My cube is not just a mishmash of the greatest cards ever printed. It’s not about playing with all of my favorite cards, flashy combos, or broken decks. The purpose of my cube is to facilitate the most colorful and structured limited formats possible. I want each color to highlight what makes it unique and interesting, and promote a variety of strategies and archetypes. I have put a lot of time into creating a skill-intensive and balanced limited environment, but at the same constantly evolving it to try out new directions. There are very few sacred cows, and I put the enjoyment of the players as the most important reason for including any card.
[B]Basic Information[/B]
[B]Cube Size:[/B] ~600 Cards
I [do not] currently have an uneven amount of colored cards by section, but I [can and do] make up for this by having an imbalanced gold section. We have found that this allows us to run better cards in the gold sections without having to inflate the cube to an unnecessary size. It also has the benefit of allowing us to keep weaker color pairs like U/R or U/G smaller without having to add cards just for the sake of keeping the numbers balanced.
Keep in mind that I am working with a finite cube size. I have an enormous binder full of all sorts of cube cards which are either waiting to be tested, weren’t quite good enough at the time, or just interesting enough to keep on the watch list. I like rotating cards in and out every now and again just to keep things interesting. If certain strategies are becoming too dominant, I will cut the key enablers of that deck (as long as it’s not at the expense of too many other decks), and I will add cards which promote other strategies. With that being said, please be patient with me if I tell you that I don’t think a certain card is good enough. It might not be that it’s a good enough cube card; it just might be that I don’t think it’s appropriate given my current cube configuration.
[B]Standard or Theme:[/B] Standard
[B]Snow Lands:[/B] Yes
[B]Average Number of Players:[/B] 8
[B]How Often Drafted:[/B] We have cube night once a week and we usually do two drafts. When I have my cube on my at PTQs and FNMs, we’ll fit Winston and other formats in.
[B]Card Selection[/B]
[B]Proxies:[/B] No
[B]Pimped:[/B] No
[B]Powered:[/B] No. Our group has our reasons for not drafting with power and they have nothing to do with budgetary constraints or power level
[B]Portal:[/B] Yes
[B]"Un" Cards: Yes
[B]Banned Cards for Power-Level:[/B] Sol Ring, Mana Drain and Mind Twist.
Banned Cards for Time Constraints: Ensnaring Bridge and Moat
[B]Banned Cards for "fun" factor:[/B] No. I guess we don’t play Shaharazad if that’s what you’re asking
[B]Cube Design[/B]
[B]Standard or Multiplayer:[/B] Standard
[B]Pack Distribution:[/B] The entire cube is randomized prior to drafting. I usually pile shuffle the whole thing twice then side shuffle piles until I feel they’re totally random. The only time I completely organize the cube is when I have a big update of 3 or more cards or after the release of a new set.
[B]Draft Formats:[/B] We typically play 6 or 8-man drafts with 4 packs of 11 cards. 7 or more players we do 3 packs of 15. Anything less than 5, we usually play an alternate format. Popular alternate formats include auction drafts, 2-man Winston, 2HG, and a number of other formats probably not worth mentioning.
[B]Sideboards?:[/B] Yes
[B]Color Balance:[/B] Yes and No. See explanation above.
[B]Gold Balance:[/B] Yes and No. See explanation above.
[B]Hybrid/Split/Kicker as Gold:[/B] Yes/Yes/No
This update was to intentionally make green better. In doing so I added 2 extra green cards and subtraced one from each of the multicolor and artifact sections.
My last round of updates didn't take including the changes I made to the gold section and red section. A ton of cards were repositioned in their proper casting cost slots including Desolation Angel, Shackles and Willbender. Others were completely cut. I am not going to provide another comprehensive update until after the release of Scars in which I will be making huge changes which I have been waiting a long time to make. Unfortunately I didn't save the swap stats, but nothing big has changed since last time.
A bajillion changes I've been meaning to make for months. I haven't really kept this thread up-to-date as I make cuts.
I haven't updated the cube list in this thread for 6-9 months. I have made small changes here and there as sets come out, but I never reconciled the thread contents. I went through my list today and made changes to reflect the actual contents of my cube based on my personal cube spreadsheet. Some of the swaps you see had been made nearly 100 drafts ago, so very few of these are recent changes. Regardless, I welcome any and all feedback related to swaps and new cards as a result of this update.
Unfortunately, the details of the rest of this update were lost so these may not be the most accurate changes.
This update was done in an effort to clean up my list and add DKA. Many of these cards have been in my list for several months, but I just hadn't updated my cube or worse yet, they had been in for quite a bit longer but my thread didn't take the updates (Scavenging Ooze and Batterskull, for example). Where you see 'Nothing' noted, that's likely where I had cut a card from before (Solifuge, Stone Rain, Teeg, Winter's Grasp, etc.). I wanted to make sure I got my cube back to a reasonable size after cutting about 20 cards.
[soapbox]one thing i have to say is that organizing the cards in the cube the way they play rather than the way they're written in the cost helps people (including the designer) understand how the cube plays and how well it is balanced. for instance, putting sarcomancy in the 1cc creature slot because that's exactly how it plays, and when you glance at the black creatures to evaluate black aggro it's helpful to see all the 1cc dudes you'd put into a black aggro deck together. and putting desolation angel in the white/black slot because no one will ever be playing that card in monoblack. this is a controversial issue here on the forums, so you'll get some dissenting opinions, but beyond personal aesthetic reasons, it's the most logical way to organize a cube. [/soapbox]
i really do like the blue aggro package. i'm not sure how well all the cards play because i've never played some of them but it looks like a lot of fun. any thought to running cloud spirit as another rishadan airship? have you tried welkin tern? and have you tested sea drake in this environment? i could see the drawback being too severe, but this is the first cube i've seen pushing blue aggro so you'd be the most likely to get good results out of it.
green aggro looks nice but you're missing fyndhorn elves which is a staple. and basking rootwalla is pretty decent too. you're also missing mire boa, who i'd rather have than leatherback baloth, whose triple cost seems pretty extreme. a lot of the time i'd expect him to be a 4/5 for 4 or 5 mana, which isn't that impressive. or do you guys run monocolor decks more often than usual? and speaking of triple green, chord of calling doesn't seem that great either. do you exclude natural order for power reasons? i'm guessing no because i see you still have tinker.
how often has kozilek been played? dude seems way too expensive, especially considering there's no way to cheat him in play (except makeshift mannequin, i guess). how has mask of memory played?
how often does ghost quarter get played successfully? it seems like a decent option to combat 5 color good stuff.
overall, an interesting cube. it looks like it would be fun to play. i think it could be cut down to concentrate the power, but if i'm reading your intro right it seems like you are more concerned with an interesting draft, rather than a turbo powered draft, and i can see how this list would produce that.
When I see Healing Salve, I'm often like "Oh girl, I wish I could turn every card into this." Thanks they removed the gain life part, otherwise this would have been broken.
I love the pimp. You've got a very pretty cube, my friend. However, you do run a lot of odd cards that are, IMO, borderline cubeable if even at all. I know you said that you're not looking to have the most powerful cube on the block, but some of your inclusions either seem bad to me or proved to be bad after several drafts with the card.
Why so many WW cards? Helping white aggro is one thing, but to me this only helps white aggro if you're playing mono white aggro. That may happen often in your cube, but if not, I'd suggest you lose some of these guys in favor of the 2/1 flyers (Pegasus and Charger). You're also not running Soltari Monk. Is there a reason for that? Soltari Trooper is also missing. Your white midrange cards seem decent, although I don't care much for Aven Mindcensor or Transcendent Master. I also think Wall of Reverence is quite weak. White Crovax proved to be rather mediocre for us. I'd prefer Battelgrace Angel in that slot as another white finisher. Your white spells look solid, except for Pulse of the Fields. I don't care for cards that are only good when I'm behind. If you need this card, you're probably not in a good situation anyway, and most likely need more than just Pulse of the Fields to stay alive. It proved to be incredibly narrow here.
I don't personally care for running a blue aggro package, but that's a personal choice. I'd prefer to keep blue doing what it does best: midrange and control. I like the cards you've included for it, but I'd echo quitequieter's questions on it. You're not running Morphling which is the second option I'd be looking at for a 5cc blue creature. It's much better than Sphinx of the Lost Truths or Magus of the Future. Aeon Chronicler proved to be a very slow, very mana intensive card here. Since you're running Tinker, I'd rather have Inkwell Leviathan in that slot. Ninja of the Deep Hours proved to be a do nothing card for us as well. It's lack of evasion outweighed the surprise factor. It normally only netted us one card, so we cut it. I'd rather have Thieving Magpie. There's no surprise factor, but there's potential for a lot more card advantage, which is the better trait, IMO. I don't like Equilibrium, Gush, Stifle, or Capture of Jinzhou for cube. Equilibrium is probably better here since you're running the aggro package, but the rest are mediocre, IMO. Gush is just a Mulldrifter without the 2/2 flyer attached. Playing it for free sets you back way too much to make it worthwhile. Stifle is a good card, but super narrow in this environment. And Capture of Jinzhou (and Time Warp for that matter) are overpriced for the effect.
I don't like Mesmeric Fiend. He's too easily dealt with to have very much of an affect on the game. You're missing Black Knight (which I expected to see, given the abundance of WW creatures you're running) who is a much better option. Abyssal Persecutor has been discussed on this forum time and time again, so I'll keep this one as short as possible. I think it's absolutely awful for cube. I don't play cards that have the text, "You can't win the game" printed on them. I realize he's a 6/6 flyer for four mana, but he forces me to deal with him. I'd rather play something that forces my opponent to deal with him and use my removal on my opponent's creatures. Plague Sliver would be a much better option in that slot, IMO. Desolation Angel is a BW card. No ifs, ands, or buts about it. I've never seen it played without white mana. Ever. Is Ghastly Demise really that good? I'd think Disfigure or even Vendetta would be better options for 1cc black removal. I found Slaughter Pact to be poor, but that could just be personal preference. Most of the time the "free" aspect was just an annoying version of echo. I'd rather have Eyeblight's Ending there and even that card is slightly weak.
Slith Firewalker is awful in this format, IMO. It was good in it's constructed heyday because it almost always came down on turn one. Here if you don't play it prior to turn three, it because significantly weaker. You're not playing Blood Knight, which is a better creature, and again is surprising considering the large amount of WW guys you have. I don't care for Ball Lightning in the cube, but that's mostly because he almost never comes down on turn three. I can see running him, but I just don't personally care for it. Covetous Dragon seems incredibly narrow. Do you see a lot of mono red artifact decks akin to the Wildfire decks from that era's standard? Gathan Raiders costs 3. Why would you ever play him for 3RR? That's silly. Pulse of the Forge is, IMO, just as bad as Pulse of the Fields. It's another card that's only good if you're behind and I don't like cards like that. If Pyrokinesis his players, I'd like it a lot more. As it is, I'd say it's mediocre at best and only worthy in cubes much larger than this. I also don't like Violent Eruption. Without the madness aspect of it, it's overpriced and very mana intensive. Fireball seems a much better option than Ghitu Fire. I wouldn't imagine instant speed being a very useful plus on an X damage spell, unless you're taking out a creature. I don't like to use my X damage spells to kill creatures unless I'm killing more than one creature at once or unless I'm killing a fatty. Reckless Charge also seems week at sorcery speed and the flashback is a bit pricey.
Why no Fyndhorn Elves? It's a 360 staple, IMO. The more mana elves the better. I'd certainly include it over Werebear. I found that threshold is a lot harder in this format than it is is constructed. Beastbreaker of Bala Ged, while being a better bear, still seems a little underpowered. I might include him in a larger cube, but you're missing some cards that I'd definitely include over him like Albino Troll and Mire Boa. Leatherback Baloth is another that I'm not too fond of, again because he's best on turn three and after that he decreases in powerlevel by quite a bit. Either of the creatures I just mentioned would be upgrades there, but you're also missing Wild Mongrel and Great Sable Stag which I consider to be staples. Exploration seems way narrow and super weak if not played on turn one. Top decking that in the mid to late game seems awful. Chord of Calling is too mana intensive for my liking and I'd much rather have Natural Order there. The rest of your green looks fairly solid. I like the inclusion of green LD.
I do not like an unbalanced multicolor section at all. At all. You're missing Wall of Denial which is arguably the best available UW card. Thistledown Liege, while probably decent in your cube due to the blue aggro support is still a worse card, IMO. Spite//Malice was bad for us. Both halves are overpriced for what you get and in general it's much worse than Agony Warp and Psychatog which are both missing. I think Tattermunge Maniac is absolutely awful and try not to include it even in the same room as my cube. Knight of the Reliquery proved to be much weaker in this format than he is in constructed. The same could be said for Gaddock Teeg. You're missing Glare of Subdual here, which is another surprising absence since you include Opposition. I've found Glare to be the better card, since it's in the colors that want the effect the most. You're missing Spiritmonger. Crime//Punishment, Hit//Run, and Sharuum could easily be replaced with Rafiq of the Many, Broodmate Dragon, and a plethora of other, better, 3+ color cards.
I don't like Eldrazis in the cube since there's absolutely no way of cheating them into play. Actually reaching that amount of mana is often just a pipe dream. I think Epochrasite is borderline cubeable, and wouldn't include him in anything smaller than 720. You obviously have a thing for Etched Oracle, but I found it to be weaker in this format, but that's probably because most of our decks are two colors, with the occasion three color deck and the rare five color control build. He just wasn't good for us. We cut Mask of Memory for being just not good enough. In a larger cube that had room for more equipment, I'd run it, but I'd much rather have Basilisk Collar in that slot. I don't like Everflowing Chalice. By the time you reach the mana you need to make it useful, you don't need the Chalice anymore. I'm a huge advocate against Chrome Mox in the cube. I found it to be absolutely awful and less of a fixer and more of an accelerant. It normally wasn't worth it for me to lose the card I'd have to imprint. Coldsteel Heart was rarely what I wanted. That card needs a way to change the color on it or it needs to hit play untapped to be worthy, IMO. I assume you're playing with an errata'd Chaos Orb? Or do you play it as written on the card? I don't see a need for graveyard hosers like Relic of Progenitus that serve no other purpose. We play with sideboards here, but I don't include cards that are pretty much sideboard only cards.
Your choices for bounce lands, pain lands and filter lands seems odd and random. I don't like Cabal Coffers, Miren, Karakas, Ghost Quarter, Tabernacle, or Bazaar in the cube. I guess Bazaar is good if you have a lot of reanimator type decks. Tabernacle is probably good in heavy control builds with few creatures. But the rest don't seem good at all. Miren was bad for us. It was either tapped when it needed to be untapped or the cost was too much for the effect. There's not enough legends for Karakas to be that great and Ghost Quarter just doesn't do here what it does in constructed. I found that it rarely hurt my opponent that much. It's far from what Wasteland is.
However, some of the card choices are kind of interesting. And there are a ton of cube staples you're not running. Your cube is almost a hundred cards more than mine, which explains the inclusion of a lot of the cards I don't run. That's not the issue. The issue I see is the missing cube amazingness. There are so many excluded amazing cards, that I'm likely to never cut from my cube.
And also, Samurai of the Pale Curtain is an often misunderstood card. It doesn't stop discarded fatties from being reanimated. It only stops cards that go to the bin from play. Thought you should know.
Soltari Monk
Akroma's Vengeance
Akroma, Angel of Wrath
Soltari Champion Kor Sanctifiers Catastrophe
Enlightened Tutor
White Knight
Temporal Isolation
Soltari Trooper
Capsize Impulse
Ponder
Thieving Magpie Morphling
Dismiss
Mystical Tutor
Inkwell Leviathan
Repeal Time Spiral
Palinchron
Psionic Blast Mana Drain
Bone Shredder
Black Knight Mind Twist Yawgmoth's Bargain
Nezumi Shortfang
Disfigure
Wild Mongrel
Mire Boa
Vines of Vastwood
Kodama of the North Tree
Albino Troll
Viridian Shaman
Fyndhorn Elves
Great Sable Stag
Creeping Mold
Loam Lion Wall of Denial Psychatog
Broodmate Dragon
Crystal Shard Mana Vault Sol Ring Phyrexian Processor
Reflecting Pool Kjeldoran Outpost
I can't imagine not playing with most of these cards... especially not in a cube that's 100 cards bigger than my list. They've all been so good. And the bold ones are absolutely insane cube staples, that I would personally never, ever cut... even from a 360 card cube.
Interesting list. Not 100% my cup of tea, but it looks like fun.
Wow, so many amazing comments! Before I respond to them, I just want to give a brief history of my cube.
I originally built my first cube as a tool to teach some players who were fairly good at tournament magic, but were unable to compete in formats outside of type 2 because of their limited knowledge of cards released before Time Spiral. At the time Tom Lapille had a fairly nice website with an up-to-date list, explanations, etc. I had played a couple drafts with his cube at a PTQ some years before and really enjoyed the whole experience. I didn’t think it would be very productive to introduce too many cards they had never seen before (not to mention I didn’t own half of them anyway), so I simply took the most recent Type 2 sets and infused cards like Pernicious Deed, Jitte, Meloku, the Clouded Mirror etc.
Buying the sleeves and card box, laying out the casting costs and colors, and selecting the cards was an experience in and of itself. Our drafts were pretty chaotic, but we had a total blast. The problem was that the cube had no balance and often the person who drafted the 5-color deck (pick every good card) won pretty much every time. Unfortunately, these guys got gobbled up by school priorities and their interest in Magic sort of fell off the map and so my cube was de-sleeved and it was back to business as usual.
Some months later I was introduced to a new group of players who had a cube they used every week to draft in between playtesting, PTQs, and FNMs. This cube was much more consistent and looked a lot more like Lapille’s list. I noticed that the idea of archetypes was much more prevalent in this list than mine. You could draft a bunch of artifacts and make the combo deck with Tolarian Academy and Palinchron, or a reanimator deck with Akroma, Angel of Wrath and Rith, the Awakener or a White Weenie deck with Armageddon and Eight-and-a-Half Tails. It was really exciting every time we sat down with our packs in front of us. Was I going to get the first pick Sensei’s Divining Top or Umezawa’s Jitte?
Unfortunately the cube owner didn’t make consistent updates to the list. A new set would come out and a few cards were added, but the same strategies seemed to always dominate. I contribute this to fundamental flaws in the cube’s design that I feel many cube constructers make like pet cards and not questioning conventional card choices, but I’ll get to this a bit later. As a result of stale drafts and lack of enthusiasm toward cubing, drafting became more of an afterthought rather than something to look forward to every week. It was then I decided to create my own cube.
Where to start? I didn’t have the card pool to put together a really good cube. I had about 250 cards off of Lapille’s list, so I knew I had to at least pick up the staples. Luckily, years earlier I had invested in an Unlimited set of Power 9 which I decided to liquidate to put toward the cube. After some savvy eBaying of a couple Moxes and several hefty orders to various Magic vendors on the internet, I had more than enough cards to get started. Like many players, my first cube had a lot of pet cards and clunky cards, so it took a while to find its footing. I fine-tuned the list online with my cube group for about a month before I finally decided run the inaugural draft. It was about 400 cards big, not much oomph, and a lot of the staples were missing, but it was a good start.
I received a ton of feedback from our playgroup, both good and bad. “This card is insane! This card is complete crap! Have you tried XYZ?” Every night after cubing I would sort the cube and lay it out in front of me. I would determine what worked and didn’t work. I analyzed curves, casting costs, sub-types, and strategies. The phrase ‘is X good enough’ became something my playgroup knows all too well. I created a binder called the ‘on deck binder’ to house such cards (see picture below). At first the on deck binder was to determine whether a card was worthy of being put in the cube, but now I use it for an entirely different purpose: to craft draft archetypes and strategies.
I eventually got to the point where I felt my cube was 100% complete. I’d browse cube forums, talk shop with people who had their own cube, and I would continue to put the same sort of effort into keeping it updated. The on-deck binder was pretty thick, but everything would at least get a couple spins before being judged. Several sets came out and I was the first person to pick up all the cards I needed. Our group would discuss spoilers as they came out and decide whether I needed to pick those cards up at the Prerelease.
