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  • Metamind's avatar
    Mar 12, 2009
    Metamind posted a message on Cube Archetype Discussion - G/x Mana Ramp
    I started doing the same in my cube thread (see in my sig, the second post or just the latest page). See the format for more ideas (I like having the matchups section, for example). I can help you if you need to write something.
    I think opening a thread for each archetype will require too much space. I mean look at aggro decks. There are (including relatively rare archetypes):
    White Weenie
    Mono-red
    R/W
    B/W
    B/R
    R/G
    G/W
    Zoo
    5 color aggro
    U/W fish

    And they behave differently than their slower counterparants (R/G aggro is very different from R/G ramp, B/W aggro is different from B/W control etc.).

    Maybe merge some of them together in one thread, based on something.
    Posted in: Archive
  • Metamind's avatar
    Mar 12, 2009
    Metamind posted a message on [720][Powered][Conspiracy]Metamind's Cube
    No, frankly. The strategy of picking fixing first pack, all the bombs in the next two doesn't exist.
    Posted in: Cube Lists
  • Metamind's avatar
    Mar 12, 2009
    Metamind posted a message on [720][Powered][Conspiracy]Metamind's Cube
    Another archetype into is ready - U/B control! This time I think I wrote it better though it ended up even longer than the previous.
    Blue-black control is a deck that wishes to dominate the game since the beginning and win with overwhelming card and tempo advantage after the opponent is tamed. Blue is there to counter things, draw and stall the opponent with bounce and control-magic effects. Black is there to feature a solid creature base and to shore-up blue's weakness at dealing with opposing permanents and providing some finishers. That's one of my favorite archetypes, and I think it's one of the best.

    The reasons to play the archetype:
    Many player's default plan is to draft blue, and for a good reason. After you've done that though, you usually need to complement it's weaknesses with another color. If you see a great number of black removals and finishers you might want to opt for this archetype. Some multicolored cards are tempting as well, with finkel, Agony Warp etc. fitting very easily into blue control's core plan.
    Very rarely a deck becomes UB out of black, because most black decks aren't fitting control well enough.

