MoshiMaro's Cube (540 Singleton - Unpowered)

[MoshiMaro]

I've had my Cube for over 4 years now and adding new cards has been going on since then. Only recently, since discovering Pucatrade, my Cube has seen a lot of changes. But that on side note.

I've taken an example from lists like Kranny and Usman Jamil's but I've been intensively consuming other Cube articles and postings for the last few years as well.

Characterizing my Cube I can say the following:
- Most choices are pretty "mainstream"
- I like to put in quite a few (odd) build around me cards to offer my drafter's a the option to build a quirky deck
- I've considered adding multiples as a few of you guys do but decided I don't like the idea because I feel I don't want to restrain my players by limiting archetype options for them.
- I don't run power and I removed some cards because of (fast mana) power level e.g. Sol Ring, Mana Vault, Channel, Fastbond, Library of Alexandria and recently Show and Tell, Natural Order and Eureka.
- "Cheating" things into play is now limited to Reanimator, Sneak Attack, Tolarian Academy, Gaea's Cradle and Tinker. I feel these cards need enough of an effort to build around that they should be awarded and are not overpowered in their own right.

As for my Cube I'm quite happy the way things are right now. There still might be some "best" decks in it atm but my drafting group isn't focused on always drafting the (same) best deck so it works for us.

I've managed to find a nice spread of available options within colors - most colors accommodate 3 or more archetypes.

I'm running:
70 cards per color,
65 colorless/artifact cards
60/65 lands (currently 62)
60/65 multicolor cards (currently 63)

Without further ado: My Cube

I have some design questions and I'm always looking for advice and your opinions - I'll be posting those in a separate post

 

[MoshiMaro]

At the moment I'm having some issues with my Red section.
Red is ofcourse the aggro color by default and that archetype is well supported.
The thing I have never liked about Red and which I see in almost all other Cubes is the amount of Burn in the spell section. I feel it makes Red a bit of a one trick pony and not a very interesting and attractive color to draft.
On a side note - I only recently decided to add Searing Spear and Lightning Strike...

As you can see I already have some archetype support for:
Storm(ish) - Empty the Warrens, Fork, Dualcaster Mage, Mana Flare, Guttersnipe, Purphoros, God of the Forge.
Artifact - Daretti, Scrap Savant, Goblin Welder, Pia and Kiran Nalaar
Land Destruction - Molten Rain, Pillage, Dwarven Blastminer, Avalanche Riders, Wildfire
Reanimator - Firestorm, Faithless Looting, Feldon of the Third Path

I'm currently thinking about cutting the LD-cards in favor of a token package (Dragon Fodder, Krenko's Command and Hordeling Outburst) but the options with those tokens are not very exciting compared to other colors e.g. Opposition, Glare of Subdual, Attritionetc.

I used to run Orcish Oriflamme (the misprint Alpha Edition with a CC of 1R) and Goblin Bushwhacker in there which might be re-added and I'm adding Shaman of the Great Hunt and Goblin Rabblemaster regardless.
I'd really like some input and discussion on these choices from you guys....

Maybe Red isn't attractive to draft because of the lack of focus in it's archetypes or it isn't because of the perception among my drafter's Red being a rather one-dimensional color. I'm definately going to consult with them but I'm very curious if any of you have had "issues" with what to do with Red and/or have had the feeling there's too much Burn.

Thanks in advance!

 

[Alfonzo Bonzo]

Personally I would be happy to support the removal of the LD theme - it's something that really goes against my principles, so removing it would be good!

The token generating cards aren't that exciting by themselves, it's more what you do alongside them. As well as the anthem type effects, you could consider some other things that utilise them for sacrifice effects, such as outpost siege or collateral damage. You do already have a bit of support in the gold section with jeskai ascendancy and assemble the legion. You could also try curse of stalked prey and that khans block enchantment that does 1 damage when a creature comes into play (sorry, can't remember what it's called off the top of my head. Something footsteps?)

For the storm side of things, from a quick look, you only have two storm cards, is that right? Pyromancers goggles might be a good option here. Abbot of Keral Keep would be good from a prowess perspective here too. Plus it's just generally good. With only two storm cards, mana flare seems odd.

For the boring burn argument, you could try burn which does something a little more interesting, like volt charge though that can be difficult when you have a high powered list.

For reanimator you could also try tormenting voice to help support that strategy.

