Shamim's Cube

[shamizy]

Ran an 8-man draft earlier tonight, decided to try a few new things out. First, I used a different method of creating packs from normal to even out the color distribution a bit more. I saw this posted on Reddit a few days ago and it worked out pretty well for us tonight, probably my go-to for all future drafts:

1) Divide everything by color (WUBRG), with lands, colorless, and gold in a sixth pile.
2) Take 20% of each color and shuffle it into the gold/colorless/land pile.
3) Distribute the mixed pile evenly into each colored pile, and shuffle those.
4) Take three cards from each pile to make your packs.

Distribution of colors was pretty even, no packs this time where it was like 8 red cards, no white cards, etc. This is much more time consuming but seems to definitely be worth it. Also makes it easy for me to sort through cube in spare time when I'm making changes.

Next, we had only 7 people able to stay for the entire thing, so we just created two teams of people alternating with me and the guy who had to dip as the 4th members on each team. Then we just went round-robin until people were tired/hungry so not everyone got to play a complete 4 matches. Some people used the leftover draft deck (It was Worldknit) in some matches.

My team ended up with both the 3-0 decks of the night, both of them were really solid based on what I saw:

Sultai

Naya Bellower

And a few of the other decks that were interesting included:

Spoiler

UB Maniac Mill (Me!)

Mardu Tokens Sacggro

Jeskai Life Matters

After plugging in the Mesmeric Orb and Lab Maniac last night, I was really excited after drafting the deck. I had actually P1P1'd Jace, Vryn's Prodigy ahead of JTMS to see if I would be able to push some reanimator deck with the new additions. I ended up with just Aetherling as a target and Exhume to bring it back early. I only got to play two matches because of our uneven number of players after the draft, but I had a blast with the deck. I had Aetherling as my initial win-con for UB control, but once I saw the Maniac late after drafting a lot of draw effects, I figured that it was worth a shot. I saw the Orb midway through that 3rd pack and I was sold. It was so much fun trying to figure out how to self-mill myself for the win and trying to navigate through my opponents on-board threats in the meantime. I won one game through careful play through the orb (leaving some lands untapped to avoid mill kill) before dropping Lab Maniac and using Compulsive Research for the win over a single turn. This was in the face of an Avenger of Zendikar who had just created an army that would kill me with another swing. I had to chump it by flashing in Snapcaster Mage while flashing back a Frantic Search to put me within self-mill range for the win. The other game, I had to bide my time with board wipes and counter spells until I reached a point where I could resolve and protect Aetherling before closing it out the following turn with an unblockable swing for 8.

In my 2nd match, I played against the Mardu Sacggro deck I posted earlier which quickly went to three games. I won the first game again through the self-mill combo, this time with Ob Nixilis Reignited being an amazing way to refill the hand, push me closer to the end of my deck, and controlling the board by killing off particularly annoying creatures. I lost the 2nd game to just a strong aggro curve while I fell behind with my early plays being answered one-for-one. Game 3 was going to go either way until I resolved a Mesmeric Orb after he had tapped out for 4 on his previous turn. He had a board with Brutal Hordechief (which he tapped out for) and a Young Pyromancer. All of a sudden he untapped and milled himself a Lingering Souls and Blood Artist into the graveyard, used Unearth to bring back the Artist, then flashbacked souls. I go from a manageable board to suddenly one where he has 7 bodies and a ton of reach. I couldn't draw into the 2nd black for my Damnation in hand so I was forced to used a Toxic Deluge paying 3 life to clear the board. With my two other creatures I end up being drained for 9. He finishes me off two turns later off a Rolling Earthquake for 5.

Loved the deck, check it out under the spoiler tag, and I urge everyone to run both Laboratory Maniac and Mesmeric Orb. Fantastic cards, would have completely overlooked the Orb if it weren't for Raveborn's post a while back. I can see both of these cards staying in my cube for the foreseeable future. Now for some other quick hits from other games:

• The Sultai player resolved Wretched Confluence once and said that it was one of his overperformers of the night. He said that the card was excellent that one time and would have been great throughout all of his matches. A ton of utility with this one, I urge you all to cube it.
• Sultai also pulled off the combo of Sylvan Safekeeper + Titania which was straight up nasty in a match against the Mardu Sacggro deck. He had to sac all of his lands to create enough blockers to survive at 1 and then crack back for lethal.
• I saw Meren buy back a card once and it immediately became a must-kill threat for the other player. There weren't many ways to abuse it and accumulate Experience counters (he told me that he never got a single one through his games) with the deck, but it was still just fine as a Raise Dead effect. Love how it played, excited to see it put to full use in a dedicated shell in the future.
• Woodland Bellower continues to be a solid card, I'm pretty happy with how it has performed to this point. I think you need 3-4 good targets for it to be entirely worth playing however. Still, it's pretty disgusting tutoring up a Knight of the Reliquary and suddenly having 9+ power on board, especially if you had any ramp at all.
• I was thinking about cutting Ajani's Pridemate but I think I might just have enough incidental lifegain spread throughout the cube at this point for it to be worth playing if a deck with a lifegain theme pops up in a draft. Sometimes it's a dorky 2/2, other times it's a synergy driven clock that people can't race. Seems like it's going to survive past my next few updates as we get new sets.
• Jeskai Life deck pulled off Soulfire + Blasphemous Act against an aggro deck after he had been punched down to like 3 life and that guy had flooded the board + flipped his Kytheon into a Gideon. Played right into the Act which gained 52 life. And then that was followed up by Venser, Shaper Savant bouncing the walker back to hand. It was amazing, the definition of living the dream.
• I think Ob Nixilis Reignited is just a fantastic card for many of our cubes. I had originally held back on adding him because I wanted to trim down on walkers, but after cutting down on others across my cube, I found that I could run him with no issues. I also like having XCC costs for cards higher up the curve to promote better building of mana bases and prioritization of fixing in draft and that's working out well. I think all but two of my current walkers are at XCC cost (aside from gold walkers) Ob Nix is not oppressive, he creates card advantage for you, and he's the perfect card for a control deck with black. He does a ton of work and was especially awesome for me in helping to get my deck low enough to Lab Maniac kill with a draw 3 spell. It was so sweet. I envision that he's going to remain in this cube for a long time to come.

 

[Ferritovore]

Loved the deck, check it out under the spoiler tag, and I urge everyone to run both Laboratory Maniac and Mesmeric Orb.

I definitely will, maybe ol' Ob too, I keep reading good things about him. Seems more fair than the various Jaces, more straightforward than the Lilianas, and more playable than the Chandras.

 

[Ferritovore]

Continuing to read, this really sounds like a fun cube. Very themey decks, plus monster-sized nuke spells, bellower! Too bad Bellower didn't get to use a Birthind Pod... podding your way up to bellower and then using the 3-drop to pod your way up the chain again would be so delightful.

Why do you have more than 360 cards? Do you sometimes draft 10 players?

 

[shamizy]

Continuing to read, this really sounds like a fun cube. Very themey decks, plus monster-sized nuke spells, bellower! Too bad Bellower didn't get to use a Birthind Pod... podding your way up to bellower and then using the 3-drop to pod your way up the chain again would be so delightful.

