Love this set! The cube stinker that was the D&D set had me afraid that R&D got spooked by the negative powercreep feedback they received for Throne of Eldraine. The power in this set comes in the form of incremental upgrades of cards we have familiarty with. "safer" from a design space.
I intend to re-include Nightpack ambusher while I test all these flip cards... See if a sub-archetype forms.
Cards I'm testing ranked by % chance they stay for a year+:
Auto Include:
Bloodthirsty Adversary
Falkenrath Pit fighter
Consider
90%+
Adeline, Brilliant Cathar
75%+
Intrepid Adversary
Light up the night
50%+
Memory Deluge
25%+
Suspicious Stowaway
Tovolar's Huntmaster
Augur of Autumn
10%-
Arlinn's the pack hope
Malevolent Hermit
Brutal Cathar
outland liberator
Primal Adversary
Wrenn and seven
Moonveil Reagent
Fateful Absence
Watching:
Briarbridge Tracker
Sacred Fire
Jadar, Ghoulcaller of Nephalia (if I cut storm and re-add black agro)
Meathook massacre (if I re-add black agro)
Jerren, corrupted bishop (if I support a humans archetype)
Stitcher of dolls
Cathartic Pyre
Consuming blob (if I go deeper on delirium)
Geistflame resevoir
Spectral adversary
Burn down the house
Katilda, Dawnheart prime
I'm cutting all the morphs to make room for Midnight Hunt cards because 1) power creep has made most morph cards too underpowered for cube and 2) I don't want to cut just a couple morphs because the mechanic's mystery needs a minimum density threshold (I like at least 2 morphs per supported color). I'd love to bring a batch of morphs back into the cube if we ever get another modern day power level morph set (in Tarkir or elsewhere) because I enjoy the "what could it be?" style of gameplay.
Feels about right for an Innistrad set. As always, I don't like most of the mythics, or any of the super pushed stat monsters. And I generally try to keep DFCs to a minimum.
I'm not 100% on all of these, but I would like to find room. Some are marginal upgrades so I'm considering waiting until a few sets to see if they get pushed out right away. The powercreep really has me looking at fleshing out a nice old border cube.
Watching:
Consider, Light up the Night, Primal Adversary, Cathartic Pyre, Outland Liberator, Suspicious Stowaway, Adeline, Resplendent Cathar
There are a lot of fine cards on the watch list from this set and previous sets that I just do not have room in 720. I have a new policy for updates; The card must be of one of three categories - 1) Must be a strict upgrades for an existing card 2) Decent playable, enabler for an existing combo that struggles with consistency 3) Must be a significantly better than 50-60% of the cards in its CMC slot/ functionality (Cannot be a card that might be good enough to be slightly better than the worst existing red 3 drop CMC. This is ensure I don't spend excessive amount of time testing cards in my cube that will likely be rotated out in 1-2 years anyways given the power creep in the last few years).
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Not optimistic about Jadar, the white adversary, and Augur but wanted to give them a test. Pit fighter and Adeline feel pretty likely to stick at this point. Bloodthirsty Adversary has overperformed in a very limited amount of testing. I really wanted Jadar to stick because we love ophiomancer but I'm not currently optimistic.
Cathartic Pyre, Fateful Absence, and Suspicious Stowaway are on the watch list for me. I had forgotten I'd cut Looter il kor in the stowaway spoiler thread.
Preliminary draft impressions:
Ran two 8 mans last night with the full gauntlet of test cards in. My decks were Gw ramp and UW control.
-Werewolf's were easier to flip than I estimated and thus overperformed. I tilted the margins of my cube to be more instant speed focused prior to this set, but it shouldn't have made much of a difference.
- Suspicious Stowaway is way better than looter il-kor. Blue is the best color for werewolfs (instants). I played it in a deck with a lot of instant speed interaction, which made me able to threaten the flip every single turn. I was able to draw many many cards with it across multiple matche. I think this play pattern will be common. This makes the card WAY better than looter in generic fair blue decks. Moving it from 25%+ to 75%+.
