Month: December 2015

Completing the four black colour pairs is Orzhov. The basic concept of this deck is to put together a large bulk of cards which in various ways hinder your opponents. Effects include making your opponents pay more to attack or block, making them pay more to cast spells, anything with the extort keyword and effects which, in general, are just a bloody nuisance.

There are also a few exalted cards in these colours too to make combat less predictable for your opponent.

I’ve pulled ideas on what to include from decks like pillowfort, hatebears, death and taxes etc.

Disruption and removal

This deck doesn’t have the advantages of some of the other colour combinations in terms of card synergy (the tribal decks), grinding advantage (graveyard decks) or just silly hugeness (ramp) but what this pair does have is some of the best disruption in the cube.  Both colours have some of the strongest single target removal (I actually cut back on whites targeted removal while doing this as it was a little too good, I’ve kept Path and Swords as a “best in class” kinda thing).

Black also gives you plenty of options for hand disruption, the latest addition being Hymn to Tourach which now I’m increasing the cubes power level should be fine. I considered Cabal Therapy but outside of a constructed format the first cast is basically luck based which I wanted to avoid.

Also as is a theme in this deck you get many extra copies of the same effects bolted onto creatures, such as Fiend Hunter and Banisher Priest for removal and Tidehollow Sculler and Sin Collector for hand disruption.

Taxes and interference

Another section of this archetype is permanent which disrupt the general course of play for your opponent. I’m aiming for a variation on the sort of cards you would see in a WB hatebears/pillowfort type of thing.

Thalia, Guardian of Thraben and Vryn Wingmare punish your opponent for playing non creature spells. Ghostly Prison, Norn’s Annex and Archangel of Tithes all make attacking difficult for your opponent and are particularly punishing for any deck that wants to go wide, such as a GW tokens deck.

There are also a few cards to reduce the effectiveness of your opponents cards. Blind Obedience, Hushwing Gryff, Containment Priest, Aegis of the Gods, Spirit of the Labyrinth and Eidolon of Rhetoric all nerf or outright prevent something on your opponents side from functioning (the effects are largely symmetrical, but as is often the case in magic the person controlling an apparently symmetrical effect usually gets a disproportionate benefit from it).

Winning the game

All this is well and good but you do need to eventually be able to win the game. You could just throw in a Baneslayer Angel or a Grave Titan but there are some slightly more subtle ways available.

Exalted is the first way this deck has to win. Sublime Archangel turns just about any creature you can protect into a huge threat, plus there are a few extra sources of exalted triggers dotted throughout white and black including my personal favourite exalted creatures Knight of Glory and Knight of Infamy. Speaking of…

Protection is something I tried to keep to a minimum in building this cube and most of it is in this deck. The aforementioned knights, Soldier of the Pantheon and a few others have protection (there’s a little outside of black white but its either at the high end or fairly niche…except for Stormbreath Dragon which is basically trinket text unless you have a StP in hand and True Name Nemesis…because True Name Nemesis). You also get Mother of Runes, a card which just makes everything difficult for the other guy, basically blanking one removal spell or combat interaction per turn.

There’s also Pontiff of Blight to win without even attacking, Bitterblossom to gradually overwhelm your opponents with flyers (bitterblossom + pontiff + just about anything = fun).

Off-Colour/Crossover cards

This deck doesn’t have a great deal of synergy with other colours but there are some deficiencies which are helped by pulling cards from other colours. Green works particularly well as both the Selesnya (WG) and Abzan (WBG) sections have some big chunky creatures (such as Siege Rhino) and some good hate effects (such as Dryad Militant and Voice of Resurgence).

This may change as I’m thinking of heavily reworking the artifact deck (currently spread across all non green colours) into either UR or entirely replacing it with eldrazi.

An example deck

Realising I should really have been doing this with the other archetypes as I go (hmm….TO THE EDIT BUTTON…when I can be arsed), here’s an example deck.

This one came out a little low on spells but, the cards that come up are the cards that come up.

[d title="WB Taxman"]
Creatures
1 Mother of Runes
1 Thrull Parasite
1 Alabaster Mage
1 Aven Squire
1 Basilica Screecher
1 Child of Night
1 Spirit of the Labyrinth
1 Thalia, Guardian of Thraben
1 Tidehollow Sculler
1 Banisher Priest
1 Drana's Emissary
1 Fiend Hunter
1 Hushwing Gryff
1 Sin Collector
1 Bloodgift Demon
1 Divinity of Pride
1 Treasury Thrull
1 Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite

Non-Creature Permenants
1 Blind Obedience
1 Spear of Heliod
1 Thran Dynamo

Spells
1 Smallpox
1 Wrath of God

Land
9 Plains
8 Swamp

Sideboard
1 Black Sun's Zenith
1 Blood Seeker
1 Charmbreaker Devils
1 Eternal Witness
1 Farseek
1 Goblin Guide
1 Gurmag Angler
1 Hellhole Flailer
1 Jiwari, the Earth Aflame
1 Llanowar Elves
1 Moorland Haunt
1 Read the Bones
1 Servant of Nefarox
1 Siege Rhino
1 Sign in Blood
1 Spectral Procession
1 Stoneforge Mystic
1 Tandem Lookout
1 Teysa, Envoy of Ghosts
1 Unburial Rites
1 White Sun's Zenith
1 Windswept Heath
[/d]

The complete list

[d title="BG Cube Subtheme (Graveyard/Morbid) - December 2015"]
White
1 Mother of Runes
1 Soldier of the Pantheon
1 Aven Squire
1 Containment Priest
1 Elite Inquisitor
1 Knight of Glory
1 Suture Priest
1 Thalia, Guardian of Thraben
1 Aegis of the Gods
1 Spirit of the Labyrinth
1 Banisher Priest
1 Fiend Hunter
1 Hushwing Gryff
1 Vryn Wingmare
1 Eidolon of Rhetoric
1 Archangel of Tithes
1 Knight of Obligation
1 Sublime Archangel

1 Blind Obedience
1 Ghostly Prison
1 Norn's Annex

Black
1 Thrull Parasite
1 Basilica Screecher
1 Blood Seeker
1 Knight of Infamy
1 Servant of Nefarox
1 Nefarox, Overlord of Grixis
1 Pontiff of Blight

1 Despise
1 Duress
1 Inquisition of Kozilek
1 Thoughtseize
1 Hymn to Tourach
1 Smallpox

Orzhov
1 Tithe Drinker
1 Tidehollow Sculler
1 Drana's Emissary
1 Sin Collector
1 Treasury Thrull
[/d]

On looking at all this I think the raw power level on some of the cards in this section is higher than most of the BG/BR/UB section but the cards in this section will be more fought over for generic good stuff decks, whereas the tribal or graveyard cards will be easier to pick up a larger number of the cards for.

Completing the Sultai/graveyard/zombies/sacrifice wedge of the cube is the Golgari graveyard section.

There will be some sacrifice effects, discard and self mill to fill up the graveyard and a variety of effects that make this desirable. Specifically the main pay off is “Creature cards in graveyards matter” in keeping with the old Innistrad [mtg_card]Spider Spawning[/mtg_card] draft deck, although there will be other benefits too. Sacrifice effects, death triggers and undying all play into this theme as well.

This section, if you look to the full list at the bottom of the post, is quite a bit longer than some of the others. This is largely because of the number of cards from Zombies/Vampires and just general goodstuff cards that play well into this archetype. [mtg_card]Murderous Cut[/mtg_card]  or [mtg_card]Whip of Erebos[/mtg_card] are happy in any black deck, it just happens to have an even bigger edge in this deck. This also leads to the conclusion that the person going all in on the graveyard deck won’t have a ridiculously good card pool as many of these will be shared with the other black or green decks.

The All-In Cards

As mentioned before a lot of the relevant cards in this colour pair are just “good cards” which happen to fit into the deck, either through being improved by a full graveyard or just being generally good. There are of course a few cards which just don’t work if you’re not in “the graveyard deck”.

Spider Spawning (sad note: the spider spawning deck was always overdrafted back in the day of Innistrad draft where I used to play so I never actually pulled it off successfully) and Boneyard Wurm both do precisely jack if you have no creature cards in your graveyard. Splinterfright and Nemesis of Mortals are both at least viable in another deck but in both cases they would be overshadowed by most of the other options available.

Corpseweft, Deathreap Ritual and Deadbridge Chant all stand out as cards that work a lot better when the graveyard is being filled, or in the case of Deadbridge Chant when you can selectively pull stuff OUT of the graveyard (Deadbridge Chant plus Scavenging Ooze/Deathrite Shaman/some delve cards makes “random” a lot less iffy).

The Standalone Cards

Sheoldred, Whispering One is a great top end in both this deck and…well…any deck that can get to that mana cost (a rampy green deck could conceivably get this out early enough to be a major pain). Outside of green the cube didnt really have much if anything over the CMC 6 level in its early iterations. Having got some play in ive reached the conclusion that I can push that up a bit across all the colours due to its midrange silliness level.

Whip of Erebos and Birthing Pod are both grindy value engines that fit into any deck in the colours (although pod requires a bit more set up). If you happen to get both so much the better.

The exploit cards in black all fill your graveyard while giving you some form of value, while also playing very nicely if you end up in the 3 colour zombie/graveyard deck.  Given that Gurmag Angler made it into modern and just what Tasigur does everywhere he goes I don’t think any explanation is really needed here.

