float:relative; /* must be floated for same cross browser position of larger image */ There are some other cards that enter into the conversation, though these are what I consider to be definitively the most powerful cards in terms of raw efficiency and power. Let's watch the world burn!" They find a Nature's Claim for Sword. 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. Next down comes Jace, Architect of Thought. One important tip is to look at how your dual lands, tri-lands, and fetch lands interact. You're not a Thundermaw Hellkite deck. As Pro Tour March of the Machine approaches, qualifier Dom Harvey offers observations on Standard and Limited, the viewer experience, and star-making. Costing zero is really nice, but if you play Mana Crypt long enough youll lose to the coin flips some of the time. Ill first-pick a Griselbrand out of some packs, though more commonly my Vampiric Tutors are tracking down Tinker in my mostly blue deck. Green Suns Zenith is among the more important cards for this archetype, and the difference between a green deck with or without Craterhoof Behemoth is night and day. Speaking of which, I wonder why Disrupt isn't in any cube. While we have a Hail Mary sideboard plan, the deck overall is a train wreck. I play Legion's Landing and Mishra's Factory. If you're the only one in it, you are going to have a formiable machine. A stack of interaction, an Upheaval, and an Urza, Lord High Artificer are really all you need to actually close a game, and Id prefer the rest of my cards to look like Force of Will rather than half-combos that cant get it done on their own. Its a very straightforward and sometimes boring strategy, and you can easily pick up the most important pieces for this archetype in your first pack. Another tip that a lot of players commonly look over is the significance and importance of non-basic lands in the Cube. Sometimes you back into it to save your draft. As Pro Tour March of the Machine approaches, qualifier Dom Harvey offers observations on Standard and Limited, the viewer experience, and star-making. There are a total of 540 cards in the Vintage Cube, which are always subject to change. 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. top:37px; White just happened to be open, and I had enough white cards to get to 40 in my extremely good blue deck. They play (Selesyna Signet) into Reclamation Sage, destroying my creature. Splashing is often correct in the green ramp decks, hence I called them "Green X". text-align: center;
Vintage Cube typically sticks around for the entire month its made available. I attack them down to 6. Free mana is always good, unless youve drafted some weird list with practically no colorless pips. Today Id like to do a bit of a deep dive into my personal favorite cube: the Vintage Cube! Supreme Vintage Cube is a slightly altered version of Vintage Cube where you pick two cards each pick of every pack. Ill see you in the queues. } 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. Toss a Mox or a Black Lotus in the mix and these decks are definitely capable of a 3-0. I think Mystic Confluence is the card that I value this highly that I see passed the most. If youre looking to get into Gruul then youre basically hoping to build around Huntmaster of the Fells, Avalanche Riders, and Questing Beast. That said, here are some guidelines of things that you could do. Avalanche Riders is serviceable. Simic relies on greens mana ramp but gives great payoffs in Hydroid Krasis, Oko, Thief of Crowns, and Hornet Queen. In case you havent heard, the Vintage Cube is back on Magic Online (MTGO) for the month of July. My conclusion: Don't play fair decks. Players have access to fast and mana-positive rocks like Mana Crypt and Grim Monolith on top of the classic Signets. 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. Ugh. Creature-Lands: Mutavault and Mishra's Factory fit great in your strategy and can live through sweepers. Im really looking for Goblin Bombardment and some other cheap support before I give that one a close look. Sheldon Menery is adding over 70 of its cards to his decks. None of the others are high picks. Personally, I hate this kind of deck in the Vintage Cube because its far too "fair" for my liking. A secondary note: this kind of deck is one of the few homes one could justify odd duck cards like Braids, Cabal Minion or Smokestackce you are flooding the board with tokens. We swing with everything but Ophiomancer to flip Legion's Landing. height:252px; Sol Ring pairs great with powerful value cards like Jace, the Mind Sculptor while Mana Crypt generally pushes you in a more aggressive direction. All rights reserved. }
