There is one thing that has been on my mind for a while now and I'm wondering if anyone else has been having this problem:
I've been noticing a pattern with drafting my cube is this problem I referring to as "Drafting on Rails". What I've been noticing is a lot of drafters will lock into one of these archetypes - Lands, Reanimator, Red Rush, Black-Red Aristocrats, Artifacts, Storm etc. and these decks are becoming very similar in the regards with their curve, land recursion etc. I've been seeing a lot of these 4 Reanimation effect + 2 Fatty cheat effect Reanimator Decks, Abzan Melira Decks, Red rush decks with 6-7 1 drops, storm etc.
One success story I had was that creature decks where they were often a mix between Aristocrats, Tokens, Melira Combo, Heliod/ Devoted/ Archangel/ Pod, Cradle, Midrange, flicker etc. where the archetypes were spread between all five colors and some of the most competitive decks had small elements of tokens, Aristocrats, Melira (2 Sacrifice, outlets, 1 Melira, 2 Perist), Survival etc. and drafters were forced to commit to 3 colors couldn't use a formula to draft the decks. I found building the cube around these decks and drafting them to be incredibly fun and rewarding.
The problem I've been noticing about archetypes such as Reanimator, Red Aggro, Artifacts etc is that players are seeing how many of these type of effects are opened + wheel and drafting the cards that wheel to them. I'm very rarely seeing anything creative with these archetypes.
The biggest offenders to this have been the artifact decks with WildFire/ Urza in particular and the Reanimator strategies.
- I would like to see less of these "draft all the artifacts" style decks.
Does anyone else feel they have this problem?
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I'm actively maintaining a comprehensive article to help explain to new cube players how some complex vintage level cards work in a cube environment. Vintage Cube Cards Explained
Without having the feeling that my current cube ends up in "on rails drafting", maybe you should look at it from another angle. Did you think about what cards do actively "derail" draft experiences by being more open or having a synergy with multiple strategies? How many cards do you have in your cube that suggest that "on rails" is the way to go?
Are decks that do not follow your observation getting good or bad results? Does your group perceive the "meta" decks as the only way to be successful at a cube session?
Maybe it would help your drafts making signpost cards for those archetypes more scarce so people cannot simply wheel stuff. Making packs that are (number of drafters)*2-1 may help a lot. Packs of 15 with 5 people make wheeling way too easy. Also making those signposts weaker or more general could help a lot.
Some of my best reanimator targets are Woodfall Primus and Wurmcoil Engine, which are also good Natural Order/Tinker/Sneak Attack targets. Others will chase those cards, too, making all-ins way riskier.
Maybe you should talk to your playgroup about it. Players may have a whole different view of things than you, the designer.
On one hand you’re describing drafters who appear to be reactive to draft signals which is a good thing. On the other hand it also sounds like they’re using overly simplified archetype heuristics to build their decks which is understandably annoying and boring for the Cube experience.
I think this is partially a result of mainstreaming Cube content over the past couple years. “LSV style” Cubing seems to involve simplified archetype lanes that slot players at the table into one of only a handful of specifically supported archetypes. This is at least how the popular online content on his Cube reads, and I also hear several of the popular pros and streamers talking about Cube in this way.
I would make sure (1) you have enough fixing to support creative splashes. (2) You have a variety of aggro, control, and combo elements across every color. And I’m not a hardliner on “green aggro means Jungle Lion” - your green aggressive deck can be a midrange deck that attacks a lot or green as a secondary aggro color. (3) Beat the other players in your Cube when you draft with them. Locking into overly narrow archetypes is not going to beat the player who thinks outside the box to build a creatively powerful deck. At some point the stock UW Control player will realize black aggro-combo Reanimator hybrid deck is good when they keep losing to recursive 1-drops into Bloodghast and Bitterblossom.
Also the more I think about the archetypes you described the more I think part of the problem is some of the archetypes you have chosen to support lend themselves to these types of draft behaviors. I dislike Storm in Cube for exactly the reason you’ve described here. It’s the ultimate “drafting on rails” archetype, as you put it. Persist combo is a close second for having cards that don’t overlap well with other decks and will always get fed the late pick “otherwise unplayables” if the drafter correctly identified no one else is on that deck. It sounds like you like that deck for its color diversity, but in my opinion it’s pretty easy to get a lot of the cards that work well in that deck as late picks that no one else is going to play in any other archetype. Aristocrats is perhaps third with certainty more cards that are generically good but still some synergy cards that are so narrow and weak outside the archetype that the drafter can correctly wait to be fed those cards on the wheel. I do not support any of those archetypes even if I have some “sacrifice synergies” for example - in my Cube those effects are in smaller packages with broader archetype appeal, and you’ll never see something like Blasting Station in my Cube. To be clear I love supporting combo, but mostly combos that work well in a variety of color combinations as “packages” within diverse shells. Take Vault / Key for example. That an exciting combo that benefits from several artifact synergies, but the Vault / Key deck is going to look more diverse than the Storm deck.
