I've never played Imperial Recruiter, but I've never been a big fan either. Without any way to abuse the etb ability it's just a bad Worldly Tutor, a card that is already pretty mediocre even in a color that is all about creatures. Don't see the value you get from Recruiter, simply running another 'real' three drop will be better in 90% of cases unless you somehow manage to draft a combo deck that needs a specific 2 power card (which is unlikely in peasant).
The only saving grace Recruiter has is that red is a rather shallow and boring color while Recruiter is a card with a unique effect. If I had one I'd probably play him, but I'm not going to pay €30 for a card that I would most likely replace sooner than later anyway if we get more interesting red cards like Light up the Stage.
I've never played Imperial Recruiter, but I've never been a big fan either. Without any way to abuse the etb ability it's just a bad Worldly Tutor, a card that is already pretty mediocre even in a color that is all about creatures. Don't see the value you get from Recruiter, simply running another 'real' three drop will be better in 90% of cases unless you somehow manage to draft a combo deck that needs a specific 2 power card (which is unlikely in peasant).
For me the Recruiter would be a value card as it can find cards like Palace Jailer, Mulldrifter, Ravenous Chupacabra, Riftwing Clodskate, etc.. Actually I was surprised how many valueable targets the Recruiter has in each color. Also note that compared to Worldly Tutor you get the creature immediately, which is a huge difference compared to putting the card on top of your library. Also a 1/1 body is valueable as a blocker, blink target, sac. outlet, etc..
The thing is that you have to pay three mana at sorcery speed to get your valuable target and then you still have to cast it. So you need seven mana to play Recruiter and Chupacabra in a single turn for example, which is unlikely. Due to the mana cost the card isn't really any better than Diabolic Tutor, which can get you any card you want for just one more mana and which doesn't see any play. Even Demonic Tutor is hardly broken in CU/be, and I think there is no need to say how much better than Recruiter it is.
Worldly Tutor is 1 mana instant speed, which more than makes up for its shortcomings - if you play it eot it's pretty much the same as getting the creature immediately, but for a fraction of the cost and with the option to cast other instant speed spells during your opponent's turn if there is a need for it. And you can play the creatures you tutored for immediately afterwards with full mana before your opponent can react to it. It's just leagues better than Recruiter.
A 1/1 isn't completely worthless, but I think we can agree that the impact it has on a 3 mana card is almost negligible. Unless you can blink/bounce it in a grindy value deck, which I already mentioned and which is unlikely given that red is the worst blink color.
I believe if this was a random black $0.1 common no one would even look at it. But since it's a well-known, expensive Legacy card that used to be ultra rare and since red is a shallow color it's an option. It's a bad tutor in a color that doesn't have tutors normally. Nothing more, nothing less.
I get what you are saying, but I think comparing Imperial Recruiter to Diabolic Tutor is not entirely fair. Sure, Diabolic Tutor can get you anything but it costs 4 mana and double colored mana, which might sound like an obvious argument but has an important implication: non-creature tutors get very very bad the more expensive they are. They dont impact the board - you just change the tutor for the tutored card and if the tutor is very epensive that is all you do during that turn (and the tutored card sits in your hand). Menawhile, your opponent advances their board and/or attacks you. Although the Recruiter only gets you a subset of the cards Diabolic Tutor can get, it gives you a blocker that (to a certain) extent negates the disadvantages of tutor cards. I completely agree with you that the follow-up play (i.e. the creature you tutored for) has to be very good to justify all the effort and this is where testing will give me the required data.
Let us consider, do our cubes actually want good tutors? Peasant cube is about fair magic to me. You can do some nice synergy stuff in peasant cube, but nothing worth tutoring for in my opinion. In aristocrats for example, Blood Artist effect matter a lot. But rather than giving people the cards to find their 1 Blood Artist, I'd rather give them the option to draft Zulaport Cutthroat as well, or give them alternatives like Goblin Bombardment. In fair magic the converted mana cost of a card matters, and playing 2/3 mana extra (for the tutor) to get a specific card is, in my opinion, not really fun. Tutors also require you to remember what is actually in your deck to play them effectively. Overall, I think tutor cards should be avoided, unless they have tough restrictions on what they can find.
Let us consider, do our cubes actually want good tutors? Peasant cube is about fair magic to me. You can do some nice synergy stuff in peasant cube, but nothing worth tutoring for in my opinion ... In fair magic the converted mana cost of a card matters, and playing 2/3 mana extra (for the tutor) to get a specific card is, in my opinion, not really fun.
The two arguments are contradictory or am I missing your point? Your are saying that the tutor targets are not powerful enough in a peasant environment and that its not fair to be able to search a card for 2-3 extra mana. For me I especially like in peasant that there are no targets that straight up win you the game and that tutoring just can give you efficient or synergistic cards. I like having that flexibility and tool-box feeling.
But rather than giving people the cards to find their 1 Blood Artist, I'd rather give them the option to draft Zulaport Cutthroat as well, or give them alternatives like Goblin Bombardment
Here I have to disagree but that is just a peronal cube building preference. Tutors give you redundancy in effects without having to dedicate redundant slots in your cube. I would rather have Blood Artist and Imperial Recruiter in my cube than Blood Artist and Zulaport Cutthroat, as the latter are kind of the same. The advantage of the Recruiter is that in one deck it is Blood Artist #2 and in another deck Mist Raven #2.
