- Pyroclasm - Plenty of wipes and this seems redundant.
+ Goblin Bombardment - What token support was lost with Mirror Entity's departure should be balanced with Goblin Bombardment.
- Viridian Shaman - Good card, but
- Genesis Wave - With half the non lands being non-permanents it's just not good enough.
- Skyshroud Claim - Green has enough ramp.
+ Hua Tuo, Honored Physician - I've wanted this card for years. Let's see how it works.
+ Living Plane - I've wanted this card for years and have seen it destroy games... sounds fun.
+ Primeval Bounty - It does stuff with stuff. I am okay enough with that to give it a trial run.
- Demonic Dread - Nobody likes Cascade but me.
+ Spiteful Visions - With all the wheel effects and Nekuzar is seems like a little love can't hurt.
So I'm building a cube ATM that is similar to this one. The catch is that I will probably only have around 4-6 people drafting on average. Would you recommend still building a cube this size but with larger decks and more packs per person, or do you think a smaller cube overall would be better?
Still new to the whole cube thing, but sleeved up a good chunk of my collection to start with.
Drafting and building can take a long time - usually we start at 8:30 and the the first game starts close to 10:00. So, smaller decks equal short times to build. 1-on-1 equals shorter everything. So, it's up to you, but I would recommend going with the smallest box you can get away with.
I think that mine it good for 8 people, but cutting it down to 500 cards could easily support 6.
Assuming your cube tutor list is still accurate, how have double strikers like markov blademaster and wrecking ogre worked for your group? My Red section is getting a bit top heavy with dragons, and I'm thinking of cutting a few in favor of lower CMC dudes.
I like them. I hear people talking about red being largely ignored in their Cubes, I adjusted to see if I could make the colors more even, and pretty soon we would see way too many red decks. So, the goal of red right now is really just to support other strategies within the other 4 colors - in other words, Red is NEVER the alpha color.
The double strike stuff is for Wx and Equipment. Blademaster takes advantage of Gisela and Aurelia really well and holds swords better than almost any creature in the cube. Ogre is sort of the sneak attach version of the same idea. They don't get used as much I think I'd like, but beat-down is pretty rare from the Cube, and the guys don't seem to want to push for it either.
I do like the low end red creatures I have, but are you playing with any others in your head?
I do like the low end red creatures I have, but are you playing with any others in your head?
The curve analysis feature in cube tutor was making me feel self conscious about my red's CMC top end. I'm considering cutting a few of the hyper-expensive dragons, like scourge of kher ridges and rimescale dragon in favor of some lower cost stuff ~ ogre battledriver, marton stromgald, markov blademaster, krenko, and squee. I'm not running Nekusar at the moment, so the shockers aren't on my short list quite yet.
Shockers aren't there for Nekusar - they are just really amazing reusable hand disruption on a small body that beats for points too. Nekusar is actually a problem because too many of the cards I had in there play too well with him, so he might get the axe.
I've had many an enjoyable experience with this cube.
It's interesting to see how play has changed around wipes. As a support color that gets played a lot, Red seems to be at an odd spot with wipes mostly attached to LD. It seems like Earthquake was in at one point, then it got cut, and it looks like now Blasphemous Act is the only pure wipe in Red atm. I think there are lots of good Instant-speed wipes in Red that are underplayed. Basically, that's the advantage I see to Red wipes. It can't match Damnation, Wrath of God and Austere Command for mana-efficiency or comprehensiveness, but they start too look similar on timing and selectivity when you're comparing Inferno or Starstorm to Rout and Oblivion Stone. Instant speed wipes might help with stalemates a little because it is easier for the one playing them to get the fist post-wipe combat phase. I see Disk and O-stone listed, but they seem to go so high that I've only been able to get Disk once and never O-stone. They also seem to have a different effect on the board than just an Instant wipe. Something like Fault Line would be valued by Green/Black for being selective to small creatures and would be valued by Boros for ignoring fliers. Aurelia and Thrax would really like any of the wipes at Instant, I think, probably Numot too. Probably why Earthquake was in there, but yeah, Earthquake is not great in the format, and I don't think Blasphemous Act is either.
Speaking of which, Flying seems limited mostly to generals, and evasion enablers like Trample mostly on Equips, which seem to go really high whether the player is going Aggro, Control, or what have you. Some color-specific options like Wonder or Glory might get things in the hands of the players really pushing creatures. Or generally, might help with the stalemates anyway.
The new Commander will be moving things around because A) I see a lot of fun cards in there, and B) I am always changing things up.
