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. max-width: 100%; Moral of the Story: Mono Red is big risk / big reward. Im pretty big on drafting an early Metalworker for the same reasons that I like Mishras Workshop. Another tip that a lot of players commonly look over is the significance and importance of non-basic lands in the Cube. We swing back for 8 and grab our sword with Stoneforge Mystic. I could see an argument for valuing Time Walk more highly than Mana Crypt, though you wont encounter a lot of packs that cause you to pick between my top six cards and another Tier 0 option. }, 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. I will say that not everyone is going to value Mox Sapphire the same way that I do. Especially in League. The play patterns are just horrendous, and Adeline more or less returns to form in a lateral substitution over Brimaz. The important notes here are the high volume of one- and two-drops with a sprinkling of threes and fours. They play Deceiver Exarch to tap us down. A deck with a lot of artifact mana and planeswalkers can seriously leverage a Balance, though its really tough to get all of the right cards together as theyre all high picks, and Id rather have the fast mana and planeswalkers than the Balance. 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. 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. I completely understand not wanting to play with Oko, though hes one of the easiest routes to free wins. 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. The biggest pitfall in blue is the card Show and Tell. 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. I believe that the colors Blue, Red and Black are miles better than Green and White in the Vintage Cube since they unlock so many unique and powerful win conditions. When you're drafting the Vintage Cube, my strong advice is to pick your cards with the assumption that you'll be in these colors. That wraps up my guide on my favorite Cube, the Vintage Cube! The mono-Red player isn't doing anything inherently broken. When it comes to utility lands, youre presented with an equally powerful choice of cards. These two can provide some of the most instantaneous leads out of any card, refilling your hand or giving you the chance to out-tempo your opponent. The Twin/Kiki deck, while sharing a lot of cards with the non-combo Izzet tempo deck, is still different enough to be a separate archetype. 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. Its really easy to assemble these combos and make incredibly strong mana bases early on. The other thing white does well is providing solid interaction for controlling strategies. Phyrexian Revoker and Phyrexian Metamorph are two cards that make all of my decks for being extremely flexible and more powerful than they might appear. Its a phantom Draft, which means it costs less and you keep none of the cards, but it still costs either 10 TIX or 100 Play Points to enter. But if that's your idea of fun, keep doing it. If you do manage to get the nuts, then congratulations! Planar Bridge (The Cube) | Illustration by Alexandre Leoni. The fetch lands are particularly important. width:252px; Next they find Dragonlord Ojutai. Chase Carroll recaps their favorite cards from each Secret Lair in the Spring Superdrop. 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. Sometimes you back into it to save your draft. This is a problem, because there are only seven aggressive red one-drops in the entire Cube, and one of them is Figure of Destiny which will be picked highly for white decks as well. Part of the problem is that a lot of its cards are Reanimator support, and while Reanimator has a broken ceiling, it also has an unplayable floor. They play Fauna Shaman and swing for 5. We could win this game! Getting into Vintage Cube is a pretty daunting endeavor, which tends to be truer the newer to competitive Magic you are. 1 Mishra's Factory Red does serve an important role in a couple of non-aggressive archetypes though. Borrowed Time wasnt printed as a replacement for Oblivion Ring; its another data point in the fact that the passage of time has made Oblivion Ring much less exciting. 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. *Lands were not submitted with this deck, so Iread the recap, added the lands that were missing, and just went from there! I Tidehollow Sculler their last card and play my sword. Rofellos, Llanowar Emissary and Gaeas Cradle are two of the most powerful cards in the mono-green decks, and they dont really play well with other colors. The fives are mostly interchangeable, though Nissa, Who Shakes the World is probably the best and both Elder Gargaroth and Vivien, Monsters Advocate are two cards that I will actively try not to play given how much worse they are than the other fives. Its so much more popular then and its harder to draft a strong deck when so many more players are going for it. In