I ended up keeping catacomb crocodile in because it can block the big dumb green 4 mana 5/5's I have in the cube and with a bit of equipment can even block Ulamog's Crusher.
That, and I have a foil of it and I sort of like the art. Normally I don't like the art on new cards because it's all soulless PhotoShop garbage but every once and a while there is a new card with art that I like.
I actually think a nice portion of the art is pretty good when seen up close but just doesn't work on the cards themselves that often
The way this guy's ability triggers is weird. If it could hit creatures it would be such a big rules headache.
I realize it is technically difficult to template what they are trying to do but sometimes they slave to the technical/legalese of the rules at great expense while other times they just outright change the rules cavalierly and for no apparent reason or gain. Its highly annoying.
I'm sure there is some subtlety that messes up "you may sacrifice a creature to have Fireblade Artist deal 2 damage to target opponent or pw"
yes, there is some linguistic ambiguity (since both parts are intended to be part of the same "may") but if you are pedantic enough there is linguistic ambiguity on probably 50% of Magic cards (or maybe more).
Whisper Agent- Another set of stats that I feel lower on than you all, but how much better is this than a bad removal spell?
Its a nice variation for black as a kill spell that isn't exactly a kill spell. I hope that they distinguish flash in black and blue by putting it more on fliers for blue so they function better as sneak attackers while blacks are more themed like Mack the Knife (a la Hired Blade who seems like it really wanted to be called Hired Knife).
In general its going to be worse than elsewhere in Cube for the same reason that deathtouch is more popular -- you need to kill buffed attackers that are difficult to interact with outside of combat
Brago's Favor. This is the sort of card that seems a little weird in a singleton format, but makes tons of sense with subthemes of the Cube and some of the Cube's signature cards (like Capsize). Conspiracies do mess with the "meat and potatoes Magic" feeling of Pauper Cube, so it's also not a lock for inclusion, but I like how it enables synergy.
This also speaks to your point regarding Sensory Deprivation because red being 50% burn spells and 50% of black cards saying "destroy" on them is not really "meat and potatoes Magic" either. Unfortunately it gets a little nebulous to describe but there is definitely a feng shui concept in play when building a Cube IMO (even taking into account power level -- the 12th best burn spell is less Cube-able than the top card that provides a more unique effect due to their relative rankings even though it might be true that the burn spell is still "more powerful". Partly this is because a deck only needs so many spells of a particular type and partly it is true because if Cube becomes a literal monoculture it ceases to be engaging. No better example of this than the fact that there is constant discussion of "churn" in Cubes even though 98% of any Cube list is virtually "locked in" at any give time (leaving ~7-10 spots up for debate)
Noggle Bandit (and other not-quite-good-enough-but-frequently-played hybrid cards). The thing that I am probably happiest with in my Cube is my decision to count Hybrid cards as one half of either of their colors, rather than a Gold card. Noggle Bandit is probably the best example why. This card really isn't good enough for Red, Blue, or Red-Blue sections, but somehow he ends up getting played in almost every draft he ends up in because all three of those decks are in the market for a reasonably costed evasion finisher.
We have been counting hybrids as halves (except for things like the 2 drop weird which is a tough sell at RR or UU) for quite a while. The two issues are
1. If you are very strict on color balance it actually makes things harder because each hybrid card essentially demands you complement it with ANOTHER hybrid card -- and there isn't always another one available that you want to play (or that is even viable)
2. As mentioned, the low drops tend to be closer to gold cards which means you end up having to go on a case by case basis
Sigil Blessing. The flip side of my Hybrid section, which I am also on board for but less self-satisfied with, are my uneven Gold sections. Not all color pairs are drafted equally often, and I think it's silly to run bad cards that nobody plays to pretend that they do. However, some color pairs also get drafted way more often than others and have fairly obvious synergy. GW is one of those pairs, and Blessing is one of those cards that rewards the synergy
Aggro pairs end up needing more low cc support which we find means that perfect technical color balance ends up being unbalanced in practice. As an example in peasant/rare Cubes, Kird Ape, Loam Lion, Wild Nacatl, Dryand Militant, Warden of the First Tree etc are all great 1 drops -- but it would seem weird to count those as your "gold" cards for their guilds.
Backup Plan not the best card? this card is better than any powered card, acutally comparable to Contract from Below, no even better. But i guess having two hands to chose from before taking a mulligan. At first i did not see it's strength, but the powerelevel of this card grows in proportion to the cube's powerlevel. In my group we had to ban it, because it was too strong even for powered cube or i should say, in particular for powered.
i am really surprised at the rating of this card.
How are your experiences?
