Update Time!
After a few months of very infrequent cubing due to other hobbies taking my/our attention, my little group is eager to play again, so I've updated my list significantly. It's a lot, so settle in with a snack and skim as you please.
Three key aspects to this update: color pair focus; color identity focus; and addressing complexity.
1. Color Pair Focus
I've gotten pretty good at monitoring unnecessary duplication vs redundancy, as well as curve-policing. The next natural step was building decks for each color pair as I worked up the list. I've done this really loosely in the past, but I was pretty strict about it this time and found it incredibly helpful in tuning each pair. Really helped to shore up my problem pairs, and help make some tough choices in what to cut and keep. While each theoretical list could potentially just not perform as well as I'd hope, I'm relatively confident that they're reasonably competitive and have different lines of play, which is really my main goal, and they work as a functional backbone upon which I can strengthen the archetypes down the road. I may post them and share write-ups about archetypes I'm supporting at a later time if they pan out in-draft as I hope, but here are the archetypes I settled on:
Historic/Skies - artifacts-matter, lovely legendaries, aerial superiority. all fun. all good.
Self-Mill/Saboteurs - graveyard play is nice, but how about some hard-to-block little shits?
Suicide/Reanimator - now with actually appealing sacrifice outlets and fodder
Stompy/Big Gruul - this is fun to do sometimes okay?
Counters/Auras - growers are always appreciated
Life Pay Aggro/Midrange - good luck racing I'm behind 7 lifelink tokens
Aristocrats/Death-Matters - death
and glory. "for when one casting just wasn't enough"
Miracle Grow/Ophidian Tempo - fiddly bullshit is my eternal jam
Spells-Matter/Artifacts - gosh i hope this works this time
Artifact Aggro/Tiny Toolbox - historically one of the best decks, and very fun to pilot
I've tried to give each color some more room to do what it is mechanically and historically attributed with doing. I'll go into that a bit more in each update section, but at a glance, this means: banisher priest effects for white; cheaper evasives and counterspells in blue; reanimator for black; aggressive, sacrifice, and token tools in red; and beefy bodies in green. This is a very loose overview, but it's something to keep an eye on as you peek at the includes.
3. Addressing Complexity
I say with no ego that I'm relatively competent as a Magic player. My playgroup is also, but they're overall less experienced. A great thing about this list before was that the archetypes were reasonably grokkable in some pairs, but in others, they were more obscure and awkward to pilot, and the pieces in some cases just didn't make a lot of sense. Transmute cards are awkward tutors, and require shuffling, which is a dreadful task nobody likes to do much that adds time to each game. Are they too complex? No, but they do add to the overall involvement of a game in a way that I think is unnecessary. Similarly, having just one instance of a keyword show up is unpleasant; I've tried to avoid it where I can. I could say a lot in this section, but suffice to say that I think the list is overall more readable, more easy to intuit, has less mechanical isolation, and should lead to smoother games. We'll see how this pans out.
Finally, I cut my cube size down further, from 300 to 280. This tightens my variance to around 80%, which should make decks a bit more consistent in assembling key pieces while also forcing some resourcefulness when what you want doesn't show up how you want it. I may increase the size again later; still not really sure where the sweet spot is.
That's enough preamble; to the cards!
White
Out:
In:
White has historically done very well here, and a part of that was due to giving the color a bit too much power without enough of it being synergy-dependent.
Mother of Runes is likely to come back due to her popularity and iconic status, but
Blade Splicer,
Master Splicer,
Sunscourge Champion, and
Mikaeus, the Lunarch were all a little too on-the-nose; they did a ton of work in literally any deck, and really felt like must-picks that would pull you into the color very easily. Other outgoing cards worth noting is
Aerial Toastmaster and
Midlife Upgrade, who felt a tad dull, and
Cast Out, for curve concerns.
By Gnome Means will probably return at some point; it's quite interesting, I just didn't want it for now.
In exchange, white picks up a new Protect-the-Queen effect in
Dauntless Bodyguard, which is a notable downgrade from
Mother of Runes but still seems quite solid.
Adanto Vanguard comes in because it's a nice card that plays well with life-gain, and
Danitha Capashen, Paragon comes in as a solid body of stats that's just screaming to be built around.
Last on our general tools tour, we have
Banisher Priest and
Bishop of Binding. I really like the Banisher Priest effect, and I think it belongs in white, so I've added it; I like that these effects don't play nicely with trying to recur them, as they can only ever grab 1 creature at a time and are relatively simple to remove. I've also added a spattering of solid auras; we'll see if my removal suite makes them traps or not, but I'm somewhat confident that they'll play nicely.
