With the new format announced, I'm inspired to make a little 4 player cube of Pioneer Peasant cards. Seeing as it is pretty similar to frontier, I was wondering if anyone here would have some advice or good example cubes? Frontier cubers, do you plan to expand to Pioneer? What cards would you add from previous sets if you did?
If I would build a Pioneer Cube, I would include rares and mythics. I don't think the commons + uncommons froms these sets is really enough to make the gameplay interesting. Drafting standard's greatest hits from the last 6 years sounds pretty good.
Agreed that the pool is hardly going to be deep enough to allow for much creativity. If you are going to try and support specific themes, the choices are going to be sort of obvious given the depth of the CU pool. Especially given how the Pioneer format includes the slump they had in CU playability as crucial effects were being dumped into higher rarities at playable rates and the CU versions were overpriced for 'limited purposes'. Of course, it is possible to go off the walls with what you end up doing and just include whatever but in terms of standard cube construction within the Peasant limits, the pool of viable cards and available archetypes is pretty shallow.
Here is a 240 4-person cube I slapped together. It seems pretty draftable to me... A lot of the cards are ones I tested out and just didn't make the cut for the normal 420. Let me know what you think! The average power is pretty low, but plenty of staple cards from recent sets make an appearance. Still working on the archetypes, and could use some help deciding what the guild cards should be. Gonna test out all the planeswalkers for now, and side out the ones that no one plays.
EDIT: Forgot to mention that in addition to basic lands, I intend for each player to have access to up to 4 cycle deserts from Amonkhet, so keep that in mind when evaluating the desert synergies.
It still really feels too shallow to my liking. Based on a P1P1 Duskwatch Recruiter, I tried to go super deep on a semi-aggressive RG creature deck with a few midrange curve toppers but despite getting some of the best 5-drops, the curve felt off even when I tried to get more early creatures drafted. The included big hitters feel like they will also be more swingy as a result.
Edit: I mean - 4 red 2-drop creatures, 3 of which are archetype support and none of those archetypes is just 'aggro'?
And while the last few years has been a bit weird in terms of peasant cube in that C/U removal has been poor for example, retail limited formats have generally been good. There are some exceptions of course, but if you pick the best from the best and look at cross synergies, there could definitely be something there.
An aside: How would you treat downshifts? I found Ire Shaman in my scryfall-search for an uncommon pioneer-legal red two-drop, but its uncommon printing was in M25. I presume you would judge rarity based on standard-legal printings only?
I personally don't have a problem necessarily with using downshifts. Some people may.
I judge more on card complexity, power, synergy etc. Clone was in the first iteration, but I took it out.
I might switch the spells matter cards for an archetype that requires less cards. Artifacts perhaps? Open to suggestions!
Edit: and in my experience with the Cubetutor drafting, this cube rewards staying open and really punishes forcing an archetype. I end up with about 3/4 two color, 1/4 three color decks, and no mono color decks as of yet.
I think it would be fine particularly when a lot of uncommons have gotten a lot stronger recently.
Your counter spells and burn will be a lot worse but I play modern peasant and that also has worse counters and burn than full peseant and that's fine.
The big issue is that the available lands kind of suck, you don't even get all the tri lands and a lot of those powerful uncommons are multicoloured.
And while the last few years has been a bit weird in terms of peasant cube in that C/U removal has been poor for example, retail limited formats have generally been good. There are some exceptions of course, but if you pick the best from the best and look at cross synergies, there could definitely be something there.
I totally agree. If anything, playing something like these limited formats without the bomb rares sounds great to me.
Will probably have it built and drafted sometime next month. I wanted a cheap 4 man cube for when we only have 2 to 4 drafters and don't want to mess with the big one. So far, its drafting like I want it to... A little worried about UW archetype. I want it to be something other than just flyers, but with two lords it seems inevitable. I'd have to switch up some cards to support the archetype...
Strangely enough, I recently built a Pioneer Peasant Cube, as sort of a fun thought project that is pretty cheap to put together physically (no foils for this CUbe, but lots of weird alternate versions).
I am trying to emphasize the themes for each color pair, so the removal is slightly under-powered,
Here is the list: https://www.cubetutor.com/viewcube/161689
I built around enemy color pairs, which each have both a major and minor theme. Allied colors get a minor theme only.
W/B- Lifegain (major) and Vampires (minor): Tried to keep the lifegain as either large single-time effects or small repeatable effects. Lifegain has a lot of decent payoffs at C/UC in Pioneer-legal sets.
U/R- Artifacts (major) and Wizards (minor): I wish there were more colored artifacts. A lot of my creatures in these colors make artifacts in some way.
B/G- Full graveyard (major) and Food (minor): "Full graveyard" means things like delirium and undergrowth, with no delve at all. Really hard to find a decent minor theme for this pair. Food is the only thing that had 4+ cards in each color and a gold card.
R/W- Auras/Equipment (major) and Cycling (minor): One of the main reasons I under-powered my removal is to give the enhanced creatures room to thrive.
