The Penny Pincher Cube 2.0--Inventors' Fair

[Grillo_Parlante]

Inventors' Fair​

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Welcome to what is the updated and redesigned Penny cube. While I did not intend this, Kaladesh is an amazing block that brought some revolutionary mechanical changes to the game, which could only be properly implemented with a total makeover. This may not represent the type of magic that people are currently playing, I feel that it represents the type of magic that people want to be playing, and most want to play. I hope to see the game shift to reflect more the mechanical approaches that were unveiled during the Kaladesh block, and which I've sought to highlight with this cube.​

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Here is the end result of that project! http://www.cubetutor.com/viewcube/71323​

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The biggest change is the heavy policing of powerful ETB effects. There are almost no heavy hitting ETB effects left in the cube, instead the focus having shifted towards more mundane utility effects (ETB bounce your own permanent, conditional tutoring etc.), energy, and conditional ETB triggers (revolt).​

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--Design Notes: you can skip below to illustrative deck lists--​

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If you expect players to run out 4-5cc creatures (and sometimes 3cc creatures), it is important that they do get something for their mana investment. Otherwise, the drafter is just wrong for putting a 4-5cc creature in their deck, will feel like an idiot when their sweet gitrog monster is hit by cheap removal or reflector mage, and it was your fault (the designer) for making your player feel like an idiot because they played the format consistent with the tools you provided. This is why the reflector mage ban in standard was a good idea, and the printing of such cards makes no sense.​

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On the other hand, the NWO solution of creating creature value via strong ETBs--there is a connection between common design and ETB density: ETBs natively are easier to understand than the complex board states of TSP or Lowryn draft--has its own set of crippling problems.​

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Combining strong pressure with strong disruption is just fundamentally busted, and that is exactly what ETB effects do. It makes some sense to attach them to extremely high cost targets to justify the mana expenditure, but even than you run into problems with any sort of mana discounting strategy, such as re-animator. Attaching them to every 3-5cc creature has absurd warping effects on the game, as all that matters is a constant flow of simultaneous attrition and pressure. Curves have to move down, and spells have to become ever cheap to justify running.​

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Energy does an amazing job getting around this problem, because you're always getting something valuable for your mana investment--and you can even convert it into an immediate spell effect--but there is now a currency you have to pay to create that effect. Revolt is similar in that it offers an additional spell effect upon the creature's casting, but now its conditioned to something else happening--again, there is a currency that has to be paid for the ETB. This is similar to the idea behind echo, but much more interesting in implementation.​

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Other than that, the penny cube was always a cube dedicated to reducing negative variance, and this format takes things even further. Basically, the entire mana base reduces negative variance: bouncelands, scry lands, and now the five cycling lands. The cluestones have been added for additional smoothing and artifact sacrifice triggers, and the format is ripe with eggs, baubles, and assorted paperweights, ready to be sacrificed, bounced, tapped, and generally tossed around for value and profit and draw smoothing. This means less non-games, more real magic, and less losses to flood, screw, or uncooperative poor top decks.​

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The other major change is the incorporation of the sifting packages previously discussed (which also reduces negative variance) which means that curves can be higher as awkward cards from the draw sequence are traded in for relevant cards, which feeds graveyard interactions.​

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Generally, the creature suite is geared towards utility and beat downs, while the spell suite generally is more controlling in nature. This is a balancing tweak that I hope will be effective, and we don't have the extreme tempo cards like vapor snag, daze, force spike, or other cheap nonsense to make you feel like an idiot for playing a high CC spells not attached to a body.​

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The other thing that I've tried to do is use CC or power/toughness restrictions to draw draft lines that pull a drafter towards focusing on lower cc cards or higher cc cards, instead of forcefully having predetermined concepts of aggro, midrange, or control, and hoping the players find the sign posts on their own. I would rather have their be signs pointing towards small decks, middle decks, and big decks, and than give the player the flexibility to move around that mana range.​

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There are lots of cool and odd mechanics here that ended up fitting in nicely: madness, delirium (really!) being the ones I am most excited about.​

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I've also included a lot of conditional tutors, which i.m.o. are absolutely essential to a good cube. You don't want a bunch of demonic tutors as that results in too repetitive of play lines, but conditional tutors are healthy, because they reduce negative variance but are balanced in the manner they do so. This opens up lines of play as well as the draft, because a tutor is essentially a duplicate of an existing cards you drafted. Its like breaking singleton without breaking singleton.​

