Card/Deck Single Card Spotlight
- Thread starter Dom Harvey
- Start date
So, I've been playing the latest iteration of the Planar Cube on Arena for a few drafts and a card that I really like (and probably has not been talked about much since it's an alchemy card ist this one:
It's a bit on the expensive side at 5 mana and two colors to boot but the turn you play it you make 5 artifacts, it crews itself the next turn, it has some wrath protection and the attack trigger is sweet but not oppressive. The spellbook is here: https://scryfall.com/search?q=spellbook:"Support+Skyforge"&unique=cards and consists of 8 medium to very good flying vehicles that enter as creatures.
If anyone is doing spellbooks in paper (I'm not... yet), this is a cool card.
It's a bit on the expensive side at 5 mana and two colors to boot but the turn you play it you make 5 artifacts, it crews itself the next turn, it has some wrath protection and the attack trigger is sweet but not oppressive. The spellbook is here: https://scryfall.com/search?q=spellbook:"Support+Skyforge"&unique=cards and consists of 8 medium to very good flying vehicles that enter as creatures.
If anyone is doing spellbooks in paper (I'm not... yet), this is a cool card.
One of the many Alchemy cards that plays extremely well online but would be rough to do in paper. Drafting from a spellbook in paper in particular is annoying, I wish you just got one wholly at random so that it would be easier to skip reminder text / yet another component/decision to understand for people who haven't played Alchemy. Still, would love it if they just printed them all in paper.
On the note of cards that demand you have a separate token/peripheral section just for it:
I've been really enjoying Fire Nation Occupation. It reminds me of the excitement Drake Haven brings about, but not only do you not have to pay, but you get the first hit for free, which makes all the difference. I love cards that ask you to build/draft/play differently than your typical Black deck would ask you to, and this one is potent enough to justify the effort. Do I like having a unique token that has an ability that's essentially useless in most decks with it? No, but the card is cool enough to overcome it, and hasn't gotten the attention I think it deserves. And, of course, it kicks ass in tempo decks like these.
Some of its best friends (besides Mana Drain and Doom Blades are also fairly recent cards. Katara, Waterbending Master is a Kitsa/Baby Jace variant that gets the trigger from attacking, and can be a real card advantage engine later in the game. Its experience counters are gained in the same way as Fire Nation Occupation, so it's an obvious pairing.
Transpose is maybe less obvious, since its second trigger happens during your turn, it's a card I've really found myself enjoying across a bunch of different archetypes, and the Black Mage token is pretty stoked for the kinds of decks you want Occupation in, which is also why the understated Black Mage's Rod is also a good consideration for these black spells-matter decks, even if, again, it doesn't itself trigger the Occupation. The much more popular Astrologian's Planisphere is not so different from the Black Mage's Rod in the typical game I've been playing with the two cards (despite being much better on paper), so if you're on the Planisphere, I'd recommend also looking at the Rod more closely.
I also generally like flash creatures, and they've been getting a bit more attention lately. One in three of my blue creatures has flash now, and so you can easily play a deck where half or more of the creatures can be trigger your Fire Nation Occupation, like this one from a month ago.
Draw/Go may be a mostly dead archetype in Cubes that have been keeping up with the pace of new creatures, but Fire Nation Occupation helps scratch part of that itch, and I encourage more people to check it out.
Is this the mana rock I've always wanted to make Wildfire happen? One-card archetypes are just so much to play with and where else can you ever play Wildfire or Burning of Xinye nowadays. Even if it's showing it's age in 202,6 I'm just too big a fan of when the stars align to ever remove it from my list. I have fond memories of my Vivi Wildfires deck I drafted in the last year that was a blast to pilot as I did the thing with Vivi razing everything to the ground once it grew big enough to supercharge it out.
Anyone get to try it out yet?
Is this the mana rock I've always wanted to make Wildfire happen? One-card archetypes are just so much to play with and where else can you ever play Wildfire or Burning of Xinye nowadays. Even if it's showing it's age in 202,6 I'm just too big a fan of when the stars align to ever remove it from my list. I have fond memories of my Vivi Wildfires deck I drafted in the last year that was a blast to pilot as I did the thing with Vivi razing everything to the ground once it grew big enough to supercharge it out.
Anyone get to try it out yet?
I put it in my list for this exact purpose, and swapped in Jeskai Revelation for my Jeskai slot for maximum Tablet-ing. It lasted a few weeks, but I took it out before it got an in-person test because I kept seeing Cursed Mirror in packs and realizing most decks wanted that one more, and it felt like overkill to have two red mana rocks, especially when I don't run that many X-spells or big mana instants and sorceries. I still like it, but I'd need to shift my Cube -- particularly my red section -- to be much more red-focused if I wanted to play it again.
