Brago works just as well with Master of Waves as Venser but Venser is better because he doesn't ever need to attack to blink something.
I think he simply means that with Venser, the Master only returns at the end step, so the original tokens die. With Brago, the flicker is immediate, so state-based actions aren't checked before the Master is returned, effectively letting you produce more and more tokens.
Burn piles go face down, way to much information if it goes face up, it immediately let's you know what others are drafting.
We burn cards into seperate piles per person. The reason for this is twofold. We usually glimpse with 4 people, so the burn pile ends up being 360 cards, if we just pile those in the middle, the stack eventually falls over and everything becomes disorganized. If everyone has their own burn pile, all the cards also go the right way, so after drafting you can just put all the burn piles straight into the cube box without having to organize anything.
wtwlf123's right, it does change the format a lot. If everyone is just playing casually and not worrying about the burn-sealed portion, it definitly doesn't change things. But if you want to get the best chances at winning both formats, you have to always be mindful of spreading your burn cards across many colors/archetypes - and at the same time, keeping a balance of burning the strongest card to keep them from your opponents draft-decks. To me, this draft+sealed format seems absoloutely exhausting, not only do you need to keep track of all the cards you've drafted, but also your entire burn pile. If the players don't get to look at the burn-piles while drafting, it is tireing to remember that many cards, and if you _do_ let players look at the burn piles while drafting, the draft is going to take ages more to finish, as players now have incentive to look through the burn pile very often to burn correctly.
The main argument here isn't wether or not the burn piles are good sealed pools in a vacuum, or compared to the draft pools. It is that you want your burn pile to be the weakest sealed pool at the table, so that your odds of winning the sealed matches is the best.
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My playgroup have had a lot of success drafting glimpse with 4 people, using a 540 pool. We're quite happy with how that turns out. My only complain is that wheeling things becomes harder than it is in a normal 8-person draft. Once we glimpsed with 4 people after having drafted a 360 cube with 8 people - only halfway through did we realize everyone was lacking 3 packs. We solved it by drafting the first 6 packs. Then shuffling together all the burned cards to 3 new cards per head, it sure was an interesting draft, not sure if I would reccomend it.
I was wondering if you could give a run-down of why you enjoy Eternal Dragon? I could not find a SCD on the card.
I recently got my hand on a pack foil, which I would love to run in my 540 cube, but during the cube league I ran last semester, it did seem a bit lackluster. I've also seen a lot of other cubes have started cutting her for other value, but I've always liked the dragon, so I just need someone to convince me to keep her around!
I don't have an updated cube-list, but it's a 540 Unpowered. It looks a lot like yours, with the power replaced.
Pay 8 mana, -6 loyalty counters to Jokulhaups the board, then +2 loyalty counters until opponent is dead.
If it really works that way, it is way too strong and boring.
The -X is no jokulhaups as it does not remove lands.
This walker seems crazy good, high starting loyalty and two abilities that protect him very well and and ult yoy hit quite quick that pretty much wins you the game. If your cube supports the cmc, i.e., plays superramp, hes perfect.
New cube achievement, eureka dropping both karn and ugin at the same time.
I am looking to resleeve my entire cube as my outer sleeves are getting pretty worn out, and man they're becoming filthy from all the play.
At the beginning of my cube, we played with Ultra-pro, as they are cheap and popular in my group. We busted on average 2-3 sleeves per 8-12 person draft. When moving over to perfect sleeves, we double-sleeved with KMC perfect inner-sleeves and black dragon shields outside. Over the following 2.5 years, I think we have busted under 10 sleeves total, so I am _very_ happy with the durability of the dragon shields.
At my last GP apperance, my friends were talking a lot about how hypermats have a superior feel to them for playing, and I do like the rugged backs. I bought a pack of 80 hyper-mats for a side-event sealed I played at that tourney and in that sealed alone I busted 8 hypermat sleeves. I figured the sleeves were just incompatible with my shuffling style and gave the other pack of hypermats I bought (different color) to a friend, he threw them away as he busted 5 sleeves the first time he played with them. Another friend bought a pack from a different vendor at that GP, and they also went bust realy quick. I don't get why our experience with the hypermats were so horrible compared to their overall reputation.
Anywho, after our bad run with hypermats so far, and the difficulty of getting them here in Norway, I think I will just resleeve the entire cube with black dragon shields. Biggest problem with dragon shields are the cuts are very different for different runs.
Yeah, Teferi feels much like a Delve card. Sure, he only effectively costs you 2 mana, but you can't actually cast him before you have 6 mana available, and you have to tap out to do so. If I end up testing him, I think he will have to come in replacing Time Spiral, which is much the same boat - really powerful effect for "free".
I haven't played many of the weaker ones, but going by assumption, I agree with your ranking of those. Ranking Parallax Wave as a sweeper for me is hard, as we usually play it as a midrange card to remove blockers and abuse ETB, it rarely acts as a sweeper.
However, I strongly disagree with the ranking of Austere Command, it is a pet card of mine. I would rank it fourth, after Wrath/Judgement/Catastrophe. It is such a house due to it's versatility. Often it will sweep all creatures and grab a enchantment or artifact in the process. It can act as a pure sweeper at six. Often it can let you keep your tiny guys/tokens and sweep their troublesome threats, or vica versa, sweep all their pesky aggro creatures, leaving your Exalted or Baneslayer angel in play. I play Austere at 540 and it's not close to being cut, I probably would try to squeese it into a 450 list.
I have just built this deck, so haven't gotten a chance to try it out in a tournament yet, but has anyone considered a 1-of Malicious Affliction? I think activating the morbid should be pretty easy, and we can easily deal with the BB mana-cost. Seems better than murderous cut to me.
