I assumed there would be a thread on this already but I couldn't find it, feel free to merge/delete if so.
I recently included persist combo (persist creature/sac outlet/way to mess with counters) in my cube after resisting it for a while for gameplay reasons.
I think a handful of folks have also added it over the last few years and wanted to ask how it's been playing for people? Is it doing what you want it to? Any other general observations?
It hasn't really been happening with my group yet, but I think we're still learning how to draft & play it.
Thanks for any thoughts!
It is one of the more difficult archetypes to draft in the cube - You need to have a good idea of the color breakdown of the combo pieces + how to pivot include aristocrats into the deck.
The persist deck in theory the weakest archetype as none of the persist combo cards outside of Skullclamp/ Gaea's Cradle will make it into the top 50 best cube cards.
But in an experience draft pod, the persist deck in theory should perform at a similar level if not higher than the blue archetypes/ combo archetypes - the reason for this is the persist decks is almost always open as it is pieces aren't heavily fought over compared to blue based archetypes.
Its one of the those archetypes that aren't great but once the cube gets larger and the fast mana/ combos get less consistent, persist starts to shine.
It is archetype for a cube generally 450+ with the power 9 but good enough for a legacy cube.
I'm actively maintaining a comprehensive article to help explain to new cube players how some complex vintage level cards work in a cube environment. Vintage Cube Cards Explained
The only enabler I run at 360 is Grumgully, the Generous. I had 2 enablers before, the other being Good-fortune Unicorn, but found they weren't high enough draft picks to justify the need for redundancy of that narrow effect. There's plenty of options for enablers, though, so it can be run as large as 720+. I also have Heliod, Sun-Crowned, which only works with Kitchen Finks
It basically just shows up in GRxSurvival of the Fittest decks here as a way to give those decks a form of inevitability. I view it similarly to an upgraded form of the Reveillark + Karmic Guide combo.
We have an add-on for our 550 cube to bring it up to 720 when we get 8 people and want to play with Conspiracies, Storm, Kiki combo and other shenanigans. Wtwlf's addition of the persist combo to his 720 and the general interest in it around the forums here inspired me to take the leap and add it into that add-on. For obvious reasons we've only gotten one draft night in with it this year, but I did notice a couple things about it.
At 720, even with an 8-man draft, it is fun to try to draft the deck, but can be disappointing if you don't see the pieces you need. You can easily end up with a pile of cards rather than a synergistic combo deck. However, when it does come together, the deck is really fun to play. Like wtwlf said, you really need to be willing to dedicate the real estate to it.
After adding it to that add-on, I noticed that a very high portion of the cards were at uncommon or even common. I then made the leap and added it into my 360 peasant cube. I've found it to be a lot more consistent there and it added a deck to that cube that's outside the norm of what you usually see in peasant draft decks.
If people want more details, you can go to my Vintage Cube Card Explained - #15 Melira Combo where i break down the color combinations of the persist enablers.
I'm actively maintaining a comprehensive article to help explain to new cube players how some complex vintage level cards work in a cube environment. Vintage Cube Cards Explained
Persist combo is very cool in theory, and I would love to see it in someone else’s Cube, but my biggest problem is the real estate devoted to cards that are otherwise either unplayable or way below Cube power level on their own. The beautiful thing about fatty cheating combos is that so many of the pieces overlap with each other. Many of the persist cards can be considered overlapping with Aristocrats strategies, but we’ve found that Aristocrats is at its best when you have an all-around solid disruptive/value engine deck that has some aristocrat cards scattered in rather than full-out sacrifice everything. If you build your ideal Aristocrats deck it probably has way more generic good black cards like Pack Rat than archetype-specific like Putrid Goblin.
Persist combo feels a bit like supporting Twin combo on steroids. It’s already tough for me to justify Deceiver Exarch whenever I see him undrafted, and I don’t think I’d be happy seeing 10x more of the narrow effects like Blasting Stations and Altar of Dementias going unplayed when no one drafts the deck. It’s similar to Storm which is tough at 720 in my opinion.
