I know!! But the landscape orientation made the card so small that you couldn't see it... so I zoomed in and it was so blurry you couldn't see it either. I guess that's what I get for trying to use my phone, a tripod, and clamps on my kitchen counter.
I am actually curious what some of you use to do this? There has to be a good way.
Hmm...maybe you could try something more diagonal or closer to a 3/4 view (like this). I don't know if the angle would make the card any more visible, but most of the times we don't need to see all the details while you are painting, since you can post a more detailed image right after the video. Music also helps
Also, while looking at some videos earlier, I was compelled to do some alters for my cube.
My first attempt at mimicking a "genre" of alters that I'm very fond of.
Reference is all bigup alters
Made with two pens, a marker, an exacto knife, some glue and a random foil I had laying around. It wasn't supposed to end up as a card as I was just testing waters, but here it is
Well, there was a lot of Magic to be played this weekend. Played my Cube twice on friday, split the top prize at the prerelease saturday, judged two parallel prereleases sunday, then proceeded to have a DMG-GTC-CMG draft where I built a 5-color control (with 10 gates and thespian stage) and splitted the prize in the finals. I've got plenty of new cards this weekend and new evaluations for cards in my cube, so on to the traditional reports:
1st Draft: BW Aggro BG Midrange/Beatdown BG Midrange/Ramp BUG Eureka/Show and Tell/Reanimator Combo
Mono R aggro WUB Esper Control
Eureka:
After the first draft, I got Eureka switched for Gaea's Cradle in the test pool, since Eureka had obviously done what it had to. The combo deck could get some very early wins out of luck, but building it is not an easy task (for the record: I was piloting the combo deck and got a 3-2 record on the draft). The deck is fun to draft and to play with and is not overwhelmingly powerful. I definitely want to support this kind of strategy in my cube and Eureka adds to the mass of cards needed for a combo deck, so it is going to the main list.
The main reason Eureka was in probation after all was because I didn't think the card was necessary for a "cheating creatures" combo deck to exist, as Show and Tell and Sneak Attack were pretty good at that. Eureka happens to be in the same color as Channel and Tooth and Nails, making it easier for the combo deck to be built. It also helps that you can eventually ramp and hardcast your eldrazi titans using green ramp, and the fact that you can cheat planeswalkers like Karn Liberated or Nicol Bolas, Planeswalker (which helps in drafting if the eldrazi titans are not available in the draft pool).
I do have some players that are not very fond of the card, but the fact that the combo decks are not dominating, are hard to build, and are fun to draft all contribute for me to keep these kind of cards around (the fact that players other than me have shown interest in building these type of decks also helps).
4x Squadron Hawk:
Nobody enjoyed the Squadron Hawks. Each player offered plenty of reasons to why they weren't playing it over anything else and even the player that had two swords in the deck found better beaters. Even with all 4 hawks always being available at all drafts, players also expressed some concern about having to pick 3 or more of those to end up playing them.
I guess I could have handled the Hawk test package better. Having about 6 hawks plus support cards would probably have yielded better results (maybe adding extra swords to the test pool). I will have to give a better treatment to my next test pool packages to ensure that something new and interesting happens. I hope I have more luck with the archetype-based test pools in the future and get more lessons on how to handle this, as it was one of the reasons that I adhered to the test pool in the first place.
Quirion Dryad:
I added the dryad to the list to see how much it compared to a similar card that was in the test pool: Gyre Sage. Both cards do play in completely different decks, but their similarities made me want to AB test 'em before settling on any of those for the main list.
The veredict is that Gyre Sage will be added to the main pool! As Gyre was a mini-CARD]tarmogoyf[/CARD]ish card for any midrange/beatdown cards, Dryad would only shine on UG tempo decks. Gyre also led to more interesting scenarios and plays than Quirion.
Gaea's Cradle:
Added just after the first draft and before the second, the land is doing some lifting here. It got into the best possible deck for it to be (GW midrange with lots of creatures). I'm eager to see how this will play out, especially because I had removed Cradle from my initial list after nobody playing the card after a good number of drafts.
