AlZHeimer plays it in his pauper cube and he has nothing but good things to say about it. Hopefully he'll see this thread and can chime in with more details that that.
Stopped reading after the first few posts about the topic, but it's enough to have an opinion on this.
I do not understand why there is a discussion about Looter power levels going on here. It is agreed upon that Looters are insane, in fact enough people complained about a Looter being a Common a few core sets back and they stopped printing them at common rarity. Having a debate on whether Looters or blue Cantrips are better early game is almost ridiculous. Cantrips are bad, among the very worst cards people still run in their cubes. Preordain is fine in Cube, Ponder is way worse and Brainstorm is simply a very mediocre card that people only rate so highly because they can't accept the fact that the best card in legacy is weak in Pauper.
A turn 2 Looter singlehandedly wins the game. It's like a Planeswalker ticking up to its ultimate. They are the Dark Confidants of Pauper. Either your opponent kills it by turn 3 or 4, or the game is very heavily in your favor. Card selection advantage over 10 turns is not beatable in Pauper. Also, I thought this was obvious, but I guess I have to explain it. You loot when you need to. You don't loot when you don't need to. The decision whether to loot or not has absolutely Zero to do with the turn you're on. It only depends on your hand. If you have the perfect hand going into the late game, you don't loot. If you have 4 Lands and only 2 spells in your hand turn 3, you start looting right away. Seriously, Brainstorm turn 2 is utterly terrible. About the worst card you could possibly play turn 2 if you don't have a shuffle effect. In contrast to that, the number of games that a player lost after 6-7 turns of looting is very very small. If it happens, you opponent either had the god draw or your deck had the worst 20 cards stacked on top.
Sorry about the rant, I'll end it here. But power rankings like this lose a lot of their credibility if 80% of the thread are just discussions like this. I suggest everyone go back to the actual ranking without discussing about it.
That whole discussion started with mainly just Humphrey trolling as per usual. I think the majority of the forum is in accordance that looters have and always will be good. The whole Brainstorm issue seems to get brought up about once every 2 months by what I'm assuming are new people to pauper joining the forums or when it randomly gets reprinted which has actually been pretty frequent lately.
I would assume he meant second behind Guardian of the Guildpact and I would agree with that. I think this card is significantly better than Seraph of Dawn. This thing is Gravedigger on performance enhancing drugs for just one more mana. It's a 3/3 flier, will always get back a relevant card, and is splashable.
So you get the 3/3 elephant token and the undying creature with a +1/+1 counter on it. That is exactly how I think it works.
Still going to be fun.
That's the same value of the two cards separately. There's not any synergy that increases their value by being together ><. I'm gonna go with Mslano in saying that's just the excitement of Elephant Guide being good
Can't wait to put Elephant Guide on an undying creature.
I don't think that works the way you think it does. You get the same advantage from Elephant Guide from both regular creatures and Undying. Undying sends the creature to the graveyard and the enchantment comes off, then it comes back to play without the enchantment.
Eh, it's more expensive by 1 to save 2 of your dudes from dying to combat/burn and it's 2 more expensive than the flashback cost. Also, it doesn't protect you from burn/combat damage like Embolden does.
I think I would call the Supply-Line Cranes at the very least "strictly cubeable". They're a strictly better Castle Raptors which has long since been considered cubeable.
PS. You're link in your sig don't work anymore : /
Oh right, right. I keep forgetting you have a 450. Emberwilde Augur and Kruin Striker are pretty far outside my radar at 360. He's definitely worth playing over them.
hmmm I've never had a problem with Kruin Striker. It's done pretty solid work here. A lot of people on these forums have been complaining about playing Goblin Piker s with mostly inconsequential upsides for a while now Goblin SkycutterEmberwilde AugurTorch Fiend etc. I think Sigiled Skink is the best of that bunch for people still playing those cards.
Has anyone tried running Perilous Research? I've been playing Altar's Reap for some time now and it's really never been bad to me, and the same effect (but better) in blue seems pretty powerful.
