Hi,
I drafted a UW deck, and as I expected, I ended up not including the flicker cards, as I had better cube staple to include. Your cube is midway between a best of the best cube list (like the one linked in my signature) and a themed cube. I would shave 45 cards to go back to 360 and decide in which direction to go. Indeed, there is no reason for players of your group to try the other archetypes, if almost (if not) all the staples for the good ol' four best archetypes of non powered cubes (WB and WU control, red burn and green ramp) are available. On the contrary, the reanimator deck is nerfed, which can be a trap for someone who does not your list, and expect the deck to exist based on the other staple cards he sees in his first pack. In any case, with such a list, I would play blue every time (hoping to tinker into Inkwell every game), as it is head and shoulders the most powerful color.
First decide, and then I can help you decide what to shave if you want.
Braids, Cabal Minion, Ravenous Chupacabra, Yawgmoth, Thran Physician and Gonti, Lord of Luxury it is for me. I do not quite get why people are so hyped by Rankle, Master of Pranks, but I am surely missing something.
Thanks for your comments. You totally have a point when you say it's "a nice change of pace", and I think that's what I tried to say (and hence did not understood the narrow-mindedness of the haters).
It is not impossible we may have even played against each other (lol), as I remember being crushed by a B/W anthem deck, which was rebuilding so fast after the wraths I was playing. And you feel so hopeless when you have two black removals in hand and opponent is playing something in the lines of spectral procession, putting 6 power on the board with only three mana. I was also totally blowed out by dictate of heliod a couple of times. Anthem archetype does not really correspond to my play style, but I will give it a try next time, as, as you may have noticed, white was also pretty open during the drafts (mtgo drafters simply seems to not like draft white). I just wish that they include Angel of Invention, in place of -say- baneslayer angel (which is a real "trap card"). And, about what you said about disruption, I was also very surprised how late i could pick up things like inquisition or duress when I was drafting black.
I also felt blue to be underwhelming in the cube, and that may be also a consequence of the modern ban list. What makes blue good but not oppressive is the consistency provided by the cantrips, and with serum visions as the best cantrip, that just simply is not the case. The 4CC clones are fun, but it can be already to late when you cast it, and playing a 2/2 on fourth turn with a bounce effect at sorcery speed (looking at you - mist raven) is simply too late when you are crushed by an army of token. But sometimes, it is good to play in an environment where blue is not the best color head and shoulders.
The Fall iteration of the “Modern Cube” was available on MTGO until last week. As an avid cube drafers on MTGO, I thought it was time to share my thoughts about it.
The list drew many criticisms on the internet. I will not comment on the gross mistake that are the inclusion of drake haven and exclusion of gifts, as everybody has already said that. What surprised me most is that the list includes only half of the manlands (the zendikar ones), which is very doubtful from a design point of view. There are also a lots of doubtful choices, as if the design team was running out of ideas at some points, and needed some“fillers”. The non inclusion of certain cards surprised me, but I understood the overall design goals of the team, which tried to give an identity to each color while providing balance between them (and thus greatly reducing red in terms of raw power for that reason, by cutting many one drops and low cost burns compared to the previous iteration). There are certainly a certain number of doubtful choices, like the inclusion of wildfire, which was a trap, as even if the number of mana rocks was reasonable, it was not sufficient to support such an archetype, given the lack of signets. But I am not unhappy to have seen some really medium planeswalker like Elspeth Tirel or Jace, Unraveler of secrets replaced by solid cards like Angel of Sanctions or Icefall Regent. I did not understood the criticism regarding the inclusion of a lot of standard legal cards, after, the MTGO designer are like any cube designer, they try new things.
As always in any MTGO cube, the list is packed with planeswalkers. On the good side, the team seemed perfectly aware of the planeswalker high density of the list, and provided with a greater number of way to deal with them (the latest ones added this time being Cast out, Angel of sanctions and Never // Return).