Cube changes:
With DMZ in the mix, I had plenty of changes to make, so I used this opportunity to also take away some underperformers. Some of the changes here make the colors have an uneven amount of cards, but I'm ok with color imbalance in my list as it never affects drafts if the imbalance amount is low.
My complete list of changes is the following:
White:
-Weathered Wayfarer → +Exalted Angel
As I transported my list to a Google Docs Spreadsheet, I perceived that I was missing a 3-drop creature in white, so I'm taking out an underperforming controlish creature for what I believe will be a card beloved by any type of white deck. White was also the only color missing a morph creature, so I hope this makes things a bit more surprising when Boros lays down a morph.
-Catastrophe → +Pacifism
Pacifism is a decent piece of removal that can be played by low-mana decks and stops game-ending bombs like the 5 titans, the unnoficial titan and the othertitans.
Blue: -Timetwister → +Coralhelm Commander
Timetwister was already in my watch list for underperforming. I'm moving it to the test pool on probation and filling the void with a card that might help blue creature decks. -Control Magic → +Wake Thresher
Blue control decks are far too easy to be built because blue tends to have some pretty powerful cards that makes some picks very automatic. From the tools in a blue control deck have, one of the most powerful is control magic type of effects. Control Magic was neither the most powerful nor the weakest of these type of effects, but it was the least interesting card, so I'm taking it away to reduce the density of this type of effect and switching to a card that helps a different type of archetype. -Enclave Cryptologist → +Voidmage Prodigy
Cryptologist was another underperforming card that is freeing a slot to another creature-oriented blue card. -Waterfront Bouncer → +Sygg, River Cutthroat
Another underperforming card, this time freeing a slot off-color. I hope Sygg provides an interesting option for black and/or blue aggressive strategies.
Black: -Death Cloud → +Blood Scrivener
It seems that Death Cloud was unnecessary to support pox/stax decks as they had already plenty of tools to work with. Cloud was also not usable in pretty much any other archetype. I played Scrivener in a draft this weekend and I know how hard it is for control decks to abuse this, but if the game grinds for some time it is not hard to activate it. I believe aggro decks will have an easier time playing this guy.
Red: -Shrine of Burning Rage → +Pyrewild Shaman
Shrine was underperforming even in mono red decks. Pyrewild was probably the first card spoiled that had me looking for a spot to fit in the cube (second to Ral Zarek, actually). -Rivalry → Zo-zu, the Punisher
I believe the main reason for Rivalry not being played is because red players didn't quite saw this as Sulfuric Vortex #2. Zo-zu punishes pretty much the same thing as Rivalry. I believe that, overall, the goblin might do more damage in a game, so lets see how it plays out.
Green: -Green Sun's Zenith → +Eureka
Underperforming card. Also, read test pool comment about Eureka.
Artifacts: -Black Vise → +Pithing Needle #2
Even though the damage potential of the vise is pretty high, it was an easy card to play around. Pithing Needle is a great answer to plenty of powerful cards that has been maindecked time after time. I don't think any deck will be happy to run 2 of those and neither will be picked early, but it is a card that does something great and I'm happy to make it more available to the players. -Mortarpod → +Gyre Sage
Didn't want to cut any green card and Mortarpod wasn't played too much. For all this time, I think that Blasting Station could be a better card that Mortarpod ever was in the cube, so I'll see if I trade for one to put it in my test pool. -Erratic Portal → +Spike Jester
The removal of Erratic Portal is pretty much a nail on Crystal Shard's coffin. The card was underperforming as well. I was going to take out Rakdos Shred-Freak for the Jester, but I believe this was a more useful replacement.
