The Black Cube

Brad · Jun 30, 2020

Enchantments
Looking at enchantments. Again, seeking to increase the density of enchantments while having a only handful of narrow payoffs.

Looks easy to move a lot of the removal to white enchantments.
The black enchantment creatures are mostly great.
Green doesn't look at good as I expected.
Probably put it in BWgu.
Gonna think on it.

blacksmithy · Jun 30, 2020

just drafted the cube and built a fun looking mono B pile.
i agree that enchantments are a good theme for this cube to include, and i think black has the best enchantment “payoffs” for a cube environment. black enchantments in general also support the devotion theme, and many go well into the stax package. so they’re not necessarily narrow.
i would avoid stuff like Sigil of the Empty Throne in favor of more broad payoffs like Aphemia. Kind of like the “when you cast an artifact spell” trap that the cube artificer decks often fall into, where you’d almost always, at least in cube, rather have “sacrifice an artifact for cookies,” “target artifact you control gets a cookie,” and so on.

Brad · Jun 30, 2020

blacksmithy said:
just drafted the cube and built a fun looking mono B pile.
i agree that enchantments are a good theme for this cube to include, and i think black has the best enchantment “payoffs” for a cube environment. black enchantments in general also support the devotion theme, and many go well into the stax package. so they’re not necessarily narrow.
i would avoid stuff like Sigil of the Empty Throne in favor of more broad payoffs like Aphemia. Kind of like the “when you cast an artifact spell” trap that the cube artificer decks often fall into, where you’d almost always, at least in cube, rather have “sacrifice an artifact for cookies,” “target artifact you control gets a cookie,” and so on.

Yeah, I'm just making a list of stuff I could use to reference later but documenting it here. I'm liking Starfield of Nyx as a narrow one right now because it's a unique reanimation effect that's going to be more reliable than Sigil. CMC 3 or less is also desirable for the Zur the Enchanter deck.

Black being one of the main colors for both artifacts and enchantments is hopefully going to add some good options to the cube once I figure it out.

I feel like everyone drafts mono B. I think the bots probably don't get what to take lol.

blacksmithy · Jun 30, 2020

a few i don’t see on the above list, that i personally like:

Lampad of Death’s Vigil
Alseid of Life’s Bounty

I do the occasional 2HG cube session with four players, and the Guardian and Coinsmith were straight sauce in that format alongside a control shell.

Brad · Jul 1, 2020

Coinsmtih I can see coming in if enchantments pans out and life gain gets more support.
Grim's too weak for me.
I worry how much value Arasta will generate. Seems like often too much.
Brain Maggot I considered but I'm really not sure.
Maybe Spinner is alright. Looks like a pay off but it's still a 2/3 for 2 at worst with a semi useful effect.
Lampad's too weak.
Have similar cards to Alseid already, so I skipped it. Could cut it if life gain comes in.

blacksmithy · Jul 1, 2020

One guy in my group really likes the discard-stax playstyle, so maggot has extra value for me, but i wouldn’t run him in, say, my core 180. if you’ve ever played an artifact or just straight aggro deck with Tidehollow Sculler, it’s pretty much exactly the same feeling.

Brad · Jul 8, 2020

I added some ninjas and a few, mostly blue, creatures that are or can be hard to block.

I also did v1 of the enchantments update.

Gonna do some drafts to look for anything that feels out of place, feel free to join in.

Brad · Jul 9, 2020

I'm cutting these for now, but I wanted to note them here because they may be good later and I want to be sure there's a reminder for me somewhere

These all have the potential to shift your draft focus without being overbearing, which I like, but I need a higher density of the keywords.

Brad · Jul 13, 2020

Another one that may make a return:

Cut him and a handful of knights that were primarily there because of him. He's alright on his own, but the whole thing felt a bit shy of proper support and I didn't want to leave my drafters looking for knights that (mostly) aren't there.

Added

and a few swaps to have more +1/+1 counters around to see if that will spawn an archetype. Fine bodies on both these guys, so there isn't a huge risk trying them.

Also cut some more general use stuff to try and get my card count down.

blacksmithy · Jul 30, 2020

just a general question... if you were going to do this project in a color other than Black, what would it be? did you have to think too much about whether to do a Black cube vs another color cube?

Brad · Jul 30, 2020

I went with black because it's kind of the jack of all trades color. Great removal, respectable card draw, graveyard interactions could be a focus, plenty of aggro 1 drops, second best midrange creatures, lots of cool top end creatures. It also has the most swamps/black matters cards, allowing me to play a lot of things no one else could.

