Gonna keep the actual cube contents on CT, not here, but welcome any and all topics of discussion here. You guys have been a great community resource to get this thing started -- looking forward to getting the cube even better with your help!
So while I'm a horrible tinkerer when it comes to cube contents and could discuss literally thousands of potential changes, I might as well start with something more topical -- Khans of Tarkir and the cards I'm considering to add.
Seeker of the Way -- a bear with a LOT of upside, and white already casts plenty of non-creature spells (token-making sorceries, enchantment-based removal, etc). Very likely inclusion.
Timely Hordemate -- the body isn't great on T4, nor would a 2-drop by itself be. But if you get both? More rad.
Singing Bell Strike -- better for blue aggro than the other options (which I'm not playing) like Curse of Chains. Worse for control/long games. Only coming in as part of a broader change, along more blue low-cost creatures.
Treasure Cruise -- high-variance sweet card. Almost definitely in.
How often is the fifth point of toughness actually significant? Flametongue Kavu and Flame Slash in red, plus Ribbons of Night in Dimir are my only relevant spells (though there's a ton of other playables like Flame Javelin or Grasp of Darkness which I'm not using).
Meanwhile, the potential ETB life loss is pretty big for control decks wanting to drop Saddlebrute on curve. Also, against something like red aggro, Saddlebrute is quite a bit weaker since the opponent can send in a horde of little 2/x or 3/x creatures, lose one in combat, but then finish off your 4/5 with a burn spell.
Add in the fact that, on offense, any 2/2 + 3/3 can double-block your creature and trade 1-for-1 and I'm pretty sure Kezz is still my choice.
(The upkeep damage clause from Kezz seems like it will very rarely matter, though I'm not even mad at the 1-in-100 chance of someone wrathing their whole board into a sacrifice outlet so Kezzerdrix can do lethal damage to its controller)
"Add in the fact that, on offense, any 2/2 + 3/3 can double-block your creature and trade 1-for-1 and I'm pretty sure Kezz is still my choice."
Good on you for noticing this.
There are very few ways for a spell to deal 4 damage in the cube, and even fewer 4/5s to get through the first strike. Being undoubleblockable makes kezzerdrix insane
Cavalry for Squire was an easy swap. More reliable card advantage over the possibility of bashing for (not) literally infinite damage with a Bonesplitter or some other power boost. Traveler hadn't really done anything and I found a Land Tax, so the "don't wanna spend $15" excuse was gone. Spirit Loop out, because "just lifegain" on a card is predictably not great, and nobody used a 5CMC reanimate spell regardless of the instant speed upside.
Switching around the bounce spells to do better in aggressive strategies, and a little more to enable "blink" stuff. Slight cut in the number of draw spells, adding one more 1CMC cantrip and the sweet new common Ancestral Recall.
Butcher Ghoul hadn't done anything, and the other Ghoul was redundant alongside a functionally identical card (Nantuko Husk), plus two other sac outlet creatures. Too many discard effects in the cube, so going for a staple black aggro card that I was missing, the all-around great Shredder (TOO many ETB kill creatures?), and the iffy reanimate spell. And, no excuse for keeping Rats over Pestilence for so long.
Blitz... fun card, turned out not to be a good card. Then some upgrades at 2 and 3 CMC, and a sweet multi-target removal spell (chosen over Cone of Flame mostly for having an old-border foil).
Sylvan again a $$ issue, and Karstoderm (pretty solid in a low-artifact count cube) for Slime was easy. The 2-drops are more iffy... Mongrel obviously is powerful, but I've seen it in four or five draft nights thus far, with absolutely nothing impressive happening.
Still hard to fill out the last cards for Azorius and Golgari. The Fanatic should probably be Flinthoof Boar, or Kird Ape as a part of a much bigger change to support green aggro. Weird might come back for the worse Izzet split card I'm playing (Turn // Burn), since it's such a sweet little versatile creature. I'm not sold on Roc at all, and am open to ideas (to be played alongside Lyev Skynight, Arctic Aven, Azorius Charm (also meh), and Mistmeadow Witch.
"Switching around the bounce spells to do better in aggressive strategies, and a little more to enable "blink" stuff"
This sounds like reasons to not cut mist raven.
Shower of coals is much better than cone of flame. The "up to" isn't relevant, but being able to plague wind is too good to ignore.
I never see people deck Fire/Ice to use Ice, so most people count it as a red card. Unless you see people decking it for Ice, I would suggest you do the same.
