As per previous post, the following is definitely happening...
Phyrexian Crusader in for Haakon, Stromgald Scourge: Still a Knight, also a Zombie, infinitely more useful and evasive than Haakon. Alara Tri-Lands in for Planeshift Lairs: They're just better.
Also potentials currently being discussed amongst the group... Nameless Inversion out for something better: Inversion has been last-picked before, and now completely loses its gas with Haakon gone. If I can lay hands on Go For The Throat, this seems to be the swap most are happy with. Terror and Hymn to Tourach are potential alternates here. Hero of Oxid Ridge in for Changeling Berserker: While the Hero is a very good card, it's a close call in this cube (both are hasty, the Hero gives more creature and attack advantage, but is less splashable). This one is on the fence.
Nameless Inversion is going to be dropped for Go for the Throat... a good swap all around, I think. Hero of Oxid Ridge isn't in yet - there's some discussion over whether it is better than any of the other red four-drops. A few have their sights set on Roc of Kher Ridges (which is good, but boring).
Nameless Inversion is going to be dropped for Go for the Throat... a good swap all around, I think. Hero of Oxid Ridge isn't in yet - there's some discussion over whether it is better than any of the other red four-drops. A few have their sights set on Roc of Kher Ridges (which is good, but boring).
The hero is better than all of your red creature 4 drops except Flametongue. It's an absolute house that gives your attackers protection from chump blocking and battle cry. In my cube it drafts around pick 3-5 (occasionally earlier) and straight up wins games with any sort of aggro backing. I'd exchange for the Roc, which is pretty bland.
The hero is better than all of your red creature 4 drops except Flametongue. It's an absolute house that gives your attackers protection from chump blocking and battle cry. In my cube it drafts around pick 3-5 (occasionally earlier) and straight up wins games with any sort of aggro backing. I'd exchange for the Roc, which is pretty bland.
Agreed. I suspect we'll end up throwing it in for the Roc. "Bland" is definitely the word most of my group will use to describe the Roc - yes, it's good for its value, but you could just have so much more fun at that CC!
We mixed it up this night. Didn't have much time to draft, but did have five players, so we shuffled the whole Cube out, dished out 80 cards each and essentially did a Sealed Draft. And then, to make things even more different, played Grand Melee (attack left, defend right, spells have a range of influence of one each side).
Enjoyed immensely by all - most of us had at least two potential deck archetypes in our 80 cards. I almost decked myself by getting Fact or Fiction underneath Panoptic Mirror and going to town (and instagibbed somebody by dropping Goliath Sphinx with In the Web of War on the table). One of my buddies managed to get out Dread wearing Blade of the Bloodchief. Twice. Wrexial, the Risen Deep turned out to be the game-winner... he had his wicked way with my graveyard after all those Fact or Fictions...
Looks like Hero of Oxid Ridge is indeed coming in for Roc of Kher Ridges.
Also, we're swapping RSZ in for Disintegrate (almost 100% strictly better... RSZ is only lacking the no-regeneration clause on Disintegrate, and our Cube has four cards total that interact with regeneration, so... natch...)
Some changes following some decent booster pulls...
Murder in for Sudden Death: Same CC, both instant. My playgroup likes the finality and bankability of Murder. Split second has been relevant about once all-time in my Cube, so Sudden Death gets punted. Snapcaster Mage in for Chromeshell Crab: Snappy was too good to leave out once I pulled him, but my 2CC slot is pretty tight. Right up the top of the curve, 5CC is probably a bit needlessly large, and Chromeshell Crab is easily the worst of them (as well as probably being the only morph in the entire Cube... yaaaay for worst "guess what I unmorph as" ploy evaaar!), so out he goes.
Murder in for Sudden Death: Same CC, both instant. My playgroup likes the finality and bankability of Murder. Split second has been relevant about once all-time in my Cube, so Sudden Death gets punted.
There are lots of creatures with toughness 5+ that can kill you in a few turns or that dominate the board through their abilities. Having a card that just kills them will often be a lifesaver.
I was going to say "In the day and age of the Titans, -4/-4 just doesn't cut it anymore", but then I saw tha tyou aren't running any Titans. Is there a reason for this? Most of them are pretty cheap now (though they will be even cheaper soon).
Snapcaster Mage in for Chromeshell Crab: Snappy was too good to leave out once I pulled him, but my 2CC slot is pretty tight. Right up the top of the curve, 5CC is probably a bit needlessly large, and Chromeshell Crab is easily the worst of them (as well as probably being the only morph in the entire Cube... yaaaay for worst "guess what I unmorph as" ploy evaaar!), so out he goes.
Crab got waaay worse with the removal of damage on the stack. And unlike the higher mana costs, the 2 mana slot is much less restrictive. You can easily have too many big creatures, but it would take a lot of 2-drops before I would say that you have too many of those. And Snappy is of course one of the best blue creatures - also in multiplayer, where his flexibility and flash come in handy. All in all, a great update.
I was going to say "In the day and age of the Titans, -4/-4 just doesn't cut it anymore", but then I saw tha tyou aren't running any Titans. Is there a reason for this? Most of them are pretty cheap now (though they will be even cheaper soon).
Just waiting on PrimeTime to get into my levels of affordability, basically - I've got the other four, but I think I'd like to throw all five of them in as a cohesive unit (quite possibly replacing the Invasion dragons long-term).
The playgroup and the forum are pretty much in agreement that the following change should go ahead... Tragic Slip in for Vendetta: Vendetta isn't bad, but you're usually wanting to aim it at a gorilla, and it's potentially going to take a lot of life away. Tragic Slip will have Morbid trigger often in Multiplayer, and will take out black things, regenerators and indestructibles as well.
Plus, I am in favour of 100% more fatal banana peel accidents in my Cube.
A really interesting draft, and the closest finish the Cube has produced - the last man standing won with no cards left in his library.
We've been trying out a suggestion of not distributing the colours evenly through the boosters (literally just give the whole Cube a good riffle shuffle and dole out the boosters - leaves the colours a bit more clumped together). This basically gave us four first packs where three had no white in at all, and the other was almost pure white. It left the four of us basically shunning white as a viable draft colour (given that that one booster was carrying half the white bombs, and you were only getting 3-4 of them, along with 11-12 very non-white cards to go with it).
That sprayed most of us across three colours, with the third colour usually being white.
I drafted RBW and had all the right mana-fixing options, but ran out of gas (I think I managed to get one decent draw spell in the entire draft... never bodes well...). Mrs. Bl00m ran Bant colours, and was at one stage packing a 16/18 Nullmage Shepherd wearing an Ancestral Mask and a Whispersilk Cloak. Naturally, that made her a target.
The runner up ran UWR, and had a wonderful time recursing Magma Phoenix and Spirit Loop - the life gain kept him in the game till the very end.
Our winner drafted a self-admitted "weird Grixis concoction". But he got both Lili and Chandra on the board, hung on and retraced Call of the Skybreaker FTW, swinging for lethal on his last turn in the game. Great night, all round.
The Houses: It's the first time Magma Phoenix and Call the Skybreaker have shown their true colours. Late game, they are both awesome. I was kind of on the fence with them, particularly the Phoenix, but I think they're staying in for a while now. Last night also marked the Cube's first resolution of an Austere Command, and hot damn, is that card staying in! (It produced a brutal one-sided sweep that neutered the Magma Phoenix player). Lightning Reaver saw some admiration too. The Fail Trains: Not too many, really. White and green both obviously suffered at the draft (with Mrs. Bl00m wisely picking up on it and riding GW in draft all the way to a very good deck). Indomitable Archangel actually got last-picked (just a few months removed from being first picked!) - it suffered due to being double-white in a very non-white draft. I don't think there was anything I ended up drafting in colour that I truly didn't want, and none of the other three mentioned any either.
My playgroup had their own M13 sealed tourney over the weekend, giving me some more decent M13 cards to sneak into the Cube.
Vampire Nighthawk in for Khabál Ghoul: The Khabál was one of my personal fanboi cards, really. Sure, it's old and expensive, but it's really a slower black Taurean Mauler. Batman should have been in this cube long ago. Disciple of Bolas in for Nightscape Master: The Master had lasted this long probably only because it was secretly a Zombie for those who knew. In reality, it's BB to cast, and then needs UU and RR to be used to its full extent - very mana intensive. The Disciple brings some more combo and card draw to black, and is far more splashable. Gilded Lotus in for Gauntlet of Power: People tended to avoid playing the Gauntlet because it helps opponents. The Lotus is a silver-bullet for colour-fixing at the same CC. Roughly the same power level, but I suspect the Lotus is going to see a lot more play.
Finally laid hands on a Mirran Crusader via trade.
