We finally got your cube up and running, so we will try it out tonight! You cube is something like 10-12% different then mine, which is huge (most cubes are more like 3-5% different) - def excited!
The Time Vault and Splinter Twin cards aren't really combos you build your deck around so much as quick finishers for controlling decks that can search up the pieces or try to draw into them. Its part of why we don't like Kiki-Jiki as much since its harder to cast.
Even the Muzzio's+Persist isn't really the basis of a deck, its just a game ending interaction that you pull sometimes and/or can search up.
We finally got your cube up and running, so we will try it out tonight! You cube is something like 10-12% different then mine, which is huge (most cubes are more like 3-5% different) - def excited!
Awesome! I'm excited to see what your results are.
We actually just made some more changes last night. We took out Kiki-Jiki / Splinter Twin / Deceiver Exarch / Pestermite and did some other stuff that we thought was largely beneficial for the cube. I'll get a changes list worked out soon, been finishing up the storm primer as my main thing lately. It's taking a bit longer than normal but a lot of real-life stuff hit recently so I'm only able to work on it for about an hour a day and I want it to be as great as it can be when first putting it out there.
The Time Vault and Splinter Twin cards aren't really combos you build your deck around so much as quick finishers for controlling decks that can search up the pieces or try to draw into them. Its part of why we don't like Kiki-Jiki as much since its harder to cast.
Even the Muzzio's+Persist isn't really the basis of a deck, its just a game ending interaction that you pull sometimes and/or can search up.
Yep, I can definitely see that. We may be moving in a very different direction with the cube soon, so I'll keep you guys updated on that.
I'm not sure if your Cube list is up to date or not (I haven't looked recently) but somewhere I saw you mention that you switched from mana elves to enchant land acceleration (Utopia Sprawl etc). There are definitely some pros and cons.
The big Con is that some of the core ramp cards kinda stop working, especially the big finishers:
Natural Order
Craterhoof Behemoth
Gaea's Cradle
Mirror Entity
Garruk Wildspeaker would still work with Wild Growths but it is almost like the best card in your deck if you have mana elves with it.
The big Pro is that you don't auto die to Pyroclasm/Bonfire/Earthquake/Powder Keg and that's a huge deal. (or maybe it is time for Ezuri, Renegade Leader)
On another note, I think it is definitely worth seeding the cube with a couple cards that get insanely better with haste from Immediate Action. Like, how good is Metalworker tapping right away?
Hey, I believe it is up to date with maybe a card or two off for odd testing purposes.
We're actually playing Mishra's Workshop as well (although it's only seen play in a Worldknit deck so far), and I was actually just thinking about trying out Metalworker the other day.
So far, I've liked the mana ramp enchantments much more than the mana elves. They are better for storm and are much better with land-untapping effects, which we have plenty of in our 360. Frantic Search is an extremely high pick in these parts for reanimator and storm, so producing an extra mana (or two) can be very helpful.
We don't play Gaea's Cradle (it wasn't very good for us) or Craterhoof Behemoth (we're starting to really like Hornet Queen), so the mana elves lose some value there. We also don't play Pyroclasm, Rolling Earthquake, or a lot of the other red control cards although I'm trying to make that work.
We're playing Wildfire and Burning of Xinye right now, but the cards are not being drafted or played. I may force a Wildfire deck tonight to see how strong it actually is in our cube. I've wanted the archetype to be good for some time, but our players just do not respect it and there hasn't been good reason to - people who draft the deck usually get blown out and then never try it again.
Thing about Wildfire/Xinye for us is that all of the mana artifacts are high picks in Powered. Not really possible to build a deck that works around it. Not much point either, since its not guaranteed to give you the huge advantage it might confer in non-Powered. We think Wildfire is the worst part of the red control package -- Pyroclasm, Rolling Earthquake, etc are absolute antiaggro studs -- better than Wrath and friends by a goodly amount. Thats why we feel White really wants to go in a more permanent direction for its anti creature spells (Moat, Humility).
