Inspired by the Bounce > Flicker thread, I'm interested in hearing about the innovations people have made with their own cubes. Not so much to get feedback on ideas, just to share cool stuff we like.
What archetypes do you support that no one else does? Which familiar archetypes do you run with an unusual twist? How do you make sure they're fun to draft and play, and what other archetypes (popular or not) overlap with them?
My offerings:
Really looking forward to seeing what everyone has to contribute.
What archetypes do you support that no one else does? Which familiar archetypes do you run with an unusual twist? How do you make sure they're fun to draft and play, and what other archetypes (popular or not) overlap with them?
My offerings:
I like storm, quite a bit in fact. I hate it in cube. First you gotta run enough payoffs, none of which go in other decks. Then you gotta run enough enablers, which either don't go in other decks, or skew the format to fit a very specific mold. Then you gotta draft all the bits and pieces and hope it doesn't all fall apart. The reward isn't really worth it imo.
My attempt at including it is built around these two:
Both are permanents you can interact with, and therefore have to protect. Protecting them turns into extra triggers when you're going off. Both require a smaller storm count than Tendrils or Brain Freeze (Or Grapeshot or Warrens). If you have to go for the hail mary in regular storm, you either win or whiff. If you have to go for the hail mary with these, you can gain enough life, deal enough face damage, or affect the board enough to buy time for another attempt. Both of them also promote interactive games where you don't have to go for the hail mary, because you're constantly pinging off small threats or slowing the bleed while drawing into your combo turn.
Beyond the usual package of card selection and card draw, as well as a fair few flashback/retrace/jump-start cards, here's how I support them:
If you go for this deck but don't find the artifacts, other payoffs you could pivot towards include:
They also have seen play with cards from the blue artifact deck (My lower power environment is too slow for Tinker/Welder):
My attempt at including it is built around these two:
Both are permanents you can interact with, and therefore have to protect. Protecting them turns into extra triggers when you're going off. Both require a smaller storm count than Tendrils or Brain Freeze (Or Grapeshot or Warrens). If you have to go for the hail mary in regular storm, you either win or whiff. If you have to go for the hail mary with these, you can gain enough life, deal enough face damage, or affect the board enough to buy time for another attempt. Both of them also promote interactive games where you don't have to go for the hail mary, because you're constantly pinging off small threats or slowing the bleed while drawing into your combo turn.
Beyond the usual package of card selection and card draw, as well as a fair few flashback/retrace/jump-start cards, here's how I support them:
If you go for this deck but don't find the artifacts, other payoffs you could pivot towards include:
They also have seen play with cards from the blue artifact deck (My lower power environment is too slow for Tinker/Welder):
I won a lot of games with Blast of Genius back in RTR standard, I love Kamigawa's Epic spells, and the Gearhulks are just the coolest. So of course I had to try this out.
And a few others.
All these need you to do is pack your deck full of the following:
Ways of manipulating the top of your deck, like:
Big expensive spells to throw away, like some fatties that the super ramp or reanimate decks were hoping to attack with, or even some perfectly castable spells like:
If it isn't quite coming together mid draft, don't worry! You can switch to ramp, or polymorph, or reanimator.
Or if you're too committed to your red burn spells, you could get low to the ground and hope you get off that Bedlam Reveler with one of these two:
Or maybe Blasphemous Act your own
And a few others.
All these need you to do is pack your deck full of the following:
Ways of manipulating the top of your deck, like:
Big expensive spells to throw away, like some fatties that the super ramp or reanimate decks were hoping to attack with, or even some perfectly castable spells like:
If it isn't quite coming together mid draft, don't worry! You can switch to ramp, or polymorph, or reanimator.
Or if you're too committed to your red burn spells, you could get low to the ground and hope you get off that Bedlam Reveler with one of these two:
Or maybe Blasphemous Act your own
Really looking forward to seeing what everyone has to contribute.