I still think Sylvan library and Land tax are incredibly overrated. Land tax because it's much closer to being terrible when you're going first, and library because unless you're paying the 4 life a couple times/are ale to shuffle your library, it just isn't doing better than a card that says "draw 2". The card selection is an illusion if you aren't manipulating your deck.
It is, however, very good with lorescale coatl.
It was a straight swap for Cloudskate, and I already have Aether Adept and the jellyfish. Don't think I want all four -- you'd play Raven over Adept?
Last 1-v-1 cube game I played my opp cast Ice twice, I think it's definitely relevant though certainly inferior to Fire.
Tax/Rack are probably indeed overrated, but still interesting cards my play group enjoys. Plus, amazing together and green actually has a decent amount of shuffle from Cultivate type effects.
I know green is the color with the most shuffle, but what matters is whether or not they will follow one another often enough in sequence for it to be relevant.
If I have only one library and one sakura tribe elder in a deck, the library isn't going to be interacting with the elder even 50% of the time assuming the game ends on the turn of your tenth draw step (7 cards in for the game, 10 for the draws, +2 deeper for library = 19/40 cards seen in the deck). And that's still assuming that if I had both, that I'm getting my library activation before I use my shuffle effect.
If you have 2 or more shuffle effects, then you're playing the odds to library's favor. But there are plenty of green decks with 1 or zero, and only very spottysupport in the other colors + the terramorphic expanses.
The library is in my cube, barely, because it provides some fuel for green aggro. They can usually afford the 4 life once or twice and the support is desirable because green is something of a second class pure aggro color outside of a few gems like blastoderm, 1 mana accelerators, and Wild Nacatl.
I am merely telling you to temper your expectations about those cards.
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It's not that your opponent played Ice. People play ice every blue moon or so. But did he put Fire/ice into his deck because he had access to Ice? Did he draft it because it has two modes? Playgroups may differ, but in my group people draft the card because it is instant speed forked bolt, the blue side is just a random bonus. For the same reason, you and I don't count azorius guildmage as blue, and I don't count either rakdos guildmage or gruul guildmage as red. They get better with the other color surely but they aren't being drafted for it.
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I would play raven over adept, but that's partly because adept is just bad man-o-war (and I stopped playing with cards that are like that a while ago). Even still, Mist raven is a relevant clock, unlike the grounded versions. It is a wonderful followup to Tandem lookout, Man o war, frost lynx, and Latch Seeker. So yes.
Sidebar: Referring to Riftwing cloudskate as cloudskate was initially confusing, since cloudskate is a card that I am actually running in my cube.
I can understand a lot of the changes you made, but the one that struck me as unusual was cutting Putrid Leech. This is arguably the best Golgari card available at the Peasant level, so it's surprising to me that it's one of the two to get the axe. I certainly think it's better than Consume Strength.
Dredge and flashback (in most cases at least, for flashback is not a need to discard cards. They are just ways for those cards to retain some value if they happen to lose some value by being discarded. And as far as I can tell there are only 2 commonly cubed cards with flashback threshold (shower of coals, grizzly fate) and one somewhat occasionally cubed one (werebear)
My opponent had P1P1'd Incinerate, but maindecked a mostly blue-black control deck with a bunch of good burn in the sideboard that would come in at several points in our three rounds. Anyway, I got off to a fast start with my 2/1 flyers, but his black removal was stronger than my blue tempo as I was stuck with two bounce spells in hand with him at a healthy life total with Aether Adept and Skinrender on board as the only targets. I had to use Withdraw on my own Drake token to fizzle a full-power Ribbons of Night (which the player hadn't seen before, and his eyes lit up as he kept reading the card out loud: "four damage... AND four life... AND I draw a card!"). Game 2 was closer; this time, though Ribbons was able to resolve, putting a race situation rather firmly in his favor.
Round 2: 2-0
This guy P1P1'd a Bloodbraid Elf and had a lot of good Naya stuff, though a little disjointed as it included both Tattermunge Maniac AND Enlisted Wurm. Both games he went T1 Elf into T2 Kitchen Finks, only to have it eat a Path to Exile. In Game 1 a Hearthfire Hobgoblin showed some danger with a couple Soulbond creatures, but I was able to trade it off when it was un-bonded, with my Mishra's Factory thanks to the classic block-pump play then win with flyers. G2 ends with him hitting his first ~7 land drops and putting little of note on board; Bloodbraid hit an Eternal Witness with an unfortunately empty graveyard.