+ Reef Worm
- Aetherling (Nobody plays it. Why bother?)
+ Huntmaster of the Fells (No idea. Just seems like it'd be fun to see what happens)
- Hull Breach (This may be something we switch back soon, but we have plenty of ArtEnt removal.)
Those all look like good swaps to me. I've been using the compare cube function at cubetutor a lot with yours and wildfires, in preparation for a reduction on mine. A few of the cards you're cutting were ones I was scratching my head about (brutalizer, factory, etc).
I'd be curious about the "etc" in there. I know with those two it was to balance the planeswalkers a bit. I have a lot in there and Factory keeps them in check after they wrath. Brute Exarch was an attempt to put planes walker removal on a creature for 5-6 mana.
I think I must have been looking over your cube right as you were preparing your comm 2014 updates, because I'm not seeing as many of the cards I was wondering about before.
I've been using the cube comparison feature a lot at cubetutor, between yours, wildfire, and mine. I just performed a pretty drastic cut on my cube, getting it down to 676 ~ 615 main + 61 generals. I'm planning to run some group games with the new comm 2014 decks before I chop them to bits for the cube. Once I have that accomplished, I'll be interested in how ours compare!
I should find that feature. I know mine is a lot like them all since the pool of good playable cards isn't that huge, but I feel like mine is full of a lot more trash than most
I think mine has been slowly morphing into yours. I like the lower CMC, and greater attention to curve. I also, frankly, don't play edh all that often, so I like to defer to yours and wildfire's practical experience. I'm more of a rubber-necker around here.
I compared his and mine just now and we have surprisingly few cards that overlap. Of my 10 Guild cards we have 3 on average that are the same. What I found that was most interesting is that I run a lot of enchantments and planes walkers and he runs a lot of tutors and combo pieces. This is not a surprise with my vocal rejection of tutoring in the past, but I thought there'd be some overlap.
EDIT: I see you put the comparison here... ours are a lot more similar than mine and WF's. My enchantments bring all the boys to the yard.
Just thinking back to your reanimator woes from a few weeks ago... Have you ever considered including mindcrank in your artifact section? Now that I'm looking at it, it's not a bad multiplayer card; inexpensive at 2 cmc and racks up a lot of milled cards off of opponents beating one another...
I'm still on the fence how much I want to push the theme since nobody seems to be biting, but that is definitely a card that could make the cut. I don't have Mesmeric Orb in there either and that thing is a beast.
People come over tonight to draft, so I'll see what they think.
I am not sure those would get picked. I'm probably the guy who rated Sedris, the Traitor King the highest when he was in here, and that kind of stuff never really excites me. Might be my mistake, since mill is stronger in 65 card and more people are playing creatures, but it just seems likely to get passed up since it has no effect on the board.
Also, I am sad to see Torrent of Souls go. I always tried to pick it up when in Rakdos, and it always performed really solidly for me. Although, the Trumpet Blast side of it is mainly only useful in Prossh, because none of the other Rakdos generals support tokens. Probably was a beast in Prossh though.
Another one, I think Unburial Rites would get taken higher than Debtor's Knell currently is. It seems like Knell would be strong with a lot of Generals that lack their own reanimation, but I have only ever taken it with Karador, and then it gets cut because I figure it is too slow. Rites gives you value right away though.
As far as the enablers go, I see it as a question of whether reanimation is your Plan A or your Plan B. Plan A being, get something expensive to the yard and play it ASAP at a discount. Plan B though is play some 6 drop on time, wait for it to get killed, then use reanimation to sustain. The second makes sure cards like Reanimate get picked, but for the first I think it's really hard to get reanimation consistent enough to have a Plan A reanimator type deck in cube, generally. A constructed deck will use lots of loot effects like Forbidden Alchemy, which are a step below Ponder type cards for what they do in the first place, and they are usually off-Black in color, besides.
Another thing, it it's not exactly the strategy with this cube to get all the 7-drops, so having a bomb in hand to pitch away to loot effects isn't guaranteed. It That Betrays was a good cut, as one example, so the situation when you have something like Pattern of Rebirth or Entomb, just going over what your options are... Seems like Elesh Norn, Avacyn, W Akroma, maybe Inferno Titan are the most board warping creatures, then with most of the rest of the 7+ drops in Green, and in reactive cards like Woodfall Primus, Terastodon, etc. Giant Adephage is decent. There's Sisters of Stone Death, Gisela, Ashen Rider. It's just a couple in each color, not particularly Black, and so it's both density and color restraints. Rune-Scarred, Sheoldred, and Sepulchral Primordial are probably the best things to reanimate in Black itself. Not that putting more bombs in is the way to go, I mean, when It That Betrays was in, it basically tabled to the reanimator player, then had the tendency to wreck games when it did show up. I'm just saying, it's hard to have a slim curve in a cube and support a lot of reanimator. I think Coffin Queen, etc, will continue to get picked for sustaining the board, without doing anything extra.