I think it could be worth diversifying a bit on the combo front rather than supporting Storm quite so heavily just to see what else could work. For instance, the only cards that justify Academy Rector are Enter the Infinite, Omniscience, maybe Dream Halls, Necro-Impotence and probably Yawgmoth's Bargain. I think if you go that way Laboratory Maniac could work. Guttersnipe too.
Another idea we're going to be trying is Worldgorger Dragon. We haven't really figured out the corrects kill(s) though.
If you use Muzzio's Preparation, Protean Hulk can now get an immediate kill (or infinite life) with persist+sac outlet. Even with Brago's Favor it can't get the Kiki kill however. Flash is actually not bad as a reanimator outlet anyway. There is a scarcity of Flash targets however: Angel of Serenity is really good with it if you are on the defensive. Its like a more limited Sneak Attack that is significantly cheaper.
I took Lone Missionary out for Karakas about a week ago. I was going to take out Gitaxian Probe for it, but my playgroup insisted it should be classified as a white card.
It did a ton of work. Being able to bounce Eldrazi is huge. It also got work done against Rofellos and one of our players drafted a really random deck that featured the Karakas - Vendilion Clique combo.
All in all, it was pretty sweet. It's been testing really well.
I swear imma be done with this Storm Primer soon. ;P
I play in Flutter's playgroup and we played your cube a couple weeks ago. I think we all had a blast, although I'm not sure if I'd want to draft such a crazy cube weekly =P
General thoughts - I think you succeeded really well in making a combo cube. Almost every deck drafted had a comboey way to win, although since we were only drafting with 5 the attempted storm deck didn't come together as well as it could have. That being said, the "fair" decks that got drafted also seemed competitive which is nice to see. I admit I was a little worried that the cube would really only be able to make combo decks, but the second place deck was a 3-color aggro control with some powerful interactions (bloodghast, carrion feeder, and fetch lands, double stroke on path to exile) and powerful fair cards like jitte. He did also have key/vault, but I don't know if he ever won that way.
My biggest concern, and again this may be because we didn't see the whole cube, was the lack of GY hate. I drafted the straight nuts BG reanimator deck with bazaar of baghdad, reanimate, necromancy, recurring nightmare, various mana dorks, and survival and once I got guys in the yard other decks had no way to get rid of them or really interrupt my plan in any meaningful way short of counterspells (I was also running oath of druids). My reanimation targets were terrastadon, primus, grave titan, sundering titan, and hornet queen so removal just didn't do much against me either. Granted, this was a limited sample size, but just in our experience reanimator seemed really hard to deal with.
P.S. - muzzio's preperations with woodfall primus is pretty hilarious, especially with recurring nightmare. Those are the kind of cube interactions I love to see and play with.
P.P.S. - Oath of druidsing into hornet queen to stabilize at 5 life is a good feeling.
Why have I not thought of this or seen this in action?!
You might have lucked into a really powerful reanimation draft pool. We actually have a harder time making reanimator work around here, hence all the ridiculous amounts of support we put into the deck. If I ever increase the cube size, I'll likely add in some reanimation hate cards.
Good to know you guys had a great time with it. It's true, it's super broken and the games are about as swingy as you can get most of the time, but that's what my playgroup really likes.
I forget who said this, maybe it was someone on the forums recently, but: (my paraphrase)
When I play an unpowered cube, I geel good playing fun balanced magic. When I play a powered cube, I feel alive.
Why have I not thought of this or seen this in action?!
Well, it did hit dorks fairly often, and it's also not great if you get a hornet queen or grave titan in play and essentially give your opponent a free creature every turn for the rest of the game, but it seemed to be a pretty good alternate plan and way to deal with aggro. I also killed it with woodfall primus in one game to stop my opponent getting a trigger.
Interesting. Yeah, one of the major reasons I took out some mana dorks was to make Oath of Druids better in decks that wanted both acceleration and Oath of Druids in their deck, which I believed at the time to just be ramp and storm. Maybe we have a bias towards it because Storm is really the only deck that takes and plays the card, although I've seen ramp take it a few times and it be mediocre.
Reanimator would actually be a really good fit for the card. Glad you made it work decently in that archetype.
