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So you've drafted before, and you've enjoyed it. You've gone from the hyper-aggro drafts of Zendikar to the battleship magic of Rise of the Eldrazi, from the intricate strategies of Innistrad to the horrible pit of bombs and terrible removal that was Avacyn Restored. Perhaps you've dabbled in the high-power archetypes of Modern Masters. Whatever happened, at some point you looked at a format and thought "You know, I think maybe I could do better". Say goodbye to your wallet, and welcome to Cube. Trust me, pick the Mind Twist, you'll cut off black completely! What's a Cube? A cube is a singleton set of cards collected for the purpose of drafting, the idea being that since the cards all get returned at the end of the draft, and because there isn't a rarity distribution, you can just shuffle up the cube again and draft as many times as you want. It's unlimited free drafts, so long as you ignore how much money you blew foiling out your entire cube. Still, it's an opportunity to shape your own limited environment, and it's a lot of fun to tinker with; it's the closest most players get to being a designer. Initially they started out as collections of the most powerful cards, but alongside the rise of EDH, Cube has seen a big increase in popularity of late, as the limited version of high-end casual play, and cube structure has gotten a lot more refined as a result. What Can I Draft in Cube? That depends on the cube, as they can vary wildly. That said, a typical good cube is going to feel a bit more like constructed than limited, in that cards are powerful enough that you need to go for a strategy, rather than just picking good cards out of every pack. Some commonly included strategies are: Ramp: Ramp can be found in just about every green section, and is usually a pretty good strategy: pick up some ramp and pump out some giant green dudes (or possibly some Eldrazi, depending on the cube. 5-Color Control: A lot of cubes are very generous with their manafixing (and rightly so). Because the later picks in cube are generally solid playables as opposed to horrible garbage, it's a perfectly valid strategy to pick up a ton of fixing early and play the most powerful stuff that's still sitting around in a control shell. Aggro: A lot of cubes try to include aggro, but it takes patience and understanding to make the environment support it, because a lot of solid aggro cards aren't especially flashy, and it gets crowded out by more exciting cards. Still, it can be a powerful strategy that plays differently depending on your colors; White aggro tends to favor equipment,anthems, and white's absurd 4-drops, while red aggro relies on burn to give it the reach to finish out the game, and Black and Green often find themselves in the mix as well. Reanimator: Like ramp, but more combo-y, Reanimator is starting to fall out of favor among cubers, for being inconsistent, not particularly interactive, and not having a ton of cross-over with other decks. A growing replacement in Black sections has been... Stax: It may not be glamorous, but using cheap recursion and land destruction to grind your opponent into the ground is gaining traction, and giving Black an identity it was sorely missing. Storm: It's a bad idea to try and make this work. It requires a ton of work for a shaky deck that still never seems to come together. The MTGO cube loves it, though (it doesn't work there, either). This isn't even getting into the vast variety of other midrange, control, and occasional combo decks you can assemble! How much does it cost to build a cube? How much do you want to spend? My cube was initially built from random commons and uncommons I had lying around, and was good fun in its own way. That said, I eventually got the itch to soup it up, and I've spent more money than I really care to think about souping it up into a more typical cube. So long as you're willing to put in the effort to make a fun draft environment, you can get a good cube at any price level. What kind of cubes are there? You can build a cube for just about any purpose, but some helpful terms to know are... Powered/Unpowered: Whether or not the cube include the Power Nine, although this tends to have implication beyond those 9 cards (such as Library of Alexandria, or Sol Ring). A powered cube tends to do a lot more unfair things than an unpowered cube. Aggro in particular is a lot worse in Powered than Unpowered. Pauper: A cube consisting entirely of commons. It takes a lot more thought than you'd think to make this to not only work, but be interesting as well, because the power level of your cards is so constrained. Still, it's cheap and very rewarding. Peasant: A cube made of commons and uncommons. Its archetypes tend to be a lot more defined than paupers, because this is where you'll find the engine cards for limited archetypes, or role-players in constructed. 360/450/540/630/etc.: How large the cube is. 360 is the exact number needed to support a full 8-person draft, and tends to be the baseline. As a cube gets larger, power level tends to get more diluted, because you don't have to be as choosy about what you put in. Anything Else I Need to Know? SLEEVE YOUR CUBE. Double-sleeve it, even. This is meant to be drafted repeatedly, you need these cards to last. Don't be afraid to proxy, either; it sucks to spend a bunch of money on a card and then realize you didn't want it in your cube after all, or to go forever without a crucial piece just because of cost. Pick Upheaval. Resources CubeTutor: A great resource for organizing your cube online! It's much nicer than dumping giant lists of cards in this thread; that's not exactly conducive to discussion. MTG Salvation: The forums as a whole might not be great, but the cube subforum has a lot of really great discussion, and is probably the one reason besides spoiler season to visit the site. The Third Power Podcast: It doesn't exactly update frequently, but there's still a lot of interesting card evaluations to listen to, if you're a degenerate like me. Talk about all things cube-related here!
