Thank you for the advice! It's much appreciated, I am trying to separate the wheat from the chaff and find I have to tweak my tweaks more than I should due to sloppy thinking.
Well noted about the performance of Exemplars I wasn't sure it was as good as it looks on paper. I think its Primal over Thornling for me after all Green isn't hurting for dangerous creatures and Primal Command is more unique, has anyone played it?
Point taken vis-a-vis Through the Breach, you would have vastly more experience playing it... I will give it a whirl (it goes in sneak-show-pod-survival / recur / reanimate shells does it not? RB RG Ru or some combination of same?)
About Trike, it's rarely drafted here even though I support blink a little more deeply than the norm (Parallax Wave, Brago as a commander for ex.), I was thinking that it has seen its day, I am guilty of not drafting him unless I hit Goblin Welder first and want to be in that deck, perhaps I am wildly undervaluing it. Not that the Hellkite is any great shakes and risks being a valueless investment if there is timely removal. I may have been lucky with it so far in the Kaalia deck or with a haste enabler where my opponent couldn't answer it at instant speed. I see the Hellkite and Triskelion as being equally situational. Is it a case of including the 6-drop which is less vulnerable?
I am strongly considering dumping Kaalia and moving Alesha to my commanders, which might be the lesser evil, not the foggiest idea what I would replace her with. My "general nonguild multicolor 10 slot section" looks like this: Alesha, Brutal Hordecheif, Sphinx of the Steel Wind, Sarkhan Unbroken, Shu Yun, Siege Rhino, Yasova, Soulfire Grand Master, Warden, and Tasigur. What are people running that have a catchall section like this?
Last question: WRT Dust Bowl, I had it in for a bit before I bought a Wasteland but couldn't puzzle out what shells it fit properly as I don't support lands-matter/recur to the hilt at my cube size: ie. no Titania, Edge of Autumn, Harrow, or the like: just running Loam/Crucible/KotR/Vinelasher Kudzu/and the usual landfall suspects aside from Avenger (I wonder if not going deep on lands matter mistake in and of itself). Other than land recursion decks as a LD engine, where does Dust Bowl shine? Or perhaps a resource-expensive Wasteland is good enough on its own? Which would lead me to believe an expensive Maze of Ith would be equally good enough?
Anyway, I appreciate the feedback. I'm finding the lower-priority card decisions to be much harder to suss out than the obvious all-star & well-rounded inclusions.
Pardon the length of the question and that this seems like a exercise in Grapefruit-V-Squid-V-Helicopter comparison... but, If you had to keep one from each of these sets:
Primal Command or Thornling
Through the Breach or Stormbreath Dragon (I both support big red and have good cheat targets + running Show&Tell and Eureka as well as full reanimator package)
Ojutai's Exemplars or Ranger of Eos or Sublime Archangel (I support spells-matter and token/weenie/anthem)
Grim Haruspex or Herald of Torment
Triskellion or Steel Hellkite
Aurelia's Fury or Boros Reckoner
and Keep 2 from these sets:
Dictate of Heliod / Wingmate Roc / Archangel of Thune
Sewer Nemesis / Disciple of Bolas / Desecration Demon
Sidisi, Undead Vizier / Puppeteer Clique / Ob Nixilis, the Fallen
Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth / Slayer's Stronghold / Kor Haven / Dust Bowl
To Clarify: this cube is usually drafted for Duel Commander 66+1 Decks 1v1 so it is a larger cube (660ish). Part of my reasoning throwing Steel Hellkite / AA of Thune / Sublime AA / Ob Nix / Desecration Demon / Stormbreath et. all, in the potential ring is that I am trying to help out people who draft Kaalia of the Vast (who I can't replace yet unfortunately) this is warping my perspective I am sure. I'm at something of a loss so thank you for your imput!
I'd go for Silverblade over Ajani. I like the extra body attacking along with granting doublestrike over Ajani's doublestrike/jump -3 his +1 sometimes feels a little durdley to me. I do run them both, however the decks that seem to want him also have a difficult time protecting Ajani and keeping the pressure on. I almost wish he gave doublestrike and vigilance until eot.
My cube is a 1v1 commander cube. It basically differs very little from what I would do for a powered list other than it is 676 cards (without the commander section I would probably run a 450+15 list). I run in the 600s because our deck size is 66 cards and I run Lore Seeker. My cubetutor is: http://www.cubetutor.com/home/6108 missing from cubetutor is the commander module itself (may add it as "rainbow" in my list however there is no way to prevent cubetutor from lumping them into the draft feature as far as I know). Commander section is 50 cards (3 per guild, 2 per wedge/shard no monocolored as mono decks are a bit difficult to get to fall into place with any consistancy for us). Commanders are drafted prior to the main cube draft each player winds up with 3 commanders to keep in mind during the main draft, we disallow the 2 benched commanders from going into the 66 at this time, we also go back and forth on allowing legendaries from the main cube as commanders as well. Basically French rules with no banlist.
