Piper's Cube

[froggy]

hullo! i'm piper, an aussie uni student who loves dungeons and dragons, reading terrible fanfiction, and perfectly normal geometric objects. this thread is for my cube, a 450 gold-heavy list with a focus on fair, resilient strategies with synergistic bases supplemented by powerful threats and efficient removal. you can find it at this link

currently, my cube prioritizes powerful threats, interesting synergy pieces and efficient removal to construct an interesting draft environment which mimics the feel of constructed. my cube runs over 80 gold cards at 450, 7 of each guild with a smattering of 3c cards, and to support this features incredibly good mana.

current archetypes include aristocrats, artifacts, control, blink, midrange, zoo, niv to light, lands piles, spells, and probably some other decks i haven't found yet! archetypes tend to be very flexible and able to show up in a number of colours, though they usually are centered in one place - e.g., the aristocrats deck almost always is in black, but between drafts it varies between including green, red and white as well.

i'm currently on a number of 'powermax' cards, as i've dubbed them - namely oko, minsc&boo, the one ring, forth eorlingas! and ragavan, as the biggest power outliers. some of these play interesting roles in my cube and i'm eager to keep them. others are on the chopping block, pending more drafts in the near future. would love feedback from anyone whose played with these.

this thread is going to be pretty stream of consciousness. im testing a bunch of stuff from lci and mkm right now, along with some of the recently spoiled cards from otj/mh3/pip, so thoughts on those as i get to play with them will likely be brought up soon.

 

[froggy]

Making some initial changes after a large swathe of playtest drafting from me and some friends, just to tweak the initial list slightly before I properly get into the swing of drafting this thing.

Swaps:

Voltaic Brawler -> Territorial Kavu
With the amount of fixing allowed by my triome/shock/fetch manabase, Kavu is almost always going to be a better fit for the slot than Brawler. Additionally, it incentivises the 5c Zoo deck which I personally adore, something missing from my prior list.

Ethersworn Sphinx -> Yorion, Sky Nomad
I'm a shameless companion lover and the minigame to make Yorion work fascinates me. Also, it's just a really good Blink card in this context and that deck needs more support, while I don't think topend payoffs life Sphinx are what Affinity is missing in terms of support right now.

Gruul Spellbreaker -> Klothys, God of Destiny
I know from experience my cube can tolerate high-power cards like Klothys. Easy slot in for me, I don't know how I missed Klothys in my first draft of the cube but that was an error on my part.

Soul-Scar Mage -> Goblin Engineer
Soul-Scar Mage is middling in Zoo/Delver and sends false signals about a nonexistent Prowess deck. Breaking singleton on Engineer provides another enabler for Affinity decks and gives me more of the lovely loopy gameplay I adore. Easy choice to make here.

Dakkon, Shadow Slayer -> Scion of Draco
Dakkon is middling and was an easy choice to cut from colorless/3c+. Scion of Draco enables 5c Zoo. Dakkon may come back someday, but for now this is a change I'm very happy to make.

Hard Evidence -> Aether Spellbomb
I love Craben Inspector. That being said, Spellbomb is really good. Hard Evidence could very easily come back in when my blue section gets shuffled around another time.

Invoke Despair -> Woe Strider
Legitimately unsure why I was testing Invoke Despair. Card is not good at this power level. Woe Strider is a piece for the Aristocrats deck that doesn't exist as much as I would like it to in this cube but I hope will be properly slotted in someday.

Eliminate -> Dismember
Eliminate is still good but Dismember provides another option for GUR decks to remove creatures and is also an enabler for Death's Shadow, which wants a teeny bit of a push right now.

Skyshroud Elite -> Deathrite Shaman
Deathrite Shaman was meant to be in this cube. Its Deathrite Shaman. Out comes a Zoo card, cause that deck will happily run DRS.

