General "Looking for a card"-Thread
- Thread starter ravnic
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What are people running as their big blue boi (control finisher)?
Jason mentioned that he is/has been running:
Both which seem pretty medium.
Do we even need control finishers anymore? Do we just beat down with random 3/1 value flyers?
What does everyone else run? Or what appeals to you, since no one seems to like the Cavalier enough to actually want to pick it?
Jason mentioned that he is/has been running:
Both which seem pretty medium.
Do we even need control finishers anymore? Do we just beat down with random 3/1 value flyers?
What does everyone else run? Or what appeals to you, since no one seems to like the Cavalier enough to actually want to pick it?
It's a little nontraditional, but it gets the job done and can be pitched for value early, which is a big plus. Granted, many cubes don't get to 7 mana, and it doesn't have evasion, so it might not make the cut if you're running a cube with Vendillion Clique.
The following might also be too cute for your power level, but I like them:
The last one is probably the most plausible of them all, tbh, though it does fold pretty hard to blockers.
Dom Harvey
Contributor
Still a fave:
I like this as a flexible, self-binning reanimation target that you can just cast if you like:
At a high power level:
A much more reliable Torrential Gearhulk if you can stomach the extra cost:
I like this as a flexible, self-binning reanimation target that you can just cast if you like:
At a high power level:
A much more reliable Torrential Gearhulk if you can stomach the extra cost:
Any recommendation for green 1-drops that are NOT mana dorks?
Onderzeeboot
Ecstatic Orb
Those are the ones I run
Chris Taylor
Contributor
Not as sure on shambler, haven't played with it yet, but pelt collector has upsides and downsides over Experiment one
I can't, in good conscience, recommend someone with a cube of the power level for 1-mana value mana dorks play a non-dork creature when they aren't running all of the best dorks. They provide the biggest bang for one's buck out of any category of one-drop, as several different decks actively want them. They help every green deck ensure that cool synergies can come on line. They also have value as food for Birthing Pods or other sacrifice outlets if that sort of thing is important.
I could see making room for one of these after I was on 8 or so mana dorks.
when were we specifically at a power level that can support 1 cmc mana dorks? Eric is specifically looking for not dorks.
And you can definitely play non-mana-dork 1 cmc creatures at high power level what? Too much mana ramp at any power level can just collapse your green section into ramp-or-bust. More focused role-players like Experiment One or Sylvan Safekeeper provide higher benefits to more specific archetypes you might want to support. A Elvish Mystic will soon lose it's luster in a green aggro deck as a 1/1 that isn't needed for your low curve, but that now 4/4 experiment one is helping power out a win; and a mana dork can't do much to protect the queens of a protect-the-queen strategy (but at least the queen is out a turn earlier!) Green isn't a monolith of ramp strategy. Both should be played alongside each other as needed for the desired archetypes of the cube.
Wtwlf123's iconic powered cube plays almost as many non-mana dorks as mana-dorks at 1 cmc, and definitely doesn't have 8 dorks before considering literally Pelt Collector among others mentioned here.
And you can definitely play non-mana-dork 1 cmc creatures at high power level what? Too much mana ramp at any power level can just collapse your green section into ramp-or-bust. More focused role-players like Experiment One or Sylvan Safekeeper provide higher benefits to more specific archetypes you might want to support. A Elvish Mystic will soon lose it's luster in a green aggro deck as a 1/1 that isn't needed for your low curve, but that now 4/4 experiment one is helping power out a win; and a mana dork can't do much to protect the queens of a protect-the-queen strategy (but at least the queen is out a turn earlier!) Green isn't a monolith of ramp strategy. Both should be played alongside each other as needed for the desired archetypes of the cube.
Wtwlf123's iconic powered cube plays almost as many non-mana dorks as mana-dorks at 1 cmc, and definitely doesn't have 8 dorks before considering literally Pelt Collector among others mentioned here.
