General Edict Effects in Cube

[ravnic]

I've learned to love edict effects before I even knew about cube, through formats like legacy and pauper. So I've always progressed with the assumption, that cards like Diabolic Edict are powerful interaction spells, and I've been cubing them since the very beginning pf my cube. But with arena I also started to do many more booster drafts than I used to, and I've learned, that edicts just don't really cut it in limited. Killing the opponent's worst creature starts getting worse with every turn, and even casting Diabolic Edict on turn 2 to kill their 2-drop isn't even incredible.

Now recently when we drafted, my girlfriend drafted a very strong mono white deck with (lifegain and) token synergies. Sadly, my rakdos sacrifice deck had three edict effects for removal (and two others, but that wasn't enough). I've lost eight out of our nine games, and I figured my biggest problem was that I couldn't kill her engine pieces or bigger threats in time, because all of my edict effects were blanked by some tokens.

I've decided to reduce the number of those, I cut Diabolic Edict and Fleshbag Marauder but keep Chainer's Edict, Do or Die and Innocent Blood.

Still, after getting proven so hard how situational an edict can be, I don't even know how to categorize and count them. Does Chainer's Edict deserve the removal tag? Does it even deserve a slot? Is Innocent Blood to be counted as a removal? It can be really good but is even more situational than Diabolic Edict was. Is Diabolic's Instant speed worth more than Chainer's Edict's flashback?

I would like to get some talking on edict effects. Do you guys run edicts? Are they any good for you? Which ones can you recommend? Do you count them as (full) removal spells in your list? Do you even count your removal spells per color?

 

[blacksmithy]

i run Liliana of the Veil who is technically a repeatable edict, and a custom version of Professor Onyx who has the Soul Shatter style of edict. i will also eventually run Riveteers Charm which is again a Soul Shatter. and yeah i agree edicts just kinda suck in limited formats generally speaking. they’re also mostly sideboard effects for fighting Bogles in constructed from my understanding.

EDIT: to answer your final question, no i don’t keep close counts on removal

 

[shamizy]

I think edict wise I'm down to the following:



Including Stax pieces just because they fit the mold despite not being straight up removal. I still like all these effects for their various utility ranging from Lily's ability to grind down resources, Innocent Blood allowing to break party with recurrable bodies, and Chainers letting you double-dip with the Flashback in the later game. I'd still count them as removal, but they are definitely more situational than straight up kill a creature effects which we've gotten a plethora of since Theros.

To maximize them you need to also be applying pressure along a different axis. I feel like the whole point of cards like Chainers or Innocent Blood is being able to maximize the cheap cost by forcing unwanted sacrifices. Like if you force an opponent into a chump block then use that edict effect to snipe what you're really after. Or even utilizing small damage off something like a 2 mana burn spell to snipe a big body and then clean up a 2nd body with the edict.

The quality of an edict effect goes up depending upon the average quality of card you're removing. If you're playing against a deck that goes wide they kind of stink, but against the majority of cube decks where individual bodies and creatures are more relevant, you're usually getting your mana's worth of value via removal. I still like them to spice up the removal suite as I find just running every bit of efficient removal a bit boring, but they should probably be considered a lower tier removal spell in a vacuum. Still removal, just not premier removal.

 

[landofMordor]

Nah, I don't bother to count my removal. I just observe the play patterns -- All games have board stall? not enough removal. All games end in topdeck wars? too much removal. (More precisely, I know when I observe these patterns that I can adjust the removal knob in those directions without much risk.)

Yeah, edicts aren't great. Legacy and Pauper utilize them because those formats have expected metagame quantities whose strategy is hardened against Doom Blade and soft to specifically non-targeting removal -- Bogles, Dark Depths, or whatever. Edicts are essentially narrow hate pieces against linear creature-based go-tall strategies.

