General Fight Club

Onderzeeboot

Ecstatic Orb
I think this one comes down to your cube's mana base. Do you want to support 3+ color decks? Crackling Drake signals a 2 color environment. Do you have enough fixing to even support heavy 2 color decks? If you want to encourage monocolored decks, CD might also give the wrong impression. In a vacuum though, I'ld say CD is the better card.
 
I agree. Crackling is slightly better in face value, but I personally prefer Enigma Drake for it's easier mana cost. Gold cards are narrow enough in my opinion, so I like them to be castable in 3- and 4-color decks.
 

Dom Harvey

Contributor
There's a world of difference between 1UR and UURR and Crackling Drake counting exiled cards brings back bad memories of Battle for Zendikar for me
 
I run both of these in addition to Magnivore. If I were to pick one it’d be Crackling Drake as it’s the more powerful card and I like concentrating some power in the multicolor slots. I’ve seen players play Crackling Drake in 4 color decks and I don’t feel like my mana fixing was insane at the time so while the mana cost is certainly restrictive, it’s not a dealbreaker.
 
I run both of these in addition to Magnivore. If I were to pick one it’d be Crackling Drake as it’s the more powerful card and I like concentrating some power in the multicolor slots. I’ve seen players play Crackling Drake in 4 color decks and I don’t feel like my mana fixing was insane at the time so while the mana cost is certainly restrictive, it’s not a dealbreaker.

How is Magnivore for you? I had it in the really early days of my cube, but counting sorceries only made it pretty weak if I remember correctly.
 
Choose 3:

I'm in the process of a rebuild so for now just judge these in the following archetypal contexts:
Primary B/R Themes: Discarding Cards/Reanimator
Secondary B/R Themes: Artifacts/Aristocrats/Artifact Aristocrats

I kind of love Kolaghan, The Storm's Fury, so I'm would have a hard time cutting it, but I also don't think it's the best use of my space.

Also- can I in good faith count Murderous Redcap this as Mono-Black?
 
I am doing the simple yet not super balanced thing of putting hybrid cards in their own section.

53 of each Monocolor = 265
30 Multicolored
60 Generic
5 Hybrid

In the Hybrid section there are no rules. No order or balance. Just five hybrid cards.
 
Bloodhall Priest is the best choice to indicate a self-discard theme. I would run it at the very least, maybe also the Azra if you wanna make super clear what the primary theme is. The I like Tymaret as an indicator for the aristocrats theme from these 6. If you don't go for the Azra, I'd add the Disintegration to communicate the artifacts theme in a nice way (with a generally useful card).

Also I would highly recommend a seperate hybrid section for EACH guild. I think at this point we have easily enough goodies to chose from to add 1 or 2 for each guild. And tgis is where the Redcap clearly belongs.
 
I agree with ravnic, the Bloodhall Priest is a good signal for the self-discard. None of the others really scream reanimator. Maybe Torrent of Souls could signal that better?

As for your artifact aristocrats theme there is one card that does it all, but it's a 3 mana planeswalker and I don't know how you feel about those: Daretti, Ingenious Iconoclast.
Otherwise, there is Mayhem Devil, which signals aristocrats and since it says permanent, doesn't exclude artifact aristocrats. However none of these were among the cards you mentioned :p

I wouldn't sweat it too much with where you put cards in your cube sections. If you cube needs the effect, who cares where it ends up as long as players can play with it!
 
ROUND ONE

vs

I'm leaning toward Fecundity because I like breaking symmetrical cards and Mysteries seems a little bit more safe and mid-rangey, but some other opinions couldn't hurt!

-----

ROUND TWO

vs vs

Spells matter + the most go-wide support, blink/reanimation support, or all-in-one GY value engine.
 
ROUND ONE

vs

I'm leaning toward Fecundity because I like breaking symmetrical cards and Mysteries seems a little bit more safe and mid-rangey, but some other opinions couldn't hurt!

Ulvenwald Mysteries will probably end up in more decks than Fecundity if you don't overtly support a token-based aristocrats strategy. I think Ulvenwald Mysteries is just a generally safer pick because it only gives it's owner value.

ROUND TWO

vs vs

Spells matter + the most go-wide support, blink/reanimation support, or all-in-one GY value engine.
I'd say Reach of Branches is probably the most playable of these three options. Crested Herdcaller wants to be broken, and your cube just doesn't have enough pieces to break it.
 
I'd prefer Fecubdity, because it works with tokens. And green is usually one of the biggest token creating colors. I can zotally see the arguments for mysteries though, especially when you don't have that many tokens in green.

Round 2 suggests something else though. I don't have experience with the 3 listed cards. I like menace with a lot of team pump effects, herdcaller with blink/recursion effects and for the dino value, and Reach with a lot of landbased ramp and maybe a landfall theme. Then I like Grizzly fate a lot too, especially with a dredge/threshold theme. Then I also run Thelonite Hermit (value goes up with every morph you got) and Ant Queen, which is an awesome mana sink and therefore supports the really big ramp decks too.

You see, there is a good green token-producing 5-drop for every theme! :)
 
I know the answer to this question is probably going to be dependent on how my new format ends up looking, but out of curiosity, which one of these do you like better in a Vacuum?


I like Mortify for it's simplicity, but I think Despark is probably just a stronger effect, especially since it can deal with all of the gods I run except Thassa
 
Oh, yeah, I forgot that other people are less hesitant to run Planeswalkers and also have indestructible permanents. Hmm. How many do you have for each? I think, you should take despark im mortify doesn't have a lot more, since the ones despark gets should be more problematic.


I also have something kinda similar. But also more difficult, since the latter is so hard to estimate.

VS.


I run 16 Legends, which is 6% of my creatures, not counting tokens.
 

Chris Taylor

Contributor
Instant speed threatens in general are about the least red thing red can occasionally do.
I might run Temp insanity just ray of command needs tempering.
 
Oh, yeah, I forgot that other people are less hesitant to run Planeswalkers and also have indestructible permanents. Hmm. How many do you have for each? I think, you should take despark im mortify doesn't have a lot more, since the ones despark gets should be more problematic.


I also have something kinda similar. But also more difficult, since the latter is so hard to estimate.

VS.


I run 16 Legends, which is 6% of my creatures, not counting tokens.

I don't really like either of these effects. They are very, very weak. I think Threaten effects in general aren't all that great in most situations (although I have blown out my opponent with/been blown out by them before in a couple of very specific situations).

I usually don't like suggesting other options in the Fight Club thread, but since these are more playable versions of the same basic effects, I would try one of these:


Grab the Reins doesn't untap, which could be an issue in some specific situations, but if you're just using it to remove a creature from combat it should still do the trick. Act of Aggression is just good.
 
I don't think Ray of Command could be called very very weak. And these two are really close to be just that in red, a color that's involved in sacrifice shenanigans in my cube. Act of Aggression I run already, but I feel like Grab the Reins is actually the weakest of those 4. When opponent attacks with two 3/3s I can kill both with all of those spells except with Grab, right?
 
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