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The last big thing, is that I've taken feedback and culled out a few classes of cards that just make people feel like idiots or add to negative variance. These should have never been part of the game.​

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1. Any sort of duress or thoughtseize type effect. These are terrible cards that should never have been printed--all they do is result in de facto mulligans (the worst part of magic), non-games, and the mulligans even favor the disruption caster by giving them perfect information at the start of the game. Plus a lot of players just hate revealing their hand to an opponent. I'm not even running persecute anymore.​

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2. Reveal Hand effects like gitaxian probe or peek. Players just hate revealing their hand.​

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3. Low CC or ETB bounce land disruption. Penny cube results showed that direct bounceland disruption should not be attached to a body, should be a spell effect, and should cost 4-5 mana. Its possible they should all be pushed up to 5 mana but we will see. All of these cards that disrupt whatever the relative mana base is at the start of the game (strip mine, wasteland etc) are terrible, should not exist, and should not be ran anywhere, for any reason. They just accentuate the worst parts of magic's variance system.​

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--End Design Notes--​

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I've been making constant tweaks to mana costs, removal, and seeing how decks fall out, but here are a few lists!​

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W/R Artifact Aggro from CubeTutor.com

Artifacts are clustered into these sort of low CC aggressive decks that are heavy on utility. Again, we have my usual focus on these sorts of aggressive decks being more about utility and assembling a reach plan, rather than curves out into burn.

Baron from CubeTutor.com

The much-hyped baron deck. I smoothed out some of the black spot removal, after this. Previously, I didn't have enough at cheap enough cost to stunt an early rush.

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U/R Vore from CubeTutor.com

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U/R Vore from CubeTutor.com

So this is really cool and unexpected. This is a vore deck, which means its more of a tempo deck, which means its essentially a glorified burn deck. About part way through this I realized how amazing the red madness beaters would be in this sort of deck (especially the haste one), and would be perfect with the blue and red sifters. Unfortunately, I had only grabbed a tormenting voice, but its a cool idea, and highlights how good madness can be.

This is similar to the UG tempo decks I like to draft, but with a slightly different posture.

R/G Aggro Loam from CubeTutor.com

Here is our aggro loam deck, using the previously discussed green TOL manipulators to find and recycle the lands used to control the board via board control enchantments. Bouncelands and cycle lands fit into this. What surprised me was the energy powered focus on creature growth and damage. The synergy between architect of the untamed and bouncelands looks amazing.

R/W tiny aggro-control from CubeTutor.com

I have an issue now where I have to smooth out the two drops, which are generally less interesting than the 1s or the 3s, resulting in this kind of spread with these types of decks, but I still thought this was neat. Its utility focused to the point where its almost a tiny control deck, and can really grind with sunforger, that can be found with mistveil plains. Would have liked a single bounceland.

B/W Artifacts from CubeTutor.com

Really neat list: the idea obviously is to just toss bobbles and weights around while constricting resources and draining the opponent. Cheak out the relationship between demonic collusion, bouncelands, and underworld connections. Marionette master also looks hot.

Once thing that has surprised me how the focus on sifting and conditionality has resulted in actual sideboarding. You can really change your deck for matchups, to a degree and depth that I haven't seen with cube lists before.

I'll post more thoughts later, but I quite like the list and how its developing. There is no tribal package at the moment, but I have a few ideas for that. Obviously, there are space issues, and the power ETB of the splicer package violates the rule that was incorporated, but we will see.

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[vennythekid]

I've been wanting to Cube energy since I saw it in Kaladesh. This is exactly the style cube I've wanting to try to build and play, but my knowledge of how to build low-power formats wasn't quite there. The list looks super solid, and I'm excited to follow it's development.

Actually, if it's alright with you, I might build this list and try it out myself.

 

[StormEntity]

Really like a lot of stuff that's going on here, and I increasingly find my own cube design to be really convergent with yours on a number of fronts. There were a couple things though that seemed like good inclusions that I didn't see in the list.



