Basic Information:
• 576 Powered Non-themed Cube. (10 of those are Test Pool cards)
• Drafted about 2 times a week. 4-7 players. Sometimes 2-3 players Winston draft.
• Doing mostly 4 12-cards boosters in drafts.
• 73 cards for each color, 81 colorless, 120 guild, 3 extras + 10 in my test pool. Color imbalance: -1 Blue, +1 Green, +1 Dimir, +1 Rakdos, -2 Colorless.
• Initially built based on wtwlf123's cube as a 540-cards cube a few weeks before Gatecrash.
• Uses a 10-card test pool, pretty much like Lanxal's pauper cube.
Multiplayer or single player? Single player. Singleton? No. Gold as printed or played? As played. Perfect color balance? No. Snow? Nope. Proxies? Yes. Functional Reprints? Yes. Portal cards? Yes. Also, I may switch expensive functional reprints with the original card. (That's why there are two Armageddons). Any banned cards? No. I don't need to ban cards. I can simply take them out of the cube or not add them if they look suspicious. With that said, Moat and The Abyss were removed for being too powerful and/or unfun. These are the closest of being "banned" that I have.
Even though the Cube is currently color-balanced and singleton(cube now has some duplicates an is not color-balanced), I don't feel like I need to follow these rules always. The cube was already color-imbalanced once and I kind of break the singleton rule already with the portal budget replacements. If somehow I feel that the cube might be better of with me breaking these self-imposed rules, I will do it.
The cube is currently stored in two Fat Pack boxes. I have 30 of each basic land (Zendikar lands, just a few foils between them) always nearby on separated deckboxes and also a bunch of tokens that are made by cards in the cube.
For the sleeves, I went with the Commander's Arsenal planeswalker sleeves at first, but I ditched them because they were peeling and switched to KMC purple sleeves, that I had laying around by the thousands.
I always keep a handfull of tokens and emblems around to use with the Cube that I keep them sleeved and on separated deckboxes. I also had some unnexisting or hard-to-find tokens printed when I was printing my cube proxies as well.
About 4 years ago, I decided I didn't have much time for playing tournaments and FNMs, so a friend of mine approached and asked if I didn't want to join our card collections and build a cube and we did just that. We split the costs of building and maintaining a cube and it was really a blast. We played it a lot at first, but about a year and a half in, time became more constricted and we weren't able to get as many people to draft with us, so we ended up dismantling the cube to build a stack. Later the stack was dismatled and a dozen EDH decks came into being.
At the end of last year, I decided I should focus on rebuilding a cube because I wanted to, so I checked half a dozen cubes here in salvation and put a list together based on wtwfl123's list with some changes to support the strategies I know my friends and I would enjoy playing the most. I dismantled my EDH decks and built the cube. It has been an interesting experience since I decided to try out different ideas, like the 12-card boosters and the Test Pool.
By using 4 12-cards booster packs instead of the usual 3 15-cards ones, a regular draft has three more cards per person each draft. Taking that usually players will use about 20-26 picks to build a deck, there will be more cards not making to their main decks. The thing is, one of the cool things about having extra cards outside the deck is that the list can support cards that might not be good in the initial 40, but might as well be awesome sideboard cards against the right decks.
Even though my initial cube list is a bit shy on sideboard cards/combat tricks, I'm always looking for tring out these different fringe cards to see if they can make it into the main list, so you might expect more of those to be addded in the future.
I also feed the boosters 1 of card of each color, 1 colorless and 2 guild cards. A parcel of the remaining cards is then shuffled along with my test pool and dealt randomly to fill the booster packs. This creates some assurance that all colors will have an even presence in the draft pool. It also skews the probability of guild cards and colorless cards appearing at any given pool by a small margin. Booster math is included in my spreadsheet at the Additional tab for anyone interested in those numbers
Note: For accurate numbers on CMC distribution and such, check my spreadsheet.
The test pool is a place to try out new interesting cards to see how much they aggregate to the cube experience. To properly test the cards, the pool will be auto-added to the pool of cards in a draft, making sure that they will have a chance to be picked and tried.
The idea is that the test pool will be always changing. Uninteresting cards will rotate out fast and cool cards might stay for a bit longer and even be inserted in the main 566.
Given the fast rotation and "seasonality" of the test pool, entire archetypes might be put into the test pool every once in a while to bring something different to the draft. This makes fragile archetipes that absolutely need some cards possible and I'm definitely looking for opportunities to try crazy cube archetypes once in a while (for instance, I might try making the test pool into a storm package or a mill package).
Note: Right now the test pool has 3 more cards than usual.
• New cards have just been added to the test pool for some testing.
• Probation cards were in the cube and are now being tested for their real impact in drafts and deckbuilding.
• Cards noted as great or good have a good chance to find a place in the main cube.
• Package cards are part of a specific package that supports a different playstyle or a hard-to-support archetype. These cards most likely will not be included in the main cube and are meant to be seasonal fun experiments.
1 Welkin Tern (Ux aggro could use more love) 1 Pestermite (Ux aggro/tempo; plus comboes with Kiki) 1 Spell Pierce (wanted a good sideboard counterspell)
1 Knight of Infamy (Bx aggro) 1 Nameless Inversion (wanted any removal, this one looked versatile in UB aggro/tempo) 1 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth (always loved this card :D; makes necropotence and geralf's messenger easier to cast and I love both cards as well)
The following cards are being watched for not doing enough in the cube or for doing too much. They are very likely to be put on probation or just simply cut from the cube. I usually forget to put cards in my watch list.
I think the cube looks really good! I'd run it through eidolon's comparison data when its fully updated to see if there's a couple of cards that slipped through, but overall I think it looks to be in great shape.
Hey guys, thanks for the comments! I've just removed the duplicated picture.
Also, just got the cube comparison result and I'm uploading it to the third post right now. It seems that it is most similar to wtwlf's one (not surprisingly) and there are plenty of stuff for me to think about adding in my next update (most notably Fettergeist, since Serendib is such an important card for Ux tempo decks). Still welcoming suggestions on cool stuff to add.
Hey guys, had a couple of drafts yesterday (both with 4 people) with my larger and crazier cube and the increase in size and the test pool were received very nicely by my players. Since the cube didn't increase so much in size picks remained consistency and the test pool did what it was supposed to do very well: Most cards were picked and main decked in either or both of the drafts.
This is a breakdown of archetypes and the winners in both drafts: 1st Draft: UWB Aggro/Control UR Control BGW Rock BR "Vampires" Aggro
2nd Draft: UR Wildfire Control GWR Naya Beatdown
Mono B Midrange GWR Naya Ramp/Pod
(yes, there was a single player in both black and blue)
After each draft I talked to my players about the cards in the test pool to better access them and I could gather the following:
Champion of the Parish
MVP in the UWB aggro/control I played in the first round. It was at least a 2/2 and got to be 4/4 in at least one game. Even though it wasn't played in any of the decks in the second draft, he was brutal in the first one and really impressed me. It's not an autoinclude in any deck, but it was much better than I thought it would be. This has a great potential to be added to the main 566.
AEther Spellbomb
I was pretty sure this would be a good card and it was even paired with Trinket Mage in the second draft in my UR Wildfire Control deck (was also played in the UR control in the first game). It has a modestly powerful effect and the turn it buys was always crucial for the control deck. Not sure I want this card in the 566, but it sure is good enough.
Fettergeist
I could only play against this card in the first draft (wasn't played in the second one). It was in the UR control deck and it did lots of awesome stuff: It was a great blocker agains early opposing threats from aggro decks and was a threat on its own against slower decks. I thought this would be extremely inferior to Serendib, but it looks like it is as close as a card can be these days. Will definitely want him in the cube in the future.
Mental Misstep
Was really unimpressed with the card. It countered a late Llanowar Elves and got pitched to Force of Will in the second draft, but that was it. I will keep it in the test pool for a while longer to see if it really shines somewhere.
Despise
Main decked each draft and was a valuable card whenever it was cast. I want it in the main, but will be tested a bit longer. Mostly because I'm not sure what to cut just yet.
Chandra, the Firebrand
Got picked and decked into the UR control in the first game and almost got played in the Naya Beatdown in the second draft (there was way too many 4-drops for this to go in). Didn't seem to get played though, so no data available for now.
Traitorous Instinct
It's a pretty narrow card, but is a great finisher in beatdown decks. Even if it doesn't outright kill the opponent, it messes with combat math, and the mere existence of the card poses a real threat. Also, it was played alongside Ulvenwald Tracker in Naya Beatdown the second game. Looks like it was fun, so i'll keep it in to test it a bit more.
Noxious Revival
Was always an uninteresting card to main deck and no deck seemed to want it. I will drop it from the test pool for now. Maybe I'll try it later in the future, but nobody seemed to like it.
Beast Within
Not enough data on this one, but players wanted this in. Will keep it in the pool to see where this goes. The players did wanted more answers to troublesome permanents though, so this might get into the cube as it is a good answer card.
Deathrite Shaman
It was not the powerhouse it could be because it wasn't played along with enough fetch lands, but everyone loved it and want it in. This will keep in the test pool for a while, but I will probably cut Putrefy for this.
So, most cards will be kept into the test pool for another round, but plenty of them are proving to be quite worthy. After all of this, my test pool will be the following:
This weekend I couldn't get enough players for a draft table, so I gathered a couple of friends and we played about 12 winston drafts. We used a pool of 50 cards for each player and there were plenty of different decks made. I only remember who won on the first draft but I'll note below the archetypes that got played.
The one draft I remember (3-players winston draft): WUR Battle Cry (had both Heros, Accorder's Palladin, lots of cheap creatures, removal and a sword) GWU Bant Wake Control BG Reanimator
Other interesting archetypes that got drafted: UW Control GWU Bant Ramp UBR Bolas Control UBR Flyers Aggro-Control BRG Jund Beatdown RGW Naya Beatdown RGW Naya Planeswalkers RGW Zoo
And a couple of WBRG Beatdown decks
(Yeah, Winston draft gets players to make lots of 3-colored decks)
Well, after all of this drafting, I got more feedback on my test pool cards and made some changes in my test pool:
Beast Within Beast Within was picked pretty late and remained most of the time on sideboards. Players seems to like it, but nobody plays it. Maybe I can bring it back someday and see if people like it better then.
Mental Misstep and Traitorous Instict
Both had a huge main deck percentage and always did a little, but that liitle wasn't always enough. Even though Misstep could be played in virtually any deck, only blue decks picked it, and Traitorous Instict was always at its worse a 4-mana 4-damage spell(which wasn't bad for the decks it fits). I like both cards, but I want to let them out for a while to test new cards.
Gyre Sage
Not that great of a powerhouse but becomes a 3/4 very easily. The mana ability was irrelevant every time it was played, but it is a neat card. I will keep it for a while longer and maybe test Quirion Dryad later in it's place to see if it is still a good cube card.
Champion of the Parish, Fettergeist, Despise, Chandra, the Firebrand, Deathrite Shaman and Nicol Bolas, Planeswalker.
Each one of those cards were great role players (huge props to Fettergeist most of all) and were good enough that they went main. One interesting thing to note is that Nicol Bolas got cut from the test pool just after the first Grixis control deck based around him because it was already sure it would be main cubed.
¹ = Card is now on probation
² = Card was on the test pool
³ = Card was on the watch list
From the cards that got replaced, one was in my watchlist for not doing enough (Zuran Orb), one I had already mentioned that could be replaced(Putrefy) and the other 4 cards are now in probation, which means that they have been taken to the test pool to better access their usefulness in the cube.
From the probation cards, Glorious Anthem and Crystal Shard seem to be severely underdrafted and almost never maindecked. They are now in the test pool to see if people like them enough to put them to good use.
Goblin Settler is a card that I never saw played before. Maybe it was never even in the draftable boosters. I know it looks good, but I want to put him into the test pool to access how good it really is and what strategies make it shine. After a while, I want to do some AB testing by putting Goblin Ruinblaster in his place to see if +1/+0 and haste makes up for not targeting basics and not being a good blink target.
The Abyss is a card that is extremely powerful and may have warped every game it was played. To be honest, I have never seen this card land in a deck that doesn't have either Bitterblossom or Moat (sometimes both before Moat got cutted). I want to see if this is actually that degenerate of a card and if so, I may cut it for something else. Personally, I like the card and would like for it to stay, but lets see how the cube handles this guy first.
About the two filter lands that got into the cube, I was planning to cut Bad River as UB tempo didn't like it very much when his lands got into play tapped (and UB hardly got the Bad River as there seems to be always someone else in B or U). I was between Sunken Ruins and Drowned Catacomb for the slot, but curving Counterspell into Geralf's Messenger seemed more interesting and the filter got the spot. Since Geralf is a great card in BW aggro as well and there are plenty of interesting cards for aggro that costs WW, Fetid Heath found it's place into the cube as well.
With all of the changes, the Test Pool had to be refactored. This is my current test pool now:
• New cards have just been added to the test pool for some testing.
• Probation cards were in the cube and are now being tested for their real impact in drafts and deckbuilding.
• Cards noted as great have a good chance to find a place in the main cube.
I am aware that a couple of these cards most likely won't last very long (namely, Blind Obedience and Gyre Sage) but they seem fun enough to try for a while.
As always, any kind of feedback is appreciated, specially on post formatting and text length (these posts are becoming unintentionally huge). This thread needs more posts not written by me
Also, I'l see if I update the pictures sometime this week...
After a couple of weeks and lots of drafts, I've made some changes to the Cube and the Test Pool. I didn't note down the winners and the archetypes that got drafted, but I can say that Esper Control had a pretty high win percentage.
As always, any feedback is appreciated.
Also, I hadn't had the time to upload my pictures since last update, so I'll see if I do it this week.
