I feel that the threshold works well, as different colors have ways of discarding cards and putting in the graveyards. For the +1/+1 counter, you definitely need it in another 2 colors to help the archetype out.
I am building out a list for a budget travel 90 card cube and I would love feedback. I haven't put this cube together in the flesh yet, but I plan to shortly.
Just putting some sealed decks together, it seems like there are some cool decks to be had, but you basically need to use all of the playables in a colour to have a valid deck. Any tips for addressing this? Do you ever do 30 card decks? Do you try to run a lot of spells that have a home in aggro and control? Tell me your secrets!
Other than that I would much appreciate any general comments or criticims.
Step 1: Expand your colorless section. I run 15-15-15-15-15-15 WUBRG-Colorless. Having a larger colorless section means more cards available for EACH color.
Yeah, I second that. The more available cards are to different archetypes and color-pairs, the better...doubly when you consider that fixing is rather limited in a micro cube.
Has anyone put together a pauper or peasant micro cube? Want to put together one of those cubes but don't want to commit to the full-size, would be nice to see what people think are essential.
I have three iterations of my peasant micro-cube on cube tutor. The official sounding cube is my current cube, 90 Test is with a threshold archetype in place of ramp (being tested right now, but likely to make the full update to run this list), and the +1/+1 archetype replacing ramp (was a test...don't particularly care for it).
As for "essentials", I don't really think there are essential individual cards so much as essential design elements, which we cover pretty extensively in the first few posts of this topic. But they boil down to:
1) Run cards that fit into more general archetypes
2) Run a colorless section equivalent in size to your color sections (allows for color fixing and filler cards for deck building)
3) Don't run cards that require a player to draft a particular archetype or color too deeply for the deck to work
4) There's a million different ways to build a micro cube....I'd be willing to say its the most customizable cube experience in the game. Because each color and guild occupies such a small amount of real estate, you can shift the paradigm ever so slightly and build an entirely new cubing experience.
Yeah I figure I was asking a redundant question to some degree, so excuse me on that. (At work, pushing it as is.) Thanks a lot for the response, Ill be sure to check out your lists!
Has anyone put together a pauper or peasant micro cube? Want to put together one of those cubes but don't want to commit to the full-size, would be nice to see what people think are essential.
I run a 180 peasant micro cube, link is in my signature. I too didnt want to commit to the full size, prefering something smaller to carry, and also dont think I'd ever have enough for an 8 man draft.
btw I was wondering how do you guys around your travel cube? Im double sleeving mine up, about halfway there, and I doubt it would fit in fat pack box with all the lands and tokens.
Also how many lands do you recommend I should have sleeved for a 180 list?
I don't. It's a peasant travel cube. Most expensive card is may $2-$3 and there's about 2 of those. The rest are $0.05 commons/uncommons. I can keep my entire cube and stack of draft lands in two cardboard deck boxes (like from a duel decks set). I built my cube so I could take it anywhere and not worry if something happened to it. If I decide to play on top of Mount Roberts in Juneau, AK and my entire deck gets picked up by a gust of wind and hurled into the ocean, its only gonna run me about $25 to rebuild the ENTIRE THING haha
As for lands, I think I run 15-20 of each...I figure going mono-anything is likely never going to happen, so if you picked up ZERO fixing lands and have a near even split of colors, you'll need 8-9 lands per color. If both players shared colors, then I'd need 16-18 lands per color.
haha well I love double sleeving so I dont have to find the obscure cards again if they are damaged, and quite a few cards of mine are $4~5. Also Im using full art lands from BFZ! I guess 20~22 lands each should be enough, will actually ask people when I test online.
Im waiting to complete my cube, then will know how much space I need
> Made a few changes to lower and flatten the power band. I think there are still a few outliers. Removal is tough to assess.
> Removed lands. I think I will just have 10 Teramorphic Expanses in the basic lands box.