Chris Taylor
Contributor
Actually supporting a green aggro deck helps
At high power levels, you tend to have two viable options for decks that want to be playing one drops in green: Ramp and Zoo. These two decks do different things and can have several different sub-variations (examples include +1/+1 counters and Landfall for Zoo, Super Ramp, Elf Ball, Unga Bunga, and Green Sun's Toolbox for Ramp, with Stompy falling in as a middle ground between the two), but they fundamentally have the same basic components.
The green component of Zoo decks want to be developing the board early with beefy attackers that benefit from a fetch-dual manabase such as Narnam Renegade, Skyshroud Elite, Elvish Reclaimer, supplemented by other generically good early green drops such as Hexdrinker. These early plays are supplemented by "land type matters" creatures, chiefly Wild Nacatl, Loam Lion, and Kird Ape. These cards also tend to contain high-impact hybrid mana cards such as Burning-Tree Emissary Dryad Militant. These decks tend to be best in unpowered "Fairmax" formats with a high density of fixing to make cards like Wild Nacatl active. Zoo is an aggressive deck that is trying to apply pressure early and often, supported by a beefy mana base and arsenal of gold spells to work with. These decks can branch into other themes, mainly lands and +1/+1 counters, driven with cards that work well with fetchlands like Steppe Lynx and Fearless Fledgling, or with "miracle grow" cards that work well with +1/+1 counters, such as Pelt Collector and Swarm Shambler. These decks normally don't play mana dorks outside of Birds of Paradise and Noble Hierarch for their fixing and utility, respectively.
Examples of Cubes with well-designed Zoo decks include Mordor's Midrange Cube and A Cube with Quality Magic Cards.
Erik's cube doesn't really have the composition for Zoo decks to function at this time. He "only" has 41 fixing lands, which is fine for mono-color aggressive decks but isn't adequate for a 3-color aggro deck that usually cares about land types. He also doesn't have the support base in White and Red that Zoo decks tend to need to make work.
Ramp, by contrast wants lots of mana dorks to accelerate to their late game early. A common misconception is that these decks always have problems with drawing the wrong "half" (either all dorks or all payoffs). While this can be a problem in a Cube where the ramp section is relies primarily on Gaea's Cradle and Eldrazi to win the game, it isn't for Cubes with more realistic ramp goals. Normally, a Ramp deck wants to either play a three drop on turn 2 or a four drop on turn 3. To do this consistently, a given deck is going to want between 5 and 8 mana dorks, depending on whether the target is a three or four mana card. There are several different strategies that can sprout from turn-1 ramp in fair cubes. Decks trying to play three drops on turn 2 include "Unga Bunga Green" stomps strategies, which cast beefy three-drops like Call of the Herd, Thrashing Brontodon, and Lovestruck Beast on turn two, followed by a value play on turn three such as Trumpeting Herd. These decks also cross nicely into Gruul, allowing for early Goblin Rabblemaster variants for an interesting followup gameplan. Four drop on turn 3 ramp decks tend to fit nicely into a "rock" or traditional ramp strategy, where a player invests time and mana into larger threats in the mid-game, usually holding down the fort with Planeswalkers. They will also often have a nice big finisher of some variety. For these decks, having a 1-mana ramp spell a little bit less important, but it is still ideal. In these decks, 1-mana dorks help to increase flexibility, spell velocity, and sequencing choice, while reducing the impact of any tap lands one might be playing. They also help play utility three-drops like Jadelight Ranger and Tireless Tracker a little earlier in the game to help with planning and value maximization.
Every Green stompy or midrange deck is happy to have turn 1 mana dorks and will actively be improved by their presence. As we've seen, these cards are extremely flexible and powerful, without breaking the game like other mana acceleration can. The nice thing about Erik's Cube for ramp is that, in it's current form, it has cards which kind of work in both versions of the Ramp deck. He has some payoffs which work towards big ramp and some that work towards small ramp. A few more mana dorks would make these decks more consistent and more viable without requiring any major re-work of the environment.
