Sweet and powerful decks in cube, Part 6: MH2 cards (Fury, Murktide Regent, Dauthi Voidwalker, Urza's Sage, etc.)

 In the following, I want to show a few decks that I drafted from recent Sealed pools with new MH2 cards and give my opinion on them.

1. Naya Winota

A Naya midrange deck with Winota. The density of humans wasn't quite high enough to get insane Winota triggers but getting a Avalanche Rider or Zealous Concripts was still good enough to win the game. Eskita's Chariot is a card that impresses me more and more being a 3-in-1 threat that is therefore very resilient against removal. It has also great synergy with Winota as all three permanents can trigger her and Winota can even crew the Chariot herself. In addition, copying good tokens like Voice of Resurgence's can happen. For MH2 cards, Ignoble Hierach was obviously good (suprise). Fury was purely brutal and is definitely the best 5 drop in Red. Sure, Glorybringer has haste and flying, but Fury gets the edge because of its flexibility not only in its casting cost being a 0 or 5 drop but also its ability to spread damage across multiple targets. Spreading damage is really powerful and playing it for zero mana is a strong tempo play not only against very aggressive aggro decks but also against Gx decks which play two or more dorks in the first few turns. I oddly never drew Goblin Anarchomancer but I imagine that it would've been quite good to play an Avalanche Rider, Eskita's Chariot or Chandra on turn 3.

2. Jeskai Control

This is a rather usual Jeskai control deck. We have our standard repertoire of burn spells, counterspells and wraths. Damn worked as a normal Wrath of God and was obviously good. It just feels weird having a black card in a Jeskai deck (is also looks bad on the picture). Unholy Heat was really good. Delirium was moderately easy to enable due to the many fetchlands in my deck in addition to the few artifacts and the occasional planeswalker or Sharknado. 1 mana to deal 6 damage to creatures or planeswalker is huge. This card kills Uros, Kroxas, Primeval Titans, JTMS,... the list goes further and further. The card can lead to really swingy plays yet alone with Snapcaster Mage and gives you a lot of efficiency. Speaking of efficiency. The card that exceeded my expectations was Murktide Regent. This card was the reason why I mostly cut all my sorcery speed 5 drops in blue like Cavalier of Gales and Meloku. I noticed that I never really want to commit to a 5 drop at sorcery speed in my U decks because I mainly want to be able to play reactively in control decks and tempo decks have no use for 5 drops. But as a control player, you have to play something to win the game eventually. Well, Murktide Regent might be the best wincondition there is in Ux control. In my deck, Murktide Regent was a 2 mana 8/8 every time I played it meaning that I could hold up interaction to even protect it. Even crazier, Murktide Regent only has to connect three (or even two) times to win the game. Being only 2 mana also meant that I could close out the games way faster than usually because you can play this as early as on turn 5 with Counterspell backup after wrathing your opponent's board on turn 4. Very impressive showing.

I want to go on a quick tangent and talk about control decks in cube in general. A friend of mine always says that control is not playable in cube because slamming down spells is always more powerful in non-constructed formats than answering spells. I agree to some extent. It is hard to play a pure control deck in cube, but it is not impossible. I noticed that the most important aspect of control is the flexibility and efficiency of counterspells and removal. This deck beautifully illustrates these two axes. Cryptic Command, Thassa's Intervention, Fiery Confluence, Sharknado and Mystic Confluence are not cheap, but very flexible. Removal like Path to Exile and Pyroclasm are not flexible but very efficient. I especially adore Foretell and MDFCs in control decks in cube. In this deck, we play Doomskar and Silundi Vision which can both help you to generally curve out better, which makes them very flexible although they are not efficient from a mana cost perspective.

3. Esper Rector

An Esper control deck that wants to win by killing of Academy Rector into Thassa bests the Seagod or Treachery. Unfortunately, I played this deck into another Control deck which resulted in a 1 hour stall game where I lost by milling myself out. So, I don't have that many insightful opinions on this deck. This deck only plays one new cards from MH2 in Lose Focus. Lose Focus will stay in my cube as a really cheap and more importantly flexible and efficient counterspell.

4. Simic Extra Turns

This is a Simic Extra turns deck I highlighted in this article. The deck plays no card from MH2. I rather want to talk about a card I played against, namely Dauthi Voidwalker. It was impossible to win against a resolved Dauthi Voidwalker with this Simic deck. My opponent played a Dimir tempo deck with cheap discard (Thoughseize, Inquisition, etc.) and cheap counterspells (Daze, Counterspell, etc.). If you can't remove Dauthi, which Simic has a lot of problems with, you will lose the game. You can't play your CMC 4+ cards because my opponent would counter them and play them for free with Dauthi. However, if I don't cast my CMC 4+ spells with this deck, I will die eventually to a 3/2 unblockable. My opponent played my Ugin in one game, in another game my Time Warp and in the last one my Commit for free. What I am trying to say is that Dauthi is insanely strong against certain type of decks and can easily lead to feelbad moments especially when piloting non-interactive decks like this extra turns deck. As I usually want to encourage players to play interaction, I am fine with that. Especially because Dauthi should be very easy to answer in almost every two-color combination except Simic as Red, Black and White each provide efficient removal. Dauthi being a 3/2 unblockable was good but not insane. You often want to hold up Dauthi to activate its ability to get value anyway.

5. Selesyna Lands

A Selesyna midrange deck utilizing a few land synergies such as Knight of the Reliquary, Ramunap Excavator as well as Horizon- and Fetchlands. This is probably one of the best decks I have ever drafted in my cube. I lost no game and never felt like I was close to losing one. The reason for this is the combination of the two cards Urza's Saga and Retrofitter Foundry. Firstly, shoutout to Retrofitter Foundry. It is a very strong card that should be played in any higher power cube. The card is a one mana win condition that is hard to answer and efficient as hell. I basically play Retrofitter Foundry in any deck except aggro. Even control decks can utilize the Foundry by using spare mana to make tokens. What is better than a 1 mana win condition? Right, a zero mana wincondition. Urza's Saga is a really good card, which became obvious in the last few weeks following Modern and Legacy. Urza's Saga's chapter II ability is the key aspect. You basically want to (almost always) generate two tokens with the Saga, meaning that you end up with two 3/3s once you fetched up your 0-1 mana artifact. Urza's Saga fetching up Retrofitter Foundry is absurdly good and leads to very easy victories if you opponent has no Reclamation Sage or else ready. Your karnstructs get massive and you didn't even commit many resources into them because you just got them from a land. Another star in this deck is Knight of the Reliquary. The card really shined in this kind of deck fetching up Urza's Saga and becoming a big threat on its own. Even without Urza's Sage, Knight provides very strong utility and flexibility with the many different utility lands we have gotten in the last few years. Another stong synergy is bringing back Urza's Saga with a Ramunap Excavator. The rest of the deck consits of removal and cheap threats to either pressure the slower opponents or to remove creatures against aggro decks. Another MH2 card that really impressed me is Prismatic Ending. Flexible and Cheap. Exactly what a removal spell should be nowadays.

See you for the next article.

MY CUBE