MTG Salvation

Great card is great. Been really happy with it.

I used to LARP. I stopped for a variety of reasons, but the combat involved is as 'intense' as you want it to be. By that I mean people take it very seriously and you can hone it as a 'skill', or you can dick around a bunch and die. I used to go with my friends who did tons of combat sports so it was a fun way not only to get outside and hang out with them, but get a serious exercise as well. As dorky as it sounds, it can be physically draining as you're typically going hours at a time fighting.

I stopped for a couple reasons. One being my shoulders, they're super arthritic, the other being LARPing itself. As fun as it is, it could be painful sometimes when other people knew I did it, and there were many times where I'd be in the middle of the woods and have one of those what am I doing? thoughts that make you question every decision that led you to be in all black in the woods fighting people with foam swords at 10 pm. Both of those problems on their own I could deal with, but once my shoulders began to hurt too much I couldn't find a reason to go as I hate the RPing that comes with it.

One of white's best 2 drops. Any cube that wants to support aggro should run it. I like both arts. Right now, I'm running the pack one but it's not foil.

I was in SCA (Society for Creative Anachronism) for a little while in college. I liked the sword fighting, but I wasn't good at it. I was pretty good at fencing, and with practice I might've become great. I gave up on SCA after a semester or two.

Cheers,
rant

Love Thalia, can totally ruin your opponent's day and the 2 power first strike for a single white is great.

I larped for about 10 years while st uni and a few years after, went to fewer events cause I moved farther north in Scotland which added 3 hrs travel to any national event meaning 7 - 12 hrs driving, then kids came along which put an end to it for now, I also fenced for my uni for 3 years fell out of the sport when all the others who fought sabre graduated leaving me no one to practice with.

Thalia is such a good creature. Hard to measure her level of disruption sometimes, but she puts in work.

My grandmother was a fencer in college, and we used to duel when I was a little kid. She dismantled me.

One of my favorite foils in my cube, and a lock to be on the list pretty much forever. Very solid early pick to build a creature-heavy deck around. (Interestingly, her Heretic Cathar version is *very* good against Glorybringer!)

I fenced for four years in college, then stayed on as an instructor for a few more afterwards. Won a couple of club-level tournaments, but my school didn't form an official team until after I graduated. My fondest memory was going up 2-0 (both wrist touches) in an epee match against one of the reserves from the German national team before he decided to take me seriously. He then thrashed me for five straight points.

Thalia will almost never leave cube. She just wrecks so many cards for a 2 drop.

I tried fencing once. Really really harder than it looks.

Thalia and Stoneforge Mystic are likely in my cube for the duration. All the other white 2s are negotiable, and I could picture something replacing them, but I can't picture anything replacing the two white girls.

You know what's better than a 2/1 with First Strike? A 2/1 with Double Strike!



Do you run different cycles of lands for different guilds in your cube (such as Temples for more controlling/combo guilds, or painlands or more aggressive ones)? Why or why not?

I run full cycles of fetch, dual, shock, and creatureland for each guild. I've thought of mixing up the fourth cycle to give the 'aggro guilds' lands that come in untapped, like probably the pain lands. But it feels pigeonholing to do that. We have plenty of Boros Wildfire and Balance decks. We have some Rakdos control builds. Creaturelands are good for those.

Once I get a Horizon Canopy, I may cut Stirring Wildwood, and will probably consider unbalancing the rest of the cycle again.

Ideally, I would run a full cycle of Dual, Fetch, Shock, then Man land. Since I only have Taiga, Scrubland and Plateau, the rest are a combination of pain or cycle lands. I do not proxy.

This discussion makes me think I hope someday there will be another full cycle of typed duals with an option to enter the battlefield untapped. If then I will forgo the true duals (for things like food and shelter).

All the manlands are great, and Needle Spires is no exception.

I play the full cycles of Dual/Fetch/Shock/Man-Lands and my 5th cycle is a custom combination that's catered to each guild.

