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What I said (or meant to say) was that Nightpack Ambusher was not an auto include in any green deck, like I feared it would be. I tried it in a deck that didn't have much flash/instants and it was bad, so I boarded it out. In the flash decks it is amazing!
Dom Harvey
Contributor
I'd say Yawgmoth (at its peak) >> Rankle ~= Nightpack Ambusher >>>>>>> the rest. My Cube is fairly high-power compared to some here and Yawgmoth is borderline too strong because it's just SO good in the right deck
Was it oppressive in a dedicated deck, or did it just as well as you expect it from a card that needs you to commit?
So, Yawgmoth isn't good because the cards it supports (by repeatable Proliferate especially) are so damn strong? I don't play with planeswalkers, the only counters it is able to proliferate are +1/+1, -1/-1 and some lore counters on Sagas.
Nah, he's saying Yawgmoth is the best of all those options in ideal circumstances, which I agree with. Yawgmoth is never really bad even without extensive support, he's just a very efficient package at his base. The 4 toughness body allows it to survive a lot of damage based removal, he's at the right spot in the curve where you want to establish any engine pieces, and it's an instant speed sac outlet + card draw + combat trick. If it's by itself in a deck that can't take advantage of its abilities, it's going to be a very solid roleplayer and do just fine. If you have recurrable bodies or other ways to maximize its effectiveness? It can just run away with games. Proliferating walkers is strong, but just being able to use small recurrable bodies or tokens as sources of card draw will just run away with games.
That's the conclusion I came to after playing with it for a short while in my cube + EDH games.
That's the conclusion I came to after playing with it for a short while in my cube + EDH games.
Wish it had mana in its first activation cost instead of life, comparable to Thallid Soothsayer and Spark Reaper. I guess you guys are right, sadly, because I love the artwork, and I love the characters from that MtG period. 
Free sac outlets play always stronger than they appear. Carrion Feeder taught me that.
Dom Harvey
Contributor
Everything I said about Yawgmoth would apply without the proliferate text, that's just a bonus
That's true, I always looked for a weaker version of Carrion Feeder, but they're all too weak.
Feeder not being able to block while also not running Gravecrawler makes up for the missing activation cost.
@ Dom: that's what I wanted to say: especially the 'free' sac outlet that draws a card (and places -1/-1) makes the card so strong.
Feeder not being able to block while also not running Gravecrawler makes up for the missing activation cost.
@ Dom: that's what I wanted to say: especially the 'free' sac outlet that draws a card (and places -1/-1) makes the card so strong.
Nightpack Ambusher wasn't oppressive, since it doesn't race all that well as stuff like Baneslayer Angel, Inferno Titan, Lingering Souls, even in the perfect deck. A 4-drop which dies to removal, and requires a turn to get value out of. Don't get me wrong, it's really good in flash, probably the best card in the deck, but it doesn't feel unfair and is pretty beatable. A negative aspect is how awful it feels to blank many cards from your deck, because you want the 3/3 more than casting those cards. A positive aspect is the risky nature of leaning too heavily on considering the wolves 3/3 when getting them down to 2/2 is easy. Block token with my 2/1, Into the Roil your Ambusher.
I think there is one topic a lot of Riptiders tried to make work in their cube but no one got satisfied with: Heroic.
I wonder what an environment needs to look like to make it fit, and what the actual problems of Heroic.dec are.
Do you need removal to be mostly at sorcery speed?
Aren't there enough payoffs that make your drafters want to build a deck around them?
Are the enablers poisonous (maybe because there is too much removal at instant speed, so they get too bad because of the risk of 2:1ing you)?
Isn't there enough overlap with other archetypes in your list(s)?
I think those are the main questions that need to be answered, and I'd like to discuss the topic with you, if you're interested in sharing your experience so far.
Personally, I think this could be a fit for my environment, as I already implemented some Werewolves into RUG Flash, which I find to be on a similar powerlevel. The other reason, and more important, is the toned down removal. In my list, sorcery removal is more efficient than instant removal, and especially instant removal is conditional, so there often is room to breathe for the Heroic player.
There also is overlap with Spellslingers (RUW) as well as +1/+1 counters (WGUR), so I don't think it's that hard to implement Heroic, since it's in the right colours (WRUG).
I wonder what an environment needs to look like to make it fit, and what the actual problems of Heroic.dec are.
Do you need removal to be mostly at sorcery speed?
Aren't there enough payoffs that make your drafters want to build a deck around them?
Are the enablers poisonous (maybe because there is too much removal at instant speed, so they get too bad because of the risk of 2:1ing you)?
Isn't there enough overlap with other archetypes in your list(s)?
