Powerful Nothing
A Magic the Gathering Cube podcast hosted by Dan and James. Talking Cube and other magical goodness.
Powerful Nothing
Our Favourite Cube Build Arounds - #67
In this episode me and James wax lyrical about some of our favourite build arounds for cube.
Card Gallery: https://moxfield.com/decks/lJ1PqhLj0kax9jtwMZgFxw
0:29 - What is a build around?
4:45 - Birthing Pod
17:00 - Opposition
25:52 - Oath of Druids
36:32 - Lurrus of the Dream-Den
My Cube: https://cubecobra.com/cube/list/sweet
The Treat Yourself Cube: https://cubecobra.com/cube/overview/treatyourself
James Cube: https://cubecobra.com/cube/list/ba642a54-a6c7-4587-b97e-1d95429c59b5
MTGO Vintage Cube: https://cubecobra.com/cube/list/modovintage
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Hello everyone. Welcome back to power for Nothing and Magic The Gathering Cube podcast. I'm the host, Dan, and as always, I'm joined by James. James. How are you doing? Are you well? Certainly. I'm doing well. Thanks. Wonderful. We have an awesome episode for today. Today we're going to be talking about our favorite build arounds. This is one of those episodes where we get to talk in-depth about cards that we really like. It's one of the ones that we kind of look forward to recording. But before we get into that, James from the top, what is a build around. Yeah. So built around is going to be a card which is built in a typical deck. But if you have the right support for it in your deck it can be very, very strong. And so again as an extra criteria as well for that, but it tends to be a card which takes your picks in a specific, maybe slightly unique direction. And I think for the cube, specifically you, you kind of want the built around slots. They need to not just be, oh, it's a synergy card. That's good. And this archetype, right. It needs to be a card which makes you do something slightly differently than all the other cards in the cube. So, for example, a card like Mox Opal, I would say even though it's, you know, meets the criteria of being weak and nice but good if you can support that as well. Not really a build around for me in the context of cube, because basically Mox Opal just says put it in the artifact deck and not in your effort. That's right. If that's a supported artifact master archetype in your cube, then box opal is going to be good in any deck you draft in the archetype. Like it's not making you pick cards very differently compared to any of your for artifacts matter cards. Whereas contrast that, for example, of cards like Opal through it, which I would say is definitely built around which that makes you prioritize all the cards in your deck a little bit differently. Compared to if you were not building around the and it's it's pretty unique in the choices it makes you. It makes it forces you to take and your picks right evilly warps your pick order. And I think for Fe to have like a really interesting built around slot, that's kind of what I want. I think often a good, a good test, it's a card value built around for cube is do you like, name your deck after it. Right. You if you if you drafted a fifth grade stack and it's like, what do you draft? I drafted a really cool I first grade stack. No one's ever like I drafted really cool lightning bolt deck and no one's ready. Like I drafted a cool Mox Opal deck. Right? You just drafted for artifact deck? But yeah, so I, I think the cards which take your draft in a very unique direction, of other ones I want to have in those built around slots and cube generally. No, definitely. Builder rounds are some of my favorite types of magic cards. So they're kind of ones like you kind of alluded to it, but they effectively they kind of warp the way that you like draft and build your deck. It's kind of like effectively you see a cool card that is as you kind of yeah, as you guys have mentioned, like it can be very powerful, but it does require effort to pull off. But for me, I like that kind of challenge of like, oh, today we are doing this flavor of deck it kind of, but it can be a simple thing. Just like one card's inclusion in a cube can make a whole new deck exist. And as a cube designer and someone who plays like cube, that's really exciting and interesting because it can make a whole new deck exist just by the existence of one card. And that's really, really cool, but awesome. This is probably gonna be the first in a series of these, because there's a lot of very cool build arounds. We could be talking about them for hours. So these are not what we would describe as like the best. This is not like a tier list. This is not like these are all steel. This is these are ten out of tens or here is like a ranking. These are ones that we think are cool. We will talk about kind of like the power level of cubes they can go into. We will try and touch on different power level of cubes as we do these episodes. That kind of stuff, because some, write effects for high power level cubes, some, like put up a cube, some a peasant cubes. We have notes for a bunch of different ones. We'll see how many we can get to today, but we will come back to this in the future because it's us waxing lyrical about cool things. And that's kind of the point of having a podcast, if I'm honest with you. Yeah, for sure. This is a somewhat indulgent episode. I think that, hopefully gives you fun ideas for your own kids as well. Our last one was the news and we have a set review coming up, so we get this one, okay. We get one. This one's for us. But but yeah, let's touch on our first card of the day. James, do you want to read us? Birthing pod? I would love to read the birthing pod. A birthing pod is such a banger. It's, It's a. Yeah, it's a really fun car to fly, I think. So bashing pod is free and a correction. Green manner. So you can pay for generic manor and to like all you can pay three and a green for a artifact and you can