Retro Combo Cube

Grillo_Parlante

Grillo_Parlante

Contributor
ahadabans said:
You gotta love the consistency of a constructed deck. 4 copies of everything makes a world of difference.

While a fast win like that is possible in cube with a god draw, it's just a lot harder to orchestrate with the singleton nature even at 40 card decks. Stating the obvious of course, but I call it out because I think it's one of the best parts about limited in general. And cube in particular, you can customize this with redundancy and how many slots you dedicate for archetypes, etc. I really love that part of cube.
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The sligh vid? Yeah, I wasn't suggesting consistent turn 4 kills, but rather that poor stat creatures are going to be much better in these sort of pressure light formats than they normally are. They just naturally have more time to go to work in a lot of matchups.

The sligh deck is running extremely bad creatures, and was entirely dependent on opposing decks being clunky, tempo-inefficient monstrosities--which they were at the time. Sligh was really the first deck to win purely off of tempo advantage, and was just as revolutionary to the development of magic theory as Weissman's "The Deck".

Its an interesting development point for the game's history, where the old spell-centric card advantage dominated magic is starting to interact with a new school of thought, where creature cheapness and early board presence is somehow able to win games on its own.

Than cards like man-o'-war/Nekrataal/flametongue kavu gets printed (decent bounce/187 ETBs) and the reign of erhnam djinn finally comes to an end, as punishing do-nothing creature investments, from a position of board superiority, becomes a way to build your own time walks.

That might be an interesting format metric too btw: would time walk be used more to push spell based threats, or creature based threats?

I would run them as is, and see how they do. I expect those creatures to perform fine, with the major issue being that they will just be less fun on average than other things you could be doing in the format.
 
ahadabans

ahadabans

Yes, the sligh deck. Fun match to watch. Thanks for posting.

The creatures really aren't all that awful. Pup is a 2 power 1 drop, which is par for the course even today. The "drawback" of dealing damage to you is simply not relevant in a deck like this. Mogg Fanatic maybe a little weak, but it plays a vital role and is still in many cube lists. OK, Ironclaw Orc is super bad. But Mogg Flunkies is 3 power for 2 mana. Again, can't ask for more than that even today. The drawback is real of course, but in a goblin deck (or any aggro deck for that matter) it won't be crippling unless your opponent has a lot of cheap spot removal. Ball Lighting is 6 damage for 3 mana and would be cubeable if not for the RRR cost. Blistering Firecat is still run in a few lists and was defended heavily until pretty recently (speaking of which, that probably needs to be in this list but not sure I can find room).

So the deck wasn't really underpowered at all. As the other guy in the video said at the end, how did that deck lose? LOL. It's a classic example of how matches can boil down to sideboarding though. Do you have answers? No? Then you lose to anything resembling a good draw. It's that simple. Any amount of cheap spot removal though hurts that deck substantially. Imagine a set of darkblasts against it. Sligh deck loses every game if the Jund player has it in his hand.

I think this has always been my objection to the all-in strategies. Where one card just totally and utterly beats you. It makes me feel like I'm just playing war and let's turn over the top card of our decks and see whose is better. I know that's simplifying things a bit too much, but there's a fine line with constructed Magic where it starts to boil down to what the top 10 cards of your shuffled pile are versus any sort of decision making during the game itself. 95% of the work was in building the deck essentially.

That may also be something fundamentally interesting to me about storm decks. Because while it's a gold fishing experiment and can be largely uninteractive, the in-game decision making requirements are absurdly complex. It is the farthest thing from playing a game of War as you can get. And while a lot less of that translates to the other side of the table with your opponent, there is still the sense of urgency and needing to disrupt or kill them before turn X happens and you die instantly.

#ILikeToRant
 
Grillo_Parlante

Grillo_Parlante

Contributor
Here is the very first sligh deck.