I pay very close attention to what people draft. I watch what tables (15th pick), I take a look at people’s sideboards after the draft to see what didn’t get played, and I ask questions. You’re playing R/x aggro, but you’re not playing Ghitu Slinger. Is it because you think the card is bad or that it didn’t fit your archetype? One night after a particularly frustrating draft, I decided to ban Tinker because it was constantly bringing out turn 2 Sundering Titan. For a few weeks after banning Tinker I noticed cards like Inkwell Leviathan, Signets, and Tezzeret, the Seeker were being left in SBs. People were playing many pieces of the artifact deck, but no one was playing the actual archetype. Titan was sitting in SBs as well or just completely out of place in the deck it was played in. I realized I had made a mistake; I banned the wrong card. My mistake led me to something a little more profound, namely what I was trying to accomplish with the cube. I realized my goal is to create the best draft experience possible with the best cards magic has to offer. I am not trying to enable broken decks or allow people to play with broken cards for the sake of playing with broken cards. I want to enable memorable drafts. I want them to have fun and experience Magic unlike they’ve ever played it before.
That was about a year ago. Some big changes happened to the cube since then. Any borderline pet cards were immediately cut. I analyzed the casting costs and color distributions very carefully and established that the perfect distribution theory of CCs and colors is flawed. I also found that you need to have certain cards in specific amounts to enable archetypes or you may as well not have them at all. Cards may become better and worse as more sets are released. I have a lot of really amazing cards which I never thought I would cut sitting in the on deck binder that may see some play some time down the line. We have also made some huge changes to the list going against conventional choices for cube construction, some borrowed from other people, some concocted in our own labs. One of the biggest things I have learned is to be more open-minded.
Here's my brief thoughts before my brain melted partway through your list..
White thoughts....
So many WW dudes!
Flickerwisp vs Transcendent Master
Crovax vs Captain of the Watch vs Battlegrace Angel vs Akroma
I am very sorry to hear about your brain
On the surface it appears as though I have an abnormally high count of WW cards, but it’s not as high as you think. Here is a small sample of 2cc white creatures from other cubes on this forum. (to clarify: when I first wrote this, I thought you meant 2cc white creatures, see my comment at the end).
# of White 2CC Creatures / Total Cube Cards – User – % Total
14/500 – wtwlf123 – 2.80%
13/555 – calibretto – 2.34%
13/551 – quitequieter – 2.35%
17/585 – kojiro – 2.90%
12/460 – rantipole – 2.6%
13/464 – iceage4life – 2.8%
12/450 – eidolon232 – 2.66%
Watch what happens when I cut even one of those cards:
16/585 = 2.73%
Now I actually have a lesser concentration of WW/1W creatures than IA4L and wtwlf123, and I am just a hair away from being in the average range. I really enjoy WW as a strategy, and personally feel that if WW is not a good and viable strategy in your cube, then you have a fundamental flaw in your cube design. I won’t get too much into it too much now as I plan on writing an article about it in the not too distant future, but I believe all of these cubes including my own have a healthy number of 2CC white creatures. On a second look, it does appear as though I should swap at least one double-CC white creature with something like Stormfront Pegasus!
Transcendent Master VS Flickerwisp – so far Transcendent Master has been pretty good. He hasn’t been outstanding, but he’s been able to pull his weight enough to merit inclusion. I have seen a lot of discussion on Flickerwisp and a lot of glowing endorsements. I admit I have not played him in my cube because of opinions from my group, but I am willing to try him out. I will be sure to include him in the next cube update.
Crovax vs Captain of the Watch vs Battlegrace Angel vs Akroma – I strongly dislike Captain and Battlegrace Angel, but I understand why people choose to include them. Akroma was cut over a year ago when we decided that it just wasn’t useful in enough decks. Truth be told, Crovax is on the chopping block currently and when I added Sun Titan, it was either cut Crovax or Pristene Angel. As much as I love Angel, I have won far more games on the back of Crovax.
Black thoughts.....
Desolation Angel as a black card?
No Thrashing Wumpus?
Desolation Angel is not a black card. It’s a gold card and has been included as such in my color table which I will address later in this post as another forum member made a comment about it. I just don’t like looking at it in the gold section because of my OCD, but I will make the change in OP, when I make the next round of changes!
Thrashing Wumpus is temporarily out while Drana, Kalistra Bloodchief is being tested. Right now Wumpus is fighting with Kagemaro, First to Suffer with who will come back should one of the other 5CC slots gets dropped. Ink-Eyes is a consideration, but he has been more useful to us than Wumpus as well.
[soapbox]one thing i have to say is that organizing the cards in the cube the way they play rather than the way they're written in the cost helps people (including the designer) understand how the cube plays and how well it is balanced. for instance, putting sarcomancy in the 1cc creature slot because that's exactly how it plays, and when you glance at the black creatures to evaluate black aggro it's helpful to see all the 1cc dudes you'd put into a black aggro deck together. and putting desolation angel in the white/black slot because no one will ever be playing that card in monoblack. this is a controversial issue here on the forums, so you'll get some dissenting opinions, but beyond personal aesthetic reasons, it's the most logical way to organize a cube. [/soapbox]
It’s kinda funny, because when I analyze my curves and determine what cards to cut, I do exactly this. I just thought from an optics perspective, it would be easier to see everything in blocks. I will amend this after the next round of updates!
i really do like the blue aggro package. i'm not sure how well all the cards play because i've never played some of them but it looks like a lot of fun. any thought to running cloud spirit as another rishadan airship? have you tried welkin tern? and have you tested sea drake in this environment? i could see the drawback being too severe, but this is the first cube i've seen pushing blue aggro so you'd be the most likely to get good results out of it.
We have had a total blast with adding the blue aggro cards. It first came about when we realized that blue’s identity was uninspired. Cards like Dominate, Dismiss, Draining Whelk, Hinder (and other superfluous control counters), Collective Restraint, etc. meant that blue was rarely doing anything but playing the control role. Those times when we were able to draft U/G or U/W aggro made for some amazing combat steps and some really tight games. I liked the increased interaction and decisions my drafters had to make in those scenarios. I decided I wanted to really push blue as an aggro color, but not so much that it completely lost its identity.
The change had the benefit of not only allowing for multiple new archetypes in the mix, but also making the control drafter work much harder to build his deck. No longer could he just take every good blue card and fixer and just build a deck from it. Rest assured we have tried most of the blue aggro cards including Tern, Drake, and friends. I think we have the right creatures in for now as we risk totally backing blue into a corner and having the creatures become so bad that only the aggro decks want to draft them.
I have never been unhappy with Old Man’s performance. Covetous Dragon is on the chopping block, and Eruption is currently on the watchlist. To answer your question, madness rarely happens. I like the ability to split the damage up; is there a good replacement card?
green aggro looks nice but you're missing fyndhorn elves which is a staple. and basking rootwalla is pretty decent too. you're also missing mire boa, who i'd rather have than leatherback baloth, whose triple cost seems pretty extreme. a lot of the time i'd expect him to be a 4/5 for 4 or 5 mana, which isn't that impressive. or do you guys run monocolor decks more often than usual? and speaking of triple green, chord of calling doesn't seem that great either. do you exclude natural order for power reasons? i'm guessing no because i see you still have tinker.
fyndhorn elves – I had this guy in at one point, but the 1-drops became so much that I ended up cutting him. I believe I originally cut him for Noble Hierarch. I might consider switching him for Joraga Treespeaker basking rootwalla – Just barely not good enough, IMO. leatherback baloth – We haven’t been able to test this guy as much, but I agree he is probably weakest 3-drop I have. For now I’d like to keep him. I’m sure Scars will help me trim the chaff a bit. chord of calling – This is one of my favorite dark horse cards. Have you ever played with it in cube before? mire boa – I chose to keep only one Boa in. natural order – this is veeeeery interesting. When I first built my cube I was underwhelmed by Natural Order and it was cut very quickly. I was going to just leave it at that until I examined what the last few sets and updates has done to the top of my curve. I am absolutely going to give this another chance in the mix. Good call!
Now that I have added the M11 titans, I think Sharuum the Hegemon can come out. I have wanted to cut Maniac from day one, but a cubemate of mine convinces me to keep it in every time I suggest cutting it. Hit//Run is cuttable, but I like the utility of Crime//Punishment.
how often has kozilek been played? dude seems way too expensive, especially considering there's no way to cheat him in play (except makeshift mannequin, i guess). how has mask of memory played?
Kozilek and Ulamog have made the single largest impact to my cube than any other non-Planeswalker card in a long time. They’ve been absolutely fantastic for us. They’re mostly played in control, the artifact deck, G/x ramp, and Kozilek is a fantastic mid-range bomb much in the same way you could randomly have Akroma in your W/x mid-range decks.
I have a love/hate relationship with Mask of Memory. Every time I see it on paper, I want to cut it. Every time I play it, I always tell the person I am playing to not let me cut it.
how often does ghost quarter get played successfully? it seems like a decent option to combat 5 color good stuff.
GQ is definitely the worst land in my list and I am looking forward to swapping it out for the next best land in Scars.
overall, an interesting cube. it looks like it would be fun to play. i think it could be cut down to concentrate the power, but if i'm reading your intro right it seems like you are more concerned with an interesting draft, rather than a turbo powered draft, and i can see how this list would produce that.
Finally we get to see your list!
Since there was a bit of a discussion on cards that worked out differently for you than most of the other cubers here, so here are the main differences between your list an what the rest of the forum plays:
(I probably try to group this better + post a comment on the card choices, but for now i don't have the time for this. I hope this will help some of the other cubers to get a better overview and post some comments on your list.)
…SNIP…
Thank you! I have found your analysis extremely helpful for me in other threads and already I am having some ideas! Thank you also for the spelling changes; I will make changes to the OP!
I love the pimp. You've got a very pretty cube, my friend. However, you do run a lot of odd cards that are, IMO, borderline cubeable if even at all. I know you said that you're not looking to have the most powerful cube on the block, but some of your inclusions either seem bad to me or proved to be bad after several drafts with the card.
Thanks for the compliment! It looks like you wrote a lot here, so I will do my best to respond to all of your points. Thanks in advance for writing all this!
Why so many WW cards? Helping white aggro is one thing, but to me this only helps white aggro if you're playing mono white aggro. That may happen often in your cube, but if not, I'd suggest you lose some of these guys in favor of the 2/1 flyers (Pegasus and Charger). You're also not running Soltari Monk. Is there a reason for that? Soltari Trooper is also missing. Your white midrange cards seem decent, although I don't care much for Aven Mindcensor or Transcendent Master. I also think Wall of Reverence is quite weak. White Crovax proved to be rather mediocre for us. I'd prefer Battelgrace Angel in that slot as another white finisher. Your white spells look solid, except for Pulse of the Fields. I don't care for cards that are only good when I'm behind. If you need this card, you're probably not in a good situation anyway, and most likely need more than just Pulse of the Fields to stay alive. It proved to be incredibly narrow here.
I was going to refer you to my comment on WW above and then realized that it wasn’t just the white 2-drops people were providing feedback on, it was the double-W 2 drops. I am going to swap out one of the Knights for Stormfront Pegasus as it is a swap I’ve wanted to make for a while. I like the mix of WW creatures I have currently, but I could definitely see bringing more shadow guys into the mix. Wall of Reverence is probably the weakest of the 4-drops, but fine for holding the fort down. I haven’t really considered cutting it. I actually cut Pulse of the Fields yesterday before I posted this thread. In fact, if you look at the cube pictures, it’s not there! Battlegrace Angel has been added and cut several times now and probably not coming back any time soon, but I’ll keep it on the backburner.
I don't personally care for running a blue aggro package, but that's a personal choice. I'd prefer to keep blue doing what it does best: midrange and control. I like the cards you've included for it, but I'd echo quitequieter's questions on it. You're not running Morphling which is the second option I'd be looking at for a 5cc blue creature. It's much better than Sphinx of the Lost Truths or Magus of the Future. Aeon Chronicler proved to be a very slow, very mana intensive card here. Since you're running Tinker, I'd rather have Inkwell Leviathan in that slot. Ninja of the Deep Hours proved to be a do nothing card for us as well. It's lack of evasion outweighed the surprise factor. It normally only netted us one card, so we cut it. I'd rather have Thieving Magpie. There's no surprise factor, but there's potential for a lot more card advantage, which is the better trait, IMO. I don't like Equilibrium, Gush, Stifle, or Capture of Jinzhou for cube. Equilibrium is probably better here since you're running the aggro package, but the rest are mediocre, IMO. Gush is just a Mulldrifter without the 2/2 flyer attached. Playing it for free sets you back way too much to make it worthwhile. Stifle is a good card, but super narrow in this environment. And Capture of Jinzhou (and Time Warp for that matter) are overpriced for the effect.
I have made my case for why I don’t like Morphling and especially don’t like him in my cube. He has been added and cut multiple times and I get complaints about his low power level every time I add him back. I cut Inkwell when I decided that I wanted less consistency with having Tinker blow opponents out of the game in the early turns. To suggest cutting cards like Ninja, Equillibrium, Stifle, Capture and Gush are a little counterintuitive to my plan of making blue focus more on aggro strategies. Aside from Ninja, those cards all have applications outside of the combat step, so I like the utility they provide, whereas the cards they cut were extremely linear and not skill intensive to draft (maybe to play). Stifle is probably the only card in that list which is in danger of being on the chopping block.
I think this would be a good time to show you a page from my ‘ondeck binder’.
Here is one page out of the blue section. Don’t be too offended! I know there are a lot of cards people really like there. And yes, I do see that Waterfront Bouncer is there and that he’s great in blue aggro. The problem is, that bouncer is a foil Bouncer with an upside down back, so I am tracking down another copy
I don't like Mesmeric Fiend. He's too easily dealt with to have very much of an affect on the game. You're missing Black Knight (which I expected to see, given the abundance of WW creatures you're running) who is a much better option. Abyssal Persecutor has been discussed on this forum time and time again, so I'll keep this one as short as possible. I think it's absolutely awful for cube. I don't play cards that have the text, "You can't win the game" printed on them. I realize he's a 6/6 flyer for four mana, but he forces me to deal with him. I'd rather play something that forces my opponent to deal with him and use my removal on my opponent's creatures. Plague Sliver would be a much better option in that slot, IMO. Desolation Angel is a BW card. No ifs, ands, or buts about it. I've never seen it played without white mana. Ever. Is Ghastly Demise really that good? I'd think Disfigure or even Vendetta would be better options for 1cc black removal. I found Slaughter Pact to be poor, but that could just be personal preference. Most of the time the "free" aspect was just an annoying version of echo. I'd rather have Eyeblight's Ending there and even that card is slightly weak.
I think that Duress and Thoughtseize are two of black’s best utility cards. Slapping that onto a creature, even if it’s temporary, is enough to clear the way for bigger and better things. I like Mesmeric Fiend and Tidehollow Sculler for that. They snag the wraths and removal just long enough to find an answer.
If you had to cut something for Black Knight (besides Mesmeric Fiend ), what would you cut?
We haven’t had trouble with Abyssal Persecutor being good, though I can see how he might not be good for everyone. Just remember that our Counterspell density is much lower in my cube. We have more tempo counters than hard counters, so playing late removal to kill Persecutor is much easier. Heck, you could always play Mesmeric Fiend the turn before you’re going to kill your guy if you’re worried about counters ;). We are also running more cards that deal with Persecutor, and also have an extra tutor or two to find what we need.
Desolation Angel is a multicolor card. Sorry for categorizing it in this thread as a mono-color card.
Slaughter Pact and Ghastly Demise are the weakest of black’s removal suite. I was thinking of adding Last Gasp back and dropping one of the two.
Slith Firewalker is awful in this format, IMO. It was good in it's constructed heyday because it almost always came down on turn one. Here if you don't play it prior to turn three, it because significantly weaker. You're not playing Blood Knight, which is a better creature, and again is surprising considering the large amount of WW guys you have. I don't care for Ball Lightning in the cube, but that's mostly because he almost never comes down on turn three. I can see running him, but I just don't personally care for it. Covetous Dragon seems incredibly narrow. Do you see a lot of mono red artifact decks akin to the Wildfire decks from that era's standard?
I can see swapping Slith Firewalker for Blood Knight. Good catch. Covetous Dragon is probably going to get cut for another R midrange card, but there aren’t a lot of options out there. I’m probably just going to hold out for the release of Scars.
Gathan Raiders costs 3. Why would you ever play him for 3RR? That's silly. Pulse of the Forge is, IMO, just as bad as Pulse of the Fields. It's another card that's only good if you're behind and I don't like cards like that. If Pyrokinesis his players, I'd like it a lot more. As it is, I'd say it's mediocre at best and only worthy in cubes much larger than this. I also don't like Violent Eruption. Without the madness aspect of it, it's overpriced and very mana intensive. Fireball seems a much better option than Ghitu Fire. I wouldn't imagine instant speed being a very useful plus on an X damage spell, unless you're taking out a creature. I don't like to use my X damage spells to kill creatures unless I'm killing more than one creature at once or unless I'm killing a fatty. Reckless Charge also seems week at sorcery speed and the flashback is a bit pricey.
Sure, I can see putting Raiders at the 3-spot. Pyrokinesis has been good to us, but Pulse is just ‘okay’. I asked earlier if someone had something better to run than Eruption, and I’ll ask the same question here. Are there better cards to run? I like the Fireball swap for Ghitu Fire, so I’ll definitely consider that. Reckless Charge is unreal, so it’s not going anywhere.
Why no Fyndhorn Elves? It's a 360 staple, IMO. The more mana elves the better. I'd certainly include it over Werebear. I found that threshold is a lot harder in this format than it is is constructed. Beastbreaker of Bala Ged, while being a better bear, still seems a little underpowered. I might include him in a larger cube, but you're missing some cards that I'd definitely include over him like Albino Troll and Mire Boa. Leatherback Baloth is another that I'm not too fond of, again because he's best on turn three and after that he decreases in powerlevel by quite a bit. Either of the creatures I just mentioned would be upgrades there, but you're also missing Wild Mongrel and Great Sable Stag which I consider to be staples. Exploration seems way narrow and super weak if not played on turn one. Top decking that in the mid to late game seems awful. Chord of Calling is too mana intensive for my liking and I'd much rather have Natural Order there. The rest of your green looks fairly solid. I like the inclusion of green LD.
Fyndhorn Elves is definitely being added. Albino Troll, Wild Mongrel, and Great Stable Stag were all in at one point, but got cut when better cards came in from other sets. Like I said in the OP, we are working with finite cube sizes, and while I know these guys are good creatures, there just isn’t room for them. I might swap GSS for Leatherback Baloth. Exploration is soooo much better than you’re giving it credit for even in the late game. There are scenarios where it is a great turn one play with some backup, but damn near broken along side of Life from the Loam, Land Tax, and Crucible of Worlds with bouncelands, Strip/Waste, etc. or a lot of card draw. I kid you not when I tell you that it gets picked extremely early in my cube.[/quote]
I do not like an unbalanced multicolor section at all.
Without repeating too much of what I said in the OP or getting to in depth on the discussion, I will just add this point. There are colors which have less good cards on deck at any given time (red) and others with so much that you couldn’t possibly keep them all straight (I’m looking at you, blue). Having an imbalanced multicolor section allows me to play more and better cards for the colors that do not have replacements, all the while increasing the number of good cards I can play in the colors that do have replacements. It doesn’t really change how viable that color’s strategy is beyond playing a mono-colored deck which literally happens with one person per draft. Most people play 2-3 color decks. At the end of the day, we’re talking only a few cards difference between colors. It’s not like I have 80 blue cards and 50 red cards with a bunch of gold. I just do it enough so that there is a nice balance in the draft without having to play the crap available in bad combinations like U/R and U/G.
At all. You're missing Wall of Denial which is arguably the best available UW card. Thistledown Liege, while probably decent in your cube due to the blue aggro support is still a worse card, IMO. Spite//Malice was bad for us. Both halves are overpriced for what you get and in general it's much worse than Agony Warp and Psychatog which are both missing. I think Tattermunge Maniac is absolutely awful and try not to include it even in the same room as my cube. Knight of the Reliquery proved to be much weaker in this format than he is in constructed. The same could be said for Gaddock Teeg. You're missing Glare of Subdual here, which is another surprising absence since you include Opposition. I've found Glare to be the better card, since it's in the colors that want the effect the most. You're missing Spiritmonger. Crime//Punishment, Hit//Run, and Sharuum could easily be replaced with Rafiq of the Many, Broodmate Dragon, and a plethora of other, better, 3+ color cards.
