RTR-THS Cube

[cstick]

Hi guys! I've been working on a cube that's a little bit different. Here's a link to the list on cubetutor:

http://www.cubetutor.com/viewcube/7668

The goal of the cube is to evoke the feeling of RTR-THS standard. I started designing this cube years ago, long before I had heard of Riptide Lab. I had first learned about cubes from a friend of mine, and decided that I wanted to build my own. I ended up with this cube concept for a couple of reasons:

• I didn't want to build a power max cube, both because my friend already had one and for budget reasons.
• I wanted to build something from scratch.
• I was excited about RTR-THS standard, as it was the current standard format, and the first one I played.

I started putting this list together 2 years ago (when BNG came out), and have worked on it on and off since then. I've been working on it a lot more in the past couple of months, and have finally finished it and been able to draft it.

Goals/Constraints

1. The format should feellike RTR-THS standard. This leads to a couple of constraints:
   • The cube should only contain cards from RTR block, THS block, M14, and M15. If I start adding fetchlands and brainstorms, it won't feel like playing standard anymore. The only exception I'm making is for the allied colored painlands, to match up with the enemy colored lands from M15.
   • The major cards and strategies from RTR-THS standard should be represented. It won't feel like RTR-THS standard if things like Thoughtseize, Elspeth, or Blue Devotion are omitted.
2. The format should be fun to draft and play. There should be a variety of draftable decks, and the gameplay should be fun and interactive.

Themes/Archetypes

Enchantments matter: Enchantments are the cube's most prominent theme. There are 70 enchantments, which is almost 20% of the cube. There are a number of rewards for playing lots of enchantments in white and black, with some supporting elements in green.

Devotion: Devotion is the other major theme in the cube. There are more cards than usual with CC in their costs, and some strong incentives to have lots of colored mana pips on the battlefield. The biggest payoffs for devotion are in blue, black, and green, but there are also some incentives in red and white as well.

Heroic: There are a couple of different heroic decks based in white. Boros is typically a very fast aggro deck using the cheapest red and white creatures, auras, and combat tricks. There is a Selesnya heroic deck that combines auras with heroic and hexproof creatures. There is also an Orzhov heroic deck with lots of bestow creatures that often cares about having lots of enchantments.

Some other supported decks include Azorius control, G/x ramp, Izzet spells, and Golgari graveyard.

I've finally finished the cube, but I've only done one draft so far, so I don't have a great idea of what is and isn't working yet. For now, what do you all think? I've done the best I can with the available cardpool, but are there any cool cards that I'm missing? Is there anything I should keep an eye on when testing?

Feel free to draft my cube (although I suspect that the bots are poorly trained). I'll be updating this thread with draft reports and other info in the future.

 

[Grillo_Parlante]

The goal of the cube is to evoke the feeling of RTR-THS standard.

What does that mean to you?

 

[Ferritovore]

I've had somewhat better luck with badchantments on enemy stuff, than enchanting my own stuff. Dragon Grip is sweet though, and I feel like you'll be missing out if you limit yourself from cool stuff like that in an enchantment cube.

 

[Ferritovore]

https://duckduckgo.com/?q=theros+or+enchant+site:cubetutor.com some inspirations?

 

[cstick]

Sorry for not getting back to you guys. Life got in the way, and then I kind of forgot I had posted this.

What does that mean to you?

I covered some of this in the goals section of the OP. It's kind of hard to explain, because feeling is subjective. One metric is that I think you should be able to look at the average draft deck and draw parallels between a deck you could have actually played in that standard environment. One requirement that's very important to me is the cardpool restriction, and that is the backbone of the cube's current design. Another thing is that I'm willing to make sacrifices in other areas to include iconic cards and strategies from the environment. Like, I get that Elspeth and Pack Rat toe the line of being GRBS, and that blue devotion is a kind of poisonous strategy, but they were such important and iconic pieces of the environment that I feel like not including them would be missing the point. I hope this gives you a better idea of what I meant.

I've had somewhat better luck with badchantments on enemy stuff, than enchanting my own stuff. Dragon Grip is sweet though, and I feel like you'll be missing out if you limit yourself from cool stuff like that in an enchantment cube.