The density of hits for this is perhaps a touch low, but it fits as both a conditional tutor and a point of reference to a specific CMC, encouraging small decks in an intriguing way. I think you probably have enough cheap creatures to make this work, especially with Sunblade Elf in a GW gold slot.



This is a fun conditional tutor too and a nice fit in the green six-drop slot. If your cube is interested in Expedition Map, and is at a reasonably low power level, this would seem to be a perfect inclusion. (Of course it's possible that you considered these both and found them to have unacceptably strong ETB abilities, but you did specify that conditional ETB tutors were fine)

 

[Chriskool]

glad to see the big update; are you maintaining two versions of the cube?

also, what's the 2.0 cost like?

 

[Grillo_Parlante]

Cube tutor says $230, so still in the budget category--that riptide min/max cube is priced at $3,533 lol...

Right now, cube tutor has the original penny cube priced at $194

Most expensive cards ($8-9 category):



Mid-tier expensive cards ($3-5 category):



The sad reality of this game is that if you have a 360 card cube, and each card is worth $.50, you are still going to end up with a $180 game format.

 

[ahadabans]

Big fan of the Penny Pincher project. Few comments I have:
1. Ninjas... is there enough value without ETB dudes? Take Ninja of the Deep Hours. You are paying at least 1U + orig creature cost to deal 2 and draw a card. My midrange cube was much more powerful, but the ninja deck was completely non-viable without tons of really good ETB creatures to rebuy.
2. Flame Slash feels out of place based on the removal / creature rules you are setting. 4 damage kills pretty much every creature in your cube (including a bunch of 6 drops) for R.
3. On the fence about running the full cycle of cluestones. Good target for Trophy Mage, but how many of those color combinations are really going to use them? Feels similar to the signet situation. I don't have any experience with them though so could be off here.
4. Without ETB, is momentary blink worth a gold slot? I love the card, but I don't think even I'd run it in this list.

 

[Grillo_Parlante]

Great questions!

If you remember back to ravinca block formats, there was always efficient removal and ETBs, but the philosophy behind those ETBs was totally different than what we started to get with Lorwyn standard and beyond. The changes with energy and revolt were the best mechanism I think R&D has given us in a long time, to recreate that sort of architecture.

The cluestones are 3cc mana rocks, which makes them infinitely worse than the signets, and there are a lot of synergies in the format that benefit from them.

 

[Grillo_Parlante]

Here is a UG ophidian deck using energy:

U/G ophidians from CubeTutor.com

 

[B8R]

I was literally looking at a complete list of energy cards from the Kaladesh block earlier today and wondering what power level cube they would be a good fit in, and voilà! you have showed me! Thanks!

 

[Grillo_Parlante]

Its been quiet around here the last week or so, so I thought I would do a quick update. I'm planning on recording some draft deck lists over the next couple weeks, but here we go for now.

Amonkhet has been a tremendous set for this project, and the format has changed in ways that is really exciting to me. I am having a very difficult time framing how the format is behaving, and I'm not sure I understand fully whats going on myself. I've made all of the appropriate updates to cube tutor the last couple of days.

I suppose the best place to start is to just forget everything about energy--its gone, and the reasons being that it was too thin on the ground, and its much less interesting than what is currently occuring.

At this point I feel like the format is almost a color shifted format--or there is at least some semblance here as to what a color shifted format should be.

If you were recall, one of the central tenets of the format was to cut down on ETB spam. I've restructured the colors where blue is more about cards we were calling reprogrammers--essentially looting/sifting spells like careful consideration. TOL manipulation was more the area of green, with grave pulses like grapple with the past, and red would have sifting/looting effects like tormenting voice. This would have an equalizing effect across blue, red, and green as regards this core mechanic, as well as feeding graveyard interactions. A player could use a variety of graveyard filtering tools to "reprogram" there decks across longer, slower games, whose length would be facilitated by a dearth of ETB effects, that typically warp formats into velocity driven affairs. This has had a tremendous effect on the color combinations, and overall format, roughly equal in effect to mana base structuring.

Amonkhet has had two major consequences:

1. The embalm mechanic in white, and the resulting proliferation of white zombies
2. The cycling cards, which also trigger off of discards.

The impact of the latter, I cannot state enough, as the entire draw smoothing suite of the cube was originally premised off of draw/discard. This means that a class of build-around cards, that normally would be mechanically isolated, are now tied in with one of the core mechanical operations of the format--draw smoothing.