These are all great suggestions and I have decided to take a look at redoing my multicolor section after some comments from you all and my group. I would like to keep the size of my multicolor section as low as possible. FWIW every single multicolor card you have suggested has been in my cube at some point. I think I ignore multicolor more than other colors, so it’s time for a facelift.
I don't like Eldrazis in the cube since there's absolutely no way of cheating them into play. Actually reaching that amount of mana is often just a pipe dream. I think Epochrasite is borderline cubeable, and wouldn't include him in anything smaller than 720.
We reach that amount of mana a lot. I have seen some forum goers suggest cutting Gilded Lotus, not running Thran Dynamo, Tolarian Academy or Metalworker, and even talking about cutting Mirari’s Wake or Tooth and Nail. I explained why I like them so much above, and if you haven’t cubed with at least Kozilek, Butcher of Truth, you are definitely missing out on a cube powerhouse.
You obviously have a thing for Etched Oracle, but I found it to be weaker in this format, but that's probably because most of our decks are two colors, with the occasion three color deck and the rare five color control build. He just wasn't good for us.
Actually, I have no tie to Etched Oracle. I just needed an avatar and started going through cube cards. I just happened to use it as a banner too
That doesn’t change the fact that I love EE as a card and think it’s a fantastic cube card. Epochrasite is easily the worst artifact.
We cut Mask of Memory for being just not good enough. In a larger cube that had room for more equipment, I'd run it, but I'd much rather have Basilisk Collar in that slot. I don't like Everflowing Chalice. By the time you reach the mana you need to make it useful, you don't need the Chalice anymore. I'm a huge advocate against Chrome Mox in the cube. I found it to be absolutely awful and less of a fixer and more of an accelerant. It normally wasn't worth it for me to lose the card I'd have to imprint. Coldsteel Heart was rarely what I wanted. That card needs a way to change the color on it or it needs to hit play untapped to be worthy, IMO. I assume you're playing with an errata'd Chaos Orb? Or do you play it as written on the card? I don't see a need for graveyard hosers like Relic of Progenitus that serve no other purpose. We play with sideboards here, but I don't include cards that are pretty much sideboard only cards.
I like all of the artifact mana that you don’t like, and haven’t had bad feedback about them. Can anyone else chime in on their experiences? The first I have heard of someone not liking Chrome Mox was last week in another thread.
Chaos Orb works as a colorless, targeted Vindicate. I only play it when I know wtwlf123 is not around I have a 100 different reasons at how this helps to actually balance my cube (though I am sure people will argue this all day long), but I will leave you with this. It gives you another way (colorless even) to kill what is arguably the best and most difficult card-type the game has ever seen: Planeswalkers. I'll leave it at that for now.
Relic is a great card where there are very few GY removal cards. It gets picked higher than you might think!
Your choices for bounce lands, pain lands and filter lands seems odd and random. I don't like Cabal Coffers, Miren, Karakas, Ghost Quarter, Tabernacle, or Bazaar in the cube. I guess Bazaar is good if you have a lot of reanimator type decks. Tabernacle is probably good in heavy control builds with few creatures. But the rest don't seem good at all. Miren was bad for us. It was either tapped when it needed to be untapped or the cost was too much for the effect. There's not enough legends for Karakas to be that great and Ghost Quarter just doesn't do here what it does in constructed. I found that it rarely hurt my opponent that much. It's far from what Wasteland is.
I assure you my bounces/pains/filter lands are highly calculated and far from random. Simply put, I cut the aggro bouncelands, added painlands, Where WW became most prevalent (WW/r, WW/b), I added two filter lands to ease the cost of the WW dudes. Make sense?
Karakas has been nothing but great for us. We discussed it in another thread. I have a bit higher legend count than normal, and I view Karakas differently than just a white land. I see it as a colorless, noncounterable, utility land that can save my guys, bounce opposing fatties, or reuse cards like Venser, Clique, or the Titans.
Cabal Coffers has been great for us. I personally draft it very high as I absolutely love MBC as an archetype. Ghost Quarter is on the outs, and the other lands haven’t been really considered for being cut.
Thanks to everyone for all the amazing suggestions! wtwlf123, I see your post, but I have spent a long time writing this, so I need a break. I will get back to it after lunch!
i second that list of wtwlf's, there are some amazing cards in there. and ghastly demise does seem pretty bad. by the time it will be decent, the cost won't matter. you're not going to play this on turn one the vast majority of the time, so why not pay 1 more for doom blade or terror?
When I see Healing Salve, I'm often like "Oh girl, I wish I could turn every card into this." Thanks they removed the gain life part, otherwise this would have been broken.
i second that list of wtwlf's, there are some amazing cards in there. and ghastly demise does seem pretty bad. by the time it will be decent, the cost won't matter. you're not going to play this on turn one the vast majority of the time, so why not pay 1 more for doom blade or terror?
I am currently responding to those card choices in another post, but thought I'd chime in here to say that while Ghastly Demise probably the first card on the list to go, and likely not to survive Scars of Mirrodin; I like it for the same reason people choose to include Disfigure and not Nameless Inversion or Last Gasp. It also hits artifact creatures, and one mana makes a huge difference, but I'll concede that there are probably better cards which could be run. For us it has only been good but not great.
i actually really like wall of reverence. i think it's a fine card for cube. and i also think chrome mox is excellent.
i understand you are doing something different with this cube, but albino troll, wild mongrel, and great sable stag are staples. they are extremely powerful and i can't see how leatherback baloth and other cards like him could be in instead of them. especially the stag, which is absolutely insane a lot of the time.
i understand your balance theory. for me, it's a lot easier to stick to consistent numbers and try and group cards by how they play to maximize the cube's balance, but i think it's possible to have all different numbers and have a balanced cube. it's not how i would do it and honestly i have no idea how well it's working in your cube because i haven't played it, but i don't think the theory is bogus. i use the same "balance by feel" technique when determining how much removal or artifact hate or whatever, so i could see doing it with the whole cube. it just seems inexact and exhausting.
the issue i can see is that when the one mana would make the most difference, the card is a dead card. but you obviously have it low on the list of important cards so i don't need to say any more about it.
When I see Healing Salve, I'm often like "Oh girl, I wish I could turn every card into this." Thanks they removed the gain life part, otherwise this would have been broken.
I think some of the controversy regarding Loam Lion that we had in the other thread can partially be explained here by certain card choices in your cube.
Actually, with the mid-range inclusion in your white and green sections, I'm not particularly suprised that the aggro archetype is secondary to midrange when drafting that color combination. At which point, a vanilla 2/3 isn't as enticing.
Thank you, sir! Coming from you that is quite a compliment
However, some of the card choices are kind of interesting. And there are a ton of cube staples you're not running. Your cube is almost a hundred cards more than mine, which explains the inclusion of a lot of the cards I don't run. That's not the issue. The issue I see is the missing cube amazingness. There are so many excluded amazing cards, that I'm likely to never cut from my cube.
I will go through each of them one by one and try to explain why they're not included.
And also, Samurai of the Pale Curtain is an often misunderstood card. It doesn't stop discarded fatties from being reanimated. It only stops cards that go to the bin from play. Thought you should know.
Yeah, he'd be insane in constructed if he was the other way around, and he is slightly less good in cube for not having that ability. To be honest it hasn't really seen as much play as I thought he would and is definitely the worst of the bunch. I will do my best to keep this post updated, but there are about 10 good WW creatures available at any given time, and depending on what kinds of updates I am making, some come on the list and others go off. It's easily the section that changes the most out of any other!
Below is a list of the cards you were concerned that were missing. I will leave the cards you bolded, bold, and do my best to explain their abscense.
Soltari Monk - I stated earlier in the thread that I 100% want this guy back in the mix.
Akroma's Vengeance - Will likely never come back to my cube as much as I love this card. It was always killing at least 1 thing you didn't want to die whether it be a wall, signet, or an early enchantment like Land Tax or Sylvan Library. It was really only playable in a few decks and doesn't have near the utility that Austere Command (benched) or All is Dust has which has been particularly good for our group. Cycling was about all that was keeping it alive, but we found there were better cards we could give white.
Soltari Champion - cut. On deck, but not really on my radar right now.
Kor Sanctifiers - I saw this in your list yesterday. I am intrigued. Can you tell me more about how he has been in your cube?
Catastrophe - Many cubes practically need this card because they don't play Ravages of War or Hokori. I had it in my cube very early on, but even with as much as you can do with this card, it was never worth 6 mana. It's also much better in a powered cube. We're doing fine without it.
Temporal Isolation - I play Journey to Nowhere. I am sure there are many of you who will argue for Isolation all day. I'd like to see if you can convince me besides telling me how great it is to cast it at instant speed.
Soltari Trooper - I could see cutting another WW guy to add another W1 guy to ease mana costs a bit. I'll run it by my group.
Capsize - cut to change blue's strategy. It's a great card, but not what I want blue doing in my cube.
Impulse/Ponder/Preordain - while many of you would argue that these go along with my blue aggro strategy I would like to explain why they're not currently in my list. While I like them a lot as cards, I really needed the slots to play cards which do different things. For every Ponder effect I added, I had to cut something from my blue strategies. Blue has like 60+ cards on deck. I don't like using those slots to make what is arguably the best color even more better and more consistant while sacrificing innovation and deck variety. Since I don't feel that I am running worse cards, I have no problem leaving them on the sidelines. Impulse is the only card which may come back just because I think it makes you work for your card (2 mana is probably the most important CC in the cube).
Morphling - discussed. Mana-intensive control card which has other brothers doing the job.
Dismiss - I am trying to cut the amount of hard control counters so that drafting control isn't just about picking all the best blue cards and mashing them together with a couple colors at the end of the draft.
Mystical Tutor - never bothered to run it. Could this be that good without Recall, Time Walk, Time Spiral and friends?
Inkwell Leviathan - cut. I wanted Tinker to be good, but I didn't want it to be able to consistently draft the turn 2 Tinker kill. Great Tinker target; overpriced control card.
Repeal - hmm, I thought this was in. I'll have to check it out.
Time Spiral - I have personally wanted to add this for like 2 years. I keep getting convinced that it's probably too swingy from a power perspective and so I am keeping my eye on it.
Palinchron - was in for 2+ years. Cut for other blue cards but could come back depending on what we see in the next few sets.
Psionic Blast - embarassingly absent as I track down a Beta copy.
Mana Drain - one of a small handful of cards which is banned from my cube.
Ghitu Slinger - Has been in and out of my cube more than any single card. Don't worry, he'll be back.
Fireslinger - I have a secret love for this guy. Would you rather me add him or Blood Knight?
Wild Mongrel - sadly I don't think Mongrel is as impressive as he used to be. Why is he so good in your cube that you would bold him? He was in our cube but nothing to write home about.
Mire Boa - I like the other Boa better and don't think I need 2.
Vines of Vastwood - I had this card in, but I cut it to make room for the LD suite.
Kodama of the North Tree - literally just got cut before I posted the list. I don't know if this is the right call yet, but for the number of time I've seen this guy table, I'd say it is.
Albino Troll - he's gone but not out of the mix. Very solid card, but we needed to test Beastbreaker of Bala Ged. Beastbreaker more than exceeded our expectations. Apparently I need to reevaluate the G 2-drop slot.
Viridian Shaman - I wanted to play Uktabi Orangutan because I have 0 elf tribal cards at the moment. If I added Imperious Perfect back, she'd come back in!
Creeping Mold - We discussed replacing one of the green LD spells with this yesterday. Could be good enough.
Loam Lion - hehe, don't think we need to go over this one
Wall of Denial - not a fan. I want my walls to do more than just block the opps biggest creature. I want to get something out of it be it life, a card, or be able to win in combat. Would sooner add back Wing Shards.
Psychatog - totally insane when he got there, but nowhere near as good as I want him to be.
Broodmate Dragon - cut when I reduced my multicolor section by nearly 25%. I dislike the color combination and he's only okay as a reanimation target.
Crystal Shard - I am obviously not including this on purpose. Believe me it pains me to not include it, but for now it is out. It was either between portal and this, and I didn't want to include both effects. I believe that Portal is probably the better card, but not the better choice for my cube right now.
Kjeldoran Outpost - I promise I'm not being lazy when I say this, but can you please explain to me why you like this card so much? What decks is it good in? How is it abusable? In a non-powered cube, how can you offset the sacrifice clause when it comes into play? I believe it's much better in a powered cube, so I am curious how I would be able to use it profitably!
I can't imagine not playing with most of these cards... especially not in a cube that's 100 cards bigger than my list. They've all been so good. And the bold ones are absolutely insane cube staples, that I would personally never, ever cut... even from a 360 card cube.
Interesting list. Not 100% my cup of tea, but it looks like fun.
Thanks for the great feedback. I asked a few questions about some cards I have either cut prematurely or not included because I felt they were weak. Hopefully you can help me understand how they've been good for you!
journey to nowhere and temporal isolation aren't a "one or the other" thing. i run both, and so should you. isolation and journey work for every deck, while stuff like judge unworthy only work for some decks.
kjeldoran outpost is good because it's basically a free token maker. it costs a land drop and that's it, and it makes dudes for very cheap. you don't get tokens that cheap very often.
creeping mold is definitely better than a card like thermokarst, i would do that swap. i like green LD, but mold is LD that costs 1 more to hit a lot more targets. definitely worth it.
I think some of the controversy regarding Loam Lion that we had in the other thread can partially be explained here by certain card choices in your cube.
agreed. you run a lot of color intensive cards and i think certain deck types are made much more difficult by it. it's your call if it's worth it, but i think you're right to think about putting in more splashable green and white guys.
When I see Healing Salve, I'm often like "Oh girl, I wish I could turn every card into this." Thanks they removed the gain life part, otherwise this would have been broken.
Soltari Monk - I stated earlier in the thread that I 100% want this guy back in the mix.
Cool. I like this creature a lot (I think it's the best WW creature, actually) good to see it's going back in.
Akroma's Vengeance - Will likely never come back to my cube as much as I love this card. It was always killing at least 1 thing you didn't want to die whether it be a wall, signet, or an early enchantment like Land Tax or Sylvan Library. It was really only playable in a few decks and doesn't have near the utility that Austere Command (benched) or All is Dust has which has been particularly good for our group. Cycling was about all that was keeping it alive, but we found there were better cards we could give white.
I can understand this. There are times where the fact that it kills artifacts and enchantments has been a drawback. But our experience has been more positive than negative, and I've cycled it may a time in the past. I'd run Austere Command instead if it had cycling... I think the ability is actually pretty useful.
Akroma, Angel of Wrath - addressed earlier in the thread. Not a huge fan.
That's fine. I just think that a cube this size can run one scary fatty from each color, and Akroma has been good in reanimator, ramp and control.
Soltari Champion - cut. On deck, but not really on my radar right now.
I can't imagine losing this guy. A splashable evasive aggressive beater with an Anthem strapped to him. Pretty good.
Kor Sanctifiers - I saw this in your list yesterday. I am intrigued. Can you tell me more about how he has been in your cube?
Very solid. Disenchant + body = win. It's such a white effect too, and I can't believe it's been this long until we got a white disenchant on a stick.
Catastrophe - Many cubes practically need this card because they don't play Ravages of War or Hokori. I had it in my cube very early on, but even with as much as you can do with this card, it was never worth 6 mana. It's also much better in a powered cube. We're doing fine without it.
If you're ahead, it's a 'Geddon and you seal the win. If you're behind, it's a Wrath and you can stabilize. I think this is easily one of the 5 best white cards in the cube.
Enlightened Tutor - I like E-Tutor. My group did not.
It's your cube too! Put it back in, use it to crush their souls, and then they'll learn to love it. It grabs so many great answers and powerful cards for so cheap.
White Knight - I am not against swapping this for Samurai of the Pale Curtain.
I would endorse this change
Temporal Isolation - I play Journey to Nowhere. I am sure there are many of you who will argue for Isolation all day. I'd like to see if you can convince me besides telling me how great it is to cast it at instant speed.
I like Journey more too. But in 600 cards, you can (and should) find room for both. The bigger the cube gets, the better Isolation gets.
Soltari Trooper - I could see cutting another WW guy to add another W1 guy to ease mana costs a bit. I'll run it by my group.
Do. This guy is a good evasive beater.
Capsize - cut to change blue's strategy. It's a great card, but not what I want blue doing in my cube.
This is going to be one of those cases where we can't agree. Capsize is fantastic (sometimes downright abusive). I'd never leave home without it.
Impulse/Ponder/Preordain - while many of you would argue that these go along with my blue aggro strategy I would like to explain why they're not currently in my list. While I like them a lot as cards, I really needed the slots to play cards which do different things. For every Ponder effect I added, I had to cut something from my blue strategies. Blue has like 60+ cards on deck. I don't like using those slots to make what is arguably the best color even more better and more consistant while sacrificing innovation and deck variety. Since I don't feel that I am running worse cards, I have no problem leaving them on the sidelines. Impulse is the only card which may come back just because I think it makes you work for your card (2 mana is probably the most important CC in the cube).
I hear you, but I respectfully disagree. Card selection is even better in an environment with so many unique interactions and powerful single cards. And I think they'd be even better in a tempo/aggro blue deck where continuing the stream of threats is so important, and digging for an out is so valuable.
Thieving Magpie - Lu Xun, Scholar General is my Magpie stand in. I haven't really felt the need to a second copy.
Good in both aggro and control, evasive card drawers are awesome. Even in my cube with 100 less cards than yours, I'd play both.
Morphling - discussed. Mana-intensive control card which has other brothers doing the job.
He is a mana-intensive control card. But he's the best one, IMO.
Dismiss - I am trying to cut the amount of hard control counters so that drafting control isn't just about picking all the best blue cards and mashing them together with a couple colors at the end of the draft.
In your cube, this exclusion seems reasonable. But in blue control decks, there are few better counters, IMO.
Mystical Tutor - never bothered to run it. Could this be that good without Recall, Time Walk, Time Spiral and friends?
Maybe. It's best when it's grabbing your Tinker, Upheaval, etc... so if you scale back the quantity of powerful spells, this card's power will drop. However, it adds extra copies of Wrath and stuff... so it's still pretty good.
Inkwell Leviathan - cut. I wanted Tinker to be good, but I didn't want it to be able to consistently draft the turn 2 Tinker kill. Great Tinker target; overpriced control card.
He's a great multipurpose finisher for me. Tinker/Welder target, Reanimation creature, Ramp target and control finisher. He's been great (best with reanimation and Tinker) but still good.
Repeal - hmm, I thought this was in. I'll have to check it out.
If not, I'd add it back in. Bounce that hits threatening non-creature cards and also draws. Pretty good.
Time Spiral - I have personally wanted to add this for like 2 years. I keep getting convinced that it's probably too swingy from a power perspective and so I am keeping my eye on it.
Pick one of these up. It's insane, really.
Palinchron - was in for 2+ years. Cut for other blue cards but could come back depending on what we see in the next few sets.
Even in an aggro-oriented blue cube, you still need some control finishers. I only run 3 blue creatures with 6+ casting cost, and this is one of them.
Psionic Blast - embarassingly absent as I track down a Beta copy.
Dude, get a foil Timeshifted one. They're gorgeous.
Mana Drain - one of a small handful of cards which is banned from my cube.
Oh, I see.
Bone Shredder - maybe I'll cut Ghastly Demise or Slaughter Pact for this guy?
Yes.
Black Knight - What would I cut?
I don't know. Look at eidolon's list of unconventional inclusions and pick the most similar card.
Mind Twist - banned.
Yawgmoth's Bargain - played since the beginning of the cube. Deemed not good enough by group after last big update. I concur.
You concur that it was not good enough? It is expensive, but you win when it hits the board. Especially in an aggressive mid-range build that curve into it.
Nezumi Shortfang - there has been a campaign by one of my cubemates to add this card. I am not a fan. How has he been for you?
Solid. Instant speed discard is cool, and he turns into a living rack. He's capable of some insane card advantage for black.
Disfigure - cut. I think it's fine, but not rushing to add it in the mix.
