MTG Salvation

I could see Protean Hulk being fine, but Primeval Titan is still a beast even without the combo potential. It will definitely be one of the top tier cards in the cube even if it isn't combo broken.

Protean Hulk has always been a card that I thought shouldn't have been banned in the first place. It's not very believable to me that people would accidentally be winning games with it, you're much more likely to ruin a casual game with Palinchron by accident. But for now I will follow the official list. Primeval Titan is a strong card but I don't think he'll ever be more than that. He's just too powerful for the kitchen table.

Panoptic Mirror is one of my favorite cards of all time since way back in my beginner magic days. I'd love to play that card in my cube. It seems absolutely rediculous in EDH though with constant board resets being terribly frsutrating or time magic being terribly boring. I'd love to hear your experience with it though.

I don't actually have any experience with Panoptic Mirror but I picture someone sticking Cataclysm or something equally worse on it. I'm fine with griefing but that seems a bit much. It could lead to some epic and cool plays though like sticking a Wheel or a Mirrorweave on it.

I don't think Library of Alexandria will cause any problems really. It's broken in regular magic because card advantage swings are more impactful, but in EDH the card advantage swings are happening all the time. Library will not likely dominate a game any more than Phyrexian Arena does. I'm really not sure why they banned it in EDH. Also, while the targeted land destruction might be thinner in cube, the high profile target list is also thinner since not every black deck is running Volrath's Stronghold and every deck is not running Temple of the False Gods, etc.

I've just had nothing but negative experiences with the card. I think my biggest issue is that it seems less powerful than it is so people don't realize how much it warps games. So in a way it's kind of like a Rhystic Study that doesn't die to collateral damage. If everyone is an experienced player it's fine but if there are noobs in the game with no idea how card advantage works it can really create a negative experience (for me, the noobs don't know what's going on regardless).

Hey man, I'm compiling a list of cubetutor links for my own comparison and analysis and noticed you weren't on cubetutor yet, unless I'm mistaken. I highly recommend it. It makes organizing and analyzing your cube really easy. It also automatically tracks your change-log. You should check it out -> cubetutor.com

OK I'll give it a try when I get a chance.

We had 11 people this weekend and I was asked if my cube was big enough for 12...so I think I need to make it bigger :/

So I need like 50 more cards. Also need to update for Born of the Gods and add to cube tutor (assuming I can figure out how to do this)./mental note

Anyways I did quite a bit of testing this weekend. Prossh got hate drafted due to going infinite in the previous draft, Ephara was alright but nothing more, I drafted Oloro but just went monoblue and never cast him and I also drafted Jeleva and she sucked. It was just really hard finding bomby spells that I wanted to cast during my attack step. Mass LD (usually), Insurrection, Sweepers, counterspells...I just kept seeing nonbo after nonbo with her. I even had an Obliterate which is nice to cast for free but not as nice when you can't float mana. The spells also get exiled face up as far as I can tell which lead to triple teaming if I got anything good. Probably going to replace her with Nekusar to see if he does better.

Be careful relying on too small a sample size to evaluate your generals. A few nights of gaming doesn't make the general's performance known. I'd leave Jeleva in for a while before giving her the axe.

You bring up a good point but my issue is more that I didn't feel this commander was well supported enough to be good. I think we had at least 8 people drafting so it wasn't an issue of not seeing the right cards but more an issue of the right cards just not being in the cube. So it wasn't a case of drafting the commander and deciding it sucked because of a poor game performance. I actually drafted what I thought was a good Maelstrom Wanderer list but the 2 games I played with the deck went pretty poorly for me but I'm certainly not writing off Wanderer, that was just a case of bad beats I think. My Jokulhaups got countered both games

Updating takes forever...

The numbers aren't exact since I didn't have the correct numbers in the first place. Now each section should have the same number of cards.

Can you explain some of your changes? Many of them are cards I'd never consider cutting from mine (mirrorweave, harmonize, empath); other are cards that I'm just surprised to see (sigarda, derevi, etc).

Thanks!