This cube is not an enchantment cube. There are enchantment synergies in some colors and a high density of enchantments because those themes work well with the available cardpool, but supporting enchantments is not the cube's primary design goal. Thank you for the suggestion though. Also, duckduckgo looks like a great tool for brainstorming that I'll have to use for a project for sometime in the future, so thanks for introducing me to that.

With that out of the way, I have a big update. I actually finished my cube, and I got to draft it on Tuesday! We only had four drafters, but they all really liked the cube, and some other players came by and liked what they saw as well. I'm looking forward to running a larger draft sometime soon.

Draft Report:

Since we had four players, I decided to run a tenchester draft. I think this was a good choice because we got to see all the cards in the cube, and because the less experienced players could read all of the cards and get help with their picks. The big downside was that it took a long time, but nobody seemed to mind. Here are the decks:

R/W Aggro

Notable sideboard cards:


Gods Willing
Devouring Light
Hammer of Purphoros
Dawnbringer Charioteers
Spectra Ward

I went 3-0 with this list. I first picked Stoke the Flames. I wanted to draft heroic, but didn't end up with quite enough enablers. I beat monogreen 2-1 by curving out in two of my games and getting stomped by Kalonian Hydra in the other. I won 3 games against blue devotion because they got stuck on 2 lands each game. It's kind of a shame, because I think that might have been the best deck and I would have liked a real game against it. I beat U/W 2-1 (I got crushed by Jace once). I played more games against the deck later (with a different pilot) and still had a winning record. My deck could produce some very fast starts (I got to play Cackler + Madcap Skills one game), while the walkers + Purphoros+ Hammer (post-board) helped the deck run strong past turn 5. This kind of deck seems very scary against anything without much removal, so it might be a natural predator of green decks.

Monogreen

This player went 1-1 with this deck. He was the least experienced player and drafter of the group. I think he first picked Hornet Nest. He ended up with some powerful cards, but I think his deck lacked focus. I would have taken a couple more ramp pieces and tried to play a second color (he had a couple of red and black cards and some lands in the board). I beat him 2-1, and he beat the U/W control deck.

Blue Devotion

This player went 1-1 with this deck. He first picked Nightveil Specter, and mostly picked multicolored goodstuff (Xenagos, Rakdos's Return) until getting back-to-back Master of Waves. From there, he moved into blue devotion. This deck looks pretty strong, although I would have certainly played the 17th land. He pretty soundly beat the U/W control deck, but unfortunately lost to me in a series of non-games. He had to leave afterwards, so he didn't get to play against the monogreen deck. Later in the night, another player piloted this for a bunch of games against a sealed deck that another player built, and he won most of those games.

This deck made me realize that I'm going to have to think more about how I'm most often playing this cube. Because we were playing tenchester, he was able to snap up all of the blue devotion cards too easily. I think that if I mostly draft with 8 players that won't be a problem.

U/W control

Notable sideboard cards:


Pack Rat
Frostburn Weird
Godless Shrine
Temple of Silence
Heliod, God of the Sun
Prognostic Sphinx
Archangel of Thune
Opportunity


This player went 0-3 with this deck. He was the other one of my less experienced drafters. He started off by picking Supreme Verdict, and drafted U/W control the whole time. If I was in this seat, I would have taken some more early defensive creatures, and might have moved into a third color (black or green). I also would have built the deck differently after the draft, and included Frostburn Weird, Pack Rat, and the five drops. He lost against blue devotion because of its planeswalkers, against me because I was too fast, and I'm not sure why he lost against the green. I might be remembering that result wrong. I got to play a bunch of games later that night against a different pilot and still mostly won.

Also, Jace is GRBS and was cut immediately after this draft.


Later in the night after we drafted, another friend came by and built a sealed deck:

4 color goodstuff

My friend played this deck a bunch against the blue devotion deck, and although he mostly lost he was able to take a couple of games. I got a quick look at his sideboard, and he had a bunch of good black cards he wasn't playing like Gray Merchant, Herald of Torment, and Underworld Connections, so I probably would have included those and cut white because I think that was probably a bit too ambitious. With that said, multicolored goodstuff seems like fun to play.


So overall, we had a great time. The call for suggestions from the OP is still open. I'd love to hear from you guys.