> Removed nearly all of the aggro-exclusive one drops. These cards seem far too narrow for a cube like this.
Question:
How do you make sure there are distinct AGGRO and CONTROL archetypes in these kinds of micro-cubes? Right now I have Blue and Black as my control colours. Aggressive decks can use their disruptive tools as well. I'd like to have the decks fit pretty solidly into either aggro/tempo or control and few mindrangey decks that do not include Green. What do aggressive decks look like in cubes with no 2/1s for 1?
I think you've made a mistake removing the lands. Fixing your land is a massive part of drafting and magic deck design. You might as well just give everyone access to multiple removal spells just in case they don't know to draft it.
Keep an eye on your aggro 1-drops actually. They bring balance to my micro...if it weren't for them, drafting would basically just be "which creature is the biggest in this pack" and games owuld play as land land land land land bomb win.
As far as making a distinction between aggro and control, I think its more likely you find a middle ground for fringe control colors and decide on one or two guilds as your "control" guilds. For me:
WU: Tempo (bounce-related tempo)
UB: Control (counter magic, tempo, removal)
BR: "Rock" (removal, burn, discard, hard-hitting creatures)
RG: Aggro (obvious)
GW: Mid-Range (lots of bouncing going on, making use of W and G's etb triggers)
WB: "Rock" (white does a lot of bouncing which plays well with black's EtB effects)
UR: Counterburn Aggro (Use blue's tempo spells and red's burn to clear the way for attacking)
BG: "Rock" (Threshold)
RW: Aggro (Utilizes the lower end of the white curve and evasive creatures)
GU: Tempo (Tempo+Threshold)
Basically my Dimir section is my only real "control" guild. Fringe control guilds like WU, UR, GU are all tempo based control. It's difficult to support all guilds and you have to pick cards that can fit multiple archetypes.
Time to revive this! What are people's thoughts on conspiracy cards in microcubes? cards that grant you being a Monarch will be powerful, but also how about conspiracies and drafting up cards?
I could see using some of the common and uncommon ones in a 4 person, multiplayer cube, but I think the rares and mythics are a bit too nutty. In the 2 player, 90 card arena, the card pool is probably too tight, trying to establish archetypes and proper CMC curves, to spend slots on conspiracies and draft constructs.
That said, a 4 person, multiplayer Fiora plane-cube sounds like it'd be a really cool, thematic experience! At 180 cards, I'd probably only include ~5 conspiracies and draft constructs, and maybe a smattering of draft matters cards in WUBRG. It'd probably be real easy to just buy a 1/2 box of both conspiracy 1 & 2, and then build a microcube out of the left overs.
I could see using some of the common and uncommon ones in a 4 person, multiplayer cube, but I think the rares and mythics are a bit too nutty. In the 2 player, 90 card arena, the card pool is probably too tight, trying to establish archetypes and proper CMC curves, to spend slots on conspiracies and draft constructs.
That said, a 4 person, multiplayer Fiora plane-cube sounds like it'd be a really cool, thematic experience! At 180 cards, I'd probably only include ~5 conspiracies and draft constructs, and maybe a smattering of draft matters cards in WUBRG. It'd probably be real easy to just buy a 1/2 box of both conspiracy 1 & 2, and then build a microcube out of the left overs.
I was actually thinking even without doing multiplayer. Something like cogwork librarian should be simple enough to slot in, though its worth wont be as great since I do 5 packs of 9
Hey people, I've been testing my cube and coming to the conclusion that its a tight list, but the archetypes aren't so diverse. I am playing a 180 card, 4 player Peasant cube, so I understand that some archetypes will bleed into each other. Cube is here - http://www.cubetutor.com/viewcube/65592
General Archetypes:
* UW - Fliers/bounce
* UB - Control/reanimator
* RB - aggro
* GR - Aggro
* GW - tokens
* BW - aristocrats
* GB - The rock/reanimator
* UG - tempo/ramp
* UR - spells matter
* RW - aggro tokens
If I try to archetype as Shards and Wedges:
* BUG - Sultai Reanimator (and I feel this might be the strongest combination/endgame)
* BUR - Grixis Control
* BUW - Esper Fliers/Tokens/Aristocrats
* GBW - Abzan Aristocrats
* GRW - Naya Tokens
* RUG - Temur Midrange
* WRB - Mardu Tokens/Aristocrats
* GRB - Jund Aggro/Midrange
* RWU - Jeskai Fliers/Control
* GWU - Bant Flicker/Tokens/Midrange
As you can see, several archetypes revolve around Tokens, and that could be my problem here.
