Won last night's draft with this "discard matters" deck last night. All together I had 13 cards that were either discard outlets or could self discard (cycling / channel) and had all 3 explicit discard matters cards in my deck: Currency Converter / Inti, Seneschal of the Sun / Ivora, Insatiable Heir. Playing the deck really reconfirmed these two bullet points for me:
- I personally think it's fringe at best in a powered cube setting, especially if you're supporting a lot of combo / initiative.
- While I don't explicitly support madness / discard matters, I do find myself liking goyfs / delirium / critical mass in graveyard matters. It feels very related to discard matters / madness, but much more powerful / broad and less narrow.
To me the discard matters theme reminds me a lot of spells matters. I've always said spells matters is more about playing spells that actually matter rather than the actual spells matters cards, and I feel the same about discard matters. A lot of discard outlets are just good on their own or feed into bigger strategies like reanimator / graveyard critical mass / card type matters / etc. Right now I like the explicit discard matters payoffs like Currency Converter / Inti, Seneschal of the Sun / Ivora, Insatiable Heir as a subtheme since those cards are really good on their own. Honestly I don't think other explicit discard matters cards like Marauding Mako / Scrounging Stingray would've cracked my deck, which to me is a sign that I'm probably right in not pushing the archetype in my cube unless the explicit payoffs are at least as good as Currency Converter / Inti, Seneschal of the Sun / Ivora, Insatiable Heir.
Agreed. The discard-matters theme has been very powerful, and plenty competitive in my powered cube list. If your playgroup is interested in something fun and different, I would definitely give it a try.
steve_man - I wouldn't consider that deck a "discard matters" deck. It's more of a mid range / tempo deck that has a few discard interactions.
For the discard matters archetype to really be evaluated properly the cube needs to have narrower cards such as the ones mentioned above and the deck needs to have cards that discard two or more at once. Currency Converter, Ivora and Inti are great on their own and it's cool to have a slice of synergy going on with incidental interactions but I wouldn't qualify that as a discard matters deck.
These days there are a lot of synergy cards that are good on there own which is giving the good stuff cubes a chance to dabble in synergistic interactions, but in order to experience the true hardcore uncut synergy you have to be willing to go narrower
steve_man - I wouldn't consider that deck a "discard matters" deck. It's more of a mid range / tempo deck that has a few discard interactions.
Yeah, that's why I put it in quotes. The deck also had a mini artifact theme going on with Urza's Saga / Legion Extruder / Kappa Cannoneer. Although "discard matters" isn't too far off considering the amount of discard outlets I had + the discard matters cards + the other graveyard matters stuff with FOMO / Pyrogoyf / Occult Epiphany.
For the discard matters archetype to really be evaluated properly the cube needs to have narrower cards such as the ones mentioned above and the deck needs to have cards that discard two or more at once.
There's a difference between evaluating a card's performance and evaluating a card's merit for inclusion. For inclusion, there are deck building exercises you can do to see if you would play card X or card Y in Z deck(s) that you drafted. I had the discard matters shell, but would I really cut anything in my deck for Marauding Mako / Scrounging Stingray / Containment Construct? Probably not, and it's borderline at best if I would. I've had plenty of examples in the past where X cards would only be playable in X shell, but even there they would have massive card #23-24 syndrome. At that point to me it's not worth the real estate to me to play those cards. I'm not saying the cards wouldn't perform well, that you can only know by actually testing it. IMO a card's first test for inclusion / testing are "are people actually going to play this card enough for me to warrant it adding it to my cube."
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StaffWon last night's draft with this "discard matters" deck last night. All together I had 13 cards that were either discard outlets or could self discard (cycling / channel) and had all 3 explicit discard matters cards in my deck: Currency Converter / Inti, Seneschal of the Sun / Ivora, Insatiable Heir. Playing the deck really reconfirmed these two bullet points for me:
To me the discard matters theme reminds me a lot of spells matters. I've always said spells matters is more about playing spells that actually matter rather than the actual spells matters cards, and I feel the same about discard matters. A lot of discard outlets are just good on their own or feed into bigger strategies like reanimator / graveyard critical mass / card type matters / etc. Right now I like the explicit discard matters payoffs like Currency Converter / Inti, Seneschal of the Sun / Ivora, Insatiable Heir as a subtheme since those cards are really good on their own. Honestly I don't think other explicit discard matters cards like Marauding Mako / Scrounging Stingray would've cracked my deck, which to me is a sign that I'm probably right in not pushing the archetype in my cube unless the explicit payoffs are at least as good as Currency Converter / Inti, Seneschal of the Sun / Ivora, Insatiable Heir.
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Agreed. The discard-matters theme has been very powerful, and plenty competitive in my powered cube list. If your playgroup is interested in something fun and different, I would definitely give it a try.
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For the discard matters archetype to really be evaluated properly the cube needs to have narrower cards such as the ones mentioned above and the deck needs to have cards that discard two or more at once. Currency Converter, Ivora and Inti are great on their own and it's cool to have a slice of synergy going on with incidental interactions but I wouldn't qualify that as a discard matters deck.
These days there are a lot of synergy cards that are good on there own which is giving the good stuff cubes a chance to dabble in synergistic interactions, but in order to experience the true hardcore uncut synergy you have to be willing to go narrower
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StaffYeah, that's why I put it in quotes. The deck also had a mini artifact theme going on with Urza's Saga / Legion Extruder / Kappa Cannoneer. Although "discard matters" isn't too far off considering the amount of discard outlets I had + the discard matters cards + the other graveyard matters stuff with FOMO / Pyrogoyf / Occult Epiphany.
There's a difference between evaluating a card's performance and evaluating a card's merit for inclusion. For inclusion, there are deck building exercises you can do to see if you would play card X or card Y in Z deck(s) that you drafted. I had the discard matters shell, but would I really cut anything in my deck for Marauding Mako / Scrounging Stingray / Containment Construct? Probably not, and it's borderline at best if I would. I've had plenty of examples in the past where X cards would only be playable in X shell, but even there they would have massive card #23-24 syndrome. At that point to me it's not worth the real estate to me to play those cards. I'm not saying the cards wouldn't perform well, that you can only know by actually testing it. IMO a card's first test for inclusion / testing are "are people actually going to play this card enough for me to warrant it adding it to my cube."
Join our Online Cube Draft Discord Group!
My High Octane Unpowered Cube on CubeCobra