Got a bunch of things I'm thinking about for the cube, figured I'd share and maybe get some feedback!
More Spiderman cards
As loathe as I am to include these because of the UB vibe, I have been overlooking some sweet cards from the recent Spiderman set.
I've been sleeping on this card. A Blue one drop that
Aether Vials artifacts is quite powerful! You get your mana back the turn after casting it and if you cantrip, you'll be mana positive real quick. You also have the ability to flash in artifacts during opponent's turn which could represent surprise blockers or pseudo haste attackers. Imagine Octopusing in an
Arcbound Ravager into play and sacrificing your board to an unblocked attacker. Then you have the Prison aspect. Casting artifacts through
Tangle Wire,
Winter Orb or post
Cataclysm is sweet!
Just got one draft deck to showcase Lady Octopus and it's an awesome one by my standards! Artifacts, prison, mill and recursion. Let's go!
This is an effect I know I want at least one of. It goes hard with
Jeskai Ascendancy and
Agatha's Soul Cauldron, but is also fun with the likes of
Rishkar, Peema Renegade and
Arcbound Ravager.
Steel Overseer is currently in as a simple, elegant and more importantly a two mana card. Iron Spider gives you a lot for that extra mana though with a more respectable body, vigilance and a counter payoff. You get to attack as a 3/4 the first turn, while the Overseer would only be a 3/3 that couldn't attack.
1. Keep
Steel Overseer, the cheap mana value is important and forget Iron Spider exists
2. Replace the Overseer for Iron Spider, the stats, vigilance and counter payoff is worth the extra mana
3. Keep Overseer and Add Iron Spider giving the artifact counter deck a big boost
I think option 3 is overkill and option 2 is the way to go, replacing
Steel Overseer. Thoughts?
Mana rocks
Adding
Grim Monolith has me thinking about my mana artifact production more critically as I would like to bolster my selection a bit. More specifically, I would like to find a spot for
Everflowing Chalice is an interesting one because of its scaling abilities. Most of the time you are just going to play it for 2 mana, but the edge cases are what interests me. Sometimes it's right to cast it for 4+ mana and ramp out your
Myr Battlesphere or get a bigger
Walking Ballista. Other times, you can cash it in for 0 mana to trigger
Vivi Ornithier or
Cori Steel-Cutter.
Swaps
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Tamiyo is too much power on a one drop. I've cut the other snowballing threats at one mana because they speed up the games too much and invalidate the need for engines when they do it all by themselves. I'd love a card like Tamiyo's front side only though.
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Though I am cutting 1 mana Tamiyo, I still value the recursion it provides and would like to keep the same density. That's where UG Tamiyo comes in. The self-mill aspect of the card allows me to cut Jace who is too similar to
Thassa's Oracle and
Nexus of Fate.
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While I tend to favor cheaper cards, the stat difference between these two is pretty crazy. On turn 4, Iron Spider attacks as a 3/4 while Overseer taps itself to become a 3/3 (if played on turn 2). Add to that the built in counter payoff and you have a nice replacement.
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The Cookbook is cute, but I've had decks that should want to play it, but there isn't the space or it's too low impact.
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I am missing
Paradox Engine's uniqueness. It singlehandedly allows some decks to exist and is a mana engine that works both with creature and noncreature cards. It's easier to cast than ever with
Grim Monolith and now
Everflowing Chalice.
I talked about it in an earlier post, but as part of scaling back the cheat package,
Sneak Attack gets the axe. It's tough to make good use of the enchantment with so few targets, especially since they get sacrificed at end of turn. I'm considering adding
Daretti, Scrap Savant to maintain some density for the archetype because hitting
Bolas's Citadel,
Memory Jar and
Paradox Engine gives the card more juicy targets.
Other random musings
Golgari
tl;dr: I want a good and uniquely Golgari artifact payoff, but that hasn't been printed yet for my tastes.
I've been somewhat dissatisfied with my BG decks. Don't get me wrong, a lot of the drafts look good, but they are almost exclusively centered around creatures (minus a heavy Green land deck). What I'd like is to be able to have a card that rewards you for going artifacts
This guy is the closest I've found. +1/+1 counters are seeded into the artifact deck, but it's more of a subtheme than anything. This means this isn't a great artifact payoff and I already have a bunch of playable threes in all colors so the bar to clear is higher.
While this dude says artifacts, it's not a big pull towards the archetype. Unlike
Biotech Specialist, the payoff here is a bit anemic. As a 1 mana hybrid, it could (should?) definitely hang in the cube, not sure it's worth the slot though.
This next one doesn't explicitly play with artifacts but could use them to great success
Culling Ritual is a board wipe + ritual that you can build your deck around to abuse. Cards like
Chromatic Star are very happy to go to the GY and Foods/Treasures are relatively easy to produce. I am not 100% sure what to do with the mana though. A big
Walking Ballista? Double or Triple spell and rebuild fast? I don't usually like adding removal spells in the multicolor section, but maybe this is fun enough to warrant an inclusion.
Berserkers
I'm always coming back to this strategy because it gives aggressive decks a combo finish which I find exciting. There might be the critical mass of threats that are playable by themselves and grow huge to make the archetype a more natural fit in my cube. I won't be including this package, but it feels like I am getting closer to trying it out! The newer premier threats for this being
+2 power (or more for Tifa) means that these go really hard, fast. Add evasion and you have some scary threats. They also already fit into the cube's archetypes. Landfall, spells velocity and discard are all heavily supported and have
explosive lines of play opening up the possibility for these to grow substantially.
You also have some secondary threats that scale, but at a 1 for 1 rate rather than 2+ for 1. I play all of these already
Bristly Bill, Spine SowerProft's Eidetic MemoryIvora, Insatiable HeirVivi Ornithier
These threats are nice because the buff sticks allowing you to be less all in. If I played
Psychic Frog, it would definitely fit in here too.
The combo piece of the puzzle are
Rancor and
Embercleave play well outside of
Berserkers, leaving the namesake card as a more narrow payoff. For this theme, I think minimal support is perfectly acceptable since the threats are all cards you want to play anyway. The deck likely won't come together often, but it could be a fun Gruul archetype to diversify decks in that color combination.
Do you have any other Berserker threats that scale with the themes of the cube? Other Spiderman cards I should be running?
Thanks for reading!
