A friend of mine really likes heavy tribal, so I started thinking about one for the cube. The only one I found with enough support were slivers. Does anyone think they could be an OK tribe here?
Just so that it is easier to decide, here are all the slivers that aren´t terrible.
If you have enough slivers, somebody (most likely your friend) WILL draft the sliver deck. But your tribal fanatic is only likely to see enough slivers to assemble the dedicated sliver deck on those occasions when the entire cube is drafted. I'm not sure whether 17 slivers is enough even then; the exact number will probably require some playtesting to suss out.
My inner Timmy does squeal at the thought of drafting a 5-color sliver deck, though. If you draft your entire cube regularly then I'd say it's worth experimenting with. Especially if your friend is a regular drafter. In Cube design as in politics, it never hurts to pander to your base once in a while.
Regarding Ridged Kusite: I'd consider running it if I needed another discard outlet in some hypothetical future where there were enough common reanimation or (good) madness effects to make those archetypes viable in a Pauper Cube draft. But I don't think it's good enough right now. I want to compare it to Wild Mongrel, but the Mongrel can attack and pump himself more than once per turn. The extra 1B on the activation cost kind of hurts it, too -- compare with Infantry Veteran that can pump up another attacker just by tapping.
Tell them why you love the Pauper format so much. Personally, I love drafting from my Pauper Cube because it produces such gritty and focused games. I can't count on drawing into some mythic-rare haymaker to turn the game around if I fall too far behind -- I have to fight for every single tempo gain, for every scrap of damage and board position and card advantage that I can wring out of my opponent from turn 1. It hones the fundamental play skills to a razor edge. A Pauper Cuber learns to fight DIRTY.
If those durdle-Cube heathens poo-poo the Pauper experience, tell them some stories about epic games you've seen. Tell them about the time you swung for 12 damage with a Steppe Lynx wearing Adventuring Gear and riding a well-timed Harrow. Tell them about the Sprout Swarm token army that got blown out by a top-decked Pestilence. Tell them about the ramp deck that powered out a turn 4 Ulamog's Crusher.
And if you can't recruit a full 8-player pod right away, start smaller. Run some 2-player Winchester drafts or 4-player sealed deck sessions at the store. Let the fence-sitters see how much fun your group is having with it, and they'll come around.
I'm honestly not sure which shade is better, though I'm currently running Crypt Ripper because A) I love me some haste, and B) the 2/2 base stats mean I have to pump slightly less mana into it to trump a blocker.
And as for Vile Rebirth vs Beckon Apparition: a 2/2 body makes a much better surprise blocker than a 1/1. The 1/1 flyer can chump block almost anything, but the 2/2 is much more likely to trade with an attacker.
----
Another card I've not seen discussed much is Vigean Hydropon. I know it's usually regarded as tech for constructed graft decks but it looks like it could become the U/G counterpart to Travel Preparations in a creature-heavy Pauper Cube. While it could easily become a dead draw late in the game, I think it could be a total house in a midrange deck if it's played early enough. Imagine curving into Primal Huntbeast, or Mist Raven... or a convoked Sprout Swarm. The possibilities are tantalizing enough that I'm going to try it out over Coiling Oracle, which has been very underwhelming for me.
Samite Pilgrim looks neat if you want to push multi-color control decks with the sunburst and/or domain mechanics. And if you want to hose the burn decks. Depends on the cube as always.
Dauthi Jackal looks like Blind Zealot's childhood pet. I'm honestly not sure which one is better. They do very similar things, but play out very differently in certain combat situations. I could see the value in running both.
Nantuko Shaman gets a big 'meh' from me. The 4-drop slot is when I want to start playing bigger stompy things in green. The suspended cantrip just doesn't excite me all that much. If I want card advantage beyond Snake Umbra and Gift of the Gargantuan in green during a draft, then I start moving into blue or black as a second color.
I honestly don't know what to think of Ruinous Minotaur. He demands a quick answer from the opponent, that's for sure.
If you like Tar Pit Warrior then check out Skulking Knight while you're at it. I'd have to say the Warrior is better on defense but the Knight is better on offense.
@MagicFever: You definitely want Bladetusk Boar in there so cut the Volcanic Hammer. You already have enough redundancy in your burn spells, especially with the acquisition of Searing Spear. Keep the Nightbird's Clutches in there: it's such a house in R/x aggro and red can afford to cut some burn for other effects. Variety is good.
