MTG Salvation

Some comments, from my own experience:

The way I do general selection is by including a 16th card in each pack, in a special sleeve. The general can be picked any time a normal card can be, though you cannot make a general pick if you already have from that pack - this is to stop someone from picking multiple generals per pack and locking the other players out of having a general. There is a possible case where the 16th pick for a player is a general where they've already got one, I've handled this by having them switch last picks with the nearest person to them who has not picked a general. However, I'm not certain this is strictly necessary, as a last-pick general is frequently not useful for (either) player, so might as well be any other last-pick card. Generals may be switched to a regular sleeve for use as part of a deck, and non-general legendaries may be switched into the general sleeves for use as generals - this allows monocolor or five-color to be played.

Your generals are mostly pretty similar to mine, with a few exceptions. Some of those seem fine (Di Corci over Bolas, Dralnu over Wrexial, Vhati over Nath, Jhoira over Nin, Olivia over Lyzolda), but a few I think you might have difficulty with:
Sygg, River's Guide - Are you running enough Merfolk for this to be really worthwhile? I see only one (Thada Adel), which means Sygg's ability more or less only affects himself. Ith, High Arcanist and Grand Arbiter Augustin IV are solid choices if you don't want to track down a Rasputin Dreamweaver. Geist of Saint Traft also works if what you're looking for is an aggro/voltron general with protection.
Phelddagrif - Personally, I hate group hug. Also, Rubinia already gives you a controllish general, so why not Rafiq/Jenara for a more aggressive Bant general?
Stonebrown, Krosan Hero - You might want to double-check how many tramplers you have in your cube before committing to this guy. He tends to thrive alongside some traditionally-bad cards like Garruk's Companion and Ball Lightning, or at least Brawn and Akroma's Memorial
Rith, the Awakener - This is more of a preference, but I find him to be much worse in the token-making department than Hazezon Tamar. If you just want beef, Uril, the Miststalker is where it's at.
Captain Sisay - You really need to be aware here of how many legendary permanents you have in G/W/Colorless, as with too few she becomes very lackluster.

Also, pay a mind to how many 5-power RWG creatures and how many RWB Angels/Demons/Dragons you have to make Kaalia of the Vast and Mayael the Anima worthwhile. I've intentionally bumped up my 5+-power Angel/Dragon numbers since originally creating the cube in order to make both of these more viable (and also improve my R and W which were lackluster where they were at).


Lands: I run 60 lands and include the Shocks, passing on the Vivids. I think the Shocks are generally better than the Vivids, but it means trimming some of your other numbers to make room for them. Apart from that your lands seem pretty similar, though I don't run the Worldwake Manlands, instead preferring to run other utility lands.

White: Couple things missing at first glance - Adarkar Valkyrie, Condemn, Hallowed Burial, Knight of the White Orchid, Luminarch Ascension, Akroma, Angel of Wrath. Ethersworn Canonist, Mirran Crusader, and Spirit en-Dal (who should be a creature) seem weak, though I know you are trying to fill in your curve a little.

Blue: Draining Whelk, Hinder, Faerie Trickery, and Spell Crumple are missing from my favored counterspell suite (as is Mana Drain, but that's for understandable budgetary reasons). Proteus Staff, Spin Into Myth, and Capsize being missing makes me think that your spot removal is also too light. Jin is out of place in spells. I personally hate Trade Secrets, as it often turns the game into a 1-on-1, and Master of Etherium seems a little weak.

Black: Nothing seems terribly wrong here, though how good is Tainted Pact?

Red: Much better than my initial draft of Red was. Imperial Recruiter would be good to add if it's in the budget. Chandra Ablaze is actually generally the superior Chandra in EDH, and is certainly worth a slot

Green: Seedborn Muse is notably missing.

Multi: Sovereigns of Lost Alara is great on paper, and then you realize you have barely any auras in your list. The only one it works with that I can see is Eldrazi Conscription, which is cute but probably not worth the slot as he's worthless without it.
Thopter Foundry/Sword of the Meek is cute, but it seems overly hard to assemble, and neither piece is that great on their own.
If you want two 5-color generals, I'd suggest Child of Alara as the second over Scion. Trying to build a 5-color mana base AND snag enough dragons to make him work seems very difficult.

Colorless: I run one of every signet for additional color fixing and ramp. I run a few more artifacts than you do though.

