General Fight Club

Going deep on this one. I already have a "historic/legendary matters" subtheme and I loved the Kethis, the Hidden Hand combo deck in Standard, so I'm trying out adding a few cards to get most of that deck into the cube: we've got Mox Amber, Rona, Herald of Invasion, Tyvar, Jubilant Brawler, Honest Rutstein, the whole nine yards.

What's the pick:


The former works with Tyvar and more easily becomes Kethis or Rona. It's better in the actual combo deck, but you (generally) would be embarrassed to play it in other decks - though I do have Abhorrent Oculus / Helping Hand / Sevinne's Reclamation so it's certainly not impossible.

The latter requires a crime, but you can also just turn it into a Griselbrand or whatever, and I do have Reanimator as well. So a bit of cross-theme synergy.

...alternatively, do I just say screw it and play Baleful Strix because nobody in the history of Magic has ever been sad to cast that one? I think that's not right, but I never know how deep is too deep.

Current list is at https://cubecobra.com/cube/list/seekerscube.


I feel like MKM Lazav does what you want from both of these and also is more playable on its own as a draw engine.
 
It also has the "Lazav is not just posing in a room" art perk!

I vote Wearer of Faces unless your cube actively avoids using clues.
 
I am looking to bolster my white aggressive artifact section with 1-2 one and two drops respectively! What would be your 1 or 2 favorites for each bracket?

Artifact one drops (Esper Sentinel, Thraben Inspector and Warden of the Inner Sky are already in):



Artifact two drops (Astrid Peth, Glimmer Lens, Securitron Squadron, Staff of the Storyteller and Stoneforge Mystic are in):


Feel free to suggest other cards too! I would prefer artifact creatures as they play better with some things, but I'm also considering creatures that interact well with artifacts. Lion Sash is out for being a bit too disruptive.
 
I am looking to bolster my white aggressive artifact section with 1-2 one and two drops respectively! What would be your 1 or 2 favorites for each bracket?

Artifact one drops (Esper Sentinel, Thraben Inspector and Warden of the Inner Sky are already in):



Artifact two drops (Astrid Peth, Glimmer Lens, Securitron Squadron, Staff of the Storyteller and Stoneforge Mystic are in):


Feel free to suggest other cards too! I would prefer artifact creatures as they play better with some things, but I'm also considering creatures that interact well with artifacts. Lion Sash is out for being a bit too disruptive.

I like splitskin doll fine enough. There’s…



Double inspector has been nice for me. I love the soft tempo disruption of canonist. Oswald is narrow but can do some really fun stuff. I primarily think of it as a 1-3mv tutor. Great with Scrap Trawler. Its definitely better when you also have myr retrievers and KCI

A big part of the white artifact deck is equipment so I also like seasoned hallowblade as a complementary piece
 
Not sure how loose you want to go with the definition of "artifact" or how thematic you're going, so you get the everything-adjacent brain dump.


There's also Nesting Bot but I assume nobody wants to track an otherwise-useless bafomdad.
Sarah Jane Smith would be the one I'd actively recommend considering if you're okay with triggering on Historic rather than just Artifact.
Glint Hawk is an IYKYK situation, cause if you want it you already know.
Toolcraft Exemplar is miles better with even one artifact land in your deck just to have the ability to do that, so if you have those bump your power-level-estimation of it accordingly.
That's all I got.
 

Chris Taylor

Contributor
I'm not sure any of these will be able to hang with Esper sentinel and Staff of the Storyteller on power level fwiw, I had to cut both for being too strong, those are some minsc and boo level cards


DFC, but its all in sequence and the backside is just a more permanent version of the front side. Love Michiko's reign of terror.
Also picks up the odd enchantment synergy


YMMV with rooms, but a little 2 mana psudo rabblemaster thing which eventually gives you a huge juiced overrun is in a really good spot mechanically.
I love that the tokens it makes can't make more copies of themselves, really wants you on the lookout for 1/1 fliers to keep generating them for eg, and lets your opponent interact with this with point removal in ways that would otherwise feel miserable.

Honestly the rest of my white 1s and 2s are all customs so hit me up if you decide to cross that bridge :marofl:
 
Generically good stuff package



I think Inspector is likely to be the one drop with the most applications in terms of synergy and decks that want it. The other two are middle of the road (but still plenty good) artifacts.

Counters package



I feel like if you go down the modular road, you need to go hard otherwise it just isn't really exciting or worth it. The Evangel will play nicely with the self-bounce that you include for easy proliferate triggers. Iron Apprentice might be better than one of the 1 drops if you don't care too much about color balance.

