Yeah, I'm boosting up to 450 currently so have a bit more room. Also I think I am running a heavier multicolour section (4 spells / 4 lands at 360 up to 5/5 at 450) which I know isn't always the best plan but we really like muticolour cards.
Jilt and Lighthouse are the two I'm looking at most. I see a lot of people running fire // ice but it's never appealed so much. Is it one of those cards that doesn't look so good but plays really well?
This is exactly what I hoped to hear, it can stay and I'll look forward to running it in the future. Thanks guys.
@Rubin: Good point, there's only 10 fetchlands so that interaction isn't the most reliable but Green has a bunch of its own shuffle effects which I hadn't thought about.
So it plays well even if you never draw additional cards from it? Think I'm gonna have to force draft it next time I get the chance so I can make a better evaluation of it.
Heya Guys, these SCD and MCD have been invaluable in helping me build and tune my cube but there are a few which I'm surprised are missing. One such card is Sylvan Library, I have a feeling this is because it is obviously good to most people so it hasn't come up for an in depth discussion.
However, I'd like to hear some thoughts on it as whenever I need to make room for alterations to my green section this card looks at me funny as no one's actually played with it yet.
My thoughts are that it's really good in an aggressive green deck which can draw a few cards from it without caring about the steep cost in life and that it gets worse as your deck gets slower. That being said it still turns your draw step into a pseudo-brainstorm (or maybe closer to ponder?) which can help to draw relevant spells later in the game.
It seems like everyone includes this card so please give me some idea of how its meant to be used and why it's in so many lists.
Thanks for your input Eidolon, I'm finding that I'm still doing a fair bit of tweaks to get things how I want.
Something I'm having issue with is that most often I'm doing a 2-person grid draft with my wife and neither of us seem to favour the full on aggro strategy so those cards feel slightly wasted as often just get left behind or end up in sideboards. I think they will play better when I manage to get a bunch of friends round to draft and I know supporting aggro is important so I'm still just feeling things out.
Large update to OP cube list after some testing to make it more reliable for 2 player drafts. Comments welcome, most common draft format will be Trunkers' Grid Draft, which is really cool.
Thanks Trunkers, 10-card Rochester and the grid draft with 12 cards per pack sound interesting, will give them a test and let you know how they go when I next have 3 people to draft with.
Something I'm curious about is if the standard 3x3 grid could be used for a 3 player draft. The third person to pick will either get the remaining 3 cards or can pick 2 from 4 so should still get reasonable value.
Would people add another 9 packs for 27 total or would something like 21 or 24 be fine due to the inherent redundancy of the grid draft?
Trunkers, thanks for coming up with this format. I just recently finished building my cube and Grid Drafting was the simplest format to explain to my wife so we drafted about 5 or 6 times in a few days to test out the cube.
The decks were pretty good, and pretty much always 2 colour. Generally we ended up with mid-range vs control each time, I once drafted a R/B pool which I realised could build a kinda fragile mono red aggro deck. It won that round against U/W planeswalker control, due to luck, any slower and the control deck would have been unstoppable.
Managed a Tezzeret 2.0 artfact deck once as well.
Only 3 colour decks were a Naya deck that failed to do anything and a B/W deck which splashed Jace TMS thanks to early picked Talisman of Progress and Dimir Signet when I thought I might be an artifact deck.
Planned some changes to the cube to better support the 2-player format as a lot of the build around me cards weren't getting the support they needed so were to risky to draft early, this has also allowed me to increase the aggro support.
A final finding is that in a strange twist of fate my wife appears to be crazy good at this format. She'd never drafted before this, only playing in 2 sealed pre-releases (Zen and Zen/WW) and the occasional game of EDH. Quite a nice surprised for us both to find she really enjoys the format and beats me to a pulp almost regardless of the decks we draft. :-D
Regarding the Lantern, I also really like it but I feel the ramp from worn powerstone is more important in going from 3 to 6. Depending on how the cube plays it may go back in, but I think it's a reasonable cut to start with in a vacuum.
I've never been sold on the original masticore, I've heard it's awesome but I've never played with it and I actually have copies of the other 2 so decided to see how they perform first.
Did a test draft on tappedout.net against bots (I know it's not the best but only option atm) and I managed to force a reasonable R/w aggro deck, decided to see if I could as I'm not sure I have the critical density of 1 and 2 drops for aggro.
The credit for this one goes to someone on these forums, but it was a while ago and I don't know where I read it.
2-Man Draft, 18 pack of 9 cards.
Deal out pack one face up as a 9x9 grid. Player 1 picks all the cards from any row or column (getting 3 cards), player 2 then does the same (getting 2 or 3 cards). Discard remaining cards.
Repeat with packs 2 - 18.
