General Ever feel like bounce > flicker?

spicewitch

spicewitch

You see a flicker card, you know what to do - you pair it with an EtB and that's all you need to know.

But I'm cookin up some low power cube soup, and I'm readin other folks' cube blogs, and a few people are sounding weary of EtBs, of getting a "free" spell+body combo.

And I'm thinking, Instant-speed bounce is maybe a lot cooler than flickering? 1 You can shoo away things that are bugging you, but 2 you can also save it as like a cheapskate's counterspell to protect your good creatures. If you end up not needing to do that, 3 you can just bounce an EtB back to hand. And then pay mana to cast it again. Fair. Less risk of runaway value. More versatility.

Is this sounding sensible?
 
TrainmasterGT

TrainmasterGT

I think if the bounce is stapled to another card or is coming free as part of an ETB, or enabling another effect it can be cool, but I can't imagine a format where players would want to actively cast unsummon on their own things just to re-buy an ETB.

Most of the time when I see people bemoaning ETBs on this site, it's usually in relation to cards like Ravenous Chupacabra and Cloudblazer, which can absolutely dunk on synergy pieces or invalidate incremental advantages by providing a ton of resources at once, respectively. If the ETB effect is something small like scrying or gaining 2 life, flickering to re-trigger those effects is almost certainly not going to be too much. Keep in mind that this dynamic mostly applies to really low power level environments to begin with. You'd probably need an environment similar in power level to early 2000s retail limited before too many triggers from efficient value creatures become a problem. If your Cube is even just on the level of something like Streets of New Capenna limited, flickers are unlikely to be problematic.


This isn't to say there aren't places where running boatloads of self-bounce is desirable. I think a format with lots of adventure cards and cool things with kicker would benefit from having additional bounce instead of flickering. But I think without these incentives, there's not much of a reason to deliberately include bounce over flickers simply as a means to reduce ETB abillities triggering.
 
shamizy

shamizy

It all comes down to the power level and speed of your environment. Is it slow enough that you can afford to leave mana up for a bounce spell and then take part of a turn to re-deploy a card? Will you be punished for durdling around or do you have openings to loop value? Do you have decks that can use these bounce spells in other ways such as proactively removing blockers for better attacks?

You can definitely build out an environment where bouncing has its own place, just comes down to a matter of balancing the pieces around the strategy. You temper your actual removal a certain way (maybe at a higher cost), figure out what threats and payoffs can work with your suite of interaction, and you try to figure out the play patterns you'd like to promote. Like just think back to a set like Dominaria a few years back where in Limited Icy Manipulator was still capable of putting in work and you'd often just wait to kick cards like Ghitu Chronicler because you knew that you could get to 6 and recur that burn spell. There are more than enough cards that should help you accomplish this idea, you'll just have to clearly define where your cutoff will be for overall power level to make it viable.

The main problem you'll run into in a higher powered cube is that at some point Wizards decided that they should just print a bunch of cards with ETBs and on-rate bodies rather than make them weaker to account for a stapled spell like they had for years. This has led to many pushed designs over the years pushing the bar of "playability" if people wanted to actively include newer cards, many cube designers feeling that they have to evaluate cards against the Doom Blade just for any consideration, and the term "Baneslayer" almost becoming a derogatory for cards that don't immediately impact the game for you.

This is where you'll run into the biggest problem because so many of the coolest designs that interact with various cards and promote cross-pollination of archetypes just exist at a higher base power level than you might want. Tireless Tracker is one of my favorite designs ever, it's a neat package that can do a little bit of everything while promoting fair Magic and on-board interactions, but I also know that it's too powerful for many designers to include if they have a particular power level in mind. I still remember how thoroughly I got stomped by it in an SOI draft where it just kicked ass in a U/G Clues deck. Having too many cards like this creates a kind of power barrier for entry for other cards so you have to be mindful of your density. However, I do think that having certain cards like this that can create spikes in gameplay are healthy for any given draft environment. It'll just be up to you where you want to draw the line because homogeneity is also something to avoid unless your synergistic archetypes are very very well defined.

TLDR; Definitely possible, gonna take a bit of elbow grease to make it a reality.
 
LadyMapi

LadyMapi

On a slightly different note... here are my favorite bounce spells that aren't just Unsummon (or Unsummon+cantrip).



Familiar's Ruse is probably my favorite "bad Counterspell", since it's actually Counterspell with an upside if you build around it properly (I like it with Eternal Witness). If Counterspell itself is a bit too good for your format, why not give the Ruse a try?

Withdraw is a classic with a surprising amount of play to it — you can use it to bounce two of your own things in response to a board wipe, as a slightly harder to cast Peel from Reality, or as a cheap Whiplash Trap if your opponent is tapped down.

Release to the Wind is cute because it's a "flicker" spell that works with Adventure creatures, cast triggers, and Kicker. It also has the interesting side effect that it effectively flickers most permanents until their owner's next main phase and gives you a second opportunity to counter them if that's your thing. Is it powerful? Not particularly. Can it do fun things? Yes.

Baral's Expertise is a sweet spell with a fun hidden mode — namely, you can recast one of the artifacts or creatures that you just picked up! Or you could do something cute and respond to an opponent's spell by bouncing their board and free-casting a counterspell. If your cube leans towards small games, this is effectively an instant-speed board wipe with a massive upside.
 
Onderzeeboot

Onderzeeboot

Ecstatic Orb
I can vouch for Withdraw, it is one of the coolest bounce spells out there, if not the coolest. The only reason I cut it is because it requires double blue and I'm actively pushing 3-color decks. It plays really well though!

PS. The coolest bounce spell, though not useful in the context of self-bounce, is obviously Recoil.
 
