MTG Salvation

This one slipped under my nose, seems to be a really powerful threaten effect.
3 mana for threaten is a sideboardable constructed effect and just below cube standards.

The option to pay 6 mana for stealing 2! creatures, as an alternative mode seems very powerful to me.
My cube runs 2x Carrion feeder, 1x goblin bombardment, 1x blasting station, 1x greater gargadon and 1x falkenrath aristrocrat for sac effects.

Have act of agression as my only threaten effect in cube (splashability in monoblack with sac effects, and sideboardability in mono W puts it over the top)

Think this one is worth considering? What about for larger cubes?

This would have been the time to give red this effect at instant speed. How often are they going to make a rare threaten effect?

As a three mana spell, this is a worse Threaten, and few of us, if any, play that.

At six mana, I'm no longer playing an aggro deck.

At nine mana, you're better off with Insurrection.

The fact that it's modal helps, but it's hardly the sum of its parts. Were it instant speed, I might be interested.

I'm wondering how often the Strive will be relevant in decks that play Threaten effects vs the colorless mode you get from Act of Aggression or the extra damage from Mark of Mutiny, or the easier cost of Act of Treason or the trample damage from Traitorous Blood. I think it's in line with the existing effects of its kind. Or an effect like Grab the Reins if you want a modal effect of this ilk.

I think 6 mana is a very castable alternate cost in a red agro deck as a finisher.
There are many games where you won't be able to get to that mana, but many games where you can IMO and the difference between stealing 1 or 2 creatures is very large.

Threaten itself may be too underpowered in an average cube that the additional value of strive is not enough...

I've never seen grab the reins , card looks very sweet in my cube. Great suggestion!!
I love the idea of fling in my black agro decks. Now with Master of feasts, Abysall persecutor, bestowed herald of torment, super large carrion feeder.

4 vs 3 and 7 vs 6 is a large mana difference tho. Very tempted to test them all.


There are a lot of very strong red 4/5 drops, that I don't hate taking a mana crypt/vault/mox or 2 and putting it in my red deck and drafting a slightly higher curve. In these decks I put a higher priority on cards like devil's play, rakdos return, and these "modal/strive" cards would fit well with this philosophy.

When you don't draw your power you still get an ok card, but when you do, you get an extremly powerful one.

After Zealous Conscripts, I had hoped to see more Threatens that let you steal any permanent. Too bad.

Is it just me, or is it incredibly silly to cascade into this off a Bloodbraid Elf?

Do you get infinite Strive triggers? How cool.

I don't know. I can only assume that's what he was talking about, otherwise you're getting an arguably worse Zealous Conscripts, and it would be worse to cascade into this than something like Traitorous Blood. I assumed there was something I was missing.

I think you get infinite strive. This is worthy of further research.

Well if you do then the card is certainly more interesting!

I think that strive would be considered an additional cost, and when you cascade into a spell with an additional cost you still have to pay it (for example, if you cascade into fling you still need to sac a creature, if you cascade into a spell with kicker you can choose to pay the kicker but don't get it for free, etc.)

I know that it's worded differently than kicker, but I can't imagine they meant to let people get away with infinite strives just from casting a spell in an alternative way. Although, speaking of strive, do we know how its converted mana cost will work? In the library it's clearly whatever's in the upper right, but what about when it's on the stack? Is it like fuse, where its CMC depends on how you cast the card? So this card with two targets is CMC 6? Or will it always be three? This would tell us more about whether it's an additional cost or not.

Yeah, looks like I was wrong about this one. It works like kicker effects, but via a different rule, it seems. Ah well.

I'm pretty sure it's CMC 3 at all times. X cost spells don't have a higher CMC on the stack, so this shouldn't either.

Quote from Asenion

X cost spells don't have a higher CMC on the stack...

Incorrect, X spells actually have CMC based on what you paid.
X cards, on the other hand, have their printed CMC.

Quote from Reason

Quote from Asenion

X cost spells don't have a higher CMC on the stack...

Incorrect, X spells actually have CMC based on what you paid.
X cards, on the other hand, have their printed CMC.

Correct, X spells on the stack have a CMC of what you paid for them, while when they're anywhere else the X is 0 for their CMC.

Alright, everything I've said in this thread has been wrong. I am retiring from rulings.

Quote from Asenion

Alright, everything I've said in this thread has been wrong. I am retiring from rulings.

No worries. The rules for this game get absurdly convoluted sometimes.

Especially in the cube where you see interactions they never expected.

Quote from Asenion

I'm pretty sure it's CMC 3 at all times.

Its CMC is always 3, yes.

You still need to pay the Strive cost if you want to target more than one creature. Cascade lets you cast it without paying the mana cost ( = the 1RR at the top-right corner of the card), other costs (including costs that are mana) still need to be paid.

The reason I thought it worked is because Strive is templated differently from additional cost cards. The card effect lets you do everything, and the "additional cost" is worded in a way that reduces the power of the card's main effect. Normally the card does whatever it does and the additional cost lets you add some effect. So I figured since the main text let you do everything, you could ignore the Strive on cascades. Obviously I was wrong.

Quote from Asenion

The reason I thought it worked is because Strive is templated differently from additional cost cards. The card effect lets you do everything, and the "additional cost" is worded in a way that reduces the power of the card's main effect. Normally the card does whatever it does and the additional cost lets you add some effect. So I figured since the main text let you do everything, you could ignore the Strive on cascades. Obviously I was wrong.

Yeah, it is templated oddly, but I think it's written that way instead of simply saying "you may pay an additional X any number of times as you cast this spell, for each X you pay you may choose an additional target for ~" in order to make less people realize that strive is just a narrower version of multikicker.