I can see Rite of Harmony having a high ceiling, so I like giving that one a shot, but any deck that asks me to play a Savannah is fighting uphill. Young Pyromancer, Expressive Iteration, Mana Drain, Counterspell, Dack Fayden, and Vendilion Clique are all great ways to get started. So as long as you're not fighting for cards, its smooth sailing. These provide ample ways to ramp out and often fix your mana. It is plainly too powerful in any non-Vintage Cube and is fully capable of being the only relevant spell played in a game of Vintage Cube. 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). Its imperative to make sure that you end up in a deck that does some combination of efficiently leveraging your mana while having some ability to curb your opponents ability to do so. We trade resources. 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. The play patterns are just horrendous, and Adeline more or less returns to form in a lateral substitution over Brimaz. Copyright 2020 Star City Games. 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. 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. Need more proof March of the Machine is a Commander player's dream? Next they find Dragonlord Ojutai. The Six Decks Im Considering For The SCG Invitational At SCG CON. I would bet it ranks close to number one for cards that I lose to immediately when my opponent casts them. Match 3, Game 1: They play Turn one Island, Black Lotus, pass. 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. Ramp out, play a big threat a few turns earlier than you otherwise should, and run over the poor schmuck across the table. Underappreciated Cube Archetypes | PureMTGO 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. 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 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. Were talking about the sorts of cards that would be easy first picks in the absence of power, and a few cards that are generally considered too good for those environments. Match 2, Game 3: I play Porcelain Legionnaire into Orzhov Signet and Honor of the Pure. Now, without further ado, Ill break down the changes to the Cube by color and what this means to you as a drafter. Once we get past the most broken fast mana and the cheapest and most efficient effects, we start looking at cards that require a little bit more investment but correlate very strongly with winning the game. } All of these cards account for huge swings that far exceed the mana invested. 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. Mono-white aggro is my choice for the third tier 1 deck. While I believe that Bloodbraid Elf is considerably more powerful than Arlinn, the Packs Hope, I also dont really want to play with any of these cards ever. Ugh. 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). White just happened to be open, and I had enough white cards to get to 40 in my extremely good blue deck. Fiery Confluence is the best non-creature spell. I play Parallax Wave, target Griselbrand and hope for a miracle. Expect gorgeous art, a heartstring-tugging dog, and pink. .thumb:hover span { } Grim Monolith is definitely behind those effects, though a lot of draws from most decks will fold to a resolved six-drop on Turn 3. 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. Cathar Commando and Intrepid Adversary both cracked my Top 10 Cube Cards for Midnight Hunt and are the most significant additions with this update. Copyright 2020 Star City Games. Deck-building for the Vintage Constructed Cube is likely the most difficult part of drafting it. This goes beyond picking power. . width: 700px; Vintage Cube: More Drafts and Archetypes | PureMTGO Augur of Autumn is the major update here, and one that I will draft highly for all of my green decks. And while some may think that's a good strategy, I tend to find them to be overrated that I am content with 1 or 2 in most decks and will always take the real win conditions, tutors, and fixing, especially true dual lands and fetchlands over the Signets. The base lesson from this history is that you dont have to work very hard to win with Black Lotus. Bennie Smith gives in to this awesome urge with Etali, Primal Conqueror, his Commander Deck of the Week. Neither is a terribly high pick in Vintage Cube with Mono-White Aggro and Azorius Control being the best white archetypes, but if I had to choose to include one I would go with the Guide. Match 2, Game 1: On the draw, we Inquisition of Kozilek revealing Rishkar, Peema Renegade, Kitchen Finks, (Hazoret, the Fervent), Thragtusk, Master of the Wild Hunt and Mountain with currently only a Mountain in play. 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. All Rights Reserved. .thumb { As Pro Tour March of the Machine approaches, qualifier Dom Harvey offers observations on Standard and Limited, the viewer experience, and star-making. I Mind Twist away their remaining four cards. Theres also the infamous pairing of Narset, Parter of Veils and a wheel effect like Wheel of Fortune. The big takeaway that I want to offer today is that Vintage Cube is much less about figuring out which archetype is best and much more about understanding how to navigate a format with absurd mana generation. For my money the other Moxen are more or less colorless sources that sometimes fix your mana, while Mox Sapphire is a tremendous boon for blue interactive decks. Signets are great because theyre mana acceleration, and I more commonly pick off-color Signets to fill out my mana curve than I do for any kind of mana fixing. I really dont have much to say about the significance of any of these cards in Vintage Cube. Azorius () also has some power cards to have some fun with. In case you havent heard, the Vintage Cube is back on Magic Online (MTGO) for the month of July. My pick order is based on understanding which cards are the very best and committing as hard as possible to playing these cards starting from Pack 1, Pick 1. Shelldock Isle is also very easy to trigger. Last week I covered two of the best decks and win conditions in the Vintage Cube: Reanimator and Grixis Goodstuff. The best cards in the Cube will be highly contested and you cant do anything about the presence of some cards that youll never want to play, but if Huntmaster of the Fells makes your deck, try your best to make it because you were shy on playables and not because you tricked yourself into believing it could hang. Bloodthirsty Adversary is plainly awesome, and while I would have preferred to see it take the place of a five-mana creature lets call it Siege-Gang Commander its still really nice to have a red threat thats good on Turn 2 and has the ability to scale into the late-game as a topdeck. We saw Portent added to Legacy Cube recently by Carmen and I loved seeing it there and its nice to see here as well. 140. Assume, for example that you're not going to be able to draft a deck with four signets. This is most commonly going to mean Azorius Control. Black Lotus can have the highest ceiling while Sol Ring most consistently does its thing. They play Splinter Twin. Strip Mine hanging out to push back on the opponents mana development is also huge, and is much more welcome than more fours or getting into any five-mana spells. If youre familiar with the history of the Vintage Constructed format, then youll know some pretty embarrassing cards (looking at you, Slash Panther) have been propped up significantly by Mishras Workshop and other fast mana. Cards like Lightning Bolt can be useful to give control decks an edge against aggressive decks as well. Yawgmoth's Win - Tumblr Here's a less-than-ideal Mono Red deck I recently drafted: So much is wrong with this deck. Vintage Cube Archetypes 2021 Posters | Redbubble The Moxen are also great in just about any deck, even if theyre not on-color. Wizards Posted The MTGO Vintage Cube List today 7-20-21. https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/magic-online/magic-online-announcements-july-20-2021 Here Are the 35 Cuts and Additions in an easier way to read from what the have posted. This is similar to how Double Masters sets are drafted, except the two-pick rule is enabled for every single pick. Some players have advocated Oko as their overall Pack 1, Pick 1, which I believe to be a defensible position. Players have access to fast and mana-positive rocks like Mana Crypt and Grim Monolith on top of the classic Signets. Infernal Grasp, on the other hand, is a nice get. } Theyre also very heavy direction-setting cards. All the time, for example, I might go P1 P1 Mana Drain into P1 P2 Badlands. } There are 540 cards in the MTGO Vintage Cube. Is This The Last Chance To Play Arcums Astrolabe In Modern? Sulfuric Vortex and Fireblast: You're the only one who wants them and they are irreplaceable. We equip our sword and swing back. 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. Opponent goes Turn 2 Chart a Course, discard Griselbrand into Exhume. Like mono red, you want to load up on one drops. They play Fauna Shaman and swing for 5. Whenever I start a draft, I hope to open one of these cards. Good archetypes for Vintage Cube : MTGO - Reddit