Again big butt that survives most damage based removal.
Triggers the turn it enters the battlefield. (people always forget that you dont even need a single counter to get a creature back to hand.)
Has synergy with lots of black and green creatures that allow you to get counters easily (sakura tribe elder, yavimaya elder, braids, cabal minion, flesh carver, etc.)
works wonders with the evoke on shriekmaw gravedigger effects are hard to include in cube on their own but meren is a good way to get a repetitive gravedigger effect with increased upside as the game goes on. volrath's stronghold is a staple with all the 187 creatures and other great creatures to bring back and meren is no different.
really enjoyed cubing with this card. but obviously depending on your cube it can be hard to find a slot in golgari. Personally i find that deathrite shaman is overrated and unnecessary and while abrupt decay, pernicious deed, and maelstrom pulse are the three includes for most people, its nice to diversify the guild a bit and have something that isnt removal based but still plays well with the guilds typical archetypes and themes.
I severely underrated meren during spoiler season.. It wasn't until I played with it in another cube that I learned what he can do. He's been in my cube for a while now and I enjoy his prescence. He doesn't see that much main deck play, but the decks he supports are very cool and are among my favourite cube decks that get drafted.
In my cube he Generally gets played in birthing pod decks that have black in them , recurring nightmare decks and occasionally as a value card in a creature midrange deck. It's very rare he doesn't get at least 1 raise dead trigger, and if left unchecked will take over a game by himself quickly.
The sweet play with jeweled amulet is obviously getting to drop a 3 drop on turn 2.
It doesnt fix your mana but getting to play a CC 3 drop is nice. tinkers as fast as a mox.
Kind of like a lotus petal that can recharge. There are lots of times where the curve isnt perfect and there is one mana hanging out.
You get insurance that you can't get 2 for 1'd like you do with chrome mox and mox diamond, for the price of needing to reinvest in it.
probably other things i am missing but its pretty nifty.
It's been a very sweet card since I re-added it. In fact, I ordered a custom alter for it because I have a good feeling that it's gonna stick around. Thanks Kranny!
I remember seeing quite a bit of Jeweled Amulet fast edh combo decks. It never occurred to me that it could be cubable but it was good in edh, so I definitely want to try it out now. How does Springleaf Drum compare? Springleaf Drum has historically been like a mox for aggro/combo decks in modern and back in extended. Might that be something worth testing?
I also decided to go back and check my cube for cards that I don't see around much. They aren't necessarily the best cards ever, but I'm curious as to why I don't see them more as they've been pretty excellent for us: Orcish Lumberjack- It exchanges long term gain for short term burst, which we've found it necessary for midrange decks to survive. Dropping a thundermaw on t2 is insane, not to mention absolute degeneracies this early such as Sneak Attack and Plow under. Shrine of Burning Rage- Many used to play this but have cut it, but it's still excellent over here. Shrine often gets 7 or 8 counters by turn 5, which is just insane. Just drop it on turn two and watch it tick up unbelievably quickly. Najeela, the Blade-Blossom- Has been surprisingly good for us. Worse than Rabblemaster and Garrison, but better than all the other red 3's. It's a super fast clock vs decks that fail to react fast enough like combo or control. Arcane Artisan- It's been amazing for us, if you haven't tried it I'd give it a shot Glare of Subdual- Worse Opposition has still been excellent, especially great in its colors or even the cheeky winter orb combo. Tamiyo, Field Researcher- Has been great in aggressive and midrange decks as it can be a good card advantage engine and/or allow you to slow down games or even race if necessary. Broodmate Dragon- Plays really well as one of the few cards that can clog boards vs aggro and kill quickly vs other decks. Plays around removal really well and seems a lot better to me than the new 7/7 Jund dragon. Chained to the Rocks- Boros multicolored cards blow ass, but this has proved itself to be the best one for us. Garruk, Primal Hunter- This guy is actually just nuts. Great top end in ramp, and clogs of boards/draws cards like nobodies business. Lore Seeker- Not everybody gets to try these types of cards, but if you draft with paper this card is super fun and everybody is always excited when the Lore Seeker gets picked.
Nothing crazy, but certainly worth looking into if you haven't in the past! If you guys have any cards that preform really well but don't see others using don't be shy and please speak up, as I love to test new cards all the time, so any input is always greatly appreciated.
EDIT: Forgot to mention Painlands. If you play fastlands or filterlands, you should probably be playing painlands instead. They are much better cards in standard historically, and they are no different in a cube setting.
My posts tend to be pretty unpopular, but I try to make sure that trying to draft an archetype in my cube is a trap. I include all the conspiracies that let other players dip into your color and strategy so that people are forced to draft based on what they've seen and not based on what they expect to see. Control and quick aggro (unless you snag Emissary's Ploy)are very difficult to put together. The result is that you always get mid-range decks with weird synergies trying to grind out value and outplay one another. So...that may not be your meta. Including the color-breaking conspiracies (Worldknit, Sovereign's Realm, and Emissary's Ploy) in your cube completely changes the drafting experience in a way no single card without the card type "Conspiracy" can.
