Usman's Cube Content

Recently I went to GP Memphis and hung out with Anthony, Drew and Zakeel (of the Magic Box) and cubed a bunch.  It was pretty great.  I started my cube over a decade ago, drafting the list on a trip to Memphis and it was good to come back to the city that “started it all.”  I gave Drew and Zakeel an Heirloom Blade and a Third Power token, and proceeded to 3-0 with a gross mono-blue tempo deck featuring Heirloom Blade.

I brought my pauper cube since – if it gets stolen/lost, it’s the cube that would be the easiest to replace – and wanted to try something new with adding more explicit storm support.  I’ve off-and-on included cards like Empty the Warrens and Temporal Fissure as “value storm” cards ala Time Spiral and Modern Masters (whichever version, I’m too lazy to ask Lord Google) had their storm cards as something you cast for a decent amount for value, rather than just winning the game.  Cards like Grapeshot suffered because of this, because you really need 3 for it to be above rate, and most of the value storms that I tended to see were for 4.  The “version 3.0” included gutting a lot of cards for explicit support like rituals, to the point where I cut *Pyrotechnics* (not because the card is bad, because, well, something’s gotta give space-wise.)

The draft happened with 6 people and the package went…
so, early on, I saw a pack with Empty the Warrens.  Since there’s a storm aficionado, I figured that I wasn’t going to fight him for it and would go with the deck I was building (a BU tempo aggro whatever.)  When the pack came around… Empty the Warrens was still there, which was confusing.  It turns out that drafter was in mono-green.

The only manifestation of storm was from a jund kinda-aggro deck that had Empty, from someone who’d not drafted pauper cube before.  The deck was pretty unfocused and likely would have been better if it stuck to being either a Jund deck or a two-color aggro deck.

The deck that 3-0ed was from @MissouriMTG – a mono-white deck:

(The 1-drops were Gideon’s Lawkeeper and Sacred Cat.)

Insert something about how signets and bouncelands don’t make 5-color decks too good, make aggro bad or other such things

So would I do the storm thing again?  Right now, it feels like the support’s a bit too thin – it seems to require a decent number of people to show up, something that I can’t really rely on, and even then, it kinda falls apart if something’s hated out, which doesn’t tend to happen at higher rarities.  If Modern Horizons brings some storm cards at common, it’s likely something that I’ll check back on, but even at 360 cards, it’s just too thin.

I’m also likely going to do some changes to my regular cube, based on some talks with someone who’s brought some fresh ideas to me on cube.  I’ve no idea where it’s going to take my cube, but if it’s like anything, it’s likely going to take a while and likely going to be for the better.

Also, since the London Mulligan has been introduced, my weekly cube group has been trying it out.  I’m somewhat surprised that it seems like there hasn’t been much in terms of *results*, but a ton of *impressions/thoughts* of what people have on formats.  The only actual results that I’ve seen is from someone in Discord (whose name is Shiny_Suicune) testing the change out in various formats, but that’s pretty much it.  Shiny’s thoughts are at the bottom of this post.

Personal thoughts are in the context that, while my cube is powered, generally games tend to play out in a “fair” manner.

Overall, I’ve personally really liked it.  Mulligans don’t feel as terrible and mulliganing down to 5 doesn’t feel incredibly hopeless like it did before, making it so that you can have better hands; last week, I won on a mull to 5 with London and likely would have just lost if it was Vancouver.  General impression from the group is that it tends to make the draft experience much better and the number of non-games went down by a lot.  No one has said that the London Mulligan is worse and while we keep things casual (nothing’s on the line aside from pride), I don’t think that would change with something on the line.

Someone drafted a deck with Channel and (new) Ulamog and he didn’t aggressively mulligan into that combo.  It may have been right to, though, but unsure.

As promised, chatlog:

Shiny_Suicune:
for limited and standard, it’s absolutely amazing
for modern (and to an extent, legacy), it heavily exacerbates play/draw

me:
is the deck type super relevant?

Shiny_Suicune:
when unfair decks are involved
yes
it is
so in a fair deck vs fair deck matchup (control vs midrange, i did a lot of jund vs jeskai testing), it has the same effect as it does in standard/limited

me:
like making it so mulligans arent as back breaking?

