What madness card could/ do we run? they work well with looting. I think the only one I run is Basking rootwalla. and theonly other one worth running is gravescabler.
Of those I think only Fiery Temper and Grave Scrabbler are too tempting. Maybe the Gorgon if you could get it discarded regularly. There are some others unlisted (12 madness total at common) but aren't even worth mentioning : /
Sinkhole and Chain Lightning are not in my pauper cube, and with lightning spear coming out soon, that should be an easy fill in for me.
Sinkhole however isn't replaced yet, would the new draw spell make a fair swap?
Yes, Read the Bones is awesome, I'd play it over Sinkhole any day. I'm also just not a huge fan of Sinkhole in pauper cube anyway; we don't have any lands that are really worth a card to destroy, games tend to go long anyway, and we don't have enough good cards for a dedicated land hate archetype. Sinkhole's a powerful card in other formats, but here it's just more annoying than anything else.
I'm not a fan of looting either but to be fair it's still only card disadvantage once. The second activation doesn't cost you another card, just 3 mana.
If you want to use Sinkhole, you really need to use Choking Sands, Rancid Earth, and Icequake. (most likely 3 of those 4). A single land d spell is pretty bad, but get 3 of them and you can do some work in an aggro deck. I'd even say you should include Stone Rain and Molten Rain and maybe Raze to allow it as an archetype.
While that helps aggro decks, I don't like Land D much in terms of gameplay. It's not fun. So I don't use it.
LD is okay to punish 3-color decks. But the tools we already have like aftershock do that job as it is.
On the topic of auras ... has anybody actually tried out Skeletal Grimace? +1/+1 isn't that great, but it comes down earlier than Trollhide / Savage Silhouette and the difference between 1 and 2 mana for regeneration is pretty significant given how good regeneration is. Also, having some support for an auras theme in G/B midrange decks (more stuff than Mark of the Vampire) seems interesting.
Still picking my jaw up off the floor from when I saw benthic giant! Talk about a finisher. This is for all intents and purposes slotting sphinx of jwar isle into pauper cube.
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They do slightly different things. Condescend effects are fantastic against decks that want to curve out early to mid game, while Essence Scatter effects are hard counters to most of the major threats in cube. I like both of them, but I'd usually value Essence Scatter more highly - it counters almost as much as Condescend early game, actually counters things late game (unlike Condescend, which really only counters ramp creatures and Fireball effects late game), and counters the majority of things (creatures) that you usually want to counter. It also requires comparatively less mana as the game goes on, which can be pretty relevant both if one player has mana issues and as both players get more land into play.
It may not be today, or tomorrow, or the next day. It may not be this set release, or this block, or the next block. But mark my words! It's only a matter of time. The day of Slippery Bogle will come!!
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I suppose you're right. I was thinking more like the dream draw with moldervine cloak, where your opponent is getting attacked by a hexproof 4/4 before they've even played their third land.
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Btw. I think that Sacred Wolf could become good enough. now. It may have too less toughness, but with the 2 regenerate/totem armor auras or Flying from one of the blue auras, it's a huge threat.
Edit: To the blue aura topic: How good is Traveler's Cloak? I mean "landwalk of your choice" = "unblockable" and with a cantrip, it could still be traded in response, but could it be worth the risk? I think it's maybe better than the new Aqueous Form.
That's an interesting card, but I don't think it's good enough. Aqueous form is only potentially good (again, it's just potential) because it's so cheap and the scry triggers could easily actually add up to more than drawing a card. Chances are neither is good enough.
Just getting back from vacation, I'm baffled at how many playable cards there are in Theros - especially for blue.
Blue
Benthic Giant - Holy ****, finally a blue finisher that people can be scared of.
Breaching Hippocamp - I really like this dude. Great ability, fair CMC and a good body. Will probably try to find room in my 450.
Fate Foretold - At first I was impressed, but it's bad for the same reasons as Bequethal
Nimbus Naiad - I did read some of your guys responses about the Bestow creatures, and I have to agree that this one is probably the 2nd best. Spectral Flight is already a thing in my cube and is just amazing with the right aura shell.
Omenspeaker - Auto include for me honestly. It's not Augur of Bolas, but it's the closest thing you've got; and let's be honest, it's great in a control shell which I find to be lacking in my 450 at the moment.
Voyage's End - Not sold on this one yet, but I might take out one of the weaker bounce spells for it.
Green
Leafcrown Dryad - I think we're all pretty sure this is an auto-include.
Nessian Asp - It looks pretty good, but I think there are better end game drops.
Nylea's Presence - This could make Landwalkers potential go up considerably, which I know is actually a thing in my cube (and a few others). Plus it cantrips.
Black
Sadly all of the new cards with the "Devotion" mechanic look kinda ****ty. So I'll leave those up in the air now.