- Brutal cathar overperformed. 2W allowed me to play it in a Gw ramp deck that 1WW wouldn't have. It gave the deck much needed interaction while still using the body for gaea's cradle/craterhoof. The biggest upside it has over banishing priest is you can run the card out on curve and it be a reasonable threat. Flipping it was not hard. If you run it out on curve, and they play a must answer creature later in the game, you can try to set up two spells in one turn. Mox's and such make it easier for a vintage cube deck to sculpt double spelling. While I still need to test it more, it's clear to me that it's a BIG upgrade over priest/fiend hunter not a small one. It can become a relevant body AND potentially flip multiple times. Moving it from 10%- to 75+. If you were on the fence, trust me. Test it out.
- Intrepid adversary sat in the sideboard of my GW ramp deck. It was a playable, but I had more than enough playables. If it were to make the main deck of a green ramp deck the deck would have to be REALLY token heavy. Little bit lower on it than when it was first spoiled, but still looking forward to see it in action.
- Bloodthirsty adversary is worse than I was estimating (it was my #1 pick for the set). I miss understood that you can kill the creature in response to the counters being put on it, then the spells don't get flashed back. That being said, it wound up in a Grixis deck with recall and kologhan's command and did an excellent premium dark dwellers impression. Still hyped on it. Always cast for 5 mana in that deck.
- Primal adversary sat in the sideboard of my GW ramp deck that had a slight beat down element, but was more ramp focused. The way the deck was structured, it didn't make too much sense to play it. Paying attention to how games played out, I was confident in that decision. If it didn't make the final 24 in this deck, I realized there weren't that many shells that it will. Probably not gonna stick around too much longer. But needs more testing.
- Augur of autumn saw play in my GW ramp deck.. It felt very similar to courser of kruphix. The ability is slightly better , but the body is much worse. Assembling coven didn't feel hard, but it didn't feel easy either. I get the sense that augur is 5% better vs most archetypes but MUCH worse against agro. 95% of courser of kruphix still a good card. Performed as I expected and I'll continue to test.
- Outland liberator saw play in my Gw ramp deck. I only drew it a couple times but it felt great. I drew it in matchups where there weren't relevant artifacts on the board, but I ended up flipping it easily... so I extrapolated from that, among other things. Still not sure if it's better than a viridian shaman variant though. Increasing prediction from 10% -> 25%.
- I only drew Memory deluge a couple times but it felt realllly good. I was playing a draw/go control deck which was the perfect deck for it. I even got to flash it back once. Really cool spot happened where my opponent was swinging for alpha with a thalia in play and I got to dig 5 cards deep because of thalia's tax and the wording on deluge. It was a spot where the extra card was worth the tax. When I saw it spoiled I thought there was a 65% it was better than FoF. Now I think it's 90%+. Needs more testing. Increasing prediction from 50%+ to 90%+.
- Moonveil Reagent circulated during both drafts and ended up in sideboards, no obvious home for it =/.
- Falkenrath pit fighter ended up in both drafts. It was a red savannah lions. Nothing surprising.
Thanks for the write up. This is actually bad news not good news because I'll have to try to make room for - Suspicious Stowaway, Brutal cathar in addition to the 5-6 cards on bench right now.
I'm not surprised about Brutal cathar - The part I dislike about it is how Fiend Hunter can setup flicker shenanigans, but does Brutal Cathar work with Sun Titan/ Reveliark with a sacrifice outlet for infinite sacrifice/ ETB?
Suspicious Stowaway/ Consider both seem really good, but blue cards are too difficult for me right now.
I am happy angur of autumn worked out - I love this type of effect. It helps to prevent flood, helps with a lands archetype etc.
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Thanks for the write up. This is actually bad news not good news because I'll have to try to make room for - Suspicious Stowaway, Brutal cathar in addition to the 5-6 cards on bench right now.
I'm not surprised about Brutal cathar - The part I dislike about it is how Fiend Hunter can setup flicker shenanigans, but does Brutal Cathar work with Sun Titan/ Reveliark with a sacrifice outlet for infinite sacrifice/ ETB?
Suspicious Stowaway/ Consider both seem really good, but blue cards are too difficult for me right now.
I am happy angur of autumn worked out - I love this type of effect. It helps to prevent flood, helps with a lands archetype etc.
