Onderzeeboot
Ecstatic Orb
Rise was truly awesome, and a breath of fresh air especially after the cutthroat speed and goldfish mechanic (landfall) of Zendikar.
Card/Deck Single Card Spotlight
- Thread starter Dom Harvey
- Start date
FlowerSunRain
Contributor
FlowerSunRain
Contributor
In times like these I usually just try it, because, fuck it, it can't be worse then Heliod was!
I feel like my love of evoke and old damaged-stacked-sacrifice creatures make me very partial to renewal. I want to see some cards and play methods shine again and I'm weighing 1. bad draws, 2. four mana do nothing, being down a card and being white, and draft archetype interest against these drawbacks. Thankfully they don't all apply at each evaluation.
I want this card to be better but only for draft deck reasons, and that's usually a hard argument to make compelling.
Playing this and next turn mull drifting into a shriekmaw seems amazing. Or playing an oath deck with enduring renewal sounds amazing to draft. But the accessibility cost is way higher than something like unburial, dig?
This card enables things I love in magic while being the sort of thing I want to train myself to avoid. #impasse
I want this card to be better but only for draft deck reasons, and that's usually a hard argument to make compelling.
Playing this and next turn mull drifting into a shriekmaw seems amazing. Or playing an oath deck with enduring renewal sounds amazing to draft. But the accessibility cost is way higher than something like unburial, dig?
This card enables things I love in magic while being the sort of thing I want to train myself to avoid. #impasse
I completely understand where you are coming from Lucre. For awhile now, I've been caught up by the fact that my drafts are missing the mark in a few areas. It's largely a problem of group size and how drafting a fraction of the cube introduces more variance than I want. So you often see great deck ideas fall down at the end because not enough key cards came up. It's not bad per se, just not what I want to see. My expectations have gone up since I started cubing I guess.
One way to counter this is focusing more on less narrow cards. But then that leads to goodstuff.dec and takes away a bit of the synergy focus that I think is very satisfying in draft and deck building. And I think this is what is driving me to try and make a modular cube work. Where you have focused blocks of cards and you can add and subtract them to make the draft pool the size you need without hacking out half of an arch type. In theory, you solve all problems with this method. You have variety because you don't draft your entire cube each time. But you keep the focus on synergy because the pool is still very focused by the nature of how you group your modules.
I'm finding it exceedingly difficult to build a list though. I started by trying to give each module a primary focus (so graveyard for example). And while that sounds like a good idea, when you look at the final card pool, it really only does one thing well. So you really don't have a lot of deck choices with it. Everyone will just try and build the nut reanimator deck and either one guy will do it and everyone else ends up with something less ideal, or (more likely) you just wind up with a bunch of clunky graveyard decks. Part of why reanimator works for example is because not everyone tries to draft it. One or maybe two guys see it and get passed key cards and then it comes together (or not).
Now, the situation improves as your number of drafters goes up because the more modules you run the more decks are featured so to speak. But then it's back to why not just find 8 guys you can draft with and play a normal 360 cube list? I don't really have a solution for this yet (I don't know 8 people that want to cube and I'm not going to go finding them). But I'm not giving up on the modular idea. I'm going to try and make the modules slightly less focused with opposing strategies so there isn't just one clear deck to draft. Not sure how that will turn out though (it will certainly make this exercise even harder).
Sort of rambled off topic there. Par for the course for me though. I tend to do that.
One way to counter this is focusing more on less narrow cards. But then that leads to goodstuff.dec and takes away a bit of the synergy focus that I think is very satisfying in draft and deck building. And I think this is what is driving me to try and make a modular cube work. Where you have focused blocks of cards and you can add and subtract them to make the draft pool the size you need without hacking out half of an arch type. In theory, you solve all problems with this method. You have variety because you don't draft your entire cube each time. But you keep the focus on synergy because the pool is still very focused by the nature of how you group your modules.
I'm finding it exceedingly difficult to build a list though. I started by trying to give each module a primary focus (so graveyard for example). And while that sounds like a good idea, when you look at the final card pool, it really only does one thing well. So you really don't have a lot of deck choices with it. Everyone will just try and build the nut reanimator deck and either one guy will do it and everyone else ends up with something less ideal, or (more likely) you just wind up with a bunch of clunky graveyard decks. Part of why reanimator works for example is because not everyone tries to draft it. One or maybe two guys see it and get passed key cards and then it comes together (or not).
