, and Young Pyromancer there were a noticeable lack of synergy payoffs. However, there is now Containment Construct, The Raven Man, and Currency Converter and Peezy and Mentor are back in the mix so the support could be there.

I definitely thought about running Jab instead of Dart when I made the change. I'm also eyeing the potential return of my beloved Raven's Crime.

I'll think on it some more. It's a fun card. I can easily see a Jund Loam deck with Crime and Jab and The Raven Man

A bit sad to see spellbinder leaving, white aggro is usually the combo-nonsense-deck predator in my meta and spellbinder is a premium piece.

Same! It came down to cutting one of Spellbinder, Blade Splicer, or Flickerwisp (although I suspect cutting my pet card Vesperlark might be the better option ). What do you think?

 

[blacksmithy]

vesperlark is probably the cut, but haven’t played it in this format to really know what all it can do

 

[inscho]

vesperlark is probably the cut, but haven’t played it in this format to really know what all it can do

It used to do a lot of different things. Looking at the vesperlark spotlight in the OP primer from two versions ago:

body double
emry, lurker of the loch
soul herder
arcbound ravager
triskelion
goblin welder
bone shredder
wall of omens
archaeomancer
epochrasite
apprentice necormancer
blood artist
weaponcraft enthusiast
marionette master
satyr wayfinder
fiend artisan
perilous myr
springbloom druid
sakura-tribe elder
stitcher's supplier
multani, yavimaya's avatar
thassa's oracle
wall of lost thoughts

I no longer run 12 of the more bombastic targets, but I now have:
stoneforge mystic
lion sash
blade splicer
phantasmal image
urza, lord high artificer
priest of forgotten gods
goblin engineer
mogg war marshal
wall of blossoms
myr retriever
phyrexian metamorph

What I particularly like about Vesperlark (in theory) at this power level is how it enables a tight sacrifice strategy in Orzhov. By tight, I just mean low cmc and explosive:



I struggle to hold space for Nested Shambler and Undead Butler which are somewhat important cogs in the deck, but the rest of the pieces are there. You can see how few white pieces contribute to the strategy at a low cmc (there's still reveillark, karmic guide and others at a higher cmc). Cutting lark drops the octane level down a couple notches on this deck.

Beyond that, Vesperlark is a great piece in the Blinkets deck:



and is a decent enabler in the Selesnya sacrifice/blink deck with access to both draw walls, saffi, pod, etc

 

[inscho]

Lots of posting today. In trying to determine whether Flame Jab and Raven's Crime would be cute luxuries or valuable pieces in this environment, I started by thinking of the prime context for them:



The Raven Man is such a cool card. I enjoy how it has spawned an entirely new Rakdos-centric archetype in my cube. I posted a deck several days ago, but here's the card pool spelled out a little more:

Misc redundancies


and laying out cards that synergize with the above while ignoring misc utility spells that trigger Witch and Pyromancer like Lightning Bolt, Thoughtseize, etc...

Misc consistent discard:


Misc one shot discard:


Tutors:


Fuel:


Some other misc support for good measure (that I don't currently run)

 

[Erik Twice]

Great write-up! For me, The Raven Man is that second copy of Young Pyromancer we've always wanted.

 

[inscho]

Every once in a while when I feel like I have over-supported archetypes and non-essential pieces, I start from scratch slowly adding the most necessary cards one by one.

https://cubecobra.com/cube/list/4j9bw

The plan is to tweak the list at 360 until it feels like I’ve gotten the most out of it, then increase cube size if I feel like it needs it.

Testing another set of shocks over the Triomes. I love the Triomes, but I want decks to be closer to 2.25-2.5 colors than 3-3.5, and Triomes provide a lot of low risk splashing opportunities. Also coming into play tapped is feeling like more and more of a problem

I’m conflicted about the wildfire effects….land destruction has always been a defining feature of my cube and is something I enjoy. As other areas of the cube weaponize, it’s difficult for LD in red and black to keep up. The black Stax effects have been mostly cut for being too slow. Four damage still kills almost everything so maybe it’s fine. The duo of Inferno Titan and Fury definitely help the wildfire archetype keep up. Maybe I should just add a couple more mana rocks.

