I run a 540 cube, going up to 720 for next weekend. There are a few cards in my cube that I know are, or at least, can be, very powerful. I would describe them as "engine cards". No one is drafting them or playing them. They get passed to me, I pass them too, and I haven't seen played at all. These are the cards:
Land Tax
Necropotence
Life from the Loam
Upheaval
Fastbond
Kiki Jiki, Mirror Breaker / Splinter Twin / Intruder Alarm
Squee, Goblin Nabob
I'm sure there are some others; I will update the post if I remember them. The last time I had this issue is when I cut Yawgmoth's will because it's not as good in unpowered cube and I wasn't interested in shoving cards around to make space for a storm deck. However, these cards I would be willing to switch a few cards in and out. But I have no idea how to make them relevant as a cube designer and I'm not sure how to successfully draft a deck around them as a player.
Land Tax has synergies with cards like Scroll Rack, JtMS, Forbid, Molten Vortex (although I don't run that right now)... cards that can either turn 3 lands effectively into 3 extra cards drawn or cards that need a lot of discarding. These 2 card "combos" rarely come together, take a while to set up when they do, and they don't necessarily win the game.
Necropotence can work kind of like a 1 sided wheel effect in a black based aggro deck but other than that, idk. People play Sylvan library way more than Necro in my cube. If black had A LOT more/better lifegain cards I could see this working out pretty well but it doesn't so idk :/. The necro decks of old all had 4x dark ritual and 4x drain life or something like that but that isn't realistic for cube.
Life from the Loam. yeah, strip mine is bonkers, but what else? Getting back fetchlands is also nice but that doesn't actually ramp you. Just like Land tax, there are some synergies here and there but they are with specific cards, not something that can enable an archetype from what I have seen out of cube.
I have tried to draft Upheaval multiple times and I've been burned every time; I've also handily beaten the one other player who used it against me. I now view it as a trap, which I know is incorrect, but that's kind of what happens. Ramp a lot into upheaval floating a lot of mana then re-deploy all the mana acceleration WEE!!! except you have to also have a follow up threat to close out the game before they re-develop and they have to not have any removal for your mana dorks/rocks. Seems like a really inefficient combo deck whenever I play it.
Fastbond is the least under drafted card on this list. It's obviously powerful and sees play BUT I don't really have enough to bring out its full potential. Meloku and Crucible and Life from the Loam w/ fetches... meh. It plays pretty much the same as exploration or burgeoning does. Wouldn't mind seeing it do more.
Kiki is the most hate drafted card in my cube I think. Consequently, this deck doesn't come together that often. When it does, you have to draw one of these 3 cards with the others that pair with them and it usually doesn't actually work out in practice that way. I know how to make this better I can obviously just run more cards that combo with them and may double up on Kiki or whatever. Or should I just cut them all? I notice a lot of cubes don't run them and I assume this is the reason, but the MTGO legacy cube does and I hear this is/was a top deck.
Squee: works well with looters I guess but how many cube cards really want to discard exactly 1 card every turn to do something powerful? Survival of the fittest is pretty much all I can think of but it's not like that card needs any help from Squee to be powerful.
I would like to have a recognizable "Loam deck" etc in the same way you could have a "Birthing Pod" deck or "reanimator" deck. I am more than willing to break singleton, I already do that anyway. But after looking up lots of constructed decks for some of these cards, there's only so many cards I can include especially when many of them aren't good in other decks. What am I doing wrong here?
Land Tax doesn't need to be drafted around to make it good. Just throw it in any non-aggro white deck, then enjoy hitting all your land drops all game long, and land thinning your deck to improve all your future draws.
I don't run Necropotence myself. I find the colour requirements to be too steep, and it's too easy to get stuck without enough life to draw cards with.
Life from the Loam has a ton of synergies. It doesn't need many of them to become solid. As you said, it's stupid with strip mine. It's great in any smokestack / braids, cabal minion deck. I also support a lands/aggro deck with Knight of the Reliquary, Titania, Protector of Argoth and The Gitrog Monster, where LftL is a core piece. You're right that if you only have fetches, it's not a tone of value, however it's a core piece in two of the archtypes I support, so I run it anyway. I'm also only running 465, so it may not make sense in a much larger cube, unless you're drafting most of the cube most times you play.
I don't run Fastbond either. I don't have any real support for the combo.
