Mentor of the Meek: Newly downgraded. I've been playing it for ages, and it's only so-so. The 2/2 body is pretty meager, and it's easy to topdeck this and have no creatures to cast for a while. Nonetheless, it's worth it if you can investigate twice. Less than that, and Roving Harper would've been better. This sure as heck ain't no Tireless Provisioner in terms of the advantage it provides, but it does get the job done.
Like you, I came from the larger, unpowered rare cube world before building my Peasant cube, so while I don't have play-testing experience with Mentor of the Meek with just commons and uncommons, I've played it a ton in a slightly more powerful environment (as well as the less powerful Innistrad draft) and found it to be pretty strong in both. Note that this is not Investigating, where you screw around getting the clue and paying two to sac it - no! Here you pay one colorless mana "whenever another creature with power 2 or less enters the battlefield under your control," and you immediately get to draw a card. For the record, some quick math shows over 77% of the white creatures in my cube meet this requirement, and I'm sure you could up that percentage even higher if you were drafting/deck-building with it in mind. Additionally, it might slip passed some that this is an etb trigger, not a play trigger, so blink effects can net you the card too. Finally, Peasant is a slower, grindier environment, and that's where I remember Mentor shining.
With all that said, I personally found Tireless Provisioner underwhelming (not that they're super comparable imo), and am fairly certain this will be way better.
After much deliberation, I've settled on including only the snow cards that don't scale based on the number of snow lands you control. The ones that count them repeatedly were not balanced as though you would have access to that many in limited and are far too swingy.
I used to think the card was nuts, and it's been in my cube for quite some time, but more and more it just doesn't seem to be finding a home.
Six mana is just too much for my green aggro and even midrangey creature decks that might want the Overrun effect. This goes for both Gruul and Selesnya I think, as Ridgescale Tusker basically give the same effect at a cmc cheaper and even has +1/+1 counter synergies. Ramp doesn't seem to want it either, as it doesn't get much bonus from the ETB and would rather have a more resilient threat like Warden of the Woods or Scaled Behemoth. Golgari is more about grinding and GY stuff, so it would prefer a better value play like Blossom Prancer or Baloth Null I think. I even support a Simic Flash/Tempo archetype where you'd think it would fit, but again... 6cmc.
Great Oak Guardian is a unique card that I don't really want to cut, but it's just not been what I want it to be.
A relatively weak set and personally I don't like the flavor of it. I don't mind if they experiment a bit with settings, but the 30s Chicago gangster vibe feels a bit too much out of place in a Magic setting from my pov.
Couldn't agree more. I hated the flavor of this set. Also neither the mechanics nor the three-color aspects of the set are conducive to peasant cube imo. I have a fairly large cube, so I'm always interested in 10-15 cards and usually end up adding 5-10. Here however, I'm only considering a handful, and at the end of the day Inspiring Overseer might be the only add. Sad... but I guess it makes things easier, especially after what was - for me at least - a homerun set in NEO (despite certain flavor issues there, the mechanics and the cards themselves were actually good).
Yes, but is it better than Twinblade Geist? The ability to loot and potentially put a +1/+1 counter on a double-striker is great, but I'm not super well set up to support a Heroic archetype in my cube. I do have an aura/enchantment subtheme in white though, and besides, Twinblade Invocation (the flip-side of Twinblade Geist), can be good on it's own).
I'm back looking at and brewing in Modern again after a year-and-a-half hiatus, and of course I'm back with my old favorite.
Upon doing a little research, I found that some people apparently are still working on this archetype. Here's a great video of Youtuber d00mwake playing a red green list in a Modern league a few months ago (12/26/2021). While the list is certainly not super tuned (the sideboard in particular looked like it could use some changes), it seemed pretty solid. He managed a 3-2 finish with a deck that he didn't build and was somewhat unfamiliar with. He also had some bad luck as far as match-ups; the follower who sent him the list apparently had several 5-0s with it, so there's definitely potential.