If I had to do another color, I'd probably do red or green. Burn spells are super flexible in their ability to remove or to race, so I like the idea of having a lot of those around. Green has some notable forest-matters cards and Gigantosaurus that I'd like to play. You'd need to be careful that you don't end up all aggro in red or all ramp/fixing in green, although a true mega ramp strategy looking to hard cast Emrakul 1 could be sweet. Green has the issue of supporting GW and GU, two problem guilds.

I wouldn't go for white because it seems like tokens would have to be a feature of the environment and they can really lock the board up in a detrimental way. The average white card also doesn't feel very interesting. White tends to have more solid role players than interesting, fun cards once you have 150 of them in your list, I'd think.

I wouldn't go for blue because control mirrors are going to lead to very long games for your players with a high frequency if counterspells are a primary feature of the format. The aggro deck in blue would maybe be interesting, but we know it would be unreliable and you'd be unable to support many aggro players.

I'd probably look at the devotion/[basic land type] matters/[color] matters/m:MMM cards for red and green and decide from there if I were to do a different color.

Brad · Sep 19, 2020

Warriors?
With the release of ZNR and Warriors being a somewhat black-centric creature type, I've decided to look at them again for The Black Cube and thought you guys might like to follow along.

Maybe the categories are just tiers, I don't know. Just appreciate that it's in sections and that looks professional.

I added some cards you guys might use rather than sticking to a color pie no one else will ever touch, but it's probably still biased.

List ended up way longer than I expected, hence the spoilers. Let me try to narrow it down...

Is Grim Flayer too good? Does Hero of Precinct One make too many dudes?

Mardu Woe-Reaper is one of my favorite grave hate cards, as I can't run too harsh of hate in this environment. Chief of the Edge is a sweet lord as a 3/2 for 2 base stats. Mindblade Render is a little less aggressive, but any cards you draw is a big deal. Kargan Intimidator is a bit of a lord while being independently interesting and good. Blood-Chin Fanatic looks like it can close out games easily and is a respectable 3/3 for 3.

Not a lot of payoffs, really, but most of the cards in the list are good aggro cards. It's definitely got some legs, but might need a bit more.

Also, I made the ZNR updates. They're recent in the cube blog. I just added cards, so I'm very open to cuts right now. Let me know.

blacksmithy · Sep 21, 2020

thanks for the analysis! this is a theme i’ve dabbled in for a while but never really committed to. seeing everything in one spot like this is really helpful for evaluating what it could add to my environment if i tweaked it in various ways.

Brad · Sep 25, 2020

Added a handful of black-only fatties to reanimate. There's 1-2 in W/U/R/G and the rest are in B. I drafted a reanimator deck and didn't see enough to reanimate, so I threw in a few more.

Cutting a few cards when I feel they aren't working. Drafting it and removing cards when I either don't want them or want them too much.

Somehow missed adding Kargan Intimidator, but I just added it to go with Chief of the Edge, Mindblade Render, and 2 Mardu Woe-Reaper as a very light warrior incentive. Honestly, just the Reapers are enough payoff. Getting to attack their life total and their graveyard is great in a lot of matchups here.

blacksmithy · Sep 25, 2020

so your post actually convinced me to cut my Warrior payoffs from the cube XD
i like what they’re doing more in your cube, but i don’t want to commit to the level you’re at. my only two payoffs were woe-reaper and blood-chin ranger, so i dropped them but kept the good Warriors like Bloodsoaked Champion and Alesha.

EDIT: How do your reanimator decks usually look?

Brad · Sep 26, 2020

blacksmithy said:
so your post actually convinced me to cut my Warrior payoffs from the cube XD
i like what they’re doing more in your cube, but i don’t want to commit to the level you’re at. my only two payoffs were woe-reaper and blood-chin ranger, so i dropped them but kept the good Warriors like Bloodsoaked Champion and Alesha.

EDIT: How do your reanimator decks usually look?

I'd keep Woe if graveyard matters. It's a 2/1 for W either way. And Intimidator seems sweet, probably.

I've played reanimator once in person before and felt a bit threat light then, as well. I think they "look" pretty normal. Bx with either mill or discard based card selection plus some 4-5 CMC reanimation spells.

Brad · Oct 11, 2020

https://cubecobra.com/cube/list/5f6ebc45dc7295103b5f3710

Total redesign up for consideration.

My original cube was Eldrazi themed and I really missed slamming those titans. I had originally excluded them from this environment due to the anti-reanimator clause wrecking your own graveyard, but you're just going to have to be wise when running the two included titans that do that.

I cut Ulamog, the Ceaseless Hunger because the attack trigger seems really brutal on a reanimation, unlike Koz2 and Em2.

And a few other giant Eldrazi for good measure.

