Can I just point out that EVERY card bar Hordechief thus far is a Human. My Champion of the Parish and Xathrid Necromancer already do good work and this set will just add to that.
If I make all the swaps as planned, my cube gets +5 cheap humans, which makes Champion of the Parish, Mayor of Avabruck and the experimental Adaptive Automaton really happy. With a steadily rising human-count, Champion is becoming a very good white 1-drop.
I wonder if it is coincidence that most of the cubable cards from this set are humans or if Wizards has purposefully increased the number of humans in the set and plans to do the same for future sets.
I hadn't considered Mayor of Avabruck for a long while, but the card's front face is rapidly approaching relevance. I think you'll still want to flip it though. Its main weakness is that Green doesn't really have many humans. Necromancer and Champion are better because those colours (and red) have lots of humans. But Mayor is getting better all the time.
Doing a good job in testing so far; particularly this suite of tri-brid cards. Alesha ultimately beat out Brutal Hordechief, who was decent in testing but not as good as she has been. Overall, a pretty spectacular set for the cube, IMHO.
I hate giving opponent's decision making power and this reads pay 4 get the worst card your opponent can give you. Can you manipulate your graveyard to force your opponent to give you a good card? Yes, I suppose but the flipside of that is that an opponent can kill/destroy something in response and force you to return that to your hand to varying effect.
His ability is difficult to evaluate, I'm curious on how this will turn out when testing him. I expect it's going to be good enough. If it were "return target non-land card from your graveyard to your hand" it would be absolutely amazing. This is not a fair expectation. It's closer to "draw a card" than Regrowth. Most of the time it will go like this:
First you get rid of all the cards that you really don't want with his delve. So it's save to assume that when you play him, you have nothing in your yard, or only something that you'd be happy to have back.
Then, when you activate him right away (which may often be the case), there are three things that can happen:
1) You flip two lands. If you had something in yard, this is great, you get exactly what you want. If not, it whiffs, but at least you milled to lands away.
2) You flip one non-land and a land. You get the worse what you flipped and what you had in your yard. Since you wanted the latter, you may get the other card, but then it's still better than "draw a card", because you get what you would have drawn, but not the land.
3) You flip two non-land cards. Now you get the worst of the cards, but still at least some gas.
So *on average* it doesn't look bad at all. It's true that his ability gets worse if your opponent kills/destroys something that you don't need, but then your opponent just used a spell to kill/destroy something *that you don't need*, so that doesn't sound like a good play anyway.
Besides, I love giving my opponent decision making power that will make him cringe over what is the least bad option that will him eventually anyway. This will not always be the case of course, but when your opponent has to choose between two really powerful cards, it will be fun
How powerful do you think Warden of the First Tree is in comparison Yasova Dragonclaw? I'm tempted to add both because they seem both good for aggro decks. I really like the Warden which seems like a good creature for both golgari and orzhov decks.
How powerful do you think Warden of the First Tree is in comparison Yasova Dragonclaw? I'm tempted to add both because they seem both good for aggro decks. I really like the Warden which seems like a good creature for both golgari and orzhov decks.
I assume by Orzhov you mean Selesnya?
Anyway, from the perspective of a Cube where aggressive green one drops of the Jungle Lion variety are not a thing, I prefer Yasova Dragonclaw. It seems quite good on the splash in aggressive red or tempo oriented blue decks even if you can't play it turn three. Also very nice for midrange, where it can help breaking stalemates in mirror matches and playing a more aggressive role against control. That is one scary ability the Dragonclaw is rocking there! It is not unconceivable to play Warden in a midrange deck, but I do not think it warrants a valuable Cube spot for smaller Cubes that do not support Gx aggro, especially considering the existence of Siege Rhino.
Total side note but I like how people are discussing running this over itself.
Well, it has to be said that Kolaghan is clearly better than Kolaghan. Considering what BR decks usually want and how stiff the competition in this guild is, there is no way that I would run Kolaghan over Kolaghan! Kolaghan might make it in as the sixth guild card or so. Kolaghan on the other hand ranks several places below that.
