We really are starting off with a bang, even in terms of the uncommons, aren't we? For example, basically a surveil Opt and a strictly better Shock that scries when you go for face.
Great additions with Infernal Grasp and Consider. Easy upgrades over Opt and any old Doom Blade you run. Maybe it's time to say goodbye to Go for the Throat.
Infernal Grasp is the new #1 unconditional black removal, will happily add it. I will probably keep Go for the Throat too because even though it may be worse than Cast Down or Power Word Kill the condition makes the most sense to me.
I like Preordain, Ponder and Serum Visions more than Consider and I don't need another cantrip like that. Would be great if you could discard any card, but then it would be way too good probably.
Play with Fire is ok, but there is too much compeition in the burn section so it won't make it into my cube.
Join the Dance isn't terrible either, though the flashback part should probably be 1-2 mana cheaper.
Comparatively, I am a bit down on Infernal Grasp and have it firmly behind Power Word Kill, Cast Down, and Go For The Throat, the three least conditional of the 2-mana kill spells. Each of those currently misses between 3% and 6% of my Cube's creatures and I think each is overall better as removal that works 94% to 97% of the time than 100% removal with a guaranteed 100% drawback.
I think there are plenty of matchups where the two life loss will matter and especially dulls the play pattern of control decks that want to kill an early 1-mana or 2-mana creature from the opponent.
That said, I feel pretty confident in Grasp over Heartless Act and Ultimate Price, which have miss rates closer to 12% to 15%. Also, I do not dislike the idea of a card being better for aggro decks compared to control.
Comparatively, I am a bit down on Infernal Grasp and have it firmly behind Power Word Kill, Cast Down, and Go For The Throat, the three least conditional of the 2-mana kill spells. Each of those currently misses between 3% and 6% of my Cube's creatures and I think each is overall better as removal that works 94% to 97% of the time than 100% removal with a guaranteed 100% drawback.
I think there are plenty of matchups where the two life loss will matter and especially dulls the play pattern of control decks that want to kill an early 1-mana or 2-mana creature from the opponent.
That said, I feel pretty confident in Grasp over Heartless Act and Ultimate Price, which have miss rates closer to 12% to 15%. Also, I do not dislike the idea of a card being better for aggro decks compared to control.
You are probably right, but I still disagree from a gameplay perspective. It is extremely rare that you are stuck at 1 or 2 life and thus can't cast Infernal Grasp at all. And it's also much more annoying and infuriating if you can't remove a creature because of a random condition you can't even get rid of, eg if you have Cast Down in your hand, but your opponent is beating you to death with Anax, Hardened in the Forge. Even if you are at 2 life there are plenty of cards that can give you life, but there is no way to change a random creature type.
While Infernal Grasp may overall be worse than Cast Down or Power Word Kill in...1 out of 50 games? it always feels better to play. I will definitely play Infernal Grasp for that reason, and like you said, a removal spell that is slightly better in aggro than in control is always another plus from my pov.
I'm not the type of person who wants depowered removal, but even for me there is a point where gameplay matters more than pure power statistics.
Personally, I agree with Phitt here: the main thing that you want from removal like that is reliability (after the obvious general requirement of efficiency).
If you ever get shafted by some high priority target being untargetable because of arbitrary limitations, it will feel all the worse. In this sense, the more niche the limitation, the worse it coming up in actual play will feel. I have a Power Word Kill in hand and the opponent just happened to put Grafted Wargear on their Rakdos Cackler? *Uuuuggh...*
What's kind of interesting is that Power Word Kill will specifically fail against many high priority targets. Cast Down has the same issue as well as swiftly diminishing value because Legendaries are becoming increasingly common at uncommon. They also often have strong enough effects to warrant inclusion since they're being 'balanced' in limited by the legendary rule. In singleton cube, this hardly matters.
@VariSami- I will certainly agree that the trio of Power Word Kill, Cast Down, and Go for the Throat feel arbitrary, I disagree about them necessarily failing against high-priority targets. In my cube (512 cards, 6 guild spells and 2 guild lands), I have a mean creature mana value of 2.99. Specifically, twenty-two 5-drops, eight 6-drops, eleven 7-drops, and two 9-drops.
For those three conditional kill spells, here is the breakdown of misses per mana value.
Power Word Kill- one 1-drop, one 2-drop, three 3-drops, one 4-drop, one 7-drop. Mean mana value: 3.29.
Cast Down- one 2-drop, five 3-drops, three 4-drops, five 5-drops. Mean mana value: 3.5.
