August Cube Draft

August 28th, 2011

 

This was the first draft we did after dropping the Moxes, Black Lotus and the signets. I was worried about control having a difficult time but when I first picked Elspeth and got an early Fact or Fiction and Sower of Temptation I decided it was time to go for a control plan (and get hunting for some cards with a lower CMC!). This turned out to be wise, as the other white and blue drafter was on my left, and pack 3 slammed me with p2 Day of Judgement and p3 Wrath of God.

The lack of reliable acceleration really made me rethink control. Though I had many powerful cards in the 5+ CMC slot, I realized that I may never be able to cast them in time. Gideon Jura and Time Spiral were the only expensive cards that made the cut. I felt I could rely on the finisher package of Luminarch Ascension (a wonderful dark horse of a card), Gideon, Exalted Angel and Elspeth.

So with a bunch of sweepers and planeswalkers it looks mostly like a normal control deck, however the Tangle Wire and cheap creature package was the true backbone. Tangle Wire + Flickerwisp took entire games by themselves, with aggro choosing between swinging and developing their board, and rival control and mid-range decks unable to do anything. I can’t say those were fun games, but they showcased the power of Tangle Wire, even in a deck without a lot of manafacts or cheap permanents. I have always valued it highly but it’s close to first pick material for me now. The built-in asymmetry and the colorless mana cost make it incredibly attractive.

Another notable, but obvious, combo that made the deck hum was Gideon + Lumiarch Ascension

A final note about land drafting. I picked up a Tropical Island at some point, thinking I was going Bant, but it didn’t pan out. However, that pick turned a late Windswept Heath into a virtual U/W fetch.  Never underestimate the boost in power that a dual land can give to any fetches that come along later.

 

14 Player Cube Draft: Top Decks & Commentary

June 30th, 2011

MTGCube.com’s June draft brought in a wealth of new players and pushed the Cube to its limit, with 630 cards drafted by 14 participants in a 4 round battle royale that would crown one planeswalker supreme over all others.

To balance the playing field for the newcomers to Cube drafting, seven Power cards were set aside and awarded at random to the losers of the first round of Swiss.  Indeed a Sol Ring or Black Lotus booster shot proved to make all the difference for those players in subsequent rounds.  But in the end only four players would come out on top, with Kuleli’s Esper deck topping Ledesma’s Bolas-packing Grixis to win top honors with a 3-0-1 finishing record.  Now on to the top decks of the night!

 

 

 

Commentary by C. Kuleli:

It may be that you won’t know whether you win or lose by turn four, in the all in crusade of the aggro deck. It may be that most games you play seems to take forever, running out of time always an option. But this is how Blue should play. Slowly, yet steadily, you march towards victory. In this case, victory meant Elspeth, Knight-Errant.

Drafting and Forging the Deck

As I opened my Pack 1, I didn’t see anything that dazzled me. There was a Thrun, Last Troll; bane of all control, but I didn’t want to commit that early during a 14 player draft, with cube being stretched too thin. I simply took Lotus Petal, to help me in whatever path I chose. I try to keep a strong mana base, because as a control player, I cannot miss my land drop, nor can afford to be stuck with a WW card I can’t cast. Petal was a decent first pick.
Very soon Elspeth, Knight-Errant arrived; and I took it. I had decided that “protecting” Elspeth would be tonight’s mission, it is a good winning condition and from then on, I first picked removal to keep her alive. Blue gave me access to Timetwister and and Time Spiral, allowing me to replenish my hand, as I would be playing a spell heavy deck. I wasn’t comfortable being two colors, though. I suspected they would dry up soon. So I picked the mana fixing that eventually allowed me steady access to Black when Blue/White seemed weak, and together deck got together pretty well.
My favorite moment was when Time Walk, my favorite magic card of all time got passed to me. The strategic advantage that can be gained through this card, especially coupled with Planeswalkers, is massive, and I discover new uses for it each time. I was also pleasantly surprised when Arcane Denial tabled, which I had passed in favor of Time Walk.
When drafting was done, I looked through my deck to see a very low creature count. That worried me a little, yet I had made up for that with a decent amount of removal and a strong mana base. I definitely lacked board clear, which I either didn’t see any/had to pass to not blow up my own heavy count of artifacts and enchantments. I had also picked up a couple more win conditions the deck could protect: Karn Liberated, Oona, Queen of Faerie, Luminarch Ascencion.