It was so funny to me when they described this as a downgrade to the original Zurgo during the Pax East panel. I was thinking if this is a downgrade, they should really "downgrade" all legendary creatures. Haha.
My deck designing is quite concise at this point:
1. Come up with deck idea
2. Realize this idea is somehow fundamentally similar to another deck I have or that is commonly played in my group
3. Decide I don't want to disassemble one of my existing decks
4. Give up and do nothing
I don't see the point of this new shroud mechanic. It's strictly worse than Hexproof. Threshold is pretty bad too, Delirium is a much better mechanic and probably easier to activate.
Otherwise this card is a pretty neat guy. Dodges removal and grows into a Primal Huntbeast. 3/5
Auto-includes at 540:
Soulfire Grand Master*
Monastery Mentor*
Yasova Dragonclaw*
Alesha, Who Smiles at Death
Mardu Woe-Reaper
Likely includes at 540:
Tasigur, the Golden Fang
Ugin, the Spirit Dragon*
Goblin Heelcutter
Brutal Hordechief
Likely not good enough but will continue to test:
Mardu Scout
Flamewind Phoenix
Mardu Strike Leader
Whisperwood Elemental
Having read more positive reviews of Mardu Strike Leader means I may test that longer than planned. We don't support black aggro so not sure if it's the right card for our Cube.
Whisperwood Elemental did well last week as it made free guys each turn to help stabilize versus an aggressive midrange deck. Looking at the suite of 5-drops in green we're running now (11) I like each card more than Whisperwood except maybe Vorapede and Plow Under. I don't necessarily believe in a cut & add of the same CMC/color but we have so many 5 drops that I'd have to cut one to make room.
Would like to see Mardu Scout in action a bit more but ultimately I don't think it will be enough.
Picked Tasigur, the Golden Fang quite highly in a draft last week and it did pretty well. I was B/U so I didn't have a ton of extra mana like the G/B decks will have but I still drew several cards off of it. It ate premium removal pretty often and it was quite a beatdown being a 4/5. He was cast 4 times for 1,3,3 & 1 mana for an average of 2. It was great to delve deep to cast him for 1 then still activate his ability in the same turn. I overdrafted him & made him the focal point of my deck and he did really well. Wish it wasn't legendary as I had several Clone effects in my deck & I didn't have enough other creatures.
Brutal Hordechief was put in a B/W token/midrange/aggressive deck. It had the Immediate Action conspiracy on it so he did his best Hellrider impression. It was pretty sweet to see it with haste and the lifegain was pretty relevant at least one game. The activated ability was never used but it still did really well. We had some discussions after the draft about how good the blocking option would be. Lure for 5 mana could win the game in multiple instances.
Goblin Heelcutter received rave reviews from the Boros player. He said the falter effect was relevant multiple times. It even helped him to beat a Griselbrand (!). I really like the Dash mechanic. We didn’t get a broken aggro card with it but the Heelcutter is pretty solid.
Ugin costs 8. The effects on it are insane but it costs 8. My drafters have been drafting it incorrectly & trying to put it in decks where he doesn’t belong. He has gone in appropriate decks two times & been quite good. I’m still not sold on him for long term but he’s going in for the short term.
Soulfire Grand Master has been good but not great yet. It has yet to live the Time Walk dream but has looped some burn spells. Someone even had it in a deck with Earthquake though he never lived the dream.
I definitely undervalued Monastery Mentor when it was spoiled. I knew it would be good enough for my 540 but holy cow. The B/W player had it in his deck. It ate removal every time hit the board but one. The one time it didn’t eat removal it made 5 prowess tokens. Pretty insane. It even made a token one time he didn’t untap with it. I’m starting to think this will be the best card from the set.
