Obliterate Cube

[MusicalBen]

Hey everybody.

This is my first post on a forum - I hope I'm doing everything right - that has already helped me a great deal with my cube.

I'm always looking for different and original cubes; recently I had the idea of building a cube that would be drafted with a very particular set of gameplay rules: each upkeep there's a chance that a "sweeper" type effect happens. Creatures die, are returned to their owner's hands, bottom of the libraries or exiled, etc. The real fun is in the specific effects: since many of them are conditional (destroy all white creatures, creatures with power 2 or less) you never really know what's going to happen. This is what I call the Obliterate pile. Currently it has 183 different cards and I built a website that can generate random cards from the list.

The cube itself is comprised of mostly creatures that have some sort of leaves-the-battlefield effect. Naturally a number of archetypes surfaced while I was choosing the cards. But now that it's finished and I look at it it just looks like a random unfocused pile.

Some of the archetypes:

Spoiler: Birds

There are some Bird creatures and a couple of tribal cards that reward you for picking up a lot of them. Celestial Gatekeeper, Keeper of the Nine Gales or Soulcatchers' Aerie. It sort of melds into the Flying archetype (that ends up being relevant since 26 of the Obliterate cards care about flying) with cards like Soulcatcher, for instance.

Spoiler: Zombies

They just do what zombies do. I'm not sure if I have the right amount or the right cards but these are the ones I'm least concerned about.

Spoiler: Clerics

There are a lot of them that work for different archetypes and, like the Birds, you get rewarded if you pick up cards that care about them like Gangrenous Goliath, Rotlung Reanimator or Celestial Gatekeeper. I think most of them will be naturally picked up, since they blend with different archetypes, so should I have even more clerics? Or ditch the tribe completely?

Spoiler: Elementals

Similar to the clerics and birds but spread through all the colours and with a lot of creatures to choose from. If you can pick up a large number of them you get rewarded with Nova Chaser, Primal Beyond, Supreme Exemplar or Omnath, Locus of Rage.

Spoiler: Auras

Mainly because of Bestow and Totem Armor, but it ends up working because there also a number of random auras that care about creatures dying. Eidolon of Countless Battles, Evershrike, Flickerform or Iridescent Drake are some of the incentives to grab a number of them.

Spoiler: Bouncing and Flickering

Not really an archetype but there are many cards that work nicely with it. Can't use most of the really good flicker effects since they don't dodge mass removal.

Spoiler: Goblins

I don't know if there are enough goblins in the cube but this theme is important since is one of the few that Red can claim. And I really like the cards. How can I make it better?

Spoiler: Dash (and dash-like effects)

One of the black sheep, as they say, since beyond phoenixes I don't have a great theme for Red. I feel like it should be great. Should I just add more Warbringers?

Spoiler: Spirits

Again, not working but it should work. Soulshift and zuberas and Blinking Spirit and Thief of Hope.

I won't bore you with more archetypes or strategies. I feel that what I lack is the ability to see what other cards these archetypes need to function properly. But then we arrive at a question that I haven't been able to answer: should I add cards that don't care about creatures dying just for the sake of the archetypes and themes? Spirits, for example, would benefit greatly from that, as would Auras and Flying.

Or is the problem simpler than that and perhaps I just need more duplicates of key cards? Like

I'm sorry for the long post but I really don't know what to do about this Cube. It feels like a great and fun idea but the decks aren't coming out the way I imagined they should.

Thank you.

 

[sigh]

Hello and welcome . Hopefully one of the staff can shift this thread over to the Blogs thread, where you can happily maintain this as your own cube design space.

But little details like thread placement are not super important. What's important is that this is a unique and cool concept! It immediately got my gears spinning', which is an awesome sign . You took a couple really interesting approaches with this:

• Creature based. This seemed a little counterintuitive at first, but I actually think this is a good idea. This means the majority of the cube interacts with the obliterate pile, which is nice. Too many non-creature spells and you'll spontaneously grow the "avoid the pile by having very few creatures" archetype. So, sweet approach!
• Tribal. I think this might be one of your big sticking points. I know there are several people here who have tried various tribes to marginal success at best, I think. Tribal is really hard to pull off with cube because the concept is linear by nature. You need a high density of one thing, and that can lead to either linear drafting, or crushed dreams if someone picks into your colors/tribes. There is a recent Spirits thread with some history lessons from Grillo_Parlante.