Match-ups

The deck played pretty well against White-Blue Weenies and White-Blue Control. Against weenies I managed to draw out the game without taking too many hits and gained control eventually. Against control I landed an early Luminarch Ascension, which unanswered will win you the game. Against Tavish’s Grixis, my win was made possible by two factors. I drew very well; allowing me to land an early Luminarch Ascension both games and being able to answer threats easily. Also, this deck is very good at answering one threat a turn. If you cannot play more than one, you’ll lose. If you can, then I’ll lose.  Which happened against Mike and his white-green beatdown.
Game 1
Creature after creature came towards me. As I fought to weaken the upcoming army, my recourses were dwindling. And then…Timetwister saved me. Drawing me a new hand of seven, it allowed me to play a Time Walk, which allowed a Time Spiral, which allowed me to land an Oona, and if you untap with Oona, its pretty much gg. I was able to mill his library and make plenty of blockers. The game was intense, very hard for this deck with an overload of creatures, and took a long time, we were down to our last twenty minutes by the time game one was finished.
Game 2
After allowing a Rampaging Baloths to resolve and make a beast token, I proceeded to cast Karn, only for it to be countered by Mana Tithe. Stabbed by my own weapon, I watched helplessly as the Baloths and the beast token was joined by an Akroma, Angel of Wrath and killed me.
Game 3
Racing against time, Mike dropped a turn one Library of Alexandria, and my heart sank. Its uncommon to lose with that beauty in play, but I managed to Faiths Fetters it turn 3. Most players keep a Library hand regardless of whatever’s in it, so I was hoping I could perhaps sneak a win here. I was close, after killing his Rampaging Baloths, Renaimating it, I could have swung for the win if it was not for that…Rout. Thus this game ended in a tie. Well played, Mike. I wish we could have played out that game, for your deck game me the biggest challenge.

Card Breakdown

The two cards that really shined in this deck, surprisingly, are:
Pithing Needle: If you are facing a creature, this card doesn’t help you much. But everything else? Library?  Denied. Jitte? Denied. Manlands? Denied. Its just a very versatile answer for one colorless mana.
Luminarch Ascension: Drop this on turn two (or one with Lotus Petal) against a control player. You will probably win. After this hits, the clock is ticking,. They need to damage you every turn, because making 4/4 flying angels for 1W at instant speed is pretty broken.  Coupled with heavy removal, this card pretty much had a hand in all of my wins.

Well, that’s it. Control has a solid win under its belt now, and I am sure no one is ever gonna pass me Time Walk again, or any blue card.
Well played,
Cem

 

March’s Cube Deck of The Month

April 4th, 2011

The very first pack I opened was a fairly weak pack with no major power cards or bombs to speak of. There was only one green card in the pack (Vengevine) and I decided early on that if I took the green card I could possible cut the color early and my intuition told me that it was likely the other drafters might be going to have a heavy amount of black and blue. Red has been known among our playgroup to be an underdrafted color, especially when one Mono Red Mike Adams is absent. I saw some packs that had some decent red cards that I thought could wheel and it was just my fortune that they did. It turned out that out of the five of us drafting no one else was in the color red and as a result I got some pretty sweet pickups late in the packs.

Matchup Round 1

This was versus Gorgalore’s white weenie deck in which he splashed black. Both games were very close as we took turns striking back and forth.

