I was playing 4 color shenanigans when this happened:
Is this awesome when it happens? You bet!
Does it happen often? A surprising amount... plenty of steal-on-ETB effects in the game, as well as sac outlets.
As for Mimic Vat I do think the gain isn't small. It is significantly better because you're more likely to get those specific creatures that are really disgusting to mimic (there's maybe just a dozen or so of them) and quality ETB guys at a higher concentration. Yes you'll have to go without a Scroll Rack, Ankh of Mishra, Black Vise, etc in order to fit it in a smaller list - but you're also getting something better, on average, with the Mimic Vat for the same activation cost in a smaller list. You're more likely to hit Eternal Witness, Baleful Strix, and Mystic Snake and you can have them all in the same deck. There's also not a whole lot more quality ETB dudes that we don't run in smaller lists that are ran in medium/larger sized cubes, so it's harder to build decks with just more of them in it.
I think the gain is small compared to the other ones I listed.
A lot of cards at 450-720 actually work great with Mimic Vat, but you have to cut them too when you go to 360. Gilded Drake is probably the most powerful one I can think of off the top of my head, but there are a good amount of others too.
I think it works like a lot of other cards that "combo" with a type. Reanimation spells work with creatures, so the better your creatures, the better your reanimation spells. Diabolic Servitude and other cards like it get better the smaller the cube size too, but the competition just becomes too stiff at a certain point. I think that's the main reason myself and others (wtwlf123 for example) cut Mimic Vat going from 450 to 360. It's a great card for sure, and is better at 450 than it is at 720, but there's just not enough room for a ton of great cards.
It also doesn't help that cubes speed up the smaller they get. 6 mana is a lot in a 360 cube just to get to your first Mimic Vat activation. It's not that bad in a 720 though.
I think Life From the Loam easily makes the cut at 360.
I don't think it easily makes the cut. It was one of my last cuts for the green cards I was cubing, but with the increased pace of games in a 360, I think durdling around with LFTL gets a lot worse, which puts it much closer to the border (and in fact, cuttable).
Cards like these tend to get better or worse based on the "maturity" of the cube group i.e. How much cube have you guys been playing together. The less a person cubes, the more likely he is to pick cards like LFTL.
Do you mean the more a person cubes? I think if I were cubing for the first time and saw Life From The Loam, I'd be like "Why is this even in here?"
A lot of cards at 450-720 actually work great with Mimic Vat, but you have to cut them too when you go to 360. Gilded Drake is probably the most powerful one I can think of off the top of my head, but there are a good amount of others too.
I guess this is where we disagree. I don't think there are that much more of the high quality targets in medium/larger cubes. The size of the cube increases by 50-100% but the targets do not. Gilded Drake is great though for sure!
I think it works like a lot of other cards that "combo" with a type. Reanimation spells work with creatures, so the better your creatures, the better your reanimation spells. Diabolic Servitude and other cards like it get better the smaller the cube size too, but the competition just becomes too stiff at a certain point.
I think that's the main reason myself and others (wtwlf123 for example) cut Mimic Vat going from 450 to 360. It's a great card for sure, and is better at 450 than it is at 720, but there's just not enough room for a ton of great cards.
We also have to consider redundancy. I don't include Diabolic Servitude because the competition is stiff - there's a good number of other reanimation spells we can use. If we didn't have say, Exhume and Dance of the Dead, I would probably be including Diabolic Servitude. There's not a whole lot of other cards like Mimic Vat. That is why I include it.
I think wtwlf123 is still running Mimic Vat, unless his cubetutor isn't updated? Either way I'm willing to go without Black Vise, Ankh of Mishra, Scroll Rack, Erratic Portal or Icy Manipulator (or other commonly used 360 cards) in order to include Mimic Vat. Though the competition is stiffer, the ability is unique and powerful enough for me to include it in 360.
It also doesn't help that cubes speed up the smaller they get. 6 mana is a lot in a 360 cube just to get to your first Mimic Vat activation. It's not that bad in a 720 though.
I'd say my cube is just as fast as the next 360 and the Vat's been perfectly fine here
Ahh, I thought wtwlf123 had cut it, I think he's still using it.
