You know, Spell Pierce is way less of a control hoser than Stone Rain.
General It could happen in any number of formats
- Thread starter Jason Waddell
- Start date
I dunno, stone rain delays my barter in blood / wrath by a turn or two at the cost of my opponent's third turn. Those are 3 tempo dollars he is spending to wrong foot me for a bit. Spell Pierce takes only one tempo dollar to take the card out of my hand and make me tap 4 mana for it while they probably played a sweet third/fourth turn.
Ah, silly anecdote time. I didn't realize it was that time of day already!
You realize that all of your arguments against Spell Pierce also apply to stuff like Remand, right?
You realize that all of your arguments against Spell Pierce also apply to stuff like Remand, right?
Aren't these sorta the ideal cases in the aggro V control matchup for the two hate cards? Isn't this kinda the shutting the door situation we want to be talking about if we want to be helping control decks? I'm just a control player at heart and I've been in these situations and felt their difference many times before.
I realize blue has many counterspells that hit wrath yes! But Remand is not at all the same as spell pierce. Remand is interesting to many decks because it's cycling ability for one, and it's ability to net tempo against all but 1cc spells. I am excited to play remand main decked in most blue decks and splashed in many other types of decks where spell pierce seems much less helpful at winning against a creature deck if I am a creature light deck. I also know I can try to cast my wrath next turn if it gets remanded and my opponent had to be leaving 2 mana up for a while, which is pretty nice compared to trying to wrath a 1drop and two 2drops and just losing my important card. Anyway I didn't want to talk about this for so long, I just found your dismissal didn't match up with my magic experience and I thought I'd explain how I saw it differently.
I'd love to hear why you thought stone rain was more damning than a meaner force spike (that is best against control) when aggro is admittedly the dominant archetype in your cube. I guess in conjunction with other land destruction, tec-edge etc it's pretty bad, but if you are gonna mock me for my illustration I at least expect you to scribble something on your paper to show in return. Maybe your control decks play more sixes and sevens than mine do? Or aren't 18 landers or don't have wayfarers bauble in them?
The dismissive tone is just not fun. I think I'm bringing up valid points and experience and then being told to shut up because I live in a fantasy world.
I realize blue has many counterspells that hit wrath yes! But Remand is not at all the same as spell pierce. Remand is interesting to many decks because it's cycling ability for one, and it's ability to net tempo against all but 1cc spells. I am excited to play remand main decked in most blue decks and splashed in many other types of decks where spell pierce seems much less helpful at winning against a creature deck if I am a creature light deck. I also know I can try to cast my wrath next turn if it gets remanded and my opponent had to be leaving 2 mana up for a while, which is pretty nice compared to trying to wrath a 1drop and two 2drops and just losing my important card. Anyway I didn't want to talk about this for so long, I just found your dismissal didn't match up with my magic experience and I thought I'd explain how I saw it differently.
I'd love to hear why you thought stone rain was more damning than a meaner force spike (that is best against control) when aggro is admittedly the dominant archetype in your cube. I guess in conjunction with other land destruction, tec-edge etc it's pretty bad, but if you are gonna mock me for my illustration I at least expect you to scribble something on your paper to show in return. Maybe your control decks play more sixes and sevens than mine do? Or aren't 18 landers or don't have wayfarers bauble in them?
The dismissive tone is just not fun. I think I'm bringing up valid points and experience and then being told to shut up because I live in a fantasy world.
spell pierce doesn't put your opponent back at least 1 turn of development for the rest of the game, or randomly mana screw your opponent out of nowhere.
even if the control player keeps hitting land drops, being a land down is going to stall their ability to play out their hand; while spell pierce destroys them harder for the particular spell getting pierced, stone rain effectively force spikes every spell they play for the rest of the game
even if the control player keeps hitting land drops, being a land down is going to stall their ability to play out their hand; while spell pierce destroys them harder for the particular spell getting pierced, stone rain effectively force spikes every spell they play for the rest of the game
Onderzeeboot
Ecstatic Orb
I'm apparently at 149/360 (41.4%), excluding token-producing noncreatures. That's... lower than I expected, though I'm not factoring out the lands. Off my nonlands 149/314 (47.5%) are creatures, that's still low.
I'm with Lucre here. Spell Pierce and Remand are very different counters. Remand goes in lots of different decks. The cycling is what makes is so good because even control can utilize it (it's not just a hoser or a tempo counter).
Spell Pierce is not a card I want in my control deck because it doesn't protect me against my worst matchup (Aggro). Well, it does in powermax cubes where I need to counter moxen, sol rings, jitte, winter orbs, and all the other broken nonsense that auto win games when cast early. But not in my cube (or most cubes here I would imagine). Here, it's a tempo/aggro only counter.
Stone rain sets you back a turn, yes. But it comes at a price (3 mana). So the caster is giving up a turn to take away a turn. Spell Pierce and Force Spike are often more back-breaking because they only cost 1 mana and don't just take away a turn, they take away a turn and the card that your opponent probably really needed to resolve (remand just delays it a turn). Force Spike is a strong card but it can be played around more easily. Spell Pierce is randomly a very strong card and sometimes its just useless. I don't like the variance personally. It's certainly better in aggro/tempo though where if you never have a target it's probably because you are winning. But I still don't care for it.
