Pete's 450 Unpowered Cube

[Peter LaCara]

Hello everyone. I've been lurking for a bit, and I figured the best way to introduce myself is with my cube. So here it is:
http://www.cubetutor.com/visualspoiler/7758
http://www.cubetutor.com/visualspoiler/7758

It's relatively vanilla compared to some of the craziness I've seen here. Hell, it's even singleton, but people already look at me like I've grown a second head when I try to explain that my cube is about creating a fun environment, rather than about strict power maxing or some stupid gimmick. I'm not convinced I could get anyone to play if I told them I broke singleton. Besides, I kinda like the aesthetics of singleton, but that's just me.

Anyway. I just did a pretty hefty overhaul after a bunch of drafts and an influx of Christmas cash and I'd like to get some opinions on it. Here's some of the themes I'm going for:

Tribal elements: Humans, soldiers, zombies, goblins, elves. Little bit of merfolk and faeries too.
Spells matter: pretty classic UR archetype, but I want a lot of focus on tempo in most of the other colors too.
Sacrifice/recursion: I love the Act of Treason + sacrifice outlet trick.
Variety of Colors: I loved the devotion mechanic from Theros. I also love ridiculous 5c goodstuff decks. I love a solid 2 color list. I want you to be able to pick a number from 1-5 and have a viable strategy available to you at that number of colors.

Most of my group thinks it's pretty fun (I've heard "most fun I've ever had cubing" more than once), but you guys are the real experts and I'd like to get your opinions.

 

[Eric Chan]

Hey Peter, welcome to the site!

I attempted a draft of your cube, and ended up in nearly mono-B control. From what I can tell, you're running a fairly high-powered list, though not power-max.

For us to provide meaningful advice, it would help to understand:

• What decks typically do well in your drafts? Are aggro, control, and midrange roughly equally represented?
• What's the speed of your cube? When aggro decks win, what turn is that often on?
• What archetypes are you trying to improve, or change?

The one thing I'll point out is that your fixing is... well, rubbish, for a cube of this power level. There's too many tap lands in there, which leaves aggro - the archetype that needs the most high-quality fixing - a step behind. Both fetchlands and original duals are a must, if you're going to put all the decks on equal footing. If there's a budget issue holding you back, there really shouldn't be - proxying just these twenty cards, and nothing else, will go a long way towards fixing your fixing. Without knowing too much about your cube, I'd be reluctant to draft even a two-colour aggro deck, because the same Seaside Citadel and Temple of Mystery would work much better in a midrange concoction than if I were trying to beat down with Edric.

 

[Peter LaCara]

Hey Peter, welcome to the site!

I attempted a draft of your cube, and ended up in nearly mono-B control. From what I can tell, you're running a fairly high-powered list, though not power-max.

Heh. Most of the cubes around here are powered and full of broken combos, so I guess I never thought of mine as high powered. You know, you think you avoid stuff like the titans and swords and that makes it lower powered, but I guess compared to some stuff around here it's not.

For us to provide meaningful advice, it would help to understand:

• What decks typically do well in your drafts? Are aggro, control, and midrange roughly equally represented?
• What's the speed of your cube? When aggro decks win, what turn is that often on?
• What archetypes are you trying to improve, or change?

I've found that the three main archetypes are pretty well represented. B/x aggro tends to smash face. I've lost hard to 5c control decks. There's been more than one sweet UR tempo deck, and green ramp is definitely a thing. I haven't paid much attention to the actual turn that games tend to end on. I should be looking at that more often.

As for archetypes I'm looking to improve, non-control blue decks were suffering pretty hard, so I just did a major overhaul to the blue section. I'd like it to be a more tempo oriented color and a little more proactive. Green feels a little one dimensional to me too, being mostly focused on ramp and fatties. I'd like it to pair with black a little better, since I love the rock type decks. I used to have a whole lifegain trigger package with Ajani's Pridemate, Zuran Orb, the soul sisters, and Searing Meditation, but no one ever touched it so I cut it recently. Since then, I feel like I don't really have a wacky build around theme in there, though I just put Seismic Assault in. I wish that card was easier to cast. I'd like some suggestions on neat build arounds along those same lines.

