Hero of Oxid Ridge is fine. Against an empty board, it does naughty things and ends games. Hellrider is the better aggro finisher since the trigger cares less about what is on the other side of the table. Hellrider also doesn't die to elite vanguards, which is a big strike against hero IMO. Red also has a ton of other sweet 4 drops, relegating this one pretty far down the list for me.
Favorite super hero is the Hulk. Wasn't so much into comics, but I really liked the old TV show.
Hero of Oxid Ridge is clearly good, but it never rung me as a card that really needed to be played. It's better than Keldon Champion, but the champ is fine, and I haven't felt the need for another card in the slot. I never bothered to hunt down a copy of the hero, and I doubt I ever will. They'll just print another pushed, hasty four-drop anyway.
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Hero gets the job done, but it is very cuttable due to narrowness, density in that part of the curve and availability of better options.
It is the sort of card that will table to aggro players consistently. It trades with one drops so it does not tend to survive combat against many decks. Hellrider and Koth of the Hammer are better red 4 drop aggro curve toppers, and now Fleetwheel Cruiser does something very similar. Pia and Kiran and FTK are playable in multiple archetype so they gain precedence for many cubers over the narrow Hero. He has some application in token decks, but again less than Hellrider, P&K and Purphoros. I find that Hero dos not make the maindeck as often as I'd like due to over saturation in 4 drops. Usually aggro decks here are two colors, and in white you have plenty of ridiculous four drops as well (two geddons, Hero of Bladehold, Elspeth). I predict Hero of Bladehold will be the go-to cut if another aggressive red four is printed (or perhaps even before then).
It's hard not to compare Hero of Oxid Ridge unfavorably with Hellrider, not only because of the low toughness but also because the Battle Cry damage is a lot easier to mitigate than Hellrider's attack trigger. Since their function is so similar the question of whether or not to run Hero really depends on how much you want the redundancy a slightly inferior version of this kind of aggro 4CMC curve-topper. I did actually cut Hero in my AKH update to test Hazoret, the Fervent, but I since found Hazoret too unreliable, I ultimately brought back Hero. However, I think it's safe to say that Hero's days are numbered for me.
I've been a big fan of Wolverine ever since I collected X-Men comics in middle school, and Hugh Jackman did a fantastic job of bringing him to life in the movies. It's a shame that Logan will be his last time in the role.
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Hero does a ton of work for red aggro. It's a fantastic curve topper and usually nets quite a bit of extra damage. I was able to find another cut to get Hazoret in, so I'm not looking to cut Hero any time soon.
My favorite hero is Batman, followed closely by Spider-Man. Unfortunately, current Batman story lines aren't that great and current Spider-Man is abysmal.
LSV has suggested that Thrun and the midrange green decks he tends to go into are not what you want to be drafting if you want to win cube matches. Is he right?
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Thrun is good at his job. He's a hard to deal with midrange threat that can be a thorn in the opponent's side after it resolves.
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LSV has suggested that Thrun and the midrange green decks he tends to go into are not what you want to be drafting if you want to win cube matches. Is he right?
In the context that he's talking about, yes. In a combo-centric cube, generic midrange isn't where you want to be. In a combat-focussed cube, it's a perfectly fine card.
I like Thrun, the last Troll. One of the issues with big beatsticks is that they just die to removal (or worse get control magic'd). This is one of the primary problems midrange has against control and cards like thrun help. Thrun's issue is a lack of evasion.
I think I've watched all of LSV's vintage cube drafts. He has several opinions that differ from the curbing community (for example he likes Harmonize and ran it over dig through time). He's a great player and I think he knows what he's talking about. That said, wtwlf is correct that the context of the cube matters. The vintage cube runs a very high CMC so outside a niche number of decks, pretty much everything that gets drafted is slow. This enables a lot more degeneracy and fair midrange strategies fold to that.
I think there's a strong argument that you can only have either viable midrange or combo as the third theatre in a cube. The vintage cube runs power and has a high curve, both things which heavily push combo over midrange.
I think Thrun is great. I can certainly remember several games over the course of his cube career where him being untouchable flat out won the game. He's one of green's best 4-drops.