I cut Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker a while back because my group wasn't interested in the combo, and he's too expensive to run without it.
I'm still running Squee, Goblin Nabob, but it's one I'm not sure of. I personally haven't had the chance to play with him yet, so I'm not willing to cut him. I've heard enough good things that I want to try it more myself.
I love the land archetype stuff myself, Loam, Crucible, Titania, Gitrog, Oracle/Courser, Wildfire even, Tectonic Break is something I'm fond of in a ramp shell, Upheaval is bonkers with ramp for that matter. Sylvan Advocate, Life // Death, any land that turns into a creature, can be fun stuff. Land shenanigans are so fun, they add a dimension to the game and make an entire card type a lot more interesting. Titania also combos with Sylvan Safekeeper.
Necropotence is bad. It was good in standard, not in limited.
Kiki combos I am not really fond of. Kiki can be an okay card, I think Angel and Zealous are playable and Kiki is also good with a few other things like Witness, but I meh at alarm, pestermite, exarch, twin.
Tried Squee, didn't interact with many things in my environment, has the potential to be super sweet with a Lili or something but it is a really narrow card.
I'll second that Land Tax is not necessarily a build around card. Throw it into any midrange or control white deck and it will be good. The only synergy you need with it is basic lands in your deck.
I personally love Necropotence, but I know it's not for everyone. It's kind of a build around card in that you really need to be heavy black. I like it, though, because it fits nicely into any archetype as long as you can meet the black requirement. I personally love playing it in aggro decks as a way to refill my hand after playing out a few creatures. One drop, two drop, Necro, refill is a fantastic curve, IMO.
We actually recently cut Life From the Loam for all the reasons you stated. I kept trying to defend it to myself by saying it synergizes so well with fetches and man lands. And it's obviously nuts with Wasteland and Strip Mine. In all reality, though, the card just wasn't played here. Most of the time, I couldn't justify the slot in my 23 during deck building. Some day there might be enough synergies to warrant a lands archetype, but for now, I'm not unhappy with replacing it with something that I know will see more play.
I've been trapped by Upheaval in the past as well. I've taken it early and felt obligated to try to draft that specific deck only to end up with a weird midrange-y ramp thing. I've also had really good Upheaval based ramp decks that make 15 mana, cast Upheaval, play back out a few mana rocks and a dude only to have my opponent play a couple lands, a removal spell and come back to win. It happens. More than that, though, I play Upheaval in ramp decks. Sometimes you ramp out an Upheaval. Sometimes you ramp out a fatty. Either way you win by ramping into something. That something doesn't have to be Upheaval. It's just another ramp target in what should already be an efficient ramp deck.
Fastbond is fine, but not great. It's definitely cuttable. It's good when you have it early and can ramp yourself by a few turns. It's good when you have card draw and can take advantage of the ability. And finally, it's good when you can combo with something like Meloku. Outside of that it doesn't do very much at all. It's a very high variance card. I wouldn't fault people for running it, but I certainly wouldn't fault them for cutting it either.
Kiki-Jiki is a pet card for my group. We run Kiki, but we do not directly support Kiki/Twin combo decks. You might get the random Kiki/Resto or Kiki/Conscripts combo wins, but those aren't archetype defining. For us Kiki is mostly just a value card used to copy guys with ETB abilities or big finishers. I've seen people do well with the Kiki/Twin combo deck on MTGO. Just as many times, though, I've seen people pick one of the pieces early, try to force it, and end up with a UR pile of midrange stuff. I think it's popular because it's normally an auto-win when it comes together and because it's like playing a constructed deck in a limited format. The combo itself is not a deck I want to support in my own cube. It's high variance, easily hated out of the draft, and gives me the super feel bads when I lose to it.
We also cut Squee a few months back. He has a lot of synergies and I've seen him be pretty good in certain decks. I've combo'ed him with Recurring Nightmare, but that requires being able to cast him. He's good with Survival, but I think that's about his best synergy in most current cube builds. There's also Masticore, but that guy isn't all that great anymore anyway. Honestly, we was another card that was taking up space because he seems to be popular around these boards, but wasn't seeing play among my group. I don't find myself wishing I had a Squee in any of the decks I normally draft, so I don't miss him being in the cube.
