General Fight Club

[Mown]

If starting at 20 life

Bold assumption to have after playing a 5-mana do-nothing in a combo deck.

If you have vintage cube level storm support I think either work, and you might need both. Reservoir can be played in advance, but is significantly worse if your opponent has interaction for it. You could also be interested in Sentinel Tower, but it doesn't work with artifacts and such. I prefer the make-bodies storm payoffs because they have a lower floor for storm count, and are therefore more splashable.

 

[Erik Twice]

Aetherflux Reservoir has quite a few problems Tendrils doesn't.

1) It needs to be played first, which is awkward.
2) It can be destroyed and countered, which Tendrils can't.
3) It cannot be recurred with Yawghmoth's Will or Snapcaster Mage

I don't think either will be played "for value", though it's not exactly unheard of to use Tendrils as a big Fireblast.

Storm, as fun as it is for a few times before it gets a tad boring, is often quite hard to implement in a cube. Most cards necessary are ‘parasitic’, i.e, only good in that deck.

If your cube supports it, I would run both. The storm deck needs consistency and different payoffs leads to different decks/situations.

I've actually found that, if you support the right archetypes, Storm barely takes any space. Most of the cards are either widely playable or can be used for archetypes like Welder or Reanimator.

From my own cube, I would divide it like this:



Tendrils of agony - Fully parasitic, it's either in a storm or no other deck. It 's necessary for black storm to work, though, and it makes the deck more viable.
Brain Freeze - While it's surprisingly useful for self-mill, reanimator or even a control finisher, it's a 24th card in those slots so I consider it parasitic.





These are all narrow cards, but ones that will see plenty of play in other archetypes or combo decks.

Underworld Breach - This is eminently playable and a combo with Brain Freeze and LED but it can and will be used to recur cheap spells.
Yawgmoth's Will -
Brain Freeze - Surprisingly useful for self-mill and, sometimes, as a control finisher.
Thassa's Oracle - Self-Mill, some reanimator builds, can become part of a finisher package in control decks
Underworld Breach - Combo with above, useful as a late-game threat of fire to face.
Lion's Eye Diamond - Great with Welder, Emry and some discard-heavy decks
Memory Jar - Great in big mana decks, great with Welder/Emry.
Lotus Bloom - Great with Welder, can power Upheaval or other big mana plays
Paradox Engine - A big mana card, turbocharges the Earthcraft/Elfball deck.
Fastbond - Staple of the Lands archetype, great with some top of library effects, cards like Upheaval, can be easily splashed
Seething Song - While not as useful as Dark Ritual, it can push a fast Terror of the Peaks or Trumpeting Carnosaur.
Bolas's Citadel - Useful card overall, great for Welder, Tinker, big mana decks or as a control finisher.
Elemental Eruption - Quite a few decks can power this for 2-3, which is great value.

Widely playable:




etc.

 

[Nanonox]

Bold assumption to have after playing a 5-mana do-nothing in a combo deck.

That's fair and the reason why I included how much extra life you get from playing 9 and 10 spells, which makes those numbers the more realistic targets to hit.

If you have vintage cube level storm support I think either work, and you might need both. Reservoir can be played in advance, but is significantly worse if your opponent has interaction for it. You could also be interested in Sentinel Tower, but it doesn't work with artifacts and such. I prefer the make-bodies storm payoffs because they have a lower floor for storm count, and are therefore more splashable.

Sentinel Tower is a good shout out, but I'd like to keep my Storm payoffs as open-ended as possible to work with artifacts as you said. I do have some make-bodies Storm payoffs in



The thing is I like to seed in different options that allow my drafters to get creative. So I have the mill classic in Brain Freeze and I want a damage based one (maybe Grapeshot should have been included in the fight!).

Aetherflux Reservoir has quite a few problems Tendrils doesn't.

1) It needs to be played first, which is awkward.
2) It can be destroyed and countered, which Tendrils can't.
3) It cannot be recurred with Yawghmoth's Will or Snapcaster Mage

I don't think either will be played "for value", though it's not exactly unheard of to use Tendrils as a big Fireblast.

The biggest issue for me is number three as not working with Yawgmoth's Will is annoying. But at the same time, if you cast 4 more spells off your Will, you will still get the Reservoir triggers hopefully getting you a kill.

Number two can definitely come up as well. But if they have a Counterspell, I think they counter the Will or Citadel and you are still in a bad place with Tendrils. Most Storm decks are pretty weak to interaction after all. No counter argument on the fact you are casting a 4 mana vulnerable artifact though, it is fragile!

Number one doesn't apply though. You can cast 4 spells, cast Reservoir and the 6th spell will gain you 6 life as the artifact "sees" what has been cast before it (though you'll likely need a higher Storm (+2) count since you missed the first 10 life).

I totally agree with your breakdown of the "Storm" card. If you are a combo heavy cube, most cards have other homes where they can shine, making them narrow, but not parasitic (fine line I know).

