RCB's Cube

[Rowan_CB]

If you just want to skip all the boring stuff, the cube is here: http://www.cubetutor.com/viewcube/95826

Before diving into my cube, a little background that might help clarify any blatantly weird decisions I’ve made. I am not only a cube newbie, I am a relatively new to Magic entirely. While a few of my friends played when I was a kid, I was enamored with Decipher’s Star Wars CCG, and sunk all my hard-earned kid dollars there instead (this has turned out to be a much poorer ROI than Magic would have been!)

Those friends that played as kids have sort of rediscovered Magic as adults, and they successfully sucked me into the MTG orbit by buying me a random junk box and inviting me to get brewing. As such I have only been paying attention to Magic contemporaneously since Kaladesh. Furthermore, my playgroup consists of some of my oldest friends, and since we are not geographically in the same place, we only play when a critical mass are congregated. This cube has been drafted precisely once, and I imagine will be drafted only once or twice a year on average.

This is all to say, I am an inexperienced cube designer and an inexperienced (and pretty bad!) player, so I am keenly interested in seeing how more experienced players would approach my format.

When I was a kid cracking Star Wars CCG packs, I had zero clue about the entire universe of cards. I had no exposure to cards other than the ones I opened in a pack or that appeared in my friend’s brother’s decks. The sense of discovery that accompanied this was my favorite thing about the game. As a Magic newbie, cube design has scratched that itch, as I’ve poured over 1000’s of cards I’d never seen before: hopefully some of that excitement manifests itself in the cube.

A few odds and ends:

Budget

· This is a relatively cheap cube. My goal when I started out was to spend no more than $100 (in addition to the cards I already had in my collection), and I came pretty close to meeting that. I don’t believe any card in my cube costs more than $5, and I shied away from anything over $3 unless I thought it was absolutely essential.

Lands/Fixing

· Due to the above, my lands section might be a little weird! No fetches or shocks, obviously. I included a full suite of the bouncelands, but additional fixing lands include no full “sets”. I tended to go with the most reasonably budget dual land that fit with the general identity of the guild. I’m not super thrilled with the prescriptive nature of this, especially because I want flexible archetypes. I rounded out fixing lands with a set of the vivid lands, and 6x evolving wilds(/terramorphic expanse) (the only cards I’ve broken singleton for).

· Given I run less fixing than is standard, I tried to minimize the number of gold cards in the cube. While you will see 3-4 cards in each guild section, those include hybrids and any cards with an off-color activation. I limited each guild to two cards that were inflexibly gold, i.e., have 2 colors in their mana cost or have 2+ hybrid mana symbols.

· I have no utility lands draft or plan for one at present.

Artifacts

· Have you seen this thread? Clearly I have! I have stolen a lot from riptide cubes, but nowhere more so than in the tailoring of my artifact section. Artifacts get colored support in the Jeskai colors, but nothing in Black or Green.

Tribes

· When I first started this project, it was a tribal cube. This was actually super useful as it eliminated a lot of decision paralysis, and significantly narrowed the gatherer searches I was doing. The tribal elements have been mostly been culled, but I’ve allowed one pseudo-lord to remain for each (other than wizards, sorry wizards!)




The thought is that these cards are safe to remain because they do enough on their own that a critical mass of the tribe is not necessary, but can be a fun additional payoff if you do pick up 4 or 5 other creatures that fit the tribe. With that in mind, I will give tiebreaks to these tribes when making card choices.

Archetype Possibilities

Spoiler

Blink / Recursive Artifact/Enchantment Control ​

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Lifegain / Sac. Tokens ​

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Heroic / Artifact Aggro ​

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Tokens / Lifegain ​

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Cycling/Discard / Graveyard Control​

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Spells / Midrange Artifacts ​

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Saboteurs / Land Shenanigans ​

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Madness/Graveyard Aggro ​

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Graveyard Midrange/Delirium ​

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Landfall ​

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[Onderzeeboot]

Looks solid! A thing you want to keep in mind if you don't run a lot of fixing, is that CC spells are as hard to cast, if not harder, than CD cards in a two color deck. For example, Vampire Hexmage is actually harder to cast for a deck than Lotleth Troll if you have to run something like a Terramorphic Expanse + Golgari Rot Farm + 8 Swamp + 7 Forest land base.

