Card/Deck Single Card Spotlight

Onderzeeboot

Ecstatic Orb
Mazirek is super sweet if you run enough sacrifice effects. You really need to be able to draft enough of them to be worth it though. You aren't going to be happy with the card if you can't realistically trigger it more than once. Stuff like fetch lands (or even Evolving Wilds from the ULD) and Eldrazi Scion / Spawn producers are perfect because they allow you to sacrifice stuff without eating away at the creature base you are trying to buff with Mazirek.
 
Had some 3v3 team drafting last night (writeup coming soon!) and got to see this guy shine in an RG Monsters Build:



RG Monsters [Ryan]











I saw it mostly used early as Fauna Shaman fodder by a drafter who then recurred it with Fetches, Wastelands, or Gitrog Monster triggers. I saw it on the field as a 5/5 and 6/6 both times I tuned in to view the matches that were happening. Being able to trigger off your opponents lands hitting the grave is also a sweet additional bonus that came into play in one game that I was watching (where it was then recurred and recast as a 5/5). Just a nice value creature with the base case usually being a 4/4 Trampler for 4.

Also, I'm making some swaps for my next cube session, need some info on how any of these have worked out for you guys:

 

Onderzeeboot

Ecstatic Orb
I can only vouch for Pyromancer's Goggles. It's a silly card, but going off with it is too funny :) It's really good with cards like Tormenting Voice (which becomes discard 1, draw 4) and obviously with X-spells like Red Sun's Zenith, but any red spell will generally be sweet when copied. It's best in a deck that can use the acceleration on turn six+, so you typically want to avoid it if it's the most expensive card in your deck, but if you have stuff like Dragonlord Atarka to ramp into as well as a number of red spells, it's a sweet, sweet card. One deck where it doesn't matter if it's the most expensive card is UR spells, where your blue draw will nab you more red spells to copy and board the value train.
 
Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite is pretty nutso; she was a first-pick bomb that was played in every deck that could play her over here, and flipped games in short order, even in my super-powerful first cube iteration that was sickeningly powermaxed. I think adding her to anything short of a powermax list is probably a mistake made to bait players into white, when the issues with the color are likely built into the foundation and just need a wholesale revisiting.

Sheoldred, Whispering One is quite potent, but she's significantly more fair than Ellie. If you support fast reanimator, she's quite absurd, but I think your environment can probably contain her well enough if you pack a solid removal suite. If you're looking for a non-ETB piece of beef for {G}{B} ramp decks/reanimator decks, she's your gal. Super sweet design.

Avalanche Riders is extremely unfun and too easily degenerate, and I strongly caution against his inclusion, because he's miserable to play against. There's too much combo potential with sac outlets and recursion, allowing him to shut an opponent out of games in a consistent, boring fashion. The fact that he self-bins means it takes very little work to break him. I ran him for a while, and he was always either "quite strong" or "game-ruining". I think I can attribute the worst match of my cube's long and sordid past to spamming Rider to wipe out my opponent's lands. I hate, hate, hate that card.

On the totally opposite end of the spectrum, Pyromancer's Goggles is fantastic, and leads to a lot of memorable games. It was very successful in my stronger list as an exciting reason to play Not-Aggro in red, and was a highly-picked buildaround that never felt boring or unfair. I recommend an absolute minimum of 23 targets in a 360 (scale that up to whatever size you cube at) to see it consistently maindecked; dip too far below that, and it's just not going to get played often in any moderately powerful environment due to opportunity cost. You can cheat by running some multicolor spells that touch red, of course, and that's really the best move to push up your instant/sorcery counts for it. If you got this route, you'd want to center those in one or two splash colors for maximum effectiveness; I think it works great for a Grixis spells angle, with something like Izzet Charm, Electrolyze, Kolaghan's Command, and Fire Covenant/Terminate in the multi section. Of course, you could also focus on a Jeskai angle instead, leaning on Enlightened Tutor to get it out of the deck a little more frequently, with Boros Charm and Lightning Helix as signposts and flexible tools that other decks would also like to have.

The other two I have no experience with in cube, but Crackling Doom looks really boring and kind of an easy wheel to greedy control players, who are probably fed enough goodies already.
 
I really like Avalanche Riders for aggressive decks, but it can be oppressive if you are heavily reliant on bounce lands for fixing, have too many blink/flicker/recursive effects, and/or your meta is slower.

