General "Looking for a card"-Thread

Not sure if it's actually low power, but I like the classic:



It's a high agency, elegant, and resonant card.




More like a mid-power card, grows quite fast and fill that role of aggressive beater in the spells archetype. Great for aggro-control. Also elegant, though it is low agency.




This is actually low power, as it's pretty bad on defense and needs time to generate value. What's nice about Saheeli is that she's great glue between spells and artifacts, and being a hybrid, she can play a role in other color combinations too, like WR tokens. I find it very easy to misread her ability though - it's not intuitive that target artifact would become a copy of another target artifact or creature. She's a high agency card, in that sequencing becomes way harder, and pulls a lot of unexpected interactions, especially in large board states.




Also low power, pingers typically block the opponent from playing /1s, and Gelectrode plays more interestingly than that because it can bring down /2s and /3s too, if you have the spells to back it up. It is a good reason for burn to dip into blue, effectively making burn spells +1 damage, which, stacked with its own pings, makes the "burn face" route to victory more viable.
 
starting work on a lower powered cube inspired by riptidian design philosophies, so for those with fairly low powered environments, what are your favourite izzet spells cards?
I think this card is pretty cool in low-power environments:

Saheeli is great because:
-She's a nice engine piece that gives players a reason to be the Spells deck.
-She's a hybrid card that can go into Blue or Red decks.
-She contributes to Izzet Spells but can also work in decks that care about other types of noncreature spells, such as Equipment and Enchantments.
-She also slots nicely into Izzet Artifacts, another low-power archetype that can cast her.

All in all, Saheeli, Sublime Artificer is a very dense card that can easily be used to anchor several decks without feeling oppressive. She's definitely a great card for Riptide-style cubes.
 


Is easily my favorite izzet card right now. In a lower powered context you can run more discard-centric mechanics like cycling and madness...great with looting and straight gas with wheel effects. Just a lot of fun and has a ton of play to it given proper support

The recommended Saheeli is great too
 


Is easily my favorite izzet card right now. In a lower powered context you can run more discard-centric mechanics like cycling and madness...great with looting and straight gas with wheel effects. Just a lot of fun and has a ton of play to it given proper support

The recommended Saheeli is great too
Given that he asked for low powered, I'd like to point out that this is much more fair if you only include cards to discard one at a time. The draw 14 Wheel is probably excessive, as is the draw 4 Looting, but Tormenting Voice or something is much more tame. You can shape the card's power level based on the available discard.

I've always thought Adeliz is cool.
 
I probably should have specified, but I'm attempting to avoid planeswalkers/legendary creatures - it's for a DnD themed archenemy cube, where flavour is king and it doesn't make much sense to be slinging legends around
 
I like the ones that work with spells already cast, so you don't have to worry about drawing stuff in the correct order. My favorite is:



I love this card. It is rewarding without being too powerful and it goes in both tempo and control oriented versions of the deck. Also overlaps with selfmill/discard. You can also just play it with an empty graveyard and have it block well before growing bigger and bigger.
 

Drake variants. All come with pros and cons, with Enigma likely being the most consistent of the three.

EDIT: You may want to wait a set to make anything D&D themed...
 
Last edited:
I probably should have specified, but I'm attempting to avoid planeswalkers/legendary creatures - it's for a DnD themed archenemy cube, where flavour is king and it doesn't make much sense to be slinging legends around

Two things

ARCHENEMY CUBE!??!? Tell me more please

You must be pretty stoked about the upcoming set we’ll get this summer? :)
 
It's getting a bit off topic, but the current concept I'm working with (subject to change) is that players pick a class base of ~25 cards (lands incl), then participate in a draft phase where they pick up 2 packs of 16, which they can then use to edit and customise their class base by adding additional synergies and stuff. From there, the party of four faces off in five consecutive archenemy games against a DM player (or, as many as time constraints allow) until either the party is wholly defeated or they best all five preconstructed DM decks. After each game, they get a one pack loot draft, from which they can upgrade their decks. The concept's a bit rough around the edges but I think it'll be a fun time that both allows lots of customisation while still feeling like DnD.

and yes, I am absolutely hyped for the DnD set
 
@froggy Your format reminds me of my cube. We run a rogue-like Magic cube where the 3 players begin the tournament with low-powered cards and unlock better and better cards as the tournament progresses.

I too am stoked for D&D. I can’t wait to see what they’ve done.
 

landofMordor

Administrator
Looking for your favorite high-powered, low-threshold "artifacts-matter" cards. (And, bonus, what are your favorite high-floor high-ceiling artifact enablers?)

One example might be Galvanic Blast -- desirable effect, high floor of Shock, and gently nudges the drafter to pick up a couple extra artifacts. Mishra's Bauble is a 0mv cantrip. Stoneforge Mystic only needs 1 equipment to be extremely good, but with 2 or 3 becomes even better.

Thanks in advance!
 
I like an Izzet tokens package that uses generically good cards.



This is probably not high powered enough, but most cards are fine on their own. Curve is a little steep too.