It kills a plethora of creatures for one mana. It also serves as a great black combat trick against every creature in the cube. I'm a fan.
Blood Knight - will probably swap Slith for this guy.
Do. Pro white is clutch so often, and First Strike is great with burn.
Fireball - probably swapping for Ghitu Fire.
Another great change.
Keldon Vandals - Cut for Maniac Vandal
I think cubes of every size should play both. A 4-power blocker and a Shatter for 2R is great. With the right board state, pay the echo and bash for 4. He's great in my book.
Wheel of Fortune - I love this card, but it's just a little too swingy for limited.
Oh, banned for power-level? I think you should try it. It's good, but it's not degenerate or anything. Test it with your group to be sure though. It is a red draw-7 spell.
Starstorm - I have a copy ready and waiting. Maybe I can cut Eruption for this?
Certainly. Starstorm is great. Instant speed red-Wrath that can cycle. Winner!
Mogg Fanatic - sadly cut.
People over-reacted with M10 rules. He's good enough for 450 cubes... he should be in here, IMHO.
Ghitu Slinger - Has been in and out of my cube more than any single card. Don't worry, he'll be back.
Good. Burn on a stick is fantastic!
Fireslinger - I have a secret love for this guy. Would you rather me add him or Blood Knight?
Add in both and cut some other goof.
Wild Mongrel - sadly I don't think Mongrel is as impressive as he used to be. Why is he so good in your cube that you would bold him? He was in our cube but nothing to write home about.
He's a great splashable aggro creature that enables graveyard shenanigans and forces your opponent to re-think all targeting and combat assignments. Its also immune to terror effects, and he can allow you to pitch unneeded cards to have him kill creatures in combat that no 2-drop should be able to do. He's very much a staple, and well ahead of the curve.
Mire Boa - I like the other Boa better and don't think I need 2.
River boa is much better. But Mire Boa is good too, and I think there's room for both, especially in a cube that's bigger than mine.
Vines of Vastwood - I had this card in, but I cut it to make room for the LD suite.
Maybe, but green counterspell's are pretty good. I use both this card and Stonewood, but I only listed this one because it's a lot better.
Kodama of the North Tree - literally just got cut before I posted the list. I don't know if this is the right call yet, but for the number of time I've seen this guy table, I'd say it is.
He needs to be in the right deck, but he's a pain in the ass to deal with. It's good in mid-range against aggro and control. But it's not good against mid-range. So if that makes up most of your decks, don't use it. But in an aggro v control type cube, he's very strong, IMO.
Albino Troll - he's gone but not out of the mix. Very solid card, but we needed to test Beastbreaker of Bala Ged. Beastbreaker more than exceeded our expectations. Apparently I need to reevaluate the G 2-drop slot.
I think he's leagues ahead of Beastbreaker. He enters play as a 3/3 blocker, he can regenerate in the mid-game. The 3rd toughness makes all the difference in the world.
Viridian Shaman - I wanted to play Uktabi Orangutan because I have 0 elf tribal cards at the moment. If I added Imperious Perfect back, she'd come back in!
Forget elf synergy. Play both because they're both good enough on their own merits.
Fyndhorn Elves - he'll be in the next update
Good!
Great Sable Stag - possibly replacing Leatherback Baloth.
This would be a great update.
Creeping Mold - We discussed replacing one of the green LD spells with this yesterday. Could be good enough.
Oh, it is. Especially when other LD is enabled. This card always has a priority target. Unlike "plain" LD, which can't kill powerful artifacts and enchantments.
Loam Lion - hehe, don't think we need to go over this one
Probably not, but if you ever make W/G aggro better with other updates, keep this thing in mind.
Wall of Denial - not a fan. I want my walls to do more than just block the opps biggest creature. I want to get something out of it be it life, a card, or be able to win in combat. Would sooner add back Wing Shards.
I hated this card on paper too. Try it. It's seriously very good. It buys more time than most other control cards, but more importantly, it's good against control creatures too, in the mirror. It's a control card that's good against aggro... and control!
Psychatog - totally insane when he got there, but nowhere near as good as I want him to be.
I think it's the most threatening 3 mana creature out there. He functions as a finisher that only costs 3 mana to play, so he's easy to cast and protect. And it's so good in combat... really makes your opponent consider combat assignments.
Broodmate Dragon - cut when I reduced my multicolor section by nearly 25%. I dislike the color combination and he's only okay as a reanimation target.
8 evasive power between 2 threats for 6 mana makes the cut as a finisher or reanimation target, IMO.
Crystal Shard - I am obviously not including this on purpose. Believe me it pains me to not include it, but for now it is out. It was either between portal and this, and I didn't want to include both effects. I believe that Portal is probably the better card, but not the better choice for my cube right now.
You should play both. For sure. Put this one in blue if you want, it's strictly better with blue mana anyways, it's easy to include it there. It's sick.
Mana Vault - banned.
Sol Ring - banned.
Phyrexian Processor - good card. I want my artifact decks doing different things right now.
Not artifact decks. Every deck. This turns every deck into two very distinct decks. The deck you constructed, or the kill your opponent with only Phyrexian Processor... deck. This card is scary, fun, exciting, risky, rewarding... and very much just a solid all around cube performer. It's also hard to perfect it's functions, so it really benefits good players making good decisions with it.
Reflecting Pool - sure, it's a pretty good land. We'll see what fate awaits Ghost Quarter after Scars.
Cut Ghost Quarter for this land.
Kjeldoran Outpost - I promise I'm not being lazy when I say this, but can you please explain to me why you like this card so much? What decks is it good in? How is it abusable? In a non-powered cube, how can you offset the sacrifice clause when it comes into play? I believe it's much better in a powered cube, so I am curious how I would be able to use it profitably!
It's worth sacrificing a Plains to get a Plains that generates tokens! Post-Wrath threats, works great with Anthems. You're not missing anything, it's just good enough as printed. Having lands that make creatures for cheap is awesome. If I'm in white (and not using white as a splash) Outpost makes the cut. What white decks wouldn't want to transform a plains into a token generator? Make sure you treat it as a spell slot and not a land slot during construction, or else it can come back to bite you. But it's a spell that transforms a plains into a token generator... awesome!
Battlegrace Angel has been added and cut several times now and probably not coming back any time soon, but I’ll keep it on the backburner.
That's fair enough, it's far from a staple, but it's been exceptionally solid for us, and it definitely performed better than Crovax ever did as a white finisher. In fact the only place I was ever impressed with Crovax was in Time Spiral limited. When I first build my cube, my crew and I thought that would port from format to format, but we were quickly proved wrong.
I have made my case for why I don’t like Morphling and especially don’t like him in my cube. He has been added and cut multiple times and I get complaints about his low power level every time I add him back.[/quotes]
If my friends complained about how weak Morphling was, I'd be inclined to question their sanity. To each his own, but I just can't imagine how Morphling is ever bad for anyone, ever.
[quote=kojiro;/comments/4468595]To suggest cutting cards like Ninja, Equillibrium, Stifle, Capture and Gush are a little counterintuitive to my plan of making blue focus more on aggro strategies. Aside from Ninja, those cards all have applications outside of the combat step, so I like the utility they provide, whereas the cards they cut were extremely linear and not skill intensive to draft (maybe to play). Stifle is probably the only card in that list which is in danger of being on the chopping block.
I can't argue with that because I don't play a blue aggro suite. Maybe all those cards get a lot better then. I think we're just looking at blue in two different ways, so we see these cards quite differently.
I think that Duress and Thoughtseize are two of black’s best utility cards. Slapping that onto a creature, even if it’s temporary, is enough to clear the way for bigger and better things. I like Mesmeric Fiend and Tidehollow Sculler for that. They snag the wraths and removal just long enough to find an answer.
This was my first thoughts on Fiend and Sculler as well. Discard on a stick? F yeah! But then I'd cast my Fiend and my opponent would have two answers from him. So it became, 'Well, I'll take your Lightning Bolt and force you to use your Incinerate to get it back' or something to that effect. The fact that it wasn't a hard discard made him seem pretty useless in my cube and my crew voted unanimously to get him and the Sculler the heck out.
If you had to cut something for Black Knight (besides Mesmeric Fiend ), what would you cut?
The first black card I would cut is Abyssal Persecutor. But if you have to cut a black aggro guy, I'd cut Dauthi Slayer or Fledgling Djinn. I like the Knight more than either of these guys.
We haven’t had trouble with Abyssal Persecutor being good, though I can see how he might not be good for everyone. Just remember that our Counterspell density is much lower in my cube. We have more tempo counters than hard counters, so playing late removal to kill Persecutor is much easier. Heck, you could always play Mesmeric Fiend the turn before you’re going to kill your guy if you’re worried about counters ;). We are also running more cards that deal with Persecutor, and also have an extra tutor or two to find what we need.
I don't think it's a matter of worrying that my removal spell for him will get countered. That's definitely a factor, but a small one. I'm more worried about actually finding the spell that removes him. Most black removal can't touch him. So you basically have to have a mass removal, an Edict, a couple of burn spells, or a Swords/Path variant. Like I said, I'd much rather have Plague Sliver in that slot. For the same price I get almost the same amount of p/t, but I don't have to worry about removing it myself in order to win the game.
Covetous Dragon is probably going to get cut for another R midrange card, but there aren’t a lot of options out there. I’m probably just going to hold out for the release of Scars.
You could add in Thunderblust. He's a great midrange creature for red. Much better than Covetous Dragon, IMO.
Albino Troll, Wild Mongrel, and Great Stable Stag were all in at one point, but got cut when better cards came in from other sets.
This is fine reasoning if it were true. But it doesn't look like better cards came in. I'd rather have any of these guys than Beastbreaker and Leatherback.
Exploration is soooo much better than you’re giving it credit for even in the late game. There are scenarios where it is a great turn one play with some backup, but damn near broken along side of Life from the Loam, Land Tax, and Crucible of Worlds with bouncelands, Strip/Waste, etc. or a lot of card draw. I kid you not when I tell you that it gets picked extremely early in my cube.
I guess I can't argue it too much if it's an early pick in your cube. If your crew likes it, who am I to tell you not to run it? But I still can't imagine it being all that great past turn three. I've never cubed with it personally, but I know how my cube plays and I know that it's a rare occasion that I have a need to play more than one land per turn after that point.
Without repeating too much of what I said in the OP or getting to in depth on the discussion, I will just add this point. There are colors which have less good cards on deck at any given time (red) and others with so much that you couldn’t possibly keep them all straight (I’m looking at you, blue). Having an imbalanced multicolor section allows me to play more and better cards for the colors that do not have replacements, all the while increasing the number of good cards I can play in the colors that do have replacements. It doesn’t really change how viable that color’s strategy is beyond playing a mono-colored deck which literally happens with one person per draft. Most people play 2-3 color decks. At the end of the day, we’re talking only a few cards difference between colors. It’s not like I have 80 blue cards and 50 red cards with a bunch of gold. I just do it enough so that there is a nice balance in the draft without having to play the crap available in bad combinations like U/R and U/G.
Oh, no... don't get me wrong. I think what you're doing with an unbalanced gold section and unbalanced color sections adding up to equal a balanced cube is definitely neat. It's just not something that I would ever personally do. I'd rather have numbers that are virtually set in stone. I don't think what you're doing with it is wrong or bad in anyway. It's just different from what I do.
These are all great suggestions and I have decided to take a look at redoing my multicolor section after some comments from you all and my group. I would like to keep the size of my multicolor section as low as possible. FWIW every single multicolor card you have suggested has been in my cube at some point. I think I ignore multicolor more than other colors, so it’s time for a facelift.
Excellent! Can't wait to see how it looks after it's finished.
We reach that amount of mana a lot. I have seen some forum goers suggest cutting Gilded Lotus, not running Thran Dynamo, Tolarian Academy or Metalworker, and even talking about cutting Mirari’s Wake or Tooth and Nail. I explained why I like them so much above, and if you haven’t cubed with at least Kozilek, Butcher of Truth, you are definitely missing out on a cube powerhouse.
The only Eldrazi I cube with is Artisan of Kozilek and that's in my Peasant cube. Even he is tough to play with because reaching even 9 mana for a creature is a tough task. I suppose with some of the cards you mentioned it makes it easier to make it work, but I don't care for a lot of those cards either, so that doesn't really help me out.
I like all of the artifact mana that you don’t like, and haven’t had bad feedback about them. Can anyone else chime in on their experiences? The first I have heard of someone not liking Chrome Mox was last week in another thread.
That was probably me. Haha... I think my crew and I are in the minority on Chrome Mox being bad for cube.
Chaos Orb works as a colorless, targeted Vindicate. I only play it when I know wtwlf123 is not around I have a 100 different reasons at how this helps to actually balance my cube (though I am sure people will argue this all day long), but I will leave you with this. It gives you another way (colorless even) to kill what is arguably the best and most difficult card-type the game has ever seen: Planeswalkers. I'll leave it at that for now.
And that's fine because it's your cube. As long as you can admit to yourself that you're playing with a fake card that doesn't exist.
I assure you my bounces/pains/filter lands are highly calculated and far from random. Simply put, I cut the aggro bouncelands, added painlands, Where WW became most prevalent (WW/r, WW/b), I added two filter lands to ease the cost of the WW dudes. Make sense?
Yeah, but it would be very helpful if you would list them as such. When I see a few random lands from different sets listed separately, it's very confusing until I start counting.
Chaos Orb works as a colorless, targeted Vindicate. I only play it when I know wtwlf123 is not around I have a 100 different reasons at how this helps to actually balance my cube (though I am sure people will argue this all day long), but I will leave you with this. It gives you another way (colorless even) to kill what is arguably the best and most difficult card-type the game has ever seen: Planeswalkers. I'll leave it at that for now.
There's probably plenty of cards you could invent that would help the cube.
There are sooooo many good suggestions here I couldn't possibly respond to them all individually else I'd be here all night. Instead, I am going to sit down tonight or tomorrow and look at Green and White since they seem to be the most talked about colors. I'm going to weigh the pros and cons of everyone's input and make a few changes in the problem areas. There are some very easy swaps I can make and some that I'm going to have to really think about. Thanks again to everyone so far for the awesome input.
I like all of the artifact mana that you don’t like, and haven’t had bad feedback about them. Can anyone else chime in on their experiences? The first I have heard of someone not liking Chrome Mox was last week in another thread.
I am not really a fan of the card disadvantage of Chrome Mox. On the other hand, I like Coldsteel Heart, is has been a solid fixer for us. The reason for cutting it is the same reason you would cut signets, that you want to remove some of the building blocks for midrange decks to 'level the playing field' for aggro.
And Fyndhorn Elves is really very good, but it's also way worse that Joraga Treespeaker or Noble Hierarch. Or Birds. Or Lawnmower elves (because of art). Better than Arbor Elf though.
Catastrophe is very good even in cubes with Hokori, Armageddon and Ravages. I'm not even close to removing any of those 4 from my cube.
Yawgmoth's Bargain I agree with you on. I keep it in solely because one of the people I play with (Nevermore) has an absolute jones for it, so I keep it in for him.
I like Bone Shredder over Ghastly Demise. And Black Knight over Xiahou, Living Death or Beacon of Unrest.
Wild Mongrel is a solid card since he has his own combat trick, can dodge black removal, acts as a reanimator enabler. He is useful in several archetypes.
Boas and Shamans. I like functionally similar cards, and have no problem playing the boa brothers and both 'sex monkeys'. And *gasp* not Crystal Shard too? Noooooooooooo. (I guess this is also why you don't have Fyndhorn Elves).
I'd run both Llanowar and Fyndhorn Elves before Joraga.
seconded. joraga is great, but sometimes that lost turn matters. and in aggro the ramp is pretty much always less important than the more immediate use of the mana.
When I see Healing Salve, I'm often like "Oh girl, I wish I could turn every card into this." Thanks they removed the gain life part, otherwise this would have been broken.
Agreed, except I opted for Arbor Elf over Fyndhorn. Untapping a dual land is pretty sweet.
Ya, but playing it without a Forest sucks.
I like the Fyndhorn more because I can use other non-forest sources for green to cast him and he still works. He also taps for green post 'Geddon effect, which is great too.
I like the Fyndhorn more because I can use other non-forest sources for green to cast him and he still works. He also taps for green post 'Geddon effect, which is great too.
I agree with all of this. Playing Arbor Elf off City of Brass/Mox Diamond/Gemstone Mine/etc. doesn't help you all that much.
[B]My Cube Mission Statement:[/B]
My cube is not just a mishmash of the greatest cards ever printed. It’s not about playing with all of my favorite cards, flashy combos, or broken decks. The purpose of my cube is to facilitate the most colorful and structured limited formats possible. I want each color to highlight what makes it unique and interesting, and promote a variety of strategies and archetypes. I have put a lot of time into creating a skill-intensive and balanced limited environment, but at the same constantly evolving it to try out new directions. There are very few sacred cows, and I put the enjoyment of the players as the most important reason for including any card.
[B]Basic Information[/B]
[B]Cube Size:[/B] ~600 Cards
I [do not] currently have an uneven amount of colored cards by section, but I [can and do] make up for this by having an imbalanced gold section. We have found that this allows us to run better cards in the gold sections without having to inflate the cube to an unnecessary size. It also has the benefit of allowing us to keep weaker color pairs like U/R or U/G smaller without having to add cards just for the sake of keeping the numbers balanced.
Keep in mind that I am working with a finite cube size. I have an enormous binder full of all sorts of cube cards which are either waiting to be tested, weren’t quite good enough at the time, or just interesting enough to keep on the watch list. I like rotating cards in and out every now and again just to keep things interesting. If certain strategies are becoming too dominant, I will cut the key enablers of that deck (as long as it’s not at the expense of too many other decks), and I will add cards which promote other strategies. With that being said, please be patient with me if I tell you that I don’t think a certain card is good enough. It might not be that it’s a good enough cube card; it just might be that I don’t think it’s appropriate given my current cube configuration.
[B]Standard or Theme:[/B] Standard
[B]Snow Lands:[/B] Yes
[B]Average Number of Players:[/B] 8
[B]How Often Drafted:[/B] We have cube night once a week and we usually do two drafts. When I have my cube on my at PTQs and FNMs, we’ll fit Winston and other formats in.
[B]Card Selection[/B]
[B]Proxies:[/B] No
[B]Pimped:[/B] No
[B]Powered:[/B] No. Our group has our reasons for not drafting with power and they have nothing to do with budgetary constraints or power level
[B]Portal:[/B] Yes
[B]"Un" Cards: Yes
[B]Banned Cards for Power-Level:[/B] Sol Ring, Mana Drain and Mind Twist.
Banned Cards for Time Constraints: Ensnaring Bridge and Moat
[B]Banned Cards for "fun" factor:[/B] No. I guess we don’t play Shaharazad if that’s what you’re asking
[B]Cube Design[/B]
[B]Standard or Multiplayer:[/B] Standard
[B]Pack Distribution:[/B] The entire cube is randomized prior to drafting. I usually pile shuffle the whole thing twice then side shuffle piles until I feel they’re totally random. The only time I completely organize the cube is when I have a big update of 3 or more cards or after the release of a new set.
[B]Draft Formats:[/B] We typically play 6 or 8-man drafts with 4 packs of 11 cards. 7 or more players we do 3 packs of 15. Anything less than 5, we usually play an alternate format. Popular alternate formats include auction drafts, 2-man Winston, 2HG, and a number of other formats probably not worth mentioning.
[B]Sideboards?:[/B] Yes
[B]Color Balance:[/B] Yes and No. See explanation above.
[B]Gold Balance:[/B] Yes and No. See explanation above.
