As far as artifacts and lands to avoid, there's not much. I mean, as long as you guys have fun with the cards and the cube is an enjoyable experience, you're doing it right. I would caution against overdoing lands that enter the battlefield tapped though, if you want aggressive decks to be playable in more than one color.
Cheers, and happy cubing!
Rude Awakening? You pay :6mana::symg::symg: to have your opponent Starstorm for 2 and destroy all your lands? Or cycle a Decree of Pain? No thanks. I can see the card being OK, but P1P1? There is no way that card is first pick over... any utility card, good artifact or power. Or other 5 drop green spell for that matter. Plow Under? Primal Command? Those cards are a million times better.
Explosive Vegetation is good, but it's the worst of all the mana-ramp green land accelerators that he has in there (and he has a lot of 'em), and he needs more green creatures.
Centaur Glade is OK, but it could go for some better green cards.
Sounds like it will be.
Green for me used to be just a utility color (because green's most powerful spells are utility cards... like Regrowth, Krosan Tusker, Wall of Blossoms, harrow, Sylvan Library, etc). Plus, it's always had ramp + huge fattys (like Llanowar Elves, Birds of Paradise, Fastbond into cards like Silvos, Rogue Elemental and Child of Gaea).
I have found that green also has a great mid-range powerband in cards like Blastoderm, Phantom Centaur, Simian Grunts and Nantuko Vigilante. Not to mention that it's a powerful aggro color (Wild Dogs, Pouncing Jaguar, Rancor, Giant Growth, and Berserk).
I don't know... I'm liking green more and more the more I cube.
These cards could probably be removed for some much needed cards that are missing. Overall, I think the cube has a cool feel to it. It's very combat oriented, and it seems like it'll have some fun and interactive games.
Personally, I think that your blue selection has way too many creatures, and your green selection has way too few creatures. Keeping white/black/red at 50/50 is fine, but blue should be at like 33/66 and green should be at like 66/33 (% Creature Spells / % Non-Creature Spells). But not everybody balances their cubes in this way.
I think that every color is currently designed for mid-range decktypes, and the cube is lacking several quality aggro cards. There are a lot of single card choices that I'd replace, but the cards mentioned above should be the first to go, IMO.
Looks like a lot of fun! When I first build my cube, it was in terrible shape. I've probably exchanged about 75 cards since my cube v1.0, so this one looks to be in pretty good shape!
~Cheers
Ya, like an Urza's Rage with kicker... devastating.
Ya, you can't really compare the two. However, I don't find either the Explosives or the Keg to be underwhelming. The Engineered Explosives serves a very specific role that isn't covered by either the Keg, the Disk or the Stone. It's also really good with Trinket Mage (if you run it), and is a really good answer to token decks (like the Powder Keg). The Explosives is really good against white aggro, because even in a two-color deck the Explosives can remove 2 or 3 white creatures from the board.
True, but the same can be said about Morphling. It dies to the same cards. Now Morphling is a lot better, of course, but it's still good to have a good-sized black creature that has decent evasion. The fact that it dies to Diabolic Edict and Wrath of God is irrelevant. Pretty much every creature dies to those 2 spells. I'm not saying that the Nosferatu is like the best black creature ever or anything, I'm just suggesting that his evasion makes him solid.
And ya, green is one of the stronger colors in the cube now. It's amazing how much of a change a few cards can make to a color's power-level. Thanks for the input.
In mono-black control the Mutilate can be better sometimes, but in B/X control, the Decree is king.
Ya, in MBC the creature would almost be impossible to kill, once you have like 6 mana available (except to like edict effects and the like).
Here they are:
Out < In
Staunch Defenders < Battle Screech
Show and Tell < Cunning Wish
Mist Dragon < Voidmage Prodigy
Black Knight < Skittering Skirge
Priest of Gix < Skittering Horror
Zombify < Persecute
Blood Lust < Goblin Bombardment
Keldon Vandals < Arc Lightning
Fledgling Dragon < Burning Wish
Mtenda Lion < Living Wish
Moment's Peace < Worldly Tutor
Channel < Simian Grunts
Cartographer < Krosan Tusker
Defense of the Heart < Nantuko Vigilante
Beast Attack < Plow Under
Out < In
So far, all of the changes have been good.
Initial thoughts? Mistakes?
~Cheers
The problem with this is that cube drafting isn't limited... and it's not pseudo-constructed either. It's cube. Which means that you don't have a deck as loose as limited or a deck as focused as constructed. You build broken decks. And broken decks have answers to their opponents cards. Period. If you wanna run sideboards, that's cool... it's not really better or worse one way or the other, we just have fundamentally different opinions of what the cube is. People that use sideboards think the cube is for attempting to build moderate quality pseudo-constructed decks with sideboard backup. People that don't use sideboards think that the cube is about making the most broken 40-card deck you can. Two completely different styles of thinking I guess... so you're right in that we'll continue to go around in circles forever about this because we have different ideas of what the cube is supposed to be.
So back on topic... I think the Sengir Nosferatu is cool. Very tough to remove.
~Cheers