In terms of aggro not being interesting, I love my jackul pups. Saw a deck in my cube run upheaval yesterday, so they can be wacky too (that deck went 4-2, upheaval with haste, ral, and black vise was actually quite strong).
I also watched a control deck pack ranger of eos so the deck could summon up a package of duders to abuse opposition with and put batterskull on... over and over (with venser)!
I think the jackul pups get a lot of flack for being "plain", but you would be surprised what you can do with em =-)
And there is nothing wrong with building a dragon cube if that is what your group prefers. Whatever keeps ya'll cubing. Here, we love the fast paced games and the skills that are required to play them (make a mistake and your dead, or severely punished).
Basically, artifact-centric stuff (other than Tinker) is out, and a blue devotion tempo package is included. Combined with the C13 update at the same time.
That's pretty much the path I took, and we really didn't miss the couple of blue cards that were gone. Artifacts was still easy enough to pull off, and I think we may want to keep the academies. Now I am just going to have to refine the choices.
We did this for blue:
Tezzeret the Seeker ->>> Coralhelm commander
Inkwell Leviathan ->>> Aether Adept
Trinket Mage ->>> Identity Nemesis
Gifts Ungiven ->>> Master of Waves
Capsize ->>> Kira, Great Glass Spinner
Gifts was a hard choice. But steam augery helped carry some weight, but the reanimator decks LOVE gifts, so I want to get it back in.
Wow, is this not the best Anthem ever? Easy to cast and in a color with a lot of creatures AND a good amount have trample/hexproof/shroud. Green aggro is a go go! Finks is sweet, sorry Strangleroot though still very playable.
Plus the power level is exceed-lying good.
I love attacking with a powerful BoP
I was playing it in a blue devotion/bant aggro deck. It was the absolute nuts with edric and geist. =). Not to mention playing a hermit or master of waves into this thing.
Racing it isn't the issue though, how often did holding it back just stop your opponent from attacking? I assume it was never killed?
It was only ever killed when my opponent was rocking wraths.
I hardly ever had to use it on defense. Often it would be used a sole attacker or along side some flying/shadow/island walk dude, while everyone else stayed home to defend. In these scenarios it wasn't rare for it be carrying a sword.
However, it was great the turn it came down to deflect an attack. That three power puts the fear in aggro. A few games I was able to give it vigilance (ajani)... and that was a bit insane. In one game it kept a very big polukranos from annihilating me.
My strategy often devolved into... how can I voltron this thing? The new green anthem was very good at that =).
Holy crap was this card amazing today. I didn't have any tokens outside of a master of waves/deranged hermit, but oh boy did it make my g/u deck hum. When you have a bunch of durdly shadow/islandwalk/flying or just 2/1's in play and you drop this, things get real bad real fast for your opponent.
Turning your BOP into threats is HILARIOUS.
I think this is the card green aggro has been dying for.
So much so we had some discussion about whether or not it was format busting good. I think if this card was in a hard aggro colour it might be, but in blue it allows me to justify a whole archetype.
We will see as time goes on, but it was very rare that I lost when I played it. But it can be raced, especially by baneslayer.....
Drafted a tempo blue/green deck with the devotion centric changes. The deck did really well, posting a 5-1 draft winning record. Lost my match to the guy who drafted opposition away from me!
Here are some notes on the cards I played:
Identity Nemesis (Getting the french one, true-name is lame): The stone cold nuts. Completely unfair with a sword. If the opponent is not ahead in the race, they are going to lose to this card. Sparked conversations about power level, and if this card was unfun/format breaking.
Curse of Predation: Whoa. This card was an absolute monster and either closed out games or turned them around. Going to be in the cube for a very long time.
Master of Waves: When I could make 4 or more tokens, master was great. This was the case 90% of the time, although I had to work at it a bit. I made sure to draft a lot of 1UU cards. Control magic was a great enabler for this deck and the ramp helped me set up really strong turns with master. Worked quite well with edric =).
Coralhelm Commander: Solid roleplayer who was always useful. His final level works nicely with the other merfolk and decided a game for me with Identity Nemesis in play.
Frostburn Weird: Played very well in another deck. Quite happy to see it perform outside of what it was included for. (was in a totally crazy Grixis aggro deck that went 4-2, which packed 10+ 1 drops, ral, ancestral, equips, and an Upheaval).
Final thoughts:
The deck did very well. I am glad I drafted fixing HIGHLY. The deck was quite tough on the mana base and playing green for birds etc was very helpful.
I will be waiting eagerly for a really good UU and U drop for this deck, otherwise, quite happy with how it turned out.
PS: Brought Boros Reckoner back in to do some work with the red god. That combination was very, very scary.
I don't have everything finalized, so I can't PM you. But some of the changes were discussed in the Master of Waves thread, so if you drop artifact.dec support cards for blue tempo support cards, and then find your favorite cuts for the 7 new cards coming in from C13 (I have them listed in post #2) I think you'll get a good idea of what the future list will look like.
