When evaluating this card, what slot do you compare it in?
It seems like a lot of people are comparing it to other green 5 drops (e.g. Deranged Hermit, Thragtusk) which isn't really where the value of the card lies.
It feels more like a 0 mana free graveyard enchantment al-la Bridge from Below that should probably compete with some narrow, unrelated card like Oath of Druids. Or it should compete with Regrowth.
In any case, given the UG Ramp is a very strong cube archtype and that 360 card cubes typically have both Fauna Shaman and Survival of the Fittest along with the embarrassment of riches that blue has to offer in the looting department like Jace, Vryn's Prodigy, Looter-il Kor and Enclave Cytologist, I wonder if this card has a home there for the important roles of wrath insurance and late game mana sink / card advantage.
It seems ideally positioned to take advantage of both the massive amounts of ramp mana and looting effects while hedging against some of the weaknesses (sweepers, mana/flood topdeck mode)
How do people feel about this card in this day and age?
I personally don't feel Hermit has aged so well. Yes it's still good with blink, opposition, flicker and to a lesser extent skullclamp, but if you don't spend ten mana over two turns you're just left with 4 1/1 squirrel chump tokens. In comparison to other armies in a box like Cloudgoat Ranger or Siege-Gang Commander, this is a little underwhelming.
Even if you pay the echo you only get 9 power, which is par the course for a beatstick like Kalonian Hydra, Wolfir Silverheart or Verdurous Gearhulk. Granted, it's probably better than those beatsticks because the bodies are more spread out and there's value to being wide.
In contrast, something like Whisperwood elemental gives you immediately 6 power across two bodies and 8 power across 3 bodies on the following turn without echo requirement and extra small upsides from the manifest and wrath insurance.
Even more to the point, I'd probably rather being powering out an early planeswalker like Garruk, Primal Hunter turn 3 as I can immediately make a beast, leave my board state extremely resistant to wrath effects, don't lock down my mana next turn with echo, and can use it to draw gas which is huge for green as it has a ton of ramp but not a lot of premium card draw so it's easy to flood out or be left top-decking post wrath.
What do you think about Staggershock instead of two copies of Arc Lightning? It's an instant so it works better in spells matters and countermagic decks, you can play it eot after there are 2 valid targets and effectively almost immediately send 4 damage across 2 bodies, which I think on average is better than 3 damage divided as you choose (how often will there be three high value x/1s).
I find it funny that this deck is called scaled affinity but the decklists being posted literally no longer have any cards with the actual keyword affinity.
I guess it's just for historical purposes but I feel like "scaled modular" would be more accurate. Doesn't have the same ring though.
I've been getting back into magic after a while away and have recently spent a decent amount of time putting together a 360 card (semi) powered cube. The most common draft type is 6 man booster draft.
Since I've been out of the game for quite a while, I'd really appreciate any feedback on cards I may be missing or questionable picks.
Right now, the cube is a 360-card semi-powered cube that strives for balance between control, aggro and mid-range.
Combo is currently not supported, but it could be if people were interested in that.
Furthermore, I easily have enough cards to expand the cube to 405 or 450 cards without issue.
Meta Game Considerations: One issue with the MTGO Vintage cube is an overabundance of combo decks, which devalue
creature based-decks. White, red and green creature based decks typically have no answers for these types of decks
and they are very non-interactive. Hence, I worry that adding storm would hurt create based decks and strengthen the
two colors that are already the strongest in almost any vintage cube (blue and black) while leading to less interactive
magic games.
Meta Game Considerations: This suffers from many of the weaknesses of adding Storm. However, most of the combo pieces
are creatures that are fine in their own right, so it's not such an all-or-nothing combo and it doesn't devalue creature based strategies nearly as much. Furthermore, it helps give red another dimension.
3) Signets (current NOT supported):
Meta Game Considerations: The cube does support Wildfire strategy but I haven't found space for Signets.
Signets are also great in the Artifact deck, which is not currently strongly supported. It might make sense to add some of the better Signets (UR, UB and maybe RG), however I've had difficulty finding anything to cut.
Meta Game Considerations: My worry with Mana Drain and Ancestral Recall is that blue is already the strongest color in pretty much every vintage cube, and these cards are just absurdly and strictly better than very playable counter magic and draw spells. Along with Library of Alexandria, these cards also risk unbalancing the cube by strengthening control and weakening aggressive creature-based strategies.
