MTG Salvation

I'm commenting purely on the replacement for Hymn to Tourach. I also had a game from a draft a few months ago where I just lost the game on my second turn due to Hymn to Tourach. I lost my land and my only castable creature and just couldn't cast anything after that. You could consider Wrench Mind which is the same cost but doesn't potentially win you the game when cast on your second turn. There is also Unburden which is good when it's good and can be cycled when it isn't; three mana vs two is a big difference though.

I agree with others that these aren't really cards you want in an aggressive deck. You generally want to save them to snag the last two cards in your opponent's hand. This can be a big game vs a lot of decks and generally favours more midrange strategies.

Hopefully fixed my sig link.

I think Hymn is a useful card for Aggro in that it is very effective disruption against control decks which have a tendency to over perform in my cube.

Quote from TheCommunistManatee »

Hopefully fixed my sig link.

I think Hymn is a useful card for Aggro in that it is very effective disruption against control decks which have a tendency to over perform in my cube.

no offense, but to be honest, i think your cube looks all over the place. you run a lot of bad card while also running the top notch cards. goblin tribal for example is really really bad and it even gots worse at 450, because already at 360 the densitiy of useful cards is too light.
but if you want to run it youre definitely missing goblin grenade and goblin shrine

i guess you started to build youre cube by including all the cool commons you have lying around or seemed interesting and my first iteration of my cube had some similiarities with yours (i also tried goblins). i think its a good approach to develop your own cube, but it takes a lot of playtesting to balance powerlevel and you need to decide what cards will be your reference points.

I totally appreciate the feedback, I would disagree though. I there are some power discrepancies, absolutely, but drafting it is still the experience I was looking for and I've curated the list quite heavily (i.e. not just a pile of stuff I own). As I said, I've gone for archetypes I think are more interesting rather than aiming for a collection of the most powerful cards legal for pauper and I know not everyone has that philosophy (which is fine, IMO cube is much more about what your group enjoys than what anyone else thinks).

A quick aside on Goblin Tribal, I've actually deliberately avoided Grenade as the Goblin deck crushed a bunch of pods for a while. There are enough incidental goblins that picking up a lord of any kind is pretty strong... (in the context of my cube).

I think Gust Walker is considerably stronger than Wings of the Guard. Immensely better as a blocker (it's "a bear" but sometimes you need exactly that instead of Dakmor Bat), shrugs off ping effects better against dividable burn spells, attacks through other 2-power flying bodies.

There's only six creatures in your entire cube which can outright stop a 3/3 flying attacker (and that's counting the Rukh Egg token and Beetleform Mage with activation)!

But Gust Walker can't block in the air. I agree that he may be better, than Wings of the Guard an a regular cube, but my cube gets drafted for Multiplayer sometimes, therefore I kepp the Wings of the guard.
I liked Rhonas Stalwart in limited, but I didn't test it yet, so I will see, if he stays.

A card I have to add is Bloodlust Inciter. Just had it in an Hour of Devastation draft, while playing a sweet Boros Aggro deck. And man, is this guy strong in an aggro deck. Just give basically everything haste is sweet.

A 1/1 can't really "block" either; it trades with a portion of a card (a token), chumps something bigger (or a 2/2)... and I guess is actually functional as a blocker against very specifically Spined Thopter, Vampire Interloper, and the white Pegasus dudes.

OTOH if you actually play multiplayer and Melee can make your dude into a 3/3 or something it's cool, but I assume the vast majority of cubes never sniff multiplayer gameplay.

Quote from Al_Z_Heimer »

Lumberjack has always been a pet card of mine, but Gruul is just too strong to justify it in my cube. After all it still turns Forst into Black Lotuses. If your are looking for a cut, the Emissary can definitely not be your consideration power level-wise. I would suggest Ground Assault instead. Red is not really short on removal and while Assault can deal huge chunks of damage, sorcery speed is a big downside without the possibility of being pointed at a players face it's not all that strong.

Definitely would not cut BTE for it, but Lumberjack is actually pretty decent. 5 mana on turn 2 is no joke.

Ive often tried and always dismissed the lumberjack. Saccing a forest was never worth the acceleration, especially in a 1of format. It calls for 3for1s since jack itself is barely a card

Idle curiosity but what about making things more interesting by allowing players who draft legends to use those legends as commanders? The problem is that there are only 12 legends legal in pauper (and 10 of them are only legal because of Masters Edition 3). All except 2 are terrible Legends legends, so things wouldn't really be broken. The other two are two bad monored legends from Homelands. But with a 360 card cube it might not come up enough to matter since you'd need the right colors and to actually draft it. Maybe better for peasant or a normal cube.