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Jul 17, 2013 06:05
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Everyone post your cube! http://cubetutor.com/viewcube/1728 I don't get to draft it near as often as I want so I'd appreciate it if you guys went ahead and just drafted it a bunch of times for me. Let me know what you like, what you don't! It's semi powered? I don't know. I'm playing with most of the Power 9 but I skipped Time Vault, for some reason. I say semi-powered because I'm still avoiding stuff that's really not fun or interesting, like Aetherling. Ciprian Maricon fucked around with this message at 06:20 on Jul 17, 2013 |
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Jul 17, 2013 06:18
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If you're doing more than 360 in a cube then does it really matter if you have more in the increments listed? It seems like it wouldn't make a difference whether or not you have 450 or 390 or 510 etc. On a side note I'd love it for the resident all foil proxy cube maker would post updates here as they work on it. I am tempted to try the same but am almost certain I'd end up abandoning the undertaking part way through.
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Jul 17, 2013 06:19
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LeafHouse posted:If you're doing more than 360 in a cube then does it really matter if you have more in the increments listed? It seems like it wouldn't make a difference whether or not you have 450 or 390 or 510 etc. It doesn't really matter, but it's helpful to draw a line somewhere so your cube doesn't just bloat, and increments of players are as good a line as any.
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Jul 17, 2013 06:30
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I played with Jon Loucks' playgroup for a summer and I think their cube was pretty fat but was very combo-friendly. I pretty much can't draft cubes without drafting for combos now and have an unhealthy fondness for eternal witness and crystal shard (which are cards that just make every other card better and should be in every cube). Actually since the OP touched on storm in cube I'd like to talk about it since it's actually my favorite thing to run and isn't that risky. The thing is depending on the cube some of the good value cards just turn into strong enablers and you just have to play them correctly. Things that help storm (don't draft storm outside of a power cube imo): All power, but especially moxen since they can be used for storm count Yawgmoth's cards (Will and Bargain) Necropotence Suspend (usually just rift bolt and sometimes lotus bloom) Ad Nauseam Bob (extra cards that won't dome you hard? hell yes) and other bobesque effects. Blue Cantrips Manamorphose (half ritual half cantrip all extremely narrow) Rituals Chromatic Star and things like it Treachery, Rewind, Remand Other mana generating artifacts like Grim Monolith Anything that lets you untap a Tolarian Academy MEMORY JAR Relevant cards with storm: Mind's Desire (Wanted storm count: 4-6) Dragonstorm (depends on the cube) (Lethal count: probably like 3) Empty the Warrens (Lethal count: 10 and an untap) Tendrils of Agony (Lethal count 6-10) Grapeshot (Lethal count: 20  )Brain Freeze (Lethal count 8-10) Ignite Memories (Lethal count: oh god this is hard but 6 is usually good since most people won't be sandbagging lands for this) Good non-storm support cards: Some hideaway lands(let you cast your stupid powerful spells anyway) Cards with good value Greater Gargadon (okay