Moral of the Story: Mono Red is big risk / big reward. You don't need any of them except maybe Garruk Wildspeaker and Acidic Slime. Last week I covered two of the best decks and win conditions in the Vintage Cube: Reanimator and Grixis Goodstuff. 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. .article-footer-ad img { LSV and Marshall Sutcliffe of Limited Resources recently addressed the MTGO Vintage Cube by saying, "Not having cheap cards is expensive . The threes and fours are broadly interchangeable and you more want to get as many of the efficient ones and twos as you can. They draw 7 cards and play Liliana of the Veil, discarding Iona, Shield of Emeria, play Looter Il-Kor, and swing with Griselbrand going back up to 20. An easier way to end up with a solid black deck is to build around Recurring Nightmare. My pick order is based on understanding which cards are the very best and committing as hard as possible to playing these cards starting from Pack 1, Pick 1. 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. They play and equip a Sword of Light and Shadow to the dragon and swing for lethal. We're now locked out of playing white spells. I tend to be down on Chandra, Pyromaster, but its decent out of the sideboard against green and white x/1s and to stop blocking. A weak build of mono-green isnt going to be anything to write home about, but a strong build of mono-green rewards you for playing a manabase of all Forests with consistently explosive draws. Previously known as the Holiday Cube because it was only available in December, its more recently been made available a second time in June or July. Ill first-pick a Griselbrand out of some packs, though more commonly my Vampiric Tutors are tracking down Tinker in my mostly blue deck. Even if the worst 4 cards in the deck were replaced with stuff like Searing Spear or Lightning Strike, two very low end playables for most other decks, they would have been very happy filler for us. The copyright for Magic: the Gathering and all associated card names and card images is held by Wizards of the Coast. I dont plan on picking Storm the Festival highly or maindecking it in all of my ramp decks. I attack them down to 6. If you're the only one in it, you are going to have a formiable machine. Or off-color mana sources? On that front, Abrade is probably the best red card for controlling red decks given its versatility in a format lousy with artifact mana. display: block; Mono red: Load up on one drops, and curve out while other people figure out the format. Required fields are marked *. 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. Cube has long been one of my favorite ways to play Magic. This is most commonly going to mean Azorius Control. We equip the sword, swing for 5, and mill them for ten.., including Griselbrand and Iona, Shield of Emeria. 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. Its far more important to have a solid direction with synergies between your cards than a pile of great cards with no connections. Vintage Cube: More Drafts and Archetypes | PureMTGO Having off-color fetch lands with on-color duals can help you piece together a much more consistent 3- or 4-color mana base to the point where youre almost never lacking any particular color. Sometimes the stars align and the cheap red cards are opened in the draft and I dont open a Tier 0 card, but it doesnt happen nearly as often as I would like. Match 2, Game 1: On the draw, we Inquisition of Kozilek revealing Rishkar, Peema Renegade, Kitchen Finks, (Hazoret, the Fervent), Thragtusk, Master of the Wild Hunt and Mountain with currently only a Mountain in play. I imagine this is because, unlike Bribery, its not directly responsible for winning the game, but it is far more flexible and is generally worth well more than the five mana that it costs. 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. I Tidehollow Sculler their last card and play my sword. The manlands are also viable win conditions for midrange and control decks that shouldnt be overlooked. Maybe the best they can boast is a sick three drop on turn-2 off of a Mox Ruby, like Sulfuric Vortex. vertical-align:bottom; 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. 1 Parallax Wave Until next time, stay safe and stay healthy! Mana Drain gets a nice two-for-one here on being interactive and giving an absurd mana boost. The former Jordan Marsh, which opened with the mall in 1984 until 1996, was a throwback until its last days from department stores of its vintage: wood adornments, smoked mirrors, artificial flourscent skylit partitions and other garish, recessed lighting elements. All you really need to get started is a strong reanimation or entomb spell, like Reanimate or Entomb. I put these cards very slightly behind my list, but theyre all excellent first picks. Erno Rubik, who invented the Rubik's Cube, wrote . Sol Ring pairs great with powerful value cards like Jace, the Mind Sculptor while Mana Crypt generally pushes you in a more aggressive direction. I get to see their whole deck and they never recover. The complete Power 9 are included in the Cube, but theres an extra card many consider to be the 10th member: Sol Ring. It just doesn't happen unless you pick them over everything, picks 1-4 out of every pack. That part works out though, because you should only be drafting Storm if nobody else at the table is interested, which means youll be wheeling a lot of the spells that make your deck. But the payoffs are fairly limited, and they boil down to essentially either locking your opponent out through a bunch of creatures and Opposition, or hitting a Craterhoof Behemoth off of Natural Order. Sanctum Prelate made it into the Cube in a very odd patch while the last run of Vintage Cube was live over Brimaz, King of Oreskos, and is one that I wont miss. None of the others are high picks. } No, the Vintage Cube is not free on MTGO. The most common splash color is blue for card draw spells like Compulsive Research, or for Counterspells or for Opposition which is its own lock-out win condition. 