It is rare when I win with an exact maximal use for all my cards - either I won before casting all cards in my hand, or I went to topdeck mode and had more mana/useless bodies/creature buffs than I needed (plus this card is an above average topdeck itself for a two drop). Cards in hand then is an unused resource. I do not care about the card disadvantage if I aim to win before it will matter.
I mean, to ignore the card disadvantage is a mistake. This could not be good enough for that reason, and there will be hands where you both cannot afford to pitch a land OR spell without it negatively effecting your plays. That's really bad. But man, a 4/3 for 1R...
there will be hands where you both cannot afford to pitch a land OR spell without it negatively effecting your plays. That's really bad.
True, but that's a worst case scenario, and even then you still just got a 4/3 for 1R - potentially on turn 2. There are plenty of value plays where discarding is an advantage, not a disadvantage. Maybe you play this turn 2 in a Rakdos deck and discard Bloodghast, which would then be put into play turn 3 for free when you play your land. Or you play this in a Gruul deck and discard Basking Rootwalla right into play. Or in an Izzet tempo deck you play this and discard Think Twice. Plenty of other value plays are out there to allow this "drawback" to actually be a GY value play probably more than most of us are even considering. Then, of course, you could use this as a more traditional discard outlet in a B/r or B/r/x reanimator shell. As others have pointed out, red has been slowly gaining strength as a reanimator support color. This card is very flexible, and I'm definitely finding room for it.
I mean, to ignore the card disadvantage is a mistake. This could not be good enough for that reason, and there will be hands where you both cannot afford to pitch a land OR spell without it negatively effecting your plays. That's really bad. But man, a 4/3 for 1R...
You can always play your other on curve plays and save it for later, when the 4/3 body is still likely relevant.
I'd rather just play Vexing Devil for R and risk 1-for-1ing with a 4-damage silver lining than set myself up for a 2-for-1 with this and getting nothing as a consolation prize. I understand it enables a few things, but I don't think it will do that a significant number of times to outweigh the times it doesn't.
I've been using red (and blue) as a reanimator colour for a while. Aside from the usual big targets there are plenty of nice things to dump in the graveyard in other decks. Here are some cards that I or others play that benefit from being pitched across red and black:
Gravecrawler
Dread wanderer
Bloodsoaked champion
Bloodghast
Reassembling skellington
Asylum Visitor
Scrapheap scrounger
Hellspark elemental
Firebolt
Anger
Faithless looting
Blast from the Past
Fiery Temper
Lingering Souls
Any aftermath card from the new set, like insult//injury or never//return
Any embalm stuff from the new set
There are plenty of other interactions across other colours too, from Life from the Loam to Deep Analysis
Failing that we are not usually having trouble chucking away an extra land or off-colour spell. Excuse the poor syntax, on my phone unfortunately.
I'm with wtwlf on this. The card DA is a real liability. I didn't like Pale Rider and I heavily supported graveyard shenanigans. This new guy is in a color with less GY support. That extra point of power is not making it up for me. I also feel being able to choose when (and if) to discard means a great deal on cards like this. If Heir of Falkenrath was just a 3/2 flyer with discard on ETB, it would not be in my cube.
It seems that people are just assuming that every hand has an extra irrelevant card you don't need in it that you can freely discard. "Oh, I'll just pitch an extra land I don't need" is a common assumption, and kinda a rare one to have in practice. 15 land aggro decks won't have more than 2-3 lands in a lot of keepable openings; none of which are expendable. And while a 4/3 for 2 is good, it's nowhere near good enough to consume an extra business spell to get to the board. I'd rather play a generic 3/2 and keep the extra business, and it's not even a close decision.
Pale Rider was fine ...when pitching a Bloodghast. Black has lots of uses for the discard outlets. Not only is this creature arguably worse, but it's in a worse color to try and mitigate the drawback.
I support reanimator with red cards. But this isn't a card I want for that deck. Controlling the timing of when you discard the cards to your outlets means everything.
It seems that people are just assuming that every hand has an extra irrelevant card you don't need in it that you can freely discard.
It doesn't have to be a land. If there's really nothing expendable at all, as is sometimes the case, then you can also hold onto the guy and drop him later on at the top of the curve with spare mana up alongside it for stuff sitting on the board. As you are fond of saying, it doesn't make you play bad Magic.