tap for ice fact pay one and another green for action and sacrifice a creature. The central library for creature card with mana value equal to one plus the sacrifice creatures mana value. Put that card on for battlefield and then shuffle so you can pay a manor and two life cycle free drop. Go and get any for shop from your deck and next turn. If this is still around you could stack for fall, chop, get and get the five felt or you could sacrifice different creature. And I think one of the really cool things about batching plot is it lets you play with your whole deck, as if your hold that was part of your hand right? I think it's really magic is a very it's very different experience when you're getting to play with your whole deck versus, this is just because you happen to draw at the top, right? Like, this is why, it's why some of the stone decks of tutors are very fun. It's that you get, it's a puzzle you need to solve, how you can piece together victory from the cards and with access to all the cards in your deck. And that thing cards also gives you that experience, without having to put a million tutors into your cube. And it's, it's restrictive enough, but it really makes you do a lot of work because the thing is, right, you can't just be. I played a generically okay free drop, like I know I played, level say, and then I sacrifice my level to get my questing piece, and then I sacrifice my questing piece to go and get my, elder card graph, say, like, these are all fine magic cards. But I think pot in that scenario cost you, say three mana and two life, and then you use stats two more times, so all. And you know, then for five mana and six life. And then at that point, all you've achieved is upgrading your free drop into your five drop. That was not a good use of your time and resources. Fast play the birthing party. You'd have been much better off just playing another generically powerful card. So what you need to make so bashing pots is worth the time and resources, is creatures where they don't need to remain on the battlefield to get their value. So, for example, if the value is in the form of an enters the battlefield effect, so you say you cast your Elvish visionary, the one on the green, one on the 12 cards, and then you plot that away and you get your free drop. Well, you weren't really losing the value of the Elvish visionary when you saw it, right? And then your free drop can have an that's the battlefield ability. Then you put that away into a full drop. And at every stage in this chain, you're accumulating value, and you're eventually just going to drown your opponents in the never ending tide of two. Once. Similarly, if your creatures have death abilities, I bet your card when they die or they come back when they die, I think like persist creatures. Those are really excellent with birthing pods. Also finally, creatures with a higher mana value than what you actually paid for them. So think, for example, a, a knock me but that came into play for free. You can then pod that into a free drop even though you didn't, you don't have to actually pay for your mana for that. If you wanted to be very ambitious, you could, you could play a game like Angelus and then plot it away into something huge. That's cool. Oh, yes. But they haven't. Very nice thing about this. It's not, you know, it's not just get any thought up from your deck. It's get the specific one you want. So this can also be very powerful for setting up combos. I'll say creature combos. Where of different parts, creatures. You can then choose a flow of your combo that's really powerful. So sort of a natural things to set up here is stuff like persist combo. That's great because of obsessed creatures have natural synergy with birthing as we discussed. But also some stuff like, tiki we have like Festering Troll is cool. That's, thing you can pod into. But I mean, there's, you know, there's lots of there's lots of creature combos. You don't need to be. So, so that's all of them stuff like chatter fang type things, while and Soul Trade. Well, if you have scratchy stuff. Yeah, there's there's a lot of potential. Hey, you can do a lot of interesting things. It's just something I want to touch on that. Yeah, I know I get a fair bit of play in some in, in cube and some other formats in the past, like, with creature combos, like with things like deceiver, exile. Because you can also untap your pod. It doesn't just on the cookie jar. You can also, untap the pod as well, which is quite hot. When we've seen this in other formats, James, there wasn't elements of like the untap were a big thing like for the more all in like pod decks. But that's not really how it looked in Q because, no, in constructed you would have four pods, you know, you're going to see it was kind of like in an cube. It it's more the value aspect with pod rather than going up the my two drop on untapped my pod which gets my three drops. And as my partner gets my four drop on the board and then I end with a gristle brand or something like that. Is that fair? Yeah. You're just never going to have the whole chain in your deck. The other thing is, even if your whole debt comes together and you have the perfect chain, you can put a whole bunch of really suboptimal cards in your deck. You've got four bad creatures in your chain that just sent that passing pods, and you're four times more likely to draw one of those bad creatures than you are to actually dwarf. Perfect. But so yeah, it's not great. All your creatures kind of have to be, not necessarily just five themselves on their own, but at least respectable, you know, when you don't 12 the pod. And, you know, if you're sending up combos, you can also just want a combo, right? It's not like you're only allowed to find it with Laughing Pod. But yeah, in the right setup, the pod just adds so much consistency tools, you know? But the other thing