Schafkurai's Graveyard Synergy Cube

[Schafkurai]

The Graveyard Synergy Cube​

art by Ryan Barger

Hello fellow cubers!

I've been lurking around the forum for enough years now, that it felt appropriate to start a thread for my Graveyard Synergy cube. Also, Nanonox kindly called me out, showing me that at least one person would be interested in reading about this project of mine.

I don't get as much time to tinker with my cube as I'd like to, but I'll try to report on draft nights (roughly every 2-3 months) and updates with new sets (probably more frequently than that).

I have a group of two to three friends that I draft with the most and every so often we pull together a pool of 8 drafters. They all have experience with commander and retail limited, so I try to keep that in mind for my design goals.

Also, I want to mention that I drew heavy early inspiration from Ryan Overturfs articles and inschos GCC and zubats graveyard cube, as well as many others and hours spent reading here on riptidelab.



Finally, here's the list before I dive deeper into the cube itself: Schafkurais Graveyard Synergy Cube

Design Goals
As a lot of other cubes on here, mine has gone on quite the rollercoaster ride until now. It started as two 180 cubes, one focused on graveyard mechanics and one with artifacts, that melded together after two play sessions. It started with a high power level (wheels, diamonds, etc.), as I wanted a legacy power feel to contrast our normal retail drafts but I soon realized that the high complexity and swinginess of draft and games was just not for my play group. Slowly I've been cutting extreme power outliers, although some still remain. The cube is in a better place than one or two years ago, but it's still not where I want it to be.

From here on I'll copy some of Nanonox's headlines, to help guide me through.

Draft
As mentioned, we're often four players and adjust the standard drafting a bit. Everyone gets a Cogwork Librarian and we have more smaller packs or burn cards at the end, to see more of the cube. I think this is useful for cubes based more around synergy, compared to general aggro, midrange, control.

Power level & Speed
Ultimately I still want my cube to be somewhere between a masters draft set and a legacy cube. No power, no free spells, no mana rocks, removal a step below the best (removal should be able answer threats with MV+1, broadly speaking), no easy auto includes on power level (Fable of the Mirror-Breaker, Palantir of Orthanc, ...). It's a high synergy format, so weaker cards that work together should have a higher ceiling than goodstuff cards. No combos. Okay, I know that's a lie, because there are some in there (usually 3+ cards). They are not so easy to find though and I doubt they will come up more than once a year. Decks are low curving and lean, you should be able to play to the board by turn two or risk falling behind. Tempo is important but value can be important too. Fixing is plentiful but painful, generally I aim for 2-3 color decks.




Graveyard hate
Deserves it's own paragraph. On one hand it makes games more interesting if interaction with this very important zone is possible. On the other hand it's a delicate balance because too much can invalidate whole strategies and make it unfun for players. So far my experience is, that exiling the whole grave and multiple cards per turn (Lion Sash and Scavenging Ooze) is too much. One per turn is ok (as etb + attack for instance) is mostly fine. The heavy graveyard decks don't care that much, it can really hurt the more modest graveyard decks like welder though. Scrabbling claws is cool, as it gives the opponent the choice of which card to remove, but self-mill just doesn't care. What I really like, are the incidental one time effects (Dreams of Steel and Oil).

Archetypes
​

This is a difficult topic for me. The overarching themes are the graveyard and artifacts. All colors except white have good graveyard strategies. Artifacts are best in jeskai, although green and black are slowly improving.

(Incomprehensive) list of archetypes:

Self-mill - works best in sultai (+red) and has different directions it can go, like classic Golgari selfmillf, or Simic combo-y selfmill, to more aggressive variants such as jund delirium/tarmogoyf. Dimir likes to use the graveyard to fuel delve. Most of these decks are slower and more value oriented. They either use the graveyard as a resource (delve, recursion) or they care about types and number of cards in graveyards.