One thing that seemed well worth adding would be a Fire-Lit Thicket or two in the mana-base. d00mwake ran into color fixing issues a couple of times, and I can say from long experience with this deck - it's a land you really want.
Also, you know you have issues with your board when you consistently don't side anything in. He mentioned wanting better graveyard hate, and the Return to Natures he did bring in a couple of times seemed underwhelming; I get that it's a flexible card, but as a result of that it's not the best at dealing with the problems you really want it to deal with.
I always get curious when cards get played in the MTGO Vintage 540 Cube that are also available for Peasant and are not frequently getting played.
Portent- An oddball "slowtrip" from Ice Age that compares real well to blue cantrips frequently played. Not drawing immediately is rough, but the utility you might get from locking an opponent out of key cards might make up for that. The Vintage Cube has this and not either Serum Visions or Consider, and I could see making a similar swap.
Generally speaking, I think a number of cards in the MTGO Vintage Cube are chosen for nostalgia reasons rather than because of raw power level, so you don't need to read too much into Portent being in it other than that it's an old card that doesn't appear elsewhere and people might remember it fondly.
That said, Portent is a legit card. I've played it for years (granted, my cube is larger, so I want more 1cmc blue cantrips than most), and I'd probably rank it behind only Ponder and Preordain. It can dig four cards deep, which none of the other options can do except Ponder. Sorcery speed isn't a big deal for a 1cmc spell. And, unlike any of the other options, it can actually mess with an opponent's library; this may not come up all the time, but I definitely remember using it to make sure a mana-screwed opponent stayed screwed and to ensure that my flooding opponent kept flooding. Yes, the fact that you don't get the card immediately can be awkward if you're needing a land or a spell immediately, but because it digs so deep it almost always finds what you need - just with the slight delay. This just means you have to change your play pattern a bit.
I do like Serum Visions, Brainstorm (which I think isn't as good in Peasant or in bigger cubes because of a lack of fetchlands), and Consider and would probably rank them in that order just behind Portent. I'm less enthusiastic about, but still play, Sleight of Hand, Opt, and Thought Scour - with the first two basically being inferior copies of better cantrips and Thought Scour being more niche. That said, I think all of these are playable, and I'd say it just depends what your decks really want.
Roaring Earth - Currently testing.It is a bit underpowered, but fits the counter theme I have in my cube as well. I like that it is not a dead draw late game as you can always channel it. Also, turns Herd Baloth into a Rampaging Baloths.
Song of Freyalise - Situationally very good. When used early, you can more quickly empty your hand and then pump for a large attack. Unfortunately, it can be a pretty weak top deck and the mass attack is broadcasted, so your opponent has some time to respond.
Gaea's Anthem - Was in my cube for a while, but I removed it in part that it is fairly boring to me. Overall a good card, but I would rather move around counters.
Curse of Predation (spoiler alert, this is the strongest) - 100% agree. I understand why some folks do not run this.
Jiang Yanggu, Wildcrafter - May be just me, but I prefer Song of Freyalise over Jiang. 3 counters over three turns is pretty underwhelming and the static ability is not that exciting unless your cube naturally supports early game counters on creatures.
Thanks for the thoughts. I basically was thinking the same thing, and am debating removing Gaea's Anthem for Roaring Earth; the former seems stronger in a vacuum, but the latter is definitely more on-theme for me. I appreciate your thoughts on the other cards as well. I've never played Song of Freyalise or Jiang Yanggu, Wildcrafter, but I know others tried them and just wanted to make sure I wasn't missing anything amazing.
Fair... maybe I was over-simplifying it. There are definitely situations where it can still be useful - even game winning. Still, all those are kind of niche scenarios, and I still gotta ask, does Slice and Dice really belong in a creature heavy deck if we're being honest? Does it even belong in a deck with an average amount of creatures? I think the answer is no because each one of those scenarios can be turned around.