Blue tempo in general is better than people usually expect from other cubes. Sunder, Parallax Tide, light countermagic (Force Spike and Daze in particular goes up in utility), and the various 3/1 and 2/1 evasive beaters. My cube has slowly been moving away from aggro critters in blue, but Geist and Edric are real and superstars in decks that ignore their color requirements. "Mono red" with Geist and Edric is just brutal. Parallax Tide is functionally a one-sided Armageddon in a mid-range deck. Similarly, land destruction has a solid tendency to help people get mana screwed. People tend not to include it in their cubes because it's feel-bad, but if you're aiming for power level and your cube is designed to wreck archetypes, tempo is king. On the note of wrecking archetypes, Volatile Chimera completely hoses the reanimation player while giving red aggro and mid-range decks solid late picks. The meta-drafting effect of messing up someone's draft is possibly even stronger than its in-game abilites. My cube doeesn't even include Entomb because it's just a trap that seldom makes a maindeck. I had the same problem with Sneak Attack.
Also, Contract from Below with the original ante rules, not the Fourth Edition update nonsense they put out to stop ante play. The tournament is for ante and at the end of the last round, the TO wins all of the cards. Note that MtG floor rules require that when a player drafts a card they own it.
I strongly support adding 2 or even 3 sets of fetches and duals. (Maybe mutiple sets of moxes) .
I find the issue is a lot of these cubes focus way too much on vanilla creatures and 1-2 drops. People want to cast broken spells like dig through time, moxes, broken 4 drops etc instead of playing vanilla creature decks.
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I strongly support adding 2 or even 3 sets of fetches and duals. (Maybe mutiple sets of moxes) .
I find the issue is a lot of these cubes focus way too much on vanilla creatures and 1-2 drops. People want to cast broken spells like dig through time, moxes, broken 4 drops etc instead of playing vanilla creature decks.
I agree that is a valid way of going about building your cube.
It ultimately comes down to the gameplay that people who will play your cube will find fun...
Supporting agro does more than support agro decks, it also indirectly supports midrange decks... I personally love playing "fair" decks in unfair environments, and that's not really possible if every deck is ramping into busted stuff.
A mix of broken stuff and interactive, card advantage based gameplay is what I personally enjoy. In busted cubes, that happens only in blue control mirrors.
The other cube we play with in vancouver has Mono W agro, Mono R agro, and everything else is focused on maximizing broken interactions... I find that gameplay grows stale after a while, and the gulf between the best decks and the medicore decks are too large. To each their own.
It's been a pretty unique and interesting effect in powered; I'm sure it'll play well in unpowered too. However, part of the appeal is the 0cc artifact aspect of it for the artifact.dec and as a Trinket Mage target ...2 things that most unpowered cubes don't support.
It's been a pretty unique and interesting effect in powered; I'm sure it'll play well in unpowered too. However, part of the appeal is the 0cc artifact aspect of it for the artifact.dec and as a Trinket Mage target ...2 things that most unpowered cubes don't support.
I don't really have an artifact.dec but I do run Tinker/Daretti/Welder so it will find a home there.
How is the ramp aspect? The ability to bank a mana on a 0 mana artefact is appealing and fixing for my double cost cards is always welcome. I've pruned most of my more broken mana rocks, this one seems more like the power level I want but its hard to theory craft it.
It's good as a mana storage effect to get access to the ramp. If you have powerful 3cc cards to ramp out, it provides an Elf effect of sorts to decks of any color.
Vindictive Lich has been devastating, not only in multiplayer, but also in 1vs1. Sac outlets and reanimation engines are not even needed to make this creature very annoying to deal with, but it's so easy to break and becomes a win condition in no time at all. I guess that most people don't give it a shot, because it has to compete with very competitive slot alternatives.
Insult // Injury is still underused in my opinion. An excellent late top deck, but also very devastating finisher for aggro strategies and also midrange. It's the red overrun, at a very fair mana cost and with many neat synergies.
Vindictive Lich has been devastating, not only in multiplayer, but also in 1vs1. Sac outlets and reanimation engines are not even needed to make this creature very annoying to deal with, but it's so easy to break and becomes a win condition in no time at all. I guess that most people don't give it a shot, because it has to compete with very competitive slot alternatives.
Interested to hear that, I play 3-way games often enough that I was excited during spoiler season but to be honest I had forgotten about Vindictive Lich. The slot definitely is a pain but it does seem like a solid win condition for a recurring nightmare deck in multiplayer or 1v1.
Insult//Injury has been on my list to try for a while. Every time I hear someone gave it a whirl I hear good things.
I tried Insult // Injury in my 630 unpowered cube, at first as a "tier one" card in the core 450. Eventually though it slid its way down into tier 2 and then out of the cube entirely. It's a good card, but it doesn't stand up against the stronger competition. If my cube were still at 720 or bigger I think I'd definitely play Insult // Injury, but as is it just can't compete at 630 or lower.
For those running modern-face-only or other slightly-lower-powered cube formats, it's definitely fine and probably worth including.
EDIT: Pretty sure the only slot in my entire Red section where Insult // Injury could compete imo is vs. Blast from the Past. Maybe also against Jokulhaups but both those cards are fan favorites around here.
Vindictive Lich has been devastating, not only in multiplayer, but also in 1vs1. Sac outlets and reanimation engines are not even needed to make this creature very annoying to deal with, but it's so easy to break and becomes a win condition in no time at all. I guess that most people don't give it a shot, because it has to compete with very competitive slot alternatives.
Insult // Injury is still underused in my opinion. An excellent late top deck, but also very devastating finisher for aggro strategies and also midrange. It's the red overrun, at a very fair mana cost and with many neat synergies.
