Fight cards like Prey Upon are pretty problematic for a bunch of reasons. The most obvious is that if you don't have a creature that's at least as big as whatever you need to remove, it does stone nothing, and if your creature isn't bigger, it's a 2-for-1 against you. Then the damage your creature takes might even leave you without any good attacks for the rest of the turn. This adds up to a card I really don't want in my cube's green section. The closest thing to a fight card that I think it remotely playable is Nature's Way, which has been OK in my Peasant cube, but even green has better options available at rare for cube.
The mono-green creature removal effects I'm running are Song of the Dryads, Polukanos, World Eater, Master of the Wild Hunt, and Garruk Relentless. If your green deck need to get rid of something bigger, and Song of the Dryads isn't enough removal, you'll need to splash another color or spend a lot of mana on something like Karn Liberated. Fortunately, green's the best color for splashing and playing big mana effects, so I think we can live without fight cards.
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465 card Unpowered cube thread. Draft it here and I'll be happy to return the favor.
450 card Peasant cube thread. Draft it here.
I love Sylvan Library. The repeatable card selection is great (especially with some shuffle effects) and the ability to dig yourself out of losing situations and the intrinsic card advantage potential is so sweet. One of my favorite green cards in the cube.
Green has a ton of ways to generate card advantage, but very little cubeable true "draw" effects.
My favorite green card in my cube, and strong enough that I'll always consider splashing for it, no matter how late I see it in the pool. Consistently one of the best performing green enchantments available. Might not be as strong as Survival of the Fittest, but more consistent, and fits in literally any deck. I greatly prefer the OG Legends art to the new. Feels more eldritch and foreboding than just a grove with holes in the wall.
I probably don't prioritize Sylvan Library as much as I could for midrange green decks, but it's a great card that I'll put in all of my green ramp decks because they have the most shuffle effects to take advantage of the card selection, and they're in the most need of the very painful card draw.
There are all kinds of ways to gain card advantage (especially in terms of land) in my green section, but in terms of things that actually put more cards into your hand I'm running Duskwatch Recruiter, Tireless Tracker, Nissa, Vastwood Seer (the +1 ability on her walker side), and Sylvan Library.
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Definitely one of my favorite green cards. While not as inherently powerful / archetype defining as things like Survival of the Fittest / Natural Order / Rolfellos / oath of Druids, Sylvan Library is one of the few green cards that can literally be slotted in any deck playing green since Survival / Natural Order encourage lots of creatures and Oath of Druids encourages few creatures. Raw card draw / filtering is extremely powerful, especially at 1G.
Sylvan Library is probably green's best card. Though I have found it confuses new players and they often need to see it in action to understand how busted it actually is. Very few green decks I wouldn't run it in and a card that will often pull me into a splash. I don't like passing this card.
I like Spiritkeeper, but there are a lot of great white 3-drops that help support the token/anthem archetype (in addition to just being good) and the 1WW cost on Spiritkeeper is prohibitive for some of those shells. It's currently not in my list at the moment.
I'm a big fan of Stephen King's The Dark Tower series, and I've always loved the 2nd edition cover art for The Gunslinger, which is where my avatar art comes from.
Spiritkeeper is fine. Worse than I thought it would be, but not bad and a high ceiling in the right shell. It's totally replaceable.
I love Phyrexian Arena (even though it's lost a decent amount of its cube luster) and I love this art the most. Also the flavor is great--win your fight, get a prize! i.e. pay a life get a card.
Never Played it, but between the other awsome creatures it competes against, the double mana cost it just can't quite compete unless you are looking for a really heavy token theme. Like really heavy.
The story behind my avatar, It came by default and I can't be bothered to change it
I haven't had any positive experiences with Hallowed Spiritkeeper. It looks great on paper, but when I've tried playing it, it felt a little underwhelming. It might be a card that shines in certain matchups more than others.
I was collecting cards as a kid before I learned how to play and Ron Spencer's art on Armor Thrull was one of the main factors in me wanting to learn how to play. Maybe that and Force of Nature. I really love the flavor of Armor Thrull, and the art really captures it. Previously, I was cycling through different John Hughes characters, but had been stuck on Long Duk Dong for a few years because I stopped feeling like changing it. I finally decided to change it to something more MtG related, and when I did my history with Armor Thrull made it the obvious choice.
To me it is of the less replacable white three drops. Mass removals are a big weakness to white weenie decks, and this is probably the best proactive countermeasure that you have. Even just having a creature that is untouchable late game is good and I've killed my own Spiritkeeper at the end of my opponent's turn for clean kills before.
I'm a bit surprised by the reception so far. I think Hallowed Spiritkeeper is really strong. The body is fine and the wrath protection makes it incredibly awkward for some decks to handle. It's good at almost all phases of the game which is fairly unusual for a 3 drop and plays extremely well with stax effects. Great versatility.
