MTG Salvation

I can't envision any scenario where I would want to put Balance in my peasant cube. Even if we're not breaking it in half with things like Moxes, it would still be wayyyyy more powerful than any other card in the cube. Broken card is broken in any environment. Pox might be fine, but it comes with such a heavy color commitment that I don't know how often it would get drafted. I like the idea of Goblin Trenches a lot, it's a solid finisher for a control deck and it can be used aggressively too.

Looks like a good set of test-worthy rares to me. I'm looking forward to your results!

Probably fine from a power level perspective, but it's pretty unexciting. I'd rather use my rare slots on something a little more unique.

I have some results on this from my last draft with my group. I posted about it in my thread, but I'll copy the relevant parts here:

• Some of the rares proved to be a little bit more powerful than we had hoped for. Geist-Honored Monk, Rakka Mar, and possibly Wolfbriar Elemental and Hornet Queen just provided too much value for a single card.
• Other rares ended up being weaker than I wanted. It was difficult to get value out of Undead Gladiator and Surrakar Spellblade ended up just being a worse, more conditional Stealer of Secrets.
• The remaining rares (see my thread for the list) ended up being right about where I want from a power-level perspective.

Cloudgoat Ranger seems stronger than Geist-Honored Monk. Did you consider running Glorious Anthem, Soltari Champion, or Spear of Heliod?

I can see the other cards being super powerful value, though. Perhaps you can consider Zealous Conscripts or something of the ilk in place of Rakka Mar?

Cloudgoat Ranger is strong, for sure, but the */* on Geist-Honored Monk puts him over the top. Most games when he came down he was a 5/5 or bigger, which is just huge value for a 5-drop especially with the vigilance. The tokens having evasion matters, too. Zealous Conscripts is probably fair for red, I'm also looking at Chandra's Phoenix, Hammer of Purphoros, and Hammer of Bogardan, but that last of those is probably too slow these days.

gogo hammer of purphoros
adding another burn spell would be criminal

I could see adding a splashy rare to each pack once in a while, but I don't feel like I would want to do it that often.

bump. in light of the recent discussion in the CNS thread


I whipped together a cubetutor list with my 280 peasant cube and 80 card rare expansion. I plan to do some trial drafts to figure out if anything seems blatatnly overpowered or if any card proportions are off. If you have a sec, let me know what you think.

http://cubetutor.com/viewcube/12444

Figure of Destiny is pretty bonkers, and easily capable of winning a game all on its own regardless of when you draw it. It dies to a lot of removal, but it's still probably going to be the best 1-drop in your cube by a pretty wide margin. Opposition is also pretty crazy, but I'm not sure how it would play out in your cube, so it makes sense to at least try it and see. Other than that, I think you've got a good set of rares there.

yeah, figure is probably too good....maybe goblin trenches would be better. soltari guerrillas doesn't really seem to have a home in peasant boros builds.

opposition might be too good, and probably is...this deck is disgusting:

http://cubetutor.com/cubedeck/134877

but I looooove simic opposition. I might replace it with Equilibrium which is maybe more fair.

What about Desolation Giant as the boros option?

oh yeah! forgot about that guy...that could be an option. I'd probably cut Supreme Verdict as I think 5 mass removal cards might be excessive (solar tide, evacuation, life's finale, supreme verdict, desolation giant)


So maybe:
Supreme Verdict->Swans of Bryn Argoll (combo with words of war )
Figure of Destiny->Desolation Giant/Goblin Trenches

I was also thinking:
Stroke of Genius->Mahamoti Djinn
Body Snatcher->Doomed Necromancer
Zealous Conscripts->Shivan Dragon
Spike Weaver->Life from the Loam

EDIT: I also think Mitotic Slime might annoyingly good...Arashi, the Sky Asunder might be a good replacement.

I'm intrigued. It's never getting cast at 4 mana, so we're looking at the question "how good is a 6 mana Wrath that leaves a 3/3 behind?". In Peasant, that's actually not a bad prospect. Doesn't really fit with how most Peasant Boros decks play, at least that I've seen, but giving your color combinations a variety of deck types can be a good thing.