Onderzeeboot

Onderzeeboot

Ecstatic Orb
LadyMapi said:
Baral's Expertise is a sweet spell with a fun hidden mode — namely, you can recast one of the artifacts or creatures that you just picked up! Or you could do something cute and respond to an opponent's spell by bouncing their board and free-casting a counterspell. If your cube leans towards small games, this is effectively an instant-speed board wipe with a massive upside.
Click to expand...
Baral's Expertise is a sorcery though :)
 
B

blacksmithy

from the perspective of the cube architect, if you want to make blink play like this instead of like Ephemerate, you absolutely can do that.
from the perspective of the cube drafter, if i first picked Solitude, and the next pack has ephemerate and unsummon in it…. that’s a no brainer
 
K

Karshtakavaar

LadyMapi said:
nothing but facts (Except that Baral's Expertise is a Sorcery)
Click to expand...

100% agree with everything said here. I've cast a lot of Familiar's Ruse's and Withdraws. And Baral's Expertise should be an instant.

I've made this an archetype in a duplicate sealed pool and in my Ana grid cube, and these effects -also- love it when you support a Ux tempo deck. You know what's better than buying back an ETB with a bounce spell? Fizzling a removal spell -while- buying back an ETB with a bounce spell. Now imagine that ETB is Spellstutter Sprite or Mystic Snake, and the bounce spell was a Quickling. Tempo!
M14 limited had a great UG tempo deck off the back of Frost Lynx and a bunch of ways to rebuy its ETB.

Basically, do eet. Flicker is lame and overplayed. Bounce is both sweet and spicy.
 
K

Karshtakavaar

blacksmithy said:
from the perspective of the cube drafter, if i first picked Solitude, and the next pack has ephemerate...
Click to expand...
I'd start having flashbacks and need to be wheeled out on a stretcher

Edit:
blacksmithy said:
removing your own creature from the board and forcing yourself to replay it later is kinda the opposite of tempo…
Click to expand...

In regards to the above scenario, you spent two mana, upgraded a threat, protected a threat and 'drew' an answer to protect the threat you just deployed, all at instant speed. You're ahead on board -and- in CA, and about to untap. Like, yeah in general you're totally right, but you can set up scenarios where it isn't, and when you do, it's sick.
 
inscho

inscho

I'm a big fan of



There can be a lot of small incentives for bouncing to hand:



I want bounce to be better than it is, but creatures have improved so much that it is not nearly as valuable as a tempo play on opposing creatures. Long gone are the days of Repulse-ing an opponent's creature to connect with your Blurred Mongoose.

My bounce suite these days is limited to:


and borrower can't even target your own creature.
 
K

Karshtakavaar

inscho said:
I want bounce to be better than it is, but creatures have improved so much that it is not nearly as valuable as a tempo play on opposing creatures. Long gone are the days of Repulse-ing an opponent's creature to connect with your Blurred Mongoose.
Click to expand...

I mean, all the cards that existed then exist now. Sure they've been outclassed by modern design philosophy, but this is a curated format. What once was can be again, but with the benefit of hindsight and a much larger card pool.
No, I don't think this approach will ever be good in even a semi-powered cube, but that doesn't mean it has no merit at all. In fact, quite the opposite - it's got both an element of nostalgia and novelty about it, which seems perfect for cube.
 
K

Karshtakavaar

Oh man I played Esperzoa and Glaze Fiend in Affinity when I couldn't afford Ravagers...

Legacy Affinity

I did not win games.

It does seem like a really cool signpost card for this as a theme in draft though, as well as being an absolute beast in combat. Could do an Esper Glinthawk deck or something.
Thinking targets like

Or possibly

Or even
 
Humpty_Dumpty

Humpty_Dumpty

Bouncing your own creatures was more powerful when damage went on the stack, and I wonder if the prevalence of bounce spells in some cubes is a hangover from the past.

Another way to approach this archetype is to include reanimating spells. Typically this would be in black but there are increasing numbers of white spells that return creatures to the battlefield to reuse the ETB effect after they have traded in combat or eaten a kill spell.

As an aside, which cards are blink enablers and which are payoffs? The cards that are blinked or the cards that do the blinking?
 
Rusje

Rusje

Humpty_Dumpty said:
Bouncing your own creatures was more powerful when damage went on the stack, and I wonder if the prevalence of bounce spells in some cubes is a hangover from the past.

Another way to approach this archetype is to include reanimating spells. Typically this would be in black but there are increasing numbers of white spells that return creatures to the battlefield to reuse the ETB effect after they have traded in combat or eaten a kill spell.

As an aside, which cards are blink enablers and which are payoffs? The cards that are blinked or the cards that do the blinking?
Click to expand...
Why not keep damage on the stack? Please explain to me the difference between shock and an archer against a creature. Now one goes on the stack, the other not on combat…
 
Humpty_Dumpty

Humpty_Dumpty

I did keep damage on the stack with a past play group, up until about 2013. Then I moved house and my new cube group also played other formats, so used the new rules.

In your example, if the archer had first strike it could still be bounced after dealing damage, even using modern rules.
 
Velrun

Velrun

I run a Zur the Enchanter Commander deck (1v1 Duel Commander) where I use



It’s still good although combat damage doesn’t stack.

Fun fact: Some people know this (Thinking of you @Onderzeeboot especially) but Morphling was called Superman back in its day. So when Wizards decided to make an aura that gave the enchanted creature Superman powers, they called it ‘I am Superman’ and switched the letters around until it said Pemmin’s Aura.

Zur feels immortal when Pemmin’s Aura and Steel of the Godhead attached with a counter spell backup.
 
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