Rasmus Mid-power 360 Cube

[Rasmus Källqvist]

Rasmus Mid-power 360 Cube​

CubeCobra link:
https://cubecobra.com/cube/list/687f688f-45b5-4db0-8b66-3cdde13d61ff

I luckily happen to have a pretty big MTG playgroup at the office, and have now finally put together a 360 card cube again after not having had an assembled cube for a very long time. We tend to play quite a lot of "lunch league" sealed tournaments, where we play a sealed tournament spread out with one round each week, where you get to add one additional pack to your pool after each game.

This has lead to me picking up a handful of the cards from the last couple of sets that I've paired together with my existing collection of "cube staples" to put together a mid-power cube. It's pretty straight forward, with some of the following ideas:

- cheap and powerful interaction (lightning bolt, doom blade, counterspell)
- good creatures, but avoiding creatures that dominate the game on their own
- a cycle of slightly weaker planeswalkers
- trying to avoid single occurrences of keywords to tame the complexity of the cube somewhat

Color pairs:​

The following color pair identities exist, most being classic for cube and draft, some being somewhat novel:

-Spells matter / Artifacts
- Amass Control / Reanimator
- Sacrifice
- +1/+1 Counters / Ramp
- +1/+1 Counters
- Sacrifice / Reanimator
- Graveyard matters
- Ramp
- Spells matter / Artifacts
- +1/+1 Counters / Artifacts

Wide themes:
- Reanimator (Primarily black)
- Spells
- Artifacts
- Sacrifice
- +1/+1 Counters
- Ramp

As with many cubes, the intent is for these pair identities to act as guidelines, and for many kinds of decks per pair being possible.
The +1/+1 counter themes is a wide theme in that either utilizes creatures with +1/+1 counters and proliferating those counters, or playing creatures and growing them with spells like travel preparations.

I love the recent trend of big creatures with cycling like Troll of Khazad-dûm, so I've included a ton of them, and this has also acted as a kind of support for "creatures in the yard" decks, with payoffs like the classic Spider Spawning.

There's also an attempt at supporting a "UG untap ramp" deck by having permanents that tap for more than one mana, either bounce lands, lands with enchantments like Fertile Ground or artifacts like Worn Powerstone and untappers like
Ioreth of the Healing House or Kiora, Master of the Depths.

Example decks:​

UW Tempo Spells

UB Amass Control

BR Sacrifice Midrange

GR Hardened Scales Aggro

GW Travel Preparations Midrange

WB Token Sacrifice

BG Dredge Midrange

UG Bounceland Ramp

UR Spells Matter Control

WR Artifacts

 

[Nanonox]

Do you have the list up on CubeCobra? Looks great!

 

[Rasmus Källqvist]

Do you have the list up on CubeCobra? Looks great!

You'd think I'd remember to post the actual cube lol. Edited the OP

https://cubecobra.com/cube/list/687f688f-45b5-4db0-8b66-3cdde13d61ff

 

[ravnic]

Those decklists look really sweet. I like the relatively flat power band, the not too outrageous power level and of course all the synergistic overlap (cards I see in one list would work well in some of the others). Looks like a true riptide cube to me

 

[Rasmus Källqvist]

I had my first draft two weeks ago, but haven't had time to write up some decks until now. We had a good time! Pretty happy with the initial state of the cube. Two drafters gave some feedback, which I agree with:

1. A little heavy on the removal. One player felt like it was difficult to play aggressive decks.
2. Too few sideboard cards, would be nice with some more cards to side in against specific strategies. (I take this as an opportunity to add more enchantment, artifact and graveyard removal).
3. Blue creatures felt a little weak. I'm thinking of abandoning the "UW spells deck" and replacing it with a UW skies deck, that still plays tempo, but utilizies 2/1 and 3/1 fliers to apply pressure and tempo.

The winning deck was GR stompy:

GR Planeswalker Stompy

Turns out Anduril, Flame of the West is a pretty nutty card, especially in a deck running two very strong planeswalkers.

I played a WR artifact aggro deck, and got 2nd place. Didn't quite draft enough 2-drops so it didn't go quite all the way.

WR Artifact aggro

All in all very fun to have a cube again! Hoping to be able to play one more draft sometime in December