Some of the new cards got to see play last night.
Smallpox was a total house. The sacrifice a creature part of the card is most useful of course, but the fact that it hits a land too was really quite impressive, and even by itself allows a faster deck a bit of an advantage over a slower deck. Geralf's Messenger was a beast of a card, and won the game every time it saw the battlefield. Both of those were put into a blue/black tempo midrange deck.
Pox was put into a black/red hard aggro deck, but it was too red to really support the BBB cost, and never got cast. Though there were times when it would have been killer.
My impression of the pox cards outside of the dedicated land denial deck is that they help give the caster an edge vs. the deck they are weakest against. In a midrange deck, Smallpox might as well have been a harder to cast Chainer's Edict, but vs. a control deck it was an undercosted Chainer's Edict and a Sinkhole all in one with a little extra that ends up hurting you very little. The same is true in an aggro deck vs midrange. Your board is already developed when the stronger deck is just beginning to stabilize. The fact that you see it coming and they don't allows you to get the most out of the universal tempo loss and keep the game in your zone a little bit longer.
More testing will tell if this impression is correct.
I like all of the changes. My group has mentioned moving Finks to the green section too, while Dryad went straight to white.
Thanks, we were quite happy with them last night. Moving Finks and Militant one to each color is not a bad plan to keep color balance if both cards are equally likely to be played in both colors. I support green aggro, so Militant fits fine in both colors. Besides it allowed me to get KotR in there who is a favorite in my group that has been asked about on numerous occasions.
I know I just added Skeleton, but finding cuts is pretty hard, and I don't think it's absolutely necessary in order to support the cards I added it in to support. The cards seem to function well enough on their own that specific support that can't stand on it's own shouldn't be necessary at this size.
I really like Firecat, and I'm a little leery of adding in another 4 drop since I hear so much on these boards about there being enough 4 drops in black and red already, so we will see how this cut goes.
All of these last changes are a result of finding a lot more aggro support in black. Green aggro is played here, but the other two colors and even blue are just plain better at it, and I want green to have something it is the best at. Now that fast mana is no longer in my cube for the most part, big mana is where green can really shine.
I like the green aggro cuts, no point in supporting it if it's preforming worse than the other aggro colors and aggro will still be heavily supported in your cube.
Biggest thing I'd do differently is I'd run Huntmaster of the Fells over Kessig Wolf Run. Huntmaster is more versatile and in my eyes just more powerful. It does everything a midrange deck could ask for and buys a lot of time in ramp decks.
Sweet changes overall, sad to see Elesh Norn go though even if I'm curious to see how the angel does.
I like the green aggro cuts, no point in supporting it if it's preforming worse than the other aggro colors and aggro will still be heavily supported in your cube.
Biggest thing I'd do differently is I'd run Huntmaster of the Fells over Kessig Wolf Run. Huntmaster is more versatile and in my eyes just more powerful. It does everything a midrange deck could ask for and buys a lot of time in ramp decks.
Sweet changes overall, sad to see Elesh Norn go though even if I'm curious to see how the angel does.
I'm glad you like the changes. I looked very hard at Huntmaster. My only concern is how often it would really flip. I have seen very few games where people are passing turn doing nothing after turn 3-4, unless they're getting screwed somehow. Even in control decks, you're seeing a wrath, a etb blocker, or something that's a sorcery. Does it really flip-flop often in your games? I imagined the only way you would be able to get it to flip consistently is if you are the one passing turn doing nothing but attacking.
We've found it generally won't flip back and forth but it tends to either eat a removal spell or flip at least once. And Maybe it's just us but I'll often times have some circumstance that makes me happy to not cast a spell for a turn (leaving up some instant, moving equipment around, manlands, I don't know it just seems like we consistently have ways to allow them to flip and not be punished for it).
You should probably take my love of it with a grain of salt though as we've had more success with werewolves in general than just about any other cube on these forums.
Hmm, I'll give it some more consideration, but I'm not thinking it will make it. I'd rather replace Sarkhan than KWR, and I think I just like the planeswalker more. Having three 4cc cards in my gold section just doesn't sit right with me, and KWR works well with the newly added ramp cards especially Prime Time.
Another quick update that I had forgotten about.
