MTG Salvation

Quote from Visserdrix »

Got in another draft last night. Doomskar solid. Usher of the Fallen was in a 3-0 selesnya deck. Firja's Retribution last pick in the pack. Think I am done testing it.

The changeling effect of masked vandal came up twice in funny situations that weren't expected. One time saving its controller from being killed by a flipped Thing in the Ice while it counted as a horror. The other time backfired and stopped its controller from creating snakes with their Ophiomancer! lol

Stuff like this is why I can't cut Mirror Entity. I love little interactions like that.

Quote from Morphling »

Quote from wtwlf123 »

No. You would have to play this before the search effect is executed. While the spell (or ability) is on the stack. Once they're already in the middle of executing the search, you don't have priority to cast this, so it won't be in play when they're searching.

Okay thanks. I had a feeling that was the case or others would obviously have pointed out my idea. That does take some a lot of the fun out of this card, honestly but maybe it's still worth it. A splashable 3/4 Flash for 3 does have a decent floor in most cube decks I can imagine no matter what happens...

It's a 3/2

I think this is clearly better than Magus of the Order for those wanting Natural Order #2

Quote from BlackWaltz3 »

This looks like a fairly easy upgrade over Oracle of Mul Daya for me. Natural Order is a top-tier Green card. Is this worse? Certainly, but a worse, more fragile, Natural Order is still a very playable card. Only costing 1 to activate helps this a lot, you can easily play a mana dork to sacrifice on the following turn, activate the ability, and have mana to spare.

Even if you want to add this card, I cannot in good conscience support this cut.

There are times you play Wheel of Fortune where you WANT your opponent to be forced to discard (hand size above 7, just tutored, trying to mill, etc.) and in those cases this won't help at all. Still, the ability to sometimes be one-sided in your favor is intriguing.

Funny you mention Risk Factor. Here's a quote from the discussion of that card:

Quote from asmallcat »

1R

Draw 7 cards unless an opponent has this card deal 10 damage to them

I feel like that's what it would take to get people to try a browbeat variant

This is 2R instead, but if you can afford to bid 10 life for this, that's essentially what this card is.

If you want to support mill decks, this is a no-brainer. Even if you don't support them per se, this is a solid one-card win-con that certainly doesn't require any other mill cards to be good.

Even a single trigger of the 10-card mill is going to put your opponent in a bad spot. Even if they keep monarch the rest of the game, you still mill 2 each turn, plus now they have monarch so they are drawing 2 per turn. I think this is basically a must-remove enchantment if you can play it by turn 3.

I'm okay with mill decks getting hosed by Reanimate, Timetwister, and even Blightsteel Colossus. Less so with the Eldrazi titans. I wish they didn't have that trigger as it makes cards like this a lot less interesting.

Red 4's are just too stacked, I agree. Also, every Monarch card you add makes Monarch slightly worse.

Quote from bnans_25 »

[quote] My experience has been that it isn't hard to pull together 23 non-land cards for a cube deck.

This is, I think, the crux of the discussion. It's a really different question to ask "would this make my deck?" than "should this make my cube?"

Obviously most decks that play white would rather replace a basic plains with Flagstones of Trokair, but that doesn't mean that card belongs in most cubes.

Quote from armando.zuffi »

IMO, those lands are strictly better than Painlands, but worse than ABU, Fetch, Shock, Horizon lands, cycle lands and (maybe) Check lands

That's not what "strictly better" means. Even setting aside the fact that painlands can generate colorless, painlands continue to generate both colors of mana after being played.

Thanks all! I think I'm going to try cutting Qasali Pridemage for Good-Fortune Unicorn for a while. I still have a decent amount of Selesnya cards (since I put hybrids in mono-color sections) so I don't think it will hurt too much.

Brainstorm is busted. I think the idea of it being reliant on fetches is way overblown. The card just got banned in Historic for warping that format and being too good ...and that format doesn't even have fetches. It has a tremendous impact on the composition of your hand for a single mana, it can hide critical cards from disruption, and it smooths out your sequence of operations better than just about anything else out there. The tremendous synergy it has with shuffle effects is simply a nice added bonus.

Quote from Breathe1234 »

This is definitely strong - I could definitely see cutting Thassa for this in my cube, especially given how stacked blue is compared to white.

This statement is as hilarious as it is true.

“This version of the card is indestructible, taps down threats, and can attack in the late game but we can put the weaker version in our white section to use this blue 4-slot on a REAL card.”

I’m starting to think that this game of ours is kind of nuts, guys.

Quote from asmallcat »

Getting to the point where it is very real for a cube to support UB mill as an actual deck.

Mill is a competitive archetype if you want to support it. It has been for a long time. It's just very parasitic and consumes a bunch of slots, so most cube managers decide not to support it. But I guarantee you you could support draft-winning mill decks right now, and this card doesn't have much to do with its viability.

I've been trying to put hybrid cards in mono-color slots. I can easily see this going in a white or black slot.

While an obvious cube staple until the end of time, a cool thing is since the casting cost is 2, Spellseeker and effects like that can tutor a wrath now.

This card is bananas

I like that between this and original Noble all five colors are represented. Neat!