Elsepth is still plenty strong as a card in the vast majority of cubes.
This post kind of reads to me like you believe I'm arguing from the position that Elspeth is a bad card, which is not what I am saying. I'm seeing all of these posts from users who haven't played with Elspeth in years saying how she's oppressive GRBS when I know from recent experience that this is not true. I think this argument did hold water at one point when the card was first printed, and there are still plenty of environments where she leads to undesirable play patterns, but that doesn't mean she shouldn't be a consideration.
However, I don't think that that's a fair barometer to judge the power level of a cube.
When I think lower powered it's more making the choice to actively play lesser options instead of the top version of a given effect. Like
Galepowder Mage instead of
Restoration Angel,
Omen of the Sea and other 2CMC cantrip options instead of
Preordain or
Ponder, or
Dread Return instead of super efficient reanimation ala
Reanimate or
Animate Dead. It's design choices to create certain gameplay patterns that would not be present in cubes trying to maximize the power level of their inclusions.
Unless we're working with a very specific definition of high powered here
Plenty of cubes that are of a high power level still deploy 4 and 5 mana cards that can make big impacts in a game if resolved.
Cube speed and power level aren't inherently linked. While it is true that building a fast low-power environment is more difficult than building a slow high-power cube, that doesn't change the inherent power level of either environment. What does change based on Cube speed is how certain cards interact within said environment. You seem to understand this in your discussion of Urza, new threats, and Unholy Heat, but then you keep going back to the power level point for some reason.
Like, yeah, you can have a high-power Cube where every deck is playing 5 or 6 drops in the mainboard and players don't start to develop their board until turn three on average, but that completely changes the relationships between broad swaths of cards. In that context, Elspeth might be too much because players won't have enough time to develop their board before they have to deal with her. That's probably
the situation where she is nothing more than a removal check. But, I also acknowledged the fact the speed of a Cube matters for this card in literally my first sentence.
I think we might just have completely different definitions of what constitutes a lower-powered environment.
I don't believe whether or not we agree as what constitutes as low power actually matters here. I only mentioned power level because I think good Planeswalkers like Elspeth and Teferi are going to be a little bit much even for fast cubes focusing on lower power cards. Any good Planeswalker is going to be hard to beat in a fast pauper cube, for example.
More evasive creatures that apply pressure yes, but I don't know if that suddenly makes Elspeth more palatable. It's not just one side that'll be deploying answers and developing a board presence in a game. Presumably you've been trading resources with the opponent to end up with a board state where you can deploy Elspeth as the finisher. And even if we have more efficient removal nowadays, often times you need it to match up with more pushed threats lower in the curve which might exhaust resources to where you won't have an answer ready for a resolved Elspeth. What's more realistic is that both sides have been firing off removal back and forth to pick off lower costed pushed threats on both sides to maintain parity. If you just deploy an Elspeth without evaluating the board state then sure she's going to suck in the face of evasive attackers, but I don't think this diminishes how powerful she can be. Elspeth is still hard to deal with if she sticks around. Just having more efficient removal available doesn't mean that you'll just have it in hand and ready to deploy.
Sure but that's just the point of a control finisher. You wait until your opponent has exhausted most of their resources, then you slam your big thing and hope it can win. Honestly that's what teferi does as well. The big issue with Elspeth was that she could come down on boards that weren't totally safe and she could throw up a wall with tokens. The newer evasive threats and improved removal make it much harder to get to a positon where playing an Elspeth is safe. Actually that's a big reason why she feels safe now– there are way fewer situations where she can just come down and warp the game in a manner different from any other control finisher because answers are much easier to find. Having more answers makes it much easier to find an answer when one is needed.
Yeah, I just don't agree with this take. Unless we're working with a very specific definition of high powered here, Elsepth is still plenty strong as a card in the vast majority of cubes. Like I can totally see why you'd say Elspeth isn't a big deal since your linked cube has an atypical distribution of 2s and has very low average CMC for deployed threats and presumed decks. But I don't think this is a typical starting point when evaluating Elspeth, Sun's Champion.
Shamizy I think your framing is all wrong here and that it is leading you to an erroneous outcome. Reading every card through the nebulous idea of the "vast majority of Cubes" is simply never going to lead to a satisfying outcome when trying to uncover any sort of truth regarding Cube design. Many Cubes are somewhere between a clone of a bad MTGO/MTGS list or are working somewhere in a retail limited style "10 2-color pair archetypes" space. However, running with the assumption that every card should be evaluated through this framework is deeply flawed. Cube design has evolved a lot in the last couple of years, but these advancements haven't filtered to every Cube designer yet. The "average" Cube, therefore, isn't going to even remotely mirror what an experienced and up-to-date designer like Dom might build.
Unfortunately, Dom did not really share any details about what the Cube he's working on looks like, how it's supposed to play, or what he's even looking for outside of the fact that the Cube doesn't have many Planeswalkers. We're left to kind of do a lot of guesswork as to what he might have meant for ourselves. When someone is asking about
flagship control finishers and puts up a picture of both Elspeth and
Teferi (who's likely the best U/W control finisher walker other than maybe
Jace, the Mind Sculptor), it's not unfair to analyze those cards through a framework which might be suited to Cubes that lean a little more towards the constructed end of gameplay styles, especially when the dissenting view has already been shared
ad nauseam.
Normally, I would try to encompass more design positions in what I have to say. The thing is, most of the anti-Elspeth arguments I'm seeing in this thread are from people who to my understanding haven't actually played with
Elspeth, Sun's Champion at all recently. As previously stated, there's a lot more diversity in the Cube design space now than when Elspeth was first printed, and the card pool is quite different. I think it's totally fair to focus on the positive aspects of the card as it relates to modern design, especially when I'm arguing against negative viewpoints that were formed when the Magic ecosystem looked very different. While the negative arguments aren't irrelevant, they also don't encompass a huge swath of modern Cubes. While there was an age when Elspeth may have been unfair in many fair environments, the times have changed and that isn't even close to a guarantee anymore.
To be fair, I think I did not do a good enough job of illustrating in my first post that some of my experiences with the card are due to the context of my environment. My Cube isn't particularly far down the "this plays like constructed" rabbit hole, and I actively handicap my power level in certain areas to make sure
certain old favorites can put up similar results to their time in Standard. It's also not much faster than many of the recent "old school" high-power designs I've seen can muster. As such, I felt more comfortable than I normally might in using absolute language. I shouldn't have done that.
But to be balanced, when I'm arguing against positions that are equally context-specific
and also deeply engrained within this community, I feel it makes sense to try to use more absolute language. I believe my current experience with the card is going to be more relevant to a Cube being built from the ground up in 2021 using modern design theory than an opinion that was formed years ago.
I appreciate your perspective, and to your credit I think you have better arguments than some of the other anti-Elspeth rhetoric in this thread. However, I think a lot of people, including you, just aren't fully considering how much magic has changed since Elspeth was first printed. The general "Elspeth is oppresive" view is not as salient as it used to be because modern Cube construction techniques tend to eliminate many of the situations where Elspeth can feel unfair. There are a ton of environments now where
Elspeth, Sun's Champion can have a net positive impact on the format. I think we should try and explore these new options instead of writing off the card. Exploration is what this forum is all about. Is it not?