They let you take advantage of all your mana and board full of artifacts and turn that into actual threats, which is just great. Blue is the best color in Cube, hands down, and the average Cube Draft can support five blue drafters without much trouble. Nor are you an Inferno Titan. Jake was first introduced to Magic in 2013, and has been a regular at his LGS ever since. 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. Compare it to using Oblivion Ring on Consecrated Sphinx. We'll take a punt. Blue is the most powerful color in the Cube and there are also just more blue cards than the other colors. Last week I covered two of the best decks and win conditions in the Vintage Cube: Reanimator and Grixis Goodstuff. I completely understand not wanting to play with Oko, though hes one of the easiest routes to free wins. We swing with everything but Ophiomancer to flip Legion's Landing. My friend and co-SCG Baltimore Team Open champion Liz Lynn enjoys forcing white and believes it to actually just be the best archetype. Some two-drops: The best is Eidolon of the Great Revel, but Abbot of Keral Keep, Young Pyromancer and Harsh Mentor will all make your deck. I love casting Mystic Confluence on Turn 4. That wraps up my guide on my favorite Cube, the Vintage Cube! Not approved/endorsed by Wizards. Cards like Counterspell and Thoughtseize are efficient enough to be reasonable against basically any opponent and tend to overperform in Vintage Cube. In the same vein, I always maindeck Manic Vandal since killing a signet is the same as killing a land. On the other end, the best cards to ramp into are: Craterhoof Behemoth, Ulamog, The Ceaseless Hunger, Primeval Titan and Terastodon. White just happened to be open, and I had enough white cards to get to 40 in my extremely good blue deck. Or off-color mana sources? I may be slightly ahead on board, but I'm way behind on cards. Youll greatly benefit if you can use their extra mana to ramp out threats early. Vintage cube is a lot less archetype-based than other drafting environments, just because the individual cards are so powerful. With the exception of Primal Command, all of the green cuts are cards that I happily maindeck. 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. They're going to default to pick the best cards too. We go Soldier of the Pantheon into Thalia, Guardian of Thraben, Tidehollow Sculler, revealing Mountain, Fauna Shaman, Primeval Titan and Thundermaw Hellkite. 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. And yet as a deck it is much more powerful than the sum of its parts. Next they find Dragonlord Ojutai. Sheldon Menery is adding over 70 of its cards to his decks. Here's the downside to Grixis: in general, you should expect that when you draft the powerful blue, black and red cards that your fellow drafters will also know this is the optimal strategy. Like mono red, you want to load up on one drops. Recurring Nightmare is one of those cards that is too good for most Cube environments while being somewhat overshadowed in powered Cube, but it can still get the job done. I personally first-pick Mishras Workshop frequently, though it goes into a very specific deck that relies on drafting a high volume of artifacts, which can be very difficult as Signets tend to be great in the majority of Vintage Cube decks and I could see other players being much colder on it. vertical-align:bottom; If you must Storm though, and I cant blame you, here are a couple of pointers on pick order. But if that's your idea of fun, keep doing it. I like Robber of the Rich well enough, but it was ultimately replacement level. Today Ill be going over the updates to the Cube to get you in fighting shape, but first I always like to link my inaugural Vintage Cube article here on Star City Games. Is Vintage Cube Free on MTGO? Toss a Mox or a Black Lotus in the mix and these decks are definitely capable of a 3-0. The two most busted Green cards in the whole Vintage Cube are Channel and Natural Order. 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. The other thing white does well is providing solid interaction for controlling strategies. They draw 7 more cards. Heres an example of one Lizs 3-0 builds: Obviously having Black Lotus isnt hurting anything, though that came Pack 2, Pick 1. All Rights Reserved. A way to keep the cards flowing as well as clear lands off the top of your deck is most welcome in green decks, and I have nothing but good things to say about the Augur. We play Legion's Landing, swing, play an Ophiomancer, and Strip Mine their Swamp to keep them off tutor mana. position:absolute; They drop a Chandra, Pyromaster. I queue into a lot of four- or five-color decks in Vintage Cube, though I most commonly play one or two colors and sometimes splash a third. The Vintage Cube has returned to Magic Online. .article-footer-ad img { visibility:hidden; We swing back for 8 and grab our sword with Stoneforge Mystic. } height:252px; Its usually safe to run 12-14 mountains and 2-4 colorless utility lands. All you really need to get started is a strong reanimation or entomb spell, like Reanimate or Entomb. Urza's Saga, Urza, Lord High Artificer, and other expensive artifact threats like Wurmcoil Engine or Myr Battlesphere are your finishers here. We play a Mother of Runes which gets Force Spiked. Why do I want to care if I can make a 2/2 every turn if my opponent is playing Channel into Eldrazi or Tinker into Blightsteel Colossus. T-shirts, posters, stickers, home decor, and more, designed and sold by independent artists around the world. LSV and Marshall Sutcliffe of Limited Resources recently addressed the MTGO Vintage Cube by saying, "Not having cheap cards is expensive . Theres just too much broken stuff happening to happily register Doom Blade. Expect gorgeous art, a heartstring-tugging dog, and pink. When you miss on the best fast mana, you just have to make do with Llanowar Elves. 