White always has access to Armageddon at the top of the power band and some of the Hatebears hold up at higher power levels. There’s always colorless options like Winter Orb, Rishadan Port, and Strip Mine in addition to Tangle Wire and Wasteland.

I suppose it’s not the end of the world if I cut Rakdos LD, because Red and Black are the deepest colors in a graveyard environment. There’s plenty of other useful pieces for those slots.

An aside, a card that I’ve really warmed up to:



Feels like a missing piece in what I want my white section to be doing.

Another aside, I don’t venture very far from RTL for cube discussions, but I recently stumbled across this cube

https://cubecobra.com/cube/list/synergy

With more followers than cards in the cube, it feels like I should’ve known about this list sooner lol. Just goes to show how out of touch I am with the larger community. I’m usually pretty content to stack and restack my blocks in my own corner of playground, but this is a cube with a kindred spirit. Anyone know how long it’s been around? Definitely more committed to combo than I am. I prefer combo to have an equal share in my environment as other deck axes. Fun to look through and has me testing out Krark-Clan Ironworks when I’d previously ruled it out for being too narrow. It still feels a bit narrow, but it’s growing on me

 

[Nanonox]

Wildfire:

Having drafted your latest version of the cube a bunch on Cubecobra, I can say that I've very rarely been tempted by Wildfire. The other build arounds are so much more powerful and lower on the curve that it doesn't compete for me.

I'm actually higher on Devastating Dreams because it works in as a discard outlet and the 2 mana value. And maybe that's where you could go: a discard control deck based off of Dreams and add Firestorm for redundancy.

If I want to go into land desctruction, Balance and Cataclysm are much more in line with the power level and speed of the format IMO.

To keep the mana denial plan, could there be a way to use more artifacts to complement those you already run?



Or maybe you go with more the nuclear option:



It doesn't deal with the board, but being a creature lends itself to many synergies.

The stax decks I have been able to draft were BW with hand disruption and recursion from Black and taxing effects and a clock from White.

 

[inscho]

Wildfire:

Having drafted your latest version of the cube a bunch on Cubecobra, I can say that I've very rarely been tempted by Wildfire. The other build arounds are so much more powerful and lower on the curve that it doesn't compete for me.

Yeah, this tracks with my suspicion. I need to decide how important land destruction really is to my format's goals.

I'm actually higher on Devastating Dreams because it works in as a discard outlet and the 2 mana value. And maybe that's where you could go: a discard control deck based off of Dreams and add Firestorm for redundancy.

Dreams is pretty sick. But it's a one of one effect. I wouldn't want to run multiples of it, and it's not like wizards is itching to print more LD cards. I knew that Land Destruction was always going to have an expiration date unless I capped my power level, but I didn't know what the threshold was. I may be past the threshold for what I consider a healthy presence of proper land destruction.

Firestorm is an interesting suggestion as a "second" Dreams tho.

If I want to go into land desctruction, Balance and Cataclysm are much more in line with the power level and speed of the format IMO.

Agreed.

To keep the mana denial plan, could there be a way to use more artifacts to complement those you already run?

Possibly! I've briefly toyed around with Thorn, Needle, and Sphere of Resistance in the past. That's a reasonable path forward if I do maintain this power level.

Or maybe you go with more the nuclear option:

It doesn't deal with the board, but being a creature lends itself to many synergies.

Firebombers is pretty bad in my experience, and with curves lowering it's not that big of a tempo reset. Wildfire for one more mana is a much stronger option. Unlike Wildfire, there's no real benefit in ramping into Firebombers.

The stax decks I have been able to draft were BW with hand disruption and recursion from Black and taxing effects and a clock from White.

I've been trying to promote an Azorius version of this, but I think it's too subtle. The general idea is to use flash creatures and bounce around things like Ethersworn Canonist, and its various Force Spikes alongside white's taxing effects:



I'm hoping The Wandering Emperor is punchy enough to draw people into at least the flash side of the archetype. I'd looked into Archon of Emeria, but the archetype is so heavy on 3 drops as it is. Archon is also fairly narrow, and I'm not sure how many guilds outside of Azorius would want the effect.