In summary, these...



... are harder to cast than you think, probably. Now, some of these are obviously not turn 2 cards, and those are totally reasonable to play. The cards you do want to land on turn 2 though, those might need a good looking at

 

[Rowan_CB]

Thanks Onderzeeboot !

I think you’ve zeroed in a few cards there that I definitely need to think about cutting. I’m comfortable with the double-CC noncreature cards and Keeper of the Dead (this wants a full graveyard so, like you alluded to, isn’t really a turn 2 play anyway). That leaves these three to think about cutting.

Vampire Hexmage,Viridian Zealot, and Phalanx Leader

Regarding the Hexmage, I think this is an easy cut if I can figure out what I want to replace it with. I do like that it has a unique effect, but counters aren’t too much of a theme in my cube anyway. Black 2-drops are rough though. I’m already running two other: Asylum Visitor and Pain Seer, that I’m pretty meh on.

There’s really no reason for Viridian Zealot to be in here either. I recently scaled back my naturalize effects because my non-creature artifacts are mostly utility and don’t demand answers, and I run a BUNCH of janky build-around enchantments (Drake Haven, Sanguine Bond, Cradle of Vitality, etc.) that I want my drafters to get to build around, so why punish them for doing so? Viridian Zealot will probably be cut for Ambush Viper next time I do updates.

Now that leaves Phalanx Leader. I want to use this one to talk a little bit about Heroic and my attempt at utilizing it in this cube. From the reading I’ve done on this site and others, it seems like many a cube-designer has tried and failed to make Heroic work. I don’t know why I think I’ll be any different, but I just love it as a mechanic for some reason.

My theory is this: by situating it in Boros, it becomes sort of a segue mechanic for aggro to transition into the midgame. I also tried to dull some of the 2-for-1 pain by mostly limiting the auras to those that have some sort of recursive or repeatable value (Mark of Fury, Crown of Flames, Gryff’s Boon (which I know only triggers Historic the first time, but still is not a one-shot), and Felidar Umbra (ditto). Flickering Ward would be good for this, but I’m not sure I want it in my environment.

In place of more auras I’ve tried to include instants and sorceries that target more than one creature (Ajani’s Presence, Launch the Fleet, Blessed Alliance, Coordinated Assault). The two cutest pieces of tech for this are probably:



I like Wave a lot, not only for its flavor text, but also as an example of how I want Heroic to work as a midrange evolution for aggro decks. Aggro decks can use it to clear blockers to get damage through after the opponent has stabilized, but it can also target your own guys to trigger heroic, or do all of the above!

Also, this is kind of a fun three card combo:



So in the context of wanting to support heroic, I really love Phalanx Leader, but it performs very poorly in the early-game aggro side of the equation I’m trying to set up.

 

[Dom Harvey]

I tried to make Heroic work for a long time, and I found it required a much larger commitment than I was happy with. It warps the rest of the environment around itself: the easiest way to trigger Heroic is combat tricks and having a bunch of those in your Cube requires that the timing/mana cost/restrictiveness of your removal gives these room to breathe and that combat between similarly sized creatures is frequent and important (which tends to be less and less true as your Cube is more powerful). If you can do this, the reward is there as combat - which you expect to be a main feature of the game - suddenly becomes very interesting again.

Phalanx Leader and Anax and Cymede stood out to me as they let you go wide as well as tall, removing the main downside of the 'build a big creature' plan. As you said though, they don't fit into your curve as aggressive creatures by themselves (at least Phalanx Leader doesn't; A&C does, kinda); they take the place of planeswalkers or mass pump or traditional curve-toppers like Hellrider/Hero of Oxid Ridge. I've found that the flashback/aftermath cards that target creatures - Travel Preparations, Reckless Charge, Sylvan Might, Appeal // Authority - are a good way of getting repeated heroic triggers without taking up too much space.

 

[Rowan_CB]

Got some play in with this cube last weekend. I had to hurry out at the end so did not collect deck lists, but I have a few items that came up that I'm curious for feedback on.

The first thing to point out is that there were three of us, with a fourth that would be arriving later in the day so we decided to build decks from sealed pools. This allowed the three of us to build decks, with a pool set aside for the fourth member to build from and join in when he arrived.