Self-discard - mainly in grixis, but other colors might contribute slightly. Red leans more aggressive and blue more controlling, with black supporting both directions. Madness plays into this space and to a lesser extent self-mill.



Lands/Landfall - most supported as an aggressive selesnya landfall Deck. Red and black have a few support pieces too and simic lands supplement the self-mill combo-y deck. Black and blue probably lean more midrange/control. Green is especially good at recursion.



Sacrifice - is not really thought through but might be possible in an aggressive rakdos Deck?



Reanimator - is also not a real deck. I tried with a weenie reanimator archetype in orzhov but my players were not convinced. Black had the reanimation spells but there are no high MV targets. Best you can do is a 4-5 drop on turn 2-3.



Artifacts - offers lots of different directions to go. There's a value reanimator sub theme with reds welders and synergistic synergistic removal. White and green are the colors of dinky tokens and critical mass. I don't know that I have an aggressive (white?) artifact deck? Blue offers a lot of support with recursion, tokens, and more. Black hast the least direct synergies with artifact builds.



Blink - there's a slight blink sub theme in azorius, that can supplement different strategies such as artifacts, tokeny things and recursion.



There are also some two-card synergies like:




So... This is what I got so far and I surely did not mention all archetypes. What I currently struggle most with, is having a clear idea of which decks exactly are viable in my cube. So far I just add cards from new sets that fit the cube, but I'm not sure if they actually fit into decks. I need a better understanding, which archetypes/decks supported well enough and which need help, specifically in what form. I don't get to play too often but I have the feeling that the decks are a bit unfocused which could be due to player drafting skill but for sure the main contributor is a somewhat unfocused cube. Am I trying to cram too many archetypes in? Probably. Do I just need to adjust the numbers? Possibly.

Let me know what you think, I'd be honored to be benefit of the centuries of collective cube knowledge gathered here in this community .

PS: My overview on CubeCobra is woefully out of date.

 

[Nanonox]

Let me know what you think, I'd be honored to be benefit of the centuries of collective cube knowledge gathered here in this community

I think the cube looks really good. I like how you've managed to fit in some narrow build arounds that don't feel all that narrow! Academy Manufactor comes to mind.

Main critiques if I may:
- A few power outliers could detract from synergy (Pyrogoyf, Mawloc, Psychic Frog, ...)

- Maybe some slots could be optimized. You probably don't need 5 3 mana Red discard cards

Spoiler: 5 3 mana Red discard cards

- With a lot of your cheap creatures being extremely powerful, some 4+ mana cards could be reevaluated (Harvester of Souls) and so should some cards that don't impact the board (The Everflowing Well).

Every time I drafted your cube on CC, the draft felt dynamic and could go into different directions. Would happily read draft updates!

 

[Schafkurai]

I think the cube looks really good. I like how you've managed to fit in some narrow build arounds that don't feel all that narrow! Academy Manufactor comes to mind.

Thank you for the praise and for doing some test drafts! I looked at the decks and I must say, that they're definitely among the more streamlined deck I've seen, compared to my playgroup. Which shows me that there is potential! Also, maybe I have to further adapt my draft setup, because drafting normally with 4 people using half the cube does lead to less focussed decks.

I'm happy to take all the major and minor criticism I can get!

- A few power outliers could detract from synergy (Pyrogoyf, Mawloc, Psychic Frog, ...)

Adding to those, these three are also good examples that can induce some groans:


I knew, that the commander Lhurgoyfs might prove too strong (imagine having Pyrogoyf in play and dropping a Tarmogoyf Nest the next turn?) but they're just such an absolutely perfect fit thematically and mechanically, so I'm not sure what to do with them (probably cut them in the end).

Interestingly the good multicolor cards (except for Hoogak, Arisen Necropolis when he was in) have not been a problem so far. Also, decks rarely come together, sometimes as beefy madness, but greens support is not what it used to be since I increased the power level. Maybe artifacts or a bit of landfall?

