Card/Deck Astral Slide

[Dom Harvey]

I've seen a few people on VMA-highs wish that Slide were a thing in Cube, and CML mentioned considering it for the article contest a while back, so here we go.



The obvious place to start is the cycling lands, which are essentially free for deckbuilding and add a lot of flavour to Limited outside of any silly interactions:



We can swap out some of the soft countermagic to buff our cycler count:



and add various utility cards:

Unearth Blast from the Past

Cloud of Faeries is excellent in blue tempo and many combo decks:



Some incidental manafixing:



finishers:



miscellaneous:

 

[anotak]

http://riptidelab.com/forum/threads/single-card-spotlight-thread.99/page-3#post-8425

some old discussion here

fwiw on my end it was merely acceptable with a bunch of custom card help

 

[Grillo_Parlante]

For reference, here is a channel fireball article explaing how it works in vintage masters.

For a lower power environment, at least, it looks like it would just be a question of running enough ETB dudes, enough cycle cards, and enough cycle lands in your land section/utility land.

I could imagine a lower power environment where it becomes an entire axis on itself, using cycling to feed cards like worm harvestor kessig cagebreakers, with 2-3 slides as archtype pieces.

 

[Onderzeeboot]

Or Living Death?

 

[Dom Harvey]

So the excellent idea of having Blasted Landscapes as basic lands to enable C costs brought me back here. Are Slide/Rift worth exploring in that context?

 

[sigh]

Maybe, actually. It would take virtually 0 other niche build-arounds when you can get 3-4 cyclers just from the BLB. You'd only need some of the better cycling effects to flush it out, rather than needing to go ham with the ability to even get a critical mass.
krosan tusker
eternal dragon
akroma's vengeance
starstorm
edge of autumn
and so on. Effectively they'd become archetype-less archetypes because all of the other cards are solidly able to be used in other decks, but these two cards can magically enable other stuff. While we are at it, astral slide is acutally really good with thought-knot seer forming a relationship of sorts between and cycling. Huh.

 

[Meltyman]

has to be mentioned... i remember the "standard" (t2) back in the day when you would lose to an unkillable Exalted Angel

 

[sigh]

has to be mentioned... i remember the "standard" (t2) back in the day when you would lose to an unkillable Exalted Angel

That sounds like a fun time. In cube the analogy can be made to several similar things like
baneslayer angel
linvala, the preserver
primeval titan
armada wurm
skeletal vampire
power level dependent, of course. It does sound like a fun protect the queen strategy if it works. Probably useful if the cube has something like Demonic tutor or Enlightened Tutor to make the slide more consistent.

 

[Grillo_Parlante]

The good thing about slide is that it looks great alongside bouncelands.

The bad thing is that it only goes in exactly one deck, reducing white's range; at a power level where its probably the worst color already. A problem which only becomes exasperated if you include narrow white enchantment tutors as a way to find your build around.

In addition, you need to include a critical mass of reasonable cycling cards, which don't really exist. It starts to looks a lot like supporting a tribal deck where you only have two payoff cards, and not enough tribe members.

Maybe if you tack cycling onto slide itself and toss the cycling lands in the basic land box?

 

[sigh]

...that was the premise all along. Blasted in the BLB. Possibly extending it to the five/ten colored ones would help?

Also laughing at enlightened tutor being called out like that.

It's not the first or last time people have cube one to two cards in an entire cube to support things (here's looking at you Goggles). And don't people all over cry over white being the "most boring" color? So why not go into this unique avenue? And also include a powerful tutor for white enchantment control while we're at it.

EDIT: in my mind it takes a similar slot as Eldrazi Displacer. 3 mana blink support that requires further investment to work, trading a body for much more resilience to removal. Even using the same lands, for god's sake. It'd simply be a blink support card, and with BLB support, it'd be virtually painless. Grab a couple cyclers, flush out the lands, done.

EDITEDIT: Also with land cyclers as the base, Life from the Loam has something more useful to do! that's really neat to me.

 

[Grillo_Parlante]

I'm not really doing much arguing: its factual that it only goes in one deck, reducing white's range, which can cause the color to feel shallow depending on the context of the cube.

I've certainly both rationalized and ran my share of narrow build arounds and supporting tutors. I've generally been cutting down even on less narrow ones in certain colors due to the way they constrict color range, and this one is very narrow: it reminds me a lot of when I was running burning vengeance, which was problematic for a lot of similar reasons to those I outlined above.

This is a topic that lucre has been posting about in various contexts for a while now, and which I've slowly been coming around to believe he is just 100% right in.

