Card/Deck Making Gruul do more than stompy, or make stompy Gruul more interesting?

[Modin]

In the first iterations of my cube I've tried to make madness a thing. One of the problems with it is that it's best when played on curve (T2 outlet into T3 wurm). This requires a huge amount of consistency. You definately want a format where a 4/4 is not too easily outclassed. A problem with madness is it's swingyness. A Bolt with upside is great, but 3 dmg for 1RR is not.
You'd probably want a slow format with lots of cycling and other graveyard shenanigans. The lucre cube if you wish. It would make it so that playing a madness wurm on T3 is powerful and applies a lot of preassure and playing one off a looter on T6 would still have an impact(as it effectively draws an extra card)

 

[Lucre]

Modin did you cube a bunch of duplicates and things that synergized with madness / spells matter / graveyards?

 

[Modin]

I remember having 2-3 Wild Mongrels, a 3/1 Patrol Hound, an Oona's Prowler, a Waterfront Bouncer and some Thought Courier like dude for creature enablers. Also double Fiery Temper and Circular Logic and the regular madness stuff. I remember being inspired by Grillo's Innistrad cube and adding more flashback stuff but I don't remember what exactly it all looked like. I did end up cutting the madness dudes though because of said problems and the fact that there are only 25 different cards with that keyword on them. I more or less tried to add the madness theme to the cube rather and didn't build around it too deeply.

 

[Lucre]

I'll send you the shell of one of my old peasant lists via PM. I think I should look at it again because it's gotten a lot of tools in terms of delve and prowess.

 

[Chris Taylor]

Oh god withering hex needs to cost BB1 nonmadness

the thing with madness is that I think the other stuff you're usually doing alongside it (Flashback/spells matter/yard etc) ends up outshining it since the madness trigger itself is so specific. It's the kind of thing that so rarely happens naturally, you need a discard outlet in play, whereas with the other themes there's backup plans of how to get value out of your cards
Like, games of magic go on. Even if you aren't milling youself, Splinterfight is probably going to get to a decent size at some point, even with just creatures trading off and his trigger. Arrogent Wurm just gets cast as a 5 mana 4/4, stats which are reversed thesedays

Maybe if we knocked 1-3 colorless off the casting cost of literally every madness card?

 

[Diakonov]

Yeah that's pretty much what I feared, which is a bummer since I love madness as a mechanic. I think it will have to wait until I build a lower powered cube.

 

[Chris Taylor]

Yeah that's pretty much what I feared, which is a bummer since I love madness as a mechanic. I think it will have to wait until I build a lower powered cube.

It still doesn't really address the specificity of the mechanic: Discarding is just so much more uncommon than anything else in natural magic. Every other synergy based archetype I've tried does better without its enablers.

Take a look at the other halfs of popular combos: (the image here is the recognizable half, please imply what it synergiezes well with)

Sacrifice Outlets let you leverage your opponents removal spells into something, a sort of insurance. It's also quite strong if the opponent's removal spell has anything tacked onto the end like control magic or faith's fetters


Creatures can generally be counted on to enter/leave play, so the triggers hardly go to waste


Pump spells work well enough on their own, and there's a wide variety of them to be found: Anthems, Equipment, Auras, +1/+1 counters, etc


Noncreature spell might be the easiest trigger in all of magic keyword history, and it's unlikely you'll be playing noncreature spells that are only good if you have a prowess creature in play (since it's such a natural part of magic)


A lot of the really good cards and manafixing let us shuffle out library, and scry lets us send things to the bottom. Both are fine on their own (and usually hugely desirable)

I think I meant this post to be about how madness outlets are typically bad without madness cards but it morphed into something else

 

[Jonas]

Is this still a card? I heart it at least.

 

[Lucre]

Madness can often be cost reduction + card advantage. If flashback was usually doing that I might agree with you. I like that it makes spells more modular. I remember a day when I really didn't mind hardcasting arrogant wurm in cube.

 

[Rasmus Källqvist]

Wait why would you play that over firespout?

 

[Dom Harvey]

isn't Sudden Demise often a cheaper, monocolour, one-sided Savage Twister?

 

[Diakonov]

I remember a day when I really didn't mind hardcasting arrogant wurm in cube.

@Chris: This was what I meant by madness only working for lower power cubes. Since madness is so specific like you said, the hard cast option has to be semi-reasonable.

 

[Jonas]

Heck if I know, I'm out of the loop.

 

[Grillo_Parlante]

Madness decks aren't good in pauper, which makes me a little wary of the archetype even at low power.

There also really isn't a great density of poweful payoff cards to reward you for going into a somewhat clunky deck, and those payoff cards that exist have largely been a victim of power creep. Arrogant wurm, for example, can feel really clunky, when compared with something that can feed naturally off of the yard, like gurmag angler.

 

[CML]

so the closest madness thing to being a card is this one, right?



seems like it should work but people quail at 1RRR. nobody ever played angel of jubilation at the "same" mana cost and it is arguably more powerful. nevertheless this is a powerful card with a powerful effect

 

[Jonas]

About madness: Not even my 180 cube seems to be low enough power level to properly support madness. But it's fun to play, so I'm keeping it.

 

[Lucre]

Pauper isn't Peasant and is an incredibly inbred metagamey constructed format but I know that doesn't suit your existing position so I dunno it's easy to forget these things. Madness was good in peasant for a bittle but things like affinity and like OP old cards turn it into a very fair deck given the shit mana in those formats.
I think I've said over and over again what sort of environment madness is playable in and where having that theme will help support other popular archetypes. Most people have successfully ignored it for a while so I think I'll let it go for now. I'll just remind everyone how sweet madness and soft storm decks could be in VMA

Playing arrogant wurms off of frantic searches and faithless lootings etc has been some of the most fun and zany magic I can remember. I looooove getting to madness a spell off thirst for knowledge.

