When I first looked at this creature, I wasn't particularly impressed. Is tutoring up an extra 2-power creature worth casting a 3-mana 1/1? Perhaps not for the typical red aggro deck, but what about red decks doing other interesting things? There's a literal TON of targets for this card, and casting it on T3 and curving directly into a Sower or Solemn Simulacrum seems like it's exactly the kind of play that a lot of mid-range and control decks want to do. And with equipment, sacrifice effects, blink and other ways to get extra value from a 1/1, it looks like it could be quite the above-average performer. I've heard polarizing opinions on the card, and the last time I played it it was less than stellar, but granted, it was in a dragon cube and it was years ago. There are a lot of legitimate targets that have been printed since then, and I'm strongly reconsidering the card now. What are everyone else's thoughts on this dude?
I'm in a similar boat - the last time I ran the card in my cube was when my cube was under the advice of someone who made my cube pretty dragony, he told me to take it out (although he also told me to use cards like Stalking Vengeance in my cube. *gag*.) It definitely seems better now since there are a lot of good targets introduced in the past few years:
Initial impressions are that it may not be worth the card, but the better way to be to look at it as a Worldly Tutor + body + keeping next draw with restrictions on it, so it may be a case where the best decks to utilize it will have to have a certain critical mass to utilize it effectively. I've been testing M13 things, but I'll throw this in the testing as well. It's a card that I really want to be good, possibly because I love the mythos of the Romance of the Three Kingdoms (although I wish there were more cubeworthy cards in that set.)
I feel like as long as I am not playing red aggro, this card would have a lot of value. There seems to be a lot of different toolbox creatures that he can grab.
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I have 21 targets just in the 4+cc range. Not to mention the plethora of 1-3cc creatures it can grab. I'm going to test it out at 500 for sure, and I expect it to do pretty well.
Price keeps it out of my cube, ill test it when I win the lottery
This is the only reason I could see for not running it.
I have one in my 450 unpowered cube. It's so good, and gives another good card to red that isn't a burn spell; which is something I'm always looking for. Also if your cube supports Splinter twin/Kiki jiki/exarch/pester mite this is another great card to support it. As well as a slew of other midrange and control decks.
If I could afford it, I would likely give it a try. It is a unique, interesting effect that will continue to get stronger as WOTC continues to focus on creatures. Beyond getting all those toolboxy creatures with CIPT triggers, it also serves as a tutor for combo-ish cards such as Braids, Karmic Guide, Bloodghast, Squee, and Kiki-Jiki, though sadly it cannot get the other parts of the combo like Restoration Angel and Zealous Conscripts. As sort of a throwaway bonus, it can also get a couple of legitimate finishers in most cubes like hornet queen, deranged hermit, and siege gang. Seems like a card that is on the cusp and could fit into most MTGS style cubes.
I had one for a while a few years ago, and it just never impressed enough to justify holding onto its hefty price tag instead of trading it for other cards I wanted for Cube/Legacy.
While you were able to get awesome creatures at times, the 1/1 body for 3 and the effect were really only was handy in control-type decks.
We've been playing Imperial Recruiter at 720 along with the aforementioned combos (red/blue infinite guys package). He is nearly always played in that deck and is an awesome addition to it. I'd play him for that reason alone, but he has other applications as well.
Counterburn seems to love him with blue targets like Sower of Temptation, Glen Archmage, and Mulldrifter.
Also as mentioned he's a sac outlet / equipment holder (equipment holder is particularly nice with Stoneforge Mystic + equipment package).
He's much better than I gave him credit for at 450 or 540.
3 mana for a tiny utility creature that gets you another small* creature seems like too much durdling for my taste - especially for red decks. I mean nobody is considering Fierce Empath for their lists, which is in a better color for that effect and gives you a game ending creature.
Speak for yourself, we play him too.
Fierce Empath is good. These guys put stuff directly into your hand, which is huge. Fierce Empath is a quasi-Demonic Tutor for stuff you're tutoring for half the time anyway. The fact that it's in green pushes it way over the edge.
3 mana for a tiny utility creature that gets you another small* creature seems like too much durdling for my taste - especially for red decks. I mean nobody is considering Fierce Empath for their lists, which is in a better color for that effect and gives you a game ending creature.
In red control or midrange I don't mind Paying 3 for a tutor/speed bump that gets me a utility creature or sometimes finisher. In green I never want to pay 3 for a 1/1. If it ramps me like wood elves I'll consider it as a 23rd. But wood elves has been cut from my 450
Recruiter is far more flexible then fierce empath as all he does is grab a Titan
Edit -- A better way of saying it is recruiter can be proactive or reactive. He can grab a glen Elendra, hornet queen, Meloku, or so on to close a game out. Or he can grab a sower, viridian shaman, avalanche riders, and so one to deal with a problem. Fierce empath can do one thing. Grab a finisher.