Yeah, I think it's a borderline card. I can agree with nearly everything up there that we haven't already disagreed on, haha.
I think the main thing about the "Mimic Vat gets better as the cube gets smaller" thing that I disagree with is that Mimic Vat is cuttable at some point (if not 360, let's say 270), where as something like Yawgmoth's Will would just continue to get better and better. Mimic Vat would never get cut at 720+ whereas Yawgmoth's Will is rarely played in 720s just because it's like a bad Regrowth most of the time.
Mimic Vat is borderline for sure at 360, since it takes 3+3 to get the first activation, but it's so fun that I can't cut it yet. It generally wins the game if it sticks for a couple of turns.
This card will probably never leave my 360 cube. Always good, has won me many, many games. There's also a good chance your opponent has just drafted 0 artifact removal spells.
Blue has a couple of bounce spells, but 12 cards that can deal with artifacts is very few. Especially if you're not drafting with a full 8 people, some of that removal just won't even be in the pool to draft.
Blue has a couple of bounce spells, but 12 cards that can deal with artifacts is very few. Especially if you're not drafting with a full 8 people, some of that removal just won't even be in the pool to draft.
When we did 4 man drafts it was noticeable that there wasn't enough artifact removal to go around so we had to make room for a few more. It's tough making cuts in smaller lists but you really do need to make sure you have enough plenty of ways to deal with the really problematic artifacts (and enchantments). We've found having 4-5 (no math backup just draft experience) each in White, Red and Green to be good when doing 4 man drafts - not counting Woodfall Primus/Terastodon and the ones in multicolour.
Well, there are also just very few artifact removal spells in cube.
If that's the case, you should add more in. That list is light. You should at least double (or triple, actually) the number of effects you have in each color.
Well, there are also just very few artifact removal spells in cube.
If that's the case, you should add more in. That list is light. You should at least double (or triple, actually) the number of effects you have in each color.
That list is just an aggregate of the top lists here and at cubetutor, so it's really the average of what most people run. Perhaps I could throw a few more in, but tripling seems very excessive.
If the average 360 cube is only running two answers in white, two answers in green, and 1 answer in red I'd be shocked. And if those numbers are a representative average, than the "average" cube isn't running remotely enough answers to artifacts. No cube I've ever played has had numbers that low.
If the average 360 cube is only running two answers in white, two answers in green, and 1 answer in red I'd be shocked. And if those numbers are a representative average, than the "average" cube isn't running remotely enough answers to artifacts. No cube I've ever played has had numbers that low.
I agree, these numbers are absurdly low.
Banishing Light
Disenchant
Council's Judgment
Oblivion Ring
Those four should be in no matter what, and that's just off the top of my head. Why are we only playing O-Ring and Disenchant?
This is just an example, I didn't even look at the other numbers.
I had to cut my number way lower than I was comfortable with or had ever seen to support storm at 360, and it was no where near those numbers.
Don't forget stuff like Manic Vandal, Keldon Vandals and Pillage. Dack Fayden in U/R is the very best one. Being able to deal with artifacts is really a necessity for every deck. Control needs to deal with Swords, Ankhs or Smokestacks. Aggro needs to deal with big artifact creatures, Grim Monoliths and Batterskulls. Every deck needs to be able to deal with Jitte. I would expect at least two pieces of removal in any given deck that can deal with artifacts in some manner; preferably 3-4.
Another one for the Mimic Vat records, after a game a few nights back..
I drop the Vat on Turn 3.
One of my opponents uses their Turn 4 to ramp out Malignus. I use mine to play Sol Ring and pass.
Turn 5, he swings at me with Malignus and I Murder it. Under the Vat it goes.
My Turn 5, Whispersilk Cloak, produce a Malignus with the Vat, equip the Cloak to it, swing under the guy's defenses and halve his life total. Fist pump!
(And yeah, Malignus spent a fair bit of time wrecking faces for the next few turns... that was a nice thing to get under the Vat alright)
Blue has a couple of bounce spells, but 12 cards that can deal with artifacts is very few. Especially if you're not drafting with a full 8 people, some of that removal just won't even be in the pool to draft.