- Maybe some slots could be optimized. You probably don't need 5 3 mana Red discard cards

Spoiler: 5 3 mana Red discard cards

Thank you! for pointing this out, as you're absolutely right, I just didn't notice it before. Maybe I would put Thrill-Kill Disciple as a 4-5 drop instead but that still leaves room to cut 1 or 2 of them, probably first Seasoned Pyromancer as the most generic card and maybe Carnage Interpreter as both a very strong AND flexible card.

- With a lot of your cheap creatures being extremely powerful, some 4+ mana cards could be reevaluated (Harvester of Souls) and so should some cards that don't impact the board (The Everflowing Well).

Woopsie, my EDH past got the better of me here, as Harvester of Souls is not in the cube, but is supposed to be Harvester of Misery! I'm sure that qualifies as stronger top-end . Out of curiosity, what other 4+ drops would you say are on the weaker side? Looking at my list, I think these ones are maybe on the weaker side:


The dragon has rarely made a deck, probably plainscycling is too much and white has no selfmill (that is good enough to put in the cube).
Royal wardens tokens entering tapped is a big downside.
With the badger, you need to be able to loot/discard the turn it comes down. Either through looters or with more mana and Faithless Looting or the like.

The Everflowing Well has been decent so far, as a bridge between artifact and graveyard decks, but it's not stellar by any means. It is a decent Welder target.


We did draft the cube two weeks ago and I have the deck pictures, so I will post that once I have a bit of time, to type everything into the right format here.

Thanks again for the thoughtful feedback!

 

[Schafkurai]

Alright, so here's my first draft report!

We were 4 players, did 4 packs of 11 cards and each player started with a cogwork librarian. I did not write down the match wins and we did not play all rounds so there is not a clear winner, but only drafting half the cube was noticeable. The standout deck of the night was probably the first one and the other three were relatively evenly matched:

Jeskai artifacts

This was the only deck that cared about artifacts at the table and therefore got most of the pieces for the deck. The deck was controlling with Thousand Moons Smithy as the preferred win condition. The card seemed good but not oppressive and I'd guess he won maybe 60% of his matches, of which half were due to the smithy. Only having two welders in the cube makes consistency difficult, as Goblin Engineer was not in the draft. I cut all planeswalkers from my cubes recently, to cut back on complexity, but Daretti, Scrap Savant is sorely missed.

Overall he was happy with the deck and had fun. The deck looks good (a bit heavy on MV) and personally I would have brought in Thraben Inspector and Spyglass Siren as great enablers for Welder and the Smithy.

Selesnya midrange

This was a friend's deck, who is famous among us for daring and unconventional Deck building. This deck was good. It had some artifact, go wide and lands synergies but mainly it was a midrange beat down deck.

One game he went Forest Exploration land, into two lands and Esika's Chariot which was quite the beating but most games were just creatures, some removal and maybe a Felidae Retreat.

An over performer that I saw shine multiple times in this deck was Chivalric Alliance. Drawing an extra card each turn and keeping up pressure was good.

Jund aggro/midrange

This deck was the most aggressive of the four and red really helped push through for the finish line. Piggy Bank and Clockwork Percussionist were both very solid. The deck might have been better off as straight up with some decent cards from the sideboard.

Emperor of Bones was very strong but not as obnoxious as Lion Sash. I did not see to many matches of this deck.

Abzan Landfall

Finally and probably least was my 4 color monstrosity. I managed to get wins but overall the deck was too finicky and unfocused. Glyph Elemental and Springheart Nantuko could lead to some fast and fun starts. With Nantuko I managed to get a total of 5 Iridescent Vinelasher which was hilarious with five fetchlands, unfortunately my opponent had lifelinking flyers. In another match I produced 5 Aftermath Analysts with no good way to capitalize on my graveyard. Ultimately the deck was pulling in different directions with landfall and selfmill and a bigger draft pod or different draft method might have led to a more cohesive deck. It was definitely fun nevertheless!