Derp. I forgot that mana burn is no longer a thing. Still, I think I'd rather have a vanilla 4/3 than a 5/3 I have to tap out to support every turn. Bluffing is a huge part of good Magic play. If I can leave mana up before my attack, my opponent has to wonder whether I'm holding a combat trick or some sort of devastating play for the 2nd main phase. The less information my opponent has before combat, the more likely s/he is to play into my plans.
All these cards piqued my interest, with often very unique abilities or states. Undying Beast being the weirdest and hardest to value out of all of them. I mean really. I have no idea what to even think about that card, as no other ability like that even exists at common.
When there's a Quirion Ranger on the board, your opponent always has to wonder whether you'll untap a blocker in response to an attack. In that sense she gives your best blocker pseudo-vigilance. She has some nice synergy with landfall effects too. She'd be worth testing, I guess.
Re: Portent -- Holy carp it's a slowtrip Ponder! That you can use to sort-of fateseal your opponent if you really want to! The slowtrip hurts but the versatility helps. I'd rank it below the holy trinity of Brainstorm, Ponder, and Preordain, but above Serum Visions, Opt, and Index. I don't see myself running it at 360 cards.
Carrion Feeder looks like a good option for cubes that really want a sac outlet. It's more efficiently costed than Bloodflow Connoisseur and the boost is more permanent than Devouring Swarm, both points in its favor. But I can only think of a couple of cubable cards that even NEED a sac outlet off the top of my head: Act of Treason and Ray of Command. Overall I'm not sure that makes it worth the slot.
Orcish Lumberjack: Looks very high-risk/high-reward. It could let R/G aggro get off to an explosive all-in start, but losing those forests could backfire if the opponent finds a way to stabilize for the long game. I like the tension but the R/G section is pretty stacked at 360 cards. I'd run it in larger cubes though.
Cutthroat il-Dal gets a big no from me personally. There's a couple of reasons most cubers run Slash Panther over Lightning Elemental, but the one relevant to this discussion is that 1 toughness dies way too easily to all pingers and a great deal of B/R removal as well. I don't really like the hellbent requirement for shadow either.
Keldon Berserker is way too inconsistent. To put it in perspective: Ogre Resister is always a 4/3 for 4 mana, while Keldon Berserker is only 5/3 when the stars align just right and you have a way to burn through all your mana ahead of your attack phase. Otherwise he's just an overcosted 2/3.
U: Regarding Archeomancer -- I like the effect but I don't like the body. Izzet Chronarch and Mnemonic Wall both do the same thing for 1 more but have P/T ratios that are still relevant during the late game, which is when you're more likely to have a spell worth retrieving anyway. And 4 CMC is stacked to the rafters for blue already. Welkin Tern is a rock-solid reprint; run it and never look back. Tricks of the Trade is definitely testworthy.
B: Liliana's Shade is arguably the 2nd-best shade after Crypt Ripper. Murder is great for mono-black, but Rend Flesh and Eyeblight's Ending kill almost as many creatures and are much easier to splash. I'm not sure black needs another 3-CMC spot removal spell.
R: Bladetusk Boar is so good. Dragon Hatchling is worth testing over the other firebreathers. Fervent Cathar has shown us that "target creature can't block" can be surprisingly relevant, so I like Goblin Battlejester too -- at least on a trial basis. I wouldn't be surprised if it doesn't pan out. Reckless Brute looks like it has more potential than Arc Runner, so I might have to try him too. I'd run Mad Prophet before Rummaging Goblin for the same reason I run Borderland Ranger over Sylvan Ranger: the 2/2 body is far more combat-relevant than the 1/1. Searing Spear should really be an auto-include unless you're really trying to cut back on the red burn package; it's kicking out Volcanic Hammer from my own cube and (I would imagine) a great many other cubes as well.
G: Sentinel Spider is the honey badger of the M13 commons -- he just takes what he wants and doesn't give a ****! Definitely an auto-include for all Pauper cubes. I'm less thrilled about Ranger's Path because it only fetches forests and a 4-drop ramp spell is so. Very. Slow. I'd only test it if I wanted to abandon aggro and go full fat-camp with the green section of my cube.