Absolutely I don't mind at all. I'd rather not go over every card but any specific ones you want to know about just post them up and I'll do a quick explanation. It's quite possible some of these cards should not be cut or that others should be added instead. For the ones you listed

Mirrorweave - I really wanted this card to make some epic plays during games but that didn't ever seem to happen. The biggest reason I think it had trouble for us is we look at it as a token enabler and it was very rare for blue to be used in token decks. My current options are Hazezon and Ghave with B/W tokens being the 3rd most drafted token deck and none of these are blue. My white section also has a heavy enchantment and pillow fort theme which goes great with blue control cards so our U/W decks were most often either heavy control or blink themed which Mirrorweave doesn't play particularly well with.

Harmonize - This is a perfectly fine card but to be honest I've been trying to cut it since I first built this cube. It's a solid card due to being green but it's still a color shifted version of a card that isn't good as a blue card. I want my colors to differentiate themselves and would prefer to have green get it's card advantage by doing green things. This may seem odd since I run things like Gate to Phyrexia, which is itself a pretty bad card, but it fills a unique role so I'm fine with it. Green isn't crippled for card advantage like black is for artifact removal so it's likely that Harmonize won't be coming back.

Fierce Empath - Another cut I know a lot of people wouldn't make. It may not look it since my cube is huge but my curve is actually fairly low in comparison with most of the other Commander cubes and I also play a ton of mass LD. This means that random fatties generally aren't as effective and are run mainly in decks they synergise with such as Mayael (where Empath would be excellent). There is also less of a density of fatties. These things paired with the fact that Empath's 2 best targets, Primeval Titan and Sylvan Primordial, have been banned I just felt Empath was a bit too narrow. I would definitely look to reinclude this one first out of the 3 listed as I do like the card and it's a role player card which I like.

Sigarda, Host of Herons - Sigarda was a rather popular commander to draft but it did not win games or even kill people with any kind of consistency. This could simply be due to bad luck, poor piloting, small sample size or whatever but Sigarda was cut for performance issues. Karametra may not be the correct replacement but I felt Sigarda was lacking whereas Captain Sisay has firmly cemented herself as one of the commanders in my cube.

Derevi, Empyrial Tactician - I really like this card, dislike Roon and even play Worb/Stasis and co. so this cut seems pretty strange even to me. This was based on discussion with my playgroup with the main arguments being Roon is easier to build around and that Roon is a more obvious build around card which is beneficial for the newer players that sometimes play with us. I'm also trying to push blink which I don't feel has been represented enough and I believe that's due in part to me not having commanders that scream "play blink!".

EDIT: The adds like Grim Tutor and Mishra's Workshop were obviously just cards I didn't own before and recently acquired.

Some of those cuts look odd to me as well, and a few of your additions look suspect also.

Spirit of the Labyrinth - I'm not a fan of the fragile body, and often I want to be drawing cards too. I might be convinced to run it if it were an just an enchantment, but not as a small body.
Felhide Spiritbinder - I just cut Spiritbinder. He was too difficult to trigger, and only being able to use his ability during my untap step was frustrating at times keeping me from getting as much value as I wanted out of him from cards I had just drawn to shananigans during an opponent's turn.
I actually prefer Niv Mizzet, the Firemind as a general to Niv Mizzet, Dracogenius. Dracogenius is very similar in function to Nin, the Pain Artist, but there isn't a single general like the Firemind. He opens up a whole strategy as his own.

Why are you cutting these?
Harvester of Souls
Bident of Thassa
Worldspine Wurm

Also even with your stated reasons, I'd still keep Feirce Empath. Even in a lower curve environment, it still holds a ton of value.

Thanks for the feedback. Here's my reasoning for the cards you asked about.

Spirit of the Labyrinth - This is mainly a card for R/W and monowhite though I suppose it could see play in Naya and G/W as well. I've been trying this guy out in my Rhys deck and been reasonably happy with the results so I wanted to give him a shot in cube. There's not a lot of removal that cares about a creature's toughness in here so I don't really see him as fragile, he just doesn't have any protection. Don't recall that he's seen play yet but he hasn't been in long. Just a test card.

Felhide Spiritbinder - Might not be worth it as you said but my cube is big and the red cards dry up at this size. Still there are some weak links I'd rather get rid of first and Aladdin simply wasn't getting played.

Niv swap - I've gone back and forth on this several times. I like Dracogenius a little more as the goodstuff commander for U/R and with Nekusar getting added I think the wheels.dec archetype is covered well enough. If I cut Nekusar I'll probably change this as well. Niv is also a potential cut for the U/R god but I'll have to think about that some more.

