MTG Salvation

With the power creep we have seen with creatures as part of the New World Order, I wanted to create a cycle of powerful Sorceries that would help swing the pendulum back. I think one of the best ways to keep sorceries interesting and relevant in the new world order is to attach creatures to them. Adventures is one way Wizards has already done this. Having sorceries that also create bodies in addition to other effects is another way. I just made these up today so balance issues are to be expected, but here are the first drafts.

Divine Interference XXXW
Sorcery (M)
Choose One:
- Destroy X target tapped creatures.
- Creatures you control get +X/+X and lifelink until end of turn
Create X 3/3 White angel tokens with flying.

This sorcery has a Take Vengeance mode and a Tenacity lite mode for 4 mana. The modality helps this card be either offensive or defensive. It also creates an Angel token to develop your board simultaneously which can also make additional copies of this spell more impactful.

Thoughtful Rejection XXXU
Sorcery (M)
Scry X. Then Draw X cards.
Create X 1/2 blue Wizard tokens. Each of these tokens enters the battlefield with one of the following abilities of your choice:
- When this creature enters the battlefield return target creature to its owner’s hand.
- Sacrifice this creature: Counter target spell.

This sorcery follows in the vein of Cryptic Command, Mystic Confluence, and other modal blue spells only it works as a sorcery instead. Losing instant speed hurts the power level of this card, but as a counterweight you don't have to choose between modes as you do with Cryptic Command, nor do you have to be heavy in blue to gain access to the effect. Getting to choose between a bounce creature or a counter creature helps you make this a tempo or a control play.

Undead Ceremony XXXB
Sorcery (M)
As an additional cost to cast this spell, sacrifice X creatures.
Return X target creature(s) from any player’s graveyard to the battlefield tapped.
Create X 2/2 black Zombie creature tokens. They enter the battlefield tapped.

Blood for Bones of sorts that trades getting a card back to your hand for being able to choose which graveyard you take the creature from, getting an additional zombie, and having both enter tapped.

Fiery Sunset XXXR
Sorcery (M)
Whenever a creature you control attacks this turn. It deals X damage to the defending player.
Create X 2/2 red Phoenix tokens with flying and haste.

Perhaps the most simplistic of the effects, but also the most explosive. It's an evasive creature with a 1-turn Hellrider effect. Like all of the other cards of this cycle X=1 (4 mana)presents a strong threat and x=2 (7 mana) is a blowout where each attacking creature deals 2 damage just by attacking and this creature makes two of those attackers by itself!


Sylvan Reprisal XXXG
Sorcery (M)
Untap each land you tapped to cast Sylvan Reprisal. They become X/X creatures until end of turn.
Create X 1/1 green Elf creatures with “Land creatures you control get +1/+1.”

Probably the most experimental of the abilities on this cycle. It is kind of like an entwined Rude Awakening except only lands that were tapped to cast this can be untapped (so if you ramped into this less lands will animate). Of note the lands are 2/2's because of the Elf but if your opponent can kill the Elf then the lands are only 1/1's. I tend to think that mass land awakening abilities are severely overcosted considering the risk a player is taking of losing their critical lands in combat or instant speed removal. Also, like the rest of the cycle this becomes much stronger when x=2 since all of your animated lands will be 3/3's since this spell will make two of the land-pumping elves!

Let me know your thoughts. Constructive criticisms only please.

My expectation would be that the more sets we go through, the less newcomers we get as there is increased competition, but that hasn't been the case.
Obviously power creep is part of this. Also, sets like Modern Horizons focused upon having cards which compete with the best of modern is going to also lend a lot to cube. Still, this is a regular set and there are cards that didn't even make the top 20 which wouldn't look embarrassing in even a powerful 450 list. Equally notable only a single instant made the top 20. Sure ELD has a bunch of spell/creature type cards so in that sense some instants/sorceries made the list. Still, I'd really like to see a set that swings the pendulum back towards non-creature spells a bit more (though I'm sure their market research says I can go fly a kite because people love creatures.)

