Eric Chan's Modern cube (405)

[Eric Chan]

Continuing where I left off:

• Nether Traitor is one of the key cogs of the black recursive aggro deck. You can only have so many Gravecrawlers and Bloodghasts, so the shadowy spirit serves a role as another piece in the well-oiled engine. Apart from Reassembling Skeleton, he's one of the easiest creatures to recur. The body may not be too impressive, but his main function is to serve as sacrifice and discard fodder for Smallpox, Liliana of the Veil, Rotting Rats, Blasting Station, Blood Artist, Mortarpod, and a whole lot more. Though, to be fair, his haste and unblockability isn't entirely irrelevant.
  
  
• I've actually tried Bloodthrone Vampire in this archetype, as the one mana savings is important for a deck that's perennially light on resources. It didn't do enough to warrant its slot, though, so I'm giving Kalastria Highborn lackey Viscera Seer an audition. Jinxed Idol is another sac outlet I'm toying with at the moment. You can never have enough altars on which to lay your own creatures.
  
  
• Sometimes deckstats behaves a little.. funny, and certain cards don't show up. I've seen this happen with other posters' lists, especially on the Visual Spoiler tab. Rest assured, both Stone Rain and Molten Rain are front and center in my cube, because land destruction is hella fun.
  
  
• I really like the Boom // Bust recommendation. I think a six mana Armageddon is certainly a strong reason to consider going into red control, especially with Inferno Titan currently sitting on the sidelines here for power level concerns. Has the Wildfire archetype done any damage in your cube? I can't say I've ever seen it come together here, and it's not for lack of trying.
  
  
• I've heard a lot of good things about Somberwald Sage, so I might just have to track down a copy. Gyre Sage is something of a different animal, and while it hasn't surfaced in our drafts here, I suspect it's more of a beatdown / ramp hybrid card. My Craterhoof Behemoth deck would probably want Somberwald Sage, and my Wolfir Silverheart deck would probably want Gyre Sage.
  
  
• Mwonvuli Acid-Moss is undeniably frivolous, and I'll be the first to tell you that. But, like I said, I love me some land death. Could be my 1996 era roots showing (back then, we used Thermokarst and we liked it!). To be perfectly honest, I've lost to Acid-Moss in my own cube way more than I've won with it, and I wouldn't have it any other way.

Keep us posted on your own list, too, and let us know what changes you make. I don't presume to know everything about Modern cube, and these are only my personal observations. I'll be keeping a close eye on your cube, cause I'm always hankering for new ideas myself.

 

[Lucre]

Wow these choices are so curious to me. I really like the way lingering souls makes decks that might struggle work though and how it adds to stuff like sorin or anthems or carrion feeder while making cards like electrolyze and tramplers feel really good. I just always see it as an interesting cube card.

I think you have a higher opinion of sower than I do. I like that card because of how unreliable it always seems to me.

Lastly I think martial coup and big silly plays like that are pretty essential to the poor GW control deck if you like supporting that archetype. Without library and other weird cards that deck really relies on big silly splashy plays and the ability to play everything it topdecks and count on top decking a real mess of a card.

Remember in formats like Mirrodin // kami the big flashy cards were rewards for having invested in big topdecks and incredible mana. They felt fair more or less. What didn't feel fair were the eternal witnesses. Those are the ones you had to watch out for.

 

[Eric Chan]

I think this is a more of a function of different cube environments than anything else. I can tell you that Lingering Souls is well over the curve in my cube, which is pretty far removed from the power maximization ethos. When Rb aggro decks rely on a whole suite of 1/1 and 2/1 beaters, a card that easily 3-for-1's them while simultaneously nipping away at the planeswalkers in slower control decks is the definition of Too Good. I'm aware that I've neutered an entire archetype, BW Tokens, by removing its key component, but I'm ok with that. It wasn't really fun for anyone to fight through Spectral Procession into Souls, anyways.

GW control isn't really a thing here. We've seen the occasional durdly midrange deck in that colour combination, but my favourite GW archetype has got to be Maverick. It doesn't come together nearly as often as WU tempo does, but a bunch of resilient hate bears backed by anthems and Gavony Township makes for a good time.

