I like this a lot more than Agadeem's Awakening since it ETBs untapped for no penalty and it goes into more decks.
I think it serves a very different purpose than Agadeem's Awakening though, since Awakening can rebuild a lost board immediately and can instantly set up small creature combos/synergies in Persist or Aristocrats. However, I do agree that it is more to my liking than Agadeem, since that card played worse on paper than it did in my head.
I played this card a few years ago and cut it again. Also, I think I mostly play all the same 4 or 5 drop creatures I did a few years ago, with the most notable changes being Fury, Yawgmoth, Thran Physician and Urza, Lord High Artificer. I'm not convinced that this is enough for me to reconsider Eldritch Evolution, especially since it has the double-green mana cost. Depends on whether I see a good other cut, but I like Green Sun's Zenith quite a bit more. But maybe I have space, and I love this kind of creature-cheating!
Over time, I have noticed that during every blue cut my eye rest suspiciously long on Search for Azcanta. I still play it, since its effect is very unique, but I'm not so certain anymore that it is good enough. It just always feels very slow and when I draw it on a later turn, I often feel like many other cards would have served me better. How do you guys feel about this card?
I also think that the niche of Price is better catered with Sulfuric Vortex. Vortex also shuts down lifegain, which meanwhile is rather significant - and it is very good when played on curveand still presents reach and inevitability when played a bit later.
Having played with the Great Henge and Renata, I'd say that the Henge will be the most universally useful card. Coincidentally, it plays very well with a more aggressively slanted green pattern using Mana Dorks and Midrange creatures - Imagine playing Questing Beast or similar beaters, enabling you to curve directly into the Henge while also giving you some insulation against a race (due to the lifegain) and turning topdecks of otherwise limited usefulness both into bigger threats and more gas. Frankly, that card is amazing.
Renata on the other hand is in purely for being an additional Persist enabler that I'll be happy to swap out as soon as a better one arrives. On the other hand, Renata is a creature, lending itself better to the Patterns of a Persist deck full of creature tutors and payoffs for creatures or sacrifice outlets.
In essence, The Great Henge can be used in Persist and is a generally very good card, whereas Renata is a more specific tool for a creature combo, which is even nicer since she herself is a creature. This last point brings me to why I'd never play Path of Discovery. It's not a creature and also a very unreliable part of the Combo since it can whiff - also, it does exactly nothing on its own, whereas the Henge ramps you and gains you life.
I have pondered on that for some time actually, together with Blood Moon, Back to Basics and Contamination (Contamination since I like myself some hard Stax :D)
I am no Legacy player myself, but enjoy watching it, and all those cards (except Contamination) see heavy sideboard play (PoP and Moon even Mainboard)
So what do you say, which of those do you see port best to Cube and why?
So far, I never thought these cards were quite good enough due to the imperfect manabase of quite a few cubedecks. How much damage would PoP need to deal in order to be worth it. 4 is not enough, but I think 6 would be, but only in the very rarest cases could this be cast on Turn 4 or 5 in my opinion.
Due to the prevalence of basics in typical cubes, I believe Contamination to be the best consideration for choking someone off mana by unconventional means (i.e. indirect landdestruction)
I would say this is a very fair assessment. The most important thing about red finishers to me is haste and evasion, which both have. After looking at Hellkite again, I actually really like that swap and maybe I'll give it a try as well
In the last few weeks you've been advocating the removal of 2 CMC ramp dorks and I pointed out the "special" 2 CMC dorks I like to keep because of their increased value.
The dealbreaker for me regarding that will be what opportunity cost I get from freeing up my 2 CMC slot in green and I think you are making a good case for it. Since these days I'm far away from my cube due to having changed country, I didn't use brainpower to fully theorycraft what I'm going to do with 2 CMC green, but I think I would want it to be something that enables an interesting new archetype. I realised that the Colorpair lacking identity the most in my Cube is Gruul, since noone really plays Gruul, but either Jund or Temur. Gruul Aggro/Midrange is intriguing, and I think I will try to cater for this in my Green creature section this winter when I'm back home.
As far as a pure aggro beater for 2 mana goes, this is one of the best options. The only white creatures for 1W that are definitively above it for me are Stoneforge Mystic and Selfless Spirit.