I figured I should probably move our discussion of Pod for your cube from the "Draft the above person's cube thread":
I've been taking out some mana elves and I don't know how much actual support I have with it. I'd like to try it some time, but I don't know how well positioned my cube is to take advantage of it right now. You're right though, that kind of style is right up my alley, probably why I jumped on it when I saw it P1P2, haha.
Just for fun, I compared our green sections, and we're both running 8 mana dorks in our cubes and Pod has been working just fine for me - so I don't think that lack of mana elves would be a problem for you. One of the nice things about Birthing Pod is that what a Pod deck needs to work - creatures at each CMC that provide value when they come into play or when they die - is something you probably want to have in your cube anyway. The only CMC spot in your cube that's lacking there is the 4-drop spot. Deadbridge Goliath and Wickerbough Elder fill that role just fine in my cube but there are quite a few other options like Masked Admirers and Vengevine (which I'd run if I had it). It's still pretty easy for drafters to fill gaps in the pod chain with creatures from other colors, too, and Solemn Simulacrum also makes great Pod fodder.
Anyway, I definitely recommend giving Pod a try in your cube, especially since you were looking at adding Melira to your cube. I think you and your playgroup will really enjoy it.
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You're the only other cuber I know that plays Dictate of Karametra. If you had to lose either that or Sylvan Caryatid, which one would you cut? I like the way Dictate supports super ramp, and the interaction with Academy Rector. Caryatid is good, but there's a lot of good 2cc ramp in the cube already. Nissa, Worldwaker will be an awesome support cards for green ramp decks, as she serves as a win-condition for regular ramp AND a support card for super-ramp, so I definitely want to play her. But I don't know if I'd rather drop a support card for regular ramp decks or one of the few support cards for super ramp.
Sorry, I must have missed your post somehow! We may try Birthing Pod. I'm going to ask my guys this Friday if they'd like to give it a go. We're weak in the 4cmc drop in green, as you mentioned. We'll see how it goes, I'm definitely always up for trying powerful cards!
@ Wtwlf123:
We play a lot of mana doublers (Mana Flare, Heartbeat of Spring, Mirari's Wake, Dictate of Karametra, Mana Reflection). Dictate of Karametra has actually proved to be one of the best, surprisingly enough. (I'd say my ranking goes: #1 Wake, #2 Dictate, #3 Mana Flare, #4 Heartbeat, #5 Mana Reflection). Getting first crack at it and the fact that your opponent has no idea it's coming has been fantastic for us in both super-ramp and storm. I think it's one of those cards that just looks okay on paper, and then you play with it and you're like "Yo, this card is way better than I expected."
Sylvan Caryatid is really awesome in so many ways too.
If I had to choose one, I'd probably cut the Caryatid because I may even play more mana doublers than the ones I'm currently playing (I think I'm playing actually all the 3-6 cmc mana doubling spells in the magic universe). They're some of the most important cards for storm, also decent in super-ramp, and I'm always very happy to play with that type of effect.
I really wouldn't cut either from my 360 though, I like the Sylvan Caryatid more than Wall of Roots as well because it fixes colors which I think is really huge. I actually cut Wall of Roots for it and haven't ever looked back. I know you feel otherwise though.
So, here's a deck that a first-time-cuber drafted on Friday. I helped him draft and build the deck, and he 3-0'd with it. This was in an 8 man with three people who have never cubed before (two others besides this guy, who's name is Kurt).
He had wins off of Channel, Tinker, Entomb-Necromancy, Fauna Shaman-Animate Dead, Eureka, and Defense of the Heart.
This is probably the best cube deck I have ever seen. He beat me in the finals (I got a game, 1-2) with storm.
I haven't updated my cube in a while, although we have made substantial changes in the past few weeks. Many of the storm cards are just not cutting it, which is great because I'm really happy to cut cards for not being good enough in the archetype so the overall strength of other archetypes are improved.
That being said, I do still have a few other storm cards I'd like to test out.
I was about 90% finished and then a lot of work-related stuff came up. The only things I've been doing for the past two weeks are work, playing magic two nights a week, or spending time with loved ones. Really not much room to do anything else.
