Card/Deck Low Power Card Spotlight
- Thread starter Grillo_Parlante
- Start date
It scales mostly on if you are graveyard focused. I've tested it a few different times and it is basically a weird threaten, depending on the environment it can be worse or better (obviously). But it's also odd that it cannot target your own graveyard.
To what degree does this scale with the environment?
I would play it in a multiplayer cube, but I personally would completely ignore it everywhere else, it's just a bit too niche.
I like it. It is not always going to have a target but it feels great when it does and adds redundancy for persist combo.
To what degree does this scale with the environment?
I mean it needs a target in general. Preferably 2 so the Persist trigger is a greater threat. I wasn't trying to imply it needs a huge beefy boy that will end the game outright, but there are games where an opponent has not a single creature in their GY and yeah at that point it's a pretty miserable game piece for 5 mana.
Things like discard and mill can help mitigate these scenarios happening.
In my case I include it as Persist combo piece so it can have additional function that helps avoid the feelbad floor from occurring as often.
Even if it does pull its weight in the prowess deck, I’d argue that it’s not worth it (my point of view of course). I’ll explain my take.
A while back I made a lower powered version of my cube to contrast with my friend’s powered cube. The synergy was great with many overlapping glue cards and archetypes. But you know what? It wasn’t as good as I had hoped because a bunch of the cards just weren’t exciting to draft or play! Sure they fit the decks and archetypes just right, but that helped me realize that you’ve got to give your drafters something to work with!
Nobody really wants to cast a 3/1 for 3 if they don’t have to (again, my very subjective point of view). I’d rather find a more exciting card that can have applications in the prowess deck (even if not as explicitly supporting the deck).
A while back I made a lower powered version of my cube to contrast with my friend’s powered cube. The synergy was great with many overlapping glue cards and archetypes. But you know what? It wasn’t as good as I had hoped because a bunch of the cards just weren’t exciting to draft or play! Sure they fit the decks and archetypes just right, but that helped me realize that you’ve got to give your drafters something to work with!
Nobody really wants to cast a 3/1 for 3 if they don’t have to (again, my very subjective point of view). I’d rather find a more exciting card that can have applications in the prowess deck (even if not as explicitly supporting the deck).
Onderzeeboot
Ecstatic Orb
Yeah, this feel like it would have been really cool at 1W, but it’s underwhelming at 2W.
Yeah. I'll just test the Ojutai Exemplars and then we will go back to Tarkir in 10 months, fingers crossed that we get more white prowess support.
As most of you might know, I try to make mono color decks possible in my cube, because they're cool. I do that mostly through ways that actually increase options for every drafter, like having a lot of colorless and hybrid cards and very few gold cards etc., but I also have 4-5 incentives per color to go mono. That works very well for most colors. But it is really hard for blue. So I want to know what you guys think of this one card I am currently playing as one such card:
It has been maindecked once in the past 15 drafts, went 1-2 and has, I think, not been cast there. So I only have some anecdotal info, I remember that it worked at least once before I started tracking drafts. But can this card even be fun? I mean, I love mill, but most people don't.
But I also want to know what you think of this potential replacement in a low-mid powered cube:
For reference, these are my other four cards that should push players more or less gently towards mono blue:
Threnody Singer
Scourge of Fleets
Archmage's Charm
Invoke the Winds
I like them all quite a lot.
It has been maindecked once in the past 15 drafts, went 1-2 and has, I think, not been cast there. So I only have some anecdotal info, I remember that it worked at least once before I started tracking drafts. But can this card even be fun? I mean, I love mill, but most people don't.
But I also want to know what you think of this potential replacement in a low-mid powered cube:
For reference, these are my other four cards that should push players more or less gently towards mono blue:
Threnody Singer
Scourge of Fleets
Archmage's Charm
Invoke the Winds
I like them all quite a lot.
Onderzeeboot
Ecstatic Orb
Cryptic Command is a blast from the past. How good it is depends a lot on how much you kept up with modern design. Cryptic is as good as unplayable in constructed formats at the moment, so it should be relatively safe in a somewhat updated cube. The biggest blowout potential comes with the tap ability. If your blue decks can muster any significant board, your opponent could be dead at end of turn simply because they suddenly don't have any blockers.
I've been thinking about this card a lot. Could it support a cube in the same way an Ornithopter apparently can? I am tinkering a lot, trying to make this card the beating heart of a cube. Right now, I'm pondering a setup like this:
- Adding 6-8 Volatile Chimera per player
- Only mountains in the basic land box
- No red creatures with mana value > 2
- Non-red buildarounds at mana value ~4
Decks will be monored. Decks need the Volatile Chimera to finish out the game. The part that intrigues me is how they'll finish the game, because that should depend on the three cards you've exiled with them: exiling Knight of New Alara, Thistledown Liege and Blade Historian powers through; exiling Scute Swarm, Mite Overseer and Hero of Bladehold just overwhelms; exiling Ancient Lumberknot, Perennial Behemoth and Sage of the Falls kicks butt.
Is my enthusiasm justified? How would you approach this project?
I think this is a pretty cool idea. I would just establish a rule that each and every deck has to consist of at least four or so Volatile Chimeras. You just have to make sure that it is worth to pay the 3+2 over casting them as Goblin Roughriders, but that should be easy. Just add stuff that is strong enough and maybe some shock variants and have a lot of X/4s in the non-red creatures.
I hope that's not necessary. I hope the Volatile Chimera would be so central to the cube that adding them to your deck would be implicit.
I was wondering if the chimera is really just a 5-drop dressed as a 3-drop. Removal is a big deal.
More than 33. If one has more than 2 mana available.
I think it's fine if some players decide to play red aggro. It would be a matter of balancing the speed of aggro compared to the chimera exile creatures. Aggro decks could be looking for creatures (to exile with chimeras) with damage, evasion, removing blockers, drawing cards, and so on to help them finish things out. And the cards for other decks could include some stuff to help you survive against aggro.
I mean, the optimal choice is to only reveal one of the Chimeras so you aren't randomizing across a stupidly large number of creatures. Considering that a normal draft pool gives you anywhere from 5* to 21 extra cards to play with, I don't think that that's going to be a problem.
* Desert cubes are the Dark Souls of draft environments.
Am I crazy or is this card not better really than Ninja of the Deep Hours or Okiba-Gang Shinobi? I know you get the CA for 0 mana but it's also four to ninjutsu and you only get one card.
The floor is higher, but so is the variance. Depending on you opponent’s deck, you can have wildly different outcomes. Sometimes it will be on par with the ninjas you mentioned, other times you will hit Verdant Force or whatever. Could be exciting, could be annoying, depends on the person.
You should look at your list and see how many cards that thing is disgusting with. It's too many for my comfort. Even when it doesn't hit something like Gary or Mindslaver, it'll probably hit some kinda 3 drop for 0 mana.
Seems like the floor is 3/2 for 3 and the ceiling is a nearly insurmountable advantage.
Seems like the floor is 3/2 for 3 and the ceiling is a nearly insurmountable advantage.
Isn't it more like a 3/2 plus a 3-drop for 4 mana and 3 life?