General Ixlan Spoiler

[Onderzeeboot]

For a minute there I thought this would turn ugly, but then everyone turned out to be a decent human being. Thanks y'all.

Speaking about black five drops...

Meh... Not exactly the card that answers our prayers, is it. Keep trying WotC, you'll succeed eventually!

 

[ahadabans]

That's an awkward card. Sort of a pox effect on a body. The more aggressive your deck is, the less life you opponent probably loses on T5+ when this comes down (and the more you might lose disproportionally). So is it more a midrange card? Control can't want that right? I dig that it's an orc pirate wizard though. I'm biased a bit against this effect because I didn't like pox for similar reasons (smallpox and death cloud are different stories - both great IMO). And pox was easier to break because of the discard/sacrifice portion being more apt to manipulation. I don't see how you make that life loss on this card something that's really exploitative. It's more just a 2-3 hit at the expense of you losing equal or more life. OK in an aggressive shell but probably not making up for the relatively weak body.

 

[Grillo_Parlante]

Interesting things from the set to think about so far:

1. R/G enrage deck for lower/mid power formats.
2. Lots of new knights for haakon, stromgald scourge, is there enough, finally, to turn him into a quality engine card?
3. Revisit Vampire tribal? Intersect it with haakon?

Than some incidental benefits from the treasure cards for tucking more artifacts into main cubes, some attack trigger cards to encourage low CC curve outs, some good generic value cards, and some nice reprints/functional reprints. Set seems well made, and on the lower end of the power spectrum, which I am--of course--biased in favor of.

Would like another order of amonkhet, however. Love cycling too much.

 

[ahadabans]

FWIW, lower power lists with enough gy support can already run Haakon, Stromgald scourge if they want. Even without Nameless Inversion combo, Haakon is still a 3/3 beater that you can just keep recasting from the yard. It's a super annoying card. Much like a Vengevine. Knights are really not required. Though if enough synergy was there to make zombie knights a thing in cube, it would certainly add a new dimension. It would also be less confusing to drafters who tend to look at Haakon and want to build a knight deck with him. That was one of the reasons I stopped running him as much as I love Haakon.

 

[Onderzeeboot]

Is that ogre a mythic too? It really is the most awkward design in the set. Who'ld be happy opening that as one of their box mythics?

 

[Grillo_Parlante]

I think the way this is supposed to work (for vampires) is that you're supposed to be fine with a density of disposable turn one 1/1s, that you can than curve out into attack trigger/Battalion/raid/bloodlust creatures. Its an aggressive deck with an emphasis on turn 2 threats, rather than turn 1 threats, and than you've got the usual wide board pieces to convert those disposable dorks into kills (wide board overruns, sac outlets, whenever creature ETBs triggers). So basically, same formula as mardu from Khans. More assertive in R/W, more grindy/midrange in B/W, and R/B probably can shift to either end of the spectrum. Legion's landing makes a lot more sense in that framework.

Basically garbage in turn 1 aggro cube formats, but reasonable in turn 2 aggro formats. Prob want to stay away from bouncelands though. That turned out to be an easy puzzle.

 

[sigh]

Some of the confusion in the preceding pages may relate to this. My agro tilts far more T2 than 1. You can do literally nothin T1 (tapped land maybe) and still progress fine.

 

[ahadabans]

It wasn't confusion so much as a difference in philosophy. And that's OK honestly. But it's why context is vital. A card can be awesome in one meta and utter rubbish somewhere else. Even in similar metas if the groups are different or the drafting methodologies vary. It's really not black and white most of the time.

 

[sigh]

non-basic-hitting Ghost quarter + untapped-basic-getting Warped Landscape

This feels like a ghost quarter effect I might actually run. Getting the basic for yourself (untapped!) is a great upside, and basically jamming two meh lands together into one card seems like a recipe for a runnable card. Not for any overly high power environments, but I'd think there's at least a few formats that can appreciate this.

