MTG Salvation

The Optimal Multiplayer Cube - 2013

Contents

1. Introduction
2. White
3. Blue
4. Black
5. Red
6. Green
7. Gold
8. Colourless
9. Nonbasic Land
10. Optimal Multiplayer Cube 2013
11. Budget Version
12. Legacy-Legal Version
13. Conclusion

Black

The black vote was completed on October 1st 2013.

The Top 40
The black section in a 360-card cube is 50 cards in size. As we are listing the top 80% we are after the top 40 cards in our power rankings for black. In order, these were:

1. Demonic Tutor (15.6)
2. Damnation (12.0)
3. Necropotence (11.3)
4. Exsanguinate (10.8)
5. Kokusho, the Evening Star (9.9)
6. Yawgmoth's Will (9.0)
7. Griselbrand (8.8)
8. Yawgmoth's Bargain (6.3)
9. Recurring Nightmare (6.3)
10. Sheoldred, Whispering One (6.2)
11. Grave Pact (6.0)
12. Phyrexian Arena (5.5)
13. Vampiric Tutor (5.3)
14. Phyrexian Obliterator (3.9)
15. Syphon Mind (3.9)
16. Sepulchral Primordial (3.8)
17. Pestilence (3.6)
18. Vampire Nighthawk (3.5)
19. Massacre Wurm (3.4)
20. Contract from Below (3.3)
21. Pox (3.2)
22. Mutilate (3.0)
23. No Mercy (2.9)
24. Demonic Consultation (2.8)
25. Contamination (2.8)
26. Innocent Blood (2.6)
27. Phyrexian Reclamation (2.2)
28. Animate Dead (2.2)
29. Decree of Pain (2.0)
30. Crypt Ghast (1.8)
31. Grave Titan (1.8)
32. Barter in Blood (1.8)
33. Bridge from Below (1.8)
34. Dread (1.8)
35. Black Sun's Zenith (1.7)
36. Dread Return (1.7)
37. Blood Artist (1.6)
38. Killing Wave (1.5)
39. Oversold Cemetery (1.5)
40. Stinkweed Imp (1.5)

Just outside of this list are The Abyss (1.4) and Wight of Precinct Six, Massacre, Underworld Dreams, Dark Ritual, Nether Void and Oath of Lim-Dul (all on 1.3).

The Curve

 There are a few obvious problems with the initial curve:

• The creatures and spells are way out of balance (12 creatures, 28 spells). We need to swap eight spells for eight creatures.
• There are far too many cards with at least triple-black casting costs. Phyrexian Obliterator is downright unplayable in cube at BBBB.
• We are again top-heavy with CC6+ finishers, and have very few creatures at lower casting costs.
• The spells are loaded up at CC4-5.
• There is, believe it or not, zero targeted removal... that's very un-black!
• Again, we probably have one or two too many sweepers.

Fixing the Holes

Well, the first big problem here is the creature/spell balance. Sort that one out, and we're most of the way there..

Fixing the Creature/Spell Balance
We need to remove eight spells and swap in eight creature for this one. The bottom eight spells are Oversold Cemtery, Killing Wave, Dread Return, Black Sun's Zenith, Bridge from Below, Barter in Blood, Decree of Pain and Animate Dead.
The next eight creatures in line are Wight of Precinct Six, Pontiff of Blight, Reassembling Skeleton, Demonic Hordes, Rune-Scarred Demon, Mikaeus, the Unhallowed, Pestilence Demon and Magus of the Abyss.
We've already complained about the triple-black CC cards. I think Bad Mike is probably good enough to stay, as he goes pretty close to turning a game on its head when he resolves, but Demonic Hordes and Pestilence Demon are unfortunately a bridge too far. The next two down in the list are Fleshbag Marauder and Herald of Leshrac... pretty good!
-1 Oversold Cemetery
-1 Killing Wave
-1 Dread Return
-1 Black Sun's Zenith
-1 Bridge from Below
-1 Barter in Blood
-1 Decree of Pain
-1 Animate Dead
+1 Wight of Precinct Six
+1 Pontiff of Blight
+1 Reassembling Skeleton
+1 Rune-Scarred Demon
+1 Mikaeus, the Unhallowed
+1 Magus of the Abyss
+1 Fleshbag Marauder
+1 Herald of Leshrac

Fixing the BBB+ Cards
This leaves us with Phyrexian Obliterator, Griselbrand, Massacre Wurm, Dread, Pox, Grave Pact, Necropotence and Bad Mike as cards that cost at least three black to cast. The Obliterator and Griselbrand pretty much have to go, unfortunately - the only way you're casting them in Cube is by drafting every black card you find, or by cheating them onto the board.
Necropotence has an almost-functionally-identical card present in Yawgmoth's Bargain (which is probably fairer anyway), so it can go overboard too.
Grave Pact and Pox are fun cards, but we've got a lot of group sacrifice effects in here already. We can bring Barter in Blood back in to make sure the archetype stays, at least.
Massacre Wurm and Dread sit in a top-heavy section, and probably need to go too. That leaves us with Bad Mike alone, which we're pretty comfortable with.
Now, to try and replace the stuff we're losing with something CC5 or less, right?
We've already indicated that we want to bring Barter in Blood back in. We're losing two other spells, and the last two spells we dropped were Animate Dead and Decree of Pain. Animate is wonderful, but we're trying to cut down on the sweepers, so Decree is probably not a good idea. The next thing down the list that doesn't cost triple-black was Dread Return. Let's go with reanimation!
We're also losing five creatures. The last creatures in the list that are 5CC or less (and not triple-black to cast) are Mortivore, Urborg Syphon-Mage and Bloodgift Demon. They're good. But we still need two, and nothing else was voted for that fits the bill. Oo er... back to the 2012 vote!
The first two creatures we saw in the 2012 vote and not the 2013 one that fit this bill are Bloodghast and Shriekmaw. Perfect.
-1 Phyrexian Obliterator
-1 Griselbrand
-1 Massacre Wurm
-1 Dread
-1 Pox
-1 Grave Pact
-1 Necropotence
+1 Animate Dead
+1 Dread Return
+1 Mortivore
+1 Urborg Syphon-Mage
+1 Bloodgift Demon
+1 Bloodghast
+1 Shriekmaw

