I hadn't thought about the hand-clogging factor, so I'll keep that in mind as we play with the current list.
I've mentioned it before, but about 1/3 of my cubing is 2HG sealed, where the chances of there not being an enemy target for these value creatures are much lower than in normal 1v1. I'm not going out of my way to add in purely multiplayer cards, but I think my lineup is better suited overall to my playgroup.
I'm not sure any of the red shatter dudes are maindeck worthy against an unknown deck in game one, and I'd rather have Vandal or Scrapmelter in games two and three. I want my Goblin Pikers to have a combat-relevant ability - a vanilla 2/1 is outclassed by too much these days.
White
+Spectral Procession
+Embolden
+Basilica Guards
+Rally the Peasants
+Benalish Cavalry
+Knight of Obligation
-Blinding Beam
-Dawn Charm
-Icatian Javelineer
-Intangible Virtue
-Raise the Alarm
-Ballynock Cohort
Even though I finally got a copy of Spectral Procession, I'm taking out the explicit token support in exchange for a more generic combat pump with Rally the Peasants. Veteran Swordsmith is down to just 11 Soldier targets to pump in white, so unless there are some good soldiers in DGM or M14, she will likely get the axe soon. I'm also pushing extort hard, as you'll see in black as well.
Blue
+Miscalculation
+Standstill
+Ray of Command
+Dominate
-Memory Lapse
-Favorable Winds
-Undo
-Niblis of the Breath
I had yet to see Favorable Winds get played since the inception of my cube, so I felt it was time for it to go.
Black
+Basilica Screecher
+Ravenous Skirge
+Wall of Souls
-Blind Creeper
-Necrogen Scudder
-Twisted Abomination
I think an extort/bleeder strategy might work better for black control than trying to find single powerful finishers. Bloodhunter Bat, Blood Artist, Falkenrath Noble, and Circle of Affliction are all on the watchlist to be added.
Red
+Genju of the Spires
+Viashino Slaughtermaster
-Goblin Arsonist
Red gets an extra card due to cuts in the hybrid section.
Green
+Crocanura
+Acidic Slime
+Village Survivors
-Indric Stomphowler
-Vital Splicer
Green also gets an extra due to hybrid cuts. Put in Slime for Stomphowler due to Leelue's commant that Slime is never dead due to being able to hit lands if there are no other targets. Stomphowler may come back in for something if I feel there's not enough Naturalize effects.
Krasis is coming in due to a lack of interest in Simic tempo decks. Torrent of Souls is cool. Blind Hunter is a temporary placeholder until I get a Kingpin's Pet from a friend, but might stay in place of Mortify if I really want to push the extort/bleeder archetype in Orzhov.
Hybrid
+Curse of Chains
-Tattermunge Maniac
-Firespout
I miscalculated my hybrid section, so I need to either add one green and one red card and cut two colorless, or cut one from white, blue, and black and add three colorless. It's not a huge imbalance at the moment, so it may be a week or two until I come up with a set of swaps I like.
-----
Here are some cards I'm looking at to support a bleeder archetype in black:
Hmm... I like both of those cards as well. They seem interesting, giving black a fun type of reach. Definitely keep me posted on how those 2 perform. I may give them a shot myself.
Stab wound's general defectiveness doesn't disappear because you're supporting this archetype. Or at least I don't see why it would. Unless you included more evasive guys so the stabbed creature can't block and more walls so the stabbed creature has no reason to attack, it's always going to be overcosted for what it's doing.
Siphon life, on the other hand, worked modestly well for me during its time here and I don't have any problem with it. For what it's worth, I don't think you strictly need cards that "steal" life to support this. You are basically just killing them over time while keeping yourself alive with the same cards (usually). This means that you don't need to run a finisher, but instead chip them to death while making their clock to kill you hard to beat. Azorious herald is the perfect example of this. For something less playable but emphasizes my point, you have lobber crew. They each do "the same" thing.
Just posting to say that I think this is an awesome starter cube for someone like me who is just getting into cubing. I built this from scratch almost card-for-card, with the only tweaks being
-Wildsize
-Elusive Krasis
+Farseek
+Etched Oracle
And the only reason I made this tweak is because Oracle is probably my all-time favorite card and I just had to find room for it in the cube, even though it seems like most people cut it because it never works out.
I'll be following your updates closely and will keep you posted on any other changes I make for your consideration.
Thanks for the vote of confidence! I hope you and your playgroup have fun with it. Let me know how it works for you, since you may actually get to cube more often than I do.