I personally like that aggro decks are a viable strategy in 1v1 so I keep the decksize down to 66 to prevent the cube from swelling to the point where theatres such as aggro are too diluted to function. I have "had" to add deeper tempo/aggro support to Blue as a result. Green also has a uncomfortable(for me)number of narrow inclusions for aggressive decks (I'm looking at you Wild Dogs). Until better cards are printed I will just tolerate their presence, thus far they have been narrow-but-fine picks.
In my playgroup I have had to work on a couple of my players tolerating a lengthier draft process, which was really the only hurdle. Working out optimal commanders for 1v1 considering the nature of a draft format vs a constructed format has been very challenging (and is still very much a work in progress for us), there is only very niche support for the duel commmander variant in general in my neck of the woods (NE US) and less for 1v1 commander cube. The variant is pretty interesting and, in my experience, requires far FAR less specialized card support and resources compared to the more popular Multiplayer cubes. It is essentially able to be "tacked on" (to my potentially lackadaisical way of thinking) to "standard" cube lists. I do hope it catches on
Thanks! Yeah our playgroup mostly drafts duel commander 66 card decks with a separate commander pool draft, thinking of adding MTGO vanguard proxies and hero cards as well in the near future, if I can still find the hero cards somewhere. As for the land sorters they are roughly 3/16" taller and 1/16" wider than a sleeved card which is fine as the box is roomy and the inserts have possibly too much wiggle room.
Happy with my dividers for now only I'm looking for a alternative, preferably prefab, to keep everything consistently labled in the box. My original plan was to print and diecut some thin sintra dividers but I'm not sure my vandercook proof press would thank me for trying to run relatively hard plastic sheet. Does anyone know of some decent precut tab dividers for card collections? or are the ones from the Holiday Box all she wrote?
Thought I'd share my cube box which is still something of a work in progress. Hobby Lobby artists box with inserts by Broken Token (which are made for the Hobby Lobby box)I made minor adjustments to the inserts to accommodate a pair of plastic bins for dice and counters. After I finish the painting, I'm thinking of doing leather upper liner with some kind of debossing or perhaps slots for rules cards or some-such. Also planning on replacing all the hardware (which is serviceable if not robust) with something a bit more heavy duty. The cube is 676 plus a pile of tokens (singleton art), 90 each basic land (singleton art) a 50 card Commander section, a Conspiracy section and a section of Schemes (reduced down to "normal" sized proxies). It's fairly heavy and I worry the latches might just spring open going from point A to B, I also don't trust the shoulder strap D rings that came with the box. However all things considered it is a pretty budget friendly option for a large cube and build quality for the money is excellent. The box cost $15 (with a coupon) and the laser-cut inserts were $30+shipping.
My cube is somewhat larger at 676 cards so I have the latitude to include guys like this. I too am running Pianna as my weakest anthem-on-a-stick I think this is easily better.
Testing:
Feldon of the Third Path in place of Fulminator Mage
Dualcaster Mage in place of Guttersnipe
Daretti, Scrap Savant in place of Goblin Settler
Flesh Carver in place of Geralf's Messenger
Malicious Affliction in place of Chainer's Edict
Hallowed Spiritkeeper in place of Pianna, Nomad Captain
I will be trying to support Artifacts Matter a bit more deeply now to justify Daretti and Feldon, adding Thirst for Knowledge, Tezz 1.0 and The Abyss back in for testing... gonna wait and see what the next few days bring first.
New to the forums but I am from Northern MA, N. Reading specifically (about 15min from the Salem NH area). I am also the proud curator of a 676 (yeah wierd size, but numerically significant in various ways) powered cube as well. A meetup sounds like it could be fun.
Thank you for the feedback it is much appreciated.
Never really considered Doran because of he seems to weaken more aggressive creatures in cube than he strengthens (in doran's colors). Maybe that is a mistake in my thinking, I should just sleeve him and try it out. Hes quite a beater on his own, and he does help some creatures out as well (thinking of Hero of Bladehold, Skyfisher, Courser, Nighthawk, and also makes all the playable walls more painful to attack into).
