Archetype overview

You have an archetype-driven cube, right? Well, what archetypes can I draft then?

Glad you asked!

This is going to be an overview of the archetypes that are supported in my cube today (Februari 10th, 2018). I'll try and update this post when necessary, putting obsolete archetype at the bottom in the future.
If you can click on the archetype's name, I wrote a more detailed post about it. Links to example decks go to decks drafted on my CubeTutor page. Some of the decks may have cards in it that are cut,  but still work well as example.

Let's get into it.

Before we start:
- Every color has enough support to be part of a generic 'goodstuff' deck of different speeds. This, in turn, means that you can draft aggro, midrange or control decks in every color combination.
- We try to have at least three different distinct archetypes/flavors available per color combination (in addition to, or overlapping, the goodstuff decks). Wherever possible, every guild has an aggro or tempo deck, a control deck and an 'other' deck. 'Other' decks can be midrange, combo or something else that doesn't really fall into the other two speeds.
- Archetypes are supported enough that you should be able to draft a 2-color version of it. While it's not strange to splash for a couple of strong cards, if an archetype is only viable if you have 3+ colors in your deck, it's out.
- We do try to overlap archetypes so you are able to switch colors or focus in-draft, even if you are building around a certain (non-gold) card. Overlap can be between guilds (like enchantress or +1/+1 counters) or in-guild (Golgari has a plethora of different graveyard options).
- Generally, if you see something in the cube, you can expect there's support for it.

Azorius (white/blue)

Flyers (aggro/tempo) - example deck

Enchantment "prison" (control)

Heroic/double strike pants (other) - example deck

Dimir (blue/black)

U/B Mill (Psychic Spiral and/or other) (control/combo)

Graveyard value control Psychatog/Delve (control) - example deck

Reanimate (control/combo) - example deck

'Classic' bounce/discard (tempo) - example deck

Rakdos (black/red)

Discard (aggro/tempo) - example deck

Aristocrats/sacrfice (midrange/combo) - example deck, example splashing white

Reanimate (aggro/combo) - example deck

Gruul (red/green)

+1/+1 Counters/Warriors (aggro) - example deck

Pump aggro Berserk/Temur Battle Rage (aggro/combo) - example deck

Fires of Yavimaya (aggro/midrange) - example deck

Threshold/flashback (aggro/combo) - example deck w/Young Pyromancer 

Selesnya (green/white)

Tokens (midrange)

Enchantress control (midrange/control) - example deck

+1/+1 Counter (midrange) - example deck

"Bogles"/Double strike (aggro/combo) - example deck

Orzhov (white/black)

Tokens (aggro)

Aristocrats/sacrifice (midrange/combo)

Enchantment matters (midrange/control) - example deck splashing Goblin Trenches

Discard (aggro/tempo) - example deck

Golgari (black/green)

Reanimate (combo) - example deck

Slow dredge Spider Spawning (midrange/control) - example deck splashing red

Fast dredge delve/Hermit (aggro/combo)

Worm Harvest (control/combo) - example deck

Enchantress (midrange)

Simic (green/blue)

"Bogles"/enchantment aggro (aggro/combo)

Threshold/flashback (aggro/midrange) - example deck

Miracle Gro-ish (control/combo) - example deck

TurboFog (control) - example deck

Izzet (blue/red)

Delver/spells aggro (tempo) - example deck, example without actual Delver

Spells control (control) - example deck

Mill combo (control/combo)

Boros (red/blue)

Tokens (aggro) - example deck

Double strike/pants (aggro/combo) - example deck, example with heroic/aura overlap

+1/+1 Counters (aggro) - example deck

Trenches/Land Tax (control) - example splashing blue

Archetype: Black/Red Reanimate

My cube is very archetype-centered. Most color combinations have two or more distinct archetypes or themes available to them (outside of plain aggro/midrange/control) that overlap with archetypes in other color combinations.

The plan is to eventually talk about all of the archetypes in my cube. Some are quite straightforward, while others might be a little more off-beat.

Today's archetype:

Black/Red Reanimate

Description

The Reanimate deck aims to put large impactful creatures in its graveyard to cheat into play through reanimation spells. Preferably, the creatures are either very hard to deal with or do something when they enter play. The red version of reanimate adds the element of 'haste' to the deck.
You can classify it as a tempo/combo deck. It's main gameplan uses more resources than it takes to answer them in the hope that when it comes together, it puts the game away in short notice.