Now, the situation improves as your number of drafters goes up because the more modules you run the more decks are featured so to speak. But then it's back to why not just find 8 guys you can draft with and play a normal 360 cube list? I don't really have a solution for this yet (I don't know 8 people that want to cube and I'm not going to go finding them). But I'm not giving up on the modular idea. I'm going to try and make the modules slightly less focused with opposing strategies so there isn't just one clear deck to draft. Not sure how that will turn out though (it will certainly make this exercise even harder).
Sort of rambled off topic there. Par for the course for me though. I tend to do that.
Grillo_Parlante
Contributor
How does putting the moduls in and out of the cube work?
Is it sort of like having a "foundation" module and than you would add whichever module you wanted for the draft? Like graveyard one week, artifact the next, ect.
Is it sort of like having a "foundation" module and than you would add whichever module you wanted for the draft? Like graveyard one week, artifact the next, ect.
My reasoning with that card is to get a) storm/gravestorm b) infinite dmg c) make white creature decks have an endgame plan.
Storm and Infinite dmg is not the easiest to accomplish since it needs 3 to 4 cards, so many enablers are needed.
In "normal" creature decks it seems like a weird Eldrazi Monument that doesn't overrun your opponent, but it wins with attrition.
Still testing it out, but haven't actually drawn it that many times to see how it plays out...
I also have a pipe dream about having multiple Enduring Renewals and Vexing Devils in one cube deck
Chris Taylor
Contributor
Wait doesn;t this just mean you get a 4/3? (It is turn 5ish, remember)
Yeah, but in multiples you can play the whole army each turn not to mention some funny synergies you can come up with since it costs only one mana:
Altar of Dementia, Blasting Station ...
I also mentioned it being a pipe dream !
Chris Taylor
Contributor
Hows this guy?
Also:
vs
(Don't care about price)
I love manlands. In my ULD I keep two Mutavaults, two Blinkmoth Nexuses, and four Mishra's Factory's.
If you're only gonna run two, I'd do two factories or two mutavaults.
If you're only gonna run two, I'd do two factories or two mutavaults.
Vaults for tribal support?
I actually have run this in my cube from day 1. It's a neat twist on bad removal and good aggro damage, and has been solid and fun pretty consistently. My cube's power level is only medium-high though, for what it's worth.
I will make this card work. It was a favorite of mine back in my early magic days, and the combo potential is there. It's probably my inner Johnny talking, but the deck that pulls it off should be inspiring.
My idea is 80 card modules. Each has a roughly equal representation of colors and 2-3 very focused themes. To that you add 10 land cards to get exactly enough for two players to draft. I have 5 modules planned. My group is almost always 4 people so we'd randomly select 2 modules and have 180 cards for the packs. We can even do a second draft with two of the remaining three modules.
Since your narrow themes would be contained in a single module, something like enchantress would be in the card pool or it wouldn't. No half and half business which is a real problem when you only have 4 drafters.
That's the idea anyway. I did a quick mock draft on my graveyard module though and I didn't like it. So this idea needs a lot of work.
Chris Taylor
Contributor
Essentially yes, I'm spitballing about weather or not it would be too good (x4 gravecrawler, remember) and wondering if anyone else has tried it
I'd probably run mutavault if it wasn't a changeling since the manland is so good, but I'm not sure how many makes control shite. But then again they kinda want them too? I dunno
I do not have a ULD if this factors into anyone's advice, but I'm running x4 wasteland
I'd say doubling up on Mutavault depends on how powerful your recursive strategy is with Gravecrawlers in your zombie drafter to Cube. I had to cut my 2nd copy because it became way too easy for the zombie drafter to restart his chain with a zombie available on the field pretty much all the time barring graveyard hate (which I hope that my inclusion of double Woe Reaper will fix). Then again, I also see aggro decks pretty consistently through 4/5 colors, thus double Muta has too much value. I'd much rather split on Mutavault and Factory. You get to apply the same amount of pressure of a man-land and you avoid the degeneracy of a constant recursive chain.
what other cards makes a player with islands wanna connect with their creatures? The 'single card' here is some hypothetical "whenever a creature you control deals damage to a player draw a card"
Onderzeeboot
Ecstatic Orb
But that's just downright inferior to Bident of Thassa.
I think that's about it? Blue isn't really about attacking...
It isnt; but I like the a idea of proactive blue decks
There's the cipher cards, but they aren't particularly good either.
Onderzeeboot
Ecstatic Orb
Sheesh, how could I forget Military Intelligence, that's even in my cube