It's actually pretty bad in most situations. The attack trigger gives you mana that goes away even before blockers are declared. You either need a creature with firebreathing or an instant, but because you have to spend it immediately, you can't even use it for post-blocker combat tricks. It really needed the "Until end of turn, you don't lose this mana as steps and phases end" clause to make it decent.
And as a two-color mana dork, I much prefer Zhur-Taa Druid because of the incidental damage - it can really add up.
Oh yes, I completely missed that you get the red mana only during the combat step. That of course makes it a lot worse.
Spiritmonger is still a really strong card for an uncommon and while it is a bit boring I might add it. It also has a really stupid German translation: Röhrender Reliops. And while I usually don't use German cards I might make an excpetion for this one.
Phyrexian Scuta is a poor man's Juzám Djinn. Certainly good enough, but even more boring than Spiritmonger from my pov.
Mystic Enforcer would be a nice addition in BG, but I feel in WG there is not enough synergy to reliably enable threshold.
I have never seen Radha, Heir to Keld before. Not sure what to think of it, but it is definitely not a weak card.
I have Call of the Herd in my cube for years already since like most people I always felt this was an uncommon at heart. I mainly included it for the graveyard synergies in the Golgari self-mill deck I support, getting a 3/3 that basically draws a card on etb is good value even for 4 mana. But it's good in any other midrange deck as well. Being able to cast the first 3/3 for just 2G (often on turn 2 in a green deck) is a huge benefit over the slow Trumpeting Herd that even has a CC mana cost.
This is by no means a super strong card, the 'hype' is just that most people around here thought this is a card that would be a perfect fit for peasant cubes, but either it wasn't reprinted at all in a set where it would fit or it was reprinted at rare, like in MM17. It's funny that now that it's finally an uncommon it is almost too weak for peasant cubes, but I don't plan cutting it unless they print something better with graveyard synergies.
I think as long as the ability isn't insanely powerful (and thus screams 'build around me') and as long as there is at least some kind of synergy in the cube it's fine from my pov.
I have plenty of soldiers in my cube (just like everyone else around here probably), just not in blue. It also depends on who you play with. I play with the same group of people so no one expects a soldier theme in blue. But I still don't believe that if you played with random people someone would first pick Zephyr Sentinel and then try to build a mono blue soldier tribal deck because of it. Especially since pretty much every Magic player who isn't completely new to the game probably knows that soldiers are a white creature type traditionally.
I agree with Funky Dragon. I would have loved to get some more playable artifacts from an artifact set like this, but the powerstones ruined it for us. I will add Zephyr Sentinel and most likely Third Path Iconoclast, but that's it.
EDIT: I completely forgot Recruitment Officer, of course I'll add that one as well.
Giant Slagmaw (4/3 Trample, players can't gain life for 2R) is boring, but efficient. There was a time when I ran Brazen Wolves in my cube. I assume nowaydays Coastline Marauders is a better card with a similar effect. A bit less reliable, but with a higher ceiling. Still, not a bad card.
I like Third Path Iconoclast and apart from Electrolyze I have no cards in my Izzet guild section that I'm really attached to, so I might give it a try. I don't think it will create more tokens than Pyromancer 90% of the time though, which may be a bit lackluster for a guild card.
Zephyr Sentinel is the best 2/1 flyer for 1U we have in blue, so it's an auto-include. The comparison to Kor Skyfisher doesn't make much sense though as 2/1 is very different from 2/3, especially for a flyer.
Obstinate Baloth is rather weak unless you can expect the second ability to trigger, and that isn't true in a cube setting.
Combat Thresher is interesting. Voltron decks often run into problems if the opponent has too much removal, so card draw on etb is nice. On the other hand dropping a creature on turn 3 is slow for such a deck and the 7 mana full mode is at least one mana too expensive to be useful. Will think about it.
Yeah, I hope they'll do a Barbie vs Ken standard set next. I'm sure it would sell like hot cakes. The only thing I'm asking for is a Barbie planeswalker at uncommon so I can add it to my cube.
Didn't want to spam the Unfinity thread, but after the recent discussion I thought it was worth pointing out that Unfinity does have Legacy (and constructed pauper) playable cards and even one that uses stickers (____ Goblin). So much for 'cards were designed to not have any impact in eternal formats'...truly disgusting.
After this much needed break from spoiler season (Unfinity obviously doesn't count :p) The Brother's War spoilers have started. And the first uncommon is yet another 2/1 aggro one drop with relevant upside for white. At least Domiaria United had some good one drops for black and red or I would have to complain about the abundance of great one drops in white compared to the other colors.