2 Dragon Whelp
2 Brothers of Fire
2 Orcish Artillery
2 Orcish Cannoneers
4 Ironclaw Orcs
3 Dwarven Lieutenant
2 Orcish Librarian
4 Brass Man
2 Dwarven Trader
2 Goblins of the Flarg

1 Black Vise
1 Shatter
1 Detonate
4 Lightning Bolt
4 Incinerate
1 Fireball
1 Immolation

4 Strip Mine
4 Mishra's Factory
2 Dwarven Ruins
13 Mountain

These are probably my favorite deck type to play, and the one in the video was more aggro than I like.

The deck obviously functioned quite well, though, given the success it had. Not a typical red burn deck, it was more of an aggressive control deck. At the time, when you talked about a control deck, you were most likely talking about blue or white deck. Not Sligh. Most of the direct damage was aimed at clearing the path for a small but aggressive creature base.
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The variant in the video is the (I think actual?) deadguy red version of the deck.

With the release of Mirage and Tempest blocks, the Standard environment sped up considerably Sligh changed from a red control deck to a pure beatdown deck. David Price, the "King of Beatdown," is credited with the "Deadguy Red" variant of Sligh that was easily capable of turn four kills, evolving from his Tempest-block deck that won PT-Los Angeles '98. During the time Tempest and Mirage blocks were Standard-legal, this beatdown variant of Sligh was among the most consistent decks in the Type II environment.
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So again, this is going to be a function of format speed, and you should be waaaay on the slower end of the speed spectrum. That means that much worst looking cards will perform better, and you may not have a problem at all.

Where cube aggro runs into problems is where the format is so fast that you have to basically be a burn deck that runs creatures (not fun), or facilitate perfect curve outs (not space efficient).

Edit: he's being funny at the end of the video. Sligh was a pretty massive underdog on paper, and won that mostly off of the back of the jund deck's mana base being CIPT, slowing it down just enough for the red deck to win.
 
ahadabans

ahadabans

So my resolve is weakening a bit on one specific area: equipment. Let me try and explain.

I'm attracted to the goblin deck because of everything you can do with it. The potential of the deck is very enticing. Lackey early gets you stupid board presence faster than any deck is capable of doing (outside powered cube). Recruiter + Ringleader potentially refuels your hand (though whether you can get the goblin density or not for this is questionable). Matron tutors whatever piece you are missing, so it's a second copy of every goblin in your deck. Long story short, I think goblins is fine without equipment (though they can obviously use it).

Even generic red aggro or boros has reach with burn, so probably doesn't need it (though again can use it).

Elves are not an aggro deck. They are midrange and generate tons of mana to play massive game ending threats (or an overrun). They also don't need equipment (though an elf is happy to pick one up and swing).

Black aggro? Probably could benefit, but with recursion and silly things like Hatred. This deck is probably also fine without equipment, but could certainly benefit from [cSword of Light and Shadow]Light and Shadow[/c] for the lifegain.

White Weenie though? #NoReach. They have a handful of protection/shadow dudes that can just swing until they die. But if those guys aren't drawn or die, then what? Oblivion Ring you to death? There's no real card advantage in white outside Tithe either. Armageddon is great if you can get board position but it's splashable and every other aggro deck will take it from the WW player. Removal is great in white but everybody wants that too. Are we hanging all our hopes for WW on Griffin Guide or Glorious Anthem? Saying it isn't so.

Again, I have a particular dislike for White Weenie. This makes being objective about the state of white aggro difficult. I feel confused like the dinosaurs on Fog Bank. That said, with my original cube nothing pushed me into an aggressive style deck faster than a great piece of equipment (except maybe Armageddon). Equipment became a problem but I think it was more quantity versus the card type. There's a very real tempo cost involved with equipment, even really good equipment.

Back when I first had my original cube, I was working on pimping it. And so I had a foil Sword of Light and Shadow. Which happens to be the judge foil with the brown artifact card frame. Turns out Wizard's did that with Fire and Ice and Feast and Famine both. I don't have either, but I can trade for Feast and Famine. I wouldn't want to run Fire and Ice anyway as it's the most powerful of the 5 swords by a pretty large margin (and I have to draw the line on cost here - Feast and Famine is $50 and Fire and Ice is twice that).

