Severance Belcher

Continuing with my renaissance of combo in the cube I decided to build an old classic in Severance Belcher. Historically I have not had much joy with this combo in the cube as, like Erratic Explosion, it tends not to kill people when you go off. This is because in a 40 card deck you have run your library too low on cards to deal enough damage by the time your Belcher is on-line. Belcher has the advantage over Erratic Explosion in that you get to do it again once you untap it and have mana but does cost a great deal more to cast and use. To tackle the problem of having too few cards once I was able to use a Belcher for the kill I decided to splash red for Mountains. This would allow me to leave a single Mountain in the deck after casting Mana Severance which gives you a good chance to kill in one hit when you have less than twenty cards left in library. I did get rather over excited with this plan and added things Like Sleight of Hand to live the dream and put my single Mountain on the very bottom. Needless to say this didn't happen and I shouldn't have played the weak spells.


Typically the deck is blue black so as to utilize tutors and targetted discard from black. This makes the deck far more robust as the targetted discard in black is one of the cheapest and most effective ways to deal with problems and disrupt in combo and redundancy in tutors is great. Yawgmoth's Will also helps to recover if they should deal with the Belcher which blue can only do via a Timetwister effect. Having seen the benefits of having access to mountains in the deck I would not do it again without them but it would be pretty easy to incorporate black with that as well. This is basically a mono blue build of the deck as going much deeper into red doesn't offer very much and starts to really harm the mana base. I felt I could get away with so few lands given the high number of one drop cantrips and the single colour requirement. I would likely have to run an extra land or two if I was going to go UBr or UR rather than Ur.


28 Spells

Chrome Mox
Mox Opal
Mana Crypt

Goblin Welder
Chromatic Star
Mana Vault
Sensei's Divining Top

Ponder
Preordain
Brainstorm
Mystical Tutor
Sleight of Hand

Spellskite
Sapphire Medallion
Snapcaster Mage
Mana Severance

Arcane Denial
Remand
Into the Roil
Fire / Ice

See Beyond
Impulse

Tinker
Timetwister
Frantic Search

Goblin Charbelcher
Tezzeret the Seeker
Thoughtcast

12 Land

6 Islands
Ancient Tomb
City of Traitors
Seat of the Synod
Steam Vents
Scalding Tarn
Volcanic Island

Other considered cards:

Voltaic Key
Grim Monolith
Trinket Mage
Elixir of Immortality
Faithless Looting
Great Furnace

I ended up playing a few luxury cards I didn't need. Goblin Welder was the biggest of these which I was using as insurance for Belcher getting killed rather than a way to cheat in a faster Belcher. This would be possible with a Frantic Search but certainly not an aim of the deck, if your Welder dies while your Belcher is in the bin it is a real pain and mostly not worth the risk. The worst thing about the Welder was that I always wanted to Mox him but never wanted a red mox. With a slightly heavier red base (including Faithless Looting) and artifact package (such as Grim Monolith and something like Tangle Wire) the welder might become good enough again but not in my build. I already mentioned my optimistic error with Sleight of Hand which was the worst card in the deck even if offering a Mox that taps for blue. It is a long way worse than all the other cantrip cards in the deck and that really showed. I had slightly too many of those effects as well given the amount of blue mana I could quickly produce. Thoughtcast was the last card I consider a real luxury and should have been cut along with the Sleight so as to give the right balance of blue mana to cantrip effects. When it is good the Thoughtcast is great but in your one Island hands it is a dead draw and forces you  to mulligan rather than keep as a Ponder would. The Sapphire Medallion was a little bit of a luxury and would have been a Talisman if I was UB or there was an UR one available. It turned out to be pretty good and morphed my build a little to include more 1U spells over just U. Tezzeret may look a little like a luxury but is good in the deck acting as a late game Voltaic Key, an expensive Tinker or an alternate win condition.

In those three slots I would definitely add a Voltaic Key as it ramps mana, adds to metal craft, allows you to turn colourless into blue mana and even to get two shots off with the Belcher in one turn. After the Key I still don't know what I would add exactly, Key makes the Grim Monolith and even Trinket Mage more appealing (a few dorks a really nice to have as speed bumps, Sea Gate Oracle would have been better than Sleight of Hand on that basis too). Once you have Key and Monolith in the list the Welder starts to look really good again which makes you want to put in the Faithless Looting and Great Furnace in along with the Welder and so I carry on like this in circles.

