Regarding the edicts, in our experiences the flashback was worth more than the instant speed. I'm also willing to pay an extra 1 to put it on a 3/1 body that is easier to abuse.
In most cases being able to choose the target really does matter though so I'd rather have more of those. I think this configuration would be ideal in a small list:
Regarding the edicts, in our experiences the flashback was worth more than the instant speed.
When you can't target, instant speed is pretty huge. Either way, have people not found Consuming Vapors to be as amazing as we have, especially in the age of persist and undying?
When you can't target, instant speed is pretty huge. Either way, have people not found Consuming Vapors to be as amazing as we have, especially in the age of persist and undying?
We've found consuming vapors amazing, especially against Stoneforge decks. I also like Diabolic Edict much more than Chainer's Edict. The flashback only happens rarely in our games.
It's been a while since anyone has posted in this thread. I thought I would bring it to the attention of the awesome cube community here. Maybe it's time for a little more discussion of the top black spot removal. For those reading in the distant future, to put things in perspective, fatal push has just been announced. Everyone is expecting it to make waves in modern and possibly eternal format's. I thought this would be a good time to get some general rankings of how black's spells / removal are looking / what changes have taken place in the past few years since the last posting on here.
Here are the card's which I am running right now and how I would rank them. The cards I include I take into account the cost / flexibility of the card / what it can hit, and the effects it can have. Maybe this is wrong/ bad design, but it's what I am currently going with.
I think GFTT is clearly #1 due to cost and flexibility, and dismember wins over snuff out barely due to flexibility of manna cost
Chainer's Edict and Hero's Downfall might not be the most flexible, but I think it's important for my cube to have an edict for cards like True-Name Nemesis, and I like the flashback/sorcery over instant speed.
Hero's Downfall is nice to have an efficient answer to troubling walkers. I think my cube could use 1 more kill spell, but Finding the right cut is always so hard, especially since I want to try and squeeze both 3 cmc lilliana's in once I get my hands on them.
What is everyone else's rankings of these types of effects these days?
I think GFTT is the worst of those by a margin. I run Downfall, Snuff Out and Dismember with Chainer's Edict just outside inclusion. I also run Ruinous Path for more versatility. I am considering running Fatal Push because there is a gap for one CMC removal in black and I expect the card to be revolted fairly easily in my smallish cube.
Edit: that said I'm hardly sold on Push either since there are a lot of targets it misses even when revolted. Still one versus two mana is a large difference in the early game. Worth testing, probably.
(x-posting this from a Reddit thread I recently posted in)
Here are the numbers that I ran through my cube filter for kill % on each black spell. The filter doesn't count planeswalkers / manlands / some token generators and those who have protection / shroud / hexproof, but the numbers are still fairly accurate.
The filter doesn't count planeswalkers / manlands / some token generators and those who have protection / shroud / hexproof, but the numbers are still fairly accurate.
I think it's a mistake to exclude manlands from your calculations. Most cubes now run 12-14 manlands, the WWK/BFZ manlands (although many exclude Stirring Wildwood) as well as Faerie Conclave, Treetop Village, Mishra's Factory and Mutavault. I run the full 14. Typically manlands can only be hit by instant speed removal, and black spot removal is an important source of that.
Based on the creatures currently in my 450 unpowered I checked to see the percentage of targets. Here are the totals of different relevant creature types in my cube:
Here are some conclusions that jump out at me after crunching the numbers on my cube's current composition:
Doom Blade and its ilk actually have more available, albeit different, targets than Ultimate Price.
Go for the Throat and Dismember are surprisingly close in the number of targets they hit once manlands are included, and are actually identical in mine. A lot of people have been cutting GftT lately, but I won't be any time soon.
Disfigure and Collective Brutality are surprisingly effective removal options (I'm not running them, but I'll probably be giving them a second look, especially Disfigure). This is true even before factoring in their potential as combat tricks.
Sorcery speed cuts the number of available targets by 4-6% if it doesn't hit lands.
