There's definitely a range in terms of how strong they are, but the 8th card is definitely that noticeable. That being said, it's also easier to fit some in than others late in the draft. Lutri basically always makes the cut regardless, but opening up your third pack and seeing Umori or Kaheera is a much harder ship to right (and likely not worth it).
I did a team draft with 5 others on dr4ft last week, and I don't think any of the companion decks lost a match except when faced off against another companion deck (although one of the data points isn't great - my Umori deck beat a non-companion deck that didn't get off the ground both games due to only drawing lands).
I've read a lot of reactions about companions on both sides and I can't say I'm fully on board with either of them. I've played with and against companions quite a bit in standard and while sometimes playing standard makes me want to quit the game all together, I don't personally feel like companions are the problem with that format.
There's a couple of points that I think are worth making about companions in limited, especially in singleton limited like cube. First is the companion needs to be seen and drafted. You don't get to just say you're the Lurrus deck and automatically get both Lurrus and Black Lotus. If you draft with the companion in mind, then sure, you can pretty easily build a deck that fits the restriction and then play your companion out of the sideboard with success. If you see a companion mid to late draft, though, you could very well be too far down your current path to justify even taking it, let alone building around it. I've not had real life experience with companions in cube, yet, but I have drafted a bunch of Ikoria limited on Arena and I've had similar experiences there with companions. In fact, my last draft I was in the cycling deck and opened Yorion P3P1. I took it and I was able to make it work with the 60 card deck, but I had to rely on the cyclers to make the deck consistent and I had some questionable inclusions to get me to 60 cards. And full disclosure, that deck didn't get me to the max wins, despite always having a bomb rare in my opening hand. Had I seen Yorion sooner in the draft, I feel pretty certain that I could have prioritized my picks differently and ended up with a much better deck. I can't imagine drafting companions in cube will end up playing out much differently.
Second is that the companions themselves are still Magic cards with actual text. I don't want to downplay how inherently powerful always having access to this specific card is. Of course Dualcaster Mage gets better if you make it hybrid blue red and also let me just start the game with it waiting in the wings. At the end of the day, though, Lutri is still just a fork on a stick, which is not exactly game breaking, especially in an environment as over the top and powerful as cube. Even if I build around and play Lurrus, for example, is getting to cast one cheap creature a turn back from my graveyard any more powerful than something like Bob in that same deck? Personally I feel like too much emphasis is being put on them being an untouchable eighth card in your opener without taking into account the effect the card itself will have on the game. Sure, you always have it, but will it always be enough? Will having Lurrus as my companion mean that my Boros aggro deck has an edge over my opponent's reanimator or Tinker deck?
Again, I don't have first hand experience with them in cube, so what do I know, really? I haven't drafted IRL since early March. I'm pretty excited to give companions a shot, though. My group really enjoys playing with conspiracies and I suspect we'll also enjoy companions or at least some number of them.
