A way to keep the cards flowing as well as clear lands off the top of your deck is most welcome in green decks, and I have nothing but good things to say about the Augur. The most common splash color is blue for card draw spells like Compulsive Research, or for Counterspells or for Opposition which is its own lock-out win condition. 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. Blue is the best color in Cube, hands down, and the average Cube Draft can support five blue drafters without much trouble. CUTS "35 cards" Birthing Pod Burning of Xinye Casualties of War Cosima, God of the Voyage Day of Judgment Cry. Planar Bridge (The Cube) | Illustration by Alexandre Leoni. This is an especially good combo since Narset shuts down the highly prevalent number of cards draw spells that just about every archetype has access to. Moral of the Story: Mono Red is big risk / big reward. .article-footer-ad { Need more proof March of the Machine is a Commander player's dream? 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. My friend and co-SCG Baltimore Team Open champion Liz Lynn enjoys forcing white and believes it to actually just be the best archetype. Until next time, stay safe and stay healthy! 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. Smoldering Egg is worth playing in controlling decks or even in Storm, but isnt one that I expect to be valued highly at the table and is a card that I would hope to wheel if I were interested in it. Like mono red, you want to load up on one drops. : Complete List and Rewards (March of the Machine), 150 Play Points, 2 Qualifier Points, 1 Friendly Trophy, 1 Treasure Chest. Costing zero is really nice, but if you play Mana Crypt long enough youll lose to the coin flips some of the time. position:relative; Opponent goes Turn 2 Chart a Course, discard Griselbrand into Exhume. Look out for Fractured Identity, Teferi, Hero of Dominaria, and Teferi, Time Raveler. Sometimes the stars align and the cheap red cards are opened in the draft and I dont open a Tier 0 card, but it doesnt happen nearly as often as I would like. These provide ample ways to ramp out and often fix your mana. The two most busted Green cards in the whole Vintage Cube are Channel and Natural Order. I completely understand not wanting to play with Oko, though hes one of the easiest routes to free wins. 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. margin:0px; The challenge of splashing for double blue cards like Opposition or Jace, The Mind Sculptor is that enough need enough sources of the secondary color. The following is my ranking for the sorts of cards Im looking to first-pick. 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. 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. .thumb span { 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. You're not a Thundermaw Hellkite deck. 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. Young Pyromancer, Expressive Iteration, Mana Drain, Counterspell, Dack Fayden, and Vendilion Clique are all great ways to get started. Storm specifically is more interested in Dark Ritual than most, and you should pick Yawgmoths Will on the level of a Tier 0 card. Players have access to fast and mana-positive rocks like Mana Crypt and Grim Monolith on top of the classic Signets. Inside macy*s at Crystal Mall during June 2020. .scgtour-ad { No, the Vintage Cube is not free on MTGO. 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. Personally, I hate this kind of deck in the Vintage Cube because its far too "fair" for my liking. Beyond that, cards like Sulfuric Vortex, Mother of Runes, Entomb, Mana Leak, or anything that provides some identity to your deck are fine places to start. Lots of decks will have multiples of these in them. 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. I Parallax Wave the two fatties, swing into a zombie token, and play a Mirran Crusader. They play and equip a Sword of Light and Shadow to the dragon and swing for lethal. Even two-color decks do want some multicolor lands so theres obviously some nuance here, though my personal bias in a format as swingy as Vintage Cube is to make sure I have the sort of spells and mana acceleration that put my opponent on the back foot before I worry about how Im casting them. Forest, go. It provides a unique style of gameplay unlike any other strategy and lets you play around with the most powerful cards in the game. Here's what you're looking for when you draft Mono-Red: All the One Drops: Goblin Guide is the best, followed by Firedrinker Satyr, Grim Lavamancer, Zurgo Bellstriker, Falkenrath Gorger, Monastery Swiftspear and Jackal Pup. Free mana is always good, unless youve drafted some weird list with practically no colorless pips. Chase Carroll recaps their favorite cards from each Secret Lair in the Spring Superdrop. 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. Sometimes, a Commander player just wants to stomp with a big, angry Dino. I play Spectral Procession. We swing with everything but Ophiomancer to flip Legion's Landing. 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. Mono-white aggro is my choice for the third tier 1 deck. An easier way to end up with a solid black deck is to build around Recurring Nightmare. Sulfuric Vortex and Fireblast: You're the only one who wants them and they are irreplaceable. 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.