MTG Salvation

I didn't realize you had a link to your cube till I wrote the below, but I think you're just split between too many archetypes for 240. You have aggressive 2s, but no aggressive 1s or 3s. You have ramp but no resilient payoffs. You have 4(!) go wide payoffs but only 2 token makers in green that are both slow as well as a reasonably low creature count for green. The guild cards are similarly not supported: GW counters has no green payoffs for the counters, GR doesn't have much to follow-up a Rhythm of the Wild, GB has basically no ways to fill the yard in general, and UG has no support for Tatyova, Benthic Druid what-so-ever.

I run my green decks more aggressively than rampy, but most of them end up revolving around dropping aggressively orientated midranged threats. Stuff like Blastoderm, Briarhorn, Phantom Centaur, Ridgescale Tusker, Trollbred Guardian, Great Oak Guardian, etc. all get "2 for 1s" through just being ahead on board. This is where mana dorks tend to come into play in these decks. Taking 15 from a Blastoderm is an unreasonable thing to do in most games, but starts to be difficult not to do for a lot of decks when the Blastoderm is played on t3 and is followed by a 5 drop.

GR aggro might be the best deck in my environment. Experiment One -> Voltaic Brawler -> 1 + 2 drop or 3 drop -> Bloodbraid Elf -> burn wins a lot of games on t4-6 if not answered perfectly. You don't have access to Kessig Prowler, but I don't think it's an important enough card to kill the deck. Also, not including Experiment One should be a crime imo.

Slower green decks that don't revolve around attacking try to rely as little as possible on removable threats. Pelakka Wurm hasn't aged well in this regard since we have so many better options. Plated Crusher, Warden of the Woods, and Scaled Behemoth are not much easier to deal with through combat and are substantially better against removal when ramped (or reanimated) out. Arborback Stomper is also mostly better if you want lifegain. Ramping out hexproof threats early takes off significant pressure and can start abyssing your opponent if they aren't threatening you.

GB decks have stuff like Worm Harvest, Spider Spawning, and Baloth Null as win conditions when combined with a filled yard. Here mana dorks up your creature count, let you start your engines early, help out the endless mana requirements these decks have, and chump block.

Green also has a lot of ways to use mana dorks in combat: Curse of Predation (a card on some people's ban lists), Song of Freyalise, Rancor, Scale Up, Imperious Perfect, Briarhorn, Ridgescale Tusker, and Great Oak Guardian allow mana dorks to be respectable attackers.

I've slightly depowered some of my removal and removed the black 4 drop Nekrataals, but neither of those things were done because green was weak.

It definitely looks like you have a good idea of what you're doing, so at this point I'd recommend playing it and changing based on what people like to play and what you find to be good rather than based on theory crafting. It's good to have archetypes in mind, but they don't really matter if no one's playing them or don't play them optimally. I would recommend adding Thriving lands, City of Brass, Gemstone Mine, and Aether Hub, since they're good options for lands that would let you cut down on fixing a bit since you don't need to be specific colours to play them. The untapped ones are also very good for aggro.

If you want to support green aggro you probably want more aggressive green 2 drops, but only if you want to support green aggro.

I'm in support of larger multicolour sections, but once you start going past 5 or 6 (non-land) cards I do think you get into multicolour cards not being unique enough to justify their inclusion. Sure, every BW deck will play Mortify, but it's not that much different than a mono B or W removal spell, so the problems that come with it being multicoloured aren't really worth it.

If you like the heavier focus on multicolour but have problems with people playing a bunch of 3+ colour midranged soup or have a bunch of gold cards never being played, all of Leelue's suggestions are good ways to deal with it. I would also pay attention to the signets in particular, since they really incentivize 3+ colour good stuff.

Thanks for doing this! I've updated my list, though I've gotten less testing than I would've liked due to current events.

I feel like rare lands should be able to be included in the final list or at least get a special mention. I doubt that any would end up making the final list since what people discuss doing with them is pretty diverse, but if enough people use them they should be represented somehow.

Flourishing Fox is pretty aggressively costed. Not good enough right now I think, but might be playable if more cycling support comes with later sets.

Reconnaissance Mission seems fine, but cycling doesn't help enough to make me overlook that it's a 4 mana enchantment that doesn't affect the board and requires you to be at least at parity.

Call of the Death-Dweller seems too hard to set up to be consistently worthwhile, even if it is reasonably powerful.

Clash of Titans might finally be a playable version of this kind of effect. Diversifying red removal is a nice bonus too.

Auspicious Starrix is a 5 mana 6/6 with a pretty powerful alternate condition. Seems like a staple to me.

Grimdancer seems solid, but also like something I'll never find a reason to play and will cut a year or 2 down the road.

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I'm incredibly baffled by how they managed to make 3 of the most complex mechanics in the game (they're probably all top 5 after banding and maybe suspend) and then decided to put them in the same set. I'm scared of how mutate works with O-rings, even though I think I got past all of the other unintuitive stuff. As far as I can tell most people have no idea how the details of companion works. And I'm still annoyed at how much mental energy I have to expend to keep Wurmcoil Engine tokens straight, which I'm sure will be similar to the keyword tokens, if not much worse if you don't have physical representations handy.

