I like this card, every deck that drafts this will play it, but the question is ofif its worth a spot in the cube
This brings up a good question. What is the value of a card that will always be played if drafted? A common thing to look for cuts is to look at cards that end up in sideboards a lot. If this never ends up in the sideboard that would normally indicate an auto-include.
I think the best comparisons are other white utility lands like Emeria's Call and Castle Ardenvale.
For small cubes, you probably don't want to play more than one of these 3 while big cubes can maybe afford 2 or even 3.
Playing all three at 360 I think would be clearly too much imho - if you water the cube down too much in this way it's easier for people to end up without enough playables when the draft doesn't go exactly as planned, and it can also make 3 color brews tougher because you already need a lot of land slots to support 3 color decks.
Being careful about the number of lands in your cube is a real thing - I think you probably don't want more than 22% of your total cube cards to be lands, because at 22% that means the average drafter will draft 10 lands and 35 non-lands. Not all of the 35 cards will be playable / on-color, and in a standard 17 land deck drafters will need to play 23/35=66% of their drafted non-land cards in their maindeck.
That's doable, but going too high on the land count really punishes people who ended up with a bit of pile maybe because there was extra competition for their archetype.
I think the main problem with this card is that it doesn't have any ETB and provides no immediate value the turn it comes down.
It's more Baneslayer Angel than Mulldrifter. So when your opponent spends 1 mana to Swords to Plowshares or Path to Exile this creature it's gonna be a blowout, especially if you were counting on the trigger ability during combat.
Even if they just Heartless Act it, paying 6 mana the next turn to get it back is a massive tempo loss.
I think that by itself is enough to hold this card down to a fringe cube card rather than slam dunk / staple.
I think it's interesting as a beefed up Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet.
If you're playing that card, it might be reasonable to make this swap, although 5 mana is a lot more than 4.
That being said, I'm not playing Kalitas, so I think this is just a watch rather than a test for me.
The best true black 5 cmc creature (i.e. disregarding Shriekmaw) is probably Custodi Lich, which I think is better than this card. Next best is probably Doom Whisperer - not sure if this is better or worse than Doom Whisperer, but I think it's certainly a more interesting card so I think that's a reasonable swap.
For non-creature 5 cmc spells, is it better than Liliana, Death's Majesty and The Eldest Reborn? Hard to know, since it plays so differently than those cards. I think they are both more mana efficient / immediately impactful, and both those cards provide you ETB value the turn they come into play, so it really comes down to how strong the last line of text is (recursion for 6 mana). Overall, I would guess this card is slightly worse than both of those cards, but it is close.
Overall, I still think Kalitas is the closest cube-worthy comparison to this card, as it also has no ETB value and makes zombie tokens, but Death Tyrant is a reasonably unique card. Doom Whisperer is another fair comparison as it's reasonably Baneslayer Angel like given that the ETB surveil value is not as high as drawing a card.
It's a decent card but really slow. This is no Fractured Identity, to be sure, but that's not a hurdle cards need to jump.
Red/Black in particular usually wants to be proactive and aggressive, so you don't really want to hold up 4 mana for a Swords to Plowshares with benefits. It could be decent in Grixis control, but that's narrow and I'm pretty sure I'd rather just have Control Magic there because it's much more mana efficient.
The comparison to Hostage Taker is fair, but Hostage Taker also provides a 2/3 body and you can flicker it after casting the card, plus it also hits artifacts like Mox Sapphire or Sol Ring that you can cast immediately. All in all, I think this is a decent amount worse than Hostage Taker, which is on the outside looking in for a lot of cubes.
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.
I think it's a decent card that gets better if you're playing Emry, Lurker of the Loch and Lurrus of the Dream-Den and the like.
I'm at 360 with both of those cards, and it also helps me in my quest to try to make delirium a thing, so I'm going to give it a shot.
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.
An MH2 card that flew under the radar but is making big waves in constructed, Unholy Heat is an efficient removal spell in the same vein as Fatal Push. While the condition is certainly harder to hit, Unholy Heat goes much wider than Fatal Push - once you hit delirium this is almost functionally a single mana instant speed Dreadbore.
Given its medium floor as an early instant speed removal spell and its high ceiling as an instant speed answer to bombs like Primeval Titan, Consecrated Sphinx, Oko, Thief of Crowns and Teferi, Hero of Dominaria, I think this card is a solid role playing cube card consideration that contributes to a growing critical mass for a spells matter / delirium matters aggressive archetype.
This is certainly not a common cube card, but I do see it's usage in cube trending up.
