Rob Dennis
Developer
http://www.cubetutor.com/cubeblog/161
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Everything is now moved to cubetutor and I do owe a new primer. Huge, from-scratch rewrite of the cube, and of note, no longer respecting singleton. I have high hopes for it.
-----
Here's the tappedout description of this cube, based on a cube primer I wrote up for some new folks who were going to draft with us. I talks about cube "in general" but it's really through the lens of this specific list. I didn't want have it be so broad that it's rough for newcomers. This list has been mostly inspired by Andy Cooperfauss's CFB articles and Matt Kranstuber's Joy of Cubing podcast.
the philosophy to follow with some notes since you folks are a bit more knowledgable and I can provide context
Themes that I'm explicitly supporting:
- Support variety in draft by:
-- working to remove uninteresting picks (a card so good that you'll always take and play it, no matter the deck; OR a card that's so cheap and useful it goes in any deck)
--- Rob-note: Jace the Mindsculptor; Elspeth, Knight-Errant; Ponder/Preordain; Demonic/Vampiric Tutor, Jitte were victims
-- cards fluctuate in value based on what you have, and what you think is likely to come
-- having enough synergies in place so an on-theme deck with good cards is favored against a pile of random "good stuff"
-- build-around cards at a rate that allows a different take on strategy, but not always guaranteed to come together
--- Rob-note: Birthing Pod has come together 1 out of 4 drafts, and that's a fine rate in my mind
- Support variety in games:
-- linear/all-in strategies should be rewarded, but still have a counter
-- proactive control (time your removal) is supported, but not reactive control (sit back with ALL MY COUNTERSPELLS)
--- Rob-note: in general this has made this a very combat-oriented cube and I've tried to keep sweepers to a reasonable level (e.g. there's ~two control decks and they have ~2 sweepers)
- Be a Living History:
-- The hope is that someone who last played 15 years ago, and someone who started this year get to both have that "oh man, I love this card" moment
-- strategies and archetypes that have historically been good should have a cube equivalent (there's ALWAYS been a white weenie deck in every era of magic)
For those of you who are a little more familiar with cubes, here are some stats:
- ~440 cards (this is relatively small, with an 8-person draft, there's about an 80% chance a given card will be in the card pool)
-- Rob-note: this would go up if we played weekly
- "unpowered" (no restrictions on rarity, but the Power Nine and other cards in that league are kept out)
- no custom erratas, all cards do what their oracle text says (http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Default.aspx)
-- Rob-note: I originally ran the rebel errata and it was too much to explain/justify each draft; some errata could come back if I had a consistent/frequent group
Strategies supported by this cube's color pairings and build-arounds:
White:
- Weenies: This deck is all about getting a critical mass of cheap creatures to maximize the chance of a creature on turns 1, 2, and 3. Hopefully clearing out blockers, and hopefully slowing down the game with some resource denial. Equipment helps make every creature a threat.
-- Keys: 4-5 1 drops (e.g. Savannah Lions), 6-8 2 drops (e.g. Accorder Paladin), Armageddon, Glorious Anthem to boost all creatures.
-- Pairs well with:
--- Blue: bounce/counter to slow down the pace, card draw to recover from your dudes dying
--- Black: use removal to get blockers out of the way, use targeted discard to prevent your dudes from getting killed
--- Red: to help close out games with burn spells and aggressive haste creatures, slow down the game with land destruction
--- Green: play 4-5 mana big guys on turn 3 to out-big your opponent too quickly
- Control: White has excellent removal (both targeted and sweepers) and good defensive/stabilization options to drag the game out and close out the game with any random finisher
-- Keys: Wrath of God, Swords to Plowshares, Baneslayer Angel, Gideon Jura
-- Pairs well with:
--- Blue: counter things you can't clear away, use blue's hard-to-kill creatures as finishers
--- Black: even MORE removal
Blue:
- Tempo: a little bounce, a little card draw, and couple of evasive creatures (or clones) and somewhere around turn 8, you're opponents 2 turns behind you in a race, and although they have a bunch of cards in hard, the game will end before that's relevant.