Test Pool results:
From my old test pool, The Abyss got cut pretty quickly. After a draft, I knew that it was too polarizing of a card. A few notes about the card:
Why was it around? The Abyss was around as a good card for the Pox/Stax decks and it happened to also helps control decks. Is it answerable? Yes, it is. With very few cards that usually don't align with the decks that The Abyss hurt the most (Aggro decks). Can it be played around once it enters the battlefield? Yes, if The Abyss arrives late and you have some board presence, you can try playing around it. If it comes online fast, either you answer it or you lose because you will play around it while your opponent keeps playing his game (usually making sure that you can't play around the enchantment). Is it easy to build a deck around it? If it comes early, it will reshape your draft around it. If it comes late, it will pass a couple of players until the next control player and that player will win the draft. Pretty much every single card that is great in hardcore control decks is also good with The Abyss, and even a couple of midrange cards are also good with it. Was it a fun card? No. The one thing it was fun at was that it made you win games. It shutted completely down a bunch of strategies that players liked to build play. It made matches take forever, where the only way to lose is that if you made some really stupid play.
So, with all of this in mind, The Abyss was completely cut from the cube. As everything else that goes away for being too powerful (Moat), it may be back if it seems that there are enough answers in the cube that are fast enough and that don't require anyone to go through too many loops to play.
Glorious Anthem was also on probation and was also cut. It didn't get played even though it wasn't a very late pick. There seems to be so many better options right now that the anthem became obsolete.
Crystal Shard (also on probation) started to get some love now, so it will stay for a while longer.
Blind Obedience wasn't played enough and didn't do much when played.
Goblin Settler (another probation card) was also cut. It just didn't do much and/or didn't do it fast enough. In every situation it was played, Goblin Ruinblaster would have been a better card, so it's getting replaced to see if Ruinblaster is any good.
Gyre Sage was really good and was played a every time. It was like a little Tarmogoyf that tapped for mana once in a while. It was cut from the pool so I can test Quirion Dryad in its place. Whichever is best might get a place in the cube, as Gyre Sage has gotten some fans among my players.
There is not enough data on the other cards in the test pool so far.
I'm particularly interested in seeing how Skyshroud Elite plays, as my players tend to value mana fixing pretty high and decks usually have about 4-9 nonbasics (with a few having way more than that)
Cube changes:
There was another card in the Test Pool that was added between anouncements: Natural Order has replaced The Abyss for the last batch of drafts and did really well. Yes, I didn't have NO in my Cube already. As I thought it would be, it has earned a spot in the cube. It has switched places with Eureka, that is now on probation.
I felt like my artifact section was too bloated and I'm cutting some rarely used artifacts to add more coloured cards. I'm also using this opportunity to switch a couple of other low-impact cards in my cube.
Cube changes:
Thinning artifact section: Razormane Masticore → Revoke Existence
Wanted more answers to noncreature permanents. War Priest of Thune and Kami of the Ancient Law were also considered. Karn, Silver Golem → Psionic Blast
Wanted a card that was better for aggro/tempo than for good in control. I saw Psionic Blast in a couple of other lists an thought I should give it a try. Triskelion → Faerie Macabre
Was thinking of adding any kind of sideboard card for this slot. Thought about discard and was between Cabal Therapy and Apetite for Brains, then I saw the faerie and imagined that more decks could want to have her than the discards. Wayfarer's Bauble → Hearth Kami
Wanted another artifact hate card. Was between Kami and Smash to Smithereens. I chose the Kami because it is more maindeckable. Also, Bauble is a painful cut, as I really enjoyed the card. Gilded Lotus → Viridian Zealot
You can never have enough answers for trouble permanents. There wasn't much contest for this spot. Nature's Claim was considered, but I feel Zealot will play better.
Other changes: Welkin Tern → Azure Mage
Not sure about this change. I wanted to keep this slot as an aggro 2-drop, but blue doesn't have many. I considered Coralhelm Commander but I don't have one right now. Azure helps Champion of the Parish and, if Voidmage Prodigy ends up going from test pool to main cube, Azure Mage only gets better. Sinkhole → Wrench Mind
It's weird but Sinkhole was very late picked and nobody seemed to want it maindeck. I believe Wrench Mind will be beloved by more decks than Sinkhole was, even if it is not a strictly better card. Magma Spray → Pillar of Flame
When I added Spray, I thought it could be a neat card for red control and also an ok sideboard card against annoyingrecurringcreatures that might give the deck some trouble. Turns out that being instant wasn't really impressive, plus, Pillar might take care of planeswalkers as well. Deathbridge Goliath → Obstinate Baloth
I believe that Baloth will be more beloved by blink decks and whenever the green player goes against aggro. Torrent of Souls → Olivia Voldaren
Torrent of Souls was to expensive for both Reanimator and as a finisher for aggro decks. Olivia seems like one of the few bomb-ish cards that doesn't force you directly into drafting control, so I want to see how she plays out. Terminate was also considered for this spot. Obzedat, Ghost Council → Gerrard's Verdict
Players were expressing some concer over Obzedat because it was way to hard to remove him. I didn't think it was that troubling, but BW and Esper already got plenty of good finishers and could go without this one. Verdict seems to be a staple that was missing from the cube, so in it goes. Unburial Rites and Angel of Despair were considered as well.
As always, any feedback on these changes is highly appreciated.
Just wanted to chime in real quick and say that while you haven't received a lot of feedback on this thread I have thoroughly enjoyed the detail you have put into it. Your cube is one of the ones I have bookmarked to check for ideas and I just want wanted you to know the effort you've put into your explanations has been much appreciated!
Hey guys, thanks for the comments and the feedback! Haven't posted lately because I haven't really cubed in a long while. Let's hope that this will change in the next couple of weeks.
About rant's disagreements:
I do like the Razormane Masticore and I think it is a great card, but it occupies a slot in my cube that plenty of other cards already occupy in a better fashion, which is of aggro deterrant for control and midrange decks. Trading Post and Ulamog, on the other hand, are playing different roles:
• Trading Post is a great piece for artifacts deck and provides different functionalities that are beloved by many decks (mostly combo, but control also enjoys it). It kinda plays Razormane's role as well, but it is a less obvious and more interactive card that tends to make games more fun than the Masticore, as it demands more skill to be used successfully.
• Ulamog is a key combo card for Channel, Eureka, Sneak Attack and Show and Tell. These combo decks are fun to draft and fun to pilot, so I'm not likely to cut Ula out in the near future.
I'm not sure why people didn't play Sinkhole more often as it clearly is a powerful card. I have seen both MonoBlack and Pox being put together, so I have no idea why it was such an underrated card. I think it is a card that might come back in the future so I could test it out again and see if players value it differently.
I guess that Faerie Macabre might really be a stub after we play it. I'll try it a couple of drafts to see how it goes. I might swap it with Withered Wretch if that is the case.
From the blue cards mentioned, I have Standstill in my queue for the test pool and I already play Daze. I had Tolarian Academy in the cube for the two weeks between me building the cube and posting it here and it was mostly unimpressive, along with most artifacts-oriented cards. I could see a case for bringing it back along with Metalworker to see how that turns out, so I'll note it on my Test Pool Ideas and Packages List™.
Deadbridge was actually a good card for us, but I guess Baloth will be more interesting and will lead to more different decks. I hope Veredict does the same as Obzedat was only just another Esper finisher.
Had a 5-man draft tonight. Here is the breakdown for the archetypes played:
URB Grixis Control BW Pox (Green splash for Pernicious Deed) URB Sneak Attack/Reanimate Combo BG Beatdown RW Boros Beatdown
I also got some more intel from the test pool to make some changes to it. I had a couple of winston drafts a while ago that I didn't report here that also helped with the following evaluations.
Crypt Ghast
This card has been mostly unnimpressive to everyone I play with. I haven't seen anyone play this card. It is a bit unfair evaluating a card that hasn't been played, but the card was always very late picked and never maindecked, so I'm ok cutting it from my test pool. Heck, I was playing Bw today and I didn't want this card main-decked, so this is definitely a miss.
Wolfir Silverheart
This card has been main-decked every single draft as far as I remember. Overall, it is a great midrange/beatdown creature for green, so I'm moving this to the main list now in place of Thornling.
Angelic Destiny
I have been pretty impressed by this card. Players seemed to value this highly and it is a great pick to push white aggro early in the draft. I tend to value cards that pull to aggro builds as there are too many cards that auto-pilot the draft into a control build.
You might have thought that this would mean that I would pull this right into the cube, but right now my white is far too heavy in the 4-drop department and I have a dent in 3-drops, so I can't afford to put it in until I rebalance my curve. I was thinking about switching this for Spectral Procession, I'm not sure it would be a very good replacement. I would love some feedback on how to rebalance my curve and to include this card
Niv-Mizzet, Dracogenius
This card has been played far more than I expected. Haven't seen him in a wildfire build yet where I thought it would shine the most (haven't seen many wildfire builds in genral, though). I am leaving it in the test pool for a while longer, until I see what is new for UR in Dragon's Maze, but he is very likely to replace Desolated Lighthouse.
Voidmage Prodigy
I don't really have much data on this card, but it has been a good card for blue. I enjoy giving blue some aggro/tempo cards and Kai Budde here is a neat card for blue. I really want to see him in a UW shell along with Delver of Secrets and Champion of the Parish, but it hasn't happened yet. Maybe it will take the slot of Waterfront Bouncer in the future, but I want him in the test pool for a while longer to make sure he has a place in the cube.
Crystal Shard
This card is taking a break from the test pool because I needed a slot in the test pool. Overall, it wasn't a very strong card and didn't fit into many decks. I believe this will get back into the test pool after Dragon's Mage, after my little test pool experiment.
Faerie Macabre wasn't really all that good as a sideboard card and the only reason this was played once was because the player was lacking 3-drops. I feel like the Wretch will get a lot more love, not only because he is an effective hate bear, but because he is far more likely to be main-decked and because he is a zombie and Gravecrawler loves his dead buddies. As a side note, Gravecrawler has been proven today to be a very good reason to keep playing Tidehollow Sculler.
As for the Wildfire, I hadn't traded for the second Wildfire until now and was using a Burning of Xinye proxy all along, so I'll change my list to reflect that.
I'm looking forward to utilizing one of the ideas that I had previously noted for my test pool. Hawk Pool is going to be a brief experiment that I believe will be a lot of fun.
Another thing that happend this week in my cube is that I replaced all my printed proxies with foil proxies that I printed this week. They are not as good looking as real cards, but they are pretty enough. Since I'm not retaking all cube pictures just now, here is a preview picture of all my new proxies:
Well, there was a lot of Magic to be played this weekend. Played my Cube twice on friday, split the top prize at the prerelease saturday, judged two parallel prereleases sunday, then proceeded to have a DMG-GTC-CMG draft where I built a 5-color control (with 10 gates and thespian stage) and splitted the prize in the finals. I've got plenty of new cards this weekend and new evaluations for cards in my cube, so on to the traditional reports:
1st Draft: BW Aggro BG Midrange/Beatdown BG Midrange/Ramp BUG Eureka/Show and Tell/Reanimator Combo
Mono R aggro WUB Esper Control
Eureka:
After the first draft, I got Eureka switched for Gaea's Cradle in the test pool, since Eureka had obviously done what it had to. The combo deck could get some very early wins out of luck, but building it is not an easy task (for the record: I was piloting the combo deck and got a 3-2 record on the draft). The deck is fun to draft and to play with and is not overwhelmingly powerful. I definitely want to support this kind of strategy in my cube and Eureka adds to the mass of cards needed for a combo deck, so it is going to the main list.
The main reason Eureka was in probation after all was because I didn't think the card was necessary for a "cheating creatures" combo deck to exist, as Show and Tell and Sneak Attack were pretty good at that. Eureka happens to be in the same color as Channel and Tooth and Nails, making it easier for the combo deck to be built. It also helps that you can eventually ramp and hardcast your eldrazi titans using green ramp, and the fact that you can cheat planeswalkers like Karn Liberated or Nicol Bolas, Planeswalker (which helps in drafting if the eldrazi titans are not available in the draft pool).
I do have some players that are not very fond of the card, but the fact that the combo decks are not dominating, are hard to build, and are fun to draft all contribute for me to keep these kind of cards around (the fact that players other than me have shown interest in building these type of decks also helps).
4x Squadron Hawk:
Nobody enjoyed the Squadron Hawks. Each player offered plenty of reasons to why they weren't playing it over anything else and even the player that had two swords in the deck found better beaters. Even with all 4 hawks always being available at all drafts, players also expressed some concern about having to pick 3 or more of those to end up playing them.
I guess I could have handled the Hawk test package better. Having about 6 hawks plus support cards would probably have yielded better results (maybe adding extra swords to the test pool). I will have to give a better treatment to my next test pool packages to ensure that something new and interesting happens. I hope I have more luck with the archetype-based test pools in the future and get more lessons on how to handle this, as it was one of the reasons that I adhered to the test pool in the first place.
Quirion Dryad:
I added the dryad to the list to see how much it compared to a similar card that was in the test pool: Gyre Sage. Both cards do play in completely different decks, but their similarities made me want to AB test 'em before settling on any of those for the main list.
The veredict is that Gyre Sage will be added to the main pool! As Gyre was a mini-CARD]tarmogoyf[/CARD]ish card for any midrange/beatdown cards, Dryad would only shine on UG tempo decks. Gyre also led to more interesting scenarios and plays than Quirion.
Gaea's Cradle:
Added just after the first draft and before the second, the land is doing some lifting here. It got into the best possible deck for it to be (GW midrange with lots of creatures). I'm eager to see how this will play out, especially because I had removed Cradle from my initial list after nobody playing the card after a good number of drafts.
Cube changes:
With DMZ in the mix, I had plenty of changes to make, so I used this opportunity to also take away some underperformers. Some of the changes here make the colors have an uneven amount of cards, but I'm ok with color imbalance in my list as it never affects drafts if the imbalance amount is low.