Of the cards you listed, only Land Tax and Upheaval are true cube staples, IMO. Those cards don't really need to synergize with other cards or combo. They don't require much of you to be good and when they're good, they can be really powerful. The rest high variance cards that go into cube based on preference and taste.
The easiest way for an Upheaval deck to fall apart is not having enough mana rocks/elves in your deck/cube. You don't have a link to your cube in your signature, but Upheaval decks come together pretty consistently in my cube. My unpowered cube runs 17 mana rocks (10 Signets, both unpowered moxen, Mind Stone, Worn Powerstone, Coalition Relic, Hedron Archive, Thran Dynamo, Gilded Lotus). Decks with Upheaval need something to do for when they don't draw Upheaval to, so make sure your cube has plenty of fatties to ramp into and Wildfire/Burning of Xinye also help ramp decks lock down the game. Sometimes Upheaval just gets cast defensively when their opponent gets a faster start then they do, but that's fine because it turns a loss into a potential win.
For Kiki-Jiki combo, if you already also have Splinter Twin and those decks aren't coming together you might need more targets for redundancy. I run Restoration Angel, Pestermite, and Zealous Conscripts, and they seem to come together often enough, but if you need to go deeper Deceiver Exarch, Bounding Krasis, Great Oak Guardian, and Village Bell Ringer are all reasonable inclusions that can see play in non-combo decks. Having plenty of tutors and cantrips available will also help these decks come together. That said....
Kiki is the most hate drafted card in my cube I think.
If your playgroup hates the combo, don't run it. Kiki-Jiki, Splinter Twin, and Zealous Conscripts all take up slots in really competitive slots. Infinite combos are like catnip to the people I play with, but if that wasn't the case I'd have no trouble filling these slots with more versatile cards. I included it because my players actively requested it, and the demand went up when Twin was banned in Modern. I thought it was a trap at first, but Twin decks seem to 2-1 drafts pretty consistently and everyone gets a kick out of it when the combo comes together so it stays.
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Land Tax doesn't need to be drafted around to make it good. Just throw it in any non-aggro white deck, then enjoy hitting all your land drops all game long, and land thinning your deck to improve all your future draws.
Life from the Loam has a ton of synergies. It doesn't need many of them to become solid. As you said, it's stupid with strip mine. It's great in any smokestack / braids, cabal minion deck. I also support a lands/aggro deck with Knight of the Reliquary, Titania, Protector of Argoth and The Gitrog Monster, where LftL is a core piece. You're right that if you only have fetches, it's not a tone of value, however it's a core piece in two of the archtypes I support, so I run it anyway. I'm also only running 465, so it may not make sense in a much larger cube, unless you're drafting most of the cube most times you play.
What about the other 50% of the time that land tax does nothing b/c you're on the play? If you are a control deck, aren't you more likely to hit your land drops than an aggro deck where land tax isn't needed, thus making it worse?
Another archetype that never comes together despite there being support for it is the stax deck, or at least a deck with stax elements in it, which is probably related to my life from the loam issue. Maybe I need to just draft this deck and see how it runs. FTR, I have crucible, smokestack, braids, tanglewire, winter orb, static orb, lodestone golem, one of the spheres, sink hole, pilage, etc. I have more support for this than most cubes.
I've seen people do well with the Kiki/Twin combo deck on MTGO. Just as many times, though, I've seen people pick one of the pieces early, try to force it, and end up with a UR pile of midrange stuff. I think it's popular because it's normally an auto-win when it comes together and because it's like playing a constructed deck in a limited format. The combo itself is not a deck I want to support in my own cube. It's high variance, easily hated out of the draft, and gives me the super feel bads when I lose to it.
Mostly this. I'm told this is a top deck on MTGO. But I don't get how. I don't think anyone gets the feel bads when they lose to it in my cube, because it's cool and people usually have some way that they can respond to creatures in their decks, but that rarely ever happens b/c to lose to it presupposes that someone was successful at drafting it and drawing it in game. But both the MTGS cube comparison and cubetutor's average lists show that Kiki is widely used. Angel and Conscripts are on both as well. Exarch & mite are on cubetutor's 720 too.
The easiest way for an Upheaval deck to fall apart is not having enough mana rocks/elves in your deck/cube. You don't have a link to your cube in your signature, but Upheaval decks come together pretty consistently in my cube. My unpowered cube runs 17 mana rocks (10 Signets, both unpowered moxen, Mind Stone, Worn Powerstone, Coalition Relic, Hedron Archive, Thran Dynamo, Gilded Lotus). Decks with Upheaval need something to do for when they don't draw Upheaval to, so make sure your cube has plenty of fatties to ramp into
Kiki is the most hate drafted card in my cube I think.