Narset is probably a good deal better than I was thinking. I was hung up on the build around me aspects of the self-mill exile ability. Having enough bounce/removal/burn in her deck seems easy enough. And actually having a tempo-oriented commander is kind of awesome.
Kaalia has come together more than a few times with varying degrees of success. I run a bunch of targets for her beyond the usual suspects(Baneslayer, Resto, Bloodgift et all). (I still run fringe playables in Herald of Torment, Grislebrand, Kokusho, Desecration Demon, Abyssal Persecutor, Ob Nixilis 1.0, Yosei, Eternal Dragon, AA of Thune, Sublime AA, Karmic Guide, Stormbreath, Bogardan Hellkite) Not sure if its really enough but in the color combo I don't really have a clear alternative. Tariel just seems way too slow for the format.
As far as Damia goes: I have 0 experience playing her or against her in EDH and so far nobody has drafted her for duel so that certainly colors my thinking. She protects herself/you once out as you ostensibly keep drawing into answers/finishers correct? My concern would be in stabilizing for that long (T8 to see an advantage w/o spending turns ramping). On the other hand too many Graveyard Commanders (Mimeoplasm, Sidisi) might be boring.
Again, thanks for the expertise. Commander section is where I'm currently having the most trouble, and advice is sparse for this kind of thing.
My cut would be Dungeon Geists or Sakashima's Student. My only hesitation is that it looks like I'm adding yet another reactive control card at the cost of a more proactive tempo-deck card that control can make good use of as well.
I like this one despite situations where you don't have a one-drop or your one-drop gets killed-countered-siezed-can't attack. Even without raid triggering it isn't "completely" horrible, a goblin piker with a situational upside is still... wait, that does sound pretty bad.
I also run a few humans-matter cards (Champion of the Parish, Mayor of Avabruck, and Xathrid Necromancer) which like this. My cube is over 600 so I have some leeway as well but also have a problem with having enough 1-drop creatures to enable this strictly on-curve (I have to run every imaginable fringe aggressive 1-drop creature for density reasons and its still not enough).
The composition on that art is tight...
Despite this looking better in a smaller list I'm eyeballing Gore-House Chainwalker, Altac Bloodseeker or Smash to Smithereens for the cut.
Wondering what you folks think of Anafenza, the Foremost and Narset, Enlightened Master...
My situation is a bit "different" as I run a separately-sleeved commander section for Duel Commander as a game-variant in a "standard" powermax cube (66 cards decks, separate CMDR pre-draft). In that environment I tend to feel that many of the commanders that do some heavy lifting in the EDH-Cube environment are too slow or niche for Duel.
For example: I was considering Anafenza as a replacement for Karador, Ghost Chieftain because Anafenza looks to fit in a wider range of decks and is cheap without any hoops to jump through. I would likely be keeping Ghave over Karador. I fear I don't have the proper experience with either Ghave or Karador to make a clear call, those decks never seem to come together in my group.
I am also planning on replacing Tariel and Damia with their wedge's respective kahns, mostly for speed reasons. Animar and Riku are looking pretty safe, new kahn would have to be pretty sweet to unhorse them.
Furthermore for 3RWU I need a Commander to really cripple the opponent or threaten to end the game. I was considering keeping Numot, the Devastator and passing on Narset (keeping Ruhan) does that seem unwise? I may be vastly underestimating Narset for my purposes.
My playgroup is getting into the Duel Commander variant more often and I am looking for more ways to make that variant feel more integral and less "stapled on" without reinventing the wheel as far as the cube goes. Might not really be possible with the commander choices out there now.
Well noted about the performance of Exemplars I wasn't sure it was as good as it looks on paper. I think its Primal over Thornling for me after all Green isn't hurting for dangerous creatures and Primal Command is more unique, has anyone played it?
Point taken vis-a-vis Through the Breach, you would have vastly more experience playing it... I will give it a whirl (it goes in sneak-show-pod-survival / recur / reanimate shells does it not? RB RG Ru or some combination of same?)
About Trike, it's rarely drafted here even though I support blink a little more deeply than the norm (Parallax Wave, Brago as a commander for ex.), I was thinking that it has seen its day, I am guilty of not drafting him unless I hit Goblin Welder first and want to be in that deck, perhaps I am wildly undervaluing it. Not that the Hellkite is any great shakes and risks being a valueless investment if there is timely removal. I may have been lucky with it so far in the Kaalia deck or with a haste enabler where my opponent couldn't answer it at instant speed. I see the Hellkite and Triskelion as being equally situational. Is it a case of including the 6-drop which is less vulnerable?