I like Spiritkeeper. It's decent at providing some beats and then post-Wrath recovery. However, it's replaceable and my get the ax when I do my Amonkhet changes.
My avatar is a photo I found online somewhere when I needed an avatar image. I love sea creatures, with octopuses being among my favorites. I was utterly charmed by this tiny octopus on a human hand.
I realy like spirit keeper as well. I think its an interesting effect, makes choices in combat harder and makes removal less straight forward. great card for creating tough choices, which I always find fun about mtg.
My avatar/name connection is obvious, but it is mis-spelled "visser"drix instead of "vizzer"drix on purposed because Visser is my last name. Coincidentally the first MTG product I ever bought was a Starter 1999 duel deck set which featured Trained Orgg and Vizzerdrix as the deck leaders. I was naturally drawn to the vizzerdrix deck because of my last name connection and now I use it as my namesake for all MTG related stuff.
I've seen Hallowed Spiritkeeper do some pretty interesting things but it's few and far between. It plays well with Moat in a more control shell. it also plays well with opposition as it gives the opponent some very interesting pressure (do they kill it just to get tapped.out.) Just don't play it with Living Death, that's an awesome nonbo.
My avatar is the Renegade symbol from Mass Effect. Mass Effect 2 is my favorite video game of all time.
Spiritkeeper is a cool card that's got the wrong cost for me. It's nuts in a BW stax deck, but that deck wants to be heavy black, and 1WW is hard to fit in a deck that revolves around BBBloodghast and 2BBBraids. So out it went a few months ago, and I'm not missing it too awful much.
My avatar is my avatar around the internet, Immanuel Kant. I studied philosophy in college and wrote my undergrad thesis on Kant. Now I teach English in rural Montana, but I also teach a philosophy class, returning to my Kant roots. It's pretty sweet. Also, my name isn't Mike Pemulis. He's a character in Infinite Jest. I'm Eric.
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I can't say I'm pleased to see you and must warn you I may have to do something about it.
EDH: UGEdric
Pauper: URDelver
Modern: UGRDelver
Draft my cube: Eric's 390 Unpowered
I last abused Spiritkeeper with Recurring Nightmare for fun results. Not super strong, but it can work in the right shell. Unfortunately somebody in WotC had the wisdom to give him enough punching power to fail the Reveillark test.
My name is John. I like degenerate combos, durdle combos, and terrible rube-goldberg decks that work once in a dozen attempts. Avatar is the art is from Johnny, Combo Player.
I'm a bit surprised to hear that it's fallen out of favor with so many people. I like the card quite a bit, particularly in white weenie/anthem decks, but there's plenty of room for abuse in other types of decks as well. Sure, it would be easier to use in RecSur and Stax decks if it cost 2W, but there's no way a three drop with this much potential for abuse gets printed at that cost. In a competitive slot, I think this is still an excellent card, and it's one I'm in no hurry to replace.
My avatar is a Borg cube, a spaceship belonging to the vicious cybernetic collective from Star Trek.
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I like Spiritkeeper just fine, but it has a lot of competition in that slot. Given the other tokens support that we have, I don't think it's a necessity to support that deck and it's not so good on it's own that I'd call it a staple. I cut it with my Amonkhet update, but it had a good run and could certainly come back one day.
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I liked him on paper but I don't think I've really ever seen him pay off in practice. Double white always feels a bit rough for a more narrow card, but I guess it doesn't really want to be played on curve so that helps off set some of that.
My avatar is my handsome face, because I feel there isn't enough of it on the internet.
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Sylvan Liberary is a stone cold staple unless you have rules for your cube that exclude it (colour pie, pauper etc.).
Mine is an old spanish copy
I've had for years so in my head its always Biblioteca Silvana, never seen an English copy in the wild.
The mono-green creature removal effects I'm running are Song of the Dryads, Polukanos, World Eater, Master of the Wild Hunt, and Garruk Relentless. If your green deck need to get rid of something bigger, and Song of the Dryads isn't enough removal, you'll need to splash another color or spend a lot of mana on something like Karn Liberated. Fortunately, green's the best color for splashing and playing big mana effects, so I think we can live without fight cards.
450 card Peasant cube thread. Draft it here.
Sylvan Library
BONUS QUESTION
What mono-green card-draw effects are you currently running?
450 card Peasant cube thread. Draft it here.
Mono-Green Card-Draw I Run:
Duskwatch Recruiter
Yavimaya Elder
Regal Behemoth
Sylvan Library
Oath of Nissa
That is honestly the closest I get to green card draw in cube.
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Green has a ton of ways to generate card advantage, but very little cubeable true "draw" effects.
My 630 Card Powered Cube
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My Article - "Mana Short: A study in limited resource management."
My 49th Set (P)review - Discusses my top 20 Cube cards from MKM!