Go for the Throat- three 1-drops, eight 2-drops, one 3-drop, two 4-drops, one 6-drop, two 7-drops. Mean mana value: 2.94.
Other than Cast Down, which definitely has some big misses with those five 5-drops, I think the other two do not skew that high on their misses.
With all that said, I totally agree that having a 100% reliable kill spell is a feel good. I personally do not think it is automatically the #1 two-mana black kill spell.
Just for clarity: while these creature types have been also becoming more popular at the low end, my comment was about the kinds of creatures that those missed by Power Word Kill tend to be design-wise, with the exception of devils (though, there are also high end devils).
Any given Cube can have a different distribution of creature types. But in terms of what gets printed, a lot of high priority targets end up being Angels, Demons, and Dragons. It is actually amusing how few of such things that are viable are also available at Peasant/Artisan level, though. Especially when it comes to Dragons, and not just because of red's preference for lower overall curves.
Ominous Roost coming with one token by default makes it a bit less parasitic when played during a match. Adding back more Retrace cards alongside it could be fun since those are already pretty good support for several things, mainly spellslingers.
I think that Flame Channeler should be really good. There is so much burn in red that the condition to flip it is not even really a deckbuilding challenge. While you might not get too many further triggers for CA, the post-flip body is worthwhile, and even before flipping, it's still a 2/2 for 2.
I also like Ancestral Mirror since there is surprisingly little quality discarding in black to support Reanimator. Rummaging to get into a decent beater is fine, and the mana cost for the activated ability is bearable.
I also like Ancestral Mirror since there is surprisingly little quality discarding in black to support Reanimator. Rummaging to get into a decent beater is fine, and the mana cost for the activated ability is bearable.
Good catch. In my cube black is pretty reliant on other colors to get cards in the bin, so this is a nice on-color option.
Re: Flame Channeler- I really like the flipside, that's for sure. How many ways will the average red deck have to transform this creature? My first thought is in the 6 or 7 range, which is pretty conditional. Also, a 2/2 for two mana is now pretty cruddy for red. Might still cut one of the conditional 3/2s for it.
Candletrap is an interesting piece of cheap white removal. If you are trying to defend, you stop a creature right away and probably do not care about leaving a blocker behind. If you are trying to attack, you leave a blocker behind that you might be able to eventually exile.
Hobbling Zombie is interesting. A 2/2 Deathtouch trades with larger creatures while not dying to every little poke like a 1/1. And it gives a 2/2 token when it dies. Just not sure about 3 mana.
I suppose it compares to Orzhov Enforcer, which I'm not running.
I think that Flame Channeler should be really good. There is so much burn in red that the condition to flip it is not even really a deckbuilding challenge. While you might not get too many further triggers for CA, the post-flip body is worthwhile, and even before flipping, it's still a 2/2 for 2.
I also like Ancestral Mirror since there is surprisingly little quality discarding in black to support Reanimator. Rummaging to get into a decent beater is fine, and the mana cost for the activated ability is bearable.
I'm running The Underworld Cookbook from MH2, and is not bad. The Mirror offers a body later, which is not bad.
Flame Channeler could be ok. Red has no problems dealing damage so this should transform easily.
I like this:
Seize the Storm
4R
Sorcery
Create a red Elemental creature token with trample and "This creature's power and toughness are each equal to the number of instant and sorcery cards in your graveyard plus the number of cards with flashback you own in exile."
Flashback 6R
Seems ok for spellslinger decks. It lacks some kind of evasion, but flashback makes the card decent for me.
Nothing that really catch my eyes in this moment, but some borderline cards. Let's see next cards.
Ghoulish Procession is insanely cheap. The bodies aren't good, but triggering on your opponent's stuff as well makes triggering it pretty easy. Even without synergy it threatens a good amount of damage pretty quickly.
At a glance Gavony Dawnguard has less hits than Militia Bugler along with a harder casting cost and not being blinkable. On the other hand it is cheap engine.
Getting any CA off Flame Channeler seems rare enough that it's not really worth playing it for. Not being able to curve it into a 3 drop creature is really awkward when we've gotten lots of good ones recently.
Foul Play is pretty solid early game removal now that a lot of the aggressive 2 drops are 2/x's.
Diregraf Rebirth seems really solid I think. Similar to Unburial Rites, but green gives access to self-mill, which can be relevant.
Ghoulish Procession seems real solid. Gives all your removal spells extra 'oomph', and isn't expensive at all.
I want to like Seize the Storm, but I think it's too expensive.
