Card/Deck Single Card Spotlight

[ahadabans]

I think at this point DTT is probably the strongest blue cube draw spell. I'm not sure ancestral recall is stronger than it in cube /controversy

I am going to strongly disagree with this. In my mind, there is no way dig is more powerful than Ancestral Recall. Drawing three cards for U with no strings attached is straight up broken. Dig gets you 2 from 7 for UU but barring some self mill shenanigans, you aren't getting that insane deal until T4 or T5 (and even then you probably are paying more than UU). The time delay makes a big difference in my mind, even more so than the cost too. T1-T3, dig is useless. Recall is not only playable early, it's crazy good at any point of the game.

Dig is stellar. No question. But it's not P9. Come on.

 

[Grillo_Parlante]

Is firing off an early recall actually that good in cube though? DTT's ability to draw-double tutor in a singleton environment seems insane.

 

[Diakonov]

Grillo just hates cards that draw 3 for

 

[kevin]

even t1 draw-land-recall and discard two at your end step is "that good"

 

[Dom Harvey]

but is it better than Ponder?

 

[Grillo_Parlante]

even t1 draw-land-recall and discard two at your end step is "that good"

Thats true--it does help set you up for your dig.

But seriously, even in vintage I wonder if recall is better than DTT at this point, what with so many mental missteps floating around.

 

[safra]

Thats true--it does help set you up for your dig.

But seriously, even in vintage I wonder if recall is better than DTT at this point, what with so many mental missteps floating around.

it isn't.

 

[Onderzeeboot]

Watching an opponent resolve a DTT while you were at relative parity is one of the scariest experiences in cube, because you just know you'll get wrecked. Ancestral is just a draw spell. The best draw spell, yes, but at least your opponent can whiff. With DTT there's no way your opp is picking up two bad cards.

That still doesn't make DTT a better card than Ancestral Recall though, because costing and a bunch of cards in the yard is significantly more expensive than just , no questions asked. It's easier to protect, it can be used in the early game, it does, in fact, draw more cards, and it's more likely that you'll be able to cast the cards you drew this turn, because you spent only a single mana. No doubt in my mind that AR > DTT. Except when it comes to scariness.

 

[Dom Harvey]

A lot of it is format-specific, e.g. Dig is far less oppressive than Sphinx's Revelation was in their respective Standard formats, while Dig is light years better in any larger format.

 

[Grillo_Parlante]

The ability to select the cards you need, at instant speed, in a largely singleton format just seems ridiculously good to the point where no other commonly run draw spell comes close. It just seems to have a lot more game winning potential on its own. I think its better than treasure cruise: costing one less mana and drawing more raw cards, I think, isn't as good as instant speed and card quality.

I don't think any of our formats are so condensed where the 1 mana is a big deal, though I could see why that was relevant when the two cards were legal in legacy.

 

[safra]

The ability to select the cards you need, at instant speed, in a largely singleton format just seems ridiculously good to the point where no other commonly run draw spell comes close. It just seems to have a lot more game winning potential on its own. I think its better than treasure cruise: costing one less mana and drawing more raw cards, I think, isn't as good as instant speed and card quality.

I don't think any of our formats are so condensed where the 1 mana is a big deal, though I could see why that was relevant when the two cards were legal in legacy.

hold up counterspells and suddenly vs is huge!

 

[Diakonov]

Even though cube tends toward singleton, most of the cards in a given deck don't vary that much from one another when compared to a format like Vintage, where you're talking about Mana Crypts and Force of Wills and Time Vaults. We've discussed before how Demonic Tutor is decidedly not close to being broken in most riptide cubes, and I think you can reference that when you consider Dig's power level. Yes, it's still great for sure. But Ancestral is ABSURD. I think you're underestimating the number of times during the game in which you can easily cast Ancestral and overwhelm your opponent with card advantage while you still couldn't even consider casting Dig.

