One of the biggest problem I've been noticing with new vintage cube drafters is that they do not understand how to use some of the older, powerful vintage level cards nor do they understand the interactions and ruling with some more less intuitive scenarios.
This will be a comprehensive article to explain how the most popular cards work and provide some sample play patterns to newer players understand how they could use these cards. My goal is to make this a comprehensive guide that all new Vintage Cube players could read to quickly learn the most important interactions.
This forum should not be to discuss if the cards are cube playable or not; This will mostly be an explanation forum designed to explain how some older cards are used for newer players.
There are some key cube concepts that are explained explicitly in these sections. They were necessary to help players fully understand the theory behind these cards in cube:
Curve Rate Cards/ Hyper geometric Distrubition - #19 Mishra's Workshop
MTG Online Cube vs Table Top - #23 Show and Tell
Turbo Xerox Theory/ Miracles - #24 Brainstorm
Archetype Package/ Cube Ritual Storm - #30 Pyretic Ritual/ Desperate Ritual
Parasitism vs 24th card Theory - #38 Fireblast/ Price of Progress
Card Evaluation/ Comparison - #61 Arcane Denial
Untap Storm - #67 Mana Doublers
Feast or Famine - #65 Opposition Agent
Lion's Eye Diamond (LED) is an incredibly powerful card that is played commonly in storm deck across all eternal formats. LED was originally printed during Mirage and was intended to be a fixed black lotus; Prior to the rules change on the timing of Mana Abilities, a player would announce he or she is casting a spell and then they are given a opportunity to add mana to the mana pool to pay for the spell.
In other words, a player would announce they are casting a card, suppose Jace, the Mind Sculptor and then could pay for the spell by tapping the land they just played plus cracking LED to add 3 blue to their mana pool (and discarding their hand) to pay for Jace.
Historical Interaction Explained Here
Player's quickly found that a fixed black lotus is still incredibly strong card. However after a year of the card's release, the ruling on casting spells has been revised to today's modern ruling (CR 601); Players are required to pay the cost associated with the spell first prior to putting the spell onto the stack.
This has become incredibly problematic and for a while LED was deem unplayable. Fortunately, there are several ways to bypass this drawback. The most common method is to pair LED with a tutor effect such as Demonic Tutor, or a graveyard recursion effect Yawgmoth's Will or a mass draw spell Time Spiral.
How this works is, first you would play LED from your hand. Then you would cast Demonic Tutor/ Yawgmoth's Will/ Time Spiral and announce that you will be holding priority. (Holding Priority allows you to put another ability on top the stack without the LED resolving - In other words, you are responding to your LED's effect) Afterwards, you can activate your Lion's Eye Diamond in response. The Lion's Eye Diamond effect will resolve first, netting you three mana and discarding your hand) then your tutor/ draw 7/ graveyard recursion will resolve.
- In the case of Yawgmoth's will, the LED could be cast again from the graveyard, netting 3 additional mana (hand is already discarded) then LED goes into exile netting 6 mana.
- Time Spiral will resolve after LED with 3 mana in your mana pool plus 6 lands untapped after time spiral with 7 new cards.
- Demonic Tutor is often used to retrieve a Yawgmoth's Will or a Time Spiral or is used at the end of a storm turn to grab a Tendrils of Agony to finish the opponent.
One deck that abuses this interaction is the constructed deck Ad Nauseam Tendrills in Legacy:
https://strategy.channelfireball.com/all-strategy/articles/deck-of-the-day-legacy-storm/
The second method to abuse Lion's Eye Diamond is with the card Underworld Breach. Unlike Yawgmoth's Will, Underworld Breach does not exile Lion's Eye if cast it from your graveyard allowing LED to be cast multiple times a turn from the graveyard with Underworld Breach is on the field.
The basic combo is this:
Turn 2 with 2 mana.
- Play Underworld Breach.
- Play LED.
- Activate LED, add three Blue. (Discard Brain Freeze from your hand. I will assume you have 3 other cards in hand for turn 2)
- Escape Brain Freeze - Exile three cards play use 2 blue from LED. Brain Freeze targeting your self.
- Brain Freeze mill yourself for 9 - Storm count is 3.
- With 9 cards in your graveyard, use 6 cards to escape LED twice, add 6 blue to your mana pool.
- Escape Brain Freeze - Exile three cards play use 2 blue from LED (4 left). Brain Freeze targeting yourself.
- Brain Freeze mills yourself for 15 - Storm count is 5.
....
Repeat this once more + cast 1-2 spells from your graveyard you turned over.
Then Brain Freeze your opponent for lethal.
Here is a detailed explanation of a Legacy Breach Deck:
http://www.mtgthesource.com/forums/showthread.php?33269-Deck-A-Cold-Day-in-Hell-(Breach-Freeze)
However, having Brain Freeze, LED and Underworld Breach come together in a single draft, let alone a single draw in a singleton format is not feasible. In most cases, cube players will fill the graveyard for Underworld Breach using cards like Wheel of Fortune, Faithless Looting and then use recur LED without a card like Brain Freeze.
The third way to use LED is to pair the card with a powerful spell with Flashback.
Two key examples are Echo of Eons and Unburial Rites. You can play the LED , activate the LED for mana and discard your hand. Then use the mana generated from the LED to cast Echo or Unburial Rites.
The fourth and final way to use LED is to pair it with Auriok Salvagers. This doesn't come together too often in cube, but its worth mentioning. The basic idea is Auriok Salvagers could pay 2 life to recur a LED or Black Lotus from the graveyard. LED/ Lotus generates 3 mana, while each Auriok activation uses 2 mana, therefore netting infinite mana (of any color).
-----
Draft Tip:
Unlike the Black Lotus or Dark Ritual, this card should only be played in storm decks. If you are looking to draft storm, this is an incredible pick up.
Drafters should not pick this card immediately, but see if this card wheels around the table. If the card does, it likely means that the other drafters at the table are not playing storm and the archetype is open.
Similarly, if you see too many storms cards opened for one draft and you do not have a good pickup, it is probably a good idea to hate draft LED to significantly cut the engine of the storm deck.
-----
Articles:
Storm is a relatively difficult deck to play in draft. I would recommend reading some articles prior to attempting to play storm.
https://drop.com/talk/2975/storm-in-vintage-cube
Lake of the dead is often not played in Vintage Cube, but similar to LED and a lot of other vintage cards, the ruling on this card has been changed from its original printing. I was confused by how this card was used and opened a thread to discuss this card - https://www.mtgsalvation.com/forums/the-game/the-cube-forum/cube-card-and-archetype/818577-lake-of-the-dead.. In summary, the Lake of the Dead's ETB is a replacement effect not a triggered ability and does not allow you to stack the second ability with the ETB sacrifice a land.
A common play with Lake of the Dead looks something like this:
Turn 3:
1. 2 Swamps in play, Tap both swamps for mana - 2 Black.
2. Lake of the Dead comes into play, replacement effect triggers, sacrifice the first swamp
3. Use Lake of the Dead's second ability, sacrifice the second swamp, add 4 black to your mana pool (6 black mana).
Use 6 black mana to cast Wurmcoil Engine/Grave Titan.
Lake of the Dead is occasionally played in Legacy Re-animator decks post board to play around grave hate - The opponent will often board in cards such as Surgical Extraction or Rest in Peace to blank the graveyard. The reanimator player will instead opt to ramp into their reanimator targets instead of cheating them into play.
------
Draft Tip:
This is not a commonly played card in Vintage Cubes, but it does have the potential to make it into some combo heavy lists. Its an incredibly strong pickup for swamp heavy combo decks (They do not have to be basic swamps) such Re-animator, storm, upheaval/ Wildfire etc.
This is a very good pickup for reanimator decks but this card does not need to be picked up early and will often wheel around the table.
Rishadan Port is another historically powerful card that is frequently misunderstood by newer players.
The card's usages is pretty simple; On the opponent's unkeep, use Rishadan Port + one untap land to tap one of your opponent's land. Your opponent could tap the land for mana, but that mana will be removed from the mana pool before their main phase, in essence denying them one mana on their main phase to cast sorcery speed spells.
It could also be used to deny the opponent off a specific color of mana if they only have one red or blue source.
This card is frequently played as a colorless utility land in more aggressive archetypes - Colorless Utility lands that do not come into play tapped could be added into decks without any deck building constraints.
One example of a play is this:
Player A is an aggressive Red- Black deck.
Player B is a Blue- White Control Deck.
Turn 3 Player A casts Goblin Rabblemaster with all his or her mana and attacks. (the third mana is Rishadan Port) Pass the turn.
Player B plays their 3rd land with the intention of casting supreme verdict on the next turn.
Player A does not want to over-extend but wants to continue to apply pressure, he or she attacks with the rabble master + tokens.
-- On Player B's upkeep, Player A uses his or her Rishadan port on upkeep to deny one of Player B's Lands.
Player B continues to turn with 2 lands and makes their 4th land drop. He or she is unable to cast Supreme Verdict that turn.
Player A gets to an extra attack in with Goblin Rabble Master, dealing lethal to Player B.
The aggressive player could very easily build their board use their Rishadan Port to deny the slower player the opportunity to play their slower threats on curve allowing their early drops to be much more effective.
This card could also be used in slower ramp MUD decks that seeks to gain a strong mana advantage over their opponent.
Standard:
Rishadan Port was banned from Mercadian Masques standard because of how the land was able to cut players from playing spells costing 4 or higher.
------
Draft Tip:
Strip Mine is a more powerful version of this effect and serves a similar role for aggressive strategies. However, Strip Mine is a key piece of the Land Recursion strategies but is also a very strong playable in any fair strategy that lacks answers to powerful lands such as Library of Alexandria.
Rishadan Port on the other hand is mostly played in aggressive strategies and occasionally in MUD decks (I would estimate 80 - 20 split). If this card wheels around the table, it often signals that aggressive strategies are open.
Legacy Death and Taxes:
There is a very good article written about how to use Rishadan Port in legacy - it is a very good read.
https://www.docdroid.net/GCM5EiF/rishadan-port-pdf#page=13
Tangle Wire is a very deceptively fair card that newer players often overlook.
In summary, this card seems to be a symmetrical prison card where each player is required to tap down 4, 3, 2 and 1 permanents on their upkeep. Newer players are often unaware that tangle wire has two triggers on your upkeep - the fading counter + the tap X permanents.
On your turn, you can stack the triggers such that the fading counter will be removed first then the tap with the tangle wire happens. In addition, you could tap the tangle wire itself to mitigate the effect even further.
Here is an example:
Player A cast tangle Wire:
Player B is required to tap 4 permanents.
Player A stacks the triggers, fading counter is removed to 3 first. Then tap 3 permanents, the first being tangle wire itself, then 2 other permanents.
This card can be incredibly oppressive in MUD/ Stax Strategies to deny the opponent ability to play their spells early on. Similarly, aggressive strategies could play this later on their curve to tap down the control player's lands making it harder for them to respond to their early threats.
Rules Question:
If you control multiple upkeep triggers, like BitterBlossom or SmokeStack, how are the triggers stack?
As the player that owns both triggers, you can decide which triggers are stacked on upkeep. In the case of bitterblossom, you could generate the token first then tap the token to Tangle Wire. If you control a smokestack and a tangle wire, you could stack Smokestack first, ask the opponent to sacrifice X permanents first then stack the tangle wire to tap X permanents.
What if both players control triggers, like my opponent has Bitterblossom and I have Tangle Wire, then how are the trigger's stacked?
The active player puts their ability on the stack, then the non-active player puts their ability on the stack. Then its resolved as Last-in, first out. In this scenario, if it is the opponent's turn, their bitterblossom trigger is added to the stack first, then the tangle wire is added on top. Tangle Wire will trigger first, then bitterblossom.
APNAP Explained
Tainted Pact is an old card that wasn't too popular and because of it's combo interaction with two new cards that are printed recently pushed it into Vintage Cube discussions. The card's original wording slightly misleading. Here is a breakdown of how this card is used:
1. Exile your top card. You can put it into your hand, if not, exile a second card.
2. Your first card goes to exile forever. You can decide if you want to put the second card into your hand or put it into exile.
... You can repeat this process as many times as you want ...
Since Cube is a singleton format, the remove two cards with the same name applies exclusively to basic lands. If you flip a basic swamp on the 3rd card, you decide to keep flipping and hit another basic swamp on the 7th card, the Tainted Pact effect is resolved and you will not get any cards. (The 7 cards flipped will stay in exile).
The drawback of potentially not getting any cards could be mitigated almost entirely by playing Snow-Covered Basics and Basics; especially for 3-4 color control decks, its is very possible to construct your mana base with a maximum of a singleton basic and a singleton snow basics for every color. If you would like the Deceiver Exarch or Splinter Twin in your library, you could continue to flip till you hit your one off deceiver exarch or Twin without any risk of not hitting your required card.
The second use of this card is if you have only singletons in your deck, you could continue to flip cards till you exile your entire library minus the last card then draw the last card using the pact's ability.
Why would you exile your entire library? Well with cards like Thassa's Oracle, Laboratory Maniac and Jace, Wielder of Mysteries you could EOT exile all the cards in your library minus two, draw the 2nd last card. Then go to your turn, draw the final card. Then play Thassa, Jace or Maniac and win.
There is an archetype in cube called the "Inverter of Combo" that seeks to exile all the cards in your library then cast Thassa's Oracle, Laboratory Maniac or Jace, Wielder of Mysteries then win.
As mentioned above, Tainted Pact is a possible option for exiling your entire library, but there is also Inverter of Truth, Demonic Consultation.
- Inverter of Truth requires a low graveyard count. Inverter is often paired with a delve spell such as Dig Through Time that can exile their entire graveyard before casting Inverter
- Demonic Consultation could be used to exile your library - name a card that does not exist in your library.
For more information, read the Pioneer Inverter deck - https://blog.cardkingdom.com/pioneer-inverter-deck-guide/
Tip:
Thassa's Oracle is a ETB trigger. If the oracle trigger is put onto the stack, but the oracle is removed, the effect will still resolve and the player will still win the game if there are no cards in the library. Similarly, you could put the Thassa's/ Jace's trigger onto the stack and holding priority put the Tainted Pact onto the stack. If the opponent does not counter the Tainted Pact, then you could safely exile your entire library and win. (They could still stop you using a Stifle style effect.)
But lastly, this is card could be played in a very fair way, similar to a card like Impulse. The player could choose to flip 3-4 cards to help smooth out their draws instead of exiling half or their entire library.
NOTE:
Some cubes may choose to play Tainted Pact, but not play Snow-Covered Lands. It is important to ask about snow basics before drafting this card.
Warning:
The cards in your library is a resources - It may be unwise to exile too many cards from your library, making your tutors and fetches a lot less effective.
Akroma, Angel of Fury, Sagu Mauler, Exalted Angel
Morph is a underplayed ability, but it has some rulings newer players might not be aware of that is relevant to cube:
If the face down morph creature is flickered, it returns the field face up. In other words, you could turn 3, play Akroma, Angel of Fury face down and use a blink effect on the face down Akroma. The Akroma will return on to the field face up.
Here are some important rulings on Morph new players might be not familiar with:
1. Morph does not use the stack - but its triggered ability uses the stack. This is added to avoid the opponent a chance to use a card like Lightning Bolt or Shock on a morphed Exalted Angel in response to the turning the morph creature face up. If this used the stack, it would have made morph borderline unplayable as it became incredibly easily for the player with lighting to use one mana to counter a 7 mana player.
https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/feature/morph-trigger-rules-primer-2003-01-08-0
2. Playing creatures face down and turning them face up (commonly called morphing/unmorphing) has no effect on them having summoning sickness - It is the same object. Similarly, equipments, auras and +1/+1 counters stay on the morph creature will also remain on the morph creature.
3. Playing a morph creature facedown is still considered casting a creature. It can be countered
4. Morph and combat is tricky - The general rule of thumb is you can only morph when you have priority.
Both players get priority in APNAP order at the beginning of those steps after any turn-based actions.
Beginning of Combat - Active Player gets priority, then Non-active player.
Declare Attackers - Attackers are declared then players get priority.
Declare Blockers - Blockers are declared then players get priority.
Combat Damage - Damage is assigned and dealt then players get priority.
End of Combat - Players get priority then creatures are removed from combat.
https://www.mtgsalvation.com/forums/magic-fundamentals/magic-rulings/magic-rulings-archives/290313-priority-during-combat-phase
Players could turn a morph creature face up at any of these steps, but cannot turn a creature face up after the lethal combat damage is assigned.
Here is a comprehensive rules list to Morph:
https://mtg.gamepedia.com/Morph
Otherwise, morph costs are often used to split the mana cost across several turns - One example of this is turn 3 Morph Exalted Angel, turn 4 Turn Angel Face up. The Angel is considered to have been on the field and will be able to attack.
Sensei's Divining Top - This is an incredibly powerful card for helping decks filter the draws/ controlling the top of their deck. Its a very straight forward card, but there are interactions with this card that a lot of newer players are unaware of (especially if the player has not played legacy during SDT's era or commander)
1. The obvious interaction of SDT is being able to constantly arrange the top of the players library is incredibly important. One of the easiest ways to abuse top is with the miracles mechanic.
Suppose the top of your library is:
Terminus
Card A
Card B
What the player is able to do is prior to their draw step, they could re-arrange the library such that it is:
Card A
Terminus
Card B
Then the player would draw card A during their regular draw step. During the opponent's turn, the player with SDT could at any decide tap top to draw the Terminus from the top of their library (reveal it) and cast Terminus for its miracles cost. This is something that could be done at instant speed; Miracles only cares if it is the first card drawn.
Otherwise, the Terminus could be "floated" on top of their library until the right time. This is a pretty common interaction that was heavily played in legacy when SDT was legal.
2. You could stack SDT's own effects on opt of each other. You could say:
- Activate Top's first ability, put the arrange first three cards on the stack
- Holding Priority, Tap Draw the top card of the library.
In this case, top would draw the card first and the top would be put on the top of the library. Then top's second ability activities and you can arrange the top three cards of your library, with the top card being SDT.
In other words, putting top on top of the library is not part of the activation cost, its part of the effect.
3. Similar to #2, you could:
- Activate, Tap draw the top card of the library.
- Holding Priority, untap top with an untap ability, Voltaic Key or Pestermite
- Allow the untap ability to resolve. First Tap ability is still on the stack
- Tap top second time.
After this, you can draw 2 cards. Similarly, you can mix #2 and #3 together for multiple draw/ rearrange effects.
4. Similar to #3, you could
- Activate, Tap draw the top card of the library.
- Holding Priority, activate the first ability of Goblin Welder to exchange SDT with a card in your graveyard.
- The Welder's exchange ability will resolve, exchanging the top and the artifact in your graveyard.
- Then you will still draw your card (SDT will not be put on top).
However, Sensei's Divining Top could also be used in fair decks with cards like Dark Confidant or Courser of Kruphix to arrange low CMC / lands on to the top of the deck respectively. It is also been used heavily in non-blue decks to provide some deck manipulation. Finally, it could also be used to as a cheap cantrip for prowess triggers with Monastery Mentor to provide additional cheap monk tokens.
5. Combo with Bolas's Citadel:
Bolas's Citadel
Suppose the Citadel reveals a land from the top of the library, or a spell with a very high CMC, you could use Sensei's Divining Top to tap draw the top card and put the top at the top of the library. Then use Citadel's effect to cast the top for 1 life.
This essentially reads:
- Pay X life to play the top card of your library or
- Pay 1 to draw the top card of your library
This is exceptionally strong in Storm/ Welder decks to ensure Bolas Citadel does not hit blanks.
NOTE:
Sensei's Divining Top has been banned from several formats for extending games to a grinding stop. Without going into detail, SDT activation should be resolved quickly, usually within a few seconds. If your opponent is taking an unusually long time with SDT, don't feel ashamed to call them out.
Miracles works only for the first card drawn each turn - if you are tapping top on your turn, this will likely not work as you have already drawn a card for the turn. This is a common oversight players make during table top matches.
Parallax Tide is another somewhat misleading card for newer players. There is a fair way to use Parallax Tide and a very unfair way to break the card.
1. The fair way to use Parallax Tide is as a mana denial engine for 3-4 turns. The player with Parallax Tide (Player A) would cast Parallax Tide (often ahead of curve with ramp) and activate its ability 3 times, to exile 3 of the opponent's land (Player B. The Parallax Tide would have 2 counters remaining.
Player B goes to their turn - they are denied 3 of their lands.
Player A goes to their turn - remove a counter from Parallax Tide (1 Counter remaining)
Player B goes to their turn - they are denied 3 of their lands again,
Player A goes to their turn - remove the last counter, Parallax Tide has no counters.
Player B goes to their turn - they are again denied 3 of their lands.
Player A goes to their turn - Remove last fading counter, Parallax Tide is sacrificed.
Similarly, a player could opt to deny 2 of the opponents lands for 4 turns or 4 of the opponent's lands for 2 turns etc.
2. The unfair way to break Parallax Tide is you can remove Parallax Tide from the battlefield while its exile lands trigger is on the stack. This interaction is very similar to how cards like Fiend Hunter or tidehollow sculler is broken in other eternal formats.
Suppose you have a card like Echoing Truth in your hand.
- Activate Parallax Tide's ability, target one of the opponent's land (4 Fading Remaining)
- Activate Parallax Tide's ability, target a different land from the opponent (3 Fading Remaining)
... Repeat 3 times ...
- Use Echoing Truths bouncing Parallax Wave back to your hand.
How this works, is the Echoing Truths will resolve first bouncing the parallax Wave back to your hand. Then Parallax Tides' ability will activate removing 5 lands from the opponent's battlefield. The lands can never be return; The original parallax tide is removed and cannot trigger the return clause. Similarly, if you recast the parallax tide from your hand, it is considered a new object and will not return the exiled 5 lands.
Outside of Cube:
Parallax Tide has a very complicated interaction with Parallax Wave and Opalescence. It is not commonly played in cube but here s a more complex explanation of the combo:
https://www.mtgsalvation.com/forums/magic-fundamentals/magic-rulings/magic-rulings-archives/310128-parallax-opalescence
Eureka on paper is a simple intuitive card; Similar to Show and Tell, it allows players to directly put permanents from their hand onto the battlefield. This could be obviously incredibly powerful when you have expensive Eldrazi/ planeswalkers in your hand that you would like to cheat into play for free. However, this card could get incredibly complicated at times for newer players when it come to scenarios with rulings.
Rulings:
1. While Eureka is being resolved, other effects could be put onto the stack and are resolved after Eureka is resolved. If player A decides to put in Griselbrand onto the field, they cannot draw their 7 cards while Eureka is being resolved. You cannot draw 7 and choose to put any of the 7 draw off Griselbrand onto the field.
2. Eureka's effect is considered resolved when both players choose to stop putting permanents onto the field for one entire cycle.
Case A:
Suppose player A has 1 Eldrazi in hand and Player B has 5 cards in hand.
Player A puts Eldrazi onto the field
Player B opts to put a card onto the field
Player A passes - nothing to put into play
Player B opts to put a second card onto the field.
....
This pattern continues for all 5 cards in Player B's hand. Eureka is resolved once both players in one cycle chooses not to put any permanents onto the field.
Case B:
Suppose player A has 2 Eldrazi in hand and Player B has 5 cards in hand.
Player A puts Eldrazi onto the field
Player B opts to put a card onto the field
Player A passes - nothing to put into play
Player B opts to put a second card onto the field.
Player A may put their second Eldrazi onto the field despite opting not the put anything onto the field on the second iteration.
....
3. ETB triggers. i.e. Ashen Rider are not triggered while Eureka is resolving; Its effect will be put onto the stack and resolved after Eureka is finished resolving.
If both players have ETB triggers, the active player puts their ability on the stack, then the non-active player puts their ability on the stack. Then its resolved as Last-in, first out.
APNAP Explained
Note:
There is a huge discrepancy in in the perceived power level between Eureka as well as Show and Tell by veteran cube curators. See "Show and Tell" for the full explanation. The one line summary is MTGO does not pair players against their own pod and it is much more likely for Eureka players to have to play the Fatty Cheat mirror match.
Council's Judgment was designed with a multi player, commander format in mind. This is an incredibly powerful removal card in eternal formats that is often slightly misleading for newer players.
This card works like this:
Player A casts Council's Judgment.
Player B allows Council's Judgment to resolve.
Player A using Will of the Council votes for a non-land permanent Player B controls. In this case, Player A votes for Player B's Jace, the Mind Sculptor.
Player B is required to vote as well. Player B cannot vote for any of Player A's permanent and has two choices:
1. He could vote for his Jace, the Mind Sculptor as well. (Jace gets two votes and is exiled)
2. He could vote for a different permanent, suppose he has snapcaster mage on the field. Both snapcaster and Jace would have 1 vote each, and they would be tied and would both be exiled.
