Today I’m going to take a departure from my usual Constructed chatter and talk about one of my favorite formats, s**t cube. If you’re interested in some Standard stuff, I’ll have a bit about splitting a 1k about my Vengevine Jund deck at the end of the Cube section. Until then, CUBE! When I was chatting with some of the Arizona guys about Cube construction, they told me about about s**t Cube and I was intrigued at how a reformed Backdraft Cube made for a fun format. I finally got to play it earlier this year at Pro Tour: San Diego and was instantly impressed at the amount of fun and depth there was to a format so full of ‘awful’ cards. The concept is simple enough, make a bad cube, but instead of just having the absolute dregs of society in the cube, put bad cards in with actual purpose in mind. The more you play around with the typical rules of Magic and the color-pie, the more interesting playing with bad cards becomes.

Here’s [lost to time] the actual cube for reference.

Note the non-MTG page has cards explained later in the article and that the ‘Booster’ page refers to the booster pack to be fetched with the card Booster Tutor.

Since the Cube itself belongs to Chris and Karl, I went ahead and asked them to describe the Cube and its philosophy in-depth. Here’s some information on how and why the S. Cube was created.,

“1. There was a lot of Cube-Making going on in Tucson, and they all kind of looked the same. I just really wanted to build a cube with a bunch of terrible, awkwardly-costed cards just to break the monotony a little bit. Bad cards are far more interesting to me, also. Its really hard to screw up the Masticore/Jitte/etc picks, but with a pile full of bad cards, you really have to scrounge for value. It’s also important to point out that we didn’t intend to Straight Draft the Cube. We wanted to build a Backdraft cube.This philosophy changed as we actually tried out the decks by Winstoning a lot and finding the format to be really engaging.

For Cube construction itself, I felt like playing with bad cards would let me re-assign the traditional color roles. In every other cube I’ve seen, Blue is NEVER the color where the most efficient creatures are. White never has the best removal, Red is never the awkward color, Green never has to play with bad creatures, Black never gets to fix mana, heh.

2. The special cards started because I’ve played a LOT of card games for a week at a time.I’ve seen a lot of Cubes with Vs. System cards in them, so I figured I could put in like 5 or 6 non-MtG cards and that’d be kind of fun. So I had to figure out what these non-MtG cards did, because some of them aren’t totally cut-and-dry (originally, Jack Bauer had “Lethal” and “Expert” keywords. What do those mean in the context of Magic? etc).

Then I came across these Ship cards from 7th Sea, which just have no discernible Magic text on them at all. So it was like “okay, these cards don’t do anything, and that’ll be fine because you’ll want to draft them high so when you give your pile to your opponent to build decks, he’ll have this card with no text.” Like, haha sucker, then it quickly became a Cube Rule that if a Ship made it into your stack, you HAD to play with it in your 40.

Toku is my nickname, so obv I had to put him in the Cube (and, incidentally, if he’s in a pack, I *have* to take him. Cube Rule).

The Blank Card is essentially Clone, but of any permanent you’ve already played in the game. Sometimes this would make for odd situations with cards already in the Cube, so we had some fun with it and let it be searched up by cards like Howling Wolf. That made it really strong, but only once the game got going and since it was only as good as the best card you had in play it wasn’t some big imbalance.

Mariano Rivera, it was like, cool here’s this closer. Best closer ever. His job is to ice the game.So when he resolves, you win the game and we just kind of arrived on 15 mana as reasonable for that kind of effect. To this day, its NEVER happened that somebody cast him. All 3 Rivera kills are because of Fold Into AEther or Hunted Wumpus.”

I think Chris did a good job of explaining why this Cube isn’t just another one or even like a Backdraft Cube (since those usually last for all of a week before being disassembled). For me what made this Cube so interesting versus other types is that you can still draft combos and archetypes, but it forces you to reevaluate and really consider how much value you get from each card you draft. In normal Cube it’s pretty obvious after a few go’s what cards are amazing and what ones you can build archetypes around. For S. Cube, you have some really neat value dilemmas pop up.

 

steel golem 

This is one of my favorite thought-provokers once I finally got to play with the Cube for a bit. Compared to nearly everything else in the cube it’s P/T is basically unmatched for the cost and even taking that into account it still has one of the best P/T’s in the Cube! Normally this type of card is borderline unplayable in other formats, but in S. Cube you can play slow ramp or Control decks based around him to some extent. If he lands into play, then life is pretty miserable for your opponents unless they have flyers and even then you have a lot more time to figure out answers to those.

Steel Golem is a good example of a card with a drawback that would make him very awkward in normal Limited and instead just makes it a more interesting card in S. Cube. Precisely because decks are slower and may not function smoothly all the time, you can build plans around them and think multiples turns in advance with being blindsided and just dead. In normal Cube all too often massive swings are possible with only a minor investment, in this format you have to fight for your edges and plan around how to hold them.