It's fine (not fantastic, but it does decent work), and I've been playing it since the rarity downgrade in Modern Masters. It gives you something to do in response to removal and late game you can just sac a land to it.
Don't forget it allows you to get some card draw off of those early game creatures you'll be playing in more control oriented decks that WILL die to Midrange/Aggro decks. That block and extra leverage you get off those trades are well worth it.
Example; Doomed Traveler is one of the most perfect cards for a control deck, giving you two blockers on the 1st turn. Turn 2 you're blocking with it and you can easily block sac to either Perilous Research or Altar's Reap, next block the same. That's pretty much what I'm talking about and it happens much more often than you'd think with how midrangey a format Pauper cube is.
I don't think sac'ing a blocker is a bad thing but I think you're definitely overplaying the situations and "advantages" to doing so in regards to Perilous Research and Altar's Reap.
As far as the given situation of blocking on turn two with a Doomed Traveler, I think that if you're blocking on turn 2 (on the play or on the draw) you probably won't want to sac the Doomed Traveler. If you're on the play and you're blocking on turn 2 with Doomed Traveler, you're blocking an opponent's 1 drop which is probably not the most likely of scenario in pauper anyways. But if you are, that one drop will most likely have 1 toughness (with very few exceptions) and trading with the creature is a much better trade than sac'ing to Perilous Research and leaving their creature on the table. If you're on the draw, you're blocking a 2 drop which probably still has a decent chance of trading with Doomed Traveler (a decent number of pauper 2 drops are X/1's).
TLDR: I think that a turn 2 scenario isn't the most common situation for you sac'ing creatures like Doomed Traveler on blocks for Perilous Research. I think you would definitely be looking at much later turns where you would both benefit from blocking a larger creature and keeping mana open on your opponents turn for removal/counter back up.
Now given that you are playing Perilous Research on later turns, I think the direct benefit of playing a card like Perilous Research and Altar's Reap over a card like Divination is so minimal that it isn't worth including unless you run a major sacrifice theme. The main argument that people bring up for these cards is that you can either sacrifice a creature that you're going to chump with anyways or that you're going to use it on a creature targeted by removal. In both situations, you're going to lose the creature either way no matter which card you have in your hand (Divination vs Perilous Research). What you are benefiting from is a reduction in mana cost by (1) and instant speed. This seems significant in terms of counter/draw play style aside from the fact that both of these scenarios will happen pre/during combat before your opponent plays their threats that you're looking to counter in main phase 2. What you're losing is the ability to draw the cards you need outside of these scenarios without losing a creature (a viable threat or even a chump block) or waiting for your opponent to do something for you to justify using Perilous Research or Altar's Reap.
TLDR: Unless you're running a heavy sacrifice theme or you really want blue/black to have a specific answer to white removal so you can use reanimation spells, you're better off using other draw spells like Divination or Think Twice if you want to support draw go. Although the cards make it seem like you trade your opponent's spells/attacks for card gain, you're really just trading (1) mana and instant speed for waiting on your opponent. Whether you play Divination or Perilous Research, you still get to block the attack or your opponent still gets to kill your creature with their removal. Sorry for the huge essay ><
at 420 id run 30 dual fixer. As said, I replaced 5 Gates with Posts, since they play almost the same.
I really don't think they play the same. They're both more versatile and more constrictive at the same time somehow. You can play them as really expensive and narrow mana rocks or they get played as a really slow land that fixes but sets you back an entire turn on land count. None of these options are very appealing to me.
I guess you get what you expect but you only get it because it's the only "correct" answer. It's your cube and you can do whatever you want with it but including cards that have never been printed as commons breaks the definition of pauper cube. This is in no way shape or form "wrong" but you're basically creating your own cube format in doing so. Also, because of varying opinions on rarity and "What feels like a pauper card" there's really no way for multiple people to deem what would be acceptable as a common other than Wizard's themselves. For example, you feel like Elvish Archers is a common level card but if someone replied saying they thought it was definitely an uncommon card would you then not include it?
