MTG Salvation

Quote from Runner5678

The 1 power is huge definitely. Being able to kill X/1's comes a lot. Oh but it's Scry for 2, so not that good.

Ah shame my mistake, I thought it was Scry 3 Still though, I think the ETB effect is still pretty strong.

TESTING SHALL DECIDE!

Quote from Runner5678

Quote from Prince_Reyson

Omenspeaker/Starfish (one of the two) are on my short list to come in once I cut a couple bounce spells, which actually is something that needs to happen. I've felt there are too many in my cube. Any help pruning would be appreciated because I honestly can't decide which are the worst of them, other than Aethersnipe.

I saw Drift of Phantasms mentioned- is that guy good? It grabs a pretty reasonable number of good targets I guess, but is the other mode worth it?

He's been solid. I'm aggressively supporting Ghostly Flicker, so he's necessary to grab that, he also grabs Capsize. However, sometimes a 0/5 Flying is exactly what you need to survive. I like split cards a lot. Giving more options to players, more choices to make, always makes for interesting decisions and games.

The only Bounce spell you play that I don't is Silent Departure. Sorcery speed was the dealbreaker for me. Not being able to save your own dudes from removal is half the utility. Aethersnipe is a boss. I'm not running him either actually right now, but he's definitely a great card.

I'm going to be dropping Departure for Flicker today - there's enough bounce in blue (and much better) to make it definitely the weakest of the lot, and Flicker pseudo takes it spot as bounce with the right tools. It's never really drafted in my group.

I can definitely see dropping Silent Departure. I've been on the Flicker train for a while, and it far surpassed any expectations I ever had for it. It's just insanely powerful with the right pieces and is still a very strong value card.

I'm looking to design a pauper cube, and wanted some suggestions for archetypes to include?

I'll try to keep it at 360.

For more 'synergies'
- Zombie, Goblin, Elf and Soldier tribal (probably others) are all possible at pauper.
- The artifact deck is possible thanks to Antiquities, 2 mirrodin blocks and esper.
- Storm (or "UR Spells" -- grapeshot, empty the warrens, temporal whatsit that bounces stuff, etc)

When I first started my cube, I tried to make goblin and elf tribal relevant. I found this difficult since tribal needs lords and creature synergies to work. Pauper lacks lords and the synergies weren't worth justifying running tribal since there are other simply more powerful cards. That being said, there are a lot of great zombies, goblins, elves etc that work great on their own.

It helps to reduce removal if you want synergy to be a thing.

Pretty much in every instance in cube land, you reduce raw power level to make synergy relevant. Otherwise everybody would play 5 color control.

Zombies, for instance, have a spell that returns all zombies in the yard to hand in common. Cabal something or other. There's also Daru Stinger, which now also counts humans, and so on.

It's true that there are very powerful cards for tribal but I find that you need to run a lot of mediocre/niche cards that are necessary to ensure that those tribal spells reach their potential. The thing I like about goblins as a tribe is they hold their own weight but are better with other synergistic goblin cards. Pauper needs more support for most tribes to be above average.

The whole point of making synergy archetypes is that you run corner cards.
Goblins don't *really* have that much going for them aside from sparksmith.
Tribal in pauper is fun because it's like Onslaught tribal - if you whiff, you still have quality dudes (versus Lorwyn, where you might as well scoop if you don't get your tribe).

Quote from Runner5678

Goblin are actually okish. You can run Goblin Matron alongside Tarfire and Warren Weirding. Those two removal spells, Sparksmith, Spikeshot Goblin, Stingscourger, Mogg War Marshal, Goblin Chirurgeon, and Skinbrand Goblin give you some nice utility. Add the cubeable Dragon Fodder or Krenko's Command and a Goblin Grenade, and you have a nice little sub-theme. There's other Goblins too just strewn about like Mogg Fanatic, Riot Piker, and Intimidator Initiate. By no means "Tribal Goblins", but some cute, viable, and ultimately good synergies.