Therefore to avoid the 2 for 1, Player B would also vote for his Jace.
Often this process is shortened in eternal formats with "Council's Judgment, exile permanent X".
Ruling:
This card does not target the permanent. True-name Nemesis could be removed with Council's Judgment.
Gifts Ungiven is one of my favorite cards and its been an incredibly powerful engine in multiple archetypes.
Searching a Hidden Zone:
Based off its original printing, Gifts Ungiven reads: "Search your library for up to four cards with different names and reveal them. Target opponent chooses two of those cards.". However, what a lot of players fail to understand is Gifts Ungiven actually has a hidden mode where the activating player could search up only two cards; As a result, the opponent is forced to choose the two cards that the activating player searched and put them both into the graveyard.
This is based off a very interesting ruling put into play very early in magic's history; Whenever a player is searching a hidden zone (i.e. In this case your library) with a restriction, the player could opt to "fail to find" even if they are able to find a card within the hidden zone that satisfy their requirement.
This ruling was added very early in magic history as proving a player's could satisfy the requirement would require a deck check from a judge and would become unrealistic in a tournament setting. Therefore, a ruling was added that whenever a player searches a hidden zone with a condition, they can opt to "fail to find" even if they are able to find the card that satisfy their requirement,
The Gifts Ungiven casting player could search up just two cards, Unburial Rites and Iona, shield of emeria and opt to fail to find two additional cards. The rest of the player's library COULD be entirely filled with only Unburial Rites and Iona, Shield of Emeria and they cannot satisfy the condition that the two other cards searched off gifts need to have different names. Furthermore, since there is no reasonable way the to prove this in a tournament setting, the casting player is able to announce they "fail to find".
Therefore, all current versions of Gifts Ungiven and printed with the text "up to four". (I probably didn't need to go through the entire "fail to find" and could have displayed the recent printing, but I really like the story behind why you can search only two cards. It came up quite a few times for me in tournament settings when my opponent asked the judge for the ruling behind how Gifts - Reanimator worked)
This is a very difficult card to explain. I will go over the three basic use cases for new players.
There is also a very similar card - Intuition. A key difference between these two cards is Intuition does not specify a quality on the cards being searched and therefore does not allow the casting player to fail to find.
Card Usage:
1. Double Entomb - Deterministic Gifts Combo.
As discussed above, Gifts Ungiven could be used to search up only two cards and put them both into the graveyard. A common usage of this is with unburial rites plus any fatty that does not shuffle itself back into the library. A player could EOT Gifts for these two, then on their turn unburial rites the reanimation target using unburial rites.
Similarly, they could use this trick to put reanimation targets into their graveyard and follow it up with a reanimation spell like animate dead
Sample Play:
ETB Gifts Ungiven
- Search up Griselbrand, Woodfall Primus. (Fail to Find) The opponent is required to select both and put them both into the graveyard.
- Next Turn - Play Animate Dead, Reanimate Griselbrand/ Woodfall Primus
There are also piles of 4 with a flashback spell/ dredge that locks the opponent into giving you the cards you would like regardless of their selection:
*Intuition could be used in a similar manner to tutor 3 creatures - Griselbrand, Woodfall Primus and Sundering Titan. For this example, the opponent would likely put your strongest reanimation target into your hand and the other into the graveyard. Similarly, Gifts Ungiven could tutor additional targets, but the strong 2 reanimation targets would likely be put into your hand.
Sample Play:
ETB Gifts Ungiven
- Search up Strip Mine, Misty Rainforest, Taiga and [card/]Life from the Loam[/card]. The opponent gives you Taiga and Life from the Loam
- If the opponent gives the player Life from the Loam, then he could use life from the Loam to recur the other 3 lands. If he did not, then the player would dredge Life from the Loam from their graveyard.
- Using a card like Life from the Loam, Wrenn and Six, Ramunap Excavator, Crucible of Worlds, the lands could be played from their hand (if the opponent gives it to them) or recurred from the graveyard (if the opponent does not give it to them)
* Intuition could be used in the same manner, but it fetches 3 targets instead of 4.
Sample Play:
ETB Gifts Ungiven
- Search up Sevinne's Reclamation + 3 Combo Creatures (Assume Melira Combo- Viscera Seer + Kitchen Finks + Melira, Sylvok Outcast)
Case 1 - Opponent gives you 2 Combo Pieces:
- Sevinne's Reclamation is in the graveyard and could be used to recur the creature sent to the graveyard + another permanent CMC 3 or less.
- The other combo pieces could be played from hand
Case 2 - Opponent gives you Sevinne's Reclamantion + 1 combo Piece:
- Sevinnne's Reclamation could be used to recur one of the combo pieces sent to the graveyard. It could then be used with flashback to recur the missing combo piece
- Last combo piece could be played from hand.
This loop is very mana intensive, it could be sped in both cases with a discard outlet, such as Noose Constrictor to put the 2nd combo piece (case 1) into the graveyard ,or Sevinne's Reclamantion (case 2) into the graveyard.
* Intuition could be performed in the same manner with 2 combo pieces + Sevinne's Reclamation. In this case, the third combo piece should be in the player's hand or on the field.
Sample Play:
ETB Gifts Ungiven
- Search up Past in Flames + 3 Rituals Dark Ritual, Seething Song, Manamorphose . Similar to the previous examples, regardless if the opponent gives the player Past in Flames or not, Past in Flames could be cast + the other rituals either as flashback or from initially from hand - See #30 for Ritual Storm.
- See UR Gifts Storm in Modern for more details - https://articles.starcitygames.com/premium/taking-modern-by-gifts-storm/
* Intuition could be used in the same manner, but it fetches 3 targets instead of 4.
Tip:
If your goal is to get the cards into the graveyard, Gifts is exceptional with a discard outlet such as Dack Fayden or Liliana of the Veil. The best way to use this is to put the Dack Fayden trigger onto the stack, then holding priority cast Gifts Ungiven. This does not give the opponent a chance to remove the Dack Fayden in response to Gifts Ungiven, stranding reanimation targets in your hand.
2. Gifts Tutor - Deterministic Gifts Tutor:
A second usage of Gifts (although this is less common in cube) is to tutor up three cards with very similar effects.
One example is :
Damnation
Wrath of God
Day of Judgement
-- Any 4th card --
The opponent is required to give the player one of these three cards, essentially ensuring a sweeper on the next turn.
This could also be paired with recursion effects such as jace, Vryn's prodigy or snapcaster mage or Life from the Loam that guarantees the card is recurred to the player's hand regardless of the decision from the opponent.
This is not used very common in cube - it is not common to have 3 offs answers in a 40 card limited deck. This often works as such - Suppose you are against an aggressive deck and you can gifts EOT. There are 3 cards that could be very efficient to play on turn 5:
- Thragtusk
- Batterskull
- Wrath of God
...
Or you are a Welder - Artifact deck and it is the late game, You can gifts EOT:
- Thirst for Knowledge
- Oblivion Ring
- Subterranean Tremors
- Ponder
These are not the best 3-4 cards to top deck, but they are all great plays on the subsequent turn and helps to thin out the library to draw into haymakers such as Wurmcoil Engine or Sundering Titan.
There are cases a player could gifts for their 4 most powerful spells:
- Myr Battlesphere
- Wurmcoil Engine
- Thragtusk
- Primeval Titan
The upside of this approach is will tutor 2 very powerful spells for the subsequent turns, but it will significantly weaken the player's top deck without a shuffle/ recursion effect.
* Intuition could also be used in a similar manner to guarantee one threat/ answer is put into the player's hand
3. Graveyard Value Pile:
Gifts is just one of the strongest ways to stockpile the graveyard for cards that get stronger with a stocked graveyard. Here are some examples that work well with a stocked graveyard. Here is more or less a comprehensive list:
Unfair Graveyard Decks:
Reanimation/ Creature Recursion:
- Agadeem's Awakening
- Recurring Nightmare
- Living Death
- Sun Titan
- Sevinne's Reclamation
- Reveillark
- Shallow Grave
- Liliana, Death's Majesty
- Reanimate
Land Recursion:
- Wrenn and Six
- Crucible of Worlds
- Ramunap Excavator
- Life from the Loam
Storm Engine:
- Yawgmoth's Will
- Underworld Breach
- Past in Flames
- Finale of Promise
- Mizzix's Mastery
Welder Combo
- Goblin Welder
- Daretti, Scrap Savant
- Trash for Treasure
- Goblin Engineer
Fair Graveyard Decks:
Play from Graveyard/ Escape:
- Uro, Titan of Nature's Wrath
- Phoenix of Ash
- Vengevine
- Skyclave Shade
- Bloodghast
- Alesha, Who Smiles at Death
Regrowth Effects:
- Regrowth
- Eternal Witness
- Snapcaster Mage
- Bala Ged Recovery
- Seasons past
- Chandra, Acolyte of Flame
- Lurrus of the Dream-Den
Flashcack/ Eternalize/ Aftermath:
- Lingering Souls
- Ancient Grudge
- Earthshaker Khenra
- Echo of Eons
- Commit // Memory
- Faithless Looting
- Deep Analysis
Top of the Deck Recursion:
- Volrath's Stronghold
- Academy Ruins
Graveyard Discount:
- Emrakul, the Promised End
- Bedlam Reveler
- Treasure Cruise
- Dig Through Time
- Murderous Cut
Threshold/ Delirium/ Threshold/ Tarmogoyf
- Tarmogoyf
- Grim Flayer
- Magmatic Channeler
- Cabal Ritual
Deck Building Tip:
Gifts Ungiven is often too slow Reanimator/ Welder Combo decks (unless it is explicitly paired with Unburial Rites. It is best played in Slower combo reanimation decks such as:
- Welder/ Daretti Artifacts
- Living Death, Recurring Nightmare
Gifts/ Intuition is strong in graveyard creature centric decks with cards like Emrakul, the Promised End or Vengevine or Uro, Titan of Nature's Wrath.
It is also incredibly strong with the Storm/ Lands recursion engines.
In terms of deck building, gifts is best thought of as a "Instant, 4 mana draw 4, scry 2". (This number should be calibrated depending on the value of the graveyard). It is frequently to slow to be effective as a tutor or a discard outlet.
Intuition on the other hand is inexpensive enough to be considered a discard/ entomb outlet for reanimater decks.
SkullClamp - This is an incredibly powerful draw engine. During original Mirrodin, the card was changed last minute to give the creatures a -1 on equip that was intended to be a supposed downside. Unfortunately, this allowed players to clamp their tokens/ one drops to draw an insane number of cards.
One thing newer players often overlook is tokens themselves do hit the graveyard (unless there is a Rest in Peace style effect on the field).
Therefore, with a card such as Lingering Souls a player could equip skullclamp to up to 4 spirit tokens and draw 8 cards off one Lingering Souls.
This is one of the most oppressive card draw engines available in eternal formats - especially with a token generator such as Young Pyromancer, it is not unusual to see a player essentially draw 6 to 10 cards.
Note:
This card is incredibly oppressive - the finals of No-Ban Modern are frequently skullclamp decks and decks that prey on the one drop decks - Chalice of the Void prison decks. If you can drafting a creature based strategy, this should be an immediate pick up.
The Splinter Twin Combo is my most beloved archetype in constructed right now. How the archetype works is this:
The combo requires two parts - an untap creatures such as:
Deceiver Exarch/Pestermite/Bounding Krasis
(There is also Village Bell-Ringer and Great Oak Guardian
with tap to create a duplicate effect such as:
Splinter Twin or Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker
- EOT play an Deceiver Exarch, Pestermite or Bounding Krasis.
- On your turn, untap and play Splinter Twin on one of the untap creatures.
- Tap the creature, using Splinter Twin's ability to create a haste version of the creature (Deceiver Exarch)
- Use the token Deceiver's untap ability to untap the Deceiver Exarch wearing the Splinter Twin
--- Repeat loop an arbitrary number of time ---
- Attack with the arbitrary large number of attackers
(This also works with Kiki-Jiki, except untap the Kiki-Jiki).
Kiki-Jiki could also work Restoration Angel, Zealous Conscripts, Felidar Guardian or Intruder Alarm
How to build the deck:
Probably everyone understands how the Splinter Twin Combo works, but for new cube drafters, this is often the biggest question - how would I build a UR or Grixis Twin deck if I have only one copy of each half of the combo in my entire 40?
Here are some approach:
1. Tempo Twin - Requires a minimum preferably 2 tap/ untap creatures + a minimum of one Kiki-Jiki or Splinter Twin
This version of the twin deck would play very similar to the modern version of UR Twin where the play would play untap creatures and use the threat of the combo to force the opponent to leave open mana every turn. It is very unlikely to draft 3 untap creatures + both the Kiki-Jiki and the Splinter Twin.
In order for this version to be successful, this combo will need to be slotted into a control shell, contains redundant tutor/ loot effects or contain a second combo, some like Felidar Guardian + Saheeli Rai or Invertor Combo.
2. Pod Twin - Requires a minimum of one tap/ untap creature + a minimum of one Kiki-jiki or Splinter Twin + Birthing Pod/ Prime Speaker Vannifar:
This version of the twin deck often is slots into the pod archetype where untap ability of the Deceiver Exarch could be used along with Birthing Pod to generate additional value. Similarly, Splinter Twin/ Kiki-Jiki could be used very effectively with the ETB creatures already present in the Pod decks to present additional value.
The creature tutors in the pod deck - Chord of Calling could also be used to help assemble the combo.
Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker is easily one of Vintage Cube's top 50 cards - his copy + haste in ETB decks should not be under estimated. The downside of Kiki-Jiki is his triple red mana cost. For this reason, it is better he is put into play from the library using a green creature tutor.
3. Storm Twin/ Tooth and Nail:
I've seen cases of the Kiki- Angel combo being assembled by Tooth and Nail or as the win-con of a storm deck, where the combo is assembled as their win combo when the storm deck goes off and draws the majority of their decks.
Draft Tip:
- Don't be afraid to 4-5 pick a Deceiver Exarch or a Splinter Twin if you really like this archetype and you're in the right colors. If it doesn't work out for you, you could always put it into your sideboard.
- The Twin/ Kiki-Jiki half is a lot less redundant than the creature half of the combo - this half is alot more important
- Kiki-Jiki is an incredibly powerful card that is good in creature combo decks as well as twin.
Important:
- Imperial Recruiter - This is an incredibly strong engine for this deck. He could be used to grab either half of the Pestermite/ Deceiver Exarch or Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker Combo. Most importantly he could be used to grab Kiki-Jiki from your library. Kiki-Jiki could then copy Imperial Recruiter to grab Deceiver Exarch/ Pestermite and win.
- Recruiter of the Guard could be used in a similar line to Imperial Recruiter, but it is off color and cannot grab Deceiver Exarch.
Interactions:
Its rare for a full on Twin deck to come together in a UR shells.
- The untap creatures of Pestermite, Deceiver Exarch are also good for untapping Time Vault (See #42 Time Vault) and untapping Birthing Pod or Prime Speaker Vannifar (See #66 Birthing Pod) for additional activiations.
- Splinter Twin, Restoration Angel and Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker are all exceptional in flicker decks.
Chains of Mephistopheles. This is essentially a draw-denial card, similar to narset, parter of veils, notion thief or Leovold, Emissary of Trest. Chains could be played in stax decks, especially with draw-7 to empty the opponent's hand.
This card is so ridiculously complex/ weirdly worded that there are diagrams explaining how this card works:
https://magicjudge.tumblr.com/post/146234535224/magicjudge-how-chains-of-mephistopheles-works.
In short, do not cast a brainstorm into this. It won't end up well for you.
In constructed formats, cards like Brainstorm could makeup 50-60% of decks and playing cards like Chains of Mephistopheles is important in stax decks to ensure the blue deck does not get ahead.
There are a category of Black Stax cards that seeks to grind the opponent out by prison/ stax:
More Commonly Played:
- Liliana of the Veil
- Nether Void
- The Abyss
- Rankle, Master of Pranks
- Braids, Cabal Minion
- Smokestack
- Lodestone Golen
- Davriel, Rogue Shadowmage
- Liliana, the last hope
Less played:
- Bottomless Pit
- Necrogen Mists
- Pox
- Oppression
- Smallpox
The stax decks seeks to break this symmetry with cards like Life from the Loam, Bloodghast, Crucible of Worlds to try to gain a small card advantage. These prison effects could be used in two ways:
- Black Stax - The prison pieces are slotted into a black based control deck that plays black hand disruption/ cheap removal to remove creatures to ensure they will be able to land their prison pieces onto an empty board
- Black Aggro - These prison pieces are the top end of an aggro deck and are used as sacrifice outlets for aristocrats decks/ discarding excessive lands against slower opponents.
Chains of Mephistopheles is very effective with discard to ensure the opponent does not recoup their resources with a draw 7 and could be discarded/ sacrificed in matchups where it is less effective.
Final Notes:
The majority of the discard stax could be played to great effect in Bx graveyard decks or reanimator decks without a full black stax archetype.
The Melira Combo has been a combo that seeks to assemble a three card combo using three components: a free sacrifice outlet, a persist creature and an engine card that could remove the -1/-1 counter, add +1/+1 counter or recursion engine.
If a -1/-1 counter and a +1/+1 counter are put on to a creature at the same time, they would cancel out each other and be both removed.
The standard Melira package is such:
- Melira, Sylvok Outcast
- Kitchen Finks
- Viscera Seer
At the start of the combo, all three creatures would be in play. The Viscera Seer would sacrifice the Kitchen Finks to scry 1. Then the Kitchen Finks would hit the graveyard and the persist trigger would be put onto the stack. The Kitchen Finks would be returned back to the field with a -1/-1 counter. However, Melira would remove the -1/-1 counter, thus resetting the kitchen finks. Kitchen Finks ETB would trigger gaining 2 life.
Afterward, this loop could be repeated an arbitrary number of time gaining an arbitrary number of life + scry.
Despite being a three card combo, this is combo was relatively easy to assemble in modern with the cards Birthing Pod or Collected Company and redundant combo pieces in terms persist creatures, sacrifice outlets and recursion engines.
https://www.mtggoldfish.com/deck/545650#paper
Here is an example of a modern Company archetype - It has 3 sacrifice outlets, 4 recursion engines and 5 persist creatures in addition to having 4 chord of calling and 4 collected company to help find combo pieces. Similarly, the deck could easily board out its weakest combo pieces (Visera seer) and play as a midrange creature deck with Gavony Township post board. In general, this decks seeks to win roughly 50% of the time with the comb and 50% without the combo.
The cube version of Melira pod is surprising similar to its modern counter part - there are often 7-8 redundant copies of each effect in the cube and if drafted correctly, it is possible for drafters to assemble 2-3 of each effect in addition to tutors to assemble the combo.
Here are the most popular versions of each effect:
Sacrifice Outlets:
Viscera Seer/Woe Strider - Infinite Scry, could be used with a persist creature that would not win on the spot, but setup to top deck a Murderous Redcap or a different sacrifice outlet that could win.
Carrion Feeder/Bloodthrone Vampire - Could grow to any arbitrary size.
Yawgmoth, Thran Physician/Greater Gargadon - Neither of these two could go infinite, but getting 8-9 triggers off these creatures will be sufficient with murderous redcap. Thran could go infinite with Kitchen Finks. The value generated off Thran/ Greater Gargadon is often sufficient to win the game.
Goblin Bombardment - This is the best sacrifice outlet - this will guarantee an auto win with any other combination of recursion engines + persist creatures.
Altar of Dementia - this could be pointed at any non-eldrazi opponent to mill them out.
Spawning Pit - could put an infinite number of counters on the spawning pit.
Ashnod's Altar - could generate an infinite amount of mana
falkenrath aristocrat
(Based off above)
Color breakdown - 5 Black Sacrifice Outlets, 2 Red Sacrifice Outlets, 3 Colorless Sacrifice Outlets, 1 Black Red.
Additional Options:
- Jinxed Idol - Suppose you have Kitchen Finks. You can sacrifice Kitchen Finks (pay the cost) and both the Idol + Kitchen Finks trigger is put on the stack. Stack it such that Finks Persist is on top of Idol. Let persist resolve, then sacrifice again - the persist trigger is stacked on top of Idol trigger 1 and trigger 2. Repeat X times
- Bogardan Dragonheart / Nantuko Husk - almost playable
- Blasting Station/ Phyrexian Altar - often played, but slightly more narrow
Recursion Engines:
Anafenza, Kin-Tree Spirit - this will only work if the persist creature coming back is the smallest
Vizier of Remedies/Melira, Sylvok Outcast - removes the -1/-1
Luminous Broodmoth - this one is a bit tricky - How this works with persist is suppose Kitchen Finks has no persist counters, you would sacrifice the kitchen finks. Both persist and Broodmoth would trigger. You would stack the persist on top of the broodmoth trigger and kitchen finks would return with the -1/-1 counter and no flying. Then on the next iteration, you would sacrifice the kitchen finks and stack it such that Broodmoth trigger would be on top of the kitchen finks such that kitchen finks would return with flying and no persist. (https://www.mtgnexus.com/viewtopic.php?t=24447)
Renata, Called to the Hunt/ Good-Fortune Unicorn/ Rhythm of the Wild / Grumgully, the Generous / The Great Henge/ Arlinn, the Pack's Hope / Path of Discovery (If the top of your library is a nonland spell and opt not to put into the graveyard. Repeat loop as many time as possible) - +1/+1 on ETB
Mikaeus, the Unhallowed - this works similar to Broodmoth - alternate between undying and persist.
Metallic Mimic - name the card type of the persist creature
Solemnity - removes putting counters
Play Tip:
* For Blasting Station, if multiple creatures/ tokens enter the battlefield at the same time, the triggers could be stacked such that Blasting Station could sacrifice all those tokens - https://www.mtgsalvation.com/forums/magic-fundamentals/magic-rulings/magic-rulings-archives/299260-blasting-station-multiple-tokens-etb.
* There are only a few Melira loops that generate a win on the spot - Kitchen Finks, Murderous Redcap, Blasting Station, Goblin Bombardment, Altar of Dementia. There are also three sacrifice outlets - Viscera Sear, Woe Strider, Yawgmoth Thran Physician that will generate infinite card draw/ scry and they're great for setting up a win on the following turn. They lose a lot of their potency without one of the above in the deck.
(Based off above):
Color breakdown - 3 White Recursion, 3 Green Recursion, 1 Black, 1 Colorless, 2 Red-Green, 1 Green-White
* Heliod, Sun-Crowned / Archangel of Thune can function as a backup recursion engine for Kitchen Finks.
Persist Creatures:
Putrid Goblin
Glen Elendra Archmage
Kitchen Finks - infinite life on scarifice
Lesser Masticore
Murderous Redcap - infinite damge
Puppeteer Clique - creatures all opponent's creatures from graveyard
Safehold Elite
Thunderblust
Woodfall Primus - destroys all the opponents non-creature permanents.
Additional Options:
- Furystoke Giant / Restless Apparition / Rendclaw Trow - Not as good, but could be playable if your cube would like a few more persist enablers.
Note:
Basri's Lieutenant can function as a persist creature if paired with a recursion engine that grants +1/+1 counters - Suppose you have another creature on the field + sacrifice outlet + Anafenza, Kin-Tree Spirit. Basri enters the battlefield and puts the +1/+1 counter on the creature. Sacrifice the creature to the Sac Outlet. Basri triggers and puts a 2/2 knight on the field - it enters with a +1/+1 counters thanks to Anafenza. The 2/2 Knight with the +1/+1 counter can be sacrificed repeating the loop an arbitrarily large number of times.
Unfortunately, not all combinations of the sacrifice outlet, persist creatures and recursion engines would win on the spot, however many combinations will result in an overwhelming advantage that will most likely result in a win.
(Based off above - I find it is easier to visualize by counting each hybrid creature twice in each color):
Color Breakdown - 3 Black, 1 Blue, 3 Green, 2 White, 3 Red, 1 Colorless
(Thunderbust, Glen Elendra and Woodfall are not ideal for the persist combo, it is prob better to count them as half)
* Basri doesn't work with all the recursion creatures, I will count this as half.
Modified Color Breakdown - 3 Black, 0.5 Blue, 2.5 Green, 2.5 White, 2.5 Red, 1 Colorless
Cross Pollination with Aristocrats:
The aristocrats deck is very similar to the melira deck - it has sacrifice outlets, persist creatures (in addition, token generators) and aristocrats (creatures that deal damage to the opponent when a sacrifice dies - Blood Artist).
In short, the deck replaces the the recursion engines with Blood Artists and could use both persist creatures and sacrifice fodder to generate its advantage.
Often successfully melira decks are hybrid aristocrats/ persist decks.