Black Lotus, Sol Ring and Mana Crypt are all absurdly better than already good cards (Dark Ritual, Worn Powerstone) and are universal P1P1 over everything else. Furthermore, they greatly strengthen Mid-Range and Control strategies at the expense of aggressive decks.
Channel, True Name Nemesis and Mind Twist may be unconventional bans - the first randomly just ends the game Turn 1 or Turn 2 with cards like Eldrazi while the latter two have just been unfun in my experience. But like everything, the ban list is up for review and discussion.
5) Swords (currently supported):
We currently run all 5 swords in the cube, which could be a little heavy.
Meta Game Considerations: I don't think these cards unbalance the metagame - they help creature-based decks and I really don't think thy are overpowered. However, some people find them unfun, especially when they randomly get hosed by the protection from colors. Certainly up for discussion.
6) Artifact Deck (currently NOT supported):
In addition to adding 5+ of the signets and/or Lotus+Sol Ring+Mana Crypt+Lotus Petal, this boils down to adding the following cards:
Meta Game Considerations: This could be a fun deck to support, and as long as it doesn't involve adding in Lotus+Sol Ring+Mana Crypt it probably wouldn't be too unbalancing. Like most of the potential changes, this would probably make the best color (Blue) even better.
The guild section is a little imbalanced, offsetting color imbalance for the most part.
Using fractional apportionment, the guild section works out to:
Black: 10.5 cards (54.5 total black cards)
Blue: 10 cards (56 total blue cards)
White: 10.5 cards (54.5 total white cards)
Green: 11.5 cards (54.5 total green cards)
Red: 10.5 cards (54.5 total red cards)
Are there any renders of the following? Or are the renders compiled in any one place where I can check. It's hard to page through all 200 pages to find out!
Abrupt Decay
Restoration Angel
Batterskull
Birthing Pod
Bloodghast
Bribery
Chrome Mox
Creeping Tar Pit
Entomb
Karn Liberated
Kira, Great Glass-Spinner
Lotus Cobra
Magus of the Moon
Mangara of Corondor
Mystical Tutor
Pack Rat
Pact of Negation
Ranger of Eos
Shardless Agent
Smokestack
Sword of Feast and Famine
Sword of War and Peace
Tezzeret the Seeker
Toxic Deluge
Umezawa's Jitte
Unexpectedly Absent
Vedalken Shackles
Vengevine
Voice of Resurgence
Basically it's a tradeoff between power and consistency (in your mana base). It sounds to me like you made the correct assessment here -- by weakening your mana base and adding green, you gained:
...plus some other stuff that's not irreplaceable. These are some of the most powerful cards you could reasonably expect to encounter in a draft, and with an existing Heroic base to back them up, it's not surprising to me that you did well.
(As a side note, you're effectively running 19 lands. I would have taken out a Plains or a Mountain and inserted a Nylea's Presence to help smooth out the colors and shrink the deck.)
Yeah Presence versus Amulet was a tough choice. I went with Amulet because a) it can get you a green land if you don't have it b) you can drop it turn 1 c) it can make some 1 land hands keepable
You might be right on dropping a land for a Presence. On a side note, the Amulet is a little less than a land in the same way that a fetchland is less than a land because it thins out the lands in your deck. So I was probably running ~18.5 lands or something. Still a little high.
Last night I did a Theros draft that started out conventionally. I picked up a bunch of good bestow and combat tricks in white, along with strong heroic targets in green. Every card was WG pack one except for a speculative Chained to the Rocks.
Then pack two, I open up Xenagos which I pick up (at the time) purely as a money card. But now I've got two very strong red cards (w/ the Chained to the Rocks) and the next pack presents me with Magma Jet versus mediocre options in color. I pick up the Jet, as well as a Polis Crusher and Two Minotaur Skullcleavers the next three packs.
Now I'm split basically evenly between white and red and heavier on green and I realize there's no way to cut either white (which has all my heroic triggers) or red (which has a ton of bombs). So I go with it and just draft Traveler's Amulet and Nylea's Presence over any mediocre cards I see (which I wouldn't play anyway, given my high number of playables).