Sacrifice package



The Renegade could be Barbed Spike and that would probably be better with Oswald actually, but you get the point. As inscho mentioned, Myr Retrievers and Junk Divers highly recommended for this.
 
Oh, sheesh, I totally forgot Michiko's Reign of Truth. That card was cracked. It was good in NEO limited, it was good in Standard, it's basically as good as the rest of the cards surrounding it at almost any power level (too weak for MODO Vintage Cube but I wouldn't be surprised if it was good literally everywhere else).

Definitely give that one a shot!
 
Double inspector has been nice for me. I love the soft tempo disruption of canonist. Oswald is narrow but can do some really fun stuff. I primarily think of it as a 1-3mv tutor. Great with Scrap Trawler. Its definitely better when you also have myr retrievers and KCI

A big part of the white artifact deck is equipment so I also like seasoned hallowblade as a complementary piece
Not sure I follow, how's the Hallowblade interacting with equipment? Just that it's a strong beater that's difficult to interact? I'm not opposed to bring him back, I used to have him and Guardian of New Benalia in the cube.

You're probably right, that the second Inspector is one of the better options for 1 drops. I might put Oswald in to try him out. Somehow he was never played, when he was in a year or two ago.
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I was thinking about Voyager Glidecar but not being able to tap artifacts kills it for me and Nesting Bot is out on account of Speed, yeah.
Sarah Jane Smith would be the one I'd actively recommend considering if you're okay with triggering on Historic rather than just Artifact.
This one I might try! Back when the card was spoiled I was not adapting cards and didn't want the "Doctors Companion" baggage but could see just removing that.
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I'm not sure any of these will be able to hang with Esper sentinel and Staff of the Storyteller on power level fwiw, I had to cut both for being too strong, those are some minsc and boo level cards
Funnily, neither of these have been a problem so far! Esper Sentinel might draw a card or two but it's not trivial to increase it's power and a lot of the tokens running around non-creature tokens. I know the Staff is strong but so far it's been fine.

Michikos Reign is a very sweet card and my artifact density has increased quite a bit since I cut it, so I might try it again! Rooms are out for me, for now just because they add a bunch of complexity and corner case rules interactions. I do like Dollmaker's Shop quite a bit though!
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Generically good stuff package

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I think this might actually be the package I will try for now! I love that Barbed Spike makes two artifact tokens specifically as that opens up a lot of synergies.

These three will probably be next in line, if I want more support for different versions of my artifact decks:


Also.. I don't know why but I'm really drawn to this one:

No rules, just flavor and I love that it's just a big artifact, but it's probably a bit weak (and my drafters might not like it nearly as much as I do).

Thanks everyone for all the input!
 
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Not sure I follow, how's the Hallowblade interacting with equipment? Just that it's a strong beater that's difficult to interact?

Yeah, that’s all I meant. It wears equipment well. Most of the interaction that kills it is in the color you’re in making it hard to deal with. I also like Hallowblade in control decks as a roadblock as the 3 power can take down a lot, and it can live through most wrath effects. Guardian is overall stronger but I like the simplicity of Hallowblade and the additional power.
 
Rooms are out for me, for now just because they add a bunch of complexity and corner case rules interactions.

God I love Rooms. I've been long-term fiddling with a Pauper brew based on using Etali's Favor to Discover Ancestral Mask, and Grand Entryway giving you a 1/1 enchantment creature is actively perfect for the deck. Rooms also have some pretty nice play patterns - I like that bouncing them and flickering them have the same effect.

That said, the fact that there are only 28 "real" Room cards (and that there probably won't be more) kinda limits their usefulness for Cubing...
 
I'm kinda torn on rooms. They are cool in some ways, but I feel like there would've been ways to capture the feeling of exploring a spooky mansion better. Something like

Example Room 1B
Enchantment — Room
(When this room enters, sacrifice all other rooms you control)
Enter
— etb ability
Leave — leaves ability

This way it would really feel like moving from room to room and less like being in all the rooms at the same time. You also could've stressed the horror house feeling even more on a few cards by having a negative etb trigger and then a really rewarding leaves trigger.
 
I feel like there would've been ways to capture the feeling of exploring a spooky mansion better.

I think the idea was to reflect the infinite sprawl of the House more than exploring the House, if that makes sense. If it wasn't An Enchantment Set, I fully expect that Room would've been a land subtype.
 
I don’t pay much attention to the details of the lore, and assumed that the rooms weren’t “real” places but nightmare creations of the demon Valfavoth to trap unsuspecting victims. Hence enchantments not lands.
 
The actual lore is that Valgavoth was bound to a single house, but got powerful enough to fudge the rules by making the house expand until it completely filled the plane from top to bottom.
 
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