Already Know What I Want To Swap These For
Frogify is sort of a concession to a) blue not being the best removal color and b)
Zur the Enchanter needing some targets in each of its colors, but it's not really a great card. Giving it flash makes it lightyears better imo, because suddenly this is a great combat trick (for ninjas) as well as a great alternative for
Counterspell if you're keeping open mana.
I put in
Tallion's Messenger in the last update, more because I wanted a "looter" than because I thought it was a cool card. Malcolm is leagues more appealing, considering that I do run a self discard theme, and faerie typal (better get used to that term) is not something I support.
This is a nice upgrade over
Kitesail Freebooter. Now that I no longer have a human typal archetype, the lifelink and broader target range of the Bat look like a mighty fine exchange for 1 health. This is going to be a great target for one of the two
Bonesplitters I run!
Maybe
A 4/4 for
with convoke and improvise is pretty sexy, especially because it actually qualifies for recursion with things like
Call of the Death-Dweller.
The only battlecry creature in my current cube is
Signal Pest. This one is a pretty interesting army-in-a-can variant.
Potentially interesting because it intersects with both artifacts matter (e.g.
Emry, Lurker of the Loch) and self mill (
Sidisi, Brood Tyrant).
Magnificent removal spell for the self discard archetype, and decent removal for any black deck, especially aggro decks that don't care about the life loss.
I might have mentioned that self discard archetype maybe. This is probably not as good of an effect, but it
is a free "at will" (sorcery speed only) discard outlet, which can do nasty things with the likes of
Faith of the Devoted.
I'm wary of the 4 toughness (with a decent 2 power), but the effect here is interesting. I think I want my 4 toughness 3 drops to be not monocolored or
Courser of Kruphix though.
Sweet! Problem is that all of my pirates except one are in red's enemy (in my cube) colors black and blue.
These are some useful upsides on a combat trick. Trample means you're getting damage through, and destroying an artifact can be pretty good too!
This looks a bit above curve for what I want, but it's a super sweet effect! This card should be on anyone's radar who supports a red aggro deck and runs at a reasonably powerful power band, imo.
What I don't like is that this is one of the few discover cards I'm interested in, what I do like is the modal nature of this card.
This is quite a neat card. It's an artifact for historic matters, and it also works with convoke, which doesn't appear in red currently, but there are a handful of convoke cards in other colors, and
is a go wide color. Maybe it's time to put
Stoke the Flames back in!
This is just funny, but realistically you are not going to have many creatures left in your hand once you hit 8 mana, and a number of creatures in my cube have
in the mana cost, which doesn't mesh well with this ability.
Sooo...
Smokestack support much?
Holy moly, this creates two 1/1 attackers the turn it hits the board, and more if it isn't dealt with! Probably waaay too explosive for my cube, but keep an eye on this one if your power level is a bit higher than mine!
Only two enrage creatures from last (and first) time Ixalan was visited survived in my cube, so this effect kinda diminished in value. It's still a big butt and fighting on command is pretty good, so who knows? Unsure if it can replace any of my current choices though.
A descend package. Unlike 'descended' (see below), this version of the keyword plays very well together with the mill plan, as well as the
Smokestack package. Unfortunately there isn't anything that I am truly psyched for, and there are a lot of random filler cards with the keyword.
An explore package. This one plays nice with self-mill, and generally smoothes well. Unlike the descend package, there are actually some cards that are interesting enough to include. Funnily enough (or maybe tragically), the explore cards this set has to offer pretty much invalidate my interest in any of the older explore cards, because they thread in the same space (except maybe
Astrid Perth, but that one's not in the self-mill colors).
