Card/Deck The House Dimir (UB)

[ravnic]

Dimir has had a special place in my heart since I got my very first advanced pre-con deck back in 2005 with Szadek, Lord of Secrets. Since then, has always been my favorite control deck. But I feel like for cube, there aren't exactly tons of great options for all power levels.

What are you running in your Dimir sections? What themes/archetypes do you support? Did you have some surprising successes? What do you want the House Dimir to do?


________


My current choices are:



- The Guildmage isn't first pick material, but every UB deck has it's uses for it, and in some games, he could really net you huge card advantage. Plus the personal nostalgia value makes it a staple for me.
- Dr. Teeth isn't as busted in cube as it was in standard, but it does so many clever things for different decks and makes for fun gameplay. Stone cold staple.
- Aberration is a brand new addition. I like mill cards that don't require a mill deck, and I hope this will perform well.
- Drownyard is pretty good too, because it doesn't eat up a spell slot. It frequently wins long games and it fulfills double duty for the UBx dredge decks or Rise from the Tides deck.




Dimir options for hybrids aren't really deep, so I let this one pass as one. It seems to be good enough, as it sees play in non-black, heavy blue decks. And mono black devotion is a supported archetype. I could see me moving this to gold section if we get a great, splashable hybrid though.



Tell me your darkest secrets: Which Dimir cards are you running?

 

[Mondschwein]

'yard is one cool control finisher, especially in cube. Command is the perfect answer on two cards, being two colours and costing five mana seems perfectly appropriate for that kind of effect. Ribbons of Night is similar to the command, having determined what it does but in the form of three effects instead of two (removal, lifegain, draw). UB obviously is a control pair in my cube although Command also could be played in tempo decks.

 

[James Stevenson]

Shoutouts to psychatog and ribbons of night, I love them. Others I've been impressed by:


Strix is always solid. A great early play for control.
Wydwen is super annoying, and properly played it can grind out a game, even from high life totals. It poses a bit of a puzzle for the opponent, whether they want to remove it or just ignore it. It played a role in a brilliant UB tempo deck that wiped the floor at one of my drafts, and I've been a fan ever since.

 

[Aston]

I play



Shadowmage and Psychatog have both been hovering on the cusp of playability. I like Tog enough because it's kind of a unique effect and it's another discard outlet for the decks that want it. Shadowmage I think will likely be cut when I get around to picking up a Baleful Strix, although the card has a lot of nostalgic value.

I've been very pleased with double Tezz, blue based artifact decks are some of my favourite to play in cube and he helps them to run smoothly and provides a victory condition.

 

[Chris Taylor]

 

[Onderzeeboot]

Yes, Silumgar and Hostage Taker are amazing without being too much. Definitely both a reason to move into Dimir.

 

[VincePendrell]

I really like UB to have an Aggro element to it. I run these:

They are good with Thassa and Erebos (and other devotion cards, if you run them), fit with mono-black aggro, and they benefit from you have any Rogue or Merfolk synergy laying around.


This guy seems lackluster, but puts quite a beating. Your opponent won't want to kill this, and they are very likely to die from the combination of attacking, they revealing cards, and you drawing cards.


This has been mentioned before, but I can't stress enough how absurdly powerful this card is. It can secretly make a mediocre UBx deck the best in the table. It comes down early, replaces itself, has evasion, discourages attacks, rarely eats removal, trades up in combat, can play a huge part in artifact/creature recursion engines, has kick-ass art, and looks beautiful in foil. (the only way for it to be better is if it were a Zombie Human Wizard Spirit)

 

[ravnic]

I had Infiltrator in before, and it was sometimes really good and I always liked the art. But in the end he was too boring and narrow to maintain it's slot.

Nightveil Specter is a much more interesting evasive creature for dimir tempo imo, and also better for slower decks like control.

 

[Chris Taylor]

Weird, they do such similar things. Is it the 2 power? Is flying better than fear?
Few colorless lands maybe? I think triple hybrid might be annoying in my format, and could be further complicated if you're intending for drafters to be 3 colors frequently

In hindsight we may have had this fight club before

 

[Onderzeeboot]

A few cool cards I haven't seen mentioned yet:



This card rocks! It's card filtering and removal on a stick, and can run away with a game if not taken care off. It's expensive to play, and has an underwhelming body for the cost, which is perfect for such a strong effect like this. Been very impressed with it!



This is probably the best card in this cycle. The basic landcycling is very relevant in this color pair, and the card itself can bury your opponent in card quality advantage. Apart from that it plays very well with various cards in the color pair, like reanimation and counterspells. A hidden gem that I'm always happy to run in Dimir decks, and extremely happy to run in any 3+ color decks that include UB.



This is a great card. Also, you should probably put in more support for Demonic Pact, because that card is the bee's knees! Anyway, Disperse is already a very serviceable card in limited, and the upside on Consign to Oblivion is huge. When your opponent is running too low on cards, this card is hard removal for any nonland permanent in a color that has great trouble dealing with certain permanent types normally.



