A new spells matters card for red. Flying and haste are very key in cubes that support monarch / initiative. This has evasion and gets a bigger power boost over Monastery Swiftspear, and this triggers off more than instants / sorceries compared to Young Pyromancer. This seems like a slam dunk to me, I think this is way better than Young Pyromancer based on its body and ability to trigger off more spells. This is very scary to facedown when backed by initiative and a burn spell or two. You can also play this in storm decks as a creature based Tendrils of Agony.
Oh, and plot is there I guess. Vengevine rejoices. Plot is really just a small bonus, this card is a slam dunk even without that line.
Fair Splinter Twin with YOLO dash with its blitz ability. Being able to blitz this later in the game means you can copy a pretty juicy creature and then draw 2 cards when they both die, leaving you card neutral between Jaxis and the discard cost. This reminds me of Seasoned Pyromancer / Reflection of Kiki-Jiki in the sense that it's fairly versatile, although I wouldn't say it's particularly great at one single thing. Sacrifices itself / its tokens for aristocrat shenanigans, is a discard outlet, can reap some value with its copy ability, and has pseudo-cycling for 1R. Probably not for cubes with a fairly high power level ceiling unless it's a particularly large cube, but I do think this has potential as roleplayer for aristocrats / discard outlet / Kiki-Twin / Recurring Nightmare shells.
So I've recently come to the realization that there's A LOT of new tech to the basic Worldgorger Dragon combo. Abdel Adrian, Gorion's Ward also works, but it doesn't exile your lands. For those who aren't familiar with the combo, it basically goes like this:
- Worldgorger Dragon + Animate Dead / Necromancy / Dance of the Dead creates a loop that causes your entire board to be exiled / re-enter the battlefield.
- With the loop going on, you get infinite ETB triggers and infinite mana through your lands constantly coming in and out. In Vintage, Bazaar of Baghdad was used to dig through your entire deck and set up a kill that way.
- Abdel Adrian can just make an infinite amount of creatures by itself with an Animate Dead effect.
So one of the issues with the combo is that there wasn't much redundancy for Bazaar of Baghdad, but that seems to no longer be the case. There are plenty of ETB triggers that also dig through your entire deck or just straight up kill your opponent through infinite blinks. Surveil duals are especially really helpful as they essentially give you 10 Bazaar of Baghdads that are easily tutored for via fetchlands.
Here's a preliminary list of things to combo with that cost 4 mana and under.
KILL CARDS
- Voldaren Epicure (probably the best card since it's both a discard outlet and a win condition)
- Orcish Bowmasters
- Twinshot Sniper
- Thassa's Oracle (have to dump deck)
- Pia and Kiran Nalaar (need 2R open)
- Mount Doom (need 2BR open)
- Omnath, Locus of Creation (needs at least 3 lands in play)
- Any initiative enabler
Graveyard enablers / draw engines (basically anything with an ETB draw / loot / rummage / surveil trigger, too many to name)
- Charming Scoundrel (provides both infinite mana and lets you rummage through your entire deck)
- Bazaar of Baghdad
- The One Ring
- Bitter Reunion
- Up the Beanstalk
- Baleful Strix
- Tireless Tracker
- Seasoned Pyromancer
- Vendilion Clique (can fail if you draw into all lands)
- Aether Channeler (also bounces all your opponent's nonland permanents)
- Staff of the Storyteller
- Bloodtithe Harvester
- Carnage Interpreter
- Thraben Inspector / Novice Inspector
- Wall of Omens
- Wall of Blossoms
- Shorikai, Genesis Engine
- Surveil dual lands
Infinite life
- Gilded Goose / Tough Cookie (need 2 free mana)
- Charming Prince
- Courser of Kruphix
- Kitchen Finks
- Knight of Autumn
Mana sinks (typically need to be able to stop the loop, especially if you need to attack)
- Urza, Lord High Artificer
- Walking Ballista
- The Goose Mother (also gains infinite life)
- Light up the Night (or any other Fireball effect)
- Retrofitter Foundry
- Pest Infestation
- Stonecoiler Serpent
- Mawloc
- Forth Eorlingas
- Secure the Wastes
- Ardoz, Cobbler of War
- Bloodthirsty Adversary
- Intrepid Adversary
- Securitron Squadron
- Cryptic Coat (limited by how many cards you have on top of your library
- Earthquake / Rolling Earthquake (need to be higher life than opponent)
Not lethal, but is funny anyways
- Grief
- Invasion of Gobakhan
- Elite Spellbinder
- Mind Twist
- Anything with an ETB trigger that removes something of your opponent's
The one big downside to the combo is that our opponent can exile your entire board by removing the Worldgorger Dragon in response to its ETB trigger, so this combo ain't for the faint of heart. Ideally you pair this with a lot of discard effects / Teferi, Time Raveler, counter magic, etc. Luckily the combo itself is cheap so it's not too hard to leave up a counter. I think it's worth testing out since the only real parasitic parts of the combo are Worldgorger Dragon / Abdel Adrian / Bazaar of Baghdad , everything else are just random goodstuff cards that you're probably already (can be) playing.
