MTG Salvation

I don't see a thread for this so I figure I'll start. It actually surprise me a bit that apparently other cube forum have also adopted this thread that I start and other people also continue it after I'm gone lol.

Overall, Duskmourn feels like a pretty weak set imo. I'm not interested in that much cards. I actually have only 1 card that I think I have a high likelihood of including.

Here's my list.

Include
Fear of Missing Out

Testing
White
Overlord of the Mistmoors

Blue
Don't Make a Sound
They Came from the Pipes
Unable to Scream
Silent Hallcreeper

Black
Metamorphosis Fanatic
Valgavoth, Terror Eater

Red
Overlord of the Boilerbilges
Razorkin Needlehead
Screaming Nemesis

Green
Walk-In Closet // Forgotten Cellar
Ursine Monstrosity

Of all the testing cards, I have high hope for Valgavoth, Terror Eater, Overlord of the Boilerbilges, and Walk-In Closet // Forgotten Cellar.



EDIT: I'm also testing Overlord of the Mistmoors now

Here are my includes from DSK and DSC:

Overlord of the Mistmoors replaces Citadel Siege
Edit: Reluctant Role Model replaces Monastery Mentor. Flying, lifelink, and +1/+1 are three of the best possible counters, making this a cheap but slow build-a-Baneslayer. I initially misread this card and thought it just donated its own counters like Quirion Beastcaller, but it actually works whenever any creature dies like The Ozolith, making this a nice support piece for +1/+1 counters decks, even if you draw it in the late game.
Silent Hallcreeper replaces Season of Weaving
They Came from the Pipes replaces Fact or Fiction
Overlord of the Boilerbilges replaces Koth of the Hammer
Curator Beastie replaces Gala Greeters
Under the Skin replaces Bala Ged Recovery//Bala Ged Sanctuary

It’s nice to get high-powered enchantment creatures for enchantress-focused cubes.

I really like manifest dread as a mechanic! Both Curator Beastie and They Came from the Pipes are great on their own and further reward playing them alongside other face down cards, so I'm going to try to make manifest dread a small Simic subtheme in the cube. I've always enjoyed the mystery of face down cards. In the Tarkir era I had ~7 morphs in my cube, but as they got outclassed I ended up cutting them all at once. There was this knowledge check -- did each drafter know exactly what 7 possible morphs were in the cube, that they were all in Bant, and did they consider who may have gotten which morphs during the draft? With manifest dread, the face down card could be any creature, so you still get the fun gameplay of "what could it be?" without the rest of the baggage. I like manifest dread much more than original manifest because the selection doubles the odds of finding a creature, it gives the player a sense of agency instead of the manifested card feeling totally random, and it feeds the graveyard. When you're the person playing against a manifest dread card, I like that you can divine small clues -- for instance if they bin a creature, then what they put face down was probably a better creature.

There are a lot of DSK and DSC cards that are close. I’ll continue to update this post if I move any more cards to the "includes" list above from the "maybe list" below. Here are the maybes, starting with the ones I’m most interested in:

Valgavoth's Onslaught
Unholy Annex // Ritual Chamber I was high on this card as a replacement for Phyrexian Arena, but perhaps the 2 life loss per turn is just too steep.
Enduring Innocence
Metamorphosis Fanatic
Entity Tracker
Unstoppable Slasher
Unidentified Hovership
Valgavoth's Lair
The Master of Keys

Not a lot of cards powerful enough in a vacuum to be included, but there's some incredible support pieces for specific strategies in this set.

Cards I think are just good: Insidious Fungus, Silent Hallcreeper, Fear of Missing Out, Screaming Nemesis, Under the Skin, Overlord of the Boilerbilges

Support pieces for artifact reanimation: Clockwork Percussionist, Chainsaw

Support pieces for Estrid's Invocation/Essence Reliquary: Overlord of the Mistmoors, Overlord of the Balemurk, Overlord of the Hauntwoods, They Came From The Pipes, Sporogenic Infection (plus Overlord of the Boilerbilges)

Support pieces for Insidious Roots/general graveyard-recursion: Overlord of the Balemurk, Unstoppable Slasher, Balustrade Wurm (plus Under the Skin)

Watchlist and near-misses: Metamorphosis Fanatic (I think it's great, but it's not for a cube that doesn't support reanimator), Overlord of the Floodpits, Reluctant Role Model, Nowhere to Run, Dissection Tools

Testing: Screaming Nemesis, Curator Beastie, Ursine Monstrosity
Considering: Overlord of the Mistmoors, Overlord of the Boilerbilges, Formless Genesis
Maybe Considering: Fear of Missing Out, Balustrade Wurm, Star Athlete

Very rough set huh.