    Top Picks:
    Counters – The essence of blue-based control decks. The ability to say "no" should be well-known to you if you have been playing competitively in any format before. If you didn't, counters are just the perfect answer to everything that the opponent throws at you.
    Counters vary in their usability, based on which decks you think you'll face. In any case, counters that cost 1U or UU are extremely important to you, as the opposing two-drops are more influential to the game than any other. Miscalculate, Remove Soul, Mana Leak, Counterspell etc. are higher picks than Dissipate. That said, if you think you'll face more midrange and control decks you should take a larger quantity of "hard-counters", spells which will counter another spell without any catch to it like paying mana or creatures only.
    You wouldn't want an extreme amount of them, but luckily to you this shouldn't ever happen. Successful B/U control deck often feature 4-6 counters of varying mana costs.
    Mass Removals – This is better than card advantage because it also causes great tempo advantage (see later for more of this). They are varying in power, but generally you should take them above most things. Damnation, one of if not the strongest black mass removal is a first pick for you, even over a counter. Bane of the Living, Barter in Blood, and Ashes to Ashes etc. are examples of mass removals.
    Card Advantage – Any card that draws you more cards then you spend, or kills more cards then you spend, or discards more cards then you spend, creates card advantage. Undeniably, this is your way to win the game in the long run: little steps of card advantage to create an impossible situation for your opponent to win.
    The card advantage card types, if I remembered noting them all, are: card draw, comes-into-play creatures, magpies, Control Magics and Bitterblossom.
    Card draw is pretty self-explanatory, it includes cards like Ancestral Vision, Fact or Fiction, Concentrate etc. etc. etc. They are a must in each deck, but on the other side I've seen people who draft card draw without real answers or ways to end the game and were puzzled why they lost horribly. In regular drafts, you won't play more than two straight draw spells. In cube you defiantly should play more, but five cards in this category would make me feel unhappy.
    The second is comes-into-play effects. This is card advantage because you both get an effect and a creature, each equivalent of one card. The best of them would probably be those who can destroy/kill creature i.e. Shriekmaw, Nekrataal and Aphetto Exterminator. Note that most of them are black.
    Third, magpies are a collective name for all creatures that draw a card whenever they hit the opponent. Thieving Magpie, Ophidian, Finkel and many more fit into this category. They are good to have, because while their card advantage is conditional it is also unlimited by a number. A thieving Magpie can draw you more cards then Concentrate ever could. They have high toughness usually and evasion so they can also pile up damage later in the game. If you have equipment, those guys will make it playable. Not to mention they attract removals in the early stages of the game and at a cost of tempo for your opponent, and lure the opponent to leave back defense for even more tempo loss.
    Control Magic and its results in card advantage because they "kill" your opponent a creature and you have just "summoned" a creature. The catch is that when they kill the enchantment they have taken your card advantage back, unlike all other effects. Threads of Disloyalty, Treachery, Sower of Temptation etc. belong here.
    Last, Bitterblossom creates card advantage by making tokens. Take it while you can.
    Discard isn't generally fitting this deck, as you will want mana open for counters and discard is usually at sorcery speed. Cards like Stupor don't fit here. That said Thoughtsieze is very playable because of his low mana cost (and also not against all decks. Spending two life to discard an Incinerate isn't very effective).
    Spot Removals – These are your ways to deal with anything that passed your wall of counters, or just more answers in general. Removals that can remove big and large threats are preferred, like Terror and Slaughter Pact, but removals for small creatures are very desirable as well. Spot removals are your main way to deal with opposing threats as you lack any other good defense, therefore pick those Last Gasps and Smothers even though they lack card advantage.
    Finishers- You need some cards that will just get the job done after you've done the work of gaining control of the game, getting the mana-cost needed, protecting them with counters and simply being alive. Black has a ton of those, like Kokusho, the Evening Star, Visara the Dreadful, Oona, Queen of the Fae, Skeletal Vampire, Tombstalker and many more. You wouldn't need many, just two-three are enough. You don't want to draw them in the early stages of the game.
    The tempo play- This is a bit of a hard concept to teach, as it isn't intuitive and hard to see. Unlike U/W control, the other commonly played blue-based control deck, you don't have the luxury of sitting back, playing some defenses and gaining life. You aren't as good at the lategame. U/W allows itself to fall behind for a large part of the game, regaining all what he lost later. U/B prefers to gain full or nearly full control from the very early stages of the game. Therefore, delaying your opponent's threats at the beginning is a key. In those extra "earned" turns, you advance your board position, probably unlike him. Your suspended cards get a turn earlier. Your lands that came into play tapped will untap. You'll play another land. Your magpies will draw you cards. You have more time to find an answer, more time to swing with your evasive creatures. More time to win.
    What do I mean by delaying the opponent? Time Walk is an obvious example. You take an extra turn, that's obviously great. Now take a look at Remand. He'd spent his whole mana in his turn for playing a spell. You've casted Remand. What have happened? You've forced the opponent to "skip" his turn. He had still drawn a card but that's not your main concern. With card advantage he has no chance to compete with you. What you do care is that he didn't advance his board position. Many newer players don't understand why remand is good, because "he can just play the spell next turn" or because "it doesn't deal with the problem". Remand, Memory Lapse and more buy you time for "free". You are not spending a card because remand will draw you a new one immediately.
    Let's see more examples. Pestermite is great because it can tap their land on their third turn, and if they don't have a two-drop (which was likely played in second turn anyway) they can do absolutely nothing. You gained an extra turn.
    The same is achieved by bounce spells. Bounce, in itself, creates card disadvantage. By the end of the day they'll play the creature again and you've spent a card doing absolutely nothing. Cube bounce effects usually don't have this problem because they come with creatures, like Man-O-War, Riftwing Cloudskate and Venser, Shaper Savant, draw a card like Repulse or just don't spend themselves like Capsize. They are never card disadvantage. Therefore, paying three mana to play Man-O-War and to bounce their two-drop forces them to replay it on their third-turn. It's almost like you have skipped their second turn, retroactively.
    In B/U you should sometimes toy with your opponent in the early game. I remember many games in which I had an early magpie and went:
    Opponent: Play a fattie.
    Opp: play it again
    Me: on my turn I'll bounce it
    Opp: Play it the third time
    Me: I'll counter it /kill it
    With little effort and minimal losses I have arrived to the late game. I have enough mana to play my finishers, I may have a body or two on the table and I have drawn an absurd amount of cards and dealt a few points of damage. I controlled my opponent since turn three.

    Card Selection- Obviously important. Not as important as everything else so far, but it's still good. Looters of any kind are good to round up your deck and let you get over those mana floods/screws when you have them.
    Fixing- You are only two colors, but you still need fixing. It's always tricky when to take this, as it always feels like a waste. I'd wait for them to table and not actively force them until the third pack. If you have some card selection the lack of good fixers won't cost you games.

    At the Draft Table – Quite simply, you won't be the only blue deck at your table in most times. That's a given (if you do you don't have a reason to splash for anything). You don't suffer too much, because unlike all other colors, blue is really focused at its strategy. It's all control – Bounce, counters, draw, and finishers. It's deep enough for many players. In packs where you don't have blue, just draft the black cards. If someone cuts your black cards, it's usually okay as black has a lot of depth for you too and you don't rely too much on specific cards. If someone cuts your mass removals however (or just both colors), you are in trouble. What I personally like about this archetype is that you will be able to draft it in the vast majority of times and end up with something playable.