Yeah, between Cursed Mirror and Loki's Scepter it has become a choose your own adventure deal with what you want to push. I'll likely be swapping between the 3 over time as I figure out what makes the most sense for that slot. It's definitely more a Constructed darling right now with how much redundancy you get with multiple copies of cards and maxing out efficiency with castable spells from the ETB mill. Might be one to just test out for now and relegate to the sidelines unless they print other big mana spells or cards with kicker that can maximize the jump.
Cursed Mirror is for Ux and Wx combo decks. I assume Miles is talking about having a red section that rewards red-focused archetypes, or other colours reward "red"-based decks, rather than a red section that rewards other colours.
Edit for clarity: Cursed Mirror also works just fine in Rx decks that are doubling up on a threat but it rewards non-red shenanigans in a way that Tablet doesn't, where Tablet works better with Rx shenanigans like casting from other zones or big impactful sorceries with a heavy Red commitment in the pips.
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you assume me to be far too smart, though I do agree
I meant my red section is not spell-focused enough for this, it has too big of themes for discard, tokens, and artifacts to properly focus on spells-matter and big spells
Dom Harvey
Contributor
Vibe check on Griselbrand as a cheat target these days? I think I want one Really Big Thing to entice drafters, it's the prize my beloved Agatha's Soul Cauldron really wants (and other conditional reanimation like Loyal Retainers or stuff like Sneak Attack), and I have fond memories of it. In a world where the cheap threats hit so hard a midgame activation is more risky than it used to be (in a ~medium power Legacy Cube yesterday I assembled Cauldron + Griselbrand but died to burn from UR Prowess instantly) so it's a more literal deal with the devil.
The only knock against Griselbrand in my book is that it isn't an artifact for Tinker or Welder. Other than that it's a fun one that isn't OP and has cool lines. Your Soul Cauldron combo is really enticing...
It depends on your reanimation suite.
If you run 1-2 mana spells like Reanimate or Animate Dead, then no.
If you run 3-4 mana spells like Necromancy or Royal Retainers, then yes.
If you run 1-2 mana spells like Reanimate or Animate Dead, then no.
If you run 3-4 mana spells like Necromancy or Royal Retainers, then yes.
Earthbending is one of my favorite mechanics because of the possibilities it opens up by turning lands into creatures. I was searching for more options for my cube and happened open this Toph, who has a weird line of text.
I've never given it much thought, until now and I think the card is much cooler than I gave it credit for because of how much her static ability recontextualizes artifacts. It's also an entry point for artifacts in Green, which is another thing I was looking for.
Landfall
This is pretty straight forward, cast a Mishra's Bauble and trigger Lotus Cobra. Depending on how low your curve is and what your landfall payoffs look like, this already is a very potent change to how artifacts work. It's now very simple to repeatedly trigger landfall without a specific lands engine. Some innocuous looking sequences now look downright threatening.
-> -> That's 2 landfall triggers.
-> /Now you are up on lands and added a cantrip to your ramp/tutor effects.
This is now trivial to trigger since each artifact counts towards the 7 different named lands you need.
Your artifact recursion engines are now landfall engines, once again cranking your landfall output for various payoffs.
Land untapers
Your various land untappers now how more utility.
-> -> There is a lot of possibilities here and it depends on the tap abilities you've seeded on your artifacts.
Land sacrifice
Your land sacrifice effects can now use artifacts as fodder
And your lands payoffs are even more insane
Earthbend
Toph also has the ability to Earthbend every turn, now targeting your artifacts.
Artifacts that self-sacrifice are amazing here since they return immediately ready to be sacrificed again.
+1/+1 Counters are live now because your noncreature artifacts are now creatures. Steel Overseer is great too.
You can engineer some lines with Toph and Toph. If you can Earthbend a Scrap Trawler, you can create some infinite loops pretty easily for example.
A few nonbos
Paradox Engine no longer untaps your artifacts.
Phelia, Exuberant Shepherd, Displacer Kitten, Yorion, Sky Nomad can't blink your artifacts anymore.
This is an other option for a similar, but broader effect. It has many more applications with the land untappers for instance. My cubes tend to have more creatures with tap abilities than artifacts, so you have more lines that open up.
Ashaya +
+ //This is an infinite loop since Cub can now Earthbend itself and Earthbending grants haste. All you need is a free sacrifice outlet for lands or creatures.
Speaking of sacrifice outlets, now the ones that sacrifice lands can sacrifice creatures too, while still triggering your Marionette Apprentice.
Ashaya is the cleaner and more open-ended version of the effect, whereas Toph has the benefit of the passive Earthbending ability. Ashaya is also single color and that definitely improves the playability.
Do you have sweet combos with these cards or others like it?