White also has two new build-towards. The most notable (and demanding) is certainly
Teshar, Ancestor's Apostle, who looks well-positioned in this list, due to the high count of artifacts and legendaries. Meanwhile,
Evra, Halcyon Witness poses some interesting questions for your opponent and looks like a blast to try to break.
Blue
Out:
In:
Exiting the cube:
Champion of Wits (for being too on-the-nose),
Laboratory Maniac (he comes and goes),
Undead Alchemist (unsupported at this point, unfortunately), some expensive counterspells, and much of the old curve-toppers. None of these cards were particularly offensive, but I felt like I needed a change. Notably, a lot of Un-cards are going;
Crafty Octopus (easy value piece),
Chipper Chopper (too dull),
Spy Eye (cute, might return), and
Five-Finger Discount (a bit strong). I also dropped the two transmute cards,
Muddle the Mixture and
Drift of Phantasms, because I'm really tired of shuffle effects, and felt they weren't worth holding onto anymore.
Mostly, there's some power-level retooling here: some bounce getting recosted; the counterspells getting cheaper and a bit more fiddly;
Spy Eye turning into
Jhessian Thief and
Mneumonic Wall turning into
Archaeomancer. All of these are with an eye to the curve and an exploration of how to push blue aggression a bit more while also adjusting how control plays.
On the subject of aggression, the addition of more cheap fliers (and
Latch Seeker, for good measure) as well as some evasion-granting tools (
Tetsuko Umezawa, Fugitive,
Aether Tunnel, and
Mistfire Adept) should help blue aggro decks have a more solid grounding, as well as unique identity in the color wheel. I can't stress enough just how brilliantly
Siren Stormtamer and
Cogmentor performed in this list, just as 1/1 flying bodies for 1 mana, and I think
Artificer's Assistant is a great add to this line-up, while also having an easy-to-trigger card quality effect.
The "value bridge" between aggro and control angles bears some brief mention; the adjustments to the disruptive suite (see
Spell Pierce,
Daze, and
Watertrap Weaver) should help to further boost blue-oriented aggression without hurting control too much.
As for control decks proper,
The Mirari Conjecture is the crowning jewel, but I expect to see
Naru Meha, Master Wizard be used for all sorts of oddball shenanigans as the game goes long.
Paradoxical Outcome is easily the strangest include, but blue needed some adjustments to its card draw suite, and I'm curious to see what it can do here - it might be used as mostly an expensive
Rescue that cantrips, and that
might be enough.
Finally, some build-towards: aside from Tetsuko, Naru Meha, and the Conjecture, I've also added
Sai, Master Thopterist and
Zahid, Djinn of the Lamp, both adding some spicy incentives to play more artifacts. I think they're going to be really great here!
Black
Out:
In:
Exiting black: The +1/+1 counters package gets the boot, as well as some
Un-cards.
Inhumaniac and
Extremely Slow Zombie weren't really what the list wanted, and
Overt Operative just felt unnecessary.
Seekers' Squire is a great card hitting the bench; black gets the most restrictions on its cheap value creatures due to its abundance of recursion and sacrifice effects, and I want to make sure black is dipping into other colors for most of its fodder/loop needs. I also dropped
Marionette Master, as it was sort of awkward as a must-pick, goes-in-every-deck 6 drop that only ever encouraged 3-color decks due to my cube not supporting black as an artifact color very well. I'm also giving
Slaughter some time on the bench while I test this new lifegain package; I don't want to risk it being miserable to play against now that there's more pieces of life gain. As usual, I've determined
Victimize is a bad card (why must I keep learning this lesson?), and
Liliana's Mastery was too generic-feeling now that I've cut some zombie producers in both white and blue.
Aside from those swaps, there's also lots of adjustments to removal power level. Black's identity requires it have access to some of the cleanest removal; in respect to this, I've added some more.
Walk the Plank,
Assassinate, and the ambitious
Public Execution flesh out the removal package in black; there's still plenty of conditional pieces that are worth playing, but the color needed some more premier removal.
I've also added two recursive creatures:
Dread Wanderer and
Oathsworn Vampire. Wanderer gets the nod over
Bloodsoaked Champion for fitting into more decks, though I may give 2shieldz a whirl again later. As for
Oathsworn Vampire, it recurs for less mana than Wanderer and has a nicer body as well as (occasionally) relevant typing, but with a stricter recursion trigger.