 

[Grillo_Parlante]

I've conceded the AR point is not worth pursuing.

The problem with demonic tutor isn't that tutoring isn't powerful, its that sorcery speed tutoring is kind of mediocre in cube. When I suddenly need either 6 mana or two turns to cast the wrath of god I tutored for, thats a big problem. Its one of the reasons why I really like lim-dul's vault and vampiric tutor: even though those cards are card disadvantage, being able to shoot them off EOT and have my tutor target online for my main phase is a big deal.

Yes, we tend to run a lot of similar effects to create effect density, but you still get access to only a finite number of those effects in the draft that can ultimately end up in the deck. I've always found tutor effects especially helpful with build around cards, combos, or heavily meta-gamed answers for control decks.

DTT is a circa 2-4 mana, instant speed, draw 2, that lets you dig for specific cards, and there are a lot of decks that benefit strongly from that. More velocity driven decks can run it because of delve, while more card advantage focused decks can fire it off EOT to make up for the higher relative cost.

Now where it is poor is as an early game draw smoother, but the ceiling on it seems so high that I don't think it really hurts the card.

 

[CML]

As the self-appointed concubine of Legacy poison I have to point out that Dig is way, way worse in that shell than Sylvan Library in almost every way.

 

[MCMcEmcee]

Recall does two very powerful and very special things:
1) draw three cards at instant speed
2) cost one mana

Dig is very close to 2-mana instant speed double tutor. But it isn't actually that. Actual 2-mana double demonic tutor would be better than Recall. 2-6 mana best 2 cards in your top 7 after you spent cards/mana to enable it is a different story.

 

[ahadabans]

Horse is already dead. But another .45 slug to the head.

If wizards lost thier minds and printed this, every sized cube would run it or add it to a ban list for being too good.

Ancestrally-gimped recall
U
Instant
Draw 3 cards and then discard 2 cards.

That should put into perspective how retarded the real version is. I get DTT being super sick in cube. It is. But it's not actually a tutor effect, 6 delve is a large number and UU is not an insignificant cost.

 

[Chris Taylor]

Horse is already dead. But another .45 slug to the head.

If wizards lost thier minds and printed this, every sized cube would run it or add it to a ban list for being too good.

Ancestrally-gimped recall
U
Instant
Draw 3 cards and then discard 2 cards.

That should put into perspective how retarded the real version is. I get DTT being super sick in cube. It is. But it's not actually a tutor effect, 6 delve is a large number and UU is not an insignificant cost.

Oh man it's that thing we work so hard for Brainstorm to be

 

[Eric Chan]

Are you sure your median cruise was 1 mana?

If you're asking if more than 50% of the Treasure Cruises cast here have been for , then yes, I'm quite certain that was the case. Blue tem- uh, aggro disruptive control something something was the best deck around here for a while, and Cruise played no small part in that. It was exactly this type of deck, which runs many cheap cantrips and shaves the land count down to 16 or 15, that wanted a draw spell that costed versus , and preferred drawing into almost any combination of gas and lands to push that tiny sliver of an advantage into a large margin of victory.

 

[ahadabans]

My experience with treasure cruise is similar. It's insane. And there is a huge difference between U and UU even in a heavy blue deck. It does me no good tutoring for cards I can't play. And while you can play DTT EOT in theory, in practice you can't always just pass your turn with UU up until pretty late.

Grillo brought up demonic tutor. And I've considered cutting it. It's value has dropped a lot without swords and other bombs to find. As combo has died so has the value of tutors that effectively add 2 mana to the cost of a spell. There's rarely time for that shit now.

