Drake Stone (first seen here). It's a really interesting design, the kind of card that could easily be printed for tournament play (similar to Mise).
This is my entry. Thanks.
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- Edward Mass
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Whether it's foils, signatures, promos, alteras or something in between, we cubers often have at least a few special cards that stand out. Some try to foil out their entire formats (including a TO I know in LA who runs Super Secret Tech). Others, like Spike Rogue, aim for maximum alters. And then some of us , like myself, just go case-by-case.
I started thinking about this topic when I realized that the virtual flavor text that is Gisela, the Broken Blade's meld ability would need to altered/alter over for the sake of my sanity. (In the interest of protecting her value, I'll just probably go for sigs on a perfect fit.) Beyond this I have some miscellaneous foils and promos, the only really notable one being a textless Psionic Blast.
What about you guys?
duplicate topic merge
-Luffy
Out:
In:
The cuts are cards the gang just hasn't enjoyed much. The includes are a mixture of YOLO picks and placeholders. Much less ho-hum here though. I'm excited to see what makes it through the full update next week and into Kaladesh. (Spoiler alert: Encrust is on shaky ground.)
Obviously preferences influence the design of a cube, but the overall design is usually done in such a way that cards all exist together and are drafted as fully and as randomly possible. What you're talking about sounds like segregating parts of what should be a single list and turning it into 2 or more sublists. There's nothing wrong with that, but it seems more like Ascension than cube at that point.
What you're talking about here is more pack-sculpting, which a separate and equally controversial move. I think most cubers would agree that sculpting face-up to create idealized (or at least less "Feel-Bad" type) packs would be problematic for a number of reasons.
Out:
I've already gone over my feelings on the 6-drops, so...yeah.
I've been looking for a reason to cut mine for a while. I subscribe to a "minimal/no feel-bads" policy when it comes to card functionality and Mine was blatantly breaking this. Also, I just generally feel like mana fixing should be more archetypically narrow and as non-punishing as possible (this is why I love the Tango lands and only tacitly support the Pain lands).
In:
One of the odd things I've come to realize about ETBs is that they really don't crop up quite as often as people assume. One of the reasons I cut Kiki (and will probably cut Flickerwisp soon) is the fact that I cant't make the ETB deck without going out of my way to support it. (And if you know me, you know that watering down my cube to support a durdly, niche archetype just isn't something I'm down for.)
I say all of the above to give context for the addition of Maze. It's by no means an obvious slam dunk, but in a format where the vast majority of creatures don't have meaning ETB triggers it's a pretty safe pseudo removal effect.
SDE is here on a temporary visa. I've talked this card down for a while and I really haven't changed my mind so much as admitted to myself that no better options currently exist for my purposes. As soon as WotC sees reason and starts printing better colorless payoff cards in the 5 to 8 mana range I'm sending him home.
Archive kinda violates my policy on both ramp cards and feel-bads, and I cringe at the possibility of someone dead-drawing this have having to spend basically their whole turn cycling it. Still, it's something other cubers seemed to like and my group had been thinking about it earlier.
Out:
In:
Call it the lesser multicolor purge. I've taken some of the critiques of my Gold section(s) to heart, especially Mark's claim that I'm holding on to too many cards. These cuts amount to the weakest, most indefensible inclusions (mostly placeholders, and bad ones at that). I'm now at a 65 vs 85 split between multi and colorless. I can't promise that I'll stick to these numbers, but I'm sure gonna try.
The main catalyst for these cuts was my realization that Fleecemane's time had come. It's not a bad card by any means (which made cutting it all the more painful), but it just doesn't do anything terribly novel or important for its colors. Cards like Stormblood Berserker and Kalonian Tusker already serve similar roles. And I was kidding myself thinking that the Monstrosity ability was relevant enough to keep it in. With the loss of Fleece I felt it was fair to toss a few other cards across the guilds to (sort of) balance things out.
As to the includes, I'll be brutally honest and say that I wasn't terribly jazzed about most of them. Hellkite and Soul both fail the Terminate test (at least until untap) and require extra mana to function optimally. I'd literally cut them in a heartbeat for something even marginally better. Still, I was at a loss for includes and they topped the list. Growth (as a colorless free spell) and Scepter were cards I've had success with in Peasant and wanted to try here, but there's no telling for sure. Dust seems a tad expensive, but the potential for it to be a Plague Wind was enough to sway me.
Legion is literally a placeholder for something (anything) better from EMN. I'm currently debating some of the new gold cards and feel like at least one of them has to be good enough. (Right?) We'll see in a week or so.
So is EMN a slow format or not? I've heard mixed reports based mostly on theory-crafting. I wanted to start a real discussion on this going into (and hoping expanding further after) the in-store events.
Just from my basic analysis the format looks reasonably fast, mostly based on the CMC and size of creatures. Obviously some colors got luckier than others in this regard, but I don't think it's gonna be unreasonable to see people reliably hitting their two drops in basically the majority of decks/games. I also don't think the big mana payoffs are quite as good here, unless you count the Eldrazi stuff (much of which you won't actually need to pay full price for upfront).
Thoughts?
I got mana screwed game one, then managed to pull it out game 2. Game 3 I kept on two lands and a strong curve. He plays Manic Scribe on the second turn and hits two lands plus a creature. I can't play anything passed turn two and get steamrolled by a mediocre ground assault.
What bugs me most is that he's not a dumb or inexperienced player. He shouldn't be playing an archetype like mill in a format like this period, and he knows better. But he did so anyway, probably on a lark. The fact that I was literally the Delirium deck just exacerbated my tilt.
Anyway, there's no question that Epiphany is better than Fortune. The hidden information aspect makes the whole thing far more random-feeling and not particularly skill-based. Sure, theoretically Fortune's a big Poker-style mindgame, but in practice a lot of people will just make trolly/yolo piles that lead to yolo picks. The card is ultimately cute and deserves to exist, but feels pretty weak (still say it should have been 5 cards).
Epiphany isn't an especially strong card either, but it's very skill-intensive. The x-cost, pile-building and full information all create very important decision points. And the better players can usually leverage some or all of them into a strong play (stronger than just shuffling around some cards or picking a pile partially in the blind).
But if we were simply comparing the idea of building piles versus making piles (which isn't really the true point of contention between Fortune and Epiphany), with all other things being equal and no hidden information picking the pile would always be better. You get the final say, guarantee that you get at least one of the best cards revealed and benefit from the occasional poor card/threat/situation evaluation of your opponent (who presumably made the piles).
As someone who's a lot more discriminating and less prone to hyperbole, I'll just say that I think you'll be pleasantly surprised when you have time (and energy) to process the set.