I watch pretty much all of LSV's cube draft videos on CFB (#mtgworkout) and a lot of his opinions on which cards are "good" and which ones are "bad" tend to differ from what you'd normally expect to hear from a regular poster. You kind of have to see it from his point of view, though. He's looking at the MTGO Vintage cube as a limited draft format the same way he'd look at Amonkhet as a limited draft format. What the Vintage and Legacy (and other) MTGO cubes often want to do, may not necessarily be what the average MTGS cube wants to do. For example, I hate storm in cube and think it's a huge trap. However, if storm was cut from the Vintage cube all together, people would riot. So yeah, in the instance of Thrun and the Vintage cube, I think LSV is right. That's not where you want to be. You can't be durdling around with your four mana 4/4 while everyone else is trying to cast Channel into Emrakul or storm into a lethal Tendrils. It's all about context.
Interesting discussion, and I think I agree that the Vintage Cube probably does have too much of a focus on fast combo decks for midrange decks featuring creatures like Thrun to have enough impact in a lot of matches. RDW can outrace Storm combo decks and control decks might shut down a turn 2 Tinker, but Signet into Thrun probably isn't where you wanna be against a deck that's planning to combo out for the win on turn 4 or 5.
Thrun's solid, and gives midrange decks a fighting chance against control decks, and so far as decks that win through combat are concerned, probably the best green 4-drop available.
I think there's a strong argument that you can only have either viable midrange or combo as the third theatre in a cube. The vintage cube runs power and has a high curve, both things which heavily push combo over midrange.
I can't say I've never heard this argument before. In fact, I make a point of making combo decks viable (specifically reanimator, Tinker, Kiki-Jiki/Splinter Twin, and Sneak & Show) as well as midrange decks. I think it's very possible to support both as long as there are enough combo pieces that have a role to play in non-combo decks (e.g. plentiful mana rocks, looters, Restoration Angel, tutors, etc.), as well as efficient creatures that can disrupt unfair strategies while still adding board presence. TBH, I find it surprising to hear that there are people who think you can only have one or the other. I've been balancing both in my cube for years.
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Good card is good. Sorcery speed non-land vindicate is great in a world where there are multiple permanent types you need to consistently answer game after game, and then it will act as a plague wind of sorts vs various token strategies. Even though Golgari is deep I consider pulse a staple, as there really aren't any GB decks that don't play pulse 100% of the time. It's hard to think of a match up where it's dead.
While I personally haven't (at least not on purpose...) I have played other cubes and it's fine depending on the reasoning. I like the constraints a singleton format requires a cube builder, and I've never felt having multiples of a card is what would put my cube 'over the top' or what have you in terms of fun/balance/etc.
I think if I were to actually consciously break the singleton rule it would be to create a battle box of sorts (even if the list he shares isn't singleton, there are ones out there that break that rule) vs. trying to replicate the cube experience that is standard, as I still have loads of fun what I'm doing but would want some amount of redundancy if there isn't drafting involved and instead trying to craft a battle box that people like Ben Stark rave about. And for good reason, too--lower powered battle boxes with tons of answers and games that tend to grind out with each turn requiring important decisions are a lot of fun, but I like the swing high-power style of cube that I wouldn't want to start changing what are base concepts IMO to fix anything, as I truly feel cube is a 'if it ain't broke don't fix it' style of magic.
I think there's a strong argument that you can only have either viable midrange or combo as the third theatre in a cube. The vintage cube runs power and has a high curve, both things which heavily push combo over midrange.
I can't say I've never heard this argument before. In fact, I make a point of making combo decks viable (specifically reanimator, Tinker, Kiki-Jiki/Splinter Twin, and Sneak & Show) as well as midrange decks. I think it's very possible to support both as long as there are enough combo pieces that have a role to play in non-combo decks (e.g. plentiful mana rocks, looters, Restoration Angel, tutors, etc.), as well as efficient creatures that can disrupt unfair strategies while still adding board presence. TBH, I find it surprising to hear that there are people who think you can only have one or the other. I've been balancing both in my cube for years.
This is a good take, I think. I like playing stuff like Tinker in my cube, but even more than that I enjoy beating reanimator or whatever combo deck with Thalia, Stoneforge, and Batterskull. Cube is a lot like Legacy in that way, that sometimes the BR Legacy reanimator deck wrecks house on turn 2, but you can play the various D&T / Maverick / Dead Guy / Delver / Jund / Sultai builds and enjoy the consistency that they afford.
That said, when I am playing those fair decks, I definitely tend toward white as a base color rather than green. Green has the efficient creatures, sure, but white has great disruption and I think that's more important.