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. Tovolars Huntmaster is actually better than Primeval Titan in the current build of the Cube absent Field of the Dead and Dark Depths combo, so I have no qualms with its addition. Fallen Shinobi probably sticks out here, but I really never see that card hit without ending the game. Ancestral Recall and Time Walk are always included in your deck, even as a splash. 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. top:37px; Copyright 2020 Star City Games. If no one is in Mono Red, its not uncommon at all to see cards like Goblin Guide, Sulfuric Vortex or Hellrider with 3 cards left in a pack. The base lesson from this history is that you dont have to work very hard to win with Black Lotus. Chase Carroll recaps their favorite cards from each Secret Lair in the Spring Superdrop. 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. 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. border:1px solid #000; Storm specifically is more interested in Dark Ritual than most, and you should pick Yawgmoths Will on the level of a Tier 0 card. They play and equip a Sword of Light and Shadow to the dragon and swing for lethal. width: 700px; Bennie Smith gives in to this awesome urge with Etali, Primal Conqueror, his Commander Deck of the Week. Some of the best and most powerful mana rocks are also included. Sometimes, a Commander player just wants to stomp with a big, angry Dino. . 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. How Much Does It Cost? Wrenns +1 and -3 are fine, but their impacts on the battlefield are minimal relative to the format and we have to dream bigger than that. 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. display: block; Sheldon Menery is adding over 70 of its cards to his decks. An easier way to end up with a solid black deck is to build around Recurring Nightmare. Ill first-pick a Griselbrand out of some packs, though more commonly my Vampiric Tutors are tracking down Tinker in my mostly blue deck. Turn two I play Mox Pearl into Orzhov Signet. Two simple ways, actually. 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. But you've already got a Lightning Bolt, there's an empty pack for you, and what do you know, an eighth pick Koth of the Hammer. Mana Drain gets a nice two-for-one here on being interactive and giving an absurd mana boost. First, let's start in the most logical place - blue decks. I play Parallax Wave, target Griselbrand and hope for a miracle. Shutting off or copying fast mana sources is powerful, and shutting off or copying payoffs is even better. The challenge of splashing for double blue cards like Opposition or Jace, The Mind Sculptor is that enough need enough sources of the secondary color. 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. They play (Selesyna Signet) into Reclamation Sage, destroying my creature. In reviewing todays update and taking inventory of the slight blow to Mono-White Aggro and the hits to Mono-Green Ramp, Im thinking that the most powerful card being added is Portent The more things change, the more they stay the same. 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. But I decided to go for it, to see how we could do. The manlands are also viable win conditions for midrange and control decks that shouldnt be overlooked. What do you think? visibility:visible; Red decks will miss Mizzium Mortars when facing down Courser of Kruphix specifically, but not much otherwise. Once you have Craterhoof you dont have to worry about having other top-end or having awkward mana ramp effects to bridge you to casting a bunch of stuff that casts seven or more; you just need to put some bodies on the table and summon the extremely lethal Beast as quickly as possible. They swing, discarding Island, playing Izzet Signet and Chart a Course only to draw 2. How am I 2-0? I hope the information provided here is helpful for those of you looking to tighten your skills in high-power environments. }. I play Spectral Procession. Sideboarding Rules Change. Ryan Overturf analyzes the latest changes so you can make the most of the three-week Limited MTG experience. And the actual cards in your deck are so narrowly aggressive that they don't really slot well into anyone else's strategy. Our Grixis deck ended up winning with the card Sneak Attack. 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. Drafting mono-blue typically means being heavy on artifact mana, though this is a fine example of a two-color blue deck that is clearly leaning on the blue cards that I 3-0ed with: This deck is honestly a little bit of a mess, and serves as a good example of how the best cards in the format are all that matter. position:relative; 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. A lot of countermagic costs multiple blue mana, and when many of your opponents will be using fast mana to cast expensive spells, counterspells become one of the most powerful forms of interaction. Posted on Dec 20, 2022. 