Seems hard to put together a consistent-ish version of the combo, but definitely not impossible...
I don't think it's too hard. There's a good amount of redundancy to each part of the combo. Abdel Adrian, Gorion's Ward literally goes infinite by itself with any Animate Dead effect.
What I wonder is if it's worth jumping through the deck building hoops for. If you have multiple enchantment based reanimation spells.. is it worth drafing/playing the engines/finishers instead of supplemental cards better suited to reanimator?
How often is worldgorger better than another tier 2 reanimation target (given you have to make deck building concessions for it)?
I don't think there's much hoops at all. You just throw Dragon / Adrian into a reanimator deck or a midrange deck that can utilize Animate Dead effects as value spells. You really don't have to go too much out of your way for enablers / win conditions / draw spells / ways to fuel the graveyard etc. You can probably get away with NOT including Bazaar of Baghdad in your cube, especially with surveil duals.
I plan to test it and think it'll be competitive with the best combos (which isn't hard since reanimating things is already a top tier strategy). This seems like a massive sleeper since there's so many ways to just go off with the combo. I don't think the EDH crowd was really paying much attention to all the random things that can just go off with it.
Dragon combo has been tested in the past before, but a lot of the ways to either win or draw your deck / dump your library into your graveyard mostly come from fairly new cards. The more I think about it, the more insane I think it is that this has been under our nose the entire time. The newly printed surveil duals are HUGE for this combo and is what got me thinking about Worldgorger Dragon in the first place.
Triomes would be my 4th and final cycle of land for a 360 vintage cube and > canopy lands.
I also don't think I'd support the cards that leveraged canopy lands? I wouldn't run crucible effects outside of wrenn and six @ 360 I think?
Canopy lands are great on their own, the presence of Crucible effects don't move the needle at all on their viability. And unlike triomes, they ETB untapped and you're not restricted to choosing between playing it as a land or cashing it in for a card.
If I were forced into a situation where I can only run 1 uniform land cycle outside of fetch / dual / shock, I would snap pick a completed Horizon Canopy cycle.
I prefer canopy lands + mix of various other things over triomes unless you're going in on domain. I like the Horizon Canopy cycle of lands more than any other cycle besides actual fetch / dual / shock.
So this is an interesting reanimation spell. Traditionally, the reanimation process is an A + B + C combo where you need a discard outlet, a reanimation spell, and the creature you're reanimating. The reason why Entomb is so powerful is because it's a cheap, instant speed option that turns the process into an A + B combo.
While Incarnation Technique is expensive at 5 mana, it also potentially turns the reanimation process into a one card combo AND can potentially score you two creatures. This makes it reminiscent of other one card combos like Selvala's Stampede which don't require you to have another specific card in your hand.
While copying it can make this opens up some risk by allowing your opponent to mill 5 / Exhume a creature, the fact that their copy resolves first means if they Exhume a Palace Jailer / Ravenous Chupacabra or something, your copies of Incarnation of Technique are still on the stack, so anything you hit off Incarnation Technique cannot be targeted by whatever your opponent is Exhuming.
At first I overlooked this card because I was too afraid of the drawback, but now realizing that my hits can't be targeted by Palace Jailer and friends, this has potential. In my experience, getting two hits with Eureka is often game over unless my opponent has a sweeper or had Palace Jailer / Oblivion Ring or something, but there's so much less risk and set up with this. Getting to 5 mana is a bummer, but that doesn't stop me from playing things like Through the Breach / Selvala's Stampede.