Some archetypes have a lot more dependencies than others, hence why they're more of an "on rails" deck. I don't think there's anything wrong with on-rails decks / strategies as long as every single deck doesn't result in an on-rails draft. I think it's good to have some on-rails decks to draft in you're in the mood for it as long as you still have plenty of options to not be on-rails.
I probably have few too many archetype packages in my cube - I used to really like the drafting but after you solve the heuristics for these archetypes, its just a little less fun during drafts. But nevertheless, I still really love the game play.
- The persist archetype has been okay from my experience - the persist creatures slot nicely into pod, aristocrats, creature midrange decks etc. I been really liking the deck recently given how rarely you'll never draft a pure aristocrats/ persist deck and it always need to be a combination of all of the above + tutors to really function. The persist archetype can easily function as part of a larger creature based archetype without assembling all the pieces and tutors go a long way. Its very likely I will trim the weakest persist creature, sacrifice outlet and enabler in the coming days - The bar for the archetype has been if the card doesn't play in other archetypes Altar of Dementia, Lesser Masticore - it will be cut. The bottleneck for this archetype is Kitchen Finks and Murderous Redcap - which are both great in any creature deck an offer a guarantee sacrifice loop. (Hence why we need cards like Blasting Station + Altar of Dementia rather than more robust sacrifice outlets)
- The storm archetype has been really fun in my experience. I'm trying to move storm into 3 variations - Grixis Ritual Storm, Thousand-Year/ Shark Typhoon Spells matter control, Untap Palinchron Storm. Unfortunately, the latter two aren't as strong as the Grixis Ritual Storm. The problem I have with this archetype is the bottleneck on ritual mana and the need to play cards like Pyretic Ritual and Desperate Ritual. (Seething Song and Goblin Electromancer have seen play in other archetypes). The bottleneck for this archetype is Frantic Search and Fastbond which are excellent and help with all storm variations, but are needed by other archetypes.
- The problem I have with the reanimator deck has been that the reanimation spells have been very parasitic - Reanimate has been the exception for this rule - its able to target creatures in you're opponent's graveyard + is playable in any Abzan style deck. The problem is I've been really reluctant to cut reanimator support over the years because of how easily the deck could fall apart if the drafter doesn't get the correct number of reanimator spells and how badly it can pivot into other archetypes.
One solution I been thinking about is to cut out some of these weak/ archetype enablers that are there more or less to help the archetypes hit its necessary density and either cut them to force drafters to pivot more. The other alternative is to allow a 4-5 maximum duplicate rule for powerful, multi archetype enablers so players could pick them up and experiment with more interesting build arounds.
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I'm actively maintaining a comprehensive article to help explain to new cube players how some complex vintage level cards work in a cube environment. Vintage Cube Cards Explained
I don't have a clean answer to your question, but it's an interesting topic.
There's a lot of trade offs in archetype design and it ultimately comes down to the type of experience you and your play group value.
From my personal experiences , the best limited formats have a lot of archetype overlap between cards and a lot of room for draft creativity. They strike a healthy balance of "on rails" drafting and creative flexibility. Most of the commons optimize in one archetype, but also have synergistic interactions with other archetypes. Dominaria and modern Horizons 2 were recent examples of that.
If you are trying to create a 540 cube that feature the most powerful cards throughout magic history, you are much more constrained in archetype overlap than a traditional limited format. You are also constrained by the relative power level of these cards... Supporting a high risk, parasitic archetype where it's best incarnation has a 45% win %, might not be a good idea.
My solution is simply to mix it up. I like to run a lot of experiments and switch in and out parasitic archetypes and see what wins and what my play group enjoys.
One archetype I stumbled on that has stood the test of time has been the Fastbond/zuran orb/crucible lands combo archetype.
The only duplicates I run to support it are Fastbond and Courser of Kruphix. The archetype takes up very little real estate. Zuran Orb is the only card that has minimal applications outside the archtype itself, every other card has overlap with other strategies. The deck has many different possible builds. It's optimal build is the best archetype in the cube. It's average build is merely competitive and a failed build is a disaster.
I found one problem in particular for this drafting on rails has been green ramp:
1. Its night and day the difference between a card like Bird's of Paradise/ Noble Hierarch and Wall of Roots. Unfortunately, I still need to play cards like Wall of Roots, or else the ramp decks do not have the density of mana dorks to function.
I don't believe the solution is to cut Wall of Roots + Kodama's Reach - I found they were necessary to keep the density of ramp spells.
I tried an approach a while back where i pushed for an lands archetype + creature archetype where I had cards like:
- Exploration/ Azuza for lands etc.
- Growing Rites/ Earthcraft for creature go wide etc.
The theory was that cards with higher variance but higher ceiling could be more equal to a card like Birds of Paradise - Just like how Rofellos offers a different type of ramp compared to Birds. But as you have correctly guessed - the performed decently well, but started to lead the cube down a more on-rails drafting experiment.
