MTG Salvation

I love it.

A more interesting Bonesplitter. Likely worse in black aggressive decks due to antisynergy with recursive creatures, but should be better everywhere else, as many cube creatures have at least one of these keywords. An easy include for me.

So much cool stuff is going to happen in games using this thing. Awesome!

Yeah, this is definitely making the cut. Occasionally, you'll have an awkward scenario where you don't want to equip it to a recursive creature, but overall, definitely better.

I think this makes the cut solely on the basis of being a Bonesplitter clone. 1 to equip +2 power has proven to be extremely solid. The exile clause is unfortunate, there's usually a lot of reasons to want cards in your graveyard (e.g., delve, recursive creatures, reanimation effects, Eternal Witness, Scavenging Ooze, delerium), but for most white or red aggro decks this is gas.

I don't see the ability soup clause coming into play very often, but if they keep power-creeping 1 and 2 drops this will only become better over time. I think if you're in red, getting haste on it is probably pretty easy for most cubes but the other abilities will be cube-dependent. I see it as an incidental bonus rather than something to build around or rely on.

But overall, yeah, this card likely gets a comfortable spot in cubes of any size.

In most decks this is strictly better than bonesplitter, as the venn diagram of decks that want a bonesplitter and decks that care about having creatures in the yard has a very small intersection. I really like that it gives haste for the agressive decks that want a bonesplitter effect, as if you can get a card with haste to die while holding this all your future creatures have haste and +2/+0 for 1 more mana. Will just swap for bonesplitter, which I still run.

Why are you guys swapping Bonesplitter? Both cards are great!

Last rare ends up being super legit!

This is the card that might warp your cube around it just because it's fun. Suddenly you've got six or seven double strikers in the two-drop slot... haha.

The downside is really relevant here. Lots of decks want cards that go into your graveyard. Granted this has plenty of synergies. Danitha, Capashen Paragon, Vampire Nighthawk, Lizard Blades(sword-buds!), and Rograkh, Son of Rohgahh spring to mind. Turn 1 Rograkh+sword=yikes. Flying is probably the nexus of easy to get and relevant.

This really turns a creature with a good keyword into a catch 22 to answer. I killed your lifelinker... aaand now lifelink is on the sword. Great.

This card's certainly good, but I'm not so sure I have an interest. It seems pretty unfun when it's at it's best, and when it isn't, it's just a slightly worse Bonesplitter (which is obviously good, but just being good isn't what it takes to get in).

Probably the best cube card of the set. This is an auto-include!

Cheers,
rant

Monastery swiftspear digs this card

Cool card! I do think Bonesplitter is the swap for me, since I don't think a 360 card cube wants two of these effects.
I think that on balance, weighing the downside and upside, it ends up only slightly better than Bonesplitter. However, it's a more interesting and more fun card, so I prefer it.

That one time vampire nighthawk is better than it's upgrade.

Not happy with the downside. Normally you put equipment on recursive creatues for maximum effect. The ability will probably not matter much. Nonetheless, I am slowly convinced to put it in my cube. If I will, then i will finally break the swords cycle and replace Sword of War and Peace.

More interesting and fun than bonesplitter, but I'm not convinced it's any better.

Tough to weigh a common downside vs an uncommon but more powerful upside

Quote from steve_man »

This is true in black aggro, but other than that most aggro creatures don't even recur. Also, there's tokens where this is just a Bonesplitter to them anyways unless you care about Blood Artist triggers or something.

This isn't a replacement effect, but a triggered ability after the creature dies, so the blade works just fine with death triggers and blood artist.

Since this is triggered ability, could I to active ability like Bloodsoaked Champion or Gutterbones if this abilities could be active ?

Yeah any instant speed effect that moves the card to another zone can prevent the exiling from happening.

Quote from armando.zuffi »

Since this is triggered ability, could I to active ability like Bloodsoaked Champion or Gutterbones if this abilities could be active ?

You'll be able to activate Bloodsoaked Champion or Gutterbones in response to the trigger, and they won't be exiled. Similarly, you could fetch in response to return Bloodghast before it gets exiled.

I'm not super high on this but the group still wants to test it and I'm sure its at least decent. Getting even one single ability from among the more common ones like flying, first strike or haste is huge game, and the baseline is already alright/mediocre. Don't think this will stick long term but definitely worth a shot, as I don't think you need more than like 5 cheap creatures in your deck that can trigger this for value for it to get off the ground rolling in an aggro or midrange deck.

How does this matchup against Bonesplitter? If you could only run one of them which would it be? Thanks!