Tutors also require you to remember what is actually in your deck to play them effectively.
Sure, but you should have a rough outline of your drafted deck in your head anyways, shouldnt you?
Again, I kind of get what you are saying and maybe it is just personal preference. I like flexibility and I like redundancy and tutors can give you both. I do appreciate the discussion as I maybe biased since I played lots of unpowered cube and in this environment tutors are more powerful (and more unfair).
In the case of single cards, I am quite fine with Guitarspider's principle about actual play being really important. I have yet to encounter a player who has regretted including Imperial Recruiter in their deck. I have even seen it thrown into aggro decks.
Tutors inherently increase reliability - which is a huge boon in a format built around singleton cards. Even with a deck like Aristocrats which possesses redundancy with its key cards, those key cards also stack their affects and Imperial Recruiter provides fodder for them. Especially given how it can search for either a sac outlet or a drainer, depending on which you need more at the time.
Unlike Worldly Tutor which is inherently -1 CA, Imperial Recruiter is slight card advantage at a minimum (let's say +0.5 for its own body). The colour difference and floor are also not negligible: at a minimum, being a creature, the Recruiter provides a body and allows you to play what you searched immediately if you have the mana which is huge when you are behind. Worldly Tutor literally does nothing that can affect the board the turn it is played should you top deck it.
Demonic Tutor remains a P1P1 worthy card even in this format, and Imperial Recruiter is +1 mana compared to it while also still providing its body. While not as versatile, as MagicFever noted, it does find a surprising number of targets across all colours.
The last time I played Imperial Recruiter, it was in a Grixis (RUb) deck that did extremely well. I would not throw the card in every deck (I think the aggro deck I mentioned should not have included it, for one) but it is one of those cards where the effect it provides is strong enough to be worthwhile even when it is not crucial but which can also provide surprise synergies to consider given the range of what it allows. Not all its targets are small creatures, either: green in particular has various borderline +1/+1 counter creatures which have a low listed power but enter play with counters.
In a game based around randomized decks of cards, being able to draw whatever card you want is inherently cheating.
It's seems like it would be a reasonable card depending on what you can cheat for with it. The more low powered your environment is, the more relevant the 1/1 body is, the more relevant the card advantage is, and the less relevant it is that you likely spent your turn playing him. And the more high powered the environment is, the more powerful the card he can find is. It scales with power level and would be as good in a Homelands cube as it would be in the MTGO Vintage cube IMO.
I've never understood this argument that tutors are bad because you often spend your entire turn casting one and they're too slow and you may lose the game. They're a hell of a lot faster on average than hoping to top deck the card you need and if you were in a situation where you couldn't afford to pay 3 mana for a tutor you are likely already losing even if you top deck what you need.
Magic players are in denial about what their best cards are. I've heard Legacy players call Force of Will a bad card, Pauper Delver players cut Delver from their decks, etc. So it seems natural that people would be in denial about cards that fundamentally break the game.
I have one in my cube because I'm okay with conditional tutors, I love the P3K art, and the counterfeit was only $2.50 so I didn't have to spend real money on it. Since expanding the size of my cube and adding colorless creatures as a real "sixth color", I've diluted the ability to draft mono red goblins, so Imperial recruiter functions as a second Goblin Matron while not being completely absurd like Goblin Recruiter.
Calling a 3 mana 1/1 'developing the board' is an euphemism. A 2/1 can at least trade with a reasonable amount of creatures, but a 1/1 without evasion reads 'you gain 3 life' at best at that point of the game. Sure, it's better than nothing, but it doesn't add much to a 3 cmc card and I certainly wouldn't say that it's worth half a card.
Also, I don't see a reason why you would even tutor up value cards like Mulldrifter. The reason why they're good is that they provide good value for a low cost, but if you need 8 mana over two turns to play Mulldrifter with a 1/1 as a bonus then the ratio becomes terrible and you would have gotten more value by simply playing a 'real' three drop, even if it's one tier below Mulldrifter.
Of course there are situations where you only have that one card left with 10 lands on the board, but I don't think that's how you properly evaluate a three drop. Otherwise you could just as well say that Artisan of Kozilek would have been the better choice.
The reason why people aren't unhappy with Recruiter is that you always get something useful out of it, but I think if you are honest to yourself and ask yourself whether a decent 'real' three drop (like, say, Fire Imp or Cloudkin Seer) would have helped more in a specific situation the answer is 'yes' more than 50% of the time.
I don't think tutors are problematic or unfair at all in peasant. There are no two card insta kill combos like in constructed or even regular cube. I run all the Mirage tutors and Demonic Tutor and I would run more if there were any worth running. It's the easiest way to enable archetypes with only few playable, but important cards.
Last, but not least I can agree that Recruiter is a nice card in aristocrats at least as the combination of the weak body and the tutor effect is much more useful than elsewhere in that deck.
Calling a 3 mana 1/1 'developing the board' is an euphemism. A 2/1 can at least trade with a reasonable amount of creatures, but a 1/1 without evasion reads 'you gain 3 life' at best at that point of the game. Sure, it's better than nothing, but it doesn't add much to a 3 cmc card and I certainly wouldn't say that it's worth half a card.
You will however develop the board with the card you tutored up. I just wanted to point out that a body that blocks or may hold back 2/1 creatures will give you a better chance that you actually can play the card you tutored for in contrast to e.g. Diabolic Tutor.
