MTG Salvation

Thanks for looking!

This is a cube composed entirely of 1 CMC cards. Kicker, activated abilities, and alternate costs all blend together to make an interesting and very grindy drafting experience. This cube can accommodate 6 players, and is meant as a casual diversion from my group’s regular roster of cubes and draft sims.

The cube can be viewed and drafted at cubetutor.com using the following address. I perform most of my updating there, but I will periodically update this OP when enough changes accumulate.
http://cubetutor.com/viewcube/4074

The Cube – 270 cards total, last updated 1/28/2015

Quote from majikian

*Coordinated Assault
*No Loam Lion/Kird Ape/Wild Nacatl?
*Lava Dart
*Tragic Slip

Thanks for the input! I've still got another 120-150 cards that didn't make the cut, and will check out when I have a chance, whether any of these are still in there.

Weapon surge proved itself repeatedly as a fantastic combat trick and alpha-strike ennabler, so I think that's going to stay in, over coordinated assault. If tricky-red becomes more of a salient archetype, CA might just go in as additional support

The Zoo creatures didn't make it in on the first draft as they were, in most cases, competing with hybrid 1-drops. Not being certain about how many lands we were going to be using in our decks, the necessity of having 2+ basic lands out to turn them on seemed onerous. This is definitely a more budget cube, and the inclusion of shocks or duals is so far an unresolved issue.

~will put Lava Dart and tragic slip into the consider category!

So far I've been pretty strict about the everything being exactly 1 CMC, so I doubt I'll be adding in any X spells for the foreseeable future.

In practice, the matches have been incredibly grindy, like a good limited environment, and all the colors have good proactive and reactive strategies. I've observed very few situations so far where an outright board wipe seems a necessary solution to the board state.

I think in a 1 drop cube you should consider mental misstep colorless .

Quote from moxnix

I think in a 1 drop cube you should consider mental misstep colorless .

Agreed. There's a bunch of reclassification that is going to happen soon, including phy-mana as "colorless" and moving some of the man lands into colored sections (treetop village for instance).

Reanimate? Get the best creature in either graveyard for 1 life.

Quote from inscho

Reanimate? Get the best creature in either graveyard for 1 life.

That's on my short list, just haven't been able to pick one up in trade (and I'm trying not to buy cards more than $2 with cash).

OMG. I love this idea. I'm literally making mine tomorrow. This is awesome. You rock.

Quote from colormage1

OMG. I love this idea. I'm literally making mine tomorrow. This is awesome. You rock.

Thanks, though there are at least 2 other 1-drop cubes here on mtgs, and a couple more on the web, so I can't take much credit for originality!

No Ghazbán Ogre?

I actually ran him for a bit in my regular cube and he was quite good in the right deck. Plus he is so awesomely old school.

Quote from astrospoon

No Ghazbán Ogre?

I actually ran him for a bit in my regular cube and he was quite good in the right deck. Plus he is so awesomely old school.

I've got an un-assimilated Jungle Lion that I think would go in before the ogre. +1 for an arabian nights style points though....

Hey Dolono - I've been working on a one-drop cube for awhile now and just finalized my list to the point where I thought it was good enough to post. It's pretty funny that another pauper cuber was doing the same!

My list in my sig below - I'd love to hear your thoughts on it. I've been thinking of expanding the colorless section by ten cards (five lands and five artifacts), but I'm not sure what to cut right now. Any ideas?

I noticed that your cube has less creatures than mine - how has this been working out for you?

Quote from Goblin Pile Shuffler

I've been thinking of expanding the colorless section by ten cards (five lands and five artifacts), but I'm not sure what to cut right now. Any ideas?

I noticed that your cube has less creatures than mine - how has this been working out for you?

Thanks for the interest, and the link to your cube!

I'll preface my response with a bit of an explanation on how my cube was arranged. My recent personal preference for finishing cubes has been to first assemble way more cards than I will realistically use in the cube, then get together with my primary cube partners, lay out everything for everyone to consider. Then I distribute glass beads for everyone to lay on their picks and preferences. Once they've all been laid out, we follow things up with debates on questionable picks, and redistribute a few here and there. This "bottoms up" approach has worked really well for me, and we'll immediately play the cube while some of the ideas and decisions are still fresh.

