General [Almost Daily] Every Set in Magic, Cube Edition

ravnic

ravnic

Wow, I didn't expect this thread to be so active. You could say it's... almost daily.

So I guess I have to double post!

Rise of the Eldrazi is an interesting case. I was on a short hiatus from mtg when it released and I wasn't even aware what a banger it was before this thread. Turns out I am still cubing eight (!) cards originally from ROE.

Nest Invader and Awakening Zone utilize the incredibly cool spawn tokens and bridge ramp and tokens in green.

Sea Gate Oracle and Cadaver Imp are sweet etb value creatures. The Imp especially fits my environment like a glove where a cheaper, evasive gravedigger synergizes perfectly with Ninjutsu.

Prophetic Prism got a ravnican reprint and is now a staple in my Ravnica cube.

I still cube Enclave Cryptologist as my only level up card, because there aren't many Merfolk Looter variants ghat aren't too bad or too good.




This guy is my favorite finisher for wildfire decks. He's also great in sacrifice decks and makes an artifact. And now, with Goblin typal in my cube, he's more solidified than ever in my cube. However, there is one card I adore even more from ROE:



I love cards like this one that are quickly read and understand but make you think how you can abuse it. It helps that Vengevine supports madness and dredge, two of my favorite archetypes.


Honorable mentions: Wall of Omens, the og white cantrip creature, was in my cube for a long, long time. And Jwari Scuttler is just cute.
 
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ravnic

ravnic

Born of the Gods

Wow, I can keep this one rather short.



I love this guy. Been cubing him for at least a decade.

I don't live tribute and most of the other mechanics and themes from Theros block, and BNG in particular didn't even give us a really cool devotion card.
 
TrainmasterGT

TrainmasterGT

I kind of like Tribute when the difference in power between the options is small. Unfortunately, the only card which did this well was:

The rest are just kind of whatever.

I did think Snake of the Golden Grove was busted as a kid, though. No idea why, maybe because it's either a 5 mana 7/7 or it gains you some life? Either way, I am a Colossal Dreadmaw enjoyer as an adult.
 
gaytransmulldrifter

gaytransmulldrifter

I feel bad that I don't have a sexier answer than Satyr Wayfinder but it really is a perfect card. Could have been the most boring thing imaginable but some absolute genius decided to end it with "graveyard" instead of "bottom of your library in any order". So many awesome hooks with this guy but it also just generically Does the Thing Well. Awesome.
 
LadyMapi

LadyMapi

BNG is a bit of a weird one for me, since it was close to when I started being legitimately into Magic. As a result, there are some cards from the set that I always thought were super cool that I mostly haven't cubed with:

 
henkdetenk

henkdetenk



It's kind of an old favorite of mine. I think this is one of the bestow creatures, if not the only one, with a reasonable cost and a decent payoff. It fits in Enchantress and tokens, and it gets around removal.
 
landofMordor

landofMordor

Administrator
daily is too fast a pace, lol. takes me a full day to get out of bed, much less delve into old cardfiles

ROE



Way to introduce a Big Bad using cardframe. Splashy and cool, and the ultra-high MVs only added to the allure. Every new set mechanic screams, "today, we are canceling the apocalypse!". And then those big dreams ramify into the way removal and creatures and manasinks are costed:



I also am enthralled (no pun intended, I guess) by ROE's art direction. Every card is a subtle banger, but why?

The classical posing on most of the figures, and the illustrative, painterly style?

Maybe it's just Enclave Cryptologist elevating the entire set? (No, that can't be right... Death Cultist surely contributes.)

What about the hot scary people everywhere? Or the basic land panoramas? Or the story told by Irresistible Prey and Prey's Vengeance?

Yeah. All of the above.
 
