These cards aren't Pauper legal, but they're super not legal in any format so I figure **** it, why not.
What do you guys think about these cards in a Pauper environment? All of them have the, "Remove from deck if not playing for ante" line sharpied through.
Timmerian Fiends Additionally, this one has the, "Opponent may ante one additional card to counter this effect" line crossed out. This gives black a little bit of artifact removal and it has double devotion for Gary (Peace be Upon Him).
I really like the concept of stealing cards for the rest of the draft and these cards hover right around Pauper power level. While I don't think the normal ante rules really work that well for cube since losing a basic land doesn't matter, some of the ante cards that forcibly trade cards are interesting.
Wenn Sometimes actually Play Ante Cube and Run it ltke a League where once you go below 30 nonbasics you are Out in that draft we use all the Ante cards and some Others. Its fun Bit most of the Ante cards are often Last picks because they are not that great. But due to the Basic Land Limit we have with that Format Sometimes you actually have to Play them.
Edit: technically Not the original Ante but a homebrew Version of it.
Wenn Sometimes actually Play Ante Cube and Run it ltke a League where once you go below 30 nonbasics you are Out in that draft we use all the Ante cards and some Others. Its fun Bit most of the Ante cards are often Last picks because they are not that great. But due to the Basic Land Limit we have with that Format Sometimes you actually have to Play them.
Edit: technically Not the original Ante but a homebrew Version of it.
Have you considered making a custom ante rule?
Like, "Whenever you would ante a card, instead ante 5 cards (or however many seems right to you)" or, "Remove cards from the top of your deck until you find a non-land card and place it into your Ante zone. Shuffle the removed cards back into your library."?
Running a league seems kind of clunky, I'm thinking of ways to make it feasible for one-off drafts. How have leagues with ante worked out for you, have there been any fun moments with ante'd or stolen cards?
Also, Contract From Below is the best card in the game. Have you seen anyone lose after resolving Contract?
I ask because my friend gave me some nice power 9 proxies that he drew, and I threw Contract in with it. The power 9 seems reasonable in a limited Pauper environment, powerful certainly but not automatically game winning. Contract on the other hand seems insurmountable if your opponent gets to resolve it.
Haven't had people lose with contract havent Seen people loose with blacker Lotus neither(also in the Ante module as a one shot then Out of the draft) my custom rule is Basic Land Limits and if you ein you don't get both Ante cards you Just get one(for each Card you anted) and remove the other from the draft entirely. That way there isnt Always a Back and forth but cards are gradually removed from the draft.
Here we are again discussing Rare and Uncommon Ante cards in a Pauper Cube forum. My dude, if you want to keep trolling and get everyone here banned because they'll inevitably get at you for the utter crap you're producing you're doing it just right.
Brb discussing Black Lotus in Modern. Cuz literally Why Not and **** consensus anyway...
Here we are again discussing Rare and Uncommon Ante cards in a Pauper Cube forum. My dude, if you want to keep trolling and get everyone here banned because they'll inevitably get at you for the utter crap you're producing you're doing it just right.
Brb discussing Black Lotus in Modern. Cuz literally Why Not and **** consensus anyway...
Okay, I have some Pauper cards to discuss.
I made a custom package deal card for Tron. 3 copies of each Tron land.
What are your thoughts on this? Would it break a more powerful cube? Would it be fine in a low powered cube? Is it not even very good?
And here I thought I'd have a quiet vacation. Knock it off guys and gals we have been through this before. Trolling and flaming each other is unacceptable. If I have to come back to warn anyone from trolling or flaming this weekend you will be upgraded to a week suspension.
Offtopic chats asking about rarities can be acceptable in separate threads but please keep them out of the general thread.
So I've got some actual drafts in with the 6Post and Tron package deal cards. One gives you 3 copies of Glimmerpost and 3 Cloudposts, another gives you 3 of each Tron land.
Tron is kind of difficult to play in a deck with more than one color. Without maps and crop rotations you don't always get it.
6Post is better than Tron, however on average you see about half of your deck in a draft of my cube, so in the matches I played my opponent would see 3 of the 6 lands and it was good but not overpowered.
The most powerful thing about his deck wasn't 6post, it was Cranial Plating for +3/+0 on a Porcelain Legionnaire, lol. That card is so bonkers.
Overall I'm pretty happy with these package deal cards. They all work fine and aren't broken. Everyone told me they were a bad idea, and would you look at that, they're an interesting build around.
For those curious about 2 veteran cuber's opinions on The Evaluate Everything Project and also more rambling, my signature links may hokd a secret of an audio compilation.spanning almost 2 hrs
I'm going through another massive update for Throne of Eldraine, but I'm stuck. I need three cuts from my green section. Do you guys have a particular opinion about what's weakest or the worst fit for green here?
You have a ton of fight cards -- including 1 Rabid Bites (Aggressive Instinct being the same card). Also, a huge number of 5+ drops. Those are the two things I'm not necessarily convinced of in that volume.
You have a ton of fight cards -- including 1 Rabid Bites (Aggressive Instinct being the same card). Also, a huge number of 5+ drops. Those are the two things I'm not necessarily convinced of in that volume.
Sure, let's take a look there. I prefer the super-fight cards like Rabid Bite over the Prey Upon variants, so I could cut Epic Confrontation. Has fight gone down in value in the last few years? Prey Upon certainly hasn't aged well.
Five drops: Since we talked four drops recently, I guess this is a natural next step. I added a few extras in this category to give green ramp some punch, but I'm ok cutting the worst couple.
Here's how I rank them. The ones I still run, at least.
1. Entourage of Trest - unique card advantage in green.
2. Bitterbow Sharpshooters - solve a major weakness of green decks while providing an excellent offense/defense combination.
3. Sentinel Spider - same as above, but adds redundancy.
4. Tajuru Pathwarden - similar to above, but solves the problem of chump blockers and tokens.
5. Lifecraft Cavalry - conditional huge trampler.
6. Rhox Maulers - another one. I'm still not sure who to give the edge to between Maulers/Cavalry.
7. Nessian Asp - not nearly as good as Bitterbow/Sentinel Spider, I think. I wonder if anyone would still advocate strongly for including this today.
8. Rampaging Rendhorn - flexible and unique, but somewhat under the curve.
Is this accurate? And what's the better card between Lifecraft Cavalry and Rhox Maulers?
You have a ton of fight cards -- including 1 Rabid Bites (Aggressive Instinct being the same card). Also, a huge number of 5+ drops. Those are the two things I'm not necessarily convinced of in that volume.
Sure, let's take a look there. I prefer the super-fight cards like Rabid Bite over the Prey Upon variants, so I could cut Epic Confrontation. Has fight gone down in value in the last few years? Prey Upon certainly hasn't aged well.
Five drops: Since we talked four drops recently, I guess this is a natural next step. I added a few extras in this category to give green ramp some punch, but I'm ok cutting the worst couple.
Here's how I rank them. The ones I still run, at least.
1. Entourage of Trest - unique card advantage in green.
2. Bitterbow Sharpshooters - solve a major weakness of green decks while providing an excellent offense/defense combination.
3. Sentinel Spider - same as above, but adds redundancy.
4. Tajuru Pathwarden - similar to above, but solves the problem of chump blockers and tokens.
5. Lifecraft Cavalry - conditional huge trampler.
6. Rhox Maulers - another one. I'm still not sure who to give the edge to between Maulers/Cavalry.
7. Nessian Asp - not nearly as good as Bitterbow/Sentinel Spider, I think. I wonder if anyone would still advocate strongly for including this today.
8. Rampaging Rendhorn - flexible and unique, but somewhat under the curve.
Is this accurate? And what's the better card between Lifecraft Cavalry and Rhox Maulers?
I'm not really sure because I have a good amount of experience with all of these creatures but not necessarily in a Pauper Cube environment. I was thinking you had a lot of 5 drops considering you also had a goodly number of higher cost creatures as well. But you have a large Cube at 540 and I can see the logic as pseudo-payoffs.