Multicolored: -Absorb → +Sphinx's Revelation
Absorb was a neat card but blue is already bloated with counterspells and any WU deck has plenty of ways to survive the early game without Absorb. Drawing cards is always fun, so let's hope Sphinx's Revalation is a fun card to play with. -Vithian Renegades → +Savageborn Hydra
I thinned my artifact section and added more artifact removal in both red and green in the past month or so, so I'm replacing the renegades with a more suitable beater. -Desolate Lighthouse → +Niv-Mizzet, Dracogenius
I really hated the Lighthouse and it seemed to make UR decks worst by keeping them out of colored mana so they had access to an effect that they would most likely never use. Even Grixis Reanimator or combo had better things to do with their mana than activate Lighthouse. Niv has tested well in the pool, so it was now allowed in the main list. -Steamcore Weird → +Ral Zarek
Ral demanded a sot and Steamcore was my 2nd less favourite card. It was a great tool to buy some time against aggressive decks, but Ral can do pretty much the same thing and a bit more for the same mana cost. -Aurelia's Fury → +Firemane Avenger
While the Fury was an interesting card for a possible WR control build or as a finisher in beatdown decks, aggressive cards could always use another early pick card, and Avenger fits the bill.
After all of these changes, my new test pool is the following:
Mostly I want to try some new cards for the edition. There is another batch of cards from DMZ that I want to put through the test pool, but Griffin Guide was in the wait list for a long time (along with Standstill, which I haven't traded for yet). I also wanted an opportunity to play with my foil Bargain, since it has been sitting in my binder doing nothing since I've bought it a few years ago.
Had a 5-man draft tonight. Here is the breakdown for the archetypes played:
URB Grixis Control BW Pox (Green splash for Pernicious Deed) URB Sneak Attack/Reanimate Combo BG Beatdown RW Boros Beatdown
I also got some more intel from the test pool to make some changes to it. I had a couple of winston drafts a while ago that I didn't report here that also helped with the following evaluations.
Crypt Ghast
This card has been mostly unnimpressive to everyone I play with. I haven't seen anyone play this card. It is a bit unfair evaluating a card that hasn't been played, but the card was always very late picked and never maindecked, so I'm ok cutting it from my test pool. Heck, I was playing Bw today and I didn't want this card main-decked, so this is definitely a miss.
Wolfir Silverheart
This card has been main-decked every single draft as far as I remember. Overall, it is a great midrange/beatdown creature for green, so I'm moving this to the main list now in place of Thornling.
Angelic Destiny
I have been pretty impressed by this card. Players seemed to value this highly and it is a great pick to push white aggro early in the draft. I tend to value cards that pull to aggro builds as there are too many cards that auto-pilot the draft into a control build.
You might have thought that this would mean that I would pull this right into the cube, but right now my white is far too heavy in the 4-drop department and I have a dent in 3-drops, so I can't afford to put it in until I rebalance my curve. I was thinking about switching this for Spectral Procession, I'm not sure it would be a very good replacement. I would love some feedback on how to rebalance my curve and to include this card
Niv-Mizzet, Dracogenius
This card has been played far more than I expected. Haven't seen him in a wildfire build yet where I thought it would shine the most (haven't seen many wildfire builds in genral, though). I am leaving it in the test pool for a while longer, until I see what is new for UR in Dragon's Maze, but he is very likely to replace Desolated Lighthouse.
Voidmage Prodigy
I don't really have much data on this card, but it has been a good card for blue. I enjoy giving blue some aggro/tempo cards and Kai Budde here is a neat card for blue. I really want to see him in a UW shell along with Delver of Secrets and Champion of the Parish, but it hasn't happened yet. Maybe it will take the slot of Waterfront Bouncer in the future, but I want him in the test pool for a while longer to make sure he has a place in the cube.
Crystal Shard
This card is taking a break from the test pool because I needed a slot in the test pool. Overall, it wasn't a very strong card and didn't fit into many decks. I believe this will get back into the test pool after Dragon's Mage, after my little test pool experiment.
