I would like to discuss, if cards like Caldera Hellion that deal 3 damage to each creatures and cards like Night Incarnate that provide -3/-3 to all creatures are viable in commander.
I often wonder if 4 damage & -4/-4 is the sweet spot of these limited sweepers. Cards like Crater Hellion are quite useful on many boards, while 3 damage & -3/-3 is more limitied.
What do you think, are such cards significant enough in a vacuum? Or do you think that they are too limited for a very mixed meta?
The issue is not with '3 damage' effects. It is that the specific cards you are using for it are bad.
Unless you are abusing the fact they are creatures, to such an extent you can justify overcosted, limited sweeper effects, just play Anger of the Gods or Toxic Deluge
By the numbers, it seems to me that -3/-3 or 3 damage reliably kills 30 out of 50 of the top 50 creatures in EDHRECs. You could say 30.5 if you want to count the fact that these effects will also sometimes kill the swarm created by Avenger of Zendikar even when they fail to kill Avenger himself. That seems okay, but the problem is that the vast majority of those creatures are things with EtB or dies triggers and so sweeping them is often meaningless collateral.
More tellingly, these effects only kill 5 of the top 20 commanders, and I'd say they only kill 4 reliably (since we can't count on Animar, Soul of Elements being a 3/3 or less when we drop this). As these are the cards we WANT to answer, it makes them risky.
Also we must consider that we have Toxic Deluge in black as a scalable effect, and that if we're willing to pay 1 more we can get better effect from stuff like Damnation or get the same effect but more flexibility off of, say, Rolling Earthquake in red.
That makes these effects metagame calls. If your meta has a ton of small tribal decks (especially decks like Elves and Humans that are likely to run x/1 and x/2 mana dorks) or token decks these effects can be worthwhile, but otherwise I think they're dead cards too often.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Sufferer of EDHD
Commander - Currently Playing: RCRDaretti: Superfriends Forever RCR WGBDoran: Ent-mootWBG GGGMultani: Group Bear HugGGG GB(B/G)The Gitrog Monster: Dredgefall DurdleGB(B/G) RGWGahiji, the Honored Group Hug MonsterRGW UB(U/B)Yuriko, Ninja Trinket AggroUB(U/B) WUBRGAtogatog: Assembling a OHKOWUBRG
To post a comment, please login or register a new account.
I often wonder if 4 damage & -4/-4 is the sweet spot of these limited sweepers. Cards like Crater Hellion are quite useful on many boards, while 3 damage & -3/-3 is more limitied.
What do you think, are such cards significant enough in a vacuum? Or do you think that they are too limited for a very mixed meta?
Unless you are abusing the fact they are creatures, to such an extent you can justify overcosted, limited sweeper effects, just play Anger of the Gods or Toxic Deluge
A Dying Wish
To Rise Again
Chainer, Dementia Master
Muldrotha, the Gravetide
Atraxa, Praetors' Voice
More tellingly, these effects only kill 5 of the top 20 commanders, and I'd say they only kill 4 reliably (since we can't count on Animar, Soul of Elements being a 3/3 or less when we drop this). As these are the cards we WANT to answer, it makes them risky.
Also we must consider that we have Toxic Deluge in black as a scalable effect, and that if we're willing to pay 1 more we can get better effect from stuff like Damnation or get the same effect but more flexibility off of, say, Rolling Earthquake in red.
That makes these effects metagame calls. If your meta has a ton of small tribal decks (especially decks like Elves and Humans that are likely to run x/1 and x/2 mana dorks) or token decks these effects can be worthwhile, but otherwise I think they're dead cards too often.
RCRDaretti: Superfriends Forever RCR
WGBDoran: Ent-mootWBG
GGGMultani: Group Bear HugGGG
GB(B/G)The Gitrog Monster: Dredgefall DurdleGB(B/G)
RGWGahiji, the Honored Group Hug MonsterRGW
UB(U/B)Yuriko, Ninja Trinket AggroUB(U/B)
WUBRGAtogatog: Assembling a OHKOWUBRG