MTG Salvation

I'm new to cubing and I am building a 400 card unpowered cube for 4 players.
I had a question regarding archetypes:
If two colors have somewhat overlapping archetypes, is that too overpowered?

For example I like to have drain in black and some burn in red. I am afraid that when combined, it might be too powerful.

Thoughts on this from people who actually have experience?

Quote from Wildfire393

No, in fact, you WANT colors to have overlapping strategies, so that players can play multiple colors in the same deck.

This. I have both in mine (which is coincidentally also 400) - burn like Red Sun's Zenith and Fanning the Flames, and black drain like Exsanguinate and Urborg Syphon-Mage... never been a problem.

What do you guys think of the Orzhov mythic just spoiled?


Our Orzhov section looks like this:

• Angel of Despair
  
• Debtors' Knell
  
• Identity Crisis
  
• Orzhov Signet
  
• Vindicate

I could conceivably see this replacing Identity Crisis, but are there other Orzhov cards I might be missing?

Given your current list, I might swap out identity crisis for her, but that's mainly because IC is such a unfun card to lay on a single opponent, IMO.

Overall I think DP Angel is a mediocre creature (somewhat wrath resilient, not great p/t for cost + rarity), and not even close to as good as her sister.

My own orzhov section looks like this:



I'm waiting for gatecrash + sorin vs tibalt to come out, to provide some new options. Death Grasp and Necromancer's Covenant would certainly get cut in favor of (inexpensive) Sorin, and/or nifty new rav cards.

EDIT: revised opinion on DP Angel ~ love the art, very disappointed by the card. At least considering the current state of spoilers, this should have been a rare, not a mythic.

Quote from Theogony_IX

What do you guys think of the Orzhov mythic just spoiled?

Our Orzhov section looks like this:

• Angel of Despair
  
• Debtors' Knell
  
• Identity Crisis
  
• Orzhov Signet
  
• Vindicate

I could conceivably see this replacing Identity Crisis, but are there other Orzhov cards I might be missing?

Mine is currently Unmake / Death Grasp / Angel of Despair / Vish Kal, Blood Arbiter (the Signet is in too, hiding out in my artifact section). I'll be upping this to five cards once Gatecrash is out.

I'd be running Debtors' Knell and Vindicate if I had them, so they're undoubtedly somewhere in the top five. Angel of Despair should be there too, and perhaps Sorin, Lord of Innistrad. From there, it's a bit of crapshoot.
Surprisingly, I typed the above paragraph before checking the MP/EDH Power Rankings results, and then went and looked... and they agreed with me. Those four cards came out as the top four. Souls of the Faultless was voted fifth... it's not bad, but there are a million things I'd run ahead of it in cube.
Unmake and Mortify are both worthy, but they're duplicating Vindicate for you. I have a certain fondness for Vish Kal, Blood Arbiter... he's pretty good once he's out (certainly ahead of the spoilt GTC angel). About the only other things I'd maybe consider are Divinity of Pride, Unburial Rites and the Death Grasp I have in my list (it's really just an off-colour burn spell, but it's a good, swingy one).

From the Gatecrash cards spoilt today...

Quote from CadaverousBl00m

From the Gatecrash cards spoilt today...

Are these two pretty much autoincludes in your cube?
Gideon is more likely to get to his ultimate with more players about, and the Aberration is a Sewer Nemesis on steroids in a weak guild.

I don't think I'll be including either gideon or the horror in my edh cube; sewer nemesis, mortivore, and lord of extinction are enough graveyard dudes for now. In u/b, Nightveil Specter I think deserves a test. Personally, I'll probably sub it in over sphinx summoner, which has never adequately pulled its own weight for my group.

Other things that are jumping out at me right now:

The new hellkite ~ I added mycosynth lattice to my cube recently, and the dragon will make for another nice combo win-condition, as well as generally back up Karrythus(sp?) and Kaalia options.

The new ghost council is absolutely replacing it's older incarnation, which was pretty much just a placeholder for an actually decent b/w option. Hopefully dragon's maze gives us another usable option at rare/mythic, because Teysa is another general that I think the cube format doesn't do justice to.

I can't imagine wizards not designing the new simic guild leader without some commander options in mind. Unless they somehow make her problematic to play in the format, I'm sure she'll immediately replace edric in my cube.

I know this is all a bit early, but I'm pretty excited so far by gatecrash's options. Hopefully it doesn't pull a dark ascension on us!

Deathrite Shaman is amazing because it's a mana dork in Black/X decks. The burn/lifegain aspects of the card are fine but the real value comes from the early acceleration in my opinion. I think that the card is at its worst in Green decks (big surprise) but I love what it can do for UB decks for example.

The new Gideon wouldn't make the cut in my cubes. It doesn't do anything relevant. It's just going to draw aggro and die. The aberration seems fine. It's another big "The Abyss" spell against someone and blocks well. If it ever connects that's GG but I mean there's plenty of things that can prevent that from happening.

Deathpact Angel seems stone unplayable. She's a hard-to-cast 6 mana 5/5 flier with a blank line of text in my eyes. It wastes too much time and mana for something that isn't even worthwhile in my mind.

The new Ghost Council also seems very bad. He's a purely aggressive card because if you're not exiling him then he's just a 5/5 for 5 (which is obviously unplayable). I'd rather field something that could still be powerful defensively and he just plain never will be.

