Legacy-based cube

[Maha]

So this is basically my attempt to improve the MTGO Legacy cube to proxy it up and make my own. I like the power level, I don't mind planeswalkers being important and I'd like to have a more traditional, singleton cube my first time around. It's 63/600 cards off, and sorry for the wall of text.

http://www.cubetutor.com/viewcurve/24991
http://www.cubetutor.com/comparecubes/24614/24991

White:
Steppe Lynx seems unsupported. I don't think white needs another wrath or Fiend Hunter effect, and Frontline Medic has always been unexciting.
Instead I kept in some aggro (I want to try out Daring Skyjek) and added a cool blink card in Galepowder Mage. I considered cutting Linvala, Keeper of Silence for Geist-Honored Monk, but I think I actually added enough targets in other colors to make her better. Mirran Crusader is the last card with protection in the cube, but I think white might actually need him.

Blue:
Gitaxian Probe seems fine as every color can use it, but I'm wary of giving it upgrades in Spell Pierce and Dissipate, and Thieving Magpie is too miserable. I'd rather keep in Mystical Teachings and Cloudfin Raptor for people who want to try to make them work, and I'm adding a tentative Fatestitcher as a low-power card with two (kinda) relevant creature types and graveyard interaction. Cutting Show and Tell along with WOTC for the standard reason of non-interactive games.

Black:
Cutting the vamps, the trap monoblack incentives and a few perennial stinkers. Adding some goodstuff, disruption, recursion, and generally trying to upgrade it across the board. Should I now cut more 1-drops?

Red:
I'm trusting WOTC and going along in nerfing monored. Gone are Figure of Destiny, Firedrinker Satyr, Rakdos Cackler, Searing Blaze/Searing Blood, Sulfuric Vortex and Fireblast. I'm also adding Pristine Talisman to the artifacts.
I'm diverging on a bunch of cards:
- No vamps.
- Monastery Swiftspear seems so bad that I'd rather give red something other than a 1-drop altogether.
- Not interested in Bogardan Hellkite or Form of the Dragon; I'd rather keep Inferno Titan and add a cool spells-matter, splashable late-game option in Charmbreaker Devils.
- Flamewake Phoenix over Guttersnipe seems like a matter of preference, and I like Guttersnipe better. Or am I wrong and one of them is considerably stronger?
- Teetering Peaks seems fine.
- I don't think red wants another fireball in Banefire, and I don't think it wants Empty the Warrens at all. Instead I'm adding some card selection in Tormenting Voice/Desperate Ravings (nice UR incentive) and two solid non-balls-to-the-wall-aggro cards in Ingot Chewer and Fire Imp.

Green:
They made a bunch of tweaks to ramp and cards that find land. I went along with some of them and not others. Cutting Eureka along with them for the same reason as Show and Tell.
They cut Wasteland so they could add Life from the Loam; I don't want both either, but I think I prefer Wasteland.
I'm keeping in Krosan Grip as the last non-incidental Disenchant in the cube, under the assumption that uncounterability is good enough.
Not interested in the Scapeshift/Valakut package.
I'm cutting Chameleon Colossus for the pointless protection and Wolfir Silverheart because he's boring and I needed a cut. Is he too important for beatdown?
Keeping in Rancor for GW (or whatever else people want to try) and adding Nest Invader, Borderland Ranger and Yasova Dragonclaw as goodies.

Multicolor/Others:
Kolaghan is a boring beater, trying Bituminous Blast instead. I doubt Fires will be great, added Predatory Advantage for a sideboard option. Zealous Persecution seems much better and more interesting than Gerrard's Verdict with the tokens theme. I don't know why Coiling Oracle wasn't in the cube, but now he is.
I'm keeping Progenitus and Emrakul as rewards for the unfair stuff that's still left in the cube, including Natural Order. Cut Kozilek and Ulamog.
I kept Jitte, but cut Wurmcoil and Batterskull. It's possible that Batterskull would actually be fine with so many Disenchants-on-a-stick coming in, I don't know. Cut Grim Monolith and Basalt Monolith, leaving in Thran Dynamo and Gilded Lotus to throw Upheaval a bone and let non-green ramp a bit. I don't think I want Ugin, Karn is enough. Filled in the slots with Lodestone Golem, Steel Hellkite, Thopter Assembly, Blasting Station and Hex Parasite to eat walkers.

Any comments extremely welcome!

 

[Jonas]

I'm not the best at judging cards, but people around here seems to have pretty good success with monastery swiftspear. You seem to generally cut a lot of 1-drops. Cutting something like Rakdos Cackler and keeping Carnophage in seems weird. (Even though I love carny) Otherwise, I'm sure some of the more seasoned designers around here can assess things better then me.

