I think people just like the idea of jumping through hoops for power.
General (DMU & DMC) Dominaria United Testing/Includes Thread
- Thread starter TrainmasterGT
- Start date
These are good points, I agree with most of them in general for many cards, but I think there's something getting lost in translation here. I just think there is so little opportunity cost to make Champion of the Parish work as a card in your typical cube deck that it's strange that it isn't utilized more often. You can bring up all of those non-humans, but I could probably wrestle up an equally long list of incidentally strong humans that have been printed in a similar span of time. I don't think there's a whole lot of legwork necessary to make it an effective inclusion; human "tribal" just tends to exist with how ubiquitous the creature type is in this game. There usually isn't an explicit need to add good humans to a final 360; it mostly just kind of happens at various power levels. If I were to pull up an average aggregate of 360 cubes along a mid-high power band, I'm quite certain that the human subtype will be very highly represented.
From years of experience with the card in my favorite draft archetype, I don't think it's a card that needs to have a deck explicitly built with it in mind explicitly to be effective. It's better if you have multiples for sure, and it'll be much more effective with a clear humans archetype, but I think it takes so little for it to be "above rate" as a singleton beater even without concentrated support. It's not all that rigid like a Goblin or Merfolk lord that are otherwise useless and wholly parasitic, where you need to really bend your design to make it passable. For the Champion don't really have to go out of your way to make it grow into a 2/2 (at which point it is passable for a 1 CMC aggro creature); you could just play another one drop human (which most cubes have an abundance of) or curve into an aggressive 2 drop (which are also mostly humans).
Like if I pull up your list from your cube blog and generate a slot for a Champ and then make these following swaps:
Now you have the density for a clear RW Humans deck without compromising much elsewhere. Unless I'm missing something in terms of synergies or other archetypes, I don't see much being broken elsewhere by these kind of swaps.
So while I agree with many of your points, and Champion is not some sacred cow for every single environment, I do think it is still woefully underused relative to what you'd expect based off an average cube's composition. And I think it's mostly due to many people not going back to re-evaluate it 11 years after release if I'm being perfectly honest.
I suspect Anafenza is here for persist combo deck.
Outside of this, I second your opinion, Champion of the Parish is a powerhouse in most cube I play, without that much constraints : you'll probably play Mom, Thalia, Spellbinder, Blade Splicer, Kytheon, Luminarch Aspirant anyway
. The list of good humans is never-ending...
Outside of this, I second your opinion, Champion of the Parish is a powerhouse in most cube I play, without that much constraints : you'll probably play Mom, Thalia, Spellbinder, Blade Splicer, Kytheon, Luminarch Aspirant anyway
. The list of good humans is never-ending...
This card is definitely a personal preference piece that no one will "win" over.
It's a little telling though when "rebuttal to points in favor of excluding it" includes making 5 swaps alongside it for inclusion (slots that would effectively become locked into being some type of human in order to not lose that density later). My personal opinion is that there's a lot more interesting things RW and other colors can be doing, especially if you are only including 1 Champ.
It's a little telling though when "rebuttal to points in favor of excluding it" includes making 5 swaps alongside it for inclusion (slots that would effectively become locked into being some type of human in order to not lose that density later). My personal opinion is that there's a lot more interesting things RW and other colors can be doing, especially if you are only including 1 Champ.
I think you missed the overarching point.These are good points, I agree with most of them in general for many cards, but I think there's something getting lost in translation here. I just think there is so little opportunity cost to make Champion of the Parish work as a card in your typical cube deck that it's strange that it isn't utilized more often. You can bring up all of those non-humans, but I could probably wrestle up an equally long list of incidentally strong humans that have been printed in a similar span of time. I don't think there's a whole lot of legwork necessary to make it an effective inclusion; human "tribal" just tends to exist with how ubiquitous the creature type is in this game. There usually isn't an explicit need to add good humans to a final 360; it mostly just kind of happens at various power levels. If I were to pull up an average aggregate of 360 cubes along a mid-high power band, I'm quite certain that the human subtype will be very highly represented.
From years of experience with the card in my favorite draft archetype, I don't think it's a card that needs to have a deck explicitly built with it in mind explicitly to be effective. It's better if you have multiples for sure, and it'll be much more effective with a clear humans archetype, but I think it takes so little for it to be "above rate" as a singleton beater even without concentrated support. It's not all that rigid like a Goblin or Merfolk lord that are otherwise useless and wholly parasitic, where you need to really bend your design to make it passable. For the Champion don't really have to go out of your way to make it grow into a 2/2 (at which point it is passable for a 1 CMC aggro creature); you could just play another one drop human (which most cubes have an abundance of) or curve into an aggressive 2 drop (which are also mostly humans).
Like if I pull up your list from your cube blog and generate a slot for a Champ and then make these following swaps:
Now you have the density for a clear RW Humans deck without compromising much elsewhere. Unless I'm missing something in terms of synergies or other archetypes, I don't see much being broken elsewhere by these kind of swaps.
So while I agree with many of your points, and Champion is not some sacred cow for every single environment, I do think it is still woefully underused relative to what you'd expect based off an average cube's composition. And I think it's mostly due to many people not going back to re-evaluate it 11 years after release if I'm being perfectly honest.