Drafting this deck:
The persist deck is incredibly difficult to draft correctly. Before attempting to draft this deck, I would recommend making a list of all the persist creatures, sacrifice outlets, recursion engines as well as aristocrats by color combination to have an idea of which tri color combinations are open to which Melira since in theory its support pieces are spread across 4 colors.
Here are the color breakdown (based on above) for each color combination:
* Kitchen Finks, Safehold Elite and Murderous Redcap were double counted for their respective colors. If green-white are both present -2, Red-Black - 1.
*Green has access to Birthing Pod, Vivien, Monster's Advocate, Finale of Devastation, Green Sun's Zenith, Worldly Tutor, Fauna Shaman. Green Sun's Zenith cannot grab sacrifice outlets. Green based combinations should be rewarded +1.
1. Red- Green- White (Naya):
- 5 Sacrifice Outlets
- 10 recursion engines
- 4.5 persist creatures
*Green Bonus - +1 across stats
2. Red- Black- Green (Jund):
- 11 Sacrifice Outlets
- 7 Recursion engines
- 6 persist creatures
*Green Bonus - +1 across stats
3. White- Black- Green (Abzan):
- 10 Sacrifice Outlets
- 9 Recursion engines
- 7 persist creatures
*Green Bonus - +1 across stats
*This is the most optimized color combination for melira combo
4. Red- White - Black (Mardu):
- 11 Sacrifice Outlets
- 6 recursion engines
- 8 persist creatures
5. Black-White:
- 8 Sacrifice Outlets
- 4 Recursion Engines
- 6.5 Persist Creatures
6. Green-Black:
- 8 Sacrifice Outlets
- 5 Recursion Engines
- 6.5 Persist creatures
*Green Bonus - +1 across stats
7. Red-Green:
- 5 Sacrifice Outlets
- 5 Recursion Engines
- 6 Persist creatures
*Green Bonus - +1 across stats
8. Black-Red:
- 11 Sacrifice Outlets
- 2 Recursion Engines
- 5.5 Persist Creatures
*Not an ideal combination for Melira Combo
9. White-Red:
- 5 Sacrifice Outlets
- 3 Recursion Engines
- 6 Persist Creatures
*Not an ideal combination for Melira Combo
10. Green-White:
- 3 Sacrifice Outlets
- 8 recursion engines
- 4 Persist Creatures
*Not an ideal combination for Melira Combo
In summary, any non-blue tri color combination is able to sufficient support the melira combo if draft correctly. Naya and Mardu are slightly weaker combinations while Abzan and Jund are a bit stronger.
There are also 3 dual color combinations (Black-White, Green-Black and Red-Green) that are able to support this archetype. Players could splash blue with any of these three dual color combinations. There isn't strong incentive to move into dual colors for Melira combo, unless it is to gain stronger color fixing for cards like Thunderbust or Mikaeus, the Unhallowed.
Similarly, colorless sacrifice outlets such as Blasting Station or Phyrexian Altar could help make Green-White a more playable option for the melira combo, although I feel these two are too narrow in cube.
In addition, Solemnity could be added as a white recursion engine, but I felt the card was too narrow and there were sufficient support for the archetype already.
Supporting Melira Combo in your cube:
These numbers were calculated based on enablers in my cube/ wtwlf123's cube. There are two main ways to support the Melira Combo - any non-blue tri color combination or Abzan/ Jund etc.
It's often a good idea to make a spreadsheet of the enablers prior to drafting or let your drafters know which tri color pairs are supported for the Melira Combo.
Similarly, Melira decks should also be focusing on the curve and playability of the cards:
- Cards like Solemnity might be good for both Melira/ Dark Depths combo, but fail to play as a fair creature unlike other enablers like Grumgully, the Generous.
- Cards like Melira/ Vizier don't play well in other archetype, but they are good recursion engines as the rest of the deck is 3-4 CMC and lacks 2 drop playables.
- My general rule of thumb is the Melira deck should aim to have 2 Persist, 2 Recursion Engines and 2 Sacrifice outlets, where a minimum of 2 loops should either generate a win Murderous Redcap or a win Carrion Feeder.
There are all-in melira variants and those should aim for 3-3-3, but there variants require a win on the spot, not just a massive Carrion Feeder, Greater Gargadon etc.
- The Melira combo is a much slower combo than the Storm/ Reanimator deck but its combo pieces play well in a fair game; The deck should aim to play a midrange-combo game rather than an all-in combo deck.
The aristocrats seeks to win the game by attacking the opponent in the early game via small creatures and sacrificing them with aristocrats on the field that result in life loss when a creature decks.
Here are the list of commonly played aristocrats in cube:
Death Triggers:
Blood Artist
Zulaport Cutthroat
Bastion of Remembrance
Spiteful Prankster
Cruel Celebrant
Judith, the Scourge Diva
Honorary Aristocrats:
mayhem devil
Fireblade Artist
Corpse Knight
Phyrexian metamorph - copy any of the above
Goblin Bombardment
Death Trigger, Draw cards:
Midnight Reaper
Yawgmoth, Thran Physician
SkullClamp
Aristocrat Finishers:
Bloodthrone Vampire
Hero of Bladehold
Hellrider
Westvale abbey
Purphoros, God of the Forge
This is a list of what I consider strong payoffs in the aristocrats desk. Here is how I would roughly grade them:
Aristocrats - 1 point
Honorary Aristocrats - 0.75 Points
Death Triggers, Draw Cards - 0.5 Points for Midnight, 0.75 for Yawgmoth, 1 for SkullClamp
Aristocrat Finisher - 0.5 Points for BloodThrone Vampire, Hero of Bladehold, 0.75 Points for HellRider, 0.75 Point for Westvale Abbey, 1 Point Purphoros, God of the Forge.
Flying Token Generators:
Lingering Souls
Bitterblossom
Flying tokens are incredibly strong at chipping in incidental damage + sacrifice fodder - I would add 0.75 points for each of these cards drafted.
Green Support cards:
Birthing Pod
Vivien, Monster's Advocate
Gaea's Cradle
All three of these cards are incredibly strong in this archetype - I would add 1 point for each of these cards drafted.
Unlike constructed, it is very difficult to get 5-6 pure aristocrats in a 40 card deck. On the hand, any of these replacements could work just as well. Roughly, you should aim for 5-6 points in total when drafting a successful aristocrats deck.
The primary color pair for aristocrats are Black-Red and Black-White based - a third color could be splash.
Finally, it is important to note that tokens themselves do hit the graveyard and count towards dying. (Unless a Rest in Peace is in play)
The Melira combo and aristocrats have a very large overlap in terms of cards and often the best performing decks are a hybrid version of the two. Roughly speaking, abzan is the best color combination for the Melira Pod Combo and Mardu is the best color combination for Aristocrats.
When drafting the deck, players should seek to categories cards into these 3 categories:
1. Sacrifice Outlets (Free + Incidental):
Free Sacrifice Outlets such as Viscera Seer are ideal for both the persist combo and aristocrats, but incidental death outlets such as Vraska, Golgari Queen, Braids, Cabal Minion or Birthing Pod etc could also be very effective. The Melira Combo may not be able to generate the finite combo loop, but with a combination such as Braids, Melira and Kitchen Finks can generate sacrifice value.
- Both the Melira Combo and Aristocrats should seek to ideally 3-4 copies of each effect, if not higher. Red-Black aristocrats is more streamlined as a rakdos aggro deck, while black-white is more of a token deck.
Free sacrifice outlets are stronger in the Melira deck for an all-in combo, but beneficial sacrifice outlets are better in aristocrats. Here are some examples:
- Evolutionary Leap
- Vraska, Golgari Queen
- Braids, Cabal Minion
- Birthing Pod
- Rankle, Master of Pranks
- Yawgmoth, Thran Physician
- Westvale Abbey
- Goblin Bombardment
- Skullclamp
- Greater Gargadon
- Liliana, Dreadhorde General
- Recurring Nightmare
- God-Eternal Bontu
2. Sacrifice Fodder + Persist creatures:
Persist creatures are ideal sacrifice fodder as they could be sacrificed twice. Similarly, the go-wide nature of aristocrats pair nicely with the +1/+1 recursion engines out of the Melira Deck.
- Both the Aristocrats deck and the Melira deck should seek to draft persist creature. The aristocrats deck should draft the go-wide sacrifice fodder at a higher priority than the melira deck.
3. Recursion Engines / Blood Artists:
The melira deck could replace Melira with Visera Seer + Kitchen Finks + Blood Artists to generate death triggers. The aristocrats deck is less flexible in replacing its blood artists with Melira enablers as a combination as Lingering Souls, Viscera Seer and Melira, Sylvok Outcast does not do enable anything.
Draft Tip:
Before attempting to draft the archetype, it is important to make a rough list of which colors the sacrifice outlets, recursion engines and blood artists effects are spread across the colors.
- Blue generally does not provide recursion engines or Blood Artists but it does provide some cards of value such as Prime Speaker Vannifar, Uro, Titan of Nature's Wrath and Edric, Spymaster of Trest for go wide strategies.
- Sacrifice outlets are traditionally concentrated in Black with some in red/ colorless
- Blood Artists effect are primarily black based with some in red
- Persist enablers are primarily Green/ White (3 White, 3 Green, 1 Green-White). However, there these three are not in Green-White - Rhythm of the Wild / Grumgully, the Generous / Mikaeus, the Unhallowed
- Persist creatures are spread across the color - fortunately many of them are hybrid mana.
- Sacrifice fodder could be fodder could be found in all the colors, primarily in White-Green
Nexus of Fate
This is very difficult card to fully explain and it took me a very long time to fully understand how to effective use it.
Historically, there have been a lot of extra turn spells in the form of Time Warp, Walk the Aeons or Temporal Manipulation, Part the Waterveil. The problem with these extra turns spells is that are incredibly expensive and requires the player to spend their entire turn casting the extra turn spell and they're only able to access their mana on the following turn. In order for these extra turn spells to be effective, the player casting it would need to pair it with a planeswalker or a turn based effect otherwise, these extra turn spells is an expensive 5 mana draw 1.
However, Nexus of Fate breaks this rule - it is an instant and could be cast at the end of the opponent's turn. Essentially the caster will have access to two consecutive turns with all their mana. This unlocks an incredible number of plays:
- Fatties will essentially have "haste"
- Planeswalkers could have two consecutive activation and could be protected - This is essentially the same as "if you untap with a jace/ Chandra, you win"
- Play setup cards like Thran Dynamo or Mana Flare for a followup turn.
Two consecutive turns is an incredibly strong effect and should not be under estimated - the slower control/ ramp or midrange deck that survive to cast Nexus of Fate at the end of their turn essentially would win.
Similarly, Nexus of Fates breaks a second rule with the extra turn spells - it shuffles itself back into the library. This clause could be abused in draw heavy decks to dig into additional nexus of fate to essentially take unlimited turns.
Here is an example of standard Nexus:
https://strategy.channelfireball.com/all-strategy/mtg/channelmagic-articles/the-scariest-deck-in-standard-u-g-nexus-and-how-to-fight-it/
This is a bit excessive in a cube environment as nexus decks in constructed are with fog, ramp and draw spells to build up for the nexus loop with only 2-3 actual win cons. Often the first scenario is enough for a win, but some of the cube forums have pointed out that nexus of fate could be used similarly as a third Thassa's Oracle or Jace, wielder of mysteries where a player could empty their entire library with effects like Hermit Druid, Tainted Pact, Demonic Consultation, Oath of druids or Doom Whisperer and leave Nexus of Fate as the last card in their library to take infinite turns.
Lastly, Nexus of Fate is often the strongest card to copy in a cube environment - It pairs very well with cards like God-Eternal Kefnet and especially Panoptic Mirror for unlimited turns.
Mishra's Workshop is incredibly strong card in constructed format - Vintage/ Commander. Constructed decks could essentially fill their deck with only artifacts turning this card essentially into a tap add 3 mana.
Sol or Tri lands are incredibly powerful for two reasons:
1. This is automatic 3 for 1 - playing a Mishra's Workshop in Vintage shops is equivalent to playing 3 Wastes. These decks allow the player to cut down their number of mana sources in favor of actual spells.
The most clear example of this the shift from Eye of Ugin Eldrazi to Noble Hierarch/ Ancient Stirrings Bant Eldrazi where the deck needed to move playing 23 lands + 5 mana dorks + 4 ancient stirrings (which is often cast on the early turns to search for additional lands).
Eye of Ugin Eldrazi - 24 mana sources:
https://www.mtggoldfish.com/deck/370900#paper
Bant Eldrazi - 23 lands + 5 mana dorks + 4 Ancient Stirrings:
https://mtgdecks.net/Modern/bant-eldrazi-decklist-by-herve-brocker-1033417
If a deck intends to curve into a 6 drop on turn 6, the deck will need approximately 26 mana sources in a 60 card deck, similarly, if a deck intends to curve into a 7 drop on turn 7, the deck will need approximate 28 mana sources.
Hypergeometric distribution calculator:
- Deck = 60, Success = 26, X = 6, Sample size = 13, 7 starting cards + 6 cards drawn
(53% probability of success, 58% probability of success if mana source is increased to 27)
- Deck = 60, Success = 28, X = 7, Sample size = 14, 7 starting cards + 7 cards drawn
(50% probability of success, 56% probability of success if mana source is increased to 29)
These numbers are not realistic for a constructed deck and therefore, they would require card draw, ramp spells that generate multiple mana (i.e. Thran Dynamo) to accumulate this type of mana to hard cast threats 6-7 drops.
2. The mana acceleration gained from the sol lands puts the opponents turns 1-2 ahead - Trinisphere on turn 1 off Mishra's Workshop will essentially lock any non-shops opponent from casting any spells in vintage for the rest of the game.
Cards like SmokeStack, Tangle Wire or Lodestone golem is completely devastating played on turn 1 or 2 - they essentially lock the opponent out from all their plays.
In addition, playing cards ahead of curve is always problematic. Here is an example of what players should be roughly expecting from each stage of the curve (non-power 9):
- 1 mana - Provides conditional removal, mana dork, creature with power of 2. Should be very easy to answer creature/ should not provide any card advantage or the player needs to work really hard to get any card advantage. Lightning Bolt, Brainstorm, Birds of Paradise, Isamaru, Hound of Konda
- 2 mana - Provides slightly less conditional removal, Provides decent setup cards/ tutors, creature should ideally cap at a power of 3. Should still be easy to answer. Could provide a card advantage, but players need to work for it (or spend extra mana/ wait extra turns for it). Abrupt Decay, Jace, Vryn's Prodigy, Kari Zev, Skyship Raider, Gruul Signet, Smuggler's Copter
The key point is 1-2 CMC cards should not be providing significant card advantage or incredibly powerful + hard to answer threats.
- 3 mana - Provides unconditional removal, stronger threats that are harder to answer or incredibly strong, provides card advantage - often at a rate of 2 for 1. Vindicate, Brimaz, King of Oreskos, Narset, Parter of Veils. Eternal Witness, Crucible of Worlds, Sword of Fire and Ice, Coalition Relic etc.
The rate for card advantage should be roughly 2 for 1.
- 4/5 mana - Similar pattern as 3 CMC, but rate of card advantage should be roughly 3 for 1 or provides an answer + tempo swing/ threat. 2 for 1 card with a tempo swing in advantage. Palace Jailer, Fact or Fiction, Jace, the Mind Sculptor, Chandra, Torch of Defiance, Oracle of Mul Daya, Thran Dynamo, Solemn Simulacrum, Batterskull.
The rate for card advantage should be roughly 3 for 1 or a good 2 for 1.
- 6/7 Mana - Should be completely gamebreaking. Should provide an absolutely insane game swinging effect. Threats should be very difficult to answer + should end the game quickly in 1-2 turns. Primeval Titan, Time Spiral, Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite, Wildfire, Bolas's Citadel, Wurmcoil Engine, Dragonlord Atarka.
The rate for card advantage should be something like 4 for 1 or completely backbreaking effect.
- 8+ Mana - Should be absolutely insane. If a spell is cast for 8 mana, you should ideally win the game at this point. Ugin, the Spirit Dragon.
In summary, a jump in mana cost, even +1 mana cost, should significantly improve the card's quality. Using a more purely quantitative, approach, +1 mana cost should improve the spells' card advantage by roughly by 0.75.
Mishra's Workshops allows a jump of 3 in mana, If referring to the chart, a 5 mana spells is significantly strong than a 3 mana spell, 3 mana spell is significantly strong than a 1 mana spell. When this is coupled with the 3 for 1 card advantage the Mishra's Workshop provides in an artifact makes this a completely broken. This has been described as a repeatable Black Lotus.
However, the problems with Mishra's workshop in cube are that there aren't enough artifacts to make Mishra's Workshop that effective - The rate cards for artifacts roughly break down to these 4 categories: Ramp, Artifact Fatties, Equipments, and Utility build arounds. The equipments aren't commonly played in artifact decks. The percentage of ramp, artifact fatties and utility build arounds is approximate 9-10% of the cube.
As a result, Mishra's workshop carries the downside of doing absolutely nothing if there are no artifacts to cast. As a result, Mishra's Workshop has been described as a "trap" - card that looks strong, but should not be drafted.
From my play test experience, I found Mishra's Workshop works best when thought of as an upgraded Dark Ritual for artifacts that occasionally could be a tri land if the artifact consistency is strong enough (I would estimate 30% of the deck playing Workshop). The decks that play Mishra's Workshop - i.e. Vintage Shops, has accessed to 4 Mishra's Workshop, 4 Ancient Tomb, 5 Moxen, 1 Crypt + 1 Sol Ring (14 fast mana sources) and would essentially be guaranteed with a 90% likelihood of opening with fast mana (They would mulligan any hand without any fast mana). As a result, these decks could construct their curve to guarantee 2 mana on the first turn, and 4 mana on the second turn.
Unfortunately, Cube decks can almost never guarantee this type of consistency for almost any artifact deck drafted. However, cube decks could guarantee that the Misrha's Workshop or redundancy could be available mid game with the help 2-3 tutors/ card draw spells. This is incredibly important for generating the mana required for artifact ramp targets:
- Bolas's Citadel, Inkwell Leviathan, Gearhulk Cycle, Wurmcoil Engine, Myr Battlesphere, Sundering Titan, Ancient Stone Idol, Golos, Tireless Pilgrim, Mindslaver, Sphinx of the Steel Wind e.t.c.
As discussed above, cards like Mishra's Workshop are actually essentially for helping to cast these threats and I've often added Workshop in decks with 3-4 Artifact re-animator targets to provide redundancy for Through the Breach for the Plan B of hard casting these threats.
On the other hand, the majority of the artifacts in the cube are a lot stronger if played with acceleration:
- Big Mana Rocks - Everflowing Chalice where X=2 or 3, Hedron Archive, Thran Dynamo, Worn Powerstone, Gilded Lotus - these acceleration are often too slow to play by themselves on curve and need additional mox/ 2 mana ramp in order to be effective.
- Stax Pieces - requires acceleration to be sufficiently effective - Smokestack, Tangle Wire, Lodestone Golem
For these cards, Mishra's Workshop should be thought of similar to Black Lotus or Sol Ring - fantastic to have in your opener to 20-30% of games, but not essential to your game plan.
Finally, there is around a 18% chance of opening with a Mishra's Workshop in a 40 card draft deck approximately a 45% change of opening with a Mishra's Workshop if the player could mulligan to 5 with the new mulligan rule. Given how Mishra's Workshop could be a 3 for 1 in artifact decks, mulliganing to 5 isn't devastating and could be an effective strategy if the artifact deck is constructed to take advantage of the Mishra's Workshop.
Similarly, if there are two incredibly strong cards - i.e. Mishra's Workshop + Mana Crypt, there is a 32% chance of opening with either one of these cards and approximately 69% chance of opening with either card if the player is willing to mulligan to 5.
I've seen drafters in my pod that are willing (and often will) mulligan to 5 into their key card against non-blue decks to ensure they open with a card like Mishra's Workshop. This has been a pretty viable strategy.
But generally, a strong rule of thumb is if there are a minimum of 8 artifacts that could take full advantage of Mishra's Workshop, its worth a slot in your 40 - However, I recommend classifying Mishra's Workshop as a 0 mana spell rather than a land to maintain the deck's mana consistency.
Gush. This is another incredibly difficult card to explain - there is is actually an entire book dedicated to explaining Gush. I will try to go over the basics.
The card Gush is deceptively strong as has been banned or restricted in every format it is legal in (Pauper, Vintage, Legacy). The card is almost never casted for its full mana cost. Its an incredibly powerful spell for blue-based tempo decks that end its curve at 2-3 or storm decks.
For Blue Based tempo decks, this is essentially a free spell with an upside:
- If the deck does not have a land drop in their hand, they could tap their island for mana + cast gush and play one of the returned lands for mana, essentially netting an additional mana for the turn - This is actually a very common play within Gush decks to hit their 4 drop without playing an excessive number of lands.
- Excess lands (often lands 3-4) are dead draws and could be returned back to the player's hand to be cycled away using a card like BrainStorm or Dack Fayden or could be used for cards like Liliana of the Veil as discard fodder.
- Free spells are inherited broken - cards like Gitaxian Probe are incredibly broken with cards like Young Pyromancer, Thing in the Ice or Monastery Mentor. In addition, they're great at generating Storm for cards like Thousand-Year Storm, Shark Typhoon or Tendrils of Agony.
For Storm decks, gush is primarily used with Fastbond - The Gush player would float 2 mana with their existing lands, cast gush to return the two lands + draw 2 cards then replay the two lands - netting 2 mana + 2 cards.
This engine is referred to as the Gush Bond Engine and could be recurred with cards like Yawgmoth's Will or Regrowth for additional cards/ mana.
This effect could be used with landfall decks with cards like Lotus Cobra, Azusa, Lost but Seeking.
Gush has also been incredibly strong against and with land destruction effects such as Strip Mine, Armageddon, or Balance.
- In response to Strip Mine/ Armageddon, you could Gush to return 2 lands back to your hand.
- Similarly, you could Gush to return two Island then cast Balance or Armageddon for additional value.
Gush is also incredibly strong with Library of Alexandria - it adds a total of 4 cards to the player's hand - 2 lands + 2 additional card draw. This is very good midgame to turn library back on.
Balance - This is another incredibly powerful card that is restricted across all the format. However, I find this card is frequently exampled to new players incorrectly.
The optimal usage of this card works like this - Balance mentions the number of cards in hand, creatures on the field, and lands on the battlefield. However, it does not "balance" the Enchantments, Planeswalkers or artifacts. Historically, the player with balance would quickly play all the artifacts in their hand, essentially emptying their hand and then cast balance to both Wrath of God the field, Mind Twist the hand and occasionally grab 1-2 lands.
In theory, it is possible to to make Balance a full Mind Twist - Wrath of God - Armageddon, especially with a card like Greater Gargadon to sacrifice all your lands on the stack. However, this is very unlikely situation.
In practice, Balance is useful for these situations:
- Early board Wipe. Suppose on turns 2-3 the opponent has 2-3 creatures out against an artifact/ control deck, it is pretty good play to cast Balance to remove the 2-3 of the opponent's creatures (often at the expense of 2-3 of your own cards). But this should be a trade any slower deck is more than willing to make.
- Midgame board Wipe. This is the more common situation out of Artifact/ Planeswalker decks that casts balance midgame after deploying their planeswalkers/ mana rocks and could force the opponent to sacrifice their creatures and lands.
- Recoup card disadvantage from ritual mana/ Faithless Looting / Imperial Seal - I've seen players where players have used cards like Dark Ritual, Pyretic Ritual, Lotus Petal to cast their 3-4 drops and use balance to recoup their card loss.
- Combo with Greater Gargadon - you could sacrifice all your lands to the Gargadon to force your opponent to sacrifice all their lands. (You could also discard your card to something like Noose Constrictor to force a Mind Twist). However you should be careful! I had situations where the opponent Force of Will my Balance in response to Greater Gargadon sacrificing all my lands.
- Discard Outlet - This one is often overlooked, but for decks like reanimator that do not intend to play creatures early on, this could be used to wrath the board + discard 1-2 cards from their hand.
- Recover from Mulligans. This is a very underappreciated mode of Balance, but suppose you had to mulligan to 4. On turn 2, on the play you would only have 2 lands, balance + 2 additional cards (one drawn previously). You could cast Balance to force the opponent to discard down to 2 cards, essentially forcing both players to a more even playing field.
In extension, there is around a 18% chance of opening with a card with a 40 card draft and approximately a 45% chance of opening with the same card if a player is willing to mulligan to 5. In addition, there is a 32% chance of opening with either one of two cards and approximately 69% chance of opening with either card if the player is willing to mulligan to 5. Similarly, there is a 44% chance of opening with one of three cards and an 82% chance of opening with the one of three cards if the player is willing to mulligan to 5.