Furthering the sacrifice package, I've brought in
Indulgent Aristocrat; there's now a few vampires in the list, although I think even growing just himself is fine since he's got lifelink and is able to block. I've also caved on my DFC resistance to bring in
Heir of Falkenrath as an aggressive tool that fits in a ton of decks, with
Dauthi Marauder and
Ruin Raider joining in to cap off the beatdown package. I really like
Dauthi Marauder; I expect it to be a great tool to keep the game advancing during potential stalls.
For the general toolbox, I've brought in
Ukud Cobra as a brick wall,
Supernatural Stamina for some staying power, and
Lay Bare the Heart as targeted discard. Lay Bare should be kept in check here due to the abundance of legends, many of which are functioning as build-arounds or power pieces in decks, which should help keep this feeling somewhat fair. Speaking of cute disruption, I've added
Vampiric Link, which can function like a really weird
Pacifism when it isn't going on your own creatures. Black's draw suite needed some massaging, so I've added
Scarscale Ritual and
Read the Bones. Ritual is especially nice because creature-light control decks will rarely want it, letting it get to the sacrifice-oriented/creature-focused decks who need it more easily.
Tinkering with black's recursion, I've added
Haunted Crossroads in place of
Oversold Cemetery. Cemetery always felt a bit bomby. I think the increased cost of Crossroads (1 more mana, and it costs
each time you activate it,
and it doesn't draw you the card for free each turn) helps to balance it somewhat in a general list, but also opens it up to exploitation if you have some way to draw multiple cards each turn, so I'm looking forward to seeing what it does. I've also added
Death Denied, which has always been great, and less fussy than
Reaping the Graves.
For our build-towards,
Whisper, Blood Liturgist is the one most exciting to me. She seemed to perform quite nicely in her limited format, and has more flexibility here. I've also got
Torgaar, Famine Incarnate, which appeals to ramp, sacrifice, and reanimator strategies. The absence of evasion makes it look pretty fair, and if you power it out early you do still risk getting blown out by a removal spell, so I think I like it. The ETB also isn't too exploitable.. I don't think..
Red
Out:
In:
Exiting Red: lots of value-bodies.
Wrench-Rigger and
Garbage Elemental (contraption/undying version) will be missed dearly, as they were great fun; I do think
Wrench-Rigger might return, though it's a very powerful effect.
Alesha, Who Smiles at Death hits the bench for a bit, as does
Pia and Kiran Nalaar and the lands-matter stuff.
Sin Prodder gets the axe for feeling bad a bit more than I'd like.
Steamflogger Temp,
Flame Fusillade, and
Release the Gremlins were all a bit underwhelming here, whereas
Curse of Opulence and
Volcanic Vision felt a little stupidly powerful. I love
Volcanic Vision, but I don't think it's a very fair-feeling card..
In exchange, red gains
Goblin Motivator to help bursty aggro and midrange decks, which I'm excited to have. I'm also trying
Goblin War Drums and
Rampaging Ferocidon; red wanted more Menace, and these seem like fine choices.
Flamewake Phoenix also adds some power to the beatdown decks, and ties very well into both
Stompy and
Midrange Sacrifice decks, giving both pairs a spicy pick-up that the leaner aggro decks are slightly less interested in poaching while still being a solid pickup for those tiny aggro decks that incentive vertical strategies/equipment.
At the very competitive 2-drop slot,
Dismissive Pyromance and
Dark-Dweller Oracle join to offer some conditional card draw tools, as well as a little boost to sacrifice strategies. I've also added
Heart-Piercer Manticore, who felt a bit criminally excluded here (I just didn't like the awkwardness of its unique triggered ability text).
Charmbreaker Devils comes in to juice up spell strategies, and I'm hoping they stick this time. At the intersection between sacrifice and spells, I'm trying
Dance with Devils and
Devils' Playground. Really curious to see what these cards can do in cube.
Also, in an effort to diversify sweepers a bit, I've added
Pyroclasm, which should do well in clearing all the little bodies in the cube and help to reign in token swarm decks, with the added benefit of not bullying the slightly larger aggressive cards or eliminating control's 3-toughness blockers. I'm glad to be rid of
Sweltering Suns for a bit - cycling felt a bit too nice on that effect, and it was simply too good at clearing aggro boards for my taste.
Green
Out:
In:
Oof, that's a lot of swaps.
Mayor of Avabruck obviously gets dropped for being too strong.
Den Protector goes because it felt a bit oddly isolated as the only morph, although I could easily bring her back. A lot of these are just hitting the bench, really:
Quirion Ranger,
Merfolk Branchwalker,
Resilient Khenra,
Ohran Viper,
Joyride Rigger,
Acidic Slime,
Fangren Marauder,
Dissenter's Deliverance,
Lifecrafter's Bestiary,
Pulse of Murasa,
Spider Spawning.. literally any of those could come back. Less likely to return is
Waker of the Wilds (a bit of a generic bomb),
Nylea's Emissary (a bit below rate here),
Traverse the Ulvenwald (mechanically isolated), and
Rhox (not sure I like Regenerate in cubes because it's such an odd mechanic to grok).