Personally, we tend to avoid redundancy in things like this so Sentinel Spider kind of got pushed out when Bitterbow showed up (we do occasionally still put the Spider in though..we like that it's a "green Serra Angel" :))
The Entourage is different enough that it is hard to compare it to the other 5-drops. Also, we tend to count Wickerbough Elder as close to being a 5-drop (but he does need a target which isn't always available).
We still like Nessian Asp because it kind of doubles as a bigger threat as well.
I'm not really sure because I have a good amount of experience with all of these creatures but not necessarily in a Pauper Cube environment. I was thinking you had a lot of 5 drops considering you also had a goodly number of higher cost creatures as well. But you have a large Cube at 540 and I can see the logic as pseudo-payoffs.
I'll be cutting Walker this update. I was all googly-eyed when it was downshifted, but the base body is too vanilla, it's genuinely clunky to play, and the evoke isn't anything special. "Leaves play" triggers are a good design space for fatties at common, but eight mana is just far too much. As for the others, Greater Sandwurm is a concession to early game thanks to the cycling (is Rampaging Hippo better? I just realized I have no green six drops, so this might be a half-decent swap). Maul Splicer is still the best play you can make for seven mana at pauper. And Wrecking Beast presents a surprise, a ton of damage and a dangerously fast clock.
Personally, we tend to avoid redundancy in things like this so Sentinel Spider kind of got pushed out when Bitterbow showed up (we do occasionally still put the Spider in though..we like that it's a "green Serra Angel" :))
The Entourage is different enough that it is hard to compare it to the other 5-drops. Also, we tend to count Wickerbough Elder as close to being a 5-drop (but he does need a target which isn't always available).
Entourage is different enough, sure, but putting Wickerbough Elder with the five-drops isn't fair to other five-drops since I'm pretty sure it would be the number one creature there
Nessian Asp can get big, but it still plays out fairly vanilla to me. I like the look of Silverback Shaman and Excavating Anurid, even if they hit less hard than Lifecraft Cavalry or Rhox Maulers. I have difficulty figuring out whether to try Shaman or Anurid. The things I like about them:
Shaman has trample up-front.
Anurid draws a card up-front.
Since I already have dudes playing the role of big trampler right now, I'm leaning towards Anurid for diversity. It helps you get to threshold faster, it technically has two modes since the sacrifice is a may, and vigilance on a fatty is a strong ability. Technically I already have dudes in the role of vigilant fatty too, though, so it's a bit of a wash for me. Do you have any follow-up info on these two?
Oh, there are also the hexproof creatures which are included if there is a hexproof theme and excluded otherwise.
I guess you're referring to Rubbleback Rhino and Wardscale Crocodile. They're not bad, but they tend to be under curve when played, so you really need to pair them with a stat boost to get the most out of them. I don't think they're a bad choice, I just personally prefer to cube more standalone beaters.
i just cruised by to inform you guys my main account was banned for insane reasons. leaving mtgs is long overdue, so i wont start posting with this one.
maybe its better to move to the salvation replacement what ever its name was? idk edit:mtgnexus
also my cube got moved to cubecobra, since its only a matter of time until ct is gone. recommend to do the same https://cubecobra.com/cube/overview/37p
it was a good time with you, despite some differences. i learned a lot and AL was right about evaluations pretty often lol
hope paupercube never dies and we meet again in some other corner of the net.
i just cruised by to inform you guys my main account was banned for insane reasons. leaving mtgs is long overdue, so i wont start posting with this one.
maybe its better to move to the salvation replacement what ever its name was? idk edit:mtgnexus
also my cube got moved to cubecobra, since its only a matter of time until ct is gone. recommend to do the same https://cubecobra.com/cube/overview/37p
it was a good time with you, despite some differences. i learned a lot and AL was right about evaluations pretty often lol
hope paupercube never dies and we meet again in some other corner of the net.
Hahaha, same. I think it was because of the transition to Twitch for this site's logon. Never mind that. I was 5oul Crusher, but I'll assume this Dimir identity.
I've been rereading some of my old reviews. Some of them are pretty cringe, but I was learning the ropes in card evaluation. And I suspect my cube got played significantly less than others on here.
Naiad of the Hidden Coves: A 2/3 3-drop with a decent ability is pretty baseline. My initial thoughts are would I ever play this over a Man-o'-War, Sea Gate Oracle or Eldrazi Skyspawner? I think I would, but I would be needing to pick quite a bit of support to justify it. One mana Mana Leaks are definitely tempting, but most lists are not running Anicipate-like effects which seem to be this kind of cards bread and butter. Mostly because Anticipate is rather outclassed by Preordain and Gitaxian Probe. I would want to know what people's latent Naiad of the Hidden Coves already synergies are? In addition, I would be very hesitant to pick a card like this if I didn't know the contents of the cube, or I might feel betrayed for following a false lead if there wasn't the support for it and I spent an early pick on this thinking that I would consistently get the mana discount. Turn 4 Naiad into holding an instant seems decent. And it helps set up Capsize from turn 5 onwards. I have found Capsize to be a bit weak of late due to the much better early boards. Getting the repeated discount throughout the game is what will turn Naiad from being mediocre to a strong playable. I suspect Naiad will draw early removal, making the card seem better, until it is common knowledge how much value you actually end up accruing.
Vexing Gull: Falls below curve, but is a decent play after holding mana to counter or remove a big threat, especially on turn three. 2 toughness means that it won't make a strong flash blocker, unless you intend to trade.
I think the Gull is the stronger of the two 3-drops in cube, not by much mind you. All the flash creatures have been decent in cube despite their weaker stats. They mostly depend on how strong your other instant speed effects are, which tend to be very strong in blue. In Constructed you can get a lot more mileage out of the cost reduction. That being said, both 3 drops synergies very strongly with each other and they both support the same archetype, so you might want to include them with a couple of extra instant/flash cards to support the flash archetype. (No Brinewater Cutthroat, which would be the dream.) (edited more on Gull)
Admittedly my counterspell package is significantly slimmer than most at 2 mana and same with my instant-speed removal at 2 and 3 mana. But I would like people to start playing around with combat tricks (mostly so they can learn to play them) before ramping up the efficacy of cheap removal.
edit:
wall of text on playing blue:
After some thinking, some lists will be running Impulse. I cut Impulse after I realised how strong it is, but I might reinclude it now since I've had a play 'round with blue spells. Basically what I established is all the 1 mana blue draw spells are very good with Preordain and Gitaxian Probe being the best in this format. Paying 2 life for probe is so good that even non-blue decks want to do this, although when they do, Probe is relegated to the sideboard as aggro is such an important matchup that you don't want any cards sabotaging you from main deck.
3 mana on a counter can be worth it for the exile and so forth (Faerie Trickery). But most blue want dig over countermagic as countermagic is redundant whereas the pool of cheap dig is much more shallow and thus much less redundant. Countercontrol is normally what snaps up all the extra countermagic, but I'm not sure that heavily supporting this archetype makes your cube as strong as it can be on all fronts. All these blue spells create an amass the components type situation. You make up for your lack of good cheap bodies by seeing more and having the ability to run a few much narrower, high impact cards while mitigating the potential downside of holding a dead card. All those blue spells take up space in the 40 line up which make the opening turns a touch weaker, say compared to Green which tends to have gassy, mana efficient creatures from the word go. But because blue has multimodal creatures (Man-o'-War: it's a creature and a bouncespell!) forgoing the full spells package for a much slimmer, more streamlined one and pairing up with another colour with good value for creature effects can be a winning strategy as you go toe for toe against strong openings and you are still doing spell-like things to hold tempo. Some black creatures (Gravedigger) are great attrition cards. Slamming a Death Denied is often game if you are out of burn range.
I've been running almost no mana rocks, almost no duels and much less evasion. Blue still has heaps of flyers, but there are less Sulfuric Vortexs to deal with. I wanted to make blocking orientated creatures more viable. I didn't want fest mana and fixing in yet because until people understand the balancing of costs those kinds of effects create confusion and lead to many suboptimal decks. The multicoloured section is one card per combination at about the strength of Auger Spree. All these cuts allow for room to expand the monocoloured sections. You reap the benefits of sticking with an open colour much sooner.