Recruitment Officer will definitely make his (or her?) way into my cube. If you have 12 other creatures with mana value 3 or less in the deck the chance to draw one with the ability is ~80%, which is a great late game mana sink. I would probably rank only Usher of the Fallen and Dauntless Bodyguard higher and in some decks Skymarcher Aspirant.
MaRo said the set has all the black-border-legal cards just so people who want to play with these are really allowed to, no one in a playgroup can deny them on the basis of border.
I wasn't referring to Legacy. No, I don't think we'll see a tier 1 (or 2 or 3) Legacy sticker deck. The format they were aiming at with this nonsense is clearly commander, because that's the most popular and best selling Magic format anyway. And while commander is a casual format it still sucks that from now on whenever you play with randoms they can come up with completely over the top nonsense 'funny' cards and stickers and no one can say anything against it.
The problem is that there is simply no reason to do it that way. If you are playing super casually with friends you could already play with silver border cards if you wanted, no problem. But now they're forcing this crap down our throats (because, like your rightfully said, 'no one in a playgroup can deny them on the basis of border') whether we want it or not. And yes, the ONLY reason for it is because they want to sell more product.
And again, it doesn't matter to me as I don't even play with random people I don't know. But I still think it's disgusting because they officially add this kind of weird crap (that isn't even remotely funny for the most part, at last in my opinion...) to the regular game only to make even more money.
But enough, I'll leave this thread now so the people who actually want this in their cube can talk about the actual cards.
Not sure what you're talking about. None of the un-sets had any eternal legal cards so far, the only value was in the full art basic lands, tokens and a few meme card foils. And don't tell me you meant basic lands with 'eternal legal'...
The sets sold so well that a sealed Unsanctioned box is cheaper now than it was two years ago...
It is pretty obvious that they decided to make some of the cards eternal legal only because they knew it would make the set sell better if there are a few playable ones among those cards. There is absolutely no logical reason why else they would do that. And that's digusting to me, sorry.
I have to say I absolutely hate the idea of eternal legal un-cards with a black border. I think it's a huge mistake. Printing unique and powerful universes beyond cards is already very questionable from my pov, but printing goofy crap with stickers is just horrible. If un-sets don't sell well then they should just stop producing them, but making them eternal legal just to make people buy them is disgusting.
I don't even look at the spoilers for this set as I have absolutely zero interest in it. Thankfully I only play with a private group of people and they all think like me, so I will never have to see any of these cards in real life. End of rant.
Triarch Praetorian is a awesome, even though I don't like Warhammer that much. This looks close enough to some kind of Phyrexian creature though, so I won't mind adding it.
Noise Marine is a five drop and ultimately it's just another Flametongue Kavu variant that costs too much for an aggro curve topper. It's obviously a very strong card, but it only makes sense if you want more pure midrange/control cards in red, so I'm not sure about it.
Trygon Prime is also quite strong, but shroud is a big reason why Blastoderm (imo still) is as good as it is. And of course it's a guild card and since I don't really need an aggro curve topper for Simic in my guild section I will most likely not add it.
I tried to participate in a discussion in a pauper thread once and was greeted with completely irrational hostility ('how dare you, as a measly peasant player you know nothing about pauper and all your arguments are invalid because you are not one of us!!111!!!'). If there is something like a 'pauper and peasant community' I must have missed it during the last 7 years.
Let's face it, there is no meaningful interaction between pauper and peasant players here. It's not like anyone could get confused by the amount of posts made by pauper and peasant players around here, but on the other hand I don't care about pauper dicussions either.
So ultimately it probably doesn't matter what happens. I only get back to this forum to discuss new sets/cards usually, which is still fun. Whether pauper threads are next to the peasant thread or not doesn't matter much to me, I don't have a problem finding what I want to find.
Knight of Dusk's Shadow looks like a very playable aggro card. A 2/2 menace that can be pumped is nice, preventing life gain for your opponent is also quite useful for aggressive decks.
Oh yes, I completely missed that you get the red mana only during the combat step. That of course makes it a lot worse.
Phyrexian Scuta is a poor man's Juzám Djinn. Certainly good enough, but even more boring than Spiritmonger from my pov.
Mystic Enforcer would be a nice addition in BG, but I feel in WG there is not enough synergy to reliably enable threshold.
I have never seen Radha, Heir to Keld before. Not sure what to think of it, but it is definitely not a weak card.
I have Call of the Herd in my cube for years already since like most people I always felt this was an uncommon at heart. I mainly included it for the graveyard synergies in the Golgari self-mill deck I support, getting a 3/3 that basically draws a card on etb is good value even for 4 mana. But it's good in any other midrange deck as well. Being able to cast the first 3/3 for just 2G (often on turn 2 in a green deck) is a huge benefit over the slow Trumpeting Herd that even has a CC mana cost.