Final notes:
Your cube is currently smaller than mine. I run 600 cards + 40 generals, which allows me to support 8 players (5 packs of 15 each is 75, x8 = 600, with 1 general per pack). I like the 8-player dynamic, because every card is in play, and it can support things like two mono-colored decks at one table. Plus then, you can split into two 4-player games for actually playing - a 5 or 6 player game gets really messy, and you don't want to force anyone into a 2-player game, because that does not support EDH well. I've done a few drafts at 5-6 players and two at 8, and I like the 8 better.
I believe my composition was originally aimed to be 80 of each color, 40 lands, 80 Artifacts/Colorless, 80 multicolored, but I bumped lands up to 60 at the cost of 4 of each color, and my 1 5-color card is "borrowed" from the colorless, so my totals are 76 of each mono, 81 multicolored, 79 Colorless, 60 Lands.

Quote from Dolono

Thanks for the detailed reply. I've been constantly tweaking the original list using yours and a few friends of mine's suggestions. I've made quite a few of the substitutions you've mentioned because they were sound, so I'll mainly be responding in the negative.

Glad to help!

I'm actually trying to go in the opposite direction from this. I can completely understand your logic here, but due to the typical size of my play group(s), my aspiration would be to cut this down to a four person cube! Right now, my list is between that and ballooning into the normal 8-person cube. I'd like to get a feel for how popular it is, and how often I get to run it, before drifting in either direction.

I've had very little trouble getting to 8 people in my experience. I fee like 4 people with the current pack numbers would be very restrictive, as that'd be 300 cards, which is probably only 40 of each color + 100 to split between lands/artifacts/multi.

Most Sygg lists I've encountered do rely on him as the sole beneficiary of his ability, so my intent was to use him as a voltron commander. But I have decided to sub in Geist, because he's a bit more interesting mechanic-wise.

Grif is intended as a voltron, rather than group hug general. I might consider Jenara or Treva, but Rafiq was specifically excluded as he's largely considered unfun by the circles I play with.

One thing to keep in mind about Voltron is that you only run 12 pieces of equipment, and they get drafted fairly highly (in my experience, them being colorless and of high general value), along with maybe two buffing auras. Getting enough buffs to go "true" voltron may be very difficult. If you definitely want to support a voltron option, I would suggest adding a few more equipment that are really only good in dedicated voltron - clunkier buffs like Argentum Armor/Sword of Kaldra, amplifiers like Fireshrieker, Inquisitor's Flail, Grappling Hook, or things like Golem-skin Gauntlets that want you to go specifically voltron.

Added the memorial, and I will examine the number of innate tramplers later. I'm not being shy about proxying cards I don't own in this cube, so no need to qualify card suggestions with concerns about budget.

You noticed the lack of auras, when discussing Sovereigns, and that affected by decision to exclude Uril. He's also close to being in the Rafiq club for despised generals. I might try out Hazezon if I build find a good pic for a proxy, but his "tokens die when he does" clause has never sat right with me.

If you sac Hazezon before your next upkeep, you still get the tokens, and they can't be exiled. He's really quite powerful.

Shocks were another conscious exclusion. I just think that the vivids and man lands give the cube more personality than another 10 duals. If color fixing turns out to be a disaster, I'll reconsider this issue. I feel similarly about signets, where I hate how many slots they take up.

Fair enough. I may be cutting the green signets myself for a bit more room, since I run a lot of Rampant Growth effects in green.

A lot of these suggestions are great, but I've been specifically excluding tuck effects. Testing will determine whether certain generals and creatures (like Ulamog) are too powerful to leave unchallenged by effects like these.

Well, you aren't entirely excluding tuck if Chaos Warp and Bant Charm are in the mix. I can see specifically excluding Blue's tuck, but I definitely recommend including White's to make it better as a color on the whole.

I love tainted pact in constructed edh. It's saved my bacon in a few games, when you need to furiously dig for an answer or combo piece. I've replaced it with tragic slip, as another ulamog slaying effect.

I may have to try it out myself. I feel like it's better in constructed because you can easily run a 3-color deck with few or no duplicate lands. Here, all decks are generally stuck with 20+ basics, which makes it very hard to avoid duplicate collision.
There are a few other black cards that could remove Ulamog. Ashes to Ashes or Sever the Bloodline can be used to get rid of him more permanently.

Quote from [I"m a bit concerned that CA won"t shine in anything but mono red, but I"ll give her a shot. I love Chandra III because of her splashability.[/quote »

CA's best ability is the mini Wheel of Fortune, which doesn't require red at all.


[quote]My green sections feels particularly tight to me. If someone runs Omnath out the gate, I'll take that as a sign that this effect would be appreciated.

Seedborn shines in Omnath, but where it mostly shines is GU(x) decks, where it can be used to play threats while still maintaining counter mana.

I'd like to see how a couple of drafts go before making this switch. If scion proves worthless without D Tyrant and Nicol B, I'll make the swap them. Scion is such a crowd favorite.