Beyond that, the power level is much lower to allow a bit more setup time. Ramp has been buffed while 4-5 mana creatures have been nerfed to enable people going to the late game but to avoid people immediately reaching the mid game. A few cards are there specifically to deal with 1 toughness mana-tokens. As many of the ZNR Spell/Lands as I felt were appropriate have been added along with a set of black bounces. Some nonblack multicolored cards are in the 3c slots. Probably more stuff I'm forgetting.

It needs 30-60 cuts down to 450-480 cards, but I figured it's at a place where it's ready to be shown. I'm also curious what people think between the Eldrazi and non-Eldrazi versions.

Brad · Dec 13, 2020

VS

Basically considering running some nonblack cards in my 3C slots. The cards would achieve more of my design goals, one of which now includes simpler text, but is it too much of a betrayal to the theme?

I've got a text out to the playgroup, but curious what people here think. Some of the swaps may or may not happen here, it isn't a definitive list. Unsure on Ral's vs Beacon Bolt.

TrainmasterGT · Dec 13, 2020

Brad said:
Basically considering running some nonblack cards in my 3C slots. The cards would achieve more of my design goals, one of which now includes simpler text, but is it too much of a betrayal to the theme?

I've got a text out to the playgroup, but curious what people here think. Some of the swaps may or may not happen here, it isn't a definitive list. Unsure on Ral's vs Beacon Bolt.

I wouldn't call that a betrayal of the theme, but I would worry about people trying to play actual non-black decks if this were a change I were to make if I were in charge of the black cube. Right now, there's no reason to play a deck without black cards. However, if something like Sphinx's Revelation were in the cube, I could reasonable build a controlling Blue/White deck without playing a single black card if I wanted because I'd have such a powerful gold option in a color pair no one else was interested in playing. I'm not saying this would actually happen, but I think the risk is there and I would avoid making that change if I only wanted black decks.

Brad · Dec 13, 2020

TrainmasterGT said:
I could reasonable build a controlling Blue/White deck without playing a single black card if I wanted

I thought about that, but with over half the cube being black, that would be either a huge misdraft or WU would legitimately have to be wide open. You'd also have to ignore me telling you that it's color imbalanced before we started. So that shouldn't be an issue.

I might also just go down to two per section.

ravnic · Dec 16, 2020

I would probably go down to 2 per 3c section. You could replace them with more Dimir, Rakdos, Golgari or Orzhov cards.

https://cubecobra.com/cube/deck/5fda32ea88d2130fa2878e56

I have drafted your cube to check how wordy it is (and to generally check it out, I'm not sure if I even have drafted it before) amd as someone who has a massive knowledge of obscure magic cards there was still a lot to read. I have to admit I didn't read everything and was in a few cases just picking a card I knew would be decent in my deck. If you have a regular playgroup who knows your cube and doesn't mind it, don't force a change because of that. But as someone not familiar with the list, there were a lot of walls of text.

That being said, I'd have fun drafting that cube build around the coolest color in mtg and I would have fun playing that deck!

Brad · Dec 16, 2020

ravnic said:
I would probably go down to 2 per 3c section. You could replace them with more Dimir, Rakdos, Golgari or Orzhov cards.

https://cubecobra.com/cube/deck/5fda32ea88d2130fa2878e56

I have drafted your cube to check how wordy it is (and to generally check it out, I'm not sure if I even have drafted it before) amd as someone who has a massive knowledge of obscure magic cards there was still a lot to read. I have to admit I didn't read everything and was in a few cases just picking a card I knew would be decent in my deck. If you have a regular playgroup who knows your cube and doesn't mind it, don't force a change because of that. But as someone not familiar with the list, there were a lot of walls of text.

That being said, I'd have fun drafting that cube build around the coolest color in mtg and I would have fun playing that deck!

I'm pretty strongly considering 2 per 3c section.

Dimir just count as blue cards in my list, as I'm anticipating everyone runs black as a base.

I actually have a hidden list right now that's 20% less wordy. Didn't want to edit the main list in case it didn't pan out. It's tough to decrease the words here because exiling is so important. The counterspells and burn spells having the whole "if it dies/counters this way, exile it instead of putting it into its owner's graveyard," or whatever the text is, adds 14 words to the cards that could otherwise be as little as 3 words. It would be a lot easier to decrease the words in a normal color pie, but I really miss this theme every time I try to walk away from it.

I scrapped the Eldrazi idea for similar reasons. Creating those spawns/scions is a lot of text. Nest Invader has 28 words on it for a rather simple effect. A lot of the Eldrazi token makers have the same text format, too. Lot of 30 word cards.

I just looked at your draft and like a third of the cards have been cut for wordiness lol.

~~Here's the current list I'm looking at, if anyone's curious: https://cubecobra.com/cube/list/5fd4a1c7beb71e104f06903c~~
Edit: OP/signature is updated with current list. ~20% less wordy than the prior list!