Since manlands are 0 CMC, Fatal Push is a bit better even without Revolt, but you're really counting on being able to trigger Revolt much more than 50% of the time, so I think it's still a bit too narrow for most cubes.
Not considering manlands, there are obviously some significant differences between Steve_Man's cube and mine. There's no link to his list, so it's hard for me to tell exactly what's different. His cube's probably bigger (I think I remember him saying he runs a 540), and I seem to have a higher percentage of low toughness creatures than he does, so my cube might be more aggro. However, overall I would expect most cube managers here to come to similar conclusions after figuring in manlands.
While manlands are significant in my cube, I didn't add them in the calculation because I strictly went through my cubetutor filter for numbers. I think manlands default to spells and I never bothered changing them to creatures.
That being said, factoring manlands really doesn't skew my views on what I should / shouldn't be playing at my cube size. Makes Ultimate Price look worse / Fatal Push look better, but I'm not a big fan of those two regardless at 540. What it does show is how close Ultimate Price is to Doom Blade, and those two cards are pretty interchangeable.
I can't say I blame you for using a CT filter over the more time-consuming method of counting up card types individually, and my count also leaves out tokens, which eliminates a lot of potential targets. Still, manlands are common enough, and hard enough to remove by a lot of cube removal spells that I think it's pretty important to factor them in.
There's definitely more to look at than just raw percentages, and those percentages absolutely make Fatal Push and Tragic Slip look a lot better than they are. Revolt and Morbid are not that easy to trigger reliably. I do think there's an assumption that Ultimate Price hits more than Doom Blade does, and that was probably true in the past, but the recent influx of multicolored manlands changes that. I'd recommend any cube manager running one over the other crunch the numbers for their cube to help them make the decision of which one is better for their cube. I also think that there's a common assumption that running Shriekmaw and/or Nekrataal make Doom Blade unnecessary, but there's so much that Doom Blade hits that sorcery speed Terror-on-a-stick just doesn't.
What it does show is how close Ultimate Price is to Doom Blade, and those two cards are pretty interchangeable.
They're close in terms of raw number of targets, but I actually don't think they're that interchangeable.
Using the example of your cube (I'm not sure if I missed the sig link earlier, or if you added it recently. If you did, thanks for that), your cube has 34 targets that Ultimate Price hits that Doom Blade doesn't.
... and 36 targets that Doom Blade hits that Ultimate Price doesn't. The lists are a bit different between our cubes, but we both have exactly 2 more Doom Blade targets than Ultimate Price targets.
Doom Blade also gets even better when you take into consideration that someone playing black has taken some of the unavailable targets out of the draft pool for their own deck. Conversely, Ultimate Price is also the better splash card for a non-black deck. Of course, if you're already running Snuff Out and/or Malicious Affliction, Doom Blade you might also prefer Ultimate Price because it's less redundant.
That being said, factoring manlands really doesn't skew my views on what I should / shouldn't be playing at my cube size.
No worries if you're already happy with your current removal suite, of course. I'm just trying to contribute to the larger discussion here. However, looking into this a bit more closely has convinced me to make room for Disfigure and Doom Blade in my own cube in my next update.
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The weakness of ultimate price is suprising. Manlands and vehicles make it significantly worse today than at its prime it seems. Some cube owners have trouble finding answers to vehicles, swapping UP to Doom Blade seems like a great solution. I am also surprised 7% of the creatures cannot be hit by GftT, it feels less than that in gameplay (also influenced by vehicles).
How much spot removal does black need at 360? Also, how does the number of black board wipes change that?
So, IMO getting the removal suite right is the hardest part of building a cube. And you will need to experiment a bit with it. A lot depends on how creature focused your cube is. I have two cubes, a more midrange focused list with a lot of creature combat. That one has about 15 creature removal effects at 450 cards (spells and 187 creatures). That's probably higher than most run but it's intended to be a really efficient format with a lot of answers and longer games. My combo focused list has non-creature win cons, so the removal count is much lower. I count 9 at 365 there. I'm including sweepers (which I run few of in black incidentally).