I think that I have come to terms with reanimator in the Cube. Instead of it being an archetype, it's going to be part of the generic goodstuff that people draft to give their decks reach. To make a good reanimator deck you really need to draft too many specific things for it to work. So, Dimir gets to go in another direction. Since I am revamping guilds right now it will be Dimir and Simic up first. My hatred for generic UGx is starting to show. Seriously, how to make UG good and relevant in all the UGx decks people draft as well as provide U and G support that is both good on its own and good in UGx... first world problems.
I drafted your cube Gals, and the first thing I notice is that people seem to draft either 40 cards or 66 cards. Have you considered changing the numbers of the cube so that 66 card decks + general is the norm, or are you happy at 59+1?
I drafted your cube Gals, and the first thing I notice is that people seem to draft either 40 cards or 66 cards. Have you considered changing the numbers of the cube so that 66 card decks + general is the norm, or are you happy at 59+1?
Huh. I must not have update wherever you were looking. We do 5 packs of 15 to get 65+1 card decks. It's been that way almost since the beginning and we all feel like it's a good size. When we have only 4 people show up though we do build 99+1 decks.
Ah, well, at least I didnt screw the bots as much as the people who drafted 20 or 40 cards.
If you want, I can retrain the bots for you. I'll go draft 4-5 times at each size. It wont be perfect, but at least it'll retrain the bots somewhat.
Ah, well, at least I didnt screw the bots as much as the people who drafted 20 or 40 cards.
If you want, I can retrain the bots for you. I'll go draft 4-5 times at each size. It wont be perfect, but at least it'll retrain the bots somewhat.
Always 5/15, correct?
Honestly I have no idea what you are talking about... I just post it there so I have a visual. But yeah, 5x15 cards with the generals mixed right in there.
+ Angel of Finality - Graveyards always need to die.
- Liliana of the Dark Realm - I like her but nobody else seems to.
+ Sudden Spoiling - Removal is always fun, right?
- Pyroclasm - Plenty of wipes and this seems redundant.
+ Goblin Bombardment - What token support was lost with Mirror Entity's departure should be balanced with Goblin Bombardment.
- Viridian Shaman - Good card, but
- Genesis Wave - With half the non lands being non-permanents it's just not good enough.
- Skyshroud Claim - Green has enough ramp.
+ Hua Tuo, Honored Physician - I've wanted this card for years. Let's see how it works.
+ Living Plane - I've wanted this card for years and have seen it destroy games... sounds fun.
+ Primeval Bounty - It does stuff with stuff. I am okay enough with that to give it a trial run.
- Demonic Dread - Nobody likes Cascade but me.
+ Spiteful Visions - With all the wheel effects and Nekuzar is seems like a little love can't hurt.
- Illusionist's Bracers - Too few creatures to care.
+ Surveyor's Scope - Too many opponents not run this gem.
WUBRGPauper Battle BoxWUBRG ... and why I am not a fan of Wayne Reynolds' Illustrations.
Still new to the whole cube thing, but sleeved up a good chunk of my collection to start with.
[Primer] WUB Dromar, the Banisher Stax [SOON TO BE OLORO]
I think that mine it good for 8 people, but cutting it down to 500 cards could easily support 6.
WUBRGPauper Battle BoxWUBRG ... and why I am not a fan of Wayne Reynolds' Illustrations.
1 Mangara of Corondo
1 Mirran Crusader
1 Storm Herd
1 Deepchannel Mentor
1 Kami of the Crescent Moon
1 Traumatize
1 Wheel and Deal
1 Buried Alive
1 Corpse Dance
1 Glistening Oil
1 Pontiff of Blight
1 Arc Trail
1 Heartless Hidetsugu
1 Knollspine Dragon
1 Splinter Twin
1 Fecundity
1 Summoning Trap
1 Tooth and Nail
1 Tranquil Domain
1 Eldrazi Monument
1 Fireshrieker
1 Font of Mythos
1 Sword of Vengeance
I wanted 24 more cards to help break the stalemates that the decks seem to create. Games that get bogged down might bust open with these... maybe
WUBRGPauper Battle BoxWUBRG ... and why I am not a fan of Wayne Reynolds' Illustrations.