What happened to Acidic Slime, Sex Monkey, Manic Vandal, Keldon Vandal, Viridian Shaman and Wickerbough Elder? And then you have stuff like Pithing Needle and Phyrexian Revoker. Sure not all of these wll be played in 360, but if you don't include enough of these effects, the balance in your cube will be seriously skewed.
Blue has a couple of bounce spells, but 12 cards that can deal with artifacts is very few. Especially if you're not drafting with a full 8 people, some of that removal just won't even be in the pool to draft.
What happened to Acidic Slime, Sex Monkey, Manic Vandal, Keldon Vandal, Viridian Shaman and Wickerbough Elder? And then you have stuff like Pithing Needle and Phyrexian Revoker. Sure not all of these wll be played in 360, but if you don't include enough of these effects, the balance in your cube will be seriously skewed.
Looking at the actual average 360 cube at Cubetutor (that Crepes cited later), I've found:
Things I didn't list: anything costing 6+ mana (Karn, Woodfall...), blue bouncing and black discarding, and special answers that work against Vat but not necessarily other artifacts like perma-tapping it with Ajani/Tamyio or using Scavenging Ooze/Deathrite Shaman in response.
The only reason Reclamation Sage or Banishing Light didn't show up in the list is the great number of outdated cubes affecting Cubetutor's averages. It is fairly low in artifact removal, but still about twice Crepes's 12 figure.
The lesson here is don't be greedy, and don't cut that artifact/enchantment removal. It's better to have more than to have less, even if it means excluding that fancier 'more exciting' card. Or else that Moat/Jitte/Vat is going to own every one of your drafts.
The lesson here is don't be greedy, and don't cut that artifact/enchantment removal. It's better to have more than to have less, even if it means excluding that fancier 'more exciting' card. Or else that Moat/Jitte/Vat is going to own every one of your drafts.
100% agree with this, ive recently added more to mine because I thought it was a little thin. Might still need 1 more in red, thinking about a cut for it.
Has anyone played this card with one of the new pitch creatures yet?
Grief - Pitch, remove a card. Then Mimic Vault again and continuously on your opponent's draw step to lock them out of the game.
I been a bit reluctant to play this as it takes 6 mana to essentially gain your first activation and I feel its a bit too slow for today. How are others finding this?
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
I'm actively maintaining a comprehensive article to help explain to new cube players how some complex vintage level cards work in a cube environment. Vintage Cube Cards Explained
Is this awesome when it happens? You bet!
Does it happen often? A surprising amount... plenty of steal-on-ETB effects in the game, as well as sac outlets.
My Stupidly Large Number of Current Decks
PucaTrade with me!
The Multiplayer Power Rankings
Cube: the Gittening (My Multiplayer Cube) - MTGS Cube List | @ CubeTutor
The N00b Cube (Peasant cube for new players) - MTGS Cube List | @ CubeTutor
I think the gain is small compared to the other ones I listed.
A lot of cards at 450-720 actually work great with Mimic Vat, but you have to cut them too when you go to 360. Gilded Drake is probably the most powerful one I can think of off the top of my head, but there are a good amount of others too.
I think it works like a lot of other cards that "combo" with a type. Reanimation spells work with creatures, so the better your creatures, the better your reanimation spells. Diabolic Servitude and other cards like it get better the smaller the cube size too, but the competition just becomes too stiff at a certain point. I think that's the main reason myself and others (wtwlf123 for example) cut Mimic Vat going from 450 to 360. It's a great card for sure, and is better at 450 than it is at 720, but there's just not enough room for a ton of great cards.
It also doesn't help that cubes speed up the smaller they get. 6 mana is a lot in a 360 cube just to get to your first Mimic Vat activation. It's not that bad in a 720 though.
LFTL is a discard outlet? Huh?
I don't think it easily makes the cut. It was one of my last cuts for the green cards I was cubing, but with the increased pace of games in a 360, I think durdling around with LFTL gets a lot worse, which puts it much closer to the border (and in fact, cuttable).
Do you mean the more a person cubes? I think if I were cubing for the first time and saw Life From The Loam, I'd be like "Why is this even in here?"
