Fixing Selesnya in Cube - #81

In this episode we're taking a deap dive into the hardest colour pair to get right in  cube, Selesnya. We go over what you can do if your struggling for something cool and good for it to do in your own cubes.

Card Gallery: https://moxfield.com/decks/wFmyR8QimkG508Yf5eaY5g

Video Version: https://youtu.be/JWUoBKM6q8M

1:56 - Issues with Selesyna
6:23 - Honorable Mentions
13:52 - Main Topic
14:14 - Go Wide Tokens
19:48 - Creature Combos
27:29 - Humans
31:10 - Enchantress
38:02 - Watch Wolves
42:45 - +1/+1 Counters - Fair
49:45 - +1/+1 Counters + Landfall

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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Transcript

0:03

Hello everyone, and welcome back to Powerful Nothing and Magic The Gathering Cube podcast. I'm your host, Dan, and as always, I'm joined by James James. How are you doing this week? You. Well yeah, I'm pretty good. I'm pretty good. Marvelous. We have an interesting one for today. We're tackling some of the hardest topics in all of cube this week. We have a doozy for us. This week we're going to try and fix Celestria as a color pair. I often when we're doing set reviews and stuff like that, it will come up. That's Lesnar is often one of the hardest things to work out what to do with when you're building a cube, and we've got some ideas and some decks that are kind of like we've played about with ourselves that we've seen in cubes. And today we're going to be talking about them. James, what's your immediate thoughts on Lesnar as a color bear? Yeah, I think it certainly can be tricky. If you're not, I would say if you're not leaning into a very specific archetype with it and often feels like the green, the default green cards and white cards you will put in, most cubes do not gel that well together. So you often, if you want, need to be a little bit more viable, you often kind of have to make a conscious effort to make that happen. No, 100%. So yeah. So that's going to be our main topic for today. Before we jump into Celestia, please firstly consider giving the podcast a like a thumbs up, a five star review. Really helps us out. And also, a link to, all the cards we talk about. We'll be down in the show notes below. There'll be a link to a field. We've chatted everything out. Everything will be there. So if you want to follow along, we will try and talk about the cards where relevant. But if some we don't mention in full detail, there will be images of them there if you want to see them. There is also the video version. Hello YouTube, if you're watching there. Also obviously there'll be time codes as well down below if you want to jump around to any specific deck. If there's a deck that takes your fancy that you're thinking of running in your cube, you can jump straight to it. That's what the time codes are for. But with that out of the way, let's kind of touch on let's let's kind of deep dive back. It's kind of green. White has tended to struggle as an archetype in Q because the best things that green and white generally do in cubes have classically been opposite to each other, like white is traditionally an aggressive color, and it has the best feature removal. Green is really good at ramping and shooting big things into play, and it has some of the best creature based creature based threats, and it kind of often falls into the trap that kind of like old Boris decks you used to fall into, where basically the combination of Celestia was not as good as or was not as aggressive or as fast as mono white, or it wasn't as big or as powerful, or could catchy things into play as quickly as mono green, like, do you think that's fair? James? Yeah, for sure. Very, a lot of it is think is down to what curves vertex want to play. Right? Like often the good white creature pay stacks very, very lean by especially in terms of if that's fair playing. You certainly won't see anything above for, and not that like only the premium premium falls. Right. Where there's green tends to be more about, you know, the effects of almost starting up for right away. Because they want to lead on an L fairly and then accelerate into those slightly higher curve threats. It's not to say you can't have aggressive green dex. You absolutely can look at like red green, for example, works fairly well in that way. But it's not beating down with two drops fairly. And that's the thing the white creature decks are good at is two drops into removal. They don't want to be playing like big, chunky, fat synth for like game early. No, no, definitely. But it is something that as the curve of cubes like as we talked about in our last episode, comparing the 2016 cube to the 2026 cube, curves are coming down. So as threats like as the best creatures are moving down from five and six manner to two, three, four mana, going elf into a threat does become a bit more achievable. Like do you think that's but like like, do you think the way the curves are going, James will or do you think the way new cards are being printed? It's kind of could mean that Lesnar has more game going forward in in a similar way to how Boris has improved tremendously as a color pair over the last couple of years. Like Celestia, like it does have some cool things it can do. Yeah, for sure that you there is a game plan where right it it tends to be taking the good three and four mana plays from white, combining it with adding a little bit of acceleration from green. Plus, you know, you can be playing your Questing Beasts and whatnot for green. And you play a temporary game and plus, you know, you're good at slashing, right? So it can be like the basis of, other sort of multicolor, aggressive ish attack. I think the, first cube clash, we played, the final draft. I ended up pivoting a lot and ending up in Celestia, and it was kind of. It was pretty good, actually. Like, it's just, like, really good manner, you know, you can just get out of turn two, oddly enough, now and then, and then, you know, there's parallax way and there's that, these things are very potent when you get them out early. But it does feel like a lot needs to come together for that to be to be the right place to be in a draft. And also has the issue I find for, a lot of the really good white cards you want in that deck have multiple white pips. And obviously, if you're trying to cast an elf on turn one, you need a lot of green manner in your deck. So you often need very, very good fixing to get the deck to work. Plus, you can't really play tap fight if you're trying to play an elf on one. So, it puts off a lot of pressure on your mana base to get those sort of untap duels and fetches. Yeah, definitely. As we go through the episode, we are going to be touching on some decks that we think, but basically we might struggle with from a consistency and power level point of view, we might be able to read game with some synergy, and that's kind of what we're trying to do by pulling these archetypes together before we kind of get into the specific ones I want to talk about today, there are some honorable, honorable mentions. These are some really cool decks that we have. I think all but one of these I am currently running in a cube and one of the money just got recently cut. But, the reason that honorable mentions will kind of kick off the first one we wanted to just mentioned