However, after recently watching Matt's video - I do agree with some of his key points.
Some archetypes have a lot more dependencies than others, hence why they're more of an "on rails" deck. I don't think there's anything wrong with on-rails decks / strategies as long as every single deck doesn't result in an on-rails draft. I think it's good to have some on-rails decks to draft in you're in the mood for it as long as you still have plenty of options to not be on-rails.
I think I might need to accept some all-in archetypes are on-ralls. But yes, I would agree if it s a problem if they are all on-rails
One archetype I stumbled on that has stood the test of time has been the Fastbond/zuran orb/crucible lands combo archetype.
The only duplicates I run to support it are Fastbond and Courser of Kruphix. The archetype takes up very little real estate. Zuran Orb is the only card that has minimal applications outside the archtype itself, every other card has overlap with other strategies. The deck has many different possible builds. It's optimal build is the best archetype in the cube. It's average build is merely competitive and a failed build is a disaster.
I've found both FastBond + Wasteland to both be bottlenecks in this archetype - I would love to have more redundancy for these two cards. Fastbond is fantastic with Draw 7 + Crucible and on the other hand, Wasteland is just a great pickup.
I'm actively maintaining a comprehensive article to help explain to new cube players how some complex vintage level cards work in a cube environment. Vintage Cube Cards Explained
I feel one of the problems is my cube is a bit too archetype heavy and almost every single archetype has these 2-3 weak enablers that only play well in their own respective archetype and not others.
One of my thought experiment solutions for this problem is slightly break the singleton rule for these 3 cards:
- Frantic Search - Overall excellent card for discard, spells matters, storm etc - good with discount bears + mana doublers.
- Goblin Bombardment - Gives Melira a stronger reason to play red (with thunderblust and grumgully, the generous.
- Fastbond - Helps lands/ Storm.
The problem is drafters will always see these enablers and expect them to wheel (which they do). My hope is cutting down on these enablers will force players to not expect cards to wheel (forcing more pivots) + cutting these will allow room for another archetype to fit into the cube.
Breaking the singleton rule is a no-go for some members of my group, but I'm willing to give it short try.
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I'm actively maintaining a comprehensive article to help explain to new cube players how some complex vintage level cards work in a cube environment. Vintage Cube Cards Explained
Going to revive this because I have been noticing a similar sort of thing with my cube. I don't have a problem with all in archetypes but I don't want just supported archetypes and aggro to be all that's viable.
So with all the recent talk about drafting on rails I want to make 3+ color good stuff a little more viable in my cube. I don't want to go too far because I really enjoy my key archetypes (Storm, reanimator, stax, and blink) but they don't overlap a ton. Supporting aggro is also of course a must to keep balance in the cube and punish greed. But now I've gone so far down that path that greed is basically dead. We don't really feel drafting on rails too keenly but we definitely feel like you can't just draft a tap out pile and compete.
So I'm looking at changes to try and bring back flexible control piles. One step is going to be taking out the pathways I have. While they are perfect for streamlined two color builds and I love them for that they are really bad for splashes. Second the Wildfire package is getting cut. It is entirely uncompetitive with anything but the piles and is by far the worst stax option in the cube. It's slow, weak, and just not played. I also think I want to try to make my green section less interested in playing 13+ forests but I'm not really sure how to go about that because the heavy green Rofellos, Nissa, GGG fatty package is so successful. Lastly I think I need to cut archtype support back a little bit. Storm is fun and we want it but in 360 with Underworld breach existing does it need Birgi or dark ritual? Does stax need Tangle Wire? Does flicker need reveillark? I don't know the answers but I'm going to try and find out.
I don't want to go all the way to the stone ages here but I do want the good stuff decks to be a bit more viable because part of what makes limited great is those decks without a super coherent plan just competing with each other on the board.
I think a big way to make draft less on rails is to have 3+ color good stuff be viable but not over powered. But striking that balance is really hard. My early idea is to make green less intrigued in being near mono green and to slightly lessen my archtype support like breathe discussed in his last post. Having the weakest redundant enablers just wheel automatically and provides that on rails feeling. If the weaker enablers can go into a goodstuff pile then they're less likely to wheel and more likely for a fun draft experience not just a fun game experience.
But the problem I've run into is I don't know how to support good stuff piles in a high powered archetype environment. It's hard to keep with up a good stax deck or a good storm deck if you're just trying to play good stuff on curve.
But the problem I've run into is I don't know how to support good stuff piles in a high powered archetype environment. It's hard to keep with up a good stax deck or a good storm deck if you're just trying to play good stuff on curve.
For me it's about having good answers / closers. There are plenty of ways to disrupt the broken decks, not to mention they can just die to their own inconsistencies. Disruption / removal / efficient closers have only gotten better, which makes it a lot easier for a midrange deck to close out the game before their opponent can overpower them.
