Slovakattack's Innistrad/Horror Throwback Cube

[GiftsForgiven]

Hi guys! So, I had this idea kicking around ever since SOI was spoiled. I love the high-gothic setting of Innistrad, and the wacky draft style it promoted. So, I decided to make a cube once all was said and spoilt! There are a few conditions that this cube is being built under.

• The cube must contain only cards from the dual Innistrad blocks (or cards that are incredibly flavorful.)
• The entire cube must be foil.
• Each Legendary creature that has multiple cards over both blocks may only appear once. (with one exception.)
• There should be a good degree of 'fun, wacky' draft cards (triskaidekaphobia, homicidal seclusion, Laboratory Maniac, etc.) and the format should allow for cool things to happen (i.e, not be so streamlined and punishing that anything other than 'straight aggro' or 'straight control' would get immediately blown out.)

The cube list is HERE.

The cube is currently in the process of being built. I know what the rule is about posting unfinished cubes, but the nature of the second condition means that I'd really like to get some feedback on my list before throwing dangerous amounts of money at it. The cube currently needs 6 cuts.

While I am not breaking singleton on the cube, Innistrad had multiple draft archetypes that required copies of a single specific card to function. For these reasons, when a player drafts either burning vengeance or spider spawning, they may take up to two additional copies of the card from the box, after the draft portion is over. It's something that I am experimenting with, and if you have any suggestions for what other cards would work great with this system, or about the system in general, I'd love to hear them!

The archetypes are as follows:

U/W: Spirits/soft blink
U/R: Spells matter/burning vengeance
U/G: Clues/flash tempo
U/B: Zombies/mill/Some madness/Homicidal Seclusion?
B/R: Madness/Vampires/Sacrifice
B/W: Tokens/Reanimator
B/G: Delirium/Spider Spawning/Sacrifice
G/W: Humans/aggro
G/R: Aggro/Werewolves
R/W: Tokens/aggro

Current worries: G/B Delirium might be too weak of a mechanic, straight aggro might be too strong.

Cards I really want to include but can't find room for: Invisible stalker, bloodgift demon.

Any suggestions of cards/cuts or archetype shifts would be greatly appreciated! I'd love some opinions from people who are more experienced cube builders than I on the matter. Thank you again for your assistance!

 

[Mauricio Barriga]

Hi, first i want to say that your cube is looking good. I think it just needs some fine tuning and playtesting. Original and new Innistrad are really cool sets.

Just gonna throw my two cents, i made an innistrad cube a while ago and did lots of testing. Found out that some things don't work so well in real life cube drafts. I'm just gonna list some cards and give a general review on some points that i've seen on my own drafts. So first, some cards:

1) Homicidal seclusion usually gets last picked and it rarely ends in the final 40. It puts too many restraints on your gameplay and is a dead draw most of the time. You should ask yourself ¿Which decks want this card?
2)Endless ranks of the dead tends to be too oppresive or do nothing. It creates too much variance (non-games or dead draw), which is not cool most of the times. I have found that not interactive "binary" cards lead to unfun games.
3) Dearly departed is seldom used in the humans deck, because it needs to get to the graveyard fast to generate value and that deck usually doesn's have efficient ways of doing it. For the spirit decks, there are better options.
4) Avacyn and Griselbrand only work for reanimator, they are uncastable most of the times. Very low pick rate for this guys on drafts (unless you support reanimator heavily and efficiently) because they only work for one deck (since there is not a super ramp archetype to play them)
5) Wharf infiltrator: in a low power cube its super oppresive if not answered right away.
6) Havengeful runebinder: usually led to unfun games once it resolved and wast killed right away.
7) laboratory maniac: this guy can be really cool but requires lot of support, like Mirror-Mad Phantasm and the like. Otherwise its not so bad as a bear, but wouldnt you prefer to give this slot to something more versatile?
8) skirdag high priest: This card never ever gets to use its ability. It requires too many conditions and is too easy to disrupt.
9) Invisible stalker AKA the least interactive creature from recent history. Not a really fun card.

