General Minor Graveyard Support

Jason Waddell

Jason Waddell

Administrator
Staff member
Stuff that put stuff in the yard:


Stuff that wants stuff in your yard:


Stuff that wants to be in the yard:


Questions:
1) How much incentive do we need in the format to make stuff like Drown in Filth and Satyr Wayfinder good? I think killing a creature with Drown in Filth feels much better than just doom blading it, and if it helps you fuel a Tasigur earlier you feel like a wizard.

2) Where can we find new ways to put stuff in the Graveyard? Are we in a situation where we have to commit to graveyard to make something like Gather the Pack playable? But to commit to graveyard stuff we have to play otherwise marginal cards like Gather the Pack?

3) Are we fine with the Graveyard being a primarily proactive rather than interactive playspace? Deathriting away their yard slowly feels like the right place to be, as all the stuff that comes out of the yard can be dealt with via other methods (e.g. we're not reanimating a hexproof bomb)

4) Do we care that {R} and {W} don't have much of a role to play here?

5) What cards have I missed? Specifically, what cards would help this theme that aren't already cube staples?

I feel like there's an opportunity to push graveyards a bit more, and run some techy cards, but I think the approach needs to be rather holistic.
 
James Stevenson

James Stevenson

Steamflogger Boss
Staff member
I like this thread, because I've been slowly building up support for this kind of theme. Some opinions:

2) There are already a lot of decent cards that help fill your graveyard without being limited to this deck. But there are not really enough yet (imo). Here are some that I run (or ran). They're not all amazing, but food for thought.

And cards I run specifically with this deck in mind:

(and several that you already mentioned)
For the moment I think we need to be running weak cards like gather the pack and commune with the gods. I think the trick is to make these not weak. I would really like to up my enchantment count so that commune with the gods can hit removal spells and whatnot.

3) I run a few graveyard hate cards, but now that you mention it, I think I'll cut them. The thing is, graveyard hate like scavenging ooze is really strong against these decks. A really brewy graveyard deck is probably piloted by a really brewy person, and the feel bads from having his whole graveyard exiled is pretty lame. On the other hand, some of these graveyard cards are very good (uh... eg. tasigur? I guess?) so maybe some hate is needed? I dunno! Might be fun just to let them run wild.

4) I don't mind at all. But! Don't forget flashback spells! Flashback spells are really awesome to load up on if there's incidental graveyard dumpage. lingering souls, firebolt, and blast from the past are legit, I guess. Maybe there's some mad route to storm here with past in flames.

edit: I think Safra said she runs looters as her graveyard fillers. There are definitely more looters to experiment with.
 
Jason Waddell

Jason Waddell

Administrator
Staff member
James Stevenson said:
For the moment I think we need to be running weak cards like gather the pack and commune with the gods. I think the trick is to make these not weak.
Click to expand...


To make them not weak, we need to increase the quantity of incentives. To me this means: cards that want to be in the graveyard in (here's the important part) decks that want to play sorcery speed 2-mana conditional impulses.

Do I bite the bullet and run Gurmag Angler? (right now I only run Tasigur)
 
Jason Waddell

Jason Waddell

Administrator
Staff member
Onderzeeboot said:
I would run Tombstalker waaaay before Gurmag Angler. I think flying > -{B}.
Click to expand...

Modern players disagree, but I'm willing concede that even if not more powerful in cube (conditions may be different enough in cube to tilt the scales), Tombstalker is perhaps more interesting.

Cards like Tombstalker do make Gather the Pack more interesting. It puts 5 cards in the yard, digs towards it, and sets up for a Turn 3 5/5 flier.
 
Jason Waddell

Jason Waddell

Administrator
Staff member
Single Card Spotlight, Minor Graveyard Support edition:


Oh, this thing says ALL graveyards? What a beefy dude. Green's 4s are pure beef. I know I can do a multislot, but here is its competition in my cube:

 
Onderzeeboot

Onderzeeboot

Ecstatic Orb
Jason Waddell said:
Single Card Spotlight, Minor Graveyard Support edition:


Oh, this thing says ALL graveyards? What a beefy dude. Green's 4s are pure beef. I know I can do a multislot, but here is its competition in my cube:

Click to expand...

Does Woodland Wanderer support a theme you are doing or is it just a big dork. As in, do you want to incentivize 4-color good stuff? It has the most overlap on the battlefield with Centaur Vinecrasher and is arguably the least interesting card (as in: just a bundle of stats). Polu is green removal, Vengevine is recursion, Baloth adds a touch of lifegain and discard protection, Thrun is a hard to remove house and somewhat promotes green control, which is relatively rare. Anyway, I don't run any of these fours, and I do run the Centaur, so what do I know :)
 
Grillo_Parlante

Grillo_Parlante

Contributor
I've done this theme to death. If you are running it incidentally I don't think you should run any of the narrow enablers, especially at 360. Thought scour, drown in filth, commune: all too narrow. The more spell velocity focused your format is the less desirable it is to cast 2-3 mana "do nothing" spells (loam, commune etc.). Wayfinder is another card I've not had great experiences with, but I think that is partially play group focused: because cube is a singleton based format, the idea of accidentally milling away bomb <x> is pretty painful. I think alchemy is just a poor cube card in general.

