facebook

CoolStuffInc.com

Destination Unknown Sale ends Sunday!
   Sign In
Create Account

From the Ground Up: Artifacts and Multicolored

Reddit

The rest of the Cube is far more freeform than the mana, so there’s going to be a lot of room for personal tastes. What I’m going to do is tell you which cards I included simply because I liked them, and which cards I included for better format balance. We’ll start with the artifacts/colorless cards.

At first I had a huge number of artifacts I wanted to run, but was forced to cull them down to a very small number. Especially with the Signets and Coalition Relic taking up eleven spots, there are precious few spots for artifacts in my Cube. I do regret this to some extent, but one of my design goals was to focus more on color identity, so I feel that having fewer artifacts is a necessary consequence. There are a number of very good artifacts that I left out of the Cube solely due to space considerations. In the end, I ended up with 102 cards of each color: fifty-one multicolored cards and forty-eight lands, leaving myself only forty-one slots for artifacts, eleven of which are already taken by my mana rocks. I did build the five colors first, and cut as much out of those as I really was willing to, so the low artifact count was simply a product of logistics. I don’t like it, but it is what it is.

The first group of artifacts is the grouping that, to me, are central to the way the Cube works. They are as follows: Ulamog, the Infinite Gyre, Kozilek, Butcher of Truth, Emrakul, the Aeons Torn, All Is Dust, Sword of Fire and Ice, Umezawa’s Jitte, Coat of Arms, Adaptive Automaton, Legacy Weapon, Basilisk Collar, Nevinyrral’s Disk, Lashwrithe, and Pithing Needle.

Let’s talk about these cards as a group. The Eldrazi and Legacy Weapon provide control decks an incentive to power hard, as all of them are mana-hungry and very powerful. They also make cards that are capable of generating lots of mana—like Elvish Archdruid, Priest of Titania, and Rofellos, Llanowar Emissary—more powerful, since they all have substantial colorless requirements.

All Is Dust, Disk, and Pithing Needle are three sort of “utility” slots that I am a real big fan of. Pithing Needle is a perennial sideboard card because it is cheap and extremely effective at stopping any number of cards. While it is not normally an awesome card in Limited, it is very effective in Cube because Cube is a more powerful format, which tends to mean far more activated abilities that are relevant. Phyrexian Revoker is a legitimate choice for a flex slot for the same reasons, but I would put Needle in first, simply due to its being so cheap. Stopping mana abilities in Cube is not hugely relevant, but not having the vulnerability of being a creature is, especially when you are using the card to deal with planeswalkers. As far as the other two cards are concerned, colorless sweepers are good—end of story.

Coat of Arms and Adaptive Automaton are obviously there because I intend to utilize tribal synergies. Both of these cards are very strong tribal cards, and I would definitely include them if you want to do tribal. If you don’t, there are a number of other cards I would run instead. At the top of that list is Eldrazi Monument.

I believe Sword of Fire and Ice and Cheaterfork (Jitte) need no introduction. It’s pretty obvious why I’m running those two cards. Sword of Feast and Famine is also a perfectly legitimate inclusion, as it is very powerful in Limited as well. I feel that those two Swords are on a similar power level, whereas the other three are substantially weaker. I really did have too many cool artifacts I wanted to include, though, and I didn’t feel the need to have both Swords, so they ended up competing for the same slot. Sword of Fire and Ice won because the judge promo is pretty. If I wanted Feast and Famine, I would run it over one of the other equipment I chose, probably Adventuring Gear.

Lashwrithe and Basilisk Collar are both there to support other sections of the Cube. I have a “Swamps matter” theme in Black, so I definitely wanted to run Lashwrithe or Nightmare Lash. Given the choice between the two (once again, space constraints suck), I think it is obvious why I picked Lashwrithe. Basilisk Collar is in there because I like pingers. I have a number of pingers all over the place, so Basilisk Collar’s ability to grant Deathtouch is very relevant. Also, Basilisk Collar + Goblin Sharpshooter is amazing, and that interaction alone should be enough reason to drop both in your Cube.

But that’s nowhere near the end of the equipment. The rest of the equipment in the Cube is as follows—Nim Deathmantle, Grafted Wargear, Loxodon Warhammer, Mortarpod, Sigil of Distinction, Skullclamp, Whispersilk Cloak, Adventuring Gear, Bonesplitter. Sigil and Adventuring Gear are in there because I like them. Let me go through my reasoning for the including the rest of the cards.

