MTG Salvation

Quote from metalevolence »

RE: deathtouch, deep enchantments

I've been running all that ***** for months and you should too. Look at my cube.

And yeah, you can draft a whole deck around deathtouch+ping.

I know what you're feeling. I've seen people just recently come around to some of the ideas I've been running for a while. People just have to realize the sweetness of these cards on their own.

I enjoy cubing with wordmail more than empyrial armor. Or hyena umbra, for that matter. I also enjoy ethereal armor. Especially in a GW deck with pacifisms and enchant lands.

those un-cards are a nogo for me, i think theyre just stupid

Why? So the flavor is a little silly, cube is a flavor trainwreck anyway. A huge mash of cards from across magic history. It's already pure chaos, serrated arrows from homelands next to a foil mulldrifter, lurking automaton and a splatter thug or whatever, who cares if a silver border card is in there too?

I honestly think wordmail's mechanic is really cool in how the pump varies depending on what it's on.

carnivorous death-parrot is probably the most efficient 2 drop ever, and honestly almost as scary as goofy. Besides, "A vicious fighting bird" could describe quite a few black bordered cards; it's not really that weird.

double header is boomerang on a solid, evasive etb creature. And a 2 headed magic drake isn't anything unusual at all for a magic card.

Those are all the ones i run. They are just fun cards that play well as far as I'm concerned.

Double Header essentially is Mist Raven.

Wordmail is sometimes unfair, but usually it is just a white Giant Strength or Furor of the Bitten

The Parrot is actually the more unique, but not too unlike Cloudskate

All of those aforementioned silver-bordered cards are ones I've run, but my favorite card from those sets is The Fallen Apart, which is basically a 4/4 Can't Block for 4 in most cases.

Quote from metalevolence »

Why? So the flavor is a little silly, cube is a flavor trainwreck anyway. A huge mash of cards from across magic history. It's already pure chaos, serrated arrows from homelands next to a foil mulldrifter, lurking automaton and a splatter thug or whatever, who cares if a silver border card is in there too?

well i care. i dont consider the un-sets real magic cards. although the cube is a huge mashup through all magic history (what i really love), theoretically every card could see a reprint in a current set, unlike the un-cards. but if you like them, keep them.

At this point, some of the stuff printed in Unglued and Unhinged is more "a part of Magic" than cards printed in Future Sight. Mark Rosewater often speaks of these sets as his testing grounds for ideas that would be hard to pitch for a normal set, but then play well enough that they provide evidence to back up designing new cards of that sort that make it into Magic "proper" from that point.

I can't find the article I was thinking of where he talked about the Un-set ideas that eventually made it into regular sets, though there's some mention of a few of those here: http://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/mm/team-building-2014-10-13 I'm pretty sure I read this article and triggered a memory of reading him say that elsewhere, but that could be in any of his 100s of articles.

My favorite Un-card in my Pauper cube is probably AWOL, followed by Death Parrot. Good looking foils too. I had Prismatic Wardrobe which I liked but others valued it very low in draft so I cut it. I hadn't seen The Fallen Apart or Wordmail, I may be able to find cuts for those.

I run it, but I run it to give all colours the option to have a mediocre flying, vigilant body, but it is looking very close to a cut.

In my cubes I run 2 colorfixing in each guild and ~5 rainbowfixer. I think thats enough at 360. Depends on how deep your multicolorsection is, though. If I wanted to up that to 30, Id probably add the Signets before a third cycle of lands. The borderposts get worse the more non-basics you add, because they only bounce basics. Thats why I cut them recently.

The Outlast guys are definitely no staples, but a pet subtheme. I think the Ainok Bond-Kin is pretty solid and synergizes well with cards like Travel Preparations.

I didnt play the Skullhunter yet, but I can imagine its very strong in the Khans limited, especially if you get multiples. I think as a lonely guy in cube its not that strong and needs some kind of discard subtheme running.

Quote from Izor »

Thanks for the replies.