Other Thoughts:

The Storm package is not great. Wouldn't be surprised to see it cut but I want to get in a real draft with it first. Otherwise, really happy with the cube's state at the moment. I'm currently looking for replacements for Ichor Wellspring and Jack-o'-Lantern, as the former I think just doesn't do enough to be worth playing in Affinity and the latter is too much redundancy with other cards of its ilk. so if you have any suggestions they are greatly appreciated.

 

[blacksmithy]

. I'm currently looking for replacements for Ichor Wellspring and Jack-o'-Lantern, as the former I think just doesn't do enough to be worth playing in Affinity and the latter is too much redundancy with other cards of its ilk. so if you have any suggestions they are greatly appreciated.

Walking Ballista and Hangarback Walker seem like easy swaps in that i don’t see here.
maybe even skullclamp and git probe if you’re feeling spicy ?

 

[froggy]

Walking Ballista and Hangarback Walker seem like easy swaps in that i don’t see here.
maybe even skullclamp and git probe if you’re feeling spicy ?

Both good shouts, thank you! I think I'll avoid Probe for colour balancing reasons, even if it can play as a colorless card - plus, it doesn't really support the artifacts deck how I'd want it to. Ballista and Walker both serve as manasinks too, which some of my players have mentioned wanting to have in the list.

I won't be updating immediately, but when I do make another change to the cube, I'll keep these in mind (probably after a bit more NEO and SNC testing)

 

[froggy]

I won't be updating immediately

So, I said that. And then I realised some pretty core structural flaws with how my cube was designed, including a dreadfully balanced aristocrats deck, slim pickings in terms of aggro-deck viability, and a Storm "package" that amounted to a bunch of useless cards. I ran a draft, got some feedback from some good friends, and tossed the list to some people with cube experience, then made a bunch of tweaks and ran a bunch of playtest drafts. I think I'm reasonably happy with this version of the list, though I'll probably tweak some more before I print out the cube in paper at some point soon.

I'll go through cuts by section, not talking about every card but instead about notable changes.

First things first, the manabase. I swapped a cycle of shocks for ABURs to increase drafting dynamicness and give some premium fixing for decks like 5c Greed to angle for. I also took out a cycle of fetches - in our preliminary draft, three players assembled 5c decks. This was too much for my group's tastes, so I'm slimming things down. In place of the fetches, I added two cards to each monocolour section.

White

Out:


In:


Trimmed some cards on the bottom end to make up for more Zoo support, more Blink support, an extra utility land for Lands and some real white wraths which I managed to forget entirely before

Blue

Out:


In:


Stupid stormpile leaves. Extra tempo-y and blink-y things come in, plus some raw power with Dig Through Time. Tezz might come back in, but was mostly unimpressive to drafters and just not a particularly compelling card considering the niche nature of the passive.

Black

Out:


In:


Shadow dies to make room for a heavily bolstered Aristocrats deck which is now hopefully going to be real. Some generic cards cut for other generic cards I liked better. Excited particularly for Bloodghasts

Red

Out:


In:


Some fairly cursory changes here. Middling storm cards, Blink card in the wrong colour, and worse one drop come out for a metric tonne more Zoo support I'm excited to have in the cube (which was missing prior) and some Crats stuff

Green

Out:


In:


Rec just didn't have the support it needed to thrive in this environment and I don't want to make room for that. Ended up in sideboards a lot. Adding in Zoo stuff and a funky Lands card I want to test out after some good recs.

Gold + Colorless

Out:


In:


I previously had a glut of graveyard hate which was stifling to those strategies and has been cut down upon. Took out some middling cards and storm stuff to make room for Zoo + Lands + Aristocrats support. Particularly excited to get up to the most degenerate bullshit nonsense with my good friend Korvold

And that's that!

 

[froggy]

well...

