Tutors are never good. All of these cards account for huge swings that far exceed the mana invested. Costing zero is really nice, but if you play Mana Crypt long enough youll lose to the coin flips some of the time. }
Sometimes its wide open. max-width:100%;
Bennie Smith gives in to this awesome urge with Etali, Primal Conqueror, his Commander Deck of the Week. Personally I have much more fun with Ancestral Recall, though I do currently take Oko over everything else. It was easy to justify putting Agadeems Awakening in a deck with the opportunity cost being so low, but I rarely saw doing so amount to much in Vintage Cube. Lots of pink. Compare it to using Oblivion Ring on Consecrated Sphinx. 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. position:absolute; In the three drop slot are good sideboard cards that are strong enough to main deck in most decks like Manglehorn, Reclamation Sage, Courser of Kruphix and Eternal Witness. Smoldering Egg is worth playing in controlling decks or even in Storm, but isnt one that I expect to be valued highly at the table and is a card that I would hope to wheel if I were interested in it. I fetch my Sword of Body and Mind with Stoneforge Mystic and swing with Mutavault. This is an especially good combo since Narset shuts down the highly prevalent number of cards draw spells that just about every archetype has access to. First is that you force it. Its almost always open, has more than enough supporting cards to get off the ground in pack one, and easily steals games from slow fair decks that didnt draft enough removal. Blue is the best color in Cube, hands down, and the average Cube draft can support five blue drafters without much trouble. To top things off you can get a very consistent deck if you manage to pick up some of the tutors in black like Imperial Seal, Demonic Tutor, or Vampiric Tutor. Vintage Cube is all about efficiently leveraging your mana. 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. 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. Creature-Lands: Mutavault and Mishra's Factory fit great in your strategy and can live through sweepers. Spot removal is much less maindeckable here than other environments, which is also much to the detriment of black. Show and Tell is admirable in that it intends to cheat on mana, though the symmetrical nature is incredibly likely to bite you. The Vintage Cube is a high-power cube developed by Wizards that includes some of the most powerful and popular cards from Magic's entire history. Chase Carroll recaps their favorite cards from each Secret Lair in the Spring Superdrop. Then I play Gideon, Ally of Zendikar, making an Ally token. The pick order outlined above offers a lot of direction for how to navigate the early part of the draft, though an understanding of each colors strengths and weaknesses is imperative to navigate from there. Mana Drain gets a nice two-for-one here on being interactive and giving an absurd mana boost. Check out every card revealed so far from Lorcana's The First Chapter. I wasnt positive that wed see Vintage Cube between the releases of the two Innistrad sets this year with the releases being so close together, but Im happy to see the format go live one more time between now and its inevitable return towards the end of the year. 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. Beyond that, Jaces Ingenuity would make a lot of my blue decks even in Vintage Cube and thats the floor of Mystic Confluence. I believe that the colors Blue, Red and Black are miles better than Green and White in the Vintage Cube since they unlock so many unique and powerful win conditions. Infernal Grasp, on the other hand, is a nice get. But I decided to go for it, to see how we could do. It includes the Power 9, all original dual lands, and some of the best creatures and planeswalkers out there. Next down comes Jace, Architect of Thought. Blue is the most powerful color in the Cube and there are also just more blue cards than the other colors. 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. Supreme Vintage Cube is a slightly altered version of Vintage Cube where you pick two cards each pick of every pack. 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. vertical-align:bottom; Its a high-powered experience where you get to draft the most expensive and powerful cards in Magic, and be paired up against somebody with just as incredible of a deck as yours. Avalanche Riders is serviceable. 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. Cards like Lightning Bolt can be useful to give control decks an edge against aggressive decks as well. Today Id like to do a bit of a deep dive into my personal favorite cube: the Vintage Cube! Mono red: Load up on one drops, and curve out while other people figure out the format. Part of the problem is that a lot of its cards are Reanimator support, and while Reanimator has a broken ceiling, it also has an unplayable floor. Now, without further ado, Ill break down the changes to the Cube by color and what this means to you as a drafter. None of its cards are so strong that they are correct to first pick them. Let's watch the world burn!" They play Deceiver Exarch to tap us down. .thumb span { 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. You can combine all sorts of stuff together and make really weird decks. Turn two I play Mox Pearl into Orzhov Signet. Unconditional removal that exiles is great against Reanimator strategies and really just anybody putting creatures on the table. Id be remiss if I didnt mention Balance and Armageddon, as I know a lot of folks are really big on these cards. The copyright for Magic: the Gathering and all associated card names and card images is held by Wizards of the Coast. They're just not as high picks as the critters. Ive been a long-time fan of the Cube and I make sure to save up my Play Points for when it eventually comes around. 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. I will say that not everyone is going to value Mox Sapphire the same way that I do. 