"Are you winning the creature race? Keep it in hand and don't cast it." Sure... you can do that, but you just drew a card that is dead atm and may be dead for who knows how long, but hey... just hold onto it until you lose control of the board, and then haha! Wham! We get ourselves back to even... after getting ourselves into trouble in the first place by drawing a blank?
"Are you losing the creature race, with two small creatures out vs their five large ones? Board wipe! Sure, you'll lose your creatures, but they will lose far more than you. It brings you to parity." Ok, this is a extremely bad scenario, and I'm not sure what got you into this big of a mess that drawing and adding one good creature (say a Nekrataal or something) to your board couldn't come close to bringing you back to even.
"Did you draw the board wipe turns ago? I hope you planned ahead and didn't overcommit to the board, because now you can board wipe and then rebuild faster than your opponent." Again, good advice to make the best out of less than ideal situation where you drew something that was useless for several turns.
"Did they just spend a bunch of removal to clear your side of the board? Return the favor with a single spell." Pretty niche. If they spent so many cards removing your creatures, then they're probably not playing a bunch of cards to make a ton of creatures to get wiped. Two or even one (especially if it's big) can get there on an empty board.
"Facing a flying army with no hope of survival? Board wipe!" Great! But what were we doing while we were getting into this terrible situation again where we now need our singleton big sweeper to save us?
"You have five cards in hand but your opponent is top-decking?" I'm assuming you mean this is in some board-stall stalemate situation? Niche, but sure.
Finally, I'd say that all of these situations could be applied to smaller sweepers as well (admittedly in regard to smaller creatures), except you might be able to build your deck in such a way that you only play creatures (or creatures that you care about at least) that can survive a Pyroclasm I'm not saying Slice and Dice isn't a good card; I just think it's limited in the number of decks it can go in in the same way Wrath of God is. Yes, big sweepers, like Wraths can be extremely powerful, but they're not good in and don't belong in a bunch of decks.
On the issue of red sweepers, I guess it's a matter of asking what kinds of decks want them?
The answer, in my cube at least, is only X/r or, I suppose X/x/r control decks. I've been trying to make "Big Red" work as a control/ramp deck with mana-rocks, but it's not a super reliable thing. Along the same lines "Big Boros" isn't much of a thing either in peasant. Both of these decks were real in my rare cube, but they were based on the Wildfires, mana-rocks, and 5+toughness creatures. In peasant you just don't have these. Even Gruul Ramp, as I've lamented on another thread, takes a backseat to Simic or Mono-G Ramp, so it's not much of a thing. I think the reason that it doesn't work (at least for me) is that most of the ramp is creature-based, and red sweepers would kill your ramp in addition to any enemy attackers. Slice and Dice suffers from this issue a bit too, and it doesn't just kill your mana-elfs. It kills everything. This means it has to be played in a virtually creatureless deck imo (a difficult thing to do in the midrangey creature-based value environment of peasant.
This leaves Izzet Control, Rakdos Control, and any 3-color decks (which are not common in my cube). I think the controlly versions of Izzet and Rakdos would definitely play red sweepers, but they probably want the smaller ones - Pyroclasm and the like. This way they can play them with their Enigma Drakes and Crackling Drakes on the board and not have them die. Oh... and the 3-color decks probably want the sweepers to only have one red pip, as red isn't usually a primary color, and they need to be splashable.
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Ok, new question for you guys. How do you evaluate/rank the following?
I kind of like this new card, Roaring Earth, because of the cmc, that it can come down on turn 2 potentially, that it puts counters on stuff (a theme I support), and the fact that it can do/be something different if topdecked later in the game. That said, as I analyze it in a vacuum, it just seems to put so much less power on the board than something like Gaea's Anthem.
Artifact Aggro was an archetype that I was always trying to make work in my rare cube but never seemed able to quite get there; I always loved watching Aggro Shops in Vintage, and dreamed of making a similar archetype in cube. However, when I switched over to Peasant and lost the likes of Arcbound Ravager, Phyrexian Revoker, etc... I assumed it just wasn't going to happen.