One card that escaped my gaze for storm that I'm excited to test (and I almost for sure believe it will make it in, especially with my cube now supporting Dig Through Time and Treasure Cruise) is Rain of Filth. It's a good ritual for when you're absolutely certain you want to go off, and it can turn on threshold for Cabal Ritual.
Seems like a good ritual that fuels both delve and threshold. With exploration effects like Fastbond, this can actually be quite playable. The drawbacks I can see right away: Lands entering play after you play it won't have the sac-ability, and it's not great if recurred with Yawgmoth's Will, unlike other rituals.
Storm needs more cards than you have listed to be a draftable archetype, particularly at your cube size of 540.
We've actually just made the jump to 540, but I have a lot of stormable cube includes on my current cube thread at 360. Working on getting a better list together before I put down the new cube list. Lots of changes we've been working on.
Check my cube list out (in my sig) if you want to see my analysis of many of the cards there if you'd like to add some to the list.
That's some great feedback, I will definitly be looking at your cube and update the main post with more Storm cards. Looking forward to reading your primer when it gets done.
Motivation
I have been running a 540 cube with a fairly stable playgroup for over 2 years now, and we are cubing fairly often, about every other week. Recently, there has been a lot of desire for more combo archetypes in the cube. For some time now, the most popular archetype by a long-shot has been GB midrange with survival of the fittest/recurring nightmare shennanigangs. And a popular card in the regard has actually been birthing pod. Pure reanimator is drafted quite often as well. I have so far been sceptical of support more outright combo archetypes in my cube, but since my playgroup has been asking for it, I want to test it out. Therefore I want to do a small overhaul of my cube, and support a series of small combo themes, the goal is that due to the overlap between different combo-archetypes, we won't have to include to many narrow cards. First, let me list some of the archetypes I am looking at, and what cards they run, and then look at the overlap and key pieces, I conclude with what includes I will be trying out.
Goal of this thread // Disclaimer
Look at and discuss different combo-packages. My view is from a medium-sized (540) unpowered cube, but feel free to share opinions regarding other cube environments. I'm sorry for missing cards/archetypes and probably the tons of spelling erros. I wrote this mostly for my own sake, and figured I should share it in case anyone has input or can take some interest in it. I hope I cause no offense to the cube-veterans!
Pitfalls and drawback
There are often some major complains about including combos in a otherwise standard cube environment. The main ones are: (1) The cards that go into the combo are otherwise to weak for the environment, for most drafters they are completely dead cards. (2) A combo deck might be sweet if it comes together, but if you end up not getting there, you have a useless pile of junk. (3) A lack of redundancy often means a combo need certain key cards, if parts of the cube pool are left out in a draft, a player might simply be trying to draft a combo that isn't actually part of the draft. (4) Combo is the bane of magic, encouraging non-interaction and wins out-of-nowhere. Simply put, they are no fun.
All of these are completely valid complaints. However, for this discussion I will leave out number (4), my playgroup has expressed a big interest for more combo, and I will do my best to satisfy my playgroup - if your playgroup hates combo, then nobody's forcing you to play it. For the discussion of each combo-package, I will try to discuss it with concerns to drawback (1) weak cards, (2)going to deep and (3) lack of redundancy. Keep in mind that (3) is a much bigger concern if you usually don't play with a full pool. My playgroup usually plays with a full or close-to-full pool, and so we are fairly certain that we will see all cube cards in the draft.
It goes without saying that any combo deck will enjoy fast mana, tutors and protection spell, so I won't include those cards for every archetype, but here are some cards that can be included in a cube to support most of the combos we will discuss
What it is?
Reanimator is one of the oldest archetypes of Magic, being played in legacy, modern and sometimes standard. The term reanimator encompasses many things, but in the widest sense it refers to any strategy that recurs creatures from the graveyard into play by the use of spells like Reanimate. The reanimator archetype is a big part of most cubes due to it being one of black's central mechanics. Most decks with black will usually be quite happy to play some reanimation effects, but in this discussion we focus on decks that go deeper into the mechanic. Reanimator decks in this sense will usually be played in one of two ways: (1) decks that focus on cheating big, resillient threats into play early. This is mainly a combo-deck with dream plays like Dark Ritual+Entomb+Exhume. (2) The second approach is more towards midrange than combo and consists of decks focusing on getting extra value out of their threats, getting strong 187 effects and things of that nature. These decks like working to more permanent advantages, using cards like Survival of the Fittest and Recurring Nightmare to tutor up and recur the creatures they need.
What do you need?
The archetype obviously needs reanimation spells and some good reanimation-targets to recur. In addition you want some discard outlets, which let you get creatures from your hand to you graveyard. As for all combo-dekcs, tutors are very strong, but there are reanimation-specific tutors out there with cards like Entomb.
The titans are very good targets Sun Titan, Grave Titan, etc.
And the list goes on, in fact, any good threat or 187 effect is a good target
Other comments
With reanimation decks you can always be on the draw, skip your first land-drop and drop a creature into the graveyard in your clean-up. This is definitly not where you want to be, but it is a possible line of play.
Conclusion
Reanimator as an archetype is defintly a cube staple with lots of powerful effects, so drawback (1) is definitly not a problem. Almost all black decks can splash into the archetype and one is not required to go deep at all, so (2) is no worry. Reanimator has no central pieces and there is tons of redundancy, (3) is ok. Reanimator seems great across the board.
What it is?
Splinter twin is a popular combo in modern. The combo draws it's name from the aura of the same name, but it also often played with Kiki-Jiki. By combining one of these token-makers with a creature that has an untap effect on entering the battlefield, you can create as many hasted attackers you want and swing in for lethal.