The melira deck can easily survive without its weakest enablers - it can pivot into a creature toolbox deck that can occasionally assemble the combo. I could seem myself shaving the weakest enablers and potentially going up on creature tutors.
The storm/ reanimator decks cannot function without a required density - one possibility I thought about is going up on cantrips with Serum Visions, Sleight of Hand, Impulse, Opt, Consider all in and shaving the weakest enabler for each archetype making pivot easier and requiring a lighter density of enablers.
The downside of this approach is this require the color pie to be more blue heavy. (I may need to go up on 5 blue 2 color lands to replace this distribution).
This feels like a bit too much of a radical shift for me - The other alternative I thought about was allowing a 3 card duplicate - Fastbond, Frantic Search and Goblin Bombardment. This would allow a lot of the weaker archetype enablers to be cut. However, this is facing very stiff resistance from my play group. They much rather I go to sliver border cards like Mirrored Lotus first, then trying duplicates or removing the color pie balance.
I'm actively maintaining a comprehensive article to help explain to new cube players how some complex vintage level cards work in a cube environment. Vintage Cube Cards Explained
I been thinking about a potential solution to this problem:
I have 540 or 630 my cards as "locked". These locked cards are locked need to be either strong cards or strong enablers for archetypes.
The cards that are weak archetype enablers used to help provide the archetype with sufficient density will be moved to the "open pool". Suppose I have 630 locked cards, I may have up to 270 cards in the "open pool" that have the archetype enablers - this way it is * possible * for the successful lands, Taking turns etc. archetype to show up but their occurrence is low and they won't dilute the main card pool.
This can potentially make testing new cards / benching cards easier as they can be move from the locked and open pools.
Therefore, my main cube can focus more towards fair archetypes, with a possibility for some archetypes to show up.
I think this can be a good system, but sorting out the cards post draft may be some what difficult - one possibility is put the open pool cards into different sleeves.
I'm actively maintaining a comprehensive article to help explain to new cube players how some complex vintage level cards work in a cube environment. Vintage Cube Cards Explained
I really dislike this in draft formats, so this is why my cube is built the way it is. The draft takes up a fair portion of the night, so it should have as many interesting decisions and be as much of a game as the matches themselves.
I don't have a cube built for power, so this advice may not work for you, but hey.
Core cards in my cube are the ones that have the most different ways of caring about them. Fetches are a well known example of this - Land that every deck wants, fixes mana, fills the graveyard, shuffles the deck. Delve cards are happy to see a fetch. Brainstorm loves a fetch. Aggro decks that can't afford to stumble on coloured mana love a fetch. People fight over fetches, and while they are generically good, they also want them for subtly different reasons. Everyone knows this. Ideally, the same would be true of a lot of cards: Good so everyone is trying to pick them, but versatile so that people want them for different decks, and ideally want them for different reasons so the play pattern is different too. Frantic Search, already pointed out in this thread, is another card in my cube that a lot of decks want to play. U/G madness wants it, Reanimator wants it, my weird artifact based Storm archetype wants it, the enchantress ramp deck wants it, even mono-U aggro or Bant Flash will take it as a playable. These cards obviously aren't great examples because they're incredibly strong and known to be, but there are weaker examples too. Blade Splicer will happily sit in a G/W human tribal deck one week, join Porcelain Legionnaire in artifact aggro the week after, and then provide a very blinkable body alongside Resto the week after that. An archetype defining card like Living Death becomes more in demand the more ways there are to fill your graveyard or empty your opponents, or (In the case of my slower cube) just be a 5 mana wrath, instead of being just for 'The living death deck'. Are the Triomes going to mana fix for some greedy 5c control monstrosity, are they going to let Astral Slide pop off with the various land-cyclers, or will they be brought back with Loam for extra (inefficient) card draw? Are they going to do all three in the one deck? Doing this across the whole cube did require dropping the power level by a lot and had the side effect of increasing the complexity by a lot, as not only do individual cards have more interactions you have to care about but also tend towards having more text. I personally have found the trade off worth it, as it's meant curating a 360 cube rather than going up to a larger cube size and only using part of it to get that same variance between drafts (Which for me also reduces feel-bads). We know what's in the cube week to week, we can rely on seeing the cards we're drafting towards. No starting a draft only to find you never had a shot at the combo piece that wasn't in the pool this week, it just got drafted by someone else for a totally different reason.
I stopped curating the online list for it a while ago but I'll try get it up to date sometime this week if work allows.
It really was mostly a matter of picking archetypes that have a lot of cross-pollination, and cards with a lot of interactions. For my cube Madness and Cycling were the core, because I love Basking Rootwalla/Wild Mongrel and Astral Slide. If I'm running cycling cards, cycling creatures are great to pick up with a Living Death, and cycling lands love a Life from the Loam (Plus, cycling duals and tris go great with Eternal Dragon to double dip on those sweet on-cycle triggers). Now I have a reason to run self mill, and a self mill enabler in green... and I'm running Astral Slide, Spirit Cairn and friends. Welp, lets run Commune with the Gods, Kruphix's Insight and Benefaction of Rhonas. Sure, they're weaker cards but they are perfectly acceptable at the pace of my cube. This was basically the mindset, Archetype A leads to B and C, B and C lead to D, E, F, G, etc, etc.