Why do you have more than 360 cards? Do you sometimes draft 10 players?

Thanks, my cube is pretty high power level, but I've looked to pursue more synergy based strategies and whatnot. The mana is good enough to consistently go 3 colors with many decks, but 2 color pairs offer bigger rewards and more explosive decks if you stick within and read the signals for a given archetype (RB Sac, BW Humans, etc.). You might splash a little for a card or two, but these synergy decks are usually two colored more often than anything. I like giving my drafters options though, so I've left a bunch of goodies for a bunch of different archetypes throughout the cube include Riptide favorites in Birthing Pod, Recursive Black Aggro, and I still have a fair amount of Lifegain support.

I have more than 360 because I don't like seeing the same exact archetypal decks spring up time and time again. In my first few drafts at 360 we would usually get a Pod deck, a black aggro deck, an RG beatdown deck, and 5 others. I didn't want to see these happen every draft, so I bumped it up to 400 to try out a few sweet cards that I didn't have room for to add some diversity to the pool. That worked out well, so I expended further into 420 so I could experiment with more themes (like Tezzeret, Agent of Bolas) and supplement/bleed those that already existed. This increase in size also let me try out more narrow cards (like Jeskai Ascendancy) that would have trouble in consistently finding homes in a 360 build, but could be a fun buildaround every few drafts at a larger size. I may increase to 450 in the future, but I think I've hit the sweet spot for a cube that has a ton of archetype support while still encouraging different builds from draft to draft.

 

[Ferritovore]

Wow, what a rebel!

 

[shamizy]

Just a few changes post GP Oakland and before the OGW prerelease, had a draft earlier in the week and I'll post up a report shortly. Here were the changes we made before the draft:

OUT:


IN:


I had Frost Walker as an option for early aggro in a blue based deck in addition to being a card that usually traded with another on the opponent's side, mostly just a stop-gap to fill in the early curve. It did alright, but I've been wanting to try out Ludevic's Test Subject for a while after reading fun things about it on the forum and I figured that I'd give it a shot here. I like the idea of a wall against a horde of 2/1s and then turning into a legitimate win-con in the late game if you end up top-decking it. A 13/13 with trample is nothing to scoff at.

Roast was an okay card, but I feel like I just want something that's more consistent. After looking over my list, there weren't a ton of creatures at 5+ toughness that were really all that scary for an Rx aggro deck to deal with that came down earlier. Exquisit hit the majority of the same targets, can also get fliers (which give ground-based aggro hell), and it can present late game reach as just burn to the face. I like Spell Mastery as a mechanic and I don't expect it to be relevant all that often, but being able to burn a control player out hiding behind a fistful of counterspells is incredibly rewarding.

I don't proxy anything in my cube and I really want to play GP LA in a few months so I bit the bullet and spent good chunks of the weekend at Oakland looking for deals on fetches that I was missing. Tarns are out of my price range for now, but I could justify picking up playsets of Misty and Catacombs after I sold a good chunk of stuff that was sitting in my binder. Finally got my Mistys and Catacombs for cube, will see just how much smoother fixing is in for the foreseeable future.

 

[shamizy]

Ran another draft earlier in the week, forgot to report back because of school and prerelease but I kept the decks intact. We went with our team round-robin thing again and had two 3-0 decks through the night:

Naya Midrange

4C Control

A couple of other decks that were crafted were:

Spoiler

UR A Wizard

Bant Lifegain (me!)

UB

The Naya deck was really really good and was piloted by one of the better players in our playgroup, every time I saw him play it he was usually in a dominant position for the match. The two 3-0 drafters obviously understood the value of good mana; they made it a priority to pick up the fixing when they saw it available. I played against the 4C control deck and it was one hell of a grind. He just answered most of my threats with burn and I had to play really conservatively just to force the G3. In G2 I was taking chip shots with a Resto Angel after blinking Venser to reset his biggest creature on the ground. I bided my time until he tapped low enough where I could safely use Become Immense and fly in for lethal. But then I lost G3 to almost infinite card advantage off a Keranos after I had been pressuring him in the early game. It was too much to overcome when I couldn't get rid of it.

I thought my deck was pretty sweet, though it was mostly just a pile of Bant stuff with a few lifegain synergies. Being able to pay 4-8 life extra and just draw a ton of cards off Sylvan Library is just so powerful. Archangel of Thune was just great all night long; made my army gigantic and it just held off just about everything in the air for a long while.

I had a ton of fun playing (and losing to) the UR Wizards deck. He tempo-d me out for a few turns with Harbinger of the Tides bouncing my dude, returning it to hand, then keeping it up again. The funniest sequence was when I was ready to start attacking with Lumbering Falls and then he used Stifle on my trigger. Okay. Try again the next turn? Snapcaster Mage back the Stifle on the trigger. What the actual fuck. He couldn't do it again in a later turn after I had flashed in my Resto and used Venser to bounce something relevant, but at some point he managed to bounce back most of my board. I managed to get in with a Lumbering Falls that had been pumped for +6/+6, dropping him to 1, but he followed up with a turn where he went with Ludevic's Test Subject, used Time Warp, then flipped it on the extra turn to swing and hit me for lethal. It was a pretty sweet play.

 

[shamizy]

Heh, funny that I saw Kirblinx's post earlier in the cube list thread (thanks for the shoutout!), thought that my list was out of sight out of mind after zero updates in like two months. This session was something we just decided on late last night once people came back from break. It's been a long while since the last cube I was able to run, not enough people were free to draft b/c of school and whatnot, but last day of Spring Break was today and we were able to get an 8-man going. Some really sweet decks from earlier, figure I'd write about them while I'm waiting for my laundry to finish up. The two decks that reached the finals today:

Little Abzan Combo

UB Grindfather

A couple of other decks that stood out from the draft included:

Spoiler

Jeskai Tempo (Me!)

Rakdos Reanimator

Mono-Green Ramp

Abzan Lifegain

Mono Red

The guy who built the Little Abzan deck is probably the best technical player among my friends and I think this is the 2nd time that he's 3-0ed a draft. In any case, his deck was ridiculously good, there were so many different angles for him to attack and even the potential of going off with an infinite combo! Lifegain cards just to push the archetype suck, but if you take a look at the deck list, most every card is justifiable in a regular deck (aside from like a Lone Missionary or something). I was really surprised when typing this up that he only played 15 lands, but his deck can aggressively mulligan and his creatures are really low curve so I guess it makes sense. It was really interesting seeing him pilot it and go from pressuring with early aggro to grinding out games late. Meren is honestly one hell of a card, such a great payoff card for certain archetypes that people are just really excited to play with.