that makes it tricky, right, is you really want to be able to access all points on the chain from most of the features given enough time. So you can't really have gaps, right? You can't just have like I've got good twos and threes and then a couple of great fives. I don't really have falls, but that's a problem because then you have no way to get a five. And really you want multiples each. Step five. You don't want to be like oh I drew my only full child and then that it's already died or whatever. So like bang can't, can't access the more expensive cards. So you do need to have quite a that really makes you think about, what have I got at each stage? What what are my chains going to look like? And I think that's quite cool. Yeah, yeah. To me, that's what makes this a proper build around is that you really have to think about. Like what? Like, like, yeah, you have to have multiples in the curve. Like like I've seen pod players in cube like you, you can normally tell who is the pod player because they're the player who has like that, face down in front of them. Yeah. Honestly. What? The pod is a lot. We have your strictly enforcing bass player not allowed to pile three packs of it. It makes it much more challenging. Yeah. No, definitely. Are there any other challenges with with pod James? Yes, certainly. Pod is great because it gives it gives you value and it gives you consistency, but it does not give you speed. Pod is a fairly slow card and on top of all of it, as well as just being slow, not affecting the pod that much, it is also costing you a bunch of lot. Because most of the time that you're you're not going to have manage to pay the, yeah, you're going to be paying life a lot of time. And a lot of kids are just too quick, and you're not allowed to do this anymore. Sadly. I think the days of of pod being a card for, like, high power level cubes, kind of gone, but, in more mid power level cubes, you just have to be conscious of that with the rest of your deck building choices. Right. So you need of you need creatures that gives you defensive speed. Stuff like Wall of Omens is really nice right. It's giving you a card on the way in, but it's also giving you a nice blocker to sit behind that's going to save you some life points. So but you have a little bit more time to sit around and play with your plastic part as well. We mostly just need to have creatures fit into facts at various points in the chain. You know, stuff like a, a in a stupid cup, for example. It's very nice. They're like, you're dying for some big scary dragon you pulled away. You're free too often to have access to copper. That fixes the issue. And then next thing you can, like, put away your chief of cards into a fire. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Is is one of the best. Just like value cards. But like, value cards do exist in certain cubes. They don't like in the in the more higher pile of cubes in the more streamlined cubes we don't have time for to just to just accrue value. We need to be doing something. We need to be trying to kill our opponent. I gotta let this is a card for more slow kids. I think. Kind of like the really kind of like high like this when this card was banned in modern, I believe in the article, when it was banned, they mentioned specifically seeds Rhino being too good with pot and kind of like that I think is the is the power level of cube. We are where birthing pod like can really shine is like we have seeds. Rhino is a respectable creature and like those groups will exist and those guys are gone are a lot of fun. Like like they'll the most powerful. They are generally more budget cubes and like because this card is somehow still banned in modern it's not the most expensive card is around like the $10 mark where we get a battered one a bit cheaper like. And that's more because it hasn't been reprinted, because it hasn't seen as much play, because it's not modern legal anymore. But yeah, Birthing Pod is a banger of a card and it is something that you can support in cube. It is also nice, unlike a lot of the other, build ones, but other ones we can be talking about. Right. There is a little bit of redundancy. They're all worse. But like Prime Speaker Vannevar does a good an impression of birthing pod. You can't do at the turn. You play it because it's a creature. And then Vivian on the hunt is a six mana planeswalker, that sort that does the birthing pod thing as it's plus two. So there is some redundancy there. So like if you want that value deck to exist, you can probably make like, let's say and that's that kind of like a band ETB flicker style of deck where you're using these. That could be quite nice. That's probably something that could still exist. And, and to N25 in plenty of budget cubes because yeah, birthing pod about a tenner. But the other two I've mentioned like vibin of the hunt. Yeah. They've been of the hunt is like some £0.50. So something to consider. Yeah. For sure. I like it a lot. My cube has combos, and there's a few little creature combos, which, uniquely good with pod like comic guides is fairly good to pod into. Like pod away my Chupacabra get my covet guide that gets back to the cop. Like, oh, your thanks that you're having a great time. You know, and it's. Yeah, I think it's just such a fun, like, play and craft experience. Yeah, but I think pod is a is an all time classic. It is, it's a card I want to play with and. Yeah, that's. Yeah. The definition of the other build around the next one I think should be a clue to everyone that James puts together these shows that, our next card, James, is opposition. Talk to us about opposition, James. Opposition. So sick. Opposition so sick. All the haters, all long. So opposition is to loosen enchantment. And you can tap a creature you control to tap target permanent. You can do this against the speed so manner involved and none of