Shiny_Suicune:
it made our 6s feel a lot better
and we weren’t going to 5 nearly as much
same with legacy delver/DnT/control deck matchups
however
as soon as any deck that fell into the “monte” category was involved (aka needed specific cards to win), game 1 became hilariously favored to them, even on the draw, and games 2 and 3 were continuously uphill battles
so decks like legacy reanimator, grishoalbrand, etc
dredge too

me:
did people aggressively mull to hate? it seemed like that would be an… odd strat

Shiny_Suicune:
in the legacy gameplay i did, in postboard games with delver variants vs reanimator, i was consistently mulling to 5 to try and find a piece of hard hate
and even then, my WR was close to 50/50 in those games even with the opponent mulling to 5 or 4 to get their t1 combo
because now, they could keep combo pieces and anti-hate while getting rid of extraneous cards

me:
how did that compare to vancouver win rates?
true

Shiny_Suicune:
historically, my WR in post board games vs these “monte”-type unfair decks was closer to 60/70%, simply due to them losing to their own deck a lot more
with vancouver mull, I’d still be willing to go down to 5 to find hard hate, because I knew that usually 1 piece of hard hate was enough

me:
yea

Shiny_Suicune:
now, as for the critical mass-type decks, their improvement frankly felt the same as the improvement in the fair decks
modern storm/RDW, legacy SnS, etc
it’s not like they were hitting their turn3 kills much faster
so basically, if every format was like standard, where there isn’t a hyper-linear but inconsistent deck always lying in wait, the London mulligan does make for much better gameplay
and let’s not get started on vintage >.>
people are complaining about dredge, forgetting that t1 vault key is a thing
hell, i even played a couple games of vintage dredge vs vintage oath storm and vintage PO
the storm and PO decks destroyed me, even g1

me:
O_O

Shiny_Suicune:
because even with bazaar, dredge has a hard time winning t1
it needs to literally flip its entire library and reanimate a lotleth giant or something
in1 turn
granted, if dredge survives to t2, then it usually has enough zombies and ichorids to 1hit people
(or enough ichorid reanimation to get a lotleth giant)
but the extra consistency afforded to the blue decks for the cost of 1-2 cards allows them to t1 much more easily

me:
yea, PO seems like it’d get a lot better

Shiny_Suicune:
I’ll be more than happy if WOTC says “london mulligan for standard/limited, vancouver for eternal”… but unless MCLondon is 64 combo decks in the top 64, that won’t happen

me:
I feel like they kept looting unbanned to stress test combo

Shiny_Suicune:
amusing sidenote, london mulligan makes pauper very… interesting

me:
why’s that?

Shiny_Suicune:
again, in fair deck vs fair deck matchups, it’s great
but pauper has this weird dynamic where there are decks that having silver bullet answers is great, but otherwise they’re a lot of 70-30 matchups
tron, affinity, flicker loop, inside out, etc
these decks are basically combo decks that can play like fair decks if hate is present
london mulligan makes these decks have to play fair
it really lets you go super-deep on the format

me:
true, a lot seem to backdoor their way into playing a normal game
yea, wow

Shiny_Suicune:
and
it makes foil even more punishing
(to use for the cheat cost early, I mean)
because now, even if you mulled to, say, 5, but you have a good hand, having to foil something feels reaaaaaaaaallly bad
yeah pauper is weird
and I love it 🙂

me:
I wonder if foil was untouched for similar reasons
or at least the foil/gush combo

Shiny_Suicune:
frankly, the London mulligan’s impact on legacy is overstated, I feel
even if there is an uptick in reanimator/prison/SnS/belcher/whatever
sideboards (and mainboards) will adjust
FoW is still a house
at local events, % of people playing the decks won’t change too much
people don’t switch out of legacy decks that often
really, it’s modern I’m worried about

men:
yah, there doesn’t seem to be a safety valve like FoW for the format

Shiny_Suicune:
maindeck leyline maindeck surgical

me:
eternal horizons shifts/prints aside*

Shiny_Suicune:
and hope
and yeah this part is obvious
but my god, the things it does for limited
i did UMA sealed, UMA draft, DOM draft, GRN draft, and RNA draft with it

me:
mulling to 5 in limited was just abysmal on vancouver
how was it?

Shiny_Suicune:
i don’t think i had a single non-game
and both me and OP were mulling to 5 once a match ish
just cuz land variance
but even those games
felt great

me:
nice 🙂
yea usually mulling to 5 was a non-game (in vancouver)

Shiny_Suicune:
even in GRN
where card advantage was king
mulls to 5 were fine
because we got to actually play cards
and sure they might have an extra answer

me:
raw cards only mean so much if you can’t use them

Shiny_Suicune:
but because the card quality had so much virtual and card advantage attached to them
every game on london felt like the “good” games on vancouver

me:
nice 🙂