On cube design decisions:
I am excluding all supplementary sets such as Modern Masters and their respective downshifting. I am including only a few of the draft bombs. I have already mentioned that I slimmed down cheap removal, cheap counters, elves and premium burn (to make room for Lash Out and Arrow Storm, and to make Titanic Strength playable). I tend to favour resource management cards and try to avoid raw stats. All Phyrexian mana (save the junk souleaters) is in and so are Planar Chaos cards when applicable (Mana Tithe > Force Spike). Only some of the weaker equipment stayed in. I try to stick with a modern colour pie distribution. The only tribe with any support is Zombies because there are so many in black and they are all playable cards even without any conscious support. Colourless mana is in, snows are out. Raw card advantage is monitored. With blue getting Treasure Cruises, black getting recursion, red getting the occasional x-for-1 and card filter, Green getting the odd engine and generally trading upwards. White gets the most virtual card advantage, typically this is in the form of cutting a land. Multicreature buffs and abilities such as first strike with a smattering of cheap tricks to trade upwards in mana efficiency and the odd cantrap there round out white's card advantage. There is also a Man-o'-War watch because I kept consistently beating my friends with them. The jellyfish and Mist Raven are still because in my opinion they are iconic cards, but all their friends aren't (Repluse being cut for Vapor Snag so you have to work work work to get that bounce lock).
On White:
White was by far the most difficult colour to work out. As fortune would have it, many well costed cheap white cards get printed and there is enough lifegain here to keep a well built white deck out of the red zone. When tweaking white I tried to make sure I accidentally didn't make White-Black unbeatable. Seriously, when their creatures start going late and you pick up the odd Liliana's Specter here and Seraph of Dawn there, backed with all the removal and 2-for-1's and extorty lifegain you can muster and before you know it you are unkillable by aggro, too disruptive for tempo, outtrade midrange, and are too taxing for control.
I'm going through another massive update for Throne of Eldraine, but I'm stuck. I need three cuts from my green section. Do you guys have a particular opinion about what's weakest or the worst fit for green here?
With mana elves there is little point running much else in green's one as an Elf is better in most decks and there is a lot of redundancy there. I like Young Wolf as it provides the best turn one answer to (non-evasion) aggro. I also think Blisterpod is very strong for similar reasons to Young Wolf. Quirion Ranger is so elfy; I really like it. I guess green ones depend on how much elf you want to cube. Basking Rootwalla and Jungle Lion are invaluable aggro pieces. They provide just enough stats to be strong, especially if your drafters are familiar with them. I think I prefer the speed bumps of Wolf and Pod, but if you've built an environment where the Lizard and the Lion are good picks, then I wouldn't change a thing about green 1s. Hooting Mandrils: I don't think I've ever seen this on turn one.
Cuts for Eldraine: Wildwood Tracker for something higher on curve, maybe a 5 or 6 drop? Tracker is a good turn 1 play in aggro and a low curve midrange. Everything in green activates the bonus. Tracker is weak to Lava Dart, but most green s are. Rosethorn Halberd, we'll get to in a minute.
Terrain Elemental and Saproling Migration are the weakest cards in Green two. 2 toughness isn't much better than 1 and Elemental is clearly weaker than Mire Boa, which isn't being ran here. A green Dragon Fodder that scales ok into late game isn't really worth it without cards such as Lead by Example taking advantage of the multiple bodies. As a road bump, Migration is more versatile that the one-drops I mentioned, but I perfer Blisterpod for the Scion. And if you are playing with a sideboard, siding in one-drops into relevant matchups is strong. Overall I don't think Saproling Migration will be cut because it fills a role from main deck, but I would like to see more two-for-one support in green to make those cheap bodies work. Maybe White or Red is where you have most of your multi-creature buffs. I think Raise the Alarm is stronger. Terrain Elemental is well stated and fits the low to the ground archetype you've got going, and nothing in Eldraine twos are worth it. There is nothing to do with food from Curious Pair other than eat it.
Snapping Gnarlid with the extra land ramp gives it the edge here, but it suffers from consistency. Darkthicket Wolf is a much stronger 2-drop version of Basking Rootwalla. Werebear has been discussed extensively. The gist of it is it's turn 2 mana that turns into good damage. The downside is you don't want this kind of card when red comes along to blitz you, and it will if you are looking for the coveted 1st in a Swiss bracket. Sauroform Hybrid which you are not running fills the duel purpose 2-drop into late game monster. The 2/2 for 2 is standard in most match ups, where it blocks aggro ok and attacks until your opponent lands a meatsheild. The adapt is a big one and at instant speed, you can get tricking. Admittedly Green at common is not well known for it's strong flash spells, but paired up with blue, well... Dawntreader Elk: another 2/2 for 2, but this one trades in for a land! Green can really use the cheap, well stated bodies to work to help with aggro match-ups, especially the duel purpose ones when a slower mid-rangey deck comes along and finds a way to invalidate all your early plays. In addition all the 2/2 provide the same clock as their evasion counterparts. Viridian Emissary one of the best road bumps you can against red, although Emissary can be left in the cold against evasion and often just sits on the battlefield neglected. However Emissary is one of the better creatures to buff and it's dying trigger turns a typically bad 2-for-1 into a somewhat favourable 1-for-1, and that's if you opponent has the removal. The risk factor generally doesn't make it worth to try the trick in the first place, but being able to aggressively trick into open mana is strong because your opponent could be bluffing or missing drops and a small guy eating removal and putting you up a land is strong. Thornweld Archer and Mire Boa are the strongest 2 drops your not running. I especially like Thornweld Archer it's a 2/1 with a keyword soup before those effects got properly balanced.
A lot can be said about Green 2-drops and I'm getting distracted looking at my list, not at your's.
Boarderland Ranger and Civic Wayfinder provide redundancy for Green's midrange plan. I really worry about Green's match up against a Red blitz. As the 2/2 body on turn 3 too weak. Coming off a turn 1 elf is fine, but you still haven't gained tempo, just card advantage. Losing to a tier-1 deck basically guarantees that you won't get first place in a Swiss. I like these cards, but I would only want one in a deck and the quality of Green three has improved. Jungleborn Pioneer is a better than either of these, 3/3 is still a respectable play and on the other hand getting a land into play is all gravy. Simian Grunts: these monkeys mean business. Hungry Spriggan and Thriving Rhino both are chunky attack mode 3 drops. Spriggan is the best stated 3 drop at attacking which makes it difficult to ever consider cutting, there is no defence mode. It provides a nice Trail of Crumbs for a dedicated aggro-drafter or tempo-player. Thriving Rhino is above curve as soon as you get the first attack off, however it's weak if you ever lose tempo in the early game, which seems to be a theme in Green 3. It feels like you're relying too much on mana elves to carry, but what happens when you don't get enough or don't draw them? Between 3 matches of best of threes which (typically) increase in difficulty, I think green is lacking the consistency to go the distance without a second colour there to carry.
Tishana's Wayfinder and Scion Summoner, both body makers without the appropriate synergy. Nest Invader makes the Summoner look bad, but that doen't necassarily mean that Scion Summoner is weak, just that Nest Invader is very strong. 3 power divided into to bodies is weaker than a 3/3 in most cases. The extra ability on the 1/1 needs to be made advantage of just justify the irrelevance of the body. Tricking with the hexproofer is super cute, and strong when pulled off, but that requires playing tricks outside the odd Giant Growth. And the downsides on combat tricks are well understood and pretty terrible when they fail. More on tricks when I get to that part. Ramping off the Scion seems decent. 3/3 of stats added up also helps when you pass turn into aggro, and then you wait you see how much you've got to work with for turn 4. Trusted Forcemage brings the stats so a good fit for most Green archetypes (aggro, tempo, midrange), but is weak to disruption. Not really much of a downside (creature dies to creature removal), it just means you don't want to Miscalculate and end up 2-for-1ing yourself.