The one thing I'll point out is that your fixing is... well, rubbish, for a cube of this power level. There's too many tap lands in there, which leaves aggro - the archetype that needs the most high-quality fixing - a step behind. Both fetchlands and original duals are a must, if you're going to put all the decks on equal footing. If there's a budget issue holding you back, there really shouldn't be - proxying just these twenty cards, and nothing else, will go a long way towards fixing your fixing. Without knowing too much about your cube, I'd be reluctant to draft even a two-colour aggro deck, because the same Seaside Citadel and Temple of Mystery would work much better in a midrange concoction than if I were trying to beat down with Edric.

I knew I was going to get this. If you can believe it, the speed of the fixing used to be even worse, since I had the karoos instead of the pain lands. I'm not opposed to proxying. I've done it before, though it leaves a bit of a bad taste in my mouth. This is going to sound weird, but I kind of don't like the fetches, though I can't put my finger on exactly why. I also don't want to run the ABU duals since the shocks are the power level I'm most comfortable with, and having a strictly better cycle in there isn't what I'm looking for. I really like the effect the temples have on gameplay, and the flexibility the tri-lands give you in a draft, so I don't want to cut either of them. The rest of the fixing comes in untapped. Should I add another cycle of something? I already have 50/450 dedicated to lands. I'm open to suggestions.

 

[Grillo_Parlante]

Welcome to the forum!

I'll ecco the issues with fixing, and with a 62 card multi-color section you really can't ignore it. Given the stipulated restrictions I would slim down the multi-color section to 30 (maybe) 40 cards. With that large of a multi-color section, a major theme of the your cube is going to be color fixing.

An additional choice would be to embrace your identity as a slower format, and encourage slower 4-5 color decks that trade tempo for access to multi-color haymakers vs. an alternate strategy of fast 2 color aggro decks that ignore quality fixing in favor of tempo.

The least invasive choices are ones you've already ruled out: run ABU duals, fetchlands, or a second set of shocks.

I did a few drafts trying to force blue tempo and wasn't really pleased with the results. Outside of the above mentioned fixing problems exacerbated by the large multi-color sections, were the following:

1. Power level disparity: The gap between cards like sublime archangel and cloud of faeries is huge. There is a mix of these powerful midrange cards (thragtusk, polukranos, precursor golem, planeswalkers ect.) that can be ramped out and take over the board, living alongside slower pauper power level cards like spellstutter sprite, ninja of the deep hours, and cloud of faeries.

2. Narrowness/lack of support: Cards like vexing sphinx, spellstutter sprite,delver of secrets, and cloud of faeries are very specific about the types of decks they want to go into. Sphinx wants gy interactions, sprite and cloud want a faeries theme, and delver wants either a heavy spell base, or TOL manipulation. None of these things really exist here. The creature section, especially in blue, is huge, and when you have such a narrow pool, it makes it hard to find cheap effective spells to chain together, which is what those decks want to do. Cards like preordain, brainstorm, gush, and gitaxian probe would be a big help. Maybe cheap flashback cards.

3. Tempo disparity: Like previously alluded to, parts of the cube seem to be working on very different clocks. Your green section is capable of ramping out big powerful haymakers like you would expect in a cube built around running titans. On the other hand, you have ninjitsu creatures and cards like azure mage, which pretty much presume you have time to setup a rube goldberg contraption.

I would probably (broken record here) write out all 10 guilds, and then choose a theme and sub-theme for each guild that you want to put into the cube. Try to have cards be broadly applicable across several different themes so as to conserve on cube space, and nail down the speed, tempo, and power level of the format.

Also, remember that the idea behind a tempo deck is to get ahead on board position and stay there. How that is done in a cube is going to be contingent on the overall tempo of the cube. Pauper is a fairly slow format, which is why spellstutter, ninja of the deep hours, and cloud of faeries work there: you have time to setup your contraption and get ahead on board position. You might need something faster here, or slow down other parts of your cube to accommodate those types of strategies.

GL!

 

[Peter LaCara]

Great analysis, thanks.

Let's address the multicolor section first. I've tried to have my cake and eat it too with the cards by trying to include a lot of hybrid and split cards, and keep the number of true gold cards down to around 4 per guild. It hasn't always worked out that way since a lot of the guilds have pretty shitty options, at least for the identities I'm trying to set up for them. They are roughly as follows:
Azorius: control/flickering effects
Dimir: control/tempo
Rakdos: aggression/sacrifice effects
Gruul: elfball type rampy goodness
Selesnya: it's all about the beats (no treble)
Orzhov: tokens
Golgari: graveyard shenanigans
Simic: ... is kind of all over the place. Hmm. Need to rework.
Izzet: spells matter
Boros: I really like this as a control guild, but there's tension because the base colors both really want to be aggressive. May want to rework as well.

