MTG Salvation

1W
Creature - Human Cleric
At the beginning of combat on your turn, put a +1/+1 counter on target creature you control.

This set is killing it with 2 drops.

This feels like it will be a staple for a long time.

Z3N is already looking redonkulous for cube.

This is amazing.

By itself it's a 3/3 for 2 when it attacks first and it grows from there.

Certainly an interesting card. Not sure it makes the highest tier of 2-drops but would be interested to see how it tests.

This does look like an efficient 2-drop. Baseline 3/3 with its first attack or can spread tokens to other creatures to make combat more problematic for the opponent/apply additional pressure. Seems good.

Same spot as the Apparition for me except this card is a bit worse: Good card, but only really goes into one deck, and it's not vital or especially dominant in that one deck. I might not be giving it enough credit, but it doesn't look all that great to me. If others have good results with it I'll test it but it doesn't excite me right off the bat

Now this is my kind of snowball!
— The effect costs no mana and does not require the creature to tap.
— It’s great all by itself as an ever-growing aggro beater.
— The effect starts the turn you play it, so the counter can go on other creatures to give the stat boost haste. This play pattern means you also get lasting value if your opponent has sorcery speed removal.
— It doesn’t require you to attack or connect to get the trigger, so in a board stall you can just sit back until your biggest thing gets big enough to attack through.
— This is one of the cheapest ways to repeatedly spread counters around your team, so it feeds the deeply ingrained +1/+1 counter theme in my Cube (Abzan Falconer, Basri’s Lieutenant, and Grateful Apparition love this card, and that’s just in white! Edit: Also gross with Mikaeus, the Lunarch).
— It can reset a persist creature once per turn.

Doesn't this add a counter on a 1 drop the turn it comes out? Feels like a great agro 2 drop. Definitely finding room.

it looks solid.

kinda makes me wanna think some more about getting a devoted +1/+1 counters theme in Selesnya or Naya rolling, since we already have various Persist support duders in those colors

Card looks great. I'll be adding it

WOw! I misread this thing at first glance.. thought it was just +1/+1 until end of turn.

Think this is basically an auto-include. Probabily the best of the generic 2 drop beaters in white, at first glance.

I think the perma-Exalted for your one drop, on the turn that you'll play this, makes this a definite contender. Adding counters would let one of your cheap creatures potentially keep up with midrange, which is the tough matchup for aggro. I can't see this disappointing.

I wonder how this compares to cards such as Seasoned Hallowblade and Charming Price.

Wowzers. I'da made it a 0/1. That's pretty nuts.

Great on turn two with one of the highest damage potentials for white two drops during the game. A great topdeck too, if you have an evasive threat to pump. Will break creature board stalls by itself. Offers the odd counter synergies with Walking Ballista, Kitchen Finks, and the like. This seems very good to me.

This card looks really good to me. It can be a large aggro beater itself but is also able to spread the damage around on a wider board. Very strong aggro card.

• Attacks as a 3/3 that grows every turn if it just boosts itself.
• If you boost your 1 drop, that first +1/+1 is hasted.
• Value engines like this creature are magnets for removal, but if you buff another creature with it, the enemy will be wasting a removal spell on a 1/1 2 drop that already got value.
• Works with +1/1 counter synergies.
• Boosting creatures with evasion or other abilities is powerful. Adanto Vanguard or Seasoned Hallowblade become really scary
• Improves your combat math each turn, as you can boost select creatures to give them better attacks.

This card just seems insane, its floor of just targeting itself seems cubeable.

pretty easy swap for glory-bound initiate for me.

Quote from opterown »

I wonder how this compares to cards such as Seasoned Hallowblade and Charming Price.

I suspect, a lot better.. at least in agro.

Here are my thoughts:

I had a difficult cut with Adanto Vanguard a while back and Luminarch Aspirant may be next cut.

The problem I found is he doesn't contribute directed to any of the archetypes - Isn't a 1 drop, doesn't provide flicker abilities, isn't a persist creature, no sacrifice support, no discard outlet. In addition, he doesn't carry any graveyard hate Remorseful Cleric, draw hate Spirit of the Labyrinth etc.

This is part of an attempt to help push cards like Wild Mongrel, Anafenza, Kin-Tree Spirit etc. as playable two drops outside of their combo shell.

When I was testing with red 2 CMC drops, I found that a vanilla 2 CMC 1 Red/ 1 colorless performed fairly well - I also found you can justify playing any red 2 drop all the way up to Plated Geopede and it will perform sufficiently well.

My theory is the gap between a Wild Mongrel/ Anafenza is that far in a fair beatdown deck - They're just not showing up because there are the more dedicated fair 2 drops are just slightly better.

Does anyone else have any thoughts on this?

My first thought was an emphatic "No", but from how I understand your endeavours from your explanations I think I can understand where you want your Cube to go.
Would it be accurate to say that you want to promote cards typically played for their role in an archetype (Reanimator, Lands, Flicker, ...) to function also as the cards played within more generic theatres (Aggro, Midrange, Control)? This you achieve by cutting cards that are catering mainly to theatres, which makes cards from archetypes the next best alternatives.

The two cards you mentioned function mainly as white Aggro beaters, so essentially you'd be nerfing your white aggro suite by cutting those and have people resort to archetype beaters (like Anafenza). This is an interesting idea, but I think you might need to do the same thing for control-finishers and midrange generic value spells. I.e. something like Griselbrand or Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite would need to be your control Finisher instead of the more generic Torrential Gearhulk. Likewise, instead of using goodstuff cards like maybe Questing Beast, you'd need to play Vengevine or whatever suitably caters your archetypes.

I hope I understood your endeavour. If I didn't, I'd be happy to see an in depth explanation of your thinking.

My knee-jerk reaction would be to say that at the moment both Vanguard and Aspirant are uncuttable Aggro beaters and are fantastic, but that is in the framework of simply havin the strongest aggro creatures available.

The first half is there is probably a strong consensus that aggro is more of a critical mass archetype - Its strength depends more on getting a decent curve + sufficient playables then quality of the cards. (For the longest time, Goblin Guide was an absolutely insane card, but without another 1 drop like Monastery Swiftspear, the burn decks didn't have the consistency.)

The part a lot of people are going to disagree with me is I think the most important parts of the aggro archetype are the 1 drops and 3-4 drops heavy hitters such as - in particular - Armageddon, Gideon, Ally of Zendikar, Hazoret the Fervent, Sulfuric Vortex, Chandra, Torch of Defiance, Goblin Rabblemaster etc are incredibly powerful in an aggressive shell, especially when the opponent is at 7-8 life and already facing another threat.

On the other hand, I found the non-disruptive/ no haste 2 drops to be fairly underwhelming in general. The second part (and controversial part) is you're really not losing much if you're playing with a slightly more subpar 2 drop.

Alright, I think I understand what you mean.

In that case, I'd say that as long as you carefully monitor the viability of Aggro, your idea has the merit of drastically increasing the number of synergistic 2-drops. On the other hand, these synergistic 2-drops will then also be prioritized not only by the archetype drafter but also by the Aggro drafter.

In any case, I'm interested where your experiments lead!

I haven't found your theory to be the case with aggro's success but that maybe come down to different cube structures. In my cube aggro's strength is directly tied to the power of it's early drop creatures. The down grade from Luminarch to Anafenza in a boros deck is absolutely massive given the WW cost and weaker body. If for your playgroup it's all been decided by the curve toppers then this change makes a ton of sense to try to solve your drafting on rails problems, but for us the curve toppers have been too slow if they don't have a strong curve backing them up.