MTG Salvation

Zendikar continues to be my favorite set and block of all time. I was eagerly anticipating BFZ but I came away disappointed. No longer were their traps and expeditions, and quests, and the general sense of adventure.

So I figure the best way to scratch the itch for Zendikar goodness is to make a CUBE with Zendikar cards. I need ideas though. I don't want to make a Zendikar-only cube. One idea is to include ROE, another is to pad the cube with decent legacy cube staples such as mana leak and uhh..mindstone or something.

The biggest problem with a singleton cube however is cards like Steppe Lynx and Geopede tend to lose some of their power if they're are only one of each in your deck. Anyway, I'm looking for ideas. I'd really like to create a good draft environment themed around Zendikar. If you have any ideas, or want to endorse some of the ones I've listed, let me know. Thanks in advance for any help.

Start by deciding how large of a cube you want to make, how you want to distribute your color sections, what kinds of archetypes you want to support (the limited forums here on mtgs can be a good resource for looking at Zen - ROE-era limited decks), how closely you wan those archtypes to cleave to colors/guilds/etc.

Check out www.cubetutor.com/ too. It's a great resource for building a hypothetical 1st draft, and seeing if the decks gel via drafting.

Quote from coyotemoon722 »

The biggest problem with a singleton cube however is cards like Steppe Lynx and Geopede tend to lose some of their power if they're are only one of each in your deck.

False. With Steppe Lynx and Geopede, you're not looking for a critical mass of landfall dudes. You're looking for a critical mass of aggro beaters. I think those would be pretty easy to accumulate if you're going for a Zendikar megablock feel (old + new sets) and also cherrypicking some thematic or flavorful cards to help round out your cube. The possibilities are actually pretty exciting with so many interesting one and two drops:

At 360, I think that could be a solid foundation.

Outside of the megablock, I would look for quality ramp spells in green, karoos/borderposts, fetches, landcyclers (Eternal Dragon) and lands-matter stuff like Knight of the Reliquary, Life from the Loam, Vinelasher Kudzu or Sword of the Animist. I gave a bit of a rundown on four colors below (because green is fairly self-explanatory)

What a quality post PyreDream. Some good ideas right there.

Quote from Goodking »

What a quality post PyreDream. Some good ideas right there.

Agreed, thanks for the post!

Sorry, a lot of that is just musings on a more general land-matters theme. I was already thinking about what a lands-matter theme might look like in pauper, so it wasn't a reach to apply that to a Zendikar cube. I thought about including domain/five-color matters stuff, but I despise domain cards (I think they're underpowered by design and that makes them usually not scale very well against either monocolor or multicolor equivalents, not because the idea is inherently bad). Stuff like Woodland Wanderer is a step in the right direction. Easier to cast, still a good baseline without domain. In that same vein, you have stuff like Obelisk of Alara, All Suns' Dawn or Who/What/When/Where/Why which are not explicitly five colors, but reward you with much better effects or options for going the extra mile.

Lands-matter is really fun, and can come in a lot of forms, whether it's building around Wildfire, Life from the Loam, Halimar Tidecaller, Knight of the Reliquary, Plated Geopede, or whatever. I am putting together a cube list that incorporates lands-matter myself, which you can view on CT (see my sig).
Some suggestions to give the theme variety and fun:
-Scapeshift! Look at all those landfall triggers!
-Run a utility land draft during/after the main draft. Jason Waddell has written about the concept at length; search around and you'll find some info on it.
-Several of the new landfall cards, specifically the Retreats, are actually quite good. The blue retreat also makes a fun combo with KotR.
-In Blue and White, run some cards that can blink any permanent, like Kor Skyfisher and UW Venser. This lets you reset your land-creatures if you run Awaken cards, and gives you more landfall triggers!
-Molten Vortex gets better the more your cube cares about lands/has the ability to recur lands. Consider bouncelands and scrylands as possible fixing cycles to make land sequencing more of a decision point, and to give you more lands to pitch to Vortex.
-Black tends to care more about Swamps than other land types, and while that's okay, it tends to make it less of a thing in the lands theme than the other colors.
-Strongly consider breaking singleton. You could, for example, run extra copies of Awaken cards to make Halimar Tidecaller a cool package enabler; you could run an extra Life from the Loam to make land recursion decks easier; you could run a bunch of Evolving Wilds to make hitting Landfall triggers easier; etc. etc. It's best not to go crazy on singleton-breaking, but it can cement an otherwise under-supported archetype if done wisely.
-Look for other themes that your landfall theme naturally leads you to. For example, having lots of fetchlands/Wilds in your environment fuels Delve cards.

Some of these ideas are obviously rather unorthodox, but the goal of your Cube is to have fun, so do what will give you and your drafters the most fun.
EDIT: If you dig around on my CubeTutor, you'll find a couple decks that I drafted to demonstrate the Lands archetype and how varied it can be. Check those out if you fancy.

A land cube is definitely interesting. Some fring cards like terra eternal or terravore would be playable in this environment.there are also land related cards in prophecy (i know they suck, but worth mentioning still).

This is quite interesting, and I might start collecting land matter cards so there is an option to morph my legacy 450 into a zndikar 360. The lands, tutors, and a lot of playables like loam and reliquary, wildfire overlap, so I might just make it an expansion.

Another theme that works well with ZEN/BFZ cards is a sacrifice/fodder deck. Since Eldrazi spawn/scions can sac themselves, building some strong death-trigger cards, like blood artist, zulaport cutthroat, or goblin sharpshooter, into the cube can give you a good incentive for drafting cards that make spawn. Catacomb sifter is a good GB guy for this archetype from the new set. This type of theme also plays well with Evoke, Morbid, and sacrifice outlets, like Evolutionary Leap and the new Vampiric Rites.
EDIT: ooh and if youre running sac outlets, dont forget a couple threaten effects to steal and sac your opponents dudes. My faves are Yasova Dragonclaw and Sarkhan Vol.