From this experiment, the following deck results. Every time I mentioned I was playing 3 colors, or that I dived into a third color second pack I got looks of pity and confusion. But I 3-0 for the first time in Theros, after going 2-1 in each of my 3 other Theros drafts playing it safe. I guess it does pay to take risks sometimes!
Do you agree with taking risks like this? As you can see from the sideboard I could probably have built an ok two color deck. Have you had similar experiences and would you have built the deck differently?
Have people been testing Miracle/Top variants? I just played a few games with the following and both Terminus and Temporal Mastery seem strong in the traditional countertop shell.
I've been out of the loop. Is there any reason we can't play Temporal Mastery in this deck? Temporal Mastery and Delver seem ideal with enablers like Jace, Brainstorm and Ponder here (or pitch to FoW). Plus the free turn is ridiculous with Jace or Geist in play.
Here's what I've been testing (haven't settled on a SB):
So Christmas came in the form of volcanoes in the middle of the ocean and thanks to those beauties, I was able to make Patriot Stoneblade. Any critiques for my list so far? I'm trying to tune it to a meta that is full of Merfolk, a couple of RUG/BUG tempo decks, a few other stoneblade decks, and quite a few Maverick lists (everyone seems to be making this deck <_<).
Solid 2-drop bear that you can cash in for basically an Abrade. Sign me up.
It seems like a lot of people are comparing it to other green 5 drops (e.g. Deranged Hermit, Thragtusk) which isn't really where the value of the card lies.
It feels more like a 0 mana free graveyard enchantment al-la Bridge from Below that should probably compete with some narrow, unrelated card like Oath of Druids. Or it should compete with Regrowth.
In any case, given the UG Ramp is a very strong cube archtype and that 360 card cubes typically have both Fauna Shaman and Survival of the Fittest along with the embarrassment of riches that blue has to offer in the looting department like Jace, Vryn's Prodigy, Looter-il Kor and Enclave Cytologist, I wonder if this card has a home there for the important roles of wrath insurance and late game mana sink / card advantage.
It seems ideally positioned to take advantage of both the massive amounts of ramp mana and looting effects while hedging against some of the weaknesses (sweepers, mana/flood topdeck mode)
I personally don't feel Hermit has aged so well. Yes it's still good with blink, opposition, flicker and to a lesser extent skullclamp, but if you don't spend ten mana over two turns you're just left with 4 1/1 squirrel chump tokens. In comparison to other armies in a box like Cloudgoat Ranger or Siege-Gang Commander, this is a little underwhelming.
Even if you pay the echo you only get 9 power, which is par the course for a beatstick like Kalonian Hydra, Wolfir Silverheart or Verdurous Gearhulk. Granted, it's probably better than those beatsticks because the bodies are more spread out and there's value to being wide.
In contrast, something like Whisperwood elemental gives you immediately 6 power across two bodies and 8 power across 3 bodies on the following turn without echo requirement and extra small upsides from the manifest and wrath insurance.
Even more to the point, I'd probably rather being powering out an early planeswalker like Garruk, Primal Hunter turn 3 as I can immediately make a beast, leave my board state extremely resistant to wrath effects, don't lock down my mana next turn with echo, and can use it to draw gas which is huge for green as it has a ton of ramp but not a lot of premium card draw so it's easy to flood out or be left top-decking post wrath.
I guess it's just for historical purposes but I feel like "scaled modular" would be more accurate. Doesn't have the same ring though.
They are both sorcery but forked bolt is 1/3rd of the mana for 2/3rd of the damage.
I've been getting back into magic after a while away and have recently spent a decent amount of time putting together a 360 card (semi) powered cube. The most common draft type is 6 man booster draft.
Since I've been out of the game for quite a while, I'd really appreciate any feedback on cards I may be missing or questionable picks.
Here's my current list:
http://www.cubetutor.com/viewcube/105282
Cube Design:
Right now, the cube is a 360-card semi-powered cube that strives for balance between control, aggro and mid-range.
Combo is currently not supported, but it could be if people were interested in that.
Furthermore, I easily have enough cards to expand the cube to 405 or 450 cards without issue.
Design Questions:
1) Storm Support (currently NOT supported).
This boils down to adding the following cards:
Meta Game Considerations: One issue with the MTGO Vintage cube is an overabundance of combo decks, which devalue
creature based-decks. White, red and green creature based decks typically have no answers for these types of decks
and they are very non-interactive. Hence, I worry that adding storm would hurt create based decks and strengthen the
two colors that are already the strongest in almost any vintage cube (blue and black) while leading to less interactive
magic games.