The MTGO modern cube is a « modern » cube, in the sense that much focus is on tempo, creatures and board interactions. The most important take away from this is that a deck that do nothing (or simply ramp) for the first turns in terms of board presence has little chance to succeed (compared to vintage cube, where draw go is a legitimate strategy if a sufficient density of instant is achieved). This draft from Reid Duke is a good example of what you should not do in this environment : https://www.channelfireball.com/videos/channel-reid-modern-cube-draft/. I think this also explains why green ramp strategies were not very successful comparatively in my view. Not having access to Rofellos, Craddle or Natural Order (making the deck at least a turn slower) that puts a lot less pressure on the opponent to find an immediate solution, opponent often has a way to deal with the mana elves in the first turns and thus considerably slow down the deck. Mono green was still very efficient when lowering a bit the curve and turning into a midrange strategy, with one or two splashes for a couple of powerful planeswalkers or a few removals, and trying to bury the opponent with card advantage. Rishkar’s expertise was nuts in this kind of decks.
There were a lot of interesting “new” cards (i.e., neither in the Vintage or the Legacy cubes), and in a sense this is quite refreshing. As a drafter, I must say that I often value fun over pure competitiveness, and in a sense, this iteration of the MTGO cube rewards that (as long as you make sure to draft something that have a legitimate plan to win, and not a pile of splashy cards without any synergy). It is really enjoyable to build decks around cards that does not make the cut in an unpowered deck, like mine. There is also a sense of nostalgia, as the list offers the opportunity to play again some archetype defining cards that used to make the cut for a cube but are no longer legitimate power wise, like crystal shard, mirror entity or mimic vat. Interesting cards from recent sets that would never fit in my own list like clever impersonator or prophet of kruphix were also worth trying, and often good surprises.
I 3-0d 4 leagues over 15 I joined, and 2-1d a good number of times, but I must say that I also 0-3d a handful of them. It took some time for me to really get a good grasp of the format, and properly evaluate the power level/utility of cards I had never played with. Once I understood I should prioritize aggressive to mid rangy two-three drops creatures (or cheap ways to deal with these if I was going for control), the games went much smoothly.
As in any “modern” cube, all creatures with a ETB ability proved to be much higher picks than the other ones. I personally avoided drafting “superfriend” decks, as, after a couple of tries, I was unable to find the good balance between fixing, sweepers/removals and planeswalker themselves, but a lot of players appeared to be good at this exercise. I felt that the "super-friend" archetype was less oppressive than back in Spring. Overall, I loved that sweet archetypes like mono black devotion or non blue control were potent choices.
Having not access to some of the most cube defining legacy legal cards also made me reevaluate the power level of some cube bombs (an obvious example being craterhoof behemoth), and rethinking a pick order too much set in stone in my mind. In a way, this was a good training to prepare for future drafts when I get the chance to play outside my usual groups.
I had a lot of fun and I am sure a lot of other people had, given the attendance numbers, and despite all the hate towards the cube that you can find on reddit. In terms of replayability, I think this cube offered quite a good deal of it. There are many modern only cube lists on Cube tutor, by players who are either constrained for budget reasons or simply are younger players that no real fondness for older cards that they never played with, and I think that the Modern Cube appealed to that public.
From a draft perspective, having access to only modern legal cards was quite challenging, as power level of cards is pretty even and there are no “automatic picks” like in a powered cube. As said on many forums, it was of course possible and often right to go for a list with a good curve, good stuff cards without so much synergy but a few bombs, but I felt that thinking out of box and focus on synergies was often rewarding. Some archetypes were pretty deep. I personally have never drafted an anthem deck (and probably never will), but I saw opponents with solid lists, and with so much choices offered, all sorts of anthem decks can be built (be it the classic aggressive white weeny, the token/go-wide based ones, G/W go-big based one with +1/+1 counters generators or B/W or decks with token generating planeswalker with resiliency to wraths – the last one appeared to be a bit slow but very potent strategy when it managed to stabilize). The experience was something in the middle between cube drafting (where you try to recreate a constructed deck) and limited. From a game play perspective, longer games provide for more skill testing game play, compared to Vintage Cube where luck in draft and in opener play a huge role (hello, T1 sol ring). Cards are still powerful enough to avoid ending up in a board stall (like it may happen in recent set drafts), but poor sequencing and sloppy plays were often punished. This pushes players to make better plays and squeeze maximum value out of them, which is always good.