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. Copyright 2020 Star City Games. Need more proof March of the Machine is a Commander player's dream? Red decks will miss Mizzium Mortars when facing down Courser of Kruphix specifically, but not much otherwise. Vintage Cube is on Magic Online usually twice a year, once in the summer around July and then again in December for the holidays. The most powerful cards are too much better than the next-best options for me to pick lands as highly as other players do. The removal of Oblivion Ring might seem odd, seeing as its one of those cards that does enough without costing too much to maindeck, but it tends to be the case that the more near-identical versions of a card theyre willing to print, the less essential they are for powerful Cube environments. Personally, I have also been known to miscount on more than one occasion. You're not a Thundermaw Hellkite deck. So my Grixis strategy is to take the fixing, take the tutors, take the irreplaceable power cards and win conditions, like Tinker, Sneak Attack and Emrakul, the Aeons Torn, and then just trust that by the end of the draft your win conditions will come together. 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. Parallax Wave goes away. .article-footer-ad img {
All you really need to get started is a strong reanimation or entomb spell, like Reanimate or Entomb. We win a game? top:37px; z-index:1; .thumb:hover { That said, here are some guidelines of things that you could do. Ryan Overturf is sharing his secrets to Vintage Cube on Magic Online! Ramp out, play a big threat a few turns earlier than you otherwise should, and run over the poor schmuck across the table. Wizards of the Coast maintains a complete list here. There are some truly incredible non-basic lands to be looking out for in the cube. There's one more hidden advantage to drafting mono-Red as well: no one else wants your cards. All Rights Reserved. Non-combo green midrange decks are one of the few directionless decks that can hold their own. .article-footer-ad {
Now, Im a big Storm fan, though its not for everybody and I dont recommend it if youre not willing to embarrass yourself. This strategy plays very similarly to any green ramp deck you mightve piloted before. You never know whether the opposition is hitting you with Containment Priest or Griselbrand, and a couple of catch-all removal spells go a long way in Vintage Cube. I play Spectral Procession. Ill take a solid Dimir () midrange deck with incredible synergies and control payoffs over a collection of the best cards in each pack. Last week I covered two of the best decks and win conditions in the Vintage Cube: Reanimator and Grixis Goodstuff. The manlands are also viable win conditions for midrange and control decks that shouldnt be overlooked. Erno Rubik, who devised one of the world's most popular and enduring puzzles, opens up about his creation in his new book, "Cubed.". I guess there is a sliver of hope. Whats more important than the list is understanding the common thread. The Vintage Cube is a high-power cube developed by Wizards that includes some of the most powerful and popular cards from Magics entire history. The play patterns are just horrendous, and Adeline more or less returns to form in a lateral substitution over Brimaz. 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. These are specific to Vintage Cube, but some, like Mono-Green or W/W, are pretty much the same in Legacy or Modern Cube as well. 1 Gideon, Ally of Zendikar, Lands* We play Seeker of the Way. 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! The current curve for the Cube is very heavy on four- and five-mana stuff, and you generally only care about getting two or three cards that are this expensive if you want a competitive red deck in a broken environment. Required fields are marked *. Mono-Green Ramp might be my most-drafted archetype in Vintage Cube. Here are the major players that you may see in your packs: One of the most common mistakes I see newer Vintage Cube drafters fall victim to is attempting to pick the most powerful cards they see and put together a sort of 3- to 5-color good stuff list. This is Vintage Cube. 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. 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. Black is in this awkward spot where it has great card selection in the most powerful tutor effects ever printed, though very few of the cards that youd be interested in tutoring for. How Much Does It Cost? 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. Dack Fayden can often just end the game when you steal an early Signet or Mox by both reducing your opponents mana production and increasing your own, and thats to say nothing of stealing something like a Wurmcoil Engine. 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. Sometimes you back into it to save your draft. 1 Shambling Vent. Looter il-Kor gets the obvious upgrade to Suspicious Stowaway, and Impulse gets the boot it probably should have gotten years ago. I Tidehollow Sculler their last card and play my sword. Next they find Dragonlord Ojutai. They play Looter Il-Kor. 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. Some players have advocated Oko as their overall Pack 1, Pick 1, which I believe to be a defensible position. 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. All you can hope to do is race. I dont plan on picking Storm the Festival highly or maindecking it in all of my ramp decks. .thumb { 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. If you can draft at least 4 of these 7, that makes your odds of having a one-drop in your starting hand very high. Holiday Vintage Cube season's back, and I'm here for the last time to provide y'all with an update of what to expect this season. Creatures back. Its always a lot of fun whether youre watching or drafting yourself, and I cant recommend it enough! Planar Bridge (The Cube) | Illustration by Alexandre Leoni. I Parallax Wave the two fatties, swing into a zombie token, and play a Mirran Crusader. I play Legion's Landing and Mishra's Factory. If your first three to five picks dont move your draft in this direction, youre probably already in trouble. Regardless, the Power 9 are about as impactful as youd assume. 