As I wrote above, combos are still a factor in this Cube, they just aren’t as obvious or as devastating as you might be used too. For example, when I finally got to draft my first time, I ended up with a War Barge and Merfolk Assassin in the maindeck. Neither card is very useful and only can be used in a small number of situations, but I still ran it because if you got the complimenting piece out you had a game-ending level threat.

Here’s a thought exercise, think about what you would consider the best cards in S. Cube to be, pick say 10 and see how close you get to what Karl put as some of his MVP’s for this Cube.

….

DoDoDo..Do..Do…Do

Storm Herd
Allosaurus Rider
Subversion
Pulsating Illusion
Unyaro Bees
Death Spark
Blank Card (Clone of a card you’ve played)

These are some of the best cards in the format, nothing horrifically swingy except Storm Herd and everything else requires multiple turns to show what they can do. One of my other favorite cards that didn’t quite make the cut is Hidetsugu’s Second Rite. While narrow in scope, a format lacking mana burn and easy ways to change your life-total, combined with the small power on creatures in the format makes it something to reasonably plan around instead of just getting lucky.

Death Spark and Subversion in particular are cards people look at and don’t immediately jump to mind as MVP-caliber cards. However context is important and with Death Spark usage you can come out even or ahead in practically every creature encounter. Meanwhile Subversion with any board presence can race many deck’s clocks by chipping away without requiring any further investment. Considering the average CMC in many S. Cube decks, this is a luxury many decks never get to enjoy.

If you aren’t sold on the format yet, there’s always the obvious reason to give a try. It’s a ton of fun playing with cards like Curse of the Cabal and Nebuchadnezzar which can give you a lot of decision trees. Essentially if you want a slower format and one that you can spend reevaluating value and focusing on what matters in each and every draft, deck construction and game. If you want an example of such, here’s a match report from one of Chris and Karl’s Winston sessions.

Draft report from Chris

Drafted another 1v1 with Karl tonight, wound up being an really nice 2-game set (I won 2-0).

Karl’s Deck:

UNPLAYED

 

My Deck:

 

[deck]

 

UNPLAYED

 

 

Game 1, it’s important to note that Karl played about 95% of it under his Goblin Mime.

We battled a little bit until this disasterous turn where he cast Cytoshape choosing his Shah of Naar Isle, dealing me a full 10 damage. I was able to follow up with what turned out to be a stabilizing Subversion from 5 life, but it was close. There was a 2 or 3 turn window where he could have gotten me with the Second Rite. Subversion wound up going for about 15 or 16 life, and put the game totally out of reach.

Game 2 was strategically very interesting. I stuck a turn 2 Swamp Mosquito, giving him a poison counter before he played Frost Raptor on turn 3. I played a Sengir Bats and passed, he plays Cosi’s Trickster and passes back. I play and equip Trailblazer’s Boots on the Mosquito and give him a 2nd poison counter thanks to nonbasic land walk.

At this point, I’ve reduced the game to a race: my Mosquito vs his Frost Raptor. I have to get 8 more hits in with the Mosquito before he can do 20 to me with the Raptor and/or other creatures. Strictly speaking, I can win this race. He’ll have 10 counters when I’m at 4. The limiting factors for me are Hidetsugu’s Second Rite, Cytoshape, and Death Spark.

At some point, I play a Subversion, the justification being that it will save me about 3 or 4 hits from the Raptor. This is important later.

He plays the Shah of Naar Isle, but I have the Crib Swap. He has 5 poison counters vs my 15 life when he pays the echo and goes to attack with the Shah and the Trickster…but it was a pump fake and he goes into the tank. Right away, I recognize the only reason to start to send the Trickster is Cytoshape. I figure out my block ahead of time…I have to block the Trickster with my Bats and wait for the Cytoshape to Crib Swap the Shah in response. If he doesn’t cast the Cytoshape, I have to just take 8, go to 6 and Crib Swap the Shah after combat.

He doesn’t cast it, and I have a 2/3 Sengir Bats, the Swamp Mosquito, Subversion and 7 life versus the Frost Raptor (enchanted with an irrelevant Soul Bleed), a Changeling Token and a post combat dork of some kind (I think it was Yavimaya Gnat).

Now that I’m at 7 and gaining a life every turn (since the Frost Raptor is now dwarfed by my 2/3 Sengir Bats), I have to figure out a way to not have my own Subversion kill me in 3 turns when I undoubtedly get Second Rited.

I untap, go to 8 and draw the Scrib Nibblers, having drawn 2 land and a Needlebite Trap off the Shah of Naar Isle’s echo cost. Being stuck on 5 lands, I figure the best option is to cast the Nibblers, get in for the 6th poison counter and pass the turn, holding the lands to trigger the Nibbler’s landfall ability, getting 4 cracks at gaining the extra life I need to get to 11. If all else failed, I had the Needlebite Trap to get out of range of the Second Rite on the turn in question.