Eternal Witness hasn't been a problem so far for us, but you're probably right in that I should keep an eye out on her. At the moment, she's one of the stronger value cards, but she hasn't screamed "broken".

 

[Lucre]

I think what I meant to say was that sometimes despite being scary and swingy the big flashy spells are fine because they require some commitment and at the end of the day your deck is trying to lean on haymakers (even if they are very good ones) and they aren't impossible to deal with but frankly deserve to be high impact. But it's little sneaky cards like witness that are the real offenders. I'm thinking about the thoughtcasts of the world right now and the remands that saunter in beside flashier plays and make it look like they aren't the cards winning the game.

 

[Jason Waddell]

This is a topic that perhaps deserves some fuller attention elsewhere, but part of it is just an intentional choice of what you want to be strong. Which cards do you want to be the game-winning cards? As a player I tend to prefer the "sneaky" low-mana games that are filled with Thoughtseizes and Eternal Witness, rather than just laying out some bomb. We actually, though, had a good long discussion on how powerful your high-end cards should be relative to the speed of your environment:
https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups=#!topic/riptide-laboratory/FAmmz5r5d50[1-25-false] (if you feel like jumping down the rabbit hole)

Lastly, one of the most important tasks in game design is to attempt to create some vaguely "monotonically increasing" function between power level and fun. This is basically player psychology. I shouldn't have to choose between playing a fun deck and playing a deck that is effective. Ideally these two are in lockstep. Some of the big failures in Magic's history come from these things being out of sync (I'm looking at you Affinity!). Naturally, what is "fun" varies from player to player, but that's the basic idea. It's much less important whether things are balanced than whether things are fun.

Which is why I get so miffed when people justify using 5 Swords of X and Y because they're "not broken". Sure, maybe, but many of the games they win are really dumb and unsatisfying. Every game must be won, and as a designer you have control over the quality of those victories.

 

[Eric Chan]

Yeah, we certainly aren't averse to having decks with Ancestral Vision and Remand take the whole thing down. For a long time, my cube was in a place where going bigger than the next guy was arguably the optimal strategy, and six and seven mana spells like Grave Titan, Wurmcoil Engine, Consecrated Sphinx, and Elesh Norn were taking on all comers. It wasn't necessarily a bad place to be, as some drafters just like powering out lands and going big. But for me, the novelty had worn off. I'm working to dial back some of the power on the high end, so that the tempo decks that subsist on four lands in play and interact on turns one through three are on equal footing. Nothing makes me happier than to see a U/R tempo deck run the table with cheap, incremental value spells, where they have to fight for every inch, and the margin for error is incredibly small.

 

[Chris Taylor]

Oh god remanding an ancestral vision...

It's possible your problem lies not in the quality of removal spells, but in the density. I had a similar problem with the (usually grixis) Hoard the removal spells deck, and my fix was to go and cut a huge swath of the removal in my cube (Bringing it down from an almost unheard of 30% to somewhere closer to 14. Don't quote me on those numbers, you can probably find more exact ones in the first sheet of my cube spreadsheet, where I keep my notes)

Part of the problem I had was I wasn't being strict enough in my definition of removal. Gideon? Removal. Mana Leak? Removal. Maze of Ith? removal. Wrath of God? removal. Ghostly Prison? Removal. Dungeon Geists? Removal.
I know some of those seem obvious to you, but try going through your cube, and seeing what percentage of each color (and the cube as a whole) counts as removal using the most liberal definition you can. It may prove enlightening

 

[Chris Taylor]

I'm not sure I agree with all the Fatty cuts, but perhaps this is where the difference between our cubes shows: I have armageddon to fall back on and you don't

One of the reasons my cube isn't specifically modern is because while rare, there are pre-modern cards with modern design sensibilities. One of the cards I wanted to suggest for the wildfire deck (assuming you don't want to cut the package) is fire diamond. Typical Control decks might pick it, but they'll feel damn embarrassed about playing it.
That card is way more balanced than the signets are.