I feel bad already. It just doesn't happen unless you pick them over everything, picks 1-4 out of every pack. This is Vintage Cube. Sideboarding Rules Change. The best green accelerants are: Mox Emerald, Rofellos, Llanowar Emissary, Joraga Treespeaker, Birds of Paradise and Noble Hierarch. Nor are you an Inferno Titan. Sol Ring, Ancestral Recall, and Black Lotus were for a long time the consensus best three cards in Magic, though there is some disagreement on which is the overall best Pack 1, Pick 1. Need more proof March of the Machine is a Commander player's dream? Sometimes to skew your mana base away from green to accommodate these powerful off-color cards ends up compromising your main strategy to the extent that it isn't worth it. The most important thing in Vintage Cube is getting set up early, so I value these slowlands lower than fastlands, but I would also value all of the cards being cut lower than fastlands. I can see Rite of Harmony having a high ceiling, so I like giving that one a shot, but any deck that asks me to play a Savannah is fighting uphill. Ugh. Primeval Titan, Craterhoof Behemoth, Rofellos, Channel are top picks. You pay two more mana upfront but you get six more mana worth of effect from your Consecrated Sphinx token. Equipment: I tend not to prioritize equipment, but you can play a Sword or Umezawa's Jitte. 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. In the same vein, I always maindeck Manic Vandal since killing a signet is the same as killing a land. 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. Howdy, gamers! Creatures back. : Complete List and Rewards (March of the Machine), 150 Play Points, 2 Qualifier Points, 1 Friendly Trophy, 1 Treasure Chest. Keep in mind that Underworld Breach was cut from the Cube so you are looking for explicitly Yawgmoths Will. But since there are 9 green one-drop accelerants plus 5 more green 2-drop accelerants, plus, of course, colorless accelerants like the Signets, Grim Monolith, Thran Dynamo, and Coalition Relic, you should always have enough if you prioritize them. Theres not a lot changing in blue this time around, which shouldnt be surprising. This strategy plays very similarly to any green ramp deck you mightve piloted before. Turning off Sneak Attack or Reanimate can completely stop some opponents from playing the game. Bennie Smith gives in to this awesome urge with Etali, Primal Conqueror, his Commander Deck of the Week. 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. T-shirts, posters, stickers, home decor, and more, designed and sold by independent artists around the world. Cards like Containment Priest that turn off some of the most broken cards are also dramatically better than creatures that only attack and block. These provide ample ways to ramp out and often fix your mana. 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. When you miss on the best fast mana, you just have to make do with Llanowar Elves. Fractured Identity is a little expensive as just a removal spell, but youll often be exiling expensive permanents in Vintage Cube. High quality Vintage Cube Archetypes 2021-inspired gifts and merchandise. Personally, Im an Ancestral Recall man. 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. 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. Magic continues to be Hasbro's top performer. We'll take a punt. Not approved/endorsed by Wizards. I could see why they might think this would work in theory. 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. 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. Just like the general pick order, youre going to value fast mana most highly. 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. 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. I equip my sword, swing and mill 10. Copyright 2020 Star City Games. You can combine all sorts of stuff together and make really weird decks. Having the Twin combo in the deck adds a certain level of consistency to actually being able to close out games. 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. 1 Gideon, Ally of Zendikar, Lands* 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). Whether its a high-powered Cube or a Pauper Cube, drafting those pre-made packs always offers a fun experience that just isnt quite matched by conventional packs. Do you like having the chance to play with all of those crazy cards, or is it a little stale after a while? Forest, go. 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. 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. Lots of pink. There are three other decks you can play in this Vintage Cube that are well-supported, deep in the colors, and powerful enough to win, even if most consider them inferior to the Tier 1 Grixis strategies. Check out every card revealed so far from Lorcana's The First Chapter. 1 Shambling Vent. The biggest pitfall in blue is the card Show and Tell. Expect gorgeous art, a heartstring-tugging dog, and pink. Looter il-Kor gets the obvious upgrade to Suspicious Stowaway, and Impulse gets the boot it probably should have gotten years ago. Id also like to direct your attention towards Channel and the many powerful bomb Eldrazi, like Emrakul, the Aeons Torn which dont always get picked. He Invented the Rubik's Cube. He's Still Learning From It. Sulfuric Vortex and Fireblast: You're the only one who wants them and they are irreplaceable. 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. If it could be said that blue has a weakness in Vintage Cube, it would be that there are probably too many win conditions. Tier 2 Archetypes: # 1 Green X Ramp. I attack them down to 6. On the other end, the best cards to ramp into are: Craterhoof Behemoth, Ulamog, The Ceaseless Hunger, Primeval Titan and Terastodon. Some players have advocated Oko as their overall Pack 1, Pick 1, which I believe to be a defensible position. Mono-green is fully supported in the Cube with the long list of mana dorks backing it up. Chandra eats our Vampire token and thier Phyrexian Metamorph copies our Ophiomancer. Non-combo green midrange decks are one of the few directionless decks that can hold their own. .scgtour-ad {
