MTG Salvation

I think this might be the best green 5 drop, especially with the new theory for green decks which is instead of trying to build a fully stream lined elves to Eldrazi ramp deck, the deck shaves from both ends and adds more midrange elements for consistency/ resiliency.

I feel this creature plays very well into this strategy.

I want to second Wtwlf's sentiment about Teething Wurmlet and I will try to sell this for anyone that's a skeptic. What I've learned during Phyrexia All will be one draft is a card like Evolving Adaptive / Exuberant Fuseling are incredibly strong in midrange decks that can incidentally make these creatures 3/x or 4/x if they're played on turn 1. Midrange decks often lack good early plays and having "delver" style cards can be incredibly strong.

- If you have 5 artifacts in your deck, you have a 70% chance on the play of making this a 2/2. This number improves ROUGHLY by 5% for every additional artifact/ card draw (increase in sample size), which are very strong odds.

- If you have 9 artifacts in your deck, you have roughly 50% chance of making it deathtouch by turn 3-4 (mid-game). This number improves by roughly 4% for every additional artifact/ card draw. (This doesn't take into account of cards that can produce multiple such as Tireless Tracker/ Oko, Retrofitter)

My experience with Wurmlet is its 70-80% "naturally" playable in Green-x aggressive decks (I would like 80% consistency on turn 2 to grow it into a 2/2) but it shines can shine in a lot of green decks such as Lands/ GX Smokestack (also an artifact!)/ Melira Combo/ ramp, which 50-70% of the time have the appropriate artifact density to naturally turn it into a 4/4 deathtouch in the mid-game. These decks often lack good turn 1 plays and having an early creature that can grow while gaining life/ block/ pressure planeswalkers has been invaluable for me.

Quote from LucidVision »

Quote from Breathe1234 »

Reanimator has been doing very badly in my cube recently and I feel I should +1 reanimation spell:

- Goryo's Vengeance
- Makeshift Mannequin
- Victimize
- Dread Return
- Persist

I'm leaning towards either Goryo's Vengance for Atraxa / redundancy for Instant Speed Reanimation or Victimize to help provide redundancy for creature combos assembled via survival/ fauna.

I'm contrasting your list relative to other popular cube lists, my own and the MTGO vintage cube.
You run less reanimator support than all of them and you run a cube with ~30% more cards.
You have less discard outlets, reanimator spells and top end (in L to R order).
You also have less black sweepers, which are good supplemental cards for reanimator.
This isn't necessarily a bad thing, but it's likely why reanimator is underperforming.

Top 10 recommended additions
1) Massacre Wurm
2) Makeshift Mannequin
3) Profane Tutor (storm + reanimator + creature combo)
4) The Meathook Massacre
5) Bone shards
6) The Cruelty of Gix
7) Persist
8) Unmarked Grave
9) Ashen Rider
10) Tainted Indulgence

Top 10 recommended cuts
1) Sedgemoor witch
2) Soul Shatter
3) Cut down
4) Puppeteer clique (ignore if there's a win the game combo Im missing)
5) Agadeeem's Awakening
6) Tainted pact
7) Hero's downfall
8) Shriekmaw
9) Anguished Unmaking
10) Dimir card

It's tough to support black agro, storm, creature combo AND reanimator properly.
I'm confident in the quality of the suggested additions, but not in what's best to cut.
I don't envy making cuts in black!

Thank you for a very detailed response. I really appreciate it.

I will def try to go +1 reanimation spell/ +1 discard outlet/ +1 fatty.

- Massacre Worm for Soul Shatter is a no brainer. Recommendation taken 100%
- Tainted Pact for Dragonlord Silumgar. Recommendation taken. (Silumgar is my pet card :()
- I don't think I can make another black cut, so I'm going to re-add Unburial Rites ... Yes its an old card, but 4c mana is very easy these days + providing Gifts Ungiven with a strong use outside of Past in Flames sounds like a good redundancy booster. Plus, I think having another 2 shot reanimation spell is a good add to help creature combo decks.

