I control Willbreaker and my opponent controls a random creature (let's be simple and call it a Fire Elemental). If I cast Chain of Plasma targeting the Fire Elemental, Willbreaker should trigger and its ability should go on the stack and resolve above Chain of Plasma. Does this mean that I'm the creature's controller by the time Chain of Plasma checks, and that I am the one given the option to discard a card to copy Chain of Plasma? When I "choose a new target" for the copy of Chain of Plasma, that should trigger Willbreaker again (assuming I target an opponent's creature) and let me repeat the process, right?
The answer shouldn't be any different if I target an opponent's creature with lower toughness (I.e. something that dies to Chain of Plasma's damage), right?
I play Spitting Image over Voidslime. It's not the most powerful card, but it makes a lot of fun situations happen.
I don't run Life&Death or Creakwood Liege, but I'd say it's pretty close. I think Life and Death wins for its versatility, bringing back a utility creature or adding 5 or 6 damage to a late game alpha strike can both be pretty handy.
I run Recoil over Agony Warp. Both are good, but Recoil is more fun, in my opinion, for the times when you catch an opponent empty handed and get to remove a permanent for good.
Personal experience on War Priest of Thune as it's been mentioned: I prefer Ronom Unicorn/Kami. That might seem counterintuitive at first, because you'd normally rather have a critter and the removal and not either or, but the density of enchantments is too low. I'd rather drop the Unicorn on turn two, connect a couple of times and then trade with Pacifism than wait and hold it until my opponent might play a target and then getting a bear that's pretty irrelevant at that stage. That would be completely different with artifacts, but that's not what we're talking about here.
While I don't have as much cube experience as most here, I agree with this assessment. Most cubes just don't have enough enchantments to make War Priest of Thune a real two-for-one often enough. I'd usually end up using it as a Glory Seeker and feel bad about having such a lame creature (and moreso if an opponent played a problematic enchantment some time after the War Priest hit the board.) Even if a Ronom Unicorn plays like Glory Seeker a lot of the time, it still has the potential to do more, which is big for me becasue you don't have the bad feeling when your opponent plays an enchantment later and it usually makes your opponent hesitate to play their enchantment (becasue who wants to use up their Survival of the Fittest of Bitterblossom just to remove a 2/2?)
I've always just piled the cards in more or less random stacks in the center of the table and let everyone involved deal themselves out whatever number of packs they'll need.
I kind of like the idea of balancing the cards in the pool before breaking it into packs as there's a general agreement that green hasn't been well represented in out drafts a lot of times. (We'll either get half as many green cards as any other color in the pool or there will be very few in pack 1 so somebody would have to switch colors to actually make use of it.) In the future, I might make packs ahead of time to seed in specific cards I want to test out. I just haven't ever planned far enough in advance to do this before now.
My cube is sitting at 579 and I have no problem with that. I would rather play multiple drafts and see lots of different cards than have a super consistent cube that always produces the same cards every time.
I'm probably going to be cutting back a little bit soon, mostly in my (frankly oversized) artifact section, but I'm still not really likley to get down to 540 or below.
What about cutting little rectangles out of the sticky part of Post-it notes and writing on that? Just stick the damn thing on the card. It's yellow and obnoxious and nobody can miss it. You may be able to tell when it's thicker at times or when you're dealing and feel the face of the card with your fingers but... this isn't a super serious format anyway.
I've used that method for errata on at least one card in my non-tribal cube (Impulse, adding "Don't shuffle your library afterwards." to the Visions version.) It isn't the prettiest solution, but it works and I've never really concerned myself about players feeling for the post-it square.
I've been looking for an excuse to drop Tezzeret the Seeker and trim back my attempted artifact theme. (I just didn't have enough artifacts-matter cards and nobody drafted it.) This new walker looks like a great replacement, especially as I've been trying to support more tempo in blue. I can't wait to try it out.
Hmmm. I guess I'll have to give the Bouncer a try next time I'm making updates. Thanks for the explanations and sorry for the minor derailment (I could have sworn I was in the Card Evaluation Thread when I posted that).
I'm still waiting for Waterfront Bouncer to impress me, and he's been in my cube from the very beginning. I think everyone must be wrong...
Actually, this brings up a point I'd like clarifying. How good is Waterfront Bouncer supposed to be and is there a trick to it besides discard cards, bounce dudes? I've never tried it in my cube and always raised an eyebrow when I saw it on others' lists. It just looks really unimpressive unless you're running reanimator or Life from the Loam/Crucible of Worlds or have some other way to make the discard less of a cost.
EDIT: I had my post written but not posted before Phantizle's post above. I'm still not quite sure I get it, but it does shed some light. Discarding a card just seems a bit steep, even for repeated bounce.