 

[Lucre]

This philosophy really makes me curious about how it drafts. The poorer removal especially has my interest.

I might be inclined to use some promo new face options to extend the range of your options though. A pernicious deed here an ftk there won't mess with the power level too much and might fix issues with cards like procession. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

I have to say, I like big blowout cards in decks that have earned them and I think martial coup is one of them. It's not a card that feels good until you have a million mana and in a cube that seems as front loaded at yours it seems like not everyone is looking to get to the very reaches of the curve every game but someone ought to. I think that's all I had in mind. Little reward for some decks that need a flashy play to justify the thing it does.

 

[Eric Chan]

Chris, you make a good point about removal density. I actually carefully track anything that could be construed as removal, for the purposes of tallying it up, much like you. I don't file counterspells under spot removal - I've got a separate tally for that - but Garruk Relentless certainly fits the bill, as does Cunning Sparkmage, Skinrender, and Mind Control. I even go so far as to count bounce spells as half a removal spell, since even temporarily nullifying a threat with the likes of Repeal can go a long way. Then Day of Judgment, Earthquake, and Massacre Wurm and their ilk get their own category entirely, under mass removal.

Using those metrics, I'm currently sitting at a 16.3% spot removal rate and 3.2% mass removal rate. The mass removal density - roughly 13 spells in ~410 cards - has always felt more or less "right" to me, as far as providing the control decks a decent selection, without stepping over the line into being oppressive. It's the spot removal amount that I've always struggled with, and as you can see from the posts in this thread, I've been adjusting the knob both in terms of quality and quantity. The spot removal rate used to be closer to 19%, and that included the cream of the crop, those one mana universal answers. I have no doubt in my mind that this was a contributing factor in the durdly midrange decks rising to the top, and in attempting to correct for that, I've shaved the numbers to where they are now. It feels better to me now, and having around 20% of the cube be one kind of removal or another means that people aren't starved for options. The difference is that now, it's just a little bit more reasonable to run your 2/2's out there and hope to get there.

 

[CML]

eric -- i think 13/410 might be a little too high for sweepers, i can't find the damn cooperfauss article on it but i think he mentions the appallingly high rate on modo as being a blight on that format, which it is. yours is (i assume) lower than that but i always advise to err on the side of fewer, or at least try a slightly adjusted configuration.

what really jumps out at me is that your spot removal rate is so high compared to mine (a generous count brings it up to 50/405 = 12.34567%.) i noticed in jason's most recent article that his games seemed defined by who had the kill spell to a greater extent than in my cube. i'm not sure what the right configuration is -- too little removal is AVR, too much is SOM -- but i assume cube environments are pretty sensitive to the amount of spot removal. i guess i'd also want to check how much of it is getting played, what other effects i have in place of it, what other effects i could have in place of it, etc. and at that point it's a waste of time to analyze when you could just playtest, i mean, play!

 

[Jason Waddell]

I'll also chime in to say that in the article, I was playing a very straightforward deck with not too many interesting lines, which was a bit disappointing.

The one thing many cubes are missing is the RPS mechanic that keeps spot removal in check. If you look at Legacy, any deck can play pretty much infinite removal, but removal is just dead against some decks. Cube decks (mostly) have to win with creatures. It's for this reason I like having the occasional Hexproof/Shroud guy. Spot removal is also pretty bad against the Zombie decks.

For the Cooperfauss article Google "Please try this at home cooperfauss".

 

[CML]

http://www.channelfireball.com/articles/cuberhauss-please-try-this-at-home-part-2/

jason: i think the rps thing still works, like if aggro is curving out against control it has a much better chance than if it's drawing bolts and stuff.

looks like the modo cube clocks in at 6.25/person = 6.25/45 = 13.9% -- though i wonder if that includes sweepers too (it's not clear from the article), and the sweeper graphic is busted (so i tweeted at andy to try and find a fixed version).

it might be useful to make the denominator not cube size but number of spells, so i get 50/338 = 14.7% for spot removal. i think this will be a little closer to the final modo cube figure. also -- 9/338 = 2.7% for sweepers.

i've also been wondering about the concentration of creatures in cube, i think my final count of 185/338 = 54.7% is aberrantly high.

someone should make the mcd spot removal and sweepers threads, i might do it later today.