Crocanura blocks, grows and eats fliers. One of the most well rounded 3 drops in my opinion. Grazing Gladehart: serious anti-aggro tech. Hooded Brawler smashes when needed. Yavamiya Elder is still one of the best three drops.
I might make room for Sporecap Spider as it mitigates the main downside of losing and lives thoroughly outside burn range. It might end-up living in sideboards, but seems like an all-star in relevant match-ups. Seasonal Ritual is colourfixing when you need it. Rosethorn Acolyte is weak as far mana-creatures are concerned, especially with mana elves available. It isn't worth the slot as nice as Seasonal Ritual sounds, being a sorcery means you can't use it to get the blue for Mana Leak, and not being able to do that pretty much puts out of consideration. Fixing for the Fireball you picked up sounds alright again, but that kind of fixing is made strong for the soonness of it's availability and there isn't much that green wants from other colours in the first few turns.
The four drops are the beginning of Green's payload. Peema Outrider seems like an easy cut for Fierce Witchstalker, or you could run both as they are very well rounded. Wild Leotau is the biggest 4 drop you're missing, although it hampers curving into 5 or 6, it is still one of the biggest turn 4s.
I'm getting tired I might edit some stuff in later. Some 5 drops could be cut for extra 4's. Likewise which a couple of 6's and 7's. Pretty much, you don't need to draft redundant late drops. Those could free up slots for a better selection of cheaper creatures so you green deck can actually have the right fit and the right spot on curve. This also helps alleviate the dependence on mana elves for casting cards. In spells, green has many cheap spells, but when you goal is always to cast the big thing in hand, these tricks don't add to that game plan. When you are tricking you want your cheap cards to go the distance and hopeful eat the spells right out of your opponent's hand before they can disrupt your big plays. Also cheap cards all synergise with each other because you can play multiple of them in a turn. There aren't many cards in common which punish laying out your hand. The trail of crumbs for green aggro or even tempo seemed a bit thin in 1 and 2, even at 3. I really enjoy playing Nessian Courser. There are no frills, it just trades — almost never downwards.
For the sake of at least keeping up a little bit of conversation and for Cobble to not feel like he's takling to a brick wall, I decided to add at least a little bit of my recent thoughts:
-First of all, even though the limited and common powerlevel in draft has risen significantly since War of the Sparks the "good" cards are all so archetype specific, many of them don't really seem to fit, at least not into my cube with it's existing archetypes.
-From Theros, even thought the set seems to be full of borderline -> cubeable cards, I wasn't really sold on anything yet. The card I'm most interested in, is from the very early spoilers. It's Warbriar Blessing (Link). I think this might mostly be interesting for me personally, because I have a very deep enchtantment archetype in green. I'm currently even running Cartouche of Strength. This also might go pretty well with all the lower tier hexproof creatures in green, I added a while ago, when drafters complained, there wasn't enough hexproof to put the auras on, so I added Sacred Wolf and Conifer Strider. Giving one of these 2 additional points of thoughness + killing a creature seems like a solid deal. I'm not too high on fight spells over all, because I don't think green necessarily needs medicore removal, when they simply get access to way better options from secondary colors, but being an aura, as I stated, has a bunch of positive side effects in my cube.
-I just realized, that not a single card from Eldraine actually made it into my cube, which is kind of unusual, because usually at least 1 card makes the cut, simply because WOTC seem to like printing at least a single common into the set, that is on a different level, than the average (e.g. Cloudkin Seer). After playing a lot of ELD and really liking the format, I still don't see much potential for most of the cards in the context of my cube. I also got excited for actually getting a bunch of new cards for my artifact cube, so I didn't really feel like I missed out on this set.
I really like Rimrock Knight, but red 2s are stacked as hell and the "free" pump is way way worse in my cube with it's overabundance of cheap instant speed removal, to fizzle the whole card. It also has like this weird "bloodrush problem". You want to play it on turn 2, but in that case you won't have used the card to it's full potential and than it's just way worse than the competition. Wicked Guardian is amazing in ELD limited, but this format is defined by mostly having Toghness > Power, which definitly can't be said about my cube. Fierce Witchstalker is probably the card that mostly stands out from the rest and when it was spoiled, I may have overlooked it because of all the premium cmc 4 green creatures with at least 4 power and 4 toughness we got over the last years, but none of them actually have trample, which starts to become quite valueable with 4 power and above. Also the added Bonus of getting the food is something that really makes this better than just your average plain 4/4 for 4. I might have a look into my cube and try to find a spot to add this retroactively.
cant hold myself back now that at least some posts are rolling in.
mtgnexus is pretty much doa, they even forbid preseason spoiler discussions m(
how about setting up our own discord server? afterall its free. id like that.
Regarding ELD. The Stalker got overlooked by me and now replaced my recently added Kraul Foragers, because my green needs a midgrange lifegain against burndecks. unconditional 5+life on a 4+/4+ would be nice and i think we see one soon.
other cards from eld that made it for me is Smitten Swordmaster being a upgrade/2nd copy of child of night
best card probably Gingerbrute
fully agree on cobbles analysis of greens situation and his individual picks. i also ended in manaelf into 3-drop green. prefer Sedge Scorpion over young wolf as a blocker though. since i try to avoid x/1s as much as possible. 1/x blocker are weak for me.
right now im trying to figure which colors should support the [cmc-slot] creatures. greens 2 are kinda lacking and they have the elves, so i cut back on those. not sure in the other colors yet. (mono)white seems to have the most balanced curve available, with a very strong cc1 suite. at least my section reflects that. Red is strong on 1 and 2, kinda loses competition at cc3+ with a handful of exceptions.
Naiad of the Hidden Coves will boot trinket mage for me. most value i see with capsize add a familiar to the mix and capsize becomes scary again.
other card im waiting for ist the 3/3 flyer that gets cheaper with devotion. for assumed 5W base cost.
Warbriar Blessing I consider as well for more aurasupport. Fight at Sorceryspeed is kinda meh though and I dont run the Sacred Wolf yet. so no room most likely.
As stated before all of these are stronger than any other 1 drop you can play in green, even Boreal Druid. The only reason I'm not running Avacyn's Pilgrim and Elves of Deep Shadow is because they break the color wheel and I'm kind of fanatical perfectionist, so this would really bother me.
I don't think you need to "force" any additional Onedrops into your cube, if you simply go by power level in a vacuum. I like neither Young Wolf nor Blisterpod. They are only really good if you pair them with Sacrifice Outlets. Jungle Lion and Mtenda Lion are Ok if you really want to push aggressive green decks, even though the latter is super random. Ghazbán Ogre and Wild Dogs are way too risky if you play against Red.
The CMC 1 Deathtouchers are a nice way to deal with hexproof, but since it's mostly a green archetype having them in green doesn't help the rest of the draft table much.
Btw. I'm currently thinking about possibly testing my cube without the aura/hexproof archetype. It takes up an incredible amount of slots and even though it's viable in form of power level it can also be very frustrating to play against. It's also kind of a parasitic archetype in the way, that all the auras aren't of much use to any other deck without a critical amount of hexproof creatures. This might leave green as the weakest color, but it might be worth a try and if it improves the draft experience it's worth it. I don't mind green being mostly a support color, like it is in the official sets from the latest years. After all there is a bunch of viable aggro/midrange creatures in green nowadays (e.g. Wicked Guardian), which might be viable, even without hexproof. Also there is a huge amount of solid ramp and fixing at common (e.g. the elves and Sakura-Tribe Elder). You only need the early game ramp and fixing since there still isn't much viable payoff for having huge amounts of mana. I will definitely make some changes and see how the cube could look without the Bogles archetype.
you can always go for an aura-light support like i do. only run the pieces that are solid on their own. i feel without any hexproof removal.dec becomes too dominant and is equally feelbad for the "fair" decks.
cmc1 deathtouch is solid all around. either as earlygame "pseudoremoval" or "pseudounblockable"
im still not an overly excited fan of manaelves, since they are so fragile and often lead to card-disadvantage. but its the best thing green can do appearently. stompygreen is equally fragile and outclassed by boros nowadays.
more fatty-payoff would be nice. either a big hexproof or more etb draws.
