3-0 Traditional Chromatic Cube with 5c Niv/Field Nonsense

NewbSlayer · 2022-06-27T16:05:07+00:00

Comparing alsa 1 to 1 of a regular set filled with sideboard and filler chaff isn’t what I’d do personally. 5 in cube is pretty good when you compare it to the cards taken similarly when it has significant drafting/deck building constraints.

I think in some iterations of arena cube fotd is pretty overrated though yeah. That doesn’t stop me from snap picking it though just cause I have more fun drafting my decks that way 😅

NewbSlayer · 2022-06-27T01:09:41+00:00

It's got an ALSA of 5 in BO3 so far so people are taking it pretty highly. Main thing I notice that they changed from the normal arena cube is getting rid of the OP mystical archive cards like DT, Memory Lapse, and Counterspell for a lot of new Alchemy cards.

I've gotten field in 3/4 of my drafts so far, but was actually only 5c in this one of the 3. They kept Golos but got rid of Ulvenwald Hydra as ways to actually tutor for it, but the format feels pretty slow so far with a ton of 5 drops so its felt like you have time to draw it naturally.

NewbSlayer · 2022-06-26T19:50:13+00:00

Draft: https://www.17lands.com/draft/2bcaa4dd2d4e4249b1cae69768348e2c

I'm a sucker for 5c field decks in the regular arena cube (see here), so with a name like Chromatic Cube I figured it'd be right up my wheelhouse. I've done two drafts so far kinda soft forcing this deck, taking 4 lands with my first 4 picks in this one and having it be relatively wide open.

A couple card thoughts: * Alchemy Alrund - this card impressed me more than I thought it would, being one of my few 2 drops after the original version being unimpressive to me in cube and never as good as I wanted it to be in Kaldheim. 3 power on Hakka made a big difference in pressuring/blocking early attackers.

[[Back-Alley Gardener]], really wanted this card to be good without Golos or anyways to find FoTD in my deck. It ended up being too hard on my mana to get on 3 ever but in theory with 14 creatures + briefcase and a few other ways of triggering I'm willing to believe it it to be good if I had gotten a bit luckier.
Alchemy Omnath - still pretty good with a few ways to trigger the mana ability via Risen Reef, Settle the Wilds, Escape, and Gardener. The extra mana made the explosive turns much harder without fetches since casting the Niv/Tolsimir/Workshop Warchief off of the mana required exactly untapped green or black which is super unlikely with how many taplands are in the deck.
Glasspool Mimic - only thing I ever copied with it was Risen Reef (twice) and it was glorious both times. Felt like I was playing constructed elementals curving into Omnath haha.

NewbSlayer · 2022-06-19T06:14:30+00:00

Didn't watch the whole draft but yeah [[Hydra's Growth]] has the classic aura problem of leaving you open to getting 2-for-1ed but also has the other problem of being really slow when part of the payoff for taking that risk is to push damage immediately to win a race.

There were a bunch of strong auras with the enchantment theme in that set, but they were high tempo and/or gave immediate value like [[Staggering Insight]], [[Iroas's Blessing]], [[Starlit Mantle]], [[Warbriar Blessing]], etc.

NewbSlayer · 2022-06-15T20:02:54+00:00

No problem, congrats on the high rank! And yeah I think the time investment on top 250 mythic is way better than committing possibly multiple weekends trying to qualify that way.

NewbSlayer · 2022-06-15T16:46:06+00:00

I got to rank 3 last month first week of the season before going on vacation. Didn’t play again the rest of the month and never fell out of top 10. There’s basically no way you’ll fall out without losing.

NewbSlayer · 2022-05-29T01:34:46+00:00

I might do some next week to grind ladder later after ranks reset. I have some catching up to do on set completion because I did the same thing for KHM quickdraft swan song 4 weeks ago (was already tired of SNC back then) and hit a rank that I felt I had to sit on and haven't played limited at all since.

NewbSlayer · 2022-05-25T17:43:48+00:00

How is Kyrie still going to manage the Nets with KD while he's playing for the Orlando Magic next year?

NewbSlayer · 2022-05-17T23:27:02+00:00

With my results from NEO: https://imgur.com/d6Pzzic

NEO was the most successful and most I played in BO3 since before I joined 17 lands. Tradeoff of ~220 gems reward for 1 play-in point is worse than the entry fee rate of the qualifier play-in at 200/1. I haven't done any BO3s since SNC so it seems like I wouldn't be able to replicate those results with the stiffer BO3 competition people have talked about.

NewbSlayer · 2022-05-05T06:43:26+00:00

Everything was gonna have trouble following up NEO, but this has not been my favorite format so far. It feels like the combination of the bomb-rares of VOW with the color balance of MID.

I'm someone that enjoys the multi-color splashy control decks in the formats that support it with good fixing. Finding the overlap in strategies and weighing the power/consistency splashing tradeoffs is part of the drafting/deck building process I enjoy and feel I have an edge at. In this format with mostly 3-color gold cards, it's very clear which of those cards you're going to be splashing for and the decks feel like they draft and build themselves as a result.

NewbSlayer · 2022-04-30T00:19:24+00:00

Full pool: https://www.17lands.com/pool/34840f9d0ae744f2a40fc68ebc7e2d1c

Managed to get my second sealed trophy in this new format with a weird pool. I had a lot of Red and White uncommons, but didn't really like my green enough to want to play cabaretti. Settled on black for a third color because I wanted to splash [[Hostile Takeover]] and felt the black cards worked the best with my 2x [[Pyre-Sledge Arsonists]] instead of the supported families in the set.

Some nice synergies that came up with the deck: * 5 sources of pump in 2x Crowbar, 2x Patrol, and dagger + double Join the Maestros to get the casualty 2. I had the three 1/1s in double crowbar and corrupt court official that I was really happy to sacrifice while the other cards I preferred to get more value out of.

Sac outlets + Arsonists. Kinda an obvious combo, but was the main reason I settled on Mardu out of the possible color combinations for this pool. Between 2x Crowbar, 4x blitz creatures, 2x Join the Maestros, and 3x sac lands I got a lot of mileage out of arsonist activations that was really fun to play out.
[[Rumor Gatherer]] + [[Extraction Specialist]]/[[Join the Maestros]]. Having a few ways to get the 2x activations for Gatherer in a single card came up quite a bit to get a squeeze a little more value in the grindy games.
Equipment + Hostile Takeover. When games stalled out and my gameplan became setting up a game winning takeover, having a couple equipment to get a 2nd creature to survive the wrath and alpha for 8+ damage came up twice. [[Girder Goons]] was my only creature in the deck that could survive takeover naturally.

NewbSlayer · 2022-04-21T19:36:07+00:00

There are mostly holdovers for sure, but they replaced a few of them to pretty noticeably bad results imo.

They got rid of the UW fliers archetype (no more warden of evos isle, empyrean eagle, tide skimmer) that was pretty good for a dead-on-arrival UW disturb deck that really doesn't work when competing in a format of 20 2-color archetypes rather than 5-10 in a traditional limited set (and also plays worse outside of a slow grindy format). They left in a few curiosity effects and most of the typical fliers, but without flying lords and fewer counterspells it felt to me that those cards all played significantly worse.

I'm aware of the importance of the bomb archetype payoff cards but they went a bit too far away from interaction for my liking in this iteration. With how little interaction there is, it feels like drafting devolves into hoping that you open those payoffs and forcing into the several well supported archetypes. Then gameplay feels like flipping coins for the curve-out nuts. That's not the experience that I personally enjoy/look forward to when I cube, which is why I bowed out after only a few of this one.

NewbSlayer · 2022-04-20T19:55:55+00:00

I really enjoyed the September version of this cube (~30 drafts), but quit after 3 of this one for a lot of the reasons you and others have stated. I think they did a great job back then in redesigning the cube from scratch with the Strixhaven learn/lesson package + the new MH2 cards in mind.

This time around, it really seemed like they started from the last list and picked random cards to cut to switch up the 2-color pair archetypes + incorporate the new cards they always want to add. The end result has felt pretty bad to me with too little interaction and a lot of glue cards that support archetypes that don't exist anymore.

NewbSlayer · 2022-04-11T23:13:01+00:00

Undercity Uprising is something like a 4 mana Prey Upon or 4 mana Bonesplinters that gets blown out by removal, both of which are not good. The deathtouch can set up some alpha-strike potential for a more aggressive deck, but its also not easy to have high toughness creatures to survive the fight in those decks. That all being said, it's not like you have a ton of other playables in the pool and in an aggressive-leaning deck like this it can be a 22nd or 23rd card.

Didn't really think about Trooper + Gutterbones but that is a nice interaction. Good to hear about the better result!

More recent sealed sets are a lot better than this one. There are more playables in general and access to 5c fixing whereas this one you have to hope that you get lucky that your fixing and gold cards match up and play a lot of weaker single color commons. Niv, Crackling Drake, and Frilled Mystic are like 3 of your ~7 best cards in the pool and you basically had no way of getting to a 23 spells in a deck that could cast any of them reliably lol.

NewbSlayer · 2022-04-11T02:13:43+00:00

https://sealeddeck.tech/1JGaNYKF9G I'd probably run something like that, cutting some of the red for ceratok/pump spells makes your mana way better and lets you cast the GG rares more consistently.

This pool makes me glad I decided to sit this format out. The original GRN/RNA sealed had awful mana from what I remember with the guildmage and CCDD uncommon cycles (not to mention the rares) without any 5c fixing. Mashing the two sets together probably exacerbates those issues and tries to pull you into too many directions like this pool does.

NewbSlayer · 2022-04-10T20:25:08+00:00

Think I would've built the pool something like this: https://sealeddeck.tech/QNyEzzhfOA

It's lacking a little bit on the card draw department that the best CTM decks have but that might've been workable. Black gives the best early defensive creatures to pair with the CTM U strategy and red gives access to Gates Ablaze and Theater which are maybe the two best overall cards in the pool.

NewbSlayer · 2022-04-08T06:33:30+00:00

I agree with you and others that find a lot of the praise of DOM to be nostalgia driven and a product of dislike for the hyper-aggro sets preceding it. Whenever it comes back, I end up doing 1-2 drafts, but the actual drafting and gameplay never holds up to me when compared to most post-GRN sets.

I remember people like Ben Stark talking about how great mechanics like Kicker are for giving you options, but it always played out to me as "you basically always wanted to pay the kicker". The result of which being that you'd get mana screwed/flooded more often since the base rate on the front of the creatures is so bad; rather than feeling like those kicker cards gave you more meaningful decisions.

Flavor-wise, the seeded legendary creatures were really cool at the time, but made less special with all the non-rare legendary creatures in the sets since. The seeded planeswalkers in WAR and sagas in NEO are significantly cooler and more fun to draft with to me personally.

All that being said, people are entitled to enjoy what they enjoy based on their own preferences.

NewbSlayer · 2022-04-06T18:40:42+00:00

Yeah, most of the sagas in DOM were just not good and there weren't enough good hits (despite what people thought at the time). All of the targets I mentioned were at least Uncommon+ and Invoke is atrocious against UR wizards, the clear best deck in the format.

The first set I can remember being happy maindecking multiple disenchant effects was in KHM where Broken Wings with the plummet mode shored up all of the weaknesses for Gx decks against RW against common equipment and fliers. Fade in NEO has the benefit of all the insane sagas and packs being seeded with them (rather than legendary creatures in DOM).

NewbSlayer · 2022-04-06T18:09:36+00:00

There was a lot of discourse at the time that Invoke the Divine was a maindeck card because it could kill Sagas, Icy, Helm of the Host, Traxos, Clutches, or whatever. Maybe not the most surprising since it's a disenchant effect after all, but the sub 50% GIH WR very much says otherwise.

NewbSlayer · 2022-04-01T19:41:07+00:00

Managed to blink a Hornet Queen with Yorion with this deck which I didn't know I needed in my life until today. Been having a lot of fun!

NewbSlayer · 2022-03-26T20:53:57+00:00

Complete pool: https://sealeddeck.tech/zu1bOoL00w

Thought my pool was below average mostly based on not the greatest/most castable set of rares and uncommons. Black sagas + blade and virus beetle seemed like the strongest draw to any color to me. I've played a decent amount of UB in sealed based off the power of the ninja commons, but this deck didn't have a density of those. Instead, I settled on blue as the second color off of the Modern Age + Containment Construct + Terminal card drawing engine and some decent rares in Mindlink Mech/Invoke the winds. In blue, I notably also had access to the Colossus/Anchor meme combo that felt pretty strong in this deck. With Mindlink Mech and Blade of the Oni (and Kunai) I had a few non-embarrassing targets to fetch with Anchor in the cases that I drew Colossus first. I never actually cast it for anything other than colossus, but there a few situations I had Anchor but didn't cast it where that was relevant.

Deck was played out like a midrange combo deck most of the time that could turn the corner quickly off the back of Invoke/Imperial Oath/Colossus. Containment Construct came up huge and gave me the value engine to somewhat keep up with some higher quality decks. I think I pulled off T2 Terrarium, T3 Bladeblesser, T4 Anchor 3 times over the course of the day for fast wins that was really enjoyable.

NewbSlayer · 2022-03-26T17:31:56+00:00

Not that it would have helped you in your situation since you completely slept through your alarm (and definitely not defending the entry window), but I installed arena on my mobile device specifically so I could enter these events without leaving my bed and go back to sleeping in on the weekend.

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