General Fight Club

I get why you guys voted Bala Ged Recovery at first but I have to say I didn't expect you to vote Revival higher than Once and Future. Is the potential mill value really worth paying twice the mana at sorcery speed over instant speed? It was also stellar in ELD limited. VOW I didn't really play because it is so full of bombs.
 
and recursive recursion is really good. Being able to come back from literally nothing in hand and on field is nothing to sneeze at.
 
It's very color intensive ({1}{G}{G}{G} to get the good result) and it costs four mana instead of 3. Revival is just a lot easier on the mana.

But that doesn't matter that much as it's not a 4-drop. You cast it in the mid- to lategane where your green decks will have 6+ lands, at which point most 2-color mana bases with decent fixing won't have any trouble casting it with adamant on.

It's not useful when you're splashing green, I'll give you that. But green is probably the least likely color to be splashed anyway. It rather splashes other colors of it's incredible fixing.

and recursive recursion is really good. Being able to come back from literally nothing in hand and on field is nothing to sneeze at.

But unless you actually mill this, it's worse than getting back two cards at once. Later in the game, when I might be behind especially, I'd rather topdeck once and future, as it's so cheap, that I might actually play two cards out of my yard that turn.
 
But that doesn't matter that much as it's not a 4-drop. You cast it in the mid- to lategane where your green decks will have 6+ lands, at which point most 2-color mana bases with decent fixing won't have any trouble casting it with adamant on.

It's not useful when you're splashing green, I'll give you that. But green is probably the least likely color to be splashed anyway. It rather splashes other colors of it's incredible fixing.



But unless you actually mill this, it's worse than getting back two cards at once. Later in the game, when I might be behind especially, I'd rather topdeck once and future, as it's so cheap, that I might actually play two cards out of my yard that turn.
If you are behind, you may not have Adamant. If it's late in the game and you fall behind, you may have already used the front end of Revival. The easiest way to get Revival into the Grave is to just cast it for 3 first. You can literally top deck a land (about 10-17x more likely than top decking Once and Future) and still have a potential out sitting there. Like I get that recurring two cards is good. But you can litreally be sitting on an entirely empty board and hand and still have an out. that's strong.
 
Last edited:
But only, if you have drawn it before. The exact same case could be made for OaF, it would just be sitting in your hand. And of I could chose between paying 3 early to get something back, than paying 5 later to get something back again and just paying 4 late to get two things back, I'd still lean towards the latter. Later, you're more likely to have impactful stuff in your yard anyway and in general, if you pay 3-4 mana in the first few turns to get a card back, that could be the reason you got behind in the first place.
 
But only, if you have drawn it before. The exact same case could be made for OaF, it would just be sitting in your hand. And of I could chose between paying 3 early to get something back, than paying 5 later to get something back again and just paying 4 late to get two things back, I'd still lean towards the latter. Later, you're more likely to have impactful stuff in your yard anyway and in general, if you pay 3-4 mana in the first few turns to get a card back, that could be the reason you got behind in the first place.
Again, if you have the card in hand, you aren't in the situation where Revival is the strongest. Do you have a self mill archetype or not? Because that means it would have a chance of just binning Once and Future. I would rather play Timeless Witness in a self-mill deck than a 4 mana instant that I could "oops" into the grave for no value, especially considering a self-mill deck is probably focused on creatures anyways. And if your cube is in the situation that you get behind by casting a 3 mana card the normal way, why is it in the fight club? If spending 3 mana to recur the best card in your grave at the time gets you behind early, 4 mana would be twice as bad, especially if you don't have Adamant by then. Harmonize probably would be more beneficial if the metric for "card is good" is "gets the maximum number of cards added to the hand".

Like I'm just pointing out actual advantages of a card you asked about.... but you seem to already have an opinion so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
 
Last edited:
Being 4 mana to dig into the graveyard makes the card useless. That’s it. Dryad’s Revival is also a bad card but at least it can help with a fetch land in the early game and have value if your cube has a self-discard theme or a mill theme. Or a Gifts Ungiven. Or if opponent has a mill theme. And cards that can be payed for over several turns are always a little better than they seem. But Bala Ged Recovery is where you want to be. It is two steps up because it always has ‘Cycle 0 that always draws a tapped green land’ as a modal effect.
 
Again, if you have the card in hand, you aren't in the situation where Revival is the strongest. Do you have a self mill archetype or not? Because that means it would have a chance of just binning Once and Future. I would rather play Timeless Witness in a self-mill deck than a 4 mana instant that I could "oops" into the grave for no value, especially considering a self-mill deck is probably focused on creatures anyways. And if your cube is in the situation that you get behind by casting a 3 mana card the normal way, why is it in the fight club? If spending 3 mana to recur the best card in your grave at the time gets you behind early, 4 mana would be twice as bad, especially if you don't have Adamant by then. Harmonize probably would be more beneficial if the metric for "card is good" is "gets the maximum number of cards added to the hand".

Like I'm just pointing out actual advantages of a card you asked about.... but you seem to already have an opinion so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

No, sorry, I didn't mean to sound bitchy or anything. It's just that I also of course thought about it after posting and I think it's interesting how much my conclusion differentiates from others. I am adding Bala Ged recovery at this point anyway, but I still think I'd rather want OaF over Revival.

what I meant with the "it gets you behind" is just that those aren't early game plays anyway. I neither want to spent turn 3 or 4 to get back a card, I want to use these to refill after I hopefully already made some impactful plays. Which is why the triple green seems to be a non-issue most of the time. I do think that Timeless Witness is better than both, but it might just be a little too much value for what I am looking for. It is basically a 4-for-1.
 
Revival is bad UNLESS the specific deck where it’s good (self-mill combo/control) is a good deck in your cube. you have to be able to count on 1. your games going very long and 2. having high impact spells that are worth spending a total of 8 extra mana on to recast twice. it’s just a very slow card, even if the value is there.
 
You Happen on a Glade is pretty dang gassy. Two lands or a permanent at instant speed is strong.

After reflection, I'll update my ranking of the above to
Bala Ged recovery > dryad's revival > Once and Future

I'm including Revival for some very specific functionality, and Recovery is better in a general role (or one of the instants mentioned above). Revival helps ensure that my lands archetype can find and/or recur the one or two centerpieces as needed, including grabbing it back from the grave, from the grave. Especially this:

Which dodges creature recursion, can't self-recur, and misses instant/sorcery recursion too. And can be key to deck operation so its paramount that the deck can attempt to field it in as many scenarios as possible.
 
You Happen on a Glade is pretty dang gassy. Two lands or a permanent at instant speed is strong.

After reflection, I'll update my ranking of the above to
Bala Ged recovery > dryad's revival > Once and Future

I'm including Revival for some very specific functionality, and Recovery is better in a general role (or one of the instants mentioned above). Revival helps ensure that my lands archetype can find and/or recur the one or two centerpieces as needed, including grabbing it back from the grave, from the grave. Especially this:

Which dodges creature recursion, can't self-recur, and misses instant/sorcery recursion too. And can be key to deck operation so its paramount that the deck can attempt to field it in as many scenarios as possible.

Can youe cube support Seismic Assault?
 
I run Seasons Past in this role:



It's not much different from Once and Future in casting cost, but it gives green control an endgame and it's a very unique effect. Not in instant, though.
 
  • Like
Reactions: dbs
Top