My complete list of changes is the following:
White:
-Weathered Wayfarer → +Exalted Angel
As I transported my list to a Google Docs Spreadsheet, I perceived that I was missing a 3-drop creature in white, so I'm taking out an underperforming controlish creature for what I believe will be a card beloved by any type of white deck. White was also the only color missing a morph creature, so I hope this makes things a bit more surprising when Boros lays down a morph.
-Catastrophe → +Pacifism
Pacifism is a decent piece of removal that can be played by low-mana decks and stops game-ending bombs like the 5 titans, the unnoficial titan and the othertitans.
Blue: -Timetwister → +Coralhelm Commander
Timetwister was already in my watch list for underperforming. I'm moving it to the test pool on probation and filling the void with a card that might help blue creature decks. -Control Magic → +Wake Thresher
Blue control decks are far too easy to be built because blue tends to have some pretty powerful cards that makes some picks very automatic. From the tools in a blue control deck have, one of the most powerful is control magic type of effects. Control Magic was neither the most powerful nor the weakest of these type of effects, but it was the least interesting card, so I'm taking it away to reduce the density of this type of effect and switching to a card that helps a different type of archetype. -Enclave Cryptologist → +Voidmage Prodigy
Cryptologist was another underperforming card that is freeing a slot to another creature-oriented blue card. -Waterfront Bouncer → +Sygg, River Cutthroat
Another underperforming card, this time freeing a slot off-color. I hope Sygg provides an interesting option for black and/or blue aggressive strategies.
Black: -Death Cloud → +Blood Scrivener
It seems that Death Cloud was unnecessary to support pox/stax decks as they had already plenty of tools to work with. Cloud was also not usable in pretty much any other archetype. I played Scrivener in a draft this weekend and I know how hard it is for control decks to abuse this, but if the game grinds for some time it is not hard to activate it. I believe aggro decks will have an easier time playing this guy.
Red: -Shrine of Burning Rage → +Pyrewild Shaman
Shrine was underperforming even in mono red decks. Pyrewild was probably the first card spoiled that had me looking for a spot to fit in the cube (second to Ral Zarek, actually). -Rivalry → Zo-zu, the Punisher
I believe the main reason for Rivalry not being played is because red players didn't quite saw this as Sulfuric Vortex #2. Zo-zu punishes pretty much the same thing as Rivalry. I believe that, overall, the goblin might do more damage in a game, so lets see how it plays out.
Green: -Green Sun's Zenith → +Eureka
Underperforming card. Also, read test pool comment about Eureka.
Artifacts: -Black Vise → +Pithing Needle #2
Even though the damage potential of the vise is pretty high, it was an easy card to play around. Pithing Needle is a great answer to plenty of powerful cards that has been maindecked time after time. I don't think any deck will be happy to run 2 of those and neither will be picked early, but it is a card that does something great and I'm happy to make it more available to the players. -Mortarpod → +Gyre Sage
Didn't want to cut any green card and Mortarpod wasn't played too much. For all this time, I think that Blasting Station could be a better card that Mortarpod ever was in the cube, so I'll see if I trade for one to put it in my test pool. -Erratic Portal → +Spike Jester
The removal of Erratic Portal is pretty much a nail on Crystal Shard's coffin. The card was underperforming as well. I was going to take out Rakdos Shred-Freak for the Jester, but I believe this was a more useful replacement.
Multicolored: -Absorb → +Sphinx's Revelation
Absorb was a neat card but blue is already bloated with counterspells and any WU deck has plenty of ways to survive the early game without Absorb. Drawing cards is always fun, so let's hope Sphinx's Revalation is a fun card to play with. -Vithian Renegades → +Savageborn Hydra
I thinned my artifact section and added more artifact removal in both red and green in the past month or so, so I'm replacing the renegades with a more suitable beater. -Desolate Lighthouse → +Niv-Mizzet, Dracogenius
I really hated the Lighthouse and it seemed to make UR decks worst by keeping them out of colored mana so they had access to an effect that they would most likely never use. Even Grixis Reanimator or combo had better things to do with their mana than activate Lighthouse. Niv has tested well in the pool, so it was now allowed in the main list. -Steamcore Weird → +Ral Zarek
Ral demanded a sot and Steamcore was my 2nd less favourite card. It was a great tool to buy some time against aggressive decks, but Ral can do pretty much the same thing and a bit more for the same mana cost. -Aurelia's Fury → +Firemane Avenger
While the Fury was an interesting card for a possible WR control build or as a finisher in beatdown decks, aggressive cards could always use another early pick card, and Avenger fits the bill.
After all of these changes, my new test pool is the following:
Mostly I want to try some new cards for the edition. There is another batch of cards from DMZ that I want to put through the test pool, but Griffin Guide was in the wait list for a long time (along with Standstill, which I haven't traded for yet). I also wanted an opportunity to play with my foil Bargain, since it has been sitting in my binder doing nothing since I've bought it a few years ago.
Haven't really played my cube for a long while. I did have some winston drafts and played stack with the cube, but never got to really test anything, so no big changes for now.
Breakdown from the Winston draft: UBR Delver/Bob Aggro/Tempo (2-0){e} WRU Aggro (1-1) UBR splashing WG Planeswalker Control (0-2)
I did switched a couple of cards from the list and one from my test pool after some consideration, though, so here are the changes:
Guild cards
- Sulfuric Springs → + Graven Cairns
- Llanowar Wastes → + Twilight Mire
I was thinking about adding Darkcleave Cliffs for BR for a while and was already forseeing adding Twilight Mire to the list since I added Sunken Ruins. I decided to add the Cairns instead for the same reasons that I was considering the Mire (namely, Geralf's Messenger and Necropotence). The scars land had the advantage of being more valuable for aggro and maybe be overlooked by any control players, but I know my players value mana fixing a lot and it would probably not matter much. Also, all the BBB cards suddenly seems to be one step closer to being easily castable.
On the test pool:
Goblin Ruinblaster
This guy was pretty much a blast in playtesting. People loved it so much more than Goblin Settler and it was even casted without kicker at least once to put some pressure. My only problem right now is finding a slot for him in my cube, so suggestions are welcome. If you would like to give a suggestion, it would be great if you would check out my spreadsheet to see if it wouldn't impact my curves so much.
Skyshroud Elite
I don't think this guy was relevant to any player at all during their drafts, and we did had green aggressive decks being played while this guy was around. In the end, I guess green aggro doesn't need this guy as it has more reliable 1-drops to play. Right now I am more concerned in giving green another interesting 3-drop to get my curve fixed, so Hystrodon is stepping right into this spot.
So, with this swap, my test pool is now the following:
[spoiler=Current]
[spoiler=Picture][/spoiler]
Oh yes, I have also updated all my cube pictures, so go check it out if you like cool foils and alters (and pictures that are somewhat blurry due to photographer's incompetence)! Heck, even my proxies are foil now!
In what way have you been using Crystal Shard and Erratic Portal? Those cards have never been even close to being removed in my cube.
Hey Rellik, hadn't seen your post until now. Sorry for that :/
So, players were mostly using to try and reset their ETB effects and sometimes as a defensive measure against big mana decks. I guess I've seen them in UB, UR and UG builds, but Bant Blink-ish Midrange decks that would theoreticaly be their main homes would never play them because they had much better stuff to do with their mana.
The last deck that I saw that used it was a UB that had at least Man-o'-War and either Nekrataal or Skinrender (can't remember which now) but, even then, the deck didn't survive the disruption/aggression of the other decks.
The problem is that both cards were too slow compared to what all the other decks were accomplishing in the meantime, so people started evaluating them lower, they got eventually renegated to the last picks and lastly Crystal Shard was sent to probation. While on probation, the shard was played but never rended enough value to the caster.
As with Sinkhole (another universally appraised card that got dismissed by the players), I might return it to my test pool in the future to see if my players see the card through different lenses. Right now, though, I'd rather use the slots to try other things with the cube.
After a very long while, I've finally decided I played enough with my list to change things. I was going to have my list changed last week, but due to my cards not being in my posession and the release of M14, I decided to wait a week and include the new stuff as well.
I haven't noted any archetype breakdowns for a long while, but I can remember at least 3 Esper controls and one UWR Tempo/Control and maybe one GW Midrange and a random aggro deck going 3-0 in my drafts, so you can see the list was a bit skewed towards blue-white-based control. I'd like to have more aggressive decks 3-0ing my drafts as well, so you might see that most of the changes I'm making are meant to power down the control decks and giving more love to aggressive strategies (U-based aggro/tempo especially).
Timetwister
Interestingly enough, the lowest of the Power 9 has never impressed anyone and no deck wanted to play it. It was already on probation and is now going away. Time Spiral on the other hand has constantly impressed us and played major role on very interesting decks and is nowhere near being cut if anyone is curious.
Hystrodon
Has been maindecked more than Renegade Krasis and is the best choice so far for being my new green 3-drop (right now my green curve has too many 5-drops and too little 3-drops, and Hystro is curiously both). In case you have any suggestions for any other green three drop that I'm not playing right now, please do tell me. Suggestions for cuts in 5-drops are also welcome (right now I'm looking at Indrik Stomphowler as my favoured cut).
¹ = Card in now on probation
² = Card was in the test pool
³ = Card was in the watch list
I'm not going into details on my changes, but most of the cards removed where either reduntant control-oriented cards or unimpressive late-pick cards that would be better of as something else. Some cards I wasn't completely sure about how well will they fare, so they are honorary test pool cards for the time beign.
Well, after all of this, I think I have to announce that this might as well be my last update for a long time. I'll be moving to Denmark next month to study and my cards will be staying with my friend, the co-owner of my collection. I think I'll have some time to play with my cube until then, but I also have a secondary cube list (my discussion thread is in another forum) that I have been dying to try and I can't because there are too many cards overlapping with my regular cube list.
Guess that last update wasn't my last update after all. Still have 20 days in Brazil, so there is more cube to be had until then.
Yesterday we did two 4-people drafts. Here is the breakdown of archetypes and win-ratio:
(players ordered by table position)
1st Draft:
1/1 — RW Boros Aggro (Rafael)
2/0 — UG Ramp (Carlos)
1/1 —BWR Tokens and Removal Midrange (Vince)
0/2 — BR Aggro/Reanimator (Henrique)
We played only two rounds because one of the players had to leave. Luckily, we found a fourth player for our second draft.
First draft was interesting because a fairly underdrafted archetype got to be the winner. Ramp faced Boros in the "finals". I was half-expecting Boros to be the winner since it was extremely fast, but the UG deck had a lot of incremental advantage and Boros didn't had many removal spells and the creatures weren't as evasive as they should. BR is also a combination that is always underrated and it was good to see someone try to play with it (both; results weren't so good, unfortunately). Esper Control still looks like it is the deck to beat in the cube. I can't really say it was a regular draft since we had fewer players than usual and Esper got to be the only player in white (and the pool had a lot of great removal for white). Still, there is a lot to be said for the consistency of this color combination.
Test Pool Results: Pain's Reward:
This card has been completely awful in playtesting. Ok, it was a 3-mana 10+ damage spell a couple of times, but even then, drawing cards would be miles better and the cards the opponent drew were usually what made the caster lose the game. I should probably test this a bit more to have more data before letting this card go ( BR would theoretically love this). This card was in the tokens and then in the UB deck, and it has been much worse than anticipated and I'm cutting it from the test pool.
Renegade Krasis:
This guy has been an underperformer for a good while. He was in my test pool because I'm planning on taking a 5-drop and replace it with a 3-drop to make my green mana curve a bit smoother, but krasis' test nemesis (Hystrodon) has been miles ahead. Hytro will likely being included to the main list in the near future. Krasis on the other hand, is going back to the binder.
Both Young Pyro and Spellstutter were in my radar to be tested for a while and now they've got a chance to shine. Lyev Skyknight was added in place of Momentary Blink in my main list as I moved the instant to my test pool. I usually do this to cards that are underperforming or being low-picked to raise availability (test pool cards are included in every draft) and verify if the card is truly underperforming or it just hadn't had time to shine (I call this probation and I do it constantly). The thing is, I had no idea how well it would play. I believed (and still do) that it would fit :u::w: archetypes very well, but right now I want to see it being played, and the best way of assuring a card will see play is to make it available, so this is why it is now in my test pool.
There were no changes to the main list with the exception of Lyev Skyknight going to the test pool.
So, after this post, I'll be moving my reports on changes and stuff to my thread at the RiptideLab. RiptideLab is a relatively new community for cube drafters that tend to have a very open mind to new ideas for cube drafting (even though there is some aversion to a few old ones) and I've been really enjoying the community there. I'll see if I post here every once in a while, but I'm no longer going to fully update my list here.
External Links: Spreadsheet | Cube Tutor | Deckstats | RiptideLab
List last updated: 2013/07/28
Pictures last updated: 2013/05/26 (outdated!)
• 576 Powered Non-themed Cube. (10 of those are Test Pool cards)
• Drafted about 2 times a week. 4-7 players. Sometimes 2-3 players Winston draft.
• Doing mostly 4 12-cards boosters in drafts.
• 73 cards for each color, 81 colorless, 120 guild, 3 extras + 10 in my test pool. Color imbalance: -1 Blue, +1 Green, +1 Dimir, +1 Rakdos, -2 Colorless.
• Initially built based on wtwlf123's cube as a 540-cards cube a few weeks before Gatecrash.
• Uses a 10-card test pool, pretty much like Lanxal's pauper cube.
Multiplayer or single player? Single player.
Singleton? No.
Gold as printed or played? As played.
Perfect color balance? No.
Snow? Nope.
Proxies? Yes.
Functional Reprints? Yes.
Portal cards? Yes. Also, I may switch expensive functional reprints with the original card. (That's why there are two Armageddons).