Conclusion
Splinter Twin is a 2-card combo that wins the game, the combo itself is powerful. There is some redundancy by there begin 2 engines and arguably 4 good cards that work with them, so (3) isn't major problem. Most 540 cubes run Restoration Angel and Zealous Conscripts. Kiki-Jiki and Pestermite are quite good. Splinter Twin and Deciever Exarch aren't terrible cards. Going any deeper than this seems bad, as the rest of the untappers are very weak cards. So we see that drawback (1) might be a problem, or not, depending on how many enablers you include and the general power-level of your cube. Drafting the combo itself is only a few cards that slide into a lot of different decks, so there is no danger of building a pile of junk. If you pick a splinter twin early in hopes of getting the combo going, and you don't get there, you only have one dead card.
What it is?
Melira is another modern combo where Melira, Sylvok Outcast let's you infinitely sac and recur a persist creature. Melira-combo is usually played in a birthing pod shell in modern, it's counterpart is Kiki-pod, which features the splinter-twin combo.
What do you need?
The key piece of the combo is Melira, so you need her, or some Melira-esque creature like Mikaeus, the Unhallowed, a persist creature and a sac outlet to go infinite.
Other comments
If you play conspiracies, Muzzio's Preparations replaces Melira in the combo, meaning you effectively have a 2 card combo with persist creature + sac outlet. Melira + Redcap also gives infinite dying and ETB triggers as redcap can shoot itself. There aren't to many general ETB and dying effects in most cubes, but this can give a kill with Purphoros. If you want to go deep with this combo, adding Blood Artist can give another kill. Mikaeus also goes infinite on its own with Triskelion.
Conclusion
Most cubes already run quite a lot of persist creatures and sac outlets. Melira herself however, is bad outside of the combo, being generally just a bear. Mikaeus can be fun card and quite decent outside the combo. All in all, the combo might be just a bit to fringe to play, as it fails both at drawback (1) and (3). It does pass (2) without troubles however.
What it is?
Sneak and show is a combo that is usually played in legacy. It involves using the cards Sneak Attack and Show and Tell to cheat big creatures into play.
What do you need?
You need some of the cheating cards, and something worth cheating into play.
And the list goes on. Any big creature or threat will be a powerful threat. This list just lists the biggest things that are otherwise hard to cast/reanimate etc.
Conclusion
Unlike the other combos I've looked at here, the Show and Tell package isn't really a package, but more a set of build-around cards. Some of these cards are definitly strong enough to include in a cube by themselves.
What it is?
Storm is an archetype that has been played in many constructed formats, and was a love it/hate it archetype of the MTGO holiday cube for a while. It aims to play enough spells in a single turn to kill the opponent outright with a storm spell like Brain Freeze. With the advent of Jeskai Ascendancy, you can go off without the use of an actuall storm card.
What do you need?
To go of, a storm deck needs to be able to draw enough cards and have enough mana (or other resources) to play spells, then a single finisher spell is needed to use the storm count. Unlike the combos I've gone through so far, storm requires most card in a deck to support it.
Conclusion
Storm is definitly a combo that goes way deeper than the ones I've looked at so far, and it completely falls flat when it comes to drawback (2) - a storm deck that doesn't get there usually can't win a single game. When it comes to drawback (1) and (3), we see that it might be hard to find a balance. From the cards, we see that we can include a lot redundancy, but this hurts (1) as we are including tons of cards that are useless outside the combo. However, each catagory has at least some cube staples, and so we can defintly get by without inclduing to many bad cards, but that might again mean we have to little redundancy. I will have to test how the archetype works in my cube.
What it is? Tinker isn't really a combo, it's just a strong spell that needs a target in your deck. I include it mostly for discussion.
What do you need?
To run tinker, a deck needs a few cheap artifact spells to sacrifice to tinker, and some big threats to fetch with tinker.
Conclusion
Tinker is played in most unpowered cubes. It is obviously more powerful in a powered environment where you have moxen and that sorts. It is a very powerful spell that requires few other includes, and can be included in any blue deck with fodder and threats, it definitly passes (1), (2) and (3).
What it is?
Superramp is the green-focused archetype that attempts to hardcast big threats to win the game. Again, I'm reaching at straws here by calling it a combo, but it has some overlap with the other archetypes, and it does feel comboy with engine's and kill-cards, so bear with me.
What do you need?
Tons of mana, preferably some cards that give you double mana and some big flashy threats.
Of course, any big creature, spell or x-spell will be castable in a super-ramp shell, but these are the threats that are otherwise hard to cast/reanimate etc.
Conclusion
Superramp requires adding some extra over-the-top ramp and some over-the-top fatties. One could arguing that normal ramp and casting reasonably big threats early is good and enough, and hard-casting Ulamog is win-more.
Discussion
To me, all of the archetypes presented here seem feasable. Tinker and reanimator are already staples with good support. Splinter twin and Melira-combo both seem fairly easy to include, due to only need a small amount of cards. Splinter seems solid, so I will include that. Melira seems more fringe and fragile, so I don't think I will try it in my first iteration, but I might include it at a later time.
Storm seems to be the only archetype to go truly deep, and it is also the most dividing of archetypes as people usually either love it or despise it. My playgroup really wants to try storm, so I feel inclined to test out a package. Super-ramp might be a bit over-the-top, but it has much overlap with storm, so if I include one I might just as well include the other.
The big question for all archetypes is how many cards to include. This of course, I will only be able to answer after many testing and adjustment iterations. In the first round I will go through and include all cards I already consider cube staples, and then go for cards that work for several cube archetypes. My goal for the first test list of my cube will be to have a cube that include no more than 20 really narrow or "fringe" cards in a 540 list.
