Inscho's Turn 2 Cube

ahadabans

ahadabans

Cytoplast Root-Kin is borderline but Elite Scaleguard is a sweet payoff card. I'd keep at least that one (though both are valuable for PitchesToForce.archetype).

You don't want Woodland Wanderer IMO. It's too easy to make it huge and vigilance/trample on something that large and that cheap is no bueno at this power level.

Other suspect cards in my mind.
Nyx-fleece Ram: Is that really encouraging aggressive decks?
Chasm Skulker: Very swingy. It's either crap or it makes a million babies and kills people. I didn't care for it but YMMV.
Solemn Simulacrum: Pure value card and probably auto first pick level in this cube. If it's there to push artifacts it won't be broken per se, but I'm not feeling that power level on colorless stuff personally.
Scuttling Doom Engine: Again, 6 mana for a 6/6 evasive threat that double lava spikes on death is pretty good value for colorless. It could wind up the Wurmcoil Engine of your meta (great value card which gets slammed into any deck that gets to 6 mana).

Lots of blink effects + lots of token makers + lots of ETB = broken at pretty much all power levels. Looks like you are already culling a lot of that, but you probably can't overdo taking support away. Seriously. Speaking of which, I love ghostly flicker, but is that really useful outside blink/landfall?

This list is coming along nicely though. I love some of the cool throw-back stuff in there (undead gladiator!). Speaking of cool throwback black creatures, how about Twisted Abomination? Cycles early (and gets a swamp specifically) and later he beats and regenerates.
 
inscho

inscho

Ok that makes a lot of sense to me. I'm definitely leery of slowly creeping up the power, so I'll bring Elite Scaleguard back....

Perhaps this guy instead of Cytoplast Root-Kin and Woodland Wanderer?



Although my Green 3's are already a little crowded.


And would be this be an alternative to Scuttling Doom Engine?:



I'll need to think about which token makers to cut. Right now, I'm thinking: Raise the Alarm, Triplicate Spirits, and Call of the Herd are pretty easy cuts.


I'll make a more thorough reply tomorrow, thanks for all of the feedback!
 
ahadabans

ahadabans

Duplicant is a really cool card. I've actually never run it in cube but been tempted many times. Can't say if it's too powerful or not, but I like that swap. Same with Renegade Krasis (never played it), though it looks pretty interesting and a nice tie in with +1/+1 counters. Give it a whirl. Double green on the cost might be a bummer is my only real concern.

Generic token producing spells I think are pretty boring personally, so I'd say you are good to cut all three of them. I have a soft spot for Call though (and it interacts nicely with discard), so if you keep any of them I'd make it that one. :)
 
Grillo_Parlante

Grillo_Parlante

Contributor
I think one thing to remember about krasis is that its kind of awkward because you are looking to both curve into it with counter creatures and than curve into another midrange card to trigger it. That might be a bit too inconsistent for cube.

No idea about duplicant in terms of power level.

I agree with cutting triplicate spirits: just a very boring card. I really like raise the alarm however, as it can be used as removal, and has all sort of niche plays. A month ago I had a darkblast on a 1/1 champion of lambholt get countered by raise the alarm in response--sweet play.

Hard to comment on call of the herd. I would cut it in a heartbeat, but the existence of the graveyard theme makes me pause.

Going to nag about outpost siege. People with much higher power formats here have cut it for being oppressive: its going to be insane in your environment.

@ghostly flicker, he can use it for ramp strategies with untappers, and also for an infinite combo.
 
japahn

japahn

I tested +1/+1 quite a bit, and found Cytoplast Root-kin really bad outside the counters deck and meh in it. Elite Scaleguard, though. That's sweet. High Sentinels was good for me - playable in other decks and awesome in counters matter.
 
Alfonzo Bonzo

Alfonzo Bonzo

Lots here to like. You've reminded me of Hammer of Bogarden again, which I'm totally stealing. I think this will be great with Pyromancer's Goggles. I like seeing Stroke of Genius here too.

I'm glad you didn't add Zo-Zu or Ankh, they are both really unfun, punishing you for what you need to do to play the game. If you did go down that road Zo-Zu is more interactive so I'd probably go with that one.

Hero of Iroas feels like a bit of a trap. I know he affects all aura's but I wuld want to suit him up, and you only have three in white, do you have enough across all colours? I'd also be looking for the 'heroic' deck, but he might be okay? Do you need more enchantments generally to go with the enchantment support? How do you feel about the white 5CC enchant land that you can tap to tap a creature?