The matches and games were all really fun! However, one surprising thing to me was that... everybody ended up (or almost ended up) in what was at least vaguely a GB build.

My deck was straight up GB, built around filling the graveyard with Oona's Prowler, Putrid Imp and Mindwrack Demon, and flashing back cards like Spider Spawning or Roar of the Wurm for value.

Another deck was more of a four-color good stuff build, but with a GB reanimation shell at its base. This deck also featured some artifact synergies (interesting, and maybe alarming, as green and black are the two colors that don't give much artifact support) with Trading Post, Perilous Myr, Terrarion, Executioner's Capsule, and Feldon of the Third Path

The third deck was pretty straight up Abzan midrange, with perhaps a slightly stronger emphasis on white and black then green, and was much less graveyard focused than the other two decks.

The fourth deck didn't actually end up being GB, but when we checked in on the player when he was building his pool he was leaning toward those colors, than decided not to when he found out that this was basically what everyone else was running out. He ended up with a RW pseudo-aggro deck that I didn't get to see in action very much because I had to leave early.

So my questions are:

Just how much does playing sealed distort the format?

My hope is that people ended up interested in similar colors by an element of chance that wouldn't exist in draft, and not because those colors are overpowered compared to the others. Is this feasible? I do seed the packs to try to ensure a reasonable color distribution. Do green and black look better than the other three colors on my list? Other than a splash in the four color deck, nobody played blue! In my attempts to curtail the usually overpowered color, have I gone too far and nerfed it? Or is this all just small sample size?

Is it too easy to play three or four colors?
I don't want to write this off as simply being a function of sealed in case there's a more deeply rooted problem. I run less fixing on a per card basis than most other cubes I've perused, but I'm wondering if the fixing I have is too flexible. In particular, I'm looking at my 3x Evolving Wilds / 3x Terramorphic Expanse, and the set of Vivid lands. The Evolving wild variants are there to serve as fixing that double as enablers for landfall in an environment that doesn't run fetches (this is a budget cube afterall). The Vivid lands are so tempting in that they only take up five cards, but I think in my heart of hearts I've always known they open the door for four and five color degeneracy. A few options I'm mulling:

1. Cut the vivids and a card from each color section and include a new 10 card dual cycle.
2. Cut the vivids and all but one of the Evolving Wilds variants and include a new 10 card dual cycle.
3. Swap the vivids out for, I dunno 5x Pentad Prism, or a bunch more Chromatic Star/Sphere variants?

 

[Rowan_CB]

Ch-ch-ch-changes:

Spoiler

Out: In:

In order to better support RW artifact aggro. Plus, Voltaic Key wasn't doing anything.

Out: In:

Launch the Fleet was supposed to be a Heroic enabler that also supported tokens strategies, but it never ended up being worth a card in any of those decks. The Bugler hits 65% of the creatures in my cube, and an identical 65% of white creatures. I'm thinking that will translate well but we'll see.

Out: In:

Discovered Somnophore perusing Grillo's cube and realized it was perfect for mine. Slots into my Simic Saboteurs archetype while also just being a good fair card. Niblis of Frost was a little generic for something so strong, plus I already have a four-drop prowess creature in blue in Mistfire Adept

Out: In:

Curse of the Swine is a pet card of mine that has always been an awkward fit. I will still probably find a way to bring it back in at some point. Gifts was on the list of cards Inscho recommended as a payoff after he drafted a Mystical Teachings deck from my cube over in the draft exchange thread. I've hesitated to pull the trigger on cards over $3 to $4 to this point, but I've recently had a few good money pulls from some M19 packs (including a Nicol Bolas, the Ravager) which I'm planning to cash in for some of the more expensive cube cards I've held out on so far.

Out: In:

After all the discussion in the Dimir Saboteurs thread, I realized I should be running some ninjas. This slides into the saboteurs archetype in place of an enabler that was too likely to be used outside of the archetype in unfun ways.

Out: In:

See above, re: Ninjas. Augur of Bolas never did anything.

Out: In:

Clearly I've been mining Grillo's cube for inspiration. Cloud of Faeries is another cycler to support U/B cycling, and it's land untapping abilities play nicely with some of the land shenanigans I like UG to be able to get up to. Mystic Speculation was a recent addition that hasn't actually been played with, but the longer its sat in my list the less I've liked it.