I just invested like 1 hour to make the changes I imagined (Link) and I'm quite happy with the result. I will definitely test this, when I get the chance to cube the next time.
There are several reasons why I'm interested in making a huge change to my cube like this:
1. I haven't had major changes to my cube for a while and I want to test something different. There were so few flex slots, that it's really hard to fit anything new in.
2. I've already recived negative feedback on hexproof, because it simply limits interaction and I agree with that criticism, but defended it, with the argument, that the removal is just sooo efficient in pauper, that it's really punishing to get tempoed out due to spending too much mana on your creatures, compared to the cost of removal.
If it turns out, that it isn't necessary to have hexproof in the cube in order for green to be viable I'm really happy.
3. This has opened up an incredible amount of slots, I can use to experiment with different cards. E.g. I decided to use the free blue slots for a bunch of fliers, to make aggressive blue decks a thing again, since I really like it when all the colors have access to all the different archetypes, in the same way as I've dedicated some slots towards red and white control.
I'm also tinkering with the idea of readding the Ghostly Flicker - Archaeomancer combo. Alternatively I can also just fill the slots with a bunch of goodstuff and counterspells, to make control more counter heavy again.
Archetype support is a very tricky thing.
When you don't dedicate enough spots towards it, the decks might not come together and people with only a half dedicated pool will feel bad, this will happen especially, when you don't draft the whole cube. When you comit too much into it, you might be forcing someone in that color to play the archetype, which is exactly not what I want, at least for my cube. My goal is to give drafters the tools to do whatever they want.
In order to make Gx Stompy more viable I've actually added the Elves I wasn't playing before, because the most powerful green, the weakest color, can do, is to play a turn 1 elf into 3-4 drops on the following turns.
Primal Huntbeast+Spectral Flight
imho is enough synergy to win the game. no need to go all in.
there arent much outs to a 5/5 hexproof flyer
meanwhile beast is kinda useful enough on its own, depending on the opponent and flight can just turn any other onedrop into a serious clock. sure you open up yourself for a 2:1, but so does runnin vaporkins, which are trading 0:1 against a couple cards.
I've already ignored the online only legalities for my cube, but this is nice for those of us too OCD to do so.
Ignoring what Magic players say isn't the answer, it's listening to what they have to say and doing the exact opposite that's correct.
What do you guys think about these cards in a Pauper environment? All of them have the, "Remove from deck if not playing for ante" line sharpied through.
Bronze Tablet
Timmerian Fiends Additionally, this one has the, "Opponent may ante one additional card to counter this effect" line crossed out. This gives black a little bit of artifact removal and it has double devotion for Gary (Peace be Upon Him).
Tempest Efreet
Rebirth
I really like the concept of stealing cards for the rest of the draft and these cards hover right around Pauper power level. While I don't think the normal ante rules really work that well for cube since losing a basic land doesn't matter, some of the ante cards that forcibly trade cards are interesting.
Ignoring what Magic players say isn't the answer, it's listening to what they have to say and doing the exact opposite that's correct.
Edit: technically Not the original Ante but a homebrew Version of it.
Have you considered making a custom ante rule?
Like, "Whenever you would ante a card, instead ante 5 cards (or however many seems right to you)" or, "Remove cards from the top of your deck until you find a non-land card and place it into your Ante zone. Shuffle the removed cards back into your library."?
Running a league seems kind of clunky, I'm thinking of ways to make it feasible for one-off drafts. How have leagues with ante worked out for you, have there been any fun moments with ante'd or stolen cards?
Also, Contract From Below is the best card in the game. Have you seen anyone lose after resolving Contract?
I ask because my friend gave me some nice power 9 proxies that he drew, and I threw Contract in with it. The power 9 seems reasonable in a limited Pauper environment, powerful certainly but not automatically game winning. Contract on the other hand seems insurmountable if your opponent gets to resolve it.
Ignoring what Magic players say isn't the answer, it's listening to what they have to say and doing the exact opposite that's correct.
Brb discussing Black Lotus in Modern. Cuz literally Why Not and **** consensus anyway...
- Last Word
Okay, I have some Pauper cards to discuss.
I made a custom package deal card for Tron. 3 copies of each Tron land.
What are your thoughts on this? Would it break a more powerful cube? Would it be fine in a low powered cube? Is it not even very good?
Ignoring what Magic players say isn't the answer, it's listening to what they have to say and doing the exact opposite that's correct.
Offtopic chats asking about rarities can be acceptable in separate threads but please keep them out of the general thread.
Ulka
Tron is kind of difficult to play in a deck with more than one color. Without maps and crop rotations you don't always get it.
6Post is better than Tron, however on average you see about half of your deck in a draft of my cube, so in the matches I played my opponent would see 3 of the 6 lands and it was good but not overpowered.
I stopped his Eldrazi Devastator with a Sawtooth Thresher that had to ditch all of its counters to get big enough. It was pretty neat.
The most powerful thing about his deck wasn't 6post, it was Cranial Plating for +3/+0 on a Porcelain Legionnaire, lol. That card is so bonkers.
Overall I'm pretty happy with these package deal cards. They all work fine and aren't broken. Everyone told me they were a bad idea, and would you look at that, they're an interesting build around.
Ignoring what Magic players say isn't the answer, it's listening to what they have to say and doing the exact opposite that's correct.
Loose Change Pauper Cube-cast
Pauper Cube Article #1
Pauper Cube Article #2
Personal Enjoyment Cube
My Cube (DeckStats)
My Pauper Cube: 540 (CubeTutor link!)
Level 1 Judge
Sure, let's take a look there. I prefer the super-fight cards like Rabid Bite over the Prey Upon variants, so I could cut Epic Confrontation. Has fight gone down in value in the last few years? Prey Upon certainly hasn't aged well.
Five drops: Since we talked four drops recently, I guess this is a natural next step. I added a few extras in this category to give green ramp some punch, but I'm ok cutting the worst couple.
Here's how I rank them. The ones I still run, at least.
1. Entourage of Trest - unique card advantage in green.
2. Bitterbow Sharpshooters - solve a major weakness of green decks while providing an excellent offense/defense combination.
3. Sentinel Spider - same as above, but adds redundancy.
4. Tajuru Pathwarden - similar to above, but solves the problem of chump blockers and tokens.
5. Lifecraft Cavalry - conditional huge trampler.
6. Rhox Maulers - another one. I'm still not sure who to give the edge to between Maulers/Cavalry.
7. Nessian Asp - not nearly as good as Bitterbow/Sentinel Spider, I think. I wonder if anyone would still advocate strongly for including this today.
8. Rampaging Rendhorn - flexible and unique, but somewhat under the curve.
Is this accurate? And what's the better card between Lifecraft Cavalry and Rhox Maulers?
My Cube (DeckStats)
My Pauper Cube: 540 (CubeTutor link!)
Level 1 Judge
I'm not really sure because I have a good amount of experience with all of these creatures but not necessarily in a Pauper Cube environment. I was thinking you had a lot of 5 drops considering you also had a goodly number of higher cost creatures as well. But you have a large Cube at 540 and I can see the logic as pseudo-payoffs.
Personally, we tend to avoid redundancy in things like this so Sentinel Spider kind of got pushed out when Bitterbow showed up (we do occasionally still put the Spider in though..we like that it's a "green Serra Angel" :))
The Entourage is different enough that it is hard to compare it to the other 5-drops. Also, we tend to count Wickerbough Elder as close to being a 5-drop (but he does need a target which isn't always available).
We still like Nessian Asp because it kind of doubles as a bigger threat as well.
Also there are a couple good newish ones in Silverback Shaman and Excavating Anurid
Oh, there are also the hexproof creatures which are included if there is a hexproof theme and excluded otherwise.