Rant was right about cutting the artifact hate, but I think I'd like to try out Smash to Smithereens over the Kami just now. The Kami just eats up so much tempo with the cost of it's activated at times and is straight prohibitive in some cases. Firebolt -> Smash to Smithereens
Firebolt is a good card, but I've been liking the fact that it's a sorcery less and less.
I like the changes, though I'd cut Arc Lightning before cutting Firebolt because of how stacked the red three drop slot is.
Personally, I have banned all double faced cards from my cube, but I would probably play or at least test Huntmaster of the Fells over Sarkhan Vol. I agree that playing both is not an option because too many four drops can't be good.
Huntmaster does not have to flip back and forth in order to be good. It is already 4 power over two bodies and 2 life that forces your opponent to play on their turn and gives you the option to not play on your turn for value. If it flips once, you got a ridiculous deal for your 4 mana already.
Alright, that's fair, I'll include Huntmaster over Sarkhan tonight in cube and seed it into the pool. Hopefully it will see some play and I can get some feedback from my players on it.
I'm been looking at that red section for a while, but I'd have such a hard time cutting Arc Lightning. I'm gonna stick with cutting Firebolt for now, but I'll be looking for a 3cmc card in the following cube sessions.
We've been playing a little more sealed than anything else lately. And I've noticed a recurring theme in red. If aggro isn't an option for whatever reason, not likely playing red. It's not a hard and fast trend. Red makes it into midrange and tempo, but it's a shallow color. It doesn't have many "interesting" deck options outside of Wildfire.
I'm going to cut the few remaining red control dedicated cards for the combo package to try giving red a little more depth.
I like this update a lot, you said you're out for red control elements, so those cards are good cuts (I wouldn't cut them since red control gives the color depth as well). But kiki jiki combo is just too much fun, and if you 8 man it's guaranteed in the draft! I'd force it every time
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We don't do 8 mans at all really, but with all of the pieces available to it now, I think the combo will come together fairly often. Glad you like the changes. Can't wait to play them.
I've been working on these changes for a bit now and I think I've come to a happy place with them. I'll be testing these out for a bit to see how they feel.
Moat decks are boring and stupid. Moat -> Ajani Goldmane
To be fair though, they really do win, but it's a lot like Jace 3.0 in that it's a very non interactive boring way to both win or lose. So hey, we'll boost aggro a bit instead.
Phoenix always seems to get cut and Recruiter seems like it could be good in various ways, but added support for the combo package is why I'm really interested in this guy. Chandra's Phoenix -> Imperial Recruiter
Masticore just isn't liked here and while it's strong, I'm the only one willing to play it. I like Chromatic Lantern for the color fixing it provides outside of its own use. With all of the heavy color requirement cards I've been adding in, this rock should be an attractive addition. Masticore -> Chromatic Lantern
@MagicFever: I'm not sure the Lantern is needed either, but I wanted to add another rock for Wildfire and Upheaval decks, and the Lantern seemed like the best choice considering all of the new includes. Coldsteel Heart is on deck if the Lantern fails to perform as expected. I haven't been all that excited for any other colorless cards though. Do you have any suggestions for an awesome colorless card I might have overlooked. I'd be so stoked if I could find another Tangle Wire/Winter Orb type effect.
@Konfusius: We did get to see Contamination played to solid effect in our last draft. There is more in cube to support it than just the black recursive dudes. A player dropped it next to a Sorin, Lord of Innistrad the turn after he played Armada Wurm. Anecdotal of course, but a hopeful result.
Over all, giving black this pox/recursive-engine function has really propelled black into an actively desirable color. I am really interested to see what other kinds of strategies I can include in my cube to that end for the other colors.
I was going to wait to make these changes until Kojiro's next podcast discussing red came out thinking he might have come up with something interesting, but maybe that project has been put on hold. So there are just a few things here.
I've been feeling more and more that I dislike the Un-cards in my cube. Yeah, they're cards that have a magic back and they look generally like Magic cards, but they feel like they exist somewhere outside of the rules and flavor of format legal magic. Besides, with the proxies I have in my cube, there are a few Un-cards I would like to run, but can't since I don't put set/rarity symbols on my proxies: Symbol Status, Rare-B-Gone. I'm trying to make room for a couple things in red, so I thought now was a good time to rid myself of them.
Blast from the Past -> Reckless Charge I've heard good things about Charge, and I think aggro could use another tool to speed up its clock.