Your swaps look fine since Wildsize is probably coming out of my cube soon anyway. Is there a reason you cut a Simic card for a generic multicolor artifact or are you okay with just having two pure cards in that guild pair?
I cut the Simic card to make room for the Etched Oracle for a couple reasons, but primarily because it was the least exciting G/X gold card to me, and I figured any deck that is going to want Etched Oracle is going to be green-based so it seemed like a reasonable swap.
Yes, we're the same person, so thanks for the shout out! I don't get to cube as often or with as many people as I'd like, but I'll take what I can get.
Also, you're probably right about Wear//Tear being bad, I just try to be bullish on new cards. I'd rather test something and have it not work out than to dismiss a potential diamond in the rough.
I want new cards to be good as much as the next guy, but I feel like WR Disenchant effects already have cards like Duergar Hedge-Mage and Orim's Thunder which give you a much better Disenchant variant for the drawback of being restricted to a WR deck. Constructed will probably have more use for it than the cube will.
Agreed on Wear // Tear....I actually like duergar hedge-mage quite a bit, and it will probably come back into my cube if I ever go back to organizing hybrids as half of each of their respective colors.
Trostani's Summoner is the first auto-include spoiled so far. I think it's definitely in the top three Selesnya cards. Now that we've got some commons and uncommons spoiled, I'm going to start a Dragon's Maze watchlist in the OP.
One card I still don't quite understand in your list is Cavern Harpy. Is there some interaction I'm missing that you really like it for? It seems to me that the tempo hit you would suffer would outweigh its ability to protect itself and that, even if you don't want to throw in Baleful Strix, in most cases I think I'd still rather just have Tidehollow Strix.
I'll take this one my man. Cavern Harpy is insaaaaaane. U/B control is a deck, and it primarily plays solid 2 for ones like Aether Adept, Skinrender, Nekrataal, Baleful Strix, etc. With so many 2 for 1's that fit nicely into the U/B decks, the Harpy is incredibly powerful. Plus, it will never die.. unless it's countered. Plus it can chump and bounce itself... Ever since adding Harpy to my cube.. it's been absolutely outstanding.
Cavern Harpy can be great, but takes some work to get good value. It's obviously a horrible topdeck on an empty board. I'd swap it with Baleful Strix if I had one, but I've been holding out to see what we get in Dragon's Maze for Dimir before I try to trade for or buy it.
I've mentioned it before, but about 1/3 of my cubing is 2HG sealed, where the chances of there not being an enemy target for these value creatures are much lower than in normal 1v1. I'm not going out of my way to add in purely multiplayer cards, but I think my lineup is better suited overall to my playgroup.
I'm not sure any of the red shatter dudes are maindeck worthy against an unknown deck in game one, and I'd rather have Vandal or Scrapmelter in games two and three. I want my Goblin Pikers to have a combat-relevant ability - a vanilla 2/1 is outclassed by too much these days.
My CubeCobra (draft 20 card packs, 2 packs.)
430, Peasant, Very Unpowered
Why you should take your hybrids out of your gold section
Manamath Article
White
+Spectral Procession
+Embolden
+Basilica Guards
+Rally the Peasants
+Benalish Cavalry
+Knight of Obligation
-Blinding Beam
-Dawn Charm
-Icatian Javelineer
-Intangible Virtue
-Raise the Alarm
-Ballynock Cohort
Even though I finally got a copy of Spectral Procession, I'm taking out the explicit token support in exchange for a more generic combat pump with Rally the Peasants. Veteran Swordsmith is down to just 11 Soldier targets to pump in white, so unless there are some good soldiers in DGM or M14, she will likely get the axe soon. I'm also pushing extort hard, as you'll see in black as well.
Blue
+Miscalculation
+Standstill
+Ray of Command
+Dominate
-Memory Lapse
-Favorable Winds
-Undo
-Niblis of the Breath
I had yet to see Favorable Winds get played since the inception of my cube, so I felt it was time for it to go.
Black
+Basilica Screecher
+Ravenous Skirge
+Wall of Souls
-Blind Creeper
-Necrogen Scudder
-Twisted Abomination
I think an extort/bleeder strategy might work better for black control than trying to find single powerful finishers. Bloodhunter Bat, Blood Artist, Falkenrath Noble, and Circle of Affliction are all on the watchlist to be added.
