Unless you want to shove square pegs into round holes (pick one snow land, get 5 of something), you really need to go all basics are snow or not at all.
Glad you think so. There's a lot of esoteric stuff that we might talk about, so if you have questions, ask.
Palingensia Striped Riverwinder was the last blue card I added, and part of its case to make it in was to have kiora be a little bit more blue. But it still ramps and only needs one trigger to be worth it if you're in some control deck with nongreen finishers.
A question I think I know the answer to, but just asking some more experienced cubers - are 2 drops with a 2 pip color cost (eg WW) basically a no go due to mana difficulties? The only three I see in the cubetutor average 720 are Consul's Lieutenant, Gifted Aetherborn, and Strangleroot Geist. What turn do you usually find yourself able to put these down?
A question I think I know the answer to, but just asking some more experienced cubers - are 2 drops with a 2 pip color cost (eg WW) basically a no go due to mana difficulties? The only three I see in the cubetutor average 720 are Consul's Lieutenant, Gifted Aetherborn, and Strangleroot Geist. What turn do you usually find yourself able to put these down?
For aggressive cards cc costs are a no-go in my cube since you can only reliably cast them on curve in a mono color deck. I cut everything including Consul's Lieutenant because of it. It's a powerful two drop on paper, but he's not that good if you can't cast him before turn 5+ in many games and never get a chance to make him renowned.
It's slightly different for a cards like Gifted Aetherborn or his big brother Vampire Nighthawk since they are still useful later on, but even for these cards it's not ideal since I when I build my deck I can't treat them like a two or three drop in most cases. That's why I like to have as few cc or 1cc cost cards as possible.
If you want to know about chances read the manamath article in Leelue's signature. It will show you how difficult it really is to cast a card like Consul's Lieutenant or even a 1cc card like Vampire Nighthawk reliably on curve.
It also depends a lot on your mana fixing what is reasonable. If you break peasant or regular cube rules it can help (and I do that already), but with a strictly peasant singleton land section it's out of question to reliably cast these cards on curve.
Thanks for the reply and the reading recommendation! It was a really nice article and basically had all the math I was looking for (I'm even more conservative than his 75% estimate) so yeah, I'll try keeping that all in mind. The 1CC and 2CC stuff was probably the most eye opening.
I'll probably be looking to keep my first attempt 'true' peasant and see how the group likes that before fiddling with that.
Edit: A card I'm curious about - Guardian of the Guildpact, how much trouble does it cause with it's super strong protection effect?
If you can put an equipment on it, it can be very dangerous. Especially if you have very small guild sections that focus more on signals than just boring staple effects. When I started with CU/be, it was still an absolute powerhouse. I have not included it in years even though I feel like it is in the waiting bench for something to make it worthwhile since the effect is still super strong.
Guardian of the guildpact used to be a top 3 white creature but having 2 power on 4 mana absolutely requires extra help for anyone to care on offense, and creatures with real stats are just much better at racing it than they used to be. We don't need to pay for inconsistency at 4 mana when we can just play efficient tokens strategies or cards with high synergy with "playing magic" like rhox veteran. Also, a 2 power indestructible isn't holding off as many boards as it used to.
Because of the pandemic, me and my friends have been cube drafting on Tabletop Simulator. We've been having a great time. If you guys ever want to get a cube draft going, even a 2 man Rochester draft, I'm down. I can upload your cubes to TTS for you and teach you TTS, it's real easy.
Any of the Territorial Hammerskull, Flanking Troops ability cards are good. I played it once in my friend's peasant cube and it was fine. Hammerskull is a great white creature that I'm more than willing to pay an extra mana for, pumping the team for +1/+0 is just gravy.
In a situation where you're the beatdown, think of these as Icy Manipulators, except with the additional bonus of being a 2/2 or 2/3 or pumping your whole team.
My CU/be includes it but I'd say it's mostly a roleplayer that pulls several minor but key roles, especially for more aggressive white decks. It doesn't do anything fancy but it does several jobs you want and probably need done. If you include other cards that already fill those niches (team pumps, removing blockers, potential blocker that passes the Lightning Bolt test if you're losing the race or wait for it to come active next turn), it may well be made redundant.
It's been good in my cube. In aggressive RW go wide og BW aristocrats it helps push through even more damage. I think the combination of battle cry, tapping a defender and toughness 4 is a great design.
If you ran no reanimator in cube, what's the highest CMC you'd go for a ramp target? Would you go up to 9 for Artisan? Just stop at 7 for the normal green big boys? Something at 8?
If you ran no reanimator in cube, what's the highest CMC you'd go for a ramp target? Would you go up to 9 for Artisan? Just stop at 7 for the normal green big boys? Something at 8?