Nicol Bolas and Chromanticore are there to pull you into the 5c control archetype. I'm not cutting Chromanticore since he's become something of a signature card in the cube. Bolas is negotiable, though I'm something of a fanboy. He was out for a while and then I recently brought him back.

Alright. Let's talk blue. Say I want my first option to be to bring it up to the power level of the other colors, while still being pretty tempo-y. What might that section look like?

 

[Grillo_Parlante]

Right now I think you have a blue section thats split:




vs.




Than the undecided



You've honed in on blues great 4cc tempo pieces, but the choices from 1-3cc are pretty weak, and thats where you have to make some choices. There seems to be a split between creature heavy blue strategies (bident, equilibrium, thassa, master, coralhelm) and more spell focused strategies (delver, cloud of faeries, talrand), which should be resolved.

If you want blue creature based decks that are curving out into devotion (master, thassa) you have to give them a curve at 1-2cc so they will have a board presence to exploit. There are also fixing issues, since those decks want UU spells by turn 3 or turn 4 and you are more of a multi-color cube.

If you want them establishing an early board presence and than not falling behind on tempo, they also need good 1-2cc threats, and than 2cc counterbackup or some other way to protect those threats while disrupting the opponent. If you want spells matters, you need more cheap cantrips to chain, and a larger spell section. If you want more of an aggro-control deck, you again, need a cheap aggro element that merges well with your control elements.

So, I think you kind of need to refine the themes a little. I think you have a bunch of cards in here that have a reputation as "blue aggro" or "tempo" cards in the history of magic, but don't really gell well with the overall format, and conflict with one another in various ways.

The traditional issue with this strategy for cube designers is that blue just dosen't have a lot of great 1-2cc threats, and the higher the power level, the worse they scale against the other colors. Cube also tends to be a very creature focused environment, so a lot of designers have a hard time patching in delver, which limits even further your choices for cheap blue aggro cards. Your other two options are cloudfin raptor (which tends to do well in a lower power "counters theme") and phantasmal bear (who has to live in the same world as goblin guide). The limit in choices really encourages singleton breaking as well, which has been ruled out here.

One approach you could take is to focus on blue's ability to develop tempo at 4cc, and just make 1-3cc purely about disruption, or cantriping blockers like sea gate oracle. Look at other color pairings and see how they could fill that gap at 1-3cc, and take advantage of that disruption.

 

[Eric Chan]

This is going to sound weird, but I kind of don't like the fetches, though I can't put my finger on exactly why.

Do you know why you don't like fetchlands?

Because you don't have anything to fetch for.

Maybe that's being a little flippant, and stating the obvious, but there's a reason Flooded Strand and friends barely factor into Standard manabases, while being staples in Modern manabases. The power in cracking a fetchland is being able to nab the Watery Grave in your deck, then casting Thoughtseize this turn, and, say, Coralhelm Commander the next. Being able to search up only basic Plains or Island makes fetchlands a fair bit worse than even, say, the painlands.

If you're going to stick to your constraints of singleton, no original duals, and no fetchlands, while still running a lot of the heavy hitting bombs and planeswalkers, I think you'll have to accept that your format will be heavily biased towards midrange, and against aggro. Colour me skeptical when you say that "all three archetypes are well represented"; I find that a little bit hard to believe, between the fixing situation and the preponderance of midrange bombs, as Grillo pointed out. Now, there's nothing wrong with being a midrangy cube - in fact, you may want to take your cube even further in this direction. I think the important part is to determine the style (attrition vs. tempo) and speed (fast vs. slow) of this cube, and then hone in on supporting that as best as you can.

As an example, Jason Waddell's cube is both very fast, and focused on attrition. Cards like Koth of the Hammer and even Call of the Herd are unusually good in his environment, because he runs a lot of cheap, universal removal, often leading to games where the board is empty. Resilient threats and threats that produce more than one body are better than normal in his metagame. On the curve side, he tops out at about six, as running anything more expensive would probably be suicide.