general, avoid midrange "fair" cards in the Vintage Cube except as a sideboard strategy. To get things out of the way early, this is going to be my last set cube update for Magic Online . I Strip Mine their Island. If youre playing a Simic () deck and have Arid Mesa and Spara's Headquarters or Savannah, then that otherwise off-color fetch can suddenly be on-color! Having off-color fetch lands with on-color duals can help you piece together a much more consistent 3- or 4-color mana base to the point where youre almost never lacking any particular color. } Personally, I hate this kind of deck in the Vintage Cube because its far too "fair" for my liking. This is Vintage Cube. Match 3, Game 2: We lead with Tidehollow Sculler, which gets Dazed. We allow some wiggle room to account for sheer complexity, but you are still expected to assemble your 60 card list in a reasonable timeframe. .scgtour-ad { Jake was first introduced to Magic in 2013, and has been a regular at his LGS ever since. Primeval Titan, Craterhoof Behemoth, Rofellos, Channel are top picks. How am I 2-0? What to avoid: 5s and 6s. Demonic Tutor is a little reliant on you ending up with other broken cards, but its always an incredibly efficient card selection tool, which can be a difference-maker if your opponents deck is more powerful but less consistent. We equip the sword, swing for 5, and mill them for ten.., including Griselbrand and Iona, Shield of Emeria. Your email address will not be published. Now, without further ado, Ill break down the changes to the Cube by color and what this means to you as a drafter. Because no one else wants them. Erno Rubik inspires us with what he's learned in a lifetime of creating, curiosity and discovery . Magic continues to be Hasbro's top performer. Why? 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. The cards you want to look out for are essentially any high-tier blue or red cards. Red decks will miss Mizzium Mortars when facing down Courser of Kruphix specifically, but not much otherwise. An easier way to end up with a solid black deck is to build around Recurring Nightmare. They Burst Lightning our Ophiomancer and Treasure Cruise. } Maybe the best they can boast is a sick three drop on turn-2 off of a Mox Ruby, like Sulfuric Vortex. Sneak Attack is among the easiest cards that take a player from no battlefield presence to winning, and red offers a handful of rituals and other effective cards for the Storm decks. 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. In the three drop slot are good sideboard cards that are strong enough to main deck in most decks like Manglehorn, Reclamation Sage, Courser of Kruphix and Eternal Witness. Black Lotus | Illustration by Christopher Rush. Power Fours: Koth of the Hammer and Hellrider are excellent. Some packs just arent exciting, though not every 3-0 starts with a Black Lotus. They play and equip a Sword of Light and Shadow to the dragon and swing for lethal. Blue has a lot of power for bullying opponents and stuff like Opposition and Deceiver Exarch combo will end up leading to less consistent and less powerful decks than just drafting busted mana and busted individual cards about as often as theyll pay off in my experience. Expect gorgeous art, a heartstring-tugging dog, and pink. 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. Bouncing two creatures and countering a spell is a pretty common way to swing a game against a more aggressive deck, and both the counterspell and the bounce ability play quite well against most of the combo decks in the Cube with so much of the Cube being dedicated to putting some large creature on the battlefield. Or at least it can be. None of its cards are so strong that they are correct to first pick them. top:37px; See what I mean? Fallen Shinobi probably sticks out here, but I really never see that card hit without ending the game. On the other end, the best cards to ramp into are: Craterhoof Behemoth, Ulamog, The Ceaseless Hunger, Primeval Titan and Terastodon. Sometimes, a Commander player just wants to stomp with a big, angry Dino. Black is honestly weaker in Vintage Cube than I would like it to be. I equip my sword, swing and mill 10. As Pro Tour March of the Machine approaches, qualifier Dom Harvey offers observations on Standard and Limited, the viewer experience, and star-making. We saw Portent added to Legacy Cube recently by Carmen and I loved seeing it there and its nice to see here as well. Match 1, Game 3: They mulligan to 6, but have a Turn 1 Imperial Seal. 