One other stores of this archetype are still open in Jefferson Valley Mall in . Match 3, Game 2: We lead with Tidehollow Sculler, which gets Dazed. Im really looking for Goblin Bombardment and some other cheap support before I give that one a close look. Some players have advocated Oko as their overall Pack 1, Pick 1, which I believe to be a defensible position. I will say that Gideon, Ally of Zendikar is the best four and is a hell of a thing to Black Lotus in, but the average draw more commonly curving a one-drop into two one-drops is a much bigger difference-maker in a large sampling of games. It offers an extra card per turn if you manage to play your hand right and can easily offer up enough card advantage to come out of any situation. } The nice thing about them is youll often be the only green drafter, which means you can get your best cards like Gaeas Cradle and Natural Order late in the draft due to their niche nature. Sometimes you back into it to save your draft. Its pretty odd to me to add Storm the Festival in the update that removes Whisperwood Elemental because you really want some kind of sweeper protection if all youre doing is flooding the battlefield with cheaper threats. The two most busted Green cards in the whole Vintage Cube are Channel and Natural Order. Red decks will miss Mizzium Mortars when facing down Courser of Kruphix specifically, but not much otherwise. The way you get into a green ramp deck is to take early one of the busted green cards or some of the best of the cards that are replaceable but are the best at what they do. Fortunately, the make an ill-advised attack, trading off Manglehorn for Wolf token and walk their Master of the Wild Hunt into my animated Shambling Vent. It's much better to have a Tier 2 archetype deck that comes together as a 9 or a 10 than a Tier 1 deck that only comes together as a 4 or a 5. It includes the Power 9, all original dual lands, and some of the best creatures and planeswalkers out there. Generally, the white based decks come in three varieties: Mono White Aggro, which is typically worse than the best Mono Red Aggro decks; Blue-White Tempo, which seeks to stick a hard to touch threat like Geist of Saint Traft and them keep the opponent from sticking anything relevant; or White-Black Disruption Aggro, which also is most often a token deck. Gulp. The first book by the reclusive inventor of the world's most iconic puzzle, the Rubik's Cube. Since Cube has so . Maybe Mono Red saves your draft. If Im going to spend that much mana on something that isnt a sure thing, I at least want it to give me looks at Craterhoof Behemoth. 2023 Wizards. I queue into a lot of four- or five-color decks in Vintage Cube, though I most commonly play one or two colors and sometimes splash a third. First is that you force it. Experience is the best teacher, but Ill do my best to facilitate some good lessons. Another tip that a lot of players commonly look over is the significance and importance of non-basic lands in the Cube. All the time, for example, I might go P1 P1 Mana Drain into P1 P2 Badlands. Match 1, Game 3: They mulligan to 6, but have a Turn 1 Imperial Seal. Lots of decks will have multiples of these in them. They have Manglehorn for my signet, making me happy I didn't play out my sword. Heres what to look out for if youre trying to get the ball rolling: The artifacts deck, while often difficult to put together completely, is still one of my favorite archetypes in the Cube. This is a problem, because there are only seven aggressive red one-drops in the entire Cube, and one of them is Figure of Destiny which will be picked highly for white decks as well. Erno Rubik inspires us with what he's learned in a lifetime of creating, curiosity and discovery . It really improves your win rate against slow fair decks like mono green or control whereas Izzet tempo would be more pressured to be the aggressor. } Let's watch the world burn!" Ancestral Recall and Time Walk are always included in your deck, even as a splash. You could say that Magic is generally about that sort of thing, but Vintage Cube is the Draft environment where this is most loudly declared. Library of Alexandria is perhaps one of (if not the) most powerful lands in the Cube. Celestial Colonnade and Creeping Tar Pit in particular are great threats for control decks that can easily run away with the game if you hold up protection for your opponents removal. As an archetype, Mono Red tends to be underdrafted because many cube aficionados consider it boring. float:relative; /* must be floated for same cross browser position of larger image */ .article-footer-ad .footer-ad-text{ Just fill out your deck with any burn spells you draft. Required fields are marked *. Because no one else wants them. My Parallax Wave gets Cryptic Commanded but at least I take out Jace #2 on their attack.The ending is not that eventful: Dragonlord Ojutai finishes me off. Burn: This is the most generic element of the deck. Go for it. Nobody else wants Tendrils of Agony so you should try to wheel it, and if it doesnt come back around your deck isnt going to work out anyway. Yes, Soulfire Grand Master does go infinite with Time Walk. That said, here are some guidelines of things