Many huge, flying "dragon"-type creatures were cut from the cube to promote other, more subtle strategies.
Most hyper aggressive creatures are found in Boros, Rakdos, and Gruul.
A gate sub-theme including 40 guild gates, Maze's End, Crackling Perimeter, Hold the Gates, and all 5 gatekeepers. (There are no shocklands or karoo lands in this cube.)
A dredge/scavenge strategy is fully supported.
A bloodlust/graft/scavenge/unleash/evolve +1/+1 theme is fully supported.
A token strategy is mainly found in Selesnya, but there are many other token producers in the other colors as well.
A minor mill strategy is supported with a small handful of powerful cards.
An unusually high concentration of Junk colored 2cmc creatures, specifically to be the foundation for the Immortal Servitude deck. (This deck is the perfect home for Dark Confidant.)
Other build-around-me cards include Domri Rade, Ruric Thar, the Unbowed, and Deadbridge Chant for a nearly 100% creature deck (thanks to bloodrush combat tricks) or any combination of Vigor Mortis, Obzedat's Aid, Deadbridge Chant, and Debtors' Knell as the back bone of a 3-5 color reanimator deck.
I know you're trying to keep blocks of cards, but a few universal fixers like Transguild Promenade, Chromatic Lantern, or Prophetic Prism might be nice for people wanting 5-color fixing without having to lean heavily on green.
Similarly, I've noticed that you don't have any general artifacts that aren't mana rocks. Is that intentional or just an oversight?
I know you're trying to keep blocks of cards, but a few universal fixers like Transguild Promenade, Chromatic Lantern, or Prophetic Prism might be nice for people wanting 5-color fixing without having to lean heavily on green.
Similarly, I've noticed that you don't have any general artifacts that aren't mana rocks. Is that intentional or just an oversight?
Well, I didn't want to use Chromatic Lantern just because of how similar it is to the keyrunes and cluestones. Prophetic Prism might be interesting. Transguild Promenade is just a little boring when there is also Pillar of the Paruns, but it might be worth including if there are too many mana problems.
I was also thinking of including Civic Saber as the only equipment in the cube, but I'm not sure yet. If I do that, I might include the Nephilims.
I've spent the past 2 weeks tweaking the cube list and without going card-by-card, I've made the following changes:
The defender sub-theme (Axebane Guardian, Doorkeeper) is completely dropped. There just weren't enough interesting defenders to make it a worth while theme. There was no reason to "go for it."
I've reduced the gate theme to the bare essentials (gatekeepers, Maze's End, Crackling Perimeter, and Gatecreeper Vine) and have dropped other things like Ogre Jailbreaker, Greenside Watcher, and Hold the Gates.
I've tried to keep "dragon"-type creatures in check throughout the color wheel. I tried limiting them to Azorius (Archon of the Triumvirate, Isperia, etc.), Izzet (both Niv-Mizzets), and Boros (Aurelia, Razia, etc.). So there is definitely a UWR "dragon" control deck, but I really limit the huge fliers to these 3 colors.
Black is kind of interesting because both Skeletal Vampire and Ogre Slumlord are powerful on their own, are token producers, and are both lords. They don't really jump out as "lords" when you first look at them, mostly because Ravnica/RTR aren't tribal themed blocks. But there are interactions with Blind Hunter, Basillica Screecher, Belfry Spirit, Hellhole Rats, Gobhobbler Rats, and Pack Rat.
With 5 planeswalkers (Domri Rade, Gideon, Ral Zarek, Jace, and Vraska), there are definitely some crazy decks that can be drafted, especially since 3 of those planeswalkers can be ultimated immediately with Doubling Season.
I've decided to support some guild abilities more than others:
Extort is a major theme and I've including almost every single extort card.
Dredge & Scavenge work so much differently than every other ability and they work so well together. So green & black are filled with cards that have these abilities or support graveyard strategies.
Graft, Bloodthirst, Scavenge, Unleash, and Evolve are all fully supported for their +1/+1 counter interactions.
Radiance only appears on 1 card (Brightflame).
Replicate only appears on 2 cards (Pyromantics, Djinn Illuminatus).
Forecast only appears on 2 cards (Plumes of Peace, Pride of the Clouds).
Convoke only appears on 2 cards (Autochthon Wurm, Chord of Calling).