Once it turns up... Mirran Crusader in for Juniper Order Advocate: This was actually a pretty tough call. My 3cc white is pretty loaded - two tribal lords, two potential first-picks in Transcendent Master and Intrepid Hero, Mentor of the Meek (which has only recently been added), Paladin en-Vec and the Advocate. It came down to the last two. The Advocate is an old-school card that sees a lot of love around our table, and is more splashable, but it's the weaker of the two. Still, a tough call, given that five of my seven 3cc white dudes now have a double-white casting cost.
Okay, I bought a box of RTR, and it's time for the inevitable massive change!
This change comes to you in several parts.
My gold section had been rocking two cards from each shard (i.e. set of three allied colours, like Jund, Bant etc.) since its inception - this was a copy of each Invasion dragon, plus another random shard card. This was not terribly popular, and there were so many awesome gold cards coming in that it was time to end the dream. I've knocked four of the five out, and left Esper a stay of execution until Gatecrash comes out (it's likely to lose both Dromar, the Banisher and Zur the Enchanter and gain Sphinx of the Steel Wind anyway).
Risen Sanctuary in for Woolly Thoctar: The Thoctar never, ever, ever got played. He was always going to lose the battle with Rith, the Awakener in Naya. If we're going to have gold vanilla in the cube, we might as well make it good french vanilla. The Sanctuary has already proven popular in my playgroup.
Teleportal in for Slave of Bolas: Slave was worse than Crosis, the Purger in Grixis, even if it had been responsible for some funny plays (it stole someone else's Jugan, the Rising Star early on!), and I've been searching for ways to break creature stalemates that sometimes happen in the cube's current form (everyone builds up a creature base, no-one has enough removal or evasion to finish a game quickly, the game stalls). Izzet didn't have many spells (which is kind of what it's good for), and Teleportal will end games without doubt.
Cryptborn Horror in for Kresh the Bloodbraided: Kresh was always ruined by his casting cost and his lack of evasion. In this meta, a fatty really needs to be something more than just fat to be worthwhile. Enter the Horror, who was built for multiplayer. It's got plenty of blanket damage cards to play with, and should be a hoot - it's far easier to cast and has trample to boot.
Archon of the Triumvirate in for Storm Spirit: The Spirit was one of my most hated cards in the cube. It had an impossible casting cost for an average creature, and had only lasted this long on account of being Bant Card #2. Sod that. Let's give Azorius the big fatty finisher it's never had before.
Martial Law in for Cradle of Vitality: It's not sexy, but it fits the enchantment theme in white, and is better than the Cradle. I suspect it's going to be sneaky good (kind of like the Detain mechanic as a whole). It's probably going to get close to last-picked until someone controls a game with it. And then it's going to see the love.
Fencing Ace in for Monk Realist: Again, not the world's greatest card, but it's at least serviceable and better than the Monk. It's also a Soldier, so it's going to play well with our Soldier tribe.
Wild Beastmaster in for Rabid Wombat: Long-term, Womble needs to become Aura Gnarlid. In the meantime, the Beastmaster is just plain multiplayer fun. Should play well with Populate and token-making strategies, and gives my resident Timmies a draft target!
Rootborn Defenses in for Holy Light: As you'll see later on, we're going to push Populate a bit. Defenses is good even without the Populate bit. For a common, I suspect this is going to end up a popular mid-range pick over time.
Guttersnipe in for Granite Gargoyle: The Snipe is a one-card draft strategy that is going to give the full Izzet deck a new win-con (try not to think how quickly you'd win in the late-game with this and Call the Skybreaker...). It should be far more popular than the Gargoyle, who was far too vanilla, defensive and boring for people's tastes.
Chandra's Spitfire in for Hell-Bent Raider: Had one arrive via trade just before the RTR box was opened. Infinitely better than the Raider. This was a very easy and very popular swap.
Golgari Charm in for Gaze of the Gorgon: The Gaze was a narrow combat trick, and little more. The Charm, while being less splashable, is far more flexible, and should see a fair bit of play.
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In the short time RTR has been out, my playgroup has really gotten into Populate as a mechanic. Out of the five guild mechanics in RTR, it's probably the one that translates the best and the easiest into multiplayer (with Overload second, and Unleash a clear last).
There were already 19 cards in the cube that produced tokens, so it was already somewhat of a good idea. Now it's viable!
Vitu-Ghazi Guildmage in for Qasali Pridemage: The Pridemage was good but somewhat underpowered in a multiplayer arena. The Guildmage is the Populate archetype on legs. At 2CC, this little guy is going to sneak under radars until the mid-round, and then people will stare at the token producers they've already drafted and snaffle it right up.
In multiplayer, Finks reduces to "just OK". Sure, they recurse, but they really need Melira next to them to shine, so they end up being just another one of those two-card combos, and may gain you a little life in the process. In other words, a warm body that recurses once with a bit of lifegain on the side. Nothing flash in multiplayer. We've just removed an artifact/enchantment piffer in the Pridemage, and we're pushing Populate, so Sundering Growth can come in. Don't hate me.
Grove of the Guardian in for Svogthos, the Restless Tomb: The Grove is the prototypical "large Populate target", and has already proven popular in my playgroup. This swap was met with a fair amount of enthusiasm. Svogthos was already the large man-land of choice, and had probably never reached 8/8 in all of its playing days (even despite being a Zombie).
Some further cards that were simply too good to leave out (or significantly better than what they were replacing).
Rakdos's Return in for Wrecking Ball: Rakdos had traditionally been a pretty weak guild in the cube. Wrecking Ball was a bit superfluous, given we already had Terminate next to it. The Return is a little bit of mythic muscle.
The Guildmage will again help to break up creature deadlocks by throwing around a lot of control and evasion. Bringing in what should be a very flexible and proactive 2CC creature for what, even in multiplayer, is one of the most polarizing cards in the cube, should be made of win.
Hypersonic Dragon in for Prophetic Bolt: The Bolt and Suffocating Blast formed almost half of Izzet before this update. RTR has shown them both up as hard-to-cast and overrated - there are now much better cards to play. The Dragon is one of them - the same CC, still essentially 4 damage (albeit now on legs), and something that plays with a whole mass of direct damage and reanimation spells for a bunch of surprises.
Mercurial Chemister in for Suffocating Blast: The other of the two Izzet cards going out the window. This one has been tight between the Chemister and Nivix Guildmage, but I'm leaning towards the Chemister, as much as he's a little expensive, and utterly loads up Izzet at 5CC (along with Hypersonic Dragon and Dominus of Fealty). At the end of the day, card advantage is king, especially in our cube as it stands (which doesn't have a heap of card draw).
Chromatic Lantern in for Proteus Staff: The Lantern belongs in every multiplayer cube known to man. It's that good. The Staff was a bit hit-and-miss.
Korozda Guildmage in for Skullbriar, the Walking Grave: Skullbriar was never going to reach his full potential here (well, at least not without me going the whole hog into the Scavenge mechanic, which probably wouldn't have worked anyway). The Guildmage will again help break deadlocks (thanks to the evasion it hands out), and even plays well with Populate.
Pithing Needle in for Bottle Gnomes: The Gnomes were possibly one of the most underpowered cards remaining in the cube (you can see where this update has gone... cards you recurse for minimal lifegain, like the Gnomes and Finks, are all going out the door). I drafted them a couple of times, and I don't think I was ever excited to see them (I was usually hoping to draw solutions when I did, too). Pithing Needle is a solution, and a cheap one at that. It actually hasn't seen a lot of play in my meta so far, so it's going to be interesting to see its popularity level. Its relative casting cost certainly won't harm its case.
Grave Betrayal in for Makeshift Mannequin: I swear WotC must have taken my cube list, thought "Let's print a new black finisher card for this cube", and then threw Grave Betrayal into RTR. It plays like Debtors' Knell in multiplayer, so it's already a fairly obvious choice (given Knell's popularity in these formats). But land it next to Death Baron in this cube? Corrosive Mentor? Noxious Ghoul? It's going to be insane, and it's going to spawn winning decks. It's essentially a reanimator spell, so we drop the worst reanimation spell in the cube for it - MM didn't have too many targets in the cube with shroud or hexproof to make it worthwhile (even if it was instant).
Okay, that's 21 changes to a 400 cube. Over 5%! Wow!
Surely at least one of those changes prompts discussion (I'm ready for the Finks discussion! Try and talk me out of it!)
Another forced change.
I am in the process of trading most of my Urza's Destiny cards to get SoL&S, Doubling Season and some other cube staples in return.
This means that a couple of Destiny cards had to fall out of the cube (don't worry - it's for its own long term benefit, and we have some pretty ready-made replacements!)...