All this said, I've been tinkering with this archetype again lately, and with the printings of some good options in Kamigawa: Neon Dynasty I think it can definitely work as a red aggro variant. Of course, it wouldn't have to be red, as white, blue, and even the other colors have gained some decent tools to support this, but for me it makes the most sense in red.
Here's what I'm currently planning on running to support this as soon as I do my Kamigawa: Neon Dynasty update:
I think there may be some crossover value with Boros Equipment and also +1/+1 Counters archetypes. And obviously, these cards would be supplemented by your normal group of burn spells that any RDW might run.
What do you think? Has anyone else tried this, and am I overlooking any potentially key cards?
My bad. For some reason I was unfamiliar with the existence of that card. That said, they're all very similar - minor difference between all three which are probably negligible.
Do you play Otherworldly Journey? Well this does the same thing only it's blue and can hit artifacts (probably not a big deal, since I can't think of any noncreature artifacts that I want to blink and put a +1/+1 counter on off the top of my head). Blue is definitely as much blink color as white, so logic says this is definitely cubeable.
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Even this Mnemonic Sphere seems worth a look if you're interested in artifacts, as 1cmc cycling attached to anything means the floor is never bad. For reference, a few years ago, before the proliferation of good, cheap blue card-draw options, while I was trying to support an artifacts matter theme, I ran Courier's Capsule.
although tanuki makes a tusker impression at first, its just a landcycling 3 fatty unfortunately. certainly flexible, but no tusker
This isn't true. Greater Tanuki isn't just a "landcycling 3 fatty." It actually ramps you by putting the land directly onto the battlefield, unlike Krosan Tusker. Yes, Krosan Tusker draws you a card when you cycle it, but the land it gives you goes to the hand, not the battlefield - big difference.
Also, as mentioned earlier, a 6cmc 6/5 trample is an eminently better and more castable body than a vanila 6/5 for 7cmc. Not to knock Krosan Tusker, as it sort of does a different thing, but to say that it's hands-down better than Greater Tanuki is a misunderstanding of the card.
Yeah... I like this Colossal Skyturtle and will have to find room for it. Simic is the main Ramp color combination in my cube, and having the versatility of being a 3-mana Regrowth or 2-mana Unsummon OR a 6/5 Flyer that is somewhat annoying to remove with Ward 2 means it will definitely find a home in a variety of decks.
On a side note, I'm more and more convinced that cutting the original Regrowth is the way to go with all of these other options. It's just not that unique of an effect anymore.
Like you, I came from the larger, unpowered rare cube world before building my Peasant cube, so while I don't have play-testing experience with Mentor of the Meek with just commons and uncommons, I've played it a ton in a slightly more powerful environment (as well as the less powerful Innistrad draft) and found it to be pretty strong in both. Note that this is not Investigating, where you screw around getting the clue and paying two to sac it - no! Here you pay one colorless mana "whenever another creature with power 2 or less enters the battlefield under your control," and you immediately get to draw a card. For the record, some quick math shows over 77% of the white creatures in my cube meet this requirement, and I'm sure you could up that percentage even higher if you were drafting/deck-building with it in mind. Additionally, it might slip passed some that this is an etb trigger, not a play trigger, so blink effects can net you the card too. Finally, Peasant is a slower, grindier environment, and that's where I remember Mentor shining.
With all that said, I personally found Tireless Provisioner underwhelming (not that they're super comparable imo), and am fairly certain this will be way better.
That's a shame, since Avalanche Caller, Abominable Treefolk, Spirit of the Aldergard, and Conifer Wurm are all insane! The first two are even good against aggro.
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On a separate note, thoughts on Great Oak Guardian these days?
I used to think the card was nuts, and it's been in my cube for quite some time, but more and more it just doesn't seem to be finding a home.
