RESURRECT DEAD ON PLANET JUPITER

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For those that are interested, I'm going to use this thread as a space to layout ideas and thoughts that I have on cube somewhere other than my head. I anticipate a lot of these posts will end up being interesting interactions that I find, or goofy, unfleshed out ideas for themes, decks, and cubes.

My method of working on cubes involves a lot of fleshing out lists on cubetutor and then deleting them so I can get a fresh start. If I end up on a design that ends up clicking/ sticking, I'll post about it here rather than creating a bunch of individual blogs that'll most likely end up being abandoned down the road.

Feel free to deride, ignore, or offer constructive criticism on anything that I post here.
 
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While I was searching for a mana rock that would interest a wildfire deck and an aggressive deck, I stumbled upon the borderpost cycle.



Their use with wildfire is pretty self explanatory, but these are the big three interactions I see happening with aggressive decks.
  1. Interacting with aggressive creatures that care about artifacts
  2. Interacting with aggressive creatures that care about landfall
  3. Interacting with aggressive creatures that care about multicolor
I found point 3 as being the most interesting and remembered that Jason's Eldrazi-Domain cube (and I guess Shards of Alara limited) prominently featured the blade cycle in that cube's aggressive decks.



I think this interaction between the borderposts and the blade creatures could provide an interesting design space for a cube to work with. I think the biggest drawback is that the borderposts are only available in allied colors and the blades are only available in Shards that heavily incentivize playing shards. This problem can have the following solutions.
  1. Proxy the enemy and wedge stuff a la Chris Taylor
  2. Cut support for enemy pairs and in this case the wedges a la Onderzeeboot's Knights of Alara Cube
I'm not brave enough for Option 1 so Option 2 seems like it would be the way to go.
I imagine that for a cube like this, the borderposts would have to take a prominent role in providing mana fixing, similar to how bouncelands feature prominently in Grillo's cubes. Since we're only working with 5 cards, I imagine 2-4 copies of each borderpost would have to be included to provide adequate support.
Some more considerations
  1. Artifact destruction would have to be heavily policed. It's nice that there's a lot of knobs to turn here since artifact destruction exists at basically every CMC.
  2. Due to the density of mana rocks, certain effects would have to be pushed up in mana cost (6 cmc wraths?)
  3. Artifact synergies would probably feature prominently in this cube, maybe enough to create two styles of aggressive decks. One that leans heavily on the blade cycle and other multicolor cards while the other focuses heavily on artifact synergies with cards that care about artifacts, vehicles, and equipment.
  4. I think there can exist two "big mana decks" in this format. The first is the typical wildfire deck, typically RG, that plays mana artifacts and ramp spells to break the symmetry on Wildfire. Due to the prominent role artifact mana plays in this hypothetical cube, I think there can exist a GW "Anti-Wildfire" deck that foregoes the mana rocks and uses things like Sakura-Tribe Elder and Wood Elves to ramp into either Austere Command or Akroma's Vengeance. Best case scenario is you destroy their creatures and mana sources, worst case scenario you wrath their board and start to play out your late game.
 
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Some thoughts on Dragon Tribal

Grillo's original PennyPincher cube features a goblin engine built on the following cards to grind out games, allowing you effectively draw 2 cards a turn, one of which is removal.



Nameless Inversion and Crib Swap are particularly interesting to me because they have the possibility of interacting with multiple tribes, in this case dragons.



I imagine this wouldn't be a super deep theme, but I like that it encourages what amounts to a tribal control deck, either in Esper or Grixis colors. There are a tons of dragons that a control deck as finishers, maybe even as reanimation targets a la solar flare. Obviously you'd have to be careful with your card choices so that Silumgar's Scorn isn't embarrassed by Counterspell

Admittedly stuff like Dragonlord's Prerogative would have only marginal upside but I just wanted to point out these interactions that I found neat.

Maybe Draconic Roar could find a home in a punchy midrange deck with Taurean Mauler, Thunderbreak Regent, Stormbreath Dragon, Thundermaw Hellkite, and Kolaghan, the Storm's Fury.

Maybe this idea can pan out as the basis of a tribal cube's control deck.

Crux of Fate seems like pretty big game too.
 