GG is just amazing all the time) Fire/Ice, Turn/Burn, Electrolyze: Most storm decks are base U/R (with access to black for Ad Nauseam and/or Tendrils) so you'll just get access to good value cards. Good dragons (if dragonstorm is a thing) Most cubes should have at least yosei, keiga, and kokusho (rip Bogardan Hellkite though) and two of those are basically on-color for a storm deck. Remember that changelings are dragons too (okay this isn't really relevant at all). And of course probably a version of Niv-Mizzet himself, that would be a good dude to dragonstorm out. Trinket Mage and his buddies (Top, Scroll, etc) A storm friendly cube should have all those cards to make the deck usable. Note that mind's desire, dragonstorm, and empty the warrens are actually pretty splashable in multiple strategies, since Mind's Desire for 4 is just "good value" sometimes even if it doesn't just win the game. Ad Nauseam is pretty awesome but takes some knowing your deck to not die to accidentally. Basically the idea is you want a good amount of power but even without going off you should be hitting good value while waiting for your big turn. Cubes generally have all sorts of combos but the power of Storm is that it generally derives from a wide variety of sources in the cube itself instead of needing specific cards. In fact, the main problem with storm is that its core cards are narrow to the point where you don't often want them elsewhere (except Empty the Warrens in a beatdown deck maybe) but that also makes it strong - you can compete early for power instead of your particular combo and then use Storm as a win condition. Zoness fucked around with this message at 07:38 on Jul 17, 2013 |
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Jul 17, 2013 07:14
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My cube: https://www.cubetutor.com/cubeblog/72 It's Peasant, with 370 cards. First, mad props to whydirt, whose cube I copied pretty much card for card to start out. I started at 360 and just added 1 additional gold card for each guild because there was a bunch of fun gold cards that I wanted to run and just couldn't find room for. I really enjoy Peasant cubing because the games play out more like limited than constructed, which I really find appealing. It's also really satisfying maximizing all of your resources, rather than being able to rely on a couple bomby cards to carry you. I'd be more than happy to answer any questions and would greatly appreciate any feedback.
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Jul 17, 2013 13:17
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My 360 Peasant cube that I'm currently in the process of rebuilding because I'm not sure I'm happy with it. -I really want solid archetypes within color or colors. While I'm still considering what those might be and how best to syngerize colors, I'm very tired of my cube playing like a less-cohesive core set where everything is goodstuf.dec. How much of a set needs to be dedicated to a given theme for it to be occasionally playable in Sealed without dominating the color? I'm eyeing Lifegain, Twiddling, Dredge, Flashback for WUBG appropriately....not sure what to do with Red. -Is a cycle of artifact mana fixing too much? I'm currently using the Keyrunes because of how well they play in Ravnica block, but their power levels really vary. I was thinking of using a Cluestone/Signet/Keyrune mix, if I keep the cycle. -Has anyone tried a pauper/peasant cube with limited rares? I was considering a single un-bomby toolbox or utility rare in each booster.