I concur with Raveborn about Elesh and Sheoldred. Elesh is a complete bomb and should only be in very high powered cubes. Sheoldred will ruin games if you have fast reanimator going, but it's otherwise a bit narrow and probably not going to be a problem (it is pretty high power though). Goggles looks super narrow to me, but I can see how it might be a fun build around. I don't care for shard/wedge gold cards as they fit in literally one deck, so they really have to be first pickable awesome. Crackling Doom is not that IMO.
 


Someone sell me on this. How hard is it to support? Can this just be something tutorable that wins a long game (and is a gray ogre otherwise)? Or does it need more infrastructure than that? Cards like this are very hard to evaluate and need to be played.
 
Had some 3v3 team drafting last night (writeup coming soon!) and got to see this guy shine in an RG Monsters Build:



RG Monsters [Ryan]











I saw it mostly used early as Fauna Shaman fodder by a drafter who then recurred it with Fetches, Wastelands, or Gitrog Monster triggers. I saw it on the field as a 5/5 and 6/6 both times I tuned in to view the matches that were happening. Being able to trigger off your opponents lands hitting the grave is also a sweet additional bonus that came into play in one game that I was watching (where it was then recurred and recast as a 5/5). Just a nice value creature with the base case usually being a 4/4 Trampler for 4.

Also, I'm making some swaps for my next cube session, need some info on how any of these have worked out for you guys:

Also, you haven't lived until you have cast Cruel Ultimatum with Pyromancer's Goggles :)

OMG! :)

Have you actually managed to fit Cruel into a cube? What's your secret?
 
As someone who also runs Cruel, my secret is that I put the sleeve on the card and throw it in the box. Thankfully my box has plenty of room so fitting it hasn't been a problem.

(But seriously: It's a fun card, my drafters (read: me) actively want to draft it, and I run Dream Halls with which it's a GREAT card. I'll happily make concessions if the card is good enough and it's wanted.)
 

Onderzeeboot

Ecstatic Orb
My secret is I support only five shards, and you get a free triland with every three color card you draft (there's three in my 450 cube per shard). So, if you pick Cruel Ultimatum, you also get a Crumbling Necropolis for free. It has been a great incentive for people to pick up three color cards and play them.

I suspect my drafters would still pick Cruel Ultimatum if the rest of my cube was mono white though :)
 
My secret is I support only five shards, and you get a free triland with every three color card you draft (there's three in my 450 cube per shard). So, if you pick Cruel Ultimatum, you also get a Crumbling Necropolis for free. It has been a great incentive for people to pick up three color cards and play them.

I suspect my drafters would still pick Cruel Ultimatum if the rest of my cube was mono white though :)

Awesome! I've been thinking exactly the same but I already have sooo many picks where the drafter gets more than one card. I'm feeling like I'm overextending the stay if I also do this with 10 Shards/Khans. Perhaps going for half is better!

Do you support the five Alara Shards?
Do you keep the same pattern when it comes to Guilds or do you support all 10?
 

Onderzeeboot

Ecstatic Orb
Awesome! I've been thinking exactly the same but I already have sooo many picks where the drafter gets more than one card. I'm feeling like I'm overextending the stay if I also do this with 10 Shards/Khans. Perhaps going for half is better!

Do you support the five Alara Shards?
Do you keep the same pattern when it comes to Guilds or do you support all 10?
Nope. I run a {W}{B}{U}{R}{G} color wheel in my cube, supporting Orzhov, Dimir, Izzet, Gruul and Selesnya. Consequently, the supported shards are Esper, Grixis, Temur, Naya and Abzan (i.e. the shards where two of the supported color pairs overlap).
 
I actually used to *love* Genesis; we loved it so much that my brother, whose cube we always played, had CWilson do an alter of one to be one of the costumes Peter Gabriel wore during his tenure in the band Genesis, except as a monster-version.

However, it's just a bit too extremely slow for cubes now except ones that are catered to a much-lower power level. I feel like cubes don't really need slow-value cards, especially ones that literally only serve that purpose.
 
Genesis is still good IMO. You need a lot of mana though and smaller ETB utility dudes to really break it. Paying 2G + 2B each turn for boneshedder is still very much worth your time. Shedder kills something, chumps to buy you time, then kills something else. Really hard to get past that sort of repeatable value. Genesis is the original planeswalker.

