General CBS

[Grillo_Parlante]

Yeah, I can't quite get myself to cut Thoughtseize yet (the Lorwyn art is beautiful as well!), though I have added more two mana options after my scuffle with grillo

For what its worth, when you asked me what a reasonable thoughtseize varient would be for me, maybe thats mez. fiend. I mean, the card is all kinds of terrible as a discard spell vs. thoughtseize: 2 mana, tempo play rather than pernament hand removal. Maybe I'm more interested in cheap remand-esque hand disruption, rather than cheap pernament hand disruption.

I've been slowly trimming down the hand disruption over the history of my cubes, after having it flex in density and power over the course of the years. Right now, I have only the unearth rats, I think, though thats probably too light. The cube probably wants freebooter.

The hand discard kind of makes me think of bounce in blue: you want some of it, but it can get pretty obnoxious, pretty quick.

 

[Chris Taylor]

It's also worth noting I play addle at

 

[Velrun]

For me black discard is in my cube for two reasons:
1. It's great support if you're doing something cheesy like reanimator.
2. Giving black something unique.

I run premium discard effects but at a low density.

 

[James Stevenson]

It's also worth noting I play addle at

Do you like that? Does it make a big difference? Do you think 1B wouldn't cut it?

 

[Chris Taylor]

Do you like that? Does it make a big difference? Do you think 1B wouldn't cut it?

Probably somewhere but not in the env I want

 

[Aston]

There's two main reasons I don't like hand disruption: there's no counterplay, and it takes some of the unpredictability out of the game. At least with other disruption like counterspells you can play around them.

 

[FlowerSunRain]

The usual refrain around targeted discard is that its strengths are counterbalanced by the fact that they are a bad topdeck. And that's true, but if the complaint is that the card is undesirable when it works, the fact that it sometimes doesn't work isn't really relevant.

As I consider my options for a massive cube overhaul, I am not planning on including too many of these effects, but I do feel that blackmail hits the sweetspot very nicely.

 

[Chris Taylor]

That's another one I like, I just wish there was a better art for it

 

[FlowerSunRain]

Did any notable white one drops come out in the past 2 years? Sacred cat, Thraben Inspector and Legion's Landing seem playable, did I miss anything else?

 

[Velrun]

Did any notable white one drops come out in the past 2 years? Sacred cat, Thraben Inspector and Legion's Landing seem playable, did I miss anything else?

Sorry for not card-tagging.

(EDIT: I just saw you wanted 1-drops. You can ignore all of the following. My bad!)

I would consider:

Angel of Invention
Angel of Sanctions
Glory-Bound Initiate
Cast Out
Fumigate

New art for:

Aven Mindcensor
Wrath of God

And one of my favorit build-around cards:

Approach of the Second Sun

 

[Dom Harvey]

Toolcraft Exemplar if you're willing to put a ring on it

 

[Onderzeeboot]

And one of my favorit build-around cards:

Approach of the Second Sun

Elaborate please. I've been fascinated by this card but not convinced that it actually is any good in a cube that does not support and , making draw hard to come by in white.

 

[Velrun]

Elaborate please. I've been fascinated by this card but not convinced that it actually is any good in a cube that does not support and , making draw hard to come by in white.

There are several ways to build around this card but it's one of those cards that you can draft, pick up some more support cards for during the draft, hope to be able to build around it and still end on excluding it to the sideboard because you didn't get enough support cards. It's the ultimate swing-or-miss card because gaining 7 life for a staggering 7 mana is encroaching worthlessness.

Also you never want to have it in your deck against aggro.

However if you manage to pick up a tutor spell, some cycle cards, sweepers, counterspells/removals and some other stall cards then you might have yourself a unique win condition. It's actually impressive how fast 7 'turn's can go by if you have cards like Preordain, Sensei's Divining Top or even a tutor. Any clue card or a card with cycling becomes immensely interesting to pick up no matter the overall power level of the card. The 7 life is no longer irrelevant and can actually give you enough time to draw it. Something we've also seen on the Deathknight cards in Hearthstone's Knight of the Frozen Throne expansion from August 2017.

The card connects a lot of other cards by making semi-good cards become stronger because they have draw, scry, self-mill, Fog or loot written on them. The card attacks the opponent from a whole new angle and creates an entirely new deck archetype just by including it in the cube. BUT the card is never auto-include and will more often than other end in the SB. Something I am fine with because the times it features in a deck makes it worth it.

My overall conclusion is this: Try it out. It can go into most cubes without changing anything. Expect it to be niche and not see play more than 30-50 % of the time. Expect the games to be fun in the way that Form of the Dragon and Sandwurm Convergence are fun because they create a unique sub-game. You can always take it out again if it never sees play or breaks your format. That's my philosophy anyways.

 

[Onderzeeboot]

However if you manage to pick up a tutor spell, some cycle cards, sweepers, counterspells/removals and some other stall cards then you might have yourself a unique win condition. It's actually impressive how fast 7 'turn's can go by if you have cards like Preordain, Sensei's Divining Top or even a tutor. Any clue card or a card with cycling becomes immensely interesting to pick up no matter the overall power level of the card.