These numbers I am constantly fiddling with too. They are not set in stone because again it's hard to nail these down. If your list is more a traditional power focused list, you might want to look at some of the popular lists here and try and gauge that way. It's a good place to start.
Final thing I want to mention on removal. The efficiency of what you run will have a very big influence on your meta. If most threats can be answered with 1 and 2 mana cards, bigger creatures (without some immediate value and/or protections from removal) get a lot worse and consequently decks built around those strategies will suffer. So a good place to look first is what types of archetypes you want to push. What types of decks are you trying to encourage people to draft? And what does different type of removal do for/against those decks? That gives you an idea of how to pick and choose the pieces you want.
As an example, I really like recursive elements in black. So a lot of my removal is focused on edict effects - many are symmetrical even (smallpox, innocent blood). These work well with the types of threats black has access to. This is just one approach though. More generically good removal that is splashable will encourage people to dip into black for those cards. Spreading black out more among drafted decks. So again, your removal suite will drive a great deal of how your cube drafts and plays.
Experimentation is the best way to figure a lot of this out and dial it in for your group.
So is Diabolic Edict not really a cube card anymore? What does the ranking of black creature kill look like now?
Diabolic Edict is definitely still a cube card. I like it more than chainers as the instant speed is real, and I feel like you want one sac effect due to the number of hard-to-kill creatures there are and weird clauses black kill spells sometimes have.
So is Diabolic Edict not really a cube card anymore? What does the ranking of black creature kill look like now?
Compared to white removal, there's no black removal that stands out head and shoulders above the rest. Most of them serve a niche function and are hard to compare. The order in which you include the removal spells into your cube, shouldn't be the order in which they appear on a top 10 power level ranking.
When two answers are comparable in power level, it's much better when those answers are useful (and useless) in different situations. Reactive decks want to be able to answer a variety of threat types, at different costs.
So, because go for the throat , shriekmaw , dismember and hero's downfall exists, I'm much less likely to include a card like doom blade, compared to a card like fatal push. Fatal push is the best at what it does, doom blade isn't. However, if I could only include one removal spell in my cube, doom blade would make it WAY before fatal push would.
For example, I've been testing out vraska's contempt primarily to fill a roll that the rest of best of black's removal suite is missing. Exiling creatures.. something that is becoming more and more important these days. It's less efficient than other spells I'm not running, but it's potentially a more important answer in my cube than a card like Never//Return (a spell I would rank higher in power level).
I make sure to include 1 cheap edict effect for similar reasons... which is still very relevant given the # of hexproof creatures. Diabolic edict is the best one.
I've been finding myself less and less impressed with Edicts. As the years went by more and more value creatures and token makers have gotten into the cube and made them look awful. I'm very close to cutting both of them for the new Doomblade variant.
Probably still worth playing in powered cubes that see lots of fat cheat-y decks, but I think Edicts' time in unpowered cubes is winding down.
I've been finding myself less and less impressed with Edicts. As the years went by more and more value creatures and token makers have gotten into the cube and made them look awful. I'm very close to cutting both of them for the new Doomblade variant.
Probably still worth playing in powered cubes that see lots of fat cheat-y decks, but I think Edicts' time in unpowered cubes is winding down.
Do it, I cut mine and haven't looked back. I think some cubes need them as a release valves for certain creatures but they felt more and more like niche sideboard cards until I cut them because I would usually have been happier with a kill spell.
Regicide
Fatal Push
Cast Down
Go for the Throat
Ultimate price
Final slot I can never decide, between Hero's Downfall, Victim of Night (my cube has enough zombies and vampires for it's drawback to be relevant), or Chainer's Edict.
You guys have me thinking that maybe edict has to go
-edit
I of course run the Staples: Liliana of the veil, Shriekmaw, and Ravenous Chupacabra
In most cases being able to choose the target really does matter though so I'd rather have more of those. I think this configuration would be ideal in a small list:
As FoggManatic pointed out, Liliana also doubles as an edict.