Out: In:

As mentioned upthread, I've been looking to cut some of these double-colored 2-drops. Golgari Thug is one that has been on my list that I've shied away form due to price, and the lack of other Dredge cards in my cube. I'm adding another Dredge card in this update (see below), so I thought it was time to make this move as well.

Out: In:

Another instant recommended by Inscho, and more in line with the type of reanimation I want to run. Last time I played this cube, I ended up casting Animate Dead targeting Pestilence Demon on turn 2, and was relieved when my opponent had a removal spell to deal with it, which was my sign that the card needed to be cut. Plus, as iconic as Animate Dead is, its rules text is pretty unaesthetic.

Out: In:

Nightshade Assassin is a really awkward card that I really wanted to work, mostly because I was looking for a fair Nekrataal variant and a Madness payoff and thought this might kill two birds with one stone. It ended up killing no birds with no stones. The black madness decks empty their hands so fast that Nightshade Assassin rarely has an opportunity to shrink a creature by more than -1/-1. I am thinking of Throat Slitter more as a Nekrataal variant than a saboteur payoff, and, since I'm adding Ninjutsu, I like having it bleed into another color.

Out: In:

Just looking to boost Black aggro a little bit here.

Out: In:

Another card to support RW artifact aggro. Cathartic Reunion ended up not being great. Red decks love both Faithless Looting and Tormenting Voice in this environment, but it turns out they don't want a bigger more expensive version of that effect.

Out: In:

Life from the Loam has been the top card on my wish list since I started this cube, and with the aforementioned M19 pulls, I'm finally going to add it. Viridian Zealot was redundant and awkwardly costed.

Out: In:

I am cutting a bunch of Evolving Wilds' in this update, so this is one attempt to mitigate that for the landfall decks. Green has plenty of land tutoring and discard outlets, so I don't think Greenseeker will be greatly missed.

Out: In:

Green has more than enough Graveyard payoffs, and too many fours.

Out: In:

Regal Bloodlord doesn't support the kind of grindy sacrifice tokens deck as well as Hidden Stockpile, but it does support it, and also pays off incremental life gain, which is WB's primary theme in my cube. We'll see.

Out: In:

Seems like a fun payoff for artifact recursion whose prohibitive CMC prevents it from being too generically good stuff in decks that have to cast it.

Out: In:

Out: In:

M19 reprint means this is actually (kind of) affordable!

Out: In:

Another one that I previously couldn't quite bring myself to pay $7 for.

 

[Rowan_CB]

Okay, I've made a bunch more changes from my last post, but I won't hammer you over the head with all of them. I will highlight the latest package I added, and take a look at a few decks I've drafted on cubetutor in recent iterations.

As I talked about in the "spells matter" thread, I was interested in spicing UR up by adding a mini "fair" miracles theme, inspired by Bloodwater Entity wherein the color pair gets access to some top-of-library manipulation, and a handful of miracles that are baseline playable and great (but not broken) when the player can set them up. Based on some recommendations from Inscho, I am also letting this theme bleed into white a little bit. Here's the package I added:



Here's an example of the type of deck I see coming together now in UR, still "spells matter" at its base, but with the focus on library manipulation and miracles making more of a control deck than that archetype typically is:

UR Miracle Control from CubeTutor.com

In some limited solo testing on cockatrice, this deck is a fair beast and a BLAST to play.

My goal recently has been to try to add texture and depth to each color pair. While each pair still supports the "primary" archetypes that are listed in the OP, and those archetypes should be readily apparent to drafters that aren't familiar with the cube, my hope is that I've added enough depth for more creative drafters to explore some fun secondary and tertiary themes that the pairs can support. Here are some recent cubetutor decks that exemplify some of these more textured themes:

UR Spell Ninjas from CubeTutor.com

This is another example of a UR spells deck, but that goes in the opposite direction of the more controlling miracles deck, using blue saboteur and ninja effects to turn the deck into an aggro-tempo deck.

WBr Sacrifacts from CubeTutor.com

This WB deck ignores lifegain payoffs (the color pairs primary archetype) and splashes red to create a grindy sacrifice deck.

Bant Golems from CubeTutor.com

Here's a three color deck that fuses UW's blink theme with GW's token theme to create the best kind of tribal deck, i.e. golem tribal.