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Jul 17, 2013 14:41
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You know, it's possible that we could get some somethingawful cube drafts going on magic online. Like what limited resources does... but for us. It wouldn't be hard to do, especially if we want to cobble something peasant or pauper, as those seem pretty popular alternatives to powered cubing. This is my budget cube, which I built basically for fun: http://cubetutor.com/cubeblog/1032
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Jul 17, 2013 14:52
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Thanks for making the thread The Lord of Hats, I've been getting more serious about developing my cube lately and it'll be great to have another place for discussion. One other resource I'd suggest for the OP is Riptide Lab, a Cube-dedicated site with articles and forums.revengeanceful posted:My cube: https://www.cubetutor.com/cubeblog/72 This is the only cube I've had a chance to draft with a full 8 players, and it was a blast. Normal limited is what I usually play, so I really enjoy the power level of Pauper as compared to standard cubes. Drafting this felt like there were a lot of really solid cards that did their job well, but nothing too bomby, leading to more interesting and skill-intensive games. Loved it. Kasonic posted:My 360 Peasant cube that I'm currently in the process of rebuilding because I'm not sure I'm happy with it. Your goals sound a lot like mine. I'm attempting to build a Modern cube that has a power level closer to Pauper, while still using rares to support archetypes where needed. What I'd ultimately like to have is a draft environment where you're not just assembling a team of all-stars, but trying to fit together individual pieces that have interesting synergy with each other. I'm trying not to make things TOO linear though, because I feel it'd be pretty boring to just decide "oh I'll be the tokens deck" and go on auto-pilot the rest of the draft. Themes I'm looking to support: White - Primarily tokens, with some flicker/ETB play as well (shared with Blue), some Soldier tribal elements. Blue - Primarily artifacts, some flicker, also has an aggro/tempo strategy possible with lots of cheap fliers Green - +1/+1 counters (some enablers in Blue thanks to Simic), GB has some dredge/graveyard stuff, feels kinda midrangey overall, might get some ramp Red - A number of "instants and sorceries matter" cards (Kiln Fiend, Charmbreaker Devils), trying out an Elemental tribal theme but not convinced on it yet Black - Similar to the Pox/Stax idea, those cards aren't in Modern but I'm focusing on things that sacrifice for value or create symmetrical sacrifices, then recursive creatures that break the symmetry of those effects. Also some dredge and reanimation stuff, and aggro low drops. What I like so far is that certain combinations of colors have explicit synergy (GU Simic, UR spells, BG dredge) while other pairs work together well, but slightly more subtle, like White tokens being great sacrifice fodder for Black. Anyway, it's a totaly work in progress right now, but check it out: http://cubetutor.com/viewcube/821 It's totally unbalanced at the moment, and I'm going to be cutting it way down to the 360 range to help the archetype enablers be reliably available. White is probably the closest to a good state right now, and the multicolor cards are pretty much set, but everything else needs major cuts I just haven't gotten around to yet. Nibble fucked around with this message at 15:52 on Jul 17, 2013 |
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Jul 17, 2013 15:48
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I posted a bit ago in the main MTG thread but I think today is the day that I will make the first post about building my all foil, all custom flavor text, and all proxy cube. I'll probably just be posting to a wordpress or a tumblr or something but I will also post them here. I have yet to flesh out a list but my personal desires are for a powered cube that supports combo, probably the stax deck instead of black aggro, and all sorts of other very fun and great things for good people who like unfair magic.
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Jul 17, 2013 16:19
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Kasonic posted:-Is a cycle of artifact mana fixing too much? I'm currently using the Keyrunes because of how well they play in Ravnica block, but their power levels really vary. I was thinking of using a Cluestone/Signet/Keyrune mix, if I keep the cycle. I feel like artifact mana fixing should be considered in opposition to land-based fixing but should also be used to bolster cards that interact with artifacts. Signets are also probably some of the most powerful artifact fixers printed (more so than talismans imo), more so than keyrunes or cluestones imo. Having all 3 is probably excessive but I'd take signets over the other two any day, probably. If you want mana producers that can become creatures that don't fix, look to the time spiral totems. While probably nobody is gonna play Chronatog totem the other ones are pretty nuts.
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Jul 17, 2013 16:36
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Nibble posted:Anyway, it's a totaly work in progress right now, but check it out: http://cubetutor.com/viewcube/821 Green is pretty solid. I just drafted this against bots and I ended up with the sickest G/W/B deck featuring tons of +1+1 counter shenanigans with gavony township for gravy. The black splash was for removal, obv.
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Jul 17, 2013 16:42
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Can I get an opinion from the thread on the relatively new idea of making Cubes out of sets? I've heard of people making MM cubes with multiple commons and uncommons and I've been thinking of doing the same with other sets that I remember enjoying drafting. Does this actually work or is it not a particularly good idea?