I will need some time to compile a cube list, as I don't really have my current list on cubetutor, but I will get back and update this thread when I have a working outline. In the mean time, I would love any feedback, thoughts or stories/testing you might have.
I playtested this list briefly yesterday, and went 5-0 against Junk midrange/control. He didn't have the best draws however, so I wouldn't put to much into those results. The list is something I threw together, and so it is definitly a rough draft, and especially 4 Banishing light mainboard was just because I needed to reach 60 cards before we could start playing.
Some thoughts
Mana: I did not struggle with mana at all at 4 mana confluence and 4 caves, but it did hurt a bit, in two of the games I reached 11 and 12 lives without my opponent swinging once (dmg was from painlands and Siege Rhino). The pain from mana might be to much to be able to out-compete mono-color aggro lists. It's a shame there is no WB fetch yet. I might actually try scrylands, as we are playing 23 lands, we will usually have enough fast-lands to play 1-drop, 2-drop, 2-drop + scryland, which should be good.
Creatures:
I really like 12 one-drops, and [card]Soldier of the Pantheon[\card] is a fantastic card even if he isn't a warrior.
Chief of the Edge is a fantastic card, and is pretty much the reason we are playing WB in the first place, it's a 3/2 without drawback, definitly outcompetering Borderland Marauder and he can make your 1-drops 3/1 before you swing in, which is really good.
I'm not as sold on Chief of the Scale, as all of your 1-drops and Mardu Skullhunter all start at 1-thoughness, a single Scale isn't even enough to push your creatures out of Drown in Sorrow/Magma Spray range, and definitly won't save you from [card]Bile Blight[\card]/[card]Anger of the Gods[/cards] which is a shame, he also won't make combat against aggro any more favorable, as you won't be able to block 2/1's any better with a Scale on the battlefield.
I really like Mardu Skullhunter, it's card advantage in a meta that seems like it contains quite little of it and at the same time it hits quite hard. Raid is also pretty easy to enable against midrange deck, as the fastest removal around seems to be Bile Blight, and due to Scrylands/color trouble it seems most people won't have time to deal with your 1-drop before you swing in. That being said, for those playing against Mardu Skullhunter and holding removal in your hand, remember to kill their attacker at beginning of combat, before attackers are declared. A lot of control-players have this insane need to play their instant at the last second always, but a declared attacker is enough to enable raid, so that is a trap.
Anthems
For me, spear and obelisk were serious all-stars against midrange, it let me beat through all 3 of his coursers and a siege rhino. When every Bloodsoaked Champion is a 5/4 that can be reccured for 2/1, it goes without saying that combat is favored for you. Secret deck tech: Play obelisk naming human, not warrior. In my list, Soldier of the Pantheon is a human, so is everything else. Also note that a lot of other cards are humans including Pain Seer and Mogis Marauder. Urd on humans is better than on warriors, quite hilarious. I never drew Sorin, but I imagine his +1 is insane.
Athreos
I sadly never drew Athreos in any of the 5 games, but I imagine he can be quite good in this deck. Between the chiefs and spear of heliod, he might actually be able to swing in ocassionally. And I imagine it can be good tech against Drown in Sorrow/Anger of the Gods, just slow-roll them somewhat, then drop Athreos, their spell might be a huge tempo-swing, but at least you can fight back from it, instead of loosing the game outright.
Removal-suite
Courser is the best card in standard, thoughtseize is a close second. However, with 12 1-drops and 12 2-drops, I don't see a Thoughtseize turn 1 being the best play for us. Against aggro it is a horrible main-board card. I think thoughtseize is a sideboard card for us, trying to hit early sweepers in game 2 and 3.
I ran 4 Banishing Light, which of course is a great card. However, I don't know how much enchantment-removal the meta will see, it might be quite a lot. It is quite slow as well, and it might be put into the sideboard in favor of Suspension Field, as I am more worried about big blockers than planeswalkers at this time. I do think Suspension Field/Banishing Light are better cards than Hero's Downfall right now, as we're not a really responsive deck, we don't really need our removal to be instant, having easier color requirements and hitting more targets is more important. If enchantment-removal becomes a thing in this meta, then Hero's Downfall is definitly back in.
Pump/protection
A lot of people are playing around with having some instant-speed pump/protection spells like Boon of Erebos or Gods Willing. I originally liked the idea, especially Boon, as it lets your 1-drops punch Caryatids and Courser to death, and could ocassionaly save your dude against removal. However, I think this is a bit to cute. As an aggro deck, you can't be afraid to lose your dudes.
Conclusion: Is this worth running over mono-black aggro?
MBA is shaping up to be a strong aggro-contender in the beginning of this meta, and I am not sure if warriors can match it. In the end I think warriors has a stronger matchup against midrange, but a weeker against the mono-color aggro-variants, and I think the meta will choose which is stronger. For now, I will continue playing around with warriors, looking for the right balance of anthem/pump/athreos etc, and also test against monocolor aggro's. I think we can be decent against aggro after siding. All in all, I fear chief of the scale might be to bad to justify running warriors, giving MBA with the superior Pain Seer as their 2-drop the edge as the best deck for the meta.
Maybe I'm wrong, but I kind of feel like prowess is a bad mechanic. It makes already small creature slightly bigger until end of turn. Definitely not on the power level of kiln fiend. And if you want to compare this mechanic to something like guttersnipe... well that's rotating and it wasn't playable while it was in standard and that's a much better ability. Maybe there is something I'm missing about it?
