Lab Rats is a pretty good card where experience matters. I never thought it was close as good as sprout, but i also tried it at some point. card is pretty horrible tbh, Id really like to run them in my t2, because its one of the few cards that allows for a continues stream of sac targets, but its just too slow and clunky.
the manacost of bolt is relatively irrelevant compared to hammer. if it was incinerate vs bolt, fine. but instant speed allows to react to pump, auras, basically every effect. sorcery speed is infintely worse, especially when it comes to removal.
the luck involved in magic is depending on the format. while legacy has all the tools to decrease variance, since it has access to 4x brainstorm, fetchlands and the other cantrips, formats like standard or limited are way higher on the luck scale. its kinda nonsense to come up with percentages out of the blue, but i wouldnt be surprised if it actually was 60%+ in some formats, especially something like sealed. on tournaments you on top have the possiblity to get paired to your autolose or win.
the good players are playing good sure, but they also grind out the rng like crazy.
I don't see how Lab Rats is significantly worse than Sprout Swarm. It's worse sure, but it's still a bomb.
Friend, you really should try and play a game of Magic first before you join discussions like that.
I'll be the bad guy and tell you that right now everyone who's posting here except you is torn between continually trying to be nice and trying to help you with your questions and requests, which is hard enough given that you have zero experience in this game and zero willingness to second-guess anything you say, and just giving up and being frustrated that this topic has been spammed with useless content for the last 10 pages or so. Literally every one of the hundreds of sentences you've written on the last pages is a testimony of the fact that you have absolutely no clue about how an actual game of Limited Magic with other human beings could play out. Pleas stop wasting our and your own time and come back once you've actually played with the cards you're suggesting.
Typically I've only ever seen Sprout Swarm activated once, maybe twice a turn. It's an instant sure, but most of the time there is nothing else you're going to cast in the same turn so that's irrelevant.
By the time you can do it 2-3 times a turn you're probably winning.
So no, I don't see Lab Rats as significantly worse than Sprout Swarm. It's like saying Volcanic Hammer is worse than Lightning Bolt. Of course it is worse, but not significantly (in a limited environment). They're the same thing 80% of the time.
Playing this game for years means absolutely nothing past the first month or two of playing the game. Referencing my experience with the game is essentially an ad hominem. This isn't brain surgery that we're discussing, it's a card game that's 60% luck based. Having played this game for 20 years is no different than having played it for only one.
Longtime Magic players just have crustier views on the game and think that they're smarter than people that have been playing for less time, that's the only difference that experience grants you with this game.
this whole post is just another example how disconnected you are.
experience is everything in magic. with so many different cards, formats and other variables its almost impossible to make the same decision as someone who just spent way more time with the game.
And saying Bolt is even remotely close to Volcanic Hammer, at this point one might jump to the conclusion you litereally never played a single game of magic ever. The difference between a sorcery and an instant alone is like 100% difference on how cards play out.
When it comes to Lab Rats, one is not only an instant over sorcery, but Swam can also pay for itself with the token you are actually creating.
Dude, you are the hardest troll ever, without even noticing.
i think we/you are overcomplicating the "problem" right now. I suggest you just add some amount 4-6 clourdpost + 2-4 Glimmerpost to your cube and play it.
there are a bunch of eldrazi that profit from colorless mana, you might want to check them out as well. there is a really strong 2 drop.
offcolor signets usually eat a deckslot, while 2 posts wont. same reason why its bad to cut duals btw. they seem worse than offcolor bouncelands though, but not much and id still play them in decks that can use exessive mana like rebuy spells or x-spells. 2 colorloss sources will also not become too problematic, when you still run 15 colored sources. anyway thats not the point here anyways.
running 5-6 posts in a 40 card deck would be just crazy
Running a map and glimmers instead of more cloudpost reduces the chances that the post player will end up with 4+ clouds in the end, depending how the shuffle rng turned out at 450 cards. for the post player its totally fine to pick a glimmer instead of a cloud to get more locust and some extra life totally doesnt hurt.
getting 3/4 posts at 360 is just a guess, but i can totally see another player either hatepicking a post later in the draft after he passed the first 3 or trying to get some posts in the early as well. running only 2 posts in your deck comes with basically no drawback and still some payoff.
i think the posts are impossible to balance in a cube that doesnt run all cards in the pool each time. they scale better than tron with only 2 pieces, but get out of hand really fast for each one beyond.