Those are my random thoughts from this set. I love testing tons of new cards (even mediocre ones). Sometimes cards come out of nowhere & surprise you (for better or worse). Getting 5 definite includes & 4 probable ones in my 540 sounds like a pretty good set to me. This set is no Conspiracy/Alpha but it’s still pretty good =)
My cube is two player Winchester Draft. Mono-colored decks are almost impossible and just making meaningful plays on turns 2-5 is often all that matters. Land destruction is incredibly strong in that context and Parallax Tide is probably stronger than Jace, TMS. In addition, I took the Conspiracy module pretty seriously and I added Contract From Below which is probably stronger than Ancestral Recall or Black Lotus. If you somehow lose after playing it, you've lost a card from your draft pool.
So with that context in mind, three-color spells are hard to cast. With the exception of Siege Rhino, every enemy shard is getting an update:
Hide/Seek -> Alesha, Who Smiles at Death
Ruhan of the Fomori -> Soulfire Grand Master
Maelstrom Wanderer -> Yasova Dragonclaw
Mimeoplasm -> Tasigur, the Golden Fang
In the colors, we have some cards that are strictly better than past cards:
Soulfire is "bumping" Lone Missionary, so Mardu Woe-Reaper can take that slot.
Duplicant is replaced by Ugin since...resolving Ugin is insane.
Mardu Strike Leader just doesn't look amazing to me, but it'll be replacing Consuming Vapors for testing.
Last Monastery Mentor is actually sort of dicey, but here's hoping it enables something like Esper Control.
I'm also reintroducing Murmuring Bosk and Avacyn's Pilgrim in this update as well as putting Siege Rhino on the list of potentials for inclusion. Overall I'm really thinking about bending the color balance in the future. For example, Junk is way more popular in my playgroup than Dimir and Simic are. I consider cutting one card in unpopular color combinations in favor of others, but I'm not sure about it, yet...
Junk is way more popular in my playgroup than Dimir and Simic are. I consider cutting one card in unpopular color combinations in favor of others, but I'm not sure about it, yet...
Sounds like it's the less played combinations that need the help.
You like Goblin Heelcutter more than flamewake phoenix? What has been your experience with the goblin that makes it such a high priority for you.
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I wonder if it is coincidence that most of the cubable cards from this set are humans or if Wizards has purposefully increased the number of humans in the set and plans to do the same for future sets.
Uril, the Miststalker RGW -- Ulamog, the Infinite Gyre C -- Vhati il-Dal BG -- Jor Kadeen, the Prevailer RW -- Animar, Soul of Elements URG
Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker R -- Maga, Traitor to Mortals B -- Ghave, Guru of Spores BGW -- Sliver Hivelord WUBRG
In --> Out
Mardu Woe-Reaper --> Savannah Lions
Soulfire Grand Master --> Spirit of the Labyrinth
Monastery Mentor --> Hallowed Spiritkeeper
Merciless Executioner --> Grim Haruspex
Brutal Hordechief --> Dread Return
Flamewake Phoenix --> Chandra's Phoenix
Alesha, Who Smiles at Death --> Feldon of the Third Path
Yasova Dragonclaw --> Sylvan Safekeeper
Ugin, the Spirit Dragon --> Staff of Nin
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On spoiled card wishlisting and 'should-have-had'-isms:
Doing a good job in testing so far; particularly this suite of tri-brid cards. Alesha ultimately beat out Brutal Hordechief, who was decent in testing but not as good as she has been. Overall, a pretty spectacular set for the cube, IMHO.
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!
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!
His ability is difficult to evaluate, I'm curious on how this will turn out when testing him. I expect it's going to be good enough. If it were "return target non-land card from your graveyard to your hand" it would be absolutely amazing. This is not a fair expectation. It's closer to "draw a card" than Regrowth. Most of the time it will go like this:
First you get rid of all the cards that you really don't want with his delve. So it's save to assume that when you play him, you have nothing in your yard, or only something that you'd be happy to have back.