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Big Enchantments

My players have expressed interest in having me support things Show and Tell, Sneak Attack, and Natural Order. While looking for targets for these cards, I kind of got hung up on Show and Tell being able to put non-creatures, particularly enchantments into play. This led me to a rough draft for a kind of big enchantment theme that can slot into a control deck a la solar flare. Occasionally it might get lucky with Show and Tell. Below are some examples.

"Targets"



"Enablers"



Vintage Cube

This article argues that there are five pillars of vintage.
  1. Drains (Blue Control)
  2. Workshops (Artifact Based Prison)
  3. Bazaars (Graveyard Based Aggro-Combo)
  4. Rituals (Restricted List Combo)
  5. Null Rods (Aggro-Control and I guess as of now Eldrazi)
I think it would be a fun exercise to design a powered cube that operates on this assumption while borrowing ideas and concepts from Legacy to fill in gaps in some colors that aren't super well represented in the vintage metagame (Elves, Goblins, Dragon Stompy, Lands, Turbo Depths, etc.) The big idea being, creating a draft format that offers archetypes inspired by the vintage/legacy decks rather than, " I played Thragtusk on Turn 2 off of some moxes and fast mana".dec

Random Thought

 
Rasmus Källqvist

Rasmus Källqvist

I haven't looked to much into it, but my suggestion whenever you want to delve into a "Deck" is to first just sit down and build it. Get 40 card together that look fun to play, and looks like something that can go 2-1, then see what variations of it you can make. Then you'll know you have critical mass of cards for the idea.
 
inscho

inscho

Rasmus Källqvist said:
I haven't looked to much into it, but my suggestion whenever you want to delve into a "Deck" is to first just sit down and build it. Get 40 card together that look fun to play, and looks like something that can go 2-1, then see what variations of it you can make. Then you'll know you have critical mass of cards for the idea.
Click to expand...


Doing this has been a real game-changer for me. It's a really simple exercise, but I managed to have a cube for several years before I consciously started doing it.
 
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Rasmus Källqvist said:
I haven't looked to much into it, but my suggestion whenever you want to delve into a "Deck" is to first just sit down and build it. Get 40 card together that look fun to play, and looks like something that can go 2-1, then see what variations of it you can make. Then you'll know you have critical mass of cards for the idea.
Click to expand...


inscho said:
Doing this has been a real game-changer for me. It's a really simple exercise, but I managed to have a cube for several years before I consciously started doing it.
Click to expand...

I feel like I do a backwards kind of version of this. When I want to push something I'll build a new cube with that idea in focus, do a bunch of drafts, make some tweaks, and then Obliterate the cube. It feels like in the process I develop "muscle memory" for the densities and cards and when I repeat the process in the future, I gravitate towards stuff that worked out in previous cubes while incorporating new stuff.

Let's try the other way though!

Jeskai Big Enchantment Solar Flare










This deck is basically the big enchantment theme sliding neatly into what I would want a URx control deck to look like. The sifting spells and cards with cycling play nicely with things like Drake Haven and as a tool to get the enchantments into the graveyard. Our removal focuses on powerful effects that incentivize discarding which again, plays well with Drake Haven and the big enchantments. You have some utility effects with counterspells, spot removal and Snapcaster Mage. Eternal Dragon is in there as something for Drake Haven and as a win condition that provides value early in addition to being able to close out the game.

Mardu Vehicles Stuff

In a lot of the cubes I've been designing lately, I've wanted to push a Mardu Vehicles type deck as the premier "Aggressive Midrange Deck with Artifact Synergies" deck. While searching for black support cards I became pretty high on these guys because of how much value they can generate with vehicles.



Continuing with the theme of this post, here's a hypothetical decklist out of thin air.










Other considerations

As I move away from traditional 1 mana dorks, I think that Pain Seer and King Macar, the Gold-Cursed play nicely and provide support with these guys. No decklist for this since it's a nascent idea.



Dom Harvey said:
That's one of the things I really like about the MTG Cube blog by Nick West - it seems like he builds sample decks for an archetype as a reference point for what the ceiling is for that strategy, which opens up a lot of design space
Click to expand...