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Jul 17, 2013 17:47
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Some Numbers posted:Can I get an opinion from the thread on the relatively new idea of making Cubes out of sets? I've heard of people making MM cubes with multiple commons and uncommons and I've been thinking of doing the same with other sets that I remember enjoying drafting. It depends on what you want to do. If your goal is to relive a particular limited environment I personally don't think it works. A cube is some 360+ cards, and sets are upwards of 300, With rarities being what they are you can't make a reasonable facsimile of what a given limited format looks like. You have too many rares usually and not enough cards at common and uncommon. Unless you plan on limiting your cube to 21-30 rares (who wants to do that?) I think for a lot of people its just an easy way to get started into the whole Cubing thing with a set they likely have a lot of the cards for, and in that way it works out really well.
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Jul 17, 2013 18:05
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Some Numbers posted:Does this actually work or is it not a particularly good idea? It works pretty well; I've done it for every set since Innistrad. I grab a Peasant playset off of ebay for $20-40(sadly, not MM), cut 25-50% of the lovely/unbalancing uncommons depending on the set, shuffle and divide into 4 Uncommons/11 Commons and Bob's your uncle. It's not perfect. Shuffling ~700 cards is a total bitch, especially if they're unsleeved. Also, it really sucks to drop $60 in sleeves at a time. Plus, since you're shuffling it yourself, you can have some REALLY lovely or skewed packs. It's weird to make three picks and not even see any blue cards for example, but that's just a general problem with cubing.
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Jul 17, 2013 18:17
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Some Numbers posted:Can I get an opinion from the thread on the relatively new idea of making Cubes out of sets? I've heard of people making MM cubes with multiple commons and uncommons and I've been thinking of doing the same with other sets that I remember enjoying drafting. I've almost finished making a RTR block 360 card cube with a couple of my friends, we're just missing about 5 commons that i'll pick up this weekend. We went with 20 cards from every guild including 2 guildgates, 30 cards from every single color, some artifacts and rounding out nonbasic lands is 3 transguild promenades and one rogue's passage bringing the total of non-rare cards to 336 and then we have a pile or DGR rares to add a bit of random to the drafting pool. Some guilds just have such a crappy pool we had to go with doubles so it ended up being about 85% singleton. Being the idiots we are we designed this set in paper so i don't have a link to share :X I think the most expensive part about building this was buying 500 high quality sleeves. TheLing fucked around with this message at 18:52 on Jul 17, 2013 |
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Jul 17, 2013 18:50
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My cube (~540 cards, powered) http://cubetutor.com/viewcube/1278 Still in the process of updating the list that's on cubetutor, missing some changes from around Dragon's Maze. Ideally my cube will be 541 cards after some rebalancing (the extra card is Booster Tutor, which gets cut if we were to have a full 12 players). I've had the cube together for almost two years now, get to draft it about once every week or two. edit: And for extra fun, cube pictures as of March http://imgur.com/a/Y41NC Hopefully I'll be able to get new pictures together some time in the next few weeks. Tonde Mo Nai fucked around with this message at 19:04 on Jul 17, 2013 |
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Jul 17, 2013 18:55
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Sweet! A cube thread for Goons. I've been waiting for this OP for a while. Here's a link to my cube (450, Powered): http://cubetutor.playworks.cloudbees.net/viewcube/170 For those that follow MTGS (an otherwise okay site that happens to have a great community for cube-related talk) I'm wtwlf123 from over there. I wrote an article about the basic cube design philosophy, which I'd like to share here, if that's okay: http://www.mtgsalvation.com/1207-cube-design-philosophy.html I've been cube drafting for a really long time, and I've been managing my own list for the past 4-5 years. I spend a lot of time discussing all things cube, and I'm stoked to see this thread up and running. Happy cubing!
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Jul 17, 2013 19:01
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Booster Tutor is one of the best cards to have in a cube ever.
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Jul 17, 2013 19:05
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Zoness posted:Booster Tutor is one of the best cards to have in a cube ever. Yeah, the "booster" usually is 15 random undrafted cards, and almost always involves the caster yelling "Boooooster Tuuuutor". It's dumb on Isochron Scepter too.
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Jul 17, 2013 19:07
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Man, Im not sure how to accomplish it, but I sure wish the bots on Cube Tutor drafted even somewhat competently. I should not be getting a pack 1 pick 3 Jace, the Mind Sculptor.
