Card/Deck Single Card Spotlight

inscho

inscho

Yeah my response wasn’t very thorough or constructive. It was just off the cuff. But it wasn’t explicitly a power max suggestion

I held onto Psychatog longer in my environment than I should’ve. Even in the lower powered iterations of my cube it mostly underwhelmed.

I do think psychic frog has more appeal to more decks in more cubes. It doesn’t have the nostalgia factor (which honestly Tog was so oppressive back in the day that I don’t exactly have the warm and fuzzies for it lol)

This isn’t the low powered spotlight, so I thought it was worth mentioning a card that I think is a general improvement, but I also missed this post:

Rasmus Källqvist said:
Ok I feel pretty sold on it. Currently brewing a "mean cube" with cards like Upheaval and Armageddon so I don't mind high ceiling, and I'm trying to keep the power level of creatures somewhat tamed.
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This actually sounds like a good place for Tog. My main gripe with Psychatog is it kind of asks to be an unfair card in fair environments. Tog was most interesting (imo) when it had potential as a threat for lethal damage, and pressured the opponent into disingenuous chump blocks and throwing everything at it to kill it.

Environments that are interested in one-shot potential are usually too high powered to be interested in Psychatog.

It can obviously be just a glue card…but I feel like there are lots of better options at any given power level these days that don’t tie up a gold slot.

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Back to the frog: in place of psychatog’s threat of lethal you have the threat of a snowballing creature to create in game tension. It is a generally stronger card that has a much higher floor than Psychatog, while avoiding the feel bad of one shot kills (if you care about that). So it’s probably not the right card for your environment
 
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shamizy

shamizy

ravnic said:
Just saying this because I read it twice recently and this is not mtgsalvation: Whether a card is outclassed or not is 100% and no percentage less your very own decision. Psychatog didn't get any worse since it's been printed, they just keep printing busted cards.
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I kind of disagree, not on the merits of Psychatog's inclusion in an environment but whether it's gotten worse or not. I think it's for sure worse just because general removal is better these days (not even premier removal, just the average kill spell), it's small for its mana cost, and creatures in general just get +1/+1 counters more frequently now which makes temporary buffs less impressive. To go all in on Psychatog or try to pull off the classic big play just feels bad nowadays.

I don't even think it's the busted stuff nowadays that invalidates it, it's just a design from a bygone era where creatures weren't nearly as important. You need a very particular environment for it to actually be an effective card nowadays.
 
Chris Taylor

Chris Taylor

Contributor
....When do you want to be giving psychatog +0/+1? Damage on the stack doesn't help psychatog, you want to be activating this card before damage would be locked in, not after.
 
ravnic

ravnic

shamizy said:
general removal is better these days (not even premier removal, just the average kill spell)
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I don't think this is true by any stretch. If we look at constructed, many premium removal spells like Bolt, StP are older than Psychatog. If we look at limited, we used to get Terror at common, now we're close to a similar power level again but not quite the same, even in recent play booster environments.

That being said ...

All of this is not relating to what I said. It doesn't matter at all! "Nowadays" is not a concept that makes sense in cube. To give off the most extreme example, one could've stopped adding cards after 2002 and Psychatog would play 100% exactly as it used to. Less extreme, you could only make changes that keep it in a similar space. It's not like literally every card printed in the last X years invalidates Psychatog.

It's the same argument I had over at mtgs years ago when people said how sad they were to cut Savannah Lions. Just ... don't. Instead craft a cube where the card is good.

Saying a card is good/bad/whatever "nowadays" is completely useless. Let's instead explain each other how a card performs in a cube with certain characteristics. You could've said "it is bad in a cube where threats are at a certain size", that would've been something to discuss properly.

Personally, I run Psychatog in a cube where estimately 60-70% of the cards in it are newer and it is very good there. I don't have the unfair stuff like Upheaval, I just love him in various control and/or graveyard decks.
 
gaytransmulldrifter

gaytransmulldrifter

I think ravnic's point is that whether or not a card is "outclassed" is almost entirely dependent on the cards that you include alongside it. A card can't become obsolete in cube because you can always just build a cube where it's good (ignoring damage on the stack for the moment lol). To me it's always more interesting to talk about "is this card fun to play with in environments where it's good" than "is this card powerful when played alongside the other most powerful cards that exist today".

edit lol sniped
 
LadyMapi

LadyMapi

ravnic said:
Saying a card is good/bad/whatever "nowadays" is completely useless. Let's instead explain each other how a card performs in a cube with certain characteristics. You could've said "it is bad in a cube where threats are at a certain size", that would've been something to discuss properly.
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To be fair to the people who keep going "oh, [X] card is outdated"... building a cube using whatever cards are currently terrorizing constructed formats or just chucking in the shiny new cards that you just saw in spoiler season is quite a bit easier than agonizingly picking through the tens of thousands of cards that exist so that you can build your perfect castle of jank.
 
gaytransmulldrifter

gaytransmulldrifter

Anyway to be back on topic here are some further thoughts about why I like to play with Psychatog and why and where you might want to include the card Psychatog in a cube:

Psychatog has cultural cache and this matters to me quite a bit. It is fun for old players to see Psychatog and say "haha that's crazy that Psychatog is here" and it's fun for new players to see Psychatog and say "why is everyone talking about this ugly frog he seems bad" and then lose to him after he goes last pick.