Faerie Macabre wasn't really all that good as a sideboard card and the only reason this was played once was because the player was lacking 3-drops. I feel like the Wretch will get a lot more love, not only because he is an effective hate bear, but because he is far more likely to be main-decked and because he is a zombie and Gravecrawler loves his dead buddies. As a side note, Gravecrawler has been proven today to be a very good reason to keep playing Tidehollow Sculler.
As for the Wildfire, I hadn't traded for the second Wildfire until now and was using a Burning of Xinye proxy all along, so I'll change my list to reflect that.
I'm looking forward to utilizing one of the ideas that I had previously noted for my test pool. Hawk Pool is going to be a brief experiment that I believe will be a lot of fun.
Another thing that happend this week in my cube is that I replaced all my printed proxies with foil proxies that I printed this week. They are not as good looking as real cards, but they are pretty enough. Since I'm not retaking all cube pictures just now, here is a preview picture of all my new proxies:
You could also cut Morphling. Both the 'lings play pretty much in the same slot in decks, and those decks don't really need a lot of finishers to work. I believe that cutting a business spell like Capsize or Gifts, or even Inkwell, that plays in another role, wouldn't be a very efficient use of cube slots.
Hey guys, thanks for the comments and the feedback! Haven't posted lately because I haven't really cubed in a long while. Let's hope that this will change in the next couple of weeks.
About rant's disagreements:
I do like the Razormane Masticore and I think it is a great card, but it occupies a slot in my cube that plenty of other cards already occupy in a better fashion, which is of aggro deterrant for control and midrange decks. Trading Post and Ulamog, on the other hand, are playing different roles:
• Trading Post is a great piece for artifacts deck and provides different functionalities that are beloved by many decks (mostly combo, but control also enjoys it). It kinda plays Razormane's role as well, but it is a less obvious and more interactive card that tends to make games more fun than the Masticore, as it demands more skill to be used successfully.
• Ulamog is a key combo card for Channel, Eureka, Sneak Attack and Show and Tell. These combo decks are fun to draft and fun to pilot, so I'm not likely to cut Ula out in the near future.
I'm not sure why people didn't play Sinkhole more often as it clearly is a powerful card. I have seen both MonoBlack and Pox being put together, so I have no idea why it was such an underrated card. I think it is a card that might come back in the future so I could test it out again and see if players value it differently.
I guess that Faerie Macabre might really be a stub after we play it. I'll try it a couple of drafts to see how it goes. I might swap it with Withered Wretch if that is the case.
From the blue cards mentioned, I have Standstill in my queue for the test pool and I already play Daze. I had Tolarian Academy in the cube for the two weeks between me building the cube and posting it here and it was mostly unimpressive, along with most artifacts-oriented cards. I could see a case for bringing it back along with Metalworker to see how that turns out, so I'll note it on my Test Pool Ideas and Packages List™.
Deadbridge was actually a good card for us, but I guess Baloth will be more interesting and will lead to more different decks. I hope Veredict does the same as Obzedat was only just another Esper finisher.
Doesn't look like a 3-drop red creature to me. The most usable mode this card has is bloodrush, so if I were to play this, it would be in a spell slot. With that said, it is definitely a card that I want to try out.
Cards with an * are the ones I'm playing right now
I really like this card as a 3-drop that happens to be good if drawn later. If I get one of these early, I'll put it in my test pool and see how it goes. Though if I were looking for a better RG finisher, I would try Ruric Thar, the Unbowed first.
Phew, after three long weeks I've finally finished reading through 2100 pages- it's kind of an adventure, including ups, downs and cliffhangers. So, now that I am properly educated i started with my first alters. Since i write this from my iPhone, I hope the formatting is correct:
This feat alone deserves more praises than any alter in this thread, so congratulations!
(alters looks neat as well, better quality pictures would be great for people to comment though)
EDIT: Whoa! Just checked my post history and it seems that I have been participating in this thread since page 54. It also seems that I had started a thread for my own crappy alters before the official thread was even started. Now I feel old.