Thanks for reading me. I would be happy if you can share your own impressions on this cube, sweet archetypes you drafted, and good stories!
First of all, your stats are rather strange. Allthough Scapeshift is a good deck, it's impossible to have a heavily favored matchup against most of the field and even against the rest. If that were true, Valakut would be banned a long time ago. In comparison the top players on Pro Tour have win% at maybe 65%? That leads me to the conclusion that either your opponents is among weaker players (you'sre the better player by a large margin), or you win% isn't correct.
Lejoon, I agree with all you say about lightning bolt, but Nils has a valid point here. It would be interesting to know what is the proportion of 8 men in your sample (where player level may be rather low) compared to PPTQs/comp leagues. It could be even more interesting if you provide the data for comp leagues/PPTQs only. You seem to have faced a lot bad control and midrange player.
I have been playing the deck consistently for about two months, and I gradually evolved from a list with three bolts to a BTL RUGw list not packing any bolt. My results in friendly leagues have greatly improved. I miss bolts against hate bears (to get rid of hosers aven and/or sculler), but that's it. BTL allowed the deck to move from the control-shell to a very resilient combo-shell, where cryptics and remands are often suficient to earn the one or two turns you need to combo off.
@ flygonagal
I like the idea (actually, I came to the forum to see if any body had it). But I would switch to bant, in order to play tireless tracker and ongoing investigation, instead of junk like fleeting memories.
OK, I understand your flavor biases, even if I do not necessarily share them as a cube designer. But here I think you are going too far, to the expense of playability (I concur with Zetsu's comment).
Did you test the cube so far?
Because there are a few points that strike me:
- the number of removals and blasts is very low for a cube, which will make for very uninteractive game. Besides, the average power level of the creatures is a lot higher than in a booster draft, because rare and mythics are more proportionnaly represented, so common rarity removals will probably end up at last pick in the boosters. You will probably end up in board stalls easily, or one player will crush its opponent with a big flier before the latter can even find and answer. So you need to put 5 to 6 more removal per each color, and preferably high to medium powered one (terror-like black removals, avacyn's judgment, declaration in stone etc.)
- control strategy is not really supported. Very probably more board sweepers are needed.
- two cycles of dual lands in not sufficient. Add another cycle, or increase the numbers of evolving wilds.
I think the manifest sub-theme should be reinforced, in order to build on the synergies with the mill deck. Once, in a SOI draft, I built a deck recently where I had a combo with Tamiyo's journal, Ulenwald Mysteries and Erdwal Illuminator. The possibility to demonic tutor every two turn while spawning token is a hell of fun, and that's typically the kind of synergies I want my fellow cube drafters to find. And the cards are good playables. UG is definitely the funniest color pair in the Innistrad environment. Startled Awake is also a vey good card, which can be more challenging to play correctly than it first seems.
And here is what I would do to reinforce the zombie theme: baby liliana, Relentless Dead, carrion feeder, undead gladiator, instead of medium power cards you included. Ok, except Relentless Dead, it is cards out of Innistrad sets, but they are not off flavor. Crow of dark tidings (>markov pratician) and rancid rats (>typhoid rates) are also zombies, to make value off a Diregraf colossus
Prized Amalgam is quite a bad card.
Seasons past is also a nice build around card, if you want to push people to draft "something different".
I think the point that a lot of people misses is that Conscripts can take control of a permanent, not only a creature. It is typically the kind of card that gives a possibility to the red mage to draft other things than RDW: it steals the big fatty of your opponent while he is full tapped, it answers a planeswalker ready to ultimate and allows to activate it if you can have some profit out, it deals with problematic permanent like a sword... It becomes totally broken if you have a way to blink it (looking at you venser...)
Hellkite is one of the best 5cc creature obviously, always a nice inclusion in wildfire.dec.
