Commander Qube
(540 Card Cube)
Blog Posts (8)
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bitterclamp posted to Commander Qube -

To make room for BIG STOMPY DRAGONS--

cutting more cards that perform more for 1v1 magic and niche packages. Removing the whole Goblin Welder package is a big change to read, but it was too durdley for commander, so red is leaning more into big stompy dragons on the high end and more prowess and group-slug elsewhere.

Not cutting all the artifact stuff, but this shifts it to primary blue urza stuff (which makes more sense anyways if the cube's meant to be more represenative of expectations) but still has a little red for overlap with prowess, treasures, mishra and other reanimation stuff etc.

Other changes reflect the overall move from less boardclutter to cards that impact the whole table.

I removed two cards from each color to make room for an additional nonlegendary slot for each three-colored combination.

The cards removed were too niche (storm my beloved I am sorry) or too oppressive (oubliette, elesh norn). Also made a couple swaps for the three-color commanders.

A couple of these additions are temporary and will be replaced with something cooler once I get my hands on some good replacements from the new set.

bitterclamp posted to Commander Qube -

Biggest change is removing Jodah:

Powerful cards that make you the archenemy are cool because multiplayer inherently balances that-- but Jodah can dominate even when everybody else works against him. His presence also warps the draft by being a must-pick, a must-hate, or even just making 5-color goodstuff too appealing... just in case you happen to open him.

Other changes include some equipment upgrades. Loxodon Warhammer and Assault Suit are very cool, but the high equip costs makes them unfortunately unplayable without having a subtheme that attaches for free. Replaced them with some more playable equipment.

Unburial Rites and Diabolic Servitude provide additional options for reanimator, so it doesn't need to rely only on Reanimate and Animate Dead, which could be gobbled up by goodstuff decks.

Also cut Kodama of the West Tree, if only because it might send the wrong signal. Modified creatures isn't really an archetype, so he was intended as someone who'd provide occasional value. Easy enough to just replace him with more removal.

Cutting Horde of Notions lets us turn Risen Reef into the Coiling Oracle that it was always meant to be.

Master of Keys fixes the three-color commander imbalance left by cutting Oloro. He provides a cool build-around that nicely combines archetypes from the two-color pairs within him.

Salvager to Entity Tracker gives more support to enchantments and tokens won't miss the Salvager.

Loxodon Warhammer might cost much mana to be impactful without having an equipment theme, but I wanna give it a try. Was looking at maybe Mimic Vat here too.

TLDR:

  • t A lot more spot removal, more finishers and ways to break through stalls.
  • q Cut back on redundant board-clog engine cards.

After the first couple of drafts, we got a clear view of where the cube needed the biggest improvement: it was too easy for boards to clog up without enough ways to punch through and end the game.

Therefore the goal of the first major revision is to bulk up the finishers and cut down on boardstalls. The majority of these changes involve replacing redundant engine-value cards with finishers and a lot more spot removal.

In order to make room for 2 more cards in each color, I cut 1 card from each two-color-pair (including moving Ayara, Widow of the Realm and Etali, Primal Conqueror to their monocolored categories).

The cards that I cut were chosen with two key thoughts in mind: redundant effects that have too much overlap with other commanders, and cards that contribute to board states with too much stuff.

Out (some examples):

In:

The second part of this major update is an archetype change-- the threaten-sacrifice theme in red-black doesn't have as much impact in a multiplayer game as it would in 1v1, so some of the key cards for that deck have been replaced with cards that support an aggressive "group slug" strategy. This should also go a long way towards pushing damage through to close games out.

Out (some examples):

In:

Also in line with this same thought process, I replaced a couple of other cards that are strong in 1v1-- but turned out to not scale well in multiplayer. These small upgrades should contribute more punch and less grind.


Note: I also still don't have Oloro, apparently he was lost in the mail. Since he would contribute to grind though, I'm happy leaving him out for now. It leaves Esper with only one three-color commander (easy to fix tbh)-- but for the time being we have an extra three-color card anyway (Sphinx of the Steel Wind), which I added as another finisher for reanimator and welder. :shrug: We'll see how it plays out.


Thanks for reading! Looking forward to some test games with this second draft of the list. :)

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