When you can't target, instant speed is pretty huge. Either way, have people not found Consuming Vapors to be as amazing as we have, especially in the age of persist and undying?
We've found consuming vapors amazing, especially against Stoneforge decks. I also like Diabolic Edict much more than Chainer's Edict. The flashback only happens rarely in our games.
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Consuming Vapors is most definitely amazing.
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Here are the card's which I am running right now and how I would rank them. The cards I include I take into account the cost / flexibility of the card / what it can hit, and the effects it can have. Maybe this is wrong/ bad design, but it's what I am currently going with.
I think GFTT is clearly #1 due to cost and flexibility, and dismember wins over snuff out barely due to flexibility of manna cost
Chainer's Edict and Hero's Downfall might not be the most flexible, but I think it's important for my cube to have an edict for cards like True-Name Nemesis, and I like the flashback/sorcery over instant speed.
Hero's Downfall is nice to have an efficient answer to troubling walkers. I think my cube could use 1 more kill spell, but Finding the right cut is always so hard, especially since I want to try and squeeze both 3 cmc lilliana's in once I get my hands on them.
What is everyone else's rankings of these types of effects these days?
http://www.cubetutor.com/cubeblog/63569
Edit: that said I'm hardly sold on Push either since there are a lot of targets it misses even when revolted. Still one versus two mana is a large difference in the early game. Worth testing, probably.
On spoiled card wishlisting and 'should-have-had'-isms:
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Me too, at least of the ones that only target creatures.
https://cubecobra.com/cube/list/3pq
Here are the numbers that I ran through my cube filter for kill % on each black spell. The filter doesn't count planeswalkers / manlands / some token generators and those who have protection / shroud / hexproof, but the numbers are still fairly accurate.
Murder / Hero's Downfall / Ruinous Path: 228 / 228 (100%, derp)
Go for the Throat: 207 / 228: (90.7%)
Dismember: 204 / 228 (89.4%)
Ultimate Price: 195 / 228 (85.5%)
Snuff Out / Doom Blade / Malicious Infliction: 187 / 228 (82%)
Fatal Push (with revolt): 182 / 228 (79.8%)
Terror: 169 / 228 (74.1%)
Disfigure / Collective Brutality: 152 / 228 (66.6%)
Fatal Push (without revolt): 106 / 228 (46.4%)
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otherwise i feel pretty similarly about fatal push not being that great in cube and the rest being solid.
I dont run any edict effects in my cube because i have taken out all protection, shroud and non-activated hexproof in my cube.
I think it's a mistake to exclude manlands from your calculations. Most cubes now run 12-14 manlands, the WWK/BFZ manlands (although many exclude Stirring Wildwood) as well as Faerie Conclave, Treetop Village, Mishra's Factory and Mutavault. I run the full 14. Typically manlands can only be hit by instant speed removal, and black spot removal is an important source of that.
Based on the creatures currently in my 450 unpowered I checked to see the percentage of targets. Here are the totals of different relevant creature types in my cube:
Creature + Manland total: 210
Non-hexproof/shroud/prot black/indestructible total: 190
Targetable manlands: 13 (2 mono-colored, 9 multi-colored, 2 colorless, 4 black)
Targetable creatures + manlands: 203
Colored artifact creatures: 6
Colorless artifact creatures: 7 (+Mishra’s Factory)
Total artifact creatures: 13 (+ Mishra’s Factory)
Colorless Non-artifact creatures: 1 (+ Mutavault)
Multicolor creatures + manlands: 25
Targetable mono-colored creatures + manlands: 35 + 22 + 28 + 31 + 39 + 4 +2
Black creatures: 36
Black creatures + manlands: 40
Black artifact creatures: 2
Creatures toughness 2 or less: 26 + 19 + 20 + 24 + 26 + 46 + 7 =168 (includes 7 manlands)
Creatures toughness 6+: 14
Creatures CMC 2 or less: 19 + 9 + 16 + 15 + 20 + 11 + 2 + 11 = 105 (includes 13 targetable manlands)
Creatures CMC 4 or less: 30 + 20 + 21+ 25 + 30 +38 + 11 = 177 (includes 13 targetable manlands)
Creatures toughness 1 = 75 (includes Faerie Conclave)
For my cube, the key total to consider here is the total number of targetable, non-prot black, non-indestructible creatures and manlands. That’s 203.