Haunt only appears on 3 cards (Blind Hunter, Belfry Spirit, Seize the Soul).
Cipher only appears on 3 cards (Call of the Nightwing, Undercity Plague, Stolen Identity).
Overload only appears on 3 cards (Teleportal, Cyclonic Rift, Mizzium Mortars).
Transmute, Populate, Detain, Bloodrush, Battalion, and Hellbent are all represented a little bit more with a few cards for each.
In the spirit of color balance, I've also streamlined the nonbasic land & split cards:
All 10 nonbasic guild lands from original Ravnica are in the cube.
All 10 "monocolored" split cards from RTR are in the cube.
All 10 gold split cards from original Ravnica are in the cube.
All 5 gold split cards from RTR are not in the cube.
I've ordered & received all the original Ravnica cards I needed and I should be receiving all 3 of my RTR set redemptions in the next couple days so I will be able to do some testing then.
It might be worth considering some of the guild artifacts in place of a keyrune/cluestone for colors that don't really care about ramping.
-1 Boros Cluestone
+1 Sunforger
I've also reduced each color to 18, down from 20, just to tighten up all the colors. It's now slimmed all the way down to 361 cards (the extra 1 is Maze's End).
I'm looking forward to going through your list to find cards I hadn't considered for mine.
My biggest question is about Dimir. Other than Consuming Aberration, I've chosen not to run any of the mill cards at all. That decision made the Dimir pool super limited.
I just wasn't convinced that there was enough mill cards for it to be a thing. I might be wrong.
I'd ask you to revisit cutting Hold the Gates. It's been awesome every time I've seen it in GTC and DGR sealed league. It can turn a game around with even just a single gate in play. I think it's actually better than Cackling Perimeter much of the time unless you go all-in on a gate strategy.
My biggest question is about Dimir. Other than Consuming Aberration, I've chosen not to run any of the mill cards at all. That decision made the Dimir pool super limited.
I just wasn't convinced that there was enough mill cards for it to be a thing. I might be wrong.
Mill is totally a thing in my cube. Take a look at my list in my sig.
Mill is totally a thing in my cube. Take a look at my list in my sig.
Yeah, I was looking at your cube earlier.
It's likely that I shouldn't be so strict on the split card / hybrid / gold / mana rocks thing when it comes to chopping up the cube, just to balance it completely.
Sometimes I get caught up with the whole strict design of it and yet... the reality is that when people actually draft it, no one would ever know if unless you pointed out how perfectly everything is balanced.
I think I would still like to include the "gate deck" and chop it like this:
21 guild cards per guild (210 total)
21 mono colored cards per color (105 total)
40 guild gates
1 Chromatic Lantern
1 Maze's End
1 Transguild Promenade
1 Pillar of the Paruns
1 Prophetic Prism
It's likely that I shouldn't be so strict on the split card / hybrid / gold / mana rocks thing when it comes to chopping up the cube, just to balance it completely.
Sometimes I get caught up with the whole strict design of it and yet... the reality is that when people actually draft it, no one would ever know if unless you pointed out how perfectly everything is balanced.
Initially I made myself stick to cycles such as the original guildmages and the keyrunes, but then I realized they were, in some cases, just wasting valuable slots. Almost every guild has a lot of options (except Izzet, sigh) and I could no longer justify not running an awesome card just for the sake of symmetry.
Of course I keep each of my guild sections the same size, but I have committed to maximizing card quality unless it gets in the way of metagame balance (aggro vs control).
You're running a few cards that I had dismissed out of hand or cut after testing, so I'd love to hear about your experiences with them so that I can consider giving them another chance:
Archon of the Triumvirate - Seems okay so far, especially since I limited many other huge fliers from my list.
Righteous Authority - Kind of funny with Sphinx's Revelation, also nice with Simic Guildmage.
Call of the Nightwing - Seems fine, but nothing special. I still think it's one of the better cipher cards to go with all the unblockable dimir creatures.
Warped Physique - Already cut it from the list. Not good enough.
Carnival Hellsteed - Already cut it from the list. Not interesting enough.
Rakdos Augermage - Already cut it from the list. Other, better ways to get hellbent and get things in your graveyard.
Borborygmos Enraged - Not sure about this one yet.