Mishra's bauble has come into its own over the years and is now a modern staple.
More recently, it's been tearing up the modern metagame in Rakdos delirium decks built around Dragon's Rage Channeler and Unholy Heat, which seems to be the top deck at the moment (although the metagame is still relatively nascent). It makes great food for Kroxa, Titan of Death's Hunger and is an efficient card draw engine with Lurrus of the Dream-Den, two other modern staple cards that hold their own in cube.
But beyond that, it's also a free card selection cantrip with any fetchland or shuffle effect - this is extremely powerful in both constructed formats like Modern as well as cube, as anyone who's played Preordain can attest. Because of this, I actually think the card is most viable in 360 cubes where fetchland density is highest.
But even in monored, can be very sweet. Admittedly, it's harder to hit delirium in cube as it's far rarer to get an artifact like Mishra's Bauble into the yard, however at tight cube lists fetchland density is high enough and creature, land, instant, sorcery is not particularly difficult to hit.
Too slow imo in a slot that’s too stacked.
It’s only application is aggressive and recursive durability is not the axis you want to attack on with a heavy red deck.
no interest
What's the axis on which you'd want to attack on with red aggro?
With the caveat that I haven't been able to cube for a long time outside of MTGO cubes... My constant experience with "standard" powered cubes has been that red aggro is just worse than white aggro. White has all the best toys: removal that can hit anything, one-drops that help blank removal and blockers, Wrath-proof two-drops, Bolt-proof three-drops and several flavors of 4-drops that give you longevity (PWs) or end the game if you're even just a tiny bit ahead on board ('Geddons).
Red aggro feels one-note, much more likely to fold to a Wrath, has little options in terms of grinding back from bad board positions. I'm drawn to the idea of red threats that keep coming back. Is my impression of red completely off, and/or have new cards like Laelia changed things?
Red aggro has gotten much stronger over the last couple years.
It think it's actually the strongest aggressive color, better than both white and black.
If you're running a low curve (which red wants to do), red might now sneakily be the best card advantage color over blue - blue card draw is much slower and just can't match the rate / efficiency of red, although it still has the best cantrips / card selection by far.
Plus all the Goblin Rabblemaster variants still set the standard for 3 cmc goldfish damage output.
It also obviously has the best go to the face burn as well as lots of great creatures with etb removal.
I think the best comparisons are other white utility lands like Emeria's Call and Castle Ardenvale.
For small cubes, you probably don't want to play more than one of these 3 while big cubes can maybe afford 2 or even 3.
Playing all three at 360 I think would be clearly too much imho - if you water the cube down too much in this way it's easier for people to end up without enough playables when the draft doesn't go exactly as planned, and it can also make 3 color brews tougher because you already need a lot of land slots to support 3 color decks.
Being careful about the number of lands in your cube is a real thing - I think you probably don't want more than 22% of your total cube cards to be lands, because at 22% that means the average drafter will draft 10 lands and 35 non-lands. Not all of the 35 cards will be playable / on-color, and in a standard 17 land deck drafters will need to play 23/35=66% of their drafted non-land cards in their maindeck.
That's doable, but going too high on the land count really punishes people who ended up with a bit of pile maybe because there was extra competition for their archetype.
It's more Baneslayer Angel than Mulldrifter. So when your opponent spends 1 mana to Swords to Plowshares or Path to Exile this creature it's gonna be a blowout, especially if you were counting on the trigger ability during combat.
Even if they just Heartless Act it, paying 6 mana the next turn to get it back is a massive tempo loss.
I think that by itself is enough to hold this card down to a fringe cube card rather than slam dunk / staple.
The advantage of top end cards like Grave Titan, Custodi Lich or Kroxa, Titan of Death's Hunger is that they have immediate ETB value. Like Custodi Lich will kill a creature and draw you a card when you play it, so when they Swords to Plowshares it, you got a 3 for 1, and killing their creature also means you probably had no tempo loss.
If you're playing that card, it might be reasonable to make this swap, although 5 mana is a lot more than 4.
That being said, I'm not playing Kalitas, so I think this is just a watch rather than a test for me.
The best true black 5 cmc creature (i.e. disregarding Shriekmaw) is probably Custodi Lich, which I think is better than this card. Next best is probably Doom Whisperer - not sure if this is better or worse than Doom Whisperer, but I think it's certainly a more interesting card so I think that's a reasonable swap.
