Man-o'-War's final form? Each individual mode is pretty much overall better than Callous Bloodmage. I like this card a lot, although blue is pretty air tight for me at the moment, not sure if I got the space for it. Great replacement for things like Man-o'-War / Barrin though.
Wow! That bounce ability is awesome. Could this really be the end of Man-o’-War in cube?
The other abilities are not nearly as good on their own, but they are far from flavour text. The options this card provides all have common use cases. Especially shines in a flicker deck where that flexibility in etb effects is highly valued.
What a charming design! I love each of these modes: there's something for when you're ahead and want an evasive body to help close out the game, when you're behind and need to slow down your opponent's biggest threat (creature or otherwise), or when you're at parity and you just need to draw more action. It's good in any deck, but will especially shine in the flickerdeck. This is a definite include for me.
I was literally just thinking about my disappointment over the 3CC blue creature slot options and this comes along. Not only does this upgrade the usual unsummon etb for disperse, but it also has alternate modes which either provide an evasive body or a card. Blue really does get everything only better.
One aspect of Barrin, Tolarian Archmage that I really liked is that he is legendary, so he has great synergy with Karakas, but that is definitely not enough of an upside to outweigh Aether Channeler.
I was literally just thinking about my disappointment over the 3CC blue creature slot options and this comes along. Not only does this upgrade the usual unsummon etb for disperse, but it also has alternate modes which either provide an evasive body or a card. Blue really does get everything only better.
Interesting. I consider blue 3CC to be quite stacked. At 360 I would definitely put Vendilion Clique, Brazen Borrower and True-Name Nemesis above this, and if you support wheels then Hullbreacher is insane. Personally I also support Twin, so that takes another 2 spots. If I didn't play Twin, I would probably play this as the fifth blue 3-drop.
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I'm wondering if Aluren might be strong enough to make an appearance with cards like Aether Channeler improving the card quality of the fair/ unfair loops.
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Aether Channeler has been performing very well, probably the card that sees the most play in my cube from DMU. I feel like the closest non-jellyfish equivalent of Aether Channeler are Reclamation Sage / Knight of Autumn. I would argue that the bounce a nonland permanent mode is equivalent to Reclamation Sage's Naturalize mode, not to mention it has two other very useful modes like Knight of Autumn. Reclamation Sage / Knight of Autumn being a creature has more affinity to their native colors though since green is all about creatures where blue is not. However, Aether Channeler is generally a much better blink / recursion target than something like Reclamation Sage / Knight of Autumn.
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StaffMan-o'-War's final form? Each individual mode is pretty much overall better than Callous Bloodmage. I like this card a lot, although blue is pretty air tight for me at the moment, not sure if I got the space for it. Great replacement for things like Man-o'-War / Barrin though.
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The other abilities are not nearly as good on their own, but they are far from flavour text. The options this card provides all have common use cases. Especially shines in a flicker deck where that flexibility in etb effects is highly valued.
Alright wizards, you got me. Man'o'war variant going in my cube.
This card is great and works with some themes im trying to support (blink with duplicates)
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This. I'm tempted to jam the Blue blink package solely because of this card.
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I was literally just thinking about my disappointment over the 3CC blue creature slot options and this comes along. Not only does this upgrade the usual unsummon etb for disperse, but it also has alternate modes which either provide an evasive body or a card. Blue really does get everything only better.
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One aspect of Barrin, Tolarian Archmage that I really liked is that he is legendary, so he has great synergy with Karakas, but that is definitely not enough of an upside to outweigh Aether Channeler.
Interesting. I consider blue 3CC to be quite stacked. At 360 I would definitely put Vendilion Clique, Brazen Borrower and True-Name Nemesis above this, and if you support wheels then Hullbreacher is insane. Personally I also support Twin, so that takes another 2 spots. If I didn't play Twin, I would probably play this as the fifth blue 3-drop.
Vintage Cube Cards Explained
Here are some other articles I've written about fine tuning your cube:
1. Minimum Archetype Support
2. Improving Green Archetypes
3. Improving White Archetypes
4. Matchup Analysis
5. Cube Combos (Work in Progress)
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StaffMy High Octane Unpowered Cube on CubeCobra