A couple of specific cards that I think will be really cool in this environment:


Going deeper than this would take significantly longer. Do you have some sample decks and what you think is not working/looking weird?

I noticed that you have a sentence that ends with "like" as if you were going to make a list. Did you have some specific examples in mind?

Definitely hope you keep chipping away at this format and cube, it seems like a awesome format if you polish it up!

 

[MusicalBen]

Hey man, thanks for the quick reply.

• Creature based. This seemed a little counterintuitive at first, but I actually think this is a good idea. This means the majority of the cube interacts with the obliterate pile, which is nice. Too many non-creature spells and you'll spontaneously grow the "avoid the pile by having very few creatures" archetype. So, sweet approach!

Yeah I wanted that every conceivable strategy was forced to deal with the fact that, at time, the board could be wiped. That they had to play with it instead of around it.

• Tribal. I think this might be one of your big sticking points. I know there are several people here who have tried various tribes to marginal success at best, I think. Tribal is really hard to pull off with cube because the concept is linear by nature. You need a high density of one thing, and that can lead to either linear drafting, or crushed dreams if someone picks into your colors/tribes. There is a recent Spirits thread with some history lessons from Grillo_Parlante.

I noticed that as well. It becomes an even bigger problem when I try to narrow the cards to effects and abilities that respond to the gameplay change. While some tribes are made for it (like zombies), for others it becomes a problem. I know I could make the spirits tribe much better with a few cards, for example, but at the same time I'm sorta reluctant about adding cards that aren't really about dying. And at the same time there are colours that simply HAVE to get different cards (like red) since there aren't enough cards that care about the graveyard. Example:



These are two very similar cards but while I'm probably going to add Nighthowler (since it plays well with both auras and general graveyard shenanigans) Boneyard Wurm feels forced simply because it does only one thing. And that one thing is only marginally related to the point of the cube.

(Regarding your other suggestions, I have most of them in the maybe file already! Since the cube was already getting too big (and it should probably get even smaller) I am waiting and seeing what needs replacing.)

The main problem, and I think I understand what you are saying, is that I should focus on broader strategies instead of gameplans that force me to draft a certain way. So maybe expand zombie tribal into a number-of-cards-in-graveyard-matters sub theme and reinforce even more the role of Birds as the flying theme instead of just bird tribal. Or taking Spirits and Elementals and finding an actual gameplay theme that can work with several cards, including cards from those tribes.

Since there's a lot of bouncing and Soulshift already something like a handsome matters for UW could work? It also makes sense, keeping your guys in your hand instead of in the battlefield. It's a big liability but it plays nicely with both blink and auras sub themes.



Again, my main issue here is adding cards that don't directly deal with the graveyard and dying. Am I being too conservative? Probably yes. But now I feel like ditching that concern and just adding these great cards. I love them, they would play well with several archetypes, they just don't do anything when they die.

EDIT: I just found the thread you mentioned and now I'm basically laughing at myself for dipping my toes into the same quicksand. But I should be safe if I don't try to enforce a tribal theme in Spirits and, instead, just regard them as a happy byproduct of other different themes that play well together like Auras, Hand Size Matters... Right? I mean, there's nothing quite like suffering for yourself when it comes to learning lessons.

 

[MusicalBen]

Allright, so this is a pretty lengthy post - and for that I excuse myself in advance - but after reading the thread that sigh recommended, and basically just thinking about it for a long time, I have arrived at a, possible, solution for two problems:

1. Why are some themes not working?
2. How to find and fill holes left by eliminating the importance of those themes?

The main issue in how to solve these is that I can't just list the guilds and link the desired play styles. Because of the gameplay particularities - every turn there's mass removal - I was forced to find certain cards and strategies, severely limiting gameplay choices. But if this can't be a valid starting point perhaps it's important, nevertheless, to arrive at it, as a conclusion that will stand as a model for the evolution of the cube.