Here's how the different black removal options stack up against the creatures and manlands in my 450 unpowered:
Murder / Hero's Downfall: 203/203 (100%)
Ruinous Path: 190 / 203 (sorcery speed can’t hit manlands most of the time) 93.6%
Go for the Throat: 189 / 203 (93.1%)
Dismember: 189 / 203 (93.1%) (Note that while Dismember can remove indestructible creatures, the only ones in my cube are Ulamog, the Ceaseless Hunger and Ormendahl, Profane Prince, which are still out of range of Dismember)
Ultimate Price: 161 / 203 (79.3%)
Snuff Out / Doom Blade / Malicious Affliction: 163 / 203 (80.3%)
Shriekmaw / Nekrataal: 141 / 203 (69.5%)
Fatal Push (with Revolt): 177 / 203 (87.2%)
Fatal Push (without Revolt): 105 / 203 (51.7%)
Terror:149 / 203 (73.4%)
Disfigure: 168 / 203 (82.8%)
Collective Brutality: 161 / 203 (79.3%) (sorcery speed usually doesn’t hit manlands)
Tragic Slip (non-Morbid): 75 / 203 (36.9%)
Tragic Slip (Morbid): 203 / 204 (99.5%) (It hits Ormendahl, Profane Prince, no other targetable black removal spell commonly cubed can. Worldspine Wurm is the only creature in my cube this won't answer)
Here are some conclusions that jump out at me after crunching the numbers on my cube's current composition:
Not considering manlands, there are obviously some significant differences between Steve_Man's cube and mine. There's no link to his list, so it's hard for me to tell exactly what's different. His cube's probably bigger (I think I remember him saying he runs a 540), and I seem to have a higher percentage of low toughness creatures than he does, so my cube might be more aggro. However, overall I would expect most cube managers here to come to similar conclusions after figuring in manlands.
450 card Peasant cube thread. Draft it here.
That being said, factoring manlands really doesn't skew my views on what I should / shouldn't be playing at my cube size. Makes Ultimate Price look worse / Fatal Push look better, but I'm not a big fan of those two regardless at 540. What it does show is how close Ultimate Price is to Doom Blade, and those two cards are pretty interchangeable.
My High Octane Unpowered Cube on CubeCobra
There's definitely more to look at than just raw percentages, and those percentages absolutely make Fatal Push and Tragic Slip look a lot better than they are. Revolt and Morbid are not that easy to trigger reliably. I do think there's an assumption that Ultimate Price hits more than Doom Blade does, and that was probably true in the past, but the recent influx of multicolored manlands changes that. I'd recommend any cube manager running one over the other crunch the numbers for their cube to help them make the decision of which one is better for their cube. I also think that there's a common assumption that running Shriekmaw and/or Nekrataal make Doom Blade unnecessary, but there's so much that Doom Blade hits that sorcery speed Terror-on-a-stick just doesn't.
They're close in terms of raw number of targets, but I actually don't think they're that interchangeable.
Using the example of your cube (I'm not sure if I missed the sig link earlier, or if you added it recently. If you did, thanks for that), your cube has 34 targets that Ultimate Price hits that Doom Blade doesn't.
... and 36 targets that Doom Blade hits that Ultimate Price doesn't. The lists are a bit different between our cubes, but we both have exactly 2 more Doom Blade targets than Ultimate Price targets.
Doom Blade also gets even better when you take into consideration that someone playing black has taken some of the unavailable targets out of the draft pool for their own deck. Conversely, Ultimate Price is also the better splash card for a non-black deck. Of course, if you're already running Snuff Out and/or Malicious Affliction, Doom Blade you might also prefer Ultimate Price because it's less redundant.
