This is essentially black Arcane Denial that has a reverse-kicker option to cancel the draw. Goes well with Narset / Hullbreacher / Leovold / etc. Even without them, typically you'd use your other removal early game to try and pay the full retail cost late game to cancel the draw. And at times you can't wait, sometimes you just gotta kill your opponent's turn 2 Oko.
I think this competes well with a lot of the Hero's Downfall variants in high powered environments since it's modal and versatile. My top 3 Hero's Downfall variants right now are Murderous Rider / Hero's Downfall / Bloodchief's Thirst. I can see this as a supplement or a swap for Downfall / Thirst to try it out.
While I'm very pro Arcane Denial, there's more hard black creature removal spells than there are hard blue 2-cmc counter spells, and Hero's Downfall / Vindicate variants are a lot more acceptable than Cancel variants. While I do think this card is good, I think there's less of a need for it compared to Arcane Denial due to those reasons.
Arcane Denial is a very good card - I feel the reason it gets such a low evaluation is how poorly it compares to Mana Drain, Counterspell, Mana Leak, and Remand - all of which are easily on the top 50 best cards in Vintage Cube.
I feel Vraska's Contempt was probably good enough to make it into a Vintage Cube prior to Soul Shatter anyways - unconditional removal, even at 4 CMC is incredibly important.
This is a really well designed card - Good CMC, adds interaction.
With excellent answers like this + Rip Apart, I'm hoping my aggressive decks could be a bit more disruptive, rather than all-in one drops.
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I'm actively maintaining a comprehensive article to help explain to new cube players how some complex vintage level cards work in a cube environment. Vintage Cube Cards Explained
This card looks good to me. This is to Hero's Downfall what Arcane Denial is to Cancel, except Downfall is actually a cubeworthy card, AND this has an option to pay 2 more to negate the drawback. Don't know if it'll make it in since black does have so many other good removal options available ...but this card looks sweet.
This is far-and-away the best Vraska's Contempt variant, and being able to cleanly remove Wurmcoil Engine, Ancient Stone Idol, Ulamog, the Ceaseless Hunger, or Blightsteel Colossus for 1B gives it an edge over all the Doom Blade and Hero's Downfall variants. Of course, if you're not playing in an environment where you're facing down monsters T2, the card loses a lot of its appeal. And not being able to get around protections (*cough* Emrakul *cough* ) keeps it from being the stone-cold nuts. That all said, I think I'd be willing to replace any of the aforementioned removal options with this card. Having an Arcane Denial mode on Feed the Serpent is just absurd.
The Exile plus 2 mana cost means that this card is quite effective against cheaty decks like reanimate or tinker. - This can take out darksteel, wormcoil, or a turn 2 Oko, making it a powerful tool in situations where you often will just lose if you don't have an answer, and situations where turn 3 might be too late.
The more I think about Baleful Mastery, the better I think it is. While I was already fairly high on this, it got much higher when I began to see this as a Path to Exile for 1B that can also hit planeswalkers with a "kicker" option to negate the drawback.
Bloodchief’s thirst super-super radical frame only got a few weeks of play time in my cube but this is definitely an upgrade. No more Turn 2 Oko’s for you.
This card is awsome! Go for the throat probabily should have been cut by me a while ago, but now there's no debate in my mind.
When you are behind tempo and up cards, giving your opponent a card to not be drowned in tempo is a huge option to have in a card that CAN trade for parity and solve many situations by itself.
For large cubes +720 cards, I think this cards better than Eat to Extinction, Never//Return, and Vraska's Contempt, maybe Soul Shatter or Eliminate. Thoughts ?
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StaffI think this competes well with a lot of the Hero's Downfall variants in high powered environments since it's modal and versatile. My top 3 Hero's Downfall variants right now are Murderous Rider / Hero's Downfall / Bloodchief's Thirst. I can see this as a supplement or a swap for Downfall / Thirst to try it out.
While I'm very pro Arcane Denial, there's more hard black creature removal spells than there are hard blue 2-cmc counter spells, and Hero's Downfall / Vindicate variants are a lot more acceptable than Cancel variants. While I do think this card is good, I think there's less of a need for it compared to Arcane Denial due to those reasons.
My High Octane Unpowered Cube on CubeCobra
I feel Vraska's Contempt was probably good enough to make it into a Vintage Cube prior to Soul Shatter anyways - unconditional removal, even at 4 CMC is incredibly important.
This is a really well designed card - Good CMC, adds interaction.
With excellent answers like this + Rip Apart, I'm hoping my aggressive decks could be a bit more disruptive, rather than all-in one drops.
Vintage Cube Cards Explained
Here are some other articles I've written about fine tuning your cube:
1. Minimum Archetype Support
2. Improving Green Archetypes
3. Improving White Archetypes
4. Matchup Analysis
5. Cube Combos (Work in Progress)
Draft my Cube - https://cubecobra.com/cube/overview/d8i
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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!
Highball MTGS Cube Thread
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This is checked on resolution, right? So it's countered, they don't get to draw?
[180 classic cube]
My 540 card Powered Cube last updated March 2022
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StaffMy High Octane Unpowered Cube on CubeCobra
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!
This is still the best place for high-power-level cube chat & debate.
Here's to many more years at MTGS *clink*
When you are behind tempo and up cards, giving your opponent a card to not be drowned in tempo is a huge option to have in a card that CAN trade for parity and solve many situations by itself.
Last Updated 02/07/24
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