01 Strip Mine
02 ONS/ZEN Fetch Lands
03 Prismatic Vista
04 Library of Alexandria
05 Wasteland
06 Ancient Tomb
07 ABU Dual Lands
08 Mana Confluence
09 City of Brass
10 Mishra's Factory
11 Ash Barrens
12 Mutavault
13 RAV Shock Lands
14 FUT/MH1 Horizon Lands
15 Maze of Ith
16 Rishadan Port
17 WWK/BFZ Manlands
18 Evolving Wilds/Terramorphic Expanse
19 Gemstone Mine
20 Grand Coliseum
1. Sol ring
2. Black lotus
3. Moxes
4. Mana crypt
5. Mana vault
6. Grim Monolith
7. Talisman8. Signet
9. Skull Clamp
10. Mox Diamond
11. Karn Liberated
12. Smuggler's Copter
13. Ulamog the Ceaseless Hunger
14. Umezawa's Jitte
15. Worn Powerstone
16. Coalition Relic
17. Thran Dynamo
18. Emrakul, the Aeons Thorn
19. Wurmcoil engine
20. Ugin, the Spirit Dragon
new 19. Batterskull
new 20. Walking Ballista
I drafted a UW deck, and as I expected, I ended up not including the flicker cards, as I had better cube staple to include. Your cube is midway between a best of the best cube list (like the one linked in my signature) and a themed cube. I would shave 45 cards to go back to 360 and decide in which direction to go. Indeed, there is no reason for players of your group to try the other archetypes, if almost (if not) all the staples for the good ol' four best archetypes of non powered cubes (WB and WU control, red burn and green ramp) are available. On the contrary, the reanimator deck is nerfed, which can be a trap for someone who does not your list, and expect the deck to exist based on the other staple cards he sees in his first pack. In any case, with such a list, I would play blue every time (hoping to tinker into Inkwell every game), as it is head and shoulders the most powerful color.
First decide, and then I can help you decide what to shave if you want.
It is not impossible we may have even played against each other (lol), as I remember being crushed by a B/W anthem deck, which was rebuilding so fast after the wraths I was playing. And you feel so hopeless when you have two black removals in hand and opponent is playing something in the lines of spectral procession, putting 6 power on the board with only three mana. I was also totally blowed out by dictate of heliod a couple of times. Anthem archetype does not really correspond to my play style, but I will give it a try next time, as, as you may have noticed, white was also pretty open during the drafts (mtgo drafters simply seems to not like draft white). I just wish that they include Angel of Invention, in place of -say- baneslayer angel (which is a real "trap card"). And, about what you said about disruption, I was also very surprised how late i could pick up things like inquisition or duress when I was drafting black.
I also felt blue to be underwhelming in the cube, and that may be also a consequence of the modern ban list. What makes blue good but not oppressive is the consistency provided by the cantrips, and with serum visions as the best cantrip, that just simply is not the case. The 4CC clones are fun, but it can be already to late when you cast it, and playing a 2/2 on fourth turn with a bounce effect at sorcery speed (looking at you - mist raven) is simply too late when you are crushed by an army of token. But sometimes, it is good to play in an environment where blue is not the best color head and shoulders.
The list drew many criticisms on the internet. I will not comment on the gross mistake that are the inclusion of drake haven and exclusion of gifts, as everybody has already said that. What surprised me most is that the list includes only half of the manlands (the zendikar ones), which is very doubtful from a design point of view. There are also a lots of doubtful choices, as if the design team was running out of ideas at some points, and needed some“fillers”. The non inclusion of certain cards surprised me, but I understood the overall design goals of the team, which tried to give an identity to each color while providing balance between them (and thus greatly reducing red in terms of raw power for that reason, by cutting many one drops and low cost burns compared to the previous iteration). There are certainly a certain number of doubtful choices, like the inclusion of wildfire, which was a trap, as even if the number of mana rocks was reasonable, it was not sufficient to support such an archetype, given the lack of signets. But I am not unhappy to have seen some really medium planeswalker like Elspeth Tirel or Jace, Unraveler of secrets replaced by solid cards like Angel of Sanctions or Icefall Regent. I did not understood the criticism regarding the inclusion of a lot of standard legal cards, after, the MTGO designer are like any cube designer, they try new things.
