Overall impression: a strong set for pauper, filling out some important roles and providing much-needed consistency with cycling. Hope more cycling and scrying gets down to us
Highlights of the set:
* a white Colossodon Yearling. Helps to diversify stats and provide defense without being too narrow.
* a strictly better Death's Duet. Surprising, since the last two or three Duet clones have been strictly worse!
* Cartouches. Almost all of them are good enough to see play.
* a second copy of Leonin Scimitar. Again surprising, considering we've been treated to a strictly worse Scimitar not too long ago.
* a strong 3/1 in green with the Initiate's Companion. A useful ability that actually incentivizes aggro.
* Hieroglyphic Illumination is a fun design that brings Think Twice to mind. Simple and easy to use, albeit not the best option.
* a playable menacer and zombie in Cursed Minotaur. The red version brought Goblin synergy, but this one is waiting for a decent Zombie payoff card.
* new art for Gravedigger that rivals the fantastic Dermot Power classic.
Lowlights:
* no real cubeable embalm creature at common. Aven Initiate comes close, but being overcosted on the front end and way overcosted on the back end breaks the deal for me. Unwavering Initiate might play well, though.
* personal desire, but we need more playable cyclers. Even after two full blocks and cameo appearances in multiple special sets, we only have, what, a handful of cubeable common cyclers? Cycling is a net improvement to the game, so I hope they revisit it more often like scry. What cyclers are you looking forward to including?
Oh, you just had to say something about Unearth. I already felt uncomfortable with that swap. I just never see anyone playing Unearth in my cube very often. I finally have 8 people organised for a drawft in a few weeks so I will have one last look through and reconsider the odd addition.
I really like the Initiate's Companion as well, but I always feel so hamstrung making cuts from my 360 card cube as so many cards feel like anchor cards for the various archetypes. Due to my own green bias I find green the hardest to cut of all as I spend so long pouring over it as it is. I should just get rid of the Young Wolf and weaken sacrifice options and put the Companion in.
I also wanted to squeeze in the Pathmaker Initiate as it is a card that could provide a lot of cool interactions and combos, but I just couldn't find the cut.
I've also taken a cleaver to my blue 3 drop sections recently, especially double blue spells.
@ Night Hydra Cheers. I am often a bit off with my ratings as my cube has drifted fairly far from powered cube status and I get too caught up thinking about how cards would fit into my own cube in particular. I particularly rate the Aven Initiate, compare it to something like Cloaked Siren which is considered cubeable.
The Ornery Kudu is like a lot of green creatures from this set in that it is good within it, but kinda pants outside of it without appropriate support; which isn't available in a pauper cube.
I also just realised why no one else is really excited about the Aven Initiate; most cubes don't really see games where 7 drops hold much value. I still think he is perfectly acceptable when compared to Phantom Monsters and the like.
Trespasser's Curse seems like a lot of fun in a U/B or W/B control deck. It's a 2 point swing for each creature they summon and if you are bouncing their creatures and what not it would be good fun. EDIT: The more I think about it the more I like it. Once it is in play there aren't too many destroy enchantment spells getting about. It really blows up any player running a swarm deck and is pretty awesome vs aggro if you can recover from not playing an actual 2 drop creature.
Believe me, the Morningstar is too slow for T1. You dont want to pay 4 mana to get +2+2, when you can pay 3 for +3+3 Moldervine Cloak
Generator Servant also never really fit the cube, because you dont want to sacrifice a card for the effect ususally.
both are fine in my T2
Bladed Pinions are bonkers with Deathtouch and Strider Harness is the next equipment on the move list. But its underrated here. Giving virtually every creature haste for the rest of the game is great. The additional +1+1 makes it really strong. But now the red dude does similiar things, although more fragile.
@Polycotton: Youre ratings make sense for Amo limited, but youre one rating too high with every card. The Naga Oracle is complete trash.
Regarding cycling, I love the ability, but the execution is flawed. I want cycling on cards that are strong in the early game and bad in the lategame, so i can just draw better. Alternatively I want landcycling to help avoiding manascrew. Generic cycling on finishers makes no sense to me, if you cant revive them somehow.
If we're talking the evaluate everything thread ratings then I think the majority of my ratings are near the mark. Cubeable doesn't mean staple. 2/4 isn't great stats for a four drop but effective scry 3 sets up your next few draws nicely and it is a fairly unique card at the 4 mana slot for blue. I agree though, I think borderline is more appropriate.