 

[Jason Waddell]

It's long been my theory that aggro decks cannot beat 22 Doom Blades + Sphinx of Jwar Isle. Granted, I came up with theory while thinking about something else, and never put more mental effort into it. But this thought happened a while ago, hence the "long been my theory".

 

[Eric Chan]

I have to say, I like big blowout cards in decks that have earned them and I think martial coup is one of them. It's not a card that feels good until you have a million mana and in a cube that seems as front loaded at yours it seems like not everyone is looking to get to the very reaches of the curve every game but someone ought to. I think that's all I had in mind. Little reward for some decks that need a flashy play to justify the thing it does.

If you take a look at my cube list, there's still plenty of high end rewards for slower decks to build up towards. White has things like Sun Titan and Angel of Serenity; blue has planeswalkers up the wazoo; black has a plethora of fatties, including Sheoldred; if you dip into multicolour, Simic Sky Swallower, Cruel Ultimatum, and Maelstrom Wanderer are your rewards. So drafts aren't usually lacking for bombs. I'm not averse to running Martial Coup, and actually had it in my list for a long time, but I generally find that the cheap sweepers are more vital for control decks' success. As you can see from the discussion that follows, sweeper density is a real concern, especially in a tight list like mine. So I've chosen to double up on Day of Judgment while giving white one additional option - currently Terminus - but cap it at that.

I might be inclined to use some promo new face options to extend the range of your options though. A pernicious deed here an ftk there won't mess with the power level too much and might fix issues with cards like procession. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

Not to put you on the spot here, but this is the kind of exact kind of thing I'm actively trying not to do. It's one thing to identify cards that are powerful, but unfun, and then balance an entire cube environment around them. That's what leads to cards like Torch Fiend and Smash to Smithereens appearing in packs alongside Sol Ring. It's another thing to decide up front how you want to shape your environment, and include cards that specifically work towards that goal. Only cards that fit into your design are even considered, and anything that doesn't mesh with your vision is excised. In this particular case, cheap token producers that make more than two evasive bodies were leading to more anti-fun than fun, and tokens as an archetype have already had their day in the sun here, and then some. I'm happy to move onto the next iteration of my cube that doesn't include them, so I never really considered letting them remain while simultaneously ratcheting up the power of the answers. It's dangerous to head down that path, as when you move the bar up, it doesn't just affect the card you're trying to hose, it hits all the archetypes in your cube metagame.

That isn't to say a card like Lingering Souls won't be back someday, but it doesn't fit into the mold of what I'm doing at the moment.

 

[Eric Chan]

eric -- i think 13/410 might be a little too high for sweepers, i can't find the damn cooperfauss article on it but i think he mentions the appallingly high rate on modo as being a blight on that format, which it is. yours is (i assume) lower than that but i always advise to err on the side of fewer, or at least try a slightly adjusted configuration.

Yeah, I'm totally with you here. My definition of mass removal is really liberal, and probably different than most people's. Anything that can potentially take out multiple creatures is labelled as mass removal, so alongside Terminus and Pyroclasm, I'm counting Angel of Serenity and Engineered Explosives. The number of actual unconditional sweepers here - your Damnations - can be counted on one hand.

I also noticed in Jason's draft report article that his removal density is way higher than mine. I think it works because his environment is so fast, and you're forced to blow your stash on the likes of Steppe Lynx and Vampire Hexmage. Like you said, though, spot removal density is a really sensitive dial to adjust, because it touches so many other things. I'm sure there's a correlation with the speed of the cube and the power level of the creatures, but you're right in that at some point, it's just easier to sit down and play than to keep theorycrafting.

Re: your other stats, I've got exactly 200 creatures in my cube at last count (I classify token makers like Midnight Haunting and spells that can only ever result in bodies like Bribery as creatures). That puts me at 49% creatures in the overall makeup of my cube, and 200/356 spells = 56% when just looking at spells. So I don't think your numbers are out of whack. If anything, it's mine that are odd!