I think those are the main questions that need to be answered, and I'd like to discuss the topic with you, if you're interested in sharing your experience so far.
Personally, I think this could be a fit for my environment, as I already implemented some Werewolves into RUG Flash, which I find to be on a similar powerlevel. The other reason, and more important, is the toned down removal. In my list, sorcery removal is more efficient than instant removal, and especially instant removal is conditional, so there often is room to breathe for the Heroic player.
There also is overlap with Spellslingers (RUW) as well as +1/+1 counters (WGUR), so I don't think it's that hard to implement Heroic, since it's in the right colours (WRUG).
So true. It's not been terrible for me, but it's a really finicky and restrictive archetype.
Yes. Not all, but most. That seriously cuts the power level of spells, which means the power level of threats needs to go down too.
Fabled Hero and Dawnbringer Charioteers work well for me, but I couldn't really justify playing any other actually heroic cards. It became more of a voltron deck, which includes putting equipment on fliers and running protection like Dive Down and Test of Faith.
I'm trying to get around that with Horobi, Death's Wail and Willbreaker, but they aren't in white. Those two also go well with my pingers theme.
Horobi + Willbreaker looks pretty cool!
I guess you're right, removal needs to be toned down, and with that, threats need to be, too, but that's something I'm willing to try. I want a nicely balanced environment, with lots of decisions during draft, deckbuilding and while playing the actual game. Colours and archetypes should all be balanced as much as possible, there shouldn't be cards that are strictly superior to others, and I don't want to have too many narrow or poisonous cards in my list. The last point is something I have to keep in mind when thinking about adding Heroic.
So, besides Hero and Charioteers, you wouldn't play any of the other Heroic cards? I wrote down a list of cards I find very interesting:
Akroan Crusader
Labyrinth Champion
Feather, the Redeemed
Favored Hoplite
Tethmos High Priest
Fabled Hero
Dawnbringer Charioteers
Battlewise Hoplite
Battlefield Thaumaturge
Triton Fortune Hunter
Wavecrash Triton
Those are the cards I'd see as 'strong enough', but there are others like Hero of the Pride and Hero of Iroas I could also see in the right list.
If your removal suite is mostly at sorcery speed, lots of auras suddenly become very interesting. Looking for auras with EtB or LtB or Totem Armor or just strong effects becomes an option, and with that, enchantments matter, even auras matter.
But that's just theorycrafting in a way that might end up taking a lot of space for little use and an awkward effect on the whole environment. That's why I asked here in the first place.
I guess you're right, removal needs to be toned down, and with that, threats need to be, too, but that's something I'm willing to try. I want a nicely balanced environment, with lots of decisions during draft, deckbuilding and while playing the actual game. Colours and archetypes should all be balanced as much as possible, there shouldn't be cards that are strictly superior to others, and I don't want to have too many narrow or poisonous cards in my list. The last point is something I have to keep in mind when thinking about adding Heroic.
So, besides Hero and Charioteers, you wouldn't play any of the other Heroic cards? I wrote down a list of cards I find very interesting:
Akroan Crusader
Labyrinth Champion
Feather, the Redeemed
Favored Hoplite
Tethmos High Priest
Fabled Hero
Dawnbringer Charioteers
Battlewise Hoplite
Battlefield Thaumaturge
Triton Fortune Hunter
Wavecrash Triton
Those are the cards I'd see as 'strong enough', but there are others like Hero of the Pride and Hero of Iroas I could also see in the right list.
If your removal suite is mostly at sorcery speed, lots of auras suddenly become very interesting. Looking for auras with EtB or LtB or Totem Armor or just strong effects becomes an option, and with that, enchantments matter, even auras matter.
But that's just theorycrafting in a way that might end up taking a lot of space for little use and an awkward effect on the whole environment. That's why I asked here in the first place.
I've tried doing the whole Hero thing before, and trust me when I say that it doesn't work very well in practice. The only two heroes that are always a bare minimum of "fine playables" are Feather, the Redeemed and Fabled Hero. That's it. And they're only "good" for the bodies, with their heroic abilities just being gravy. You can make a small heroic package built around Feather, the Redeemed work, but even then there's only a handful of heroes you can play to actually make that deck functional. I'd recommend taking a look at Onderz's Wheel of Change cube for the "feather deck."
As for auras, they're interesting, but ultimately a trap. Even if your entire suite of removal is sorcery speed, you still run into the issue of your players getting 2 for 1'd on a regular basis. Although auras with ETBs can help mitigate this, it doesn't fix the issue. A U/W player would usually rather play an Omen over a Cartouche of Knowledge in their deck as a means of generating card advantage because it's more flexible and doesn't require them to have a creature to use their cantrip. I'd say the only exception to this rule are the sorcery-speed auras with ETB fight effects, since those are not much different from green's spell-based fight effects. Creature Aura themes are, in my evaluation, largely traps.