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). Let's watch the world burn!" You could say that Magic is generally about that sort of thing, but Vintage Cube is the Draft environment where this is most loudly declared. Just fill out your deck with any burn spells you draft. Its always a lot of fun whether youre watching or drafting yourself, and I cant recommend it enough! Where blue has the most cards in the Cube, red for some reason has the fewest. Im actually a bit miffed that Arcane Artisan, a card that I was generally happy to pick early, was cut from the Cube while Show and Tell and Eureka remained in despite their massive downsides. 1 Scrubland There are more than a few cards that are half of a game-winning or infinite combo in the Cube, and knowing what they are can help you know when to pick them up or when to pass them. 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. the Vintage Cube is back on Magic Online (MTGO) for the month of July. All the time, for example, I might go P1 P1 Mana Drain into P1 P2 Badlands. 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. Shelldock Isle is also very easy to trigger. The complete Power 9 are included in the Cube, but theres an extra card many consider to be the 10th member: Sol Ring. Additionally, their is one high-end spell you want: Tooth and Nail. Non-combo green midrange decks are one of the few directionless decks that can hold their own. 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. 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. 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. If youre first-picking one of the listed cards in these two categories, youre starting things off in great shape. 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. Im really looking for Goblin Bombardment and some other cheap support before I give that one a close look. They play Deceiver Exarch to tap us down. 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. Turning off Sneak Attack or Reanimate can completely stop some opponents from playing the game. 140. Augur of Autumn is the major update here, and one that I will draft highly for all of my green decks. 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. They're just not as high picks as the critters. Beyond that, card selection and card draw are very important, and Storm is the one archetype that I regularly draft where I believe you have to take lands highly because you will lose to your manabase otherwise. I fetch my Sword of Body and Mind with Stoneforge Mystic and swing with Mutavault. You don't need any of them except maybe Garruk Wildspeaker and Acidic Slime. Howdy, gamers! 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. As for reanimation targets, good old Griselbrand, Iona, Shield of Emeria, Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite, Archon of Cruelty, and Massacre Wurm can all serve a purpose. If youre looking to get into Gruul then youre basically hoping to build around Huntmaster of the Fells, Avalanche Riders, and Questing Beast. Youll end up with 36 cards from 18 packs, never having seen a pack youve picked from before again. 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. They Frantic Search, loot, crack the Memory Jar, play LED, Rakdos Signet, and Grim Tutor for Living Death. Creature-Lands: Mutavault and Mishra's Factory fit great in your strategy and can live through sweepers. Bad choice. 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. Aggro decks are fun, especially mono-red, but honestly, your cards are so much weaker than your opponents. The Six Decks Im Considering For The SCG Invitational At SCG CON. The Vintage Cube is here for fun. But suppose you don't want to fight over Grixis. the most expensive and powerful cards in Magic, Vintage Cube Archetypes Ranked / Best Vintage Cube Archetypes. Cry. In general, avoid midrange "fair" cards in the Vintage Cube except as a sideboard strategy. Vintage Cube is on Magic Online usually twice a year, once in the summer around July and then again in December for the holidays. } Ignore the 4 and 5 drops. Cards like Black Lotus can make 4-drops on turn 1 a reality. } We're now locked out of playing white spells. I hope you Birthing Pod fans are happy! The Scarab God and Fallen Shinobi are some of the best creature threats out there. Laelia, the Blade Reforged is one that Ive been playing in the original Twobert since its release and has been great there. 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. High quality Vintage Cube Archetypes 2021-inspired gifts and merchandise. 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. 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. The mono-Red player isn't doing anything inherently broken. Here's a less-than-ideal Mono Red deck I recently drafted: So much is wrong with this deck. Somehow we escaped this draft with a 2-1 record. } 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. Its really easy to assemble these combos and make incredibly strong mana bases early on. Pair these two with Giver of Runes or Mother of Runes and you have some of the best early creatures, period. Avalanche Riders is serviceable. We equip our sword and swing back. Gaea's Cradle? No, the Vintage Cube is not free on MTGO. I would bet it ranks close to number one for cards that I lose to immediately when my opponent casts them. Losing a one-drop is more significant for those strategies than upgrading the two-drops, so on balance Id say white got slightly worse here. 