This guest post is written by Reuben Bresler. For those wishing to contribute to cubedrafting.com, contact eerwin at gmail dot com.

It’s a fairly well known and accepted line of thought in Magic that, in general, the larger the format gets the weaker the aggro strategies become. This is because the answers to specific problems become more varied and accessible, while the relative strength of the aggressive cards goes down accordingly. Put more simply, a control deck has more options than an aggro deck does with the same card pool because there will only be 1 or maybe 2 2-power creatures for 1 mana per block, but there will be way more options on ways to kill that creature as the block gets larger…

Soltari Priest

A good example of this is Time Spiral block constructed. At the beginning of that PTQ season, Kavu Justice, Gargadon Red and White Weenie were very strong because the control strategies weren’t as fleshed out yet and had some glaring holes that the aggressive decks could exploit. But as the format developed, the Dralnu and Pickles decks evolved. When Future Sight came out, the control decks became much stronger. Not so much because of any one card, but because the control decks gained so many more options while the aggro and midrange decks only gained a few more creatures and other aggressive cards.

The Cube is no different, except that it’s on an even larger scale.

This is a problem that is often encountered in larger cubes (for the sake of this argument, lets say 450+). In smaller Cubes, the aggro strategies are much stronger for many reasons. One of them is the higher likelihood of multiple fetch lands and dual lands, allowing for easy splashes. In larger cubes, the lower occurrence of those lands make playing something like Hammer of Bogardan in the same deck as Stromgald Crusader or even Loxodon Hierarch much more difficult. In addition, the higher likelihood of particularly strong creatures, such as Soltari Priest, and equipment, such as Umezawa’s Jitte, being in a pack is also a problem in larger cubes. Sure, you’ll be okay with Knight of the Holy Nimbus, but you’d much rather have Silver Knight most of the time. This is in sharp contrast to the control strategies losing very little. Often, you’ll be just as happy to get Dismiss instead of Cryptic Command, Repeal instead of Repulse, or Compulsive Research instead of Thirst for Knowledge.

The redundancy of blue is the biggest problem here. This is mostly due to the fact that there isn’t a second archetype of blue cards in the Cube. White has aggressive weenies, like Elite Vanguard, but it also has control cards like Rout and Return to Dust for control decks. Black has many subthemes, from aggro (Carnophage, Profane Command) to ‘swamps matter’ (Mind Sludge, Nantuko Shade) to control (Damnation, Disfigure) and reanimation (Entomb, Dread Return). Red has a lot of burn and aggro guys to be sure, but it also has the L.D./control deck possibility. Green has weenies and fatties alike, plus pump spells and controllish cards, which don’t work well (Pouncing Jaguar + Primal Command?) together but enable different archetypes.

Blue does three things in the Cube: Draw cards, counter spells and take things. And it does all of those things very well.

Put it another way: If you could pick any one white card as the overall best card from the Cube, which would it be? Would it be Armageddon? Isamaru, Hound of Konda? Spectral Procession? Wrath of God? There’s discussion there, as well there should be, because white isn’t linear. There are may different possibilities. If Akroma’s Vengeance is in your third pack, you may not take it even though you are mono-white because you’re deck isn’t in the control vein. Similarly, if you’re in red you might not take Pyroclasm because you don’t want to kill your own Blood Knight or Magus of the Scroll.

This means that some things that you undervalue might not make it back around the table and vice versa, because while Banefire is a stronger card in your deck than Earthquake it might not be in someone else’s deck at the table.

Collective Restraint

Blue spells don’t have that issue. If you could pick any one blue card as the overall best, which would it be? The second best? I would wager that, if you had to, you could rank the blue cards in the Cube top to bottom and you would have very little argument from anyone. Every blue deck can use every blue card with rare exception (the only ones I can think of are Collective Restraint, Mistblade Shinobi and Ninja of the Deep Hours). This hierarchy makes blue very powerful because you can say to yourself, “well, there are 3 blue cards left so I will most likely get back this one,” and be able to plan accordingly.

How to solve this problem?

Introduce what the other colors already have: a different strategy.

Now, I know you aren’t going to want to cut what appear to be good blue cards, like Think Twice or Complicate, with ‘trash’ like 3/1 fliers for 3, but honestly it will make your Cube healthier and more fun to play.

Now let’s say you cut 7-10 of the blue cards, let’s say 2-3 each counterspells, draw and taking things, and one of the big blue fatties. Then add that many aggressive blue creatures (in addition to the Vendilion Clique, Serendib Efreet, etc., that are already in there).

For your consideration, I present what I think to be the best 10 blue aggressive creatures for the Cube.

Aquamoeba

Chisei, Heart of Oceans

Chronozoa

Cloud Spirit

Rishidan Airship

Sea Drake

Skyshroud Condor

Serendib Djinn

Skyshroud Condor

Vexing Sphinx

Wake Thrasher

In addition to (or instead of) these, you could add in the blue guys that make drafting artifacts better (Esperzoa, Master of Etherium) or add pingers (Fledgling Mawcor, Squ’ata Firewalker). Maybe try Merfolk (Merrow Reejerey, Silvergill Adept) or Faeries (Spellstutter Sprite, Sprite Noble). You could even go in a completely different direction and, instead of adding a blue aggro deck to the Cube, instead add pieces to a combo deck (Turnabout, Brain Freeze).

The fact that adding another archetype to blue helps other cards get better is another bonus. All of the equipment receive higher values when the possibility of an early Sea Drake carrying a Sword of Light and Shadow is added to the mix. If you go the tribal route, you already have Mutavault and Mirror Entity.

The point here is simple: everyone knows that blue is historically the best color in Magic and it got that way by drawing cards, countering spells and taking other people’s stuff and most certainly not by getting into the red zone as soon as possible, but add a little spice to your life. Then next time you open up your third pack and you’ll actually have a choice to make between ‘just another counter spell’ and… Cloud Spirit?

Reuben Bresler

Special thanks to Reuben for submitting this article. Remember you can submit your own cube articles by contacting me via eerwin (at) gmail (dot) com.