OK. So some changes to account for this. It includes some cleanup and a few other adjustments. This is probably the last major change for awhile.

IN << OUT

Sword of Light and Shadow << Black Vise - vise is clearly powerful but also extremely swingy. Both support aggro but the sword clearly goes in more decks.
Sword of Feast and Famine << Cruel Ultimatum - I think storm has enough play things. This is just really hard to cast.

Land updates (removing all guild lands)
Ghitu Encampment << Desolate Lighthouse
Kjeldoran Outpost << Slayers' Stronghold
Reflecting Pool << Nephalia Drownyard
Kessig Wolf Run << Blistering Firecat - Squee is moving to colorless for classification purposes which opens up a red slot.

Additional Tweaks
Skirk Prospector << Crater Hellion - more goblin support and I have enough fat things and sweepers (I think).
Uktabi Orangutan << Penumbra Wurm - I think two great Natural Order targets is enough. Deranged Hermit is also legit against some decks, especially with wirewood symbiote. Wurm is fine but one more artifact hate card feels like a good idea to me.

EDIT:

Nope. Not a fan. One sword only.

IN << OUT

Sword of Feast and Famine << Black Vise
 
Grillo_Parlante

Grillo_Parlante

Contributor
I kind of expect people to go into a sort of G/W utility deck more than straight mono w? The only real reason is crusade and more consistent mana (of course).

Exile seems like a control card.

Here is a UG tempo deck

U/G tempo from CubeTutor.com











This looks like a lot of fun to play, eternal witness ->time warp/plow under is a beating. I also like the minor elf synergy, as this is a deck that loves mana elves to keep counter mana open, and priest just happens to work with that.

Of course, most if its power comes from meloku and the two control magic effects.

Kind of hate kira, she just seemed like a boring pick and include.

There was a really strange moment where it was looking at hunting pack, and debating running it in a sort of storm shell.

U/G is really good at ramping mana with utopia sprawl effects and urza's bock spell untaps. Frantic search, turnabout, peregrine drake, and cloud of faeries might be able to power a sort of gushing UG ramp deck, that just happens to generate lots of spell copies in a turn, which a player might feel inclined to take advantage of with the storm mechanic.

You already have those medallions: not that far off from a high powered incarnation of a familiar combo deck.
 
ahadabans

ahadabans

So I've mentioned this a couple times in various cube talk threads, but it bears repeating. The cube forum on MTGS gets a lot of flack from the other cube communities, and I would argue some of that is certainly justified. That said, you can find a wealth of information if you wade past the nonsense.

This is particularly true for a project like this retro list I'm building. Back in 2008/2009, cube design philosophy was almost singular in nature and so you had a great deal of collaborative and useful discourse on card choices - what worked and what didn't, etc. Especially on MTGS. There are probably thousands of relevant thread pages. You can find just a wealth of information about older cards in particular and you can see when some of them fell out of favor and which cards or sets caused that to happen. I made liberal use of the search feature on MTGS while I was building this list. And it makes me confident about a lot of choices which are total misses in a modern list but were clearly very strong cards in 2008.

Today, I stumbled on a dark horse thread. It quickly derails in 2010, which is about the time cube philosophy starts to diverge a bit and the power max crowd seize control of the cube forum on MTGS. But one poster made a lot of interesting arguments for narrow card inclusion (things like goblins over generic red beaters - I love this idea so much). I found the list he posted (which does not appear to have changed from 2010), and it surprisingly has a lot of parallels to where this list I'm building ended up. He/she is running power finishers (Titan's, et. all), so it's not going to play the same as what I built. But for anyone interested in making a cube like this that is based on older sets but goes farther than mine with newer cards, I would probably start with that list. I imagine it's a blast to draft.

http://www.mtgsalvation.com/forums/the-game/the-cube-forum/cube-lists/191955-j-maxs-450-cube

This poster "J-max" has 56 total posts on MTGS, so I suspect he/she quickly got discouraged (or felt their time was wasted) by the environment on MTGS. Which is unfortunate, because I would have loved to have picked his/her brain.

