I'm gonna state the obvious here, since I've been annoyed about must-answer bomb creatures since Baneslayer. Just because cards exist and are good doesn't mean you need to play them.
There's no need to play cards you don't like, especially if you don't like what they do to an environment. It's not like it's hard to find cool cards to try.
They have tried a lot of things with answers lately, and some of it has really been nice. Hand disruption could still use more options (Dreams of Steel and Oil is lovely, but it's no Thoughtsieze), and counter magic hasn't moved very far. Black also continues to bafflingly lack good mass-removal options that don't break the bank. And green could still use help despite some killer Naturalize variants.
Despite all this, the power of runaway bombs is undeniable. But hey, if those cards lead to unfun play patterns, just cut 'em. There have to be cards you'd love to try if only you had room.
I've seen people play with lower power level cubes/ cubes with 2000+ cards. I can definitely see the appeal as it opens the possibility for more decks/ card variety.
Esper Sentinel is an absolute nightmare. He's terrible on his own yes, but if you can curve Esper Sentinel into any snowball creature such as Rabblemaster, 3 drop walkers, he's almost alwways going to trade up in value and mana.
This is something that's always been on my mind over the years, and the past couple of years have really exacerbated it. Right now my approach is to focus on cheaper, versatile removal that can cheap threats (think Prismatic Ending / Portable Hole / Cut Down) etc over traditional Doom Blades / Oblivion Ring effects. With threats also being much more consistent, I've also been scaling down on the critical mass of them (especially cheap aggro threats).
I might scale my cube from 540 back to 480 again as a balancing act so help combo / control. Aggro / midrange is very dominant right now, especially with initiative. Theoretically, combo can prey on these decks if they're more consistent with a smaller cube size. And if combo is more prevalent, then control will rise along with it to foil combo.
I feel that if aggro is now the more dominant archetype, we should be played more Red-X sweepers such as Subterranean Tremors or Rolling Earthquake to help archetype decks such as Lands, Storm, Reanimator, Artifacts etc. buy time against aggressive decks.
Yahenni's Expertiese - Yahenni's Expertiese seems to have aged well as there aren't that many 4 toughness creatures and it may even perform better than languish in black tempo decks. I've found the cast for free is at its best in cubes when people are playing 3c or 4c and cannot cast their splash color spell. Its rare you can get an Crashing Footfalls/ Ancestral Visions off it.
Extinction Event feels too difficult to take advantage of.
- Velomachus. Survives Wildfire, can be played as a control top end to present a 5/5 creature but also dig through time a removal. Aruelia feels too small for control/ reanimator, too expensive for aggro/ combo decks with Aurelia combos.
The theory is Rabbit Battery can be played in both aggro and fatty cheat and Bomat can be played in both aggro and artifacts, however in my experience they were just tier 2 playables in both decks, never spectacular and were cards both decks can easily live without.
When Teething Wurmlet was spoiled, I've done the math on this card and its roughly this:
- Given a sample size of 8 (Opening 7 + Draw 1) and a success population of 4 (Artifacts in your deck), there is a 60% chance of playing an artifact by turn 2.
- For each additional card drawn, the chance improves by roughly 5%
- For each additional artifact, the chance improves by roughly 9%
I feel these are decent are more or less numbers normal aggressive decks can achieve regardless. I'm not convince the payoff/ Inventor's Apprentice is really worth it, but Toolcraft Exemplar seems like an excellent swap for a white 1 drop regardless.
Considerably better in powered cubes than unpowered , and considerably better in cubes that tilt their red section to focus on burn over creatures.
my experiences with the card seems to be much different than others here and I don’t understand why.
In my cube it’s a shadow of its constructed self , but still a solid step above jackal pup.
I think the first half is I feel the bar for non-red 1-drops is it needs to be stronger than 1 mana 2/2 or 2/1.
Usher of the Fallen, Wild Nacatl, Bloodsoaked Champion, Cult Conscript, Ragavan, Falkenrath Pit Fighter, Esper Essential, Dryad Militant, Recruitment Officer, Icehide Golem etc. all have either hybrid mana or relevant text.
The second problem I've had with Swiftspear is I've found I rarely have the spell density to make it worthwhile. I've found my most successful aggressive decks are more about stax/ tokens and swiftspear is often a sore thumb of a red-black stax aggro, red-white aggro or red-green stompy.
The third problem I've found is I think she lacks a bit to make it worthwhile in a spells-matters shell - I've found those decks often want to be a bit more midrange with slightly higher quality of threats.
Sorry for Necro, but I want to ask what people's thoughts about Swiftspear in 2022 is?
I've kept her in the cube primarily because everyone else did and I've been consistently unimpressed by her damage output compared to a Jackal Pup variants.
Balancing is always so tricky!
I have a target optimal Agro threshold to be something ~25-30% of the decks drafted.
I've been theorizing and I feel part of the problem might be an attempt to try to make the colors competitive with each other:
- White traditionally is the weak color in cube; It has good removal, but for the most part its unable really compete in the late game against the other colors and it must rely on aggro.
- Black has been split cross sacrifice/ stax, reanimator, storm, control etc. I've found that without sufficient Thoughseize variants, black more or less needs to play 1-drops to stay competitive.
- Red traditionally is the most aggressive color out of the three, but recently its demonstrated red can and should be less aggressive than White-Black as its 3-4 drops have improved significantly in the last few years and can afford to go a bit bigger with its burn spells.
I'm thinking moving forward, red should NOT be the aggressive color and move towards more of a midrange/ combo color while white should be the predominate aggro color and aggressive decks should be more sacrifice/ stax based rather than creature/ burn based.