It's a card that teaches a lot of the more abstract concepts of the game in a way that I think is rewarding for new players. It's fun to watch someone block Psychatog for the first time and immediately realize in that moment how fucked up he can be. It's exciting to watch someone go from saying "why would I play this" to beating people with Psychatog.

It's a rather unique card in terms of where it sits on the mana curve and its overall power level. It's a card that asks you to play long games and build around turning it's discard into an upside. It can be very strong in the right contexts and unplayable in other contexts. I think if you want to include it, it's important to look at what other 3 power threats are doing in the format. If every other 3 drop is a strong immediate value engine or a stat monster, Psychatog will probably fall a bit short. If other people are playing Laelia and Tireless Tracker, Tog will feel underpowered in that context. But I think if your other 3 drops are either very build aroundy or very modest in terms of stats and value, he's probably fine.

The art is also very good and I think old border gold cards are charmingly ugly.
 
Nanonox

Nanonox



I recently drafted Ryan Saxe's Build around cube and first picked Enduring Renewal. I ended up with the following deck which was very fun to draft and puzzle out.











The Soultrader and the Altar allow you to cast a one drop an infinite amount of times and there are a bunch of ETB or death triggers to take advantage of those casts. Having a mono White combo engine is missing in my cube hence my interest. Thing is, I am not sure what other directions you can go in!

I've been trying to make creature combo work and I think this could be a strong engine alongside cards like these



How do you go off with Enduring Renewal?
 
Brad

Brad

Something you missed is that you can use Renewal with Springheart Nantuko to great effect if you remove Renewal for Nadu.

I'd considered a build around cube before. Not sure why I didn't try it. 2007's top decks were a lot of decks named after cards. Gifts, Glare, Chord, Dragonstorm, etc. That's what originally gave me the idea.

It's kinda nice to look at a decklist and see "Abzan Renewal." You find the card name and look at the other cards for how they interact with the namesake. Hell, I'm selling myself on the idea again.

Anyways,

Plus Abiding Grace.

Most things in Karador EDHrec, I'd bet. You could card search Renewal on there, too. Seems like an EDH card to me.

Future Sight effects like Vizier of the Menagerie and Augur of Autumn are fine cards that can negate some of the drawback.

Nanonox said:
Walking Ballista and friends also work, but the Thopter is a good one!
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There's plenty of solid X drops to be had.

EDIT: Just checked out the list thinking that a cube with Enduring Renewal probably has some cute little shenanigans going on... Lurrus, Oath of Druids, Animate Dead, Dress Down Dreadnought, but there's also a ton of low power stuff.

Did you draft and play? I'd like to know if the play experience was wild due to the power band. I recently played a cube with a wide power band and it was difficult to accept that sometimes the cards you had drawn were simply far, far worse than what the opponent had drawn. Similarly, I stole a few games off of drawing my good cards when they didn't. Felt even more lopsided than retail when one player has a bomb.
 
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Nanonox

Nanonox

Brad said:
Something you missed is that you can use Renewal with Springheart Nantuko to great effect if you remove Renewal for Nadu.
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I see what I did wrong, good catch!

Something I missed when saying that Ballista could replace Ornithopter is that the thopter can be sacrificed to Altar of Dementia or Goblin Bombardment for the win whereas the other just dies (you would need Blood Artist here).

Another type of card that works is Skirk Prospector or Reckless Barbarian. If you have a sacrifice outlet shambling Ghast or Burning-Tree Emissary.

Sneak Attack alongside Warren Soultrader or Phyrexian Altar goes infinite with any creature you can Sneak.

Weirdest I’ve found so far is discarding Blazing Rootwalla to hand size, casting it and sacrificing it, then going to a second clean up phase, repeat.
 
Nanonox

Nanonox

Brad said:
Did you draft and play? I'd like to know if the play experience was wild due to the power band. I recently played a cube with a wide power band and it was difficult to accept that sometimes the cards you had drawn were simply far, far worse than what the opponent had drawn. Similarly, I stole a few games off of drawing my good cards when they didn't. Felt even more lopsided than retail when one player has a bomb.
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It was just the draft. However, if going for a cube with these combo elements, you have to remove easy bombs from the draft pool IMO. Otherwise they just negate the need to draft a coherent deck. The list I drafted from was light on those so I think it would play out as a race between two decks since the interaction was somewhat limited (and you don't have a ton of space to slot removal into these engine decks).
 
Mondschwein

Mondschwein

I'm working on an Innistrad set cube right now which is not a real set cube but rather an updated version with all ten guilds being more balanced with new cards mainly from dark ascension and some more from later sets that happened on innistrad and fit the original dark gothic flavour.

There are two green instants with morbid and wolves in their artworks which I fail to evaluate:



Since they're instants I figure it is way easier to have their morbid triggered which makes both of them look quite strong to me. Permanent +3/+3 at instant speed for G? Six power divided over three bodies for 4 mana also at instant speed? If I'd add those cards I'd think about putting those cards in the uncommon (hunger) and rare (howl) slot respectively.

Someone's opinion? Am I misevaluating here?
 
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