January Update Part 2

The Rest…

In the last post, I covered the White, Blue, Black and Red sections of my update. This post should be enough to get through the rest of the update. I’m hoping that after this update, I will be going back to smaller updates to cover new sets and cards I randomly discover.

Green

Sometime last year, my green section got a big overhaul to make it more aggressive than it was in my initial build. That update brought plenty of pump spells and aggro type creatures into my cube. Since then, I’ve found that I end up not playing most of those pump spells because I don’t have the room for them in my actual deck. So, I have decided to move green back into more of a ramp configuration.

• Wasteland Viper > Wild Nacatl: I added the Viper thinking that it would make a cool combat trick when an opponent blocks something that wouldn’t trade. In the end, I don’t think I ever actually put this card into a deck and I certainly never cast it. Wild Nacatl will work out to be a better aggro creature than Wasteland Viper and even when I was testing these updates, I found it to be far more useful.
• Wild Beastmaster > Wall of Roots: This card would have been pretty awesome with the pump spells that I had floating around. As it is, the card never did much more than a creature with Battle cry would. Wall of Roots is a pretty decent defender/ramper so I wanted to try it out in my cube to see if it will work for what I need.
• Elvish Piper > Brawn: The piper was put into my initial build of my cube, and has stayed in because it is a pet card for one of the people in my play group. I could never get the card to work for me (but he was pretty awesome at it). The piper just doesn’t really do enough for me to want to have him in the cube at this point. Brawn is a returning card to help support some of the big fat creatures that are in the cube now and coming in with this update.
• Protean Hydra > Polukranos, World Eater: The hydra never really did do anything exciting. Polukranos should help to give my green section a little removal that it really needs.
• Thorn Elemental > Liege of the Tangle: Thorn Elemental is a sort of pet card for my play group. Unfortunately, it doesn’t really play well in my cube. Liege should be an interesting card that will provide a good target for the ramp decks and also be a pretty crazy card in any deck with Sneak Attack.
• Worldly Tutor > Acidic Slime: It took me a long time to decide that Worldly Tutor is not as good as Enlightened Tutor or Mystical Tutor. I haven’t put my finger on exactly what that is, but I’m pretty sure that it is true. Acidic Slime is coming in to provide more removal for green.
• Titanic Growth > Regrowth: I don’t think I ever used Titanic Growth. Regrowth is a great card that I’m not sure why I never ran it before now.
• Might of Oaks > Birthing Pod: Might of Oaks is another victim of the ‘pump spell’ purge. I wanted to add Birthing Pod to give green a new deck type to play with.
• Harrow > Beast Within: Harrow is a card that was difficult to want to add into my decks. I think that it would be a shoe-in if it let you get any land but it only does basics so it was time to let it go. Beast Within adds another removal spell to green. Just in the time I have been testing it, Beast Within has made green decks so much scarier to deal with.
• Groundswell > Omnath, Locus of Manas: Growndswell had to go along with the other pump spells. Omnath is coming in as a pseudo ramp card. One of the people in my playgroup suggested it so I figured I would give it a try and see how it actually plays out. After a few games with this card I’ve found Omnath to be a weird threat to deal with since he causes trouble on multiple fronts.
• Gyre Sage > Lotus Cobra: I didn’t have Gyre Sage in my cube for very long, but I decided I wanted to have a spell that ramps a little bit better when it actually comes into play. That said, I’m not convinced that Lotus Cobra is better than Gyre Sage so this switch may get reversed down the line.
• Nylea, God of the Hunt > Yavimaya Elder: Nylea is the first god to get removed from my cube since I added them all a while back. She just doesn’t do enough for my green decks to want to keep her in the cube. Yavimaya Elder is coming in to help with the ramp plan.

Multicolored

There are only a handful of changes in my multicolored section. Mostly just things to get a few bad cards out and good cards in…

• Rakdos Keyrune > Olivia Voldaren:  I had added a few of the Keyrunes into my cube a while back to see how they would play. Most of them were bad. Olivia should be much more fun and useful to my playgroup.
• Grisly Salvage > Deathrite Shaman:  Grisly Salvage is a terrible card in cube. I really shouldn’t have been running it in the first place. Deathrite Shaman should be much more useful and its various abilities should be relevant in many situations.
• Prime Speaker Zagana > Drakewing Krasis: Zagana is a pretty decent card, but she never really took with my playgroup for some reason. Drakewing Krasis should be more palatable for my group since it is a flyer and half as expensive.
• Simic Keyrune > Simic Signet: Another failed keyrune making a switch back to the card it replaced.
• Niv-Mizzet, Dracogenius > Ral Zarek: I really wanted Niv to be good… For the second time, I have discovered that he just isn’t. He doesn’t impact the board enough the turn he comes into play to justify his place in the cube. Ral Zarek is a card I was excited for the second they spoiled him. Now that I have loosened my rules for Planeswalkers (previously there were only 2 for each color with no multi-colored), I am going to give him a shot and see how this works out.
• Teysa, Envoy of Ghosts > Orzhov Charm: Teysa is just too expensive. She is awesome once she is in play, but it is a long time before you can get to that 7th mana on the table. All of the other charms have turned out to be very useful so I wanted to see if this one would be as good as those ones.
• Selesnya Keyrune > Ready // Willing: I realize that Ready//Willing shouldn’t really be classified as a Selesnya card, but right now, I have the space in this section and just wanted to test the card to see what people think of it. If it sticks, I’ll probably move it to some other section but that will depend on what I see with the way the card gets played.
• Kessig Wolf Run > Temple of Abandon: I have never really been impressed with the Wolf Run and I pulled a Temple of Abandon from a random pack of Theros a while back. I wanted to test it out to see if I liked it better than any lands in my Gruul section.
• Creeping Tar Pit > Underground River: The Tar Pit is a good land that was not getting put into decks for one reason or another. So, I replaced it with Underground River and already people have been playing it more. It is probably something to do with the ‘comes into play tapped’ thing. To be honest, the ‘Man-Lands’ haven’t made much of an impact in my cube (with the exception of Celestial Colonnade and Faerie Conclave for some reason).

Colorless

This round of updates is mainly to cut some cards that aren’t actually good for some cards that I thought would be interesting to try out.

• Basilisk Collar > Explorer’s Scope: The Collar never made it into many decks. I think I may just not have the right cards in the other sections of my cube to support it. Explorer’s Scope does something that interests the people I play with so I figured I would throw it in and see how it goes.
• Feldon’s Cane > Isochron Scepter: Feldon’s Cane came in as a foil to the Mill cards that were floating around. Since that isn’t necessary I brought the Scepter back because my group was sad to see it go when I cut it.
• Executioner’s Hood, Prowler’s Helm > Mask of Memory, Infiltration Lens: Two bad cards being exchanged for cards that should provide interesting situations in the game.

Conclusion

Looking at the full list of updates I’ve made here, I realize that there are going to be some cards that will get moved around as testing finishes up. There are a few cards that are in just to see how they play that I don’t have high expectations for, but I’ll cross those bridges as I get to them. I try not to judge cards too harshly before I test them out (which is why I tend to run some pretty bad cards from time to time).