UG Baron Lands from CubeTutor.com

Finally, here's a UG deck that is essentially a baron deck that uses Life from the Loam, coupled with big landfall payoffs and enablers, as its finishing package.

 

[Alfonzo Bonzo]

I really like the miracle package here, looks good.

 

[Rowan_CB]

Got a 6-man draft in this past weekend. Had a ton of fun, and it gave me lots of food for thought for how to continue to improve this cube.

A few housekeeping details:

1. We did 4 packs of 14, then burned the last 3 cards in each pack. This is in accordance with the system I developed and posted about in this thread, in an attempt to most closely emulate the feel of an 8-man draft. I believe this was a success. It was a fun, dynamic drafting experience, with plenty of tension and tough choices.


2. My playgroup consists of a tight knit group of friends who have known each other since early childhood, and who only get together a few times a year. There is a pretty wide range of experience amongst the drafters, but we’re all very casual players. A few literally only play when we get together, and have no other relationship to magic.

Without further ado, here are the decks:

3-0

JS's WG Enchanted Tokens from CubeTutor.com

I was pleasantly surprised to see a GW deck win the tournament, as it’s one of the color pairs I felt the least sure of with going in. JS ran a lot of the token-related cards that are this color-pair’s bread and butter, but mixed in a slate of auras, most often used to pump Fabled Hero, but I saw him Voltron out a few other creatures protected by Flickering Ward at other points. The aforementioned Fabled Hero and Flickering Ward were two of the all-stars for him, but Felidar Umbra was surprisingly impactful, and Vitu-Ghazi Guildmage was a house. Restoration Specialist was a card he ended up sideboarding in each match, as rebuying the protective auras after an opponent found an answer was often backbreaking.

2-1

SH's UR Aggro from CubeTutor.com

This is probably my favorite deck of the night. Super low to the ground, aggressive, but with plenty of fun synergies, including good use of low-cmc artifacts for prowess triggers. Tetsuko Umezawa, Fugitive was the stand out card in this deck to me, but it was just a well-tuned aggro deck that made for fun games.

2-1

AM's GWb Midrange from CubeTutor.com

So as it turns out, the GW decks went a combined 5-1, and the only match-loss came when they faced off against each other (more on that matchup later!) This was just a solid grindy midrange deck, piloted by the player who might be one of the most skilled technical players in our group. Some of his All-stars were obvious (Angel of Invention, Spear of Heliod), but one thing that was fun to see was that Appeal // Authority turned out to be a game changer.

1-2

RCB's UGr Lands from CubeTutor.com

This beauty was mine. Extremely high on synergy, and extremely low on power, just the way I like it. In truth, I think this deck would have been quite good if it had just one more finisher. I was hoping for Rampaging Baloths or Meloku the Clouded Mirror, but neither were coming through the door. As it was, the clear all star of my deck was Tatyova, Benthic Druid, as it only functioned at high capacity when she was out there, but getting the engine assembled with Tatyova, Mina and Denn, Wildborn, Zuran Orb / Life from the Loam, and one of Llanowar Scout/Sakura-Tribe Scout was fun, and I usually won if I could get something like this going. Other fun lines were saccing lands to Harrow/Zuran Orb, casting Centaur Vinecrasher, then rebuying the sac’ed lands with Loam. In the end though, this deck lacked oomph, which I was aware of coming out of the draft. Regardless, all of the games I played were fun.


1-2

SF's Grixis Cycling from CubeTutor.com

SF picked up enough cycling cards he decided his deck could afford to run 50 cards, which is highly debatable, but ultimately he played the deck he wanted to play! I think he started the draft taking sacrifice focused cards, then saw that a cycling theme was open, drafted a bunch of cyclers, and determined that gave him enough digging ability to leave in the sacrifice win-cons. I did not play him or catch any of his games, but I know he got a Trade Routes/ Drake Haven / Crucible of Worlds engine going at least once, which is sweet!