- Key cards this match-

Hero of Oxid Ridge
This guy was key in pushing through a few extra damage with his haste and ability to make weenies not be able to block. (Maybe I should take this guy out to the bar’s with me as a wingman sometime)

Thornling
So Garrett had an Ob Nixlis out and was draining me for 3 a turn. The board was lined with creatures from both players and I was having a hard time finding a way to get through with some extra damage. I was at 2 and would die the next turn as Ob Nixlis + Land Tax was making life difficult. I had a thornling in hand along with my rancor, but I was one green mana short of casting the thornling, giving it haste and putting the rancor on it for trample. I needed to top draw a forest for this to work and TADAAAAA! a forest appeared when I needed it most. With the thornling / rancor active I was able to swing in for the kill and win the game that I would have surely lost the next turn.

Raging Ravine
When your low on spells and need an extra body to keep up the pressure this guy is boss, an amazing land for sure.

Matchup Round 2

This was versus Tavish and his blue black control deck. Now Tavish was sitting to me left and I knew I had been feeding him some pretty sweet black cards. Grave Titan and Hymn to Tourach to name a few.

Key Cards this match

Chameleon Colossus
This was the MVP in an a long game 1 that started with me dropping a turn 2 tarmagoyf and tavish with a turn 2 juzam djinn. I hooked up my Loxodon Warhammer to the goyf and Tavish hooked up a basalisk collar to his djinn. We battled back and forth for awhile and the Colossus played a key role in neutralizing an opposing grave titan. A hammer hooked up to the Colossus pumped for the win.

Krosen Grip
This was a sideboard card that I added, I was going against a fair number of artifacts and playing vs counterspells. Vedalken shackles was a real threat, but I had the bases covered with this, the maindeck artifact destruction and Eternal Witness.

Matchup Round 3 Finals

This was against Steve and his black/white beater deck.

Key Cards this match

Path to Exile
When facing a Kokusho, The Evening Star this card bailed me out and eliminated the threat flawlessly… and for only 1 mana.

Inferno Titan
This guy really brought the pain and once a hammer got equipped to him it was gg.

Wheel of Fortune
This managed to draw me a bunch of cards and got rid of a few of his bombs in the process. He drew a mindtwist to take some of the lead back, but the damage had already been done when his Baneslayer, mortify and Elspeth? got sent to the yard.

-Firekraag-

March Standard Deck of the Month

March 26th, 2011

So I apologize that it has been sometime since my last post. I’ve been hibernating if you will during these dull winter months. Working full time, getting quite sick for a couple weeks with what seemed like a lite version of mono, and just in general being lazy. Now that spring has arrived and I’m feeling better its time for a little type 2 action. We’ve seen the release of Mirrodin Besieged and I always enjoy having some new cards to work with. Infect has started to show up a little bit on the radar of some tournaments and I think it is probably the archetype that may have the most chance to level up to tier 1 status. Proliferate is a very powerful mechanic when combined with infect and essentially having to do half the normal damage to an opponent seems like a pretty solid strategy to go with. Heres the list

Tempered Infect

A pretty basic build here that can end the game very quick. Some decks just can’t beat a turn 4 armored ascension on one of your infect guys. Especially if your turn 3 play was a tempered steel. Being that you only need to get to 10 poison you can have some devastating attacks when you land your enchantments. The proliferate mechanic comes in handy as a finisher and there are six non creature cards that can help get the job done there. This deck is a fine choice to suit up for a friday night magic and perhaps with some fine tuning and maybe the addition of a second color could be a tier 2 or 1.5 deck in the future.

Firekraag

February’s Cube Deck of the Month

February 4th, 2011

I doubt I could have made this deck much better picking and choosing from the cube itself. A Bone Shredder and an Oona’s Prowler would have real nice but that’s about it.

The deck’s main plan is to get one of its two devastating finishers into the graveyard with one of the discard outlets, and then reanimate them for huge card advantage and a nasty threat. Hopefully the villain will kill them somehow so you can reanimate them again for further shenanegins. These finishers are ideal because they kill Planeswalkers and enchantments, many of which can wreak havoc on our plans. The deck also plays control, removal and survival elements so that it might just get to the point where it can hardcast its bombs. A second backup plan is to remove an opponent’s finisher and use it against them.

