I would not run a infinite/infinite vanilla creature for 5 mana in cube.
I would run a creature that kills in one shot, doesn't die to any damage effects, and cost 5 mana.
Absolutely. I mean, I might run a 9/5 for five mana in black given the lack of competition. Would curve nicely into a Wildfire. Here's to hoping they make an actual competitive legendary vanilla in the next set.
I would assume this card is not going to make it into most people's cubes, but I'd like to hear opinions nonetheless, and maybe some general discussion on vanillas. MaRo has mentioned the idea of a mythic vanilla a couple times. This is not mythic, but I feel it might as well have been. If someone is in the market of including cards in their cubes based on uniqueness and not just raw power level, I think Yargle should be up for consideration.
Good black five-drops are notoriously missing from standard powered and unpowered cubes. Yargle dies to absolutely everything, doesn't pass the Vindicate test, has no evasion and no noticeable synergies, unless you count the fact that relatively few creatures can block it profitably a "synergy". On the other hand, it is the biggest, dumbest vanilla beater you can get for five mana. How big and dumb does a big, dumb beater have to be to make its way to a cube? I assume every cube manager has a threshold at which they would consider an extremely undercosted beatstick instead of value creatures, even if the trend lately has been to replace the likes of Baneslayer with creatures that pass the Vindicate test.
EDIT. Agh, should have been the SCD tag. Woops. Seems I can't edit it.
How? With Ponder, you get to shuffle, then draw. You lose that mode here anyway. Ponder always nets you a card, here you have a chance of whiffing. There are benefits to putting the cards on the bottom I guess, but I still wouldn't call this a Ponder on steroids under any circumstances.
I actually still have Outpost Siege in my cube - included it in 450, IIRC, because I couldn't find a copy of some red staple in my collection and it was sold out in my LGS. I quite liked Siege, and it was practically always there for CA and used for damage mode possibly once. Gonna test this in its place in 540. I think one possibly janky red 4 is acceptable there.
Not them, but as someone who's fond of Reveillark even though I try to remain critical of cards like this... Picking Reveillark early if there's not a completely bonkers card in the pack can be though of as a pretty cheap speculative pick that doesn't commit you too much, but if you get passed a bunch of bonkers 2 power creatures and other ETB enablers, hey, even more reason to pick them. I'd pick it about as high as Purphoros or Crystal Shard. In general, I think it's completely fine to pick build-around cards early in cube if you know that the cube has enough support.
I've had a couple crazy 'Lark decks in different cubes, but I will admit sometimes breaking the card can feel pretty hard. It absolutely needs a deck that can otherwise win with it's 2 power creatures and other threats, or enough draw or tutoring to set up a value engine. Reading older threads and descriptions of card choices for cubes years ago, I think 'Lark might've been a lot more versatile some years back when aggro decks in most cubes just couldn't be as fast and consistent as nowadays, and adding a potentially value-generating five-drop was more reasonable.
Pretty sweet, but I'd probably still rather play Aethergeode Miner. It requires an attack to protect it and the protection removes it from combat, but 4 life is steep and the Miner can be blinked to no end once it gets rolling.
BlackWaltz3: out of curiosity, what puts you off about the original Crpytic artwork? I felt the new art was kinda meh, the addition of the random blue mage in the background makes it feel too much like generic modern Magic artwork, though not as bad as most of the stuff I see in new sets. I really prefer the warm feel of the original command(s).
I'm lukewarm on the new Canopy artwork as well, but happy that they reprinted it, might be able to get an original for a bit cheaper now.
The back half, without having to flip, is strictly better than Gaea's Cradle. Even if I were running Powered, that would feel kind of wrong. A land is not supposed to better than Cradle/Academy/Maze.
Man, on one hand I hate trolling and aggressive out-of-place arguments, but on the other hand, this is the best thread in a while.
Also, what kind of a person plays Legacy FFA? Are we talking a casual multiplayer fun hour at an LGS where someone just joins in with a Legacy deck? That's like the people who have $5000+ competitive 1v1 EDH Storm decks that ask to join a group of kids playing with the newest Commander precons.
I'd go with Welder and then add Trash for Treasure if you really want to push an artifact reanimation archetype.
The thing with cards like these is that the prerequisite for the effect is actually very hard to achieve, much harder than Tinker. With Tinker, you need an artifact on the field and an artifact wincon in your deck, but with these cards, the target needs to be in your yard so you need some looting/discard/Entomb etc. Daretti earns his stay because he fills the yard himself. Goblin Welder, IMO, earns his stay because uninterrupted, he'll just win you the game if you have the right fatty in the yard - think Wurmcoil, Battlesphere, Precursor Golem and such (or of course the once-in-a-lifetime decking your opponent with Memory Jar, or exchanging your redundant Signets for Bosh and doming your opponent for 8 every turn).
It is a combo piece that makes you jump through hoops, but Trash for Treasure makes you jump through almost as many hoops without offering the most important thing that Goblin Welder gives you. IMO the scenario where the opponent manages to instantly remove the artifact on the field in response to your Welder activation is shadowed by the fact that Trash for Treasure only happens once. Moreover, the decks that want to run these cards often have to run so many artifacts (especially in unpowered) it would not be worth it to run Snapcaster Mage or anything similar to reuse Trash, so there's not even that much potential for clever plays: you just play your Trash and hope the opponent doesn't have an answer. Welder being a creature is a liability, but on the other hand, you can reanimate Welder (not uncommon for Welder decks to run black for reanimation in my experience) or make copies of it with Mimic Vat or Feldon if that's what wins you the game - and you can equip Welder with Lightning Greaves.