[B]Hybrid/Split/Kicker as Gold:[/B] Yes/Yes/No
1 Champion of the Parish
1 Elite Vanguard
1 Dryad Militant
1 Figure of Destiny
1 Isamaru, Hound of Konda
1 Gideon's Lawkeeper
1 Mother of Runes
1 Savannah Lions
1 Steppe Lynx
1 Student of Warfare
1 Weathered Wayfarer
Two CMC
1 Acorder Paladin
1 Cloistered Youth
1 Eight-and-a-Half-Tails
1 Knight of Glory
1 Knight of Meadowgrain
1 Loyal Cathar
1 Precinct Captain
1 Soltari Priest
1 Soltari Monk
1 Soltari Trooper
1 Stoneforge Mystic
1 Thalia, Guardian of Thraben
1 Wall of Omens
1 Blade Splicer
1 Boros Reckoner
1 Fiend Hunter
1 Flickerwisp
1 Frontline Medic
1 Loyal Retainers
1 Mangara of Corondor
1 Mirran Crusader
1 Mirror Entity
1 Silverblade Paladin
1 Soltari Champion
Four CMC
1 Academy Rector
1 Emeria Angel
1 Glimmerpoint Stag
1 Hero of Bladehold
1 Restoration Angel
1 Sublime Archangel
1 Windborn Muse
1 Baneslayer Angel
1 Cloudgoat Ranger
1 Geist-Honored Monk
1 Karmic Guide
1 Reveillark
Six Plus
1 Angel of Serenity
1 Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite
1 Sun Titan
1 Yosei, the Morning Star
X CMC
1 Mikaeus, the Lunarch
1 Shrine of Loyal Legions
Enchantment
1 Faith’s Fetters
1 Ghostly Prison
1 Glorious Anthem
1 Honor of the Pure
1 Journey to Nowhere
1 Oblivion Ring
1 Sphere of Safety
Instant
1 Disenchant
1 Enlightened Tutor
1 Mana Tithe
1 Midnight Haunting
1 Momentary Blink
1 Path to Exile
1 Sundering Growth
1 Swords to Plowshares
1 Ajani, Caller of the Pride
1 Ajani Goldmane
1 Elspeth Tirel
1 Gideon, Champion of Justice
1 Gideon Jura
Sorcery
1 Armageddon
1 Balance
1 Day of Judgment
1 Decree of Justice
1 Entreat the Angels
1 Lingering Souls
1 Martial Coup
1 Ravages of War
1 Rout
1 Spectral Procession
1 Terminus
1 Wrath of God
1 Windbrisk Heights
1 Delver of Secrets
1 Enclave Cryptologist
Two CMC
1 Gilded Drake
1 Looter il-Kor
1 Invisible Stalker
1 Merfolk Looter
1 Phantasmal Image
1 Snapcaster Mage
1 Spellstutter Sprite
1 Waterfront Bouncer
Three CMC
1 Man-o'-War
1 Vendilion Clique
1 Serendib Efreet
1 Pestermite
1 Fettergeist
1 Aether Adept
1 Kira, Great Glass-Spinner
1 Archeomancer
1 Dungeon Geists
1 Venser, Shaper Savant
1 Lu Xun, Scholar General
1 Mist Raven
1 Ninja of the Deep Hours
1 Sakashima's Studen
1 Sower of Temptation
1 Talrand, Sky Summoner
1 Tradewind Rider
1 Glen Elendra Archmage
Five CMC
1 Body Double
1 Mulldrifter
1 Meloku the Clouded Mirror
1 Teferi, Mage of Zhalfir
1 Sun Ce, Young Conquerer
1 Riftwing Cloudskate
1 Consecrated Sphinx
1 Deadeye Navigator
1 Oona, Queen of the Fae
1 Frost Titan
1 Collective Restraint
1 Compulsion
1 Control Magic
1 Opposition
1 Propaganda
1 Standstill
1 Treachery
Instant
1 Complicate
1 Condescend
1 Counterspell
1 Cryptic Command
1 Cyclonic Rift
1 Daze
1 Exclude
1 Fact or Fiction
1 Forbid
1 Forbidden Alchemy
1 Force of Will
1 Force Spike
1 Gifts Ungiven
1 Gush
1 Into the Roil
1 Mana Leak
1 Memory Lapse
1 Miscalculation
1 Mystical Teachings
1 Mystical Tutor
1 Remand
1 Repulse
1 Spell Pierce
1 Spell Snare
1 Thirst for Knowledge
1 Vapor Snag
1 Jace Beleren
1 Jace, Architect of Thought
1 Tamiyo, the Moon Sage
1 Tezzeret, the Seeker
Artifact
1 Vedalken Shackles
Sorcery
1 Ancestral Vision
1 Bribery
1 Compulsive Research
1 Deep Analysis
1 Preordain
1 Strategic Planning
1 Upheaval
Land
1 Faerie Conclave
1 Shelldock Isle
1 Carnophage
1 Carrion Feeder
1 Diegraf Ghoul
1 Gravecrawler
1 Vampire Lacerator
1 Putrid Imp
Two CMC
1 Blood Artist
1 Bloodghast
1 Dark Confidant
1 Dauthi Horror
1 Pack Rat
1 Nether Traitor
1 Nezumi Graverobber
1 Oona's Prowler
1 Reassembling Skeleton
1 Vampire Hexmage
1 Bone Shredder
1 Gatekeeper of Malakir
1 Geralf's Messenger
1 Hypnotic Specter
1 Liliana's Specter
1 Nether Spirit
1 Phyrexian Rager
1 Stinkweed Imp
1 Stronghold Assassin
1 Vampire Nighthawk
Four CMC
1 Bloodline Keeper
1 Braids, Cabal Minion
1 Crypt Ghast
1 Graveborn Muse
1 Marsh Flitter
1 Murderous Redcap
1 Nekrataal
1 Phyrexian Obliterator
1 Skinrender
1 Xiahou Dun, the One-Eyed
1 Shriekmaw
Six Plus
1 Grave Titan
1 Griselbrand
1 Sheoldrod, Whispering One
1 Animate Dead
1 Bitterblossom
1 Contamination
1 Debtor's Knell
1 Necromancy
1 Necropotence
1 Nether Void
1 Oversold Cemetary
1 Phyrexian Arena
1 Recurring Nightmare
1 Sarcomancy
Instant
1 Booster Tutor
1 Contagion
1 Dark Ritual
1 Diabolic Edict
1 Doom Blade
1 Entomb
1 Go for the Throat
1 Makeshift Mannequin
1 Snuff Out
1 Tragic Slip
1 Ultimate Price
1 Vampiric Tutor
1 Liliana of the Dark Realms
1 Liliana Vess
1 Liliana of the Veil
1 Sorin Markov
Sorcery
1 Black Sun's Zenith
1 Cabal Therapy
1 Chainer's Edict
1 Damnation
1 Death Cloud
1 Demonic Tutor
1 Duress
1 Exhume
1 Hymn to Tourach
1 Innocent Blood
1 Inquisition of Kozilek
1 Pox
1 Reanimate
1 Sinkhole
1 Smallpox
1 Thoughtseize
1 Unburial Rites
1 Cabal Coffers
1 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth (in lands)
1 Volrath's Stronghold
1 Goblin Guide
1 Greater Gargadon
1 Grim Lavamancer
1 Jackal Pup
1 Legion Loyalist
1 Magus of the Scroll
1 Rakdos Cackler
1 Reckless Waif
1 Stormkirk Noble
Two CMC
1 Ash Zealot
1 Burning Tree Emissary
1 Crimson Mage
1 Dwarven Blastminer
1 Fireslinger
1 Hellspark Elemental
1 Kargan Dragonlord
1 Keldon Marauders
1 Kruin Striker
1 Lightning Mauler
1 Mogg War Marshal
1 Plated Geopede
1 Stormblood Berserker
1 Tin Street Hooligan
1 Torch Fiend
1 Boggart Ram-Gang
1 Chandra's Phoenix
1 Cunning Sparkmage
1 Fulminator Mage
1 Ghitu Slinger
1 Goblin Sharpshooter
1 Guttersnipe
1 Imperial Recruiter
1 Manic Vandal
1 Squee, Goblin Nabob
1 Zo-Zu the Punisher
Four CMC
1 Avalanche Riders
1 Beetleback Chief
1 Blistering Firecat
1 Flametongue Kavu
1 Goblin Settler
1 Hellrider
1 Hero of Oxid Ridge
1 Keldon Champion
1 Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker
1 Siege-Gang Commander
1 Thundermaw Hellkite
1 Zealous Conscripts
Six Plus
1 Inferno Titan
1 Orchish Oriflamme (Alpha misprint)
1 Sneak Attack
1 Sulfuric Vortex
1 Shrine of Burning Rage
Instant
1 Blast from the Past
1 Burst Lightning
1 Char
1 Fireblast
1 Incinerate
1 Lightning Bolt
1 Magma Jet
1 Searing Blaze
1 Searing Spear
1 Staggershock
1 Chandra Nalaar
1 Chandra, the Firebrand
1 Koth of the Hammer
Sorcery
1 Arc Trail
1 Arc Lightning
1 Bonfire of the Damned
1 Burning of Xinye
1 Chain Lightning
1 Devil's Play
1 Earthquake
1 Faithless Looting
1 Fire Ambush
1 Firebolt
1 Forked Bolt
1 Mizzium Mortars
1 Molten Rain
1 Pillage
1 Pyroclasm
1 Rift Bolt
1 Rolling Earthquake
1 Wildfire
1 Ghitu Encampment
1 Arbor Elf
1 Avacyn's Pilgrim
1 Birds of Paradise
1 Deathrite Shaman
1 Experiment One
1 Fyndhorn Elves
1 Joraga Treespeaker
1 Llanowar Elves
1 Noble Hierarch
1 Wild Nacatl
Two CMC
1 Devoted Druid
1 Fauna Shaman
1 Flinthoof Boor
1 Lotus Cobra
1 Mayor of Avabruck
1 Rofellos, Llanowar Emissary
1 Sakura-Tribe Elder
1 Scavenging Ooze
1 Scryb Ranger
1 Strangleroot Geist
1 Tarmogoyf
1 Wall of Blossoms
1 Wall of Roots
1 Werebear
1 Wild Mongrel
1 Eternal Witness
1 Imperious Perfect
1 Kitchen Finks
1 Somberwald Sage
1 Uktabi Orangutan
1 Viridian Shaman
1 Wood Elves
1 Yavimaya Elder
Four CMC
1 Blastoderm
1 Masked Admirers
1 Master of the Wild Hunt
1 Obstinate Baloth
1 Oracle of Mul Daya
1 Thrun, the Last Troll
1 Vengevine
1 Wickerbough Elder
Five CMC
1 Acidic Slime
1 Deranged Hermit
1 Genesis
1 Indrik Stomphowler
1 Thragtusk
1 Vorapede
1 Wolfir Silverheart
1 Avenger of Zendikar
1 Craterhoof Behemoth
1 Krosan Tusker
1 Primeval Titan
1 Terastodon
1 Woodfall Primus
1 Exploration
1 Oath of Druids
1 Survival of the Fittest
1 Sylvan Library
1 Utopia Sprawl
Instant
1 Beast Within
1 Crop Rotation
1 Nature's Claim
1 Sprout Swarm
Planeswalker
1 Garruk Wildspeaker
1 Garruk, Primal Hunter
1 Garruk Relentless
1 Creeping Renaissance
1 Cultivate
1 Explore
1 Farseek
1 Genesis Wave
1 Green Sun's Zenith
1 Harmonize
1 Kodama's Reach
1 Life from the Loam
1 Mwonvuli Acid Moss
1 Natural Order
1 Plow Under
1 Rampant Growth
1 Regrowth
1 Tooth and Nail
1 Worm Harvest
1 Dryad Arbor
1 Tranquil Thicket
1 Treetop Village
1 Detention Sphere
1 Geist of Saint Traft
1 Grand Arbiter Augustin IV
1 Sphinx's Revelation
1 Supreme Verdict
1 Venser, the Sojourner
Blue/Black
1 Dimir Charm
1 Duskmantle Seer
1 Lazav, Dimir Mastermind
1 Mind Grind
1 Shadowmage Infiltrator
Black/Red
1 Blightning
1 Dreadbore
1 Falkenrath Aristocrat
1 Olivia Voldaren
1 Terminate
Red/Green
1 Bloodbraid Elf
1 Domri Rade
1 Ghor-Clan Rampager
1 Huntmaster of the Fells
1 Gavony Township
1 Qasali Pridemage
1 Mirari's Wake
1 Knight of the Reliquary
1 Selesnya Charm
1 Sigarda, Host of Herons
White/Black
1 Angel of Despair
1 Mortify
1 Obzedat Ghost Council
1 Sorin, Lord of Innistrad
1 Vault of the Archangel
1 Vindicate
Blue/Red
1 Desolate Lighthouse
1 Electrolyze
1 Izzet Charm
Black/Green
1 Abrupt Decay
1 Lotleth Troll
1 Maelstrom Pulse
1 Pernicious Deed
1 Putrefy
1 Vraska the Unseen
1 Ajani Vengeant
1 Aurelia's Fury
1 Boros Charm
1 Lightning Helix
Green/Blue
1 Mystic Snake
1 Edric, Spymaster of Trest
1 Master Biomancer
1 Prime Speaker Zegana
1 Shardless Agent
1 Temporal Spring
1 Trygon Predator
1 Urban Evolution
Tri-Color+
1 Cruel Ultimatum
1 Maelstrom Wanderer
1 Nicol Bolas, Planeswalker
1 Sphinx of the Steel Wind
1 Duplicant
1 Etched Oracle
1 Gitaxian Probe
1 Grindstone
1 Gut Shot
1 Kozilek, Butcher of Truth
1 Mental Misstep
1 Metalworker
1 Mutagenic Growth
1 Myr Battlesphere
1 Porcelaine Legionnaire
1 Signal Pest
1 Spined Thopter
1 Spellskite
1 Solemn Simulacrum
1 Sundering Titan
1 Trading Post
1 Triskelion
1 Ulamog, the Infinite Gyre
1 Wurmcoil Engine
Equipment
1 Batterskull
1 Bonesplitter
1 Grafted Wargear
1 Loxodon Warhammer
1 Mortarpod
1 Runechanter's Pike
1 Skullclamp
1 Sword of Body and Mind
1 Sword of Feast and Famine
1 Sword of Fire and Ice
1 Sword of Light and Shadow
1 Sword of War and Peace
1 Umezawa's Jitte
1 Azorius Signet
1 Basalt Monolith
1 Rakdos Signet
1 Dimir Signet
1 Izzet Signet
1 Chromatic Lantern
1 Chrome Mox
1 Coalition Relic
1 Coldsteel Heart
1 Darksteel Ingot
1 Grim Monolith
1 Lotus Petal
1 Mind Stone
1 Mox Diamond
1 Prismatic Lens
1 Pristine Talisman
1 Talisman of Dominance
1 Talisman of Progress
1 Thran Dynamo
1 Worn Powerstone
Miscellaneous
1 Aether Vial
1 All is Dust
1 Ankh of Mishra
1 Chaos Orb
1 Contagion Clasp
1 Crucible of Worlds
1 Cursed Scroll
1 Dismember
1 Engineered Explosives
1 Mimic Vat
1 Nevinyrral's Disk
1 Oblivion Stone
1 Phyrexian Metamorph
1 Scroll Rack
1 Sensei's Divining Top
1 Smokestack
1 Tangle Wire
1 Winter Orb
1 Karn Liberated
1 Golgari Rot Farm
1 Simic Growth Chamber
1 Selesnya Sanctuary
Fast Lands
1 Copperline Gorge
1 Blackcleave Cliffs
1 Seachrome Coast
1 Razorverge Thicket
1 Darkslick Shores
Filter Lands
1 Fetid Heath
1 Rugged Prairie
1 Twighlight Mire
1 Graven Cairns
Dual Lands
1 Bayou
1 Volcanic Island
1 Scrubland
1 Tropical Island
1 Savannah
1 Taiga
1 Plateau
1 Badlands
1 Underground Sea
1 Tundra
Shocklands
1 Overgrown Tomb
1 Steam Vents
1 Godless Shrine
1 Breeding Pool
1 Temple Garden
1 Stomping Ground
1 Sacred Foundry
1 Blood Crypt
1 Watery Grave
1 Hallowed Fountain
1 Bloodstained Mire
1 Windswept Heath
1 Polluted Delta
1 Wooded Foothills
1 Flooded Strand
1 Verdant Catacombs
1 Marsh Flats
1 Scalding Tarn
1 Misty Rainforest
1 Arid Mesa
WWK Manlands
1 Celestial Colonnade
1 Raging Ravine
1 Creeping Tar Pit
1 Lavaclaw Reaches
1 Stirring Wildwood
Buddy Lands
1 Isolated Chapel
1 Sulfur Falls
1 Woodland Cemetary
1 Hinterland Harbor
1 Clifftop Retreat
1 Drowned Catacomb
1 Glacial Fortress
1 Dragonskull Summit
1 Rootbound Crag
1 Sunpetal Grove
1 Bazaar of Baghdad
1 Blinkmoth Nexus
1 Mishra's Factory
1 Strip Mine
1 Maze of Ith
1 Gaea's Cradle
1 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
1 Murmering Bosk
1 Mutavault
1 Phyrexian Tower
1 Wasteland
1 Rishadan Port
1 Tolarian Academy
1 Karakas
1 City of Brass
1 Horizon Canopy
1 Thawing Glaciers
1 City of Ass
Joy of Cubing Podcast
My 600 Card Unpowered Cube
My Combo Cube
OUT -> IN
This update was to intentionally make green better. In doing so I added 2 extra green cards and subtraced one from each of the multicolor and artifact sections.
