Hey, guys. I wasn't sure about doing this thread, but something Salmo said really emboldened me. Let's talk Mirror Entity!
As popular and respected as I know this card is, I'm just not sold. I've tended to feel that the crappy body, mana-intensive ability and need for uncommon board-states all really made this guy pretty lame outside of tokens or maybe tribal. Still, I was wondering "What's the feeling in overall community?" Thus this thread.
Also, since the vast majority of my SCD threads have been on older cards like this, I've decided to start acknowleging that more heavily upfront by labeling them like a series: Old Card Discussion. Whereas New Card Discussions are usually more theoretical and speculative, Old Card Discussions are meant to be more about concrete gameplay/testing experiences, staple re-evaluation, and just generally talking about classic cube cards.
So what do you guys think?
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I'm officially proposing we retire the word "insane" from the MtG vocabulary.
"The best way to be different is to be better" - Gene Muir
The card is undoubtedly powerful. Turning all your creatures into X/Xs and then swinging for lethal is no joke.
But the card is also *incredibly* fragile on a lot of board states. Playing him on T3 can feel awful and can do literal nothing for some number of turns if you have other plays to make, and if you're relying on the Mirror Entity to break through board states you can be massively disappointed when so many cards kill it.
We found that more effortless options i.e. anthems and creatures that don't require mana commitments to anthem, were much more effective in supporting those token builds. There are a lot of these options in white already--Accorder Paladin, Hero of Bladehold, Soltari Champ, the new WW guy whose name escapes me, plus all the actual anthems--so running one that asked a lot to be powerful eventually stopped interesting us. It also feels like they'll never stop printing these effortless anthems, so the further we go with cube the less and less the mana commitment is necessary.
Don't get me wrong, Mirror Entity can do some disgusting things, but it took too much time and mana too often to make those disgusting things happen.
That being said, if you're running a tribal cube, this guy is absolutely a staple.
I'm ranking Mirror Entity near the top of white's three drops. It is a three drop that scales very well within the game, you are happy to draw it later too usually (in a lot of situations it will win on the spot or create a Plague Wind). The threat of activation is so high, it will likely mean your creatures will get blocked, and you do not have to spend all your mana to kill the opposition. You attack, wait for them to declare blockers and only then decide by how much, if at all, to pump - usually, if you dump all your mana into it, it is because it will win you the game. It helps in white weenie's toughest matchup the most - against green midrange. They rely on their blockers being fat enough to kill your attackers and ME makes sure that does not happen.
Add to that the splashable cost and colorless ability and you have a winner. It is fairly easy to win with, especially with cards like Spectral Procession. The card is bad on defense and wants more creatures out, so he is not a control card, making him less broad than some of the other options. However, he is valuable splash in other aggressive decks.
It's a very high variance card. Against removal-heavy decks or decks that can interact with the trigger on the stack, it often does nothing. However, if you get to untap with it, it's very often game over. I think it's still powerful enough to be in most cubes (although I would not think someone was crazy if they wanted to cut it for power level reasons), whether or not you like it's relatively binary status could be something for your playgroup to decide and cut it for that reason.
As our traditional cube supports Wx tokens pretty heavily, it's a long way from being cur for us as it's a redundant anthem effect that can be the best anthem in the cube.
I agree that he's a high-variance card, but I feel like he's gotten better this year with all the token support we've been getting lately. I like him for now, but I like Thalia 2.0 more, luckily I have space to play both at the moment.
With the new Thalia I probably will be cutting a white 3-drop soon, so this discussion is timely, but I don't think it's going to be Mirror Entity. What I like about Mirror Entity is that it's one of the few really good mana-sinks available in cube, and this seems especially important for white aggro which is lacking other forms of reach like card draw or direct damage. The fact that it's a Changeling lets it play off against a bunch of tribal synergies like Goblin Rabblemaster, Mardu Woe-Reaper, Gravecrawler, and more. I don't think I'd blame anyone for making this their cut for new Thalia, but it's powerful and unique, so I think it's worth it to keep it in for now.