Since I've added more storm cards in with the recent update (but haven't been taking many out to see how they interact with one another), it's become actually the strongest archetype in a 4-8 man draft, and is normally drafted in 2-mans as one of the decks. People in these parts really enjoy playing the deck, but it's led to games being very uninteractive with how powerful it has become.
The cube is going through a huge reshifting right now. I wanted to get in some more testing with some cards to add to the storm primer, but I may not have time for all that with everything that's going on.
I'll probably finish things up when I get an hour or two here or there.
TL;DR - Storm has been better than ever, storm primer has been slow coming, but it's coming.
So.. I've recently taken a fancy to necropotence, and have been trying to figure out a way to make it cubeable. Curious what you thought of the card??? Notice you run it.
Asides from the very obvious casting restriction (have figured my way around this without hurting cube experience), would you play this card in a non-storm cube??
It was broken in constructed primarily for its interactions with combo, but the lack of combo in most cubes makes it seem a lot worse.
My issue with combo is the inconsistency it brings to cube, so am trying to wrack my brain as hard as possible to include combo without diluting the "fair" archetypes.
Eagerly trying to find another combo to introduce, especially one that can utilize the insane card draw of necropotence, and close out the game immediately once its assembled.
One combo I'm planning to try out is Volt Key/Time vault combo, which you inspired. So many ways to untap time vault with playable cards, that it will take up so few slots.
So.. I've recently taken a fancy to necropotence, and have been trying to figure out a way to make it cubeable. Curious what you thought of the card??? Notice you run it.
Asides from the very obvious casting restriction (have figured my way around this without hurting cube experience), would you play this card in a non-storm cube??
Necropotence is awesome. We run Dark Ritual and Cabal Ritual to help out with casting it, but our very heavy black aggro decks can also cast it if they're only splashing 1-3 cards of another color.
I'd say over 80% of the time it goes in a storm deck, although the other 20% may surprise you.
It's by far the card that goes on Unexpected Potential the most, in our experience. Turning the triple black cost into three colorless mana is huge and it makes the cut in literally any deck at that point. It's also seen some play in Worldknit decks where it's an all-star.
If you run Unexpected Potential already, I would definitely give Necropotence a shot, even if you don't run any combo stuff in your cube.
One combo I'm planning to try out is Volt Key/Time vault combo, which you inspired. So many ways to untap time vault with playable cards, that it will take up so few slots.
Time Vault / Voltaic Key is a really strong combo that any deck can have access to, but if you run Ral Zarek and/or Tezzeret the Seeker, chances are that Time Vault is going to be taken very highly for the blue mage that wants as many draw 7s as he can get his hands on.
I'm actually thinking about cutting Time Vault / Voltaic Key from the cube because it's not really a colorless combo, it's more like just another blue card that doesn't serve any functions other than to lucksack a game win or two. Tezzeret the Seeker is a particularly damaging way to abuse Time Vault since it creates the combo itself and five mana is really easy to accomplish in our powered cube. Our players really like Time Vault / Key more than I do though, so chances are it's here to stay.
That's a huge jump. I'd experiment and playtest with a 450 list for a few months before jumping all the way to 540. It will be an incredible difference. I've played a lot of 360, 450 and 540 but I wouldn't scale in either direction more than 1 "step" at a time.
That's a huge jump. I'd experiment and playtest with a 450 list for a few months before jumping all the way to 540. It will be an incredible difference. I've played a lot of 360, 450 and 540 but I wouldn't scale in either direction more than 1 "step" at a time.
We played at 450 for 6 months about a year to a year and a half ago. The last time we played at 540 was over two years ago, maybe more. I talked about it with the playgroup and we're excited to try out a significantly larger cube size. We were actually debating going all the way to 720, but 540 won out.
-1 Gitaxian Probe
+1 Karakas
Bouncing Eldrazi and Vendilion Clique among other things sounds fun.
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We finally got your cube up and running, so we will try it out tonight! You cube is something like 10-12% different then mine, which is huge (most cubes are more like 3-5% different) - def excited!
Even the Muzzio's+Persist isn't really the basis of a deck, its just a game ending interaction that you pull sometimes and/or can search up.
Awesome! I'm excited to see what your results are.