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Jul 17, 2013 19:18
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toadee posted:Man, Im not sure how to accomplish it, but I sure wish the bots on Cube Tutor drafted even somewhat competently. I should not be getting a pack 1 pick 3 Jace, the Mind Sculptor. My last draft included Pick 4 Jitte, Pick 6 Lotus
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Jul 17, 2013 19:22
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toadee posted:Man, Im not sure how to accomplish it, but I sure wish the bots on Cube Tutor drafted even somewhat competently. I should not be getting a pack 1 pick 3 Jace, the Mind Sculptor. It can happen, but it would be rare indeed. If we could see what the bots took in there first picks, it might make more sense. I've definitely passed big Jace before, but that early in the draft, it would be tough outside of maybe 5-10 other cards (in a powered cube that is).
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Jul 17, 2013 19:23
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Tonde Mo Nai posted:My cube (~540 cards, powered) http://cubetutor.com/viewcube/1278 This seems even more powered than a normal powered cube. I'm a bit surprised by the lack of Tolarian Academy, Academy Rector, Cabal Coffers, and Crop Rotation, though. The obvious cards to add from Dragon's Maze would be Aetherling and Voice of Resurgence, I guess?
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Jul 17, 2013 20:22
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Silver2195 posted:This seems even more powered than a normal powered cube. I'm a bit surprised by the lack of Tolarian Academy, Academy Rector, Cabal Coffers, and Crop Rotation, though. Oh yeah, to clarify the Dragon's Maze changes have been made, the cubetutor list just isn't updated yet. Aetherling, Voice, and Ral Zarek are in, Far//Away is being tried, and Pyrewild Shaman got put in, but I'm not too wild on him. Academy had been in, was cut, and is now back as I've added more support for the artifact deck. Crop Rotation is probably going to get another run in the near future, as it was cut for lack of people playing it. I'm not sure how I feel about Academy Rector and Cabal Coffers. I don't feel like there's enough of a mono-black focus to dedicate to Coffers/Magus of the Coffers/Urborg as a package. The powerful enchantment strategy off of Academy Rector seems too narrow to me so I've never included it, but what would you go with as the enchantment pieces?
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Jul 17, 2013 20:40
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Tonde Mo Nai posted:Oh yeah, to clarify the Dragon's Maze changes have been made, the cubetutor list just isn't updated yet. Aetherling, Voice, and Ral Zarek are in, Far//Away is being tried, and Pyrewild Shaman got put in, but I'm not too wild on him. I didn't notice Academy because it was listed under colorless instead of blue. Fair point about Coffers and Rector. I was thinking you would pick Rector when there was at least one really good enchantment (like Moat) in your deck, but there's only 26 enchantments in the cube, most of which have low mana costs.
