I was curious about the roll of Sevinne’s Reclamation in your cube. I assume that it’s there to support persist and other permanent-based combo decks, but I was curious how strong and/or narrow you’ve found the card to be. It works well with gifts ungiven, but that’s a card I’ve never particularly liked in cube (even though gifts storm is my modern deck of choice.)
I’d love to hear your thoughts on the card. I’ve really liked your previous recommendation of pushing white into a more combo oriented direction and am wondering if Sevinne’s Reclamation is worth an include in a 540-sized cube with persist support.
I’m trying to decide between cutting arbor elf and avacyn’s pilgrim. (I know it’s almost certainly correct to run both, but I’ve recently added green aggro, birthing pod support, and persist combo to my unpowered 540 and cuts have to come from somewhere. I’ll probably wind up re-adding the mana dork I cut here at a later point after testing the changes I’ve made and seeing which cards underperform.)
I don’t own the OG dual lands, but do run fetches, shocks, and cipt cycling duals. My current inclination is that this lack of duals will make the pilgrim better than arbor elf, but I could see an argument either way. Another option would be to cut one of the 2-CMC mana dorks (wall or caryatid) but that seems less right as they serve slightly different functions. I’m currently running all the commonly used 1-CMC dorks other than elves of deep shadow, boreal druid, and gilded goose.
That’s super helpful! I think I’ll try it out and tune it over time to see how things feel. My main reason for wanting to include the combo is that white and particularly selesnya have felt kind of stale and underwhelming, particularly in the powered iteration of my cube where midrange is fairly mediocre; that’s great to hear that it’s worked well as a combo support color!
Hey wtwlf, I really appreciate all the content you’ve put out over the years.
How have you liked persist combo in your cube (especially as compared to other supported combo decks?) I was contemplating adding persist combo to my cube and had few questions about how to implement it:
1. How many sac-outlets, persist creatures, and meliria/vizier effects would you run to support the combo at 540? Would something like 4-4-4 be enough, (along with additional creature tutors) or is one part of the combo more important than the others and should receive greater redundancy.
2. Does it make sense to support persist and not aristocrats or vis-versa? (I guess I’m mostly thinking about the roll of blood artist style effects here: are they necessary for persist combo to work, and are they good enough in sacrifice themed decks in cubes without any persist support?)
3: Are any of the cards you’ve used in your cube to support the combo significantly less valuable than the others? (If I include the combo I’d probably trim cards from those you’ve included and I’d love to know for example which of the meliria/vizier/unicorn effects are most important to include. Are finks, redcap, putrid goblin, and masticore the best persist creatures, with clique and blunderbuss as filler? Are the sac outlets with built in kill conditions more important than the one-drop black creatures?)
Sorry for the number of unfocused questions, I’d love any insight you have on any of them. Thanks!
Between this, dead of winter, on thin ice, and the coatl, I’m tempted to swap basics. The main problem is that my budget is limited and 200+ snow lands is way more expensive than what these cards are worth to my cube. I could errata all basics, but that feels weird to me. I might ask my playgroup how they feel, but I think it’s more likely than not that I don’t include any snow cards.
I feel like a lot of this discussion comes down to a disagreement about the underlying purpose of a gold/multicolored/guild/whatever you want to call it section, especially when we are rationing a specific number of slots to this section. I think wtwlf has articulated a cogent argument for a philosophy oriented towards having as much playability in this section as possible, but an alternate view is of a multicolored section that acts as a reward to each two-color combination, that provides strong cards that only they can use, similar to how it’s ok to include random artifacts or mono-colored cards that only support a particular narrow strategy like stax or storm or sneak and show or whatever. In that regard, cutting voice or wake or pridemage for nature’s chant takes away one of a limited number of specific bonuses given to the player who chooses to draft w/g. Someone coming from this side might respond to the playability argument that one might as well not include any gold cards at all or to just run an artifact cube, which is an obvious strawman, but I think it is worth thinking about why one would choose to include cards that have less broad playability when there are no shortage of cubeable cards for all sections.