briefly is food. This one, I really like foods. Obviously been around for a little bit of time. It kind of came out in l drain, but then it got a bunch more cards and the Lord of the rings set that some very powerful hobbits there kind of really make a lot more food and kind of let you do more with it. Like this Paragon took that can that two and a green for 2 or 3. If one or more tokens would be created under your control, those tokens plus an additional food token are created instead. And it has three foods to draw a card to. That is so food isn't just a life Gainey thing now it is an engine as well. You can actually do stuff with it. There's also some very cool food combos, involving cars like it's experimental confection air. It's we just make infinite food and kind of go ham that way. The main reason that this is an honorable mention is that food tends to be absent. The confectionary I just mentioned is a black card as a bunch of the hobbits as well that you want to be running. So we're trying to keep this season here. So therefore food doesn't technically get in, even though the majority of the deck is Celestia. You are kind of splashing black for it as well. Yeah, food is cool. It has it's nice in the air. Complaints with quite different ways. There's, there's there's a lot of combo potential fare, but you can also just run over one people over pretty quickly with, you know, it's just not difficult to pump out food at a pretty alarming rate. And, once you get that going, you sort of need only 1 or 2 things that actually pay you off of that to, to snowball some games pretty quickly, you know? So yeah, I think the fruit deck has a lot of potential. It's, it's tough to make it work. And, you know, you're super cut for vintage cubes, but I think nice kids like that, you can, if you're willing to commit a bunch of slots to making food work, you can definitely do it. Yeah. And it has the nice thing if it does over like that. There's also a bunch of decks nowadays that just want an amount of artifacts, and food will slot in there as an amount of artifacts, but then you have the decks that you care about it, which is quite nice. The and also obviously, we're we're a few months before The Hobbit comes out, the new the, the next Lord of the rings set. I would expect that to be a couple of hobbits in the set called The Hobbit. I hope, the next one that that's not mentioned we want to touch on is persist combos. This is also generally absent or sometimes even going into like four colors. And like for like going into red as well. We've, we've touched on specific combos a bunch of times in the course of this podcast. I think our general consensus is in theory, it's good, but struggles to come together a lot of the time. I think the main issue is like, I've actually with this with, with with combos, you are playing a creature with possessed, that is a creature that when it dies, it comes back to the creature. It comes back to the battlefield with a minus one, minus one count on it. You are combining that with a way of either not putting the counter on it or negating the counter. So something like Grum galley. The generous puts a counter on non-humans when they enter, so plus one on counters and minus one minus one counters cancel each other out. So if you have a sack outlook, you can infinitely sack your possessed creature if you have an effect that's canceling it out. Generally, these tend to be three, sometimes four card combos. It has all the bits, it has all the redundancy. I just haven't found the cube where it works. Probably it is more like a budget cube looking for combos or a more mid range cube, but, again, it's based celestria a lot of the time, but you are generally smashing into black the sack outlets, or often red for either either a possessed creature that she kills them in murderous red cap, or a way of putting counters on things as well. So it's not a true Celestia deck as we tried to talk about today. Yeah, for sure it would be quite unusual. I think actually should be straight. Celestia if you're doing that stuff. Because black is just going to give you a lot of powerful options in terms of finding your combo. And, and the sack out that is, is obviously a very big part of it. They can be powerful, though. I like it more if it's part of a sort of bigger creature combo package where you have, you know, your wealthy tutors and your birthing pots and lots of ways to go and find all these pieces. I, I don't really like it if it's just like I've got, you know, I put a few pieces, have a few copies of each piece of the combo in there, that you not really leave ways to assemble it. I think that it gets a bit tough. Yeah. I think you generally have to commit if you want to do combos, but but one thing I do like about it, which we will kind of talk about, the flip side about this when we are talking about some other ones in Celestia a bit later on is that with PCs, with PCs, combos, they are all at least trying to do the same thing. And I do like the linear nature of I am trying to get a persist creature and something to negate the counter. And a second I know the pieces I'm looking for that is quite nice, but. But we'll get into that and any of that proper in a minute. But the last one I want to touch on is what I'm currently running in my old bordered Boomer cube, which is the threshold is about having seven or more creatures in your graveyard. I really like this deck. It's really cool. You get to run awesome. Guys like web. Mystic Crusader and Mystic Enforcer. These are really cool. Cars effectively get better when you have seven or more cards in your graveyard. The issue with it is that it's very 2001. This was like a good deck. Then if you have if you have cards from. If you if your cube has any cards from a modern horizon set, I don't think you can do threshold. I probably that that's why I'm even pushing it. I think like if you have, I think that's a very generous box of I should have a power of love fest. I, I think it's very easy to stuff. You can play festivals like look at your cube of that card from the last 20 years and that if yes, don't run thresholds because, okay. No, I will concede that. Yes. And the ultimate, being the cube thing, I think that sweet, The problem is it just takes a so long to get to seven cards. Like, it's not like you tend to build yourself that aggressively and you just play magic cube ramp. Yeah, you play a ramp and growth player or something like that. Yeah, exactly. So like my payoff is going to be for like by 1010, my creature has plus one plus one. The and I, I think you find where bear gets plus three plus three games. Okay. I acknowledge that. And you know, if you're in that being the cube. And that's a big deal, right? Yes. Yes it is. You have cards from more, more recent times then, then they laugh at your Fifi and that they're very cat. No, no. Very fair. But yeah, yeah I would agree. That is why I. That is why it is an honorable mention. Because I made the list. That is reasonable. Go. But let's, let's you jump into our episode. So what we're gonna be doing is we're gonna be going through a bunch of different archetypes that we think can make Celestia work, like they are things that can make it take and can give. So there's an identity to actually do something cool. The first one is kind of a bit of a