I've never run Thraben Inspector. What do folks like about it so much? Happy to be sold on it...
In most cases it's a little like Wall of Omens. It's a decent 1-drop against aggro decks because it gums up the ground, threatens to trade against X/1's or can chump some damage and it does all of that while regaining its card. Compared to Wall It costs you 3 mana instead of 2 mana to get the card, but being able to play the creature on 1 and then keep up a 2-mana counterspell is very nice in control decks, so the mana isn't strictly worse. Similar to Wall of Omens, Inspector is a decent flicker target, though a bit more expensive since you will need to pay 2 extra mana for the clue.
However, unlike Wall of Omens, Thraben can actually swing in. This is sort of like a Sakura-Tribe Elder or similar, where the 1-power might look very unassuming at first glance, but suddenly it is wielding an equipment, or it grabs monarch or initiative or you have some anthems out or something like Court of Garenbrig. Not having Defender is a big upside. My favorite example was when a Thraben Inspector was used to ninjitsu in a Fallen Shinobi (Wall of Omens definitely can't do that!).
So in my cube, Inspector has gone in and out several times. It has never felt very good, but it is quite popular and sees a lot of maindeck play. I haven't cubed Wall of Omens for many years, and doubt it will make a return. I might end up cutting Thraben soon, but I do like 1-drops that aren't simply aggro creatures as well, so it feels nice from a cube design perspective.
This is another leak and seems really strong 4cc in aggro or midrange decks. Also, the indestructive ability to discard 2 cards is really interesting in those decks. Thoughts?
I'm not sure I agree this seems really strong. While the static ability is of course strong, and quite tempting, I think it looks quite awkward to use it in practice. If already costs 4 mana, so if you want to get immediate value out of the static ability you will need to have 5-6 mana. You also need a second card to draw advantage from the static, so in a top deck situation, it can very often simply be a vanilla 5/4 for 4.
This doesn't look playable in aggro to me, as they usually want to have a curve-topper in the 4-slot. Even in the dream situation where your deck has Fireblast, I think something like Hazoret, Hellrider, Oxid Ridge or Embercleave are better.
I think the indestructibility ability is a bit hard to evaluate, and there is a whole cycle of these guys - so it will be interesting to see how much value those add. But at the moment I am leaning towards the ability being to slow and costly to add enough value to make this particularly nice, even in midrange. Even if you manage to get the indestructible counter on, which means you have invested 7 mana and discarded 2 cards, there are plenty of answers. I also think the activated ability is way to costly to be interesting as a discard outlet.
Please correct me if I am wrong on this one. Reading the exile clause, it isn't worded like a replacement effect (like for instance Flashback or Unearth). Instead it is a trigger. This has two important consequences: (1) The card does actually go to the yard and you get dies triggers. Though I guess most dies triggers in cube are on stuff bigger than cmc 3, so it might be slightly moot. (2) If you cast things like Kitchen Finks with Serra Paragon, the persist and added triggers both go on the stack at the same time, and you choose the order. Meaning Serra Paragon works really well with Persist creatures.
Again, I am not 100% sure on the ruling here - but this is the way I interpret it.
One aspect of Barrin, Tolarian Archmage that I really liked is that he is legendary, so he has great synergy with Karakas, but that is definitely not enough of an upside to outweigh Aether Channeler.
I was literally just thinking about my disappointment over the 3CC blue creature slot options and this comes along. Not only does this upgrade the usual unsummon etb for disperse, but it also has alternate modes which either provide an evasive body or a card. Blue really does get everything only better.
Interesting. I consider blue 3CC to be quite stacked. At 360 I would definitely put Vendilion Clique, Brazen Borrower and True-Name Nemesis above this, and if you support wheels then Hullbreacher is insane. Personally I also support Twin, so that takes another 2 spots. If I didn't play Twin, I would probably play this as the fifth blue 3-drop.
My vote goes for Mox Diamond. But I will admit that I play Mox Diamond in my own cube, but not Gaea's Cradle. I think the card will see a lot more play, and see play in a lot of different situations/decks, compared to Cradle. I personally really like Mox Diamond - it's a super clean design and has fun interactions with the more loam-based strategies (Wrenn and Six and such).
1 - Ulvenwald Oddity vs Undermountain Adventure vs Timeless Witness ? What order ?
2 - Attrition vs Altar to Bhaal vs Whip of Erebos ? What order?
3 - Portent vs Careful Study ?