Of course, its not really going to be a popular point, but I think that if we are to be fair, we at least need to acknowledge that these cards reduce color range, and consider that a factor to be balanced in making our decision.

 

[Aston]

I must be missing something - how does adding a build around card that enables a new deck/archetype reduce a colour's range?

 

[Grillo_Parlante]

I must be missing something - how does adding a build around card that enables a new deck/archetype reduce a colour's range?

Because it only goes in one deck. So if no one is interesting in drafting the astral slide deck, it just ends up wheeling, and its like you were drafting a 48 card white section. Some colors are better able to deal with that than others (blue) but if you have a color that already has a fairly narrow range (white at low power or red at high power), it only exacerbates an existing color range problem you have.

 

[sigh]

Because it only goes in one deck. So if no one is interesting in drafting the astral slide deck, it just ends up wheeling, and its like you were drafting a 48 card white section. Some colors are better able to deal with that than others (blue) but if you have a color that already has a fairly narrow range (white at low power or red at high power), it only exacerbates an existing color range problem you have.

but it's a deck that wasn't there before. You aren't losing any decks by putting one card in, maybe reducing their ability to 3-0 slightly, and you are up one whole deck. With basic land support can we even be as sure it'd endlessly wheel? It's an untested area with the card that's probably throwing off all our assumptions. Now I can toss three blasted landscapes into my deck and support reality smasher and astral slide? wowie! The problem it's had historically is that you needed to draft the support. Now you have that leg up.
Honestly I feel like color reach is the number of decks a color is drafted in during play. I'm also not sure that adding this one card would affect that much, especially if it turns out to actually be a useful spell.
My numbers for # of decks using a color (my definition of their reach). White is clearly healthy:
W 31
U 13
B 18
R 23
G 21

I'd be reallllly interested to see someone test this with an environment already set up to handle it as best as possible? Slightly slower, enchantment themed. Onder's cube has potential, and he could swap out vestiges for BL, or just have both. And make like 10 custom cyclers

Also would be interested to see what kinda narrow things people already run in white that this could potentially take the place of?
For me, I could see Eldrazi Displacer, Bonds of Faith, Spear of Heliod maybe, citadel siege (for being kinda too good)

Also also interesting exercise is going through bottom pick lists. What sort of cards are already down there? This might firstly be a glimpse into why a color isn't performing so well (lots of that color cards there), but also lets one think "if no one is playing the equipment deck, is that fencing ace hurting my color? If no one picked up the Buried ruin a decent number of times is it worth taking a land slot for?" and so on.

 

[Grillo_Parlante]

When I say range (and its my fault for not first clarifying my language) I don't mean total # of decks a color can support, I mean the degree to which it can flexibly support the major archetypes: aggro, midrange, control. The various colors do this better when they are running a high density of flexible enablers, which can function in different decks.

For example, I love designing red at low power levels, because of the tremendous range it has. Small beaters like mogg war marshal have broad utility in aggro, midrange and control. Than I have great flexible cross archetype removal in the form of flame slash, and even card draw/filtering in the form of magmatic insight or tormenting voice. Its very easy to take the individual pieces and convert them into aggro, midrange, or control roles, with their specific application being dictated by the nuances of the card, and what it synergizes best with. A perfect example of this is spikeshot elder, which can fit anywhere, but encourages a drafter to explore a number of interesting interactions within the cube.

As a result, a control player can go into red and have a broad range of tools that they can compete for, and the picks in the color feel very live. An aggro or midrange player also will have many options during the draft, due to the flexibility of the cards available to them.

Its not like how red can sometimes feel in higher power environments, where there is this huge morass of cheap beaters, which are dead picks to a control player, than perhaps some filtering/draw options that are virtual dead picks as they are grossly outclassed by what blue is doing, and damage based spells that are lacking as spot removal due to their nature and resiliency of the formats threats.

Reducing the number of picks I have available, because of some (however well intentioned) need to further dilute my pick pool by running 1-2 narrow build around cards, does not help the situation at all.

Astral slide, as written, is an incredibly narrow card that can only ever function in the astral slide deck. It has no flexibility, cannot fulfill multiple draft functions, and is devoid of subtilty. The card itself dictates the draft, forcing the drafter down linear lines (or hoping that the draft has been already going down those lines). If any wavering at all from the stringent draft conditions it imposes occurs, it ceases to be a card, and becomes a virtual blank slot in a pack, waiting until the next draft when someone will hopefully be of the inclination to give it a go.