classic. It's go wide, it's go way tokens. So there's a couple of ways you can play this deck. I'm gonna talk about one first and is going to touch on another one in a moment. The classic one is or when I think of go way tokens and this is probably my age showing here is play a bunch of things that make tokens. So, some classic ones that currently see play is like, secure the wastes. X and a white instant create X11 white warrior. Which tokens you have? Cause like scoop swarm. Like it's like landfall. Make a creature. You have Jack rabbit is a very good rapper. Master. Like, I kind of like like there's like there's Adeline. There's a bunch of good token makers. You're kind of combining that with your classic overrun effect. So the OG overrun is overrun to green doing green sorcery creatures, you can do all get super sweet and getting trampled until end of turn. That is a very classic way of winning games and magic. Like when I was a kid, that is what I was doing. There are. So there are other ways you can take this deck. James, I know, I know, you wanted to touch on some alternative ways of doing this. Yeah. So I think that go light deck is cool. The thing I always worry about it with that deck, though, putting it into a cube is, especially, you know, in, in more sort of mid to high power level cube. I play often see you as tokens and then you draft it and it's just like short. I mean it's a tokens that in that my Adeline is making tokens while it kills you. But really we're being a beat down DAC more than a token stack. Like we I think it's hard to make people actually really commit to the tokens, but, you know, rather than just attacking with that good features. And I think one way you can go about trying to do that right, and make it really distinct is have some pay offs for making tokens for, just attack, just pumping them. Right. So stuff like ways to make your tokens tap for mana. So things like, some of Faily saw Jira, Fender Vicforests is one I really like. That's two in agreement for two free tokens you control have tap to add a green, or ways to convert your tokens into cards. You know, like it's like skull clamp is the most powerful, but there's certainly plenty of others. Or just to tap your tokens for additional effects, you know, it's, I think it can give give it a slightly different flavor, maybe, near decks that we're used to, and it really pushes you to pay. But then the cheap, efficient token makers go into some of the really big token makers who things like much of the multitudes of, a car that quite like looking into this, I was like, I think it's called Queen Elena. Now, of the fence, that word voodoo duck and Lego probably people. Yeah, I like that. No no no no no. Commit to it. You got dig it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So this is green white, white for star. Power and toughness equal to number of creatures you control. If one or more tokens would be created under your control, create an additional one. One white soldier. So this isn't, you know, it's not a self-contained engine, right? Is say it doesn't do anything if you're not making tokens outside of this. But if you are making tokens already, this sort of is a force multiplier on that. So, I like that sort of card that makes people commit to the tokens thing a little bit more. You know? No, I do like that way of doing it because effectively, what you're because the classic issue with the overrun version is if you don't draw your overrun, you're kind of a bit buggered. And like there are versions on creatures, there's like race for runners as well, that kind of it. But like, like if your game plan is to just make a bunch of stuff and then profit from it, that is quite nice. Like just just having more redundancy or just a yeah, just having more things to do with your tokens then just hope you have enough power and toughness to win the game in one swoop. Basically. Yeah. Exactly, exactly. And this is probably you know, it's more for like mid to low power level kids realistically. But I think it can be pretty fun. No definitely. Yeah. Yeah. Go on. It is definitely a classic version of doing. And there is another kind of like downside. I also like I think one thing classically holding this back from higher power level cubes is that there is a world where just the mono green version of playing stuff into an overrun effect. Mono green was better than that and more consistent that that because you have cards like Natural Order and creative like you don't need like in that's it. That is, in theory a similar game plan push to 11. But you don't have to actually even make tokens with that. You just play your ramp creatures. So I think that's why it probably wasn't seen as much in the higher power level games. But I think there's still definitely something here where. So it's very good at making tokens. It has a bunch of ways of abusing tokens, and it's definitely a good a good identity. And a bunch of the cards will go in other decks as well. Like like, like the token makers in white will go into your Boris decks. They'll go into your mono white decks if you're doing aristocrat. So go into there as well. There's good overlap in those places basically. And I do quite like that. Yeah for sure. And that's always something you need because you're not going to be able to put enough token makers in. If only Celestia can use them. So they certainly need to look for those overlap decks. Not 100%. All right. Let's keep the let's keep going on next, deck I want to touch on is creature combos. So we mentioned, possessed specifically at the start in honorable mentions. But this is more specifically what stuff you can do in the colors of Celestia. You don't need to splash. You can keep your mana more efficient by just keeping it in Celestia to what this deck is. What this is trying to do is basically use the powerful creature tutors that we get into. Leissner certainly has some of the best creature tutors like green gives us like Worldly Tutor, Greens and Zenith Natural Order. But we also have a card like Ella Danbury's called. This is a fantastic card for a creature combo deck because it's, a green and a white instant search, a like for a creature card. Reveal that card, put it to put it into your hand, then shuffle. That is a fantastic effect that that is very unique to Celestia. At instance. Be tutor for the thing you need at that time is very good, but when you're combining it with feature combos, it's even better because you only have to draw half your combo. If you have another danbury's goal in hand, you immediately get the other half. Yeah for sure. So I, I think I quite like the creature combo thing if you really commit to it. Because I think part of the reason people struggle to think feature combo is that it's hard to know when to take the combo pieces. You know, it's, and they and people don't want to stack on, you know, v tutors and they're bashing pots and whatnot until they have something to do with, and you kind of just need to have enough combos. And I think where you can feel happy to speculate on combo pieces and ways to find them, and having faith that you will get something that works, you know, like you will fire a bunch of shots. A lot of fun won't pay off. One of them will, hopefully. And and then you will have a combo deck that does something, you know, but