-- Keys: Riftwing Cloudskate, Phantasmal Image, Mana Leak, Fettergeist, Repeal, Remand
-- Pairs well with:
--- White: same gameplan with better cheap creatures and some permanent removal
--- Black: use removal to get blockers out of the way, use targeted discard to prevent your dudes from getting killed.
- Control: keep things from hitting the table, block, trade with, steal, or clone it if it does, draw cards to have more resources than your opponents, and hopefully stabilize at like 6 before finishing it off with a single big guy
-- Keys: Cryptic Command, Control Magic, Body Double, Frost Titan, Sea Gate Oracle, Compulsive Research
-- Pairs well with:
--- White: If something hits the table, you can permanently remove it, and more defensive creature options
--- Black: If something hits the table, you can permanently remove it, and make them discard it proactively
--- Green: ramp up to the mana to cast finishers sooner
Black:
historically can do "anything" but with drawbacks (often, pay life, or have very restrictive mana costs), so there's a lot of sub-themes that you can mix and match that care about very specific cards or combinations of cards. IT'S FOR THIS REASON THAT BLACK IS HARD TO DRAFT:
- Disruptive Aggro: deploy a lot of threats, clear out blockers with removal, make them discard their stuff, replenish your resources by using your life total as a resource, stuff with drawbacks that you can work around or can turn into a benefit
-- Keys: Carnophage, Phyrexian Rager, Gatekeeper of Malakir, Fleshbag Marauder, Desecration Demon, Hymn to Tourach
-- Pairs well with:
--- White: cheap creatures without drawbacks, artifact/enchantment removal
--- Red: burn and haste creatures to end the game before your drawbacks catch up with you
- Reanimator: Discard (or let die) something huge and then get it of the graveyard for cheaper than paying the normal costs. Also, you reanimate your opponent's dudes
-- Keys: Pack Rat (discard outlets), Animate Dead (get it back for cheap), Griselbrand (fatty)
-- Pairs well with:
--- White: fatties to reanimate
--- Blue: discard outlets and protect your fatty, fatties to reanimate
--- Red: discard outlets, fatties to reanimate
--- Green: fatties to reanimate, ramp to play them naturally if the game goes long
- Pox/Resource Denial: everyone sacrifice your stuff, although mine comes back or I got my use out of it already so I don't mind
-- Keys: bloodghast, pox, contamination, ravenous rats, Braids, Liliana of the Veil
-- Pairs well with:
--- Green: lot of ramp creatures that outlived their use and can be sacrificed, Survival of the Fittest/Genesis to help with the graveyard
--- White: a lot of creature token generators for more things to sacrifice
--- Red: maybe I already destroyed some lands, so sacrifices are worse for you
- Control: kill creatures or make them discard the non creature stuff you can't kill before you even get to play them. Close it out with some big finisher
-- Keys: Damnation, Grave Titan, Doom Blade, Duress
-- Pairs well with:
--- White: More removal, some different finishers, some life gain in the event I used life as a resource earlier
--- Blue: Counterspells in the event I can't make you discard stuff, and some card draw to make sure I don't run out of stuff
--- Red: burn spells are often more removal
Red:
- Aggro: all-in red aggro is probably the strongest deck in any given cube thanks to the focus and the redundancy of the cards. Get a lot of cheap creatures, kill blockers, drop some haste guys, get the opponent to around 7-9 and ask "what are you at?" And then go "Firebolt, Chain Lightning, Fireblast, kill you?"