Suppose you have a deck that revolves around Channel or Mishra's Workshop. It is not an unreasonable strategy to mulligan to 5 to hit either Channel or Balance. If you open with Channel, you could Channel into fatty and win on turn 2. Similarly, if you open (or draw into) Balance on a low mulligan, you could use Balance to even the playing field and force the opponent to discard to parity with you, in essence making a mulligan to 4 more of a winnable game for you.
However, I would not attempt this strategy unless you have a 2-3 cards (outside of Balance) you would like to mulligan into. Similarly, this is not effective against blue decks.
Tip:
- Don't try to gain the absolute maximum value out of Balance - if you are a control deck and you can get 3 creatures removed for Balance + 2 cards discarded, you should be very happy
- If you are on the draw, you can cast balance first to force the opponent to sacrifice a land then play your land. 2 Mana land destruction is VERY good.
Upheaval. This is another oppressive build around card.
There are three basic uses for Upheaval:
1. Traditional - 9 Mana Upheaval.
The game plan is pretty straight forwards - The deck aims to get 9 mana worth of mana as soon as possible and cast upheaval with 2-3 floating mana. Then the deck would replay its artifact mana/ three drop and gain an insurmountable advantage from there. (Think turn 1, Dack Fayden or Oko, Thief of Crowns. This makes it essentially for the opponent to come back from.
One of the traditional win-con post upheaval was psychatog - The player casting upheaval could attack with a Psychatog discarding their entire hand (all returned by Upheaval) + exile their entire graveyard for a lethal swing onto a usually empty board.
There are multiple ways to get to 9 mana. Traditionally in cube, this is achieved via by drafting a lot of mana rocks/ mana dorks. However, it is possible to achieve this through ritual/ mana doubler such as High Tide or Channel.
Similarly, it is also possible to play a pure control deck that aims to get to 9 mana to cast upheaval.
(https://mtg.gamepedia.com/World_Championship_Decks/2002)
2. Upheaval + Suspend/ Flicker/ Leave the battlefield effect.
Upheaval can be equally oppressive if played in curve if the caster has leave the battlefield effects in the form of Reveillark, Thragtusk, Parallex Wave/ Journey to Nowhere with their own creatures underneath. In this case, Upheaval would return all permanents to their owners hand and a creature would enter an empty battlefield.
This could also be achieved with End of Turn Flicker effect such as Charming Prince or suspend card such as Greater Gargadon
3. Natural Upheaval
Upheaval doesn't need to be played at all with either of the above situations - The upheaval player could cast upheaval on curve to return everything to their owners hand and in essence restarting the game. I would like to add a quote I found on the upheaval forum:
Quote from Power Conduit »Wanted to repost something I said earlier, but this time emphasize the information advantage you get from being the person playing the card. This is a valuable resource which allows you to virtually break the symmetry of Upheaval open, even if you cannot do so on the perceived board state.
'I barely run any mana rocks and have virtually no way to truly abuse Upheaval in my cube and I play almost exclusively Winston. Nevertheless, it just wins so many games when you're ahead and so many games when you're behind. If you can affect the board so drastically while your opponent is unable to plan for it, the information advantage that you have is monumental. Your opponent makes sacrifices to get himself into an advantageous state, spending tutors, life, whatever, and you wipe out all that effort at your whim. That's why Upheaval can win you games although you are behind in terms of tangible development, and even if you can't float much or any mana before resolution -- it's like a Counterspell for the whole game."
In other words, if you're about the lose the game, you could cast upheaval, bounce everything and essentially restart the game. The opponent would need to discard down to 7 cards - significantly reducing any accumulated advantage. Both players would essentially restart the game.
Note:
This gets a lot worse if the opponent has a higher density of fast mana in the form of Mana Crypt, Sol Ring etc. I would recommend drafting artifact/ permanent removal.
Show and Tell. This is a very intuitive card - cast Show and Tell and put a fatty (or high cost permanent) into play. This is obviously very strong in Reanimator, Fatty Cheat archetypes.
There are two things I would like to go over with this card:
- The huge discrepancies in perceived power level by many Veteran Cuber - some deemed the card unplayable even in the best fatty cheat archetypes while others deem the card incredibly strong
- The ETB ruling for creatures/ enchantments cheated into play
On Jan 3, 2018, LSV wrote an article on Channel Fireball saying:
"Under no circumstances should you play Show and Tell (and especially not Eureka). There are zero recorded instances of a player casting Show and Tell and winning, so don’t get tricked. Casting Show and Tell and having to wait a turn while also letting the opponent put their best permanent into play is just a recipe for disaster. It is a fine sideboard card against low-curve aggro, but for the love of Jace, don’t take this card early or play it in your main deck."
https://www.channelfireball.com/articles/the-ultimate-guide-to-cube-archetypes-blue/
However, this is very a different opinion from a veteran cube drafters on this forum, which has been somewhat more positive. Wtwlf123 is on the best cube curators online. Here is his take:
"Card's awesome, and I don't consider it a trap at all. Rarely does the opponent have a permanent that's even remotely comparable to what I'm playing, and I can count on one hand the number of times I've seen an opponent's permanent actually be better than the S&T caster's permanent. And in an even smaller percentage of those cases has it ever cost someone a game. I guess it feels so bad when it happens that the memory sticks around with you, but I don't ever see it happen. The decks willing to play cards like Show and Tell and Eureka don't use them to put permanents into play that get outclassed by the opponent's stuff. You put the biggest, baddest bombs into play. 7/10 times I play an effect like this, the permanent I put into play with it wins me the game. Maybe another 20% of the time the opponent can answer it and it's not game-winning. Rarely, likely less than 1/10 times the card is played, do I wind up in a worse position because of what my opponent puts onto the battlefield with it. It's powerful, it's fun, it's exciting, and if your opponent's cards are bigger than yours, you're probably playing S&T in the wrong decks to begin with. It's the exact kind of card that makes this format a blast to play."
https://www.mtgsalvation.com/forums/the-game/the-cube-forum/cube-card-and-archetype/818260-show-and-tell
One of the big reasons for this huge discrepancy in perceived power level is that LSV primarily drafts the MTGO Vintage Cube while wtwlf123 primarily drafts his table top cube. The Vintage Cube does not pair people against their own draft pod in subsequent games - This is actually incredibly important. In table top cube, most if not all the fatty cheat pieces - Eldrazi, Show and Tell etc. will gravitate towards the player drafting that one particular deck. It is much less likely for the fatty cheat player to have to play against the mirror match where Show and Tell would be disastrous.
Similarly, Veteran cube drafters are stronger at identifying that if too many cards like Blightsteel Colossus or Emrakul, the Aeons Torn are opened and not wheeling, it might not be a good idea to play Show and Tell in their deck, even if they have all the components for a successful fatty cheat deck.
This is actually another key point - When designing your cube, it is important to keep in mind the discrepancy between MTGO and tabletop cube - There is no hate drafting on MTGO but hate drafting but hate drafting is an important aspect of table top cube and should be exercised more proactively to cut opponent's off dangerous streamlined combo decks - I would argue that MTGO combo/ linear archetypes are stronger for this reason and could function with less support compared to a table top cube.
Similarly, if you are a cube curator, it is important to understand the skill level of your draft pool - Some cubes could get away with weaker support pieces for certain archetypes as more experienced drafters will understand which archetypes are open and which are not. Similarly, they understand how to pivot from narrow archetypes more effectively.
Secondly, one of the most asked questions about Show and Tell is the ruling. If Player A puts in Phantasmal Image, Control Magic, Ashen Rider or Sower of Temptation could it copy, remove or steal it?
The short answer is this - If the effect is activated after the permanent is put into play, then it can. This includes Sower of Temptations, Ashen Rider, Oblivion Ring. (I.e. When this enters the battlefield).
If the permanent requires a target on cast it cannot target the other card that is put into play Control Magic.
Phantasmal Image cannot copy the creature that came into play at the same time - this is an explicit ruling.
Enter the battlefield or As it enters the battlefield is different from When it enters the battlefield. This is added to prevent Phantasmal Image from dying in the split second if it is a trigger put onto the stack. This is part of the resolution of Phantasmal Image.
When playing with Show and Tell, if it resolves, both players should choose a card put it facedown on the battlefield. Once both players have selected their choice, then they should simultaneously flip the card face up. This should be done at the same time and not one after the other.
Brainstorm - This is another staple in eternal formats newer players might not understand how to correctly use.
There are two usages for Brainstorm, the first is setting up the miracles/ top of the deck matters. The second is shuffling away dead draws.
1. For miracles/ Top of the deck Matters:
Suppose you have a Courser of Kruphix or Oracle of Mul Daya on the battlefield. The top of your library is not a land, but you have an extra land drop to play. You could cast Brainstorm to draw 3 cards and put a land (or even two lands for Oracle) and put the land onto the battlefield into play.
Similarly, if you have a card such as Entreat the Angels drawn into your hand. You could use brainstorm to put Entreat back onto the top of your library to activate miracles for the following turn.
2. Shuffling away dead draws:
Suppose you are playing a draft deck where your curve ends at 3. Excess lands beyond 4 are essentially dead draws. You could cast brainstorm to put 2 dead cards onto the top of your library and use a shuffle effect, usually fetchland Scalding Tarn to shuffle the lands back into your library.
This effect could also be achieved with a discard outlet such as Dack Fayden or Liliana of the Veil. The player could put two of their better cards on to the top of the library and keep the two bad cards in their hand to discard to Dack Fayden or Liliana of the Veil. (The best way to do this is to put Dack Fayden/ Liliana of the Veil's ability onto the stack. Holding Priority, cast Brainstorm. If your opponent counters the brainstorm, activate Liliana or Dacks Ability by discarding your worst cast. Otherwise, draw 3 cards, keep the two worst cards in your hand and discard to Dack/ Liliana's Ability. If you brainstorm first then hope to Dack Fayden, you run the risk of the opponent removing your Liliana/ Dack with a card like Abrupt Decay in response and you're stranded with 2 bad cards in your hand)
3. Turbo Xerox Theroy:
The (Turbo) Xerox theory is a deck building theory in which you replace some amount of lands with cheap cantrips. The "Xerox rule" says that roughly 4 1-2 mana cantrips can replace two land. They allow you to hit your land drops nonetheless while also allowing you to find cards you want later on. (https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/feature/ub-trippin’-2005-04-21)
This improves the players consistency of hitting land drops, avoiding mana floods and finding cheap answers at the expense of tempo - usually this tempo could be made up with efficient answers and creatures that benefit from casting loads of instants/ sorceries such as Young Pyromancer or Thing in the Ice
Unfortunately, cube does not have too many brainstorm style effects - the popular alternatives are Scroll Rack and Jace, the Mind Sculptor
Lastly, cheap cantrips are essentially for the Xerox theory. For more information, see Xerox Theory in the Gush Section. (https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/feature/ub-trippin’-2005-04-21)
Miracles Mechanic:
In addition to Brainstorm, there is also Jace, the Mind Sculptor and Scroll Rack that could be used to put card from your hand onto the top of your library - This could be very important for a deck playing Entreat the Angels.
Similarly, you could use top of the deck tutors such as Vampiric Tutor, Imperial Seal or Mystical Tutor to put the Entreat the Angels on to the top of the library.
Palinchron - This is another key combo piece that generates infinite mana.
Commonly Used:
- Palinchron + High Tide + 7 Islands. Tap 1 Island to cast High Tide. Tap all remaining Island (12 Mana). Cast Palinchron (5 left in Pool). Untap all 7 lands. Use Palinchron's return to hand (1 left in Pool). Repeat arbitrary number of times.
- Palinchron + Heartbeat of Spring/Mana Flare + 7 Lands. Tap 3 Lands to play HeartBeat/ Mana Flare. Tap 4 lands (8 mana in pool). Cast PalinChron (5 left in Pool). Untap all 7 lands. Use Palinchron's return to hand (1 left in Pool). Repeat arbitrary number of times.
If HeartBeat of Spring/ Mana Flare was on the table for the previous turn, this loop could be done with 6 mana - 7 to cast Palinchron + 4 to return Palinchron per loop + 1 extra net mana.
- Palinchron + Any mana Doubler + 6 Lands. - Mirari's Wake
- Palinchron + Clone effect + 7 Lands - Phantasmal Image With the Palinchron in play, use Phantasmal Image to Copy Palinchron. Then Bounce the clone Palinchron back to hand. (Loop requires 7 lands to initially cast Palinchron)
- Palinchron + Sneak Attack + 5/6 Lands - Use one mana to cheat Palinchron into play. Untap 6 Lands. Spend 4 mana to return Palinchron back to hand. (Net 1 Mana). If there are only 5 lands in play, this loop does not net mana, but it nets an infinite ETB and LTB triggers.
Less Commonly Used:
- Palinchron + Recurring Nightmare + another creature - Cast Palinchron. (untap 7 lands). Cast Recurring Nightmare, sacrifice Palinchron to return a creature from the graveyard onto the battlefield - Recurring Nightmare returns back to hand. Cast Recurring Nightmare again sacrificing the creature to return Palinchron (untap 7 lands). This loop nets 1 mana - Untaps 7 lands, Spends 6 to cast Recurring Nightmare Twice.
- Palinchron + Gaea's Cradle/Tolarian Academy + 6 lands - Same logic as mana doubler. If Cradle or Academy could 4+ mana, then the loop with generate infinite mana.
Its also important to mention that Palinchron could serve as a finisher for a control deck - It could be cast for "free" late game with counter spell back up the following turn. However, this doesn't come up very often as Palinchron is frequently drafted early on for its Infinite Mana and control decks have a surplus of finishers.
Draft Tip:
Palinchron is exceptional in Mana Doubler - untap storm. See #67 Mana Doubler for more information.
Vendilion Clique - This is one of my most played cards in eternal formats - both in Gifts Control/ Splinter Twin. This card is incredibly strong.
This is primarily played in tempo decks both as a threat, disruption and an answer - One common play you will see the slower blue deck do is Flash in Vendilion Clique during combat to trade with an attacker early on in the game.
The flash on the Vendilion clique is also incredibly important at playing around sorcery speed removal + hold up counter magic - This is very good against planeswalkers + flash in attacker to equip with a sword ETB.
Tips:
- In response to your opponent revealing a card of miracles (Entreat the Angels), you can clique them in response to remove the miracles out of their hand. Your opponent will lose their miracles.
- You can clique targeting yourself to push a bad card from your hand back into your library. This is a very underplayed aspect of Vendilion Clique - I used to play as many as 4 Vendilion Cliques in my Gifts Control deck to push Iona, Shield of Emeria back into my deck
- You can clique on their draw step- In this case, you could pick any of the cards in their hand + the card they have recently drawn. They will not be able to cast the spell they recently drawn, unless it is an instant
- Vendilion Clique is very strong at pressuring planeswalkers - if your opponent taps out for a planeswalker, you can clique your opponent in response to remove their answer to your Vendilion Clique and attack the planeswalker on your main phase.
- The card is very good with flicker effects. You could pair it with a card like Restoration Angel or Crystal Shard to soft lock the opponent's draws.
- Clique becomes unfair with cards like Notion Thief or Narset, Parter of Veils - Clique becomes an instant speed Thoughtseize
Grim Monolith and its cousin Mana Vault are both very powerful cards - They should provide the caster with an insane amount of fast mana.
Here are common plays:
Turn 2 - Cast Grim Monolith off 2 Lands
Turn 3 - Play 3rd Land. Grim Monolith could be tapped this turn for 3 mana.
- 6 mana on turn 3.
Turn 1 - Cast Mana Vault off 1 Land
Turn 2 - Play 2nd Land. Mana Vault could be tapped for 3 mana.
- 5 mana on turn 2.
As discussed in my section with Mishra's Workshop, cards that provide 1+ mana are strong not only because they accelerate the player way ahead of curve, but provide the player with a 2 or 3 for 1 as they removes the need to play 27-28 lands in a ramp deck. (See Mishra's Workshop section for breakdown of non-power 9 rate cards from CMC 1-7. Jumping from 3 to 6 mana spells/ 2 to 5 mana spells provides an insane jump in card quality).
Similarly, Grim Monolith could net +1 mana if played + tapped on the same turn, Mana Vault could next +2 mana if played + tapped on the same turn.
Similarly, these mana rocks could be untapped continuously with untap artifact effects such as:
Tezzeret the Seeker
Voltaic Key
Manifold Key
Kiora's Follower
Ral Zarek
Here is an example of a Grim Monolith Deck - The deck uses Grim Monolith + Mana rocks to get ahead on mana to cast expensive or mana intensive spells such as WildFire, Temporal Aperture:
https://mtgtop8.com/event?e=9189&d=253016&f=ST
Basalt Monolith also plays a similar role to Grim Monolith, but is a turn slower.
True-Name Nemesis. This is another very divisive card in the cube community. It is an incredibly powerful card, but is very difficult to interact with and leads to one sided games.
True-Name Nemesis was originally designed with multiplayer commander in mind where a player could play threat that a selected player could not remove + could definitively block a threat from an opponent. However, in one on one, the player casting True-Name will always chose their opponent - This essentially becomes a near unanswerable threat.
Cannot be removed:
- Targeted Removal - Swords to Plowshares. Targeted removal cannot target it. It is possible to remove True-Name by redirecting the opponent's spell to True Name
- Creature damage from the opponent. True Name could in theory be remove by creatures controlled by the player controlling True Name's Nemesis. - i.e. Grim Lavamancer. This may come on with MindSlaver
- Damage based sweepers - Fiery Confluence. However, True-Name could be removed through black/ white removal sweepers. Damnation, Wrath of God.
In addition, True-Name cannot be blocked by the opponent's creatures but it could be removed by edict effects from cards such as Liliana of the Veil. True Name could be removed by Council's Judgment - True Name was "chosen by the council" and not targeted.
Similarly, it is important to not that True Name Nemsis is "As it enters the battlefield, not when it enters the battlefield". Choosing the player does not require the stack and cannot be responded to with a removal spell.
The problem with True Name Nemesis is this card is very difficult to remove for a lot of decks and is a serious road block for non-combo based strategies. Especially in slower cube environments, True Name Nemesis equipment with a Sword such as Sword of Fire and Ice can become incredibly problematic.
The cube curator should be balancing the cube with a good balance of threats and answers - If it is an artifact heavy cube (I.e. Vintage Cube with Mox/ Signets or Artifact Cube), there should be a similar number of artifact removal to counter balance the artifacts in the environment.
Similarly, if it is a Tokens heavy environment, there should be sufficient sweepers etc. The problem with True-Name Nemesis is it has very few answers once it hits the fields. Here is the comprehensive list:
White Sweepers - Wrath of God/ Day of Judgment/ Shatter the Sky
Black Sweepers - Languish/ Damnation/ Toxic Deluge
Colorless Sweepers - All is Dust/ Nevinyrral's Disk
Black Edict - Liliana of the Veil / To the slaughter / Diabolic Edict
- Supreme Verdict
- Council's Judgment
- Moat
The problem with this list is outside of Liliana of the Veil (which may not be effective if the opponent plays multiple creatures) and Council's Judgement, the answers to True Name Nemesis are primarily board sweepers that are played in slower control decks.
This is a very difficult creature for Aggressive or Midrange creature decks to answer/ interact. On the other hand, Combo decks such as Storm, Melira, Artifacts, Reanimator could mostly ignore True-Name as its damage is too slow to be effective - It's described as a "Feast or Famine" card, where it is either incredibly powerful or borderline useless.
For this reason, some cube curators should to exclude True Name Nemesis to improve interaction/ game play.
Desperate Ritual/ Pyretic Ritual / Seething Song / Cabal Ritual - These are commonly played ritual mana in cube, and are very rarely explained in cube articles.
Cube storm is very difficult to explain to newer players how to draft correctly. I find the best way to explain cube storm is to go over the main storm engines:
- Yawgmoth's Will
- Mind's Desire
- Time Spiral
- Bolas's Citadel
- Thousand-Year Storm / Bonus Round
- Past in Flames
- High Tide + Frantic Search/ Palinchron
- Dream Halls
- Underworld Breach + Wheel of Fortune / Brain Freeze
When drafting storm, you're looking to pick up a minimum of 2 of these engine pieces to support your archetype. With one of these engine pieces in play, it is relatively easy for any spells matters deck with a reasonable hand or graveyard in the case of Yawgmoth's Will, Past in Flames or Underworld Breach to cast 4-5 spells.
Ideally the rest of your deck should be a combination of fast mana, tutors/ can trips to find engines/ fast mana, and some interaction.
This is roughly how rituals work with these engines:
- Yawgmoths Will, Underworld Breach/ Past in Flames - This is the most ideal interaction. These rituals could be casted twice the mana + storm count for lethal Tendrils of Agony or Brain Freeze
- Mind's Desire/ Thousand Year Storm - The storm count + mana generated by these rituals are incredibly strong at powering additional copies of subsequent spells
- Hide Tide/ Dream Halls - Not very good in this archetype.
- Bolas Citadal - Somewhat good helping to accelerate Citadel, but not as strong as with Mind's Desire
- Time Spiral - Great with Time Spiral - could be used to empty hand to draw into one of the other pay offs
These rituals work very well with cards like Baral, Chief of Compliance, Goblin Electromancer or Nightscape Familiar. An example of this type of deck is the modern gifts storm {https://www.mtggoldfish.com/archetype/gifts-storm)
Storm Draft:
There are two dominant storm variants - Untap storm, Ritual storm. See #67 Mana Doubler for more about the untap storm.
The ritual storm variants is more all-in compared to the untap storm. There are a lot more redundancy in these types of effects:
- Lotus Bloom / Black Lotus / Lion's Eye Diamond
- Mana Crypt / Mana Vault / Basalt Monolith / Grim Monolith /Thran Dynamo / Pentad Prism / Sol Ring / Chrome Mox / Any Moxen
- Desperate Ritual / Pyretic Ritual / Manamorphose / Seething Song / Rite of Flame
- Cabal Ritual / Dark Ritual / Rain of Filth
- Baral, Chief of Compliance, Goblin Electromancer or Nightscape Familiar
- High Tide / Frantic Search - Hide tide could be decent in ritual storm to jump 1-2 mana on the turn it cast, however it is less good without untap abilities. Frantic Search could be used without mana doublers and could net mana with a cost reducer.
For newer players attempting to draft a good ritual storm deck, they should try to aim for a minimum of 6-7 of these type of mana acceleration effects. Cheap Tutors + cantrips could supplement having fewer storm fast mana.
Archetype Support Package:
Unfortunately, Desperate Ritual and Pyretic Ritual are played in cube as "filler" cards to help round out the fast mana necessary to power the powerful engines cards of Mind's Desire or Yawgmoth's Will. (There aren't enough Lions Eye's Diamond, Black Lotus, Dark Rituals, Hide Tide, Seething Songs to go around)
This is something commonly seen in cubes - Cube Curators will add weak playables to help provide the minimum support an archetype needs to function effectively in their environment. Often, players will see cards like Renata, Called to the Hunt - (Melira Combo), Trash for Treasure - (Red Welder) or Buried Alive - (Reanimator) that are added into cubes but aren't incredibly strong, even in their own archetypes and aren't played too often in other archetypes.
The purpose of these cards are to provide the redundancy required for these archetypes to function effectively. They are often the first cards on the cutting block and are removed immediately if the cube curator feels the archetype has enough support or a less parasitic/ more effective enabler is printed.
Goryo's Vengeance / Corpse Dance / Shallow Grave - This is another categories of cards I will explain in one section.
On the surface, there are instant speed reanimation spells that brings a creature into play for turn and grants it haste. This is obviously incredibly powerful with fatties that have strong attack step triggers such as Griselbrand, Primeval Titan, Grave Titan.
However, there are ways to break this:
Wizards has been very careful with printing reanimator fatties. For creatures such as Emrakul, the Aeons Torn or Worldspine Wurm, Wizards has added the clauses, "When Emrakul is put into a graveyard from anywhere, its owner shuffles his or her graveyard into his or her library." - this was designed to ensure players could not simplify Entomb - Reanimate Emrakul.
However, what you can do is put Emrakul/ Blightsteel into the graveyard through Faithless Looting or Entomb etc and with the shuffle trigger on the stack, reanimate the fatty from the graveyard onto the battlefield.
An instant speed Emrakul is often sufficient to win the game.
Finally, the instant reanimator spells also work fairly well with creatures that could flicker themselves prior to the EOT trigger on Goryo's Vengeance:
Jace, Vryn's Prodigy - Flip him on the turn to transform
Aetherling - Needs to be Corpse Dance/ Shallow Grave
Obzedat, Ghost Council - stack the Obzedat trigger on top of the EOT Goryo's Vengeance Trigger
Nissa, Vastwood Seer - Flip her proir to the turn of turn to transform
Liliana, Heretical Healer - Flip her prori to the turn of turn to transform
(Doesn't apply to Thing in the Ice - it is the same object, but just in a different state)
Cards like Necromancy, Makeshift Mannequin and Feldon of the Third Path could also be used with the shuffle trigger on the stack but they require more setup to be effective.