 

[Eric Chan]

I know you want to stick close to the formula established by the MTGO Legacy cube, but I might recommend slimming down the cube from its considerable girth of 600 cards, to something closer to 540, or even 500. At 600, it's actually harder to implement themes, as key archetype build-arounds show up less often, and there's a greater disparity between the most powerful and the least powerful cards. While it's true that you get greater variety in a larger list - and this is the primary reason to go with a big cube - unless you manage to draft the cube twice a week, or have a turnout of 12 people or more when you do draft, a 500ish cube offers plenty enough variety for a normal weekly 8-man that you won't tire of seeing the same decks quickly.

The benefit of taking out the hundred worst cards in the environment is that you might 'fix' some of the lackluster archetypes like black aggro, without needing to lift much of a finger.

 

[Chris Taylor]

I'm not the best at judging cards, but people around here seems to have pretty good success with monastery swiftspear. You seem to generally cut a lot of 1-drops. Cutting something like Rakdos Cackler and keeping Carnophage in seems weird. (Even though I love carny) Otherwise, I'm sure some of the more seasoned designers around here can assess things better then me.

Swiftspear is shit when the curve of a cube is really high. When you can afford to play spell + creature a bit because you don't have an aggro deck full of 5 and 6 drops, it's great.
But then again there's no point in trying to make a prowess deck in singleton, since there's maybe 4 good prowess creatures: Swiftspear, Mentor, Seeker, and like, mistfire adept or something (Maybe)
Edit: RIGHT! Young Pyromancer. Okay done.

I'd way prefer if you lowered the curve so that other decks could compete against mono red rather than take out 1 drops that make it good.

 

[Grillo_Parlante]

Yeah, that curve is pretty ugly. Compare the legacy cube's curve vs. CML's curve.

The difference between blue 4s in particular is pretty jarring.

 

[Chris Taylor]

While certainly extreme, I tried FSR's experiment of having 80% of each color section (Other than green, since it's part of the identity) cost 3 or less.

I recognize that changes like that are bonkers (I'm at 450ish, ~75 card color sections. This leaves 15 cards for: Wraths, Non-Brainstrorm Card draw, Planeswalkers who aren't liliana of the veil, control win conditions, wildfire, and a million other things) but hot damn are my games nice. Nobody's getting run over at all, every player (even the UW control guy on his first draft) has plenty of things they can do in the early turns

 

[Maha]

I suspect that to lower the curve I would either have to go down to a smaller size (which is sounding more and more tempting), break singleton or start including dreck.

 

[Eric Chan]

I think you can stick to singleton, and aim for somewhere in the neighbourhood of 450 to 500 cards. I'd probably start by removing a lot of the redundant three and four drops - there is no way blue needs that many fours! - and shaving down the gold sections to maybe four per guild. Again, changes like this can go a long way towards making a deck like black aggro viable, without needing to go to the extremes of including a marginal tribe with multiple otherwise unplayable cards.

 

[Maha]

Alright, here's my first crack at a leaner version: http://www.cubetutor.com/viewcurve/25206
Brought red's 1-drops back, then left 1s and 2s mostly alone and went after the rest of the curve. Cut down on gold cards, cut down on removal to keep up with cube size. Cut Jace TMS and Elspeth, Knight-Errant for power level while I was at it. Got rid of Emrakul/Progenitus/Through the Breach/Sneak Attack. Finally, cut the Temples and the color-specific utility lands. edit: oh yeah, cut both Armageddon effects too for fun purposes.

 

[Chris Taylor]

Alright, here's my first crack at a leaner version: http://www.cubetutor.com/viewcurve/25206
Brought red's 1-drops back, then left 1s and 2s mostly alone and went after the rest of the curve. Cut down on gold cards, cut down on removal to keep up with cube size. Cut Jace TMS and Elspeth, Knight-Errant for power level while I was at it. Got rid of Emrakul/Progenitus/Through the Breach/Sneak Attack. Finally, cut the Temples and the color-specific utility lands. edit: oh yeah, cut both Armageddon effects too for fun purposes.

1 drops: Awesome!

Walkers: I'd actually give Jace TMS a chance. He's a lot worse (Read: Actually fair) with the lowered curve/aggro being sweet, much the same as he was in Alara/Zen standard, and a fun but beatable card. He's not something every cube needs or can handle, but he's workable if you like him. Elspeth being cut I support though, as she's kind of the opposite: Insane with a low curve. If your cube is full of 5-6 mana durdles, she's only slightly better than a 4/4 flying for 4, but she's pretty well insane with both players doing more stuff earlier.

Emrakul and Co: Probably for the best. IIRC there's still a bit of a combo deck that wants these kinds of cards (Tooth and Nail and Reanimate are still here after all) but you never want to be running the fatties nobody else wants, and more reasonably castable things like titans or Elesh Norn work waaaaay better for everyone. A+ change. I'm also more for trimming the top end just because decks tend to need less at the top of the curve. How many fatties does your average control deck need, like 3? Contrast this with the 5-6 one drops most aggro decks want...

