General Fight Club

[Onderzeeboot]

Just alter the other one to Hyprophesizzle and you're set.

I'ld rather change Hypothesizzle to damage any target, but that wouldn't be nearly as good a joke

 

[Featherhall]

Apologies for mis-sellings - drunk on Kraken....

Help me cut one, as it's hard to do when drinking, adjusting green (I hate this color) and watching hockey at the same time:

 

[Velrun]

Are we cutting a card from your cube in general or from your draft deck for a tournament you are participating in right now?

If cube: Wall of Roots gets my vote.
1. Boring
2. Weird counters that doesn't interact with anything (anymore)
3. All the other cards are kinda cool and can be built around

If for tournament deck: Genesis Hydra
It seems out of touch with the rest of the cards. Doesn't really suit your semi-aggro deck with graveyard interactions.

All above are my personal opinions.

 

[safra]

yeah I'm not really feeling wall of roots

genesis hydra is cute but it's really just a guy-reball with negative variance imo

 

[ravnic]

I'd cut the Wall too.
And then replace the Explorer with Wild Mongrel, whose absence hurts me.

 

[Onderzeeboot]

I'd cut the Wall too.
And then replace the Explorer with Wild Mongrel, whose absence hurts me.

Noose Constrictor is the Wild Mongrel of this cube. Have you ever felt the need for two Mongrels?

 

[Featherhall]

Guh... should not have posted that last night - without providing context, the question to what to cut loses all meaning.

Thankfully, this hangover I have will be punishment enough.

So, essentially, I'm just finishing up the last bit of my 450 card cube. Some cards are missing still, but am working on getting some proxies for the time being (Magic is still expensive). However, for whatever reason, I hate my Green section a lot. So I've been going up and down the creatures I have so far per cmc to see what fits and what does not. Green is to provide creature/spell ramp (for the red/blue pairing), Graveyard shenanigans (black pairing) and +1/+1 counters (white pairing).

I'm surprised that Wall of Roots is getting the vote to be honest. I kinda saw it as a sacred cow in truth, as right now I'm still trying to determine how many mana dorks is the right number. I'm also cold on Genesis Hydra, as his inclusion was mostly to get a +1/+1 counter creature in the list.

I have to ask why switch to Wild Mongrel? Isn't it's existence invalidated by the Constrictor? Plus, I think I read somewhere's on this forum that the Borderland Explorer played well?

 

[Grillo_Parlante]

My opinions on wall of roots can change a lot depending on the context, but its a lot more dull in cube in general, when you can't pair it with a density of interesting convoke cards. Its at its best when you can use it to fuel creature based tool box decks with cards like chord of calling. Otherwise it has a tendency to just come down early, clog the board, while ramp into powerful midrange threats, all while being hard to interact with. Its kind of methenamine for a deck type that already has a tendency to overpopulate cubes.

On the other hand, it can be nice to add some variation instead of running five million elf clones.

In the dark, I would cut Genesis Hydra as well, for the reasons safra mentioned.

 

[Velrun]

I have to ask why switch to Wild Mongrel? Isn't it's existence invalidated by the Constrictor? Plus, I think I read somewhere's on this forum that the Borderland Explorer played well?

You should always make your cube function in a vacuum. Ignore the rest of the world and mold the meta in your own cube to your liking.

In other words: If you make one card stronger you are also making most other cards weaker. Example if you choose to go with Constrictor over Mongrel you are also making all flyers easier to block and thus a little worse. Relatively speaking. This is a broad stroke and only true 90 % of the time but you can use it as a rule of thumb.

 

[Grillo_Parlante]

I don’t get why someone would cut constrictor for mongrel either, other than nostalgia. There is a good argument for running both, if you have a lot of discard interactions, but otherwise constrictor is going to be slightly better for most green sections. Green has an annoying habit of color pairing in ways that just struggle to deal with decks that run a lot of flyers.

 

[ravnic]

Noose Constrictor is the Wild Mongrel of this cube. Have you ever felt the need for two Mongrels?

All the time. All the decks in my cube that want an aggressive discard outlet at 2 mana would want another. I'm even hoping for more variants. Gruul Madness Aggro wants them the most, followed by Golgari dredge. Other beat down decks like Selesnya Aggro also highly appreciate both of them, but Mongrel even more than Constrictor, because dodging a handfull of spells like Terror or Wash Out help more than anything related to blocking in these decks.