I really hate reverse threshold. Threshold is good because you have so much control over it. Reverse threshold doesn't work with anything that threshold doesn't. It also punishes people for playing the most random things and bad draws. Draw both of your Evolving Wilds? Now my Into the Story is way better. Into the Story doesn't have enough over our current draw suite to justify the awkwardness anyways (if it was targeted and you supported mill maybe it would be), even if you're okay with the randomness of it.


Ardenvale Tactician seems really solid. I saw it was a common and assumed that the adventure was a sorcery, but it's not. It's a mono-coloured Feeling of Dread that fixes the main issue of running out of gas. A 1WW 2/3 flyer isn't embarrassing either if you need to do it without adventuring.

Indulgent Tormentor is filler, but it's hard to go too wrong with a 5 power 5 cost flyer with upside.

Shower of Coals kills 2 random things and hits face most of the time. If you can get threshold it can be a big swing.

Lust for War can work basically anywhere, but it's matchup dependent outside of aggro.

Weaver of Lightning is mainly a control card in my experience as control decks can have issues with x/1s; we've gotten so many good spells matter's cards it's not always worth a slot in that deck imo. Spells-matter works very well at peasant with Murmuring Mystic/Young Pyromancer/Saheeli, Sublime Artificer. Then there's a bunch of other solid stuff you can play beyond that core which are more deck dependent: Rise from the Tides/Enigma Drake/Weaver of Lightning/Thermo-Alchemist/Pteramander.

I tried Baleful Ammit: it was bad. 4/3 lifelink is a big threat, but it's just too fragile for the cost. Being so horrible against removal and pretty pathetic on an empty board made it feel really bad even with the "right" deck.

Adventure is really interesting space. It adds a lot of utility to creature heavy decks that would need to either be expensive etbs or spells. I'm particularly interested in the U or R ones, as they act as creatures but don't hurt your spell count for Young Pyromancer and co.

Imperial Recruiter got brought up in the general thread and adventure increases its utility a lot if we get good targets. With Order of Midnight it only costs 5 to get a Raise Dead effect with Recruiter, whereas previously it would cost 7.

Syr Konrad, the Grim is the only card I'm interested in so far. It plays nicely with basically everything black does. Aristocrats, discard, reanimation, self mill, delve, and removal all can trigger the ability. It's so much sturdier than Blood Artist/Falkenrath Noble (which is not a noble) and actually is a good empty board play, which probably make up for the worse effect in aristocrats while still having a lot of application elsewhere.

I can't imagine Recruiter being correct to play in any deck in a way that it's actually versatile outside of maybe aristocrats. The way tutors work in almost every case is they find a shortlist of 1-3 cards that you fetch every game regardless of circumstance. Theoretically they act as a toolbox, but that's almost never the case in practice as there are very few cards that actually are worth the additional cost. In peasant there are almost no effects that are rare enough that you are constantly wanting more of them in deckbuilding, so you're effectively having a card riding on the strengths of cards like Palace Jailer. If you are actually short on payoffs Recruiter is significantly worse than just adding another payoff for that archetype to the cube, as you're not only paying an insane premium, but you're also losing the chance to draw both the card Recruiter is replacing and the tutored card. If multiple archetypes are short on payoffs then Recruiter is a band-aid solution to a bigger issue.

If Recruiter is used to fetch purely powerful cards rather than archetype ones I see that as a fail state. Not only are you actively supporting good stuff play styles, but you're also homogenizing gameplay as a Palace Jailer type card will almost always be played, which leads to similar game states. This allows for linear deckbuilding around singular cards, which is completely against the purpose of singleton. I find it hard to believe that this usage wouldn't be the norm for Recruiter.

Quote from SaltMaster 5000 »

My reaction was aimed more towards the attitude that cubes that are good stuff piles are better than cubes that have "on rails" synergies and how this is just an excuse to dumb down drafting because the opposite is true. Even though I'd argue that having to draft synergies is less on rails and requires you to think more than snap picking every single on-color good stuff card in ranked power order.

On rails is used to refer to hyper specific synergies that require you to pick all the cards the cube designer puts in for that archetype. If you're trying to draft a tribal deck there's likely only going to be 1 card of that tribe in the pack, so you're railed into taking that card. No one is arguing that cubes shouldn't have synergies, they're saying that the "on rails" synergies are so specific you'd be better off with synergies that work with more cards.

Quote from SaltMaster 5000 »

It's been my experience that getting random strangers to draft at the LGS is easier with, "It's the MTGO proxy Vintage cube you can play Black Lotus!" than "Hey want to draft a cube? It's a mostly Pauper cube." So my perception is that people prefer to Tinker -> Blightsteel you over say, a close game that takes 20 turns and involves Banding. I think I should start lying and start calling my cube an unrestricted Vintage cube, after all Timmerian Fiends and Shahrazad are banned in Vintage and Benalish Hero is vintage legal lol.