Not trying to be overly negative - it is certainly a cool archetype to support. I just want to provide an alternate perspective since the “stock” 720s on here (mostly based on the awesome and timeless work from wtwlf123) support persist.
After being initially skeptical I brought in both Kiki combo in UR and Persist combo in WBG to my 540 power cube this summer. It has been a pretty nice change - not a slam dunk by any means but also not something we want to switch away from any time soon. I think the more of the creature combos you run at a time the easier it is to justify some of the combo inclusions and cards that get better with creature based combos like Sevinne's Reclamation and Birthing Pod effects.
One thing I'd be curious to hear opinions on - we are currently experimenting with cutting the two biggest persist enablers - Melira, Sylvok Outcast and Vizier of Remedies to see if there was enough other support cards now to not have to include these two that are just a Grizzly Bear and a Goblin Piker in any other deck. I'm not sure happy to be playing Solemnity right now either, for that matter.
We're trying this because we've always much preferred the cards like Anafenza, Kin-Tree Spirit that can do a bit more even in a non-persist deck, and there have been a LOT of enablers of this style printed in the last year or so that have more general applications (like doubling up as support for aggressive decks in these colors - my cube supports green aggro as well so that's especially enticing). The more niche inclusion of new Heliod + Kitchen Finks was mentioned above, but also in the last year or so we've had Good-Fortune Unicorn, Grumgully, the Generous, Rhythm of the Wild, Renata, Called to the Hunt. Even Luminous Broodmoth helps here!
Our results have been mixed and I am curious to hear what others would think of supporting persist combo without those two pieces... its very possible we aren't quite at the density of needed redundant pieces to be able to do away with them, but we are much closer than we were a year ago, and I think this archetype might appeal to more people who were on the fence about adding it (like I was) if we could get away from playing SUCH specific support cards.
This is exactly where I'm at with it, thanks for articulating. I copied ryansaxe's version of it which I liked b/c it's more pared-down - but of the enablers we're only running Vizier of Remedies, Anafenza Kin-Tree Spirit, Metallic Mimic, and I guess technically The Great Henge, which sounds like is less than everybody else. We're at 540 and usually draft w/ 8-10 people, so it would be pretty easy for none of the enablers to show up in a draft. I think I'm going to add Renata, Called to the Hunt and maybe one of the gold ones you mentioned to try to help it out.
Man, I forgot to even mention The Great Henge. I'm running that one too! This is what I mean; so many new enablers printed in the last year or so.
We do also run Metallic Mimic and have had good success with it in both persist and non-persist decks, despite my cube not having any particular tribal themes.
After being initially skeptical I brought in both Kiki combo in UR and Persist combo in WBG to my 540 power cube this summer. It has been a pretty nice change - not a slam dunk by any means but also not something we want to switch away from any time soon. I think the more of the creature combos you run at a time the easier it is to justify some of the combo inclusions and cards that get better with creature based combos like Sevinne's Reclamation and Birthing Pod effects.
One thing I'd be curious to hear opinions on - we are currently experimenting with cutting the two biggest persist enablers - Melira, Sylvok Outcast and Vizier of Remedies to see if there was enough other support cards now to not have to include these two that are just a Grizzly Bear and a Goblin Piker in any other deck. I'm not sure happy to be playing Solemnity right now either, for that matter.
We're trying this because we've always much preferred the cards like Anafenza, Kin-Tree Spirit that can do a bit more even in a non-persist deck, and there have been a LOT of enablers of this style printed in the last year or so that have more general applications (like doubling up as support for aggressive decks in these colors - my cube supports green aggro as well so that's especially enticing). The more niche inclusion of new Heliod + Kitchen Finks was mentioned above, but also in the last year or so we've had Good-Fortune Unicorn, Grumgully, the Generous, Rhythm of the Wild, Renata, Called to the Hunt. Even Luminous Broodmoth helps here!
Our results have been mixed and I am curious to hear what others would think of supporting persist combo without those two pieces... its very possible we aren't quite at the density of needed redundant pieces to be able to do away with them, but we are much closer than we were a year ago, and I think this archetype might appeal to more people who were on the fence about adding it (like I was) if we could get away from playing SUCH specific support cards.