And so I started by making of list of themes - non-tribal - that work well within the rules. I also made an effort to expand the allowed strategies. (Boneyard Wurm, you're cool). I arrived at this, unordered and general, list:

• Auras
• Bounce / Blink
• Flying
• Voltron
• # Cards in Hand
• Unearth
• Leaves / Enter Play
• # Creatures In Graveyard
• Tokens
• Deathtriggers
• Dash

I was happy with it and it also gave me a sort of insight into what made or didn't make sense: of course spirits and elementals don't have a place in this list. Those are themes, not archetypes. They may be part of an archetype but enforcing them as their own is always going to constitute an identity problem, both for the tribe (that may not have the desired pieces) and the archetype in general (that will lack the non-tribal cards).

Then it was time to make a chart describing positive and negative relationships for this list. This is mainly so there could be some sort of visual support for what themes are alone or too weak. And hopefully it is the first step in injecting some colour identity and grouping into the themes by ordering and visualising natural oppositions and bonds.

Spoiler: Themes: Positive Relationships

Spoiler: Themes: Negative Relationships

It may seem like a mess. And some things I'm not sure about (especially in the Negative Relationship Chart) but those mostly relate to problems with specific cards so I'll leave them be for now.

Anyway next it was time to list these themes once again, but this time specifying which colour they belong in. While I tried to not overstep the previous charts I mostly just filled the new chart with whatever was appropriate. The results would, hopefully, eliminate and organize the errors and incongruities.

​

This made me pretty happy: it seems the themes are nicely separated, even if we consider them to be very minor or very major. And most important: we seem not to be stepping on the toes of the first two charts. Opposing strategies still have opposing colours behind them. (I decided to leave Leave / Enter Play blank since this is a really broad strategy and, hopefully, something the whole cube will play with.)

Then I figured this was a good time to use this chart to deduce a new colour wheel. If I want this cube to be evenly divided and have some sense behind colour groupings, then these themes and its identities must conform to a colour wheel that can house them. A quick glance reveals four evident three-colour groups: Abzan, Jund, Jeskai and Bant. Two wedges and two shards? Let's make a new colour wheel.

​

Spoiler: New Colour Wheel (detailed)

So our cube now conforms to this new colour wheel: WURBG. Why is this useful? Perhaps only to my untrained eyes, but it was now very easy for me to see what colour should have some sort of relationship that may be lacking in the current state of the themes. We have one shard - Grixis - and two guilds - Selesnya and Izzet - without any clearly defined strategies or identities.

And thus I was able to combine all this knowledge into my last chart (and I promise it's the last) that finally details what we lacked in the first place: detailed themes by shard and guild. And more important: where are the holes and what should we fill them with.

Spoiler: The Final Chart

I'll stop for now. I already have some ideas for these holes in the cube. Some are quite obvious (the zombie theme can easily expand into Grixis and stop being a purely black thing) and some are less obvious.

I figure I'll start delving deeper into each individual strategy in the next post but right now I'm sure of one thing:

I have to start from the beginning.

First card:

It doesn't play very well with any strategy. But the opportunity to turn any random Obliterate card that has an X into something worthwhile is too fun to pass.

 

[Kirblinx]

Dude, that post was awesome!

Finding what archetypes you wanted, seeing where they overlap and finding what colour pairs needs archetypes was a great process to follow. It feels like this is what most people are asking for when they first post their cube list here but you went above and beyond to find it out yourself.

I don't know why you haven't shifted unearth to Grixis rather than Rakdos. You seem to have a decent amount of unearth creatures in blue and the 2 best Grixis Unearthers.

Abzan looks like it is 'death triggers' just like jund. It just has different base to go off of. It looks like a token theme, but that is because it has Selesnya in it which looks like the superior token colour pair.

The only problem pair I can see is UR. Since you are heavy creature based there goes the easiest archetype for UR, spells matter. I had a quick look at all the gold creatures in those colours and tried to find anything that could be of use in your cube and this was all I came up with:

All of these work well in a setting where things get blown up every so often. The thing that came to mind after looking at these and what makes the rest of the grixis shard work, HASTE!