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. Vintage Cube is on Magic Online usually twice a year, once in the summer around July and then again in December for the holidays. Golgari (), Simic (), and Gruul () each offer a strong midrange playstyle through some great interaction and powerful creatures. The Six Decks Im Considering For The SCG Invitational At SCG CON. document.getElementById( "ak_js_1" ).setAttribute( "value", ( new Date() ).getTime() ); Wizards of the Coast, Magic: The Gathering, and their logos are trademarks of Wizards of the Coast LLC. Unconditional removal that exiles is great against Reanimator strategies and really just anybody putting creatures on the table. border:1px solid #000; One important tip is to look at how your dual lands, tri-lands, and fetch lands interact. Urza's Saga, Urza, Lord High Artificer, and other expensive artifact threats like Wurmcoil Engine or Myr Battlesphere are your finishers here. On that front, Abrade is probably the best red card for controlling red decks given its versatility in a format lousy with artifact mana. Mox Diamond doesnt hold a candle to the real thing, but its all the same when youre resolving cards like Jace, the Mind Sculptor and Wheel of Fortune. Cards like Counterspell and Thoughtseize are efficient enough to be reasonable against basically any opponent and tend to overperform in Vintage Cube. Black Lotus can have the highest ceiling while Sol Ring most consistently does its thing. All rights reserved. Mono-green is fully supported in the Cube with the long list of mana dorks backing it up. Turning off Sneak Attack or Reanimate can completely stop some opponents from playing the game. Magic continues to be Hasbro's top performer. I could see why they might think this would work in theory. Since Cube has so . 1 Parallax Wave You may have already heard, but in case you havent, Im here to let you know that Vintage Cube is returning to Magic Online (MTGO) for three weeks starting today! First, let's start in the most logical place: Blue decks. They find a Nature's Claim for Sword. In my experience, once you have Yawgmoths Will, if anybody at the table opens Lions Eye Diamond it will come to you, which is the easiest two-card combo for making a lethal Storm turn happen. You can find her writeup on the most recent update here. z-index:1; Mana Crypt is close enough to Sol Ring to fit in here, but theres some give and take. I play Parallax Wave, target Griselbrand and hope for a miracle. Parallax Wave goes away. How do you get into Mono Red then since none of the cards are first-pickable? A Dutch artist worked with former plantation employees to create a "white cube" that they hope will one day display works returned from European museums. Two simple ways, actually. Lightning Bolt is great, but honestly its not much different than Searing Spear or Char. 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. Cube has long been one of my favorite ways to play Magic. It performs well in all the same matchups that Reveillark does while being by far the superior pairing for Recurring Nightmare. Karmic Guide is generally at its best alongside Reveillark, so its something of an odd substitution. Whats more important than the list is understanding the common thread. Vorinclex has higher potential to do nutty things with planeswalkers as well as some other cards like Walking Ballista than Tovolars Huntmaster does so I dont love that substitution, but the Huntmaster is one I expect to play. Sol Ring pairs great with powerful value cards like Jace, the Mind Sculptor while Mana Crypt generally pushes you in a more aggressive direction. Bribery and Treachery will similarly often result in well worth the value of tapping five lands. Mono Red is a strange bird. Ill see you in the queues. Regardless, the Power 9 are about as impactful as youd assume. And yet as a deck it is much more powerful than the sum of its parts. But suppose you don't want to fight over Grixis. They swing but forget to give Putrid Imp flying, taking us to 1. Midnight Reaper also just doesnt have the kind of support that you want for a card like that with some of the most powerful cards for sacrifice decks absent from the Cube. Sometimes you're just in the mood to watch it all burn. They loot another Island, play a Sol Ring, and a Memory Jar. Library of Alexandria is perhaps one of (if not the) most powerful lands in the Cube. Its updated semi-regularly by the Cube team, and has a few cards swapped out every time its made available on Magic Online. 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. Mono red: Load up on one drops, and curve out while other people figure out the format. 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. Ive 3-0ed plenty of Vintage Cubes staying mono-blue, and blue is most commonly my primary color in any two or more color decks. .article-footer-ad img { Mono Red is good like that. If thats your thing, thats cool, and ultimately the cost of featuring Niv in the Cube is one slot and a lot of these gold slots are replacement-level anyway. But the payoffs are fairly limited, and they boil down to essentially either locking your opponent out through a bunch of creatures and Opposition, or hitting a Craterhoof Behemoth off of Natural Order. It gives you a way to win once the board is clear and youre holding up strictly interaction. visibility:hidden; Avalanche Riders is serviceable. font-style: italic; We counter with Stoneforge Mystic, fetching our Sword of Body and Mind. These provide ample ways to ramp out and often fix your mana. Make sure its worth it to splash. The best green accelerants are: Mox Emerald, Rofellos, Llanowar Emissary, Joraga Treespeaker, Birds of Paradise and Noble Hierarch. 