The disruption I played in the absence of black included Remand, Arcane Denial, Into the Roil and Spellskite which is light but gives a nice spread. They are all quite wide application and offer you more cards or good insurance. The Spellskite in particular is a fantastic card in most combo decks as it holds off early pressure quite well and later protects many combo pieces. Also helping out with things to Tinker, Welder or that need metalcraft.


This is still a tricky deck to play as most combo decks are but compared to many other cube combo offerings Severance Belcher is one of the simpler and more robust ones that you can build. Not needing to use creatures as part of your combo is one of the best ways to avoid the worst disruption in the cube, a good rule is if you can't beat Swords to Plowshares / Path to Exile or a Lightening Bolt without great effort then your combo is too fragile. Although not among the most broken combos in the cube it is in the top tier along with them and uses no banned cards or much at all from the B cube. Goblin Charbelcher is not unusable outside of combo decks too so it is a worthy combo if any to make an option in any cube. It is also the first of the recent combo decks I have built that I managed to win all my games with, even despite some horrible misplays.

No land Belcher is an alternate way to try and use the Charbelcher to kill people instead of trying to find a mana severance. These decks use things like Harrow, Nature's Lore and Farseek to pull the few (about 6 total) lands out of the deck and things like Lotus Petal and Elvish Spirit Guide to ensure you have the mana to cast those cards. It is a harder deck to build that the one using Severance and can be almost any mix of colours with green giving more options too. It makes up for this by being a little easier to play although unsurprisingly quite similar.

Four Player Rotisserie Draft

I have not done one of these for a long time as they are very time consuming and really draining on your mental reserves. For those not familiar with the rotisserie draft format it involves laying out (as best you can) the cube and then taking it in turns to pick a single card. The starting player takes one card and then the next person clockwise takes one of the remaining cards and so on until the last player is reached. The last person to pick a card takes two cards and along with the starting player is deemed to be on the "wheel" which is the best position to be in. Once the last player has picked two cards the direction reverses with everyone picking a single card again until the starting player is reached and they pick two as well and the direction carries on bouncing back and forth between the two wheels.

We decided to use the power as it is least unfair in this format, we also had the B and C cube on hand so basically if you could name a card that hadn't been picked you could put it in your deck. With only four players this did lead to slightly more hosers getting picked than normally would be the case. The other downside of only having 4 decks being built is that there is a good chance most of a colour wont get played, in this case it was red. At six or more players it gets tediously slow but much more interesting in terms of the competition. Six people is also great for a team draft which is probably the hardest thing you can do in magic. Obviously that is because I think rotisserie drafting cubes is the hardest solo magical endeavour you can undertake. There is so much information to take in and account for in your picks. You have to build complex and smooth decks in a linear manner and adapt to things changing your plans unexpectedly.

Below is a list of our picks. For the sake of anonymity and reference I have given the other players pseudonyms. "The Changeling" was to begin, I was to his right, followed by "Pieman" and finally "Magnum Force" was the second wheel. The overall pick order of the cards can be worked out by snaking down the list starting from left to right. I did try putting in some helpful arrows to show this but it looked horrible so if you care about the exact pick number of something I guess you will have to work it  out, sorry.

