Rocky Mountain Yetis

We got 9 wizards back together to chase the Weatherlight to the plane of Rath. It had been a while since we had gotten together to cube and everyone was so appreciative and enjoyed getting back together. This really is a great group and I appreciate whenever I get to see them. We’d drafted this cube twice before, and I’m always eager to draft my project. People always seem to have fun. I think Tempest offers some really unique and fun cards, and some that lead to some weird interactions.

It was a joy to see everyone open their packs, and hear people exclaim things like “Nobody wants this?” “This card is in tempest?” “This pack is really good.” It felt like Christmas morning.

About the cube

I’ve covered my Tempest Block cube previously on my last post, but here was the basic speech I gave at the beginning.

“Let me take you back to join the Weatherlight crew on their voyage to the plane of Rath. They must venture forth to rescue their fearless captain Sisay from the evil evincar Volrath. The main themes of the block are slivers, shadow, and buyback. Slivers make all other slivers stronger and a team of them can be quite formidable. Shadow creatures can’t be blocked except by other shadow creatures. And they can only block shadow creatures too, so watch out for fast decks. Tempest is known for its fast and aggressive environment. And finally there’s buyback. Plenty of cards let you spend extra mana to cast a spell and get it back. So you have plenty of options for things to do in the late game. Because of this, all archetypes are represented with good showings from aggro decks, control decks, midrange, and combo decks. The cube is not singleton. There are 3 copies of each common, 2 of each uncommon, and 1 of each rare, so you are able to draft more consistent decks.”

Well let’s get into it!

Let’s see the players and their decks

Evan on UG aggro (9th at 1-2)

I was thrilled to have Evan join one of our cube drafts. He is an avid pre-modern player so quite familiar with the Tempest era cards. He played a version of my favorite deck from then, UG aggro with slivers. I think the muscle slivers and the winged silvers are the best. Back them up with a few cheap counterspells and that can end games in a hurry.

Cory on BR aggro (8th at 1-2)

This is pretty much the deck that Luke won with last time. It has everything – fast, aggressive creatures, strong removal, and burn. I didn’t get to see a whole lot of his games, but I guess the players adjusted to Luke’s deck after last time and packed some more early answers and lifegain. Maybe I’m just kidding about the life gain part.

Here Cory’s deck is far into the late game and facing down Brian’s 4/4 flying Ephemeron and counterspells and he can’t quite seem to get back the initiative.

Brian on Mono Blue (7th at 1-2)

Speaking of, Brian played a strong mono blue deck with all the answers and fatties. I do really like control decks in this cube even though a lot of people seem to pass over them for the aggressive creatures. Brian played something similar last time to success with all the forbids. It seems Brian just wants to counter spells left and right and he did that.

I sat next to him in the first match and peer over to see his fist full of countermagic and I swear I heard him cackle. 

Here he takes control with the weird and powerful Dominating Licid in the blue mirror. He is able to take Luke’s Tradewind Rider to complement his own and go to town.

Jim on GW fatties (6th at 1 – 2)

I’d seen white decks and white / green as the weakest in the cube so I’d worked hard to beef up this archetype and make it a contender. I thought I’d strengthened it enough and wanted to try it out. The main cards I was looking for were Recycle, Cataclysm, Wall of Blossoms, Kor Chant, Provoke, and Endangered Armodons, plus some pacificms and shackles. I remarked during the draft “My draft is going largely as planned. Soon we’ll find out if it was a good plan or not.” It was okay. I didn’t see any endangered armodons until pack 3 which was making me nervous but then I picked up 2. My games were pretty close. Even though I went 1-2 I could have easily pulled out those other games. I regretted passing a Null Brooch and another Shackles which would have helped me a lot versus Jared on buyback.dec and versus Matt on shadow creatures. Wall of Blossoms isn’t as strong as usual because of the evasion. I also really wanted to see Static Orb which would have been another strong answer to buyback but I never saw it.

