I've been playing around with slaver quite a bit. Are you also running Academy Ruins? Not sure I'd run Mindslaver without it. Assembling the lock is difficult since you need a million mana, but it's a unique win condition. It's also one people really can't complain too much about since if you do get there, the game went awhile in order for you to assemble 13 mana and get both cards in play. I'm a big fan of alternate win conditions, and this is certainly a neat one. Emrakul, the Promised End is a cool take on this effect. But sort of the sledgehammer edition. My group did not appreciate the lack of subtlety with that card.
General CBS
- Thread starter James Stevenson
- Start date
I've been playing around with slaver quite a bit. Are you also running Academy Ruins? Not sure I'd run Mindslaver without it. Assembling the lock is difficult since you need a million mana, but it's a unique win condition. It's also one people really can't complain too much about since if you do get there, the game went awhile in order for you to assemble 13 mana and get both cards in play. I'm a big fan of alternate win conditions, and this is certainly a neat one. Emrakul, the Promised End is a cool take on this effect. But sort of the sledgehammer edition. My group did not appreciate the lack of subtlety with that card.
Mindslaver is pretty great with Daretti/Goblin Welder too. Even without Welder that package is pretty fun and adds a cool point of attack for red. Add Feldon in there and you pretty much have an archetype or at least one that strongly supports/compliments other archetypes. RB Reanimator is a real thing in my cube, and that's partly because of that package.
Onderzeeboot
Ecstatic Orb
Good thinking. In fact my cube used to have a utility land draft, as well as Goblin Welder and Daretti, Scrap Savant in the main. I since cut the ULD because it slowed down the draft and I discovered I don't much like lands with benefits because it's a card type that's naturally hard to interact with and it takes up slots if you want your players be able to do so. I also cut Goblin Welder because of power reasons. I like the card, but with a discard spell it sometimes reanimates something big on turn two in true "oops I win" fashion. I tried cutting the high end artifacts, like Myr Battlesphere, but turns out I like the high end artifact cards better (for several slower archetypes) than the card that enables unfair things way ahead of the curve. Anyway, Mindslaver used to be played in that old environment, but has become a relic from the past to be honest. In theory it still has an interesting effect, but in practice it never sees play because I cut most of the support.
Sadly Feldon of the Third Path only reanimates creatures. Daretti isn't enough support for Mindslaver, and doesn't need Mindslaver because it works perfectly well with the other artifacts in my cube.
While true, my line of thinking is that a deck that can consistently abuse Mindslaver probably has other artifact creatures it wants back with those engines and then Feldon gains a bit more stock. This is of course not always, but something that seems to be consistently true.
Welder/Feldon/Daretti is a nice complimentary package. I run the first two in my combo list but not the last one since it's a walker.
Mindslaver is interesting because it sometimes blanks and sometimes it's basically a combo kill. I didn't have this happen in my cube, but I watched a match in which the mindslaver turn ended the game off of 10 spellskite activations (paying 2 life obviously). In my own cube (off Emrakul), I green sun's zenithed for a rec sage to destroy a mirari's wake, then attacked and wing sharded my opponent's army. Again, I think it's a really interesting card that can lead to a bunch of crazy game states and cool stories you get to talk about for a long time. Stuff like this is why I cube.
Mindslaver is interesting because it sometimes blanks and sometimes it's basically a combo kill. I didn't have this happen in my cube, but I watched a match in which the mindslaver turn ended the game off of 10 spellskite activations (paying 2 life obviously). In my own cube (off Emrakul), I green sun's zenithed for a rec sage to destroy a mirari's wake, then attacked and wing sharded my opponent's army. Again, I think it's a really interesting card that can lead to a bunch of crazy game states and cool stories you get to talk about for a long time. Stuff like this is why I cube.
Wow, Ajani, Caller of the Pride is pretty busted combined with Seeker of the Way or Glory-Bound Initiate on t4, it just wrecks aggro and even dumber than Silverblade Paladin as it also grants evasion. As I already put the Paladin out there was obviously no reason for me to leave Ajani in my cube.
On the other hand: what do people think about Glory-Bound Initiate? I like it as a white 2drop human with the ability to gain a reasonable amount of life pretty fast so it could be used defensively as well as offensively. It's nice that Exert shuts it down for one round.
Actually, there is another planeswalker card I repeatedly thought about removing from my cube: Jace, Vryn's Prodigy.
As I recently went up with Cycling and discard effects, Jace seems to become stronger and stronger in a way that Snapcaster Mage and Looter il-Kor both are hardly able to stand up to. A flipped Jace is only able to let you cast at sorcery speed, yes, but it doesn't require you to pay its mana cost, which is a huge deal, especially when its front is able to discard huge spell into the yard. I already cut Torrential Gearhulk because it's so much stronger than Goblin Dark-Dwellers for just one more mana, and the upside of Jace being able to just cast a big spell (especially in the lategame) is ridiculous.