Six mana is just too much for my green aggro and even midrangey creature decks that might want the Overrun effect. This goes for both Gruul and Selesnya I think, as Ridgescale Tusker basically give the same effect at a cmc cheaper and even has +1/+1 counter synergies. Ramp doesn't seem to want it either, as it doesn't get much bonus from the ETB and would rather have a more resilient threat like Warden of the Woods or Scaled Behemoth. Golgari is more about grinding and GY stuff, so it would prefer a better value play like Blossom Prancer or Baloth Null I think. I even support a Simic Flash/Tempo archetype where you'd think it would fit, but again... 6cmc.
Great Oak Guardian is a unique card that I don't really want to cut, but it's just not been what I want it to be.
Couldn't agree more. I hated the flavor of this set. Also neither the mechanics nor the three-color aspects of the set are conducive to peasant cube imo. I have a fairly large cube, so I'm always interested in 10-15 cards and usually end up adding 5-10. Here however, I'm only considering a handful, and at the end of the day Inspiring Overseer might be the only add. Sad... but I guess it makes things easier, especially after what was - for me at least - a homerun set in NEO (despite certain flavor issues there, the mechanics and the cards themselves were actually good).
Yes, but is it better than Twinblade Geist? The ability to loot and potentially put a +1/+1 counter on a double-striker is great, but I'm not super well set up to support a Heroic archetype in my cube. I do have an aura/enchantment subtheme in white though, and besides, Twinblade Invocation (the flip-side of Twinblade Geist), can be good on it's own).
I'm back looking at and brewing in Modern again after a year-and-a-half hiatus, and of course I'm back with my old favorite.
Upon doing a little research, I found that some people apparently are still working on this archetype. Here's a great video of Youtuber d00mwake playing a red green list in a Modern league a few months ago (12/26/2021). While the list is certainly not super tuned (the sideboard in particular looked like it could use some changes), it seemed pretty solid. He managed a 3-2 finish with a deck that he didn't build and was somewhat unfamiliar with. He also had some bad luck as far as match-ups; the follower who sent him the list apparently had several 5-0s with it, so there's definitely potential.
Here's the video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xZ5ofwMGp9k
And here's a link to the decklist:
https://www.mtggoldfish.com/deck/4511665#online
One thing that seemed well worth adding would be a Fire-Lit Thicket or two in the mana-base. d00mwake ran into color fixing issues a couple of times, and I can say from long experience with this deck - it's a land you really want.
Also, you know you have issues with your board when you consistently don't side anything in. He mentioned wanting better graveyard hate, and the Return to Natures he did bring in a couple of times seemed underwhelming; I get that it's a flexible card, but as a result of that it's not the best at dealing with the problems you really want it to deal with.
Generally speaking, I think a number of cards in the MTGO Vintage Cube are chosen for nostalgia reasons rather than because of raw power level, so you don't need to read too much into Portent being in it other than that it's an old card that doesn't appear elsewhere and people might remember it fondly.
That said, Portent is a legit card. I've played it for years (granted, my cube is larger, so I want more 1cmc blue cantrips than most), and I'd probably rank it behind only Ponder and Preordain. It can dig four cards deep, which none of the other options can do except Ponder. Sorcery speed isn't a big deal for a 1cmc spell. And, unlike any of the other options, it can actually mess with an opponent's library; this may not come up all the time, but I definitely remember using it to make sure a mana-screwed opponent stayed screwed and to ensure that my flooding opponent kept flooding. Yes, the fact that you don't get the card immediately can be awkward if you're needing a land or a spell immediately, but because it digs so deep it almost always finds what you need - just with the slight delay. This just means you have to change your play pattern a bit.
