Card/Deck Broken cards for lower power

[ravnic]

But for Field you need seven (!) lands with different names. Getting those into a deck is a challenge already (especially if you, like me, have almost half your fixing be Prismatic Vista). And since you will only have one Field of the Dead ever, you aren't going crazy with zombies either. A few 2/2s in the late game don't seem super relevant tbh.

I am not even sure the card would be playable in my cube. Is it even as good as Zendikar's Roil? I am not convinced.

 

[LadyMapi]

The issue with cards like Field is that the gap between them being playable and them being broken is really narrow, and people are going to be disappointed if they drafted the card because of its reputation as a crazy powerful card and just got a zombie or two out of it.

 

[EzPzJapanezy]

If you're doing this, you probably deserve every zombie, even in fair cubes, right?

I don't find Field to be an egregious inclusion. Like you said, you include a suite of Vista's as your primary source of recursive, strong fixing. Your Loam / Dredge support for 660 doesn't seem so omnipresent that Field would easily come online, and Temur <-> Rainbow strategies would just earn a new potential finisher in the form of a Land that is very flavorful and interesting.

If you over-supported land-focused hyper-ramp / land-recursion I would probably recommend to stay away from it, but those 2 strategies seem really balanced in your list.

 

[ravnic]

Your Loam / Dredge support for 660 doesn't seem so omnipresent that Field would easily come online

I appreciate your take, but you kinda had to type tag:core on cubecobra for that to get a more realistic overview. My cube is essentially a shifting 360 card cube where 324 cards from the core appear in each draft (90% of the pool), so you are much more likely to get certain pieces like Elvish Reclaimer or Crucible of Worlds.

 

[EzPzJapanezy]

Interesting, yeah that makes a lot of sense. I will try to analyze your list through using that tag from now on when posting responses.

If I may ask, when you consider cards like Field as a 'healthy' inclusion for your environment, are you scrutinizing it as a potential 'core' inclusion? Or more as if it would play well / fairly enough with your 'core' list to warrant testing as an occasional? (or maybe both?)

 

[ravnic]

No, I wasn't thinking of it or any of the cards mentioned here (except maybe demonic tutor) as a core card. These constructed/powered cube all stars have the perk of being exciting, which makes for good occasionals. Core cards are judged more on the basis of elegance, flexibility and such, good clean magic.

The idea is that you open a pack with Oblivion Ring, Opt, Throat Slitter, Reckless Impulse and Mother Bear and then a Mox Opal or Bazaar of Bagdhad it would really catch your eye – even when it might be correct to take Opt or whatever.

 

[ravnic]

Let's talk about this birdie

 

[gaytransmulldrifter]

I think this card is pretty bad and I've always been surprised by how many people include it in cubes (or in their decks in arena cube lol). Like yeah sure, you can high roll drawing time walk or ancestral and then you're probably feeling good, but I have never seen that happen. This card adds six lands to your deck. I think its pretty weak. But perhaps that's exactly what you're looking for in which case yeah card is obviously badass, run it.

 

[alvoi]

I had a deck on Arena where I played it in conjunction to Displacer Kitten and Paradoxical Outcome to continuously blink it and draw more cards and play more Power 9. It was so bad that I had to cut it from the deck for better alternatives. But it is a fun card

 

[gaytransmulldrifter]

I think a lower power environment where you're pretty stoked on getting a 3 mana 2/3 flyer that scries on attack would actually be a much better environment for this card than any of the high power cubes where it actually tends to show up lol.

 

[Nanonox]

Combos with these I guess



It did mess me up on Arena when I had a lethal Brain Freeze that suddenly needed 3 more spells ><

 

[LadyMapi]

I think a lower power environment where you're pretty stoked on getting a 3 mana 2/3 flyer that scries on attack would actually be a much better environment for this card than any of the high power cubes where it actually tends to show up lol.

It's also going to be better in a slower environment where you can actually draw the dang cards.

(Hot take: the Moxen and Black Lotus aren't actually that good unless you can draw them in the first few turns.)

 

[Brad]

I think that's a really cold take? GTM already referred to it as adding 6 lands to the deck.

 

[ravnic]

Yeah, I think the fact that the moxen aren't good anymore on turn 4+, and lotus probably too, is what made me consider this card for lower power in the first place.

I had a deck on Arena where I played it in conjunction to Displacer Kitten and Paradoxical Outcome to continuously blink it and draw more cards and play more Power 9. It was so bad that I had to cut it from the deck for better alternatives. But it is a fun card

Ooh right, it does the thing again when you blink or reanimate it. That kills it for paper cube imo, I don't want to make 27 proxies for one card.

