It might not be what you're looking for in terms of cmc, but I really like Crystalline Crawler as a support piece as well. Instead of just getting big due to the untapping it helps the engine generate tons of mana.
I might be putting too much stake into the next suggestion, as situational tutors are really hard for me to evaluate from list to list, but:
Has been a favorite of mine. There are a lot of constructs that intersect with supported combos in my list personally:
Although arguably too clunky outside of niche-tutoring, Recombiner does intersect with counters / sacrifice / welder. I am curiously if it could mesh successfully with your supported strategies while also buffing the consistency of your artifact combo-pieces. (as a slight edit: I personally am a fan of narrow tutors, I like niche strategies being able to reliably draft a tutor most would wheel without a second thought)
As for Green / White counter support , a lot of my personal inclusions angle towards storm / persist / green-aggro / white-humans, and am unsure if any individual suggestion would really assist in your goals. I do run Ozolith, the Shattered Spire and like how it supplements the counter components of strategies I support without being incredibly narrow.
It might not be what you're looking for in terms of cmc, but I really like Crystalline Crawler as a support piece as well. Instead of just getting big due to the untapping it helps the engine generate tons of mana.
I had Crawler in an earlier build and it’s a good shoutout! I don’t mind the mana cost since you can get mana back instantly if you need it and it promises future fun. I love cards that let you convert a ressource into another (and why I use most colorless sac outlets except Spawning Pit), they typically lead to more interesting deck possibilities or lines of play. I’d like to find a slot for this, will scour the list for cuts.
It’s getting more and more tempting to go up to 400 cards or something to slot in all the sweet cards.
Love this suggestion! As you say, it intersects with a bunch of themes and is a spicy tutor. There are more targets than I thought honestly and the best ones are also great in the archetype. As much as I like this one, it’s a bit too narrow at this size. And tbh, I am more excited to fit the Crystalline Crawler that you suggested first.
I was drafting a cube featured on the front page of CubeCobra and got to draft this deck
It's a self-mill deck but what piqued my interest was the prison element.
Currently, my stax pieces are more for aggressive decks
These are great and I really enjoy them. So the thought is, maybe I can set up a controlling Stax package.
Academy Ruins is a known quantity and is very good in decks like the one above. Not only does it prevent milling out, it also extends the GY into a second hand, just like Emry does. I know it’s not a prison piece per se, but we’ll get there.
Being a land is a huge upside for a few reasons. It's tougher to interact with than Emry, meaning your engine is more robust. It also plays so well with Life from the Loam. Loam lets you mill to your heart's desire since you know you'll be able to recur it and the Ruins. You can set up Gifts Ungiven piles to that effect as well giving Simic decks late game inevitability.
The best targets with Ruins? These three come to mind.
Ballista and Explosives serve as interaction while Mindslaver is a win condition. This is where the prison element comes up and turn after turn you recur the same card and mess up opponent’s board. Do you have other favorite cards to pair with Academy Ruins?
Ensnaring Bridge is brutal. It shuts down aggressive decks very effectively and gives you the time to set up your gameplan. Unless you are going hard on the discard plan (maybe this is the card I want for my Firestorm discard control decks), it will be tough to empty your hand very fast meaning creatures can still attack on turns 3 and 4.
The biggest difference with the other stax pieces is that this one doesn’t let up. Wire and Orb leave you an out given enough time, not so with Bridge. I feel like it will create huge emotional spikes as well. Some positive (like when you attack and instant speed attach Cranial Plating to the unblocked 1/1) and most negative where you are locked out of the attack step. It’s a cool one with Welder and sacrifice outlets too as you can manipulate and set up a board and get rid of Bridge when you are ready to attack. Other cards become appealing too like Song of Creation for combo decks. Baubles and cards that let you bank a draw on the board are great too.
Am I unhinged? The only cube here with Bridge that I know of is dbs’s Mox Combo Cube but he’s a real sicko with Stasis even
This first one uses the fact that it swarms the board with 1/1s to push through damage. Between Epiphany and Foundry, you can make a lot of evasive flyers. You can also remove your Bridge with Cryptic or Explosives if the situation calls for it. With a Planeswalker, it's very appealing to sit back and do nothing. However there is a lot of card draw in this deck, meaning it won't be trivial to keep your hand empty.
This next one is better at removing Bridge when you need it which is just as well, because you are going to want to smack people with Uro down the line. Lands decks like these are happy spinning their wheels for as long as possible and win with inevitability. You love to see Firestorm combined with Bridge here.
BW control here and tbh, not sure if the Bridge is needed. This color combination has a ton of wraths and creature removal is easy to come by. Probably the worst colors for the effect ><
First impressions? Bridge is at its best in Temur colors that have a harder time answering a board. Blue benefits the most since it has no wraths/board control and is generally more creature light. I don't know yet if it warrants a slot, but I love a hard control build around.
Cuts
I've been tinkering pretty hard with the list these past few weeks and I like the general direction. However, after going through the list and drafting, I am going to be lowering the density of some effects.
This is a cool effect to have to get a free discard trigger, but I feel that I am somewhat saturated on discard effects already. It's also nice to reanimate early, but the land cyclers from LotR fill that role already.
In Red, I have too many aggressive discard cards at lower mana value. I find myself being able to go mono-Red some drafts meaning I can scale back support a little and diversify my archetypes.