What I hadn’t even considered was that I couldn’t activate the Nibblers on the next turn, when I would only have 6 lands up, because if I hit, it would get me to 10 a turn earlier and not allow me to cast the Trap to trump the Second Rite. I activated it anyway and luckily he flipped a Goblin Mime, allowing me to stay at 9. I play land #6 and he Call to Heels the Scrib Nibblers at EOT (because he can’t let me get activations with it on the following turn, for fear of me getting up to 11 or 12).

The next turn, I went to 10, gave him poison counter #9 and passed, holding the Needlebite Trap. He untapped, cast the Second Rite and scooped when I showed him the Trap. We shake hands and I pour some Victory Bourbon.

Now, a lot of strategically interesting things are at work here, even with the bad cards. In order for me to win the game, I have to recognize the following things. #1, I have to recognize that the unblockable Mosquito is my best chance to win this game. #2, I have to play a little tighter with my mana, because I miss land drop #6 two or three times (once on purpose). This means I can’t just start running dorks out that would prove to be irrelevant (like Sengir Autocrat), because it doesn’t let me play around Cytoshape. #3, I can’t get impatient vs the Shah of Naar Isle, and Crib Swap him prematurely. If need be, I have to just take the 6, in a race where my margin is 4, so that Cytoshape doesn’t just kill me. #4, when I do drop below 10, I have to figure out how to beat the Second Rite. #5, he needs to forget that I drafted the Needlebite Trap (which was a mid-to-late pick in a middle pack this time around) and not cast Dream’s Grip on a land during the upkeep in which I go to 10.

Luckily, all these things happened and my HUGE misplay with the Scrib Nibblers didn’t just kill me.

And that’s 2 semi-typical games. These pools were a titch wonky, being a little removal light, but the games were interactive and tight.

Jund

As for the Standard portion of the article, I split a 1k Standard event with Vengevine Jund this weekend. It was around 50 players and 6 rounds, so not quite the most rigorous of battlefields, but it was good prep for the 5k this upcoming weekend here in San Jose. Here’s the list:

I ended up casting Blightning a total of zero times and didn’t really miss it the entire day. Since almost all of my opponents had Vengevine, Unearth or some other way to Negate the card loss of Blightning it wasn’t going to be a strong card. Lavaclaw Reaches was also disappointing, but in large part that was because I never played against a Control deck and many of my attrition wars were won on the back of Vengevine and Siege-Gang Commander, not manlands. Plated Geopede was a mixed bag; sometimes it would deal a huge amount of damage early and other times it was just fodder, at least if you run it in this build you have a reasonable chance of holding back and returning a Vengevine with it.

Vengevine itself was excellent and co-MVP along with Bloodbraid Elf. This combo of 4-drops almost makes me want to dump Thrinax or Geopede and throw in a set of Lotus Cobra to help jump from 2 to 4 the same way Nest Invader allows. Speaking of Nest Invader: while not particularly amazing at any given moment, it was pretty useful throughout the day. Extra blockers were at a premium in a number of racing situations and unlike Lotus Cobra, nobody ever wants to remove an Eldrazi token so you get your turn three boost just about always.

Sideboard-wise the only cards I’m sold on are Bituminous Blast, Consuming Vapors and some amount of Lightning Bolt or similar cheap removal. Forked Bolt was a card I was considering removing some number Bolts for since it takes out multiple Mythic one-drops and still retains usefulness later. Cunning Sparkmage is another creature I want to try out as it takes care of mana creatures, opposing Sparkmages and chump blockers in an efficient and tidy fashion. With the lack of serious Control decks in my metagame and vast number of Vengevine and Red decks I’m tempted to dump Blightning for additional removal and Sarkhan the Mad.

For reference my matches were:
R1: Jace Jund (2-1)
R2: Naya (2-1)
R3: B/G (2-0)
R4: Mythic (2-0)
R5/6: ID
T8: RDW (2-1)

Only the Red match felt really close and oddly enough the biggest blowout game ended up being when my opponent went [card]Goblin Guide[/card] on turns one and two. Turns out Consuming Vapors is pretty sweet eating 2/2’s or my own Vengevine for some much needed lifegain. Despite some writers claiming Jund is a worse choice than a number of other decks in the field, the only three decks I’d consider playing over Jund right now are Mythic, Turboland and RDW. Mythic is a very valid choice, but I think as more people adapt plans that kills the early mana producers the worse range the deck has in terms of draws that win the game. RDW is the worst of all four decks, but is likely the best positioned in the current metagame.

That’s it from me for this week, see you at the 5k this weekend at Stars!

Josh Silvestri
Email me at: joshDOTsilvestriATgmailDOTcom