With all that said, I'd like an opinion on a couple of other M13 commons I haven't seen discussed yet: Primal Huntbeast in green and Watercourser in blue. I like the Huntbeast because it's a Sacred Wolf that doesn't die to a lone chump blocker; it's probably the closest that Pauper will come to playing Thrun. And Watercourser looks like the offspring of Calcite Snapper and Flowstone Crusher: he's cheap enough to throw down as a roadblock against aggro, and when you swing with him later he'll either eat a bear, trade with one big blocker or multiple chumps, or get in for up to 4 damage. He's just so versatile.
I'll chime in to support the Hallimar Wavewatch. I've only seen it hit max level once during play, but it doesn't even need to swing to win the game: the 0/6 mode can stall out aggro decks long enough for control to stabilize and play another finisher if necessary.
And now for a completely different topic. I'm not really happy with the conventional mana fixing solutions in Pauper beyond the signets, mana rocks, bouncelands, and panoramas. The borderpost cycle is OK for allied-color pairs, but the lack of an enemy-color borderpost cycle really grinds my gears; I always liked the bouncelands much better because there's one for each of the 10 possible 2-color pairs. I feel that enemy-color guilds should have just as many nice things to play with as the other guilds if we're organizing our multicolor sections along guild lines, as most of us seem to be doing.
I've been toying with the idea of using Magic Set Editor to create a cycle of custom cards to complement either the borderposts or the panoramas from the Alara block. Which would you prefer to cube, if you had the option of doing so: a set of 5 enemy-color borderposts, or a set of 5 wedge color-trio panoramas?
Examples:
Mistfire Borderpost -- 1UR
Artifact
You may pay 1 and return a basic land you control to its owner's hand rather than pay Mistfire Borderpost's mana cost.
Mistfire Borderpost enters the battlefield tapped. t: Add U or R to your mana pool.
Doran's Panorama (working title)
Land t: Add 1 to your mana pool. 1, t, Sacrifice Doran's Panorama: Search your library for a basic Swamp, Forest, or Plains card and put it into play tapped. Then shuffle your library.
I was just cruising through Gatherer, looking at the new reprints in Planechase 2012, and spotted this:
Primal Plasma: 3U
Creature - Elemental Shapeshifter
As Primal Plasma enters the battlefield, it becomes your choice of a 3/3 creature, a 2/2 creature with flying, or a 1/6 creature with defender.
Kinda looks like a color-shifted Skinshifter except that it stays in whatever form you first pick. I realize that none of those three forms are very exciting on their own for that casting cost, but does the ability to choose between them make this potentially cubeworthy?
2013 Core Set spoilers are accessible from the MGS front page now. And they even have a few commons up! Technically they're from the DotP 2013 preview, but it seems reasonable to assume that they'll make it in.
I just finished a Winchester draft with my downstairs neighbor, and Gryff Vanguard definitely pulled its weight in my 5-color ramp deck. Of course, I have to admit that I'm only running the Vanguard until I can either replace it with a Mulldrifter or find something else to cut so I can run both. (Drawing an extra card is totally worth the loss of 1 power IMO, and the ability to evoke it for those cards during the early game is nothing to discount either.)
There's been lots of theoretical discussion of the new AVR cards, but has anybody else had the opportunity to test them in actual Cube play yet? I can only offer a few observations so far:
Kruin Striker and Fervent Cathar are completely devastating in R/x aggro -- especially when you play them back-to-back. During one game I dropped the Striker on turn 2, then dropped the Cathar on turn 3 and swung for 5 points of unblockable damage. Then I curved out with a turn 4 Battle-Rattle Shaman and pumped the Striker up to a 5/1 trampler for another swing. Needless to say the game didn't last too long after that.
I'm not sure whether Pathbreaker Wurm is any better than Yavimaya Wurm, but he's certainly more fun. The jury's still out on the other soulbond guys, at least in my playgroup -- they rarely get passed up, but I haven't seen anybody pwn with them yet either. I'm still trying them all out for now.
Dag, black got some interesting Pauper spoilers today! I hope some of these pan out.
Predator's Gambit - B
Enchantment - Aura
Enchant creature
Enchanted creature gets +2/+1.
If enchanted creature is the only creature you control, it has intimidate.
I know, I know: enchantments < equipment because they generate card disadvantage when the enchanted creature dies or gets bounced. But Bx tempo/control could create a very fast clock with this.