On a related note, there have been a number of posters like this with outside-the-box cube design philosophy that have simply disappeared from the forums. And IMO, that is to the detriment of this format (cube).
 
ahadabans

ahadabans

Tried forcing a zombie deck and an elf deck. Both were bad. The zombie deck gold fished poorly and must have dealt 10+ damage to itself. And that brought me back to several articles and discussions on the forums about black aggro and how its life payment essentially made it worse than all other aggro decks. The context of those articles and discussions though has to be viewed with respect to the state of mainstream cubing of the time. And while my memory is not what it used to be, I'm fairly certain this was after the creature power creep explosion and the rise of autodraftmidrangevalue.dec.

Regardless, I think black needs more life gain elements and options are extremely lackluster given the confines of this list. On a somewhat related note, I was going over cards and re-reviewing them for inclusion to see what other swaps I wanted to make and I noticed that the Alpha wording for Disintegrate uses the word "dies". That makes me extremely happy since it removes my only reservation with Blood Artist and opens the door for me adding Falkenrath Noble. The noble is very highly rated in peasant lists and the relative creature power to mana ratio of this list is much closer to modern peasant that it is to modern rare lists. Long story short, I think it's a very solid add and it backs up the sacrifice theme which is really missing pieces. Fallen Angel is coming in too.

Totally shifting gears, I thought it was interesting a comment made in Meltyman's blog about the shadow guys. Specifically that shadow is a bad mechanic. And I've uttered these same sentiments before and seen them uttered by many posters and writers. And it occurred to me that shadow is really just "unblockable and cannot block". Why is this viewed negatively? It's much worse on defense and while very good on offense, it often is no better than flying. Then it dawned on me that the most famous shadow cards are the soltari brothers who both have protection. And protection is definitely an annoying key word. It's sort of like a sledgehammer when what you really wanted was just a framing hammer.

But I think there is more context we can put on the shadow creature discussion. It clearly has warped cube over the years to the point where the vast majority of people have removed them from lists. But in the context of an old list, I feel like the criticism might be overly harsh. And the reason for that boils down to equipment. Without some way to buff a soltari brother, they are a 10 turn clock that can't block in a pinch. That's... a long fucking time. Anthems speed the clock up, sure. But without a sword or a jitte or something that makes the creature immediately answerable, are they really warping the meta to the point where their removal is a necessity?

I'm simply not convinced.

This is compounded for me because white lacks something that the other colors generally have better options for - reach. Red has burn. Green has overrun effects, things like rancor, and ramp to make bigger things faster. Black has disruption and a lot of life drain stuff now (back in the day it had less I think). I'm repeating myself from an earlier post, but I really can't help but think the shadow dudes (protection and all) are sort of needed in a list like this. And this isn't just me trying to justify their inclusion either.

Take this article written just yesterday. Talking about a decline in white weenie due to creature power creep (2/3 dudes for 2 specifically). And this is in a modern list running all sorts of busted equipment.

http://mtgcube.blogspot.com/2016/08/23s-and-decline-of-white-weenie.html

What's really interesting is that the soltari brothers completely fix this problem by avoiding those 2/3's from mattering. So while I think there may have been a good 4-5 years where cubes were better without the protection shadow twins, early cubes I don't think were and we might be reaching a point in modern cube design where reintroducing them (along with white anthems) could be the way to go.
 
Grillo_Parlante

Grillo_Parlante

Contributor
What you should do is look at white based aggro from the original vintage masters: it was one of the best decks in the format. The white token decks in pauper are also a good guide.

White reach comes from jamming evasive token makers, and than slamming an anthem.