Hmm...maybe you could try something more diagonal or closer to a 3/4 view (like this). I don't know if the angle would make the card any more visible, but most of the times we don't need to see all the details while you are painting, since you can post a more detailed image right after the video. Music also helps
Also, while looking at some videos earlier, I was compelled to do some alters for my cube.
Yeah, I just had to do a nacatl. I'll probably repaint it someday to make the swords look better
References: Sword of Fire and Ice, Sword of Light and Shadow, Umezawa's Jitte
My Wickerbough was already halfway done. I just made some details pop out more and added the hanging hand.
Looks good enough. More people should be doing time lapse videos for their alters
Reference is all bigup alters
Made with two pens, a marker, an exacto knife, some glue and a random foil I had laying around. It wasn't supposed to end up as a card as I was just testing waters, but here it is
1st Draft:
BW Aggro
BG Midrange/Beatdown
BG Midrange/Ramp
BUG Eureka/Show and Tell/Reanimator Combo
Mono R aggro
WUB Esper Control
2nd Draft:
GW Midrange
2x WUB Esper Control
BR Zombies Aggro
Notes on the test pool:
Eureka:
After the first draft, I got Eureka switched for Gaea's Cradle in the test pool, since Eureka had obviously done what it had to. The combo deck could get some very early wins out of luck, but building it is not an easy task (for the record: I was piloting the combo deck and got a 3-2 record on the draft). The deck is fun to draft and to play with and is not overwhelmingly powerful. I definitely want to support this kind of strategy in my cube and Eureka adds to the mass of cards needed for a combo deck, so it is going to the main list.
The main reason Eureka was in probation after all was because I didn't think the card was necessary for a "cheating creatures" combo deck to exist, as Show and Tell and Sneak Attack were pretty good at that. Eureka happens to be in the same color as Channel and Tooth and Nails, making it easier for the combo deck to be built. It also helps that you can eventually ramp and hardcast your eldrazi titans using green ramp, and the fact that you can cheat planeswalkers like Karn Liberated or Nicol Bolas, Planeswalker (which helps in drafting if the eldrazi titans are not available in the draft pool).
I do have some players that are not very fond of the card, but the fact that the combo decks are not dominating, are hard to build, and are fun to draft all contribute for me to keep these kind of cards around (the fact that players other than me have shown interest in building these type of decks also helps).
4x Squadron Hawk:
Nobody enjoyed the Squadron Hawks. Each player offered plenty of reasons to why they weren't playing it over anything else and even the player that had two swords in the deck found better beaters. Even with all 4 hawks always being available at all drafts, players also expressed some concern about having to pick 3 or more of those to end up playing them.
I guess I could have handled the Hawk test package better. Having about 6 hawks plus support cards would probably have yielded better results (maybe adding extra swords to the test pool). I will have to give a better treatment to my next test pool packages to ensure that something new and interesting happens. I hope I have more luck with the archetype-based test pools in the future and get more lessons on how to handle this, as it was one of the reasons that I adhered to the test pool in the first place.
Quirion Dryad:
I added the dryad to the list to see how much it compared to a similar card that was in the test pool: Gyre Sage. Both cards do play in completely different decks, but their similarities made me want to AB test 'em before settling on any of those for the main list.
The veredict is that Gyre Sage will be added to the main pool! As Gyre was a mini-CARD]tarmogoyf[/CARD]ish card for any midrange/beatdown cards, Dryad would only shine on UG tempo decks. Gyre also led to more interesting scenarios and plays than Quirion.
Gaea's Cradle:
Added just after the first draft and before the second, the land is doing some lifting here. It got into the best possible deck for it to be (GW midrange with lots of creatures). I'm eager to see how this will play out, especially because I had removed Cradle from my initial list after nobody playing the card after a good number of drafts.
Niv-Mizzet, Dracogenius:
As expected, the card has replaced Desolate Lighthouse in my list.