- Keys: Lightning Bolt, Jackal Pup, Sulfuric Vortex, Hellrider
-- Pairs well with:
--- White: even MORE cheap creatures, and they're stronger than red ones usually
--- Black: some decent cheap drops and extra removal for killing blockers
--- Green: some of the more expensive green creatures are a fine curve toppers, and maybe you need some way to kill enchantments
- Resource Denial: there's a fair number of land destruction cards that can help keep the game from progressing past the point where your cheap stuff is relevant
- Keys: Avalanche Riders, Pillage, Molten Rain
-- Pairs well with:
--- Black: play even MORE resource denial cards, and some removal in case any creature was played before the lands were killed
--- Green: play the resource denial cards even earlier thanks to ramp, get some of the relevant Green resource denial in Plow Under or Stunted Growth
Green:
- Ramp: Instead of playing something that costs 4 on turn 4 (best case), wouldn't you like to play it on turn 3? What about 8 drops on turn 5? Course you would. This deck needs a mix of things to ramp with, and a list of things to ramp to. Also, you need some luck to draw them in the correct order. If you're ramping to 4 versus 8, there's different things you want to ramp with and ramp to, so there's a lot of variation.
- Keys: Rampant Growth, Birds of Paradise, Green Sun's Zenith, Primeval Titan, Avenger of Zendikar
-- Pairs well with:
--- White: Things to ramp to and defensive things to stay alive
--- Black: Things to ramp to and removal to keep pressure off
--- Blue: Things to ramp to, protection for the thing you ramped to and cad draw to find more things to do with all your mana
--- Red: use all that mana to pump up spells that damage based on the mana you put into it (X-spells).
-- Resource Denial Sub-Theme: Keep them off lands or slow them down with Plow Under/Stunted Growth, blow up stuff with Acidic Slime/Woodfall Primus
BUILD AROUNDS
These are cards that spawn their own types of decks, and don't always come together, but add some extra depth beyond color combo
- Opposition - combine with white tokens or green ramp creatures to lock your opponent's lands/creatures out of the game
- Wildfire (also reprinted as Burning of Xinye) - combine big or red colorless creatures that can survive, and artifact mana to ensure that you don't mind sacrificing your lands as much as they do
- Recurring Nightmare and Survival of the Fitness - get creatures to the graveyard to search up more creatures, and bring them back for value
- Venser, the Sojourner - keep blinking your permanents to re-trigger enters/leaves the battlefield abilities
- Tinker - combine some cheap artifacts that you can sacrifice, and a couple of big artifact creatures to get out cheaply
THE GLUE
Most of those archetypes mentioned above could be done with cards from the five colors, but colorless, multi-colored, and land cards can really help solidify a strategy.
Colorless
- Artifacts and colorless cards often act as additional copies of effects that exist in other colors. Some examples:
-- Ramp: Thran Dynamo, Grim Monolith
-- Color Fixing: Chromatic Lantern
-- Resource Denial: Tangle Wire, Winter Orb, Smokestack
-- Damage/Reach: Jinxed Choker, Cursed Scroll, Ankh oh Mishra
-- Ramp/Reanimation Targets and Control Finishers: Wurmcoil Engine, Myr Battlesphere
-- Defense: Maze of Ith
Multicolor Cards:
Typically harder to cast, and thus, more powerful than the cost would dictate, each color pair has around 3-4 cards in the cube and are intended to be a reward for getting into a deck early and wheeling something that's only good for you.
Non-Basic Lands / The importance of lands
Since you're probably going to be playing a multicolor deck, you need to make sure you have ways to play all your spells.
In typical booster draft, the 45 picks you make are probably going to get you 24-25 playables compared to the 23 you need, so you don't get a lot of leeway to take lands. In a cube draft, pretty much all the picks are playable, and you still only need 23ish non land cards. If you play 17 basic lands, you spent 22 picks on cards you're not playing, and that may not be worth it (the consistency of a monocolored deck might have been worth it though).
Picking lands gives you value when can field a deck with 33ish of your picks plus basic lands. In this case, you're playing all but 7ish of your picks, which means you got more from the draft portion, even if drafting lands aren't as fun as slamming some huge dragon on the table mid pack.