I began my draft with a P1P1 Monastery Mentor because I wanted to keep myself open colorwise, then I was fed some sweet UW cards the next couple of picks and I picked up an Electrolyze like near the end of the pack. At this point I was thinking UW splash red, but the next couple of packs ended up giving me some great fixing and great cards that had red in them so I ended up going URW, very light white splash. I think my deck was really solid, it's just that I had some rough matchups. Mono-Red answered my dudes one for one or 2 for 1'd me with Arc Lightning to set me back. Way too aggro for me to deal with, it was just so much damage so quickly and I never really was able to pressure. Sure, I'd bounce guys here and there, but it was denying the inevitable more than anything. Then I played against the Abzan Lifegain deck and viewed the horror of Pridemate + Seeker of the Way + Brutal Hordechief on the field at the same time. And then Archangel of Thune plopped down the next turn. All the dudes ended up outpacing the Mizzium Mortars I drew into and there was just no way to deal with that flood. I did punish him the next game by just stringing together bounce creatures and effects and just pecking away at his life total. G3 wasn't kind to me with the draws and I kept a shaky hand with little action and many lands, then proceeded to brick for a number of turns before being overrun. Oh well.

I usually use my draft slot to try and force certain decks to see how archetypes work anyway (Lab Maniac and Grixis Dragons in the past come to mind) and I liked what I saw out of a potential Jeskai Tempo shell.

For the final round (Little Abzan vs. UB Grindfather), the first game was pretty back and forth with Abzan coming out on top. UB was answering dudes throughout the early game, but Meren stuck on the field later and just rebought guys and overwhelmed with value in the lategame. The 2nd game had a shaky keep from UB where they started off great with Thoughtseize (out the sideboard) into Hymn to Tourach which ripped away all the action for Abzan. But then they never drew a land again with three drops stuck in hand. It was pretty ridiculous, like I think it would have been ten straight draws with no lands when I took a look at his topdecks. If he had hit lands, probably would have been able to force a third game because he would have just ripped apart the Abzan hand with Liliana.

My two favorite decks that I saw today were Little Abzan and the Rakdos Reanimator. I only caught a glimpse of the Rakdos deck in action, but my friend told me that his entire goal was just to stick a fatty and bring it back, using Goblin Bombardment as plan B to just machine gun people down. The list is super sweet, I would have loved to play it. I think he might have been able to make it to the finals, but he had to dip early b/c of work. Excited to see how much better this kind of deck could be with SOI patches. Now for some quick hits/thoughts:

• As you'll notice, we didn't really have a chance to ULD, we had like 3 guys who needed to head out midway through the 2nd round.
• Cube is so dependent upon matchups, it's just crazy. Aside from one pile that a friend drafted, I think any of these decks could have been the 3-0. Mono-Green had the problem of being matched up against Rakdos and he tells me that Darkblast was MVP and killed like all of his dorks over two games which was hilarious to me. There was a nutty boardstate in some game I saw where Mono-Green began with Forest --> Exploration --> Forest --> Dork, then the 2nd turn he dropped two more lands and another dork. Followed it up with T3 Prime Time. It was pretty sweet. If we had ULD, I imagine that Wolf Run would have been an easy pick.
• I know there's reasonable dislike for Ajani's Pridemate because it's usually just a shitter, but I feel like every time I put it on the chopping block it ends up in one of these Lifegain decks and just justifies its inclusion by becoming an unstoppable killing machine. What a fucking tease.
• Gray Merchant of Asphodel is still an excellent finisher, I'm glad that I put in back in after adding in a few zombies in my last update. It's just such a great stabilizer and there's just something really fun with trying to fill the board with a bunch of symbols to maximize the drain. Also pushes people towards fewer colors in their given deck which is something I've been striving to push more after we had a glut of 3 color decks like every other draft in the past. Actively looking at XCC costs higher up the curve when possible has been great for this.
• Funny note on the Mono-Red deck, it had a sideboard plan of adding an Island or two, a Shivan Reef, and sticking in both Dack Fayden and the Splinter Twin + Pestermite combo to get people out of nowhere. He didn't get a chance to pull it off with the combo, but he did stick Fayden in a matchup where it stole Batterskull and was really important in winning the 2nd match.
• Little Abzan just had so many lines of play to it that it was a blast to watch in action. There's a potential infinite life combo with Sac Outlet + Anafenza + Finks, you can throw in Blood Artist or Zulaport to kill the opponent also, and you can also just go the old-fashioned aggro route. Champion of the Parish into two humans has always been a pretty decent start. One really cool play was lategame when he attacked with Carrion Feeder and Bloodsoaked Champion into an empty board, then post-combat he sacced and brought back Bloodsoaked with the Raid trigger like 4 times to grow the Carrion Feeder to 5/5.
• (EDIT) Forgot to add this really important tidbit from today: Karlov of the Ghost Council is a crazy good card if you've got a ton of lifegain effects going on. Like holy shit, I saw it exile two creatures in one game with no problems at all, all from incidental lifegain effects and guys dying. I hadn't seen it any draft pools since adding it in a few months ago, but I'm convinced that it's a great payoff card for anyone who focuses upon those lifegain synergies. Lifegain works guys, somehow we had TWO decks that had a reasonable amount of enablers to pull it off effectively.

All in all, good session of cube, wish everyone could have stayed till the end but it's tough to commit that much time. Hopefully I can get another session in this week and again after getting my hands on some SOI cards after prerelease weekend.

 

[sigh]

cool decks! I love seeing CoCo combo outside of modern How have you liked
?
I've been eyeing including her for awhile, but she seems a little slow sometimes? Does the utter end mode turn on a reasonable amount of times? Is it just a Disciple of Griselbrand+ without some dedicated lifegain support?

 

[shamizy]

cool decks! I love seeing CoCo combo outside of modern How have you liked
?
I've been eyeing including her for awhile, but she seems a little slow sometimes? Does the utter end mode turn on a reasonable amount of times? Is it just a Disciple of Griselbrand+ without some dedicated lifegain support?

This was the first draft where I've actually seen her in action, but she was very very impressive. The Abzan player who drafted her was actually able to fire it off twice in one turn during the late game, then brought back the fodder through Meren of Clan Nel Toth. It was pretty gross. To turn on that ability more often, you'll need many more instances of incidental lifegain sprinkled throughout the cube. Looking at my list, these are the main ways to gain life:



In the worst case, you end with a 2/3 for two that has deathtouch and represents a roadblock or a threat that can attack early without anything really standing it its way. I think she's just a great card overall that has pretty high upside in the late game if you decide to build around lifegain synergies. Also, I love having additional sac outlets for things like Abyssal Persecutor or any Threaten effects I might be running. I don't think she'll be leaving my cube anytime soon; she's one of my favorite cards from recent sets. Just so much play to it.

 

[sigh]

sounds pretty attractive to me! I could see saying buh-bye to Siege Rhino for her, to reduce the three color intensity and bring a card with lots of play into the fold. Honestly that's what excites me most about what you've said. So flexible, helped by incidental synergies, and can theoretically be a draft focus! I run about half that list of life gain, and some besides, and I could see focusing on them in a WB build for exactly the reasons you say. Neat!

 

[Kirblinx]

Sweet writeup Shamizy. You deserve the shoutout.

My only concern was how did the Mono-Red player feel about those 2 lifegain decks? Is that why he had the Splinter Twin combo in the board? It just seems like a complete and utter beating for them. Having 28% of your matchups being unfavourable from the start is a bit harsh.

Is this sort of like a meta-gaming thing? It can beat other decks fairly handily but gets crushed by lifegain?

