Matt's Cube (720, unpowered, usually used for multiplayer formats)

Hey guys, I've been putting a list together over the last few days and I thought it might be nice to get some feedback since I'm all new to this. You can find the list here: http://cubetutor.com/deckbuilder/1088

When I started the list I had a bunch of themes in mind I wanted to try to include. Some of them were easy, some off them did not make it, mostly because it's pretty hard to find enough cards for certain themes for a 720 cube. I considered a 360 list but since we usually do 2 drafts per cube session I figured I'd stick to 720 for now. However I am thinking about creating two 360 cards cubes with different themes. That might be better in the long run since I get more control over the cards that are in an actual draft.

I tried to include a bunch of different archtypes in this cube:

Besides the usual weenie suspects white also gets a good number of tokenmaking ranging from the unassuming Doomed Traveler to the miraculous Entreat the Angels. Of course there are also a number of anthem effects to be found. Control decks get a bunch of sweepers, removal and big guys.

Blue is of course the color of control with a good amount of card draw and counterspells. To get a little more diversity I also tried to include card for a tempo deck with cheap evasive guys and efficient bounce spells. The lack of good 1- and 2-Drops in this department was frustrating but I could see it work in UR or UW.
Blue is also helps to get the Reanimator Deck to work with the likes of Careful Study, Thirst for Knowledge or Frantic Search. I have no idea how good Magus of the Bazaar is but it looks sweet and I want to give it a try.

Black is home to the recursive aggro deck where also Pox, Smokestack and Braids like to make their appearance. This can combine just fine with white tokens to make sure you stay ahead on permanents. I have no idea how this will workout, your teammates may or may not hate you for playing this... But since it looks so sweet I will first gather some empirical Data on that. ;) Talking about multiplayer, how sweet is Liliana's Specter?
As mentioned above there's also a Reanimator Deck plus some tools for the control decks.

Red does what it does best. Cheap guys and burn spells. Multiplayer All-Star Guttersnipe makes an appearance here. Goblin Bombardment can be a welcome addition to the black deck aswell as the token deck. If you build a Boros Token Deck you also get a chance to play with Furystoke Giant. I know I want to.
More up the manacurve is where the landdestruction takes place. Fulminator Mage and Avalanche Riders are only steps in the way to Wildfire, Burning of Xinye and Destructive Force. Of course you want to make sure to have a big Dragon left standing when the dust settles. (Wildfire is the second archetype besides Pox that I could see being an issue in multiplayer because it's harder to get it enough asymetric. I had no good idea for another big red deck tough.)
If an Eldrazi is more what you have in mind, Sneak Attack and Through the Breach are the easiest way to get there. Or you could just steal their guy. Or steal some of their guys. But who am I kidding here. You want to steal them all.

Last but not least Green. Basically there's a lot of ramp and there's Midrange with sweet value creatures. They tend to be my favorite targets for the small assortment of Flicker effects that can be found in white and blue. Some of the Midrange guys also happen to make tokens.
If you're ramping hard but have no big guy comming Magus of the Candelabra is there to share your wealth with your allies.

With the multicolor cards I tried to solidify the kind of decks I had in mind for the different color pairs. Some color pairs were less cooperative then others tough and sometimes I just wanted also to include some other sweet cards. Basically the main archetypes are thought to be like this:

UW: Mostly control but you might also end up with a tempo deck.
UB: Reanimator or Control.
BR: Aggro.
RG: Wildfire Ramp: Sweepers, Landdestruction and big guys.
GW: Tokens. Lots of them.
BW: Disruptive Aggro. Efficient Beaters backed up by discard. Also some combination of Tokens and the Pox type cards.
GB: More midrange-y aggro deck focused on resilient creatures. (Lotleth Troll, Varolz, Thrun)
UG: The Value Deck. Cloning Thragtusks, drawing lots of cards.
UR: The main tempo deck with cheap counters and burn.
RW: Aggro.

I don't really have an idea how much fixing would be appropriate for a 720 cube. Thus far I have 50 dual lands plus a hand full of lands that can make more than two colors. I also run all the Signets atm.

I'm looking forward to hear your thoughts. :)
 

Eric Chan

Hyalopterous Lemure
Staff member
Sweet cube, Matt. Looks pretty good for a big 720 list. If I could offer a couple of suggestions, right off the bat:

- I'd look to trim the size of your gold section a little bit. There are some, er, questionable choices in the list right now. As much as I love its artwork, I don't see anybody ever taking Kiss of the Amesha, while stuff like Skyknight Legionnaire is below the power level of most mono-white and mono-red creatures. I don't want to pick on your individual card choices too much, other than to say that having weak gold cards is probably just a symptom of there being too many of them. You might find that somewhere between 6 and 8 gold cards hits the sweet spot of including all your favourite hits from over the years, while preventing Counterflux from tabling for the tenth time.

- If you're considering Magus of the Bazaar, have you also thought about Ideas Unbound, Careful Consideration, or Gifts Ungiven? The latter works especially well with Unburial Rites and other flashback cards.

