MTG Salvation

Neither the creature half nor the spell half gets there on their own merits, but I do think y'all are undervaluing the flexibility of being a 1 mana instant, a 2 mana creature, or both. Successful aggro decks want effect density more than they care about card quality. If I can jam in a creature that provides a little extra flexibility while fulfilling it's primary purpose of being a cheap attacker, I'm in. At least for testing.

I wish this guy had 4 toughness, but it's not a deal breaker. We run several X/1 aggro dudes at 2 mana.

Fair enough, our environments and cube design goals are so different that I'm not surprised we are having different results.

I’m all about Witching Well! Didn’t make a thread for it because its a card that exists pretty deep down the cantrip rabbit hole, but I plan to play this at 540. Dig for lands early, refill later. Modern UW control decks play Heiroglyphic Illumination and this card compares very favorably.

Also, as was pointed out to me by cube colleague Metallix87, Charming Prince’s etb is totally a charm spell

I’d argue that a 4 mana creature that doesnt generate value on etb needs to be almost this pushed to be competitive.

100% agree with this statement. This creature is pushed and strong, but it's not going to warp any environments.

I'm up to 14 personally Overall the power level of this set seems very pushed, especially in the creature department.

I won't argue with you guys that giving a bunch of slots to aggro one drops is painful, it 100% is. I want to limit cards that only go in a single archetype as much as possible. For aggro though 1 mana beaters are absolutely ESSENTIAL. Let me see if I can explain my though process through math:

Below is an ugly copy/paste from an online hypergeometric calculator showing the chances of having an aggro 1 drop in your opening 7, assuming you have 8 in your deck. This has been an invaluable tool for me and I highly recommend using it to evaluate your own cubes.

(https://stattrek.com/online-calculator/hypergeometric.aspx)
Population size
40
Number of successes in population
8
Sample size
7
Number of successes in sample (x)
1
Hypergeometric Probability: P(X = 1)
0.38884934
Cumulative Probability: P(X < 1)
0.180537194
Cumulative Probability: P(X </= 1)
0.569386533
Cumulative Probability: P(X > 1)
0.430613467
Cumulative Probability: P(X >/= 1)
0.819462806

Basically what this tells me is that with 8 one drops in my deck, 4 out of 5 times (82%) I'll have one in my opening 7. Ideally, I'd like to have that number be higher, but you have to draw the line somewhere. 10 aggro one drops brings my chances up to 90%, but only having six aggro one drops drops my chances to 70%. As a rule of thumb, my target # of aggro one drops is 8, but if I can draft more, great.

How does this information affect my overall cube design? Lets look at more math:

Population size
540
Number of successes in population
16
Sample size
360
Number of successes in sample (x)
8
Hypergeometric Probability: P(X = 8)
0.075647491
Cumulative Probability: P(X < 8)
0.047400417
Cumulative Probability: P(X </= 8)
0.123047907
Cumulative Probability: P(X > 8)
0.876952093
Cumulative Probability: P(X >/= 8)
0.952599583

Assuming a normal 8 man pod with 3 packs of 15 (360 total cards seen), there is a 95% chance that at least 8 one drops of any given color will be included in the draft pool. This is pretty much where I want to be. In reality this overstates the chance that any single player will actually see all 8 in a draft because cards are drafted out of packs before you see them.

Why am I only focusing on one color? What about two color aggro decks? Lucidvision, you mentioned that splashing for a second color is an option in aggro, and you are totally right, but I think it's very important to support mono color aggro decks in order for the archetype to thrive. Being heavily in two colors in an aggro deck puts serious strain on the mana. The same hypergeometric calculation I used in above for one drops applies to lands. If I want an 80% chance of having an color source in my opening 7, I need 8 sources in my deck. If I want a 90% chance, I need 10 sources. Add in the fact that aggro decks tend to be light on lands and prioritize untapped mana sources (sorry manlands) and things get real tight, real fast. If I have an evenly split 2 color aggro deck with 4 red one drops and 4 white one drops, to have a high degree of certainty I'll be able to play aggressively on turn one I need 10 untapped sources of each color. If I want to go down to 14-15 lands, I'd need 5 untapped dual lands in that specific guild. That's a big ask. If I'm playing a 2 color aggro deck, I'd much rather splash up the curve at 2, 3, and even 4 mana and keep my one drops as close to mono colored as possible.

Another consideration is the my overall archetype balance. I only support three archetypes in my cube: Aggro, Midrange, and Control. No reanimator, no artifact stuff, no aristocrats, ect. My goal is that for an 8 man draft the cube supports 2-3 of each archetype so in any given pod there will be 3 aggro decks, 2 midrange decks, and 3 control decks, or some similar combination. The desire to support 3 mono-colored (or close to it) aggro decks in a single cube draft necessitates that black, white, and red all have enough aggro beaters to support a deck with at least 8 one drops with a high degree of certainty. Not every deck is going to come together every draft, obviously, and I love variety as much as the next guy, but it's important to me that drafters are able to execute assembling the decks I support more often than not.

This is all well and good, but I also do a lot of 1v1 drafting in my playgroup using the glimpse method (9 packs of 15, pick one burn 2). With 16 aggro one drops per color in my 540 doing a 2 man glimpse draft, the math looks like this:

Population size
540
Number of successes in population
16
Sample size
270
Number of successes in sample (x)
8
Hypergeometric Probability: P(X = 8)
0.19935343
Cumulative Probability: P(X < 8)
0.400323285
Cumulative Probability: P(X </= 8)
0.599676715
Cumulative Probability: P(X > 8)
0.400323285
Cumulative Probability: P(X >/= 8)
0.599676715

60% chance of being able to see 8 aggro one drops in a single color. Not great, but in a 2 man draft we kind of expect decks to be a little less consistent so it's not the end of the world. Still, my own analysis is telling me that I should be running MORE aggro duders, not less.

