MTG Salvation

As the title suggests, I want to refine and hone my skills in cube deckbuilding. I often find that I can draft a reasonable stack of cards, but sometimes I have trouble finding the optimal build.

Today I drafted the following and was unsure about which direction I should take it:



I came up with 3 different builds, but am unsure which is best. For reference this is a typical powered cube.

Can anyone give some feedback on how they would build this and/or come up with a list they feel is optimal? Thanks in advance!

The pool looks too shallow for WG aggro.

WG midrange would probably do fine.

For me, I'd be playing the ramp cards, utility cards and defensive pieces and play a GG/w ramp deck trying to get to Titan/Primus/Karn mana. I think it's the strongest build from this pool.

Thanks, that's encouraging feedback, as I too had Gw Ramp as my first of three options. My 2nd build was a GW midrange token deck that had some nice elements but also had some random and confusing things together in the same deck. My 3rd build was an attempt to make the ramp deck mono G, but it seemed I was adding worse cards, and the fixing seems sufficient for some white anyway.



What do you think of this build? Any specific changes?

Regarding Sideboard options:
Leap- vs decks trying to attrition you out.
Library- vs control decks where you can aggressively spend life for cards.
Crucible- vs land destruction heavy strategies.
Ravages and Plow- on the play vs other midrange/ramp/control decks that seem vulnerable to this kind of disruption.
Secure- vs control decks to have a post-wrath instant speed threat.

Thoughts on SB?

Random thought that came during deckbuilding: how many colorless sources would I want for Reality Smasher in a midrange version of this deck?

1 Channel
1 Sakura-Tribe Elder
1 Kodama's Reach
1 Hedron Archive
1 Brushland
1 Wastes

Would this be sufficient? Would I even want some of these cards in a midrange beatdown shell? Still confused about this one.

Cheers!

I think part of the issue looking at how you asked this question, is that you are not drafting correctly. Cube, like most formats requires you draft a coherent strategy. And because all the cards in cube are so powerful, the important thing is to have synergy, you should be building a deck as you draft, not have a bunch of reasonable cards at the end to make a seal deck with. At end of draft you should be asking yourself questions like "which removal spells do I want to play" not "what deck should I make"

Now for this specific deck, I would cut the Qasali pridemage, Voice of Resurgence and blade Splicer for Sylvan library, Plow Under and secure the waste.
Looking at your pool I actually think there are very few white cards worth playing, and changing your mana base for more forest to make Refellos even stronger i think have merit. The 3 creature card I suggest cutting because they are all aggro/mid range value creature, but your deck is not interested in that fight, its interested in casting turn 2 rofellos into turn 3 titan and turn 4 karn. You are not looking to grind them out with value dudes, you go over the top of them. Sylvan library is one of the best cards in magic especially with a deck with this many shuffle effects. One of ramp's problem is that you need to draw both ramp and fatty together, and library help a lot with this area. Plow Under is a very powerful tempo play if you get off the board fast with mana dorks, Turn 1 Treespeaker, level it on turn 2 and casting Plow under on turn 3 will frequently end the game against all but the most aggresive decks. Lastly I thought secure the waste is a good way to leverage excess mana late game also as a good response to sweeper which this deck is a bit weak to.

Lastly Channel Looks like it should be good in this deck, but you have a lot of green costs so I am not sure on it. but you already have 21 mana source as is, anymore feels like you will be prone to flooding out, but 15 lands isnt really an option as well. Unless we cut elder for channel?

Another direction you can take is go Crucible/Burning/Ravage but that seems much harder to pull off

Thanks for the response Crimson, I will give your words some thought!

Cheers

I would do a bunch of practice drafts on CubeTutor & work on building decks from those. Post some decks from there & we can give easy feedback. That will help you a lot.

I'd also recommend doing team drafts (2v2, 3v3 or 4v4). You still play 1v1 games but the deckbuilding portion you're able to discuss strategies and get assistance during that (but you do not share card pools). This helps a lot if you have some more experienced players in your group.