General Small archetype packages

[Erik Twice]

Earlier this morning I noticed I had added a small archetype in my cube without meaning to. And it made me think of small archetype packages that can be implemented in most cubes without radical changes. Do you have any that surprised you?

BERSERKERS

 

[Rasmus Källqvist]

So is the recipe here double striker + some (big) buff effect?

 

[Nanonox]

Popular and easy to include packages I've found around here:

Green GY Lands




I've found that if you support a GY theme in green at all, you already want to play the following as enablers and cheap draw smoothers which conveniently dump lands in the GY.



After that you can splash more land stuff in other colors (Cataclysm, Wildfire, Braids, Cabal Minion, The Gitrog Monster)

Red Cheat



All you need is a few artifact fatties and you are good to go!

Red +1/+1 Counters



This is a small package inside of red's aggressive decks. It allows you to grow wide and then tall. I added the Mimic since most of these cards make goblins!

You can widen the theme to a more midrange deck with cards like (careful with the persist combo and +1/+1 counter enablers).

 

[Erik Twice]

So is the recipe here double striker + some (big) buff effect?

Yes. So it may not actually be a full archetype as much as it is a package, but it's fun. Interestingly enough, I got to it naturally. Some Riptiders actually support the archetype in a more directed manner.

 

[Nanonox]

I was thinking about tying artifacts to green a bit more and thought about this little package





Green already plays nice with +1/+1 counters so the Sentry and Crawler makes sense, getting you beefy 4/4 or 5/5 for 4 mana. The Sentry also adds some needed removal to green. Golos can help with landfall (Tireless Tracker, Evolution Sage, ...) and with the fixing you get free activations easily.

The Dryad can be fun with other lands matter cards (the usual suspects Crucible of Worlds, Courser of Kruphix, Oracle of Mul Daya) or if you want to get fancy, it also fits into an enchantment theme with Setessan Champion (more +1/+1 counters!), Eidolon of Blossoms and Archon of Sun's Grace as payoffs.

Are there any other enablers or payoffs I could add here? I dislike Prismatic Omen since it does nothing by itself.

 

[Erik Twice]

I like Golos and I like Crystalline Crawler, but I don't like the other cards very much. I think playing an extra land every turn is not very useful at 2G and Chromatic Lantern is a bit too dull for me. Chamber Sentry is very clunky and very mana-intensive too. But I do think something similar can work.

 

[Onderzeeboot]

I like Golos and I like Crystalline Crawler, but I don't like the other cards very much. I think playing an extra land every turn is not very useful at 2G and Chromatic Lantern is a bit too dull for me. Chamber Sentry is very clunky and very mana-intensive too. But I do think something similar can work.

The main appeal of the Dryad for this archetype from Nanonox’s perspective is the Chromatic Lantern part, I think, not the extra land drop.

 

[Onderzeeboot]

If you run customs Nanonox, this might appeal to you for your small green 5cc artifact package.

 

[Nanonox]

I don't run customs, but seeing that thread does make me hesitate, you guys come up with some sweet cards!

The Sentry is really pushing it, I agree

However as Onder pointed out the appeal of the Dryad is the 5 color fixing for this particular package. I wouldn't play it for just that part of the card though. As I said however, it can do work in an enchantment archetype, it is great in the land archetype as well since you can abuse Crucible of Worlds/Ramunap Excavator/Life from the Loam and it has synergy with Courser of Kruphix and/or Oracle of Mul Daya. It is also a solid 2/4 for 3 mana. It can help these slower decks stabilize.

And finally it can help enable some more random cards like Cabal Coffers, Defile, Vedalken Shackles, Rofellos, Llanowar Emissary, Woodland Wanderer, Koth of the Hammer, Valakut, the Molten Pinnacle, Emeria, the Sky Ruin (ok fine, some of these don't need the help!).

Each part of the card is pretty mediocre, but if you support enough of the themes it enables, it becomes somewhat of a roleplayer.

 

[Brad]

Credit to inscho's peasant cube for inspiration:

These two cards can grab any of the Splicers or any Clone as common ones that are mid-costed. It can also grab anything with Graft or Modular (including Arcbound Overseer). Urbis Protector, Trostani's Summoner, Triskelion, Phantom Nishoba, Noosegraf Mob, Multani, Yavimaya's Avatar are some other cool ones from a quick scryfall search for cmc>5. I'm sure there's more.

Optional, takes the package out of white and makes it bigger. Although one of these is very good anyways:

 

[Velrun]

Which one is?

I might be out of touch with Commander or whichever cube format you’re refering to.