"I think the more of the creature combos you run at a time the easier it is to justify some of the combo inclusions and cards that get better with creature based combos like Sevinne's Reclamation and Birthing Pod effects."
This I cannot agree more. I find aristocrats, Pod, creature tutors would all get weaker - you kinda need all theses decks to justify including all these pieces.
I been thinking about this as well - They are pretty narrow in terms of cube archetypes, but they're decent 2 drops in the melira decks themselves - the cards I've dislike the most is Altar of Dementia - only good in the all-in melira deck + doesn't really synergies well with the rest of the deck. Melira at least could chip in some damage turn 2 + being a creature is a huge plus.
They fit two criteria for me:
- Path of Discovery is a +1/+1 enabler for the infinite Combo but also allows you to dig into your combo. Evolutionary Leap is both a sacrifice Outlet + card to help tutor. This allows the persist deck to still hit the critical density of enablers to go infinite but stresses less on the combo.
There have been two shells for the melira combo - Modern Birthing Pod/ Collected Company Melira. Birthing Pod Melira runs 1-2 melira max, 1-2 sacrifice outlets max, and 4-5 persist creatures (kitchen finks has been so good, its mainboard in Jund decks). Collected Company Melira is more all in with 3 sacrifice outlets, 4-5 enablers + 4-5 persist creatures. I really would like to move to the pod model to try to shave narrow combo pieces.
I'm actively maintaining a comprehensive article to help explain to new cube players how some complex vintage level cards work in a cube environment. Vintage Cube Cards Explained
I'm avoiding having white in this archetype as I find trying to win through sacrifice + Blood Artists isn't reliable however the deck functions better as more or less an aggressive deck that goes wide on creatures and can slot in Blood Artists.
But at the same time, either color could function essentially as the base color for a go-wide creature based strategy.
For Persist Combo:
- The persist creatures are broken across all 5 colors, primarily in Abzan.
- The sacrifice outlets are primarily black, with 2 in red and quite a few colorless.
There is also Evolutionary Leap - which I do could as a sacrifice outlet for this archetype and Bogardan Dragonheart - which is an interesting, underrated card for black-red aristocrats as well.
- The good recursion enablers are 3-4 white, 2-3 green, 2 Green-Red, 1 Green-White, 1 Colorless, 1 Black
There is Path of discovery, which is nice for filtering to the combo.
I've ran the numbers and its very possible to construct the Melira Combo to play in any of the non-blue tri-colors.
I find there are 2 ways we can go with the Melira Combo:
1. The Melira Combo should be trimmed to an absolute minimum with the narrow cards like Blasting Station, Melira, Sylvok Outcast cut and we stick to only the absolute Minimum needed to function and all enablers must have a purpose outside of Melira:
- Luminous Broodmoth, Anafenza, Kin-Tree Spirit, Mikaeus, the Unhallowed, Path of Discovery, Grumgley the Generous, Good Fortune Unicorn, Rhythm of the Wild. (No Melira)
* Good in go-wide creature decks
- Carrion Feeder, Viscera Seer, Bloodthrone Vampire, Flesh Carver, Greater Gargadon, Goblin Bombardment, Yawgmoth, Thran Physician, Woe Strider, Nantuko Husk (no Artifact Sacrifice outlets)
* Doubles in Aristocrats decks. The problem is usually the combinations don't yield a win on the spot.
The idea is Melira isn't really "supported", but it may come together due to the variances of 720 cards being opened (Similar to Twin) as these cards naturally play with in a creature toolbox style deck anyways.
2. The Melira Combo should be supported with the recommended maximum number of 7-8 persist creatures for the minimum archetype support - Lesser Masicore, Furystoke Giant?, Thunderblust and enablers should move towards cards like Good-Fortune Unicorn, Grumgully, the Generous etc. that could be useful for token/ go-wide aristocrats archetypes.
I find this dedicates a lot of real estate to the archetype (similar to storm) and focuses more on the combo focused Melira as Plan A, rather than occasionally assembling it via pod.