Most people have basically no interaction with pauper/peasant cubes, so it makes total sense that people shy away from them. Even if the MTGO vintage cube isn't the best cube, I know that I can at least do some exciting stuff that's fun for a couple games; with pauper I'm not immediately coming up with cards I want to play with in the same way. And even if you know what to expect it takes a lot of time to get used to a whole new set of cards. I played pauper once and it was very clear immediately after my first game that I drafted wrong, which made close games almost impossible. If I'm only going to be playing the cube once, why would I play something I could have a horrible time with instead of something I know I can have close games with?

Quote from SaltMaster 5000 »

1.) If I always disagree with what people here like, what I can do is use everyone as a sort of inverse springboard for ideas. So for example If I asked what people think about cutting Thraben Inspector for Shield Bearer I would likely be told not to (and probably accused of trolling because one is not allowed to question the council's judgement on The One True 360) so that to me is confirmation that my cube is built correctly.

This doesn't really make your cube more inviting to play considering I now need to learn mechanics on top of a ton of new cards and archetypes. If I had Shield Bearer in my cube I can assure you I would spend a good 10-15min over the course of the draft explaining how banding works. Regardless of how much fun Shield Bearer is, that's a lot of time to be spending on a single card instead of playing the game. This also just paints you as a contrarian for the sake of being a contrarian, which isn't a good look.

Quote from SaltMaster 5000 »

I'm fine with drawing fire, I just don't want to be banned. I don't know why you guys can't tolerate opposing view points, I don't want any of you guys banned.

You're just kinda shifting every topic into your views on magic players. I'm fine with contrarian opinions (even if I disagree with yours), but there's a time and place for them. You're taking a discussion about unequal colour numbers and moving that to your philosophical views on the magic community as a whole. Pauper isn't Peasant Cube. X-Wing: Miniatures isn't Peasant Cube. Whatever gameplay you think is non-interactive doesn't really exist in Peasant at a relevant level, so I fail to see how most of your points are relevant to Peasant Cube.

If you want to have a discussion on why Dash Hopes is good or why having only 3 white cards works I'm sure people will argue those points with gusto. But you seem to be mostly interested in going on about how mtg players hate mtg, which is both derailing the conversation and hardly a discussion worth having considering it seems pretty clear no one is going to change their minds.

Quote from SaltMaster 5000 »

Honestly this entire discussion is based on a false premise- ie that consensus is at all useful for cube construction which is a matter of personal taste. Considering that I disagree with this notion there is no way for me to express my views without drawing fire.

Cube construction is definitely personal taste and there is a lot of variation in that regard. But broadly speaking people want their cube to appeal to a large band of players. Doing efficient things, doing cool things, and doing powerful things are what people tend to enjoy (Spike, Johnny, and Timmy), so people will make their cube with those things in mind and try to allow players to do all 3. Allowing those things is what the consensus is for this community. If you don't agree with that consensus then it's likely you're not going to get much help from this board.

Quote from BrownDog5117 »

As long as you play Bloodhunter Bat I have no problems with you.

If you do run Bloodhunter Bat please remember to indicate that by marking your Cube as "Peasant+".

"On the other hand, I agree with rancoredmalone that increasing multicolor cards likely does increase average deck power. If you're in Simic, the 4th-best Simic card is likely to make the cut over the 50th-best green or blue card every time"

But this is still at the expense of every other deck that wasnt simic.

There is a balancing point, and it's probably got something to do with the proportion of decks it doesn't get cut from.

The case that the simic card makes the simic deck better still has to contend with the fact that the monocolored card it replaced isn't around to make the other 3 guilds it could be in better. So izzet, azorius, and dimir all get worse while simic gets better.

Now you might say "but leelue, when I put in a card for each of those guilds, they get better too and it's all a wash". But that's a fallacy. If you add 10 guild cards, each individual guild is losing 4 monocolored cards but only gaining 1 guild card to compensate.

So the guild cards probably have to be roughly four times more likely to contribute to winning for the guy who drafted it purposely than the worst monocolored cards they replaced.

That is probably less work than it seems?
I know the least popular white cards in my cube for example (like shelter) get decked way less than half the time. So an... Orzhov card like tidehollow sculler that makes BW decks more often and ups the winrate by a decent clip is better for the cube in theory. But you need 9 more gold cards to balance, which means you need 9 more monocolored cards that are around as rarely used as shelter to go with 9 more tidehollow sculler-level gold cards.

You can fudge the numbers a bit to keep things even. Maybe only 8 monocolor cards are bad but you drop 2 more for the greater good. But the cost is there.

I run 3 cards per guild, but that includes lands

Quote from Leelue »

2/2s and 3/2s, ground or flying, can't attack into it. 2/3s, 4/2s, 3/3s don't want to. It seems pretty good.

3/anything really. If they are going to attack around it with multiple 3/x's, they'd better be winning that turn, or near enough. It's obviously bad aggressively, but buying time to set up grindy graveyard or other value interactions suits what Golgari often does in my cube.