I would definitely play the deck again. I think for the cube, I’ll replace the provokes with Heartwood Dryad. I’ve had them in and out a bunch and this time they didn’t make the cut. But it turned out provoke was rarely useful because so many creatures I want to use it on can’t block because of shadow or they have tap abilities and they won’t block anyway. And a few more cheap ways to deal with shadow creatures could go a long way, even if they live in the sideboard. Plus a 2/1 for 2 is always playable in a pinch. Even if green already has a lot of these, a few more just help round out a deck a bit.

Round 1 I had to mulligan to 5 seeing no land and decided to keep this 5. It at least had a prayer. I was able to find green, drop the wall to block, and eventually get to 6 mana for recycle. It still took a while to win after that but I pulled it out. Note to self: recycle is a lot better with cheap answers. I had way more cards but having 8 creatures to their 5 still isn’t a winning formula. 

Interestingly, I nearly got stuck by my own recycle after casting cataclysm. I didn’t have enough mana to cast my spells, and then I had no way to draw the mana I needed. I had Soltari Priest that needed WW to cast and I just didn’t have it. I had to keep tapping the ancient tomb, taking damage, and drawing one card per turn. I fortunately got out of it but just barely.

Starr on RGW with slivers (5th at 1-1-1)

I got to play Starr for my first match. She had a sweet tri-color deck rocking slivers and great support from across the colors. Over time, I was able to use the format allstar Cursed Scroll to kill off all her creatures and attack for the win. Orim kept me off for awhile but I could do double-activations on her turn and my turn and eventually make enough of a dent to get through.

Chad on Mono Black (4th at 1-1-1)

Chad loves the impactful enchantments in this block with splashy effects. So he took bottomless pit, gravepact, and recurring nightmare and built a nightmare of a deck to play against. He added a smattering of reanimation effects and value cards and was able to take out the opposition.

Chad and Starr came together so for their last match against each other, they called it a draw and headed out for the day. Thanks for coming!

Luke on UG (3rd at 2-1)

After the last few drafts where green wasn’t drafted much, it really made a comeback here. I’m glad to see it. I think it has some great cards and strong strategies. Luke went a bit more value-focused where he also had counterspells and capsizes. He definitely got good mileage out of that capsize in his games!

Jared on UR buyback (2nd at 3-0)

“Memory crystal is busted”. I’m a fan of this UR deck. It gets to play the cheap removal that’s so good in red aggro, but combine it with countermagic and plenty of options for card advantage in the late game. Whispers, capsize, and shard phoenix can take over a game. He also used intuition well against me by combining it with scrivener or the phoenix to get great cards no matter what I chose. This deck can also be one flavor of the Dream Halls deck I played last time if the dream halls plan doesn’t pan out as hoped.

Jared and I had an epic final match where we both almost decked ourselves. He kept capsizing and I kept playing staunch defenders, getting to 40 life at one point. The rest of the crew had to head out and told us to text em when we were done. It took awhile. Despite digging deep, I didn’t find the cataclysm that would have saved me by stopping Jared’s endless buyback. It turned out to be the bottom card in my deck. I was hoping that after gaining 40 life, Jared wouldn’t be able to kill me in time before decking himself. But he was able to repeatedly cast Fanning the Flames over and over for a bunch and finally finished me off with a single card left in his library.

Matt on BW shadow (1st at 3-0)

I’d also really wanted to see white get picked up in this cube. In old school formats, white is traditionally the black sheep with no unique strategies or cards, and everything costs more. In this cube, the shadow creatures and protection makes it pretty tough to beat, in certain cases. So I was pleased to see Matt take the top spot playing white as one of his colors.

Playing the slower deck, I thought I solidly had things under control here. I’d just gained more life and added a beefy blocker in staunch defenders. Cursed scroll was slowly picking off all his guys and I was about to draw unlimited cards with recycle. But, Matt had other plans. When I tapped out, he attacked with an unblockable foot soldier and pumped it with hatred to do exact damage. Game over. What a cool way to die.

Conclusion

Planning for 9 or 10 for the days festivities led me to add some extra packs into the mix and expand the cube. There’s plenty of fine options, though it does take away slightly from the combo interactions. The main bummer for me is that we then had a player with buys so they only got to play two matches. And Jared also went 3-0 but didn’t win the whole thing because he got matched against me with a subpar record. But, we get together to play the game and have fun, and we definitely did that.