Personally, I fall in the middle and include cards like finks and figure of destiny that have more than one hybrid symbol in the gold section and also have a flexible rainbow section with a non-fixed number of slots that includes whatever one hybrid symbol and three color cards I think are of value to the cube, which currently includes the hybrid aggro critters, Sphinx of steel wind, a bolas walker, and tasigur and alesha, and I’ll probably end up throwing nature’s chant in there as well. This is totally ad hoc, but it works for me in terms of cube management, and no one in my playgroup has felt like there are any real balance issues between color combinations, at least in regards to having access to cards. There are definitely more ways to build a successful izzet deck than selesnya deck in my cube, but that’s not due to how I balance my multicolored cards.
How is this card performing for people? Given its current price, I’m reticent to get a copy if it’s just going to be a placeholder for a better Simic card (assuming one of those will be printed someday.) FYI, my guild sections run 4 cards, so Coiling Oracle or Mystic Snake would likely be the cut. (Or Trygon Predator, which comes in and out for me.)
I noticed you swapped out Will Kenrith for Daze. Did Will underperform for you? He's in my cube but I haven't drafted a blue-based control deck since adding him so I don't have any first hand experience with the card. Daze is fantastic though.
What's your rationale for including Eternal Dragon? It seems a little clunky/durdly for an environment as fast and high-powered as yours, but maybe I'm misevaluating it?
I’d love to hear your thoughts on the card. I’ve really liked your previous recommendation of pushing white into a more combo oriented direction and am wondering if Sevinne’s Reclamation is worth an include in a 540-sized cube with persist support.
I don’t own the OG dual lands, but do run fetches, shocks, and cipt cycling duals. My current inclination is that this lack of duals will make the pilgrim better than arbor elf, but I could see an argument either way. Another option would be to cut one of the 2-CMC mana dorks (wall or caryatid) but that seems less right as they serve slightly different functions. I’m currently running all the commonly used 1-CMC dorks other than elves of deep shadow, boreal druid, and gilded goose.
How have you liked persist combo in your cube (especially as compared to other supported combo decks?) I was contemplating adding persist combo to my cube and had few questions about how to implement it:
1. How many sac-outlets, persist creatures, and meliria/vizier effects would you run to support the combo at 540? Would something like 4-4-4 be enough, (along with additional creature tutors) or is one part of the combo more important than the others and should receive greater redundancy.
2. Does it make sense to support persist and not aristocrats or vis-versa? (I guess I’m mostly thinking about the roll of blood artist style effects here: are they necessary for persist combo to work, and are they good enough in sacrifice themed decks in cubes without any persist support?)
3: Are any of the cards you’ve used in your cube to support the combo significantly less valuable than the others? (If I include the combo I’d probably trim cards from those you’ve included and I’d love to know for example which of the meliria/vizier/unicorn effects are most important to include. Are finks, redcap, putrid goblin, and masticore the best persist creatures, with clique and blunderbuss as filler? Are the sac outlets with built in kill conditions more important than the one-drop black creatures?)
Sorry for the number of unfocused questions, I’d love any insight you have on any of them. Thanks!
Personally, I fall in the middle and include cards like finks and figure of destiny that have more than one hybrid symbol in the gold section and also have a flexible rainbow section with a non-fixed number of slots that includes whatever one hybrid symbol and three color cards I think are of value to the cube, which currently includes the hybrid aggro critters, Sphinx of steel wind, a bolas walker, and tasigur and alesha, and I’ll probably end up throwing nature’s chant in there as well. This is totally ad hoc, but it works for me in terms of cube management, and no one in my playgroup has felt like there are any real balance issues between color combinations, at least in regards to having access to cards. There are definitely more ways to build a successful izzet deck than selesnya deck in my cube, but that’s not due to how I balance my multicolored cards.
I want to cut one or two white 2-drops from my 540 unpowered cube; which of these do you think are weakest?
This is what I'm currently running:
Also how would you rank these four?
I can probably only run one or two of these. I do run Najeela, so warrior synergies are semi-relevant.