Rocky Mountain Yetis

Hi all, I’ve got another short write-up and a few pictures from a cubing session. This was an unsleeved white and old bordered cube. The criteria is that every card in it has to be available in white border and the older border. That’s it. So it’s an eclectic mix from revised to 7th edition, with other unusual sets mixed in like Deckmasters.

It was a lot of fun and not what I expected. I’ve played a lot of these same cards in cube and they tend to be low-powered, so I was prepared for grindy games. Pack 1 pick 1 I chose Call of the Wild over lightning bolt. Then I ended up cutting it from my deck after all. My curve kept getting lower and lower and I ended up packing a punch with burn.I managed to snag fireball, disintegrate, and hurricane, so I was able to end games in a hurry.

Uthden troll is a great card. I love playing it in decks like these because its a cheaper card that can hold off a fattie indefinitely. It worked great for me. I play fire elemental decently often as an efficient fattie. This one had different art that I usually play.

Here we see another strong red green doing work with aspect of wolf. I love the mix of lands for this cube. While the alpha and beta art is so classic, there are some real gems from later editions.

My deck delivered the goods with plenty of removal. Death spark has served me well in various cube decks as reusable removal to gain the upper hand. While powerful, they do have a weakness to pro red. Repentant blacksmith definitely blunted my assault. Post sideboard he brought in more pro red like abbey gargoyle and I added Desert Twister and Winter Blast. I didn’t plan on leaning heavily on green for my removal suite but in this case that’s exactly what I had to do.

Erhnam djinn is great in any format he’s legal in. I play this dude quite a lot. He’s that much better in cube. It does amuse me how some color combinations are just more classic. While the colors are balanced, certain pairs complement each other better. You see a lot of red and green doing well, but blue and black almost never pair up together. Meanwhile, white and blue is a combo as old as the game itself.

The Decks

I played the classic red green combo. I took it to a 4-0 record. I had it at 3-0, but with 5 players out, and more time to kill, the day wasn’t quite done. The scoring would have gotten messy if I had lost that final match but fortunately my luck stayed with me and we avoided having to do the extra math to determine a winner. The store owner saw that we were playing old border so he found a nice old border foil to award to the winner. We only revealed it once all was said and done.

In this mix, blue white reared its head again. It has the flyers, the removal, and the guys to gum up the ground. It’s a great combination.

And we have another red green entry. The game plan of playing big dudes and using flexible removal on creatures and players’ faces proves popular.

I really enjoyed this slower build for a cube. My favorite interaction here was over a mesa pegasus. I’d remarked that it was such a cool card that never saw play. But then it and another critter where keeping my fire elemental at bay. So I cast flare to kill the pegasus. He case actual counterspell on the flare. Then I had to use immolation to take it out. I’d never seen the lowly pegasus be so important.

Here’s an underrated combo, but black green has shown up repeatedly as the popular rock deck. What is a rock deck and why is it called that? I have no idea. But it generally has creatures and things to kill creatures. This deck is no different. I prefer the moniker “good stuff deck” because that captures the strategy so articulately.

That’s all folks!