-----
Everything is now moved to cubetutor and I do owe a new primer. Huge, from-scratch rewrite of the cube, and of note, no longer respecting singleton. I have high hopes for it.
-----
Here's the tappedout description of this cube, based on a cube primer I wrote up for some new folks who were going to draft with us. I talks about cube "in general" but it's really through the lens of this specific list. I didn't want have it be so broad that it's rough for newcomers. This list has been mostly inspired by Andy Cooperfauss's CFB articles and Matt Kranstuber's Joy of Cubing podcast.
the philosophy to follow with some notes since you folks are a bit more knowledgable and I can provide context
Themes that I'm explicitly supporting:
- Support variety in draft by:
-- working to remove uninteresting picks (a card so good that you'll always take and play it, no matter the deck; OR a card that's so cheap and useful it goes in any deck)
--- Rob-note: Jace the Mindsculptor; Elspeth, Knight-Errant; Ponder/Preordain; Demonic/Vampiric Tutor, Jitte were victims
-- cards fluctuate in value based on what you have, and what you think is likely to come
-- having enough synergies in place so an on-theme deck with good cards is favored against a pile of random "good stuff"
-- build-around cards at a rate that allows a different take on strategy, but not always guaranteed to come together
--- Rob-note: Birthing Pod has come together 1 out of 4 drafts, and that's a fine rate in my mind
- Support variety in games:
-- linear/all-in strategies should be rewarded, but still have a counter
-- proactive control (time your removal) is supported, but not reactive control (sit back with ALL MY COUNTERSPELLS)
--- Rob-note: in general this has made this a very combat-oriented cube and I've tried to keep sweepers to a reasonable level (e.g. there's ~two control decks and they have ~2 sweepers)
- Be a Living History:
-- The hope is that someone who last played 15 years ago, and someone who started this year get to both have that "oh man, I love this card" moment
-- strategies and archetypes that have historically been good should have a cube equivalent (there's ALWAYS been a white weenie deck in every era of magic)
For those of you who are a little more familiar with cubes, here are some stats:
- ~440 cards (this is relatively small, with an 8-person draft, there's about an 80% chance a given card will be in the card pool)
-- Rob-note: this would go up if we played weekly
- "unpowered" (no restrictions on rarity, but the Power Nine and other cards in that league are kept out)
- no custom erratas, all cards do what their oracle text says (http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Default.aspx)
-- Rob-note: I originally ran the rebel errata and it was too much to explain/justify each draft; some errata could come back if I had a consistent/frequent group
Strategies supported by this cube's color pairings and build-arounds:
White:
- Weenies: This deck is all about getting a critical mass of cheap creatures to maximize the chance of a creature on turns 1, 2, and 3. Hopefully clearing out blockers, and hopefully slowing down the game with some resource denial. Equipment helps make every creature a threat.
-- Keys: 4-5 1 drops (e.g. Savannah Lions), 6-8 2 drops (e.g. Accorder Paladin), Armageddon, Glorious Anthem to boost all creatures.
-- Pairs well with:
--- Blue: bounce/counter to slow down the pace, card draw to recover from your dudes dying
--- Black: use removal to get blockers out of the way, use targeted discard to prevent your dudes from getting killed
--- Red: to help close out games with burn spells and aggressive haste creatures, slow down the game with land destruction
--- Green: play 4-5 mana big guys on turn 3 to out-big your opponent too quickly
- Control: White has excellent removal (both targeted and sweepers) and good defensive/stabilization options to drag the game out and close out the game with any random finisher
-- Keys: Wrath of God, Swords to Plowshares, Baneslayer Angel, Gideon Jura
-- Pairs well with:
--- Blue: counter things you can't clear away, use blue's hard-to-kill creatures as finishers
--- Black: even MORE removal
Blue:
- Tempo: a little bounce, a little card draw, and couple of evasive creatures (or clones) and somewhere around turn 8, you're opponents 2 turns behind you in a race, and although they have a bunch of cards in hard, the game will end before that's relevant.
