Holy fucking shit how did I miss that card :o Being all about decks not cards that like everything I want out of a 3 cmc "disruptive aggro" WB card
Card/Deck The Orzhov Syndicate (WB)
- Thread starter ravnic
- Start date
It's sort of a sliding scale though and honestly you'll have a hard time finding a perfect balance. Too much archetypal support and you get railway drafts as you point out. Not enough though, and it's all just good stuff and drafting is a bit shallow (just grab stuff that fits your curve and you have mana to cast - bam). Go really low power and everything sucks unless you stack tons of synergy, but that's just a low power version of railway archetypal cubing masquerading as something more than it is. There is probably a sweet spot in the middle of all this but it's difficult to find without a lot of testing.
I agree with the general sentiment though - you want flexibility probably more than narrowness, colors should stand on their own and interact in multiple ways and not be heavily dependent on your guild cards to tie them together. Being heavy handed with guild slots can send the wrong message about how deep (or shallow) a cube is but it's honestly not going to ruin your meta in most cases. Some color pairs have shit for good options anyway and if you try and force a specific number of gold cards or make each one super meaningful for a theme you want conveyed, you just wind up with suboptimal cube cards a lot of times. Basically cards that get passed and never make decks. So if you are struggling to find a 3rd Orzhov card, just skip it. Add another land or something that might make a deck list.
Onderzeeboot
Ecstatic Orb
Sweet! I pegged the card for my section when it was released, but wasn't sure it was good enough. Will see if I can room for it after allSo back to multi-color WB cards, my favorite can of soup right now is:
He's like the hate bear lord, leading you into the color pair, and bringing a stellar hate bear effect to the table. Even comes with a decent bod. A+ orzhov card, not likely to remove soon.
Especially with Izzet as one of your pairs, I think Kambal will be a very solid addition. Nice little bit of counterplay in the format.Sweet! I pegged the card for my section when it was released, but wasn't sure it was good enough. Will see if I can room for it after all
Dom Harvey
Contributor
Has anyone found deep themes in WB that aren't variants of 'make/sac a bunch of creatures'? Whenever I try to assign archetypes to colour pairs, WB ends up there by default because I can't think of anything else.
Onderzeeboot
Ecstatic Orb
There's a lifegain matters theme there, but the power level is all over the place and it's very parasitic. Humans, warriors and zombies all have good support in both colors nowadays, thanks in no small part to Amonkhet block, so tribal is definitely an option.
Onderzeeboot
Ecstatic Orb
For example, for Warriors, I think all of the following cards are good in a dedicated warrior deck:
There's a bunch of playable (depending on your format) warriors in white and black as well nowadays. It's definitely a bit lower powered than some cubes would be comfortable bit, but it's a tribe you can sculpt the color pair around.
There's a bunch of playable (depending on your format) warriors in white and black as well nowadays. It's definitely a bit lower powered than some cubes would be comfortable bit, but it's a tribe you can sculpt the color pair around.
Lifegain and specifically repeatable small lifegain triggers are everywhere in BW:
And anything with Extort. The trouble I have is finding payoffs, although there are a few I think could work (full search: https://scryfall.com/search?as=&order=&q=o:"whenever+you+gain+life" )
Outside of WB there's also
And anything with Extort. The trouble I have is finding payoffs, although there are a few I think could work (full search: https://scryfall.com/search?as=&order=&q=o:"whenever+you+gain+life" )
Outside of WB there's also
I thought Jason put a monumental effort into making the lifegain deck work, and the outcome was that it really doesn't work that well?
For me WB is a perfect place to foster a death and taxes style agro deck. Like so:
For me WB is a perfect place to foster a death and taxes style agro deck. Like so:
Deadguy Ale from CubeTutor.com
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Onderzeeboot
Ecstatic Orb
For the lifegain payoffs, there's also (varying power levels):
Like I said though, the payoff cards are pretty parasitic.
Like I said though, the payoff cards are pretty parasitic.
I do remember him saying that he cut it but I can't quite remember why.
In any case, BFZ block might have given it a small boost, and I know Jason's cube is a high power level so it might be more effective in a lower powered environment.
There's also artifacts that you can go down. Here's a quick deck I knocked together
There's also reanimator and control. But the greatest Orzhov deck is Demonic pact themed.
Orzhov artifact mash up from CubeTutor.com
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There's also reanimator and control. But the greatest Orzhov deck is Demonic pact themed.
Onderzeeboot
Ecstatic Orb
Aw yeah, Demonic Pact! It's great, love it, and it does fit BW
BW Zombies is a fun subtheme. You basically pair Embalm creatures in white with black zombies or 2/2 zombie makers, then use tokens+zombies-matter as payoff. In a graveyard-focused cube, I've found Esper Zombies to be super solid. The Penny Pincher 2.0 is a great example of a UB-centric zombie theme, often splashing white for cards like Aven Wind Guide and Necromancer's Covenant. In my format, Deserts such as Cradle of the Accursed are important contributors, but splashing is difficult. Therefore supporting BW or even UW zombies is necessary to prevent the theme from being isolated in UB. Important cards for the deck:
Unconventional tactics seems so brutal.