Pick	“The Changeling”	Me	“Pieman”	“Magnum Force”
1	Sol Ring	Time Walk	Ancestral Recall	Black Lotus
2	Mox Jet	Mox Emerald	Mox Sapphire	Umezawa's Jitte
3	Mox Ruby	Fastbond	Mox Pearl	Mana Crypt
4	Tolarian Academy	Time Spiral	Sensei's Divining Top	Skull Clamp
5	Mana Vault	Force of Will	Mana Drain	Stoneforge Mystic
6	Tinker	Eternal Witness	Jace, the Mind Sculptor	Mox Diamond
7	Strip Mine	Timetwister	Snapcaster Mage	Chrome Mox
8	Emrakul, the Eons Torn	Frantic Search	Brainstorm	Swords to Plowshares
9	Phyexian Matalmorph	Cryptic Command	Path to Exile	Wheel of Fortune
10	Metal Worker	Temporal Manipulation	Library of Alexandria	Land Tax
11	Balance	Fact or Fiction	Counterspell	Mox Opal
12	Mishra's Workshop	Grim Monolith	Elspeth, Knight Errant	Karakas
13	Wasteland	Ancestral Visions	Vendillion Clique	Kor Skyfisher
14	Ancient Tomb	Remand	Trinket Mage	Student of Warfare
15	Crucible of Worlds	Time Warp	Mana Leak	Winter Orb
16	Tezzeret the Seeker	Treachery	Mystical Tutor	Tanglewire
17	Karn Liberated	Bird of Paradise	Wrath of God	Thalia, Guardian of Threben
18	Myr Battlesphere	Cunning Wish	Austere Command	Phyrexian Revoker
19	Tumble Magnet	Gifts Ungiven	Disenchant	City of Traitors
20	Talisman of Dominance	Sakura-Tribe Elder	Force Spike	Yawmoth's Will
21	Spellskite	Capsize	Baneslayer Angel	Hex Parasite
22	Demonic Tutor	Life from the Loam	Arcane Denial	Scrubland
23	City of Brass	Regrowth	Tundra	Vindicate
24	Lodestone Golem	Nature's Lore	Flooded Strand	Marsh Flats
25	Everflowing Chalice	Mind's Desire	Mindbreak Trap	Godless Shrine
26	Wurmcoil Engine	Sunscape Familiar	Celestial Colonade	Dark Confidant
27	Mindslaver	Helm of Awakening	Adarkar Wastes	Isamru, Hounds of Konda
28	Talisman of Progress	Nature's Claim	Hallowed Fountain	Lingering Souls
29	Trinisphere	Exploration	Oblivion Ring	Armageddon
30	Batterskull	Harrow	Ponder	Hero of Bladehold
31	Tezzeret, Agent of Bolas	Noble Hierarch	Nevinyrral's Disk	Aether Vial
32	Duplicant	Garruk wildspeaker	Spell Pierce	Thoughtseize
33	Academy Ruins	Tropical Island	Pact of Negation	Sorin, Lord of Innistrad
34	Polluted Delta	Windswept Heath	Thirst for Knowledge	Inquisition of Kozilek
35	Underground Sea	Misty Rainforest	Seat of the Synod	Grand Abolisher
36	Watery Grave	Savannah	Gideon Jura	Ethersworn Cannonist
37	Azorious Signet	Breeding Pool	Mystic Gate	Ancient Den
38	All is Dust	Flooded Grove	Scalding Tarn	Flagstones of Trokair
39	Voltaic Key	Heartbeat of Spring	Preordain	Dark Ritual
40	Seal of Cleansing	Mirrari's Wake	Into the Roil	Duress
41	Revoke Existence	Palinchron	Ratchet Bomb	Spectral Lynx
42	Inkwell Leviathan	Stifle	Consecrated Sphinx	Cataclysm
43	Sphinx of the Steel Wind	Vapour Snag	Lat-Nam's Legacy	Mana Tithe
44	Palladium Myr	Azourious Chancery	Daze	Porcelain Legionnaire
45	Sun Titan	Lonely Sandbar	Day of Judgement	Revilark
46	Goblin Welder	Temple Garden	Counterbalance	Knight of the White Orchid
47	Volcanic Island	Beast Within	Negate	Orim's Chant
48	Lightening Greaves	Lotus Cobra	Mental Misstep	Abeyance
49	Bloodstained Mire	Horn of Greed	Teferi, Mage of Zalafir	Catastrophe
50	Burning Wish	Zuran Orb	Meddling Mage	Blinkmoth Nexus

Overall this looked pretty representative of how I would expect a powered cube rotisserie to play out. The most powerful cards were picked in roughly the right order with only a few slipping through to be come late pick ups. After the power comes a few cards to cement a core for the decks followed by trying to hoover up all the powerful things you might want that others also might want. As the powerful cards dry up people either move into picking their mana bases or taking the very narrow cards for their deck that others wouldn't likely take. The final stages tend to be the slowest ones where people only have a few picks left and are trying to plug the holes in their deck or get useful sideboard cards. There also tends to be a late panic to grab any leftover powerful cards too despite often not being needed.

This draft had a couple of curious picks, some things very late and others rather early. There was also a wide range of experience playing at the table and so given the difficulty of the format I was pretty impressed with the efforts. Here is a very brief list of a few of the notable cards that were picked either surprisingly late or early.

Late Picks:

Yawmoth's Will
Zuran Orb
Goblin Welder
Library of Alexandria
Mishra's Workshop
Elspeth, Knight Errant

Early Picks:

Kor Skyfisher
Student of Warfare
Sensei's Divining Top
Emrakul, the Eons Torn
Phyrexian Metalmorph
Myr Battlesphere
Temporal Manipulation

A few picks I thought were really inspired:

Thalia, Guardian of Threben
Austere Command
Snapcaster Mage
Ethersworn Canonist
Abeyance
Spellskite
Blinkmoth Nexus

A few really dud picks:

Lotus Cobra
Teferi, Mage of Zalafhir
Sun Titan

Below are the final decks each player built. As you would expect with few players there were a lot of blue drafters so as to make sure the really powerful cards are split up most evenly. The three blue drafters then split into their different directions; combo, control and artifact based (blue can easily support an agro disruption blue deck as well as or instead of one of these). If we had another two players I would expect a BG rock style deck and an aggressive red deck to also get built. The blue decks tend to still see play as you strip away players as they have the most early power picks thus if just one or two people are left with free reign on blue they end up with stupidly good decks. I was really scared of The Changelings archetype and tried to over compensate with ways of beating him including a hate draft of his Grim Monolith. In the end this fixation with what I was facing lead me to construct quite a horrible deck that was midway between a storm deck and a turbo land deck.

