My 1st Roto Draft - The Conclusion

Welcome back! This is  the final post about the SamP Arena Cube - Roto draft. I feel I could go on even more about the experience because there was so much time to focus on it, so many games to play and banter to be had in the Discord. 

   The sacrifice theme that's fully supported in this cube is a little bit higher on the curve than a Lurrus deck can play. Noting Mayhem Devil, Sephiroth, Fabled Soldier and Yawgmoth, Thran Physician.

 

I didn't actually end up with like the best version of either the sacrifice deck or the artifactr deck. My deck was in between both. I had a lot of really cool synergies and I'm going to be posting a deck list down below for people to take a look at it. I'll just kind of go through the last pics in the draft and then we'll talk about the matches and how that went. 

So I did end up taking Hangarback Walker, and Inspiring Vantage(R/W) next. Vantage comes into play untapped by turn three. My curve is so low I'm okay with it. I am very rarely going to miss having a tapped land on turn 4, especially with the curve and artifact ramp.

I picked up some hand disruption next with Inquisition of Kozilek. I also picked up Kolaghan's Command because I feel like it would absolutely hose my deck and so I didn't want to play against it. I then found myself leaning into the Lurrus strategy a little bit more with Pyrite Spellbomb. Scavenger's Talent is another card I picked up which can be an alternate win con. It works really nice with my theme.

I then picked up Michiko's Reign of Truth. I incidentally have a lot of artifacts and enchantments in this deck, so it could be a 2 mana 5/5 most of the time. It also pairs well with another card I will mention shortly. I picked up some more solid removal; Sheltered by Ghosts which is something that I can recast with Lurrus if it gets answered at some point. I picked up some more premium removal with Bloodchief's Thirst and Damnation. 

Damnation is the one card I was really tempted to take earlier because it works so well with Selfless Spirit. I can just imagine sacrificing the Spirit, giving all my creatures indestructible and then casting Damnation to make my own Plaguewind. I can even rebuy it with Soul Cauldron to give another creature the effect again as well. 

We then have Chromatic Sphere, Legion Extruder, Chainsaw and a really late pic Gingerbrute. So Gingerbrute is a one-mana artifact that I use ASC's ability to make any creature unblockable. So my thought is pair it with Chainsaw or Michiko's Reign of Truth and swing in for the win(Which did happen several times in the matches). 

I also picked up Caustic Bronco, Pile On, Phyrexian Tower and another utility land: Spymaster's Vault which I found very good. The last card which is actually ended up being really great was Sorin, of House of Markov. There's so many aggressive decks. I've been playing test matches and my deck has felt like it needed something that could get on the board and kind of hold back some early aggressive threats. 

Okay so let's go through my deck and my sideboard plan for the matches.

So my game one build, the one that I'm submitting is a B/W deck that's built around Scavenger's Talent, Agatha's Soul Cauldron and drain effects using Meathook Massacre and Marionette Apprentice. I've got cheap interaction with Inquisition of Kozilek, Portable Hole and Bloodchief's Thirst. I also have a load of great two drops with Bitterblossom to pressure opponents, Caustic Bronco, Cathar Commando and Selfless Spirit. I've got my engines that allow me to gain long-game card advantage with Staff of the Storyteller and I got ASC and of course Lurrus. I have my good top deck cards like Massacre and Hangerback Walker to just gum up the board. It's looking really fun. I love all the different synergies and I'm excited to share kind of like how the how the games went as well

 

So sideboard plan I felt like I wanted to have a total switch with a different deck that's more built around artifact aggro. So this deck is mardu and it utilizes Max Opal, Galvanic Blast, Chainsaw and Gingerbrute to push damage. I think is going to be really good to sideboard into versus other slower decks. 

So moving into the matchups I'm looking at the opponents and I've got four decks that I think the artifact deck is a little bit better and five decks where I think the Scavengers Talent plan works out in my favor.

The first couple of games go pretty well I start off with three or four wins right away and I'm happy with kind of how the deck performed. 

I fired off matches super quickly and like I said that initially went pretty well. Then we stopped playing some matches for like weekends and work and stuff like that and I tried to pick up matches kind of anytime others could. So if I'm like busy doing something else but I want to jam a game you know I'm trying to make that happen. That was a little bit of my own downfall with this deck. 