I have some reanimator, but really only 4 cards that could put something like Artisan onto the field as opposed to in my hand. I've never been keen on Artisan as a reanimator target, as you lose half the card's functionality. For me, it's always been a ramp target. Then again, I probably have a little less pure aggro than the average cube; mine is built more for a powerful mid-game. So I guess it depends on the cube.
I have some reanimator, but really only 4 cards that could put something like Artisan onto the field as opposed to in my hand. I've never been keen on Artisan as a reanimator target, as you lose half the card's functionality. For me, it's always been a ramp target. Then again, I probably have a little less pure aggro than the average cube; mine is built more for a powerful mid-game. So I guess it depends on the cube.
Yeah, you seem pretty light on reanimator compared to some lists I've seen. Would you say the eldrazi are green cards in practice?
I have some reanimator, but really only 4 cards that could put something like Artisan onto the field as opposed to in my hand. I've never been keen on Artisan as a reanimator target, as you lose half the card's functionality. For me, it's always been a ramp target. Then again, I probably have a little less pure aggro than the average cube; mine is built more for a powerful mid-game. So I guess it depends on the cube.
Yeah, you seem pretty light on reanimator compared to some lists I've seen. Would you say the eldrazi are green cards in practice?
I have ten other cards capable of returning it to the battlefield if it's already there (Undying Evil, etc.) or of returning it to my hand from the graveyard. It's just the straight-up reanimate a fattie from the graveyard that's sparse. There are even a couple that can reanimate small creatures but not large ones, so like 17 cards total.
I'd say green can access the Eldrazi the soonest, but any color can use them if they stall the enemy long enough. I've played them in mono-black by killing all of my opponent's creatures and gaining life to survive longer.
At least in my cube 9 mana is one hell of a lot to cast even for a green ramp deck. I rarely play Artisan in such a deck and I never play it in a deck that is not ramp or reanimator. It's mostly a reanimator target in my cube. Sure, you lose a bit of functionality, but if you resurrect it on turn 3 or 4 and your opponent doesn't remove it before you can attack it's game over anyway, so who cares?
I very much dislike that it can get removed by unconditional removal even at sorcery speed without having any impact at all and I usually avoid high cmc cards like that, but for one big, colorless Eldrazi like that there has to be room in my cube.
Personally I wouldn't play it if I wouldn't support reanimator unless I had some kind of super ramp archetype with cards like Basalt Monolith, Thran Dynamo and the like. I have a lot of 'normal' ramp cards in green and the highest cmc targets I consider playable cost 7 mana. When you think about it that is already a lot. If you play 2 ramp cards and 5 lands you won't be able to cast any of these before turn 6 on average. And that's with a near perfect hand in a deck that sacrifices reliability for mana, so most of the time it's probably more like turn 7-8.
If you ran no reanimator in cube, what's the highest CMC you'd go for a ramp target? Would you go up to 9 for Artisan? Just stop at 7 for the normal green big boys? Something at 8?
15 mana Emrakul. I double sleeve my cards, so I used sharpie on the inner sleeve to make Through the Breach unable to cheat Worldspine Wurm and Emrakul into play. With Time Spiral Storage lands and Mana Batteries it's fine.
If you count it, hard cast double rainbow for Door to Nothingness is probably the most difficult to pull off expensive threat in my cube. One day someone will be able to fire the Death Star, one day.
I purposefully have a slower, low power environment where 10~ mana plays are somewhat reasonable. I especially like big expensive creatures that don't outright win you the game, like Reya Dawnbringer, Colossus of Sardia, Teeka's Dragon, Polar Kraken, etc. The game is more exciting when your opponent can try to fend off your huge monster, or when your opponent summons a huge beast and you try to fend it off. There is a, "King Kong at the gates" moment when someone actually manages to summon Thing From the Deep and creatures like Ulamog don't really have that same tension, you can only really survive a turn or 2 with it on board. You can try to brace the gates, you can try to throw more spears at Kong, maybe he can be stopped. Ulamog just can't be. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lUJAgGE3AtI 15 mana Emrakul is unstoppable, but that's the exception, and at 15 mana you do deserve something that powerful.
So that's my answer to you, slow your environment down and play worse cards in order to make battlecruiser Magic possible.
Snow lands are working out for me very nicely. But I don't think I would feel right recommending it to people just because the cost of getting 150 snow lands is not worth (to me) the relative upside. There is something of a coolness factor that comes with it though, and if the viking set uses snow like modern horizons did, I am probably going to feel like it was worth the investment.
Even stuff like finding coldsteel heart with glacial revelation feels pretty slick, and having another axis by which to judge the value of random cards is sweet.