I think I'd be very happy with wanderer if it had trample, but as is, I'm not sure this is actually the finisher I want. Interestingly, this would be more than okay if it was CMC 9, since all my other green finishers have CMC 8.
After some time, do people running this think it is worth it to introduce Daybound just for this card?
I would run it for the powerlevel, but I'm hesitating to introduce the day/night stuff for only one card.
Thank you, that is a good argument you are making for Rift Sower.
I have noted elsewhere before that I'm also not the biggest fan of CMC 2 dorks, but the ones I play is because they fill multiple roles.
Sylvan Caryatid has Hexproof, rainbow fixing and 3 toughness. This makes her a beast against early pressure and enables splashes. Lotus Cobra has Land shenanigans, rainbow fixing and the very real possibility of ramping more than 1 Mana. Sakura-Tribe Elder has recursion value, gains life against aggressive decks (block, then sacrifice) and also enables Land shenanigans Rofellos, Llanowar Emissary ramps almost always for more than 1 Mana.
Of those four, I actually am closest to cutting Rofellos. The reason I see for this is that the maindeck % of the other cards is way higher and their ACS is also better. Since I don't get to play with my cube very often these days, it has been a long time since I actually saw Rofellos pop off and it feels like a waste of space to me (even as I write this it sounds hilarious, since I still know that Rofellos is a good card). The one I think will stick around for the longest is Sakura-Tribe Elder, since it's incidental value is just very high.
With more and more fixing dorks at CMC 1 I think shaving CMC 2 Dorks is a fine decision, unless they do something very special. I haven't put much thought into redesigning green CMC 2 yet and would need to think about the alternatives before making that change though.
Rift Sower being a 1/3 with rainbow-fixing makes it the most similar to Sylvan Caryatid I guess - I think I can try it out and I'll probably like it.
I wonder how the removal suite of a cube will curate the matchup advantages - obviously it will, but I'm more thinking about subtle differences like "exile" versus "destroy". Recursive spells and permanents only increase in density, and the strength of Force of Negation in Legacy to answer Life from the Loam, which before that point was close to unbeatable, shows the importance of answering a threat permanently.
Short question about this new terminology: Is "Unga Bunga" just a new name for "Green Stompy"?
On the note of Hyperramp, I think the inconsistency discussion about hyperramp is actually an emergent discussion about Green card-filtering. A few years ago, we essentially had no Green card filtering and the consistency job of the deck was relegated to Natural Order. With Once Upon a Time, Abundant Harvest and other cards that might come in the future, this inconsistency issue will get smaller, because you are able to manipulate your ressources. Other axes of solving this problem include Green Sun's Zenith, Worldly Tutor and stuff, so I think hyperramp will still have a spot in my cube.
An important addendum to this is that I'm not sure about the role of Mono-Green hyperramp. Lately, I have found UG Ramp to be way superior, since again you increase consistency with a few cantrips, faster enablers (Show and Tell and Shelldock Isle) and glue like Uro, Titan of Nature's Wrath or Hydroid Krasis.
Often in the last two years have I thought about cutting Rofellos, Llanowar Emissary, since the Mono-Green hyperramp deck comes together so rarely and even if it does, he is just so fragile.
I think it serves a very different purpose than Agadeem's Awakening though, since Awakening can rebuild a lost board immediately and can instantly set up small creature combos/synergies in Persist or Aristocrats. However, I do agree that it is more to my liking than Agadeem, since that card played worse on paper than it did in my head.
Having played with the Great Henge and Renata, I'd say that the Henge will be the most universally useful card. Coincidentally, it plays very well with a more aggressively slanted green pattern using Mana Dorks and Midrange creatures - Imagine playing Questing Beast or similar beaters, enabling you to curve directly into the Henge while also giving you some insulation against a race (due to the lifegain) and turning topdecks of otherwise limited usefulness both into bigger threats and more gas. Frankly, that card is amazing.
Renata on the other hand is in purely for being an additional Persist enabler that I'll be happy to swap out as soon as a better one arrives. On the other hand, Renata is a creature, lending itself better to the Patterns of a Persist deck full of creature tutors and payoffs for creatures or sacrifice outlets.