I have cubed in the nearly two years since I touched this thread, though not as much as I'd have liked to haha. my cube looks very different now, though I'd like to think it's identity still exists - an unpowered modern-legacy cube with some neat synergy stuff and a core of strong, fair decks. i've just cut the initiative package, which, i think, if i'd been drafting more often, would have kicked the bucket a lot sooner, and in the process added a variety of cards from LCI and MKM, with a couple more sprinkled in from PIP and the latest UTJ/MH3 spoilers.

i went up to 450 about a year ago, because i couldn't resist the allure of more cards, and i was optimistically thinking i'd be drafting with eight more often. but i've just started playing with a new magic group, so maybe i'll get some more things there.

i'm going to be rewriting the intro post here soon, probably, because i want a place to write down the thoughts behind the changes im making to this thing. right now, with the exception of turbobroken cards like minsc, forth, oko, etc (which are not long for this list, if i'm being honest), the best decks tend to be the artifacts piles? i ran a sick 4c breya list last time i got a proper draft together that 3-0ed. academy manufactor goes crazy.

that's about it. i want to use this thread again bc keeping a record of things is based as hell, and cube has recently come back into my field of perception, along with all the other important shit, like lectures, d&d, work, tutoring, reading gay fanfiction, writing gay fanfiction, more d&d, and more lectures. so. to anyone reading this thread inexplicably interested in my cube, keep an eye out.

 

[froggy]

The first update since I have returned to this thread!! i am killing a hamster with fire and knives!!

in all seriousness, cutting the power cards. we'll see if my drafters miss them. if not, smooth sailing. if so, i'll find room again. for now though, changes!!

->
Forth is stupid broken. I love playing with it but. Jesus christ it's so good on rate. Winota does very silly things but in a fairer way and provides an interesting alternate direction for zoo to build in.

->
Culling Ritual came in after I decided I didn't want to test Insidious Roots but forgot what I cut for it. Fine card, but nothing that exciting, and B-centric control has a lot of other wrath options. In comes Ravenous Squirrel, which is a neat little role player which fits really nicely into what BG does, esp with the glut of clues and treasures in the list.

->
Do I need to explain why I'm cutting Oko? I dunno how good Goose Mother will be but it seems worth a try.

->
Minsc and Boo is stupid broken. Questing Druid looks v interesting, but I'm not 100% sure if it'll be on rate here. We'll see!

->
TNN goes out for little baby TNN. We'll see how it goes.

->
Constant Mists is very very funny but doesn't particularly lead to good gameplay. Not sure how TProv will work out. My green section as a whole likely needs an overhaul but thats a consideration for another day.

 

[TrainmasterGT]

Do I need to explain why I'm cutting Oko? I dunno how good Goose Mother will be but it seems worth a try.

Hjonk

 

[froggy]

hjonk indeed! i really have no idea if goosey will be any good, but i figure she's worth a test. plus, bird hydra.

 

[TrainmasterGT]

hjonk indeed! i really have no idea if goosey will be any good, but i figure she's worth a test. plus, bird hydra.

I think the card is pretty good. I have heard Goose Mother is worse than Hydroid Krasis when X is greater than 4, but it’s more useful in the earlier stages in the game.

 

[froggy]

I think generally if you're getting a Krasis above four in my cube, you're already in an overwhelmingly good spot - and the fail case of Goose Mother as a flying bear is a lot better than krasis' fail case

 

[TrainmasterGT]

I think generally if you're getting a Krasis above four in my cube, you're already in an overwhelmingly good spot - and the fail case of Goose Mother as a flying bear is a lot better than krasis' fail case

I also think Goose Mom is great on three— 3/3 flying draw a card seems like an insane rate, especially if you have other food producers in the Cube like Samwise Gamgee.

 

[Dom Harvey]

I don't think one is much better/worse overall but I like the play patterns of Goose a lot more - you care more about those stats + those stats are better + you can get life and/or cards but you have to work harder to unlock those vs the immediate and guaranteed output of Krasis

 

[froggy]

Rounding up is a huge deal, yeah. Not currently on Sam but he's on the maybeboard.

Definitely concur on the better play patterns as well

 

[froggy]

i needed to share this decklist even if its just from cc playtesting bc. holy shit. i got every good crats piece oh my god.