Fun Cubed – “Unfun” Strategies

The majority of my personal evolution as a Magic player started in my childhood. The steps and breakthroughs that helped me to be able to play the game at the level I do today began in the schoolyard. I can vividly remember the first time I was in middle school and an older kid showed up with a deck that had four copies of Bad Moon in it. He even made the genius decision to make all of his creatures black! I had a similar reaction when another kid at school built a deck with all the counterspells in print and four copies of Clone and Control Magic as win conditions. I can remember thinking how great it was that not only did you not have to play your own creatures to win the game, but you could just copy or take your all the ones your opponents played, all while countering their other spells. Learning those simple strategies were an important part of learning deck building skills.

As my friends and I grew older and we grew more interested in playing decks that could win games rather than find ways to cast Arcades Sabboth or put as many goblins into play as possible. First, we moved on from deck strategy that only involved one color. The first deck that was a joint effort in the schoolyard was land destruction. Deciding to construct a green/red/black deck with Thermokarst, Stone Rain, Icequake, and Hypnotic Specter as the primary win condition, it took the dual lands of three classmates in order to make the deck consistent enough to play. Building the deck taught all of us valuable lessons about the importance of a mana curve and hitting land drops, and various other aspects of the game.

This move away from a casual interest in the game to a more competitive one only added to the overall enjoyment for me. Never when playing the game were myself or any of my friends ever displeased to play against a deck like land destruction or counterspells. On the other hand, the competitive nature of young men didn’t make any of us happy to lose. Whatever ill feelings myself or friends have had about losing over the years has been nothing like the responses I’ve heard over the years from the majority of the casual Magic player community about decks they consider to be “unfair” or “unfun”. The vast majority of casual players don’t enjoy playing against decks centered on either permission or resource restriction, feeling these elements of the game take away from play rather than adding to the game. As the years have gone by, Wizards has heard the cries of outrage from this portion of the player community and phased out cards that were once the cornerstones of their colors like Counterspell and Stone Rain.

Meanwhile, players like myself who have grown up playing with and against cards of this caliber are left to scoff at their replacements in the current incarnation of magic. Every time I look at Cancel it hurts a little inside to think that one day I might have to play that card in a constructed format. Meanwhile, creatures get larger for lower casting costs as the game becomes even more creature-centric. While the future is uncertain for strategies like countermagic and land destruction, there is fortunately a sanctuary where you can find a place to play Sinkhole, Stone Rain, and even Ark of Blight all in the same deck and they’re good.

If you’re anything like me then you aren’t put off by either of the strategies I’ve mentioned above and actually enjoy playing with them. Cube is a great place for these deck strategies to flourish and make interesting draft archetypes. Land destruction has been the number one enemy of casual magic players as far back as I can remember, meanwhile in Cube I’ve found it to be a fair and balanced way to reintegrate a very fun aspect of the game back into regular play. Choosing how to integrate land destruction into the cube wasn’t an easy task. After I decided that I wanted to see it in the format I had to chose how much to put in and over which colors it should be spread. While white has Armageddon and Ravages of War right from the get go, I felt both of those cards were outside of the realm to pick from. White only had mass land removal and wasn’t reflecting the theme I was looking for, which was pin-point land destruction to constrict your opponent’s resources. Green, red, and black have all shared the mantle of land destruction over the years, all having cards printed that simply destroy target land. I thought having a draft strategy that spanned three colors would be difficult so right off the bat I knew land destruction would be a two color effort.

Green already had fewer spots for spells in Cube, so although it does manage to get in on the action with Plow Under, it was almost as easy to dismiss as White. Having Red and Black both share land destruction spells has made for a very positive Cube experience for everybody who’s played with the archetype. Red gets the bonus of having creatures that also destroy lands; between Ravenous Baboons, Ogre Arsonist, Avalanche Riders, Goblin Settler, and Dwarven Blastminer getting in on the action it means that not as many spots for spells need to be taken up by LD. While Red has the widest variety of creatures and spells that can destroy lands, Black has additions that make it a great compliment. Befoul and Rancid Earth bring a little spice to Black’s land destruction, and Sinkhole is the grandfather of land destruction spells. Despite being quite linear, Black land destruction has proven to not only be viable but solid. The multicolor section even gets to get in on the action with Fulminator Mage and Wrecking Ball each acting as above par land destruction effects. Land destruction is a huge positive in all the Cube drafting that I’ve done.

Starting with heads-up formats where the card pool is the most limited, a couple of land destruction spells in a deck can cut off a color from your opponent or suffocate a land light hand early in a game. The majority of decks played in formats only involving two players are three colors, so those land destruction spells can really make a difference even if only in small numbers. In an eight man draft, unless two players decide to fight over the cards, often times there’s an opportunity for a land destruction deck to be drafted. Between Ravnica block bounce lands and the high quality and versatility of non-basic lands, even a singleton Stone Rain can make a difference in most Cube draft decks.

