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tsludee posted to The Atog Tower -
Mainboard Changelist+0, -2

I literally woke up in the middle of the night and thought I should make this a Wizard’s Tower, not a cube! I’m making adjustments now!

Mainboard Changelist+127, -0

I love artifacts. I love abusing them, I love breaking them, and I love rebuilding them. After I built my last cube The Sludee Cubee, I had the thought of building a theme cube. I initially thought about doing an artifact cube, and that didn't seem to quite scratch the itch.

But then I remembered: Atog in all his glory. A menace of pauper so nefarious that it received the ban. What better place to play with them again than in a cube?

My initial thoughts for "The Atog Cube" (name is a work in progress, I promise) are a little scattered:

  1. Atogs like to eat artifacts, so I'll need to build a ton into the cube.
  2. I will also need to incorporate some sort of recursion so the atogs can nom again.
  3. I still want to play with the other things that play with artifacts, but I don't want to have cards that are too busted.
  4. Some of the atog creatures care about other things including: other atogs, enchantments, your turns, forests, creatures in your graveyard, cards in your hand, and lands in general.
  5. I think this variance in things to eat on is enough to build a cube out of!

Some initial thoughts on cards/effects to include in the cube:

  1. The cards from the pauper atog deck.
  2. The eldrazi "processors" that get things back from exile and into graveyards. UPDATE: this mostly puts things into opponents graveyards... hmm...
  3. I'll need to be very careful about the type of graveyard hate that I include.
  4. Metalcraft effects and other Mirrodin staples.
  5. Kaladesh will also be a great set/plane to think about.
  6. Madness or the Psychatog
  7. Other back from exile effect cards
  8. To include Chronatog makes me think he needs some sort of combo to win OR maybe pillowfort?!
  9. Maybe this eldrazi processing can play with "Plot" from OTJ...?
  10. Playing from exile also has me thinking about suspend.
  11. White is really good at bringing things back that were sacced that turn. I should probably include some of those elements.

I think there will be plenty of archetypes to play with, the real problem is going to be keep things balanced.

This is just a first pass of cards I think could be interesting/good. Next, I want to look to some of the EDH precons that card about artifacts for some neat-o cards.

Draft 1 went pretty well! It was a five person pod, and we drafted 5 packs of 9 cards with the following decks represented:

  1. 5C Lurrus
  2. wrg Ramp/Titania, Protector of Argoth
  3. u-b Reanimator Control
  4. u-r Spells
  5. w-b Aristocrats

The w-b deck went 3-0! It was a pretty sweet build that put Hidden Stockpile and Vito, Fanatic of Aclazotz to great use -- it was quite resilient with an Elspeth Conquers Death to solve any problem!

As for the swaps I've made, these are all cards that I had, and I hope they will help even out the power a little bit more. The only card of concern is the Minsc & Boo, Timeless Heroes, but hey -- aren't we here for a good time?!

Winning deck list from Max:
Condemn
Giant Killer
Dismember
Gideon's Lawkeeper
Fatal Push
Recruitment Officer
Village Rites
Hidden Stockpile
Gust Walker
Shepherd of the Flock
Dusk Legion Duelist
Seasoned Hallowblade
Horn of Gondor
Flaming Fist Officer
Ministrant of Obligation
Devoted Crop-Mate
Woe-Strider
Rankle, Master of Pranks
Elspeth Tirel
Vito, Fanatic of Aclazotz
Syr Konrad, the Grim
Elspeth Conquers Death

Ok - I'm going to give this the ol' college try. I've flirted with the idea of a cube for a long time, but I've really only ever based my cube ideas on other cubes and not actually tried to make my own.

I came across this article from Lucky Paper Radio a while back, and I want to build a cube from my current collection without buying any more cards. Once I build it and play it, I can work on some upgrades.

My ADHD brain likes clear rules to work within, so here are some that I will follow:

  1. I will keep it simple for now and build up to a 360 card cube - 54 each of wubrg, 30 multicolored cards (which means 3 of each color pair), 30 c, and 30 lands. UPDATE: after a conversation with @couchlife, I decided to cut back the c cards from 30 to 15 and bump my fixing lands up to 45.

  2. I'm going to keep each of the colors simple for now and go with really basic overarching themes for each color to base themselves in that I enjoy playing to give me some direction as I look through all of my cards. I'm thinking:
    w: Aggro
    u: Tempo/Control
    b: Sacrifice/Discard
    r: Burn/Aggro
    g: Creature-based Midrange

  3. No double faced cards; I think it's more than I want to offer drafters at the moment, and I think it adds to the length of the actual draft.

I'll update the blog as I filter through my collection and add about a section a day or so. Finished on 5/4/24!

This was the previous overview for the cube, but I'm logging it as a blog post and will be working on the updated overview to give an introduction to "The Sludee Cubee".

So... I cut this section in half to offer more color-fixing lands. I wanted to include all of the triomes to encourage going for the easy three-color include/splash.

All of these cards are good, but I don't think they're anything too wild, and they may help fill a gap that a deck may have.

This section is where things got pretty tricky actually. Here was my thought process for thinking about some interactions with other colors:

  1. For w-r I wanted to be able to go wide with tokens so I've got a lot of token makers either stapled onto bodies like Squee, Dubious Monarch or Keldon Strike Team -- this also gives creatures haste which seemed pretty good. Same with the Bushwhacker bros. Reckless Bushwhacker and Goblin Bushwhacker, or I’ve got token generators in spells like Dragon Fodder.
  2. For u-r I needed to support some spell-slinger shenanigans so I included Wrenn's Resolve (which I love), Kiln Fiend to bash in, and Dreadhorde Arcanist to do it all over again.
  3. For b-r I made sure to have ways to fill up the graveyard. Classics like Faithless Looting and Thrill of Possibility, but also Charming Scoundrel. I included the madness cards I did have to work with the discard theme I have in black, so there's an Avacyn's Judgement and a Fiery Temper. Not much, but a role I would like to fill in the future with things like Alchemist's Greeting, or (I thought I had one somewhere...) Anje's Ravager, and a fun one in Blast from the Past. There could also be some cool synergy with Revolutionist.

Hopefully there's a good balance of things, but I think leaning into discard could be a sweet direction to take things, enable madness, reanimation, etc. Just gotta find an eventual slot for Careful Study, a personal favorite.

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