it is tricky because it's kind of asking you to, almost, you know, go in blind, take hops, have combos. Hope it turns out. And because that does something by train wreck potential, right? Yeah. It really does look like like, like I, I love the idea of learning creature combos. They're kind of I think the, the tricky part with them is that some of them can be quite niche, if that makes sense. Like, like everyone or a lot of magic players, especially ones who cube will kind of know how Kiki spent it to end. Those combos work because it's quite simple. It's I put the thing on the thing, or I have these two out and they go infinite. Some of the creature base combos in Celestia are a bit trickier and like, stuff like Rosie Cotton and Scary Oak, I think at least has been in like, pioneer or modern or like like, I know they are playable on arena basically, so therefore people will see them in a little bit, but like a lot of them are a bit niche. And I think one downside with it is that sometimes people don't realize their combo cards when that when it's going round in the draft. I think that that is one downside with creature combos in it. But like, I think they're very good. Well, and I do agree, they kind of like like like I think the way to build it is kind of like you commit to like, okay, we are doing life gain combos or we're doing infinite token combos. I think, like I think mixing too many of them can lead to. But like when I added a bunch of which combos to my group the first time, like there were two players who drafted creature combos, we both ended up with two halves of the combo. Neither of us could combo. We had the exact opposite halves of all the combos, if that makes sense. Yeah, I so I put this in my dual command cube, right? As kind of what Queen White's doing and no one has drafted it yet. I kind of I might just fall set aside for draft picks, because I feel like it did. So, I feel like if someone makes it work, then people will sort of conceive a way, you know? So, I'm planting my flag two days before the draft. I. I'm in I'm in near creature combos, and I'll go far back with how that goes. No. Nice. I think I look like. Yeah, I just think I do really like the creature almost. And like, I think like it has all the tools to be good and consistent and it has all the redundancy as well. And I think one again, it's a pitfall of it is that you can really go down a rabbit hole when the combo is, it's like, oh, this card combos with this. Oh, but that color combos with this. And I can put like like a combos with B, B combos with C, but ANC do nothing together. But also isn't that really fun like it is it? I love that no no no no I would agree. But I think like this is very much and when we're talking about power level of Q like normally when we talk about cards, it's kind of like, what power level of cube should you run them in? This is more the experience level of play group, I think like play groups who who have a bit more experience with these type of combos or with these type of interactions will get more out of it. Basically, yes, because they'll commit to it. Like, like like someone will take that devoted druid earlier because I know it combos with something else and work with it because it combos with a bunch of other stuff in the Q, like that kind of thing. Yes, I think that's definitely true. I think it is fine to have like 1 or 2 decks in a cube bent like that fo, you know, like if every if every deck like that and only rarely very variants, only people who've drafted a lot of cube, can I know what's going on then that that's maybe a bit of a feel bad for everyone else. But I think if that's like 1 or 2 decks, that's maybe. Okay. You know, it adds a little bit of variety and I think it's really fun figuring out a combo you want to wear off mid draft. I think that's just like whatever suite of things that could happen. Yeah. You know, I definitely and it is something that I think should exist in in any balance cube, no matter what power level it is. I think that I think combo should exist because it does. It is a nice like it balances out the cube nicely, and there are people who like combos out there and it's something for them to do. Like I like like there's combos in every power level of cube. Like we talk about a bunch. I go about some, we talk about some that involve rares, but like, there's like proper combos like, Midnight Guard and presence of God will make infinite one one elf tokens. It's of like a worst version of of, isn't it, to end like the scary oak rosy cotton combo is is peasant legal. So that is something that is quite nice. Is that you can tailor the combo to match any level of cube. And I do think sizing is a good home for those, but yeah, yeah, it is it. It is a tricky thing to balance I think. Yeah for sure, for sure. I agree that I have seen this not work several times, so I've on on a second iteration of it, I will have the thought that if this is successful. Definitely. All right, let's keep it going. We have another one that I tried in my, powered cube a while ago. And it's one I really like and will get more cards going forward, but, yeah, it's a cool one, and it's humans. So this is a title deck, and we've done a whole episode recently on running type all matters in cubes. And normally when you're doing table matters, decks and archetypes, you want it to be in a cube where there's multiple cards that care about it. In the episode we mentioned, the one exception is humans, because a lot of cards are generally humans. If you just go through like like if you just go, just go to Cube Cobra and filter by creature type, the majority of the creatures in the cube will be humans, and it's not hard to find easy swaps for some things that our humans offer for like there's sort an elf with a humanoid and it has a similar effect like rather than Savannah lions, you run elite Vanguard, that kind of thing. You run the human version of an effect that's already there that that does exist in group and as a type of matters to humans, it's quite solid. It's got a bunch of cool effects, like, like like at one drops you have like champion of the power. It's a single white for A11 human soldier or whatever. Another human enters the battle, it under control protect plus one is on counter on it. You have lords with like mayor of Overbrook or killer, a Guardian emissary. And like Tauren, space of the angels is another cool card that when you cast a creature spell, you make A11 green and white human soldier twitch token with training, and it has training itself. Like, what's quite nice about this is that you can probably fit in the gold cards quite nicely to your celestial section, and then just a lot of the other creatures in there will actually be humans, and it will come kind of, and it can kind of give you a nice bit of synergy on top of what your cube was already doing. You won't have to change too much basically is what I'm doing. Yeah. For sure. I think it works better if you're not absolutely maxing out the power level left your cube, because then you have a bit more flexibility to pick between creatures, and you're like and creature slots and you can just say, hey, we're unless there's a compelling reason for this slot not to be a human, I'll take the human option. You know, and because this you say it's such a abundant creature type, you can get up to a very strong number of humans, without really sacrificing a lot from the focus, insights and the cube. So having knowing this is a good place to be. And you can potentially make it more of a multicolor thing as well, like, because humans are across all the colors. You can maybe look at like payoffs in other colors as well, you know. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It, it it is something you can sprinkle across the whole game, but you can make selection. You're going to really be like like that's where the gold payoffs are. But yeah, you can sprinkle like there's good humans in all in all colors of magic. Yeah. It is just. Yeah. As just saying it is stuff of like like you might have to run like Amazon's Pilgrim over like ignoble hierarchy or jogger tree speaker or something like that. That's kind of the that's kind of like the yeah. The like min maxing power level. Yeah. You're right. It can't be in the most powerful games where you have to work, where everything has to be efficient. If in your cube you can run inefficient creatures for synergy purposes to make like a plus B a is something more powerful than A and B individually, then that's definitely something. But that's kind of where this this kind of strategy can kind of can really flourish if you have time to build an engine. So in a slower cube, rather than just a more efficient kill. You with my hitscan boo style cube. Yeah for sure. The next one I want to touch on is a very classic Celestia deck. And it is Enchantress. So what we trying to do here is play cards that reward us for playing enchantments, and then play a lot of enchantments. The classic ones. Here are cards that draws cards when we either play or cast enchantment. So there's like, very old magic. I was like, I'll go through and Enchantress one and the green zero one with shroud. Whenever you cast enchantment spell draw a card, there's a bunch of basically similar versions of this effects. There's like Enchantress is presence, say, to enchant. Scythe is harvest, harvest hand. These all draws cards. When we cast or play enchantments. So card value is very good. There's a bunch of cool things you can do with enchantments. There's some very, there's after like, like from around ferrous block, there's cards that, get buffed up. So like, assistant champion gets bigger whenever we play an enchantment and we draw a card as well. So you kind of really doing a lot of stuff there. I quite like enchantments. It can be very all in, though. James, before I kind of talk about some of my less positive views on Enchantress, like, what do you think about it? First of all, yeah, I think Enchantress is really cool, and it's something I would love to be able to do. And cube, she is a very it's very like, iconic thing for me to be doing as well. I like it, it's what it does in a lot of like interesting older formats. The cards are all dope. Like Sarah's Sanctum is an awesome cards enchanters presence. I go for Enchantress. It's a really cool engine that you can get going. I, I find it mostly doesn't work in cube. Just. Well, I mean, it can work, but you just have to commit so many slots, you know? Yeah. It's really tough. And the reason is like that, you know, like, artifact work really well and lots of cubes. And, you know, you might look at, you know, Savage Sanctum, Canary Island Academy, these are kind of the same cards, basically the same thing type. We can certainly make Slayer and Academy work, but the difference is, right. But if you weren't trying to make artifacts work in a cube, you would still have a really big chunk of artifacts in that the of them. But they're just very good. And you're just naturally going to end up with way fewer enchantments in a cube. And that means you have to dedicate more cards specifically for this stack. You just aren't going to get that same density that the the required density. Otherwise. And no art intensive presence. If you only have like six enchantments in your deck, it's not very good. So yeah, I for me, this just like asks for too many slots. Most of the time, I think to make it work you'd need to find other decks which care about enchantments, and that seems challenging to me. Yeah, 100%. Yeah. Enchantments is a it's a it's it is a parasitic, archetype. Like, it just requires so many slots to get any kind of synergy. But there are ways of making it overlap. But, but but then it's, it is more niche cuz basically it's the it's like there's like bugs in Simcoe, there's heroic in Boris. Like there's a world where, where enchantments does best when you're doing like a souped up, there are block cube where just like, like in the in those sets there to make creatures be enchantments, to make the draft environment work and like there just aren't enough good ones. So to make it exist in a regular cube. And also there is the world where kind of like the power outliers, like like because you really want to play like I'll go within Enchantress and Sarah Sanctum and a bunch of these other cards, they're expensive because they're very popular. And commander and it's like, there's a world I kind of like, but this would be great in like a budget or a lower power level cube, but are you going to spend the money on a server sanctum? It's probably like a couple hundred quid now, are you going to spend that money on one of these cards to go into your lower power level cube? You could proxy it. Love that. But yeah, but yeah, it it's like it would struggle and it's like yeah, yeah. Until they transition from everything making an artifact token to everything, making a token, we're kind of at the point where it's a bit trickier. Yeah. For sure. Chief of Sarah Sanctum. Currently $480. How much? 480. Jesus. That's half. But yeah, you can. I didn't buy one when I got into magic because it was, like, £40. That's a bit much like I remember the strong investment. Yeah. I traded my fetch lands away instead. I'm very good at magic. So this is why we do not provide financial advice. I'm much better at building cubes than I am with my finances. Let's put it that way. Yeah. No, it's tough, I feel it. So, shrines. Something you could do, right? Shrines at times. I do like that. Yes. Shrine of shrines. Now, you know, if I keep finding new ones. So so I have, So shrines tends or for a long while was the five color deck in, like, peasant cubes? That's mainly where I've played shrines. Some of them are very oppressive. Yes. Yeah. You need you need it to be in a power level of cube that isn't just going to Babylon doesn't just fall to you having free shrines and fly right? But yeah, maybe that's like a thing that you could do to flesh out your enchantment numbers. And I do like that. Yeah. Get that critical mass in the, you know. Yeah, maybe you have like that and you have some sort of all these masses theme and you can make something like. Yeah. Hold on. Yeah. Oh we can do that. So, so if we have auras, heroic aggro in Boris, we have play as many enchantments as possible. In Celestia we have five color shrines Condon's and blue, white. Parallax tide stuff. That's sounds sick. That works. I mean, like like like. Yeah, yeah, yeah, but but but but then I've just just listed four different decks and I think that's where this deck is. Good. That's kind of the build around. But we are having to work towards to make this strategy work. I think. Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You've got you've got a lot of, a lot of acid. Fisher commit to the bit. Yeah. This next one though I think is a bit easier to fit in. And there's one that I've had in I've run versions of this in my unpowered cube for a while, and I quite liked it. I thought I did it, did like it was a very solid. So my cube was quite high power level at the time, and it was a solid two one deck, I think in a lower power level cube this would really do well and it's effectively watch wall matters. Oh, like it makes like the Watch Wolf deck. Basically what we're trying to do is spend two mana on three threes. And that's it. No, there is more like we're trying to play creatures with more power than mana, turn them sideways and then use the disruptive cards that we get in, like white things like Mother of Runes and Voice of Resurgence to help us kind of having more interaction, help us push damage through. So like, we're running cards like like like we're probably not going as deep as actual watch Wolf. That is a white. There's a green and a white for A33 wolf, but we're going for fleece main ly and that is the same thing, but it's a cat, therefore better, with, three green and a white, but with monstrosity one. Which means if it isn't monstrous, you can pay that man. I put a counter on it and it becomes monstrous. And then it as long as it is monstrous, it has exposed and indestructible. Like there's a bunch of other effects like this. There's, like bronze height lion. And this is something that goes quite nicely with the green side of things, like because green has a bunch of threats that are around the three four mana mark that are very powerful. Like, I really like ursine monstrosity. That's been a really cool one recently. It's three mana for a 3D with trample that basically says when it attacks Milla card, it gets plus one plus one for each types of cards in your graveyard and is indestructible. It has? Yeah, it has the most player massive stacks and normal two player magic. It just has to attack. It just has to attack. But yeah, but it's indestructible. I guess it was one for each card in your. Each card type in your graveyard and has trample. So like that card been really good and like but but like that. That's the kind of creature that we want. It's a three drop that we can ramp out early, with one of our mana dorks that green gives us. We just hit for a bunch of damage as quickly as possible, and then we have the good removal when white to mop up anything that we need to like. This is kind of, I think, the closest to Boris aggro, as we kind of know it now in like the Arena cube. I think this is the closest specifically to that because you're just playing good, efficient creatures and trying to get them across the line that way. Basically. Yeah, this seems good. It's interesting. They invert it once. A very different selection of green cards. Fan. Than a lot of decks like this. You know, we're explicitly saying we're about playing a two to off on turn two. We presumably don't want to Elvish mystic on turn one. We want, one chop to be something that attacks or gets bigger can just be a good home. Something like, trim a pelt collector. Ooh. I do like that for later. Yeah, yeah. That seems like a very nice way to get this kind of sausage. Yeah, this seems good. Green stomp stuff with white removal. I can't imagine it goes from. No. And it is something that just like, I know, like like Boris has got a bunch of love from modern horizons and, like, ancillary products. This is very easily a strategy that just like they print a couple of good green creatures or a couple of good white creatures in the kind of like it can kind of really pull it together. But like at the moment, from a power level point of view, it is not as good as the Boris version of this deck. Like, it just doesn't have the power outliers like fourth Aer Lingus, the what's the bloody dog called that? I hate comment comment. Yeah, yeah, I but I do like dogs, I like dog, I just hate, I just hate comments that are worth pointing out. And then as a theory, is also quite a powerful Boris card. Like, like, I don't think we have things that are that power level. So but I like that. But like one tier below that. From a power level point of view, I think this deck is quite good. Yeah, it seems fine. I think you need you need to sort of make a conscious effort, not just in the gold cards, but in your green cards, to have enough at least aggressive, right? Yeah. Like like hex. Hex trinket we're running. Yeah. Think of a fables from the most recent that. Yeah, yeah. No, since I saw it. Marvelous. All right. Our last two are kind of. They start at the same nucleus, but then they do diverge. The first one is the fairer version, and it's the fairer version of plus one plus one counters. This is a very classic Lesniak strategy that does overlap nicely with things like persist combos. You're you're putting your counters on them. That is maybe where this could see play it. It does also go nicely with like go wide decks because if you can make your whole board get bigger with one spell, that's quite nice. But actually what the strategy is trying to do is put or play cards that put counters onto our creatures. And then in this version, we're trying to have cards that reward us for having counters on our creatures. So like, a card like bio Vegas is a is a two is a two man a manager that taps Romano. And if you count up as a counter on a creature, you have, cause like a Johnny Steadfast is a planeswalker that has a minus two of put a person as a counter on each creature you control. That's what we're trying to do, which are not spread out as many counters as possible. We're then trying to synergize that with cards like ABS and Falconer as an example. It's a card that's two and a white for two, three without last. Don't worry about it. It's terrible, but each which you control with a plus one was on counter and it has flying, so it's a way of pushing damage through. There's a bunch of attacks like that. There's ways of there's like primal kin, which is a cat that, gives all of our creatures with positions and counters trample. Like, this is more for lower power level cubes, where you're trying to do some copies of synergy, but this is a very solid thing that certainly has always able to do well. Well with. And there's a bunch of cool effects that we can really kind of tie everything together. Cards like hardened scales, single grain for enchantment. If one or more person counters would be put on a creature, you control that many plus one on counters plus one I put on it instead. If you don't have a bunch of creatures that care about pleasant counters, hand scales does nothing. But if you're really committing to the bit on scales is a very powerful card, effectively, it's a doubling season for one mana that can be very strong. And that is one downside of the deck, potentially where you may need to run. And it's one reason why it's struggling. Higher power level two. But in higher power level cubes where you need to be more efficient because on scales and the odds are that they're really cool cards, but they don't attack or block and you can't pack a deck with them. You need to look these going cubes where you have time to. Again, you can