Like I've pointed out, the ability in practice is more often beneficial to me than detrimental (I listed some of the interactions above), and it's not close between the two scenarios (3:1, at a guess). And if it really hurts to play at a given moment... then play something else and hold it back. A 4/3 for 2 late on could be much worse. I don't know though, cubes have different concentrations of things that work with this effect, so chances are that neither of us are really wrong. Maybe these don't work for your group and you know your group a lot better than I do. But for us the card disadvantage is usually worth it, and quite often isn't CD at all. I'm putting Anger back in the cube since my red decks are pitching stuff a lot now, and that will be hella fun to pitch with this guy, Firestorm, or whatever else.
I disagree. It feel like decks that love 2 mana beaters don't want to have to wait multiple turns to play them. Why does it matter that it's a 4/3 for 2 mana if you aren't going to play it until turn 4, either by being hellbent or by finding something to discard?
As you are fond of saying, it doesn't make you play bad Magic.
But this can. If it's the only 2-drop in your hand, it can trash your curve if you wait to play it, and it can be an awful play if you're priced into pitching a business spell to play it.
Even in black, which has all the graveyard interaction cards, not having control over the timing window of the discard is a huge disadvantage. In non-black colors, this drawback is even more significant.
The fact that someone wants to now run Anger in their cube because this card exists makes me super happy it got printed. It strikes me as a really compelling idea honestly. How much support would you need to make that an actual thing in red?
Cards like Anger and Fiery Temper would help make this a reasonable card to play. The same way that black having like 6+ cheap cards that want to be discarded that go into the same deck as Pale Rider helps make it ...barely passable.
My point is, if you are just looking at your Cubetutor list and counting the stuff that specifically wants to be discarded or could provide some sort of advantage by it being in the GY, then you're underestimating other, less obvious interactions with stuff in play or in your hand where discarding the card is not just losing a card.
That is all solid in a lower powered rare list, but value plays like this need to be really great in order to be viable in higher powered cube lists IMO (I'm learning this in my combo list experiment).
Tossing a card just to feed one half of a lavamancer trigger (with no other value) is probably not doing enough. That's my fear anyway. A true red GY focus has always been alluring to me but felt a couple cards away. Not sure we truly have ignition yet, but I'm happy to see conversation around it at least and stuff from this set that gives me hope we will eventually get there.
How much support would you need to make that an actual thing in red?
Not all that much. Red has tons of good cards with madness and flashback, like Blast from the Past (my favorite), Fiery Temper, Desperate Ravings, Violent Eruption, Faithless Looting (also a great enabler), and Avacyn's Judgment. There are also loads of good enablers like this guy, Tormenting Voice, Hazoret the Fervent,and Jaya Ballard, Task Mage. Plus, who doesn't love Grim Lavamancer? I have sugar plum dreams of things like Past in Flames and Gamble being good, but that's probably too optimistic. I find red is actually more of a support color most often in these kinds of strategies in green, black, or blue decks that can really exploit the graveyard. I'm thinking of adding a second Fiery Temper to my cube based on how important that card has become, and how much deeper it is than the average burn.
Being able to pitch a fat artifact when you have a Welder is awesome. But you really need to be in control of the timing window in which you discard. Especially in decks that are primarily playing this for the discard effect. Discard outlets for the sake of discard outlets are playable alongside cards that care about the graveyard, but timing is everything. Heir of Falkenrath would be pretty much unplayable if it had a static discard requirement instead of a timed discard option. There's a night and day difference there.
@wtwlf123
I see your point, but I think you're overstating the difference between Bloodrage Brawler and Heir of Falkenrath. I mean, when you play your Heir of Falkenrath on turn 2, let's say, how often are you really not going to discard the card before your combat on turn 3? I mean, you want to transform it into Heir to the Night ASAP so that it can fly and not trade with your opponent's stupid Grizzly Bears, Savannah Lions, or Llanowar Elves. And then, once you have transformed it, you lose your one-of ability to discard because Heir to the Night can't transform back in any way. Sure, Heir of Falkenrath has SLIGHTLY more flexibility, but I think these two cards are far more similar than you're making them out to be.
I think reality is somewhere in between both positions. It absolutely matters that you can choose when to discard. That's a real advantage. But there are plenty of times where it can be largely immaterial. Ignoring that isn't fair.
That said, I like the added flexibility personally. I can wait until my next draw before commiting a discard. My opponent gets less info and I potentially have more options.
I mean, when you play your Heir of Falkenrath on turn 2, let's say, how often are you really not going to discard the card before your combat on turn 3?