This is by no means a super strong card, the 'hype' is just that most people around here thought this is a card that would be a perfect fit for peasant cubes, but either it wasn't reprinted at all in a set where it would fit or it was reprinted at rare, like in MM17. It's funny that now that it's finally an uncommon it is almost too weak for peasant cubes, but I don't plan cutting it unless they print something better with graveyard synergies.
I have plenty of soldiers in my cube (just like everyone else around here probably), just not in blue. It also depends on who you play with. I play with the same group of people so no one expects a soldier theme in blue. But I still don't believe that if you played with random people someone would first pick Zephyr Sentinel and then try to build a mono blue soldier tribal deck because of it. Especially since pretty much every Magic player who isn't completely new to the game probably knows that soldiers are a white creature type traditionally.
EDIT: I completely forgot Recruitment Officer, of course I'll add that one as well.
Zephyr Sentinel is the best 2/1 flyer for 1U we have in blue, so it's an auto-include. The comparison to Kor Skyfisher doesn't make much sense though as 2/1 is very different from 2/3, especially for a flyer.
Obstinate Baloth is rather weak unless you can expect the second ability to trigger, and that isn't true in a cube setting.
Combat Thresher is interesting. Voltron decks often run into problems if the opponent has too much removal, so card draw on etb is nice. On the other hand dropping a creature on turn 3 is slow for such a deck and the 7 mana full mode is at least one mana too expensive to be useful. Will think about it.
Yeah, I hope they'll do a Barbie vs Ken standard set next. I'm sure it would sell like hot cakes. The only thing I'm asking for is a Barbie planeswalker at uncommon so I can add it to my cube.
Recruitment Officer will definitely make his (or her?) way into my cube. If you have 12 other creatures with mana value 3 or less in the deck the chance to draw one with the ability is ~80%, which is a great late game mana sink. I would probably rank only Usher of the Fallen and Dauntless Bodyguard higher and in some decks Skymarcher Aspirant.
I wasn't referring to Legacy. No, I don't think we'll see a tier 1 (or 2 or 3) Legacy sticker deck. The format they were aiming at with this nonsense is clearly commander, because that's the most popular and best selling Magic format anyway. And while commander is a casual format it still sucks that from now on whenever you play with randoms they can come up with completely over the top nonsense 'funny' cards and stickers and no one can say anything against it.
The problem is that there is simply no reason to do it that way. If you are playing super casually with friends you could already play with silver border cards if you wanted, no problem. But now they're forcing this crap down our throats (because, like your rightfully said, 'no one in a playgroup can deny them on the basis of border') whether we want it or not. And yes, the ONLY reason for it is because they want to sell more product.
And again, it doesn't matter to me as I don't even play with random people I don't know. But I still think it's disgusting because they officially add this kind of weird crap (that isn't even remotely funny for the most part, at last in my opinion...) to the regular game only to make even more money.
But enough, I'll leave this thread now so the people who actually want this in their cube can talk about the actual cards.
The sets sold so well that a sealed Unsanctioned box is cheaper now than it was two years ago...
It is pretty obvious that they decided to make some of the cards eternal legal only because they knew it would make the set sell better if there are a few playable ones among those cards. There is absolutely no logical reason why else they would do that. And that's digusting to me, sorry.
I don't even look at the spoilers for this set as I have absolutely zero interest in it. Thankfully I only play with a private group of people and they all think like me, so I will never have to see any of these cards in real life. End of rant.
Noise Marine is a five drop and ultimately it's just another Flametongue Kavu variant that costs too much for an aggro curve topper. It's obviously a very strong card, but it only makes sense if you want more pure midrange/control cards in red, so I'm not sure about it.
Trygon Prime is also quite strong, but shroud is a big reason why Blastoderm (imo still) is as good as it is. And of course it's a guild card and since I don't really need an aggro curve topper for Simic in my guild section I will most likely not add it.
I tried to participate in a discussion in a pauper thread once and was greeted with completely irrational hostility ('how dare you, as a measly peasant player you know nothing about pauper and all your arguments are invalid because you are not one of us!!111!!!'). If there is something like a 'pauper and peasant community' I must have missed it during the last 7 years.
Let's face it, there is no meaningful interaction between pauper and peasant players here. It's not like anyone could get confused by the amount of posts made by pauper and peasant players around here, but on the other hand I don't care about pauper dicussions either.
So ultimately it probably doesn't matter what happens. I only get back to this forum to discuss new sets/cards usually, which is still fun. Whether pauper threads are next to the peasant thread or not doesn't matter much to me, I don't have a problem finding what I want to find.
Knight of Dusk's Shadow looks like a very playable aggro card. A 2/2 menace that can be pumped is nice, preventing life gain for your opponent is also quite useful for aggressive decks.
Nothing else I could see.