Well honestly, you could be completely right. Right now I am just brewing like crazy, trying to figure out and guess at the new standard environment before my first GP with Khan. Now, prowess in a vacuum is very bad, and yes, Kiln fiend is quite a lot better, and maybe guttersnipe aswell - but they were quite different cards, and I can try to explain why. First of, both cards are actually to slow to fit into the BW heroic/Boss sligh shell, but a 1-drop haste is actually faster than anything that deck was already playing (except legion loyalist). Also, as the decks might play a lot of auras (Mogi's Warhound, Ordeal of Purphoros, Hammerhand), those spells will trigger prowess, but not Kiln Fiend or Guttersnipe. The BCS of Swiftspear is definitly good enough - Turn 1 heroic creature followed by turn 2 monastary + 1CMC pump of some sort on the heroic and bash for a lot is a good and aggresive opening. However, her WCS is a raging goblin, which isn't to exciting. If her ACS is good enough needs playtesting in my opinion, but I won't fault people for being sceptical.
I think he simply means that with Venser, the Master only returns at the end step, so the original tokens die. With Brago, the flicker is immediate, so state-based actions aren't checked before the Master is returned, effectively letting you produce more and more tokens.
I also like Venser more.
We burn cards into seperate piles per person. The reason for this is twofold. We usually glimpse with 4 people, so the burn pile ends up being 360 cards, if we just pile those in the middle, the stack eventually falls over and everything becomes disorganized. If everyone has their own burn pile, all the cards also go the right way, so after drafting you can just put all the burn piles straight into the cube box without having to organize anything.
The main argument here isn't wether or not the burn piles are good sealed pools in a vacuum, or compared to the draft pools. It is that you want your burn pile to be the weakest sealed pool at the table, so that your odds of winning the sealed matches is the best.
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My playgroup have had a lot of success drafting glimpse with 4 people, using a 540 pool. We're quite happy with how that turns out. My only complain is that wheeling things becomes harder than it is in a normal 8-person draft. Once we glimpsed with 4 people after having drafted a 360 cube with 8 people - only halfway through did we realize everyone was lacking 3 packs. We solved it by drafting the first 6 packs. Then shuffling together all the burned cards to 3 new cards per head, it sure was an interesting draft, not sure if I would reccomend it.
I recently got my hand on a pack foil, which I would love to run in my 540 cube, but during the cube league I ran last semester, it did seem a bit lackluster. I've also seen a lot of other cubes have started cutting her for other value, but I've always liked the dragon, so I just need someone to convince me to keep her around!
I don't have an updated cube-list, but it's a 540 Unpowered. It looks a lot like yours, with the power replaced.
The -X is no jokulhaups as it does not remove lands.
This walker seems crazy good, high starting loyalty and two abilities that protect him very well and and ult yoy hit quite quick that pretty much wins you the game. If your cube supports the cmc, i.e., plays superramp, hes perfect.
New cube achievement, eureka dropping both karn and ugin at the same time.
At the beginning of my cube, we played with Ultra-pro, as they are cheap and popular in my group. We busted on average 2-3 sleeves per 8-12 person draft. When moving over to perfect sleeves, we double-sleeved with KMC perfect inner-sleeves and black dragon shields outside. Over the following 2.5 years, I think we have busted under 10 sleeves total, so I am _very_ happy with the durability of the dragon shields.
At my last GP apperance, my friends were talking a lot about how hypermats have a superior feel to them for playing, and I do like the rugged backs. I bought a pack of 80 hyper-mats for a side-event sealed I played at that tourney and in that sealed alone I busted 8 hypermat sleeves. I figured the sleeves were just incompatible with my shuffling style and gave the other pack of hypermats I bought (different color) to a friend, he threw them away as he busted 5 sleeves the first time he played with them. Another friend bought a pack from a different vendor at that GP, and they also went bust realy quick. I don't get why our experience with the hypermats were so horrible compared to their overall reputation.
Anywho, after our bad run with hypermats so far, and the difficulty of getting them here in Norway, I think I will just resleeve the entire cube with black dragon shields. Biggest problem with dragon shields are the cuts are very different for different runs.
I haven't played many of the weaker ones, but going by assumption, I agree with your ranking of those. Ranking Parallax Wave as a sweeper for me is hard, as we usually play it as a midrange card to remove blockers and abuse ETB, it rarely acts as a sweeper.
However, I strongly disagree with the ranking of Austere Command, it is a pet card of mine. I would rank it fourth, after Wrath/Judgement/Catastrophe. It is such a house due to it's versatility. Often it will sweep all creatures and grab a enchantment or artifact in the process. It can act as a pure sweeper at six. Often it can let you keep your tiny guys/tokens and sweep their troublesome threats, or vica versa, sweep all their pesky aggro creatures, leaving your Exalted or Baneslayer angel in play. I play Austere at 540 and it's not close to being cut, I probably would try to squeese it into a 450 list.
Seems like a good ritual that fuels both delve and threshold. With exploration effects like Fastbond, this can actually be quite playable. The drawbacks I can see right away: Lands entering play after you play it won't have the sac-ability, and it's not great if recurred with Yawgmoth's Will, unlike other rituals.
Ah, now I see it. Fixed now, thanks!
Yes, I mention that under the Melira-combo section. It is listed both under Cards and Other Comments.
That's some great feedback, I will definitly be looking at your cube and update the main post with more Storm cards. Looking forward to reading your primer when it gets done.
Thanks!
Thanks, I'll take a look at that thread and make a new section in the main post for them.
I have been running a 540 cube with a fairly stable playgroup for over 2 years now, and we are cubing fairly often, about every other week. Recently, there has been a lot of desire for more combo archetypes in the cube. For some time now, the most popular archetype by a long-shot has been GB midrange with survival of the fittest/recurring nightmare shennanigangs. And a popular card in the regard has actually been birthing pod. Pure reanimator is drafted quite often as well. I have so far been sceptical of support more outright combo archetypes in my cube, but since my playgroup has been asking for it, I want to test it out. Therefore I want to do a small overhaul of my cube, and support a series of small combo themes, the goal is that due to the overlap between different combo-archetypes, we won't have to include to many narrow cards. First, let me list some of the archetypes I am looking at, and what cards they run, and then look at the overlap and key pieces, I conclude with what includes I will be trying out.