that nonsense opposition is very good. So for vs an opposition is really good right? Is for death. It's good for a lot of different stages of a game and it's a lot. And you don't need a lot of creatures for it to be good. When you have opposition with 1 or 2 creatures in play, it's just very hard for your opponent to kill you because you just tap down that good thing at the time. And, that's fine, but you're probably still taking a little bit of damage, but it's buying you the time to find small creatures. Once you found more creatures, you can then assemble your lock and lock down the whole board. And once you've really gone wide with a bunch of tokens and whatnot, then you're in the first stage where you're tapping down that lands in their upkeep, and they're pretty much locked out of the game. And it's faster. You know, you're gradually assembling battles by your starting firm. I'm just not tapping down your attacker, keeping myself alive into a few seconds later. Cool. You're not casting sorcery speed spells for for remainder of this game. And I think that's sick. You do need to. You do need to do a little bit of work to enable that foe because you want to be can why? It needs a lot of creatures in play to really get full value. And you also need some tree creatures that don't need to attack or block to get their value. So yeah, obviously like token makers are a big thing here. But also just like that, cheap value creatures. Again we mentioned above base for stuff like for spirited companions, things like the even like deep cavern bats, that sort of thing. But it's got its value just on the way in. And just by sitting there, you don't need it to be attacking so it can set around, generate you value by tapping to an opposition. Yeah. And then you and your, you know, you're generally playing a like slower, more value game. And you're, you're building up your lock and then you just have this sort of inevitability into like game nice. No, I, I would not say I am an opposition hater. I am just more I'm, I say realistic with its power level. I think it's very strong. And I think if you can build around it, it is it is very good. I'm going to say the word smokestack. In terms of power level, like like I think it's so much better than this. Like it's so much faster. It's like it is the fact that I, I think for me, the, the fact it's a blue card makes it a bit trickier. Because blue generally in cube isn't really the color of tokens. Yeah. So like like where, where this has been really good is like where it's seen like combination play with the card. Like, well, a rogue that's a four manner to two that makes to top two tokens. So that's like a board they in a can which kind of like blue doesn't get too much. But kind of like I guess is kind of touching the artifact deck. So maybe like this with like psi that also spits out a bunch of thought this could be quite good as well. Like then you are a bit more controlling until you kind of find your big base to actually get around to that you're actually going to beat them with, but yeah, like like tapping down their lands, I think is the is by far the strongest part of this card because like if you can be just nothing than one man at then that is incredibly strong. Like that's like for me, that is the part where it makes sense in Powered Cube by like tapping down there. Their creatures is like, okay, cool, they haven't attacked you for a turn. That's okay. But like, for me, like the when you're controlling the game and actually like nothing them out of mana so they can't actually do anything. That's when I think opposition is is is at its strongest. And I just think, yeah, but all these they are built around. So you need to find ways of building around them. So if you can do that then I think yeah. And I, I'm here for opposition teams. I will defend you. I'm glad to hear it. Yeah. So I think you're right that you want to be want to have a way to get that lock safe in the end fight where you're you're tapping on lands and they never have an on tap into my first main phase. But it's nice that it does something before you get there. You know, it's not it's not all of nothing I like for that. It gives it gives you a bit of the time you need to get there to, to play a more expansive cause and make you more time to fight. But yeah, you're right. You do need to put in some work. I think color combo wise. So the classic is is blue green, right. Where you play like some elves and your opposition, and then you are vamping something like the deep forest, a derangement. So what I do, right. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, that was a classic one. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I actually think there's a bunch of called color combinations that work really well here. As far as what I've really liked in the past, to get those, like, nice little thinky value creatures, you know, like, mesmeric fiend type stuff. Yes. Versus companions. And then obviously, like, lingering souls is just the whole world. And. Yeah, and white just has a decent amount of token makers. Right. Yeah. And I think it's cool and like, kind of thing. And I think for me, the big difference between this and something like smokestack Fit, you mentioned right, is this doesn't care about what's the issue with smokestack fire is when your opponent has a bunch of disposable stuff and sock and it's a Punisher effect, right? But they get to choose what they're starting. With this, you get to choose what your. That's true. You get to pick that for four rather than their one one, if that makes sense. Yeah, exactly. And even when you're tapping that Lansdown, if you're on, say, four islands and one Plains, you can tap out of a plane and get a off of White Manor that way. That's very true. Yeah. And the other thing is that it takes some time to build up, such canvases or whatever they're called