Vindictive lich
Could you sell me a little more on vindictive lich? I remember seeing it during spoiler season, thinking it was just a smidgen underpowered.. Even re-evaluating it here, I still can't wrap my head around it's play pattern... Like any individual mode of it's death trigger is too weak for 4 mana. It's nice you get to choose, so the versatility makes it better.. but it also has to die.
What archetypes are it's home? is it that the 4/1 must be dealt with? so a 4/1 "unblockable" does a lot of work? Does it find it's way into Recurring nightmare strategies a lot?
Insult//Injury
I've had great success with insult//injury myself... Low floor but extremly high ceiling so I'm still not exactly sure how good it is. The other week I remember being at 19 life with 1 counter on umezawa's jitte, a thragtusk + an elf + a courser of kruphix in play... Super lethal on the swingback, thinking there was no chance I could lose the game.
I was facing down a territorial hellkite that was about to untap with 2 cards in my opponents hand.
Opponent untaps 5 lands, plays a land, Casts Insult + Injury, fireblast my face, hit with hellkite. 24 damage :(((
vindictive lich was good in my list as well. I just cut it when I added night incarnate though.
its kind of hard to evaluate much like hallowed spiritkeeper where you want it to die.
its great as a 4 power guy that your opponent wont want to block but its really good on defense as well.
its a 2 for 1 a lot of the time since it trades with most things and then you can make them sac another.
its a 3 for 1 if you trade and then make them discard 2 cards.
and sometimes it can be a aggro top end that says exile this or you lose.
very versatile on offence and defence. but competition at 4cmc is tough. would recommend for larger than 360 cubes depending on what you are looking for.
This is intended an article, a collection of my cube experiences with less popular cards, but I encourage people to share their own afterwards.
Is there any cards in your list that you think may have been missed by forum members that worked out great for you? Is there a card that you tested a year ago, loved, championed, but have now cut?
Cards that were slept on , but I feel people are coming around to
Craterhoof behemoth
Gaea's cradle
Massacre wurm
Karakas
Collective brutality
Palace Jailer
- Craterhoof Behemoth: This is one my favorite cards to get with NO and a card that green really needed to make it more interesting.
- Gaea's Cradle: This card goes so well with Hoof and has application in other big mana decks.
- Massacre Wurm: I haven't been very fond of this card. I think I remember killing someone with it once? What makes this so good? I understand that it's great against the go-wide strategies, but is there something else I'm missing? It looks fine in control shells, but entirely ancillary. I suspect this card is less important now that we have Night Incarnate. I think Steve tried this for a while in his cube and wasn't a huge fan and I've only played it that environment. I think he replaced it for the black gearhulk which hasn't been bad. I'll continue to test it though.
- Karakas: This card isn't a high pick, but the potential to shut down Emmy or Griselbrand and other random creatures like Baby Jace or Brimaz makes this card strong. It's also pretty nasty with Clique or Venser. This card ages like a fine wine due to the increasing power creep found among legendary creatures.
- Collective Brutality: One of the stronger cards to play in reanimator shells. It sets up the fatty in the yard, checks if the coast is clear, clears your opponent's answers, and it can even double as life gain to make the reanimate less painful or an early game removal to eliminate a pesky Rofellos or Bob. It's also incredibly strong against aggro decks. Against red aggro, you can kill a 1 or 2 drop, remove a burn spell, and heal yourself thereby reducing the efficiency of other burn spells. It gives your deck better game against control and aggro decks. I've had it whiff on me, but I'm not usually concerned when that happens because it's safe to reanimate.
- Palace Jailer: This card is downright insane. In the correct shell, this card will just create insurmountable card advantage that will make it nearly impossible for the opponent to ever take back monarch. You can even block and trade creatures with him to prevent your opponent from getting monarch and still keep your opponent's threat exiled. The beauty of this card is how strong it is in more than just aggro shells. If a midrange player lands this card against a control player, the control player is going to experience great difficulty taking monarch. Conversely, I've also seen control players land this to help generate the card advantage they need to keep opponents locked from doing anything relevant. Then there's all these other bonuses like recruiter, blink, and Reveillark synergy. Jailer is a top 5 white card in my book.
Cards that were slept on , but I feel people are coming around to
Craterhoof behemoth
Gaea's cradle
Massacre wurm
Karakas
Collective brutality
Palace Jailer
- Massacre Wurm: I haven't been very fond of this card. I think I remember killing someone with it once? What makes this so good? I understand that it's great against the go-wide strategies, but is there something else I'm missing? It looks fine in control shells, but entirely ancillary. I suspect this card is less important now that we have Night Incarnate. I think Steve tried this for a while in his cube and wasn't a huge fan and I've only played it that environment. I think he replaced it for the black gearhulk which hasn't been bad. I'll continue to test it though.
What makes massacre wurm good is the sheer quantity of 2 toughness or less creatures that see play in cube across all archetypes... Many planeswalkers produce tokens, monastery mentor is a common control finisher, green has an abundance of elfs to ramp with.. agro decks rely on going wide with 1 mana 2/1's.. Midrange decks run utility creatures like recruiter's , man'o war, mull drifter etc.
It's primary function is to stabilize the battlefield in reanimator. The damage it deals immediately can be so high, that it often either wins the game on the spot, or in 1 attack... It can turn near hopeless games into instant wins. I've had it do 10+ damage on resolution many many times.
I also like it in heavy Black agro if I have a lake of the dead or a dark ritual.. Black lacks sources of reach, so it's not uncommon for 1 drops to get clogged up by blockers... It wins the game a high % of the time immediately on resolution in creature mirrors.