Thanks!
"Personally I love high-riak, low-reqars gambles. Life's best with a decent amount of riak. And f*** reqars."
The double strike stuff is for Wx and Equipment. Blademaster takes advantage of Gisela and Aurelia really well and holds swords better than almost any creature in the cube. Ogre is sort of the sneak attach version of the same idea. They don't get used as much I think I'd like, but beat-down is pretty rare from the Cube, and the guys don't seem to want to push for it either.
I do like the low end red creatures I have, but are you playing with any others in your head?
WUBRGPauper Battle BoxWUBRG ... and why I am not a fan of Wayne Reynolds' Illustrations.
The curve analysis feature in cube tutor was making me feel self conscious about my red's CMC top end. I'm considering cutting a few of the hyper-expensive dragons, like scourge of kher ridges and rimescale dragon in favor of some lower cost stuff ~ ogre battledriver, marton stromgald, markov blademaster, krenko, and squee. I'm not running Nekusar at the moment, so the shockers aren't on my short list quite yet.
Thanks for the reply.
"Personally I love high-riak, low-reqars gambles. Life's best with a decent amount of riak. And f*** reqars."
WUBRGPauper Battle BoxWUBRG ... and why I am not a fan of Wayne Reynolds' Illustrations.
It's interesting to see how play has changed around wipes. As a support color that gets played a lot, Red seems to be at an odd spot with wipes mostly attached to LD. It seems like Earthquake was in at one point, then it got cut, and it looks like now Blasphemous Act is the only pure wipe in Red atm. I think there are lots of good Instant-speed wipes in Red that are underplayed. Basically, that's the advantage I see to Red wipes. It can't match Damnation, Wrath of God and Austere Command for mana-efficiency or comprehensiveness, but they start too look similar on timing and selectivity when you're comparing Inferno or Starstorm to Rout and Oblivion Stone. Instant speed wipes might help with stalemates a little because it is easier for the one playing them to get the fist post-wipe combat phase. I see Disk and O-stone listed, but they seem to go so high that I've only been able to get Disk once and never O-stone. They also seem to have a different effect on the board than just an Instant wipe. Something like Fault Line would be valued by Green/Black for being selective to small creatures and would be valued by Boros for ignoring fliers. Aurelia and Thrax would really like any of the wipes at Instant, I think, probably Numot too. Probably why Earthquake was in there, but yeah, Earthquake is not great in the format, and I don't think Blasphemous Act is either.
Speaking of which, Flying seems limited mostly to generals, and evasion enablers like Trample mostly on Equips, which seem to go really high whether the player is going Aggro, Control, or what have you. Some color-specific options like Wonder or Glory might get things in the hands of the players really pushing creatures. Or generally, might help with the stalemates anyway.
WUBRGPauper Battle BoxWUBRG ... and why I am not a fan of Wayne Reynolds' Illustrations.
+ Reef Worm
- Aetherling (Nobody plays it. Why bother?)
+ Flesh Carver
- Ob Nixilis, Unshackled (Not enough shuffle effects for this to be anything but an annoyance)
+ Feldon of the Third Path
- Soul of Shandalar (I like it, but I seem to be unique)
+ Reclamation Sage (Finally got one of the Gameday promos and like this to bump...)
- Indrink Stomphowler (Just dropping the curve where I can)
+ Lifeblood Hydra
- Brutalizer Exarch (Never see it played and a green card draw creature seems better)
+ Song of the Dryads
- Tribute to the Wild (Love this card annd hate to see it go, but Song bumps it.)
+ Wave of Vitriol
- Primal Command (Never see it get played and it's really just a creature tutor... boring)
+ Huntmaster of the Fells (No idea. Just seems like it'd be fun to see what happens)
- Hull Breach (This may be something we switch back soon, but we have plenty of ArtEnt removal.)
+ Myriad Landscape
- Mishra's Factory (Fine card, but I don't know what else to cut)
+ Daretti, Scrap Savant
- Chandra Nalaar
WUBRGPauper Battle BoxWUBRG ... and why I am not a fan of Wayne Reynolds' Illustrations.
"Personally I love high-riak, low-reqars gambles. Life's best with a decent amount of riak. And f*** reqars."
WUBRGPauper Battle BoxWUBRG ... and why I am not a fan of Wayne Reynolds' Illustrations.
I've been using the cube comparison feature a lot at cubetutor, between yours, wildfire, and mine. I just performed a pretty drastic cut on my cube, getting it down to 676 ~ 615 main + 61 generals. I'm planning to run some group games with the new comm 2014 decks before I chop them to bits for the cube. Once I have that accomplished, I'll be interested in how ours compare!
