How good has the swarm archetype been for those who put it into their cube? Is it worth making the leap? Also, has anyone tried out some amount of Squadron Hawks?
I've been playing with a swarm archetype in my cube a long time and it was one of the better decks each time we drafted. Eventually, people in my group considered Cenn's Enlistment to be the best card in my cube because of the support around it.
As for Squadron Hawk, I've thought about including it, but couldn't figure out a way to make them work. Having just 4 in the cube seems like they'd be dead picks too often. Even if you always have enough people to draft the whole cube every time, the draft has to go just right for one person to get them all. I've also thought about including them as cards where you draft 1 and get 4 to build your deck with, but that seems really strong. I've tried this a while back with Aurochs Herd and it was a bit much (though I still want to try with other cards like Myr Servitor, Kjeldoran War Cry, Accumulated Knowledge, and Kindle).
My playgroup has been asking me to add grave hate into the cube. Seems that while the grave recursion theme isn't overpowered it is extreamly hard to play against as there isnt much one can draft to fight against it. besides relic of progenitus what are some cards that might be worth cubing?
The thing is recursion decks in my cube generally play midrangy and go to out value the opponent in a longer game.
In G/B turns can play out like this
turn 2 gatecreeper vine/thornweald archer/wild mongrel etc
turn 3 penumbra bobcat/phantom tiger/liliana's specter etc
turn 4 blastoderm/impersiosaur/penumbra spider/blood hunter bat etc
This generally puts some pressure on the board and if the opponent deals with some of the cards you just get them back and recast them. I once had a game were I had like 5 penumbra bobcat/spider tokens along with the actual cards on the field.
Last draft someone drafted the deck in the example. They only lost due to the combination of gorehouse/splatter thug with aqueous form/madcap skills being drawn early each game with burn back up. So The deck is beatable just that not every deck can out value or ignore the value the recursion deck has.
Maybe you have a look at my Tier2 cube, I heavily support swarm and sacrifice there and got a lot of synergies across all colors. If you miss certain cards like spout swarm theyre probably in Tier1 because of powerlevel reasons.
But I guess you have to build such cube from the scratch, because it takes a lot of slots.
Since you have to play a lot of "borderline" cards to support swarmaggro it already weakens the overall powerlevel anyway. You dont need to overextend on slots, but I dont think that archetype fits. Especially green offers a lot of token producers and Selesnya some nice support cards, but those colors are stuffed with insane value in standard cubes already.
RW only might work, but would be a shallow archetype compared to a cube build around it.
When you rebalance your powerlevel to support those archetypes, Nantuko Husk is a fine card. It often represents a huge thread, and if you manage to give it evasion with Shadow Alley Denizen or Predator's Gambit it usually ende the game.
I didnt go too deep into sac-outlets though, because I think theyre overall too weak. The swarmcards are better and more flexible.
The Act of Treason effects are quite good even without sacrifice. I often killed my opponent with one, because he only left 1 blocker.
Blue has very few cards to either support swarm of sacrifice. I build a gy theme around the looters.
AL, how can we decide for you. If you aim for a crosscolor interaction between borderline cards to improve gameplay, add both/rework the whole cube/buid a second one.
If you want to aim for higher power, add more burn and removal to RW and cut the swarmstuff.
I'm actually not able to do that. As soon as the cube is played more I can try to balance in some kind of swarm- and/or sacrifce-archetype, but right now I can't. I'll rewind my changes and try to convince my friends, that constructed sucks.
I got the same problem at my place. Most of the players prefer EDH/Highlander. There are a few player who like to cube, but its tough to get them all together.
I dont understand why cubetutor doesnt allow multitplayer drafts. Or mtgo should finally support cubedrafts..
I dont understand why cubetutor doesnt allow multitplayer drafts. Or mtgo should finally support cubedrafts..
One reason is that CubeTutor is developed and maintained by one guy in his spare time. Writing the server-side code for a scalable multiplayer draft website takes a decent amount of work to get right, especially if you want features like persistent sessions, post-draft pick analysis, and whatnot. But, if enough people ask, it might get implemented -- you should contact Ben and tell him how awesome that feature would be.
I haven't tried this before, but I think you can do cube drafts on http://drafts.in/. Or you can do rotisserie drafts via something like Google Docs (rotisserie drafts are super fun anyway, although they can take a while to do).
Sounds like you need to change up how you draft? Time to get innovative.