I'm also not really committed if Melira should be supported for any of the non-jund tri colors or just Abzan (Both are possible), but as of right now, I'm leaning a bit more towards just supporting it for Abzan as red has been fairly heavily taxed by other red combo decks - Storm, Lands, Polymorph. Similarly, it makes the deck that much more difficult to draft.
I haven't really decided which approach is better for the melira deck, but I'm leaning more towards the first approach. I felt moving aristocrats to red-black helped to cut some narrow black-white enablers and keep the archetype strong but not parasitic.
I personally would like the see the 2 variations of the deck with one built around Pod/ Survival and focused more on the combo and another built around plan A - Plan B, where Plan A involves attacking with cards like [card}Nantuko Husk[/card] and can occasionally combo. My concern right now is if the Aristocrats variant of Melira is strong enough to really contend with the format.
Thanks for reading this pretty long rant everyone.
I'm actively maintaining a comprehensive article to help explain to new cube players how some complex vintage level cards work in a cube environment. Vintage Cube Cards Explained
I'm experimenting with the persist combo in my artifact cube. Because I heavily support +1/+1 counters and aristocrats themes, most of the combo pieces aren't that parasitic. I've also culled all of the pieces to be playable within jund colors, which should make it far more achievable.
Yah the persist combo enablers are spread across all 5 colors.
In theory, you could construct your cube in a way such that any non-blue color combination in addition to white-black, green-black, red-green and green-white splashing blue as third color have sufficient enablers for the persist combo. (only grixis and jeskai cannot support it fully).
The alternative is you could restrict it to just Abzan/ Jund and trim the non-parasitic elements - but this I find creates a bit of a drafting on rails experience. I would generally avoid restricting persist combo to a selected tri color as it makes drafting a lot less interesting.
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I'm actively maintaining a comprehensive article to help explain to new cube players how some complex vintage level cards work in a cube environment. Vintage Cube Cards Explained
Lesser Masticore has severely under performed in both the dedicated persist deck and as a generic creature on its own. The other persist options haven't faired much better .
Ashnod's Altar has under performed for a similar reason.
Viscera Seer has is an all-star in constructed, but its usually scaricing a Kitchen Finks and scrying into a redcap. He has also under performed in cube.
I learned the aristocrats deck should move away from bad sacrifice outlets and focus on midrange cards that sacrifice for value - Grist, Rankle, Braids, Smokestack, BloodThrone Vampire, Greater Gargadon.
On the other hand, the +1/+1 enablers have overall performed fairly well both as enablers for other archetypes and in the persist deck. They were great as combo pieces, but also for the persist's Plan B (beat down) and enablers for token archetypes.
I will be cutting a Lesser Masticore/ Ashnod's Altar/ Visera Sear in favor of a Good-Fortune Unicorn and Grumgully, the Generous. They're decent (not great though) in the tokens/ aggressive shell but also great in the melira deck as they are fine combo pieces but also are great for plan B.
My theory is the Persist combo requires tutors to assemble regardless - unbalancing the number of enablers will not significantly downgrade the consistency of the original deck, but will improve the deck's plan B.
I traditionally try to aim for 3-3-3 with persist, sacrifice, recursion, but I recently drafted a great persist deck that was 2 persist, 2 sacrifice and 4 recursion/ +1/+1 that performed incredibly well as a regular creature beatdown deck.
I considered going down on the number of sacrifice outlets, I realized the deck needs a way to win on the spot (either through scry/ draw off Yawgmoth, Woe Strider). Large Carrion Feeder/ BloodThrone Vampires have not be sufficient.
Similarly, Nantuko Husk/ Spawning Pit seem like fine cards, but they underperformed in both Melira and Sacrifice decks and thus they are out of consideration.
I'm actively maintaining a comprehensive article to help explain to new cube players how some complex vintage level cards work in a cube environment. Vintage Cube Cards Explained
I recently included persist combo (persist creature/sac outlet/way to mess with counters) in my cube after resisting it for a while for gameplay reasons.
