General Fight Club

ravnic

ravnic

If you push black aggro really hard, give the juggler a try
If you want the more generally useful card, stick with rager
That's what my gut feeling tells me
 
Dom Harvey

Dom Harvey

Contributor
The spectacle cards need to feel noticeably better than the average card to justify the feel-bad moments when stuck in your hand. Light up the Stage or some of the rares manage that; a card that's slightly better than Phyrexian Rager when it works and terrible when it doesn't will lead to a lot of disappointment
 
Onderzeeboot

Onderzeeboot

Ecstatic Orb
Dom Harvey said:
The spectacle cards need to feel noticeably better than the average card to justify the feel-bad moments when stuck in your hand. Light up the Stage or some of the rares manage that; a card that's slightly better than Phyrexian Rager when it works and terrible when it doesn't will lead to a lot of disappointment
Click to expand...

I do feel the difference between a 2/2 that draws a card and a 3/2 that draws a card and has a relevant creature type is a huge difference at three mana. Incidentally, the deck that cares about that creature type is also the deck that wants to apply early pressure and is likely to cast this card for 3.
 
ravnic

ravnic

Oh, yeah, I forgot about the creature type, since I have zero human support in my meta. So if multiple black decks in your cube can constantly trigger spectacle and/or are heavy on humans, juggler might be worth a try.


Okay, the context in this fight is pretty obvious I guess:

VS.

I know, Hoarding Dragon exists, but I want something, that actually rewards you for having (multiple) artifacts on the battlefield.
My other red artifact payoff is Galvanic Blast.
 
Aston

Aston

I would go with Hellkite since at least if you don't have any artifacts, it's playable if a bit under curve. I suppose it depends on how many artifacts you think the average deck that wants this card would play - anything less than about 10 and I'd be wary of covetous dragon.

Also I think I'm going to try the Juggler for at least a couple drafts, but with a close eye on how often it has to be hardcast.
 
TrainmasterGT

TrainmasterGT

ravnic said:
Oh, yeah, I forgot about the creature type, since I have zero human support in my meta. So if multiple black decks in your cube can constantly trigger spectacle and/or are heavy on humans, juggler might be worth a try.


Okay, the context in this fight is pretty obvious I guess:

VS.

I know, Hoarding Dragon exists, but I want something, that actually rewards you for having (multiple) artifacts on the battlefield.
My other red artifact payoff is Galvanic Blast.
Click to expand...

Hellkite Igniter is a more interesting card.
 
shamizy

shamizy

I think Mystic is far more interesting and it's not even close. Delver is pretty lacking unless you flip it right away and can begin applying pressure, Big Delver doesn't really do anything to fix those same issues. Mystic has deckbuilding potential, provides a more interesting puzzle to solve from the other side of the table, and has a really weird 1/5 body that does more work than you would think.
 
ravnic

ravnic

Well, one thing the researcher has going for itself is, that blue is also a secondary dredge color, so it has seen some play in decks with low spell count. Once I flipped a Roar of the Wurm immediately, which helped me turn around the game, that was sweet. But it's still not incredible in those decks.

The problem is, that spells matter is a control deck in my cube, where a more resilent guy like the mystic could provide more finisher value, because he at least can leave a few fliers behind when killer. For that reason I'm probably giving him a test run.


He's also sweet with Sprout Swarm :D
 
Velrun

Velrun

You mean degenerate with Sprout Swarm, right?

What did we learn about Buyback and repetitive gameplay? :) They are either super bad or super strong. And in either case they are only fun the first and second time you witness it. Then starts the degeneracy.
 
ravnic

ravnic

I never got any complains about sprout swarm in real life. I think people tend to hate on it just because it was horrible in TSP limited, while it is actually just a sweet build around in the right cube. (Funnily enough it seems to be kinda similar to the mystic, both are hard to stop, both generate free tokens and both need the right deck to really shine.)

In my meta, Sprouty itself is pretty unspectacular. An okay filler at bestwhen you just throw it in a random deck. But there are a few ways to build around it, and this is what gets drafters exited for it. You can do it with typical token payoffs and sacrifice outlets or get more tricky with spell velocity cards and such.



Even though I don't run the Aberration anymore, I'll never forget the first game someone (me) got milled out by that Combo, everyone in the room had a blast.


Also, in addition to racing there are many ways to beat a going sprout swarm or set it back so hard that you can win.




Sprout Swarm is one of my favorite cube cards, period, and me and my playgroup we had so much fun with it already. You have to pull it from my cold, dead hands to get it out of my cube!
 
TrainmasterGT

TrainmasterGT

Velrun said:
You mean degenerate with Sprout Swarm, right?

What did we learn about Buyback and repetitive gameplay? :) They are either super bad or super strong. And in either case they are only fun the first and second time you witness it. Then starts the degeneracy.
Click to expand...


ravnic said:
I never got any complains about sprout swarm in real life. I think people tend to hate on it just because it was horrible in TSP limited, while it is actually just a sweet build around in the right cube. (Funnily enough it seems to be kinda similar to the mystic, both are hard to stop, both generate free tokens and both need the right deck to really shine.)

In my meta, Sprouty itself is pretty unspectacular. An okay filler at bestwhen you just throw it in a random deck. But there are a few ways to build around it, and this is what gets drafters exited for it. You can do it with typical token payoffs and sacrifice outlets or get more tricky with spell velocity cards and such.

Sprout Swarm is one of my favorite cube cards, period, and me and my playgroup we had so much fun with it already. You have to pull it from my cold, dead hands to get it out of my cube!
Click to expand...

To me, Sprout Swarm is one of those cards that gets worse in conjunction to the power level of the format. In a mid 2000's retail limited format, then yeah, Sprout Swarm is going to be degenerate and insane. In a late 2010's mid-power cube format, it ends up just being an interesting tokens/spells payoff. You can't even start doing anything with it until turn three, and at that point in the game, you'll be spending all of your mana and tapping both of your creatures to make... a 1/1 saproling token. It can be amazingly powerful, but that doesn't mean it will be amazingly powerful.
 
Onderzeeboot

Onderzeeboot

Ecstatic Orb
I added it to my cube with great hesitation, because I wanted playable convoke spells in GW, and instead of it being overwhelming, to my relief it was actually just fine. Interesting, but not really overwhelming at all.
 
Aston

Aston

I wonder if Sprout Swarm is the most broken common in its native format in the whole game. The only two comparisons I could think of are Pestilence and Rolling Thunder, although I wasn't playing for those formats so it's hard for me to compare. Are those the top 3 or are there any others which deserve a mention?
 
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