Loathsome Catoblepas - This might actually make into my Golgari section of my cube. It's more interesting than anything, and that's what makes it fun for me.
Read The Bones - Wasn't excepting this card at all. Auto include.
Returned Phalanx - I actually really like these guys. If there's something in my Dimir Section that isn't up to par (which is doubtful), they might see some testing.
Two-Headed Cerebrus - Not sure if you guys came to a conclusion about this guy yet. Looks pretty cool, but I'd like to see results first.
White
Sadly White doesn't look like it got anything THAT great. Right now the only one that caught my eye was Leonin Snarecaster, just because it has a relevant body and ability for a cheap CMC.
Upgrading my cube to 450, I decided to go up to 5 for each guild. The initial reaction I got was that it'd be too difficult to support that many multicolored cards, considering I had gone from; 12 monocolored to every one 1 multi into 9 monocolored to every one 1 multi, which is a pretty large jump.
I can report that after a week of three 10 man drafts, two 8 man drafts and two 6 man drafts, I can comfortably say that we had no problems finding the correct mana bases for our decks. The amount of mana fixing seems perfect right now actually, and forces you to draft it earlier rather than later (which is something I experienced when I was at 360).
Anyway, just thought you guys should know that, considering those are the kinds of things hard to judge on paper.
No you don't miss anything. A 1/2 for U is terribly unplayable, while the bear can be cut, for beeing an agressive card in a control/tempo heavy color.
My guess is that when he looked at the spoiler he got the names of triton shorethief and omenspeaker mixed up.
No you don't miss anything. A 1/2 for U is terribly unplayable, while the bear can be cut, for beeing an agressive card in a control/tempo heavy color.
My guess is that when he looked at the spoiler he got the names of triton shorethief and omenspeaker mixed up.
I just really don't like the Bear, at all, but I don't want to give up that 1CMC slot to anything else but a creature. The 1/2 DOES trade with with a majority of 1 drops, which is strong in a Tempo oriented build.
I really don't like Delver in Pauper cube. I think it's just bad limited design. We don't have really have enough support for the spells-tempo deck (lots of spells low creature count). We've got Kiln Fiend, Delver, Nivix Cyclops, and Wee Dragonauts. None are really good on their own. So without other support for the archetype Delver alone is luck-based card. Sometimes blowout T1 sometimes a dork all game. I don't like that much variance.
Nivix Cyclops has actually been pretty solid in U/R control decks for me - block, bolt something, eat whatever you're blocking is a fairly common play and it occasionally even gets in for some damage of its own. I agree that the rest of the U/R spells cards don't have enough support. Unless we get something like a bunch of Young Pyromancer esque effects (which almost certainly will not happen), I can't imagine including Delver.
Nivix Cyclops has actually been pretty solid in U/R control decks for me - block, bolt something, eat whatever you're blocking is a fairly common play and it occasionally even gets in for some damage of its own. I agree that the rest of the U/R spells cards don't have enough support. Unless we get something like a bunch of Young Pyromancer esque effects (which almost certainly will not happen), I can't imagine including Delver.
If I had one more slot for Izzet I'd definitely be running the Cyclops. Wee Dragonauts and Kiln Fiend are just better for me at the moment.
A 1 power creature can't trade anything. 1/2 is simply the most terrible body except for 1/1 and 0/1. You are playing way too many Onedrops and blue, while a lot of strong 2 drops are missing.
Cloudfin Raptor is awesome. It's way better than it seems. A big thing I realised is, that people aren't killing it as long it's 1/2, but when it's a relevant 2/3 body many of the damage/toughness based removal spells aren't working anymore. Starting from 3/5, this creature is already a solid finisher.
Some people don't play functional reprints so that may explain Thought Courier's absence. This effect actually showed up in my Number Crunch project with Merfolk Looter being played in every Cube but Thought Courier showing up less than 80% of the time.
Some people don't play functional reprints so that may explain Thought Courier's absence. This effect actually showed up in my Number Crunch project with Merfolk Looter being played in every Cube but Thought Courier showing up less than 80% of the time.
I don't think the highbrow cubes should be allowed in statistical analyses.
https://cubecobra.com/cube/list/9o1
Of those I think only Fiery Temper and Grave Scrabbler are too tempting. Maybe the Gorgon if you could get it discarded regularly. There are some others unlisted (12 madness total at common) but aren't even worth mentioning : /
Sinkhole and Chain Lightning are not in my pauper cube, and with lightning spear coming out soon, that should be an easy fill in for me.
Sinkhole however isn't replaced yet, would the new draw spell make a fair swap?
Yes, Read the Bones is awesome, I'd play it over Sinkhole any day. I'm also just not a huge fan of Sinkhole in pauper cube anyway; we don't have any lands that are really worth a card to destroy, games tend to go long anyway, and we don't have enough good cards for a dedicated land hate archetype. Sinkhole's a powerful card in other formats, but here it's just more annoying than anything else.