You really find those flicker shenanigan's with fiend hunter come up often? While it's very powerful when it does, I believe it's so rare that it doesn't affect it's average case performance much. And without that rare scenario, fiend hunter and brutal cathar aren't in the same league. 1WW vs 2W matters a lot too.
It's a totally reasonable splash card in Bw agro , Rw agro or Gw creature ramp. That adds a lot of playability.
If you're only gonna test one, I recommend testing suspicious stowaway though. Card might be the card of the set for cube when the dust settles. Cathar just another card among a sea of great white 3 drops.
Thanks for the write up. This is actually bad news not good news because I'll have to try to make room for - Suspicious Stowaway, Brutal cathar in addition to the 5-6 cards on bench right now.
I'm not surprised about Brutal cathar - The part I dislike about it is how Fiend Hunter can setup flicker shenanigans, but does Brutal Cathar work with Sun Titan/ Reveliark with a sacrifice outlet for infinite sacrifice/ ETB?
Suspicious Stowaway/ Consider both seem really good, but blue cards are too difficult for me right now.
I am happy angur of autumn worked out - I love this type of effect. It helps to prevent flood, helps with a lands archetype etc.
You really find those flicker shenanigan's with fiend hunter come up often? While it's very powerful when it does, I believe it's so rare that it doesn't affect it's average case performance much. And without that rare scenario, fiend hunter and brutal cathar aren't in the same league. 1WW vs 2W matters a lot too.
It doesn't come up much nor the Mimic Vat interaction - which is why Fiend Hunter was cut. But this is also the reason why i play cube - i think its really exciting when these interactions show up once in a while.
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- [b]Bloodthirsty adversary[/b] is worse than I was estimating (it was my #1 pick for the set). I miss understood that you can kill the creature in response to the counters being put on it, then the spells don't get flashed back. That being said, it wound up in a Grixis deck with recall and kologhan's command and [b]did an excellent premium dark dwellers impression. Still hyped on it[/b]. Always cast for 5 mana in that deck.
[/b]
You still "flashback" the spell even if Bloodthirsty Adversary dies in response to the trigger. All that matters is that you paid the cost X times, not how many counters you put on it. Not getting the counters doesn't fizzle the trigger.
- [b]Bloodthirsty adversary[/b] is worse than I was estimating (it was my #1 pick for the set). I miss understood that you can kill the creature in response to the counters being put on it, then the spells don't get flashed back. That being said, it wound up in a Grixis deck with recall and kologhan's command and [b]did an excellent premium dark dwellers impression. Still hyped on it[/b]. Always cast for 5 mana in that deck.
[/b]
You still "flashback" the spell even if Bloodthirsty Adversary dies in response to the trigger. All that matters is that you paid the cost X times, not how many counters you put on it. Not getting the counters doesn't fizzle the trigger.
That’s what I assumed too! A L1 judge in my playgroup told me otherwise. He told me a second trigger gets created that fizzles if the counters don’t get placed. Now I don’t know what to believe haha.
608.2b: ...Illegal targets, if any, won’t be affected by parts of a resolving spell’s effect for which they’re illegal. Other parts of the effect for which those targets are not illegal may still affect them...
Both the counters and the flashback are parts of the effect, and not the trigger nor condition. I'd think this means you do get the latter half of the effect.
I couldn't find a ruling on the case, but it should go like this:
The creature enters the battlefield -> a trigger that allows you to pay a cost is put on the stack with no target. This trigger isn't prevented by killing the creature. -> the trigger resolves, if you choose to pay one or more times, one secondary reflexive triggered ability is put on the stack, refering the entered creature and targeting one or more instants or sorceries.
Once you have the second reflexive triggered ability on the stack it should behave exactly like if you had cast an instant with that effect. It is completely separate from the creature, except that it refers to it as an object.
Notice how the wording is very different from monsterous/adapt, which have exactly those issues due to the second part of the effect being stored as a triggered ability on the creature itself, and not a part of the adapt/monsterous ability.
As I read it, you could instead fizzle the ability by exiling all the targeted instants and sorceries.
#Edit - After playing on magic arena, I can confirm that the spells are still cast if the Adversary is killed in response.
