I like Fatal Push more than most because hitting aggro creatures and mana dorks is so incredibly important. In the same vein, Disfigure is a seriously respected removal spell in my Cube environment.
Fatal Push is in here mostly as a black Spell Snare. If someone can get lucky and trigger the revolt, great. But that rarely happens for me and I still think FP is worth the slot.
Maybe I'll drop Regicide so I'm able to include both Edict and Downfall. I think Chainer's edict is important in my cube because I have some creatures with protection: such as Thrun, True-Name Nemesis, Invisible Stalker, Mirran Crusader, Gigapede, Simic Sky Swallower, Striped Riverwinder
I like Fatal Push more than most because hitting aggro creatures and mana dorks is so incredibly important. In the same vein, Disfigure is a seriously respected removal spell in my Cube environment.
*cough* (this used the CubeTutor 450-card average)
With creatures, it's more fundamentally important for them to be cast on-curve; whereas with non-creatures, they can be cast off-curve — although we'd ideally want them to be cast on curve as well — as it isn't as important to cast, say, a Fatal Push on turn one vs turn four, as the deprecation in value from a Fatal Push on turn four isn't as bad as something like a Narnam Renegade on turn four.
Fatal Push gives Black another conditional 1-mana removal while it typically has to rely on 2-mana removal spells like Go For the Throat. Let's do a side-by-side comparison with Disfigure, a pretty similar analog as a 1-mana Black removal spell that deals with small creatures. For these, I won't consider armies in a can like Cloudgoat Ranger and Avenger of Zendikar because while sometimes you've gotta push a token out of the way, most of the time, that's not what these cards are doing.
By the numbers:
What BOTH Disfigure and Fatal Push kill without revolt.: 64 (examples: Grim Lavamancer, Lotus Cobra)
What BOTH Disfigure and Fatal Push kill with revolt: 33 (examples: Oracle of Mul Daya, Goblin Rabblemaster)
What Disfigure kills and what Fatal Push can't, even with revolt: 3 (Shriekmaw, Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker, Mulldrifter, Acidic Slime) — all of these being Mulldrifters whose main value comes outside of the creature itself.
What Disfigure can't kill but Fatal Push can, without revolt: 12 (Thing in the Ice, Celestial Colonnade)
What Disfigure can't kill but what Fatal Push can with revolt: 21 (Courser of Kruphix, Hellrider, Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet)
For reference, 30 creatures can't be killed by either Disfigure or Fatal Push , creatures like Consecrated Sphinx, Sarkhan, the Dragonspeaker, and Baneslayer Angel. Unsurprisingly, these are the highly efficient Baneslayers of the format.
If we go by raw numbers and assume that Fatal Push can't reliably hit Revolt, Disfigure comes out slightly ahead, but that doesn't tell the entire tale. Approaching these creatures as Baneslayers and Mulldrifters allows us to see that Fatal Push is able to kill Baneslayers like Kalitas and creature lands like Celestial Colonnade. Generally, the quality of the removal represented is slightly higher with Fatal Push than Disfigure. One can argue that you can chump attack with a lot of creatures to enable revolt, but much like trying to do that with Tragic Slip, it can't really get large blockers out of the way reliably.
Fatal Push loses out on combat trick potential, but general experience with Disfigure when I had it in my Cube and playing it in others', generally that mode wasn't used very much, despite how powerful and impacting it may look in combat. Some decks don't really use Baneslayers and when a control opponent just has Solemn Simulacrum, Mulldrifter and Shriekmaw-style creatures as their creature suite, Fatal Push isn't very good (but then again, would a card like Go For the Throat been much better? Besides, that's what your sideboard is for!)
A) That doesn't cover what Disfigure CAN kill that Fatal Push can't without revolt. There are lots of 3-4cc creatures that you can kill with Disfigure where Push can't target them unless revolt is live. It lists the pool of 33 creatures as things that BOTH can kill when revolt is live, but I think its spinning the data in a bit of a disingenuous way. Realistically, that passage should read "Things that Disfigure can kill that Push cannot (unless revolt is live) - 33 targets". That's a lot of targets that you need revolt to be live in order to kill that Disfigure can cleanly answer in every window.
B) I think that's underselling the value that Disfigure has as a combat trick. It's more relevant than that passage implies. As the quality of 1-4cc creatures increases, and the stats improve, the relevance of how they interact in combat becomes more and more relevant. Especially in unpowered cubes where the non-interactive decks are fewer and further between.
