A potential new reanimator target. Unfortunately, it's mono-blue, which means it would need to be extremely good to compete.
This card is probably most comparable to Terastodon. With Terastodon, you can kill nonland permanents, but have to replace them with a 3/3. When targeting opposing permanents with this card, it's YOU who gets the 3/3's not your opponent, which is huge. However, creating a copy of a permanent is generally weaker than destroying it, and here that is especially true, as
1. Copying can be better than destroying when targeting something with an ETB effect, but the best ETB effects are on creatures, which this cannot copy.
2. Copying an aura or an equipment does nothing, as you are getting a creature copy, that cannot attach to creatures.
3. The 3/3 tokens have to copy the same nonland permanent. This means that when copying a planeswalker, you'll lose one of them, since planeswalkers are legendary. This applies to other legendary nonland permanents as well.
When targeting a permanent you control, the effect is obviously stronger than Terastodon: your permanent doesn't get destroyed, and the created token gains some additional properties too.
In terms of just stats, this card gets you 10/10 in flying stats, while Terastodon can get you up to 18/18 in vanilla creatures, thus both cards take two combat steps to end the game. However, for Terastodon to achieve that, you have to kill three of your own permanents, most likely lands, while the baseline for this card actually creates two land creatures. That's a 5-land difference, which is especially significant if the big main body of each gets removed: I'd rather have two 3/3 land fliers than three vanilla 3/3 creatures and three less lands.
I think it is reasonable to argue that in terms of what you get for 8 mana, this card is stronger than Terastodon. However, this card is blue, not green. This makes it harder to cast for decks that could feasibly hardcast Terastodon, and means it has to compete for a significantly tighter slot. In cubes where Terastodon's color and cost don't matter, this will make a competitive replacement. I am personally looking for a few more reanimation targets, but being a blue card, this will be hard to sell.
I'll end with a rules question: what happens when you reanimate this with Necromancy, and copy Necromancy with the tokens?
This is pretty powerful. Up front it's essentially a Grave Titan (10 power spread across three bodies), but all those bodies have flying. It's nice that you can always just copy a land if there's nothing else to hit. I'd imagine the most dangerous thing you can copy with this is Parallax Wave or something? I'm not sure if I'm in the market for this right now since this has no crossover with Natural Order / Tinker / Channel / etc, and isn't the hottest Sneak Attack hit.
Quote from Mangolassi »
I'll end with a rules question: what happens when you reanimate this with Necromancy, and copy Necromancy with the tokens?
I'd imagine that it'd work the same way Necromancy / Animate Dead work with Akroma, Angel of Wrath. It brings it into play for a brief second but cannot enchant it due to the tokens being creatures, so the targeted creature dies immediately. Still pretty useful in a Reanimator / Sneak attack deck if you want to get an extra trigger or something.
Even if you're copying lands, you won't be able to use the abilities until your next turn. So even if copying Strip Mine, it wouldn't do much to immediately impact the board. Plus all the best lands, like Karakas and Cradle, are legendary.
All the best permanents I can think of that this can copy are enchantments, most of them white. Cards like Courts, Oblivion Rings, Bitterblossom, Sulfuric Vortex...
However, since this card will mostly be played in black reanimator, as already mentioned, they probably won't be run in that deck, so the average choice of what to copy will likely be far worse.
This card goes infinite with Cursed Mirror, a card I just realized existed.
Speaking of Cursed Mirror, I think I will test this card. Maybe alongside Astral Dragon.
This card goes infinite with Cursed Mirror, a card I just realized existed.
Speaking of Cursed Mirror, I think I will test this card. Maybe alongside Astral Dragon.
There are a bunch of cards this goes infinite with, but the most common cube ones that I can think of are Parallax Wave / Oblivion Ring / Journey to Nowhere.
Quote from Mangolassi »
I'll end with a rules question: what happens when you reanimate this with Necromancy, and copy Necromancy with the tokens?
To be clear about the Animate Dead / Necromancy interaction, the only things that happen is that your 3/3 dragons will die immediately when state-based effects are checked. The triggered abilities of Animate Dead / Necromancy fizzle because they are no longer in play.
I don't know if I'm a fan of this in Reanimator but I'll be running it anyway.
I'm sure people will target it with Animate Deads and Necromancies and Recurring Nightmares and it'll be fine if confusing (and probably chumped by 1/1 spirits for days), but I'll be including it for Mass Polymorph and the Manifest -> Astral Slide/Drift deck I support. Both of those are already in blue for me anyway, and both run non-creature permanents that are sweet to copy:
I think the function of this card is just a little too awkward for me to cube it. It's cool that you can target your own lands to essentially ramp, but I'm not sure how needed that is in a reanimator deck, or especially if you're hard casting this card. Copying a planeswalker and only ending up with a single 3/3 feels odd as a play pattern. That's probably pretty strong alongside a 4/4 flier, but it feels bad to lose out on the second token.
