Using my CubeTutor change log as a guide, I'm going to reflect on the biggest changes 2016 brought to my cube. I'll close the article with the top card added from each of 2016's expansions.
January - Added painlands
After complaining about peasant mana-fixing for a long time, I decided to bite the bullet and add better lands - and with them break the peasant rarity restriction - to my cube. While painlands are not the best rare lands available, I chose them because the power level 'feels' enough like peasant. Arbitrary, I know.
At the time, I wrote "If the change is minimal, I'll revert to the uncommon lands. If it's huge, I'll keep them for a while." Apparently, I've been playing with them for almost a year now, and I still like having them. That said, the addition of the painlands has had less impact than I thought it would. Yes, mana is better. I especially wanted to make manafixing better for aggro, but painlands also makes greedy control decks faster. I think I will actually change back to the uncommon lands for a while to see if I will miss the painlands.
January - Double strike/pants and +1/+1 counters overlap
Both archetypes have been in my cube before, and have been a favorite in my playgroup but narrow. A year ago something clicked when I realized that the 2 archetypes play well with each other, making them less narrow to support.
January - Tried storm again
Against better judgment, I tried supporting storm again in my cube. The archetype has always been a fan favorite in rare cubes, after all.
According to my change log I changed back on March 9th, but I think that I made the actual change earlier. Like, after 1 cube session.
Reminder to myself: don't try again unless something ridiculous comes along.
April - Tribal synergies
When Shadows over Innistrad came out, and with it 2 actual Vampire 'lords', I started experimenting with tribal in my cube. Tribes are a huge part of Magic's history, casual and competitive, and one of the things lacking from my cube. Peasant highlander is not an easy place to support tribal.
After Vampires (black), Goblins followed (black/red). We did have a lot of fun with both, but during the year most of the tribes that I went deeper into were reduced, simply because the pay-off was not big enough to warrant going deep.
However, smaller tribal synergies have become something I keep looking out for. Small support for tribes has been one of the most eye-opening experiences I've had with my cube the last year. Having cards that care about creature types adds a lot of depth to the draft. Suddenly, cards gain or lose value based on something that's not the actual game text.
May - Enchantress
Finally Wizards of the Coast decided to give me something I've wanted for a long long time: a peasant legal Enchantress. Instantly, I made a 50-card change to my cube to incorporate one of my favorite archetypes of all time.
I must say, for people wanting to go the distance and having the space to dedicate to it, the archetype has been a blast. Like with Tribal, it gives the drafters a card type to care about that's not 'creature' or 'spell'. With a Mesa Enchantress in my deck, I will be drafting Journey of Nowhere over Swords to Plowshares, whereas that would otherwise never be the case.
Sure, my cube's bigger than most so I have more room to experiment without having to remove too many proven cards, I have a double strike/pants archetype that also wants some auras, etc etc. But, running more enchantments is easier than you might think. Removal is not hard to find in enchantment form, for example, and you can just cube Fertile Ground over Rampant Growth.
June - Removed +1/+1 counters again
While the archetype was fun, it just wasn't there yet. I wanted it to be, but it kept falling just short of good enough.
September - MADNESS!
Like with storm, I decided to go against rational thought to see for myself if the archetype was worth pursuing. I was looking for an archetype to overlap green, blue and red and this was the best thing I could come up with.
Turns out, it was about as good as we all thought it would be. Not very. It required too many pieces, at exactly the right amounts in decks, at exactly the right moment in games, to be better than most general decks on those colors. Madness' timing can make for awkward and suboptimal plays at times.
I removed all the madness cards from my cube, but I did keep all the red discard outlets and most blue/green/red cards that do something from/with the graveyard. As a result, Red/X graveyard decks (along with B/R Reanimate) have become a thing and are surprisingly good.
Oktober - The return of +1/+1 counters, with a vengeance
Kaladesh came out, and with it a couple of more cards with +1/+1 counters. Apparently, these cards where exactly the thing to push the +1/+1 counter archetype into playable/good range. I'm stoked for the next set, as the archetype can only get better (maybe even bleed into blue and black this time around).
Oktober - Big red
Red is my favorite color. It's also the color I've been having most trouble with in my cube over the last couple of years.
It has had 2 big identities, almost from the inception of my cube: aggro/burn and spells matter. While both are great decks, red has been falling short when compared to other colors. It's not that red is seeing less play, not at all! Red's burn makes it a perfect supplement in multiple decks, and the number 1 aggressive color. But with the move to more different decks, fringe archetypes and overlapping synergies, the other colors just feel a lot deeper and versatile.
2016 has seen more than one change to red where I changed 15+ cards at a time. All the above archetypes? Red had something to with them at one point or another. With +1/+1 counters and an increasing focus on graveyard support, I felt I was getting there with red.
Coincidentally, we have been having fun with multiple control decks lately but they were usually of the board-control pillow-fort-y type. I wanted something like the classic U/W decks with Wrath of God. Or, even better, R/X WILDFIRE! Control decks with big splashy finishers like Cruel Ultimatum.
Flame Wave and Inferno got added to the cube, and while we didn't have a lot of chances to cube in the last months of the year, initial tests are positive. Slamming down Flame Wave feels great.
Top cards from sets released in 2016
These are not necessarily the best cards in a vacuum, but my personal picks for most awesome for my cube.
Oath of the Gatewatch (Jan): Relief Captain
Shadows over Innistrad (Apr): Vessel of Nascency
Eternal Masters (Jun): Mesa Enchantress
Eldritch Moon (Jul): Curious Homunculus
Kaladesh (Sep): Armorcraft Judge
Conspiracy (Aug): ManaplasmCommander 2016 (Nov): Ash Barrens
Conclusion
2016 was a pretty sweet year for my peasant cube. I've been moving into the archetype direction for a longer while, but 2016 felt like it started to show. The cube is in a great spot, with an enormous amount of playable archetypes, build-arounds and weird cards.
I really hope that 2017 can continue the trend af releasing awesome new cards and downgrading sweet older cards that give me and other peasant cubers more options than just power level.
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