Also, I don't see a reason why you would even tutor up value cards like Mulldrifter. The reason why they're good is that they provide good value for a low cost, but if you need 8 mana over two turns to play Mulldrifter with a 1/1 as a bonus then the ratio becomes terrible and you would have gotten more value by simply playing a 'real' three drop, even if it's one tier below Mulldrifter.
Mulldrifter is just an example for an overall good card. Btw, Mulldrifter on turn 5 or 7 is still good value for low cost. Maybe Mulldrifter was a bad example. Need removal: Palace Jailer; need tokens: Belfry Spitir; need a central archetype card: Elite Scaleguard ... and the list goes on. Its the flexability that males tutors good, the ability that you can react to a specific board state.
The reason why people aren't unhappy with Recruiter is that you always get something useful out of it, but I think if you are honest to yourself and ask yourself whether a decent 'real' three drop (like, say, Fire Imp or Cloudkin Seer) would have helped more in a specific situation the answer is 'yes' more than 50% of the time.
Sure, but if I need removal I would rather draw the Recruiter than Cloudkin Seer to tutor up for removal. If I play against a control deck I would rather have Imperial Recruiter than Fire Imp to tutor up for card-draw or pressure. I completely agree with you that the Recruiter is never the most mana efficient solution, but it is more often than not the best solution for the current situation on the board.
I don't think tutors are problematic or unfair at all in peasant. There are no two card insta kill combos like in constructed or even regular cube. I run all the Mirage tutors and Demonic Tutor and I would run more if there were any worth running. It's the easiest way to enable archetypes with only few playable, but important cards.
Agree ... and thats a reason I like tutors better in peasant than e.g. in powered cubes.
Also I think tutors create interesting decisions in drafting, deck-building and playing, which is something we value very high - of course, this an individual opinion.
Also, I don't see a reason why you would even tutor up value cards like Mulldrifter. The reason why they're good is that they provide good value for a low cost, but if you need 8 mana over two turns to play Mulldrifter with a 1/1 as a bonus then the ratio becomes terrible and you would have gotten more value by simply playing a 'real' three drop, even if it's one tier below Mulldrifter.
So the value of Imperial Recruiter seems to come from having a lot of high-impact cards you can fetch. Ravenous Chupacabra or Nekrataal is a much better target than you've made it out to be, because it changes the board so drastically (-1 to your opponent's board and +1 to yours, putting them back and getting ahead at the same time) so it's better than something durdly like Mulldrifter, but to me it's still not quite enough. In regular powered/unpowered, the kind of target you're looking for is something like Deranged Hermit/Angel of Invention, Phantasmal Image, Sower of Temptation, etc. Palace Jailer is another good one that's accessible to peasant. Basically, I can see Recruiter being an acceptable role-player but not the kind of "glue" card that really brings flexibility to a deck.
Magic players are in denial about what their best cards are. I've heard Legacy players call Force of Will a bad card, Pauper Delver players cut Delver from their decks, etc. So it seems natural that people would be in denial about cards that fundamentally break the game.
Jesus christ, here we go again. You have no idea what you're talking about, man.
Force of Will is horrifically bad against fair decks. Its main use is to stop game-winning combos. Consider the difference between countering a first-turn Mother of Runes vs a first-turn Show and Tell. FoW's play value has been over-inflated by casual gamers like you due to its reputation as a combo-breaker and its associated monetary price. And if combo didn't exist or was reduced in speed, it would almost certainly not be as prevalent as it is now.
I can't speak to pauper strategies, but I could spend ten minutes browsing the forums or conferring with some of my high-level pauper friends and learn something new about the game to help improve my skill, instead of coming here to ***** about it. Or, you know, using some of that established knowledge and realizing that you need different tools to attack different decks. Magic is an intensely crowd-sourced game, you have thousands of players playing millions of matches over years of play to figure out best practices but somehow, the one guy insisting it's the wrong call is you. Yeah.
You're drawing all kinds of baseless conclusions based on hilariously erroneous foundations, which might be a good start to discussion if you weren't then trying to pass it off as fact and insulting the entire forum by doubling down on this misguided view.
You make some decent points about tempo and value plays regarding tutors, but goddamn if it doesn't get lost in the morass of the rest of your posts.
I can't imagine Recruiter being correct to play in any deck in a way that it's actually versatile outside of maybe aristocrats. The way tutors work in almost every case is they find a shortlist of 1-3 cards that you fetch every game regardless of circumstance. Theoretically they act as a toolbox, but that's almost never the case in practice as there are very few cards that actually are worth the additional cost. In peasant there are almost no effects that are rare enough that you are constantly wanting more of them in deckbuilding, so you're effectively having a card riding on the strengths of cards like Palace Jailer. If you are actually short on payoffs Recruiter is significantly worse than just adding another payoff for that archetype to the cube, as you're not only paying an insane premium, but you're also losing the chance to draw both the card Recruiter is replacing and the tutored card. If multiple archetypes are short on payoffs then Recruiter is a band-aid solution to a bigger issue.
If Recruiter is used to fetch purely powerful cards rather than archetype ones I see that as a fail state. Not only are you actively supporting good stuff play styles, but you're also homogenizing gameplay as a Palace Jailer type card will almost always be played, which leads to similar game states. This allows for linear deckbuilding around singular cards, which is completely against the purpose of singleton. I find it hard to believe that this usage wouldn't be the norm for Recruiter.