Seems worth noting that even in this scenario, you do get an extra draw first
This card is garbage in a welder strategy that isn't also heavy reanimator.
Welder strategies don't beat down, and almost always try to go huge/comboish.
often those decks have to play the fair game and, unless it's discarding a key combo peices, you don't even really want to be playing a 4/3 for 2 WITHOUT the drawback.
As you are fond of saying, it doesn't make you play bad Magic.
But this can. If it's the only 2-drop in your hand, it can trash your curve if you wait to play it, and it can be an awful play if you're priced into pitching a business spell to play it.
Even in black, which has all the graveyard interaction cards, not having control over the timing window of the discard is a huge disadvantage. In non-black colors, this drawback is even more significant.
Yes, if you meet the extremely specific and concurrent subset of conditions: it's the only two drop in your hand AND you have nothing else you can play AND there's no spell or land that you feel you can't do without AND you have nothing in hand that benefits in the graveyard; yes, then I will grant you that the drawback will be a pain and the card is then suboptimal, in the way that nearly every other single card is suboptimal in a certain window. Strange that a 4/3 for 2 mana won't always have upside. In practice this set of conditions making it actually suboptimal as a t2 play occurred about once in ten games. Even then... It's still a huge guy.
Black has more graveyard stuff than red, in that at least you are correct. But as listed before red has a pretty good amount, and really the deck shouldn't require a lot of it to make use of a 2 mana evasive 3/3 or a 4/3. Of course I'm extrapolating from PRoT, but then again I do have an awful lot of experience with that card, which is often one the most efficient beaters in my deck regardless of Gravecrawlers. I never lost a game because of discarding one chosen card. My decks don't fold to Ravenous Rats.
Timing is nice for reanimator decks, so Heir is a better overall pick for that archetype but PRoT is extremely playable there nonetheless. Basically you can't have a Goblin Piker and wait to top deck a creature to dump, but Pikers aren't that useful in play for that deck anyway.
@ahadabans: Anger is on the re-add list since i would like to boost midrange Fires, and that deck packs lots of red's discard outlets. It just happens to work well with this creature too, like a lot of things do.
Edit: wtwlf123, sleeve one up and try it for a few cube sessions in a variety of builds. I think you will be pleasantly surprised at how often the discard is inconsequential or beneficial. Unless you tell me it sucks anyway to spite me
I think the emphasis on synergy is exaggerated. I'd play it in an aggro deck without synergy at all. Killing Wall of Omens and Courser of Kruphix in combat is big game. It is even a good blocker the turn you play it.
As you are fond of saying, it doesn't make you play bad Magic.
But this can. If it's the only 2-drop in your hand, it can trash your curve if you wait to play it, and it can be an awful play if you're priced into pitching a business spell to play it.
Why is it an awful play? I am maybe sacrificing something I'd be playing 2+ turns down the road for more power now. That is exactly the philosophy of aggro decks.
______________________________________________
Is the discard a drawback? Sure. But it is roughly as relevant as Diregraf Ghoul's or Jackal Pup's drawbacks from my experience with Pale Rider of Trostad. I've included PRoT for the synergy, surprisingly it ended up being great just as an aggressive beater more often than as a discard enabler. I suspect most people here have little experience with PRoT, because his greatest weakness in my experience was not even mentioned (that is bounce and Flickerwisp, hurts more than removal). I can only recommend to try the two.
I've included PRoT for the synergy, surprisingly it ended up being great just as an aggressive beater more often than as a discard enabler.
I tested Pale Rider for the aggro body, and found it straight unplayable without the synergy. Mandatory discard where you don't control the window in which you discard is a steep drawback. That's not worth +1/+1 to me. Far too many scenarios where I'm priced into pitching a business spell since I don't have a spare land to ditch. And like I said, I'd rather have a generic 3/2 and a second gas spell than a generic 4/3. All day, every day, and twice on cube day.
Quote from goodking »
sleeve one up and try it for a few cube sessions in a variety of builds. I think you will be pleasantly surprised at how often the discard is inconsequential or beneficial.
I played Pale Rider long enough to know that the exact opposite is true. It was my experience with that card that leads me to say that the discard is far from inconsequential, and not good unless it's beneficial. And again, that's in a color that's 10x more likely to be able to take advantage of the discard!
