Card/Deck B/G Lifegain (Lets Durdle)
- Thread starter Grillo_Parlante
- Start date
Isn't that a nice trick to give a format more depth though? Pinpoint things colors are doing and how the could do it in tandem and then put choose card playable on their own that support that intersection.
Grillo_Parlante
Contributor
If you really wana make a theme deck playable in cube, this guy totally used to make it into cubes in like year of our lord 2004
I'm running him in the penny cube right now, and he is great. I feel like life pay has a ton of depth at lp because the payoff is so huge, and it blurs a decks board control tools with its finisher. I think I need to run more cheap creatures that are worth a card to help entice people to overextend. Works nicely with blacks discard that also makes them want to play out into a board.
I think the closest I could get with hp is bitterblossom, but otherwise its just fueling a draw engine and spot removal engine?
Grillo_Parlante
Contributor
I think so; the pinpointing is a bit tricky though, and I didn't realize the potential for cross over here until playing against a bunch of sweet gnaw to the bone/crypt rats decks.
maybe one day when I play one of your low powered cubes I'll understand the edge of the hunted wumpus golgari brownscale deck, but I have to admit my experience playing peasant cube is only telling me that wumpus is probably pretty okay in formats where you have no rares, though it's not like there is any real drought for incinerates.
Grillo_Parlante
Contributor
I'm not sure I would run actual golgari brownscale, I find a lot of dredge cards feel a bit clunky in a lot of decks, and I think you kind of need tortured existence for brownscale to be a good engine. In that instances you are spinning the dredge wheels over and over again to recur some key card or rebuild a board state, and the two life from it can help pull you out of the red zone in a close game, or fuel repeat life pay board wipes. Outside of that it probably is a bit underwhelming. I do like the idea of spike feeder though.
It's the GG on brownscale that kills it for me, even if you really only use it as a dredge engine 90% of the time. It's already a rubbish 2/3 for 3, AND you have to make it a CC card? It looks stupid in a cube list next to Courser of Kruphix.
Grillo_Parlante
Contributor
The only place you would run it (or spike feeder) would be in a low power format, but even there i think there are less narrow ways to recreate the feeling of a strong late game b/g deck
More of a generic black control card, but I haven't seen many opinions on this in cube yet.
FlowerSunRain
Contributor
Absolutely fantastic card. Lots of play and counterplay. You can gimick it or play it straight up, it can work either way. I haven't 100% worked out exactly where the power level is on the card, but its certainly high enough for basically any cube to run.
If you want to play with Demonic Pact, I suggest it in Esper with white blink stuff and blue bounce stuff... But since we're in the BG thread consider the following "combos:"
etc.
etc.
My problem with most of these cards is that they're not very playable on their own. Need more things that are in the vein of Qasali Pridemage.
Do you run Viridian Zealot? It's been in my cube since forever but I actually can't remember the last time I played it or saw it in play.
CML
Contributor
there's enough decent options now that none of us need viridian zealot, i think. wickerbough is about the bottom of the range. ainok survivalist is probably too bad, but i wanted to post here to confirm it was true
Chris Taylor
Contributor
Viridian Zealot was shit when it was printed
I tried Ainok Survivalist and it was bad. It synergizes with nothing, is slow and underpowered in morph mode and you do not want to cast it in piker mode either.
With broken equips and other game warping enchants/artifacts, cards like this are passable. Without them though, they just suck. Reclamation Sage is the new minimum standard for me. If I want more of that effect (which I don't), I'd run more copies of that card. Although I don't think Conclave Naturalists is terrible (4/4 is not useless).
With broken equips and other game warping enchants/artifacts, cards like this are passable. Without them though, they just suck. Reclamation Sage is the new minimum standard for me. If I want more of that effect (which I don't), I'd run more copies of that card. Although I don't think Conclave Naturalists is terrible (4/4 is not useless).
