Yeah, I'm in the same boat. I'm ready to believe this is better on power level than soulherder, but I'm not willing to give up the synergy, and I'm not sure it's better than the teferies or Fractured Identity. The closest to the chopping block is probably 3feri, in part because it's the least fun of the bunch.
My only concern is that there's now quite a glut of green utility lands. I currently run Cradle, Treetop, and the green MDFC, which would make this the 4th. IS this the end for Treetop Village?
This card is obviously quite strong, but I don't know whether it'll make my cube because it has no specific synergy. The only cards that fits that bill in my black 2 drop section right now are Dauthi Voidwalker and Dark Confidant. Everything else is either recursive, a discard outlet, or a piece of a specific deck. It's nice you can find this with Stoneforge I guess, and the artifact tag can matter, but it's not like black has any other support for artifact.dec.
Something I never see mentioned with the UB cards is that I don't believe they're all going to be "Immersion breaking" in the same way. I can understand why you wouldn't want to run named characters, but draft sets aren't going to be all legendary creatures and nothing else. It's entirely plausible that the best competitive cards are cards you wouldn't really raise an eyebrow at seeing in a normal set. I'm not super eager to run, say, Frodo, but I'd be perfectly fine running some unnamed gondor soldier 1 mana 2/1 for W with an ability.
For example, from what we've seen from the FR set coming up, I really don't think Portable Hole, for instance, would break my immersion, even though it's a DnD reference. Of course, DnD is less far from magic than WH40K, so we'll see about that one, but my plan is to just run cards on individual merit, rather than a wholesale include/exclude on the UB cards.
Seems super solid, though it feels more important for this card than for FTK that you can't play it on an empty board since turn 4 gives your opponent more time to have cast a creature than turn 2. As such, it's awkward in Mono-red, since you can't lean on it to bolster your 2-drop slot in most matchups.. Which is doubly awkward because it's the only deck that can reliably cast it on 2 anyway.
That said, the flexibility is interesting, and it seems like a gigantic beating in the appropriate matchups. I'll probably test this out.
I think the best comparison for this card is Thought-Knot seer. Having played that card for a while, along with a colourless package, that card was solid when you could cast it, which bodes well for this card. The evoke cost is pretty harsh in cube, though sometimes it'll be worth it. There's probably a spot somewhere for it in my cube.
My only concern is that there's now quite a glut of green utility lands. I currently run Cradle, Treetop, and the green MDFC, which would make this the 4th. IS this the end for Treetop Village?
For example, from what we've seen from the FR set coming up, I really don't think Portable Hole, for instance, would break my immersion, even though it's a DnD reference. Of course, DnD is less far from magic than WH40K, so we'll see about that one, but my plan is to just run cards on individual merit, rather than a wholesale include/exclude on the UB cards.
That said, the flexibility is interesting, and it seems like a gigantic beating in the appropriate matchups. I'll probably test this out.