Why does this card have lifelink AND deathtouch AND you get a creature back if you connect with it .

 

[Nanonox]

I knew, that the commander Lhurgoyfs might prove too strong (imagine having Pyrogoyf in play and dropping a Tarmogoyf Nest the next turn?) but they're just such an absolutely perfect fit thematically and mechanically, so I'm not sure what to do with them (probably cut them in the end).

If they make you happy then keep them! I was just saying that they will pull you into that color and don't really care about synergy all that much since the base rate is good enough on its own.

Out of curiosity, what other 4+ drops would you say are on the weaker side? Looking at my list, I think these ones are maybe on the weaker side:

The Badgersaur is probably the biggest standout.

What I meant to say is that even if the 4+ drops are ok, your 2 and 3 drops are just as good for cheaper. For example Blossoming Tortoise is a fine card, it just looks bad compared to Six. Maybe Satyr Wayfinder does a good enough job while being cheaper meaning you don't run an almost strictly worse version of a card. Or you run Hedge Shredder as a build around that kind of does the same thing while being unique.

I like the Royal Warden as an additional Welder target since you don't have the top end heavy hitters, but at the same time, you have Necron Deathmark that is a powerhouse in the same slot. The dragon is a decent 2 for 1 that is relevant early and late, I like it.

Ultimately the deck was pulling in different directions with landfall and selfmill

!

This is a 4+ drop that would be cool in your cube. It does something no lower drop does. With the slightly weaker removal and little fast mana present in the cube, it could do work.

Love the draft report, thanks for sharing.

 

[Schafkurai]

It's that time of year again, time to post a bi-annual draft report! Last Friday was a special occasion, since a friend from abroad was in the city and we managed to get 4,5 people together for a relaxed, after-putting-the-kids-to-bed cube draft. Four out of five people (myself included) made it on time, so we decided to draft 3 packs of 16, with two picks per pack, to account for the smaller draft pod. Also a friend and I decided to draft an additional deck, so that the last person would have two decks to choose from for the games.

At this point I also want to shout out a somewhat new App for cube drafting called SnapDrafter, that I used for the first time. It's still in beta and things can go wrong here and there but it's easy too use and works quite well already. Basically it allows you to take photos of your draft decks and will do an automated text search that recognizes 95% of the cards. It will then give you a list, that you can directly export into CubeCobra. CubeCobra also now sports new functionality, where you can record drafts, to easily digitalize your draft events (which is probably old news to most of you). It's still work in progress and I hope the functionality will be expanded, as it would be great to be able to write a little report on the draft night (with observations that I tend to forget after a few days) and it would also be cool to be able to export the decks as text (e.g. to easily create the draft decks here in the forum and save 3-5 minutes per deck! ).

But enough of that and back to the Magic, so here are the decks:

1. Sultai Value/Control


This was my visiting friends deck and it shows that he's a good Magic player and an experienced drafter. It's a sleek, no nonsense control deck that is very hard to beat once it reaches the late game. He did not go for specific synergies but the deck has some self-mill to benefit his recursion engines and a little bit of discard. The main win condition was Titania, Protector of Argoth. He neatly beat every deck but faster decks or those with graveyard hate were able to steal some games.

Overperformers:


Witness coupled with Nightmare was very hard to beat in the late game, but I'm ok with that as a control finisher loop. So is Murktide, although I could think about replacing the Regent with Ethereal Forager. Legolas's meddling on the other hand led to a lot of bullshit comments, seeing as it's removal and protection in one card, that cannot even be responded to.

Underperformers:
None really, he just built a very solid deck.

2. Golgari Midrange Dredge


Somehow this friend (almost) always drafts Golgari self-mill/dredge and it usually works out well! He does try out different things though, so this time he added an Insidious Roots package. We only played two rounds but he told me it worked reasonably well with the dredge creatures, as well as the graveyard hate used on his own graveyard (e.g.Scrabbling Claws & Hazel's Brewmaster). Thats neat! He did struggle sometimes against other decks, as he had little removal to break up strong synergies.