I still have a personal hatred of Timely Reinforcements, due to it's back breaking nature against anything aggro. Just looking to hear your (and the pilots) thoughts on the matter. Wouldn't want him to feel like the deck is a trap.

 

[shamizy]

Sweet writeup Shamizy. You deserve the shoutout.

My only concern was how did the Mono-Red player feel about those 2 lifegain decks? Is that why he had the Splinter Twin combo in the board? It just seems like a complete and utter beating for them. Having 28% of your matchups being unfavourable from the start is a bit harsh.

Is this sort of like a meta-gaming thing? It can beat other decks fairly handily but gets crushed by lifegain?

I still have a personal hatred of Timely Reinforcements, due to it's back breaking nature against anything aggro. Just looking to hear your (and the pilots) thoughts on the matter. Wouldn't want him to feel like the deck is a trap.

After deckbuilding he was like shit, two lifegain decks. How do I even. He wasn't exactly Red Aggro so he had some outs and reach to deal with these decks; he actually beat the other Lifegain deck pretty handily. Red Aggro always has those fast starts that incremental lifegain can't really put a dent into, and the red deck had plenty of removal to clear away roadblocks whenever they would pop up. Grafted Wargear on an early 2 power guy represents an incredibly fast clock in most games that can't be chumped easily. Additionally, there doesn't seem to be a ton of interaction in the way of spot removal for either Lifegain deck so it worked out for the most part. I haven't yet seen lifegain to be especially oppressive in any draft and we have aggro decks assembled pretty frequently. The bigger issue for these decks ends up being like 3-4C midrange builds that just end up having huge value guys and access to so many answers.

Outpost Siege was actually a major card for him and gave him just enough card advantage to grind through matchups where he just couldn't aggro them out.

The Splinter Twin was just picked up on a whim I think because it looked fun and I mean you pretty much have to go for it if both of the pieces end up wheeling to you. It's just too sweet to pass up.

Aggro is pushed in my cube and applies tremendous pressure to many decks since so many people like to just try and draft 3 colors if they get the fixing and usually shock themselves down to like 15 or so in the process. Timely Reinforcements has been a decent hedge against them if you're some durdly control deck so it's a concession I've been willing to make. Sure, you'll have games where it just flips the game for one side, but I'm willing to have those every now and then. Recursive Black Aggro can also be a pain for certain decks to deal with and that cushion of extra life + bodies may sometimes be enough to buy time to dig for that out.

Additionally, I'm at 420 for my cube so Timely isn't in every single draft we run so I'm fine with the variance. I've never seen it be especially oppressive, just annoying in certain matchups. I think this is mostly due to there never being a pure burn deck because that would just get trounced handily. Most of the time burn is just extra reach to allow aggro to push through the final points of damage anyway.

 

[shamizy]

Well, finally got around to updating my cube with SOI stuff, here's the rundown:

OUT:



IN:



Very extensive changes here, most of the SOI cards are here because I just want to try out new things. I did end up having to relegate some of my favorites like Gideon Jura and UB Tezz to the sideboard to make room for other cards that I wanted to see in action. My drafters have liked the potential of combos being available to them every now and then and Splinter Twin was a nice addition, so I figured why not see what happens with Kiki-Jiki in my next go-around. As of right now you can infinite combo with 3 other cards in the cube and with 420 total cards, I don't imagine that that combo will come together all that often unless they can wheel Kiki or something. Another fun build-around is Cruel Ultimatum which I've had sitting in my binder for a long while now and figured fuck it, why not? Who doesn't love big splashy payoffs that just feel epic? The mana is good enough in the cube now that I can justify it and if someone wants to live the dream, I want to be the enabler. The best win-cons are those that you have to jump through hoops to enable, and the Ultimatum requires a commitment in deckbuilding and prioritizing fixing to make work. It's just always so much more fun when you're playing the game on an atypical axis compared to your opponent.

White Aggro has gotten a ton of support in this update with SOI goodies to help them get bigger after going wide and some evasion with Gryff's Boon. The more I read the card, the more I like the potential of it as a way to continuously apply pressure to your opponent once they've established a brick wall your dorky 2/1 attackers can't break through. After facing it in Limited in an aggressive R/W deck, I think it may be the real deal here.

I'm interested in changing the composition of the walkers in cube from mostly midrange enablers to push towards one end of the spectrum through either aggro support or as a controlly finisher. There will still be some available (Arlinn was too sweet to not sleeve up and play with), but I don't want to see midrangey planeswalker stalled boards as often as I have.

Finally, my top five SOI cards I can't wait to play with:

1. Tireless Tracker - I've gone into detail in some other forum post of how great this card can be in our fetch heavy environments and I'm convinced that it's going to be a major player for Green decks everywhere. This isn't a payoff card, but it's just such a sweet value engine that rewards you for doing things you'd be doing on the regular. The bane of every green ramp deck is spewing their hand on the field and getting completely wiped or having their threats dealt with one by one and then running out of gas. Tracker is capable of mitigating this by allowing you to refuel your hand anytime you have a two free mana and a clue token to crack. I've drafted the set twice now and Investigate has been one hell of a mechanic. I'm very excited to see it in play here. Bygone Bishop is another new card that is in a similar mold, I'd love to see it action performing a similar role for aggressive B/W decks.
2. The Gitrog Monster - This card is just one hell of an engine and one of the most fun cards I've seen in a while. Ramping this out early is a beating for your opponent, it draws you into gas, and it has wacky interactions with fetches and cycling lands. I'm a huge fan, left Meren in my EDH deck for now where she can chill as we hail the Hypnotoad. I might even put Dakmor Salvage in the ULD now to fuel some shenanigans. Maybe someone drafts Sultai Lab Man? GB Reanimator? A discard outlet like Oona's Prowler could lead to some really sweet decks.
3. Westvale Abbey - I swear to god that I saw this card in like 80% of my matches prerelease weekend. Every team we went up against in 2HG had one in their pool and played it, I shit you not. It creates a weird sub-game where you're worried about the potential of a flip into a finisher that you might just not be able to handle. It's a steep cost to get there, and you have the potential to get 6-for-1'd, but damn if it isn't sweet to pull off. I'm cool with giving decks that go wide an alternate win-con and a card that can just break open board stalls on the ground. Also, it was my prerelease foil and I want to play with somewhere other than my Teysa's Twos and Threes EDH deck.
4. Thing in the Ice - This is strange card to evaluate. I love wonky win conditions and this is sort of like a reverse Ludevic's Test Subject. It rewards you when you play it on curve into action spells, but is miserable as a late-game topdeck. Test Subject, on the other hand, is a fine topdeck where you can just dump mana into it and flip it ASAP. This one is also weird because the UR spellslinger builds usually feature Young Pyromancer and a bunch of tokens, but this has negative synergy with that. It is a very cool and different way to win, however, so I'm sure that it'll be fun.
5. Sin Prodder - This card is just awesome. It was trash in 2HG when we played it because of the format, but one-on-one it's just amazing. You don't want to play this if you still have crucial land drops to hit for your deck (because you're never getting one off the ability), but he can draw you into gas or just burn your opponent slowly. I think he's definitely at his best in a GR midrange deck where he's flipping 4's and 5's. It's even sweeter if you play the sub-game where you just hold back the burn in your hand till you whittle your opponent down to the point where you can just take them out in one big turn. I can't wait to play with this and watch my opponent cry.