Historic relevance
Most people know Reanimate historically as either a blue/black or mono black deck. See John Larkin's and Rob Dougherty's decks, respectively, from the top 8 of Pro Tour Houston 2002. Another historical Reanimate deck people might remember is the Angry Ghoul deck from old extended that pairs self-mill with reanimates.
Blue/black reanimate has seen a lot of play in Legacy, especially since Griselbrand got printed, but lately there has been an uprising of black/red reanimate as well.

Strengths
All the strengths of 'regular' blue/black or even green/black reanimate apply here. There's a reason Pelakka Wurm and Plated Crusher cost 7 mana, and it's not hard to see why it is good to put either of them into play on turn 2-4. Cheating of manacost is powerful, and a fast fatty usually means removal or bust for your opponent. Also, the fun thing about reanimate is that you can pick up the best creature finishers in the cube regardless of their color.
The big difference between red and non-red reanimate is that red reanimate is a lot more aggressive. Where blue 'only' gives you looting and card draw, red also gives you haste. This means your opponent's window just got smaller by a full turn. Imagine reanimating Ulamog's Crusher with Anger in your graveyard. That's usually game over on the spot if it happens fast enough.
Where it gets even more aggressive is that red has access to cards like Bloodrage Brawler and Burning-Fist Minotaur that create a lot of pressure by themselves while also helping you with your reanimate gameplan. Having a solid plan B is great, because:


Weaknesses
The biggest weakness of reanimate is that its main gameplan is a three part combo deck. To execute this consistently, you need enough a)reanimation, b)discard outlets and c)reanimate targets. While discard outlets aren't the hardest to find, there are only so much quality reanimates and targets in the cube. You really want at least 3 of each of the latter (and enough card draw/tutoring to find them).
This is both a weakness while drafting (it doesn't always come together) and in gameplay (it can be somewhat inconsistent).
Other weaknesses are:
- Spell-based disruption - discard and counterspells - targeting your reanimation.
- Depending on the fatties, a deck with a lot of removal can be very good against reanimate.
- VERY fast aggro can race. This also depends on the fatties (Pelakka Wurm is super hard to race), but you can pressure and swarm around reanimate. Also, the best reanimate spell, Reanimate, asks for a hefty life payment.
- Red/black do not have great fatties inside their colors, so you don't have the luxury of being able to hardcast your big creatures like Black/green reanimate does. You should have enough discard outlets that you always have use for them if they get stuck in your hand, but it does cut off a back-up plan.


Key cards
Reanimates: Reanimate, Animate Dead, Dance of the Dead, Exhume, Necromancy (and less efficient ones if you can fit them in)
Reanimate targets: Pelakka Wurm, Plated Crusher, Scaled Behemoth, Ulamog's Crusher (and the like), Trostani's Summoner, Jetting Glasskite, etc. Although, anything big is a good substitution. Cycling creatures work as well.
Filling your graveyard: Faithless Looting, Cathartic Reunion, Tormenting Voice, Insolent Neonate, Stinkweed Imp, Bloodrage Brawler, Heir of Falkenrath, Pale Rider of Trostad, Burning-Fist Minotaur, Lightning Axe.
Haste enablers: Anger, Lightning Greaves, Reckless Charge, Bloodlust Inciter

Overlap with other archetypes
The deck overlaps well with other graveyard based decks, like:
- blue/black reanimate
- green/black reanimate
- red/green graveyard midrange
- blue/red graveyard control
- Psychic Spiral

It also overlaps somewhat with some of the more top-heavy red/green Fires of Yavimaya decks.

Experience with the deck
One of our favorite decks to draft. I noticed the other day that I'm often looking for Anger in my last couple of packs.

Verdict
Powerful deck, and a lot of fun to pilot. Swinging in with a hasty fatty on turn 3 is exhilarating. While sometimes hard to deal with, its kept in check by being somewhat inconsistent. That said, I can see cubes owners not wanting the kind of swingy gameplay B/R Reanimate can bring.

Its existence in the cube creates depth by being an archetype that operates on a different axis than other decks. I love having enough decks that use the graveyard in general, but this deck both has a different speed than most decks and requires different play patterns with and against it.

If you support graveyard decks in general, and want the fat anyway because you have ramp in your cube, it's not super hard to support. However, some of the red cards are specific to red supporting the graveyard, which is not something every cube does. You also need to run enough reanimate spells to make the archetype not a complete trap to draft.