Then, when you activate him right away (which may often be the case), there are three things that can happen:
1) You flip two lands. If you had something in yard, this is great, you get exactly what you want. If not, it whiffs, but at least you milled to lands away.
2) You flip one non-land and a land. You get the worse what you flipped and what you had in your yard. Since you wanted the latter, you may get the other card, but then it's still better than "draw a card", because you get what you would have drawn, but not the land.
3) You flip two non-land cards. Now you get the worst of the cards, but still at least some gas.
So *on average* it doesn't look bad at all. It's true that his ability gets worse if your opponent kills/destroys something that you don't need, but then your opponent just used a spell to kill/destroy something *that you don't need*, so that doesn't sound like a good play anyway.
Besides, I love giving my opponent decision making power that will make him cringe over what is the least bad option that will him eventually anyway. This will not always be the case of course, but when your opponent has to choose between two really powerful cards, it will be fun
CUBE TOP 10 - Help us vote for the best cards in cube
I think you're undervaluing both his base body and the Dash ability, personally.
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!
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!
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!
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!
Anyway, from the perspective of a Cube where aggressive green one drops of the Jungle Lion variety are not a thing, I prefer Yasova Dragonclaw. It seems quite good on the splash in aggressive red or tempo oriented blue decks even if you can't play it turn three. Also very nice for midrange, where it can help breaking stalemates in mirror matches and playing a more aggressive role against control. That is one scary ability the Dragonclaw is rocking there! It is not unconceivable to play Warden in a midrange deck, but I do not think it warrants a valuable Cube spot for smaller Cubes that do not support Gx aggro, especially considering the existence of Siege Rhino.
"What am I looking at? Ashes, dead man."
For reference, anyone who's okay with un cards, wordmail is sweet.
etc etc etc
Mardu Strike Leader
Mardu Woe-Reaper
Monastery Mentor
Ugin, the Spirit Dragon
Warden of the First Tree
Soulfire Grand Master
Alesha, Who Smiles at Death
Yasova Dragonclaw
Brutal Hordechief
Tasigur, the Golden Fang
I think
Soulfire Grand Master*
Monastery Mentor*
Yasova Dragonclaw*
Alesha, Who Smiles at Death
Mardu Woe-Reaper
Likely includes at 540:
Tasigur, the Golden Fang
Ugin, the Spirit Dragon*
Goblin Heelcutter
Brutal Hordechief
Likely not good enough but will continue to test:
Mardu Scout
Flamewind Phoenix
Mardu Strike Leader
Whisperwood Elemental
Having read more positive reviews of Mardu Strike Leader means I may test that longer than planned. We don't support black aggro so not sure if it's the right card for our Cube.
Whisperwood Elemental did well last week as it made free guys each turn to help stabilize versus an aggressive midrange deck. Looking at the suite of 5-drops in green we're running now (11) I like each card more than Whisperwood except maybe Vorapede and Plow Under. I don't necessarily believe in a cut & add of the same CMC/color but we have so many 5 drops that I'd have to cut one to make room.
Would like to see Mardu Scout in action a bit more but ultimately I don't think it will be enough.
Picked Tasigur, the Golden Fang quite highly in a draft last week and it did pretty well. I was B/U so I didn't have a ton of extra mana like the G/B decks will have but I still drew several cards off of it. It ate premium removal pretty often and it was quite a beatdown being a 4/5. He was cast 4 times for 1,3,3 & 1 mana for an average of 2. It was great to delve deep to cast him for 1 then still activate his ability in the same turn. I overdrafted him & made him the focal point of my deck and he did really well. Wish it wasn't legendary as I had several Clone effects in my deck & I didn't have enough other creatures.
Brutal Hordechief was put in a B/W token/midrange/aggressive deck. It had the Immediate Action conspiracy on it so he did his best Hellrider impression. It was pretty sweet to see it with haste and the lifegain was pretty relevant at least one game. The activated ability was never used but it still did really well. We had some discussions after the draft about how good the blocking option would be. Lure for 5 mana could win the game in multiple instances.