Overall, green has gotten stronger; my initial suggested adds were well-liked, but my players felt that none of the proposed adds really drew them into green. I definitely related; why bother with
Bitterbow Sharpshooters and
Pelakka Wurm when I can fool around with
Angel of Invention or
Bloodgift Demon? While the furries and the wurm are nice, they just don't offer a ton of excitement. Seeing as green also has terrible removal and doesn't tie into artifacts well at all, I needed to adjust my approach, and I've settled on simply giving green better creatures.
This makes sense from a color identity approach: white gets cheap, flexible creatures that pivot well between aggro tools and control tools, with some beefy fliers and anthems to wrap things up; blue gets little fliers and unblockable tools which are complemented by bounce and counter protection; black gets some fliers and hard-to-block tools as well as clean removal; red has burn and access to menace and haste to push damage through; and green, having the least removal of all the pairs, gets slightly better creatures. I think this balance can work; I just need to be careful about it.
For the cheap beef,
Manaplasm joins as a fun card that gets really exciting for the Miracle Grow decks especially but which can fit just about anywhere; I anticipate a lot of bluffing and a lot of combo kills. Swing with
Deeproot Champion and
Manaplasm as unblockable 1/1s off of
Tetsuko,
Spore Swarm, you take 7? And it only goes up from there!
For more direct tools,
Thrashing Brontodon,
Mouth // Feed, and
Elephant Guide all bring some real stomp. I was low on
Thrashing Brontodon as it's obviously good, but I've come around on it; artifacts and enchantments are scary enough in this list to justify blowing up your 3/4 sometimes, which adds some tension around how to play with it and how to deploy your artis/enchants when it's on the board, and every color has some variation of highly-desired-3-drop, so why not green?
Moving up the curve, I've got
Goreclaw, Terror of Qal Sisma,
Multani, Yavimaya's Avatar, and
Verdant Sun's Avatar, all solid picks that ask for very little to make them great. The most suspicious add here is certainly
Greenwarden of Murasa, as it's very flatly a value play; the others, at least, require some more thoughtful deckbuilding to maximize. We'll see how it works out, but I admit I'm wary.
As for general tools, I've added
Channeler Initiate,
Dryad Greenseeker,
Song of Freyalise, and
Living Wish as land-tutors/ramp effects. We'll get back to
Living Wish in a moment, but I do want to note that I'm a bit wary of
Song of Freyalise; that's a lot of punch! As for card selection/draw more generally, we get
The Mending of Dominaria as a do-it-all enabler/recursion tool,
Nostalgic Dreams as a fair
Seasons Past effect,
Mouth // Feed and
Colossal Majesty for the beefier decks, and
Fecundity for the combo decks.
Fecundity might be too good; I envision some scary turns where the sacrifice deck turns
Saproling Migration into a supercharged
Opportunity, but I want to see what it can do.
Back to
Living Wish; I'm very down on shuffle effects these days, so I decided to give this a try, with a Wishboard. Aside from fetching sideboard creatures (which should be a fringe application that rarely gets used), it can also grab:
I really like this package: you get some strong fixing, an artifact strategy enabler, a 3-mana cantrip, a removal spell that costs a land drop, or a beater that costs a land drop. At 2-mana, I think any of these are reasonable pick-ups without feeling too good. I also love that it can function like
Land Grant, pushing down land counts for greedier decks. This selection package might need to be trimmed, but for now, I'm excited to try it; 2 mana is a real cost to pull a land to your hand, and it doesn't thin your deck, either.
Artifacts/Colorless
Exiting is some fixing (needed less as I shrunk the cube and
I hate all these shuffle-causing effects these days), but more notably, some strong stuff.
Platinum Angel felt a little too obvious of a pick in this slowed-down format,
Metallic Mimic threatens to combo off with
Murderous Redcap which I won't allow, and
Obelisk of Urd wasn't doing anything.
Conqueror's Galleon just bored me, whereas
Nevinyrral's Disk does too much for my taste.
A note on Commander equipment:
Bloodforged Battle-Axe is busted and leads to some very unfun games. I really, really caution against it; if your aggro decks have any teeth at all, it quickly gets out of hand. Similarly,
Heirloom Blade is just too good; it's a big buff for very cheap, and it
routinely draws you a card. I could see an argument for the Blade, but Battle-Axe is a mistake to cube, I firmly believe that.