I'm not the best at long, drawn out discussions of individual cards, so I'm gonna throw out some general thoughts too:

1. If you're going to use hedron crab, screeching sliver, and memory sluice, codex shredder, etc, I think you will need to commit more cards to mill as a strategy. It will certainly be painful, but your going to need to find space for thought scour, tome scour, cathartic adept, shriekhorn, and a few others (that I'm probably forgetting). If you ever decide to increase the size of the cube, mill will probably not work, given the relatively small number of quality 1CMC mill cards, and should probably just be cut entirely.

2. I've been planning to make this switch myself, but phy mana cards should probably all be reclassified as colorless. I really cant think of a deck where mental mistep isn't amazing.

3. I excluded path to exile from mine because, even though it's practically unconditional removal, I was worried that the basic land it fetches might actually give the opponent too much extra momentum in their game. Similarly, I think magus of the vineyard and veteran explorer might be way too risky.

4. Jungle village and many of the other man lands are really great in this format.

5. Vivid and gold lands, are really fantastic for the 1-drop format, as they allow for many interesting 3+ color decks. If you're planning on expanding your colorless selection, I'd like to recommend adding more of those in.

Late edit: 6. I'd get rid of pithing needle ~ probably replace it with another equip, like darksteel axe or something.

Looks pretty great otherwise! How have your games been?

-Dolono

Quote from Dolono

Thanks for the interest, and the link to your cube!

I'll preface my response with a bit of an explanation on how my cube was arranged. My recent personal preference for finishing cubes has been to first assemble way more cards than I will realistically use in the cube, then get together with my primary cube partners, lay out everything for everyone to consider. Then I distribute glass beads for everyone to lay on their picks and preferences. Once they've all been laid out, we follow things up with debates on questionable picks, and redistribute a few here and there. This "bottoms up" approach has worked really well for me, and we'll immediately play the cube while some of the ideas and decisions are still fresh.

This is a really awesome idea.

Quote from Dolono

1. If you're going to use hedron crab, screeching sliver, and memory sluice, codex shredder, etc, I think you will need to commit more cards to mill as a strategy. It will certainly be painful, but your going to need to find space for thought scour, tome scour, cathartic adept, shriekhorn, and a few others (that I'm probably forgetting). If you ever decide to increase the size of the cube, mill will probably not work, given the relatively small number of quality 1CMC mill cards, and should probably just be cut entirely.

Cathartic Adept is in already and I just realized that Shriekhorn was not, so I will add it soon. I don't like the "one and done" mill spells though, so they were specifically excluded. I'm testing this to see if mill might actually be viable in this format, but this stuff might all come out.

Quote from Dolono

2. I've been planning to make this switch myself, but phy mana cards should probably all be reclassified as colorless. I really cant think of a deck where mental mistep isn't amazing.

Good point.

Quote from Dolono

3. I excluded path to exile from mine because, even though it's practically unconditional removal, I was worried that the basic land it fetches might actually give the opponent too much extra momentum in their game. Similarly, I think magus of the vineyard and veteran explorer might be way too risky.

I think Path is worse T1 than in other cubes (since the player can untap and then potentially play 3 cards), but after T3 or so it becomes better than it would be in normal cubes since a lot of decks won't have much to do with the extra mana. I like that it creates interesting decisions. The Magus and Explorer are both in to support decks that want to run multi-kicker, morph, buyback, level up, and creatures with mana-greedy activated abilities. I may at some point cut down to just one of the two, but I think they play an interesting support role for a certain kind of deck in the cube.

Quote from Dolono

4. Jungle village and many of the other man lands are really great in this format.

I left them out because I thought they would be too good. (The Genjus are certainly bonkers as is.) What has your experience been with these so far?

Quote from Dolono

5. Vivid and gold lands, are really fantastic for the 1-drop format, as they allow for many interesting 3+ color decks. If you're planning on expanding your colorless selection, I'd like to recommend adding more of those in.

Yeah - I've been looking at adding 5 lands and the Vivid cycle is probably what I'm going to add.

Quote from Dolono

Late edit: 6. I'd get rid of pithing needle ~ probably replace it with another equip, like darksteel axe or something.

Pithing Needle has actually been surprisingly good. It shuts down so many bombs, like the Genjus and creatures with game-changing activated abilities (ex: I used this to stop an opponent's pinger before they could start picking apart my board).

