General What build arounds do you run?

Onderzeeboot

Onderzeeboot

Ecstatic Orb
Right. After thoroughly derailing this thread in the most styleful of ways...



This is by far my most favorite build-around in my cube. Well, together with...



I don't think I'm ever passing these if I'm not set in an archetype yet.
 
safra

safra

If you axe me, this is just another 'bundle of sticks' prescriptivism fiasco waiting to happen.

I'm really liking Jeskai Ascendancy so far (just one play session with it though!) - insofar as it combos with anything, it combos with creatures and spells. If you have both in your deck you'll be fine. Since that's about as unparasitic a requirement as I've been able to find (okay, okay, some token-making spells) it's just a good fun card that manages to justify its restrictive cost.

i think what the success of human tribal, pod decks and possibly ascendancy indicates is that giving decks a novel way to attack the game only really works if they'd want to play those cards together anyway. I tried a mill subtheme for a little while (more hedron crab and friends, less breaking // entering) and it didn't really work very well. The suggestion i read in one of those Adam Thomas articles of an Owling Mine-style control archetype seems like a cool way to build that from the ground up, while justifying a few more wraths and reactive graveyard strategies. Has anyone tried something like this?
(iirc it was various Howling Mine effects and just tons of hard control but i'm sure there are alternate builds too)
 
Grillo_Parlante

Grillo_Parlante

Contributor
safra said:
i think what the success of human tribal, pod decks and possibly ascendancy indicates is that giving decks a novel way to attack the game only really works if they'd want to play those cards together anyway.
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CML's rules for tribal seem pretty applicable here:

1. The tribal [archetype] pieces not to be poisonous
2. Incentive synergy for having a lot of these cards [that care about the archetype piece] together

With certain pieces, when you have to have the archetype enablers is important. Some, you need to run multiple copies of to ensure an early game draw, some are fine as late game draws.

The problem with mill, in most cubes, is thats its on a completly different strategic axis, and is thus inheriently poisonous.

I would have to see the exact owling mine suggestion, but I hate that deck so much, that it would take a lot of convincing for me to view it positively, lol. Ebony owl only seems to enable one specific deck, and the support cards seem narrow.
 
safra

safra

Here's the post in question:
http://www.magicmadhouse.co.uk/articles/2014/12/under-the-hood-running-the-show/

Looking over it again, it seems pretty poisonous, but I think there's probably a way to avoid that (mystic speculation, walls and mindshrieker might come in handy). Rather than being an Ebony-Owl Netsuke archetype i guess it's more of a Font of Mythos archetype

I mean if you're looking for incentive synergy it's hard to get more of an incentive than 'if you somehow hold this point with a few draw effects, you'll win'. Jace's Archivist is awfully narrow and I don't like it that much anyway but the rest of the deck got my nonpoisonous mill hackles up
 
Onderzeeboot

Onderzeeboot

Ecstatic Orb
GenericZero said:
I wish this guy wasn't poisonous. I love that name and the art is fantastically horrifying/awesome.

Click to expand...

How is this card poisonous? It kills in three swings! And it's very hard to deal with as well. I don't know that it would be fun to play against, but you can easily run this without any other mill cards.
 
Diakonov

Diakonov

I do not care about Owling Mine or opponent-mill but self-mill (specifically) is very fun and doesn't have to be poisonous. As was mentioned, Hedron Crab is a difficult win condition, but it is a wicked sweet self-mill engine.

What are some other reasonable self-mill effects and payoffs?
 
Eric Chan

Eric Chan

Hyalopterous Lemure
Staff member
I'm not a big fan of Hedron Crab, and he's really narrow - I ran him for a while, but he never caught on. Unlike all of the good self-mill cards, he actually costs you a card, making it hard to justify a deck slot on.

For cheap self-mill enablers that replace themselves, I like

 
Grillo_Parlante

Grillo_Parlante

Contributor
safra said:
Here's the post in question:
http://www.magicmadhouse.co.uk/articles/2014/12/under-the-hood-running-the-show/

Looking over it again, it seems pretty poisonous, but I think there's probably a way to avoid that (mystic speculation, walls and mindshrieker might come in handy). Rather than being an Ebony-Owl Netsuke archetype i guess it's more of a Font of Mythos archetype

I mean if you're looking for incentive synergy it's hard to get more of an incentive than 'if you somehow hold this point with a few draw effects, you'll win'. Jace's Archivist is awfully narrow and I don't like it that much anyway but the rest of the deck got my nonpoisonous mill hackles up
Click to expand...

Yeah, that looks more reasonable. The tricky things are the draw 7s and howling mine. Presumably, he has other strategies in the cube that benefit from those cards?

It seems like a smart control strategy otherwise, one where the engine that powers the deck both acts as the control enabler and win condition. You don't have to go down a mill route specifically to have that in your cube: the III burning vengeance decks, for example, had a similar strategy. Its just a matter of finding the right non-poisonous engine/kill condition for your cube.
 
Jonas

Jonas

I tried hedron crab in my gycube, and it didn't really catch on, so as soon as I've managed to figure out my changes, I'm cutting it.
 
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