CUBE TOP 10 - Help us vote for the best cards in cube
I guess this is where we disagree. I don't think there are that much more of the high quality targets in medium/larger cubes. The size of the cube increases by 50-100% but the targets do not. Gilded Drake is great though for sure!
We also have to consider redundancy. I don't include Diabolic Servitude because the competition is stiff - there's a good number of other reanimation spells we can use. If we didn't have say, Exhume and Dance of the Dead, I would probably be including Diabolic Servitude. There's not a whole lot of other cards like Mimic Vat. That is why I include it.
I think wtwlf123 is still running Mimic Vat, unless his cubetutor isn't updated? Either way I'm willing to go without Black Vise, Ankh of Mishra, Scroll Rack, Erratic Portal or Icy Manipulator (or other commonly used 360 cards) in order to include Mimic Vat. Though the competition is stiffer, the ability is unique and powerful enough for me to include it in 360.
I'd say my cube is just as fast as the next 360 and the Vat's been perfectly fine here
Lol yeah I don't think you're being cheeky. My mistake, I meant another way to get cards into your graveyard. I want to give a little boost to Green's graveyard interactions - had some decks that were almost there, with Scavenging Ooze, Deathrite Shaman and Living Death. With Survival of the Fittest, Fauna Shaman, Wild Mongrel and now Life From The Loam, I think I'm good to go.
Yeah, I think it's a borderline card. I can agree with nearly everything up there that we haven't already disagreed on, haha.
I think the main thing about the "Mimic Vat gets better as the cube gets smaller" thing that I disagree with is that Mimic Vat is cuttable at some point (if not 360, let's say 270), where as something like Yawgmoth's Will would just continue to get better and better. Mimic Vat would never get cut at 720+ whereas Yawgmoth's Will is rarely played in 720s just because it's like a bad Regrowth most of the time.
CUBE TOP 10 - Help us vote for the best cards in cube
Haha oops. Yep that is what I meant.
You don't really need specific combos for Mimic Vat to be good. Even copying a Gore house chain walker is great if the board has been cleared.
Modern: Jund Legacy: RUG Delver EDH: Captain Sisay
UR Melek, Izzet ParagonUR, B Shirei, Shizo's CaretakerB, R Jaya Ballard, Task MageR,RW Tajic, Blade of the LegionRW, UB Lazav, Dimir MastermindUB, UB Circu, Dimir LobotomistUB, RWU Zedruu the GreatheartedRWU, GUBThe MimeoplasmGUB, UGExperiment Kraj UG, WDarien, King of KjeldorW, BMarrow-GnawerB, WBGKarador, Ghost ChieftainWBG, UTeferi, Temporal ArchmageU, GWUDerevi, Empyrial TacticianGWU, RDaretti, Scrap SavantR, UTalrand, Sky SummonerU, GEzuri, Renegade LeaderG, WUBRGReaper KingWUBRG, RGXenagos, God of RevelsRG, CKozilek, Butcher of TruthC, WUBRGGeneral TazriWUBRG, GTitania, Protector of ArgothG
On spoiled card wishlisting and 'should-have-had'-isms:
We have a name for this around here, it's called "completely ****ing up your draft".
On spoiled card wishlisting and 'should-have-had'-isms:
Well, there are also just very few artifact removal spells in cube. I find the following in a typical 360:
Disenchant
Oring
Torch Fiend
Reclamation Sage
Naturalize
D sphere
Pridemage
Vindicate
Abrupt Decay
Putrefy
Maelstrom Pulse
Trygon Predator
Blue has a couple of bounce spells, but 12 cards that can deal with artifacts is very few. Especially if you're not drafting with a full 8 people, some of that removal just won't even be in the pool to draft.
When we did 4 man drafts it was noticeable that there wasn't enough artifact removal to go around so we had to make room for a few more. It's tough making cuts in smaller lists but you really do need to make sure you have enough plenty of ways to deal with the really problematic artifacts (and enchantments). We've found having 4-5 (no math backup just draft experience) each in White, Red and Green to be good when doing 4 man drafts - not counting Woodfall Primus/Terastodon and the ones in multicolour.
