Heya Guys, I've been reading all the debate regarding theaters and R/P/S interactions and it's given me some food for thought. But first a bit of background to give some context.
The majority of the time my cube is drafted with just me and my wife, we have tended to use tenchester drafts and it's worked well with our decks being pretty focussed. I'm thinking of moving more towards pancake drafting as it's been fun in the past. We still see ~1/2 the cube so archetypes are viable but not as guaranteed as with seeing 360/450 cards. It also means we can end up fighting over a colour or managing to work out the other deck and cut them with the discards.
Anyway, recently it's started feeling a bit like Blue just wins (what's new eh?) and with the recent discussions I've had a think about it. I'm naturally a control player and end up in UW control a lot unless I make a deliberate effort to avoid that deck. My wife likes stompy green decks with a decent amount of ramp, generally paired with red or white since I tend to cut blue and she's not keen on the feel of a lot of black's cards - which is something I should probably work on but she's not interested in the design and balance of cube so getting enough info is hard.
The high level reasons for my problems are that she drafts mid-range which I do agree is slightly unfavoured vs control, additionally, I'm a more experienced player than she is and due to spending a lot of time here, I have a greater understanding of the many subtle interations in cube. This has resulted in her losing a lot more than she wins which is starting to get a bit dull for us both. Funnily, in the first few months of my cube existing I would always win game 1, then get destroyed in every subsequent game once she'd seen what her deck did.
Her description of the current situation was "draft blue or a draft aggro or draft chaff for you to munch on." Drafting a fast aggro deck would punish my control tendancies but I can see that coming in a tenchester draft and adapt (another reason that pancake will be a good change). So when I mentioned the idea of supporting tempo in blue she liked the idea provided she was allowed to play blue too and also suggested that while giving "my" colour some new toys that I should also try and help her one out - which seemed reasonable.
This is where I turn for some advice. Has anyone had similar issues and what kind of cards are good to run to help green fight back? It may also be a case of ideas to minimise getting stuck in these decks (I do try and force others now and again).
Thanks for any help ppl can give.
TL;DR - Blue control decks keep stomping on green rampy ones, what can be done to help green/lessen blue's overbearance?
EDIT: My cube list is slightly out of date and I working on mods before updating the list. If people want to see my list to help then I'll post what I've been running up til now.
I try to encourage graveyard strategies. Some of them are slow but that isn't a huge problem unless you are running a really fast environment.
Genesis is the one that comes to mind right away. I also like masked admirers. Persist dudes like kitchen finks are awesome especially if you can find ways to recur them. Vengevine too.
Green ramp/stompy certainly isn't going to do well versus wrath and counters, but moving more towards graveyard shenanigans will help a lot.
Thanks for the idea, sounds interesting, I do like messing with the graveyard (my gold cube has a full on dregde archetype supported).
I'm already running all cards mentioned except Masked Admirers, well Genesis was already down from coming back after a brief hiatus. Do you run the admirers? Deadwood Treefolk is a pet card of mine which can keep supplying threats. But these all feel painfully slow.
Plow Under is a bit of a nightmare for control, especially on turn 3 or 4 from some ramp, would Stunted Growth do similar or does the choice in ordering them nulify a fair bit of the effect?
Card advantage engines (Genesis is a control slayer! :)) and green aggro decks.
Green ramp decks will always be bad against counterspells. You can't really fix that. But you can diversify green so that the color as a whole isn't pigeonholed into playing midrange all the time.
Thanks for the feedback guys, I'm already running a lot of the cards mentioned so maybe part of the issue is valuing the wrong cards for the match-up.
Eidolon: Why do you say that I can't get a critical mass of green aggro? Green may not have as good reach as red or the removal of black and white but it's aggro creatures are still reasonable, and its not like we'd run mono-green aggro.
When people advise engine cards, I'm assuming that cards like Survival of the Fittest, Genesis, Mimic Vat are the usual suspects? Any others that I'm failing to think of?
My wife likes the idea of messing around with the graveyard, thinks it seems fun and slow, but I guess that is in line with how Eidolon suggests making mid-range more controlly, by going for the long, grindy game.
Good fun, hidden information style draft is nice for heads-up and you see 198 cards so our decks tend to be pretty decent. It's also pretty quick to draft once you get the pattern into your head. Have fun.
Eidolon: Thanks, I guess I have a few cards which churn out token every turn which I hadn't thought of as an engine. Additionally, I think I agree regarding green aggro, a cube can have a bunch of reasonable small green creatures to beat with but the attraction to green will be weak due to the lack of removal and disruption which the other colours provide.
