First off I would commend you on building this cube. It pains me that you have not gotten much response, but here goes nothing. I am definitely interested in drafting and playing cube on arena.
I played the heck out of the last iteration of arena cube. The last iteration of tinkerers cube, on the other hand made for very tedious games where both players were more or less goldfishing to get their overwhelming engine online first. T
his thread outlines other riptiders negative experiences with the tinkerers cube. My play experiences with MtgA cube offerings so far form the basis for my comments on critique of your card choices.
First some general comments on the challenges of building a cube on magic arena.
1: Card acquisition: MtgA's economy makes it impossible or exceedingly expensive to gather the requisite cards to particiate in cube drafts. In order to be more inclusive of non-enfranchised players I've also tried to build peasant cubes or "budget" cubes where I only include rares that offer a unique effect, for example land cycles. I think it is important to be cognizant of this feature of MtgA and adjusting to your target audience.
2: Supporting micro archetypes: This is a general discussion in cube design; whether to support macro-archetypes (aggro, midrange, control, combo) or micro archetypes (blink, landfall, +1/+1 counters etc.). I find that the regular arena cube and tinkerers cube fall on opposite sides of the spectrum. The arena cube is, as we've come to expect of WotC's cubes, an assembly of the greatest hits of the historic card pool. Many or most of the macro archetypes are supported, with neat interactions between
individual cards or groups of cards.
The tinkerer's cube eschews the "goodstuffy" card choices in favor of more synergy-driven drafting. In my mind this makes for more parasitic and "on-rails" drafting (sorry Trainmaster, but this term, though derogative, is well established).
Can you speak to these two overarching design challenges and how your cube relates to them?
You do not outline your design goals or archetypes in your post or on the cubecobra blog. I surmise that your list is an attempt to improve upon the regular arena cube and recognize certain archetypes from that cube.
White-black life gain
I appreciate this archetype in the abstract as it gives White-black a flavorful identity. I have been looking to support it in various ways in my lists. Alas I have moved away from it for the following reasons:
- I find that it is too polarizing of a matchup against aggro or other creature based midrange decks.
Soul Warden is the main offender as it even punishes the opponent for playing creatures, especially with an
Ajani's pridemate or
Heliod, Sun-crowned on the battlefield as their creatures grow to be overwhelming threats. My opinion is based (and may be overly biased) by playing against
life gain decks in historic and finding the experience miserable.
Proposed solution: Change the focus from individual life-gain triggers to gaining chunks of life to either turn on
key cards or
paying costs.
Green-multicolor / Field of the dead
This is the epitomy of the dreaded 5c "good stuff" deck, though with a unique spin. Golos is the center-piece of the deck, serving both as an enabler and a pay-off. It was often touted as the "deck to beat" in both iterations of the regular arena cube. Though not directly applicable to cube, Field of the dead has been banned in several formats. The recurring reasoning is its deterministic play pattern.
- There are few ways to interact with the deck outside of beating them down before they assemble "tron". I find 2 maindeckable
land destruction cards and
Field of ruin as a sideboard option.
- The deck cannibalizes on the other decks fixing. This may be a function of people not drafting fixing highly enough. It is alleviated by inclusion of MDFC's (the backside is a land with a unique name).
Proposed solutions: Including more land destruction. Alternatively eschewing Field of the dead in favor of other tutorable lands that give a long-term advantage. Including
Ramunap Excavator and
Crucible of worlds and a few Kaldheim
CCDD lands as an alternative late game engine. (supplementing my favorite pet peeve,
hypno toad)
Blue Black Rogues/Mill
I don't find the requisite support for the
mill cards in your list for it to be a reliable strategy. This is exacerbated by most colors having a way to capitalize on the milled cards (black recursive creatures, escape etc.) and even turning off your cards. I would rather have focused on self-mill to enable
Thassa's Oracle and
Jace, Wielder of mysteries.
Emry, lurker of the lochis a good self-mill enabler which also gives blue a reason to care about artifacts.
Bx Demonic Pact
I had great fun trying to break this in the regular arena cube and I am sad to see you not include it in your list. I may have rose-tinted glasses about this card. At present there may not be enough support. With Strixhaven coming up we get Lorehold Command with one of the options being "sacrifice a permanent, then draw two cards". Future historic offerings may give us other ways to
abuse the card.
Individual cards:
Goblin Chainwhirler,
Benalish Marshal and other overly color intensive cards. These, I feel, incentivize mono color drafting in a parasitic way.
Anax, Hardened in the forge, which you already include is more versatile as it is pickable and playable outside of monored where it shines.
Shepherd of the Flock is a sweet card with a plethora of interactions. It's most basic use is
rescuing something from removal. A 3/1 also hits hard if you need to beat down. In standard it is being used to great effect to rebuy
Showdown of the skalds. It can also rebuy MDFCs or creatures with ETBs. A great glue card in my opinion.
Those are my thoughts.
Here is my
work in progress and a
comparison between our lists. I have been waffling between including powerful cards (mostly rares) that stand more on their own and trying to give the colors an identity and promoting synergies. I can flesh out my thoughts about design goals and card choices later, if you like.
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