I'm not sure you can say that the survivalist synergises with nothing, though again different cubes will vary. I have quite a large number of morph and manifest cards in my cube, so there's that, and also a +1/+1 counters matter theme, so it fits in pretty well.
I thought I would like conclave naturalists, but then I remembered why I removed the Stomphowler - they're dull. Thought if this was printed as a white card, I'm sure I would have been all over it.
I thought I would like conclave naturalists, but then I remembered why I removed the Stomphowler - they're dull. Thought if this was printed as a white card, I'm sure I would have been all over it.
I'll concede the +1/+1 theme, but even that is pretty loose (there are way better options for supporting that theme).
But I don't see why having lots of morphs is "synergistic" (whisperwood being one of the very few exceptions). Morph to me really isn't a "theme" in the sense of how we generally talk about themes (like +1/+1 counters, enchantress or whatever). Having a bunch of them adds to the mystery, sure, but doesn't really change how they play. Now, if we had more morphs that you could penalize people for targeting, maybe that would change things. But as it stands, running marginal cards to hit a specific morph count makes little sense to me.
But I don't see why having lots of morphs is "synergistic" (whisperwood being one of the very few exceptions). Morph to me really isn't a "theme" in the sense of how we generally talk about themes (like +1/+1 counters, enchantress or whatever). Having a bunch of them adds to the mystery, sure, but doesn't really change how they play. Now, if we had more morphs that you could penalize people for targeting, maybe that would change things. But as it stands, running marginal cards to hit a specific morph count makes little sense to me.
I think the idea is that you have enough morphs that playing a card facedown is some sort of bluff. There's one extreme of standard at the moment, if you see a morph out of a green deck, 90% of the time it's going to be Den Protector so there's almost no bluffing there. The other end would be Onslaught limited, where the morph could be one of like 30 creatures maybe and if you guess wrong then you might end up getting super punished, the classic example being Battering Craghorn/Skirk Commando.
It's not so much a case of morphs being synergistic as it is that they get better the more of them there are in your environment, the more uncertainty there is, which can allow some deeper play.
The other problem is that there aren't that many morphs which are cubable. I could see like Den Protector, Icefeather Aven, Willbender, Vesuvan Shapeshifter, Ire Shaman, and Hidden Dragonslayer being possibilities, and if you really want to support it there's Deathmist Raptor and Zombie Cutthroat, but most morphs just aren't very good.
It's not so much a case of morphs being synergistic as it is that they get better the more of them there are in your environment, the more uncertainty there is, which can allow some deeper play.
The other problem is that there aren't that many morphs which are cubable. I could see like Den Protector, Icefeather Aven, Willbender, Vesuvan Shapeshifter, Ire Shaman, and Hidden Dragonslayer being possibilities, and if you really want to support it there's Deathmist Raptor and Zombie Cutthroat, but most morphs just aren't very good.
Yeah, Aston is right in that the more morphs you have the better they all become, but he's also right that there's not enough 'good ones' for cube. For this discussion, my comment about different cubes, YMMV etc. is pretty true here, so you have to bear in mind that different environments are built differently for different purposes. My cube is deliberately designed to be slower, so morphs have an easier time in my cube. For info, relevant stuff I'm playing is:
hidden dragonslayer
stratus dancer
willbender
vesuvan shapeshifter
ruthless ripper
silumgar assassin
ire shaman
rattleclaw mystic
ainok survivalist
den protector
hooded hydra
sagu mauler
sultai emissary
whisperwood elemental
wildcall
I have considered deathmist raptor because it ties in with both counters and graveyard theme but I think it's too much of a trap as players will start looking for those face down cards which aren't there in quantity.
Re the +1/+1 counter theme, it doesn't support the theme by itself, other than it gets a counter when it turns itself up. It just synergises with the other stuff that cares about counters, which adds value to it.