I think cycling is fine the way it is. If you cycled cards that were rubbish late game it would be an easy decision as you have so much mana to burn and nothing else to do, so cycling would be a no brainer. Cycling early makes for more difficult and more important decisions as you have to spend limited mana to do so and the card you are cycling might be useful if you wait another turn or two.
The ratings are off.
Staple means theyre basically in every cube and cubable means this is the first card next on the list to fill a slot. If you rate any card cubable that is not completeley bad, then rating the cards makes no sense whatsoever. Rule of thumb, if only 1 card is bad, then the rating is bad.
Btw. there are tons of selfmill cards with pseudoscry and nobody will ever play them in regular cubes.
I still focus on powerlevel first when I watch at the cards, so I want useful and strong cycling. Second I look if it fits an existing archetype. Being just an interesting mechanic to play with is nice for limited and not completely to be ignored for cubes, but definitely nothing I aim for. That said. Just slamming cycling on overcosted, extremely situational or bad card doesnt make it interesting. And having it on useful stuff doesnt make it great either, because you will never cycle it anyway then.
The cycling arguments are valid; it is probably my 2nd favorite mechanic.
The "cycling on good cards" calls back to a design argument from WotC from Urza's saying Expunge was actually not a great design since no one ever wanted to cycle it.
I disagree. I see Wander as a great, Cubeable design. Some early games you need another card. Some late games, you are playing aggro and your dead bodies are worthless brought back. Again, cycle it.
As for the creatures, they are filler bodies you can throw in Midrange if you want non-dead fat. It is not a brilliant inclusion, but like Shards block, it is useful for the Grundy matches that go long. However, we have either better mid's or run less useless curve-toppers.
Embalm is a "good" mechanic. I like it a lot. But I will admit it is more like Megamorph and its ilk (read: too pricey to be great).
That said, if you want a rock solid Sealed environment, include more cycling.
I have only rated the cards I thought were worth mentioning, hence only a couple of bad ratings. There is an obvious load of bad cards that I didn't bother rating as we already have superior equivalents that do the same things better. It's also not clear how useful exert will be. Exert cards are harder to rate. I thought the idea after each set was spoiled was to discuss where the cards should be rated for the evaluate everything thread. Naga Oracle is close to Drownyard Explorers and should be at borderline. Progress is being made!
@ Night Hydra I am also a big fan of cycling, anything that makes decks run more consistently and can smooth out bad draws makes me happy; no one likes losing because they got mana screwed.
At the end of the day any common cycling card is almost always going to have tradeoffs for the versatility and consistency it adds to your deck. Having said that, Wander in Death is just a straight up buff to an already cubeable card. Shimmerscale Drake is at least on par with Prescient Chimera and unless I was running a heavy spells matter deck I would prefer it to the Chimera due to the freedom to cycle it when needed.
Yeah discussion is fine, thats why express my opinion on the ratings If I would argue for each card seperated, Id do the ratings myself though.
Keep in mind, the more cards get printed the higher the competition becomes, because the cubesize stays the same. The Top3 cards for the manaslot are staple. The next ~12 best cards are cubable. The next 20 cards are borderline. The rest is bad or below, unless theyre relevant for archetypes.
Exert isnt useful for cubes, because you never want to freeze your board for a slight temporary buff. If the buff was permanent, it would be a more interesting (playable) mechanic.
I agree the Drake is fine, but I wouldnt run the Chimera in powered cubes anyway and Death Duet is bad. With cycling its a liitle bit better, but still doesnt deserve a slot anywhere.
Prescient Chimera runs the role of finisher in my control decks. I'm very unlikely to cycle it away because that actually makes it harder for me to win. I'm more likely to consider my deck's mana curve carefully to make sure I have consistent starts.