My playgroup and I have sort of unofficially started cubing weekly over the weekend the last few weeks, mostly trying out my friend's black-centric cube and helping him to tweak it. If everyone is available again, this week we'll be putting my cube through the gauntlet. If that happens, I'll be back with a recap and report on all of the sweet new cards that were played. Thanks for reading!

 

[RavebornMuse]

As always, very happy to see an update to your list! It's one I find myself looking at pretty frequently as I'm gauging changes to my own list.

I do have a small question: why Vapor Snag over Compelling Deterrence? The latter is a mana more, but has wider applications, and potentially devastating utility in a deck that has some incidental zombies lying around. I'd consider it an especially desirable include along such things as Diregraf Colossus!

That aside, I'm gonna have to agree with you on Tireless Tracker; I completely misevaluated that little gem. I'm also happy to see Cruel Ultimatum show up; it's probably high time I give it another go, myself!

 

[shamizy]

As always, very happy to see an update to your list! It's one I find myself looking at pretty frequently as I'm gauging changes to my own list.

I do have a small question: why Vapor Snag over Compelling Deterrence? The latter is a mana more, but has wider applications, and potentially devastating utility in a deck that has some incidental zombies lying around. I'd consider it an especially desirable include along such things as Diregraf Colossus!

That aside, I'm gonna have to agree with you on Tireless Tracker; I completely misevaluated that little gem. I'm also happy to see Cruel Ultimatum show up; it's probably high time I give it another go, myself!

I've actually cut Vapor Snag from my list at some point in the last three weeks, I don't remember why or where but I haven't really missed it since. I think I just forgot what the swap was at this point, might have just been bringing back Time Warp because one of my drafters wanted to play with it. I wanted to give Compelling Deterrence a run, but as you can see I had a ton of updates this time around and couldn't get around to it. If we cube next Saturday, I'll give it a run.

I just don't know how appealing a Disperse is in my cube currently as you probably won't be going UB Zombies all that often to get the extra effect. There's just nothing at the moment to draw someone towards UB as the two color pair for a zombie-centric deck, that's much more common in RB where you get reach with burn and sacrifice shenanigans.

I'm actually going to have to see how powerful Colossus ends up being. There are a fair number of zombies in my black section and I don't want it to just end up being a value-town card that just runs away with games by flooding the board with bodies. We'll see what happens. I usually end up seeding my drafted pool with new cards to see them in action and I've got one drafter in particular who loves drafting the Gravecrawler decks so I'm sure it'll show up sometime.

 

[RavebornMuse]

I just don't know how appealing a Disperse is in my cube currently as you probably won't be going UB Zombies all that often to get the extra effect. There's just nothing at the moment to draw someone towards UB as the two color pair for a zombie-centric deck, that's much more common in RB where you get reach with burn and sacrifice shenanigans.

I'm actually going to have to see how powerful Colossus ends up being. There are a fair number of zombies in my black section and I don't want it to just end up being a value-town card that just runs away with games by flooding the board with bodies. We'll see what happens. I usually end up seeding my drafted pool with new cards to see them in action and I've got one drafter in particular who loves drafting the Gravecrawler decks so I'm sure it'll show up sometime.

Fair point about it being a Disperse a great deal of the time. I've probably got rose-tinted glasses for it after all the stupid blowouts it's enabled for me to manage in limited, and, coupled with my own lack of a "satisfying" theme (other than "control"), I'm probably underestimating the common-case scenario for the low chance of a blowout. I think it might appeal more for me because I've got 2 zombies already that are primarily control-style finishers and am considering adding one or two more. It's probably not that great in most lists, though. Probably won't be that great in mine, either, come to think of it...

I'm curious to hear how the Colossus does as well; he seems like he might be the necessary cog to push zombies as a soft sub-theme without being all that poisonous, and in my limited match-ups against it, it didn't seem too wacky. Looking forward to hearing how it goes!

 

[shamizy]

Had a 6-man draft today since a handful of friends were busy/out of town. We ended up going 5 packs of 11 which was probably one too many, but drafting is the funnest part, right? Everyone had a ton of playables at their disposal and we had some really really strong decks this time (spoiler: mine was not one of them). Because we had six and how matches ended up, we ended up with no 3-0 deck, but a handful of 2-1 decks. The three that were most impressive to me today were:

Cruel Control

Kiki-Pod

Sorin's Angels

The other three decks that were contructed today were:

Spoiler

Gitrog Glory (Me!)

Mono-Black Zombies

Naya Company

Among the decks we built today, the one that I enjoyed the most was the Cruel Ultimatum deck. I've had that card lying around in my binder ever since I first began designing my cube, but never got around to adding it even after I had fixed up the mana base in the last year. The discussion on build-arounds and interesting control cards led me to revisit it and include it this time and I couldn't be happier. It was a sweet card and it was really fun watching my friend pilot it and try to get there each time. I have no idea why he went with a 60 card deck, but it seemed to work out for him until the last round where he was overrun by Mono-Black Zombies. Ultimatum is an excellent buildaround, exciting to cast, and leads to some awesome stories and games. I think it's here to stay.

The Kiki-Pod deck was straight up a modern port featuring a handful of banned cards in that format. I was overrun immediately in my match and couldn't handle the matchup at all. It just went wide very quickly, had some disruption, and could pretty much always threaten a combo-kill out of nowhere. It was a really good deck with sweet synergies and lines of play and I was surprised that he had lost his first round match. But it made sense once I looked over the BW list; it was pretty much built to beat a deck like Kiki-Pod. Unless he could threaten the combo to pull it out, board wiping and exiling key pieces was enough to keep Pod in check.

I ended up going 0-3 with a Sultai pile that I really started forcing like mid-late pack 2 once I had picked up The Gitrog Monster and Life From the Loam. My big issue was that I just didn't have enough in the way of interaction and removal, a board wipe or two more pieces of spot removal would have gone a long way towards making it more competitive. I did assemble the engine in one game and I just spewed value with cycling lands and fetches and replaying the Loam over and over again. Would draft and force Gitrog again, will definitely prioritize removal and interaction more highly.

Quick hits!

• Collected Company decks are a very real thing, doubling up on them was a good choice two drafts ago and I'm glad to see it as a viable archetype. Just when I had thought that I had turned the corner in the match and could begin to stabilize or pressure, a Company refilled the board and allowed for my opponent to keep applying pressure to me.
• Usually the black aggro decks have white or red as a secondary color to help apply more pressure, but today's deck clearly showcased the power of just recursive attackers that just keep on applying pressure throughout a game. The reach provided by Geralf's Messenger and Gray Merchant of Asphodel were excellent and helped the pilot close out a number of games and completely flip boardstates. Brutal Hordechief continues to be an excellent card for black-based aggro by fulfilling the same role by extending the reach of the deck. Hellrider was a bit too powerful and caused massive lifeswings out of nowhere, but Hordechief seems to hit the sweet spot.
• Wretched Confluence is still a disgusting good value card with a ton of play to it. Not really a fan of the other confluences from that commander set, but this one has been consistently good and has been a very good card every time without being especially oppressive.
• I really really want to play with Cruel Ultimatum now after seeing the card in action. It's tough to get to that point, but its such a major payoff and completely flips all but the most lopsided of boardstates. In a different game, Ultimatum player actually managed to ultimate Tamiyo and with that Emblem Izzet Charm became a draw 2 spell with free buyback and Remand was equally disgusting. If it had better fixing I think he definitely could have played it at 40, might have had to go with 60 cards just because he couldn't draft the necessary fetches and lands to make it work easily.