Played with the recruiter for a few years now. As my cube size has changed, he has gone in and out. The larger the cube, the easier it is to play him. I wouldn't use him in anything under 450.
Great card though. We have always been happy to play him.
3 mana for a tiny utility creature that gets you another small* creature seems like too much durdling for my taste - especially for red decks. I mean nobody is considering Fierce Empath for their lists, which is in a better color for that effect and gives you a game ending creature.
Fierce Empath has only a fraction of the targets, doesn't help you curve out and doesn't grab the utility creatures so it can function like a toolbox tutor. It's only partially as useful as the Recruiter can be. Also, it doesn't provide a unique effect for the color its going into; green has lots of creature tutors ...red doesn't. I think this comparison isn't accurate at all.
It is definitely an interesting effect in red and it gets quite a few useful creatures. The Recruiter plays especially well with the Kiki Mite combo, fetching any missing piece... or even both, if you search for Kiki-Jiki first, then copy the Recruiter. A bit weak for smaller cubes, but at 500+, I can definitely see him getting played.
If he would cost like $20, I would actually get one to try him in my cube. Too bad he costs more than ten times as much.
It is definitely an interesting effect in red and it gets quite a few useful creatures. The Recruiter plays especially well with the Kiki Mite combo, fetching any missing piece... or even both, if you search for Kiki-Jiki first, then copy the Recruiter. A bit weak for smaller cubes, but at 500+, I can definitely see him getting played.
If he would cost like $20, I would actually get one to try him in my cube. Too bad he costs more than ten times as much.
15 times to be more exact :(, he's such an interesting card, such a shame that he has such a barrier to him.
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If your goal is to curve out with a card that costs >3 mana, you end up with the same number of targets.
No you don't. Not in my cube, anyways. I have 21 targets for it that cost 4+ mana. I have 25% fewer targets than that for the Empath, and I can't curve out with any of them.
And you're ignoring the most important aspect of the card. Not only can I use it to curve out perfectly, but I can also use it to grab an array of utility creatures that can be valuable in a ton of different game-states. I won't have nearly as many targets for Empath, and none of them are going to be utility cards.
Only because you can get more creatures doesn't mean that these are good targets.
All of them are good targets. And you're likely able to pick from a selection of targets for the Recruiter, most of which will be immediately castable on the next turn, and they're more likely to help out with specific board states.
Sure, this is not an effect that you see often in red, but do you even want it in a red deck? The aggressive lists don't want to waste a turn, the midrange lists care more about the bigger creatures and the control decks are often very creature light to take full advantage of red's best control cards.
I play a lot of red decks that would want it. Aggro decks might not play it all the time, but I could see it being valuable in mana-denial decks where grabbing an Avalanche Riders, Acidic Slime or Ruinblaster could be key. Mid-range decks will have a glut of utility targets for it, and a lot of control decks easily use enough creatures to make it worth grabbing. Most of the targets it has in the 4+cc range are excellent creatures for control.
Not to mention that the body is valuable in some decks more than others; a concentration of equipment, blink or sacrifice effects could increase his value. Above his intrinsic purposes of being good for curving, toolbox utility and card advantage, which will be his three main purposes.
But that doesn't address the issue I have with the comparison at all. I can't use Empath as a utility card. I can't use Empath as a way to help curve out. I can't use Empath to grab key archetype creatures or combo creatures. Therefore, I can't use Empath for anything that I want to use Recruiter for.
And ya, some of the 1-drops are bad targets. And it has the same number of 4+cc targets as Empath has 6+cc targets, but why ignore all the good 2 and 3cc cards it can get? You're doing a disservice to the evaluation of the card by pretending you would never want to get anything that costs less than 4 mana with it. Being a tutor for all your toolbox utility creatures is one of the most important things it does. Comparing it to Empath doesn't do anyone any good.
Imo the only reason to play it in a cube deck is when it finds you some game winning combo cards, be it Body Double, parts of Pester/Kiki, Goblin Welder or Painter's Servant.
he is also great for getting any utility creature or power house creature with 2 or less power. LD creatures, disenchant creatures, creatures that bring an army of tokens, combo pieces, sower, mulldrifter, clones, witness, the list goes on and on. I'm not saying he is a recurring nightmare or anything. Your not going to want him in every deck that is playing his colors. But he is a very unique effect that goes a long way in most cubes. Your cube runs SFM doesn't it? That only interacts with 9 other cards in your cube. Seems pretty narrow. Maybe you should cut that....
My point was that the flexibility of being able to tutor up a cheap creature does not compensate the lesser power level of these cards.
When your tutor is neither cheap nor finds the truly broken cards, it isn't really very appealing for me.