Thorn, Needle and Sphere might slot into a heavier artifact version of the deck with things like:



Thorn and Sphere are a bit dangerous with how many spells this deck would want to cast, but I think they could still be viable since the deck can generate a lot of mana early.

 

[Kirblinx]

Another aside, I don’t venture very far from RTL for cube discussions, but I recently stumbled across this cube

https://cubecobra.com/cube/list/synergy

With more followers than cards in the cube, it feels like I should’ve known about this list sooner lol. Just goes to show how out of touch I am with the larger community. I’m usually pretty content to stack and restack my blocks in my own corner of playground, but this is a cube with a kindred spirit. Anyone know how long it’s been around? Definitely more committed to combo than I am. I prefer combo to have an equal share in my environment as other deck axes. Fun to look through and has me testing out Krark-Clan Ironworks when I’d previously ruled it out for being too narrow. It still feels a bit narrow, but it’s growing on me

I knew about this since it was put on MTGO earlier this year. He has put a lot of effort into it and has a pile of videos on his youtube channel on cube drafts on MTGO including a decent amount on his own cube as well. I relate to his content well, as he is a fellow Australian and Pauper brewer (formerly; hasn't done much pauper recently).

If you hadn't dug too deep, then he has written a pile about his cube on his blog, https://calebgannon.com/tag/cube/

I remember it being great when I read it. Thought you might like to read as well.

 

[inscho]

Looking for ways to spice up green's creature suite. I'm noticing Simic decks being more artifact and turboland strategies than the madness/dredge decks of the past. This is prompted in part by blue's pivot toward spells matters cards like Murktide Regent and away from things like Skaab Ruinator.

I'm currently looking at this package:



Which @dbs supports and @Erik Twice employs sans Dragonsguard. What are folks' experience with these cards?

Gro is one of my all-time favorite constructed decks:

Alex Shvartsman Miracle Gro

Creature (12) 4 Quirion Dryad 4 Gaea's Skyfolk 4 Werebear Instant (23) 4 Brainstorm 4 Force of Will 4 Gush 4 Daze 2 Foil 1 Misdirection 3 Withdraw 1 Opt Sorcery (8) 4 Sleight of Hand 4 Land Grant Enchantment (3) 3 Curiosity Artifact (4) 4 Winter Orb

Land (10) 6 Island 4 Tropical Island

Simic has a nice little suite of creatures that profit from spell volume:


It has a surplus of cheap/free spells as its disposal:


Recursion:


Most of which I already run.

Not to mention all of the cheap artifacts:


etc

This could also be an archetype for:



For a Hulkatog style win-con with things like Berserk. Gurk has bounced in and out of my list a lot as I grapple with whether to cut power outliers such as Uro, Titan of Nature's Wrath or not.

I also like how these green creatures pair with some of red's cards:


among others


What I don't love about introducing these green creatures is that they seem fairly fragile, and are somewhat narrow. They also have little appeal to Selesnya or Golgari. The latter issue might not be a big deal as Selesnya has never really cared for the Mongrels (Wild Mongrel being one likely cut with this change) and Golgari is deep enough to be able to afford losing a couple of pieces.

After laying it out some, I'm still not sure what I think.

 

[Nanonox]

This dude should definitely be a consideration. Plays with spell volume and lands. Makes all your cantrips able to hit gas since you are picking up lands for free. It also provides discard fodder with the lands in hand.
The downside is that it’s limited to instants and sorceries.


This is true for Dragonsguard Elite as well, but it’s been my experience that the combination of these two cards leads to nice Simic spell velocity tempo decks full of cantrips and counters. Similar to the UW deck you were trying to promote in an above post.
I’ve also had RG spells matter decks with a cool land package thanks to Life from the Loam being cast over and over.

The other two I am a lot less keen on in this iteration of your cube. 2 and 3 mana 1/1s is a rough place to be even if they scale. Usually these decks are pretty light on threats and your removal is efficient enough that they’ll be answered at a tempo loss.
Maybe if you had some more protective spells like these it would be more interesting:



I’ve had trouble including these spells as they usually don’t push any synergies, but they add some cool counter play and are fun gameplay wise.