Important Ruling:
I did not realize this ruling until recently - There is a difference between these shuffle into library effects.
The shuffle effects on the creatures reads "When it is put into the graveyard". This is a trigger.
Emrakul, the Aeons Torn
Kozilek, Butcher of Truth
Ulamog, the Infinite Gyre
Worldspine Wurm
These shuffle effects reads "If this creature is put into the graveyard". This is a replacement effect. Replacement effects do not use the stack, they merely occur in place of what normally would. So, in this example, if Blightsteel Colossus would go to the graveyard, it "instead" is shuffled into your library, meaning at no point does it ever actually touch the graveyard.
Progenitus
Blightsteel Colossus
https://tappedout.net/mtg-questions/if-you-put-cardblightsteel-colossus-into-play-with-cardgoblin-welder-does-it-shuffle-back-in/
The Eldrazi Titans + WorldSpine Wurm can be reanimated by an instant reanimation spell. Progenitus and Blightsteel Colossus cannot - there is no trigger to respond to.
Flash. This is an incredibly good card at abusing an ETB/ LTB off a fatty.
The reason I would like to cover this card is I realized there are very interesting rulings on this card:
https://boardgames.stackexchange.com/questions/8027/will-elesh-norn-kill-creatures-if-i-dont-pay-the-extra-cost-for-flash
1- Elesh Norn's Static ability does not trigger if she is flashed in.
https://magicjudge.tumblr.com/post/146018126347/if-i-cast-flash-and-cheat-out-griselbrand-can-i
2- You also cannot use Griselbrand's Draw 7 ability.
https://www.mtgsalvation.com/forums/magic-fundamentals/magic-rulings/magic-rulings-archives/311839-flash-etb-bounce
3- You also cannot bounce/ or flicker it in response.
In summary, while flash is being resolve, you have to finish Flash's resolution - you cannot stack any trigger/ state based effect on top of it.
It could function as a decent reanimator discard outlet, but it is at its best abusing the ETB/ LTB. Flash is relatively narrow - here are the commonly played cards that work well with Flash:
Good in at abusing ETB:
Protean Hulk - this likely won't happen but there is the hulk flash combo that in theory could be setup if you drafted all the pieces. (https://www.reddit.com/r/CompetitiveEDH/comments/67czr7/protean_hulk_combos_by_color)
Custodi Lich
Ashen Rider
Palace Jailer
Primeval Titan
Hornet Queen
Terastodon
Worldspine Wurm
Woodfall Primus
Sundering Titan
Wurmcoil Engine
Ancient Stone Idol
Myr Battlesphere
- Flash is instant speed - Flashing in tokens on turn 2 to ambush your opponent's attackers/ destroying all your opponent's lands is incredibly strong
Flash isn't a card like Reanimate that works well with a lot of creatures/ shells - I think if it as more of a narrow combo piece similar to Splinter Twin that works almost as an "I win" with WorldSpine Wurm or WoodFall Primus, and has several cards it could be strong with.
Burning Wish / Fae of Wishes / Karn, the Great Creator - There are around ten black border cards that allows you to bring a card "you own outside the game" into your hand. These are cards are rarely played in cube, but they're still worth bringing up.
For competitive environment, outside the game refers to your sideboard. (Does not include cards in exile). In decks playing wishes, there is always a wishboard - a specific set of narrow cards that are never intended to be played in the mainboard and used to be tutored up by the wishboard.
However, cube is a casual environment and there are no set rules. Traditionally wishes are not played in cube, and the if they are played, it is usually something like Karn, the Great Creator which is played more for his stony silence effect in powered cubes rather than his -1. The rules for the wishboard should be determined by the draft pod/ cube curator - It could refer to the cards not played in your main deck or it could refer to a specific wishboard that is built for the environment.
I personally like the idea of a wish board - I have Liquimetal Coating as a wishboard card for Karn the great creator.
Dark Depths - This is another key combo piece in eternal formats in Legacy Lands/ Turbo Depths. As you have correctly guessed, there are ways to remove all 10 ice counters without spending 30 mana. I'll go over the combo aspect of dark depths, but more importantly how to play Dark Depths in Cube.
The combo is actually pretty simple:
- With Vampire Hexmage you can sacrifice the hexmage to remove all the Ice Counters off Dark Depths, making the 20/20 Marit Liege
- With Solemnity already in play, the Dark Depths would enter the battlefield with zero counters. Then the Dark Depths would trigger immediately creating the 20/20
- With Thespian's Stage/ Mirage Mirror you can copy the Dark depths. You now control two copies of the same legendary permanent (Dark Depths with 10 Ice Counters, Dark Depths Copy has zero ice Counters), so you are now required to put one of them into your graveyard (Legend Rule). You should choose the put the original Dark Depths into your graveyard.
Next, the “no ice counters” trigger from the Mirror/Depths will go on the stack. When that trigger resolves, you'll sacrifice the dark depths and get a 20/20.
*Important Note:
In Eternal formats, when the no ice counter trigger is put onto the stack, that is the time to Wasteland the Dark Depths - the opponent will lose both lands.
Here are the three basic shells to build the dark depths combo:
1 - Vampire Hexmage - Dark Depths (Black Control Depths):
This is decent Dark Depths combination. For the Hexmage/ Dark Depths to work, it is best paired with the black tutors Imperial Seal, Demonic Tutor or Vampiric Tutor that are able to fetch both halves of the combo.
Obviously this works with Solemnity, Mirage Mirror and Thespian Stage, but Hexmage is the most mana efficient. In addition, her ability to remove planeswalkers works incredibly well in a tutor heavy deck.
2 - Thespian Stage - Dark Depths (Green Lands Matter Depths):
There are a lot of green based tutors that could search up both halves of the Dark Depths combo.
Elvish Reclaimer
Knight of the Reliquary
Primeval Titan
Expedition Map
Good Enablers:
Life from the Loam - Very Good enabler in depths shells
Into the North - Could ramp/ fetch dark depths
This combo could also be assembled with any Entomb style effects such as:
Gifts Ungiven
Entomb
Intuition
And recurred using a recursion effect:
Sevinne's Reclamation
Crucible of Worlds
Life from the Loam
Wrenn and Six
Ramunap Excavator
3 - Infinite Mana Outlet:
Dark Depths could be used as a mana sink for a infinite mana combo - This is actually an incredibly underappreciated mode of Dark Depths in Cube.
Saheeli Rai - This card is in my opinion the best card should be the gold standard to what a card in cube should be - She's decent in a lot of archetypes, but is incredible strong build around and combo enabler.
During standard, she formed the second half of the Saheeli- Rai Felidar Guardian Combo. (Felidar Guardian) The combo worked as such:
- Saheeli Rai is on the field
- Play Felidar Guardian - Flicker Saheeli Rai.
- Saheeli Rai comes back as a new object, copy Felidar Guardian
- The Copy Felidar Guardian flickers the original Saheeli Rai.
.....
Repeat until you have sufficient number of haste Felidars
The standard Saheeli-Rai deck was originally built in the same shell as the Modern UR Splinter Twin deck - The deck would play as a tempo-control deck and use a turn three Saheeli Rai and the threat of the combo to force the opponent to leave up mana for their removal spells and eventually win through this tempo advantage. (https://strategy.channelfireball.com/all-strategy/mtg/channelmagic-articles/team-cfb-ice-deck-tech-jeskai-saheeli/).
The Jeskai Saheeli deck at the start of the season easily became the strongest deck in standard. However, as the season progressed, players realized it had a natural foil to the strategy - Mardu Vehicles. The mardu Vehicles had disruption in the form of Walking Ballista to break up the combo, its aggressive creature suite could go underneath the opponent's removal and pressure Saheeli Rai and in the late game it could leave open mana for Unlicensed Disintegration if the opponent tries the combo. (https://strategy.channelfireball.com/all-strategy/mtg/channelmagic-articles/mardu-vehicles-in-standard/).
However later in the season, players realized that both Saheeli Rai + Felidar Guardian were incredibly powerful blink enablers. Players evolved the deck into the 4c Saheeli Rai deck that focused towards blink - energy synergies to out value the opponent. (https://strategy.channelfireball.com/all-strategy/mtg/channelmagic-articles/deck-of-the-day-4c-saheeli/).
The value from the blink effects in addition to the significant tempo advantage the deck posed made it incredibly difficult for the opponent to keep up and eventually led to the banning of Felidar Guardian.
Applying these lessons to cube, the best shell for Saheeli Rai is a blink deck - Saheeli Rai herself is a strong blink enabler at copying good ETB creatures - Copying cards like Sun Titan can quickly get out of control.
Here are the other archetypes Saheeli is strong with:
- Fires Archetypes - Saheeli Rai could be used as haste enabler for a cheated into play creature.
- UR Tempo/ Spells Matter - Definitely not close to as good as Dack Fayden, but her +1 scry + ping is pretty good at filtering away excess lands + dealing incremental damage to the opponent
- Aristocrats - Copy the Blood Artist before sacrificing the board. (Could copy a strong ETB creature to sacrifice)
- Artifacts - Her copy is incredibly good at copying payoffs + her scry is very good at filter away dead draws
Combo Tips:
- Aminatou, the Fateshifter works with Felidar Guardian - but the Felidar copies do not have haste and require a sacrifice outlet/ ETB enabler to go infinite
- Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker also goes infinite with Felidar Guardian
Treasure Cruise - This is another card that has been banned in Modern, Legacy and Vintage for how similar this card plays to Ancestral Recall for decks that could quickly fill up the graveyard. In these eternal formats with fetch lands (Scalding Tarn), cantrips Serum Visions/ Brainstorm, cheap burn Lightning bolt in conjunction with cheap efficient can quickly fill up the graveyard. Treasure Cruise essentially becomes a one mana draw 3.
Traditionally, aggressive/ Tempo strategies were strong in the early game because it was able to deploy its inexpensive threats early on but would get out valued by slower strategies that are able to survive and cast their stronger more expensive spells. However, Treasure Cruised powered Delver decks were able to turn this around - They could put significant pressure early on using their threats and could still out value the control decks in the late game with its card advantage engine.
For an example of Treasure Cruise's power, watch this game 2 in the World Championships - https://youtu.be/EPa5MnU3mfs?t=2017
In this match, the UR Cruise delver deck was able to constantly put pressure on the slower Jeskai control deck forcing it board out its more expensive finishers. Similarly, it was able to have a stronger card advantage than Jeskai Control as it was able to use its own cantrips/ Treasure Cruises to dig into additional Treasure Cruises eventually casting 5 Treasure Cruises in that one game. (The 5th was flashed back with Snapcaster Mage)
As a result, the meta game in 2014 for Modern, Legacy and Vintage were quickly filled with these UR delver decks powered by Treasure Cruises and in 2015, it was banned from all eternal formats.
However one key note here is that Treasure Cruise was never banned in standard - It was a very strong card in the format, especially with loot engines such as Jeskai Ascendancy and Jace, Vryn's Prodigy as well as the allied fetch land cycle, but it never proved to be oppressive.
However, Treasure Cruise was a different story in Modern, Legacy and Vintage - Blue decks in these formats were already playing Fetchlands, Cantrips, Lightning Bolts, Spell Pierce prior to Treasure Cruise. The Legacy format was so incredibly fast that the majority of the spells cast in that format were one mana or free already. Players in those formats were able to essentially add 4 Treasure Cruises into their decks without making any changes.
When this is applied to cube, it is important to note that Treasure Cruise should not be played in every blue deck in cube - It should only be played in slower control decks or decks that play a significant density of spells that fuel the graveyard.
Examples:
- Dack Fayden
- Search for Azcanta
- Jace, Vryn's Prodigy
- Liliana of the Veil
- Sacrifice Decks
- Stax Decks
etc.
Note:
Treasure Cruise could pay with Delve if flashed back with Snapcaster Mage
Fun Fact:
Treasure Cruise was arguably stronger than Ancestral Recall in Vintage because it was able to play around Mental Misstep, a very commonly played 4 off vintage. (This was when both Treasure Cruise and Mental Misstep were unrestricted)
Roast - Roast seems like a very underwhelming card but 5 damage out of a red deck for 2 mana is an incredibly good rate. This was printed during Dragon's of Tarkir to combat the Siege Rhino flooding the format that proved to be incredibly difficult for the red aggro and tempo decks to interact with.
Roast also proved to be a staple in modern and legacy UR decks that traditionally lacked efficient answers to cards like Tarmogoyf.
Roast provided red aggro decks a way for the aggressive deck to get underneath the slower decks by deploying their cheaper threats to deal incredibly damage every turn while Roast/ burn spells were able to remove the slower deck's more expensive threats. This match is an example of how effective Roast can be - https://youtu.be/UoKhuf66V5o?t=595
Its not unusual to see an aggressive Red 1 drop played on turn 1 to deal 6-8 damage over the course of the game without cheap blockers.
Similarly, Roast also gave the UR control decks that traditionally had issue dealing with creatures with 3+ toughtness creatures, such as Tarmogoyf or Reality Smasher.
With Modern Horizons, the printing of Magmatic Sinkhole supplanted Roast as the red 5 damage removal in eternal formats and Roast fell out of favor. In Theroes beyond death, there is also Purphoros's Intervention, which is a very efficient burn spell at removing early creatures with X = 1 or later stage blockers with high toughness with X = 3, 4.
Traditionally, there have been two variants of Red Deck wins:
1. Burn/ All-In Sleigh:
The Modern/ Legacy burn decks are good examples of this. Their creatures are seen as repeatable burn spells that tries to get underneath to deal 4-6 damage and use burn spells to primarily subtract life total from the opponent. The deck tries its best to be more or less 40 Lightning Bolts + 20 Mountains.
Legacy Burn:
https://strategy.channelfireball.com/all-strategy/mtg/channelmagic-articles/level-one-legacy-burn/
Martin Dang 2015 Dragon's of Tarkir Winning List:
https://tappedout.net/mtg-decks/12-04-15-apR-martin-dangs-red-aggro-pro-tour-dragons-of/
Burn decks primarily tries to aim for 60%-70% damage via Burn, 30%-40% damage via Creatures.
2. Zoo/ Red Midrange:
This version of the red deck plays as a red- midrange deck where it plays one drops, efficient burn spells but also plays 3-4 drops such as Goblin Rabblemaster variants, Hazoret the Fervent and Chandra, Torch of Defiance and relies more on their top end finishers to close out the game.
Worlds 2017 Red Aggro:
https://strategy.channelfireball.com/all-strategy/mtg/channelmagic-articles/mono-red-at-worlds/
One key feature is these lists play 24 lands and rely almost primarily on dealing damage via combat rather than burn.
Modern Zoo:
https://strategy.channelfireball.com/all-strategy/mtg/channelmagic-articles/deck-of-the-day-modern-zoo/
Traditionally, these decks are more prevalent in standard formats with fewer efficient burn spells, forcing deck builders to focus more on efficient creatures than efficient burn.
Zoo/ Red Midrange tries to aim almost 70-80% damage via creatures, 20-30% via burn.
Lessons for Cube:
IF red decks in cube tries to mimic the second option, cards such as Roast, Magmatic Sinkhole and Purphoros's Intervention are excellent at removing blockers mid to late game for cards such as Goblin Rabblemaster variants or Hazoret the Fervent.
These cards allows the cube red decks to reduce the number of parasitic sleigh cards such as Fireblast or Falkenrath Gorger.
Price of Progress/ Sulfuric Vortex/ Fireblast - These are three incredibly direct damage burn spells. The goal of the burn deck is essentially to point 7 lightning Bolt at the opponent before they can stabilize.
The gold standard with burn spells works roughly like this:
- At 1 mana, you can deal 3 damage - Lightning Bolt
- At 2 mana, you can deal 4 damage - Boros Charm, Flame Rift
- We still don't have an efficient 3 mana burn spell that can consistently deal 5 damage. (and probably for good reasons). It is generally at 3 mana you deal 4 damage. This isn't a great rate and therefore 3 mana burn aren't played that much.
- At 4 mana, you can deal 6 damage - Fiery Confluence
All three of these cards above would break the gold standard.
- Price of Progress could easily deal 4 up to 10 damage in the late game as decks in eternal formats do not play enough basics. Unfortunately, cube decks often do not play enough non-basic lands and Price of Progress is generally not played in cube. However, if it is included in a cube, it is likely a strong card burn card given texture of the cube designed by the cube curator.
- Sulfuric Vortex does a pretty good impression of Staggershock at its worst - The turn it comes out, it will deal 2 damage to the opponent on their upkeep plus an additional 2 on their next turn. In slower matchups, Sulfuric Vortex by itself could deal 6 to 8 damage while preventing incidental lifegain. Sulfuric Vortex is an incredibly hard card for slower decks to race - The burn deck could point their burn spells at their opponent's creatures + using their 1 drops to chump block attackers until Sulfuric Vortex deals lethal damage.
- Fireblast is "free" and is often as the last burn spell pointed at the opponent. The free part of FireBlast is very difficult for the opponent to play around. Its not uncommon for a midrange/ control deck to tap out at 10-12 life and lose to an attack + burn spell + Fireblast for lethal.
The bottleneck for burn decks in cube is often mana, rather than cards. Its very common for even the most aggressive burn decks to curve into 4-5 drops such as Thundermaw Hellkite or Chandra, Torch of Defiance. Its fairly common for a burn deck to play something like ETB Char - Deal 4 damage, untap play Thundermaw Hellkite - attack for 5, Fireblast the opponent for 4. A total of 14 damage.
Fireblast is essential in legacy burn to help the red aggro deck with turn 3-4 kills to help race against the faster combo decks in the format. Its also essential in cubes to help speed up wins by often 1 turn.
Fireblast is also very good with cards like Thousand-Year Storm or Shark Typhoon to generate "free" storm count.
Note:
- Price of Progress is problematic because if both player's life total is reduced to 0 at the same time, the game would become a draw. Price of Progress isn't a problem in Legacy burn because the deck player 0 non-basic lands, but this could be a problem in a cube format with games where the red deck will play more non-basics to help curve out creatures from their second color.
Parasitic Burn Debate:
There is a debate by cube curators whether cards like playing Price of Progress, Sulfuric Vortex and Fireblast should be played in cube.
As of right now, the best four burn spells are unanimously Lightning Bolt, Chain Lightning, Shatterskull Smashing and Fiery Confluence. They are very efficient and could be played in almost any deck - Burn, Zoo, Combo, Control etc.
Cube Curators would like to extend this flexibility with it comes to the 7th or 8th spell. Instead of cards like FireBlast, Price of Progress, Searing Blood, Searing Blaze that are strong in burn/ aggro, but less effective in other shells, some cube curators opt for more generic burn spells such as Char, Roil Eruption or Staggershock which in theory could be played in aggro, midrange, combo, or control.
This argument sounds great on paper, but cards like Staggershock or Char may be too weak for both competitive burn or control deck in powered cubes. This is similar to cards like Thraben Inspector which in theory could be played in artifacts (Clue), Flicker (Create second clue), Aggro (1-Drop), Stax, Control (Early blocker + Draw a card) etc. but in practice is always the 24th or 25th card in any deck and often doesn't make the cut during deck building.
Here are some more examples:
Dragon Fodder / Gather the Townsfolk/ Servo Exhibition
Roil Eruption/ Staggershock
Fireball
...
The problem with some of these cards is they look great when trying to balance support for cube archetypes:
- Dragon Fodder/ Gather the Townsfolk is playable Spells Matters, Planeswalkers, Aristocrats, Polymorph (see #39), Recurring Nightmare/ Stax, Aggro, Artifacts (Servo)
- Into the Roil/ Staggershock are great in burn, spells matters, control, combo (removes hate bears), midrange etc.
But during deck constructions there is frequently an excess of playables, these cards are always the 24th or 25th card and are cut from the final 40 card limited deck.
It is important to avoid adding too many parasitic cards into a cube (this includes burn spells), but if too many weaker, generic burn spells are relegated as the 24th card, then they should likely be replaced with the more powerful, but parasitic burn spells such as FireBlast, Price of Process or Searing Blaze.
* As stated in this article, I am not advocating any of these cards as playables or non-playables. Thraben Inspectr and Dragon Fodder are commonly used examples of the 24th card concept in the vintage cube.
I want to thank everyone that read this far. This archetype is pioneered and mostly developed by wtwlf123. The best part about MTG Cube form is that cube curators could build off each others ideas/ theories to perfect archetypes and cube.
https://www.mtgsalvation.com/forums/the-game/the-cube-forum/cube-card-and-archetype/817737-the-polymorph-deck
Polymorph
Transmogrify
The idea behind this archetype is simple - play a token generator that is not a creature itself - Lingering Souls and cast Transmogrify on the creature. Ideally the rest of your deck should not contain any low drops, and you flip into a fatty such as Emrakul, the Aeons Torn that gets cheated into play.
The most efficient of the 5 effects are:
Lukka, Coppercoat Outcast
Reality Scramble
Transmogrify
Polymorph
Proteus Staff
However, after my personal play testing, I've realized two issues:
- It is unrealistic to deck with no low drop creatures, the payoff isn't strong or consistent enough. (The deck doesn't feel stronger than a Through the breach or Eureka style fatty cheat deck)
- Blue is overtaxed in cube and often over drafted. Similarly, the sacrifice creatures are traditionally not in blue.
I decided to replace the Polymorph and Proteus Staff with two red based Transmogrify effects. Both these payoffs retrieve multiple creatures.
Divergent Transformations
Indomitable Creativity
Shifting Shadow
With the exception of Transmogrify, the other four effects Polymorphs multiple creature or allows for multiple activation. This allows the deck to play more like the standard Aetherworks marvel deck that spins to Marvel (potentially multiple times) to try to hit its payoffs without having to place too many deck building restrictions. These effects could be played in the big red archetype, without having to be placed in dedicated Transmogrify shells.
Time Spiral/ Timetwister/ Wheel of Fortune/ Memory Jar/ Echo of Eons/ Commit // Memory
This is an incredibly difficult topic to explain well. I will try my best to go through each card. Here are the general usages for draw 7s:
Draw Denial:
When a draw 7 is paired with a draw denial spell such as Notion Thief, Leovold, Emissary of Trest, Narset, Parter of Veils or Hullbreacher becomes a Mind Twist + draw 7. This is card advantage is often sufficient in winning the game
Asymmetrical Draw:
The more common usage of a draw 7 is suppose you have 2-3 cards in hand and your opponent has 7. In this case, casting a draw 7 should draw the player casting it 3-4 extra cards compared to the opponent. Here are some scenarios for this:
- Player A is playing an aggressive Burn deck with Wheel of Fortune as their top end. The opponent is playing an Abzan midrange deck. Player B is stabilizing at 4-5 life and Player A is out of resources. Player A could cast Wheel of Fortune to essentially draw 7 new cards and burn the opponent out.
- Player A is playing a ramp deck and Player B is playing a midrange control deck. Player A has accelerated into 10 mana, but is low on top end threats. Player B still has a hand of answers + 1-2 threats on board. Player A could cast Time Spiral to rebuild their hand and deploy new threats
Discard Fodder:
The draw 7 are great for reloading after discarding your hand to discard outlets such as Noose Constrictor, Firestorm. If the opponent is tapped out, discarding 4 to Noose Constrictor + the freshly drawn 7 to give the Constrictor +11/+11 could enable a combo kill.
Recoup cards after a mulligan:
This is was incredibly relevant during the Tolarian Academy standard where players would mulligan to low subset of cards. It was very common to see the Tolarian Academy player mulligan to 4 and turn 1 play Tolarian Academy, Lotus Petal, Mox Diamond and then cast Windfall to refuel their hand.
https://www.mtggoldfish.com/articles/instant-deck-tech-1998-academy-historical-standard
Digging for Answers:
There are situations where the player with the draw 7 are so behind they cannot win the game - The Draw 7 could be cast to dig for answers.
Here is an example at Worlds - The Temur Energy player is incredibly behind on realizes the top card of his opponent's deck is a Chandra, Torch of Defiance. He doesn't feel he can beat Chandra + his board and decided to risk a draw 7 and hope that the 7 cards he's drawn is stronger than the opponent's 7. The game worked out well for him.
https://youtu.be/iAKxJjDe2AY?t=759
Storm Decks:
Draw 7s are essential for storm decks that tries to cast 10 spells for Tendrils of Agony - Storm decks require several pieces to function - Fast Mana, Tutors, Win Cons/ Infinite Mana Combo etc. Draw 7s ensure the subset of cards could be drawn.
