Getting the Job Done

After culling a hefty stack of cards from the cube (70 cards to be exact!) and working through some of the mana curves the colors present I've been upgrading and pimping everything I can. White, blue, and black have all been updated heavily with more changes coming but not nearly as dramatic as has already been done. You can see the updated cube for these colors and it becomes apparent that this cube is getting significantly tighter.

Thursday I had the pleasure of drafting with three very sharp Magic players, one of which was Klug himself. I forced a black/red aggro-burn deck that had both the red bounce spells (Stingscourger and the Gone side of Dead//Gone), plenty of burn, and a bevy of removal (like the incredible Ashes to Ashes). While I was a little on the lighter side for creatures I was able to nuke opposing critters and swing with the few that consistently dropped. Klug, however, drafted a sick green/white aggro deck backed up by a strong curve of green-white critters and Shield of the Oversoul. He also splashed for just Fireball - wow. While my deck had the bounce and exile power to deal with the shield I never saw any of it.

Some burn and a few creatures just don't hold the fort against a pure curve of aggro beatdown.

I'll try to grab decklists next-time. The feeling we came away with was that control, via traditional blue/black or blue/white pairing, just wasn't tenable. Blue/red counterburn might have been stronger if all the burn I had been grabbing had instead flowed a little better. The other deck also used blue but it was very underwhelming. I think blue may need the most work of all the colors: aggro feels like the best way to go, and aggro in blue is the pits. As Klug puts it "It seems like drafting the best aggro is the way to go. I don't know if control can really work with so many creatures around."

I've got the challenge laid down. For perspective on how I'm looking at blue I've taken out card filtering and replaced it with more creatures and distruption. The idea I'm working towards is that blue, paired with whatever color you want to match up, would weather the first wave of aggression, disrupting and countering spells, then push back with raw card draw and evasive creatures. With red or black the deck would gain removal and with white or green the deck would gain sifficiently strong creatures to reinforce and attack with.

We'll see how the next round goes.