As always in any MTGO cube, the list is packed with planeswalkers. On the good side, the team seemed perfectly aware of the planeswalker high density of the list, and provided with a greater number of way to deal with them (the latest ones added this time being Cast out, Angel of sanctions and Never // Return).
The MTGO modern cube is a « modern » cube, in the sense that much focus is on tempo, creatures and board interactions. The most important take away from this is that a deck that do nothing (or simply ramp) for the first turns in terms of board presence has little chance to succeed (compared to vintage cube, where draw go is a legitimate strategy if a sufficient density of instant is achieved). This draft from Reid Duke is a good example of what you should not do in this environment : https://www.channelfireball.com/videos/channel-reid-modern-cube-draft/. I think this also explains why green ramp strategies were not very successful comparatively in my view. Not having access to Rofellos, Craddle or Natural Order (making the deck at least a turn slower) that puts a lot less pressure on the opponent to find an immediate solution, opponent often has a way to deal with the mana elves in the first turns and thus considerably slow down the deck. Mono green was still very efficient when lowering a bit the curve and turning into a midrange strategy, with one or two splashes for a couple of powerful planeswalkers or a few removals, and trying to bury the opponent with card advantage. Rishkar’s expertise was nuts in this kind of decks.
There were a lot of interesting “new” cards (i.e., neither in the Vintage or the Legacy cubes), and in a sense this is quite refreshing. As a drafter, I must say that I often value fun over pure competitiveness, and in a sense, this iteration of the MTGO cube rewards that (as long as you make sure to draft something that have a legitimate plan to win, and not a pile of splashy cards without any synergy). It is really enjoyable to build decks around cards that does not make the cut in an unpowered deck, like mine. There is also a sense of nostalgia, as the list offers the opportunity to play again some archetype defining cards that used to make the cut for a cube but are no longer legitimate power wise, like crystal shard, mirror entity or mimic vat. Interesting cards from recent sets that would never fit in my own list like clever impersonator or prophet of kruphix were also worth trying, and often good surprises.
I 3-0d 4 leagues over 15 I joined, and 2-1d a good number of times, but I must say that I also 0-3d a handful of them. It took some time for me to really get a good grasp of the format, and properly evaluate the power level/utility of cards I had never played with. Once I understood I should prioritize aggressive to mid rangy two-three drops creatures (or cheap ways to deal with these if I was going for control), the games went much smoothly.
As in any “modern” cube, all creatures with a ETB ability proved to be much higher picks than the other ones. I personally avoided drafting “superfriend” decks, as, after a couple of tries, I was unable to find the good balance between fixing, sweepers/removals and planeswalker themselves, but a lot of players appeared to be good at this exercise. I felt that the "super-friend" archetype was less oppressive than back in Spring. Overall, I loved that sweet archetypes like mono black devotion or non blue control were potent choices.
Having not access to some of the most cube defining legacy legal cards also made me reevaluate the power level of some cube bombs (an obvious example being craterhoof behemoth), and rethinking a pick order too much set in stone in my mind. In a way, this was a good training to prepare for future drafts when I get the chance to play outside my usual groups.
I had a lot of fun and I am sure a lot of other people had, given the attendance numbers, and despite all the hate towards the cube that you can find on reddit. In terms of replayability, I think this cube offered quite a good deal of it. There are many modern only cube lists on Cube tutor, by players who are either constrained for budget reasons or simply are younger players that no real fondness for older cards that they never played with, and I think that the Modern Cube appealed to that public.