OK, so i got a 5 person draft in with 5 packs of 9 yesterday. Companion does seem as strong as wtwlf is making it out to be. Personally, I drafted an Umori, the collector deck of jund midrange creatures. Umori's ability is relevant, but what I found really interesting is that a lot of the times, I just cared that he was a big beefy creature that I would definitely be able to play. The ability to guaranteed have a 4/5 on the field if my opponent wrathed, or dealt with my board, that ALSO helped me reastablish my board was amazing insurance as a creature based deck. Making it really hard for me to overextend on board, I think Umori might be here to stay, but i did P1P1 it, so that may have affected my impression. My deck had a few cards he could ramp out, but most of my games, he was the most expensive creature i ended up casting (deck winrate 5-2)(singles)
Lutri, the spellchaser - was drafted but not used as a companion because we did a multiplayer draft, and the player chose the next card as his companion. (FFA multiplayer)
Jegantha, the wellspring - simlar to umori, a medium sized creature with no strings attached ( once deck construction is complete) is pretty good. Was dealt with immediately in multiplayer, but a free 8th card is something I'd be fine with failing the vindicate test.(FFA Multiplayer)
Triomes in general - My cube is decently small(so most players had multiple fetches), and I just added all 5 of these guys, but every time they were fetched as another copy of my shock/duals. The cycling ability was never used, but is something we recognized the value of. It didn't last night, but these would also make splashes or tricolors a little easier. One small bonus of triomes is that "offcolor" fetches work so much better. Like if you have the sultai triom, are jund, and use the izzet fetchland, you have access to all colors in your deck, which is pretty good. (singles)
Gemrazer - this card wasn't on my radar, but one of my cube group recommended it to me and i realized, I was actually really excited for it. I realized that I still run wickerbough elder, maybe it was a pet card, but i liked it over the seemingly more popular thrashing brontodon(singles)
Yorion, sky nomad amusingly, in our second draft, I (drafting america control) wanted this card, assumed it would table, and it didn't, the deckbuilding restriction proved too difficult for the person who was forced to draft grixis control. (my cube has a rule where if you get nicol bolas p1p1 you are "forced" to build his grand deck, people tend to like it.(strongly peerpressured). I definitely WOULD have used this companion, but cut down to a 40 card deck when it didn't table. (FFA multiplayer) gigan, cyberclaw terror Was found pack 3, Bolas player also grabbed this card and didn't ever draw it. (FFA multiplayer) vivien, Monster's advocate Drafted but never drawn, probably would have been good.(FFA multiplayer)
Mutate mechanic! - Seems a lot harder of a rule than I first thought to understand. its very important to know the reminder text on mutate. Last night, I used Treachery on an Ulamog, the ceaseless hunger then mutated it into a Ghidorah, king of the cosmos in an EDH game afterwards(to prevent losing control of the fatty), and apparently you can only mutate creatures you own. ALSO fun fact, if the creature you want to mutate onto dies, the mutate creature just ETB's normally.
edit: I think its kind of amusing that my experience was the opposite of the poster above me. callibretto was basically saying the cards themselves need to be good still, and I'm saying that in some games a 4/5 vanilla creature was bonkers.
I'm also somewhat on the fence about Companions. If the rumor is true m21 is going to errata them to require a payment of {3} before you can cast them. That is a huge nerf.
However, as they are now I think they are fine in powered Cube and that most of the backlash is a reflection of the distaste some players have for what the mechanic does (and granted, the vast consensus is that it is a stupid idea that is obviously stupid and should have been shot down before getting to print). Honestly, if a group is open to it Companion can really liven up a draft -- but the problem is that constructed/competitive is really ruining it by making the mechanic generally reviled (even though it is not necessarily the same problem Companions in each constructed format).
My group finally met up to test the new cards and Mutate was a flop. It is too easy to disrupt and the non-human clause just makes this win-more mechanic even worse for most cubes.
I played a cube draft last night, where the combo decks just happened to get amazing opening hands, and had several turn 2 or 3 wins based on opening hands. Meanwhile, I had a subpar lutri, the spellchaser deck, and played her several times as a 3/2 flash vanilla creature, to apply pressure or kill a problematic planeswalker. Which honestly didn't feel fair, but definitely felt like magic... I understand what some companions have done to magic in other formats, but I'm really not feeling like they are all too broken in cube. Jegantha, the wellspring , umori, the collector and lutri, the spellchaser have all been at an OK power level in our two in-person drafts. Gyruda has been maindecked twice, and been reanimated pulling out a turn wurmcoil engine as well in his most "broken play". Yorion still hasn't seen play, so i can't say, and i dont own the other 5 yet, so I can't say how they will do, but i can't imagine the hippo to be unfair in a format with turn 2 reanimated blightsteel collosus, and splintertwin combos...
