mull plans are so dependent on numerous factors that its impossible to give a perfect guide. some general advice though...
- any hand with a dork and a pod and two lands that lets you play a dork turn 1 are basically snap keeps.
- dorks are key. you want that early acceleration. i don't consider hands without one to be an auto mulligan, but they are very important which is why you play 8 or more.
- pod is a very good hard to have in your hand, but that doesn't mean you keep every hand with a pod in it.
- one landers are sometimes okay on the draw, but i prefer to have at least 2 dorks when i attempt it since its highly likely they will kill the first and if you stall, you are dead.
i'm just going to do 5 scenarios quick with my current build that might be interesting.
1) mesa, stomping ground, angel, wall of roots, thicket, blade splicer, pridemage
- this is a pretty good opener, while it doesn't do anything crazy you have early defense/acceleration as well as a solid midrange beatdown line and a combo piece.
2) hierarch, 2 grove, linvala, kiki, forest, pridemage
- i would keep this one. you have a dork and a combo piece as well as good ways to interact with twin. you can't cast the linvala currently or the pridemage if your dork eats the bolt, but thats how this deck goes. this hand is really rough against zoo and you probably lose that game, but against an unknown opponent i would keep.
3) mesa, garden, grove, domri, pod, finks, spellskite
- i would probably keep this too. you have twin hate again and early defense and a lot of play at 3 mana. this hand is awesome with a dork off the top on the draw. (there was a grove and then a hierarch sadly :P)
4) fountain, mesa, plains, hierarch, exarch, spellskite, pridemage
- another keep with a combo piece and a turn 1 dork as well as hate.
5) forest, stomping ground, rugged-prairie, kiki, pod, finks, linvala
- this one i'd mull because you just aren't going to get there unless you draw into a dork. on the draw this is way too slow without the dork and on the play you miss the chance to draw into it. (there was a birds on top though if you went for it ;))
6) thicket, island, prairie, birds, pod, 2 kiki
- okay so i did a 6th one because i wanted to see if i could find another interesting scenario. this one i would mull for a couple reasons. 1 - he second kiki is basically a dead draw, but its actually worse than that because i only play two which means i don't have one to pod into now. 2 - despite being able to potentially turn 2 pod, if the bird gets shot we have nothing else to do outside of play a 5 mana 2/2. i don't like hands like this. i'd likely keep it though if the 2nd kiki has pretty much any 2-4 drop though, a zealous would also be too slow in my opinion.
You seem to be boarding out domri quite a bit which I think is fine since he plays a more of a flex spot in the deck.
I don't really understand dropping a pod in the uwr matchup, can you explain?
Also I didn't really notice you siding out phantasmal image very often which is a slot i often look to cut when i am unlikely to have an opportunity to chain all the way to combo. This is especially bad vs decks with electroyze. If you aren't playing image, you probably should be since it allows a fairly easy to assemble turn 4 kill when necessary vs other combos or tron.
Its easy to get caught up in the excitement of playing a cycle in your cube and not considering what your cube really needs. You have to consider what each color wants to be doing and what each color pair wants to be doing and if these cards fit the bill then you can start to consider them. Try to avoid falling into the trap of following a cycle just because.
Thats not to say you shouldn't try it. Throw them in for a draft and see what people think. If one or two ends up working out well then thats awesome, but I see these pretty late picks in a lot of cubes since you can't splash them or play them on time with colorless lands. I play a lot of 1 on 1 drafts and these cards would be complete throwaways in those formats 90% of the time because they will be too restrictive. I avoid triple costed cards for that reason.
i have never really been happy with unmake either the effect seems so powerful, but I play a lot of winston and in that format you are never happy to see something with such a demanding cost. and even if you are black/white you might end up cutting it for cheaper or more versatile removal.
interested to see if people have a new appreciation for birthing pod in cube yet. this thread is very skeptical of the card's power. its personally my favorite card and i think its a great build around card and fits great in GB value creature decks as previously mentioned here.
i've been playing it in my cube and its one of my playgroup's favorite cards to build around.
new to the forum so i hope its alright posting here (not intending to necro)
I honestly don't think true randomness is needed, or particularly wanted. It is also not how actual MTG are distributed as (I believe) print runs tend to normalize color distribution.