The best draw 7s for Storm are Memory Jar or Time Spiral - They are essentially free and guarantee 7 additional cards the turn the storm player is going off. Echo of Eons and Timetwister are less good because they shuffle the library back into the deck - this is weak in versions that require Underworld Breach, Past in Flames or Yawgmoth's will. Wheel of Fortune is very good - it draws 7 new cards while providing fuel for aforementioned graveyard recursion spells.
Storm decks in Vintage and Legacy are approximate 25% fast mana with another 25% being cheap cantrips that could be used to draw into additional sources of fast mana. Draw-7s in these formats are incredibly strong because it essentially draws into around 2 pieces of fast mana + 2 cantrips to draw into additional fast mana to continue the loop.
https://www.mtggoldfish.com/deck/2888239#paper
Storm decks in cube do not have luxury. Draw 7s such as Echo of Eons, Timetwister and Wheel of Fortune often do not draw into sufficient fast mana to recoup their initial 3 mana investment. They are more or less used to draw into additional spells + win cons/ tutors to cast to generate a sufficiently high storm count.
-----
Specific Cards:
- Time Spiral - This is the best draw 7 for ramp/ storm decks. It is essentially for "free" for decks that will ramp up to 7 mana and its untap clause could be abuse with any mana doubler - High tide or Mana Flare, essentially giving the player 12 mana + 7 new cards.
- Echo of Eons/ Commit // Memory - Memory isn't a draw 7 compared to the other draw 7, its more played for its Commit and not its memory. But these two cards are an incredible combo with Dream Halls You can discard them to Dream Halls and cast the Flash Back/ Aftermath half from the graveyard by discarding an additional card.
- Wheel of Fortune and Timetwister could be used as top ends for aggressive strategies that quickly empty their hand, but have trouble in the late game. These could be used to refuel the aggressive deck. The other draw-7 are too expensive for this.
- All the draw 7s work very well with Fastbond - On average a draw 7 will contain 3-4 lands. This will allow the play their new lands + play any new threats they drawn
- Memory Jar - Memory Jar is often used the turn after it is drawn - The player casting Memory jar would be able to play all the cards they drawn. The opponent is required to discard the cards the turn after and cannot play them unless they are instant. Unlike the other draw 7, this could be recurred with Goblin Welder or Daretti, Scrap Savant or cloned by Saheeli Rai or Phyrexian Metamorph to mill the opponent out. (This is quite likely given cube decks are only 40 cards deep)
Here is a discussion on the reason for Memory Jar remains banned in Legacy:
https://www.reddit.com/r/MTGLegacy/comments/4p88bw/why_is_memory_jar_banned/
Library of Alexandria - This is another very powerful card. Its relatively simple to use - Turn 1 you play Library of Alexandria. Suppose you did not mulligan, you would have 6 cards in hand. Then on the subsequent turn, you would draw a card. Then you would have 7 cards in hand. After that, you could use Library's draw ability to draw an 8th card.
In order to fully appreciate the strength of this card advantage - we should look at a somewhat commonly played Legacy/ Vintage card - Night's Whisper. This is the least expensive non-power 9 card that will net +1 card advantage. Night's Whisper comes at the expense of 2 mana + 2 Life. On the other hand, Library of Alexandria's card draw is a repeatable effect, does not cost life and is at the expense of a single mana. (The Library of Alexandria cannot be used to generate colorless mana)
Tips:
- Library could be used by Re-animator decks as a discard outlet - The deck would draw their 8th card go to discard.
- Gush and Land Tax are both incredibly strong engines at draw sufficient cards to activate Library
Playing Tip:
Library of Alexandria is a low opportunity cost utility land that is exceptional in slower matchups. It is often incorrect to attempt to maximum your draws at the expense of tempo against aggressive/ combo strategies.
Time Vault - This could be used to gain infinite turns with any card that can untap Time Vault every turn. Here are the list of cards that could untap Time Vault every turn.
Tezzeret the Seeker - This is the best enabler as Tezzert could -2 to tutor up the Time Vault then take infinite turns the following turn.
Manifold Key/ Voltaic Key - Both are very good combos with Time Vault, but could also be used with Grim Monolith, Mana Vault, Basalt Monolith to untap and net 2 mana per activation.
Ral Zarek
Kiora's Follower
Mirage Mirror - Mirage Mirror copies the Time Vault. The copy is untapped and copy be tapped to gain an extra tunr
Saheeli Rai - Does not go infinite, but could be used to copy Mirage Mirror to gain extra turns.
Time Vault could also be useful with Pestermite, Deceiver Exarch that can untap time vault.
Selvala's Stampede. This is a very straightforward card that might be misleading to newer players.
- For each Wild Vote, the player casting Selvala will reveal cards from the top of their library until they reveal a creature.
- For each Free Vote, the player casting Selvala will put a permanent from their hand onto the battlefield
The player casting Selvala cannot control how their opponent votes, but they will pick the option that benefits them the most. Suppose the player casting Selvala has an Emrakul, the Aeons Torn in their hand, they should choose Free. However, if the player has no good permanents in hand, or they know the top creature in their deck is Emrakul, the Aeons Torn they should choose Wild. (Players usually choose Wild because they have no good cards in their hand and need to take a gamble by flipping the top of their library)
The player casting Selvala's Stampede gets to vote first. Assuming both players are strong players, if the Player casting Selvala votes for Wild, it is probably best for the opponent to vote Free because it likely means the player casting Selvala does not have a good permanent to put into play.
The other scenario is an open question to how to vote - If the player casting Selvala does vote for Free, it means they have a good permanent to put into play. This depends heavily on the number of cards in hand/ texture of their deck.
Ruling:
- While Selvala is being resolved, players cannot cast spells such as Brainstorm or Vampiric Tutor.
Coercive Portal. This is a little bit different from Selvala's Stampede, but here is how it works. The player with Coercive Portal votes first. If Carnage gets more votes, then sacrifice Coercive Portal and destroy all nonland permanents. If homage gets more votes or the vote is tied, draw a card.
The summary of this card is a 4 mana artifact that reads "draw a card at the beginning of your upkeep". Here is why:
- Assume the person with Coercieve Portal and the opponent will vote accordingly to benefit themselves the most.
- Assume the person with the stronger board position does not want all nonland permanents destroyed and the opponent would like the board destroyed.
If you have the stronger board position, you would vote for homage. The opponent's vote is irrelevant - if they vote for Carnage, Homage is tied 1-1. If they vote for Homage, then it is 2-0. In both scenarios it is homage and the player controlling Coercive Portal gets to draw a card.
If you have a weaker board position, you would vote for carnage. The opponent does not want the board destroyed, and instead opts for homage. Homage is tied at 1-1 and the player controlling Coercive Portal gets to draw a card.
Heliod, Sun-Crowned, Mikaeus, the Unhallowed, Archangel of Thune are both combo enablers that could be played in fair decks. They are all part of infinite creature combos. I'm going to go through three creatures in one section because of the enormous overlaps between these combos:
1. Heliod - Walking Ballista/ Triskelion:
- Heliod is on the battlefield with a Walking Ballista has a minimum of two counters or Triskelion.
- Heliod uses his ability to give Ballista or Triskelion lifelink
- Ballista/ Triskelion shoots the opponent for 1 damage. The lifelink triggers gaining 1 life.
- Heliod's static activiates putting a new +1/+1 counter on the Walking Ballista/ Triskelion.
(Loop demonstrated - Repeat steps 3-4 arbitrary number of times)
The Walking Ballista needs to be a minimum of two counters because if it had only a single counter, it would die when it shoots the opponent.
2. Mikaeus, the Unhallowed- Walking Ballista/ Triskelion:
This is a little bit trickier with Walking Ballista. I will go through the loop with just Triskelion first.
- Mikaeus and Triskelion are both on the battlefield.
- Triskelion shoots the opponent for 1 damage. (2 +1/+1 counters remaining)
- Triskelion shoots itself twice, to remove itself from play (it is a base 1/1 + Mikaeus adds an additional +1/+1)
(Setup Loop)
- Triskelion is a non-human with zero +1/+1 counters - undying triggers
- Triskelion returns with 4 +1/+1 counters - 3 from itself and 1 from undying.
- Triskelion shoots the opponent for 2 damage (2 +1/+1 counters remaining)
- Triskelion shoots itself for 2 damage, to remove itself from play.
(Loop demonstrated - Repeat steps 4-7 an arbitrary number of times)
Unfortunately, Walking Ballista returns with a single +1/+1 counter + an additional base 1/1 toughness from Mikaeus - It cannot be loop in the same manner as Triskelion. In order for Ballista to loop an arbitrary number of times, there needs to be a sacrifice outlet i.e. Carrion Feeder or an ability that will add an additional +1/+1 counter when Ballista enters the battlefield off undying i.e. Grumgully, the Generous
With Sacrifice Outlet:
- Walking Ballista returns from undying with +1/+1 counter and base 1/1
- Walking Ballista shoots the opponent for 1 damage
- Sacrifice outlet sacrifices Waling Ballista, Walking Ballista goes to the graveyard
With en effect that will provide an additional +1/+1 counter:
- Walking Ballista returns from undying with 2 +1/+1 counters + an additional base 1/1/ toughtness
- Walking Ballista shoots the opponent for 1 damage
- Walking Ballista shoots itself for 1 damage, to remove itself from play
Lastly, this loop could also work with Purphoros, God of the Forge - Ballista could repeatedly shoot itself on every loop and Purphoros will deal 2 damage to the opponent
3. Mikaeus, the Unhallowed - with Persist Combo:
Mikaeus could be used as a persist enabler in the Melira combo (see #15 Melira Combo).
How this works with persist is suppose Kitchen Finks has no persist counters, you would sacrifice the kitchen finks. Both persist and undying would trigger. You would stack the persist on top of the undying trigger and kitchen finks would return with the -1/-1 counter - undying does not trigger. Then on the next iteration, you would sacrifice the kitchen finks and stack it such that undying trigger would be on top of the kitchen finks such that kitchen finks would return with +1/+1 and persist does not trigger.
4. Heliod, Sun-Crowned - Kitchen Finks:
With Heliod, Sun-Crowned on the battlefield, with Kitchen Finks and a sacrifice outlet i.e. Viscera Seer. You can repeatedly sacrifice the Kitchen Finks to the Viscera Seer. When Kitchen Finks returns to the battlefield after being sacrificed, the Heliod +1/+1 trigger would activate putting the 2 +1/+1 counters onto the kitchen finks gaining infinite life.
This loops works with Archangel of Thune as well.
5. Heliod, Sun-Crowned/Archangel of Thune and Spike Feeder:
With Heliod, Sun-Crowned or Archangel of Thune on the battlefield with Spike Feeder, the Spike Feeder could remove a +1/+1 counter to gain 2 life. When the player gains 2 life, the Heliod/ Archangel of Thune would trigger putting a +1/+1 counter on Spike Feeder. This could be done an arbitrary number of times to gain infinite life. (With Archangel of Thune, the creatures are arbitrary large and can deal lethal that turn)
Similarly to the Mikaeus, the Unhallowed- Walking Ballista combo, there needs to be a sacrifice outlet to remove the Spike Feeder from the battlefield once it runs out of counters as Mikaeus adds an inherit 1/1 to the creature's base stats.
Rules:
- Heliod, Sun-Crowned is considered a creature in the deck/ hand. Chord of Calling and Despise both will work with Heliod
* Thanks Jeenios Cleric Class level 2 can also function as a backup Heliod/ Archangel of Thune
Recurring Nightmare is another very difficult card to explain. In summary, it is a recurring effect, for 3 mana + a creature, you can return a card from the graveyard to the battlefield. It's main purpose is not to form reanimation combo loops - Its main purpose is to continuously reanimate creatures for value. I'll go over its rulings first, because the card is a bit misleading then I will cover the deck it is normally played in.
Rules:
- When Recurring Nightmare comes into play, the casting player has priority to use Recurring Nightmare. The Recurring Nightmare ability to return back to the owner's hand + sacrifice a creature are part of the card's activation cost. The opponent does not have an opportunity to destroy Recurring Nightmare in response.
- Recurring Nightmare can only be stopped by a card that stops activated abilities like Pithing Needle or Phyrexian Revoker
- It cannot reanimate the creature that is sacrifices - the creature it tries to reanimate needs to be already in the graveyard.
Recurring nightmare is incredibly strong with creatures with Enter the Battlefield/ Leave the Battlefield effects, especially Enter the Battlefield effects that produce tokens or recur creatures such as Deep Forest Hermit, Deranged Hermit, Thragtusk, Sun Titan, Reveillark. The tokens produced from these creatures could be used to fuel future Recurring Nightmares.
The Recurring Nightmare decks requires a way to fill its graveyard in order to be effective - the best two options are Survival of the Fittest and Birthing Pod. Both these cards can not only fill the graveyard with value creatures, but could also tutor up creatures that are excellent in the specific scenario.
Recurring Nightmare decks are different from Reanimator decks in that they could function without ways to sent creatures into their graveyard - it could operate by reanimating their earlier creatures that were removed by the opponent. However, this is a lot weaker than having an engine like Birthing Pod or Survival of the Fittest that could directly put creatures into the player's graveyard.
Here is an example of a Recurring Nightmare Deck - It won worlds in 1998. It had Survival of the Fittest, Firestorm to get creatures into the graveyard and Recurring Nightmare to reanimate them.
https://lilianamarket.co.uk/decks/deck/recurring-nightmare-survival-of-the-fittest/c60cf6f10fe8410882ca2a0728aee674
See section #66 on Birthing Pod for an analysis of the best ETB/ LTB creatures.
Intruder Alarm - This is another combo enabler. Its goes infinite with any creature that can tap to create a token.
Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker
Krenko, Mob Boss
Steward of Solidarity
Thraben Doomsayer
Bloodline Keeper
The base loop is tap create a token. A creature has entered the battlefield, Intruder Alarm activates untapping all the creatures. The creature untaps. Loop Demonstrated
Sprout Swarm
- Requires 5 creatures to be on the battlefield to be played + bought back
Ant Queen
- Requires mana dorks that could tap for 2 mana - i.e. Rofellos, Llanowar Emissary or a Birds of Paradise + Boreal Druid
Goblin Welder
- If you have an artifact creature in the graveyard and an artifact on the field, you can weld and swap the two artifacts. IF the artifact creature has an Enter the Battlefield that produces token, i.e. Myr Battlesphere, then Welder can continuously replace Myr Battlesphere with an artifact in the graveyard generating infinite Myrs.
Earthcraft / Cryptolith Rite / Rofellos, Llanowar Emissary
- Intruder Alarm will not go infinite with these cards, but every creature ETB can potentially generate upwards of 3-5 mana.
Ruling:
- If multiple creatures enter the battlefield at the same time i.e. Lingering Souls, this triggers Intruder alarm X number of times given the number of tokens that are entering. (https://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=intruder alarm).
This ruling is very good with a card like Rofellos, Llanowar Emissary - He could easily tap for 3-4 mana in the midgame. Lingering Souls enterting the battlefield could trigger 4 untaps, netting enormous amounts of mana.
This should be pretty intuitive to most players, but the wording on the original dual lands was slightly misleading when I first read them. Therefore, I will go over the fetch-land/ dual land interaction.
Dual-lands - i.e. Tundra:
The wording on Tundra is "Counts as both island and plains and is affected by spells that affect either". This could simplifies "this is both an Island and a Plains". The new digital printing of Tundra on Vintage Masters is the better representation of dual lands.
Fetchlands - i.e. Flooded Strand:
There is a cycle of 10 Fetch lands that could be sacrifice to search either two basic lands. The lands they put into play do not need to be basics land - they could grab lands that only satisfy one of the Island/ Plains requirement i.e. Steam Vents could be fetched off Flooded Strand
- Flooded Strand could fetch Mystic Sanctuary because it is an Island. If it says Island at the card type slot, it could be grabbed. Flooded Strand cannot fetch a blue land like Tolarian Academy
- This also includes the Triome cycle Ketria Triome. The Triome still comes into play tapped if searched up by Flood Strand.
Ruling:
- Sacrificing Flooded Strand is part of the activation cost - The effect could be negated using a card like Stifle and the player still loses the land. This is not a mana ability.
- When searching the library for a specific requirement, you could always fail to find. This is relevant if the player is controlled by a Mindslaver
Tip:
- Fetch lands are the best fixing in cube - If you are playing only Blue-White and you have a Tundra, all other blue-white fetch lands are great pickups i.e. Polluted Delta as they can be used to grab Tundra and fix for Blue-White.
- For each dual land, there are 7 fetch lands that can grab the fetch the dual land.
- For each tri land, there is only one fetch land that cannot grab the dual land.
Snow-Covered Island - There is an entire cycle of basic snow covered lands. They are a set of basic lands. In retail drafts, players drafting snow archetypes would need to draft the snow lands from their packs, just like Wastes during Battle for Zendikar. However, most cube curators will have snow lands in their in their basic land section - It is best to check prior to playing.
Snow lands serve two function:
- They are a different name than their basic counter part
- Some mechanics require specifically snow mana
I'll go through both functions.
Snow basics are a different name than their basic counterpart. For cards such as:
Gifts Ungiven - A player could tutor up both a basic Island and a Snow Covered Basic land with Gifts Ungiven
Tainted Pact- If a player flips both a snow covered swamp and a swamp of their Tainted Pact, they are considered different cards. (See Tainted Pact section)
Field of the Dead - Both a Snow Covered Forest and basic forest are lands with different names and could trigger Field of the Dead earlier.
For these card, player should opt play a mix of snow basics and regular basics to fully take advantage of these cards.
There are also cards that specifically require snow lands:
Into the North
Arcum's Astrolabe
Dead of Winter
Ice-Fang Coatl
Drafters could very easily opt to play snow basics over regular basics to play these cards. For these card, players should replace their basic lands entirely with snow basics.
Cube Tip:
- If you are playing snow matters in your cube, I would add the rule that players could declare all their basics are snow-basics instead of regular basics to save the need to sleeve approximately 150 extra snow lands.
Shatterskull Smashing/ Turntimber Symbiosis/ Emeria's Call/ Agadeem's Awakening
The Zendilar Rising Lands are some of the best utility lands printed - their opportunity cost is almost negligible, especially Shatterksull Smashing which the 3 damage drawback is almost completely irrelevant in aggressive strategies. The utility lands also tap for colored mana, which also mitigates the potential drawbacks with fixing.
They have proven to significant outperform cycle lands, cycle spells because they offer a much lower opportunity cost in playing them in your deck.
The rulings with these lands are not intuitive. I will go over the specific rulings:
- Suppose you have a Shatterskull, the Hammer Pass on the battlefield and it is flickered, it remains in exile because a sorcery cannot be put onto the battlefield. This is ruling is important because if a Kazandu Valley is flickered, it returns to the battlefield as Kazandu Mammoth
- The Shatterskull Smashing exists as a sorcery unless it is played onto the field as a land. It is a sorcery in your hand, library and graveyard. It can be discarded using a card like Thoughtseize and cannot be tutored by Expedition Map. It cannot be returned by Life from the Loam because it exists as a sorcery in the graveyard.
- Yawgmoth's Will allows the either side of the card to be played, but Past in Flames only allows the sorcery to be played.
- Shatterskull, the Hammer Pass could be played off the effect of Crucible of Worlds or Courser of Kruphix. Shatterskull Smashing cannot be casted.
Pathway Lands Rulings:
- Riverglide Pathway is also a double sided card. Despite both sides being lands, the Riverglide Pathway is the Front Face and if it is flickered, it is returned back to the battlefield.
These cards are commonly referred to as MDFC Bolt lands and MDFC Tapped Lands (Modal Double-Faced Cards).
- The Bolt lands is the cycle of Shatterskull Smashing etc. that could be played untapped by paying 3 life (i.e. Bolting yourself)
- MDFC tapped lands are referring to cards such as Tangled Florahedron, Glasspool Mimic or Kazandu Mammoth that could be played as a tapped land or a spell.
The MDFC Bolt lands have unanimously been included into the cube for their flexibility in serving as both a spell and a land when it is needed. These cards should be counted as a land when deck building and are incredibly flexible at providing utility as well as a mana sink later on in the game.
MDFC tapped lands have performed above expectations. They also proven to be incredibly flexible, but the tapped land half is a more serious drawback compared to its Bolt land counterparts.
They function very well in cube for two reasons:
- Cube decks don't have the 90% mana consistency compared to constructed decks - They often aim for 70% at best. Similarly, the mana curve in Limited could easily range from 1-6 CMC, unlike constructed which is more streamlined between 1-3 CMC (Non-ramp decks)
Often tri color decks lack sufficient fixing to play their spells on curve. MDFC such as Kazandu Mammoth could be played as a turn 2 land drop if the player's opening hand does not have any green sources.
- As anticipated, Creature Lands, Cycle Lands and the MDFC lands provide flood protection (drawing too many lands, not enough spells) and are incredibly strong late game when both players are low resources with 6-7 lands on the battlefield.
The MDFC tapped lands are best though of as half a land, half a spell - This is similar to the Xerox Theory for every 2 cheap cantrips, the deck could cut 1 land.
Devoted Druid. This is another good mana acceleration. In case of emergency, a player could tap Devoted Druid to add one green, and then put a -1/-1 on Devoted Druid then tap for a second green netting 2 mana off a mana dork.
Furthermore, if Devoted Druid was able to get extra thoughtness through equipments/ +1/+1 counters, it could potentially generate 3-4 mana on a single turn.
However, if Vizier of Remedies is on the battlefield, devoted druid cannot put -1/-1 counter on itself and can untap itself an arbitrarily high number times generating infinite mana.
NOTE:
This is a correction I was not aware of - Devoted Druid does not work with Melira, Sylvok Outcast or Solemnity. The -1/-1 counter is part of the cost of the activation and these two cards do not allow the cost of the card to be played.
Armageddon / Ravages of War - This is a generic mass land destruction spell. There are three types of decks that would like this type of effect:
1. Aggressive Decks:
Aggressive decks by their nature are able to deploy their threats quickly. In the midgame, they are either able to win by dealing 20 damage or they get out valued by midrange/ control decks.
Armageddon could be played as a top end threat. If the aggressive decks has even one creature left on the field, it leaves very little time for the opponent to rebuild their board.
A possible play pattern is the aggressive decks plays turn 1 - Dryad Militant, turn 2 - Luminarch Aspirant followed by a turn 3 - Goblin Rabblemaster. The control player might be able to answer 1-2 of these threats but is relying on casting a Supreme Verdict or Wurmcoil Engine to try to stabilize against an overwhelming board. The aggressive player would then cast Armageddon to destroy all the lands thus leaving the board empty with just their Luminarch Aspirant or Goblin Rabblemaster. With one or two of these creatures on a empty board, the aggressive player could easily win in 1-2 attack steps - This is more than enough time before the control player could rebuild
2. Artifact Ramp/ WildFire Decks:
There is an archetype called WildFire. How this decks is it uses artifact ramp in the form of Thran Dynamo, Azorius Signet to cast WildFire / Burning of Xinye / Armageddon. These decks could cast their subsequent spells using primarily their artifact mana while the opponent will often struggle with the majority of their mana sources destroyed.
Furthermore, cards like WildFire could also sweep the board against aggressive strategies in addition to destroying 4 lands.
Here is an example of a WildFire Deck:
https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/feature/wildfire-99-2008-12-04
3. Crucible of Worlds/ Life from the Loam:
After an Armageddon has destroyed all the lands in player, the player with Crucible of Worlds and Life from the Loam could rebuild their lands a lot quicker than the opponent. In addition, if they have effects such as Fastbond or Dryad of the Ilysian Grove to play additional lands, then destroying all lands is incredibly asymmetrical.
Life from the Loam. This is a very strong engine in the legacy lands deck and the modern dredge deck.
The modern dredge deck, unlike its legacy or vintage counterparts would like additional lands mid to late game to make additional land drops for recurring Bloodghast or for a late game Conflagrate.
The legacy lands deck has access to Exploration which allows the the deck to play multiple lands a turn. Similarly, the lands deck is 60% lands, with half of those being utility lands. Life from the Loam dredging 3 cards a turn gives the land decks more options to recur from their graveyard for specific scenarios. it is also essential for ensuring the lands deck does not run out of resources mid to late game.
Life from the loam functions very similarly in cube - It could be used to recur lands from the graveyard and with cards like Fastbond or Dryad of the Ilysian Grove, they could play additional lands from their graveyard. In conjunction with lands like Wasteland or Strip Mine, the life from the loam player could recur a wasteland every turn, essentially denying the opponent their land drops.
Life from the Loam returns 3 cards for the price of 1 card - The extra cards are very good if used as discard fodder with cards like Faithless Looting or Liliana of the Veil.