Devil's Play -> Burning of Xinye - More support for Wildfire.dec. It doesn't get played as much as it deserves IMO even though my group really likes the card, so I thought another copy was in order. It also helps focus the red section a bit.
Faithless Looting -> Firebolt - Looting has been okay for us, doing nothing super impressive, but reanimator gets paired with red very little so it's not that great of a role player there. In aggro, I think I'd rather just have the burn spell from its performance so far.
How's Angel of Serenity? Is it as high impact as say, Elesh Norn?
So far the angel has had about the same impact as Elesh Norn with minor upsides/downsides. I still haven't quite made up my mind which I like more.
Why don't you run Gifts Ungiven? Surely it must be more valuable than Capsize, which suffers in a faster, more modern game.
The main thing that bothers me about Gifts is the amount of time it provided our players with two cards they didn't need (effectively nothing), or their deck couldn't provide a hard choice for the opponent. Now cube environments change over time, and quite a bit of pro-gy stuff has emerged, so I've recently had my eye on Gifts as a come-back-kid. Capsize is still a good card though that shows up in force every once in a while, but it is close to the block for me.
I also noted you offer support for artifact.dec in the form of tolarian academy, but haven't included Academy Ruins or Thirst for Knowledge. TfK is obviously much less powerful, but Academy Ruins is a very strong card, and definitely more broad in it's applications than tolarian academy.
Academy Ruins was just a bit slow/costly most of the time and players had a hard time either giving up the tempo necessary to recur an artifact, or setting up a turn where you could invest in it without it setting you too far back. I feel that the artifact deck can use the other sources of card advantage that aren't deck specific over Thirst for Knowledge.
I was surprised to see you don't run entomb. I would value it over Geralf's Messenger, which seems quite lonely as support for an all-in black strategy, and otherwise has a very difficult mana cost.
Right now Death Cloud is holding Entomb's spot hostage until I can decide whether the cloud is powerful enough/necessary at 360 based on a suggestion from one of my playgroup. Geralf's Messenger is actually very good at closing out games and has been impressive every time he shows up. He was an experiment for the Pox-theme at first, but since then I've added more support for the heavy-black-deck to make the deck easier to go into earlier in the draft and even without the Pox cards.
I'm guessing you run a pox subtheme how is that working out?
Very well actually. It's a powerful package that plays into the strengths of numerous archetypes. I thought it would pigeon-hole the black deck into a single strategy, but it's actually quite flexible.
How's Mogg Fanatic working? I cut it a while ago because whilst it could hit a lot of targets, it seemed too low effect compared to other one drops.
I hear complaints about Mogg Fanatic from my group every now and then because he just doesn't look impressive on the surface, then the Fanatic will really show up in a few games and silences those complaints for a while. Until we get at least 2-3 more 2 power 1-drops, Fanatic is safe.
Would you say Smash to Smithereens is superior to Heath Kami?
I would say they are about equal. I chose Smash to Smithereens over Hearth Kami due to a few cards that will kill aggro all on their own if not handled that Kami struggles with: Wurmcoil Engine, Batterskull, Nevinyrral's Disk(if I'm playing hard aggro and haven't made it to that fourth land yet), etc. In my experience with aggro, when you need an artifact dead, you need it dead now, and in low curve aggro decks, that can be tricky with Kami if he isn't already out. The trade off is not being able to carry to awesome aggro equipment that is available. You still get 3 damage though.
I'm surprised you don't run Fire Imp or Flames of the Firebrand.
Yeah, I actually don't know what to say there. Fire Imp should be in there, but for some reason it always seems to just miss the cut. I should look into that harder. As for Flames of the Firebrand, I just couldn't find a cut for it, and just recently I cut all of the red control cards including Arc Lightning to make room for Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker and friends.
How would you say Fireslinger compares to reds other 2 drops?
Fireslinger is fantastic. Like Mogg fanatic, it doesn't really look like much on the surface, but it is really, really good. I'd probably put him 6th-7th out of the 9 I run.
How's Primeval titan working? What's a typical play there?
Hasn't seen much play yet, unfortunately.
I find it odd you don't run Kird Ape -what gives?
lol, I ended up cutting green hard aggro in in favor of focusing green in on ramp. Too many cases of "Not enough ramp to go dedicated ramp, and not enough 2 power 1-drops to go hard aggro, hmm, not playing green." So now green is either ramp, mid-range, or 1-into-3 drop aggro. Those strategies don't really pair well with red's form of aggro, IMO.