as opposition. If you've got the board state and you draw the opposition, there's no window for them to keep playing the game for that while while it gets going, you know. So that's a and for me, the I guess the biggest part of opposition is it is such a unique effect. Like it is the for me, it is the again, another great definition of the term build round because just existing like with that like this effect is so unique. There's nothing else that does this. It just existing means that the opposition deck now exists. So so for me, I think that's one reason why it still sees play in of wide variety cubes, including the higher power level ones, and all the way down to the budget ones, because it just being that facilitates a whole archetype and deck existing. And that is a fantastic thing to have in a cube. It just one card makes a whole nother deck because it's it's a whole archetype. It's a whole package in a single card. And that's I think yeah, that that alone means that it should be considered outside of where people lie on the power level scales. Yeah. For sure. And you're getting a lot more in packs out of one card slot than if it was just another reasonable creature. And it's why I'm kind of fine including the cards. Even in a bunch of the time they don't get played by because, like, I'm okay if four times out of five the opposition ends up in someone's sideboard, if, b of a one time someone's like, I crafted a composition that, you know, like I'm kind of more in for that trade off than playing in, I don't know, say a Tatiana's tied binder. Just looking at I keep just like, yeah, this is it's a fine card. People will put it in that attacks. But you're not adding, like a new experience to the cube by playing a shot of sci fi, don't it? Right. Obviously, you can't have all built around. You need most of your cards to be functional, standalone magic cards and ball players and supporting your larger archetypes, but I think it's very cool to find space for a few of these cards. No? Fantastic. All right, let's move on to another real, build around. Next up we have Oath of Druids. Of all the ones we've mentioned so far, this is a card that if I see in my opening pack like that is what I'm doing for that day. Like I am taking Oath of Druids and I am going to have a fantastic time because it is a very strong card and a very good build around, I've read the last couple. James, I read oath of Joy is a bit of a long one. Oath of Druids is one the green for an enchantment? At the beginning of each player's upkeep, that player chooses target player who controls more creatures than they do and is their opponent. The first player may reveal cards on top of the library until they reveal a creature card. If that player does, that player puts that card onto the battlefield and all other cards revealed this way into their graveyard. So James, talk to us about Oath of Druids. What is the game plan here? How are we getting the most out of this very broken enchantment? So that's sort of the happy path. If you're a shooter, it's games where everything goes well. The game plan that your opponent plays some nice 212 creature, you say that's cute. You play it afterwards. On your next turn, your experience is going to trigger and you're going to put a very large creature and play a long time ahead of curve, and the game is going to snowball that, you will probably, in your own words, not have very many creatures. You'll certainly have far fewer than your opponent. So you may even get multiple life figures, but in reality, it's probably not going to matter. Because the thing if your opponent gets no trigger at some point later in the game, because you have running away of a game so quickly, because you put an eight drop into play on ten free, so to enable that to work, you're putting quite a lot of restrictions on your deck generally and not Dex. You want to have a curve of creatures with more creatures at the cheaper end of that curve, and only a few expensive creatures, we end up hitting a chief creature five trigger. And obviously we're a bit sad about that. So ideally, in your oath of true attack, you probably want somewhere in the region of 3 to 5 creatures. If you want enough, because you've got to bear in mind for the cards you hit before you've hit your creature again and go to your graveyard, and not going on the bottom of your library. So if you have too few creatures, you can back yourself. It it's it's an issue. I've seen that happen to you. Dan. Yeah. Oh, thing into that attractor at the bottom of the deck is like, oh, that's what are we drawing? Not enough. Okay. Yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah. So you want a decent chunk and you want them all to be fairly high and. Right. You don't want you don't want any, which is, is kind of the important thing. No I agree yeah. Oh, this is a really. Oh, this is a really good one. Part of the tricky part with oath is getting is building a deck where you just don't die, because, again, you are you're a deck with 3 to 5 creatures. Now it's like 3 to 5 very impactful creatures. But still 3 to 5 creatures. Like if you don't see them or you don't see the oath, you can. Just like I'm not even saying an aggro jack, just like a regular mid-range deck that at some, but at some point puts a five power question into play could cause you issues. So I'm assuming with the deck we're looking for quite a lot of like card selection. And are we also generally combining this with another way of cheating something into play? Would you say? Ideally, yes, because you don't want to put your four targets in your deck and have nothing else to do with them? So ideally you want this in a cube where there's other stuff to do with giant creatures. Think large, think sneak, attack, think philosophy, think reanimates. All this stuff can work. But you don't. Yeah. You don't want to just be