Genesis gets really dumb when you pair it with mana engines. Mirari's Wake with Genesis in the yard is just pain filthy.

High powered cubes are probably too fast and efficient now. But anything not redlining can still get a lot of value out of Genesis in slower midrange/control rock style decks. Might be a tad narrow if you aren't focused on graveyard synergies in green, but honestly this card is one of the reason I love cube so much. As soon as this stops working in a list I'm running I know I took a wrong turn with my cube design. Cards like this are what cube is about for me. I can't conceive of a cube I could build and get enjoyment out of it that wouldn't have this card in the pool and have it be good in a dedicated shell.
 

Onderzeeboot

Ecstatic Orb
I actually used to *love* Genesis; we loved it so much that my brother, whose cube we always played, had CWilson do an alter of one to be one of the costumes Peter Gabriel wore during his tenure in the band Genesis, except as a monster-version.

However, it's just a bit too extremely slow for cubes now except ones that are catered to a much-lower power level. I feel like cubes don't really need slow-value cards, especially ones that literally only serve that purpose.

That completely depends on how you build your cube though, doesn't it? Genesis certainly isn't going to win the fight against the Wurmcoil Engines and Path to Exiles of this world, but those aren't mandatory, and certainly not mandatory for a good Magic experience. If you like Genesis so much, why not build a cube where it can shine? It's not like you have to forsake modern cards either, as my cube still fields almost 100 cards from Kaladesh block and over 30 from Amonkhet, and Genesis still made the finals!
 
That completely depends on how you build your cube though, doesn't it? Genesis certainly isn't going to win the fight against the Wurmcoil Engines and Path to Exiles of this world, but those aren't mandatory, and certainly not mandatory for a good Magic experience. If you like Genesis so much, why not build a cube where it can shine? It's not like you have to forsake modern cards either, as my cube still fields almost 100 cards from Kaladesh block and over 30 from Amonkhet, and Genesis still made the finals!


Cause I like Path to Exile and Wurmcoil way better :p
 
No shame in that. Power cubing can be a lot of fun. Most of us probably started with that kind of cube. Many never want to play anything else (an entire forum is dedicated to that way of cubing).

Only problem I see is that with each set Wizard's releases, it pushes the power level higher and higher in the no-holds-barred style cubes. And as critical mass points are reached, you start losing things. Go back to 2010, and Genesis is in basically every power max cube with tales of how it out valued a control deck and is vital to Gx midrange health. Now the average power/efficiency level of cards in cube are so high, there's very little incentive to jump through the hoops to get some of these old school synergy engines online. Genesis has to be discarded somehow and then you need a free 2G each turn to get something back and then you need mana to cast it. It's all a bit tedious compared to options you have now. Why not just run a bunch of way-over-the-curve threats and kill your opponent outright? Or run single card engines that are the equivalent of ordering a happy meal? Want a Golgari graveyard recursion engine? Run Meren. Set it and forget it like the showtime rotisserie. Play dudes. Play Meren. Get dudes back. Simple.

That's where cube is going. More and more in that direction of easy-mode value. Power cube (talking P9 cubes) will likely remain more resilient to this problem because no matter how many above curve value dudes get printed, Wizards isn't making stuff that competes with moxen / recall / library etc. So that level of degeneracy will likely always trump however efficient and powerful the average cube card gets. It's the unpowered (yet still high powered) rare lists that are going to turn into aimless piles of good stuff.
 
@ahdabans, that's kind of why I love power cubing, is that I don't have to struggle with the choices a lot of cube owners here do. I maintained an unpowered list and it was a real burden to try to figure out what worked and what didn't and why. With power cubes it's either it works or it doesn't based on the inherent requirements of the format. My free time is sparse and I already spend so much of it on magic that I can't imagine spending more trying to curate the lists like you guys do, especially when I find a lot of the complaints that come up here that lead to these design choices (variance, mindless games, etc) are really in the minority of my experiences with the format.

Also, I hope no one feels like I'm shitting on anybody's parade. I've played with a lot of cubes and I love lower powered cubes as much as I love powered cubes. I just know what I like and can be a little snarky about it, but it's in good fun. (If you add enough smilies to anything, it makes everything better! :) :) :) :) :) :) )
 
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