To be fair, I don't think those cards are that great either and I've played with them a decent amount.
It's already pretty unlikely for Empty to just make 4 tokens by turn 5. There aren't many CC0 spells, maybe a small handful, so unless your opponent helps you out you're usually looking to cast one drop plus Empty on turn 5, which is fine, but even that is significantly weaker than just playing a reliable Beetleback Chief whenever you want. For your opponent to help you you may have to make suboptimal attacks to force an instant, or you need to have a board that forces them to do something to begin with. They apparently didn't use their instant on their turn, so maybe you can't even get it out without casting something yourself first. All of those are just small things that make it hard for EtW to actually be great and I've seen enough of those scenarios happen. And needless to say, the fail case is terrible.
We all understand Snap is usually a zero mana version of a 1 mana card that is far from being cubeable. Zero mana is always quite strong and shouldn't be underestimated, though unlike things like Daze, Fireblast or Mutagenic Growth Snap doesn't actually cost zero, which is a huge deal. You can't tap out and have Snap open for your opponent's turn. You're paying 2 for an Unsummon on their turn and are a favorite to have nothing to do with that 2 leftover mana. It may still be borderline playable, but not insane.
Grim Initiate has the same issues that all of those creatures have that have some sort of self-replacement when they die. You have Persist, Undying, Doomed Traveler, Loyal Cathar, etc, etc. The problem is that the front side already has to be efficient, because the back side is usually such that it will be irrelevant to the board once it comes up. A 1/1 First Striker is not good enough for Cube. And a 1/1 vanilla is very likely irrelevant by the time your opponent had that 1/1 First Striker killed.
Manamorphose is interesting. I don't think it does enough outside of EtW, Prowess and fixing once for that one card you're splashing for, but it's never really bad either. If spells matters is a thing in your cube you can't really go wrong with it.
Fencing Ace's fail case is still an Ashmouth Hound and its potential is insane, even with just a +1 attack boost it's already dealing with 4-drops.
Gush is also pretty nuts when used correctly, which is on the turn where you'd have missed your land drop for the first time in the game. The reason why it's even better in old constructed formats is that that turn usually arrives by turn 3 and in Limited it's 5/6ish on average, but it's still good.
Stitched Drake is good whenever you can cast it by turn 5 at the latest. That won't happen in spell-based control decks, but it's pretty easy to enable between Looters and early trades, so I think it's still cubeable.
I obviously didn't count reprints for that list. Only how many new cards that set introduced to my cube, and MM3 was 6. Regardless of that, I clearly remember when MM3 came out I was already considering banning supplemental sets from my cube for the same reasons that I'm still considering banning them now. Those sets don't follow the same guidelines for what can be printed as a common and what can't, because they aren't standard legal, which means the overall power level of the set can be as high as they want it to be.
Again, I'm not trying to argue that anything I do with my cube is the objectively right thing to do. I wasn't even trying to start a discussion about that topic, but other people did, so I replied.
Previous Masters sets weren't that powerful. Even the rarity downshifts didn't produce that amount of cubeables, and in MH they're not even downshifts but new printings. MH took it to another level and it just made sense for me to make the cut there.
That's between 1 and 6 from the previous Masters set. 12 from MH, taking Humphrey as an example because I can't provide one myself, is a completely different dimension... And quite frankly, most of the Masters commons I'm playing aren't format breaking. Some are actually filling crucial niches, such as the 2/1s for 1.
Even cards like Dinrova and Falkenrath were streches at the time and I actually have been and still am considering making my cube Expansion-only, excluding all supplementary sets. If it wasn't for the 2/1s I probably would have done that already, just like I probably would have made the final cut before Ravnica 3.0 if that didn't fill some much-needed holes in some gold sections, such as UG and RG.
Modern Horizons, a set I have never played [...] and which was probably the worst designed set in recent history
I don't want to troll or anything, but the first part seems to contradict with the judgement in the 2nd part. I've played some Modern Horizons and it wasn't badly designed. It wasn't as interesting as Ultimate Masters, but definitely better than Master 25 and Ironic Masters.
I didn't play MH as a Limited format. I did play with MH cards in other formats such as Legacy and Modern. You need to be a long time eternal player to understand what the 2019 paradigm shift has meant to that part of the Magic playing community, and frankly there are no two opinions about that among those affected either. I have nothing against the commons in the newest sets other than that they are from a set I overall dislike and that they have the potential to push old favorites out of the cube. That is purely subjective, nothing I was trying to sell as the thing to do for everybody.