 

[Chris Taylor]

3 lands is so much to hold back though.

 

[Salmo2]

It wasn't confusion so much as a difference in philosophy. And that's OK honestly. But it's why context is vital. A card can be awesome in one meta and utter rubbish somewhere else. Even in similar metas if the groups are different or the drafting methodologies vary. It's really not black and white most of the time.

Yeah nobody was confused lol

 

[sigh]

I was

 

[Salmo2]

cool

if you want to continue that discussion, bring it to PMs, I'll happily clarify whatever you want me to about my philosophy on cube and how I got there

 

[sigh]

3 lands is so much to hold back though.

This is, of course, a valid concern. Getting the land does mean you only spend the same amount of effective mana as Tectonic Edge, so that is helping me keep interest. You can still use T4 and have 2 mana for a counter, and next turn still have your 4 lands to develop to five, for instance.

That may not outweigh the very real cost.

 

[Dom Harvey]

If only there was a bespoke Wildfire-esque effect that could trigger Enrage for cheap without killing your dinos...

re. Legion's Landing, I find my 'aggro' decks are more interesting and contextually powerful when they are less about piling on damage ASAP and more about building a board presence they can quickly convert later. Shrine of Burning Rage and Shrine of Loyal Legions are two classic examples: they don't add to your board and aren't relevant for at least a few turns but they warp the whole game around the threat they create. My white decks that make a bunch of tokens are very mana-hungry and would absolutely welcome this card; between this, Kytheon, and Windbrisk Heights, there are enough battalion incentives for me to put the work in. It's sweet with Kor Skyfisher/Flickerwisp etc too. It may end up being bad but I'm excited to test it.

There's disagreement on MTGS but the people disagreeing usually share the same core beliefs - they might disagree over whether to dump Kird Ape from their 5th Gruul slot for Regisaur Alpha, but they agree on the criteria for that decision and that it's even a sensible question in the first place. That said, it's better than it was and there's not enough traffic here to fill my need for Cube chat.

 

[shamizy]

Two days left of spoilers, I'd imagine the bulk of playables have been shown by this point. This is what I'm looking at trying out:

The land will slot into ULD, everything else into the main cube.

I'm just wondering how many dinos I need before the giant Naya one is worth it, might just run that as well since it seems like a fun big beater for ramp decks. I think Ruin Raider is likely the best Dark Confidant variant we've gotten to date, I could see it being very successful in my aggressive W/B shells. I only wish it were a human to promote more synergies. I'm just happy to see Raid back, hopefully we see even more cards with useful triggers across this block.

It's been a while since I last updated my cube, I actually still need to slot in the few C17 cards that I picked up.

 

[Salmo2]

That said, it's better than it was and there's not enough traffic here to fill my need for Cube chat.

Not sure if you use Discord, but if you do there are a number of great cube groups where there's a ton of discussion.

 

[Dom Harvey]

I'm in the Cube subreddit server, which other ones are there?

 

[FlowerSunRain]

What's everyone's thoughts on this card?

3/3 trample, cantrips, feeds the graveyard, will sometimes turn dead cards into live ones, will occasionally force you to resequence in order to avoid potentially discarding an important live card(or alternatively will occasionally throw out a live card when you can't resequence).

Its a weird card and it sorts of begs the question of how far below the curve can you be if you cantrip? Four mana gets you 5/5s with upside in terms of stat monster type creatures, a 3/3 trades with a lot of 2 drops. I'm always in favor of chucking cards in the graveyard, but no one likes losing games because they got too cute. Obviously stuff like skinrender are fine being undersized because their value effects impact the board while this guy sort of plays the long game hoping the extra resources (card in hand, 2 cards in graveyard) eventually amount to something. Masked Admirers isn't getting much work done these days, but that body is even worse and additional upside is extremely mana intensive, which exacerbates the cards front-end inefficiency. This card asks nothing of you after playing it. Red 4 is an interesting place on the curve that isn't dying for options, but grindy red is often undersupported and a card that gives a value body that also feeds into other red discard/graveyard themes seems like its worth a look.

