Sets [DTK] Dragons of Tarkir Spoilers Thread

Alfonzo Bonzo

Alfonzo Bonzo

Lucre, I think coat with venom has more applications than just black blocking creatures - it won't usually be mono black, also counters burn removal and fight effects. Combos with lingers too.

I'm usually up for people trying stuff to see/understand if something works or doesn't (and why). Your comment about aggro only cards being distasteful resonates with me though. It's something I've been thinking about a lot and trying to apply, especially following the trying to make aggro more inclusive thread we had a while back. I'd be interested in hearing of your thoughts on this.

Also, grillo I'm not sure the comparison between myth realised and querion dryad is apt really. I'm not convinced that myth realised is that good in cube, though will be stronger if you have an enchantment theme. Interested to see how it plays for people.
 
Onderzeeboot

Onderzeeboot

Ecstatic Orb
Lucre said:
I guess I'm also just sick of seeing cards in drafts that are only for particular aggro decks / have no defensive use outside of racing. Like so much of your (one's) cube is devoted to / useful to aggressive strategies over midranged and control decks anyway.
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Well, to be honest, there's as many cards in the cube that aggro isn't interested in in the least. Wall of Omens and Day of Judgement aren't exactly epitome white weenie cards. I really don't mind some enablers that give the nonred aggro decks a bit of reach.

James Stevenson said:
Rally the Peasants has a huge upside though. Instant speed is very good here, and the potential to cast and flashback during the same combat is very powerful!
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Well, when you're just pushing through damage, the instant speed doesn't really matter? The +1 toughness helps your critters survive for the next wave though. Also, flashing Rally back in the same turn is a six mana combat trick. That's a magical Christmas land scenario for aggro! ;)

In short: I think the benefits of Great Teacher's Decree outweigh the benefits of Rally the Peasants.
 
Grillo_Parlante

Grillo_Parlante

Contributor
Onderzeeboot said:
Also, flashing Rally back in the same turn is a six mana combat trick. That's a magical Christmas land scenario for aggro! ;)
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The flashback is one of the big benefits for running rally though. Aggro decks do get flooded, and this gives them a mana sink thats on point with their game plan, and actually helps them comeback from a scenario where they are probably behind due to circumstances beyond their control.

Its the reason rally is the go-to white antham effect for me: if I'm going to run a somewhat narrow card, may it at least address negative variance. Rally does that in a neat compact package.
 
Lucre

Lucre

Isn't the "if you're just pushing through damage" also a little christmas landy? If I have them right where I want them my lava axe is amazing.
The argument for this mass pump spell vs helliod thing seems an awful lot to me like arguing for lava spike over incinerate because it costs 1 less.

Anyway I could probably go on for a page long ramble about your false equivalency up there between wraths etc and trumpet blasts but I'll try to keep it short. Tonnes of decks want wraths or walls. Tonnes of them. I've played 3 wraths in the sideboard of quite a number of aggro decks and main decked damnation in cube aggro decks before. Those sorts of cards don't stick around and you have to lean on them real hard in some archetypes to run. What the fuck does aggro care which 1, 2 and 3 drops it gets, sure some are better than others but is the difference really that much bigger between seeker and cathar to warrant taking the seeker over say a journey to nowhere or elspeth in the pack? God no. And of course any gods willing or stray hound of konda or trumpet blast will be waiting for me at the end of the pack, duh who else wants them.

Having a more narrow anthem in your packs creates a serious entry fee on some of the in colour cards you'll be seeing. It says, play me only after curving out or if you have 3+ army in cans in your pile. Its absolutely useless to many many decks and this one is only good on offense making it even weird to have in hand a lot of the time in decks it's actually fine in. There's very little entry fee on wrath. I play those in creature decks in limited all the time, especially in white decks where your tokens force players to over extend.

Do you know how dismaying it is to be the midranged or control guy and know that not only are most of the creatures not for you, but a growing number of sorceries and instants are also not for you and the creatures and removal you really want (blot, path, finks, venser, splicer) are things everyone else on the table will be scrambling up into their filthy grasping mandibles? And then at the end of the pack when you're hoping the freaking loyal cathar or something tables so you can even think of salvaging your early picks (and maybe survive to play your six mana wrath) you get passed a unuseful gold card, a firedrinker satyr a vines of the vastwood and a trumpet blast. And you take the fire drinker because it can block, even if poorly.

