General (DMU & DMC) Dominaria United Testing/Includes Thread

Chris Taylor

Chris Taylor

Contributor
TrainmasterGT said:
—Insert obligatory anti-Wtwlf statement here–
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His is a perspective, and useful for that in and of itself.
Sometimes I just want cards that work, and the crowd that's spend the last 20 years debating the exact ranking of red 3s is useful for that.

Look if his name is no longer the standin for power max cube as I understand it, perhaps I'm as old and outmoded as he is :p
 
shamizy

shamizy

wtwlf's reviews and rankings are useful tools for people brand new to cube, and his cube is still the go-to skeleton for most anyone just entering the format, but it became apparent after a few months of tinkering and designing on my own back in 2014 that he wasn't a particularly good designer. There was never any real nuance to his analyses; the ultimate factor for a card seemed to be raw power level. Not the cultivation of an idea, archetype or theme that we loved deepdiving into around here, but just a raw overview and plugging and chugging some rigid view on a given card relative to other offerings. It's the opposite of explorative design. I still remember those dumb threads from when Torrential Gearhulk came out, and MTGS was still big, where the monkeys fell in line with terrible takes on how bad it was and how it wasn't in the top 6 CMC blue cards, and then weeks later it flipped completely.

I have nothing against the guy himself, he seems super pleasant and a welcome resource compared to other cube "personalities", but the cult that pretty much established themselves around his views from MTGS to now was cringey to say the least. Groupthink all day, a big reason why so many of us came here years ago to get away and get some actual conversations on explorative design going.

On a whim I might browse his list a few times a year just to see if anything has changed, but every time I see the Sarcomancy or shitty gold offerings to complete a cycle I remember that it's still the same old same old.
 
inscho

inscho

Overall I'm much more interested to retail draft this set than in its contribution to my cube. Invasion block was one of my favorite moments in magic.

Certain:
Raven Man: I'm really looking forward to having another discard matters piece for black that is more aggro-centric. Go-wide is an interesting angle for the hellbent deck. I'm always looking for more reasons to keep my pet card Raven's Crime in the cube.

Near Certain:
Phoenix Chick: Likely taking Flameblade Adepts place. If I ever break my "anti-tribal" position, it'll be for Phoenix Tribal.

Resolute Reinforcements: I've been looking for a 2cmc token support card in white. This printing is long overdue imo.

Cult Conscript: It's not the tribaless version of Gravecrawler I've been hoping for, but at least it can block, and is an upgrade on Gutterbones and Dread Wanderer.

Uncertain but Interested:
Squee, Dubious Monarch: I think I prefer Phoenix of Ash and I don't love the idea of running both. Could take Breya's Apprentice's slot which is fine, but somewhat unremarkable. Ox of Agonas might be coming out which would reduce some of red's graveyard munching.

Liliana of the Veil: Been flirting with including this for a while, and the price drop of a reprint likely means I'll grab a copy.

Aether Channeler: Super solid roleplayer, which is rarely the type of card I'm drawn to in my cube. :) I'll still probably test it.

Llanowar Greenwidow: 4/3 Trample, Reach is interesting at 3 mana. I really wish it didn't exile upon 2nd death. I'm keeping the 5c Zoo Archteype in the back of my mind. I think it's an interesting contrast to the 5c goodstuff decks that I'm accustomed to. I think the Greenwidow is likely a square peg in a round hole in my current environment.

Founding the Third Path: The uncertaintly lies in so many of blue's spells being bad/underwhelming spell reanimation targets: Miscalculation, Occult Epiphany, Deep Analysis, Nexus of Fate, etc. I foresee skipping the first chapter 80%+ of the time. I think I'm already talking myself out of it.

Braids, Arisen Nightmare: If I wasn't increasing my cube's powerlevel and testing LotV I'd be giving this a spin. I feel like it's more of a Sulfuric Vortex than a Stax piece.