For what it's worth, Expunge is barely borderline, but that's because black's removal is excellent, not because of some perceived excess of quality on cyclers from Wizards
you probably wouldnt run either the drake or the chimera but both, so you have a solid threat as you hit 5 mana and the drake doesnt stuck in your hand if screwed
nowhere ive said that generally the scimitar is better then morningstar. thats just my commented changelist for my cubes. but the morningstar isnt the holy cow either. its clunky and slow and kinda outclassed by better auras.
harness seems better in a non-bomb environment, because the additional tempo is a bigger benefit there. and as said the next ewuopment that will get the axe.
btw this is the spoiler discussion topic, not the ultimative guide for cubestarter.
the numbers were just out of the blue, but I still argue for really tight ratings on cards. To be cubable, which is pretty close to staple and a real contender for a slot the card must be outstanding these days. It also doesnt help to rate every playable card as borderline, because the amount of cards in this section would confuse starters and most of them wouldnt be played anyways.
besides i dont think the evaluation thread should be the first step for cubestarter anyways. if youre new to cubeconstruction either start from scratch with the cards you already have/want to play and playtest it so you get a better undestanding what works and what not. Or copy an existing cube from one of the members and modify it by your own taste after some drafts.
Then you can browse the Evaluation to get an overview what cards are interesting as well.
its just a rough classification anyways. I found a bunch of cards in the bad section Im still playing in my T1 up until today and would consider them staples and so everybody else should also have its own thoughts about the cards.
I increased the artifact count in my cube to make manic vandal (and by extension disenchant) maindeckable. I want there to be answers for noncreature permanents so that I can run interesting ones.
In most limited formats artifact/enchantment removal is only sideboard playable and you're better off just running a reliable business spell (like any decent creature.)
I'm just a sucker for demons (scorpion demon at common!) and anything that plays well in sacrifice decks. He can be a roadblock, or if you have a blazing effigy/mudbutton torchrunner he can be a 4/5 black creature with no downside
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You make a good argument. I'm fairly sure I am going to remove a few cards from my cube related to sacrifice as I feel it just isn't strong enough yet. I think I'm going to go back to supporting swarm, enchantments, and ramp only.
I'm going to scratch my archetype itch by making a masters cube once I finish uni for this trimester.
With all the Pacifisms and bounce effects running around, a death trigger can be awkward to actually pay out. If we're using the scorpion as sac fodder, two -1/-1 counters (a slightly different Disfigure) is not the payoff I'm looking for. Basically another spin on Emerge, but with the base body probably not good enough.
I do like that they're playing with alternative drawbacks for fat at lower rarities though. It just needs the right balance of drawback to beef (I would play the heck out of the scorpion at base P/T 5/5)
If you are playing sacrifice.dec, you LOVE your opponent's pacifisms and want them to play as many as possible.
If the soulstinger was just a 2/3 that put 2 -1/-1 counters on something when it dies, it would be a lot worse. A 4/5 black creature can close out games. Play it as a roadblock to aggro, sac it once you've stabilized and grab it with recover/urborg uprising/whatever, now you have a win condition
I'm not trying to say it's a staple or anything but if you have sacrifice support it's pretty good.
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If the soulstinger was just a 2/3 that put 2 -1/-1 counters on something when it dies, it would be a lot worse. A 4/5 black creature can close out games. Play it as a roadblock to aggro, sac it once you've stabilized and grab it with recover/urborg uprising/whatever, now you have a win condition
Like I said, I like the creative design of cheap beef, but it's not just a 4/5, is it? It's a 4/5 that also costs you a second creature. That's more likely to lose you the game than close it if it gets answered. And this problem only gets magnified if you recur it. That seems like a losing strategy to me, unless you stick to its Executioner mode
For me it would be interesting to find out how often you need to lose a creature vs downsizing a Courser or something.
Feeding it a 1/1 vanilla token (mogg war marshal etc) seems fine too
Otherwise yeah you probably choose the executioner mode
In my previous post I was envisioning you are playing against some aggro or midrange deck, so you play the 2/3 that's hard to attack into/remove (If they burn it or trade in combat they get 2 for 1'd. If they pacify it, it's free value for you if/when you can sacrifice it.) Then later once the game is stabilized you can sac and recur it and get your 4/5.
dont be too harsh on the set. i added 4 cards to my T1 which is more than from other sets. the green cartouche is a huge upgrade dor me and the red haste giver is probably the strongest red 1-drop so far. and for archetype driven cube i appreciate the pathmaker and the horror.
that you can ignore the set could be said about almost every set since 360 cube are already stuffed with useful cards.
but soulstinger doesnt seem too great for me as well
I am really looking forward to drafting it. It did confirm some of my suspicions whilst also challenging some ideas I had already formed on some cards.
