MTG Salvation

Happy holidays, everyone. Anyone get some sweet holiday MTG swag?

Lolno, I took my family to see Coco and almost cried like a baby though.

Welcome back cali
I'm sure we'll remain as civil as ever, forever (;

Hello everyone,

I hope everyone is having a good time on their vacations. I, personally, have been having a blast. Here, where I live, December = summer, so I'm all tanned up by now. Haha! Great 2018 to all! I wish you all playable uncommons/commons in sets to come and downshifts of good rares.

I have been watching/playing lots of Holiday (powered) Cube. Every match is diferent from each other and the decks usually end up very interesting, specially because of the how many archetypes are supported in that Cube. That creates a very interesting evironment, I'd say Powered Cube is my favorite kind of Magic. I've forced storm a bunch of times already, and i'd like to revive a discussion that took place back in 2015 (and touched briefly on the Unstable discussion on Crow Storm).

In hopes of making my draft experience a little more than 'Should I go aggro or control?' I've added Reanimator and other X-matters archetypes, but I'm never fully convinced, so I ask . . .
Is Storm an archetype that can be added in C/Ube?


Win cons:
Empty the Warrens
Brain Freeze (no Eldrazi Titans in C/ube yay!)
Tendrils of Agony
Guttersnipe (maybe)

Enablers:
Lotus Petal
Sol Ring + other mana rocks. Mind Stone and Thran Dynamo
Turnabout
High Tide
Frantic Search
Snap
Cloud of Fearies
Peregrine Drake
Gush
Dark Ritual
Cabal Ritual
Seething Song + other red rituals
Goblin Electromancer
Izzet Signet + friends. Help the fixing and the ramp, these decks tend to be 3+ colors.
Demonic Tutor
Gitaxian Probe
Gut Shot
Preordain + other cantrips. Ponder,Brainstorm
Compulsive Research the turn before you go off, maybe?
Suspend cards - Rift Bolt, Staggershock, Riftwing Cloudskate, Search for Tomorrow
Manamorphose
Bubbling Muck
Regrowth or Eternal Witness
Windfall
Mystical Tutor
Noxious Revival
Mutagenic Growth better pump up that Guttersnipe and hit for the missing 4 dmg. Lol.
Ancient Tomb
Izzet Boilerworks + other Karoo Lands. Built-in card advantage on lands is nice.

The main problem I find with this archetype is that the cards are maybe too narrow. But that is something that doesn't concern me, I'm like that.

What are your opinions on the matter?


Thanks in advance!

Adding Sol Ring to make storm work is kind of putting the cart before the horse, with cube balance and an overall fun experience being the horse and the niche archetype being the cart. Yes, it would help that archetype, but it would be so OP that there's no deck that it wouldn't help.

For what its worth, I ran a mini-storm package in pauper for a while, and it was bad. Granted the options are that much more miniscule there vs peasant, but I think you would probably be leaning on Guttersnipe/Young Pyro more than you would Brainfreeze/Tendrils.

Make the 'storm package' in cube tutor, draft a couple decks, build them in paper (or on something like TappedOut) and see how they play.

I think it'll just be inconsistent and bad, but hard to say without trying. The cards like High Tide and other rituals are DEFINITELY too narrow, as is Gut Shot for that matter, but if you're OK with that you might as well give it a shot.

I feel like spellsmatter.dec is like 2-3 enablers away. Right now, it's hard to sell the archetype without painting it as 'everything comes together or its a trainwreck', which is a weird/bad place to be in peasant when most decks have an abundance of options.

That being said, Crow Storm could just be fine on its own, perhaps? It's not a turn 3 card, but if you're consistently getting 3 or more crows with it that's a great deal for 2U. I haven't tried it yet, but it's not too hard to think of scenarios where you play 1-2 spells and your opponent fills in the rest.

Normal powered Storm isn't really doable because you don't have fast mana or payoffs. In powered cube you have ~11 0 or 1 mana accelerants with Sol Ring, Lotus, Mana Vault, Fastbond, and the 7(?) moxen. You also have a lot of draw 7s to use this mana and find more mana or your win con. The good storm decks in powered cube generally have ~3 of both. In C/Ube we have Sol Ring and Windfall? And if you have Sol Ring you might as well play something that's not storm to abuse it more.

However, High Tide storm could potentially work pretty well. High Tide, Frantic Search, Turnabout, Snap, Cloud of Faeries, Peregrine Drake, Gush, Mystical Tutor to find High Tide/Brain Freeze, Brain Freeze, Remand to bounce Brain Freeze, Mnemonic Wall + Ghostly Flicker as a combo with Drake in addition to solid cards, Augur of Bolas, maybe Rise from the Tides or Crow Storm as alternate win cons, some draw, and the rest of the deck can kind of build itself. It's not as intrusive as storm typically is as most of the cards are usable elsewhere, but you do have to be mono blue, which is a bit restricting. Seems reasonable enough to test at the very least.

Quote from Salmo »

I feel like spellsmatter.dec is like 2-3 enablers away. Right now, it's hard to sell the archetype without painting it as 'everything comes together or its a trainwreck', which is a weird/bad place to be in peasant when most decks have an abundance of options.

That being said, Crow Storm could just be fine on its own, perhaps? It's not a turn 3 card, but if you're consistently getting 3 or more crows with it that's a great deal for 2U. I haven't tried it yet, but it's not too hard to think of scenarios where you play 1-2 spells and your opponent fills in the rest.