We actually just made some more changes last night. We took out Kiki-Jiki / Splinter Twin / Deceiver Exarch / Pestermite and did some other stuff that we thought was largely beneficial for the cube. I'll get a changes list worked out soon, been finishing up the storm primer as my main thing lately. It's taking a bit longer than normal but a lot of real-life stuff hit recently so I'm only able to work on it for about an hour a day and I want it to be as great as it can be when first putting it out there.
Yep, I can definitely see that. We may be moving in a very different direction with the cube soon, so I'll keep you guys updated on that.
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The big Con is that some of the core ramp cards kinda stop working, especially the big finishers:
Natural Order
Craterhoof Behemoth
Gaea's Cradle
Mirror Entity
Garruk Wildspeaker would still work with Wild Growths but it is almost like the best card in your deck if you have mana elves with it.
The big Pro is that you don't auto die to Pyroclasm/Bonfire/Earthquake/Powder Keg and that's a huge deal. (or maybe it is time for Ezuri, Renegade Leader)
On another note, I think it is definitely worth seeding the cube with a couple cards that get insanely better with haste from Immediate Action. Like, how good is Metalworker tapping right away?
We're actually playing Mishra's Workshop as well (although it's only seen play in a Worldknit deck so far), and I was actually just thinking about trying out Metalworker the other day.
So far, I've liked the mana ramp enchantments much more than the mana elves. They are better for storm and are much better with land-untapping effects, which we have plenty of in our 360. Frantic Search is an extremely high pick in these parts for reanimator and storm, so producing an extra mana (or two) can be very helpful.
We don't play Gaea's Cradle (it wasn't very good for us) or Craterhoof Behemoth (we're starting to really like Hornet Queen), so the mana elves lose some value there. We also don't play Pyroclasm, Rolling Earthquake, or a lot of the other red control cards although I'm trying to make that work.
We're playing Wildfire and Burning of Xinye right now, but the cards are not being drafted or played. I may force a Wildfire deck tonight to see how strong it actually is in our cube. I've wanted the archetype to be good for some time, but our players just do not respect it and there hasn't been good reason to - people who draft the deck usually get blown out and then never try it again.
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I think it could be worth diversifying a bit on the combo front rather than supporting Storm quite so heavily just to see what else could work. For instance, the only cards that justify Academy Rector are Enter the Infinite, Omniscience, maybe Dream Halls, Necro-Impotence and probably Yawgmoth's Bargain. I think if you go that way Laboratory Maniac could work. Guttersnipe too.
Another idea we're going to be trying is Worldgorger Dragon. We haven't really figured out the corrects kill(s) though.
If you use Muzzio's Preparation, Protean Hulk can now get an immediate kill (or infinite life) with persist+sac outlet. Even with Brago's Favor it can't get the Kiki kill however. Flash is actually not bad as a reanimator outlet anyway. There is a scarcity of Flash targets however: Angel of Serenity is really good with it if you are on the defensive. Its like a more limited Sneak Attack that is significantly cheaper.
It did a ton of work. Being able to bounce Eldrazi is huge. It also got work done against Rofellos and one of our players drafted a really random deck that featured the Karakas - Vendilion Clique combo.
All in all, it was pretty sweet. It's been testing really well.
I swear imma be done with this Storm Primer soon. ;P
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General thoughts - I think you succeeded really well in making a combo cube. Almost every deck drafted had a comboey way to win, although since we were only drafting with 5 the attempted storm deck didn't come together as well as it could have. That being said, the "fair" decks that got drafted also seemed competitive which is nice to see. I admit I was a little worried that the cube would really only be able to make combo decks, but the second place deck was a 3-color aggro control with some powerful interactions (bloodghast, carrion feeder, and fetch lands, double stroke on path to exile) and powerful fair cards like jitte. He did also have key/vault, but I don't know if he ever won that way.