Cube changes:
With DMZ in the mix, I had plenty of changes to make, so I used this opportunity to also take away some underperformers. Some of the changes here make the colors have an uneven amount of cards, but I'm ok with color imbalance in my list as it never affects drafts if the imbalance amount is low.
My complete list of changes is the following:
White:
-Weathered Wayfarer → +Exalted Angel
As I transported my list to a Google Docs Spreadsheet, I perceived that I was missing a 3-drop creature in white, so I'm taking out an underperforming controlish creature for what I believe will be a card beloved by any type of white deck. White was also the only color missing a morph creature, so I hope this makes things a bit more surprising when Boros lays down a morph.
-Catastrophe → +Pacifism
Pacifism is a decent piece of removal that can be played by low-mana decks and stops game-ending bombs like the 5 titans, the unnoficial titan and the other titans.
Blue:
-Timetwister → +Coralhelm Commander
Timetwister was already in my watch list for underperforming. I'm moving it to the test pool on probation and filling the void with a card that might help blue creature decks.
-Control Magic → +Wake Thresher
Blue control decks are far too easy to be built because blue tends to have some pretty powerful cards that makes some picks very automatic. From the tools in a blue control deck have, one of the most powerful is control magic type of effects. Control Magic was neither the most powerful nor the weakest of these type of effects, but it was the least interesting card, so I'm taking it away to reduce the density of this type of effect and switching to a card that helps a different type of archetype.
-Enclave Cryptologist → +Voidmage Prodigy
Cryptologist was another underperforming card that is freeing a slot to another creature-oriented blue card.
-Waterfront Bouncer → +Sygg, River Cutthroat
Another underperforming card, this time freeing a slot off-color. I hope Sygg provides an interesting option for black and/or blue aggressive strategies.
Black:
-Death Cloud → +Blood Scrivener
It seems that Death Cloud was unnecessary to support pox/stax decks as they had already plenty of tools to work with. Cloud was also not usable in pretty much any other archetype. I played Scrivener in a draft this weekend and I know how hard it is for control decks to abuse this, but if the game grinds for some time it is not hard to activate it. I believe aggro decks will have an easier time playing this guy.
Red:
-Shrine of Burning Rage → +Pyrewild Shaman
Shrine was underperforming even in mono red decks. Pyrewild was probably the
first cardspoiled that had me looking for a spot to fit in the cube (second to Ral Zarek, actually).-Rivalry → Zo-zu, the Punisher
I believe the main reason for Rivalry not being played is because red players didn't quite saw this as Sulfuric Vortex #2. Zo-zu punishes pretty much the same thing as Rivalry. I believe that, overall, the goblin might do more damage in a game, so lets see how it plays out.
Green:
-Green Sun's Zenith → +Eureka
Underperforming card. Also, read test pool comment about Eureka.
Artifacts:
-Black Vise → +Pithing Needle #2
Even though the damage potential of the vise is pretty high, it was an easy card to play around. Pithing Needle is a great answer to plenty of powerful cards that has been maindecked time after time. I don't think any deck will be happy to run 2 of those and neither will be picked early, but it is a card that does something great and I'm happy to make it more available to the players.
-Mortarpod → +Gyre Sage
Didn't want to cut any green card and Mortarpod wasn't played too much. For all this time, I think that Blasting Station could be a better card that Mortarpod ever was in the cube, so I'll see if I trade for one to put it in my test pool.
-Erratic Portal → +Spike Jester
The removal of Erratic Portal is pretty much a nail on Crystal Shard's coffin. The card was underperforming as well. I was going to take out Rakdos Shred-Freak for the Jester, but I believe this was a more useful replacement.
Multicolored:
-Absorb → +Sphinx's Revelation
Absorb was a neat card but blue is already bloated with counterspells and any WU deck has plenty of ways to survive the early game without Absorb. Drawing cards is always fun, so let's hope Sphinx's Revalation is a fun card to play with.
-Vithian Renegades → +Savageborn Hydra
I thinned my artifact section and added more artifact removal in both red and green in the past month or so, so I'm replacing the renegades with a more suitable beater.