Like U/B Reanimate, it's a fragile deck that does not always come together. It's probably even more fragile because B/R has less card draw and worse (reverse) looting.

If Reanimate is something you like supporting and playing with, give this a spin. It has replaced Blue/Black Reanimate as our go-to 'traditional' all-inreanimate deck, with U/B taking the role of slightly-slower-but-more-consistent Reanimate.

Archetype: White/Blue (Prison) Control

My cube is very archetype-centered. Most color combinations have two or more distinct archetypes or themes available to them (outside of plain aggro/midrange/control) that overlap with archetypes in other color combinations.

The plan is to eventually talk about all of the archetypes in my cube. Some are quite straightforward, while others might be a little more off-beat.

Today's archetype:

White/Blue (Prison) Control

Description

White/Blue (Prison) Control is a lockdown control deck that uses cheap removal, card draw and counters to get through the early game and locks the game up with a combination of back-breaking permanents or spells. Finishing the game is typically done with a resilient creature, but is more or less arbitrary after the opponent's chances to win are basically taken away.
Control at its finest.

Historic relevance
Blue/white control is a classic archetype that's almost as old as Magic. The combination of white's board control and life gain and blue's stack control and card draw is apparently a very efficient one. Well known U/W control decks are The Deck, Millstone U/W control, Invasion-era U/W control, Caw-Go and many many more.

Strengths
The deck can answer basically anything depending on how you build it: removal for single large threats, Propaganda against swarms of creatures, Disenchants against problematic artifacts/enchantments, Counterspells against problematic spells, lifegain against burn. Blue and white go together in control decks like peanut butter and jelly.
Another (minor) strength is that the deck is able to blank whole categories of cards by not running a lot of creatures and Propaganda basically making creatures a bad draw if your opponent already has a couple out.

Weaknesses
The white/blue control deck is slow. It usually only plays a handful of cards that can finish the game, because so much space goes to answering the opponent's threats. This means that it's prone to getting outsped by super fast aggro. It also means that - even when the deck has control of the board - sometimes a single threat can be its downfall because the deck couldn't finish fast enough. And, because of it running so few threats of its own, decks filled with removal for that type of threat can be problematic as well if you don't have a pile of counterspells.
There's another weakness: the reliance on permanents to deal with swarms of creatures. Peasant has almost everything 'normal' Magic has for U/W control, except 1 very important thing. Traditionally, U/W control has made use of Wrath of God effects to trump creature decks. The closest thing Peasant has available to it in these colors are Propaganda and friends. While very efficient (and even better in some scenarios), this makes the deck vulnerable to enchantment removal.

Key cards
White: Ghostly Prison, Sphere of Safety, Story Circle, Swords to Plowshares (any flexible removal), Nyx-Fleece Ram, Timely Reinforcements, Faith's Fetters (any enchantment-based removal), Sentinel of the Eternal Watch, Enlightened Tutor
Blue: Propaganda, Jetting Glasskite, Mana Leak (and other cheap counterspells), Tidings, Compulsive Research (and other draw spells), Sphinx's Tutelage depending on the set-up of the deck
Gold: Wall of Denial
Colorless: Maze of Ith, Isochron Scepter, Pristine Talisman, Mind Stone, Darksteel Sentinel
Note: depending on if you include Isochron Scepter or Sphere of Safety, card evaluation for similar effects changes. For example, the choice between Path to Exile or Journey to Nowhere

Overlap with other archetypes
The deck overlaps well with other control decks, either the spell-based ones or the enchantment-based ones:
- white/green enchantress control
- blue/black control
- blue/red control
- this deck also frequently splashes for back breaking spells from other colors (especially when Scepter is involved)


Experience with the deck
White/blue control is basically a pile of all the good defensive white and blue spells put together. The thing that sets it apart is the lockdown nature of Sphere of Safety (essentially a build-around card). Apart from that, the deck needs a willingness of the drafter of committing to digging in and prioritizing getting control of the board. Running only a couple of win conditions is not something everyone is comfortable doing.

It's is a great deck, but not necessarily easy to get together. You need multiple things: early interaction, strong lockdown/control elements (not just 1-for-1 answers), finishers that are resilient enough that they don't just die to the first Doom Blade in your opponents hand AND powerful enough that they can kill someone on their own.
If either of those is not present, the deck can have a really hard time. If all you have is 1-for-1 removal to deal with creatures, you will get run over by aggro decks. If you have lockdown effects, but no single target removal, that single 4/4 will kill you. If your only threat is a 3/3 vanilla flyer, good luck winning.