They quite liked Pathmaker Initiate for the same reason it interested me; it can get in for an attack or two itself when played on turn two and late game allows your inferior creatures to get through for 2 or more if you have pump of some sort. Being useful early and late is pretty cool for a red aggro card.
They hated Bloodlust Inciter due to the useless body and weakness when drawn late. I am also extremely critical of cards that are rubbish when drawn late, but when you are talking the red section of a cube, then most of its creatures are devoted to out and out super aggro along with some control and midrange creatures thrown in and the being useless when drawn late doesn't quite hold the same water. You could say the same thing about most red two drops as well. I still think it is worth a try.
They also highlight just how much better a card becomes with cycling, I totally agree.
It also dawned on me that a lot of the cards from this set in black don't just give -1/-1 until end of turn; they give -1/-1 counters. These are way more versatile as they can shrink big creatures etc and are otherwise permanent. Something to be considered when evaluating the cards from the set.
Aven Initiate I still think this guy is an absolute boss unless games from your cube never get to turn 7. This is what it is up against as far as staples go:
I would generally prefer those cards, except maybe the Shimmering Glasskite, as I don't run hexproof or psuedo hexproof in my cube.
Here's the cubeable competition:
Ghost Ship is about the only one that tempts me as much as the Aven Initiate in most circumstances.
Greater Sandwurm This guy is definitely finding his way into my cube. It can't be cheaply chump blocked and if drawn early then he is cycled away for a new card. I would prefer him to Havenwood Wurm or Oakgnarl Warrior for the cycling alone.
Shimmerscale Drake The only real current comparison is Prescient Chimera which is staple. Do you value incidental scry (or build around instant/sorcery scry) or the ability to turf this when you need a land drop or some action? Again, I value the cycling a lot so will be finding room in my cube. The Shimmerscale Drake can find a home in more decks than the Chimera can because of the cycling. The scry is really only of concern to a blue deck focused on a lot of instants and sorceries. This card is staple by comparison. Compare it to Shoreline Ranger as well.
Winged Shepherd In a lot of white decks you are cycling this most of the time; for 1 mana. That is no great loss and almost turns your deck into a 39 card deck. When you need it you have a 3/3 flyer with vigilance. Once again, when compared to its contemporaries in white at 6 mana it is cubeable. The only true six drop to compare it to is Noble Templar and although I value land cycling an awful lot, I would prefer a 3/3 flying body most of the time as I feel that will help me finish the game compared to the more defensive and less aggressive 3/6 templar. Regular cycling will often net you a land as well.
Horror of the Broken Lands In most cubes you aren't really looking at getting too many activations with this card. But even as a 4/4 for five with cycling for 1 mana it seems fine. I think this compares favourably with a lot of borderline 5 drops due to the cheap cycling. If you have any way of reliably activating this in your cube it seems pretty pleasing (Dimir comes to mind). Compare it to a Barkhide Mauler. I think blue's River Serpent is in a similar place. Think of how much trouble it is to block when you have a looter on the board and some blue cards in your hand.
Desert Cerodon Not as useful as the staple Chartooth Cougar as the firebreathing on the top end is an awesome mana sink, but it competes for a spot against the cubeable Tenement Crasher. Unexciting, but it's never a dead card like the crasher is when drawn early and a big improvement over Ridge Rannet.
Djeru's Resolve Unexciting, but it saves a creature, or ambushes an opponents creature. When not needed it can be cycled. It's comparable to current cubeable 1 mana white tricks and has the added untap bonus and it can be cycled. Seems it is easily cubeable.
The other thing to remember about cycling is that it doesn't just allow you to get rid of a card that isn't needed, it allows you to hit all important land draws.
Highlights of the set:
* a white Colossodon Yearling. Helps to diversify stats and provide defense without being too narrow.
* a strictly better Death's Duet. Surprising, since the last two or three Duet clones have been strictly worse!
* Cartouches. Almost all of them are good enough to see play.
* a second copy of Leonin Scimitar. Again surprising, considering we've been treated to a strictly worse Scimitar not too long ago.
* a strong 3/1 in green with the Initiate's Companion. A useful ability that actually incentivizes aggro.
* Hieroglyphic Illumination is a fun design that brings Think Twice to mind. Simple and easy to use, albeit not the best option.