Bonesplitter and Grafted Wargear are two awesome pieces of equipment for aggressive decks. They are both excellent at helping aggro decks power through 4-toughness (and larger) blockers because they provide huge power boosts for their mana investment. Pushing aggro is important, and that means giving aggro decks ways of getting around the defensive measures you give control decks. Bonesplitter makes it over the two Bonesplitter variants—Darksteel Axe and Trusty Machete—simply because it is a much stronger card. The difference between 2 to equip and 1 to equip is worth more than the benefits either card provides.

Skullclamp and Warhammer make it because those two cards are awesome. Mortarpod makes it because it is a good piece of equipment that supports both aggro and control. Aggro decks can use it as a bonus method of reach, whereas control decks can use it for board control. Having such strong utility is definitely worth points.

Whispersilk Cloak was competing against Lightning Greaves (and I suppose now Swiftfoot Boots as well). The reason I chose cloak was threefold.

  1. I like Shroud more than Troll Shroud. (I refuse to use the keyword name; it is horrible.) This is because I feel like Shroud is a more interesting ability, since it has an actual, relevant drawback.
  2. I don’t like the way both pairs of Boots break the color pie. Giving non-Red access to such powerful ways of gaining Haste is not something I want to be doing.
  3. I really like the flavor of Whispersilk Cloak. Giving the dude unblockability goes very well with the idea of the card. You can’t target the guy or block him because you can’t detect him.

So, that’s why I chose Whispersilk Cloak over more powerful options. Nim Deathmantle I included because it did something unique while turning dudes into Zombies (very relevant for a tribal Cube where Zombies is my Black tribe). [Author’s note: Screw Vampires . . . I WANT BRAINS.]

The rest of the artifacts are sort of in the “cards I just really like” section. They are Molten-Tail Masticore, Icy Manipulator, Ensnaring Bridge (Stronghold version, of course), Wurmcoil Engine, Moonglove Extract, Triskelion, Predator, Flagship, Platinum Angel. All of these are cards that have solid utility and are, in general, pretty cool. Those are all the artifacts that made it in.

As far as cards that didn’t end up making the cut, the card I am probably most sad about is Engineered Explosives. I really like that card a lot. I feel like that sort of effect is missing from the artifact set, and would like to get EE, Powder Keg, or Ratchet Bomb into the Cube. At the moment, there is nothing really urgent that I would cut for them, but I really don’t see a reason not to have them either.

Mindslaver is another card that I am sad didn’t make the cut. I mean, it’s Mindslaver, what more do I need to say? Artifacts have historically been one of the most awesome card types and I am sad that I wasn’t able to include more. I went with a heavier equipment theme because I wanted to emphasize the fact that this is still a limited format, and thus still fundamentally about creatures. I felt that skewing the artifacts toward equipment would go a long way toward emphasizing combat a bit more.

On that note, I am pretty sad that Tatsumasa, the Dragon Fang didn’t make it as well. I mean, it’s a sword that transforms into a dragon, how awesome is that? Part of the reason it’s not in the Cube is that I don’t have one, but that’s not a huge deal since I had to acquire a bunch of cards for my Cube (I’m still randomly short a Mistform Wall, which is a recent addition). Really, I just didn’t have the room for it, despite it being a dragon. I mean, dragons are the best, but sometimes, even being a dragon isn’t enough. [Pout.]

The next thing to look at is multicolored cards. I slotted these by color combination, making sure that all the allied combinations had the same number of cards. The same is true for the enemy combinations, as well as tri-color combinations. I originally wanted allied and enemy to also have the same number, but there are just far more allied multicolor cards, and therefore more of them I want to run. Thus, each allied combination has five slots, as opposed to three for enemy. Even doing this, I had to leave a huge number of cards I like off the list. I will talk about some of the cards I left off, but obviously it is impossible to do an exhaustive discussion. Mostly this is just to talk about my choices and prompt some ideas, perhaps for lesser known cards, for your own Cube.

So, here is the slotting:

Five-color: Conflux

Tricolored arc: Nicol Bolas, Planeswalker, Sphinx of the Steel Wind, Empyrial Archangel, Rith, the Awakener, Lavalanche

Tricolored wedge: Guided Passage, Oros, the Avenger, The Mimeoplasm, Lightning Angel, Crime // Punishment

Of all the possible five-color spells, Conflux seemed like the most powerful overall. It’s definitely a spell worth working for in five-color, so it provides incentive for mages to play it. Yes, it will be difficult to cast, but the reward is well worth it. Combined with other cards, there is definitely an incentive to play lots of colors.

As far as the tricolored arcs are concerned, I wanted big threats, for the most part. Grixis was the toughest choice, since I had Bolas or Cruel Ultimatum. In the end I went with Bolas, due to its being a planeswalker and a mana more expensive, thus making it a bit easier to interact with. I chose Lavalanche for Jund and Rith for Naya despite numerous other options because I really like those cards. There are other good options as well, but I feel like both those cards are relatively close to the top of their respective lists. I mean, I love dragons a lot, and how can you ever go wrong with more dragons?