Trinket mage might be nice here?

Is Mirror Mockery good? Skyline Cascade looks a little weak. I think I'd prefer the land that gave a creature flying.
 
inscho

inscho

Pyromancer's Goggles is a card I totally forgot about, but would really like to include. Maybe I'll cut Rite of the Raging Storm for it.

Hero discounts bestow dudes and removal auras as well. He only needs one trigger to be one of the most aggressive creatures at 2 cmc in the cube. I have been looking for other playable auras...Angelic Destiny is too powerful, but Empyrial Armor might be better suited. I think Debtor's Pulpit is likely far too slow, though I do like it with the untappers. Caustic Tar was a card I was running in my first draft that could really kill someone out of nowhere.

Now that I have Engineered Explosives in the cube, Trinket Mage has a lot more value. Suggestion on a cut?

Mirror Mockery is probably too janky, but has some really cool interactions.

Skyline Cascade has played very well so far. Giving blue some more creature control without maxing out on bounce is pretty important to me. It's not exactly necessary, but for now I like it over Soaring Seacliff. If I had more shuffle effects, Halimar Depthswould be a no brainer.
 
RavebornMuse

RavebornMuse

Pyromancer's Goggles is super fun and a more exciting finisher tool than Rite is, which imho kinda reeks of mindless game-ending baloney; a 5/x hasty trampler every turn has got to put away a game quickly.

I'll second Skyline Cascade being awesome, and it's actually close to being in my main cube. It's absurdly underrated and it always gets picked out of the ULD, no matter what.
 
inscho

inscho

Out:



In:



After slowly creeping out of my cube, Artifact.dec is getting more support.

A couple concerns:
1) I feel like the cube is dangerously approaching durdletown, and I'd like to avoid hour long games being the norm. I need to to boost aggro, and would really appreciate any opinions on what would help incentivize the strategy during a draft. I realize the absurdity of this statement as I cut a couple good aggro support cards in this update.

2) Pyromancer's Goggles is exactly what I wanted for my control decks, but it needs more support. I'm looking to cram a couple good spells in the gold section. Any suggestions?
 
Grillo_Parlante

Grillo_Parlante

Contributor
To boost aggro, I would put goblin bushwhacker back in, and add some of the red aggro token makers.





Bushwhacker is a finisher for horizontal aggro based strategies, and without on color support, the deck doesn't really exist.

It might be a good idea to include aggro haymakers like assault strobe and become immense, to play towards critical turns, and make up for their inability to consistently curve out. Otherwise those decks kind of just end up drowning.

I would also cut out the remaining of the durdle burg prison cards:





You'll probably also want to put the entire pinata deck under a microscope, as most of those cards clog the board and discourage attacks:





And other durdle creatures



Another big difference between our two lists, is that you run true sweepers, which I like to stay away from




Its really trivial in cube to find ways to run sweepers alongside creatures, and a lot of times I found that people were just using them as game resets whenever they were losing, artificially extending out games. The fact that blasphemous act is even considered a card, I feel, speaks to that phenomenon.

There exist a large number of, generally much more interesting, low power cards that allow a control deck to produce 2 or 3s for one, but which can actually be played around to some extent, or require some deck focus in draft (savage twister, starstorm, better be going big mana and have ways to do with color restrictions). This results in more interesting, skill based, game interactions, and making post "many for one" recovery time much more managable.

Blash act can just fit anywhere, earthquake needs only four mana to effectively be WOG, merciless evictions can't really be played around, and neither can winds of rath.

All a cube really is, at the end of the day, is about 10-20 decks that can be drafted within a certain range. All you're really doing is tuning those decks so that they have a presence in the format, and encouraging fun matchups.

I also kind of think the blue section is much better than the other colors. Moloku probably needs to go. It looks like it plays a similar role to skeletal vampire in my cube, but at a better mana point, more easily splashed, and in a better color.

On a happier note, I drafted this deck up, which I rather liked:

U/R tempo combo from CubeTutor.com











The gitaxian probe kind of says it all. I actually ended up choosing to stay on a fairly focused tempo plan, ignoring more powerful cards. There is a nice concentration of impactful U/R spells that encourage low CC spell velocity; enough to support a U/R tempo deck.