I wouldn't describe the survivalist as marginal either. One of the things I think we probably all struggle with is to find cards that we would be happy to maindeck which destroy artifacts/enchantments. There are really quite few of them, and there are few that we can link into specific themes that your cube is trying to support. You can play general good stuff like reclaimation sage (which I do), but from a design perspective I find the survivalist interesting because it has a bit more play to it.
hidden dragonslayer
stratus dancer
willbender
vesuvan shapeshifter
ruthless ripper
silumgar assassin
ire shaman
rattleclaw mystic
ainok survivalist
den protector
hooded hydra
sagu mauler
sultai emissary
whisperwood elemental
wildcall
I have considered deathmist raptor because it ties in with both counters and graveyard theme but I think it's too much of a trap as players will start looking for those face down cards which aren't there in quantity.
Re the +1/+1 counter theme, it doesn't support the theme by itself, other than it gets a counter when it turns itself up. It just synergises with the other stuff that cares about counters, which adds value to it.
I wouldn't describe the survivalist as marginal either. One of the things I think we probably all struggle with is to find cards that we would be happy to maindeck which destroy artifacts/enchantments. There are really quite few of them, and there are few that we can link into specific themes that your cube is trying to support. You can play general good stuff like reclaimation sage (which I do), but from a design perspective I find the survivalist interesting because it has a bit more play to it.
Chris Taylor
Contributor
+1/+1 counters is the tribal deck my cube always wanted
We might just have to agree to disagree on morph.
I do not see why playing more makes them better. The very premise of morph is sort of like layaway with a surcharge. You pay too much up front for garbage to reclaim value after you un-morph later. It's only playable in slow and lower powered environments unless the card is playable at face value and/or the unmorph is such a great deal it's worth the risk (Exalted Angel).
If my opponent uses T3 to put a no-ability 2/2 into play and I have a removal spell, the right answer 99% of the time is to kill it. That's a great tempo play against my opponent no matter what that card is. My removal probably cost less than 3 mana for starters, and barring fee unmorph shenanigans (none of which are cubable and that's the issue I have with morph - I am not put in a position where I put myself at risk killing the morph so why wouldn't I?), my opponent is losing out. It doesn't actually matter what the morph is. That's the problem. It's either a good deal for me to remove it or it's a stellar deal. Win win every time.
As far as the survivalist goes, he has no evasion. Even with megamorph, he is a 3/2 that dies to elite vanguard in combat. For 5 mana. If I want the disenchant effect, I might as well run Wickerbough or Naturalists since those leave behind 4/4 bodies.
I do not see why playing more makes them better. The very premise of morph is sort of like layaway with a surcharge. You pay too much up front for garbage to reclaim value after you un-morph later. It's only playable in slow and lower powered environments unless the card is playable at face value and/or the unmorph is such a great deal it's worth the risk (Exalted Angel).
If my opponent uses T3 to put a no-ability 2/2 into play and I have a removal spell, the right answer 99% of the time is to kill it. That's a great tempo play against my opponent no matter what that card is. My removal probably cost less than 3 mana for starters, and barring fee unmorph shenanigans (none of which are cubable and that's the issue I have with morph - I am not put in a position where I put myself at risk killing the morph so why wouldn't I?), my opponent is losing out. It doesn't actually matter what the morph is. That's the problem. It's either a good deal for me to remove it or it's a stellar deal. Win win every time.
As far as the survivalist goes, he has no evasion. Even with megamorph, he is a 3/2 that dies to elite vanguard in combat. For 5 mana. If I want the disenchant effect, I might as well run Wickerbough or Naturalists since those leave behind 4/4 bodies.
I think you should, if you must run morphs, run the ones that don't require bluffing.
There's also a high enough complexity in cube that I wouldn't burden my drafters with figuring out which morphs to play around. I know the same can be said about lots of dynamics, but I don't think the gain is worth the design cost.
There's also a high enough complexity in cube that I wouldn't burden my drafters with figuring out which morphs to play around. I know the same can be said about lots of dynamics, but I don't think the gain is worth the design cost.