-Desolate Lighthouse → +Niv-Mizzet, Dracogenius
I really hated the Lighthouse and it seemed to make UR decks worst by keeping them out of colored mana so they had access to an effect that they would most likely never use. Even Grixis Reanimator or combo had better things to do with their mana than activate Lighthouse. Niv has tested well in the pool, so it was now allowed in the main list.
-Steamcore Weird → +Ral Zarek
Ral demanded a sot and Steamcore was my 2nd less favourite card. It was a great tool to buy some time against aggressive decks, but Ral can do pretty much the same thing and a bit more for the same mana cost.
-Aurelia's Fury → +Firemane Avenger
While the Fury was an interesting card for a possible WR control build or as a finisher in beatdown decks, aggressive cards could always use another early pick card, and Avenger fits the bill.
After all of these changes, my new test pool is the following:
1 Timetwister (probation)
1 Yawgmoth's Bargain (new)
1 Goblin Ruinblaster
1 Renegade Krasis (new)
1 Far//Away (new)
1 Sire of Insanity (new)
1 Voice of Resurgence (new)
1 Gaea's Cradle (new; good)
Mostly I want to try some new cards for the edition. There is another batch of cards from DMZ that I want to put through the test pool, but Griffin Guide was in the wait list for a long time (along with Standstill, which I haven't traded for yet). I also wanted an opportunity to play with my foil Bargain, since it has been sitting in my binder doing nothing since I've bought it a few years ago.
Not by a long shot: http://forums.mtgsalvation.com/showthread.php?p=10112520
URB Grixis Control
BW Pox (Green splash for Pernicious Deed)
URB Sneak Attack/Reanimate Combo
BG Beatdown
RW Boros Beatdown
I also got some more intel from the test pool to make some changes to it. I had a couple of winston drafts a while ago that I didn't report here that also helped with the following evaluations.
Crypt Ghast
This card has been mostly unnimpressive to everyone I play with. I haven't seen anyone play this card. It is a bit unfair evaluating a card that hasn't been played, but the card was always very late picked and never maindecked, so I'm ok cutting it from my test pool. Heck, I was playing Bw today and I didn't want this card main-decked, so this is definitely a miss.
Wolfir Silverheart
This card has been main-decked every single draft as far as I remember. Overall, it is a great midrange/beatdown creature for green, so I'm moving this to the main list now in place of Thornling.
Angelic Destiny
I have been pretty impressed by this card. Players seemed to value this highly and it is a great pick to push white aggro early in the draft. I tend to value cards that pull to aggro builds as there are too many cards that auto-pilot the draft into a control build.
You might have thought that this would mean that I would pull this right into the cube, but right now my white is far too heavy in the 4-drop department and I have a dent in 3-drops, so I can't afford to put it in until I rebalance my curve. I was thinking about switching this for Spectral Procession, I'm not sure it would be a very good replacement. I would love some feedback on how to rebalance my curve and to include this card
Niv-Mizzet, Dracogenius
This card has been played far more than I expected. Haven't seen him in a wildfire build yet where I thought it would shine the most (haven't seen many wildfire builds in genral, though). I am leaving it in the test pool for a while longer, until I see what is new for UR in Dragon's Maze, but he is very likely to replace Desolated Lighthouse.
Voidmage Prodigy
I don't really have much data on this card, but it has been a good card for blue. I enjoy giving blue some aggro/tempo cards and Kai Budde here is a neat card for blue. I really want to see him in a UW shell along with Delver of Secrets and Champion of the Parish, but it hasn't happened yet. Maybe it will take the slot of Waterfront Bouncer in the future, but I want him in the test pool for a while longer to make sure he has a place in the cube.
Crystal Shard
This card is taking a break from the test pool because I needed a slot in the test pool. Overall, it wasn't a very strong card and didn't fit into many decks. I believe this will get back into the test pool after Dragon's Mage, after my little test pool experiment.