My UGw "no idea how I win" Combo Deck

23 Spells

Zuran Orb
Mox Emerald
Exploration
Fastbond

Regrowth
Sunscape Familiar
Time Walk
Remand
Grim Monolith
Life from the Loam

Harrow
Eternal Witness
Horn of Greed
Heartbeat of Spring
Frantic Search
Timetwister
Cunning Wish
Capsize

Force of Will
Temporal Manipulation
Mind's Desire
Time Spiral
Palinchron

17 Land

2 Forest
6 Island
Savannah
Tropical Island
Temple Garden
Breeding Pool
Misty Rainforest
Windswept Heath
Lonely Sandbar
Flooded Grove
Azorious Chancery

I really didn't like my final build and realised I had made a few critical draft errors. Firstly I was reliant on too few spells to get me to high enough mana to start casting my end game things of which I also had too many. I really needed to have taken more one and two drop card quality and draw spells such as Sylvan Library, Brainstorm, Ponder, See Beyond etc. I could have had a much more consistent deck that did one thing well and if necessary boarded into a slightly different win mechanism. I also should have taken Mana Drain over Force of Will as the mana ramp would have been far more useful in going off and there were too many cards I really didn't want to exile to the Force. The early pick of Emrakul set me on edge for trying to win through Brain Freeze and the prominence of things that messed with your mana base sent me in a direction towards Life from the Loam but with no specific plan in mind. I frequently sided out Grim Monolith, Zuran Orb, Exploration and Harrow for more robust cards like Cryptic Command or Garruk depending on the match up.


Piemans UW Draw Go Control Deck

26 Spells

Mox Pearl
Mox Sapphire

Force Spike
Ponder
Preordain
Brainstorm

Sensei's Divining Top
Mystical Tutor
Path to Exile
Ancestral Recall

Daze
Disenchant
Mana Leak
Lat-Nam's Legacy

Arcane Denial
Counterspell
Mana Drain
Snapcaster Mage

Trinket Mage
Vendilion Clique
Oblivion Ring

Jace, the Mind Sculptor
Wrath of God
Nevinyrral's Disk

Gideon Jura
Baneslayer Angel

14 Land

Library of Alexandria
Flooded Strand
Tundra
Hallowed Fountain
Celestial Colonnade
Scalding Tarn
Mystic Gate
Adarkar Wastes
Seat of the Synod
2 Plains
3 Islands

I like this deck although I tend to play far less card filter effects, particularly the sorcery speed ones, and favour a higher land count. I would also have played the Austere Command over the Disk for sure. It was a touch threat light for a deck devoid of any way to reshuffle your graveyard back in or recur threats. This deck was always going to find the format the hardest as trying to control an aggressive creature disruption deck, a fast artifact mana deck and a storm style deck is a tall order. The deck did have good sideboard options, particularly against my deck.


The Changelings Bazaar of Craziness.dec

28 Spells

Mox Jet
Mox Ruby
Everflowing Chalice

Voltaic Key
Sol Ring
Goblin Welder
Mana Vault

Spellskite
Lightening Greaves
Azorious Signet
Talisman of Progress

Talisman of Dominance
Demonic Tutor
Balance
Burning Wish

Tinker
Metal Worker
Crucible of Worlds

Lodestone Golem
Phyrexian Metamorph
Tezzeret, Agent of Bolas

Tezzeret the Seeker
Batterskull
Duplicant
Wurmcoil Engine

Karn Liberated
Myr Battlesphere
Emrakul, the Eons Torn

12 Lands

Wasteland
Strip Mine
City of Brass
Ancient Tomb
Tolarian Academy
Academy Ruins
Mishra's Workshop
Polluted Delta
Bloodstain Mire
Underground Sea
Tropical Island
Watery Grave

This is sort of what you get when you draft as much of the powerful things as you can get. I am not a big fan of this deck, rather like mine it is trying to do too many things and as a result has too many holes. It shouldn't play either Balance or Emrakul, the mana is too weak for the former and the latter is optimistic and should be in the sideboard to deal with Brain Freeze only. A few threats should also be traded for some extra consistency, cards like Faithless Looting would be outstanding in this deck as would the simple Chromatic Star. A Memory Jar would have been a good pick up to offer some serious card draw to the deck which it presently lacks and an Upheaval would have been really at home in this deck and been great against all the match ups. An extra land or two would have been great too as it was muliganing lots. Despite me not liking the way in which the deck was polished off the core is pretty safe and does still offer the chance to make a lot of very early big threats and is still competitive as a result.