I don't think the power-level if its targets are lower. The cards are just cheaper. There are still a ton of outstanding creatures it can grab.
Having a toolbox tutor that's strapped to a creature is pretty good. My experience with Worldly Tutor leads me to think this guy is going to be pretty good. The primary role is searching up utility creatures to respond to certain gamestates, or to ensure that I continue to properly curve out. This creature should do both of those things quite well. And it's in a color that has zero access to similar effects.
And I don't find the comparison to Fierce Empath accurate or fair, because they don't do the same thing at all.
I guess we'll just have to disagree on this one all around.
I agree with pretty much everything wtwlf said regarding the use of Imperial Recruiter as a tutor for utility creatures. That makes the card much more appealing than simply making sure you have a fatty at the time where you could cast it, like Fierce Empath does. When my opponent drops a Sword, I don't care that Imperial Recruiter into next turn Torch Fiend is a really ineffective curve. If the Fiend is more or less my only maindeck artifact removal, I want to have it as soon as possible. And if my opponent doesn't have a Sword or anything else immediately threatening, I would be happy to get one of the 4 mana LD guys. Besides that, there are plenty of utility 4-drops that have a power of 2. Even e 3-drop would be fine on turn four if it does something I really want at that point.
Power level might have been the wrong formulation -it is more about the board impact of the cards that you can get with the Recruiter.
The same way you do not use Diabolic Tutor in a regular limited deck just for flexibility, because you fall too much behind on the board by spending a full turn doing nothing, while it is a welcome addition in lists where it can find some expensive bombs.
I think the board impact from the cards I can grab with the Tutor will be just fine. More important, often enough, than simply grabbing a fatty because I can use the Recruiter to grab utility creatures that can answer important cards on my opponent's board.
In regular limited, the entire game boils down to drawing your bomb creature. The cube isn't like that.
And there are several expensive creatures that can be tutored by the Recruiter; some of them are among the best 5-drops in the cube.
Utility toolbox, curving, off-color effect, etc... I feel like I've been talking in circles this entire thread.
He was never that impressive in our cube, but we cut him before the complete rise of aggro (we also never ran the KikiJiki combo). Three mana for the smallest of creatures and a restrictive creature tutor always just felt a bit slow and underpowered, especially in red. I expect it to be solid, but unspectacular in most cubes, which is not what I am looking for in narrowish cards. I'm curious to see how it performs for you.
The Kiki combos are for Roto drafts IMO, and not a legitimate reason to press for Recruiter. Imperial is not that good. I don't even know what the argument that he is better than Fierce Empath means -- I guess it proves that he is playable in a thousand card cube? It has no bearing on anything else.
The Kiki combos are for Roto drafts IMO, and not a legitimate reason to press for Recruiter. Imperial is not that good. I don't even know what the argument that he is better than Fierce Empath means -- I guess it proves that he is playable in a thousand card cube? It has no bearing on anything else.
The argument that it's better than Empath is to show that it's better than Empath. The comparison was drawn by someone else, and I don't think it's apt.
I think it's 10x the card Empath is, and I can find a bunch of decks that would be happy to have him.
I didn't say that your 4th turn wasn't important in limited. But drawing your bomb fatties is more important there than it is in the cube, which is why I think the comparison between Diabolic Tutor/Fierce Empath and Imperial Recruiter was disingenuous.
When I first looked at this creature, I wasn't particularly impressed. Is tutoring up an extra 2-power creature worth casting a 3-mana 1/1? Perhaps not for the typical red aggro deck, but what about red decks doing other interesting things? There's a literal TON of targets for this card, and casting it on T3 and curving directly into a Sower or Solemn Simulacrum seems like it's exactly the kind of play that a lot of mid-range and control decks want to do. And with equipment, sacrifice effects, blink and other ways to get extra value from a 1/1, it looks like it could be quite the above-average performer. I've heard polarizing opinions on the card, and the last time I played it it was less than stellar, but granted, it was in a dragon cube and it was years ago. There are a lot of legitimate targets that have been printed since then, and I'm strongly reconsidering the card now. What are everyone else's thoughts on this dude?
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This is the only reason I could see for not running it.
I have one in my 450 unpowered cube. It's so good, and gives another good card to red that isn't a burn spell; which is something I'm always looking for. Also if your cube supports Splinter twin/Kiki jiki/exarch/pester mite this is another great card to support it. As well as a slew of other midrange and control decks.
While you were able to get awesome creatures at times, the 1/1 body for 3 and the effect were really only was handy in control-type decks.
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Counterburn seems to love him with blue targets like Sower of Temptation, Glen Archmage, and Mulldrifter.
Also as mentioned he's a sac outlet / equipment holder (equipment holder is particularly nice with Stoneforge Mystic + equipment package).
He's much better than I gave him credit for at 450 or 540.
