I am back again with a few decks I have drafted in the last few weeks. Again, because of the pandemic, these decks were built from Sealed pools of 100 cards and played against another cube's Sealed pool with a similar powerlevel.
In these Sealed drafts, things are different from conventional draft. Firstly, it is really hard to build mono colored decks. In draft, mono-colored decks can be easily built because one can table important pieces like 1 Mana 2/1s in Mono White or Mono Red. In Sealed, you don't get as many cards of the same color, and even if you do, it is very unlikely to get exactly the cards you need for your specific deck or archetype. As a result, most decks tend to be at least two-colored in Sealed. Furthermore, it turns out that sometimes playing three colors grants a better mana base because one usually has more fixing lands in three than two colors. This can be frustrating because I haven't played as much Mono Red as I want, which is especially sad because Red does not tend to have an important role in three colored decks. Hence, I thought that I post a few three colored decks that at least include a few red (or partially red) cards which enable interesting decks and synergies.
1) Naya Landfall
As mentioned earlier, it is very hard to draft mono colored decks in Sealed, which tend to be aggressive decks in most cubes. However, that does not mean that drafting aggro decks it impossible in Sealed. I recently included a Naya landfall package into my cube which makes Naya aggro decks playable in Draft and Sealed. Here is the decklist:
Firstly, we notice the amount of 1 drops. We have three manadorks and four aggressive 1 drops in Hexdrinker, Goblin Guide and our two stars: Akoum Hellhound and Steppe Lynx. These two are the bread and butter of this deck. We play four fetchlands and want to optimally pump both of these to 2/3s in the early game and 4/5s in the late game, or even bigger. To provide consistent land drops, we play Crucible of Worlds which works really well with the fetch- and Horizon lands. Another cards which works really well in this deck and provides additonal land drops is Radha, Heart of Keld.
We play only two 2 drops, because we actually don't need that many. Our optimal line is either playing a 1 drop on turn 1, following up with another or even two 1 drops. The alternative line is playing a turn 1 dork into a powerful 3 drop. We have multiple of those in the deck, namely Legion Warboss, Domri, Anarch of Bolas and the previously mentioned Radha, Heart of Keld. At four mana, we have our game ending cards. Flametongue Kavu is a card that I wanted to cut a long time ago but never actually did. Luckily so, because this Naya shell seems like the perfect home for it. Felidar Retreat is another Landfall payoff and played really well. Together with Crucible, you can pump your creatures by +2/+2 each turn or you can go wide with Cat tokens. Another advantage of Felidar Retreat is making your manadorks useful in the lategame: With Felidar Retreat, an Arbor Elf can easily become a threat which eventually demands removal. Not even mentioning that Felidar Retreat gives our creatures vigilance. Another cards which fulfilled a similar role in powering up mana dorks is Domri, Anarch of Bolas. Playing Turn 1 Arbor Elf into Turn 2 Domri into Akoum Hellhound is a messed up curve. We also play good 5 drops in Nissa, who shake the World and Glorybringer; nothing to go wrong with these.
Now comes the spice: Scapeshift and Titania. I was really surprised that these two cards carried the deck. I initially expected these to be rather neat than actually good. Scapeshift has insane play patterns with multiple cards in the deck: Akoum Hellhound and Steppe Lynx become massive once Scapeshift resolves. Felidar Retreat into Scapeshift gives you immediate board domination even if you didn't have any creatures on the board beforehand. It is also very nice to get your fetchlands from your deck to get even more landfall triggers. But of course, the most powerful play pattern is playing Titania into Scapeshift. However, this actually never happened when I played the deck. However, Titania does not need this interaction to be great. Titania can be easily played on turn 4 (or even 3) with the help of manadorks and provides double landfall triggers when recurring a fetchland while also getting a 5/3 on the board. Titania is a very underrated cube card and has very strong synergies with many fan favourites like Wildfire and Burning.
I was really impressed with this deck and therefore included even more Landfall creatures into my cube to enable this strategy more. The package includes the following creatures: Steppe Lyn, Fearless Fledgling, Akoum Hellhound, Plated Geopede, Vineslasher Kudzu and Kazandu Mamooth. Other cards that performed really well in later versions of this deck were Undiscovered Paradise and Wayward Guide-Beast.
2) Korvold Jund
I love Korvold. The card is very powerful and solely enables a whole other direction your typical Jund deck can go into. Jund decks with Korvold have the best lategame in my cube even overpowering Sultai Uro Soup decks. In addition, the deck has way better early interaction to fight aggro decks, because one has access to black discard spells (Duress) and removal spells (Go for the Throat, Ravenous Chupacabra) in addition to Red burn spells (Burst Lightning). Together with Green dorks like Birds, Better Birds (shots fired) and Llanowar Elves, the deck has a really solid foundation to build on.