Frenzied Tilling - Seems fine so far, but I run more nonbasic utility lands than you do.
Gruul War Chant - Already cut from the list.
Trostani's Summoner - One of my favorite cards from DGR draft and I would never cut this ever.
Blood Baron of Vizkopa - Not sure about this yet. It's really good, but might be redundant with Orbzedat. Between the 2, Obzedat is just better.
Teleportal - Seems good in theory with Wee Dragonaughts, Nivix Cyclops, and Fluxcharger. Needs more testing.
Deadbridge Chant - I like it.
Drown in Filth - So much better than in stragith DGR draft because of dredge.
Rot Farm Skeleton - Already cut from the list. Not good enough.
Brightflame - Not sure about this one.
Searing Meditation - Only good in a BWR extort type deck. Might be too narrow.
Experiment Kraj - Love this card.
Bioshift - Already cut from the list. Not nearly good enough.
Azorius Justiciar - Seems fine.
Seize the Soul - Might have a place in a esper fliers / cipher deck.
Undercity Plague - Love this card.
Leyline of Lightning - It's been pretty good so far, especially for a deck looking to get hellbent.
Guttersnipe - Not sure about this card, I could probably replace it with more burn.
Chord of Calling - Pretty good in a tokens deck.
Skarrgan Pit-Skulk - I've recently cut down on the number of auras. It's good with a lot of auras... not sure how it does now.
edit: Still making some more changes:
1) I wasn't happy with mono blue and black and decided to give cipher another chance. In theory its a very powerful effect and I decided to add Last Thoughts, Midnight Recovery, Shadow Slice, and Paranoid Delusions.
2) I'm now running Immortal Servitude in my list and have gone on in on 2 cmc black, white, and green creatures. There are nearly 30 Junk colored creatures that can be reanimated in one huge Immortal Servitude.
3) I'm continuing to remove a lot of the weaker guildmages and utility lands.
Update on the Maze's End deck and... I think it works.
I've done a handful of simulations by getting a p1p1 Maze's End and I've been able to draft all 10 gates every time. In general, with 4 copies of every gate, there is almost too much fixing in this cube. If you go 3 colors, you can easily get 5+ gates of the right colors almost every time.
They all basically end up the same: some mana fixing, some card draw, a few creatures, and a ton of removal. This version ended up being slanted towards red/black just because that was the removal which was passed to me. I even ended up with 2 sweepers (Savage Twister, Crime/Punishment).
It's hard to tell how good/bad these decks are since I haven't had a chance to test them yet, but they look like they could work.
(This particular version is probably mediocre when it comes to the Maze's End decks I've drafted so far. The best version ended up more green/white with the green gatekeeper, Loxodon Hierarch, Hold the Gates, and Mericless Eviction.)
It's especially hard to tell how good it is when it pair it up against something like this Junk Reanimator deck I was able to put together: http://cubetutor.com/draftdeck/7541
I think this deck is quite strong and I would have loved to play with it against someone.
Loaming Shaman is amazing. It's a 3/2 body for 3 which is perfectly fine for this format. It can be used as graveyard hate, it can recycle your own graveyard if you're using a lot of dredge (so you can keep on dredging), and it combos perfectly with Deadbridge Chant.
Verdant Eidolon fits into that same reanimator style deck. It also can be value discarded to a Pack Rat, Lotleth Troll, or Rakdos Guildmage. She's also great to hard can fatties in a 5-Color Reanimator deck.
Here are a couple examples of 5-Color Reanimator decks that I've drafted:
Archon of the Triumvirate - Seems okay so far, especially since I limited many other huge fliers from my list.
Righteous Authority - Kind of funny with Sphinx's Revelation, also nice with Simic Guildmage.
Call of the Nightwing - Seems fine, but nothing special. I still think it's one of the better cipher cards to go with all the unblockable dimir creatures.
Warped Physique - Already cut it from the list. Not good enough.
Carnival Hellsteed - Already cut it from the list. Not interesting enough.
Rakdos Augermage - Already cut it from the list. Other, better ways to get hellbent and get things in your graveyard.
Borborygmos Enraged - Not sure about this one yet.
Frenzied Tilling - Seems fine so far, but I run more nonbasic utility lands than you do.
