Written by There has recently been a lot of discussion about what to do to help Black become viable again in Cube drafts.
While this was definitely not true when I first created my cube, Black has become the worst color to play in recent times. The rise of creatures has left black in the dust. Wizards has recently decided to give Black creatures with higher toughness than power, to differentiate it from Red. This isn’t going to do much to solve the problem.
One of the more recent developments to attempt to fix the Black problem has been the advent of the Pox Archetype. It is broken down pretty well in this forum thread: Supporting Pox.
Pox
The terrible art and paper quality of this Ice Age rare, notwithstanding, Pox can be a powerful card.
It is also very confusing until you get used to it. The concept of 1/3 is very unusual for MAGIC.
I find that art quality has a disproportionate effect on card choice than it should have. For example, Mana Drain is often picked later in my cube than I would normally expect. Wordier cards and cards with triple-colored, mana costs have the same issues. Pox suffers from all three.
In addition, the Pox cube deck is riddled with otherwise 15th pick cards like Carnophage and Sarcomancy. This does make it easier to draft, but it puts you all-in on some otherwise lackluster cards.
I played a cube draft over the weekend. I forced this archetype from my very first pick and drafted the following list:
My notable sideboard included Doom Blade, Phyrexian Metamorph, and Pithing Needle.
I passed three cards the entire draft that I felt should have been in the deck. I always took something else in their place. The three cards were Epochrasite, Reassembling Skeleton, and Smokestack. Only the Smokestack wheeled on me.
As you can see, it is a fairly strong list, but several of the key cards that would make it a juggernaut are missing. Examples include Dark Confidant, Bloodghast, and Demonic Tutor.
I was pretty confident going in. I was in for a surprise.
Round one, I was paired against a mid-rangy, green, ramp deck. Ramp is like Kryptonite for Pox. You are trying to keep them down on lands and other resources while many of their spells and creatures give them resources anyway. This round was quick. I lost both games handily and meandered off to the loser’s bracket. One of the key things I learned in this round was that Pox folds to token creatures as well. Deranged Hermit destroyed me. Also, a single Llanowar Elves was enough to shut down my strategy. This didn’t bode well for the deck. Ramp is very popular in my current group of players.
Round two, I was paired against a Blue, Black, and White control deck. I won this round in record time. They key card in this match-up was Winter Orb. I drew and played it both games. Ankh of Mishra paired with it was quite nasty! I relearned that generally good cards can just win the game on their own. I didn’t play the namesake spell of my deck the entire time. My opponent and I played two more games to see if there would be any change. Cursed Scroll went the distance, and Winter Orb continued to shine.
Round three, I am paired up against Red Aggro. This match-up was nearly a coinflip, but I feel my opponent was slightly favored. We were both aggro decks, but Red is just better at it. Red’s removal is cheaper and more efficient. Red aggro decks can run with fewer resources. Red can burn me away while I’m lowering both of our life totals at the same time. Smallpox was a worse Diabolic Edict in this round. We each won a game, and then we ran out of time to play more.
I found that the deck ran fine, without the namesake card. Most of my wins were on the backs of cards that were already time-tested. Most of my losses were to generally more powerful cards. Pox is trying to play a slightly unfair game, but cube is all-out busted, power-wise. Pox just isn’t able to keep up. Too many cards trump your entire deck all on their own. Cloudgoat Ranger and Deranged Hermit trade with all your creatures and blank your Pox and edict effects. Kodama’s Reach and Mind Stone bring you back from losing mana. Even Divination, a non-cube card, would just destroy what this deck is trying to do.
Having single cards trump your entire deck is an ongoing issue with playing Black in the cube. In one round, I was sitting with two, dead removal spells in my hand, because I couldn’t hit non-black creatures with them. There are just too many instances of Black’s cards getting zonked for no reason. I took out many of the protection from black creatures from my own cube in an effort to combat this injustice. Black is already handicapped. Dropping a Phantom Centaur or Paladin en-Vec against them makes it even worse.
I think the originator of this archetype let the results of the other cards around Pox determine that the card was good enough for cube. The deck needs many of Black’s first picks to win. It needs powerful artifacts to win. Really, it just needs to go away. It was a fine experiment, but it’s time to try something else. Wizards needs to print more cards to make Black viable, and all we can do is wait.
‘Til next time,
DJ
cuberdj@gmail.com
All images owned by Wizards of the Coast/Hasbro and its affiliates.
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