Molten-Tail Masticore in for Masticore: Losing one, gaining another. My Molten-Tail is foil, and hasn't had an opportunity to shine yet (literally!)... let's give it one. Tolarian Academy in for Yavimaya Hollow: The Hollow was pretty good, so I had to swap something good in in return... wait, I haven't got my Academy decked? Oh boy... Mimic Vat in for Powder Keg: We talked in the RTR post above how we want to push Populate. This is the ultimate way to do it - the Keg was possibly the best token creature defense in the cube, and we're swapping it with something that actually likes Populate? Hopefully, this change doesn't unbalance things too much! Darksteel Juggernaut in for Thran Golem: One borderline-cubeable 5-drop artifact creature in for another.
The full RTR changes were deployed, and six players meant that three-quarters of the cube got suited up. And oh. What. A. Night.
The New Stuff
With a quarter of the cube still in the box, a few things missed out on being seen. Hypersonic Dragon, Rakdos's Return and Vitu-Ghazi Guildmage didn't make it into boosters, so we didn't get a read on Populate in particular.
But the stuff that did make it in?
The two other guildmages (New Prahv and Korozda) were both complete and utter houses. They did exactly what I put them in to do, and more. Korozda spent half the first match threatening to get Hydra Omnivore through people's defenses, and produced close to 20 Saprolings off already-dying creatures. New Prahv kept the biggest threat in lockdown for half the game, and defended like a champ.
Detain in general is sneaky good. Martial Law also got maindecked, and worked well. Mimic Vat was a complete house, and should have been in the cube much sooner. Grave Betrayal got first-picked, but sat in the player's hand the whole game waiting for an opportune moment to be played (hmm... interesting sign...).
The First- and Last-Picked
In a good sign for the strength of the cube, a vast majority of the last-picks were tribal and draft strategy cards that had the other half of their theme still back in the cube box. Elves and Knights in particular (I had both Kinsbaile Cavalier and Knight Exemplar handed to me as last picks... damn shame they were outside of my colours). Flame-Kin Zealot was last-picked as expected... he's one of the first overboard when Gatecrash is out. Similar for Wild Cantor.
Some of the first-picks were Prismatic Omen, Hydra Omnivore and Scythe Specter.
The Games
We had two games: A three-team 2HG game, and, once one of our players left, a five-player Grand Melee (attack left, defend right, spell range of a player each side).
The 2HG match went right down to the wire. It was one team attempting to sneak Hydra Omnivore and Lightning Reaver under the radar with Korozda Guildmage, one controlling with Tradewind Rider, Urborg Syphon-Mage and Liliana Vess, and the third going for the kill with an incredible combo of Hateflayer, Nullmage Shepherd and Rith-supplied Saprolings. The Nullmage had a Darksteel Juggernaut to continually aim for, allowing Hateflayer to find a way of tapping and then untapping multiple times in a turn for heinous amounts of damage.
In the end, the Hateflayer was the downfall of the Hydra Omnivore team, but the control players' fliers got over the top for lethal before the 'Flaya Playa could untap him again (Djinn of Wishes and New Prahv Guildmage getting the scalp). Hateflayer was probably card of the game, although the two Guildmages were right behind. The 'Flaya is beginning to gain some healthy respect as a bomb finisher now. He's earnt his spot.
The Grand Melee game was where my deck decided to shine. My Triskelion managed to throw two damage at someone, kill itself with the last to get under the Vat, and then reappear for four unblocked damage plus another three post-combat. From there, he was controlling most of the field until there were two of us left, and my opponent resolved Fracturing Gust to try and reset things in the aims of survival.
I topdecked Diabolic Tutor in response, found Dragonmaster Outcast (with well more than six lands by this point) and dared him to draw removal. He didn't.
To Sum Up
The final word from one of my buddies: "Damn that was fun. We should be playing cube more often."
The RTR cards we've seen have all shone. I'm beginning to ponder if it's worth pulling the entire cube out for six player drafts (i.e. let them draft four boosters instead of three, which gets 360 of the 400 cards out). We would've likely seen even more powerful decks, some more RTR cards, and maybe even a populate deck (Grove of the Guardian got maindecked, but didn't need to be activated... its player was too busy being the 'Flaya Playa to need an 8/8).
Anyone tried that before in the event of six players?
Stoneforge Mystic in for Fencing Ace: Probably couldn't get a more straight-forward swap if we tried. The Ace was place-holding for something better, and my, is the Mystic "something better"!
The same trade brought me a Sword of Light and Shadow, so I am now one Sword short of having the whole set of five to put in the cube (and the missing one is Body and Mind, too... hopefully won't take too long to sort out). I'll wait until I have all five, and then sort out the kinks between gold and colourless in the process (for some reason, my cube is currently +3 on artifacts and -3 on gold... don't ask me how that happened).
Four of us pulled the entire cube out, got 100 cards each and played sealed.
I rolled a Bant control deck with Inkwell Leviathan as its finisher. The other decks across the table were another Bant deck that favoured equipment, a BRG Zombie deck and a WG deck that... well, we never really got a long-enough look at it!
The Bant equipment deck won both games. The first one it took easily, landing a Hydra Omnivore with a Loxodon Warhammer and Whispersilk Cloak, even triggering Garruk Wildspeaker's ultimate for the final scalp.
The second one I should have won... I held everyone else off with Barrin and tokenproduction, and set up for a kicked Rite of Replication on Lightning Reaver for the win. But I missed the equipment deck's Soul Warden, which gained enough life to leave it in the game and swing FTW the next turn. Bah.
It was certainly enjoying me having to continually bounce its Reveillark. That in turn was refetching Sakura-Tribe Elder each time, and... yeah, it was messy.
We then had a 2HG Second Sealed match (taking the cards we didn't main-deck the first time around and building decks with those).
I went BR and was paired with a BW deck. Across the table were UB and UR.
And of course, as is my norm, my deck fired up completely for the last game.
Turn 3 Guttersnipe, Turn 4 Flametongue Kavu. A bit of resetting, then Chandra Nalaar, Incandescent Soulstoke, Kulrath Knight and Ashling the Pilgrim for a very quick and hot win (ably backed up with a little bit of Avatar of Woe action from my partner).
Good to get the whole cube out and playing, and good to see that every colour got a win.
We finally saw Hydra Omnivore + Whispersilk Cloak FTW, as well as a kicked Rite. Noxious Ghoul, Barrin and Reveillark all proved strong as well (as we expected they would be).
The inevitable post-"Awesome Xmas Presents" cube changes.
Some pretty decent ones here - another 21 changes. We've only lost three of our RtR changes - one was a placeholder for something better, and the other two simply got superseded by newly-acquired cards. Onwards!
This was kicked off a few weeks ago now when I acquired a Glissa, the Traitor. She's pretty much an auto-include in this guild for multiplayer, but no-one could agree on what to drop to let her in. And then I was given Izzet vs. Golgari for Christmas...
This left us with ten cards (Glissa, Jarad, Nath, Putrefy, Golgari Charm, Korozda Guildmage, Doomgape, Vulturous Zombie, Lord of Extinction and Gleancrawler) competing for five slots. Not pretty!
I threw it into a few different threads in the cube forum, as well as physically infront of the eyeballs of half my playgroup and forced a vote.
The winners were Glissa, Jarad, Putrefy, Vulturous and Doomgape. This means... Putrefy in for Golgari Charm: Nothing wrong with the Charm - Putrefy is just more bankable. When time and budget permits, this goes even further to Maelstrom Pulse. Doomgape in for Gleancrawler: Gleancrawler was pretty combolicious, but was beginning to show its age. Doomgape fits a bit better with the guild, is a lot swingier, and can be dropped on Turn 4 for a surprise face-smash by Incandescent Soulstoke. Jarard, Golgari Lich-Lord in for Nath of the Gilt-Leaf: Nath was another showing his age. I am not sold on Jarad's castability in cube, but he's been a big enough house in my meta's regular multiplayer and EDH games that the group is very excited to see him in. I reserve my judgement. Glissa, the Traitor in for Korozda Guildmage: I rather liked the Guildmage and the churning it did, but Glissa's just a straight-up house at the same CC. Can't argue with that.
It was a very close vote within the group for the fifth and final slot between Vulturous Zombie and Lord of Extinction. Vulturous stays due to its evasion (which is the side I lean towards, personally). Lord will come in if Jarad proves uncastable.
So the Golgari section of my cube is all new and all shiny. Barring Putrefy being Maelstrom Pulse and one of the others being dropped for Pernicious Deed, I feel like this is pretty close to being the best five Golgari cards you could put in a multiplayer cube right now. Joy!
I had noticed that green was short on ramp, and had absolutely zero room in its spell slots - mostly due to the ratio we were running, which was 36:14, more than two creatures for each spell! Ouch!