You're probably right, I guess I'll get rid of the Borderposts and play 20 Guildgates. It's a shame, the posts look so nice and unique in foil...

I'll get the Bond-Kin and Disowned Ancestor and test them.

I'm still not convinced of Skullhunter, I may give it a try in the future, but for now it stays out.

you might also try Salt Road Patrol as its stats are slightly above curve

When wondering which lands to run I realized I wanted a greater variety of lands without taking up so many slots in the cube. My solution was to keep a land section seperate from the cube, shuffle it seperately, and deal a land for the 15th card in each pack. That way there is enough fixing to go around as well as variety of cycles but I don't have to fight over cube slots so hard. Been running it that way for almost a year and the feedback has been positive.

Testing out the soul sisters in cube again. I know that in the past they have been dismissed as not achieving enough, but I am not testing them for raw power. Instead I am testing them to encourage an archetype, G/W attrition. with token generators (Sprout Swarm, Presence of Gond (especially going infinite with Midnight Guard)), other decent lifegain cards (Lone Missionary, Aven Riftwatcher, Faith's Fetters, lifelinkers, extorters) I am testing a more grindy G/W than people are used to. I have seen this archetype work well in drafts so far, but there was little incentive to draft it over old good stuff Selesnya decks, so I have moved in the Soul Sisters (Soul Warden, Soul's Attendant, Essence Warden) and am giving them a fair shot. Will report back on how things go.

Presence of Gond + Midnight Guard is a very neat combo. Ill include the Guard immediately. It doesnt need the lifegain to win, though.

I always liked the soulsisters, but in the end I cut them for higher impact cards.

Quote from Al_Z_Heimer »

I dislike the Soul Sisters for several reasons. One reason obviously is the raw power, but also that I really dislike lifegain as a strategy. My most hated card in Theros was Hopeful Eidolon. It was extremly powerful in this removalless and fatty/heroic-heavy set, but it led to games, that went terribly much longer, than they were supposed to and often ended with time outs. I remember the situation, when I had a 22/23 Heroic dude with Lifelink and my opponent had like a 24/24 dude with lifelink and booth just hit the opponents life in a neverending cycle, till one finds a Divine Verdict, that wasn't answered by God's Willing. I know that lifegain can be a strategy, but I prefer not to support it as an own archetype, but as a support keyword for different strategies.

I fully understand where you are coming from, and I don't want my cube to end up like Theros draft, but I feel that in a more removal heavy format then it is a workable situation. The lifegain is intended to be a side strategy to a general lategame flood strategy, with the lifegain keeping a deck going until it reaches some lategame bombs. At the end of the day this is just a test with some slots until I have to cut 10 cards for karoos (when I get my last 2 karoos, can't find Simic Growth Chambers or Boros Garrisons in my area) in the next month or so.

Quote from Humphrey »

Presence of Gond + Midnight Guard is a very neat combo. Ill include the Guard immediately. It doesnt need the lifegain to win, though.

I always liked the soulsisters, but in the end I cut them for higher impact cards.

Midnight Guard + Presence of Gond is a pet combo of mine, the two cards are decent enough to run on their own (neither are true bombs, but they aren't at all bad) and when they come together they have an infinite creature combo - something that I have used to draw more than a few people into pauper cube that would otherwise think the format low powered.


I fully understand why people dislike the soul sisters, but for now I am trying to include them as support cards for a draft archetype (I feel that 2 or 3 colours to support an archetype across multiple colours doesn't dilute the cube too much, especially if it is just a short term change) and am trying to loosen up drafts a little bit for a while. They will likely be the 2 cuts in white and 1 of the cuts in green, which makes adding the karoos a bit easier for me.

