Out of these three, I'd swap out Merfolk Looter for Jace. It has the least upside of the three you listed.
Card/Deck Black Sheep
- Thread starter CML
- Start date
Out of these three, I'd swap out Merfolk Looter for Jace. It has the least upside of the three you listed.
Dom Harvey
Contributor
if you want to keep Looter, Thought Courier ties into any remaining Human synergies
I mean I've played a lot of jace in standard. Trading for a 2/1 is also a common merfolk looter play that Jace can't imitate.
I do think he's good. If the choice was Jace or Looter I would save the money and get a foil Looter and a pizza. Fortunately i can just run both eventually.
edit: and still have pizza because that's important probably
I do think he's good. If the choice was Jace or Looter I would save the money and get a foil Looter and a pizza. Fortunately i can just run both eventually.
edit: and still have pizza because that's important probably
Why trade with the 2/1 when you can flip Jace and blank that 2/1 indefinitely with Jace's +1?
I find Guided Strike to be better than Defiant Strike. Yes, it's one extra mana but it's a really sweet combat trick, too.
Really reminds me of Harm's Way with a cantrip.
Really reminds me of Harm's Way with a cantrip.
I'm glad you put that out there. I've been giving my defiant strike lusty looks on my desk every now and then but it just doesn't feel like it makes the cut, and the rtr first strike life link one I did play doesn't cantrip. This is a nice middle ground. First strike feels crucial.
Grillo_Parlante
Contributor
I think defiant strike really needs heroic to make the cut, and even than its much narrower than other heroic enablers you could run.
Guided Strike looks pretty good. Reminds me of Shelter.
Aoret
Developer
I think the first strike life link one only makes the cut if pridemates make the lifegain potentially meaningful as well as heroic making the spell itself meaningful. I'm running it but I look at it sideways every now and then. FWIW I feel the same way about Undying Evil but every time I'm about to cut it somebody finally runs it in a deck and does something sick.
Prowess and double strike do nice stand-ins for heroic, too. I'm a little biased against heroic, because it tends to encourage somewhat poison principle-y voltron decks, but double strike works well with any type of pump (global anthems, equipment), while prowess does a nice temporary heroic impression while being much more broadly applicable.
Grillo_Parlante
Contributor
Good call on guided strike-i think i'm going to cut defiant strike in favor of it in the penny cube.
I have mixed feelings on heroic: I think its a nice mechanic to run to cement a relationahip between small creatures and pump, but you really have to run a high density of tricks to create a feeling of a true heroic deck. The best cards imo are fabled hero, anax and cymede, and battlewise hoplite, which kind of cements it as a low power theme. I do really like all of those cards though.
I have mixed feelings on heroic: I think its a nice mechanic to run to cement a relationahip between small creatures and pump, but you really have to run a high density of tricks to create a feeling of a true heroic deck. The best cards imo are fabled hero, anax and cymede, and battlewise hoplite, which kind of cements it as a low power theme. I do really like all of those cards though.
Sometimes I think about if Theros would've been a little higher powered. In retrospect I think I like almost all the mechanics but they were pretty lackingly pulled off.
Inspired... What a waste of a keyword. I always felt so ironic untapping an Inspired creature. It coulda been pushed a bit more. Same goes with Constellation, which was a massive letdown overall. Heroic was okay but I feel it's a bit poison-y in cube at even a medium power level/a cube with solid removal. It's just too hard to justify picking up tricks for me. And tribute... Yuck. Oh well. I loved Prowess even if storywise Tarkir was super dullsville, but that's been about all that I've been happy for in the past.. 6 sets now, not counting cores? Hahah. I also really didn't like KTR, which everyone else seems to be nuts for. It's likely my extreme dislike of formats that don't start on T1; I drafted a lot of Khans online (I was big on MTGO for a while) and it just felt so unsatisfyingly durdle-centric. Yeah people ran aggro sometimes but for the most part everyone just did 8-colour morphfest with a million gainlands, making aggro feel worthless unless you got real lucky. There didn't feel to be any theme to it, just, draft a bunch of solid nearly-vanilla crap and play Rock'em Sock'em Wizards. But I digress..
Born of the Gods - worst set of the last five years? If not the winner, then a true contender!