Other big drops I run:
Greater Sandwurm
Maul Splicer
Wrecking Beast
Walker of the Grove
I'll be cutting Walker this update. I was all googly-eyed when it was downshifted, but the base body is too vanilla, it's genuinely clunky to play, and the evoke isn't anything special. "Leaves play" triggers are a good design space for fatties at common, but eight mana is just far too much. As for the others, Greater Sandwurm is a concession to early game thanks to the cycling (is Rampaging Hippo better? I just realized I have no green six drops, so this might be a half-decent swap). Maul Splicer is still the best play you can make for seven mana at pauper. And Wrecking Beast presents a surprise, a ton of damage and a dangerously fast clock.
Oh yeah, it's such a bomb.
Entourage is different enough, sure, but putting Wickerbough Elder with the five-drops isn't fair to other five-drops since I'm pretty sure it would be the number one creature there
Nessian Asp can get big, but it still plays out fairly vanilla to me. I like the look of Silverback Shaman and Excavating Anurid, even if they hit less hard than Lifecraft Cavalry or Rhox Maulers. I have difficulty figuring out whether to try Shaman or Anurid. The things I like about them:
Shaman has trample up-front.
Anurid draws a card up-front.
Since I already have dudes playing the role of big trampler right now, I'm leaning towards Anurid for diversity. It helps you get to threshold faster, it technically has two modes since the sacrifice is a may, and vigilance on a fatty is a strong ability. Technically I already have dudes in the role of vigilant fatty too, though, so it's a bit of a wash for me. Do you have any follow-up info on these two?
I guess you're referring to Rubbleback Rhino and Wardscale Crocodile. They're not bad, but they tend to be under curve when played, so you really need to pair them with a stat boost to get the most out of them. I don't think they're a bad choice, I just personally prefer to cube more standalone beaters.
My Cube (DeckStats)
My Pauper Cube: 540 (CubeTutor link!)
Level 1 Judge
maybe its better to move to the salvation replacement what ever its name was? idk edit:mtgnexus
also my cube got moved to cubecobra, since its only a matter of time until ct is gone. recommend to do the same
https://cubecobra.com/cube/overview/37p
it was a good time with you, despite some differences. i learned a lot and AL was right about evaluations pretty often lol
hope paupercube never dies and we meet again in some other corner of the net.
powpercube Johnny https://cubecobra.com/cube/list/37t
Hahaha, same. I think it was because of the transition to Twitch for this site's logon. Never mind that. I was 5oul Crusher, but I'll assume this Dimir identity.
I've been rereading some of my old reviews. Some of them are pretty cringe, but I was learning the ropes in card evaluation. And I suspect my cube got played significantly less than others on here.
https://www.mtgsalvation.com/forums/the-game/the-cube-forum/cube-lists/806004-360-pauper-in-search-of-lost-commons was the last recorded iteration of my cube. I went through a phase of noob-friendlying some aspects, so people wouldn't just be stomped because they didn't know what Guardian of the Guildpact was. I think I also got tired of balancing everything around good removal and lightning fast aggro decks.
Naiad of the Hidden Coves: A 2/3 3-drop with a decent ability is pretty baseline. My initial thoughts are would I ever play this over a Man-o'-War, Sea Gate Oracle or Eldrazi Skyspawner? I think I would, but I would be needing to pick quite a bit of support to justify it. One mana Mana Leaks are definitely tempting, but most lists are not running Anicipate-like effects which seem to be this kind of cards bread and butter. Mostly because Anticipate is rather outclassed by Preordain and Gitaxian Probe. I would want to know what people's latent Naiad of the Hidden Coves already synergies are? In addition, I would be very hesitant to pick a card like this if I didn't know the contents of the cube, or I might feel betrayed for following a false lead if there wasn't the support for it and I spent an early pick on this thinking that I would consistently get the mana discount. Turn 4 Naiad into holding an instant seems decent. And it helps set up Capsize from turn 5 onwards. I have found Capsize to be a bit weak of late due to the much better early boards. Getting the repeated discount throughout the game is what will turn Naiad from being mediocre to a strong playable. I suspect Naiad will draw early removal, making the card seem better, until it is common knowledge how much value you actually end up accruing.
Vexing Gull: Falls below curve, but is a decent play after holding mana to counter or remove a big threat, especially on turn three. 2 toughness means that it won't make a strong flash blocker, unless you intend to trade.
I think the Gull is the stronger of the two 3-drops in cube, not by much mind you. All the flash creatures have been decent in cube despite their weaker stats. They mostly depend on how strong your other instant speed effects are, which tend to be very strong in blue. In Constructed you can get a lot more mileage out of the cost reduction. That being said, both 3 drops synergies very strongly with each other and they both support the same archetype, so you might want to include them with a couple of extra instant/flash cards to support the flash archetype. (No Brinewater Cutthroat, which would be the dream.) (edited more on Gull)
Admittedly my counterspell package is significantly slimmer than most at 2 mana and same with my instant-speed removal at 2 and 3 mana. But I would like people to start playing around with combat tricks (mostly so they can learn to play them) before ramping up the efficacy of cheap removal.
edit:
wall of text on playing blue:
After some thinking, some lists will be running Impulse. I cut Impulse after I realised how strong it is, but I might reinclude it now since I've had a play 'round with blue spells. Basically what I established is all the 1 mana blue draw spells are very good with Preordain and Gitaxian Probe being the best in this format. Paying 2 life for probe is so good that even non-blue decks want to do this, although when they do, Probe is relegated to the sideboard as aggro is such an important matchup that you don't want any cards sabotaging you from main deck.
3 mana on a counter can be worth it for the exile and so forth (Faerie Trickery). But most blue want dig over countermagic as countermagic is redundant whereas the pool of cheap dig is much more shallow and thus much less redundant. Countercontrol is normally what snaps up all the extra countermagic, but I'm not sure that heavily supporting this archetype makes your cube as strong as it can be on all fronts. All these blue spells create an amass the components type situation. You make up for your lack of good cheap bodies by seeing more and having the ability to run a few much narrower, high impact cards while mitigating the potential downside of holding a dead card. All those blue spells take up space in the 40 line up which make the opening turns a touch weaker, say compared to Green which tends to have gassy, mana efficient creatures from the word go. But because blue has multimodal creatures (Man-o'-War: it's a creature and a bouncespell!) forgoing the full spells package for a much slimmer, more streamlined one and pairing up with another colour with good value for creature effects can be a winning strategy as you go toe for toe against strong openings and you are still doing spell-like things to hold tempo. Some black creatures (Gravedigger) are great attrition cards. Slamming a Death Denied is often game if you are out of burn range.
I've been running almost no mana rocks, almost no duels and much less evasion. Blue still has heaps of flyers, but there are less Sulfuric Vortexs to deal with. I wanted to make blocking orientated creatures more viable. I didn't want fest mana and fixing in yet because until people understand the balancing of costs those kinds of effects create confusion and lead to many suboptimal decks. The multicoloured section is one card per combination at about the strength of Auger Spree. All these cuts allow for room to expand the monocoloured sections. You reap the benefits of sticking with an open colour much sooner.
On cube design decisions:
I am excluding all supplementary sets such as Modern Masters and their respective downshifting. I am including only a few of the draft bombs. I have already mentioned that I slimmed down cheap removal, cheap counters, elves and premium burn (to make room for Lash Out and Arrow Storm, and to make Titanic Strength playable). I tend to favour resource management cards and try to avoid raw stats. All Phyrexian mana (save the junk souleaters) is in and so are Planar Chaos cards when applicable (Mana Tithe > Force Spike). Only some of the weaker equipment stayed in. I try to stick with a modern colour pie distribution. The only tribe with any support is Zombies because there are so many in black and they are all playable cards even without any conscious support. Colourless mana is in, snows are out. Raw card advantage is monitored. With blue getting Treasure Cruises, black getting recursion, red getting the occasional x-for-1 and card filter, Green getting the odd engine and generally trading upwards. White gets the most virtual card advantage, typically this is in the form of cutting a land. Multicreature buffs and abilities such as first strike with a smattering of cheap tricks to trade upwards in mana efficiency and the odd cantrap there round out white's card advantage. There is also a Man-o'-War watch because I kept consistently beating my friends with them. The jellyfish and Mist Raven are still because in my opinion they are iconic cards, but all their friends aren't (Repluse being cut for Vapor Snag so you have to work work work to get that bounce lock).