It turns out this discard for value was also the secret sauce to tie together the nasent graveyard mechanics we've been seeing since SOI, and the land mechanics I've been wanting to capitalize on since BOZ.

You can have a real madness/hellbent deck now, since both the enablers in red can compete with blue, and the red payoff cards (which don't have ETBs) can compete in an ETBless/lite format.

In other worlds, the shift away from blue card draw, means that color pairs that traditionally struggle with depth, competiveness, or just manifesting themselves, have the manipulation they need to really develop.

A couple CT decks that show the philosophical change:

R/G Loam from CubeTutor.com

This is a landfall/loam deck, with some artifact sub interactions. In an ETB format, spell creatures narrow the focus, creating a somewhat linear feel to the games, as mana efficiency and threats drive games onward at a relentless pace. This is fine, but it makes it somewhat difficult to explore decks and cards in terms of their harmonious layered interactions--or fun durdles if you will.

Here all of the creatures are picked out in a way largely alien to an ETB format. The overall strategy is an enchantment based engine, that wants to grind its multi-layered land tossing gears. The creatures selected are more utility pieces that fill in odd parts of that plan--sweepers, lifegain, or board control--rather than having their manipulation--and the the threat-ETB package that come with them--becoming the focus of the strategy.

UB/g Baron from CubeTutor.com

Got a little cute here with the backup win conditions--as the maniac/undead alchemist sub-interactions are interesting in their own right--but the core of this deck is to control the game until either drawing into or transmuting for a drake haven/faith of the devoted and either winning with stroke-discard outlet, or forgotten creation cycles.

The combination of cycle/discard cards + draw 7s (or card draw + discard outlet) means you have a legit combo interaction easily built into the fabric of a format, though I haven't fully parsed out the ramifications of these interactions.

 

[Grillo_Parlante]

Few card reviews:



One of my complaints about UR is that the go-to spells matter theme is a bit awkward, as it creates something of a drafting trap--players going in on red's low CC creature threats, which nombo with the spells matter pieces that typically drive the color design. Drafters can learn to avoid this, but its fairly ineloquent.

This was originally included due to its ability to work in RB decks or RG decks (as a buff target), but is surprisingly decent in UR, since both the blue and red sifting effects act as buffs for it. Its just one card, but its neat the way it helps close that bridge in one configuration of UR drafts, that would rather focus on a creature-centric plan of discarding for value, rather than spell casts for value. Love it.

This has me wondering if I shouldn't be finding a spot for



Which now seems quite brilliant. A 2 mana draw seven is a powerful effect in either UR or RB in this rampy format, where you can use the spin and subsequent discard to do powerful things. You can also reanimate it with unearth (cycling!)



This is such a cool card, and feels great for this power level. When you cast it, you name a source, so it can double the damage of a creature or spell. This is ideal for the red section, as its a single card that can fit into either the spells matter decks, or more traditional creature combo decks. On top of that, it moves at sorcery speed, so you get less of those frustrating blow outs.

These new split cards are in general amazing for these types of formats, as it feels almost like they reprinted flashback as a mechanic.

 

[Chris Taylor]

Insult doubles ALL damage you're dealing this turn, not just one source. It does still accomplish the same thing, but it does also happen to give your whole team double strike

 

[Grillo_Parlante]

So, some thoughts about game texture. I want to wait a little bit on this, and get some more data points, but its been rather surprising.

I think that this is a more challenging format structure than the ETB based formats that I've been historically running. Because your turns are much less efficient than they in an ETB format, the effect of an error in both short term sequencing and long term planning is magnified by quite a bit. You might have to make a choice here, between spell based hand or TOL development, versus adding to your board. Because you don't have a lot of spell bodies, the ultimate spell density you can generate in a turn, is of course much less.

This is much more similar to how games were in 90s in terms of texture, and its interesting because its a bit like dusting off an old game cartridge and seeing if your memories hold up.

1. Aggro feels naturally much better. Its really funny now to imagine how savannah lions could be a defining card of a format, I mean really hard, and I lived through that era. My memory was just sort of flushed by years of a very different sort of magic. Because you don't have a lot of ETBs, the best way to generate tempo is by casting lots of spells in a turn, and the best way to do that, it turns out, is by just running an aggro deck.