Will be busy next weekend with other stuff and maybe Gameday, but we'll probably be cubing again the week afterwards. Hoping to get an 8 man and see some more of the new cards in action.

 

[shamizy]

Well, I finally got around to updating my Cube and making some sweeping changes after EMN was released. Too many changes to list out one by one, but I'll touch upon some of the major updates (with pictures and stuff for the lazy).

First of all, I increased the size of the cube from 420 to 450. I was running into an issue where I just didn't have enough slots for smaller archetypes that I wanted to support and also a problem with fixing. As much as we all love the Double Shock/Double Fetch manabase, that density of fixing at 360-420 was way too much. I started to just see a majority of full on 3 color decks through the drafts I ran and the best decks often weren't archetype driven, but just piles of goodstuff cards. I decided to change from a second cycle of Shocks to Allied BFZ lands/Enemy Pains. If there was an entire 10 land cycle from BFZ I would have just chosen to run that but we can't have nice things. Having your land unable to ETB untapped without two basics in play is a real cost when it comes to curving out and it helps to keep the goodstuff decks in check, which I am all for. I'm fine with a 4C goodstuff build happening every now and then if a drafter prioritizes their fixing, but if you can just luck your way into it based off an abundance of fixing it's just not good for the environment. Swapping a Farseek for a Rampant Growth also helped, and it allows for Wastes to actually be fetched up (more on this in a bit).

Nonbasic Land Hate



To help deal with the 4C goodstuff problem I had had, I looked more into various forms of Nonbasic land hate that could do some more work for me without being too narrow. Wasteland has long been the posterboy for this and I'm cool with bumping up from 3-4 with an increase of 30 more cards into the cube. Spreading Seas and Volcanic Offering were two cards that were on my radar from a while back that I was interesting in trying out. Offering is especially sweet being a dual threat at 5 mana to snipe down their best creature and some fixing without being completely busted. Finally, Thalia, Heretic Cathar was just an amazing addition from EMN. This is like everything I had been looking for in the last few months. A way to punish super greedy manabases, helps push Wx aggro forward, and comes on a reasonable 3/2 First Striking body. I'm really happy with these new options available.

Delirium



I have a Sidisi EDH deck that I really enjoy playing and working through the graveyard is just a ton of fun. I wanted to bring that back to my cube (and play with KTK Sidisi again), so I put in some more support here with cards that explicitly benefit from the Delirium requirements. With the addition of a number of newer loot/discard effects, I feel like it's easier than ever to get your 4 card types into the graveyard after EMN. To supplement this further, I've put in additional looting effects with the new Wharf Infiltrator, trying out an Oath of Jace (which I saw on camera for SCG last weekend and really liked), and even a swap of Disfigure into Dead Weight (that type diversity yo). Mindwrack Demon is an aggressively costed threat with a real drawback, but a 4/5 flampler is pretty big game in any deck looking to apply pressure. I can see it as a viable curve-topper in aggressive Bx decks as well where the hit yourself for 4 still hurts, but can be leverage more effectively. There is also a side benefit of providing even more support for a Laboratory Maniac fueled victory and I'm always looking for more of these. An added benefit of this theme is that there's a lot of splash support here for Reanimator decks as well.

Colorless



Oath of the Gatewatch was a pretty sweet set giving us cards that actually made a "Colorless Matters" theme available in cubes. The problem was that most of our cubes just couldn't support this via the maindeck because there were few ways to easily get that colorless mana (aside from a ULD or something). Jumping to 450 let me put in a cycle of painlands, Evolving Wilds and Terramorphic Expanse and a few other colorless producing sources (including Hedron Crawler) which I think should be enough for that splash. I still think Newzilek is a really cool card to play with, but there just weren't easy ways to cast it prior to now even if you put it into a Green based ramp shell. As such, it was left to being just a weird reanimator target that was kind of interesting but not really. I've had a lot of fun playing with Eldrazi in a BW Standard deck prior to GW Tokens being the scourge of the last Standard, and I hope to see them put in some work in future drafts.

Reanimator



With the releases of EMA and EMN over the last two months, I've been able to get my hands on enough creatures/spells to make a reanimator theme viable in my cube (finally!). As we all know, the biggest issue with reanimator is balancing it so that it isn't too busted and uninteractive. You do not want such narrow enablers that there is no competition for cards that make the archetype. For this to work, you need big threats that are worth casting on their own at a regular cost. Newmrakul was a godsend for this, providing us with a triple threat that is viable to cast on it's own for 8-9 mana, a cool card for ramp decks to power out, and a reanimation target that isn't just busted to hell. EMA gave me the Entombthat I've been wanting to add for a while and I finally got around to putting in another reanimator spell in Animate Dead with the bump to 450.

Aside from these new Archetypes that are now more viable, a handful of existing archetypes also got some cool toys to play with. These are some of my favorite new cards that I've added and looking forward to playing with in the next draft we do:



Feel free to give my cube a draft sometime, I'd love to see whatever decks you guys come up with and any suggestions/critiques you have.

 

[Dom Harvey]

tried forcing stuff that looked fun:

Spoiler

5c Bant to Light from CubeTutor.com

BGw Loam Stax from CubeTutor.com

WG Ramp from CubeTutor.com

RG Blitz from CubeTutor.com

 

[shamizy]

tried forcing stuff that looked fun:

Spoiler

5c Bant to Light from CubeTutor.com

BGw Loam Stax from CubeTutor.com

WG Ramp from CubeTutor.com

RG Blitz from CubeTutor.com

Thanks for drafting, I'm digging the Bant to Light and Stax builds. Setting up a Loam/Smokestack/Gitrog engine just looks disgusting to go up against, though it might be tamer than blinking a Blade Splicer or Avenger. It's kind of funny seeing Bellower in 3/4 of the decks you drafted.

 

[shamizy]

Well, I finally got some inspiration earlier this week and got around to changing around some stuff + adding Kaladesh cards. I've made way too many minor tweaks here and there to list out the individual card swaps (thanks for all the drafts this week!), but I might as well address how some of the themes I had mentioned back in July have worked out to this point.