I had a discussion with someone at Legacy yesterday where he argues that Brainstorm isn't really playable now in cube given the number of draw punishers and the very limited number of ways to shuffle your library.
- I think the lack of shuffle effects is very over-exaggerated from Legacy being able to play multiple Brainstorms. They don't chain well together without a shuffle effect, but a single Brainstorm without a shuffle effect is still very potent.
- Draw punishers can be removed. Only Hullbreacher / Notion Thief can really catch you off guard and heavily Brainstorm since they have flash. Orcish Bowmasters has flash too, but that at least doesn't prevent you from drawing your cards.
Fwiw when I say “blue deck” I mean a deck where blue is a primary or significant secondary color.
There are plenty of blue shells that are pretty creature heavy where Seedshark isn't idea: UR Kiki-Twin / UW blink / UB Recurring Nightmare / UG Survival / many UX tempo shells / a good amount of artifacts matters decks are getting creature heavy / etc.
I see oath of druids as a near pointless comparison. Oath decks in cubes I draft come together like 1/100 decks… and even if they came together more (as is clearly the case in some cubes here). Shark typhoon is not a good card in them, it’s a low priority playable.
YMMV, but Oath of Druids comes together in my cube all the time since I heavily support cheaty face (and Oath of Druids is probably the deck I force the most). Shark Typhoon is often a card that will make the deck since it's a cantrip that can buy time or steal initiative / monarch in a pinch.
I think chrome host is better than all the other spells matters cards.
The highest average case performance and only less upside than mentor.
This I generally agree with, the only spells matters card I think that is better than Seedshark is Third Path Iconoclast. Mentor has a high ceiling, but its average case scenario in a singleton environment is so bad that I ended up cutting it from my cube. Shark is pretty much everything I wanted mentor to be in terms of defensive prowess and generating value through a sweeper.
Just to be clear with everyone, I think Chrome Host Seedshark is a great card. But gun to head, I'd cube Shark Typhoon first. I value Shark Typhoon's versatility, guaranteed value, role of being a scaleable big mana payoff that's strong at any point in the game, and ability to be reactionary more than Seedshark being an engine for spells matters. I'd give the nod to Seedshark over Mulldrifter even though Mulldrifter is also more versatile and shares a lot of Shark Typhoon's qualities, but IMO Shark Typhoon is on another level compared to both of them.
I've arrived at the conclusion that my black 2-drop section is one card short. I'm running 360 powered an find all of the remaining options so lackluster...
I'm already running Dark Confidant, Bloodghast, Oona's Prowler and Pack Rat.
We've played all 3 of those cards with very lukewarm results. What are people's experience with these guys? Any other options?
-------------------
Aside from that, I've also recently cut Earthquake for Fiery Confluence. Am I crazy?
We're running the Wildfire package so we felt like 2 earthquakes + 2 wildfires + Confluence seemed like too many sweepers. Thoughts?
1
A new spells matters card for red. Flying and haste are very key in cubes that support monarch / initiative. This has evasion and gets a bigger power boost over Monastery Swiftspear, and this triggers off more than instants / sorceries compared to Young Pyromancer. This seems like a slam dunk to me, I think this is way better than Young Pyromancer based on its body and ability to trigger off more spells. This is very scary to facedown when backed by initiative and a burn spell or two. You can also play this in storm decks as a creature based Tendrils of Agony.
Oh, and plot is there I guess. Vengevine rejoices. Plot is really just a small bonus, this card is a slam dunk even without that line.
1
Fair Splinter Twin with YOLO dash with its blitz ability. Being able to blitz this later in the game means you can copy a pretty juicy creature and then draw 2 cards when they both die, leaving you card neutral between Jaxis and the discard cost. This reminds me of Seasoned Pyromancer / Reflection of Kiki-Jiki in the sense that it's fairly versatile, although I wouldn't say it's particularly great at one single thing. Sacrifices itself / its tokens for aristocrat shenanigans, is a discard outlet, can reap some value with its copy ability, and has pseudo-cycling for 1R. Probably not for cubes with a fairly high power level ceiling unless it's a particularly large cube, but I do think this has potential as roleplayer for aristocrats / discard outlet / Kiki-Twin / Recurring Nightmare shells.