The dredge clause on Life from the Loam makes it much easier to tutor for - players could use Gamble or Entomb to put Life from the Loam into the player's graveyard and they could recur it back to their hand the following turn.
As mentioned in the Armageddon section, Life from the Loam paired with a mass land destruction effect is incredibly devastating - the opponent often do not have the lands in hand to rebuild their board as effective as the Life from the Loam player.
Ruling:
Dredge is a replacement effect for any draw effect - this includes cards like Thirst of Knowledge, Brainstorm and Sylvan Library.
Suppose there is Life from the Loam and the player casts Brainstorm. Then the player would draw 3, however they would replace one of their draws by dredging Life from the Loam from their graveyard. Then they are required to put 2 cards back on to the top of their library.
Oath of Druids - This is a relatively simple card to understand. If your opponent controls more creatures on either upkeep, you could flip cards from the top of your library until you hit a creature.
This card is only legal in Vintage, in this format, the Oath decks have only 1-2 creatures - Emrakul, the Aeons Torn or Griselbrand and the rest of the deck is fill with cantrips and disruption. If the opponent is not playing creatures, the Vintage Oath deck has Forbidden Orchard to give their opponent tokens to trigger oath.
https://www.mtggoldfish.com/archetype/oath-of-druids#paper
Similar to Vintage, the Oath of Druids in cube should ideally be filled with powerful creatures that the deck could flip into. Ideally, one of these creatures should be an Eldrazi Titan to ensure the graveyard could be shuffled back into the library for future oath activation.
However, there are two problems with this approach:
- It is a relatively steep drawback to play no low drops in your cube
- Your opponent might not be being a creature focused deck
These two drawbacks could be easily mitigated. Oath could be played in Reanimator decks, fatty cheat decks and remove creature based discard outlets, creature ramp in favor of artifact ramp, non-creature based discard outlets. (Oath isn't consistent enough in green-ramp decks)
Similarly, Oath could be played in a planeswalker heavy deck, or a storm deck - this would incentive their opponent to play creatures. If their opponent opts to not play creatures, their opponent would be buried by the card advantage generated by the oath deck's planeswalkers. Similarly, if the opponent opts not to play creatures to pressure the storm combo deck, they would lose.
Opposition - This is another very oppressive prison piece - If you're playing a token heavy deck, it is very easy to use your tokens to tap down all your opponents lands, artifacts and creatures. This essentially locks the opponent from attacking, blockers, or casting any of their spells.
For example, with a card like Deranged Hermit on the field, opposition could be used to lock out 5 lands/ artifacts - This is often sufficient to deny the opponent from casting any spells.
Unlike other prison pieces, opposition is also incredibly strong if the opposition deck is behind. The token deck could use Opposition on upkeep to tap down all the opponent's attacks - This could also be used to tap down the most problematic creatures in cube, such as Emrakul, the Aeons Torn, Grave Titan etc. with 1-2 small creatures.
I often describe opposition as having three stages:
- Survival Stage - Opposition is used with 1-2 creatures when behind on board to tap down the opponent's attackers. This usually occurs when the opposition deck is behind and attempting to stabilize.
- Midrange Stage - Opposition is used to keep the opponent from attacking, but also could be used to tap down their blockers and occasionally lands. This usually occurs if the opposition deck is on parity with the opponent.
- Lockout Stage - Opposition is used to entirely lock the opponent from casting any spells. This usually occurs if the opposition deck has an overwhelming board presence and is seeking to win.
Cards that are incredibly powerful when the player is ahead or behind are incredibly powerful.
Ruling:
- Opposition is an activated ability, it can be stopped by Pithing Needle
- The opponent's target for Opposition cannot have protection from blue or shroud
Land Tax - Land tax is potentially a very broken card. In a game of 4 people commander, a player with land tax will essentially be guaranteed one activation per turn, especially if they are not going first - The player going first will not be purposely skipping their land drop to avoid triggering land tax in a 4 player game. This is a very broken effect - I've seen commander games where a player was able to search up 18 lands from their turn 1 land tax.
Turn 1 land tax on the draw could be devastating - The opponent on the play makes a land drop, the player with land tax plays turns 1 land tax. The opponent will be forced to skip their turn 1 land drop or give their opponent three basic lands - Both these effects are incredibly strong for one mana.
Land Tax is incredibly strong in attrition decks like SmokeStack, Armageddon or Braids, Cabal Minion where their game plan revolves around grinding their opponent out of resources. These decks are often willing to skip their land drop to gain the card advantage required for these cards to be effective.
Cards that work well with Land Tax:
- Gush - Gush could be used to return lands to your land to trigger land tax
- Scroll Rack, Jace, the Mind Sculptor or Brainstorm could be used to shuffle the excess lands on to the top of your library to draw actual spells
- Mox Diamond - Land tax could recoup its card disadvantage, but with Mox Diamond, the land tax could ensure they are ahead of their opponent in terms of mana without playing extra lands.
- Fastbond - The land tax player could skip their land drop to accumulate multiple land tax activations and play the land drops they skipped + 6 lands they fetched off land tax on a later turn.
- Horizon Canopy - Canopy lands cycle could be sacrificed to keep the land tax player at a lower land count than their opponent
Its usually not incorrect to play Land tax in any white deck - Aggro, Control or Midrange, however the effectiveness of Land Tax may vary. Land Tax could be easily triggered in aggressive decks that only plays 16-17 lands and frequently keeps 2 land hands, but often these decks may not the additional land drops. Similarly, control decks need the extra lands/ fixing, but it may be difficult for land tax to trigger, especially on the play if the control deck's game plan is to play a land every turn till turn 5-6.
Tolarian Academy/ Urza, Lord High Artificer - These two cards are very difficult to explain. They could vary significantly in cube environments with a low density of artifacts.
Tolarian Academy is incredibly strong in vintage with the moxen i.e. Mox Sapphire, Sol Ring, Mana Crypt etc. and could easily tap for 3-4 mana on turns 2-3.
The standard Tolarian Academy deck was able to win consistently on turns 3 by repeatedly untapping their Tolarian Academy using Time Spiral or Mind over Matter.
https://www.mtggoldfish.com/articles/instant-deck-tech-1998-academy-historical-standard
The Tolarian academy standard deck played 19 artifacts in their 60 card deck. Similarly, blue vintage decks playing Tolarian Academy decks also played a similar ratio.
https://www.mtgtop8.com/event?e=28380&d=424581&f=VI
Using this ratio, if the artifact in cube could have 12-13 low cost artifacts, then the deck would be incredibly strong with Tolarian Academy. If the deck was 1/3 artifacts, by turn 3, it is not unreasonable to expect Tolarian Academy to tap for 3-4 mana. If the artifact deck had a lower bound of 9-10 artifacts, they can still expect their Tolarian Academy to tap for 2-3 a reasonable of times. (Players should try to play as many artifacts in their cube deck as possible - These numbers are to give an idea of what is considered a consistent Tolarian Academy Deck)
On the other hand, almost half of the artifacts in the cube are mana rocks. Urza doesn't work well with mana rocks as they already generate mana by themselves, but works incredibly well with cards that generate large number of artifacts such as Oko, Thief of Crowns, Saheeli, Sublime Artificer, Daretti, Ingenious Iconoclast, Karn, Scion of Urza or Retrofitter Foundry. At worst, Urza is a 4 mana ramp creates a Mox Sapphire with the construct he brings into play.
In modern and legacy, Urza was incredibly strong with the cheap artifacts already present in these decks - Chalice of the Void, Arcum's Astrolabe, Mishra's Bauble etc. Similarly, Urza's 5 mana payoffs is already incredibly powerful at sinking the extra mana in the mid to late game.
Both Urza, Lord High Artificer and Tolarian Academy work very well with draw-7s - The artifact deck are very good at generating fast mana to quickly play their hands and the draw 7s will ensure the artifact deck will draw into additional artifacts to help their Urza and Tolarian Academy to generate additional mana.
Final Note:
- Winter Orb works very well with Tolarian Academy and Urza. Tolarian Academy would be the only land the artifact deck would untap and could tap for 3-4 mana in the late game - The land the opponent is untapping would only be able to tap for 1 mana. On the other hand, Winter Orb could be used with Urza to ensure your lands untap but your opponent's lands do not untap - Tap Winter Orb with Urza at the end of your opponent's turn, Winter Orb and your lands untap on your upkeep. On your opponent's turn, the Winter orb is untapped and your opponent cannot untap their lands.
Kor Skyfisher - This a card that is often undervalued. Kor Skyfisher is required to permanent when it comes into play - It must return itself or a land. This is often a very severe drawback. In some cases, aggressive decks could return a land in exchange for a stronger 2 mana creature - The flying from Kor Skyfisher is very relevant at pushing damage through blockers.
However, the return ability could be an advantage:
- Kor Skyfisher could be used to return a moxen back to the owner's land - netting +1 mana for turn
- Return ETB creatures/ artifacts such as Arcum's Astrolabe or Eternal Witness for value
- Return Battle for Zendikar Land such as Emeria's Call to cast in the late game
- If the player has no lands to play, Kor Skyfisher could return a land and play it untapped. (This could be very strong with a land like Gaea's Cradle
Progenitus. Progenitus is a card that is more difficult to hard cast than even Emrakul, the Aeons Torn. It also cannot be reanimated by Reanimate. (EDIT) Progentius cannot be reanimated even by instant speed reanimation spells - Emrakul, the Aeons Torn Could be reanimated because its shuffle into the library ability is a triggered ability and not a replacement effect. (See #31 Goryo's Vengeance for more information)
In addition, Progenitus lacks the Annihilator trigger and a single attack from this creature off an ability like Through the breach or Sneak attack isn't very good.
However, Progenitus has two advantage over the other fatty cheater targets - Natural Order/ Magus of the Order and Dream Halls. Progenitus is the best target to cheat into play with Natural Order and is the best creature to cheat into play using Dream Halls - The Eldrazi cannot be played by discarding a colorless card with Dream Halls.
Furthermore, Progenitus' protection also makes it an ideal target Oath of Druids, Eureka, Show and Tell, or Selvala's Stampede against white decks with target exile based removal.
Goblin Welder - This is the one mana Recurring Nightmare for artifact decks. The artifact decks would use cards like Faithless Looting or Dack Fayden to put expensive artifacts into the graveyard and use Goblin Welder to recur them by sacrificing cheap artifacts such as Arcum's Astrolabe for more expensive artifacts in the graveyard such as Wurmcoil Engine.
Goblin Welder works best with artifacts that generate tokens that could be used in subsequent turns to welder for additional artifacts. However, Goblin Welder is incredibly fragile and is easily removed. It is nevertheless provides redundancy for decks containing Tinker and Daretti, Scrap Savant.
Ruling:
- Both targets must be legal in order for Welder's ability to resolve. If the artifact is removed in response, the welder ability is removed.
Goblin Welder could also be used to weld the opponent's artifacts - this could be used to great effect if the opponent control's a Wurmcoil Engine and a Mox Diamond in the graveyard, but this doesn't happen often.
https://strategy.channelfireball.com/all-strategy/mtg/channelmagic-articles/deck-of-the-day-painters-legacy/
Goblin Welder is frequently played in legacy Painter to help re-assemble the Painter's Servant - Grindstone combo in the late game if one of the combo pieces were removed.
Cards that interact well with Goblin Welder:
- Memory Jar could be welded 2-3 turns in a row mill out the opponent. Memory Jar cannot be swapped after it's trigger is put onto the stack - Sacrificing it is part of the activation cost. The object no longer exists.
- Smuggler's Copter could be crewed by Goblin Welder to loot artifacts into the graveyard and used in later turns as the artifact to weld into a more expensive artifact
- Wishclaw Talisman - This is similar to Sensei's Divining Top. Put the Wishclaw Talisman trigger onto the stack. Holding Priority, put the swap the Wishclaw Talisman with an artifact in the graveyard trigger onto the stack. Then holding priority, put the Goblin Welder's trigger of exchanging the Wishclaw with an artifact in the graveyard onto the stack.
Then let the stack resolve. The Goblin Welder trigger will happen first and the Wishclaw will be moved to the graveyard. Then the Wishclaw Talisman trigger will resolve allowing the player to tutor for a card. Since the Wishclaw Talisman is no longer on the field, it will not be given to the opponent.
Goblin Engineer is used very differently to Goblin Welder in that it cannot return artifacts with CMC greater than 3, making it a very weak recursion enabler. However, he has an Entomb for artifacts ability on his ETB which makes him excellent for getting artifacts into the graveyard such as Wurmcoil Engine, Myr Battlesphere, Memory Jar, Bolas's Citadel or Sundering Titan.
This makes him ideal for putting artifacts into the graveyard to reanimate with Daretti, Scrap Savant or Goblin Welder.
Arcane Denial - This is an incredibly strong vintage cube card but its often cut because on the surface it seems much weaker than Mana Leak, Remand, Mana Drain, or Counterspell. Neverthe less, Arcane Denial is still a very strong card.
1. Arcane Denial is generally weaker than the previously mentioned 4 counter spells, but people often overlook is those 4 cards are all on the top 50 best vintage cube cards - The counterspells provide a very good counter balance to the card disadvantage fast mana such as Black Lotus, Channel, Grim Monolith, card disadvantage tutors such as Imperial Seal or Mystical Tutor or 5-6 mana spells.
Arcane Denial does a similar role - It can counter expensive spells played off fast mana or searched up via tutors. This is incredibly important at stopping combo decks as well as generating tempo/ card advantage.
Similarly, because Ponder is weaker than Ancestral Recall or Lion's Eye Diamond is weaker than Black Lotus does not mean the card should not be played.
Arcane Denial provides excellent redundancy for Blue based Tempo or Control decks that needs to answer their opponent's most important threats while it tries to win the late game via card advantage.
* See section on Card Comparison for more information on this topic.
2. Arcane Denial works incredibly well with draw-7 denial such as Hullbreacher, Narset, Parter of Veils, Leovold, Emissary of Trest, or Notion Thief often turning its disadvantage into an advantage. This doesn't show up very often - but given that there are 4 draw-denial cards, this is interaction is much more relevant.
3. Arcane Denial could be used similar to Remand in modern where players could remand their own spell during a counterspell war.
- Player A casts Vendilion Clique
- Player B casts Counterspell targeting Vendilion Clique
- Player A casts Arcane Denial targeting their own Vendilion Clique
Player A gets to draw 3 cards for Vendilion Clique + Arcane Denial. Player B's Counter spell is wasted.
Similarly, Arcane Denial could be used to counter dead cards in the late game such as Thoughtseize to essentially draw 3 cards.
- Player A casts Thoughtseize against an empty hand of Player B
- Player A holds priority and casts Arcane Denial to counter their own thoughtseize/
Player A gets to draw 3 cards for a dead thoughseize + Arcane Denial.
Arcane Denial could also be used to counter spells that threatened a response on the stack.
- Player A casts Damnation
- Player B is playing an aristocrat deck, while Damnation is on the stack, Player B decides to sacrifice their board to gain scry value etc.
- Player A casts Arcane Denial targeting their own Damnation as it is no longer useful.
Player A gets to draw 3 cards for a Damnation + Arcane Denial. Player B loses their board.
Card Comparison:
Frequently good cards are cut from cubes because they are significantly weaker than a very strong card. Arcane Denial is a very good example of - It is a very strong card, sufficiently strong to break into the 360 or 540 card cubes, but often left out of cube lists because it is significantly worse than Mana Drain or Counterspell. I've seen cards such as Mana Leak or Counterspell (which are both considered to be among the top 50 best cube cards) receive low evaluations because they are significantly weaker than the very powerful Mana Drain or Force of Will.
There are 4 general areas where strong cards are frequently under evaluated:
- Counterspells (especially 2 mana counter spells)
- Draw spells/ cantrips
- Extra Turn spells
- Ritual/ Fast mana
It is important to have rate cards that could serve has a benchmark to how strong a card at each color/ curve should be, but these cards should not be compared with cards with power 9 + Vintage Cube Power 9.
Here are some examples I've seen:
- Growing Rites of Itlimoc/ Earthcraft compared with Gaea's Cradle
- Exploration compared with Fastbond
- Night's Whisper compared with Ancestral Recall
- Time Warp compared with Time Walk
- Pyretic Ritual compared with Dark Ritual or Lion's Eye Diamond
and finally
- Arcane Denial compared with Mana Drain/ Counterspell
Instead these cards should be evaluated as such:
- Growing Rites compared with Kodama's Reach or Finale of Devastation
- Earthcraft compared with Sakura-Tribe Elder
- Exploration with any 1 - 2 mana ramp.
The evaluation should be "Is this a good ramp card compared to other ramp cards in its CMC?". Not "How far is this from Gaea's Cradle?"
- Time Warp with a 5 Blue CMC spell - Mulldrifter or Meloku the Clouded Mirror.
Is Time Warp a good 5 Blue CMC Spell?
Is Pyretic Ritual/ Night's Whisper a good 2 CMC spell/ is it an essential spell for the storm package?
* As stated in this article, I am not advocating any of these cards as playables or non-playables. These cards are objectively weaker than their powerful counterpart.
Crystal Shard - This is another cube staples players often overlook. Crystal Shard has two purpose; The first to tax your opponent's more expensive threats, the second is to bounce your own threats to play them for ETB/ LTB effect or to save them from sweepers/ removal.
1. Tax your opponent's expensive threats:
- If your opponent is tapped out and cheated into play a Blightsteel Colossus, Crystal shard could be played for 3 and activated for 1 blue to bounce the Blightsteel.
- If Crystal Shard is in play, the opponent would need to leave two open mana to keep their expensive threats on the field. The Crystal shard player could on the opponent's turn tap to force to pay 1 and on their turn tap to force to pay 1 a second time.
2. Bounce your own threats:
- In response to a removal from your opponent, Crystal shard could be used to return your own creature to your hand - this is very important for saving creatures against cards like Treachery.
- Creatures could block your opponent's attacker and in response bounce it back to the owner's hand (Trample still goes through)
- Return creatures for additional LTB/ETB triggers - Eternal Witness, Thragtusk
The majority of the time, Crystal won't be used to bounce an opponent's expensive threat or save your own threat from removal - It is the threat of a Crystal Shard activation that forces awkward uses of mana/ game play. Crystal Shard is a very slow card - but is excellent in slow creature based mirrors.
Wishclaw Talisman - This is very efficient tutor. This should not be used with the intention of tutoring for a card, then giving it to your opponent to tutor for a card and finally returned to you. There are ways to break this symmetry.
1. Goblin Welder:
As mentioned in the Goblin Welder section - Put the Wishclaw Talisman trigger onto the stack. Holding Priority, put the swap the Wishclaw Talisman with an artifact in the graveyard trigger onto the stack. Then holding priority, put the Goblin Welder's trigger of exchanging the Wishclaw with an artifact in the graveyard onto the stack.
Then let the stack resolve. The Goblin Welder trigger will happen first and the Wishclaw will be moved to the graveyard. Then the Wishclaw Talisman trigger will resolve allowing the player to tutor for a card. Since the Wishclaw Talisman is no longer on the field, it will not be given to the opponent.
2. Goblin Engineer/ Greater Gargadon:
Goblin Engineer / Greater Gargadon
Similar to Goblin Welder, but put the sacrifice an artifact trigger onto the stack on top of the Wishclaw Talisman Trigger
3. FlickerWisp/ Dack Fayden/ Thieving Skydiver:
Flicker the Wishclaw to regain the Wishclaw Talsiman with Flickerwisp/ Steal it back with Dack Fayden / Thieving Skydiver. This could be done by using Wishclaw Talisman to Tutor for Flickerwisp or Dack Fayden.
4. Upheaval/ Pernicious Deed:
Wishclaw Talisman could be used to tutor for either Upheaval or Pernicious Deed. Then either of these cards could be used to wipe the board including the opponent's Wishclaw Talisman.
5. Combo Instant Win:
This is common in eternal formats - Wishclaw Talisman be played the previous turn and the combo turn, it is activated to tutor for the missing combo winning piece. This commonly played in Legacy TES Storm builds.
https://theepicstorm.com/
Wheel of Misfortune - This is another card somewhat convoluted card that has been showing up in cube discussions. I'll go over the basics and how to play with or against it.
The card's wording is designed for multi player commander, but here is the simplified version for 2 players. Assume there are Player A and Player B.
- If Player A's choice equals Player B's choice (Choice C), C is both the highest and lowest. Wheel of Misfortune deals C to each player that choose the highest number (both player). Wheel of Misfortune gives a wheel effect to both players that did not choose the lowest (Neither Player). Therefore, Wheel does C to both players and neither player gets a wheel effect.
- If Player A's choice is higher than Player B's choice, Wheel of Misfortune deals Player A's choice to Player A and then Player A discard their hand and draw 7. Wheel has no effect on Player B.
For example:
- Player A bids 0 life, Player B bids 0 life - both players would take 0 damage. No effect
- Player A bids 0 life, Player B bids 1 life - Only Player B takes 1 damage and only Player B would discard their hand and draw 7
- Player A bids 10 life, Player B bids 11 life - Player B takes 11 damage, Player A takes 0 damage. Only Player B would discard their hand and draw 7.
- Player A bids 10 life, Player B bids 10 life - both players would take 10 damage. No wheel effect.
Discarding a player's hand and drawing 7 is an incredibly powerful effect. Suppose Player A is a storm player or red aggro player, if they were able to draw 7 cards off Wheel of Misfortune, it could give them 3-4 additional burn spells or 4-5 rituals/ cantrips/ tutors to finish the opponent. See #40 on Draw 7s.
Therefore, the opponent (Player B) has an incentive to stop the Wheel from resolving. Player B should try to bid as high as possible to avoid giving Player A an additional 7 cards.
This is a difficult question on how much should each players should bid - especially if Player A is a burn deck, giving Player A a draw 7 cards or taking 7 damage from Wheel of Misfortune are both bad propositions.
One benchmark to evaluate how to bid are the cards Browbeat and Risk Factor. The gold standard for burn spells at 3 CMC is to deal 5 damage - When evaluating how to bid, use Browbeat as a benchmark. It is generally incorrect to bid 5+ life.
In the other case, it is generally correct to bid a slightly higher number if Player A is casting Wheel of Misfortune in a storm deck or reanimator deck is trying to go off - Player B's life total usually irrelevant. There are two scenarios:
- Player A is player storm/ reanimator and will lose the next turn to Player B's board regardless and is casting Wheel of Misfortune to try to go off. It is usually correct for Player B to bid Player A's life total (assuming Player B is ahead on life) to try to prevent Player A from going off. (Player B is the beat down against a combo deck and should almost always have the higher life total)
- Player A is casting a value Wheel of Misfortune - This is less clear cut, but generally Player B should be willing to bid a higher life total than against a burn opponent. Player B should still be careful and not bid an insanely high number such as 8-9 as the storm opponent could still cast a Tendrils of Agony with a storm of 4-5. The correct number to bid in this situation should be based off the opponent's win-con/ number of cards in hand.
For this reason, Wheel of Misfortune is strongest in decks that could take advantage of both the draw 7 + dealing 4-5 damage i.e. Red aggro. It is less good in combo decks because the life loss from Wheel of Misfortune is usually irrelevant in the matchup.
Final Thoughts:
There are a subset of cards that offer the opponent two bad above rate cards. These cards are called Punisher Cards. There are articles on how to evaluate/ player these cards.
https://www.reddit.com/r/magicTCG/comments/4ocrqu/why_do_people_keep_falling_for_punisher_cards/
Opposition Agent - This is an incredibly strong search punisher. Here is how it works.
Player A cards Demonic Tutor.
While Tutor is on the stack, Player B casts Opposition Agent
Player B control Player's A search and searches for a card. Suppose Player B finds Time Walk.
Player A does not get their search, but Player B could now cast Time Walk using any color of mana.
This is a very punishing 3 for 1.
Rulings:
- If your opponent is searching for a land - Misty Rainforest, the player with Opposition Agent cannot search for Time Walk, it needs to be land with the predetermined quality.
- If the opponent casts Opposition Agent in response to Demonic Tutor, Player B has the opponent to remove Opposition Agent before Demonic Tutor resolves. If that happens, Player B will not steal the search
- Assume Player B casts Path to Exile and it resolves, Player B cannot decide to flash in Opposition Agent after Player A decides to search. Player B needs to play Opposition Agent prior to casting Past to Exile in order for Opposition Agent to take effect.
- Opposition Agent only controls their search - Player B cannot force the opponent to perform any other game actions
- Opposition Agent applies to tutors that put it onto the top of the library, on to the battlefield, or into the player's hand - this includes Vampiric Tutor, Tinker, etc.
- If the opponent cards Intuition or Gifts Ungiven, the player with Opposition Agent gets to search the opponent's deck for 3 or 4 cards and keeps all of them.