Results in an average of 50 cards each to build decks with.
Never actually used this yet as I'm only just putting my cube together but it got some good feedback as it's fast and makes decent decks due to seeing 162 cards rather than 90.
Also decided to swap out Sigarda, Host of Herons for Qasali Pridemage as the angel is a fairly replaceable beat stick unless used against a black stax deck... The Pridemage is nice support for aggro/mid-range.
1 Electrolyze
1 Prophetic Bolt
1 Desolate Lighthouse
1 Izzet Signet
1 Jilt
I need to cut one of the above cards form my Izzet section. Help please.
I support the artifact deck, reanimator comes up now and then but isn't heavily supported.
Thanks
@Rubin: Good point, there's only 10 fetchlands so that interaction isn't the most reliable but Green has a bunch of its own shuffle effects which I hadn't thought about.
Thanks for the input.
Heya Guys, these SCD and MCD have been invaluable in helping me build and tune my cube but there are a few which I'm surprised are missing. One such card is Sylvan Library, I have a feeling this is because it is obviously good to most people so it hasn't come up for an in depth discussion.
However, I'd like to hear some thoughts on it as whenever I need to make room for alterations to my green section this card looks at me funny as no one's actually played with it yet.
My thoughts are that it's really good in an aggressive green deck which can draw a few cards from it without caring about the steep cost in life and that it gets worse as your deck gets slower. That being said it still turns your draw step into a pseudo-brainstorm (or maybe closer to ponder?) which can help to draw relevant spells later in the game.
It seems like everyone includes this card so please give me some idea of how its meant to be used and why it's in so many lists.
Thanks
Something I'm having issue with is that most often I'm doing a 2-person grid draft with my wife and neither of us seem to favour the full on aggro strategy so those cards feel slightly wasted as often just get left behind or end up in sideboards. I think they will play better when I manage to get a bunch of friends round to draft and I know supporting aggro is important so I'm still just feeling things out.
Would people add another 9 packs for 27 total or would something like 21 or 24 be fine due to the inherent redundancy of the grid draft?
The decks were pretty good, and pretty much always 2 colour. Generally we ended up with mid-range vs control each time, I once drafted a R/B pool which I realised could build a kinda fragile mono red aggro deck. It won that round against U/W planeswalker control, due to luck, any slower and the control deck would have been unstoppable.
Managed a Tezzeret 2.0 artfact deck once as well.
Only 3 colour decks were a Naya deck that failed to do anything and a B/W deck which splashed Jace TMS thanks to early picked Talisman of Progress and Dimir Signet when I thought I might be an artifact deck.
Planned some changes to the cube to better support the 2-player format as a lot of the build around me cards weren't getting the support they needed so were to risky to draft early, this has also allowed me to increase the aggro support.
A final finding is that in a strange twist of fate my wife appears to be crazy good at this format. She'd never drafted before this, only playing in 2 sealed pre-releases (Zen and Zen/WW) and the occasional game of EDH. Quite a nice surprised for us both to find she really enjoys the format and beats me to a pulp almost regardless of the decks we draft. :-D
Regarding the Lantern, I also really like it but I feel the ramp from worn powerstone is more important in going from 3 to 6. Depending on how the cube plays it may go back in, but I think it's a reasonable cut to start with in a vacuum.
I've never been sold on the original masticore, I've heard it's awesome but I've never played with it and I actually have copies of the other 2 so decided to see how they perform first.
Did a test draft on tappedout.net against bots (I know it's not the best but only option atm) and I managed to force a reasonable R/w aggro deck, decided to see if I could as I'm not sure I have the critical density of 1 and 2 drops for aggro.
2-Man Draft, 18 pack of 9 cards.
Deal out pack one face up as a 9x9 grid. Player 1 picks all the cards from any row or column (getting 3 cards), player 2 then does the same (getting 2 or 3 cards). Discard remaining cards.
Repeat with packs 2 - 18.
Results in an average of 50 cards each to build decks with.
Never actually used this yet as I'm only just putting my cube together but it got some good feedback as it's fast and makes decent decks due to seeing 162 cards rather than 90.
1 Library of Alexandria
1 Maze of Ith
1 Mishra's Factory
1 Mutavault
1 Rishadan Port
1 Strip Mine
1 Wasteland
1 Gemstone Mine
1 Thawing Glaciers
1 Vivid Meadow
1 Vivid Creek
1 Vivid Marsh
1 Vivid Crag
1 Vivid Grove
1 Reflecting Pool
1 Chromatic Lantern
1 Thran Dynamo
1 Gilded Lotus
Also decided to swap out Sigarda, Host of Herons for Qasali Pridemage as the angel is a fairly replaceable beat stick unless used against a black stax deck... The Pridemage is nice support for aggro/mid-range.