LCI/LCC Update
hollis posted to Mono-Red Slice -

I think it’s time to finally admit that nobody’s playing a Sword of X and Y in this cube, even with pro red being at its best here.

And Runaway Steam-Kin just hasn’t been as explosive as I’d imagined it might be.

I ran a 6-seat rotisserie draft of the cube, and I learned a lot from it! A roto is a very different environment from a booster draft, and 6 is greater than the normal number of players, so I do want to avoid overindexing on the results, but it definitely can help highlight some harder-to-see facets of different decks (“nobody ever builds storm in booster draft—how does the storm deck perform when the stars align?” // “in a vacuum, how would a straightforward aggro deck prioritize its 2-drops?” // etc.)

The biggest take-aways:

  • There’s not enough card flow for unfair decks. Red lacks the sort of check cantrips that blue gets, so every combo or graveyard deck in the cube needs Faithless Looting at the moment. There’s really nothing close to that power level, but this change adds a few more rummaging effects at 2 to help these decks see more cards.
  • There’s not enough acceleration to make planeswalkers or dragons very attractive. None of the 6 players chose to move into a midrange deck, and in fact some chose to compete with other players before eventually taking walkers and dragons. Chats with some drafters suggested that the ability to more consistently land those threat a turn earlier may make them more attractive. My hope is that a few more rocks can make a “rocks -> planeswalkers -> Wildfire” deck a possibility. Ruby Medallion may also be a positive inclusion for storm, but mana production is not that deck’s weakness right now.
  • Slagstorm is far worse than the other sweepers. Brotherhood’s End seems like a pretty strict upgrade there.

And then on top of all that, I wanted to add Decadent Dragon from WOE, Etali, Primal Conqueror after seeing how it performed in the MTGO vintage cube, and Palantir of Orthanc over Coercive Portal since nobody seems excited to run the latter.

I want to try out The One Ring in this list. Let’s go!

  • Pretty straightforward updates, I think.
  • Also adding in a few more dragons because there were fewer than I thought there ought to be.
  • Trying two new cards from ONE, but this is truly a trial run—I'm not sure if either one gets to keep its slot.
  • Mox Diamond is already in the paper version of the cube. I accidentally included it but not LED. I definitely want both in the cube, though: mox so there's enough fast mana to go around, LED to combo with Underworld Breach.