1. Very hard to compare, the three cards do completely different things. I think I personally would rank Ulvenwald Oddity on top, as hasty beaters have increased in value to clear out walkers, at least in my own meta. The other two cards are slower, more grindy cards. I personally don't like the design of Adventurer and probably would like to stay clear of adding "Taking the initiative" unless something very strong comes a long. I do really like the design of Timeless Witness, the eternalize feels great with looting and cards like Survival of the Fittest, or simply in super-ramp decks. So I would say
2. Again, fairly hard to compare. I think the new Altar of Bhaal seems better than Whip, but as mentioned - whip gets better if you need the lifelink. Attrition can be a fun deck if you lean towards the recursion style decks, but I personally don't think it is worth a cube slot - I would probably rank it over whip though.
3. Very different cards. Portent is a decent cantrip, ranking right under Opt/Consider in my book. Careful Study is card disadvantage, and in most cubes only reanimator would be interested. Not having the flashback of Faithless Looting really hurts its playability. In a vacuum I would therefore say
You Rotisseried every Modern card? Nice! I suppose this was online drafting?
This is getting a bit off-topic, so I will keep my answer a bit short. And moderators, please feel free to delete this if you think it clogs up the post.
In a modern rotisserie draft, every modern card is a legal pick - but you typically only pick 45 cards per player, or 360 cards in total. As you typically draft in a snake pattern, some groups prefer 46 picks per player, so that you get to finish the final "wheel".
We drafted online using google sheets. A so-called asynchronous draft where people pick when they have time. For our play group it took about a week to finish. Then I assembled the decks physically and we met to play out the matches. We do 8-person drafts and play round robin, i.e., 7 rounds.
I'm not sure I am allowed to post a link to the draft sheet itself, but if you are curious, send me a private message and I can send you the link.
I think the comparison to Looter il-Kor is a bit weird. I still play Looter at 360, and love the card. But I play it mainly because it is the second best looter (in my opinion). This card is an evasive beater with some value when it connects, it isn't a looter. The two cards play very different roles, and there are plenty of decks I play looter il-kor where this would be completely uninteresting.
On an unrelated note, I think people are overrating the evasion slightly. In a tempo shell, especially UR or UW, attack alone is often a steep cost and I think this card will play worse than it looks in many cases.
Custom cards means cards you have designed yourself, or somehow altered the rules of. Most cubes don't play custom cards, but some do. A common reason for customizing cards are to play cards as they were before an errata, to simplify a rule or similar. A common example is cubes that play Chaos orb like an artifact that says: (1)(Tap): Destroy target permanent. Another common example are people who play Orcish Oriflamme or Oubliette misprints, these were both printed with the wrong mana cost, so you can get copies that lower CMC and thus more powerful.
If I play Snow basics instead of Basics, then that is just the way it is like in any other format. In addition, I really like that cards like Coatl, Dead of Winter, etc. exactly lead players to play more (Snow) Basics.
This is where I disagree, and this was my main point. Playing snow basics in a cube is not like any other format. In no official limited format ever have you been allowed to add snow basics to your draft pool. Not in draft, and not in sealed. Instead you have needed to draft snow basics. The design of snow-matters card for limited strongly reflects this, where the pay-off necessitates that you also draft snow-covered lands during the draft. Only in constructed format can one freely add as many snow basics as you want, but Cube is inherently a limited format, where to me, the draft experience is the main reason to play it.
I know a lot of people play snow-covered basics in their cube, and I totally understand why, it means you get to play some unique and powerful cards. But my point was that this is changing the fundamentals of how a limited format usually works. It's your cube and your format, of course you decide how you play. But to me this goes against what I want cube to be. Some people also let people add as many tapped dual lands as they want to their draft pool. One cube I saw mentioned on Reddit let all players add one of each fetch and one of each dual to their pool. These are more drastic examples of changing the "fundamental rules" of how draft works, but I think adding snow-covered basics is basically the same as these examples at the most fundamental level.
My point about snow-cards feeling like "custom cards" is this: Because adding snow-covered basics to your pool is traditionally not allowed, adding this house rule is functionally equivalent to taking a sharpie to snow-cards and changing "snow permanents" or "snow lands" to "basic lands". I won't criticize anyone for playing snow in their cube, nor would I criticize anyone for playing custom cards. I was just presenting my thoughts on why I, personally, don't.
Another example: Some people also play only snow-covered basics in their cubes, saying you can't play non-snow basics - and then they add Cold Snap as an incredibly powerful aggro card. I mean, at that point, you might as well just design your own white sulfuric vortex and play that.