I really wasn't mentioning this to convince or to make a point here. With their latest design philosophy WotC has stopped catering to me as a player and I've made the decision to stop catering to WotC in any way or form. That coupled with the fact that it isn't worth it any more for me to update my cube is all there is to it.
MaRo said himself there was a paradigm shift in how powerful they want to make new sets, that was right before Ravnica 3.0 iirc. In any case, this was much more a decision I personally took because a) I don't get to play my cube very often any more and Magic in general and it's hard to justify investing into so many foils every 2 months, and b) as a long-time eternal constructed player I truly hate their new philosophy and the damage they've done to some of my favorite formats with those power-crept sets.
I have a strong bond and emotional connection with my cube and some of the oldest cards in it. I have zero emotional connection to any of the clearly powerful commons in Modern Horizons, a set I have never played, which has zero significance in the Magic lore and which was probably the worst designed set in recent history, so I'm definitely not replacing any of my favorites with those cards. I'd rather call it quits and still be able to play my older favorites while still being able to call it the 'best commons available' within the time frame I'm allowing.
This pool reminds me of the earliest iterations of my cube which had way too many spells and not enough creatures. Either this cube has the same problem or it was super unlucky, given that blue was the color with the most creatures (relatively), with green at 50/50, white below 50%, and both R and B below 50% with virtually no universally good creatures and only disjointed build-arounds. I tend to play Sealed with 75 or even 60 cards nowadays and the pools don't look so shallow, so idk what happened there...
Red and Black are the most powerful colors all around, but given their miserable creature base I think RB is not optimal. I can see two decks here that could somewhat work. Option 1 would be something Jund, being mainly G and one of each R or B, splashing the third, with lots of fixing and removal. That would be similar to Humphrey's above, though looking at his mana situation I'm not a huge fan. So I'll go for the second deck I can see, which is just RG beatdown-and-hope-I-draw-enough-creatures-and-punish-opponents-for-durdling-around.dec.
Too few creatures obviously, and red Denizen is awful, but it at least feeds Sparksmith and sacs to Artillerize. Croc is also bad, but playing less than 15 creatures in RG Aggro with Flunkies sounds even worse.
There were also a few cards from newer sets that I have zero experience with since I discontinued my cube with Ravnica 3.0 due to the powercreep in the 2019 sets which would dilute my cube as I love it, so take that with a grain.
I'm expecting Pioneer to be a bunch of proactive decks trying to do their thing plus BG trying to keep everything in check with TSeize and Decay.
Time has shown again and again that fair blue decks and non-Burn aggro decks can only keep up with the formerly mentioned strategies if the format grants them good cantrips, efficient counter spells, powerful and resilient win conditions for 4 mana or less as well as efficient hate bears and quality burn spells.
Pioneer is shaping up to have none of that whatsoever.
Legacy will always remain the fairest non-Standard format in Magic due to exactly that reason. And it will never change unless WotC prints actual Force of Will, actual Daze and actual Wasteland into more modern sets instead of watered down imitations that are 80% less powerful. None of these cards would break Modern, or Standard, or Pauper, or 3-year old kitchen table Magic. The cards that make formats good are cards that scale with the power of the formats they're used in. As I mentioned previously. TSeize, Decay and Push are the only such cards Pioneer is going to have. So either play BG or sling unfair decks against other unfair decks to find out who can draw better, win coinflips, or draw sideboard-hosers or answers to them in the right amount.
I'll stick to EDH, Limited and Cube as well as Legacy, dreaming about those Legendary Duals that would solve so many issues of the format at once. Snow ones were also an option until Modern Horizons cut off that option entirely.
If I'm not mistaken Thoughtseize will be the only tier 1 non-creature spell from Modern and Legacy that's legal in this format.
Actually, I'll go over the colors real quick looking for what they lost and kept compared to Modern and Legacy.
Red has lost probably the top 3-5 spells (Bolt, Looting, Chain Lightning, Forked Bolt, etc). We're literally talking Shock / Incinerate level now.
Blue has lost all existing cantrips as well as Jace, Delver and Snapcaster.
Green has lost its top 3-4 mana dorks and its top 3 tutors (GSZ, NO, Chord), only leaving Company behind. They also lost Goyf.