Any banned cards? No. I don't need to ban cards. I can simply take them out of the cube or not add them if they look suspicious. With that said, Moat and The Abyss were removed for being too powerful and/or unfun. These are the closest of being "banned" that I have.
Even though the Cube is currently color-balanced and singleton(cube now has some duplicates an is not color-balanced), I don't feel like I need to follow these rules always. The cube was already color-imbalanced once and I kind of break the singleton rule already with the portal budget replacements. If somehow I feel that the cube might be better of with me breaking these self-imposed rules, I will do it.The cube is currently stored in two Fat Pack boxes. I have 30 of each basic land (Zendikar lands, just a few foils between them) always nearby on separated deckboxes and also a bunch of tokens that are made by cards in the cube.
For the sleeves, I went with the Commander's Arsenal planeswalker sleeves at first, but I ditched them because they were peeling and switched to KMC purple sleeves, that I had laying around by the thousands.
I always keep a handfull of tokens and emblems around to use with the Cube that I keep them sleeved and on separated deckboxes. I also had some unnexisting or hard-to-find tokens printed when I was printing my cube proxies as well.
At the end of last year, I decided I should focus on rebuilding a cube because I wanted to, so I checked half a dozen cubes here in salvation and put a list together based on wtwfl123's list with some changes to support the strategies I know my friends and I would enjoy playing the most. I dismantled my EDH decks and built the cube. It has been an interesting experience since I decided to try out different ideas, like the 12-card boosters and the Test Pool.
Even though my initial cube list is a bit shy on sideboard cards/combat tricks, I'm always looking for tring out these different fringe cards to see if they can make it into the main list, so you might expect more of those to be addded in the future.
I also feed the boosters 1 of card of each color, 1 colorless and 2 guild cards. A parcel of the remaining cards is then shuffled along with my test pool and dealt randomly to fill the booster packs. This creates some assurance that all colors will have an even presence in the draft pool. It also skews the probability of guild cards and colorless cards appearing at any given pool by a small margin. Booster math is included in my spreadsheet at the Additional tab for anyone interested in those numbers
Note: For accurate numbers on CMC distribution and such, check my spreadsheet.
1 Champion of the Parish
1 Elite Vanguard
1 Icatian Javelineers
1 Isamaru, Hound of Konda
1 Mother of Runes
1 Savannah Lions
1 Steppe Lynx
1 Student of Warfare
//2CC
1 Accorder Paladin
1 Azorius Arrester
1 Cloistered Youth
1 Imposing Sovereign
1 Knight of Meadowgrain
1 Kor Skyfisher
1 Leonin Relic-Warder
1 Lone Missionary
1 Porcelain Legionnaire
1 Precinct Captain
1 Soltari Monk
1 Soltari Priest
1 Soltari Trooper
1 Stoneforge Mystic
1 Thalia, Guardian of Thraben
1 Wall of Omens
1 Banisher Priest
1 Blade Splicer
1 Exalted Angel
1 Flickerwisp
1 Frontline Medic
1 Mirran Crusader
1 Mirror Entity
1 Silverblade Paladin
1 Soltari Champion
1 Stonecloaker
//4CC
1 Hero of Bladehold
1 Hokori, Dust Drinker
1 Kor Sanctifiers
1 Ranger of Eos
1 Restoration Angel
1 Baneslayer Angel
1 Cloudgoat Ranger
1 Karmic Guide
1 Reveillark
//6CC
1 Sun Titan
//7CC
1 Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite
1 Eternal Dragon
//XCC
1 Mikaeus, the Lunarch
1 Enlightened Tutor
1 Harm's Way
1 Land Tax
1 Path to Exile
1 Swords to Plowshares
//2CC
1 Balance
1 Disenchant
1 Journey to Nowhere
1 Pacifism
1 Seal of Cleansing
1 Ajani, Caller of the Pride
1 Oblivion Ring
1 Spectral Procession
//4CC
1 Ajani Goldmane
2 Armageddon
1 Day of Judgment
1 Elspeth, Knight-Errant
1 Faith's Fetters
1 Wrath of God
1 Elspeth Tirel
1 Gideon Jura
//6CC
1 Terminus
//XCC
1 Entreat the Angels
1 Decree of Justice
//Lands
1 Kjeldoran Outpost
1 Cursecatcher
1 Delver of Secrets
//2CC
1 Azure Mage
1 Coralhelm Commander
1 Gilded Drake
1 Invisible Stalker
1 Looter il-Kor
1 Phantasmal Image
1 Snapcaster Mage
1 Spellskite
1 Voidmage Prodigy
1 Fettergeist
1 Kira, Great Glass-Spinner
1 Man-o'-War
1 Pestermite
1 Phyrexian Metamorph
1 Serendib Efreet
1 Trinket Mage
1 Vendilion Clique
1 Wake Thresher
1 Willbender
1 Dungeon Geists
1 Glen Elendra Archmage
1 Ninja of the Deep Hours
1 Sower of Temptation
1 Venser, Shaper Savant
//5CC
1 Meloku the Clouded Mirror
1 Mulldrifter
//6CC
1 Frost Titan
1 Keiga, the Tide Star
//9CC
1 Inkwell Leviathan
1 Daze
1 Force of Will
1 Gush
//1CC
1 Ancestral Recall
1 Brainstorm
1 Mystical Tutor
1 Ponder
1 Preordain
1 Spell Pierce
1 Vapor Snag
//2CC
1 Counterspell
1 Cyclonic Rift
1 Into the Roil
1 Mana Drain
1 Mana Leak
1 Memory Lapse
1 Remand
1 Time Walk
1 Forbid
1 Frantic Search
1 Jace Beleren
1 Psionic Blast
1 Show and Tell
1 Thirst for Knowledge
1 Tinker
1 Vedalken Shackles
//4CC
1 Cryptic Command
1 Deep Analysis
1 Fact or Fiction
1 Gifts Ungiven
1 Jace, the Mind Sculptor
1 Opposition
1 Bribery
1 Tamiyo, the Moon Sage
1 Tezzeret the Seeker
1 Treachery
//6CC
1 Time Spiral
1 Upheaval
//XCC
1 Condescend
//Lands
1 Academy Ruins
1 Faerie Conclave
1 Diregraf Ghoul
1 Vampire Lacerator
1 Carnophage
1 Carrion Feeder
1 Sarcomancy
1 Gravecrawler
//2CC
1 Blood Scrivener
1 Bloodghast
1 Dark Confidant
1 Dauthi Horror
1 Dauthi Slayer
1 Knight of Infamy
1 Nezumi Graverobber
1 Oona's Prowler
1 Pack Rat
1 Reassembling Skeleton
1 Vampire Hexmage
1 Withered Wretch
1 Hypnotic Specter
1 Dauthi Marauder
1 Bone Shredder
1 Geralf's Messenger
1 Bane of the Living
1 Fleshbag Marauder
//4CC
1 Braids, Cabal Minion
1 Liliana's Reaver
1 Skinrender
1 Xiahou Dun, the One-Eyed
//5CC
1 Shriekmaw
1 Drana, Kalastria Bloodchief
1 Grave Titan
1 Kokusho, the Evening Star
//8CC
1 Griselbrand
1 Contagion
1 Snuff Out
1 Dark Ritual
1 Despise
1 Dismember
1 Duress
1 Entomb
1 Imperial Seal
1 Inquisition of Kozilek
1 Reanimate
1 Thoughtseize
1 Vampiric Tutor
1 Animate Dead
1 Bitterblossom
1 Chainer's Edict
1 Demonic Tutor
1 Diabolic Edict
1 Doom Blade
1 Exhume
1 Go for the Throat
1 Hymn to Tourach
1 Nameless Inversion
1 Smallpox
1 Wrench Mind
1 Liliana of the Veil
1 Necromancy
1 Necropotence
1 Phyrexian Arena
1 Pox
1 Recurring Nightmare
1 Yawgmoth's Will
//4CC
1 Consuming Vapors
1 Damnation
//XCC
1 Mind Twist
1 Profane Command
//Land
1 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
1 Volrath's Stronghold
1 Goblin Guide
1 Goblin Welder
1 Gorilla Shaman
1 Greater Gargadon
1 Grim Lavamancer
1 Jackal Pup
1 Mogg Fanatic
1 Reckless Waif
1 Spikeshot Elder
1 Stromkirk Noble
//2CC
1 Ash Zealot
1 Fireslinger
1 Gore-House Chainwalker
1 Hearth Kami
1 Hellspark Elemental
1 Keldon Marauders
1 Lightning Mauler
1 Mogg War Marshal
1 Plated Geopede
1 Stormblood Berserker
1 Torch Fiend
1 Blistering Firecat
1 Chandra's Phoenix
1 Fire Imp
1 Hell's Thunder
1 Imperial Recruiter
1 Manic Vandal
1 Squee, Goblin Nabob
1 Zo-zu, the Punisher
//4CC
1 Avalanche Riders
1 Flametongue Kavu
1 Goblin Ruinblaster
1 Hellrider
1 Hero of Oxid Ridge
1 Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker
1 Siege-Gang Commander
1 Thundermaw Hellkite
1 Zealous Conscripts
//6CC
1 Inferno Titan
//8CC
1 Bogardan Hellkite
1 Fireblast
//1CC
1 Burst Lightning
1 Chain Lightning
1 Faithless Looting
1 Firebolt
1 Firestorm
1 Lightning Bolt
1 Pillar of Flame
1 Reckless Charge
//2CC
1 Arc Trail
1 Incinerate
1 Magma Jet
1 Mizzium Mortars
1 Pyroclasm
1 Searing Spear
1 Pyrewild Shaman
1 Arc Lightning
1 Chaos Warp
1 Char
1 Flames of the Firebrand
1 Molten Rain
1 Pillage
1 Slagstorm
1 Staggershock
1 Sulfuric Vortex
1 Wheel of Fortune
//4CC
1 Chandra, Pyromaster
1 Koth of the Hammer
1 Sneak Attack
1 Chandra Nalaar
//6CC
1 Wildfire
//XCC
1 Bonfire of the Damned
1 Earthquake
1 Arbor Elf
1 Basking Rootwalla
1 Birds of Paradise
1 Elvish Mystics
1 Experiment One
1 Joraga Treespeaker
1 Jungle Lion
1 Llanowar Elves
1 Noble Hierarch
1 Ulvenwald Tracker
1 Wolfbitten Captive
//2CC
1 Fauna Shaman
1 Gyre Sage
1 Lotus Cobra
1 Mayor of Avabruck
1 River Boa
1 Rofellos, Llanowar Emissary
1 Sakura-Tribe Elder
1 Scavenging Ooze
1 Strangleroot Geist
1 Tarmogoyf
1 Vinelasher Kudzu
1 Viridian Zealot
1 Wall of Blossoms
1 Wall of Roots
1 Wild Mongrel
1 Call of the Herd
1 Eternal Witness
1 Nantuko Vigilante
1 Somberwald Sage
1 Troll Ascetic
1 Uktabi Orangutan
1 Viridian Shaman
1 Yavimaya Elder
//4CC
1 Master of the Wild Hunt
1 Obstinate Baloth
1 Oracle of Mul Daya
1 Phantom Centaur
1 Thrun, the Last Troll
1 Vengevine
1 Wickerbough Elder
//5CC
1 Acidic Slime
1 Deranged Hermit
1 Genesis
1 Indrik Stomphowler
1 Thragtusk
1 Vorapede
1 Wolfir Silverheart
1 Primeval Titan
//7CC
1 Hornet Queen
//8CC
1 Woodfall Primus
1 Rancor
1 Worldly Tutor
//2CC
1 Channel
1 Farseek
1 Life from the Loam
1 Nature's Lore
1 Regrowth
1 Survival of the Fittest
1 Sylvan Library
1 Awakening Zone
1 Cultivate
1 Kodama's Reach
//4CC
1 Birthing Pod
1 Eureka
1 Garruk Relentless
1 Garruk Wildspeaker
1 Natural Order
1 Garruk, Primal Hunter
1 Plow Under
1 Primal Command
//Lands
1 Gaea's Cradle
1 Treetop Village
1 Perilous Myr
1 Phyrexian Revoker
//4CC
1 Lodestone Golem
1 Masticore
1 Molten-Tail Masticore
1 Solemn Simulacrum
1 Wurmcoil Engine
//7CC
1 Myr Battlesphere
//8CC
1 Sundering Titan
1 Kozilek, Butcher of Truth
//11CC
1 Ulamog, the Infinite Gyre
1 Bonesplitter
1 Skullclamp
//2CC
1 Lightning Greaves
1 Umezawa's Jitte
1 Grafted Wargear
1 Sword of Body and Mind
1 Sword of Feast and Famine
1 Sword of Fire and Ice
1 Sword of Light and Shadow
1 Sword of War and Peace
1 Batterskull
1 Black Lotus
1 Chrome Mox
1 Mana Crypt
1 Mox Diamond
1 Mox Emerald
1 Mox Jet
1 Mox Pearl
1 Mox Ruby
1 Mox Sapphire
1 Mana Vault
1 Sol Ring
//2CC
1 Coldsteel Heart
1 Everflowing Chalice
1 Grim Monolith
1 Guardian Idol
1 Mind Stone
1 Chromatic Lantern
1 Coalition Relic
1 Worn Powerstone
//4CC
1 Thran Dynamo
1 Cursed Scroll
2 Pithing Needle
1 Sensei's Divining Top
//2CC
1 Ankh of Mishra
1 Ratchet Bomb
1 Scroll Rack
1 Winter Orb
1 Crucible of Worlds
1 Mimic Vat
1 Ring of Gix
1 Tangle Wire
//4CC
1 Icy Manipulator
1 Nevinyrral's Disk
1 Smokestack
1 Trading Post
1 Memory Jar
//7CC
1 Karn Liberated
//XCC
1 Engineered Explosives
1 Dust Bowl
1 Rishadan Port
1 Strip Mine
2 Wasteland
//Fetches
1 Evolving Wilds
1 Terramorphic Expanse
1 Mishra's Factory
1 Mutavault
//Multicoloured
1 City of Brass
1 Gemstone Mine
1 Grand Coliseum
1 Reflecting Pool
1 Ancient Tomb
1 Library of Alexandria
1 Maze of Ith
1 Sphinx of the Steel Wind
1 Nicol Bolas, Planeswalker
WU
1 Geist of Saint Traft
1 Detention Sphere
1 Supreme Verdict
1 Venser, the Sojourner
1 Sphinx's Revelation
1 Moorland Haunt
1 Tundra
1 Hallowed Fountain
1 Flooded Strand
1 Mystic Gate
1 Celestial Colonnade
UB
1 Baleful Strix
1 Inkfathom Infiltrator
1 Sygg, River Cutthroat
1 Psychatog
1 Shadowmage Infiltrator
1 Duskmantle Seer
1 Far // Away
1 Tezzeret, Agent of Bolas
1 Underground Sea
1 Watery Grave
1 Polluted Delta
1 Sunken Ruins
1 Creeping Tar Pit
BR
1 Rakdos Cackler
1 Rakdos Shred-Freak
1 Spike Jester
1 Fulminator Mage
1 Murderous Redcap
1 Falkenrath Aristocrat
1 Olivia Voldaren
1 Dreadbore
1 Bituminous Blast
1 Badlands
1 Blood Crypt
1 Bloodstained Mire
1 Graven Cairns
1 Lavaclaw Reaches
RG
1 Kird Ape
1 Tattermunge Maniac
1 Savageborn Hydra
1 Bloodbraid Elf
1 Ghor-Clan Rampager
1 Huntmaster of the Fells
1 Sarkhan Vol
1 Taiga
1 Stomping Ground
1 Wooded Foothills
1 Copperline Gorge
1 Raging Ravine
GW
1 Loam Lion
1 Dryad Militant
1 Qasali Pridemage
1 Voice of Ressurgence
1 Kitchen Finks
1 Loxodon Hierarch
1 Mirari's Wake
1 Savannah
1 Temple Garden
1 Windswept Heath
1 Horizon Canopy
1 Stirring Wildwood
WB
1 Tidehollow Sculler
1 Stillmoon Cavalier
1 Gerrard's Verdict
1 Lingering Souls
1 Mortify
1 Vindicate
1 Sorin, Lord of Innistrad
1 Scrubland
1 Godless Shrine
1 Marsh Flats
1 Fetid Heath
1 Isolated Chapel
BG
1 Deathrite Shaman
1 Lotleth Troll
1 Life // Death
1 Abrupt Decay
1 Maelstrom Pulse
1 Pernicious Deed
1 Vraska the Unseen
1 Bayou
1 Overgrown Tomb
1 Verdant Catacombs
1 Twilight Mire
1 Woodland Cemetery
GU
1 Plaxcaster Frogling
1 Edric, Spymaster of Trest
1 Trygon Predator
1 Mystic Snake
1 Prime Speaker Zegana
1 Simic Sky Swallower
1 Simic Charm
1 Tropical Island
1 Breeding Pool
1 Misty Rainforest
1 Simic Growth Chamber
1 Hinterland Harbor
UR
1 Turn // Burn
1 Fire // Ice
1 Izzet Charm
1 Jilt
1 Electrolyze
1 Prophetic Bolt
1 Ral Zarek
1 Volcanic Island
1 Steam Vents
1 Scalding Tarn
1 Izzet Boilerworks
1 Sulfur Falls
RW
1 Figure of Destiny
1 Boros Reckoner
1 Lightning Helix
1 Boros Charm
1 Ajani Vengeant
1 Firemane Avenger
1 Slayers' Stronghold
1 Plateau
1 Sacred Foundry
1 Arid Mesa
1 Rugged Prairie
1 Clifftop Retreat
The idea is that the test pool will be always changing. Uninteresting cards will rotate out fast and cool cards might stay for a bit longer and even be inserted in the main 566.