Seems like Phyrexian Rebirth would be better than Desolation Giant most of the time.

They fill different slots though since one is mono-W and the other is Boros. And I'm assuming most people making a rare expansion aren't necessarily interested in just using the most powerful cards, otherwise they'd like just make a regular cube.

Sorry for the double post but I wanted to share my tentative expansion list. I'm trying to include cards that either support existing archetypes, are fun build-arounds, or are scalable/modal. Aside from a few sweepers, I'm trying to avoid removal and raw 2-for-1s. I'd rather see powerful cards that build up your board.



You may notice I'm missing a card for Orzhov, but I'm not super happy with the available options right now.

I'm looking to cut down to having 8-10 per monocolor section. The cards I end up starting with will probably rely a lot on what I can buy/trade for locally before going online. Any thoughts on stuff to cut would be appreciated. Thoughts on additions are also welcome, but given I have more cards than I plan to use already it'll be tough to break in.

Some of your card choices seem iffy, either because they're decently above the power curve (Myr Battlesphere, Siege-Gang Commander, Grenzo, Dungeon Warden, Mimic Vat) or decently below it (Prophet of Kruphix, Undercity Plague, Incendiary Command, Mindshrieker, Assemble the Legion, Crush of Wurms). So you'll probably want to not include stuff that's either too strong or too mediocre? Also, your choices seem to be weighted more towards expensive creatures than cheap creatures.

I like a lot of the "build-around-mes" and I think you should definitely include them.

For Orzhov, try Evershrike or Debtor's Knell? Or maybe Orzhov Pontiff if you're really pushing token-aggro in WB?

Thanks for the feedback!

- Battlesphere doesn't seem any worse than Pelakka Wurm (granted, I've actually cut that from my main cube, but I'm okay with my rares being slightly bomby given that they won't show up every draft) and dies to Naturalize effects on top of regular removal. Maybe it's better than I expect?
- Siege-Gang is obviously strong, but I think there are a lot of games where it's about the same as a Cloudgoat.
- Grenzo seems to require a lot of time and mana to be nuts, which seems fine to me. I like that he fits into basically any B/R deck.
- Mimic Vat might actually be too good, so we'll see.

- Prophet was insane when I played it in prerelease a while back. Giving your team vigilance on top of quasi-doubling your mana is really sweet
- Undercity Plague is probably a bit too cute, so that's an easy cut
- Incendiary Command might be a little underwhelming, but I think it'll still make decks
- Mindshrieker is in because I need some low-drop creatures for blue aggro/tempo. I think it's an underrated card
- Assemble the Legion is an insane finisher, especially in a format with all fair decks
- Crush of Wurms 18 power for 9 mana is pretty insane, but I'm open to other suggestions for green ramp targets

You're right about the lack of cheap creatures. Most of my cuts should hopefully come from the top-end, which should help out with mana curve balance. The main issue is that most good low-drops are mostly just more efficient instead of having neat or unique effects (Isamaru, for example). Maybe that's okay though? If someone wants to draft aggro, they probably aren't concerned with being cute or durdly anyway.

- For Orzhov I'm trying to avoid hybrid cards just out of personal preference. Pontiff is a possibility, although I'm not a fan of haunt as a mechanic. Orzhov has a bit of extra support in the main cube due to extra mono-color extort dudes being better in B/W decks, so I won't be super mad if I just exclude it here for now.

My very brief first impressions:

• Meloku might be a little more powerful than you're looking for.
• I found Geist-Honored Monk to be above the power level that I wanted, but it's not outrageous.
• Curse of Death's Hold probably doesn't do enough in most situations.
• Conjurer's Closet is absolutely bonkers with pretty much any ETB creature.
• I don't think Steam Augury is actually very good, but I know Izzet is pretty light on options. Maybe Dragonshift?
• Consider Ulvenwald Tracker for your green section, it performed exactly as well as I hoped it would in my cube.
• If you really want a rare for Orzhov, Ghost Council of Orzhova or Teysa, Orzhov Scion is probably the one I'd go with.
• Overall, I think you've got the right pool of cards to choose from. At this point it becomes a question of what you want your rares to do for your cube.