Part of what makes Terastodon so great is that it is flexible, and that there are scenarios where destroying 3 of your opponent's lands essentially seals out the game. Whereas with this guy, you're just as vulnerable to a wrath as before he enters the battlefield.
As for big blue creatures, I think Consecrated Sphinx, All-Seeing Arbiter, etc. still take the slot as they are a lot more castable in a blue control deck.
I've never cubed with this myself, but have heard good things from other people. Now that I'm playing Flash this is quite an interesting option as a pseudo turn 2 Grave / Primeval Titan. Too bad I cut most of the cards that goes infinite with this (Oblivion Ring / Journey to Nowhere), but still a solid cheaty face target regardless. Will give it a test.
Astral Dragon has been performing extremely well in my testing over the past month and a half, and it's been a solid cheaty face target all around, and is one of the better creatures to use with Flash. Being a combination of Primeval Titan / Grave Titan that can randomly clone non-creature permanents is extremely versatile. Most of the time you'll be copying a land, but sometimes you'll get something juicy like a Portable Hole or something / Leyline Binding. My favorite accidental combo I recently discovered is Astral Dragon + Bitter Reunion, was pretty fun to randomly walk into turn three 10 haste damage in the air while drawing a bunch of cards.
I'll end with a rules question: what happens when you reanimate this with Necromancy, and copy Necromancy with the tokens?
To be clear about the Animate Dead / Necromancy interaction, the only things that happen is that your 3/3 dragons will die immediately when state-based effects are checked. The triggered abilities of Animate Dead / Necromancy fizzle because they are no longer in play.
So it turns out I was half wrong about this. This is essentially what happens for copying Necromancy, but not Animate Dead
- Copying Necromancy will allow you to temporarily reanimate any creature(s), but you'd end up sacrificing your 3/3 Necromancy Dragon tokens AND the things that were reanimated by those Necromancy copies. There are very few edge cases where you'd actually want to do this, like if you had Purphoros, God of the Forge / Blood Artist on the battlefield or something.
- Copying Animate Dead / Dance of the Dead literally does nothing. Your 3/3 dragon tokens will never enter the battlefield. An aura that can't enchant anything will never enter the battlefield. Creatures can't enchant anything and the copies of Animate Dead are creatures, therefore they will never hit the battlefield.
I don't know if I'm a fan of this in Reanimator but I'll be running it anyway.
I'm sure people will target it with Animate Deads and Necromancies and Recurring Nightmares and it'll be fine if confusing (and probably chumped by 1/1 spirits for days), but I'll be including it for Mass Polymorph and the Manifest -> Astral Slide/Drift deck I support. Both of those are already in blue for me anyway, and both run non-creature permanents that are sweet to copy:
All that and the name even tells you how to use it. Too perfect.
For me.
In my cube.
Dunno about you guys tho, seems pretty meh outside those specific use cases. I'll give it 7/11
This is my concern lol. Every single card is a nightmare to explain
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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
I put this card off because of its enormous rules complexity, but I'm planning to replace this with Hornet Queen
- Can be used to copy your opponent's planeswalkers/ threats, such as Oko, Thief of Crowns, which can often be problematic for reanimator decks
- Decent for Sneak Attack/ Flash decks to cheat out 2 - 3/3 flyers
- High potential for reanimator storm - I been thinking of ways to improve storm and with Etali, Atraxa, Griselbrand, Palinchron, and this, I feel the reanimator storm (Tin-Fins) may be able to help storm become a bit more competitive without having to hope a high density of rituals/ enablers wheel.
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A potential new reanimator target. Unfortunately, it's mono-blue, which means it would need to be extremely good to compete.
This card is probably most comparable to Terastodon. With Terastodon, you can kill nonland permanents, but have to replace them with a 3/3. When targeting opposing permanents with this card, it's YOU who gets the 3/3's not your opponent, which is huge. However, creating a copy of a permanent is generally weaker than destroying it, and here that is especially true, as
1. Copying can be better than destroying when targeting something with an ETB effect, but the best ETB effects are on creatures, which this cannot copy.
2. Copying an aura or an equipment does nothing, as you are getting a creature copy, that cannot attach to creatures.
3. The 3/3 tokens have to copy the same nonland permanent. This means that when copying a planeswalker, you'll lose one of them, since planeswalkers are legendary. This applies to other legendary nonland permanents as well.