Goal of this thread // Disclaimer
Look at and discuss different combo-packages. My view is from a medium-sized (540) unpowered cube, but feel free to share opinions regarding other cube environments. I'm sorry for missing cards/archetypes and probably the tons of spelling erros. I wrote this mostly for my own sake, and figured I should share it in case anyone has input or can take some interest in it. I hope I cause no offense to the cube-veterans!
Pitfalls and drawback
There are often some major complains about including combos in a otherwise standard cube environment. The main ones are: (1) The cards that go into the combo are otherwise to weak for the environment, for most drafters they are completely dead cards. (2) A combo deck might be sweet if it comes together, but if you end up not getting there, you have a useless pile of junk. (3) A lack of redundancy often means a combo need certain key cards, if parts of the cube pool are left out in a draft, a player might simply be trying to draft a combo that isn't actually part of the draft. (4) Combo is the bane of magic, encouraging non-interaction and wins out-of-nowhere. Simply put, they are no fun.
All of these are completely valid complaints. However, for this discussion I will leave out number (4), my playgroup has expressed a big interest for more combo, and I will do my best to satisfy my playgroup - if your playgroup hates combo, then nobody's forcing you to play it. For the discussion of each combo-package, I will try to discuss it with concerns to drawback (1) weak cards, (2)going to deep and (3) lack of redundancy. Keep in mind that (3) is a much bigger concern if you usually don't play with a full pool. My playgroup usually plays with a full or close-to-full pool, and so we are fairly certain that we will see all cube cards in the draft.
It goes without saying that any combo deck will enjoy fast mana, tutors and protection spell, so I won't include those cards for every archetype, but here are some cards that can be included in a cube to support most of the combos we will discuss
Cards
Archetypes
What it is?
Reanimator is one of the oldest archetypes of Magic, being played in legacy, modern and sometimes standard. The term reanimator encompasses many things, but in the widest sense it refers to any strategy that recurs creatures from the graveyard into play by the use of spells like Reanimate. The reanimator archetype is a big part of most cubes due to it being one of black's central mechanics. Most decks with black will usually be quite happy to play some reanimation effects, but in this discussion we focus on decks that go deeper into the mechanic. Reanimator decks in this sense will usually be played in one of two ways: (1) decks that focus on cheating big, resillient threats into play early. This is mainly a combo-deck with dream plays like Dark Ritual+Entomb+Exhume. (2) The second approach is more towards midrange than combo and consists of decks focusing on getting extra value out of their threats, getting strong 187 effects and things of that nature. These decks like working to more permanent advantages, using cards like Survival of the Fittest and Recurring Nightmare to tutor up and recur the creatures they need.
What do you need?
The archetype obviously needs reanimation spells and some good reanimation-targets to recur. In addition you want some discard outlets, which let you get creatures from your hand to you graveyard. As for all combo-dekcs, tutors are very strong, but there are reanimation-specific tutors out there with cards like Entomb.
Cards
Tier 1
Tier 2
All blue filter spells like Thirst for Knowledge, Compulsive Research, Frantic Search, etc
Cyclers
Resillient Threats
Other strong fatties
The titans are very good targets Sun Titan, Grave Titan, etc.
And the list goes on, in fact, any good threat or 187 effect is a good target
Other comments
With reanimation decks you can always be on the draw, skip your first land-drop and drop a creature into the graveyard in your clean-up. This is definitly not where you want to be, but it is a possible line of play.
Conclusion
Reanimator as an archetype is defintly a cube staple with lots of powerful effects, so drawback (1) is definitly not a problem. Almost all black decks can splash into the archetype and one is not required to go deep at all, so (2) is no worry. Reanimator has no central pieces and there is tons of redundancy, (3) is ok. Reanimator seems great across the board.
What it is?
Splinter twin is a popular combo in modern. The combo draws it's name from the aura of the same name, but it also often played with Kiki-Jiki. By combining one of these token-makers with a creature that has an untap effect on entering the battlefield, you can create as many hasted attackers you want and swing in for lethal.
Cards
Restoration Angel (Only with Kiki-Jiki)
Midnight Guard (Only with Splinter Twin)
Conclusion
Splinter Twin is a 2-card combo that wins the game, the combo itself is powerful. There is some redundancy by there begin 2 engines and arguably 4 good cards that work with them, so (3) isn't major problem. Most 540 cubes run Restoration Angel and Zealous Conscripts. Kiki-Jiki and Pestermite are quite good. Splinter Twin and Deciever Exarch aren't terrible cards. Going any deeper than this seems bad, as the rest of the untappers are very weak cards. So we see that drawback (1) might be a problem, or not, depending on how many enablers you include and the general power-level of your cube. Drafting the combo itself is only a few cards that slide into a lot of different decks, so there is no danger of building a pile of junk. If you pick a splinter twin early in hopes of getting the combo going, and you don't get there, you only have one dead card.
Further Reading
There is a Splinter Twin thread here.
What it is?
Melira is another modern combo where Melira, Sylvok Outcast let's you infinitely sac and recur a persist creature. Melira-combo is usually played in a birthing pod shell in modern, it's counterpart is Kiki-pod, which features the splinter-twin combo.
What do you need?
The key piece of the combo is Melira, so you need her, or some Melira-esque creature like Mikaeus, the Unhallowed, a persist creature and a sac outlet to go infinite.