Gruul War Chant - Already cut from the list.
Trostani's Summoner - One of my favorite cards from DGR draft and I would never cut this ever.
Blood Baron of Vizkopa - Not sure about this yet. It's really good, but might be redundant with Orbzedat. Between the 2, Obzedat is just better.
Teleportal - Seems good in theory with Wee Dragonaughts, Nivix Cyclops, and Fluxcharger. Needs more testing.
Deadbridge Chant - I like it.
Drown in Filth - So much better than in stragith DGR draft because of dredge.
Rot Farm Skeleton - Already cut from the list. Not good enough.
Brightflame - Not sure about this one.
Searing Meditation - Only good in a BWR extort type deck. Might be too narrow.
Experiment Kraj - Love this card.
Bioshift - Already cut from the list. Not nearly good enough.
Azorius Justiciar - Seems fine.
Seize the Soul - Might have a place in a esper fliers / cipher deck.
Undercity Plague - Love this card.
Leyline of Lightning - It's been pretty good so far, especially for a deck looking to get hellbent.
Guttersnipe - Not sure about this card, I could probably replace it with more burn.
Chord of Calling - Pretty good in a tokens deck.
Skarrgan Pit-Skulk - I've recently cut down on the number of auras. It's good with a lot of auras... not sure how it does now.
edit: Still making some more changes:
1) I wasn't happy with mono blue and black and decided to give cipher another chance. In theory its a very powerful effect and I decided to add Last Thoughts, Midnight Recovery, Shadow Slice, and Paranoid Delusions.
2) I'm now running Immortal Servitude in my list and have gone on in on 2 cmc black, white, and green creatures. There are nearly 30 Junk colored creatures that can be reanimated in one huge Immortal Servitude.
3) I'm continuing to remove a lot of the weaker guildmages and utility lands.
Thanks for this! Sorry for taking a while to get back to you.
It's really interesting to hear how other cards are working or not working, and I'll want to keep checking in with you as I tinker with specific card choices.
Thanks for this! Sorry for taking a while to get back to you.
It's really interesting to hear how other cards are working or not working, and I'll want to keep checking in with you as I tinker with specific card choices.
Of the cards you originally listed, only the following are still in my cube:
Righteous Authority
Trostani's Summoner
Deadbridge Chant
Drown in Filth
Experiment Kraj
Undercity Plague
Chord of Calling
The only card I can possibly see cutting is Righteous Authority, but I still kind of like it. In esper decks there are a lot of unblockables. In straight azorius, there is always Ascended Lawmage who can do a lot of work. And in bant decks you can do some tricks with Simic Guildmage.
Drown in Filth is over performing for me. Junk Reanimator and 5-Color Reanimator (and sometimes BUG Reanimator) are a big thing in my cube. Together with dredge, Drown in Filth is the incidental removal the deck wants. You don't have to cut dredge, card draw, fatties or other things you want to be doing with that deck. You kind of don't want to cut those things just for a straight removal. Blast of Genius and Clutch of the Undercity and other cards with transmute also fall under this category.
That's really cool. I wouldn't say Reanimator is an archetype that I support, though dredge is a thing, and there's also Debtors' Knell. I'm going to have to get my hands on a Deadbridge Chant so that I can try it out, so thanks for mentioning this.
Gruul War Chant is bananas powerful and needs to go in.
Warped Physique is solid, pretty easy for it to kill an x/3.
Gruul War Chant used to be in the cube. I might give it another chance. It just feels like there are so many 4's in Gruul already. I had to cut something.
But I think Warped Physique is just underpowered compared to some of the other removal. It was a high pick in draft, but when you throw in all the rares from DGR and all the other removal from Ravnica, it just didn't seem as good.
edit: After looking through my list, Warped Physique is probably much better than Twisted Justice. So I'll give it another shot.
I've been wanting to add the nephlim to the cube for a while; I just didn't know how. 2 of them are really good, 1 is decent (if only it didn't start off as a 1/1 creature), and the other 2 are very bad. So how do you color balance them? Just give up and jam all 5? Or throw color balance out and just randomly add them to the cube?
In the end, I decided to count them as the two middle colors of their casting costs. So Dune-Brood Nephlim takes up a Gruul slot and Yore-Tiller Nephlim takes up a Dimir slot in this cube.
