MTG Salvation

Quote from NoobinCube »

What do you guys think of unhinged cards in a cube? Nothing too weird, but stuff like carnivorous Death-Parrot.

I've had the parrot in every cube I've ever made, it's embodied perfection

I've had some good times with wordmail too, as part of a larger auras/enchantments package. Usually +2/+2 unless you get the wombo combo like blade of the sixth pride or order of the golden cricket. 5/5 syndic of tithes isn't bad. Randomly wombos with some out of color guys too like sentinels of glen elendra becomes a 6/7 flier.

In a true/typical aggro deck he tends to be pretty bad since those decks play 16+ creature cards and probably one or more equipment. You don't often end up with a lot of instants and sorceries. When his damage output is averaging like 1.2 per turn that's just too little. The exception may be tokens if several of their "creatures" are instants and sorceries that make tokens

In a deck that's not trying to put on as much pressure as fast as possible he seems fine probably. I don't think he has to be "control-only"

I wanted to specifically support white control for a while just to have a good home for sheer drop. And yeah the printing of palace sentinels is a pretty big push.

Also calling porcelain legionnaire anything but colorless is honestly silly

Finally got around to making a thread for my Formerly Pauper cube and updating my cubetutors, just making this post here as shameless self-promotion in the event anyone is curious about it.

here tis -----> http://www.mtgsalvation.com/forums/the-game/the-cube-forum/cube-lists/721201-the-formerly-pauper-cube-that-weird-cube-with-five <-----

The thing is gnomes isn't even especially great against aggro, just acceptable. And pretty bad against anything else.

1/3 is just really crappy stats, no way around it. You're being assailed by 1R 3/2s, 1G wild mongrel/snapping gnarlid, 1W and 1U 2/1 fliers. It can only really do anything if your opponent plays a lot of non-evasive X/1s.

You honestly might be better off with gut shot as a colorless sideboard slot

Bottle gnomes seems pretty bad to me. 1/3 for 3 mana is pretty awful, there are not even a lot of 2 drops it can block without dying, or even trade with. And just about everything that costs 3 or more mana runs it over. 3 life is not enough to redeem that

Commune with the gods is probably the best card in a hexproof deck after actual hexproof creatures and armadillo cloak. Vessel is the same effect but not as efficient.

Also no mention of hopeful eidolon? This is pretty much as good as armadillo cloak if you resolved rubbleback rhino. This deck is essentially a combo deck.

Sometimes this deck splashes for mark of the vampire

On the subject of hexproof answers, butcher's glee is usually the best unless they assemble something ridiculously massive or evasive. Butcher's glee is a really great card for pauper cube in general IMO, it's really powerful in a race situation

shadow guildmage is a much better version of nightscape apprentice

granger guildmage is probably better than thornscape apprentice, but they're closer

A possible problem with slotting these guys as 3 color cards is that in practice they function more like guild cards. For example, stormscape apprentice will be picked by a UW player just to be used as a tapper, but no one in UB should ever be picking it. Shadow guildmage is plenty good enough in BR as a pinger, but it's pretty rare for a UB deck to want a card that does nothing but bounce your own guys at the cost of your draw step.

I do like the bonesplitter ability on dega disciple and to a lesser extent ceta disciple, those guys are cute. Dega disciple is cool.

Quote from NoobinCube »

I have to agree. Putting non-commons in a pauper cube makes it non-pauper. Of course it is your cube and you can do with it whatever you like, but I wouldn't call it a pauper cube if there are more than one or two exceptions.

Okay, I'm calling it "Formerly Pauper Cube" now. It's 85% commons atm.

I just thought you guys might find it some interesting food for thought

Quote from Humphrey »

Ive no problem with running Conspiracy-cards and Librarian is a common. Also there are hundreds of other rares that wouldnt unbalance the cube and improve its playabilty. If I ever wanted to break the common rule, Id include real duals because that would increase the playability for all players the most. But I wont, because I like the restriction the format has.
For me it seems that running the online commons is the starter drug for breaking this rule and youre on the same train as metalevolence.

¯\_(OuO)_/¯

I'm glad I stuck with pauper cube for a few years because I feel like I gained a good sense of the power level and what makes the format good. I think I'm at the point where I can trust myself to responsible with uncommons and rares and not ruin the cube.

So far I'm having a pretty good time with my sac outlets and playable 1-drops.

this is my WIP Pauper++ cube for anyone curious

I am considering a cycle of rare lands that can fix mana turn 1. Not sure if it should be fetches, shocks, or painlainds. Even the painlands are expensive enough now that I'll have to proxy them to not have to worry about theft :/

Four flying tokens is just bonkers in any context. triplicate spirits is plenty strong in pauper cube and it's nowhere near battle screech's level

Quote from Al_Z_Heimer »

@metalevolence:
I can't think of anything, Runner hasn't said already.

was hoping people might comment on some of the card choices ¯\_(OwO)_/¯

I really like pauper cube. I want a cube that's extremely similar to pauper cube, but with some of the gaps filled and some extra cuteness. Something like a "masters" set is way more of a departure than I want.

Building and maintaining 2 cubes seems like a pain... I can use the same basics and tokens, but I still need to sleeve 400 more cards, and get extra copies of a bunch of stuff, and will need to get extra copies of stuff that comes in future sets. IDK, I don't really cube frequently enough that that seems worthwhile.

I'm thinking about breaking the pauper restriction for my cube (again.) I still want it to feel like pauper cube - small creatures, interesting archetypes, no bombs, no sweepers, not too many easy 2-for-1s or removal attached to bodies, etc.

These cards I'm going to add, and feel pretty good about:

These cards I'm considering but some of them seem potentially too good and some potentially seem not good enough

Anything here seem too egregious? Anyone have cool suggestions? Will probably be editing this as i think of more cards.

For 1v1 pauper cube games, the power level of something like rhystic study or soul barrier just isn't there.