Thoughts on that one? As I really like the card and am only willing to cut cards that are strictly better than others, ore obviously on a higher power level.
On the other hand: what do people think about Glory-Bound Initiate? I like it as a white 2drop human with the ability to gain a reasonable amount of life pretty fast so it could be used defensively as well as offensively. It's nice that Exert shuts it down for one round.
Actually, there is another planeswalker card I repeatedly thought about removing from my cube: Jace, Vryn's Prodigy.
As I recently went up with Cycling and discard effects, Jace seems to become stronger and stronger in a way that Snapcaster Mage and Looter il-Kor both are hardly able to stand up to. A flipped Jace is only able to let you cast at sorcery speed, yes, but it doesn't require you to pay its mana cost, which is a huge deal, especially when its front is able to discard huge spell into the yard. I already cut Torrential Gearhulk because it's so much stronger than Goblin Dark-Dwellers for just one more mana, and the upside of Jace being able to just cast a big spell (especially in the lategame) is ridiculous.
Thoughts on that one? As I really like the card and am only willing to cut cards that are strictly better than others, ore obviously on a higher power level.
Onderzeeboot
Ecstatic Orb
Uh... Jace doesn't let you cast the spell without paying its casting cost. You still have to pay up.
What the shizz, you're right, of course! I just haven't played MtG in ages and actually misread it before posting about it here while not remembering it right.
I really don't know why I thought that lol
Thank you for enlightening me.. again. :>
I really don't know why I thought that lol
Thank you for enlightening me.. again. :>
Chris Taylor
Contributor
I will say, he's also nearly impossible to kill, given you need 8 power in play to kill him if he's helpless 
I've found him to be one of those "Acceptably Strong" blue cards.
I've found him to be one of those "Acceptably Strong" blue cards.
I guess that describes him the best.
I've got to admit that I myself never played Staxx/Death Cloud and I wonder if it's possible to implement that archetype without being too poisonous?
I already have Wildifre/DevDreams in, which seem to function quite similar, but in my case black and white need to get more interesting. Thought about the following cards:
Death Cloud looks like it needs a big setup so you could break the symmetry, not too easy to implement.
Braids is a minion, thus easily recurrable and works great with tokens or recursive bodies. Smokestack is somewhat similar, but harder to get rid of, and possibly more devastating.
I really like the Gearhulk as it brings a big body with it, and it may choose itself as an artifact so you can keep another creature, or itself as creature so you keep an artifact blah blah. Tragic Arrogance doesn't deliver a body, but you're able to choose what your opponent gets, so you could use it as a Wrath or to cut your opponent out from certain colours. EDIT: okay, it doesn't destroy lands, would've been too good if it would, I guess.
I've got to admit that I myself never played Staxx/Death Cloud and I wonder if it's possible to implement that archetype without being too poisonous?
I already have Wildifre/DevDreams in, which seem to function quite similar, but in my case black and white need to get more interesting. Thought about the following cards:
Death Cloud looks like it needs a big setup so you could break the symmetry, not too easy to implement.
Braids is a minion, thus easily recurrable and works great with tokens or recursive bodies. Smokestack is somewhat similar, but harder to get rid of, and possibly more devastating.
I really like the Gearhulk as it brings a big body with it, and it may choose itself as an artifact so you can keep another creature, or itself as creature so you keep an artifact blah blah. Tragic Arrogance doesn't deliver a body, but you're able to choose what your opponent gets, so you could use it as a Wrath or to cut your opponent out from certain colours. EDIT: okay, it doesn't destroy lands, would've been too good if it would, I guess.
Onderzeeboot
Ecstatic Orb
Braid, Smokestack and Tragic Arrogance are awesome! I love this archetype though, so I'm definitely not unbiased Death Cloud has a triple black casting cost, so I haven't tried it in my multicolor cube. Cataclysmic Gearhulk was disappointing. Yes, you get a good body out of the deal, but as an artifact creature it's pretty easy to kill, and the effect is lackluster. You really want to be making the choices here, not your opponent.
Death Cloud has a triple black casting cost, so I haven't tried it in my multicolor cube. Cataclysmic Gearhulk was disappointing. Yes, you get a good body out of the deal, but as an artifact creature it's pretty easy to kill, and the effect is lackluster. You really want to be making the choices here, not your opponent.Braids, Cabal Minion is very powerful. Smokestack needs more support to really be broken, but I think the tools exist for it to be very strong. Death Cloud is one of my favorite cards and the main reason to go heavy black IMO. It does everything. It armageddons, it wraths, it makes hands disappear, it even fireballs. Card is ridiculous.
So a few lines you can follow to incorporate. Most obvious is the Pox archetype rooted mainly in black. Use recursive creatures like crawler/bloodghast/2 shields to break symmetry, add Smallpox for redundancy. This works really well with hand destruction and things like thoughtsieze. Resource denial early in particular until you get one of these engines online is really important. You can go deep and run things like Lake of the Dead and Necropotence. That's surprisingly strong because you can quickly get to 5 mana, use necro to ensure you never miss lands and that gets your engine online faster. Super risky line of play but that's what makes it fun.
