Rob's unpowered cube - with primer

[Rob Dennis]

• Otherworldy journey is new. They were cut after I went down to 360 and they never got reps in the old list. I'm hoping to see how it works. To me, MMA is the closest inspiration for what power level I'm going for, so I'm hoping.
• centaur courser was supposed to be courser of kruphix. whoops.
• Brimaz never got played (not a lot of chances) and I replaced him with Fabled Hero after getting a bit inspired to give double strike a better look after Jason's CFB article. Courser is great great great and hasn't been too bad.
• The last 6-man I did have someone go G/W with 3 cantrip walls, wall of roots, sylvan and Axebane Guardian which was astoundingly cool and fun. stack blocked and flashed in dictate of heliod to take down some folks.

By far the most common deck has been B/W midrange and it's pretty successful. The B/W utility land slice is valued really high so that helps. Mostly-white aggro is also quite good, but I think this is at least in some part based on player's color preference.
Venser value blink shows up and is good, which makes me happy.
Control shells that feature both U and Red (RUG, UWR, grixis) post good results too (this is where the walls are really shining).
Aggressive red has been doing all the things I've wanted with the young pyromancers, and there's the right amount of competition for the key cards I think.
All the ramp flavors are played and do well, with GU and GW being the most common.
Grindy black with things like recurring nightmare and/or blood artist are common are pretty good.
A lot of good blue tempo decks have made it out there, which is great.

Less popular:
resilient black aggro featuring the zombies and bloodghast, but I had a really go B/R deck that could side into mostly young pyro or mostly zombie based on the matchup. I think this is really influenced by player preference, because it's not like people are drafting it and not have luck. Aside from U/B tempo was tried a few times and was never successful, which is too bad. I'm not sure what that should look like.

Birthing Pod, it's recognized as objectively powerful and fun, but I don't see people taking aside from me (and hate drafted more than I'd expect) and feel like there's a gap there that I don't understand. People are excited to play Survival, and say they like toolboxes, but it hasn't happened yet.

 

[Rob Dennis]

Here are my notes from a 6 man draft last night with 1 conspiracy card per pack, utility land draft, and the latest 360 list:

- adding some conspiracy cards seemed fun and to add a lot, but specific numbers could be tweaked, we'd need to consider how to reduce chances of draft mistakes, and may be a bit much with the utility land draft
- maze of ith is currently valued as "too good to pass" in the land draft, so maybe it gets promoted back
- elesh norn getting elected the the Hall of Fame (the too good to pass binder) seems begrudgingly accepted but she'll be back once we miss her again
- gilded drake loops are not so hard to put together that the repetitive and noninteractive gameplay are balanced. To contrast, Mangara loops exist, but without something like aether vial to flash it in, there's a reasonable delay on the effect (also, no one's broken it yet).
- My pod deck was a good/interactive version of it, and I'm curious if anyone else would consider them in a future draft now. The gravecrawler/bloodghast and pyromancer packages have been accepted so far, so I'm hoping.
- Green 4 drop creatures that are good with Pod are lacking: Obstinate Baloth / Wickerbough Elder / Masked Admirers / Penumbra Spider is a pretty lackluster group compared to 3s and 5+ interested in ideas.
- pleasantly surprised with both ruric thar, cackling counterpart, and pelakka wurm
- it seemed like 8.5 tails was doing some pretty good work without being a giant dick
- cards that are on the chopping block for never getting played:

• Winter Orb
• Ludevic's Test Subject
• Delver of Secrets
• a lot of red 1-drops (this whole section needs work)
• lodestone golem
• jinxed choker (which is a shame by the way)
• grim monolith (in favor of a more "normal" artifact ramp spell
• scavenging ooze (originally an generally good value card with anti gravecrawler shenanigans, but that deck isn't breaking things up)
• phyrexian revoker (unsure if this is because planeswalkers aren't coming up that much)

- considerations for adds:

