Battle of the Guilds Commander Cube
(751 Card Cube)
Blog Posts (20+)
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Removed some unrecognised infinite combos. Replaced with other synergistic cards

Mainboard Changelist+182, -182

Overhaul of Azorius and Dimir was the main focus of this, as the archetypes were too narrow and weak to actually be viable to play. As such, picked out two archetypes which were quite close to the previous archetype:

  • Azorius: Clues Blink to Artifact Token Blink- while many of the blink cards were being picked up, the clue specific synergy pieces were not ever really picked up in other archetypes and also were not inticing enough to build a deck around. As such, transition the archetype to a more artifact token (thopters, golems and the like) theme. Blinking is the easiest way to mass produce these tokens so a lot of the base structure there is unchanged.
  • Dimir: Surveil to Looting- while surveil was much more viable than investigate as an archetype and had a lot of cross synergy, a lot of the surveil cards and their payoffs were quite weak- without Mirko a lot of the cards didn't feel like they had a home. As such, transitioned Dimir to a similar archetype in Discard Looters. The overall theme is the same (getting specific cards into the graveyard), however the deck is hopefully more consistent and viable now.

Other notable changes:

  • Gruul: Gruul power matters got a lot of new support this year (particularly in red) so this will hopefully make the archetype more desirable to path into.
  • Black: On analysis of the cube found that Black had a much higher curve pattern than any other colour, with a significant number more 5 drops than other colours. A particular goal of this update was to flatten the curve down in Black, particularly in Golgari.
  • White: White had a lot of static enchantments, which while powerful, meant the colour had a lot lower creature count than other colours. Targeted a lot of enchantments to reduce how many show up in the colour. White also had a similar problem as Black with a high number of 5 drops (although not as severe) so attempted to lower the curve as well.
  • Other changes; most changes were aimed at adding in new powerful cards that heavily synergise with the archetype and remove weaker stragglers that were just there to fill out an archetype but not generally picked up.
Mainboard Changelist+333, -326

Large Update to Multiple Colour Archetypes. Some general design philosophies used in this update:

  • Move away from Tribal archetypes:
    A lot of support in the cube was being given to tribal archetypes which meant that for some drafts, these cards were taking up a slot the drafter would never want or could use. As such, all tribal archetypes were moved out of the cube and replaced with another.
  • Provide more cohesive themes for colour pairs:
    A few of the colour pairs themes were not super cohesive, generally with one colour being favoured over the other (e.g. Gruul with landfall) or too much support being dedicated to a subtheme because the main theme did not have enough cards to tie it together (e.g. Selesnya, +1 Counters were overtaking lifegain payoffs). As such retooled these pairs to use archetypes which have a good toolbox of support from both colours.