As far as the wedges were concerned, Guided Passage is the only card I’m not 100% happy with. It’s a bit underwhelming, but there really isn’t a very good R/U/G wedge card. Animar and Riku just aren’t where I want to be with Cube cards. I think Animar has the same problem as a lot of the really good mana rocks in that it simply means your opponent is not playing the same game as you. Riku is almost too fragile to build around in Cube, it might be worth trying, but Guided Passage is a card I feel is highly underrated and well worth playing in a lot of situations. As far as the others are concerned, Lightning Angel is one of my favorite cards, The Mimeoplasm is one of the flexible, awesome, and powerful legends they’ve printed, and the Planar Chaos prerelease Oros is cool. Oh, also, Oros is a Dragon. Did I mention that I like Dragons?

In the end, the B/G/W one was hard as well. The options were Doran, Teneb, and Crime/Punishment. I love Dragons, but I love Pernicious Deed more, and anything that evokes memories of that card is a card I automatically like, Crime/Punishment wins for that reason. Let’s move on to other multicolored cards.

Enemy-colored:

bg: Putrid Leech, Maelstrom Pulse, Pernicious Deed

wb: Vindicate, Angel of Despair, Pillory of the Sleepless

ug: Coiling Oracle, Gaea’s Skyfolk, Mystic Snake

ur: Fire // Ice, Prophetic Bolt, Suffocating Blast

rw: Firemane Angel, Figure of Destiny, Lightning Helix

We’ll start with the most stacked color combination—bg. Obviously, I was running Pernicious Deed. Not only is it like the best bg card ever printed, but it’s also my favorite Magic card of all time, so no way that doesn’t make it. As far as the other two are concerned, Maelstrom Pulse was Putrefy for a bit, but in the end, when I upped the planeswalker count by adding a second cycle of monocolored planeswalkers after M12, I felt the need to change Putrefy to Pulse, in order to better keep ’walkers in check.

Putrid Leech made the cut because it is such an efficient aggressive drop in a color combination that can support aggro-rock style decks. I wanted to throw them a bone and Leech was my way of doing that. Being a Zombie didn’t hurt his case either. Obviously Putrefy is a strong choice for this slot as well, but I wanted to mention three other nice bg cards (all from Apocalypse) that people may have forgotten about—Ebony Treefolk, Consume Strength, Llanowar Dead.

Llanowar Dead is a Zombie Elf, and almost made it on those grounds alone. If he wasn’t competing against such stacked competition, that alone probably would have been enough. Tapping for Black mana is also cool, since it is a pretty unique ability. Consume Strength is an amazing combat trick, and one that I don’t see in Cubes enough. Once again, the bg slot is absolutely stacked, and I liked Putrid Leech just a tad more. Ebony Treefolk is also an underrated creature. It is quite cheap ($$-wise), and is quite good for common/uncommon Cubes, I feel. I just felt like mentioning these cards since they are cards that I like a lot and had in mind when I was building the Cube.

The bw pairing obviously began with Vindicate and Angel of Despair. At that point I had a number of options, with the standouts being Mortify, Ghost Council of Orzhova, Pillory of the Sleepless, and Necrotic Sliver. Changelings were definitely going to be around, so even if I didn’t include other slivers, Necrotic Sliver could have gotten some extra value. In the end, I narrowed it down to Ghost Council vs. Pillory, since I felt like the other two cards were too similar to what I already had, and I wanted at least a little variety. Pillory won because it is easier to cast. It’s also a card that I feel is oft forgotten, so that got it points as well.

In ug, I felt like Mystic Snake and Coiling Oracle don’t really need an explanation. As far as Gaea’s Skyfolk is concerned, I like the fact that it is a 2/2 Elf Merfolk flyer for 2. The creature types are important. Invasion block has a cycle of these 2-drops that had relevant creature types, and this was the representative that ended up making it in eventually. Having two relevant creature types is a huge boon in a Cube with tribal synergies. The fact that it’s Terese Nielsen art doesn’t hurt either.

There are definitely other options in this color combination. The Simic guild in Ravnica block produced quite a few interesting cards, not the least of which is Plaxcaster Frogling, which is an awesome card. Of course, there are a million Ophidians as well—Cold-Eye Selkie, Vedalken Heretic, etc.—but I feel like those are less interesting.