Also, since the vast majority of my SCD threads have been on older cards like this, I've decided to start acknowleging that more heavily upfront by labeling them like a series: Old Card Discussion.
Since there's already a separate subforum just for discussion of new cards, making this distinction while posting a card in the Cube Card and Archetype Discussion subforum seems pretty redundant and unnecessary.
Since there's already a separate subforum just for discussion of new cards, making this distinction while posting a card in the Cube Card and Archetype seems pretty redundant and unnecessary.
But branding's all the rage these days!
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():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
I'm officially proposing we retire the word "insane" from the MtG vocabulary.
"The best way to be different is to be better" - Gene Muir
The love fest for this card in the Thalia thread has convinced me to add it to my cube. I want to improve my support of tokens overall, and this seemed like a good way to do it. I think this is going in over Mausoleum Guard.
Our group loves this one and you need to respect the Entity or die to it. It is true it is fragile and sometimes you are just playing it out for it to die but when it sticks around, you are probably winning. I haven't been able to kill this thing a few times and have just died. I can't see cutting this anytime soon but I can see in some groups where it doesn't see much play or is valued highly. It took for someone to do really well it for it to really be feared in our group.
As popular and respected as I know this card is, I'm just not sold. I've tended to feel that the crappy body, mana-intensive ability and need for uncommon board-states all really made this guy pretty lame outside of tokens or maybe tribal. Still, I was wondering "What's the feeling in overall community?" Thus this thread.
Also, since the vast majority of my SCD threads have been on older cards like this, I've decided to start acknowleging that more heavily upfront by labeling them like a series: Old Card Discussion. Whereas New Card Discussions are usually more theoretical and speculative, Old Card Discussions are meant to be more about concrete gameplay/testing experiences, staple re-evaluation, and just generally talking about classic cube cards.
So what do you guys think?
I'm officially proposing we retire the word "insane" from the MtG vocabulary.
"The best way to be different is to be better" - Gene Muir
Cubes:
Modern Banlist Cube
Monocolor Budget Cube
But the card is also *incredibly* fragile on a lot of board states. Playing him on T3 can feel awful and can do literal nothing for some number of turns if you have other plays to make, and if you're relying on the Mirror Entity to break through board states you can be massively disappointed when so many cards kill it.
We found that more effortless options i.e. anthems and creatures that don't require mana commitments to anthem, were much more effective in supporting those token builds. There are a lot of these options in white already--Accorder Paladin, Hero of Bladehold, Soltari Champ, the new WW guy whose name escapes me, plus all the actual anthems--so running one that asked a lot to be powerful eventually stopped interesting us. It also feels like they'll never stop printing these effortless anthems, so the further we go with cube the less and less the mana commitment is necessary.
Don't get me wrong, Mirror Entity can do some disgusting things, but it took too much time and mana too often to make those disgusting things happen.
That being said, if you're running a tribal cube, this guy is absolutely a staple.
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Add to that the splashable cost and colorless ability and you have a winner. It is fairly easy to win with, especially with cards like Spectral Procession. The card is bad on defense and wants more creatures out, so he is not a control card, making him less broad than some of the other options. However, he is valuable splash in other aggressive decks.
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As our traditional cube supports Wx tokens pretty heavily, it's a long way from being cur for us as it's a redundant anthem effect that can be the best anthem in the cube.
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Highly synergetic with token strategies, which is the main reason he still finds a spot in my cube.
Can't agree more with that. In our playgroup, Mirror Entity is still a total beast, while Soltari Champion struggles at seeing constant action.
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Since there's already a separate subforum just for discussion of new cards, making this distinction while posting a card in the Cube Card and Archetype Discussion subforum seems pretty redundant and unnecessary.
450 card Peasant cube thread. Draft it here.
But branding's all the rage these days!
I'm officially proposing we retire the word "insane" from the MtG vocabulary.
"The best way to be different is to be better" - Gene Muir
Cubes:
Modern Banlist Cube
Monocolor Budget Cube
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!
Modern: Jund
450 card Peasant cube thread. Draft it here.