0-3

HS’s BR Aggro-Madness

Unfortunately I didn’t get this deck list, but it was a solid BR Aggro with strong madness synergies. HS is the least experienced player in the group, and I think he had a lot of fun drafting something synergistic. His deck was good! He really should have been 2-1, but he made a few (frankly, hilarious) match-losing plays. The most memorable was against me, where he had a Mindwrack Demon out, and I had no board. I was just barely staying alive by sacrificing lands to Zuran Orb, racing, against him losing 4 life per turn to the Demon because I had Commit // Memoryed our graveyards back into our decks. I thought I was dead when he turned on delirium with 4 life left, but he promptly flashbacked Reckless Charge, even though it was not quite enough to kill me (I had to sac my last land), not realizing it was the only sorcery in his graveyard, thus killing him on his next upkeep. It was very Rakdos.

Takeaways

1. One thing I was very happy about was the level of fixing/smoothing. Most people were in two-color decks with, at most, a light splash, which is the ideal I strove for, and nobody had mana issues, at all, one way or the other, in any of the 20+ games that were played, which I am VERY pleased with.

2. The Aggro vs. Midrange games played out ideally. The aggro decks were fast enough that they got in a lot of damage early, but not so fast that the slower decks never got a chance to play. Usually, the midrange decks would find a chance to stabilize somewhere around 6-8 life, and there would be great tension regarding whether or not the aggro decks could find that last bit of reach to put their opponent away before they could turn the corner on the stabilized board and start pressing the advantage. My games against the BR and UR aggro decks were really fun, for both players, and I think that was true across the board.

3. Midrange vs. Midrange was way grindier than I want it to be. The biggest culprits were the two GW decks. Their games against each other took FOREVER. In the first round, all other matches had been completed when they were still in the middle of game 1, with no end in sight. AM ended up conceding the game because he was pretty heavily disadvantaged, but it was a dissatisfying ending. Then, they ended up finishing their match the following day, and each of the games was incredibly drawn out. In truth, they were great magic games, and very dramatic. In game 2, AM got down to 1 life before stabilizing and roaring back to win, and in game 3, JS got down to 2 life before mounting his own game-winning comeback. Objectively, that was great fun, but in practice it was too much of a slog. The boards got so stalled, and the decision density was so great and so complicated, that I think all players and observers were a little burned out by the end.

My question moving forward is how to address the grindiness that occurs when two midrange decks like this butt heads. I maligned GW pre-draft when I thought it wasn’t strong, and now I am going to be unfair and malign it again even though it performed extremely well, because I don’t love how it performed well. I think two things really led to the grindy board states: token spamming and life gain.

I am thinking I may want to reconfigure GW’s identity so that tokens move from the primary archetype to a secondary or tertiary one. In its place, I think I will emphasize a lands-matter theme, inspired in part by Inscho examining similar design space in his cube for this color pair.

This will make land synergy a theme that now touches 4 of 5 colors (WURG), and give it standing alongside artifact and graveyard synergies as the three pillar themes of the format, meaning they are diffused among more than just a single wedge or shard.


Some particular cards I think will go:





I love that this is an anthem that is both an artifact and enchantment. Unfortunately, the last line of text was more problematic than I had envisioned. If I’m trying to cut down on grindy midrange board stalls, cutting a card that strongly disincentivizes people from attacking is probably a good step.





I avoided putting this card in for a long time because I am anti-protection. However, I was still dumbly trying to support Heroic, and decided this had enough drawbacks as an aura that it could act as a strong enabler for the Heroic deck without being oppressive. But it was in fact pretty oppressive. I think part of the takeaway is, as you all have been telling me, I need to stop trying to support heroic ☹.





This one also leads to drawn out games. It both protects and grants lifelink to your biggest creature, padding life totals on attacks and blocks, and preventing removal spells from being able to do their jobs in pairing down board states.





Will become:





Expressing the shift in WG’s from tokens to lands. The basic idea as I conceive it now will be for white to use land sacrificing effects like Zuran Orb, maybe Cenn’s Enlistment or Pegasus Stampede (which, I know, create tokens, drat!) to fuel Knight of the Reliquary, but also to ensure they can have less lands then their opponents when needed to take advantage of Land Tax based effects, thus filling the hand with lands for landfall activations, or to play and sac to further grow Knight of the Reliquary or Centaur Vinecrasher.

 

[Rowan_CB]

Ari Lax posted a very interesting breakdown of how power-toughness relationships might affect limited Magic. I suggest reading it for anyone that has cube-ish projects with a lot of combat interactions!



https://armlx.blogspot.com/2019/01/limited-design-32-for-three-is-place-to.html

This article (quote here is from the CBS thread, where there was much rejoicing) inspired me to do a little P/T analysis for my cube.