Yes, the companion ability is destroying a lot of magic formats right now, but I still feel like in cube the deckbuilding restrictionsare impactful + average power level is high enough that they aren't just unsalvageable. In 400 powered, individual cards feel like bombs, while others feel like 8-15th picks. A pack 3 gyruda, or yorion might be a hard sell.
Every regularly cubed conspiracy is stronger than companion. I run power play and sentinel dispatch. One drafter remarked, "the strongest companion at the table today is my 1/1 artifact defender"
As for other ikoria cards, Vivien, monster's advocate still seems like a strong, but not broken tool in green midrange decks.
I never even got to test these guys without the rule change (as none of my group live with me, and playing on xmage and cockatrice is an exercise in frustration) so I think I'm still gonna test them as written, and if they're too good leave them as written as part of the conspiracy package we can shuffle in.
I'll probably jam them with the errata so that players who are using them elsewhere will have a consistent Magic rules experience. That being said, I'll now also be specifically seeking out nonfoil extended art copies, since they don't have the now-inaccurate companion reminder text (and the foils for these aren't at a price point that I want to deal with). It's easier to explain what companion does with the errata if it has no reminder text than to have to explain that the reminder text is wrong, since players are more likely to ask what something does in the first scenario as opposed to having to be corrected in the latter scenario (likely once they've already built their draft deck around the incorrect assumption of functionality).
What a complete cluster-eff these companions turned out to be. Yowza, it's an absolute embarrassment.
Yeah I can't think of a more blunt force fix to this. I know it would have made the text on the cards even more wrong, but just having them start in your hand of 7 (rules text - your starting hand size is 6, after resolving all mulligans put the companion in your hand) would have been such a better solution that still felt like the way the cards were supposed to work.
So inelegant. I will probably draft these as intended, for now. If they prove overwhelmingly unfun or overpowered, I will probably then get the borderless art versions without reminder text, and run them with the errata.
here are some stats on companion in IKO limited, pre-nerf. for what it's worth, note that the baseline winrate of players using this service is 57%, so any winrate below 57% means the companion is actively bad.
of course IKO limited is not super comparable to cube - for example, kaheera is significantly easier to companion in limited, and lutri is significantly easier to companion in cube, and has a higher ceiling of things to copy. but it's some food for thought.
interestingly, maindecked companions tend to do poorly. i suspect this is due to the situation where you draft the companion, and try to force the restriction, and end up with a pile to steaming garbage where you cannot meet the restriction, which leads to lost games.
complete ***** show. can cut all companions from my testing list except I will still try lurrus out which I think is the only one that may have enough legs to stand on its own.
My thoughts on the companion errata re-posted from the Reddit thread.
Feels like a massive over-correction to me.
The guaranteed card advantage was a bigger upside than some of the deck building restrictions could balance out. I was really hoping the fix was going to be having the option to exile a card from your opening hand to put this in your hand so long as you meet the deckbuilding restriction. It would have negated the card advantage and made companions easier to interact with via targeted discard while still granting the player the consistency of having the card in their opening hand so long as they met the deckbuilding restrictions. I'm not going to house rule my own fix for companion though - last thing I need is to have to explain before each draft that we aren't using the printed or the errata'd rules for one small subset of cards.
I think for most unpowered lists, including my own, this change puts the designer in the place of having to house rule the errata as being void -- otherwise these are nearly unplayable in my opinion. The other option is to just take them out because they don't compete in their respective slots as errata'd.
A silver lining is that for slightly lower powered cubes these just became great includes that are no longer well above the power band of these cubes.
complete ***** show. can cut all companions from my testing list except I will still try lurrus out which I think is the only one that may have enough legs to stand on its own.
I've been enjoying lurrus as a stand alone card, without the companion mechanic.
It has some busted interactions and it's floor is still very solid, hasn't been hard for me to find targets to bring things back.
That being said, it is generally powerful "small-ball" type value, which I find tends to get dominated by huge go over the top plays, so it depends a lot on your cube.