They're both really hard to cast, but there are alternate ways to get them into play. Vigor Mortis, Obzedat's Aid, Breaking / Entering, Deadbridge Chan, and Debtors' Knell can all reanimate them. (And Yore-Tiller Nephlim wants to be in the Reanimator Deck anyway. Debtors' Knell into Yore-Tiller Nephlim to them reanimate 2 creatures per turn?) Or if you're a base green deck, both Chord of Calling and Protean Hulk can both fetch them from your library for free. Or maybe you just jam a Chromatic Lantern and hard cast one of them on turn 4?
Another thing I like about them (I think?) is that because they're unlike everything else in the cube, they become their own little build-around-me cards on their own. If the cube gets drafted over and over by the same people, maybe it would be time for a fun draft and p1p1 one of these guys just to see if you can get it to work (Achievement Unlocked).
(The 3rd best nephilim is Witch-Maw Nephilim, but I'm just not sure it's strong enough. There are so many good 4 drops in this cube. I think it may just be a little too slow for it to matter.)
Not sure if they're going to work out, but it might be fun.
The Yore-Tiller is definitely worth trying out, at the very least. Let us know how it goes!
Eh, they've been pretty miserable so far. Dune-Brood is too hard to get through for something that most likely won't come down on turn 4. And Yore-Tiller likely only gets to reanimate a single creature before it dies. It's just a reanimation spell that costs 4 colors of mana and has summoning sickness. I don't think they're going to work out after all.
~ Ravnica Complete ~
Defining Features
Breakdown
Cube
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Dimir
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Rakdos
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Gruul
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Selesnya
--------
Orzhov
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Izzet
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Golgari
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Boros
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Simic
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White
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Blue
----
Black
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Red
---
Green
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Other
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Notes
Links
Thread | Draft
Similarly, I've noticed that you don't have any general artifacts that aren't mana rocks. Is that intentional or just an oversight?
Well, I didn't want to use Chromatic Lantern just because of how similar it is to the keyrunes and cluestones. Prophetic Prism might be interesting. Transguild Promenade is just a little boring when there is also Pillar of the Paruns, but it might be worth including if there are too many mana problems.
I was also thinking of including Civic Saber as the only equipment in the cube, but I'm not sure yet. If I do that, I might include the Nephilims.
Thread | Draft
I've decided to support some guild abilities more than others:
In the spirit of color balance, I've also streamlined the nonbasic land & split cards:
I've ordered & received all the original Ravnica cards I needed and I should be receiving all 3 of my RTR set redemptions in the next couple days so I will be able to do some testing then.
Thread | Draft
I suggest finding room for Sunforger.
Hm...
It might be worth considering some of the guild artifacts in place of a keyrune/cluestone for colors that don't really care about ramping.
-1 Boros Cluestone
+1 Sunforger
I've also reduced each color to 18, down from 20, just to tighten up all the colors. It's now slimmed all the way down to 361 cards (the extra 1 is Maze's End).
Thread | Draft
My biggest question is about Dimir. Other than Consuming Aberration, I've chosen not to run any of the mill cards at all. That decision made the Dimir pool super limited.
I just wasn't convinced that there was enough mill cards for it to be a thing. I might be wrong.
Thread | Draft
Mill is totally a thing in my cube. Take a look at my list in my sig.
Yeah, I was looking at your cube earlier.
It's likely that I shouldn't be so strict on the split card / hybrid / gold / mana rocks thing when it comes to chopping up the cube, just to balance it completely.
Sometimes I get caught up with the whole strict design of it and yet... the reality is that when people actually draft it, no one would ever know if unless you pointed out how perfectly everything is balanced.
I think I would still like to include the "gate deck" and chop it like this:
21 guild cards per guild (210 total)
21 mono colored cards per color (105 total)
40 guild gates
1 Chromatic Lantern
1 Maze's End
1 Transguild Promenade
1 Pillar of the Paruns
1 Prophetic Prism
Thread | Draft
Initially I made myself stick to cycles such as the original guildmages and the keyrunes, but then I realized they were, in some cases, just wasting valuable slots. Almost every guild has a lot of options (except Izzet, sigh) and I could no longer justify not running an awesome card just for the sake of symmetry.