FOMO, Magmatic Channeler and Tersa are the ones with the least cross synergy potential. I like Channeler least because it exiles cards rather than draw them and makes it possible that you lose a critical piece.
My Green decks are often centered around land matters. I don't mind it since a lot of the cards have ties into other archetypes (GY, discard, artifact and even combo). However, since adding Icetill Explorer, I've found that I sometimes cut land recursion effects from my deck because I have so many of them. Top 5 in order of preference.
Loam and Analyst are perfect for this cube and by far my favorites. Explorer is very nice with its two effects that you don't always want to use a cube slot on. Crucible edges out Excavator since it can pop up in decks not playing Green which opens up lines not possible otherwise.
I'm trying to cut a bit of support for the Green land deck to give other strategies room to breath. Provisioner is a fantastic card with a variety of effects. Fastbond, Second Sunrise and Aftermath Analyst being the best. It's a Lotus Cobra that lets you stock mana and get artifact synergies. What I like less are the food tokens that can really do a number on aggressive decks. I could see myself adding this back in for the Treasures down the line.
I want to spice up my Gruul section a bit. Most RG decks I draft are discard/GY or land based archetypes. I occasionally have a cheat deck too. Schafkurai included a new one from EOE and I am on board stealing their idea.
This little guy is a great pull into artifacts. It's nothing super novel, but Gruul usually doesn't have artifact payoffs. Everything is already in place to abuse it and machine gun down the opponent.
Take any combination of these and the Specialist will shine IMO. The issue is the Lander token which is another unique token type. Right now, I think the uniqueness of having a solid Gruul artifact payoff is worth it.
I also posted about Jolrael somewhere as a fantastic glue card for looting effects, artifact baubles and spells matter cantrips. Time to put my money where my mouth is a find a slot for her. I think she will also go well with the Specialist above alongside Chromatic Stars and Mishra's Baubles.
I'd like to expand my Red section to have a few more token payoffs. Goblin Bombardment is the main one right now and I am eyeing another EOE card I mentioned before
The rate is pretty bad, but the Warp ability really makes up for it letting you set up a combo turn rather than exposing your finisher and passing. The biggest improvement is triggering off artifacts which is a real game changer (see Marionette Apprentice!).
Going to try this one that shamizy endorsed. It looks really good tbh and I have no doubt it will play well. Since I don't adhere to strict numbers per color, I am not sure this is the best use of the slot (vs a colorless utility land or something for example), but for now it will do.
A few more drafts convinced me that Ensnaring Bridge is the real deal. What makes it enticing is that it imposes unique deckbuilding constraints. Similar to Oath of Druids where you have to warp your deck around it, Bridge demands that either you remove it before winning with creatures or that you find a different avenue than creature combat for the win.
This first one was drafted by Erik and it's a sweet one!
At the same time it's a really great synergistic whole. You've got artifacts, discard, sacrifice and lands all combined into one. The artifact package offers grindy value for your White board resets, but also a win condition outside of combat thanks to the newly added Rust Harvester and Biotech Specialist. You can also just weld out the Bridge and swing with a big Lion Sash or something.
Another deck to make one question their choice of hobby, but this one uses Mesmeric Orb rather than Winter Orb.
You are going for either a combo finish by milling them out with Grinding Station + Second Sunrise or sitting behind Bridge and Planeswalkers. You can prolong the game with your foods and tokens which conveniently work with the mill plan by virtue of being artifacts.
I posted about wanting my controlling decks to have explosive synergy , this type of prison deck definitely scratches that itch even though they are kind of the opposite of explosive...
A few more drafts convinced me that Ensnaring Bridge is the real deal. What makes it enticing is that it imposes unique deckbuilding constraints. Similar to Oath of Druids where you have to warp your deck around it, Bridge demands that either you remove it before winning with creatures or that you find a different avenue than creature combat for the win.
This first one was drafted by Erik and it's a sweet one!
At the same time it's a really great synergistic whole. You've got artifacts, discard, sacrifice and lands all combined into one. The artifact package offers grindy value for your White board resets, but also a win condition outside of combat thanks to the newly added Rust Harvester and Biotech Specialist. You can also just weld out the Bridge and swing with a big Lion Sash or something.
Another deck to make one question their choice of hobby, but this one uses Mesmeric Orb rather than Winter Orb.
You are going for either a combo finish by milling them out with Grinding Station + Second Sunrise or sitting behind Bridge and Planeswalkers. You can prolong the game with your foods and tokens which conveniently work with the mill plan by virtue of being artifacts.
I posted about wanting my controlling decks to have explosive synergy , this type of prison deck definitely scratches that itch even though they are kind of the opposite of explosive...
Sold! That’s a great suggestion and a valuable reminder that you should re-examine cuts when modifying your cube.
I am also looking at
Dismissed it during spoiler season based on vibes, but it amounts to sac any artifact, bolt face. It can go pretty hard with actual foods or other sources of life gain. It might not be the most powerful, but it makes you reevaluate your picks since now all your artifacts can be sacrificed. These 2 mana multicoloured build around cards are in a really sweet spot IMO.
Artifact aggro/burn in Naya could be a thing with Biotech Specialist. These colors are great at spitting out artifact tokens and I like having players commit to certain colors rather rely completely on the colorless section.
I don't want to go ham on life gain as the lobster is self-contained, but you could build a reasonable package at higher power levels