Given the fast rotation and "seasonality" of the test pool, entire archetypes might be put into the test pool every once in a while to bring something different to the draft. This makes fragile archetipes that absolutely need some cards possible and I'm definitely looking for opportunities to try crazy cube archetypes once in a while (for instance, I might try making the test pool into a storm package or a mill package).
1 Spellstutter Sprite (new)
1 Mistblade Shinobi
1 Sakashima's Student
1 Standstill
1 Cemetery Reaper
1 Stab Wound
1 Young Pyromancer (new)
1 Hystrodon (good)
1 Lyev Skyknight
1 Momentary Blink (probation)
1 Sire of Insanity
1 Armada Wurm (probation)
• New cards have just been added to the test pool for some testing.
• Probation cards were in the cube and are now being tested for their real impact in drafts and deckbuilding.
• Cards noted as great or good have a good chance to find a place in the main cube.
• Package cards are part of a specific package that supports a different playstyle or a hard-to-support archetype. These cards most likely will not be included in the main cube and are meant to be seasonal fun experiments.
RRR Like a Bosh!
WUB Sharuum Solar Flare
UBR Thraximundar Zombie Beatdown
• Changed cube size to 576 (36 cards added, color balance restored)
• Added Test Pool section
1 Lone Missionary (overall good card)
1 Silverblade Paladin (needed a good 3-drop in white)
1 Harm's Way (wanted a cool combat trick in white)
1 Terminus (pushing Ux control a bit)
1 Welkin Tern (Ux aggro could use more love)
1 Pestermite (Ux aggro/tempo; plus comboes with Kiki)
1 Spell Pierce (wanted a good sideboard counterspell)
1 Knight of Infamy (Bx aggro)
1 Nameless Inversion (wanted any removal, this one looked versatile in UB aggro/tempo)
1 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth (always loved this card :D; makes necropotence and geralf's messenger easier to cast and I love both cards as well)
1 Mizzium Mortars (Rx control/counterburn)
1 Slagstorm (Rx control/counterburn)
1 Terastodon (ramp/reanimator target)
1 Farseek (ramp, RG wildfire)
1 Nature's Lore (ramp, RG wildfire)
1 Wayfarer's Bauble (wanted a 2CC mana rock, this one is trinketable)
1 Mystic Gate (UW missing a fixing land)
1 Inkfathom Infiltrator (Ux/Bx aggro)
1 Bituminous Blast (BR control/midrange)
1 Ghor-Clan Rampager (couldn't get a Domri Rade yet)
1 Loxodon Hierarch (GW midrange)
1 Mortify
1 Putrefy
1 Prime Speaker Zegana
1 Jilt (UR conterburn)
-Glorious Anthem¹ → +Champion of the Parish²
-Crystal Shard¹ → +Fettergeist²
-The Abyss¹ → Despise²
-Goblin Settler¹ → Chandra, the Firebrand²
-Zuran Orb³ → Nicol Bolas, Planeswalker²
-Bad River → Sunken Ruins
-Caves of Koilos → +Fetid Heath
-Putrefy → +Deathrite Shaman²
¹ = Card went to probation
² = Card was in the test pool
³ = Card was in the watch list
Announcement
-Eureka¹³ → +Natural Order²
¹ = Card went to probation
² = Card was in the test pool
³ = Card was in the watch list
Announcement
-Welkin Tern → +Azure Mage
-Sinkhole¹ → +Wrench Mind
-Magma Spray → +Pillar of Flame
-Deathbridge Goliath → +Obstinate Baloth
-Razormane Masticore → +Revoke Existence
-Karn, Silver Golem → +Psyonic Blast
-Triskelion → +Faerie Macabre
-Wayfarer's Bauble → +Heart Kami
-Gilded Lotus → +Viridian Zealot
-Torrent of Souls → +Olivia Voldaren
-Obzedat, Ghost Council → +Gerard's Veredict
¹ = Card was in the watch list
Announcement
- Thornling¹ → + Wolfir Silverheart²
- Faerie Macabre → + Withered Wretch
- Wildfire → + Burning of Xinye
¹ Card was in the Watch List
² Card was in the Test Pool
Announcement
Big Dragon's Maze update
-Weathered Wayfarer → +Exalted Angel
-Catastrophe → +Pacifism
-Timetwister¹³ → +Coralhelm Commander
-Control Magic → +Wake Thresher
-Enclave Cryptologist → +Voidmage Prodigy ²
-Waterfront Bouncer → +Sygg, River Cutthroat
-Death Cloud → +Blood Scrivener
-Shrine of Burning Rage → +Pyrewild Shaman
-Rivalry → Zo-zu, the Punisher
-Green Sun's Zenith → +Eureka ²
-Black Vise → +Pithing Needle #2
-Mortarpod → +Gyre Sage ²
-Erratic Portal → +Spike Jester
-Absorb → +Sphinx's Revelation
-Vithian Renegades → +Savageborn Hydra
-Desolate Lighthouse → +Niv-Mizzet, Dracogenius ²
-Steamcore Weird → +Ral Zarek
-Aurelia's Fury → +Firemane Avenger
¹ = Card went to probation
² = Card was in the test pool
³ = Card was in the watch list
Announcement
- Sulfuric Springs → + Graven Cairns
- Llanowar Wastes → + Twilight Mire
Announcement
- Revoke Existence → + Imposing Sovereign
- Magus of the Moat → + Banisher Priest
- Capsize → + Kira, Great Glass-Spinner
- Consacrated Sphinx → + Cursecatcher
- Impulse → + Cloud of Faeries (Test Pool Slot)
- Shelldock Isle³ → + Ninja of the Deep Hours
- Tooth and Nails → + Gush
- Nekrataal → + Liliana's Reaver
- Living Death → + Wasteland #2
- Bloodline Keeper → + Fulminator Mage
- Vampire Nighthawk → + Cemetery Reaper (Test Pool Slot)
- Burning of Xynie → + Goblin Ruinblaster²
- Rolling Earthquake → + Hell's Thunder
- Kargan Dragonlord → + Burst Lightning
- Chandra, the Firebrand → + Chandra, Pyromaster
- Terastodon → + Gaea's Cradle²
- Fyndhorn Elves → + Elvish Mystic
- Momentary Blink → + Lyev Skyknight
- Forbidden Alchemy¹ → + Far//Away²
- Armada Wurm¹ → + Voice of Resurgence²
- High-Priest of Penance → + Stillmoon Cavalier
- Niv-Mizzet, Dracogenius → + Turn//Burn
¹ = Card in now on probation
² = Card was in the test pool
³ = Card was in the watch list
Announcement
Lyev Skyknight moved to the test pool as a honorary test pool slot.
Announcement
1 Fettergeist
1 Mental Misstep
1 AEther Spellbomb
1 Despise
1 Chandra, the Firebrand
1 Traitorous Instinct
1 Beast Within
1 Noxious Revival
1 Deathrite Shaman
• This was the first test pool ever tested
Results
1 Fettergeist (great so far)
1 Mental Misstep
1 Despise
1 Chandra, the Firebrand
1 Traitorous Instinct
1 Gyre Sage (new)
1 Beast Within
1 Deathrite Shaman (great so far)
1 Nicol Bolas, Planeswalker (new)
Results
1 Glorious Anthem (probation)
1 Angelic Destiny (new)
1 Voidmage Prodigy (new)
1 Crystal Shard (probation)
1 Crypt Ghast (new)
1 The Abyss (probation)
1 Goblin Settler (probation)
1 Gyre Sage
1 Wolfir Silverheart (new)
• This was the first list that had cards on probation.
Results
1 Voidmage Prodigy
1 Crystal Shard (probation; great)
1 Crypt Ghast
1 Goblin Ruinblaster (new)
1 Skyshroud Elite (new)
1 Quirion Dryad (new)
1 Wolfir Silverheart
1 Eureka (probation)
1 Niv-Mizzet, Dracogenius (new)
Results
1 Skyshroud Elite
1 Quirion Dryad
1 Eureka (probation)
1 Goblin Ruinblaster
1 Niv-Mizzet, Dracogenius (good)
4 Squadron Hawk (new)
Results
1 Timetwister (probation)
1 Yawgmoth's Bargain (new)
1 Goblin Ruinblaster
1 Skyshroud Elite
1 Renegade Krasis (new)
1 Far//Away (new)
1 Sire of Insanity (new)
1 Voice of Resurgence (new)
1 Gaea's Cradle (new; good)
Results
1 Timetwister (probation)
1 Yawgmoth's Bargain (new)
1 Goblin Ruinblaster (good)
1 Renegade Krasis (new)
1 Hystrodon (new)
1 Far//Away (new)
1 Sire of Insanity (new)
1 Voice of Resurgence (new)
1 Gaea's Cradle (new; good)
Results
1 Mistblade Shinobi (new)
1 Sakashima's Student (new)
1 Standstill (new)
1 Cemetery Reaper (new)
1 Stab Wound (new)
1 Pain's Reward (new)
1 Renegade Krasis
1 Hystrodon (good)
1 Momentary Blink (probation)
1 Sire of Insanity
1 Armada Wurm (probation)
Results
1 Spellstutter Sprite (new)
1 Mistblade Shinobi
1 Sakashima's Student
1 Standstill
1 Cemetery Reaper
1 Stab Wound
1 Young Pyromancer (new)
1 Hystrodon (good)
1 Lyev Skyknight
1 Momentary Blink (probation)
1 Sire of Insanity
1 Armada Wurm (probation)
Results pending
Last updated: 2013/july/15
RRR Like a Bosh!
WUB Sharuum Solar Flare
UBR Thraximundar Zombie Beatdown
Unusual cards:
Recommended cards:
RRR Like a Bosh!
