I've really enjoyed adding the spells matter cards back, especially Dreadhorde Arcanist and Young Pyromancer. With the added Strixhaven support and extra density of instants and sorceries, I've found the decks to come together quite often and take on all sorts of speeds and archetypes.
Before, there was too much tension between the required density of artifacts and spells. In this current setup, I find myself with enough pieces for both decks quite reliably. I've also added High Tide and it's been a great addition. It fits perfectly in the environment and adds another cheap mana engine you have to work for.
The Izzet decks tend to be very heavy Blue, whereas the Green decks can afford to be more balanced since you have ramp that can fetch your islands.
This deck Has Breach and Brain Freeze, but no LED. That's when High Tide as a back up mana engine comes in and shines.
This deck also has Brain Freeze, but also Exhibition Tidecaller. No Breach, but Flashback and E. Witness can lead to some Brain Freeze lines, especially if you have an active High Tide turn. In this type of deck, I wouldn't mind a Ghostly Flicker to blink Eternal Witness and an Island, effectively untapping it for High Tide.
Artifacts and Spells
Although I am happy with the way these decks turned out, I haven't found a way to bridge spells and artifacts into one deck reliably. Outside of Prowess type cards, payoffs tend to be narrow. For example Flashback doesn't work with artifacts and Goblin Engineer doesn't care about spells. From Strixhaven
The first cards happen to be artifacts that work with spells, but they won't really pull me into a hybrid build. The Tablet has some merit with Welder/Engineer, but not a lot.
Mica is more in line with what I am looking for, a reason to combine both themes that is reasonably powerful. The Ward is nice, but the art...the art is painful to look at.
Similar idea to Mica where you put your artifacts to use in a spells matter deck. I like that you can cast a cheap cantrip or interaction spell the turn he enters or untap and go nuts. It's a narrower Urza, Lord High Artificer and doesn't come with a body. Not 100% convinced it's the right fit.
Saheeli, Sublime Artificer and Third Path Iconoclast making artifact tokens is a great way to bridge both themes. Another artifact producer triggering off noncreature cards would certainly help make the hybrid decks happen more often. Incubator tokens being DFC is pretty bullshit, but they do play nicely in control decks where you can stockpile them and turn them into creatures post wrath. I have a decent cut as well in Geralf, the Fleshwright.
These being artifact creatures with ETBs opens up more synergy possibilities than the Tablet and Lute. That said, the Actuator is quite low impact, especially because I don't run cards like Ancestral Visions that really benefit from it. I could be convinced to run the Gearhulks though! Double Strike and Prowess are a fun mix, especially attached to an ability that clears the board up a little. Torrential Gearhulk would mainly hit counters or removal, with the option to draw a few cards sometimes.
For now, I'll be making the Seedshark swap and see where to go from there. I've noticed that a lot of time, decks exist in this cube IF I have the intent to draft them.
Draft simulation ideas
I tried the draft simulation on CubeCobra using 500 drafts to see what would come up.
There are overlaps and connections present, but a few islands seem rather isolated. The rightmost one is Green lands matter. Landfall, land sacrifice and UG ramp are all grouped together, with almost no branches towards other archetypes. The other remote isle in the center contains storm decks mostly in the Grixis colors.
Lands
Although I've been asking for more lands matter cards in non-Green colors for a while, there hasn't been a ton released that I can use. That said, I don't think the reality is quite as closed off as it seems.
1. Ramp + storm. The newly added High Tide and Fastbond really help bridge the two sections. Fastbond alongside draw 7s is a surefire way to make a ton of mana. You can also use land recursion to make sure you hit your land drops and go off once you have a critical amount of mana. High Tide + land ramp + recursion means that simic storm decks are a real possibility.
I'm very tempted to add this Simic card for combo decks. It's more clunky than straight up Timetwister and offers no recursion, but you get an instant speed Wheel effect to untap with and go off. Being in Green adds to the color's desirability for combo decks which seems like the right designer decision (vs players who would most likely prefer the mono-colored card).
2. Lands + discard. Throughout the 500 drafts, there is no real mention of combining lands matter with discard matters. In my experience, this is a very real deck that makes great use of its tutoring abilities to find Bazaar of Baghdad. From there, you can use cards like Life from the Loam or straight up discard payoffs like Monument to Endurance to minimize Bazaar's downside. Formless Genesis and Six offer repeatable discard triggers in Green, while you can have Firestorm and various Red interactive pieces to control the board.
Rydia, Summoner of Mist is a great signpost for this deck. However, I seem to recall one of Dom's draft recaps where he states that players were too hung up on the saga part of the card and dismissed it for other purposes. Maybe this is happening with the bots as well and other, more explicit support might be needed.