I've done half sealed half draft before. 45 cards sealed, 5 to 10 minute review, 2 packs of draft. It speeds things up nicely. Or just try out some sealed straight up. Having a cube larger than 360 has its benefits of supporting stuff like that when needed.
+1 for sealed / sealed variants. Super easy to do, especially if you don't have enough people around to draft.
Another two-player variant I've had a lot of fun with before is:
Person (A) chooses one color
Person (B) chooses two of the other colors
Person (A) chooses a second color
Each person gets all the cards in the two colors they chose (including the corresponding guild cards / lands), and colorless cards are dealt out randomly. Make 60 card decks (or have each player make two 40 card decks with no card overlap).
What my group did is start a facebook chat for cube drafter scheduling. It doesn't work perfectly but definitely better than not having it. Cube drafts, for me, really have to be planned ahead of time with respect to as many peoples schedules as possible. That's why a chat group is good, you can make a call out for "next Sunday" or whatever and see who is free, and give them a chance to plan around it.
the problem with alternative draft options is the way the cube is designed. My tier1 is what some call here "preconstructed decks shuffled together". To make some archetypes work you need some keycards. Like the Izzetdudes for spells matters. So sealed or drafting only half the cube wont be that satisfying.
but yeah, the draft and deckbuilding takes a lot of time, but thats the reason why i like cubing in the first place. actually playing the decks is as good as any other format.
hopefully we get to play mid april, when the new cards are available.
Im not sold on the delveguys in poweroriented cubes. Theyre too slow for aggrodecks at least in my meta and its not that easy to fill the graveyard. For quite some time I had Werebear in my cube and I never saw it threshed. The Delves are ok in controldecks, because it allows you to keep counter/removalmana, but often you could just pay for another already available undercosted spell. Also theyre very weak to bounce, which I run a lot of. Even more after my last rework, when I added all the bounce-creatures.
Well, I see no point in comparing Werebear to any of the Khans Delve spells. Werebear is garbage. There is a pretty huge difference between 2-3 cards in your graveyard and 7 cards in your graveyard. 2-3 cards in the bin by turn 4-5 is very common in Cube, at least in mine. It may be true that pure aggro decks (assuming they even exist in this format) don't love the Delve cards, though I still see nothing wrong with a 4/4 Trampler or a 3/3 Flyer for 5 as pretty much my worst case scenario. On average, though, you'll often trade a creature early on and often use a removal spell during the first few turns as well. Basically, as long as your curve is not dude into dude into dude all while zero combat trades or opposing removal spells are going on, which is never the case, the Delve spells are good. And they always have the potential to be completely busted if you draw them in the mid or lategame.
as i said, the main problem i have with those guys is the bounce-density. Also some cubes like mine run a few GY-hate cards like Night Soil and Bojuka Bog
Hooting Mandrills - green is stuffed with highvalue lowcost creatures already. We have Hungry Spriggan and Festerhide Boar for example, both with other drawbacks, but less problematic in my experience.
Gurmag Angler - since black lacks highpower/hightoughness guys this card isnt stellar, but essential for black control to finish the game. Only alternative is Golgari Longlegs
Sultai Scavenger - while black also doesnt have many flyers, this guy is weak to a ton of removal and burn, so I dont really like him in the first place. Still we already got Skittering Skirge and Ravenous Skirge as lowcost flyer, which will fit in the same decks.
well it goldfishes around turn 5, in games more like turn 6-8, depends what the opponent is doing. but its not like the graveyard is stuffed with cards real quick. the white removal doesnt even fill it.
we could do some test games on cockatrice with decks coming from your cube, if youre interested.
Okay, you seem to run a whole lot of underpowered weenies specifically to make aggro work, so I guess in your cube full-aggro does exist. Delve isn't good in those types of decks, but neither are 50% of the entire cube, so that argument doesn't really cut it for me. At least around 5 cards you played in that deck are awful in 80% of cube decks. The Delve cards are awful in maybe 20% of cube decks. I'll play them over those weenies all day. What you are doing totally makes sense if your main goal is pushing aggro to the limits, so I'm not saying I fault you for that. It's just not the approach I want to take.
well I wouldnt call them underpowererd for their manacost, but yeah, we had that discussion since I joint the forum...