My biggest concern, and again this may be because we didn't see the whole cube, was the lack of GY hate. I drafted the straight nuts BG reanimator deck with bazaar of baghdad, reanimate, necromancy, recurring nightmare, various mana dorks, and survival and once I got guys in the yard other decks had no way to get rid of them or really interrupt my plan in any meaningful way short of counterspells (I was also running oath of druids). My reanimation targets were terrastadon, primus, grave titan, sundering titan, and hornet queen so removal just didn't do much against me either. Granted, this was a limited sample size, but just in our experience reanimator seemed really hard to deal with.
P.S. - muzzio's preperations with woodfall primus is pretty hilarious, especially with recurring nightmare. Those are the kind of cube interactions I love to see and play with.
P.P.S. - Oath of druidsing into hornet queen to stabilize at 5 life is a good feeling.
375 unpowered cube - https://cubecobra.com/cube/list/601ac624832cdf1039947588
Oath of Druids in Reanimator!
Why have I not thought of this or seen this in action?!
You might have lucked into a really powerful reanimation draft pool. We actually have a harder time making reanimator work around here, hence all the ridiculous amounts of support we put into the deck. If I ever increase the cube size, I'll likely add in some reanimation hate cards.
Good to know you guys had a great time with it. It's true, it's super broken and the games are about as swingy as you can get most of the time, but that's what my playgroup really likes.
I forget who said this, maybe it was someone on the forums recently, but: (my paraphrase)
When I play an unpowered cube, I geel good playing fun balanced magic. When I play a powered cube, I feel alive.
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Well, it did hit dorks fairly often, and it's also not great if you get a hornet queen or grave titan in play and essentially give your opponent a free creature every turn for the rest of the game, but it seemed to be a pretty good alternate plan and way to deal with aggro. I also killed it with woodfall primus in one game to stop my opponent getting a trigger.
375 unpowered cube - https://cubecobra.com/cube/list/601ac624832cdf1039947588
Reanimator would actually be a really good fit for the card. Glad you made it work decently in that archetype.
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Just for fun, I compared our green sections, and we're both running 8 mana dorks in our cubes and Pod has been working just fine for me - so I don't think that lack of mana elves would be a problem for you. One of the nice things about Birthing Pod is that what a Pod deck needs to work - creatures at each CMC that provide value when they come into play or when they die - is something you probably want to have in your cube anyway. The only CMC spot in your cube that's lacking there is the 4-drop spot. Deadbridge Goliath and Wickerbough Elder fill that role just fine in my cube but there are quite a few other options like Masked Admirers and Vengevine (which I'd run if I had it). It's still pretty easy for drafters to fill gaps in the pod chain with creatures from other colors, too, and Solemn Simulacrum also makes great Pod fodder.
Anyway, I definitely recommend giving Pod a try in your cube, especially since you were looking at adding Melira to your cube. I think you and your playgroup will really enjoy it.
450 card Peasant cube thread. Draft it here.
My 630 Card Powered Cube
My Article - "Cube Design Philosophy"
My Article - "Mana Short: A study in limited resource management."
My 49th Set (P)review - Discusses my top 20 Cube cards from MKM!
Sorry, I must have missed your post somehow! We may try Birthing Pod. I'm going to ask my guys this Friday if they'd like to give it a go. We're weak in the 4cmc drop in green, as you mentioned. We'll see how it goes, I'm definitely always up for trying powerful cards!
@ Wtwlf123:
We play a lot of mana doublers (Mana Flare, Heartbeat of Spring, Mirari's Wake, Dictate of Karametra, Mana Reflection). Dictate of Karametra has actually proved to be one of the best, surprisingly enough. (I'd say my ranking goes: #1 Wake, #2 Dictate, #3 Mana Flare, #4 Heartbeat, #5 Mana Reflection). Getting first crack at it and the fact that your opponent has no idea it's coming has been fantastic for us in both super-ramp and storm. I think it's one of those cards that just looks okay on paper, and then you play with it and you're like "Yo, this card is way better than I expected."
Sylvan Caryatid is really awesome in so many ways too.
If I had to choose one, I'd probably cut the Caryatid because I may even play more mana doublers than the ones I'm currently playing (I think I'm playing actually all the 3-6 cmc mana doubling spells in the magic universe). They're some of the most important cards for storm, also decent in super-ramp, and I'm always very happy to play with that type of effect.
