General Fight Club

safra

safra

Seconding Ophiomancer, that dude is way more fun than 'deathtouch blocker, and then more of those' should ever be.

e: Turn Aside is awful and way too conditional, even at one mana. It might be fixable if it was counter target spell / ability, but jesus, there's no way that'd cost 1. i've had more luck with Annul, Disrupt/Force Spike/Mana Tithe, Spell Pierce and Intervene, which I cut but might get there in more heroic environments. maybe i sh
 
Dom Harvey

Dom Harvey

Contributor
I'll submit Shadow Rift for the Distortion Strike vs. Artful Dodge debate. In Standard, the value of drawing a card in the Heroic decks is quite low because you don't want a 2nd creature or 5th land or whatever, you just want very specific cards (which is why I think playing Treasure Cruise in the deck is silly and playing Cruise over Dig is even sillier). In Cube it might be different though because you don't have that much redundancy and your other creatures are good enough to hopefully do something. Strike is probably better in Prowess decks but in graveyard decks I like the idea of milling myself a lot, making a big Nighthowler or Nemesis, and then having my unblockability effect readily available instead of having to dig for it.

Does anyone have experience with Strike Leader yet?
 
Lucre

Lucre

yeah I've played shadow rift in more than one peasant and pauper deck. Man when you got to give your tog shadow to block a dauthi it was so sweet.
 
D

DreamPaint

Eric Chan said:
Attrition / value black threes

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Dusk Urchins: I played with this card for years and it was never more than mediocre. I'm not sure what it would have taken to be playable? Maybe more -1/-1 counter cards like Skinrender or just haste.
Flesh Carver: Really powerful aggressive card with tons of synergies. A+
Grim Haruspex: Was mediocre when I tried it. Needed to trigger off of itself and/or tokens.
Mardu Strike Leader: Awesome. My favorite cube addition from FRF. Plays well with white and red aggressive builds.
Ophiomancer: Very obnoxious and borderline oppressive to creature strategies. That being said, it's still in my cube for some reason.
Phyrexian Rager: Mediocre like Dusk Urchins.
Xathrid Necromancer: Pretty fair. Feels rewarding in certain Black/White builds and kinda lousy everywhere else.

Another card is Bone Shredder. It's always been pretty great. Could probably be printed without the echo, but sometimes it's nice to "turn on" things like Necromancy/Whip, etc.
 
Lucre

Lucre

Regarding Xathrid:
You'd be surprised by how many seriously cubable black red and green humans there are if your cube is super "new world ordery"

I've even seen it work with blue tempo/control decks before. It's just a shame the 2/2 cant block when it enters the battlefield. Wizards are determined to make black decks block poorly till like the 5th turn lol. Omg getting a 2/2 zombie from your huntmaster is so silly.

Ophiomancer seems like a great card to play after you have exhausted your opponents removal in a control deck / midranged strategy and I think it being oppressive when you've played it into optimal circumstances should be okay. It might be actually oppressive if you have either 1) People who think they can draft non-interactive decks that also only have one readily accessible line to victory 2) You simply do not cube enough removal 3) You cube enough removal but quite a bit of it is enchantment / attacker based.

Fleshcarver's evasion is very interesting for reasons that might become evident below.

Many of these are kinda awful because they are more or less 2/2s when compared to the sort of 4 and 5 drops your opponents will be fielding while you are trying to grind someone out. It helps a tonne if you've got removal laying around but having a 3 drop with an irrelevant body that generates a small advantage needs some help to fight other cube strategies. Thank god grave crawler cannot block because it costs a 3rd of what these things do and delivers a similar amount of advantage for largely equivalent body. Lets not even talk about when a thrun or a cloudgoat or a huntmaster or a FTK hits the table. Ya feel dumb.
 
Grillo_Parlante

Grillo_Parlante

Contributor
@ the distortion strike, shadow rift, artful dodge discussion, I think I like artful dodge the least in cube. Its a poor mana sink, with its biggest value coming from being able to play around counterspells with more precision than the other two.

Distortion strike easily has the best broad appeal in terms of power level: its a great stalemate breaker, spell's matter trigger, and heroic trigger. Shadow rift's cantrip is nice though, as sometimes you really want to cycle that card away to find something impactful on board states where you are not positioning for a kill.
 
Lucre

Lucre

Another problem with the value 3drops in black is they don't have a lot of smaller black creatures they can rely on having around to help group block with, it's really a mess.
 