"Personally I love high-riak, low-reqars gambles. Life's best with a decent amount of riak. And f*** reqars."
WUBRGPauper Battle BoxWUBRG ... and why I am not a fan of Wayne Reynolds' Illustrations.
Here's yours vs mine (pre comm 2014)
http://www.cubetutor.com/comparecubes/18626/219
Here's yours vs wildfires
http://www.cubetutor.com/comparecubes/18626/921
"Personally I love high-riak, low-reqars gambles. Life's best with a decent amount of riak. And f*** reqars."
EDIT: I see you put the comparison here... ours are a lot more similar than mine and WF's. My enchantments bring all the boys to the yard.
WUBRGPauper Battle BoxWUBRG ... and why I am not a fan of Wayne Reynolds' Illustrations.
"Personally I love high-riak, low-reqars gambles. Life's best with a decent amount of riak. And f*** reqars."
People come over tonight to draft, so I'll see what they think.
WUBRGPauper Battle BoxWUBRG ... and why I am not a fan of Wayne Reynolds' Illustrations.
Also, I am sad to see Torrent of Souls go. I always tried to pick it up when in Rakdos, and it always performed really solidly for me. Although, the Trumpet Blast side of it is mainly only useful in Prossh, because none of the other Rakdos generals support tokens. Probably was a beast in Prossh though.
Another one, I think Unburial Rites would get taken higher than Debtor's Knell currently is. It seems like Knell would be strong with a lot of Generals that lack their own reanimation, but I have only ever taken it with Karador, and then it gets cut because I figure it is too slow. Rites gives you value right away though.
As far as the enablers go, I see it as a question of whether reanimation is your Plan A or your Plan B. Plan A being, get something expensive to the yard and play it ASAP at a discount. Plan B though is play some 6 drop on time, wait for it to get killed, then use reanimation to sustain. The second makes sure cards like Reanimate get picked, but for the first I think it's really hard to get reanimation consistent enough to have a Plan A reanimator type deck in cube, generally. A constructed deck will use lots of loot effects like Forbidden Alchemy, which are a step below Ponder type cards for what they do in the first place, and they are usually off-Black in color, besides.
Another thing, it it's not exactly the strategy with this cube to get all the 7-drops, so having a bomb in hand to pitch away to loot effects isn't guaranteed. It That Betrays was a good cut, as one example, so the situation when you have something like Pattern of Rebirth or Entomb, just going over what your options are... Seems like Elesh Norn, Avacyn, W Akroma, maybe Inferno Titan are the most board warping creatures, then with most of the rest of the 7+ drops in Green, and in reactive cards like Woodfall Primus, Terastodon, etc. Giant Adephage is decent. There's Sisters of Stone Death, Gisela, Ashen Rider. It's just a couple in each color, not particularly Black, and so it's both density and color restraints. Rune-Scarred, Sheoldred, and Sepulchral Primordial are probably the best things to reanimate in Black itself. Not that putting more bombs in is the way to go, I mean, when It That Betrays was in, it basically tabled to the reanimator player, then had the tendency to wreck games when it did show up. I'm just saying, it's hard to have a slim curve in a cube and support a lot of reanimator. I think Coffin Queen, etc, will continue to get picked for sustaining the board, without doing anything extra.
So, just my ramble for the day.
I think that I have come to terms with reanimator in the Cube. Instead of it being an archetype, it's going to be part of the generic goodstuff that people draft to give their decks reach. To make a good reanimator deck you really need to draft too many specific things for it to work. So, Dimir gets to go in another direction. Since I am revamping guilds right now it will be Dimir and Simic up first. My hatred for generic UGx is starting to show. Seriously, how to make UG good and relevant in all the UGx decks people draft as well as provide U and G support that is both good on its own and good in UGx... first world problems.
WUBRGPauper Battle BoxWUBRG ... and why I am not a fan of Wayne Reynolds' Illustrations.
540 Peasant cube- Gold EditionSomething SpicyWUBRGPauper Battle BoxWUBRG ... and why I am not a fan of Wayne Reynolds' Illustrations.
If you want, I can retrain the bots for you. I'll go draft 4-5 times at each size. It wont be perfect, but at least it'll retrain the bots somewhat.
Always 5/15, correct?
540 Peasant cube- Gold EditionSomething SpicyWUBRGPauper Battle BoxWUBRG ... and why I am not a fan of Wayne Reynolds' Illustrations.