Good examples of unpowered Cubes with well-built Ramp sections for green include Mordor's Classic Cube, Minorbug's Gimickless Unpowered Cube, This Version Unpowered Fair Stuff, and the Cube I am currently working on for which I have not yet released a public list.
I never said someone shouldn't play 1-drop creatures that don't accelerate mana. Rather, I was saying that I would not recommend someone add more non-ramp dorks to their cube when they only have 5 ramp one-drops and are already running other non-ramp one-drops but not supporting Zoo.
Wtwlf's cube is not a good metric to use when looking for a top tier design from a gameplay perspective. He uses a lot of cards that aren't anywhere close to the power level of the best cards in the cube for nostalgia reasons. Until recently, he had slow landfall shenanigans with Fearless Fledgling in the same cube as turn 2 tinker kills. Granted, he's gotten a little bit better at cube balance in the last couple of months, but he was running some insanely questionable cards for a powered vintage cube only a couple of months ago.
Basically, it might be famous, but that does not mean it was as good as it could have been.
Hopefully I've done a reasonable job of outlining why one should consider playing more 1-cost dorks. They provide so much milage to so many different decks that they best options to use for a mid to high power cube. While this does not mean one shouldn't play non-dork one drops, having enough one-drop ramp in the right capacity is going to help basically every green deck except for some very specific aggressive builds.
Hey Train, congrats on making the 100,000th post on the forum! There should be a trophy for that, don't you think?
That number includes spam posts though! Hmmmm
I get that mana dorks are useful creatures, but "you need 8 mana dorks before you should consider these non-mana dorks" without any discussion on archetypes until prompted later is just....
Reductive to the conversation Eric was looking to have, if anything, and almost certainly reductive to the depth that green can operate.
Like, you straight up did not say it this way:
Tl;dr, I think that this is a very reductive way of thinking, especially when it comes to archetype-driven cube design where there are broad spectrums of deck plans that have needs separate from or parallel to "get stuff out faster". And double especially since we have people that have active experience with using these non-mana-dorks in their cubes to perfectly good effect.
Reductive to the conversation Eric was looking to have, if anything, and almost certainly reductive to the depth that green can operate.
Like, you straight up did not say it this way:
If that's what you meant, you did not do a good job.
A non-dork creature. As in any above zero. Nothing at all about "none more than 3" or "stick to 3". Yu can't run A non-dork until after the dorks. Anbd this is for any cube that can field 1-drop dorks. That's a huge power band that has no one easy archetypal build-pattern. Non-mana-dorks go in more than Zoo in many of the cubes in this band. Constructed decks aren't the only basis for actually operational cube decks.
Like, a "realistic cube ramp" deck... wants 8 mana dorks in a 40 card deck, just for popping out a T2 three-drop?? That's about 35% of nonland cards! You have a 60% chance of drawing 3 or more of those dorks in just a 7 turn game. If we are just trying to bump some drops one turn, that's at least 2 wasted draws that could've been cards pushing the deck plan. That's not a typical green cube deck, at least that I've seen around here. That specifically a turbo ramp deck, and they are usually reaching for a T3 6 drop, or a T4 6-8 drop, or a t5 7-8+ drop, not just a one turn bump to their cards.
A deck that is actually happy just getting a one-turn-early 3- or 4-drop is any number of midrange or tempo strategies that also want to do more useful things than having 8 1/1 mana dorks in 40 cards LMAO. If I'm trying to put things down more-or-less on curve and probably have some sort of synergies like +1 counters, spells, or the graveyard, I'm just wasting space above 2-3 mana dorks max in those decks. Enough to get one in my opening hand an appreciable fraction of the time, but not too much that I'm putting my late game in serious jeopardy through over-drawing of dorks.
with 3 in a deck, I'm at about 50% chance to open with at least one, only 10% chance to draw two+ in my opener, but still a 75% chance that I've only drawn that one needed dork by turn 7.
