MTG Salvation

Quote from wtwlf123 »

Master of the Wild Hunt, Oracle of Mul Daya and Wickerbough Elder.

I would actually rank Wickerbough Elder as the highest value creature of the three. am i crazy?

That doesn't sound so crazy to me, artifact destruction is really important in most cube environments, and it's great to get this effect on a body that's also a viable threat. Oracle of Mul Daya is fantastic in ramp decks, but not really anywhere else, and Master of the Wild Hunt is great, but a bit slow to get going, and both are boltable.

No, that's not that crazy. Elder is a good card.

Reading this entire thread and getting a glimpse at the recent history has revealed an interesting tidbit:

4-5 years ago Vengevine was revered as an elite, top-echelon 4-drop in green. Nowadays it is hardly mentioned or played. It’s not like there has been printed a bunch of great 4’s to push it out in that time span, so my question is: what else happened in cube development that made people cool on this critter?

Green-based beatdown decks that play GG-costed cards fell out of favor. Strangleroot, Vengevine and others just stopped being popular. And for the generic green midrange decks, Polukranos was just an easier way to get a good beatdown monster and some card advantage rolled into one card.

Quote from B8R »

Reading this entire thread and getting a glimpse at the recent history has revealed an interesting tidbit:

4-5 years ago Vengevine was revered as an elite, top-echelon 4-drop in green. Nowadays it is hardly mentioned or played. It’s not like there has been printed a bunch of great 4’s to push it out in that time span, so my question is: what else happened in cube development that made people cool on this critter?

It is still a huge part of the cubes I play and is still a force. Just beat me recently with it's sweet ability.

Quote from TheRealEbase131 »

Quote from B8R »

Reading this entire thread and getting a glimpse at the recent history has revealed an interesting tidbit:

4-5 years ago Vengevine was revered as an elite, top-echelon 4-drop in green. Nowadays it is hardly mentioned or played. It’s not like there has been printed a bunch of great 4’s to push it out in that time span, so my question is: what else happened in cube development that made people cool on this critter?

It is still a huge part of the cubes I play and is still a force. Just beat me recently with it's sweet ability.

Our group feels that something is lost if green just becomes monoramp. It's same-y -- not just in terms of repetitive decks/gameplay but also derivative of what green does in virtually every other format -- especially because it makes the color feel very homogenous when a good chunk of its spells are Cultivate variants. Personally, I don't even know if green ramp is good in super-powered Cube. There are just so many nasty things that trump Llanowar Elf ramp.

How would you rank the green four drop creatures today? I'll assign each commonly played green four drop a number here - (Not including Voracious Hydra as it isn't technically a green four drop).

1 - Nightpack Ambusher
2 - Master of the Wild Hunt
3 - Oracle of Mul Daya
4 - Polukranos, World Eater
5 - Questing Beast
6 - Thrun, the Last Troll
7 - Magus of the Order
8 - Elvish Piper

How many do you play at your cubesize?

I play these at 720:

• Magus of the Order
  
• Nightpack Ambusher
  
• Oracle of Mul Daya
  
• Polukranos, World Eater
  
• Questing Beast
  
• Renata, Called to the Hunt

Questing Beast and Oracle of Mul Daya are probably my two favorite green 4-drops at the moment.

I play Questing Beast and am Testing Magus of the Order at 360 unpowered.

If I had to rank these it probably like this:

1. Questing Beast
2. Magus of the Order
3. Nightpack Ambusher
4. Thrun the last troll
5. Master of the Wild Hunt
6. Oracle
7. Polukranos
8. Piper

Quote from wtwlf123 »

I play these at 720:

• Magus of the Order
  
• Nightpack Ambusher
  
• Oracle of Mul Daya
  
• Polukranos, World Eater
  
• Questing Beast
  
• Renata, Called to the Hunt

Questing Beast and Oracle of Mul Daya are probably my two favorite green 4-drops at the moment.

I know you have touted Master of the Wild Hunt for a while - what caused it to be cut?

DOn't forget Caller of the Untamed, which can do some pretty busted things. Utra-baneslayer-y though

Since I'm bored to tears staying home during the pandemic I decided to do a bit of data compilation from the responses I got to my question about Green 4cc creatures on both Twitter and here.

I assigned 3 points to any creature people ranked in their top 3, 2 to anything people ranked 4-6, and 1 point for anything 7th or later. Since some responses did not rank, but rather just named cards I assigned a score based on how strong of an endorsement for the card the post was (E.g. The best green 4 drop I know is...got a 3. I like.... got a 2. This card is more fair, but I've enjoyed.... got a 1.

Below is the link to the data.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1gdRkJGyVTF0I2uEq0c1knFK4vkvrHpyrOoFLMyefoTo/edit?usp=sharing

My primary takeaways are as follows.
1) Questing Beast is the clear front-runner. Along with Nightpack Ambusher and Thrun this makes up the top tier.
2) There's a big drop off from there - Lots of middling options (Oracle, Polukranos, Magus, and Master of the Wild Hunt)
3) There's a ton of diversity in this slot - 30 cards were namedropped. Only 14 cards (Renata on up) got at least 4 points.

This thread is interesting. From reading this and watching a lot of the online Vintage Cube streamers, I’ve realized that opinions on green 4s vary wildly.

I’m in the wtwlf123 camp on Oracle of Mul Daya - that card is awesome. And our whole group thinks so, not just me.

Magus of the Order is fantastic in my opinion. It’s the exact type of effect that needed redundancy, and it’s in the color that can abuse being a creature the most with many tutor options between GSZ, Finale, Survival, Fauna Shaman, Pod, etc.

I don’t like most of the “big beef” 4-drops, including Thrun. Thrun got so much worse over the years with many sweepers and sac effects helping the control decks against the regenerate-able hexproof threat (stuff like Languish, for example). If it’s not totally game-breaking against control then it shouldn’t be in the cube, but it’s not particularly good in any other matchup.

Polukranos is mildly interesting for decks that generate a ton of mana, but it’s mostly a ‘big yawn.’ No deck is particularly excited to pick it, and if you play it it’s likely because you didn’t pick 26+ playables.

Nightpack Ambusher is way better than Master of the Wild Hunt for a card that has a similar effect (slowly goes wide with tokens) and is the ideal threat for certain Simic decks. I still think it’s only OK but is serviceable for now.

Don't sleep on Shifting Ceratops - the haste + trample on this creature is incredibly powerful in a planeswalker heavy environment.

Another card I've really liked is Vengevine. Haste is something I really like to push in damage against combo + remove planeswalkers. I've liked him in aggro/ creature based pod decks.