Guardian of New Benalia: It feels like this should be an instant upgrade on Seasoned Hallowblade, but I'm not confident that it is for me. A 3 power indestructible blocker is pretty good in my cube. Guardian adds complexity and introduces a one-off mechanic. I'm probably going to hold off.

Cut Down: Seems good. I can just never decide on the criteria I use for selecting my cube's removal spells :(

The Dragon War: Seems totally reasonable. I'm not sure I'm looking to add any additional noncreature permanents to my red section.

Karn's Sylex: This is not the colorless Pernicious Deed I thought it was at first glance...there's too many downsides between self-exile, entering the battlefield tapped, and sorcery speed activation

Interested but Doubtful:
Haughty Djinn: Interesting card, but spell volume isn't really where my cube is going at the moment. I also think 3cmc is an awkward spot in the curve for the spell reduction cost, and as others have mentioned most spellslinging cards have low cmc to begin with.

Sheoldred, the Apocalypse: Interesting Wheels.dec piece, but probably is too generically punishing to be that fun.

Baird, Argivian Recruiter: My boros section has a go-wide and go-tall intersection, and this could be a decent connective piece. I'm not extremely happy with Boros' offerings at the moment, but I'm not sure this brings enough to the table.
 
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landofMordor

landofMordor

Administrator
This reminds me: Lucky Paper's survey is up! Add what you're testing (or pull it directly from Cube Cobra if you've already changed your online list) and give me some good pullquotes to include in the write-up analysis that will follow in a few weeks.

https://luckypaper.co/survey/dmu/
 
shamizy

shamizy

sigh said:
Pretty spicy curve with
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You know it's weird to me that a lot of cube lists still don't run Champion of the Parish. With the number of incidental humans early in the curve with aggressive bodies, it's so trivially easy to turn it into a 2/2. I get that a 1/1 topdecked late sucks, but a 2/1 isn't much better. Why not play the card that opens up a greater variety of sequencing decisions with the potential for even more damage in the crucial early game before the board gets clogged up? Just bizarre.
 
Onderzeeboot

Onderzeeboot

Ecstatic Orb
I used to run two, but I dropped them because it was holding me back from including non-humans in white and its allied colors. Blame Throne of Eldraine. Currently only 35 of my 101 creatures in {W}{B}{R} with mv<4 are human (I narrowed it down because black and red are white's allied colors in my cube, you're not typically going to end up with a {W/U} or {G/W} deck in my cube, and because you want to be triggering Champion early and often, so low mv humans are important for it to thrive).
 
TrainmasterGT

TrainmasterGT

shamizy said:
You know it's weird to me that a lot of cube lists still don't run Champion of the Parish. With the number of incidental humans early in the curve with aggressive bodies, it's so trivially easy to turn it into a 2/2. I get that a 1/1 topdecked late sucks, but a 2/1 isn't much better. Why not play the card that opens up a greater variety of sequencing decisions with the potential for even more damage in the crucial early game before the board gets clogged up? Just bizarre.
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I think there are many reasons why Champion of the Parish isn't as popular as its reputation around here would suggest.

Primarily I think it has do with the fact that Champion of the Parish demands that Cube designers actively curate their White sections to include enough Humans to make sure it can consistently grow. An increasing number of premium one and two drops are non-human. There are lots of Spirits, Cats, Dogs, Kor, Dwarves, Vampires, and even Foxes that people want to be including in their lists that all diminish the power level of a Champion of the Parish. Sure, plenty of humans that are perfect for Cube inclusion, but not every designer is going to want to employ random humans even if they are playable in their environment when there are cooler non-human creatures out there that they could be using. The inclusion of Champion of the Parish now places a premium on the inclusion of Humans in slots that might otherwise go to something else. Likewise, some powerful new cards are explicitly made non-human by WOTC to prevent breaking the Humans deck in constructed formats.