This was my overall impression of how the card would play out, and I excluded it based on the fact that most of these aren't available to the white decks in my cube. Sweepers are, of course, but not Counterspells (as doesn't exist), no card manipulation (as both and don't exist), no SDT, and no tutors. I guess things like redundant lifegain, Wall of Omens-style cards, and maybe Phyrexian Arena or somesuch can get there, but I think it will have a harder time doing something useful in my cube than in yours. Who knows though, I might still find a slot for it in the future, you are right after all that you won't know if you don't try

 

[Velrun]

This was my overall impression of how the card would play out, and I excluded it based on the fact that most of these aren't available to the white decks in my cube. Sweepers are, of course, but not Counterspells (as doesn't exist), no card manipulation (as both and don't exist), no SDT, and no tutors. I guess things like redundant lifegain, Wall of Omens-style cards, and maybe Phyrexian Arena or somesuch can get there, but I think it will have a harder time doing something useful in my cube than in yours. Who knows though, I might still find a slot for it in the future, you are right after all that you won't know if you don't try

I would say you are pretty well-prepared for the outcome with that analysis and you seem to know your cube really, really well! I like the card but it kinda has to go into Azorius, Selesnya, Orzhov or any of the Shards/Khans that combine white with either blue or black and that seems like a steep hill in your cube.

 

[Grillo_Parlante]

This was my overall impression of how the card would play out, and I excluded it based on the fact that most of these aren't available to the white decks in my cube. Sweepers are, of course, but not Counterspells (as doesn't exist), no card manipulation (as both and don't exist), no SDT, and no tutors. I guess things like redundant lifegain, Wall of Omens-style cards, and maybe Phyrexian Arena or somesuch can get there, but I think it will have a harder time doing something useful in my cube than in yours. Who knows though, I might still find a slot for it in the future, you are right after all that you won't know if you don't try

Did you change your list? I see both counterspell and jace aot. U/w countrol/midrange looks perfectly viable. You could run the card in any white based control deck. Its just a really good win con for control.

 

[sigh]

Did you change your list? I see both counterspell and jace aot. U/w countrol/midrange looks perfectly viable. You could run the card in any white based control deck. Its just a really good win con for control.

The problem becomes that UW "doesn't exist" in the format. That means you have to be ok with effectively a fully basic land mana base in order to run that color combo.

Approach honestly frustrates me in that it can be fairly trivial to win with it given a little setup, and it's hard to interact with. Either counter or outrace.

 

[Velrun]

The problem becomes that UW "doesn't exist" in the format. That means you have to be ok with effectively a fully basic land mana base in order to run that color combo.

Approach honestly frustrates me in that it can be fairly trivial to win with it given a little setup, and it's hard to interact with. Either counter or outrace.

Either counter or outrace as you mention. Or discard. Or force shuffle.

 

[Grillo_Parlante]

Yeah, I've enjoyed it as a fun puzzle. Most alt. win conditions are gimmicks, while this one at least reasonable. It also gives an incentive for a person to draft a control deck not about winning by turning creatures sideways, which is nice.

 

[sigh]

It is a neat card. I won't fault anyone for running it. I just don't think it's right for my group. It's very much a "spell removal check" in a variety of mathcups, and it has to be determined whether or not that's wanted, and I think I'd have too much latent backlash from it being absolutely hellish to deal with in EDH.

I do like creatureless wincons, and do run a couple, but I like them to be >1 card combos, basically.

 

[Onderzeeboot]

Did you change your list? I see both counterspell and jace aot. U/w countrol/midrange looks perfectly viable. You could run the card in any white based control deck. Its just a really good win con for control.

Sigh has it exactly right. White and blue are enemy colors in my cube. You could, in theory, run a deck, but your mana would be atrocious.

 

[Chris Taylor]

It's kind of amazing the things we take for granted sometimes. Like the ability to patch things.

For eg, here's a card I've had in my cube for a while:

Design's alright, art is pretty nice, doesn't seem to be any huge templating errors, flavor text is fine, if a little boring.

But I get to do this:

and change the flavor text to something thematically appropriate! (He's easier to block now)

I really feel for whoever submitted the flavor text for Untethered Express, because I'm sure he was kicking himself right as the set released.

Spoiler

"Rails are mean to be broken" is just way better you know it

These are changes we get to make, weather it's removing moat because it doesn't lead to fun gameplay, swapping the arts on which version of pacifism you run, or more minute stuff like the above.

 

[wahoopride]

Last night my regular group drafted my cube and during one of the games in which two of my other friends were playing, this play happened:

Player A had several creatures on board. It was his turn and he had Player B down to about 8 life. However, Player B was close to stabilizing and definitely had inevitability. With a relatively stalled board state, Player A casts



Player B was completely tapped out. If the spell resolved, Player A would have lethal on board and would have won.

But Player B responds first by discarding a plains to



Then exiling the plains with



Adding U to his mana pool. He then discards



Also to the Mongrel and used the U mana to case Circular Logic for its madness cost. With the deck he was playing, Player B had about 10 cards in his graveyard and so easily countered the game winning Overwhelming Stamped. Player A was stunned as he had assumed he won the game.

Player A almost scooped but sportingly played it out as Player B then coasted to victory.

It’s stuff like that that remind me why I spend so much time designing my cube.

 

[James Stevenson]

Guys! I am rebuilding my cube and I want lots of help. See my cube blog thread!
http://riptidelab.com/forum/threads...ᶑ-Ḉụḅẽ-a-journey-of-wonder-and-adventure.108/

 

[James Stevenson]

What prowess/spells matter cards are people running? Any opinions on: