Hello! I am @japahn and in this article, @ravnic99 and I will talk about the madness archetype in cube. Though I’ve wanted to support madness to my cube as early as its first version in 2010, only relatively recently I actually added the archetype. It is fiddly to support, but I have a blast when I play with it.
First I will introduce the archetype, talk about its history, and why I like it so much. Ravnic will then talk about the card pool available as of the beginning of 2022 and about various considerations, challenges and options when designing a cube with the madness archetype.
HistoryIt all started in 2002, during the dark reign of Psychatog. From the Odyssey block, a peasant block constructed deck emerged to challenge the boogeyman control deck. After the Invasion block rotated out and was replaced by Onslaught in Standard, the madness archetype started to shine. Dave Humpherys piloted it to a Top 4 in Worlds 2003:
The exact build varied somewhat, sometimes including these other options:
UG Madness was powerful, but it wasn’t really a dominant deck. It had sketchy mana and was inconsistent. Although it won a Pro Tour, Frank Karsten ranked it the #7 worst deck to ever do so.
After rotating out of Standard, UG Madness was a low-tier deck in larger pool formats, with an intact core of Basking Rootwalla, Wild Mongrel, Arrogant Wurm, Circular Logic, and Wonder. A couple of years later, the Extended version used Daze, Intuition, and Chrome Mox. As late as 2010, a Legacy version, played by Caleb Durward made Top 8 in GP Columbus, featuring:
First of all, millenials are more likely to care about UG Madness than boomers.
It comes down to three reasons: Madness is nostalgic, has unique play patterns and offers unusual decisions.
Reason #1: NostalgiaNostalgia makes us remember things in the past as happier than they actually were. Because there have not been any similar decks in recent memory since then, Madness is something of the past, whose blemishes have been filtered out leaving only the reminiscences of a simpler time, when it was an elegant weapon for a more civilized age.
Reason #2: Strategic NicheUG Madness challenged general card advantage theory at the time. By Mark Rosewater's own admission, this did not sit well with casual players, and 13-year old me agrees that the deck looked like hot garbage. A card couldn't possibly be worth a temporary +1/+1, or +2/-2! What I and other players missed was how important tempo was, and how the mana discounts that madness provided, combined with the explosiveness of Wonder, set the deck up to be fast enough that value was unnecessary.
Playing a control deck, you aim to outvalue your opponent while not falling behind in tempo so much that you lose. Playing an aggro deck, you want to play threats as fast as possible to overwhelm your opponent before they stabilize. These two macro archetypes can be explained in several other ways, but the careful balancing of tempo and value sets aggro-control decks apart, and UG Madness represented my first foray into this macro archetype.
Aggro-control put Magic on a different level of strategic depth: the game was not just a struggle between a deck that had the upper hand in card advantage, and another that had a tempo advantage. A deck that balanced them existed, and that resulted in much more engaging gameplay.
Reason #3: Decisions at Every PointI believe that player agency is the most important factor in making a cube fun, so much I wrote The Art and Science of Giving Choices (part 1, part 2). Madness is an archetype that’s fun to pilot because it gives you so much agency hidden under a simple facade.
Madness allows you to cast spells at instant speed, which allows for a wide range of timings limited mostly by your enablers - the Wild Mongrels. That’s why enablers that cost 0 (or at most 1) mana to discard a card and aren’t tied to a specific trigger are the cornerstone of the deck.
Having an instant speed enabler makes Madness similar to flash decks, but rewarding you with extra damage for combat-phasing your plays, like addendum from Azorius in Ravnica Allegiance does. In flash decks you usually cast spells during the opponent’s end step, but with Madness it is less obvious a choice. This dynamic is presented without any words; just a natural consequence of the way relatively simple cards interact.
Knowing when to deal the extra 1 or 2 damage and when to hold that Rootwalla or Wurm for the opponent’s burn spell or end step is one of those tiny risk/reward edges that are rewarding to get right, and offer gratification within one turn.
Intricate, unintuitive, tricky plays made you feel like you always had agency when playing UG Madness. Managing windows of opportunity with Basking Rootwalla activations and Arrogant Wurm instant-speed casts, spending life resources with Deep Analysis as the matchup allowed, getting in a bidding war against your opponent's Wild Mongrel, performing damage on the stack acrobatics with Aquamoeba, going all-in hellbent to enable a Circular Logic.
This feeling of agency was bolstered by the fact that it was an aggro-control deck. It wasn't an aggro deck always trying to go as fast as possible, or a control deck always trying to make the game last as long as possible, or a combo deck simply putting its head down and trying to go off. It existed at a local maximum, on a plateau where it precariously stood, able to beat anything, but barely.
Madness? More like badness.The power level of creatures at the time was way lower than today's power level. Though explosive draws could in theory compete today, the average draw is just way weaker than it has to be to compete at contemporary Standard power levels. Star City Games' Titans of Standard pitted UG Madness against a 2016 BG Delirium and it was already evident then that it wouldn’t have been viable then.
Perhaps the deck can beat modern control decks with good draws, but the creatures just don't match up well against stats of today's threats. Why go through the trouble of enabling a 4/4 for 2G when Lovestruck Beast enables itself?
This is why to support Madness in cube, a low power level is necessary. The other threats can't be good enough that Arrogant Wurm isn't worth taking the trouble to enable. A few of the payoffs might be powerful enough to compete on a higher power level, like Vengevine or Wonder, but there are not enough of them for a dedicated madness deck if you have to wrestle with pushed mythics.
What makes Madness goodMadness cards are payoff cards, which means they are worse in a vacuum than a baseline, but combining them with enablers (discard outlets) allows them to reap advantages. What’s unusual about madness among mechanics is that it is a payoff both in terms of tempo and in terms of card advantage:
- Tempo because the spells cost less.
- Card advantage because a card that would’ve gone straight to the graveyard gets cast instead.
This structure has a couple of implications that are key for evaluating madness cards:
- The reduction from regular to madness cost dictates how much better a spell is in aggressive draws. A reduction of 2 mana is very significant, a reduction of 1 mana is mediocre, no reduction is bad.
- The nature of the enabler (discard outlet), whether it’s card advantage, parity or card disadvantage, dictates how much better the madness cards become in slow draws.
- Enablers that cost mana negate the tempo payoff proportional to the cost. Free enablers are much more powerful in fast builds. 1 mana enablers have to make it worth the cost (and some do). 2 mana enablers are rarely good.
Torment, in Odyssey block, introduced madness in the form of a common and an uncommon cycle. Not a single rare was printed with the mechanic, but the blue, red and green cards were, for a long time, all we had, because white and black got Strength of Isolation and Psychotic Haze. Yeah, I know.
Combined with discard payoffs from Odyssey and Torment itself, the mechanic debuted with a bang. But it would take the better part of two decades until the trickle of new cards formed a large enough madness card pool to support it well in singleton cubes.
Time SpiralThe first comeback was in 2006's Time Spiral block, in which madness was almost exclusively limited to black. Most cards were not very good and didn’t work well with the existing pool, so this batch largely didn't matter. Red got a decent, though non-repeatable enabler.
Reckless Wurm almost made red a more tempting pairing for blue than green, since it already had access to Fiery Temper and Violent Eruption, but not to Roar of the Wurm.
Shadows Over InnistradAfter Time Spiral, there would be a ten year hiatus, during which the mechanic was labeled an 8 on the storm scale. Unexpectedly, this lull ended in 2016, when Shadows over Innistrad brought madness back! Everyone was excited about it and it... flopped.
First, the mechanic was mostly costed for limited, and even in limited Wizards didn't seem to understand that the mechanic is not good without a cost reduction. Wizards was too conservative with the ones designed for constructed and they fell flat.
Second, Madness was a 
archetype in SOI, so 
did not get a single new card (in fact, Basking Rootwalla and Arrogant Wurm remain the only two green cards with madness to this day).
Third, the rare creatures had already power crept for constructed, but most madness cards were costed for limited and placed at common and uncommon. The wave of cards more spread the archetype between than add support for it in .
The best things that came out of Shadows Over Innistrad block were the new enablers: a new, somewhat better Wild Mongrel, and a non-parasitic black enabler that worked well in grindy builds.
Kaladesh EraIn the same year, Kaladesh surprised us with a reasonable red enabler:
Not much hope was left for madness when Amonkhet in 2017 gifted us a long-awaited piece of redundancy for UG Madness: a second, better Roar of the Wurm. It also brought a decent (though somewhat expensive to activate) red enabler. Ixalan followed with two aggressive blue enablers:
Not only that, but Amonkhet block also included lots of discard matters payoffs, which occupied the same niche as madness cards, sharing the same enablers. This made it the best block for madness since Odyssey!
The issue was the bimodal distribution of cards in terms of power. Some were much stronger than the Odyssey cards and aren't adequate for the same cube. Others were much weaker.
In 2018, a surprise: a madness precon is printed in Commander 2019!
But alas, among the few new cards, most are golden and costed for commander, which makes a slow value madness archetype viable, but Madness gets zero new toys - not even an artifact on theme. Anje's Ravager is the best card from this batch, and probably the best madness card ever printed, fitting the aggressive slant of the original deck.
In the same year, M19 brought a good, non-parasitic red looter and the Izzet sneaked some expensive enablers into Guilds of Ravnica:
M21 added an aggressive looter that was compatible with the aggro-control nature of madness, a welcome option, though the cost to draw is clunky.
After 20 years of disappointment, 2021's Modern Horizons 2 was the first set that really understood what made Madness special and replicated it.
While only black and red got new cards with actual madness, they were real hits! Generously reduced costs, offensiveness, and reasonable fail cases made the archetype a success in retail limited, and solidified black and red as the modern Madness colors, which can enjoy a play style very similar to UG Madness.
Green didn't get much again, and blue had some enablers printed but clearly with a defensive focus:
Edgar’s Awakening is the only madness card and it’s not aggressive at all, but the biggest contribution from 2021 was Blood tokens. Blood was a major theme, and it fit madness very well, allowing non-blue builds to be more resilient by turning madness into card advantage.
The issue with Blood was that, again, it was bimodal in power level. Few commons and uncommons are good enough and the rares are stronger than you’d like in a cube that runs madness and more threats themselves than enablers. The rares also suffered from being narrow (caring about Blood in particular) and wordy.
With this somewhat disappointing end to a lot of history, but a hopeful outlook for better cards that produce Blood tokens in the future, I’m going to hand it over to @ravnic99!
Madness in your 2022 cube Power levelMadness fits a power level comparable to stronger retail sets like Modern Horizons the best. That’s where the widest pool of cards is. You can go a bit higher or lower, and adjust the consistency to strengthen the archetype. At lower power levels, many cards that would be parasitic and only acceptable in a specific deck, have more acceptable fail cases.
ColorsRed and black are likely the deepest colors and can support both aggressive and controllish builds at relatively low power levels. Blue and green still largely rely on the original Odyssey block staples, with a few clones for redundancy, and they lean towards aggression. Blue got a ton of enablers over time, though not much to discard, and green is lacking good discard outlets, especially if you want to keep the deck aggressive, and also not super deep in payoffs.
Blue
Blue was part of the classic pro tour winning deck, and that one was pretty agressive. But with today’s pool, I think blue supports the more value oriented version better than any of the other colors. The reason is looters. Just drawing a card off of a Merfolk Looter and adding a three mana Arrogant Wurm to the board is valuable. The fact that most of blue’s discard outlets also draw you cards lets you play more marginal payoff cards, another angle that helps make the theme less parasitic.
Wonder is very good and can sometimes just feel unbeatable, in the right situation, but it’s usually accepted, in my experience, by players and opponents, who tend to consider it a cool play to give your 6/6 wurm token flying. Also, who is cubing Levitation again? With more payoffs, like some of the disturb cards from Midnight Hunt, blue doesn’t need Wonder, especially in smaller cubes. If you try it, be aware that it can be swingy and very potent.
Green
I might be a little biased, as I have a certain fondness for green madness. Basking Rootwalla is my favorite 1-drop in the entire game. Fifteen years ago it blew my mind that I could cast it for free when I would’ve discarded it, that was even better than curving Mongrel into Arrogant Wurm!
But let’s get rational here. Green isn’t the madness color anymore, as @japahn mentioned before. If you’re looking for aggressive discard outlets in green, you’ll mostly find Mongrel and its snake brother Noose Constrictor. Fauna Shaman is actively good, albeit slower, Borderland Explorer is better than it reads, but we definitely don’t have a large pool of options.
Green has got a few good payoffs, even beyond Roar of the Wurm and Honored Hydra. I am a fan of Vengevine, sometimes Brawn and if you’re not super aggressive Chainweb Aracnir. Beyond those good payoffs though, you are quickly playing cards that aren’t really great if you discard them to Wild Mongrel like Mother Bear. I still like those cards. If you can pair them with looting/rummaging, having cards like Call of the Herd around isn’t bad and plays well alongside the more dedicated madness cards. And they’re less parasitic (not at all, you could say) than Arrogant Wurm.
Red
Red is probably the best madness color. Whatever colors you want to have that theme in, I wouldn’t exclude red. The color just has it all. It started with two good burn spells with madness in Torment and got lots of good cards with the keyword since. It also has cards that are both enabler and payoff, like Anje's Ravager (also one of the stronger cards for this deck), it has cheap and aggressive discard outlets, it’s got rummaging (and of course the infamous Faithless Looting!) to go the card advantage route, and other cards that are happy being discarded, like a bunch of phoenixes and Anger. The latter isn’t that far behind Wonder in power level, actually!
Personally, I think Madness is the coolest thing red does well, and if you’re aiming for a pivot archetype, I’d center madness in red.
Black
Black has good cross-pollinating options with other graveyard strategies, in particular reanimator. If you don’t include them though, black doesn’t have many non-parasitic enablers or payoffs. Heir of Falkenrath is a decent Mongrel-variant and I am a huge fan of Necrogoyf. Hell Mongrel is in a great position as a payoff and enabler. Cards like Oona's Prowler or Asylum Visitor might even be good enough for higher power levels - but also too much if you are lower on the scale with your cube.
I have to add, however, that I personally just added black as my fourth madness color. It started as a gruul pair archetype years ago and became even more successful when I added blue - or blue kind of added itself, as green’s and red’s cards already got paired with blue’s looters. So I have hopes for black.
White
White does not contribute much to Madness. Though Seasoned Hallowblade is perfect for the deck, there is basically no other reason to dip into it for a real madness deck. White could somewhat overlap by being a reanimator color, for example leveraging Unburial Rites, [Late to Dinner]] and Karmic Guide.
Disturb added something to blue and white’s madness package, as those cards are actually good and work with the color’s natural loot effects, but even then white is still not good. If you want redundancy for the reanimator overlap, Patrol Hound isn’t a Hallowblade but it is the next best enabler white has.
Multicolor
Even though there aren’t any multicolored madness cards outside of BR, there are some good enablers and not-literally-madness payoffs. The issue with these is that as an archetype that’s always trying to not be parasitic, gold cards pull it into a narrower direction.
Colorless
There aren’t any colorless madness cards either, but some noteworthy enablers include Mask of Memory, Key to the City or Zephyr Boots. Those aren’t fast but have been very decent for me. Also, let’s take a moment to talk about this guy:
This isn’t constructed, and if you don’t break singleton for a playset of Faithless Looting, I don’t see this guy on the battlefield before turn three all that often. Then it’s a vanilla 4/4, undercosted but not even trampling like the madness wurms. It’s a cool card though and probably worth a shot if you like cards with a very tempting ceiling.
Archetype shapeBetween blue, black, red and green, Madness can be built as a pair, triangle, or tetra archetype.
As a pair archetype, the most obvious ways to build it would be for nostalgia or for the gold cards. The latter is more flexible in terms of card selection.
As a triangle archetype, pretty much any three of the colors can be chosen. would be the most classic build, focused on Odyssey block.
If you can dedicate a significant part of the cube to it, a tetra Madness archetype offers a wider range of possible builds. It is possible that two drafters at the table would end up in it, picking two colors each, and with good fixing, 3- and 4-color versions could come up.
My cube is relatively slow and also relatively low powered. Yet, I have seen madness decks killing their opponent in four or five turns a few times. But then I also had a lot of fun with grindy versions that started the game with a Merfolk Looter or a Werebear. Those make good use of flashback-like cards and can easily bleed into self-mill/dredge. The variety in tempo that is possible within a madness theme is a huge upside for the archetype. Despite the seemingly narrow cards that come with it, to some degree, it really feels like you’re just giving our players the pieces to create their very own version.
Other graveyard strategiesA black microarchetype that can share enablers with Madness is Reanimator. The decks are different as Reanimator has to run clunky 6+ drops that won’t sit well with an aggressive draw, but including both is a way to be efficient with real estate as they share enablers.
More important are the dredge or self-mill strategies, which have quite a bit of overlap with madness’ enablers. This overlap is so important that I’d say you shouldn’t include madness if you don’t support any graveyard value themes beside it. The incarnations (Wonder, Anger, Brawn), Flashback, Disturb, Embalm, Scavenge, Escape and Unearth are all helpful. They might not always be the same as the actual madness trick, but they are good tools to merge the archetype smoothly with the rest of your environment. You’re unlikely to play Reckless Wurm if you don’t get there with discard outlets, but you can still end up playing First-Sphere Gargantua or Chainweb Aracnir.
ParasitismWhile the lack of depth in the card pool is a problem, parasitism is the biggest issue with the Madness archetype. Enablers tend to be general, but payoffs are trickier. Few of the payoffs with the actual madness mechanic are good in other decks, so it’s useful to tap into other payoffs like Vengevine. Still, it is a significant real estate cost to support madness and it’s not an archetype that emerges spontaneously.
ConclusionMadness is a hard archetype to support in singleton cubes, due to lack of depth, parasitism and power level. The traditional aggressive build is still largely based on Odyssey, but over the last few years, new cards brought redundancy and elevated and to be at least as good. If a cube's power level allows it, the high degree of agency when playing the deck plus the nostalgia are powerful draws towards Madness.