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That said, when I am playing those fair decks, I definitely tend toward white as a base color rather than green. Green has the efficient creatures, sure, but white has great disruption and I think that's more important.
I think this is the bigger point--midrange works fine when it's disrupting, but there's no real inherent disruption in green. Sure there's artifact/enchantment removal, but if I'm 'going off' there's nothing really in base green that's hindering that outside of the ways green can react to things that have already happened or could maybe stifle a tinker for a turn or two with a reclamation sage or kill that animate dead. So a base-white or base-black midrange deck will almost always have the tools available during draft to disrupt your opponents, whereas a green deck needs to play into other colors to make Thrun more than a 4/4 do-nothing in those match ups. This is not impossible or anywhere close, but it's more of an effort you would make vs the other colors as you would need to prioritize Thoughtseize or Thalia way more than you might other cards.
I think this is the bigger point--midrange works fine when it's disrupting, but there's no real inherent disruption in green. Sure there's artifact/enchantment removal, but if I'm 'going off' there's nothing really in base green that's hindering that outside of the ways green can react to things that have already happened or could maybe stifle a tinker for a turn or two with a reclamation sage or kill that animate dead. So a base-white or base-black midrange deck will almost always have the tools available during draft to disrupt your opponents, whereas a green deck needs to play into other colors to make Thrun more than a 4/4 do-nothing in those match ups. This is not impossible or anywhere close, but it's more of an effort you would make vs the other colors as you would need to prioritize Thoughtseize or Thalia way more than you might other cards.
This is what I was driving at. I don't want to get into a semantics war which is where this feels like it's going.
If you are playing a deck and trying to win fair with bigger creatures, you are going to lose to most archetypes in a powered or combo oriented cube. Play Thrun, draw some cards, play more dudes gets wrecked by control and combo and is probably only 50/50 against aggro depending on how good your first turns were. If I'm combo or control and my opponent taps out on T3 for a Thrun, I'm pretty OK with that typically unless my hand is a mess.
And that's the heart of the argument. If you truly have combo represented as a theatre, midrange just has a bad matchup against most of the archetypes it will face. You have to take it more disruptive and/or aggressive to get in under combo/control. Maybe something like the rock with an answer to everything and late game CA engines, though it also runs disruption and operates more like a control deck anyway (not even sure it's truly midrange).
Thrun is going to do some work against aggro, as will midrange in general. That's part of the appeal of midrange--when aggro is good, midrange tends to go hand-in-hand with the early threats and disruption, but by T4-6 it's still able to hit cards that aren't trying to win the next turn and therefore can break through by extending the game with hard to deal with threats, whereas aggro is still stuck on its plan and probably stalling out. It starts to turn on the jets during aggro's 'late game' after it's either stalled the board or removed 1 or 2 threats with its own removal. Like, midrange can still 'disrupt' aggro by just playing a guy and trading or making blocking tough and that's an overall winning strategy in that match up.
However, a midrange deck with minimal interaction has bad match ups against both control and combo. Combo will go off before midrange can start putting on ample pressure of its own, and control will start with the big plays around the same time midrange is trying to end their series of plays and have a number of answers that can deal with 2-3 turns worth of creature plays. If these decks are disrupted by the thoughtseizes and thalias of the world it's a lot tougher for combo to go off and control to be able to answer the series of threats turn by turn, but if I'm just playing efficient creatures into these match ups then control will do what control does and answer them, or combo will just continue to not care. So in a hypothetical 4-theatre environment like the vintage cube, you're playing a deck where you need the interaction or you lose, and green just doesn't have enough of it built in there if Thrun is in the deck as a theme and not an exception. It's tough to win when your deck is losing that bad to those other decks.
Maelstrom Pulse is absolutely great, however when cutting down my multicolored slots, I ended up valuing the versatility and uniqueness of Deathrite Shaman, Pernicious Deed, and a pet slot that does a half-decent impression of Pulse, my beautiful signed Vraska.
FWIW, I would always run Pernicious Deed over the pulse. Cooler option for Golgari.
Only time I broke singleton was to include a second Cogwork Librarian. It had a very interesting impact on drafting and made certain archetypes more draftable. I eventually needed the slot though (plus I'm currently working on a method to instill the cogwork cards' effects onto the players themselves, kind of like a perk during a draft.)
