Second Breakfast

This deck is an attempt to make a cube version of Stanislav Cifkas Pro Tour winning modern list. It is always really fun making cube versions of cool decks from other formats. As you can have one of any card in cube most things are viable, even the combos that need two copies of a card can still sometimes be done with clone style cards although this tends to make them very bad decks... Some decks are improved because of the wider pool of cards in the cube and some end up weaker due to insufficient redundancy. Often what happens is they are functional and cool but simply weaker versions of other cube archetypes. This list is in danger of that being the case with likely both Auriok Salvagers decks and storm decks being better. Even if you end up with a worse version of another deck it is well worth doing as you get to use a whole bunch of new cards that don't normally see cube play as well as having the challenge of copying a deck onto a different mould. Eggs has already been done in cube but not to great success, it fitted the bill of working fine and taking a decent number of games but just being a weaker way to win than other combo decks.


The last time I made a list before making the deck and playing with it was the infect deck which got horribly brutalised. I am sure when I do come to build this deck it will look a little different, perhaps other people will steal a few cards for their decks or will have something I need an answer to.When initially designing decks I find it best to try and make the deck do the thing it is trying to do as consistently and quickly as possible, then after some games or even just some goldfishing you get to see which cards are key, which are weak and where your plan might have some holes. With this information you are better set to be able to refine the list to be able to cope with the format, often the deck will become slower but this is worth the pay off for being far less fragile. This being the first attempt at this deck I suspect the deck will be very fragile and auto lose to a few cards with many more being unreasonably awkward to win around but goldfish pretty well.



27 Spells

Mox Opal
Mana Crypt
Lotus Bloom
Lotus Petal

Lion's Eye Diamond

Chromatic Sphere
Chromatic Star
Conjurers Bauble
Pyrite Spellbomb

Orim's Chant
Brainstorm
Preordain
Sensei's Divining Top

Gitaxian Probe
Skycloud Egg
Terrarion

Elsewhere Flask
Grapeshot
Reshape
Transmute Artifact

Ichor Wellspring
Helm of Awakening

Second Sunrise
Tinker

Faith's Reward

Open the Vaults

Greater Gargadon

13 Lands

Ghost Quarter
Tundra
Volcanic Island
Plataeu

Hallowed Fountain
Seat of the Synod
Ancient Den
Flooded Strand

Scalding Tarn
Arid Mesa
Plains
2 Islands

Other possible cards to think about putting in

Conch Horn!
Frantic Search
Thirst for Knowledge
Tangle Wire
Cyclonic Rift
Time Sieve
Archaeological Dig
Phyrexian Metalmorph
Trinket Mage
Pact of Negation
Memory Lapse
Auriok Salvagers...






The main problems this deck was going to face was a lack of redundancy of key cards, namely Conjurer's Bauble, Lotus Bloom, Faith's Reward and Second Sunrise. The other parts of the engine have some decent redundancy from the parts of the cube outside of modern. Tinker is comically worse than both Reshape and Transmute Artifact both of which have not had an airing in my cube before! Tinker is not much worse than the others however and means you have 3 copies in a 40 card deck rather than 4 is a 60 cards one compared to the modern listing. This gives you higher odds on finding them and in turn makes up a little for only having the one Lotus Bloom. Lotus Petal and Lion's Eye Diamond help out but are both a lot worse than the Bloom and so being able to tutor it up reliably is nice. Having access to Brainstorm effects also means you are not forced into an awkward long delay when you draw the Bloom on turn two and have to wait for it to suspend. Although you only get one of each of the good return everything cards Open the Vaults does still get the job done and also kind of allows you a second chance at going off if you wiff on your first attempt. Oddly it the having only one copy of the Bauble that scares me most with this deck as it means you can only ever put one thing back into your library per Second Sunrise etc. There is not much else that does this and has synergy with the deck and it is for this reason I stuck in two main deck win conditions, it probably doesn't need them but hopefully will make life easier.


Orim's Chant is just a direct upgrade on Silence and is the only interactive card in the deck as it stands, it should be pretty good in every match up and essential in some. Having one is still fragile but makes you vastly less so than having nothing and is the most marginal of consistency loss so a well worth while trade off. I could easily see this deck going up to around 3 interactive cards, be they disruption or answer cards, once refined. The Divining Top is better than most of the other blue card quality spells as it gives you artifact synergy and also allows you to go off more easily with Lion's Eye Diamond as it can save spells on top of your library. It is not an essential card but it fits neatly and hopefully makes up for there being fewer copies of important cards. Helm of Awakening may well be awful, it seems like it can ease going off quite effectively but is both dangerous to gift your opponent with and a lost card as well. It is one of the cards most likely to get culled but also feels like it is so powerful it should be tested. Greater Gargadon is another card that not only didn't feature in the modern list but is also in there to do something the modern list wasn't even bothering to do. The cube version has less cards that sac to fuel up the Sunrise etc and the Gargadon seems like the best sac outlet available. It is an awful threat and would likely be better in the deck if you could just perpetually sac off your stuff at will rather than get a big dork but it will blatantly win some games and be useful in others, if not optimal. It may well not be necessary, if so I would likely also cut the Ichor Wellspring and the Terrarion which is very bad in the deck as it cannot be used on the turn it comes into play and therefore fails to fuel the combo. It is certainly weaker than some of the suggested cards even with Tinker effects and Gargadon to sac it but keeps the deck quite pure so I can refine it more easily.