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Seeker

Seeker

RoE absolutely slaps. Plenty of reasons why that nobody's posted yet (the way Pillarfield Ox from Zendikar turned into Makindi Griffin at the same cost and yet went from marginal-bad-playable to total-garbage, for instance), but primarily because they decided to try to both make a "normal" set and also make Ulamog's Crusher a playable-to-great common so

all the removal had to be Oust
all the control magic had to be Domestication
all the gray ogre had to be Lavafume Invoker

and we end up with a whole set full of staples for various power levels of cube (time has passed some by - every set has five Lavafume Invokers now with the focus on BO1 draft meaning more mana sinks on commons - but definitely not passed others by - writing this post has me thinking maybe I put Oust back in my cube for the first time in a decade, because it's definitely a Dark Confidant-style "far better now that everything else is more efficient" situation)
 
gaytransmulldrifter

gaytransmulldrifter

Day: 023
Set: Antiquities (ATQ)
Release Date: March 4, 1994
Cards: 102
Design & Development: Skaff Elias, Jim Lin, Joel Mick, Chris Page, Dave Pettey
Art Direction: Jesper Myrfors
All New Cards, Sorted by ELO: CubeCobra Link

Wow Antiquities! It kinda sucks but that's okay. Like 85% of the cards in this set are some shit like a 3 mana 1/1 with "Tap three artifacts you control to tap an artifact an opponent controls", but the set actually does have a bunch of classics regardless.

We've got high power cube staples:


We've got beloved lads:


We've got some of the worst top-end creatures of all time:


We've got uh, urza lands? Does anyone run these?


But for my money the best design in this set is:

Incredible just how well the rate holds up on this card. Still plays well in most environments but is almost never going to be the best thing going on. Eminently fair but just powerful enough to be a reasonably high pick. The first time you do the block and tap to pump itself trick you feel like a genius. Dope.

State your favorite ATQ card or perish.
 
ravnic

ravnic

Aaah, the first gimmick set (every card except some lands has the word artifact on it somewhere). It's an odd one, really, and when you look through the spoiler, art ranges from top tier (Yawgmoth Demon, Citanul Druid, Obelisk of Undoing) to pretty bad/akward/unfitting (wtf Reverse Polarity).

However, there are some cool designs in this little set. Millstone is super iconic and influences our magic lingo until this day. Sage of Lat-Nam can be pretty sweet in the right environment. And I think Xenic Poltergeist is the first card to animate target artifact?

In my cube, I still run two cards from Antiquities. One is Mishra's factory, because why would anyone not cube this? Very cool, well balanced card. But I can't give my vote to it as best design, because the weird "tap to pump itself"-ability is actually quite confusing for less enfranchised players.

My darling is:



It holds up pretty well even today, as a colorless artifact creature that gives you a more flexible Arc Lightning as an etb really holds some value. It is best of course when you can abuse it with blink, recursion, proliferate - there are so many ways to get more bang for your buck! All that makes Triskelion a perfect CCC card. It is simple to read and understand, but offers high synergy potential, that can be reached in very different ways.
 
henkdetenk

henkdetenk



I hated this thing so much as a kid when my brother played it. It's not even that terrible. It just brings back so many godawful memories of chumping my Craw Wurm forever.

Incidentally, I just love how weird and all over the place the art for this set is. It gives off that feeling of "Hey do we have any artwork lying around? Any will do. It doesn't matter what it is, we need to get this stuff to the printers."
 
Seeker

Seeker

henkdetenk said:


I hated this thing so much as a kid when my brother played it. It's not even that terrible. It just brings back so many godawful memories of chumping my Craw Wurm forever.

Incidentally, I just love how weird and all over the place the art for this set is. It gives off that feeling of "Hey do we have any artwork lying around? Any will do. It doesn't matter what it is, we need to get this stuff to the printers."
Click to expand...
it's really good in Shandalar because 1) there's hardly anything else to Workshop out early if you don't draw two Workshops and 2) it regenerates and the AI is not exactly good at playing around that
 
Nemo

Nemo

Onderzeeboot said:
That’s a very good shoutout!

Personally, I’ve always been intrigued by this card, even though I never made it work.

Click to expand...
I used to play it with Magus of the Unseen and Sage of Lat-Nam. I had sick teck back in 1997. And yes, I also used Xenic Poltergeist. It's a three card combo to kill a creature every turn, but the deck sometimes also had the three way combo of Royal Assassin, Nettling Imp, and Icy Manipulator (works with any two). As long as you didn't have something overpowered like a removal spell to mess up my combo, I was coming for your creatures.
 
Seeker

Seeker

800px-Set_isomorphic_cards.svg.png


rate my new cube
 
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