I am currently trying to implement more unconventional archetypes into my cube. Most of these archetypes are centered around only a few additional cards which are normally not seen in most cubes. One example is "Jund Land Sacrifice" which only needs a small package containing Korvold, Fae Cursed King, Titania, The Gitrog Monster, Zuran Orb and Squandered Resources. The deck is assisted by the generally good enough land matters cards like Strip Mine, Wasteland, Fetchlands, Ramunap Excavator and Crucible of Worlds. Of course, there a several other cards which work well with such a Jund Land matters theme. For example, cards that generally care about the graveyard are good includes in such a deck. What I am trying to convey is that only dedicating a few cubeslots can go a very long way. I also support Mono Black in my cube and the only cards needed for this archetype in my cube are Hymn to Tourach, Sinkhole, Necropotence, Phyrexian Obliterator and Gary. Of course, the Mono Black archetype only works because of the Black aggro support that is already central in my cube. If you don't run such black 1 drops, including Mono Black as an archetype generally demands more dedicated slots. But, in an existing cube shell, there are a lot of unexplored archetypes which can be included by just slotting a few cards into your cube.
I want to quickly talk about the parasitic term "parasitic". I have seen a lot of discussion on cards which are only playable in (mostly) one deck and are therefore "parasitic". Whereas I don't disagree that cards like Phyrexian Obliterator and Squandered Resources are only playable in (mostly) one deck and are therefore passed on a lot in draft, I don't like the passive negativity by declaring such cards as "parasitic". Of course, there are downsides to include such cards in your cube, namely that a lot of cards don't find a home in decks and are blanks in the draft. However, I rarely see people talk about the advantage of such cards: They enable decks and strategies which are different (and therefore exciting for drafters) and more importantly highly synergistic. My drafters are usually more excited by picking marginally-playable cards than they are disappointed by not being able to play that card. The reaction opening a "parasitic" card in pack 3 which is perfectly made for your deck is one of the best feelings you can have in draft. I also know that there are a lot of cube owners and players that want to cast their Volcanic Hammers on Elvish Mystics. Go for it! Cube is supposed to be a diverse format. Therefore, I find it very inappropriate to call marginal, highly synergistic cards "parasitic". Cube is not supposed to be an optimized draft experience for everyone. So let us continue.
I mainly want to include unusual archetypes in my cube because I like variation in drafting. The Mono Black deck does not come together as frequently as other decks, but it is a lot of fun if it does, because it is a rather special occasion. As my cube is pretty big (600+ cards), you are not really on railroads while drafting though. A pick-one Necropotence does not necessarily lead to a Mono Black deck. This may not be liked by everyone, but my drafters and I enjoy this quite a lot. I am not a huge fan of midrange festivals and generally enjoy full power cubes for their inclusion of Combos to combat greedy value decks. Talking about value, let's talk about Simic, the new rising star in most cubes. We have seen an influx of insane Simic cards in the last few years from Vintage full power cubes to even Pauper cubes. The community is a little bit torn on these new cards. On the one hand, these cards finally make Simic playable but on the other hand, these cards are just generally good cards and don't really form a real archetype. This is certainly true for Simic's Lord Oko. Oko is just busted and not really a Simic card. Oko is and will be played in every deck that includes at least Green or Blue and you will do anything in your power to splash for it. This often results in Mono Green decks splashing Blue and not really a two-colored Simic deck.
One of the problems in Simic is that Green and Blue generally do very different things. Blue's biggest strength and focus are its noncreatures, mainly its instants. Green's biggest strength and focus are its creatures which mainly don't have Flash. Other color combinations have a commonly known and utilized denominator: A Gruul deck is often a Stompy deck combining both aggressive components of each color, mainly the aggressively costed creatures. The general strategy of such a deck is carried by the respective signpost gold cards like Bloodbraid Elf, Klotyhs, Domri, etc. There are of course other directions your Gruul section can go into. With MH2, we see a new direction which enables a Gruul Storm archetype which is rather unconventional. An Izzet decks generally combines the noncreature focus of both colors which can lead to spell-based aggressive, tempo or even control strategies which are mostly supported by direct two-colored noncreature payoffs and powerful instants and sorceries. But what common denominator can we find in the typical Legacy Plus cube for Simic? This question may be answered by "good cards" because Blue and Green share the similarity of having the best standalone cards. However, that is not a satisfying answer in my opinion. In cube, there are sometimes the 3-0 decks that are not really synergistic but picked up all the best cards for their two-colored deck. This often happens if the other players did not find all of their synergy pieces. Simic decks never truly felt like "oh my god, they did it, they got all the cards for the deck". It rather felt like "Simic Soup".
