MTG Salvation

Solid card, but this is how I feel about it:

Quote from steve_man »

Eh, Force of Will is good, but not great in cube and this is well below it. Negate and Spell Pierce are cubeable, but are definitely tier 3 counterspells in my book, and this probably falls in the same boat. I’d like this more if it didn’t have the turn restriction, but even then it’d probably still be borderline at best to me.

I'm not sure I actually prefer it to Spell Pierce/Negate in this format, and those aren't spells I've historically had success with. Maybe I'm wrong and this is great, since the 3cc failsafe mode is much fairer than FoW's 5cc option, but I've been burned too many times on the noncreature counter clause to get excited for this kind of interaction, regardless of how effective it can be in certain windows.

Best scenario? It can generate 6 power and 5 bodies while discarding things like Bloodghast/Gravecrawler/etc. and exiling later on when you have unspent/unused mana. It can be cast while hellbent to be a 3-mana 2/2 that draws 2 cards, like an evoked Mulldrifter you don't have to sacrifice. You can discard 2 lands when you have a Crucible of Worlds in play and draw 2 more gas spells for essentially no cost. You can discard fatties for reanimator or artifacts for Daretti/Feldon/Welder. There's a lot of crazy stuff this can do for you.

Not as good as the Rabblemasters for aggro, but it can be a roleplayer for like 6 different non-aggro archetypes that red plays in. And it's still a playable 3-drop in generic theater decks, even if it's not ideal there. Since the hellbent draw and rummaging can always be valuable in a format as volatile as cube.

Quote from pillar15 »

I just got Kalonian Hydra for Biogenic Ooze, but I guess this is better than the Ooze, right?

This will likely be my cut too, but I'd remove either the Hydra or the Ooze for this in a heartbeat.

Oh it's a lot less exciting if you don't fully support the artifact.dec.

I won't be seeing such a day myself.

I like those designs. Bloomsnapper please!

Yes. We've been discussing that aspect of the card throughout the thread, lol. It's mentioned in the sales pitch in the OP.

I used to play a snow cube. But I don't think I'd change it back. I like the idea of using regular basics just like regular limited events, and not changing the provided basics to something that isn't allowed in retail limited just to make a handful of cards work. I used to do it for Wastes and C cards, but that experiment didn't last, and we didn't like it all that much.

I want playable snow duals! ...but not for the purpose of playing snow-themed cards. I just want another cycle of cubeable dual lands.

Plus, I'm a huge basic land nerd, and my basic land collection I use for my cube basics is one of my favorite parts of deckbuilding and playing. So I'm even less inclined to make the swap than most other cube managers might be.

Snow/Wastes cubes are fine, I just don't think it's for me. It wouldn't dissuade me from guest-drafting another cube, but I have little-to-no interest in doing that for myself.

There are already a lot of justifiable reasons to play S in the cube, and some powerful options that already exist. But it doesn't tempt me much.

It doesn't seem like the kind of card you can just chuck into anything, but it has a lot of cool things going for it. It does a lot of stuff for a lot of different builds. And I disagree with the notion that the exile clause is "flavor text". It's a free Krenko's Command strapped to an otherwise already playable critter; it's "flavor text" about as much as the flashback on Firebolt is. Especially in decks that are playing Pyromancer for its token value. I'm all for free value.

I mean, this card will be better than almost anything you choose to cut for it, but man, do my playgroup and I LOVE Retrofitter Foundry. Card's been legit great.

I would run this and Ash Barrens at the very least. But I do like Expanse/Wilds a lot too.

Ya, I look forward to trying it in my Welder/Daretti/Feldon shells.

I play a lot of 1CC cards, and I'm not nearly as critical on them as I am of CC cards. It felt like you were saying I was being hypocritical for criticizing 2cc CC bears, but not critical of Procession. I was explaining why. I play a lot of 1CC cards in my cube, and almost no CC 2cc permanents, since the difference between playing a 3-drop a turn late isn't as hard on your development than having to wait on your 2-drops. While I do think there's a significant advantage for 2C cards over 1CC cards, it's nowhere near as big as the gap between a 1C card and a CC card. I was illustrating why I'm hard on CC cards but still like Procession. Nothing more. Since I don't have nearly the same criticisms for 1CC cards.

Anyways, cheers man. Thanks for the good discussion. I must've been misunderstanding your original comments.

Turns out both Narset and Leovold are awesome with Arcane Denial!

We'll have to agree to disagree and move on. I think I've illustrated why the bar is different for a WW 2cc creature and Spectral Procession. You don't agree. That's fine.

There's a reason why the bar is set at T4 for double-colored cards too. 10 sources is the first benchmark for making CC cards castable 75+% of the time, but that's not until T4 at the earliest. In order to play 2cc CC cards on curve on the play, you need like 13+ sources for it to be reliable. Since non-monocolored decks have a hard time reliably reaching that mana demand, calculating double-color availability on T4 is much more reasonable. The cost on Procession allows it to be reliably playable only a turn later than what is ideal when you "miss". The same cannot be said for a 2cc card with a CC cost. But whatever, you don't agree with that assessment, so I guess we're just done here.

Cheers, and happy cubing!