 

[Kirblinx]

Thanks for the draft writeup. Shows a good insight as to what your format entails. Although I have a concern with regular tenchester drafts. Since devotion is a decent and strong archetype in your cube, I feel that people will keep gravitating towards them. Just because it is easy to stick to your colours and get rewarded for doing so. 8-man's, even 2-player grid drafts would be pretty fun though due to the amount of hate drafting people can do.

I did a couple of draft a while ago and should have mentioned my thoughts then, as I could have warned you that Jace was GRBS, I must have just had an off day and was too happy I picked up a boatload of fixing to get Chromanticore to work

5-Colour Chromanticore Control from CubeTutor.com

Look at all those temples (even the garden!). I would gladly 0-3 with this pile.

All I can remember from this standard format was how annoying Pack Rat was, how stupidly strong Elspeth, Sun's Champion was and how ridiculous Master of Waves can be. I am not really a fan of any of these cards, but this is what your cube is based around, so there isn't much I can do about that. My only concern is that if they are too dominating to think about cutting them, or start doubling up on other strong cards to suppress their power. I had a quick look at a snap shot of the format to remind myself and the only 'highly played' card that I can't see is Mistcutter Hydra. Was there a reason for not including him? I think Blue needs to be knocked down a peg anyway

The decks I can remember that I played in this format was Maze's End Fog and BG Dredge. Unless you do some mad squadroning of gates I don't think Maze's End will ever be a cube card. It is nice to see that dredge is there though. The only card I can see that is missing is Grisly Salvage. Maybe cut Deathrite Shaman, as it didn't do much in standard at the time either, with no fetchlands it really loses its lustre.

On your cubetutor page I noticed your potential cuts and all I can say is please don't cut Imposing Sovereign. It may look and feel pretty average, but it can be so back breaking to any durdely decks. The rest I can see being cut, as I don't ever remember seeing them in standard (although I remember using Martial Law ).

Also, thanks for drafting my cube. You made the most obscene looking tokens deck. Made me leave Jeskai Ascendency in for a little bit longer, as it has potential, it just never gets picked.

 

[cstick]

Thanks for the draft writeup. Shows a good insight as to what your format entails. Although I have a concern with regular tenchester drafts. Since devotion is a decent and strong archetype in your cube, I feel that people will keep gravitating towards them. Just because it is easy to stick to your colours and get rewarded for doing so. 8-man's, even 2-player grid drafts would be pretty fun though due to the amount of hate drafting people can do.

Yeah, definitely. Ideally, I'd like to draft this cube with 8. If I end up with 4 drafters again, I have a couple of other ideas in mind instead of tenchester. I saw a 4-player grid draft variant that looked pretty good. Also, I personally think that sealed is a really under-appreciated format, so I might try that, or even team sealed.

That looks like a fun draft deck. On a related note, I think that the format's mana is in a bit of a weird place. As you saw, there's an abundance of fixing, so if you try you can build a five color deck like this. However, the variable quality of the fixing (guildgates aren't very good), devotion, and the high number of restrictive mana costs all push people towards playing fewer colors. I think that the typical deck will probably be closer to two colors than three. That's part of the reason why I like having Chromanticore in the cube. It encourages people to build their deck completely differently.

Master of Waves

Ideally, I would like to cut him down to one. It's a bit of a tricky situation, though. So much of the strength of the blue devotion deck comes from Master of Waves and Thassa, and I don't want someone to try and draft blue devotion and have it be a trap and end up with a terrible deck. I'm going to keep both in for now and see how things play out, but I'll keep a close eye on it.

I had a quick look at a snap shot of the format to remind myself and the only 'highly played' card that I can't see is Mistcutter Hydra. Was there a reason for not including him? I think Blue needs to be knocked down a peg anyway

To me, it looked too boring and too much like a sideboard card. I like the other green cards at 5+ mana better. I'll keep it in mind though if green wants something to help it against blue.

The decks I can remember that I played in this format was Maze's End Fog and BG Dredge. Unless you do some mad squadroning of gates I don't think Maze's End will ever be a cube card. It is nice to see that dredge is there though. The only card I can see that is missing is Grisly Salvage. Maybe cut Deathrite Shaman, as it didn't do much in standard at the time either, with no fetchlands it really loses its lustre.

