I'm pretty excited for the soulbound guys (especially in normal limited, but some of the ones that are good there are probably too cute to work here. Eg. the deathtouch guy could be a pretty high pick in draft, depending on the speed of the format and such as it allows you to have a deathtouched defender for the rest of the game, but that's not nearly as impressive here). I like Wingcrafter a lot. But delver has impressed probably more than any other card from innistrad block apart from Brimstone Volley and I don't think that wingcrafter will quite be able to top that.
Delver of Secrets is awesome in the right 60-card constructed deck, no doubt about that. I run a U/R Delver deck myself, and my 5th Delver went straight into my own Cube. But it seems much tougher to both draw and flip a singleton Delver during a draft. Wingcrafter should be far more consistently valuable in aggro and midrange decks packed with plenty of beatsticks, and those seem to be the more straightforward archetypes to draft. But maybe that's just true for my table and my Cube.
Nightshade Peddler is definitely worse than Ambush Viper -- I have to work so hard to maintain a poker face when I'm holding a Viper -- but the Peddler might have a slight edge over Thornweald Archer: the ability to grant deathtouch to other creatures sounds even better in the Cube format, given our access to pingers and flying first-strikers from other expansions.
I can agree that Brimstone Volley is nuts and will probably leave my Cube right about the time that Lightning Bolt does.
Congratulations to Lanxal et al -- this thread is the one that convinced me to stop lurking and register for an MTGS forum account. I poured over the entire history of this thread when I was building my 360-card Pauper Cube, and learned a lot by doing so. So far my Cube has been well-received by the few people at my LGS that I've been able to rope into a draft, and I have you all to thank for it.
Oh, and I'm totally going to give all of the common soulbond critters from AVR a try -- but then, my Cube is mostly stuff from M11 forward, since that's when I got back into the hobby. The soulbond mechanic itself looks strong enough and non-parasitic enough to work well in my Pauper Cube. Wingcrafter in particular looks strong for Ux aggro/tempo -- even better than Delver of Secrets, I'll call it right now. That said, I agree with everyone's assessment that jank like Joint Assault is right out for being too narrow; there's no way we'll get enough soulbond critters from AVR to make that worthwhile.
I'll probably end up testing Cloudshift and Ghostly Flicker too since my nascent Cube can easily make room for them, and I love ETB effects and combat-trick instants in general.
Delver of Secrets is awesome in the right 60-card constructed deck, no doubt about that. I run a U/R Delver deck myself, and my 5th Delver went straight into my own Cube. But it seems much tougher to both draw and flip a singleton Delver during a draft. Wingcrafter should be far more consistently valuable in aggro and midrange decks packed with plenty of beatsticks, and those seem to be the more straightforward archetypes to draft. But maybe that's just true for my table and my Cube.
Nightshade Peddler is definitely worse than Ambush Viper -- I have to work so hard to maintain a poker face when I'm holding a Viper -- but the Peddler might have a slight edge over Thornweald Archer: the ability to grant deathtouch to other creatures sounds even better in the Cube format, given our access to pingers and flying first-strikers from other expansions.
I can agree that Brimstone Volley is nuts and will probably leave my Cube right about the time that Lightning Bolt does.
Oh, and I'm totally going to give all of the common soulbond critters from AVR a try -- but then, my Cube is mostly stuff from M11 forward, since that's when I got back into the hobby. The soulbond mechanic itself looks strong enough and non-parasitic enough to work well in my Pauper Cube. Wingcrafter in particular looks strong for Ux aggro/tempo -- even better than Delver of Secrets, I'll call it right now. That said, I agree with everyone's assessment that jank like Joint Assault is right out for being too narrow; there's no way we'll get enough soulbond critters from AVR to make that worthwhile.
I'll probably end up testing Cloudshift and Ghostly Flicker too since my nascent Cube can easily make room for them, and I love ETB effects and combat-trick instants in general.