  I forgot to pull up my sideboard plan and didn't actually SB versus one matchup and I ended up losing 2-0 when I definitely should have like been more competitive with the other version of the build. I also got really greedy and had a board state where I had selfless spirit and Damnation in hand, but I was way behind on board. So I waited to cast Damnation and got totally run over by a couple of timely combat tricks. So I ended up coming all the way down to the end and I did win five matches and lost four. It was a very fun deck to play but it's not something that you could really pilot well in a distracted state. You need to be really engaged, and thoughtful of every interaction to play the deck well. 

It did exactly what I thought it was going to do versus some decks. Vs. the blue the mono blue player I was just able to get underneath their counter Magic and pressure them pretty well. I did lose to the green deck after beating them around the time the draft was wrapping up. That matchup was one of the ones I was kicking myself for. I think I didnt take the ample amount of prep to get my SB plan pulled up and look through the differences in their build from our scrimmage. I wanted to actually step on the gas vs them and I ran out of time trying to pull up my SB plan. So, that's on me again. 

So many cool decks at the draft. I was super impressed by everyone's builds and want to thank Sam for putting this together! If you havent already, please go listen to his podcast: Rough Drafts. It's a fantastic limited focused pod. 

Rough Drafts

I'm proud of the deck I had a lot of fun playing the matches and I would definitely do this again and  recommended to anybody that is interested.

Roto Drafting SamP's Arena Legal Cube Part 4

Welcome back! Let's recap what we have in the deck so far: 

1. Demonic Tutor 2. Currency Converter 3. Mox Opal 4. Deathrite Shaman 5. Lurrus, of the Dream-Den 6. The Meathook Massacre 7. Marionette Apprentice 8. Chthonian Nightmare 9. Bitterblossom 10...

.....Agatha's Soul Cauldron 

We're now in round 10 now of this rotisserie draft. Once you get to the round 21, you get two pics per round. Just something to pay attention to as we move into the next couple of days. 

    I'm having a great time and the cards that I've identified that work well with my strategy are kind of pushing me in certain directions which I think is pretty cool. I'm trying to find the best synergy pieces while also making a functional deck. After Agatha's Soul Cauldron I realized no wouldn't had taken Staff of the Storyteller. Staff is a newer to Arena card and I played with it a bunch, so I know how strong it can be. It obviously plays really well with my first couple of pics. I can just imagine being able to put out a staff and a bitter blossom. That would be amazing. 

 

Right after I took Staff the other card that I was hoping to wheel in the next six pics got taken and so a little bummed about that and that was Voice of Victory. Voice and Staff go really well together and also works really well with my sacrifice plan. So on the way back a lot of people started taking lands and I decided I really needed some good hard interaction. It also worked with my game plan of graveyard and so I ended up taking Bitter Triumph which I feel like is one of the best black removal spells in this environment. It hits creatures or planeswalkers, it's instant speed and it's only two mana. 

    After that it looks like we had some people decide to move into a little bit more into black in the next couple of pics. Someone ended up taking unearth and it looks like they're playing a good Jund game plan. The mono red player decided to start taking some blue cards with Spell Pierce which was really a smart pickup. The mono blue player pretty much has all the answers that he would ever need, but Spell Pierce is a really nice card to have access to versus that kind of a deck. 

    Toxic Deluge got taken, followed by a couple of nice white cards and the mono blue player is kind of sticking with his game plan. There's also a Wrenn and Six / Strip Mine player is pretty much mono green at this point and over the next several pics he gets a lot of really strong payoffs like Rofellos, Nissa, Who Shakes the World and Endurance. That green deck in the mono  blue deck look really good so far. A lot of these decks look fantastic, but I'm just calling out some notable decks that are in the pool right now. 

    After the Bitter Blossom + Staff pick, the person that I'm passing to towards the top end of the draft has two pics. They ended up clearly going into an Aristocrats deck with Yawgmoth, Thran Physician and Priest of Forgotten Gods. I have to be really careful about passing too many Aristocrats type pieces that way. Token makers especially, because I feel pretty confident that they're going to contest some of those cards. 

    After I take Bitter Triumph I started thinking about my fixing and also my Mox Opal is looking a little lonely. I have the Agatha Soul Cauldron but I didn't have much else as far as cheap artifacts to go with it and so I ended up with Chromatic Star to pair with something like Umbral Collar Zealot, which is a new card from Edge of Eternities. It works with my game plan of draining people out with Marionette Apprentice. Chromatic Star says, whenever it leaves the battlefield you draw card, so if I sac it with the Zealot for free, I just get to draw card and I can play it back with Lurrus every turn. If the Zealot gets answered or gets put into the graveyard, I can use ASC to give any of my creatures that same ability which I feel like is just super strong synergy. 

   

After that, I ended up getting my first fetch land and unfortunately the only one left at this point which was Prismatic Vista. I followed up Prismatic Vista with some more cards that work well with Agatha Soul Cauldron and Lurrus; Cathar Commando, Selfless Spirit. I feel like Selfless Spirit  and Bitter Blossom is going to be really really nice. Cathar Commando to be able to deal with my opponents artifacts and enchantments is important. There's a few of the Overlords in the cube, there is Retrofitter Foundry, Smuggler's Copter, Fear of Missing Out, Esika's Chariot just a name a couple. These are the types of syngeries that also advance my game plan. I want to be able to one for 1 or 2 for 1 my opponents, stall the game out and pull ahead with card advantage using Lurrus or land a Bitter Blossom early that continues to pressure even after the dust clears. My threats are cheap, interactive and difficult to remove without graveyard hate(which there isn't as much available after Deathrite and ASC are taken). 

    Okay so my last couple pics I'm looking at the cardpool and some things are drying up. I'm interested in fixing for the most part. I'm also looking at the person next to me who is also in black/white and there's some black cards that are getting contested. I'm thinking about jumping into red for some of the artifacts/sacrifice synergies. There's several cards that I think will be really really good and so I'm going to take I take some fixing here around picks 18 and 19 with Godless Shrine and Talisman of Conviction which is the boros talisman. These are the Talisman is a really boring pic but I think it glues my mox opal pick up. Even though my curve is really low I do have a lot of mana of sinks, especially with currency converter. I do plan on playing cards that scale into the late game. So these are all things that I'm considering right now. I'm also really interested in solidifying the mana base probably taking up some more interaction to go with that bitter Triumph. 

 

 I took some time yesterday and looked at the entire list again. If I do end up getting into red a little bit, there are a lot of good removal spells Mardu colors. There is not a lot of token makers in the Mardu colors that I want per se. So I think my next couple of pics are going to be hanger back walker or Jadar. Jadar is a two drop that makes at 2/2 decayed zombie every turn. Hangerback Walker is another artifact that I can play on turn two or four that dies into thopters so it works really well with my game plan. 

  This format seems super fun to me. I've enjoyed about the cube, thinking about drafting like all day for like a week or two and I'm excited to play this deck. I feel like the deck is going to be super sweet. There's some very strong decks here so that's something. One thing I want to take into consideration is how my deck lines up against certain matchups. I do feel like if I continue to get some more removal my deck can go toe-toe with a lot of the creature based strategies in the queue.

 I'm a little concerned about the mono green and the monoblue player just because of the just because of the fact that they haven't had to take any fixing and they've got just really premium spells all the way up and down their list with a lot of interaction. Also green has a ton of graveyard interaction in the cube. Endurance was a nice pickup. The mono green player has access to Scavenging Ooze and the Bloomborrow one that exiles cards for one mana.

Secret Santa Cube: A Cube Holiday Tradition

Twas the Night before Cubemas,

               and all through the Discord, everyone was thinking of Magic cards galore. 

    I was tinkering with my Shoebox submission, while fellow cubers were dreaming of Omniscience. 

  When all of a sudden, it struck me so clear. What if Stone Soup was now and bringing good cheer? 

   So, I dashed to my PC and wrote up my idea. We shall all share archetypes and, yes, that can includes Phelia. 

    Name a card, a deck or a theme if you will. Just put it out there, for someone's dream will be fulfilled. 

   Regardless of the tradition, let's make a new cube with your favorites. Like Tree of Perdition?

    

    We draw our names, like that cringy game. However, instead of Dollar Tree gifts, we deliver 45 picks for an epic card game. 

     All right I have an idea of a new Cube Limited Format that is like my take on Secret Santa. 

   We all have our favorite decks, our favorite strategies, our favorite types of things we like to do when we're playing Magic the Gathering. 

   What would you do if we made a wish list? Just like if we had a Secret Santa. Where we put any number of types of decks or archetypes that we really love to play, and that was our wish list. 

   We build a cube where everybody that wants to participate, selected a player to build an archetype for. 

Each player donates 45 cards that they've selected to fit in the archetype for the person that they got. 

  Come the end of the year, we mash all the cards together(blindly) and we draft the cube. Would the people that really really love certain archetypes be able to get into those decks? Could they find the theme that they recognize? Would the gifter bring a new take to a favorite?

I think it's going to be very interesting, fun and a nice twist on a holiday classic. I think this is kind of perfect timing since we're right November we've got about a month, month and a half out and we can play the games leading up to Christmas/Holdays. Then, once the dust settles, we can reveal who had who at the end of all the games.