Fearless Adversary
Fateful Absence
Adeline, Brilliant Cathar
Brutal Cathar (maybe)
Cathar Commando (maybe)
BLUE
Consider
Suspicious Stowaway
Memory Deluge
Stitcher of Dolls (maybe)
BLACK
Jadar, Ghoulcaller of Nephalia (maybe)
RED
Falkenrath Pitfighter
Bloodthirsty Adversary
Cathartic Pyre
Light up the Night
GREEN
Tovolar's Huntmaster
Augur of Autumn (maybe)
Briarbridge Tracker (maybe)
Primal Adversary (maybe)
OTHER
Arlinn, the Pack's Hope (maybe)
My High Octane Unpowered Cube on CubeCobra
Adeline, Resplendent Cathar: replacing Hero of Bladehold
Fateful Absence: replacing Oblivion Ring
Blue
Suspicious Stowaway: replacing Barrin, Tolarian Archmage
Black
Jadar, Ghoulcaller of Nephalia: replacing Sedgemoor Witch
Infernal Grasp: replacing Heartless Act
Red
Falkenrath Pit Fighter: replacing Firedrinker Satyr
Bloodthirsty Adversary: replacing Impatient Iguana
Green
Augur of Autumn: replacing Jadelight Ranger
Tovolar's Huntmaster: replacing Terastodon
[180 classic cube]
I intend to re-include Nightpack ambusher while I test all these flip cards... See if a sub-archetype forms.
Cards I'm testing ranked by % chance they stay for a year+:
Auto Include:
Bloodthirsty Adversary
Falkenrath Pit fighter
Consider
90%+
Adeline, Brilliant Cathar
75%+
Intrepid Adversary
Light up the night
50%+
Memory Deluge
25%+
Suspicious Stowaway
Tovolar's Huntmaster
Augur of Autumn
10%-
Arlinn's the pack hope
Malevolent Hermit
Brutal Cathar
outland liberator
Primal Adversary
Wrenn and seven
Moonveil Reagent
Fateful Absence
Watching:
Briarbridge Tracker
Sacred Fire
Jadar, Ghoulcaller of Nephalia (if I cut storm and re-add black agro)
Meathook massacre (if I re-add black agro)
Jerren, corrupted bishop (if I support a humans archetype)
Stitcher of dolls
Cathartic Pyre
Consuming blob (if I go deeper on delirium)
Geistflame resevoir
Spectral adversary
Burn down the house
Katilda, Dawnheart prime
Last Updated 02/07/24
Streaming Standard/Cube on Twitch https://www.twitch.tv/heisenb3rg96
Strategy Twitter https://www.twitter.com/heisenb3rg
Adeline, Resplendent Cathar replaces Brimaz, King of Oreskos. Willing to risk the lower power floor for the higher power ceiling.
Borrowed Time replaces Exalted Angel. Always loved this effect, happy to have a third copy to boost enchantress.
Intrepid Adversary replaces Hidden Dragonslayer. Sweet for aggro, tokens, lifegain matters, and blink.
Consider replaces Stratus Dancer. Great in spells matter decks and good in reanimator/graveyard decks. I have literally been wanting this exact text on a card ever since the surveil mechanic was spoiled.
Suspicious Stowaway replaces Vesuvan Shapeshifter. I dislike that Day/Night requires outside rules knowledge not written on the card, but this particular card is strong enough to include anyway.
Bloodthirsty Adversary replaces Stoke the Flames. Great in mono-red, Boros aggro, and Izzet spells matter. Plus it's another tribe member for the light Vampire tribal theme.
Falkenrath Pit Fighter replaces Sagu Mauler. It's strong as an aggro 2/1 for R that can be cashed in for cards. Plus it helps slightly support Vampires matter both as a tribe member and with an ability that lets you sac any Vampire.
Play with Fire replaces Wild Slash. I like one mana instant burn to support the weird spell pinger archetype, and this is just much better than Wild Slash.
Other non-MID changes happening at the same time:
Fastbond replaces Den Protector
Oath of Nissa replaces Rattleclaw Mystic
I'm cutting all the morphs to make room for Midnight Hunt cards because 1) power creep has made most morph cards too underpowered for cube and 2) I don't want to cut just a couple morphs because the mechanic's mystery needs a minimum density threshold (I like at least 2 morphs per supported color). I'd love to bring a batch of morphs back into the cube if we ever get another modern day power level morph set (in Tarkir or elsewhere) because I enjoy the "what could it be?" style of gameplay.
