Part 1: How to make Companions work in Cube (Obosh, Gyruda, Zirda)

In my recent draft, I played a Rakdos Aristocrat deck splashing green. I opened Obosh, the Preypiercher as my pack 2 pick 1. I thought, that I could definitely draft around its Companion clause, but I failed, and it was not even that close. I ended up with 18 playable odd CMC spells, that could fit into my color pair. Hence, I concluded that Companions are not as free as everyone thinks they are. I also included Yorion in my Cube and tried to draft around it on Cubetutor multiple times. It only worked 1 out of 7 times, which was a little bit disappointing. In this (I used to write short) article, I want to take a look at all Companions and their Companion clauses to see whether they can be build around easily or not. For that, we need to take a look at the cube and see in which decks the card would actually be good as a Companion. I will also talk about the Companion in the 40 card deck, such that one has a rough estimate on the fail case if the companion deck does not come together. In addition, I want to point out some neat cards that go along very well with them.

Obosh the Prey Piercer

Obosh seemed like one of the slam dunk cube includes for me. I play a lot of Aggro one drops, especially in Red and Black, which seems like the perfect prequisite for Obosh. In addition, I support Green Stompy, which provides 1 mana dorks and a few strong 3 mana beaters like Lovestruck Beast, Rhonas the Indomitable and Trashing Brontodon. In addition, the signpost Gruul cards slot into an Obosh deck, namely Klothys, God of Destiny and Domri, Anarch of Bolas that are perfect fits for the deck, especially because they can ramp you into a Turn 4 Obosh. Such a Gruul Aggro shell showed to perform well in conjecture with Obosh even in Modern. I think that Obosh will either be playable in such a Gruul Midrange Stompy deck or a Rakdos Aristocrat deck.

Now, how likely will it be to be able to play Obosh as a companion? From my recent experience, I can say that Obosh is a fine Magic card but not really amazing in the 40s, especially if your deck is not build around its companion clause. Obosh really only shines as a Companion. But how probable is that? I will use the most basic method I could think of to compare the likelihood of being able to play a companion: I count how many cards in my cube would fit in a deck. For Obosh, I will just count the number of odd CMC green, red or black (and colorless) spells, that I would happily play in an Obosh deck. (This is of course biased.)

1 Drops: 52
3 Drops: 28
5 Drops: 8
Total: 88

This is a very crude estimate, because one probably does not want to play a Jund Obosh deck, which is 50% Gruul Stompy and 50% Rakdos Aristocrat Aggro. However, I do not want to go into depth (today) on how to calculate the probability of having enough playable cards passed to you if your deck is open as that would require some sort of drafting model. Hence, the total amount of playable cards is now our final value and we will compare it to the other obtained values.
Lastly, I also want to point on some neat cards that would go into an Obosh deck:
- Porcelain Legionnaire
- Bonecrusher Giant
- Dismember.

I am aware, that Obosh can be played in a multiple of other decks because of its hybrid mana cost, however I do not think that Obosh synergies with the general gameplan of those kind of decks. For example, I would not play Obosh without any Red cards, as the red burn spells are the most powerful thing you can do with it. White has a lot of antisynergy with Obosh because there is a lot of token generation. Blue is obviously also not a great fit for Obosh.

Verdict
Power in the 40: C-
Power in a functional companion deck: A-
How likely will it be your companion: B-

Gyruda, Doom of Depths

Gyruda is a companion that I looked over the first time I saw it. It seemed too clunky as a six drop. The main reason for that was that I was comparing it to The Scarab God, which is a pretty unfair comparison. Gyruda is hybrid colored and generally, I really do not consider those cards as pure Dimir cards, as they can be played in a variety of decks. I started to include a lot more hybrid colored cards in the multicolored section in general since the latest Ravnica. I would rather compare Gyruda to other mono colored six drops. The only six drops I am happily playing nowadays are Torrential Gearhulk, Carnage Tyrant and especially Grave Titan (also Consecrated Sphinx if I owed one). I claim, that Grave Titan is the most powerful six drop in my cube. What makes Grave Titan great? It is the embodiment of immediate board presence. One key thing which makes Grave Titan great is that it passes the Vindicate test, leaving two tokens. 

Considering that, Gyruda is pretty similar to Grave Titan. I know, that Gyruda does not have the attack trigger, which makes it a lot less powerful than Grave Titan, as Grave Titan definitively wins the game if left unchecked. Gyrudas ETB ability has a much higher ceiling and a much lower floor than Gravetitan's. It can range from pseudo reanimating Griselbrand to getting nothing. I think that, similarily to Obosh, Gyruda would be fine in a standard Cube deck as a curve topper but it would not be amazing. However, I think that Gyruda is more powerful in the 40s just because its effect can be so swingy and the card is good by itself, whereby Obosh is pretty week on its own. 