Re: Theros block, I just wish there'd been one or two more playable bestow creatures, as that was one of the most interesting mechanics they introduced that didn't have a constructed-level playable card. We've seen Herald of Torment, Boon Satyr, and Eidolon of Countless Battles here and there, but they're all fringe players at best; there wasn't anything high-impact enough to make anyone sit up and take notice, and I doubt any of these are more than bit players at best in our cubes. More solid bestow creatures would have in turn let us slot in more heroic creatures, without needing to plumb the depths for narrow combat tricks.
Re: Theros block, I just wish there'd been one or two more playable bestow creatures, as that was one of the most interesting mechanics they introduced that didn't have a constructed-level playable card. We've seen Herald of Torment, Boon Satyr, and Eidolon of Countless Battles here and there, but they're all fringe players at best; there wasn't anything high-impact enough to make anyone sit up and take notice, and I doubt any of these are more than bit players at best in our cubes. More solid bestow creatures would have in turn let us slot in more heroic creatures, without needing to plumb the depths for narrow combat tricks.
Chris Taylor
Contributor
But no limited format has ever started on turn 1...
Triple Khans is my favourite draft set of the last couple years; Rise of the Eldrazi is my favourite draft format of all time. Both are formats that are on the sloooooooow side. It's really been making me rethink my own cube format, when it comes to speed. I was always under the impression that fast was best, but perhaps dialing things down a notch or two might actually be more fun for everyone if no one's getting run over on turn four or five.
Things I liked about Khans:
Things I liked about Khans:
- Lots of multicolour decks, but not that many multicolour cards. It's hard to believe, but there were only five total gold cards at common - a far cry from Alara Reborn's gold diarrhea. Of the multicolour cards, many were "hidden" by the morph mechanic, allowing the pilot to run them out there turn three, then flip them by the time all the colours were actually assembled.
- Only five supported colour combinations, rather than the usual ten. Archetypes weren't spread out as thin as they usually are.
- Abundant fixing! Unlike Dragon's Maze, I would hazard a guess that less than 10% of games were decided by colour screw, rather than >30%.
- Not heavily bomb driven. If Wingmate Roc is the strongest card in the set, you've done something right.
- None of the wedge mechanics were dead on arrival - all of them did something, even if they weren't perfectly balanced.
- Lots of play to the games, with the face-down morphs being the centerpiece. You know how some formats, you can look at the two decks, and kind of decide who's going to win, without having to sleeve up and shuffle? This was not that format.
- It wasn't a strictly tempo-driven format (e.g. Innistrad) nor attrition-based format (e.g. Shards of Alara). I'm not sure how to classify it, really, but it seemed to have the best qualities of both worlds.
- Deep packs. Not that much filler - especially compared to the two sets that came after it - and you could count on getting something marginally playable even late into the pack.
Aoret
Developer
I'm pretty sure that last bit is actually the catch. The reason those slow limited formats work is that the four drops they play aren't JTMS, they're kozilek's predator.
But don't let me theorycraft deter you Eric, I think there's a ton of interesting thought experiments and research in this space. I was particularly struck by the notion of only supporting 5 color pairings. I feel like that's a concept I need to let soak for a while, but I'm definitely intrigued by it. My immediate question is whether I give up significant design density in my drafts, or restrict the creative space too much for my drafters. If the answer to that is no, that it's fine, that creates a lot more room in the cube to do some potentially interesting things.
CML
Contributor
Chris Taylor
Contributor
I think they worked well for the magic players who think of auras when they think enchantments, not some stupid legacy combo deck or humility
In my lower-powered cube I use some auras that have totem armor, bestow or are named Prison Term, Rancor, Madcap Skills, Griffin Guide or Elephant Guide.
I can't think of many auras outside of those that are playable.
I can't think of many auras outside of those that are playable.
CML
Contributor
it was just impossible to develop interestingly
constellation was cool if a little linear
here are some enchantments that are cool and could have been in theros block but were printed in other sets instead:
what is a card named "song of the dryads" doing not in a set based on CLASSICAL MYTHOLOGY? where is ? add that a few of the dope theros enchantments work if they're not enchantments (gods e.g.) and jesus that was a disappointment. i think the enchantment theme was first executed tastefully in urza's saga
Dom Harvey
Contributor
it's not an obvious enough reference to Greek mythology
GEDDIT?
GEDDIT?
CML
Contributor
it's not an obvious enough reference to Greek mythology
GEDDIT?
300 bitches, where the trojans?