* If I had to choose tokens to splash in Colors with white, which should it be only?
* What other archetypes are playable in Peasant cubes? I know I'm missing the +1/+1 counters archetypes, and I'm considering it now.
* Are there any cards you would consider staples that I'm missing?
* Are there any hidden gems in Peasant cards that you think I should try out?
White and Black seems like a strong choice for tokens. You have the anthem effects in White and the need for sacrifice targets in Black. I do support the idea of narrowing the tokens.
I will be drafting your cube in my group of four this Tuesday. Looking forward to provide you some hands on feedback.
White and Black seems like a strong choice for tokens. You have the anthem effects in White and the need for sacrifice targets in Black. I do support the idea of narrowing the tokens.
I will be drafting your cube in my group of four this Tuesday. Looking forward to provide you some hands on feedback.
Actually Red and white is the more centralized token strategy. Im also considering dropping Trostani's summoner for Juniper order ranger. The summoner is quite a bomb, either in tokens/reanimator/flicker strategies.
@gsethi999 Okay, we did a four man draft of your cube last night and had a great time.
The decks we played:
Black-Green: Midrange with a lot of removal. Had some components for reanimator but not enough to make it reliable. A strong deck even without critical mass on the reanimator theme.
Mono-Blue: Blue was left alone so this player decided to cut all red cards and go for Blue only. Struggled to stay alive in most matches.
White-Green: Very creature-heavy deck with a very few spells (mostly pump spells). Played many creatures but was victim to removal and other spells in most matches.
White-Black: Both sacrifice theme and token theme. One of the stronger decks in the draft.
No one played red.
I think some cards can be swapped for more utility cards but I need more drafts before any suggesting any replacements. Token theme worked out okay, and maybe not so prevalent because red was missing. Black could need more discard outlets to power reanimator. I discovered too late I should have been in Blue-Black to really support the them.
@gsethi999 Okay, we did a four man draft of your cube last night and had a great time.
The decks we played:
Black-Green: Midrange with a lot of removal. Had some components for reanimator but not enough to make it reliable. A strong deck even without critical mass on the reanimator theme.
Mono-Blue: Blue was left alone so this player decided to cut all red cards and go for Blue only. Struggled to stay alive in most matches.
White-Green: Very creature-heavy deck with a very few spells (mostly pump spells). Played many creatures but was victim to removal and other spells in most matches.
White-Black: Both sacrifice theme and token theme. One of the stronger decks in the draft.
No one played red.
I think some cards can be swapped for more utility cards but I need more drafts before any suggesting any replacements. Token theme worked out okay, and maybe not so prevalent because red was missing. Black could need more discard outlets to power reanimator. I discovered too late I should have been in Blue-Black to really support the them.
Wuhooo my cubes got fans! haha, thanks for the feedback!
I absolutely agree on black needing discard outlets for reanimator. But I guess instead of having it in its color, it can splash blue or green for it. For green there is already Borderland Explorer and Noose constrictor. Adding Greenseeker or Llanowar mentor (in for Beastbreaker of Bala Ged) and Raven's Crime (in for Hymn to Tourach) should help out the archetype, but it definitely needs one more in Black. Perhaps Bog Witch, Plague Witch, Undertaker and Skirk Ridge Exhumer are all possible choices (if you see, you will realize they are all spellshapers).