Moving on to rw, Lightning Helix and Figure of Destiny are fairly self-explanatory, and I chose Firemane Angel for the third card because I played that card quite a bit when it was in Standard so I have a soft spot for it. In addition, I also feel like it is a relatively unique card in that it is a recursive creature that provides a benefit while it simply sits in the graveyard. 1 life a turn may not seem like much, but if you can get it into the ’yard early, it can definitely be a game-changer.

As far as other mentions, I feel like Ajani Vengeant is a card a lot of people will look at. While I don’t have a problem with the card, I also don’t have a huge attachment to it either. If I had more room in rw, I would probably run either Goblin Legionnaire or Goblin Trenches, both solid cards that are often left by the wayside because people forget about them. There are also some nice tricks, like Double Cleave, in this color combination. However, this discussion is already getting long, so let’s move on.

Allied colors:

uw: Hindering Light, Absorb, Silver Drake, Silkbind Faerie, Venser, the Sojourner

ub: Agony Warp, Undermine, Oona, Queen of the Fae, Cavern Harpy, Sygg, River Cutthroat

gw: Enlisted Wurm, Armadillo Cloak, Qasali Pridemage, Selesnya Guildmage, Loxodon Hierarch

rg: Scab-Clan Mauler, Hull Breach, Fires of Yavimaya, Boggart Ram-Gang, Bloodbraid Elf

rb: Terminate, Bituminous Blast, Wort, Boggart Auntie, Murderous Redcap, Dralnu’s Crusade

A thing I tried to do with the enemy-colored cards is far more apparent here. What I wanted to do was use the multicolored cards to hedge color combinations a little bit in draft decks, and you can definitely see that in the allied cards. Let’s go through them set by set. There really are so many options here that that fact, combined with the fact that this article is already very long means I’m not going to go through cards that I miss.

uw is clearly a control combination, and thus I included control cards. I feel that Hindering Light is an underutilized card, as it really is quite solid. Cantripping and countering a spell for 2 mana is really good. Silver Drake I put in because it’s a card I really like from a mechanistic standpoint. I don’t know why, but the gating mechanic from Invasion block made the most sense to me in Blue or White, so I definitely wanted to represent that with a gating creature.

As far as ub is concerned, that’s another control combination, so I included three more control cards. Because Black is more focused on removal than White, I made one of the cards an actual removal spell (Agony Warp). Cavern Harpy is just an awesome card that does so many little things that I couldn’t help but include it. Using it to re-buy 187 creatures is absolutely sick. Sygg, River Cutthroat is the bone I threw to tempo decks in ub. uw already has Hindering Light, which is a very good offensive counterspell, and Silver Drake, which is a very credible 3-mana 3/3 flyer.

I focused on value when I was looking at the gw color combination. gw, from a mechanistic standpoint, always felt like a color combination that was able to just about anything and would be very good at extracting value out of their cards. Thus, I tried to get gw cards that were good at generating value. The fact that they were almost all creatures (Armadillo Cloak is simply too good to not include) is intentional as well, since I feel GW would also be very focused on that card type. Selensya Guildmage made it on being an Elf himself while also making Saprolings, which are my favorite type of token.

The Gruul color combination was one I wanted to direct toward aggression, both from a 1-drop-focused standpoint and a midrange-focused standpoint. This made Scab-Clan Mauler and Fires of Yavimaya the first two cards I dropped in, without question. Boggart Ram-Gang and Bloodbraid Elf quickly followed. The final slot went to Hull Breach, as it is a flexible card able to support both aggressive and more controlling strategies, due to its cheap cost.

The rb color combination is obviously focused on control and removal (Terminate, Bituminous Blast, Murderous Redcap). After looking through the “Goblins” I selected, I realized that Wort would be sort of cool, so I included that card as well. Dralnu’s Crusade is one of my pet cards that I really don’t get enough opportunities to play with, and it fits perfectly into my tribal themes as well, so it got there real fast. I mean, what’s not to like about Zombie Goblins?




I’m going to stop there for now, since this article will soon pass 3,500 words. I’d be happy to elaborate more on my thinking in the comments, though, so feel free to ask questions there. Having a preconstructed Cube allows you to pick up and play, which is one reason I recommend that everyone make a Cube. I think it’s a great way of playing Magic. Over the past two months, my Cube has been a huge help in keeping me playing Magic, as just being busy means I had no time to think about Magic, much less write about it. I hope that next time life hits me with a sledgehammer, I won’t have to drop Magic as hard, as I have really enjoyed and benefited from the experience of writing and thinking critically about this game.

Chingsung Chang

Conelead most everywhere and on MTGO

Khan32k5 at gmail dot com

Appendix (Master List):

Artifacts/Colorless Cards:

Multicolored:

Limited time 30% buy trade in bonus buylist