It's funny that you mentioned Maze's End, because it's actually something I've spent some time thinking about. Maze Fog is the pet deck of one of the members of my playgroup, and he would be really happy to be able to draft it. The best idea I came up with to support Maze's End is this:

When you pick Maze's End, at the end of the draft you may add 7 (number subject to change) guildgates of your choice to your draft pool. There are two restrictions:

1. You cannot add more than one copy of any guildgate this way.
2. In order to play any of the guildgates in your draft deck, you must include all 7 and Maze's End in your deck.

This way, picking Maze's End gives you enough guildgates to build the deck, while still requiring you to spend some additional picks on actual guildgates to make it work. The restrictions keep people from just taking it for a couple of extra lands for fixing instead of using it as intended. If I want to include Maze's End like this, I can see it causing some problems:

1. Including Maze's End results in a consistent 5 color deck.
2. The support cards needed to make Maze's End work are too narrow.

I don't want there to be a 5 color deck or a Maze's End deck in every draft. I think that 5 color is in a good place right now, but I'm worried that if I try and include Maze's End, it will be too easy to just take it and end up in 5 color goodstuff for free. If Maze's End is in the cube, I want players to try and win with it instead of just taking it so that their 5 color deck has better fixing. However, to support that goal, I feel like I would have to include a bunch of narrow support cards (fogs, mostly) that will make the rest of the environment worse. Unless I come up with a better idea, I'm leaning towards not trying to include Maze's End.

Regarding dredge, I think that it's in a bit of a tough spot because there aren't many good enablers available. There are some good multicolored ones, and Satyr Wayfinder and Commune with the Gods are good, but otherwise there aren't many good ways to fill up your graveyard, so while there are plenty of payoff cards, it's hard to turn them on. You're probably right about Deathrite Shaman; I was hoping that players would be able to grind enough value off of the other two abilities, but that's probably not realistic. Technically, with how the cube is set up now I'd be looking to replace him with a colorless card or another hybrid instead of another Golgari card, but maybe I should just include Grisly Salvage anyway.

Also, thanks for drafting my cube. You made the most obscene looking tokens deck. Made me leave Jeskai Ascendency in for a little bit longer, as it has potential, it just never gets picked.

Jeskai Ascendency is one of my favorite cards, so I always try and draft it when possible. In this draft I got lucky though and got it near the end of pack 2.

Thanks for the comment. I think right now, the most important thing for me to do is get more drafts in. Once I do that, I should have a much better idea about the answers to some of these questions and in what direction I should take things.

Question of the Week: If I want to support Maze's End in this cube, how should I do that? Is it even worth trying?

 

[cstick]

I finally got to draft again on Thursday. I actually got two do two drafts: a grid draft with one other person, and then a 6-man draft pod. Here's a recap:

Grid Draft:
I started off by taking a bunch of lands, while my opponent took some good green and blue cards. Eventually, I ended up in Abzan splashing red, while my opponent ended up with U/R aggro. Decklists:

U/R Aggro

I think this deck is kind of weak. In particular, I think that it doesn't have enough creatures to curve out consistently while also not being good enough in the late game.

Red Abzan

This deck is basically a pile of value. White and black are the main colors, and I really wanted to play green so I could play Eidolon of Blossoms, because I already had a ton of enchantments. To be honest, after taking another look at my pool after the draft, I probably should have just played Mardu though. I got to do some cool heroic things. Bestow is a sweet mechanic.

We played at least ten games. I won about 70% of them. My mana was good enough that I generally didn't stumble, and my opponent didn't really have good answers to big voltron creatures or Doomwake Giant. Some notable cards:

Claustrophobia was my opponent's only answer to my bigger creatures, but it was surprisingly effective. Flames of the Firebrand and Cone of Flame both 2-for-1'd me multiple times, and led to me falling pretty far behind when I thought I was safe. Hornet Nest is super unfun. Chromatic Lantern is basically the best fixing you could ask for — anyone who wants to support 5 color decks should definitely run it.

We did our grid draft with all 5 colors, but in the future I think I'll try cutting a color beforehand like other people have done.

Booster Draft:
Later on in the night, I was able to run an impromptu draft with 6 people. I'll talk a bit about what people drafted, starting with myself and moving clockwise around the table:

Me: I drafted U/B control. I started by taking a Genesis Hydra, but got Jace and Ashiok in my next few picks, and from there stayed in U/B the whole time. Here's my list:

U/B Control

Bending: Bending drafted 5-color goodstuff. I don't know much about the particulars of his deck, but I know he first picked Elspeth, took a bunch of lands, then ended up with Chromanticore halfway through and went all-in on 5-color.