Nevertheless, Gyruda is of course more powerful as a Companion. The problematic part about 6+ drops in cube is that you can draw them early, when they are useless. Hence, I cut more and more 6 drops over the recent years. But just the idea of having a powerful 6 drop available in every game on turn 6 just seems nuts. Especially if your deck is build around its powerful ETB. To go more into depth about Gyruda as a companion we first have to ask the question: how would such a Gyruda deck look like?

We are only allowed to play even CMC spells. The first idea that came to my mind was a creature based strategy to maximize the value of Gyrudas ETB. Hence, we want as many creatures a possible but we also want to follow a more midrangy strategy to arrive at turn 6 with enough life. First, we want to be able to skip our odd turns. Cards like Moxen are really strong with Gyruda, however I do not play those because of power restrictions. We can look at Gyruda combo lists and see that we want to play Gyruda as fast as possible. Hence, we want a lot of Ramp, especially at 2 mana. Luckily, there are a lot of these cards, namely all Talismans (or Signets). However, these are not creatures. Green provides cards such as Sylvan Caryatid, Paradise Druid, Incubation Druid, etc. that are strongly needed in a Gyruda deck. Another pillar of the deck are creatures with powerful ETBs: Palace Jailer is an insane card by itself and is just nasty when summoned (the cards are not reanimated!) by Gyruda. Venser, Shaper Savant and Urza are also great cards to summon. Black has arguably the most powerful variety with Gonti, Lord of Luxxury, Ravenous Chupacabra and Nektrataal. Wicked Wolf is a card that is very strong but suffers from his second paragraph as drafters do not want to pick it up without a Gilded Goose. I looked closer at the cards in my cube, from which I could place Gyruda into multiple different creature-based decks:

1) WGx Flicker

We can look at Gyruda decks that did great in Standard, Pioneer and Modern in the first few days and we see a pattern of 2 mana ramp and 4 mana clones. Obviously, we do not have access to that many clones (in most cubes). I only play Phyrexian Metamorph which is funnily a really strong card in a Gyruda deck as it is a virtual 3 drop. However, we have other tools in cube, namely flicker in white. Felidar Guardian, Charming Prince (love this card) and Restoration Angel seem really powerful if flipped with Gyruda and can lead to a chain of Gyruda ETB triggers. On their own, these cards are great in a ETB heavy creature deck anyway. The base for this deck would be Green and White and would have to include Blue or Black to be able to cast Gyruda. The nice thing is, that these color provide strong 4 mana ETB creatures (as mentioned previously). How many cards would I be happy to play in such a deck? (I count all White, Green Blue and Black cards as I could easily see me playing a 4 color deck because of the green mana 2 drops that fix mana)

0 Drops:  0
2 Drops: 54 (mostly 2 mana green cards)
4 Drops: 25
6 Drops: 3
Total: 82

which is still a slightly smaller number than for Obosh although we counted cards from four colors. This is why I wanted to do such rough estimates first, because one can get a lot of insight from those. The hypothetical WGx flicker deck does not want a lot of sorcery and instant removal spells as it would antisynergieses with Gyruda. Obviously, one would not pass the good ones. In an Obosh deck, the general idea is just an Aggro deck, and that is a way broader category than this specific Gyruda deck. I conclude, that this deck will not come together often. The main problem is that one really wants the 2 mana Talismans and 2 mana dorks in Green. Especially latter are wanted by every Gx midrange deck which is a problem. However, if one gets a lot of those, I think that it is pretty easy to switch to a Gyruda deck if one opens one in the second pack. One might wonder, whether it is even wise to first pick Gyruda ever as this deck will not come together often. The great thing about Gyruda is, that it does not only fit into one category of deck.

2) UBx Control

The deck before originated from Magic Wonderland. The perfect Flicker deck containing all even CMC payoffs. I think, that Gyruda will see play more often in a UBx control deck, where x is either White or Red. Here, we will follow a completely different strategy. We do not want to maximize on the ETB value of Gyruda. We want to maximize on the fact, that we have acces to a 6 mana 6/6 every game. We do not have to play a lot of control finishers as we already have Gyruda in our companion zone. This deck is even more keen on the Talismans but probably also works without them if it is packed with a lot of removal. The deck can easily pick up ETB tapped lands as those are not really a downside, if you are restrained on only playing even CMC spells. I play a lot of these tapped lands: The Mirage Fetch lands, the Zendikar Man lands and the Amonkhet Cycling lands (soon I will also add the Triomes). The main idea of this deck is to pick up a lot of removal spells and counterspells at 2 mana and 4 mana wraths like Damnation, Wrath of God, Wrath's Storm, etc.