I feel like this deck is also playing it a little too safe on lands and could easily drop one or two, the Modern list had 17/60 which is just under 12/40 while I am running 13/40, in addition to this I have access to powerful zero mana artifacts that are comparable to lands and certainly mean you can get away with fewer. This deck doesn't even have as much ways to pitch excess lands as either similar cube decks or Cifka's modern list. The list of other possible cards I have suggested all offer something neat to the deck, whether that be answers, disruption, card quality and advantage, tutoring or just more ways of further powering up the combo. Phyrexian Metalmorph is the next best thing to a second Bauble and although it is comically bad comparatively it gets the job done and is highly versatile in addition to that. I haven't put it in the main deck as I don't know how bad only one Bauble is yet. When I finally build this I will post a reply with how it performed and what I would change. Hopefully it will be fun!


30/11/2012

There is rather too much to say to neatly put in a reply so I am just going to edit this post. The deck was hard work, I was misplaying and had obviously mis-built it as well. The list below is what I would play on another run however I am still not sold on a number of the cards. Divining Top felt like it should have been good but I never had the mana to really use it, having not played enough games to rule it out it could have just been circumstantial bad luck and is probably worth testing a little more however it felt like one of the more cuttable cards for the new spells I feel the deck needs. Also sent packing were Greater Gargadon and Ichor Wellspring which are nice when you get them in ideal circumstances but crippling the rest of the time. I had not realised how tight the deck is in regards to needing most of its cards to be fuel for the combo engine. I also cut the alternate win condition as it does nothing to power you up and only helps once you have gone off. You simply need a critical mass to be able to explode and go infinite which it turns out is having at least 4 manas worth of Lotus Bloom, Lotus Petal and Lion's Eye Diamond, a Second Sunrise, a Conjurer's Bauble and a Pyrite Spellbomb and no cards in your library. This is easy enough to set up once you start to go off, it is the going off with enough momentum that is hard. I also cut Helm of Awakening as it is a bit like Gargadon, good when good but ultimately too much gravy and not enough meet.

Cards that I nearly cut where the Lions Eye Diamond and the Terrarion which are both really limp substitutes for the single copies of Lotus Bloom and Chromatic Star I could run. This deck manages to negate the drawback on Lotus Bloom turning it into a all powerful Black Lotus, it cannot however easily get around the downside of the Lion's Eye Diamond. I kept drawing it when I wanted to draw more fuel cards and was unable to make use of it due to the important cards in hand I needed to keep. Prior to going off it is just dead weight and once you are going off you shouldn't need it. Even if you do it can still be a royal pain to use mid combo. Terrarion is also weak but the other way round, it aids you getting to the point of going off but then stops being useful. This is a far better weakness to have in this deck however as it is where I was finding it to be struggling most. Terrarion is also the ideal artifact to sac to the Tinker/Reshape effects going on and so with less cycling artifacts than I would like I am happy to play this sub par one which is still far better than something that doesn't sac, or doesn't draw a card. I think Kealidastone is the next best and at two two cast and five to activate after which it gives you awful colours of mana you get the picture.


27 Spells

Mox Opal
Mana Crypt
Lotus Bloom
Lotus Petal

Lion's Eye Diamond

Chromatic Sphere
Chromatic Star
Conjurers Bauble
Pyrite Spellbomb

Orim's Chant
Brainstorm
Preordain
Gitaxian Probe

Skycloud Egg
Terrarion
Mystical Tutor

Elsewhere Flask
Reshape
Transmute Artifact

Second Sunrise
Tinker
Timetwister
Frantic Search


Faith's Reward
Phyrexian Metalmorph

Open the Vaults
Repeal

13 Lands

Ghost Quarter
Tundra
Volcanic Island
Plataeu

Hallowed Fountain
Seat of the Synod
Ancient Den
Flooded Strand

Scalding Tarn
Arid Mesa
Plains
2 Islands


I ended up adding some cards to this list I didn't think I would be needing first time round. Repeal is my cover all out spell of choice, mostly because it can cycle for free if you have Mox Opal or even generate mana with Crypt. Having lost the alternate win condition in Grapeshot I have to play the Repeal as the deck can be beaten by so many different cards from Pithing Needle to Ankh of Mishra. I added Mystical Tutror to help you have the cards you need when you need them. You are often going off blind hoping to draw another Second Sunrise effect and you wiff if you don't usually into swift death. It works well with the cantrip artifacts and Lion's Eye Diamond. It is kind of like accepting defeat however, I thought the deck would be more consistent and with enough redundancy to do without it but I fear I am wrong. Frantic Search is just a great additional way to dig through your deck cheaply to find the cards you really want. You can comfortably afford the card disadvantage later on when you have an abundance of lands in hand and it lets you set up for Open the Vaults. I really wanted to add a Snapcaster Mage but I don't think this deck can stomach the extra mana costs of the Mage let alone the exiling of combo cards. The Snapcaster would help you carry on going off like the Mystical Tutor but can't quite fit in.

The two more interesting cards added are the Phyrexian Metalmorph and the Timetwister both of which serve a couple of roles. Timetwister allows you to recover if your opponent destroys you with a Cabal Therapy or something, or if you draw all your cheap artifacts and dump you hand but have no gas to use it with. It is also there to return your Sunrise etc all in one go as Bauble only ever does it once per cast, usually after a wiffed going off attempt. The Metalmorph is there to copy the Lotus Bloom and the Bauble as its extra cost over them is irrelevant when you are starting to recur things. This should make it a lot easier to do the things you need to be doing. It is not the worst card anyway being an answer to things on occasion or even a win condition in bizarre circumstances.

I was really impressed with how good Open the Vaults was in the deck, I thought it was going to be an awful Second Sunrise but it gave you so much freedom to put artifacts in the bin as you pleased that it added to the deck heavily and was one of the most useful cards. Brainstorm was another stand out card as it did so much with its putting things back into the library for Lion's Eye Diamond and for Lotus Bloom when you need to Tinker it out.