 

[RavebornMuse]

Rhystic Tutor has been the bomb dot com over here in my format and is pretty much exactly where I want my tutor effect to be. Demonic has always looked too dull for my tastes; it's too clearly "good". Which brings me to T-Cruise. I cut T-Cruise because we found it extremely boring over here as well. It's clearly really efficient but that seems to be it, really.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that for us at least, we like cards better when they feel like they demand "good plays" or have "cool effects"; ie, Rhystic Tutor being really cool and us not being interested in Demonic, and us preferring Dig over T-Cruise even though both are pretty powerful, because Dig makes you think about a plan. I feel that the one that asks for the most skill to pilot is almost always the more fun choice, and thus the correct one. That said I also run Brimaz, King of the West Coast because he's "cool and scary and fun to play/beat" so don't listen to me, I'm over here sinning.

 

[CML]

meh you can powermax tutors in cube if you want. most of the time in our environments combo and even "synergy" (less far along that axis) could use a bit of a shot in the arm. i like demonic tutor

 

[Grillo_Parlante]

While I'm glad that the hyperbolic comparison between ancestral recall and dig through time has had such a response, I don't think the conditions really exist in most of our cubes where treasure cruise would be strictly better than dig through time.

We all run good mana, and most of our formats aren't really that condensed. If you're a legacy delver deck or infect, for instance, I could see vs. being a huge deal, as those decks are really concerned about efficiency.

But I don't really see that being an issue in a format where you are playing cards like genesis or have strong fixing. I'm also not sure how good a lot of formats really are at quickly filling up the graveyard, even with the benefit of some density of fetchlands.

There is going to be variance of course across formats but I feel like we are getting a little carried away here with the colored mana difference, on spells that probably aren't going to be shot off until past turn 4. Dig is also going to be more consistent, I believe, because its instant speed, and can function in scenarios where it dosen't have easy access to a flush graveyard. Its low point is very manageable.

Now if your format is really fast like Eric's, than its a different evaluation: but I'm not sure how many of us are at that point.

I also realize that one of the great weaknesses of DTT in forum debates is that there is no good analogy for it. Probably the closest comparison is gifts ungiven, in the sense that they are both cards that yield card advantage and card selection. Even that comparison is filled with flaws.

I'm also really surprised at how much the ability to, well, dig for specific answers or threats is being dismissed. I know we are not all running some number of redundant effects in our cube; and some of you are also running powerful but mechanically isolated cards (like tragic arrogance for example) and its quite powerful (not to mention fun) to have dig effects to ensure you have access to cards like that.

Demonic tutor is a card that I cut a long time ago, and no one has really missed it, for the mana inefficiency reasons I stated. The only reason I drew a comparison with DTT with it, was to highlight that DTT, being an instant, dosen't have those mana inefficency issues. The two cards are quite different.

 

[ahadabans]

I think you can compare DTT to Fact or Fiction. It's not uncommon for me to cast them for the same cost. In that case, Dig is slightly better most of the time because it goes deeper and you get to choose the cards you get. But I almost always have graveyard synergies in my decks. Sometimes going 5 deep and getting something in the yard is better than 2 from 7. I also find people make the wrong choices with FoF too, so actual play is better than theory craft with that card (could be playgroup dependent though).

But Treasure Cruise is super excellent late game. My cube is slower and I run a decent amount of removal. It's not uncommon for a game to linger a bit and with ample mana and nothing "specific" that I need (just more gas), 3 cards for U can be better than 2 for UU (though not usually since you can avoid land with dig).

Anyway, from playing both cards a lot recently, the cost can matter more than it might appear. Again, in a heavy blue deck, using UU to cast dig may not leave me with enough blue mana to cast what I draw. Say I'd really like to find a counter to protect my board state, even with a solid mana base I might not have UUUU until like T8 or later (or never if I'm 2 colors and splashing a third).

I don't know, I think these two cards are a lot closer in power than some are suggesting.

 

[henrizzlebear]

What do all of you think about to support sacrifice themes?

 

[Lucre]

3 colour cards are such a depressing pain. It's like augur of bolas ya know? We need to make a thread some day about "privileged" 3 colour decks. Still two colour value spikes should be enough for normal draft right?

One solution I've proposed was adding a bonus tri land with every rhino etc.