Card/Deck Single Card Spotlight

ahadabans

ahadabans



So, this is an interesting card. Like many cards, it completely missed cube when spoiled mostly because there are more powerful options (for power max lists), but also because it costs 8 and fails the terminate test pretty hard. Still, something like this could be a really fun card to play with depending on what you are looking for.

What I think is cool about this card is the ceiling. It's stupid high because of the seismic assault ability. It's also in a color combination that is well positioned to take advantage. Green has Natural Order and things like Cultivate for fuel (plus can ramp into 8 mana). Red has Sneak Attack (and this card is so much better with haste). He also works in other fattie cheat strategies, but certainly prefers being part of an RG deck. That is sort of nice since most fatties in green/red get stolen and prioritized by reanimator/etc. On a related note, that is probably my favorite thing about Craterhoof Behemoth - the fact that the green mage will always get priority due to the fact that no one wants to use it in other decks over better options.

Anyway, so imagine having a couple lands in hand, you drop this with haste. Swing. Get 1-2 more lands. Conceivably you can do 20 in one turn with the right combination of cards (and not that hard - all you need are lands which you should have plenty of in your deck). Even if you can't do the one turn kill, you can lightning bolt your opponents board and almost always get at least one land a turn to feed him (even more if you are doing Life From the Loam shenanigans).

It's high risk high reward. Something I think fits Gruul really well. Question though is whether you want a one-shot monster like this that dies to doom blade in your cube? If you have a Timmy player, I really think this might be worth a slot in a lot of lists.

Oh yeah, and it's a cyclops and all cube lists are better if they have a cyclops. Stating the obvious here, but just wanted to point it out. ;)
 
Fulcrum

Fulcrum

The only place I've ever seen Borborygmos Enraged played in a constructed sense is in Grishoalbrand. It's place in that deck makes me think the following two things.

1. Borborygmos wants to be cheated into play with haste as you've stated with things like Sneak Attack and Through the Breach.

2. Borborygmos wants to be paired with a massive draw engine as seen in the Grishoalbrand with Griselbrand + Nourishing Shoal + Worldspine Wurm.

I think in cube 90% of the time you're not going to have the massive draw engine so I think that you have to evaluate it mainly as a reanimator/ramp target. I like that Borborygmos fails the Terminate Test. I feel like reanimator targets should fail that test as not to risk the game getting out of control. Even then, I feel like some decks would have problems if you dropped a vanilla 6/6 into play on turn 3 or 4, nevermind something with abilities.

I think the activated ability is super interesting. Even though Borborygmos fails the Terminate test you can still get a little value by discarding some lands and maybe taking some creatures with it.

Now that we're discussing this card, I think it has a really interesting place in a Solar Flare type deck. I could see things like discarding Borborygmos to a Compulsive Research in the early game, bringing it back with Unburial Rites or Resurrection and wiping the opponent's board. Additionally, I think a solar flare type deck can provide a decent big draw engine that Borborygmos wants with cards like Sphinx's Revelation and Stroke of Genius.

In a ramp deck, Borborygmos seems to have synergy with cards that might be dead in the late game like Cultivate. Additionally, clearing lands off of the top of your deck if you can get a hit in seems really good by keeping the gas going. I know I've played ramp decks where my big thing dies and then I draw like 5 lands in a row while something like dumb like Thraben Inspector decimates me.

You can also do dumb things like turn 1 Dark Ritual, Thoughtseize yourself, Shallow Grave Borborygmos attack and discard like 5 lands.

Necropotence seems really good with Borborygmos.

1. Even though I wrote Borborygmos I really mean Borborygmos Enraged. I know somebody is going to say something about it just like those people at FNM that say, "You named the wrong Borborygmos with Pithing Needle!
 
Fulcrum

Fulcrum

These are the relevant rules about graveyard order.

Comprehensive Rules

404.2. Each graveyard is kept in a single face-up pile. A player can examine the cards in any graveyard at any time but normally can't change their order. Additional rules applying to sanctioned tournaments may allow a player to change the order of cards in his or her graveyard.

Tournament Rulse

3.14 Graveyard Order
In formats involving only cards from Urza’s Saga™ and later, players may change the order of their graveyard at any time. A player may not change the order of an opponent’s graveyard.

TLDR: Graveyard order matters when cards in the format says it matters.
 
Onderzeeboot

Onderzeeboot

Ecstatic Orb
ahadabans said:
So what's the deal on the wording of Shallow Grave. I thought graveyard order was not a thing anymore?