Oh, yeah, and sometimes it is bizzaro world card advantage trampling balduvian horde, I guess that factors in there somewhere (seriously the odds of hitting are pretty bad outside of very narrow circumstances, but not so unlikely it won't happen occassionally).

 

[Salmo2]

I'm in the Cube subreddit server, which other ones are there?

I'm not sure if that's the same as one of these, but I'm part of two:

XMage Cube Group - https://discord.gg/9P38d
Where the drafts on xmage are organized, and general talk happens. Also where weekend drafts are organized before/during/etc. Not that you can't draft on xmage without being part of this group, but its a bit more reliable when you have people from there join vs randoms.

MTG Cube Talk - https://discord.gg/k4HCnp
General cube discussion. Lot of specialized rooms, with varying degrees of activity. Currently 11 pm EST and there are 94 people online there, so pretty active overall.

Both of those are 24 hr invites, feel free to PM if interested in joining and invalid in future

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re: rowdy crew, the +1+1 counters probably won't happen enough to rely on, and I'm not sure of the value of the rest. Not in a negative way, it's just a weird combination of abilities overall, and then when you hit its pretty powerful. Clearly good in GY strategies, and otherwise it's probably better the more generic your deck feels, as you can't really afford to discard engine pieces that you can''t recur. 2 random cards is really rough--there are so many hands that can go from 'good' to 'awful', though your hand might not be big enough at that point to care. But again, if you are hypothetically going 4->5 and you discard your 5 for something way worse, that's kinda shitty. But even then you still have a 3/3 trample at worst, which feels worse than the floors of most/all the other 4s you could be playing but is still fine in a lot of situations.

 

[shamizy]

Now that is some nice graveyard hate. But why are green 3s so damn stacked now?

EDIT: Holy shit that is a massive image, I'll update it to something smaller once I find one.

 

[Grillo_Parlante]

Really odd card, my initial gut reaction is that its bad due to the random discard. R&D decided to make this card mythic however, which means they think it has a home (some dredge deck?). As someone who remembers all of the hype around balduvian horde (RED JUZUM OMG!!) part of my wonders if this isn't just R&D trolling, or maybe someone really wanted to tackle that card to fix it.

Just drawing three cards is a really powerful effect, but whenever I run faithless looting or cathartic reunion, I can't remember the last time I didn't care about the cards being discarded, either due to qualty, or some triggered ability, and dicard for value is pretty prevelent across the Grixis portion of my format.

The odd thing is, that you kind of want to hold this card to hit the counter trigger, and I wonder if its not deceptively narrow as a result.

 

[Salmo2]

Draw 3 discard 2 random is pretty solid in a lot of spots. It's essentially a trampling 3/3 that's always going to draw you a card, and will randomly be a 5/5. In cube that can hurt in certain decks, and red definitely doesn't lack for 4s, so there are a number of legitimate strikes against this card in a section with a lot of no-strike cards. This card does seem a *lot* better than Balduvian Horde and I think that's a bad comparison that makes sense to make, mainly because you aren't actually going down in card advantage and there will be times where you have some amount of useless cards in your hand and you'll dump those and improve what you have.

 

[inscho]

Rowdy Crew's requirements for excellence is a little too situational to be fun in even low powered cubes in my opinion. I'd take a card like Bedlam Reveler over it any day. I know the applications are slightly different, but at least there's some clear design direction given by Reveler. Crew is just a chaos value bro.

 

[ahadabans]

My first thought on Rowdy Crew is that the random discard is too much of a drawback, but I'm not sure that's the weak part of the card. I don't like the stats on it or the random 5/5 trigger. Too much of this card is random for me. What I do like is more GY support in red. I love that we keep getting cards like that in this color and so I want to like Rowdy Crew more than I actually do. At a minimum, I hope Wizard's keeps exploring red GY support.