The group was in agreeance that we change the ratio to 30:20, meaning six creatures get dropped for six spells. I had some pretty good stuff sitting outside the cube, and I wanted to add some ramp (and perhaps even prepare for future Enchantress action in green), so... Worldly Tutor in for Veteran Explorer: A new tutor comes in for a card that benefited everyone (and was therefore rarely played). Crop Rotation in for Overgrown Battlement: Battlement is good, but was running out of fellow-defenders. And a defender deck is a pretty negative thing to be encouraging in this environment. So it goes overboard for a cute non-basic land tutor. Mirri's Guile in for Quirion Dryad: The Dryad only rewarded you if you were brave enough to play 3+ colours. The Guile deserved to be in. Fertile Ground in for Wild Beastmaster: The Beastmaster was pretty much just filling a slot. Fertile Ground is colour-fixing, ramp, and future Enchantress help. Birthing Pod in for Squallmonger: Squallmonger was always a wild (and not universally loved) ride. Pod was too good to be out. Mana Reflection in for Stampeding Wildebeests: The Wildebeests had a grand total of six decent cards to combo with, which is not enough to warrant its inclusion at the end of the day. Mana Reflection returns for its second tour of duty (it was in early on, but we cut it to let Epic Proportions in for some surprise kills) - we can warrant two CC6+ spells now. If we're going to ramp and cast enchantments, let's do it hard!
While we were discussing ramp, and how it could also be achieved with creatures, we noticed that our good friend Mr. Landcestral Recall was not in the cube. So we made room for him too, just to be sure of things. Yavimaya Elder in for Carven Caryatid: Remove a negative defender, add a ramp creature that does things three times as well as the Caryatid did.
The cube is a little light-on for countermagic. We thought it could stand to have a bit more. So we ended a dream or two in blue, and snuck two more in. Daring Apprentice in for Trinket Mage: Alas, poor Trinky. You were good, yes you were. But you were only ever fetching a single, solitary card in a draft deck. And it was probably either Expedition Map or Skullclamp. You were making your living off two cards, and for that, we had to bid you adieu. Daring Apprentice is a nice twist on countermagic, and will be very good once I get a Sun Titan in here. Dissipate in for Spectral Cloak: In the interests of making Enchantress a viable archetype in the cube (because it should be OK here - people are currently getting scalped with Ancestral Mask and Epic Proportions, so I have proof it should work), I'm beginning to do some groundwork. First up is containing the archetype to GW - it bled into blue somewhat, and we don't have Bruna or Sovereigns here to support it. So it's time to start throwing some marginal blue auras overboard. Dissipate comes in to be our sole 3CC counter.
The remaining eight changes are all a little more random. Golgari Grave-Troll in for Wren's Run Packmaster Krenko, Mob Boss in for Changeling Berserker: All of the "Champion a creature" guys have been given the final axe from the cube - they're simply too hard to resolve, or not worth the effort. Party Troll takes the green slot for some good old-fashioned dredging. Krenko gets a run to see his worthiness in the red slot - he's only got three fellow goblins to play with right now, but he's a bit of a one-man band anyway. We'll see how well he goes, as he only just scraped in over Furnace Whelp when my group cast their vote.
Kiln Fiend in for Hammer Mage: Another Elemental, and a worthy addition. Hammer Mage was just filling a slot.
Mystical Tutor in for Minds Aglow: I didn't see Minds get resolved once in over a year. It was time for it to go. In comes another good tutor.
Thragtusk in for Weatherseed Treefolk: Got one of these for Christmas too, and he was too good to leave out. Weatherseed was too hard to cast to stay in.
Isochron Scepter in for Pennon Blade: Isochron came via the Izzet duel deck, and was again too good to leave out. Pennon Blade was the weakest link.
Chain Reaction in for Aether Sting: One of my most hated slot-fillers gets the axe for a red psuedo-wrath that I managed to free up. I feel better already.
Ulvenwald Tracker in for Magus of the Candelabra: Tracker was an interesting pull over Christmas. The Magus was another of those "I haven't been resolved in twelve months" cards. Off it went into the sunset.
We had seven, and played Grand Melee (attack left, defend right, spell range of one).
We had the following decks:
Player 1 - WB control.
Player 2 - Jund.
Player 3 - My resident Timmy, who drafted mono-green.
Player 4 - Bant control.
Player 5 - Grixis combo.
Player 6 - WBR control / beats.
Player 7 (Me!) - Another Bant control deck.
I'm a little fuzzy on a couple of the cards, but this is 99% correct. This deck rolled perfectly and went off.
It got Rhystic Study out early and picked up and then discarded all the creatures.
From there, Sneak Attack and Tortured Existence hit the board, and he recurred Magma Phoenix back to his hand each turn. When threatened, he was able to discard it for a solution with the Existence, and then Sneak Attack the solution onto the board instantly. Next turn, he'd do it again. He had Nevinyrral's Disk out for insurance, and burnt his way backwards around the table with Red Sun's Zenith (he'd got down to minimal cards in the library, so was able to keep drawing it).
Player 4 had a decent deck, but got squished from both sides (Timmy #3 smacked him upside the head with Liege of the Tangle, and he then copped an RSZ for lethal, just as he was getting rolling with Inkwell Leviathan).
Timmy met a similar fate before all those Elemental forests could cause pain, as did Player 2 (but not before he Fanning the Flamesed our Grixis guy several times and dropped him to six).
Player 1 was controlling me and not able to get anything terribly lethal on the table, Player 5 was controlling Player 6.
I'd managed to have a Stuffy Doll wearing Argentum Armor and a Scavenging Ooze rocking Epic Proportions, but both of them got hosed (damn the Unmake on Stuffy hurt!).
And then Player 1 finally got a solution to Player 5's combo. He had six power worth of creatures, and removed the blocker that got Sneaked into play when he swung. Player 5 could do nothing but Disk in response. Which naturally left me in the best position.
Yes, that's 41 cards. Couldn't split the last two.
This deck's basic aim was to hang around and be annoying until I landed Hydra Omnivore + Whispersilk Cloak FTW. In theory, it had two indestructibles + Worship to do this forever.
I'd sat around drawing land for several turns, until I'd finally broken the duck and pulled Whispersilk Cloak followed by Darksteel Juggernaut, followed by Worship. When the Disk went off, I had Juggernaut on the table wearing the Cloak, and had kept Worship in my hand waiting for the Disk (just in case someone got wiped out either side of me before it went off).
Player 1 got enough damage back on the board to knock Player 5 out of the game, but couldn't stop my unblockable Juggernaut. I then promptly topdecked... guess what? Hydra Omnivore!
Player 6 O-Ringed my Worship, threw out a Soul Warden and crossed her fingers, but once the Cloak moved across to the Omnivore, it was GG. My deck did exactly what it was built to do... even if it only achieved it on the last turn of the match!
The New Cards
Of the newbies, only one actually hit the board - Yavimaya Elder, which did exactly what it advertised it would do. Timmy drafted it, and it promptly fetched some more elementals for Liege of the Tangle.
Quite a few of the others were main-decked but didn't make it into play (certainly Ulvenwald Tracker, Mirri's Guile and Chain Reaction... likely Thragtusk as well). Party Troll, Isochron Scepter, Daring Apprentice and Putrefy didn't make it out of the box in the draft.
The Winners
My Johnny Combo actually first-picked the Magma Phoenix, and it proved worthy.
Another couple of cards firmed themselves up as being stronger than I'd thought to admit - Urborg Syphon-Mage and Sneak Attack were both sensational. We knew Sneak was broken... it'd just never proven it in our cube until now. These three cards are in for quite a while yet.
URGImperial AnimarGRU BRGProssh, Tokenmaker of KherGRB WURNarset NostalgicRUW UBR"I like your deck better" JelevaRBU UBlue BraidsU GAzusa, Lost but RampingG
WUHanna, Pillowfort's NavigatorUW WBRAleshacratsBRW UBRGrixis Pew PewRBU URGYasova the ThreateningGRU BGGlissa the ArticiferGB WUSygg MerfolkUW RSquee, Value NabobR
Cheers! Yeah, red 4-drops are so weak in Multiplayer that I'd probably run her like a shot if I had her... great political card in this environment.
My cube in particular has really struggled to fill this slot. My playgroup was pretty high on Furnace Whelp coming in here... Furnace Whelp! I don't think that card's high on anyone's rankings... it's just one of the better things available (and it was trumped in the end by Krenko, despite my cube having only three other Goblin cards out of the remaining 399... that says a fair bit).
URGImperial AnimarGRU BRGProssh, Tokenmaker of KherGRB WURNarset NostalgicRUW UBR"I like your deck better" JelevaRBU UBlue BraidsU GAzusa, Lost but RampingG
WUHanna, Pillowfort's NavigatorUW WBRAleshacratsBRW UBRGrixis Pew PewRBU URGYasova the ThreateningGRU BGGlissa the ArticiferGB WUSygg MerfolkUW RSquee, Value NabobR
How do you find games often go? Do people tend to make enemies quick or do they sit around for awhile building up before deciding to go for broke?