that you could do. Reanimator is, in my experience, almost always open. Balance is simultaneously not good enough to consistently perform in Vintage Cube while being too good for any other environment. These decks love putting in cheap yet effective threats and then holding up a hand full of interaction to ensure that your opponents never even get off of the ground, let alone clear the board. Theyre almost always worth drafting early thanks to the inclusion of Pestermite, Deceiver Exarch, and Zealous Conscripts. On the other end, the best cards to ramp into are: Craterhoof Behemoth, Ulamog, The Ceaseless Hunger, Primeval Titan and Terastodon. We allow some wiggle room to account for sheer complexity, but you are still expected to assemble your 60 card list in a reasonable timeframe. Its a phantom Draft, which means it costs less and you keep none of the cards, but it still costs either 10 TIX or 100 Play Points to enter. I think Mystic Confluence is the card that I value this highly that I see passed the most. If youre first-picking one of the listed cards in these two categories, youre starting things off in great shape. Vintage Cube features a wide range of viable archetypes, and even the most successful drafters will offer different insights on what they believe the best archetypes to be. Or at least it can be. Black Lotus can have the highest ceiling while Sol Ring most consistently does its thing. Its always a lot of fun whether youre watching or drafting yourself, and I cant recommend it enough! And yet as a deck it is much more powerful than the sum of its parts. We play a Mother of Runes which gets Force Spiked. Drafting mono-blue typically means being heavy on artifact mana, though this is a fine example of a two-color blue deck that is clearly leaning on the blue cards that I 3-0ed with: This deck is honestly a little bit of a mess, and serves as a good example of how the best cards in the format are all that matter. Infinity Faeries. First, let's start in the most logical place: Blue decks. Theoretically, there is also a White-Green Hatebears deck, but I've yet to see it in practice. It includes the Power 9, all original dual lands, and some of the best creatures and planeswalkers out there. Last week I covered two of the best decks and win conditions in the Vintage Cube: Reanimator and Grixis Goodstuff. We play Knight of the White Orchid and accelerate up to 4 lands. All Rights Reserved. You can find her writeup on the most recent update here. Theres plenty of card draw in the Cube, and this land comes online if either player has a library with 20 or less cards in it. I get to see their whole deck and they never recover. visibility:hidden; Today Id like to do a bit of a deep dive into my personal favorite cube: the Vintage Cube! Its actually pretty rare that youd see anything fundamentally shift in a Cube this powerful, though the relative strength of individual colors and archetypes are constantly in flux with these updates. The copyright for Magic: the Gathering and all associated card names and card images is held by Wizards of the Coast. I personally first-pick Mishras Workshop frequently, though it goes into a very specific deck that relies on drafting a high volume of artifacts, which can be very difficult as Signets tend to be great in the majority of Vintage Cube decks and I could see other players being much colder on it. They loot another Island, play a Sol Ring, and a Memory Jar. Most of them are clearly much worse than the best 30 or so cards, and some of them I hope I never have to register in any of my decks. Black Lotus | Illustration by Christopher Rush. Avalanche Riders is serviceable. Unconditional removal that exiles is great against Reanimator strategies and really just anybody putting creatures on the table. The Twin/Kiki deck, while sharing a lot of cards with the non-combo Izzet tempo deck, is still different enough to be a separate archetype. text-align:center; Blue is the most powerful color in the Cube and there are also just more blue cards than the other colors. Cube has long been one of my favorite ways to play Magic. Our Privacy Policy. The other way you get into Mono Red is that you backdoor in. Ah, Storm, a classic archetype thats as fun as it is difficult to pull off. For my money the other Moxen are more or less colorless sources that sometimes fix your mana, while Mox Sapphire is a tremendous boon for blue interactive decks. Do you like having the chance to play with all of those crazy cards, or is it a little stale after a while? He started off playing in his store's Journey into Nyx league, and his favorite formats are draft and commander! I Tidehollow Sculler their last card and play my sword. Mana Drain gets a nice two-for-one here on being interactive and giving an absurd mana boost. Expect gorgeous art, a heartstring-tugging dog, and pink. This just goes to show that if you complain loudly enough, you can have Niv-Mizzet Reborn in any Cube! }. } The simple fact is that the very best cards in Vintage Cube are foolish to pass and the very worst cards are foolish to pick. I fetch my Sword of Body and Mind with Stoneforge Mystic and swing with Mutavault. I attack them down to 6. Its updated semi-regularly by the