I am strongly considering dumping Kaalia and moving Alesha to my commanders, which might be the lesser evil, not the foggiest idea what I would replace her with. My "general nonguild multicolor 10 slot section" looks like this: Alesha, Brutal Hordecheif, Sphinx of the Steel Wind, Sarkhan Unbroken, Shu Yun, Siege Rhino, Yasova, Soulfire Grand Master, Warden, and Tasigur. What are people running that have a catchall section like this?
Last question: WRT Dust Bowl, I had it in for a bit before I bought a Wasteland but couldn't puzzle out what shells it fit properly as I don't support lands-matter/recur to the hilt at my cube size: ie. no Titania, Edge of Autumn, Harrow, or the like: just running Loam/Crucible/KotR/Vinelasher Kudzu/and the usual landfall suspects aside from Avenger (I wonder if not going deep on lands matter mistake in and of itself). Other than land recursion decks as a LD engine, where does Dust Bowl shine? Or perhaps a resource-expensive Wasteland is good enough on its own? Which would lead me to believe an expensive Maze of Ith would be equally good enough?
Anyway, I appreciate the feedback. I'm finding the lower-priority card decisions to be much harder to suss out than the obvious all-star & well-rounded inclusions.
Thanks Again
Primal Command or Thornling
Through the Breach or Stormbreath Dragon (I both support big red and have good cheat targets + running Show&Tell and Eureka as well as full reanimator package)
Ojutai's Exemplars or Ranger of Eos or Sublime Archangel (I support spells-matter and token/weenie/anthem)
Grim Haruspex or Herald of Torment
Triskellion or Steel Hellkite
Aurelia's Fury or Boros Reckoner
and Keep 2 from these sets:
Dictate of Heliod / Wingmate Roc / Archangel of Thune
Sewer Nemesis / Disciple of Bolas / Desecration Demon
Sidisi, Undead Vizier / Puppeteer Clique / Ob Nixilis, the Fallen
Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth / Slayer's Stronghold / Kor Haven / Dust Bowl
To Clarify: this cube is usually drafted for Duel Commander 66+1 Decks 1v1 so it is a larger cube (660ish). Part of my reasoning throwing Steel Hellkite / AA of Thune / Sublime AA / Ob Nix / Desecration Demon / Stormbreath et. all, in the potential ring is that I am trying to help out people who draft Kaalia of the Vast (who I can't replace yet unfortunately) this is warping my perspective I am sure. I'm at something of a loss so thank you for your imput!
Utter End or Sorin, Solemn Visitor?
My cube is a 1v1 commander cube. It basically differs very little from what I would do for a powered list other than it is 676 cards (without the commander section I would probably run a 450+15 list). I run in the 600s because our deck size is 66 cards and I run Lore Seeker. My cubetutor is: http://www.cubetutor.com/home/6108 missing from cubetutor is the commander module itself (may add it as "rainbow" in my list however there is no way to prevent cubetutor from lumping them into the draft feature as far as I know). Commander section is 50 cards (3 per guild, 2 per wedge/shard no monocolored as mono decks are a bit difficult to get to fall into place with any consistancy for us). Commanders are drafted prior to the main cube draft each player winds up with 3 commanders to keep in mind during the main draft, we disallow the 2 benched commanders from going into the 66 at this time, we also go back and forth on allowing legendaries from the main cube as commanders as well. Basically French rules with no banlist.
I personally like that aggro decks are a viable strategy in 1v1 so I keep the decksize down to 66 to prevent the cube from swelling to the point where theatres such as aggro are too diluted to function. I have "had" to add deeper tempo/aggro support to Blue as a result. Green also has a uncomfortable(for me)number of narrow inclusions for aggressive decks (I'm looking at you Wild Dogs). Until better cards are printed I will just tolerate their presence, thus far they have been narrow-but-fine picks.
In my playgroup I have had to work on a couple of my players tolerating a lengthier draft process, which was really the only hurdle. Working out optimal commanders for 1v1 considering the nature of a draft format vs a constructed format has been very challenging (and is still very much a work in progress for us), there is only very niche support for the duel commmander variant in general in my neck of the woods (NE US) and less for 1v1 commander cube. The variant is pretty interesting and, in my experience, requires far FAR less specialized card support and resources compared to the more popular Multiplayer cubes. It is essentially able to be "tacked on" (to my potentially lackadaisical way of thinking) to "standard" cube lists. I do hope it catches on
Glad to be whatever help I can be.
Cheers!
Diabolic Edict
Chainer's Edict
Go For the Throat
Malicious Affliction
If you could only keep 3 which would you cut?