I don't like Clique but the real issue in that Blue doesn't have great 3 drops. Hunted Phantasm and Phyrexian Metamorph are the 2 big ones that come to mind but I mean realistically it doesn't have tons of great creature plays at that CMC. Clique is a 3 power flier with a decent effect. it's not an amazing card but the alternatives aren't any better so...

Quote from Cz

I don't like Clique but the real issue in that Blue doesn't have great 3 drops. Hunted Phantasm and Phyrexian Metamorph are the 2 big ones that come to mind but I mean realistically it doesn't have tons of great creature plays at that CMC. Clique is a 3 power flier with a decent effect. it's not an amazing card but the alternatives aren't any better so...

My blue 3-drop section is pretty strong - Ertai, Barrin, Kira, Jace's Archivist and Daring Apprentice.
Are you talking in terms of the physical pain it can dish out along with the control factor? Because, speaking in an overall sense, Ertai, Barrin and Kira are very strong blue creatures.

Don't for Thada Adel, Acquisitor for EDH cubes. I'm not sure how important artifacts are for a regular multiplayer game, but stealing a Sol Ring or even something like a Mind's Eye from an opponent's library is pretty sweet in our EDH games.

EDIT: I thought the Aberration had to connect in order to get the mill, but all you have to do is cast a non-creature spell. That is pretty amazing. The mill is what the card would really be in my cube for anyway. I'm really stoked to have that guy for my Mimeoplasm decks now.

What are your thoughts on fast mana? There is a thread for 1vs1, but I'm not sure it applies for MP.
Sure, Sol Ring is too good, but what about the one shot one (Mana Vault and Grim Monolith)?
In my mind they are fine. Sure it means you have a 6 drop on turn 3, but there are (in my case) 3 other players to take out the threat.

Speaking of fast mana, is Mana Drain overpowered? It seems very very strong, but too much so?

I agree with Toad about fast mana + mana drain; when you have to divide your attention and resources between 2+ opponents, very few cards remain overpowered. The political and resource-management dynamics of multiplayer really change certain cards' relative power level.

In Wildfire and my personal edh cube, we've both included certain cards that are banned in constructed edh (recurring nightmare, fastbond, panoptic mirror, etc) , using the assumption that drafting will make them harder to abuse.

Quote from Toad

All these are fine. I actually disagree that Sol Ring is too strong. In a, say, 5 players game, leading with a Turn 1 Sol Ring means the game becomes 4vs1 right away. That's a very very harsh drawback, as that's a fight you can't really win. Politics balance fast mana very well. Same for Mana Drain.

Quoted for truthery.
I had a mate who tried to bring the full Academy deck to our multiplayer table back in the day. And he'd dump all his fast mana, inevitably get close to going off for the kill but not quite... and then never get a Turn 2, no matter how hard he tried. The faster you start, the quicker you become The Threat.

I'd like to add my undying love for Mana Vault. It's in my cube, it's undervalued by my friends, and it's wonderful.

Thanks for the insight. I was pretty sure that the one shot fast mana was fine. I am surprised that Sol Ring isn't too abusive, but I will take your word for it (and happily add my Juzam Djinn altered Beta one to the cube :D).

It even appears to be a cycle:
http://www.mtgsalvation.com/gatecrash-spoiler.html#6734

Better make some room in your 7 drop department!

I'm excited to see the rest of the cycle. It looks like edh candy, big time.

I really wish they'd push more interesting things in red for edh. Spell copying, Heat Shimmer repeatable effects, stuff like that. Hmm, the red one could be a Mass Mutiny on legs.

If you support tokens at all in red, I think Five Alarm Fire makes a good utility card. It's a basically a pseudo-anthem for 1/1 creatures, with some upsides and downsides of a traditional +1/+1 anthem.

I was trying to find the information, but did not succeed:
What type of average CC should I be looking for for my cube?
I am sure there are many variables to take into consideration to answer, but a ballpark figure would help greatly.

Right now, I think I am quite a bit too high with around 3.75CC average.

It is just so hard to cut the good high end stuff

Quote from Miaou

I was trying to find the information, but did not succeed:
What type of average CC should I be looking for for my cube?
I am sure there are many variables to take into consideration to answer, but a ballpark figure would help greatly.

Right now, I think I am quite a bit too high with around 3.75CC average.

It is just so hard to cut the good high end stuff

Do you have a regular multiplayer cube or an EDH cube?

It's a MP cube

Quote from Miaou

It's a MP cube

One of the multiplayer cube guys should be able to help you out. I run an EDH cube, and it has an average cmc of something like 4.5.



Some cool new gatecrach cards for EDH Boros sections. The links below will actually work by the way.

Aurelia's Fury
This thing can really set up your alpha strike. I'm not sure it's an auto-include, but we've found X spells to be pretty good in the big mana edh environment. It probably warrants some testing.

Assemble the Legion
Now this card looks like an auto-include. If left alone, it gets overwhelming pretty fast. It probably paints a target on you, but no more than most bombs would, and since the tokens have haste, wrath effects become useless to keep it in check after a short time.

Quote from Theogony_IX

One of the multiplayer cube guys should be able to help you out. I run an EDH cube, and it has an average cmc of something like 4.5.

Yeah, mine's above 4 too, from memory. I certainly wouldn't worry about breaking the mythical 4CC average.

Gotta love the white primordial... imagine it in a white/blue control build next to Venser!