Vital Harvest - 2B
Sorcery
Target player loses X life and you gain X life, where X is the highest power among creatures you control.
Bx midrange just got a cheaper Lava Axe with lifegain.
Cátaro ferviente – 2R Common
Creature – Human knight
Haste.
When this enters the battlefield, target creature can’t block this turn.
2/1
Look nice!
Fervent Cathar?
It's a little under-curve for its CMC, but the abilities synergize well. I'd definitely take this over something like Crossway Vampire just because it can swing with your other aggro-beaters on the same turn that it sidelines a blocker.
If you have enough slivers, somebody (most likely your friend) WILL draft the sliver deck. But your tribal fanatic is only likely to see enough slivers to assemble the dedicated sliver deck on those occasions when the entire cube is drafted. I'm not sure whether 17 slivers is enough even then; the exact number will probably require some playtesting to suss out.
My inner Timmy does squeal at the thought of drafting a 5-color sliver deck, though. If you draft your entire cube regularly then I'd say it's worth experimenting with. Especially if your friend is a regular drafter. In Cube design as in politics, it never hurts to pander to your base once in a while.
Regarding Ridged Kusite: I'd consider running it if I needed another discard outlet in some hypothetical future where there were enough common reanimation or (good) madness effects to make those archetypes viable in a Pauper Cube draft. But I don't think it's good enough right now. I want to compare it to Wild Mongrel, but the Mongrel can attack and pump himself more than once per turn. The extra 1B on the activation cost kind of hurts it, too -- compare with Infantry Veteran that can pump up another attacker just by tapping.
Tell them why you love the Pauper format so much. Personally, I love drafting from my Pauper Cube because it produces such gritty and focused games. I can't count on drawing into some mythic-rare haymaker to turn the game around if I fall too far behind -- I have to fight for every single tempo gain, for every scrap of damage and board position and card advantage that I can wring out of my opponent from turn 1. It hones the fundamental play skills to a razor edge. A Pauper Cuber learns to fight DIRTY.
If those durdle-Cube heathens poo-poo the Pauper experience, tell them some stories about epic games you've seen. Tell them about the time you swung for 12 damage with a Steppe Lynx wearing Adventuring Gear and riding a well-timed Harrow. Tell them about the Sprout Swarm token army that got blown out by a top-decked Pestilence. Tell them about the ramp deck that powered out a turn 4 Ulamog's Crusher.
And if you can't recruit a full 8-player pod right away, start smaller. Run some 2-player Winchester drafts or 4-player sealed deck sessions at the store. Let the fence-sitters see how much fun your group is having with it, and they'll come around.
I'm honestly not sure which shade is better, though I'm currently running Crypt Ripper because A) I love me some haste, and B) the 2/2 base stats mean I have to pump slightly less mana into it to trump a blocker.
And as for Vile Rebirth vs Beckon Apparition: a 2/2 body makes a much better surprise blocker than a 1/1. The 1/1 flyer can chump block almost anything, but the 2/2 is much more likely to trade with an attacker.
----
Another card I've not seen discussed much is Vigean Hydropon. I know it's usually regarded as tech for constructed graft decks but it looks like it could become the U/G counterpart to Travel Preparations in a creature-heavy Pauper Cube. While it could easily become a dead draw late in the game, I think it could be a total house in a midrange deck if it's played early enough. Imagine curving into Primal Huntbeast, or Mist Raven... or a convoked Sprout Swarm. The possibilities are tantalizing enough that I'm going to try it out over Coiling Oracle, which has been very underwhelming for me.
Samite Pilgrim looks neat if you want to push multi-color control decks with the sunburst and/or domain mechanics. And if you want to hose the burn decks. Depends on the cube as always.
Dauthi Jackal looks like Blind Zealot's childhood pet. I'm honestly not sure which one is better. They do very similar things, but play out very differently in certain combat situations. I could see the value in running both.
Nantuko Shaman gets a big 'meh' from me. The 4-drop slot is when I want to start playing bigger stompy things in green. The suspended cantrip just doesn't excite me all that much. If I want card advantage beyond Snake Umbra and Gift of the Gargantuan in green during a draft, then I start moving into blue or black as a second color.
I honestly don't know what to think of Ruinous Minotaur. He demands a quick answer from the opponent, that's for sure.
