Well it’s officially coming to together to me now (well some other people probably beat me)
But I think it’s counters that adds keywords to creatures is what the crazy mechanic is and those double sided things has the chosen ones
Probably simply the most known evergreen keywords
If we get a little crazy with the speculation it could be that the double-sided cards are something like the Hearthstone "Discover" mechanic: you randonly decide which side of the card you get and each side imparts a different keyword.
So we are getting a mechanic reminiscent of the Theros hero weapons as actual cards in the set right after a return to Theros. Sounds cool. My absolute favorite magic item released in the last 10 years has been the Theros challenge events with the hero cards.
The Hero cards that tap are basically Hearthstone hero powers (granted, without a mana cost in most cases) and there are also a few "one shot" powers that exile themselves. Personally I thought it was a great idea that could've been explored and integrated into the real game (it feels at least as "real" as the Conspiracy draft cards).
The weapons though could be kind of busted because you got to start with them in play (since they were equipment) and having a free artifact in play can matter for a ton of different things.
Incidentally, there is an Extra Pulled card that is a close riff on Time Walk but the kicker is that you have to "sacrifice a kidney: to cast it. In the write up, Rosewater says that they wanted to limit you to two casts of the card with the restriction but that made no sense to us. Obviously you are limited to ONE cast of the card (if you sacrifice two kidneys you are DEAD). However, we did modify it slightly so that you could ask other players to donate you a kidney to sacrifice
I'm sold on Evil Boros Charm and picked one up..not sure how I'll wedge it in but it does seem pretty awesome for cubing.
Most of those write ups seem to seriously misunderstand the cards in question.
Regarding Do Over, let me just tell you that it is VERY tedious to actually implement. There was an Extra Pulled card from the old Duelist magazines that did the same thing and in the times we used it we realized that it was basically just a variant on Angel's Grace. I don't think it is anywhere close to good enough for Cube AND it plays horribly (and causes a lot of arguments) [and has massive memory issues]{and takes forever}
EDIT: and when you use Do Over because you "missed a win" it just causes resentment.
But that is stupidly pushed. It may as well be a 5-color land with no downside there. And maybe that's fine? I'm not sure. I could house rule it so you can only mine it 5 times in a draft, but that's a lot of bookkeeping. 5 times in a round might be okay, but still involves a little bookkeeping while also still being close to no downside, which is kind of the worst of both worlds there.
I'll continue to debate with myself if Gold Mine is worth the effort, but Unicycle is for sure getting in. Lazier Goblin and Gunk Slug seem okay, but I don't think they make the cut for me. Others that seem close, but I don't think will make it for me are:
The easiest way to do Gold Mine I think is to put stickers on the sleeve with each use and keep them there for the entire draft. Then you can just peel off the stickers -- its not that unusual actually since many stores put price tags on cards this way. Or you could just replace the sleeve after each draft.
Reading this, it sounds like PLAYER 1 picks each side of the volcano for all their creatures, then PLAYER 2 picks each side of the volcano for all their creatures. It's not one creature at a time.
I still find it ambiguous because it isn't totally clear whether you assign creatures individually (3 on the left, 2 on the right) or altogether (5 on the left). But if it was the latter it would basically only be good in multiplayer games or offer your opponent a choice to make all creatures unblockable in a two player game (by picking the opposite side). It also wouldn't work well with the fact that you get to pick the side for each new creature that enters.
If the Volcano works like that (and I guess we'll find out with today's articles/explanations) then I like it much better than some other possible interpretations. But to me the wording is ambiguous.
I don't think bombardment is busted at all. May not even be good.
The issue is that it is only until end of turn, costs a card and a mana to set up.
Let's say you've managed to sand bag 3 dead cards?
Thats 4 cards and 4 mana for 6 damage... and pretty close to a best case scenario.
Worst case and common scenario is you are near hellbent and the card is worse than a shock.
Has some corner case build around potential (draw 7's + ramp) , but I don't think it's good in Mono R. Not "bad" tho.
Problematic Volcano on the other hand seems very good.
Do all of your creatures have to go on the same side or is it creature-by-creature?
I realize that Giant Growth is iconic but to match the theme of "2 mana Growth spells" I think it should've been Rampant, *Titanic* and Regrowth personally
Reading this entire thread and getting a glimpse at the recent history has revealed an interesting tidbit:
4-5 years ago Vengevine was revered as an elite, top-echelon 4-drop in green. Nowadays it is hardly mentioned or played. It’s not like there has been printed a bunch of great 4’s to push it out in that time span, so my question is: what else happened in cube development that made people cool on this critter?
It is still a huge part of the cubes I play and is still a force. Just beat me recently with it's sweet ability.