I really like the syntax on that versus Animate Dead (which makes me want to unlearn the English language).
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Necromancy is an awesome card, but also has this effect on me. At least the Oracle wording does, especially the second sentence :)

You may cast Necromancy as though it had flash. If you cast it any time a sorcery couldn't have been cast, the controller of the permanent it becomes sacrifices it at the beginning of the next cleanup step.

When Necromancy enters the battlefield, if it's on the battlefield, it becomes an Aura with "enchant creature put onto the battlefield with Necromancy." Put target creature card from a graveyard onto the battlefield under your control and attach Necromancy to it. When Necromancy leaves the battlefield, that creature's controller sacrifices it.
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Fulcrum

Fulcrum

Masters Edition II Dance of the Dead is too much.

83.jpg


It has all of Animate Dead's text essentially with even more words.

Enchant creature card in a graveyard

When Dance of the Dead enters the battlefield, if it's on the battlefield, it loses "enchant creature card in a graveyard" and gains "enchant creature put onto the battlefield with Dance of the Dead." Put enchanted creature card onto the battlefield tapped under your control and attach Dance of the Dead to it. When Dance of the Dead leaves the battlefield, that creature's controller sacrifices it.

Enchanted creature gets +1/+1 and doesn't untap during its controller's untap step.

At the beginning of the upkeep of enchanted creature's controller, that player may pay {1}{B}. If he or she does, untap that creature.
Click to expand...
 
ahadabans

ahadabans

IMO, totally fine at the higher end of the low powered rare cube spectrum. I think Mox Diamond is much better than Chrome Mox in cube because it's very easy to run 1 extra land versus have a good selection of gold cards to get good fixing off of the chrome version. Plus discard >>> exile.

Look at these two cards like you're taking a mulligan to 6 without scry but one of your cards is a mox. Is that too good in your meta?
 
shamizy

shamizy

Mox Diamond is excellent, Chrome Mox is middling. The cost of a future land drop versus an actual card (and discard versus exile) can be steep. You're basically trading a future land drop to accelerate by one with the Diamond while Chrome Mox is costing you an actual card while providing limited colorfixing in most cases. I've found that I've only really wanted Chrome Mox in very aggressive decks like Mono-Red or RW with a mass of similar cards and effects. The only reason I have it in right now is as a placeholder for Mox Diamond when I can eventually acquire a copy. Also, there are just so many cool tricks that you can do with the Diamond vs. the Chrome Mox:

 
Onderzeeboot

Onderzeeboot

Ecstatic Orb
Mox Diamond used to be in my cube, until I drastically cut down on cheap artifact mana. I once had a game where I was on the draw, opened with t1 land, Diamond, Porcelain Legionnaire, t2 attack for 3, Phyrexian Tower, sac Legionnaire for Braids. My opponent was very lucky he was on the play and had a Fire // Ice in hand, or he would have had no chance whatsoever that game.

Edit: Also...

shamizy said:
Can now return to the field with the revolt trigger from Renegade Rallier
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Revolt triggers on stuff leaving the battlefield. It does not work with Mox Diamond itself, you need something else to leave the battlefield to get that land back with the Rallier.
 
Fulcrum

Fulcrum

Thanks for all of the comments on the moxes. I was looking at ways to enable cards like Toolcraft Exemplar, Inventor's Apprentice, and Court Homunculus in an unpowered environment and was curious to see how the impact those two moxes had on other environments.

I posted the following on my cube blog but I feel like it'll get additional discussion here. I'm interested in finding ways to provide creatures with protection for decks that want to combo off with creatures à la Death's Shadow Aggro and Infect.

Fulcrum said:
Protection on a Stick
This is a pretty basic thought I've been having. I want to provide decks that want to combo out with a double strike creature access to protection so that they don't get blown out by removal. Cards like Emerge Unscathed and Shelter seem risky to play, feel unexciting while drafting, and kind of have narrow uses. This led me to try to find creatures that can help protect creatures and am looking into input on some of these cards.



Some of these are obviously much stronger than others, namely Mother of Runes and Selfless Spirit which are already in the cube.

Eight-and-a-Half-Tails seems super mana intensive but if you get access to that much mana, it feels like it can run away with a game. The WW cost seems like a beating in a deck that might want to dip into a third color.

Benevolent Bodyguard Seems interesting as a one time use Mother of Runes. It seems interesting with effects like Reveillark, Alesha, Who Smiles at Death, and Saffi Eriksdotter. Being a 1/1 that doesn't do much until you can combo seems not good though.