//
Every once in a while I label Artisan of kozilek as being too expensive, but then it makes its way into some super dedicated slow build and earns its slot tentatively again. It is almost a green card for me though, and I should see if its play pattern is close enough to exclusively green for me to actually categorize it as a green card straight up.
I am currently trying a different distribution for rare land fixing that gives different guilds different duals but still feels symetrical (which I really like). Maybe others have tried, but for me this is a new thing and I thought I'd share. I'll copy my post that accompanied the change on Cube Cobra:
When experimenting with rare land fixing I first tried a combination of ABU duals, shock duals and fetch but this made the land fixing feel way too "rare" and not in the spirit of a peasant cube imho. After that I settled for pain, check and ABU duals. This was still a huge improvement over peasant land fixing while still keeping true to the spirit of it (again imho).
Unfortunately, the painlands are odd. While Battlefield Forge is great and got picked often, Yavimaya Coast or Adarkar Wastes were more often than not not even picked by the person in those colors. This got me thinking about replacing the painlands with shockduals. This would make the checklands better in three color decks as well. However, I am afraid that this might again feel like no longer "peasant". Although the "ABU duals, shock duals and checks" idea is still on the table I came across another idea which I want to try first:
Some color combination want different things than others, but I didn't like breaking symmetry in land fixing. The idea I found circumvents this "problem" while still giving color combinations different fixing. Each color will get a certain dual and these will pair with all other colors. So:
W/x: Checklands
U/x: Scry lands
B/x: Filterlands
R/x: Painlands
G/x: Manlands
This will create 20 slots to replace all but the ABU duals and still confirm to my arbitrary sense of symmetry. Although I am not completely happy (the checklands for W/x are more like a stand-in), let's see how this goes.
Anyway, anybody else have any experience with this or any other feedback?
Snow lands are working out for me very nicely. But I don't think I would feel right recommending it to people just because the cost of getting 150 snow lands is not worth (to me) the relative upside. There is something of a coolness factor that comes with it though, and if the viking set uses snow like modern horizons did, I am probably going to feel like it was worth the investment.
Even stuff like finding coldsteel heart with glacial revelation feels pretty slick, and having another axis by which to judge the value of random cards is sweet.
//
Every once in a while I label Artisan of kozilek as being too expensive, but then it makes its way into some super dedicated slow build and earns its slot tentatively again. It is almost a green card for me though, and I should see if its play pattern is close enough to exclusively green for me to actually categorize it as a green card straight up.
Glad to hear they're working! I wasn't considering actually buying them, just house-ruling all basics as snows. I hadn't considered that the upcoming viking set may bring back more snow, that could make it even more worthwhile.
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Draft it on Cubetutor here, and CubeCobra here.
Treasure Cruise did nothing wrong.
My CubeCobra (draft 20 card packs, 2 packs.)
430, Peasant, Very Unpowered
Why you should take your hybrids out of your gold section
Manamath Article
Palingensia
Striped Riverwinder was the last blue card I added, and part of its case to make it in was to have kiora be a little bit more blue. But it still ramps and only needs one trigger to be worth it if you're in some control deck with nongreen finishers.
My CubeCobra (draft 20 card packs, 2 packs.)
430, Peasant, Very Unpowered
Why you should take your hybrids out of your gold section
Manamath Article
For aggressive cards cc costs are a no-go in my cube since you can only reliably cast them on curve in a mono color deck. I cut everything including Consul's Lieutenant because of it. It's a powerful two drop on paper, but he's not that good if you can't cast him before turn 5+ in many games and never get a chance to make him renowned.
It's slightly different for a cards like Gifted Aetherborn or his big brother Vampire Nighthawk since they are still useful later on, but even for these cards it's not ideal since I when I build my deck I can't treat them like a two or three drop in most cases. That's why I like to have as few cc or 1cc cost cards as possible.
If you want to know about chances read the manamath article in Leelue's signature. It will show you how difficult it really is to cast a card like Consul's Lieutenant or even a 1cc card like Vampire Nighthawk reliably on curve.
It also depends a lot on your mana fixing what is reasonable. If you break peasant or regular cube rules it can help (and I do that already), but with a strictly peasant singleton land section it's out of question to reliably cast these cards on curve.
My Old School Battlebox
My Premodern Battlebox
I'll probably be looking to keep my first attempt 'true' peasant and see how the group likes that before fiddling with that.
Edit: A card I'm curious about - Guardian of the Guildpact, how much trouble does it cause with it's super strong protection effect?
My CubeCobra (draft 20 card packs, 2 packs.)