In G/B recurring nightmare it's also excellent... It's hardcastable, the -2/-2 stacks if you manage to recur it twice, and you often have utility creatures that can beat down through the path that the wurm clears.. for lethal.
Occasionally you'll have it in your hand and they happen to be playing a deck with only a few (or zero) ways to produce small creatures ... You'll board it out every few matches or so.. But even a healthy fraction of the matchups you board it out in, it's not a terrible card.. just underwhelming for it's cost.
Vraska's Contempt
I and most people dismissed the card during spoiler season for being 4 mana instead of 3, and all the competition that comes at the four mana slot in cube.
However, after losing back to back against blightsteel colosus in my black deck and seeing vraska's contempt in standard, I decided to give it a whirl.
It pleasently surprised me and confirmed my theory.
I now think its slightly better than Never//Return and Ruinous path overall.
The main reasons are, exile >> destroy. With reanimator being a commonly deck, indestructible creatures, recursive creatures etc. Black doesn't have many good answers to resilient creatures and cube has a lot of them. They typically have to x for 1 themselves, or hope that they land an edict on an empty board. There's a fair number of generic kill spells, but that doesn't deal well with a woodfall primus for example. I want my versatile expensive kill spells to be as versatile as possible
Instant > Sorcery, it may not always be obvious, but there are many times where instant speed is relevant for agressive decks. And for UB control decks it's 1000000x better.
Gain 2 life is nice and non-neglible, especially in black which has so much incidental life loss.
I currently am running Vraska's contempt, and am not running never//return.
Wretched Confluence
A card I just cut in my most recent batch of updates, but one that is very solid. I've been playing it since the confluence cycle got spoiled and have seen it done great work. It didn't see much play outside of UB control, but was still an ok 22nd playable outside of that deck. IN that deck it's insane. Especially with torrential gearhulk
UB control doesn't come up quite often enough for me to feel the need to keep it as I'm performing some weird tests at the moment. It could easily come back. At 540 it would have a permanant home
Ashiok, Nightmare weaver
This card potentially should go in my first section on a power level basis, but I personally loathe the gameplay it presents, and don't like it's synergies. I don't like the card, but I cannot deny it's power level. It's clear top 4 in dimir (most of my playgroup believes #2), but meh, I hate it
I recommend testing it if you haven't given it it's proper due and don't care about milling.
Jace , Memory adept
I dislike this card even more than ashiok for gameplay reasons, but again, I can't deny it's power. Unlike ashiok I havent tested jace much, but I have played it in other cubes, and the mill effect is super super good. It may be less good in cubes that support agro thoroughly though. MTG salvation forums cubes tend to support agro better than most cubes I've seen IRL. I'm not recommending this card, only mentioning it for completion.
I came to the same conclusions regarding Vraska's Contempt and Never // Return and I believe Contempt was dismissed way too early. I posted my reasons in the Public Xmage Cube Discord, and I'd like to share them here with the people here well. Also, I like all those other cards you mentioned--probably more than a lot of the members on here. lol
I love this thread topic. Spending time on this forum has given me amazing ideas for my Cube, and my perspectives have improved tremendously from my time here. That said, I sometimes second guess my own experiences because of the hivemind, and when I remove certain non-stock cards I have regretted it. Here are a few cards that overperform for my group:
Champion is a much higher pick that Savannah Lions in our group. You're usually not missing on the 2/2, and the ceiling is tremendous for the W investment. The risk/reward ratio on this 1-drop is fantastic.
I do not like SB-only cards in Cube, so when I first added Containment Priest as an experiment I assumed I would be disappointed by the narrowness. As it turned out, Containment Priest became a premium 2-drop pick for our group. Some of this might be because we have more fatty cheating support than some Cubes, but in general it's the acceptable floor meets sky-high ceiling that makes this card great, and it's not only maindeckable but more highly sought after than many Cube staple 2-drops. While it's obviously solid in traditional aggressive/fair RW and GW decks, it is worth nothing that it is the perfect card for UW tempo which has become a popular draft strategy in the last couple years.
This card is better than expected for two reasons. One is that the overcosted aspect of the 4cc mode is mitigated by the fact that the extra mana often isn't wasted - I believe 4cc ORing is not as bad as people think because you are often wanting to answer other 4cc or more expensive cards. It is rare that I look at Quarantine Field in my hand and feel like not being 3cc is causing me to lose the game. Most importantly this card is cast for 6 or 8 more than initially anticipated, and double (or triple) ORing is fantastic, as answering 2-3 non-creature permanents with one card is unexpected by the opponent and causes huge lategame swings. This card is respected by everyone in our Cube group and consistently picked higher than a lot of Cube staples.
If I were to rank all cards in my list, this one might be the biggest over-performer when you consider low community expectation. It kills SO fast, and all you have to do is play it and continue doing what control decks like to do. There are also enough combos to 1-shot your opponent that you can make some interesting combo kill decks with Tutelage. It's best in UR, Jeskai, or Grixis.
It looks like a lot of people agree with me on this card, but mainstream consensus still seems to be that it is worse than most stock 1cc options. In our group this is the 2nd best black 1-drop behind Gravecrawler. Like Champion of the Parish, it has a high ceiling for a low investment of B, and it flat-out wins games in the right deck. When I draft black-based aggro I am always thinking, "I hope I see the Carrion Feeder in this draft..."