I'll take a stab at it and see what I come up with for tomorrow!
There's going to be a big update coming up when the C13 cards become available. I'm going to be benching the artifact.dec support to try and bolster a devotion tempo package in blue. Looks like it's going to be about 15 or 16 changes altogether. The token decks will get help, black control will get some help, Pox/Stax will be bolstered, and a few more enchantment answers will be coming in. Once the changes are finalized, I'll post it here. But for fans of the artifact deck, be prepared for a bit of a disappointing series of swaps.
Can't wait!
I am doing a draft tomorrow if you want to message me the potential changes. happy to test it out.
If I always had 10+ drafters I might go back up to 540. Right now I get a steady 8, so 450 is perfect. But I do miss that card adding flexibility.
In terms of aggro not being interesting, I love my jackul pups. Saw a deck in my cube run upheaval yesterday, so they can be wacky too (that deck went 4-2, upheaval with haste, ral, and black vise was actually quite strong).
I also watched a control deck pack ranger of eos so the deck could summon up a package of duders to abuse opposition with and put batterskull on... over and over (with venser)!
I think the jackul pups get a lot of flack for being "plain", but you would be surprised what you can do with em =-)
And there is nothing wrong with building a dragon cube if that is what your group prefers. Whatever keeps ya'll cubing. Here, we love the fast paced games and the skills that are required to play them (make a mistake and your dead, or severely punished).
That's pretty much the path I took, and we really didn't miss the couple of blue cards that were gone. Artifacts was still easy enough to pull off, and I think we may want to keep the academies. Now I am just going to have to refine the choices.
We did this for blue:
Tezzeret the Seeker ->>> Coralhelm commander
Inkwell Leviathan ->>> Aether Adept
Trinket Mage ->>> Identity Nemesis
Gifts Ungiven ->>> Master of Waves
Capsize ->>> Kira, Great Glass Spinner
Gifts was a hard choice. But steam augery helped carry some weight, but the reanimator decks LOVE gifts, so I want to get it back in.
I was playing it in a blue devotion/bant aggro deck. It was the absolute nuts with edric and geist. =). Not to mention playing a hermit or master of waves into this thing.
It was only ever killed when my opponent was rocking wraths.
I hardly ever had to use it on defense. Often it would be used a sole attacker or along side some flying/shadow/island walk dude, while everyone else stayed home to defend. In these scenarios it wasn't rare for it be carrying a sword.
However, it was great the turn it came down to deflect an attack. That three power puts the fear in aggro. A few games I was able to give it vigilance (ajani)... and that was a bit insane. In one game it kept a very big polukranos from annihilating me.
My strategy often devolved into... how can I voltron this thing? The new green anthem was very good at that =).
Turning your BOP into threats is HILARIOUS.
I think this is the card green aggro has been dying for.
So much so we had some discussion about whether or not it was format busting good. I think if this card was in a hard aggro colour it might be, but in blue it allows me to justify a whole archetype.
We will see as time goes on, but it was very rare that I lost when I played it. But it can be raced, especially by baneslayer.....
On the fence, but with earthquake, better earthquake, and bonefire, I am pretty happy not including it at 450.
Here are some notes on the cards I played:
Identity Nemesis (Getting the french one, true-name is lame): The stone cold nuts. Completely unfair with a sword. If the opponent is not ahead in the race, they are going to lose to this card. Sparked conversations about power level, and if this card was unfun/format breaking.
Curse of Predation: Whoa. This card was an absolute monster and either closed out games or turned them around. Going to be in the cube for a very long time.
Master of Waves: When I could make 4 or more tokens, master was great. This was the case 90% of the time, although I had to work at it a bit. I made sure to draft a lot of 1UU cards. Control magic was a great enabler for this deck and the ramp helped me set up really strong turns with master. Worked quite well with edric =).
Coralhelm Commander: Solid roleplayer who was always useful. His final level works nicely with the other merfolk and decided a game for me with Identity Nemesis in play.
Frostburn Weird: Played very well in another deck. Quite happy to see it perform outside of what it was included for. (was in a totally crazy Grixis aggro deck that went 4-2, which packed 10+ 1 drops, ral, ancestral, equips, and an Upheaval).
Final thoughts:
The deck did very well. I am glad I drafted fixing HIGHLY. The deck was quite tough on the mana base and playing green for birds etc was very helpful.
I will be waiting eagerly for a really good UU and U drop for this deck, otherwise, quite happy with how it turned out.
PS: Brought Boros Reckoner back in to do some work with the red god. That combination was very, very scary.
My cube is 450 and it just won't beat out any of my other 5 slot cards.
Flashy Adept: 1U/U/
Flash
When Flashy Adept enters the battlefield, put target creature on top of its owner's library.
1/2
Flashy Imp: U/U/
Flash
When Flashy Imp enters the battlefield, it deals 2 damage to target creature.
2/1
I'll take a stab at it and see what I come up with for tomorrow!
Can't wait!
I am doing a draft tomorrow if you want to message me the potential changes. happy to test it out.