Temples: This is something I could go either way on. You look to have about the right amount of mana fixing for a cube your size (About 53 lands at 490, and outside of the Fetch/Shock/Dual you can kinda do whatever you want. You've got an aggro leaning cycle right now in the pain lands and a control leaning cycle in the buddy lands, and if you really liked the gameplay the temples give with the scry you could swap them for the buddy lands.

For refernece: The great part of breaking singleton here with the lands (EG: Fetch/Fetch/Dual/Shock/Shock) isn't that people always make 3-5 color decks and pilot these insane masterpieces (though that can happen), it's that the fixing is kept agnostic. Aggro decks don't like lands that ETB tapped, or can't play 1 drops (I'm looking at you graven cairns), and control decks hate playing stuff like city of brass doing half their opponent's job for them, but everyone loves duals and fetches! This also has the side effect of making drafting a bit more interesting, since you don't have the problem of control decks being able to reliably wheel fixing like boros garrison since nobody else cares

 

[Maha]

1 drops: Awesome!

Walkers: I'd actually give Jace TMS a chance. He's a lot worse (Read: Actually fair) with the lowered curve/aggro being sweet, much the same as he was in Alara/Zen standard, and a fun but beatable card. He's not something every cube needs or can handle, but he's workable if you like him. Elspeth being cut I support though, as she's kind of the opposite: Insane with a low curve. If your cube is full of 5-6 mana durdles, she's only slightly better than a 4/4 flying for 4, but she's pretty well insane with both players doing more stuff earlier.

Emrakul and Co: Probably for the best. IIRC there's still a bit of a combo deck that wants these kinds of cards (Tooth and Nail and Reanimate are still here after all) but you never want to be running the fatties nobody else wants, and more reasonably castable things like titans or Elesh Norn work waaaaay better for everyone. A+ change. I'm also more for trimming the top end just because decks tend to need less at the top of the curve. How many fatties does your average control deck need, like 3? Contrast this with the 5-6 one drops most aggro decks want...

Temples: This is something I could go either way on. You look to have about the right amount of mana fixing for a cube your size (About 53 lands at 490, and outside of the Fetch/Shock/Dual you can kinda do whatever you want. You've got an aggro leaning cycle right now in the pain lands and a control leaning cycle in the buddy lands, and if you really liked the gameplay the temples give with the scry you could swap them for the buddy lands.

For refernece: The great part of breaking singleton here with the lands (EG: Fetch/Fetch/Dual/Shock/Shock) isn't that people always make 3-5 color decks and pilot these insane masterpieces (though that can happen), it's that the fixing is kept agnostic. Aggro decks don't like lands that ETB tapped, or can't play 1 drops (I'm looking at you graven cairns), and control decks hate playing stuff like city of brass doing half their opponent's job for them, but everyone loves duals and fetches! This also has the side effect of making drafting a bit more interesting, since you don't have the problem of control decks being able to reliably wheel fixing like boros garrison since nobody else cares

This is all awesome feedback, thanks so much. I understand the land argument, but I kinda think adding a wealth of great lands would actually make drafting less interesting - I, at least, enjoy being put to the decision of premium land vs. spell, and none of the cycles I'm running are weighed too heavily toward a strategy to make them easy wheels or anything.
I'll probably bring JTMS back, then. Now I wonder if Jitte became too oppressive for the same reasons as Elspeth, and also if black wants more aggro (Vampire Lacerator, Pain Seer, Pack Rat)?

 

[Chris Taylor]

This is all awesome feedback, thanks so much. I understand the land argument, but I kinda think adding a wealth of great lands would actually make drafting less interesting - I, at least, enjoy being put to the decision of premium land vs. spell, and none of the cycles I'm running are weighed too heavily toward a strategy to make them easy wheels or anything.
I'll probably bring JTMS back, then. Now I wonder if Jitte became too oppressive for the same reasons as Elspeth, and also if black wants more aggro (Vampire Lacerator, Pain Seer, Pack Rat)?

I'm more talking about which lands you do run, less about how many. (Usually somewhere between 10-15%, depending on what kind of decks you want people to be drafting on average)
I'll agree in that Boros Garrison is way more egregious than Clifftop Retreat, all I ment was that Arid Mesa and Sacred Foundry aren't at all

Jitte's...different. While it's not necessarily too strong for a random enviornment, it's not really worth it usually. Even if it's something drafters can fight back against, it's still a really strong colorless card, and that's the opposite of interesting draft tension. At least Elspeth requires you commit to white!

RE: Black Aggro: I worry about about the power level spread across your creatures here. Carnophage is no Gravecrawler after all, (though even he's better than vampire lacerator), and rotting rats is miles below blood artist, let alone dark confidant. Assuming black aggro is something you want your drafters doing, I'd look at the differences between black and a color where aggro is preforming like you want it to.
For example, a quick look says you've got 10 red 1 drops, and 5 in black.

You're going to need someone else to talk to you about good black creatures to run, since the cards I have a problem with in your black section I've basically replaced with like 10 gravecrawler like guys and 15 custom cards, but I'm sure there's some black 2 drops out there that don't suck!