I'm not saying this card is insane, and I'm not sure I would play it in a smaller Cube, but the effect is good enough to win the game by itself in certain matchups. You ideally want this card as a curve topper in black aggro decks and want to be casting it against control and combo. Mindbender often hits your opponent at just the right time where you would otherwise begin to lose the game if you have nothing disruptive to do at that point in the midgame. It tested much better than its blue counterpart, Elder Deep-Fiend.
Dark Salvation is another example of a card whose over-cost for flexibility ended up being less than it initially seemed. The Fire Imp mode is respectable, and the scalable 3-or-more-for-1 can swing the game.
Enchantments are notoriously the most difficult permanents to interact with in Cube which makes cards like Bitterblossom and Sulfuric Vortex total bombs. While Rivalry isn't anywhere near those cards, it can still win the game by itself and punish control opponents for not drafting enough enchantment hate. It's great when you can curve 1-drop and 2-drop creatures into Rivalry, because the different angles of attack give your opponent a headache that can be difficult to solve in time. This card has been in and out of my Cube, but I only ever remove it because I'm convinced by forum advice. It has always seemed to perform well for my players when I add it back to the Cube.
Not sure if Karakas is underrated anymore... But with the printing of a lot of 2-3cc legendary creatures the last couple years, there are now many ways to abuse Karakas defensively. Also for very little downside you can deal with a lot of problematic fatties. It's a nonbasic plains that can sometimes win the game from a single activation, and not only will I always play it in a white deck, but I will often pick it over solid spells even when I have no synergies in my own deck.
From the cards listed on this page I think the following are solid 360:
Palace Jailer
Karakas
Carrion Feeder
Containment Priest
Champion of the Parish
Gaea's Cradle
Ashiok, Ashiok Nightmare Weaver (subject to the usual caveats about how you build your Cube)
Craterhoof Behemoth
Volatile Chimera
(I'm exempting the Conspiracy cards)
A big thing is that those cards combine power level with different effects that help to break up the monotony of many cube sections. For that reason I didn't list Shrine of Burning Rage because everybody can already figure out what it does and why and make a decision accordingly.
Dark Salvation is another example of a card whose over-cost for flexibility ended up being less than it initially seemed. The Fire Imp mode is respectable, and the scalable 3-or-more-for-1 can swing the game.
I have to thank you for this. My black has a zombie tribal support and I've never considered this card. The ability to make tokens is nice, but the flexibility of also being able to just give -X/-X for one Mana (if that's all you can spare) would be really nice in a deck already packing some zombies. I think I'll have to try this at the black CMC 3 slot
Cards I've found to over perform per their low expectations
Drak Haven not a huge cycling theme in my cube but enough generic discard support to make this a house in every deck that mains it. It's awesome in reanimayor as the tokens help stabilize until you can reanimate
Mystic Enforcer - This card has single handedly pushed Bant mid-range and control to a tier 1 deck in my cube drafts. It's an amazing top end threat when paired with blue, but also good in generic junk or GW mid range.
Pieces of the Puzzle - any cube supporting reanimator as an archetype should use this card. Solid ±1 card advantage and easily splashable
Pieces of the Puzzle seems like a very narrow Forbiddn Alchemy / Strategic Planning variant. Digging deep and fueling the graveyard is nice, but only getting instants / sorceries is pretty narrow, plus a lot of reanimation effects are enchantments.
I severely underrated meren during spoiler season.. It wasn't until I played with it in another cube that I learned what he can do. He's been in my cube for a while now and I enjoy his prescence. He doesn't see that much main deck play, but the decks he supports are very cool and are among my favourite cube decks that get drafted.
In my cube he Generally gets played in birthing pod decks that have black in them , recurring nightmare decks and occasionally as a value card in a creature midrange deck. It's very rare he doesn't get at least 1 raise dead trigger, and if left unchecked will take over a game by himself quickly.
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It doesnt fix your mana but getting to play a CC 3 drop is nice.
tinkers as fast as a mox.
Kind of like a lotus petal that can recharge. There are lots of times where the curve isnt perfect and there is one mana hanging out.
You get insurance that you can't get 2 for 1'd like you do with chrome mox and mox diamond, for the price of needing to reinvest in it.
probably other things i am missing but its pretty nifty.
My 630 Card Powered Cube
My Article - "Cube Design Philosophy"
My Article - "Mana Short: A study in limited resource management."
My 50th Set (P)review - Discusses my top 20 Cube cards from OTJ!
I also decided to go back and check my cube for cards that I don't see around much. They aren't necessarily the best cards ever, but I'm curious as to why I don't see them more as they've been pretty excellent for us:
Orcish Lumberjack- It exchanges long term gain for short term burst, which we've found it necessary for midrange decks to survive. Dropping a thundermaw on t2 is insane, not to mention absolute degeneracies this early such as Sneak Attack and Plow under.
Shrine of Burning Rage- Many used to play this but have cut it, but it's still excellent over here. Shrine often gets 7 or 8 counters by turn 5, which is just insane. Just drop it on turn two and watch it tick up unbelievably quickly.
Najeela, the Blade-Blossom- Has been surprisingly good for us. Worse than Rabblemaster and Garrison, but better than all the other red 3's. It's a super fast clock vs decks that fail to react fast enough like combo or control.
Arcane Artisan- It's been amazing for us, if you haven't tried it I'd give it a shot
Glare of Subdual- Worse Opposition has still been excellent, especially great in its colors or even the cheeky winter orb combo.