Black aggro pre gravecrawler was generally pretty terrible, as all of the creatures kill you, meaning you can never actually beat any of the other aggro decks. Thats why its a non-archetype in pauper.

The aggressive black decks that did well back in the day always were built on a platform of curving disruption into threats, rather than curving out with creatures. The old necro decks from the black summer ran x4 strip mine, x4 hymn, and during the phyrexian negator era of suicide black aggro, you had duress, or t1 dark ritual into phyrexian negator, first protected by unmask. Dark ritual fueled Hatred was the zerk of the era.

Even really old school black aggro would be stuff like x4 strip mine, sinkhole (+later hymn!), and mind twist. Dark rites, moxes, and lotus would power out stuff like bad moon, erg raiders (+ unholy strength :cool:), juzum djinn, and sengir vampire. Fast mana, I think, was part of why you could get away with having such terrible creatures and not feel horrible: everything was really 2-3cc at some point in the game.

The closed example I can think of from modern magic (still? haven't followed the format in months) would be aggro stax in vintage, where you are often times trying to curve t1-t2 sphere disruption into an aggressive threat.
 
ahadabans

ahadabans

Thanks for the link.

Recursive threats in black is how my modern list tends to function (that with a lot of Stax support). Either goes heavy black for Gary and Messenger (very nasty) or red for sacrifice (maybe one of the best decks in the list). Works very well and I'm happy with it. Not really portable to this list though (sacrifice maybe). Mind Twist is such an unfun card, I just don't think I could bring myself to run it. Zombies I think will work with noxious ghoul offering repeatable one-sided board wipes, but that is clearly midrange (and without life gain, it just kills you). Really think introducing the life drain twins opens up a lot of design space in integration into these archetypes.

White has Battle Screech already and anthems and soltari bros. Feels like a good place. Overlap with green is solid. Probably less overlap with red than my modern list, but that's fine. Red has the goblins and they want you to be mono red or very light splash for removal and/or bombs. WB is probably control only. No lingering souls here and a lot of double CC cards, so it's not an aggro friendly pairing. Maybe a token thing but feels splash only.

Blue having so few creatures is really a heavy support color. You made a great UG tempo list and I did something similar, so very happy that deck exists. Peregrine Drake may come in after I get a copy.
 
ahadabans

ahadabans

Hunting Pack seems surprisingly good in this cube. Being an instant means it can be this EOT potentially game ending play with a number of UGx decks, even ones that aren't really trying to be storm per se. If your opponent plays two spells let's say, you get 12 power instant speed for 7 mana. I mean, that's pretty crazy. And god forbid that happen BEFORE combat or you toss a Frantic Search in there or whatever.
 
ahadabans

ahadabans

Top end options for green are super limited with the design constraints. Elf deck in particular feels like it's ramping into nothing. I added Silvos and I'm adding Regal Force. That's a cheeky add, but it's especially potent in Elf decks since you generally have several dudes when that comes down and this is a combo oriented list after all.

Built a Rock style deck and it gold fished well in deckstats. Always hard to tell how these sorts of decks will play out, but it has a lot of CA going on with things like Genesis, Eternal Witness and Gravedigger. Plus removal bombs Vindicate and Shriekmaw. This list can handle a lot of different decks. Monger and Silvos are top end finishers here with Regal Force drawing a grip of cards anytime it resolves. Couple of subpar choices in this deck for sure (not enough shuffle effects to make library all that great), but not half bad in the end.

Abzan Rock from CubeTutor.com










 
ahadabans

ahadabans

Threw in Astral Slide package which amounted to 5 cards swaps (I'm already running almost every playable cycling card because I love the mechanic). Drafted this questionable piece. Mana is loose (not enough fixing and I probably should have gone 17 lands not 16). I was forcing the deck and hyper focused on grabbing the key cards to my detriment, so didn't really end up with enough solid playables. This is one of those piles of cards that will likely be super draw/matchup dependent. A deck that I can see being randomly great or just a total mess.