Increasing to 450 (not a good idea)

I had thought that bumping the cube up by 30 cards wouldn't have that great of an effect, but I saw more and more of my archetypes just being diluted. It was getting difficult to draft synergistic builds with payoffs and incentive cards sometimes not showing up in the pool or just being picked up in more generic builds. That's a problem. It's nice to be able to play with all the new toys, and no one likes having to make cuts, but there is a clear size threshold to any given cube. This max threshold just gets higher and higher depending upon how much you have pumped up the power level. If someone were just running a power-max build, they're already sacrificing nuanced gameplay for raw power so synergistic builds likely aren't on the higher end of priorities. But I don't like that one bit. I've spent the better part of this week tinkering and tweaking my list with various cuts and inclusions to get myself back down to 420 and I think I've hit the sweet spot.

Additionally, fixing-wise I've decided to go back to double shock as the baseline. At 420 ALL the abundant fixing is no longer available in the 360/375 card pool so there's actual competition. I found the issue with going half Battlelands/Painlands was that the Painlands just weren't anywhere near as attractive in non-aggro builds. It got me thinking as to whether it was really worth the inclusion just to support a handful of colorless matters cards. It was not. I've gone back to double fetch/double duals using Battlelands when possible because I like that they reward 2 color decks with good fixing, but are not a major hindrance if someone still wants to go with 3 colors. And honestly, we usually fetch our duals tapped anyway unless we're playing a super aggro build or really need that 4th land for our play that turn. I just really want that cycle finished soon, I think it's excellent for most of our cubes.

So I've decided that 420 is just the perfect size for my cube. 360 had too many of the same dominant archetypes being drafted again and again, 405 had allowed me to expand upon themes and further support them, and 420 let me reach a sweet spot for size and variety that allowed for more diverse archetypes/themes.

Colorless Theme (Sort of works)



I loved the Smalldrazi when they came out and I really wanted to include them in my cube, but the issue was a lack of reliable colorless sources in the main cube. Then, like manna from heaven, came Aether Hub in Kaladesh and it was just the answer I'd been looking for. Also I was also too lazy to shell out for Tendo Ice Bridge when I had cooler stuff on my pickup list from KLD. Anyway, Displacer is the only heavy colorless commitment card if you really wanted to go deep with a bouncehouse theme, but I've found that just having 3 colorless producing sources (basically a light splash) was enough to run most of them without any issues.

In the midst of this, I also really thought about the presence of Wasteland in my cube. Wasteland is a powerful effect and an excellent tool to play police with against super greedy decks, but this comes with the caveat that you have minimal color requirement up your curve. This means that only aggressive decks can really leverage the full value the majority of the time. The issue I saw with this was that way too often, a WB or Rx Aggro deck would pick up a single copy and never get their hands on another one. This meant I couldn't count on it as a consistent source of colorless either for decks that needed this as an Eldrazi fixer in the main cube. The fix? I just moved all 3 copies into the ULD as a squadron pick that used up all your picks at once (since we do 3 rounds of snakedrafting around the table). I'm thinking of using this for other batches as well, or maybe a pick 2 out of 5 in the case of something like Artifact Lands.

So the Eldrazi colorless cards have all worked out, except for one:



Newzilek has a cool effect and I like the art, but this guy is just impossible to cast without super fast mana like in a powermax list. I tried to make it work a handful of times through draft but each time I ended up wondering whether it was really worth it. Nope. That is too steep a cost for that effect. The idea of Newzilek is great, but actually casting it is fucking brutal on yoru mana base (unless you luck out and draft a Hedron Archive) and not worth the effort. I never saw it cast in a draft, only once reanimated in a BR deck with looting and Exhume + Feldon, but it just wasn't that great.

Delirium (Completely viable and fucking sweet)

On the complete opposite end of the playability spectrum, we have this card:



I played the Temurge deck during EMN gameday and had a blast with it, Emrakul was one of the most fun cards I had played with in a long while. I knew I had to get it into the Cube at some point, it was just too fun to not have around. It's a legitimate reanimator target, a ramp finisher, and just a sweet payoff for any kind of graveyard centric build to work towards.

This led me to implementing Delirium as a subtheme with many more graveyard matters type cards. I have a Sidish EDH deck so I had been playing with a lot of the better Delirium cards for a while now and I had a pretty good idea of how to enable it, I just had to find the right multi-purpose cards for cube.

I went ahead and added some enablers in Grapple with the Past (Instant speed makes a huge difference in playability) and Edge of Autumn (which I found by scouring through some Riptide lists for inspiration). I brought back Boon Satyr for that sweet Enchantment Creature type line in the main cube, added a handful of extra discard effects (Noose Constrictor, Collective Brutality), and then remembered that now the BUG Artifact Lands actually are more useful through the ULD as cheap Delirium sources. Oh man, Baleful Strix (and any artifact creatures coming out of Kaladesh block) also supplement the Delirum theme! Dope.

As I was looking through lists for more enablers, I came across Gisa and Geralf in sigh's cube thread and realized that that was one of the perfect signals that I was missing. This card had been great in my EDH deck but I hadn't even considered it for cube since I was still pushing UB Tezz and generic UB Control as archetypes. However, that's just completely ignoring the fact that the siblings from Innistrad can just be a sweet engine unto themselves if you have enough zombies in your list. It really doesn't take a whole lot to reap great value out of them, even something as simple as rebuying Fleshbag Marauder can be pretty devastating on the right board. You know what's especially filthy? Replaying a Cryptbreaker and restarting a value train through the draw 1, lose 1 ability.

Having Delirium centered in UBG with Sidisi, Brood Tyrant flanked by the likes of The Gitrog Monster, Gisa and Geralf, and Mindwrack Demon and a number of self-mill helpers like Satyr Wayfinder and discard outlets made it a very real theme and one of the more interesting synergistic archetypes in my cube.

Spoiler: Check out some decks!

Sultai Graveyard from CubeTutor.com

G Delirium Pod from CubeTutor.com

BG Aggro from CubeTutor.com

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Whoa. This turned out longer than expected, wanted to write a little about the Grixis Artifacts archetype that I've been working on, but I'll save it for later.

 

[sigh]

Sweet write up! These are two of the archetypes I've been fiddling with myself. Basically reaching the same set of conclusions about as you, and have been using my painland cycle as a sorta flex slot, and break the cycle as desired. How have the "lesser" eldrazi worked out for you? The obligator, bearer, etc? I couldn't get people to go in on them, and barely get people to like the "better" offerings :/. It's definitely an iffy theme...

Glad to hear that the beauty that is G&G is being further explored . What's your opinion on how deep one has to go in terms of zombie offerings? I pushed a bit, adding stuff like Forgotten Creation. Do you think they require the extrain help, or are fine off of the major support like Fleshbag?

I haven't fully checked out your list in its newest stare, but there are definitely little openings where you can further help out Delirium if needed. The prime example I have is swapping in seal of removal and/or executioner's capsule for some other removal spell.

Hopefully later today I can get a better chance to check out your update and maybe give it a draft

 

[shamizy]

Sweet write up! These are two of the archetypes I've been fiddling with myself. Basically reaching the same set of conclusions about as you, and have been using my painland cycle as a sorta flex slot, and break the cycle as desired. How have the "lesser" eldrazi worked out for you? The obligator, bearer, etc? I couldn't get people to go in on them, and barely get people to like the "better" offerings :/. It's definitely an iffy theme...