My approach is similar to Temujin7's. The cube is sorted into 8 sections for storage which has the added benefit of making card accountability and cube updating a lot easier. When we draft, each player gets a stack of 6x WUBRG, 5x colorless, 5x multicolored, 5x land and then shuffles that 45. So there's not a perfect distribution in each pack, but there is a perfect distribution over the 45 and the packs are fairly normalized.
i really like this idea. i've had drafts before where no one enters a color because none of the early packs contain it. seems like a good way to avoid this bias. especially if you have a large cube and are only drafting a 4 man or something.
so i really like your list and have been working on developing something similar, but i'm wondering about a few things...
why mind grind and grindstone?
why no rancor or birthing pod?
edit: so i've been listening to some of your casts and i heard your explanation on pod. guessing the rancor explanation might be in your green cast...
have you considered playing akroma, angel of fury? she can be cheated into play in various ways in your cube as well as be bounced out of the morph version. it might be too off the wall, but it seems really fun...
- any hand with a dork and a pod and two lands that lets you play a dork turn 1 are basically snap keeps.
- dorks are key. you want that early acceleration. i don't consider hands without one to be an auto mulligan, but they are very important which is why you play 8 or more.
- pod is a very good hard to have in your hand, but that doesn't mean you keep every hand with a pod in it.
- one landers are sometimes okay on the draw, but i prefer to have at least 2 dorks when i attempt it since its highly likely they will kill the first and if you stall, you are dead.
i'm just going to do 5 scenarios quick with my current build that might be interesting.
1) mesa, stomping ground, angel, wall of roots, thicket, blade splicer, pridemage
- this is a pretty good opener, while it doesn't do anything crazy you have early defense/acceleration as well as a solid midrange beatdown line and a combo piece.
2) hierarch, 2 grove, linvala, kiki, forest, pridemage
- i would keep this one. you have a dork and a combo piece as well as good ways to interact with twin. you can't cast the linvala currently or the pridemage if your dork eats the bolt, but thats how this deck goes. this hand is really rough against zoo and you probably lose that game, but against an unknown opponent i would keep.
3) mesa, garden, grove, domri, pod, finks, spellskite
- i would probably keep this too. you have twin hate again and early defense and a lot of play at 3 mana. this hand is awesome with a dork off the top on the draw. (there was a grove and then a hierarch sadly :P)
4) fountain, mesa, plains, hierarch, exarch, spellskite, pridemage
- another keep with a combo piece and a turn 1 dork as well as hate.
5) forest, stomping ground, rugged-prairie, kiki, pod, finks, linvala
- this one i'd mull because you just aren't going to get there unless you draw into a dork. on the draw this is way too slow without the dork and on the play you miss the chance to draw into it. (there was a birds on top though if you went for it ;))
6) thicket, island, prairie, birds, pod, 2 kiki
- okay so i did a 6th one because i wanted to see if i could find another interesting scenario. this one i would mull for a couple reasons. 1 - he second kiki is basically a dead draw, but its actually worse than that because i only play two which means i don't have one to pod into now. 2 - despite being able to potentially turn 2 pod, if the bird gets shot we have nothing else to do outside of play a 5 mana 2/2. i don't like hands like this. i'd likely keep it though if the 2nd kiki has pretty much any 2-4 drop though, a zealous would also be too slow in my opinion.
hope this somewhat helpful...
You seem to be boarding out domri quite a bit which I think is fine since he plays a more of a flex spot in the deck.
I don't really understand dropping a pod in the uwr matchup, can you explain?
Also I didn't really notice you siding out phantasmal image very often which is a slot i often look to cut when i am unlikely to have an opportunity to chain all the way to combo. This is especially bad vs decks with electroyze. If you aren't playing image, you probably should be since it allows a fairly easy to assemble turn 4 kill when necessary vs other combos or tron.
Thats not to say you shouldn't try it. Throw them in for a draft and see what people think. If one or two ends up working out well then thats awesome, but I see these pretty late picks in a lot of cubes since you can't splash them or play them on time with colorless lands. I play a lot of 1 on 1 drafts and these cards would be complete throwaways in those formats 90% of the time because they will be too restrictive. I avoid triple costed cards for that reason.
one need simply create logic to wrap the name of each card in card tags using the concatenate function.
this way the list need only be modified in one place, the google doc, and can be easily copy and pasted to these forums.
help?
i guess its better depending on the amount of etb effects in your cube as well.
i really like the idea of having lightning mauler constantly soulbond with guys in a pod chain. O_O
i've been playing it in my cube and its one of my playgroup's favorite cards to build around.
new to the forum so i hope its alright posting here (not intending to necro)
i really like this idea. i've had drafts before where no one enters a color because none of the early packs contain it. seems like a good way to avoid this bias. especially if you have a large cube and are only drafting a 4 man or something.
why mind grind and grindstone?
why no rancor or birthing pod?
edit: so i've been listening to some of your casts and i heard your explanation on pod. guessing the rancor explanation might be in your green cast...
have you considered playing akroma, angel of fury? she can be cheated into play in various ways in your cube as well as be bounced out of the morph version. it might be too off the wall, but it seems really fun...