If you like Tar Pit Warrior then check out Skulking Knight while you're at it. I'd have to say the Warrior is better on defense but the Knight is better on offense.
You'd have to cube a LOT of elves to make Priest of Titania worthwhile, I think. Among the 2-drop mana dorks in a non-tribal cube, I'd have to rank her behind Werebear, Wall of Roots, Overgrown Battlement, Steward of Valeron, and even Scorned Villager // Moonscarred Werewolf.
Derp. I forgot that mana burn is no longer a thing. Still, I think I'd rather have a vanilla 4/3 than a 5/3 I have to tap out to support every turn. Bluffing is a huge part of good Magic play. If I can leave mana up before my attack, my opponent has to wonder whether I'm holding a combat trick or some sort of devastating play for the 2nd main phase. The less information my opponent has before combat, the more likely s/he is to play into my plans.
When there's a Quirion Ranger on the board, your opponent always has to wonder whether you'll untap a blocker in response to an attack. In that sense she gives your best blocker pseudo-vigilance. She has some nice synergy with landfall effects too. She'd be worth testing, I guess.
Re: Portent -- Holy carp it's a slowtrip Ponder! That you can use to sort-of fateseal your opponent if you really want to! The slowtrip hurts but the versatility helps. I'd rank it below the holy trinity of Brainstorm, Ponder, and Preordain, but above Serum Visions, Opt, and Index. I don't see myself running it at 360 cards.
Carrion Feeder looks like a good option for cubes that really want a sac outlet. It's more efficiently costed than Bloodflow Connoisseur and the boost is more permanent than Devouring Swarm, both points in its favor. But I can only think of a couple of cubable cards that even NEED a sac outlet off the top of my head: Act of Treason and Ray of Command. Overall I'm not sure that makes it worth the slot.
Orcish Lumberjack: Looks very high-risk/high-reward. It could let R/G aggro get off to an explosive all-in start, but losing those forests could backfire if the opponent finds a way to stabilize for the long game. I like the tension but the R/G section is pretty stacked at 360 cards. I'd run it in larger cubes though.
Cutthroat il-Dal gets a big no from me personally. There's a couple of reasons most cubers run Slash Panther over Lightning Elemental, but the one relevant to this discussion is that 1 toughness dies way too easily to all pingers and a great deal of B/R removal as well. I don't really like the hellbent requirement for shadow either.
Keldon Berserker is way too inconsistent. To put it in perspective: Ogre Resister is always a 4/3 for 4 mana, while Keldon Berserker is only 5/3 when the stars align just right and you have a way to burn through all your mana ahead of your attack phase. Otherwise he's just an overcosted 2/3.
W: Attended Knight looks solid enough, though I don't necessarily like it more than Kitsune Blademaster or Ballynock Cohort. I'd only run Captain's Call if I didn't already have Cenn's Enlistment or if I was really desperate to push a token theme in my cube. Ajani's Sunstriker is a little meh unless you really need more lifegain; Lone Missionary has the same power and will probably net you more life before it dies.
U: Regarding Archeomancer -- I like the effect but I don't like the body. Izzet Chronarch and Mnemonic Wall both do the same thing for 1 more but have P/T ratios that are still relevant during the late game, which is when you're more likely to have a spell worth retrieving anyway. And 4 CMC is stacked to the rafters for blue already. Welkin Tern is a rock-solid reprint; run it and never look back. Tricks of the Trade is definitely testworthy.
B: Liliana's Shade is arguably the 2nd-best shade after Crypt Ripper. Murder is great for mono-black, but Rend Flesh and Eyeblight's Ending kill almost as many creatures and are much easier to splash. I'm not sure black needs another 3-CMC spot removal spell.
R: Bladetusk Boar is so good. Dragon Hatchling is worth testing over the other firebreathers. Fervent Cathar has shown us that "target creature can't block" can be surprisingly relevant, so I like Goblin Battlejester too -- at least on a trial basis. I wouldn't be surprised if it doesn't pan out. Reckless Brute looks like it has more potential than Arc Runner, so I might have to try him too. I'd run Mad Prophet before Rummaging Goblin for the same reason I run Borderland Ranger over Sylvan Ranger: the 2/2 body is far more combat-relevant than the 1/1. Searing Spear should really be an auto-include unless you're really trying to cut back on the red burn package; it's kicking out Volcanic Hammer from my own cube and (I would imagine) a great many other cubes as well.