Izzet Signet over Fire//Ice?
More support for Upheaval/Wildfire decks. Fire//Ice may find it's way back in under my new hybrid classification though.
How's Karn Liberated?
Kinda sweet. He's just got such a fat butt that he's so hard to kill. Honestly, if you can't kill Karn the turn he hits, then you just ignore him and try to kill your opponent and hope you get there. That's a hard race though.
Thanks for the questions. They made me take a closer look at some things.
I think Primeval Titan is borderline 360 cubable: it's probably the best green 6-drop, but the main problem is that it just doesn't stem the tide of an aggressive surge, unlike any of the other titans, unless you can find a Maze of Ith. It's great when it works and you can get even more ahead, but I wish there was more defensive ability on there.
I would run Smash over the Kami, just because I value instant-speed shenanigans quite a bit, and the 3 damage is significant. I agree that the Kami may be more consistent, but Smashing something just feels great, and don't you want your red section to feel great once in a while?
I don't like Fanatic or Kird Ape myself much either (for the same reasons as others), but Fire Imp and Arc Lightning always manage to do major work here.
Good news:
Kiki-Jiki/Splinter Twin + Pestermite/Conscripts/Restoration Angel combo comes together very often in a draft. A totally supportable combo in cube.
Bad news:
It's way too fragile to rely on. Every night we've done something with the cube it has come together. It has yet to win a single game by the person who drafted it with multiple attempts to combo off. It really requires blue or black to protect the combo, and for that you have to know way early in the draft that's what you're going for.
Good news:
It's a fun deck to see come together, and a fun deck to try to pilot. I won't fault anyone for running it for those reasons.
Bad news:
It's just not good enough to warrant inclusion in a 360 cube based on power alone.
So that's the good news and the bad news. Based on all of that, I'll be cutting it with my next update though I'm not sure what I'll be putting in instead.
WWWWW Kor Skyfisher -> (See Hybrid) - Have been becoming less and less enamored with this girl since my cube unpowered.
UUUUU Pestermite -> Aether Adept - It was between this and Dungeon Geists, but since 4 is such a stacked spot in cube, Adept won out even though Dungeon Geists is a little better functionally. Morphling -> Sphinx of Jwar Isle - Morphling hasn't been played in a while so I want to replace it with another finisher to see if the slot gets used.
BBBBB Death Cloud -> (See Hybrid) - Death Cloud was good, but it was the weakest card in my black section.
(G/W)(U/B)(R/G)(U/R)(B/W) Kor Skyfisher -> Figure of Destiny Imperial Recruiter -> Rakdos Shredfreak - Hasty 2-drop is fine with me. Not the most exciting include, but it should be solid. Death Cloud -> Stillmoon Cavalier - I'm kinda excited to get this guy back into the cube. He was always a solid performer and was only cut because b/w is so stacked. The best part is he's another zombie for braids/pox decks!
Thanks for the feedback Lass. I'm excited to have Aether Adept in again too. I will give some more thought to Conscripts over Siege-Gang. Untapping with Siege-Gang normally heralds a win and it is one of the only red cards that rebuilds well after a wrath for both aggro and midrange. It's immediate impact isn't nearly as good as Conscripts though. I'll bring it to the this or that thread.
Kor Skyfisher -> (See Hybrid) - Have been becoming less and less enamored with this girl since my cube unpowered.
I am not enamored with Skyfisher at all. In powered, the dream is to use it to return a Mox, which is great. But you have one Mox (max 2?).
I think she goes best in a deck that lets her function as a Quirion Ranger mana maker, but thats basically a 14/15 land WW deck. That deck is really hard to pull off.
As an "enabler" its so so and slow. Basically, if you're not casting KS on turn three, its hard to justify how it is realistically better than Serra Avenger.
I have a guy who thinks KS is key to building WW decks but we run Cold Snap and count all basic lands as snow. That card is a huge game changer for white and actually makes white beats a highly sought after strategy. I actually think its the top pick in white.
I am not enamored with Skyfisher at all. In powered, the dream is to use it to return a Mox, which is great. But you have one Mox (max 2?).
I think she goes best in a deck that lets her function as a Quirion Ranger mana maker, but thats basically a 14/15 land WW deck. That deck is really hard to pull off.