Plus, I've learned something recently is that secretly Balance is the best reanimation enabler if you think about it

Thank you always for these articles!

1. I recall 2-3 years ago, people were saying that Griselbrand was an absolute mistake as he was considered the absolute best reanimation target for almost every single scenario - Show and Tell/ Sneak Attack/ Reanimation/ Instant Speed Reanimation/ Oath/ etc. But Atraxa/ Archon printed recently are not only on-par with Griselbrand, but might prove to be better. On one hand, I like how the gap between the best/ worst fatty cheat targets are closing but on the other hand, I'm getting a bit uncomfortable about these deck's power levels.

2. Conduit of Worlds/ Lands archetype has always been a player favorite, despite how weak it is to the other archetypes. I think it really needs another Stripe Mine/ Fast Bond effect to really be more viable.

3. I'll be watching Mercurial Spelldancer more closely. The unfortunate reason why I didn't add this into my cube is because any good spells matters card would probably snap Legacy/ Modern in half as UR Delver is already incredibly dominant in those formats any good UR spells matter card would essentially require a ban, as demonstrated in the past 5 years. I feel this card has most likely been extensively tested and deemed as safe by play testing, so my thoughts are wait and see.

My experience is 3 CMC creatures absolutely needs to snow-ball or have something like haste to contest early planeswalkers.

I personally think the best card for this slot is Endurance, I haven't cubed with it for a while I've found that Endurance is better suited for control shells and those decks are frequently splashing green. If Endurance was single green, it would likely be the best 3 CMC.

I could see Crystal Vein improve in quality, especially with Initiative also being more prominent.

Quote from armando.zuffi »

I love this one, it will replace Gideon Jura in my cube

Same for me.

Quote from steve_man »

- Personally I don't like Goblin Welder type cards in cubes with a good amount of removal or things to it haste / shroud / hexproof / etc. Welder is an ABC effect (Welder / artifact in play / artifact in graveyard) that relies on a fragile 1/1 surviving a whole turn cycle never felt great to me.

- A lot of the artifact deck for me just has to do with critical mass (Tinker / Tolarian Academy / Urza's Saga / Urza, Lord High Artificer / anything that makes Karnstructs / etc). Red in general for me doesn't play too heavy a role in artifacts matters. P&K Nalaar generates thopters for Retrofitter Foundry, then there's gold cards like Dack / Daretti / Third Path Iconoclast / Chaos Defiler / etc.

I've found this is the mistake people make when evaluating cards like Welder in cube. Welder is a 1-drop.
- If my opponent spent a removal spell on a 1 drop, I'm always very happy because that's a removal spell not pointed at one of my expensive artifacts
- The artifact deck traditionally curves as No 1-drop, Talisman -> 4 drop etc. This is often way too slow for vintage cube standards. My experience is you need to do something turn 1.

I also found red to be an incredibly important color for the artifact.dec, in particular its Red-X sweepers/ WildFire. Sweepers are most important in these type of decks as the artifact deck should be more of a control deck with artifact synergies.

Quote from TheGroglord »

Today's random card is Intangible Virtue



I have had this on the chopping block for a long time but it always manages to hang on because I like to support token decks with a couple of payoffs in the form of anthems. This is definitely the most narrow as it only effects token, but it's cheap and grants a usefull keyword.

Vigilance is one of the lesser keywords in a vaccume but in tokens it let's you alpha strike with impunity. Definitely not the ideal keyword, but plays better than you might expect.

BONUS RIDDELL: What must you first give, before you can keep?

Your Word

I been really impressed by Jeskai Ascendancy. I would argue its the best anthem variant of late.

Thanks so much for this article.

The unfortunate part is I would label the vast majority of these cards as 2-4 drops in already high competitive slots that are at marginal upgrades to existing cards. This would put a lot of additional pressure on keeping weaker enablers for various combos or even some inefficient combos/ archetypes in my cube itself. I might need to re-evaluate some packages.