Even stupid stuff can work without skewing the cube too much. Splicers and Precursor Golem like getting flickered with Astral Slide/Drift, Precursor Golem works in some combo shenanigans, Hollow One is there for the madness decks regardless of colour. I was already running Adaptive Automaton and Metallic Mimic because there's a pretty high density of Elves, Zombies, Merfolk, Humans, Spirits and Goblins anyway. Now I've lost a game to a janky Golem tribal deck because they just made a ton of 3/3 tokens, swung in, and flashed in an aggressive Ancient Stone Idol so my wrath wasn't enough to keep me alive the following turn.
Is ancient stone idol a great card? No, but it has killed me in more than one way. Reanimated turn 2 is decent, hitting a 1/1 spirit with a Proteus Staff was cool, but Sylvan Library setting up Erratic Explosion? That's a painful way to lose. Fringe card, four different decks doing different things at different stages of the game, between them using every colour in the cube. To me, that justifies the inclusion.
Vivien's Arkbow / Evolutionary Leap/ Hermit Druid in addition to Survival, Fauna Shaman, Wild Mongrel, Noose constructor etc. but I just feel the payoff for the green self-mill wasn't strong enough to compete in my cube + it was a bit too parasitic
On the other hand, I do like cards like Metallic Mimic. I found the +1/+1 / recursion half of the persist combo to be the least parasitic/ playable on its own in persist decks when the deck doesn't try to combo. I'm currently trying an experiment to cut down 1 and 1 on the sacrifice outlet / parasitic persist creatures and going up on +1/+1 enablers as this is combo is assembled primarily via combo regardless.
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I'm actively maintaining a comprehensive article to help explain to new cube players how some complex vintage level cards work in a cube environment. Vintage Cube Cards Explained
I've been noticing a pattern with drafting my cube is this problem I referring to as "Drafting on Rails". What I've been noticing is a lot of drafters will lock into one of these archetypes - Lands, Reanimator, Red Rush, Black-Red Aristocrats, Artifacts, Storm etc. and these decks are becoming very similar in the regards with their curve, land recursion etc. I've been seeing a lot of these 4 Reanimation effect + 2 Fatty cheat effect Reanimator Decks, Abzan Melira Decks, Red rush decks with 6-7 1 drops, storm etc.
One success story I had was that creature decks where they were often a mix between Aristocrats, Tokens, Melira Combo, Heliod/ Devoted/ Archangel/ Pod, Cradle, Midrange, flicker etc. where the archetypes were spread between all five colors and some of the most competitive decks had small elements of tokens, Aristocrats, Melira (2 Sacrifice, outlets, 1 Melira, 2 Perist), Survival etc. and drafters were forced to commit to 3 colors couldn't use a formula to draft the decks. I found building the cube around these decks and drafting them to be incredibly fun and rewarding.
The problem I've been noticing about archetypes such as Reanimator, Red Aggro, Artifacts etc is that players are seeing how many of these type of effects are opened + wheel and drafting the cards that wheel to them. I'm very rarely seeing anything creative with these archetypes.
The biggest offenders to this have been the artifact decks with WildFire/ Urza in particular and the Reanimator strategies.
- I personally would like Reanimator decks to occasionally be less all-in and rely more on cards like Gifts Ungiven - Unburial Rites or Incarnation Technique as a more midrange/ control deck.
- I would like to see less of these "draft all the artifacts" style decks.
Does anyone else feel they have this problem?
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
Are decks that do not follow your observation getting good or bad results? Does your group perceive the "meta" decks as the only way to be successful at a cube session?
Maybe it would help your drafts making signpost cards for those archetypes more scarce so people cannot simply wheel stuff. Making packs that are (number of drafters)*2-1 may help a lot. Packs of 15 with 5 people make wheeling way too easy. Also making those signposts weaker or more general could help a lot.
Some of my best reanimator targets are Woodfall Primus and Wurmcoil Engine, which are also good Natural Order/Tinker/Sneak Attack targets. Others will chase those cards, too, making all-ins way riskier.
Maybe you should talk to your playgroup about it. Players may have a whole different view of things than you, the designer.
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I think this is partially a result of mainstreaming Cube content over the past couple years. “LSV style” Cubing seems to involve simplified archetype lanes that slot players at the table into one of only a handful of specifically supported archetypes. This is at least how the popular online content on his Cube reads, and I also hear several of the popular pros and streamers talking about Cube in this way.