I think a handful of folks have also added it over the last few years and wanted to ask how it's been playing for people? Is it doing what you want it to? Any other general observations?
It hasn't really been happening with my group yet, but I think we're still learning how to draft & play it.
Thanks for any thoughts!
The persist deck in theory the weakest archetype as none of the persist combo cards outside of Skullclamp/ Gaea's Cradle will make it into the top 50 best cube cards.
But in an experience draft pod, the persist deck in theory should perform at a similar level if not higher than the blue archetypes/ combo archetypes - the reason for this is the persist decks is almost always open as it is pieces aren't heavily fought over compared to blue based archetypes.
Its one of the those archetypes that aren't great but once the cube gets larger and the fast mana/ combos get less consistent, persist starts to shine.
It is archetype for a cube generally 450+ with the power 9 but good enough for a legacy cube.
Vintage Cube Cards Explained
Here are some other articles I've written about fine tuning your cube:
1. Minimum Archetype Support
2. Improving Green Archetypes
3. Improving White Archetypes
4. Matchup Analysis
5. Cube Combos (Work in Progress)
Draft my Cube - https://cubecobra.com/cube/overview/d8i
My 630 Card Powered Cube
My Article - "Cube Design Philosophy"
My Article - "Mana Short: A study in limited resource management."
My 49th Set (P)review - Discusses my top 20 Cube cards from MKM!
Persist creatures: Kitchen Finks, Murderous Redcap, Woodfall Primus, Glen Elendra Archmage
Sac Outlets: Goblin Bombardment, Carrion Feeder, Woe Strider,
It basically just shows up in GRx Survival of the Fittest decks here as a way to give those decks a form of inevitability. I view it similarly to an upgraded form of the Reveillark + Karmic Guide combo.
[180 classic cube]
At 720, even with an 8-man draft, it is fun to try to draft the deck, but can be disappointing if you don't see the pieces you need. You can easily end up with a pile of cards rather than a synergistic combo deck. However, when it does come together, the deck is really fun to play. Like wtwlf said, you really need to be willing to dedicate the real estate to it.
After adding it to that add-on, I noticed that a very high portion of the cards were at uncommon or even common. I then made the leap and added it into my 360 peasant cube. I've found it to be a lot more consistent there and it added a deck to that cube that's outside the norm of what you usually see in peasant draft decks.
MTGS Average Peasant Cube 2023 Edition
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The persist section in my cube is almost entirely built off wtwlf's initial work, except I cut:
- Good-Fortune Unicorn for Path of Discovery - I wanted an enabler in green instead of Green-White. The card is also good with green based graveyard decks
- Blasting Station for Evolutionary Leap - Not a free sacrifice outlet, but still an outlet that is also good in other archetypes.
- Cut Phyrexian Altar, Solemnity - I play a few more black/ green tutors and I didn't feel I need this many combo pieces. (In particular Tainted Pact + Demonic Consultation for Inverter combo + Growing Rites of Itlimoc for other creature based strategies)
If people want more details, you can go to my Vintage Cube Card Explained - #15 Melira Combo where i break down the color combinations of the persist enablers.
Vintage Cube Cards Explained
Here are some other articles I've written about fine tuning your cube:
1. Minimum Archetype Support
2. Improving Green Archetypes
3. Improving White Archetypes
4. Matchup Analysis
5. Cube Combos (Work in Progress)
Draft my Cube - https://cubecobra.com/cube/overview/d8i
Persist combo feels a bit like supporting Twin combo on steroids. It’s already tough for me to justify Deceiver Exarch whenever I see him undrafted, and I don’t think I’d be happy seeing 10x more of the narrow effects like Blasting Stations and Altar of Dementias going unplayed when no one drafts the deck. It’s similar to Storm which is tough at 720 in my opinion.
Not trying to be overly negative - it is certainly a cool archetype to support. I just want to provide an alternate perspective since the “stock” 720s on here (mostly based on the awesome and timeless work from wtwlf123) support persist.