* a playable menacer and zombie in Cursed Minotaur. The red version brought Goblin synergy, but this one is waiting for a decent Zombie payoff card.
* new art for Gravedigger that rivals the fantastic Dermot Power classic.
Lowlights:
* no real cubeable embalm creature at common. Aven Initiate comes close, but being overcosted on the front end and way overcosted on the back end breaks the deal for me. Unwavering Initiate might play well, though.
* personal desire, but we need more playable cyclers. Even after two full blocks and cameo appearances in multiple special sets, we only have, what, a handful of cubeable common cyclers? Cycling is a net improvement to the game, so I hope they revisit it more often like scry. What cyclers are you looking forward to including?
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I really like the Initiate's Companion as well, but I always feel so hamstrung making cuts from my 360 card cube as so many cards feel like anchor cards for the various archetypes. Due to my own green bias I find green the hardest to cut of all as I spend so long pouring over it as it is. I should just get rid of the Young Wolf and weaken sacrifice options and put the Companion in.
I also wanted to squeeze in the Pathmaker Initiate as it is a card that could provide a lot of cool interactions and combos, but I just couldn't find the cut.
I've also taken a cleaver to my blue 3 drop sections recently, especially double blue spells.
@ Night Hydra Cheers. I am often a bit off with my ratings as my cube has drifted fairly far from powered cube status and I get too caught up thinking about how cards would fit into my own cube in particular. I particularly rate the Aven Initiate, compare it to something like Cloaked Siren which is considered cubeable.
@ Monkrealist Cheers!
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I also just realised why no one else is really excited about the Aven Initiate; most cubes don't really see games where 7 drops hold much value. I still think he is perfectly acceptable when compared to Phantom Monsters and the like.
Trespasser's Curse seems like a lot of fun in a U/B or W/B control deck. It's a 2 point swing for each creature they summon and if you are bouncing their creatures and what not it would be good fun. EDIT: The more I think about it the more I like it. Once it is in play there aren't too many destroy enchantment spells getting about. It really blows up any player running a swarm deck and is pretty awesome vs aggro if you can recover from not playing an actual 2 drop creature.
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Generator Servant also never really fit the cube, because you dont want to sacrifice a card for the effect ususally.
both are fine in my T2
Bladed Pinions are bonkers with Deathtouch and Strider Harness is the next equipment on the move list. But its underrated here. Giving virtually every creature haste for the rest of the game is great. The additional +1+1 makes it really strong. But now the red dude does similiar things, although more fragile.
@Polycotton: Youre ratings make sense for Amo limited, but youre one rating too high with every card. The Naga Oracle is complete trash.
Regarding cycling, I love the ability, but the execution is flawed. I want cycling on cards that are strong in the early game and bad in the lategame, so i can just draw better. Alternatively I want landcycling to help avoiding manascrew. Generic cycling on finishers makes no sense to me, if you cant revive them somehow.
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I think cycling is fine the way it is. If you cycled cards that were rubbish late game it would be an easy decision as you have so much mana to burn and nothing else to do, so cycling would be a no brainer. Cycling early makes for more difficult and more important decisions as you have to spend limited mana to do so and the card you are cycling might be useful if you wait another turn or two.
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Staple means theyre basically in every cube and cubable means this is the first card next on the list to fill a slot. If you rate any card cubable that is not completeley bad, then rating the cards makes no sense whatsoever. Rule of thumb, if only 1 card is bad, then the rating is bad.
Btw. there are tons of selfmill cards with pseudoscry and nobody will ever play them in regular cubes.
I still focus on powerlevel first when I watch at the cards, so I want useful and strong cycling. Second I look if it fits an existing archetype. Being just an interesting mechanic to play with is nice for limited and not completely to be ignored for cubes, but definitely nothing I aim for. That said. Just slamming cycling on overcosted, extremely situational or bad card doesnt make it interesting. And having it on useful stuff doesnt make it great either, because you will never cycle it anyway then.
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The "cycling on good cards" calls back to a design argument from WotC from Urza's saying Expunge was actually not a great design since no one ever wanted to cycle it.
I disagree. I see Wander as a great, Cubeable design. Some early games you need another card. Some late games, you are playing aggro and your dead bodies are worthless brought back. Again, cycle it.
