I'm only really confident about Portable Hole sticking around long term. But Wight has been really nice so far. It's easy to replace itself and then that's a huge amount of power for 2 mana. It can get chumped by bigger creatures but that's the case for most 2 drops. Even then there are removal/burn tricks to get a free 2/2 after the fact. Zombie typing is nice. It's no Dauthi Voidwalker, but not much is...
Ebondeath is interesting as an unusually fast clock on a 4 drop that is somewhat resilient, but expect may fall short eventually.
Nalaar is probably the best feature of the dungeon mechanic and I'll be testing him out too. As you say there are a lot of lines of play. I hope to see the mechanic revisited with new dungeons and cards in the future.
I am not super excited about any of the Manlands, of course they are going to be decent at worst!
Here's an example RB delirium deck I drafted that I think would perform very well in cube.
Note that I am able to play Lurrus as a companion in the SB, which is very powerful.
The curve is extremely low and disruptive, similar to current modern Rakdos decks.
Hence, why I consider this a potentially very viable archetype.
Nice deck, love a low curve rakdos or mardu aggro deck. But would have thought you could cut 1 or 2 lands, no?
Yeah the Black Lotus and Mishra's Bauble in the 0 slot with the lands may be confusing - I moved those.
it's actually 15 lands plus a Chrome Mox and 2 of those lands are Strip Mine and Shatterskull Smashing which can be used for non land purposes. So I think it's pretty reasonable. Having Lurrus of the Dream-Den as a companion also provides you flood insurance as it gives you a late game card advantage engine to fall back on, also you do want to be able to get to 4 lands to kick Tourach, Dread Cantor and escape Kroxa, Titan of Death's Hunger.
Here's an example RB delirium deck I drafted that I think would perform very well in cube.
Note that I am able to play Lurrus as a companion in the SB, which is very powerful.
The curve is extremely low and disruptive, similar to current modern Rakdos decks.
Hence, why I consider this a potentially very viable archetype.
I like Nadaar quite a bit with the various lines of play available, and his absolute floor of a 3/3 vigilance that does something minor on ETB on something else on every swing is pretty acceptable. I think the venture mechanic will play well but need some testing. He's a nice blink target too - I may replace the recently added Elite Spellbinder.
Out of the four, I think I like Steel and Sinew the most. Removal is always good, especially when you don't waste swings on opposing PWs. Body and Mind is also very good obviously. I like Feast and Famine the least for sure. The discard is nice but most decks running the Sword and connecting with it weren't positioned to take a lot of advantage from the untap.
Actually I went down to two swords myself recently (S&S and F&I, which I think is the best one by a fair bit), I assumed everyone else was still running 4 or 5 but there is usually a glut of 3 drops in the decks running swords and they can clog up the board a bit. I feel a bit equipment light now and might end up cutting Stoneforge Mystic.
Probably Bone Shards even without reanimate support ( ) or aristocrats.
I guess Dancing Sword seems OK, kinda?
I prefer Kefnet, then Iymrith, but maybe you need a 4/5 drop in particular. I didn't run Meloku for years, it was getting too slow, but it still has its fans.
Duskwatch Recruiter was a recent cut and I liked it quite a bit, I think I may prefer it to Ranger Class but the latter was only just revealed so nobody tested it yet.
I'm so used to Looter il-Kor being essentially unblockable that I attacked straight into this. Oops.
Voidwalker is a total staple though, needless to say. You really have to play around its ability a lot when it's on the board. And it hits for a LOT of unblockable damage.
I want to add either Checklands or Painlands since I already own both cycles. Which cycle would you rather add?
Painlands, and by a lot.
Inclined to agree there. They also help enable some powerful Eldrazicolorlesspayoffs, if you're into that, but I'd run them over the checklands regardless.
To be fair Dauthi Voidwalker is an absolute S tier aggro drop. A 3/2 shadow 'vanilla' would still be fully playable too.
Wight looks really strong to me, replacing itself in a trade or adding board presence in a chump block, especially in RB where you can burn-trade with it. I'm not totally keen on the ETBT tapped but it's usually irrelevant for aggro unless you have a rare haste-giver.
I ran it to good effect since THB came out. It's cheap and effective. Trample and lifelink are great abilities in many matchups. I kept it over a couple of Swords that I recently cut, in fact. Swords can be quite slow and I wanted more variety in the cost of equipment.
I think a 3/3 double strike splittable FTK is solid but not spectacular. What's cool is we can play this in aggro as a Pyrokinesis-esque removal and a fallback 5 drop. Our aggro decks are topping at 1-3 four drops with maybe a Sword of X and Y as a pseudo-five drop. Definitely going to try this along the white and black ones.
I adore it! Swing with abandon for 3 every turn while your opponent has to watch extra careful for removal, discard or looting to make sure they don't donate you a free game-ending creature or spell.
I'm only really confident about Portable Hole sticking around long term. But Wight has been really nice so far. It's easy to replace itself and then that's a huge amount of power for 2 mana. It can get chumped by bigger creatures but that's the case for most 2 drops. Even then there are removal/burn tricks to get a free 2/2 after the fact. Zombie typing is nice. It's no Dauthi Voidwalker, but not much is...
Ebondeath is interesting as an unusually fast clock on a 4 drop that is somewhat resilient, but expect may fall short eventually.
Nalaar is probably the best feature of the dungeon mechanic and I'll be testing him out too. As you say there are a lot of lines of play. I hope to see the mechanic revisited with new dungeons and cards in the future.
I am not super excited about any of the Manlands, of course they are going to be decent at worst!
Missed the Lotus/Bauble, yeah this seems reasonable actually, though being greedy I may have gone for 14 lands...
I am going to give DRC a shot over Akoum Hellhound and see how he does.
Nice deck, love a low curve rakdos or mardu aggro deck. But would have thought you could cut 1 or 2 lands, no?
Also will give some of the fast manlands a run out.
Actually I went down to two swords myself recently (S&S and F&I, which I think is the best one by a fair bit), I assumed everyone else was still running 4 or 5 but there is usually a glut of 3 drops in the decks running swords and they can clog up the board a bit. I feel a bit equipment light now and might end up cutting Stoneforge Mystic.
Nice pull though!
I guess Dancing Sword seems OK, kinda?
I prefer Kefnet, then Iymrith, but maybe you need a 4/5 drop in particular. I didn't run Meloku for years, it was getting too slow, but it still has its fans.
Duskwatch Recruiter was a recent cut and I liked it quite a bit, I think I may prefer it to Ranger Class but the latter was only just revealed so nobody tested it yet.
Voidwalker is a total staple though, needless to say. You really have to play around its ability a lot when it's on the board. And it hits for a LOT of unblockable damage.
Inclined to agree there. They also help enable some powerful Eldrazi colorless payoffs, if you're into that, but I'd run them over the checklands regardless.
Flameskull > Rampaging Ferocidon
Zariel > Sarkhan, but neither are that great
Growth Spiral > Shardless Agent
Domri, AoB > Klothys > Brawler
Woe Strider >> Liliana, HH >> Gonti
Wight looks really strong to me, replacing itself in a trade or adding board presence in a chump block, especially in RB where you can burn-trade with it. I'm not totally keen on the ETBT tapped but it's usually irrelevant for aggro unless you have a rare haste-giver.
More Gravecrawler support is very welcome too.