I'll hopefully get this thing sleeved and played in the next two weeks. Then I'll have some better impressions of how the cube runs.

Sounds good. Best of luck.

If you're looking for sleeves, I've been loving mine - KMC's Super series. Very durable, and very affordable if you go through potomacdist.com. You can get 800 for $48, which should suit your needs.

Quote from Dolono

Thanks again for the thought provoking reply. In short, most of your ideas were very persuasive.

Hazezon I'm going to wait on, as the group I play with is either returning or casual players, so understanding how to game him will probably be lost on most of my group.

I've substituted Argentum Armor over E Conscription for voltron purposes. I will see if I need to add some additional swords of x and x, or fireshrieker to make that play style work.

You got me on the bant charm, but that card and chaos warp aren't nearly as cruel as hinder. I might try to add in spell crumple eventually, as its a personal fav in U/x constructed. As for tuck/exile in white, I'd probably add in crib swap before condemn, but I'll see with testing.

If you wouldn't mind suggesting something to remove in green in favor of seedborn, that would be appreciated! I can't decide what to cut!

The more I mull over it, the more this cube seems destined to balloon into an 8 person. What I'll probably do though, is just enfold the 40 generals into the main cube, and boost the subsections to make 600 total. I'm pretty confident that I can instruct my player to MAKE SURE YOU DRAFT AT LEAST ONE LEGEND!

For sleeves, my FLGS likes to buy limited edition and eccentric packs, so I've picked up 19 50-sleeve packs of ones with Mayan Pyramids + calendars. I'm an avowed skeptic, but enjoy the kitsch of hidden hostory/conspiracy stuff. I'm currently using 100 on my godzilla themed horde, but I can easily transfer these oven when and if the time comes to expand.

How many lands have you sleeved for your cube? 250 or 300?

Thanks!

-Dolono

Thing I'd be most likely to cut from your green is Arashi, the Sky Asunder.

The problem I see with including the generals in with the regular cards is that it increases the size of your multicolor by a fair amount. I like having my multicolor section fairly large (5 of each of the 10 2-color pairs, 3 of each of the 5 Shards, and 1 from the enemy wedges which have little to pick from) as a way to encourage people to go into specific color combinations and to include enough key effects, especially for combos like Grixis and Selesnya that have a lot of very key cards. This is also why I include cards like Gauntlet of Might, Omnath, Locus of Mana, Cabal Coffers, Chandra Ablaze, etc to encourage monocolored decks.
Having 40 generals in with all of the multicolored means either that your multicolored is going to be very large (which cuts into your mono and potentially leaves you with a lot of cards that aren't usable in most decks) or that your available non-general multicolored cards are going to be very small.

Quote from Dolono

I probably didn't make this point clearly, but I'd only include the generals in the main cube if I were to increase it to 600+ cards. In fact, I've included a section in the first post for an additional 87 cards (bringing the total to 600).

Well, keep me in the loop for how it develops.

Your additions mostly seem solid, but there are a few that are kind of questionable:

Angel of Flight Alabaster - How many spirits do you have here? About the best I see this doing is enabling Yosei locks. Maybe try Requiem Angel instead, who can produce a fair number of tokens? Emeria Angel and Iona, Shield of Emeria are both also solid angel options.

Traumatize - Dedicated Mill is pretty bad in EDH. If you want to run a dedicated mill card, might I suggest Tunnel Vision? It can combine with tuck spells for an often-lethal mill, or it can be used as a self-tutor that also fuels the graveyard - target yourself naming Living Death, Replenish, or similar and set yourself up for a game-winning next turn.

Toshiro Umezawa - This guy is very rarely what he's cracked up to be. Black has very few good instants, and I'd wager that you aren't running quite enough spot destruction effects to let him reliably flash back countermagic. Try Xiahou Dun, the One-Eyed for another black recursion effect that can hit non-creatures.

Nantuko Shade - He's "just" a relatively efficient pump-beater. Why not tack a Shade ability onto some solid utility with Nirkana Revenant instead?

Troll Ascetic - Another cheap efficient beater who does little else. I guess he can carry equipment fairly well, but Silhana Ledgewalker seems to do that better with evasion + hexproof if that's your goal here. Gaea's Revenge is a nice removal-protected beater who carries equipment very well.

Other than those few standouts, looks good!

I can think of a few guys lower on the curve in Black and Green that you don't currently have that fit a little better:

Black:
Bloodghast, Nether Traitor, Reassembling Skeleton - the Trifecta of recursion creatures.
Bone Shredder - another Shriekmaw effect

Green:
Wood Elves/Yavimaya Dryad - A few more ramp guys
Viridian Shaman/Viridian Corrupter - A few more artifact hate guys