I do like Serum Visions, Brainstorm (which I think isn't as good in Peasant or in bigger cubes because of a lack of fetchlands), and Consider and would probably rank them in that order just behind Portent. I'm less enthusiastic about, but still play, Sleight of Hand, Opt, and Thought Scour - with the first two basically being inferior copies of better cantrips and Thought Scour being more niche. That said, I think all of these are playable, and I'd say it just depends what your decks really want.
Thanks for the thoughts. I basically was thinking the same thing, and am debating removing Gaea's Anthem for Roaring Earth; the former seems stronger in a vacuum, but the latter is definitely more on-theme for me. I appreciate your thoughts on the other cards as well. I've never played Song of Freyalise or Jiang Yanggu, Wildcrafter, but I know others tried them and just wanted to make sure I wasn't missing anything amazing.
"Are you winning the creature race? Keep it in hand and don't cast it." Sure... you can do that, but you just drew a card that is dead atm and may be dead for who knows how long, but hey... just hold onto it until you lose control of the board, and then haha! Wham! We get ourselves back to even... after getting ourselves into trouble in the first place by drawing a blank?
"Are you losing the creature race, with two small creatures out vs their five large ones? Board wipe! Sure, you'll lose your creatures, but they will lose far more than you. It brings you to parity." Ok, this is a extremely bad scenario, and I'm not sure what got you into this big of a mess that drawing and adding one good creature (say a Nekrataal or something) to your board couldn't come close to bringing you back to even.
"Did you draw the board wipe turns ago? I hope you planned ahead and didn't overcommit to the board, because now you can board wipe and then rebuild faster than your opponent." Again, good advice to make the best out of less than ideal situation where you drew something that was useless for several turns.
"Did they just spend a bunch of removal to clear your side of the board? Return the favor with a single spell." Pretty niche. If they spent so many cards removing your creatures, then they're probably not playing a bunch of cards to make a ton of creatures to get wiped. Two or even one (especially if it's big) can get there on an empty board.
"Facing a flying army with no hope of survival? Board wipe!" Great! But what were we doing while we were getting into this terrible situation again where we now need our singleton big sweeper to save us?
"You have five cards in hand but your opponent is top-decking?" I'm assuming you mean this is in some board-stall stalemate situation? Niche, but sure.
Finally, I'd say that all of these situations could be applied to smaller sweepers as well (admittedly in regard to smaller creatures), except you might be able to build your deck in such a way that you only play creatures (or creatures that you care about at least) that can survive a Pyroclasm I'm not saying Slice and Dice isn't a good card; I just think it's limited in the number of decks it can go in in the same way Wrath of God is. Yes, big sweepers, like Wraths can be extremely powerful, but they're not good in and don't belong in a bunch of decks.
The answer, in my cube at least, is only X/r or, I suppose X/x/r control decks. I've been trying to make "Big Red" work as a control/ramp deck with mana-rocks, but it's not a super reliable thing. Along the same lines "Big Boros" isn't much of a thing either in peasant. Both of these decks were real in my rare cube, but they were based on the Wildfires, mana-rocks, and 5+toughness creatures. In peasant you just don't have these. Even Gruul Ramp, as I've lamented on another thread, takes a backseat to Simic or Mono-G Ramp, so it's not much of a thing. I think the reason that it doesn't work (at least for me) is that most of the ramp is creature-based, and red sweepers would kill your ramp in addition to any enemy attackers. Slice and Dice suffers from this issue a bit too, and it doesn't just kill your mana-elfs. It kills everything. This means it has to be played in a virtually creatureless deck imo (a difficult thing to do in the midrangey creature-based value environment of peasant.
This leaves Izzet Control, Rakdos Control, and any 3-color decks (which are not common in my cube). I think the controlly versions of Izzet and Rakdos would definitely play red sweepers, but they probably want the smaller ones - Pyroclasm and the like. This way they can play them with their Enigma Drakes and Crackling Drakes on the board and not have them die. Oh... and the 3-color decks probably want the sweepers to only have one red pip, as red isn't usually a primary color, and they need to be splashable.