I'm very surprised no one utilized Red. Its quite the beast as I've trimmed down a lot on lifegain shenanigans. The Blue player should definitely have splashed for it for removal and some early pressure (UR is the spells matters archetype). The BW player could have splashed as well for some token producers (Goblin trenches, hordeling outburst) and Goblin Bombardment would have helped.
What utility spells were you thinking?
Also I waa thinking of adding and testing 20 cards to the overall cube, giving 50 cards to each player to build decks (5 packs of 10), though that could dilute the Cube
I have a 4 player 180 count cube filled with only two colored cards which makes the drafting more exciting in my opinion, as I tried another 4 player cube once before and it seemed there was no competition for cards during drafting.
I am thinking of bumping up the card count to 216, each player getting 54 cards instead of the normal 45. While testing I discovered that it can be difficult to finalize the last 2-3 cards of your deck, forcing players to dip into a fourth color or use sub optimal cards to finish the deck.
At the moment I have the guildgates, tri-lands, vivid cycle and 5 other lands for mana fixing but planning on switching to Pain, and Fast lands, Tri lands and maybe 5 or 10 Five color lands, because I want all archetypes viable and don't want to push control and mid range too much.
And for the +1/+1 cube - Got a nice UB Control list
I feel that the threshold works well, as different colors have ways of discarding cards and putting in the graveyards. For the +1/+1 counter, you definitely need it in another 2 colors to help the archetype out.
Affinity
Legacy:
GBCombo Elves
EDH:
GEzuri, Renegade Leader's Elf Ball
Cube:
180 Peasant Micro Cube
Nice to find a group of micro-cubers!
I am building out a list for a budget travel 90 card cube and I would love feedback. I haven't put this cube together in the flesh yet, but I plan to shortly.
Just putting some sealed decks together, it seems like there are some cool decks to be had, but you basically need to use all of the playables in a colour to have a valid deck. Any tips for addressing this? Do you ever do 30 card decks? Do you try to run a lot of spells that have a home in aggro and control? Tell me your secrets!
Other than that I would much appreciate any general comments or criticims.
http://www.cubetutor.com/viewcube/68051
Also, follow us on twitter! @TurnOneMagic
I have three iterations of my peasant micro-cube on cube tutor. The official sounding cube is my current cube, 90 Test is with a threshold archetype in place of ramp (being tested right now, but likely to make the full update to run this list), and the +1/+1 archetype replacing ramp (was a test...don't particularly care for it).
As for "essentials", I don't really think there are essential individual cards so much as essential design elements, which we cover pretty extensively in the first few posts of this topic. But they boil down to:
1) Run cards that fit into more general archetypes
2) Run a colorless section equivalent in size to your color sections (allows for color fixing and filler cards for deck building)
3) Don't run cards that require a player to draft a particular archetype or color too deeply for the deck to work
4) There's a million different ways to build a micro cube....I'd be willing to say its the most customizable cube experience in the game. Because each color and guild occupies such a small amount of real estate, you can shift the paradigm ever so slightly and build an entirely new cubing experience.
Also, follow us on twitter! @TurnOneMagic
I run a 180 peasant micro cube, link is in my signature. I too didnt want to commit to the full size, prefering something smaller to carry, and also dont think I'd ever have enough for an 8 man draft.
Affinity
Legacy:
GBCombo Elves
EDH:
GEzuri, Renegade Leader's Elf Ball
Cube:
180 Peasant Micro Cube
Also how many lands do you recommend I should have sleeved for a 180 list?
Affinity
Legacy:
GBCombo Elves
EDH:
GEzuri, Renegade Leader's Elf Ball
Cube:
180 Peasant Micro Cube
As for lands, I think I run 15-20 of each...I figure going mono-anything is likely never going to happen, so if you picked up ZERO fixing lands and have a near even split of colors, you'll need 8-9 lands per color. If both players shared colors, then I'd need 16-18 lands per color.