I would make sure (1) you have enough fixing to support creative splashes. (2) You have a variety of aggro, control, and combo elements across every color. And I’m not a hardliner on “green aggro means Jungle Lion” - your green aggressive deck can be a midrange deck that attacks a lot or green as a secondary aggro color. (3) Beat the other players in your Cube when you draft with them. Locking into overly narrow archetypes is not going to beat the player who thinks outside the box to build a creatively powerful deck. At some point the stock UW Control player will realize black aggro-combo Reanimator hybrid deck is good when they keep losing to recursive 1-drops into Bloodghast and Bitterblossom.
Also the more I think about the archetypes you described the more I think part of the problem is some of the archetypes you have chosen to support lend themselves to these types of draft behaviors. I dislike Storm in Cube for exactly the reason you’ve described here. It’s the ultimate “drafting on rails” archetype, as you put it. Persist combo is a close second for having cards that don’t overlap well with other decks and will always get fed the late pick “otherwise unplayables” if the drafter correctly identified no one else is on that deck. It sounds like you like that deck for its color diversity, but in my opinion it’s pretty easy to get a lot of the cards that work well in that deck as late picks that no one else is going to play in any other archetype. Aristocrats is perhaps third with certainty more cards that are generically good but still some synergy cards that are so narrow and weak outside the archetype that the drafter can correctly wait to be fed those cards on the wheel. I do not support any of those archetypes even if I have some “sacrifice synergies” for example - in my Cube those effects are in smaller packages with broader archetype appeal, and you’ll never see something like Blasting Station in my Cube. To be clear I love supporting combo, but mostly combos that work well in a variety of color combinations as “packages” within diverse shells. Take Vault / Key for example. That an exciting combo that benefits from several artifact synergies, but the Vault / Key deck is going to look more diverse than the Storm deck.
My High Octane Unpowered Cube on CubeCobra
- The persist archetype has been okay from my experience - the persist creatures slot nicely into pod, aristocrats, creature midrange decks etc. I been really liking the deck recently given how rarely you'll never draft a pure aristocrats/ persist deck and it always need to be a combination of all of the above + tutors to really function. The persist archetype can easily function as part of a larger creature based archetype without assembling all the pieces and tutors go a long way. Its very likely I will trim the weakest persist creature, sacrifice outlet and enabler in the coming days - The bar for the archetype has been if the card doesn't play in other archetypes Altar of Dementia, Lesser Masticore - it will be cut. The bottleneck for this archetype is Kitchen Finks and Murderous Redcap - which are both great in any creature deck an offer a guarantee sacrifice loop. (Hence why we need cards like Blasting Station + Altar of Dementia rather than more robust sacrifice outlets)
- The storm archetype has been really fun in my experience. I'm trying to move storm into 3 variations - Grixis Ritual Storm, Thousand-Year/ Shark Typhoon Spells matter control, Untap Palinchron Storm. Unfortunately, the latter two aren't as strong as the Grixis Ritual Storm. The problem I have with this archetype is the bottleneck on ritual mana and the need to play cards like Pyretic Ritual and Desperate Ritual. (Seething Song and Goblin Electromancer have seen play in other archetypes). The bottleneck for this archetype is Frantic Search and Fastbond which are excellent and help with all storm variations, but are needed by other archetypes.
- The problem I have with the reanimator deck has been that the reanimation spells have been very parasitic - Reanimate has been the exception for this rule - its able to target creatures in you're opponent's graveyard + is playable in any Abzan style deck. The problem is I've been really reluctant to cut reanimator support over the years because of how easily the deck could fall apart if the drafter doesn't get the correct number of reanimator spells and how badly it can pivot into other archetypes.
One solution I been thinking about is to cut out some of these weak/ archetype enablers that are there more or less to help the archetypes hit its necessary density and either cut them to force drafters to pivot more. The other alternative is to allow a 4-5 maximum duplicate rule for powerful, multi archetype enablers so players could pick them up and experiment with more interesting build arounds.
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
There's a lot of trade offs in archetype design and it ultimately comes down to the type of experience you and your play group value.
From my personal experiences , the best limited formats have a lot of archetype overlap between cards and a lot of room for draft creativity. They strike a healthy balance of "on rails" drafting and creative flexibility. Most of the commons optimize in one archetype, but also have synergistic interactions with other archetypes. Dominaria and modern Horizons 2 were recent examples of that.
If you are trying to create a 540 cube that feature the most powerful cards throughout magic history, you are much more constrained in archetype overlap than a traditional limited format. You are also constrained by the relative power level of these cards... Supporting a high risk, parasitic archetype where it's best incarnation has a 45% win %, might not be a good idea.
My solution is simply to mix it up. I like to run a lot of experiments and switch in and out parasitic archetypes and see what wins and what my play group enjoys.
One archetype I stumbled on that has stood the test of time has been the Fastbond/zuran orb/crucible lands combo archetype.
The only duplicates I run to support it are Fastbond and Courser of Kruphix. The archetype takes up very little real estate. Zuran Orb is the only card that has minimal applications outside the archtype itself, every other card has overlap with other strategies. The deck has many different possible builds. It's optimal build is the best archetype in the cube. It's average build is merely competitive and a failed build is a disaster.
