Card/Deck Supporting latent tribal.

[Laz]

As cubes approach a critical mass of generally strong cards which just happen to come from the same tribe, adding cards to support that tribe can add an interesting dynamic to the draft. In most typical cubes, this tends to happen with Humans, and we have seen supporting this tribe can be done fairly simply with just a few cards, usually:


Are there other tribes that have awesome supporting cards? Any tribes with a density of strong cards worth supporting? Elementals maybe?

Self-interest disclaimer: In the Scuttlemutt cube, I am looking to support Goblins/Elves and maybe Elementals. I don't know what cards can be used to support these. Elvish Archdruid maybe?

 

[negativeview]

Elvish Archdruid is good for mana, but not particularly good as a global pump in my opinion. It pumps the tribe that isn't particularly good at attacking and I'm probably using mainly for mana.

I like Azami, Lady of Scrolls if you already have a decent number of wizards. Maybe Patron Wizard, though I've heard that card called unfun many times.

 

[Alfonzo Bonzo]

Is always something I want to jam in but never make room for. Should be good with enough tribal?

 

[negativeview]

I wasn't aware of that card. A second lord and a token generator make me like it more than Archdruid. I'm not sure how many lords (and by lord here I mean things encouraging you to play more elves, not necessarily buffers) you'd want, but I think it's might be more than two.

 

[CML]

Is always something I want to jam in but never make room for. Should be good with enough tribal?

Well, considering most of us aren't doing the Bloodline Keeper thing ...

The failures of Goblins and Vampires over here make me think that only Humans and Zombies will ever make the cut

 

[Jason Waddell]

I don't know about Goblins, but Vampires are probably just a card or two away from being there.

 

[CML]

There are a number of Goblins per the Goblins thread that everyone loves, but then after that you're hard-pressed to find someone who wants to draft Krenko or Goblin Chieftain. The nice thing about Mayor and Necromancer is that they're very close to being good on their own

 

[Jonas]

Imperious perfect was in my first cube version, but then the helpful people over at mtgs told me that it was crap, so I put it out. Now I have a lot less elves, so I don't think it would have as much impact anymore.

 

[Laz]

I think negativeview has a good point. Wizards are not a difficult tribe to support in most cubes (probably because the 'Wizard' type line usually means interesting text, which cube designers love). Elves and Goblins are almost certainly not going to be worth supporting in most cubes.

For Wizards, I think Azami is a nice touch, and I would add Voidmage Prodigy to the list of 'decent on its own, good tribal incentive' cards. Appropriately enough, Riptide Laboratory as a utility land works too.

As for the elves, Elvish Vanguard is so close to Champion of the Parish in design, but too old to get the push it needed...

 

[Jason Waddell]

RipLab gets taken from the utility draft more often than not here. Turns out all the Wizards have sweet ETB abilities.

 

[negativeview]

I don't know why it always surprises me to learn that Magic sites/podcasts/everything are named after cards I didn't know about. I thought Limited Resources was just talking about resources for limited players and couldn't possibly be a card ntil recently. Crazy Magic players...

(that's a sweet land by the way, I love it now that I know it exists)

 

[CML]

I think negativeview has a good point. Wizards are not a difficult tribe to support in most cubes (probably because the 'Wizard' type line usually means interesting text, which cube designers love). Elves and Goblins are almost certainly not going to be worth supporting in most cubes.

For Wizards, I think Azami is a nice touch, and I would add Voidmage Prodigy to the list of 'decent on its own, good tribal incentive' cards. Appropriately enough, Riptide Laboratory as a utility land works too.

As for the elves, Elvish Vanguard is so close to Champion of the Parish in design, but too old to get the push it needed...

Eh, I disagree with those card evaluations, Azami and Voidmage Prodigy seem god-awful to me unless we're in a very low-power environment, and a big upshot of this thread is that running bad creatures for tribal themes, even a few, doesn't work well. Maybe tribal is best in these nerfed kinds of environments, i.e. C or C/U cubes (has anyone ever tried to make an "only uncommons" Cube? probably most interesting as a thought experiment) but then them dudes is rares

 

[Eric Chan]

Imperious Perfect is more than fine over here in my lower-powered environment, without any other explicit Elf support. I just see her as a 2/2 token maker, and if she happens to pump your random mana dorks, then you've gone and Exploited Some Synergies.

I guess she's a little embarrassing if you run all the good army-in-a-can cards. But since I don't, she's actually one of the better token producers in my list. So I suppose the context is important.

 

[Jason Waddell]

The other day somebody podded Reveillark into Sun Titan, returning Huntmaster of the Fells, Eternal Witness and Blade Splicer and I wanted to kill myself. Thank goodness he didn't have Seige-Gang around.

 

[FlowerSunRain]

Fungus is my favorite tribe and I'd love for them to be cubable, but I even I will not invest in the weight of custom rules/cards/errata to make it work. I sort of hate how they make cards that are cool but literally don't have a single format where they are seriously playable.

 

[Chris Taylor]

Fungus is my favorite tribe and I'd love for them to be cubable, but I even I will not invest in the weight of custom rules/cards/errata to make it work. I sort of hate how they make cards that are cool but literally don't have a single format where they are seriously playable.

Technically kitchen table is a format. I think that's their fallback.

 

[FlowerSunRain]

I take that last statement back, we thought up an errata that probably makes Fungus cubable, off to development!

 

[CML]

The other day somebody podded Reveillark into Sun Titan, returning Huntmaster of the Fells, Eternal Witness and Blade Splicer and I wanted to kill myself. Thank goodness he didn't have Seige-Gang around.

Yeah that guy can put you out of your misery

Reveillark is pretty gross eh. I've had it in my Cube all along but it's more fun when you do degenerate stuff like that if some other guy's Baneslayer looks stupid