If you cut aggro from your cube and only allow midrange decks, a lot of slower cards get better. But at least I rate the cards how they work in a full range emvironment from fast aggro, tempo, aggrocontrol to control. And I think at 360 the delve guys are borderline. Theyre not bad, but the slots are so tight I include other undercosted creatures I mentioned before.
And dont ignore their weakness to bounce. Suspend gives at least haste.
I'd go with buffing the W/R tokens / swarm archetype - that's gotten a fair amount of support in the last few blocks, and it means you can add some really fun / interactive cards like Weapon Surge. Not sure how many W/R aggro cards you'd have to cut to incentivize drafting tokens over the normal W/R aggro deck, though.
I'm not convinced a full-blown R/B sacrifice or U/R spells matter deck is viable on its own right now without significantly weakening a lot of other decks.
In terms of cutting pingers in your cube, I'd cut Vithian Stinger first. 3 mana and an irrelevant body with no insane potential upside (unlike Spikeshot Goblin) makes it kind of underwhelming. Also worth noting that Fireslinger and Sparksmith have downsides against the token swarm deck because the damage to yourself can add up quickly. Also, I'd also consider cutting Viridian Longbow if you're really worried about pingers. Granted, I'm not a huge fan of the card anyway, but it would restrict pingers to red decks only.
Blue pingers are great. Gives blue decks something they totally shouldn't have.
The flying one can even start beating in the sky with a bonesplitter or something.
EDH Decks:
BWR Alesha, Who Smiles at Death BWR
BUG Tasigur, the Golden Fang BUG
BRU Mishra, Artificer Prodigy BRU
R Jaya Ballard, Task Mage R
U Hakim, Loreweaver U
As for Squadron Hawk, I've thought about including it, but couldn't figure out a way to make them work. Having just 4 in the cube seems like they'd be dead picks too often. Even if you always have enough people to draft the whole cube every time, the draft has to go just right for one person to get them all. I've also thought about including them as cards where you draft 1 and get 4 to build your deck with, but that seems really strong. I've tried this a while back with Aurochs Herd and it was a bit much (though I still want to try with other cards like Myr Servitor, Kjeldoran War Cry, Accumulated Knowledge, and Kindle).
In G/B turns can play out like this
turn 2 gatecreeper vine/thornweald archer/wild mongrel etc
turn 3 penumbra bobcat/phantom tiger/liliana's specter etc
turn 4 blastoderm/impersiosaur/penumbra spider/blood hunter bat etc
This generally puts some pressure on the board and if the opponent deals with some of the cards you just get them back and recast them. I once had a game were I had like 5 penumbra bobcat/spider tokens along with the actual cards on the field.
Last draft someone drafted the deck in the example. They only lost due to the combination of gorehouse/splatter thug with aqueous form/madcap skills being drawn early each game with burn back up. So The deck is beatable just that not every deck can out value or ignore the value the recursion deck has.
T2 powpercube Value https://cubecobra.com/cube/list/37t
T2 powpercube Value https://cubecobra.com/cube/list/37t
But I guess you have to build such cube from the scratch, because it takes a lot of slots.
T2 powpercube Value https://cubecobra.com/cube/list/37t
RW only might work, but would be a shallow archetype compared to a cube build around it.
T2 powpercube Value https://cubecobra.com/cube/list/37t
I didnt go too deep into sac-outlets though, because I think theyre overall too weak. The swarmcards are better and more flexible.
The Act of Treason effects are quite good even without sacrifice. I often killed my opponent with one, because he only left 1 blocker.
Blue has very few cards to either support swarm of sacrifice. I build a gy theme around the looters.
T2 powpercube Value https://cubecobra.com/cube/list/37t
If you want to aim for higher power, add more burn and removal to RW and cut the swarmstuff.
T2 powpercube Value https://cubecobra.com/cube/list/37t
I got the same problem at my place. Most of the players prefer EDH/Highlander. There are a few player who like to cube, but its tough to get them all together.
I dont understand why cubetutor doesnt allow multitplayer drafts. Or mtgo should finally support cubedrafts..
T2 powpercube Value https://cubecobra.com/cube/list/37t
One reason is that CubeTutor is developed and maintained by one guy in his spare time. Writing the server-side code for a scalable multiplayer draft website takes a decent amount of work to get right, especially if you want features like persistent sessions, post-draft pick analysis, and whatnot. But, if enough people ask, it might get implemented -- you should contact Ben and tell him how awesome that feature would be.
