Zoo's Cube
This project started as an upgrade to my old peasant cube. Generally I wanted to be able to add cards that they just don't print at common or uncommon and I was starting to chafe at the fact that a lot of strong answers are printed at common, but very few strong threats are. My ideal for this cube is that it's interactive, decks feel both powerful and synergistic, and frankly players should feel like they get to do cool things. Aggro, midrange, control, and combo are all supported in various colors. Below is a brief overview of some of the decks I'm explicitly trying to support.
Aggro
Aggressive decks will tend to come in the Mardu colors. Any monocolor aggro deck will work, but each color pair also comes with unique powerful combinations.
has the highest concentration of aggressive artifact creatures, enabling an artifact aggro deck with Cranial Plating and Skorpekh Lord.
has the highest concentration of aggressive humans. With Winota, Joiner of Forces, this deck can quickly run away with a game.
can play a few ways. The aggressive token makers can be boosted by cards like Sorin, Lord of Innistrad, or can be used to drain your opponent with Elas il-kor, Sadistic Pilgrim. Lurrus of the Dream-Den also benefits anyone with an aggressive curve.
Graveyard
All colors except white have some amount of graveyard interaction.
leans heavily into land recursion from the graveyard.
has recursive creatures along with a classic reanimation package
features delve cards which use the graveyard as fuel
gets some unearth and flashback cards for some extra punch from the yard
Lands
In some ways all colors contribute to this archetype, but I would find it hard to believe you can play it without the deck being base green. While there are a lot of cards that can contribute, generally you want to recur cards from the graveyard for value. All-stars include Wrenn and Six, Titania, Protector of Argoth, Strip Mine, and Crucible of Worlds.
Artifacts
Each color outside of green has some cards that interact with artifact synergies.
contains powerful aggro cards like Skorpekh, Lord.
has a few artifact creatures, and some equipment. Stoneforge Mystic can act as a valuable tutor for the equipment creatures.
with Tinker, Emry, Lurker of the Loch, Urza, Lord High Artificer, and Kappan Cannoneer there are a variety of avenues for blue decks to take advantage of artifacts
featuring aggressively costed artifact creatures, red is a fantastic choice for any artifact synergy deck. Daretti, Scrap Savant also allows for an artifact reanimator deck.
With Saheeli, Sublime Artificer and Third Path Iconoclast can go wide with a spell slinger artifact deck
Cheaty-Face
Each of these colors features at least 2 cards that allow a deck to cheat on mana cost to pump out a massive creature early.
Flash, Show and Tell, and Tinker are the trinity for cheating in blue decks.
Channel is arguably the most busted card in the cube. Oath of Druids can absolutely steal a draft in the right deck. Otherwise Natural Order lets you get your Woodfall Primus about 5 turns early if you don't ramp it out.
I already mentioned Daretti, Scrap Savant, but he's also friends with Sneak Attack. Sneak is all the fun of flash, but you actually get to attack.
El Classico. Reanimate, Animate Dead, Exhume, Recurring Nightmare. Step 1: Move big thing to graveyard. Step 2: Move big thing from graveyard to battlefield. Step 3: Profit.
Midrange
While technically viable in any color, green is the king of mid-range decks. Featuring a bevy of beefy bodies, pairing green acceleration and creatures with any of the tools other colors can give you typically gives you a deck that is able to keeping throwing threats to either overwhelm the opponents early defenses, or to grind out the late game with superior top-decks.
Control
Blue counter spells, white wraths, and black spot removal describe most control decks in the cube. Red gets an honorable mention as a supplementary color, but the key control decks will typically be base or . Supported by planeswalkers to generate value, these decks excel in the card advantage game and will typically worry more about running out of cards in their library than in their hand.
COMBO
All of the colors are assorted with some sort of combo that can win the game. Here are a few examples:
- Persist combo: Existing in some way in every color except blue. One part persist creature. One part a Metallic Mimic or Anafenza, Kin-Tree Spirit. Add a whole dash of sacrifice outlets, and you have an infinite combo on your hands.
- Splinter Twin: Solidly in Izzet colors. Take the namesake Splinter Twin or in a pinch Kiki-jiki, Mirror Breaker and start copying Pestermite or Deceiver Exarch. Crates infinite creature tokens with haste.
- Helido Combo: Step 1: Get a Walking Ballista with 2 counters on it. Step 2: Play Heliod, Sun-Crowned and give Ballista lifelink. This turns Everytime you move a counter from Ballista to do damage, it gets a new counter.
While there are other decks available, hopefully this has given you a pretty decent understanding of what you can expect to find in this cube. My drafters are constantly surprising me so there's no way I could possibly cover everything. I hope you enjoyed this write-up and please let me know if you have any questions or comments.
Duskmorne Update
Zoobam posted to Zoo's Cube -
Mainboard Changelist+13, -13
- Cathartic PyreUnholy Heat
- Seismic AssaultFear of Missing Out
- Phyrexian Dragon EngineGut, True Soul Zealot
- HellriderBroadside Bombardiers
- Royal WardenOsseous Sticktwister
- NethergoyfOverlord of the Balemurk
- Faerie GuidemotherVeteran Survivor
- Lingering SoulsOverlord of the Mistmoors
- Life from the LoamOverlord of the Hauntwoods
- Flametongue KavuOverlord of the Boilerbilges
- DeduceOverlord of the Floodpits
- Imposing SovereignSplitskin Doll
- Remorseful ClericFlickerwisp
Generally trying to support more graveyard interactions, and make delirium more achievable by adding more enchantments. Also adding some big hitters that I've been avoiding for a while. Special cuts will be discussed below.
Assault & Loam: Both marginal cards that were very good in a specific deck, but also very often last picks or stuck in sideboards. Replacements are enchantment creatures to fuel delirium and generally just good.
Nethergoyf is a good card, I just don't like how it tracks power differently than the other goyfs in the cube. This is just a cut for simplicity.
Lingering Souls is still incredibly powerful, but frankly I was cheating with the off-color flashback, and in mono-white decks Overlord is probably just better.
FTK is still incredibly strong and I wouldn't be surprised if it ends up coming back, but it feels redundant with a lot of my red section. Overlord fuels delirium and works better with most cheaty cards.
Remorseful Cleric is removed because as additional graveyard synergies are added, I want to remove feel-bads from nuking an entire graveyard. I'm still fine with Scavenging Ooze type effects where things are removed piece-meal, but shutting down the entire yard with 1 card is probably a thing of the past for me.
All Overlords have been added to up the enchantment count. Flickerwisp is back in due to the combo with impending.