General Subthemes at High Power Levels

Karn Cuberated

Karn Cuberated

In order to add some extra texture to my decks I'm looking for some subthemes/packages of cards that create bridges between archetypes and are playable at Legacy/Vintage power level. A couple of examples:
Lands & Value
Gives your decks an interesting way of generating value and goes into any Green deck, but some cards pull you in the GBx direction.
<any fetch-/cycle-/canopy-/sacrificeable land>
Affinity Pod
An archetype spawned by the intersection between Birthing Pod and "artifact.dec" archetypes.
White Weenie Recursion
A way to give your white decks more resilience against removal and gain some value of ETB triggers.
Basically: https://riptidelab.com/forum/threads/subtheme-weenie-recursion.3233/

Do you guys have any other examples of such groups of cards?
 
Nanonox

Nanonox

+1/+1 Counters
In addition to the payoffs, sprinkle in a few cards that get counters in those colors (Champion of the Parish, Mikaeus, the Lunarch, Nadir Kraken, Verdurous Gearhulk, Nissa, Voice of Zendikar,...).


In line with Birthing Pod, I like an ETB/search package in green. All cards are playable on their own, but form a nice toolbox when combined.


5 color package
Fits with the counters one (Crawler), with your land package (Golos fetching Wasteland for example and Dryad allowing more land drops) and takes up minimal slots. Could also add Kenrith, the Returned King.

 
Karn Cuberated

Karn Cuberated

I have been experimenting with +1/+1 counters for quite some time, and found that the theme is kind of subpar to the other archetypes I run, which is a pity. I find that payoffs are not really powerful/wide enough to cube, at least in my list.
Not a big fan of rainbow-ish 5c decks, but that could be fun, I guess. Good point on Golos finding smart lands for the land package! I think, we also could stretch the land theme's claws into the aggro shell:

Definitely going to test the Advocate; not sure about Geopede and Lynx. Geopede seems to be inconsistent, even though I'm on double fetches and goind to add a set (or two) of tapped mirage fetch-lands into my Utility Land Draft section. Both Lynx and Geopede provide the flavor of the old Modern 4c Zoo deck, but I'm not sure I'm fine with breaking singleton for Lynxes, and cubing only one seems not enough.
Also not really willing to go as far as Adventuring Gear, tbh.
Another cute subtheme:
Persist Combo

A 20000/20000 Carrion Feeder/20 damage from Goblin Bombardment to the opp's face on the spot. I cube the listed sac-outlets, but I'm not sure Redcap and Clique are cubeable these days. Puppeteer Clique was a lot of fun when I cubed it, though.
 
Erik Twice

Erik Twice

I tried to make Pod Artifacts a thing, but it just hasn't. I run the cards, there's just not a real crossover between, say, Birthing Pod and Tezzeret.
 
Karn Cuberated

Karn Cuberated

Erik Twice said:
I tried to make Pod Artifacts a thing, but it just hasn't. I run the cards, there's just not a real crossover between, say, Birthing Pod and Tezzeret.
Click to expand...

The greediest of the greediest decks in the history of my cube, but it has 3-0'd the tournament and was very fun to pilot:
Karn Cuberated said:

3-0 Urza Pod from CubeTutor.com










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I don't think every card in your Pod deck should be a Pod target (unless you run 3+ Brithing Pods in your deck?), so you can run some walkers alongside. The synergy I see is having Birthing Pod in the deck allows you to hit creatures like Whirler Rogue, Pia and Kiran etc. more consistently, and thus, more commonly have a critical mass of artifacts for Tezz AoB. Tezzeret also finds you the Pod itself, and, if necessary, you can turn your Pod into a 5/5, though that makes him more vuilnerable to removal.
 
Karn Cuberated

Karn Cuberated

Seems like Shardless Agent could fit the TOL theme, but my UG decks are either Ramp whose 1-cmc dorks make the cascade pretty bad, or tempo decks whose counterspells do the same. I forgot we're building a theme which must be able to fix those problems
Some time ago I thought about implementing the Miracles theme, but it turned out to be quite hard to find the proper quality of balanced and more or less consisted Miracle cards
 
Karn Cuberated

Karn Cuberated

Oh wow, this is just what we need for the TOL schemes AND it's also a tutor which fits the theme Nanonox suggested:

Not sure if I want to add another planeswalker though. Not worried about any strict quotas, but I might be nearing the limit where they're too plentiful.
 
sigh

sigh

If you don't want the walker, this is a decently high-powered creature option of that same effect:
 
shamizy

shamizy

Karn Cuberated said:
Oh wow, this is just what we need for the TOL schemes AND it's also a tutor which fits the theme Nanonox suggested:

Not sure if I want to add another planeswalker though. Not worried about any strict quotas, but I might be nearing the limit where they're too plentiful.
Click to expand...


This definitely gets there power-wise, but it's up to you whether you'd want to track ability counters in paper. I'm all for it in digital due to easier tracking, but I'm never running any of those Ikoria ability counter cards in my paper cube.
 
shamizy

shamizy

At a higher power level for subthemes to work you need individual cards that have enough "density" to point your drafters towards cards that synergize with them, but are still powerful enough to be worth picking up by themselves. Your subtheme(s) manifest as you're able to build additional value off the supplementary pieces around them, but the individual cards still need to be strong enough as a standalone to hold up without additional support. That's a tough spot to hit if you're into building synergistic designs but want to play at a higher power level. Thankfully we seem to get one or two of these a year nowadays (though mostly in gold cards), so there are more archetype building opportunities with less narrow cards than in the past.