This archetype has lots of places to overlap. Most obvious is tokens. Things like lingering souls and then white anthems make this a natural pairing. You are sacing tokens while they are sacing important things. This also pairs nicely with white hate bears. Again, you want to prevent them from building up their board early in particular, so mana tithe and annoying crap like Thalia help to delay them until Braids and company are doing damage. Vindicate a land is also not unreasonable.
In red, this can work with the aristocrats theme. Getting you double duty out of the sacrificed creatures you have to lose to Braids/Smokestack. Blood artists, goblin bombardment, goblin token producing cards, etc. Going red gets you burn which allows you to pick off creatures making the Braids/Smokestack hit more important things like lands.
In green, there's life from the loam to get back all the lands you sac to your own braids/smokestack. The new Magus of the Crucible I imagine fits right in here (along with actual Crucible of Worlds). Exploration effects are super good here since you can outpace the trigger. Outside token producers, this might be the easiest way to ramp Smokestack up to 2+ soot counters and not have it destroy your own board.
All in all, I think it's definitely worth supporting at higher power levels. Very flavorful and bleeds well into a lot of colors if you use your imagination.
So a few lines you can follow to incorporate. Most obvious is the Pox archetype rooted mainly in black. Use recursive creatures like crawler/bloodghast/2 shields to break symmetry, add Smallpox for redundancy. This works really well with hand destruction and things like thoughtsieze. Resource denial early in particular until you get one of these engines online is really important. You can go deep and run things like Lake of the Dead and Necropotence. That's surprisingly strong because you can quickly get to 5 mana, use necro to ensure you never miss lands and that gets your engine online faster. Super risky line of play but that's what makes it fun.
This archetype has lots of places to overlap. Most obvious is tokens. Things like lingering souls and then white anthems make this a natural pairing. You are sacing tokens while they are sacing important things. This also pairs nicely with white hate bears. Again, you want to prevent them from building up their board early in particular, so mana tithe and annoying crap like Thalia help to delay them until Braids and company are doing damage. Vindicate a land is also not unreasonable.
In red, this can work with the aristocrats theme. Getting you double duty out of the sacrificed creatures you have to lose to Braids/Smokestack. Blood artists, goblin bombardment, goblin token producing cards, etc. Going red gets you burn which allows you to pick off creatures making the Braids/Smokestack hit more important things like lands.
In green, there's life from the loam to get back all the lands you sac to your own braids/smokestack. The new Magus of the Crucible I imagine fits right in here (along with actual Crucible of Worlds). Exploration effects are super good here since you can outpace the trigger. Outside token producers, this might be the easiest way to ramp Smokestack up to 2+ soot counters and not have it destroy your own board.
All in all, I think it's definitely worth supporting at higher power levels. Very flavorful and bleeds well into a lot of colors if you use your imagination.
Grillo_Parlante
Contributor
lollolol...all of these years and I never noticed he has a god damn pet lizard sitting on his shoulder...
wow I am not very observant!
Chris Taylor
Contributor
Even better, that pet lizard is a card:
I believe you're posting in the wrong place, this is the cube forum, sir.
-----
As an aside, it's nice we live in a world where vanilla 1/1s are no longer rares.
Onderzeeboot
Ecstatic Orb
My god! That is savage! :eek:
That reminds me of a method I came up with to counter a spell.
Player 1 casts an offending spell. Player 2 responds with Overmaster, Shahrazad.
In the subgame, several turns transpire until Player 2 plays Ring of Ma'rûf on turn 5, Mindslaver on turn 6, then on turn 7 activate Mindslaver and Donate the ring. During Player 2's control of Player 1's following turn, Player 2 activates the ring, then takes the offending card from the first game and puts it into Player 1's subgame hand.
When you eventually resume the original game, the offending spell is no longer on the stack!
Player 1 casts an offending spell. Player 2 responds with Overmaster, Shahrazad.
In the subgame, several turns transpire until Player 2 plays Ring of Ma'rûf on turn 5, Mindslaver on turn 6, then on turn 7 activate Mindslaver and Donate the ring. During Player 2's control of Player 1's following turn, Player 2 activates the ring, then takes the offending card from the first game and puts it into Player 1's subgame hand.
When you eventually resume the original game, the offending spell is no longer on the stack!
Onderzeeboot
Ecstatic Orb
Elixir, aw yeah.
http://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/dd/pt-magic-2015-winning-decklist-2014-08-04
How sweet is it that this was a deck. A deck that won a pro tour no less! With basically Elixir as the only maindeck win condition :')
Best case, it will only take away half of your opponent's life, right? Which is not useful in a mill deck.
It's more that the original work is still preserved and you can maybe delay the original game's impending doom with new information/status/etc....look, I know this is a loose justification/reasoning, I'm making a stretch no doubt, and one that probably isn't even acceptable justification as is lol