I've included this in the past, but it wasn't very high impact. Compared to when I included it last (thanks CC for the new tool!), there are a few notable changes. One of them is more discard matters
Monument is a big one, making discarding a card a lot less painful. Ivora + Vortex can bring the beatdown quickly, especially if you have a Slogurk, the Overslime somewhere in the mix. Genesis isn't a payoff, but it adds land discard density, signaling the deck exists.
This is a fringe upside, but Molten Vortex plays really well with Ensnaring Bridge, letting you discard excess lands helps you stay at zero cards in hand while closing out the game.
The extra recursion lets you keep hitting your land drops even when discarding. Why Reclamation wasn't in my cube at that time is a mystery. WTF past Jean.
Gush gives you lands to discard which is perfect.
Land Tax wasn't in the cube at the same time as Vortex, which seems like an oversight. It's gotten even better now thanks to Squandered Resources and Sylvan Safekeeper that I didn't have before.
The Raven Man is a cool card that I could see adding back in. A two drop that makes evasive tokens is quite strong, even if it is capped at once a turn.
3. Lands + sacrifice. This one is correctly identified among the clusters. It uses cards like Zuran Orb, Knight of the Reliquary, Titania, Protector of Argoth and Icetill Explorer to generate value and ramp. There are two things it doesn't include, one is the more staxy build of the deck with Balance, Cataclysm and Devastating Dreams. The second is the link between lands and aristocrats. I'm talking about these
That's actually less than I thought I had. Looking at Scryfall here are the sacrifice a permanent cards I think will work here
Talent is mostly a creature sacrifice piece, but that second ability could be a nice finisher/enabler in a shell using Squandered Resources and Aftermath Analyst for example. Then there is one of my pet cards in Skittering Precursor. Love this guy's token making ability and versatility (+Enduring Renewal bs).
I've been tinkering with my lower power cubes and this is a card I slam in there. I'm thinking it actually has merit here too as it's similar to Precursor in that it overlaps land sacrifice with creature sacrifice. It has the added bonus of working with discard and mill, which seems quite strong given my current themes.
I'll try analyzing the Storm cluster in another post. For now, this little exercise has been interesting at revealing some potential holes in the cube. Whether or not I want to fix them is another story, but Sail into the West, Molten Vortex, Land Tax, Turntimber Sower and Skittering Precursor seem promising in terms of giving the lands matter archetype more directions to go in, by opening itself up to the other themes in the cube.
Before, there was too much tension between the required density of artifacts and spells. In this current setup, I find myself with enough pieces for both decks quite reliably. I've also added High Tide and it's been a great addition. It fits perfectly in the environment and adds another cheap mana engine you have to work for.
The Izzet decks tend to be very heavy Blue, whereas the Green decks can afford to be more balanced since you have ramp that can fetch your islands.
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This deck Has Breach and Brain Freeze, but no LED. That's when High Tide as a back up mana engine comes in and shines.
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This deck also has Brain Freeze, but also Exhibition Tidecaller. No Breach, but Flashback and E. Witness can lead to some Brain Freeze lines, especially if you have an active High Tide turn. In this type of deck, I wouldn't mind a Ghostly Flicker to blink Eternal Witness and an Island, effectively untapping it for High Tide.
Artifacts and Spells
Although I am happy with the way these decks turned out, I haven't found a way to bridge spells and artifacts into one deck reliably. Outside of Prowess type cards, payoffs tend to be narrow. For example Flashback doesn't work with artifacts and Goblin Engineer doesn't care about spells. From Strixhaven
The first cards happen to be artifacts that work with spells, but they won't really pull me into a hybrid build. The Tablet has some merit with Welder/Engineer, but not a lot.
Mica is more in line with what I am looking for, a reason to combine both themes that is reasonably powerful. The Ward is nice, but the art...the art is painful to look at.
Similar idea to Mica where you put your artifacts to use in a spells matter deck. I like that you can cast a cheap cantrip or interaction spell the turn he enters or untap and go nuts. It's a narrower Urza, Lord High Artificer and doesn't come with a body. Not 100% convinced it's the right fit.
Saheeli, Sublime Artificer and Third Path Iconoclast making artifact tokens is a great way to bridge both themes. Another artifact producer triggering off noncreature cards would certainly help make the hybrid decks happen more often. Incubator tokens being DFC is pretty bullshit, but they do play nicely in control decks where you can stockpile them and turn them into creatures post wrath. I have a decent cut as well in Geralf, the Fleshwright.
