It's quite possible I am entirely wrong about how good cradle is, I've never cubed with it because I don't love non fixing lands that don't provide utility. It's definitely very strong and I don't have experience with it. Was more trying to make my point about the weaker green mana dorks, which is off topic anyway.
In an unpowered legacy cube, green ramp might be the best archetype (depending on how hard you support parasitic reanimator cards).. so it missing this peice is not a nail in the coffin for it by any stretch.
I realize this is not the place for this at all but at this stage is the green hyper ramp package as parasitic as any other archetype? Taking the green section of the MTGO legacy cube for example it has an absolute ton of cards that won't see play in any archetype except for Green ramp with a small splash. Obviously the best dorks go into any deck but the lower end ones that only tap for G? I don't think that's too far off reanimator on the parasitic scale. Obviously not on the level of dedicated storm cards but not completely flexible either.
On that note I'd run Cradle if you wanted to support hyper ramp and run Treetop if you didn't.
Going to revive this because I have been noticing a similar sort of thing with my cube. I don't have a problem with all in archetypes but I don't want just supported archetypes and aggro to be all that's viable.
So with all the recent talk about drafting on rails I want to make 3+ color good stuff a little more viable in my cube. I don't want to go too far because I really enjoy my key archetypes (Storm, reanimator, stax, and blink) but they don't overlap a ton. Supporting aggro is also of course a must to keep balance in the cube and punish greed. But now I've gone so far down that path that greed is basically dead. We don't really feel drafting on rails too keenly but we definitely feel like you can't just draft a tap out pile and compete.
So I'm looking at changes to try and bring back flexible control piles. One step is going to be taking out the pathways I have. While they are perfect for streamlined two color builds and I love them for that they are really bad for splashes. Second the Wildfire package is getting cut. It is entirely uncompetitive with anything but the piles and is by far the worst stax option in the cube. It's slow, weak, and just not played. I also think I want to try to make my green section less interested in playing 13+ forests but I'm not really sure how to go about that because the heavy green Rofellos, Nissa, GGG fatty package is so successful. Lastly I think I need to cut archtype support back a little bit. Storm is fun and we want it but in 360 with Underworld breach existing does it need Birgi or dark ritual? Does stax need Tangle Wire? Does flicker need reveillark? I don't know the answers but I'm going to try and find out.
I don't want to go all the way to the stone ages here but I do want the good stuff decks to be a bit more viable because part of what makes limited great is those decks without a super coherent plan just competing with each other on the board.
I think a big way to make draft less on rails is to have 3+ color good stuff be viable but not over powered. But striking that balance is really hard. My early idea is to make green less intrigued in being near mono green and to slightly lessen my archtype support like breathe discussed in his last post. Having the weakest redundant enablers just wheel automatically and provides that on rails feeling. If the weaker enablers can go into a goodstuff pile then they're less likely to wheel and more likely for a fun draft experience not just a fun game experience.
But the problem I've run into is I don't know how to support good stuff piles in a high powered archetype environment. It's hard to keep with up a good stax deck or a good storm deck if you're just trying to play good stuff on curve.
So with all the recent talk about drafting on rails I want to make 3+ color good stuff a little more viable in my cube. I don't want to go too far because I really enjoy my key archetypes (Storm, reanimator, stax, and blink) but they don't overlap a ton. Supporting aggro is also of course a must to keep balance in the cube and punish greed. But now I've gone so far down that path that greed is basically dead. We don't really feel drafting on rails too keenly but we definitely feel like you can't just draft a tap out pile and compete.
So I'm looking at changes to try and bring back flexible control piles. One step is going to be taking out the pathways I have. While they are perfect for streamlined two color builds and I love them for that they are really bad for splashes. Second the Wildfire package is getting cut. It is entirely uncompetitive with anything but the piles and is by far the worst stax option in the cube. It's slow, weak, and just not played. I also think I want to try to make my green section less interested in playing 13+ forests but I'm not really sure how to go about that because the heavy green Rofellos, Nissa, GGG fatty package is so successful. Lastly I think I need to cut archtype support back a little bit. Storm is fun and we want it but in 360 with Underworld breach existing does it need Birgi or dark ritual? Does stax need Tangle Wire? Does flicker need reveillark? I don't know the answers but I'm going to try and find out.