Quote from Dolono

Looks pretty great otherwise! How have your games been?

Thanks! The games have been really awesome. I've only played it twice so far, but had one epic game with a ton of back and forth that was probably the best game of cube draft I played this year.

BTW - do you have any rules changes when you play the one-drop cube? In my searching on the internet, I found that some people have experimented with different deck sizes and hand sizes. I'm trying a different starting life total (15), and my group seems to like this. It helps keep the games from grinding on too long and keeps everyone from trying to draft control decks. The sample size (2 drafts) is a bit small to draw any serious conclusions from it thus far though.

Sorry for the delayed reply:

1. Good point on pithing needle. Will poll my group next time whether genjus and other activated ability cards are oppressive enough to warrent needle making its way into the cube. Currently I like the genjus a lot. They are definitely top-tier cards, but I don't think they're oppressive yet.

2. Jungle village has been fantastic but the wwk manlands have surprisingly not been as solid as I first expected. Particularly with colonnade, they just generally cost too much to activate. The ability to activate JV or a genju while keeping mana open for casting or tricks have been far more effective than spending 5 to activate CC and send it naked into chump blockers. I think they've been doing more work as mana fixers than finishers or win cons.

3. We haven't implemented any house rules for starting life or hand size with the cube so far. Matches have seemed of appropriate length for a draft session, and even the longest, grindiest games are no worse than control vs control in a normal cube. Maybe if I've finished a match early I'll suggest to my opponent we play a practice session with modified life and hand totals, but I doubt it'll become the norm.

-Dolono

I updated my OP on this cube as well. Joining pucatrade has made it a lot easier to pamper and foil my cubes.

~ I think I'm missing a card in my green section somehow... need to check when I get back home...

edit: probably going to pick up ghitu encampment, faerie conclave, titan's strength, and collateral damage this evening and see where they fit.

Entomb is expensive, and might not do much of anything, but it's a consideration. The same can probably be said for Gamble and the tutors. Mystical Tutor wouldn't do much, but Enlightened Tutor, and Worldly Tutor would be good. Vampiric Tutor is especially sweet, and especially costly. All of those are more than 2$, so they are probably not on the short-list.

I assume in this format, you want to play something like 14 lands, so that puts a slight additional strain on the card-pool.

No Dark Ritual? It seems Ritual into three 1-drops is this cube's favorite thing to do.

I like the theme that most of the creatures grow into being bigger than 1/1. Nevertheless, Pendelhaven seems like a sensible choice in a 1-drop cube. Then again, you may not wish to add another colored land. Some random thoughts: Brass Man, Clutch of Currents, Skin Invasion, Portent, Thraben Gargoyle, Scute Mob Thraben Inspector, maybe Avoid Fate, (but probably not). Helix Pinnacle if you wanted to be crazy. The Rack if you want to be cruel (hands empty pretty fast in this format, I'd imagine).

I missed my window to perform a timely SOI update, so I decided to just wait till my EMN stuff came in before updating the cube again.

As for lands, it's usually best to just go with 16-17, like in a normal draft; the decks are incredibly mana hungry, and it's usually best to preserve the standard lands to playables ratios. The matches also tend to be very very grindy, and all-in plays, such as those fueled by dark ritual rarely turn out as awesome as you'd think. The one exception is devastating summons, which usually lands up being an incredibly back breaking play in this environment.

Have you considered Tomb of Urami? I can't think of a better use for that card than here. It'd be a shame if there's no place to play it at all.

Thanks for the recommendation, which I will definitely check out. Non-basic land's role is still in a bit of flux in this cube. Fixing is a bit less important than normal, and man lands performance has been a real mixed bag (I actually transferred the wwk mana lands to my edh cube, to complete the cycle over there). I still haven't quite hit on how many exactly to run, in what configuration, and how to properly color coordinate them.

Tomb seems like it might be worth a shot in black, if and when I expand to 360 cards. My only reservation is that the cube is really mana hungry, and I'm not sure if blowing up the board for a 5/5 is actually worth it. The devastating summons I mentioned above works because it spits out two, usually 6+ power elementals. One of the two almost always eats removal or bounce, but the second usually sticks, to finish off a burned out opponent. Urami only producing one dude has me a bit worried...