The problem I had with the Painland cycle was that they just weren't appealing if you weren't especially aggressive or had like 3 of the Eldrazi in your build. I just never found myself wanting a Llanowar Wastes in a GB build unless I was hurting for fixing. Even then, having to ping yourself to be able to cast your cards really builds up over time. Of the 5 draft options available fixing wise (fetches, shocks, manlands, battlelands), Pains are by far the least appealing. It's just not an elegant enough solution to the problem. Two Aether Hub in the main and moving Wastelands to the ULD seem like the right solution here. If someone really needs the access to an actual Wastes mana, I figure that the ULD will correct the issue and greedier mana bases will just have to use an earlier pick on an Evolving Wilds or Terramorphic Expanse.

The lesser Eldrazi have been just fine. Bearer of Silence has the base case of Vampire Interloper, while the Obligator is passable as just a 3/1 hasty. I think the problem is that a lot of people get tunnel vision when drafting them thinking only of the colorless activation/cost. They should be judged without the colorless kicker before slotting into any deck, it's not worth it to mess up your base for that minimal payoff. It's better to just think of it as a bonus for the later game when you have more mana to spend.

Glad to hear that the beauty that is G&G is being further explored . What's your opinion on how deep one has to go in terms of zombie offerings? I pushed a bit, adding stuff like Forgotten Creation. Do you think they require the extrain help, or are fine off of the major support like Fleshbag?

The big thing with G&G is to just have enough relevant ETB effects or board impact with the cards you're bringing back. In my list, I've got these available:



The Gravecrawler package is more useful in aggressive lists (usually RB), but being able to restart the chain via recasting any of the others is fine. Cryptbreaker does blacks best impression of Heritage Druid with that card draw ability and allows you to further grind out your opponent once you're online with G&G. The Fleshbag, Lifebane and Skinrender are just powerful ETBs you can rebuy for extra value later in the game, also providing a body to trade with your opponent. The way I see it, you've basically given yourself access to a reuseable edict, a way to hate on any opponent with Green or White creatures, and a means of permanently shrinking and/or killing threats. I'd imagine being able to recast one or two things off a G&G in whatever game they find themselves in and that seems fine.

I didn't really see anything in blue that I could use to supplement the theme further. I'd imagine that slotting in a Gray Merchant of Asphodel would be a pretty sweet inclusion as a curve topper, especially if you can set up some loop where you sac to the Feeder then recast it to drain out your opponent.

I haven't fully checked out your list in its newest stare, but there are definitely little openings where you can further help out Delirium if needed. The prime example I have is swapping in seal of removal and/or executioner's capsule for some other removal spell.

Hopefully later today I can get a better chance to check out your update and maybe give it a draft

There are definitely ways to further Delirium, though I think the biggest help is just more artifact creatures (hoping for some nice smaller ones in Aether Revolt). They are the easiest inclusions into UB or BUG decks with a minimal mana cost, allow you to pivot into a heavier artifact centric UB or UBR build if you need to during a draft, and they are trivially easy to put into the grave via combat. Lands are also no issues with my double fetch base and a variety of looting and discard effects through BUG offerings.

The problem I have with the Seal is that I've never really been all that excited by Unsummon variants and I don't think it's really much of a payoff at my power level. Is someone in my draft pod really going to think that it's worth a pick with actual impact cards available? I don't think that's likely. Executioner's Capsule has the problem of being a Doom Blade variant that might just be dead in certain matchups. I've seen Malicious Affliction sit around dead in hands way too many times to really want to use those kind of removal spells in my cube.

But yeah, check out the list and let me know what you like. I think I've gotten in something like 25ish drafts this last week on Cubetutor through Draft Exchange and self-testing so I'm all for any suggestions/improvements.

 

[sigh]

The problem I had with the Painland cycle was that they just weren't appealing if you weren't especially aggressive or had like 3 of the Eldrazi in your build. I just never found myself wanting a Llanowar Wastes in a GB build unless I was hurting for fixing. Even then, having to ping yourself to be able to cast your cards really builds up over time. Of the 5 draft options available fixing wise (fetches, shocks, manlands, battlelands), Pains are by far the least appealing. It's just not an elegant enough solution to the problem. Two Aether Hub in the main and moving Wastelands to the ULD seem like the right solution here. If someone really needs the access to an actual Wastes mana, I figure that the ULD will correct the issue and greedier mana bases will just have to use an earlier pick on an Evolving Wilds or Terramorphic Expanse.

I think the painlands are a very elegant solution, but require the proper power level. Painlands proved themselves for the past while in standard (even in control decks), but again, power level appropriate. For the higher power level, the truly good cycle are the filterlands. Being able to fix from C to DD is sweet, and they've still got that . The ULD seems like a good outlet for costs, in any case. The spell lands are a great source of there.

The lesser Eldrazi have been just fine. Bearer of Silence has the base case of Vampire Interloper, while the Obligator is passable as just a 3/1 hasty. I think the problem is that a lot of people get tunnel vision when drafting them thinking only of the colorless activation/cost. They should be judged without the colorless kicker before slotting into any deck, it's not worth it to mess up your base for that minimal payoff. It's better to just think of it as a bonus for the later game when you have more mana to spend.

I hope the players realize all that. They might not do what they should do, and will end up doing what they think they should do. Does that problem ever materialize in drafting? This may be largely playgroup dependent, but it definitely angled me towards only including a select couple.

The big thing with G&G is to just have enough relevant ETB effects or board impact with the cards you're bringing back. In my list, I've got these available:



The Gravecrawler package is more useful in aggressive lists (usually RB), but being able to restart the chain via recasting any of the others is fine. Cryptbreaker does blacks best impression of Heritage Druid with that card draw ability and allows you to further grind out your opponent once you're online with G&G. The Fleshbag, Lifebane and Skinrender are just powerful ETBs you can rebuy for extra value later in the game, also providing a body to trade with your opponent. The way I see it, you've basically given yourself access to a reuseable edict, a way to hate on any opponent with Green or White creatures, and a means of permanently shrinking and/or killing threats. I'd imagine being able to recast one or two things off a G&G in whatever game they find themselves in and that seems fine.

I didn't really see anything in blue that I could use to supplement the theme further. I'd imagine that slotting in a Gray Merchant of Asphodel would be a pretty sweet inclusion as a curve topper, especially if you can set up some loop where you sac to the Feeder then recast it to drain out your opponent.

I've found the same thing to be true. My first guinea pig tester felt like they got sufficient value off of even one Skinrender recursion. I might look into using the Forgotten Creation's spot for something more needed. Maybe. And every week Cryptbreaker jumps at me from the shadows, throwing more tricks on it's ever growing pile.

The problem I have with the Seal is that I've never really been all that excited by Unsummon variants and I don't think it's really much of a payoff at my power level. Is someone in my draft pod really going to think that it's worth a pick with actual impact cards available? I don't think that's likely. Executioner's Capsule has the problem of being a Doom Blade variant that might just be dead in certain matchups. I've seen Malicious Affliction sit around dead in hands way too many times to really want to use those kind of removal spells in my cube.

Silly me, I meant

I've found a couple of spots where it probably could go. Unfortunately, it's got the nonblack clause, so it's probably out.