If I were to run them at 360 Id probably run 4, so one guy is likely to have 3 in his deck. And you definitely want to have some of the colorless payoff cards salt has mentioned.
At 450 4 Cloud, 4 Glimmer seems best.
I run teachings in my T2 and its fine. But I support a draw-go style control archetype with Flashcreatures and it can tutor combopieces for Blink.
The tutorcreatures are all pretty bad, unless youre meta is not only slow, but ultraslow (like no 2-drops at all). That said, I drafted 2 pretty fast aggrodecks from salts cube and im pretty sure at this point he never actually played it, at least not with some experienced drafter.
Pilgrim is fine to fetch for Presence of Gond combo, otherwise Totem-Guide Hartebeest is the superior card
its wasted time to argue about powerlevel or cards in general with salt since he a) wont listen anyway and b) evaluates cards based on whatever, but not normal magic.
his posts are also pretty interchangeable and pretty much consist of the same phrases everytime.
Havent played it yet, since i mostly play Arena right now. But I expect it to play as I expect Really solid in Bx aggro strategies, whilse also not out of imagination in midrange or even control decks.
But im actually getting more and more sold of Ill-gotten, the fact that is also sacs for 4 makes it a pretty strong card.
thing is, its totally fine to just add one dual or fixing for the flashback card and otherwise run 2 completely different colors. therefore they play much closer to monocolored cards than guild cards.
id test both, random discard or chosen discard. ofc random can screw you up, but getting a land guaranteed should come with a cost. just exiling your worst card seems to strong for my taste.
UU is a drawback already and the card scales with the game in a bad way, the more cards are in your gy the more likely your opponent can pay for it. Why its played in modern? Fetchlands
the luck involved in magic is depending on the format. while legacy has all the tools to decrease variance, since it has access to 4x brainstorm, fetchlands and the other cantrips, formats like standard or limited are way higher on the luck scale. its kinda nonsense to come up with percentages out of the blue, but i wouldnt be surprised if it actually was 60%+ in some formats, especially something like sealed. on tournaments you on top have the possiblity to get paired to your autolose or win.
the good players are playing good sure, but they also grind out the rng like crazy.
this whole post is just another example how disconnected you are.
experience is everything in magic. with so many different cards, formats and other variables its almost impossible to make the same decision as someone who just spent way more time with the game.
And saying Bolt is even remotely close to Volcanic Hammer, at this point one might jump to the conclusion you litereally never played a single game of magic ever. The difference between a sorcery and an instant alone is like 100% difference on how cards play out.
When it comes to Lab Rats, one is not only an instant over sorcery, but Swam can also pay for itself with the token you are actually creating.
Dude, you are the hardest troll ever, without even noticing.
there are a bunch of eldrazi that profit from colorless mana, you might want to check them out as well. there is a really strong 2 drop.
btw salt, if you would accept that you are incredible unexperienced in cubing and magic in general, it would be much easier to discuss things
running 5-6 posts in a 40 card deck would be just crazy
getting 3/4 posts at 360 is just a guess, but i can totally see another player either hatepicking a post later in the draft after he passed the first 3 or trying to get some posts in the early as well. running only 2 posts in your deck comes with basically no drawback and still some payoff.
If I were to run them at 360 Id probably run 4, so one guy is likely to have 3 in his deck. And you definitely want to have some of the colorless payoff cards salt has mentioned.
At 450 4 Cloud, 4 Glimmer seems best.
The tutorcreatures are all pretty bad, unless youre meta is not only slow, but ultraslow (like no 2-drops at all). That said, I drafted 2 pretty fast aggrodecks from salts cube and im pretty sure at this point he never actually played it, at least not with some experienced drafter.
Pilgrim is fine to fetch for Presence of Gond combo, otherwise Totem-Guide Hartebeest is the superior card
his posts are also pretty interchangeable and pretty much consist of the same phrases everytime.
But im actually getting more and more sold of Ill-gotten, the fact that is also sacs for 4 makes it a pretty strong card.