Card/Deck Single Card Spotlight

[Grillo_Parlante]

I think the mana requirement makes it pretty bad even in power max lists. It always wheeled over here.

 

[Onderzeeboot]

This is a stupid question I think. But is this card just too broken to run in non-powermax lists?

Well... It's a Griselbrand that can't be reanimated, can't kill your opponent, doesn't give you the cards immediately, and doesn't offer a way to recoup the life loss. It's insanely powerful when it works at its full potential, but I assume it's harder to get maximum value from it in cube?

 

[Chris Taylor]

Yeah it's largely aweful. Unless you have some serious combo sheninigans going on, it's largely a bad play to replace regular draw steps with this, because it's quite aweful in a control deck unless they manage to cast this and 3-5 lightning helixs back to back

 

[Eric Chan]

Right, this card ties more into combo archetypes than anything else. If your plan is to just attack with Gravecrawlers, or to keep the board clear with Damnations before one of your finishers mops up, Necropotence may not be what you want. If, on the other hand, you need another Timetwister-like draw-7 effect to go along with your rituals and dig for your combo engine, then Necro has you covered. It's at its best in powered lists, where there are as many unfair decks as fair ones.

 

[DreamPaint]

Necro is one of my absolute favorite cards but I don't think it's good enough for typical cubes. It's too hard to cast and most decks are aggressive enough to punish it. I prefer Arena and potentially even Connections, even though i've never played with the ladder.

 

[ahadabans]

Thanks guys. I've always been a big fan of necro. I'm trying to push devotion (especially in black - as mono black was always one of my favorite decks), so I'm considering adding a few really powerful cards that have heavy mana requirements to "reward" those who commit heavily. Problem is it doesn't translate well to drafts. So really just tossing out ideas right now.

I appreciate the input. Has anyone successfully made mono black a thing? And if so, how did you do it?

 

[Chris Taylor]

Gravecrawler + Gravecrawler + Gravecrawler + Gravecrawler

 

[Rasmus Källqvist]

such an elegant solution

 

[Diakonov]

Thanks guys. I've always been a big fan of necro. I'm trying to push devotion (especially in black - as mono black was always one of my favorite decks), so I'm considering adding a few really powerful cards that have heavy mana requirements to "reward" those who commit heavily. Problem is it doesn't translate well to drafts. So really just tossing out ideas right now.

I appreciate the input. Has anyone successfully made mono black a thing? And if so, how did you do it?

I've been trying Phyrexian Obliterator, and people like it. Also Dark Ritual, Erebos, Oubliette, Massacre Wurm, Nightveil Specter.

 

[Eric Chan]

Yeah, hybrid is your friend here.



Toss in a Gray Merchant and an Erebos, and you should be almost good to go.

 

[CML]

Yeah, hybrid is your friend here.



Toss in a Gray Merchant and an Erebos, and you should be almost good to go.

yeah i'm there with you. you can also do stuff like grave pact or attrition

i wanna try Necro but the card is unbelievably busted. i think you guys are hugely underestimating both that and yawg barg. the griselbrand "increments of 7" is a real drawback.

 

[ahadabans]

i wanna try Necro but the card is unbelievably busted. i think you guys are hugely underestimating both that and yawg barg.

That's my fear as well. I fully expected more people to say this. Instead, most feel it's almost not cube worthy. I'm pretty surprised.

I don't have extensive experience with it, but I have played it and every time it has resolved this card did very broken things. I won't say I've won every game (I have run out of life before), but when you have a decent life total it's very hard to lose with this in play.

 

[anotak]

yeah i'm sort of confused that people are saying its not that good

 

[Grillo_Parlante]

Excerpt from this channel fireball article:

Add Bargain to the list of expensive enchantments that have no effect on the board. Again, in a powered Cube, Bargain is a whole different animal, as Moxen enable not only earlier Bargaining, but more to do when you resolve it. However, for us unpowered folk, Bargain kept getting worse as other cards got better, and eventually the time came to just let it go entirely. Necropotence is very similar, in that it's almost impossible to cast for the effect it gives you, and your life total is more dear these days in Cube than it once was. When you see these cards in a pack, think carefully about what the board might look like when you want to cast it, and how much life you could possibly be willing to pay if your position is an unfavorable one.

I think my original cube environment was just really poor for necropotence. A enchantment that didn't immediately affect the board was basically uncastable, and it didn't really have a home. That was so long ago that I don't want to seem like i'm objectively shooting the card down. I just think its one of those cards that can easily end up in a cube where it seems much worse than it actually is.

The casting cost is a big deal though, and its seen me cut death cloud and geralf's messenger--all cards I like.

 

[CML]

That's my fear as well. I fully expected more people to say this. Instead, most feel it's almost not cube worthy. I'm pretty surprised.

I don't have extensive experience with it, but I have played it and every time it has resolved this card did very broken things. I won't say I've won every game (I have run out of life before), but when you have a decent life total it's very hard to lose with this in play.

i had the same reaction and have been convinced to give it a go

 

[Jonas]

I ran Necro in my cube for a while, when it was good it was great, and nobody played it unless they had a deck that could handle it, so it ended up in sideboards quite often.

 

[ahadabans]

I ran Necro in my cube for a while, when it was good it was great, and nobody played it unless they had a deck that could handle it, so it ended up in sideboards quite often.

I'm going to throw it back it. My hope is that I can entice another one of my players into drafting some heavy/mono black goodness. Not sure it's going to work though. I really don't like Erebos, so the only real incentive to run heavy black in my cube is stuff like Necro, Merchant, Lashwrithe (which is super narrow and probably questionable but I really like the art and the living weapon mechanic in general). Honestly, I think this is going to be epic fail on my part but I can't help myself. I have a soft spot or mono black.

 

[MCMcEmcee]

Necro always played worse than Phyrexian Arena/Bloodgift Demon/etc. when it was in my cube. Sticking one early usually just meant not having enough mana to use all the cards, sticking one late often meant not having enough life to pull ahead enough to matter.
The main issue I have with Necro is that it's a very powerful effect that makes you play worse cards to make sure you can actually cast it in a reasonable window. Drawing lots of cards gets way worse when you aren't drawing many good cards.

You can mitigate this with fast mana and bomb-ier cards and such, which has its own share of issues.

 

[CML]

this sounds like it could be great fun. you've convinced me to try it

 

[Lucre]

double your grey merchants etc and you might have a deck there. Who wants to draft mono black though? I thought part of the idea was that those cubes sucked.

I'm a much bigger fan of arena etc but I'm sure necro has potential here somewhere, it's just about what you're looking for.

 

[miles]

has anyone played with ? pretty sure its not great and too slow to really do anything but wanted to make sure.

 

[Goldenpineapple]

It's fine if you play a couple weak fliers then just get in for a couple every turn. Has some tension between blocking and drawing. Cheap is great for tempo decks. Cloudfin Raptor -> Kor skyfisher -> military intelligence etc.

 

[Lucre]

Seems great with token themes and like tradewind/blue devotion decks.

Seems like an auto include in tribal cube.

 

[Eric Chan]

Anyone else tried this card yet? I had it tonight, with an Angel of Despair 'imprinted' on it, but was thoroughly underwhelmed. There were a number of times where my Angel had been discarded, milled, or had died, and my Aether Searcher did a whole lot of nothing.

I had high hopes for this guy, too.

 

[Lucre]

I've seen it in a couple cube tutor drafts. It was pretty awful most times I picked it up, but maybe AEther Searcher into Banisher Priest isn't actually awful.