dead balls waiting for you, right? And yeah, the other challenges as well. Like, it's. Yeah, you're a deck with no such a fear deck with no chief creatures. You're a green deck with no, no chief creatures. That's kind of what green does. Yeah, and that they can be very tough. I will very frequently be the only green cards in your deck. I will say, I think there is a little bit more flexibility than sometimes people verbalize about which creatures you put in. They don't have to all be a chops, you know? As long as your deck is like the lively going to have fewer creatures in play than most of your opponents and all of the creatures I impact when you hit them, it's okay to have maybe 1 or 2 cheaper ones. If that makes your deck as a whole better. So, for example, say, if drafted, salty over deck and you've got a psychic fog, it's totally fine for a psychic in your deck. Sometimes you're open to psychic fog. And the psychic, you're pretty good, because psychic fog is kind of a messed up card. Would have been better if you hit your icon of cruelty and said, show that the psychic folks are going to be a lot better than they are on your opening hand. So maybe that's a trade off. You're willing to make. You just need to be careful. You don't have any tougher messes. Yeah, I refer to it into psychic fog. It's okay if if druids into Elvish mystic is not okay. You need to avoid. Yeah. No. Yeah, I think that's very fair. You also, how is Arthur Druids, like in a combo deck, though? Like, it does seem like. How do we feel about if the only creatures in our deck. I like Arctic jiggy and then, deceiver? Exotic is like, does that work well, or or does it depend on the combos that we're hitting? Yeah. It's interesting. So I generally don't love the idea of, I have my first Druids that it's in play. I get a trigger, I hit a creature. That creature doesn't do that much on its own. But then I get my second figure, basically two creatures within a game together. That seems like a plan. Our opponent might be able to interact with, you know, especially because by necessity, we didn't play any other creatures this game. So they are sat there looking at me like, but you certainly can use this to enable a combo deck. Because you're deterministically hitting one of a small subset of creatures. Right? And, that enables you to really build your deck around those creatures. So for example, all right, one thing that can come up is say you have a wheel stack, you can sign off of Druids with, your head being like a whole feature, a layer fold and a shield to it. And then the very nice bonus you get from that is if you have echo of whenever you mill over the echo of the islands basically into your wheel and your pail. So that's fairly powerful. And then when you cast that echo, you then like shuffling any creatures that died earlier, you can keep going. That's fairly cool. You can also do interesting things like, my only creature in my deck is an eternal witness. Hahahahahahahaha. Okay. Yeah. And then obviously, when I oath, I'm hoping my eternal witness is the lowest card in my library and I have access to my whole graveyard. My evil figure and I can progress my game from there. That stuff's always like. It's really cool when you can pull it off, but it's. I can't in good conscience recommend most people start for draft saving. To do that, I yeah, things have happened to get to that point in time. That is not, that is not a, I am oath. I open this oath of Druids. Like the first response is not the only creature. I'm going to draft his eternal witness. That is, somehow you have Re-Animator to your right. And flash to your left. And you do not see, big creature all day. Basically, that's the only way that happen. Oh, like I'm, blue green, 470, Stormy deck. And I happen to see an open. And then the set of. What? That's right. Yeah, yeah. No, no. That is fair. Another way that I've seen, like, the druids decks be taken quite a bit is, often are the quite high planeswalker count is planeswalker is obviously don't count like sometimes walkers make creatures, but some of them I just value like like, both of druids and, an amount of to fairies seems like a quite a good way of controlling the board and just slowing things down until you can pop off with the arrows of druids. Basically, that seems pretty solid to me. Yeah, for sure. And it gives you a fact that you can play and proactively progress the game when you don't for your life. That's why it's taking the role of a creature. Particular shoutout as well for okay, Fifth of Crowns. Not for dead leaves. Need to help. Okay. You can give your opponent a creature. Hahahahahahaha. That's quite funny. Yeah, yeah, I like that. It yeah it is. It is an issue that affects one and two, but you know, some amount of a time you play against a control or a combo deck. And I just don't feel creatures into play. Or a Re-Animator deck. It's like they. Yeah. One creature they put in his Archon or something like that. Yeah. It's all one creature. Yeah. Another thing. Sam, that point I would if you're against just like a normal mid-range deck, I would generally recommend not playing Theo form to an empty pot. Wait for them to be looked at and to have something basically. Exactly, exactly. I think that's, Yeah. Because the thing is, if you play it onto VMC board, you're giving them the opportunity to hang around and find an answer, a way to remove Theo before they cast their creatures. Right. Well, if you let them cast creature, then you play video. If I think the oath is really good on your deck, what one pattern you'll see if I have a lot is okay. I'll attack you with my creature. But I will use my Doom blade and kill my own. Yeah, and that's a very good pattern for you, right? If they're forced to do that, they can. Yeah, even if they can maybe find a way to deny you the trigger, you can get a ton of value and a bunch