Watching this development was a bit like taking a time machine to the birth of sligh, and watching it slither out of the primordial muck. Its also an interesting contrast in aggro designs. Here, aggro feels like something that is a natural development of the format, that its filling a very real niche made possible, even demanded by, the game's numbers. My experiences with aggro design elsewhere was that it was essentially a sick man, that needed to be helped along to some rallying cry like, for the health of the format! ETB design at midrange, really moved into aggro's traditional kingdom.

2. With that being stated, its also interesting to see how the development of the traditional Roshambo structure could come into play, which is probably no longer a relevant model, and hasn't been relevant for years. These categories make much more sense here, where distinctions between board and hand development are more concrete.

1. Aggro: deck that focuses on creating a volume of spell spells, pulling ahead on tempo
2. Midrange: Deck that uses larger amounts of mana to add to the board, rather than hand development.
3. Control: Deck that uses larger amounts of mana for hand development, rather than adding to the board.

You still see these kinds of categorizations today, but they seem vestigial. Everything seems like its been more blended together by easier access to tempo generation tools. This makes for a more forgiving, more accessible magic, which is probably good in terms of sales generation.

3. Removal can be much stronger, and I will probably have to power it up. Its funny seeing how cards like STP or bolt really made a lot of sense back in the day, and played a role in the development of an authentic, natural, control identity. With mana costs on average being higher, if you're a deck thats choosing to develop its hand rather than the board, you really need cheap removal in order to both develop your hand, while staying alive. You can see the mechanisms that would drive someone to building a creatureless, or creature light deck.

4. The light colorshifting in a format that doesn't explicitly state I'M A COLORSHIFTED FORMAT, has been interesting. My suggesting would be to be very clear with your drafters about a format being colorshifted (especially if they aren't very good at magic/drafting) and explain the shift to them. Particularly, putting the red cycling sweepers in red, people are so conditioned to thinking of red as an aggressive color that its not always easy for them to see it as anything more.

I also suspect that some players handle the idea of colorshifting better than others. For them, color identity is really sacrosanct, and diluting those decades old categorizations bothers them. Its kind of like people that don't like having their food touching. I know, its weird, but the odd psychological quirks this game brings out in my players never ceases to amaze me.

But funny story about ETBs making the game more accessible. Here was the controversy card of the night:



Why? Well, its not like eternal witness, that you can just play out. This card requires some thought in draft as to how you're going to trigger revolt, thought in deckbuilding about how to trigger revolt as well as what your target will be, and than it requires a sequencing decision in game. If you don't do these things, it ends up being more punishing than a card like eternal witness, and because the skill floor is higher, it ends up being more punishing to a casual player.

It made me think back to MARO talking about RAV-TSP constructed, which is often held up nostalgically as the best constructed format of all time, but in terms of tournament attendance was quite poor, giving rise to the design shifts in Lorwyn block.

I'm going to keep on running this configuration for a while, because its just so interesting to me. But fyi for anyone following, I have a small ETB package ready to go, to help my poor darling player base. Sort of a "best of" from the penny cube, to just up that ETB density to a level that will help player accessibility. I don't want to push it too quickly, because thats interesting in itself. I'm imagining it will be kind of like visions era magic, when they starting printing good ETBs for the first time, and the game started gravitating around them. I expect them to jump to the top of the pick order.

Also note, if you're running cloud of faeries with boucelands, I suggest giving players pads of paper to write down mana totals on. We had a poor guy last night that you would think was trying to solve the hodge conjecture in his head, and it was just miserable for everyone.

 

[Jovial]

I built the original Penny Pincer Cube and host a draft night at my LGS and they love it.

Therefor, I'm going to build the SHIT out of this and see how much they love it. <3

 

[Grillo_Parlante]

Thank you sir

Give me a little bit more time to do some more A/B testing, say 1-2 weeks. I feel like we're a little bit skewed too much towards one player psyche demographic, and want to pull it back a little.

 

[Grillo_Parlante]

A few thoughts I want to record. I added the small ETB package, and it has helped with the learning curve immensely. This is awkward to explain, but if you'll remember one of the original ideas behind a riptide format was to slim down the curve to 1-2cc spells, which everyone liked, and it would be skill testing due to sequencing decisions.