White has lost Path and Swords as well as SFM, which is already all the cards that ever made this color playable in eternal formats.
Yeah, I think I'd start brewing with black first... I think WotC will end up regretting reprinting TSeize in Theros. It's on paper the best spell in the format by a mile.
Here we are again discussing Rare and Uncommon Ante cards in a Pauper Cube forum. My dude, if you want to keep trolling and get everyone here banned because they'll inevitably get at you for the utter crap you're producing you're doing it just right.
Brb discussing Black Lotus in Modern. Cuz literally Why Not and **** consensus anyway...
Why are people so hyped up about Audacious Thief? Stealer of Secrets was never anything more than Borderline, and while this doesn't have to connect, it's still a 2/2 for 3 in a world full of efficient removal at 1 and 2 CMC. The only straight up Staples I see are Cloudkin Seer and Silverback Shaman, and maybe Winged Words. I wanna low-key try Boneclad Necromancer though, since a floor case of 5/5 worth of stats spread across two bodies isn't that bad, and it can disrupt Flashback cards and incidental graveyard synergies in my cube.
Boneclad Necromancer's floor case is a 3/3 vanilla for 5. So that's an absolutely abysmal floor case paired with a ceiling that's just on par for a 5 drop in black. It's unplayable.
I kinda agree with you on Thief though. Even when it was spoiled I for some reason thought it would play out worse than it looks, and after playing with it on Arena it has been pretty disappointing indeed. On the surface it looks like the best of both worlds between Phyrexian Rager and Stealer of Secrets, but in practise it's pretty similar to Stealer and worse than Rager. It suffers from the same insurmountable problem that all of those Scroll Thief variants have: they're only good when your opponent can't deal with a mediocre body hitting them every turn on turn 4 or later. Whenever that happens, you were probably winning the game no matter what. However, when the game is close and your opponent is able to stop a vanilla 2/2 from attacking them, which in practise should be in over 80% of games, they are literally Grey Ogres and a full card down on Phyrexian Rager. All Thief had going for it over Stealer is that you can basically cycle it away from play by suiciding it. That's not nothing, and if your opponent actually had to trade for it it's actually good, but still not better than Rager. I'm still suspecting Rager's average will be higher than his.
Tolarian Scholar is also better in context. That context being you at 2 life and your opponent attacking with a 3/2 Trampler.
And Lava Dart is better than Lightning Bolt in context, that's why it's probably the most played card across two eternal formats when the other one is unplayable. Is that how it works?
Or even a Walking Corpse that loses you 1 life? cause that's exactly what we're comparing here. A 2/2 that loses 1 life vs a 2/1 Flyer that loses nothing.
I'm used to people thinking things are cubeable that aren't, but we don't get too many easy staples that people don't even want to run. This guy is likely in the hunt for 2nd-3rd best blue 3-drop behind the bouncers.
Damn, I misread that dude and thought it said greater than 2.
Yeah, that's definitely a massive upgrade over the ones we have and a noticeable power creep in general. Maybe they were holding some of their 'new and interesting commons' spoilers back initially.
It's already pretty unlikely for Empty to just make 4 tokens by turn 5. There aren't many CC0 spells, maybe a small handful, so unless your opponent helps you out you're usually looking to cast one drop plus Empty on turn 5, which is fine, but even that is significantly weaker than just playing a reliable Beetleback Chief whenever you want. For your opponent to help you you may have to make suboptimal attacks to force an instant, or you need to have a board that forces them to do something to begin with. They apparently didn't use their instant on their turn, so maybe you can't even get it out without casting something yourself first. All of those are just small things that make it hard for EtW to actually be great and I've seen enough of those scenarios happen. And needless to say, the fail case is terrible.
We all understand Snap is usually a zero mana version of a 1 mana card that is far from being cubeable. Zero mana is always quite strong and shouldn't be underestimated, though unlike things like Daze, Fireblast or Mutagenic Growth Snap doesn't actually cost zero, which is a huge deal. You can't tap out and have Snap open for your opponent's turn. You're paying 2 for an Unsummon on their turn and are a favorite to have nothing to do with that 2 leftover mana. It may still be borderline playable, but not insane.
Grim Initiate has the same issues that all of those creatures have that have some sort of self-replacement when they die. You have Persist, Undying, Doomed Traveler, Loyal Cathar, etc, etc. The problem is that the front side already has to be efficient, because the back side is usually such that it will be irrelevant to the board once it comes up. A 1/1 First Striker is not good enough for Cube. And a 1/1 vanilla is very likely irrelevant by the time your opponent had that 1/1 First Striker killed.