What is the synergistic part of the deck? The basis is simply Korvold. With Survival of the Fittest, we effectively play two copies of Korvold. We want as many cards that let us sacrifice permanents. Generally good cards that do this are Fetchlands, Strip Mine variants and Baubles. However, there are a lot more incidental synergies which are not obvious on first glance, mainly Sakura Tribe Elder, Evoke-triggers, Gilded Goose and Treasure tokens. I tested Magda in this deck because the prospect of creating a treasure every turn seemed great. Although the card was good in this deck ramping out Korvold and other cards while creating treasures, it is not good enough for Legacy (Vintage Light) Cube in my opinion because a 2/1 for two mana is a horrible stat line. The better but also more expensive version of Magda is Captain Lannery Storm, a card that impresses me more and more. I love playing a Turn 1 mana dork into a turn 2 Lannery, into a turn 3 Korvold. In addition, Lannery is generally good as a 3/2 Haste with upside.
This deck would have been great with only Korvold + Survival. However, what is better than one Korvold? Korvold and The Gitrog Monster. Gitrog is similar to Korvold, in that it can also generate a ton of value while being in a standard Jund shell. They especially share the similarity of creating card advantage when sacrificing lands. Both of them also cost 5 mana. While Gitrog does not synergies as well with the general sacrificing theme, its abilities are close enough to Korvold's to act as a pseudo second copy of it. Not even mentioning what happens when you get both of them onto field at the same time.
The card that pushed this deck to extremes is Squandered Resources. It is a card I initially included for storm shenanigans but this is the real home for it. Squandered Resources together with Gitrog or Korvold can lead to extremely disgusting turns that are reminiscent of playing actual storm decks. One can barely keep up with all the triggers and carddraw.
All in all, this deck was very powerful and more importantly a lot of fun to play. I can highly suggest including the package Gitrog Monster + Korvold + Squandered Resources into any cube because it especially gives Golgari a whole other unique direction which is far more exciting than playing fourty removal spells in this guild.
3) Temur Goodstuff?!
This is probably the least exciting deck of the three. It just seems like an assembly of powerful Red, Blue and Green cards, at first glance. There are a lot of small interactions that I really enjoyed which lead me to think more about the effective curve of my decks.
I want to talk about Alpine Guide. I think that this card is massively underrated and provides a lot of interesting play patterns and synergies. Firstly, Alpine Guide fixes your mana to perfection in most decks. In this deck, I could fetch up Ketria Triome and I had perfect mana for the rest of the game because if the Guide dies you can just sacrifice your mountain which you used for casting it. Secondly, Alpine Guide is a unique card in that it provides ramp while also appyling pressure. There are only a few other creatures (for example Lannery Storm) which also do this as a 3 drop. Why is that so crucial? I often found myself casting Alpine Guide in this deck on turn 3 followed up by a powerful 5 drop on turn 4, mostly Goldspan Dragon or Acidic Slime, without losing any aggresion. My preferred 5 drop was Goldspan Dragon. The card really impressed me as a hasty threat which provided ramp in a similar way like Alpine Guide. This is especially nice when one can play Alpine Guide into Goldspan Dragon into a 7 drop, which we have two of in Agent of Treachery and Genesis Ultimatum. I played out this exact curve two times and it is near unbeatable. Especially because Goldspan Dragon will provide the additional two mana most times because of its ability to generate treasure when being targeted. Because of these considerations, I began to think more about exploiting curve synergies.
Normally, in a Gx deck, you play a manadork on turn 1, followed by a 3 drop or another 2 drop manadork. However, Alpine Guide or similar cards enable playing a manadork on turn 1, followed by cette 3 drop on turn 2 into a turn 3 5 drop, while still hitting your opponent for damage. This is especially good when this 5 drop interacts with the opponents board (like a Glorybringer) or strips your opponent off their resources with Acidic Slime or even Primal Command. I think that this 1-3-5 curve can be explored more especially for Gruul decks. There are a lot of 3 drops in these colors which can ramp you into a 5 drop like Domri, Anarch of Bolas or Klothys, God of Destiny. This might also work well with Obosh, but I did not find the sealed pool for such a deck yet. It might come together in a draft though.
I have not much more to say about this deck. Another card which always performs for me is Fires of Invention. It is a personal favourite of mine which is good in any midrangey Rx deck.
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