I don't like the thought of mixing and matching land cycles based on whether I think a color pair should be "fast" or "slow". Right now I run originals, shocks, fetches, hybrids, manlands, buddylands, and trilands at 720. When WotC gets around to finishing the cycle, I will probably change the buddylands to the new cycling duals. I've considered swapping them for painlands, but at this point I'd rather just wait on the cyclers.

I like it, I don't think I animate it very often but (like all man-lands) the fact I means my opponent has to play round it is worth it coming into play tapped.

I run Duals (proxied), Fetches (mostly proxied) and Man-Lands (mostly real). The rest of the lands are various other fixing and utility lands.

man lands so fun.

i run fetches, shocks, man lands. then one colour aligned utility land per colour karakas, faerie conclave, volrath's stronghold, hanweir battlements, gaea's cradle. then 10 5-colour fixing and colourless utility lands.

Getting blown out by today's card must be a wretched feeling.



Having a floor of being a slightly worse Jace's Ingenuity seems like a good place to be. This spell should (almost) always amount to some sort of 3-for-1.

Anyone ever been in a graveyard after dark? How was it?

I like the manlands and don't mind Needle spire in my aggressive RW decks. Sometimes the ETB tapped is a drawback, but it is also pretty good protection to help close out games if you get hit with a board wipe etc.

As far as wretched confluence, I could see it in bigger cubes, but I am at 405 right now and I feel like black is pretty deep. Even with the 5 mana slot being one of blacks biggest holes in cube, there is not any room for this card in my cube. Even if it amounts as a 3 for 1, the competition is too steep for this sort of card advantage in this color. Black has lot's of ways to get card advantage for cheaper, between Bob, the several creatures which can be brought back from the graveyard, Toxic deluge, Damnation, and other wrath effects. Plus black has the best tutors taking up a few slots as well.

Wretched Confluence is a solid card. Nothing amazing, but also very reasonable. I'd cube it in a second if it distributed -3/-3 instead. We found that it was often forced into distributing a pair of the -/- abilities on a single target, and if you had a big monster like a Titan or a Sphinx to deal with, it was costing you all 5 mana to deal with it.

Just when you think your opponent is tapped out and has no plays...



What are some of the biggest/funniest blowouts you've seen while playing cube?

Fireblast is awesome. Underrated by people not familiar with it, free spells are just gross, especially one that does 20% of your job for you. Cube staple.

Karn ready for ultimate getting stolen by zealous conscripts is disgusting.

Always loved Fireblast from back in the days of Sligh and Deadguy Red. You can never really feel safe against it.

Funniest blowout is another excuse to tell my favorite cube story. One of my players cast Maelstrom Wanderer and cascaded into Channel. Channeled for 15 and hardcast Emrakul, the Aeons Torn. With haste, thanks to the Wanderer. His opponent just sort of sat there shaking his head in a daze for a while.

Fireblast is an incredible card and it rewards decks that are deep in red, which is something i love in cube.


Funniest blowout was me T1 Entomb putting Griselbrand in the graveyard with Reanimate in hand
Opponent plays Black Lotus -> Scavenging Ooze -> exile fatty

I love fireblast.
Once I am solidly in red, it is always a nice pickup to help close games out.

One of the best blowouts I have seen in my cube was at the end of a long match going back and forth between 2 players.
I forget what was exactly on the field but both players were in top deck mode with 3 creatures on the field.
One player gets to ultimate Daretti, Ingenious Iconoclast and picks a phyrexian metamorph in a graveyard which then enters the field as copies of reflector mage and bounces his opponents field back into his hand. Opponent draws a land and can't play anything

Speaking of people with poor diplomatic skills...



My group has had quite a bit of success with today's card, but I don't know if she sees a lot of play elsewhere, especially since Golgari is a tight guild.

Which plane or location do you most want Wizards to return to or visit for the first time?

Meren is pretty cool, though I don't currently run her. Probably going to be one of those cards that is always mentioned but I never end up seriously trying for longer than the initial run I gave it. Guilds are too punishing.

Kamigawa would be cool, but I want some space magicians.