    Deck Building – Your curve should feature many cards casting two-four, with a few casting more. You don't want more then three 6cc+ cards tops.
    Don't cower to play a low amount of creature. And by low I mean less than ten, sometimes mere 6 or 5. If you have answers and tempo manipulation creatures in high quantities aren't needed.
    You can splash relatively easily, due to your card draw and selection, and most cards don't have double colored mana in their cost.
    Unsurprisingly, the most common splash for you is white. White fits control strategies easily. You wouldn't want to play both white's and black's mass-removals, as playing Rout, Control Magic and Barter in Blood together is too harmful to your mana base. If you see you absolutely need to play both colors' mass removals because you have too few sources of tempo-control it's better to play B/W and reduce blue to a mere splash.
    Common white splashes include removals (Oblivion Ring, Swords to Plowshares), sources of card advantage (Momentary Blink, Reveillark) and plain bombs. The bombs in white are luckily very splashable.
    Splashing green will usually be for single-cards like Pernicious Deed or Mystic Snake. Splashing red can vary, but generally avoided. Single cards like Nicol Bolas are great, and splashing for Electrolyze, Prophetic Bolt, Terminate or a myriad of burn spells is easily justifiable.

    Matchups –
    B/U control decks in general rely on their tempo more then U/W control. Since U/W has no problem losing its tempo and has better long-term advantages against you like better mass-removals, lifegain and tokens, it is generally a bad matchup. You however can have the edge at the other two common MUs.
    A good plan against another control deck is to cut the number of answers because you have fewer targets, and add more counters of any kind, flash creatures, instant utility spells and acceleration. Mass removals that don't target should stay to deal with their shroud creatures, should they come.
    U/B decks have a large number of answers to choose from. You can build a B/U deck so that it will utterly own aggro or horribly fold to it, same about midrange.
    Against aggro decks you can have an advantage reducing their tempo, having mass removals and cheap, instant spot removals. White-based aggro poses fewer problems than red-based, since you can more easily stop them with mass removals and tempo advantage. Remember to keep your control magic effects for the protection from black beaters. Don't shy to use removals early, unlike what you might have learnt from other magic experience you may have. An early beater can kill you if you don't deal with it.
    Red-based aggro deck has a much easier time killing you because you cannot deal with their burn in any way other then to counter it. Even if you have achieved control, if your life total is low (~6) the red player may just send two-three burn spells at your head when you tap out, or just wait to draw another and bypass all the counters. Mass Removals aren't useful against their many creatures that die at the end of turn. Reusable damage sources have to be dealt with, obviously. The creatures themselves aren't as good however. You don't care about their land-destruction effects as much, and it's not worth spending your counters on. Side out the cards that cause you life-loss like Thoughtsieze, Bitterblossom and Yawgmoth's Bargain. Side in more bounce, cheap counters and subpar creature you might have left in your sideboard.

    The midrange matchup can be really bad to almost unloseable. If you have enough hard counters and removals that can deal with their big creatures you're golden. Control-Magic is very strong when snatching a fattie, esp. because many of them have regenerate. Soft-counters, Last Gasp effects etc. are weaker. If you have extras of the effects that were mentioned, include them instead. You may want to add even off-color signets just so that you advance your board position while they spend their first few turn ramping and doing nothing significant enough to counter.


    Also, what do you think about Armillary Sphere? I want to get 5-color decks stronger and as I've seen from conflux drafts and casual decks this cards enables them really easily.
    Posted in: Cube Lists
  • Metamind's avatar
    Mar 12, 2009
    Metamind posted a message on The "Should I Run This Card?" Thread
    I think that Trinket Mage is a bit inconsistent, it's nice when it can find a Mox/Lotus or Skullclamp, but I don't think that are enough targets to make it consistent enough, at least to put it in every blue deck, which, with blue's high threshold of quality, must be taken into consideration.
    There are way more targets, actually.

    Posted in: Archive
  • Metamind's avatar
    Mar 12, 2009
    Metamind posted a message on What cube are you
    There's only 2 cards on that list that are even close to the same quality as LoA, and that't the Nightmare and the Jitte. Other than that, there's the P9 and Sol Ring. That's really it. And, I'd P1P1 the Library over every other card in the cube... every time. And I'll use the Library to win... every time I draw it.

    Generally Skullclamp is better than Jitte, it should be in the list. Moxen, Black Lotus and Timetwister aren't automatic first picks.
    P1P1 I'd consider narrower cards as well, like Balance.
    Not to say that Armageddon or Survival of the Fittest aren't first picks, I'd certainly take them over a mox P1P1, but they are a step below.
    Posted in: The Cube Forum
  • Metamind's avatar
    Mar 12, 2009
    Metamind posted a message on The Recommend-a-Card Thread
    HYSTRODON. Seriously. The card is a HOUSE in the U/G control decks and is one of the best reasons that other colors aren't pared with blue for control.