There are two cards I be very interested in, in particular to ho they affect the density of enablers in my cube:

1. Transmogrant's Crown

- Skullclamp is an incredible card in creature combo decks, I could see this as an excellent addition in those decks to both dig into their combo/ play a creature value game

2. Arcane Proxy

- This is a fantastic value creature. I'll be looking into adding this along side cards such as Sea Gate Stormcaller, Aminatou's Augury, Jeskai Ascendancy etc. for more spells matter combo/ control storm variants.

3. Haywire Mite

- I'm not sure at this point if this signals that 2 CMC dorks that don't produce 2+ mana consistently are unplayable at this point.

I’d be curious what constitutes “midrange” in this discussion. I’m guessing green midrange decks often have Hexdrinker and red midrange has Ragavan and dragons at 5cc. But that makes definitions wonky because we’ve had great “long game” 1-drops printed recently which makes decks that like to attack with 1-drops more like midrange decks instead of “put all my 2-power 1-drops that can’t block on the board and hope they get there.” I remember when every third Cube card was some jank common/uncommon with decent P/T and a defensive drawback. Couple this creature trend with 3cc walker bombs taking the previously held throne of the 4cc Walker.

In general my claim is that midrange decks have gotten more aggressive which has made hard aggro less prominent, and that has been great for Cube.

Sidenote: our experience with “tempo” is quite different. Ux tempo is always one of the best ways to compete for a 3-0 in our Cube.

While true, there's so many great removal options in black now that I can use removal that meets the criteria I'm looking for and still have more than enough options (with even more good ones in my on-deck binder) for my builds without the Terrors. Again, YMMV, but that configuration's been working great for us.

I don't fault folks for using Doom Blades, they're still very solid. Those were just our observations, and the reasons why we've migrated our black removal package in a different direction.

I think I understand what you mean. So many things have been explored by now that a few new cards feel like a retake on some older card. However, diversifying the cardpool for high-powered environments also allows Cube designers to give their Cube a bit more of a personal twist, which is nice.

Also, with new archetypes turning up, it gets possible to create small modules to swap in (thinking of Persis Combo, Polymorph, Landfall Aggro) and out at will, without going far down in powerlevel. This point is mainly what keeps me interested in SCD's of cards I don't immediately see myself cubing with. Keeps the Cube fresh for me.

Thanks for the kind words. Hope your playgroup continues to enjoy your configuration!

So, I've cut my cube down to 450 cards. In the time playing the cube at the expanded size(s), it's been a great success. I aimed to change the dynamic of the cube by incorporating deeper archetype play and supporting infinite combos ...and the list was a success in achieving those goals. However, with all the focus on combo play being not only possible but also competitive, I realized that it's not the style of play I actually prefer.

When I was playing my 540/630 lists, I faced a fork in the road. With the powerlevel of the cards being released as high as they are (were?) in recent years, I felt the need to modify the structure of the cube in one of two ways. I either needed to trim the cube down in size to close the gap between the best cards and the worst cards so that the average powerlevel of the cards in the cube would be more competitive with one another, OR, I had to introduce combo play as a counter to card's increasing intrinsic powerlevels. I opted to go with the latter, and combat Okos and Teferis and Uros with Storm wins and infinite combos. It was a realistic way to try and fight the newly-printed high-power cards. And it worked. Combo decks were not only supported, but they were draftable and powerful, and left a lot of "fair" decks in the dust ...even if they were full of great cards.

Despite those decks doing a lot of winning, and having a good time drafting/deckbuilding those kinds of decks, they weren't as fun and interactive to pilot (at least for me anyways). It turns out that I greatly prefer the more conventional aggro/midrange/control paradigm (with tempo decks and archetype builds splashed in). So I wanted to go back and try Option 1, and see if I can still manage balanced play by reducing the cube size and narrowing the powerlevel gap that way. In short, that's what this change accomplishes.