I run Sylvan Library, Duskwatch Recruiter, Harmonize and Yavimaya Elder as my true card draw effects. Though Harmonize is on the bubble.
There are all kinds of ways to gain card advantage (especially in terms of land) in my green section, but in terms of things that actually put more cards into your hand I'm running Duskwatch Recruiter, Tireless Tracker, Nissa, Vastwood Seer (the +1 ability on her walker side), and Sylvan Library.
450 card Peasant cube thread. Draft it here.
My High Octane Unpowered Cube on CubeCobra
http://riptidelab.com/forum/threads/modular-cube-5-colors.800/
Retro combo cube thread
http://riptidelab.com/forum/threads/retro-combo-cube.1454/
Hallowed Spiritkeeper
BONUS QUESTION
What's the story behind your avatar?
450 card Peasant cube thread. Draft it here.
I'm a big fan of Stephen King's The Dark Tower series, and I've always loved the 2nd edition cover art for The Gunslinger, which is where my avatar art comes from.
My 630 Card Powered Cube
My Article - "Cube Design Philosophy"
My Article - "Mana Short: A study in limited resource management."
My 49th Set (P)review - Discusses my top 20 Cube cards from MKM!
I love Phyrexian Arena (even though it's lost a decent amount of its cube luster) and I love this art the most. Also the flavor is great--win your fight, get a prize! i.e. pay a life get a card.
Also, follow us on twitter! @TurnOneMagic
The story behind my avatar, It came by default and I can't be bothered to change it
http://www.cubetutor.com/cubeblog/63569
I found a fitting one for you:
My 630 Card Powered Cube
My Article - "Cube Design Philosophy"
My Article - "Mana Short: A study in limited resource management."
My 49th Set (P)review - Discusses my top 20 Cube cards from MKM!
I was collecting cards as a kid before I learned how to play and Ron Spencer's art on Armor Thrull was one of the main factors in me wanting to learn how to play. Maybe that and Force of Nature. I really love the flavor of Armor Thrull, and the art really captures it. Previously, I was cycling through different John Hughes characters, but had been stuck on Long Duk Dong for a few years because I stopped feeling like changing it. I finally decided to change it to something more MtG related, and when I did my history with Armor Thrull made it the obvious choice.
[180 classic cube]
The list on cube cobra
Read my blog on cube - Latest post June 2nd 2022
My avatar is a photo I found online somewhere when I needed an avatar image. I love sea creatures, with octopuses being among my favorites. I was utterly charmed by this tiny octopus on a human hand.
Cheers,
rant
My Cube
CubeCobra: https://cubecobra.com/cube/overview/5f5d0310ed602310515d4c32
Cube Tutor: http://cubetutor.com/viewcube/1963
My avatar/name connection is obvious, but it is mis-spelled "visser"drix instead of "vizzer"drix on purposed because Visser is my last name. Coincidentally the first MTG product I ever bought was a Starter 1999 duel deck set which featured Trained Orgg and Vizzerdrix as the deck leaders. I was naturally drawn to the vizzerdrix deck because of my last name connection and now I use it as my namesake for all MTG related stuff.
My avatar is the Renegade symbol from Mass Effect. Mass Effect 2 is my favorite video game of all time.
http://www.cubetutor.com/cubeblog/414
My avatar is from Contract From Below, which was a linchpin of the old (and sorely-missed) 5-Color format.
My Eternal Cube on CubeTutor| |My Reject Rare Cube on CubeTutor| |My Peasant Cube on CubeTutor
I used to write for MTGS, including Cranial Insertion and cube articles. Good on you if you can find those after the upgrade.
My avatar is my avatar around the internet, Immanuel Kant. I studied philosophy in college and wrote my undergrad thesis on Kant. Now I teach English in rural Montana, but I also teach a philosophy class, returning to my Kant roots. It's pretty sweet. Also, my name isn't Mike Pemulis. He's a character in Infinite Jest. I'm Eric.
EDH: UGEdric
Pauper: UR Delver
Modern: UGR Delver
Draft my cube: Eric's 390 Unpowered
My name is John. I like degenerate combos, durdle combos, and terrible rube-goldberg decks that work once in a dozen attempts. Avatar is the art is from Johnny, Combo Player.
My avatar is a Borg cube, a spaceship belonging to the vicious cybernetic collective from Star Trek.
450 card Peasant cube thread. Draft it here.
My avatar (and user name) is the character Calibretto from the comic book series Battle Chasers by Joe Madureira (my favorite comic artist).
MTGS Average Peasant Cube 2023 Edition
Follow me. I tweet.
My avatar is my handsome face, because I feel there isn't enough of it on the internet.
____________________
Sylvan Liberary is a stone cold staple unless you have rules for your cube that exclude it (colour pie, pauper etc.).
Mine is an old spanish copy
I've had for years so in my head its always Biblioteca Silvana, never seen an English copy in the wild.