On White:
White was by far the most difficult colour to work out. As fortune would have it, many well costed cheap white cards get printed and there is enough lifegain here to keep a well built white deck out of the red zone. When tweaking white I tried to make sure I accidentally didn't make White-Black unbeatable. Seriously, when their creatures start going late and you pick up the odd Liliana's Specter here and Seraph of Dawn there, backed with all the removal and 2-for-1's and extorty lifegain you can muster and before you know it you are unkillable by aggro, too disruptive for tempo, outtrade midrange, and are too taxing for control.
Cuts for Eldraine: Wildwood Tracker for something higher on curve, maybe a 5 or 6 drop? Tracker is a good turn 1 play in aggro and a low curve midrange. Everything in green activates the bonus. Tracker is weak to Lava Dart, but most green s are. Rosethorn Halberd, we'll get to in a minute.
Terrain Elemental and Saproling Migration are the weakest cards in Green two. 2 toughness isn't much better than 1 and Elemental is clearly weaker than Mire Boa, which isn't being ran here. A green Dragon Fodder that scales ok into late game isn't really worth it without cards such as Lead by Example taking advantage of the multiple bodies. As a road bump, Migration is more versatile that the one-drops I mentioned, but I perfer Blisterpod for the Scion. And if you are playing with a sideboard, siding in one-drops into relevant matchups is strong. Overall I don't think Saproling Migration will be cut because it fills a role from main deck, but I would like to see more two-for-one support in green to make those cheap bodies work. Maybe White or Red is where you have most of your multi-creature buffs. I think Raise the Alarm is stronger. Terrain Elemental is well stated and fits the low to the ground archetype you've got going, and nothing in Eldraine twos are worth it. There is nothing to do with food from Curious Pair other than eat it.
Snapping Gnarlid with the extra land ramp gives it the edge here, but it suffers from consistency. Darkthicket Wolf is a much stronger 2-drop version of Basking Rootwalla. Werebear has been discussed extensively. The gist of it is it's turn 2 mana that turns into good damage. The downside is you don't want this kind of card when red comes along to blitz you, and it will if you are looking for the coveted 1st in a Swiss bracket. Sauroform Hybrid which you are not running fills the duel purpose 2-drop into late game monster. The 2/2 for 2 is standard in most match ups, where it blocks aggro ok and attacks until your opponent lands a meatsheild. The adapt is a big one and at instant speed, you can get tricking. Admittedly Green at common is not well known for it's strong flash spells, but paired up with blue, well... Dawntreader Elk: another 2/2 for 2, but this one trades in for a land! Green can really use the cheap, well stated bodies to work to help with aggro match-ups, especially the duel purpose ones when a slower mid-rangey deck comes along and finds a way to invalidate all your early plays. In addition all the 2/2 provide the same clock as their evasion counterparts. Viridian Emissary one of the best road bumps you can against red, although Emissary can be left in the cold against evasion and often just sits on the battlefield neglected. However Emissary is one of the better creatures to buff and it's dying trigger turns a typically bad 2-for-1 into a somewhat favourable 1-for-1, and that's if you opponent has the removal. The risk factor generally doesn't make it worth to try the trick in the first place, but being able to aggressively trick into open mana is strong because your opponent could be bluffing or missing drops and a small guy eating removal and putting you up a land is strong. Thornweld Archer and Mire Boa are the strongest 2 drops your not running. I especially like Thornweld Archer it's a 2/1 with a keyword soup before those effects got properly balanced.
A lot can be said about Green 2-drops and I'm getting distracted looking at my list, not at your's.
Boarderland Ranger and Civic Wayfinder provide redundancy for Green's midrange plan. I really worry about Green's match up against a Red blitz. As the 2/2 body on turn 3 too weak. Coming off a turn 1 elf is fine, but you still haven't gained tempo, just card advantage. Losing to a tier-1 deck basically guarantees that you won't get first place in a Swiss. I like these cards, but I would only want one in a deck and the quality of Green three has improved. Jungleborn Pioneer is a better than either of these, 3/3 is still a respectable play and on the other hand getting a land into play is all gravy. Simian Grunts: these monkeys mean business. Hungry Spriggan and Thriving Rhino both are chunky attack mode 3 drops. Spriggan is the best stated 3 drop at attacking which makes it difficult to ever consider cutting, there is no defence mode. It provides a nice Trail of Crumbs for a dedicated aggro-drafter or tempo-player. Thriving Rhino is above curve as soon as you get the first attack off, however it's weak if you ever lose tempo in the early game, which seems to be a theme in Green 3. It feels like you're relying too much on mana elves to carry, but what happens when you don't get enough or don't draw them? Between 3 matches of best of threes which (typically) increase in difficulty, I think green is lacking the consistency to go the distance without a second colour there to carry.
Tishana's Wayfinder and Scion Summoner, both body makers without the appropriate synergy. Nest Invader makes the Summoner look bad, but that doen't necassarily mean that Scion Summoner is weak, just that Nest Invader is very strong. 3 power divided into to bodies is weaker than a 3/3 in most cases. The extra ability on the 1/1 needs to be made advantage of just justify the irrelevance of the body. Tricking with the hexproofer is super cute, and strong when pulled off, but that requires playing tricks outside the odd Giant Growth. And the downsides on combat tricks are well understood and pretty terrible when they fail. More on tricks when I get to that part. Ramping off the Scion seems decent. 3/3 of stats added up also helps when you pass turn into aggro, and then you wait you see how much you've got to work with for turn 4. Trusted Forcemage brings the stats so a good fit for most Green archetypes (aggro, tempo, midrange), but is weak to disruption. Not really much of a downside (creature dies to creature removal), it just means you don't want to Miscalculate and end up 2-for-1ing yourself.
Crocanura blocks, grows and eats fliers. One of the most well rounded 3 drops in my opinion. Grazing Gladehart: serious anti-aggro tech. Hooded Brawler smashes when needed. Yavamiya Elder is still one of the best three drops.
I might make room for Sporecap Spider as it mitigates the main downside of losing and lives thoroughly outside burn range. It might end-up living in sideboards, but seems like an all-star in relevant match-ups. Seasonal Ritual is colourfixing when you need it. Rosethorn Acolyte is weak as far mana-creatures are concerned, especially with mana elves available. It isn't worth the slot as nice as Seasonal Ritual sounds, being a sorcery means you can't use it to get the blue for Mana Leak, and not being able to do that pretty much puts out of consideration. Fixing for the Fireball you picked up sounds alright again, but that kind of fixing is made strong for the soonness of it's availability and there isn't much that green wants from other colours in the first few turns.
The four drops are the beginning of Green's payload. Peema Outrider seems like an easy cut for Fierce Witchstalker, or you could run both as they are very well rounded. Wild Leotau is the biggest 4 drop you're missing, although it hampers curving into 5 or 6, it is still one of the biggest turn 4s.
I'm getting tired I might edit some stuff in later. Some 5 drops could be cut for extra 4's. Likewise which a couple of 6's and 7's. Pretty much, you don't need to draft redundant late drops. Those could free up slots for a better selection of cheaper creatures so you green deck can actually have the right fit and the right spot on curve. This also helps alleviate the dependence on mana elves for casting cards. In spells, green has many cheap spells, but when you goal is always to cast the big thing in hand, these tricks don't add to that game plan. When you are tricking you want your cheap cards to go the distance and hopeful eat the spells right out of your opponent's hand before they can disrupt your big plays. Also cheap cards all synergise with each other because you can play multiple of them in a turn. There aren't many cards in common which punish laying out your hand. The trail of crumbs for green aggro or even tempo seemed a bit thin in 1 and 2, even at 3. I really enjoy playing Nessian Courser. There are no frills, it just trades — almost never downwards.
-First of all, even though the limited and common powerlevel in draft has risen significantly since War of the Sparks the "good" cards are all so archetype specific, many of them don't really seem to fit, at least not into my cube with it's existing archetypes.