take a turn off to play an engine piece and not just get run over. But it is very cool. I do like this just the. This strategy is a classic one for commander, and the overlap with combos I think can be quite nice. I was very upset with what you said about outlast. Outlast is dreadful. I really don't trust it enough on decks and counters. Take I did and my wife ran me over with them. But you know what ran me over the siege? Rhino? Not an outlast creature. Outlast is so I will read outlast. So it's a abs. And Falconer also has outlast. It is outlast for a white. And that means you pay a white and tap it. Put a counter on this creature. Outlast only as a saucer so you have to untap with the creature. Then on your one of your main phases, tap it to put a counter on it. I'm not saying it's for quick this thing involves, but you know you get a counter counts as a correct fairly never activates it. And I knock bond can I? That's why I, I can't that's why I'm against this. Like I have to tap for my creature. And sorcery is like a little pop, a little patience. You know, this is 2016 magic. We we are happy to hang around for five full creatures. Attack anyone? Like outlast is the one mechanic I want. Modern horizon. Let me go. Let me do it at instant speed. That would be tight. That would be good speed with haste. Yeah, yeah, yeah, maybe not the haste, but just so. Just so I can do it while blocking. But. James. Rabbit hole. Come on, let's break. So talk to me about counters at the fairer version of the platforms I count today. Yeah, I think this stack is good. A lot of the reason is that there's loads of very good cards, which is plus one plus one counters on stuff that you'd run anyway. You know, your Luminar cast fence and whatnot, flexin. So you get another version of that card that we sat in the poll pretty good. But yeah, the talent I think is very good. And keep the silent, A bit I have struggled with, with this stack, because I've seen people try a bunch cuz they always have forgotten scales in there. And I always end up thinking you don't actually want to play the hardened scales, you know? Because, like, I'd rather just have more of creatures that create the counter. I want more features and more ways to put counters on them. And the hardened scales feels a little bit, when more, you know, but I would like, I would like to get it to a stage where you actually want the hardened scales. I think that would be cool. Stuff like the conclave mantle is really good, though, because that's hardened scales, but also a body which you can put the counts on, you know, it can attack and block and can take a counter itself. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. But yeah, I think this this stack is solid and it's, it's certainly one way you can be very committed to the counters facing or only slightly committed to account this thing. And they both work. But definitely. And what's nice about this is that we have mentioned some rares, we've mentioned some mythic, and we've mentioned plenty of commons. And on Commons this really can go into any like from the most budget pop, a cute pop a cute all the way up to a decent power level. Like like, what's the highest power level cube you think this could be like like the fairer version could be run it, but like because like it's probably they're up to like cores that are running like, like to like modern power level cubes to an extent. There's always think like for the whole this way. We used to classify cubes as like modern cube, a legacy cube model kind of fell down when because of like, you know, for failing us or whatever size. I guess I'm for psychic fog is in Modern Cube, right? It's kind of a busted card. I wouldn't put it in cubes with psychic fog, but, I would put it in cubes with, you know, I think, like, mid to high power level cube. This is fine. That probably not full blown. Here's all my modern horizons cards. Cube. Yeah, yeah. If you're not running all the all the efficient cards, and if you're planning on winning around turn eight. I think is where we're going with that. You you have fetch lands, but you don't have jewels. You turn eight. Sounds like a beast to draft me, right? That's it. All right. 6 to 8. 6 to 8. Yeah, yeah. Turning up the power level a little bit. Let's talk about the. Well, I think is probably the best thing you can do with Celestia right now. And this is the one that has the closest chance of being respectable. A vintage Q and this is the landfall plus one plus one count, mash up deck. I'm going to I'm going to plant my flag and say, yeah, I think this is the best thing you can do. You can do in Celestia in 2026. But basically the plan is to play good cards. But wait, there's more. We're going to like good cards that synergize with counters and lands coming into play. It's not running cards. The synergy sake is not running underpowered level like it's not running any underpowered cards. When we don't have room for hand scales or the all the regular was left, we are just running cards that are going to synergize and do cool things and kill our opponents. All that powerful. So the key cards in this deck are cards like bristly Bill, cipher, cat, cop like, Badger, mole Cub, fast bond, cause like Tifa Lockhart, these are kind of where we are. They're kind of like the. But they are 1 to 3 manner, and they're just incredibly powerful cards that you would run in effectively. Most green or white decks when you combine them. Any other extra level of synergy with things like fast bond with things that maybe we're playing lands from our graveyard as well. Maybe we're going to add a strip mine into here. It's it's just it combines to be way more powerful. You have that. You have cool utility. You have things like Knight of the relic ready to go in search for some cool lands that are that are in our deck as well. It's just an extra level of power and extra level of utility. And effectively you are playing the powerful cards that green and white have right now. So like I'll read, I've Cat Cobb, basically it's a very similar thing to bristly Bill, but it's one in a green for a two to cat with trample as land for whenever land you can draw and has put a personal counter on target which you control. If this is the second time this ability has resolved this term, double the number of poison counters on that creature instead. It's this whole kind of thing of like we play a cheap threat and it gets bigger. This is kind of like what Tamagotchi looks like now in 2026. It's this kind of deck. Yeah. I agree that this is one of the better things you could be doing if you playing Celestia in a pirate cube now. I think the thing I struggle, I of struggle to call this, you know, we we fix the f0 because, to me, this is more. This is what Queen's doing. And if white is the thing that's open with my green deck, then I'll play some good white cards and that'll work well, and that'll be good. But, you know, if if it was bad, it was open with it or if it was, was, with blues that was open with it, then I would be playing the good cards in those colors, and that green card package, I think, would still work. Like I well, I guess what I'm saying is, I don't know that the white is essential to make this strategy good. Right? It's, the white cards can be good in it, but those balls can be played by other colors as