When targeting a permanent you control, the effect is obviously stronger than Terastodon: your permanent doesn't get destroyed, and the created token gains some additional properties too.
In terms of just stats, this card gets you 10/10 in flying stats, while Terastodon can get you up to 18/18 in vanilla creatures, thus both cards take two combat steps to end the game. However, for Terastodon to achieve that, you have to kill three of your own permanents, most likely lands, while the baseline for this card actually creates two land creatures. That's a 5-land difference, which is especially significant if the big main body of each gets removed: I'd rather have two 3/3 land fliers than three vanilla 3/3 creatures and three less lands.
I think it is reasonable to argue that in terms of what you get for 8 mana, this card is stronger than Terastodon. However, this card is blue, not green. This makes it harder to cast for decks that could feasibly hardcast Terastodon, and means it has to compete for a significantly tighter slot. In cubes where Terastodon's color and cost don't matter, this will make a competitive replacement. I am personally looking for a few more reanimation targets, but being a blue card, this will be hard to sell.
I'll end with a rules question: what happens when you reanimate this with Necromancy, and copy Necromancy with the tokens?
I'd imagine that it'd work the same way Necromancy / Animate Dead work with Akroma, Angel of Wrath. It brings it into play for a brief second but cannot enchant it due to the tokens being creatures, so the targeted creature dies immediately. Still pretty useful in a Reanimator / Sneak attack deck if you want to get an extra trigger or something.
My High Octane Unpowered Cube on CubeCobra
All the best permanents I can think of that this can copy are enchantments, most of them white. Cards like Courts, Oblivion Rings, Bitterblossom, Sulfuric Vortex...
However, since this card will mostly be played in black reanimator, as already mentioned, they probably won't be run in that deck, so the average choice of what to copy will likely be far worse.
Speaking of Cursed Mirror, I think I will test this card. Maybe alongside Astral Dragon.
What do you mean? You can get 2 more Sneak Attacks! It's unbeatable! /s
375 unpowered cube - https://cubecobra.com/cube/list/601ac624832cdf1039947588
There are a bunch of cards this goes infinite with, but the most common cube ones that I can think of are Parallax Wave / Oblivion Ring / Journey to Nowhere.
To be clear about the Animate Dead / Necromancy interaction, the only things that happen is that your 3/3 dragons will die immediately when state-based effects are checked. The triggered abilities of Animate Dead / Necromancy fizzle because they are no longer in play.
My High Octane Unpowered Cube on CubeCobra
I'm sure people will target it with Animate Deads and Necromancies and Recurring Nightmares and it'll be fine if confusing (and probably chumped by 1/1 spirits for days), but I'll be including it for Mass Polymorph and the Manifest -> Astral Slide/Drift deck I support. Both of those are already in blue for me anyway, and both run non-creature permanents that are sweet to copy:
All that and the name even tells you how to use it. Too perfect.
For me.
In my cube.
Dunno about you guys tho, seems pretty meh outside those specific use cases. I'll give it 7/11
Part of what makes Terastodon so great is that it is flexible, and that there are scenarios where destroying 3 of your opponent's lands essentially seals out the game. Whereas with this guy, you're just as vulnerable to a wrath as before he enters the battlefield.
As for big blue creatures, I think Consecrated Sphinx, All-Seeing Arbiter, etc. still take the slot as they are a lot more castable in a blue control deck.
My High Octane Unpowered Cube on CubeCobra
So it turns out I was half wrong about this. This is essentially what happens for copying Necromancy, but not Animate Dead
- Copying Necromancy will allow you to temporarily reanimate any creature(s), but you'd end up sacrificing your 3/3 Necromancy Dragon tokens AND the things that were reanimated by those Necromancy copies. There are very few edge cases where you'd actually want to do this, like if you had Purphoros, God of the Forge / Blood Artist on the battlefield or something.
- Copying Animate Dead / Dance of the Dead literally does nothing. Your 3/3 dragon tokens will never enter the battlefield. An aura that can't enchant anything will never enter the battlefield. Creatures can't enchant anything and the copies of Animate Dead are creatures, therefore they will never hit the battlefield.
My High Octane Unpowered Cube on CubeCobra
This is my concern lol. Every single card is a nightmare to explain
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
- Can be used to copy your opponent's planeswalkers/ threats, such as Oko, Thief of Crowns, which can often be problematic for reanimator decks
- Decent for Sneak Attack/ Flash decks to cheat out 2 - 3/3 flyers
- High potential for reanimator storm - I been thinking of ways to improve storm and with Etali, Atraxa, Griselbrand, Palinchron, and this, I feel the reanimator storm (Tin-Fins) may be able to help storm become a bit more competitive without having to hope a high density of rituals/ enablers wheel.