Matchwise I had alot of problems against Treavor’s U/G deck. It was sort of aggressive with evasion and tons of disruptive elements like Crystal Shard and Shackles. The 3/1 Faerie ate away my face pretty quick. His nastiest play was a turn 3 Mana Crypt/Sword-> Equip Sword to River Boa and swing for 7. Ouch! This deck just has very little that can deal with fliers and I’m lucky that I only faced one deck that featured a good amount of them.

Individual Cards:

The walls, Diabolic Edict, Call of the Herd, Uktabi Orangutan and Yavimaya Elder help the deck survive the early game, as well as provide fodder for Nightmare/Survival. Most of them provide card advantage in and of themselves, which is huge because they are going to die alot. Against a control deck I can get a real aggro start if I get lucky.

Putrid Leech: I’ve been irrationally down on this guy, but I picked him up because I was lacking creatures. What a beast. Stops aggro well and is immune to almost all black and red removal. If you can drop him turn 2 vs. control, they are begging for an answer or they are just dead.

Survival of the Fittest: No better card for a reanimator deck. Tutor your target and put him in the graveyard for 2 mana. Wow! This wheeled. I guess everyone hates green?

Terastodon: Another card I didn’t like the look of on paper but DAMN! This guy is so badass that when he shows up on the field, Koth of the Hammer thinks: “Man, I sure wish I was that cool”. Then he remembers that he’s a wizard so he uses his magic to turn himself into an elephant. But the elephant is only one third of the elephant that Terastodon is and Koth laments. Nothing beats the card advantage of neutralizing two Planeswalkers with one card, or reanimating this guy to blow up 3 of your lands to put 18 power on the table.

Psychatog: Yeah I splashed blue for this guy (and Creeping Tar Pit). Yet another card I was skeptical of, but in a reanimator deck he is boss. I actually ended a game with an enemy Jace fueled rampage from this guy, discarding 7 and removing 12 from the graveyard to pump him up to a 14/15. Don’t try this against a white deck, kids.

The Cube goes Atkins

February 3rd, 2011

That’s right folks, The Cube is dropping fat faster than a mono-green ramp deck. Let’s have a moment of silence for all of the high class cards who just did not make the cut:

It’s farewell to these guys for now, but you never know when a select few may weasel their way back into the standard rotation. In the meantime, let’s bask in the much tighter card pool to draft from!

MTGCube.com’s January Draft

January 21st, 2011

A blustery evening in Portland, Oregon brought Cube drafters indoors from across the metropolitan area for MTGCube.com’s monthly booster draft. With The Cube running at a leaner 495 cards, down from its previous 540, participants crowded around the draft table in stark anticipation of higher quality picks and a chance to crack one of the three newest additions: Hero of Bladehold, Thrun, the Last Troll, and Black Sun’s Zenith. (These were proxied in from one of the many Mirrodin Besieged Spoilers floating around the internets.)

The clock struck seven. Silence blanketed the room, and nine drafters popped the first pack to survey the selection. From the sounds of it, or rather lack of sound — some players have been known to spam the “Vuvuzela” app on their smartphones upon windmill slamming a top pick — you would think the recent Cube reduction was all for naught. Personally? I kept quiet as I slipped a Pack 1-Pick 1 Black Lotus into my pile. The rest of the seasoned drafters remained equally subdued as they thoughtfully pieced together their masterpieces.

Four rounds of Swiss, three large pizzas, and five hours of trash-talking later, the two top contenders sat down at Table One for a classic archetype battle: Clearence’s Blue/Green Beatsy Control versus Adams’ Mono-Red Burn. While the night’s winner would ultimately be determined by the total number of accumulated match points (Win = 3, Tie = 1, Loss = 0), all eyes were on Steve and Mike as the two duked it out for bragging rights.