I'm not a fan of looting either but to be fair it's still only card disadvantage once. The second activation doesn't cost you another card, just 3 mana.
LD is okay to punish 3-color decks. But the tools we already have like aftershock do that job as it is.
Is that forced? Usually auras have to be god like to enter most cubes.
Knowledge is power, money is power, time is money, you are actually gaining time by reading my posts
check out my EDH and Pauper EDH decks here
Knowledge is power, money is power, time is money, you are actually gaining time by reading my posts
check out my EDH and Pauper EDH decks here
Knowledge is power, money is power, time is money, you are actually gaining time by reading my posts
check out my EDH and Pauper EDH decks here
Knowledge is power, money is power, time is money, you are actually gaining time by reading my posts
check out my EDH and Pauper EDH decks here
That's an interesting card, but I don't think it's good enough. Aqueous form is only potentially good (again, it's just potential) because it's so cheap and the scry triggers could easily actually add up to more than drawing a card. Chances are neither is good enough.
Draft it on Cubetutor!
Blue
Benthic Giant - Holy ****, finally a blue finisher that people can be scared of.
Breaching Hippocamp - I really like this dude. Great ability, fair CMC and a good body. Will probably try to find room in my 450.
Fate Foretold - At first I was impressed, but it's bad for the same reasons as Bequethal
Nimbus Naiad - I did read some of your guys responses about the Bestow creatures, and I have to agree that this one is probably the 2nd best. Spectral Flight is already a thing in my cube and is just amazing with the right aura shell.
Omenspeaker - Auto include for me honestly. It's not Augur of Bolas, but it's the closest thing you've got; and let's be honest, it's great in a control shell which I find to be lacking in my 450 at the moment.
Triton Shorethief - I might be replacing Phantasmal Bear for this.
Voyage's End - Not sold on this one yet, but I might take out one of the weaker bounce spells for it.
Green
Leafcrown Dryad - I think we're all pretty sure this is an auto-include.
Nessian Asp - It looks pretty good, but I think there are better end game drops.
Nylea's Presence - This could make Landwalkers potential go up considerably, which I know is actually a thing in my cube (and a few others). Plus it cantrips.
Black
Sadly all of the new cards with the "Devotion" mechanic look kinda ****ty. So I'll leave those up in the air now.
Loathsome Catoblepas - This might actually make into my Golgari section of my cube. It's more interesting than anything, and that's what makes it fun for me.
Read The Bones - Wasn't excepting this card at all. Auto include.
Returned Phalanx - I actually really like these guys. If there's something in my Dimir Section that isn't up to par (which is doubtful), they might see some testing.
Red
Lightning Strike - Nice
Minotaur Skullcleaver - Another version of Inner-Flame Acolyte, which is definitely playable.
Two-Headed Cerebrus - Not sure if you guys came to a conclusion about this guy yet. Looks pretty cool, but I'd like to see results first.
White
Sadly White doesn't look like it got anything THAT great. Right now the only one that caught my eye was Leonin Snarecaster, just because it has a relevant body and ability for a cheap CMC.
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Multicolored Issues
Upgrading my cube to 450, I decided to go up to 5 for each guild. The initial reaction I got was that it'd be too difficult to support that many multicolored cards, considering I had gone from; 12 monocolored to every one 1 multi into 9 monocolored to every one 1 multi, which is a pretty large jump.
I can report that after a week of three 10 man drafts, two 8 man drafts and two 6 man drafts, I can comfortably say that we had no problems finding the correct mana bases for our decks. The amount of mana fixing seems perfect right now actually, and forces you to draft it earlier rather than later (which is something I experienced when I was at 360).
Anyway, just thought you guys should know that, considering those are the kinds of things hard to judge on paper.
My guess is that when he looked at the spoiler he got the names of triton shorethief and omenspeaker mixed up.
I just really don't like the Bear, at all, but I don't want to give up that 1CMC slot to anything else but a creature. The 1/2 DOES trade with with a majority of 1 drops, which is strong in a Tempo oriented build.
That one was more of a longshot
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Nivix Cyclops has actually been pretty solid in U/R control decks for me - block, bolt something, eat whatever you're blocking is a fairly common play and it occasionally even gets in for some damage of its own. I agree that the rest of the U/R spells cards don't have enough support. Unless we get something like a bunch of Young Pyromancer esque effects (which almost certainly will not happen), I can't imagine including Delver.
If I had one more slot for Izzet I'd definitely be running the Cyclops. Wee Dragonauts and Kiln Fiend are just better for me at the moment.
What am I missing in the 2 drop slots?
I don't think the highbrow cubes should be allowed in statistical analyses.
Both ways have a bias to them I guess and since I'm just collating raw lists its not something I'm even aware of on a cube-by-cube basis.