by: Jason Waddell
My Magic 2014 cube set review is online over at ChannelFireball. Have a read, then chime in with your thoughts in our forums.
by: Jason Waddell
My Magic 2014 cube set review is online over at ChannelFireball. Have a read, then chime in with your thoughts in our forums.
Great article Jason,
I really like your Kalonian Hydra evaluation. This card may have a high power level but isn’t really fun to play with or against in a limited format. Though I disagree on Liliana’s Reaver. Compared to Ashling, the Reaver has two beneficial triggers and he is quite good on defense + he can trade up. I do think he’s a strong consideration for black.
Thanks for the comment Janis! Actually I see now that I slightly misread the card, I hadn’t noticed the discard trigger. My mistake!
For reference, at the 4-drop slot I have:
Skinrender
Disciple of Bolas
Abyssal Persecutor
Nekrataal
It’s well possible that he is stronger than Disciple, but Disciple has been a great card that interacts with the sacrifice theme as well as things like Thragtusk, Threaten effects (mostly Sarkhan), etc.
I agree that Liliana’s Reaver is stronger than I gave it credit for in the article, but I still don’t know if it cracks my 360 list. Maybe if I ran a slightly larger cube.
With a relevant creature type for your cube and some decently fair but strong things going on for it, you could just cut the Nekrataal. I honestly don’t see much reason for Nekrataal to stick around anyway. I know they serve two very different purposes, but there are plenty of different takes on Nekrataal that just seem better. The Reaver also seems a little more interesting than “kill ur dood, get a 2/1 first striker!”. Just my opinion, though.
I will certainly test it. Nekrataal is a great stabilizer for our control decks, as well as being a high-priority target in the Birthing Pod decks.
I’ve been wrong about cards many times in the past, and always do my best to test even cards that I speak negatively of in the reviews.