How many playable cards are there in White, Blue, Black and Red?

0 Drops: 2 (Urza and Mishra's Bauble are great with slow and regular fetches)
2 Drops: 55 (mostly all 2 mana blue cards)
4 Drops: 30
6 Drops: 10
Total: 97

Which is more than the previous deck, as control is a much broader category than flicker. We still want the most powerful 4 drop creatures but we also have access to the 2 mana counterspells and a lot more removal spells than in the flicker deck as this deck can operate at instant speed. Great cards that strike my attention are: Icy Manipulator (one usually has one mana available due to the companion clause), Magmatic Sinkhole and Tasigur.

I could see this deck being played much more often as there is usually a Grixis or Esper Control deck drafted anyway and Gyruda is a strong enough payoff in my opinion to trim all odd CMC spells. The good thing is, that the 1 mana spells are usually not really desirable anyway (besides the really powerful ones such as Ponder, Preodrain, Swords and Path) and 3 mana spells do not provide much more besides generally stronger removal and clean counterspells.

I also want to mention, that Gyruda is probably playable in a Reanimator Strategy. However, one loses a lot of key cards like Reanimate, Entomb, Faithless Looting, Careful Study and Thoughseize. But it should be said, that one still has access to all the other Reanimation spells in black, which are all at 2 CMC. I do not really know, whether such a deck would be playable, as I do not have a lot of experience with (actually good) Reanimator in cube.

Verdict
Power in the 40: C+
Power in a functional companion deck: B+
How likely will it be your companion: B+

Zirda, the Dawnwaker

We wanted great Boros cards and we got one. Hell, it is even banned in Legacy! But what does it do? Zirda's main role in Legacy is to reduce the activated ability of Basalt and Grim Monolith to make infinite mana. I play the Basalt one, so that it a sweet two card combo, and I appreciate those. 

Especially because it does not immediately win the game on the spot. However, this is probably not the main strategy that we can follow in cube (or is it?). The restriction of Zirda seems very strict at first glance; only being allowed to play permanents with activated abilities seems too restrictive. But,  if one dives deeper into the numbers of your cube there are a lot of Magic cards with activated abilities. I do not think that the density of permanents with activated abilities is restraining Zirda's playability as a Companion. If anything, the problem is to find a suitable strategy that happily plays only permanents with activated ability. The question rises again: How does a Zirda deck look like in cube? 

For Obosh and Gyruda, it was not really a problem as we could look at different strategies that are doing (or were doing) well in constructed. Constructed Zirda decks are heavily reliant on the broken synergies of certain cards with Zirda, like the lastly mentioned Monoliths, Umbra Mantel or various Elves-combo stratgies with Ezuri, Renegade Leader. For cube, we have to get more creative. Of course, Zirda is perfectly playable in a non-permanent control deck. However, Zirda is only worth it, if it reduces the activated ability cost of something. I do not think that it is worth it to cut cards just to be able to play Zirda in cube, especially if one would cut cards like Mind Control, Cavalier of Gales, etc. Still, being able to play non-permanent spells is a huge relief considering the probability of being able to play Zirda as a companion. We conclude, that we want a non full-control midrange deck with powerful payoffs to maximize on its static ability. What cards with activated abilities synergies with one another is the main question. Let us first look at the number of permanents with activated abilities in the different colors (filtering for ":" is the way to go on cubetutor):

White: 15
Blue: 23
Black: 23
Red: 24
Green: 36
Multicolored:18
Total: 136.

Green provides the highest amount of playable permanents with activated abilities because of all the mana dorks. It is nice that those are playable in a Zirda Companion deck, but we do not really get any benefit from Zirda. What are the real payoffs?

White: Myth Realized/ Stoneforge Mystic, Kenrith, the Returned King
Blue: Spectral Sailor/Urza /Shark Typhoon/ Decree of Silence
Black: Tasigur
Red: Pia and Kiran Nalaar/ Hammer of Purphoros
Green: Duskwatch Recruiter/ Incubation Druid/ Rhonas the Indomitable/ Polukranos, the World Eater/ Honored Hydra
Multicolored: The Scarab God (TSG) / Kinnan, Bonder Prodigy
Artifacts: Bag of Holding/ Retrofitter Foundry/ Basalt Monolith/ Batterskull, Walking Ballista
Lands: Blast Zone
Cycling Lands/ Man Lands

It is pretty clear that there are not many great payoffs that heavily reward you for playing Zirda. However, the ones that exist are very powerful. Zirda+Urza/Kinnan probably wins the game, so does Zirda+Kenrith/Retrofitter Foundry/Walking Ballista, etc.