Red
+Genju of the Spires
+Viashino Slaughtermaster
-Goblin Arsonist
Red gets an extra card due to cuts in the hybrid section.
Green
+Crocanura
+Acidic Slime
+Village Survivors
-Indric Stomphowler
-Vital Splicer
Green also gets an extra due to hybrid cuts. Put in Slime for Stomphowler due to Leelue's commant that Slime is never dead due to being able to hit lands if there are no other targets. Stomphowler may come back in for something if I feel there's not enough Naturalize effects.
Gold
+Torrent of Souls
+Elusive Krasis
+Blind Hunter
-Fire Covenant
-Shambleshark
-Tidehollow Sculler
Krasis is coming in due to a lack of interest in Simic tempo decks. Torrent of Souls is cool. Blind Hunter is a temporary placeholder until I get a Kingpin's Pet from a friend, but might stay in place of Mortify if I really want to push the extort/bleeder archetype in Orzhov.
Hybrid
+Curse of Chains
-Tattermunge Maniac
-Firespout
Artifact
+Palladium Myr
-Pilgrim's Eye
-Lightning Greaves
Greaves seem cool in theory, but even ramp decks usually prefer buffing equipment or another creature.
+Fire/Ice
-Frostburn Weird
+Falkenrath Noble
-Infest
+Mana Tithe
-Glimmerpoint Stag
I miscalculated my hybrid section, so I need to either add one green and one red card and cut two colorless, or cut one from white, blue, and black and add three colorless. It's not a huge imbalance at the moment, so it may be a week or two until I come up with a set of swaps I like.
-----
Here are some cards I'm looking at to support a bleeder archetype in black:
Sure Things
Maybes
Borderline, but Might Test
I'm open to other suggestions if you have any!
+Chandra's Outrage
+Rampant Growth
-Fire/Ice
-Bottle Gnomes
My Type 4 stack (Cube Tutor link)
My Peasant Cube thread !!! (380 cards)
Draft my Peasant Cube on Cube Cobra !!!
Siphon life, on the other hand, worked modestly well for me during its time here and I don't have any problem with it. For what it's worth, I don't think you strictly need cards that "steal" life to support this. You are basically just killing them over time while keeping yourself alive with the same cards (usually). This means that you don't need to run a finisher, but instead chip them to death while making their clock to kill you hard to beat. Azorious herald is the perfect example of this. For something less playable but emphasizes my point, you have lobber crew. They each do "the same" thing.
My CubeCobra (draft 20 card packs, 2 packs.)
430, Peasant, Very Unpowered
Why you should take your hybrids out of your gold section
Manamath Article
-Wildsize
-Elusive Krasis
+Farseek
+Etched Oracle
And the only reason I made this tweak is because Oracle is probably my all-time favorite card and I just had to find room for it in the cube, even though it seems like most people cut it because it never works out.
I'll be following your updates closely and will keep you posted on any other changes I make for your consideration.
CubeTutor: www.cubetutor.com/cubeblog/72
Thread: http://forums.mtgsalvation.com/showthread.php?t=512410
Your swaps look fine since Wildsize is probably coming out of my cube soon anyway. Is there a reason you cut a Simic card for a generic multicolor artifact or are you okay with just having two pure cards in that guild pair?
CubeTutor: www.cubetutor.com/cubeblog/72
Thread: http://forums.mtgsalvation.com/showthread.php?t=512410
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, you're probably right about Wear//Tear being bad, I just try to be bullish on new cards. I'd rather test something and have it not work out than to dismiss a potential diamond in the rough.
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!
CubeTutor: www.cubetutor.com/cubeblog/72
Thread: http://forums.mtgsalvation.com/showthread.php?t=512410
My CubeCobra (draft 20 card packs, 2 packs.)
430, Peasant, Very Unpowered
Why you should take your hybrids out of your gold section
Manamath Article
My Peasant Cube thread !!! (380 cards)
Draft my Peasant Cube on Cube Cobra !!!
cough cough
My CubeCobra (draft 20 card packs, 2 packs.)
430, Peasant, Very Unpowered
Why you should take your hybrids out of your gold section
Manamath Article
My Peasant Cube thread !!! (380 cards)
Draft my Peasant Cube on Cube Cobra !!!
CubeTutor: www.cubetutor.com/cubeblog/72
Thread: http://forums.mtgsalvation.com/showthread.php?t=512410
My Peasant Cube thread !!! (380 cards)
Draft my Peasant Cube on Cube Cobra !!!