Tamiyo, Field Researcher- Has been great in aggressive and midrange decks as it can be a good card advantage engine and/or allow you to slow down games or even race if necessary.
Broodmate Dragon- Plays really well as one of the few cards that can clog boards vs aggro and kill quickly vs other decks. Plays around removal really well and seems a lot better to me than the new 7/7 Jund dragon.
Chained to the Rocks- Boros multicolored cards blow ass, but this has proved itself to be the best one for us.
Garruk, Primal Hunter- This guy is actually just nuts. Great top end in ramp, and clogs of boards/draws cards like nobodies business.
Lore Seeker- Not everybody gets to try these types of cards, but if you draft with paper this card is super fun and everybody is always excited when the Lore Seeker gets picked.
Nothing crazy, but certainly worth looking into if you haven't in the past! If you guys have any cards that preform really well but don't see others using don't be shy and please speak up, as I love to test new cards all the time, so any input is always greatly appreciated.
EDIT: Forgot to mention Painlands. If you play fastlands or filterlands, you should probably be playing painlands instead. They are much better cards in standard historically, and they are no different in a cube setting.
Blue tempo in general is better than people usually expect from other cubes. Sunder, Parallax Tide, light countermagic (Force Spike and Daze in particular goes up in utility), and the various 3/1 and 2/1 evasive beaters. My cube has slowly been moving away from aggro critters in blue, but Geist and Edric are real and superstars in decks that ignore their color requirements. "Mono red" with Geist and Edric is just brutal. Parallax Tide is functionally a one-sided Armageddon in a mid-range deck. Similarly, land destruction has a solid tendency to help people get mana screwed. People tend not to include it in their cubes because it's feel-bad, but if you're aiming for power level and your cube is designed to wreck archetypes, tempo is king. On the note of wrecking archetypes, Volatile Chimera completely hoses the reanimation player while giving red aggro and mid-range decks solid late picks. The meta-drafting effect of messing up someone's draft is possibly even stronger than its in-game abilites. My cube doeesn't even include Entomb because it's just a trap that seldom makes a maindeck. I had the same problem with Sneak Attack.
Also, Contract from Below with the original ante rules, not the Fourth Edition update nonsense they put out to stop ante play. The tournament is for ante and at the end of the last round, the TO wins all of the cards. Note that MtG floor rules require that when a player drafts a card they own it.
https://www.cubecobra.com/cube/list/p420
I find the issue is a lot of these cubes focus way too much on vanilla creatures and 1-2 drops. People want to cast broken spells like dig through time, moxes, broken 4 drops etc instead of playing vanilla creature decks.
Vintage Cube Cards Explained
Here are some other articles I've written about fine tuning your cube:
1. Minimum Archetype Support
2. Improving Green Archetypes
3. Improving White Archetypes
4. Matchup Analysis
5. Cube Combos (Work in Progress)
Draft my Cube - https://cubecobra.com/cube/overview/d8i
I agree that is a valid way of going about building your cube.
It ultimately comes down to the gameplay that people who will play your cube will find fun...
Supporting agro does more than support agro decks, it also indirectly supports midrange decks... I personally love playing "fair" decks in unfair environments, and that's not really possible if every deck is ramping into busted stuff.
A mix of broken stuff and interactive, card advantage based gameplay is what I personally enjoy. In busted cubes, that happens only in blue control mirrors.
The other cube we play with in vancouver has Mono W agro, Mono R agro, and everything else is focused on maximizing broken interactions... I find that gameplay grows stale after a while, and the gulf between the best decks and the medicore decks are too large. To each their own.
Last Updated 02/07/24
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My 630 Card Powered Cube
My Article - "Cube Design Philosophy"
My Article - "Mana Short: A study in limited resource management."
My 50th Set (P)review - Discusses my top 20 Cube cards from OTJ!
I don't really have an artifact.dec but I do run Tinker/Daretti/Welder so it will find a home there.
How is the ramp aspect? The ability to bank a mana on a 0 mana artefact is appealing and fixing for my double cost cards is always welcome. I've pruned most of my more broken mana rocks, this one seems more like the power level I want but its hard to theory craft it.
My 630 Card Powered Cube
My Article - "Cube Design Philosophy"
My Article - "Mana Short: A study in limited resource management."
My 50th Set (P)review - Discusses my top 20 Cube cards from OTJ!
Vindictive Lich has been devastating, not only in multiplayer, but also in 1vs1. Sac outlets and reanimation engines are not even needed to make this creature very annoying to deal with, but it's so easy to break and becomes a win condition in no time at all. I guess that most people don't give it a shot, because it has to compete with very competitive slot alternatives.
Insult // Injury is still underused in my opinion. An excellent late top deck, but also very devastating finisher for aggro strategies and also midrange. It's the red overrun, at a very fair mana cost and with many neat synergies.
Interested to hear that, I play 3-way games often enough that I was excited during spoiler season but to be honest I had forgotten about Vindictive Lich. The slot definitely is a pain but it does seem like a solid win condition for a recurring nightmare deck in multiplayer or 1v1.
I tried Insult // Injury in my 630 unpowered cube, at first as a "tier one" card in the core 450. Eventually though it slid its way down into tier 2 and then out of the cube entirely. It's a good card, but it doesn't stand up against the stronger competition. If my cube were still at 720 or bigger I think I'd definitely play Insult // Injury, but as is it just can't compete at 630 or lower.