(also I totes advocate taking high power low cost creatures as SB fodder in control decks because you have to be making cost effective blocks in cube these days to keep up with the sweet new aggro cards, but it's really a shame so many of the new aggro fodder doesn't block well at all)
 
Eric Chan

Eric Chan

Hyalopterous Lemure
Staff member
Dictate of Heliod was incredibly overpowered here, with enchantment removal being as hard to come by as it is. I like to think my cube is on the fast side, and it still performed admirably, if it's one of the ~three cards over 4 cmc in your white weenie deck. Flashing it in mid-combat is absolutely brutal.

edit: holy moly Lucas, did you not have your morning coffee or something? there's grumpy Lucas and then there's grumpy Lucas
 
Lucre

Lucre

Lol omg Eric you slay me, we gotta do a cube night at shepherd again!

I'm actually pretty fine right now, I drank too much apple juice so my tummy is a little upset but I was also just excited to use the term false equivalences and I was empowered by people liking my post earlier regarding blocking. I think there are a lot of things about drafting / enabling archetypes that people aren't picking up on and sometimes an impassioned description of the exemplary events can be as good as a personal essay?
 
James Stevenson

James Stevenson

Steamflogger Boss
Staff member
Onderzeeboot said:
Well, when you're just pushing through damage, the instant speed doesn't really matter? The +1 toughness helps your critters survive for the next wave though. Also, flashing Rally back in the same turn is a six mana combat trick. That's a magical Christmas land scenario for aggro! ;).
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The instant speed really does matter. When you alpha strike with all your mana open, you could have anything. In fact, you could even hold up Rally the Peasants along with something else. They have to make their blocks before they know what's gunna hit them, and often (especially in game one) rally can kill them. I've never used it in cube, but I've certainly died like this in draft. Had it been played in the main phase, I would have just blocked differently and lived.
 
Diakonov

Diakonov

I agree Lucre it is sort of narrow, but there are def some other cards in my cube that are similarly narrow in other ways, and I think it could be interesting so it can't hurt to try it. The single {W} makes it splashable enough for many aggro/weenie decks, which is a pretty significant upside compared to Rally also. Dictate is a better card but kinda different; I think of this as a more widely usable and more interesting Overrun. Your opponent will probably struggle a bit with blocks and bad trades, but unlike Overrun, at least those blocks will mean something more.
 
Lucre

Lucre

be sure to include lingering souls, spectral procession, battle screech and triplicate spirits if you wana cube this guys that sounds almost as fun as having someone curve into silverheart after surrak! Man this is totally taking me back to getting blown out by rites or empyreal armor in vma drafts with my bros.

Would you say pump strategies are a good reason to have efficient instant speed removal or a good reason to cut it lol?
 
Onderzeeboot

Onderzeeboot

Ecstatic Orb
Well Lucre, you're being super cheeky today, that's for sure. I'm sure I don't need to explain to you how important the difference between 4 and 5 mana is in an aggro deck, and that that difference is far larger than the one between 1 and 2 mana. I'm also pretty sure I don't need to really convince you that it's much more common for an aggro deck to have two or three creatures on board, than it is for that same aggro deck to have six mana in play. Decree doesn't even need armies in a can, though it is undoubtedly good together with them. With only two creatures it already represents eight damage for 4 mana. I've actually been winning with the card in my sealed deck with just the {3}{B} 2/3 flyer and the {3}{B}{B} 4/6 Sidisi on the battlefield. I actually like that it's a sorcery as well, because it's much less of an "oh yeah, I guess I just lose then", and more of a "shit, how am I going to survive this, let's see". Anyway, I'm going to try it, seeing that I'm not afraid to give aggro noncreature tools as well, apparently unlike you. :p
 
Grillo_Parlante

Grillo_Parlante

Contributor
You really don't need to cut instant speed removal to support pump strategies. Pump spells can act as defacto counters for damage based removal and good ones can outright counter removal. Having both present in the same cube can create an interesting tension in how you use your spells, with each player trying to outplay the other.