I'm a big fan of MTG Cube Blog. I love how he gives feedback on cards that reddit, this forum, and mtgsalvation don't normally touch. (This kind of ties back to the Retro Combo Cube game where Opposition was never drawn and there was that whole discussion of what it would be like if Opposition got cut in the early days for being "inconsistent") This post in particular makes me want to find a home for As Foretold

Goofy Lab Man Combo



I thought we got more support but it wasn't meant to be.

ripjawraptor.jpg
 
Grillo_Parlante

Grillo_Parlante

Contributor
That Boros/mardu artifact aggro deck is very real btw, and is pretty applicable across power levels. The one drops for it are all on average better than what most people have been/are currently running for aggro 1 drops, and some of the best aggro 2 drops are artifacts.

Would suggest also



Cards like scrapheap scrounger are great for cube aggro in general, because you can slot them into the colored section, but they play as ubiquitous aggro creatures that don't care about color fixing issues. Its really a very pretty way to do aggro, addressing all of the archetypes normal weaknesses in cube, while staying deep and layored in its execution.

For inspired you would want to suppliment the vehicles with other tap effects, like convoke I think. Not sure how many cards there are out there that are reasonable, but also want you to tap creatures as an added cost. Feels to me like something you would want to go light into at first?
 
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Alfonzo Bonzo said:
One of the things I do is to add cards to cube tutor when there is an interesting theme or idea. Behold, the tap, untapped, tap cube :

http://www.cubetutor.com/viewcube/11418
Click to expand...


I have a cube like this affectionately called the Sandbox cube. I usually utilize it as a space to layout ideas visiaully when I want to add a theme to a cube, revamp a color, etc. when I end up sticking with a design for a while.

Grillo_Parlante said:
That Boros/mardu artifact aggro deck is very real btw, and is pretty applicable across power levels. The one drops for it are all on average better than what most people have been/are currently running for aggro 1 drops, and some of the best aggro 2 drops are artifacts.

Would suggest also

Cards like scrapheap scrounger are great for cube aggro in general, because you can slot them into the colored section, but they play as ubiquitous aggro creatures that don't care about color fixing issues. Its really a very pretty way to do aggro, addressing all of the archetypes normal weaknesses in cube, while staying deep and layored in its execution.

For inspired you would want to suppliment the vehicles with other tap effects, like convoke I think. Not sure how many cards there are out there that are reasonable, but also want you to tap creatures as an added cost. Feels to me like something you would want to go light into at first?
Click to expand...


I agree with this wholeheartedly. Shrine of Loyal Legions has been in most of the stuff I've been working on for the past month. I see it working in tandem with Oketra's Monument which I've been pretty high on. I'm a little gun-shy and kind of dismissive of Shrine of the Burning Rage. I guess it's because I associate it with Mono Red decks in Vintage Cube/ always seeming like a 14-15th pick on there (I guess it has to wheel to the mono red player). I can see it's applications here however for turning on stuff that cares about artifacts.

I didn't add it to the example deck, but I really like Stoneforge Mystic and Relic Seeker as a way to fetch up aggressive equipment. Cranial Plating sends a really strong message. I kind of like the idea Sram, Senior Edificer as well. It feels like in a slightly grindier version of this deck it can draw some additional cards as well as make auras less bad. I guess it wold depend on answer the question, "how many cards would Sram have to draw in order to be worth it?"

I wouldn't imagine I would go super deep on the inspired cards. Besides the two black ones listed above I would probably only consider these two.



I really like how well Smuggler's Copter and Order play. Siren can trigger inspired on its own and is a Zombie for tribal shenanigans.

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Brewed another version of the Big Enchantment deck, this time in Esper and focused a little more on value reanimator. In this version you have Seal of Cleansing, Attunement, CastOut, and Doomwake Giant serving as smaller, more value focused targets for Replenish and Starfield of Nyx. Enlightened Tutor helps the perviously mentioned cards serve as a toolbox as well as searching out one of the "win condition" enchantments late in the game. The same Drake Haven synergies are present as last time and Death Rattle adds a neat wrinkle with regards to reprograming the deck with Elixir of Immortality. Starfield + Seal of Doom seems like a punishing soft lock.











I've been pretty big on Splendid Reclamation and Oath of Druids lately, even though Oath can cause some problems with design. Decks like the following have become my darling.











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Thinking about the Vintage Cube stuff, I think it would be interesting to classify cards by the five pillars rather than color since there is so much skew towards blue and artifacts. Could be neat, could be an unbalanced mess.
 