For those running modern-face-only or other slightly-lower-powered cube formats, it's definitely fine and probably worth including.
EDIT: Pretty sure the only slot in my entire Red section where Insult // Injury could compete imo is vs. Blast from the Past. Maybe also against Jokulhaups but both those cards are fan favorites around here.
Vindictive lich
Could you sell me a little more on vindictive lich? I remember seeing it during spoiler season, thinking it was just a smidgen underpowered.. Even re-evaluating it here, I still can't wrap my head around it's play pattern... Like any individual mode of it's death trigger is too weak for 4 mana. It's nice you get to choose, so the versatility makes it better.. but it also has to die.
What archetypes are it's home? is it that the 4/1 must be dealt with? so a 4/1 "unblockable" does a lot of work? Does it find it's way into Recurring nightmare strategies a lot?
Insult//Injury
I've had great success with insult//injury myself... Low floor but extremly high ceiling so I'm still not exactly sure how good it is. The other week I remember being at 19 life with 1 counter on umezawa's jitte, a thragtusk + an elf + a courser of kruphix in play... Super lethal on the swingback, thinking there was no chance I could lose the game.
I was facing down a territorial hellkite that was about to untap with 2 cards in my opponents hand.
Opponent untaps 5 lands, plays a land, Casts Insult + Injury, fireblast my face, hit with hellkite. 24 damage :(((
Last Updated 02/07/24
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its kind of hard to evaluate much like hallowed spiritkeeper where you want it to die.
its great as a 4 power guy that your opponent wont want to block but its really good on defense as well.
its a 2 for 1 a lot of the time since it trades with most things and then you can make them sac another.
its a 3 for 1 if you trade and then make them discard 2 cards.
and sometimes it can be a aggro top end that says exile this or you lose.
very versatile on offence and defence. but competition at 4cmc is tough. would recommend for larger than 360 cubes depending on what you are looking for.
- Craterhoof Behemoth: This is one my favorite cards to get with NO and a card that green really needed to make it more interesting.
- Gaea's Cradle: This card goes so well with Hoof and has application in other big mana decks.
- Massacre Wurm: I haven't been very fond of this card. I think I remember killing someone with it once? What makes this so good? I understand that it's great against the go-wide strategies, but is there something else I'm missing? It looks fine in control shells, but entirely ancillary. I suspect this card is less important now that we have Night Incarnate. I think Steve tried this for a while in his cube and wasn't a huge fan and I've only played it that environment. I think he replaced it for the black gearhulk which hasn't been bad. I'll continue to test it though.
- Karakas: This card isn't a high pick, but the potential to shut down Emmy or Griselbrand and other random creatures like Baby Jace or Brimaz makes this card strong. It's also pretty nasty with Clique or Venser. This card ages like a fine wine due to the increasing power creep found among legendary creatures.
- Collective Brutality: One of the stronger cards to play in reanimator shells. It sets up the fatty in the yard, checks if the coast is clear, clears your opponent's answers, and it can even double as life gain to make the reanimate less painful or an early game removal to eliminate a pesky Rofellos or Bob. It's also incredibly strong against aggro decks. Against red aggro, you can kill a 1 or 2 drop, remove a burn spell, and heal yourself thereby reducing the efficiency of other burn spells. It gives your deck better game against control and aggro decks. I've had it whiff on me, but I'm not usually concerned when that happens because it's safe to reanimate.
- Palace Jailer: This card is downright insane. In the correct shell, this card will just create insurmountable card advantage that will make it nearly impossible for the opponent to ever take back monarch. You can even block and trade creatures with him to prevent your opponent from getting monarch and still keep your opponent's threat exiled. The beauty of this card is how strong it is in more than just aggro shells. If a midrange player lands this card against a control player, the control player is going to experience great difficulty taking monarch. Conversely, I've also seen control players land this to help generate the card advantage they need to keep opponents locked from doing anything relevant. Then there's all these other bonuses like recruiter, blink, and Reveillark synergy. Jailer is a top 5 white card in my book.
450 Unpowered Cube Cobra
What makes massacre wurm good is the sheer quantity of 2 toughness or less creatures that see play in cube across all archetypes... Many planeswalkers produce tokens, monastery mentor is a common control finisher, green has an abundance of elfs to ramp with.. agro decks rely on going wide with 1 mana 2/1's.. Midrange decks run utility creatures like recruiter's , man'o war, mull drifter etc.
It's primary function is to stabilize the battlefield in reanimator. The damage it deals immediately can be so high, that it often either wins the game on the spot, or in 1 attack... It can turn near hopeless games into instant wins. I've had it do 10+ damage on resolution many many times.
I also like it in heavy Black agro if I have a lake of the dead or a dark ritual.. Black lacks sources of reach, so it's not uncommon for 1 drops to get clogged up by blockers... It wins the game a high % of the time immediately on resolution in creature mirrors.
In G/B recurring nightmare it's also excellent... It's hardcastable, the -2/-2 stacks if you manage to recur it twice, and you often have utility creatures that can beat down through the path that the wurm clears.. for lethal.
Occasionally you'll have it in your hand and they happen to be playing a deck with only a few (or zero) ways to produce small creatures ... You'll board it out every few matches or so.. But even a healthy fraction of the matchups you board it out in, it's not a terrible card.. just underwhelming for it's cost.
I think it is way better than the black gearhulk.