Countermagic in Cube often reminds me of the draw-go days of Tempest Type Two. While popular and strong in tournament magic, this mono Blue strategy involving such cards as Forbid and Whispers of the Muse set the standard for what was considered frustrating to play against. Ever since this time period in Magic, we’ve seen Wizards slowly move away from permission strategies, offering fewer counterspells and cutting back on their power level. Fortunately for the Cube’s sake, there’s enough to go around! While you’ll have the option to first pick Mana Drain, you won’t have to worry about having to pick up Cancel in order to fill out a permission deck. Countermagic isn’t a straightforward game to play in any format, and while permission by its very nature is strong, it takes play skill to wield blue based decks. While land destruction has a far more straightforward strategy from game to game, knowing which spells to counter in a game and when to counter them is much harder for the average player to do. Meanwhile learning to play against permission has always been a very entertaining cat and mouse game for me, and I find it provides many opportunities for skilled play and adaptive strategy. Countermagic in Cube is strictly a Blue affair; sure Absorb, Undermine, and Voidslime all branch off slightly, but there is no question that Blue is the only color to say “no” in Magic.

In the future we’ll see where permission takes us, as many Cubes out there include Mana Tithe and Lapse of Certainty along with Rebuff the Wicked, posing the question of whether there will be another shift in the color wheel in the future to give White a card that simply reads “Counter Target Spell.” In the meantime I subscribe to the school of thought that not only should permission have a place in Cube but also have a strong presence in order to give two Blue players at an eight man table enough cards to work with in any given draft. While not an overpowered archetype in Cube draft, permission does warrant a handful of would be “hate” cards in other colors to really level the playing field.

The last topic I want to cover stems from the ancient ancestors of the game, the Power Nine. Its potential inclusion in Cube is always subject to debate. While I don’t personally include original Power Nine in my own Cube, it has always been tempting to have the full menagerie of jewelry and friends at our disposal. Weighing the questions of how potentially unfair and unbalanced all of Cube would be if Power Nine were included, I actually decided to start the debate process from the other side of the coin. How little impact would power cards have on Cube? Sure enough, drawing Mox Sapphire on turn eight is a small step above drawing a land, and the same could be said for Black Lotus itself. Timetwister also doesn’t look like a blowout, considering Memory Jar doesn’t automatically win the game and Wheel of Fortune doesn’t even make the cut. Having a draw seven effect in the color that already draws cards seems completely fair.

At this point in the debate the argument that the Power Nine wouldn’t impact Cube negatively has run its course, as we take a look at Time Walk and Ancestral Recall and their impact on the game. First off, while Time Walk in Vintage more often than not simply untaps your permanents and gives you a land drop. In a limited format where multiple combat steps mean a lot, Time Walk gets a huge boost to its power level. Ancestral Recall is a no-brainer when it comes to power level, and can’t even really be compared to any other card. So while six of the nine on the chopping block could be considered marginally broken on the level of Sol Ring, Mana Vault, Mana Crypt, or Grim Monolith, the rest just give Blue an unfair edge that none of the other colors could combat (I actually think Sol Ring and Mana Crypt cross the line themselves – LSV, having been on the receiving end of enough Sol Ring-fueled beatings in Winston Draft).

There’s also the possibility of the busted style draws where one side of the table explodes with mana acceleration and buries the opponent by casting four, five, or six drops on turn one, which is often grounds for a game that isn’t any fun. If you’ve seen my Cube list you notice I don’t exile all of the fast mana outlets, but rather section them off to the colorless variety in an effect to promote a brown draft strategy and not a broken first turn for any color deck. At the end of the day I have a warm fuzzy spot in my heart for casting a Mox or telling my opponent I’m targeting myself with Ancestral Recall but I know they don’t have a home in my Cube. The first cousin of the power nine, Library of Alexandria, has seemed to sneak its way into Cube however, and continues to hang on by a thread as my close-knit play group often jokes about how impossible it is to race a turn one Library. Another one of those cards that’s simply a non-factor in many games, it has the potential to be a blowout when played early in a game, and I’ve seen many lists that don’t play Power in their Cube and consider Library of Alexandria on par with the rest of the Power Nine. Thankfully since I have the land destruction package, Library often hits the table with a giant target on it and often ends up seeing the business end of a Stone Rain.

At the end of the day as Cube builders and players you hold the power to define what’s unfair within your own play group. The Cube format doesn’t suffer from limited strategies as long as your creative process stays consistent and balanced. From my experience you should be careful of overloading a single color with a single strategy. Blue and countermagic can become overpowering if left unchecked, so keep a watchful eye on any theme or strategy you develop. To this day there hasn’t been a Cube I’ve played with that I didn’t enjoy, regardless of what thematic choices were made by the builder. So until next time this is Tristan Gregson hoping your top decks are live and your lethal damage always resolves.