Round 3: 2-1
The last round was against someone who P1P1'd a Journey to Nowhere and had a fairly nutso Orzhov deck with tokens from Lingering Souls, Triplicate Spirits, Raise the Alarm; disruption from Wrench Mind, Tidehollow Sculler, and Mesmeric Fiend, and pump from Bonesplitter and Mask of Memory. Game 1 I keep Island, Plains, Preordain, Shrine of Loyal Legions + 4 drops on the draw... I get my Shrine out early, but can't find a third land for way too long as he builds a perfect hand with a Mask'd soldier token beating me in. Eventually I pop the Shrine for 5 and have a narrow window to stabilize, but Triplicate Spirits finishes me off. G2, the luck of the draw goes the other way -- he only has swamps for four or five turns, and Carnophage plus Night's Whisper whittle away his life total before I'm happy to finish it off with my Serendib Efreet. G3 starts sometime close to 1:30 in the morning, so I'm more fuzzy on the details... it was the most competitive of the three, and I finished it off with a Vulshok Morningstar-equipped Custodi Squire bashing repeatedly.
Yeah, except for Go for the Throat, those are all cards that I wouldn't expect to be first picking most of the time. Specter's Shroud is one I'm interesting in hearing more about though, I'm always on the lookout for more playable equipment.
Had an eight-man draft on Thursday, the first time in months I've had a full pod!
I drank too much and went 1-2 with some weird Bant midrange deck. No real notes (cuz drinking), though I remembered to jot down six of the eight P1P1s:
Basic Info
Card Selection
Gonna keep the actual cube contents on CT, not here, but welcome any and all topics of discussion here. You guys have been a great community resource to get this thing started -- looking forward to getting the cube even better with your help!
Seeker of the Way -- a bear with a LOT of upside, and white already casts plenty of non-creature spells (token-making sorceries, enchantment-based removal, etc). Very likely inclusion.
Timely Hordemate -- the body isn't great on T4, nor would a 2-drop by itself be. But if you get both? More rad.
Jeskai Windscout -- how often will it be better than a Cloud Elemental? Probably not often.
Singing Bell Strike -- better for blue aggro than the other options (which I'm not playing) like Curse of Chains. Worse for control/long games. Only coming in as part of a broader change, along more blue low-cost creatures.
Treasure Cruise -- high-variance sweet card. Almost definitely in.
Bellowing Saddlebrute -- if Vintage Masters didn't give us Kezzerdrix, it would be great.
Murderous Cut -- removal seems TOO good in some games, so could swap this in for something more consistent like Doom Blade.
Hordeling Outburst -- 3-for-1. Let's do it. Would be my 14th Goblin spell for Sparksmith, too.
Monastery Swiftspear -- I love cards that encourage bluffing. What happens when you attack into a 2/2 on T2 with this with open mana? Fun happens.
War-Name Aspirant -- I'm a big fan of red aggro, led by cards like Gore-House Chainwalker. This girl slides right in.
Tri-Lands -- duh.
How often is the fifth point of toughness actually significant? Flametongue Kavu and Flame Slash in red, plus Ribbons of Night in Dimir are my only relevant spells (though there's a ton of other playables like Flame Javelin or Grasp of Darkness which I'm not using).
Meanwhile, the potential ETB life loss is pretty big for control decks wanting to drop Saddlebrute on curve. Also, against something like red aggro, Saddlebrute is quite a bit weaker since the opponent can send in a horde of little 2/x or 3/x creatures, lose one in combat, but then finish off your 4/5 with a burn spell.
Add in the fact that, on offense, any 2/2 + 3/3 can double-block your creature and trade 1-for-1 and I'm pretty sure Kezz is still my choice.
(The upkeep damage clause from Kezz seems like it will very rarely matter, though I'm not even mad at the 1-in-100 chance of someone wrathing their whole board into a sacrifice outlet so Kezzerdrix can do lethal damage to its controller)
Good on you for noticing this.
There are very few ways for a spell to deal 4 damage in the cube, and even fewer 4/5s to get through the first strike. Being undoubleblockable makes kezzerdrix insane
To be fair and why I dont have hopes for this card, probably one damage happens.
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 Cuts
White Adds
Cavalry for Squire was an easy swap. More reliable card advantage over the possibility of bashing for (not) literally infinite damage with a Bonesplitter or some other power boost. Traveler hadn't really done anything and I found a Land Tax, so the "don't wanna spend $15" excuse was gone. Spirit Loop out, because "just lifegain" on a card is predictably not great, and nobody used a 5CMC reanimate spell regardless of the instant speed upside.
Blue Cuts
Blue Adds
Switching around the bounce spells to do better in aggressive strategies, and a little more to enable "blink" stuff. Slight cut in the number of draw spells, adding one more 1CMC cantrip and the sweet new common Ancestral Recall.