Vintage cube (talking Wizard's version), aggro is pretty niche. You have RDW and maybe a couple other viable options, but it's a stretch to say it's a full theater since the average CMC is like 3.2 for the cube. From what I've seen, most of the meta revolves around combo pieces with your occasional control deck (and those often do badly without pieces of power - combo is truly king here). Midrange is complete trash in this meta to LSV's point.
The typical MTGS cube however heavily supports aggro and has a much lower average CMC. And so midrange is less useless there, but still bad if you have a healthy amount of combo going on. For sure, those of you running powered cubes should have very little real midrange happening. Anything masquerading as midrange (and winning) is almost certainly some sort of combo deck. Either black lotusing out some midrange threat on T1, or Natural Order into Craterhoof or disruptive/denial shells (opposition, stax, etc). None of this is fair midrange though. And Thrun is pretty low on the list of things that go in these sorts of decks, thus it's value is lower in a cube of this type.
I make this point because for those who are or have run a lower powered rare list, the value of generic midrange threats goes up dramatically. Thrun is really solid in a midrange focused cube. In these lists, things like Grave Titan are often broken (depending on where your power level is). This is something that took me a long time to really figure out. I would see wildly different card evaluations and wonder how that was possible. When it comes to card evaluation, particular with 3-5 mana midrange centric cards, the focus of the cube changes the value of many of these cards substantially.
Maelstrom Pulse is sweet. It's less good in my lists since I don't run walkers. Here it's marginally better than Putrefy but that's still solid. I feel like the multiple target aspect of this card is largely overrated. It feels very bad to use expensive universal removal on tokens since that is usually going to be card disadvantage outside corner cases (lingering souls post flashback, etc). With the average CMC of cubes dropping, I can see Abrupt Decay being the better spot removal option since it's instant, costs 1 less and can't be countered. I still prefer Pernicious Deed to both due to it's flexibility and higher ceiling.
I am currently breaking singleton on enemy shock lands. I don't run the ABU duals and Wizard's still hasn't completed another cycle of dual lands with basic land types (teased for a second time now with bicycles). As soon as they get around to finishing either Tangos or Bicycles, I will make the swap and be singleton again. I've tested a lot of land configurations and 20 dual lands with basic land types plus 10 fetch lands is a really solid configuration. I can see going 30/20 in a large cube though, and would certainly test that at 540 or higher if I ever went there.
In the past I've experimented with some of the more tested singleton breaks (birthing pod, gravecrawler, brainstorm). In particular, brainstorm has so many uses and can be a key component in "top of library" support (Miracles, Oracle of Mul Daya, Delver of Secrets, Oath of Druids, Future Sight, etc). Most cubes are already doing some functional singleton breaks with Wildfire/Burning, Armageddon/Ravages, Cutivate/Reach. When a card is key to an archetype and it really only works (or works much better) with more than one copy, this is when I think it makes a lot of sense to consider breaking singleton. I ran into analysis paralysis when I tried to take it farther than that.
Pulse is a solid removal spell. It's no Vindicate, but it gets the job done. I kind of hate that the majority of cubeable Golgari cards are all just solid removal spells.
I don't play much MTGO cube since Leagues were introduced because I don't like how it completely violates the singleton nature of cube. I don't mind Leagues in constructed formats at all, and I can deal with them in other limited formats, but facing a nearly card for card mirror match or even just having your opponent drop the same planeswalker you just played is so annoying to me. I really like that aspect of cube. If you don't take a card for your deck now, it might not table and you have zero chance of picking up another copy later on.
Maelstrom Pulse is great removal, but it is just removal. Golgari is not lacking for interesting or powerful options, and pulse is not doing anything Vindicate can't do better (except mop tokens), so this wouldn't be on the short list for cards I'd want to run in GB. Pulse is largely eclipsed by Pernicious Deed's dramatic flair.
This is what I was driving at. I don't want to get into a semantics war which is where this feels like it's going.
Nah, we can do without a semantics war. I think I get what you're driving at, that a cube that goes deep enough into combo like the MTGO Vintage Cube uses so much space on combo pieces and enablers that something has to give, and that's effective midrange support. I'd submit that they've also given up on most of the aggro support that's popular in the MTGS cubes, with zero aggro support in black or green. I built my cube with no combo except for reanimator, and added combos that were the easiest to support with mostly pieces that could fit into non-combo based decks. Combos come together all the time in my cube as well as "fair" decks, but it's rare for decks to come together that rely entirely on combo to win, it's usually just part of a more fair archetype (often control).