Of course I keep each of my guild sections the same size, but I have committed to maximizing card quality unless it gets in the way of metagame balance (aggro vs control).
I'd love to hear how the gates work out in your cube. I'm only running a set because I don't have a second copy of every shockland.
Thanks!
Righteous Authority - Kind of funny with Sphinx's Revelation, also nice with Simic Guildmage.
Call of the Nightwing - Seems fine, but nothing special. I still think it's one of the better cipher cards to go with all the unblockable dimir creatures.
Warped Physique - Already cut it from the list. Not good enough.
Carnival Hellsteed - Already cut it from the list. Not interesting enough.
Rakdos Augermage - Already cut it from the list. Other, better ways to get hellbent and get things in your graveyard.
Borborygmos Enraged - Not sure about this one yet.
Frenzied Tilling - Seems fine so far, but I run more nonbasic utility lands than you do.
Gruul War Chant - Already cut from the list.
Trostani's Summoner - One of my favorite cards from DGR draft and I would never cut this ever.
Blood Baron of Vizkopa - Not sure about this yet. It's really good, but might be redundant with Orbzedat. Between the 2, Obzedat is just better.
Teleportal - Seems good in theory with Wee Dragonaughts, Nivix Cyclops, and Fluxcharger. Needs more testing.
Deadbridge Chant - I like it.
Drown in Filth - So much better than in stragith DGR draft because of dredge.
Rot Farm Skeleton - Already cut from the list. Not good enough.
Brightflame - Not sure about this one.
Searing Meditation - Only good in a BWR extort type deck. Might be too narrow.
Experiment Kraj - Love this card.
Bioshift - Already cut from the list. Not nearly good enough.
Azorius Justiciar - Seems fine.
Seize the Soul - Might have a place in a esper fliers / cipher deck.
Undercity Plague - Love this card.
Leyline of Lightning - It's been pretty good so far, especially for a deck looking to get hellbent.
Guttersnipe - Not sure about this card, I could probably replace it with more burn.
Chord of Calling - Pretty good in a tokens deck.
Skarrgan Pit-Skulk - I've recently cut down on the number of auras. It's good with a lot of auras... not sure how it does now.
edit: Still making some more changes:
1) I wasn't happy with mono blue and black and decided to give cipher another chance. In theory its a very powerful effect and I decided to add Last Thoughts, Midnight Recovery, Shadow Slice, and Paranoid Delusions.
2) I'm now running Immortal Servitude in my list and have gone on in on 2 cmc black, white, and green creatures. There are nearly 30 Junk colored creatures that can be reanimated in one huge Immortal Servitude.
3) I'm continuing to remove a lot of the weaker guildmages and utility lands.
Thread | Draft
I've done a handful of simulations by getting a p1p1 Maze's End and I've been able to draft all 10 gates every time. In general, with 4 copies of every gate, there is almost too much fixing in this cube. If you go 3 colors, you can easily get 5+ gates of the right colors almost every time.
Here's an example of a Maze'd End deck that I just did and saved: http://cubetutor.com/draftdeck/7550
They all basically end up the same: some mana fixing, some card draw, a few creatures, and a ton of removal. This version ended up being slanted towards red/black just because that was the removal which was passed to me. I even ended up with 2 sweepers (Savage Twister, Crime/Punishment).
It's hard to tell how good/bad these decks are since I haven't had a chance to test them yet, but they look like they could work.
(This particular version is probably mediocre when it comes to the Maze's End decks I've drafted so far. The best version ended up more green/white with the green gatekeeper, Loxodon Hierarch, Hold the Gates, and Mericless Eviction.)
It's especially hard to tell how good it is when it pair it up against something like this Junk Reanimator deck I was able to put together: http://cubetutor.com/draftdeck/7541
I think this deck is quite strong and I would have loved to play with it against someone.
And here's another one after a p1p1 Immortal Servitude ending up with 11x 2cmc targets: http://cubetutor.com/draftdeck/7556
(Hold the Gates + Korozda Guildmage is particularly nutty.)
You can find a lot of other decks I've drafted on the deck list here: http://cubetutor.com/decks/1660
Thread | Draft
Loaming Shaman is amazing. It's a 3/2 body for 3 which is perfectly fine for this format. It can be used as graveyard hate, it can recycle your own graveyard if you're using a lot of dredge (so you can keep on dredging), and it combos perfectly with Deadbridge Chant.