Last Updated 02/07/24
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1. Its night and day the difference between a card like Bird's of Paradise/ Noble Hierarch and Wall of Roots. Unfortunately, I still need to play cards like Wall of Roots, or else the ramp decks do not have the density of mana dorks to function.
2. Playing extra lands is an effect I need for cards like Field of the dead / Palinchron / Time spiral to function but Kodama's Reach is no Uro or Fastbond.
I don't believe the solution is to cut Wall of Roots + Kodama's Reach - I found they were necessary to keep the density of ramp spells.
I tried an approach a while back where i pushed for an lands archetype + creature archetype where I had cards like:
- Exploration/ Azuza for lands etc.
- Growing Rites/ Earthcraft for creature go wide etc.
The theory was that cards with higher variance but higher ceiling could be more equal to a card like Birds of Paradise - Just like how Rofellos offers a different type of ramp compared to Birds. But as you have correctly guessed - the performed decently well, but started to lead the cube down a more on-rails drafting experiment.
However, after recently watching Matt's video - I do agree with some of his key points.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z-DrxYm-9WM
I think I might need to accept some all-in archetypes are on-ralls. But yes, I would agree if it s a problem if they are all on-rails
I've found both FastBond + Wasteland to both be bottlenecks in this archetype - I would love to have more redundancy for these two cards. Fastbond is fantastic with Draw 7 + Crucible and on the other hand, Wasteland is just a great pickup.
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
- Storm Rituals
- Weaker Melira Enablers + Sacrifice Outlets
- Weaker Lands enablers.
One of my thought experiment solutions for this problem is slightly break the singleton rule for these 3 cards:
- Frantic Search - Overall excellent card for discard, spells matters, storm etc - good with discount bears + mana doublers.
- Goblin Bombardment - Gives Melira a stronger reason to play red (with thunderblust and grumgully, the generous.
- Fastbond - Helps lands/ Storm.
The problem is drafters will always see these enablers and expect them to wheel (which they do). My hope is cutting down on these enablers will force players to not expect cards to wheel (forcing more pivots) + cutting these will allow room for another archetype to fit into the cube.
Breaking the singleton rule is a no-go for some members of my group, but I'm willing to give it short try.
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
So I'm looking at changes to try and bring back flexible control piles. One step is going to be taking out the pathways I have. While they are perfect for streamlined two color builds and I love them for that they are really bad for splashes. Second the Wildfire package is getting cut. It is entirely uncompetitive with anything but the piles and is by far the worst stax option in the cube. It's slow, weak, and just not played. I also think I want to try to make my green section less interested in playing 13+ forests but I'm not really sure how to go about that because the heavy green Rofellos, Nissa, GGG fatty package is so successful. Lastly I think I need to cut archtype support back a little bit. Storm is fun and we want it but in 360 with Underworld breach existing does it need Birgi or dark ritual? Does stax need Tangle Wire? Does flicker need reveillark? I don't know the answers but I'm going to try and find out.
I don't want to go all the way to the stone ages here but I do want the good stuff decks to be a bit more viable because part of what makes limited great is those decks without a super coherent plan just competing with each other on the board.
But the problem I've run into is I don't know how to support good stuff piles in a high powered archetype environment. It's hard to keep with up a good stax deck or a good storm deck if you're just trying to play good stuff on curve.
For me it's about having good answers / closers. There are plenty of ways to disrupt the broken decks, not to mention they can just die to their own inconsistencies. Disruption / removal / efficient closers have only gotten better, which makes it a lot easier for a midrange deck to close out the game before their opponent can overpower them.
My High Octane Unpowered Cube on CubeCobra
The storm/ reanimator decks cannot function without a required density - one possibility I thought about is going up on cantrips with Serum Visions, Sleight of Hand, Impulse, Opt, Consider all in and shaving the weakest enabler for each archetype making pivot easier and requiring a lighter density of enablers.
The downside of this approach is this require the color pie to be more blue heavy. (I may need to go up on 5 blue 2 color lands to replace this distribution).
This feels like a bit too much of a radical shift for me - The other alternative I thought about was allowing a 3 card duplicate - Fastbond, Frantic Search and Goblin Bombardment. This would allow a lot of the weaker archetype enablers to be cut. However, this is facing very stiff resistance from my play group. They much rather I go to sliver border cards like Mirrored Lotus first, then trying duplicates or removing the color pie balance.
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 have 540 or 630 my cards as "locked". These locked cards are locked need to be either strong cards or strong enablers for archetypes.
The cards that are weak archetype enablers used to help provide the archetype with sufficient density will be moved to the "open pool". Suppose I have 630 locked cards, I may have up to 270 cards in the "open pool" that have the archetype enablers - this way it is * possible * for the successful lands, Taking turns etc. archetype to show up but their occurrence is low and they won't dilute the main card pool.