Spell Pierce is not a card I want in my control deck because it doesn't protect me against my worst matchup (Aggro). Well, it does in powermax cubes where I need to counter moxen, sol rings, jitte, winter orbs, and all the other broken nonsense that auto win games when cast early. But not in my cube (or most cubes here I would imagine). Here, it's a tempo/aggro only counter.
Stone rain sets you back a turn, yes. But it comes at a price (3 mana). So the caster is giving up a turn to take away a turn. Spell Pierce and Force Spike are often more back-breaking because they only cost 1 mana and don't just take away a turn, they take away a turn and the card that your opponent probably really needed to resolve (remand just delays it a turn). Force Spike is a strong card but it can be played around more easily. Spell Pierce is randomly a very strong card and sometimes its just useless. I don't like the variance personally. It's certainly better in aggro/tempo though where if you never have a target it's probably because you are winning. But I still don't care for it.
Spellbound dragon discarding seize the day, casting it, then cruel ultimatum off the second loot for the exact 21. Don't remember what the 1 was from.
Including artifacts and gold, but not lands, I've got 63% creatures.
Including artifacts and gold, but not lands, I've got 63% creatures.
This. Not to mention stone rain takes out the key colour or colours that the control player is leaning on. Randomly being colour screwed for the next several turns after spending some time and life laying out your perfect manabase is not going to make a control player's day.
If you feel I'm being dismissive, it's just that I have a hard time believing that anyone feels Spell Pierce is more oppressive to control decks than Stone Rain, much less that someone would type up ten+ paragraphs expressing why. We simply have very different philosophies about how to build a cube, and that's fine. It's not that I'm ignoring your recommendations because I feel your opinions are invalid, but that we disagree pretty fundamentally about how to go about designing a cube. That's not a personal slight against you, but again, if you're arguing for Stone Rain over Spell Pierce given that you know control decks are struggling in my environment, I'm letting you know up front that you're not going to convince me with flimsy made-up anecdotes. I know I'm being harsh here, but I get a lot of cube advice from my playerbase - a lot - and if I simply accepted and implemented every piece of advice I heard, the cube would, quite frankly, be awful. Worse than every single random cube on CubeTutor. It would have no design vision - it'd simply be development tidbits from a dozen players who each only saw a very limited slice of the metagame. It's probably not an exaggeration to say that I ignore 75% of the cube advice I receive, so don't feel like I'm "out to get you" just because you're in that 75%.
Also, when your Wrath of God gets Remanded, there's a decent chance you don't see a next turn to get to cast it again. I mean, Remand is really at its best when it's cast in the final two turns of the game, which is where the comparison with Spell Pierce comes in - if you can keep the game length short, those counterspells tend to do their best work.
it's misleading to say that stone rain costs 3 and thus costs the caster more tempo than spell pierce. leaving up U for more than a turn costs as much or more mana as just casting stone rain; wasted mana is just as real a cost as paying for spells.
for the record i don't currently run spell pierce, but i like it a lot and would love to make room for it again. on the other hand i can't imagine wanting stone rain again, it never did anything interesting or desirable while i ran it.
for the record i don't currently run spell pierce, but i like it a lot and would love to make room for it again. on the other hand i can't imagine wanting stone rain again, it never did anything interesting or desirable while i ran it.
That's fair, but you don't usually keep U up multiple turns. If you are doing that, it's because your opponent isn't casting stuff or they are casting lower cost stuff to play around your counter (or you are holding it open for Spell Pierce and your opponent keeps dropping dudes so you can't play it which takes us back to why I don't like this card). Barring that last scenario, it's not really wasted mana (at least not wasted mana that is hurting you).
The most important thing for me is that unless stone rain is color screwing me, it isn't stopping me from playing something. Just delaying me a turn. Counters are essentially taking those cards from my hand. So while we can probably argue the tempo loss either way, I think the impact on the game is typically larger with the counter (losing my wrath is much worse than having to wait one turn to play it - I may lose either way of course but in a vacuum it's worse).
For what it's worth, I don't run stone rain either. Though I do run Pillage, so close enough I suppose.
Now maybe for some of the faster cubes here, losing a turn to a stone rain essentially loses you the game versus aggro. That is not true in my cube though where things are a bit slower and you can't assemble a constructed level aggro deck (from an efficiency standpoint). Land destruction can obviously be very powerful if you get locked out of a color, but otherwise it's a speed bump against most decks and nothing more.
The whole point of Stone Rain is to deny access to a colour, though. And if you're lucky, multiple colours. It's not about the delay, so much as the complete denial. Unlike with counterspells, where you're aiming to hit their best spell, but sometimes have to settle for any spell because you can't afford to hold up mana forever, Stone Rain always hits the land you're pointing at.