If you run an artifact theme, this card offers a lot of value. It lets the Dimir player durdle comfortably while slowly cashing in scries.

 

[ravnic]

Weird, they do such similar things. Is it the 2 power? Is flying better than fear?
Few colorless lands maybe? I think triple hybrid might be annoying in my format, and could be further complicated if you're intending for drafters to be 3 colors frequently

In hindsight we may have had this fight club before

They are quite different

One says "you get 2 damage a turn" with no interactions.

The other brings a 2/3 evasive attacker/blocker, that let's you play with your opponent's deck if it doesn't get stopped.

I had both side by side for a long time, when I had 2 hybrids/guild, and Specter saw slightly more game play actually, despite the triple hybrid cost being a bit restrictive. A Dauthi Horror just was too boring for my taste when it had to combat with Nightveil Specter for the remaining hybrid slot. And I also don't want to cut a gold card for it.

 

[Chris Taylor]

Nah mate I meant
vs , not

Also, side note, why do you have a quota for anything, let alone hybrid cards? The symmetry of your spreadsheet is not worth having to play dross like Dominus of Fealty

 

[ravnic]

Oops, my bad. Yeah, they're pretty similar, but the guaranteed value of Finkel might be better.

At first, I am not running Dominus of Fealty, my Izzet hybrid is Fire // Ice. And second, I don't see the advantage in breaking the symetry. If I can craft a great cube meta while giving every color the same amount of cards, why shouldn't I? Hybrids are the opposite of gold cards after all, at least as long as they are easy on color requirement. I can't treat Kird Ape and Tattermunge Maniac the same.

 

[Chris Taylor]

sure, and that's a great argument for hybrid cards, but not for exactly two of them

 

[ravnic]

But I'm only running one per guild

 

[Dom Harvey]

I don't think Rise is worth it unless you can cast Fall, but the card as a whole is super sweet so make the effort IMO

Ashiok, Nightmare Weaver can lead to some really interesting boards but it also kinda busted especially in Cube. In general though I love the 'steal your opponent's cards' subtheme: it's guaranteed to add variety to games as they are probably trying to do something different (or at least in a different way) so you have to figure out how to use these new tools that your deck wasn't build around. Dragonlord Silumgar and Hostage Taker are very powerful versions of this effect that you'd run anyway but Nightveil Specter is a great medium-power example. If you push this I like having ways to make off-colour mana (Vivid Creek et al) so you can use activated abilities etc

Sygg, River Cutthroat is great in decks that don't really exist in UB unless you try way too hard

Prized Amalgam is an effectively colourless payoff card if it's a graveyard smash

Shadowmage Infiltrator is solid but uninteresting?

Psychatog is iconic but past its prime. The play patterns with it are very different in Limited vs Constructed and you can't make it consistently lethal unless you have a bunch of draw-7s or go further down the graveyard rabbit hole than even I want to


Diregraf Captain if you like Zombies but don't want to play any of the 5 better UB Zombie cards

Recoil is a old-school favourite but see the 'should gold slots be used on removal' debate. Consider Probe too!

Chaining Snapcaster/Torrential Gearhulk with Soul Manipulation is a great feeling but just countering something and returning a cycler/Shriekmaw is nice too

When I saw this thread I knew James would come out of retirement to post Wydwen

I love modal cards but Silumgar's Command really doesn't do it for me? It just feels like a big Agony Warp for some reason.

Nephalia Drownyard is great, play as many of that cycle as you can

I'm surprised that nobody mentioned The Scarab God yet. It's incredibly powerful, creates a fun subgame around itself, and fits perfectly into the Solar Flare decks that want to reanimate things already. Despite the ceiling being higher it also creates better counterplay: it's good against Terminate-esque removal because the upside is so high if they don't have it and it still comes back but it doesn't leave anything behind so, if you're ahead on board, you can keep tagging it with removal and getting damage in. Somewhat awkward vs Swords/Path etc though

UB also has a lot of artifact support: Baleful Strix is amazing everywhere but even better when you can recur it, improvise with it, and so on. Contraband Kingpin provides necessary defense and filtering for an archetype that tends to be slow and mopey. Silas Renn, Seeker Adept looks cool but haven't tried it yet. Tezzeret, Agent of Bolas is the ultimate payoff card but there's surprisingly little finesse to it as it's usually correct to just make 5/5s; maybe Tezzeret the Schemer is more refined?

If you like cards that look fake but actually aren't, having to use proxies, and overpowered planeswalkers, Drake Stone is your man

 

[Peter LaCara]

I've never played with The Scarab God, but I've been explicitly told not to add it to my cube due to its completely OP nature.

 

[Onderzeeboot]

If you like cards that look fake but actually aren't, having to use proxies, and overpowered planeswalkers, Drake Stone is your man

Wow, I totally forgot about these, but some of these are quite awesome! The planeswalker looks really interesting and pretty balanced, and the black discard spell looks like it could do work as well, considering that it's already a cheaper Mind Rot if you cast one other spell, and Mind Rot is close to playable as is.