Overperformers:


Souls and Mycotyrant both can get huge, but they need to be built around and are a bit swingy. Perfect for chasing that dredge dream! Scrabbling Claws is the perfect kind of graveyard interaction for my cube and I think I'm not alone in that. Esika's chariot on the other hand is maybe too much for the cube. It's very self contained and works great with other tokens like Honored Hydra and Tarmogoyf Nest but there's no work involved, it always delivers. I liked the discussions in Dom's cube post, as the idea of having some cards be a cut above the rest (basically the rares/mythics of limited) rings true to me. But Esika's Chariot is not it, it's a bit too generic. I'd be happy with stronger cards that still play within the themes the cube is about - hence why I'm eyeing Urza, Lord High Artificer for my blue artifact section again..

Underperformers:
I did not get a chance to talk a lot about the deck but the following cards I'm a bit suspicious about in this deck:



Willow Geist I still need to see in action but I'm not sure the Insidious Roots decks would really care about it. The Raven Man and Woe strider are better in other decks but my friend really likes the Man and they were probably fine. The Mandrills are probably showing their age but I liked having a delve card in green. Any suggestions for decent, synergistic top end? I think Old One Eye might be too much.

3. Simic Self-Mill Combo


This deck was drafted by one of my less enfranchised players and I'm really proud of the job they did. They identified Thassa's Oracle as a self-mill win condition and did everyhing in their power to draft a deck around it. And it worked! Once or twice.. The deck was pulling in different directions, lots of self-mill and recursion but also some artifact synergy pieces, but not enough to work well together. It would have benefitted from some more defensive cards and a Laboratory Maniac as backup.

Overperformers:



Recurring the Serpent a couple times definitely made the games go longer (in a good way)! Otherwise these were not so much overperformers as wellperformers. Illuminator is decent graveyard interaction with some card advantage and Winding Way is one of my favorite draw/mill spells in green, next to Malevolent Rumble.

Underperformers:
Tameshi without white sources and the other artifact cards. I'm still not sure I like Seed of Hope or Confounding Riddle in this cube.

4. Rakdos Artifact Aristocrats


This was one of the decks I drafted and along the way I thought that I want to try an artifact deck in a different space (including black). It worked reasobaly well, as an artifact aristocrats aggro deck. With a good draw it had a chance against any of the other decks but I also felt the limitations from time to time. Mostly a way to meaningfully capitalize on all the artifact tokens. Marionette Apprentice was great and so was Breya's Apprentice but the archetype could use more things like Makeshift Munitions to close out games after the opponent gets their defenses up. Oni-Cult Anvil is already in but did not make it into the draft pool. I wonder if Marionette Master would be viable or too slow.

(Over)performers:


Except for Wernog, all of the others were known quantities to me. They play well and are fun to play with. Wernog I added last second (kicking out Zoraline, Cosmos Caller) and the card was deceptively good, usually a 1/2 body, that pings for two and creates two Clue tokens, that the opponent is reluctant to block.

Underperformers:


Battery is just better in a real Welder deck, I think, as my deck wanted that incremental advantage, though it was not terrible. Krenko and Braids on the other hand were too clunky for the deck. Paying for every artifact just didn't work out well and whenever I had Braids my opponent also had a bunch of creatures and artifacts in play. Could be that Braids were better if played against other kinds of decks. The Familiar was just a little slow.

5. Boros Artifacts Midrange


This deck was the one my last friend ended up playing and it was ok. I think it could have been a really cool deck (I have not seen many Boros artifact decks yet) but ultimately fell a bit short with playables. It lacks two drops and would have benefitted from being more artifact heavy (for e.g. Goblin Welder, Academy Manufactor and Cranial Plating). I'm eager to see what the next iteration of this deck might look like and was already thinking of increasing my white artifact creature density at 1-2 mana, which would help decks like these (I hope).