Those two homelands legends are technically uncommon.

EDIT: I'm wrong, it's confusing because they don't come up on a search for common legendary cards on magiccards.info and are listed as uncommon there, but gatherer classifies them as Common, so, MY BAD!

Is it even necessary at that size? Maybe try Vulshok Gauntlets? Plays way better than it looks.

I've managed to get 6 chums to come draft this weekend and I decided to shave off a few poorly supported archetypes from my cube and improve some of the curves of the different colours.

I decided to give blue and black a few more top end finishers and put Kalastria Nightwatch back in my cube. It is currently rated borderline on the evaluate everything thread. Ambitious Aetherborn and Prowling Pangolin are the only other creatures that have comparable stats at the five mana slot.

It doesn't seem too difficult to turn a vanilla 4/5 into a major flying threat. Most pauper cubes have some extort creatures and this makes Kalastria Nightwatch perfectly acceptable in black and it becomes a staple in a deck with some life-leeching abilities or extort. There are also incidental lifegain creatures like Vampire Envoy (which is about black's best defensive creature at the 3 mana slot), Gray Merchant of Asphodel, Rotfeaster Maggot, Falkenrath Noble, Cartouche of Ambition, virtually every Orzhov gold card and a whole bunch of white lifegain cards.

Cartouche of Ambition doesn't work with Kalastria, because you deal damage after it attacks as a flyer (unless you use it with a pinger or Rats).

But Vampire Envoy synergises perfectly with it.

Yes, quite. Getting a little excited there.

What do people think about +1/+1 counters matters in the cube? The reprinting of the counter-lords from Khans (though no significant downshifts) made me reassess the theme and it seems like there are a number of cards now, ranging from renown to the new explore mechanic, that allow counters to pop up throughout the cube. Are there any significant cards available to exploit the counters outside of ainok bond-kin?

Past discussions about this topic seem to show that even when we have lots of cards that put +1 counters, we don't have enogh payoff.

Ainok bond-kin and Crowned Ceratok give good abilities to +1 counters creatures.

Creatures with Graft exist but the abilities they grant are not very powerful (except maybe Sporeback Troll, but its stats are underwelming).

I would add creatures with double strike, lifelink and, marginally, vigilance, as every point of p/t you add to them has double value.

Thrummingbird and s bunch of other cards with proliferate are the best approach for the archetype.

Good call, I forgot about proliferate. Nonetheless, the few cards with proliferate at common are not white nor green, which are the colors with more +1 counters.

Fuel for the cause
Grim Affliction
Spread the sickness
Steady Progress
Thrummingbird
Volt Charge

If proliferate returns in some future set, maybe u.u

Right now I'm only counting about 20 or so +1/+1 counter cards (in a 360 cube), that doesn't seem like much. How many would you need to justify the inclusion of Ainok bond-kin and Crowned Ceratok? Like-wise, dropping in a card like Steady Progress or even thrummingbird. There is already some -1/-1 counter action already in there.

I think the +1+1 theme is a build around archetype in cubes. so either you go deep into it and add like 50+ cards to the cube or you leave it. there are tons of abilities that provide those, though. so it shouldnt dilute the powerlevel too much. I dont think its worth the payoff, because i dont feel counter are an interesting mechanic playstype wise. It only leads to excessive use of dice.

@Al: I hope you read this. How is Mire's Malice perfoming for you? I noticed you run it and im currently reworking my T2. It looks worse than Mournwhelk to me, because it lacks revive or blink shenenigans, but i might add both if its a solid card.

the basic question is. does discard 2 for 4mana pay off in the first place. or do you cast it as a creature all the time?

It's hard to say, but most of the time it feels bad to pay 4 for discard 2. It's nice to have the floor on these cards, but I think I'd rather pay for the cheaper ceiling than the similar floor that can be improved with specific cards.

sacrifice seems a totally viable archetype to me already, but its not as deep as you might think. its maybe only 5 cards directly dedicated and synergizing with the token archetype. the husk is pretty solid if you can give it evasion and its always a tough decision how to block.

the archetype is nothing for a powered cube, but is fine in toned down ones
the interaction of threaten effects and sacrifice is strong enough to warrant inclusion

(although i missed some in my example draft)