On the flip side, my own cube is also fast - a smidgeon slower than Jason's, but not by much - but tempo-based. Call of the Herd is laughable here, but things like Dungeon Geists and Pyreheart Wolf are bigger game. Players more often have several bodies on their side of the field, but just as often, are killed while still holding several cards in hand they didn't have time to cast. I run a few seven-drops and a sprinkling of eights, but players take and run those at their own peril.

Having perused your black section more thoroughly than the rest of your list, I think your cube is attrition-based, but maybe you can fill us in on that. The large number of two-for-ones I see - Gatekeeper of Malakir, Ophiomancer, Xathrid Necromancer, Grim Haruspex in the black threes alone - is another thing holding aggro down, and propping midrange up. Again, you have to decide if this is the style of cube you want to run, or if this is just incidental from all of the stuff you've included.

 

[Peter LaCara]

Hmm. Maybe I have a different definition of aggro in my mind than you guys do. Like, I think Xathrid Necromancer and Grim Haruspex are perfectly fine aggro cards, since they let you keep jamming into the red zone without worrying about running out of gas. Maybe I've been fooling myself and they've been more midrange decks all along?

Like, can you post a typical aggro deck from your cube so I can stack it up against one of mine and see how they compare?

 

[Peter LaCara]

Anyway, I've been considering some cuts based on the advice so far. What do you guys think of:

OUT


IN

 

[Eric Chan]

I've recorded all the winning decklists in my cube for the last year and a half. Some of them defy easy categorization, but it's still helpful to take a glance at the list. I would say that aggro decks here are 1) very heavy on twos, 2) have a smattering of threes, and 3) typically have four or fewer cards that cost four or more, and oftentimes just one or two.

http://riptidelab.com/forum/threads/eric-chans-modern-cube-405.13/

On your cuts, I like the idea of taking out Delver of Secrets if you're going the Cloudfin Raptor route, as they tend not to synergize well with one another. Fettergeist is awful, and Hada Spy Patrol seems underpowered, but I think I can get behind the rest of the changes. I love Merfolk Looter, though - do you plan to support a minor graveyard theme?

 

[Grillo_Parlante]

Here are a few of the nastier ones from various stages of my cube's development (drafter is Kirblinx):

Wr Hyper Token Aggro from CubeTutor.com

W/b Blistering Human Aggro from CubeTutor.com

Champion swinging for 3 on turn 2, followed by him and the team swinging for 6 on turn 3 is no joke. These decks goldfish turn 4-5 kills on the curve out.

Edit: for the card swaps, I would need to know exactly what themes you are trying to fit them into in what colors. E.g. cloudfin suggests either a curve out aggro theme or a + + counter theme.

 

[Peter LaCara]

Those don't look that different from some of the decks that have x-0'd or x-1'd my cube. White, black, and red can all put some savage beats on when they want to, but the decks do tend to be mono-colored or close to it. That's probably a consequence of the fixing, as you guys have pointed out. Maybe I just need to accept that my cube's gonna be mono-colored aggro vs dual color midrange vs 5c control. I just love my 2 for 1's and grindy attrition battles too much (there's a Jund player buried deep down in my core).

As for the swaps, the idea is to give blue a bit more early board presence to help push the devotion cards and stuff like Bident and Equilibrium. Probably need a few more pairs of pants for the flying men and looter, though. Hmm.

 

[Eric Chan]

White, black, and red can all put some savage beats on when they want to, but the decks do tend to be mono-colored or close to it. That's probably a consequence of the fixing, as you guys have pointed out.

Yes, this was my exact conclusion as well, based both on your current state of fixing, as well as the sample decks that have been drafted over on your cubetutor page. For aggro decks to be successful, it seems like they would need to accumulate a critical mass of one and two-drops, all from a single colour. The danger of allowing only this approach to aggro - and this is the exact same problem the MTGO cube faces - is that it's very easy for two drafters to get the same idea, and thereby annihilate each other. In the MTGO cube, you can easily have the best deck in the pod if you decide to go mono-red, and no one else jumps into the archetype at the same time. But if you open Goblin Guide, and the player across the table (as it were) cracks open Fireblast, and you both decide you want to gun for it? Two words. Train. Wreck.