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. display: block; The nice thing about them is youll often be the only green drafter, which means you can get your best cards like Gaeas Cradle and Natural Order late in the draft due to their niche nature. 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. Rofellos, Llanowar Emissary and other cheap green mana creatures present a clear path to a deck that generates a lot of mana, though these decks tend to be more vulnerable to creature removal than other decks. They Unburial Rites their Griselbrand, but I have Anguished Unmaking. No, the Vintage Cube is not free on MTGO. Laelia, the Blade Reforged is one that Ive been playing in the original Twobert since its release and has been great there. These are specific to Vintage Cube, but some, like Mono Green or White Weenie, are pretty much the same in Legacy or Modern Cube as well. 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. Cry. If Im going to spend that much mana on something that isnt a sure thing, I at least want it to give me looks at Craterhoof Behemoth. Some of the best and most powerful mana rocks are also included. And yet through no merits except for raw speed, especially based on its ability to punish slow starts, (and occasionally induce them), Mono Red is a viable Vintage Cube deck. Pack 1, Pick 1, you see that Goblin Guide, and you say, "I'm in. I take no joy in reporting this, especially considering that I was able to post a 3-0 with the archetype the only time it felt open during the last run of the Vintage Cube. Required fields are marked *. 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. Personally I dont see the appeal of Birthing Pod in Vintage Cube, but it does certainly do more for archetype diversity than all of my Mono-Green Ramp darlings that are on the outs. . .article-footer-ad { We're now locked out of playing white spells. Generally, the white based decks come in three varieties: Mono White Aggro, which is typically worse than the best Mono Red Aggro decks; Blue-White Tempo, which seeks to stick a hard to touch threat like Geist of Saint Traft and them keep the opponent from sticking anything relevant; or White-Black Disruption Aggro, which also is most often a token deck. This is arguably the best card in the Cube thanks to its versatility and power level, often providing more value than weaker power pieces like Timetwister or off-color Moxen. We'll take whatever we can get with this deck. We trade resources. You're not a Thundermaw Hellkite deck. You pay two more mana upfront but you get six more mana worth of effect from your Consecrated Sphinx token. Speaking of which, I wonder why Disrupt isn't in any cube. I would love to see Oko, Thief of Crowns cut from every Cube. If it could be said that blue has a weakness in Vintage Cube, it would be that there are probably too many win conditions. }. This strategy plays very similarly to any green ramp deck you mightve piloted before. I hope the information provided here is helpful for those of you looking to tighten your skills in high-power environments. They play Bazaar of Baghdad, discarding Grave Titan and play Living Death. .scgtour-ad img { But I decided to go for it, to see how we could do. This is perhaps deserved after the huge upgrade that white recently got with Palace Jailer being reintroduced to the Cube along with the addition of Solitude, though I will still miss the Landing. We play Knight of the White Orchid and accelerate up to 4 lands. As such, side boarding has always taken a back seat. 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. .article-footer-ad .footer-ad-text{ . This site is Draftsim.com. The decks your players will draft and build need to have the tools to be successful decks. 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 you can draft at least 4 of these 7, that makes your odds of having a one-drop in your starting hand very high. Izzet tempo is one of the best general archetypes you can look to get into early thanks to the power of blues cards and the synergies with red. 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. Copyright 2020 Star City Games. Supreme Vintage Cube is a slightly altered version of Vintage Cube where you pick two cards each pick of every pack. Vintage Cube features a wide range of viable archetypes, and even the most successful drafters will offer different insights on what they believe the best archetypes to be. 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.
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