I can certainly understand anyone not wanting to run only removal spells in your Golgari section, but along with Pernicious Deed it's one of the two I've chosen because it's great to have that good of a catch-all removal spell in a color pair that doesn't really get much that effect otherwise on a single spell. As efficient as Abrupt Decay is, I think it's more important to run support for graveyard based decks in my remaining Golgari slots, so that stays out.
I haven't broken singleton in my cube since my initial janky budget build which had multiple cycles of Guildgates, although if they hadn't come out with the FTV reprint of Burning of Xinye I probably would be running a second copy of Wildfire by now. I'm also sometimes tempted to run a second copy of Armageddon until they reprint Ravages of War.
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It is the sort of card that will table to aggro players consistently. It trades with one drops so it does not tend to survive combat against many decks. Hellrider and Koth of the Hammer are better red 4 drop aggro curve toppers, and now Fleetwheel Cruiser does something very similar. Pia and Kiran and FTK are playable in multiple archetype so they gain precedence for many cubers over the narrow Hero. He has some application in token decks, but again less than Hellrider, P&K and Purphoros. I find that Hero dos not make the maindeck as often as I'd like due to over saturation in 4 drops. Usually aggro decks here are two colors, and in white you have plenty of ridiculous four drops as well (two geddons, Hero of Bladehold, Elspeth). I predict Hero of Bladehold will be the go-to cut if another aggressive red four is printed (or perhaps even before then).
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Thrun, the Last Troll
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LSV has suggested that Thrun and the midrange green decks he tends to go into are not what you want to be drafting if you want to win cube matches. Is he right?
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In the context that he's talking about, yes. In a combo-centric cube, generic midrange isn't where you want to be. In a combat-focussed cube, it's a perfectly fine card.
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I think I've watched all of LSV's vintage cube drafts. He has several opinions that differ from the curbing community (for example he likes Harmonize and ran it over dig through time). He's a great player and I think he knows what he's talking about. That said, wtwlf is correct that the context of the cube matters. The vintage cube runs a very high CMC so outside a niche number of decks, pretty much everything that gets drafted is slow. This enables a lot more degeneracy and fair midrange strategies fold to that.
I think there's a strong argument that you can only have either viable midrange or combo as the third theatre in a cube. The vintage cube runs power and has a high curve, both things which heavily push combo over midrange.
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I watch pretty much all of LSV's cube draft videos on CFB (#mtgworkout) and a lot of his opinions on which cards are "good" and which ones are "bad" tend to differ from what you'd normally expect to hear from a regular poster. You kind of have to see it from his point of view, though. He's looking at the MTGO Vintage cube as a limited draft format the same way he'd look at Amonkhet as a limited draft format. What the Vintage and Legacy (and other) MTGO cubes often want to do, may not necessarily be what the average MTGS cube wants to do. For example, I hate storm in cube and think it's a huge trap. However, if storm was cut from the Vintage cube all together, people would riot. So yeah, in the instance of Thrun and the Vintage cube, I think LSV is right. That's not where you want to be. You can't be durdling around with your four mana 4/4 while everyone else is trying to cast Channel into Emrakul or storm into a lethal Tendrils. It's all about context.
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One trick is we use Pithing Needle to be able to trade against it in combat.
Thrun's solid, and gives midrange decks a fighting chance against control decks, and so far as decks that win through combat are concerned, probably the best green 4-drop available.
I can't say I've never heard this argument before. In fact, I make a point of making combo decks viable (specifically reanimator, Tinker, Kiki-Jiki/Splinter Twin, and Sneak & Show) as well as midrange decks. I think it's very possible to support both as long as there are enough combo pieces that have a role to play in non-combo decks (e.g. plentiful mana rocks, looters, Restoration Angel, tutors, etc.), as well as efficient creatures that can disrupt unfair strategies while still adding board presence. TBH, I find it surprising to hear that there are people who think you can only have one or the other. I've been balancing both in my cube for years.
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Maelstrom Pulse
BONUS QUESTION
Do you now, or have you ever broken singleton?
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While I personally haven't (at least not on purpose...) I have played other cubes and it's fine depending on the reasoning. I like the constraints a singleton format requires a cube builder, and I've never felt having multiples of a card is what would put my cube 'over the top' or what have you in terms of fun/balance/etc.