Happy with my dividers for now only I'm looking for a alternative, preferably prefab, to keep everything consistently labled in the box. My original plan was to print and diecut some thin sintra dividers but I'm not sure my vandercook proof press would thank me for trying to run relatively hard plastic sheet. Does anyone know of some decent precut tab dividers for card collections? or are the ones from the Holiday Box all she wrote?
Testing:
Feldon of the Third Path in place of Fulminator Mage
Dualcaster Mage in place of Guttersnipe
Daretti, Scrap Savant in place of Goblin Settler
Flesh Carver in place of Geralf's Messenger
Malicious Affliction in place of Chainer's Edict
Hallowed Spiritkeeper in place of Pianna, Nomad Captain
I will be trying to support Artifacts Matter a bit more deeply now to justify Daretti and Feldon, adding Thirst for Knowledge, Tezz 1.0 and The Abyss back in for testing... gonna wait and see what the next few days bring first.
I really should put my cube on the map
Never really considered Doran because of he seems to weaken more aggressive creatures in cube than he strengthens (in doran's colors). Maybe that is a mistake in my thinking, I should just sleeve him and try it out. Hes quite a beater on his own, and he does help some creatures out as well (thinking of Hero of Bladehold, Skyfisher, Courser, Nighthawk, and also makes all the playable walls more painful to attack into).
Narset is probably a good deal better than I was thinking. I was hung up on the build around me aspects of the self-mill exile ability. Having enough bounce/removal/burn in her deck seems easy enough. And actually having a tempo-oriented commander is kind of awesome.
Kaalia has come together more than a few times with varying degrees of success. I run a bunch of targets for her beyond the usual suspects(Baneslayer, Resto, Bloodgift et all). (I still run fringe playables in Herald of Torment, Grislebrand, Kokusho, Desecration Demon, Abyssal Persecutor, Ob Nixilis 1.0, Yosei, Eternal Dragon, AA of Thune, Sublime AA, Karmic Guide, Stormbreath, Bogardan Hellkite) Not sure if its really enough but in the color combo I don't really have a clear alternative. Tariel just seems way too slow for the format.
As far as Damia goes: I have 0 experience playing her or against her in EDH and so far nobody has drafted her for duel so that certainly colors my thinking. She protects herself/you once out as you ostensibly keep drawing into answers/finishers correct? My concern would be in stabilizing for that long (T8 to see an advantage w/o spending turns ramping). On the other hand too many Graveyard Commanders (Mimeoplasm, Sidisi) might be boring.
Again, thanks for the expertise. Commander section is where I'm currently having the most trouble, and advice is sparse for this kind of thing.
My cut would be Dungeon Geists or Sakashima's Student. My only hesitation is that it looks like I'm adding yet another reactive control card at the cost of a more proactive tempo-deck card that control can make good use of as well.
I also run a few humans-matter cards (Champion of the Parish, Mayor of Avabruck, and Xathrid Necromancer) which like this. My cube is over 600 so I have some leeway as well but also have a problem with having enough 1-drop creatures to enable this strictly on-curve (I have to run every imaginable fringe aggressive 1-drop creature for density reasons and its still not enough).
The composition on that art is tight...
Despite this looking better in a smaller list I'm eyeballing Gore-House Chainwalker, Altac Bloodseeker or Smash to Smithereens for the cut.
My situation is a bit "different" as I run a separately-sleeved commander section for Duel Commander as a game-variant in a "standard" powermax cube (66 cards decks, separate CMDR pre-draft). In that environment I tend to feel that many of the commanders that do some heavy lifting in the EDH-Cube environment are too slow or niche for Duel.
For example: I was considering Anafenza as a replacement for Karador, Ghost Chieftain because Anafenza looks to fit in a wider range of decks and is cheap without any hoops to jump through. I would likely be keeping Ghave over Karador. I fear I don't have the proper experience with either Ghave or Karador to make a clear call, those decks never seem to come together in my group.
I am also planning on replacing Tariel and Damia with their wedge's respective kahns, mostly for speed reasons. Animar and Riku are looking pretty safe, new kahn would have to be pretty sweet to unhorse them.
Furthermore for 3RWU I need a Commander to really cripple the opponent or threaten to end the game. I was considering keeping Numot, the Devastator and passing on Narset (keeping Ruhan) does that seem unwise? I may be vastly underestimating Narset for my purposes.
My playgroup is getting into the Duel Commander variant more often and I am looking for more ways to make that variant feel more integral and less "stapled on" without reinventing the wheel as far as the cube goes. Might not really be possible with the commander choices out there now.