Tzenmoroth's Cube [540]

[Tzenmoroth]

The list: http://www.cubetutor.com/viewcube/42610

Spoiler: Rambling about the cube

Primary design goals:
-Sticking to the Modern color wheel in important ways (e.g. no land destruction in white)
-Maximize interaction and meaningful choices, the avg cmc is kept around 3.0
-Maximize interesting card interactions and synergies. I like to have a high density of cards that are fine on their own and have various incidental synergies with other cards.
-Relatively flat power curve, many cards have been removed for being too powerful from Lightning Bolt to Batterskull
-Support largest possible variety of fundamental archetypes, there are overlapping themes throughout various sets of colors and many cards that fit into multiple themes, hopefully nothing parasitic
-Being relatively easy for new players to get into, requiring minimal explanation (The cube is singleton and without a utility draft largely because of this)

This cube is usually drafted with 6-8 players or two person sealed or grid draft.

Significant changes to the cube since its inception:
-Cutting down significantly on tutors to keep things varied
-Removal of less interactive cards like True-Name Nemesis, attempts to push interaction
-Removal of a lot of of good cards against aggro
-Breaking singleton for awhile then going back
-Cutting the cube from 720 to 540, lots of chaff removed
-Removing non-Modern ramp and anything as fast as Sol Elf
-Removing the bulk of sneak effects and 9+ mana cards.
-Significantly trimming blue card draw to focus on tempo instead
-Morph subtheme didn't work out

Archetypes (Roughly):
RG Big Red, Real Estate (Titania, Protector of Argoth, Life from the Loam), Wildfire/Obliterate
RW Swarm / Tokens (Purphoros), Piñata
RU Counterburn, Spells matter (Prowess/Guttersnipe)
RB Pain's Reward Blitzkreig, Sacrifice (Blood Artist)
GW Hatebears, Creatures (CoCo, Pod, etc), Ramp, Reveillark
GU Combo ramp / Upheaval, "Tempo", Lands
GB Attrition midrange, Death Cloud, Graveyard abuse
WU Aggro-control / Standstill, "Geist" decks, Luminarch Ascension
WB Pikula, Death and Taxes / Tap out control, Smokestack
UB grindy draw go control, Psychatog
5c Goodstuff: Bring to Light, All Suns' Dawn, Morphs / Manifests

RG Obliterate, UB Psychatog, BW Smokestack and UR Keranos decks have felt like the most dominant decks in the past two months. These cards regularly win games and demand respect.

Cruel Ultimatum, Jeskai Ascendancy, Mardu tokens, RUG Goodstuff, Esper control, Abzan Goodstuff have all performed well.

Most concerning issues:
-GW is relatively lacking an identity. GW has been drafted a few times as relatively generic midrange beatdown and has done poorly.
-The Reveillark/Sun Titan package has yet to really see play. Its been in there since the cube began.
-GB probably needs more ways to fill the yard.

I have a ton of notes about all of the changes I have been making to this cube so I will be posting card changes or something probably.

 

[Chriskool]

I like what I've read; oppressively powerful cards can stick to constructed; let cubers have fun with all sorts of relics from MTG's past!

It's hard for me to give pinpointed valuable feedback on a cube of this size without it being deconstructed into smaller parts (color-pair synergies, etc.), but I can comment on your quirks!

Selesnya's Identity
From playing 100-card singleton, I found this color pair to run best as a midrange deck low on ramp with card advantage to compete with slow decks and lifegain to react to quick decks. Another key component of this deck is having enough removal to interact with threats that outclass GW's 3/3s-6/6s. A Natural Order or Green Sun's Zenith (with a big, card-advantage-creating threat) never hurt anyone. And manlands go a long way improving threat density.

Lastly, I don't see a sustainable graveyard theme here; the enablers are too thin. Here is the list I threw together (and it's by no means exhaustive):



Add more to this selection (I would want six or more enablers in a draft deck) to support the theme if you desire. Cyclers that are also creatures (think Pale Recluse or Eternal Dragon) can support this theme further. Also, Marshal's Anthem is a great card to fetch with Commune with the Gods.

 

[Tzenmoroth]

Yeah the cube is complicated and I've already read through everything this website has to say about cube, so I don't imagine specific constructive feedback being particularly easy. There are still quite a few things I'm playing around with but I felt comfortable posting the last now because the cube feels way more solid now after the overhauls its gone through. I foresee a lot of small fixes now, not another huge overhaul. I also wanted it on cubetutor so I could test draft it.

Selesnya feels like it tends to be somewhere from go big or go home midrange to Wg aggro fueled with stuff like CoCo and some solid WG creatures. Maybe its just been having trouble dealing with control decks, idk. Its hard to tell how much of the meta is my group's biases towards certain decks and how much of it is the support present in the cube.

Green feels like it has enough cards that fill the graveyard, if anything it doesn't utilize the graveyard enough. Black certainly has enough cards to utilize the graveyard, red have blue have decent amounts. I have actually kept reanimation out of white (except for value reanimation that counts cmc or power) because black is already the color that does real reanimation and it feels silly to have reanimation in a color with no real graveyard filling. Anyway, I like the cube's graveyard decks being mostly GB, UB and RB/RG to an extent. I think I also like four color themes instead of five. I feel like I don't need GW to go that route but Survival of the Fittest has actually been on the cutting board. I mean, Fauna Shaman is fine just to have a bear with a neat toolbox ability. Survival might just want to come out in favor of another graveyard utilizer though. The card is mostly a leftover relic of my original list.

 

[Tzenmoroth]

Spoiler: Cube games

Deck I drafted and went 2-1 with. Went okay, lost a game to color screw, don't remember why I went with the red splash but it was whatever'o'clock in the morning so that's a good enough reason I suppose. Lost to a pretty intense BUG reanimator/control deck. Our first game lasted over an hour, featuring Smokestack into Elspeth on my end, grinding through a Hornet Queen he Diabolic Servituded, Upheaval from him, Smokestack grinding him down again and eventually me squeezing out the last of his life total. Game 2 I got Servitude out of their hand off a blind Cabal Therapy. It was a pretty solid wrecking of their hand since I had a spare token to sac but they preceded to topdeck into Whip of Erebos and I couldn't deal the the impending 40+ life gain and onslaught of fatties. I completely 404'd on answers to Whip that game. Fucking Whiiip. Our third game featured me swinging with 7 Pack Rats, trading most of them off with Hornet tokens because I had no other choice, into Frost Titan locking a pack rat down and me dying well before I could get the rats to take off again.

TL;DR I had eight Pack Rats at one point and it just wasn't enough.

Smokestack