Important info
Restrictions: Semi-bar, reasonable budget, desert
Size: 432 cards (3x18 with 8 players sees every card)
Goals
Necropolis is my semi bar desert cube. My main goals for the cube are graveyard oriented strategies while not falling too far down the rabbit hole of a synergy-focused cube. You should still be able to play along the vectors of just curving out, or just trying to interact with what your opponent is doing.
Cards shouldn't be too hard to parse, most do 1 to maybe 2 things and are dependent on further context from the cards surrounding them. Example: Your Ardent Elementalist is dependent on the cards you draft to go with it, but fundamentally is a regrowth effect for a spells deck.
Interaction should not be "too cute". A removal spell should not turn off because you didn't hit your self mill stuff in most cases. Some removal will be dependent on other inputs but the overall feel should be that interaction can get better when you take the effort but should not require you to do something to be reasonable. This means I've cut a lot of things that feel like they should be here in favor of very boring but efficient options.
Philosophy
Semi-bar cube is a weird term. Currently what that means is a few breaks from the usual bar cube mentality. My playgroup shuffles like demons at times hence I sleeve my cube, I think that's not gonna upset too many folks. I also have 1 token here, it's a 2/2 zombie. While this does mean I carry extra stuff with this cube, ANY object that can represent being tapped works for representing a zombie. I've also included ONE type of counter, Finality counters. The logic here was that we have a pretty clear shorthand for this style of effect from the Amonkhet days of pulling the card out of the sleeve a bit to indicate the embalm/eternalized token when you didn't have one on hand.
One token type has been a huge boon, the creatures they make aren't huge, but they are impactful. The hits of stuff like Rise from the Tides enabling a huge army in a can effect for the self mill/spells deck is nice, being able to have payoffs for discard like Dying to Serve likewise is nice. There's only 10 cards that make the tokens so they're not super heavy, but it's a nice way to have some effects that just don't have corollary versions that Manifest cards, the usual solution for bar cubes.
The finality counter decision started from realizing that Heartless Act is just a banger in a cube that doesn't have counters, then realizing the other non-removal side has an interesting interaction with finality counters. I'm still testing this out but the general idea is one that I think holds water and gives some niche interactions that I think are cool.
Things I've been contemplating
I still don't have a firm opinion on how many lands I want to be in here. I've never seen someone fully build a non-playable deck to date, but I have definitely seen folks run some SUSPECT manabases. By that same note, those suspect manabases have sometimes gone 3-0 with little resistance, so there is something to be said for just prioritizing low pip cards during the draft.
Cubes I consider "Upstream" of this one
I think it's really important to have a collection of cubes for your cubes that serve as inspiration. Sometimes that's not possible but here there's a bunch of stuff upstream that I really feel the cube is better off for.
- Necropolis - Wait what? Yeah, this one started off as a clone of Ahnkili's cube list, we actually wound up meeting in person by sheer coincidence at this year's Boston Cube Party.
- Penrose - I may not agree 100% with some of the decisions on display in Penrose (goblin bombardment and hogaak), I think the general idea is playing in a similar sphere as what I'm doing here.
If you know of other cubes in this sphere (or at least one of the spheres), let me know via email below!
You can reach me by email! omniczech@tuta.com