Maybe I'm off base, but didn't WotC put the Play Design team in place to prevent this exact thing from happening? Felt like when we first started getting sets that Play Design was part of (Guilds, Allegiance) we were seeing powerful, but balanced cards and while unrelated to us cubers specifically, a standard format that was actually pretty fun. How did they screw companions up so much that it required a complete revision of the rules text two months after release? Was there no one testing these extensively in house a year ago?
I'm torn on even including them now. I don't like added errata much, and I especially don't like this where it feels like an arbitrary house rule.
Personally, I am going to use the Companion cards as written. I am only including Lurrus of the Dream-Den and Lutri, the Spellchaser and the complete wording is on them. Part of what I enjoy about Cube, is the historic experience that is offered with rich cards from the game's history. I think the release of the Companion mechanic in MTG is pretty historic in how much of a blunder it has turned out to be for the game, and I think Cube hasn't really felt the same impact as constructed formats.
I kind of like that Cube allows for players to experience the intended idea behind some of these cards.
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I think play design only really tests limited and standard. Companions are not nearly as broken in those two formats compared with eternal formats.
Yup, as far as eternal formats go WOTC's position is essentially "we aren't gonna worry too much about printing cards that might be broken there, we'll ban them if necessary."
What did you ultimately decide to do with companions for your cube?
1) Running them with the rules update.
2) Run them as written.
3) Cut them.
4) Wasn't running them to begin with.
I find myself genuinely torn. With the new rules, not one of these is cubeable in my opinion and I would've really liked to have Lurrus and Lutri as written. I'm not sure if you're truly instituting house rules when you're playing a card as written, but then again you would be because you would have to remind drafters familiar with the companion rule change that your cube doesn't abide by the rule change - definitely impacts the pick order for those cards. I'm leaning towards cutting them because running them with the new rules means playing bad cards, and running them as written means carving out special rules for cards setting a precedent I don't want to set.
This set goes from average to somewhat poor for cube without these. I think only Vivien, Heartless Act, Luminous Broodmoth, and Shark Typhoon and maybe Fiend Artisan make it in.
I'm playing them as-originally-printed for now. If they prove too overpowered in testing, I will probably revert to playing them as-errata'd.
Even with the errata, Lutri is still a free card (that costs 6 now). Lurrus is perfectly good maindeck as well. Gyruda is still probably OK. The rest are probably not worth running.
I did a team draft with 5 others on dr4ft last week, and I don't think any of the companion decks lost a match except when faced off against another companion deck (although one of the data points isn't great - my Umori deck beat a non-companion deck that didn't get off the ground both games due to only drawing lands).
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There's a couple of points that I think are worth making about companions in limited, especially in singleton limited like cube. First is the companion needs to be seen and drafted. You don't get to just say you're the Lurrus deck and automatically get both Lurrus and Black Lotus. If you draft with the companion in mind, then sure, you can pretty easily build a deck that fits the restriction and then play your companion out of the sideboard with success. If you see a companion mid to late draft, though, you could very well be too far down your current path to justify even taking it, let alone building around it. I've not had real life experience with companions in cube, yet, but I have drafted a bunch of Ikoria limited on Arena and I've had similar experiences there with companions. In fact, my last draft I was in the cycling deck and opened Yorion P3P1. I took it and I was able to make it work with the 60 card deck, but I had to rely on the cyclers to make the deck consistent and I had some questionable inclusions to get me to 60 cards. And full disclosure, that deck didn't get me to the max wins, despite always having a bomb rare in my opening hand. Had I seen Yorion sooner in the draft, I feel pretty certain that I could have prioritized my picks differently and ended up with a much better deck. I can't imagine drafting companions in cube will end up playing out much differently.