The absolute best graveyard enabler is darkblast: cheap, instant speed, impacts the board, gets better when you dredge, and has the potential to be mass removal. Its everything you want as an engine piece for a cube format. The only other semi-equivalent card is shambling shell, which is unplayable in a lot of our formats.

There are tons of other incidental ways to fill up graveyards, but unfortunately, none of them are really engine pieces, and will get diluted around the format for the most part. The best way to fill up the yard i.m.o. are cards like sakura-tribe elder: cheap creature bodies that go to the yard as a means to further an already valid game plan.

This is a big part of why delve is so important of a keyword for an incidental graveyard strategy: it rewards raw spell velocity, which is more in-sync with what a lot of our formats are doing anyways. If you have a somewhat slower, more card advantage focused format, you could start looking more at the other options.

Gurmag Angler is an amazing card: difficult to remove in combat, immune to much of red removal, and immune to a portion of black removal. Being vanilla makes its easy to understand, but having delve makes its place in the format more difficult to evaluate. Deathrattle and murderous cut should also be listed as incentive cards.

Good flashback cards (especially reanimation), and regrowth effects are where the theme should be i.m.o. In a spell velocity focused, singleton based format, rebuying your powerful spells, and using delve to sequence out multiple spells a turn is a good strategy.
 
Jason Waddell

Jason Waddell

Administrator
Staff member
FlowerSunRain said:
Stuff I would entomb (with reanimiation) and not feel bad about:

Life from the Loam
Squee, Goblin Nabob
Vengevine
Roar of the Wurm
I guess that new centaur in the above post works.

Maybe:

Genesis
Skaab Ruinator
Wonder

There's a few more that you can use for entomb for profit, but its probably not worth putting entomb in your deck to do it like Deep Analysis (bad divination).

It doesn't seem worth running to me.
Click to expand...

The most common play is probably Entomb for Bloodghast on Turn 2, play a land, play a 1-drop.
 
Jason Waddell

Jason Waddell

Administrator
Staff member
Onderzeeboot said:
Does Woodland Wanderer support a theme you are doing or is it just a big dork. As in, do you want to incentivize 4-color good stuff? It has the most overlap on the battlefield with Centaur Vinecrasher and is arguably the least interesting card (as in: just a bundle of stats). Polu is green removal, Vengevine is recursion, Baloth adds a touch of lifegain and discard protection, Thrun is a hard to remove house and somewhat promotes green control, which is relatively rare. Anyway, I don't run any of these fours, and I do run the Centaur, so what do I know :)
Click to expand...

Kind of. I really like how Converge played in BFZ, so I'm testing Wanderer and Radiant Flames. Wanderer certainly powerful enough, but maybe it will get cut for some vague "lameness" criterion.
 
Jason Waddell

Jason Waddell

Administrator
Staff member
FlowerSunRain said:
Yeah, that's another good option, but its a one mana 2/1 that can't block and comes back to life, which we already have plenty of, so if entomb doesn't have other play to it we basically have convoluted gravecrawler #5.

Vengeful Pharaoh is another good option.
Click to expand...

Well, way back when I ran double Bloodghast, which I really liked, except for the running two {B}{B} spells. I also like that sometimes you'll hit something else with it, be it Lingering Souls or a Gravecrawler or a Shambling Remains or Hell's Thunder or Vengevine.

Ideally I would like it to be a multi-archetype card though, but I will be happy if it plays as a skill-testing conditional tutor that rewards unconventional and creative lines.

AND! And! Entomb like... fuels Delve, and Prowess and Spell Mastery and can be grabbed by Augur of Bolas. Totally not Gravecrawler #5. And it creates drafting synergies which make you feel cool?
 
safra

safra

Stuff I'd entomb for:
Life from the Loam / Darkblast
utility lands, if I have Loam
Bloodsoaked Champion / Skaab Ruinator
removal if I have a regrowth effect
Firebolt
Riftstone Portal (ULD)
I really like the idea of Vengeful Pharoah as a black five in a graveyard environment.
 
Eric Chan

Eric Chan

Hyalopterous Lemure
Staff member
Ran Grisly Salvage for a long time - it's super narrow and unexciting to use a gold slot on, which means that this is one of those cards that Tables Forever. While it's mostly stronger than Mulch, I prefer the mono-green land-only variant because narrow cards don't want to be both narrow and gold.

Drown in Filth was a card I was only moderately excited about while drafting Dragon's Maze, so I can't imagine it would translate well to high-powered cube.

To be clear, I love the idea of using the graveyard as an incidental theme in a 'normal' cube, especially in BUG, so I don't want to be seen as shitting on your ideas. But those aren't the Golgari enablers you want, when the mono-colour equivalents are almost the same power level.
 
Grillo_Parlante

Grillo_Parlante

Contributor
It really isn't even worth the test. The only cards of those type somewhat worth running cost 2, are mono colored, and find you lands: something a non-graveyard deck is going to maybe be tempted into to smooth out its draws (and I still think you want the body) Everything else is too narrow.

I don't think that centaur is going to work out either: just size it up against those other 4s, it looks really bad. Especially when you put it alongside vengevine.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top