WRG Astal Slide from CubeTutor.com










 
ahadabans

ahadabans

So the next evolution of this experiment is likely something less restrictive that still keeps the heart of the list. I'm thinking a way to do it might be how I've done iterative testing with my modern list. For that list, I'm putting all the cards into deck lists basically and balancing by playing one archetype against another. Pretty easy to do with modules because they are focused and have specific themes you can design around. This feels super daunting with a full 360 list though.

The fundamental problem I find is with figuring out what parameters to place on the cube. Too many and you are just limiting the playabilty for no real purpose. Too few, and it drifts too far into value overload with no real reason to stretch decks you build. I've beat to death the creature power creep thing. But what I rarely say is that there is a great deal of good that has come out of modern creature design. It's pushed the envelop on synergy in a really interesting way. Something I feel old Magic is lacking a bit.

So how to find a place in the middle where we keep the feel of old Magic, bring in some of this cool new synergy but keep out the power creep that has warped the game? This is where taking the retro list as a base and infusing it was a smattering of modern cards might work. Basically a step further. But how not to go too far?

Back to the original idea of iterative testing through putting every card in the cube into a deck. Again, works really well for small sets of cards. Might be absurd to even attempt in a 360 list, but I'm going to noodle on how I'd do it. First task would be to determine what the 12 or so decks would focus on. And they'd have to be roughly split in color allotments (having an even color distribution - I simply can't get away from it and sleep at night).

Here's what I have so far. Ideally there is a decent amount of overlap, but since this is still combo in design I'm not overly concerned about having a few dozen narrow cards that really power these archetypes and single what is open.

{W}{W} - white weenie. I hate this deck passionately, but it's iconic I feel and I can't bring myself to cut it.
{R}{R} - mono red goblins. Testing reveals this is draftable, and you can salvage an Rx aggro deck if you get cut out of the core goblins.
{B}{B} - stax. Here is a deck that almost requires modern cards. Thinking bloodghast/messsenger. Maybe even Gary. Old school black aggro is so damn janky. I have a hard time justifying it. Drafting it in the retro list reminded me of why people went into crisis mode over WTF their black sections were doing a several years back.
{B}{U}{R} - storm. Storm can go green too, but I just like that red has some cool support and this isn't the same old tired RDW shtick. I have yet to draft a good version of this though.
{U}{G} - tempo. Focus on the untap dudes to ramp out a bunch of stuff quickly. I like some of the modern play things with this though, so I feel like it only got more interesting with modern Magic.
{U}{W}{R} - enchantments. Not enchantress. But rector into astral slide/lighting rift. Or sneak attack. Or form of the dragon, etc. Control deck with enchantment win conditions. What is neat about this is the work you have to put into getting the pieces online, but with minimal removal options you are not very disreputable once there. Every cycle card in existence goes in this deck, along with some of the delve cards I had to cut for wording.
{B}{U}{G} - reanimator. nightmare/survival with blue support. Classic deck I loved to draft back in the days of my broken cube.
{B}{G}{W} - rock. AKA, the value reanimator deck. Genesis. deed and what not, with some white support stuff (thinking karmic guide/eternal dragon). Maybe with some dredge (which didn't make the original retro list).
{U}{R} - spells matter. Another list which probably doesn't work without modern cards. I like the faster versions of this over the more controlling flavors. Prowess probably needs to return.
{R}{B}{W} - sacrifice. Also requires modern pieces to be good. Is presently one of the best (if not THE best) deck in my modern cube. I want to make this a bit more control oriented. Firemane Angel? Really want to find a home for that card. life gain/life spend as a theme could really add another dimension to this too and it fits with what the deck is already doing.
{R}{G}{W} - zoo. Classic efficient creature deck. I have a soft spot for this deck even though I was routinely destroyed by it back in the day.
{G}{G} - elves. ramp into horrible stuff. Craterhoof is sorely missed in this deck. I also really like how weak that particular card is outside this specific archetype, so it's sort of an awesome signal for the dudes-ramp-into-badass-thing plan. And without OG Garruk, a second overrun effect is desperately needed too.
{W}{U}{B} - tinker/control. start off with some high powered by narrow targets and see how broken this deck is. I drafted this with triskelion as the best target and I'm just not convinced this is worth the effort. But maybe I'm wrong. Deck really needs one crazy bomb that ideally can't be played in other decks (no such card exists I don't think).