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inscho said:
I've toyed around with the Enchantment Reanimator deck, but could never quite integrate into my cube, switching it to Azorius Artifact Control instead. I still have a small Academy Rector package which is a lot of fun.




That Oath deck is rad. I've enjoyed Gamekeeper, Shelldock Isle (Trade Routes!). and Show and Tell alongside Oath as support. I'm all aboard Splendid Rec w/ Oath....a few other cards that play nicely:

Click to expand...


Man, Lay Claim is one of those cards that I knew is good and checks all of the boxes except that the entire thing is so aesthetically displeasing to me.

I remember seeing Gamekeeper in Conspiracy drafts. I never really got to play with it but it seems like a nice, redundant effect.
The interaction between Isle and Routes seems busted.
I like Seasons Past and it's one of those cards that makes its way into all of my lists.
I think Borborygmos is v good but I always think about how decks can respond to it if it comes down on turn 3. aka the worst case scenario.
Devil's Play looks so simple but it fits so well. Starstorm usually occupies the slot of big red x spell in the stuff I've been working on.

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More Splendid Reclamation Love: Build Your Own Armageddon


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Feeling cute, might delete later idk









 
inscho

inscho

Don't delete. I'm a fan of TOL matters spell decks and Mizzix's Mastery in general. :cool:

Could be some crossover with Miracles. I've been happy with:


Other misc support:


EDIT: Just realized JVP isn't friendly with the suspend cards.
 
inscho

inscho

Oh food chain is an interesting card with scourge and griffin. I have an irrational appreciation for eternal scourge and I'm always looking for more ways to take advantage of it in my cube.
 
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Rasmus Källqvist said:
There seems to be a lot of three colored sample decks here. What would some (strictly) two color lists look, in the theme of the cube?
Click to expand...
Most of the decks that I've posted are just random ideas or brews that have come to mind and not necessarily for or from a specific cube. I think that my ideal "regular/main" cube would take my favorite aspects from Sigh's Cube and PennyPincher's 1 and 2 as well as other stuff that I like and see around here. So I guess it would be best to imagine these decklists as existing in a hypothetical cube that's an amalgam of those cubes in terms of power level/ environment. Maybe they fit or maybe they don't. If I ever settle on cube design like that that I like I'll definitely post a link here.

I haven't started work on the Borderpost Cube or Vintage cube since I'm still brainstorming those projects but I'll definitely post some stuff about that once I get some concrete ideas on paper. Currently trying to brew up some lists that show an aggressive deck that utilizes the borderposts for multicolor stuff and an aggressive deck that utilizes them for artifact stuff. Once I get started on that I can hopefully begin to flesh out that format a little more.

One interesting thing to me about the borderposts is that they can occupy a different spot of the curve for different decks. A deck that wants to play a Jund Hackblade on turn 2 would be fine with playing a borderpost on turn 1. Contrast this with a control deck that would probably never want to play their borderpost on turn 1 and instead want to play it on turn 3 so their Hallowed Burial or whatever could come down a turn earlier. This kind of makes it seem tricky to balance artifact removal in that format, at least in theory. Does an aggressive deck care if it gets stone rained early? Will a slower deck want to stone rain an aggressive deck or would it rather remove their creatures? Is allowing an aggressive deck to remove a slower deck's mana rock necessarily a problem? Could there exist an aggro-control deck that's based on cheap threats and cheap protection that attacks the mana bases of both aggressive and slow decks via borderpost abuse? Who knows.




inscho said:
Oh food chain is an interesting card with scourge and griffin. I have an irrational appreciation for eternal scourge and I'm always looking for more ways to take advantage of it in my cube.
Click to expand...

This is what the "real" deck looks like.

Some Goblin Food Chain Love
 
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I dove deep into the archives last night and I thought the level up cards seemed kind of interesting as an Azorius cares about counters thing. Protection spells and creatures would probably be big for this. Parallax Tide and Parallax Wave offer super interesting support in conjunction with Skyship Plunderer and Thrummingbird.

Since most of these guys are evasive you've got a kind of weird UW Fliers vibe going on where the threats get bigger over time.

I wonder if Caravan Escort is as bad as it seems.

Lord of Shatterskull Pass seems fun with Wildfire.












I wish there were enough cubeable pirates to make Siren's Ruse playable.
 
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