I haven't tried this before, but I think you can do cube drafts on http://drafts.in/. Or you can do rotisserie drafts via something like Google Docs (rotisserie drafts are super fun anyway, although they can take a while to do).
+1 for sealed / sealed variants. Super easy to do, especially if you don't have enough people around to draft.
Another two-player variant I've had a lot of fun with before is:
Person (A) chooses one color
Person (B) chooses two of the other colors
Person (A) chooses a second color
Each person gets all the cards in the two colors they chose (including the corresponding guild cards / lands), and colorless cards are dealt out randomly. Make 60 card decks (or have each player make two 40 card decks with no card overlap).
but yeah, the draft and deckbuilding takes a lot of time, but thats the reason why i like cubing in the first place. actually playing the decks is as good as any other format.
hopefully we get to play mid april, when the new cards are available.
T2 powpercube Value https://cubecobra.com/cube/list/37t
Knowledge is power, money is power, time is money, you are actually gaining time by reading my posts
check out my EDH and Pauper EDH decks here
as i said, the main problem i have with those guys is the bounce-density. Also some cubes like mine run a few GY-hate cards like Night Soil and Bojuka Bog
Hooting Mandrills - green is stuffed with highvalue lowcost creatures already. We have Hungry Spriggan and Festerhide Boar for example, both with other drawbacks, but less problematic in my experience.
Gurmag Angler - since black lacks highpower/hightoughness guys this card isnt stellar, but essential for black control to finish the game. Only alternative is Golgari Longlegs
Sultai Scavenger - while black also doesnt have many flyers, this guy is weak to a ton of removal and burn, so I dont really like him in the first place. Still we already got Skittering Skirge and Ravenous Skirge as lowcost flyer, which will fit in the same decks.
Treasure Cruise - I dont really like sorcery speed draw to begin with and you need 5 cards to make it better than Compulsive Research. For a high cost I like Foresee and Rush of Knowledge more. Also there is Deep Analysis.
And here is an example of a pure aggro deck, coming from my Tier1:
1x Arbor Elf
1x Basking Rootwalla
1x Elvish Mystic
1x Ghazban Ogre
1x Granger Guildmage
1x Jungle Lion
1x Kird Ape
1x Mogg Conscripts
1x Pouncing Jaguar
1x Rogue Elephant
1x Vault Skirge
1x Wild Nacatl
1x Borderland Marauder
1x Mogg War Marshal
1x River Boa
1x Silhana Ledgewalker
1x Wild Mongrel
1x Villagers of Estwald
1x Vines of Vastwood
1x Colossal Might
1x Wild Might
1x Brimstone Volley
Sorcery
1x Reckless Abandon
1x Reckless Charge
Enchantment
1x Madcap Skills
1x Moldervine Cloak
Land
1x Teetering Peaks
5x Mountain
8x Forest
T2 powpercube Value https://cubecobra.com/cube/list/37t
we could do some test games on cockatrice with decks coming from your cube, if youre interested.
T2 powpercube Value https://cubecobra.com/cube/list/37t
This.
http://www.cubetutor.com/viewcube/17954
If you cut aggro from your cube and only allow midrange decks, a lot of slower cards get better. But at least I rate the cards how they work in a full range emvironment from fast aggro, tempo, aggrocontrol to control. And I think at 360 the delve guys are borderline. Theyre not bad, but the slots are so tight I include other undercosted creatures I mentioned before.
And dont ignore their weakness to bounce. Suspend gives at least haste.
T2 powpercube Value https://cubecobra.com/cube/list/37t
T2 powpercube Value https://cubecobra.com/cube/list/37t
I'm not convinced a full-blown R/B sacrifice or U/R spells matter deck is viable on its own right now without significantly weakening a lot of other decks.
In terms of cutting pingers in your cube, I'd cut Vithian Stinger first. 3 mana and an irrelevant body with no insane potential upside (unlike Spikeshot Goblin) makes it kind of underwhelming. Also worth noting that Fireslinger and Sparksmith have downsides against the token swarm deck because the damage to yourself can add up quickly. Also, I'd also consider cutting Viridian Longbow if you're really worried about pingers. Granted, I'm not a huge fan of the card anyway, but it would restrict pingers to red decks only.
The flying one can even start beating in the sky with a bonesplitter or something.
My 490 Pauper Cube
Modern frame only- Common on paper only - no functional copies, no strictly-betters - no subtype-matters