If you want to make an enchantment package work, you basically just need to run as many enchantments as you can in your cube. Thanks to THB, there are a bunch of enchantments that can be used to fill slots we may normally use for other decks. For example, Disfigure can become Dead Weight. Wall of Omens can become The Birth of Meletis. Knight of the White Orchid can become Daxos, Blessed by the Sun. Grumgully, the Generous can become Rhythm of the Wild. Anticipate become Omen of the Sea. Effectively, you switch non-enchantment cards with the enchantment version of the same effect. There are a lot of good enchantment-based removal spells in basically every color, so you can even give incentives to decks not dedicated to enchantress to play with enchantments.
I'd suggest to sticking to the constellation payoffs such as Setessan Champion, Eidolon of Blossoms, and Archon of Sun's Grace. These cards are nice because they trigger off of blink spells, token generation, and reanimation, which more traditional enablers can't do. Then, all you have to do is make sure you have a nice high density of enchantments and you should be good to go with a pretty cool little enchantress archetype.
Onderzeeboot
Ecstatic Orb
Feather, the Redeemed has a sweet baseline that works regardless of whether you abuse her heroic trigger. The heroes from THB have actually been testing well for me, that is...
, in my Wheel of Change cube, can lean heavily into token builds, which makes the effect of the heroes much more pronounced. I run only a few spells that support heroic, but it seemed to be enough to just about support the theme.
Note that Gods Willing is actually a custom that investigates rather than scries.
The heroic theme, in this cube, plays nicely together with the spells matter theme.
Gather the Townsfolk is a custom with rebound that creates a 1/1 prowess token.
There's a bunch of other ways to create tokens in the color pair as well, and the +1/+0 to your whole team often adds up to a lot of bonus damage!
, in my Wheel of Change cube, can lean heavily into token builds, which makes the effect of the heroes much more pronounced. I run only a few spells that support heroic, but it seemed to be enough to just about support the theme.Note that Gods Willing is actually a custom that investigates rather than scries.
The heroic theme, in this cube, plays nicely together with the spells matter theme.
Gather the Townsfolk is a
custom with rebound that creates a 1/1 prowess token.There's a bunch of other ways to create tokens in the color pair as well, and the +1/+0 to your whole team often adds up to a lot of bonus damage!
Reckless Rage'ing your heroes sounds pretty strong! :eek:
You use some heroic cards to support your token archetype, which is fine as there is a perfect overlap between tokens - heroic - spells matter. I just wonder if you could push it further, as I find the value effects of Labyrinth Champion, Triton Fortune Hunter and Tethmos High Priest to be very interesting.
There are also cards like Feeling of Dread and Travel Preparations which won't lead into CDA that easily. Argh, it's like SO CLOSE.
btw I forgot to mention some other cards:
Gnarlback Rhino the green Fortune Hunter
Zada, Hedron Grinder going deep
Beamsplitter Mage
Season of Growth also good with tokens
Dreadhorde Arcanist also good in prowess, but a natural fit for +1/+1 counters and heroic, too
You use some heroic cards to support your token archetype, which is fine as there is a perfect overlap between tokens - heroic - spells matter. I just wonder if you could push it further, as I find the value effects of Labyrinth Champion, Triton Fortune Hunter and Tethmos High Priest to be very interesting.
There are also cards like Feeling of Dread and Travel Preparations which won't lead into CDA that easily. Argh, it's like SO CLOSE.
btw I forgot to mention some other cards:
Gnarlback Rhino the green Fortune Hunter
Zada, Hedron Grinder going deep
Beamsplitter Mage
Season of Growth also good with tokens
Dreadhorde Arcanist also good in prowess, but a natural fit for +1/+1 counters and heroic, too
The problems with heroic run pretty deep.
It's an A+B archetype where both the A and the B are cards most cubes would not otherwise run. As has been mentioned, few of the heroes are strong enough to run without explicit heroic support, but most cubes don't naturally run more than one or two heroic enablers (i.e., auras and combat tricks) either. So that means you need to devote significant creature and noncreature slots in your heroic colors to the archetype, not to mention the concessions you have to make to your removal suite across all colors to make the archetype viable.
The other problem with heroic that I haven't seen mentioned, particularly aura-based heroic, is that it has an unfortunate tendency toward feelbads on one side of the table or the other. Folks have talked a lot about the fragility of the archetype. It feels bad on the heroic player's side to get their hero blown out by instant speed removal as a 2- or 3-for-1. The flip side of that is that the player sitting across from the heroic player is going to feel equally helpless against a pantsed-up hero if they aren't given the tools to deal with it. It's quite difficult to find the right balance there.