I mean, Imperial Recruiter could just be used for its intended purpose... You know, finding a vanilla creature.
Is Imperial Recruiter -> Beetleback Chief or Goblin Bushwhacker not good enough? I'm sure there are even better cards one could be fetching at uncommon or rare that I'm not aware of.
But then again, Force of Will is a TERRIBLE card (because losing the game is preferable to losing card advantage, amirite?) so what do I know.
Imperial Recruiter is out of my price range for this cube, but I can't imagine it being too bad. Think of the recursion! There are a huge number of cards it gets. Some of them even work specifically to recur the recruiter like Kor Skyfisher, or Devoted Crop-Mate and Vesperlark if you can sacrifice it.
I'm with Saltmaster on this one. The card doesn't have to be played unfairly for it to be good. My experience with Recruiter of the Guard in my main cube would confirm this.
If you start thinking about corner cases and special interactions then every card with an etb effect suddenly becomes awesome. Especially if you don't even look at cards from the same color, which is another reason why Recruiter isn't that great - there hardly are any cards in red worth tutoring for. In my cube the only utility cards are Goblin Cratermaker and Fire Imp and there are no op targets I can think of, most creatures are even aggro, a deck where Recruiter is useless. Which is probably why people rather refer to Palace Jailer, Kor Skyfisher, Ravenous Chupacabra or Mulldrifter.
Your cube has to be incredibly slow if Recruiter into Beetleback Chief is a good play as all you get is a 7 mana Beetleback Chief that gives you three instead of two tokens. And in that case any other three drop would have been way better as well (again, unless you are in top deck mode with 10 lands in play).
Like I already said, Recruiter giving you value when you tutor for a fair target is just an illusion since people tend to forget that they could have played a real card instead of the tutor to begin with. In a deck with a well balanced curve any three drop with a real board impact will be way, way better on average than a three mana token that can fetch you a card you may not have even needed if you would have filled the 3 cmc spot with a useful card.
Also, the often mentioned Palace Jailer isn't really a great target for Recruiter either. The strength of Jailer is that if you have an even board state he will give you the edge so you can keep being monarch. But if you waste your third turn to cast a 1/1 you're most likely behind when Jailer hits the board, so it makes the card far worse than it would normally be. And on top of that your opponent even knows that Jailer will come down the next turn, so he can prepare for it.
Let's approach this from a slightly different angle: camparisons with Elvish Visonary.
Now, I am not saying that Elvish Visionary is a card worth playing in CU/be. However, it is a roleplayer which would see play, were it included.
Imperial Recruiter is +1 mana on that baseline and a *considerably* better average case scenario in terms of the quality of the card it 'draws'. Indeed, if your deck wants specific cards that fall within the range of Recruiter's effect, will filter cards up to half the size of your remaining deck on average. Peasant might not have the haymakers of traditional Cube and I agree that value creatures are not the best use of the ability but stuff like Anger and Wonder need not be played for its value, Psychatog has no need to rush, Old Man of the Sea wins games in the right deck (which would also make Recruiter more relevant through equipments), and so on.
A 1/1 is indeed almost the worst possible body available - but you missed the point I was making. Having a body at all is still infinitely better in a good many scenarios than not having one. As pointed out, it can still (threaten to) trade with aggro's 2/1s and 3/1s and there are bigger creatures which can be chumped. 'Gain 3 life' is a joke people make because of cards that only gain you life but lifegain is a really good rider effect when you are already doing other relevant things. It is the difference between Lightning Strike and Lightning Helix and only one of those sees consistent constructed play. When you are behind, it can buy you an extra turn.
Imperial Recruiter ought to be considered a tutor first and a creature second. And at least I have been consciously not mentioning the deck where it is its strongest: actual blink and self-bounce strategies. As far as red 3-drops go, the power of the rest is nowhere high enough that I can say I would be missing them when I draw Recruiter in a ton of scenarios, and in general, the depth of Peasant card pools is not such that the other available plays would just plainly overshadow Recruiter in terms of the slot it occupies in a deck.
I have not been only talking about my players' experiences: I am one of those players and have player Imperial Recruiter to great effect. I am also cognisant enough to know its perceived power is not illusory.
If you start thinking about corner cases and special interactions then every card with an etb effect suddenly becomes awesome. Especially if you don't even look at cards from the same color, which is another reason why Recruiter isn't that great - there hardly are any cards in red worth tutoring for
This is true - but most decks are doubled colored and Recruiter has very good targets in every color.
Your cube has to be incredibly slow if Recruiter into Beetleback Chief is a good play as all you get is a 7 mana Beetleback Chief that gives you three instead of two tokens. And in that case any other three drop would have been way better as well (again, unless you are in top deck mode with 10 lands in play).
The Chief is a bad example but I think you miss an important general point of tutors. You are not paying e.g. 7 mana for a 4 drop (3 for Recruiter and 4 for the tutored card) just for fun, you are paying 7 mana for the 4 drop at the exact time you need the card given the current game state, which is huge and can make a big difference. Magic is all about having the right cards at the right time.
I think there are many valid pro and contra arguments and I will just tets the card and see how it turns out.
Imperial Recruiter -> Beetleback Chief isn't 7 mana. If you wait a turn it's still only 4 mana.
5 mana on one turn and 5 mana the next is a whole different beast than having to pay 10 mana for something.