This is partly true. In legacy, your mana base is under assault from wastelands, stiles, ports, (once upon a time counter-top locks) and the format is more condensed due to fast combo. In a context where you need to be hyper efficient with 1-3 mana sources, you need a low curve, and this creates a competing sequencing dilemma.

If one wishes to actually scale that experience to cube, you would need to actually up your average mana cost, to say 3-4cc. This way you have real competing sequencing demands. The problem with this approach is that is absolutely miserable for less experience players, who just struggle to process the game in this way. It makes sequencing mistakes that appear relatively minor to them into death sentences that they don't really understand, resulting in player frustration. Think of it this way: If you've ever had to painfully explain to a player why they should run reasonable mana totals, whats the chances they will like/understand why they need to run a reasonable curve?

If you want to emphasis skillful mtg play, this is probably a good approach to do so, but it feels inappropriate for a casual setting. One of the appeals of a bounceland format is that players don't have to deal with the tedium of shuffling, and they naturally allow for lower land totals, which means more sweet spells, as well as less "proper deck building" arguments with more casual players.

Here is the guild structure:

RB: Hellbent//madness//sacrifice
RG: lands // Berserkers//Horizontal Aggro
RU: Spells Tempo
RW: Artifacts//Tiny Control//Horizontal Aggro
UG: Ophidian Tempo
GB: Reanimator
GW: ++ Counters//Humans//Reanimator
BW: Zombies
UB: Ninjas//Zombies Control//Reanimator
UW: Flyers//Golem Control

And these are actual "core" guild decks. There are different ways they can come together, but each one has real density and redundancy of effect in the format, with proper signs represented via the gold section, so the developmental pathways are there, and are fairly forgiving. Due to the shifting color responsibilities possible at this power level, these decks are also competitive, and all have valid tools to combat negative variance.

The format is, I feel, still a little bit harder, just because some of these cards are just harder to grok when you've been accustomed to leaning on powerful blue draw, but I just don't care. Some Johnny player can be the hero and figure it out.

Have been leaning on the format in cube tutor, following a variety of pathways to try to break my own format. Its been pretty hard to do so far, outside of deliberate and gross card miss-evaluations or greedy brewing attempts where I ignore obvious draft signals that I need to return to the reservation.

The two biggest openings is the usual hole in the UR archetype, where a drafter can awkwardly end up meshing together a bunch of non-evasive low CC aggressive red creatures, with the conflicting spells matters cards in blue, for the worst deck in the format. The cards to patch this don't yet exist, I don't think. It really wants reasonably bodied small ground creatures that are rewarded by both spell castings, as well as discard triggers--and more discard triggers, because they fit better across Grixis mechanically.

There is also an iteration of the UB deck where the drafter misses the lifegain cards, but goes for a controlling build rather than a tempo build, and picks up the life pay card draw. Obviously dead against the formats excellent aggressive decks. This, while possible, seems to be a fairly narrow needle to thread, and goes against most drafters drafting instincts.

These were the two most significant additions:




Tremendous smoothing effect, and just foundational for blue controlling decks, while powering a lot of the discard focused interactions core to the Grixis portion of the cube's identity.

Also ended up adding almost all of the aftermath cards, which are just really well designed, and deep cards. Its like an artificial way to go over your cube count--providing that players are willing to access the graveyard as a resource.

The power gap is also really close. Have some thoughts about this, but its a bit early to put them to paper. Basically, because card evaluations are less static, early picks are less predictable, which results in broadening the range of valid paths to develop a deck along. This is fine if you have core archetypes, as I do, but a disaster if you don't.

To give a simple example of what happens with a power gap, first picks, the draft, and your format. If 25% of my cards are being repeatedly taken as first picks due to their power level, than that means that drafting patterns are going to essentially be reduced to being developmental pathways for that 25%. E.g. once we establish that mulldrifter is a slam first pick, than we've limited our particular draft to whatever the range of mulldrifter decks can be, and that number probably shrinks once we determine what the most competitive mulldrifter decks are. If its a subset of cards that are repeatedly dominating our first picks, than our format can only ever produce decks consistent with the range of decks that each one of those cards allows.

