Victimize - The highest upside Reanimate effect beside Living Death. The real advantage is in drafting and deckbuilding, when this supports less all-or-nothing deckbuilding than Necromancy/Dance of the Dead etc. - you don't need a huge game-ending fatty to gain an insurmountable advantage; landing two 4-6-drops turn 3 will have about the same effect. Also just plain value in aggressive or midrange decks.
Sunder - A huge tempo deck blowout, and about the most prohibitive thing you can do on an opponent's end step once you have an evasive creature in play.
Catacomb Sifter - Beside maybe Meren, the best support card I've found for fair GB Junk decks. Just does everything I want in those decks, whether it's ramping to game-locking 5-drops, synergizing with Stax or Pox plans, or just gumming up the board against aggro.
Orcish Lumberjack - The most fair thing this card can do is a Turn 2 Kalonian Hydra. It's completely all-in, but in colors that want to hard-cast Ruric Thar, Titans and Tooth and Nails, Lumberjack just breaks the game.
Fire Covenant - In an aggressive deck that sets a fast clock, it's just a one-sided Plague Wind for 3, and in midrange/control decks that drag the game out, it's still often a 2- or 3-for-1. And it makes anything running mana elves just go home and cry.
Using cards from your collection is a lot harder than selecting singles. I'd suggest working out a cube list you want within budget before buying anything.
That might sound expensive, but you can make an interesting cube environment with commons, uncommons and bulk rares, where buying bulk would run around $50 for the whole thing.
I like it less in an Izzet than in red. Fork is always on the verge of playable, and Expansion isn't too much worse, but more castable in a lot of decks
I think it's stronger than other common cube cards, but I'd put it between the 20th and 30th Counterspell in line - Countering is just an inherently strong effect, and I'd have to be running a pretty big cube to allocate enough spots to dig that deep
He's strong, but he's hard to fit. GW wants hatebears. Gx 6+ drops want to be creatures. Control decks don't want to splash for "nonland permanents."
I could imagine supporting a GW enchantment-based control deck where he would be great. I just don't think that's very common, and I'm probably not going to force it any time soon
I'm still a big fan of Putrid Imp because it works uniquely well with Recurring Nightmare and Victimize, as well as helping to hold janky graveyard-centric black aggro decks together (ie. the ones playing Unearth) and playing its normal role as the T2 Reanimate-enabler.
Does anyone run Insolent Neonate? He also seems on the cusp of good enough for 2 different archetypes, with a somewhat higher worst-case scenario.
If you're playing in a tournament, is that Modern format? If so, you could probably post on the appropriate format's deck creation subforum for the appropriate help.
Also, assuming that's Mono-Green Devotion, that whole deck needs Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx to work. If you can't afford that card, the deck's just bad. What some Modern format decks do for similar results, which may be cheaper, is 4x Arbor Elf + 4x Utopia Sprawl plus additional bigger ramp spells and land-untappers. Google "Modern RG Ponza" and there are a bunch of decks and critiques. "Modern Amulet Titan" would probably be the closest established deck in concept, but several of the central cards are pretty expensive.
If it's just you two playing kichen table magic, you can play anything. I've gone pretty deep in Pauper (only commons, but from any set) for casual pickup games, but you can really play any sets you want!
(A lot of the time, you'll do best to combine cards with themes, which means sets that care a lot about artifacts tend to work better with each other than with sets focused on, say, Pirate and Dinosaur creatures)
The thing to keep in mind is that you want to make sure you're both on the same page, because even on a budget, if one of you makes a deck of broken cards like Urza Lands, Cloudposts and/or Sol Rings, and the other's playing an M19 Preconstructed Deck, you might not have the best time.
The biggest theme for any of the factions in Alara was "struggling for fixing because there is barely any."
If you're playing up shards and wedges, be sure to be sparing on actual 3-colored cards (absolutely no more than 2 per faction at 360 - and that's pushing it hard) and to play a lot more fixing than most cubes.
Alternatively, you might use additional rules to be sure people can actually cast spells, like adding Guildgates to the basic land pod, adding a 4th land/fixing pack to the draft, or just giving people a set package of fixing lands if they call a faction (eg. Just hand 1 Sandsteppe Citadel and 1 of each WBG fetch and shock to drafters who say they're playing Abzan)
The biggest complaint I have is that a lot of my high end fatties are 6/6s, and the ones that trade without additional value don't look great
Sunder - A huge tempo deck blowout, and about the most prohibitive thing you can do on an opponent's end step once you have an evasive creature in play.
Catacomb Sifter - Beside maybe Meren, the best support card I've found for fair GB Junk decks. Just does everything I want in those decks, whether it's ramping to game-locking 5-drops, synergizing with Stax or Pox plans, or just gumming up the board against aggro.
Orcish Lumberjack - The most fair thing this card can do is a Turn 2 Kalonian Hydra. It's completely all-in, but in colors that want to hard-cast Ruric Thar, Titans and Tooth and Nails, Lumberjack just breaks the game.
Fire Covenant - In an aggressive deck that sets a fast clock, it's just a one-sided Plague Wind for 3, and in midrange/control decks that drag the game out, it's still often a 2- or 3-for-1. And it makes anything running mana elves just go home and cry.
That might sound expensive, but you can make an interesting cube environment with commons, uncommons and bulk rares, where buying bulk would run around $50 for the whole thing.
I could imagine supporting a GW enchantment-based control deck where he would be great. I just don't think that's very common, and I'm probably not going to force it any time soon
Does anyone run Insolent Neonate? He also seems on the cusp of good enough for 2 different archetypes, with a somewhat higher worst-case scenario.
Don't sink money into MtG expecting to see it back again.
But as far as cards that go in decks that can actually win games, kind of disappointed. Especially for this being the Izzet/Boros set.
Also, assuming that's Mono-Green Devotion, that whole deck needs Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx to work. If you can't afford that card, the deck's just bad. What some Modern format decks do for similar results, which may be cheaper, is 4x Arbor Elf + 4x Utopia Sprawl plus additional bigger ramp spells and land-untappers. Google "Modern RG Ponza" and there are a bunch of decks and critiques. "Modern Amulet Titan" would probably be the closest established deck in concept, but several of the central cards are pretty expensive.
(A lot of the time, you'll do best to combine cards with themes, which means sets that care a lot about artifacts tend to work better with each other than with sets focused on, say, Pirate and Dinosaur creatures)
The thing to keep in mind is that you want to make sure you're both on the same page, because even on a budget, if one of you makes a deck of broken cards like Urza Lands, Cloudposts and/or Sol Rings, and the other's playing an M19 Preconstructed Deck, you might not have the best time.
If I'm taking a turn to pay 2B for a 2/2 in Cube, I'm not optimistic about that game.
3/2 for BB is so much worse than 3/2 for 1B that I'd rather run either of the Kaladesh Artifacts-matter 3/Xs
If you're playing up shards and wedges, be sure to be sparing on actual 3-colored cards (absolutely no more than 2 per faction at 360 - and that's pushing it hard) and to play a lot more fixing than most cubes.
Alternatively, you might use additional rules to be sure people can actually cast spells, like adding Guildgates to the basic land pod, adding a 4th land/fixing pack to the draft, or just giving people a set package of fixing lands if they call a faction (eg. Just hand 1 Sandsteppe Citadel and 1 of each WBG fetch and shock to drafters who say they're playing Abzan)
I wish she had a more confidently favorable comparison to Kavu Climber