You raise an interesting point that people forget that a tutor could just be another good card, but tutors are already just second copies of good cards. Which in a singleton format especially is valuable.
If Beetleback Chief was one of the better cards in my deck, I'd prefer the ability to draw it more often.
If I was playing an aggro deck I'd prefer to be able to tutor up a Trumpet Blast on a stick or removal on a stick than just crossing my fingers and hoping to draw what I needed.
And when you're playing a non-mono red deck there are even more possibilities. Even when my cube wasn't diluted with an entire colorless section and I had a more normal color distribution, the most common type of deck had 2 colors.
Holy ***** I love James Bond opening credits sequences by the way.
I'm not missing the general point of tutors, I'm just questioning that you will have a lot of situations where paying three additional mana for a 1/1 and a 2 power creature of your choice is better than playing any decent three drop that has a board impact on its own already. This will hardly ever be the case in the early to mid game where you usually can't allow yourself to (almost) waste a whole turn.
And it's not like peasant has any unbeatable bombs that require very specific answers to deal with, neither are there any broken combos you could tutor for. And that even after assuming that a 2 power max creature in your deck would be able to deal with a potentional bomb or would be part of a combo.
But good luck testing the card. Like I said, I don't think it's unplayable, but I'm very sure this would be a low tier card in my cube as it's so, sooo much worse than Demonic Tutor and while Tutor is obviously very good, it is far from overpowered.
Being able to tutor cards at fair prices fundamentally breaks the game, phitt. Saltmaster said so, and by disagreeing you have shown him the path to true cube nirvana.
What is a fair price depends on the cards you can tutor for. Demonic Tutor is banned in all non-casual constructed formats but Vintage for a reason, but in CU/be it's just a good utility card. Imperial Recruiter may be a powerful card in a Legacy insta win combo deck, but in CU/be it's hardly ever worth it to pay three mana extra for a random 2 power creature and a token.
Tutors don't break the game at all, it's the combination of tutors and the cards you can tutor for that break the game.
I'm not missing the general point of tutors, I'm just questioning that you will have a lot of situations where paying three additional mana for a 1/1 and a 2 power creature of your choice is better than playing any decent three drop that has a board impact on its own already.
Again I think you dont get the point that I dont want to play any decent three drop, but rather a three drop that searches up the best card for the current situation and this is most often better than any decent three drop. Granted, the Recruiter has limitations regarding the tutor targets, but I will test out whether these limitations will be a reason to not permanently include the card in my cube.
Thanks for the input.
I can't imagine Recruiter being correct to play in any deck in a way that it's actually versatile outside of maybe aristocrats. The way tutors work in almost every case is they find a shortlist of 1-3 cards that you fetch every game regardless of circumstance. Theoretically they act as a toolbox, but that's almost never the case in practice as there are very few cards that actually are worth the additional cost. In peasant there are almost no effects that are rare enough that you are constantly wanting more of them in deckbuilding, so you're effectively having a card riding on the strengths of cards like Palace Jailer. If you are actually short on payoffs Recruiter is significantly worse than just adding another payoff for that archetype to the cube, as you're not only paying an insane premium, but you're also losing the chance to draw both the card Recruiter is replacing and the tutored card. If multiple archetypes are short on payoffs then Recruiter is a band-aid solution to a bigger issue.
If Recruiter is used to fetch purely powerful cards rather than archetype ones I see that as a fail state. Not only are you actively supporting good stuff play styles, but you're also homogenizing gameplay as a Palace Jailer type card will almost always be played, which leads to similar game states. This allows for linear deckbuilding around singular cards, which is completely against the purpose of singleton. I find it hard to believe that this usage wouldn't be the norm for Recruiter.
I agree with this completely. I also think Recruiter messes with the 'feel' of peasant cube. In current day, a card like Imperial Recruiter just doesn't feel like an uncommon. Not because of raw power level, but just because tutoring with loose restrictions is something typically done at rare, not at uncommon. Whether or ot you want to avoid cards that feel like they should be rare, but have been printed at lower rarities is a personal choice, but I don't like it for my cube.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
To post a comment, please login or register a new account.
The only saving grace Recruiter has is that red is a rather shallow and boring color while Recruiter is a card with a unique effect. If I had one I'd probably play him, but I'm not going to pay €30 for a card that I would most likely replace sooner than later anyway if we get more interesting red cards like Light up the Stage.
Praise the Don Quijote of the gaming world!
My Old School Battlebox
My Premodern Battlebox
2023 Average Peasant Cube|and Discussion
Because I have more decks than fit in a signature
Useful Resources:
MTGSalvation tags
EDHREC
ManabaseCrafter
Simian Grunts
Spellstutter Sprite
The already mentioned Ambush Viper is pretty nasty too.
Ignoring what Magic players say isn't the answer, it's listening to what they have to say and doing the exact opposite that's correct.
For me the Recruiter would be a value card as it can find cards like Palace Jailer, Mulldrifter, Ravenous Chupacabra, Riftwing Clodskate, etc.. Actually I was surprised how many valueable targets the Recruiter has in each color. Also note that compared to Worldly Tutor you get the creature immediately, which is a huge difference compared to putting the card on top of your library. Also a 1/1 body is valueable as a blocker, blink target, sac. outlet, etc..