I mean, it's not really that effective against the mono-Forest deck. But against UWR, who's just finished searching up that Sacred Foundry to assemble
? Yep, that's got a giant bullseye on it. Who says we're allowing you to cast your Wrath of God next turn - let alone at all?
I mean, it's not really that effective against the mono-Forest deck. But against UWR, who's just finished searching up that Sacred Foundry to assemble
? Yep, that's got a giant bullseye on it. Who says we're allowing you to cast your Wrath of God next turn - let alone at all?The whole point of Stone Rain is to deny access to a colour, though. And if you're lucky, multiple colours. It's not about the delay, so much as the complete denial. Unlike with counterspells, where you're aiming to hit their best spell, but sometimes have to settle for any spell because you can't afford to hold up mana forever, Stone Rain always hits the land you're pointing at.
I mean, it's not really that effective against the mono-Forest deck. But against UWR, who's just finished searching up that Sacred Foundry to assemble
Denying access to color is the ideal scenario with land destruction sure, but it's not the whole point or even the primary point IMO simply because you can't rely on that outcome. Against a deck running two colors with a solid mana base, you do not have good odds of keeping them off the colors they need. Your odds obviously go up the more greedy they are with the splashes and what not though. Still, if that's what you are after you are going to end up disappointed with how well Stone Rain performs in your deck.
But delaying a control deck one turn of mana development while you continue to pound away with your 1 and 2 drop is often all you need to seal victory. That's really what Stone Rain and friends are best used for. It's a tempo play first and foremost.
All men must die.
Every game must end. I feel a LOT better about games ended by Spell Pierce than Stone Rain.
Every game must end. I feel a LOT better about games ended by Spell Pierce than Stone Rain.
Sometimes they don't have the land in hand, though.
FlowerSunRain
Contributor
Turn 3: Attunement
Turn 4: Return Attunement, Discard Attunement, Thoughtrender Lamia, Seal of Doom and Angelic Destiny. Cast Replenish.
Discard 4 cards, kill a dude and get a 9/7 threat? This is about as close to a combo deck as my cube gets.
Turn 4: Return Attunement, Discard Attunement, Thoughtrender Lamia, Seal of Doom and Angelic Destiny. Cast Replenish.
Discard 4 cards, kill a dude and get a 9/7 threat? This is about as close to a combo deck as my cube gets.
Dom Harvey
Contributor
Don't creatures have to be in play before Replenish for Auras to be put on them?
FlowerSunRain
Contributor
According to the rules clarification, they do.
Not sure how I feel about that. In the game in question there was an enclave cryptologist on the table, so it really didn't matter.
Although, why is this ruling 9 years old? Enchantment creatures haven't been around long. Is this Opalescence's fault? Were they afraid Lucent Limind was going to break Replenish?
Not sure how I feel about that. In the game in question there was an enclave cryptologist on the table, so it really didn't matter.
Although, why is this ruling 9 years old? Enchantment creatures haven't been around long. Is this Opalescence's fault? Were they afraid Lucent Limind was going to break Replenish?
Cubed a lot this week. Lots of silly value plays (monolith cubes, you know how it is)
Saw a guy use Grindstone and Painter's Servant to kill someone. That looked unfortunate.
It was fun losing to mind twist and struggling to set up my own balances etc but boy is there a difference in card to card power level in some of these cubes guys. Lots of arguments for "Cube isn't right if you can't do unfair things" though I think I got through to them with the Go Big vs Go Under gameplay can be a little less polarized. It was really weird to me that everyone seemed to agree that winter orb hardly led to games where you could play magic and have fun, but lotus openers were somehow more of a game than that.
It was neat that a pod deck went 3-0 in one flight though.
Saw a guy use Grindstone and Painter's Servant to kill someone. That looked unfortunate.
It was fun losing to mind twist and struggling to set up my own balances etc but boy is there a difference in card to card power level in some of these cubes guys. Lots of arguments for "Cube isn't right if you can't do unfair things" though I think I got through to them with the Go Big vs Go Under gameplay can be a little less polarized. It was really weird to me that everyone seemed to agree that winter orb hardly led to games where you could play magic and have fun, but lotus openers were somehow more of a game than that.
It was neat that a pod deck went 3-0 in one flight though.
Grindstone + Painter's Servant sounds like the type of play that should happen in any format BUT cube.
I like Grindstone + Painted Servant in cube! I run it and it's always been fun: it doesn't come up too often but when someone assembles it, the whole room usually has a good laugh. I wouldn't run vault-key but painted stone can be disrupted by removal: doesn't seem too bad!
I've been considering adding stuff like red elemental blast and Jaya Ballard, Task Mage to support Painted Servant but that probably won't work out. Grindstone has incidental value in graveyard decks or in dedicated control as a grindy win condition
I've been considering adding stuff like red elemental blast and Jaya Ballard, Task Mage to support Painted Servant but that probably won't work out. Grindstone has incidental value in graveyard decks or in dedicated control as a grindy win condition
This disruption is an interesting point. In theory I'm not a fan of two-card "win the game" combos that do (next to) nothing on their own. Other people have opinions here?