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True, but that's a worst case scenario, and even then you still just got a 4/3 for 1R - potentially on turn 2. There are plenty of value plays where discarding is an advantage, not a disadvantage. Maybe you play this turn 2 in a Rakdos deck and discard Bloodghast, which would then be put into play turn 3 for free when you play your land. Or you play this in a Gruul deck and discard Basking Rootwalla right into play. Or in an Izzet tempo deck you play this and discard Think Twice. Plenty of other value plays are out there to allow this "drawback" to actually be a GY value play probably more than most of us are even considering. Then, of course, you could use this as a more traditional discard outlet in a B/r or B/r/x reanimator shell. As others have pointed out, red has been slowly gaining strength as a reanimator support color. This card is very flexible, and I'm definitely finding room for it.
You can always play your other on curve plays and save it for later, when the 4/3 body is still likely relevant.
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Easy pass.
Gravecrawler
Dread wanderer
Bloodsoaked champion
Bloodghast
Reassembling skellington
Asylum Visitor
Scrapheap scrounger
Hellspark elemental
Firebolt
Anger
Faithless looting
Blast from the Past
Fiery Temper
Lingering Souls
Any aftermath card from the new set, like insult//injury or never//return
Any embalm stuff from the new set
There are plenty of other interactions across other colours too, from Life from the Loam to Deep Analysis
Failing that we are not usually having trouble chucking away an extra land or off-colour spell. Excuse the poor syntax, on my phone unfortunately.
On spoiled card wishlisting and 'should-have-had'-isms:
http://riptidelab.com/forum/threads/modular-cube-5-colors.800/
Retro combo cube thread
http://riptidelab.com/forum/threads/retro-combo-cube.1454/
Pale Rider was fine ...when pitching a Bloodghast. Black has lots of uses for the discard outlets. Not only is this creature arguably worse, but it's in a worse color to try and mitigate the drawback.
I support reanimator with red cards. But this isn't a card I want for that deck. Controlling the timing of when you discard the cards to your outlets means everything.
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It doesn't have to be a land. If there's really nothing expendable at all, as is sometimes the case, then you can also hold onto the guy and drop him later on at the top of the curve with spare mana up alongside it for stuff sitting on the board. As you are fond of saying, it doesn't make you play bad Magic.
Like I've pointed out, the ability in practice is more often beneficial to me than detrimental (I listed some of the interactions above), and it's not close between the two scenarios (3:1, at a guess). And if it really hurts to play at a given moment... then play something else and hold it back. A 4/3 for 2 late on could be much worse. I don't know though, cubes have different concentrations of things that work with this effect, so chances are that neither of us are really wrong. Maybe these don't work for your group and you know your group a lot better than I do. But for us the card disadvantage is usually worth it, and quite often isn't CD at all. I'm putting Anger back in the cube since my red decks are pitching stuff a lot now, and that will be hella fun to pitch with this guy, Firestorm, or whatever else.
I just want a green version now.
On spoiled card wishlisting and 'should-have-had'-isms:
But this can. If it's the only 2-drop in your hand, it can trash your curve if you wait to play it, and it can be an awful play if you're priced into pitching a business spell to play it.
Even in black, which has all the graveyard interaction cards, not having control over the timing window of the discard is a huge disadvantage. In non-black colors, this drawback is even more significant.
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http://riptidelab.com/forum/threads/modular-cube-5-colors.800/
Retro combo cube thread
http://riptidelab.com/forum/threads/retro-combo-cube.1454/
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My point is, if you are just looking at your Cubetutor list and counting the stuff that specifically wants to be discarded or could provide some sort of advantage by it being in the GY, then you're underestimating other, less obvious interactions with stuff in play or in your hand where discarding the card is not just losing a card.
Tossing a card just to feed one half of a lavamancer trigger (with no other value) is probably not doing enough. That's my fear anyway. A true red GY focus has always been alluring to me but felt a couple cards away. Not sure we truly have ignition yet, but I'm happy to see conversation around it at least and stuff from this set that gives me hope we will eventually get there.
http://riptidelab.com/forum/threads/modular-cube-5-colors.800/
Retro combo cube thread
http://riptidelab.com/forum/threads/retro-combo-cube.1454/
Not all that much. Red has tons of good cards with madness and flashback, like Blast from the Past (my favorite), Fiery Temper, Desperate Ravings, Violent Eruption, Faithless Looting (also a great enabler), and Avacyn's Judgment. There are also loads of good enablers like this guy, Tormenting Voice, Hazoret the Fervent,and Jaya Ballard, Task Mage. Plus, who doesn't love Grim Lavamancer? I have sugar plum dreams of things like Past in Flames and Gamble being good, but that's probably too optimistic. I find red is actually more of a support color most often in these kinds of strategies in green, black, or blue decks that can really exploit the graveyard. I'm thinking of adding a second Fiery Temper to my cube based on how important that card has become, and how much deeper it is than the average burn.