If I increase the dork count to 8, I'm at a 50% chance to have more than 1 dork in my opener, and by T7 I'm at 66% that I have up to 3 dorks, and a 60% chance that I'm at or over three! No non-turbo-ramp deck would want that! Anything remotely on the aggro spectrum would definitely not want that.
If I'm picking up a Phyrexian Triniform and Sandwurm Convergence for my turbo-ramp deck, then sure, I'll scarf up every dork I find, but I'll also scarf up every rampant growth and selesnya signet variant I find too. And on the flip side, in certain decks like GR wildfire, a 1 drop section that's just mana dorks is an active dead zone for me. I want other kinds of ramp like the sorceries and artifacts mentioned, and a one-drop like Elvish Reclaimer or Chainweb Aracnir is immensely better for the strategy I'm building.
There are plenty of Gx constructed decks that show a more flexible approach, and that show that adding more 1 cmc mana dorks doesn't always actually lead to any increased benefit for every deck.
RTR-INN: those decks that did thragtusk/resto/obzedat shenanigans, ran like 1-3 Avacyn's pilgrims and 3-4 farseeks. Usually 4-8 ramp spells total (in 60), and 3-4 of those are 2-cost sorceries. They certainly weren't running 12 1-drop mana dorks (couldn't even if they wanted to) even though it technically would have resulted in pieces of their deck coming out earlier.
CON-M10: the GW baneslayer decks ran like 5 total dorks. Noble Hierarchs and maybe a couple birds. They literally ran things like Scute Mob and Soul Warden in the 1-slot (maindeck!) rather than just packing in more BoPs.
A deck that is actually happy just getting a one-turn-early 3- or 4-drop is any number of midrange or tempo strategies that also want to do more useful things than having 8 1/1 mana dorks in 40 cards LMAO. If I'm trying to put things down more-or-less on curve and probably have some sort of synergies like +1 counters, spells, or the graveyard, I'm just wasting space above 2-3 mana dorks max in those decks. Enough to get one in my opening hand an appreciable fraction of the time, but not too much that I'm putting my late game in serious jeopardy through over-drawing of dorks.
with 3 in a deck, I'm at about 50% chance to open with at least one, only 10% chance to draw two+ in my opener, but still a 75% chance that I've only drawn that one needed dork by turn 7.
If I increase the dork count to 8, I'm at a 50% chance to have more than 1 dork in my opener, and by T7 I'm at 66% that I have up to 3 dorks, and a 60% chance that I'm at or over three! No non-turbo-ramp deck would want that! Anything remotely on the aggro spectrum would definitely not want that.
If I'm picking up a Phyrexian Triniform and Sandwurm Convergence for my turbo-ramp deck, then sure, I'll scarf up every dork I find, but I'll also scarf up every rampant growth and selesnya signet variant I find too. And on the flip side, in certain decks like GR wildfire, a
1 drop section that's just mana dorks is an active dead zone for me. I want other kinds of ramp like the sorceries and artifacts mentioned, and a one-drop like Elvish Reclaimer or Chainweb Aracnir is immensely better for the strategy I'm building.There are plenty of Gx constructed decks that show a more flexible approach, and that show that adding more 1 cmc mana dorks doesn't always actually lead to any increased benefit for every deck.
RTR-INN: those decks that did thragtusk/resto/obzedat shenanigans, ran like 1-3 Avacyn's pilgrims and 3-4 farseeks. Usually 4-8 ramp spells total (in 60), and 3-4 of those are 2-cost sorceries. They certainly weren't running 12 1-drop mana dorks (couldn't even if they wanted to) even though it technically would have resulted in pieces of their deck coming out earlier.
CON-M10: the GW baneslayer decks ran like 5 total dorks. Noble Hierarchs and maybe a couple birds. They literally ran things like Scute Mob and Soul Warden in the 1-slot (maindeck!) rather than just packing in more BoPs.