Cube team, and has a few cards swapped out every time its made available on Magic Online. While I believe that Bloodbraid Elf is considerably more powerful than Arlinn, the Packs Hope, I also dont really want to play with any of these cards ever. Match 2, Game 2: They go Forest-Forest-Rishkar, Peema Renegade. Sheldon Menery is adding over 70 of its cards to his decks. Necromancy | Illustration by Pete Venters. Id recommend staying away from Storm in the first one or two weeks of the Cube. } And while some may think that's a good strategy, I tend to find them to be overrated that I am content with 1 or 2 in most decks and will always take the real win conditions, tutors, and fixing, especially true dual lands and fetchlands over the Signets. They play Splinter Twin. Spot removal is much less maindeckable here than other environments, which is also much to the detriment of black. This is perhaps deserved after the huge upgrade that white recently got with Palace Jailer being reintroduced to the Cube along with the addition of Solitude, though I will still miss the Landing. And for your amusement, here is my misadventures in playing White / Black Disruptive Aggro: Match 1, Game 1: I drop a Turn 1 Soldier of the Pantheon. Do what feels fun to you. The Vintage Cube has returned to Magic Online. These are specific to Vintage Cube, but some, like Mono Green or White Weenie, are pretty much the same in Legacy or Modern Cube as well. To get things out of the way early, this is going to be my last set cube update for Magic Online . They drop a Chandra, Pyromaster. Blue is the best color in Cube, hands down, and the average Cube draft can support five blue drafters without much trouble. 2021 Updated April 22, 2021. I Parallax Wave the two fatties, swing into a zombie token, and play a Mirran Crusader. Cards like Black Lotus can make 4-drops on turn 1 a reality. Very uncommon. There are some great hatebears in the Cube too in the form of Thalia, Guardian of Thraben and Esper Sentinel. They let you take advantage of all your mana and board full of artifacts and turn that into actual threats, which is just great. This means you can expect to be able to play it all of both July and December with the occasional two- or three-week release in the spring and autumn. This is an incredibly low cost way to please a lot of players, and kudos to Carmen for doing so. Lots of pink. I guess there is a sliver of hope. So as long as you're not fighting for cards, its smooth sailing. Expect gorgeous art, a heartstring-tugging dog, and pink. Ramp out, play a big threat a few turns earlier than you otherwise should, and run over the poor schmuck across the table. Bouncing two creatures and countering a spell is a pretty common way to swing a game against a more aggressive deck, and both the counterspell and the bounce ability play quite well against most of the combo decks in the Cube with so much of the Cube being dedicated to putting some large creature on the battlefield. A Dutch artist worked with former plantation employees to create a "white cube" that they hope will one day display works returned from European museums. Young Pyromancer, Expressive Iteration, Mana Drain, Counterspell, Dack Fayden, and Vendilion Clique are all great ways to get started. In the coming weeks Ill be putting out articles looking at interesting draft picks as I come across them on MTGO, which should help to build on the groundwork Ive laid here. Land Destruction: You are the deck that wants Strip Mine, Wasteland and occasionally even Rishadan Port. As Pro Tour March of the Machine approaches, qualifier Dom Harvey offers observations on Standard and Limited, the viewer experience, and star-making. They play Fauna Shaman and swing for 5. Usually it shouldn't be your Plan A since there is no individual cards that are so strong that they are the "correct" picks in your pack 1 picks 1-4, but its a deck that the sum is a lot better than the parts. I Mind Twist away their remaining four cards. Grim Monolith is definitely behind those effects, though a lot of draws from most decks will fold to a resolved six-drop on Turn 3. Before we look at ways to mitigate parasitism, let's take some time to examine a parasitic deck in greater detail and see if we can spot some common pitfalls. Have you tried the Vintage Cube? Ugh. .article-footer-ad img { Moral of the Story: Mono Red is big risk / big reward. Id be remiss if I didnt mention Balance and Armageddon, as I know a lot of folks are really big on these cards. Look out for Fractured Identity, Teferi, Hero of Dominaria, and Teferi, Time Raveler. Sideboarding Rules Change. I think that Jadar falls flat in the way that the two cuts did, though Im always in favor of lowering the curve. There are plenty of other effects for consistency like Putrid Imp, Oona's Prowler, Shallow Grave, Corpse Dance, Makeshift Mannequin, Exhume, Animate Dead, and Necromancy. The mono-Red player isn't doing anything inherently broken. 