I'm confused by the 4/3 devil. On one hand a 4 shot lava spike/4/3 creature for R is reallly good. On the other hand browbeat effects generaly suck. On the other hand it's a 4/3 for R.
I'm looking forward to at least trying out the new devil. Even if you always get the worse of the two effects, they're both solid enough that I wouldn't usually mind being "stuck" with the "worse" of the two.
Bear in mind that I do Browbeat in my cube. I know it's not very good, but it is very fun and several people in my group still routinely play it, so I keep it.
Soulbond doesn't specifically say that it only works for your creatures. Only that they stay bonded for as long as you control them both. If you bonded my card with an opponent's creature, even if it immediately unbonded, you would kill that creature.
It wouldn't work this way for the same reason that you never get your opponent's creature if your Sower of Temptation dies while its own triggered ability is on the stack. The rules define a duration that never starts ("for as long as you control both of them" when you don't control both to begin with) and thus the effect never happens.
Comprehensive Rules Cite:
611.2b Some continuous effects generated by the resolution of a spell or ability have durations worded "for as long as . . . ." If the "for as long as" duration never starts, or it ends before the moment the effect would first be applied, the effect does nothing. It doesn't start and immediately stop again, and it doesn't last forever.
If I could find it, I'd say my Tarmogoyf. I got a great deal for it on eBay, put it in my cube and even used it a couple times. Last week, when I was going through my cube to reconstruct my lost card list, it wasn't there and I have no clue what happened to it.
As for cards I can lay hands on, I'd have to say it's my Gaea's Cradle, also a resident of my cube. I got it (along with a ton of other cards) from a cousin who had stopped playing years ago. If only I hadn't traded the Force of Will I got from the same cousin. *sigh*
In sentimental terms, it's my foil Seventh Edition Thorn Elemental hands down. I got it out of the starter deck that was my first Magic purchase ever and it was the all-star of my first real deck. Sure it doesn't have any protection from removal, but who cares!? If it attacks and lives, your opponent will take 7 damage, blockers or no.
While I like to harvest the BoaB collumns for deck ideas (I had a lot of fun with a proliferate heavy Lux Cannon deck last year) I agree that they're very poor compared to previous iterations of the column. I remember once last year when Van Lunen won both of his playtesting games using a card that wasn't even in his deck list.
I'll add another vote for sellecting your Winchester pool complletely randomly.
If your Cube's ballanced to have the percents of the various colors, gold, artifacts and land you want to play with, those percentages should be approximately what you end up with in your pool. If it isn't balanced to your prefered percentages, you should probably modify your cube so that it is.
The answer shouldn't be any different if I target an opponent's creature with lower toughness (I.e. something that dies to Chain of Plasma's damage), right?
I don't run Life&Death or Creakwood Liege, but I'd say it's pretty close. I think Life and Death wins for its versatility, bringing back a utility creature or adding 5 or 6 damage to a late game alpha strike can both be pretty handy.
I run Recoil over Agony Warp. Both are good, but Recoil is more fun, in my opinion, for the times when you catch an opponent empty handed and get to remove a permanent for good.
I kind of like the idea of balancing the cards in the pool before breaking it into packs as there's a general agreement that green hasn't been well represented in out drafts a lot of times. (We'll either get half as many green cards as any other color in the pool or there will be very few in pack 1 so somebody would have to switch colors to actually make use of it.) In the future, I might make packs ahead of time to seed in specific cards I want to test out. I just haven't ever planned far enough in advance to do this before now.
I'm probably going to be cutting back a little bit soon, mostly in my (frankly oversized) artifact section, but I'm still not really likley to get down to 540 or below.
EDIT: I had my post written but not posted before Phantizle's post above. I'm still not quite sure I get it, but it does shed some light. Discarding a card just seems a bit steep, even for repeated bounce.
Bear in mind that I do Browbeat in my cube. I know it's not very good, but it is very fun and several people in my group still routinely play it, so I keep it.
Comprehensive Rules Cite:
As for cards I can lay hands on, I'd have to say it's my Gaea's Cradle, also a resident of my cube. I got it (along with a ton of other cards) from a cousin who had stopped playing years ago. If only I hadn't traded the Force of Will I got from the same cousin. *sigh*
In sentimental terms, it's my foil Seventh Edition Thorn Elemental hands down. I got it out of the starter deck that was my first Magic purchase ever and it was the all-star of my first real deck. Sure it doesn't have any protection from removal, but who cares!? If it attacks and lives, your opponent will take 7 damage, blockers or no.
If your Cube's ballanced to have the percents of the various colors, gold, artifacts and land you want to play with, those percentages should be approximately what you end up with in your pool. If it isn't balanced to your prefered percentages, you should probably modify your cube so that it is.