2) Splinter Twin Support (currently NOT supported) - Restoration Angel is already in the cube and Zealous Conscripts is fighting with Glorybringer for a spot.
This boils down to adding the following cards:
Meta Game Considerations: This suffers from many of the weaknesses of adding Storm. However, most of the combo pieces
are creatures that are fine in their own right, so it's not such an all-or-nothing combo and it doesn't devalue creature based strategies nearly as much. Furthermore, it helps give red another dimension.
3) Signets (current NOT supported):
Meta Game Considerations: The cube does support Wildfire strategy but I haven't found space for Signets.
Signets are also great in the Artifact deck, which is not currently strongly supported. It might make sense to add some of the better Signets (UR, UB and maybe RG), however I've had difficulty finding anything to cut.
4) Other power / Ban List
These cards are banned:
Meta Game Considerations: My worry with Mana Drain and Ancestral Recall is that blue is already the strongest color in pretty much every vintage cube, and these cards are just absurdly and strictly better than very playable counter magic and draw spells. Along with Library of Alexandria, these cards also risk unbalancing the cube by strengthening control and weakening aggressive creature-based strategies.
Black Lotus, Sol Ring and Mana Crypt are all absurdly better than already good cards (Dark Ritual, Worn Powerstone) and are universal P1P1 over everything else. Furthermore, they greatly strengthen Mid-Range and Control strategies at the expense of aggressive decks.
Channel, True Name Nemesis and Mind Twist may be unconventional bans - the first randomly just ends the game Turn 1 or Turn 2 with cards like Eldrazi while the latter two have just been unfun in my experience. But like everything, the ban list is up for review and discussion.
5) Swords (currently supported):
We currently run all 5 swords in the cube, which could be a little heavy.
Meta Game Considerations: I don't think these cards unbalance the metagame - they help creature-based decks and I really don't think thy are overpowered. However, some people find them unfun, especially when they randomly get hosed by the protection from colors. Certainly up for discussion.
6) Artifact Deck (currently NOT supported):
In addition to adding 5+ of the signets and/or Lotus+Sol Ring+Mana Crypt+Lotus Petal, this boils down to adding the following cards:
Meta Game Considerations: This could be a fun deck to support, and as long as it doesn't involve adding in Lotus+Sol Ring+Mana Crypt it probably wouldn't be too unbalancing. Like most of the potential changes, this would probably make the best color (Blue) even better.
Sampling of Supported Archetypes:
Wildfire / Crucible:
http://www.cubetutor.com/cubedeck/953122
BR Aggro:
http://www.cubetutor.com/cubedeck/954153
http://www.cubetutor.com/cubedeck/949483
http://www.cubetutor.com/cubedeck/949159
http://www.cubetutor.com/cubedeck/949157
Recurring Nightmare / Tokens:
http://www.cubetutor.com/cubedeck/953027
UG Tempo Lands / Fastbond / Upheaval:
http://www.cubetutor.com/cubedeck/950669
http://www.cubetutor.com/cubedeck/950194
Dimir Reanimator / Control:
http://www.cubetutor.com/cubedeck/941777
http://www.cubetutor.com/cubedeck/949163
http://www.cubetutor.com/cubedeck/949222
Orzhov Weenies:
http://www.cubetutor.com/cubedeck/950660
Mono-Green Ramp:
http://www.cubetutor.com/cubedeck/950150
UW Control:
http://www.cubetutor.com/cubedeck/950285
http://www.cubetutor.com/cubedeck/950213
Bant Ramp Pod:
http://www.cubetutor.com/cubedeck/949106
The guild section is a little imbalanced, offsetting color imbalance for the most part.
Using fractional apportionment, the guild section works out to:
Black: 10.5 cards (54.5 total black cards)
Blue: 10 cards (56 total blue cards)
White: 10.5 cards (54.5 total white cards)
Green: 11.5 cards (54.5 total green cards)
Red: 10.5 cards (54.5 total red cards)
Thanks in advance for any thoughts or advice!