A couple other things:

I've talked about my overall cube environment elsewhere on MTGS so I'll be super brief here. I run significantly more removal (both sweepers and spot), countermagic, ramp elves, cantrips, and of course aggro beaters than most cubes here. My curve, on average, is a bit lower (nothing above 6 mana, period). Because I don't run synergy decks, it's way easier for me to have redundancy in what I consider key categories. Aggro beaters, midrange ramp, wraths for control, and cheap interaction all around. I also don't run a bunch of cards that I feel create lame, binary, gameplay like Winter Orb, Mind Twist, Armageddon, ect. My goal is to have a balanced environment where a drafter can sit down and have a roughly equal chance of winning a pod drafting any of the archetypes I support. In my environment, durdly decks don't really happen, if they do it's a mistake. Aggro decks tend to curve out at 3 mana, with maybe a 4 drop or two, and should NEVER be running anything 5 mana or above. Midrange is alive and well in my meta, so in order to compete, aggro decks need to be super consistent and able to come out of the gates swinging every game.

All this to say... I need lots of black one drops and thus have room to try Foulmire Knight.

Great post, thanks Steve_Man.

I think this is one of the best mechanics for cube we've seen in a LONG time. It's like a combo between split cards, fuse, and aftermath. Every single card with adventure gives you the option to "draw a card." I'm guessing we get several good Adventure cards for cube.

Quote from BlackWaltz3 »

All in all, I think this is probably worth swapping out one of the Llanowar Elf variants for a test.

Don't cut a 1 mana dork! Cut a 2 mana dork or, if you are still running them Kodama's Reach/Cultivate. Cheap ramp is amazing and green's single greatest strength

This seems very close to Sun's Champion/Flamespeaker power for a 6 mana walker. Great top end for a midrange deck. I'm all about this guy.

I will always play any sort of 5c land without big downsides. People cutting evolving wilds for this are doing it wrong, just play all the variants they're some of the best lands in cube.

I also think braids is overrated on these forums, but it's still a good card.

My best theory as to why, is over-emphasis on her upside. It's easy to remember the games where you play her on the play with a permanent advantage and they fail to answer her.

However, there are a ton of decks that have a lot of permanents where the smokestack effect is slow/symmetrical. In aggressive matchups she's quite bad.

She's really only nuts against decks without many permanents, which in my cube, is a minority of decks. Regardless, it's rare she doesn't get at least a 2 for 1 against those decks and there isn't another 4 drop in black I'd want more in those matchups.

Like smokestack, she also used to be better in an era where cards rarely put more than one permanent on the battlefield. As creature resiliency rose, and power level increased, it's indisputable that she's gotten worse over time.

Am messing around with standard vampires on arena and this guy has massively overpeformed.
Different environments blah blah, but seeing why he's been so good has got me hyped.

In an agro deck, doing 4 damage by turn 3 is trivial and once the counters start to spiral, you don't even need the activated ability before he becomes much better than a generic 2/1.

Once you factor in the activated ability he becomes near unblockable and can occasionally do crazy amounts of damage by himself when you are hellbent and nothing better to do with your mana. Also awsome on defense in removal light situations.

Something particular in cube, but black has a lot of ways to do itself damage. A shock land + a vamp tutor, or a dismember and you trigger his ability to grow without doing 4 damage to them. In standard, I grow the knight by self activate adanto vanguard's indestructable a lot EOT to do extra damage or play around cry of the carnarium.

He's impressed me so much that I'm already 95% confident he's better than the worst black agro 1 drop everyone here is playing. Not going to be a cube all-star or anything, but the bar he's trying to climb is one set by vampire lacerator. Is he better? I'd wager quite a lot the answer is yes.

He also is reasonable in an agressive midrange deck, something that can't be said for many other black 1 drops. So even if he's 99% as good in agro, being playable in more archtypes would make me want to cube him.

This card has far exceeded my expectations. It's a mini Skullclamp and Serrated Arrows built on a stick. He's burn proof and the proliferate allows players to ultimate their walkers faster while simultaneously controlling the board. Drawing more creatures just means that he can continue to put more -1/-1 counters on the board, and if you draw a land, he can just proliferate. The random protection from humans clause isn't just flavor text either; it's occasionally relevant since humans is probably the most common creature type in many cubes. Praise Yawgmoth.

Noah Bradley art on the Leylines. omg, if he does Leyline of Anticipation's art too I am going to steamroll over everyone at the pre-release to get it like a mad hood woman who raised 3 boys gunning for a flat screen 42" on Black Friday at Walmart.

Since Genesis Wave is such a sweet card to pull off, but I wanted to be a little less obvious about it, here's an example of what I'm running. It won't stand up to the decks looking to break the format in half, but making your beefy rampers indestructible whilst drawing you cards feels like a dream.

Just being able to manipulate your library and graveyard to this extent is so powerful in Cube. Oh yeah, it's also a 6/6 flying trample win condition.

Quote from noshadowkick »

Interesting reports. I'm going to give this guy a test run over Carrion Feeder.

FWIW I think they play well together since Feeder is a zombie and can eat the tokens.