Im waiting to complete my cube, then will know how much space I need
Affinity
Legacy:
GBCombo Elves
EDH:
GEzuri, Renegade Leader's Elf Ball
Cube:
180 Peasant Micro Cube
I've made some changes:
> Reduced colour intensity of a few cards.
> Made a few changes to lower and flatten the power band. I think there are still a few outliers. Removal is tough to assess.
> Removed lands. I think I will just have 10 Teramorphic Expanses in the basic lands box.
> Removed nearly all of the aggro-exclusive one drops. These cards seem far too narrow for a cube like this.
Question:
How do you make sure there are distinct AGGRO and CONTROL archetypes in these kinds of micro-cubes? Right now I have Blue and Black as my control colours. Aggressive decks can use their disruptive tools as well. I'd like to have the decks fit pretty solidly into either aggro/tempo or control and few mindrangey decks that do not include Green. What do aggressive decks look like in cubes with no 2/1s for 1?
Keep an eye on your aggro 1-drops actually. They bring balance to my micro...if it weren't for them, drafting would basically just be "which creature is the biggest in this pack" and games owuld play as land land land land land bomb win.
As far as making a distinction between aggro and control, I think its more likely you find a middle ground for fringe control colors and decide on one or two guilds as your "control" guilds. For me:
WU: Tempo (bounce-related tempo)
UB: Control (counter magic, tempo, removal)
BR: "Rock" (removal, burn, discard, hard-hitting creatures)
RG: Aggro (obvious)
GW: Mid-Range (lots of bouncing going on, making use of W and G's etb triggers)
WB: "Rock" (white does a lot of bouncing which plays well with black's EtB effects)
UR: Counterburn Aggro (Use blue's tempo spells and red's burn to clear the way for attacking)
BG: "Rock" (Threshold)
RW: Aggro (Utilizes the lower end of the white curve and evasive creatures)
GU: Tempo (Tempo+Threshold)
Basically my Dimir section is my only real "control" guild. Fringe control guilds like WU, UR, GU are all tempo based control. It's difficult to support all guilds and you have to pick cards that can fit multiple archetypes.
Affinity
Legacy:
GBCombo Elves
EDH:
GEzuri, Renegade Leader's Elf Ball
Cube:
180 Peasant Micro Cube
That said, a 4 person, multiplayer Fiora plane-cube sounds like it'd be a really cool, thematic experience! At 180 cards, I'd probably only include ~5 conspiracies and draft constructs, and maybe a smattering of draft matters cards in WUBRG. It'd probably be real easy to just buy a 1/2 box of both conspiracy 1 & 2, and then build a microcube out of the left overs.
"Personally I love high-riak, low-reqars gambles. Life's best with a decent amount of riak. And f*** reqars."
I was actually thinking even without doing multiplayer. Something like cogwork librarian should be simple enough to slot in, though its worth wont be as great since I do 5 packs of 9
Affinity
Legacy:
GBCombo Elves
EDH:
GEzuri, Renegade Leader's Elf Ball
Cube:
180 Peasant Micro Cube
General Archetypes:
* UW - Fliers/bounce
* UB - Control/reanimator
* RB - aggro
* GR - Aggro
* GW - tokens
* BW - aristocrats
* GB - The rock/reanimator
* UG - tempo/ramp
* UR - spells matter
* RW - aggro tokens
If I try to archetype as Shards and Wedges:
* BUG - Sultai Reanimator (and I feel this might be the strongest combination/endgame)
* BUR - Grixis Control
* BUW - Esper Fliers/Tokens/Aristocrats
* GBW - Abzan Aristocrats
* GRW - Naya Tokens
* RUG - Temur Midrange
* WRB - Mardu Tokens/Aristocrats
* GRB - Jund Aggro/Midrange
* RWU - Jeskai Fliers/Control
* GWU - Bant Flicker/Tokens/Midrange
As you can see, several archetypes revolve around Tokens, and that could be my problem here.