WUB Sharuum Solar Flare
UBR Thraximundar Zombie Beatdown
4x Squadron Hawkincluded 2013/apr/203x Nissa's Chosen + 1x Nissa Revane
3x Arachnus Web + 1x Arachnus Spinner
Storm Package:
Mind's Desire, Brain Freeze, Tendrils of Agony, Empty the Warrens, High Tide, + enablers
Mill Package:
Mind Grind, Mesmeric Orb, Consuming Aberration, Riddlekeeper, Mirko Vosk, Mind Drinker, Sands of Delirium, Nephalia Drownyard, Sewer Nemesis
Artifact Abuse Package:
Tolarian Academy, Metalworker, Mishra's Workshop, Voltaic Key, Time Vault
RRR Like a Bosh!
WUB Sharuum Solar Flare
UBR Thraximundar Zombie Beatdown
Great pictures btw!
My 630 Card Powered Cube
My Article - "Cube Design Philosophy"
My Article - "Mana Short: A study in limited resource management."
My 50th Set (P)review - Discusses my top 20 Cube cards from OTJ!
Also, just got the cube comparison result and I'm uploading it to the third post right now. It seems that it is most similar to wtwlf's one (not surprisingly) and there are plenty of stuff for me to think about adding in my next update (most notably Fettergeist, since Serendib is such an important card for Ux tempo decks). Still welcoming suggestions on cool stuff to add.
RRR Like a Bosh!
WUB Sharuum Solar Flare
UBR Thraximundar Zombie Beatdown
This is a breakdown of archetypes and the winners in both drafts:
1st Draft:
UWB Aggro/Control
UR Control
BGW Rock
BR "Vampires" Aggro
2nd Draft:
UR Wildfire Control
GWR Naya Beatdown
Mono B Midrange
GWR Naya Ramp/Pod
(yes, there was a single player in both black and blue)
After each draft I talked to my players about the cards in the test pool to better access them and I could gather the following:
Champion of the Parish
MVP in the UWB aggro/control I played in the first round. It was at least a 2/2 and got to be 4/4 in at least one game. Even though it wasn't played in any of the decks in the second draft, he was brutal in the first one and really impressed me. It's not an autoinclude in any deck, but it was much better than I thought it would be. This has a great potential to be added to the main 566.
The deck also had the following humans to aid him out: Elite Vanguard, Accorder Paladin, High-Priest of Penance, Battlefield Medic, Ranger of Eos, and Snapcaster Mage. There might have been one or two other humans as well but I'm not sure.
AEther Spellbomb
I was pretty sure this would be a good card and it was even paired with Trinket Mage in the second draft in my UR Wildfire Control deck (was also played in the UR control in the first game). It has a modestly powerful effect and the turn it buys was always crucial for the control deck. Not sure I want this card in the 566, but it sure is good enough.
Fettergeist
I could only play against this card in the first draft (wasn't played in the second one). It was in the UR control deck and it did lots of awesome stuff: It was a great blocker agains early opposing threats from aggro decks and was a threat on its own against slower decks. I thought this would be extremely inferior to Serendib, but it looks like it is as close as a card can be these days. Will definitely want him in the cube in the future.
Mental Misstep
Was really unimpressed with the card. It countered a late Llanowar Elves and got pitched to Force of Will in the second draft, but that was it. I will keep it in the test pool for a while longer to see if it really shines somewhere.
Despise
Main decked each draft and was a valuable card whenever it was cast. I want it in the main, but will be tested a bit longer. Mostly because I'm not sure what to cut just yet.
Chandra, the Firebrand
Got picked and decked into the UR control in the first game and almost got played in the Naya Beatdown in the second draft (there was way too many 4-drops for this to go in). Didn't seem to get played though, so no data available for now.
Traitorous Instinct
It's a pretty narrow card, but is a great finisher in beatdown decks. Even if it doesn't outright kill the opponent, it messes with combat math, and the mere existence of the card poses a real threat. Also, it was played alongside Ulvenwald Tracker in Naya Beatdown the second game. Looks like it was fun, so i'll keep it in to test it a bit more.
Noxious Revival
Was always an uninteresting card to main deck and no deck seemed to want it. I will drop it from the test pool for now. Maybe I'll try it later in the future, but nobody seemed to like it.
Beast Within
Not enough data on this one, but players wanted this in. Will keep it in the pool to see where this goes. The players did wanted more answers to troublesome permanents though, so this might get into the cube as it is a good answer card.
Deathrite Shaman
It was not the powerhouse it could be because it wasn't played along with enough fetch lands, but everyone loved it and want it in. This will keep in the test pool for a while, but I will probably cut Putrefy for this.
So, most cards will be kept into the test pool for another round, but plenty of them are proving to be quite worthy. After all of this, my test pool will be the following:
1 Fettergeist (great so far)
1 Mental Misstep
1 Despise
1 Chandra, the Firebrand
1 Traitorous Instinct
1 Gyre Sage (new)
1 Beast Within
1 Deathrite Shaman (great so far)
1 Nicol Bolas, Planeswalker (new)
RRR Like a Bosh!
WUB Sharuum Solar Flare
UBR Thraximundar Zombie Beatdown
The one draft I remember (3-players winston draft):
WUR Battle Cry (had both Heros, Accorder's Palladin, lots of cheap creatures, removal and a sword)
GWU Bant Wake Control
BG Reanimator
Other interesting archetypes that got drafted:
UW Control
GWU Bant Ramp
UBR Bolas Control
UBR Flyers Aggro-Control
BRG Jund Beatdown
RGW Naya Beatdown
RGW Naya Planeswalkers
RGW Zoo
And a couple of WBRG Beatdown decks
(Yeah, Winston draft gets players to make lots of 3-colored decks)
Well, after all of this drafting, I got more feedback on my test pool cards and made some changes in my test pool:
Beast Within
Beast Within was picked pretty late and remained most of the time on sideboards. Players seems to like it, but nobody plays it. Maybe I can bring it back someday and see if people like it better then.
Mental Misstep and Traitorous Instict
Both had a huge main deck percentage and always did a little, but that liitle wasn't always enough. Even though Misstep could be played in virtually any deck, only blue decks picked it, and Traitorous Instict was always at its worse a 4-mana 4-damage spell(which wasn't bad for the decks it fits). I like both cards, but I want to let them out for a while to test new cards.
Gyre Sage
Not that great of a powerhouse but becomes a 3/4 very easily. The mana ability was irrelevant every time it was played, but it is a neat card. I will keep it for a while longer and maybe test Quirion Dryad later in it's place to see if it is still a good cube card.
Champion of the Parish, Fettergeist, Despise, Chandra, the Firebrand, Deathrite Shaman and Nicol Bolas, Planeswalker.
Each one of those cards were great role players (huge props to Fettergeist most of all) and were good enough that they went main. One interesting thing to note is that Nicol Bolas got cut from the test pool just after the first Grixis control deck based around him because it was already sure it would be main cubed.
So, on to the cube changes:
-Glorious Anthem¹ → +Champion of the Parish²
-Crystal Shard¹ → +Fettergeist²
-The Abyss¹ → Despise²
-Goblin Settler¹ → Chandra, the Firebrand²
-Zuran Orb³ → Nicol Bolas, Planeswalker²
-Bad River → Sunken Ruins
-Caves of Koilos → +Fetid Heath
-Putrefy → +Deathrite Shaman²
¹ = Card is now on probation
² = Card was on the test pool
³ = Card was on the watch list
From the cards that got replaced, one was in my watchlist for not doing enough (Zuran Orb), one I had already mentioned that could be replaced(Putrefy) and the other 4 cards are now in probation, which means that they have been taken to the test pool to better access their usefulness in the cube.
From the probation cards, Glorious Anthem and Crystal Shard seem to be severely underdrafted and almost never maindecked. They are now in the test pool to see if people like them enough to put them to good use.
Goblin Settler is a card that I never saw played before. Maybe it was never even in the draftable boosters. I know it looks good, but I want to put him into the test pool to access how good it really is and what strategies make it shine. After a while, I want to do some AB testing by putting Goblin Ruinblaster in his place to see if +1/+0 and haste makes up for not targeting basics and not being a good blink target.
The Abyss is a card that is extremely powerful and may have warped every game it was played. To be honest, I have never seen this card land in a deck that doesn't have either Bitterblossom or Moat (sometimes both before Moat got cutted). I want to see if this is actually that degenerate of a card and if so, I may cut it for something else. Personally, I like the card and would like for it to stay, but lets see how the cube handles this guy first.
About the two filter lands that got into the cube, I was planning to cut Bad River as UB tempo didn't like it very much when his lands got into play tapped (and UB hardly got the Bad River as there seems to be always someone else in B or U). I was between Sunken Ruins and Drowned Catacomb for the slot, but curving Counterspell into Geralf's Messenger seemed more interesting and the filter got the spot. Since Geralf is a great card in BW aggro as well and there are plenty of interesting cards for aggro that costs WW, Fetid Heath found it's place into the cube as well.
With all of the changes, the Test Pool had to be refactored. This is my current test pool now:
1 Glorious Anthem (probation)
1 Angelic Destiny (new)
1 Voidmage Prodigy (new)
1 Crystal Shard (probation)
1 Crypt Ghast (new)
1 The Abyss (probation)
1 Goblin Settler (probation)
1 Gyre Sage
1 Wolfir Silverheart (new)
• New cards have just been added to the test pool for some testing.
• Probation cards were in the cube and are now being tested for their real impact in drafts and deckbuilding.
• Cards noted as great have a good chance to find a place in the main cube.
As always, any kind of feedback is appreciated, specially on post formatting and text length (these posts are becoming unintentionally huge). This thread needs more posts not written by me
Also, I'l see if I update the pictures sometime this week...
RRR Like a Bosh!
WUB Sharuum Solar Flare
UBR Thraximundar Zombie Beatdown
As always, any feedback is appreciated.
Also, I hadn't had the time to upload my pictures since last update, so I'll see if I do it this week.
Test Pool results:
From my old test pool, The Abyss got cut pretty quickly. After a draft, I knew that it was too polarizing of a card. A few notes about the card:
So, with all of this in mind, The Abyss was completely cut from the cube. As everything else that goes away for being too powerful (Moat), it may be back if it seems that there are enough answers in the cube that are fast enough and that don't require anyone to go through too many loops to play.
Glorious Anthem was also on probation and was also cut. It didn't get played even though it wasn't a very late pick. There seems to be so many better options right now that the anthem became obsolete.
Crystal Shard (also on probation) started to get some love now, so it will stay for a while longer.
Blind Obedience wasn't played enough and didn't do much when played.
Goblin Settler (another probation card) was also cut. It just didn't do much and/or didn't do it fast enough. In every situation it was played, Goblin Ruinblaster would have been a better card, so it's getting replaced to see if Ruinblaster is any good.
Gyre Sage was really good and was played a every time. It was like a little Tarmogoyf that tapped for mana once in a while. It was cut from the pool so I can test Quirion Dryad in its place. Whichever is best might get a place in the cube, as Gyre Sage has gotten some fans among my players.
There is not enough data on the other cards in the test pool so far.
Current test pool is now the following:
1 Voidmage Prodigy
1 Crystal Shard (probation; great)
1 Crypt Ghast
1 Goblin Ruinblaster (new)
1 Skyshroud Elite (new)
1 Quirion Dryad (new)
1 Wolfir Silverheart
1 Eureka (probation)
1 Niv-Mizzet, Dracogenius (new)]
I'm particularly interested in seeing how Skyshroud Elite plays, as my players tend to value mana fixing pretty high and decks usually have about 4-9 nonbasics (with a few having way more than that)
Cube changes:
There was another card in the Test Pool that was added between anouncements: Natural Order has replaced The Abyss for the last batch of drafts and did really well. Yes, I didn't have NO in my Cube already. As I thought it would be, it has earned a spot in the cube. It has switched places with Eureka, that is now on probation.
RRR Like a Bosh!
WUB Sharuum Solar Flare
UBR Thraximundar Zombie Beatdown
Cube changes:
Thinning artifact section:
Razormane Masticore → Revoke Existence
Wanted more answers to noncreature permanents. War Priest of Thune and Kami of the Ancient Law were also considered.
Karn, Silver Golem → Psionic Blast
Wanted a card that was better for aggro/tempo than for good in control. I saw Psionic Blast in a couple of other lists an thought I should give it a try.
Triskelion → Faerie Macabre
Was thinking of adding any kind of sideboard card for this slot. Thought about discard and was between Cabal Therapy and Apetite for Brains, then I saw the faerie and imagined that more decks could want to have her than the discards.
Wayfarer's Bauble → Hearth Kami
Wanted another artifact hate card. Was between Kami and Smash to Smithereens. I chose the Kami because it is more maindeckable. Also, Bauble is a painful cut, as I really enjoyed the card.
Gilded Lotus → Viridian Zealot
You can never have enough answers for trouble permanents. There wasn't much contest for this spot. Nature's Claim was considered, but I feel Zealot will play better.
Other changes:
Welkin Tern → Azure Mage
Not sure about this change. I wanted to keep this slot as an aggro 2-drop, but blue doesn't have many. I considered Coralhelm Commander but I don't have one right now. Azure helps Champion of the Parish and, if Voidmage Prodigy ends up going from test pool to main cube, Azure Mage only gets better.
Sinkhole → Wrench Mind
It's weird but Sinkhole was very late picked and nobody seemed to want it maindeck. I believe Wrench Mind will be beloved by more decks than Sinkhole was, even if it is not a strictly better card.
Magma Spray → Pillar of Flame
When I added Spray, I thought it could be a neat card for red control and also an ok sideboard card against annoying recurring creatures that might give the deck some trouble. Turns out that being instant wasn't really impressive, plus, Pillar might take care of planeswalkers as well.
Deathbridge Goliath → Obstinate Baloth
I believe that Baloth will be more beloved by blink decks and whenever the green player goes against aggro.
Torrent of Souls → Olivia Voldaren
Torrent of Souls was to expensive for both Reanimator and as a finisher for aggro decks. Olivia seems like one of the few bomb-ish cards that doesn't force you directly into drafting control, so I want to see how she plays out. Terminate was also considered for this spot.