of time. They just won't be able to get a creature out of play, and you're just going to dive into your thing and and and for game. Yeah. Oh, there's a really cool. God. We do love it. All right. We're changing things up a bit. We have our first creature that is built around to talk about. Next up we're going to talk about lures of the dream then. So this is from this is one of the famously fair and fixed, companions. Lyrics of the dream then is one hybrid also of hybrids. Also A32 legendary creature cat nightmare with lifelink. And during each of your turns, you may cast one permanent spell with a button. Mana cost two or less from your graveyard, but also has companion, which means there is a deck building clause that you have to follow in order to be able to have Loris as the companion. Its drawback is each family card in the starting deck has mana value two or less, and as a reminder for a companion, it means that it starts in the companion zone, maybe outside the game, and at any point you can pay three mana at sorcery speed, so not at any point you can. You can spend three manor at sorcery speed to move it from the command zone. Let's save this try. Let's try that one into your hand. That has been updated. Originally there was no cost. You could just do it. That sorcery speed. But Luis is a very, very strong magic card. Like, it's just such a annoying little value engine. James, talk to us about Luis the dream, then. Like, what's the play pattern with Loris and why is it really good? Yeah, those is very powerful. Like, yeah, you start with eight cards. That's kind of messed up. And one of his cards is a very powerful three mana play that you build around, and that is going to provide you ongoing cards advantage throughout the game. And because you have access to it every single game, you can really lean into it. Having said that, it takes a ton of mana, right? You're you're six mana deep. By the time lowest to set the battlefield. Therefore not an early game playing. Like it's not acceptable in almost any game of AQ. That is powerful enough. You'll put Lotus in it to spend ten three putting Lotus into your hand and ten for casting. It is generally going to be a much, a later game thing, how I like to approach drafting lower stacks. And this isn't the only way to draft them, but how I like to approach it and, and more sort of high power level cubes is for basically I'm talking I'm building my decks just one for one with my opponent as much as possible. I have a bunch of removal, I have a bunch of discard spells. I want to counter spells, whatever it might be. I'm just going to exchange resources with my opponent. Draw the game out. We can both be empty handed, and I'm going to spend three mana split Lois into my hand. I'm going to cast lot of the sun swap, and that's just such a huge advantage if I basically didn't pay very much for, you know, and the condition, like, yes, you need to draft around it and yes, you will pass good cards, but, playing chief cards in your deck is not a huge cost. Yeah, you should put cheap cards anyway. Cheap cards. Very good. It's a yeah, it's a deck building constraint, but it's also just good advice. Yeah. And and also importantly it is only permanent spells. So like your incense in your sorceries can be more expensive. So that is something good to consider. I've also found that Louis is very good. If you have effects that sac themselves will value. So like in my cube, things like pyrite, spell bomb, seal of fire, I have really good removal spells that I get really quite egregious with Laura. So you just kind of keep bringing back the removal spell and keep doing when your opponent screeches. But stuff like the baubles are very good for card draw. And then obviously in the most powerful games, like, I mean, Laura's like Black Lotus seems pretty strong. James. Yeah, it's not very reasonable. Lost. I've had enough games of vintage recently. No, exactly. And like one what the thing for me that really pushes a Louis deck over the edge. Like, it's like I felt this more as someone who's played against it in cube a bunch, is when they have the recursion spell for the Louis, because there is kind of this, like when they reveal the Louis in the first place, like you're already keeping a removal spell up for it because you're like, okay, if I answer the Louis, then in theory the whole deck falls apart. That's not really normally how it works, but kind of like in my head it's like, okay, they've they've spoiled me their game plan. All I have to do is draw, remove a spell, and then I'll kill it. The deck normally doesn't fold, but like it is a big part of it. Like if you can answer the Louis, it will affect the lowest deck because they have built the whole deck around it. But that's where cards like on Earth or Animate dead are really good because you can just rebuy the Louis. And then and then your opponent just, just keeps getting more value again and again. It's very strong. Yeah. Have you found that to be the case with Louis James? Yes, sure. There's some lower level. This feels like it's a command over often a companion. You keep killing it, and every turn, it just comes out. Yeah. And. Yeah. And when your it's really built around, you know, it's just always getting your card when you cast it says, oh, it's, it's kind of inherently a two for one in that sense. But it's also, you know, almost a two for zero, I guess, because you didn't even have to draw. This is in the companion side. And, yeah. And you can just keep going and keep getting that value, and you're not really paying a big cost to put these cards in your deck, but work well for those because you just always have access to the lowest rate because, there's never a game where you for your enabler that don't for your payoff because your payoff is in the companion zone. That that the game, the way to punish from is make the game