I don't want to go all the way to the stone ages here but I do want the good stuff decks to be a bit more viable because part of what makes limited great is those decks without a super coherent plan just competing with each other on the board.
Not optimistic about Jadar, the white adversary, and Augur but wanted to give them a test. Pit fighter and Adeline feel pretty likely to stick at this point. Bloodthirsty Adversary has overperformed in a very limited amount of testing. I really wanted Jadar to stick because we love ophiomancer but I'm not currently optimistic.
Cathartic Pyre, Fateful Absence, and Suspicious Stowaway are on the watch list for me. I had forgotten I'd cut Looter il kor in the stowaway spoiler thread.
Keeper of Balance doesn't specify to that turn which makes it horribly broken in my opinion. It means that your opponent is having every creature they play tapped for 2 turns making defense impossible and lands become use it immediately or lose it for two whole turns rather than just the following turn. If you're on the play your opponent has only 2 mana at best on turns 2 and 3, and 3 at best on turn 4. Of that one of it must be used as the land if played. In addition it's going to be a miserable card to play with. Slows the game down drastically and absolutely punishes decks interested in anything beyond putting cheap permanents onto the board. If it's just meant to be the first of that type and be a fetch land punisher then I can get behind the card but not as written now.
As for Soul Eruption I agree with user_938036 it is either useless in smaller formats or among the best rituals in larger ones. I think that's actually fine but I just want to make sure you realize how powerful it is.
Council's Judgement is great, but it's a sorcery, and costs 3. I feel like this plays a somewhat different role. In comparison to Winds of Abandon or Declaration in Stone this is great. Destroy vs exile is not that big a deal imo.
I already don't cube with those though. I guess for me the comparison is probably Unexpectedly Absent and missing more card types is a point against this even if it is more reliable.
It's good (I have been loving Baleful Mastery and this is very similar) but I don't run much pure removal in white and it's top tier spells are excellent. It probably pushes the last traditional O-Ring out of my list because it can hit walkers but it's in a precarious position.
Edit: I take it back because I had already planned to cut O-Ring when I pick up a Skyclave Apparition. Card is very good but unless it beats out Unexpectedly Absent it's not going to make it for me because I can't imagine cutting anything else for a removal spell at this point.
P.S. Sorry for going off topic and talking about my own list. Hard to evaluate cards without doing that because I have no experience designing above 360 and I don't like making proclamations about things being good for bigger sizes when I don't really know.
As someone that loves aristocrats, I'm really not fan. Aristocrats deck don't actually need 3-4 "Aristocrats". There are a lot of other cards that support go wide strategies that can function as well as an aristocrat.
I can only see this played in the all-in aristocrats variant and even there I don't think its very good.
I don't fully support aristocrats so I'm not too familiar with it as a cube archetype but I would have assumed being an enchantment rather than a creature was a significant upside over Zulaport Cutthroat or Blood Artist and the wrath mode was gravy. Which payoffs do you prefer?
I'm not sold on this one but I think the art might be biasing me. Not a fan.
Instant speed is great but I'm agreeing with Sliver Lord that destroy is a real downside. It beats O-ring variants but I prefer Council's Judgment to it.
Seems great. Not sure how to make space for it because I think I want two Looters like that so definitely not a swap for il kor.
The fact that you can flip it so easily in a tempo deck that want to leave mana up is quite nice. Back side is a pretty must answer threat. Pretty sweet for 2 mana.
It's been good for us but because it's an actual 1/1 it needs either support or a good match up to be relevant more than most creatures.
Edit: the fact that my cube is powered, small, and equipment heavy helps it a lot. Easier to end up in a white weenie deck with thalia, luminarch aspirant, or stoneforge in 360 than at a larger size.
The tokens not blocking is pretty massive. Part of what makes Young Pyro and Sedgemore so good is that each spell is increasing your defense while giving you value. This is much more a purely offensive card. Talrand is probably worse because 4 is a ton of mana. When you have two of these cards this one becomes good but I think it's much worse than MMentor, YP, or the witch without another token maker.
I realize this is not the place for this at all but at this stage is the green hyper ramp package as parasitic as any other archetype? Taking the green section of the MTGO legacy cube for example it has an absolute ton of cards that won't see play in any archetype except for Green ramp with a small splash. Obviously the best dorks go into any deck but the lower end ones that only tap for G? I don't think that's too far off reanimator on the parasitic scale. Obviously not on the level of dedicated storm cards but not completely flexible either.