140. Wheel of Misfortune has popped out and now back into the Cube relating to a bug.Its more fun than good, but its plenty fun. Next they find Dragonlord Ojutai. height:252px; Ugh. We play Legion's Landing, swing, play an Ophiomancer, and Strip Mine their Swamp to keep them off tutor mana. Because I assume I'm going to be Grixis. Cards like Containment Priest that turn off some of the most broken cards are also dramatically better than creatures that only attack and block. Pair these two with Giver of Runes or Mother of Runes and you have some of the best early creatures, period. Theres not a lot changing in blue this time around, which shouldnt be surprising. Past those two, you're looking for a critical mass of 1 and 2 mana ramp cards and then the real top end game-ending haymakers. These work wonders for your mana base, making 3- and 4-color mana bases incredibly easy to assemble and produce reliable mana. I hope the information provided here is helpful for those of you looking to tighten your skills in high-power environments. Chandra eats our Vampire token and thier Phyrexian Metamorph copies our Ophiomancer. They Unburial Rites their Griselbrand, but I have Anguished Unmaking. The big takeaway that I want to offer today is that Vintage Cube is much less about figuring out which archetype is best and much more about understanding how to navigate a format with absurd mana generation. 1 Scrubland } Im actually a bit miffed that Arcane Artisan, a card that I was generally happy to pick early, was cut from the Cube while Show and Tell and Eureka remained in despite their massive downsides. Cathar Commando and Intrepid Adversary both cracked my Top 10 Cube Cards for Midnight Hunt and are the most significant additions with this update. } max-width: 100%; In my experience, once you have Yawgmoths Will, if anybody at the table opens Lions Eye Diamond it will come to you, which is the easiest two-card combo for making a lethal Storm turn happen. In reviewing todays update and taking inventory of the slight blow to Mono-White Aggro and the hits to Mono-Green Ramp, Im thinking that the most powerful card being added is Portent The more things change, the more they stay the same. Its usually safe to run 12-14 mountains and 2-4 colorless utility lands. Ill take a solid Dimir () midrange deck with incredible synergies and control payoffs over a collection of the best cards in each pack. We swing with everything but Ophiomancer to flip Legion's Landing. Storm is the textbook of example of a parasitic archetype, and below I've included a sample decklist from a January 2021 Vintage Cube draft by Caleb Gannon. I Strip Mine their Island. Demonic Tutor is a little reliant on you ending up with other broken cards, but its always an incredibly efficient card selection tool, which can be a difference-maker if your opponents deck is more powerful but less consistent. A great red aggressive deck in Vintage Cube usually implies the presence of Mox Ruby, Black Lotus, and/or Strip Mine, but the most important thing is that you get a lot of one-drops and a good amount of two-drops. We saw Portent added to Legacy Cube recently by Carmen and I loved seeing it there and its nice to see here as well. The primary nature of the October 2021 changes is with regard to the release of Innistrad: Midnight Hunt, though we are also seeing the addition of older cards as Carmen Handy grows into her role of curating the digital Cubes. document.getElementById( "ak_js_1" ).setAttribute( "value", ( new Date() ).getTime() ); Wizards of the Coast, Magic: The Gathering, and their logos are trademarks of Wizards of the Coast LLC. When you try to force Storm sometimes your deck just doesnt actually do anything and sometimes even when it does it can be impossibly hard to play. Mono white: The archetype I would recommend the most. Which do you want: more forests for Rofellos? Tolarian Academy, while more difficult to use, can offer copious amounts of mana to the right artifact deck, more than even mono-green could generate. Why? Until next time, stay safe and stay healthy! Shutting off or copying fast mana sources is powerful, and shutting off or copying payoffs is even better. In general, avoid midrange "fair" cards in the Vintage Cube except as a sideboard strategy. I would still expect Mono-White Aggro to be a regular performer in the Cube though. Bloodthirsty Adversary is plainly awesome, and while I would have preferred to see it take the place of a five-mana creature lets call it Siege-Gang Commander its still really nice to have a red threat thats good on Turn 2 and has the ability to scale into the late-game as a topdeck. Tovolars Huntmaster is actually better than Primeval Titan in the current build of the Cube absent Field of the Dead and Dark Depths combo, so I have no qualms with its addition. When I venture into black its most commonly for Leovold, Emissary of Trest or to try to play Storm. We play Seeker of the Way. We trade resources. In case you havent heard, the Vintage Cube is back on Magic Online (MTGO) for the month of July. #thumbwrap { As for reanimation targets, good old Griselbrand, Iona, Shield of Emeria, Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite, Archon of Cruelty, and Massacre Wurm can all serve a purpose. None of its cards are so strong that they are correct to first pick them. Turning off Sneak Attack or Reanimate can completely stop some opponents from playing the game.
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