General Non Blue Control in Cube

[Eric Chan]

Dualcaster Mage is really awkward to use on someone else's spells - for the same reason that trying to keep up Cancel mana really constrains what you can do - but he might be okay if you manage to draft a sufficient number of cheap spells yourself. He's on the chopping block, though, as he's no Snapcaster Mage.

 

[Onderzeeboot]

So far I like Daretti, he was really good in a Grixis build someone ran in my first silent auction with the new (well, not anymore, really, but it was then) cube.

 

[Karl]

Daretti is once again very cube dependant. A lot of his power come from Artifact interaction. Without a high amount of Artifacts he essentially becomes a 4 mana card filter engine. Which isn't bad, but it's not great.
Dualcaster Mage in my experience is just to awkward to use effectivly. You have to keep a lot of mana open to abuse your own spells and you can't really rely on him copying your opponents spells.

 

[Lucre]

dual caster is a 4-5 cost spell right?
I guess you can use him as a mystic snake type spell if you can rely upon opponents having relevant instant or sorcery interactions. (sorry artifact and enchantment and devotion themes lol)

 

[Lucre]

How is it going for people who are trying to make enchantments and artifacts work at once? Do you ever have relevant cards in your hand or are they always just expensive sorcery speed permanents?

 

[FlowerSunRain]

I did it by making the artifact theme completely incidental. I'm not running lots of loose artifacts to "make it work", the closest thing being Chromatic Sphere. These cards are all shit you play, but if you grab welder/Daretti you can try and grab a few more + great furnace and make it work.

The enchantments are a little looser, but there are so many of them (Over 20% of cards in my cube are enchantments) and they cover just about everything from dude to removal to utility that it works on a brute force level.

 

[CML]

Yeah, Daretti is cube-dependent but my environment is very far from one that would want him. Lower power cubes with a big artifact theme will enjoy it.

I may very well cut Dualcaster

 

[Alfonzo Bonzo]

How about green control?

 

[Grillo_Parlante]

Maybe some white only blink effects to keep getting value off of briarhorn, caryatid, and wall of blossoms?



White also has wall of omens, a bunch of removal, and temp. protection effects to protect your board. There is also citanul woodreaders.

Don't know how like likely it is someone picks G/W control though over U/x control or G/W midrange.

 

[Lucre]

Alphonso's green control deck looks like several peasant cube decks I've made

• My green control decks are usually Thragtusk / Arena / Thoughsieze decks. Often they will play between a mix of extended rock and standard jund. I love it when I can damnation around an epochrasite or a bitterblossom. Lily is so good with green blockers / Nighthawk

• The next most common green control decks I draft are usually 4 colour value decks that play combos like Snapcaster / Witness + Rites / Cryptic /Profane. These decks are usually cobbled together from broken dreams or go 2-1 when you have everything going for you. They are very easy to hate out, hard to play, your lands do a lot of damage to you and with the rise of wasteland and shitty removal you are often not making the most of your turns.

• The least common green control deck I get to play is closer to a GW midranged deck or white rock deck. It uses wrath of god and cards like finks to generate card advantage and really advantageous boardstates. This deck has trouble with topdecking though and its ways of generating cards usually require some work. This is mainly a pet deck until people start building their cubes a little differently. Acceleration has been particularly bad here of late because most people are really enamored with an "all elves" style of enablers which hurt your wraths and further hurt your ability to thin/shuffle your deck consistently.

I'm gonna include a bonus chapter on RG control but it's essentially a peasant archetype. green and red are both great colours to be in if you are facing a lot of 2/1s and you can very easily get advantaged while constantly trading value guys down, while using your red efficient removal and excess of lands to enable multiple spell turns and making use of sweet flashbacks.

Green often takes a hell of a lot of time and work to make it's card advantage feel relevant or even particularly beneficial, I think there are probably ways to change this but I'm not seeing a lot of them on this thread so far. ; )

The more stupid cards that are only for creature heavy decks with mana to spend protecting their strategy or forcing through stalled boardstates (negates, weak equipment, shadow rifts, pump, anthems etc) the fewer reasons people will have to build unconventional control decks and aggro control decks. A lot of those cards table and people taking green cards (tenacious fatties and ramp) with wrath of god finding themselves adrift later in the packs with gods willing and anthems and say morbid or soulbond guys and rattleclaw mystic, you're gonna feel like you're in the wrong deck. What you'll learn over a couple times is that is always gonna be the wrong deck through a mix of what is supported and what disappears first, the eternal witness you NEED will not table, but neither will that bitter blossom or that swords to plow shares, maybe vines of vastwood will table though! Maybe I should just play little kid again?

In summation I'm very curious about Sudden Reclamation.

 

[CML]

Sudden Rec is kinda poop unfortunately. Looked really great to me for draft but ugh. It's pretty bad.

Green card advantage:



Green is a common control color in Cube and limited in general, isn't it? In modern limited everyone's playing ~14 creatures (this is one of the few things I disliked about KKK limited) so you just go a little bit bigger with Green.

What are some other nice Green draw spells? Tell me about your experiences with these:

 

[Laz]

I am a big fan of this one: Mirri's Guile

Not strict card advantage, but with the number of shuffle effects that I have in my cube, and the fact that I have a small-ish top of library manipulation theme, it generates a lot of value.

 

[CML]

So are we doing both Mirri's Guile and Sylvan Library?

 

[Rasmus Källqvist]

Why not? If anything, if a player sees both mirri and library in their pool maybe it'll start getting some cogs churning. They're also two strong enchantments that help eidolon of blossoms if we want that as a source of card advantage.

 

[Jason Waddell]

Guile + Courser?

 

[Laz]

Guile + Courser?

That came out against me last time we drafted. Then there were no lands in the top 6 and it was a non-game.

 

[Chris Taylor]

Soooooooo much mana

 

[Dom Harvey]

it's Sphinx's Revelation + a body if you have enough ways to sac it, worth a try IMO

 

[Chris Taylor]

it's Sphinx's Revelation OR a body IF you have enough ways to sac it, worth a try IMO

corrected for emphasis

 

[Lucre]

corrected for emphasis

Yeah this combat damage stacking point I had keeps fucking popping up hahahahhahah.
Also the body is ludicrously awful if it's not getting killed by a removal spell (aka doesn't attack and block well)

 

[Chris Taylor]

Yeah this combat damage stacking point I had keeps fucking popping up hahahahhahah

Okay I'm guilty since rev never did anything for me at all, but this works like damage stacks: You deal damage and then you get the sac trigger

You just can't trigger it whenever. The only way you're really getting both is if it does it on ETB, which would probably be pretty sweet and/or backbreaking

 

[Lucre]

Well, yes I was being a little glib but it just reminded me about how much more satisfying sacrifice effects used to be. Also the incredibly disadvantaged body for cost would seem to make it hard for this to be actually relevantly trading in combat, so I guess you are putting all your weight on the expectation of cards and life, which is something I'd love to supplement with say the lil extra value you get from, trading with a token, getting a gargadon counter off and then drawing two cards and gaining 2 life.

 

[CML]

Well Rev is also kinda poop unless you're doing it for 7+

 

[Chris Taylor]

Well Rev is also kinda poop unless you're doing it for 7+

Man no wonder, Kozilek is shit in my cube too

 

[Lucre]

Man people at grim monolith cube nights I attend swear by rev. I was like, don't you deck?

By the time you're on 7 lands how many cards have you already seen. Then I remember I'm playing in an environment where mind twist and boarder land ranger are in the same pack and life feels too vast and sublime for me to contemplate.