D

DreamPaint

@Lucre, you are underestimating Ophiomancer. You don't need exhaust their removal, Ophiomancer 2 for 1s removal on it's own. It really punishes decks that curve out, and most people strive to make cube decks with good curves.

Take a sample zoo hand on the draw for example: 3x Duals, Wild Nacatl, Pridemage, Incinerate, Hellrider. This is a pretty sick hand that gets wrecked by a turn three Ophiomancer. I mean, what do you do to further your gameplan here? Substitute a Lightning Bolt into that hand for the Hellrider. Again, you are punished for playing one drop into two drop and are forced to make a really tough choice of 2 for 1ing yourself just to push damage through. These are easily 90% + of scenarios regarding the card. The card is weak against control and solid against midrange, but against aggro it's a complete nightmare even if they have a nut draw.
 
Lucre

Lucre

@dreampaint
Yeah well mean that it's not oppressive until they are out of removal. I don't tend to think of a 2 for 1 on turn 3 as really that oppressive, especially when it involves combat and 1/1s. It's good even if they have removal, I think most 3 drops in cube should be at least pretty decently relevant even when facing tempo advantageous removal spells, but certainly getting shocked etc and leaving a snake behind isn't "oppressive".

In your example I'd probably attack for 3/4 on turn 2 and bolt the thing and attack into the snake. Depending on what I had in hand and expected from my opponent I might even hold my creatures back till hell rider was around to make blocking uncomfortable / force multiply. Or even wait for a 2nd removal spell but I assume that this deck has no short supply of more creatures with 3 power to run into your opponent.

Your 3 mana guy got an extra card and traded for 3 mana against a deck that's whole plan is apparently in it's opener and mainly just knows how to beat on the ground. I guess ya did good but not great.

Like I really don't consider 1drop 2drop removal 4drop to be "nut draw" but yeah, this card is good at taking apart aggressive starts. Lots of cards are, and it gets actually oppressive when it can duck removal for a couple of turns, taking turns away from your opponent's tempo strategey (unless they are playing into the removal + alpha cold war you often see in limited) I find these example situations very silly really. I always end up thinking: okay I can deal with this at a loss or play to my outs. What is my opponent playing?

Ophiomancer to me seems like another reason not to run too many "creature protecter" counterspells in your cube. Who wants to play against a God's Willing Ophiomancer? Will Ophiomancer usher in a new era of tradewind decks and the glorious return of Flames of the Firebrand and Pyrotechnics type effex?
 
FlowerSunRain

FlowerSunRain

Contributor
BOTH!!!!

The awesome thing about each of these cards is that they both work in the two situations you are likely to see yourself in:

1) I have dudes and need to use them to kill you
2) I don't have dudes so I need to draw some.

Really brilliantly designed cards. If I HAVE to choose one I want Chandra, but definitely both.
 
Rasmus Källqvist

Rasmus Källqvist

Daretti feels super weird to me. Like, I can pick an early welder and play it with a couple artifacts. It's a small investment, whereas deretti requires it to be a whole artifact deck? It's a 4 mana cost so I'd want to do more than just loot. Depends on the artifact in the cube definitely!
 
safra

safra



I actually cut Daretti for this guy a month or two ago in my red/grey 180 and it's been really fun. That's at least partially a consequence of the environment (it's like a third artifacts?) but welding out Staff of Nin or Precursor Golem on turn three feels pretty different from recurring a bunch of dudes as a lategame trump. If you genuinely just want to run one I'd vote Goblin Welder because it's cheaper and therefore more fun, and has cool synergy with haste granters. If you can't protect a 1/1 until your next turn then run Daretti but the tempo advantage of welding is so much cooler if you don't have to wait until turn four for it to happen. Doubled or 2-squadron Welder might make the deck a reality if it hasn't come together yet.

e: also you can't/shouldn't reanimate Daretti, while Corpse Dance on a welder is the funniest fucking thing
 
Diakonov

Diakonov

Yeah I currently run a 2-squadron of Welder and it works fairly well. One major thing I don't like about Daretti is that he can't just keep welding turn after turn, and he's very easy to kill after one use.
 
safra

safra

Lucre said:
Trash for treasure should cost 2?
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Trash for Treasure sure isn't treasure. I'd be excited about playing a two mana version but more excited if it were a creature (0/1? Stats, by Context) with haste, an Instant, or a Sorcery with flashback.

e: and there goes anotak with a better design. i'd totally be pumped to run that.
 
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