Leatherback Baloth -> Great Stable Stag
Tattermunge Maniac -> Fyndhorn Elves
Fellwar Stone -> Natural Order
Violent Eruption -> Starstorm
Slith Firewalker -> Blood Knight
Pulse of the Forge -> Goblin Sharpshooter (Fireslinger will be added, just not for this update)
Covetous Dragon -> Magma Phoenix (unconventional, but big potential. Really want to test)
Ghitu Fire -> Fireball
Samurai of the Pale Curtain -> Soltari Monk
Crovax -> Austere Command
Aven Mindcensor -> Soltari Champion
Gale Powdermage -> Kor Sanctifiers
Knight of the Holy Nimbus -> Soltari Trooper
Momentary Blink -> Kjeldoran Outpost (sad to see blink go, but excited for the new add)
Ancient Tomb -> Ghitu Encampment
Ghost Quarter -> Reflecting Pool
Ghastly Demise -> Disfigure (didn't like the first time around, but testing again)
Slaughter Pact -> Bone Shredder
Hit//Run -> Throat Slitter (extremely underrated and happy to bring him off the bench)
Addendum:
OUT -> IN
Magma Phoenix -> Rakka Mar
Pulse of the Fields -> Free Slot
Gifts Ungiven -> Timetwister
Wall of Reverence > Whipcorder
Transcendant Master > Flickerwisp
Kazandu Blademaster > White Knight
War Priest of Thune > [card]Kami of Ancient Law
[/card]Austere Command > [card]Elspeth Tirel
[/card]BLANK > Luminarch Ascension
Serendib Djinn > Gilded Drake
Tinker > Crystal Shard
Timetwister > BLANK
Entomb > Necrogen Scudder
Faceless Butcher > Skinrender
Beacon of Unrest > Wei Assassins
Living Death > BLANK
Ball Lightning > Spikeshot Elder
Rakka Mar > Words of War
Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker > Koth of the Hammer
Pyrokinesis > Arc Trail
Sudden Shock > BLANK
River Boa > Mire Boa
BLANK > Genesis Wave
BLANK > Venser, the Sojourner
Behemoth Sledge > Loxodon Hierarch
BLANK > Rafiq of the Many
Epochrasite > Precursor Golem
Ulamog, the Infinite Gyre > Molton-Tail Masticore
Mindslaver > Wurmcoil Engine
Lightning Greaves > Nim Deathmantle
Sword of Vengeance > Sword of Body and Mind
Pithing Needle > Mimic Vat
Relic of Progenitus > Chimeric Mass
Golgari Signet > Fellwar Stone
Gruul Signet > BLANK
Karplusan Forest > Copperline Gorge
Sulfurous Springs > Blackcleave Cliffs
Temporal Aperature > Pithing Needle
Judge Unworthy > Austere Command
Genesis Wave > Nantuko Vigilante
OUT -> IN
Drana, Kalistra Bloodchief -> Fume Spitter
Ob Nixilis, the Fallen -> Predatory Nightstalkers
Precursor Golem -> Myr Battlesphere
Fellwar Stone -> Contagion Clasp
Natural Order - > Creeping Mold
Bazaar of Baghdad -> Faerie Conclave
Aftershock -> Keldon Vandals
Sphinx of Jwar Isle -> Palinchron
Conundrum Sphinx - > Jushi Apprentice
Grand Coliseum - > City of Ass
Rishadan Airship -> Horizon Drake
OUT -> IN
Desertion -> Gifts Ungiven
Sphinx of Lost Truths -> Thieving Magpie
Old Man of the Sea -> Cursecatcher
Rite of Replication -> Perilous Research
Aeon Chronicler -> Coralhelm Commander
White Knight -> Kor Aeronaut
Luminarch Ascension -> Momentary Blink
Academy Rector -> Galepowder Mage
Harm's Way -> Ghostway
Wild Dogs -> Basking Rootwalla
Skyshroud Elite -> Gaea's Anthem
Goblin Welder -> Inner-Flame Acolyte
Starstorm -> Aftershock
Fume Spitter -> Ghost-Lit Stalker
Nether Void -> Choking Sands
Library of Alexandria -> Undiscovered Paradise
Rakdos Guildmage -> Sarkhan the Mad
Phanton Nishoba -> Mistmeadow Witch
Debtor's Knell -> Placeholder
Spite // Malice -> Placeholder
Suffocating Blast -> Placeholder
Desolation Angel -> Placeholder
OUT -> IN
Artisen of Kozilek -> Karn, the Released
Braingeyser -> Deep Analysis
Palinchron -> Tradewind Rider
Magus of the Future -> Sphinx of Lost Truths
Capture of Jingzhou -> Soritami Cloudskater
Jace's Inginuity -> Flash
Future Sight -> Show and Tell
Ghost-Lit Stalker -> Stupor
Imperial Seal -> Slaughter Pact
Yawgmoth's Will -> Gatekeeper of Malakir
White
Goldmeadow Harrier -> Gideon's Lawkeeper
Kor Aeronaut -> Elite Inquisitor
Kami of Ancient Law -> Cloistered Youth
Mystic Crusader -> Fiend Hunter
Eternal Dragon -> Geist-Honored Monk
Elspeth, Knight Errant -> Mikaeus, the Lunarch
Porcelaine Legionnaire (moved) -> Shrine of Loyal Legions
Blue
Soritami Cloudskater -> Snapcaster Mage
Spiketail Hatchling -> Mindshrieker
Lighthouse Chronologist -> Azure Mage
Phyrexian Metamorph (moved) -> Phantasmal Image
Spined Thopter (moved) -> Faerie Conclave (moved)
NOTHING -> Academy Ruins (moved)
NOTHING -> Shelldock Isle (moved)
Jace, the Mind Sculptor -> Forbidden Alchemy
Black
Dauthi Slayer -> Reassembling Skeleton
Dauthi Marauder -> Chittering Rats
Arrogant Bloodlord -> Bloodgift Demon
Bane of the Living -> Bloodline Keeper
Juzam Djinn -> Sewer Nemesis
Ink-Eyes, Servant of Oni -> Sorin's Vengeance
Sorin Markov -> Liliana of the Veil
Dismember (moved) -> Phyrexian Obliterator
NOTHING -> Diegraf Ghoul
NOTHING -> Entomber Exarch
NOTHING -> Volrath's Stronghold (moved)
NOTHING -> Cabal Coffers (moved)
Red
Goblin Patrol -> Reckless Waif
Blood Knight -> Stormblood Berserker
Gathan Raiders (moved) -> Stormkirk Noble
Crater Hellion -> Chandra's Phoenix
Puncture Blast -> Brimstone Volley
Flame Javelin -> Chaos Warp
Aftershock -> Instigator Gang
Fireball -> Devil's Play
Skizzik -> Hell's Thunder
Kird Ape (moved) -> Stormkirk Noble
NOTHING -> Barbarian Ring (moved)
NOTHING -> Ghitu Encampment (moved)
Green
Twinblade Slasher -> Mayor of Avabruck
Beastbreaker of Bala Ged -> Skinshifter
Mire Boa -> River Boa
Nantuko Vigilante -> Jade Mage
Mold Shambler -> Masked Admirers
Spike Weaver -> Devoted Druid
Primodial Hydra -> Kessig Cagebreakers
Birthing Pod (moved) -> Nest Invader
Primal Command -> Brutalizer Exarch
Rancor -> Sprout Swarm
Berserk -> Garruk, Primal Hunter
Harrow -> Garruk, Relentless
Creeping Mold -> Bramblecrush
Edge of Autumn -> NOTHING
Land
Tabernacle at Pendrell Vale -> NOTHING
Volrath's Stronghold (moved) -> NOTHING
Treetop Village (moved) -> NOTHING
Cabal Coffers (moved) -> NOTHING
Academy Ruins (moved) -> NOTHING
Shelldock Isle (moved) -> NOTHING
Barbarian Ring (moved) -> NOTHING
Ghitu Encampment (moved) -> NOTHING
Faerie Conclave (moved) -> NOTHING
Artifact
Pithing Needle -> Signal Pest
Expedition Map -> Spellskite
NOTHING -> Mortarpod
NOTHING -> Phyrexian Metamorph (moved)
NOTHING -> Spined Thopter (moved)
NOTHING -> Porcelain Legionnaire (moved)
NOTHING -> Birthing Pod (moved)
NOTHING -> Moltensteel Dragon
NOTHING -> Act of Aggression
NOTHING -> Tumble Magnet
Multicolor
Azorius Guildmage -> NOTHING
Absorb -> NOTHING
Thistledown Liege -> Geist of Saint Traft
Undermine -> NOTHING
Nemesis of Reason -> Tezzeret, Agent of Bolas
Bituminous Blast -> NOTHING
Sarkhan the Mad -> NOTHING
Void -> Olivia Voldaren
Sarkhan Vol -> Kessig Wolf Run
NOTHING -> Kird Ape (moved)
Stormbind -> Daybreak Ranger
Gerrard's Verdict -> NOTHING
Tidehollow Sculler -> NOTHING
Izzet Chronarch -> NOTHING
Simic Skyswallower -> Edric, Spymaster of Trest
Orim's Thunder -> Midnight Haunting
Mistmeadow Witch -> Reserved for DKA
Turn to Mist -> Reserved for DKA
Giant Solifuge -> Reserved for DKA
Gaddock Teeg -> Reserved for DKA
Goblin Legionnaire -> Reserved for DKA
Crime \\ Punishment -> Reserved for DKA
Forked Bolt -> Reserved for DKA
Stone Rain -> Reserved for DKA
Unfortunately, the details of the rest of this update were lost so these may not be the most accurate changes.
IN -> OUT
Lone Missionary -> Thalia, Guardian of Thraben
Whipcorder -> Loyal Cathar
Austere Command -> Martial Coup
Land Tax -> Intangible Virtue
Nothing -> Elesh Norn
Nothing -> Windbrisk Heights
Nothing -> Thraben Doomsayer
Nothing -> Lingering Souls
Nothing -> Increasing Devotion
Nothing -> Stillmoon Cavalier (moved from multicolor)
Bloodgift Demon -> Geralf's Messenger
Puppeteer Clique -> Sheoldrod, Whispering One
Disfigure -> Tragic Slip
Skeletal Scrying -> Necropotence
Nothing -> Gravecrawler
Waterfront Bouncer -> Invisible Stalker
Coralhelm Commander -> Delver of Secrets
Keiga, the Tide Star -> Dungeon Geists
Cloud of Faeries -> Stormbound Geist
Flash -> Silent Departure
Complicate -> Nothing
Basking Rootwalla -> Nature's Claim
River Boa -> Scavenging Ooze
Cloudthresher -> Hornet Queen
Krosan Grip -> Crushing Vines
Nothing -> Imperious Perfect
Nothing -> Ghoultree
Nothing -> Natural Order
Nothing -> Vorapede
Nothing -> Strangleroot Geist
Nothing -> Avenger of Zendikar
Gobling Ruinblaster -> Torch Fiend
Instigator Gang -> Hellrider
Volcanic Fallout -> Faithless Looting
Nothing -> Goblin Wardriver
Nothing -> Price of Progress
Nothing -> Boggart Ram-Gang (moved from multicolor)
Nothing -> Fulminator Mage (moved from multicolor)
Nothing -> Godo, Bandit Warlord
Nothing -> Cunning Sparkmage
Fulminator Mage -> Falkenrath Aristocrats
Kessig Wolf Run -> Huntmaster of the Fells
Stillmoon Cavalier -> Sorin, Lord of Innistrad
Nothing -> Vault of the Archangel
Voidslime -> Nothing
Rafiq of the Many -> Nothing
Lodestone Golem -> Lashwrithe
Memory Jar -> Batterskull
Erratic Portal -> Nothing
Boros Signet -> Talisman of Progress
Orzhov Signet -> Talisman of Dominance
Izzet Boilerworks -> Sulfur Falls
Orzhov Basilica -> Razorverge Thicket
Dimir Aqueduct -> Darkslick Shores
Azorius Chancery -> Seacrhome Coast
Nothing -> Evolving Wilds
Nothing -> Gaea's Cradle
Nothing -> Dryad Arbor
Nothing -> Vivid Grove
Nothing -> Graven Cairns
Nothing -> Twilight Mire
Joy of Cubing Podcast
My 600 Card Unpowered Cube
My Combo Cube
Here's my brief thoughts before my brain melted partway through your list..
White thoughts....
So many WW dudes!
Flickerwisp vs Transcendant Master
Crovax vs Captain of the Watch vs Battlegrace Angel vs Akroma
Black thoughts.....
Desolation Angel as a black card?
No Thrashing Wumpus?
i really do like the blue aggro package. i'm not sure how well all the cards play because i've never played some of them but it looks like a lot of fun. any thought to running cloud spirit as another rishadan airship? have you tried welkin tern? and have you tested sea drake in this environment? i could see the drawback being too severe, but this is the first cube i've seen pushing blue aggro so you'd be the most likely to get good results out of it.
old man of the sea seems pretty sub par.
covetous dragon seems too fragile.
how often does the madness happen with violent eruption?
green aggro looks nice but you're missing fyndhorn elves which is a staple. and basking rootwalla is pretty decent too. you're also missing mire boa, who i'd rather have than leatherback baloth, whose triple cost seems pretty extreme. a lot of the time i'd expect him to be a 4/5 for 4 or 5 mana, which isn't that impressive. or do you guys run monocolor decks more often than usual? and speaking of triple green, chord of calling doesn't seem that great either. do you exclude natural order for power reasons? i'm guessing no because i see you still have tinker.
crime//punishment, hit//run, and sharuum the hegemon don't seem worth reducing pack quality for. and i think you could cut more multicolor without a problem, like tattermunge maniac, burning tree shaman, thistledown liege, etc.
how often has kozilek been played? dude seems way too expensive, especially considering there's no way to cheat him in play (except makeshift mannequin, i guess). how has mask of memory played?
how often does ghost quarter get played successfully? it seems like a decent option to combat 5 color good stuff.
overall, an interesting cube. it looks like it would be fun to play. i think it could be cut down to concentrate the power, but if i'm reading your intro right it seems like you are more concerned with an interesting draft, rather than a turbo powered draft, and i can see how this list would produce that.
Why so many WW cards? Helping white aggro is one thing, but to me this only helps white aggro if you're playing mono white aggro. That may happen often in your cube, but if not, I'd suggest you lose some of these guys in favor of the 2/1 flyers (Pegasus and Charger). You're also not running Soltari Monk. Is there a reason for that? Soltari Trooper is also missing. Your white midrange cards seem decent, although I don't care much for Aven Mindcensor or Transcendent Master. I also think Wall of Reverence is quite weak. White Crovax proved to be rather mediocre for us. I'd prefer Battelgrace Angel in that slot as another white finisher. Your white spells look solid, except for Pulse of the Fields. I don't care for cards that are only good when I'm behind. If you need this card, you're probably not in a good situation anyway, and most likely need more than just Pulse of the Fields to stay alive. It proved to be incredibly narrow here.
I don't personally care for running a blue aggro package, but that's a personal choice. I'd prefer to keep blue doing what it does best: midrange and control. I like the cards you've included for it, but I'd echo quitequieter's questions on it. You're not running Morphling which is the second option I'd be looking at for a 5cc blue creature. It's much better than Sphinx of the Lost Truths or Magus of the Future. Aeon Chronicler proved to be a very slow, very mana intensive card here. Since you're running Tinker, I'd rather have Inkwell Leviathan in that slot. Ninja of the Deep Hours proved to be a do nothing card for us as well. It's lack of evasion outweighed the surprise factor. It normally only netted us one card, so we cut it. I'd rather have Thieving Magpie. There's no surprise factor, but there's potential for a lot more card advantage, which is the better trait, IMO. I don't like Equilibrium, Gush, Stifle, or Capture of Jinzhou for cube. Equilibrium is probably better here since you're running the aggro package, but the rest are mediocre, IMO. Gush is just a Mulldrifter without the 2/2 flyer attached. Playing it for free sets you back way too much to make it worthwhile. Stifle is a good card, but super narrow in this environment. And Capture of Jinzhou (and Time Warp for that matter) are overpriced for the effect.
I don't like Mesmeric Fiend. He's too easily dealt with to have very much of an affect on the game. You're missing Black Knight (which I expected to see, given the abundance of WW creatures you're running) who is a much better option. Abyssal Persecutor has been discussed on this forum time and time again, so I'll keep this one as short as possible. I think it's absolutely awful for cube. I don't play cards that have the text, "You can't win the game" printed on them. I realize he's a 6/6 flyer for four mana, but he forces me to deal with him. I'd rather play something that forces my opponent to deal with him and use my removal on my opponent's creatures. Plague Sliver would be a much better option in that slot, IMO. Desolation Angel is a BW card. No ifs, ands, or buts about it. I've never seen it played without white mana. Ever. Is Ghastly Demise really that good? I'd think Disfigure or even Vendetta would be better options for 1cc black removal. I found Slaughter Pact to be poor, but that could just be personal preference. Most of the time the "free" aspect was just an annoying version of echo. I'd rather have Eyeblight's Ending there and even that card is slightly weak.
Slith Firewalker is awful in this format, IMO. It was good in it's constructed heyday because it almost always came down on turn one. Here if you don't play it prior to turn three, it because significantly weaker. You're not playing Blood Knight, which is a better creature, and again is surprising considering the large amount of WW guys you have. I don't care for Ball Lightning in the cube, but that's mostly because he almost never comes down on turn three. I can see running him, but I just don't personally care for it. Covetous Dragon seems incredibly narrow. Do you see a lot of mono red artifact decks akin to the Wildfire decks from that era's standard? Gathan Raiders costs 3. Why would you ever play him for 3RR? That's silly. Pulse of the Forge is, IMO, just as bad as Pulse of the Fields. It's another card that's only good if you're behind and I don't like cards like that. If Pyrokinesis his players, I'd like it a lot more. As it is, I'd say it's mediocre at best and only worthy in cubes much larger than this. I also don't like Violent Eruption. Without the madness aspect of it, it's overpriced and very mana intensive. Fireball seems a much better option than Ghitu Fire. I wouldn't imagine instant speed being a very useful plus on an X damage spell, unless you're taking out a creature. I don't like to use my X damage spells to kill creatures unless I'm killing more than one creature at once or unless I'm killing a fatty. Reckless Charge also seems week at sorcery speed and the flashback is a bit pricey.
Why no Fyndhorn Elves? It's a 360 staple, IMO. The more mana elves the better. I'd certainly include it over Werebear. I found that threshold is a lot harder in this format than it is is constructed. Beastbreaker of Bala Ged, while being a better bear, still seems a little underpowered. I might include him in a larger cube, but you're missing some cards that I'd definitely include over him like Albino Troll and Mire Boa. Leatherback Baloth is another that I'm not too fond of, again because he's best on turn three and after that he decreases in powerlevel by quite a bit. Either of the creatures I just mentioned would be upgrades there, but you're also missing Wild Mongrel and Great Sable Stag which I consider to be staples. Exploration seems way narrow and super weak if not played on turn one. Top decking that in the mid to late game seems awful. Chord of Calling is too mana intensive for my liking and I'd much rather have Natural Order there. The rest of your green looks fairly solid. I like the inclusion of green LD.
I do not like an unbalanced multicolor section at all. At all. You're missing Wall of Denial which is arguably the best available UW card. Thistledown Liege, while probably decent in your cube due to the blue aggro support is still a worse card, IMO. Spite//Malice was bad for us. Both halves are overpriced for what you get and in general it's much worse than Agony Warp and Psychatog which are both missing. I think Tattermunge Maniac is absolutely awful and try not to include it even in the same room as my cube. Knight of the Reliquery proved to be much weaker in this format than he is in constructed. The same could be said for Gaddock Teeg. You're missing Glare of Subdual here, which is another surprising absence since you include Opposition. I've found Glare to be the better card, since it's in the colors that want the effect the most. You're missing Spiritmonger. Crime//Punishment, Hit//Run, and Sharuum could easily be replaced with Rafiq of the Many, Broodmate Dragon, and a plethora of other, better, 3+ color cards.
I don't like Eldrazis in the cube since there's absolutely no way of cheating them into play. Actually reaching that amount of mana is often just a pipe dream. I think Epochrasite is borderline cubeable, and wouldn't include him in anything smaller than 720. You obviously have a thing for Etched Oracle, but I found it to be weaker in this format, but that's probably because most of our decks are two colors, with the occasion three color deck and the rare five color control build. He just wasn't good for us. We cut Mask of Memory for being just not good enough. In a larger cube that had room for more equipment, I'd run it, but I'd much rather have Basilisk Collar in that slot. I don't like Everflowing Chalice. By the time you reach the mana you need to make it useful, you don't need the Chalice anymore. I'm a huge advocate against Chrome Mox in the cube. I found it to be absolutely awful and less of a fixer and more of an accelerant. It normally wasn't worth it for me to lose the card I'd have to imprint. Coldsteel Heart was rarely what I wanted. That card needs a way to change the color on it or it needs to hit play untapped to be worthy, IMO. I assume you're playing with an errata'd Chaos Orb? Or do you play it as written on the card? I don't see a need for graveyard hosers like Relic of Progenitus that serve no other purpose. We play with sideboards here, but I don't include cards that are pretty much sideboard only cards.
Your choices for bounce lands, pain lands and filter lands seems odd and random. I don't like Cabal Coffers, Miren, Karakas, Ghost Quarter, Tabernacle, or Bazaar in the cube. I guess Bazaar is good if you have a lot of reanimator type decks. Tabernacle is probably good in heavy control builds with few creatures. But the rest don't seem good at all. Miren was bad for us. It was either tapped when it needed to be untapped or the cost was too much for the effect. There's not enough legends for Karakas to be that great and Ghost Quarter just doesn't do here what it does in constructed. I found that it rarely hurt my opponent that much. It's far from what Wasteland is.
MTGS Average Peasant Cube 2023 Edition
Follow me. I tweet.
However, some of the card choices are kind of interesting. And there are a ton of cube staples you're not running. Your cube is almost a hundred cards more than mine, which explains the inclusion of a lot of the cards I don't run. That's not the issue. The issue I see is the missing cube amazingness. There are so many excluded amazing cards, that I'm likely to never cut from my cube.
And also, Samurai of the Pale Curtain is an often misunderstood card. It doesn't stop discarded fatties from being reanimated. It only stops cards that go to the bin from play. Thought you should know.
Soltari Monk
Akroma's Vengeance
Akroma, Angel of Wrath
Soltari Champion
Kor Sanctifiers
Catastrophe
Enlightened Tutor
White Knight
Temporal Isolation
Soltari Trooper
Capsize
Impulse
Ponder
Thieving Magpie
Morphling
Dismiss
Mystical Tutor
Inkwell Leviathan
Repeal
Time Spiral
Palinchron
Psionic Blast
Mana Drain
Bone Shredder
Black Knight
Mind Twist
Yawgmoth's Bargain
Nezumi Shortfang
Disfigure
Blood Knight
Fireball
Keldon Vandals
Wheel of Fortune
Starstorm
Mogg Fanatic
Ghitu Slinger
Fireslinger
Wild Mongrel
Mire Boa
Vines of Vastwood
Kodama of the North Tree
Albino Troll
Viridian Shaman
Fyndhorn Elves
Great Sable Stag
Creeping Mold
Loam Lion
Wall of Denial
Psychatog
Broodmate Dragon
Crystal Shard
Mana Vault
Sol Ring
Phyrexian Processor
Reflecting Pool
Kjeldoran Outpost
I can't imagine not playing with most of these cards... especially not in a cube that's 100 cards bigger than my list. They've all been so good. And the bold ones are absolutely insane cube staples, that I would personally never, ever cut... even from a 360 card cube.