Obzedat, Ghost Council → Gerrard's Verdict
Players were expressing some concer over Obzedat because it was way to hard to remove him. I didn't think it was that troubling, but BW and Esper already got plenty of good finishers and could go without this one. Verdict seems to be a staple that was missing from the cube, so in it goes. Unburial Rites and Angel of Despair were considered as well.
As always, any feedback on these changes is highly appreciated.
RRR Like a Bosh!
WUB Sharuum Solar Flare
UBR Thraximundar Zombie Beatdown
(list not current)
My Cube Google Docs Spreadsheet: https://spreadsheets.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AibgWfz0ukmOdDNhOHlucjcxUi1wVy00NDhLbDUtUlE&hl=en_US#gid=8
(list is always current)
I'd cut Trading Post or Ulamog before Razormane. I'd run all three Masticores in any cube bigger than ~450.
I think Faerie Macabre will be a wasted slot. I don't understand what's not to love about Sinkhole. Do people just not play black aggro or black stax?
I'd play Daze, Standstill, and Tolarian Academy before any of the blue cards you are adding, although there's nothing wrong with Psi Blast.
I'm neutral on the green changes. I wasn't impressed with Baloth but Deadbridge hasn't really done much of anything for me.
I think Gerrard's Verdict is a more important card for WB even if Obzedat seems more powerful. Verdict is perfect for WB aggro.
Cheers,
rant
My Cube
CubeCobra: https://cubecobra.com/cube/overview/5f5d0310ed602310515d4c32
Cube Tutor: http://cubetutor.com/viewcube/1963
About rant's disagreements:
I do like the Razormane Masticore and I think it is a great card, but it occupies a slot in my cube that plenty of other cards already occupy in a better fashion, which is of aggro deterrant for control and midrange decks. Trading Post and Ulamog, on the other hand, are playing different roles:
• Trading Post is a great piece for artifacts deck and provides different functionalities that are beloved by many decks (mostly combo, but control also enjoys it). It kinda plays Razormane's role as well, but it is a less obvious and more interactive card that tends to make games more fun than the Masticore, as it demands more skill to be used successfully.
• Ulamog is a key combo card for Channel, Eureka, Sneak Attack and Show and Tell. These combo decks are fun to draft and fun to pilot, so I'm not likely to cut Ula out in the near future.
I'm not sure why people didn't play Sinkhole more often as it clearly is a powerful card. I have seen both MonoBlack and Pox being put together, so I have no idea why it was such an underrated card. I think it is a card that might come back in the future so I could test it out again and see if players value it differently.
I guess that Faerie Macabre might really be a stub after we play it. I'll try it a couple of drafts to see how it goes. I might swap it with Withered Wretch if that is the case.
From the blue cards mentioned, I have Standstill in my queue for the test pool and I already play Daze. I had Tolarian Academy in the cube for the two weeks between me building the cube and posting it here and it was mostly unimpressive, along with most artifacts-oriented cards. I could see a case for bringing it back along with Metalworker to see how that turns out, so I'll note it on my Test Pool Ideas and Packages List™.
Deadbridge was actually a good card for us, but I guess Baloth will be more interesting and will lead to more different decks. I hope Veredict does the same as Obzedat was only just another Esper finisher.
Also, rant and I are Bosh-buddies
RRR Like a Bosh!
WUB Sharuum Solar Flare
UBR Thraximundar Zombie Beatdown
I had Withered Wretch in my cube and it was not good. I just don't think most groups need much graveyard hate. It's usually not worth a slot.
Cheers,
rant
My Cube
CubeCobra: https://cubecobra.com/cube/overview/5f5d0310ed602310515d4c32
Cube Tutor: http://cubetutor.com/viewcube/1963
URB Grixis Control
BW Pox (Green splash for Pernicious Deed)
URB Sneak Attack/Reanimate Combo
BG Beatdown
RW Boros Beatdown
I also got some more intel from the test pool to make some changes to it. I had a couple of winston drafts a while ago that I didn't report here that also helped with the following evaluations.
Crypt Ghast
This card has been mostly unnimpressive to everyone I play with. I haven't seen anyone play this card. It is a bit unfair evaluating a card that hasn't been played, but the card was always very late picked and never maindecked, so I'm ok cutting it from my test pool. Heck, I was playing Bw today and I didn't want this card main-decked, so this is definitely a miss.
Wolfir Silverheart
This card has been main-decked every single draft as far as I remember. Overall, it is a great midrange/beatdown creature for green, so I'm moving this to the main list now in place of Thornling.
Angelic Destiny
I have been pretty impressed by this card. Players seemed to value this highly and it is a great pick to push white aggro early in the draft. I tend to value cards that pull to aggro builds as there are too many cards that auto-pilot the draft into a control build.
You might have thought that this would mean that I would pull this right into the cube, but right now my white is far too heavy in the 4-drop department and I have a dent in 3-drops, so I can't afford to put it in until I rebalance my curve. I was thinking about switching this for Spectral Procession, I'm not sure it would be a very good replacement. I would love some feedback on how to rebalance my curve and to include this card
Niv-Mizzet, Dracogenius
This card has been played far more than I expected. Haven't seen him in a wildfire build yet where I thought it would shine the most (haven't seen many wildfire builds in genral, though). I am leaving it in the test pool for a while longer, until I see what is new for UR in Dragon's Maze, but he is very likely to replace Desolated Lighthouse.
Voidmage Prodigy
I don't really have much data on this card, but it has been a good card for blue. I enjoy giving blue some aggro/tempo cards and Kai Budde here is a neat card for blue. I really want to see him in a UW shell along with Delver of Secrets and Champion of the Parish, but it hasn't happened yet. Maybe it will take the slot of Waterfront Bouncer in the future, but I want him in the test pool for a while longer to make sure he has a place in the cube.
Crystal Shard
This card is taking a break from the test pool because I needed a slot in the test pool. Overall, it wasn't a very strong card and didn't fit into many decks. I believe this will get back into the test pool after Dragon's Mage, after my little test pool experiment.
So, my list of changes for the cube is the following:
- Thornling¹ → + Wolfir Silverheart²
- Faerie Macabre → + Withered Wretch
- Wildfire → + Burning of Xinye
¹ Card was in the Watch List
² Card was in the Test Pool
Faerie Macabre wasn't really all that good as a sideboard card and the only reason this was played once was because the player was lacking 3-drops. I feel like the Wretch will get a lot more love, not only because he is an effective hate bear, but because he is far more likely to be main-decked and because he is a zombie and Gravecrawler loves his dead buddies. As a side note, Gravecrawler has been proven today to be a very good reason to keep playing Tidehollow Sculler.
As for the Wildfire, I hadn't traded for the second Wildfire until now and was using a Burning of Xinye proxy all along, so I'll change my list to reflect that.
Also, my test pool is now the following:
1 Skyshroud Elite
1 Quirion Dryad
1 Eureka (probation)
1 Goblin Ruinblaster
1 Niv-Mizzet, Dracogenius (good)
4 Squadron Hawk (new; package)
I'm looking forward to utilizing one of the ideas that I had previously noted for my test pool. Hawk Pool is going to be a brief experiment that I believe will be a lot of fun.
Another thing that happend this week in my cube is that I replaced all my printed proxies with foil proxies that I printed this week. They are not as good looking as real cards, but they are pretty enough. Since I'm not retaking all cube pictures just now, here is a preview picture of all my new proxies:
RRR Like a Bosh!
WUB Sharuum Solar Flare
UBR Thraximundar Zombie Beatdown
1st Draft:
BW Aggro
BG Midrange/Beatdown
BG Midrange/Ramp
BUG Eureka/Show and Tell/Reanimator Combo
Mono R aggro
WUB Esper Control
2nd Draft:
GW Midrange
2x WUB Esper Control
BR Zombies Aggro
Notes on the test pool:
Eureka:
After the first draft, I got Eureka switched for Gaea's Cradle in the test pool, since Eureka had obviously done what it had to. The combo deck could get some very early wins out of luck, but building it is not an easy task (for the record: I was piloting the combo deck and got a 3-2 record on the draft). The deck is fun to draft and to play with and is not overwhelmingly powerful. I definitely want to support this kind of strategy in my cube and Eureka adds to the mass of cards needed for a combo deck, so it is going to the main list.
The main reason Eureka was in probation after all was because I didn't think the card was necessary for a "cheating creatures" combo deck to exist, as Show and Tell and Sneak Attack were pretty good at that. Eureka happens to be in the same color as Channel and Tooth and Nails, making it easier for the combo deck to be built. It also helps that you can eventually ramp and hardcast your eldrazi titans using green ramp, and the fact that you can cheat planeswalkers like Karn Liberated or Nicol Bolas, Planeswalker (which helps in drafting if the eldrazi titans are not available in the draft pool).
I do have some players that are not very fond of the card, but the fact that the combo decks are not dominating, are hard to build, and are fun to draft all contribute for me to keep these kind of cards around (the fact that players other than me have shown interest in building these type of decks also helps).
4x Squadron Hawk:
Nobody enjoyed the Squadron Hawks. Each player offered plenty of reasons to why they weren't playing it over anything else and even the player that had two swords in the deck found better beaters. Even with all 4 hawks always being available at all drafts, players also expressed some concern about having to pick 3 or more of those to end up playing them.
I guess I could have handled the Hawk test package better. Having about 6 hawks plus support cards would probably have yielded better results (maybe adding extra swords to the test pool). I will have to give a better treatment to my next test pool packages to ensure that something new and interesting happens. I hope I have more luck with the archetype-based test pools in the future and get more lessons on how to handle this, as it was one of the reasons that I adhered to the test pool in the first place.
Quirion Dryad:
I added the dryad to the list to see how much it compared to a similar card that was in the test pool: Gyre Sage. Both cards do play in completely different decks, but their similarities made me want to AB test 'em before settling on any of those for the main list.
The veredict is that Gyre Sage will be added to the main pool! As Gyre was a mini-CARD]tarmogoyf[/CARD]ish card for any midrange/beatdown cards, Dryad would only shine on UG tempo decks. Gyre also led to more interesting scenarios and plays than Quirion.
Gaea's Cradle:
Added just after the first draft and before the second, the land is doing some lifting here. It got into the best possible deck for it to be (GW midrange with lots of creatures). I'm eager to see how this will play out, especially because I had removed Cradle from my initial list after nobody playing the card after a good number of drafts.
Niv-Mizzet, Dracogenius:
As expected, the card has replaced Desolate Lighthouse in my list.
Cube changes:
With DMZ in the mix, I had plenty of changes to make, so I used this opportunity to also take away some underperformers. Some of the changes here make the colors have an uneven amount of cards, but I'm ok with color imbalance in my list as it never affects drafts if the imbalance amount is low.
My complete list of changes is the following:
White:
-Weathered Wayfarer → +Exalted Angel
As I transported my list to a Google Docs Spreadsheet, I perceived that I was missing a 3-drop creature in white, so I'm taking out an underperforming controlish creature for what I believe will be a card beloved by any type of white deck. White was also the only color missing a morph creature, so I hope this makes things a bit more surprising when Boros lays down a morph.
-Catastrophe → +Pacifism
Pacifism is a decent piece of removal that can be played by low-mana decks and stops game-ending bombs like the 5 titans, the unnoficial titan and the other titans.
Blue:
-Timetwister → +Coralhelm Commander
Timetwister was already in my watch list for underperforming. I'm moving it to the test pool on probation and filling the void with a card that might help blue creature decks.
-Control Magic → +Wake Thresher
Blue control decks are far too easy to be built because blue tends to have some pretty powerful cards that makes some picks very automatic. From the tools in a blue control deck have, one of the most powerful is control magic type of effects. Control Magic was neither the most powerful nor the weakest of these type of effects, but it was the least interesting card, so I'm taking it away to reduce the density of this type of effect and switching to a card that helps a different type of archetype.
-Enclave Cryptologist → +Voidmage Prodigy
Cryptologist was another underperforming card that is freeing a slot to another creature-oriented blue card.
-Waterfront Bouncer → +Sygg, River Cutthroat
Another underperforming card, this time freeing a slot off-color. I hope Sygg provides an interesting option for black and/or blue aggressive strategies.
Black:
-Death Cloud → +Blood Scrivener
It seems that Death Cloud was unnecessary to support pox/stax decks as they had already plenty of tools to work with. Cloud was also not usable in pretty much any other archetype. I played Scrivener in a draft this weekend and I know how hard it is for control decks to abuse this, but if the game grinds for some time it is not hard to activate it. I believe aggro decks will have an easier time playing this guy.
Red:
-Shrine of Burning Rage → +Pyrewild Shaman
Shrine was underperforming even in mono red decks. Pyrewild was probably the
first cardspoiled that had me looking for a spot to fit in the cube (second to Ral Zarek, actually).-Rivalry → Zo-zu, the Punisher
I believe the main reason for Rivalry not being played is because red players didn't quite saw this as Sulfuric Vortex #2. Zo-zu punishes pretty much the same thing as Rivalry. I believe that, overall, the goblin might do more damage in a game, so lets see how it plays out.
Green:
-Green Sun's Zenith → +Eureka
Underperforming card. Also, read test pool comment about Eureka.
Artifacts:
-Black Vise → +Pithing Needle #2
Even though the damage potential of the vise is pretty high, it was an easy card to play around. Pithing Needle is a great answer to plenty of powerful cards that has been maindecked time after time. I don't think any deck will be happy to run 2 of those and neither will be picked early, but it is a card that does something great and I'm happy to make it more available to the players.
-Mortarpod → +Gyre Sage
Didn't want to cut any green card and Mortarpod wasn't played too much. For all this time, I think that Blasting Station could be a better card that Mortarpod ever was in the cube, so I'll see if I trade for one to put it in my test pool.