1
So I've recently come to the realization that there's A LOT of new tech to the basic Worldgorger Dragon combo. Abdel Adrian, Gorion's Ward also works, but it doesn't exile your lands. For those who aren't familiar with the combo, it basically goes like this:
- Worldgorger Dragon + Animate Dead / Necromancy / Dance of the Dead creates a loop that causes your entire board to be exiled / re-enter the battlefield.
- With the loop going on, you get infinite ETB triggers and infinite mana through your lands constantly coming in and out. In Vintage, Bazaar of Baghdad was used to dig through your entire deck and set up a kill that way.
- Abdel Adrian can just make an infinite amount of creatures by itself with an Animate Dead effect.
So one of the issues with the combo is that there wasn't much redundancy for Bazaar of Baghdad, but that seems to no longer be the case. There are plenty of ETB triggers that also dig through your entire deck or just straight up kill your opponent through infinite blinks. Surveil duals are especially really helpful as they essentially give you 10 Bazaar of Baghdads that are easily tutored for via fetchlands.
Here's a preliminary list of things to combo with that cost 4 mana and under.
KILL CARDS
- Voldaren Epicure (probably the best card since it's both a discard outlet and a win condition)
- Orcish Bowmasters
- Twinshot Sniper
- Thassa's Oracle (have to dump deck)
- Pia and Kiran Nalaar (need 2R open)
- Mount Doom (need 2BR open)
- Omnath, Locus of Creation (needs at least 3 lands in play)
- Any initiative enabler
Graveyard enablers / draw engines (basically anything with an ETB draw / loot / rummage / surveil trigger, too many to name)
- Charming Scoundrel (provides both infinite mana and lets you rummage through your entire deck)
- Bazaar of Baghdad
- The One Ring
- Bitter Reunion
- Up the Beanstalk
- Baleful Strix
- Tireless Tracker
- Seasoned Pyromancer
- Vendilion Clique (can fail if you draw into all lands)
- Aether Channeler (also bounces all your opponent's nonland permanents)
- Staff of the Storyteller
- Bloodtithe Harvester
- Carnage Interpreter
- Thraben Inspector / Novice Inspector
- Wall of Omens
- Wall of Blossoms
- Shorikai, Genesis Engine
- Surveil dual lands
Infinite life
- Gilded Goose / Tough Cookie (need 2 free mana)
- Charming Prince
- Courser of Kruphix
- Kitchen Finks
- Knight of Autumn
Mana sinks (typically need to be able to stop the loop, especially if you need to attack)
- Urza, Lord High Artificer
- Walking Ballista
- The Goose Mother (also gains infinite life)
- Light up the Night (or any other Fireball effect)
- Retrofitter Foundry
- Pest Infestation
- Stonecoiler Serpent
- Mawloc
- Forth Eorlingas
- Secure the Wastes
- Ardoz, Cobbler of War
- Bloodthirsty Adversary
- Intrepid Adversary
- Securitron Squadron
- Cryptic Coat (limited by how many cards you have on top of your library
- Earthquake / Rolling Earthquake (need to be higher life than opponent)
Not lethal, but is funny anyways
- Grief
- Invasion of Gobakhan
- Elite Spellbinder
- Mind Twist
- Anything with an ETB trigger that removes something of your opponent's
The one big downside to the combo is that our opponent can exile your entire board by removing the Worldgorger Dragon in response to its ETB trigger, so this combo ain't for the faint of heart. Ideally you pair this with a lot of discard effects / Teferi, Time Raveler, counter magic, etc. Luckily the combo itself is cheap so it's not too hard to leave up a counter. I think it's worth testing out since the only real parasitic parts of the combo are Worldgorger Dragon / Abdel Adrian / Bazaar of Baghdad , everything else are just random goodstuff cards that you're probably already (can be) playing.
1
I don't think it's too hard. There's a good amount of redundancy to each part of the combo. Abdel Adrian, Gorion's Ward literally goes infinite by itself with any Animate Dead effect.
I don't think there's much hoops at all. You just throw Dragon / Adrian into a reanimator deck or a midrange deck that can utilize Animate Dead effects as value spells. You really don't have to go too much out of your way for enablers / win conditions / draw spells / ways to fuel the graveyard etc. You can probably get away with NOT including Bazaar of Baghdad in your cube, especially with surveil duals.
I plan to test it and think it'll be competitive with the best combos (which isn't hard since reanimating things is already a top tier strategy). This seems like a massive sleeper since there's so many ways to just go off with the combo. I don't think the EDH crowd was really paying much attention to all the random things that can just go off with it.