EDIT: here’s the existing discussion on the archetype (albeit dated): https://www.mtgsalvation.com/forums/the-game/the-cube-forum/cube-card-and-archetype/193736-melira-combo. Breathe1234 also has a nice post about it in their post in the Cube articles and podcasts section.
One thing I'd be curious to hear opinions on - we are currently experimenting with cutting the two biggest persist enablers - Melira, Sylvok Outcast and Vizier of Remedies to see if there was enough other support cards now to not have to include these two that are just a Grizzly Bear and a Goblin Piker in any other deck. I'm not sure happy to be playing Solemnity right now either, for that matter.
We're trying this because we've always much preferred the cards like Anafenza, Kin-Tree Spirit that can do a bit more even in a non-persist deck, and there have been a LOT of enablers of this style printed in the last year or so that have more general applications (like doubling up as support for aggressive decks in these colors - my cube supports green aggro as well so that's especially enticing). The more niche inclusion of new Heliod + Kitchen Finks was mentioned above, but also in the last year or so we've had Good-Fortune Unicorn, Grumgully, the Generous, Rhythm of the Wild, Renata, Called to the Hunt. Even Luminous Broodmoth helps here!
Our results have been mixed and I am curious to hear what others would think of supporting persist combo without those two pieces... its very possible we aren't quite at the density of needed redundant pieces to be able to do away with them, but we are much closer than we were a year ago, and I think this archetype might appeal to more people who were on the fence about adding it (like I was) if we could get away from playing SUCH specific support cards.
My 36+ Commander Decks: TAPPEDOUT
We do also run Metallic Mimic and have had good success with it in both persist and non-persist decks, despite my cube not having any particular tribal themes.
My 36+ Commander Decks: TAPPEDOUT
"I think the more of the creature combos you run at a time the easier it is to justify some of the combo inclusions and cards that get better with creature based combos like Sevinne's Reclamation and Birthing Pod effects."
This I cannot agree more. I find aristocrats, Pod, creature tutors would all get weaker - you kinda need all theses decks to justify including all these pieces.
"We are currently experimenting with cutting the two biggest persist enablers - Melira, Sylvok Outcast and Vizier of Remedies"
I been thinking about this as well - They are pretty narrow in terms of cube archetypes, but they're decent 2 drops in the melira decks themselves - the cards I've dislike the most is Altar of Dementia - only good in the all-in melira deck + doesn't really synergies well with the rest of the deck. Melira at least could chip in some damage turn 2 + being a creature is a huge plus.
Two cards that have been on my radar are Path of Discovery and Evolutionary Leap.
They fit two criteria for me:
- Path of Discovery is a +1/+1 enabler for the infinite Combo but also allows you to dig into your combo. Evolutionary Leap is both a sacrifice Outlet + card to help tutor. This allows the persist deck to still hit the critical density of enablers to go infinite but stresses less on the combo.
There have been two shells for the melira combo - Modern Birthing Pod/ Collected Company Melira. Birthing Pod Melira runs 1-2 melira max, 1-2 sacrifice outlets max, and 4-5 persist creatures (kitchen finks has been so good, its mainboard in Jund decks). Collected Company Melira is more all in with 3 sacrifice outlets, 4-5 enablers + 4-5 persist creatures. I really would like to move to the pod model to try to shave narrow combo pieces.
Vintage Cube Cards Explained
Here are some other articles I've written about fine tuning your cube:
1. Minimum Archetype Support
2. Improving Green Archetypes
3. Improving White Archetypes
4. Matchup Analysis
5. Cube Combos (Work in Progress)
Draft my Cube - https://cubecobra.com/cube/overview/d8i
For Aristocrats:
I'm convinced the best color combination for this deck as of right now is Red-Black. Here are the enablers:
Black
Flesh Carver
Blood Artist
Zulaport Cutthroat
Yawgmoth, Thran Physician
... (Recursive Creatures, Pox stuff etc).
Red
Spiteful Prankster
Embercleave
Goblin Bombardment
Greater Gargadon
Hellrider
... Red tokens for Polymorph
... Rabblemaster Variants
Red/Black
Judith, the Scourge Diva
I'm avoiding having white in this archetype as I find trying to win through sacrifice + Blood Artists isn't reliable however the deck functions better as more or less an aggressive deck that goes wide on creatures and can slot in Blood Artists.