 

[MilesOfficial]

On Limited Resources, LSV and Marshall talked about how Oracle of the Alpha is not very good but it's really "cool" and they were happy to have it in Cube even though they're not inclined to really ever draft it themselves. I feel that way about including it in most Cubes. I have nice proxies for the power 9, but to Ravnic's point, the need to have a few sets of them for blinks/recursions is what keeps me from actually paying $145 for a foil copy.

On that note, WotC, please stop making cards that only exist in foil. I like non-foils a lot! While you're at it, please stop making cards only exist in extended border, like Michelangelo, the Heart or The Reaper, King No More or Earthshape (which would 1000% be in my Cube if it explained what earthbending was).

 

[EzPzJapanezy]

I think this card is a lot better than the bird and find it just as exciting if not more in a cube context. Sure its not power-9, but as a singleton cuber, a playable singleton giving a constructed playset of lightning bolts (or more) is awesome.

 

[LadyMapi]

I think that's a really cold take?

To be fair, when was the last time anything preceded by "hot take" was actually a hot take?

...

Toralf's Disciple is cool, but it still runs into the problem of "how many lightning bolts do you proxy?"

 

[EzPzJapanezy]

"how many lightning bolts do you proxy?"

People who collect all printings of Bolt can finally rejoice! In all seriousness though I think 20-28 would suffice, depending on how often 3 toughness creatures stick to the board in your list.

 

[ravnic]

I've heard people say that Brainstorm becomes Ancestral Recall with enough fetchlands around.



Does that mean that Brainstorm should not be in a lower powered list with 15 Prismatic Vistas in 360 cards?

 

[MilesOfficial]

I've heard people say that Brainstorm becomes Ancestral Recall with enough fetchlands around.



Does that mean that Brainstorm should not be in a lower powered list with 15 Prismatic Vistas in 360 cards?

It does and it should not be from a power-level view. It's 1 mana at instant speed to craft your hand in a meaningful way. It may not be card "advantage" but because every card in your deck has different situational advantages, it brings you much closer to "what would be the optimal set of cards I could possibly have right now for this board state" than simply drawing 1 or even 2 cards. Your opponent also doesn't get to know which of the cards you're keeping were already in your hand, which means they have to reset their expectations about what they can play around based on how you were behaving before. It's kind of like how in the late game, "scry 3" is often better than "draw a card".

...that said, I'd run it anyways. I love playing with Brainstorm so much and Cube is the ideal home for it. I had removed it for a while because of how big my Cube was compared to the number of fetch lands I ran but then the landscape cycle (a la Tranquil Landscape) fixed that real good.

 

[Nanonox]

I love Brainstorm, but its inclusion for me depends on your play group. It’s a power outlier that benefits experienced players who know how to maximize it and hold onto it until the time is right. Newer players are more likely to misplay it, it’s a tough card to get a handle on.
It exacerbates the skill difference in a way new players won’t pick up on and that will benefit better players who already have an edge. So if you have lots of new players, I’d rather go with Preordain. If you are all veterans, enjoy Brainstorm!

 

[Erik Twice]

I've heard people say that Brainstorm becomes Ancestral Recall with enough fetchlands around.

That's a bit like saying Time Walk is just an Explore. Yeah, kind of. But also, no.

 

[LadyMapi]

I'd honestly include it even if there's an experience disparity - newer players have to learn somehow, and I remember that seeing people play Brainstorm well was one of my big "oh wait, this game is pretty deep" moments. As long as the group isn't super competitive it should be fine.

 

[Rusje]

Thing is, it is card selection not advantage (with fetches). In lower power it is advantage that wins. In higher power it is more tempo than advantage skewed, in lower powered tempo is less strong. I doubt it will be a power outlier.

 

[Nanonox]

Grillo’s take on Brainstorm in multiples, seems relevant here even if we aren’t breaking singleton.

https://riptidelab.com/forum/threads/single-card-spotlight.99/post-42012

His last point is also interesting, but seems dependent on how heavily you support spell velocity strategies.

Even if we increased fetchland desnity, I'm also not sure that its even good to be running a large selection of these blue cantrips due to how powerful the effect is. At 360, I think its fine to narrow that pure card selection mechanism down to say 3 cards (maybe even 2), and than start attaching that effect to other more conditional bodies or spells that push people into actual strategies: condescend, sea gate oracle, looter il-kor, or jace, vryn's prodigy for example.