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. Where blue has the most cards in the Cube, red for some reason has the fewest. MTGO Vintage Cube Changes Listed 7-20-21 : r/mtgcube - Reddit 2021 Updated April 22, 2021. I may be slightly ahead on board, but I'm way behind on cards. Fireblast is a free spell that shortens your goldfish time to win by a turn and Sulfuric Vortex is a relentless way to both ensure damage and stop the one sideboard strategy to beat you in lifegain. Need more proof March of the Machine is a Commander player's dream? The first is that the Mono-White Aggro archetype is basically always open, and if all you care about is drafting a coherent deck it will always be there for you. .thumb:hover { This is the same reason, for example, I find the "Brown" deck to be undesirable: if we're all fighting over signets, drafting a deck that relies on a critical mass of artifacts to unlock its artifact payoffs, cards like Tolarian Academy, Mishra's Workshop, Tezzeret the Seeker and Wildfire just tends to fall short. Expect gorgeous art, a heartstring-tugging dog, and pink. They Unburial Rites their Griselbrand, but I have Anguished Unmaking. max-width: 100%; position:relative; Midnight Reaper also just doesnt have the kind of support that you want for a card like that with some of the most powerful cards for sacrifice decks absent from 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. Free mana is always good, unless youve drafted some weird list with practically no colorless pips. Theres also the infamous pairing of Narset, Parter of Veils and a wheel effect like Wheel of Fortune. 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. 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. Sometimes, a Commander player just wants to stomp with a big, angry Dino. Especially in League. CUTS "35 cards" Birthing Pod Burning of Xinye Casualties of War Cosima, God of the Voyage Day of Judgment Spot removal is much less maindeckable here than other environments, which is also much to the detriment of black. Bad choice. Erno Rubik inspires us with what he's learned in a lifetime of creating, curiosity and discovery . Cube Questions: Lightning Strike and Tarmogoyf 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. Somehow we escaped this draft with a 2-1 record. This strategy plays very similarly to any green ramp deck you mightve piloted before. The most important pieces will be Tolarian Academy, as many Signets as you can pick up, and any other instances of fast mana in the form of an artifact like Mana Vault, Mana Crypt, and Sol Ring. They play a Turn 1 Sol Ring. Simic relies on greens mana ramp but gives great payoffs in Hydroid Krasis, Oko, Thief of Crowns, and Hornet Queen. If youre familiar with the history of the Vintage Constructed format, then youll know some pretty embarrassing cards (looking at you, Slash Panther) have been propped up significantly by Mishras Workshop and other fast mana. All your power is in doing broken things and then being able to disrupt their broken things. Draftsim.com is unofficial Fan Content permitted under the Fan Content Policy. If youre playing a Simic () deck and have Arid Mesa and Spara's Headquarters or Savannah, then that otherwise off-color fetch can suddenly be on-color! Make sure its worth it to splash. He Invented the Rubik's Cube. He's Still Learning From It. I like Robber of the Rich well enough, but it was ultimately replacement level. As somebody who has had one of my own Cubes run on MTGO, Im here to impart some wisdom on how to best enjoy your Vintage Cube experience and how to best navigate one of the most volatile Limited environments imaginable. } 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. Theres just too much broken stuff happening to happily register Doom Blade. They have Manglehorn for my signet, making me happy I didn't play out my sword. First, let's start in the most logical place: Blue decks. It is plainly too powerful in any non-Vintage Cube and is fully capable of being the only relevant spell played in a game of Vintage Cube. 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. There are some great hatebears in the Cube too in the form of Thalia, Guardian of Thraben and Esper Sentinel. 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. height:252px; Some of the best and most powerful mana rocks are also included. One important tip is to look at how your dual lands, tri-lands, and fetch lands interact. I dont make a secret of the fact that Im not big on the color white, though white does two things very well in Vintage Cube. Augur of Autumn is the major update here, and one that I will draft highly for all of my green decks. Much like my notes on drafting blue, you should worry about win conditions later. The base lesson from this history is that you dont have to work very hard to win with Black Lotus. Blue is the best color in Cube, hands down, and the average Cube draft can support five blue drafters without much trouble. Because I assume I'm going to be Grixis. There have been iterations of the Cube where I would more happily force red, though I believe currently there just arent enough one-drops for me to happily endorse this. Ignore the 4 and 5 drops. Dont forget about interaction. Magic continues to be Hasbro's top performer. 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. Fractured Identity is a little expensive as just a removal spell, but youll often be exiling expensive permanents in Vintage Cube. 