Now, if my white section already has a very dynamic range, this could perhaps be forgiven, but if that is not the case, now not only must drafters contend with a selection of white cards already suffering from being overly shallow, but they must do so with a white section that is effectively 1-2 cards smaller, and for which they might, very badly, have preferred those slots to go to something more broadly useful.

 

[sigh]

Astral slide, as written, is an incredibly narrow card that can only ever function in the astral slide deck. It has no flexibility, cannot fulfill multiple draft functions, and is devoid of subtilty. The card itself dictates the draft, forcing the drafter down linear lines (or hoping that the draft has been already going down those lines). If any wavering at all from the stringent draft conditions it imposes occurs, it ceases to be a card, and becomes a virtual blank slot in a pack, waiting until the next draft when someone will hopefully be of the inclination to give it a go.

With our new presumption, you only need 2 or 3 other cards, and it becomes a cool blink enabler. If you go into a reanimator deck, you generally need more enablers than that. Honestly every counterspell is in this boat too, just for instance. They one do one thing, counter a spell (usually). Generally if you draft one, you now have to draft at least a couple more, so your draft is already shaped by that. You draft a few of X, Y, and Z, and you are set in a deck, if you want to have a deck that does anything worthwhile. It's not unique. Why exactly must it be an "Astral slide deck"? What is that? I've seen Kiki Jiki used in a deck in cube that wasn't "the kiki chord deck".

I can also think of at least three roles it can play in a deck right off the top of my head.
1) In control, slowing down enemy attacks and mana with carefully timed cycles. Control even has more cycling access with miscalculation and complicate.
2) in Blink, blinking.
3) in beatdown, getting blockers out of the way.

Being devoid of subtlety is fine on some cards. Not every drafter does well with that, but likes "Find some cards with cycling go!"

Honestly, I'm still convinced that none of us know what the card is like with built in enablers, pickable from the basic land box. Which makes me extra interested in some testing of some kind... I think our analytical tools are failing us.

EDIT: anyone who runs Pyromancer's Goggles should have to worry about this too. I've seen more than one cube with it in the red section, and supposedly red is already narrow at higher power... woe if goggles doesn't find a big red burn deck

 

[Alphez]

That sounds like a fun time. In cube the analogy can be made to several similar things like
baneslayer angel
linvala, the preserver
primeval titan
armada wurm
skeletal vampire
power level dependent, of course. It does sound like a fun protect the queen strategy if it works. Probably useful if the cube has something like Demonic tutor or Enlightened Tutor to make the slide more consistent.

The super cool thing about Exalted Angel + Astral Slide is that you can cast the Angel as a morphed creature and then blink it with Slide, so that it comes back face-up without having to pay the full unmorph cost. There are other interesting morph cards, like red Akroma, which would love this.
Running a bunch of morph cards also increases the amount of colourless creatures in the Cube. Don't know if that can be relevant.

To me, this seems more of an idea for a themed cube rather than something you can include in any list. I mean, this cycling + colourless matters + morph thing is quite well interconnected. Remove a single piece and I don't know that it's still worth running.

 

[sigh]

The super cool thing about Exalted Angel + Astral Slide is that you can cast the Angel as a morphed creature and then blink it with Slide, so that it comes back face-up without having to pay the full unmorph cost. There are other interesting morph cards, like red Akroma, which would love this.
Running a bunch of morph cards also increases the amount of colourless creatures in the Cube. Don't know if that can be relevant.

To me, this seems more of an idea for a themed cube rather than something you can include in any list. I mean, this cycling + colourless matters + morph thing is quite well interconnected. Remove a single piece and I don't know that it's still worth running.

Yeah, I did think of that, but I don't really like running just one morph creature, and is it good enough on it's own? Probably agreeing that it's better in a cube with these things all happening at the same time. At the same time, I don't want to completely rule it out. at this point I'm of the mind that it's interesting enough to warrant testing somehow/somewhere.

 

[Grillo_Parlante]

With our new presumption, you only need 2 or 3 other cards, and it becomes a cool blink enabler. If you go into a reanimator deck, you generally need more enablers than that. Honestly every counterspell is in this boat too, just for instance. They one do one thing, counter a spell (usually). Generally if you draft one, you now have to draft at least a couple more, so your draft is already shaped by that. You draft a few of X, Y, and Z, and you are set in a deck, if you want to have a deck that does anything worthwhile. It's not unique. Why exactly must it be an "Astral slide deck"? What is that? I've seen Kiki Jiki used in a deck in cube that wasn't "the kiki chord deck".

I'm not really following you here, especially this exert

Generally if you draft one, you now have to draft at least a couple more, so your draft is already shaped by that. You draft a few of X, Y, and Z, and you are set in a deck, if you want to have a deck that does anything worthwhile.