Magnums Force's Trusty Beatdown Deck

28 Spells

Mox Diamond
Crome Mox
Black Lotus
Mox Opal
Mana Crypt

Duress
Inquisition of Kozilek
Thoughtseize
Mana Tithe

Student of Warfare
Isamru, Hound of Konda
Hex Parasite
Skullclamp
Swords to Plowshares

Winter Orb
Umezawa's Jitte
Phyrexian Revoker
Dark Confidant

Stoneforge Mystic
Thalia, Guardian of Threben
Kor Shyfisher
Grand Abolisher

Lingering Souls
Tangle Wire
Yawgmoth's Will
Vindicate

Cataclysm
Armageddon

12 Lands

5 Plains
Karakas
Ancient Den
Flagstones of Trokair
Scrubland
Godless Shrine
Marsh Flats
Blinkmoth Nexus

I also like this deck a great deal. It was a good choice given the directions taken by the other players and had a great deal more options later in the draft than any other player had. It could have gone heavier black or splashed green or red instead as both were pretty untouched in areas this deck would be interested in. I would like to have seen a way to include Land Tax so as to be able to recover better from Armageddon and Cataclysm better but with only five basics and a really hard time with the black mana this probably isn't a viable option. The ratio of disruption to threats which is perhaps a little high, even given the match ups. The threats are all also very cheap and thus the fast mana can become somewhat useless. I would like to see either a more expensive equipment like Sword of Fire and Ice or even the Clamp so as to make use of the mana. An Elspeth would also have been ideal although a Bitterblossom or the Sorin would have worked fine given that Pieman picked up Elspeth. The Tangle Wire is the first disruption card I would bin, after that it is probably one of the discard spells but overall the list is pretty tight and so making these minor improvements is tricky.

The final results were;

Pieman 0-3
The Changeling 1-2
Me 2-1
Magnum Force 3-0

I cannot speak for all the games but Piemans results were not reflective of his performance in the draft. He would have beaten me if he had ever played against a deck like it before and his game against Magnum Force was incredibly close. He also had the most difficult task as a control deck against three very different strategies. The Changeling should also probably have beaten me but took too many muligans, he effectively beat himself too by telling me about Squall Line as a Cunning Wish target to win the game. Magnum Force destroyed me like he were gold fishing his deck. It was a good cube in which I predicted The Changeling to win after he picked Spellskite. The moral of the cube is that when three people are drafting broken blue power strategies beatdown with some appropriate disruption is a good route.

Draco "Top Deck" Explosion

After my Cad Bloom article I got to thinking about what the other most complicated decks in the cube are. My general conclusion is that anything with Sensei's Divining Top, Scroll Rack, Gifts Ungiven and other tutor spells tend to be the hardest, the more colours and the cheaper the spells the more taxing too. I haven't built this deck in a while but remember the cube version being one of the hardest decks I have played, it being based on an old extended deck which was also the hardest competitive deck I have ever played. Having played it now the Cad Bloom deck felt more taxing but this is a better deck very fun to play as well as being a meaty morsel to sink your mental teeth into.

For those interested about the extended version of the deck a list and article about that is here.




The cube version:

25 Spells

Chrome Mox
Mana Crypt

Sensei's Divining Top
Brainstorm
Enlightened Tutor
Mystical Tutor

Orim's Chant
Lightening Bolt
Path to Exile
Ponder
Delver of Secrets

Snapcaster Mage
Meddling Mage
Fire / Ice
Lightening Helix

Isochron Scepter
Scroll Rack
Lat-Nam's Legacy
Into the Roil
Spellskite

Erratic Explosion
Timetwister

Jace, the Mind Sculptor
Mystic Retrieval

Draco

15 Lands

Volcanic Island
Plateau
Tundra
Flooded Strand
Scalding Tarn
Hallowed Fountain
Steam Vents
Shivan Reef
Adarkar Wastes
Mystic Gate
Faerie Conclave
Lonely Sandbar
3x Island


I always get mana bases wrong  in the complex decks and should have played the third sac land and a Seat of the Synod instead of two Islands. The Lonely Sandbar was also perhaps a little greedy but didn't ever cause me trouble. The last time I built this deck I seem to remember playing Trinket Mage, Zuran Orb (plus Balance) and Engineered Explosives as part of his package. Not going for that in this build and playing against Pernicious Deed made me think twice about including artifact land but I think at least one to be able to tutor up is well worthy.