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Speak for yourself, we play him too.
Fierce Empath is good. These guys put stuff directly into your hand, which is huge. Fierce Empath is a quasi-Demonic Tutor for stuff you're tutoring for half the time anyway. The fact that it's in green pushes it way over the edge.
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In red control or midrange I don't mind Paying 3 for a tutor/speed bump that gets me a utility creature or sometimes finisher. In green I never want to pay 3 for a 1/1. If it ramps me like wood elves I'll consider it as a 23rd. But wood elves has been cut from my 450
Recruiter is far more flexible then fierce empath as all he does is grab a Titan
Edit -- A better way of saying it is recruiter can be proactive or reactive. He can grab a glen Elendra, hornet queen, Meloku, or so on to close a game out. Or he can grab a sower, viridian shaman, avalanche riders, and so one to deal with a problem. Fierce empath can do one thing. Grab a finisher.
Great card though. We have always been happy to play him.
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Fierce Empath has only a fraction of the targets, doesn't help you curve out and doesn't grab the utility creatures so it can function like a toolbox tutor. It's only partially as useful as the Recruiter can be. Also, it doesn't provide a unique effect for the color its going into; green has lots of creature tutors ...red doesn't. I think this comparison isn't accurate at all.
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If he would cost like $20, I would actually get one to try him in my cube. Too bad he costs more than ten times as much.
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15 times to be more exact :(, he's such an interesting card, such a shame that he has such a barrier to him.
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No you don't. Not in my cube, anyways. I have 21 targets for it that cost 4+ mana. I have 25% fewer targets than that for the Empath, and I can't curve out with any of them.
And you're ignoring the most important aspect of the card. Not only can I use it to curve out perfectly, but I can also use it to grab an array of utility creatures that can be valuable in a ton of different game-states. I won't have nearly as many targets for Empath, and none of them are going to be utility cards.
All of them are good targets. And you're likely able to pick from a selection of targets for the Recruiter, most of which will be immediately castable on the next turn, and they're more likely to help out with specific board states.
I play a lot of red decks that would want it. Aggro decks might not play it all the time, but I could see it being valuable in mana-denial decks where grabbing an Avalanche Riders, Acidic Slime or Ruinblaster could be key. Mid-range decks will have a glut of utility targets for it, and a lot of control decks easily use enough creatures to make it worth grabbing. Most of the targets it has in the 4+cc range are excellent creatures for control.
Not to mention that the body is valuable in some decks more than others; a concentration of equipment, blink or sacrifice effects could increase his value. Above his intrinsic purposes of being good for curving, toolbox utility and card advantage, which will be his three main purposes.
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And ya, some of the 1-drops are bad targets. And it has the same number of 4+cc targets as Empath has 6+cc targets, but why ignore all the good 2 and 3cc cards it can get? You're doing a disservice to the evaluation of the card by pretending you would never want to get anything that costs less than 4 mana with it. Being a tutor for all your toolbox utility creatures is one of the most important things it does. Comparing it to Empath doesn't do anyone any good.
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he is also great for getting any utility creature or power house creature with 2 or less power. LD creatures, disenchant creatures, creatures that bring an army of tokens, combo pieces, sower, mulldrifter, clones, witness, the list goes on and on. I'm not saying he is a recurring nightmare or anything. Your not going to want him in every deck that is playing his colors. But he is a very unique effect that goes a long way in most cubes. Your cube runs SFM doesn't it? That only interacts with 9 other cards in your cube. Seems pretty narrow. Maybe you should cut that....
I don't think the power-level if its targets are lower. The cards are just cheaper. There are still a ton of outstanding creatures it can grab.
Having a toolbox tutor that's strapped to a creature is pretty good. My experience with Worldly Tutor leads me to think this guy is going to be pretty good. The primary role is searching up utility creatures to respond to certain gamestates, or to ensure that I continue to properly curve out. This creature should do both of those things quite well. And it's in a color that has zero access to similar effects.
And I don't find the comparison to Fierce Empath accurate or fair, because they don't do the same thing at all.
I guess we'll just have to disagree on this one all around.
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I think the board impact from the cards I can grab with the Tutor will be just fine. More important, often enough, than simply grabbing a fatty because I can use the Recruiter to grab utility creatures that can answer important cards on my opponent's board.
In regular limited, the entire game boils down to drawing your bomb creature. The cube isn't like that.
And there are several expensive creatures that can be tutored by the Recruiter; some of them are among the best 5-drops in the cube.
Utility toolbox, curving, off-color effect, etc... I feel like I've been talking in circles this entire thread.
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The argument that it's better than Empath is to show that it's better than Empath. The comparison was drawn by someone else, and I don't think it's apt.
I think it's 10x the card Empath is, and I can find a bunch of decks that would be happy to have him.
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