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I see your point, but I think you're overstating the difference between Bloodrage Brawler and Heir of Falkenrath. I mean, when you play your Heir of Falkenrath on turn 2, let's say, how often are you really not going to discard the card before your combat on turn 3? I mean, you want to transform it into Heir to the Night ASAP so that it can fly and not trade with your opponent's stupid Grizzly Bears, Savannah Lions, or Llanowar Elves. And then, once you have transformed it, you lose your one-of ability to discard because Heir to the Night can't transform back in any way. Sure, Heir of Falkenrath has SLIGHTLY more flexibility, but I think these two cards are far more similar than you're making them out to be.
That said, I like the added flexibility personally. I can wait until my next draw before commiting a discard. My opponent gets less info and I potentially have more options.
http://riptidelab.com/forum/threads/modular-cube-5-colors.800/
Retro combo cube thread
http://riptidelab.com/forum/threads/retro-combo-cube.1454/
Seems worth noting that even in this scenario, you do get an extra draw first
Welder strategies don't beat down, and almost always try to go huge/comboish.
often those decks have to play the fair game and, unless it's discarding a key combo peices, you don't even really want to be playing a 4/3 for 2 WITHOUT the drawback.
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Yes, if you meet the extremely specific and concurrent subset of conditions: it's the only two drop in your hand AND you have nothing else you can play AND there's no spell or land that you feel you can't do without AND you have nothing in hand that benefits in the graveyard; yes, then I will grant you that the drawback will be a pain and the card is then suboptimal, in the way that nearly every other single card is suboptimal in a certain window. Strange that a 4/3 for 2 mana won't always have upside. In practice this set of conditions making it actually suboptimal as a t2 play occurred about once in ten games. Even then... It's still a huge guy.
Black has more graveyard stuff than red, in that at least you are correct. But as listed before red has a pretty good amount, and really the deck shouldn't require a lot of it to make use of a 2 mana evasive 3/3 or a 4/3. Of course I'm extrapolating from PRoT, but then again I do have an awful lot of experience with that card, which is often one the most efficient beaters in my deck regardless of Gravecrawlers. I never lost a game because of discarding one chosen card. My decks don't fold to Ravenous Rats.
Timing is nice for reanimator decks, so Heir is a better overall pick for that archetype but PRoT is extremely playable there nonetheless. Basically you can't have a Goblin Piker and wait to top deck a creature to dump, but Pikers aren't that useful in play for that deck anyway.
@ahadabans: Anger is on the re-add list since i would like to boost midrange Fires, and that deck packs lots of red's discard outlets. It just happens to work well with this creature too, like a lot of things do.
Edit: wtwlf123, sleeve one up and try it for a few cube sessions in a variety of builds. I think you will be pleasantly surprised at how often the discard is inconsequential or beneficial. Unless you tell me it sucks anyway to spite me
On spoiled card wishlisting and 'should-have-had'-isms:
Why is it an awful play? I am maybe sacrificing something I'd be playing 2+ turns down the road for more power now. That is exactly the philosophy of aggro decks.
______________________________________________
Is the discard a drawback? Sure. But it is roughly as relevant as Diregraf Ghoul's or Jackal Pup's drawbacks from my experience with Pale Rider of Trostad. I've included PRoT for the synergy, surprisingly it ended up being great just as an aggressive beater more often than as a discard enabler. I suspect most people here have little experience with PRoT, because his greatest weakness in my experience was not even mentioned (that is bounce and Flickerwisp, hurts more than removal). I can only recommend to try the two.
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I tested Pale Rider for the aggro body, and found it straight unplayable without the synergy. Mandatory discard where you don't control the window in which you discard is a steep drawback. That's not worth +1/+1 to me. Far too many scenarios where I'm priced into pitching a business spell since I don't have a spare land to ditch. And like I said, I'd rather have a generic 3/2 and a second gas spell than a generic 4/3. All day, every day, and twice on cube day.
I played Pale Rider long enough to know that the exact opposite is true. It was my experience with that card that leads me to say that the discard is far from inconsequential, and not good unless it's beneficial. And again, that's in a color that's 10x more likely to be able to take advantage of the discard!
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