Sweet commons and uncommons I may add:
Cathar Commando
Loyal Gryff
Search Party Captain
Foul Play
Hobbling Zombie
Play with Fire
Dryad's Revival
Diregraf Rebirth
Ambitious Farmhand // Seasoned Cathar
Lunarch Veteran // Luminous Phantom
Outland Liberator // Frenzied Trapbreaker
Cool rares I might throw in if I get them:
Lier, Disciple of the Drowned
Sludge Monster
Jadar, Ghoulcaller of Nephalia
Burn Down the House
Falkenrath Pit Fighter
Briarbridge Tracker
Saryth, the Viper's Fang
Storm the Festival
Malevolent Hermit // Benevolent Geist
Poppet Stitcher // Poppet Factory
Suspicious Stowaway // Seafaring Werewolf
Hostile Hostel // Creeping Inn
Stuff I'm especially interested in:
I'd really like to try The Meathook Massacre, but I never obtain most mythics. I could use a cool black wrath with extra utility.
Low-power cube enthusiast!
My 1570 card cube (no longer updated)
My 415 Peasant+ Artifact and Enchantment Cube
Ever-Expanding "Just throw it in" cube.
Heliod, Sun-Crowned > Cathar Commando
Serra the Benevolent > Sungold Sentinel
Brimaz, King of Oreskos > Adeline, Brilliant Cathar
Looter il-Kor > Suspicious Stowaway
Heartless Act > Infernal Grasp
Cathartic Pyre
Falkenrath Pitfighter
Outland Liberator
Primal Adversary
I'm not 100% on all of these, but I would like to find room. Some are marginal upgrades so I'm considering waiting until a few sets to see if they get pushed out right away. The powercreep really has me looking at fleshing out a nice old border cube.
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Remorseful Cleric > Intrepid Adversary
Charming Prince > Cathar Commando
Thalia, Heretic Cathar > Adeline, Respledent Cathar
Mana Tithe > Fateful Absence
Gitaxian Probe > Suspicious Stowaway
Serum Visions > Consider
Heartless Act > Infernal Grasp
Bomat Courier > Falkenrath Pit Fighter
Dire Fleet Daredevil > Bloodthirsty Adversary
Fauna Shaman > Primal Adversary
Plow Under > Augur of Autumn
Hornet Queen > Tovolar's Huntmaster
NON-MID:
Magus of the Order > Nightpack Ambusher
Testing: Intrepid Adversary, Memory Deluge, Bloodthirsty Adversary
Trying to find a cut for: Fateful Absence
Keeping an eye on: Cathar Commando, Outland Liberator, Light Up the Night, Tovolar's Huntmaster, Infernal Grasp, Primal Adversary
Nice set for sure!
https://www.mtgsalvation.com/forums/the-game/the-cube-forum/articles-podcasts-and-guides/823668-set-p-review-my-top-20-innistrad-midnight-hunt-mid
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!
Adeline, Resplendent Cathar
Fateful Absence
Consider
Suspicious Stowaway
Infernal Grasp
Falkenrath Pit Fighter
Testing
Borrowed Time - Not sure if I want a 3rd copy of this effect.
Memory Deluge
Bloodthirsty Adversary
Light up the Night
Augur of Autumn
Primal Adversary
Watching
Cathar Commando
Cathartic Pyre
Tovolar's Huntmaster
- Augur of Autumn
- Intrepid Adversary
- Fateful Absence
- Borrowed Time
- Arlinn, the Pack's Hope
- Bloodthirsty Adversary
- Falkenrath Pit Fighter
Watching:
Consider, Light up the Night, Primal Adversary, Cathartic Pyre, Outland Liberator, Suspicious Stowaway, Adeline, Resplendent Cathar
There are a lot of fine cards on the watch list from this set and previous sets that I just do not have room in 720. I have a new policy for updates; The card must be of one of three categories - 1) Must be a strict upgrades for an existing card 2) Decent playable, enabler for an existing combo that struggles with consistency 3) Must be a significantly better than 50-60% of the cards in its CMC slot/ functionality (Cannot be a card that might be good enough to be slightly better than the worst existing red 3 drop CMC. This is ensure I don't spend excessive amount of time testing cards in my cube that will likely be rotated out in 1-2 years anyways given the power creep in the last few years).