This is kind of good, kind of bad depending on what our format goals are.

 

[ahadabans]

Drafted this. I blasted through the draft so it's not great. Can't remember what my first pick was (maybe a ninja), but I wanted to see where I could go with UB ninjas which is a cool deck to play so I stuck with that to the end. I feel like this desperately needed some incremental ETB dudes (Liliana's Specter maybe). I snap grabbed Bone Shredder and realized right after that it's not great with Ninjas due to the echo (oops), so it's just a value card in this deck.

On a semi-related note, I find it's hard to downshift to these sorts of drafts because they are very different. It's about synergy selection versus power drafting where you are looking at what is broken and just building around that. This type of drafting is definitely harder.

UB Ninja Grind from CubeTutor.com

 

[ahadabans]

This is a cool deck. Started with Reckless Wurm and really wanted to make a madness thing happen with some Drake Haven synergy, but that didn't wheel and I cut blue entirely in the end. Tried to hit enough life gain for searing meditation, but that didn't pan out unfortunately. Just a couple more pieces though and I would have pulled the trigger on that - it's clearly insane in this cube with Firemane in the yard. That's sweet.

RW Firemane Madness from CubeTutor.com

EDIT: In retrospect, I think maybe searing mediation works here. I forgot wind-scarred triggers life too, so that's 4 effects and combo with firemane.

 

[Grillo_Parlante]

Thats funny, I was just debating the inclusion of specter as well. I swapped out psychatog for wydwen, the biting gale, on the basis that would be a clearer signal, and help cement UB as a flash-flyers mystical teachings pair.

Shredder is actually fine with the ninjas, and part of that is the echo. You really want to be ninjaing it back, than either hitting it with a repeal, or letting it hit the yard for unearth or raise dead effects.

I really like what you did with that deck btw. Very creative focus on artifacts.

I think this is a pretty fair baseline of what I am looking for in UB:

U/B zombies tempo from CubeTutor.com

The zombies clog the ground and are the main enablers of slower variants of the deck, while also letting it go wide for ninja hits.

Added a waterfront bouncer in for one of the looters. I felt like a little bit more interaction might from that angle might be helpful for the deck, as there is a lot less bounce from OG penny cube for balancing reasons.

 

[ahadabans]

The artifact thing just came together. I saw eggs and then a braids and then a trading post and I was like "nice, that all goes well together AND combos with my aristocrats thing!"

Trading Post is like the quintessential value card in a midrange cube. I love that card. It does a little bit of everything. I wonder if I could squeeze that into my combo list?

 

[Grillo_Parlante]

Its really amazing in such subtle ways, just one of those classic cube cards that enables seemingly everything.

Really like that R/W deck, and it highlights pretty nicely why I wanted to shift away from the raw power of blue card draw. Very controlling deck that wants to generate CA in other ways, and is more interested in card quality. The deck looks like it has a lot of fascinating lines.

Wanted to show off of a few other drake decks that looked really cool to me.

UW from CubeTutor.com

This is such a clean list, and shows a really reasonable haven. Most of the time its probably going to be pretty fair, but the ceiling is good, the floor is acceptable, and it fits really well in a UW shell--decks not cards.

One thing that made me blink though was that there are actually six ways to trigger haven in the list: you discard a card to transmute muddle the mixture!

There are a few mechanics I hadn't thought of that naturally trigger those cards: transmute, retrace, reinforce, and bloodrush--good things to keep in mind.

And speaking cool trading post decks, there is this haven deck from modin:

Bant Drake Post from CubeTutor.com

Again, we have 6 ways to trigger haven, and post is just an all-star, getting back trisk and powering haven.

There was a slight misbuild imo though, in his card pool he had inventor's fair (another way to trigger searing med btw) which could be used to grab trading post and really supercharge the deck.

Not enough artifacts you say to turn on fair? Than I remembered that confirm suspicions gives you instant metalcraft.

I'm really enjoying some of these artifact interactions. Not only is trading post a high value target, recurring niv's disk with cards like remember the fallen, seems like big game.

I really like these low vibration, synergy related ways to give a deck consistency, creating a way to shift around and hit high value targets.