Tl;dr, I think that this is a very reductive way of thinking, especially when it comes to archetype-driven cube design where there are broad spectrums of deck plans that have needs separate from or parallel to "get stuff out faster". And double especially since we have people that have active experience with using these non-mana-dorks in their cubes to perfectly good effect.
I agree that it's reductive to state that "you need X mana dorks in green before thinking of other 1-drops, at high power levels" fore multiple reasons:
1. Power levels aren't static, they aren't single numbers. To model them properly, it would probably have to be multidimensional objects.
2. The more mana dorks and the fewer other 1-drops you have, the more "green ramp" becomes a siloed archetype.
3. The design goal of running cards that are good in your environment is self defeating because adding a card with main deck rate higher than average necessarily pushes other cards down.
4. I don't think it is a design goal in this situation to push power level up.
1. Power levels aren't static, they aren't single numbers. To model them properly, it would probably have to be multidimensional objects.
2. The more mana dorks and the fewer other 1-drops you have, the more "green ramp" becomes a siloed archetype.
3. The design goal of running cards that are good in your environment is self defeating because adding a card with main deck rate higher than average necessarily pushes other cards down.
4. I don't think it is a design goal in this situation to push power level up.
Chris Taylor
Contributor
TBH the base play patterns of ramp decks don't really appeal to me gameplay wise, so I'm down to BoP and Hierarch as mostly just being quality of life cards, and cutting ramp as a deck alltogether.
I find a lot of games with/against ramp are:
-Did I draw the wrong half of my deck, or the wrong ratio of ramp vs payoffs
-How unanswerable is the card I've ramped into
-How slow was my opponent in killing me while I did nothing
Especially since a lot of those questions are decided by what deck your piloting, not decisions in gameplay.
That's my perspective though. Maybe you've solved this issue in ways I haven't thought of
I find a lot of games with/against ramp are:
-Did I draw the wrong half of my deck, or the wrong ratio of ramp vs payoffs
-How unanswerable is the card I've ramped into
-How slow was my opponent in killing me while I did nothing
Especially since a lot of those questions are decided by what deck your piloting, not decisions in gameplay.
That's my perspective though. Maybe you've solved this issue in ways I haven't thought of
Chris Taylor
Contributor
RIGHT those are my customs no wonder scryfall was confused
To the uninitiated:
And yes these also both exist and yes these offer things above llanowar elves
Also there are 100% enviornments where dryad is too strong. I think the best thing she can do in my cube is attack as a raging ravine (which is a LOT of mana, given you already have a raging ravine), or trigger morbid by acting as a fetchland
To the uninitiated:
And yes these also both exist and yes these offer things above llanowar elves
Also there are 100% enviornments where dryad is too strong. I think the best thing she can do in my cube is attack as a raging ravine (which is a LOT of mana, given you already have a raging ravine), or trigger morbid by acting as a fetchland
When I had 1cmc ramp creatures and an abundance of 2cmc ramp spells, everyone in my group played ramp into 4 mana 5/5 all the time. Didn't like how it panned out. Currently no 1cmc ramp creatures and just a few 2cmc spells with my 4 drops being a bit neutered, just in case.
Dryad of Masks sounds really cool as an elf/manland/fetch. It's a Nykthos for me, which is maybe alright because it wouldn't kick in until late game and doesn't fuel a black Nykthos itself? Cool design to think about.
I also appreciate that sigh tripped you up by naming your own customs.
Dryad of Masks sounds really cool as an elf/manland/fetch. It's a Nykthos for me, which is maybe alright because it wouldn't kick in until late game and doesn't fuel a black Nykthos itself? Cool design to think about.
I also appreciate that sigh tripped you up by naming your own customs.
Chris Taylor
Contributor
Yeah my cube's been drafted I think once during the pandemic so I fell off magic for a while
Glad to be excited about it again
There is a new Path of Exile league Friday though...
Glad to be excited about it again
There is a new Path of Exile league Friday though...