As an "enabler" its so so and slow. Basically, if you're not casting KS on turn three, its hard to justify how it is realistically better than Serra Avenger.
I have a guy who thinks KS is key to building WW decks but we run Cold Snap and count all basic lands as snow. That card is a huge game changer for white and actually makes white beats a highly sought after strategy. I actually think its the top pick in white.
Kor Skyfisher had its moments of greatness in our powered cube when it was bouncing moxen. Tempo is such a huge thing in my cube now that KS's ability is more of a liability across decks than an abusive opportunity to reuse etb effects. It still has its applications, they are just becoming more and more narrow with each update. Cold Snap is seriously brutal though, so that combination definitely makes sense.
Smallpox was a total house. The sacrifice a creature part of the card is most useful of course, but the fact that it hits a land too was really quite impressive, and even by itself allows a faster deck a bit of an advantage over a slower deck. Geralf's Messenger was a beast of a card, and won the game every time it saw the battlefield. Both of those were put into a blue/black tempo midrange deck.
Pox was put into a black/red hard aggro deck, but it was too red to really support the BBB cost, and never got cast. Though there were times when it would have been killer.
My impression of the pox cards outside of the dedicated land denial deck is that they help give the caster an edge vs. the deck they are weakest against. In a midrange deck, Smallpox might as well have been a harder to cast Chainer's Edict, but vs. a control deck it was an undercosted Chainer's Edict and a Sinkhole all in one with a little extra that ends up hurting you very little. The same is true in an aggro deck vs midrange. Your board is already developed when the stronger deck is just beginning to stabilize. The fact that you see it coming and they don't allows you to get the most out of the universal tempo loss and keep the game in your zone a little bit longer.
More testing will tell if this impression is correct.
Thanks, we were quite happy with them last night. Moving Finks and Militant one to each color is not a bad plan to keep color balance if both cards are equally likely to be played in both colors. I support green aggro, so Militant fits fine in both colors. Besides it allowed me to get KotR in there who is a favorite in my group that has been asked about on numerous occasions.
360 Unpowered Cube | Cubetutor
Reassembling Skeleton -> Rakdos Cackler
Blistering Firecat -> Murderous Redcap
+Blightning
+Falkenrath Aristocrat
I know I just added Skeleton, but finding cuts is pretty hard, and I don't think it's absolutely necessary in order to support the cards I added it in to support. The cards seem to function well enough on their own that specific support that can't stand on it's own shouldn't be necessary at this size.
I really like Firecat, and I'm a little leery of adding in another 4 drop since I hear so much on these boards about there being enough 4 drops in black and red already, so we will see how this cut goes.
360 Unpowered Cube | Cubetutor
Exalted Angel -> Sun Titan - Works great with the Pox package I just added.
Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite -> Angel of Serenity - In for testing based on Kojiro's recommendation in the SCD thread.
Keiga, the Tide Star -> Consecrated Sphinx - I like the overwhelming CA Sphinx provides more than the Keiga's variable value theft effect.
Wild Dogs -> Arbor Elf
Wolfbitten Captive -> Wall of Roots
Jungle Lion -> Hornet Queen
Wild Nacatl -> Thragtusk
Thornling -> Primeval Titan
River Boa -> Green Sun's Zenith
Loam Lion -> Armada Wurm
Stormbind -> Kessig Wolf Run
Kird Ape -> Sarkhan Vol
All of these last changes are a result of finding a lot more aggro support in black. Green aggro is played here, but the other two colors and even blue are just plain better at it, and I want green to have something it is the best at. Now that fast mana is no longer in my cube for the most part, big mana is where green can really shine.
360 Unpowered Cube | Cubetutor
Biggest thing I'd do differently is I'd run Huntmaster of the Fells over Kessig Wolf Run. Huntmaster is more versatile and in my eyes just more powerful. It does everything a midrange deck could ask for and buys a lot of time in ramp decks.
Sweet changes overall, sad to see Elesh Norn go though even if I'm curious to see how the angel does.
I'm glad you like the changes. I looked very hard at Huntmaster. My only concern is how often it would really flip. I have seen very few games where people are passing turn doing nothing after turn 3-4, unless they're getting screwed somehow. Even in control decks, you're seeing a wrath, a etb blocker, or something that's a sorcery. Does it really flip-flop often in your games? I imagined the only way you would be able to get it to flip consistently is if you are the one passing turn doing nothing but attacking.