Cards
Other comments
If you play conspiracies, Muzzio's Preparations replaces Melira in the combo, meaning you effectively have a 2 card combo with persist creature + sac outlet. Melira + Redcap also gives infinite dying and ETB triggers as redcap can shoot itself. There aren't to many general ETB and dying effects in most cubes, but this can give a kill with Purphoros. If you want to go deep with this combo, adding Blood Artist can give another kill. Mikaeus also goes infinite on its own with Triskelion.
Conclusion
Most cubes already run quite a lot of persist creatures and sac outlets. Melira herself however, is bad outside of the combo, being generally just a bear. Mikaeus can be fun card and quite decent outside the combo. All in all, the combo might be just a bit to fringe to play, as it fails both at drawback (1) and (3). It does pass (2) without troubles however.
Further Reading
There is a thread on Melira-combo in cube here.
What it is?
Sneak and show is a combo that is usually played in legacy. It involves using the cards Sneak Attack and Show and Tell to cheat big creatures into play.
What do you need?
You need some of the cheating cards, and something worth cheating into play.
Cards
And the list goes on. Any big creature or threat will be a powerful threat. This list just lists the biggest things that are otherwise hard to cast/reanimate etc.
Conclusion
Unlike the other combos I've looked at here, the Show and Tell package isn't really a package, but more a set of build-around cards. Some of these cards are definitly strong enough to include in a cube by themselves.
What it is?
Storm is an archetype that has been played in many constructed formats, and was a love it/hate it archetype of the MTGO holiday cube for a while. It aims to play enough spells in a single turn to kill the opponent outright with a storm spell like Brain Freeze. With the advent of Jeskai Ascendancy, you can go off without the use of an actuall storm card.
What do you need?
To go of, a storm deck needs to be able to draw enough cards and have enough mana (or other resources) to play spells, then a single finisher spell is needed to use the storm count. Unlike the combos I've gone through so far, storm requires most card in a deck to support it.
Cards
Explore
Exploration
Fastbond
Oracle of Mul Daya
Summer Bloom
Simian Spirit Guide
Elvish Spirit Guide
Ancient Tomb
Manamorphose
High Tide
Conclusion
Storm is definitly a combo that goes way deeper than the ones I've looked at so far, and it completely falls flat when it comes to drawback (2) - a storm deck that doesn't get there usually can't win a single game. When it comes to drawback (1) and (3), we see that it might be hard to find a balance. From the cards, we see that we can include a lot redundancy, but this hurts (1) as we are including tons of cards that are useless outside the combo. However, each catagory has at least some cube staples, and so we can defintly get by without inclduing to many bad cards, but that might again mean we have to little redundancy. I will have to test how the archetype works in my cube.
What it is?
Tinker isn't really a combo, it's just a strong spell that needs a target in your deck. I include it mostly for discussion.
What do you need?
To run tinker, a deck needs a few cheap artifact spells to sacrifice to tinker, and some big threats to fetch with tinker.
Cards
Tinker
Any low cmc artifact will do, including all mana rocks.
Conclusion
Tinker is played in most unpowered cubes. It is obviously more powerful in a powered environment where you have moxen and that sorts. It is a very powerful spell that requires few other includes, and can be included in any blue deck with fodder and threats, it definitly passes (1), (2) and (3).
What it is?
Superramp is the green-focused archetype that attempts to hardcast big threats to win the game. Again, I'm reaching at straws here by calling it a combo, but it has some overlap with the other archetypes, and it does feel comboy with engine's and kill-cards, so bear with me.
What do you need?
Tons of mana, preferably some cards that give you double mana and some big flashy threats.
Cards
Of course, any big creature, spell or x-spell will be castable in a super-ramp shell, but these are the threats that are otherwise hard to cast/reanimate etc.
Conclusion
Superramp requires adding some extra over-the-top ramp and some over-the-top fatties. One could arguing that normal ramp and casting reasonably big threats early is good and enough, and hard-casting Ulamog is win-more.
Discussion
To me, all of the archetypes presented here seem feasable. Tinker and reanimator are already staples with good support. Splinter twin and Melira-combo both seem fairly easy to include, due to only need a small amount of cards. Splinter seems solid, so I will include that. Melira seems more fringe and fragile, so I don't think I will try it in my first iteration, but I might include it at a later time.
Storm seems to be the only archetype to go truly deep, and it is also the most dividing of archetypes as people usually either love it or despise it. My playgroup really wants to try storm, so I feel inclined to test out a package. Super-ramp might be a bit over-the-top, but it has much overlap with storm, so if I include one I might just as well include the other.
The big question for all archetypes is how many cards to include. This of course, I will only be able to answer after many testing and adjustment iterations. In the first round I will go through and include all cards I already consider cube staples, and then go for cards that work for several cube archetypes. My goal for the first test list of my cube will be to have a cube that include no more than 20 really narrow or "fringe" cards in a 540 list.
I will need some time to compile a cube list, as I don't really have my current list on cubetutor, but I will get back and update this thread when I have a working outline. In the mean time, I would love any feedback, thoughts or stories/testing you might have.
4 Tormented Hero
4 Bloodsoaked Champion
4 Chief of the Edge
4 Chief of the Scale
4 Mardu Skullhunter
2 Boon of Erebos
3 Athreos, God Of Passage
2 Spear of Heliod
1 Sorin, Solemn Visitor
1 Obelisk of Urd
4 Caves of Koilos
8 Swamp
7 Plains
I playtested this list briefly yesterday, and went 5-0 against Junk midrange/control. He didn't have the best draws however, so I wouldn't put to much into those results. The list is something I threw together, and so it is definitly a rough draft, and especially 4 Banishing light mainboard was just because I needed to reach 60 cards before we could start playing.