Depends on the format we're playing, really (we tend to mix it up a bit between standard free-for-all, Grand Melee and team play like 2HG), but certainly no different than our usual non-cube games. I've had one or two run to the two-hour mark, but that's usually when the control decks are having a good night.
My playgroup is (for the most part) not quite so aggro, and it's probably quite hard to draft a true aggressive multiplayer strategy with this cube anyway. The general rule is that if you're open, you're fair game. So those with lousy starts will get knocked out early, but after that, everyone is indeed saving their bullets.
two friends of mine want to build a cube as well, and as a counterpoint to mine they want it to be multiplayer focussed. They want to slowly get it built over time, but are there some core cards that really enrichen the play?
Hi! Pretty much anything with "... each opponent ... " written on it is a good start. Some of the true multiplayer bombs all carry this - Kokusho, the Evening Star, Blatant Thievery, Exsanguinate, Hydra Omnivore.
As a general rule, the global stuff (e.g. Wrath, Fracturing Gust and so on) becomes more important, while the one-shot stuff (e.g. Swords, Disenchant) becomes less so.
While the 2012 Multiplayer Power Rankings (in my sig below) aren't perfect, they're a very good start - anything that landed a ranking of about 4.0+ is pretty much guaranteed to be multiplayer gold, especially if it streeted the competition.
One small (but significant) change ahead of the (potentially mammoth) Gatecrash update.
Recurring Nightmare in for Megrim: RN was rocking my wife's EDH deck. It was EDH legal when it went in, but apparently it got banned somewhere, sometime. My playgroup pointed it out when I suited it up the other night, so it got one last shot in the deck and was thereafter banned. Straight away, the first thought was "CUBE. OH MY STARS CUBE". The playgroup agreed on the spot, and also agreed that Megrim was the weakest link in that slot. Nothing against Megrim, but it needs more of a discard theme to work (and there isn't one at the moment). RN is 2B of sleek, sexy combo wonderment. It's going to do broken, broken things in here.
Phyrexian Crusader in for Haakon, Stromgald Scourge: Still a Knight, also a Zombie, infinitely more useful and evasive than Haakon.
Alara Tri-Lands in for Planeshift Lairs: They're just better.
Also potentials currently being discussed amongst the group...
Nameless Inversion out for something better: Inversion has been last-picked before, and now completely loses its gas with Haakon gone. If I can lay hands on Go For The Throat, this seems to be the swap most are happy with. Terror and Hymn to Tourach are potential alternates here.
Hero of Oxid Ridge in for Changeling Berserker: While the Hero is a very good card, it's a close call in this cube (both are hasty, the Hero gives more creature and attack advantage, but is less splashable). This one is on the fence.
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Hero of Oxid Ridge isn't in yet - there's some discussion over whether it is better than any of the other red four-drops. A few have their sights set on Roc of Kher Ridges (which is good, but boring).
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The hero is better than all of your red creature 4 drops except Flametongue. It's an absolute house that gives your attackers protection from chump blocking and battle cry. In my cube it drafts around pick 3-5 (occasionally earlier) and straight up wins games with any sort of aggro backing. I'd exchange for the Roc, which is pretty bland.
Agreed. I suspect we'll end up throwing it in for the Roc. "Bland" is definitely the word most of my group will use to describe the Roc - yes, it's good for its value, but you could just have so much more fun at that CC!
We mixed it up this night. Didn't have much time to draft, but did have five players, so we shuffled the whole Cube out, dished out 80 cards each and essentially did a Sealed Draft. And then, to make things even more different, played Grand Melee (attack left, defend right, spells have a range of influence of one each side).
Enjoyed immensely by all - most of us had at least two potential deck archetypes in our 80 cards. I almost decked myself by getting Fact or Fiction underneath Panoptic Mirror and going to town (and instagibbed somebody by dropping Goliath Sphinx with In the Web of War on the table). One of my buddies managed to get out Dread wearing Blade of the Bloodchief. Twice.
Wrexial, the Risen Deep turned out to be the game-winner... he had his wicked way with my graveyard after all those Fact or Fictions...
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Also, we're swapping RSZ in for Disintegrate (almost 100% strictly better... RSZ is only lacking the no-regeneration clause on Disintegrate, and our Cube has four cards total that interact with regeneration, so... natch...)
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Murder in for Sudden Death: Same CC, both instant. My playgroup likes the finality and bankability of Murder. Split second has been relevant about once all-time in my Cube, so Sudden Death gets punted.
Snapcaster Mage in for Chromeshell Crab: Snappy was too good to leave out once I pulled him, but my 2CC slot is pretty tight. Right up the top of the curve, 5CC is probably a bit needlessly large, and Chromeshell Crab is easily the worst of them (as well as probably being the only morph in the entire Cube... yaaaay for worst "guess what I unmorph as" ploy evaaar!), so out he goes.
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There are lots of creatures with toughness 5+ that can kill you in a few turns or that dominate the board through their abilities. Having a card that just kills them will often be a lifesaver.
I was going to say "In the day and age of the Titans, -4/-4 just doesn't cut it anymore", but then I saw tha tyou aren't running any Titans. Is there a reason for this? Most of them are pretty cheap now (though they will be even cheaper soon).
Crab got waaay worse with the removal of damage on the stack. And unlike the higher mana costs, the 2 mana slot is much less restrictive. You can easily have too many big creatures, but it would take a lot of 2-drops before I would say that you have too many of those. And Snappy is of course one of the best blue creatures - also in multiplayer, where his flexibility and flash come in handy. All in all, a great update.
Uril, the Miststalker RGW -- Ulamog, the Infinite Gyre C -- Vhati il-Dal BG -- Jor Kadeen, the Prevailer RW -- Animar, Soul of Elements URG
Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker R -- Maga, Traitor to Mortals B -- Ghave, Guru of Spores BGW -- Sliver Hivelord WUBRG
Just waiting on PrimeTime to get into my levels of affordability, basically - I've got the other four, but I think I'd like to throw all five of them in as a cohesive unit (quite possibly replacing the Invasion dragons long-term).
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Tragic Slip in for Vendetta: Vendetta isn't bad, but you're usually wanting to aim it at a gorilla, and it's potentially going to take a lot of life away. Tragic Slip will have Morbid trigger often in Multiplayer, and will take out black things, regenerators and indestructibles as well.
Plus, I am in favour of 100% more fatal banana peel accidents in my Cube.
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A really interesting draft, and the closest finish the Cube has produced - the last man standing won with no cards left in his library.
We've been trying out a suggestion of not distributing the colours evenly through the boosters (literally just give the whole Cube a good riffle shuffle and dole out the boosters - leaves the colours a bit more clumped together). This basically gave us four first packs where three had no white in at all, and the other was almost pure white. It left the four of us basically shunning white as a viable draft colour (given that that one booster was carrying half the white bombs, and you were only getting 3-4 of them, along with 11-12 very non-white cards to go with it).
That sprayed most of us across three colours, with the third colour usually being white.
I drafted RBW and had all the right mana-fixing options, but ran out of gas (I think I managed to get one decent draw spell in the entire draft... never bodes well...). Mrs. Bl00m ran Bant colours, and was at one stage packing a 16/18 Nullmage Shepherd wearing an Ancestral Mask and a Whispersilk Cloak. Naturally, that made her a target.
The runner up ran UWR, and had a wonderful time recursing Magma Phoenix and Spirit Loop - the life gain kept him in the game till the very end.
Our winner drafted a self-admitted "weird Grixis concoction". But he got both Lili and Chandra on the board, hung on and retraced Call of the Skybreaker FTW, swinging for lethal on his last turn in the game. Great night, all round.
The Houses: It's the first time Magma Phoenix and Call the Skybreaker have shown their true colours. Late game, they are both awesome. I was kind of on the fence with them, particularly the Phoenix, but I think they're staying in for a while now. Last night also marked the Cube's first resolution of an Austere Command, and hot damn, is that card staying in! (It produced a brutal one-sided sweep that neutered the Magma Phoenix player). Lightning Reaver saw some admiration too.
The Fail Trains: Not too many, really. White and green both obviously suffered at the draft (with Mrs. Bl00m wisely picking up on it and riding GW in draft all the way to a very good deck). Indomitable Archangel actually got last-picked (just a few months removed from being first picked!) - it suffered due to being double-white in a very non-white draft. I don't think there was anything I ended up drafting in colour that I truly didn't want, and none of the other three mentioned any either.
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Vampire Nighthawk in for Khabál Ghoul: The Khabál was one of my personal fanboi cards, really. Sure, it's old and expensive, but it's really a slower black Taurean Mauler. Batman should have been in this cube long ago.
Disciple of Bolas in for Nightscape Master: The Master had lasted this long probably only because it was secretly a Zombie for those who knew. In reality, it's BB to cast, and then needs UU and RR to be used to its full extent - very mana intensive. The Disciple brings some more combo and card draw to black, and is far more splashable.