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
Not optimistic about Jadar, the white adversary, and Augur but wanted to give them a test. Pit fighter and Adeline feel pretty likely to stick at this point. Bloodthirsty Adversary has overperformed in a very limited amount of testing. I really wanted Jadar to stick because we love ophiomancer but I'm not currently optimistic.
Cathartic Pyre, Fateful Absence, and Suspicious Stowaway are on the watch list for me. I had forgotten I'd cut Looter il kor in the stowaway spoiler thread.
W: Adeline, Resplendent Cathar, Intrepid Adversary, Fateful Absence
U: Suspicious Stowaway
B: nada
R: Falkenrath Pit Fighter, Cathartic Pyre
G: Tovolar's Huntmaster
Have an eye on Moonveil Regent and Cathar Commando too.
On spoiled card wishlisting and 'should-have-had'-isms:
Adeline, Resplendent Cathar
Intrepid Adversary
Fateful Absence
Suspicious Stowaway
Falkenrath Pit Fighter
Bloodthirsty Adversary
I'm considering/watching Consider, Cathar Commando, Cathartic Pyre, Primal Adversary, and Tovolar's Huntmaster
It's really good set for cube.
Cheers,
rant
My Cube
CubeCobra: https://cubecobra.com/cube/overview/5f5d0310ed602310515d4c32
Cube Tutor: http://cubetutor.com/viewcube/1963
Ran two 8 mans last night with the full gauntlet of test cards in. My decks were Gw ramp and UW control.
-Werewolf's were easier to flip than I estimated and thus overperformed. I tilted the margins of my cube to be more instant speed focused prior to this set, but it shouldn't have made much of a difference.
- Suspicious Stowaway is way better than looter il-kor. Blue is the best color for werewolfs (instants). I played it in a deck with a lot of instant speed interaction, which made me able to threaten the flip every single turn. I was able to draw many many cards with it across multiple matche. I think this play pattern will be common. This makes the card WAY better than looter in generic fair blue decks. Moving it from 25%+ to 75%+.
- Brutal cathar overperformed. 2W allowed me to play it in a Gw ramp deck that 1WW wouldn't have. It gave the deck much needed interaction while still using the body for gaea's cradle/craterhoof. The biggest upside it has over banishing priest is you can run the card out on curve and it be a reasonable threat. Flipping it was not hard. If you run it out on curve, and they play a must answer creature later in the game, you can try to set up two spells in one turn. Mox's and such make it easier for a vintage cube deck to sculpt double spelling. While I still need to test it more, it's clear to me that it's a BIG upgrade over priest/fiend hunter not a small one. It can become a relevant body AND potentially flip multiple times. Moving it from 10%- to 75+. If you were on the fence, trust me. Test it out.
- Intrepid adversary sat in the sideboard of my GW ramp deck. It was a playable, but I had more than enough playables. If it were to make the main deck of a green ramp deck the deck would have to be REALLY token heavy. Little bit lower on it than when it was first spoiled, but still looking forward to see it in action.
- Bloodthirsty adversary is worse than I was estimating (it was my #1 pick for the set). I miss understood that you can kill the creature in response to the counters being put on it, then the spells don't get flashed back. That being said, it wound up in a Grixis deck with recall and kologhan's command and did an excellent premium dark dwellers impression. Still hyped on it. Always cast for 5 mana in that deck.
- Primal adversary sat in the sideboard of my GW ramp deck that had a slight beat down element, but was more ramp focused. The way the deck was structured, it didn't make too much sense to play it. Paying attention to how games played out, I was confident in that decision. If it didn't make the final 24 in this deck, I realized there weren't that many shells that it will. Probably not gonna stick around too much longer. But needs more testing.
- Augur of autumn saw play in my GW ramp deck.. It felt very similar to courser of kruphix. The ability is slightly better , but the body is much worse. Assembling coven didn't feel hard, but it didn't feel easy either. I get the sense that augur is 5% better vs most archetypes but MUCH worse against agro. 95% of courser of kruphix still a good card. Performed as I expected and I'll continue to test.