Draco Explosion may be built a number of ways, the most significant difference is swapping white for black as Vampiric Tutor and Imperial Seal are better than Enlightened Tutor. I guess you could also use green as the third colour. The problem with Draco Explosion is that it is a pretty terrible combo as it doesn't win you the game. As such I have never really spent much time being decks designed only to do that and always add another element to the deck. If they print a card with converted mana cost of 20 or more (or I put in unglued cards and have "Gleemax Explosion") then ~name of that card~ Explosion would be a viable combo deck with no other aims. A good way to build Explosion decks is to use Emrakul instead of Draco and play Show and Tell and Sneak Attack but in such builds explosion is very much a secondary aspect of the deck.




As for the inclusion of Isochron Scepter and Orim's Chant there is much to say. The two combos seem at total odds to each other, one trying to end the game instantly while the other tries to lock the opponent out and control the game. The reason this works is because you basically include no extra cards to incorporate the combo after the Scepter which has great synergy with a lot of your spells any way. Either of the combos alone is pretty fragile however making a deck that can cope with both is pretty tough. Orim's Chant is either a Duress or a really good counterspell if you wish to go off with Explosion and would be worth playing without the Scepter. Most of the time you use the Scepter Chant combo is to buy time to assemble the win via an Erratic Explosion a little like the use of Moments Peace in some combo decks but a lot more effective against all sorts of archetypes. Even if you do manage a hard lock with the Scepter Chant combo most of the time you will still be winning by using the other combo as the number of win conditions in the deck is very low and there is no way to make another Scepter to burn them out while locked down.



The burn and the creatures are all dual purpose in the deck. The burn spells buy time by controlling the early board when required or are used to deal the additional damage to kill someone beyond the 16 from exploding Draco at their face. For this reason I should have perhaps played either Vapour Snag or Burst Lightening over the Path to Exile which is the narrowest card in the deck. Meddling Mage and Spellskite are to protect the combos, the Skite is also great defensively and Meddling Mage can sneak in a few vital points of damage. Snapcaster is as outstanding in the deck as he is in most cube decks and offers your deck a great deal of extra longevity and utility and is even better than Meddling Mage for sneaking through damage. Delver of Secrets offers less utility to your deck but is so cheap and easy to get in damage with while also having the greatest total stats of all the dorks in the deck and being so easy to flip he seems to merit his slot. He is just about viable as a win condition if they are Scepter locked and is definitely the best non-burn way to get through the remaining damage needed to kill with Explosion.

All Moxen are great in this deck as your spells are cheap and you need a threshold of mana to go off in any way and so they do more than time walk you if made on turn one. Crypt served me well in the absence of other Moxen despite seeming to have terrible synergy with Scepter Chant. You do not need long to assemble what you need in this deck and will tend to win from the extra mana well before the life loss is an issue. Starting a Scepter lock two turns earlier tends to save more life than the Crypt will deal all game. Into the Roil is a nice cover all out spell which is necessary without things like Engineered Explosives and useful even if you do. Jace was rather a luxury that I felt I could support due to playing the Mana Crypt. Brainstorm is a key spell in the deck but at four mana the redundancy for it from Jace is not worth it alone. Being able to use Jace as a win condition, card advantage, a speed bump, removal and to be able to reduce the odds of them drawing the few cards you really despise like Disenchant or Zuran Orb together all make Jace a reasonable inclusion. He also makes many of your early game choices easier as he is one of the most obvious targets to imprint on Chrome Mox or reshuffle into your library. Timetwister and Mystic Retrieval both help make the deck more robust and increase its longevity. The Retrieval was the last card I put in and was pleasantly surprised by its effectiveness. I think it would be unplayable without the Crypt again but offers a lot more control than Twister and doesn't exile things as Sanpcaster does. Twister both recurs key cards you have used and refills your hand which can very quickly empty and is pretty essential in the deck. The rest of the deck is pretty self explanatory library manipulation which is good in any combo deck and essential in this one, the Scroll Rack and the Brainstorm in particular was they allow you to place Draco where you need him if drawn.