I get the feeling the sort of highly interactive and introspective environment I talk about just doesn't mesh with NWO or a lot of the modern cube design principles. The prowess aggro / ascendancy decks of late are giving me a little hope though. But like, do you want your decks to be as interesting as madness or as flat as monsters? Like flat can be good and all, but we are always complaining about how dull white etc is. It really reminds me of the difference between eras of magic. Like thinking about tog, Bug control, or dralnu control against recent flash resto control archetypes, UW immortality and UB control. Even comparing black devotion to MBC from Odyssey or GB Deathcloud or recent junk decks to glare of subdual. Its interesting to see how many sweet tools we have to relive the things we adore about old magic but we stick to the character of recent magic.

Omfg I cant forget tradewind vs blue devtion! What a comparison! Omg has anyone put a really techy blue guy tempo deck in their cube successfully?

 

[Grillo_Parlante]

fwiw, pauper's problem is that it skews towards the non-interactive. While I enjoy the format for what its worth, it needs some work.

Madness is a fun mechanic, but crafting a home for it seems a bit tricky. You need to address the clunkiness, the inconsistancy, the reality that arrogant wurm no longer really feels powerful, and worst of all, the small pool of good madness cards.

Though maybe its not that far away. When I was building the penny pincher cube, I mistepped a few times with archetypes like faeries, which have the same inherient problem: you can pull them off where you have an actual print run and can ensure the availability of key cards, but thats hard to do in cube. A G/R madness deck just isn't as satisfying without a certain number of reckless/arrogant wurms, and that feeling of value when you madness them. I thought maybe squadroning spellstutter sprite might be a solution with the faeries, and maybe that could work here?

 

[Lucre]

You're up to what feels powerful in your cube a 4/4 trampler for 5 is not horrible in tonnes of environments you can make if it's only the downside of a better card. But again, I've outlined what you probably want as a support network before so as frustrating as it is to hear people who aren't listening or trying this stuff talk about it, I should probably hang back for a bit and roll on.

If you aren't happy with GR monsters or RGLD I dunno what to tell ya, GL with your hornets nest theme decks etc. Chris Taylor has cool things going on with his pump themes in RG, but I think and get a lot cuter when you are making use of their great graveyard and discard abilities and their sweet storm spells and mana production. Harrow into Manamorphose into Grapeshot is a pretty sick turn and usually turns on your threshold. Imagine having a pyromancer or prowess guy in play? And you know those cards are great in other decks. Frantic searching down a rootwalla is great before a temporal fissure etc. RG bleeds nicely into storm and madness aggro (both of which play nicely with each other) and their flashback spells form the backbone of a great controlling midranged deck. But this is a curated draft format, it's like very divergent from the collection of powerful cards school of cube design.

 

[Grillo_Parlante]

I think and get a lot cuter when you are making use of their great graveyard and discard abilities and their sweet storm spells and mana production. Harrow into Manamorphose into Grapeshot is a pretty sick turn and usually turns on your threshold. Imagine having a pyromancer or prowess guy in play? And you know those cards are great in other decks. Frantic searching down a rootwalla is great before a temporal fissure etc. RG bleeds nicely into storm and madness aggro (both of which play nicely with each other) and their flashback spells form the backbone of a great controlling midranged deck. But this is a curated draft format, it's like very divergent from the collection of powerful cards school of cube design.

I agree. Do you think this format would benefit from bouncelands and cloud of faeries? Maybe go down the splice road like MMA with red rites?

I really like running harrow, its just a sweet card, and intersects nicely with a lot of other archetypes. Rootwalla is another really good card as a mana sink and beater. It would be cool to have it be used as more of a combo piece.

Brewing for G/R really does become super interesting when you go down a bit on the power level, and can really explore some of its other nuances.

 

[Modin]

Bouncelands are also a fun lategame option for people running looters or retrace spells... gotta love bounce lands!

 

[Rasmus Källqvist]

Maybe something for the utility land draft, then!

 

[Lucre]

Bounce lands are pretty good I'm control and storm type decks I love land destruction though so I dunno.
Maybe I can design a better bounce land...

Like big sligh is actually a pretty cool / fun deck to play in the right environment, it also really suits the more prudent attitudes toward removal. If you can make being the biggest aggro deck a real advantage it's pretty sweet. If having two 5/5s by turn 5 and another within two turns is a huge deal in your cube, monsters might be lovely for ya, but these decks have very little introspection and certainly don't give you many unique considerations. relevant cards being scarce is sadly a normal problem for most colour combinations.

Zoo is kinda cool though, but try looking at land and thresholds themes. That one is mainly interesting to curated draft formats too.

One of greens biggest advantages as an aggro colour is that it's creatures it can commit are worth more than other aggro colours and are often harder to kill. You have more room for burn and tricks that way.

 

[Grillo_Parlante]

Brainstorm session! Did a gruul search on gatherer, to see what directions the cards suggested. It just seems like a very midrangy color combination, and it probably makes more sense to just accept it for what it is, and come up with a few different styles of midrange for it to inhabit.

Wide Aggro/Midrange





Ramp/Big Mana Beats





Haste Fatties and Heavy Hits





Control





Grinders





Enchantments


Combo

 

[ahadabans]

On paper, I really like the fires - fast aggro/midrange flavor of Gruul. But I have yet to get anyone to draft it.

Historically, RG was the wildfire deck / LD deck. And while that is cool when it comes together, it doesn't work with BBE and no one really enjoys playing against it. So I'm trying to really find a way to make fires happen.