G/U- Counters (major) and Flash (minor): The only uncommon Planewalkers are in these colors so I can proliferate onto them. Included some Werewolves as an incentive to play more flash creatures.
W/U- Fliers: We basically have 3 flying lords, so it was easy to find the theme here.
U/B- Zombies: The Amass stuff works decently with +1/+1 synergies and black has tons of zombinos.
B/R- Steal and sacrifice: A classic limited combo.
R/G- Energy and trample: Was mostly energy, but it was easy to fit a little trample synergies in from Ikoria.
G/W- Miscellaneous: Hard to find something here that was not replicated already by a major theme. Everything plays with the major theme of either Green or White.
Colorless- I have a pretty big artifact section, as every color pair kind of wants them for different purposes. Tried to find as many artifacts that play with the themes of the set.
Also made room for other synergies like Gates, Mutate, Trials/Cartouches from the history of Pioneer.
EDIT: Forgot to mention that in addition to basic lands, I intend for each player to have access to up to 4 cycle deserts from Amonkhet, so keep that in mind when evaluating the desert synergies.
Edit: I mean - 4 red 2-drop creatures, 3 of which are archetype support and none of those archetypes is just 'aggro'?
And while the last few years has been a bit weird in terms of peasant cube in that C/U removal has been poor for example, retail limited formats have generally been good. There are some exceptions of course, but if you pick the best from the best and look at cross synergies, there could definitely be something there.
An aside: How would you treat downshifts? I found Ire Shaman in my scryfall-search for an uncommon pioneer-legal red two-drop, but its uncommon printing was in M25. I presume you would judge rarity based on standard-legal printings only?
Cubetutor Peasant'ish-Funbox
Project: Khans of Tarkir Cube (cubetutor)
I judge more on card complexity, power, synergy etc. Clone was in the first iteration, but I took it out.
I might switch the spells matter cards for an archetype that requires less cards. Artifacts perhaps? Open to suggestions!
Edit: and in my experience with the Cubetutor drafting, this cube rewards staying open and really punishes forcing an archetype. I end up with about 3/4 two color, 1/4 three color decks, and no mono color decks as of yet.
Your counter spells and burn will be a lot worse but I play modern peasant and that also has worse counters and burn than full peseant and that's fine.
The big issue is that the available lands kind of suck, you don't even get all the tri lands and a lot of those powerful uncommons are multicoloured.
Pioneer:UR Pheonix
Modern:U Mono U Tron
EDH
GB Glissa, the traitor: Army of Cans
UW Dragonlord Ojutai: Dragonlord NOjutai
UWGDerevi, Empyrial Tactician "you cannot fight the storm"
R Zirilan of the claw. The solution to every problem is dragons
UB Etrata, the Silencer Cloning assassination
Peasant cube: Cards I own
I totally agree. If anything, playing something like these limited formats without the bomb rares sounds great to me.
I am trying to emphasize the themes for each color pair, so the removal is slightly under-powered,
Here is the list: https://www.cubetutor.com/viewcube/161689
I built around enemy color pairs, which each have both a major and minor theme. Allied colors get a minor theme only.
W/B- Lifegain (major) and Vampires (minor): Tried to keep the lifegain as either large single-time effects or small repeatable effects. Lifegain has a lot of decent payoffs at C/UC in Pioneer-legal sets.
U/R- Artifacts (major) and Wizards (minor): I wish there were more colored artifacts. A lot of my creatures in these colors make artifacts in some way.
B/G- Full graveyard (major) and Food (minor): "Full graveyard" means things like delirium and undergrowth, with no delve at all. Really hard to find a decent minor theme for this pair. Food is the only thing that had 4+ cards in each color and a gold card.
R/W- Auras/Equipment (major) and Cycling (minor): One of the main reasons I under-powered my removal is to give the enhanced creatures room to thrive.
G/U- Counters (major) and Flash (minor): The only uncommon Planewalkers are in these colors so I can proliferate onto them. Included some Werewolves as an incentive to play more flash creatures.
W/U- Fliers: We basically have 3 flying lords, so it was easy to find the theme here.
U/B- Zombies: The Amass stuff works decently with +1/+1 synergies and black has tons of zombinos.
B/R- Steal and sacrifice: A classic limited combo.
R/G- Energy and trample: Was mostly energy, but it was easy to fit a little trample synergies in from Ikoria.
G/W- Miscellaneous: Hard to find something here that was not replicated already by a major theme. Everything plays with the major theme of either Green or White.
Colorless- I have a pretty big artifact section, as every color pair kind of wants them for different purposes. Tried to find as many artifacts that play with the themes of the set.
Also made room for other synergies like Gates, Mutate, Trials/Cartouches from the history of Pioneer.
https://cubecobra.com/cube/list/peasantsnowcube
-- Updated with Fallout Commander
The PioneWer Peasant CUbe
https://cubecobra.com/cube/list/pionewer
-- Updated with Murders at Karlov Manor