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Jul 17, 2013 20:58
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Tonde Mo Nai posted:Oh yeah, to clarify the Dragon's Maze changes have been made, the cubetutor list just isn't updated yet. Aetherling, Voice, and Ral Zarek are in, Far//Away is being tried, and Pyrewild Shaman got put in, but I'm not too wild on him. Coffers is good if you have mind twist or enough drain life effects or support for like a mono-B ANT type finish. Maga is also a good man to use with coffers but he's not really dependent on a lot of B. Death Cloud is also a good reason to want to use Coffers, and Mutilate doesn't hurt. Also mono-B stax loves coffers afaik. Here's a list off the top of my head (also cards that go well with (also some of these worked well with Enduring Ideal!), you should aim for cards here that are good outside of being fetche: Dream Halls Yawgmoth's Bargain Mind over Matter Form of the Dragon (or Moat if you're a wuss) Dovescape Recycle/Null Profusion Decree of Silence I'm probably forgetting a few good ones but these are all cool big enchantments that win games pretty hard. EDIT: Also since when was Venser, Shaper Savant not cube material any more? Dude has one of the coolest abilities written, he's like remand or boomerang on a man, what more can you ask for? Zoness fucked around with this message at 21:15 on Jul 17, 2013 |
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Jul 17, 2013 21:00
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CountFosco posted:Green is pretty solid. I just drafted this against bots and I ended up with the sickest G/W/B deck featuring tons of +1+1 counter shenanigans with gavony township for gravy. The black splash was for removal, obv. Thanks for the feedback! I've been impressed with how draftable it is in its current state, considering I think it's far from done. Three colors is not something I expect to see too often, but we'll see how much fixing I end up with - I'm thinking I'd like to add at least the M10/INN cycle of duals. The thing I've been struggling the most with lately is finding a solid mechanical identity for red. For each other color it's been pretty easy to find some core idea to work with that provides a sense of identity and synergy, is not super linear, and plays well mixed with the other subthemes. Red has eluded me though. There's cards that care about instants and sorceries (Kiln Fiend, Young Pyromancer, Galvanoth, Charmbreaker Devils, etc.) - I like these because any color will have spells they want to cast, and red itself will always have a ton of playable burn spells. It's one of the better subthemes for red, but I've already got most of what I could find and it's not all that much. I've been looking at Elemental tribal, mostly propped up by Lorwyn/Shadowmoor Flamekin, and it's neat but I'm not that excited about it. You don't get much benefit out of it besides a few decent creatures (including my pet favorite Nova Chaser) and a mediocre lord. There's also not much cross-color synergy out there - other colors have Elementals, but nothing else really cares that you're playing them. Storm seems too difficult to support as a full deck archetype. Would it be worth it to throw in a few enablers (Grinning Ignus, Seething Song, Manamorphose) and a couple Storm cards (Empty the Warrens, Storm Entity) and leave it at that? There's some potential there to just generate big mana to play early fatties if you're not on the actual storm plan, and it would work nicely with some other cards like Guttersnipe, but I'm not sure if there's enough there. And Empty the Warrens seems totally fine if you play it turn 5 with a one-mana burn spell ahead of it, so I'm not worried about it being totally useless. Totally open to any other ideas as well. Red just feels to me like it has plenty of stuff to help along the other archetypes you may be working towards, but it's lacking some central theme that would make you want to go primary red with support from other colors.
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Jul 17, 2013 21:53
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Nibble posted:Storm seems too difficult to support as a full deck archetype. Would it be worth it to throw in a few enablers (Grinning Ignus, Seething Song, Manamorphose) and a couple Storm cards (Empty the Warrens, Storm Entity) and leave it at that? There's some potential there to just generate big mana to play early fatties if you're not on the actual storm plan, and it would work nicely with some other cards like Guttersnipe, but I'm not sure if there's enough there. And Empty the Warrens seems totally fine if you play it turn 5 with a one-mana burn spell ahead of it, so I'm not worried about it being totally useless. I wrote a bit on Storm and it's reliant on power and/or rituals. Rituals also play decently with enormously powerful high-cost drops while power is just a thing you decide whether you have or not. If the power level of the cube is relatively low then Storm isn't going to be particularly interesting.
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Jul 17, 2013 21:57
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Zoness posted:I wrote a bit on Storm and it's reliant on power and/or rituals. Rituals also play decently with enormously powerful high-cost drops while power is just a thing you decide whether you have or not. Yeah, and being Modern severely limits the broken fast mana I can put in there. I'll probably take the approach of adding a few fast mana cards that you could happen to use to cast a Storm card, and a Storm card or two that would be reasonable to cast after one or two cheap spells and/or suspended spells but wouldn't be the focus of your deck. So basically, Empty the Warrens.
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Jul 17, 2013 22:01
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Nibble posted:So basically, Empty the Warrens.
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Jul 17, 2013 23:31
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I'm trying to find a place for Rude Awakening, any thoughts? http://www.cubetutor.com/cubeblog/1728 Currently Plow Under is under scrutiny.