Limited removal is nice for creating some defintion in your removal suite. Otherwise your aggro and midrange decks end up grabbing the cheap efficent removal pieces, and your control decks end up being these boring 3 color decks, as the non-multicolor spot removal generally won't wheel.
 
Lucre

Lucre

Give them tools more than one deck is interested in is more my point. That card only interests drafters with an early curve of creatures of several army in cans. Yeah I'm glad as a player of decks that don't block well (aggro and control decks) that it's a sorcery too so I can think about it, but I'm sorta calling it ugly in a more general way when I think about how narrow it is, how few states of the game this is going to feel like it has utility in, and how few cube decks would even consider taking it anywhere but 13th+
But anyway it's your cube.

Man when I think of that card, I can see myself losing to it often because of it's mere existence. You know what I mean. Seeing the trumpet blast go around the table wishing it were something you actually wanted, knowing you probably don't have the removal or stabilizing creatures to actually combat an over run deck because there are so many stupid loxodon warhammers and brave the elements swimming around in packs. Wondering how often you're gonna be arresting a 1 drop or token this draft.
 
Onderzeeboot

Onderzeeboot

Ecstatic Orb
I get what you mean, we'll see. I cut Overrun long ago for being too swingy, but a large part of that is the trample. I think this is in a sweet spot, where you can see it coming before blocks, and thus block differently, but cheap and powerful enough that it is actually desirable to run for aggro decks. And well, yeah, as I alluded to before, I hate it when aggro isn't really viable outside of red because you lack the reach. White weenie is nice and all, but it's so easy to shut down with a large blocker, and there's no way to deal those final points of damage. I totally agree this is a card that might wheel if there's only one white-based aggro player at the table, we'll see how that turns out. If it's popular and good enough, I don't mind some cards tabling. Goblin Welder has been in my cube for the longest time as well for example, and that has been great fun so far.
 
anotak

anotak



i haven't seen anyone mention anything about this, idk, it could interact well w token and lifegain strats maybe or somethin
 
Onderzeeboot

Onderzeeboot

Ecstatic Orb
Lucre said:
I have no idea why people aren't hella hyphy about

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So how would you guys rank Secure the Wastes compared to the cards below?



Edit: I honestly don't love the rate on Secure the Wastes, considering that it makes evasionless tokens. I'ld say its better than Decree and possibly Gather the Townsfolk, depending on whether you support humans and/or warriors. Zenith has a better rate at 6+ mana, not to mention it gets shuffled back, which means it's the better card in control and midrange decks, I think, but Secure has the advantage in the early game, though it would suck to have to blow Secure for only two or three tokens. At that rate it's just inefficient and I'ld rather be playing any of the other token makers that generate flyers.
 
Diakonov

Diakonov

The flexibility is nice. There are situations where I'd be fine with getting two dudes for {2}{W} if the synergy is there, but it seems like the optimal situation is getting four or five dudes. White Sun's Zenith at cmc 6 is {3}{W}{W}{W} compared to {5}{W}, and receiving five 1/1's is comparable to three 2/2's especially if you take into account anthems, Goblin Bombardment, Purphoros, etc.

Man just writing this makes me think about how bonkers Cloudgoat Ranger actually is.
 
Onderzeeboot

Onderzeeboot

Ecstatic Orb
True that, Secure the Wastes is eminently more splashable than White Sun's Zenith. It's just, Secure doesn't wow me at all, promising nothing but measly 1/1's at a moment in the game where I could be dropping more relevant threats. Of course there's the interaction between anthems, Goblin Bombardment and Purphoros (I don't play the god myself though), but all of the other token makers offer the same synergies, don't cost 5 mana before they're good, and can actually attack just fine without support, because they have evasion or are bigger! (Well, except Gather the Townsfolk...) I just don't understand what's there exactly to get al hyped up about when there's several cards (more than I want to put into my cube) that outshine it imho.
 
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