 

[MoshiMaro]

Thanks for the reply,

I'm going to add the token cards, dragon fodder, krenko's command and hordeling outburst and "support" them with Shaman of the Great Hunt, Outpost Siege, Impact Tremors and Goblin Bushwhacker.

To make room I'm removing the LD package except Wildfire although I'm sad to see it go. I feel it's part of magic and should be represented in Cube. In reality though an LD deck has been only drafted once or twice and the cards are consistently wheeling.

I'll make sure to let you guys know how the new adds work out.

As for Storm I only run Empty the Warrens and Brain Freeze as finishers and I've been slowly removing Storm enablers in my cube (Rude awakening, Turnabout, Palinchron Past in Flames, Seething Song recently) because I'm the only one who has been trying to make it work and my fellow drafters haven't been interested. Most Storm enablers and support cards which are still left atm fill in multiple roles so I'm leaving it as is for the moment.

As for Reanimator - there is plenty of support for this archetype in green and blue alongside black so I'm not looking to improve it with additional red cards.

I also read the Rethinking Red article and comment thread by Dom Harvey and was wondering how you, Dom, are feeling about your red section atm...

 

[Grillo_Parlante]

Sorry, I've been meaning to post.

Check out these two articles, they should help shed some light on why aggro is not popular in your cube, and how you can address it.

As a matter of course, I would encourage you to think less in terms of "what does my red section do" and more dynamically in terms of what do my red color pairs do.

If you want to run storm, look at some of the recent posts in ravinbornmuse's cube thread, as he has been having some success with value storm.

To summarize your problem, you are running a bunch of sligh aggro cards. To quote:

1. Sligh Aggro is not fun for casual players. I want to bring this to the forefront, because we are not going to get very far without acknowledging this basic reality. Remember our quote from Near? Does playing a bunch of 2/1 creatures for 1 mana seem exciting, powerful, or able to handle any situation? The answer is a resounding no. Unfortunately, this one style of aggro defines what many cube designers will support (usually in only 1-3 color combinations), while at the same time providing a critical mass of attractive looking midrange cards in every other single color combination in their cube. Combining this with how sligh decks are very punishing of drafting and play mistakes, and their focus on technical play rather than flashy play, we shouldn’t be surprised when many such cubes finish midrange dominated.

There also are a number of excellent control cards that red has access to, and red can really be quite dynamic.

 

[MoshiMaro]

Hi Grillo,

Thanks for your reply, I already read your articles a while ago and I liked them quite a lot. Besides Cube I've been playing Pauper on MODO for the last few years and I believe I already incorporated some of the notions you put forward because of that experience.

Aggro is actually quite popular in my Cube and it works fine as is...White, Red and Black all have solid aggro archetype support.
My main issue is the amount of Burn people are running which makes Red imo a rather dull color to draft.

I want to liven up things in red by indeed allowing more (Red/x) archetypes to be supported. The LD package is in there to support the only "interesting" RG archetype - the other would be RG midrange. In my Cube RG is hardly ever drafted and by offering an LD-style deck in those colors I have always been hoping it would become attractive to draft - It only never has... Now that I'm going to remove the LD, only RG midrange remains as an "archetype" and I'm fine with that atm.

With other color pairs there are plenty of options for Red and those don't need fixing at all, I just wanted to see whether there are more exciting archetypes R/x to be discovered without having to add a whole bunch of cards across different colors.

R/x archetypes which are frequently drafted in my Cube are:

UR Tempo|UR Control|UR Artifacts|UR Combo (mainly kiki)|
BR AggroPox
RW Aggro|RW Tokens
Grixis Storm|Grixis Control| Grixis Tempo
Jeskai Tokens|Jeskai Tempo

As you can see Green is missing.....

As for Storm - like I said I'm the only one trying to put it together and space atm is that scarce that I'm leaning more towards cutting altogether instead of re-adding a lot of storm support.

In summary:

a) Less Burn good or bad?
b) Are there other viable archetypes which Red might support (and I'm not looking at niche archetypes which require a lot of cards to be added)


As for the latter on a different note - I'm going to remove Thrun, the Last Troll and Troll Ascetic and replace them with Spike Feeder and Spike Weaver. Since I've had quite some +1/+1 counters-matter cards which are solid in their own right I'm thinking of adding those two to see what will happen.