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Jul 18, 2013 01:00
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Plow under is ridiculously strong in a stompy deck because it's basically a time walk or even a double time walk against a control deck when you power it out on the backs of some mana elves or acceleration. Then you eternal witness it back to your hand and your opponent just scoops. But other than that yeah i dunno. All right, I'm cube drafting on MTGO right now and I managed to make a deck with like 5 creatures. Whoever said storm support was dry was right  .EDIT: I may actually be able to win a game off a tendrils for 8 to him though! EDIT 2: 7 cards left in my deck and i can't draw my friggin tendrils aaaah EDIT 3: Okay worst part is playing a storm cube deck takes forever to step through and you end up running out of time. Also I piloted that list like an idiot but it was really amazing. Zoness fucked around with this message at 02:18 on Jul 18, 2013 |
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Jul 18, 2013 01:27
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http://cubetutor.com/draft/1034 This is a convenient thread. I've been putting together this monstrosity the last month. It's pretty heavy on gold cards (my kitchen table group has loved drafting DGR) and I think I'm going to cut one from each colour to add some more artifacts. Comments?
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Jul 18, 2013 02:01
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I may as well toss out my horrible abomination. I'm aiming for 450, so I've still got a ways to go, especially with some of the real stinkers that are still in there at the moment. Still, I like the progress that I've got so far.
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Jul 18, 2013 04:58
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Stinky Pit posted:I'm trying to find a place for Rude Awakening, any thoughts? I could never let go of Plow Under from my list. It's partially from a pet card standpoint (and there's a dumb story involving the foil version I've got), but from a pure gameplay perspective the finisher of potential-double-time walk is too much for me to pass up
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Jul 18, 2013 05:13
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boba fetacheese posted:http://cubetutor.com/draft/1034 I tried this out, and ended up with this monstrosity. I kept seeing all kinds of bombs, but little to no ramp, so I ended up just drafting every signet I could find (and I think I still missed one, since it didn't table). I'm not quite sure what Gifts is doing in this deck, but I figured I might as well use it to find me all kinds of signets and stuff.
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Jul 18, 2013 07:19
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Jenx posted:I tried this out, and ended up with this monstrosity. I kept seeing all kinds of bombs, but little to no ramp, so I ended up just drafting every signet I could find (and I think I still missed one, since it didn't table). I'm not quite sure what Gifts is doing in this deck, but I figured I might as well use it to find me all kinds of signets and stuff. The power of gifts generally depends on the deck archetype but there's a few pretty strong gifts packages available but the card is pretty weak overall if you can't put them together: 1. Life from the Loam, Academy Ruins, Crucible of Worlds, Mindslaver - this package will assemble the Academy Ruins + Mindslaver lock pretty much no matter what. 2. Reveillark, Body Double, a sac outlet, and a 187 effect 3. Kiki-Jiki, Pestermite, at least one reanimation effect, something else revelant 4. Etc. Basically the idea behind having amazing Gifts Ungiven packages is to identify a two card combo such as Ruins + Mindslaver, Reveillark + Body Double, or Kiki-Jiki + Pestermite and then pick two other cards that ensure you hit your plan. For example, in case 1 the fastest case is if you get Ruins + Slaver in hand. If both get binned you can Life from the Loam or Crucible Ruins into play then use Academy Ruins to retrieve Mindslaver. Crucible and Life from the Loam exist as ways to get Academy Ruins for sure, etc, and you could probably play something instead of the crucible or life from the loam to make sure you get mindslaver faster, etc. Also something like: Yawgmoth's Will, Snapcaster Mage, Recoup, something else should be a fun gift pile to make in a combo deck. Basically Gifts is only particularly good if you've got something really explosive for it to pick up, or at least really good value.
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Jul 18, 2013 08:04
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Gifts is also amazing with a re-animator package because you can fail to find any number of cards, so you pick two like Elesh Norn and Unburial Rites and your opponent has to put them into your graveyard.
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Jul 18, 2013 08:26
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Zoness posted:Gifts stuff I...know all of this. What I specifically mentioned was I don't know if it's any good in that deck, the one I drafted and linked to.
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Jul 18, 2013 08:29
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