Some thoughts
Mana: I did not struggle with mana at all at 4 mana confluence and 4 caves, but it did hurt a bit, in two of the games I reached 11 and 12 lives without my opponent swinging once (dmg was from painlands and Siege Rhino). The pain from mana might be to much to be able to out-compete mono-color aggro lists. It's a shame there is no WB fetch yet. I might actually try scrylands, as we are playing 23 lands, we will usually have enough fast-lands to play 1-drop, 2-drop, 2-drop + scryland, which should be good.
Creatures:
I really like 12 one-drops, and [card]Soldier of the Pantheon[\card] is a fantastic card even if he isn't a warrior.
Chief of the Edge is a fantastic card, and is pretty much the reason we are playing WB in the first place, it's a 3/2 without drawback, definitly outcompetering Borderland Marauder and he can make your 1-drops 3/1 before you swing in, which is really good.
I'm not as sold on Chief of the Scale, as all of your 1-drops and Mardu Skullhunter all start at 1-thoughness, a single Scale isn't even enough to push your creatures out of Drown in Sorrow/Magma Spray range, and definitly won't save you from [card]Bile Blight[\card]/[card]Anger of the Gods[/cards] which is a shame, he also won't make combat against aggro any more favorable, as you won't be able to block 2/1's any better with a Scale on the battlefield.
I really like Mardu Skullhunter, it's card advantage in a meta that seems like it contains quite little of it and at the same time it hits quite hard. Raid is also pretty easy to enable against midrange deck, as the fastest removal around seems to be Bile Blight, and due to Scrylands/color trouble it seems most people won't have time to deal with your 1-drop before you swing in. That being said, for those playing against Mardu Skullhunter and holding removal in your hand, remember to kill their attacker at beginning of combat, before attackers are declared. A lot of control-players have this insane need to play their instant at the last second always, but a declared attacker is enough to enable raid, so that is a trap.
Anthems
For me, spear and obelisk were serious all-stars against midrange, it let me beat through all 3 of his coursers and a siege rhino. When every Bloodsoaked Champion is a 5/4 that can be reccured for 2/1, it goes without saying that combat is favored for you. Secret deck tech: Play obelisk naming human, not warrior. In my list, Soldier of the Pantheon is a human, so is everything else. Also note that a lot of other cards are humans including Pain Seer and Mogis Marauder. Urd on humans is better than on warriors, quite hilarious. I never drew Sorin, but I imagine his +1 is insane.
Athreos
I sadly never drew Athreos in any of the 5 games, but I imagine he can be quite good in this deck. Between the chiefs and spear of heliod, he might actually be able to swing in ocassionally. And I imagine it can be good tech against Drown in Sorrow/Anger of the Gods, just slow-roll them somewhat, then drop Athreos, their spell might be a huge tempo-swing, but at least you can fight back from it, instead of loosing the game outright.
Removal-suite
Courser is the best card in standard, thoughtseize is a close second. However, with 12 1-drops and 12 2-drops, I don't see a Thoughtseize turn 1 being the best play for us. Against aggro it is a horrible main-board card. I think thoughtseize is a sideboard card for us, trying to hit early sweepers in game 2 and 3.
I ran 4 Banishing Light, which of course is a great card. However, I don't know how much enchantment-removal the meta will see, it might be quite a lot. It is quite slow as well, and it might be put into the sideboard in favor of Suspension Field, as I am more worried about big blockers than planeswalkers at this time. I do think Suspension Field/Banishing Light are better cards than Hero's Downfall right now, as we're not a really responsive deck, we don't really need our removal to be instant, having easier color requirements and hitting more targets is more important. If enchantment-removal becomes a thing in this meta, then Hero's Downfall is definitly back in.
Pump/protection
A lot of people are playing around with having some instant-speed pump/protection spells like Boon of Erebos or Gods Willing. I originally liked the idea, especially Boon, as it lets your 1-drops punch Caryatids and Courser to death, and could ocassionaly save your dude against removal. However, I think this is a bit to cute. As an aggro deck, you can't be afraid to lose your dudes.
Conclusion: Is this worth running over mono-black aggro?
MBA is shaping up to be a strong aggro-contender in the beginning of this meta, and I am not sure if warriors can match it. In the end I think warriors has a stronger matchup against midrange, but a weeker against the mono-color aggro-variants, and I think the meta will choose which is stronger. For now, I will continue playing around with warriors, looking for the right balance of anthem/pump/athreos etc, and also test against monocolor aggro's. I think we can be decent against aggro after siding. All in all, I fear chief of the scale might be to bad to justify running warriors, giving MBA with the superior Pain Seer as their 2-drop the edge as the best deck for the meta.
Well honestly, you could be completely right. Right now I am just brewing like crazy, trying to figure out and guess at the new standard environment before my first GP with Khan. Now, prowess in a vacuum is very bad, and yes, Kiln fiend is quite a lot better, and maybe guttersnipe aswell - but they were quite different cards, and I can try to explain why. First of, both cards are actually to slow to fit into the BW heroic/Boss sligh shell, but a 1-drop haste is actually faster than anything that deck was already playing (except legion loyalist). Also, as the decks might play a lot of auras (Mogi's Warhound, Ordeal of Purphoros, Hammerhand), those spells will trigger prowess, but not Kiln Fiend or Guttersnipe. The BCS of Swiftspear is definitly good enough - Turn 1 heroic creature followed by turn 2 monastary + 1CMC pump of some sort on the heroic and bash for a lot is a good and aggresive opening. However, her WCS is a raging goblin, which isn't to exciting. If her ACS is good enough needs playtesting in my opinion, but I won't fault people for being sceptical.