I have found that the similarity between Green and Blue lies in the synergy between carddraw and ramp. You might say that this is obvious because this is most often the backbone of any Simic deck drafted in conventional Legacy Plus cubes. Whereas this ramp+carddraw strategy is somewhat already used in many draftes Simic decks, there can be done more to enable a more powerful type of deck. Onto the typical Green-Blue core in Legacy Plus cubes, an Engine Combo deck can be built, namely a Simic Extra turns deck, which is enabled by the following ~15 (number depends on cube size) card package:
High Tide
Search for Aczanta
Frantic Search
Turnabout
Echo of Eons
Time Warp
Temporal Manipulation
Time Spiral
Nexus of Fate
Palinchron
Fastbond
Exploration
Heartbeat of Spring
Bala Ged Recovery
Oracle of Muldaya
Wilderness Reclamation
etc.
I tried to only include a few cards here that I assume are not common in most cubes that don't run them already because of Storm or other reasons. A few of these cards are certainly also played in cubes. This package can be split into six separate groups which I will talk about separately:
1) Land Ramp
This package only includes three additional cards in Fastbond, Exploration and Oracle of Mul Daya. Typical cubes mostly don't need that much more land ramp because cards like Farseek, Cultivate and Dryad of Ilysian Grove are commonly played cards. Getting lands onto the battlefield is not only important for the next group of cards but also for fixing purposes. This type of deck can be heavy Blue on its spells by using utility counterspells such as Cryptic Command, Archmage's Charm, Counterspell, etc. which work especially well with Wilderness Reclamation to pivot into a Control deck if the full Extra Turn strategy does not come together (see last Section).
2) Mana Doubling
These are the key cards to combo off. High Tide and Heartbeat of Spring are the on-color mana doubling cards. Doubling your mana is of course powerful, especially for a deck that is very mana hungry because it relies on double-spelling with Extra turns spells which cost 5 mana at minimum. As said, the landramp is crucial to support these cards, mainly High Tide as a lot of Duals which are part Island are needed. One can also think about supporting Temur Extra Turns by including Mana Flare or my preferred option is to get into Bant with Mirari's Wake. White also gives us access to Enlightened Tutor which leaves us with two copies of Heartbeat and can also fetch up Mirari's Wake or even Wilderness Rec. Cards like Mystical Tutor and Mystic Sanctuary are also very good with extra turn spells. This way, such a deck can also transition into a
Mystic Sanctuary Deck utilizing Miracles. I am also currently trying to support Counterbalance decks in my cube, but it needs more work.
3) Mana doubling abusers - Untappers
High Tide is very powerful in isolation, but Heartbeat of Spring is not. It is not advisable to cast Heartbeat on Turn 3 without a follow-up. To abuse these mana-doublers, we play Untap effects such as Frantic Search, Turnabout, Treachery, Time Spiral and Palinchron. These cards are necessary to go off and can generate tons (or even infinite) mana very easily. The most common play pattern for this deck is to play Heartbeat with 5 lands into Frantic Search or Turnabout which generates 10 unused mana. From there on, one can easily play a 4-5 CMC Walker or creature and an Extra turn spell, thus double-spelling. Of course, you can also just win the game by following up with a Time Spiral/ Palinchron + Fastbond to take all the turns.
4) Extra turn spells
We already talked about them in the previous sections. These cards are your centerpieces which make this deck unique. Because of extra turn spells, this deck does not need to be a Storm deck. Usually in storm decks, one wants to generate a lot of mana to win the game in that exact turn. Mana-doublers + untappers are mostly used for that in Vintage cubes in addition to Rituals + Yawg's Will/ Past in Flames/ Underworld Breach to generate lots of mana and casting a lot of spells to get the necessary spell count to finish the game with Brainfreeze/ Tendrills/ Mind's Desire. Here, we don't want to necessarily win the turn we generate lots of mana. We will use the mana to cast extra turn spells. Extra turn spells are unique in that you pay mana to have an advantage on the next turn: Namely you get the next turn. This is especially powerful with cards like Heartbeat of Spring/ Manaflare/ Mirari's Wake which are balanced because your opponent should get to have their effect too eventually. Well, if the they don't take turns, that won't be a concern. Generally, extra turns are more powerful the more advantage you get from permanents that are already on the battlefield. Fastbond, Dryad of Ilysian Grove and Oracle of Mul Daya are good in that an extra turn grants you more mana because of their passive abilities. The other important cards in these decks are Planeswalkers which obviously work very well with extra turns, especially the ones that snowball. Nissa, who shakes the World is an already powerful Green card which just works disgustingly well when played together with an extra turn spell. Not only are you hitting your opponent optimally for 9 damage in two consecutive turns but you also double your mana with Nissa which leads to even more mana. You might recognize a pattern here. It should be noted that one actually does not need that many extra turn spells in the deck. Sure, the more extra turn spells, the better, but recycling our extra turn spells is as good. Cards like Snapcaster Mage, Regrowth, Eternal Witness, Bala Ged Recovery, etc. all do the same thing here.