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. 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. I Tidehollow Sculler their last card and play my sword. 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. It's enough. And yet as a deck it is much more powerful than the sum of its parts. Land Destruction: You are the deck that wants Strip Mine, Wasteland and occasionally even Rishadan Port. If your opponent has brought something fair to the table, then the classic combo of Nightmare and Deranged Hermit can just be lights-out, though I like to make sure I end up with some creatures that can destroy mana sources in the mix. Blue is the best color in Cube, hands down, and the average Cube draft can support five blue drafters without much trouble. Magic continues to be Hasbro's top performer. Once we get past the most broken fast mana and the cheapest and most efficient effects, we start looking at cards that require a little bit more investment but correlate very strongly with winning the game. The following is my ranking for the sorts of cards Im looking to first-pick. 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. In Pack 1 I was thinking I would end up as a Dimir deck, though the only good black card I got the entire draft was Fallen Shinobi and I didnt see any good fixing. 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. Ugh. Now, without further ado, Ill break down the changes to the Cube by color and what this means to you as a drafter. I love casting Mystic Confluence on Turn 4. We saw Portent added to Legacy Cube recently by Carmen and I loved seeing it there and its nice to see here as well. 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. .thumb:hover span { the Vintage Cube is back on Magic Online (MTGO) for the month of July. visibility:visible; They play and equip a Sword of Light and Shadow to the dragon and swing for lethal. 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. Heres a look at a 3-0 mono-green deck: Much like with white and red, there tends to be too many cards at the top of the curves of these decks in 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. Tutors are never good. /* ------------- CSS Popup Image ------------- */ Azorius () also has some power cards to have some fun with. Getting into Vintage Cube is a pretty daunting endeavor, which tends to be truer the newer to competitive Magic you are. 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. On balance these swaps dont do much to alter the positioning of red decks in the Cube, but Bloodthirsty Adversary offers the most for being a cheap threat that can be a big swingy play when it needs to be. 1 Legion's Landing z-index:1; It provides a unique style of gameplay unlike any other strategy and lets you play around with the most powerful cards in the game. }
Cards like Counterspell and Thoughtseize are efficient enough to be reasonable against basically any opponent and tend to overperform in Vintage Cube. Much like my notes on drafting blue, you should worry about win conditions later. LSV and Marshall Sutcliffe of Limited Resources recently addressed the MTGO Vintage Cube by saying, "Not having cheap cards is expensive . 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 other way you get into Mono Red is that you backdoor in. Ryan Overturf is sharing his secrets to Vintage Cube on Magic Online! Blue is the most powerful color in the Cube and there are also just more blue cards than the other colors. Scoop. Augur of Autumn is the major update here, and one that I will draft highly for all of my green decks. The big winner with these lands is, of course, Niv-Mizzet Reborn, so I suppose theyll be fan favorites as well. Whats more important than the list is understanding the common thread. Regardless, the Power 9 are about as impactful as youd assume. Library of Alexandria is perhaps one of (if not the) most powerful lands in the Cube. Sullivans Satchel: Baneslayer Angel; Uro, Titan Of Natures Wrath; And Casual VS Competitive. Ramping cards like these out, especially ones with protection, are the easiest way to win the game on turn 1 or 2. 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. Erno Rubik, who devised one of the world's most popular and enduring puzzles, opens up about his creation in his new book, "Cubed.". We equip our sword and swing back. 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. They draw 7 more cards. The Cube is incredibly expensive to put together unless proxied, which makes it a rare occurrence to see in paper. I don't mine either in the sideboard, but remember that your power is in speed not in splashing mythic rares. 140. We trade resources. After another Mountain on their side, I Mind Twist them for 4, leaving only Master of the Wild Hunt in hand. Ah, Storm, a classic archetype thats as fun as it is difficult to pull off.