Sadly, even at 3-1, my Green/Red Ramp could not Kodama’s Reach its way to the final table. However I did savor a sweet game victory over Clearence with a top-decked Banefire for the win, as he held not one but three counterspells in his hand. But moving on to the spotlight match for the evening…

Indeed it was a battle of epic proportions — Chandra versus Jace. Meloku versus Inferno Titan. Wasteland versus Library. Don’t blink or else you may have missed this one. In fact, that’s indeed what happened. As I was munching on some leftover pizza, I glanced over and both players had already started reshuffling their decks. Could it really have ended that quickly?

The answer is a resounding yes.

In two straight games, Adams’ mono-red proved to be too hot to handle for his worthy adversary. In a friendly game three, Adams added insult to injury by Forking Steve’s Cryptic Command, both countering the original spell and netting an additional card. And with that, Steve scooped in defeat, but not without walking away the ultimate winner of the night by edging out the competition with his 3-1 record.

Congratulations to Steve, and to the remaining drafters who really raised the competition to a new level. Stay tuned for next month’s draft report and a full update on changes to The Cube.

Happy Drafting!

-Tavish

Standard Rogue Deck of the month

December 4th, 2010

By Kevin Graybeal (Firekraag on MTGO)

I’ve decided to take up posting a new rogue type 2 deck of the month. At the moment it appears as if our cube action is dwindling down a bit and I like to see new content posted on our site.

First a quick word on MTGO. Magic the Gathering Online is one of the best directions wizards has taken magic. With Magic Online, gone are the days of lugging around boxes and binders of cards around from place to place. You no longer need to drive through the traffic to get to a card shop to play competitive magic nor do you have to align your schedule with a friend or acquaintance just to get a quick game in.
With that being said, I think anyone who likes to play magic can get access to being able to play anytime vs a wide variety of players. One of the best parts is that the costs of most of the virtual cards are cheaper than their paper counterparts and are not subject to losing value over time via card condition deterioration. All organized and easily accessed via the internet day or night.

So this next deck takes some of my favorite cards with “Enter the battlefield” effects and combines it with some heavy removal and creature lock-down to power out some overwhelming board advantage.

Enter the Ascension

Artifacts (9)
Creatures (10)
Instants (1)
Sorceries (3)
Enchantments (8)
Planeswalkers (3)
Land (25)

This deck is a controlling build focused on neutralizing their creatures while you ascend the board with card advantage and token makers.

Luminarch Ascension – This card is pretty good against green ramp decks and u/w u/b control decks. Against aggro decks this card will come out a lot, but given that theres contagion clasp and lots of removal in the main deck its not incredibly difficult to get this online.

Day of Judgement – A lot of aggro decks just lose to this card. They load the board up with all their cheap creatures and you end up 4 for 1ing them or something ridiculous and they get setback too far to catch up.

Skin Render – This guy is at his best in the early to mid game when he almost takes an enemy creature out with it. Even if he does hit a titan, its weakened to the point of near death and will trade with the Skin render if attacked into.

Glimmerpoint Stag – I must say at first I wasn’t sure about this card, but I have been impressed. Not only does it disrupt the opponents game plan, but with skin render and tumble magnet you can really give your opponents headaches. This guy even kept a Koth from going ultimate on me one game via reseting his counters. Not a permanent answer to everything, but a decent body thats very versatile playing defense well while offering a smidgen of offense.

Mimic Vat – Putting a Skin Render or a Glimmerpoint Stag into this is ridiculous. When a mimic vat gets loaded up with a sweet creature, opponents usually will have to deal with the vat before they can win.

Sun Titan – Opponent destroys your mimic vat fun time ? No problem, drop a sun titan and your right back in business.

Gideon Jura – This planeswalker goes very well with luminarch ascension, using his +2 counter ability to prevent damage and is of destroying tapped guys you tumble magnet. Being a 6/6 that can’t die very easily rounds out his role as a finisher and all around powerful asset.