Our group feels that something is lost if green just becomes monoramp. It's same-y -- not just in terms of repetitive decks/gameplay but also derivative of what green does in virtually every other format -- especially because it makes the color feel very homogenous when a good chunk of its spells are Cultivate variants. Personally, I don't even know if green ramp is good in super-powered Cube. There are just so many nasty things that trump Llanowar Elf ramp.
Syr Alin has been a good, not great curve topper for aggressive token decks in my cube. If you're in the archetype you'll run him, but he's far from vital to the strategy. He typically gets picked up in the latter half of the pack
It's the five mana that holds him back in those type of decks in our opinion.
No, I don’t think it’s viable in most fair decks (4 mana is a huge cost if that’s what it winds up costing, which is what it does in fair decks). I think a modern shell theoretically exists where you drop it t1 with only one land down (assisted by Chancellor of the Tangle), where the cost is mitigated somewhat. But that’s a discussion for a different deck.
(I was sad when Elvish Spirit Guide was not printed in Modern Horizons - that in modern would provide some much needed redundancy for that sort of effect in green).
Gotta think they just never intend to introduce ESG. On top of that I was fingers crossed that it might hit Pauper as well by being reprinted at common. A guy can dream
I love Rhonas’ Last Stand and wish more decks made use of it. But in our deck I think we have to choose whether we are building for big-play Aspect of Hydra or not. And if we are (and I think we are) we don’t want to be spending effectively 4 green mana putting a permanent with zero devotion onto the board.
I love Rhonas's Last Stand as well but I doubt its tournament viable at all.
I've been doing some cube overhauling and read in an old This or That post that Hydroid Krasis was doing pretty well for folks? Has this card outperformed the original pessimism or did I misread? Given the price of the card I presume it's doing a lot of work in standard?
Wait... it is JTMS power level, if JTMS is worse? Is that how I should read that?
I think he's just saying its the multicolor analogue of JTMS. And I gotta agree with Patrun, its the top simic card for Cube because its just an idiot card in general.
If we get a little crazy with the speculation it could be that the double-sided cards are something like the Hearthstone "Discover" mechanic: you randonly decide which side of the card you get and each side imparts a different keyword.
The Hero cards that tap are basically Hearthstone hero powers (granted, without a mana cost in most cases) and there are also a few "one shot" powers that exile themselves. Personally I thought it was a great idea that could've been explored and integrated into the real game (it feels at least as "real" as the Conspiracy draft cards).
The weapons though could be kind of busted because you got to start with them in play (since they were equipment) and having a free artifact in play can matter for a ton of different things.
https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/feature/extra-pulled-archives-2010-05-10
Most of those write ups seem to seriously misunderstand the cards in question.
Regarding Do Over, let me just tell you that it is VERY tedious to actually implement. There was an Extra Pulled card from the old Duelist magazines that did the same thing and in the times we used it we realized that it was basically just a variant on Angel's Grace. I don't think it is anywhere close to good enough for Cube AND it plays horribly (and causes a lot of arguments) [and has massive memory issues]{and takes forever}
EDIT: and when you use Do Over because you "missed a win" it just causes resentment.
The easiest way to do Gold Mine I think is to put stickers on the sleeve with each use and keep them there for the entire draft. Then you can just peel off the stickers -- its not that unusual actually since many stores put price tags on cards this way. Or you could just replace the sleeve after each draft.
I still find it ambiguous because it isn't totally clear whether you assign creatures individually (3 on the left, 2 on the right) or altogether (5 on the left). But if it was the latter it would basically only be good in multiplayer games or offer your opponent a choice to make all creatures unblockable in a two player game (by picking the opposite side). It also wouldn't work well with the fact that you get to pick the side for each new creature that enters.
Do all of your creatures have to go on the same side or is it creature-by-creature?
Our group feels that something is lost if green just becomes monoramp. It's same-y -- not just in terms of repetitive decks/gameplay but also derivative of what green does in virtually every other format -- especially because it makes the color feel very homogenous when a good chunk of its spells are Cultivate variants. Personally, I don't even know if green ramp is good in super-powered Cube. There are just so many nasty things that trump Llanowar Elf ramp.
It's the five mana that holds him back in those type of decks in our opinion.
Gotta think they just never intend to introduce ESG. On top of that I was fingers crossed that it might hit Pauper as well by being reprinted at common. A guy can dream
I love Rhonas's Last Stand as well but I doubt its tournament viable at all.
It's a nutty ramp card.
I think he's just saying its the multicolor analogue of JTMS. And I gotta agree with Patrun, its the top simic card for Cube because its just an idiot card in general.