The Filler Cards

I haven’t worked out yet just how good Tarmogoyf will be in this cube. Outside of the full on graveyard deck I don’t really have a handle on how quickly the different types will get into the graveyard. There aren’t a huge number of enchantments and they won’t be dying that much, and there aren’t that many lands that will end up in the graveyard (I might improve the land section in the near future with wasteland, strip mine and some other higher power goodies). My intuition says he belongs mostly in the BG deck….I may be wildly and hilariously wrong on that though.

There are plenty of other less dramatic cards that play with the graveyard and theres not much to be gained by writing about them, and theyre also pretty interchangeable.

Honorouble mention for failing to make the cut goes to Grisly Salvage…It really SHOULD be in here, but im trying to stick strictly to the numbers in each colour section and I really like what’s currently in the Golgari section. Without breaking a cycle (charms, RTR guildmages, guild leaders, maze runners) or taking out Deathrite Shaman (the card that prompted me to actually make the cube in the first place) the only one that really fits to go is Dreg Mangler…He may not last much longer.

Crossover With Other Archetypes

As ive mentioned before (and I shant bother retreading here) there is a lot of crossover between this deck and the UB zombie archetype, and to a lesser degree with the BR vampire deck.

Evolutionary Leap is most intended here, but works pretty well in any creature heavy green deck. Blanking your opponents removal spells is always nice but if you can get any repeatable reanimation or token generation then this becomes a source of gradual card advantage too, especially in something like GW tokens.

The Off-Colour Bleed Cards

Unburial Rites might as well be a WB card. You would definitely want at least a small white splash just to flash it back. Timely Hordemate (assuming it survives the next round of cuts) fits relatively well if you have some aggressive creatures (might let you recur a small value creature like a Sakur-Tribe Elder). The token makers in white give you some fodder creatures for the sac effects but the best one for this deck is clearly Lingering Souls, as you can at least get some use if you mill it.

Other colours also have a couple of nice graveyard fillers, Forbidden Alchemy in blue and Faithless Looting in red. Both also have flashback which is a bonus in this deck.

The bloodrush creatures in RG also are a good way to up your creatures in the graveyard count. Pyrewild Shaman in particular is good as you can recur him for multiple triggers off of cards such as Blood Artist.

The Sultai selection also has some good options. Sultai Ascendancy improves your draws and fills the graveyard. Sultai Soothsayer gives you a good defensive body, card selection and also fills the graveyard. Lastly Sidisi, Brood Tyrant once again fills the graveyard and also gets you blockers and combos with anything else you have that mills you.

The complete list

[d title="BG Cube Subtheme (Graveyard/Morbid) - December 2015"]
Black
1 Gravecrawler
1 Viscera Seer
1 Blood Artist
1 Sultai Emissary
1 Blood Bairn
1 Cemetery Reaper
1 Fleshbag Marauder
1 Geralf's Messenger
1 Nantuko Husk
1 Falkenrath Noble
1 Erebos's Emissary
1 Anowon, the Ruin Sage
1 Rakshasa Gravecaller
1 Shadowborn Demon
1 Sidisi, Undead Vizier
1 Silumgar Butcher
1 Mikeaus, the Unhallowed
1 Tasigur, the Golden Fang
1 Butcher of Malakir
1 Gurmag Angler
1 Sheoldred, Whispering One

1 Liliana of the Veil

1 Tragic Slip
1 Murderous Cut
1 Barter in Blood
1 Unburial Rites

1 Corpseweft
1 Whip of Erebos

Green
1 Boneyard Wurm
1 Sakura-Tribe Elder
1 Satyr Wayfinder
1 Scavenging Ooze
1 Strangleroot Geist
1 Tarmogoyf
1 Eternal Witness
1 Splinterfright
1 Graverobber Spider
1 Lumberknot
1 Thragtusk
1 Vorapede
1 Hooting Mandrills
1 Nemesis of Mortals

1 Commune with the Gods
1 Mulch
1 Spider Spawning

1 Evolutionary Leap

1 Birthing Pod
1 Bow of Nylea

White
1 Timely Hordemate
1 Lingering Souls

Blue
1 Forbidden Alchemy

Red
1 Faithless Looting
Golgari
1 Deathrite Shaman
1 Korozda Guildmage
1 Lotleth Troll
1 Dreg Mangler
1 Nyx Weaver
1 Pharika, God of Affliction
1 Jarad, Golgari Lich Lord
1 Reaper of the Wilds
1 Deathreap Ritual
1 Golgari Rotwurm
1 Deadbridge Chant

Sultai
1 Sidisi, Brood Tyrant
1 Sultai Soothsayer
1 Sultai Ascendancy
[/d]

While I make changes to the cube I do a lot of sim drafts just to see if enough of a given archetype appears that it’s even a thing. This one so far has definitely come across as less “all-in” than the previous vampire and zombie ones. It comes across a little more like a grindy midrange deck. This doesn’t strike me as a bad thing but I do plan to come back and review this section post SoI.