It doesn't overly appeal to me either, but it is an archetype that is popular with several players I know, so running it for a month or two is fair to me. I don't like drafted storm very much myself for example, but that didn't stop the storm deck in modern masters from being popular. And several people didn't really like Spider Spawning in Innistrad, but I loved the archetype. The cards will get a fair shot until I bring the karoos in.

well, in my maincube i run Lone MissionaryAven RiftwatcherSeraph of Dawn, the good Extort guys and a few selfbounce creatures Kor Skyfisher,Dream Stalker,Silver Drake. (aka the staples).
Its way more effecient to bounce the missionary a few time, than to play the Sisters and gives you the lategame reach you want. You could also add Temple Acolyte, which is a good blocker and enables selfbounce too.

I consider Dream Stalker a bomb in control. The ass of 5 stops almost everything. So annoying to deal with. And it synergizes very well with a lot of ETB effects.

As a side note regarding the soul sisters: Tokens still aren't very well-supported in most cubes, but the soul sisters would be much more powerful if played in a token-heavy deck.

well at least in my meta its very good. I even added the much worse Grizzled Leotau, because im so impressed by the resilience of CC2 1/5 against aggro. Early game its a huge wall, mid/lategame the bounce ability is crazy value.

dont know, we often noticed our cubes are very different. Half of your blue section ended in my Tier2. I prefer to bounce one of my many drawcreatures, while you run Omenspeaker and Sigiled Starfish(both not even Tier2 worthy) which eats a bolt if its a problem anyway. Green 2 drops already outclass it, which of course you dont run either Or Halimar Wavewatch which eats the removal or bounce after you skipped a few turns to pump it.

well, I built my cube very tempo oriented, a t1 2power, t2 3power dude will apply enough pressure to kill you in 4 turns.
Its pretty reasonable to get a deep G aggrodeck, so GG isnt much of a problem and you got manaelves or fixing to support that more easily. (usually I end up playing them in a Gr stompydeck with 2 of 3 harrow,Viridian Emissary,Krosan Tusker and a 10forest/4mountain/1dual split or UG tempo - drawmanipulation will find you the 2nd G and the low cost lets you keep countermana.
Also there are lots of alternative options to make a 0/3 1/3 obsolete the turn it comes into play, like Basking Rootwalla, Darkthicket Wolf, the white 3/1 drops (at least it trades then) and so on. Counting the answers to toughness 5 compared to tougness 3 will show a massive difference.

You mentioned evasion, and I guess you mean those bunch of 2/1 guys. Well I dont cube them, because an early Desert or Guildmage will ruin your day.

The Leotau is still on the watchlist, but I like him. Hes happily wearing that Armadillo Cloak without the fear of toughness based removal in response and can attack or block (into) everything Since GW usually ends as a pretty controlish midrange deck, hes totally fine there. Travel Preparations is great but doesnt fit into that archetype that well.

Aether Adept on the other side isnt totally garbage (just not in my top20list), but if you need to play that bounce early to stop the pressure, youre just dead if you miss that crucial (island)landdrop. While delaying an aggrodrop isnt optimal, it wont lose you the game.

Building the cube it ended up having 3 maincolors WBG and 2 supportcolors UR , so you wont landsplit 50/50 (besides the UR archetype), but 60/40 to 80/20. Few UU or RR spells are left and those even they lost a lot of value due to their cost are still too powerful to leave.

Bolting/removing a 1/3 blocker is totally fine if a crtical amount of x/1 creatures are stalled. (the whites 3/1 for example) Again its tempoplay. You probably stick a 3 or 4 drop, but are still unable to win the race.

ok maybe I underrate Adept a bit, but Dream Stalker is definitely the better card compared to Omenspeaker and Starfish.

I prefer using a manaelf to cast a 2 and a 1 drop turn 2, although a 3-drop is pretty reasonable as well, because if you play only a 3 drop, I lose a card but race you in the end (finishing your with burn)

Toughness 2 is much much better than 1 and I said this pretty often. There are too many effect that can trade 2:1 or better with it. Arc Lightning and so on.

And tempoplay involve cards like Daze, Mana Leak, Rhystic Study (against you) and the correct balance between spellls and lands. You generate virtual card advantage/quality if you run 14/15 lands and your opp 16/17 because of a higher curve.