Dragon combo has been tested in the past before, but a lot of the ways to either win or draw your deck / dump your library into your graveyard mostly come from fairly new cards. The more I think about it, the more insane I think it is that this has been under our nose the entire time. The newly printed surveil duals are HUGE for this combo and is what got me thinking about Worldgorger Dragon in the first place.
1
Canopy lands are great on their own, the presence of Crucible effects don't move the needle at all on their viability. And unlike triomes, they ETB untapped and you're not restricted to choosing between playing it as a land or cashing it in for a card.
If I were forced into a situation where I can only run 1 uniform land cycle outside of fetch / dual / shock, I would snap pick a completed Horizon Canopy cycle.
1
I prefer canopy lands + mix of various other things over triomes unless you're going in on domain. I like the Horizon Canopy cycle of lands more than any other cycle besides actual fetch / dual / shock.
Also, I prefer Restless Anchorage over Celestial Colonnade in a cube that has a heavy presence of monarch / initiative.
1
So this is an interesting reanimation spell. Traditionally, the reanimation process is an A + B + C combo where you need a discard outlet, a reanimation spell, and the creature you're reanimating. The reason why Entomb is so powerful is because it's a cheap, instant speed option that turns the process into an A + B combo.
While Incarnation Technique is expensive at 5 mana, it also potentially turns the reanimation process into a one card combo AND can potentially score you two creatures. This makes it reminiscent of other one card combos like Selvala's Stampede which don't require you to have another specific card in your hand.
While copying it can make this opens up some risk by allowing your opponent to mill 5 / Exhume a creature, the fact that their copy resolves first means if they Exhume a Palace Jailer / Ravenous Chupacabra or something, your copies of Incarnation of Technique are still on the stack, so anything you hit off Incarnation Technique cannot be targeted by whatever your opponent is Exhuming.
At first I overlooked this card because I was too afraid of the drawback, but now realizing that my hits can't be targeted by Palace Jailer and friends, this has potential. In my experience, getting two hits with Eureka is often game over unless my opponent has a sweeper or had Palace Jailer / Oblivion Ring or something, but there's so much less risk and set up with this. Getting to 5 mana is a bummer, but that doesn't stop me from playing things like Through the Breach / Selvala's Stampede.
1
Get Lost > Fateful Absence since it hits more things and your opponent can't crack the maps on your turn and require a creature.
1
- I think the lack of shuffle effects is very over-exaggerated from Legacy being able to play multiple Brainstorms. They don't chain well together without a shuffle effect, but a single Brainstorm without a shuffle effect is still very potent.
- Draw punishers can be removed. Only Hullbreacher / Notion Thief can really catch you off guard and heavily Brainstorm since they have flash. Orcish Bowmasters has flash too, but that at least doesn't prevent you from drawing your cards.
Brainstorm / Ponder / Preordain are still the top cantrips for U in my book. I'd put Sleight of Hand at #4 though.
1
There are plenty of blue shells that are pretty creature heavy where Seedshark isn't idea: UR Kiki-Twin / UW blink / UB Recurring Nightmare / UG Survival / many UX tempo shells / a good amount of artifacts matters decks are getting creature heavy / etc.
YMMV, but Oath of Druids comes together in my cube all the time since I heavily support cheaty face (and Oath of Druids is probably the deck I force the most). Shark Typhoon is often a card that will make the deck since it's a cantrip that can buy time or steal initiative / monarch in a pinch.
This I generally agree with, the only spells matters card I think that is better than Seedshark is Third Path Iconoclast. Mentor has a high ceiling, but its average case scenario in a singleton environment is so bad that I ended up cutting it from my cube. Shark is pretty much everything I wanted mentor to be in terms of defensive prowess and generating value through a sweeper.
Just to be clear with everyone, I think Chrome Host Seedshark is a great card. But gun to head, I'd cube Shark Typhoon first. I value Shark Typhoon's versatility, guaranteed value, role of being a scaleable big mana payoff that's strong at any point in the game, and ability to be reactionary more than Seedshark being an engine for spells matters. I'd give the nod to Seedshark over Mulldrifter even though Mulldrifter is also more versatile and shares a lot of Shark Typhoon's qualities, but IMO Shark Typhoon is on another level compared to both of them.