- Outland liberator saw play in my Gw ramp deck. I only drew it a couple times but it felt great. I drew it in matchups where there weren't relevant artifacts on the board, but I ended up flipping it easily... so I extrapolated from that, among other things. Still not sure if it's better than a viridian shaman variant though. Increasing prediction from 10% -> 25%.
- I only drew Memory deluge a couple times but it felt realllly good. I was playing a draw/go control deck which was the perfect deck for it. I even got to flash it back once. Really cool spot happened where my opponent was swinging for alpha with a thalia in play and I got to dig 5 cards deep because of thalia's tax and the wording on deluge. It was a spot where the extra card was worth the tax. When I saw it spoiled I thought there was a 65% it was better than FoF. Now I think it's 90%+. Needs more testing. Increasing prediction from 50%+ to 90%+.
- Moonveil Reagent circulated during both drafts and ended up in sideboards, no obvious home for it =/.
- Falkenrath pit fighter ended up in both drafts. It was a red savannah lions. Nothing surprising.
Last Updated 02/07/24
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I'm not surprised about Brutal cathar - The part I dislike about it is how Fiend Hunter can setup flicker shenanigans, but does Brutal Cathar work with Sun Titan/ Reveliark with a sacrifice outlet for infinite sacrifice/ ETB?
Suspicious Stowaway/ Consider both seem really good, but blue cards are too difficult for me right now.
I am happy angur of autumn worked out - I love this type of effect. It helps to prevent flood, helps with a lands archetype etc.
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
You really find those flicker shenanigan's with fiend hunter come up often? While it's very powerful when it does, I believe it's so rare that it doesn't affect it's average case performance much. And without that rare scenario, fiend hunter and brutal cathar aren't in the same league. 1WW vs 2W matters a lot too.
It's a totally reasonable splash card in Bw agro , Rw agro or Gw creature ramp. That adds a lot of playability.
If you're only gonna test one, I recommend testing suspicious stowaway though. Card might be the card of the set for cube when the dust settles. Cathar just another card among a sea of great white 3 drops.
Last Updated 02/07/24
Streaming Standard/Cube on Twitch https://www.twitch.tv/heisenb3rg96
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It doesn't come up much nor the Mimic Vat interaction - which is why Fiend Hunter was cut. But this is also the reason why i play cube - i think its really exciting when these interactions show up once in a while.
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
You still "flashback" the spell even if Bloodthirsty Adversary dies in response to the trigger. All that matters is that you paid the cost X times, not how many counters you put on it. Not getting the counters doesn't fizzle the trigger.
My High Octane Unpowered Cube on CubeCobra
That’s what I assumed too! A L1 judge in my playgroup told me otherwise. He told me a second trigger gets created that fizzles if the counters don’t get placed. Now I don’t know what to believe haha.
Last Updated 02/07/24
Streaming Standard/Cube on Twitch https://www.twitch.tv/heisenb3rg96
Strategy Twitter https://www.twitter.com/heisenb3rg
Both the counters and the flashback are parts of the effect, and not the trigger nor condition. I'd think this means you do get the latter half of the effect.
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The creature enters the battlefield -> a trigger that allows you to pay a cost is put on the stack with no target. This trigger isn't prevented by killing the creature. -> the trigger resolves, if you choose to pay one or more times, one secondary reflexive triggered ability is put on the stack, refering the entered creature and targeting one or more instants or sorceries.
Once you have the second reflexive triggered ability on the stack it should behave exactly like if you had cast an instant with that effect. It is completely separate from the creature, except that it refers to it as an object.
Notice how the wording is very different from monsterous/adapt, which have exactly those issues due to the second part of the effect being stored as a triggered ability on the creature itself, and not a part of the adapt/monsterous ability.
As I read it, you could instead fizzle the ability by exiling all the targeted instants and sorceries.
#Edit - After playing on magic arena, I can confirm that the spells are still cast if the Adversary is killed in response.
Interested in Custom Card Creation.
My Cube:Cardinal Custom Cube
A custom version of a third modern masters: MM2019
(filter->rarity to see in set rarity).