Heirloom Mirror seems fun, enabling reanimator in-colour is definitely an upside, however, sorcery speed is a bit of a bummer. Incidental gravehate on the back is cool, though.
I like Hobbling Zombie. Deathtouch has turned out to be quite nice, and having an extra (bad) body attached is nice. Will have to wait and see how Decayed plays out.
Diregraf Rebirth is really good in a more useful guild (golgari) than Unburial Rites. Having access to more selfmill and discard with green is fine, and the discount effect is great. I think this will be an addition for me, but the guild is really stacked with good options.
On the other hand, Fleshtaker
is decent for aristocrats and even lifegain archetypes. I would prefer this card was a Blood Artist effect, draining life, but as it is, is not so bad.
Triggering off you sacrificing is so much worse than triggering off of any creature (or even just one of your creatures) dying. I'm an aristocrats Stan but even I don't think Fleshtaker makes the cut. I really like the art so I won't fault anybody who plays it for that reason alone.
Diregraf Rebirth seems too expensive in a stacked guild that already has access to all the (very good) black reanimation cards. The comparison to Unburial Rites is interesting but I like to pretend Rites is hybrid so it's not taking one of my guild slots (but let's not retread the hybrid debate).
I think Heirloom Mirror does slightly not enough too slowly to be worth it. Self discard in black is cute but you're spending a lot of resources to get there.
Ghoulish Procession seems at least testable. I think Open the Graves would be very cubeable and at 2CMC this seems like a very fair downsized version of that.
Hobbling Zombie is a neat design in that not only does it kill any creature it touches, but it may actually bore me to death as well with how blandly playable it is.
I want to like Flame Channeler but I'm not convinced there's a deck where the payoff is worth the time you have to sit there and look at your red bear. I guess bears aren't that bad.
Heirloom Mirror seems fun, enabling reanimator in-colour is definitely an upside, however, sorcery speed is a bit of a bummer. Incidental gravehate on the back is cool, though.
Heirloom Mirror remembers me too much to Bloodsoaked Altar, but I think I would play the Altar before the new one. It costs 6 mana, but is repeteable and faster to enable.
Heirloom Mirror seems fun, enabling reanimator in-colour is definitely an upside, however, sorcery speed is a bit of a bummer. Incidental gravehate on the back is cool, though.
Heirloom Mirror remembers me too much to Bloodsoaked Altar, but I think I would play the Altar before the new one. It costs 6 mana, but is repeteable and faster to enable.
I mean, all proponents of the mirror have been talking about enabling reanimator with it in-colour for minimal cost. Six mana to play the Altar makes it terrible for this particular task - especially because you also need to sacrifice creatures before you even get to activate it and discard a card.
This is also partly why I do not understand n00b's comment about 'spending a lot of resources'. You pay 1 life and 1 mana per discard after an initial investment of 1 card and 2 mana. The sunk cost on the card is repayed once the card flips into a creature that affects the board itself. Maybe they missed the part where you are also drawing a card (hence, rummaging) whenever the card is activated since this is almost unheard of with black discard enablers.
Re: Heirloom Mirror- I understand the idea of this being time and resource intensive since the main payoff, Inherited Fiend, will not attack until turn 6. I am also skeptical of this card as a great reanimation enabler. I like enablers with a little board impact, like a Mire Triton or a Heir of Falkenrath. That said, Mirror does a bunch of little stuff, so it is worth consideration as a broader "good card."
Re: Ghoulish Procession and Hobbling Zombie- I think these decayed Zombie tokens are generally worse than a 1/1, so I am skeptical of their value. Ghoulish Procession does have that upside as an engine, which interests me. Compared to Hobbling Zombie, I think there are better, similar cards like an Orzhov Enforcer.
Re: Gavony Dawnguard- Only mentioned once in this thread, but another card with some engine potential. Keeping a 3/3 ward 1 around for multiple turns seems unlikely, but this is probably good enough activated just once in high-creature white decks.
Re: Fleshtaker- The real downside of this card to me is the one-mana activation. That always kills these cards more than anything else, since the threat of activation is severely diminished.
Re: Loyal Gryff- A cute trick that is also just a flash flying 2/2 that might get some value is eating small attackers.
Re: Brief Repreive- Another Banishing Light, but I think I would rather have the 3rd three-mana version before the 3rd four-mana version, which is Cast Out for me.
Here's a link to the spoiler thread for the initial reveals.
Oh, right - and Infernal Grasp is *finally* our two mana unconditional black removal Instant. Even if it pings you for two which is negligible.