It's an A+B archetype where both the A and the B are cards most cubes would not otherwise run. As has been mentioned, few of the heroes are strong enough to run without explicit heroic support, but most cubes don't naturally run more than one or two heroic enablers (i.e., auras and combat tricks) either. So that means you need to devote significant creature and noncreature slots in your heroic colors to the archetype, not to mention the concessions you have to make to your removal suite across all colors to make the archetype viable.
The other problem with heroic that I haven't seen mentioned, particularly aura-based heroic, is that it has an unfortunate tendency toward feelbads on one side of the table or the other. Folks have talked a lot about the fragility of the archetype. It feels bad on the heroic player's side to get their hero blown out by instant speed removal as a 2- or 3-for-1. The flip side of that is that the player sitting across from the heroic player is going to feel equally helpless against a pantsed-up hero if they aren't given the tools to deal with it. It's quite difficult to find the right balance there.
Onderzeeboot
Ecstatic Orb
Yeah, I think it works best as a minor archetype. Don't focus too many resources towards it, run Feather, maybe a few of the heroes, maybe a few green cards because they work well with the fight and pump spells in that color. I slightly tweaked my burn suite and protective spells to increase the number of targeted spells without running too many effects that feel like they're specifically heroic plants.
I'm taking a minor approach to it as well, with only:
I think going in too heavy with heroic is a mistake, though I could maybe be convinced to run some more.
Supported with:
But this ties into a bunch of cards that care about power as well:
I think going in too heavy with heroic is a mistake, though I could maybe be convinced to run some more.
Supported with:
But this ties into a bunch of cards that care about power as well:
Onderzeeboot
Ecstatic Orb
Oh right, I forgot about Rimrock Knight. That's another one I run
I don't feel like making a whole thread for this just yet...
Onslaught 2.0, use the custom draft format I've set up of 10C 3U 1R 1 Onslaught card (like a Timeshifted slot)
https://cubecobra.com/cube/list/5e543067116c8a06d43a258a
I think it shows that you can do tribal without it being total ass, but maybe I'm wrong. I feel like that's always been a challenge in the cube community. Most of us like a tribal deck but can't play it in cube. Maybe this changes that. The tribal payoffs are very light, there's non-tribal decks, and I think a lot of the cards overlap very well. Give it a whirl, it's by no means perfect. This is like version 1.0, but I wanted to see if you guys thought it had legs first.
Onslaught 2.0, use the custom draft format I've set up of 10C 3U 1R 1 Onslaught card (like a Timeshifted slot)
https://cubecobra.com/cube/list/5e543067116c8a06d43a258a
I think it shows that you can do tribal without it being total ass, but maybe I'm wrong. I feel like that's always been a challenge in the cube community. Most of us like a tribal deck but can't play it in cube. Maybe this changes that. The tribal payoffs are very light, there's non-tribal decks, and I think a lot of the cards overlap very well. Give it a whirl, it's by no means perfect. This is like version 1.0, but I wanted to see if you guys thought it had legs first.
That was fun. I got that sweet zombie deck together:
https://cubecobra.com/cube/deck/5e6a54b61287041ccf338f2c
I like the curve, pretty aggressive. The payoffs are subtile but worth it!
https://cubecobra.com/cube/deck/5e6a54b61287041ccf338f2c
I like the curve, pretty aggressive. The payoffs are subtile but worth it!
Look, I get that it is going to cost you more than $200 if you were to just go out and buy all 5 enemy fetchlands. But come on, WOTC is printing these specifically so that we can buy Fetchlands at a more affordable price. If I can't afford $100 for just Scalding Tarn, what makes them think I can afford $200 for a full set of 5 fetches? If this cost even just $100 it would be far more palatable since then one could at least somewhat realistically sell singles back to their LGS to trade it in for the fetchland drop.
They vaguely confirmed that another product will have Enemy Fetchlands at local game stores "later this year," but that's all that they said. I hope it's in a booster type product and not another drop like this. I can't fork over almost 200 dollars for effectively 3 cards (I already have Marsh Flats and Arid Mesa back from my MM2017 draft days)- I want to complete my set not buy a whole new one!
I had a very long and well thought out post (which you can believe if you can discount the idea that I am evaluating my own thoughts) that was lost to time and habitually hitting control-c for something else. But yes, I think it is normal to hit road blocks for designing. My point of the matter was, don't give up, and don't be afraid to talk to others about ideas, and then from that, don't be afraid to steal ideas from them (and don't be afraid to realize when someone's ideas are bad). Rarely is something amazing born from isolation, but group brainstorms and possibility storms have a good track record if all of you are on the right track.