I considered playing with Counterbalance in the deck as most of the cards you use to manipulate your library are already in the deck. Without any other counter magic or an even distribution of converted mana costs it seemed rather optimistic that it would do all that much and just waste time in casting it and trying to get value from it. In a more controlly build of the deck, perhaps just without the Draco aspect, Counterbalance would work far better.

Cards like Draco and Erratic explosion are the most narrow of cards you could have in a cube however the two card combos do not pollute cubes all that much compared to incorporating a whole combo engine. To keep the draft cube formats interesting I like to have a few pairs of combo cards such as these and things like Illusions of Grandeur and Donate. Most of the time they are last picks and even when used end up in tier two decks but it does keep options open and allow for some good fun. I have played cubes where pretty much all you can make is combo decks and those end up with the silliest games and decks.

Present Cube List March '12

Gold

Figure of Destiny
Qusali Pridemage
Psychatog
Boggart Ram-Gang
Knight of the Reliquary
Geist of Saint Traft
Kitchen Finks
Edric, Spymaster of Trest
Shadowmage Infiltrator
Murderous Redcap
Mystic Snake
Bloodbraid Elf
Huntsmaster of the Fells / Ravager of the Fells

Fire / Ice
Terminate
Lightening Helix
Pernicious Deed
Recoil
Mealstrom Pulse
Vindicate
Sorin, Lord of Innistrad

Land

10x Original Dual Land
10x Sac Lands
10x Ravnica Bounce Lands
10x Shock Lands
10x Pain Lands
10x Lorwyn/Shadowmoor Filter Lands
5x Vivid Lands
6x Artifact Lands
5x Man Land Duals
5x Onslaught Cycling Lands

Wasteland
City of Traitors
Ancient Tomb
Mishra's Workshop
Mishra's Factory
Blinkmoth Nexus
Faerie Conclave
Treetop Village
Gaea's Cradle
Pendlehaven
Volrath's Stronghold
Lake of the Dead
Flagstones of Trokair
Kessig Wolf Run
Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
Grove of the Burnwillows
City of Brass
Teetering Peaks
Barbarian Ring

Artifacts

Mox Diamond
Mox Opal
Chrome Mox
Mana Crypt
Zuran Orb
Everflowing Chalice
Engineered Explosives

Mana Vault
Aether Vial
Chromatic Sphere
Chromatic Star
Voltaic Key
Terrarion
Sensei's Divining Top
Bonesplitter
Cursed Scroll
Skullclamp

Orzhov Signet
Dimir Signet
Izzet Signet
Azourius Signet
Talisman of Progress
Talisman of Unity
Talisman of Indulgence
Talisman of Dominance
Grim Monolith
Contagion Clasp
Winter Orb
Ratchet Bomb
Cranial Plating
Isochron Scepter
Scroll Rack

Crucible of Worlds
Tangle Wire
Loxodon Warhammer
Sword of Fire and Ice
Sword of Feast and Famine
Vedalken Shackles
Tumble Magnet

Nevinyrral's Disk
Smokestack
Khalni Gem

Guilded Lotus
Memory Jar
Mindslaver
Karn Liberated

Memnite
Ornithopter

Signal Pest
Hex Parasite
Arcbound Worker

Spellskite
Phyrexian Revoker
Arcbound Ravager
Myr Retriever 

Palladium Myr
Metalworker

Molten-Tail Masticore
Frogmite
Solemn Simulacrum

Duplicant
Triskelion
Wurmcoil Engine
Myr Enforcer
Myr Battle Sphere

White

Path to Exile
Swords to Plowshares
Land Tax
Mana Tithe
Faith's Shield

Disenchant
Balance
Honour the Pure
Crusade

Spectral Procession
Oblivion Ring
Lingering Souls

Wrath of God
Day of Judgement
Armageddon
Cataclysm
Elspeth, Knight-Errant

Gideon Jura
Austere Command

Student of Warfare
Mother of Runes
Isamru, Hound of Konda
Savannah Lions
Elite Vanguard
Champion of the Parish

Stoneforge Mystic
Kor Skyfisher
Ethersworn Canonist
Thalia, Guardian of Threben
Loyal Cathar
Grand Abolisher
Wall of Omens
Knight of the White Orchid

Blade Splicer
Fiend Hunter
Mentor of the Meek

Academy Rector
Hero of Bladehold
Ranger of Eos

Baneslayer Angel
Sun Titan
Mikaeus, the Lunarch
Elash Norn, Grand Cenobite

Blue

Spell Pierce
Force Spike
Mental Misstep
Spell Snare
Ancestral Vision
Gitaxian Probe
Vapour Snag
Brainstorm
Preordain
Ponder