Now, general review:

1) For G/B, delirium should support itself over the graveyard matter and self mill archetypes (overlapping with blue as enabler).
2) For archetypes like Burning vengeance and Spider Spawning you need to break singleton, otherwise you can't build your deck around them (at least not at 360 size). you shuld try to place the extra copies in the pool, otherwise you kill the risk-reward trade-off during draft. It becomes too easy and "safe" to go for this decks. Also, this guys would end with a bigger pool of cards and additional deck building possibilities that might give them an "unfair" edge.
3) Im not sure if you have enough ways to interact with enchantments/artifacts. You should try to have ways to destroy/answer them.
4) You have too many slots for multicolor cards and too little mana fixing. This leads to a lot of useless cards during drafting because its "too expensive" to pick multicolor cards, so they get last picked. Think that multicolor cards are useful for less decks than mono color cards, more so when the fixing is just not there.
5) You should check some act of aggresion type cards to pair with your emerge mechanics. You could throw some other sac outlets to the mix. It was really common in innistrad to cast act of treason and then sac the creature for more value after combat.
6) Be careful with foils, they tend to warp a lot, even when double sleeved (even more if you live in a high humidity weather)
7) Too many "fun/wacky" archetypes and you end up with a combo cube or too many narrow cards that dont go in more than one deck. This might kill the drafting experience. Try to find a balance.

I'll leave you the link for my innistrad cube, maybe you can get ideas for cards/archetypes.

http://www.cubetutor.com/visualspoiler/39261

Also, you might wanna check some of those design articles about innistrad mechanics and archetypes. There are tons of them and can be pretty enlightening.

Keep up the good work!

 

[GiftsForgiven]

Hi, first i want to say that your cube is looking good. I think it just needs some fine tuning and playtesting. Original and new Innistrad are really cool sets.

Just gonna throw my two cents, i made an innistrad cube a while ago and did lots of testing. Found out that some things don't work so well in real life cube drafts. I'm just gonna list some cards and give a general review on some points that i've seen on my own drafts. So first, some cards:

1) Homicidal seclusion usually gets last picked and it rarely ends in the final 40. It puts too many restraints on your gameplay and is a dead draw most of the time. You should ask yourself ¿Which decks want this card?
2)Endless ranks of the dead tends to be too oppresive or do nothing. It creates too much variance (non-games or dead draw), which is not cool most of the times. I have found that not interactive "binary" cards lead to unfun games.
3) Dearly departed is seldom used in the humans deck, because it needs to get to the graveyard fast to generate value and that deck usually doesn's have efficient ways of doing it. For the spirit decks, there are better options.
4) Avacyn and Griselbrand only work for reanimator, they are uncastable most of the times. Very low pick rate for this guys on drafts (unless you support reanimator heavily and efficiently) because they only work for one deck (since there is not a super ramp archetype to play them)
5) Wharf infiltrator: in a low power cube its super oppresive if not answered right away.
6) Havengeful runebinder: usually led to unfun games once it resolved and wast killed right away.
7) laboratory maniac: this guy can be really cool but requires lot of support, like Mirror-Mad Phantasm and the like. Otherwise its not so bad as a bear, but wouldnt you prefer to give this slot to something more versatile?
8) skirdag high priest: This card never ever gets to use its ability. It requires too many conditions and is too easy to disrupt.
9) Invisible stalker AKA the least interactive creature from recent history. Not a really fun card.

Now, general review:

1) For G/B, delirium should support itself over the graveyard matter and self mill archetypes (overlapping with blue as enabler).
2) For archetypes like Burning vengeance and Spider Spawning you need to break singleton, otherwise you can't build your deck around them (at least not at 360 size). you shuld try to place the extra copies in the pool, otherwise you kill the risk-reward trade-off during draft. It becomes too easy and "safe" to go for this decks. Also, this guys would end with a bigger pool of cards and additional deck building possibilities that might give them an "unfair" edge.
3) Im not sure if you have enough ways to interact with enchantments/artifacts. You should try to have ways to destroy/answer them.
4) You have too many slots for multicolor cards and too little mana fixing. This leads to a lot of useless cards during drafting because its "too expensive" to pick multicolor cards, so they get last picked. Think that multicolor cards are useful for less decks than mono color cards, more so when the fixing is just not there.
5) You should check some act of aggresion type cards to pair with your emerge mechanics. You could throw some other sac outlets to the mix. It was really common in innistrad to cast act of treason and then sac the creature for more value after combat.
6) Be careful with foils, they tend to warp a lot, even when double sleeved (even more if you live in a high humidity weather)
7) Too many "fun/wacky" archetypes and you end up with a combo cube or too many narrow cards that dont go in more than one deck. This might kill the drafting experience. Try to find a balance.

I'll leave you the link for my innistrad cube, maybe you can get ideas for cards/archetypes.

http://www.cubetutor.com/visualspoiler/39261

Also, you might wanna check some of those design articles about innistrad mechanics and archetypes. There are tons of them and can be pretty enlightening.

Keep up the good work!

Thank you so much for your feedback! It's a lot to process, and I'm gonna need a little time to go through it. I just wanted to let you know of my immediate appreciation!