MTG Salvation

I was like "oh, flavor text in the ability."

http://www.cubetutor.com/cubeblog/274
Last two updates, should be like 10 cards or so.

BTW
I am not saying prophetic bolt didn't earn its keep. I'm saying that I want to test gelectrode.

In aggro I'd definitely prefer shard volley, but in every other deck I take jet. I don't value scry two one all that highly (Voyages end is unsummon + 1 mana for scry two the way magma jet is shock plus 1 mana for scry two) but hey I guess it's more valuable in red.
I suppose I've pushed a lot of aggro in red recently so perhaps a more lenient card could stay. ok. Swap made.

Finally cracked and added artisan of kozilek. It gets a short leash.

Cut one from each gold, as well as smasll tests in earlier blog posts (marang river prowler, break through the line)
http://www.cubetutor.com/cubeblog/274
I chose to keep dreg mangler over putrid leech because black has so many great 2 drops and green has so few good 3 drops. Leech is the better card, perhaps, by a hair so it's not that bad.
Again, i don't think gelectrode is better than jilt, but I want to test it to see if it makes that deck tick.
Orc Sureshot could open the door to a few explosive plays, even if it's just "2 drop 3 drop, kill your guy".
Still waiting on an abzan beastmaster.


My cube is almost 360, purely out of serendipity. I can't go lower than 361 unless I'm sure I can convince a whole pod to draft 2 packs of 20. Booster tutor's fault.


First deck drafted
http://www.cubetutor.com/cubedeck/281816

19 lands seems somewhat absurd for a deck like that?

Oh.. and I thought on pure principle that you'd play the Frost Walker...

Brown dog never reads

I definitely didn't read that because I profoundly disagree with the Squadron hawk thing.

White would be really good with cheaty Hawks. If there was an equivalent in each color i'd consider it, but it seems strange to give one color something like that.

It's really not that confusing, the hawks thing. I've forgotten to alert someone once or twice though.

They're good but it plays out more like a cheaper, finite sprout swarm.

It would also never work if you forced people to draft them individually. You'd need to draft the whole cube or close to it. And once you do that, multiple people will kill the other person's opportunity to draft it.

Aurochs herd is closer to being cubable than it appears, as it does an effective centaur glade impression for a while. But one color have access to the effect isn't particularly relevant if your draft method causes people to cut playables instead of struggling for them.

Quote from Leelue »

But one color have access to the effect isn't particularly relevant if your draft method causes people to cut playables instead of struggling for them.

Hawks seems particularly relevant in 2 player drafts as it frees up a few extra picks to hate-drafting due to having even less pressure to meet main deck requirements.

Interesting.
I don't know how much it matters. Hm.
Because you're going to end up with enough playable where hate drafting is not horrendously costly. Having a larger window to hate draft.. last time I drafted I had 29 playables.

Fault riders: still good.
Break through the line: n/a
Restock: my stance is on cards that take many turns to pay for itself. This hasn't had a lot of opportunity, but the couple times it's been cast it was good.
Serrated arrows: Haven't played icy manipulator in forever. It's probably still functional, but my abundance of low health minions makes arrows excel.

Also, because you asked others:
Slaughter gets multiple guys Maybe 60%
Soltari visionary is usually much better than expected.
Radiant archangel has been hatedrafted every single time.

I've been thinking about bringing in soltari visionary lately. I've never tried it, but it seems to only be getting better as my cube grows.

Repeatable effects are always nice.

http://www.cubetutor.com/cubedeck/283848

http://www.cubetutor.com/cubedeck/281816

The UQ skies deck I posted earlier is on the bottom. A blue white aggro deck is on top. I love how the two decks are obviously very different. Also, exercise: What's the 40th card for the top deck?

kor skyfisher?

I'd definitely run +1 Skyfisher, -Sactifiers +Faith's Fetters. Skyfisher as you're already at the threshold of too many 4 drops for a smooth curving out, and Fetters allows you to race a ground army more. Skyfisher also has loose synergy with woe-reaper, cloudskate, calciderm, timely hordemate, banisher priest, temporal isolation, fetters....

I was thinking about fetters for a long time and I settled on the perhaps incorrect idea that my deck didn't want a 4 mana removal spell, but rather kor sanctifiers. Part of that decision is based in something you guys don't know until this sentence: I'm swapping ghostly prison in this week. Either way, sanctifiers is the quintessential card that I keep cutting for cool things when it seems to always be a blowout.

My play was to make the 40th card skyfisher. It's an interesting question, and I could see myself trying to make more "last card" posts.

Anyways, inscho cheated lol.

Ghostly Prison, eh? Welcome to the dark side.

Let's have a moment of silence for the aggro decks that play against that card

Yeah, white is just stocked to the brim with mediocre cards and there just aren't replacements. Shelter? A different combat trick? Aven riftwatcher? Knight of meadowgrain? The previous two plus ajanis pridemate?

http://www.cubetutor.com/cubeblog/274
There are
so
many
cards in white that are forgettable average cards. Serra angel. Youthful knight. Guardian of the guildpact. Land tax. Daring skyjek. It makes me want to run at 335 cards.

Hi - it's the Jayemdae guy from the other thread. Your cube is fun to draft. What do you think seperates your CU/be from others?

Well, there's the most obvious point where I "tried" to not run any cards that are either essentially the same or straight up worse than another card. That is to say, a draft pick shouldn't be interchangeable or always an upgrade over another. This isn't always true (shriekmaw always wins a comparison with maybe over half of all black cards, and there are a couple of other examples I didn't notice back when I did this such as jackal pup vs rakdos cackler) Lightning bolt, for example, is a card I'm not running because there are no straightforward burn spells that ever compare to it. The long-story-short version behind this reasoning is that it should make each choice more interesting.

Aside from phantom centaur, I don't run any color hosers in the entire cube. No landwalk, no color-targeted protection. I find them extremely distasteful and I think that they drain the fun out of games. For example, mire boa playing against a golgari deck is really obnoxious. Same with soltari monk.

The only strategy that I seem to feel like this has been a problem for is a ground-based white aggro strategy, since the elite vangaurd, mardu woe-reaper, dragon hunter, savannah lions quartet are practically indistinguishable from one another (and I don't get the protection soltari). It doesn't bother me though, since I just strongly support white control instead.

Other than that, my cube is well known to be fast and leans aggressive, with a well fleshed-out blue aggro section. Many of the slower engines we have access to are in fact too slow for me, such as capsize and sprout swarm. Of course, this is where I get my befuddlement about Jayemdae tome.

Lastly, I use the hybrid system, a low gold card count, and multiples of the 5 color lands instead of any 2 color lands.

It does fit into almost everything, but I don't think it was particularly... great? The card always does its job but it's been a no upside guy. I also think he's below average in aggro. It could easily come back if (which I have) I feel like I need to give non-aggro decks some cards. But right now, I don't think I have another card with a low ceiling to cut.