Second is that the companions themselves are still Magic cards with actual text. I don't want to downplay how inherently powerful always having access to this specific card is. Of course Dualcaster Mage gets better if you make it hybrid blue red and also let me just start the game with it waiting in the wings. At the end of the day, though, Lutri is still just a fork on a stick, which is not exactly game breaking, especially in an environment as over the top and powerful as cube. Even if I build around and play Lurrus, for example, is getting to cast one cheap creature a turn back from my graveyard any more powerful than something like Bob in that same deck? Personally I feel like too much emphasis is being put on them being an untouchable eighth card in your opener without taking into account the effect the card itself will have on the game. Sure, you always have it, but will it always be enough? Will having Lurrus as my companion mean that my Boros aggro deck has an edge over my opponent's reanimator or Tinker deck?
Again, I don't have first hand experience with them in cube, so what do I know, really? I haven't drafted IRL since early March. I'm pretty excited to give companions a shot, though. My group really enjoys playing with conspiracies and I suspect we'll also enjoy companions or at least some number of them.
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Lutri, the spellchaser - was drafted but not used as a companion because we did a multiplayer draft, and the player chose the next card as his companion. (FFA multiplayer)
Jegantha, the wellspring - simlar to umori, a medium sized creature with no strings attached ( once deck construction is complete) is pretty good. Was dealt with immediately in multiplayer, but a free 8th card is something I'd be fine with failing the vindicate test.(FFA Multiplayer)
Triomes in general - My cube is decently small(so most players had multiple fetches), and I just added all 5 of these guys, but every time they were fetched as another copy of my shock/duals. The cycling ability was never used, but is something we recognized the value of. It didn't last night, but these would also make splashes or tricolors a little easier. One small bonus of triomes is that "offcolor" fetches work so much better. Like if you have the sultai triom, are jund, and use the izzet fetchland, you have access to all colors in your deck, which is pretty good. (singles)
Gemrazer - this card wasn't on my radar, but one of my cube group recommended it to me and i realized, I was actually really excited for it. I realized that I still run wickerbough elder, maybe it was a pet card, but i liked it over the seemingly more popular thrashing brontodon(singles)
Yorion, sky nomad amusingly, in our second draft, I (drafting america control) wanted this card, assumed it would table, and it didn't, the deckbuilding restriction proved too difficult for the person who was forced to draft grixis control. (my cube has a rule where if you get nicol bolas p1p1 you are "forced" to build his grand deck, people tend to like it.(strongly peerpressured). I definitely WOULD have used this companion, but cut down to a 40 card deck when it didn't table. (FFA multiplayer)
gigan, cyberclaw terror Was found pack 3, Bolas player also grabbed this card and didn't ever draw it. (FFA multiplayer)
vivien, Monster's advocate Drafted but never drawn, probably would have been good.(FFA multiplayer)
Mutate mechanic! - Seems a lot harder of a rule than I first thought to understand. its very important to know the reminder text on mutate. Last night, I used Treachery on an Ulamog, the ceaseless hunger then mutated it into a Ghidorah, king of the cosmos in an EDH game afterwards(to prevent losing control of the fatty), and apparently you can only mutate creatures you own. ALSO fun fact, if the creature you want to mutate onto dies, the mutate creature just ETB's normally.
edit: I think its kind of amusing that my experience was the opposite of the poster above me. callibretto was basically saying the cards themselves need to be good still, and I'm saying that in some games a 4/5 vanilla creature was bonkers.
thats my cube
However, as they are now I think they are fine in powered Cube and that most of the backlash is a reflection of the distaste some players have for what the mechanic does (and granted, the vast consensus is that it is a stupid idea that is obviously stupid and should have been shot down before getting to print). Honestly, if a group is open to it Companion can really liven up a draft -- but the problem is that constructed/competitive is really ruining it by making the mechanic generally reviled (even though it is not necessarily the same problem Companions in each constructed format).
https://www.reddit.com/r/magicTCG/comments/gpk43h/m21_rumors/
Yes, the companion ability is destroying a lot of magic formats right now, but I still feel like in cube the deckbuilding restrictionsare impactful + average power level is high enough that they aren't just unsalvageable. In 400 powered, individual cards feel like bombs, while others feel like 8-15th picks. A pack 3 gyruda, or yorion might be a hard sell.