These being artifact creatures with ETBs opens up more synergy possibilities than the Tablet and Lute. That said, the Actuator is quite low impact, especially because I don't run cards like Ancestral Visions that really benefit from it. I could be convinced to run the Gearhulks though! Double Strike and Prowess are a fun mix, especially attached to an ability that clears the board up a little. Torrential Gearhulk would mainly hit counters or removal, with the option to draw a few cards sometimes.
For now, I'll be making the Seedshark swap and see where to go from there. I've noticed that a lot of time, decks exist in this cube IF I have the intent to draft them.
Draft simulation ideas
I tried the draft simulation on CubeCobra using 500 drafts to see what would come up.
There are overlaps and connections present, but a few islands seem rather isolated. The rightmost one is Green lands matter. Landfall, land sacrifice and UG ramp are all grouped together, with almost no branches towards other archetypes. The other remote isle in the center contains storm decks mostly in the Grixis colors.
Lands
Although I've been asking for more lands matter cards in non-Green colors for a while, there hasn't been a ton released that I can use. That said, I don't think the reality is quite as closed off as it seems.
1. Ramp + storm. The newly added High Tide and Fastbond really help bridge the two sections. Fastbond alongside draw 7s is a surefire way to make a ton of mana. You can also use land recursion to make sure you hit your land drops and go off once you have a critical amount of mana. High Tide + land ramp + recursion means that simic storm decks are a real possibility.
I'm very tempted to add this Simic card for combo decks. It's more clunky than straight up Timetwister and offers no recursion, but you get an instant speed Wheel effect to untap with and go off. Being in Green adds to the color's desirability for combo decks which seems like the right designer decision (vs players who would most likely prefer the mono-colored card).
2. Lands + discard. Throughout the 500 drafts, there is no real mention of combining lands matter with discard matters. In my experience, this is a very real deck that makes great use of its tutoring abilities to find Bazaar of Baghdad. From there, you can use cards like Life from the Loam or straight up discard payoffs like Monument to Endurance to minimize Bazaar's downside. Formless Genesis and Six offer repeatable discard triggers in Green, while you can have Firestorm and various Red interactive pieces to control the board.
Rydia, Summoner of Mist is a great signpost for this deck. However, I seem to recall one of Dom's draft recaps where he states that players were too hung up on the saga part of the card and dismissed it for other purposes. Maybe this is happening with the bots as well and other, more explicit support might be needed.
I've included this in the past, but it wasn't very high impact. Compared to when I included it last (thanks CC for the new tool!), there are a few notable changes. One of them is more discard matters
Monument is a big one, making discarding a card a lot less painful. Ivora + Vortex can bring the beatdown quickly, especially if you have a Slogurk, the Overslime somewhere in the mix. Genesis isn't a payoff, but it adds land discard density, signaling the deck exists.
This is a fringe upside, but Molten Vortex plays really well with Ensnaring Bridge, letting you discard excess lands helps you stay at zero cards in hand while closing out the game.
The extra recursion lets you keep hitting your land drops even when discarding. Why Reclamation wasn't in my cube at that time is a mystery. WTF past Jean.
Gush gives you lands to discard which is perfect.
Land Tax wasn't in the cube at the same time as Vortex, which seems like an oversight. It's gotten even better now thanks to Squandered Resources and Sylvan Safekeeper that I didn't have before.
The Raven Man is a cool card that I could see adding back in. A two drop that makes evasive tokens is quite strong, even if it is capped at once a turn.
3. Lands + sacrifice. This one is correctly identified among the clusters. It uses cards like Zuran Orb, Knight of the Reliquary, Titania, Protector of Argoth and Icetill Explorer to generate value and ramp. There are two things it doesn't include, one is the more staxy build of the deck with Balance, Cataclysm and Devastating Dreams. The second is the link between lands and aristocrats. I'm talking about these
That's actually less than I thought I had. Looking at Scryfall here are the sacrifice a permanent cards I think will work here
Talent is mostly a creature sacrifice piece, but that second ability could be a nice finisher/enabler in a shell using Squandered Resources and Aftermath Analyst for example. Then there is one of my pet cards in Skittering Precursor. Love this guy's token making ability and versatility (+Enduring Renewal bs).
I've been tinkering with my lower power cubes and this is a card I slam in there. I'm thinking it actually has merit here too as it's similar to Precursor in that it overlaps land sacrifice with creature sacrifice. It has the added bonus of working with discard and mill, which seems quite strong given my current themes.
I'll try analyzing the Storm cluster in another post. For now, this little exercise has been interesting at revealing some potential holes in the cube. Whether or not I want to fix them is another story, but Sail into the West, Molten Vortex, Land Tax, Turntimber Sower and Skittering Precursor seem promising in terms of giving the lands matter archetype more directions to go in, by opening itself up to the other themes in the cube.