I'm not sure about Trash in a 360 environment. On one hand you'll likely draft a more consistent deck, on the other hand it'll be one more card that's potentially just dead.
TSP maguses were artifacts, Planar Chaos were lands, and FUT were enchantments. The new cycle in COMM products is instants/sorceries (maybe just sorceries). Ramunap Excavator isn't part of a cycle, and Magus of the candelabra is already the green artifact magus, so it would have been weird to name it a magus.
Wow, I managed to miss the pattern here. So, OT, but what would be the most iconic old-timey green sorcery, comaprable to Wheel, Will and Mind's Desire?
^ This. It's also pretty easy to draft an "almost constructed" deck in cube and once you have such a deck, Gifts is really good value.
It probably works best with green due to all of the Regrowth effects, and now that we have Magus of the Crucible, UGx Loam is even more of an archetype.
Absolutely. I mean, I might run a 9/5 for five mana in black given the lack of competition. Would curve nicely into a Wildfire. Here's to hoping they make an actual competitive legendary vanilla in the next set.
4B
Legendary Creature - Frog Spirit
9/3
I would assume this card is not going to make it into most people's cubes, but I'd like to hear opinions nonetheless, and maybe some general discussion on vanillas. MaRo has mentioned the idea of a mythic vanilla a couple times. This is not mythic, but I feel it might as well have been. If someone is in the market of including cards in their cubes based on uniqueness and not just raw power level, I think Yargle should be up for consideration.
Good black five-drops are notoriously missing from standard powered and unpowered cubes. Yargle dies to absolutely everything, doesn't pass the Vindicate test, has no evasion and no noticeable synergies, unless you count the fact that relatively few creatures can block it profitably a "synergy". On the other hand, it is the biggest, dumbest vanilla beater you can get for five mana. How big and dumb does a big, dumb beater have to be to make its way to a cube? I assume every cube manager has a threshold at which they would consider an extremely undercosted beatstick instead of value creatures, even if the trend lately has been to replace the likes of Baneslayer with creatures that pass the Vindicate test.
EDIT. Agh, should have been the SCD tag. Woops. Seems I can't edit it.
I've had a couple crazy 'Lark decks in different cubes, but I will admit sometimes breaking the card can feel pretty hard. It absolutely needs a deck that can otherwise win with it's 2 power creatures and other threats, or enough draw or tutoring to set up a value engine. Reading older threads and descriptions of card choices for cubes years ago, I think 'Lark might've been a lot more versatile some years back when aggro decks in most cubes just couldn't be as fast and consistent as nowadays, and adding a potentially value-generating five-drop was more reasonable.
I'm lukewarm on the new Canopy artwork as well, but happy that they reprinted it, might be able to get an original for a bit cheaper now.
Also, what kind of a person plays Legacy FFA? Are we talking a casual multiplayer fun hour at an LGS where someone just joins in with a Legacy deck? That's like the people who have $5000+ competitive 1v1 EDH Storm decks that ask to join a group of kids playing with the newest Commander precons.
The thing with cards like these is that the prerequisite for the effect is actually very hard to achieve, much harder than Tinker. With Tinker, you need an artifact on the field and an artifact wincon in your deck, but with these cards, the target needs to be in your yard so you need some looting/discard/Entomb etc. Daretti earns his stay because he fills the yard himself. Goblin Welder, IMO, earns his stay because uninterrupted, he'll just win you the game if you have the right fatty in the yard - think Wurmcoil, Battlesphere, Precursor Golem and such (or of course the once-in-a-lifetime decking your opponent with Memory Jar, or exchanging your redundant Signets for Bosh and doming your opponent for 8 every turn).
It is a combo piece that makes you jump through hoops, but Trash for Treasure makes you jump through almost as many hoops without offering the most important thing that Goblin Welder gives you. IMO the scenario where the opponent manages to instantly remove the artifact on the field in response to your Welder activation is shadowed by the fact that Trash for Treasure only happens once. Moreover, the decks that want to run these cards often have to run so many artifacts (especially in unpowered) it would not be worth it to run Snapcaster Mage or anything similar to reuse Trash, so there's not even that much potential for clever plays: you just play your Trash and hope the opponent doesn't have an answer. Welder being a creature is a liability, but on the other hand, you can reanimate Welder (not uncommon for Welder decks to run black for reanimation in my experience) or make copies of it with Mimic Vat or Feldon if that's what wins you the game - and you can equip Welder with Lightning Greaves.
I'm not sure about Trash in a 360 environment. On one hand you'll likely draft a more consistent deck, on the other hand it'll be one more card that's potentially just dead.
Wow, I managed to miss the pattern here. So, OT, but what would be the most iconic old-timey green sorcery, comaprable to Wheel, Will and Mind's Desire?
How? Am I missing something here? It still can't attack if it's untapped if it attacked your opponent last turn.
It probably works best with green due to all of the Regrowth effects, and now that we have Magus of the Crucible, UGx Loam is even more of an archetype.