* If I had to choose tokens to splash in Colors with white, which should it be only?
* What other archetypes are playable in Peasant cubes? I know I'm missing the +1/+1 counters archetypes, and I'm considering it now.
* Are there any cards you would consider staples that I'm missing?
* Are there any hidden gems in Peasant cards that you think I should try out?
Thanks in advance for any advice!
Affinity
Legacy:
GBCombo Elves
EDH:
GEzuri, Renegade Leader's Elf Ball
Cube:
180 Peasant Micro Cube
White and Black seems like a strong choice for tokens. You have the anthem effects in White and the need for sacrifice targets in Black. I do support the idea of narrowing the tokens.
I will be drafting your cube in my group of four this Tuesday. Looking forward to provide you some hands on feedback.
Actually Red and white is the more centralized token strategy. Im also considering dropping Trostani's summoner for Juniper order ranger. The summoner is quite a bomb, either in tokens/reanimator/flicker strategies.
I hope it goes well, can't wait for the feedback!
Affinity
Legacy:
GBCombo Elves
EDH:
GEzuri, Renegade Leader's Elf Ball
Cube:
180 Peasant Micro Cube
The decks we played:
Black-Green: Midrange with a lot of removal. Had some components for reanimator but not enough to make it reliable. A strong deck even without critical mass on the reanimator theme.
Mono-Blue: Blue was left alone so this player decided to cut all red cards and go for Blue only. Struggled to stay alive in most matches.
White-Green: Very creature-heavy deck with a very few spells (mostly pump spells). Played many creatures but was victim to removal and other spells in most matches.
White-Black: Both sacrifice theme and token theme. One of the stronger decks in the draft.
No one played red.
I think some cards can be swapped for more utility cards but I need more drafts before any suggesting any replacements. Token theme worked out okay, and maybe not so prevalent because red was missing. Black could need more discard outlets to power reanimator. I discovered too late I should have been in Blue-Black to really support the them.
Wuhooo my cubes got fans! haha, thanks for the feedback!
I absolutely agree on black needing discard outlets for reanimator. But I guess instead of having it in its color, it can splash blue or green for it. For green there is already Borderland Explorer and Noose constrictor. Adding Greenseeker or Llanowar mentor (in for Beastbreaker of Bala Ged) and Raven's Crime (in for Hymn to Tourach) should help out the archetype, but it definitely needs one more in Black. Perhaps Bog Witch, Plague Witch, Undertaker and Skirk Ridge Exhumer are all possible choices (if you see, you will realize they are all spellshapers).
I'm very surprised no one utilized Red. Its quite the beast as I've trimmed down a lot on lifegain shenanigans. The Blue player should definitely have splashed for it for removal and some early pressure (UR is the spells matters archetype). The BW player could have splashed as well for some token producers (Goblin trenches, hordeling outburst) and Goblin Bombardment would have helped.
What utility spells were you thinking?
Also I waa thinking of adding and testing 20 cards to the overall cube, giving 50 cards to each player to build decks (5 packs of 10), though that could dilute the Cube
Affinity
Legacy:
GBCombo Elves
EDH:
GEzuri, Renegade Leader's Elf Ball
Cube:
180 Peasant Micro Cube
I am thinking of bumping up the card count to 216, each player getting 54 cards instead of the normal 45. While testing I discovered that it can be difficult to finalize the last 2-3 cards of your deck, forcing players to dip into a fourth color or use sub optimal cards to finish the deck.
At the moment I have the guildgates, tri-lands, vivid cycle and 5 other lands for mana fixing but planning on switching to Pain, and Fast lands, Tri lands and maybe 5 or 10 Five color lands, because I want all archetypes viable and don't want to push control and mid range too much.
http://www.cubetutor.com/viewcube/72327
Gonna put this info to good use