Card/Deck Single Card Spotlight

Eric Chan

Eric Chan

Hyalopterous Lemure
Staff member
Yeah, as excited as I was about the Souls - I tried all except the blue one! - I've been disappointed with all of them, and they've slowly exited my cube. Soul of Theros is the last man standing, as it were, but as he's been aggressively mediocre even in my fairly low powered environment, he probably won't stick around much longer. It's mostly that their expensive activations mean it's hard to get full value out of their packages, and cube games don't often go long enough for their graveyard abilities to matter.
 
shamizy

shamizy

Urgh, still have Soul of Shandalar in mine but he hasn't done jack shit in ever. He's probably out at the next update.

I feel like Sentinel is a real sweet card, but it might just be overcosted by one. If it were a 3/5 for 4W, I would be more excited to run it. As a six drop though? It's kinda dumb in a powerful environment and can't really hang with the other curve-toppers in other colors.
 
Chris Taylor

Chris Taylor

Contributor
shamizy said:
Urgh, still have Soul of Shandalar in mine but he hasn't done jack shit in ever. He's probably out at the next update.

I feel like Sentinel is a real sweet card, but it might just be overcosted by one. If it were a 3/5 for 4W, I would be more excited to run it. As a six drop though? It's kinda dumb in a powerful environment and can't really hang with the other curve-toppers in other colors.
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Now for reference it is better than most rares in Origins Limited :p
 
Eric Chan

Eric Chan

Hyalopterous Lemure
Staff member
Yeah, for whatever reason, Soul of Shandalar is the one I had the highest hopes for, which made it all the more disappointing when he didn't live up to his potential. There are just so many red fives that are stronger, and fit into more decks. Right now I've replaced that slot with Caldera Hellion, who's actually putting in some decent work.
 
RavebornMuse

RavebornMuse

As much as I love giving each colour big, cool creatures to throw down, I've found red rarely wants them over here, since they tend to stack up unfavourably against other big creatures and mono-colour decks are a rarity usually tooled for aggro; as such, decks with red just ran their other-colored 6+ drops and left Inferno Titan in the sideboard. A big part of my cube philosophy is that things in a slot not getting played are the equivalent to not having that slot at all, so I cut all my red creatures that cost 6+ recently as a result, and I haven't regretted it. That said, my format is probably faster than most, so red appreciated the new, meaner creature curve.
 
shamizy

shamizy

That's true, my red decks all seem to curve out at 4 or 5 in the cube, especially the Grixis variants that I've been seeing in more recent drafts. A 6 drop in red isn't what I'm usually in the market for. I hope that there's a decent one sometime that wows me to slot into the main cube, but I haven't really been impressed with any. Inferno Titan spit out too much value and I never saw him in non RG ramp decks where a T4 or T5 Inferno is backbreaking. Cutting Soul gives me a slot for another sweet card that might actually see play, awesome!
 
Aston

Aston



I feel like it's a strong card, and it's one of my favourites to play with, but the traditionally singleton nature of cube hurts it. I'm bumping up to 3 copies in my list to see if that helps matters at all.
 
Aoret

Aoret

Developer
Aston said:
Aether Vial

I feel like it's a strong card, and it's one of my favourites to play with, but the traditionally singleton nature of cube hurts it. I'm bumping up to 3 copies in my list to see if that helps matters at all.
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I think I remember a CML rant about how this was terrible, but I forget the details. My thought is that if this is viable at all you'd have to squadron it at 3 or so, rather than break singleton at 3.
 
Jason Waddell

Jason Waddell

Administrator
Staff member
Aston said:


I feel like it's a strong card, and it's one of my favourites to play with, but the traditionally singleton nature of cube hurts it. I'm bumping up to 3 copies in my list to see if that helps matters at all.
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It's awful. I have a friend who wants to always use it. Whenever he drafts against me I let him just put it into his deck for free (it's not in the cube), and when he plays against me I let him put it in his opening hand every time, and it still seems awful.
 
Dom Harvey

Dom Harvey

Contributor


Anyone have thoughts on this? It's unfortunate that white has very few sac outlets, but there's appeal to a Wrath+ that works with Recruiter/Alesha/Reveillark/whatever
 
ahadabans

ahadabans

I am shocked at the replies on aether vial. That card is busted. It's not an aggro card IMO if that's how you've been playing it. It's a midrange control card. It lets you play creatures for free at instant speed. You don't have to put a counter on it so getting value requires very little work.