Verdant Eidolon fits into that same reanimator style deck. It also can be value discarded to a Pack Rat, Lotleth Troll, or Rakdos Guildmage. She's also great to hard can fatties in a 5-Color Reanimator deck.
Here are a couple examples of 5-Color Reanimator decks that I've drafted:
Thread | Draft
Thanks for this! Sorry for taking a while to get back to you.
It's really interesting to hear how other cards are working or not working, and I'll want to keep checking in with you as I tinker with specific card choices.
Of the cards you originally listed, only the following are still in my cube:
The only card I can possibly see cutting is Righteous Authority, but I still kind of like it. In esper decks there are a lot of unblockables. In straight azorius, there is always Ascended Lawmage who can do a lot of work. And in bant decks you can do some tricks with Simic Guildmage.
Drown in Filth is over performing for me. Junk Reanimator and 5-Color Reanimator (and sometimes BUG Reanimator) are a big thing in my cube. Together with dredge, Drown in Filth is the incidental removal the deck wants. You don't have to cut dredge, card draw, fatties or other things you want to be doing with that deck. You kind of don't want to cut those things just for a straight removal. Blast of Genius and Clutch of the Undercity and other cards with transmute also fall under this category.
Thread | Draft
Warped Physique is solid, pretty easy for it to kill an x/3.
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Gruul War Chant used to be in the cube. I might give it another chance. It just feels like there are so many 4's in Gruul already. I had to cut something.
But I think Warped Physique is just underpowered compared to some of the other removal. It was a high pick in draft, but when you throw in all the rares from DGR and all the other removal from Ravnica, it just didn't seem as good.
edit: After looking through my list, Warped Physique is probably much better than Twisted Justice. So I'll give it another shot.
Thread | Draft
I've been wanting to add the nephlim to the cube for a while; I just didn't know how. 2 of them are really good, 1 is decent (if only it didn't start off as a 1/1 creature), and the other 2 are very bad. So how do you color balance them? Just give up and jam all 5? Or throw color balance out and just randomly add them to the cube?
In the end, I decided to count them as the two middle colors of their casting costs. So Dune-Brood Nephlim takes up a Gruul slot and Yore-Tiller Nephlim takes up a Dimir slot in this cube.
They're both really hard to cast, but there are alternate ways to get them into play. Vigor Mortis, Obzedat's Aid, Breaking / Entering, Deadbridge Chan, and Debtors' Knell can all reanimate them. (And Yore-Tiller Nephlim wants to be in the Reanimator Deck anyway. Debtors' Knell into Yore-Tiller Nephlim to them reanimate 2 creatures per turn?) Or if you're a base green deck, both Chord of Calling and Protean Hulk can both fetch them from your library for free. Or maybe you just jam a Chromatic Lantern and hard cast one of them on turn 4?
Another thing I like about them (I think?) is that because they're unlike everything else in the cube, they become their own little build-around-me cards on their own. If the cube gets drafted over and over by the same people, maybe it would be time for a fun draft and p1p1 one of these guys just to see if you can get it to work (Achievement Unlocked).
(The 3rd best nephilim is Witch-Maw Nephilim, but I'm just not sure it's strong enough. There are so many good 4 drops in this cube. I think it may just be a little too slow for it to matter.)
Not sure if they're going to work out, but it might be fun.
Thread | Draft
Eh, they've been pretty miserable so far. Dune-Brood is too hard to get through for something that most likely won't come down on turn 4. And Yore-Tiller likely only gets to reanimate a single creature before it dies. It's just a reanimation spell that costs 4 colors of mana and has summoning sickness. I don't think they're going to work out after all.
Thread | Draft
Lim-Dul Zombies
Kresh | Ghost Council | Sliver Overlord | Reaper King | Sharuum
Kaalia | Ghave | Zedruu | Mimeoplasm | Riku | Child of Alara (Kamigawa) | Anax and Cymede | Damia | Melek | Rakdos | Vela
Building:
Derevi | Maelstrom Wanderer (Primeval) | Nekusar | Borb, Enraged | Tymaret | Ur-Dragon | Marrow-Gnawer | Ruric Thar | Lavinia