No worries if you're already happy with your current removal suite, of course. I'm just trying to contribute to the larger discussion here. However, looking into this a bit more closely has convinced me to make room for Disfigure and Doom Blade in my own cube in my next update.
450 card Peasant cube thread. Draft it here.
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So, IMO getting the removal suite right is the hardest part of building a cube. And you will need to experiment a bit with it. A lot depends on how creature focused your cube is. I have two cubes, a more midrange focused list with a lot of creature combat. That one has about 15 creature removal effects at 450 cards (spells and 187 creatures). That's probably higher than most run but it's intended to be a really efficient format with a lot of answers and longer games. My combo focused list has non-creature win cons, so the removal count is much lower. I count 9 at 365 there. I'm including sweepers (which I run few of in black incidentally).
These numbers I am constantly fiddling with too. They are not set in stone because again it's hard to nail these down. If your list is more a traditional power focused list, you might want to look at some of the popular lists here and try and gauge that way. It's a good place to start.
Final thing I want to mention on removal. The efficiency of what you run will have a very big influence on your meta. If most threats can be answered with 1 and 2 mana cards, bigger creatures (without some immediate value and/or protections from removal) get a lot worse and consequently decks built around those strategies will suffer. So a good place to look first is what types of archetypes you want to push. What types of decks are you trying to encourage people to draft? And what does different type of removal do for/against those decks? That gives you an idea of how to pick and choose the pieces you want.
As an example, I really like recursive elements in black. So a lot of my removal is focused on edict effects - many are symmetrical even (smallpox, innocent blood). These work well with the types of threats black has access to. This is just one approach though. More generically good removal that is splashable will encourage people to dip into black for those cards. Spreading black out more among drafted decks. So again, your removal suite will drive a great deal of how your cube drafts and plays.
Experimentation is the best way to figure a lot of this out and dial it in for your group.
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Diabolic Edict is definitely still a cube card. I like it more than chainers as the instant speed is real, and I feel like you want one sac effect due to the number of hard-to-kill creatures there are and weird clauses black kill spells sometimes have.
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Compared to white removal, there's no black removal that stands out head and shoulders above the rest. Most of them serve a niche function and are hard to compare. The order in which you include the removal spells into your cube, shouldn't be the order in which they appear on a top 10 power level ranking.
When two answers are comparable in power level, it's much better when those answers are useful (and useless) in different situations. Reactive decks want to be able to answer a variety of threat types, at different costs.
So, because go for the throat , shriekmaw , dismember and hero's downfall exists, I'm much less likely to include a card like doom blade, compared to a card like fatal push. Fatal push is the best at what it does, doom blade isn't. However, if I could only include one removal spell in my cube, doom blade would make it WAY before fatal push would.
For example, I've been testing out vraska's contempt primarily to fill a roll that the rest of best of black's removal suite is missing. Exiling creatures.. something that is becoming more and more important these days. It's less efficient than other spells I'm not running, but it's potentially a more important answer in my cube than a card like Never//Return (a spell I would rank higher in power level).
I make sure to include 1 cheap edict effect for similar reasons... which is still very relevant given the # of hexproof creatures. Diabolic edict is the best one.
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Probably still worth playing in powered cubes that see lots of fat cheat-y decks, but I think Edicts' time in unpowered cubes is winding down.
Do it, I cut mine and haven't looked back. I think some cubes need them as a release valves for certain creatures but they felt more and more like niche sideboard cards until I cut them because I would usually have been happier with a kill spell.
Fatal Push
Cast Down
Go for the Throat
Ultimate price
Final slot I can never decide, between Hero's Downfall, Victim of Night (my cube has enough zombies and vampires for it's drawback to be relevant), or Chainer's Edict.
You guys have me thinking that maybe edict has to go
-edit
I of course run the Staples: Liliana of the veil, Shriekmaw, and Ravenous Chupacabra
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