 

[Jason Waddell]

I don't think creatures/cards is a more useful statistic than creatures/spells. As for the creature density, mine is on the lower side with about 160/360, counting only things with card type "Creature".

Well, I guess if you look at spells only I am at 160/313 = 51%.

 

[Lucre]

Not to put you on the spot here, but this is the kind of exact kind of thing I'm actively trying not to do. It's one thing to identify cards that are powerful, but unfun, and then balance an entire cube environment around them. That's what leads to cards like Torch Fiend and Smash to Smithereens appearing in packs alongside Sol Ring. It's another thing to decide up front how you want to shape your environment, and include cards that specifically work towards that goal. Only cards that fit into your design are even considered, and anything that doesn't mesh with your vision is excised. In this particular case, cheap token producers that make more than two evasive bodies were leading to more anti-fun than fun, and tokens as an archetype have already had their day in the sun here, and then some. I'm happy to move onto the next iteration of my cube that doesn't include them, so I never really considered letting them remain while simultaneously ratcheting up the power of the answers. It's dangerous to head down that path, as when you move the bar up, it doesn't just affect the card you're trying to hose, it hits all the archetypes in your cube metagame.

That isn't to say a card like Lingering Souls won't be back someday, but it doesn't fit into the mold of what I'm doing at the moment.

I think I know where you are coming from. I guess I was just reaching to add more rationalization. I think some of the judge promo cards might be fun because I know I love them and there are a lot of them that do something interesting that modern design has yet to find a really solid way to replicate: Engineered Explosives or Ratchet Bombs from Deed I think are a neat example of this. I also sorta like the aspect that sliding in some cheats like that diversify the card pool that folks have been getting used to in modern or even in the standard progression for a long time. When else do you get to play FTK these days (totally not a EDH player sadly) ?

Anyway it was just a thought when I was perusing your multicoloured section and I started thinking "wow this really is a whole different ball game isn't it?" and it isn't that my first inclination is to drag you back to other styles, it's more like I get all excited about the cool BUG decks I could be making in this format or how the availabilities might make different archetypes flourish in the absence of certain cards, but of course it's not just a couple decks that are missing powerful pieces, it's also some of the other interesting cards that I'm not sure how to relate to the absence of yet. Deed and FTK just came to mind because they are often there for me when I'm trying to do something cute, whether it be trying to make dorky big red decks, kiki jiki decks or the very special things playing both green and black in a deck could help you out with and how heading down that road to help smooth over a problem with proper removal or disruption would often show you a bunch of synergy in all kinds of 3 colour decks.

Anyway I think I'm rambling. I just don't think those cards are so busted and I wanted to clarify that I didn't mean to sound like I thought your cube could use a injection of traditional elements. Though I'll admit I'm always sad when I don't see any Night's Whispers in a list. I keep thinking my favourite card is Remand until I remember how much I like Night's Whisper.

 

[Eric Chan]

Yeah, no worries, I think this is just a case of different strokes for different folks. It's true that my cube is missing some of the powerful plays and synergies you get from a traditional list, but I'm aiming to produce some equally cool, if slightly less powerful, interactions in my somewhat off the wall take on cube. So while you won't find Armageddon or Recurring Nightmare here, there are lots of other cards that get a boost from an environment where the ceiling on power level is lower. Kozilek's Predator is maybe the poster child for cards that I didn't expect a lot from, but continue to impress here, and in a variety of archetypes, too.

It's funny you mention Night's Whisper, because that was I card I had in briefly, but cut for being too low impact. Is it just a pet card of yours, or do you find it vital to certain decks?

 

[Chris Taylor]

I'd say pet card. I don't feel comfortable casting that card on turn 2 thesedays

 

[Lucre]

Well that's the thing, it really doesn't need to happen on turn 2. I will say it goes a long way to making your decks less reliant on blue for their low impact card advantage / fixing spells. It's like how you don't Thirst on turn 3 all the time. If your black section can gain any life or if you happen to pair black with a colour that has lifegain sorta value plays but has trouble getting more cards in hand to play with or often finds itself in topdeck mode (green / white) this card goes a long way. I have always loved it in RB aggro decks and WWb decks too to capitalize on the usual irrelevance of your lifetotal.