Recent plays with this card. Turn 4, skaab ruinator for free. Same deck, late game genesis in the yard pay three get back dragon put back into play.

Even outside combo, generic control play. Turn three wall of omens for free keep my three mana for counter. Oh, and put that wall in your way on your combat phase. God forbid if I had a blocker that did damage or had deathtouch.
 
Grillo_Parlante

Grillo_Parlante

Contributor
Its because their formats are really fast. We had a somewhat similar conversation about greater gargadon a year ago.

In a slower format where you can build the counters up to 4-6, and still be in the game, it would be terrifying.
 
ahadabans

ahadabans

Grillo_Parlante said:
Its because their formats are really fast. We had a somewhat similar conversation about greater gargadon a year ago.

In a slower format where you can build the counters up to 4-6, and still be in the game, it would be terrifying.
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I don't think it's comparable to Gargadon at all. Gargadon even in my environment rarely becomes a creature. It gets played as a sac outlet mostly (one that cannot be removed making it valuable), but it's durdly and I can see it being not so great in a fast aggro based format. Aether vial is none of that in a midrange/control deck. It's the opposite.

Sure, it's a worthless top deck, but so are most 1 mana cards. Toss it to draw spell or something and move on. In your opening hand though, I don't care how fast your environment is, putting stuff into play for free with no timing restriction is extremely powerful (actually, it's broken). That card breaks the resource mechanic of the game wide open. It functions as a mana rock that can be upgraded to continually cast bigger and bigger creatures at instant speed for no cost whatsoever.

This card in my opening hand is doom for my opponent. T4 utility dude, t5 dude, T7 finisher - all free - while I am using my mana to cast other business spells, other creatures, etc. That is going to win most games. Ever have a control deck that just can't find that 6 land or double swamp or whatever ? Cast Cataclysm and still drop 5+ drops. This card is retarded.

My 2 cents is you guys should build a deck with a bunch of creatures that is control oriented and put that card in your opening hand and see how many decks can beat you. It's going to be a short list no matter what your cube looks like.
 
FlowerSunRain

FlowerSunRain

Contributor
I mean, how bad do you want that scry 1?

You can get this card could be cheaper as unsummon or vapor snag
You can get it more flexible as cyclonic rift or into the roil
You can even get it for free as snap

I wouldn't call voyage's end unplayable, but there are a LOT of comparable cards out there that are more impactful or less expensive. To the point, there are probably decks that I would run snap, but wouldn't run voyage's end. I'm not sure the reverse is true.
 
Rasmus Källqvist

Rasmus Källqvist



Alright, so completely opposite direction in power level. Is this too oppressive in a regular riptide cube? I think it should be alright but I fear it might be a little harsh on weenie players. On the same token I'd like to see more black based control decks. I just drafted a deck that could bounce and retrigger it a bunch with equilibrium in Timbers cube list , so now I'm sort of in the mood to run it in my own cube as well, since I haven't really seen any black based control decks come out of it.
 
RavebornMuse

RavebornMuse

Rasmus Källqvist said:
skinrender

Alright, so completely opposite direction in power level. Is this too oppressive in a regular riptide cube? I think it should be alright but I fear it might be a little harsh on weenie players. On the same token I'd like to see more black based control decks. I just drafted a deck that could bounce and retrigger it a bunch with equilibrium in Timbers cube list , so now I'm sort of in the mood to run it in my own cube as well, since I haven't really seen any black based control decks come out of it.
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I'm really lost as to how low-powered your environ would need to be for Skinrender to be oppressive. Even if your opponent manages the 5-mana loop of Skinrender+Crystal Shard/Equilibrium, like.. If a 5-mana -3/-3 loop reliant on two types of permanent can lock someone out of a game because the other player has no removal and can't draw into any while you spend 5 mana a turn blasting their little dudes, I feel like the control player here deserves that win. Because I see no one ever worrying about Bonesplitter+Spikeshot Elder doing nearly the exact same thing, at instant speed, for 3 mana, so why would it ever be bad for a control player to do the same thing in an equally-disruptable form at 5 mana? There's a point at which enabling aggro becomes babying aggro, and I feel like this is about it. (Though I will say: Equilibrium is crazy bonkers good, and even I haven't had the will to try it out, because it looks way too broken at my power level. The shard does a much better job enabling such shenanigans in a fair way, I think).
 
Dom Harvey

Dom Harvey

Contributor
Skinrender is actively bad IMO, if I'm running a clunky removal spell I want it to hit the things I care about Villain playing at that stage of the game
 
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