I searched for similarities between those cards and came to one big one: Artifacts and utility creatures (or maybe both together). I think that former will be the primary home of Zirda, mostly in a Bant, Jeskai or Grixis Shell. I can't see a Mardu deck with Zirda as its companion, as Mardu is bad if it's not an Aristocrat deck.

1) UGw Zirda Artifacts
Enablers: Green 1&2 drop mana dorks, Arcums Astolabe, Chromatic Sphere, Chromatic Star, Talismans (everything that generates mana), Stoneforge Mystic, Emry, Looter, Duskwatch Recruiter

Payoffs: Urza, Lord High Artificer, Kinnan, Bonder Prodigy, Walking Ballista, Basalt Monolith, Batterskull, Stoneforge Mystic, Armageddon, Kenrith, the Returned King.

The main objective of the deck would be to generate as much mana as possible as fast as possible. We would play Looters like Jace, Vryn's Prodigy and Merfolk Looter together with artifact cantrips like Chromatic Sphere/Star, Arcums Astrolabe to get to our main payoffs as fast as possible. Kinnan, Urza and Kenrith are all awesome win conditions with Zirda. Especially Kinnan, which synergies very well with the deck as we already play a lot of mana dorks and mana rocks. The deck would probably play out as a combo control deck and would include multiple removal- and counterspells.

2) URw Zirda Artifacts

Whereas the main focus of the Bant version is mana generation, this version's focus is not that easily explained. Here, we have access to Goblin Welder, Goblin Engineer and Pia and Kiran Nalaar, which is nice. It is really exciting that in my last draft, one player managed to build a URw Artifact Planeswalker deck, that would have just needed to cut 3 (!) cards to be able to play Zirda as a Companion. Even crazier, Pl's (the player's) deck has a lot of payoffs for Zirda, namely Basalt Monolith, Celestial Colonnade and Embercleave. Imagine, if Pl picked up a Zirda, they could have just played it. In addition, the Pl could have definitely picked up more cards that went well with it. For example, Retrofitter Foundry tabled two times in this draft. One card, that would be awesome in this shell is Fires of Invention. First, it lets you play multiple PWs in one turn. Second, one has a lot of free mana available for activated abilities.

Enablers: Looters, Emry, Talismans, Baubles, Chromatic Star/Sphere, Planeswalkers, Wraths, Goblin Welder, Goblin Engineer, Stoneforge Mystic

Payoffs: Embercleave, Kenrith, Urza, Purphoros' Hammer, Fires of Invention.

This deck is not as dependant on Zirda, but it is nearly a free include and has some sweet synergies with the deck. One could go really crazy and include an Indomitable Creativity&Lukka, Coppercoat Captain package. We play a few PWs that create tokens and we always have Zirda sitting in our companion zone as a creature to fuel into Lukka or the Creativity. The deck is then basically the Jeskai Fires deck that runs rampant in Standard (and even Pioneer) right now. I think that Zirda is even a better companion in that deck (in cube) than Yorion, but we will come to Yorion in the next article.

3) URb Zirda Artifacts

This deck uses the same UR shell as the Jeskai Zirda deck, but is able to play TSG and Tasigur. If we play Black, we can include Bolas' Citadel in our deck and may even be able to cast it. Else, there is not much different here, expect for the payoffs.

The last deck I want to mention focuses on the white creatures, that all have activated abilities. This is also the only deck that I can see utilizing Zirda's last ability.

4) WG Zirda PW Aggro

Enablers: Dauntless Bodyguard, Kytheon, Mother of Runes, Giver of Runes, Alseid, Adanto Vanguard, Selfless Spirit, Scavenging Ooze, Duskwatch Recruiter, Planeswalkers like Gideon, Ajani's, etc.

Payoffs: Zirda

This deck's payoff is "only" having Zirda as a companion. What I haven't mentioned yet is that Zirda is a fine aggro creature with a neat activated ability that let's you turn off a blocker. The deck would be a typical white&green aggro deck that starts with Zirda every game, which sounds very powerful. There is not much else to say here, the PW sound very powerful with Zirda, because we always have access to a creature on turn 3 that can apply pressure. A neat thing that I observed is that there are not a lot 3 drop creatures or PWs in my cube with activated abilities. This is however no problem as we can only play Zirda as our 3 drop as we can always cast it on turn 3.

Overall, I think that Zirda is by far the most interesting companion and it is definitely the one, which will end up in and cause really weird decks, that are good (for reasons). I also think, that Zirda will mostly find its way into a drafters deck as a companion.

Verdict
Power in the 40: C (yeah, I think it is a better creature than Obosh in a normal deck)
Power in a functional companion deck: B-
How likely will it be your companion: A-

This was it from me for this time. In the next one, I will talk about Lurrus, Yorion and Keruga. Spoiler: I think that Keruga will be good in cube. 

See ya.