Every regularly cubed conspiracy is stronger than companion. I run power play and sentinel dispatch. One drafter remarked, "the strongest companion at the table today is my 1/1 artifact defender"
As for other ikoria cards, Vivien, monster's advocate still seems like a strong, but not broken tool in green midrange decks.
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Yeah I can't think of a more blunt force fix to this. I know it would have made the text on the cards even more wrong, but just having them start in your hand of 7 (rules text - your starting hand size is 6, after resolving all mulligans put the companion in your hand) would have been such a better solution that still felt like the way the cards were supposed to work.
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here are some stats on companion in IKO limited, pre-nerf. for what it's worth, note that the baseline winrate of players using this service is 57%, so any winrate below 57% means the companion is actively bad.
of course IKO limited is not super comparable to cube - for example, kaheera is significantly easier to companion in limited, and lutri is significantly easier to companion in cube, and has a higher ceiling of things to copy. but it's some food for thought.
interestingly, maindecked companions tend to do poorly. i suspect this is due to the situation where you draft the companion, and try to force the restriction, and end up with a pile to steaming garbage where you cannot meet the restriction, which leads to lost games.
Feels like a massive over-correction to me.
The guaranteed card advantage was a bigger upside than some of the deck building restrictions could balance out. I was really hoping the fix was going to be having the option to exile a card from your opening hand to put this in your hand so long as you meet the deckbuilding restriction. It would have negated the card advantage and made companions easier to interact with via targeted discard while still granting the player the consistency of having the card in their opening hand so long as they met the deckbuilding restrictions. I'm not going to house rule my own fix for companion though - last thing I need is to have to explain before each draft that we aren't using the printed or the errata'd rules for one small subset of cards.
I think for most unpowered lists, including my own, this change puts the designer in the place of having to house rule the errata as being void -- otherwise these are nearly unplayable in my opinion. The other option is to just take them out because they don't compete in their respective slots as errata'd.
A silver lining is that for slightly lower powered cubes these just became great includes that are no longer well above the power band of these cubes.
I've been enjoying lurrus as a stand alone card, without the companion mechanic.
It has some busted interactions and it's floor is still very solid, hasn't been hard for me to find targets to bring things back.
That being said, it is generally powerful "small-ball" type value, which I find tends to get dominated by huge go over the top plays, so it depends a lot on your cube.
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I'm torn on even including them now. I don't like added errata much, and I especially don't like this where it feels like an arbitrary house rule.
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I kind of like that Cube allows for players to experience the intended idea behind some of these cards.
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Yup, as far as eternal formats go WOTC's position is essentially "we aren't gonna worry too much about printing cards that might be broken there, we'll ban them if necessary."
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1) Running them with the rules update.
2) Run them as written.
3) Cut them.
4) Wasn't running them to begin with.
I find myself genuinely torn. With the new rules, not one of these is cubeable in my opinion and I would've really liked to have Lurrus and Lutri as written. I'm not sure if you're truly instituting house rules when you're playing a card as written, but then again you would be because you would have to remind drafters familiar with the companion rule change that your cube doesn't abide by the rule change - definitely impacts the pick order for those cards. I'm leaning towards cutting them because running them with the new rules means playing bad cards, and running them as written means carving out special rules for cards setting a precedent I don't want to set.
This set goes from average to somewhat poor for cube without these. I think only Vivien, Heartless Act, Luminous Broodmoth, and Shark Typhoon and maybe Fiend Artisan make it in.
Even with the errata, Lutri is still a free card (that costs 6 now). Lurrus is perfectly good maindeck as well. Gyruda is still probably OK. The rest are probably not worth running.