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I like Preordain, Ponder and Serum Visions more than Consider and I don't need another cantrip like that. Would be great if you could discard any card, but then it would be way too good probably.
Play with Fire is ok, but there is too much compeition in the burn section so it won't make it into my cube.
Join the Dance isn't terrible either, though the flashback part should probably be 1-2 mana cheaper.
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I think there are plenty of matchups where the two life loss will matter and especially dulls the play pattern of control decks that want to kill an early 1-mana or 2-mana creature from the opponent.
That said, I feel pretty confident in Grasp over Heartless Act and Ultimate Price, which have miss rates closer to 12% to 15%. Also, I do not dislike the idea of a card being better for aggro decks compared to control.
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You are probably right, but I still disagree from a gameplay perspective. It is extremely rare that you are stuck at 1 or 2 life and thus can't cast Infernal Grasp at all. And it's also much more annoying and infuriating if you can't remove a creature because of a random condition you can't even get rid of, eg if you have Cast Down in your hand, but your opponent is beating you to death with Anax, Hardened in the Forge. Even if you are at 2 life there are plenty of cards that can give you life, but there is no way to change a random creature type.
While Infernal Grasp may overall be worse than Cast Down or Power Word Kill in...1 out of 50 games? it always feels better to play. I will definitely play Infernal Grasp for that reason, and like you said, a removal spell that is slightly better in aggro than in control is always another plus from my pov.
I'm not the type of person who wants depowered removal, but even for me there is a point where gameplay matters more than pure power statistics.
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EDIT: Nvm I get it. I like Cast Down more than the new.
If you ever get shafted by some high priority target being untargetable because of arbitrary limitations, it will feel all the worse. In this sense, the more niche the limitation, the worse it coming up in actual play will feel. I have a Power Word Kill in hand and the opponent just happened to put Grafted Wargear on their Rakdos Cackler? *Uuuuggh...*
What's kind of interesting is that Power Word Kill will specifically fail against many high priority targets. Cast Down has the same issue as well as swiftly diminishing value because Legendaries are becoming increasingly common at uncommon. They also often have strong enough effects to warrant inclusion since they're being 'balanced' in limited by the legendary rule. In singleton cube, this hardly matters.
For those three conditional kill spells, here is the breakdown of misses per mana value.
Power Word Kill- one 1-drop, one 2-drop, three 3-drops, one 4-drop, one 7-drop. Mean mana value: 3.29.
Cast Down- one 2-drop, five 3-drops, three 4-drops, five 5-drops. Mean mana value: 3.5.
Go for the Throat- three 1-drops, eight 2-drops, one 3-drop, two 4-drops, one 6-drop, two 7-drops. Mean mana value: 2.94.
Other than Cast Down, which definitely has some big misses with those five 5-drops, I think the other two do not skew that high on their misses.
With all that said, I totally agree that having a 100% reliable kill spell is a feel good. I personally do not think it is automatically the #1 two-mana black kill spell.
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Any given Cube can have a different distribution of creature types. But in terms of what gets printed, a lot of high priority targets end up being Angels, Demons, and Dragons. It is actually amusing how few of such things that are viable are also available at Peasant/Artisan level, though. Especially when it comes to Dragons, and not just because of red's preference for lower overall curves.
I like Famished Foragers and Baithook Angler could be decent enough.
Ominous Roost coming with one token by default makes it a bit less parasitic when played during a match. Adding back more Retrace cards alongside it could be fun since those are already pretty good support for several things, mainly spellslingers.
Thoughts on Flame Channeler // Embodiment of Flame? A little narrow, but repeatable card draw in red is interesting.
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I also like Ancestral Mirror since there is surprisingly little quality discarding in black to support Reanimator. Rummaging to get into a decent beater is fine, and the mana cost for the activated ability is bearable.
Good catch. In my cube black is pretty reliant on other colors to get cards in the bin, so this is a nice on-color option.
Gavony Dawnguard is close to a repeatable Militia Bugler. Seems quite strong.
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Candletrap is an interesting piece of cheap white removal. If you are trying to defend, you stop a creature right away and probably do not care about leaving a blocker behind. If you are trying to attack, you leave a blocker behind that you might be able to eventually exile.
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I suppose it compares to Orzhov Enforcer, which I'm not running.
2023 Average Peasant Cube|and Discussion
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I'm running The Underworld Cookbook from MH2, and is not bad. The Mirror offers a body later, which is not bad.
Flame Channeler could be ok. Red has no problems dealing damage so this should transform easily.