Gilded Lotus in for Gauntlet of Power: People tended to avoid playing the Gauntlet because it helps opponents. The Lotus is a silver-bullet for colour-fixing at the same CC. Roughly the same power level, but I suspect the Lotus is going to see a lot more play.
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Once it turns up...
Mirran Crusader in for Juniper Order Advocate: This was actually a pretty tough call. My 3cc white is pretty loaded - two tribal lords, two potential first-picks in Transcendent Master and Intrepid Hero, Mentor of the Meek (which has only recently been added), Paladin en-Vec and the Advocate. It came down to the last two. The Advocate is an old-school card that sees a lot of love around our table, and is more splashable, but it's the weaker of the two. Still, a tough call, given that five of my seven 3cc white dudes now have a double-white casting cost.
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This change comes to you in several parts.
My gold section had been rocking two cards from each shard (i.e. set of three allied colours, like Jund, Bant etc.) since its inception - this was a copy of each Invasion dragon, plus another random shard card. This was not terribly popular, and there were so many awesome gold cards coming in that it was time to end the dream. I've knocked four of the five out, and left Esper a stay of execution until Gatecrash comes out (it's likely to lose both Dromar, the Banisher and Zur the Enchanter and gain Sphinx of the Steel Wind anyway).
This is also a good opportunity to remove some pet-hate cards from the Cube. Cradle of Vitality, Rabid Wombat and Monk Realist were all last-picks, and Holy Light never worked (not even when it was stuck under Panoptic Mirror). Granite Gargoyle and Hell-Bent Raider were simply filling the curve for red at 3CC and were universally hated also. Gaze of the Gorgon was easily the weakest Golgari card in the cube.
In the short time RTR has been out, my playgroup has really gotten into Populate as a mechanic. Out of the five guild mechanics in RTR, it's probably the one that translates the best and the easiest into multiplayer (with Overload second, and Unleash a clear last).
There were already 19 cards in the cube that produced tokens, so it was already somewhat of a good idea. Now it's viable!
Some further cards that were simply too good to leave out (or significantly better than what they were replacing).
Okay, that's 21 changes to a 400 cube. Over 5%! Wow!
Surely at least one of those changes prompts discussion (I'm ready for the Finks discussion! Try and talk me out of it!)
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I am in the process of trading most of my Urza's Destiny cards to get SoL&S, Doubling Season and some other cube staples in return.
This means that a couple of Destiny cards had to fall out of the cube (don't worry - it's for its own long term benefit, and we have some pretty ready-made replacements!)...
Molten-Tail Masticore in for Masticore: Losing one, gaining another. My Molten-Tail is foil, and hasn't had an opportunity to shine yet (literally!)... let's give it one.
Tolarian Academy in for Yavimaya Hollow: The Hollow was pretty good, so I had to swap something good in in return... wait, I haven't got my Academy decked? Oh boy...
Mimic Vat in for Powder Keg: We talked in the RTR post above how we want to push Populate. This is the ultimate way to do it - the Keg was possibly the best token creature defense in the cube, and we're swapping it with something that actually likes Populate? Hopefully, this change doesn't unbalance things too much!
Darksteel Juggernaut in for Thran Golem: One borderline-cubeable 5-drop artifact creature in for another.
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The full RTR changes were deployed, and six players meant that three-quarters of the cube got suited up. And oh. What. A. Night.
The New Stuff
With a quarter of the cube still in the box, a few things missed out on being seen. Hypersonic Dragon, Rakdos's Return and Vitu-Ghazi Guildmage didn't make it into boosters, so we didn't get a read on Populate in particular.
But the stuff that did make it in?
The two other guildmages (New Prahv and Korozda) were both complete and utter houses. They did exactly what I put them in to do, and more. Korozda spent half the first match threatening to get Hydra Omnivore through people's defenses, and produced close to 20 Saprolings off already-dying creatures. New Prahv kept the biggest threat in lockdown for half the game, and defended like a champ.
Detain in general is sneaky good. Martial Law also got maindecked, and worked well.
Mimic Vat was a complete house, and should have been in the cube much sooner.
Grave Betrayal got first-picked, but sat in the player's hand the whole game waiting for an opportune moment to be played (hmm... interesting sign...).
The First- and Last-Picked
In a good sign for the strength of the cube, a vast majority of the last-picks were tribal and draft strategy cards that had the other half of their theme still back in the cube box. Elves and Knights in particular (I had both Kinsbaile Cavalier and Knight Exemplar handed to me as last picks... damn shame they were outside of my colours). Flame-Kin Zealot was last-picked as expected... he's one of the first overboard when Gatecrash is out. Similar for Wild Cantor.
Some of the first-picks were Prismatic Omen, Hydra Omnivore and Scythe Specter.
The Games
We had two games: A three-team 2HG game, and, once one of our players left, a five-player Grand Melee (attack left, defend right, spell range of a player each side).
The 2HG match went right down to the wire. It was one team attempting to sneak Hydra Omnivore and Lightning Reaver under the radar with Korozda Guildmage, one controlling with Tradewind Rider, Urborg Syphon-Mage and Liliana Vess, and the third going for the kill with an incredible combo of Hateflayer, Nullmage Shepherd and Rith-supplied Saprolings. The Nullmage had a Darksteel Juggernaut to continually aim for, allowing Hateflayer to find a way of tapping and then untapping multiple times in a turn for heinous amounts of damage.
In the end, the Hateflayer was the downfall of the Hydra Omnivore team, but the control players' fliers got over the top for lethal before the 'Flaya Playa could untap him again (Djinn of Wishes and New Prahv Guildmage getting the scalp).
Hateflayer was probably card of the game, although the two Guildmages were right behind. The 'Flaya is beginning to gain some healthy respect as a bomb finisher now. He's earnt his spot.
The Grand Melee game was where my deck decided to shine. My Triskelion managed to throw two damage at someone, kill itself with the last to get under the Vat, and then reappear for four unblocked damage plus another three post-combat. From there, he was controlling most of the field until there were two of us left, and my opponent resolved Fracturing Gust to try and reset things in the aims of survival.
I topdecked Diabolic Tutor in response, found Dragonmaster Outcast (with well more than six lands by this point) and dared him to draw removal. He didn't.
To Sum Up
The final word from one of my buddies: "Damn that was fun. We should be playing cube more often."
The RTR cards we've seen have all shone. I'm beginning to ponder if it's worth pulling the entire cube out for six player drafts (i.e. let them draft four boosters instead of three, which gets 360 of the 400 cards out). We would've likely seen even more powerful decks, some more RTR cards, and maybe even a populate deck (Grove of the Guardian got maindecked, but didn't need to be activated... its player was too busy being the 'Flaya Playa to need an 8/8).
Anyone tried that before in the event of six players?
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Cube: the Gittening (My Multiplayer Cube) - MTGS Cube List | @ CubeTutor
The N00b Cube (Peasant cube for new players) - MTGS Cube List | @ CubeTutor
Stoneforge Mystic in for Fencing Ace: Probably couldn't get a more straight-forward swap if we tried. The Ace was place-holding for something better, and my, is the Mystic "something better"!
The same trade brought me a Sword of Light and Shadow, so I am now one Sword short of having the whole set of five to put in the cube (and the missing one is Body and Mind, too... hopefully won't take too long to sort out). I'll wait until I have all five, and then sort out the kinks between gold and colourless in the process (for some reason, my cube is currently +3 on artifacts and -3 on gold... don't ask me how that happened).
My Stupidly Large Number of Current Decks
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The Multiplayer Power Rankings
Cube: the Gittening (My Multiplayer Cube) - MTGS Cube List | @ CubeTutor
The N00b Cube (Peasant cube for new players) - MTGS Cube List | @ CubeTutor
Four of us pulled the entire cube out, got 100 cards each and played sealed.
I rolled a Bant control deck with Inkwell Leviathan as its finisher. The other decks across the table were another Bant deck that favoured equipment, a BRG Zombie deck and a WG deck that... well, we never really got a long-enough look at it!
The Bant equipment deck won both games. The first one it took easily, landing a Hydra Omnivore with a Loxodon Warhammer and Whispersilk Cloak, even triggering Garruk Wildspeaker's ultimate for the final scalp.
The second one I should have won... I held everyone else off with Barrin and token production, and set up for a kicked Rite of Replication on Lightning Reaver for the win. But I missed the equipment deck's Soul Warden, which gained enough life to leave it in the game and swing FTW the next turn. Bah.
It was certainly enjoying me having to continually bounce its Reveillark. That in turn was refetching Sakura-Tribe Elder each time, and... yeah, it was messy.
We then had a 2HG Second Sealed match (taking the cards we didn't main-deck the first time around and building decks with those).
I went BR and was paired with a BW deck. Across the table were UB and UR.
And of course, as is my norm, my deck fired up completely for the last game.