Peyton: Peyton also drafted U/B control, interestingly enough. He ended up in the deck by getting two Gray Merchants within the first 4 picks. The blue and black cards were apparently plentiful enough to support both of us. His deck was more black-centric, as he had the Gray Merchants, Nightveil Specter, Lifebane Zombie, along with Whip of Erebos, Rescue from the Underworld, and Soul of Innistrad to recur them with.

Patrick: Patrick drafted Selesnya, with a small blue splash for Sphinx's Revelation. He had some aura shenanigans going on, as well as some ramp and a powerful top end with cards like Archangel of Thune, Angel of Serenity, and Scuttling Doom Engine.

James: James drafted monored. Besides the player to his left, James was the only one in red, so he basically hoovered up all of the good aggressive red cards. Here's his deck:

Monored

Bryce: Bryce drafted Jeskai control. His deck had a bunch of removal and two sweepers, but could also play a more aggressive game plan with some high-quality three drops like Brimaz and Prophetic Flamespeaker, as well as both Ajanis.

Results:

Round 1:

U/B Control (Me) vs. Bant (Patrick)

5-Color (Bending) vs. Monored (James)

U/B Control (Peyton) vs. Jeskai (Bryce)

Round 2:

U/B Control (Me) vs. U/B Control (Peyton)

Monored (James) vs. Jeskai (Bryce)

5-Color (Bending) vs. Bant (Patrick)

Round 3:

U/B Control (Me) vs. Monored (James)

U/B Control (Peyton) vs. Bant (Patrick)

5-Color (Bending) vs. Jeskai (Bryce)

So monored won the draft. I'm not really surprised, as the rest of our decks were basically in durdle city. To be fair, my match against James was very close, and things definitely could have gone the other way if the draws had been a bit different. A couple things worth noting:

In both this draft and the previous one, the aggressive red deck won. The red deck is clearly pretty strong, but I also feel like a part of this is due to there being little competition over the red cards. I think that in an 8 person draft, the same scenario where one person gets almost all the red cards won't happen.

In every match, the deck that was playing fewer colors won. I'm not sure whether this says something about my format, the drafters, or if it's just a fluke, but it's something to keep an eye on.

Anyways, everyone had lots of fun, and some sweet games were played. I'm hoping to get another draft in on Sunday.


With this data in mind, I'm making a couple of changes:

Out:

In:

My fears of devotion not being well enough supported were unfounded. Master of Waves and Gray Merchant seem to generally find their way to where they're supposed to go, and having two copies just seemed to make it so that one player ended up with both of them, which is not what I wanted. Hornet Nest either does nothing or completely shuts the opponent down, and is generally miserable to play against. Deathrite Shaman doesn't do enough without fetchlands, and the main point of me having hybrids was that they could be played in decks of either color, which isn't really the case with DRS.

Water Servant is pretty crappy in comparison, but is the best option to fill the hole in that slot. Indulgent Tormentor is a pretty solid 5-drop. Chord of Calling is a really sweet card. In the past I was concerned that it was too expensive and clunky, but I've decided to err towards running it and then cutting it if it doesn't perform. Deathcult Rogue is not a powerful card, but it can fill a role in a variety of decks, and provides two devotion for black or blue, which are probably the best devotion colors.

I have some other swaps in mind, but I'm not going to pull the trigger on them just yet.

All in all, things are progressing pretty well. I'm still interested in hearing any suggestions regarding Maze's End.

 

[Rasmus Källqvist]

I liled that ub control deck!

How important would you say is the card pool restriction vs having the themes you set out in the OP?

For devotion I know that theres some interesting still standard power level hybrid cards that could help making support of devotion less of a heavy color commitment.

The same probably goes for stuff like supporting heroic or enchantments.

I could imagine you being able to use cards outside of rtr-ths to create an environment where the decks people draft in your cube end up doing things mechanically similair to what tournament decks did back in 2014.

 

[cstick]

Right now, the card pool restriction is the paramount feature of the cube. The themes that are present in the cube are there because they're what's supported by the card pool. Sometime in the future when I want to spice things up I might eliminate the card pool restriction and see where that leads me, but it's not something I'm interested in doing now.