• Additional Snapcasters instead of some of the unplayed blue 1/2s
• Eternal Witness -> Carven Caryatid / overgrown battlement -> scattering ooze
  • defenders matter has been getting some buzz, and witness is a card I feel like green could have 2 of and it be a positive
• some interesting coloress options at 2 / 4
• cheap red creatures that would support a red aggro plan that still features pyros and a lot of spells (I don't think there's a critical mass of dudes in red to make jackal pups be good enough)

 

[Chris Taylor]

Worb is one of those cards that is either super annoying or unplayably bad. I kinda like the weird constraint it puts on play since aggro decks can better take advantage of the one mana per turn, but control decks usually can keep making land drops to play things out as well. It became pretty clear I was the only one who thought so

Delver never worked for me either

RE: Lodestone Golem, artifact dudes are for curve fillers. Nobody needs help filling the 4 drop spot usually. 1s and 2s sure, but not really the finishers.

Jinxed Choker is one of those cards I keep in because it is way better than people give it credit for. I just rarely draft the kind of deck that wants it

I fully support monolith becoming something like worn powerstone

Scooze is a fine creature on it's own though. Do you want to cut the sweet value dude to give the crawler deck more room to flourish? Becuase holy crap you are pushing it (4 crawlers, 2 feeders, 2 bloodghast, 2 blood artist and misc others)

About the red 1 drops: you've got 6 at the moment. I've got 8, but my cube is 90 cards bigger, so... 4.8? Okay fine. I'd add another
In terms of good ones: Goblin Guide is great, as is stromkirk noble, but spikeshot elder needs a lot of help, stonewright isn't great on it's own, and jackel pup is pretty lackluster as well. Lavamancer probably wants to stay in because of the spells deck, but doubling up on him probably wont help the deck as much as you want it to, since he is a VERY controlling card.

Here's a few I'd consdier swapping in:
-Rakdos Cackler: Basically my favorite 1 drop thesedays. Perfect drawback, easy to cast, randomly helps black (why not) and might make a multicolor aggro deck possible with the alara blades cycle? (I haven't taken this plunge myself, but it could be sweet. I think Jason's Eldrazi Domain does?)
-Firedrinker Satyr: if jackel pup is really your bag, at least do this. Flood protection is nice, and he trades surprisingly well.
-Flamekin Bladewhirl: I've ran him and eratta'd him to say "red creature" and he was okay, but given the want to make the spells deck work, perhaps "red card" would be better. Up to you
-Reckless Waif: This card can be really strong if opponents can be expected to stumble on spells occasionally. The curve of my cube is so low that almost never happens, but your enviornment might be different? Worth mentioning as a possability. Nonbo with snapcaster tho.

Given the green defender theme, for the jackel pup deck to work I think it needs an angle to fight them. Consider doubling up on hero of oxid ridge, or adding some volt charges and doing a +1/+1 counter theme, which could give them a way to fight past an endless supply of 0/4s by growing creatures.

 

[Rob Dennis]

Some good feedback here, and taking a look at it. Good point about curve fillers, and I'll amend my point about Scavenging Ooze but it's mostly about the fact that no one is playing it and the two green decks that do get played: ramp and pod, would rather that slot be something else.

For the biggest area of concern, cheap red drops that aren't explicitly about spells (like pyromancer): I was concerned that having just the normal set of 1 drops wasn't going to work because there it's a critical mass of "random aggressive dudes" and upon further reflection, I think I mostly ended up lukewarm and making it not really good for either supporting red's themes or for a standalone, non spell-heavy aggressive deck. Stonewright was there for extra synergy with doublestrikers and spikeshot was there to combo with the large amount of cheap equipment, and pup was a nostalgia include only.

By my accounting, I actually have 9 1-drops due to the two greater gargadons (which are kind of a victim of me liking it more than the player base) and figure of destiny (heavily contested in white decks), but in reality, half of those (at least) are not really panning out.

edit: maybe a bit unintuitve, but heavy red has had a really good matchup against green since so much of the card power is in spells and going wide. Which matches up really well, so I don't feel pressed to add more for red in that matchup.

 

[Chris Taylor]

I'll respond more later, but while gargadon costs R, he's not really the same animal as jackel pup.

Have you tried Mogis's Warhound? He's one of my favorites recently, and if double strike is your thing he gets extra sweet