Goblin Heelcutter received rave reviews from the Boros player. He said the falter effect was relevant multiple times. It even helped him to beat a Griselbrand (!). I really like the Dash mechanic. We didn’t get a broken aggro card with it but the Heelcutter is pretty solid.
Ugin costs 8. The effects on it are insane but it costs 8. My drafters have been drafting it incorrectly & trying to put it in decks where he doesn’t belong. He has gone in appropriate decks two times & been quite good. I’m still not sold on him for long term but he’s going in for the short term.
Soulfire Grand Master has been good but not great yet. It has yet to live the Time Walk dream but has looped some burn spells. Someone even had it in a deck with Earthquake though he never lived the dream.
I definitely undervalued Monastery Mentor when it was spoiled. I knew it would be good enough for my 540 but holy cow. The B/W player had it in his deck. It ate removal every time hit the board but one. The one time it didn’t eat removal it made 5 prowess tokens. Pretty insane. It even made a token one time he didn’t untap with it. I’m starting to think this will be the best card from the set.
Those are my random thoughts from this set. I love testing tons of new cards (even mediocre ones). Sometimes cards come out of nowhere & surprise you (for better or worse). Getting 5 definite includes & 4 probable ones in my 540 sounds like a pretty good set to me. This set is no Conspiracy/Alpha but it’s still pretty good =)
My 540 card Powered Cube last updated March 2022
So with that context in mind, three-color spells are hard to cast. With the exception of Siege Rhino, every enemy shard is getting an update:
Hide/Seek -> Alesha, Who Smiles at Death
Ruhan of the Fomori -> Soulfire Grand Master
Maelstrom Wanderer -> Yasova Dragonclaw
Mimeoplasm -> Tasigur, the Golden Fang
In the colors, we have some cards that are strictly better than past cards:
Soulfire is "bumping" Lone Missionary, so Mardu Woe-Reaper can take that slot.
Duplicant is replaced by Ugin since...resolving Ugin is insane.
Mardu Strike Leader just doesn't look amazing to me, but it'll be replacing Consuming Vapors for testing.
Last Monastery Mentor is actually sort of dicey, but here's hoping it enables something like Esper Control.
https://www.cubecobra.com/cube/list/p420
Mardu Woe-Reaper
Monastery Mentor
Mardu Strike Leader
Ugin, the Spirit Dragon
in normal colors and am introducing a wedge section for
WBR - Alesha, Who Smiles at Death
URG - Yasova Dragonclaw
BGW - Warden of the First Tree
RWU - Soulfire Grand Master
GUB - Tasigur, the Golden Fang.
There is no Shard section yet, and I don't want to include cards just because of that. I'll wait until there are five other cards that make the introduction of a Shard section reasonable for me.
I'm also reintroducing Murmuring Bosk and Avacyn's Pilgrim in this update as well as putting Siege Rhino on the list of potentials for inclusion. Overall I'm really thinking about bending the color balance in the future. For example, Junk is way more popular in my playgroup than Dimir and Simic are. I consider cutting one card in unpopular color combinations in favor of others, but I'm not sure about it, yet...
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360 Peasant Cube!
Custom Cube
RWU Miracles RWU
Exactly. Besides having the really huge number of 3 Treefolks in my Cube (including Mirror Entity), the Forest type is the main reason it's going in.
Interactions/Synergies/Whatever (in my cube):
Mirror Entity, Wickerbough Elder, Woodfall Primus
Verdant Catacombs, Wooded Foothills, Windswept Heath, Misty Rainforest
Woodland Cemetery, Hinterland Harbor
Arbor Elf, Knight of the Reliquary, and, well... Sundering Titan.
It's not much, but I like it enough to cube it over Sandsteppe Citadel.
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Sounds like it's the less played combinations that need the help.
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My Article - "Mana Short: A study in limited resource management."
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