Dropping Some Finishers
Things are now moderately sensible, but we've still got eight black finisher creatures at 6CC+... probably a few too many. Let's try and drop three for some creatures with lower casting costs.
Herald of Leshrac and Rune-Scarred Demon snuck in above, and are obvious drops. We committed to keeping Bad Mike, so we'll leave him in. Next cab off the rank is Pontiff of Blight.
Now to add... oh heck... back into the 2012 vote! Did no-one vote for creatures this year?
The next three off the previous year's list are Mindslicer, Will-o'-the-Wisp and Abyssal Gatekeeper. Fair enough.
-1 Herald of Leshrac
-1 Rune-Scarred Demon
-1 Pontiff of Blight
+1 Mindslicer
+1 Will-o'-the-Wisp
+1 Abyssal Gatekeeper

Fixing the Sweepers
We've managed to keep this well-restricted, but we're high on 4CC spells and have no 5CC. We only have Damnation and Mutilate left, so we'll drop Mutilate.
At 5CC, the first spell we come across is Descent into Madness. Well, that's... out there. I'm not convinced it's going to play too nicely with the other stuff we have going on in black! After that, the first thing that isn't triple-black or a sweeper is Syphon Flesh. Perfect!
-1 Mutilate
+1 Syphon Flesh

The Remaining Cleanup
Okay, our curve is now 6-8-8-9-3-6. That's pretty good, to the point where I think we can ignore the gaping hole at 5CC.
We were also concerned about the lack of targeted removal, but we've now got Shriekmaw in, along with an absolute motherlode of group sacrifice effects. I think black will be fine from here.

 Budget Constraints

Only two cards we have to worry about here.

• Vampiric Tutor ($36.32)
• Damnation ($50.49)

Damnation is an easy one to replace... Mutilate is a twentieth of the price, and not far off being equally good.
The tutor is another story, though. Every other 1-drop tutor is the same price or higher (unless you want to play Cateran Summons). So we might as well just bite the bullet and go for the first 1-drop under $20 in our rankings.
The next one down was Killing Wave, but we're trying to limit the resets. The one after that was good ol' Dark Ritual, which is useful enough.

Archetypes to Add
The mana curve for black currently looks like: 5-10-8-8-4-5
We've wound up with a half-decent curve for black, though it could stand to have another CC5 card or two. We want to keep it that way when adding an archetype for the final ten cards.

Black's best archetypes are pretty obvious - we touched on some of them in the 40 cards above. Some potential directions to take the final ten cards are:
Zombies: A very strong tribe in multiplayer. Death Baron, Lord of the Undead and Noxious Ghoul are must-includes. Vengeful Dead and Shepherd of Rot are also strong options, and Unholy Grotto can even be added to the landbase to support this.
Vampires: There are already a few decent vampires in our list, and while the tribe is probably lacking a decent lord for cube so far, there are some excellent additions here. Malakir Bloodwitch, Butcher of Malakir, Vampire Hexmage and Kalastria Highborn are all excellent inclusions.
Reanimation: The reanimator archetype had a couple of its pieces inside the Top 40, and we can build on it from there. Entomb and Buried Alive get things started, and we can rely on Animate Dead, Dread Return, Unburial Rites and several others to keep things rolling.
Discard: This was a theme only lightly touched on in our Top 40, with Mindslicer and Hymn to Tourach making our list. However, there are plenty more options here, including Bottomless Pit, Megrim, Rotting Rats and Hypnotic Specter. You will need to be throwing Wheel of Torture and/or Lavaborn Muse in the cube also to make this strategy work, however.

Example Zombie Archetype
+1 Death Baron (The main lord of choice)
+1 Lord of the Undead (Another lord, but too good to leave out)
+1 Noxious Ghoul (Cleans the floor with Elves and token strategies)
+1 Undead Warchief (Yet another lord, but again, too good)
+1 Phyrexian Crusader (Excellent evasive zombie)
+1 Call to the Grave (Lets the tribe play board control)
+1 Rise From the Grave (Reanimator with surprise tribal benefits)
+1 Zombie Infestation (Another reanimation enabler that works well with this tribe)
+2 other zombie-related spells. Syphon Flesh and Cruel Revival are potential options here.

Example Reanimator Archetype
+1 Entomb
+1 Buried Alive
+1 Necromancy
+1 Unburial Rites
+1 Exhume
+1 Corpse Connoisseur (Another pseudo-Entomb)
+1 Geth, Lord of the Vault (Fuels the graveyard offerings)
+3 more creatures that support reanimation strategies (or make good targets)