My Peasant Cube: @ mtgsalvation---- @ cubecobra
Worldly Tutor is 1 mana instant speed, which more than makes up for its shortcomings - if you play it eot it's pretty much the same as getting the creature immediately, but for a fraction of the cost and with the option to cast other instant speed spells during your opponent's turn if there is a need for it. And you can play the creatures you tutored for immediately afterwards with full mana before your opponent can react to it. It's just leagues better than Recruiter.
A 1/1 isn't completely worthless, but I think we can agree that the impact it has on a 3 mana card is almost negligible. Unless you can blink/bounce it in a grindy value deck, which I already mentioned and which is unlikely given that red is the worst blink color.
I believe if this was a random black $0.1 common no one would even look at it. But since it's a well-known, expensive Legacy card that used to be ultra rare and since red is a shallow color it's an option. It's a bad tutor in a color that doesn't have tutors normally. Nothing more, nothing less.
My Old School Battlebox
My Premodern Battlebox
My Peasant Cube: @ mtgsalvation---- @ cubecobra
The two arguments are contradictory or am I missing your point? Your are saying that the tutor targets are not powerful enough in a peasant environment and that its not fair to be able to search a card for 2-3 extra mana. For me I especially like in peasant that there are no targets that straight up win you the game and that tutoring just can give you efficient or synergistic cards. I like having that flexibility and tool-box feeling.
Here I have to disagree but that is just a peronal cube building preference. Tutors give you redundancy in effects without having to dedicate redundant slots in your cube. I would rather have Blood Artist and Imperial Recruiter in my cube than Blood Artist and Zulaport Cutthroat, as the latter are kind of the same. The advantage of the Recruiter is that in one deck it is Blood Artist #2 and in another deck Mist Raven #2.
Sure, but you should have a rough outline of your drafted deck in your head anyways, shouldnt you?
Again, I kind of get what you are saying and maybe it is just personal preference. I like flexibility and I like redundancy and tutors can give you both. I do appreciate the discussion as I maybe biased since I played lots of unpowered cube and in this environment tutors are more powerful (and more unfair).
My Peasant Cube: @ mtgsalvation---- @ cubecobra
Tutors inherently increase reliability - which is a huge boon in a format built around singleton cards. Even with a deck like Aristocrats which possesses redundancy with its key cards, those key cards also stack their affects and Imperial Recruiter provides fodder for them. Especially given how it can search for either a sac outlet or a drainer, depending on which you need more at the time.
Unlike Worldly Tutor which is inherently -1 CA, Imperial Recruiter is slight card advantage at a minimum (let's say +0.5 for its own body). The colour difference and floor are also not negligible: at a minimum, being a creature, the Recruiter provides a body and allows you to play what you searched immediately if you have the mana which is huge when you are behind. Worldly Tutor literally does nothing that can affect the board the turn it is played should you top deck it.
Demonic Tutor remains a P1P1 worthy card even in this format, and Imperial Recruiter is +1 mana compared to it while also still providing its body. While not as versatile, as MagicFever noted, it does find a surprising number of targets across all colours.
The last time I played Imperial Recruiter, it was in a Grixis (RUb) deck that did extremely well. I would not throw the card in every deck (I think the aggro deck I mentioned should not have included it, for one) but it is one of those cards where the effect it provides is strong enough to be worthwhile even when it is not crucial but which can also provide surprise synergies to consider given the range of what it allows. Not all its targets are small creatures, either: green in particular has various borderline +1/+1 counter creatures which have a low listed power but enter play with counters.
It's seems like it would be a reasonable card depending on what you can cheat for with it. The more low powered your environment is, the more relevant the 1/1 body is, the more relevant the card advantage is, and the less relevant it is that you likely spent your turn playing him. And the more high powered the environment is, the more powerful the card he can find is. It scales with power level and would be as good in a Homelands cube as it would be in the MTGO Vintage cube IMO.
I've never understood this argument that tutors are bad because you often spend your entire turn casting one and they're too slow and you may lose the game. They're a hell of a lot faster on average than hoping to top deck the card you need and if you were in a situation where you couldn't afford to pay 3 mana for a tutor you are likely already losing even if you top deck what you need.
Magic players are in denial about what their best cards are. I've heard Legacy players call Force of Will a bad card, Pauper Delver players cut Delver from their decks, etc. So it seems natural that people would be in denial about cards that fundamentally break the game.
I have one in my cube because I'm okay with conditional tutors, I love the P3K art, and the counterfeit was only $2.50 so I didn't have to spend real money on it. Since expanding the size of my cube and adding colorless creatures as a real "sixth color", I've diluted the ability to draft mono red goblins, so Imperial recruiter functions as a second Goblin Matron while not being completely absurd like Goblin Recruiter.
Ignoring what Magic players say isn't the answer, it's listening to what they have to say and doing the exact opposite that's correct.
Also, I don't see a reason why you would even tutor up value cards like Mulldrifter. The reason why they're good is that they provide good value for a low cost, but if you need 8 mana over two turns to play Mulldrifter with a 1/1 as a bonus then the ratio becomes terrible and you would have gotten more value by simply playing a 'real' three drop, even if it's one tier below Mulldrifter.
Of course there are situations where you only have that one card left with 10 lands on the board, but I don't think that's how you properly evaluate a three drop. Otherwise you could just as well say that Artisan of Kozilek would have been the better choice.