Lone Rider and Crested Sunmare are both very playable with some incidental lifegain in your list as 3 isn't much and can bei done with buffs or ewuipment and the horse is a vanilla threat in its own, offering a high ceiling.
Grillo_Parlante
Contributor
The main problem orzhov has in something like 99.9% of cubes, is that its midrange designs compete very poorly against U/x decks, so it tends to get regulated to small creature aggro frameworks. Its small creature decks tend to do fairely well, providing there are enough black drain life effects and evasive tokens to mimic red reach. They tend to be pretty good at overwhelming most removal suites as a core strength.
This is one of those instances where the B/W aggro deck has to scale up well into an aggressive, resilient, midrange shell, or you need to tone down the OP blue smoothing/draw effects.
This is one of those instances where the B/W aggro deck has to scale up well into an aggressive, resilient, midrange shell, or you need to tone down the OP blue smoothing/draw effects.
Onderzeeboot
Ecstatic Orb
This mirrors my experience.
I like the Life deck, but I prefer it to be oriented around "Life Pay" rather than "Life Gain-Matters".
Over here, that means versatile tools like Vizkopa Guildmage and Vona, Butcher of Magan, which signal the pair's power in changing life gain into a win condition pretty strongly while also being very playable without any other support. I've yet to hit upon a third multicolor card that I like, so I'm just running Restoration Gearsmith; I like to pack flexible archetype tools in where I can, but Ayli sends a weird signal and Kambal, Consul of Allocation was out of the question for me because both black and white stack the 3-drop slot too much for him to realistically compete over here (but he's on the bench; I love the card, and rode it to several hilarious wins back in limited).
The deck, of course, extends well beyond the multicolor cards, as you look to give your black section powerful tools like Night's Whisper (or a variant), Moonlight Bargain, Skeletal Scrying and Slaughter, which you feed with life gain tools in white like Seeker of the Way, Blessed Alliance, Sunscourge Champion, or Faith's Fetters (among others). The best part of that plan is that black's powerful life-for-card-draw effects are highly desirable in white, which can struggle with direct draw power, while also leaning very naturally on white for the life gain effects the color naturally tends to have.
That said, I'm still working out the deck somewhat in my format, with the real "problem" of trying to make it a well-defined theme being that black is a bit shy on cards that want aggressive life payment that seem to suit my power level. I also think the entire deck quickly becomes undesirable if you aren't policing draw effects in blue to balance out draw manipulation across colors, so I'm aware that this strategy doesn't really translate to other formats very often.
Life deck, but I prefer it to be oriented around "Life Pay" rather than "Life Gain-Matters".Over here, that means versatile tools like Vizkopa Guildmage and Vona, Butcher of Magan, which signal the pair's power in changing life gain into a win condition pretty strongly while also being very playable without any other support. I've yet to hit upon a third multicolor card that I like, so I'm just running Restoration Gearsmith; I like to pack flexible archetype tools in where I can, but Ayli sends a weird signal and Kambal, Consul of Allocation was out of the question for me because both black and white stack the 3-drop slot too much for him to realistically compete over here (but he's on the bench; I love the card, and rode it to several hilarious wins back in limited).
The deck, of course, extends well beyond the multicolor cards, as you look to give your black section powerful tools like Night's Whisper (or a variant), Moonlight Bargain, Skeletal Scrying and Slaughter, which you feed with life gain tools in white like Seeker of the Way, Blessed Alliance, Sunscourge Champion, or Faith's Fetters (among others). The best part of that plan is that black's powerful life-for-card-draw effects are highly desirable in white, which can struggle with direct draw power, while also leaning very naturally on white for the life gain effects the color naturally tends to have.
That said, I'm still working out the deck somewhat in my format, with the real "problem" of trying to make it a well-defined theme being that black is a bit shy on cards that want aggressive life payment that seem to suit my power level. I also think the entire deck quickly becomes undesirable if you aren't policing draw effects in blue to balance out draw manipulation across colors, so I'm aware that this strategy doesn't really translate to other formats very often.
Grillo_Parlante
Contributor
Alfonzo's cube does a pretty good job with the artifact theme and cute build arounds for BW:
If you're already jamming the R/W artifact deck, black is a nice tie in. B/W already wants to play footsie with red anyways, so it only makes sense to have your already artifact focused aggressive R/W section turn into an artifact focused B/W section. Both of them care about equipment and want to carry it over on tokens, improvise is like delve for them, so a lot of the R/W artifact deck that scales up into midrange fits nicely with black, especially if black has stuff like night's whisper/skeletal scy/moonlight bargain/arena etc. The blood-forged battle axe is brilliant here for creating a raw density of artifacts.
Kind of working like the RBW firemane control decks from 2007, where our lifegain is covering the black draw engine, and our black draw is good enough to compete with whatever our blue draw package is. There is your life pay deck, with the life pay the condition to get something really good--draw/smoothing.
More traditional formats though should probably just run stax, as all of those B/W aggressive decks are just trying to create a low resource situation for their opponent by overwhelming their removal anyways, and the stax stuff helps with that, letting you kill them before their card advantage crushes you. You can scale up to higher mana counts, though i.m.o the more non-aggro version is probably still not really competitive as pure BW, or mostly pure BW.