I guess there's also Nerf War to consider..
I think my brother and I are the only ones to consider Necro-Impotence supremely broken as well. Its a better Necropotence (15 life = draw 30 cards)
But to your point, a number of the Conspiracies are insane and rank alongside Black Lotus, Ancestral Recall, etc
So when players triggered Boar constantly, were they constantly triggering it on Turn 4 (or elsewhere)? The thing about these sorts of weird set-up costs is that they're very easy to ignore how much you're losing out on by jumping through hoops to pay them. If Boar is consistently basically a six drop because of the extra work that it takes to turn on, I don't think it's even really in the ballpark of viable. If it's consistently a 4-drop, then we can talk.
I like the Soulstinger comparison too. It might be better on account of greater flexibility (the "fail case" of a 2/3 that can easily turn into a 2-1 is better than a 3/3 for 4, even if the best mode is marginally worse).
EDIT: I had a thought about the Hybrid question. In my mind, the question you ask is "would a significant number of decks in either color play this." The existence of better options is relevant, because the fact that a color has enough playable options for a particular role speaks to how frequently the color would play a card. But there is also stuff that can change the calculus, like how many versions of the effect a color wants or how much competition there is for the better option. The devils may just have too much competition in both of their colors at this point, it's on the cusp even for the hybrid calculations, but I'm looking at it more through that lens.
Ideally Boar would be coming down t3 using a mana elf. In our Cube experience (disclaimer: not necessarily representative) that didn't work as we hoped.
If you take the literal average (50% 5/5, 50% 3/3 =~4/4) maybe it would be worth it (compare to the Kaladesh creature) but when the fail case means you likely won't play the Boar that turn it completely changes the calculation. Is it good enough at "4.5" mana (40%t4, 50% t5)? Maybe so but then in that case it's a matter of the math not matching impressions.
About the red cards you're not running -- War Marshal, Gearcrafter, Beetleback -- they all have the common theme of making tokens so they're basically part of a larger question you have to ask of your Cube I think.
I don't think that cube data means much. All it demonstrates to me is that people are averse to playing fun, fair, interactive magic and can't tolerate playing cards that are merely okay. They just want to play "Multiplayer Solitaire" where no one is competing with them or can stop them from doing their cool thing.
The dominance of "euro game" board game design where everyone is converting cubes of one color into another color for victory points and only incidentally interacting with the other players proves this.
A cube full of cards like Dash Hopes or Acridian or (overpriced) Morph or Banding creatures means that they have to actually interact with their opponent, which means they won't be able to do Their Cool Thing (tm) unabated.
I had a friend tell me that my cube was filled with terrible cards, meanwhile he shows me his cube that he's working on and it's full of uninteractive combo BS.
So when I hear , "Dash Hopes is a terrible card" all that goes through my head is, "I can't combo off turn 3, this cube is garbage!" Or, "This card doesn't break the game, trash."
Ivory Giant seems like an okay card. I took it out of my cube because there were other cards I found more interesting.
Just out of curiosity, and not that its getting old or anything, but how long are you planning on airing your burning vendetta(s) in your forum posts?
Do you truly want other peoples' opinions on what constitutes fun to you? Because that isn't even an intelligible request, right? Otherwise, there may be some confusion as this is a Message Board and not your personal Sounding Board for every grudge you're still holding on to (which is all of them).
The new revealed card “Vintage of the Guild Pact” does not fit the crunch as that. 233 is between Gate Colussus and Gruul locket. My guess is Gate keeper’s Vintage (as even) Guildpact’s Vintage won’t even fit the crunch unless I’m reading the number wrong. Anybody who can read and translate the card (see thread titled Vintage of Guildpact...) is welcome to help over here. For now I left it as Gate keeper’s vintage since it fits.
If Gate Colossus is 232 and Gruul Locket is 234 then the card name can't start with "Guildpact's "even though Guildpact is definitely in the name. Its not Vintage or Vitrage anyway. My guess is that it starts with Glass since it's basically a stained-glass window.
Oh yeah - the Kor creatures from Tempest block were essentially fixed banding, now that I think about it. If you like banding, you would probably like Nomads en-Kor and Spirit en-Kor. Zealous Inquisitor is a similar card. I also have Lancers en-Kor and Warrior en-Kor on my personal shortlist of cards I think will be downshifted eventually.
I agree with everything you wrote above about banding, but the en-Kor are only "fixed" banding if banding needed to be better than it already was (on defense). The ones with an activation cost, maybe but the "0: redirect" creatures are stupid in that regard (although I believe OG banding stops trample while en-Kors do not).
