MTG Salvation

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

Got in the first test on Xmage last night and got some reps with a lot of cards.

Usher of the Fallen, Clarion Spirit, and Dragonkin Berserker were played in a Boros Aggro list. Usher was great as expected and clarion spirit ate removal everytime it hit the board which is fine for a 2cmc creature and at least speaks to the perceived threat level of the card. Dragonkin threatened to make a dragon forcing the opponent to remove it or die so again I think if your 2cmc spells are forcing your opponent to use up valuable removal they are doing a fine job.

Doomskar, glorious protector, and cosima, god of the voyage were played in an Esper control list. Nothing much to report on doomskar unfortunately, glorious protector was mostly played as a non blinking restoration angel, but cosima was surprisingly good. Vehicle wasn't played at all but the front side blocked then drew two cards, then exiled while the controller played a board wipe and came back later drawing 3 cards. So pretty good in this shell. Still feels slow but has potential and people who run double fetches might want to consider it more strongly.

Battle Mammoth, Esika's Chariot, and Masked Vandal were played in a Mono Green deck. Battle mammoth was a big dummy as expected but in the situations where Elder Gargaroth would have just died the insurance of battle mammoth felt good. Chariot is very strong. It was very difficult for opponents to decide to kill the chariot or to kill the crewing creatures and just snowballed so hard. Surprise of the night, Masked Vandal was very strong. It hit the board as a 2 mana Rec sage three times not being hindered by lack of creatures in the graveyard at all. Took out a retrofitter foundry and two coalition relics. Was tutored for with Green Sun's Zenith twice costing only 3 mana to tutor it directly into play where compared to reclamation sage would be 4 mana. So far very happy with this over spell based disenchants like Wilt especially being able to tutor for it in green with things like greensun, Fiend artisan, etc.

Behold the Multiverse was in a Dimir control list and played pretty much as expected. It was cast for foretell about equal amounts as fully paid and gave a nice flexible option to hold up mana for counterspells.

Starnheim unleashed unfortunately didn't get cast as far as I know.
Firja's Retribution rotted in the sideboard of the Esper Control deck, being too demanding of a casting cost for the mostly blue aligned deck. I feel it is the weakest of the cards i'm testing so not too surprised by this.
Shimmerdrift Vale Was serviceable as a fixer if you are looking to cut back on functional reprints of evolving wilds and terramorphic expanse which are both better than this. Some people are diehard on singleton and this helps with the spirit of that if you are against functional reprints. Also if your cube plays some crazy land configuartion where decks consistently end up with only 1 or 2 basics shimmerdrift can fit into these decks without ending up as a dead card with nothing to fetch so that's one advantage to consider.

Hope you are all getting in some good testing and enjoying the set!

I like char more than fireblast. fireblast has a place but char is a way more versatile burn spell that can go in more decks.

otherwise i'm in agreement.

Quote from Breathe1234 »

I personally don't know if judging by main deck percentage is the best way to go. There are several reasons from my game play experience that a card might see less maindeck play:

- If I see a card that is a rarely seen effect - I.e. Gaea's Cradle, SkullClamp, Crucible of Worlds, I would pick it Pick 1, Pack 1/2 - The other cards are pretty replaceable, I might get lucky and see both Loam + Strip Mine etc.
- There are cards that are build arounds and not intended to be played as frequently. There is almost no green deck that will not play Birds of Paradise, but cards like Griselbrand require a build around.

I agree that maindeck percentage alone is not a good measure of overall cube performance but I do think it is an important factor to consider. The best cube cards have a high maindeck percentage and a high win rate. The worst cube cards have a low maindeck percentage and a low win rate. Serviceable cube cards fall somewhere in the middle. Your example of Griselbrand is a great one. It has a lower maindeck percentage because it needs to be built around, but it is sufficiently powerful that it has a high enough win rate to offset its low maindeck percentage.

Unfortunately this is not the case for Armageddon in my cube. It has a maindeck percentage of only 32.50% and a win rate of 51.16% for an overall cube rating of 41.83%. This is dismal. Out of all 360 cards in my list it is ranked 352nd. Griselbrand by comparison has an overall rating of 55.55% ranked 261st out of 360 cards.

Overall Armageddon has not been performing well enough to justify its low maindeck percentage in my list.

very good review as always. good insight into doomskar potentially almost always being 5 cmc and at that point fumigate would be better.

I am really hoping fortell comes through stronger than it reads.

Quote from ThatOneNinja »

Needle Spires vs the RW Pathway

And do you guys think any of the Pathways are better than their respective man-land?

Pathway much better than spires. RW aggro wants untapped lands. needle spires too slow to get activated in most RW decks.

I would say the pathways are better than most manlands with the exception of tarpit, collonade, and maybe on par with ravine and shambling vent depending what you want these sections to do.

first group for sure. 5 colour fetches are always good and seems like you are ocd about colour balancing just like me so shimmerdrift does a good job of alleviating the problem of needing to include 5 thriving lands as you are currently debating.

Quote from Morphling »

I do not think this is nearly as good as Dragonmaster Outcast but I pulled that guy a while ago because it never worked. (Does not bode well for this new option..)

While there are definitely some obvious comparisons I think these will play differently. You play dragonmaster outcast in a deck that is designed to get to 6 lands. You play this as flood insurance in an aggro deck that isn't supposed to get past 4 mana. This can still swing in and be difficult to block in the early game where dragonmaster outcast is a big doodoo head that cant do anything, and for that reason I think it aligns much better with traditional red aggro decks and should be much stronger.

card seems pretty strong. will test over shatter the sky.

wouldnt cut parallax wave for this though. that card is a whole different type of beast.

Bad Rankle

I tested this a few days ago and This had been really good for us. I know that seems so narrow for cube but I think the token generation increased in last years in the cube. Does more someone have good experiences with it?

Happily replacing Brimaz with this for the human synergies and the reduction of token type bloat by 1.

Unexpectedly Absent is nowhere near as good as this. UA doesn't deal with the problem. A bit of tempo is nice, but it isn't removal.

Another card that entices me to include Ephemerate.

Is this a good replacement for Angel
of Invention or Cloudgoat Ranger?

Finally managed to pull this off in a game. #BucketList

Bad and slow

What a cool project - thanks for sharing!

Thanks for sharing!
Cosima was pretty good for us too, the game I saw I think it came down a turn early and drew 3 cards when it came back? Share the concerns about it being kinda slow and clunky.
Battle Mammoth was very solid in the GW midrange deck I saw it in - drawing a card off an opponent's Primus trigger.
I really want Vorinclex to get there, it hasn't happened much yet (one player did get to immediately ultimate a Nissa WStW which was fun, but otherwise it just ate removal where both Primeval Titan and Carnage Tyrant would have been better. Going to keep hoping though cause it's a wacky card.
I'm still very skeptical of the reliability of Masked Vandal, but if it ends up being good, would love to play it!