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. Having the Twin combo in the deck adds a certain level of consistency to actually being able to close out games. Some of these tiers will be exhaustive lists, while others will be a sampling of the nature of that tier, which I will make explicit in my thoughts on each category. Memory Deluge is going to be a much bigger deal for formats like Arena Cube, but its a serious card advantage spell that offers a good amount of selection for the price. Unconditional removal that exiles is great against Reanimator strategies and really just anybody putting creatures on the table. Cards like Lightning Bolt can be useful to give control decks an edge against aggressive decks as well. Personally I dont see the appeal of Birthing Pod in Vintage Cube, but it does certainly do more for archetype diversity than all of my Mono-Green Ramp darlings that are on the outs. We play Seeker of the Way. .article-footer-ad a{ In general, avoid midrange "fair" cards in the Vintage Cube except as a sideboard strategy. Everything I Know About Vintage Cube On Magic Online Ah, Storm, a classic archetype thats as fun as it is difficult to pull off. We saw Portent added to Legacy Cube recently by Carmen and I loved seeing it there and its nice to see here as well. Black Lotus | Illustration by Christopher Rush. Jake was first introduced to Magic in 2013, and has been a regular at his LGS ever since. They play (Selesyna Signet) into Reclamation Sage, destroying my creature. font-style: italic; I Parallax Wave the two fatties, swing into a zombie token, and play a Mirran Crusader. Splashing is often correct in the green ramp decks, hence I called them "Green X". 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. They loot another Island, play a Sol Ring, and a Memory Jar. Bribery and Treachery will similarly often result in well worth the value of tapping five lands. top:37px; width: 700px; Compare it to using Oblivion Ring on Consecrated Sphinx. Nor are you an Inferno Titan. 1 Shambling Vent. Ramp out, play a big threat a few turns earlier than you otherwise should, and run over the poor schmuck across the table. While we have a Hail Mary sideboard plan, the deck overall is a train wreck. Regardless, the Power 9 are about as impactful as youd assume. They end-of-turn Thirst for Knowledge, discarding Grave Titan and Iona, Shield of Emeria. The swings in Vintage Cube can be a lot to handle, though I do find joy in the fact that midrange decks are just horrible. Even two-color decks do want some multicolor lands so theres obviously some nuance here, though my personal bias in a format as swingy as Vintage Cube is to make sure I have the sort of spells and mana acceleration that put my opponent on the back foot before I worry about how Im casting them. All of these cards account for huge swings that far exceed the mana invested. There are tentpole cards (channel, tinker, Kiki Kiki/splinter Twin, etc) that are more or less unique, and there are cards that are better or worse versions of the same effect (exhume vs reanimate, etc). This is Vintage Cube. Sometimes, a Commander player just wants to stomp with a big, angry Dino. Drop your thoughts in a comment below or head over to the official Draftsim Discord to chat about it there. Here are some of the big ones you should look out for: Planeswalkers have been a part of Magics history more than they havent lately, and there certainly have been some powerful ones printed into existence. Young Pyromancer, Expressive Iteration, Mana Drain, Counterspell, Dack Fayden, and Vendilion Clique are all great ways to get started. It provides a unique style of gameplay unlike any other strategy and lets you play around with the most powerful cards in the game. Forest, go. In the white beatdown deck Ill take something that deals damage over Armageddon every day, and I personally beat Balance more than I lose to it. Vintage Cube typically sticks around for the entire month its made available. Yawgmoth's Win - Tumblr This is more of a general drafting tip, but its especially important to recognize due to the fact that it becomes incredibly tempting given what cards youre looking at in each pack. Match 3, Game 1: They play Turn one Island, Black Lotus, pass. 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. What to avoid: 5s and 6s. Were talking about the sorts of cards that would be easy first picks in the absence of power, and a few cards that are generally considered too good for those environments. 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. } Shelldock Isle is also very easy to trigger. These two can provide some of the most instantaneous leads out of any card, refilling your hand or giving you the chance to out-tempo your opponent. Red has gone through many different iterations in the history of the MTGO Vintage Cube, and in the last couple of runs I just have not seen the volume of cards necessary to draft Mono-Red Aggro in most of the drafts that Ive done. We all know "the big four" cube archetypes: green ramp ( Rofellos -types into Eldrazi-types) red aggro ( Goblin Guide and friends into bolts and Sulfuric Vortex) reanimator ( Entomb and looting into Necromancy and such) blue-white "superfriends" (draw, counters, removal, and planeswalkers) (Honorable mentions go to Storm and White Tokens, which . 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. Youll end up with 36 cards from 18 packs, never having seen a pack youve picked from before again. 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. We go Soldier of the Pantheon into Thalia, Guardian of Thraben, Tidehollow Sculler, revealing Mountain, Fauna Shaman, Primeval Titan and Thundermaw Hellkite. 2023 Wizards. You dont want to try to draft a good stuff deck where you have a pile of cards that are fine when broken is possible. Players have access to fast and mana-positive rocks like Mana Crypt and Grim Monolith on top of the classic Signets. . They play a Master of the Wild Hunt. When you miss on the best fast mana, you just have to make do with Llanowar Elves. Match 1, Game 2: I cast Inquisition of Kozilek making them discard Exhume, revealing Island, Swamp, Thirst for Knowledge, Liliana of the Veil, Grave Titan and Yawgmoth's Bargain. I expect Wrenn and Sevens time in Vintage Cube to be forgettable, though it remains to be seen whether it ends up being short.