I really wouldn't cut either from my 360 though, I like the Sylvan Caryatid more than Wall of Roots as well because it fixes colors which I think is really huge. I actually cut Wall of Roots for it and haven't ever looked back. I know you feel otherwise though.
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My 630 Card Powered Cube
My Article - "Cube Design Philosophy"
My Article - "Mana Short: A study in limited resource management."
My 49th Set (P)review - Discusses my top 20 Cube cards from MKM!
He had wins off of Channel, Tinker, Entomb-Necromancy, Fauna Shaman-Animate Dead, Eureka, and Defense of the Heart.
This is probably the best cube deck I have ever seen. He beat me in the finals (I got a game, 1-2) with storm.
1x Fauna Shaman
1x Squee, Goblin Nabob
1x Psychatog
1x Pelakka Wurm
1x Terastodon
1x Woodfall Primus
1x Emrakul, the Aeons Torn
Artifact Creature
1x Æther Searcher
Artifact
1x Mana Crypt
1x Mana Vault
1x Grim Monolith
1x Mind Stone
1x Worn Powerstone
1x Channel
1x Cultivate
1x Tinker
1x Eureka
Instant
1x Entomb
Enchantment
1x Animate Dead
1x Fertile Ground
1x Necromancy
1x Recurring Nightmare
1x Defense of the Heart
1x Bazaar of Baghdad
1x Shelldock Isle
2x Island
6x Swamp
7x Forest
Æther Searcher is here to stay.
That being said, I do still have a few other storm cards I'd like to test out.
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Since I've added more storm cards in with the recent update (but haven't been taking many out to see how they interact with one another), it's become actually the strongest archetype in a 4-8 man draft, and is normally drafted in 2-mans as one of the decks. People in these parts really enjoy playing the deck, but it's led to games being very uninteractive with how powerful it has become.
The cube is going through a huge reshifting right now. I wanted to get in some more testing with some cards to add to the storm primer, but I may not have time for all that with everything that's going on.
I'll probably finish things up when I get an hour or two here or there.
TL;DR - Storm has been better than ever, storm primer has been slow coming, but it's coming.
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Asides from the very obvious casting restriction (have figured my way around this without hurting cube experience), would you play this card in a non-storm cube??
It was broken in constructed primarily for its interactions with combo, but the lack of combo in most cubes makes it seem a lot worse.
My issue with combo is the inconsistency it brings to cube, so am trying to wrack my brain as hard as possible to include combo without diluting the "fair" archetypes.
Eagerly trying to find another combo to introduce, especially one that can utilize the insane card draw of necropotence, and close out the game immediately once its assembled.
One combo I'm planning to try out is Volt Key/Time vault combo, which you inspired. So many ways to untap time vault with playable cards, that it will take up so few slots.
Last Updated 02/07/24
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Sorry, I must have somehow missed this post and it wasn't showing up for me as a new one or whatever.
Necropotence is awesome. We run Dark Ritual and Cabal Ritual to help out with casting it, but our very heavy black aggro decks can also cast it if they're only splashing 1-3 cards of another color.
I'd say over 80% of the time it goes in a storm deck, although the other 20% may surprise you.
It's by far the card that goes on Unexpected Potential the most, in our experience. Turning the triple black cost into three colorless mana is huge and it makes the cut in literally any deck at that point. It's also seen some play in Worldknit decks where it's an all-star.
If you run Unexpected Potential already, I would definitely give Necropotence a shot, even if you don't run any combo stuff in your cube.
Time Vault / Voltaic Key is a really strong combo that any deck can have access to, but if you run Ral Zarek and/or Tezzeret the Seeker, chances are that Time Vault is going to be taken very highly for the blue mage that wants as many draw 7s as he can get his hands on.
I'm actually thinking about cutting Time Vault / Voltaic Key from the cube because it's not really a colorless combo, it's more like just another blue card that doesn't serve any functions other than to lucksack a game win or two. Tezzeret the Seeker is a particularly damaging way to abuse Time Vault since it creates the combo itself and five mana is really easy to accomplish in our powered cube. Our players really like Time Vault / Key more than I do though, so chances are it's here to stay.
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