The reason why people aren't unhappy with Recruiter is that you always get something useful out of it, but I think if you are honest to yourself and ask yourself whether a decent 'real' three drop (like, say, Fire Imp or Cloudkin Seer) would have helped more in a specific situation the answer is 'yes' more than 50% of the time.
I don't think tutors are problematic or unfair at all in peasant. There are no two card insta kill combos like in constructed or even regular cube. I run all the Mirage tutors and Demonic Tutor and I would run more if there were any worth running. It's the easiest way to enable archetypes with only few playable, but important cards.
Last, but not least I can agree that Recruiter is a nice card in aristocrats at least as the combination of the weak body and the tutor effect is much more useful than elsewhere in that deck.
My Old School Battlebox
My Premodern Battlebox
You will however develop the board with the card you tutored up. I just wanted to point out that a body that blocks or may hold back 2/1 creatures will give you a better chance that you actually can play the card you tutored for in contrast to e.g. Diabolic Tutor.
Mulldrifter is just an example for an overall good card. Btw, Mulldrifter on turn 5 or 7 is still good value for low cost. Maybe Mulldrifter was a bad example. Need removal: Palace Jailer; need tokens: Belfry Spitir; need a central archetype card: Elite Scaleguard ... and the list goes on. Its the flexability that males tutors good, the ability that you can react to a specific board state.
Sure, but if I need removal I would rather draw the Recruiter than Cloudkin Seer to tutor up for removal. If I play against a control deck I would rather have Imperial Recruiter than Fire Imp to tutor up for card-draw or pressure. I completely agree with you that the Recruiter is never the most mana efficient solution, but it is more often than not the best solution for the current situation on the board.
Agree ... and thats a reason I like tutors better in peasant than e.g. in powered cubes.
Also I think tutors create interesting decisions in drafting, deck-building and playing, which is something we value very high - of course, this an individual opinion.
My Peasant Cube: @ mtgsalvation---- @ cubecobra
So the value of Imperial Recruiter seems to come from having a lot of high-impact cards you can fetch. Ravenous Chupacabra or Nekrataal is a much better target than you've made it out to be, because it changes the board so drastically (-1 to your opponent's board and +1 to yours, putting them back and getting ahead at the same time) so it's better than something durdly like Mulldrifter, but to me it's still not quite enough. In regular powered/unpowered, the kind of target you're looking for is something like Deranged Hermit/Angel of Invention, Phantasmal Image, Sower of Temptation, etc. Palace Jailer is another good one that's accessible to peasant. Basically, I can see Recruiter being an acceptable role-player but not the kind of "glue" card that really brings flexibility to a deck.
Jesus christ, here we go again. You have no idea what you're talking about, man.
Force of Will is horrifically bad against fair decks. Its main use is to stop game-winning combos. Consider the difference between countering a first-turn Mother of Runes vs a first-turn Show and Tell. FoW's play value has been over-inflated by casual gamers like you due to its reputation as a combo-breaker and its associated monetary price. And if combo didn't exist or was reduced in speed, it would almost certainly not be as prevalent as it is now.
I can't speak to pauper strategies, but I could spend ten minutes browsing the forums or conferring with some of my high-level pauper friends and learn something new about the game to help improve my skill, instead of coming here to ***** about it. Or, you know, using some of that established knowledge and realizing that you need different tools to attack different decks. Magic is an intensely crowd-sourced game, you have thousands of players playing millions of matches over years of play to figure out best practices but somehow, the one guy insisting it's the wrong call is you. Yeah.
You're drawing all kinds of baseless conclusions based on hilariously erroneous foundations, which might be a good start to discussion if you weren't then trying to pass it off as fact and insulting the entire forum by doubling down on this misguided view.
You make some decent points about tempo and value plays regarding tutors, but goddamn if it doesn't get lost in the morass of the rest of your posts.
I wonder why.
My Cube (DeckStats)
My Pauper Cube: 540 (CubeTutor link!)
Level 1 Judge
If Recruiter is used to fetch purely powerful cards rather than archetype ones I see that as a fail state. Not only are you actively supporting good stuff play styles, but you're also homogenizing gameplay as a Palace Jailer type card will almost always be played, which leads to similar game states. This allows for linear deckbuilding around singular cards, which is completely against the purpose of singleton. I find it hard to believe that this usage wouldn't be the norm for Recruiter.
Is Imperial Recruiter -> Beetleback Chief or Goblin Bushwhacker not good enough? I'm sure there are even better cards one could be fetching at uncommon or rare that I'm not aware of.
But then again, Force of Will is a TERRIBLE card (because losing the game is preferable to losing card advantage, amirite?) so what do I know.
Ignoring what Magic players say isn't the answer, it's listening to what they have to say and doing the exact opposite that's correct.
I'm with Saltmaster on this one. The card doesn't have to be played unfairly for it to be good. My experience with Recruiter of the Guard in my main cube would confirm this.
Low-power cube enthusiast!
My 1570 card cube (no longer updated)
My 415 Peasant+ Artifact and Enchantment Cube
Ever-Expanding "Just throw it in" cube.
Your cube has to be incredibly slow if Recruiter into Beetleback Chief is a good play as all you get is a 7 mana Beetleback Chief that gives you three instead of two tokens. And in that case any other three drop would have been way better as well (again, unless you are in top deck mode with 10 lands in play).