Harvester of Souls - This is a really good card that I didn't want to cut. It felt like the weakest of my 6 drops though I could probably be convinced to cut something else. I really wanted to try Champion of Stray Souls but didn't want to add yet another 6 drop to my already full black 6 drop section.

Bident of Thassa - Another good card but I felt it was the least needed card in my blue section. It was solid and I wouldn't have a problem making room for it again in the future. Would be open to other cards to cut instead.

Worldspine Wurm - I'm hoping Kalonian Hydra will fill in as random beatstick for this guy. He's too expensive to hardcast outside of big mana decks and he's not an amazing reanimation target so he simply wasn't getting played.

These are my proposed cuts and adds

I'm not a fan of your two black cuts at all. We've had great success with both of those cards. Also, I'd keep an eye on Silence the Believers. I'm not convinced it's worth its cost, but since I haven't played it myself, I couldn't say definitively. I'd just watch its performance and see if in those moments Ashes to Ashes wouldn't be better or even just a straight wrath.

Quote from Theogony_IX

I'm not a fan of your two black cuts at all. We've had great success with both of those cards. Also, I'd keep an eye on Silence the Believers. I'm not convinced it's worth its cost, but since I haven't played it myself, I couldn't say definitively. I'd just watch its performance and see if in those moments Ashes to Ashes wouldn't be better or even just a straight wrath.

I think Ashes to Ashes is really solid though so while I think Silence the Believers is worse I want to try it out at least. Seems at least better than Murder which is fine. Diabolic Revelation is fine, kind of like a monocolor Conflux however I felt it was the least impactful of my high end black spells. Maybe I could keep it and cut Demonic Collusion instead, I do want to cut one of the expensive tutors. Avatar of Woe isn't a card I'm a big fan of but it has definitely seen play. Personally I would rather run Royal Assassin but I'll check with my playgroup and see how they feel, these changes certainly aren't firm yet.

Just out of curiosity what would you recommend removing to get Fierce Empath back in?

The fact that the creature has to be tapped to be destroyed kills Royal Assassin for me. Just a thought, but Demonic Collusion is a good role player in Kerador and Mimeoplasm decks. I'm not saying it's uncuttable because it is, but it is a role player. I do like Revelation more though. Every time Revelation has resolved in our games it has won the game.

To get Fierce Empath back in, I'd probably cut Forgotten Ancient. Being a creature, it's inherently fragile, and so it's effect won't last through wraths, which is where it might actually be worth it building up counters while you rebuild your board state. It's best in the early game because it can build up some counters then while you build up a board state providing a beastly attack from your first swing of the game, but that's also when your opponents are likely holding a wrath. In the mid to late game, you probably want something splashier than a slow upgrade to a creature or two. My 2 cents.

Quote from Theogony_IX

The fact that the creature has to be tapped to be destroyed kills Royal Assassin for me. Just a thought, but Demonic Collusion is a good role player in Kerador and Mimeoplasm decks. I'm not saying it's uncuttable because it is, but it is a role player. I do like Revelation more though. Every time Revelation has resolved in our games it has won the game.

To get Fierce Empath back in, I'd probably cut Forgotten Ancient. Being a creature, it's inherently fragile, and so it's effect won't last through wraths, which is where it might actually be worth it building up counters while you rebuild your board state. It's best in the early game because it can build up some counters then while you build up a board state providing a beastly attack from your first swing of the game, but that's also when your opponents are likely holding a wrath. In the mid to late game, you probably want something splashier than a slow upgrade to a creature or two. My 2 cents.

I guess the downside of Royal Assassin is that he prevents attacking period instead of just encouraging people to swing elsewhere like Avatar of Woe.

The tutors are definitely getting played in decks but I can't actually recall which one has seen more play or been more effective. I think I'll leave this one up to my playgroup to decide.

Definitely sold on Forgotten Ancient, I've never liked the card much myself though there are some people in my group that love it. I'll do my best to convince them to cut him to get Fierce Empath back in who seems like he's a better role player anyways. I don't have any counters matter commanders so the only real synergy Forgotten Ancient has is with random stuff like Double Season. Thanks for the feedback as always.