They're kind of comparable in terms of targets, but without revolt being live, Disfigure is a more reliable removal spell against all the X/2 creatures with a CMC >2. AND it can double as a combat trick.
Small cubes with a full fetch suite might see the value of Push go up to give it a nod over Disfigure, but for medium- to large-sized cubes, I think the latter gets the edge.
adjective
1.
lacking in frankness, candor, or sincerity; falsely or hypocritically ingenuous; insincere:
Her excuse was rather disingenuous.
Implying that I'm being insincere is rather... odd, considering conversations we've had about wanting to improve communications in this forum and if you really used the word to imply that, that's... not good, to put it lightly.
In the time that I've tried Disfigure in my cubes and experiences from other cubes, Disfigure's combat trick potential wasn't used enough for it to tip the scales towards it being a better card.
Poor choice of words on my part. I meant "incomplete" rather than disingenuous. You clearly weren't attempting anything malicious by the presentation of your data. I apologize for any confusion, and 100% did not mean any offense.
I used to run disfigure for years, and really enjoyed the utility it provided.
I replaced it with fatal push when fatal push came out, but after playing hundreds of cubes with both cards, I still feel like disfigure is very slightly better.
I've found triggering revolt to be non-trivial and the combination of the higher number of targets AND the combat trick value of disfigure offsets the higher quality of targets that fatal push can hit.
I can recall multiple times using disfigure in combat to shrink a large creature making it trade with a smaller creature, or stopping an opponents lethal attack FWIW.
That being said, both are great cards (at what they do) , they run so close in power level (in cube) that I admit there's a chance my intuition is wrong.
Because they are so close, I much prefer to run fatal push for it's iconic value and people's experience with it in constructed.
I've been considering adding it in for that reason. Even though I think Disfigure is the slightly better cube card, players who are familiar with the more modern era of Magic are quite familiar with (and therefore expect to see) Fatal Push floating around in the cube.
I still run Disfigure in the expanded section of my cube (i.e. the extra 180 cards that bring it from 450 to 630 for large groups or more deck diversity). It's pretty strong there and definitely earns its spot overall, but it's not quite powerful enough to contest the top 450. If you need a larger black removal suite than usual, I'd at least consider Disfigure. Fatal Push is sweet too but it feels soooooo bad when you need the Revolt and have no way to trigger it. Either way, these two are very close overall.
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Maybe I'll drop Regicide so I'm able to include both Edict and Downfall. I think Chainer's edict is important in my cube because I have some creatures with protection: such as Thrun, True-Name Nemesis, Invisible Stalker, Mirran Crusader, Gigapede, Simic Sky Swallower, Striped Riverwinder
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Disfigure might just be better than Fatal Push in this format.
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B) I think that's underselling the value that Disfigure has as a combat trick. It's more relevant than that passage implies. As the quality of 1-4cc creatures increases, and the stats improve, the relevance of how they interact in combat becomes more and more relevant. Especially in unpowered cubes where the non-interactive decks are fewer and further between.
They're kind of comparable in terms of targets, but without revolt being live, Disfigure is a more reliable removal spell against all the X/2 creatures with a CMC >2. AND it can double as a combat trick.
Small cubes with a full fetch suite might see the value of Push go up to give it a nod over Disfigure, but for medium- to large-sized cubes, I think the latter gets the edge.
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Definition of disingenuous:
Implying that I'm being insincere is rather... odd, considering conversations we've had about wanting to improve communications in this forum and if you really used the word to imply that, that's... not good, to put it lightly.
In the time that I've tried Disfigure in my cubes and experiences from other cubes, Disfigure's combat trick potential wasn't used enough for it to tip the scales towards it being a better card.
I used to write cube articles on StarCityGames, now for GatheringMagic and podcast about cube (w/Antknee42.)
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My Article - "Cube Design Philosophy"
My Article - "Mana Short: A study in limited resource management."
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I used to run disfigure for years, and really enjoyed the utility it provided.
I replaced it with fatal push when fatal push came out, but after playing hundreds of cubes with both cards, I still feel like disfigure is very slightly better.
I've found triggering revolt to be non-trivial and the combination of the higher number of targets AND the combat trick value of disfigure offsets the higher quality of targets that fatal push can hit.
I can recall multiple times using disfigure in combat to shrink a large creature making it trade with a smaller creature, or stopping an opponents lethal attack FWIW.
That being said, both are great cards (at what they do) , they run so close in power level (in cube) that I admit there's a chance my intuition is wrong.
Because they are so close, I much prefer to run fatal push for it's iconic value and people's experience with it in constructed.
Last Updated 02/07/24
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