That seems to be more a general observation about how drafting works, and doesn't seem to really acknowledge that build around cards draft differently, which is central to the discussion. The difference between drafting an independently strong removal piece like counterspell, and a narrow build around like astral slide (which literally does nothing without specific enablers) seems pretty clear. I'm also not sure how noting that counterspells counter spells is relevant to the idea of color range, or what supporting spells counterspell needs to be playable.

I know that was a long response, but I kind of get the feeling that you just skimmed it without really reading it. Fyi, if you click on the cites I included to Lucres' post, it actually goes to a discussion about pyromancer's goggle's as being a narrow build around.

Surely we can acknowledge that astral slide is dependent upon a drafter committing to picking supporting cards in a way thats much more extreme than reanimation, counterspell, or kiki-jikki.

 

[vennythekid]

Hm. After having stepped away from cube for some weeks and coming back to the argument (albeit presented in a different form with a different card) I start to see I am likely wrong and very likely (actually, certain) I misunderstood Lucre when he was arguing against Goggles. I see the point of view he was presenting and now that I understand where he's coming from (thanks to this small discussion) I concede Goggles might be the hero red deserves, but not the one it needs. not be the best choice for a red section.

 

[sigh]

I'm not really following you here, especially this exert



That seems to be more a general observation about how drafting works, and doesn't seem to really acknowledge that build around cards draft differently, which is central to the discussion. The difference between drafting an independently strong removal piece like counterspell, and a narrow build around like astral slide (which literally does nothing without specific enablers) seems pretty clear. I'm also not sure how noting that counterspells counter spells is relevant to the idea of color range, or what supporting spells counterspell needs to be playable.

I know that was a long response, but I kind of get the feeling that you just skimmed it without really reading it. Fyi, if you click on the cites I included to Lucres' post, it actually goes to a discussion about pyromancer's goggle's as being a narrow build around.

Surely we can acknowledge that astral slide is dependent upon a drafter committing to picking supporting cards in a way thats much more extreme than reanimation, counterspell, or kiki-jikki.

I'm sure you are assuming that I'm skimming, I make point by point observations almost. The idea I'm working towards is that every card has dependencies. If you just have one counterspell in your deck, it will possibly be very awkwardly placed amongst your sorcery speed creatures. Build arounds obviously have more dependencies, but that doesn't make them different. You don't have to suddenly only draft "Astral slide" stuff, but you need to look out for a couple enablers. This is the same as the fact that you should probably find some more instants alongside your lonely counterspell so it's not a sore thumb in your sequencing.

The important thing to take from my response is that we don't actually know how it will perform, because we've never had a build-around supported by lands.

And I've read all your discussions, as you were writing them. I'm not one who's necessarily in agreeance. If sets were only supposed to be drafted with flexible, do-good spells, we'd never have cards like Burning Vengeance, Pyromancer's Assault etc.

And is it more extreme than that sort of stuff? Does Unburial rites do nearly as much without enablers? It'll be dead 90% of the time until very late when things are dying. Does an enchantment that can blink multiple things have to be more supported than any other sort of "puzzle piece" deck like reanimator?

 

[Grillo_Parlante]

Build arounds obviously have more dependencies, but that doesn't make them different.

Yes it does, and the difference is in degrees of dependence.

Astral slide is a brick in the absence of specific supporting cards, counterspell is not. That difference is significant.

Burning vengeance was a great card in the draft set it was designed for, because it received its build around density from print runs, which don't exist in cube. This was actually one of my early findings when building the penny cube.

The design of this cube also really hammered in the importance of having broadly applicable cards. I think I was knocked off track a bit by MMA and VMA, each which use print runs to enable narrow decks in their respective formats. However, in cube, since you can't use a print run to control the availability of certain cards, every card must be broadly applicable. Its a bit like designing a good sideboard for a constructed environment with a broad array of possible matchups: your cards have to be relevent in many places, not just a few. For example, in cube, thirst for knowledge is a better card blue draw spell to run to support an artifact theme, thanthoughtcast.

Also here, from the actual design process

Archetypes that did not survive the building process:

1. Fish: A disruptive-aggro deck built around merfolk, just did not cut it due to both the narrowness and cost of the cards.
2. Faeries: Another disruptive-aggro deck, the main problem with faeries is that its best disruptive piece is spellstutter sprite. Without print runs, its very difficult to create the density of copies needed for spellstutter to support a deck. Outside of pestermite, oona's prower, and marshflitter, the supporting faerie cast is either too weak (even at this low power level) or too narrow.
3. Affinity: Another victim of not having a print run. The affinity mechanic is just too narrow, and synergizes with nothing else.
4. Hexproof Aggro: Non-interactive cards, even when they are in the form of 1/1s, arn't fun in general. In addition, another narrow decktype, and not really needed anyway to create a sense of aura's matter.