I like this:
Seize the Storm
4R
Sorcery
Create a red Elemental creature token with trample and "This creature's power and toughness are each equal to the number of instant and sorcery cards in your graveyard plus the number of cards with flashback you own in exile."
Flashback 6R
Seems ok for spellslinger decks. It lacks some kind of evasion, but flashback makes the card decent for me.
Nothing that really catch my eyes in this moment, but some borderline cards. Let's see next cards.
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At a glance Gavony Dawnguard has less hits than Militia Bugler along with a harder casting cost and not being blinkable. On the other hand it is cheap engine.
Getting any CA off Flame Channeler seems rare enough that it's not really worth playing it for. Not being able to curve it into a 3 drop creature is really awkward when we've gotten lots of good ones recently.
Foul Play is pretty solid early game removal now that a lot of the aggressive 2 drops are 2/x's.
Ghoulish Procession seems real solid. Gives all your removal spells extra 'oomph', and isn't expensive at all.
I want to like Seize the Storm, but I think it's too expensive.
Heirloom Mirror seems fun, enabling reanimator in-colour is definitely an upside, however, sorcery speed is a bit of a bummer. Incidental gravehate on the back is cool, though.
I like Hobbling Zombie. Deathtouch has turned out to be quite nice, and having an extra (bad) body attached is nice. Will have to wait and see how Decayed plays out.
WiJ
Peasant 540 Cube
On the other hand, Fleshtaker
is decent for aristocrats and even lifegain archetypes. I would prefer this card was a Blood Artist effect, draining life, but as it is, is not so bad.
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Diregraf Rebirth seems too expensive in a stacked guild that already has access to all the (very good) black reanimation cards. The comparison to Unburial Rites is interesting but I like to pretend Rites is hybrid so it's not taking one of my guild slots (but let's not retread the hybrid debate).
I think Heirloom Mirror does slightly not enough too slowly to be worth it. Self discard in black is cute but you're spending a lot of resources to get there.
Ghoulish Procession seems at least testable. I think Open the Graves would be very cubeable and at 2CMC this seems like a very fair downsized version of that.
Hobbling Zombie is a neat design in that not only does it kill any creature it touches, but it may actually bore me to death as well with how blandly playable it is.
I want to like Flame Channeler but I'm not convinced there's a deck where the payoff is worth the time you have to sit there and look at your red bear. I guess bears aren't that bad.
Draft it on Cubetutor here, and CubeCobra here.
Treasure Cruise did nothing wrong.
Heirloom Mirror remembers me too much to Bloodsoaked Altar, but I think I would play the Altar before the new one. It costs 6 mana, but is repeteable and faster to enable.
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I mean, all proponents of the mirror have been talking about enabling reanimator with it in-colour for minimal cost. Six mana to play the Altar makes it terrible for this particular task - especially because you also need to sacrifice creatures before you even get to activate it and discard a card.
This is also partly why I do not understand n00b's comment about 'spending a lot of resources'. You pay 1 life and 1 mana per discard after an initial investment of 1 card and 2 mana. The sunk cost on the card is repayed once the card flips into a creature that affects the board itself. Maybe they missed the part where you are also drawing a card (hence, rummaging) whenever the card is activated since this is almost unheard of with black discard enablers.
I think this is the best Disturb card we have in this moment.
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Re: Heirloom Mirror- I understand the idea of this being time and resource intensive since the main payoff, Inherited Fiend, will not attack until turn 6. I am also skeptical of this card as a great reanimation enabler. I like enablers with a little board impact, like a Mire Triton or a Heir of Falkenrath. That said, Mirror does a bunch of little stuff, so it is worth consideration as a broader "good card."
Re: Ghoulish Procession and Hobbling Zombie- I think these decayed Zombie tokens are generally worse than a 1/1, so I am skeptical of their value. Ghoulish Procession does have that upside as an engine, which interests me. Compared to Hobbling Zombie, I think there are better, similar cards like an Orzhov Enforcer.
Re: Gavony Dawnguard- Only mentioned once in this thread, but another card with some engine potential. Keeping a 3/3 ward 1 around for multiple turns seems unlikely, but this is probably good enough activated just once in high-creature white decks.
Re: Fleshtaker- The real downside of this card to me is the one-mana activation. That always kills these cards more than anything else, since the threat of activation is severely diminished.
Re: Loyal Gryff- A cute trick that is also just a flash flying 2/2 that might get some value is eating small attackers.
Re: Brief Repreive- Another Banishing Light, but I think I would rather have the 3rd three-mana version before the 3rd four-mana version, which is Cast Out for me.
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