As for the creatures, they are filler bodies you can throw in Midrange if you want non-dead fat. It is not a brilliant inclusion, but like Shards block, it is useful for the Grundy matches that go long. However, we have either better mid's or run less useless curve-toppers.
Embalm is a "good" mechanic. I like it a lot. But I will admit it is more like Megamorph and its ilk (read: too pricey to be great).
That said, if you want a rock solid Sealed environment, include more cycling.
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@ Night Hydra I am also a big fan of cycling, anything that makes decks run more consistently and can smooth out bad draws makes me happy; no one likes losing because they got mana screwed.
At the end of the day any common cycling card is almost always going to have tradeoffs for the versatility and consistency it adds to your deck. Having said that, Wander in Death is just a straight up buff to an already cubeable card. Shimmerscale Drake is at least on par with Prescient Chimera and unless I was running a heavy spells matter deck I would prefer it to the Chimera due to the freedom to cycle it when needed.
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Keep in mind, the more cards get printed the higher the competition becomes, because the cubesize stays the same. The Top3 cards for the manaslot are staple. The next ~12 best cards are cubable. The next 20 cards are borderline. The rest is bad or below, unless theyre relevant for archetypes.
Exert isnt useful for cubes, because you never want to freeze your board for a slight temporary buff. If the buff was permanent, it would be a more interesting (playable) mechanic.
I agree the Drake is fine, but I wouldnt run the Chimera in powered cubes anyway and Death Duet is bad. With cycling its a liitle bit better, but still doesnt deserve a slot anywhere.
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For what it's worth, Expunge is barely borderline, but that's because black's removal is excellent, not because of some perceived excess of quality on cyclers from Wizards
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harness seems better in a non-bomb environment, because the additional tempo is a bigger benefit there. and as said the next ewuopment that will get the axe.
btw this is the spoiler discussion topic, not the ultimative guide for cubestarter.
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Consistently guilty of this. I'll take my further waffling to the evaluate everything thread.
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besides i dont think the evaluation thread should be the first step for cubestarter anyways. if youre new to cubeconstruction either start from scratch with the cards you already have/want to play and playtest it so you get a better undestanding what works and what not. Or copy an existing cube from one of the members and modify it by your own taste after some drafts.
Then you can browse the Evaluation to get an overview what cards are interesting as well.
its just a rough classification anyways. I found a bunch of cards in the bad section Im still playing in my T1 up until today and would consider them staples and so everybody else should also have its own thoughts about the cards.
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In most limited formats artifact/enchantment removal is only sideboard playable and you're better off just running a reliable business spell (like any decent creature.)
So no one else likes the strictly-much-better undead executioner? soulstinger
I'm just a sucker for demons (scorpion demon at common!) and anything that plays well in sacrifice decks. He can be a roadblock, or if you have a blazing effigy/mudbutton torchrunner he can be a 4/5 black creature with no downside
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I'm going to scratch my archetype itch by making a masters cube once I finish uni for this trimester.
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I do like that they're playing with alternative drawbacks for fat at lower rarities though. It just needs the right balance of drawback to beef (I would play the heck out of the scorpion at base P/T 5/5)
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If the soulstinger was just a 2/3 that put 2 -1/-1 counters on something when it dies, it would be a lot worse. A 4/5 black creature can close out games. Play it as a roadblock to aggro, sac it once you've stabilized and grab it with recover/urborg uprising/whatever, now you have a win condition
I'm not trying to say it's a staple or anything but if you have sacrifice support it's pretty good.
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Like I said, I like the creative design of cheap beef, but it's not just a 4/5, is it? It's a 4/5 that also costs you a second creature. That's more likely to lose you the game than close it if it gets answered. And this problem only gets magnified if you recur it. That seems like a losing strategy to me, unless you stick to its Executioner mode
For me it would be interesting to find out how often you need to lose a creature vs downsizing a Courser or something.
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Feeding it a 1/1 vanilla token (mogg war marshal etc) seems fine too
Otherwise yeah you probably choose the executioner mode
In my previous post I was envisioning you are playing against some aggro or midrange deck, so you play the 2/3 that's hard to attack into/remove (If they burn it or trade in combat they get 2 for 1'd. If they pacify it, it's free value for you if/when you can sacrifice it.) Then later once the game is stabilized you can sac and recur it and get your 4/5.