Manamorphose is interesting. I don't think it does enough outside of EtW, Prowess and fixing once for that one card you're splashing for, but it's never really bad either. If spells matters is a thing in your cube you can't really go wrong with it.
Gush is also pretty nuts when used correctly, which is on the turn where you'd have missed your land drop for the first time in the game. The reason why it's even better in old constructed formats is that that turn usually arrives by turn 3 and in Limited it's 5/6ish on average, but it's still good.
Stitched Drake is good whenever you can cast it by turn 5 at the latest. That won't happen in spell-based control decks, but it's pretty easy to enable between Looters and early trades, so I think it's still cubeable.
None of the other cards are particularly good.
Again, I'm not trying to argue that anything I do with my cube is the objectively right thing to do. I wasn't even trying to start a discussion about that topic, but other people did, so I replied.
Actually, I just checked with my current cube:
MM1: Moldervine Cloak.
MM2: Cathodion.
MM3: Burning-Tree Emissary, Dinrova Horror, Falkenrath Noble, Magma Jet, Tandem Lookout, Spike Jester.
EMA: Elephant Guide, Elite Vanguard, Night's Whisper, Peregrine Drake, Rally the Peasants.
ICO: Riverwheel Aerialists, Seeker of the Way, Thrill-Kill Assassin.
M25: Court Hussar, Ruthless Ripper, Frenzied Goblin, Jackal Pup, Hordeling Outburst, Savannah Lions.
UMA: Fire//Ice
That's between 1 and 6 from the previous Masters set. 12 from MH, taking Humphrey as an example because I can't provide one myself, is a completely different dimension... And quite frankly, most of the Masters commons I'm playing aren't format breaking. Some are actually filling crucial niches, such as the 2/1s for 1.
Even cards like Dinrova and Falkenrath were streches at the time and I actually have been and still am considering making my cube Expansion-only, excluding all supplementary sets. If it wasn't for the 2/1s I probably would have done that already, just like I probably would have made the final cut before Ravnica 3.0 if that didn't fill some much-needed holes in some gold sections, such as UG and RG.
I didn't play MH as a Limited format. I did play with MH cards in other formats such as Legacy and Modern. You need to be a long time eternal player to understand what the 2019 paradigm shift has meant to that part of the Magic playing community, and frankly there are no two opinions about that among those affected either. I have nothing against the commons in the newest sets other than that they are from a set I overall dislike and that they have the potential to push old favorites out of the cube. That is purely subjective, nothing I was trying to sell as the thing to do for everybody.
I really wasn't mentioning this to convince or to make a point here. With their latest design philosophy WotC has stopped catering to me as a player and I've made the decision to stop catering to WotC in any way or form. That coupled with the fact that it isn't worth it any more for me to update my cube is all there is to it.
I have a strong bond and emotional connection with my cube and some of the oldest cards in it. I have zero emotional connection to any of the clearly powerful commons in Modern Horizons, a set I have never played, which has zero significance in the Magic lore and which was probably the worst designed set in recent history, so I'm definitely not replacing any of my favorites with those cards. I'd rather call it quits and still be able to play my older favorites while still being able to call it the 'best commons available' within the time frame I'm allowing.
Red and Black are the most powerful colors all around, but given their miserable creature base I think RB is not optimal. I can see two decks here that could somewhat work. Option 1 would be something Jund, being mainly G and one of each R or B, splashing the third, with lots of fixing and removal. That would be similar to Humphrey's above, though looking at his mana situation I'm not a huge fan. So I'll go for the second deck I can see, which is just RG beatdown-and-hope-I-draw-enough-creatures-and-punish-opponents-for-durdling-around.dec.
1 Sparksmith
1 Lava Dart
1 Mogg Flunkies
1 Blood Ogre
1 Incinerate
1 Flummoxed Cyclops
1 Lightning Bolt
1 Disintegrate
1 Borderland Marauder
1 Artillerize
1 Arc Lightning
1 Foundry Street Denizen
1 Staggershock
8 Mountain
1 Vines of Vastwood
1 Mire Boa
1 Loathsome Chimera
1 Jungle Lion
1 Blastoderm
1 Crocanura
1 Thornweald Archer
1 Elvish Mystic
1 Rancor
1 Ambush Viper
1 Basking Rootwalla
8 Forest
Too few creatures obviously, and red Denizen is awful, but it at least feeds Sparksmith and sacs to Artillerize. Croc is also bad, but playing less than 15 creatures in RG Aggro with Flunkies sounds even worse.