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. Lots of pink. 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. Planeswalker Vintage Cube is all about efficiently leveraging your mana. Always always always bias your picks in favor of efficiency and do everything in your power to not end up with uninteractive midrange cards in your pool. I play a Shambling Vent and swing with Mutavault which trades off. 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. . Its far more important to have a solid direction with synergies between your cards than a pile of great cards with no connections. This goes beyond picking power. Ugh. 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. 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. 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. Bennie Smith gives in to this awesome urge with Etali, Primal Conqueror, his Commander Deck of the Week. Ryan Overturf is sharing his secrets to Vintage Cube on Magic Online! Dont forget about interaction. max-width: 100%; Ancient Grudge is by far the most powerful card on the outs here, but playing with red and green mana isnt free. This just goes to show that if you complain loudly enough, you can have Niv-Mizzet Reborn in any Cube! Cheap and efficient cards that are interactive and/or have clearly defined roles/archetypes are where you want to be. 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. Golgari has great cheap removal in the form of Assassin's Trophy and Maelstrom Pulse, and Vraska, Golgari Queen often gives you a 2-for-1 trade. We play Knight of the White Orchid and accelerate up to 4 lands. Experience is the best teacher, but Ill do my best to facilitate some good lessons. Young Pyromancer, Expressive Iteration, Mana Drain, Counterspell, Dack Fayden, and Vendilion Clique are all great ways to get started. We saw Portent added to Legacy Cube recently by Carmen and I loved seeing it there and its nice to see here as well. The Moxen are also great in just about any deck, even if theyre not on-color. 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. I think Mystic Confluence is the card that I value this highly that I see passed the most. The play patterns are just horrendous, and Adeline more or less returns to form in a lateral substitution over Brimaz. Black is honestly weaker in Vintage Cube than I would like it to be. Free mana is always good, unless youve drafted some weird list with practically no colorless pips. Go into it if see Sulfuric Vortex or Goblin Guide late. Whenever I start a draft, I hope to open one of these cards. } I would still expect Mono-White Aggro to be a regular performer in the Cube though. All orders are custom made and most ship worldwide within 24 hours. We'll take whatever we can get with this deck. Match 2, Game 3: I play Porcelain Legionnaire into Orzhov Signet and Honor of the Pure. 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. 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. text-align: center; Now, Im a big Storm fan, though its not for everybody and I dont recommend it if youre not willing to embarrass yourself. Drop your thoughts in a comment below or head over to the official Draftsim Discord to chat about it there. Ive seen many disappointing Dreadhorde Arcanists in 540-card Cubes and zero good ones, so good riddance there. As an archetype, Mono Red tends to be underdrafted because many cube aficionados consider it boring. Splashing is often correct in the green ramp decks, hence I called them "Green X". 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. 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. } 1 Mutavault float:relative; /* must be floated for same cross browser position of larger image */ Vintage Cube typically sticks around for the entire month its made available. White actually does have some interaction in this Cube in the form of Mana Tithe, both Swords to Plowshares and Path to Exile, and Ive even been rolled by an early Armageddon. Look out for Fractured Identity, Teferi, Hero of Dominaria, and Teferi, Time Raveler. 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. Ugh. Holiday Vintage Cube 2022. 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. 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. Need more proof March of the Machine is a Commander player's dream? 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. Phyrexian Revoker, Reclamation Sage, and Acidic Slime are good to have around to slow the opponent down in the early-game and something like Woodfall Primus or Terastodon can slam the door once you get them online (preferably assisted by a discard outlet like Jace, Vryns Prodigy). See what's going where! }, Lorcana shows off demo decks, new cards, and more at the GAMA Expo, Dusk Till Dawn introduces Prism, Advent of Thrones as well as new Shadow Runeblade hero. 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. Today I discuss an important aspect of building a successful cube: archetype support. Vintage Cube has the best cards in the game after all, and throwing them in a pile and saying go could lead to you having a great curve.
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