Black Cuts
Black Adds
Butcher Ghoul hadn't done anything, and the other Ghoul was redundant alongside a functionally identical card (Nantuko Husk), plus two other sac outlet creatures. Too many discard effects in the cube, so going for a staple black aggro card that I was missing, the all-around great Shredder (TOO many ETB kill creatures?), and the iffy reanimate spell. And, no excuse for keeping Rats over Pestilence for so long.
Red Cuts
Red Adds
Blitz... fun card, turned out not to be a good card. Then some upgrades at 2 and 3 CMC, and a sweet multi-target removal spell (chosen over Cone of Flame mostly for having an old-border foil).
Green Cuts
Green Adds
Sylvan again a $$ issue, and Karstoderm (pretty solid in a low-artifact count cube) for Slime was easy. The 2-drops are more iffy... Mongrel obviously is powerful, but I've seen it in four or five draft nights thus far, with absolutely nothing impressive happening.
Misc Cuts
Misc Adds
Still hard to fill out the last cards for Azorius and Golgari. The Fanatic should probably be Flinthoof Boar, or Kird Ape as a part of a much bigger change to support green aggro. Weird might come back for the worse Izzet split card I'm playing (Turn // Burn), since it's such a sweet little versatile creature. I'm not sold on Roc at all, and am open to ideas (to be played alongside Lyev Skynight, Arctic Aven, Azorius Charm (also meh), and Mistmeadow Witch.
This sounds like reasons to not cut mist raven.
Shower of coals is much better than cone of flame. The "up to" isn't relevant, but being able to plague wind is too good to ignore.
I never see people deck Fire/Ice to use Ice, so most people count it as a red card. Unless you see people decking it for Ice, I would suggest you do the same.
I still think Sylvan library and Land tax are incredibly overrated. Land tax because it's much closer to being terrible when you're going first, and library because unless you're paying the 4 life a couple times/are ale to shuffle your library, it just isn't doing better than a card that says "draw 2". The card selection is an illusion if you aren't manipulating your deck.
It is, however, very good with lorescale coatl.
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
Last 1-v-1 cube game I played my opp cast Ice twice, I think it's definitely relevant though certainly inferior to Fire.
Tax/Rack are probably indeed overrated, but still interesting cards my play group enjoys. Plus, amazing together and green actually has a decent amount of shuffle from Cultivate type effects.
If I have only one library and one sakura tribe elder in a deck, the library isn't going to be interacting with the elder even 50% of the time assuming the game ends on the turn of your tenth draw step (7 cards in for the game, 10 for the draws, +2 deeper for library = 19/40 cards seen in the deck). And that's still assuming that if I had both, that I'm getting my library activation before I use my shuffle effect.
If you have 2 or more shuffle effects, then you're playing the odds to library's favor. But there are plenty of green decks with 1 or zero, and only very spottysupport in the other colors + the terramorphic expanses.
The library is in my cube, barely, because it provides some fuel for green aggro. They can usually afford the 4 life once or twice and the support is desirable because green is something of a second class pure aggro color outside of a few gems like blastoderm, 1 mana accelerators, and Wild Nacatl.
I am merely telling you to temper your expectations about those cards.
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It's not that your opponent played Ice. People play ice every blue moon or so. But did he put Fire/ice into his deck because he had access to Ice? Did he draft it because it has two modes? Playgroups may differ, but in my group people draft the card because it is instant speed forked bolt, the blue side is just a random bonus. For the same reason, you and I don't count azorius guildmage as blue, and I don't count either rakdos guildmage or gruul guildmage as red. They get better with the other color surely but they aren't being drafted for it.
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I would play raven over adept, but that's partly because adept is just bad man-o-war (and I stopped playing with cards that are like that a while ago). Even still, Mist raven is a relevant clock, unlike the grounded versions. It is a wonderful followup to Tandem lookout, Man o war, frost lynx, and Latch Seeker. So yes.
Sidebar: Referring to Riftwing cloudskate as cloudskate was initially confusing, since cloudskate is a card that I am actually running in my cube.
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
CubeTutor: www.cubetutor.com/cubeblog/72
Thread: http://forums.mtgsalvation.com/showthread.php?t=512410
flashbackthreshold (shower of coals, grizzly fate) and one somewhat occasionally cubed one (werebear)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 CubeCobra (draft 20 card packs, 2 packs.)