I've never liked doing snow in cubes and honestly think it just looks quite messy design wise. Snow cards are designed to be in limited environments where you are supposed to need to draft the snow lands, and it really shows. It's a "critical mass" kind of design. I think it worked really well in Modern Horizons for example, which I personally found to be a great limited format. When people play things like Ice-Fang Coatl in cube it's basically like you replace every instance of "Snow" on the card with "Basic". Feels like using custom cards to me.
If I wanted to build a snow theme it would probably be in a Desert-style cube where all lands needs to be drafted, where some lands could be normal basics, some non-basics and some snow-basics perhaps.
With that said, I don't think any of these cards are terribly exciting to begin with. Also, calling Boreal Outrider a "mono-green Good-Fortune Unicorn" is a big exaggeration. You briefly mention it not working in persist combo, which is the main reason the unicorn is played, but it also doesn't work with tokens, which is another major downside.
3
In most cases it's a little like Wall of Omens. It's a decent 1-drop against aggro decks because it gums up the ground, threatens to trade against X/1's or can chump some damage and it does all of that while regaining its card. Compared to Wall It costs you 3 mana instead of 2 mana to get the card, but being able to play the creature on 1 and then keep up a 2-mana counterspell is very nice in control decks, so the mana isn't strictly worse. Similar to Wall of Omens, Inspector is a decent flicker target, though a bit more expensive since you will need to pay 2 extra mana for the clue.
However, unlike Wall of Omens, Thraben can actually swing in. This is sort of like a Sakura-Tribe Elder or similar, where the 1-power might look very unassuming at first glance, but suddenly it is wielding an equipment, or it grabs monarch or initiative or you have some anthems out or something like Court of Garenbrig. Not having Defender is a big upside. My favorite example was when a Thraben Inspector was used to ninjitsu in a Fallen Shinobi (Wall of Omens definitely can't do that!).
So in my cube, Inspector has gone in and out several times. It has never felt very good, but it is quite popular and sees a lot of maindeck play. I haven't cubed Wall of Omens for many years, and doubt it will make a return. I might end up cutting Thraben soon, but I do like 1-drops that aren't simply aggro creatures as well, so it feels nice from a cube design perspective.
1
I'm not sure I agree this seems really strong. While the static ability is of course strong, and quite tempting, I think it looks quite awkward to use it in practice. If already costs 4 mana, so if you want to get immediate value out of the static ability you will need to have 5-6 mana. You also need a second card to draw advantage from the static, so in a top deck situation, it can very often simply be a vanilla 5/4 for 4.
This doesn't look playable in aggro to me, as they usually want to have a curve-topper in the 4-slot. Even in the dream situation where your deck has Fireblast, I think something like Hazoret, Hellrider, Oxid Ridge or Embercleave are better.
I think the indestructibility ability is a bit hard to evaluate, and there is a whole cycle of these guys - so it will be interesting to see how much value those add. But at the moment I am leaning towards the ability being to slow and costly to add enough value to make this particularly nice, even in midrange. Even if you manage to get the indestructible counter on, which means you have invested 7 mana and discarded 2 cards, there are plenty of answers. I also think the activated ability is way to costly to be interesting as a discard outlet.
1
Thanks for the input. My question just turned moot anyway with today's spoiler of Sheoldred's Edict, which seems better than both to me.
1
Again, I am not 100% sure on the ruling here - but this is the way I interpret it.
2
One aspect of Barrin, Tolarian Archmage that I really liked is that he is legendary, so he has great synergy with Karakas, but that is definitely not enough of an upside to outweigh Aether Channeler.
Interesting. I consider blue 3CC to be quite stacked. At 360 I would definitely put Vendilion Clique, Brazen Borrower and True-Name Nemesis above this, and if you support wheels then Hullbreacher is insane. Personally I also support Twin, so that takes another 2 spots. If I didn't play Twin, I would probably play this as the fifth blue 3-drop.
2
My vote goes for Mox Diamond. But I will admit that I play Mox Diamond in my own cube, but not Gaea's Cradle. I think the card will see a lot more play, and see play in a lot of different situations/decks, compared to Cradle. I personally really like Mox Diamond - it's a super clean design and has fun interactions with the more loam-based strategies (Wrenn and Six and such).