Supporting two-colour aggro - and I mean true two-colour aggro, not mono-red splashing Lighting Helix and Ajani Vengeant - goes a long way towards addressing this problem. If you start out with Curse of Predation, Experiment One, and Garruk Relentless, hoping to build a heavy green attacking deck, but then find that the green dries up, you can switch gears and salvage your draft. You pivot, and start picking up late Gravecrawlers and Bloodghasts, morphing into a black aggro deck with a splash for the best eight or so green cards that you've amassed. (This exact circumstance happened to me in my own cube, just this week.) This is only possible when your manabase allows you to be flexible, which in turn ensures that aggro players can react to those wide open signals that they're reading loud and clear.

 

[Peter LaCara]

Yes, this was my exact conclusion as well, based both on your current state of fixing, as well as the sample decks that have been drafted over on your cubetutor page. For aggro decks to be successful, it seems like they would need to accumulate a critical mass of one and two-drops, all from a single colour. The danger of allowing only this approach to aggro - and this is the exact same problem the MTGO cube faces - is that it's very easy for two drafters to get the same idea, and thereby annihilate each other. In the MTGO cube, you can easily have the best deck in the pod if you decide to go mono-red, and no one else jumps into the archetype at the same time. But if you open Goblin Guide, and the player across the table (as it were) cracks open Fireblast, and you both decide you want to gun for it? Two words. Train. Wreck.

Ugh. You're giving me flashbacks to the time three people all got it into their heads to draft red and trainwrecked like half the draft. I thought it was just that no one was reading signals, but now I'm thinking it's probably my fixing's fault. So far it's only happened the one time, but I'd like to avoid it in the future.

Goddamnit. I need to think about this.

 

[Grillo_Parlante]

There is also the issue that if a player decides to go two color aggro, they will have to prioritize fixing that dosen't CIPT, which a midrange or control opponent dosen't have to do.

If you are looking to support a mono colored blue aggroish devotion deck in a singleton format, I think the easiest thing to do would be to run merfolk. You get a fairly aggressive board pressence + disruption. A lot of the cards also have value in other deck types.

You should be able to put something together, lots of choices.




There is a mill theme you can run in it too (which I didn't include above), since I noticed you have some mill cards in the cube. The looter merfolk can branch into UB reanimation, talrand reaches into UR spells. Some of it bleeds into a UG counters theme (+ mystical snake/aether mutation?) or supports U/x control. Their are other cheap disruptive cards you can run (spike tail, judge's familiar) to support it, and these cards run better with thassa and friends. You might need to run some 1cc or 2cc merfolk filler though, not sure. Back it up with some cheap 1-2cc counter disruption and cantrips (leak, counterspell, force spike, spell pierce, miscalculation, ponder, brainstorm, preordain, serum visions).

You also have the critical mass of lords to make it work in a singleton format, which is key. Just be careful about having a 3cc creature glut.

 

[Peter LaCara]

Ooh. Fish! I like that idea. Damn, I didn't even know like 1/3 of these cards existed. May have to go card shopping again. That's exactly the feel I was going for in blue.

 

[Eric Chan]

Ugh. You're giving me flashbacks to the time three people all got it into their heads to draft red and trainwrecked like half the draft. I thought it was just that no one was reading signals, but now I'm thinking it's probably my fixing's fault. So far it's only happened the one time, but I'd like to avoid it in the future.

If you want to see the highest profile example of this in action, I refer you to the 2012 Players Championship, which used the MTGO cube:
http://archive.wizards.com/Magic/Magazine/Article.aspx?x=mtg/daily/eventcoverage/tpc12/cube1decks

LSV has a reputation for being predisposed to drafting mono-red in cube, and sure enough, he went down his preferred route at the highest stakes cube event thus far.

Only problem?

Tzu-Ching Kuo had the same idea.

What happened next resulted in more flaming wrecks than a giant, multi-car NASCAR pile-up. They went a combined 2-4 with their junk heaps.

Don't let this happen to your drafters. Only You Can Prevent... Bad Stuff!

 

[Peter LaCara]

Do I need to cut Kiki-Jiki? I'm trying to avoid as many "oops, I win" scenarios as possible, and I cut the Deciever Exarch and Pestermite just for that purpose. I keep stumbling across ways to infinite combo off with him (I forgot he works with Restoration Angel and even worse, Zealous Conscripts). He's so much fun when he's used fairly, but I'm beginning to wonder if he's more trouble than he's worth.