We have gotten some incredibly strong modal cards as of late Rankle, OUAT, Knight of Autumn, Charming Prince. Even all of the adventure creatures are modal in a sense, PW's are of course modal. The trend for a lot of new cube inclusions seems to be cards that do a crap-ton of things simultaneously (Hydroid Krasis, Questing Beast) or cards that can do one of a variety of things depending on what you need. It seems increasingly rare to get a card that just does one specific thing -- even if really well -- that makes it into the cube unless that thing is be aggressive.

I should have specified mono-green I guess.

I like Nissa, Who Shakes the World, Garruk Wildspeaker, and Garruk Relentless, but I can't decide on #4.

Top 4 Green PW. Go!

Ready for some good Selesnya cards? Me too.

Spirit of Perseverance 2GG
Creature - Spirit (M)
Haste
When Spirit of Perseverance enters the battlefield creatures you control get +2/+2 and trample until end of turn.
4WW: Exile Spirit of Perseverance then return it to the battlefield. Spirit of Perseverance gains lifelink until end of turn.
2/2

This card kind of combines all the things I've needed lately.

- A strong green 4 drop.
- An overrun effect attached to a body that can also attack itself.
- An activated ability that blinks this guy to allow for extra ETB triggers and makes this (IMO) a top Selesnya card.
- Late game life gain to help green stabilize.

I'd probably go Oko and Krasis.

Coatl has 3 for 1 potential, but even so I still think it brings less to the table than either of the others.

Prospect Seeker XUU
Creature - Human Wizard (R)
When you cast Prospect Seeker look at the top X cards of your library and put one into your hand. Put the rest on the bottom of your library.
Prospect Seeker enters the battlefield with X +1/+1 counters.
Remove a +1/+1 counter from Prospect Seeker: Look at the top card of your library. You may shuffle your library then look at the top card of your library again.
(1/2)

Prospect Seeker is a scaling threat with a cast trigger that ranges from a cantrip to Impulse or even better. The final ability is what I think makes this card really fun and better late game. It allows you alone to look at your next draw. Shuffle if you like. Then look at what is there now. You can keep removing +1/+1 counters to spin the wheel until you find something you like.

Okay Crazy.

Kidding.

Dack Fayden's ability to dig deep and steal artifacts (even with a less busted artifact suite) are still much more valuable to me than a loot or pump effect. If I'm going to run the Scions, it would be over Saheeli.

The Royal Scions or Saheeli, Sublime Artificer?

https://www.cubetutor.com/viewcube/34371

Anyone have any testing results they would like to share? Based on my own observations from standard, some testing results from reddit, and some theorycrafting I made a few adjustments to the cards I want from this set. Mainly that I'm no longer interested in Gilded Goose.

I was trying to avoid calling out a poster by name, but since you asked, I was referring to your votes. There's nothing to apologize for though, I set forth the criteria for voting and if you believe your system was the best way to vote according to that criteria then you voted appropriately. The voting criteria was meant to encourage some representation of cubes outside of the "traditional" power-focused MTGS cube design, but to give a bit more deference towards the more traditional philosophy.

I think a good practice for future years might be to knock out votes that only get 1 vote. It would save the organizer time and reduce the quantity of information that is an extreme outlier. It is particularly disconcerting when a card that only got 1 vote makes a top 20 because one person voted it near the top of their list even if nobody else voted for it. I think there was only 1-2 instances of this, but that is too many I think. Voter thresholds might be something to consider next time too. Like maybe a voting thread doesn't close until we have at least 15 votes? These are things for the next organizer to consider down the road....

Quote from hoodwink »

Quote from BlackWaltz3 »

Quote from noshadowkick »

Fair enough. I was asking about what you said before the offending comment, but no worries.

I think the following reddit thread does a really good job at fully fleshing out what I've stated here if you want to go more in depth. The jist being that immediate value/resilience in the face of removal is important but so is impact if your opponent can't deal with it. The higher up the CMC chain you go the more impact you have to get in exchange for lacking some immediate value/resilience.