From a draft perspective, having access to only modern legal cards was quite challenging, as power level of cards is pretty even and there are no “automatic picks” like in a powered cube. As said on many forums, it was of course possible and often right to go for a list with a good curve, good stuff cards without so much synergy but a few bombs, but I felt that thinking out of box and focus on synergies was often rewarding. Some archetypes were pretty deep. I personally have never drafted an anthem deck (and probably never will), but I saw opponents with solid lists, and with so much choices offered, all sorts of anthem decks can be built (be it the classic aggressive white weeny, the token/go-wide based ones, G/W go-big based one with +1/+1 counters generators or B/W or decks with token generating planeswalker with resiliency to wraths – the last one appeared to be a bit slow but very potent strategy when it managed to stabilize). The experience was something in the middle between cube drafting (where you try to recreate a constructed deck) and limited. From a game play perspective, longer games provide for more skill testing game play, compared to Vintage Cube where luck in draft and in opener play a huge role (hello, T1 sol ring). Cards are still powerful enough to avoid ending up in a board stall (like it may happen in recent set drafts), but poor sequencing and sloppy plays were often punished. This pushes players to make better plays and squeeze maximum value out of them, which is always good.
Thanks for reading me. I would be happy if you can share your own impressions on this cube, sweet archetypes you drafted, and good stories!
Lejoon, I agree with all you say about lightning bolt, but Nils has a valid point here. It would be interesting to know what is the proportion of 8 men in your sample (where player level may be rather low) compared to PPTQs/comp leagues. It could be even more interesting if you provide the data for comp leagues/PPTQs only. You seem to have faced a lot bad control and midrange player.
I have been playing the deck consistently for about two months, and I gradually evolved from a list with three bolts to a BTL RUGw list not packing any bolt. My results in friendly leagues have greatly improved. I miss bolts against hate bears (to get rid of hosers aven and/or sculler), but that's it. BTL allowed the deck to move from the control-shell to a very resilient combo-shell, where cryptics and remands are often suficient to earn the one or two turns you need to combo off.
I like the idea (actually, I came to the forum to see if any body had it). But I would switch to bant, in order to play tireless tracker and ongoing investigation, instead of junk like fleeting memories.
Did you test the cube so far?
Because there are a few points that strike me:
- the number of removals and blasts is very low for a cube, which will make for very uninteractive game. Besides, the average power level of the creatures is a lot higher than in a booster draft, because rare and mythics are more proportionnaly represented, so common rarity removals will probably end up at last pick in the boosters. You will probably end up in board stalls easily, or one player will crush its opponent with a big flier before the latter can even find and answer. So you need to put 5 to 6 more removal per each color, and preferably high to medium powered one (terror-like black removals, avacyn's judgment, declaration in stone etc.)
- control strategy is not really supported. Very probably more board sweepers are needed.
- two cycles of dual lands in not sufficient. Add another cycle, or increase the numbers of evolving wilds.
I think the manifest sub-theme should be reinforced, in order to build on the synergies with the mill deck. Once, in a SOI draft, I built a deck recently where I had a combo with Tamiyo's journal, Ulenwald Mysteries and Erdwal Illuminator. The possibility to demonic tutor every two turn while spawning token is a hell of fun, and that's typically the kind of synergies I want my fellow cube drafters to find. And the cards are good playables. UG is definitely the funniest color pair in the Innistrad environment. Startled Awake is also a vey good card, which can be more challenging to play correctly than it first seems.
And here is what I would do to reinforce the zombie theme: baby liliana, Relentless Dead, carrion feeder, undead gladiator, instead of medium power cards you included. Ok, except Relentless Dead, it is cards out of Innistrad sets, but they are not off flavor. Crow of dark tidings (>markov pratician) and rancid rats (>typhoid rates) are also zombies, to make value off a Diregraf colossus
Prized Amalgam is quite a bad card.
Seasons past is also a nice build around card, if you want to push people to draft "something different".
I think the point that a lot of people misses is that Conscripts can take control of a permanent, not only a creature. It is typically the kind of card that gives a possibility to the red mage to draft other things than RDW: it steals the big fatty of your opponent while he is full tapped, it answers a planeswalker ready to ultimate and allows to activate it if you can have some profit out, it deals with problematic permanent like a sword... It becomes totally broken if you have a way to blink it (looking at you venser...)
Hellkite is one of the best 5cc creature obviously, always a nice inclusion in wildfire.dec.