- Fixing! Fixing. Chris has the ratios about right, and in the two sample drafts I did of your list over on cubetutor, it felt like there wasn't enough good fixing to go around. For a 720 list, I think you'd want somewhere in the neighbourhood of 80 dual lands, plus some other miscellaneous fixers (your City of Brasses). I hate to say it, but in a list as large as this, there's no good way to achieve this density of fixing without breaking singleton. I mean, maaaaaybe there's some borderline ways to do it while sticking to singleton, but it seems pretty hard without hurting aggro. I guess if you're exclusively playing multiplayer, though, maybe aggro isn't so much of a thing...?
 
Thanks for the Feedback!
I'll definitely look into adding more fixing. I still try to avoid breaking singleton for this list tough. I also had a feeling that the multicolor section was rather big after doing a couple testdrafts on cubetutor. There are definitely some weaker cards in some guilds that could be cut. Kiss of the Amesha has seen a good amount of play in my friends cube because cards that let you help your teammates are always appreciated, especially in Emperor where the middle player can't interact with his opponents as much. But I can see the card being rather expensive.
Replacing Magus of the Bazaar is also not a bad idea. It mostly got in there in the first place because of my Wizards Tribal subtheme that got cut again in the process. Your suggestions are definitely better now.
 
After tinkering around for a while and doing some cubetutor drafts I decided that I could not fix all of things that were bugging me within the sigleton restriction. So I broke it and I like how it is starting to look. I've added some much needed one-drops to the blue tempo section, added more Gravecrawlers for the Pox deck and most importantly I doubled up on fetchlands and shocks in order to get to 80 dual lands to go together with a handfull of five color lands. I've removed most of the utility lands for now as I'm looking into adding a utility land draft.
I'm currently thinking about replacing some mana rocks with more Spectral Searchlights because Serachlight always plays great in emperor and i feel like some color combinations like WR or BR will hardly ever play their signets. Another point on my list is to increase the amount of removal for planeswalkers as those can be very hard to deal with when they're under the emperor's control and cannot be attacked directly.
 

Chris Taylor

Contributor
That might be a losing battle Matt, only so many cards exist, and people still struggle with this problem at 360, and no multiplayer to boot!

I can't remember who it is, but someone had the brilliant idea to just treat walkers as creatures additionally: They die to wrath and doom blade, but can benefit from Dolemn Gate.
The way they ruled protection is that the walker was immune to damage of that color/source.

RE: Mana rocks, there's a bunch of sweet ones out there. Coldsteel heart is great but has memory issues, Felwar Stone is awesome but a really expensive foil, Star Compass is sweet, etc
 
Today was a cube day at my house and the first time I got to use this cube list. We played two drafts. The first one was 2HG, the second one Emperor. Two of the decks can be found in this thread.

The increased amount of fixing made a big difference from what I could tell. I love it! I also was happy to see some decks come together thanks to breaking singleton, like BG Staxx featuring Awakening Zone and multiple Gravecrawlers. Skirsdag High Priest and Lyzolda, the Bloodwitch joining forces also made me happy as I'm a sucker for sacrificing and synergies. Aggro seemed to be very draftable, while I sometimes felt a lack of early defensive creatures. Maybe another Wall of Omens or something like that.

We did a Utility Land Draft for both drafts and it was pretty sweet. List:


1 Windbrisk Heights
1 Karakas
1 Emeria, the Sky Ruin
1 Secluded Steppe
1 Flagstones of Trokair
1 Eiganjo Castle

1 Academy Ruins
1 Shelldock Isle
1 Riptide Laboratory
1 Lonely Snadbar
1 Faerie Conclave
1 Halimar Depths

1 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
1 Bojuka Bog
1 Cabal Coffers
1 Barren Moor
1 Phyrexian Tower
1 Dakmor Salvage

1 Barbarian Ring
1 Hellion Crucible
1 Shivan Gorge
1 Forgotten Cave
1 Ghitu Encampment
1 Teetering Peaks

1 Yavimaya Hollow
1 Oran-Rief, the Vastwood
1 Mosswort Bridge
1 Tranquil Thicket
1 Treetop Village
1 Pendelhaven

1 Eye of Ugin
1 Mishra's Factory
1 Vesuva
1 Urza's Factory
1 Mutavault
1 Ancient Tomb
1 Tectonic Edge
1 Hall of the Bandit Lord
1 Ghost Quarter
1 Contested War Zone
1 Mystifying Maze

1 Vault of the Archangel
1 Gavony Township
1 Kessig Wolf Run
1 Moorland Haunt
1 Nephalia Drownyard
1 Desolate Lighthouse
1 Slayer's Stronghold

1 Ancient Ziggurat
1 Gemstone Mine
1 Undiscovered Paradise


Time will tell whether some of the lands are too powerful. Gavony Township was an early pick both times which was not very surprising. Vault and Wolf Run went also pretty early. Overall tough People picked a pretty big variety of lands. Cycling Lands were very popular. I'm probably gonna add Forbidden Orchard and maybe also Reflecting Pool to increase the amount of color fixing lands.
 

Jason Waddell

Administrator
Staff member
Your Utility Land stack looks pretty similar to mine. None of the ones you list are overpowered in my cube. Our strongest is Volrath's Stronghold, but we also run a ton of land destruction. The cycling lands also have a ton of synergies. I love to get a cycling lands, Loam, Deathrite Shaman, Crucible, Mox Diamond deck going.
 
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