Question: Is this card cubable and under what conditions?
I have a 700 card unpowered cube (Cubetutor link below) in which I have long tried to push a sort of "Life-gain" or "Soul Sisters" style archetype in white. Recently, I've tried to expand this archetype into Orzhov's colors by including things like Karlov of the Ghost Council, Drana's Emissary, and Obzedat, Ghost Council, so that somebody drafting black/white could try something other than Tokens. While black does offer some good life-gain cards (Gifted Aetherborn, Vampire Nighthawk, Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet, Consuming Vapors, Whip of Erebos, and a few others), I feel most of what this deck really wants is in white. Hence, there's not a large incentive for the player drafting this deck to splash black unless you have to. This is where I think Sanguine Bond could come in; I feel it might be the "signpost" card that might get the player drafting this deck excited about playing both white AND black. I think it could potentially see play in mono-black or Golgari colors as well, so it might not be AS narrow as it would initially appear. Still, it's a 5cmc do nothing enchantment in many cases. What do you think?
Cost is my biggest concern. 5 mana is expensive to get into play. So it would sort of have to be part of a combo turn I would guess? Drop it and then unload a ton of life gain (it would be like a black overrun or something)? I don't know though. Maybe build a deck and see how well this comes together.
The card I would be adding is Blood Artist. It's deceptively powerful and while not a purely life gain focused card, it fits here and it ties in with sacrifice decks (you have Goblin Bombardment). Great card.
Sanguine bond is a great card at 5cmc in many soul sisters/life gain type decks. The problem with it is it really only fits in those type decks. You're right in that it is a pretty narrow card but there's a bunch of decks out there that like this card. Soul sisters probably being the most popular. It can also fit into some sort of golgari or abzan life gain deck as well. If I'm playing this card I personally favor stuff like rhox faithmender or boon reflection. But again still very narrow because in sisters you want to be fairly aggressive with your play, getting a bunch of creatures out ahead of your opponent to give yourself the life advantage so it may or may not be worth it. The life gain decks I normally play are pretty control heavy so I can spend time setting up my board and making sanguine bond more worth while. That's really the deck it's looking for is a b/w control with a fairly heavy lifegain subtheme. So yes it's narrow but it's also worth it in the right build.
@ahadabans, you're so right that Blood Artist seems like it would be sweet with this and other life-gain stuff as well as tokens. I've been considering it for sure. My only concern is does it work if you don't support black aggro? My playgroup hates black aggro as an archetype, so it has been banished from my cube. The thing I liked about Sanguine Bond is I figured it could play well with creatures like Vampire Nighthawk as well as spells like Consuming Vapors; I'm not sure Blood Artist can play with both aggro/midrange and control since it NEEDS creatures to do anything. Still, I think I'm definitely going to try to find space for both - maybe some other good life-gain support stuff too.
Cards that cost 5 mana and do nothing the turn they drop have historically been very bad in cube. I can't see making room for this unless I was building some kind of combo cube and this was part of a combo.
Check out the budget aristocrats video that mtggoldfish put up on YouTube the other day. It's kind of a midrange combo deck in b/w with blood artist in it. It looks like a solid build and I'm debating on getting the stuff I need to actually put it together.
Question: Is this card cubable and under what conditions?
I have a 700 card unpowered cube (Cubetutor link below) in which I have long tried to push a sort of "Life-gain" or "Soul Sisters" style archetype in white. Recently, I've tried to expand this archetype into Orzhov's colors by including things like Karlov of the Ghost Council, Drana's Emissary, and Obzedat, Ghost Council, so that somebody drafting black/white could try something other than Tokens. While black does offer some good life-gain cards (Gifted Aetherborn, Vampire Nighthawk, Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet, Consuming Vapors, Whip of Erebos, and a few others), I feel most of what this deck really wants is in white. Hence, there's not a large incentive for the player drafting this deck to splash black unless you have to. This is where I think Sanguine Bond could come in; I feel it might be the "signpost" card that might get the player drafting this deck excited about playing both white AND black. I think it could potentially see play in mono-black or Golgari colors as well, so it might not be AS narrow as it would initially appear. Still, it's a 5cmc do nothing enchantment in many cases. What do you think?
The card I would be adding is Blood Artist. It's deceptively powerful and while not a purely life gain focused card, it fits here and it ties in with sacrifice decks (you have Goblin Bombardment). Great card.
http://riptidelab.com/forum/threads/modular-cube-5-colors.800/
Retro combo cube thread
http://riptidelab.com/forum/threads/retro-combo-cube.1454/
@ahadabans, you're so right that Blood Artist seems like it would be sweet with this and other life-gain stuff as well as tokens. I've been considering it for sure. My only concern is does it work if you don't support black aggro? My playgroup hates black aggro as an archetype, so it has been banished from my cube. The thing I liked about Sanguine Bond is I figured it could play well with creatures like Vampire Nighthawk as well as spells like Consuming Vapors; I'm not sure Blood Artist can play with both aggro/midrange and control since it NEEDS creatures to do anything. Still, I think I'm definitely going to try to find space for both - maybe some other good life-gain support stuff too.
Cheers,
rant
My Cube
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