-From Theros, even thought the set seems to be full of borderline -> cubeable cards, I wasn't really sold on anything yet. The card I'm most interested in, is from the very early spoilers. It's Warbriar Blessing (Link). I think this might mostly be interesting for me personally, because I have a very deep enchtantment archetype in green. I'm currently even running Cartouche of Strength. This also might go pretty well with all the lower tier hexproof creatures in green, I added a while ago, when drafters complained, there wasn't enough hexproof to put the auras on, so I added Sacred Wolf and Conifer Strider. Giving one of these 2 additional points of thoughness + killing a creature seems like a solid deal. I'm not too high on fight spells over all, because I don't think green necessarily needs medicore removal, when they simply get access to way better options from secondary colors, but being an aura, as I stated, has a bunch of positive side effects in my cube.
-I just realized, that not a single card from Eldraine actually made it into my cube, which is kind of unusual, because usually at least 1 card makes the cut, simply because WOTC seem to like printing at least a single common into the set, that is on a different level, than the average (e.g. Cloudkin Seer). After playing a lot of ELD and really liking the format, I still don't see much potential for most of the cards in the context of my cube. I also got excited for actually getting a bunch of new cards for my artifact cube, so I didn't really feel like I missed out on this set.
I really like Rimrock Knight, but red 2s are stacked as hell and the "free" pump is way way worse in my cube with it's overabundance of cheap instant speed removal, to fizzle the whole card. It also has like this weird "bloodrush problem". You want to play it on turn 2, but in that case you won't have used the card to it's full potential and than it's just way worse than the competition.
Wicked Guardian is amazing in ELD limited, but this format is defined by mostly having Toghness > Power, which definitly can't be said about my cube.
Fierce Witchstalker is probably the card that mostly stands out from the rest and when it was spoiled, I may have overlooked it because of all the premium cmc 4 green creatures with at least 4 power and 4 toughness we got over the last years, but none of them actually have trample, which starts to become quite valueable with 4 power and above. Also the added Bonus of getting the food is something that really makes this better than just your average plain 4/4 for 4. I might have a look into my cube and try to find a spot to add this retroactively.
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mtgnexus is pretty much doa, they even forbid preseason spoiler discussions m(
how about setting up our own discord server? afterall its free. id like that.
Regarding ELD. The Stalker got overlooked by me and now replaced my recently added Kraul Foragers, because my green needs a midgrange lifegain against burndecks. unconditional 5+life on a 4+/4+ would be nice and i think we see one soon.
other cards from eld that made it for me is Smitten Swordmaster being a upgrade/2nd copy of child of night
best card probably Gingerbrute
fully agree on cobbles analysis of greens situation and his individual picks. i also ended in manaelf into 3-drop green. prefer Sedge Scorpion over young wolf as a blocker though. since i try to avoid x/1s as much as possible. 1/x blocker are weak for me.
right now im trying to figure which colors should support the [cmc-slot] creatures. greens 2 are kinda lacking and they have the elves, so i cut back on those. not sure in the other colors yet. (mono)white seems to have the most balanced curve available, with a very strong cc1 suite. at least my section reflects that. Red is strong on 1 and 2, kinda loses competition at cc3+ with a handful of exceptions.
Naiad of the Hidden Coves will boot trinket mage for me. most value i see with capsize add a familiar to the mix and capsize becomes scary again.
other card im waiting for ist the 3/3 flyer that gets cheaper with devotion. for assumed 5W base cost.
Warbriar Blessing I consider as well for more aurasupport. Fight at Sorceryspeed is kinda meh though and I dont run the Sacred Wolf yet. so no room most likely.
powpercube Johnny https://cubecobra.com/cube/list/37t
Arbor Elf
Avacyn's Pilgrim
Boreal Druid
Elves of Deep Shadow
Fyndhorn Elves
Elvish Mystic
and the auras
Utopia Sprawl
Wild Growth
As stated before all of these are stronger than any other 1 drop you can play in green, even Boreal Druid. The only reason I'm not running Avacyn's Pilgrim and Elves of Deep Shadow is because they break the color wheel and I'm kind of fanatical perfectionist, so this would really bother me.
I don't think you need to "force" any additional Onedrops into your cube, if you simply go by power level in a vacuum. I like neither Young Wolf nor Blisterpod. They are only really good if you pair them with Sacrifice Outlets.
Jungle Lion and Mtenda Lion are Ok if you really want to push aggressive green decks, even though the latter is super random.
Ghazbán Ogre and Wild Dogs are way too risky if you play against Red.
The CMC 1 Deathtouchers are a nice way to deal with hexproof, but since it's mostly a green archetype having them in green doesn't help the rest of the draft table much.
Btw. I'm currently thinking about possibly testing my cube without the aura/hexproof archetype. It takes up an incredible amount of slots and even though it's viable in form of power level it can also be very frustrating to play against. It's also kind of a parasitic archetype in the way, that all the auras aren't of much use to any other deck without a critical amount of hexproof creatures. This might leave green as the weakest color, but it might be worth a try and if it improves the draft experience it's worth it. I don't mind green being mostly a support color, like it is in the official sets from the latest years. After all there is a bunch of viable aggro/midrange creatures in green nowadays (e.g. Wicked Guardian), which might be viable, even without hexproof. Also there is a huge amount of solid ramp and fixing at common (e.g. the elves and Sakura-Tribe Elder). You only need the early game ramp and fixing since there still isn't much viable payoff for having huge amounts of mana. I will definitely make some changes and see how the cube could look without the Bogles archetype.
Pauper Cube & Artifact Pauper Cube & Multiplayer Cube
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cmc1 deathtouch is solid all around. either as earlygame "pseudoremoval" or "pseudounblockable"
im still not an overly excited fan of manaelves, since they are so fragile and often lead to card-disadvantage. but its the best thing green can do appearently. stompygreen is equally fragile and outclassed by boros nowadays.
more fatty-payoff would be nice. either a big hexproof or more etb draws.
powpercube Johnny https://cubecobra.com/cube/list/37t
There are several reasons why I'm interested in making a huge change to my cube like this:
1. I haven't had major changes to my cube for a while and I want to test something different. There were so few flex slots, that it's really hard to fit anything new in.
2. I've already recived negative feedback on hexproof, because it simply limits interaction and I agree with that criticism, but defended it, with the argument, that the removal is just sooo efficient in pauper, that it's really punishing to get tempoed out due to spending too much mana on your creatures, compared to the cost of removal.
If it turns out, that it isn't necessary to have hexproof in the cube in order for green to be viable I'm really happy.
3. This has opened up an incredible amount of slots, I can use to experiment with different cards. E.g. I decided to use the free blue slots for a bunch of fliers, to make aggressive blue decks a thing again, since I really like it when all the colors have access to all the different archetypes, in the same way as I've dedicated some slots towards red and white control.
I'm also tinkering with the idea of readding the Ghostly Flicker - Archaeomancer combo. Alternatively I can also just fill the slots with a bunch of goodstuff and counterspells, to make control more counter heavy again.
Archetype support is a very tricky thing.
When you don't dedicate enough spots towards it, the decks might not come together and people with only a half dedicated pool will feel bad, this will happen especially, when you don't draft the whole cube. When you comit too much into it, you might be forcing someone in that color to play the archetype, which is exactly not what I want, at least for my cube. My goal is to give drafters the tools to do whatever they want.
In order to make Gx Stompy more viable I've actually added the Elves I wasn't playing before, because the most powerful green, the weakest color, can do, is to play a turn 1 elf into 3-4 drops on the following turns.
Pauper Cube & Artifact Pauper Cube & Multiplayer Cube
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imho is enough synergy to win the game. no need to go all in.
there arent much outs to a 5/5 hexproof flyer
meanwhile beast is kinda useful enough on its own, depending on the opponent and flight can just turn any other onedrop into a serious clock. sure you open up yourself for a 2:1, but so does runnin vaporkins, which are trading 0:1 against a couple cards.
powpercube Johnny https://cubecobra.com/cube/list/37t