You may be wondering how blue gets access to haste, well:

While it isn't as large of an archetype as I would have liked it could be good enough. Otherwise you can have a flipping good time with some phasing, or focus one of the tribes in UR (elementals, spirits) as those seem to be the only options.


Also, I wouldn't just restrict yourself to those shards with your new colour wheel. They will be the solid base for your cube but if people decide to wander from the norm you can give them a little reward like Rosheen.

 

[MusicalBen]

Hey dude, I'm glad you found my journey interesting; I felt very confused while putting everything together : D

I don't know why you haven't shifted unearth to Grixis rather than Rakdos. You seem to have a decent amount of unearth creatures in blue and the 2 best Grixis Unearthers.

Yeah I hadn't made the official decision yet but I think that was inevitable. Maybe I was classifying it more as a role rather than an actual card-effects-thing since I don't know wether blue cares a lot about unearth and the remaining Grixis abilities (Dash only, for now).

Abzan looks like it is 'death triggers' just like jund. It just has different base to go off of. It looks like a token theme, but that is because it has Selesnya in it which looks like the superior token colour pair.

The thing is that white adds very little when it comes to actual interesting death triggers: just more tokens. Jund has Falkenrath Noble, Sek'Kuar, Deathkeeper, Hissing Iguanar and random green token generation (Symbiotic Beast). White gets... more 1/1 Spirit tokens, most of the time, and life gain (Moonlit Wake for example). And so (and picking up on your Spirits suggestion) I was thinking about leaving the Abzan with just endless tokens and less ways to use them as direct damage and using the tokens to cement the spirit theme without going all out on the tribal perspective. Most of the interesting Spirits are Abzan, anyway, and things like Tallowisp or Sovereigns of Lost Alara wouldn't be too far off (color-wise) in Bant.

The only problem pair I can see is UR. Since you are heavy creature based there goes the easiest archetype for UR, spells matter. I had a quick look at all the gold creatures in those colours and tried to find anything that could be of use in your cube and this was all I came up with...

My problem with UR is Jeskai, not UR. I mean... It's fairly easy to expand the Unearth and Zombie theme to a color that easily adopts it (blue). What is harder to do is marrying any Grixis theme to Jeskai. But you did mention one thing that is making me think: phasing! Blue-white has one of the minor themes that combines very well with temporary creatures (unearth and dash being great examples of this): blinking creatures. Dashing creatures, or Blistering Firecating them into the battlefield and phasing them away before they return to the battlefield and die doesn't sound terrible. Does it?

It would mean Jeskai becomes the aggro shard of the cube with a little twist on recurring cheap creatures. But that actually sounds amazing. Things like:



I'm liking this new take on Jeskai. It combines the two things you said, actually: hasty, temporary creatures, and weird ways of recurring them: phasing, for example. It sounds like the kind of thing that gets better if the game goes long but I'm expecting games to be longer than average, anyway.

As for elementals I think I'll spread them through the five colours and leave some cool build around cards flowing, if there are enough elementals in the end.

Also, I wouldn't just restrict yourself to those shards with your new colour wheel. They will be the solid base for your cube but if people decide to wander from the norm you can give them a little reward like Rosheen.

Agree with you completely. This exercise was mainly to guide myself and organize the various themes I have floating around in my head. But if a card is cool it goes in the cube. How would I live without Realm Razer?

 

[MusicalBen]

Allright, so following up on my previous posts I decided to definitely, and now in full possession on valuable knowledge, try and define the archetypes for each color pair and shard.

I decided to provide a better support for allied colour pairs and definitely guide people into drafting the shards. One, two and three coloured decks will be possible. Wedges and enemy pairs won't be as supported but won't be impossible to build. The reason for this is very simple: the enemy colours don't have great support regarding good strategies for this cube (except for WB, and I'm still thinking about what to do with it.). Most of the time the cards simply aren't there. I don't want to limit the players' options, but I definitely don't want to trick them into drafting an inexistent or impossible archetype. Like Kirblinx said, if people wander of I want to be able to reward them with a few cards. But there just aren't enough cards in GR or UR that speak to this kind of cube. That being said, let's define some colour groups.