I think if I were to actually consciously break the singleton rule it would be to create a battle box of sorts (even if the list he shares isn't singleton, there are ones out there that break that rule) vs. trying to replicate the cube experience that is standard, as I still have loads of fun what I'm doing but would want some amount of redundancy if there isn't drafting involved and instead trying to craft a battle box that people like Ben Stark rave about. And for good reason, too--lower powered battle boxes with tons of answers and games that tend to grind out with each turn requiring important decisions are a lot of fun, but I like the swing high-power style of cube that I wouldn't want to start changing what are base concepts IMO to fix anything, as I truly feel cube is a 'if it ain't broke don't fix it' style of magic.
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This is a good take, I think. I like playing stuff like Tinker in my cube, but even more than that I enjoy beating reanimator or whatever combo deck with Thalia, Stoneforge, and Batterskull. Cube is a lot like Legacy in that way, that sometimes the BR Legacy reanimator deck wrecks house on turn 2, but you can play the various D&T / Maverick / Dead Guy / Delver / Jund / Sultai builds and enjoy the consistency that they afford.
That said, when I am playing those fair decks, I definitely tend toward white as a base color rather than green. Green has the efficient creatures, sure, but white has great disruption and I think that's more important.
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I think this is the bigger point--midrange works fine when it's disrupting, but there's no real inherent disruption in green. Sure there's artifact/enchantment removal, but if I'm 'going off' there's nothing really in base green that's hindering that outside of the ways green can react to things that have already happened or could maybe stifle a tinker for a turn or two with a reclamation sage or kill that animate dead. So a base-white or base-black midrange deck will almost always have the tools available during draft to disrupt your opponents, whereas a green deck needs to play into other colors to make Thrun more than a 4/4 do-nothing in those match ups. This is not impossible or anywhere close, but it's more of an effort you would make vs the other colors as you would need to prioritize Thoughtseize or Thalia way more than you might other cards.
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This is what I was driving at. I don't want to get into a semantics war which is where this feels like it's going.
If you are playing a deck and trying to win fair with bigger creatures, you are going to lose to most archetypes in a powered or combo oriented cube. Play Thrun, draw some cards, play more dudes gets wrecked by control and combo and is probably only 50/50 against aggro depending on how good your first turns were. If I'm combo or control and my opponent taps out on T3 for a Thrun, I'm pretty OK with that typically unless my hand is a mess.
And that's the heart of the argument. If you truly have combo represented as a theatre, midrange just has a bad matchup against most of the archetypes it will face. You have to take it more disruptive and/or aggressive to get in under combo/control. Maybe something like the rock with an answer to everything and late game CA engines, though it also runs disruption and operates more like a control deck anyway (not even sure it's truly midrange).
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Retro combo cube thread
http://riptidelab.com/forum/threads/retro-combo-cube.1454/
However, a midrange deck with minimal interaction has bad match ups against both control and combo. Combo will go off before midrange can start putting on ample pressure of its own, and control will start with the big plays around the same time midrange is trying to end their series of plays and have a number of answers that can deal with 2-3 turns worth of creature plays. If these decks are disrupted by the thoughtseizes and thalias of the world it's a lot tougher for combo to go off and control to be able to answer the series of threats turn by turn, but if I'm just playing efficient creatures into these match ups then control will do what control does and answer them, or combo will just continue to not care. So in a hypothetical 4-theatre environment like the vintage cube, you're playing a deck where you need the interaction or you lose, and green just doesn't have enough of it built in there if Thrun is in the deck as a theme and not an exception. It's tough to win when your deck is losing that bad to those other decks.
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FWIW, I would always run Pernicious Deed over the pulse. Cooler option for Golgari.
Only time I broke singleton was to include a second Cogwork Librarian. It had a very interesting impact on drafting and made certain archetypes more draftable. I eventually needed the slot though (plus I'm currently working on a method to instill the cogwork cards' effects onto the players themselves, kind of like a perk during a draft.)
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The typical MTGS cube however heavily supports aggro and has a much lower average CMC. And so midrange is less useless there, but still bad if you have a healthy amount of combo going on. For sure, those of you running powered cubes should have very little real midrange happening. Anything masquerading as midrange (and winning) is almost certainly some sort of combo deck. Either black lotusing out some midrange threat on T1, or Natural Order into Craterhoof or disruptive/denial shells (opposition, stax, etc). None of this is fair midrange though. And Thrun is pretty low on the list of things that go in these sorts of decks, thus it's value is lower in a cube of this type.