 

[Grillo_Parlante]

Since you're already heading down that path I would cut him. The alternatives are to cut zealous conscripts and resto angel, or just be cool with a few infinite combos.

You don't really have a lot of tutoring right now, so its probably not going to be too consistent, but still, its a bit of a feel bad for the other player.

 

[Eric Chan]

I would tend to agree - especially as you're not running most of the cheap, premium removal (a la Swords to Plowshares or Path to Exile), someone winning via a creature-based two card infinite combo would feel pretty gross, even if it were to happen infrequently.

 

[Grillo_Parlante]

Any idea how you want to setup fish? I'm legitimatly curious--I don't think anyone has ran a merfolk theme on here before.

 

[Peter LaCara]

Here's what I'm going to try tonight, assuming we can collect enough people (it's currently looking questionable):

IN

OUT

 

[Grillo_Parlante]

hmmm....more merfolk!? Go super deep?
Mono U merfolk
UB reanimator
UR spells matters
UG counters

Ones (22) 1 enclave cryptologist 1 cursecatcher 1 skywatcher adept 1 judge's familair 1 phantasmal bear 1 delver of secrets 1 cloudfin raptor 1 experiment one 1 nimble mongoose 1 treasure cruise 1 gitaxian probe 1 mutagenic growth 1 force spike 1 vapor snag 1 brainstorm 1 ponder 1 serum visions 1 peordain 1 peek 1 vampiric tutor 1 mystical tutor 1 vines of vastwood Twos (22) 1 August or bolas 1 coralhelm commander 1 inkfathom infiltrator 1 kiora's follower 1 master of the pearl trident 1 merfolk looter 1 lord of atlantis 1 sejiri merfolk 1 spiketail hatchling 1 tidebinder mage 1 waterfront bouncer 1 kiln fiend 1 gyre sage 1 young pyromancer 1 thrumming bird 1 vinelasher kudzu 1 counterspell 1 remand 1 snap 1 apostle's blessing 1 daze 1 exhume Threes (16) 1 lullmage menor 1 lord of atlantis 1 merfolk soverign 1 merrow reejery 1 streambed aquitects 1 simic fluxmage 1 sygg, river cutthroat 1 vorel of the hull clade 1 wake thrasher 1 nivix cyclops 1 chasm skulker 1 grand architect 1 lorescale coatl 1 renegade krasis 1 plaxcaster frogling 1 thassa, god of the sea Fours (10) 1 talrand, sky summoner 1 venser, shaper savant 1 somnophore 1 sower of temptation 1 dungeon geists 1 mystic snake 1 dread return 1 cytoplast root-kin 1 master of waves 1 bident of thassa Fives (5) 1 gush 1 force of will 1 body double 1 riftwing cloudskate 1 unburial rites Sixes (1) 1 Prime Speaker Zegana (0)

 

[Peter LaCara]

Had a 6-man draft last night. The whole thing was won by a Grixis control deck with Nicol Bolas. There was a Mardu aggro deck, a Simic ramp deck, a Boros control deck, and an Abzan midrange value deck. I myself first picked a Seismic Assault because I wanted to experiment with it, and snagged a Life from the Loam to go with it, and ended up in a Jund deck with some reanimation stuff. Ended up going 1-2, and though the games were close, and the card was fun to play with, I'm considering cutting the Assault for just not being good enough. I dunno. I'll keep it in for now, but I've got my eye on it.

I also had my eye on the Mardu deck's mana. He ultimately went 2-2, and he did stumble on his mana a bit, though some of that was due to poor sequencing.

The Simic deck ran Freyalise, Llanowar's Fury, another card that's in on a probationary period. She apparently did a fair amount of work ramping into Myr Battlesphere and Cyclonic Rift. She wasn't super high impact, but she did pull her weight, at least according to the player. I didn't get much of a chance to watch the games with her in play.

Here's the winning deck, piloted by possibly the strongest player in Rochester, Eric English:

Grixis Control

 

[Grillo_Parlante]

How happy were you with the draft? That grixis control deck looks a bit ripetidish, but with weaker removal.

Did you get a chance to talk to the aggro player? It would be good to know how he felt about the fixing, if he felt like he was having hard time getting playables and forced into three colors, and if he was happy with the deck and would draft an aggro deck again. That last issue I think is the most important, because it does look like a very midrangy format, and having that aggro presence helps keep things fresh for players.