Summary of Themes

  • Azorius: New theme - Investigate Blink
    Flying units were found not to be as cohesive an identity as originally expected and the archetype devolved into a split tribal archetype between angels and spirits, but this meant there was not enough of a crossover between the two colours. Investigate had a lot of support added in Karlov Manor, however still not enough for a full archetype to be built exclusively on that, so two subthemes were identified. Blink, in order to get extra value from Investigate ETBs and Artifact Animation, to turn those clues into beaters.
  • Boros: New theme - Populate
    One of the previous tribal archetypes in humans, the humans forced to be included were often mediocre and did not really support what the archtype wanted to do (especially from red). As such moved to what was the original goal with Boros in a blink theme with Populate. This was helped by Azorius having a blink subtheme as it meant support for blink was not restricted to Boros and they could have more room for dedicated Populate cards.
  • Orzhov: Minor Changes
    Orzhov only had a few minor changes made, some of which were related to some cards specific to tribes being removed, introducing some new cards and remove some weaker cards and some power outliers.
  • Selesnya: New theme - Food Lifegain
    While there was support for a mix of lifegain and +1 Counters in Selesnya, drafting the colours always felt like a pull in one direction or the other and it was hard to build a good mix of the two without getting specific payoff cards. It also felt that +1 Counter cards dominated the archetype, but actually playing did feel as though there were not enough counters being thrown around for what the colour pair wanted to do. As such moved to a lifegain archetype with more support in Food tokens, which fits better into Whites overall token theme as well.
  • Dimir: New theme - Surveil
    Dimir has struggled to find an archetype which offers interesting and/or powerful builds and has synergy with the other blue black archetypes in cube. The pair also needed to move away from tribal which it has stuck with since the start of the cube, with ninjas and then rogues. Luckily Karlov manor provided support for a relatively unsupported archetype with Surveil. This offers good level of support from both colours, although the mono-colour commanders are not exactly synergistic with the archetype, simply because they do not exist and offer room for improvement if more cards are released.
  • Izzet: Minor Changes
    Izzet had a few weaker cards and cards which weren't very synergistic with the overall archetype. As such added more support for sacrificing artefacts as well as a lot more coloured artefacts which were recently released.
  • Simic: Minor Changes
    Simic had a bit of an identity crisis and was being pulled in too many directions with what they wanted to do- a few cards created tokens on draw while others would grow bigger or have power/toughness equal to cards in hand. Tided this up so that the pair was focused more on tokens which synergise more with the commanders in the pair and has more power behind it in general.
  • Rakdos: Minor Changes
    With Gruul moving away from Impulse draw synergies, there was very little impulse draw for Prosper to function with. As such removed him and a lot of the other impulse draw and shifted around a few of the cards to make the archetype function better.
  • Golgari: Minor Changes
    Most changes were too gold cards to have more power in the slot and shuffled around the mono-colour cards to make the archetype have a bit more power.
  • Gruul: New theme - Power Matters
    Gruul Landfall struggled to find cards that mattered in Red so ended up being hard to draft as it also had an impulse draw theme which did not really synergise with the landfall theme and took up a lot of card slots. As such, Power matters was identified as a theme which both Green and Red could support. This was somewhat the original theme for Gruul but going much harder on this theme now.
Mainboard Changelist+1, -1

Swapped out an Azorius commander for one with more reliable support.

Fix to last update not removing all cards

Mainboard Changelist+176, -167

Main focus of this update was to make the archetypes for Boros and Dimir more generally useable and fit better with the rest of the cube. Boros is more focused on blink than before and now has a human tribal subtheme. Dimir is now more Rogue focused, with a removal of all ninjitsu effects as they were not very desirable outside of the specific archetype of ninjas.

Also overhauls each guild, with a focus on lowering the number of enchantments and lowering the curve, as most decks were found to curve out at 4 mana which was not ideal for the play experience. Also added in more removal and board wipes to reduce the number of board locks.

Another notable change was increasing the number of staples per colour to 10 from 8. This was to help alleviate the lack of cards when playing with a pool of 12 players but also give more space for non-synergy pieces but important for the different colours.

Mainboard Changelist+1, -1

Added a new source of Goad to Rakdos and removed Thopter Engineer from Rakdos (Galvanic Blast is now in Izzet from Rakdos as a supplemental swap)

Mainboard Changelist+179, -169

Major Overhaul:
Focus was on reworking Simic and Gruul. Simic's Landmill archetype was quite lacking and required a lot of bad cards to be run. Now overhauled to a more synergistic and complete archetype within the colour pairing of Card Draw/Hand Size. This gave some space to Gruul which mostly lacked a cohesive archetype and gave it some focus in Landfall, which was a space Simic was previously occupying.

Also made small improvements to many other colours, in particular removing a lot of weaker cards in Dimir and giving them an additional direction with the Rogue Mill theme. Also removed a lot of weak cards in Golgari and Selesnya, giving them a bit more power and synergy.

Also added in the check dual lands and the Kamigawa utility lands to give more interest in the land slot. Also moved out some of the weaker/specific colourless cards in favour of more ramp.

Staples also saw a minor improvement, mainly in giving more of a counterspell identity to Blue and giving more interesting cards to Black. Vandalblast was also added to help keep down the strong artifact archetypes and give more artifact desctruction to Red, which it was lacking.

Overall, helped out most colours/guilds to give them more synergy and remove the generally weak cards in favour of stronger, but also more interesting ones.

Removed some weaker cards for more interesting cards with synergy

Mainboard Changelist+1, -1

Replaced Damning Verdict for more Lifegain synergy in Selesnya

Removed weaker cards from the Simic pool and updated them with cards more fitting to the archetype

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