Last Updated 02/07/24
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I came to the same conclusions regarding Vraska's Contempt and Never // Return and I believe Contempt was dismissed way too early. I posted my reasons in the Public Xmage Cube Discord, and I'd like to share them here with the people here well. Also, I like all those other cards you mentioned--probably more than a lot of the members on here. lol
450 Unpowered Cube Cobra
Champion of the Parish
Champion is a much higher pick that Savannah Lions in our group. You're usually not missing on the 2/2, and the ceiling is tremendous for the W investment. The risk/reward ratio on this 1-drop is fantastic.
Containment Priest
I do not like SB-only cards in Cube, so when I first added Containment Priest as an experiment I assumed I would be disappointed by the narrowness. As it turned out, Containment Priest became a premium 2-drop pick for our group. Some of this might be because we have more fatty cheating support than some Cubes, but in general it's the acceptable floor meets sky-high ceiling that makes this card great, and it's not only maindeckable but more highly sought after than many Cube staple 2-drops. While it's obviously solid in traditional aggressive/fair RW and GW decks, it is worth nothing that it is the perfect card for UW tempo which has become a popular draft strategy in the last couple years.
Quarantine Field
This card is better than expected for two reasons. One is that the overcosted aspect of the 4cc mode is mitigated by the fact that the extra mana often isn't wasted - I believe 4cc ORing is not as bad as people think because you are often wanting to answer other 4cc or more expensive cards. It is rare that I look at Quarantine Field in my hand and feel like not being 3cc is causing me to lose the game. Most importantly this card is cast for 6 or 8 more than initially anticipated, and double (or triple) ORing is fantastic, as answering 2-3 non-creature permanents with one card is unexpected by the opponent and causes huge lategame swings. This card is respected by everyone in our Cube group and consistently picked higher than a lot of Cube staples.
Sphinx's Tutelage
If I were to rank all cards in my list, this one might be the biggest over-performer when you consider low community expectation. It kills SO fast, and all you have to do is play it and continue doing what control decks like to do. There are also enough combos to 1-shot your opponent that you can make some interesting combo kill decks with Tutelage. It's best in UR, Jeskai, or Grixis.
Carrion Feeder
It looks like a lot of people agree with me on this card, but mainstream consensus still seems to be that it is worse than most stock 1cc options. In our group this is the 2nd best black 1-drop behind Gravecrawler. Like Champion of the Parish, it has a high ceiling for a low investment of B, and it flat-out wins games in the right deck. When I draft black-based aggro I am always thinking, "I hope I see the Carrion Feeder in this draft..."
Distended Mindbender
I'm not saying this card is insane, and I'm not sure I would play it in a smaller Cube, but the effect is good enough to win the game by itself in certain matchups. You ideally want this card as a curve topper in black aggro decks and want to be casting it against control and combo. Mindbender often hits your opponent at just the right time where you would otherwise begin to lose the game if you have nothing disruptive to do at that point in the midgame. It tested much better than its blue counterpart, Elder Deep-Fiend.
Dark Salvation
Dark Salvation is another example of a card whose over-cost for flexibility ended up being less than it initially seemed. The Fire Imp mode is respectable, and the scalable 3-or-more-for-1 can swing the game.
Rivalry
Enchantments are notoriously the most difficult permanents to interact with in Cube which makes cards like Bitterblossom and Sulfuric Vortex total bombs. While Rivalry isn't anywhere near those cards, it can still win the game by itself and punish control opponents for not drafting enough enchantment hate. It's great when you can curve 1-drop and 2-drop creatures into Rivalry, because the different angles of attack give your opponent a headache that can be difficult to solve in time. This card has been in and out of my Cube, but I only ever remove it because I'm convinced by forum advice. It has always seemed to perform well for my players when I add it back to the Cube.
Karakas
Not sure if Karakas is underrated anymore... But with the printing of a lot of 2-3cc legendary creatures the last couple years, there are now many ways to abuse Karakas defensively. Also for very little downside you can deal with a lot of problematic fatties. It's a nonbasic plains that can sometimes win the game from a single activation, and not only will I always play it in a white deck, but I will often pick it over solid spells even when I have no synergies in my own deck.
Palace Jailer
Karakas
Carrion Feeder
Containment Priest
Champion of the Parish
Gaea's Cradle
Ashiok, Ashiok Nightmare Weaver (subject to the usual caveats about how you build your Cube)
Craterhoof Behemoth
Volatile Chimera
(I'm exempting the Conspiracy cards)
A big thing is that those cards combine power level with different effects that help to break up the monotony of many cube sections. For that reason I didn't list Shrine of Burning Rage because everybody can already figure out what it does and why and make a decision accordingly.
I have to thank you for this. My black has a zombie tribal support and I've never considered this card. The ability to make tokens is nice, but the flexibility of also being able to just give -X/-X for one Mana (if that's all you can spare) would be really nice in a deck already packing some zombies. I think I'll have to try this at the black CMC 3 slot
Cards I've found to over perform per their low expectations
Drak Haven not a huge cycling theme in my cube but enough generic discard support to make this a house in every deck that mains it. It's awesome in reanimayor as the tokens help stabilize until you can reanimate
Mystic Enforcer - This card has single handedly pushed Bant mid-range and control to a tier 1 deck in my cube drafts. It's an amazing top end threat when paired with blue, but also good in generic junk or GW mid range.
Pieces of the Puzzle - any cube supporting reanimator as an archetype should use this card. Solid ±1 card advantage and easily splashable
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My High Octane Unpowered Cube on CubeCobra