-Erratic Portal → +Spike Jester
The removal of Erratic Portal is pretty much a nail on Crystal Shard's coffin. The card was underperforming as well. I was going to take out Rakdos Shred-Freak for the Jester, but I believe this was a more useful replacement.
Multicolored:
-Absorb → +Sphinx's Revelation
Absorb was a neat card but blue is already bloated with counterspells and any WU deck has plenty of ways to survive the early game without Absorb. Drawing cards is always fun, so let's hope Sphinx's Revalation is a fun card to play with.
-Vithian Renegades → +Savageborn Hydra
I thinned my artifact section and added more artifact removal in both red and green in the past month or so, so I'm replacing the renegades with a more suitable beater.
-Desolate Lighthouse → +Niv-Mizzet, Dracogenius
I really hated the Lighthouse and it seemed to make UR decks worst by keeping them out of colored mana so they had access to an effect that they would most likely never use. Even Grixis Reanimator or combo had better things to do with their mana than activate Lighthouse. Niv has tested well in the pool, so it was now allowed in the main list.
-Steamcore Weird → +Ral Zarek
Ral demanded a sot and Steamcore was my 2nd less favourite card. It was a great tool to buy some time against aggressive decks, but Ral can do pretty much the same thing and a bit more for the same mana cost.
-Aurelia's Fury → +Firemane Avenger
While the Fury was an interesting card for a possible WR control build or as a finisher in beatdown decks, aggressive cards could always use another early pick card, and Avenger fits the bill.
After all of these changes, my new test pool is the following:
1 Timetwister (probation)
1 Yawgmoth's Bargain (new)
1 Goblin Ruinblaster
1 Renegade Krasis (new)
1 Far//Away (new)
1 Sire of Insanity (new)
1 Voice of Resurgence (new)
1 Gaea's Cradle (new; good)
Mostly I want to try some new cards for the edition. There is another batch of cards from DMZ that I want to put through the test pool, but Griffin Guide was in the wait list for a long time (along with Standstill, which I haven't traded for yet). I also wanted an opportunity to play with my foil Bargain, since it has been sitting in my binder doing nothing since I've bought it a few years ago.
RRR Like a Bosh!
WUB Sharuum Solar Flare
UBR Thraximundar Zombie Beatdown
My 450 Cube
Breakdown from the Winston draft:
UBR Delver/Bob Aggro/Tempo (2-0){e}
WRU Aggro (1-1)
UBR splashing WG Planeswalker Control (0-2)
I did switched a couple of cards from the list and one from my test pool after some consideration, though, so here are the changes:
Guild cards
- Sulfuric Springs → + Graven Cairns
- Llanowar Wastes → + Twilight Mire
I was thinking about adding Darkcleave Cliffs for BR for a while and was already forseeing adding Twilight Mire to the list since I added Sunken Ruins. I decided to add the Cairns instead for the same reasons that I was considering the Mire (namely, Geralf's Messenger and Necropotence). The scars land had the advantage of being more valuable for aggro and maybe be overlooked by any control players, but I know my players value mana fixing a lot and it would probably not matter much. Also, all the BBB cards suddenly seems to be one step closer to being easily castable.
On the test pool:
Goblin Ruinblaster
This guy was pretty much a blast in playtesting. People loved it so much more than Goblin Settler and it was even casted without kicker at least once to put some pressure. My only problem right now is finding a slot for him in my cube, so suggestions are welcome. If you would like to give a suggestion, it would be great if you would check out my spreadsheet to see if it wouldn't impact my curves so much.
Skyshroud Elite
I don't think this guy was relevant to any player at all during their drafts, and we did had green aggressive decks being played while this guy was around. In the end, I guess green aggro doesn't need this guy as it has more reliable 1-drops to play. Right now I am more concerned in giving green another interesting 3-drop to get my curve fixed, so Hystrodon is stepping right into this spot.
So, with this swap, my test pool is now the following:
[spoiler=Current]
[spoiler=Picture]
1 Timetwister (probation)
1 Yawgmoth's Bargain (new)
1 Goblin Ruinblaster (good)
1 Renegade Krasis (new)
1 Hystrodon (new)
1 Far//Away (new)
1 Sire of Insanity (new)
1 Voice of Resurgence (new)
1 Gaea's Cradle (new; good)
Oh yes, I have also updated all my cube pictures, so go check it out if you like cool foils and alters (and pictures that are somewhat blurry due to photographer's incompetence)! Heck, even my proxies are foil now!
RRR Like a Bosh!
WUB Sharuum Solar Flare
UBR Thraximundar Zombie Beatdown
Hey Rellik, hadn't seen your post until now. Sorry for that :/
So, players were mostly using to try and reset their ETB effects and sometimes as a defensive measure against big mana decks. I guess I've seen them in UB, UR and UG builds, but Bant Blink-ish Midrange decks that would theoreticaly be their main homes would never play them because they had much better stuff to do with their mana.
The last deck that I saw that used it was a UB that had at least Man-o'-War and either Nekrataal or Skinrender (can't remember which now) but, even then, the deck didn't survive the disruption/aggression of the other decks.
The problem is that both cards were too slow compared to what all the other decks were accomplishing in the meantime, so people started evaluating them lower, they got eventually renegated to the last picks and lastly Crystal Shard was sent to probation. While on probation, the shard was played but never rended enough value to the caster.
As with Sinkhole (another universally appraised card that got dismissed by the players), I might return it to my test pool in the future to see if my players see the card through different lenses. Right now, though, I'd rather use the slots to try other things with the cube.
RRR Like a Bosh!
WUB Sharuum Solar Flare
UBR Thraximundar Zombie Beatdown
I haven't noted any archetype breakdowns for a long while, but I can remember at least 3 Esper controls and one UWR Tempo/Control and maybe one GW Midrange and a random aggro deck going 3-0 in my drafts, so you can see the list was a bit skewed towards blue-white-based control. I'd like to have more aggressive decks 3-0ing my drafts as well, so you might see that most of the changes I'm making are meant to power down the control decks and giving more love to aggressive strategies (U-based aggro/tempo especially).
Test pool analysis:
Goblin Ruinblaster, Gaea's Cradle, Far//Away and Voice of Resurgence
Amazing. Everybody loved them and were main decked most of the time.
Timetwister
Interestingly enough, the lowest of the Power 9 has never impressed anyone and no deck wanted to play it. It was already on probation and is now going away. Time Spiral on the other hand has constantly impressed us and played major role on very interesting decks and is nowhere near being cut if anyone is curious.
Hystrodon
Has been maindecked more than Renegade Krasis and is the best choice so far for being my new green 3-drop (right now my green curve has too many 5-drops and too little 3-drops, and Hystro is curiously both). In case you have any suggestions for any other green three drop that I'm not playing right now, please do tell me. Suggestions for cuts in 5-drops are also welcome (right now I'm looking at Indrik Stomphowler as my favoured cut).
List Changes:
(Also on CubeTutor!)
- Revoke Existence → + Imposing Sovereign
- Magus of the Moat → + Banisher Priest
- Capsize → + Kira, Great Glass-Spinner
- Consacrated Sphinx → + Cursecatcher
- Impulse → + Cloud of Faeries (Test Pool Slot)
- Shelldock Isle³ → + Ninja of the Deep Hours
- Tooth and Nails → + Gush
- Nekrataal → + Liliana's Reaver
- Living Death → + Wasteland #2
- Bloodline Keeper → + Fulminator Mage
- Vampire Nighthawk → + Cemetery Reaper (Test Pool Slot)
- Burning of Xynie → + Goblin Ruinblaster²
- Rolling Earthquake → + Hell's Thunder
- Kargan Dragonlord → + Burst Lightning
- Chandra, the Firebrand → + Chandra, Pyromaster
- Terastodon → + Gaea's Cradle²
- Fyndhorn Elves → + Elvish Mystic
- Momentary Blink → + Lyev Skyknight
- Forbidden Alchemy¹ → + Far//Away²
- Armada Wurm¹ → + Voice of Resurgence²
- High-Priest of Penance → + Stillmoon Cavalier
- Niv-Mizzet, Dracogenius → + Turn//Burn
¹ = Card in now on probation
² = Card was in the test pool
³ = Card was in the watch list
I'm not going into details on my changes, but most of the cards removed where either reduntant control-oriented cards or unimpressive late-pick cards that would be better of as something else. Some cards I wasn't completely sure about how well will they fare, so they are honorary test pool cards for the time beign.
The new test pool is the following:
1 Mistblade Shinobi (new)
1 Sakashima's Student (new)
1 Standstill (new)
1 Cemetery Reaper (new)
1 Stab Wound (new)
1 Pain's Reward (new)
1 Renegade Krasis
1 Hystrodon (good)
1 Momentary Blink (probation)
1 Sire of Insanity
1 Armada Wurm (probation)
Well, after all of this, I think I have to announce that this might as well be my last update for a long time. I'll be moving to Denmark next month to study and my cards will be staying with my friend, the co-owner of my collection. I think I'll have some time to play with my cube until then, but I also have a secondary cube list (my discussion thread is in another forum) that I have been dying to try and I can't because there are too many cards overlapping with my regular cube list.
RRR Like a Bosh!
WUB Sharuum Solar Flare
UBR Thraximundar Zombie Beatdown
Yesterday we did two 4-people drafts. Here is the breakdown of archetypes and win-ratio:
(players ordered by table position)
1st Draft:
1/1 — RW Boros Aggro (Rafael)
2/0 — UG Ramp (Carlos)
1/1 —BWR Tokens and Removal Midrange (Vince)
0/2 — BR Aggro/Reanimator (Henrique)
We played only two rounds because one of the players had to leave. Luckily, we found a fourth player for our second draft.
1 Scavenging Ooze
1 Gyre Sage
1 Lotus Cobra
1 Mana Drain
1 Channel
1 Into the Roil
1 Edric, Spymaster of Trest
1 Somberwald Sage
1 Hystrodon
1 Mimic Vat
1 Oracle of Mul Daya
1 Solemn Simulacrum
1 Sower of Temptation
1 Dungeon Geists
1 Sakashima's Student
1 Master of the Wild Hunt
1 Garruk Wildspeaker
1 Deep Analysis
1 Kozilek, Butcher of Truth
1 Garruk, Primal Hunter
1 Bribery
1 Misty Rainforest
10 Forest
7 Island
3/0 — WUB Esper Control (Carlos)
1/2 — BR Beatdown (Henrique)
2/1 — GB Rec/Sur Midrange (Vince)
0/3 — UB Tempo Ramp (Renan)
1 Ancestral Recall
1 Mystical Tutor
1 Path to Exile
1 Swords to Plowshares
1 Tidehollow Sculler
1 Gilded Drake
1 Baleful Strix
1 Remand
1 Diabolic Edict
1 Gerrard's Verdict
1 Flickerwisp
1 Willbender
1 Jace Beleren
1 Necropotence
1 Vindicate
1 Mortify
1 Stab Wound
Four:
1 Jace, The Mind Sculptor
1 Wrath of God
1 Faith's Fetters
1 Creeping Tar Pit
1 Isolated Chapel
1 Tundra
7 Island
4 Swamp
4 Plains
First draft was interesting because a fairly underdrafted archetype got to be the winner. Ramp faced Boros in the "finals". I was half-expecting Boros to be the winner since it was extremely fast, but the UG deck had a lot of incremental advantage and Boros didn't had many removal spells and the creatures weren't as evasive as they should.
BR is also a combination that is always underrated and it was good to see someone try to play with it (both; results weren't so good, unfortunately). Esper Control still looks like it is the deck to beat in the cube. I can't really say it was a regular draft since we had fewer players than usual and Esper got to be the only player in white (and the pool had a lot of great removal for white). Still, there is a lot to be said for the consistency of this color combination.
Test Pool Results:
Pain's Reward:
This card has been completely awful in playtesting. Ok, it was a 3-mana 10+ damage spell a couple of times, but even then, drawing cards would be miles better and the cards the opponent drew were usually what made the caster lose the game. I should probably test this a bit more to have more data before letting this card go ( BR would theoretically love this). This card was in the tokens and then in the UB deck, and it has been much worse than anticipated and I'm cutting it from the test pool.
Renegade Krasis:
This guy has been an underperformer for a good while. He was in my test pool because I'm planning on taking a 5-drop and replace it with a 3-drop to make my green mana curve a bit smoother, but krasis' test nemesis (Hystrodon) has been miles ahead. Hytro will likely being included to the main list in the near future. Krasis on the other hand, is going back to the binder.
Test Pool Changes:
- Pain's Reward ? + Spellstutter Sprite
- Renegade Krasis ? + Young Pyromancer
Lyev Skyknight has been promoted to a honorary test pool slot.
Both Young Pyro and Spellstutter were in my radar to be tested for a while and now they've got a chance to shine.
Lyev Skyknight was added in place of Momentary Blink in my main list as I moved the instant to my test pool. I usually do this to cards that are underperforming or being low-picked to raise availability (test pool cards are included in every draft) and verify if the card is truly underperforming or it just hadn't had time to shine (I call this probation and I do it constantly). The thing is, I had no idea how well it would play. I believed (and still do) that it would fit :u::w: archetypes very well, but right now I want to see it being played, and the best way of assuring a card will see play is to make it available, so this is why it is now in my test pool.
There were no changes to the main list with the exception of Lyev Skyknight going to the test pool.
So, after this post, I'll be moving my reports on changes and stuff to my thread at the RiptideLab. RiptideLab is a relatively new community for cube drafters that tend to have a very open mind to new ideas for cube drafting (even though there is some aversion to a few old ones) and I've been really enjoying the community there. I'll see if I post here every once in a while, but I'm no longer going to fully update my list here.
RRR Like a Bosh!
WUB Sharuum Solar Flare
UBR Thraximundar Zombie Beatdown