The Elegant Cube

japahn

japahn

Haven't updated this in a while. I'll try to post about each update separately, with the benefit of hindsight, but it will be staggered a bit.

Updates 4.9 - 4.9.2
(2020-03-31)

Cut shocklands, replaced with vivids + two five-color fixing lands. Lands were wheeling too much, so I'm trying to spend fewer slots with them.

In:


Out:


Hindsight: Going down to 2 cycles of duals (temples and checks) + 1 cycle of trilands + a bunch of five color lands was still plenty of fixing. Vivids were too much and I do not like having counters on lands, it's just mechanically awkward. Vivids got cut afterwards in Update 5.0.2.

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Finish shifting graveyard to madness/reanimator. That was already underway, but there were still some leftovers of cards that don't play se well with madness.

In:


Out:


Hindsight: Circular Logic and Call the Bloodline just sucked. They were too narrow, only really went in the madness deck, and begrudglingly. Daretti, Scrap Savant is too wordy for this cube, but played ok. Another issue with it is how it takes red artifacts into a direction that blue and white artifacts really don't want to go, and my artifacts support is largely based on tokens, so it's sort of underwhelming. As for the removals, the surveil cards were kind of unnecessary, so it's fine they are out. Graveblade Marauder might come back.

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Critical mass for elves, zombies

In:


Hindsight: Curse of Shallow Graves was too damn good and got cut quickly. Twinblade Slasher is sort of weak, but playable, and the bad counters deck really needs the -1/-1 counters as well as elves needs the 1-drop, so it's staying for now.

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Random changes

In:


Out:


Hindsight:

A truly assorted set of changes.

On additions, Irregular Cohort, Path of Bravery, Sadistic Obsession were terrible. Glass Casket, Grateful Apparition, Docent of Perfection, Monastery Swiftspear were fine. Hydra's Growth I didn't actually got to try, but got moved to occasionals in 5.0. Fecundity kind of warps the game around it, but damn, that's a sacrifice payoff. It does a lot for a single line of text.

On removals, these are mostly weak/narrow cards that rarely if ever got played. Not Man-o'-War, it's great, I just turned it into a human. Then I realized Exclusion Mage can't bounce your own stuff, and poof - it's now Aether Adept. Also not Pia and Kiran Nalaar, which are a bit too good.
 
japahn

japahn

Update 4.9.3

(2020-05-11)

Remove cards that are rarely worth playing

Out:


Not much to say here besides Squee, Goblin Nabob is either useless or crazy good. The rest of the cards just didn't work, even in their archetype.


Remove cards that are too good

Out:


Blade Splicer stonewalls aggro easily and is a no-risk play, plus it goes into every single archetype, making it possibly the single best cards in the cube. I dislike forced correct first picks. Withdraw is actually fun, but it's an enormous tempo swing.


More agency

In:


I missed more choices during games and noticed many games were just sort of played out naturally, without major decision points. I'm adding cards that have options and introduce tension.


De-polarize aggro

Out:


Nerfing ultra aggro, anti-aggro, and removing cards especially bad against aggro. Aggro just ran away with some matches, but often it was completely trumped by something, so I'm removing the worst hosers. If aggro becomes dominant I'll look into it, but I'm more worried about it being too dependent of draw than it being too good on average.


Remove boring cards for more interesting ones

In:


Out:


So many lords are just +1/+1. I'm shifting away from that, as there are already 4 artifacts that are generic tribal and just pump stats.


Archetype support

In:


Respectively for [lifegain], [any tribal], [pingers and reanimator], [flash, elves, ramp], [ramp], [ramp and reanimator].


Too many lands

Out:


Still too many non-basics are wheeling.
 
japahn

japahn

Updates 4.9.4 - 4.9.5

Remove RG enrage

RG enrage was an ok archetype, but suffered from some issues:
- Made the environment too rough for x/1s
- Was too good against decks with small creatures and too bad against control
- Was not a deck supported throughout many sets, but concentrated on Ixalan block

Out:



Remove Golems

Golems are a nice tribe in many ways, playing well with artifacts, blink, tokens, etc. However, the colors are the problem. The archetype wants all colors but black, and there is not enough density to concentrate it on 2 or even 3 colors. It's not that it was taking up much space, but it was sort of a trap.

Out:



Underperformers

Too narrow or too weak cards.

Out:



Archetype Support

This is an assortment of cards to thicken various archetypes that feel light on enablers / payoffs.

In:



Power level adjustment

Curse of Shallow Graves is too strong and hard to remove. You told me, but I guess I had to see for myself.

Out:


Replacements

Moving away from +1/+1 lords, Thalia's Lieutenant is kind of a confusing, wordy, and unexciting card to play. Might as well play Shared Triumph, a simpler card that gives Mono Archetypes reasons to use white as support, as well as effectively a Humans payoff card.

Pridemate is a pretty weak lifegain payoff as a x/2 is so fragile and the upside isn't that great. Lone Rider is even more fragile at first, but the payoff is better, it's much more playable in general, enables other lifegain payoffs, and can enable itself.

Animate Dead is really wordy and kind of too explosive. Vigor Mortis is a bit weaker than I'd like, but it signals counters and Zombify is ok in reanimator.

Hindsight: I ended up regretting again Withdraw and swapping it out.

Out:


In:



Just things

Because I had an RG slots and wanted to test the card.

In:
 
japahn

japahn

Update 5.0

This is it. The next evolution of my 10 year old cube.

I developed the concept of Cube Occasionals, and Update 5.0 is the one that introduces them to my cube.

This is as simple an update as it is a huge one. I remove 54 cards from version 4.9.5 of my cube so that it becomes a Core module, and build the first version of the Occasionals module out of 606 cards, including the majority of the 54 cards removed to clean up the core.

Cards actually removed from the cube and not moved to occasionals:


Cards moved to occasionals:


And this is where this thread ends and another begins! Coming soon, in a new thread: The Elegant Cube v5.
 
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