It's very easy to support in your cube. I just went a little deeper than most by including Story Circle and Timely Reinforcements, for example. The hard part of supporting this deck is in support of the decks around it. Prison/control decks like these can be so good against aggro and midrange (aka the lion's share of decks in peasant cube) that it can feel a little stifling to them.

The weird thing is that - although enchantments are in a way easier to answer than the classic Wrath of Gods - players get more frustrated by not being able to attack with their whole team because of a Propaganda than by having the same team destroyed in one fell swoop. Be aware of this if you want to have this deck in your cube. Personally, I don't have a problem with cards like Propaganda, but you do have to make sure that decks have a way to not insta-lose to it. Be it enchantment removal, reach, discard, etc. (also: players should run enough mana sources in aggro decks).


Verdict

I love having this deck in my cube. It's a staple historic archetype for Magic, it's very good (rewards a player for moving in) and has a very distinct feel to it by not being a general midrange good-stuff or aggro deck.

Having said that, I do recognize that a cube must be able to handle having the deck available. And, even if a format can, people might not enjoy playing against the prison-y nature of it.

Archetype: Blue/Green Enchantment Aggro

My cube is very archetype-centered. Most color combinations have two or more distinct archetypes or themes available to them (outside of plain aggro/midrange/control) that overlap with archetypes in other color combinations.

The plan is to eventually talk about all of the archetypes in my cube. Some are quite straightforward, while others might be a little more off-beat.

Today's archetype:

Blue/Green Enchantment Aggro

Description

Blue/Green Enchantment Aggro combines hard-to-interact-with creatures with creature auras to create quite a fast clock. Because of the reliance on auras, the deck also makes very good use of the green enchantment matters cards.
It plays a little bit like a creature-based combo-aggro deck.

Historic relevance
The closest analogue to this deck is probably the green/white Bogles deck that (among others) Seth Manfield played in the 2015 World Championships.
Other than that, the deck plays a little bit like a slow version of blue/green poison.

Strengths
The main strength of the deck is that it can be hard to interact. Either because of unblockability, hexproof or shroud, or just because the creatures can get quite big for their cost.
The deck can be quite fast, and the pairing of green's acceleration with blue's permission means that opponents don't have a lot of time and room to deal with the threats.

Weaknesses
The deck has 2 big weaknesses:
First, it's essentially a combo deck. You need to find a creature to suit up, an enchantment, and preferably some additional way to protect your assets. There's a delicate balance to find in drafting and deck building, because you don't want to have/draw too many or too few of any of them. This also means that it's not easy to get all the parts while drafting and you may find yourself abandoning the deck mid-draft.
Second, auras have an inherent drawback: if the creature gets killed, you just 2-for-1'd yourself. Hexproof/shroud and countermagic do help, as does carddraw, but it still can be somewhat risky.

Key cards
Blue: Invisible Stalker, Looter il-Kor, Daze, Curiosity, Sigil of Sleep, Unstable Mutation, Zephid's Embrace
Green: Dreampod Druid, Silhana Ledgewalker, Aura Gnarlid, Yavimaya Enchantress, Rancor, Vessel of Nascency, Wild Growth (and similar), Ancestral Mask, Boar Umbra (and similar)
Gold: Jhessian Infiltrator

Overlap with other archetypes
The deck overlaps well with other enchantment-based or pump-based decks, like:
- white/green double strike/pants
- white/blue double strike/pants
- white/green enchantment matters
- black/green enchantment matters

Experience with the deck
Somehow this deck always seems to come out of left field to make short work of opponents.

Verdict
While the deck can be quite powerful and its nut draws very hard to interact with (and therefor annoying to play against) is mitigated by the fact that it doesn't come together that often (or easy) and sometimes loses to itself because the opponent manages to deal with the first suited up threat and the deck loses steam because of the card disadvantage or awkward draws.

It's not easy to support in your cube. Cards like Rancor, Looter il-Kor, Daze, cheap flyers, Wild Growth effects are great in any cube, but the cards that set this deck apart and give it its explosiveness and raw power are not mainstream. The archetypes it overlaps with aren't really mainstream either.

It feels powerful enough that it's exciting to see in action, but not overpoweringly so. Some of our most memorable games involve this deck, with sequences like turn 1 Wild Growth, turn 2 Dreampod Druid, turn 3 Zephid's Embrace.

We like the deck a lot, and have a lot of fun playing with and against it.