 

[Onderzeeboot]

Cool! Thanks for the answer. Those scenarios do seem environment specific though. For example, they don't apply to my cube (no Gruul madness, no Golgari (period), no Terro, no Wash Out. It's good to name some cube archetypes / cards that would make the second Mongrel a good fit!

 

[Peter LaCara]

As a counterpoint, I love Borderland Explorer because it still enables discard shenanigans (not as well as Mongrel, to be sure, but well enough) AND it has the added benefit of reducing non-games by giving both players some filtering. Plus, 3/1's are good on defense, which is generally where green wants to be.

 

[Jason Waddell]

If the question is comparing 2-drops, the Hydra doesn't really even qualify. I also think the Harpooner is kind of an absurd amount of text, so if the players aren't already familiar with it I would consider giving it a cut.

 

[ravnic]

VS.

 

[Onderzeeboot]

It's not a name... Wait, let me try that again. "It" is not a name, so no comma



I'ld say Ajani's Pridemate has a lower floor and an easier requirement. It's obviously more dangerous. I mean, It That Rides As One is obviously more dangerous. Jeez, that name is confusing! Anyway, higher upside, but a lot harder to trigger and a lower base make me want to choose the Pridemate!

 

[ravnic]

Yeah, I first wanted to with It ... I mean Lone Rider. But I just saw the Guilds of Ravnica fine, which made me tend more to change. You made tge decision final, thanks

 

[safra]

Lone Rider is also cross-bleed with an Equipment theme in my experience. Bonesplitter swing flip

 

[shamizy]

I've tried them both in the past, I think Pridemate was on average better due to being a bear. Lone Rider reads better than it plays from my experience, you need to deploy it on curve or suited up to get the actual payoff. Otherwise it gets walled off by just about everything. I found it very inconsistent to pull off a 3+ point lifegain on a turn to get it to flip accordingly and continue applying pressure. On the other hand, any incidental lifegain effects let you grow the Pridemate and go to town, might be able to find ways to squeeze things like Healer's Hawk or Leonin Vanguard into certain lists to help enable weird shenanigans.

 

[Rasmus Källqvist]

vs

What's the better card for the burning vengeance deck?

 

[Onderzeeboot]

 

[Rasmus Källqvist]

I already run that card and most all other play-from-the-graveyard removal but I also want some big honking stupid cards as well.

 

[Velrun]

Firebolt was not one of the two options at the table. It is like answering ‘Brazil’ when asked if Germany or Spain will win the big match.

I think it depends how many sorceries you have in your cube.

In my personal experience Burning Vengeance functions best if you are not going for a big turn with tons of damage but instead simply gets to activate it every second turn. The slow burn.

I would test Recoup first because it is the cheap version (CMC). If that works out, test the big guy.

 

[Onderzeeboot]

Firebolt was not one of the two options at the table. It is like answering ‘Brazil’ when asked if Germany or Spain will win the big match.

I think it depends how many sorceries you have in your cube.

In my personal experience Burning Vengeance functions best if you are not going for a big turn with tons of damage but instead simply gets to activate it every second turn. The slow burn.

I would test Recoup first because it is the cheap version (CMC). If that works out, test the big guy.

So we aren't supposed to think out of the box? I do believe Firebolt is much better in a Burning Vengeance deck than either of those options. The question was posed to us with little context, and I'm not sure either of the available answers are great in that deck, so I answered C (with admittedly little context of my own, because I like being cheeky). I do agree with you that of the two, Recoup is the most desirable. The Burning Vengeance deck isn't looking to go off with a bunch of rituals, it's about grinding out a game, and the cheaper spell helps there. This observation comes with a caveat though. Keep in mind that for Recoup to be worth it, you need to be running multiple spells that want to be flashed back. Those will most often be useful spells that don't have flashback themselves, because why run Recoup when you can already cast everything from the graveyard? Those spell, however, will be useless with Burning Vengeance unless you also draw the Recoup. I don't know how tricky it will be to find the right balance, but I suspect Recoup plays less well with Burning Vengeance than expected because of what Recoup does to the deck composition.

 

[Velrun]

I’m sorry. I did not mean to offend.

My bad