Really like alfonzo's cube btw. Curious about shred memory.
B/W Second Sun Pact from CubeTutor.com
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If you're already jamming the R/W artifact deck, black is a nice tie in. B/W already wants to play footsie with red anyways, so it only makes sense to have your already artifact focused aggressive R/W section turn into an artifact focused B/W section. Both of them care about equipment and want to carry it over on tokens, improvise is like delve for them, so a lot of the R/W artifact deck that scales up into midrange fits nicely with black, especially if black has stuff like night's whisper/skeletal scy/moonlight bargain/arena etc. The blood-forged battle axe is brilliant here for creating a raw density of artifacts.
Kind of working like the RBW firemane control decks from 2007, where our lifegain is covering the black draw engine, and our black draw is good enough to compete with whatever our blue draw package is. There is your life pay deck, with the life pay the condition to get something really good--draw/smoothing.
More traditional formats though should probably just run stax, as all of those B/W aggressive decks are just trying to create a low resource situation for their opponent by overwhelming their removal anyways, and the stax stuff helps with that, letting you kill them before their card advantage crushes you. You can scale up to higher mana counts, though i.m.o the more non-aggro version is probably still not really competitive as pure BW, or mostly pure BW.
Really like alfonzo's cube btw. Curious about shred memory.
Looking through Alfonzo's cube, I saw Salvaging Station and my interest was immediately piqued. How has it performed for you?
I've been thinking about Pox as a more controlling, Prison-y archetype recently, featuring Braids, World Queller etc, tokens, and artifact interactions in Chromatic Star and Return from the Fallen. I've never played Modern (or any constructed magic for that matter) but Lantern control has been something I've wanted to replicate in cube. This looks like a good shell for such a subtheme, using Lantern to deny your opponent lands and constrict their resources. The inclusion of Salvaging Station could be a great help to these more artifact-focused Pox builds. The core of the deck:
The resulting deck hoping to chip away at the opponent as they slowly run out of outs.
I've been thinking about Pox as a more controlling, Prison-y archetype recently, featuring Braids, World Queller etc, tokens, and artifact interactions in Chromatic Star and Return from the Fallen. I've never played Modern (or any constructed magic for that matter) but Lantern control has been something I've wanted to replicate in cube. This looks like a good shell for such a subtheme, using Lantern to deny your opponent lands and constrict their resources. The inclusion of Salvaging Station could be a great help to these more artifact-focused Pox builds. The core of the deck:
The resulting deck hoping to chip away at the opponent as they slowly run out of outs.
Thank you for the kind words. Shred memory is a recent addition, so can't confirm real life testing at the moment. It's intended to be a graveyard removal effect that isn't embarrassing to play in the main deck and supports deck consistency. I like it a lot in theory.
Salvaging station is super fun. You need a significant number of cogs in your cube to support it but it allows for and leads to all sorts of interesting mid range and control decks, usually 3 colours plus, due to having chromatic stars and renegade maps, and wanting to splash for pyrite spellbombs etc. I'm actually most worried about its interaction with fangren marauder, as the first time they're in play together gaining 5 or 10 life a turn people are gonna get stroppy and it'll have to come out.
I avoid playing stax effects in my cube for drafter preference but I think your idea is really interesting and has a lot of merit as a theme. Station would definitely support that, as would of course
Lantern and station seems great for that deck.
Salvaging station is super fun. You need a significant number of cogs in your cube to support it but it allows for and leads to all sorts of interesting mid range and control decks, usually 3 colours plus, due to having chromatic stars and renegade maps, and wanting to splash for pyrite spellbombs etc. I'm actually most worried about its interaction with fangren marauder, as the first time they're in play together gaining 5 or 10 life a turn people are gonna get stroppy and it'll have to come out.
I avoid playing stax effects in my cube for drafter preference but I think your idea is really interesting and has a lot of merit as a theme. Station would definitely support that, as would of course
Lantern and station seems great for that deck.
Here's something pox related that I just drafted in Grillos cube, which highlights stax/cog interactions there
You could see how taking this in other directions and at different power levels would be interesting.
deathcloud gearsmith mk2 from CubeTutor.com
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You could see how taking this in other directions and at different power levels would be interesting.
Grillo_Parlante
Contributor
Yeah, the B/W or Mardu Artifact deck is super dope, just really fun. Going deep on eggs as a recursive engine is always a blast, and you get those cool Mirodin style decks where the colorless core lets you go in neat directions, since its largely immune to color fixing concerns. Its the type of structure that can get you either sweet mono-colored decks, or cool sunburst style multi-color decks. Works great with the pox cards too, and can even reach out into green for the recursive baron pieces for a different varient.
Salvaging station looks like a really great bit of tech for it, and I should probably find room for renegade map and bloodforged axe.
Also curious about these cards
Salvaging station looks like a really great bit of tech for it, and I should probably find room for renegade map and bloodforged axe.
Also curious about these cards
Dom Harvey
Contributor
Don't get me wrong, the BW sac-aggro and artifacts decks are great, it would just be nice to have some choice.