Idea would be to build the nut version of each of these decks. Then play them against one another. Invariably, some will be (much?) better than others. Then we either remove power from the good ones or add power to the weak ones. The intent being to do this by using as many older cards as possible and/or cards which play well in more than one of these decks. Also looking to avoid the unwinnable matchup problem of really well tuned and/or high powered decks. Which is going to be really really tricky (if not impossible). Some leeway has to be given since the nut deck in many cases will be next to impossible to assemble in a real draft scenario.

I want to stick with the concept of minimizing key words. And where I can cull a key word entirely by cutting a single card (even something awesome like bloodbraid), I have to at least consider this during testing unless the card is irreplaceable or a crowd favorite. Less is definitely more when it comes to mechanics. There's enough going on in cube and I have too much advantage having sunk so many hours into design exercises like this.
 
Rasmus Källqvist

Rasmus Källqvist

I must say, the idea of running low power creatures but pretty high power spells sounds great. I've been pretty intrigued by lower power (courtesy of Grillo) lately, but it does give up some of the flare that full power or the riptide 75% power has. It would seem as it really is the value crammed creatures that make the powerful spells unbearable, reanimating or natural ordering into something that is mostly just a big dude sounds fucking great when it isn't grave titan.
 
ahadabans

ahadabans

Rasmus Källqvist said:
I must say, the idea of running low power creatures but pretty high power spells sounds great. I've been pretty intrigued by lower power (courtesy of Grillo) lately, but it does give up some of the flare that full power or the riptide 75% power has. It would seem as it really is the value crammed creatures that make the powerful spells unbearable, reanimating or natural ordering into something that is mostly just a big dude sounds fucking great when it isn't grave titan.
Click to expand...


That is essentially where I'm at right now.

Since Grillo turned me on to LSV, I've been watching his videos excessively. His Vintage cube drafts got a little stale for me as he almost always goes for the same basic deck (big mana featuring some broken blue cards). But it was sort of fun watching the games (partly because he's a great player, but also to see what other people are doing). Can't remember which of the drafts it was, but he made the finals and just got crushed by this silly 5 color value deck running every ETB creature in existence. It was just the poster child deck for what cube has turned into and I'm not a fan. LSV had this really cool deck trying to do something thematic, and his opponent just running a value machine. No real strategy other than dropping a 2 for 1 card every turn (being harsh here, player was obviously good and his deck was well constructed - just felt like a pile of good stuff).

I put a lot of that on just the power of creatures in general. So a cube with a really gutted value midrange section but leaving in some of the high and low end stuff. I don't know. Just feels like it will produce interesting decks that aren't obsoleted by generic value drafting. It's essentially what my goal with my midrange cube was, but it just isn't anything close to what I was trying to accomplish.

This retro list in particular, I've drafted quite a few times now. And I can't tell you how many drafts I snapped up Recurring Nightmare (or thought about it), looked at my creatures and just didn't see a ton of value. Without an endless stream of value ETB dudes, it's not all that amazing. But in my midrange cube, it's completely broken to pieces.

That said, I'm not sure I can run Wurmcoil Engine and not have it ruin even a combo cube, so some of the top end has to stay out I think. But I'm seriously contemplating running something like Inkwell Leviathan just because tinker is downright anemic in this list and that thing costs a billion so you have to work to get it into play. I wish there was a better option for tinker though. I'm just not seeing one.
 
Grillo_Parlante

Grillo_Parlante

Contributor
Lets us not forget that the original tinker lists were going for these targets:



Fair tinker was essentially a mud ramp card, rather than a combo cheat card.
 
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