As an aside, I am thinking of launching a 2.0 cube blog because the entire design principle of my cube is light years away from what is talked about in the OP here, but I'll save that for when I have the time and energy to make a big post.

I imagine the author of the linked piece focuses on 3 cmc creatures because they are sort of a natural lynchpin for limited retail environments, but I don't know if that is true for cube. I did find it interesting, though, to examine the % of creatures a given P/T would win, lose, trade, or blank in combat.

Looks like this:

Spoiler

Important caveats: This is only looking at base power toughness, so Student of Warfare, Figure of Destiny, etc., are all considered 1/1's. It also ignores evasive keywords, and keywords like deathtouch, first strike, which obviously has implications as far as trading or winning combat

Still an interesting snapshot, I think.

It's more useful when CMC is factored in as well, which is present on my spreadsheet but I haven't come up with a nice way to visualize it yet. This informs that, for instance, a 3/1 for 2 trades up with 60 creatures, and trades down with 26.

 

[dbs]

Looked at your list in detail for the first time, and I wanted to pop in to say I really like it. You have an interesting mix of different ideas you've combined here and while I recognize a lot of concepts pulled from riptide wisdom, the particular combination actually strikes me as pretty unique. And you've fit it all into a well-tuned 360 which I certainly could never do. I gave it a draft and had a total blast:

Bant Land Miracle Storm from CubeTutor.com

Really fun overlapping synergies between lands and storm alongside Mystical Tutor to either grab Hunting Pack or a miracle when you're playing control mode. Ended up passing Courser of Kruphix and Brainstorm during some very close picks, and maybe that was a mistake, consistency-wise.

Win Cons: Emeria Angel and Hunting Pack
Mana Gen: Harrow, Heartbeat, Turnabout, Cloud of Faeries
Ramp: Sakura Tribe-Scout, Wayward Swordtooth, Dream Stalker, Scryb Ranger, Bouncelands
Card Advantage: Commit, Tatyova, Weathered Wayfarer

Anyway, cool cube.

 

[Rowan_CB]

Thanks for the draft, and for the kind words! A revamped cube blog is way overdue here, as my cube has evolved a lot from anything that’s written about on here, and I’m pretty happy with where it is right now.

Phase 0.5 of this cube was a silly and fun mess of existing limited archetypes that I liked and some ill-conceived tribal components.

Phase 1, which began in earnest shortly after I started hanging out here, was heavily, heavily influenced by Grillo’s Penny Pincher cube, and my cube will always be indebted to the design work Grillo put into creating a low-power/narrow-power-band, skill-rewarding environment.

Phase 1.5 involved really honing in the broad archetypes (or quartets, as I’ve called them—though a better name is out there for sure) and maximizing the number of viable decks each color pair could arrive in.

I think the cube is now in Phase 2, for which the biggest influence was actually you, dbs. Running a narrow-power band for as long as I did, I was finding myself agreeing with other posters here that were advocating for a slightly wider band, and the excitement that could lead to in drafting, plus the effectiveness of bombs in ending games (which could sometimes be a problem with the midrange slugfests my cube was all too capable of producing.) Each time I tried to push the power-level with creatures, however, I wasn’t happy with the result. There are few things more demoralizing than staring down a bomb creature on the other side of the board that you know you just can’t deal with.

With that in mind, I became intrigued by dbs’s push to maximize spell velocity. As a resulted I started pushing the power-level of my noncreature spells, and tried to add as much spell velocity as my format could handle in order to create another axis of excitement for the games to operate on.

To be clear, with no moxen, and a much lower power level, my cube won’t play out much like dbs’s at all. But I think I’ve found that the philosophy of pushing spell velocity really works well in a low-power environment as well, and that there’s perhaps more room in a riptidian environment to push the power level of exciting noncreature spells than there is for creature spells. Anyway, I think I’ll put together a more comprehensive post at some point in the near-ish future.

 

[Onderzeeboot]

It might actually work a bit like old school magic. If there is such a thing as power creep in Magic (it's all relative anyway), it's the average power of creatures, especially higher on the curve. Spells used to rule in the old days, any old creature could finish off the opponent after you neutralised them and their threats with your spells.