Interesting list. Not 100% my cup of tea, but it looks like fun.
My 630 Card Powered Cube
My Article - "Cube Design Philosophy"
My Article - "Mana Short: A study in limited resource management."
My 49th Set (P)review - Discusses my top 20 Cube cards from MKM!
I originally built my first cube as a tool to teach some players who were fairly good at tournament magic, but were unable to compete in formats outside of type 2 because of their limited knowledge of cards released before Time Spiral. At the time Tom Lapille had a fairly nice website with an up-to-date list, explanations, etc. I had played a couple drafts with his cube at a PTQ some years before and really enjoyed the whole experience. I didn’t think it would be very productive to introduce too many cards they had never seen before (not to mention I didn’t own half of them anyway), so I simply took the most recent Type 2 sets and infused cards like Pernicious Deed, Jitte, Meloku, the Clouded Mirror etc.
Buying the sleeves and card box, laying out the casting costs and colors, and selecting the cards was an experience in and of itself. Our drafts were pretty chaotic, but we had a total blast. The problem was that the cube had no balance and often the person who drafted the 5-color deck (pick every good card) won pretty much every time. Unfortunately, these guys got gobbled up by school priorities and their interest in Magic sort of fell off the map and so my cube was de-sleeved and it was back to business as usual.
Some months later I was introduced to a new group of players who had a cube they used every week to draft in between playtesting, PTQs, and FNMs. This cube was much more consistent and looked a lot more like Lapille’s list. I noticed that the idea of archetypes was much more prevalent in this list than mine. You could draft a bunch of artifacts and make the combo deck with Tolarian Academy and Palinchron, or a reanimator deck with Akroma, Angel of Wrath and Rith, the Awakener or a White Weenie deck with Armageddon and Eight-and-a-Half Tails. It was really exciting every time we sat down with our packs in front of us. Was I going to get the first pick Sensei’s Divining Top or Umezawa’s Jitte?
Unfortunately the cube owner didn’t make consistent updates to the list. A new set would come out and a few cards were added, but the same strategies seemed to always dominate. I contribute this to fundamental flaws in the cube’s design that I feel many cube constructers make like pet cards and not questioning conventional card choices, but I’ll get to this a bit later. As a result of stale drafts and lack of enthusiasm toward cubing, drafting became more of an afterthought rather than something to look forward to every week. It was then I decided to create my own cube.
Where to start? I didn’t have the card pool to put together a really good cube. I had about 250 cards off of Lapille’s list, so I knew I had to at least pick up the staples. Luckily, years earlier I had invested in an Unlimited set of Power 9 which I decided to liquidate to put toward the cube. After some savvy eBaying of a couple Moxes and several hefty orders to various Magic vendors on the internet, I had more than enough cards to get started. Like many players, my first cube had a lot of pet cards and clunky cards, so it took a while to find its footing. I fine-tuned the list online with my cube group for about a month before I finally decided run the inaugural draft. It was about 400 cards big, not much oomph, and a lot of the staples were missing, but it was a good start.
I received a ton of feedback from our playgroup, both good and bad. “This card is insane! This card is complete crap! Have you tried XYZ?” Every night after cubing I would sort the cube and lay it out in front of me. I would determine what worked and didn’t work. I analyzed curves, casting costs, sub-types, and strategies. The phrase ‘is X good enough’ became something my playgroup knows all too well. I created a binder called the ‘on deck binder’ to house such cards (see picture below). At first the on deck binder was to determine whether a card was worthy of being put in the cube, but now I use it for an entirely different purpose: to craft draft archetypes and strategies.
I eventually got to the point where I felt my cube was 100% complete. I’d browse cube forums, talk shop with people who had their own cube, and I would continue to put the same sort of effort into keeping it updated. The on-deck binder was pretty thick, but everything would at least get a couple spins before being judged. Several sets came out and I was the first person to pick up all the cards I needed. Our group would discuss spoilers as they came out and decide whether I needed to pick those cards up at the Prerelease.
I pay very close attention to what people draft. I watch what tables (15th pick), I take a look at people’s sideboards after the draft to see what didn’t get played, and I ask questions. You’re playing R/x aggro, but you’re not playing Ghitu Slinger. Is it because you think the card is bad or that it didn’t fit your archetype? One night after a particularly frustrating draft, I decided to ban Tinker because it was constantly bringing out turn 2 Sundering Titan. For a few weeks after banning Tinker I noticed cards like Inkwell Leviathan, Signets, and Tezzeret, the Seeker were being left in SBs. People were playing many pieces of the artifact deck, but no one was playing the actual archetype. Titan was sitting in SBs as well or just completely out of place in the deck it was played in. I realized I had made a mistake; I banned the wrong card. My mistake led me to something a little more profound, namely what I was trying to accomplish with the cube. I realized my goal is to create the best draft experience possible with the best cards magic has to offer. I am not trying to enable broken decks or allow people to play with broken cards for the sake of playing with broken cards. I want to enable memorable drafts. I want them to have fun and experience Magic unlike they’ve ever played it before.
That was about a year ago. Some big changes happened to the cube since then. Any borderline pet cards were immediately cut. I analyzed the casting costs and color distributions very carefully and established that the perfect distribution theory of CCs and colors is flawed. I also found that you need to have certain cards in specific amounts to enable archetypes or you may as well not have them at all. Cards may become better and worse as more sets are released. I have a lot of really amazing cards which I never thought I would cut sitting in the on deck binder that may see some play some time down the line. We have also made some huge changes to the list going against conventional choices for cube construction, some borrowed from other people, some concocted in our own labs. One of the biggest things I have learned is to be more open-minded.
With all that being said, onto the comments!
I am very sorry to hear about your brain
On the surface it appears as though I have an abnormally high count of WW cards, but it’s not as high as you think. Here is a small sample of 2cc white creatures from other cubes on this forum. (to clarify: when I first wrote this, I thought you meant 2cc white creatures, see my comment at the end).
# of White 2CC Creatures / Total Cube Cards – User – % Total
14/500 – wtwlf123 – 2.80%
13/555 – calibretto – 2.34%
13/551 – quitequieter – 2.35%
17/585 – kojiro – 2.90%
12/460 – rantipole – 2.6%
13/464 – iceage4life – 2.8%
12/450 – eidolon232 – 2.66%
Watch what happens when I cut even one of those cards:
16/585 = 2.73%
Now I actually have a lesser concentration of WW/1W creatures than IA4L and wtwlf123, and I am just a hair away from being in the average range. I really enjoy WW as a strategy, and personally feel that if WW is not a good and viable strategy in your cube, then you have a fundamental flaw in your cube design. I won’t get too much into it too much now as I plan on writing an article about it in the not too distant future, but I believe all of these cubes including my own have a healthy number of 2CC white creatures. On a second look, it does appear as though I should swap at least one double-CC white creature with something like Stormfront Pegasus!
Transcendent Master VS Flickerwisp – so far Transcendent Master has been pretty good. He hasn’t been outstanding, but he’s been able to pull his weight enough to merit inclusion. I have seen a lot of discussion on Flickerwisp and a lot of glowing endorsements. I admit I have not played him in my cube because of opinions from my group, but I am willing to try him out. I will be sure to include him in the next cube update.
Crovax vs Captain of the Watch vs Battlegrace Angel vs Akroma – I strongly dislike Captain and Battlegrace Angel, but I understand why people choose to include them. Akroma was cut over a year ago when we decided that it just wasn’t useful in enough decks. Truth be told, Crovax is on the chopping block currently and when I added Sun Titan, it was either cut Crovax or Pristene Angel. As much as I love Angel, I have won far more games on the back of Crovax.
Desolation Angel is not a black card. It’s a gold card and has been included as such in my color table which I will address later in this post as another forum member made a comment about it. I just don’t like looking at it in the gold section because of my OCD, but I will make the change in OP, when I make the next round of changes!
Thrashing Wumpus is temporarily out while Drana, Kalistra Bloodchief is being tested. Right now Wumpus is fighting with Kagemaro, First to Suffer with who will come back should one of the other 5CC slots gets dropped. Ink-Eyes is a consideration, but he has been more useful to us than Wumpus as well.
Thanks for the feedback!
It’s kinda funny, because when I analyze my curves and determine what cards to cut, I do exactly this. I just thought from an optics perspective, it would be easier to see everything in blocks. I will amend this after the next round of updates!
We have had a total blast with adding the blue aggro cards. It first came about when we realized that blue’s identity was uninspired. Cards like Dominate, Dismiss, Draining Whelk, Hinder (and other superfluous control counters), Collective Restraint, etc. meant that blue was rarely doing anything but playing the control role. Those times when we were able to draft U/G or U/W aggro made for some amazing combat steps and some really tight games. I liked the increased interaction and decisions my drafters had to make in those scenarios. I decided I wanted to really push blue as an aggro color, but not so much that it completely lost its identity.
The change had the benefit of not only allowing for multiple new archetypes in the mix, but also making the control drafter work much harder to build his deck. No longer could he just take every good blue card and fixer and just build a deck from it. Rest assured we have tried most of the blue aggro cards including Tern, Drake, and friends. I think we have the right creatures in for now as we risk totally backing blue into a corner and having the creatures become so bad that only the aggro decks want to draft them.
I have never been unhappy with Old Man’s performance. Covetous Dragon is on the chopping block, and Eruption is currently on the watchlist. To answer your question, madness rarely happens. I like the ability to split the damage up; is there a good replacement card?
fyndhorn elves – I had this guy in at one point, but the 1-drops became so much that I ended up cutting him. I believe I originally cut him for Noble Hierarch. I might consider switching him for Joraga Treespeaker
basking rootwalla – Just barely not good enough, IMO.
leatherback baloth – We haven’t been able to test this guy as much, but I agree he is probably weakest 3-drop I have. For now I’d like to keep him. I’m sure Scars will help me trim the chaff a bit.
chord of calling – This is one of my favorite dark horse cards. Have you ever played with it in cube before?
mire boa – I chose to keep only one Boa in.
natural order – this is veeeeery interesting. When I first built my cube I was underwhelmed by Natural Order and it was cut very quickly. I was going to just leave it at that until I examined what the last few sets and updates has done to the top of my curve. I am absolutely going to give this another chance in the mix. Good call!
Now that I have added the M11 titans, I think Sharuum the Hegemon can come out. I have wanted to cut Maniac from day one, but a cubemate of mine convinces me to keep it in every time I suggest cutting it. Hit//Run is cuttable, but I like the utility of Crime//Punishment.
Kozilek and Ulamog have made the single largest impact to my cube than any other non-Planeswalker card in a long time. They’ve been absolutely fantastic for us. They’re mostly played in control, the artifact deck, G/x ramp, and Kozilek is a fantastic mid-range bomb much in the same way you could randomly have Akroma in your W/x mid-range decks.
I have a love/hate relationship with Mask of Memory. Every time I see it on paper, I want to cut it. Every time I play it, I always tell the person I am playing to not let me cut it.
GQ is definitely the worst land in my list and I am looking forward to swapping it out for the next best land in Scars.
Thanks for your input and great suggestions!
Thank you! I have found your analysis extremely helpful for me in other threads and already I am having some ideas! Thank you also for the spelling changes; I will make changes to the OP!
Thanks for the compliment! It looks like you wrote a lot here, so I will do my best to respond to all of your points. Thanks in advance for writing all this!
I was going to refer you to my comment on WW above and then realized that it wasn’t just the white 2-drops people were providing feedback on, it was the double-W 2 drops. I am going to swap out one of the Knights for Stormfront Pegasus as it is a swap I’ve wanted to make for a while. I like the mix of WW creatures I have currently, but I could definitely see bringing more shadow guys into the mix. Wall of Reverence is probably the weakest of the 4-drops, but fine for holding the fort down. I haven’t really considered cutting it. I actually cut Pulse of the Fields yesterday before I posted this thread. In fact, if you look at the cube pictures, it’s not there! Battlegrace Angel has been added and cut several times now and probably not coming back any time soon, but I’ll keep it on the backburner.
I have made my case for why I don’t like Morphling and especially don’t like him in my cube. He has been added and cut multiple times and I get complaints about his low power level every time I add him back. I cut Inkwell when I decided that I wanted less consistency with having Tinker blow opponents out of the game in the early turns. To suggest cutting cards like Ninja, Equillibrium, Stifle, Capture and Gush are a little counterintuitive to my plan of making blue focus more on aggro strategies. Aside from Ninja, those cards all have applications outside of the combat step, so I like the utility they provide, whereas the cards they cut were extremely linear and not skill intensive to draft (maybe to play). Stifle is probably the only card in that list which is in danger of being on the chopping block.
I think this would be a good time to show you a page from my ‘ondeck binder’.
Here is one page out of the blue section. Don’t be too offended! I know there are a lot of cards people really like there. And yes, I do see that Waterfront Bouncer is there and that he’s great in blue aggro. The problem is, that bouncer is a foil Bouncer with an upside down back, so I am tracking down another copy
I think that Duress and Thoughtseize are two of black’s best utility cards. Slapping that onto a creature, even if it’s temporary, is enough to clear the way for bigger and better things. I like Mesmeric Fiend and Tidehollow Sculler for that. They snag the wraths and removal just long enough to find an answer.
If you had to cut something for Black Knight (besides Mesmeric Fiend ), what would you cut?
We haven’t had trouble with Abyssal Persecutor being good, though I can see how he might not be good for everyone. Just remember that our Counterspell density is much lower in my cube. We have more tempo counters than hard counters, so playing late removal to kill Persecutor is much easier. Heck, you could always play Mesmeric Fiend the turn before you’re going to kill your guy if you’re worried about counters ;). We are also running more cards that deal with Persecutor, and also have an extra tutor or two to find what we need.
Desolation Angel is a multicolor card. Sorry for categorizing it in this thread as a mono-color card.
Slaughter Pact and Ghastly Demise are the weakest of black’s removal suite. I was thinking of adding Last Gasp back and dropping one of the two.
I can see swapping Slith Firewalker for Blood Knight. Good catch. Covetous Dragon is probably going to get cut for another R midrange card, but there aren’t a lot of options out there. I’m probably just going to hold out for the release of Scars.
Sure, I can see putting Raiders at the 3-spot. Pyrokinesis has been good to us, but Pulse is just ‘okay’. I asked earlier if someone had something better to run than Eruption, and I’ll ask the same question here. Are there better cards to run? I like the Fireball swap for Ghitu Fire, so I’ll definitely consider that. Reckless Charge is unreal, so it’s not going anywhere.
Fyndhorn Elves is definitely being added. Albino Troll, Wild Mongrel, and Great Stable Stag were all in at one point, but got cut when better cards came in from other sets. Like I said in the OP, we are working with finite cube sizes, and while I know these guys are good creatures, there just isn’t room for them. I might swap GSS for Leatherback Baloth. Exploration is soooo much better than you’re giving it credit for even in the late game. There are scenarios where it is a great turn one play with some backup, but damn near broken along side of Life from the Loam, Land Tax, and Crucible of Worlds with bouncelands, Strip/Waste, etc. or a lot of card draw. I kid you not when I tell you that it gets picked extremely early in my cube.[/quote]
Without repeating too much of what I said in the OP or getting to in depth on the discussion, I will just add this point. There are colors which have less good cards on deck at any given time (red) and others with so much that you couldn’t possibly keep them all straight (I’m looking at you, blue). Having an imbalanced multicolor section allows me to play more and better cards for the colors that do not have replacements, all the while increasing the number of good cards I can play in the colors that do have replacements. It doesn’t really change how viable that color’s strategy is beyond playing a mono-colored deck which literally happens with one person per draft. Most people play 2-3 color decks. At the end of the day, we’re talking only a few cards difference between colors. It’s not like I have 80 blue cards and 50 red cards with a bunch of gold. I just do it enough so that there is a nice balance in the draft without having to play the crap available in bad combinations like U/R and U/G.
These are all great suggestions and I have decided to take a look at redoing my multicolor section after some comments from you all and my group. I would like to keep the size of my multicolor section as low as possible. FWIW every single multicolor card you have suggested has been in my cube at some point. I think I ignore multicolor more than other colors, so it’s time for a facelift.
We reach that amount of mana a lot. I have seen some forum goers suggest cutting Gilded Lotus, not running Thran Dynamo, Tolarian Academy or Metalworker, and even talking about cutting Mirari’s Wake or Tooth and Nail. I explained why I like them so much above, and if you haven’t cubed with at least Kozilek, Butcher of Truth, you are definitely missing out on a cube powerhouse.
Actually, I have no tie to Etched Oracle. I just needed an avatar and started going through cube cards. I just happened to use it as a banner too
That doesn’t change the fact that I love EE as a card and think it’s a fantastic cube card. Epochrasite is easily the worst artifact.
I like all of the artifact mana that you don’t like, and haven’t had bad feedback about them. Can anyone else chime in on their experiences? The first I have heard of someone not liking Chrome Mox was last week in another thread.
Chaos Orb works as a colorless, targeted Vindicate. I only play it when I know wtwlf123 is not around I have a 100 different reasons at how this helps to actually balance my cube (though I am sure people will argue this all day long), but I will leave you with this. It gives you another way (colorless even) to kill what is arguably the best and most difficult card-type the game has ever seen: Planeswalkers. I'll leave it at that for now.
Relic is a great card where there are very few GY removal cards. It gets picked higher than you might think!
I assure you my bounces/pains/filter lands are highly calculated and far from random. Simply put, I cut the aggro bouncelands, added painlands, Where WW became most prevalent (WW/r, WW/b), I added two filter lands to ease the cost of the WW dudes. Make sense?
Karakas has been nothing but great for us. We discussed it in another thread. I have a bit higher legend count than normal, and I view Karakas differently than just a white land. I see it as a colorless, noncounterable, utility land that can save my guys, bounce opposing fatties, or reuse cards like Venser, Clique, or the Titans.
Cabal Coffers has been great for us. I personally draft it very high as I absolutely love MBC as an archetype. Ghost Quarter is on the outs, and the other lands haven’t been really considered for being cut.
Thanks to everyone for all the amazing suggestions! wtwlf123, I see your post, but I have spent a long time writing this, so I need a break. I will get back to it after lunch!
Joy of Cubing Podcast
My 600 Card Unpowered Cube
My Combo Cube
Joy of Cubing Podcast
My 600 Card Unpowered Cube
My Combo Cube
i actually really like wall of reverence. i think it's a fine card for cube. and i also think chrome mox is excellent.
i understand you are doing something different with this cube, but albino troll, wild mongrel, and great sable stag are staples. they are extremely powerful and i can't see how leatherback baloth and other cards like him could be in instead of them. especially the stag, which is absolutely insane a lot of the time.
i understand your balance theory. for me, it's a lot easier to stick to consistent numbers and try and group cards by how they play to maximize the cube's balance, but i think it's possible to have all different numbers and have a balanced cube. it's not how i would do it and honestly i have no idea how well it's working in your cube because i haven't played it, but i don't think the theory is bogus. i use the same "balance by feel" technique when determining how much removal or artifact hate or whatever, so i could see doing it with the whole cube. it just seems inexact and exhausting.
the issue i can see is that when the one mana would make the most difference, the card is a dead card. but you obviously have it low on the list of important cards so i don't need to say any more about it.
My 630 Card Powered Cube
My Article - "Cube Design Philosophy"
My Article - "Mana Short: A study in limited resource management."
My 49th Set (P)review - Discusses my top 20 Cube cards from MKM!
Your white aggro is very white intensive. (Leatherback Baloth) is green intensive. I think by taking some of the suggestions, getting a couple splashable evasive white weenies like Stormfront Pegasus, Soltari Trooper, etc. can be part of the solution. Omissions like Wild Mongrel, Great Sable Stag (vs. the GGG Baloth), Mire Boa, Albino Troll, etc. are also things that could be looked at.