-- Keys: Riftwing Cloudskate, Phantasmal Image, Mana Leak, Fettergeist, Repeal, Remand
-- Pairs well with:
--- White: same gameplan with better cheap creatures and some permanent removal
--- Black: use removal to get blockers out of the way, use targeted discard to prevent your dudes from getting killed.
- Control: keep things from hitting the table, block, trade with, steal, or clone it if it does, draw cards to have more resources than your opponents, and hopefully stabilize at like 6 before finishing it off with a single big guy
-- Keys: Cryptic Command, Control Magic, Body Double, Frost Titan, Sea Gate Oracle, Compulsive Research
-- Pairs well with:
--- White: If something hits the table, you can permanently remove it, and more defensive creature options
--- Black: If something hits the table, you can permanently remove it, and make them discard it proactively
--- Green: ramp up to the mana to cast finishers sooner
Black:
historically can do "anything" but with drawbacks (often, pay life, or have very restrictive mana costs), so there's a lot of sub-themes that you can mix and match that care about very specific cards or combinations of cards. IT'S FOR THIS REASON THAT BLACK IS HARD TO DRAFT:
- Disruptive Aggro: deploy a lot of threats, clear out blockers with removal, make them discard their stuff, replenish your resources by using your life total as a resource, stuff with drawbacks that you can work around or can turn into a benefit
-- Keys: Carnophage, Phyrexian Rager, Gatekeeper of Malakir, Fleshbag Marauder, Desecration Demon, Hymn to Tourach
-- Pairs well with:
--- White: cheap creatures without drawbacks, artifact/enchantment removal
--- Red: burn and haste creatures to end the game before your drawbacks catch up with you
- Reanimator: Discard (or let die) something huge and then get it of the graveyard for cheaper than paying the normal costs. Also, you reanimate your opponent's dudes
-- Keys: Pack Rat (discard outlets), Animate Dead (get it back for cheap), Griselbrand (fatty)
-- Pairs well with:
--- White: fatties to reanimate
--- Blue: discard outlets and protect your fatty, fatties to reanimate
--- Red: discard outlets, fatties to reanimate
--- Green: fatties to reanimate, ramp to play them naturally if the game goes long
- Pox/Resource Denial: everyone sacrifice your stuff, although mine comes back or I got my use out of it already so I don't mind
-- Keys: bloodghast, pox, contamination, ravenous rats, Braids, Liliana of the Veil
-- Pairs well with:
--- Green: lot of ramp creatures that outlived their use and can be sacrificed, Survival of the Fittest/Genesis to help with the graveyard
--- White: a lot of creature token generators for more things to sacrifice
--- Red: maybe I already destroyed some lands, so sacrifices are worse for you
- Control: kill creatures or make them discard the non creature stuff you can't kill before you even get to play them. Close it out with some big finisher
-- Keys: Damnation, Grave Titan, Doom Blade, Duress
-- Pairs well with:
--- White: More removal, some different finishers, some life gain in the event I used life as a resource earlier
--- Blue: Counterspells in the event I can't make you discard stuff, and some card draw to make sure I don't run out of stuff
--- Red: burn spells are often more removal
Red:
- Aggro: all-in red aggro is probably the strongest deck in any given cube thanks to the focus and the redundancy of the cards. Get a lot of cheap creatures, kill blockers, drop some haste guys, get the opponent to around 7-9 and ask "what are you at?" And then go "Firebolt, Chain Lightning, Fireblast, kill you?"