For non-creature 5 cmc spells, is it better than Liliana, Death's Majesty and The Eldest Reborn? Hard to know, since it plays so differently than those cards. I think they are both more mana efficient / immediately impactful, and both those cards provide you ETB value the turn they come into play, so it really comes down to how strong the last line of text is (recursion for 6 mana). Overall, I would guess this card is slightly worse than both of those cards, but it is close.
Overall, I still think Kalitas is the closest cube-worthy comparison to this card, as it also has no ETB value and makes zombie tokens, but Death Tyrant is a reasonably unique card. Doom Whisperer is another fair comparison as it's reasonably Baneslayer Angel like given that the ETB surveil value is not as high as drawing a card.
Red/Black in particular usually wants to be proactive and aggressive, so you don't really want to hold up 4 mana for a Swords to Plowshares with benefits. It could be decent in Grixis control, but that's narrow and I'm pretty sure I'd rather just have Control Magic there because it's much more mana efficient.
The comparison to Hostage Taker is fair, but Hostage Taker also provides a 2/3 body and you can flicker it after casting the card, plus it also hits artifacts like Mox Sapphire or Sol Ring that you can cast immediately. All in all, I think this is a decent amount worse than Hostage Taker, which is on the outside looking in for a lot of cubes.
In Rakdos, beyond the cards you named, I would also play Kroxa, Titan of Death's Hunger, Rakdos's Return, Rakdos Signet and Valki, God of Lies before this card (depending on how you classify the last two).
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.
Ragavan, Nimble Pilferer and Dark Confidant are also good backup card advantage engines to provide gas for your lands.
I'm at 360 with both of those cards, and it also helps me in my quest to try to make delirium a thing, so I'm going to give it a shot.
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.
https://cubecobra.com/cube/deck/60e78a8e82955b1044dd4dcd
I'll watch it rather than testing
An MH2 card that flew under the radar but is making big waves in constructed, Unholy Heat is an efficient removal spell in the same vein as Fatal Push. While the condition is certainly harder to hit, Unholy Heat goes much wider than Fatal Push - once you hit delirium this is almost functionally a single mana instant speed Dreadbore.
Given its medium floor as an early instant speed removal spell and its high ceiling as an instant speed answer to bombs like Primeval Titan, Consecrated Sphinx, Oko, Thief of Crowns and Teferi, Hero of Dominaria, I think this card is a solid role playing cube card consideration that contributes to a growing critical mass for a spells matter / delirium matters aggressive archetype.
This is certainly not a common cube card, but I do see it's usage in cube trending up.
Mishra's bauble has come into its own over the years and is now a modern staple.
A few years back it was doing big things with the likes of Urza, Lord High Artificer and Emry, Lurker of the Loch, two popular cube cards that it's great with.
More recently, it's been tearing up the modern metagame in Rakdos delirium decks built around Dragon's Rage Channeler and Unholy Heat, which seems to be the top deck at the moment (although the metagame is still relatively nascent). It makes great food for Kroxa, Titan of Death's Hunger and is an efficient card draw engine with Lurrus of the Dream-Den, two other modern staple cards that hold their own in cube.
But beyond that, it's also a free card selection cantrip with any fetchland or shuffle effect - this is extremely powerful in both constructed formats like Modern as well as cube, as anyone who's played Preordain can attest. Because of this, I actually think the card is most viable in 360 cubes where fetchland density is highest.
DRC is proving to be a house in modern and legacy.
With cube curves trending ever lower, DRC seems like a strong option.
It's certainly better than Delver of Secrets, and will slot perfectly into a BR spells matter aggressive deck alongside Sedgemoor Witch. Obviously pairs great with Kroxa, Titan of Death's Hunger as well.
But even in monored, can be very sweet. Admittedly, it's harder to hit delirium in cube as it's far rarer to get an artifact like Mishra's Bauble into the yard, however at tight cube lists fetchland density is high enough and creature, land, instant, sorcery is not particularly difficult to hit.
Red aggro has gotten much stronger over the last couple years.
It think it's actually the strongest aggressive color, better than both white and black.
One reason is the extreme amount of efficient card advantage packed onto aggressive threats, such as:
Ragavan, Nimble Pilferer
Bonecrusher Giant
Robber of the Rich
Light up the Stage
Laelia, the Blade Reforged
If you're running a low curve (which red wants to do), red might now sneakily be the best card advantage color over blue - blue card draw is much slower and just can't match the rate / efficiency of red, although it still has the best cantrips / card selection by far.
Plus all the Goblin Rabblemaster variants still set the standard for 3 cmc goldfish damage output.
It also obviously has the best go to the face burn as well as lots of great creatures with etb removal.
That being said, I'm not a fan of this card.