- Lukka was something I kept as part of the former polymoprh package. Its been great as both a top-end for Persist, Red- Welder, red-green ramp and Black-Red Reanimator.
- Dictate of Karametra was originally for storm, but its serviceable in fatty cheat.
The other thing I've found is the Red-X sweepers have significantly improved in quality given how low to the ground a lot of decks are and they can often count as 0.5 to 1 enabler as it buys times.
I've found that for persist/ Heliod combos, the best cards are Ao, the Dawn Sky / Reveillark / Protean Hulk which are excellent as blockers against aggressive decks, trade up in value while also assembling your combo.
I've seen people play with lower power level cubes/ cubes with 2000+ cards. I can definitely see the appeal as it opens the possibility for more decks/ card variety.
I played it a bit and FTK at 5 CMC is just a turn too slow.
I feel that if aggro is now the more dominant archetype, we should be played more Red-X sweepers such as Subterranean Tremors or Rolling Earthquake to help archetype decks such as Lands, Storm, Reanimator, Artifacts etc. buy time against aggressive decks.
I really wanted a "mardu card" that could round out my tri color section.
Feldon - My experience is 1 toughness is not a place you want to be and it makes huge difference.
* No experience real play test experience with the remaining cards:
2 - Yahenni's Expertise vs Extinction Event?
Yahenni's Expertiese - Yahenni's Expertiese seems to have aged well as there aren't that many 4 toughness creatures and it may even perform better than languish in black tempo decks. I've found the cast for free is at its best in cubes when people are playing 3c or 4c and cannot cast their splash color spell. Its rare you can get an Crashing Footfalls/ Ancestral Visions off it.
Extinction Event feels too difficult to take advantage of.
3 - Velomachus Lorehold vs Aurelia, the Warleader?
- Velomachus. Survives Wildfire, can be played as a control top end to present a 5/5 creature but also dig through time a removal. Aruelia feels too small for control/ reanimator, too expensive for aggro/ combo decks with Aurelia combos.
The theory is Rabbit Battery can be played in both aggro and fatty cheat and Bomat can be played in both aggro and artifacts, however in my experience they were just tier 2 playables in both decks, never spectacular and were cards both decks can easily live without.
The cEDH format is way too expensive for me to consider playing competitively.
- Given a sample size of 8 (Opening 7 + Draw 1) and a success population of 4 (Artifacts in your deck), there is a 60% chance of playing an artifact by turn 2.
- For each additional card drawn, the chance improves by roughly 5%
- For each additional artifact, the chance improves by roughly 9%
I feel these are decent are more or less numbers normal aggressive decks can achieve regardless. I'm not convince the payoff/ Inventor's Apprentice is really worth it, but Toolcraft Exemplar seems like an excellent swap for a white 1 drop regardless.
In addition to being useful to play expensive artifacts in Recurring/ Stax decks, powerstones are useful for:
- Ashnod's own ability
- Paying for abilities/ kicker/ Evoke off cards like Misery's Shadow, Pack Rat, Cult Conscript, Flesh Carver, Skyclave Shade
- Artifact Synergies
- Cast Artifacts etc.
I think if there are 5+ cards that can take advantage of powerstones, its more than worth it.
I think the first half is I feel the bar for non-red 1-drops is it needs to be stronger than 1 mana 2/2 or 2/1.
Usher of the Fallen, Wild Nacatl, Bloodsoaked Champion, Cult Conscript, Ragavan, Falkenrath Pit Fighter, Esper Essential, Dryad Militant, Recruitment Officer, Icehide Golem etc. all have either hybrid mana or relevant text.
The second problem I've had with Swiftspear is I've found I rarely have the spell density to make it worthwhile. I've found my most successful aggressive decks are more about stax/ tokens and swiftspear is often a sore thumb of a red-black stax aggro, red-white aggro or red-green stompy.
The third problem I've found is I think she lacks a bit to make it worthwhile in a spells-matters shell - I've found those decks often want to be a bit more midrange with slightly higher quality of threats.
I've kept her in the cube primarily because everyone else did and I've been consistently unimpressed by her damage output compared to a Jackal Pup variants.
I've been theorizing and I feel part of the problem might be an attempt to try to make the colors competitive with each other:
- White traditionally is the weak color in cube; It has good removal, but for the most part its unable really compete in the late game against the other colors and it must rely on aggro.
- Black has been split cross sacrifice/ stax, reanimator, storm, control etc. I've found that without sufficient Thoughseize variants, black more or less needs to play 1-drops to stay competitive.
- Red traditionally is the most aggressive color out of the three, but recently its demonstrated red can and should be less aggressive than White-Black as its 3-4 drops have improved significantly in the last few years and can afford to go a bit bigger with its burn spells.
I'm thinking moving forward, red should NOT be the aggressive color and move towards more of a midrange/ combo color while white should be the predominate aggro color and aggressive decks should be more sacrifice/ stax based rather than creature/ burn based.
- Lukka was something I kept as part of the former polymoprh package. Its been great as both a top-end for Persist, Red- Welder, red-green ramp and Black-Red Reanimator.
- Dictate of Karametra was originally for storm, but its serviceable in fatty cheat.
The other thing I've found is the Red-X sweepers have significantly improved in quality given how low to the ground a lot of decks are and they can often count as 0.5 to 1 enabler as it buys times.
I've found that for persist/ Heliod combos, the best cards are Ao, the Dawn Sky / Reveillark / Protean Hulk which are excellent as blockers against aggressive decks, trade up in value while also assembling your combo.
Gideon Jura with Archangel Avacyn for a similar reason, but Avacyn is a bit overcosted ...