 

[Brad]

Which one is?

I might be out of touch with Commander or whichever cube format you’re refering to.

Lol the 3/2 first strike for 3 with recursion is quite good in a lot of places.

 

[Brad]

You could add a decent little mill theme for just a handful of cards. Sorted approximately best to worst, spanning a variety of power levels, keeping general usefulness in mind. I've excluded things that are entirely poisonous.

The order isn't open to debate, this list ended up longer than anticipated. I am open to things that didn't show up in my scryfall search being added. Very Cryptic Command is higher in usefulness, but got tacked onto the end because I didn't know how to call up the right version other than to use the img file.

Reanimation that can target their yard falls into this list, as well.

Tech?

 

[Rasmus Källqvist]

This is a card that saw play out of the sideboard in that UW 'never gonna die' control deck from RTR-THS standard that also played elixir of immortality.
Could maybe work well as a bridge between the self-mill and the aggressive mill?

 

[japahn]

How do you run a mill deck that can be interacted with? Nephalia Drownyard was such GRBS in my cube (probably due to cube speed).

 

[Rasmus Källqvist]

How do you run a mill deck that can be interacted with? Nephalia Drownyard was such GRBS in my cube (probably due to cube speed).

I guess you don't really except race it? I'd imagine one of the strengths of running mill is that you attack from another angle. When it comes to land win cons that's tricky, since it's hard to interact with outside of dedicated cards. I might stay away from that particular card.

 

[Brad]

I think the top of the list isn't fun, except maybe Mesmeric Orb. Thief is probably ok because it dies to every red card.

I think the real fun would be like the two mill 3 counters as Cancel alternatives, Oblivion Sower or Mindbreaker/Mindcrusher as a multipurpose threat. Overwhelmed Apprentice as a weak filter spell. Winds of Rebuke, Thought Scour, and Broken Ambitions are all totally decent cards on their own. Grisly Spectacle mills a little for 1.5 mana more than it's worth and Patient Rebuilding is also about 1.5 mana more than the slightly improved Phyrexian Arena that it represents. Wall of Lost Thoughts blocks well.

My point is that the deck would be made up of counterspells, bounce/kill, draw, and finishers. It's a normal control deck with an extra angle to it if you're at a power level where switching some of these cards over makes sense. You can lean into the theme as much or as little as you want. Most of those cards just mill a few extra, but that's fine if your control deck is pushing the game to turn 10+.

I think Drownyard and the Ashioks are for quite a high power level, if they wanted. I didn't even include the Jace with 0: Mill 10 because it's not really a theme, it's just two activations, maybe three.

 

[Rasmus Källqvist]

Yeah mill jace is just awful. I'd agree that you want mill probably as a sub theme to a "real" deck. I find blink to be a similar kind of deal, they're fun interactions for a control deck that might otherwise be a bit too dry.

 

[sigh]

Mill in all colors it's possible has evolved into almost entirely self-mill in my cube. Much more fun for both people involved. If one were to have a "mill" deck I would stick to the mesmeric orb as a cool one-off thing that someone can find and get creative with.

 

[Velrun]

How do you run a mill deck that can be interacted with? Nephalia Drownyard was such GRBS in my cube (probably due to cube speed).

There is always the two Field of Ruins. One from Ixalan and one from Theros Beyond Death. Great cards to have in a cube because they can never Strip Mine or Wasteland a semi mana screwed player out of a game before it even begins.

There is also Blood Sun but that card I would advice against having in a cube because it doesn’t offer much and is restricted to one color.

 

[Onderzeeboot]

There is also Blood Sun but that card I would advice against having in a cube because it doesn’t offer much and is restricted to one color.

 

[Velrun]

Even worse than Wasteland. It literally pretends to be a Back to Basics but it cantrips and can’t even combo with anything like Blood Sun comboes with Lotus Field.

 

[Onderzeeboot]

Even worse than Wasteland. It literally pretends to be a Back to Basics but it cantrips and can’t even combo with anything like Blood Sun comboes with Lotus Field.

It is, however, colorless, unlike Blood Sun, and a mana cheaper! It's not particularly good (though it does gain a lot of value if you run a Utility Land Draft), but neither is Blood Sun

 

[Mondschwein]

Blood Sun doesn't combo with Lotus Field, it just doesn't affect it.

 

[Onderzeeboot]

Blood Sun doesn't combo with Lotus Field, it just doesn't affect it.

There was a deck build around the combo in Modern, I believe. With Blood Sun out, you no longer have to sacrifice two lands when Lotus Field enters the battlefield and it enters the battlefield untapped!