well. So this is I think what I'm saying is this is certainly a way you can draft Celestia and have it work out in a powerful cube. But I think it is not as well defined as the identities that some other color pairs will have from those cubes. You know, like, you look at the, say like a boss deck. It's, it's it's those, it's two colors, like, amplifying each other in a very coherent way. Right? Or they, all say, like, three black combo, dark like, very far. But both colors are contributing a lot. And, like, essential for things that you can do in that deck. I really feel like that's the case in most of this. Lesniak decks and those cubes. It feels like most of the time, if I'm drafting you in these cubes, it's, I'm rarely is if, it's in the best way. I'm leaning into the cold. Good. Suffer green is doing. Which is around the land stuff. Yeah, like 50 great sci fi cups. Great. All that that stuff is, is very strong. And then I'll sprinkle in some good white cards. I got some good white cause it was open in the draft, and there might be some little bits of synergy there, but it's not like it doesn't feel like a super coherent overall strategy. But that the white is not so or sometimes it's just way around. Right? Sometimes I'm, I'm sort of doing the white aggro thing and, but my white cards are a little bit bigger. So I'm going to play a few adults and maybe I'll like, I'll chuck a question be. So whenever I'm right, I'm more leaning into what White's doing. And I've still struggled to find a place in those cubes where I like. I am like Celestia and those two, and it's really the two colors amplifying each other, you know? So, I see what you're saying. I think it is the counters is where you can get that added level of synergy. And I think something that might, might not be fully represented in the most in the arena or the go cube as it is now. But like I think there is definitely synergy there that you can make it work. So running additional cards like, like Luminar, Casper and the one that, puts a counter on a creature at the start of combat that goes nicely with cars like bristly Bill, or like a cap or like the arrow. Boyd. Like, that's another way of taking the counters. Like that's where I've seen it be quite good, like Laura Boyd is, was, it's two green. Green for a one, three, I think, combat on your turn. But X was on counters on each creature you control. Where X is this creature's power. So I admit the I have just given another green card to say why. I think it's really why. Why this works. But like, have it like, white has so many consistent ways of putting counters on things like, like like I love the landfill stuff that comes with bristly. But as I think the white ones are more consistent, they are putting a counter on something every turn. And that's where I think you can get that synergy of because like, sometimes you don't have that fetch land to kind of make your creature bigger with the bristly bill. But like, I think some guaranteed ways of counters, of just growing your board every turn, I think it's, I think that that kind of like that part it for me is where the overlap to a higher power level is basically that thing, voice. I share a very good example because it's, is a card for Get Better when you have other things making counters. Right? Yeah. I think sometimes that's for, that's for a bit. That's missing for me often in these decks, like, you know, like Luminar has two invisible five critical people, good cards, that do put counters on things, but I still often wouldn't call it a counters deck because I not don't really feel like, I'm not playing stuff that needs for counters, especially, you know, face cards are just doing the thing they do outputting power and toughness. But it's not actually important that it's in the form that, I have those fat snap playing power and stuff. That's often something else. I it's not like I have specific things that are synergize with the counters. I'm just making my creatures back and attacking, whereas O void actually does benefit more directly from the counters, because if you can pump your own outside, then that is going to snowball really, really quickly because it kills off its own power. So that I think that's a good example. Maybe, maybe that scan. So you need like a few more things like that that actively benefit from getting the counters. The other than just my bristly bill makes my bill bake a nice hack for it. You know? No. Definitely that. Yeah. Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah. Yeah, I, I've had a lot of fun with the big, o with the arrow boy, but. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I do see that level of like I, those guys I mentioned have been green being really strong. Why do you need. Yeah why do you need the white. But yeah I do think with the consistency and I do think that with the added level of interaction, white does pair with it quite well. But that does bring it on down to like with that deck. One thing that I do think Celestia has quite nicely to it, and I think this is the deck that kind of gets the most use out of it, is because this is the deck that runs the most fetch lands, like the deck with bristly bill and the deck with with, with, with like a gap is the one that wants to run the most. Fetch lands that works really well with splashing. So it means you can splash that Naidoo which works really nicely with ways of targeting it like this deck. Or you can run like a renegade six to help get you strip mine back because you can do that type of stuff in this deck. So yeah, I think that's generally quite strong. Yeah, for sure, for sure. It's yeah, it can, it can be a nice base to pull up, to, to play a lot more colors. Right. Yeah. We're kind of coming to the end of the episode. Hopefully there's been some good ideas there for people who are struggling to find, what's the Lesnar's identity is in their cubes. I know it's something that we both definitely struggled with over the years, and I know stuff like counters, stuff like tokens are more widely known in terms of archetypes you can do in Celestia, but stuff like Watch Wolves, I think is really powerful and is definitely worth a try. If you're in like a mid powered cube and you're struggling to work out what to do, I think. I think it changes is very cool. In the right cube. It all comes down to finding the overlap, finding what works best for your cube. Who knows, maybe. Maybe it's threshold. Everyone. Maybe that was the answer all along. You had a first. If you have any other, like any other archetypes that you found to work really well and so letting go, do let us know. The easiest way is in the YouTube comments. Again, we're working on a way of getting a bit more direct interaction with everyone. But, yeah, that would definitely be a good way to pass over any feedback. All right, James, I think that's where we gonna leave us today. Thank you very much, man. Been a pleasure. Yeah, always a pleasure. Nice one. All right. Yeah. Yeah. As you said at the start, please give the podcast a five star review. Thumbs up. All that good stuff greatly helps us out. Until next time, when it will actually be, Teenage Mutant Ninja Z on set with you. The card will be spoiled by the time we record that one. It's goodbye from me, and it's goodbye from James. And we'll see you all soon. Goodbye.