G: Sentinel Spider is the honey badger of the M13 commons -- he just takes what he wants and doesn't give a ****! Definitely an auto-include for all Pauper cubes. I'm less thrilled about Ranger's Path because it only fetches forests and a 4-drop ramp spell is so. Very. Slow. I'd only test it if I wanted to abandon aggro and go full fat-camp with the green section of my cube.
With all that said, I'd like an opinion on a couple of other M13 commons I haven't seen discussed yet: Primal Huntbeast in green and Watercourser in blue. I like the Huntbeast because it's a Sacred Wolf that doesn't die to a lone chump blocker; it's probably the closest that Pauper will come to playing Thrun. And Watercourser looks like the offspring of Calcite Snapper and Flowstone Crusher: he's cheap enough to throw down as a roadblock against aggro, and when you swing with him later he'll either eat a bear, trade with one big blocker or multiple chumps, or get in for up to 4 damage. He's just so versatile.
What do you guys think?
And now for a completely different topic. I'm not really happy with the conventional mana fixing solutions in Pauper beyond the signets, mana rocks, bouncelands, and panoramas. The borderpost cycle is OK for allied-color pairs, but the lack of an enemy-color borderpost cycle really grinds my gears; I always liked the bouncelands much better because there's one for each of the 10 possible 2-color pairs. I feel that enemy-color guilds should have just as many nice things to play with as the other guilds if we're organizing our multicolor sections along guild lines, as most of us seem to be doing.
I've been toying with the idea of using Magic Set Editor to create a cycle of custom cards to complement either the borderposts or the panoramas from the Alara block. Which would you prefer to cube, if you had the option of doing so: a set of 5 enemy-color borderposts, or a set of 5 wedge color-trio panoramas?
Examples:
Mistfire Borderpost -- 1UR
Artifact
You may pay 1 and return a basic land you control to its owner's hand rather than pay Mistfire Borderpost's mana cost.
Mistfire Borderpost enters the battlefield tapped.
t: Add U or R to your mana pool.
Doran's Panorama (working title)
Land
t: Add 1 to your mana pool.
1, t, Sacrifice Doran's Panorama: Search your library for a basic Swamp, Forest, or Plains card and put it into play tapped. Then shuffle your library.
Primal Plasma: 3U
Creature - Elemental Shapeshifter
As Primal Plasma enters the battlefield, it becomes your choice of a 3/3 creature, a 2/2 creature with flying, or a 1/6 creature with defender.
Kinda looks like a color-shifted Skinshifter except that it stays in whatever form you first pick. I realize that none of those three forms are very exciting on their own for that casting cost, but does the ability to choose between them make this potentially cubeworthy?
Chandra's Fury looks mildly interesting as a one-sided Rain of Embers + Lava Spike. I don't really see Archeomancer edging out Izzet Chronarch or Mnemonic Wall despite its lower CMC; 1/2 means it can neither attack nor block effectively after it retrieves your spell. And I'd honestly take Markov Patrician over Servant of Nefarox.
There's been lots of theoretical discussion of the new AVR cards, but has anybody else had the opportunity to test them in actual Cube play yet? I can only offer a few observations so far:
Kruin Striker and Fervent Cathar are completely devastating in R/x aggro -- especially when you play them back-to-back. During one game I dropped the Striker on turn 2, then dropped the Cathar on turn 3 and swung for 5 points of unblockable damage. Then I curved out with a turn 4 Battle-Rattle Shaman and pumped the Striker up to a 5/1 trampler for another swing. Needless to say the game didn't last too long after that.
I'm not sure whether Pathbreaker Wurm is any better than Yavimaya Wurm, but he's certainly more fun. The jury's still out on the other soulbond guys, at least in my playgroup -- they rarely get passed up, but I haven't seen anybody pwn with them yet either. I'm still trying them all out for now.
I know, I know: enchantments < equipment because they generate card disadvantage when the enchanted creature dies or gets bounced. But Bx tempo/control could create a very fast clock with this.
Bx midrange just got a cheaper Lava Axe with lifegain.
Fervent Cathar?
It's a little under-curve for its CMC, but the abilities synergize well. I'd definitely take this over something like Crossway Vampire just because it can swing with your other aggro-beaters on the same turn that it sidelines a blocker.