about tempo, not about value, because then it punishes them for needing to spend that three mana to put it into their hand and and not affect art. But yeah, no, I, I, I find the effects are very strong and, and real high power level cubes. I think they, they play very well if you travel around them. Also worth saying this sort of attritional is the only thing you can do effect. It can also be redundancy for some combo that's like specifically the underworld breach. So on deck okay. Because it's it's completely free in that deck. So I was like no pertinence you would find that quickly. Maybe like a one way thing if you saw that, that, that doesn't need five minutes. And getting to buy back your breach if I deal with your breach is kind of huge. That's quite nice. And you can. You can real fast. I kind of any colors you like with that? Because it's hybrid as well. You don't need to be both black and black, but I, I've often found you can be quite a few colors with logos. I'd say green is, is sort of the least naturally synergistic because, green is obviously about making more manner and casting more expensive things, which are often permanent. I'd like for cards malevolent specifically, a lot with lower specs. Yeah, I would say that I don't tend to be in a lot of my blood sacks, but, yeah, all the other colors play very well with this. No, I think that's the the one thing I do want to make people aware of, just from what I've seen, and my experience of playing with Lois is that Lois is very strong. If you see it in pack one, as, in fact, most of these build arounds are they are stronger the earlier you get them. But there is definitely a I have seen multiple people in our cube. Go for Lois like in like pack two and really struggle to to hit play balls because it's fine once you have a whole cube to build around it. But there are definitely worlds where you didn't know you were gonna to get the Lois. So you will have been taking three drops in order. And like I said, I would like to commit to Lois. You are like, sometimes you are putting a decent part of your potential pool to one side. A lot of the time it can be worth it, but you have to keep that in mind of like of like if you if you take a Lois, just, just just count how many playable cards you have at that point. I think maybe do that before you take the Lois, actually, and then work out how many, how much, how much of the rest of the draft you have to finish off the deck and bring everything together. I said one thing to consider with a Lois pile. Basically. Yeah, because you're not just giving up the cards you've already drafted for them. Meet the criteria Guild giving up future powerful cards. You'll see which, built out by Lois. And you will have packed right away, especially if you have, for example, a two color Lois stack and and your, blue black and the two blue cards and the black cards in the pack. All disqualified by Lois. And you're just not getting anything out of that pack. And that sucks, right? It can mean that you have packs even when your colors are quite open. Why? It's just not adding a card to your deck. But I think that's why Lois decks, quite often feel more colors, because it just reduces face number of packs, which are can be blanks for you know, that definitely make sense. One last thing to touch on with Lois is if you are playing it in paper, you do have the option to errata. Things like in my cube, we do play with original companion rules, so you don't have to pay the three. Mine isn't a powered cube, and Lois does kind of push that to the limit, but the other ones are fine in in that environment. But Lois is at the tippy top of. Maybe I need to think of that. But if you are in, like, a, like, full powered vintage cube, like, I think you could play with these as written because it's an environment where everything is broken. Again, if you're listening to this and you have a cube, it's your cube. Have a think about it. Is your is your decision like James, from your experience, Lois has gone up like, how much more powerful is Lois when you don't have to pay the companion tax? Oh, it's it's a different ball game. It's one of a multitude of things you can do, and you don't have to pay the tax. Yeah, it's kind of sad just because that, that criteria is very achievable. And, you, you just have a, like a card you would put in a deck, activate, you would put it in your deck, it just starts in your opening hand, you know, it's like all of your opponents have already mulligans. Yeah. You know. Yeah. Just already a card up when the game stuff. It's kind of upset. It's. I mean, I think it can be cool to play with those rules, but, it is it, it does take it to a whole different level. And I think it's, I think a lot of it is like the argument to play with, with the tax and sometimes the same because like, default sometimes get kind of killed by the tax, like things like that. I like. Yeah. You really have to put in work to make certain what I feel. I shouldn't have to pay the tax credit, but but Lois is, is very, very strong. Ever tax real? No. Yeah. It's about. Yeah. Yeah, definitely. It's something I think from a balancing point of view I might have to look at at some point soon. Okay. Yeah. Seems reasonable. All right. I think that's where we're going to do it for today. We there are plenty of cards. We didn't we weren't I didn't have time for today. So we will be revisiting this at some point in the future. Don't you worry. James. Thank you. That was awesome. Always good to talk about some awesome card. Oh, always awesome to talk about some cool cards. Yeah. Always pleasure. Nice one. All right. Thank you all very much for listening. Do make sure to give the podcast a five star review. Give us a thumbs up, tell a friend all that good stuff. And till next time it's goodbye from me. That's goodbye from James. And we'll see you all soon. Goodbye.