430, Peasant, Very Unpowered
Why you should take your hybrids out of your gold section
Manamath Article
I'm a little curious about the threshold lands in U/B, though I doubt they're quite good enough.
Anyway, slight Khans change.
+ Hordeling Outburst
+ War-Name Aspirant
-Krenko's Command
-Traitorous Blood
Nothing too fancy. Blood was redundant since I also have Act of Treason... though THAT might get swapped for the instant-speed Kamigawa version. TBD.
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
Did 4 packs of 11. I first-picked a Lust for War out of a pack with only Naya or colorless cards, second-picked Talrand's Invocation, then rattled off five or six good blue aggressive creatures and spells. Arctic Aven had me wanting to go White, then I was solidified in that by P2P1 Path to Exile. Wound up with a very solid deck, with Vaporkin AND Welkin Tern AND Spined Thopter, plus Tandem Lookout and Serendib Efreet, splashing very lightly in white for the Path, a copy of Faith's Fetters and a Custodi Squire.
Round 1: 0-2
My opponent had P1P1'd Incinerate, but maindecked a mostly blue-black control deck with a bunch of good burn in the sideboard that would come in at several points in our three rounds. Anyway, I got off to a fast start with my 2/1 flyers, but his black removal was stronger than my blue tempo as I was stuck with two bounce spells in hand with him at a healthy life total with Aether Adept and Skinrender on board as the only targets. I had to use Withdraw on my own Drake token to fizzle a full-power Ribbons of Night (which the player hadn't seen before, and his eyes lit up as he kept reading the card out loud: "four damage... AND four life... AND I draw a card!"). Game 2 was closer; this time, though Ribbons was able to resolve, putting a race situation rather firmly in his favor.
Round 2: 2-0
This guy P1P1'd a Bloodbraid Elf and had a lot of good Naya stuff, though a little disjointed as it included both Tattermunge Maniac AND Enlisted Wurm. Both games he went T1 Elf into T2 Kitchen Finks, only to have it eat a Path to Exile. In Game 1 a Hearthfire Hobgoblin showed some danger with a couple Soulbond creatures, but I was able to trade it off when it was un-bonded, with my Mishra's Factory thanks to the classic block-pump play then win with flyers. G2 ends with him hitting his first ~7 land drops and putting little of note on board; Bloodbraid hit an Eternal Witness with an unfortunately empty graveyard.
Round 3: 2-1
The last round was against someone who P1P1'd a Journey to Nowhere and had a fairly nutso Orzhov deck with tokens from Lingering Souls, Triplicate Spirits, Raise the Alarm; disruption from Wrench Mind, Tidehollow Sculler, and Mesmeric Fiend, and pump from Bonesplitter and Mask of Memory. Game 1 I keep Island, Plains, Preordain, Shrine of Loyal Legions + 4 drops on the draw... I get my Shrine out early, but can't find a third land for way too long as he builds a perfect hand with a Mask'd soldier token beating me in. Eventually I pop the Shrine for 5 and have a narrow window to stabilize, but Triplicate Spirits finishes me off. G2, the luck of the draw goes the other way -- he only has swamps for four or five turns, and Carnophage plus Night's Whisper whittle away his life total before I'm happy to finish it off with my Serendib Efreet. G3 starts sometime close to 1:30 in the morning, so I'm more fuzzy on the details... it was the most competitive of the three, and I finished it off with a Vulshok Morningstar-equipped Custodi Squire bashing repeatedly.
IN: Force of Will
OUT: Time Ebb
-Go for the Throat (me), ended up blue-black aggro
-Force of Will, ended up blue-black control
-Mogis's Warhound, ended up near mono-red with two green spells
-Specter's Shroud, ended up RW tokens/aggro
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 540 CU/be thread
CubeTutor: www.cubetutor.com/cubeblog/72
Thread: http://forums.mtgsalvation.com/showthread.php?t=512410
Had an eight-man draft on Thursday, the first time in months I've had a full pod!
I drank too much and went 1-2 with some weird Bant midrange deck. No real notes (cuz drinking), though I remembered to jot down six of the eight P1P1s:
Draft it on Cubetutor here, and CubeCobra here.
Treasure Cruise did nothing wrong.
My Peasant Cube thread !!! (380 cards)
Draft my Peasant Cube on Cube Cobra !!!
I think? Maybe? Bourbon was pouring a little too freely
1. Casting Standstill when you're down in terms of power on board, 5 to 0, then breaking it next turn.
2. T1 suspend Rift Bolt on the play.
3. T1 mountain-Genju of the Spires, T2 Swamp-Dark Ritual out a Genju activation and attack.