The majority of the time my cube is drafted with just me and my wife, we have tended to use tenchester drafts and it's worked well with our decks being pretty focussed. I'm thinking of moving more towards pancake drafting as it's been fun in the past. We still see ~1/2 the cube so archetypes are viable but not as guaranteed as with seeing 360/450 cards. It also means we can end up fighting over a colour or managing to work out the other deck and cut them with the discards.
Anyway, recently it's started feeling a bit like Blue just wins (what's new eh?) and with the recent discussions I've had a think about it. I'm naturally a control player and end up in UW control a lot unless I make a deliberate effort to avoid that deck. My wife likes stompy green decks with a decent amount of ramp, generally paired with red or white since I tend to cut blue and she's not keen on the feel of a lot of black's cards - which is something I should probably work on but she's not interested in the design and balance of cube so getting enough info is hard.
The high level reasons for my problems are that she drafts mid-range which I do agree is slightly unfavoured vs control, additionally, I'm a more experienced player than she is and due to spending a lot of time here, I have a greater understanding of the many subtle interations in cube. This has resulted in her losing a lot more than she wins which is starting to get a bit dull for us both. Funnily, in the first few months of my cube existing I would always win game 1, then get destroyed in every subsequent game once she'd seen what her deck did.
Her description of the current situation was "draft blue or a draft aggro or draft chaff for you to munch on." Drafting a fast aggro deck would punish my control tendancies but I can see that coming in a tenchester draft and adapt (another reason that pancake will be a good change). So when I mentioned the idea of supporting tempo in blue she liked the idea provided she was allowed to play blue too and also suggested that while giving "my" colour some new toys that I should also try and help her one out - which seemed reasonable.
This is where I turn for some advice. Has anyone had similar issues and what kind of cards are good to run to help green fight back? It may also be a case of ideas to minimise getting stuck in these decks (I do try and force others now and again).
Thanks for any help ppl can give.
TL;DR - Blue control decks keep stomping on green rampy ones, what can be done to help green/lessen blue's overbearance?
EDIT: My cube list is slightly out of date and I working on mods before updating the list. If people want to see my list to help then I'll post what I've been running up til now.
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Genesis is the one that comes to mind right away. I also like masked admirers. Persist dudes like kitchen finks are awesome especially if you can find ways to recur them. Vengevine too.
Green ramp/stompy certainly isn't going to do well versus wrath and counters, but moving more towards graveyard shenanigans will help a lot.
http://riptidelab.com/forum/threads/modular-cube-5-colors.800/
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http://riptidelab.com/forum/threads/retro-combo-cube.1454/
I'm already running all cards mentioned except Masked Admirers, well Genesis was already down from coming back after a brief hiatus. Do you run the admirers? Deadwood Treefolk is a pet card of mine which can keep supplying threats. But these all feel painfully slow.
Plow Under is a bit of a nightmare for control, especially on turn 3 or 4 from some ramp, would Stunted Growth do similar or does the choice in ordering them nulify a fair bit of the effect?
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Green ramp decks will always be bad against counterspells. You can't really fix that. But you can diversify green so that the color as a whole isn't pigeonholed into playing midrange all the time.
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http://riptidelab.com/forum/threads/modular-cube-5-colors.800/
Retro combo cube thread
http://riptidelab.com/forum/threads/retro-combo-cube.1454/
Eidolon: Why do you say that I can't get a critical mass of green aggro? Green may not have as good reach as red or the removal of black and white but it's aggro creatures are still reasonable, and its not like we'd run mono-green aggro.
When people advise engine cards, I'm assuming that cards like Survival of the Fittest, Genesis, Mimic Vat are the usual suspects? Any others that I'm failing to think of?
My wife likes the idea of messing around with the graveyard, thinks it seems fun and slow, but I guess that is in line with how Eidolon suggests making mid-range more controlly, by going for the long, grindy game.
Thanks for the help.
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Good fun, hidden information style draft is nice for heads-up and you see 198 cards so our decks tend to be pretty decent. It's also pretty quick to draft once you get the pattern into your head. Have fun.
Eidolon: Thanks, I guess I have a few cards which churn out token every turn which I hadn't thought of as an engine. Additionally, I think I agree regarding green aggro, a cube can have a bunch of reasonable small green creatures to beat with but the attraction to green will be weak due to the lack of removal and disruption which the other colours provide.
Thanks.
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