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. 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. I take no joy in reporting this, especially considering that I was able to post a 3-0 with the archetype the only time it felt open during the last run of the Vintage Cube. Do what feels fun to you. border:0; /* IE6 needs this to show large image */ There are also just a ton of artifacts that I will play in basically every deck that Ill look to draft early that can overperform in Metalworker/Workshop decks. The best cards in the Cube will be highly contested and you cant do anything about the presence of some cards that youll never want to play, but if Huntmaster of the Fells makes your deck, try your best to make it because you were shy on playables and not because you tricked yourself into believing it could hang. Vorinclex has higher potential to do nutty things with planeswalkers as well as some other cards like Walking Ballista than Tovolars Huntmaster does so I dont love that substitution, but the Huntmaster is one I expect to play. left:37px; And yet as a deck it is much more powerful than the sum of its parts. Youll greatly benefit if you can use their extra mana to ramp out threats early. I Mind Twist away their remaining four cards. Ancient Grudge is by far the most powerful card on the outs here, but playing with red and green mana isnt free. White also just presents some of the best planeswalkers in the Cube, with Teferi, Time Raveler and Teferi, Hero of Dominaria both being very high picks. Magic continues to be Hasbro's top performer. Laelia, the Blade Reforged is one that Ive been playing in the original Twobert since its release and has been great there. Pair these two with Giver of Runes or Mother of Runes and you have some of the best early creatures, period. Much like my notes on drafting blue, you should worry about win conditions later. Its limited availability on MTGO helps underscore its important and localized demand for when its actually available, which also helps reduce queue time and make it more of an event. While theres occasionally a two- to three-week period where the Vintage Cube is available in the Spring, that isnt always guaranteed. The bar is much higher for Vintage Cube and the card is more or less replacement level by virtue of being an aggressive three-drop, but its a great option to fill out your curve once youre full up on ones and twos. Vintage Cube typically sticks around for the entire month its made available. First, let's start in the most logical place: Blue decks. This category is a bit broader, and my list here is by no means exhaustive. Black Lotus can have the highest ceiling while Sol Ring most consistently does its thing. Im pretty big on drafting an early Metalworker for the same reasons that I like Mishras Workshop. Its far more important to have a solid direction with synergies between your cards than a pile of great cards with no connections. Theres just too much broken stuff happening to happily register Doom Blade. As such, side boarding has always taken a back seat. You can find her writeup on the most recent update here. I wouldnt take it over a counterspell or a cheaper card selection spell, but I also expect it to overwhelmingly make my deck when I do draft it. 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. } Its usually safe to run 12-14 mountains and 2-4 colorless utility lands. 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. The two most busted Green cards in the whole Vintage Cube are Channel and Natural Order. .scgtour-ad img {
In the last run of Vintage Cube I noticed players were passing Oko entirely too much. I expect Wrenn and Sevens time in Vintage Cube to be forgettable, though it remains to be seen whether it ends up being short. They play a Master of the Wild Hunt. Rofellos, Llanowar Emissary and Gaeas Cradle are two of the most powerful cards in the mono-green decks, and they dont really play well with other colors. Do you like having the chance to play with all of those crazy cards, or is it a little stale after a while? Rofellos, Llanowar Emissary and other cheap green mana creatures present a clear path to a deck that generates a lot of mana, though these decks tend to be more vulnerable to creature removal than other decks. Keep in mind that Underworld Breach was cut from the Cube so you are looking for explicitly Yawgmoths Will. 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. height:252px; High quality Vintage Cube Archetypes 2021-inspired gifts and merchandise. If it could be said that blue has a weakness in Vintage Cube, it would be that there are probably too many win conditions. 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. None of the others are high picks. }. This is most commonly going to mean Azorius Control. Cards like Black Lotus can make 4-drops on turn 1 a reality. Speaking of which, I wonder why Disrupt isn't in any cube. It is powerful on occasion, though if youre not winning the turn you cast it with something like Thousand-Year Storm, its more likely than you might think that your opponent will just annihilate you with some Eldrazi. /* ------------- CSS Popup Image ------------- */ Free mana is always good, unless youve drafted some weird list with practically no colorless pips. .scgtour-ad {
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 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. Planeswalker This can work, sometimes you just end up having no direction and manage to 2-1, but that isnt reliable. The Vintage Cube has returned to Magic Online. The two most busted Green cards in the whole Vintage Cube are Channel and Natural Order. 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. 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. Cube has long been one of my favorite ways to play Magic. float:relative; /* must be floated for same cross browser position of larger image */
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