I didn't say much in the first post, because I wanted to read people's opinions, but I feel like the colorless nature of the card is really important. Say I have a non-Black Scrap Trawler deck. It would never play a Tendrils, but Reservoir? Definitely maybe! It's not too hard to chain 8+ spells in a Trawler loop if you have zeros and ones (even outside of KCI loops). Likewise, a Jeskai Ascendancy deck could reasonably chain together enough spells to get there. Or an Urza deck maybe.

This would make the Reservoir less parasitic than Tendrils, which is appealing. Does that upside sway your opinions at all?

 

[Ecophagy]

vs

LF not too strong Red Planeswalker for nostalgia cube. I feel like Koth is narrower as an aggro top-end but can get weird with his -2, Chandra is more flexible and generically good.

 

[EzPzJapanezy]

The thing is I like to seed in different options that allow my drafters to get creative. So I have the mill classic in Brain Freeze and I want a damage based one (maybe Grapeshot should have been included in the fight!).

In a near 360 card cube that includes both Artist's Talent & Underworld Breach I genuinely believe Grapeshot has the potential to be terrifying (in the good way).

I didn't say much in the first post, because I wanted to read people's opinions, but I feel like the colorless nature of the card is really important. Say I have a non-Black Scrap Trawler deck. It would never play a Tendrils, but Reservoir? Definitely maybe! It's not too hard to chain 8+ spells in a Trawler loop if you have zeros and ones (even outside of KCI loops). Likewise, a Jeskai Ascendancy deck could reasonably chain together enough spells to get there. Or an Urza deck maybe.

This would make the Reservoir less parasitic than Tendrils, which is appealing. Does that upside sway your opinions at all?

It provides flexibility to an artifact heavy storm deck with Bolas's Citadel as a secondary Tinker target.

If your Selesnya section supports sacrifice based creature loops, infinite lifegain can happen in a multitude of ways. Aetherflux has the magic power to turn one of the most boring ways to lose into something explosive.

I personally like Aetherflux Reservoir more due to its flexibility as a finisher, even if 'storming off' with it is exposed to a lot of additional vulnerabilities as folks have mentioned. At least for my list, combo shells have to dip into White as a 4th color frequently so I do find a lot of benefit in Resevoir's colorless nature.

 

[ravnic]

Green token payoffs that work with other themes in my cube. Choose two:



Swordtooth works with lands too, Path helps graveyard decks. Revelations is card draw and rumbleweed keys of the lands-in.graveyard stuff.

 

[Rusje]

both Revelations and path are slow. Revelations requires 3 or more creatures to make it worth taking the turn off. Are you able in your cube to take a turn of from casting oath, and if so, will the value you generate be worth it? (I like durdle.deck but it is not a great fit for many cubes).

 

[Nanonox]

From those, I like Path of Discovery and Rumbleweed.

These give you a decent spread of effects. One is value over time, the other a big burst to end the game. Explore seems like a great mechanic for your cube as Green likes the GY and lands, so seems likely you will benefit from it. I am wondering if Rumbleweed isn't too powerful honestly for your environment though. A bunch of your token producers care about the GY, so it seems likely you'll have self-mill effects to make the Plant cost 6-8 mana at most.

---

In a near 360 card cube that includes both Artist's Talent & Underworld Breach I genuinely believe Grapeshot has the potential to be terrifying (in the good way).

This is awesome to hear, because I've been considering adding to for a while, but was second guessing myself.

I hadn't considered lifegain combo, and don't run it, but it is another point in Reservoir's favor. Thanks for sharing your experience!

 

[EzPzJapanezy]

vs

LF not too strong Red Planeswalker for nostalgia cube. I feel like Koth is narrower as an aggro top-end but can get weird with his -2, Chandra is more flexible and generically good.

Koth's -2 alone is more interesting that Chandra's whole suite of Loyalty options and that isn't to say that his other abilities are bad either. I would much rather play with him than that Chandra.

 

[EzPzJapanezy]

Green token payoffs that work with other themes in my cube. Choose two

Wayward Swordtooth & Path of Discovery.

Your Green token producers are higher up the curve and I think Wayward Swordtooth's Exploration imitation is a great tool to speed up their impact. It has extra utility with Zendikar's Roil, allowing for multiple tokens per turn.

Path of Discovery is indeed slow but it also works excellently with both Wayword and Zendikar's Roil. Explore can help keep the land drops coming while filtering future draws to find threats to use with the newfound mana. The +1/+1 token buff is just the icing on the cake imo, but a very welcome one. Just a slight note, if you do eventually test Kitchen Finks as a core slot, Path can easily go infinite with it if that is something you would like the avoid.

Shamanic is effective (A lot of your token lords would trigger Ferocious), I just think it's a little dull compared to the other options.

I would like Rumbleweed a lot more if the ETB also gave other creatures on the battlefield Haste and its a little hard for me to tell how quickly / consistently it will be castable at 6-7 mana.

 

[TekLazar]

Wayward swordtooth for sure. I personally like Rumbleweed, but the other two seem interesting as well. I think it's mostly a gut thing.

here's one I'm struggling with. I want a charm in Boros that is roughly on the same power as Izzet Charm. So Boros Charm is kind of cracked in my opinion.

I'm leaning towards Lorehold Command, but thinking it might step on the toes of Catharsis. (Which I could see as a charm, but to me it's different.)