Extremely weak set for cubes in general, especially for small powered cubes, which is in fact my case.

I will only include Walk-In Closet//Forgotten Cellar as a replacement for Ramunap.

However, I will keep an eye out on how certain cards perform, including Screaming Nemesis, Metamorphosis Fanatic and perhaps even Valgavoth, Terror Eater which may have more potential than I initially expect.

I'm interested in the following:

Ursine Monstrosity
Screaming Nemesis
Overlord of the Mistmoors

And possibly:

Fear of Missing Out (hard to find a cut, but the stats are good, rummage ETB is good, and delirium support too.)
Valgavoth, Terror Eater (S tier reanimator only payoff, it's a case of finding a slot at 400 cards)
Curator Beastie (competitive 6 drop)

Half an eye on Overlords of the Balemurk and Boilerbilge as well. Especially if we get more good permanent blink like Phelia in the future.

Think I am looking at the following:

White:
Overlord of the mistmoors for usher of the fallen

Blue:
silent hallcreeper for glen elendra archmage

Black:
metamorphosis fanatic for damn

Red:
Screaming Nemesis for Goblin Rabblemaster
Fear of Missing out for goblin guide
Overlord of the boilerbilges for magma jet

Green:
Balustrade Wurm for fanatic of rhonas

Might look at under the skin as well

Honestly, I could add nothing from this set and not feel like I missed anything. I think Metamorphosis Fanatic is the only card I'm excited for. I may try Screaming Nemesis, Ursine Monstrosity, Walk-in Closet // Forgotten Cellar, and the red and white Overlords. Great set for Commander; not a great set for cube.

Cheers,
rant

I think this is a solid set, but anyone who has smaller than a 540 cube will have a hard time finding cuts for cards from Standard sets. now that they make so many sets that bypass standard, even my unpowered cube seems so much more powerful than it was 5 years ago.

Even mine at 630 will only have maybe 5 cards to test. I think that is not too bad.

Random stuff to maybe try with a power level a bit closer to peasant:

Two cycles stand out for me. First is the Overlord cycle:

Overlord of the Mistmoors: a very powerful card I think
Overlord of the Boilerbilges: powerful, but somewhat redundant - I'll test though.
Overlord of the Floodpits: lower confidence but might test.

Next comes the resilient Enduring cycle:

Enduring Courage: I think this is being slept on. One of the most powerful cards of the set IMO.
Enduring Tenacity: makes all life gain, of which there is a lot in black and white, life-threatening.
Enduring Innocence: should be solid and plays nice with Tenacity (and Vito, Thorn of the Dusk Rose)
Enduring Curiosity: testable, I like drawing cards so Coastal Piracy on legs is appealing

Besides the cards from these 2 cycles, I have on my shortlist:

Silent Hallcreeper: looks like a solid versatile 2-drop; not an essential card by any means though
Persistent Constrictor: promising new persister, testable
Metamorphosis Fanatic: unsure, might test. I'm not a huge fan of miracle.
Balustrade Wurm: very aggressive; not essential but a clear option in green's offensive arsenal
Slavering Branchsnapper: landcyclers in general have massively overperformed and proven themselves to be vital glue-type cards, so this is probably good.
Ursine Monstrosity: unsure, but has potential. It's an absolute unit in combat and very fragile at any other time; odd card. Must attack clause is concerning.
Curator Beastie: looks solid but more of a sidegrade for existing cards; currently at the outside looking in for me.

Overall agree with others who say this set is on the weaker side. We usually are not shy to experiment and make changes to our cube, but not seeing a ton to run with here. Some bombs for the cube, but other than that mostly passable stuff here.

White:
Including- Overlord of the Mistmoors (Slam dunk in our cube with token support)
Testing- Unidentified Hovership (Might be good enough? Flying on a option creature/removal/artifact seems good?)

Black:
Testing- Funeral Room // Awakening Hall (Missing out on the 1/1 from Bastion of Remembrance sucks, but this card has the upside of late-game payoff)
Testing- Valgavoth, Terror Eater (Seems like a really strong reanimate target over some others, hard to kill once out)
Including- Metamorphosis Fanatic (Slam dunk)

Red:
Including- Overlord of the boilerbilges
Testing- Norin, Swift Survivalist
Testing- Razorkin Needlehead (Not sure about the double red cost, but it pairs well with all the wheel effects we have.)
Including- Fear of Missing Out (Slam dunk and have already tested this card for a while.)
Including- Screaming Nemesis (Added this card thinking it would play pretty nice in a aggro shell, but I personally have thought it's kind of a mid-card compared to the other 3 drops in red... Am I stupid? is this better than some of the other red 3 drops?)