So, my list of changes for the cube is the following:
- Thornling¹ → + Wolfir Silverheart²
- Faerie Macabre → + Withered Wretch
- Wildfire → + Burning of Xinye
¹ Card was in the Watch List
² Card was in the Test Pool
Faerie Macabre wasn't really all that good as a sideboard card and the only reason this was played once was because the player was lacking 3-drops. I feel like the Wretch will get a lot more love, not only because he is an effective hate bear, but because he is far more likely to be main-decked and because he is a zombie and Gravecrawler loves his dead buddies. As a side note, Gravecrawler has been proven today to be a very good reason to keep playing Tidehollow Sculler.
As for the Wildfire, I hadn't traded for the second Wildfire until now and was using a Burning of Xinye proxy all along, so I'll change my list to reflect that.
Also, my test pool is now the following:
1 Skyshroud Elite
1 Quirion Dryad
1 Eureka (probation)
1 Goblin Ruinblaster
1 Niv-Mizzet, Dracogenius (good)
4 Squadron Hawk (new; package)
I'm looking forward to utilizing one of the ideas that I had previously noted for my test pool. Hawk Pool is going to be a brief experiment that I believe will be a lot of fun.
Another thing that happend this week in my cube is that I replaced all my printed proxies with foil proxies that I printed this week. They are not as good looking as real cards, but they are pretty enough. Since I'm not retaking all cube pictures just now, here is a preview picture of all my new proxies:
About rant's disagreements:
I do like the Razormane Masticore and I think it is a great card, but it occupies a slot in my cube that plenty of other cards already occupy in a better fashion, which is of aggro deterrant for control and midrange decks. Trading Post and Ulamog, on the other hand, are playing different roles:
• Trading Post is a great piece for artifacts deck and provides different functionalities that are beloved by many decks (mostly combo, but control also enjoys it). It kinda plays Razormane's role as well, but it is a less obvious and more interactive card that tends to make games more fun than the Masticore, as it demands more skill to be used successfully.
• Ulamog is a key combo card for Channel, Eureka, Sneak Attack and Show and Tell. These combo decks are fun to draft and fun to pilot, so I'm not likely to cut Ula out in the near future.
I'm not sure why people didn't play Sinkhole more often as it clearly is a powerful card. I have seen both MonoBlack and Pox being put together, so I have no idea why it was such an underrated card. I think it is a card that might come back in the future so I could test it out again and see if players value it differently.
I guess that Faerie Macabre might really be a stub after we play it. I'll try it a couple of drafts to see how it goes. I might swap it with Withered Wretch if that is the case.
From the blue cards mentioned, I have Standstill in my queue for the test pool and I already play Daze. I had Tolarian Academy in the cube for the two weeks between me building the cube and posting it here and it was mostly unimpressive, along with most artifacts-oriented cards. I could see a case for bringing it back along with Metalworker to see how that turns out, so I'll note it on my Test Pool Ideas and Packages List™.
Deadbridge was actually a good card for us, but I guess Baloth will be more interesting and will lead to more different decks. I hope Veredict does the same as Obzedat was only just another Esper finisher.
Also, rant and I are Bosh-buddies
I really like this card as a 3-drop that happens to be good if drawn later. If I get one of these early, I'll put it in my test pool and see how it goes. Though if I were looking for a better RG finisher, I would try Ruric Thar, the Unbowed first.
This feat alone deserves more praises than any alter in this thread, so congratulations!
(alters looks neat as well, better quality pictures would be great for people to comment though)
EDIT: Whoa! Just checked my post history and it seems that I have been participating in this thread since page 54. It also seems that I had started a thread for my own crappy alters before the official thread was even started. Now I feel old.
Damn, and I thought the desk was the real deal...
There you go. Still very heavily "rainbowned" in comparison to a regular phone picture. Lack of metadata is also very convenient.
Good thing that the desk does seems to be the real deal, though.
EDIT: Just for curiosity, Varolz and Rootborn Defenses.