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Ok, new question for you guys. How do you evaluate/rank the following?
Roaring Earth
Song of Freyalise
Gaea's Anthem
Curse of Predation (spoiler alert, this is the strongest)
Jiang Yanggu, Wildcrafter
And any others that I might be missing that you'd like to include with the same theme.
I kind of like this new card, Roaring Earth, because of the cmc, that it can come down on turn 2 potentially, that it puts counters on stuff (a theme I support), and the fact that it can do/be something different if topdecked later in the game. That said, as I analyze it in a vacuum, it just seems to put so much less power on the board than something like Gaea's Anthem.
All this said, I've been tinkering with this archetype again lately, and with the printings of some good options in Kamigawa: Neon Dynasty I think it can definitely work as a red aggro variant. Of course, it wouldn't have to be red, as white, blue, and even the other colors have gained some decent tools to support this, but for me it makes the most sense in red.
Here's what I'm currently planning on running to support this as soon as I do my Kamigawa: Neon Dynasty update:
Red:
Rabbit Battery
Inventor's Apprentice
Reinforced Ronin
Galvanic Blast
Shrapnel Blast
Arcbound Tracker
Arcbound Whelp
Twinshot Sniper
Arcbound Slasher
Hoarding Dragon
Colorless:
Signal Pest
Gingerbrute
Icehide Golem (I give the option for all Snow basics)
Trusty Machete
Bonesplitter
Lesser Masticore
Monoskelion
Epochrasite
High-Speed Hoverbike
Shambling Suit
Chief of the Foundry
Foundry Inspector
Porcelain Legionnaire
Filigree Familiar
Circuit Mender
Renegade Freighter
Grafted Wargear
Loxodon Warhammer
Snare Thopter
Untethered Express
and a number of other less "aggro" artifacts like mana-rocks, Sensei's Divining Top, or Arcum's Astrolabe which of course could be played in an artifact aggro deck, but aren't really designed to be there.
There are also a number of other red options like Boots of Speed, Kuldotha Rebirth, Aether Chaser, Atog, Ravenous Intruder, Thopter Engineer, and Bronzeplate Boar and colorless options like Vault Skirge, Perilous Myr, Patchwork Automaton, and Pierce Strider that I don't currently plan on including but could be used to fill out the archetype if needed.
I think there may be some crossover value with Boros Equipment and also +1/+1 Counters archetypes. And obviously, these cards would be supplemented by your normal group of burn spells that any RDW might run.
What do you think? Has anyone else tried this, and am I overlooking any potentially key cards?
My bad. For some reason I was unfamiliar with the existence of that card. That said, they're all very similar - minor difference between all three which are probably negligible.
Do you play Otherworldly Journey? Well this does the same thing only it's blue and can hit artifacts (probably not a big deal, since I can't think of any noncreature artifacts that I want to blink and put a +1/+1 counter on off the top of my head). Blue is definitely as much blink color as white, so logic says this is definitely cubeable.
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Even this Mnemonic Sphere seems worth a look if you're interested in artifacts, as 1cmc cycling attached to anything means the floor is never bad. For reference, a few years ago, before the proliferation of good, cheap blue card-draw options, while I was trying to support an artifacts matter theme, I ran Courier's Capsule.
This isn't true. Greater Tanuki isn't just a "landcycling 3 fatty." It actually ramps you by putting the land directly onto the battlefield, unlike Krosan Tusker. Yes, Krosan Tusker draws you a card when you cycle it, but the land it gives you goes to the hand, not the battlefield - big difference.
Also, as mentioned earlier, a 6cmc 6/5 trample is an eminently better and more castable body than a vanila 6/5 for 7cmc. Not to knock Krosan Tusker, as it sort of does a different thing, but to say that it's hands-down better than Greater Tanuki is a misunderstanding of the card.
On a side note, I'm more and more convinced that cutting the original Regrowth is the way to go with all of these other options. It's just not that unique of an effect anymore.