This can potentially make testing new cards / benching cards easier as they can be move from the locked and open pools.
Therefore, my main cube can focus more towards fair archetypes, with a possibility for some archetypes to show up.
I think this can be a good system, but sorting out the cards post draft may be some what difficult - one possibility is put the open pool cards into different sleeves.
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 don't have a cube built for power, so this advice may not work for you, but hey.
Core cards in my cube are the ones that have the most different ways of caring about them. Fetches are a well known example of this - Land that every deck wants, fixes mana, fills the graveyard, shuffles the deck. Delve cards are happy to see a fetch. Brainstorm loves a fetch. Aggro decks that can't afford to stumble on coloured mana love a fetch. People fight over fetches, and while they are generically good, they also want them for subtly different reasons. Everyone knows this. Ideally, the same would be true of a lot of cards: Good so everyone is trying to pick them, but versatile so that people want them for different decks, and ideally want them for different reasons so the play pattern is different too. Frantic Search, already pointed out in this thread, is another card in my cube that a lot of decks want to play. U/G madness wants it, Reanimator wants it, my weird artifact based Storm archetype wants it, the enchantress ramp deck wants it, even mono-U aggro or Bant Flash will take it as a playable. These cards obviously aren't great examples because they're incredibly strong and known to be, but there are weaker examples too. Blade Splicer will happily sit in a G/W human tribal deck one week, join Porcelain Legionnaire in artifact aggro the week after, and then provide a very blinkable body alongside Resto the week after that. An archetype defining card like Living Death becomes more in demand the more ways there are to fill your graveyard or empty your opponents, or (In the case of my slower cube) just be a 5 mana wrath, instead of being just for 'The living death deck'. Are the Triomes going to mana fix for some greedy 5c control monstrosity, are they going to let Astral Slide pop off with the various land-cyclers, or will they be brought back with Loam for extra (inefficient) card draw? Are they going to do all three in the one deck? Doing this across the whole cube did require dropping the power level by a lot and had the side effect of increasing the complexity by a lot, as not only do individual cards have more interactions you have to care about but also tend towards having more text. I personally have found the trade off worth it, as it's meant curating a 360 cube rather than going up to a larger cube size and only using part of it to get that same variance between drafts (Which for me also reduces feel-bads). We know what's in the cube week to week, we can rely on seeing the cards we're drafting towards. No starting a draft only to find you never had a shot at the combo piece that wasn't in the pool this week, it just got drafted by someone else for a totally different reason.
It really was mostly a matter of picking archetypes that have a lot of cross-pollination, and cards with a lot of interactions. For my cube Madness and Cycling were the core, because I love Basking Rootwalla/Wild Mongrel and Astral Slide. If I'm running cycling cards, cycling creatures are great to pick up with a Living Death, and cycling lands love a Life from the Loam (Plus, cycling duals and tris go great with Eternal Dragon to double dip on those sweet on-cycle triggers). Now I have a reason to run self mill, and a self mill enabler in green... and I'm running Astral Slide, Spirit Cairn and friends. Welp, lets run Commune with the Gods, Kruphix's Insight and Benefaction of Rhonas. Sure, they're weaker cards but they are perfectly acceptable at the pace of my cube. This was basically the mindset, Archetype A leads to B and C, B and C lead to D, E, F, G, etc, etc.
Even stupid stuff can work without skewing the cube too much. Splicers and Precursor Golem like getting flickered with Astral Slide/Drift, Precursor Golem works in some combo shenanigans, Hollow One is there for the madness decks regardless of colour. I was already running Adaptive Automaton and Metallic Mimic because there's a pretty high density of Elves, Zombies, Merfolk, Humans, Spirits and Goblins anyway. Now I've lost a game to a janky Golem tribal deck because they just made a ton of 3/3 tokens, swung in, and flashed in an aggressive Ancient Stone Idol so my wrath wasn't enough to keep me alive the following turn.
Is ancient stone idol a great card? No, but it has killed me in more than one way. Reanimated turn 2 is decent, hitting a 1/1 spirit with a Proteus Staff was cool, but Sylvan Library setting up Erratic Explosion? That's a painful way to lose. Fringe card, four different decks doing different things at different stages of the game, between them using every colour in the cube. To me, that justifies the inclusion.
Vivien's Arkbow / Evolutionary Leap/ Hermit Druid in addition to Survival, Fauna Shaman, Wild Mongrel, Noose constructor etc. but I just feel the payoff for the green self-mill wasn't strong enough to compete in my cube + it was a bit too parasitic
On the other hand, I do like cards like Metallic Mimic. I found the +1/+1 / recursion half of the persist combo to be the least parasitic/ playable on its own in persist decks when the deck doesn't try to combo. I'm currently trying an experiment to cut down 1 and 1 on the sacrifice outlet / parasitic persist creatures and going up on +1/+1 enablers as this is combo is assembled primarily via combo regardless.
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