Arcane Denial
Mana Drain
Daze
Memory Lapse
Negate
Mana Leak
Remand
Counterspell
Into the Roil
Think Twice
See Beyond
Lat-Nam's Legacy

Timetwister
Jace Beleren
Thirst for Knowledge
Tinker
Frantic Search
Capsize
Forbid

Cryptic Command
Opposition
Gifts Ungiven
Jace, the Mind Sculptor
Foil
Fact or Fiction
Mystic Retrieval

Temporal Manipulation
Time Warp
Tezzeret the Seeker
Gush
Thoughtcast
Force of Will
Treachery

Upheaval
Timespiral

Cursecatcher
Enclave Cryptologist
Delver of Secrets

Lighthouse Chronologist
Spellstutter Sprite
Voidmage Prodigy
Phantasmal Image
Waterfront Bouncer
Snapcaster Mage

Kira, Great Glass-Spinner
Stormbound Geist
Aether Adept
Trinket Mage
Master of Etherium
Vendilion Clique
Grand Architect
Sea Gate Oracle

Phyrexian Metamorph
Glen Elandra Archmage
Sower of Temptation

Meluko the Clouded Mirror
Consecrated Sphinx

Black

Disciple of the Vault
Carrion Feeder
Carnophage
Diregraf Ghoul
Vampire Lacerator 
Gravecrawler

Dark Confidant
Black Cat
Bloodghast
Vampire Hexmage

Priest of Gix
Phyrexian Rager 
Geralf's Messengers
Vampire Nighthawk
Hypnotic Spectre

Braids, Cabal Minion
Skinrender
Abyssal Persecutor

Bloodgift Demon
Shriekmaw
Grave Titan

Tragic Slip
Innocent Blood
Dark Ritual
Disfigure
Vampiric Tutor
Sarcomancy
Duress
Cabal Therapy
Thoughseize
Inquisition of Kozilek

Bad Moon
Demonic Tutor
Bitterblossom
Sinkhole
Hymn to Tourach
Smallpox
Doomblade
Go for the Throat

Necropotence
Recurring Nightmare
Yawgmoth's Will
Liliana of the Veil

Damnation
Nether Void

Living Death
Sorin Markov
Yawgmoth's Bargain
Mind Twist
Death Cloud

Red

Lightening Bolt
Chain Lightening
Burst Lightening
Seal of Fire
Lava Dart
Geistflame
Reckless Charge
Faithless Looting

Arc Trail
Incinerate
Searing Blaze
Punishing Fire

Slagstorm
Chaos Warp
Brimstone Volley
Sulphuric Vortex
Wheel of Fortune

Chandra, the Firebrand
Koth of the Hammer

Fireblast
Wildfire
Destructive Force
Devil's Play
Rolling Earthquake

Mogg Fanatic
Goblin Guide
Stormkirk Noble
Grim Lavamancer
Goblin Welder
Spikeshot Elder
Goblin Bushwhacker
Reckless Waif
Orcish Lumberjack

Ember Hauler
Kargan Dragonlord 
Torch Fiend
Keldon Marauders
Hellspark Elemental
Tin Street Hooligan

Squee, Goblin Nabob
Manic Vandal
Changra's Phoenix

Flametongue Kavu
Siege-Gang Commander
Inferno Titan
Rorix Bladewing

Green

Exploration
Nature's Claim
Rancor

Regrowth
Life from the Loam
Nature's Lore
Survival of the Fittest
Sylvan Library
Explore

Beast Within
Crushing Vines

Birthing Pod
Garruk Wildspeaker

Primal Command
Plow Under
Overrun
Green Sun's Zenith

Birds of Paradise
Noble Hierarch
Llanowar Elf
Fyndhorn Elf
Avacyn's Pilgrim
Elves of Deep Shadow
Jogora Treespeaker
Quirion Ranger
Llanowar Mentor
Wild Nacatl
Basking Rootwalla

Rofellos, Llanowar Emissary
Elvish Visionary
Fauna Shaman
Wall of Blossoms
Overgrown Battlement
Wall of Roots
Viridian Emissary
Sakura-Tribe Elder
Kavu Predator
Lotus Cobra
Tarmogoyf
Scavenging Ooze
Strangleroot Geist

Caller of the Claw
Ohran Viper
Viridian Shaman
Eternal Witness
Wood Elves

Oracle of Mul Daya
Obstinate Baloth
Thrun, the Last Troll
Vengevine
Master of the Wild Hunt

Deranged Hermit
Acidic Slime
Genesis
Primeval Titan
Chancellor of the Tangle 
Ghoul Tree