430, Peasant, Very Unpowered
Why you should take your hybrids out of your gold section
Manamath Article
Draft it on Cubetutor here, and CubeCobra here.
Treasure Cruise did nothing wrong.
My steam username is: paragoomba slayer
My avatar on steam is of Benalish Hero.
Any of the Territorial Hammerskull, Flanking Troops ability cards are good. I played it once in my friend's peasant cube and it was fine. Hammerskull is a great white creature that I'm more than willing to pay an extra mana for, pumping the team for +1/+0 is just gravy.
In a situation where you're the beatdown, think of these as Icy Manipulators, except with the additional bonus of being a 2/2 or 2/3 or pumping your whole team.
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.
It's been good in my cube. In aggressive RW go wide og BW aristocrats it helps push through even more damage. I think the combination of battle cry, tapping a defender and toughness 4 is a great design.
2023 Average Peasant Cube|and Discussion
Because I have more decks than fit in a signature
Useful Resources:
MTGSalvation tags
EDHREC
ManabaseCrafter
Yeah, you seem pretty light on reanimator compared to some lists I've seen. Would you say the eldrazi are green cards in practice?
I'd say green can access the Eldrazi the soonest, but any color can use them if they stall the enemy long enough. I've played them in mono-black by killing all of my opponent's creatures and gaining life to survive longer.
2023 Average Peasant Cube|and Discussion
Because I have more decks than fit in a signature
Useful Resources:
MTGSalvation tags
EDHREC
ManabaseCrafter
I very much dislike that it can get removed by unconditional removal even at sorcery speed without having any impact at all and I usually avoid high cmc cards like that, but for one big, colorless Eldrazi like that there has to be room in my cube.
Personally I wouldn't play it if I wouldn't support reanimator unless I had some kind of super ramp archetype with cards like Basalt Monolith, Thran Dynamo and the like. I have a lot of 'normal' ramp cards in green and the highest cmc targets I consider playable cost 7 mana. When you think about it that is already a lot. If you play 2 ramp cards and 5 lands you won't be able to cast any of these before turn 6 on average. And that's with a near perfect hand in a deck that sacrifices reliability for mana, so most of the time it's probably more like turn 7-8.
My Old School Battlebox
My Premodern Battlebox
2023 Average Peasant Cube|and Discussion
Because I have more decks than fit in a signature
Useful Resources:
MTGSalvation tags
EDHREC
ManabaseCrafter
How's the snow working out for you? Have you tried any snow cards that aren't currently in your cube?
I'm thinking of going for it, though I'd probably leave out stuff like Cold Snap or anything else that majorly hoses all the lands being snow.
15 mana Emrakul. I double sleeve my cards, so I used sharpie on the inner sleeve to make Through the Breach unable to cheat Worldspine Wurm and Emrakul into play. With Time Spiral Storage lands and Mana Batteries it's fine.
If you count it, hard cast double rainbow for Door to Nothingness is probably the most difficult to pull off expensive threat in my cube. One day someone will be able to fire the Death Star, one day.
I purposefully have a slower, low power environment where 10~ mana plays are somewhat reasonable. I especially like big expensive creatures that don't outright win you the game, like Reya Dawnbringer, Colossus of Sardia, Teeka's Dragon, Polar Kraken, etc. The game is more exciting when your opponent can try to fend off your huge monster, or when your opponent summons a huge beast and you try to fend it off. There is a, "King Kong at the gates" moment when someone actually manages to summon Thing From the Deep and creatures like Ulamog don't really have that same tension, you can only really survive a turn or 2 with it on board. You can try to brace the gates, you can try to throw more spears at Kong, maybe he can be stopped. Ulamog just can't be. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lUJAgGE3AtI 15 mana Emrakul is unstoppable, but that's the exception, and at 15 mana you do deserve something that powerful.
So that's my answer to you, slow your environment down and play worse cards in order to make battlecruiser Magic possible.
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.
Even stuff like finding coldsteel heart with glacial revelation feels pretty slick, and having another axis by which to judge the value of random cards is sweet.
//
Every once in a while I label Artisan of kozilek as being too expensive, but then it makes its way into some super dedicated slow build and earns its slot tentatively again. It is almost a green card for me though, and I should see if its play pattern is close enough to exclusively green for me to actually categorize it as a green card straight up.
My CubeCobra (draft 20 card packs, 2 packs.)
430, Peasant, Very Unpowered
Why you should take your hybrids out of your gold section
Manamath Article
Anyway, anybody else have any experience with this or any other feedback?
My C/Ube on Cube Cobra
Glad to hear they're working! I wasn't considering actually buying them, just house-ruling all basics as snows. I hadn't considered that the upcoming viking set may bring back more snow, that could make it even more worthwhile.