360 Unpowered Cube | Cubetutor
You should probably take my love of it with a grain of salt though as we've had more success with werewolves in general than just about any other cube on these forums.
Another quick update that I had forgotten about.
Rant was right about cutting the artifact hate, but I think I'd like to try out Smash to Smithereens over the Kami just now. The Kami just eats up so much tempo with the cost of it's activated at times and is straight prohibitive in some cases.
Firebolt -> Smash to Smithereens
Firebolt is a good card, but I've been liking the fact that it's a sorcery less and less.
360 Unpowered Cube | Cubetutor
Personally, I have banned all double faced cards from my cube, but I would probably play or at least test Huntmaster of the Fells over Sarkhan Vol. I agree that playing both is not an option because too many four drops can't be good.
Huntmaster does not have to flip back and forth in order to be good. It is already 4 power over two bodies and 2 life that forces your opponent to play on their turn and gives you the option to not play on your turn for value. If it flips once, you got a ridiculous deal for your 4 mana already.
"What am I looking at? Ashes, dead man."
I'm been looking at that red section for a while, but I'd have such a hard time cutting Arc Lightning. I'm gonna stick with cutting Firebolt for now, but I'll be looking for a 3cmc card in the following cube sessions.
Thanks for the feedback.
360 Unpowered Cube | Cubetutor
I'm going to cut the few remaining red control dedicated cards for the combo package to try giving red a little more depth.
Dungeon Geists -> Pestermite
Rolling Earthquake -> Kiki Jiki, Mirror Breaker
Chandra Nalaar -> Zealous Conscripts
Arc Lightning -> Splinter Twin
And also this:
Profane Command -> Death Cloud
360 Unpowered Cube | Cubetutor
The Great Cube Map!
My Powered Cube
Draft it here!
360 Unpowered Cube | Cubetutor
Moat decks are boring and stupid.
Moat -> Ajani Goldmane
To be fair though, they really do win, but it's a lot like Jace 3.0 in that it's a very non interactive boring way to both win or lose. So hey, we'll boost aggro a bit instead.
I'm going to give the all-in Pox strategy a shot for a while. We've liked the tempo package, but want to see if the full archetype works well also.
Tombstalker -> Bone Shredder
Yawgmoth's Will -> Necropotence
Nether Void -> Contamination
Liliana's Specter -> Reassembling Skeleton
Phoenix always seems to get cut and Recruiter seems like it could be good in various ways, but added support for the combo package is why I'm really interested in this guy.
Chandra's Phoenix -> Imperial Recruiter
Masticore just isn't liked here and while it's strong, I'm the only one willing to play it. I like Chromatic Lantern for the color fixing it provides outside of its own use. With all of the heavy color requirement cards I've been adding in, this rock should be an attractive addition.
Masticore -> Chromatic Lantern
In addition to those, I've settled on Huntmaster of the Fells as my Gruul 4-drop.
OP is fully updated with accurate proxy, foil, altered, and promo tags.
Any thoughts?
360 Unpowered Cube | Cubetutor
"What am I looking at? Ashes, dead man."
@MagicFever: I'm not sure the Lantern is needed either, but I wanted to add another rock for Wildfire and Upheaval decks, and the Lantern seemed like the best choice considering all of the new includes. Coldsteel Heart is on deck if the Lantern fails to perform as expected. I haven't been all that excited for any other colorless cards though. Do you have any suggestions for an awesome colorless card I might have overlooked. I'd be so stoked if I could find another Tangle Wire/Winter Orb type effect.
@Konfusius: We did get to see Contamination played to solid effect in our last draft. There is more in cube to support it than just the black recursive dudes. A player dropped it next to a Sorin, Lord of Innistrad the turn after he played Armada Wurm. Anecdotal of course, but a hopeful result.
Over all, giving black this pox/recursive-engine function has really propelled black into an actively desirable color. I am really interested to see what other kinds of strategies I can include in my cube to that end for the other colors.