If your playgroup hates the combo, don't run it.
I have all the rocks you listed plus chromatic lantern, basalt monolith and maybe 1 or 2 more and every 1 drop mana dork in green except Boreal Druid I think, plus Wild Growth and Utopia Sprawl. "Decks with Upheaval need something to do for when they don't draw Upheaval" <-- that right there is the issue. Whenever I draft upheaval I get in the mindset of a control deck b/c it's blue, but more tapout w/ green b/c ramp, and defense creatures like waterfront bouncer and courser of kruphix to survive aggro since UG doesn't have removal, and then a couple big fatties like sundering titan. and when it's all done I have a hodge podge and struggle to find 23 playable with 1 coherent strategy. Sometimes I assume that literally anything can win you the game after an upheaval but that's just not true. I assume no one else in my group knows hot to draft an upheaval deck either.
When I say hate-drafted, I don't mean that people hate the card or hate the deck, just that they counter draft it so it doesn't come together for someone else. An aggro deck might hate-draft a board wipe for example. but between this and sometimes 2 different people see some part of the combo so neither one gets it, I feel like I have enough support that it could come together every draft were it simple to put together.
I don't run those but suppose I add them for next weekend, then an upheaval deck is URG, and needs G early for mana dorks but needs double blue and double red high drops? And the red sweepers kill your mana dudes? How does that work?
Mana rocks are pretty important for both decks. Without mana rocks, I think Wildfire is a decent amount worse since your ramp is less reliable and often, as you imply, green-creature-based. Not an unwinnable/unbuildable strategy as green decks still have plenty of creatures that live through Wildfire, but a bit more difficult.
The deck w/o mana rocks is base-green, since you can usually draft enough fixing both through your lands and cultivates/etc. to make both of those spells work.
I've seen people do well with the Kiki/Twin combo deck on MTGO. Just as many times, though, I've seen people pick one of the pieces early, try to force it, and end up with a UR pile of midrange stuff. I think it's popular because it's normally an auto-win when it comes together and because it's like playing a constructed deck in a limited format. The combo itself is not a deck I want to support in my own cube. It's high variance, easily hated out of the draft, and gives me the super feel bads when I lose to it.
Mostly this. I'm told this is a top deck on MTGO. But I don't get how. I don't think anyone gets the feel bads when they lose to it in my cube, because it's cool and people usually have some way that they can respond to creatures in their decks, but that rarely ever happens b/c to lose to it presupposes that someone was successful at drafting it and drawing it in game. But both the MTGS cube comparison and cubetutor's average lists show that Kiki is widely used. Angel and Conscripts are on both as well. Exarch and Pestermite are on cubetutor's 720 too.
The Kiki/Twin deck is one of the top tier decks in our environment. I run all the pieces in my 420 cube (including Recruiter) so it's relatively easy to put the pieces together, and when key cards are hated you still oftentimes end up with a reasonably strong deck (winning decks that started down the Kiki/Twin path during the draft but ended up going another route due to missing pieces end up as Izzet tempo/control/counterburn, Grixis control or Jeskai spells matter).
Land Tax doesn't need to be drafted around to make it good. Just throw it in any non-aggro white deck, then enjoy hitting all your land drops all game long, and land thinning your deck to improve all your future draws.
What about the other 50% of the time that land tax does nothing b/c you're on the play? If you are a control deck, aren't you more likely to hit your land drops than an aggro deck where land tax isn't needed, thus making it worse?
If you're on the play, and never miss a land drop that your opponent doesn't also miss, you're in a good place, even with a dead card in hand. Sure you have some games where you're up against an aggro deck, you're on the play, and they stop playing lands after hitting three, and you really need to get to that fourth mana for your board wipe, then you're sad. However that doesn't make it a bad card, it just means it has some games where it's a dead draw, the same as most other cards in the cube. If you're really worried, side it out if you're on the play vs aggro.
Agreed. It's occasionally a dead draw in games where I'm on the play and hitting all my land drops. It's like an insurance policy when you're on the play, that IF you get behind, you can continue to make land drops. But when you're on the draw (or naturally behind on lands, or have a way to get Tax active like Gargadon or Skyfisher or something) the card is completely bonkers. Usually drawing somewhere between 3 and 9 cards for W.