Some of my favorites include:

 
Karn Cuberated

Karn Cuberated

Absolutely agree, that's how I try to pick the cards in this case. I run the upper half of your list and have just added The Gitrog boi (gal?).
Is Kiki/Twin combo worth running? It's not a sbutheme on its own, but can be a fun finisher for URx decks and also criss-crosses with Birthing Pod, giving us a sweet old-school Modern reference.
 
shamizy

shamizy

I like Kiki a bit more but not really a fan of either in Cube nowadays. Kiki has more interactions with other cards being a creature, but it's just a very all-in strategy in Cube.

The biggest problem with Kiki decks from my experience is that pretty much every time you draft it in U/R, even if it wasn't your primary gameplan, you just end up being pushed into playing the combo. It's happened with my drafters many times and I've been tempted into it a handful of times. Being able to live the dream of the combo is nice, but on the flipside you might have just been able to assemble a really sweet U/R Spellslinger or Artifacts deck if you just stayed the course.

You think it'll be an alternative finisher by giving your U/R deck a different way to win, but in reality your synergistic U/R deck is now just trying to play Turbo Kiki with card filtering to assemble the combo. And if you don't get there? You're pretty much playing a mediocre deck. Every time. To maximize more of my slots and lead to less feelbads, I just ended up removing him from my Cube at some point and haven't really missed him. Cool card, but it ends up being parasitic most of the time.
 
Erik Twice

Erik Twice

Karn Cuberated said:
Is Kiki/Twin combo worth running? It's not a sbutheme on its own, but can be a fun finisher for URx decks and also criss-crosses with Birthing Pod, giving us a sweet old-school Modern reference.
Click to expand...
In my experience, the combo just takes what could be a fun, interactive game of Magic and turns it into "well, I drew the combo, GG".

I'm tempted to run The Gritog Monster but it just seems way too strong for me.
 
Jason Waddell

Jason Waddell

Administrator
Staff member
Karn Cuberated said:
Absolutely agree, that's how I try to pick the cards in this case. I run the upper half of your list and have just added The Gitrog boi (gal?).
Is Kiki/Twin combo worth running? It's not a sbutheme on its own, but can be a fun finisher for URx decks and also criss-crosses with Birthing Pod, giving us a sweet old-school Modern reference.
Click to expand...
I tested all the Kiki/twin/pod stuff in my cube and I hated it. Way too easy to assemble for it's payoff, and basically nobody but the person assembling it had a lot of interest in putting the combo pieces in their 40.
 
Karn Cuberated

Karn Cuberated

shamizy said:
...you might have just been able to assemble a really sweet U/R Spellslinger or Artifacts deck...
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Speaking of, I might want to add more U/R Artifacts support into my list. The interesting cards I see in many people's lists are Daretti, Scrap Savant and Goblin Welder. What can you recur with them, if you do not aim for cheating Sundering Titans and Inkwell Leviathans into play? I see a Duplicant and a Scuttling Doom Engine in your list, but are they playable outside of the artifacts deck?
Saheeli, Sublime Artificer seems like another cute piece of interaction with artifacts and potentially ties together "The Artifacts" and "The Spells" shells.
 
shamizy

shamizy

Yeah, they're definitely playable in other decks, but they're not the most exciting picks. I wish there were more exciting 4-6 CMC artifact creatures that readily slotted into U/R artifacts, but there just aren't too many great options out there. That would be the sweet spot for cross archetype inclusion. The only real longstanding high cmc all-star is Myr Battlesphere who still holds up nowadays. Once you go up to Inkwell Leviathan and Sundering Titan, they're just too big to be worth casting in other decks unless you're either turbo ramp or cheating them into play. I'm not a big fan of having dead cards in my draft pool so I stay away from those kind of offerings. I'd much rather have mediocre playables like Doom Engine and Duplicant that other decks might just end up playing than stone unplayables that no one would want. Especially if it's something niche.

You don't really need to be going all-in on the Welder reanimate big dude plan for it to be worth it. Even bringing back something innocuous like a Hollow One early (which you can also cast for cheap after a Daretti Activation) is decent. Skysovereign, Consul Flagship isn't a bad target either. I've had it in and out of my cube over the years and it's always been a pretty solid performer.
 
sigh

sigh


are pretty fun targets that both help the deck naturally and constrain themselves closer to the deck via color.
 
shamizy

shamizy

sigh said:

are pretty fun targets that both help the deck naturally and constrain themselves closer to the deck via color.
Click to expand...

Torrential is a great card but Combustible was meh in practice for years in my list. It just wasn't all that interesting to my drafters or even to me when I'd try going for the U/R Artifacts deck. Also the problem with Torrential is that it's more a U/x control finisher than something you'd want in a dedicated U/R Artifacts shell in my cube. There just aren't that many great target to flashback unless you managed to draft just generically decent U/R spells to fill out your deck that weren't sniped by the table. It's definitely where you want to be with bodies, but there's a good chance that someone else will have snapped it up for a completely different archetype.

I guess what I'm dreaming of is more in the line of a Siege-Gang Commander artifact variant or an Angel of Invention in the right colors.
 
Dom Harvey

Dom Harvey

Contributor


This card is really really good... but how egregious is it in practice? If I do want to give Welder stuff a final shot I may have to grasp the nettle at some point
 
Nanonox

Nanonox

If you like combos (in line with the persist combo post), you could try out this package




Triskelion is actually decent in the Welder/Daretti deck and gives some color pairs like UG some needed removal. It also fits with blink in white if you support that.
There is also



As a recursion engine. It can be a top end for more controlling decks or cheated into play with Welder. The fact that you get the creature back immediately makes it playable IMO.

Edit:
In regards to Wurmcoil Engine, the first is fine, but if it is cloned or recurred it gets stupid fast. I hate that it singlehandedly stomps on aggro decks. Pass for me even if it does everything I want from an artifact (minus the lifelink I guess).
 
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