I think this really drilled in to me the extent to which not having a print run differentiate cube from retail draft. MMA is perfectly fine running a heavy focus on individual archetypes as you are guaranteed a density of certain key individual cards; and there is thus more of a range between what is unacceptably narrow (infect) and what is permissibly narrow (affinity). In cube draft, the individual pieces have to be more flexible since you can't control how they will appear in packs.

I've even stepped back even further on a number of cards, having dropped thirst for knowledge due its narrowness, in favor of artificer's epiphany.

Not to say that you can't go ahead and do your experiment, but there is an issue here that should be being appreciated. Like I said, it would be nice to add something like plains cycling to astral slide to make it feel less narrow.

 

[sigh]

If I'm getting anything from this discussion beyond how easy it is to tunnel vision, it's that with this change Slide seems to be more in line with other "niche" build-arounds like Goggles. That is, the discussion becomes more about build-arounds in general and not "can this card even function wow". Can cards with one deck function in cube. See all relevant linked discussion above.

How many enablers do you think it would take to make it worthwhile? Imma think about it like 1 cycle = 1 otherworldy journey. How many journey's would it take to make this one spell worth taking a slot/mana?

Imma also assume you can get up to 4 sources with lands from the BLB. So with that in mind, how many spells would we need?

The internal example I've been using has been UW blink, with Slide.
I grab 3 BL, so there's 3 enablers for "free".
I guess the cyclers I would want to look for in this case would be:
miscalculation
complicate
eternal dragon
akroma's vengeance
cloud of faeries
(In a setting with all of these)
Does this sound reasonable at all as a thing that can happen? Would you pick the cyclers anyways? That's important to determine if it would be worth it.

 

[sigh]

Astral slide is a brick in the absence of specific supporting cards, counterspell is not.

I'm basically done with this conversation because we are just spinning our wheels, but One counterspell in a draft pool that becomes a deck of 13 green creatures and 10 red spells will be a brick. If you don't draft to your cards, they are bricks. Sometimes it's as easy as staying in blue (supporting card: island) to keep a card active, sometimes not. All cards act the same, but as we both point out, it's all about degrees of dependence.

There's a lot to be said about print runs = good times, but we are solving that through availabilty in other ways, the BLB, hence why I've been repeatedly saying neither of us can accurately craft anything about it, cuz half the "building-arounding" happens for free. That's something new, effectively. It'd be like having free Darksteel Citadels in the BLB to make affinity a fine deck without "cube print runs". I think this can potentially be a way to express some niche cards more readily.

regardless, I'm looking for feedback on what we all think it would take to actually do it (in a vacuum, maybe) above.

And I think a custom astral slide may be a good option too. Maybe an ETB like make a 2/2 knight, or as you said cycling.

 

[Grillo_Parlante]

If I'm getting anything from this discussion beyond how easy it is to tunnel vision, it's that with this change Slide seems to be more in line with other "niche" build-arounds like Goggles. That is, the discussion becomes more about build-arounds in general and not "can this card even function wow". Can cards with one deck function in cube. See all relevant linked discussion above.

How many enablers do you think it would take to make it worthwhile? Imma think about it like 1 cycle = 1 otherworldy journey. How many journey's would it take to make this one spell worth taking a slot/mana?

Imma also assume you can get up to 4 sources with lands from the BLB. So with that in mind, how many spells would we need?

The internal example I've been using has been UW blink, with Slide.
I grab 3 BL, so there's 3 enablers for "free".
I guess the cyclers I would want to look for in this case would be:
miscalculation
complicate
eternal dragon
akroma's vengeance
cloud of faeries
(In a setting with all of these)
Does this sound reasonable at all as a thing that can happen? Would you pick the cyclers anyways? That's important to determine if it would be worth it.

I think that looks pretty good, though I would of course like to see the bouncelands to make cloud really shine.

This looks like its geared towards being a control deck, with eternal dragon as a finisher, cloud as a ramping source, and a sweeper as well as a few counterspells. Though its possible to run some more general blink creatures and promote a tempo deck as well. It shouldn't take much, say galepowder mage and flickerwisp?

Do you have a R/W deck in mind? Might as well look at lightning rift while doing this I suppose.

If we are making a custom astral slide, it might be nice to expand the blink clause out to hit artifacts, so you can value blink wellsprings.