For includes, we've got
Traxos, Scourge of Kroog as a build-towards for historic-heavy decks,
Primal Amulet for spells decks,
Chaos Wand for removal-lite decks/shenanigans,
Meteor Golem for ramp and reanimator fun, and
Erratic Portal +
Voyager Staff for some flicker/bounce goodness.
Split Screen is also a solid piece of quirk.
Beyond that, we have
Trusty Machete,
Blackblade Reforged, and
Sigiled Sword of Valeron joining as equipment options. I think Machete is a really solid all-around piece, whereas the other two adds really like particular decks: Blackblade loves to function as a finisher just about anywhere, but especially in token lists or legend-heavy lists, whereas the Sigiled Sword plays neatly in more midrange-style beatfests, but can just as easily enable tokens decks or help to build a board presence off of one resilient threat. I think I'll need to watch their power level carefully, but I think they both have plenty of room to be disrupted, so I'm not too concerned.
Out:
In:
Lots of changes as I work to reinforce archetypes!
: Refocusing the pair away from tokens and onto historic-matters by way of
Hanna, Ship's Navigator and
Raff Capashen, Ship's Mage.
Azorius Charm joins as a flexible little thing that does work in any sort of
deck, which is lovely. I'm counting
Curse of Chains primarily as a white card, as it's the color that most wants enchantments, although blue will poach it too; similarly,
Augury Adept plays best with blue's evasion-granting tools, but white may poach it to give it pants. I want to do more of these hybrid adds in the future, and I hope they all make as much sense as these two seem to make.
: Mill out, value body in. I think
Psychic Symbiont might not be here for a long time, but they're here for a good time. :^)
: I hate Rakdos' card options, as they are mostly bad.
Azra Oddsmaker seems to do what the pair wants, so we'll try that. Going down to 2 cards in this section, offset by adding
Rakdos Cackler and
Murderous Redcap, which both colors will want equally and which lowkey encourages a Rakdos configuration.
: Big swaps!
Huntmaster of the Fells was pretty generically good, but now Green has some nice beef and I want to get to it faster instead off of
Radha.
Ghor-Clan Rampager will be good fun as a bloodrush damage spike, too. Going down to 2 cards in this section, offset by
Burning-Tree Emissary and
Giant Solifuge. I expect Solifuge is slightly more desirable in Green as an unexpected closer that turns on
Colossal Majesty and parties with
Goreclaw, but it also turns on
Flamewake Phoenix, and red like hasty beaters. Similarly,
Burning-Tree Emissary is more likely to make its way into red-oriented aggro decks. However, both encourage an
formation, so I think these are fair adds to justify dropping 1 true multicolor until I decide to add one again.
: Cutting all this generic and boring power stuff for some more quirky and powerful stuff.
Shanna, Sisay's Legacy and
Satyr Enchanter both encourage the drafter to draft with them in mind, whereas
Shalai, Voice of Plenty is being counted as a white card that will often tempt a drafter into picking up green. I have high hopes for Shalai, but I admit she's a little awkward, as she's perfectly playable without green, although I think she pushes drafters really hard to reach for it.
:
Restoration Gearsmith boosts a pair which doesn't need it;
Call to the Feast serves more themes here, and allows the Gearsmith to get color-shifted to where it belongs.
: Refocusing on Death-Matters,
Golgari Germination and
Poison-Tip Archer both look great in this pair, with
Pharika's Mender coming in as a generic-but-powerful
Gravedigger variant.
:
Edric, Spymaster of Trest felt a little too good here.
Tatyova, Benthic Druid and
Kiora's Follower both play beautifully in the more durdly formation of Simic, whereas
Skyrider Patrol helps to push through ophidians from blue and beef from green in the more aggressive orientation of this pair.
: What a mess this pair always wants to be!
Adeliz, the Cinder Wind seems like a solid enough pickup for the spell-heavy decks, as it has some supporting Wizards already.
Steam Augury offers some raw card draw in an efficient package, which the pair wants, and
Ogre Savant gives Izzet a meaty, disruptive body (that is, cutely but unintentionally, a wizard). I'm timidly hopeful, but not over-the-moon optimistic.
:
Honored Crop-Captain is not my favorite multicolor card, but
is honestly already too popular in my group, so I think this does a good job of underscoring a strength of the pair (go-wide aggro, often with little bodies or artifacts-matter shenanigans) without being too weak.
Whew! What an update. I'm exhausted now..
As usual, I welcome questions, comments, and drafts (please follow my suggested parameters if you do) :>