I'd argue that spells matter is already viable (at least I believe that is common terminology for instants and sorceries matter, and to a lesser extent noncreatures), just not the storm specific sub-type. I've heard a similar thing referred to as 'spell velocity' as a slightly different sub-type which is more about playing multiple spells per turn on consecutive turns, rather than going off in a single turn. So enabling things like surge cards, Illusory Angel, Pyromancer's Assault, Incursion Specialist. Err... I'm sure there are some other options as only the Angel is probably worth considering but those are the ones that came up in a quick gatherer search.

Rebound spells are also something that helps either Storm or spell velocity.

I like the idea of Crow Storm, but I'm still dubious. I agree that 3 crows for 3 mana is a decent deal, but how long do you have to wait to cast 2 other spells in a turn on top of the 3 mana this requires? I don't want to rely on my opponent casting instants on my turn. 3 crows isn't so much above the curve that I would feel like I got away with something, and breaking past 3 Crows seems like a tall order unless you really go out of your way to enable it.

Thanks for the feedback.

Considering that Storm is already unreliable in Powered Cube I highly doubt it it will be reliable in C/Ube.
Either way, I will try it out (for science) and I'll post here my results. I love theorycrafting about certain things, but when you are actually playing there are other things that come up that you didn't consider while theorycrafting. I have hope

I did not see a spoiler thread for RIX just yet and would prefer not making one for just a single card of interest.

However, Thrashing Brontodon... Get in mah cube!

Presumably more cards incoming... whole spoiler is on Friday!

The Naturalize Dino is decent, but 1GG is annoying as is the fact that we keep getting more options for this effect in GREEN sand the best white thing is still Kor Sanctifiers, followed by... nothing

Hell no im not putting that naturalize dino in cube.

An above curve body with a relevant ability seems totally cubeable to me. The only thing that might exclude it is the double green casting cost.

Since we were talking about green three drops.

thrashing brontadon any good? A spoiled uncommon card from rivals. a 3/4 with quasli pridemage's sac ability. 4 toughness is pretty good but double green.

This is a surprising discussion to me, since I am very happy to add a 1GG 3/4 that also has a super relevant ability. I don't know if it just the size of my cube (512) or the fact that I play all of the powerful artifacts/enchantments, but this is a no-brainer. I get the concern about double colored three drops, but it is a bit simpler to have that for turn 3 than turn 2 and green has quite a few mana-elves that can get you there without another green source on a land.

I'm at 360 and I don't think I have a cut for this guy. A three mana 3/4 is a solid dude, but I don't think I like this guy more than any of my current 2, 3, or 4 cc dudes. Maybe over Wolfir Avenger? Sacrificing my 3/4 to blow up an artifact/enchantment feels like a huge cost unless you're blowing up a bomb like Warhammer or something.

The ability feels pretty minor compared to the loss in consistency: losing ~20% chance to land it on turn 3 is a big deal. There also aren't that many artifact/enchantments that you are actively happy sacing a 3/4 to destroy. If you needed another destruction dude after Wickerbough Elder, Reclaimation Sage, and Acidic Slime and it filled the curve better than Conclave Naturalists I could potentially see it, but otherwise I'm a bit suspect.

EDIT: didn't realize there was a Rivals thread up

Any Europe-based Cubers able to place/receive/forward an MKM order my way?

Can do.

Sent ya a message

How many 2/1 fliers for 1U is too many?
Pre-Unstable, I was plying 4 of them (3 of the generic ones plus Skyship Plunderer). Some part of me really, really wants to put all 4 different versions of Novellamental in, but I wouldn't want to replace Plunderer because strictly better is strictly better. I'd probably drop Labyrinth Guardian, and that would bring me up to 5 2-mana fliers.
Skies is my supported U/W archetype, and I think the 2/1s are playable elsewhere. I tend to see U/R spells come up as a tempo deck rather than a control deck, so they don't hate cheap beaters, and in theory I guess there's a U/B aggro deck out there somewhere.
It feels weird to me to devote so many blue slots to basically the same thing, so I was wondering if you guys supported skies and if you do, how many of the cheap fliers you play.

Carnivorous Death-Parrot if you're already interested in un-cards. Though I guess it's actually doing something wonky and the Novella isn't

--

The problem with Novella and other cards with the same drawback is they all lose a damage race vs any aggro 1-drop or any 3-power 2-drop. Skyskip Plunderer (and the Parrot) go into like 200% more decks because getting to block a Carnophage or Gore-House Chainwalker is so important for midrange and control decks.

I run one 2/1 flyer at 405, the Plunderer. I'd find it hard to find space for two, nevermind four.

Quote from _i0 »

The problem with Novella and other cards with the same drawback is they all lose a damage race vs any aggro 1-drop or any 3-power 2-drop. Skyskip Plunderer (and the Parrot) go into like 200% more decks because getting to block a Carnophage or Gore-House Chainwalker is so important for midrange and control decks.

So, will you be including Kitesail Corsair, given how it fits this criterion?

Yeah, I was just about to type something similar in the RIX thread.

I might still keep one Welkin Tern dude around since there still IS a couple different color pairs that would want it, but I fully think Corsair is a better card and pretty universally a higher pick.

Also, I'll plug Inkfathom Infiltrator as a good blue and/or black aggro card. Rough mana, yeah, but UU for "2 to your opponent every attack step until they kill it" is still quite strong.