But at the same time, either color could function essentially as the base color for a go-wide creature based strategy.
For Persist Combo:
- The persist creatures are broken across all 5 colors, primarily in Abzan.
- The sacrifice outlets are primarily black, with 2 in red and quite a few colorless.
There is also Evolutionary Leap - which I do could as a sacrifice outlet for this archetype and Bogardan Dragonheart - which is an interesting, underrated card for black-red aristocrats as well.
- The good recursion enablers are 3-4 white, 2-3 green, 2 Green-Red, 1 Green-White, 1 Colorless, 1 Black
There is Path of discovery, which is nice for filtering to the combo.
I've ran the numbers and its very possible to construct the Melira Combo to play in any of the non-blue tri-colors.
I find there are 2 ways we can go with the Melira Combo:
1. The Melira Combo should be trimmed to an absolute minimum with the narrow cards like Blasting Station, Melira, Sylvok Outcast cut and we stick to only the absolute Minimum needed to function and all enablers must have a purpose outside of Melira:
- Kitchen Finks, Murderous Redcap, Safehold Elite, Putrid Goblin, Glen Elendra Archmage, Thunderblust, Puppeteer Clique
*Good in Aristocrats, Sacrifice fodder etc.
- Luminous Broodmoth, Anafenza, Kin-Tree Spirit, Mikaeus, the Unhallowed, Path of Discovery, Grumgley the Generous, Good Fortune Unicorn, Rhythm of the Wild. (No Melira)
* Good in go-wide creature decks
- Carrion Feeder, Viscera Seer, Bloodthrone Vampire, Flesh Carver, Greater Gargadon, Goblin Bombardment, Yawgmoth, Thran Physician, Woe Strider, Nantuko Husk (no Artifact Sacrifice outlets)
* Doubles in Aristocrats decks. The problem is usually the combinations don't yield a win on the spot.
The idea is Melira isn't really "supported", but it may come together due to the variances of 720 cards being opened (Similar to Twin) as these cards naturally play with in a creature toolbox style deck anyways.
2. The Melira Combo should be supported with the recommended maximum number of 7-8 persist creatures for the minimum archetype support - Lesser Masicore, Furystoke Giant?, Thunderblust and enablers should move towards cards like Good-Fortune Unicorn, Grumgully, the Generous etc. that could be useful for token/ go-wide aristocrats archetypes.
I find this dedicates a lot of real estate to the archetype (similar to storm) and focuses more on the combo focused Melira as Plan A, rather than occasionally assembling it via pod.
I'm also not really committed if Melira should be supported for any of the non-jund tri colors or just Abzan (Both are possible), but as of right now, I'm leaning a bit more towards just supporting it for Abzan as red has been fairly heavily taxed by other red combo decks - Storm, Lands, Polymorph. Similarly, it makes the deck that much more difficult to draft.
I haven't really decided which approach is better for the melira deck, but I'm leaning more towards the first approach. I felt moving aristocrats to red-black helped to cut some narrow black-white enablers and keep the archetype strong but not parasitic.
I personally would like the see the 2 variations of the deck with one built around Pod/ Survival and focused more on the combo and another built around plan A - Plan B, where Plan A involves attacking with cards like [card}Nantuko Husk[/card] and can occasionally combo. My concern right now is if the Aristocrats variant of Melira is strong enough to really contend with the format.
Thanks for reading this pretty long rant everyone.