360 Unpowered Cube | Cubetutor
I've been feeling more and more that I dislike the Un-cards in my cube. Yeah, they're cards that have a magic back and they look generally like Magic cards, but they feel like they exist somewhere outside of the rules and flavor of format legal magic. Besides, with the proxies I have in my cube, there are a few Un-cards I would like to run, but can't since I don't put set/rarity symbols on my proxies: Symbol Status, Rare-B-Gone. I'm trying to make room for a couple things in red, so I thought now was a good time to rid myself of them.
Blast from the Past -> Reckless Charge I've heard good things about Charge, and I think aggro could use another tool to speed up its clock.
Devil's Play -> Burning of Xinye - More support for Wildfire.dec. It doesn't get played as much as it deserves IMO even though my group really likes the card, so I thought another copy was in order. It also helps focus the red section a bit.
Faithless Looting -> Firebolt - Looting has been okay for us, doing nothing super impressive, but reanimator gets paired with red very little so it's not that great of a role player there. In aggro, I think I'd rather just have the burn spell from its performance so far.
City of Ass -> Grand Coliseum - Like for like swap.
I know these aren't necessarily upgrades, but I'm happy with them.
Thoughts are welcome.
360 Unpowered Cube | Cubetutor
So far the angel has had about the same impact as Elesh Norn with minor upsides/downsides. I still haven't quite made up my mind which I like more.
The main thing that bothers me about Gifts is the amount of time it provided our players with two cards they didn't need (effectively nothing), or their deck couldn't provide a hard choice for the opponent. Now cube environments change over time, and quite a bit of pro-gy stuff has emerged, so I've recently had my eye on Gifts as a come-back-kid. Capsize is still a good card though that shows up in force every once in a while, but it is close to the block for me.
Academy Ruins was just a bit slow/costly most of the time and players had a hard time either giving up the tempo necessary to recur an artifact, or setting up a turn where you could invest in it without it setting you too far back. I feel that the artifact deck can use the other sources of card advantage that aren't deck specific over Thirst for Knowledge.
Right now Death Cloud is holding Entomb's spot hostage until I can decide whether the cloud is powerful enough/necessary at 360 based on a suggestion from one of my playgroup. Geralf's Messenger is actually very good at closing out games and has been impressive every time he shows up. He was an experiment for the Pox-theme at first, but since then I've added more support for the heavy-black-deck to make the deck easier to go into earlier in the draft and even without the Pox cards.
Very well actually. It's a powerful package that plays into the strengths of numerous archetypes. I thought it would pigeon-hole the black deck into a single strategy, but it's actually quite flexible.
I hear complaints about Mogg Fanatic from my group every now and then because he just doesn't look impressive on the surface, then the Fanatic will really show up in a few games and silences those complaints for a while. Until we get at least 2-3 more 2 power 1-drops, Fanatic is safe.
I would say they are about equal. I chose Smash to Smithereens over Hearth Kami due to a few cards that will kill aggro all on their own if not handled that Kami struggles with: Wurmcoil Engine, Batterskull, Nevinyrral's Disk(if I'm playing hard aggro and haven't made it to that fourth land yet), etc. In my experience with aggro, when you need an artifact dead, you need it dead now, and in low curve aggro decks, that can be tricky with Kami if he isn't already out. The trade off is not being able to carry to awesome aggro equipment that is available. You still get 3 damage though.
Yeah, I actually don't know what to say there. Fire Imp should be in there, but for some reason it always seems to just miss the cut. I should look into that harder. As for Flames of the Firebrand, I just couldn't find a cut for it, and just recently I cut all of the red control cards including Arc Lightning to make room for Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker and friends.
Fireslinger is fantastic. Like Mogg fanatic, it doesn't really look like much on the surface, but it is really, really good. I'd probably put him 6th-7th out of the 9 I run.
Hasn't seen much play yet, unfortunately.
lol, I ended up cutting green hard aggro in in favor of focusing green in on ramp. Too many cases of "Not enough ramp to go dedicated ramp, and not enough 2 power 1-drops to go hard aggro, hmm, not playing green." So now green is either ramp, mid-range, or 1-into-3 drop aggro. Those strategies don't really pair well with red's form of aggro, IMO.
More support for Upheaval/Wildfire decks. Fire//Ice may find it's way back in under my new hybrid classification though.
Kinda sweet. He's just got such a fat butt that he's so hard to kill. Honestly, if you can't kill Karn the turn he hits, then you just ignore him and try to kill your opponent and hope you get there. That's a hard race though.
Thanks for the questions. They made me take a closer look at some things.