If banding was reskinned as a defense only ability and was reintroduced it would be insane. I'm not sure they would do it at common though because it makes blocking oppressive. I would say "complex" which is kinda true except that once you navigate through all the complexity you always end up with "ATTACKER LOSES".
Example: a 2 power attacker doesn't trade for anything vs two 2/2 blockers if one of them has banding.
I actually think a nice portion of the art is pretty good when seen up close but just doesn't work on the cards themselves that often
I realize it is technically difficult to template what they are trying to do but sometimes they slave to the technical/legalese of the rules at great expense while other times they just outright change the rules cavalierly and for no apparent reason or gain. Its highly annoying.
I'm sure there is some subtlety that messes up "you may sacrifice a creature to have Fireblade Artist deal 2 damage to target opponent or pw"
yes, there is some linguistic ambiguity (since both parts are intended to be part of the same "may") but if you are pedantic enough there is linguistic ambiguity on probably 50% of Magic cards (or maybe more).
Its a nice variation for black as a kill spell that isn't exactly a kill spell. I hope that they distinguish flash in black and blue by putting it more on fliers for blue so they function better as sneak attackers while blacks are more themed like Mack the Knife (a la Hired Blade who seems like it really wanted to be called Hired Knife).
In general its going to be worse than elsewhere in Cube for the same reason that deathtouch is more popular -- you need to kill buffed attackers that are difficult to interact with outside of combat
This also speaks to your point regarding Sensory Deprivation because red being 50% burn spells and 50% of black cards saying "destroy" on them is not really "meat and potatoes Magic" either. Unfortunately it gets a little nebulous to describe but there is definitely a feng shui concept in play when building a Cube IMO (even taking into account power level -- the 12th best burn spell is less Cube-able than the top card that provides a more unique effect due to their relative rankings even though it might be true that the burn spell is still "more powerful". Partly this is because a deck only needs so many spells of a particular type and partly it is true because if Cube becomes a literal monoculture it ceases to be engaging. No better example of this than the fact that there is constant discussion of "churn" in Cubes even though 98% of any Cube list is virtually "locked in" at any give time (leaving ~7-10 spots up for debate)
We have been counting hybrids as halves (except for things like the 2 drop weird which is a tough sell at RR or UU) for quite a while. The two issues are
1. If you are very strict on color balance it actually makes things harder because each hybrid card essentially demands you complement it with ANOTHER hybrid card -- and there isn't always another one available that you want to play (or that is even viable)
2. As mentioned, the low drops tend to be closer to gold cards which means you end up having to go on a case by case basis
Aggro pairs end up needing more low cc support which we find means that perfect technical color balance ends up being unbalanced in practice. As an example in peasant/rare Cubes, Kird Ape, Loam Lion, Wild Nacatl, Dryand Militant, Warden of the First Tree etc are all great 1 drops -- but it would seem weird to count those as your "gold" cards for their guilds.
I guess there's also Nerf War to consider..
I think my brother and I are the only ones to consider Necro-Impotence supremely broken as well. Its a better Necropotence (15 life = draw 30 cards)
But to your point, a number of the Conspiracies are insane and rank alongside Black Lotus, Ancestral Recall, etc
Ideally Boar would be coming down t3 using a mana elf. In our Cube experience (disclaimer: not necessarily representative) that didn't work as we hoped.
If you take the literal average (50% 5/5, 50% 3/3 =~4/4) maybe it would be worth it (compare to the Kaladesh creature) but when the fail case means you likely won't play the Boar that turn it completely changes the calculation. Is it good enough at "4.5" mana (40%t4, 50% t5)? Maybe so but then in that case it's a matter of the math not matching impressions.
Just out of curiosity, and not that its getting old or anything, but how long are you planning on airing your burning vendetta(s) in your forum posts?
Do you truly want other peoples' opinions on what constitutes fun to you? Because that isn't even an intelligible request, right? Otherwise, there may be some confusion as this is a Message Board and not your personal Sounding Board for every grudge you're still holding on to (which is all of them).
If Gate Colossus is 232 and Gruul Locket is 234 then the card name can't start with "Guildpact's "even though Guildpact is definitely in the name. Its not Vintage or Vitrage anyway. My guess is that it starts with Glass since it's basically a stained-glass window.
I agree with everything you wrote above about banding, but the en-Kor are only "fixed" banding if banding needed to be better than it already was (on defense). The ones with an activation cost, maybe but the "0: redirect" creatures are stupid in that regard (although I believe OG banding stops trample while en-Kors do not).
Example: a 2 power attacker doesn't trade for anything vs two 2/2 blockers if one of them has banding.