Turn 3 Guttersnipe, Turn 4 Flametongue Kavu. A bit of resetting, then Chandra Nalaar, Incandescent Soulstoke, Kulrath Knight and Ashling the Pilgrim for a very quick and hot win (ably backed up with a little bit of Avatar of Woe action from my partner).
Good to get the whole cube out and playing, and good to see that every colour got a win.
We finally saw Hydra Omnivore + Whispersilk Cloak FTW, as well as a kicked Rite. Noxious Ghoul, Barrin and Reveillark all proved strong as well (as we expected they would be).
My Stupidly Large Number of Current Decks
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Cube: the Gittening (My Multiplayer Cube) - MTGS Cube List | @ CubeTutor
The N00b Cube (Peasant cube for new players) - MTGS Cube List | @ CubeTutor
Some pretty decent ones here - another 21 changes. We've only lost three of our RtR changes - one was a placeholder for something better, and the other two simply got superseded by newly-acquired cards. Onwards!
This was kicked off a few weeks ago now when I acquired a Glissa, the Traitor. She's pretty much an auto-include in this guild for multiplayer, but no-one could agree on what to drop to let her in. And then I was given Izzet vs. Golgari for Christmas...
This left us with ten cards (Glissa, Jarad, Nath, Putrefy, Golgari Charm, Korozda Guildmage, Doomgape, Vulturous Zombie, Lord of Extinction and Gleancrawler) competing for five slots. Not pretty!
I threw it into a few different threads in the cube forum, as well as physically infront of the eyeballs of half my playgroup and forced a vote.
The winners were Glissa, Jarad, Putrefy, Vulturous and Doomgape. This means...
Putrefy in for Golgari Charm: Nothing wrong with the Charm - Putrefy is just more bankable. When time and budget permits, this goes even further to Maelstrom Pulse.
Doomgape in for Gleancrawler: Gleancrawler was pretty combolicious, but was beginning to show its age. Doomgape fits a bit better with the guild, is a lot swingier, and can be dropped on Turn 4 for a surprise face-smash by Incandescent Soulstoke.
Jarard, Golgari Lich-Lord in for Nath of the Gilt-Leaf: Nath was another showing his age. I am not sold on Jarad's castability in cube, but he's been a big enough house in my meta's regular multiplayer and EDH games that the group is very excited to see him in. I reserve my judgement.
Glissa, the Traitor in for Korozda Guildmage: I rather liked the Guildmage and the churning it did, but Glissa's just a straight-up house at the same CC. Can't argue with that.
It was a very close vote within the group for the fifth and final slot between Vulturous Zombie and Lord of Extinction. Vulturous stays due to its evasion (which is the side I lean towards, personally). Lord will come in if Jarad proves uncastable.
So the Golgari section of my cube is all new and all shiny. Barring Putrefy being Maelstrom Pulse and one of the others being dropped for Pernicious Deed, I feel like this is pretty close to being the best five Golgari cards you could put in a multiplayer cube right now. Joy!
I had noticed that green was short on ramp, and had absolutely zero room in its spell slots - mostly due to the ratio we were running, which was 36:14, more than two creatures for each spell! Ouch!
The group was in agreeance that we change the ratio to 30:20, meaning six creatures get dropped for six spells. I had some pretty good stuff sitting outside the cube, and I wanted to add some ramp (and perhaps even prepare for future Enchantress action in green), so...
Worldly Tutor in for Veteran Explorer: A new tutor comes in for a card that benefited everyone (and was therefore rarely played).
Crop Rotation in for Overgrown Battlement: Battlement is good, but was running out of fellow-defenders. And a defender deck is a pretty negative thing to be encouraging in this environment. So it goes overboard for a cute non-basic land tutor.
Mirri's Guile in for Quirion Dryad: The Dryad only rewarded you if you were brave enough to play 3+ colours. The Guile deserved to be in.
Fertile Ground in for Wild Beastmaster: The Beastmaster was pretty much just filling a slot. Fertile Ground is colour-fixing, ramp, and future Enchantress help.
Birthing Pod in for Squallmonger: Squallmonger was always a wild (and not universally loved) ride. Pod was too good to be out.
Mana Reflection in for Stampeding Wildebeests: The Wildebeests had a grand total of six decent cards to combo with, which is not enough to warrant its inclusion at the end of the day. Mana Reflection returns for its second tour of duty (it was in early on, but we cut it to let Epic Proportions in for some surprise kills) - we can warrant two CC6+ spells now. If we're going to ramp and cast enchantments, let's do it hard!
While we were discussing ramp, and how it could also be achieved with creatures, we noticed that our good friend Mr. Landcestral Recall was not in the cube. So we made room for him too, just to be sure of things.
Yavimaya Elder in for Carven Caryatid: Remove a negative defender, add a ramp creature that does things three times as well as the Caryatid did.
The cube is a little light-on for countermagic. We thought it could stand to have a bit more. So we ended a dream or two in blue, and snuck two more in.
Daring Apprentice in for Trinket Mage: Alas, poor Trinky. You were good, yes you were. But you were only ever fetching a single, solitary card in a draft deck. And it was probably either Expedition Map or Skullclamp. You were making your living off two cards, and for that, we had to bid you adieu. Daring Apprentice is a nice twist on countermagic, and will be very good once I get a Sun Titan in here.
Dissipate in for Spectral Cloak: In the interests of making Enchantress a viable archetype in the cube (because it should be OK here - people are currently getting scalped with Ancestral Mask and Epic Proportions, so I have proof it should work), I'm beginning to do some groundwork. First up is containing the archetype to GW - it bled into blue somewhat, and we don't have Bruna or Sovereigns here to support it. So it's time to start throwing some marginal blue auras overboard. Dissipate comes in to be our sole 3CC counter.
The remaining eight changes are all a little more random.
Golgari Grave-Troll in for Wren's Run Packmaster
Krenko, Mob Boss in for Changeling Berserker: All of the "Champion a creature" guys have been given the final axe from the cube - they're simply too hard to resolve, or not worth the effort. Party Troll takes the green slot for some good old-fashioned dredging. Krenko gets a run to see his worthiness in the red slot - he's only got three fellow goblins to play with right now, but he's a bit of a one-man band anyway. We'll see how well he goes, as he only just scraped in over Furnace Whelp when my group cast their vote.
Kiln Fiend in for Hammer Mage: Another Elemental, and a worthy addition. Hammer Mage was just filling a slot.
Mystical Tutor in for Minds Aglow: I didn't see Minds get resolved once in over a year. It was time for it to go. In comes another good tutor.
Thragtusk in for Weatherseed Treefolk: Got one of these for Christmas too, and he was too good to leave out. Weatherseed was too hard to cast to stay in.
Isochron Scepter in for Pennon Blade: Isochron came via the Izzet duel deck, and was again too good to leave out. Pennon Blade was the weakest link.
Chain Reaction in for Aether Sting: One of my most hated slot-fillers gets the axe for a red psuedo-wrath that I managed to free up. I feel better already.
Ulvenwald Tracker in for Magus of the Candelabra: Tracker was an interesting pull over Christmas. The Magus was another of those "I haven't been resolved in twelve months" cards. Off it went into the sunset.
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Cube: the Gittening (My Multiplayer Cube) - MTGS Cube List | @ CubeTutor
The N00b Cube (Peasant cube for new players) - MTGS Cube List | @ CubeTutor
We had seven, and played Grand Melee (attack left, defend right, spell range of one).
We had the following decks:
Player 1 - WB control.
Player 2 - Jund.
Player 3 - My resident Timmy, who drafted mono-green.
Player 4 - Bant control.
Player 5 - Grixis combo.
Player 6 - WBR control / beats.
Player 7 (Me!) - Another Bant control deck.
1 Bone Shredder
1 Crosis, the Purger
1 Disciple of Bolas
1 Enclave Cryptologist
1 Ertai, Wizard Adept
1 Fog Bank
1 Lightning Reaver
1 Magma Phoenix
1 Mercurial Chemister
1 Mulldrifter
1 Shriekmaw
1 Wrexial, the Risen Deep
1 Chain Reaction
1 Coastal Piracy
1 Dead Reckoning
1 Doom Blade
1 Liliana Vess
1 Mana Vault
1 Nevinyrral's Disk
1 Red Sun's Zenith
1 Rhystic Study
1 Seething Song
1 Sneak Attack
1 Tortured Existence
5 Island
5 Mountain
5 Swamp
1 Terramorphic Expanse
I'm a little fuzzy on a couple of the cards, but this is 99% correct. This deck rolled perfectly and went off.
It got Rhystic Study out early and picked up and then discarded all the creatures.