I make this point because for those who are or have run a lower powered rare list, the value of generic midrange threats goes up dramatically. Thrun is really solid in a midrange focused cube. In these lists, things like Grave Titan are often broken (depending on where your power level is). This is something that took me a long time to really figure out. I would see wildly different card evaluations and wonder how that was possible. When it comes to card evaluation, particular with 3-5 mana midrange centric cards, the focus of the cube changes the value of many of these cards substantially.
http://riptidelab.com/forum/threads/modular-cube-5-colors.800/
Retro combo cube thread
http://riptidelab.com/forum/threads/retro-combo-cube.1454/
I prefer the singleton cube experience.
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I am currently breaking singleton on enemy shock lands. I don't run the ABU duals and Wizard's still hasn't completed another cycle of dual lands with basic land types (teased for a second time now with bicycles). As soon as they get around to finishing either Tangos or Bicycles, I will make the swap and be singleton again. I've tested a lot of land configurations and 20 dual lands with basic land types plus 10 fetch lands is a really solid configuration. I can see going 30/20 in a large cube though, and would certainly test that at 540 or higher if I ever went there.
In the past I've experimented with some of the more tested singleton breaks (birthing pod, gravecrawler, brainstorm). In particular, brainstorm has so many uses and can be a key component in "top of library" support (Miracles, Oracle of Mul Daya, Delver of Secrets, Oath of Druids, Future Sight, etc). Most cubes are already doing some functional singleton breaks with Wildfire/Burning, Armageddon/Ravages, Cutivate/Reach. When a card is key to an archetype and it really only works (or works much better) with more than one copy, this is when I think it makes a lot of sense to consider breaking singleton. I ran into analysis paralysis when I tried to take it farther than that.
http://riptidelab.com/forum/threads/modular-cube-5-colors.800/
Retro combo cube thread
http://riptidelab.com/forum/threads/retro-combo-cube.1454/
I don't play much MTGO cube since Leagues were introduced because I don't like how it completely violates the singleton nature of cube. I don't mind Leagues in constructed formats at all, and I can deal with them in other limited formats, but facing a nearly card for card mirror match or even just having your opponent drop the same planeswalker you just played is so annoying to me. I really like that aspect of cube. If you don't take a card for your deck now, it might not table and you have zero chance of picking up another copy later on.
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I run several duplicates as placeholders for cards I don't have. A second Animate Dead is holding a place for Dance of the Dead or Necromancy, for example. Cards that are intended to stay in as duplicates are Counterspell, Dark Ritual, Stone Rain, Evolving Wilds, Terramorphic Expanse (yes, both), Everflowing Chalice, Contagion Clasp, Scuttlemutt (an all star), and all ten tri-lands. I'm considering adding a second Filigree Familiar, and I'm considering adding Ramunap Excavator as a two-of when I get it.
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Nah, we can do without a semantics war. I think I get what you're driving at, that a cube that goes deep enough into combo like the MTGO Vintage Cube uses so much space on combo pieces and enablers that something has to give, and that's effective midrange support. I'd submit that they've also given up on most of the aggro support that's popular in the MTGS cubes, with zero aggro support in black or green. I built my cube with no combo except for reanimator, and added combos that were the easiest to support with mostly pieces that could fit into non-combo based decks. Combos come together all the time in my cube as well as "fair" decks, but it's rare for decks to come together that rely entirely on combo to win, it's usually just part of a more fair archetype (often control).
As for Maelstrom Pulse....
I can certainly understand anyone not wanting to run only removal spells in your Golgari section, but along with Pernicious Deed it's one of the two I've chosen because it's great to have that good of a catch-all removal spell in a color pair that doesn't really get much that effect otherwise on a single spell. As efficient as Abrupt Decay is, I think it's more important to run support for graveyard based decks in my remaining Golgari slots, so that stays out.
I haven't broken singleton in my cube since my initial janky budget build which had multiple cycles of Guildgates, although if they hadn't come out with the FTV reprint of Burning of Xinye I probably would be running a second copy of Wildfire by now. I'm also sometimes tempted to run a second copy of Armageddon until they reprint Ravages of War.
450 card Peasant cube thread. Draft it here.