@whydirt

When you're looking to add 8-10 rares per color, I don't think you can really still call it a peasant cube plus a few rares anymore. It's more just a cube that focuses on a few unique synergies.

However, I do agree with your assessments on how some still fit in the power curve. None seem busted in a peasant power level type of cube. A lot are strong, but in the same way not all peasant cube cards are equal. Like I agree that Siege-Gang Commander isn't too much stronger than a Cloudgoat Ranger depending on the cube. When I have more time I'll try to add more of my own evaluation on your potential choices.

And on a side note in relation to the whole discussion. I considered doing the same thing as whydirt, where I just add rares that fit in with synergies/archetypes I'm looking to push (not quite as many, I had only 1-3 per color), but I found it difficult in terms of where to draw the line. Either I'm going to force myself to stay strictly as a peasant cube, or just call it a cube and stop limiting myself to arbitrary restrictions.

Maybe I wasn't clear before, but I'm not mixing in the rares with the rest of the cube. They are going to be separate and added 1 per pack like regular limited. And I probably won't even use them all the time.

Sorry if there was any confusion!

Quote from revengeanceful »

My very brief first impressions:

• Meloku might be a little more powerful than you're looking for.
• I found Geist-Honored Monk to be above the power level that I wanted, but it's not outrageous.
• Curse of Death's Hold probably doesn't do enough in most situations.
• Conjurer's Closet is absolutely bonkers with pretty much any ETB creature.
• I don't think Steam Augury is actually very good, but I know Izzet is pretty light on options. Maybe Dragonshift?
• Consider Ulvenwald Tracker for your green section, it performed exactly as well as I hoped it would in my cube.
• If you really want a rare for Orzhov, Ghost Council of Orzhova or Teysa, Orzhov Scion is probably the one I'd go with.
• Overall, I think you've got the right pool of cards to choose from. At this point it becomes a question of what you want your rares to do for your cube.

Where is your list of expansion rares? It'd be sweet to see what you've ended up with.

- I've literally never played with or against or even seen Meloku in play, so I have no frame of reference for it.
- I probably only want one army-in-a-can between Geist and Captain of the Watch, so I'll probably just use Captain.
- I'm cutting some of the most broken ETB creatures (Pelakka, Skinrender, and some others) so Closet should hopefully be fun without creating too many lockdown situations.
- I wanted a spell for Izzet, but I'm not married to Steam Augury.
- Good call on Tracker for green. Birds is an obvious 1-drop, but seems kind of boring.

Thanks!

well what whydirt (and myself) are trying to do is maintain a peasant core to draft and have an expansion pack of rares to change things up from time to time/accommodate larger draft groups.

i liken bringing a cube to a friend's house to bringing a board game or other card game. It's a closed system, and everything you need to play is included. Lots of games develop expansions to shake things up from time to time.

I think it's pretty legit to call it a Peasant cube still. I'm sure it'll play much more like a peasant cube than anything else.

Quote from whydirt »

Where is your list of expansion rares? It'd be sweet to see what you've ended up with.

The rare list that we used the one time we drafted with rares is here, and my thoughts on how they played can be found further down that page. I haven't had a chance to figure out exactly what tweaks I want to make to the list yet.

Quote from inscho »

well what whydirt (and myself) are trying to do is maintain a peasant core to draft and have an expansion pack of rares to change things up from time to time/accommodate larger draft groups.

i liken bringing a cube to a friend's house to bringing a board game or other card game. It's a closed system, and everything you need to play is included. Lots of games develop expansions to shake things up from time to time.

And me too! I'm in a very similar mindset about having a base cube + expansion packs. I'm pretty happy with how my rare expansion turned out when we tried it, and I'm actively working on a Conspiracy expansion as well, since I don't think we'll want to use all the conspiracies and draft-altering cards all the time.