Recent content by IanGitax

Get your Ancestral Visions remanded once and you’ll understand the problem. Between Compulsive Research, Careful Consideration, and Hatching Plans, every deck that wanted a card draw spell had a suitable alternative that doesn’t lose to the most common card in the format.

Hazoret the Fervent

Oculus takes from your library; it just triggers on your opponent’s turn. I also found myself cutting a few unnecessary tempo payoffs recently. The deck is often fine playing more generic threats; the critical density of cheap spells/interaction is usually the harder part to draft in most cubes...

Sanguine Evangelist is just that good. It’s excellent both offensively and defensively, and more importantly it synergizes with all the other top cards in Boros incredibly well. Triggers guide twice, pumps pride tokens and provides more tokens to double, makes fodder for gut and bombardiers.

There are several but they’re all custom card based and fairly small. I enjoyed messing around in Magic Set Editor Modern for a bit but found the constant balance changes to be a little much for me as someone who tends to latch onto a single deck and play it for a long time. I think that’s a...

I’m a big stifle fan. If there’s enough density of mulldrifters where the trigger comprises most of the value, it’s perfectly playable as a piece of cheap disruption. I play a lot of Canadian Highlander, which has basically the same card pool as a vintage cube, and even when my opponent has no...

Galazeth Prismari Mirari’s Wake Lotleth Troll Lyev Skyknight

The 6-drop starter deck planeswalkers feel way too weak even at your cube’s power level. Since you’re avoiding FTKs, I’m guessing you want to avoid the standard “-x kill, +x for card advantage” template. Some options: Nissa, Vital Force Garruk, Caller of Beasts Garruk Unleashed Chandra...

Verdurous Gearhulk

I’ve found for your average cube singleton makes for better gameplay unless you have a specific reason not to stick to it. It makes games less repetitive and deckbuilding more interesting, and adds an additional strategic layer I enjoy of knowing which cards your opponent can’t have based on...

I think the more likely answer here is that these small sets are going to be more common going forwards, since they want to hit six sets a year. Drafting small sets alone is normally pretty abysmal, and the one time they tried designing around it was Coldsnap and it was terrible. Smaller sets...

Lazav, Wearer of Faces[\ci] I feel like MKM Lazav does what you want from both of these and also is more playable on its own as a draw engine.

Is there any reason you can’t use a buff for elspeth’s +1 and swap the other effect to the minus? Maybe plus for glorious anthem, minus for helping hand? Hexcatcher specifically suffers a lot more than most tribal payoffs since it asks for sac fodder in a tribe that rarely provides much and has...

You’re going 0-3 your next draft.

I was once accused of being part of the Jewish cabal responsible for manipulating everyone’s draws on MTGO.