 

[Dom Harvey]

Managorger Hydra is super sweet IMO - triggering off everything and for both players means it gets out of control quickly and offers tough tradeoffs for the opponent - do they develop their board and grow it even further or try to contain it where it is? By contrast I'm not a fan of the smaller ones that take several spells from you to get to the size you'd expect from the average green creature at its cost. Green is meant to have big creatures - the big selling point of Prowess etc in UR is that you get a unique sizing in those colours.

I think Berserk and Rancor are the best spells for pushing this deck in G and you have both as well as cool stuff like Become Immense so it shouldn't take too many slots if you want to explore this. Maybe Primal Might?

 

[Erik Twice]

Some thoughts.

First, I think extending "spells matter" per se, into green is not that great. It's possible and you can do it in the right cube, but I found it takes a good bite out of green's versatility to support an already great archetype. Hence, no Dragonsguard Elite.

Second, Managorger Hydra is a strong, versatile card. It has two weakness: That it starts out small and that, ultimately, being big isn't the most powerful ability. But it triggers on everything so you can play it in a variety of shells and is fun to play with. You can use it as a pseudo-storm win condition because it has trample, it works well with Rancor and Berserk as well as more spells-minded decks with storm or Life from the Loam cycling.

Third, Deeproot Champion is a mediocre card. It works, but it should have been a 2/2 to be "good". Again, being big isn't actually a game-winning ability and this one takes a long time to reach that status. For it to be on par with Tarmogoyf, you must play a lot of spells.

Do note my cube is a bit wonky in this area, so take my additions with a grain of salt.

 

[inscho]

Good points all around. I really appreciate the input.

I suppose what I fear about just running Managorger Hydra is that it will all too often just be a card the Izzet deck splashes, and it won't contribute to shoring up the green guild weaknesses I'm identifying.

With just the addition of Hydra and Slogurk the Simic archetype pool could look something like:

More spells-centric:



Or more artifact-centric:




Slogurk, the Overslime is looking pretty appealing, and it also works with dredge and land strategies. I'm less convinced on the Hydra. If I was Paradoxical Outcoming eggs or recasting spells infinitely, I think it'd make a lot more sense.

 

[Nanonox]

Another open-ended option I forgot to mention is



She isn't an explicit spell velocity payoff, but she plays well in those decks IMO.
- Baubles, Spellbombs, Smuggler's Copter, Tireless Tracker, Occult Epiphany, Ledger Shredder all trigger it from the artifact package.

- Cantrips, Jace, Remand, Miscalculation, Frantic Search, Treasure Cruise, Gush and Bazaar do the same in the spells package.

- Red's looting/rummaging effects all work well with it too, making it a solid Temur card for the decks you seem to want to support.

The gravy is how good she can be with Slogurk. Fill you hand with lands and then activate the +X/+X ability for a ton of damage.

You don't need to trigger her a lot to get value as she is just a 2 drop. Adding something like Explore and Manamorphose go a long way into supporting her (and the Hydra too while you are at it).

 

[N0oh]

Slogurk goes obviously well with wildfire/seismic assault/molten Vortex, if you needed another reason for this archetype to go Temur. It can be a whole other deck than the izzet spells splash Green you feared.

Edit : and slogurk forbid loam is such a funny plan, as long as its yours and not your opponents.

 

[inscho]

Wow, I didn't realize it's been nearly 9 months since my last post in here. Let's change that.

(Incoming ramble)

I'm slowly chipping away at an updated primer (so much has changed since v3) while I wrestle with the last 2% of my list. My struggle over the last handful of cards relate a lot to Gruul's identity in this powered up setting. For the longest time, I've tried to support 4 different archetypes in each guild. I have two constants:

Madness:


Which scales up very well at this power level with the introduction of Bazaar and Survival

Aggro Loam:


Which does just fine at this power level with Titania and Wrenn and Six and Lightning Bolt. This is mostly what the old Wildfire archetype has morphed into as my ramp suite has shifted more towards mana elves and exploration effects.

Some of the issues I'm having with resolving the final two archetypes for Gruul revolve around Green's apathy towards Red's Spells Matter and Artifact Matter cards, and Red's confusion with what to do with Green's mana elves.