Because Champion of the Parish is a tribal card, it still requires a fair amount of parasitic support in order to function properly. While you're correct in saying that Human is an easier type to support than most others because so many cards are randomly Human, that doesn't change the fact that those humans still need to exist in the Cube for Champion to work. While this isn't going to be difficult in every environment, this isn't the case universally. Frankly, I think having enough Humans isn't something most designers actually want to worry about. The example you gave with that outdated version of my old Cube supports this argument. Could younger me have gone out of my way to add some extra Humans to my Cube to support Champion of the Parish? Sure. Did I have any reason to do that? No.
Simply put, saying "just play more Humans, stupid" about environments where human density is irrelevant is not a good argument in defense of a card. There are likely some Cubes that could play Champion that currently don't due to the card's age, but I suspect that number is significantly lower than you're expecting. The fact that there is some effort required in supporting the Champion kills it for a lot of people.
I think sigh said it best with his contribution:
I run both Champion and Thalia's Liutenant because they both require very little to accomodate them but are a lot of fun to play and draft around.
I don't have a cube or cube group at the moment, just drafting the set on Arena, but this little core here is getting my wheels turning again
Chris Taylor
Contributor
Notes: I thought enlist pumped power/toughness
Enlist has underwhelmed me.
Chris Taylor
Contributor
I like the idea! It's just a bit too balanced, I hate to say it.
On lucky paper radio they were talking about the cycle of rares that convert the FIRST colored symbol in your PERMANENT spells into phyrexian mana, and how they'd be a lot more powerful, but way cleaner if they just converted them all.
Like I get why enlist only works on creatures that could attack on their own, balance wise. But it's so much this way.
On lucky paper radio they were talking about the cycle of rares that convert the FIRST colored symbol in your PERMANENT spells into phyrexian mana, and how they'd be a lot more powerful, but way cleaner if they just converted them all.
Like I get why enlist only works on creatures that could attack on their own, balance wise. But it's so much this way.
LPR is a truly great show.
Got my first draft in since Dominaria's release, and my final cube draft with my current playgroup, as I'm moving halfway across the world next month.
...unfortunately, none of the cards made it in time, as they'll be arriving by post today.
My Jund tokens deck would've been sick with a Raven Man, though.
...unfortunately, none of the cards made it in time, as they'll be arriving by post today.
My Jund tokens deck would've been sick with a Raven Man, though.
Onderzeeboot
Ecstatic Orb
Good luck settling into your new home!
It's the only MtG podcast I've found that feels like it has any game design chops whatsoever. Every other cube podcast I've ever listened to I've dropped after a couple episodes because all they talk about are power level considerations. LPR really cares about crafting an interesting environment.
landofMordor
Administrator
The only other one I've found is "The Resleevables" -- patrick sullivan and cedric phillips reminiscing about old magic sets. You've gotta sign up for the talk-show vibes and sports tangents, as well as a focus on evaluating cards for competitive formats, but Sullivan does talk about every mechanic from a game design lens, as well as many individual cards. It's really good stuff. Unfortunately, they're on hiatus, but there's a healthy backlog to listen to.
Dom Harvey
Contributor
Riptide Lab Podcast fans in shambles
Chris Taylor
Contributor
When is that next set review eh?
landofMordor
Administrator
don't get me wrong, i listen to every single RTL podcast, too, even the one where that annoying guy Parker is a guest
landofMordor
Administrator
Hey all, the Lucky Paper Community Set Review is live! Thanks for everybody who submitted surveys, this one broke records!
https://luckypaper.co/articles/cube-prospective-dominaria-united/
https://luckypaper.co/articles/cube-prospective-dominaria-united/
Thanks as always for maintaining these. Would kill to be able to break out cubes tagged with rarity restrictions or that are EDH-focused for the analysis, but I can 1) technically do that myself if I just want to play around in CubeCobra, and 2) I know how much work that would be!
Especially on the heels of the retrospective y'all posted today, I can very much see which cards are going to be over/under-valued, even with just a little bit of play on them.
Over-valued
Evolved Sleeper - Black aggro never seems to have terribly good staying power in the typical cubes on CubeCobra, I don't think this'll be the exception.
Serra Paragon - Just because I adore her doesn't mean she'll stick around for others; white's 4-drops are too competitive, and like you said in your more recent article, this is the kind of card that gets a new shiny version nearly every expansion these days
Haughty Djinn - I just don't think this has the staying power in blue's always-competitive slice of cube. The extra pip needs to represent significant power, and I don't think it does here, archetype support be damned.
Under-valued
Leyline Binding - Again, going back to your thesis from today's article, I think people are strongly influenced by constructed formats in their cube curation. This isn't strictly a bad thing -- part of the fun of Cube is playing with the "best of" from your other Magic experiences -- but I'll be shocked if it's not one of the strongest DMU holdouts in a year's time.
Sheoldred, the Apocalypse - Ditto here, you don't need draw 7s to realize the power represented here. Unreal.
The Raven Man - It's my personal goal and ambition to change the Cube community's perspective on this card. I will make it happen, even if I have to do it alone. Raven Man is sick as hell y'all, and Cube is the perfect format for a novel card like this.
this reminds me i need to make a Raven Man that makes tokens i already have