With some more big mana focused sweepers (rolling thunder, starstorm), you probably have the tools to support a nice U/R control deck in the same color range.

The deck looks quite fun to play. There is no guarantee that you'll be the first to get a threat on the board, putting the deck in an interesting spot of having to manipulate the game to develop its board presence at a more favorable rate than an opponents, despite initially having fallen behind. There is a little bit of a grind game that it can dip into, and it always has the ability to play towards a combo kill (facilitated by ample cantriping) to just win the game.

This is a real deck, with a clear gameplan it wants to leverage, and interesting (interactive) ways to go about doing so. This is much better than what I see often in more expensive, powered environments, where the decks are effectively high powered draft decks, working on the BREAD principle.
 
inscho

inscho

Will make a more thorough reply with the next update, but in the meantime:

Goblin Bushwhacker has never been good enough to really be called a finisher in my experience. I almost like Haze of Rage a little more with all the prowess support. I'm also thinking about these:

vs ?

Also, what would would be a good Meloku replacement? My first thought is:



I like the delve synergy a lot. But then there's also:




Is Kolaghan's Command too good here? Does Blightning go in the same deck as Pyromancer's Goggles?

VS ?
 
Grillo_Parlante

Grillo_Parlante

Contributor
I think we are kind of confusing the issue here.

Ultimately, whether you swap out bushwhacker for hero or hellrider, you still end up having the same problem: these cards are designed to be color intensive finishers in a horizontal aggro archetype that could be suffering from a few problems: 1) its not very good, 2) it lacks support. You're choices are really to either fix those issues, or pull all of these types of horizontal overrun cards (including reckless bushwhacker) and replace them with another style of aggro deck.

These cards are overrun effects, and thats the extent they can function as finishers. In order to fill that role, there has to be a cheap creature deck, looking to go wide, and that strategy has to be viable--otherwise these cards do nothing. To provide some further context, I absolutely love the card hellrider, and run it in the innistrad them cube--where it hasn't been particularly great, and the reason is because that cube never really featured cheap red token production.

Hero and hellrider also have the problem that because of the higher CC requirements, they tend to want higher mana counts, which naturally cause drafters to push the curve up into more bombtastic midrange territory, while bushwhaker's {R}{R} cost tends to have the opposite effect. The really brilliant thing about the bushwhackers is that they can act as overrun effects for low CC decks, running very low land counts. This is a unique niche that neither hero nor hellrider really can ever fill (though those cards are good in their own ways).
 
inscho

inscho

Grillo_Parlante said:
Hero and hellrider also have the problem that because of the higher CC requirements, they tend to want higher mana counts, which naturally cause drafters to push the curve up into more bombtastic midrange territory, while bushwhaker's {R}{R} cost tends to have the opposite effect. The really brilliant thing about the bushwhackers is that they can act as overrun effects for low CC decks, running very low land counts. This is a unique niche that neither hero nor hellrider really can ever fill (though those cards are good in their own ways).
Click to expand...



I don't think that low land aggro decks exist in my cube right now. Having so few 1-drops, I expect most of my aggro decks will have a couple 4cmc curve toppers. That may need to change soon, as the scales are definitely tipped in favor of midrange and control. Otherwise, I'd need to slow down everything else quite a bit.
 
Grillo_Parlante

Grillo_Parlante

Contributor
Can you check the cube's analytics in cube tutor? Thats a huge issue for the format's structure, as one of the major tensions is intended to be the tempo loss that comes from playing bouncelands.

It would help a lot to flesh out the one drop section a bit. Even something simple like isamaru, hound of konda can put a lot of pressure on a bounceland heavy opponent looking to play a long game. Reckless waif and goblin glory chaser are other excellent one drops that punish people for durdling.

You could also add in some of the heavy duty anti-durdle tech for your midrange decks to leverage.

 
Alfonzo Bonzo

Alfonzo Bonzo

I've been walking a similar design path as you have and have been giving consideration to a lot of the exact same issues. I'll share some of my thoughts, hopefully they might help and hopefully some of the replies might help shape my thinking in return.

In relation to aggro, I think you've really got to be clear and make a decision about what tools you are going to give aggro and how it should be able to win, you can't just throw a bunch of cheap creatures together and call it the aggro deck, and I think as cube designers this is one of the temptations we have when new sets come out, cool exciting new creatures come in and undermine what we are trying to achieve. (I'm mostly generalising about my experiences, not anybody in particular).