Tumble Magnet – This card is the bane of eldrazis and titans, shutting them down and keeping them out of the red zone until you use a removal spell to end them for good.

Journey to Nowhere – Indestructible ? np. Lots of toughness ? didn’t think so. This removal spell is the answer to so many creatures. Sure an opponent can destroy an enchantment occasionally, but with a sun titan you can recycle ! re-use ! reduce !

Contagion Clasp – Early game defense and the ability to power up ascensions, magnets, and planeswalkers all while shrinking opponents creatures with counters on them.

Baneslayer Angel – This lady rules the skies and can turn the tide of battle on her own.

White weenie quest decks and vampire weenie aggro decks are pretty popular online lately. The sideboard has some more mass removal in the form of Consume the Meek and instant spot removal as well as a stocked revoke existance set. Valakut is very popular now and the White Leyline of Sanctity does a nice job at protecting you from their burn. With black being able to dip into hand discard spells I think this deck has access to all the tools needed to survive the meta game and be contender in the near future.

Standard Ooze

November 22nd, 2010

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So lately I have been playing lots of Scars of Mirrodin Drafts on MTGO and as my collection starts to accumulate I always I enjoy messing around in the lab trying to concoct the latest rogue deck that will take standard by storm. This is a dream shared by many a young magic player and definitely not an easy task, but I do believe that this is one of the first of its kind utilizing the combo. So here is the steamy brew that I came up with the other day and it is quite fun once the pieces fit together. It is mostly black and if theres something that black can do well it is take advantage of the graveyard. The reason I think this can be a successful strategy is that your opponent is almost always going to play their spells to put your creatures in the graveyard. So you can make your opponents spells gain advantage for you with the good ol necrotic ooze. And if you can equip your ooze with a cloak, and happen to have a Steel Hellkite in the graveyard… well say goodbye to your opponents threats while you bash with an unblockable pumping ball of destruction ooze. So without further adooze I present Sticky Icky Icky Ooze!

– Kevin (FireKraag on MTGO)

Finding cubes for cards without a home

October 22nd, 2010

Hello fellow cube architects and players! We all know that running a cube can be expensive and time consuming albeit very rewarding though! You know that big stack of crap you never play with? Well some of that might just fit into someone’s cube! I know I have thousands of cards that just collect dust. I’d love to see them go to anyone’s cube. So I propose this:

If you own a cube post up a need list of either cards that you don’t have and need or cards that are proxy and you want to fill with the real deal. Then anyone who wants to pony up some free unused cards can do so and help everyone out. Just to give people an idea I’ll put up an example pulled from my cube.

  • Card
  • Rarity
  • Price
  • Fireslinger
  • C
  • 0.15
  • Mold Shambler
  • C
  • 0.15
  • Disenchant
  • C
  • 0.19
  • Kor Skyfisher
  • C
  • 0.25
  • Ronom Unicorn
  • C
  • 0.25
  • Aether Adept
  • C
  • 0.25
  • Into the Roil
  • C
  • 0.25
  • Condescend
  • C
  • 0.25
  • Repeal
  • C
  • 0.25
  • Manic Vandal
  • C
  • 0.25
  • Smash to Smithereens
  • C
  • 0.25
  • Staggershock
  • C
  • 0.25
  • Aftershock
  • C
  • 0.25
  • Vines of Vastwood
  • C
  • 0.25

Post your need lists up in a similar format and I’ll scour my collection to see if I can’t fill some holes. There is no pressure here. If you don’t feel like giving out then don’t! But if you have some cards that you never use and would like to see them used try and fill another cuber’s list.

I’ll post my full need list once I’ve gone through my own collection to fill any gaps. I hope others will do the same. I know TLM, Keston, Tavish and myself all have cubes but anyone else that has one or wants to build one post your list and fill those holes! (That’s what she said.)