Like I already said, Recruiter giving you value when you tutor for a fair target is just an illusion since people tend to forget that they could have played a real card instead of the tutor to begin with. In a deck with a well balanced curve any three drop with a real board impact will be way, way better on average than a three mana token that can fetch you a card you may not have even needed if you would have filled the 3 cmc spot with a useful card.
Also, the often mentioned Palace Jailer isn't really a great target for Recruiter either. The strength of Jailer is that if you have an even board state he will give you the edge so you can keep being monarch. But if you waste your third turn to cast a 1/1 you're most likely behind when Jailer hits the board, so it makes the card far worse than it would normally be. And on top of that your opponent even knows that Jailer will come down the next turn, so he can prepare for it.
My Old School Battlebox
My Premodern Battlebox
Now, I am not saying that Elvish Visionary is a card worth playing in CU/be. However, it is a roleplayer which would see play, were it included.
Imperial Recruiter is +1 mana on that baseline and a *considerably* better average case scenario in terms of the quality of the card it 'draws'. Indeed, if your deck wants specific cards that fall within the range of Recruiter's effect, will filter cards up to half the size of your remaining deck on average. Peasant might not have the haymakers of traditional Cube and I agree that value creatures are not the best use of the ability but stuff like Anger and Wonder need not be played for its value, Psychatog has no need to rush, Old Man of the Sea wins games in the right deck (which would also make Recruiter more relevant through equipments), and so on.
A 1/1 is indeed almost the worst possible body available - but you missed the point I was making. Having a body at all is still infinitely better in a good many scenarios than not having one. As pointed out, it can still (threaten to) trade with aggro's 2/1s and 3/1s and there are bigger creatures which can be chumped. 'Gain 3 life' is a joke people make because of cards that only gain you life but lifegain is a really good rider effect when you are already doing other relevant things. It is the difference between Lightning Strike and Lightning Helix and only one of those sees consistent constructed play. When you are behind, it can buy you an extra turn.
Imperial Recruiter ought to be considered a tutor first and a creature second. And at least I have been consciously not mentioning the deck where it is its strongest: actual blink and self-bounce strategies. As far as red 3-drops go, the power of the rest is nowhere high enough that I can say I would be missing them when I draw Recruiter in a ton of scenarios, and in general, the depth of Peasant card pools is not such that the other available plays would just plainly overshadow Recruiter in terms of the slot it occupies in a deck.
I have not been only talking about my players' experiences: I am one of those players and have player Imperial Recruiter to great effect. I am also cognisant enough to know its perceived power is not illusory.
This is true - but most decks are doubled colored and Recruiter has very good targets in every color.
The Chief is a bad example but I think you miss an important general point of tutors. You are not paying e.g. 7 mana for a 4 drop (3 for Recruiter and 4 for the tutored card) just for fun, you are paying 7 mana for the 4 drop at the exact time you need the card given the current game state, which is huge and can make a big difference. Magic is all about having the right cards at the right time.
I think there are many valid pro and contra arguments and I will just tets the card and see how it turns out.
My Peasant Cube: @ mtgsalvation---- @ cubecobra
5 mana on one turn and 5 mana the next is a whole different beast than having to pay 10 mana for something.
You raise an interesting point that people forget that a tutor could just be another good card, but tutors are already just second copies of good cards. Which in a singleton format especially is valuable.
If Beetleback Chief was one of the better cards in my deck, I'd prefer the ability to draw it more often.
If I was playing an aggro deck I'd prefer to be able to tutor up a Trumpet Blast on a stick or removal on a stick than just crossing my fingers and hoping to draw what I needed.
And when you're playing a non-mono red deck there are even more possibilities. Even when my cube wasn't diluted with an entire colorless section and I had a more normal color distribution, the most common type of deck had 2 colors.
Holy ***** I love James Bond opening credits sequences by the way.
Ignoring what Magic players say isn't the answer, it's listening to what they have to say and doing the exact opposite that's correct.
And it's not like peasant has any unbeatable bombs that require very specific answers to deal with, neither are there any broken combos you could tutor for. And that even after assuming that a 2 power max creature in your deck would be able to deal with a potentional bomb or would be part of a combo.
But good luck testing the card. Like I said, I don't think it's unplayable, but I'm very sure this would be a low tier card in my cube as it's so, sooo much worse than Demonic Tutor and while Tutor is obviously very good, it is far from overpowered.
My Old School Battlebox
My Premodern Battlebox
My CubeCobra (draft 20 card packs, 2 packs.)
430, Peasant, Very Unpowered
Why you should take your hybrids out of your gold section
Manamath Article
Tutors don't break the game at all, it's the combination of tutors and the cards you can tutor for that break the game.
My Old School Battlebox
My Premodern Battlebox
Again I think you dont get the point that I dont want to play any decent three drop, but rather a three drop that searches up the best card for the current situation and this is most often better than any decent three drop. Granted, the Recruiter has limitations regarding the tutor targets, but I will test out whether these limitations will be a reason to not permanently include the card in my cube.
Thanks for the input.
My Peasant Cube: @ mtgsalvation---- @ cubecobra
I agree with this completely. I also think Recruiter messes with the 'feel' of peasant cube. In current day, a card like Imperial Recruiter just doesn't feel like an uncommon. Not because of raw power level, but just because tutoring with loose restrictions is something typically done at rare, not at uncommon. Whether or ot you want to avoid cards that feel like they should be rare, but have been printed at lower rarities is a personal choice, but I don't like it for my cube.