It also happens to solve two other smaller problems for my playgroup. At 720, even with Impulse Drafting as an event structure, we only saw 50% of the cube list. With so much of the real estate dedicated to combo and archetype play, it could be difficult to navigate the heads-up drafts effectively, and the events felt full of narrow cards. Sealed Deck was even worse. I love Sealed events, and the 720 combo cube was just not conducive to supporting that kind of play. At 450, my heads-up events will use 80% of the cube, and my Sealed Decks won't be bogged down by combo-centric pieces. The decision has certainly been impacted by the Covid lockdown as well. We have less and less time to play, with fewer and fewer people each time. The drafting frequency certainly influences the desire to have more interactive play, and less "oops, I win" kinds of moments. I don't mind those when we're drafting multiple times per gathering with a full table of 8 every weekend ...but when you wait a month to get a small group together, getting Vaulted or Twinned out after playing a solid, competitive game just doesn't produce the best feelings. Hopefully playing a more conventional theater-centric format will make those events a bit more interactive.

720 was a huge success overall. I set out to create an environment where combo decks could compete, we could take full advantage of Sight/Glimpse/Impulse Drafts to mitigate the size problem; and to that aim, it played very well. I discovered over these past couple years that I prefer more interactive theater play, and aim to play a tighter list with a flatter powerlevel that reverts back to that style of play. I certainly don't fault anyone for continuing to support combo, and there's absolutely a chance some (or all!) of those themes could return in the future. But right now, I'm going to focus with tinkering the 450 list into a balanced and competitive environment again. So bear with me while I continue to rebalance the cube and get it right where we want it to be!

Quote from Breathe1234 »

I personally don't know if judging by main deck percentage is the best way to go. There are several reasons from my game play experience that a card might see less maindeck play:

- If I see a card that is a rarely seen effect - I.e. Gaea's Cradle, SkullClamp, Crucible of Worlds, I would pick it Pick 1, Pack 1/2 - The other cards are pretty replaceable, I might get lucky and see both Loam + Strip Mine etc.
- There are cards that are build arounds and not intended to be played as frequently. There is almost no green deck that will not play Birds of Paradise, but cards like Griselbrand require a build around.

I agree that maindeck percentage alone is not a good measure of overall cube performance but I do think it is an important factor to consider. The best cube cards have a high maindeck percentage and a high win rate. The worst cube cards have a low maindeck percentage and a low win rate. Serviceable cube cards fall somewhere in the middle. Your example of Griselbrand is a great one. It has a lower maindeck percentage because it needs to be built around, but it is sufficiently powerful that it has a high enough win rate to offset its low maindeck percentage.

Unfortunately this is not the case for Armageddon in my cube. It has a maindeck percentage of only 32.50% and a win rate of 51.16% for an overall cube rating of 41.83%. This is dismal. Out of all 360 cards in my list it is ranked 352nd. Griselbrand by comparison has an overall rating of 55.55% ranked 261st out of 360 cards.

Overall Armageddon has not been performing well enough to justify its low maindeck percentage in my list.

No, Sickening Dreams can't deal damage to a planeswalker (unless that planeswalker is also a creature), and you can't choose to have Sickening Dreams deal damage to a planeswalker instead of to a player, without more (review C.R. 306.7).

In general, the update for Dominaria, which eliminated the planeswalker redirection effect, didn't change any "each opponent" or "each player" in the text of spells or abilities (examples include Sickening Dreams, Atarka's Command, Earthquake, Bloodfire Colossus, and Flame Rift). See also this thread and this thread.

Wow What a great read! I actually have read a couple and will definitely come back for the rest!

Quote from Breathe1234 »

Just for fun, There was a video of LSV and Gaby drafting a storm deck that generated infinite mana with Palinchron, but they failed to pick up a win-con.
Their last two picks of the draft were Corpse Dance and Siege-Gang Commander making their win con: Generate infinite mana with Palinchron, then Corpse Dance the Siege-Gang 10 times.

https://twitter.com/gabyspartz/status/947895090575486976?lang=en

This is amazing. Cube is the best.