Abrupt Decay
Restoration Angel
Batterskull
Birthing Pod
Bloodghast
Bribery
Chrome Mox
Creeping Tar Pit
Entomb
Karn Liberated
Kira, Great Glass-Spinner
Lotus Cobra
Magus of the Moon
Mangara of Corondor
Mystical Tutor
Pack Rat
Pact of Negation
Ranger of Eos
Shardless Agent
Smokestack
Sword of Feast and Famine
Sword of War and Peace
Tezzeret the Seeker
Toxic Deluge
Umezawa's Jitte
Unexpectedly Absent
Vedalken Shackles
Vengevine
Voice of Resurgence
Yeah Presence versus Amulet was a tough choice. I went with Amulet because a) it can get you a green land if you don't have it b) you can drop it turn 1 c) it can make some 1 land hands keepable
You might be right on dropping a land for a Presence. On a side note, the Amulet is a little less than a land in the same way that a fetchland is less than a land because it thins out the lands in your deck. So I was probably running ~18.5 lands or something. Still a little high.
Then pack two, I open up Xenagos which I pick up (at the time) purely as a money card. But now I've got two very strong red cards (w/ the Chained to the Rocks) and the next pack presents me with Magma Jet versus mediocre options in color. I pick up the Jet, as well as a Polis Crusher and Two Minotaur Skullcleavers the next three packs.
Now I'm split basically evenly between white and red and heavier on green and I realize there's no way to cut either white (which has all my heroic triggers) or red (which has a ton of bombs). So I go with it and just draft Traveler's Amulet and Nylea's Presence over any mediocre cards I see (which I wouldn't play anyway, given my high number of playables).
From this experiment, the following deck results. Every time I mentioned I was playing 3 colors, or that I dived into a third color second pack I got looks of pity and confusion. But I 3-0 for the first time in Theros, after going 2-1 in each of my 3 other Theros drafts playing it safe. I guess it does pay to take risks sometimes!
5 Plains
5 Mountain
2 Traveler's Amulet
1 Hopeful Eidolon
1 Mistcutter Hydra
1 Leafcrown Dryad
1 Observant Alseid
2 Minotaur Skullcleaver
2 Chronicler of Heroes
1 Anax and Cymede
1 Polis Crusher
2 Staunch-Hearted Warrior
1 Centaur Battlemaster
1 Coordinated Assualt
1 Chained to the Rocks
1 Magma Jet
1 Dauntless Onslaught
1 Feral Invocation
1 Time to Feed
1 Divine Verdict
Sideboard:
1 Shredding Winds
1 Staunch-Hearted Warrior
1 Satyr Piper
1 Gift of Immortality
1 Lagonna-Band Elder
1 Satyr Hedonist
2 Setessan Griffin
1 Vulpine Goliath
1 Bronze Sable
2 Nylea's Presence
1 Commune with the Gods
Do you agree with taking risks like this? As you can see from the sideboard I could probably have built an ok two color deck. Have you had similar experiences and would you have built the deck differently?
4 Flooded Strand
4 Wasteland
7 Island
1 Plains
4 Mox Diamond
4 Ponder
4 Brainstorm
4 Land Tax
4 Swords to Plowshares
1 Terminus
4 Daze
1 Temporal Mastery
1 Crucible of Worlds
4 Jace, the Mind Sculptor
4 Force of Will
1 Entreat the Angels
1 Plains
4 Flooded Strand
4 Tundra
4 Wasteland
3 Mishra's Factory
2 Ponder
4 Sensei's Divining Top
4 Brainstorm
4 Jace, the Mind Sculptor
4 Counterbalance
4 Temporal Mastery
1 Crucible of Worlds
4 Swords to Plowshares
2 Terminus
4 Spell Snare
4 Force of Will
4 Purify the Grave
3 Stifle
4 Path to Exile
Here's what I've been testing (haven't settled on a SB):
4 Scalding Tarn
4 Flooded Strand
1 Polluted Delta
4 Tundra
1 Plains
5 Island
3 Delver of Secrets
3 Geist of Saint Traft
3 Jace, the Mindsculptor
4 Brainstorm
3 Ponder
4 Spell Snare
4 Swords to Plowshares
4 Temporal Mastery
4 Force of Will
1 Batterskull
1 Sword of Feast and Famine
Grim Lavamancer is pretty much the nuts against that field. 4 pyroblast is sb is kinda a must, it's such a great card.