Combining my two answers, I don't even think much about classifying the edict in my cube. In NEO limited, I played The Long Reach of Night as a "2-for-1 creature", not as "removal", which probably gets closest to my stance on them -- if the edict is just a small chunk of the rate, and I'm interested in the entire rate, then I'm in. Another saving grace of certain edicts is modality -- Debt to the Kami was respectable (but not "good") in NEO because you could hit stuff like Branch of Boseiju when the creature mode whiffed. Finally, Innocent Blood is so castable that it can be relied upon to "bolt the bird" in consistent/grindy/graveyard-y decks like Rakdos Dreadhorde Arcanist/Young Pyromancer (and it did see Historic play briefly like a year ago). Outside of those limiting cases, I classify Edicts as "sideboard garbage" as far as taxonomy goes. I'd put it in whatever category you're using to classify Naturalize and Skullcrack.

The exception is when I'm specifically looking to cultivate the aforementioned go-tall linear Auras strategy (which I have done, and it turned out to be not super fun: http://cubecobra.com/cube/overview/5d5f0a26726e4277c7bc2044)

 

[LadyMapi]

Yeah, Edicts really suck if villain has any number of non-critical creatures.

That said... if you want to run edicts, support Smallpox (and friends). Not because it's good, necessarily... no, you support Smallpox because it feels amazing to break parity on it.

 

[TrainmasterGT]

Edicts always sound cool until you realize that a two mana Nest Invader completely invalidates all nine mana of a Chainer's Edict...

 

[ravnic]

The quality of an edict effect goes up depending upon the average quality of card you're removing. If you're playing against a deck that goes wide they kind of stink, but against the majority of cube decks where individual bodies and creatures are more relevant, you're usually getting your mana's worth of value via removal. I still like them to spice up the removal suite as I find just running every bit of efficient removal a bit boring, but they should probably be considered a lower tier removal spell in a vacuum. Still removal, just not premier removal.

Yeah, that's true. Sadly, tokens are so commonplace these days, in my cube at least but I think in other's as well. Go tall strategies like bogles however aren't beloved for a reason.

I still like edicts, I think they're a cool part of black's identity and I will try to keep some.

Nah, I don't bother to count my removal. I just observe the play patterns -- All games have board stall? not enough removal. All games end in topdeck wars? too much removal. (More precisely, I know when I observe these patterns that I can adjust the removal knob in those directions without much riskrisk.

I've found it to be easier to observe these things when you also have numbers, especially when not all of the cube's cards are drafted. If now one draft it feels like white has too many removal spells, but black and red seem perfect, I can compare the numbers and figure out, if it might've been because there just happened to be an above average number of them in the 40% (or whatever) of the cube that was drafted. I use the same tag system to calculate, how many e.g. discard outlets will appear in a draft utilizing N of my 680 cube cards.

Oh, and I forgot Debt to the Kami, which I run as well. But this one probably shouldn't be considered an actual removal spell. I assume players will use this as a bad, black Demistify 90% of the time. Please wizards, give us better black enchantment removal!

 

[Rusje]

Why not use
All but the last are edict effects which require the most powerful/expensive one to go.

 

[Onderzeeboot]

These are the cards in my cube that force an opponent to sacrifice creatures (or permanents). Four of the six fall into a category of cards that make opponents sacrifice multiple times. By Invitation Only is a scalable wrath. Silverquill Command is the only true edict, but it's flexible, so you can pick another option if the edict isn't going to work. I think straight up edict effects, like Diabolic Edict, are typically bad in limited environments. They tend to work best in specific constructed environments, where tokens are rare and high impact cards that can't be dealt with through more traditional removal cards frequently can be (or naturally are) isolated on the battlefield. There was a time when Akroma, Angel of Wrath was a popular finisher, for example, and Innocent Blood/

 

[japahn]

Edicts got a lot worse over time with tokens and ETB effects getting more and more playable. They were an important counter to "threats that counter removal" when Magic was more about matching removal with threats, but nowadays they are too situational to be good.