- Keys: Lightning Bolt, Jackal Pup, Sulfuric Vortex, Hellrider
-- Pairs well with:
--- White: even MORE cheap creatures, and they're stronger than red ones usually
--- Black: some decent cheap drops and extra removal for killing blockers
--- Green: some of the more expensive green creatures are a fine curve toppers, and maybe you need some way to kill enchantments
- Resource Denial: there's a fair number of land destruction cards that can help keep the game from progressing past the point where your cheap stuff is relevant
- Keys: Avalanche Riders, Pillage, Molten Rain
-- Pairs well with:
--- Black: play even MORE resource denial cards, and some removal in case any creature was played before the lands were killed
--- Green: play the resource denial cards even earlier thanks to ramp, get some of the relevant Green resource denial in Plow Under or Stunted Growth
Green:
- Ramp: Instead of playing something that costs 4 on turn 4 (best case), wouldn't you like to play it on turn 3? What about 8 drops on turn 5? Course you would. This deck needs a mix of things to ramp with, and a list of things to ramp to. Also, you need some luck to draw them in the correct order. If you're ramping to 4 versus 8, there's different things you want to ramp with and ramp to, so there's a lot of variation.
- Keys: Rampant Growth, Birds of Paradise, Green Sun's Zenith, Primeval Titan, Avenger of Zendikar
-- Pairs well with:
--- White: Things to ramp to and defensive things to stay alive
--- Black: Things to ramp to and removal to keep pressure off
--- Blue: Things to ramp to, protection for the thing you ramped to and cad draw to find more things to do with all your mana
--- Red: use all that mana to pump up spells that damage based on the mana you put into it (X-spells).
-- Resource Denial Sub-Theme: Keep them off lands or slow them down with Plow Under/Stunted Growth, blow up stuff with Acidic Slime/Woodfall Primus
BUILD AROUNDS
These are cards that spawn their own types of decks, and don't always come together, but add some extra depth beyond color combo
- Opposition - combine with white tokens or green ramp creatures to lock your opponent's lands/creatures out of the game
- Wildfire (also reprinted as Burning of Xinye) - combine big or red colorless creatures that can survive, and artifact mana to ensure that you don't mind sacrificing your lands as much as they do
- Recurring Nightmare and Survival of the Fitness - get creatures to the graveyard to search up more creatures, and bring them back for value
- Venser, the Sojourner - keep blinking your permanents to re-trigger enters/leaves the battlefield abilities
- Tinker - combine some cheap artifacts that you can sacrifice, and a couple of big artifact creatures to get out cheaply
THE GLUE
Most of those archetypes mentioned above could be done with cards from the five colors, but colorless, multi-colored, and land cards can really help solidify a strategy.
Colorless
- Artifacts and colorless cards often act as additional copies of effects that exist in other colors. Some examples:
-- Ramp: Thran Dynamo, Grim Monolith
-- Color Fixing: Chromatic Lantern
-- Resource Denial: Tangle Wire, Winter Orb, Smokestack
-- Damage/Reach: Jinxed Choker, Cursed Scroll, Ankh oh Mishra
-- Ramp/Reanimation Targets and Control Finishers: Wurmcoil Engine, Myr Battlesphere
-- Defense: Maze of Ith
Multicolor Cards:
Typically harder to cast, and thus, more powerful than the cost would dictate, each color pair has around 3-4 cards in the cube and are intended to be a reward for getting into a deck early and wheeling something that's only good for you.
Non-Basic Lands / The importance of lands
Since you're probably going to be playing a multicolor deck, you need to make sure you have ways to play all your spells.
In typical booster draft, the 45 picks you make are probably going to get you 24-25 playables compared to the 23 you need, so you don't get a lot of leeway to take lands. In a cube draft, pretty much all the picks are playable, and you still only need 23ish non land cards. If you play 17 basic lands, you spent 22 picks on cards you're not playing, and that may not be worth it (the consistency of a monocolored deck might have been worth it though).
Picking lands gives you value when can field a deck with 33ish of your picks plus basic lands. In this case, you're playing all but 7ish of your picks, which means you got more from the draft portion, even if drafting lands aren't as fun as slamming some huge dragon on the table mid pack.