Hedron Field Purists probably isn't good since it's mana intensive and doesn't protect from Doom Blade type spells but I'd thought I'd throw it into the discussion just to be thorough. Maybe Wild Defiance is just a better version of this effect.

Void Grafter takes up a multicolor slot and is 3 mana, but the flash is nice and the body is not bad. I've never played with it but it seems kind of interesting.

Another thing about most of these cards are that they are onboard tricks which have pluses and minuses compared to other the instants. It feels like these creatures can make playing against removal feel much more fair. On the other hand, taking away hidden information and the whole mind game of bluffing a protection spell seems like it could be less fun for the player that's trying to combo off.

Lastly, since these guys are all creatures they can at least get in for chip shots if they're all you have. They won't rot in your hand like a top decked Shelter would.
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RavebornMuse

RavebornMuse

Emerge Unscathed and Shelter are both "nuts & bolts" picks I'd happily make, regardless of if my strategy is aggro or control. I actually cut Emerge Unscathed because it was too high-impact in my list for a while (I was running 2 of them). A cube needs a certain number of these "nuts & bolts" picks that aren't the most exciting picks to function, so don't shy away from protection tricks if they interest you - your drafters will learn to love them, and if they don't, that says more about design incompatibilities leading to creatures being over-prioritized than anything bad about the spells themselves. Your proposed scenario of a "top-decked Shelter" rotting in-hand seems a bit absurd to me; yes, that can happen, but that can also happen with your inflexible aggro-combo cards; at least Shelter cantrips and can do lots of work in more control-oriented decks! I think it's a far more versatile tool than you're giving it credit for, personally.

Addressing your protection question more generally, of the non-Mother of Runes / Selfless Spirit options, I'm personally pretty interested in Hedron-Field Purists, but it's obviously not addressing your protection-seeking efforts as far as aggro-combo goes here, so I'll skip over it.

Eight-and-a-Half-Tails has all the problems you point out (mana-intensive, color-intensive), so I'd pass unless your environment is very friendly to it; it's a super-defensive mana-sink that I don't think most aggressive decks would want. Benevolent Bodyguard is really low-powered as well, significantly below Emerge Unscathed by a county mile. Void Grafter has the unfortunate problem of being {U}{G}, which isn't usually an "aggro-combo" card, so you're not really addressing the problem you're posing in this post. I think perhaps you've lost the forest for the trees; none of these proposals really help aggro-combo, which is the deck you're looking to help, and aside from Hedron-Field Purists, I'm not sure what deck really wants them more than Shelter or Emerge Unscathed.

Personally, I'm a big fan of Mother of Runes, Selfless Spirit, Shelter, and Flickering Ward. Those four pieces together provide very flexible tools that aggro-combo, prowess, control, and even "midrange" decks love having access to, and will compete over. Flickering Ward is a seldom-played gem that has an incredible amount of versatility to it; being able to bounce it back to your hand and reallocate and re-calibrate your protection effect is extremely cool, and it's been a top pick around here since I added it and we saw it in action. If you really think you need the most power possible, Emerge Unscathed is typically stronger than Shelter, but it's less-desirable to non-aggressive decks, and by the looks of things, aggressive decks are getting plenty of tools in your cube already.
 
Grillo_Parlante

Grillo_Parlante

Contributor
The big appeal of the instant speed proc effects is that they counter removal--the same goes for blink effects. Any other effects--prowess, double strike, ETBs--is more incidental. There real value is acting as a sort of white spell pierce or daze for pressure decks--cheap disruption to punish players trying to slow the game down with removal. The main benefit for a list is taking some of that identity pressure off of blue so it can do more varied things, diversifying color identity, and enabling strong white based aggro-disruption tools. The principle at work is what is important here, not the literal replication of the technique.

For example, I would probably consider a card like:



Before some of the other cards under discussion. Like many things--and certainly as far as any conceptual cross overs are concerned in cube--principle >>>>> technique.
 
Onderzeeboot

Onderzeeboot

Ecstatic Orb
RavebornMuse and Grillo are spot on, I feel. Another card I like in this role (and run myself) is



Aggressive decks are usually wanting for card advantage or filtering mechanics (which incidentally is why Shelter is a playable card, despite being two mana), and while scry 1 is only a small effect, it's exactly the kind of small bonus you are looking for when you're drafting an aggressive deck.
 
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