 

[inscho]

Edicts got a lot worse over time with tokens and ETB effects getting more and more playable. They were an important counter to "threats that counter removal" when Magic was more about matching removal with threats, but nowadays they are too situational to be good.

100%. I don't play any non-stax edicts (rankle, braids, smokestack, smallpox) these days. They are just often outclassed.

 

[japahn]

I wonder if this is good, even:

Diabolic Edicts
1B
Instant
Target player sacrifices two creatures.

Also situational, but the success case probably makes it worth to accept the fail cases. I don't think they'd print that though, it might be format warping and shift the meta to armies of tokens.

 

[inscho]

I wonder if this is good, even:

Diabolic Edicts
1B
Instant
Target player sacrifices two creatures.

Also situational, but the success case probably makes it worth to accept the fail cases. I don't think they'd print that though, it might be format warping and shift the meta to armies of tokens.

That's definitely good lol

 

[Zoss]

I wonder if this is good, even:

Diabolic Edicts
1B
Instant
Target player sacrifices two creatures.

Also situational, but the success case probably makes it worth to accept the fail cases. I don't think they'd print that though, it might be format warping and shift the meta to armies of tokens.

Found blacksmithy's alt, lol.

On topic, I think that this card for 2B might not be crazy. It would be strong for sure, but it might not be broken. 3B is too much unless you kept the same flashback (edit: got this mixed up with Chainer's Edict.), at which point it would be right back to being busted as eventually the raw value gets to be enough to make it worthwhile.

Edit:

Two Edicts In A Trenchcoat
2BB
Instant
Target player sacrifices two creatures.
Flashback 5B

How busted is this? I think this is weirdly fair.

 

[TrainmasterGT]

Two Edicts In A Trenchcoat
2BB
Instant
Target player sacrifices two creatures.
Flashback 5B

How busted is this? I think this is weirdly fair.

I don't think it's busted at all. It's 10 mana to kill a lingering souls.

 

[sigh]

This is a prime reason (of many) I keep tokens to a minimum where possible. Edicts have still gotten worse, but if you restrict their primary fail state, they can pull through.

Fleshbag Marauder still pulls its weight, because you can also utilize a token or something that wants to go to the grave. And it can be recurred, potentially over and over.

 

[landofMordor]

Two Edicts In A Trenchcoat
2BB
Instant
Target player sacrifices two creatures.
Flashback 5B

How busted is this?

This is just Barter in Blood with a glow-up that it sorely needs. This is eminently fair, although possibly stronger than most retail limited uncommons.

 

[Zoss]

I completely missed that card somehow, thanks! And yeah, looks rough to play.

 

[Onderzeeboot]

I don't quite remember how playable Dead Drop was in limited (not very, iirc), but those are usually only overcosted by a mana or two (at common or uncommon at least) compared to what Wizards thinks such an effect should cost. That means "Target player sacrifices two creatures" as a sorcery is valued at roughly . On the one hand that seems way too much, on the other hand it does suggest that affect as a instant is really pushing it. The problem is that, the lower the mana value of such an effect becomes, the higher the chance that it actually is a one-sided wrath. For a regular edict effect you often have a spare creature lying around so that you can at least don't need to sacrifice your biggest threat. Keeping more than two creatures on the board is a much harder ask for a lot of decks (especially against a black deck). I'ld argue that an edict for two > two edicts for one, and would personally set the cost at . That's admittedly unattractive, but so is completely crippling your opponent while leaving your own board untouched for not enough mana. That's my feeling at least.

Obviously this evaluation is turned completely on its head in lean cubes with a low average mv and a high density of interaction.

 

[LadyMapi]

Weirdly enough, I feel like this is one of the better types of Edict you can run in Cube:



On defense, you're pretty likely to hit one of Villain's relevant creatures. On offense, you can turn a "safe" block into an unsafe one by forcing them to sacrifice a blocker after the chump blockers die. And the best part is that the way that they play around the effect is by over-committing to combat.