360 Unpowered Cube | Cubetutor
I think Primeval Titan is borderline 360 cubable: it's probably the best green 6-drop, but the main problem is that it just doesn't stem the tide of an aggressive surge, unlike any of the other titans, unless you can find a Maze of Ith. It's great when it works and you can get even more ahead, but I wish there was more defensive ability on there.
I would run Smash over the Kami, just because I value instant-speed shenanigans quite a bit, and the 3 damage is significant. I agree that the Kami may be more consistent, but Smashing something just feels great, and don't you want your red section to feel great once in a while?
I don't like Fanatic or Kird Ape myself much either (for the same reasons as others), but Fire Imp and Arc Lightning always manage to do major work here.
Good news:
Kiki-Jiki/Splinter Twin + Pestermite/Conscripts/Restoration Angel combo comes together very often in a draft. A totally supportable combo in cube.
Bad news:
It's way too fragile to rely on. Every night we've done something with the cube it has come together. It has yet to win a single game by the person who drafted it with multiple attempts to combo off. It really requires blue or black to protect the combo, and for that you have to know way early in the draft that's what you're going for.
Good news:
It's a fun deck to see come together, and a fun deck to try to pilot. I won't fault anyone for running it for those reasons.
Bad news:
It's just not good enough to warrant inclusion in a 360 cube based on power alone.
So that's the good news and the bad news. Based on all of that, I'll be cutting it with my next update though I'm not sure what I'll be putting in instead.
360 Unpowered Cube | Cubetutor
Kor Skyfisher -> (See Hybrid) - Have been becoming less and less enamored with this girl since my cube unpowered.
UUUUU
Pestermite -> Aether Adept - It was between this and Dungeon Geists, but since 4 is such a stacked spot in cube, Adept won out even though Dungeon Geists is a little better functionally.
Morphling -> Sphinx of Jwar Isle - Morphling hasn't been played in a while so I want to replace it with another finisher to see if the slot gets used.
BBBBB
Death Cloud -> (See Hybrid) - Death Cloud was good, but it was the weakest card in my black section.
RRRRR
Firebolt -> Fire Imp - Finally back in. Still don't like Firebolt.
Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker -> Rolling Earthquake - Returns red control support.
Zealous Conscripts -> Arc Lightning - Returns red control support.
Splinter Twin -> Pyroclasm - Returns red control support.
Imperial Recruiter -> (See Hybrid) - Not needed for the combo, and better options abound.
GGGGG
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WUBRG
Figure of Destiny(move to hybrid) -> Boros Charm - Looking forward to this card in boros.
Psychatog -> Duskmantle Seer - Also excited to how this guy does.
(G/W)(U/B)(R/G)(U/R)(B/W)
Kor Skyfisher -> Figure of Destiny
Imperial Recruiter -> Rakdos Shredfreak - Hasty 2-drop is fine with me. Not the most exciting include, but it should be solid.
Death Cloud -> Stillmoon Cavalier - I'm kinda excited to get this guy back into the cube. He was always a solid performer and was only cut because b/w is so stacked. The best part is he's another zombie for braids/pox decks!
xxxxx
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Feedback is appreciated.
360 Unpowered Cube | Cubetutor
360 Unpowered Cube | Cubetutor
I am not enamored with Skyfisher at all. In powered, the dream is to use it to return a Mox, which is great. But you have one Mox (max 2?).
I think she goes best in a deck that lets her function as a Quirion Ranger mana maker, but thats basically a 14/15 land WW deck. That deck is really hard to pull off.
As an "enabler" its so so and slow. Basically, if you're not casting KS on turn three, its hard to justify how it is realistically better than Serra Avenger.
I have a guy who thinks KS is key to building WW decks but we run Cold Snap and count all basic lands as snow. That card is a huge game changer for white and actually makes white beats a highly sought after strategy. I actually think its the top pick in white.
I'll keep you posted.
Kor Skyfisher had its moments of greatness in our powered cube when it was bouncing moxen. Tempo is such a huge thing in my cube now that KS's ability is more of a liability across decks than an abusive opportunity to reuse etb effects. It still has its applications, they are just becoming more and more narrow with each update. Cold Snap is seriously brutal though, so that combination definitely makes sense.
360 Unpowered Cube | Cubetutor
Other than that, the changes look good!
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