Spells Matters in green mostly boil down:


Which kind of pair well with Red's:


Spell volume go wide, go big...Green also has Pest Infestation

But do I really want add Green to all of the other "spell" based token generators in all colors?


It's just a lot...and difficult to balance with everything else the cube is doing. I think about cutting half of the above on a daily basis as it is.

Then there's the hodgepog pool of gruul artifacts that kind of interact, but also don't in any truly unified sense:


This is where I'm hoping the new Eldraine Set can come through and tie some stuff together.

There's a good pod chain in there....

Gruul Artifact Pod Pool

So you have mana acceleration, mana sinks, sacrifice, recursion...and they all loosely feed into one another.

The above pool could definitely benefit from the persist combo:


It would also love Imperial Recruiter. I could see Memnite and Rishkar, Peema Renegade having a home here as well....Mishra's Workshop if we are feeling extra zesty.

So that seems like a pretty promising option. Just need to see whether this can be incorporated without disrupting the rest of the cube's infrastructure. It looks like about 6-10 card swaps total. Not bad.

I'll follow up with in another post with ideas for the 4th archetype. But I appreciate any input!

 

[inscho]

So I feel pretty happy with the artifact sacrifice pile as the third archetype. Turning my attention towards the 4th Gruul archetype...

I wish I felt good about Green's contributions to the Sneak Attack deck, but with Feldon of the Third Path fading out of relevance, See the Unwritten being outclassed, and much of the Cube's top end threats being trimmed down, that's not looking very good...but let's see if it's workable. This is what I have right now:



Fury and Old One Eye are very cool with Sneak Attack, but the deck is pretty thin on support. Green's options for suplementing the cheat strategy aren't great:



I like Symbiosis the most of these. I could definitely see Pattern working here with so much of the archetype being Welder-driven sacrificing....but I don't love how it plays with the other colors. Monster Manual is cute, but looks a bit silly next to Entomb > Reanimate.

Setting that aside for now.

Another archetype that I've used a lot in the past is the Berserkers archetype, often in the context of madness decks like:




However, Madness doesn't really need to get cute with things like Reckless Charge, Flamewake Phoenix, and Become Immense when it's dropping 4 power creatures for next to nothing. But maybe it could move towards a midrangey monsters deck:



I like the big dudes that kill your stuff theme, and it feels like there's something there. I think Questing Beast is too much, and I'm not super into Rhythm of the Wilds (although I like that it can be a combo enabler).

Setting that aside.

I also have toyed around with a Gruul Turboland deck in the past. Let's see what that could look like here:



Analogous to the aggro loam deck, just substituting aggro for more top end and focusing less on resource denial.

Maybe Shatterskull Smashing could make an appearance here? I run many of these cards already, but it feels like it is lacking some the gravity to entice drafters to go this route. Inferno Titan could be that draw. I cut it just because it seemed redundant with the printing of Fury, and I preferred the latter's multiple modes....but I could definitely run both.

So that's where I'm at with Gruul right now.

 

[Nanonox]

Edit: just saw your new post after I posted mine. Hopefully it’s still relevant!

I haven’t had great success with the spells matters in Gruul. The lack of instants and sorceries in Green has been an issue. I usually have to splash Blue or Black to get a sufficient density, making them 3 color cards more often than not.

Have you given up on the Berserkers game plan?



It can go into artifacts thanks to Blades, Enbercleave and Phyrexian Dragon Engine. The discard decks can use it with Mongrel, Hollow One, Mandrils and Rootwalla’s. That might be more of a supporting cast than an archetype though.

Gruul comes together in my cube, but not always in a synergistic way. It’s a hodgepodge of good cards and curve to beat down.
One piece of the cube that sometimes ties my Gruul decks together are artifact fatties.
They go right into the Earthcraft, Ashnod’s Altar, Ironworks, Academy, Cradle decks as top end, but they also fit nicely into a cheat package



I realize that that’s a lot of four drops, but if you can use an accelerant on turn 2 that is plenty fast enough (Mind Stone or Explore type cards). Oath is a bit of a bummer since you exclude Green’s artifact producers, but but the Manual is usually a second Sneak Attack.



Jinnie Fay has been an amazing payoff for
all the artifacts you can produce. Turning inoffensive game pieces into real threats.