Card/Deck [MCD] Graveyard Hate

[Jason Waddell]

From your list, I really like Loaming Shaman. Green is shallow on 3's anyways, and the stats aren't too embarrassing. I think this is in the good compromise region you're looking for of "narrow effect on a card that has other value".

Dryad Militant does some work here. You could always double-down there.

Regarding my recursive package, a fairly up-to-date list is in my thread. It hasn't really changed since the article on it though. I like your point about including Reanimate as a value one-off without hitting a critical mass with things like Animate Dead, etc. Currently I have Unearth in that kind of slot, which I'm pretty happy with. I think one potential drawback of a miser Reanimate is that you communicate to your players that such a strategy is viable. I try to avoid such traps, especially as I play with a big rotating cast. Unearth also finds its way to the "right player" more than Reanimate, which is something I'm currently happy with.

 

[CML]

mill as an alternate win-con is actually an easy enough thing to support. toss in slam-dunk utility land drownyard and righteous 1-drop hedron crab and you've got a mill thing going. (i'd be very interested in a mill MCD thread, with cards that of course effortlessly fit in multiple archetypes -- e.g. what do y'all think of breaking/entering?)

i will try the dissension centaur (shibboleth or epithet?)

i guess i just really like reanimator as a cube mechanic, it's (a) synergistic (b) easy to support (c) fits in multiple decks (d) difficult to draft correctly (e) interactive (f) splashy and the list goes on. what issues were you having with it? were they similar to the ones you adumbrated in that early article (where you recommend d. servitude?)

what does unearth usually hit? it's a sweet card.

 

[Jason Waddell]

Too lazy to type it up again. This card puts the Eternal in Eternal Witness.

 

[Jason Waddell]

Also, I can't believe you don't have all my articles mentally cataloged...

 

[Chris Taylor]

Jeez Jason, hubris much?

Maybe the problem can be approached from a different direction: Cut Crucible/Loam. I've done so, and I've never missed them, though they might merit consideration since I've kinda got a looter thing going. It's so sad there are only 2 blue madness cards

 

[Dom Harvey]

Crucible and Loam are both fine if Strip Mine isn't in the equation, imo.

 

[CML]

im cuttin crucible, no love for that one. keeping loam though. graveyard hate now numbers ~12 cards, and with a little zombie tribal going on in black, i wonder if that color will be resilient enough. guess we'll see next weds!

edit: new additions:

withered wretch
nihil spellbomb
samurai of the pale curtain
nihil spellbomb
loaming shaman
(trinket mage)

 

[CML]

someone please start the mill thread!? i wanna get evals of mind funeral and glimpse and, um, other cards like them

 

[Chris Taylor]

someone please start the mill thread!? i wanna get evals of mind funeral and glimpse and, um, other cards like them

Here: http://bit.ly/YNufKV

 

[Jason Waddell]

No love for Crucible + Utility Cycling lands?

 

[CML]

to draw a card AND play a land?

 

[Jason Waddell]

Yeah, you cycle the land, then play it from your graveyard. Maybe things are different here, but Crucible is a huge net-fun positive here. People love to play with it, and it hasn't been stifling.

Last draft Hannes put together a deck that ran off of a Crucible, Birthing Pod, Bloodghast engine.

 

[CML]

so that is the kind of interaction i'm looking for in cube, but it's so marginal as to be incidental. (contrast with the other use of crucible, which is to kill all your lands.) somewhere in between 'drawing a card once' and 'wasting you every turn' is the ideal crucible effect, do you ever have anything like that? crucible's quality just seems so polarized to me

loam fwiw seems more likely to approach that ideal since it costs 1G, has a ton of decisions to it, etc

 

[Jason Waddell]

Crucible + Manlands is pretty good value. Crucible + Fetchlands means never missing a land drop again.

 

[CML]

that's true. i wonder if i should just cut wasteland and add crucible again? that seems so perverse and yet...

 

[Chris Taylor]

Maybe move from strip mine to something more innocuous like tec edge?

 

[CML]

i have tec edge and dust bowl and readily acknowledge it's absurd to have both tec edge and wasteland in the same pile. i'm just kinda conflicted because (a little) LD seems like a fun component of a balanced cube -- R/G's way of disrupting and/or interacting, if you will. also as much as i love rewarding people for drafting sweet non-basics, wasteland doesn't seem to punish those players for playing them so much as it rewards its drafter for making a nice manabase that can accommodate a colorless land. who knows?

i think a land destruction thread is in order, if someone else wants to make it. the p1p1 acidic slime deck from a few weeks ago was one for the ages.

jason, i noticed wasteland isnt in your utility land piles, do you just draft it like a normal cube card or is it out entirely?

 

[Chris Taylor]

Yeah he runs x4 wasteland

if you feel wasteland isnt the right disruption land for you, tec edge is an easy replacement I think. You could quadruple up on it like jason does, since it does stop people from being wasted out of the game.

 

[Jason Waddell]

You know, even with 4 Wasteland I haven't run into troubles with Crucible locks yet. Maybe it's our play group, but part of the issue is also that my cube is ridiculously low CMC. So a lot of decks can operate / are already online by Turn 3 / 4. Also a lot of our lands are fetchlands, so you can play around it and/or side out some utility lands for basics.

I used to run a much higher emphasis on land destruction. I was known for running decks that go Plow Under -> Regrowth -> Plow Under and other shenanigans.

I think Wasteland is good for lots of reasons, but it also complements Crucible in my cube in a way that isn't OP. What you end up with for Crucible decks are a crucible and a variety of ways to leverage it (cycling lands, fetchlands, a Wasteland or two, landfall triggers, rebuying manlands). Aggro-crucible (Lynx, Wasteland, Bloodghast, Mox Diamond) is a fun archetype.

 

[CML]

4 wastelands in the main pile? <3 that's so audacious. (though 4/60 is a good way to start a legacy deck imo...)

actually, maybe you're right that crucible isn't too much -- like it's a common enough lock in legacy, but not THAT common, serves em right for not fetching and/or running basics, and cube decks, well, run basics. plus it's a 3-cmc do-nothing artifact. man, aggro-crucible does sound sweet.

zombies are cool, aren't they? i'm thinking they might be the second-least-lame tribe in cube (after humans obvi). graveborn muse and gravecrawler are nice analogues to mayor and champ, it's not like you gotta warp your cube to toss in scullers and manglers and loltrolls and stuff. mr waddell sir: you are no idiot for thinking of this beforehand

 

[CML]

how do you guys feel about cemetery reaper and lord of the undead (for gy hate and recursion?)

 

[Chris Taylor]

A little slow in my eyes. I kinda wish there was an enchantment that did what lord of the undead does.

 

[Jason Waddell]

The best thing about Zombies is that there are good Zombie cards in all five colors. I actually don't use Graveborn Muse, but that's because Disciple of Bolas is a much sweeter and more versatile card. I cut Graveborn Muse long ago for not being what I wanted, so I really didn't feel the need to bring it back in.

Diregraf Captain is sweet though.

 

[CML]

o capn my capn.

 

[Jason Waddell]

I'm not going to say people don't occasionally get Wastelocked, but there's a reason you don't see Crucible everywhere in Legacy, just as there's a reason you don't see Jitte everywhere either. The strength of these cards are very context dependent, and even games that end in a Wastelock usually have a fair bit of play and positioning to them.