Unless you play with snow lands, then Chilling Shade is pretty sick
That whole discussion started with mainly just Humphrey trolling as per usual. I think the majority of the forum is in accordance that looters have and always will be good. The whole Brainstorm issue seems to get brought up about once every 2 months by what I'm assuming are new people to pauper joining the forums or when it randomly gets reprinted which has actually been pretty frequent lately.
I would assume he meant second behind Guardian of the Guildpact and I would agree with that. I think this card is significantly better than Seraph of Dawn. This thing is Gravedigger on performance enhancing drugs for just one more mana. It's a 3/3 flier, will always get back a relevant card, and is splashable.
I would agree with those while also being pretty tempted by Killer Whale, Mistmoon Griffin, and Dauthi Mercenary.
That's the same value of the two cards separately. There's not any synergy that increases their value by being together ><. I'm gonna go with Mslano in saying that's just the excitement of Elephant Guide being good
I don't think that works the way you think it does. You get the same advantage from Elephant Guide from both regular creatures and Undying. Undying sends the creature to the graveyard and the enchantment comes off, then it comes back to play without the enchantment.
PS. You're link in your sig don't work anymore : /
hmmm I've never had a problem with Kruin Striker. It's done pretty solid work here. A lot of people on these forums have been complaining about playing Goblin Piker s with mostly inconsequential upsides for a while now Goblin Skycutter Emberwilde Augur Torch Fiend etc. I think Sigiled Skink is the best of that bunch for people still playing those cards.
I don't think sac'ing a blocker is a bad thing but I think you're definitely overplaying the situations and "advantages" to doing so in regards to Perilous Research and Altar's Reap.
As far as the given situation of blocking on turn two with a Doomed Traveler, I think that if you're blocking on turn 2 (on the play or on the draw) you probably won't want to sac the Doomed Traveler. If you're on the play and you're blocking on turn 2 with Doomed Traveler, you're blocking an opponent's 1 drop which is probably not the most likely of scenario in pauper anyways. But if you are, that one drop will most likely have 1 toughness (with very few exceptions) and trading with the creature is a much better trade than sac'ing to Perilous Research and leaving their creature on the table. If you're on the draw, you're blocking a 2 drop which probably still has a decent chance of trading with Doomed Traveler (a decent number of pauper 2 drops are X/1's).
TLDR: I think that a turn 2 scenario isn't the most common situation for you sac'ing creatures like Doomed Traveler on blocks for Perilous Research. I think you would definitely be looking at much later turns where you would both benefit from blocking a larger creature and keeping mana open on your opponents turn for removal/counter back up.
Now given that you are playing Perilous Research on later turns, I think the direct benefit of playing a card like Perilous Research and Altar's Reap over a card like Divination is so minimal that it isn't worth including unless you run a major sacrifice theme. The main argument that people bring up for these cards is that you can either sacrifice a creature that you're going to chump with anyways or that you're going to use it on a creature targeted by removal. In both situations, you're going to lose the creature either way no matter which card you have in your hand (Divination vs Perilous Research). What you are benefiting from is a reduction in mana cost by (1) and instant speed. This seems significant in terms of counter/draw play style aside from the fact that both of these scenarios will happen pre/during combat before your opponent plays their threats that you're looking to counter in main phase 2. What you're losing is the ability to draw the cards you need outside of these scenarios without losing a creature (a viable threat or even a chump block) or waiting for your opponent to do something for you to justify using Perilous Research or Altar's Reap.
TLDR: Unless you're running a heavy sacrifice theme or you really want blue/black to have a specific answer to white removal so you can use reanimation spells, you're better off using other draw spells like Divination or Think Twice if you want to support draw go. Although the cards make it seem like you trade your opponent's spells/attacks for card gain, you're really just trading (1) mana and instant speed for waiting on your opponent. Whether you play Divination or Perilous Research, you still get to block the attack or your opponent still gets to kill your creature with their removal. Sorry for the huge essay ><
I really don't think they play the same. They're both more versatile and more constrictive at the same time somehow. You can play them as really expensive and narrow mana rocks or they get played as a really slow land that fixes but sets you back an entire turn on land count. None of these options are very appealing to me.