From there, Sneak Attack and Tortured Existence hit the board, and he recurred Magma Phoenix back to his hand each turn. When threatened, he was able to discard it for a solution with the Existence, and then Sneak Attack the solution onto the board instantly. Next turn, he'd do it again. He had Nevinyrral's Disk out for insurance, and burnt his way backwards around the table with Red Sun's Zenith (he'd got down to minimal cards in the library, so was able to keep drawing it).
Player 4 had a decent deck, but got squished from both sides (Timmy #3 smacked him upside the head with Liege of the Tangle, and he then copped an RSZ for lethal, just as he was getting rolling with Inkwell Leviathan).
Timmy met a similar fate before all those Elemental forests could cause pain, as did Player 2 (but not before he Fanning the Flamesed our Grixis guy several times and dropped him to six).
Player 1 was controlling me and not able to get anything terribly lethal on the table, Player 5 was controlling Player 6.
I'd managed to have a Stuffy Doll wearing Argentum Armor and a Scavenging Ooze rocking Epic Proportions, but both of them got hosed (damn the Unmake on Stuffy hurt!).
And then Player 1 finally got a solution to Player 5's combo. He had six power worth of creatures, and removed the blocker that got Sneaked into play when he swung. Player 5 could do nothing but Disk in response. Which naturally left me in the best position.
1 Beloved Chaplain
1 Cloudgoat Ranger
1 Darksteel Juggernaut
1 Hydra Omnivore
1 Intrepid Hero
1 Reveillark
1 Scavenging Ooze
1 Silklash Spider
1 Stuffy Doll
1 Ulvenwald Tracker
1 Vitu-Ghazi Guildmage
1 Argentum Armor
1 Aura Shards
1 Epic Proportions
1 Fact or Fiction
1 Fracturing Gust
1 Jace Beleren
1 Mimic Vat
1 Miraculous Recovery
1 Mirri's Guile
1 Pattern of Rebirth
1 Rootborn Defenses
1 Skullclamp
1 Tezzeret's Gambit
1 Tinker
1 Whispersilk Cloak
1 Worship
4 Forest
1 Glacial Fortress
1 Grove of the Guardian
3 Island
3 Plains
1 Vivid Creek
1 Vivid Grove
Yes, that's 41 cards. Couldn't split the last two.
This deck's basic aim was to hang around and be annoying until I landed Hydra Omnivore + Whispersilk Cloak FTW. In theory, it had two indestructibles + Worship to do this forever.
I'd sat around drawing land for several turns, until I'd finally broken the duck and pulled Whispersilk Cloak followed by Darksteel Juggernaut, followed by Worship. When the Disk went off, I had Juggernaut on the table wearing the Cloak, and had kept Worship in my hand waiting for the Disk (just in case someone got wiped out either side of me before it went off).
Player 1 got enough damage back on the board to knock Player 5 out of the game, but couldn't stop my unblockable Juggernaut. I then promptly topdecked... guess what? Hydra Omnivore!
Player 6 O-Ringed my Worship, threw out a Soul Warden and crossed her fingers, but once the Cloak moved across to the Omnivore, it was GG. My deck did exactly what it was built to do... even if it only achieved it on the last turn of the match!
The New Cards
Of the newbies, only one actually hit the board - Yavimaya Elder, which did exactly what it advertised it would do. Timmy drafted it, and it promptly fetched some more elementals for Liege of the Tangle.
Quite a few of the others were main-decked but didn't make it into play (certainly Ulvenwald Tracker, Mirri's Guile and Chain Reaction... likely Thragtusk as well). Party Troll, Isochron Scepter, Daring Apprentice and Putrefy didn't make it out of the box in the draft.
The Winners
My Johnny Combo actually first-picked the Magma Phoenix, and it proved worthy.
Another couple of cards firmed themselves up as being stronger than I'd thought to admit - Urborg Syphon-Mage and Sneak Attack were both sensational. We knew Sneak was broken... it'd just never proven it in our cube until now. These three cards are in for quite a while yet.
The Losers
I knew I had some dogs waiting for Gatecrash before replacement. And around they came as last-picks, sure enough. Wild Cantor, Rock Hydra, Flame-Kin Zealot, Winds of Change and Fodder Cannon are all scheduled for termination when GTC is out (along with Zur the Enchanter and Dromar, the Banisher, who are coming out for Sphinx of the Steel Wind). At least I know 100% now.
My Stupidly Large Number of Current Decks
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The Multiplayer Power Rankings
Cube: the Gittening (My Multiplayer Cube) - MTGS Cube List | @ CubeTutor
The N00b Cube (Peasant cube for new players) - MTGS Cube List | @ CubeTutor
Living End Contributor and Enthusiast
Come Pucatrade with me
Rules Advisor
Modern: BRGLiving EndGRB
Legacy: UBGShardless BUGGBU
BRGProssh, Tokenmaker of KherGRB
WURNarset NostalgicRUW
UBR"I like your deck better" JelevaRBU
UBlue BraidsU
GAzusa, Lost but RampingG
WBRAleshacratsBRW
UBRGrixis Pew PewRBU
URGYasova the ThreateningGRU
BGGlissa the ArticiferGB
WUSygg MerfolkUW
RSquee, Value NabobR
Cheers! Yeah, red 4-drops are so weak in Multiplayer that I'd probably run her like a shot if I had her... great political card in this environment.
My cube in particular has really struggled to fill this slot. My playgroup was pretty high on Furnace Whelp coming in here... Furnace Whelp! I don't think that card's high on anyone's rankings... it's just one of the better things available (and it was trumped in the end by Krenko, despite my cube having only three other Goblin cards out of the remaining 399... that says a fair bit).
My Stupidly Large Number of Current Decks
PucaTrade with me!
The Multiplayer Power Rankings
Cube: the Gittening (My Multiplayer Cube) - MTGS Cube List | @ CubeTutor
The N00b Cube (Peasant cube for new players) - MTGS Cube List | @ CubeTutor
Living End Contributor and Enthusiast
Come Pucatrade with me
Rules Advisor
Modern: BRGLiving EndGRB
Legacy: UBGShardless BUGGBU
BRGProssh, Tokenmaker of KherGRB
WURNarset NostalgicRUW
UBR"I like your deck better" JelevaRBU
UBlue BraidsU
GAzusa, Lost but RampingG
WBRAleshacratsBRW
UBRGrixis Pew PewRBU
URGYasova the ThreateningGRU
BGGlissa the ArticiferGB
WUSygg MerfolkUW
RSquee, Value NabobR
Depends on the format we're playing, really (we tend to mix it up a bit between standard free-for-all, Grand Melee and team play like 2HG), but certainly no different than our usual non-cube games. I've had one or two run to the two-hour mark, but that's usually when the control decks are having a good night.
My playgroup is (for the most part) not quite so aggro, and it's probably quite hard to draft a true aggressive multiplayer strategy with this cube anyway. The general rule is that if you're open, you're fair game. So those with lousy starts will get knocked out early, but after that, everyone is indeed saving their bullets.
My Stupidly Large Number of Current Decks
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The Multiplayer Power Rankings
Cube: the Gittening (My Multiplayer Cube) - MTGS Cube List | @ CubeTutor
The N00b Cube (Peasant cube for new players) - MTGS Cube List | @ CubeTutor
Hi! Pretty much anything with "... each opponent ... " written on it is a good start. Some of the true multiplayer bombs all carry this - Kokusho, the Evening Star, Blatant Thievery, Exsanguinate, Hydra Omnivore.
As a general rule, the global stuff (e.g. Wrath, Fracturing Gust and so on) becomes more important, while the one-shot stuff (e.g. Swords, Disenchant) becomes less so.
While the 2012 Multiplayer Power Rankings (in my sig below) aren't perfect, they're a very good start - anything that landed a ranking of about 4.0+ is pretty much guaranteed to be multiplayer gold, especially if it streeted the competition.
My Stupidly Large Number of Current Decks
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The Multiplayer Power Rankings
Cube: the Gittening (My Multiplayer Cube) - MTGS Cube List | @ CubeTutor
The N00b Cube (Peasant cube for new players) - MTGS Cube List | @ CubeTutor
Recurring Nightmare in for Megrim: RN was rocking my wife's EDH deck. It was EDH legal when it went in, but apparently it got banned somewhere, sometime. My playgroup pointed it out when I suited it up the other night, so it got one last shot in the deck and was thereafter banned. Straight away, the first thought was "CUBE. OH MY STARS CUBE". The playgroup agreed on the spot, and also agreed that Megrim was the weakest link in that slot. Nothing against Megrim, but it needs more of a discard theme to work (and there isn't one at the moment). RN is 2B of sleek, sexy combo wonderment. It's going to do broken, broken things in here.
My Stupidly Large Number of Current Decks
PucaTrade with me!
The Multiplayer Power Rankings
Cube: the Gittening (My Multiplayer Cube) - MTGS Cube List | @ CubeTutor
The N00b Cube (Peasant cube for new players) - MTGS Cube List | @ CubeTutor