MTG Salvation

Some details about my cube. It's a 360 card, unpowered, modern, budget cube. The budget is no single card over $20 and the average being much less. I've never ran aristocrats before so I would appreciate some feedback.

Do you have a link to your overall cube list? I'd be happy to take a look, but don't want to unduly steal from other archetypes.

Quote from Cythare »

Do you have a link to your overall cube list? I'd be happy to take a look, but don't want to unduly steal from other archetypes.

Not yet. I'm rebuilding my cube from the ground up and I'm still working through it. I'll update here when it's done.

Rakdos Aristocrats is a great archetype to support in cube because you really only need to fit a few cards in specifically for the deck. Most of the support are cards you'd typically see in an average cube because they tend to be good value cards, like sac outlets and recursive creatures. Because of this, my advice would be to not over think it and try to shoehorn in a bunch of cards to force that archetype. I wouldn't try to include a bunch of sac outlets (like Attrition or Ashnod's Altar) unless you're also looking to support a persist deck that needs to share these payoffs. You'll be running a bunch of the support already for aristocrats, so it's easy to throw in just a few pay offs and trust your drafters to know it's there. Carrion Feeder, Blood Artist, and Goblin Bombardment going around the table alongside already cube all stars like any of the recursive black 1-drops, Ophiomancer, red token makers, etc is bound to spark the attention of the Rakdos player at your table. I would try to make sure my Rakdos guild cards acted as signposts for the archetype. If you're running three cards in that section, for instance, then maybe you include Daretti, Judith, and Falkenrath Aristocrat. These let drafters know there's a sacrifice deck available, but are also good in their own right if the deck doesn't quite come together.

I actually have a lot to say about Rakdos Aristocrats. If you look just at the rakdos cards:

Rix Maadi Reveler
Fireblade Artist
Kroxa, Titan of Death's Hunger
Mayhem Devil
Judith, the Scourge Diva
Lightning Skelemental
Murderous Redcap
Falkenrath Aristocrat

What you'll notice is these creatures could as on curve Black Red aggro cards that incidentally work stronger with a sacrifice theme.

There are quite a few cards you could add:

Bloodthrone Vampire/ Nantuko Husk (These two are actually quite strong in an aristocrats shell as its all-in potential along with Blood Artist/ Judith is very difficult to deal with)
Priest of Forgotten Gods
Liliana, Heretical Healer
Woe Strider
Yawgmoth, Thran Physician
Braids, Cabal Minion
Culling the weak
Unearth

I find Black-Red Aristocrats works the best as more or less an black-red aggro shell that incidentally have go wide aristocrats synergies. I think to make this archetype successful, you should try less to aim for an sacrifice combo, but more focused aggro shell.

If you want a more complete run down on how to support a strong aristocrats archetype in your cube:

1. Rakdos Aristocrats -> Focused more towards Black- Red Aggro but incidental sacrifice synergies.
1b. Rakdos Splash Green -> Slightly more ramp focused with more go-wide synergies
2. Green- White Aristocrats -> Focused more towards melira combo (Persist + Colorless Sacrifice Outlet + Meliria/ +1/+1) and slower go-wide token.
2b. Green- White Aristocrats splash Black -> Focused more in all-in Melira/ Pod/ Recurring Nightmare Combo
3. Blue - White (Flicker) -> Focused on flicker archetype. (Not Aristocrats)
3b. Blue - White Flicker splash red -> Focused on Twin/ Kiki/ Sahelli combo (Not Aristocrats)
3c. Blue - White splash black -> Flicker deck, splashing Aristocrats for ending the game
3d. Blue - White splash green -> Bant value based flicker deck.
4. Red- Green Midrange -> Focused on midrange 2 for 1 planeswalkers/ creatures that generate tokens/ man (not aristocrats)
4b. Red - Green Midrange splash black -> Uses Red- Green to populate the board for black's scarifice.
5. Black - White Aristocrats -> Midrange Token deck that is more focused on using the Blood Artist style effects + tokens to drain the opponent (closer to what you would expect a standard aristocrats deck to be like)

Aristocrats is incredibly hard to balance out for your cube, but if you do want to support a strong aristocrats theme, I would focused on deciding how many of these 5 color pairs you would like to have.

For example, if you would like to have all of these 5 archetypes, I would recommend adding more sacrifice all in cards such as Bloodthrone Vampire/ Nantuko Husk/ westvale abbey as I find some of the more value based colors have strong synergies but lack the push to end the game.

If you like Rakdos Aristocrats, Blue White Flicker and Red- Green midrange, but not the other 2, I would recommend staying away from the persist combo all together, as the deck needs its critical mass.

The mistake I often see with designing the aristocrats archetype is the payoffs/ synergies are across all five colors and its very difficult to draft a decent aristocrats deck without going into 3-4 colors.