 

[Grillo_Parlante]

This has got to be the coolest searing meditation deck:

RWG Searing Suns from CubeTutor.com

It gets triggers from mina and denn returning gain lands, approach of the second sun, pelakka wurm (who is also a reanimation target), seeker of the way, and exempler.

Than card advantage, ramp, and both creature and spell recursion.

Thinking this cube might be a good candidate for




Sweet midrange durdles

 

[ahadabans]

I wonder with the reduced ETB package if Genesis is worth it? It hurts me to say that because I love the card so much. But I have found the playability of that card in my lists hinges entirely on what utility engine I can get going. Because a creature/effect that is more than 3 mana is too cost prohibitive to loop with Genesis. Bone Shredder is a classic combo with it since it self bins. So you've got one slam dunk for sure. Sacrifice dudes work good as well (thinking things like Sakura-Tribe Elder, etc. in particular).

 

[ahadabans]

This feels solid (minus the absolute blank on nonbasic... oops). I love GB midrange. I didn't get spider spawning, which would be sweet in this.

Two cards you might consider... Nostalgic Dreams (over Wildest Dreams?). And maybe Satyr Wayfinder? It's absolutely perfect in this deck and good just as filler in a lot of Gx midrange decks.

GB Midrange from CubeTutor.com

 

[Grillo_Parlante]

I wonder with the reduced ETB package if Genesis is worth it? It hurts me to say that because I love the card so much. But I have found the playability of that card in my lists hinges entirely on what utility engine I can get going. Because a creature/effect that is more than 3 mana is too cost prohibitive to loop with Genesis. Bone Shredder is a classic combo with it since it self bins. So you've got one slam dunk for sure. Sacrifice dudes work good as well (thinking things like Sakura-Tribe Elder, etc. in particular).

Its 100% worth it. Just let your imagination fly! You can use it to turn all of those cycling creatures into a card advantage engine, giving you a source of discard triggers, etc. Plus the trisks all want to be recurred, and have ways to send themselves to the yard.

Added nostalgic dreams, its just too perfect. Wayfinder has always been a somewhat polarizing card for me, since people get weird about it binning things they care about, but maybe its fine?

I feel pretty happy, I had a sort of mechanical superstructure with URB resolving around the discard mechanic, and was looking to give some strong mechanical identity to WBG, and think I've finally found it.

This card, has been really good traditionally in the penny cube.



Since you can recur niv's disk, arrows, the trisks, and so forth. Because it hits creatures, its not too narrow. Lo and behold, I discover they also printed:



This creates a strong identity around recursion in the tri-color Structure I wanted, which fits well with the overlapping discard elements, and green self-mill TOL manipulators, as well as the bauble and egg tossing for CA, or grabbing self-milled cards we want. Fun durdles.

This resulted in a couple decks like this:

GBW Artifact nonsense from CubeTutor.com

B/W/G Awesome Post from CubeTutor.com

Since the power gap is closer, it seems much easier to draft the cube in reverse--meaning that instead of picking a power pick, you select the supporting elements first--land, removal etc--and than feed in the good cards that seem to fit with the emerging strategy.

That also seems to mean that engine pieces are the better first picks, and that makes sense, since we're going to want to draft a synergistic engine anyways. Flexible, plastic cards, that can build up into powerful interactions, based on whats flowing towards you, puts you into a better position to respond to the draft.

And I think thats pretty much how a midrange deck should be, and it balances itself on an attractive line. Well these decks are interactive, there is a certain level of non-interactivity to them, since you're essentially trying to survive to build a giant combo machine. I think that appeals strongly to the types of players that enjoy non-interactive magic, brewing, or discovering interactions. But they manage to provide that "building" feeling without making other people's lives miserable.

Meanwhile my aggro decks have a midrangy strategy as well, since they are about early pressure, than manufacturing a board state capable of killing an opponent in one brutal rush--hopefully walking the line again between interactive and non-interactive, fair and combo.

For the UB ninjas, I can't find a spot, but I think I would run this:



They can ninja that back to the hand, and than build their 5/5 flying ninja of the deep hours. That deck has more of a problem with subsequent hits than it does with getting the first hit in with ninjas: the UG version can always slap a moldervine cloak on a ninja and go to work, black struggles with that, and there are no blue 3 mana bounce spells that hit lands in this version of the cube to leave them crippled and vulnerable.