Overperformers:


Shoutout to the other thread, where we just discussed the Warden! This deck was not perfect for it but it still performed well and was a must kill threat later in the game. Phlage and Saga are just individually strong cards (Saga especially), though the deck was not optimal at capitalizing on either one.

Underperformers:
Mostly cards that don't synergize too much ins this deck, like Weathered Wayfarer and Academy Manufactor.

6. Izzet Discard Midrange/Control


This deck was played for 1-2 rounds and my friend was happy with it. Can't say much about it though I am excited to try this guy over Rielle, the Everwise:



This also brings me to the end segment of my report, before I go back to hibernation and exhume the cube in another 3-6 Months. Cube update time! I have exciting cards I want to try from Edge of Eternities, Final Fantasy (probably as custom reskins), Tarkir: Dragonstorm all the way to Aetherdrift and am looking forward to make the swaps in the coming weeks, once Edge of Eternities is fully released (and people over on MPCfill had time to create most of the proxies I want). So long and thanks to anyone who made it till the end!

 

[inscho]

Great write up!

Can't say much about it though I am excited to try this guy over Rielle, the Everwise:

I briefly tossed captain into my list in place of Rielle, and ended up cutting it for Vivi Ornitier. So no real play notes to share, but I’m interested to hear how it works out for you.

How do you rank Clockwork Percussionist among your other red one drops?

 

[Nanonox]

Those are some great looking decks, well done! Your drafters picked up what you were laying down, love to see it.

I recently decided to cut Pyschic Frog for being too strong, any feedback on it?
Also always loved the look of Voldaren Bloodcaster, how did it do for you?

 

[Schafkurai]

Great write up!



I briefly tossed captain into my list in place of Rielle, and ended up cutting it for Vivi Ornitier. So no real play notes to share, but I’m interested to hear how it works out for you.

How do you rank Clockwork Percussionist among your other red one drops?

Vivi Ornitier looks fantastic from what I've seen so far! A fun and unique card that you can built around, it just doesn't interact with my themes, except maybe for helping with the big mana creatures like Walking Ballista. So I'm not sure if I should include it.

As for the shark, it looks very interesting to me in paper but I am concerned about two things:

1. Four mana is quite a bit for aggressive decks.
2. It works nicely with these guys:

But not so well with some of my looters:


As they only trigger after combat damage.

Normal looters like Merfolk Looter work but you need another creature to get through and two more promising options are Kitsa, Otterball Elite, Duelist of the Mind and the new Mechan Navigator. The first two are quite strong and mechan might be too weak.. so I'm not 100% what I do here, but I'm already happy the red rummagers work!

Clockwork Percussionist is a surprisingly good card! It was probably the best one drop in my deck but I would think it falls off a bit, if you're not aggressive and don't do artifact/sacrifice things. Probably still a decent playable in any deck that's not strictly control. Felt a bit like a 1 mana Filigree Familiar in my deck!

Those are some great looking decks, well done! Your drafters picked up what you were laying down, love to see it.

I recently decided to cut Pyschic Frog for being too strong, any feedback on it?
Also always loved the look of Voldaren Bloodcaster, how did it do for you?

I'm also really glad everyone had a good time. There's nothing worse than confused and unhappy people during a deaft that lead to unsatisfied people during the games after. I am kinda building this cube for myself (since my friends are not that into it) but ultimately the main goal is for them to have a good and satisfying experience!

Psychic Frog is on my radar.. I saw it in two matches and it was good. I think it's not as good here as in other cubes, because I have less removal and it can be harder to push it through but in the midgame it can be trivially easy to give it flying for multiple turns + the threat of activation is always there. I think it can stay for the next draft but I have my eye on it.

Voldaren Bloodcaster was above average in my deck! A 2/1 flyer for two is already decent and it always made 2-3 blood tokens. It's especially nice in an aristocrats deck. I just wish it did not have the backside, as it rarely comes up and is a lot of added text my drafters have to read.