1. Very hard to compare, the three cards do completely different things. I think I personally would rank Ulvenwald Oddity on top, as hasty beaters have increased in value to clear out walkers, at least in my own meta. The other two cards are slower, more grindy cards. I personally don't like the design of Adventurer and probably would like to stay clear of adding "Taking the initiative" unless something very strong comes a long. I do really like the design of Timeless Witness, the eternalize feels great with looting and cards like Survival of the Fittest, or simply in super-ramp decks. So I would say
Ulvenwald Oddity > Timeless Witness > Undermountain Adventurer
2. Again, fairly hard to compare. I think the new Altar of Bhaal seems better than Whip, but as mentioned - whip gets better if you need the lifelink. Attrition can be a fun deck if you lean towards the recursion style decks, but I personally don't think it is worth a cube slot - I would probably rank it over whip though.
Altar of Bhaal > Attrition > Whip of Erebos
3. Very different cards. Portent is a decent cantrip, ranking right under Opt/Consider in my book. Careful Study is card disadvantage, and in most cubes only reanimator would be interested. Not having the flashback of Faithless Looting really hurts its playability. In a vacuum I would therefore say
Portent >> Careful Study
But Careful Study can provide a special effect if you play stuff like Dredge.
2
This is getting a bit off-topic, so I will keep my answer a bit short. And moderators, please feel free to delete this if you think it clogs up the post.
In a modern rotisserie draft, every modern card is a legal pick - but you typically only pick 45 cards per player, or 360 cards in total. As you typically draft in a snake pattern, some groups prefer 46 picks per player, so that you get to finish the final "wheel".
We drafted online using google sheets. A so-called asynchronous draft where people pick when they have time. For our play group it took about a week to finish. Then I assembled the decks physically and we met to play out the matches. We do 8-person drafts and play round robin, i.e., 7 rounds.
I'm not sure I am allowed to post a link to the draft sheet itself, but if you are curious, send me a private message and I can send you the link.
1
On an unrelated note, I think people are overrating the evasion slightly. In a tempo shell, especially UR or UW, attack alone is often a steep cost and I think this card will play worse than it looks in many cases.
1
Custom cards means cards you have designed yourself, or somehow altered the rules of. Most cubes don't play custom cards, but some do. A common reason for customizing cards are to play cards as they were before an errata, to simplify a rule or similar. A common example is cubes that play Chaos orb like an artifact that says: (1)(Tap): Destroy target permanent. Another common example are people who play Orcish Oriflamme or Oubliette misprints, these were both printed with the wrong mana cost, so you can get copies that lower CMC and thus more powerful.
This is where I disagree, and this was my main point. Playing snow basics in a cube is not like any other format. In no official limited format ever have you been allowed to add snow basics to your draft pool. Not in draft, and not in sealed. Instead you have needed to draft snow basics. The design of snow-matters card for limited strongly reflects this, where the pay-off necessitates that you also draft snow-covered lands during the draft. Only in constructed format can one freely add as many snow basics as you want, but Cube is inherently a limited format, where to me, the draft experience is the main reason to play it.
I know a lot of people play snow-covered basics in their cube, and I totally understand why, it means you get to play some unique and powerful cards. But my point was that this is changing the fundamentals of how a limited format usually works. It's your cube and your format, of course you decide how you play. But to me this goes against what I want cube to be. Some people also let people add as many tapped dual lands as they want to their draft pool. One cube I saw mentioned on Reddit let all players add one of each fetch and one of each dual to their pool. These are more drastic examples of changing the "fundamental rules" of how draft works, but I think adding snow-covered basics is basically the same as these examples at the most fundamental level.
My point about snow-cards feeling like "custom cards" is this: Because adding snow-covered basics to your pool is traditionally not allowed, adding this house rule is functionally equivalent to taking a sharpie to snow-cards and changing "snow permanents" or "snow lands" to "basic lands". I won't criticize anyone for playing snow in their cube, nor would I criticize anyone for playing custom cards. I was just presenting my thoughts on why I, personally, don't.
Another example: Some people also play only snow-covered basics in their cubes, saying you can't play non-snow basics - and then they add Cold Snap as an incredibly powerful aggro card. I mean, at that point, you might as well just design your own white sulfuric vortex and play that.
1
If I wanted to build a snow theme it would probably be in a Desert-style cube where all lands needs to be drafted, where some lands could be normal basics, some non-basics and some snow-basics perhaps.
With that said, I don't think any of these cards are terribly exciting to begin with. Also, calling Boreal Outrider a "mono-green Good-Fortune Unicorn" is a big exaggeration. You briefly mention it not working in persist combo, which is the main reason the unicorn is played, but it also doesn't work with tokens, which is another major downside.