After flipping Thing in the Ice, Awoken Horror immediately cleans the board and presents a huge threat. Smoldering Egg's flipside is a 4/4 flier that shocks on every spell cast. This is stronger against midrange decks with lots of creatures that create value on ETB -- you'd much rather shock a Mulldrifter than bounce it. The body is also nearly impossible to chump, thanks to flying and the shocks, while Thing in the Ice has nothing to prevent chumping (by creatures entering after it flips). The flipside of the Egg is probably worse than Thing's, but both are very good, and the 0/4 frontside, which is much more relevant in the matchup, is the same.
From my understanding, this doesn't work with discounts such as Delve/ Phyrexian mana.
The thing is cards like Magmatic Channeler/ Kilnd Field, Bedlam Reveler are all playable, but it depends more on your red's sections composition. My red needs to support polymorph, twin, wildfire, storm, aristocrats as well as traditional red burn. Therefore, a lot of red two drops are non-starters for me.
The part I do not like about this card is the red spells matters deck should be attacking, not defending - it should primarily used burn spells to clear the way for rabblemaster, Swiftswear, Pyro etc.
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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
Seems decent.. pretty narrow though.
Thing in the ice can be played as an 0/4 wall without too many instants/sorceries to act as an anti agro card.
Red is primarily an offensive color that is used as supplement in other strategies (combo/ramp first ->)
It's sideboard value is very limited and it's only good in one shell (UR with a bunch of sorceries/instants).
If it was busted in that strategy, i'd be interested in something that narrow, but I don't think it is.
We support Jeskai spells matter, but this feels like worse than what we're currently running. If I wanted an additional option I'd run this, but the deck feels like it's in a good place with existing options.
Seems tough to flip if the average cmc of spells in your cube is fairly low, and easy if it's higher. When I think of red spells I think of things like Lightning Bolt.
Most cost reducers don't work with this, but Convoke was reworded in M15 so that it does. Sprout Swarm seems quite good with this one, as does Stoke the Flames.
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A red Thing in the Ice. Clearly this is not a good card for an aggressive deck, but I think it could be very good in UR spells matter.
Since the flip condition is "Spells with total mana cost 7 or more", X-spells like Light up the Night or Tempt with Vengeance, expensive spells like Fact or Fiction and Memory Deluge, or alternative casting costs like a kicked Burst Lightning, flashbacked Firebolt or overloaded Mizzium Mortars let you flip this with relatively few spells cast (you still always need to spend the same amount of mana).
After flipping Thing in the Ice, Awoken Horror immediately cleans the board and presents a huge threat. Smoldering Egg's flipside is a 4/4 flier that shocks on every spell cast. This is stronger against midrange decks with lots of creatures that create value on ETB -- you'd much rather shock a Mulldrifter than bounce it. The body is also nearly impossible to chump, thanks to flying and the shocks, while Thing in the Ice has nothing to prevent chumping (by creatures entering after it flips). The flipside of the Egg is probably worse than Thing's, but both are very good, and the 0/4 frontside, which is much more relevant in the matchup, is the same.
I think this can be a good card, but it does have hard and deep competition in Young Pyromancer, Bloodthirsty Adversary, Magmatic Channeler and Abbot of Keral Keep, which are all go in more decks. I guess it's not worth it, but I'm posting a thread on it as I'm interested to see what others think.
The thing is cards like Magmatic Channeler/ Kilnd Field, Bedlam Reveler are all playable, but it depends more on your red's sections composition. My red needs to support polymorph, twin, wildfire, storm, aristocrats as well as traditional red burn. Therefore, a lot of red two drops are non-starters for me.
The part I do not like about this card is the red spells matters deck should be attacking, not defending - it should primarily used burn spells to clear the way for rabblemaster, Swiftswear, Pyro 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
Thing in the ice can be played as an 0/4 wall without too many instants/sorceries to act as an anti agro card.
Red is primarily an offensive color that is used as supplement in other strategies (combo/ramp first ->)
It's sideboard value is very limited and it's only good in one shell (UR with a bunch of sorceries/instants).
If it was busted in that strategy, i'd be interested in something that narrow, but I don't think it is.
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Most cost reducers don't work with this, but Convoke was reworded in M15 so that it does. Sprout Swarm seems quite good with this one, as does Stoke the Flames.