Actually, with the mid-range inclusion in your white and green sections, I'm not particularly suprised that the aggro archetype is secondary to midrange when drafting that color combination. At which point, a vanilla 2/3 isn't as enticing.
My Cube Blog @theCubeMiser on Twitter
I will go through each of them one by one and try to explain why they're not included.
Yeah, he'd be insane in constructed if he was the other way around, and he is slightly less good in cube for not having that ability. To be honest it hasn't really seen as much play as I thought he would and is definitely the worst of the bunch. I will do my best to keep this post updated, but there are about 10 good WW creatures available at any given time, and depending on what kinds of updates I am making, some come on the list and others go off. It's easily the section that changes the most out of any other!
Below is a list of the cards you were concerned that were missing. I will leave the cards you bolded, bold, and do my best to explain their abscense.
Soltari Monk - I stated earlier in the thread that I 100% want this guy back in the mix.
Akroma's Vengeance - Will likely never come back to my cube as much as I love this card. It was always killing at least 1 thing you didn't want to die whether it be a wall, signet, or an early enchantment like Land Tax or Sylvan Library. It was really only playable in a few decks and doesn't have near the utility that Austere Command (benched) or All is Dust has which has been particularly good for our group. Cycling was about all that was keeping it alive, but we found there were better cards we could give white.
Akroma, Angel of Wrath - addressed earlier in the thread. Not a huge fan.
Soltari Champion - cut. On deck, but not really on my radar right now.
Kor Sanctifiers - I saw this in your list yesterday. I am intrigued. Can you tell me more about how he has been in your cube?
Catastrophe - Many cubes practically need this card because they don't play Ravages of War or Hokori. I had it in my cube very early on, but even with as much as you can do with this card, it was never worth 6 mana. It's also much better in a powered cube. We're doing fine without it.
Enlightened Tutor - I like E-Tutor. My group did not.
White Knight - I am not against swapping this for Samurai of the Pale Curtain.
Temporal Isolation - I play Journey to Nowhere. I am sure there are many of you who will argue for Isolation all day. I'd like to see if you can convince me besides telling me how great it is to cast it at instant speed.
Soltari Trooper - I could see cutting another WW guy to add another W1 guy to ease mana costs a bit. I'll run it by my group.
Capsize - cut to change blue's strategy. It's a great card, but not what I want blue doing in my cube.
Impulse/Ponder/Preordain - while many of you would argue that these go along with my blue aggro strategy I would like to explain why they're not currently in my list. While I like them a lot as cards, I really needed the slots to play cards which do different things. For every Ponder effect I added, I had to cut something from my blue strategies. Blue has like 60+ cards on deck. I don't like using those slots to make what is arguably the best color even more better and more consistant while sacrificing innovation and deck variety. Since I don't feel that I am running worse cards, I have no problem leaving them on the sidelines. Impulse is the only card which may come back just because I think it makes you work for your card (2 mana is probably the most important CC in the cube).
Thieving Magpie - Lu Xun, Scholar General is my Magpie stand in. I haven't really felt the need to a second copy.
Morphling - discussed. Mana-intensive control card which has other brothers doing the job.
Dismiss - I am trying to cut the amount of hard control counters so that drafting control isn't just about picking all the best blue cards and mashing them together with a couple colors at the end of the draft.
Mystical Tutor - never bothered to run it. Could this be that good without Recall, Time Walk, Time Spiral and friends?
Inkwell Leviathan - cut. I wanted Tinker to be good, but I didn't want it to be able to consistently draft the turn 2 Tinker kill. Great Tinker target; overpriced control card.
Repeal - hmm, I thought this was in. I'll have to check it out.
Time Spiral - I have personally wanted to add this for like 2 years. I keep getting convinced that it's probably too swingy from a power perspective and so I am keeping my eye on it.
Palinchron - was in for 2+ years. Cut for other blue cards but could come back depending on what we see in the next few sets.
Psionic Blast - embarassingly absent as I track down a Beta copy.
Mana Drain - one of a small handful of cards which is banned from my cube.
Bone Shredder - maybe I'll cut Ghastly Demise or
Slaughter Pact for this guy?
Black Knight - What would I cut?
Mind Twist - banned.
Yawgmoth's Bargain - played since the beginning of the cube. Deemed not good enough by group after last big update. I concur.
Nezumi Shortfang - there has been a campaign by one of my cubemates to add this card. I am not a fan. How has he been for you?
Disfigure - cut. I think it's fine, but not rushing to add it in the mix.
Blood Knight - will probably swap Slith for this guy.
Fireball - probably swapping for Ghitu Fire.
Keldon Vandals - Cut for Maniac Vandal
Wheel of Fortune - I love this card, but it's just a little too swingy for limited.
Starstorm - I have a copy ready and waiting. Maybe I can cut Eruption for this?
Mogg Fanatic - sadly cut.
Ghitu Slinger - Has been in and out of my cube more than any single card. Don't worry, he'll be back.
Fireslinger - I have a secret love for this guy. Would you rather me add him or Blood Knight?
Wild Mongrel - sadly I don't think Mongrel is as impressive as he used to be. Why is he so good in your cube that you would bold him? He was in our cube but nothing to write home about.
Mire Boa - I like the other Boa better and don't think I need 2.
Vines of Vastwood - I had this card in, but I cut it to make room for the LD suite.
Kodama of the North Tree - literally just got cut before I posted the list. I don't know if this is the right call yet, but for the number of time I've seen this guy table, I'd say it is.
Albino Troll - he's gone but not out of the mix. Very solid card, but we needed to test Beastbreaker of Bala Ged. Beastbreaker more than exceeded our expectations. Apparently I need to reevaluate the G 2-drop slot.
Viridian Shaman - I wanted to play Uktabi Orangutan because I have 0 elf tribal cards at the moment. If I added Imperious Perfect back, she'd come back in!
Fyndhorn Elves - he'll be in the next update
Great Sable Stag - possibly replacing Leatherback Baloth.
Creeping Mold - We discussed replacing one of the green LD spells with this yesterday. Could be good enough.
Loam Lion - hehe, don't think we need to go over this one
Wall of Denial - not a fan. I want my walls to do more than just block the opps biggest creature. I want to get something out of it be it life, a card, or be able to win in combat. Would sooner add back Wing Shards.
Psychatog - totally insane when he got there, but nowhere near as good as I want him to be.
Broodmate Dragon - cut when I reduced my multicolor section by nearly 25%. I dislike the color combination and he's only okay as a reanimation target.
Crystal Shard - I am obviously not including this on purpose. Believe me it pains me to not include it, but for now it is out. It was either between portal and this, and I didn't want to include both effects. I believe that Portal is probably the better card, but not the better choice for my cube right now.
Mana Vault - banned.
Sol Ring - banned.
Phyrexian Processor - good card. I want my artifact decks doing different things right now.
Reflecting Pool - sure, it's a pretty good land. We'll see what fate awaits Ghost Quarter after Scars.
Kjeldoran Outpost - I promise I'm not being lazy when I say this, but can you please explain to me why you like this card so much? What decks is it good in? How is it abusable? In a non-powered cube, how can you offset the sacrifice clause when it comes into play? I believe it's much better in a powered cube, so I am curious how I would be able to use it profitably!
Thanks for the great feedback. I asked a few questions about some cards I have either cut prematurely or not included because I felt they were weak. Hopefully you can help me understand how they've been good for you!
Joy of Cubing Podcast
My 600 Card Unpowered Cube
My Combo Cube
kjeldoran outpost is good because it's basically a free token maker. it costs a land drop and that's it, and it makes dudes for very cheap. you don't get tokens that cheap very often.
creeping mold is definitely better than a card like thermokarst, i would do that swap. i like green LD, but mold is LD that costs 1 more to hit a lot more targets. definitely worth it.
agreed. you run a lot of color intensive cards and i think certain deck types are made much more difficult by it. it's your call if it's worth it, but i think you're right to think about putting in more splashable green and white guys.
Cool. I like this creature a lot (I think it's the best WW creature, actually) good to see it's going back in.
I can understand this. There are times where the fact that it kills artifacts and enchantments has been a drawback. But our experience has been more positive than negative, and I've cycled it may a time in the past. I'd run Austere Command instead if it had cycling... I think the ability is actually pretty useful.
That's fine. I just think that a cube this size can run one scary fatty from each color, and Akroma has been good in reanimator, ramp and control.
I can't imagine losing this guy. A splashable evasive aggressive beater with an Anthem strapped to him. Pretty good.
Very solid. Disenchant + body = win. It's such a white effect too, and I can't believe it's been this long until we got a white disenchant on a stick.
If you're ahead, it's a 'Geddon and you seal the win. If you're behind, it's a Wrath and you can stabilize. I think this is easily one of the 5 best white cards in the cube.
It's your cube too! Put it back in, use it to crush their souls, and then they'll learn to love it. It grabs so many great answers and powerful cards for so cheap.
I would endorse this change
I like Journey more too. But in 600 cards, you can (and should) find room for both. The bigger the cube gets, the better Isolation gets.
Do. This guy is a good evasive beater.
This is going to be one of those cases where we can't agree. Capsize is fantastic (sometimes downright abusive). I'd never leave home without it.
I hear you, but I respectfully disagree. Card selection is even better in an environment with so many unique interactions and powerful single cards. And I think they'd be even better in a tempo/aggro blue deck where continuing the stream of threats is so important, and digging for an out is so valuable.
Good in both aggro and control, evasive card drawers are awesome. Even in my cube with 100 less cards than yours, I'd play both.
He is a mana-intensive control card. But he's the best one, IMO.
In your cube, this exclusion seems reasonable. But in blue control decks, there are few better counters, IMO.
Maybe. It's best when it's grabbing your Tinker, Upheaval, etc... so if you scale back the quantity of powerful spells, this card's power will drop. However, it adds extra copies of Wrath and stuff... so it's still pretty good.
He's a great multipurpose finisher for me. Tinker/Welder target, Reanimation creature, Ramp target and control finisher. He's been great (best with reanimation and Tinker) but still good.
If not, I'd add it back in. Bounce that hits threatening non-creature cards and also draws. Pretty good.
Pick one of these up. It's insane, really.
Even in an aggro-oriented blue cube, you still need some control finishers. I only run 3 blue creatures with 6+ casting cost, and this is one of them.
Dude, get a foil Timeshifted one. They're gorgeous.
Oh, I see.
Yes.
I don't know. Look at eidolon's list of unconventional inclusions and pick the most similar card.
You concur that it was not good enough? It is expensive, but you win when it hits the board. Especially in an aggressive mid-range build that curve into it.
Solid. Instant speed discard is cool, and he turns into a living rack. He's capable of some insane card advantage for black.
It kills a plethora of creatures for one mana. It also serves as a great black combat trick against every creature in the cube. I'm a fan.
Do. Pro white is clutch so often, and First Strike is great with burn.
Another great change.
I think cubes of every size should play both. A 4-power blocker and a Shatter for 2R is great. With the right board state, pay the echo and bash for 4. He's great in my book.
Oh, banned for power-level? I think you should try it. It's good, but it's not degenerate or anything. Test it with your group to be sure though. It is a red draw-7 spell.
Certainly. Starstorm is great. Instant speed red-Wrath that can cycle. Winner!
People over-reacted with M10 rules. He's good enough for 450 cubes... he should be in here, IMHO.
Good. Burn on a stick is fantastic!
Add in both and cut some other goof.
He's a great splashable aggro creature that enables graveyard shenanigans and forces your opponent to re-think all targeting and combat assignments. Its also immune to terror effects, and he can allow you to pitch unneeded cards to have him kill creatures in combat that no 2-drop should be able to do. He's very much a staple, and well ahead of the curve.
River boa is much better. But Mire Boa is good too, and I think there's room for both, especially in a cube that's bigger than mine.
Maybe, but green counterspell's are pretty good. I use both this card and Stonewood, but I only listed this one because it's a lot better.
He needs to be in the right deck, but he's a pain in the ass to deal with. It's good in mid-range against aggro and control. But it's not good against mid-range. So if that makes up most of your decks, don't use it. But in an aggro v control type cube, he's very strong, IMO.
I think he's leagues ahead of Beastbreaker. He enters play as a 3/3 blocker, he can regenerate in the mid-game. The 3rd toughness makes all the difference in the world.
Forget elf synergy. Play both because they're both good enough on their own merits.
Good!
This would be a great update.
Oh, it is. Especially when other LD is enabled. This card always has a priority target. Unlike "plain" LD, which can't kill powerful artifacts and enchantments.
Probably not, but if you ever make W/G aggro better with other updates, keep this thing in mind.
I hated this card on paper too. Try it. It's seriously very good. It buys more time than most other control cards, but more importantly, it's good against control creatures too, in the mirror. It's a control card that's good against aggro... and control!
I think it's the most threatening 3 mana creature out there. He functions as a finisher that only costs 3 mana to play, so he's easy to cast and protect. And it's so good in combat... really makes your opponent consider combat assignments.
8 evasive power between 2 threats for 6 mana makes the cut as a finisher or reanimation target, IMO.
You should play both. For sure. Put this one in blue if you want, it's strictly better with blue mana anyways, it's easy to include it there. It's sick.
Not artifact decks. Every deck. This turns every deck into two very distinct decks. The deck you constructed, or the kill your opponent with only Phyrexian Processor... deck. This card is scary, fun, exciting, risky, rewarding... and very much just a solid all around cube performer. It's also hard to perfect it's functions, so it really benefits good players making good decisions with it.
Cut Ghost Quarter for this land.
It's worth sacrificing a Plains to get a Plains that generates tokens! Post-Wrath threats, works great with Anthems. You're not missing anything, it's just good enough as printed. Having lands that make creatures for cheap is awesome. If I'm in white (and not using white as a splash) Outpost makes the cut. What white decks wouldn't want to transform a plains into a token generator? Make sure you treat it as a spell slot and not a land slot during construction, or else it can come back to bite you. But it's a spell that transforms a plains into a token generator... awesome!
My 630 Card Powered Cube
My Article - "Cube Design Philosophy"
My Article - "Mana Short: A study in limited resource management."
My 49th Set (P)review - Discusses my top 20 Cube cards from MKM!
That's fair enough, it's far from a staple, but it's been exceptionally solid for us, and it definitely performed better than Crovax ever did as a white finisher. In fact the only place I was ever impressed with Crovax was in Time Spiral limited. When I first build my cube, my crew and I thought that would port from format to format, but we were quickly proved wrong.
I can't argue with that because I don't play a blue aggro suite. Maybe all those cards get a lot better then. I think we're just looking at blue in two different ways, so we see these cards quite differently.
That's a very pretty two pages worth of binder. And it's filled with a lot of cards that I'll probably never remove from my cube.
This was my first thoughts on Fiend and Sculler as well. Discard on a stick? F yeah! But then I'd cast my Fiend and my opponent would have two answers from him. So it became, 'Well, I'll take your Lightning Bolt and force you to use your Incinerate to get it back' or something to that effect. The fact that it wasn't a hard discard made him seem pretty useless in my cube and my crew voted unanimously to get him and the Sculler the heck out.
The first black card I would cut is Abyssal Persecutor. But if you have to cut a black aggro guy, I'd cut Dauthi Slayer or Fledgling Djinn. I like the Knight more than either of these guys.
I don't think it's a matter of worrying that my removal spell for him will get countered. That's definitely a factor, but a small one. I'm more worried about actually finding the spell that removes him. Most black removal can't touch him. So you basically have to have a mass removal, an Edict, a couple of burn spells, or a Swords/Path variant. Like I said, I'd much rather have Plague Sliver in that slot. For the same price I get almost the same amount of p/t, but I don't have to worry about removing it myself in order to win the game.
That would be excellent.
You could add in Thunderblust. He's a great midrange creature for red. Much better than Covetous Dragon, IMO.
I like your own suggestion of cutting it for Starstorm. Total upgrade.
This is fine reasoning if it were true. But it doesn't look like better cards came in. I'd rather have any of these guys than Beastbreaker and Leatherback.
I guess I can't argue it too much if it's an early pick in your cube. If your crew likes it, who am I to tell you not to run it? But I still can't imagine it being all that great past turn three. I've never cubed with it personally, but I know how my cube plays and I know that it's a rare occasion that I have a need to play more than one land per turn after that point.
Oh, no... don't get me wrong. I think what you're doing with an unbalanced gold section and unbalanced color sections adding up to equal a balanced cube is definitely neat. It's just not something that I would ever personally do. I'd rather have numbers that are virtually set in stone. I don't think what you're doing with it is wrong or bad in anyway. It's just different from what I do.
Excellent! Can't wait to see how it looks after it's finished.
The only Eldrazi I cube with is Artisan of Kozilek and that's in my Peasant cube. Even he is tough to play with because reaching even 9 mana for a creature is a tough task. I suppose with some of the cards you mentioned it makes it easier to make it work, but I don't care for a lot of those cards either, so that doesn't really help me out.
That was probably me. Haha... I think my crew and I are in the minority on Chrome Mox being bad for cube.
And that's fine because it's your cube. As long as you can admit to yourself that you're playing with a fake card that doesn't exist.
I don't have that much of a need for GY hate in my cube. I can't imagine it ever going that quickly here.
Yeah, but it would be very helpful if you would list them as such. When I see a few random lands from different sets listed separately, it's very confusing until I start counting.
MTGS Average Peasant Cube 2023 Edition
Follow me. I tweet.
There's probably plenty of cards you could invent that would help the cube.
My 630 Card Powered Cube
My Article - "Cube Design Philosophy"
My Article - "Mana Short: A study in limited resource management."
My 49th Set (P)review - Discusses my top 20 Cube cards from MKM!
Expect an update soon!
Joy of Cubing Podcast
My 600 Card Unpowered Cube
My Combo Cube
I am not really a fan of the card disadvantage of Chrome Mox. On the other hand, I like Coldsteel Heart, is has been a solid fixer for us. The reason for cutting it is the same reason you would cut signets, that you want to remove some of the building blocks for midrange decks to 'level the playing field' for aggro.
And Fyndhorn Elves is really very good, but it's also way worse that Joraga Treespeaker or Noble Hierarch. Or Birds. Or Lawnmower elves (because of art). Better than Arbor Elf though.
Catastrophe is very good even in cubes with Hokori, Armageddon and Ravages. I'm not even close to removing any of those 4 from my cube.
Yawgmoth's Bargain I agree with you on. I keep it in solely because one of the people I play with (Nevermore) has an absolute jones for it, so I keep it in for him.
I like Bone Shredder over Ghastly Demise. And Black Knight over Xiahou, Living Death or Beacon of Unrest.
Wild Mongrel is a solid card since he has his own combat trick, can dodge black removal, acts as a reanimator enabler. He is useful in several archetypes.
Boas and Shamans. I like functionally similar cards, and have no problem playing the boa brothers and both 'sex monkeys'. And *gasp* not Crystal Shard too? Noooooooooooo. (I guess this is also why you don't have Fyndhorn Elves).
But... you run Elite Vanguard and Savannah Lions?
MTGS Average Peasant Cube 2023 Edition
Follow me. I tweet.
seconded. joraga is great, but sometimes that lost turn matters. and in aggro the ramp is pretty much always less important than the more immediate use of the mana.
Me too. I like the Treespeaker, but it's no Llanowar/Fyndhorn.
My 630 Card Powered Cube
My Article - "Cube Design Philosophy"
My Article - "Mana Short: A study in limited resource management."
My 49th Set (P)review - Discusses my top 20 Cube cards from MKM!
Agreed, except I opted for Arbor Elf over Fyndhorn. Untapping a dual land is pretty sweet.
Ya, but playing it without a Forest sucks.
I like the Fyndhorn more because I can use other non-forest sources for green to cast him and he still works. He also taps for green post 'Geddon effect, which is great too.
My 630 Card Powered Cube
My Article - "Cube Design Philosophy"
My Article - "Mana Short: A study in limited resource management."
My 49th Set (P)review - Discusses my top 20 Cube cards from MKM!
I agree with all of this. Playing Arbor Elf off City of Brass/Mox Diamond/Gemstone Mine/etc. doesn't help you all that much.
Cheers,
rant
My Cube
CubeCobra: https://cubecobra.com/cube/overview/5f5d0310ed602310515d4c32
Cube Tutor: http://cubetutor.com/viewcube/1963