In addition, Champion of the Parish really wants to be included in multiples. The card asks players to build their deck with it in mind, and might not be included in a deck where playing a high density of non-humans would yield a more powerful final product than going all in on the single Champion of the Parish. Therefore, including two or three champions in a Cube is usually a good idea when trying to support its needs. A lot of designers are still hesitant to go in on non-singleton spells. While the winds are changing on this front, there's still a significant number of people who might not see the juice as being worth the squeeze of abandoning the singleton restriction.

Finally, an increasing number of designers simply aren't building base-white archetypes into their Cubes anymore. Over the past couple of years, more and more designers have started building all-midrange environments or shifting their aggro decks from "mono-color with splash" archetypes to "domain zoo" decks. Champion of the Parish simply doesn't have a home in a deck that's playing Kird apes and Loam Lions into Territorial Kavus, Tarmogofys, or god forbid Scion of Dragos by virtue of the lack of humans this deck employs.

Simply put, while Champion of the Parish may offer unique play patterns, several meta-level design reasons bar it from inclusion in an increasing number of environments.
 
Dom Harvey

Dom Harvey

Contributor
I don't really understand the obsession with Death's Shadow. It's a unique incentive but one that only works under the very specific constraints of on-demand fetches + shocks (just look at how it fell flat in Historic) and I think in practice it would be very hard to draft an appealing Shadow deck in Cube that's also a functional deck otherwise (unless you have something like Ryan Saxe's Constructed Cube where you get 3-4 copies of everything you draft and build a 60-card deck, but even then)

re. Champion, I found that doubling Thalia's Lieutenant worked better for me - in many draws it's effectively the same and in the draws where Champion would be more aggressive Lieutenant is still excellent. It also makes those other Humans matter more (as opposed to just being the right type for Champion) and it's often the card you most want to draw in the mid-game (whereas Champion is just a 1/1 at worst or another body at best)
 
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TrainmasterGT

TrainmasterGT

Dom Harvey said:
I don't really understand the obsession with Death's Shadow. It's a unique incentive but one that only works under the very specific constraints of on-demand fetches + shocks (just look at how it fell flat in Historic) and I think in practice it would be very hard to draft an appealing Shadow deck in Cube that's also a functional deck otherwise (unless you have something like Ryan Saxe's Constructed Cube where you get 3-4 copies of everything you draft and build a 60-card deck, but even then)
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I think people are obsessed with Death's Shadow because it's a constructed card they enjoy that, on paper, could technically work as a Cube deck in multishock//multifetch non-singleton environments. I'm seeing this a lot more with other cards that are or were popular in constructed at some point, such as Winota, Joiner of Forces, Collected Company, and the classic case of Splinter Twin. People want to enjoy cards they like in constructed in their Cubes, and as a result, they try to play them. Newer advances in nonsingleton design technology are actually letting some of these cards work quite well (Collected Company can be a cool toolbox card again in Cube instead of being an Elf and/or Angel Cleric factory), but for others, the inclusion feels forced. I think Shadow is one such forced inclusion because it leans hard into a series of very specific cards that it can get consistently in constructed but not necessarily in a draft. After all, who in a Cube draft is not fighting for the shocks, fetches, and thoughtseize(s)?
 
B

blacksmithy

Dom Harvey said:
I don't really understand the obsession with Death's Shadow. It's a unique incentive but one that only works under the very specific constraints of on-demand fetches + shocks (just look at how it fell flat in Historic) and I think in practice it would be very hard to draft an appealing Shadow deck in Cube that's also a functional deck otherwise (unless you have something like Ryan Saxe's Constructed Cube where you get 3-4 copies of everything you draft and build a 60-card deck, but even then)

re. Champion, I found that doubling Thalia's Lieutenant worked better for me - in many draws it's effectively the same and in the draws where Champion would be more aggressive Lieutenant is still excellent. It also makes those other Humans matter more (as opposed to just being the right type for Champion) and it's often the card you most want to draw in the mid-game (whereas Champion is just a 1/1 at worst or another body at best)
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Shadow’s cool, therefore, i run it; it needs multiples to be worth building around, therefore, i run draft one get 3
 
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