I was actually thinking of running Spikeshot Goblin for a while. Repeated removal with Synergy to every single Power pump spell? Pretty legit, and a lot of reach.

+1 for Spikeshot Goblin. It's somewhat underwhelming (but not terrible) if you don't draft anything that breaks it, but it also gets out of hand super quickly if you can get equipment or auras attached to it. I doubt it would make the cut for most 360 card cubes, but it has definitely earned its place at 450 cards for me.

Spikeshot Goblin has long been a mainstay in my Cube. Since the rate on him as a pinger is only just below average (1 mana is a lot more than 0, but Red decks can usually find the extra mana after the first few turns), he's quite reasonable without much aid. Throw some equipment on him, or, as I initially included, ways to generate and move +1/+1 counters and he becomes an excellent board control card. You can go full bore like I did with some of my early forays into building archetypes and also include some Untap cards for further synergies (though many of these enablers are only okay cards on their own).

Quote from Runner5678

I think we've all wanted at some point have tried to make +1/+1 counters work as an archetype. Sporeback Troll, I want you to be good so badly.

I think it's very very close to being a strong enough archetype with enough support. Some version or another of my cube (I'd have to look back through the various iterations) was a few cards shy of a really cubeable counters archetype. We just need another set of cards that care about counters in particular (e.g. Phantom creatures, creatures like the Dissension Grafters) or a lot more good cards that care just about the power of a creature like we have with Spikeshot Goblin, Aura Gnarlid (and Wandering Wolf and Skarrgan Pit-Skulk), Fling, etc.

I'm struggling with size. What's good? I'm looking at 450, but is it a good idea to go higher?

Also, archetypes I'm looking into:

- Aggro/Control in Every color
- Enchantments (Using more Heroic than Hexproof)
- Kiln Fiend Aggro (Fiend, Cyclops, Wee Dragonauts)
- BG Tortured Existence (Brownscale, Shambling Shell, etc)

Anything else you'd suggest?

Quote from Hapless Researcher

I'm struggling with size. What's good? I'm looking at 450, but is it a good idea to go higher?

Also, archetypes I'm looking into:

- Aggro/Control in Every color
- Enchantments (Using more Heroic than Hexproof)
- Kiln Fiend Aggro (Fiend, Cyclops, Wee Dragonauts)
- BG Tortured Existence (Brownscale, Shambling Shell, etc)

Anything else you'd suggest?

My cube is a 450 card cube and I've been quite happy with it. You could always go less and increase the power level and consistency of the drafts. Raising the amount of cards would definitely dilute the power level, but there would be more room for gimmicky cards. As for archetypes, I'm a big fan of U/B evasion and U/R tempo.

It's also worth keeping in mind that archetype support really only pans out if 1) people like to draft the archetypes and 2) people have fun playing the archetypes. Keep that in mind going in and be ready to tweak things as the drafts and games play out in order to increase the fun aspects and diminish the unfun aspects.

Quote from Runner5678

Both 360 and 450 work. Never seen a 540 Pauper and I don't think you could do it with an archetype-focused cube. There's a few tough cuts at 360 but I'm not leaving anything on the bench I really miss. If you go heavy archetype, you will have a lot more hard cuts.

Quote from mslano

It's also worth keeping in mind that archetype support really only pans out if 1) people like to draft the archetypes and 2) people have fun playing the archetypes. Keep that in mind going in and be ready to tweak things as the drafts and games play out in order to increase the fun aspects and diminish the unfun aspects.

I like to think of it like this with my 450; I almost always go with Power over card synergies, but they definitely help fill the gaps at 450 in differences of power level. Honestly when I added in my 90 additional cards from 360 there was no way I was going to find anything to compete with cards like Hymn to Tourach, Capsize, etc etc...BUT you can definitely fit in some cards that not only perform well in Limited decks, but synergize well with certain deck strategies and archetypes. It really leaves for some interesting drafts.

A card like Curfew for example. It's not the most powerful of cards you could be adding to a cube, but holy ***** in the right deck is this thing bonkers. If you're building any type of Tempo based deck it is just a bomb on it's own. On 3rd pack if you're drafting mostly blue and you get this and say, something like Ponder, it makes it that much harder to make those kind of decisions.

In my experience, nothing really competes with Hymn to Tourach or Capsize, etc, but those cards are also responsible for the least fun games among my play group. Even the person casting those cards didn't enjoy the experience. Once I cut those for cards for reasons like that, it became much more manageable to fit in cards to support archetypes.

Lava Zombie and Rakdos Shred-Freak continue to be unimpressive. Has anyone tried Kathari Bomber before? It seems acceptable but probably still pretty marginal... is value with recursion enough to push this guy to playable?

Quote from Hapless Researcher

I'm struggling with size. What's good? I'm looking at 450, but is it a good idea to go higher?

Also, archetypes I'm looking into:

- Aggro/Control in Every color
- Enchantments (Using more Heroic than Hexproof)
- Kiln Fiend Aggro (Fiend, Cyclops, Wee Dragonauts)
- BG Tortured Existence (Brownscale, Shambling Shell, etc)

Anything else you'd suggest?

RE: cube size

If you want to support specific decks or synergies, stuff like izzet spells-matter, dredge etc., making your cube bigger seems to be shooting yourself in the foot. You aren't helping your dredge deck if you make it possible for that deck's key cards to never even show up in the draft, which is what happens when your cube is bigger than 360. That possibility alone (that pieces might not ever show up) pushes drafters away from picking stuff like kiln fiend or golgari brown-scale. And sure, I can see you saying that that uncertainty is exciting, but IMO those weird synergetic decks are hard enough to assemble even under the best circumstances.

I personally find the fact that my entire cube will be used in an 8 person draft to be very attractive. I'm also interested in trying smaller pack sizes, and making the cube even smaller than 360. Maybe something like 12-card packs from a 288-card cube...

Quote from Prince_Reyson

Lava Zombie and Rakdos Shred-Freak continue to be unimpressive. Has anyone tried Kathari Bomber before? It seems acceptable but probably still pretty marginal... is value with recursion enough to push this guy to playable?

I agree about the Freak for now (even though it still has a spot in suicide Black), but Lava Zombie has actually been pretty decent in my group so far - regardless I'm still always looking for alternatives. Rakdos Ickspitter continuously comes to mind.

Quote from Prince_Reyson

Lava Zombie and Rakdos Shred-Freak continue to be unimpressive. Has anyone tried Kathari Bomber before? It seems acceptable but probably still pretty marginal... is value with recursion enough to push this guy to playable?

Kathari Bomber is a lot of value for a RB creature, especially an evasive one (already a rarity for the colors). It's fit right in my cube for a long time now, aiding both tokens and sacrifice archetypes (it has a delayed trigger, so after combat damage, you can sacrifice it to other effects and still get the tokens).

Quote from Runner5678

Why does no one run Benalish Cavalry? To me he looks like a pretty solid offensive 2-drop. I wouldn't expect him to be in every list, but he's literally in zero. Being able to attack into X/3's is definitely relevant. He also just can't be blocked by X/1's like Porcelain Legionnaire.

He's in my cube and has been forever. He is better at attacking than youthful knight, so I'm surprised too that no one uses him.

@Al: Lone missionary is one of the best aggro hosers ever, for whatever that's worth, and also good in blink/self-bounce decks.

Veteran armorer, on the other hand, has an ability that just didn't matter most times I saw it used.

I think I'd still be running Benalish Cavalry if it were a Soldier. As it is, it's fine creature, albeit not a very synergistic one.

I'm in the same spot as metalevolence with Benalish Cavalry. I've included it for ages; it's consistently solid and I like flanking as an ability. Not sure if there's room for him at 360 cards, though.

On Veteran Armorer, it's been okay but not fantastic. The ability is best against decks with burn, but most white decks tend to get at least some marginal amount of value out of it.