I guess it's a bit of a pet card to me, but it's an awfully good pet card with a wide spectrum of uses that is splashable and brings an ability from one colour that is stacked and always fought over to another colour where the only cards you see it on tend to be bomby pickes that are harder to control.

It kinda reminds me of how the 1cc ponder type sorceries are good when I play it. It is so cheap it just slides right into a curve really rewarding you for picking up a bunch of cheap spells and with decks that like to make a million mana needless to say have trouble because they put all their cards in hand into play and then struggle to find plays to sink all that mana into. Whisper makes a big impact on that.

I think low impact on a draw spell is sorta what you want in them. I think it's a triumph of design when you've got a thoughtcast that doesn't turn the world upsidedown.

 

[Eric Chan]

So.. here's the thing. Even with the Modern restriction that I use, black has no shortage of good two-for-ones. Indeed, you could reasonably argue that black is the king of card advantage, outside of straight traditional card draw. Just looking at 4cmc cards and under in Modern:

Dark Confidant
Dusk Urchins
Gatekeeper of Malakir
Liliana's Specter
Phyrexian Rager (kind of the poster boy for card advantage)
Nekrataal
Skinrender
Bitterblossom
Wrench Mind
Phyrexian Arena
Stupor
Consuming Vapors

These are all cards that I'm currently running, or have run in the past. The nice part about all the creatures is that they give you a body, which can sometimes go unappreciated. In a fairly fast cube like mine, though, where board presence and tempo tend to matter more than the number of cards you've stockpiled in hand, that 2/2 beatstick can go a long way. In the case of the discard spells, it's true that they don't have any immediate board impact, much like card draw. However, when you bring them in as a countermeasure against the slower decks, it has some serious blowout potential if you pull the trigger at the right time.

All that's to say is that when I'm drafting black, I'm not really interested in a traditional draw-two. Maybe your cube environments are structured a little differently, but filling up my hand at a tempo loss to myself is a formula for either getting clocked in the face, or out-ramped and out-bombed. It's also kind of telling that even though Sign in Blood has been legal in Standard for almost a year now, no deck has seen fit to employ it. Neither the fast Zombie aggro decks at the beginning of the season, nor the midrangy Junk concoctions that have been a mainstay more recently. Draw twos just aren't what they used to be in 1999, or even 2007, for that matter.

It's funny that you bring up Thirst for Knowledge as a comparison, because to be frank, without explicit support for the reanimator or artifact archetypes in my cube, Thirst here is actually mediocre at best. All of the "air" cards in blue, I find, are more and more of a trap as I push the needle on the cube's speed. In our drafts, you can't afford to sit there and do nothing sculpting the perfect hand, because the other decks are busy going under or over you while you durdle. I've drafted plenty of what, on paper, were immaculate base blue control decks with tons of card advantage, only to get absolutely crushed by so-called "bad" decks. Just hammered. Maybe that's more a critique of my current cube design than anything else, but regardless, you have to be really careful when casting Compulsive Research here, lest you open yourself up to a can of whoop ass.

Please don't take any of this to be a personal attack against you, or the cards that you value. I totally understand that Night's Whisper is a card that's been traditionally strong for you, and I can see how it would be sweet in the right environments. It's just that we've tried it, and it doesn't cut the mustard here.

 

[Jason Waddell]

So.. here's the thing. Even with the Modern restriction that I use, black has no shortage of good two-for-ones. Indeed, you could reasonably argue that black is the king of card advantage, outside of straight traditional card draw. Just looking at 4cmc cards and under in Modern:

Dark Confidant
Dusk Urchins
Gatekeeper of Malakir
Liliana's Specter
Phyrexian Rager (kind of the poster boy for card advantage)
Nekrataal
Skinrender
Bitterblossom
Wrench Mind
Phyrexian Arena
Stupor
Consuming Vapors

These are all cards that I'm currently running, or have run in the past. The nice part about all the creatures is that they give you a body, which can sometimes go unappreciated. In a fairly fast cube like mine, though, where board presence and tempo tend to matter more than the number of cards you've stockpiled in hand, that 2/2 beatstick can go a long way. In the case of the discard spells, it's true that they don't have any immediate board impact, much like card draw. However, when you bring them in as a countermeasure against the slower decks, it has some serious blowout potential if you pull the trigger at the right time.