    If you're already playing blue, why not to play a ninja or an ophidian?
    Posted in: The Cube Forum
  • Metamind's avatar
    Mar 11, 2009
    Metamind posted a message on Adam's Cube
    Or you can just play a reasonable beater and draw a card with Civic Wayfinder. I like it when a card can be played in more than one archetype.
    Posted in: Cube Lists
  • Metamind's avatar
    Mar 11, 2009
    Metamind posted a message on The "Should I Run This Card?" Thread
    Considering how well Glittering Wish works under my rules for 4C or 5C decks, i can imagine Eladamris Call being quite good. Didn't play it so far though.

    It doesn't say much if I say it's worse than Wilt-Leaf Liege, does it?
    As I said, I wouldn't cut any.
    Posted in: Archive
  • Metamind's avatar
    Mar 11, 2009
    Metamind posted a message on The "Should I Run This Card?" Thread
    I think Glare is the most powerful W/G card. Watchwolf is solid+ for aggro, and can be played in W/G aggro and zoo. Knight of the Requilary doesn't fit into the same archetype.
    If I had to cut a card, Eladamri's Call performed a bit worse then the others, if that's worth something.
    Posted in: Archive
  • Metamind's avatar
    Mar 11, 2009
    Metamind posted a message on What cube are you
    You win games in my cube by building the best deck, not by playing with broken cards.


    You win games in cube by playing LoA. It probably shouldn't be in your cube, but you all still haven't witnessed it's full power. I'm sure it'll find the way out eventually.
    In regular drafts as well, if you see a bomb that doesn't fit your strategy but has the power to win the game itself, you'll pick it (like white aggro decks picking ***, or slow decks splashing Blaze for well-known examples). A card being a natural fir to a strategy raises it's value but only by that much. In cube it's the same, just the card has a much higher threshold. Aggro decks should happily be able to draft LoA and be able to overwhelm opponents with both board presence and card advantage. None of the cards you mentioned fit into any deck, most of them are narrow (and some of them are not first picks IMO). LoA will fit into any deck and that's especially important P1P1.
    If someone would be the first to take the risk and try it he would succeed.

    @ The point of the thread: If I could play un-cards I'll play the enjoyable cards even if they cannot be printed as real cards. I don't have an example for this.
    Posted in: The Cube Forum
  • Metamind's avatar
    Mar 11, 2009
    Metamind posted a message on The "Should I Run This Card?" Thread
    I wouldn't cut any.
    Posted in: Archive
  • Metamind's avatar
    Mar 11, 2009
    Metamind posted a message on What cube are you
    I run an unpowered cube and Library of Alexandria is far from being broken enough to cut from the cube. Hell, just last week I had LoA and it was Strip Mine d, Magus of the Moon'ed and there were a half dozen times I drew it with the awkward 3-5 cards in hand. I find cards like Survival of the Fittest and Armageddon are much more broken seeing as their brokenness does not have a prequisite (well almost no prereq).

    Well, if they have the choice of killing it or losing to it, it's awesome. You don't suffer card disadvantage most of the time when they destroy it, it starts netting cards from the first turn of the game, costs nothing, cannot be countered, it even produces mana. You can keep on the draw a hand with seven lands and still win. What can be possibly better in your cube?
    Posted in: The Cube Forum
  • Metamind's avatar
    Mar 10, 2009
    Metamind posted a message on What cube are you
    We like to have our tournaments judged (players are serious when there is a considerable prize support) so we cannot play ante cards or un-cards. We also play with oracle-text for that reason.

    I'd probably pass the Lotus, Recall and the Walk to pick a Library of Alexandria P1P1.

    I'd certainly do it. Not a close pick at all. Also P2P1 and P3P1, and that's without looking at my deck, with above 90% certainty. Sol Ring is also better.

    The funny thing is, Jitte and Recurring Nightmare (along with Mind Twist, Skullclamp and a handful of others) aren't that far behind.

    Agreed. When people don't include power in their cubes they forget Jitte, SoFaI, Balance, Skullclamp and more are way better than, say, a Black Lotus or a mox.
    Posted in: The Cube Forum
  • Metamind's avatar
    Mar 10, 2009
    Metamind posted a message on Usman's Cube
    Why no Kodama's Reach? I meant to ask that.
    Posted in: Cube Lists
  • Metamind's avatar
    Mar 10, 2009
    Metamind posted a message on The "Should I Run This Card?" Thread
    From the weakest to the best from my expirience -

    Urza's Rage (I added Resounding Thunder instead of it. Has a possible cost to pay and does avoid counterspells)
    Fireball (rarely ever used the divide ability)
    Disintegrate
    Ghitu Fire
    Demonfire
    Earthquake (I prefer Rolling Earthquake)
    Banefire
    Posted in: Archive
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