This thread confuses me a bit. Most of the things discussed so far aren't "engine" cards, they are just very good cards that go into certain decks (or in the case of Land Tax - I would argue MOST white decks). An example of an engine card would be Molten Vortex which you could play with your Land Tax to create a sort of build-around engine. Not necessarily saying I would Cube Molten Vortex... Just using that as an example. Wildfire and Upheaval are sort of build-around, but in general they are great cards that go into a large umbrella of decks, and they are certainly not engine cards either.
Well of the 7 things listed, 5 are definitely engine cards. The other 2 (Upheaval and Kiki-twin-Alarm) I threw in b/c those also weren't coming together for me and I wanted advice but didn't want to make another thread. But most the discussion has centered around the 2 that aren't, plus land tax which apparently doesn't have to be.
Anyway, necro and squee are coming out I think.
Land Tax and Fastbond are difficult to get max use out of but they are both still playable so they stay.
Life from the Loam needs help but I want to keep it. I was thinking of trying out Constant Mists.
Land Tax
Necropotence
Life from the Loam
Upheaval
Fastbond
Kiki Jiki, Mirror Breaker / Splinter Twin / Intruder Alarm
Squee, Goblin Nabob
I'm sure there are some others; I will update the post if I remember them. The last time I had this issue is when I cut Yawgmoth's will because it's not as good in unpowered cube and I wasn't interested in shoving cards around to make space for a storm deck. However, these cards I would be willing to switch a few cards in and out. But I have no idea how to make them relevant as a cube designer and I'm not sure how to successfully draft a deck around them as a player.
Land Tax has synergies with cards like Scroll Rack, JtMS, Forbid, Molten Vortex (although I don't run that right now)... cards that can either turn 3 lands effectively into 3 extra cards drawn or cards that need a lot of discarding. These 2 card "combos" rarely come together, take a while to set up when they do, and they don't necessarily win the game.
Necropotence can work kind of like a 1 sided wheel effect in a black based aggro deck but other than that, idk. People play Sylvan library way more than Necro in my cube. If black had A LOT more/better lifegain cards I could see this working out pretty well but it doesn't so idk :/. The necro decks of old all had 4x dark ritual and 4x drain life or something like that but that isn't realistic for cube.
Life from the Loam. yeah, strip mine is bonkers, but what else? Getting back fetchlands is also nice but that doesn't actually ramp you. Just like Land tax, there are some synergies here and there but they are with specific cards, not something that can enable an archetype from what I have seen out of cube.
I have tried to draft Upheaval multiple times and I've been burned every time; I've also handily beaten the one other player who used it against me. I now view it as a trap, which I know is incorrect, but that's kind of what happens. Ramp a lot into upheaval floating a lot of mana then re-deploy all the mana acceleration WEE!!! except you have to also have a follow up threat to close out the game before they re-develop and they have to not have any removal for your mana dorks/rocks. Seems like a really inefficient combo deck whenever I play it.
Fastbond is the least under drafted card on this list. It's obviously powerful and sees play BUT I don't really have enough to bring out its full potential. Meloku and Crucible and Life from the Loam w/ fetches... meh. It plays pretty much the same as exploration or burgeoning does. Wouldn't mind seeing it do more.
Kiki is the most hate drafted card in my cube I think. Consequently, this deck doesn't come together that often. When it does, you have to draw one of these 3 cards with the others that pair with them and it usually doesn't actually work out in practice that way. I know how to make this better I can obviously just run more cards that combo with them and may double up on Kiki or whatever. Or should I just cut them all? I notice a lot of cubes don't run them and I assume this is the reason, but the MTGO legacy cube does and I hear this is/was a top deck.
Squee: works well with looters I guess but how many cube cards really want to discard exactly 1 card every turn to do something powerful? Survival of the fittest is pretty much all I can think of but it's not like that card needs any help from Squee to be powerful.
I would like to have a recognizable "Loam deck" etc in the same way you could have a "Birthing Pod" deck or "reanimator" deck. I am more than willing to break singleton, I already do that anyway. But after looking up lots of constructed decks for some of these cards, there's only so many cards I can include especially when many of them aren't good in other decks. What am I doing wrong here?