Feast or Famine:
This type of effect is considered a "Feast or Famine", usually named after the card Sword of Feast or Famine. The idea is the card is either backbreaking powerful (usually against a particular strategy or effect or is completely useless.
For this example, Opposition Agent could be a very punishing 3 for 1 against Fetchlands, Tutors etc, but they are far and few in between in cube and often this is a 3 mana 3/2 Flash.
However, this type of effect does not apply for cards that could be abused as part of a combo - any example is Punishing Fire and Notion Thief. Punishing Fire is very strong against lifegain decks, life gain effects, but there are ways with cards like Grove of the burnwillows to repeatly abuse the trigger. Similarly, Notion Thief could be abused with symmetrical draw 7's such as Timetwister, which makes it more of a combo piece than a feast or famine type of effect.
* Note - Opposition Agent could be abused with Wishclaw Talisman, but it is more or less played as a hate piece rather than a combo creature.
Birthing Pod - This is a very difficult card to unpack. This wouldn't be a comprehensive cube forum if I didn't go over the most challenging build around.
I'll first go over the theory behind Birthing Pod and I'll present simple guide on drafting/ playing a Birthing Pod Deck.
Historically, Birthing Pod was one of the most powerful decks in modern. The core of the deck are 7-8 mana dorks + the namesake card + 33-34 creatures between CMC 1-5. There were two dominant Birthing Pod variant - Value Pod/ Combo Pod.
The combo pod deck seeks to use Birthing Pod + Chord of Calling to quickly assemble a two or three card creature combo such as the Melira Combo, Kiki- Twin, the Spike Feeder Combo to gain infinite Life/ Infinite Damage. (See #15 on Melira Combo/#13 on Splinter Twin/ #45 on Heliod Combo). The mainboard contains more creature tutors to help accelerate the combo.
https://mtgtop8.com/event?e=6698&d=238469&f=MO
The Value pod decks is more focused on cards with strong ETB value/ tool box effects with cards such as Restoration Angel, Eternal Witness or Siege Rhino to out value the opponent. The mainboard is filled with more interactive spells/ value creatures and cuts some of the less synergistic combo pieces. The Combo Pod variant frequently boards into the Value pod post board against removal heavy matchups as it is much more difficult to combo.
https://mtgtop8.com/event?e=8670&d=249546&f=MO
Both variants of Birthing Pod contains a selection of toolbox creatures that it could tutor up for particular matchups. Here are some examples:
- Kataki, War's Wage - against artifact decks
- Siege Rhino - against red aggro
- Entomber Exarch - against combo
- Orzhov Pontiff - against -1/-1
- Linvala, Keeper of Silence - against creature combo decks
- Realm Razer - against lands decks etc.
The Birthing Pod deck could afford to mainboard these creatures as less than relevant creatures could be sacrificed to Birthing Pod. Birthing Pod/ creature tutors offer redundant copies of the creature making them more relevant for each matchup.
The Birthing Pod deck in a Vintage Cube is relatively similar to constructed Value Pod/ Combo Pod decks - It has creatures with strong ETB/ LTB effects with a built in creature combo that Birthing Pod could assemble. In general, Birthing Pod is strong in green creature based (non-ramp) decks - If the drafter is playing a green based midrange creature deck, Birthing Pod is generally a strong pickup. Without delving extensively into cube lists, here are some general rule of thumb:
- Roughly 70-80% of Green creatures with CMC 3 or higher have a favorable interaction with Birthing Pod
- Roughly 40-50% of White/ Black creature with CMC 3 or higher have a favorable interaction with Birthing Pod
- Red and Blue lack good creatures for Pod
- Blue and Red have lower percentages, but still have some very strong creatures
- 1 CMC mana dorks are strong in Birthing Pod as early acceleration but also could be used as fodder
Here is a comprehensive list of all the commonly played 2 CMC - 6 CMC Green, Black and White Creatures. The take away from this is that Birthing Pod should be good in any green based creature based deck - the deck should already play mana dorks and have an even curve of creatures from 1-6. It just happens that the majority of these creatures interacts very favorablely with birthing pod.
Disclaimer:
This should be used to give an idea of the spread of ETB/ LTB creatures that are good in each section. This is not intended to provide a quantitative analysis of which color is best with Birthing Pod, but to provide an idea of what each color could expect.
2 CMC:
wall of blossoms
merfolk branchwalker
Strangleroot Geist
3 CMC:
Eternal Witness
Llanowar Visionary
Jadelight Ranger
Manglehorn
Nissa, Vastwood Seer
Ramunap Excavator - Could be used to play a land on the turn it is tutored with pod and a land the turn after before being sacrificed to pod.
Reclamation Sage
Tireless Tracker - Could get a clue the turn pod out. Could get additional clue turn after before being sacrificed to pod.
Viridian Shaman
Courser of Kruphix - Could be used to play an additional land the turn it is tutored with pod and a land the turn after before being sacrificed to pod.
Dryad of the Ilysian Grove - Extra land drop for the turn and turn after. Not the best, but still okay.
Yavimaya Elder
Kitchen Finks
4 CMC:
Master of the Wild Hunt - Wolf the following turn + wolf fight trigger.
Nightpack Ambusher - Usually you won't get the trigger, but its a consideration
Oracle of Mul Daya - Could be used to play an additional land. Then could be podded away
VengeVine - Could be sacrificed and recurred on a following Turn.
Questing Beast - Haste is exceptional at removing planeswalkers
5 CMC:
Biogenic Ooze
Deep Forest Hermit
Deranged Hermit
Thragtusk
Whisperwood Elemental
Verdurous Gearhulk
Titania, Protector of Argoth
Acidic Slime
6 CMC:
Primeval Titan
2 CMC:
Wall of Omens
Charming Prince
Stoneforge Mystic
Knight of the White Orchid
3 CMC:
Blade Splicer
Flickerwisp
Recruiter of the Guard
Skyclave Apparition
Fiend Hunter
4 CMC:
Basri's Lieutenant
Felidar Guardian
Luminous Broodmoth
Palace Jailer
Restoration Angel
5 CMC:
Angel of Invention
Karmic Guide
Reveillark
Cavalier of Dawn
6 CMC:
Sun Titan
Non-Creature:
Sevinne's Reclamation
2 CMC:
Viashino Pyromancer
Abbot of Keral Keep - This is usually not played in Pod Decks, but worth bringing up.
3 CMC:
Imperial Recruiter
Seasoned Pyromancer
Manic Vandal - This is not a you may, if Birthing Pod is the only artifact, it is required to pick Birthing Pod
4 CMC:
Flametongue Kavu
Avalanche Riders
Pia and Kiran Nalaar
Purphoros, God of the Forge
5 CMC:
Zealous Conscripts
Thunderblust
Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker - Very good card to tutor with Pod
Siege-Gang Commander
Glorybringer
6 CMC:
Inferno Titan
2 CMC:
Phantasmal Image
3 CMC:
Deceiver Exarch
Pestermite
Vendilion Clique
Man-o'-War
4 CMC:
Glen Elendra Archmage
Venser, Shaper Savant
Thassa, Deep-Dwelling
5 CMC:
Arcane Savant
Cavalier of Gales
Riftwing Cloudskate
Mulldrifter
2 CMC:
Blood Artist
Bloodghast
Putrid Goblin
Skyclave Shade
Scrapheap Scrounger
Zulaport Cutthroat
3 CMC:
Flesh Carver
Xathrid Necromancer
Liliana, Heretical Healer
Ophiomancer
4 CMC:
Ravenous Chupacabra
Sling-Gang Lieutenant
Nekrataal
5 CMC:
Puppeteer Clique
Custodi Lich
Shriekmaw
God-Eternal Bontu
6 CMC:
Grave Titan
Massacre Wurm
Mikaeus, the Unhallowed
Non-Creature:
Living Death
Agadeem's Awakening
Any reanimation Spell
UW:
Reflector Mage
UB:
Baleful Strix
BR:
Kroxa, Titan of Death's Hunger
Judith, the Scourge Diva
Mayhem Devil
Murderous Redcap
GW:
Safehold Elite
Kitchen Finks
Knight of Autumn
BW:
Corpse Knight
Cruel Celebrant
UG:
Uro, Titan of Nature's Wrath
Kiora's Follower
Prime Speaker Vannifar
Abzan:
Siege Rhino
Birthing Pod is also strong in Aristocrats decks (See #16 on Aristocrats) for tutoring up Blood Artists variants + sacrifice creatures for Blood Artists drain effects. Players will often pay Phyrexian Mana for Birthing Pod + the birthing pod activation and as a result, the life gain from Blood Artist is often very relevant.
Similarly, Birthing Pod is exceptional at tutoring up multiple parts of a creature based combo. Imperial Recruiter and Recruiter of the guard are both exceptional in these circumstances as they could be used as sacrifice fodder + search up additional creatures. Here are some pod chains:
Kiki Jiki + Deceiver Exarch/ Restoration Angel:
- Start with 1 drop and 2 drop
- Pod 2 drop into Deceiver Exarch. Deceiver Exarch could untap Birthing Pod.
- Pod 1 drop for Phantasmal Image. Phantasmal Copies Deceiver Exarch, untap Birthing Pod.
- Pod Copy Phantasmal Image for Restoration Angel. Angel blinks Deceiver Exarch, untap Birthing Pod.
- Pod Restoration Angel for Kiki-Jiki. Kiki-Jiki + Deceiver Exarch goes infinite.
Kiki Jiki + Imperial Recruiter:
- Start with 2 drop
- Pod 2 drop for Imperial Recruiter - Tutor Kiki-Jiki
- Pod Imperial Recruiter away for Restoration Angel
- Play Kiki-Jiki from hand. Kiki-Jiki + Restoration Angel goes infinite
Creatures copied with effects such as Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker or Saheeli Rai share the copied creature's original mana cost making them exceptional sacrifice fodder.
Reveillark + Mikaeus, the Unhallowed:
- Start with a sacrifice outlet i.e. Carrion Feeder and persist in the graveyard i.e. Putrid Goblin
- Pod 4 drop for Reveillark.
- Pod Reveillark for Mikaeus, the Unhallowed.
- Reveillark triggers, returning Carrion Feeder and Putrid Goblin. This is an infinite Loop.
Birthing Pod could be used to assemble any of the aforementioned combos:
- Heliod - Spike Feeder
- Spike Feeder - Archangel of Thrune
- Melira Combo
etc.
Birthing Pod is exceptional with creature recursion effects, in particular:
- Reveillark
- Luminous Broodmoth
- Agadeem's Awakening
- Living Death
Birthing Pod decks should also play creature tutors such as Worldly Tutor, Chord of Calling and Green Sun's Zenith. These tutors could be used to tutor the half of the combo that is more difficult for Birthing Pod to have access to.
Finally, Birthing Pod decks should always seek to play the value game plan over the turbo combo plan. Assembling these combos often upwards of 2-3 turns between several activation to tutor up the correct creatures. While the birthing pod player is assembling the combo, they looked to tutor up situational creatures such as Flametongue Kavu, Reclamation Sage, Glen Elendra Archmage, Avalanche riders, Thragtusk, Mulldrifter to provide the appropriate disruption/ answer to your opponent's strategy.
Traditionally, Birthing Pod decks performed well against fair value decks in modern, such as UR Treasure Cruise Delver, Abzan etc. It is the slowest of the combo decks and under performs against more streamlined, linear archetypes that could play out their game plan prior the Birthing Pod being able to get their tutors online.
When drafting a birthing pod deck, it is important to play cheap disruption in the form of Thoughtseize to interact with more unfair strategies.
There are redundancies with Birthing Pod, in particular Prime Speaker Vannifar, Eldritch Evolution, and Survival of the Fittest.
There are always 3-4 mana doublers in cube and its frequently a difficult card for newer players to understand how to effectively use them. They are grouped into two categories:
Symmetrical:
Heartbeat of Spring
Mana Flare
Asymmetrical:
Mirari's Wake
High Tide - Technically the effect is symmetrical, but because High Tide only lasts the turn it is cast, the opponent cannot use the mana effectively.
1. Asymmetrical Mana Doublers should be thought of as a massive ramp spell, going from 5 mana to 10 mana on the next turn.
The most played mana doubler in cube is Mirari's Wake; Mirari's Wake could be used on curve to essentially jump from 5 mana to potentially 12 mana (with land drop) on the following turn to cast Eldrazi Titans/ Tooth and Nail or an incredibly expensive spells.
Here is an example of the 2003 World Championship Mirari's Wake deck:
https://magic.wizards.com/en/worldchampdecks2003
2. Symmetrical mana doublers such as Heartbeat of Spring/ Mana Flare are entirely different and could go incredibly wrong if used incorrectly - It is incredibly risky to tap out for Mana Flare on turn 3-4 and give your opponent 8-10 mana on the following turn.
With a mana doubler in play, the player could use untap effects such as Turnabout, Frantic Search, Palinchron, Treachery or Time Spiral to net additional mana.
In conjunction with Palinchron, you could go generate an infinite mana, storm could, enter/ leave battlefield trigger by playing Palincrhon, netting 7 mana, spending 4 mana, return Palinchron etc.
It could also be played in ramp decks/ decks with high density of X mana spells that could use this mana more effectively than their opponent - but this is often a very risky situation as the opponent will have the opportunity to use the mana first.
Storm Decks:
There are two dominant storm decks in cube - The mana doubler, untap storm or ritual storm.
High Tide, Heartbeat of Spring and Mana Flare are exceptional doubling engines with cards like Palinchron, Treachery, Time Spiral, Turnabout, or Frantic Search. Mana Doublers could generate infinite man + storm count with Palinchron (See #26 on Palinchron)
For newer storm drafts, a good rule of thumb to follow is try to assemble 2 mana doublers + 2-3 mana untappers for a successful mana untap storm deck. However, this is an incredibly given that there are usually only 3-4 good mana doublers and 5-6 untap effects. Therefore, it is important to draft tutors/ draw spells to find them.
In general, the best untap is Palinchron because the card allows you to go infinite with any mana doubler and the best mana doubler is high tide because it is incredibly cheap and could be tutored easily with cards like Merchant Scroll or Mystical Tutor.
FastBond and Exploration could also play the role of a mana doubler in storm decks - its not unusual for a FastBond to get up to 7-8 lands in UG decks for on turn 3 for Turnabout to net 3-4 mana.
Mana Doubler storms require a minimum of 5-6 land drops to effectively combo - This is a slower variant compared to the Ritual storm and plays similar to a ramp/ control deck than a ritual storm deck. The mana doubler deck has a lower density of combo pieces and a higher density of ramp and control elements.
- Kodama's Reach and Sakura-Tribe Elder are exceptional in this archetype to ramp to the prerequisite mana.
- Mystic Confluence, Cryptic Command and especially Mana Drain are exception at providing control + card draw/ mana for the combo turn.
- Cheap tutors, cantrips, especially free ones such as Gush and Gitaxian Probe are exceptional at helping to dig into the combo and also to ensure the deck has enough spells to play prior to playing their win-con
Play Tip:
Asymmetrical mana doublers are very effective with counter magic. Suppose a player has 4 lands and one of the lands taps for blue. They could tap 3 to cast Heartbeat of Spring or Mana Flare and leave the last mana open to cast Remand, Counterspell, Mana Drain etc. on an expensive spell the opponent could potentially play on their following turn.
I've not a huge fan of playing unset cards from cubes, but here are some commonly played cards that occasionally make it into cube lists:
Blast from the Past - At its surface, this looks like an overcosted red burn spell (and it generally is). Its flashback, buyback, kicker costs are too expensive to be relevant. However, there is one factor players over look - Players could cycle Blast from the Past for 1C + 1R, and pay 1R of its madness cost to draw 1 + deal 2 damage. This is pretty similar to a commonly played modern card - Electrolyze.
Knight of the Kitchen Sink (There are many variants, but the most commonly played variant reads "Protection from Black Borders" - https://www.mtgsalvation.com/forums/the-game/the-cube-forum/cube-card-and-archetype/786160-uns-cube-knight-of-the-kitchen-sink)
If this is the only silver border card in the cube, then this a pretty good imitation of True-name Nemesis. (See #29 True-Name Nemesis). Blast from the Past is a silver border card, it could be used to remove Knight of the Kitchen Sink. However, it should be clarified prior to the match if borderless or extended alters can target Knight of the Kitchen Sink.
Clocknapper - This is another completely broken unset card. Here are the two most relevant:
- Stealing the combat phase gives your creatures an extra combat step (Your opponent can still block)
- Stealing the Beginning phase: You untap permanents you control and your opponent doesn’t. Abilities that trigger at the beginning of your upkeep happen and ones that trigger at the beginning of their upkeep don’t. You draw a card as it’s now your draw step, so your opponent doesn’t.
If this card was flickered with a card like Soulherder or Ephemerate or repeatedly copied by a card like Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker, it essentially puts a soft lock on the game where the opponent is unable to untap their permanents + draw during their turn.
Mind's Desire - This card was banned in 6 days after its printing. Its was very easy for players to cast 3-4 spells (mana acceleration) followed by a Mind's Desire for Storm = 4-5. The Mind's Desire's copies allows the players to cast spells for the top of their library, which could be used to chain into additional Mind's Desire on constructed formats, essentially allowing the player to cast their entire library followed by a Tendrils of Agony.
In cube, this is one of the strongest storm engines. It is very easy to accelerate into a storm of 4-5, cast Mind Desire and chain into 3-4 spells into their library - ritual, draw spells, tutors or Eldrazi Titans.
Tendrils of Agony - This is the preferred storm win con. Its normally played as a one-off in Legacy and vintage storm after the player goes off and searches for Tendrils using one of their tutors. In cube, this should only be played in storm decks and not as a 4 mana life drain for any reason.
Empty the Warrens - This is almost never the primary win con for storm, its always used as a backup win con in post board storm decks when the disruption is too heavy to perform the full storm loop. Its not a strong win-con for storm in cube, but could be played if Tendrils/ Mind's Desire is not available. It could be played in UR spells matters deck as a payoff.
However, Empty the Warrens could be easily countered by a sweeper like Wrath of God.
Brain Freeze - This is another very good storm win con. Its cheap, and especially in constructed with start decks of 40 cards, a Brain Freeze for 6-7 is often sufficient for winning the game. However, it is less good when a lot of cards like Eldrazi Titans, Blightsteel Colossus or Progenitus are opened as they will shuffle back into their library. It is also exceptional at targeting the storm player themselves mid combo to fuel cards for Underworld Breach, Past in Flames or Yawgmoth's Will
When drafting match up dependent win-cons such as Brain Freeze/ Empty the Warrens, it is important to see which cards wheel around the table - Brain Freeze might not be an ideal win-con if all 3 Eldrazi Titans, Progenitus and Blightsteel Colossus are all opened. However, this non factor in MTGO Vintage Cube as they do not pair you against your draft pool and seeing which cards wheel/ hate drafting has no impact. (See #23 Show and Tell for more information)
Ruling:
- Storm puts X copies onto the stack. They cannot be countered by a single counter spell - with the exception of Flusterstorm or Mindbreak Trap. A single counter spell can only count a single copy of the storm on the stack, not all the copies
Fireball - This isn't a commonly played cube. There are occasionally 1 or 2 X costed Burn spell that could x damage to any target. This is traditionally used as a win con for fast mana decks/ infinite mana combo decks to deal lethal to the opponent.
However, the amount of mana the player needs to spend in each use case isn't very clear. I will go in depth with some specific examples. This is full Oracle Text:
This spell costs. more to cast for each target beyond the first. Fireball deals X damage divided evenly, rounded down, among any number of targets.
This part is sometimes difficult for players to understand, but here are some simple examples:
- Your opponent controls a creature with stats of 2/2. Fireball requires X=2 to remove the 2/2. No additional cost is paid. Fireball costs {R} + 2
- If your opponent has 2 creatures that have stats of 2/2, X=4 is required to deal 4 damage to remove both creatures, +1 for 1 additional target. Fireball costs {R} + 5
- If your opponent has 3 creatures that have stats of 2/2, X=6 to remove all three creatures, +2 for 2 additional target. Fireball costs {R} + 8.
Fireball divides the damage evenly - For scenario 1, if {R} + 6 was paid instead, then each creature would be dealt 2 damage, as 5/2 = 2 rounded down. Similarly for Scenario 2, if {R} + 9 was paid instead, then each creature would be deal 2 damage, (9-2)/3 = 2 rounded down.
Fireball must deal the same damage to all targets. It cannot split the damage unevenly.
Mana Sink:
In all cases, Fireball is a very inefficient burn spell - However, this is often one of these burn X burn spells that make it into every cube list:
Demonfire
Fireball
Devil's Play
Crater's Claws
Electrodominance
Theses spells are referred to as mana sinks. Mana Sinks are cards are generally cards that are strong by themselves, but could generate additional value at a good rate if a player has extra mana or even infinite mana. Here are four common examples EDH/ Legacy/ Modern:
Urza, Lord High Artificer
Green Sun's Zenith/ Chord of Calling
Walking Ballista
Green Sun's Zenith is almost the gold standard for Mana sinks - It is exception on turn 1, X=0 to grab Dryad Arbor, it is also very good on turns 3-4 when X=3-4 to fetch any value creature such as Knight of the Reliquary or Siege Rhino and also very strong in the late game/ or as an outlet for an infinite mana loop to fetch Progenitus or Craterhoof Behemoth.
Walking Ballista also serves a very similar purpose - It's exceptional in Modern (UrzaTron), Legacy (Eldrazi) and Vintage (MUD) for a similar purpose - its a great value creature to play on turn 1-2 for X = 1 to remove early Birds of Paradise or Delver of Secrets but also exceptional on turns 3-4 for X=4.
It could also be played in Melira Combo decks as a good X= 1-2 rate creatures/ removal, but also as part of a mana sink for an infinite mana combo between Vizier of Remedies and Devoted Druid.
Similarly, Urza, Lord High Artificer is exceptional top end for an artifact as both a ramp and a threat but could also be a sink for the amount of excess mana it could generate in the midgame.
The X damage damage burn spells are also great mana sinks for a similar purpose - they're great on turns 2-3 when X = 2-3 to remove early mana dorks/ creatures. They're also great on turns 4-5 when X = 4, 5 to remove Phaneswalkers/ Midrange creatures but also great during the later stages of the game for X = 7-8 or as an infinite mana sink to burn the opponent for lethal.
Cards like Fireball are exceptional in Red-Green ramp decks - They could be used early to remove key creatures/ planeswalkers from the opponent, but also serve as a ramp target without sacrificing the deck's density of removal/ payoffs.
I try to cite and confirm every ruling discussed in these articles. If there is an incorrect ruling or something I overlooked, please sent me a correction. I also try my best to make this guide a comprehensive reference for all new Vintage Cube players. If there is something I have not covered, please let me know.
1
I think I may give Cabal Therapy a try as well - being able to hit your opponent right after a SFM/tutor seems really strong, and while its not as relevant as an early-game discard (unless you've scouted with a T1 Duress, T2 Therapy), it can be a nice answer for non-blue decks to deal with combo. maybe its just me, but sometimes I feel that Blue is a bit too powerful in powered/vintage cube, so I'm just trying to give other colors some better tools to answer them!
3
2
2
Enchantress Engine: Argothian Enchantress, Enchantress's Presence
Enchantments Payoff: Serra's Sanctum, Academy Rector, Opalescence, Replenish, Sigil of the Empty Throne, Luminarch Ascension
Protection: Sterling Grove, Elephant Grass, City of Solitude, and Privileged Position, Dovescape
In constructed, the redundancy of Enchantress (draw) effects was the key to the deck: once you were able to stick 1-2, casting enchantments became cantrips (often low-cost Utopia Sprawl/Wild Growth variants), before hitting a win condition such as Sigil of the Empty Throne, or even a big X spell (powered by Serra's Sanctum).
In Cube, I think my biggest issue with the Enchantment archetype is the fact that the cards are tough to find homes for in other decks. With the power level and colourless nature of artifacts, they will often get picked up by other decks, but the colour requirements of Enchantment-archetype cards make it tougher for them to see play outside of the dedicated Enchantment deck. As much as I love Enchantress, I think it would be tough to find the cuts in my cube, but I definitely hope THB gives us some more reasons to try!
1
1
1
good thing i play cube, and not standard
PS. the last couple times i forced an Oath deck (my favourite deck to play in cube), I was stomped due to issues of consistency and answerable threats. it got me thinking that i'd really like to run one or two of the 10+ monsters, and when the new Emrakul was printed I knew i had to have her in my cube. can't wait to take her for a spin in oath!
1
i just sent my end off today. i think it should arrive in time!!
2
PS. whoever Spike Rogue gets will be an incredibly lucky dude. Spike's the most generous santa i've ever had and he's inspired me to give greatly this year
1
Hope you enjoyed it!