Of course, this deck could also win with Brainfreeze but I think that Brainfreeze is too powerful if you don't play cards like Eldrazi Titans which can nullify it. A storm card which is actually also quite good here is Mind's Desire as it can hit your expensive Walkers and Extra turn spells. Here, it should be mentioned that this deck greatly benefits from general blue carddraw. We mainly talked about generating lots of mana, but doing that requires resources and cards. You will eventually run out of cards, so drawing cards is very important. Refreshing your hand can be done by general carddraw spells, but there are also more extreme and powerful ways:
5) Draw 7s
We covered the mana, what about the carddraw? Preordain, Ponder, etc. are all very good in these decks. More expensive card selection spells cards like Supreme Will, FoF, Gifts Ungiven, etc. are also very potent. However, draw 7s still work best here. In addition to the already mentioned Time Spiral which fulfills double duty, we include Echo of Eons as a budget and more balanced Time Twister. Shuffling your graveyard back into your deck might sometimes by non-optimal but it is usually the right thing to do. Especially Time Spiral on your Heartbeat Turn mostly wins the game as you easily generate 15+ mana which is enough for 1-2 Extra turn spells and a threat. Having additional land drops is also very powerful with draw 7s and becomes degenerate with Fastbond.
6) The alternative Route
My cube plays three extra turn spells in Time Warp, Temporal Manipulation and Nexus of Fate. Of course, getting all or even two of these cards won't happen often. We already discussed that one actually does not need all of them. But, what happens if you don't get High Tide or Heartbeat or the right untappers? Luckily, it is very easy to transition from a Simic extra turns combo deck to a Simic (extra turn) Control deck. The card that enables this pivot is Wilderness Reclamation. Wilderness Reclamation also doubles your mana, but that mana is only usable on your end step, so only useable for instants. It is very unfortunate that we only have one instant speed extra turn spell. Luckily, it is by far the best extra turn spell that exists. Nexus of Fate is a mistake. Not only is it an instant, it shuffles itself into your deck again meaning that as soon as your library becomes thin, it is very easy to find Nexus of Fate into Nexus of Fate into Nexus of Fate into... In Pioneer, there was a deck that utilized these two exact cards (Nexus of Fate and Wilderness Rec). One card that made this banned Pioneer deck broken is Search for Azcanta. Not only does our flipped Search for Azcanta dig for our Nexus of Fate, it also untaps itself with Rec's trigger. Having a 40 card deck makes this interaction very powerful and it happens relatively often that you win once Search flips when Rec is on the board. The advantage of cube in contrast to Pioneer is the access to other busted instants like Cryptic Command, Mystic Confluence, etc. Again, this kind of deck is very similar to the Mystic Sanctuary deck.
I want to quickly talk about the gold signposts. Unfortunately there are not many exciting ones that fit well with this archetype. The best one is Growth Spiral. The card is exactly what this decks wants: Carddraw and Ramp. It is also nice because being an instant is huge for more interactive controlling Simic decks. Uro is a card which is generally very powerful but has a good place here as the manabase can easily support casting Uro, which is not trivial in cube for three-colored decks. Uro is another pivot the deck can take if not all the pieces are coming together. Uro works very well on its own when it is protected by counterspells. A few cards in this deck work very well together with Uro, namely Fact of Fiction and Gifts Ungiven. Uro is also a very good addition to a functioning extra turns deck. Let me tell you how good it feels escaping Uro and following up with Time Warp. Having an attack trigger makes Uro the perfect card to gain value from during extra turns.
Of course, this type of deck can go in very different directions. Here is a sample deck which I drafted recently:
Cube is an awesome format. I regularly search for alternative strategies and I think that there is a ton of unexplored space. It can be really rewarding to think a little bit outside the box and to try new things and if it does not work, you can just remove it from your cube. This deck works very well for me and I can't imagine cutting it in the future. I am a fan of having a variety of different strategies in my cube. Therefore, I enjoy having an engine combo deck in my cube that does not win deterministically. This change also lead me to include Storm in my cube but that one does not work that well without Vintage-only cards like Moxen, Mana Crypt, etc. However, as soon as I am satisfied with Legacy Light storm, I will also write about it.
Keep cubing!
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