On that note I'd run Cradle if you wanted to support hyper ramp and run Treetop if you didn't.
So I'm looking at changes to try and bring back flexible control piles. One step is going to be taking out the pathways I have. While they are perfect for streamlined two color builds and I love them for that they are really bad for splashes. Second the Wildfire package is getting cut. It is entirely uncompetitive with anything but the piles and is by far the worst stax option in the cube. It's slow, weak, and just not played. I also think I want to try to make my green section less interested in playing 13+ forests but I'm not really sure how to go about that because the heavy green Rofellos, Nissa, GGG fatty package is so successful. Lastly I think I need to cut archtype support back a little bit. Storm is fun and we want it but in 360 with Underworld breach existing does it need Birgi or dark ritual? Does stax need Tangle Wire? Does flicker need reveillark? I don't know the answers but I'm going to try and find out.
I don't want to go all the way to the stone ages here but I do want the good stuff decks to be a bit more viable because part of what makes limited great is those decks without a super coherent plan just competing with each other on the board.
But the problem I've run into is I don't know how to support good stuff piles in a high powered archetype environment. It's hard to keep with up a good stax deck or a good storm deck if you're just trying to play good stuff on curve.
So I'm looking at changes to try and bring back flexible control piles. One step is going to be taking out the pathways I have. While they are perfect for streamlined two color builds and I love them for that they are really bad for splashes. Second the Wildfire package is getting cut. It is entirely uncompetitive with anything but the piles and is by far the worst stax option in the cube. It's slow, weak, and just not played. I also think I want to try to make my green section less interested in playing 13+ forests but I'm not really sure how to go about that because the heavy green Rofellos, Nissa, GGG fatty package is so successful. Lastly I think I need to cut archtype support back a little bit. Storm is fun and we want it but in 360 with Underworld breach existing does it need Birgi or dark ritual? Does stax need Tangle Wire? Does flicker need reveillark? I don't know the answers but I'm going to try and find out.
I don't want to go all the way to the stone ages here but I do want the good stuff decks to be a bit more viable because part of what makes limited great is those decks without a super coherent plan just competing with each other on the board.
Not optimistic about Jadar, the white adversary, and Augur but wanted to give them a test. Pit fighter and Adeline feel pretty likely to stick at this point. Bloodthirsty Adversary has overperformed in a very limited amount of testing. I really wanted Jadar to stick because we love ophiomancer but I'm not currently optimistic.
Cathartic Pyre, Fateful Absence, and Suspicious Stowaway are on the watch list for me. I had forgotten I'd cut Looter il kor in the stowaway spoiler thread.
As for Soul Eruption I agree with user_938036 it is either useless in smaller formats or among the best rituals in larger ones. I think that's actually fine but I just want to make sure you realize how powerful it is.
I already don't cube with those though. I guess for me the comparison is probably Unexpectedly Absent and missing more card types is a point against this even if it is more reliable.
It's good (I have been loving Baleful Mastery and this is very similar) but I don't run much pure removal in white and it's top tier spells are excellent.
It probably pushes the last traditional O-Ring out of my list because it can hit walkers but it's in a precarious position.Edit: I take it back because I had already planned to cut O-Ring when I pick up a Skyclave Apparition. Card is very good but unless it beats out Unexpectedly Absent it's not going to make it for me because I can't imagine cutting anything else for a removal spell at this point.
P.S. Sorry for going off topic and talking about my own list. Hard to evaluate cards without doing that because I have no experience designing above 360 and I don't like making proclamations about things being good for bigger sizes when I don't really know.
I don't fully support aristocrats so I'm not too familiar with it as a cube archetype but I would have assumed being an enchantment rather than a creature was a significant upside over Zulaport Cutthroat or Blood Artist and the wrath mode was gravy. Which payoffs do you prefer?
Instant speed is great but I'm agreeing with Sliver Lord that destroy is a real downside. It beats O-ring variants but I prefer Council's Judgment to it.
The fact that you can flip it so easily in a tempo deck that want to leave mana up is quite nice. Back side is a pretty must answer threat. Pretty sweet for 2 mana.
Edit: the fact that my cube is powered, small, and equipment heavy helps it a lot. Easier to end up in a white weenie deck with thalia, luminarch aspirant, or stoneforge in 360 than at a larger size.