Green:
Testing- Balustrade Wurm
Testing- Tyvar, the Pummeler (Solid win condition for green with built-in survivability)
Testing- Valgavoth's Onslaught (Curves pretty well in green and set up a lot of graveyard stuff for shells like Green Black decks)
Including- Curator Beastie (This card seems to have a ton of playability and synergies)
Including- Twitching Doll (Not 100% sold on this card, but plays really nice into +1/+1 counter themes and has late game payoff that other mana dudes lack. Might see a cut soon, but still testing it out.)

- Hot takes:

Kaito, Bane of Nightmares (Am I bad at this game for thinking this might be good enough? Our cube group thinks I am crazy, but I feel like this has a place against control for sure. Anti-wrath, anti-spot removal creature that only gets bigger with card advantage?)

Ursine Monstrosity (I think this card seems ok, but will end up being a card a lot people cut from their cubes. On paper, it has a lot going for it, but it's kinda slow and only fits into aggro shells.

White:

Veteran Survivor (Testing)
Reluctant Role Model (Testing)
Overlord of the Mistmoors

Blue:

Overlord of the Floodpits (Testing)

Black:

Metamorphosis Fanatic
Valgavoth, Terror Eater

Red:

Norin, Swift Survivalist
Fear of Missing Out
Screaming Nemesis
Overlord of the Boilerbilges

Green:

Balustrade Wurm (Testing)
Walk-In Closest // Forgotten Cellar

Guild:

Floodfarm Verge
Gloomlake Verge
Blazemire Verge
Thornspire Verge
Hushwood Verge

Colorless:

Ghost Vacuum (Testing)

Îm here for a 720 legacy+

other than wtwlf123, no 1 seems to be mentioning veteran survivor. the card has been putting in work in limited. kinda of surprising, b/c its a 1 mana 2/1 w/ relevant upside. eating cards from ANY yard, so you can also feed him, & it only takes 3 turns & 3 cards before he becomes a 5/4 hexproof; for the very low one time price of W. in ur face hexdrinker!

Quote from d0rsal »

other than wtwlf123, no 1 seems to be mentioning veteran survivor. the card has been putting in work in limited. kinda of surprising, b/c its a 1 mana 2/1 w/ relevant upside. eating cards from ANY yard, so you can also feed him, & it only takes 3 turns & 3 cards before he becomes a 5/4 hexproof; for the very low one time price of W. in ur face hexdrinker!

The card also seems rather insane with Copter/anything crew. A 1 mana 5/4 hexproof isn't a joke!

Not just Savannah Lions being fairly poor, white's other 1-drops are absolutely insane now, I can't imagine playing a 2/1 with minor upside (and I do think Veteran Survivor's upside is very minor, it needs to survive three attacks to do anything other than minor gravehate).

Quote from steve_man »

My Duskmourn: House of Horror HOT TAKES article is now up on MTGSalvation!
https://www.mtgsalvation.com/forums/the-game/the-cube-forum/articles-podcasts-and-guides/833783-duskmourn-house-of-horror-hot-takes-wtwlf123

Published later than I would've liked, but been busy the past couple of weeks.

Always a worthy read, have been looking forward to it!

I'm surprised no one else seems to like Norin Swift Survivalist. Are people down on Savannah Lions in red too?

This one can let you rebuy ETB effects, makes blocking very difficult the turn it comes down and helps negate the downsides to chunk attacking.

I think it does a lot for a one drop.

I like it quite a bit.

Quote from TorontoJock »

I'm surprised no one else seems to like Norin Swift Survivalist. Are people down on Savannah Lions in red too?

This one can let you rebuy ETB effects, makes blocking very difficult the turn it comes down and helps negate the downsides to chunk attacking.

I think it does a lot for a one drop.

I'm jamming him in, seems great for rebuying etbs or saving guys when you have to make bad attacks to get damage in. It seems like a solid card advantage engine as you get to return/recast creatures that should have died in combat and can attack again next turn. Something like Voldaren Epicure from my friends cube springs to mind.

I'm surprised he isn't getting any hype, but I think you are right in saying alot of cubes are less into them these days.

I expect its ability will have a ton of fun little interactions, Do we have any creatures that get bonuses for being cast/entering from exile yet? I feel like Norins stock will go up over time as we get more card, definitly more than the average 2/1 with trinket text.

Norin wasn't on my radar at all, thanks for mentioning him Toronto. I might test him as well for the reasons steveman mentioned.