My favorite way to draft artifacts right now is with these "White" cards:



Emry, Lurker of the Loch, Monastery Swiftspear, Soul-scar Mage and Abbot of Keral Keep works great here too!
I think Baubles and Stars are really great for a format because they smooth draws for all colors and enable all sorts of cool synergies (Prowess and Delirium for example).
 
Looking for your favorite high-powered, low-threshold "artifacts-matter" cards. (And, bonus, what are your favorite high-floor high-ceiling artifact enablers?)

One example might be Galvanic Blast -- desirable effect, high floor of Shock, and gently nudges the drafter to pick up a couple extra artifacts. Mishra's Bauble is a 0mv cantrip. Stoneforge Mystic only needs 1 equipment to be extremely good, but with 2 or 3 becomes even better.

Thanks in advance!

You already run most of the ones I would suggest, but some others to consider:



I don't consider Bygone Bishop very high powered, but you run Tireless Tracker which is somewhat comparable imo
 
Obvious Literal Power / Power Adjacent:

Black Lotus
Mox Jet
Mox Ruby
Mox Emerald
Mox Pearl
Mox Sapphire
Sol Ring
Mana Vault
Mana Crypt
Demonic Tutor
Imperial Seal
Vampiric Tutor
Mystical Tutor
Balance
Timetwister
Wheel of Fortune
Lurrus of the Dream Den
Tolarian Academy
Tinker

Still Busted but Less So:

Mox Opal
Chrome Mox
Mox Diamond
Lotus Petal
Lion's Eye Diamond
Grim Monolith
Skullclamp
Ancient Tomb
City of Traitors

Very Good But "Fair":

Emry, Lurker of the Loch
Enlightened Tutor
Goblin Welder
Goblin Engineer
Sai, Master Thopterist
Monastery Mentor
Saheeli, Sublime Artificer
Hullbreacher
Urza, Lord High Artificer
Oko, Thief of Crowns
Urza's Bauble
Mishra's Bauble
Arcum's Astrolabe
Chromatic Star
Chromatic Sphere
Karn, Scion of Urza
Karn, the Great Creator + Liquimetal Coating // Mycosynth Lattice
Crystal Vein
Memory Jar
Time Spiral

Dedicated Weaker Support:

Ichor Wellspring
Guild Globe
Golden Egg
Prophetic Prism
Mind Stone
Mazemind Tome
Sunset Pyramid
Witching Well
Conjurer's Bauble
Tezzeret, Artifice Master
Wheel of Misfortune
Day's Undoing
Tezzeret, Agent of Bolas
Notion Thief
Kinnan, Bonder Prodigy
Pentad Prism
Pyrite Spellbomb
Aether Spellbomb
Nihil Spellbomb
Relic of Progenitus
Scrabbling Claws
Soul-Guide Lantern
Phyrexian Furnace

Deck Gameplan:

At higher power levels "artifacts matter" is at its core a big mana, critical mass deck that at the highest power level is a Storm combo deck that leveraged free mana to increase storm count and then inevitably rip through its deck with broken draw spells and obviously eponymous storm spells that end the game such as Brain Freeze and Tendrills of Agony.

Slightly further down the power level pyramid the deck looks fairly similar in that it is still a big mana deck that wants to leverage its mana to do significantly more than the opponent is able to do, but is deprived of its best card selection (tutors), its most efficient big draw spells, and its most potent sources of free mana. Commonly referred to as "wheels matter" in more casual circles, this deck would look most similar to legacy deck Artifact Blue, or before the banning of Mox Opal in modern the Urza decks.

Another step down the power level pyramid will lead you towards a grindy value plan. Using Welder/Emry to loop eggs/baubles and fuel planeswalkers and other value cards. The same grind pieces can be used more effectively and faster by the big mana variants but are still good even in their absence as a reasonably strong and cheap source of repeatable card advantage.

Below this is where we mostly see truly divergent gameplans that stop being about resource advantages (mana & cards) and more about tempo proactive creature focused aggression. This is where you'd see "Affinity" or Robots Aggro that simply leverages synergistic interactions between their cards, similar to that of a tribal deck, to cheat out large amounts of stats and push fast damage.

The other tier is mostly weak interactions between overcosted cards intended for play in retail limited and casual edh with gameplans that are neither efficient in any way nor comparable to the power level of generic zero synergy modern era threats.
 
Last edited:
I'm a big fan of Emry, Lurker of the Loch . It scales reasonable well in power level. It's an excellent enabler. It obviously has a low floor, because without X many artifacts in your deck it really just inefficiently fuels your graveyard.

I also really like the welders...engineer has one less hoop to jump through than the og welder, but both can be brutal when optimized around.
 

landofMordor

Administrator
Thanks all for the feedback! I've gotten a few good ideas -- Phyrexian Furnace is spicy indeed. Thanks also for the excellent write-up, @SirFunchalot ! Very helpful primer for this deck, considering I don't have enough firsthand experience with older formats to know the intricacies of the decks.
 
Top