Link?

Oh. Crapola! Forgot that part. That might have been helpful....

Reddit Link

Quote from LucidVision »

Man, I hate to be a hater (hyprocrite?)... But part of the reason I didn't vote in the last few threads is the number of people with absurd lists skewing everything. Lost my passion for it.

The thing is, the best way to counterbalance those votes is to vote yourself. I only saw one voter that consistently had lists that were wildly different from the rest and in cases where more people voted, it didn't have the same degree of impact on the results. It wasn't my job to call out outlier lists though, I tried to remain neutral even when I vehemently disagreed. There was a steep dropoff in voters once we got beyond monocolor and while I can appreciate guilds/shards being a bit cumbersome, people didn't come back to vote on colorless or lands either. The end result being that more of what I'd call the "non-traditional" votes carried more weight on these final categories.

The voting criteria gave a little more deference to slightly less powerful cubes where cards like Fetches are more likely to be among the top cards and cards like Library of Alexandria don't factor. Library still came in 3rd so I wouldn't read to much into the drop. The list is still telling you "Play Library, Library is dumb." lol.

I apologize if the delays between some later rounds due to personal family matters was responsible for the loss of interest in voting. I also appreciate the shoutout for work involved. It is much more involved than I could appreciate at the beginning. I know someone mentioned doing a ranking project by card type, color, and CMC, I hope to see that materialize soon--it sounds fun and useful as well!

Quote from noshadowkick »

Fair enough. I was asking about what you said before the offending comment, but no worries.

I think the following reddit thread does a really good job at fully fleshing out what I've stated here if you want to go more in depth. The jist being that immediate value/resilience in the face of removal is important but so is impact if your opponent can't deal with it. The higher up the CMC chain you go the more impact you have to get in exchange for lacking some immediate value/resilience.

The community has spoken! Here are the results of this year's Power Rankings voting for LANDS:


A full list of results, with all cards that received votes and the number of lists a card appeared on, can be found on this Google spreadsheet.


Thanks to all 10 voters! (More participation would've been great, but on the brightside having 10 voters made calculations SUPER EASY!)

Trivia, Useless Ramblings, and Facts (TURF)

Perfect no Longer - In 2016, with 23 voters Library of Alexandria obtained a perfect score meaning everyone put it at #1. Today it ties for 3rd, no doubt due to the change in voting criteria and small sample size.

That's So Fetch - Despite Regina George telling us to "Stop trying to make Fetch happen" it is happening! The Fetchlands are #1 in our rankings. Strip Mine and Mana Confluence continue to sit near the top of our rankings along with newcomer Prismatic Vista from Modern Horizons.

Big Gains/Steep Falls - Ancient Tomb climbed from 11th in 2016 to 7th today. Maze of Ith fell from 7th in 2016 to tied for 15th today. Horizon Canopy is now the Horizon Lands and as a cycle their ranking improved from 14th for just Horizon Canopy to 11th for the whole cycle.

Hello and Goodbye - Newcomers to the Lands list include Prismatic Vista (#2), the Horizon Lands (#11), Ash Barrens (#12), Manlands (15th-T) are new to this list but only because of changes to categorization, and finally Blast Zone (#20). Paliano, the High City and Mishra's Workshop have fallen out of the rankings and received no votes this year.

That's a wrap everyone! Thank you all for indulging my idea to resurrect this project to see what the results would look like today. I truly believe that, contrary to the naysayers, this produced a lot of information that was both interesting and useful. I know I'll be keeping these list in mind as I expand my cube list to 500 cards. I hope others will find ways to apply this information to their own cubes or at least to keep it in mind in future discussions about cube. I seriously underestimated the number of hours it takes to host this project, but it was a labor of love so I don't mind it. I hope someone else takes the reins in a couple years so we can see where we stand after the newest commander set, Eldraine, Theros, and what comes after. Cheers!