#FOOTLIGHT FIEND DEATHTOUCH FREE#

It is nice when you can hedge somewhat, a card like a Bone Shredder is a poor removal spell and a low powered card but it is an extra body and a removal spell for relatively cheap and as such supports your theme pretty well. I suspect much more than eight non-land, non-engine cards would be a problem but I have yet to push those limits properly and am more confident in the minimum requirements than I am with the maximum. Saying you want at least 10% disruption was a bit of a cop out as you can't afford too much either. This list is not at all short on options but it is very tight on space and has little room for luxuries. The only real difficulty is that being an engine deck you do weaken everything else with each card that isn't directly supporting the engine. It is no fun being completely cold to an opposing Kalitas or Olivia Voldaren nor a great gameplan when you are such a robust and reliable little deck when allowed to do your thing. You want at least 10% of your deck (so, at least four) as these kinds of potent disruptive interaction. Cards like Thoughsieze and Swords to Plowshares and Kolghan's Command are all just great cards and their value doesn't change all that much in this deck compared to the average value of such cards. I will focus little on this last group as the cards are well known. The archetype is comprised of three components to make it work and then a fourth group of interactive disruption so as to make it competitive. Running two game plans in the same deck because of huge overlap is a reasonable and in this case, effective thing to do in cube. It will still often win through attacking and indeed often use some cards with buff effects to exploit that potential. It also has a lot of chumps and lifegain and so is able to weather a pretty savage beat down too. It can also kill out of nowhere like a combo deck! The deck typically has a lot of reach and is able to win through most defenses. It can swarm and win quickly like an aggressive deck, it can control the pace of the game, grind out value and operate like a midrange or a control deck. It produces lots of creatures but rather than buff them and go face this deck will consume those creatures and gain advantages from triggers when they die, the things making them die and even triggers when they come into play. The 'Blood Artistry' archetype is a more dynamic kind of deck. They are a linear aggressive strategy that simply abuse the good scaling of the buff cards to empower them. Other token decks are linear, they make tokens and then buff them up and attack face, going wide to win the game. Right, housekeeping done, on with the article!īlood Artist or Aristocrat builds are an engine deck with a number of ways it can play out. If I find EDH content useful there is every chance my content will be of use to some EDH players. It is a good source of inspiration and info.

While I don't play EDH I do watch a fair amount of content on it due to how much overlap it does have with cube.

Hopefully this will extend the utility of article. As such I have tried to mention where cards have a wildly differing value from cube to EDH. It misses out some of the pricier things that are good in EDH but covers most, if not all of the core synergy cards. Due to the extent of cards I have looked at this breakdown is actually relevant for EDH play as well. Otherwise, until a new distinct top tier archetype evolves into the cube meta this is me done for this style of article simply due to it being completed as far as I can tell. If anyone has any suggestions of an archetype I have left out that they wish to see 'broken down' then by all means throw me a comment. This was the last of the archetype breakdown articles I had planned to do but being less clear cut than the others it took significantly longer to compose and get my head around! This should complete what I deem to be all the tier one archetype builds in unpowered cube drafts.

#FOOTLIGHT FIEND DEATHTOUCH FREE#

Feel free to point any out you spot for me to add in too. There is also a good chance I have missed the odd card that works well in these decks, ones I recall after publishing will be in the comments. I am also absolutely going to repeat myself a bunch over the course of this article so sorry about that too. Take the card ratings with a little more wiggle room than usual and please forgive any continuity style errors I have left in. As such it is a little less refined than usual and may well contain some sentiments that seem to conflict. This has made editing it and keeping track of contents a little harder than usual.

This has taken over two years to write and is my longest single article. This is such a vast body of work that it actually needs an introduction.

Footlight fiend deathtouch