GWU or Bant

Major Theme: Auras / Voltron
Minor Theme: Number of cards in hand matters

GWU is all about getting one creature into play, minimising the risks of the inevitable removal effects, and beefing it up with auras and evasion to create a giant creature. It's the color combination that has the least interaction with the graveyard. Instead it avoids it by protecting creatures with auras, blink and bounce effects or by simply keeping cards in hand and using it s an advantage.

The tokens theme it gains from white and green offer it a great way to muck up the ground and make sure your important creatures can attack safely.



WUR or Jeskai

Major Theme: Resilient Threats / Combat Trickery
Minor Theme: ETB / LTB

WUR is the most versatile colour combination of the five shards. It focuses on many different things, all with the same purposes: making the most of one turn, avoiding removal and being hard to kill. Haste, from mechanics such as Unearth and Dash, offers these short span creatures. Coupled with blink and bounce effects, WUR has not only access to interesting combat tricks but also a way to reuse these creatures, turning a dash creature into a permanent one, if needed be.

The small tokens it may have access in white, are also an excellent way to make use of the several red cards that care about the number of creatures in play. I'm also considering a small splice onto arcane sub theme (that would also tie very nicely into GWU's cards in hand matters theme) and errata'ing all instant and sorceries as arcane.

Also a sincere thank you to Kirblinx for telling me everything I needed to know to discover this archetype : )



URB or Grixis

Major Theme: Reanimator
Minor Theme: Zombie tribal
Associated Mechanics: Unearth

The three colours that bring things back from the graveyard. And that's what they do. Unearth, dash and the very obvious zombie archetype will hopefully end up as a very aggressive type of deck that plays a large density of threats that are easily replaced and brought into play over and over again.



RBG or Jund

Major Theme: Sacrifice
Minor Theme: Death triggers, Number of creatures in graveyard matter

This is group that doesn't really care what happens as long as the creatures keep dying. While it has a few ways of bringing them back, it's mostly about making sure that, when they die, they can be useful in some way, whether by fuelling another card's abilities or simply being more useful in the graveyard.

While the dash theme is also present in these colours a lot of cards will care about the number of creatures in the graveyard, providing an incentive to play them into certain death. Green also offers tokens that, while not going to graveyard, fuel the Death triggers sub theme that characterise this colour combination.



BGW or Abzan

Major Theme: Tokens
Minor Theme: Spirit Tribal

While sharing some themes with RGB, BGW has a much less aggressive plan since white provides a way to stabilise the board quickly with tokens. The access to green, white and black, gives BGW access to a lot of different strategies form all around the cube: auras, bouncing, graveyard matters, tokens etc. The common theme across these three colours is simple: creatures with added value that replace themselves very nicely when dying.

BGW hopefully becomes the go to midrange, flexible combination of the cube, able to go wide while also boasting high value creatures. There is also a small Spirit tribal sub theme with about 40 spirits in these colours. I'll surely be talking about this specific theme in a separate post since, as Grillo_Parlante so eloquently demonstrated, it can pose serious issues of narrowness.



Those are the shards. Individual colour pairs have their own flavours and strategies and, hopefully, can be mixed and matched to create interesting decks. There are strategies beyond the ones described in this post. Elementals might be a tribe spread throughout all the colours, and there are some rewards for picking up creatures with flying. I'll be talking about those (and other) draft able strategies in future posts.

A couple of questions regarding this post:

1. Splice onto Arcane. Will it work? How many instants and sorceries are needed for a spell to be spliceable while still keeping the gameplay focus on creatures? How many Splice spells should I have? Is making all spells Arcane the right solution?
2. Is Abzan unfocused? I feel like it's one of the colour combinations that has the best cards, but I'm concerned whether the final result will result in a deep draft experience or a confusing labyrinth.

Thank you for reading and here's another random card to think about. Is it too strong?