All that's to say is that when I'm drafting black, I'm not really interested in a traditional draw-two. Maybe your cube environments are structured a little differently, but filling up my hand at a tempo loss to myself is a formula for either getting clocked in the face, or out-ramped and out-bombed. It's also kind of telling that even though Sign in Blood has been legal in Standard for almost a year now, no deck has seen fit to employ it. Neither the fast Zombie aggro decks at the beginning of the season, nor the midrangy Junk concoctions that have been a mainstay more recently. Draw twos just aren't what they used to be in 1999, or even 2007, for that matter.

It's funny that you bring up Thirst for Knowledge as a comparison, because to be frank, without explicit support for the reanimator or artifact archetypes in my cube, Thirst here is actually mediocre at best. All of the "air" cards in blue, I find, are more and more of a trap as I push the needle on the cube's speed. In our drafts, you can't afford to sit there and do nothing sculpting the perfect hand, because the other decks are busy going under or over you while you durdle. I've drafted plenty of what, on paper, were immaculate base blue control decks with tons of card advantage, only to get absolutely crushed by so-called "bad" decks. Just hammered. Maybe that's more a critique of my current cube design than anything else, but regardless, you have to be really careful when casting Compulsive Research here, lest you open yourself up to a can of whoop ass.

Please don't take any of this to be a personal attack against you, or the cards that you value. I totally understand that Night's Whisper is a card that's been traditionally strong for you, and I can see how it would be sweet in the right environments. It's just that we've tried it, and it doesn't cut the mustard here.

To be fair Thirst for Knowledge's instant speed is a pretty big contributor to its value. I found Night's Whisper to be pretty borderline. I ran it at 420 but not at 360. I wouldn't begrudge anyone for running it or cutting it.

 

[Lucre]

If thirst for knowledge cost 2 and was a sorcery wouldn't that be similarly good as having been an instant?
2cc is a really small commitment on your turn. It's also really silly to imagine trying to play this card on turn two in most decks. You play it when you don't have tempo things you want to do and you are running low on cards. I guess a combo deck might want to play it on turn two but it's kinda still a stretch. I think

I like it because it spreads blues abilities out more to colours that could use the enabling, it's a really inexpensive trick that makes a big impact (2 mana for straight up +1 card is just so solid in my experience) but it's also a thinking card. It's like everything you wanted from harmonize that harmonize just did poorly. Maybe these are just my personal reasons for it being a pet but I think they are good reasons for being a pet. We pay so much more life on colour fixing.

 

[Eric Chan]

You'll have to help me understand what kind of deck wants Night's Whisper, cause I guess I'm still not seeing it. A two mana spell that isn't good on turn two and is only good when you're out of gas clearly doesn't belong in an aggro deck, which cares about developing the board and pressing the advantage. So I imagine we're looking at a slower midrangy or control build. In those decks, though, wouldn't I be better off with any of Dusk Urchins, Liliana's Specter, or the perennial card advantage bear, Phyrexian Rager? Spells that give me a body while putting me up a card are useful at any point in the game, and when they can immediately play defence or keep planeswalkers in check, they're much more likely to make my maindeck. Rager, in particular, is an all-round useful utility man that goes pretty high here, as it suits most any black deck.

I suppose I need to be convinced that a draw-two is better than any of the twelve cards I listed above, some of which I don't even run anymore. As it is, I'd much sooner give Dusk Urchins another kick at the can before I look at Night's Whisper a second time.

Maybe it's just that your cube configurations have been wildly different than mine, though. Is combo a large element of your cube metagame? I can see a draw-two being more useful if all you're interested in is playing solitaire, and putting together some key combinations of cards.