When I first saw this card, I was pretty down on it. The tokens require 2 mana to transform and it plays poorly in traditional spellslinger decks where you want a high density of 1 mana cantrips. However, I think it may have a place in a more control-orientated shell with Planeswalkers and cards like Force of Will, Treachery, etc.
It also has a couple of other nice advantages:
3 mana for a 2/4 flyer is a pretty good rate. The 4 toughness makes it a reasonable blocker and it survives lightning bolt.
I also like this quite a lot. It's good for spellslinger and artifact deck an has a big butt against aggro.
Having to pay 2 everytime to maybe only get 1/1 or 2/2 is not a good rate but the flying body of shark buddy makes up for that. Think this might have a place in 540 unpowered.
This is awesome. Really looking forward to playing this with Gush / Treasure Cruise
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I appreciate OP outlining all the perks of the card. My immediate thoughts were likewise the control angle; turn 3 this guy turn 4 wrath doesn't leave you with nothing. Transforming the token may come at a price, but I dunno 2 mana play a 4/4 is probably a solid line against most aggro decks. And if you don't need to wrath, it feels almost certain that you'll get some value if it sticks at least a turn.
If I had to find a critique about it, it's that I think it'll operate slowly. If you're hoping to generate humongous tokens with it by casting big spells, I feel like those big spells will probably win anyhow. If your big spells don't resolve, your opponent will probably find time to deal with most tokens unless they are particularly big. At the other end of the spectrum, 2/2s and 1/1s will probably be really hard to make use of to close a game if you manage to get the advantage, and they may be little more than 2-mana roadblocks if you're on the back foot. 3-4 mana spells feels like the sweet spot for me?
I feel like there is huge potential for it, but I'm mentally prepared for the reality to be just 'pretty good, nothing spectacular'.
The stats on this thing are nuts. The tokens not dying to wraths is very notable. Curving this to a wrath leaves you with a 4/4 you can activate for 2 mana.
Card is sweet.
Slot is sooooooo stacked, so I'm not confident in it's longevity, but I'll definitely give it a try.
2/4 flying is a really strong defensive body for 3 mana, dodging most red removal and blocking all cheaper creatures well.
The ability will take over the game eventually and has plenty of synergy with both spells matters and artifact decks.
The body is so much better than other spells matter token makers, but in my experience spells matters decks don't tend to have a ton of extra mana.
I like that you can leave up countermagic and transform the tokens at instant speed and I like that you can transform them post-wrath, but 2 mana per creature is rough. I think I will test but I expect the 2 mana to flip each one will end with this being worse than the ones that just make 1/1's.
Having a 2/4 statline (with Flying, no less) goes a loooong way to make up for the fact it doesn't generate blockers immediately. To me, the spells matter theme is still 2-3 payoffs away from where I would like it to be, so I'm definitely slamming this into my cube.
I had a draft with this in M30 Arena and I went 7-0 primarily on the back of this ... The card's 2/4 body allows it to quickly take a defensive posture early on and quickly spiral the game out of control and is especially disgusting with free spells.
Definite add of you have artifact synergies. Low cmc spells produce “scrap” artifacts that power Kanstructs or Welder foddler, while large spells can provide finishers.
Not adding in my 450 but adding in my artifact cube of course. (Which works so well with Affinity spells like Thoughtcast and Reality Heist)
Chrome Host Seedshark is pretty much everything I've always wanted in a blue Monastery Mentor. Much lower ceiling than Mentor, but waaay better floor since a 2/4 with flying makes it much better on defense and harder to kill. This is also much better in control since your creature sweepers don't destroy the incubator tokens. There are a lot of cost reducers / alternate casting cost cards that makes this very easy to generate big tokens very fast (FoW / Snuff Out / Treasure Cruise / Baleful Mastery / Leyline Binding / etc). Chrome Host Seedshark is very up there in terms of being one of the better spells matters cards while being able to contribute to artifacts matters like Third Path Iconoclast.
I once farted during the final match for prizes at an FNM. It was a tense moment, everything was quiet, control vs control, I was about to mana leak, thought about it.. and farted. Then mana leaked.
When I first saw this card, I was pretty down on it. The tokens require 2 mana to transform and it plays poorly in traditional spellslinger decks where you want a high density of 1 mana cantrips. However, I think it may have a place in a more control-orientated shell with Planeswalkers and cards like Force of Will, Treachery, etc.
It also has a couple of other nice advantages:
Thoughts?
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Having to pay 2 everytime to maybe only get 1/1 or 2/2 is not a good rate but the flying body of shark buddy makes up for that. Think this might have a place in 540 unpowered.
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)
Draft my Cube - https://cubecobra.com/cube/overview/d8i
If I had to find a critique about it, it's that I think it'll operate slowly. If you're hoping to generate humongous tokens with it by casting big spells, I feel like those big spells will probably win anyhow. If your big spells don't resolve, your opponent will probably find time to deal with most tokens unless they are particularly big. At the other end of the spectrum, 2/2s and 1/1s will probably be really hard to make use of to close a game if you manage to get the advantage, and they may be little more than 2-mana roadblocks if you're on the back foot. 3-4 mana spells feels like the sweet spot for me?
I feel like there is huge potential for it, but I'm mentally prepared for the reality to be just 'pretty good, nothing spectacular'.
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Slot is sooooooo stacked, so I'm not confident in it's longevity, but I'll definitely give it a try.
2/4 flying is a really strong defensive body for 3 mana, dodging most red removal and blocking all cheaper creatures well.
The ability will take over the game eventually and has plenty of synergy with both spells matters and artifact decks.
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I like that you can leave up countermagic and transform the tokens at instant speed and I like that you can transform them post-wrath, but 2 mana per creature is rough. I think I will test but I expect the 2 mana to flip each one will end with this being worse than the ones that just make 1/1's.
375 unpowered cube - https://cubecobra.com/cube/list/601ac624832cdf1039947588
540 Version: https://cubecobra.com/cube/list/zza
Not adding in my 450 but adding in my artifact cube of course. (Which works so well with Affinity spells like Thoughtcast and Reality Heist)
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