Vintage Cube Cards Explained
Here are some other articles I've written about fine tuning your cube:
1. Minimum Archetype Support
2. Improving Green Archetypes
3. Improving White Archetypes
4. Matchup Analysis
5. Cube Combos (Work in Progress)
Draft my Cube - https://cubecobra.com/cube/overview/d8i
Sac Outlets
Carrion Feeder
Woe strider
Spawning pit
Blasting Station
Greater Gargadon
goblin bombardment
Enablers
metalic mimic
grumgully
The great henge
rhythm of the wild
Bloodspore Thrinax
Persist Creatures
Lesser Masticore
putrid goblin
Safehold elite
Kitchen Finks
murderous redcap
https://cubecobra.com/cube/overview/artifact-cube
In theory, you could construct your cube in a way such that any non-blue color combination in addition to white-black, green-black, red-green and green-white splashing blue as third color have sufficient enablers for the persist combo. (only grixis and jeskai cannot support it fully).
The alternative is you could restrict it to just Abzan/ Jund and trim the non-parasitic elements - but this I find creates a bit of a drafting on rails experience. I would generally avoid restricting persist combo to a selected tri color as it makes drafting a lot less interesting.
Vintage Cube Cards Explained
Here are some other articles I've written about fine tuning your cube:
1. Minimum Archetype Support
2. Improving Green Archetypes
3. Improving White Archetypes
4. Matchup Analysis
5. Cube Combos (Work in Progress)
Draft my Cube - https://cubecobra.com/cube/overview/d8i
Ashnod's Altar has under performed for a similar reason.
Viscera Seer has is an all-star in constructed, but its usually scaricing a Kitchen Finks and scrying into a redcap. He has also under performed in cube.
I learned the aristocrats deck should move away from bad sacrifice outlets and focus on midrange cards that sacrifice for value - Grist, Rankle, Braids, Smokestack, BloodThrone Vampire, Greater Gargadon.
On the other hand, the +1/+1 enablers have overall performed fairly well both as enablers for other archetypes and in the persist deck. They were great as combo pieces, but also for the persist's Plan B (beat down) and enablers for token archetypes.
I will be cutting a Lesser Masticore/ Ashnod's Altar/ Visera Sear in favor of a Good-Fortune Unicorn and Grumgully, the Generous. They're decent (not great though) in the tokens/ aggressive shell but also great in the melira deck as they are fine combo pieces but also are great for plan B.
My theory is the Persist combo requires tutors to assemble regardless - unbalancing the number of enablers will not significantly downgrade the consistency of the original deck, but will improve the deck's plan B.
I traditionally try to aim for 3-3-3 with persist, sacrifice, recursion, but I recently drafted a great persist deck that was 2 persist, 2 sacrifice and 4 recursion/ +1/+1 that performed incredibly well as a regular creature beatdown deck.
Persist:
- Putrid Goblin
- Kitchen Finks
- Murderous Redcap
- Thunderblust
- Basri's Lieutenant
- Safehold Elite
- Woodfall Primus
- Puppeteer Clique
- Glen Elendra Archmage
9 looks like a lot, but Glen, Woodfall and Thunderblust aren't the best persist enablers. I count these as 0.5
+1/ +1 Counters:
- Anafenza
- Vizier of Remedies
- Luminous Broodmoth
- Mikaeous
- Melira
- Arlinn, the Pack's Hope
- Rhythm of the Wild
- Metallic Mimic
Adding:
- Grumgully, the Generous
- Good-Fortune Unicorn
I will be actively looking for another +1/+1 enabler.
Scarifice:
- Carrion Feeder
- Bloodthrone Vampire
- Woe Strider
- Yawgmoth, Thran Physician
- Greater Gargadon
- Goblin Bombardment
- Falkenrath Aristocrat
- Altar of Dementia
- Blasting Station
I considered going down on the number of sacrifice outlets, I realized the deck needs a way to win on the spot (either through scry/ draw off Yawgmoth, Woe Strider). Large Carrion Feeder/ BloodThrone Vampires have not be sufficient.
Similarly, Nantuko Husk/ Spawning Pit seem like fine cards, but they underperformed in both Melira and Sacrifice decks and thus they are out of consideration.
Vintage Cube Cards Explained
Here are some other articles I've written about fine tuning your cube:
1. Minimum Archetype Support
2. Improving Green Archetypes
3. Improving White Archetypes
4. Matchup Analysis
5. Cube Combos (Work in Progress)
Draft my Cube - https://cubecobra.com/cube/overview/d8i