I don't run Necropotence myself. I find the colour requirements to be too steep, and it's too easy to get stuck without enough life to draw cards with.
Life from the Loam has a ton of synergies. It doesn't need many of them to become solid. As you said, it's stupid with strip mine. It's great in any smokestack / braids, cabal minion deck. I also support a lands/aggro deck with Knight of the Reliquary, Titania, Protector of Argoth and The Gitrog Monster, where LftL is a core piece. You're right that if you only have fetches, it's not a tone of value, however it's a core piece in two of the archtypes I support, so I run it anyway. I'm also only running 465, so it may not make sense in a much larger cube, unless you're drafting most of the cube most times you play.
I don't run Fastbond either. I don't have any real support for the combo.
I cut Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker a while back because my group wasn't interested in the combo, and he's too expensive to run without it.
I'm still running Squee, Goblin Nabob, but it's one I'm not sure of. I personally haven't had the chance to play with him yet, so I'm not willing to cut him. I've heard enough good things that I want to try it more myself.
Necropotence is bad. It was good in standard, not in limited.
Kiki combos I am not really fond of. Kiki can be an okay card, I think Angel and Zealous are playable and Kiki is also good with a few other things like Witness, but I meh at alarm, pestermite, exarch, twin.
Tried Squee, didn't interact with many things in my environment, has the potential to be super sweet with a Lili or something but it is a really narrow card.
I personally love Necropotence, but I know it's not for everyone. It's kind of a build around card in that you really need to be heavy black. I like it, though, because it fits nicely into any archetype as long as you can meet the black requirement. I personally love playing it in aggro decks as a way to refill my hand after playing out a few creatures. One drop, two drop, Necro, refill is a fantastic curve, IMO.
We actually recently cut Life From the Loam for all the reasons you stated. I kept trying to defend it to myself by saying it synergizes so well with fetches and man lands. And it's obviously nuts with Wasteland and Strip Mine. In all reality, though, the card just wasn't played here. Most of the time, I couldn't justify the slot in my 23 during deck building. Some day there might be enough synergies to warrant a lands archetype, but for now, I'm not unhappy with replacing it with something that I know will see more play.
I've been trapped by Upheaval in the past as well. I've taken it early and felt obligated to try to draft that specific deck only to end up with a weird midrange-y ramp thing. I've also had really good Upheaval based ramp decks that make 15 mana, cast Upheaval, play back out a few mana rocks and a dude only to have my opponent play a couple lands, a removal spell and come back to win. It happens. More than that, though, I play Upheaval in ramp decks. Sometimes you ramp out an Upheaval. Sometimes you ramp out a fatty. Either way you win by ramping into something. That something doesn't have to be Upheaval. It's just another ramp target in what should already be an efficient ramp deck.
Fastbond is fine, but not great. It's definitely cuttable. It's good when you have it early and can ramp yourself by a few turns. It's good when you have card draw and can take advantage of the ability. And finally, it's good when you can combo with something like Meloku. Outside of that it doesn't do very much at all. It's a very high variance card. I wouldn't fault people for running it, but I certainly wouldn't fault them for cutting it either.
Kiki-Jiki is a pet card for my group. We run Kiki, but we do not directly support Kiki/Twin combo decks. You might get the random Kiki/Resto or Kiki/Conscripts combo wins, but those aren't archetype defining. For us Kiki is mostly just a value card used to copy guys with ETB abilities or big finishers. I've seen people do well with the Kiki/Twin combo deck on MTGO. Just as many times, though, I've seen people pick one of the pieces early, try to force it, and end up with a UR pile of midrange stuff. I think it's popular because it's normally an auto-win when it comes together and because it's like playing a constructed deck in a limited format. The combo itself is not a deck I want to support in my own cube. It's high variance, easily hated out of the draft, and gives me the super feel bads when I lose to it.
We also cut Squee a few months back. He has a lot of synergies and I've seen him be pretty good in certain decks. I've combo'ed him with Recurring Nightmare, but that requires being able to cast him. He's good with Survival, but I think that's about his best synergy in most current cube builds. There's also Masticore, but that guy isn't all that great anymore anyway. Honestly, we was another card that was taking up space because he seems to be popular around these boards, but wasn't seeing play among my group. I don't find myself wishing I had a Squee in any of the decks I normally draft, so I don't miss him being in the cube.