If that's the case, you should add more in. That list is light. You should at least double (or triple, actually) the number of effects you have in each color.
My 630 Card Powered Cube
My Article - "Cube Design Philosophy"
My Article - "Mana Short: A study in limited resource management."
My 50th Set (P)review - Discusses my top 20 Cube cards from OTJ!
That list is just an aggregate of the top lists here and at cubetutor, so it's really the average of what most people run. Perhaps I could throw a few more in, but tripling seems very excessive.
My 630 Card Powered Cube
My Article - "Cube Design Philosophy"
My Article - "Mana Short: A study in limited resource management."
My 50th Set (P)review - Discusses my top 20 Cube cards from OTJ!
I agree, these numbers are absurdly low.
Banishing Light
Disenchant
Council's Judgment
Oblivion Ring
Those four should be in no matter what, and that's just off the top of my head. Why are we only playing O-Ring and Disenchant?
This is just an example, I didn't even look at the other numbers.
I had to cut my number way lower than I was comfortable with or had ever seen to support storm at 360, and it was no where near those numbers.
CUBE TOP 10 - Help us vote for the best cards in cube
On spoiled card wishlisting and 'should-have-had'-isms:
I drop the Vat on Turn 3.
One of my opponents uses their Turn 4 to ramp out Malignus. I use mine to play Sol Ring and pass.
Turn 5, he swings at me with Malignus and I Murder it. Under the Vat it goes.
My Turn 5, Whispersilk Cloak, produce a Malignus with the Vat, equip the Cloak to it, swing under the guy's defenses and halve his life total. Fist pump!
(And yeah, Malignus spent a fair bit of time wrecking faces for the next few turns... that was a nice thing to get under the Vat alright)
My Stupidly Large Number of Current Decks
PucaTrade with me!
The Multiplayer Power Rankings
Cube: the Gittening (My Multiplayer Cube) - MTGS Cube List | @ CubeTutor
The N00b Cube (Peasant cube for new players) - MTGS Cube List | @ CubeTutor
I imprinted Venser, Shaper Savant on the mimic vat and had a Voidmage Prodigy in play at the time.
For those times when an upheaval lock isn't enough and you want to also remand every spell they play forever...
What happened to Acidic Slime, Sex Monkey, Manic Vandal, Keldon Vandal, Viridian Shaman and Wickerbough Elder? And then you have stuff like Pithing Needle and Phyrexian Revoker. Sure not all of these wll be played in 360, but if you don't include enough of these effects, the balance in your cube will be seriously skewed.
I feel compelled to repeat everything I hear
Looking at the actual average 360 cube at Cubetutor (that Crepes cited later), I've found:
Things I didn't list: anything costing 6+ mana (Karn, Woodfall...), blue bouncing and black discarding, and special answers that work against Vat but not necessarily other artifacts like perma-tapping it with Ajani/Tamyio or using Scavenging Ooze/Deathrite Shaman in response.
The only reason Reclamation Sage or Banishing Light didn't show up in the list is the great number of outdated cubes affecting Cubetutor's averages. It is fairly low in artifact removal, but still about twice Crepes's 12 figure.
100% agree with this, ive recently added more to mine because I thought it was a little thin. Might still need 1 more in red, thinking about a cut for it.
https://cubecobra.com/cube/list/3pq
450 card Peasant cube thread. Draft it here.
Grief - Pitch, remove a card. Then Mimic Vault again and continuously on your opponent's draw step to lock them out of the game.
I been a bit reluctant to play this as it takes 6 mana to essentially gain your first activation and I feel its a bit too slow for today. How are others finding this?
Vintage Cube Cards Explained
Here are some other articles I've written about fine tuning your cube:
1. Minimum Archetype Support
2. Improving Green Archetypes
3. Improving White Archetypes
4. Matchup Analysis
5. Cube Combos (Work in Progress)
Draft my Cube - https://cubecobra.com/cube/overview/d8i
My 630 Card Powered Cube
My Article - "Cube Design Philosophy"
My Article - "Mana Short: A study in limited resource management."
My 50th Set (P)review - Discusses my top 20 Cube cards from OTJ!