In essence, The Great Henge can be used in Persist and is a generally very good card, whereas Renata is a more specific tool for a creature combo, which is even nicer since she herself is a creature. This last point brings me to why I'd never play Path of Discovery. It's not a creature and also a very unreliable part of the Combo since it can whiff - also, it does exactly nothing on its own, whereas the Henge ramps you and gains you life.
I am no Legacy player myself, but enjoy watching it, and all those cards (except Contamination) see heavy sideboard play (PoP and Moon even Mainboard)
So what do you say, which of those do you see port best to Cube and why?
So far, I never thought these cards were quite good enough due to the imperfect manabase of quite a few cubedecks. How much damage would PoP need to deal in order to be worth it. 4 is not enough, but I think 6 would be, but only in the very rarest cases could this be cast on Turn 4 or 5 in my opinion.
Due to the prevalence of basics in typical cubes, I believe Contamination to be the best consideration for choking someone off mana by unconventional means (i.e. indirect landdestruction)
The dealbreaker for me regarding that will be what opportunity cost I get from freeing up my 2 CMC slot in green and I think you are making a good case for it. Since these days I'm far away from my cube due to having changed country, I didn't use brainpower to fully theorycraft what I'm going to do with 2 CMC green, but I think I would want it to be something that enables an interesting new archetype. I realised that the Colorpair lacking identity the most in my Cube is Gruul, since noone really plays Gruul, but either Jund or Temur. Gruul Aggro/Midrange is intriguing, and I think I will try to cater for this in my Green creature section this winter when I'm back home.
Seconded. This card is amazing for me.
I would run it for the powerlevel, but I'm hesitating to introduce the day/night stuff for only one card.
I have noted elsewhere before that I'm also not the biggest fan of CMC 2 dorks, but the ones I play is because they fill multiple roles.
Sylvan Caryatid has Hexproof, rainbow fixing and 3 toughness. This makes her a beast against early pressure and enables splashes.
Lotus Cobra has Land shenanigans, rainbow fixing and the very real possibility of ramping more than 1 Mana.
Sakura-Tribe Elder has recursion value, gains life against aggressive decks (block, then sacrifice) and also enables Land shenanigans
Rofellos, Llanowar Emissary ramps almost always for more than 1 Mana.
Of those four, I actually am closest to cutting Rofellos. The reason I see for this is that the maindeck % of the other cards is way higher and their ACS is also better. Since I don't get to play with my cube very often these days, it has been a long time since I actually saw Rofellos pop off and it feels like a waste of space to me (even as I write this it sounds hilarious, since I still know that Rofellos is a good card). The one I think will stick around for the longest is Sakura-Tribe Elder, since it's incidental value is just very high.
With more and more fixing dorks at CMC 1 I think shaving CMC 2 Dorks is a fine decision, unless they do something very special. I haven't put much thought into redesigning green CMC 2 yet and would need to think about the alternatives before making that change though.
Rift Sower being a 1/3 with rainbow-fixing makes it the most similar to Sylvan Caryatid I guess - I think I can try it out and I'll probably like it.
I wonder how the removal suite of a cube will curate the matchup advantages - obviously it will, but I'm more thinking about subtle differences like "exile" versus "destroy". Recursive spells and permanents only increase in density, and the strength of Force of Negation in Legacy to answer Life from the Loam, which before that point was close to unbeatable, shows the importance of answering a threat permanently.
On the note of Hyperramp, I think the inconsistency discussion about hyperramp is actually an emergent discussion about Green card-filtering. A few years ago, we essentially had no Green card filtering and the consistency job of the deck was relegated to Natural Order. With Once Upon a Time, Abundant Harvest and other cards that might come in the future, this inconsistency issue will get smaller, because you are able to manipulate your ressources. Other axes of solving this problem include Green Sun's Zenith, Worldly Tutor and stuff, so I think hyperramp will still have a spot in my cube.
An important addendum to this is that I'm not sure about the role of Mono-Green hyperramp. Lately, I have found UG Ramp to be way superior, since again you increase consistency with a few cantrips, faster enablers (Show and Tell and Shelldock Isle) and glue like Uro, Titan of Nature's Wrath or Hydroid Krasis.
Often in the last two years have I thought about cutting Rofellos, Llanowar Emissary, since the Mono-Green hyperramp deck comes together so rarely and even if it does, he is just so fragile.