Does this make running these kinds of effects a good idea? No, unless they're something like Blessed Alliance, which screws with combat math something fierce.

 

[ravnic]

Edicts got a lot worse over time with tokens and ETB effects getting more and more playable. They were an important counter to "threats that counter removal" when Magic was more about matching removal with threats, but nowadays they are too situational to be good.

This isn't wrong, but cube is still a custom format. So it would maybe be interesting to find out, what determines if edicts are good or bad in a given cube.

• Of course (small) tokens make them worse.
• Low creature mana value curves do as well.
• Also creatures that like to be sacrificed.

• EtB effects make them worse, but not more than they do to a doomblade.

• Protection abilities like hexproof and ward make them better.
• Go tall strategies like auras, +1/+1 counters do too.
• Also certain mechanics like adapt, mutate etc.

Did I miss anything else?

Persomally, this overview makes it obvious why they are often bad in my cube. I have all the first three things and almost nothing of the last three.

 

[blacksmithy]

This isn't wrong, but cube is still a custom format. So it would maybe be interesting to find out, what determines if edicts are good or bad in a given cube.

• Of course (small) tokens make them worse.
• Low creature mana value curves do as well.
• Also creatures that like to be sacrificed.

• EtB effects make them worse, but not more than they do to a doomblade.

• Protection abilities like hexproof and ward make them better.
• Go tall strategies like auras, +1/+1 counters do too.
• Also certain mechanics like adapt, mutate etc.

Did I miss anything else?

Persomally, this overview makes it obvious why they are often bad in my cube. I have all the first three things and almost nothing of the last three.

hey same here! i am starting to get a lot of ward critters though…

 

[landofMordor]

This isn't wrong, but cube is still a custom format. So it would maybe be interesting to find out, what determines if edicts are good or bad in a given cube.

• Of course (small) tokens make them worse.
• Low creature mana value curves do as well.
• Also creatures that like to be sacrificed.

• EtB effects make them worse, but not more than they do to a doomblade.

• Protection abilities like hexproof and ward make them better.
• Go tall strategies like auras, +1/+1 counters do too.
• Also certain mechanics like adapt, mutate etc.

Did I miss anything else?

Persomally, this overview makes it obvious why they are often bad in my cube. I have all the first three things and almost nothing of the last three.

I’d add to the “better” side “linear combo that involves a creature or two, while the overall deck composition is very creature-light” like Oath of Druids combo or Hermit Druid or Channel or whatever. Also, extremely Removal dense formats where boards are likely to be pretty sparse. These are both elements of old school magic where edicts were good.

 

[LadyMapi]

You can also add decks that want to land a single evasive threat in order to win the game to that list. Which includes stuff like classic control decks with creature-based finishers and "protect the queen" strategies (think old-school all-in Delver decks). Sudden Edict is basically tailor-made to beat up that kind of deck.

Also, I think you should bold the "protection abilities make them better" line. An Edict's whole thing is that it entirely ignores that kind of stuff — as long as there's only one creature on villain's side of the field, Diabolic Edict will kill that creature (barring, like, three exceptions — a shiny no-prize to anyone who knows what they are ).

...

If you think about it, Edicts are the equivalent of tossing an unstoppable Doom Blade at the weakest thing on villain's side of the board. Anything that makes doing that less silly makes Edicts stronger.

 

[ellogeyen]

We've also had this edict effect from SNC. It actually sits in a weird spot of being a normal removal spell and being an edict effect. I don't think it really solves the issues brought up in this discussion, but it's an interesting take on an edict nontheless:



• It beats some protection effects, like indestructible, but doesn't beat others, like hexproof
• It destroys an opponent's second-to-best creature instead of their worst (as with edicts) or best creature (as with spot removal)
• It needs two targets for the same player