There were also a few cards from newer sets that I have zero experience with since I discontinued my cube with Ravnica 3.0 due to the powercreep in the 2019 sets which would dilute my cube as I love it, so take that with a grain.
Time has shown again and again that fair blue decks and non-Burn aggro decks can only keep up with the formerly mentioned strategies if the format grants them good cantrips, efficient counter spells, powerful and resilient win conditions for 4 mana or less as well as efficient hate bears and quality burn spells.
Pioneer is shaping up to have none of that whatsoever.
Legacy will always remain the fairest non-Standard format in Magic due to exactly that reason. And it will never change unless WotC prints actual Force of Will, actual Daze and actual Wasteland into more modern sets instead of watered down imitations that are 80% less powerful. None of these cards would break Modern, or Standard, or Pauper, or 3-year old kitchen table Magic. The cards that make formats good are cards that scale with the power of the formats they're used in. As I mentioned previously. TSeize, Decay and Push are the only such cards Pioneer is going to have. So either play BG or sling unfair decks against other unfair decks to find out who can draw better, win coinflips, or draw sideboard-hosers or answers to them in the right amount.
I'll stick to EDH, Limited and Cube as well as Legacy, dreaming about those Legendary Duals that would solve so many issues of the format at once. Snow ones were also an option until Modern Horizons cut off that option entirely.
Actually, I'll go over the colors real quick looking for what they lost and kept compared to Modern and Legacy.
Red has lost probably the top 3-5 spells (Bolt, Looting, Chain Lightning, Forked Bolt, etc). We're literally talking Shock / Incinerate level now.
Blue has lost all existing cantrips as well as Jace, Delver and Snapcaster.
Green has lost its top 3-4 mana dorks and its top 3 tutors (GSZ, NO, Chord), only leaving Company behind. They also lost Goyf.
White has lost Path and Swords as well as SFM, which is already all the cards that ever made this color playable in eternal formats.
Yeah, I think I'd start brewing with black first... I think WotC will end up regretting reprinting TSeize in Theros. It's on paper the best spell in the format by a mile.
Brb discussing Black Lotus in Modern. Cuz literally Why Not and **** consensus anyway...
Boneclad Necromancer's floor case is a 3/3 vanilla for 5. So that's an absolutely abysmal floor case paired with a ceiling that's just on par for a 5 drop in black. It's unplayable.
I kinda agree with you on Thief though. Even when it was spoiled I for some reason thought it would play out worse than it looks, and after playing with it on Arena it has been pretty disappointing indeed. On the surface it looks like the best of both worlds between Phyrexian Rager and Stealer of Secrets, but in practise it's pretty similar to Stealer and worse than Rager. It suffers from the same insurmountable problem that all of those Scroll Thief variants have: they're only good when your opponent can't deal with a mediocre body hitting them every turn on turn 4 or later. Whenever that happens, you were probably winning the game no matter what. However, when the game is close and your opponent is able to stop a vanilla 2/2 from attacking them, which in practise should be in over 80% of games, they are literally Grey Ogres and a full card down on Phyrexian Rager. All Thief had going for it over Stealer is that you can basically cycle it away from play by suiciding it. That's not nothing, and if your opponent actually had to trade for it it's actually good, but still not better than Rager. I'm still suspecting Rager's average will be higher than his.
And Lava Dart is better than Lightning Bolt in context, that's why it's probably the most played card across two eternal formats when the other one is unplayable. Is that how it works?
Would you also say Stormfront Pegasus is only 'a bit better' than Walking Corpse?
Or even a Walking Corpse that loses you 1 life? cause that's exactly what we're comparing here. A 2/2 that loses 1 life vs a 2/1 Flyer that loses nothing.
I'm used to people thinking things are cubeable that aren't, but we don't get too many easy staples that people don't even want to run. This guy is likely in the hunt for 2nd-3rd best blue 3-drop behind the bouncers.
Yeah, that's definitely a massive upgrade over the ones we have and a noticeable power creep in general. Maybe they were holding some of their 'new and interesting commons' spoilers back initially.