Grillo has written some really good posts and articles on how aggro can work differently which has really helped my thinking. Historically aggro would win with as much early damage as it could cause and then shut the game out with something like burn or land destruction. The turn two aggro concept as I understand it suggests that aggro starts at turn two, making it a bit slower and by necessity a bit more interactive, which is fine, but I think there can a problem when the opponent's turn two also starts with things like nyx-fleece lamb. Essentially you've made the anti-aggro cards more able to compete with aggro, making it more challenging.

By having turn 2 be when most of the action starts, I think you have an opportunity to help aggro by giving it more things to do on turn 1. This doesn't need to be Goblin Guides and Zurgo's but something that supports how it plays. I ended up looking for things that could give players something to do but wouldn't necessarily super charge aggro's clock.

Grillo talks about vertical and horizontal aggro, and I think that is helpful when asking if that is how an aggro colour should win or not, but it's probably also useful as well to think about how it's going get damage through. In wanted to avoid matches where say a mono red deck (which I don't want to support necessarily) would hit for as much as it could and then just point burn at the face. I didn't think that would lead to fun, satisfying games. If aggro is about creatures, that become outclassed as the game goes on because they could block and kill the smaller creatures I looked for ways aggro could evade blockers, so went with things like:



There are other options as well, but I think there's a balance as too much 'can't block' makes games uninteractive and frustrating as well. This doesn't mean that you can't have cards that give you late game reach, but there's a difference between fireblast and jinxed idol say.

Hero of Oxid ridge gives a degree of unblockability, but requires you to have some number of monsters on the board to support it.

These are all pretty much 'horizontal' (I think) rather than vertical and there should probably be support for both, which you do in places (bonesplitter, rancor, griffin guide) but maybe worth seeing if you have deep enough support.

I would agree with all of Grillo's comments about regarding the number of anti-aggro durdle cards (the pinata ones being the biggest offenders I think) which I think a cube could support if it needed an answer to aggro being particularly strong but I don't think it's here. You don't necessarily need to cut all of the durdle cards, but just try and keep the ones that add the most to game play and are fun (I removed most of them for being frustrating to play against.

As an aside, are you clear over what colours you want to/should be able to be aggro colours/aggro guilds? That might help shape your thinking.



Similar to you, I've been wondering about how I give enough support to having the goggles in the cube. I've asked before and the answer given is that even a couple of red instants/sorceries are enough and that you should consider how it can support ramp generally. I went looking through the multi-coloured cards to see if I could support it there and there are some interesting options depending on the power level of your cube. Safra has listed a lot of the good ones above, I went through Gatherer and these were the ones I wrote down to think about (and I very much doubt all/any of these would make it, but something for you to think about):

artifact mutation
destructive revelry
manamorphose
hit // run
clan defiance
hull breach
savage twister
exploding borders
vengeful rebirth
revel of the fallen god
dreadbore
blightning
terminate
kolaghan's command
izzet charm
electrolize
steam augury
prophetic bolt
throughtflare
fire // ice
call the skybreaker
aurelia's fury
lightning helix
warleaders helix
naya charm
fiery justice
crackling doom
mardu charm
slave of bolas
crosis's charm
grixis charm
jund charm

A lot of these have already been mentioned, but there are options there, and of course you already have some. I think call the skybreaker, which you are already playing is particularly neat with goggles.

But if you have cards that have flashback or either return from the graveyard or to your hand then you can more than one use out of the goggles, making them more valuable and tie-ing into spells matter. Some of these are a lot better than others:



I haven't listed things like Firebolt that you're already playing. I prefer Devil's play to Red Sun's Zenith personally as people are more likely to use it as removal and provide a bit of a clock in the graveyard as people see it sitting there waiting to burn them out.

If you consider the ramp aspect to just having more mana to do stuff (which I guess it is but isn't necessarily what I think of when I think of ramp) then you've got kicker type spells to consider too:



I've got some other thoughts on artifact.dec to come back to you on as well, but I need to give it some more thought first.
 
inscho

inscho

I'm just popping in to say thanks for the great replies. I've read them all, and have started making some adjustments on cubetutor. I'm in the middle of buying a home, and don't have the time to reciprocate with an equally thoughtful response at the moment. Just know it is appreciated, and when things settle down and I make my update, I'll hit on everything you guys have brought up.

Thanks!
 
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