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that you can ignore the set could be said about almost every set since 360 cube are already stuffed with useful cards.
but soulstinger doesnt seem too great for me as well
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EMAtJTJrnwA
I am really looking forward to drafting it. It did confirm some of my suspicions whilst also challenging some ideas I had already formed on some cards.
They quite liked Pathmaker Initiate for the same reason it interested me; it can get in for an attack or two itself when played on turn two and late game allows your inferior creatures to get through for 2 or more if you have pump of some sort. Being useful early and late is pretty cool for a red aggro card.
They hated Bloodlust Inciter due to the useless body and weakness when drawn late. I am also extremely critical of cards that are rubbish when drawn late, but when you are talking the red section of a cube, then most of its creatures are devoted to out and out super aggro along with some control and midrange creatures thrown in and the being useless when drawn late doesn't quite hold the same water. You could say the same thing about most red two drops as well. I still think it is worth a try.
They also highlight just how much better a card becomes with cycling, I totally agree.
It also dawned on me that a lot of the cards from this set in black don't just give -1/-1 until end of turn; they give -1/-1 counters. These are way more versatile as they can shrink big creatures etc and are otherwise permanent. Something to be considered when evaluating the cards from the set.
Aven Initiate I still think this guy is an absolute boss unless games from your cube never get to turn 7. This is what it is up against as far as staples go:
Illusionary Forces
Mist Raven
Shimmering Glasskite.
I would generally prefer those cards, except maybe the Shimmering Glasskite, as I don't run hexproof or psuedo hexproof in my cube.
Here's the cubeable competition:
Archaeomancer
Aven Fleetwing
Cloaked Siren
Crookclaw Transmuter
Elgaud Shieldmate
Ghost Ship
Makeshift Mauler
Nephalia Seakite/Sentinels of Glen Elendra
Phantom Monster
Separatist Voidmage
Ghost Ship is about the only one that tempts me as much as the Aven Initiate in most circumstances.
Greater Sandwurm This guy is definitely finding his way into my cube. It can't be cheaply chump blocked and if drawn early then he is cycled away for a new card. I would prefer him to Havenwood Wurm or Oakgnarl Warrior for the cycling alone.
Shimmerscale Drake The only real current comparison is Prescient Chimera which is staple. Do you value incidental scry (or build around instant/sorcery scry) or the ability to turf this when you need a land drop or some action? Again, I value the cycling a lot so will be finding room in my cube. The Shimmerscale Drake can find a home in more decks than the Chimera can because of the cycling. The scry is really only of concern to a blue deck focused on a lot of instants and sorceries. This card is staple by comparison. Compare it to Shoreline Ranger as well.
Winged Shepherd In a lot of white decks you are cycling this most of the time; for 1 mana. That is no great loss and almost turns your deck into a 39 card deck. When you need it you have a 3/3 flyer with vigilance. Once again, when compared to its contemporaries in white at 6 mana it is cubeable. The only true six drop to compare it to is Noble Templar and although I value land cycling an awful lot, I would prefer a 3/3 flying body most of the time as I feel that will help me finish the game compared to the more defensive and less aggressive 3/6 templar. Regular cycling will often net you a land as well.
Horror of the Broken Lands In most cubes you aren't really looking at getting too many activations with this card. But even as a 4/4 for five with cycling for 1 mana it seems fine. I think this compares favourably with a lot of borderline 5 drops due to the cheap cycling. If you have any way of reliably activating this in your cube it seems pretty pleasing (Dimir comes to mind). Compare it to a Barkhide Mauler. I think blue's River Serpent is in a similar place. Think of how much trouble it is to block when you have a looter on the board and some blue cards in your hand.
Desert Cerodon Not as useful as the staple Chartooth Cougar as the firebreathing on the top end is an awesome mana sink, but it competes for a spot against the cubeable Tenement Crasher. Unexciting, but it's never a dead card like the crasher is when drawn early and a big improvement over Ridge Rannet.
Djeru's Resolve Unexciting, but it saves a creature, or ambushes an opponents creature. When not needed it can be cycled. It's comparable to current cubeable 1 mana white tricks and has the added untap bonus and it can be cycled. Seems it is easily cubeable.
The other thing to remember about cycling is that it doesn't just allow you to get rid of a card that isn't needed, it allows you to hit all important land draws.
My singleton Masters Cube