Of the cards you listed, only Land Tax and Upheaval are true cube staples, IMO. Those cards don't really need to synergize with other cards or combo. They don't require much of you to be good and when they're good, they can be really powerful. The rest high variance cards that go into cube based on preference and taste.
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For Kiki-Jiki combo, if you already also have Splinter Twin and those decks aren't coming together you might need more targets for redundancy. I run Restoration Angel, Pestermite, and Zealous Conscripts, and they seem to come together often enough, but if you need to go deeper Deceiver Exarch, Bounding Krasis, Great Oak Guardian, and Village Bell Ringer are all reasonable inclusions that can see play in non-combo decks. Having plenty of tutors and cantrips available will also help these decks come together. That said....
If your playgroup hates the combo, don't run it. Kiki-Jiki, Splinter Twin, and Zealous Conscripts all take up slots in really competitive slots. Infinite combos are like catnip to the people I play with, but if that wasn't the case I'd have no trouble filling these slots with more versatile cards. I included it because my players actively requested it, and the demand went up when Twin was banned in Modern. I thought it was a trap at first, but Twin decks seem to 2-1 drafts pretty consistently and everyone gets a kick out of it when the combo comes together so it stays.
450 card Peasant cube thread. Draft it here.
What about the other 50% of the time that land tax does nothing b/c you're on the play? If you are a control deck, aren't you more likely to hit your land drops than an aggro deck where land tax isn't needed, thus making it worse?
Another archetype that never comes together despite there being support for it is the stax deck, or at least a deck with stax elements in it, which is probably related to my life from the loam issue. Maybe I need to just draft this deck and see how it runs. FTR, I have crucible, smokestack, braids, tanglewire, winter orb, static orb, lodestone golem, one of the spheres, sink hole, pilage, etc. I have more support for this than most cubes.
Mostly this. I'm told this is a top deck on MTGO. But I don't get how. I don't think anyone gets the feel bads when they lose to it in my cube, because it's cool and people usually have some way that they can respond to creatures in their decks, but that rarely ever happens b/c to lose to it presupposes that someone was successful at drafting it and drawing it in game. But both the MTGS cube comparison and cubetutor's average lists show that Kiki is widely used. Angel and Conscripts are on both as well. Exarch & mite are on cubetutor's 720 too.
I have all the rocks you listed plus chromatic lantern, basalt monolith and maybe 1 or 2 more and every 1 drop mana dork in green except Boreal Druid I think, plus Wild Growth and Utopia Sprawl. "Decks with Upheaval need something to do for when they don't draw Upheaval" <-- that right there is the issue. Whenever I draft upheaval I get in the mindset of a control deck b/c it's blue, but more tapout w/ green b/c ramp, and defense creatures like waterfront bouncer and courser of kruphix to survive aggro since UG doesn't have removal, and then a couple big fatties like sundering titan. and when it's all done I have a hodge podge and struggle to find 23 playable with 1 coherent strategy. Sometimes I assume that literally anything can win you the game after an upheaval but that's just not true. I assume no one else in my group knows hot to draft an upheaval deck either.
When I say hate-drafted, I don't mean that people hate the card or hate the deck, just that they counter draft it so it doesn't come together for someone else. An aggro deck might hate-draft a board wipe for example. but between this and sometimes 2 different people see some part of the combo so neither one gets it, I feel like I have enough support that it could come together every draft were it simple to put together.
I think Necropotence is getting the boot.
I don't run those but suppose I add them for next weekend, then an upheaval deck is URG, and needs G early for mana dorks but needs double blue and double red high drops? And the red sweepers kill your mana dudes? How does that work?
The deck w/o mana rocks is base-green, since you can usually draft enough fixing both through your lands and cultivates/etc. to make both of those spells work.
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1 + discard 7 + exile 32. 7 cards left in library?
My 630 Card Powered Cube
My Article - "Cube Design Philosophy"
My Article - "Mana Short: A study in limited resource management."
My 50th Set (P)review - Discusses my top 20 Cube cards from OTJ!
Anyway, necro and squee are coming out I think.
Land Tax and Fastbond are difficult to get max use out of but they are both still playable so they stay.
Life from the Loam needs help but I want to keep it. I was thinking of trying out Constant Mists.
I don't recommend that. It doesn't win games, it just makes them take longer.
450 card Peasant cube thread. Draft it here.