Onderzeeboot
Ecstatic Orb
By the way, one of those customs was created to complete a cycle that is currently exclusive to the allied color pairs. These are great, great cogs, and I believe any low-power cube would benefit from adding these.
Card/Deck Low Power Card Spotlight
- Thread starter Grillo_Parlante
- Start date
You're probably right. I've only avoided doing so because I feel like I throw up my concerns of the day...you guys make detailed thoughtful posts. I never have time to return the gesture.....I make a ton of revisions. Lather, rinse, repeat. I just don't want to take advantage of the generosity on the forum.
I think the blog section is intended for this purpose. I write to myself there all the time not even really looking for or expecting feedback. It's very helpful to get thoughts down. You can compare them to previous ideas or preconceptions and see how things have evolved. And then figure out why that is true if you can, which then enhances your understanding of the game and of the cubes you are building. I'm always learning something new. As soon as that stops, I'll know it's time to move on to other interests.
Onderzeeboot
Ecstatic Orb
You know, Genesis is definitely on my (pretty short) reprint request list. It's one of the very few old border cards in my cube.
Ha! I bet people won't guess those six when I ask them which cards in my cube haven't been printed in a nonfoil version of either the 8th edition or the new border.
Technically I run an old border version of Assault // Battery as well, but that's my own fault
Apart from those seven, there's not a lot of super old stuff going on anyway. Only29 30* other cards pre-8th edition cards, for a total of merely 36 37!
* Sorry I forgot you Rith, the Awakener!
For those interested:
Ha! I bet people won't guess those six when I ask them which cards in my cube haven't been printed in a nonfoil version of either the 8th edition or the new border.
Technically I run an old border version of Assault // Battery as well, but that's my own fault
Apart from those seven, there's not a lot of super old stuff going on anyway. Only
* Sorry I forgot you Rith, the Awakener!
For those interested:
Grillo_Parlante
Contributor
is such a sweet card.Also really like
Guided Passage was recently features in a legacy deck video series by Andreas Mengucci. He does great videos on the format, if you can get past the accent (which has drastically improved since he started making videos, interesting to watch them from that perspective) then you're in for really cool content regarding legacy.
Onderzeeboot
Ecstatic Orb
Cool! I remembered the card from back when I still played 60 card casual decks with friends. One of them had a really cool Guided Passage deck, so when I was looking for a replacement for Maelstrom Wanderer (which didn't get picked and was actively disliked by some) I went looking for a copy and lo and behold, I still had one somewhere in one of my shoe boxes
Card is indeed a sweet 3 for 1, and possible build around. I'm excited to see what comes of it Guided Passage is literally the only reason to play EDH. I had a deck that passage could only fetch Djinn Illuminatus or an Eternal Witness/Archaeomancer variant to recast until I got the Djinn Illuminatus.
Guided Passage seems super super time consuming on resolution. Reveal the cards in your entire library? The whole thing? Opponent then finds three cards (each with a set of criteria) and essentially gives them to you? That's like a 15 minute spell. It's fine for online Magic but with physical cards that sounds brutal. Weren't people complaining about Gifts Ungiven taking too long? This is way worse than that.
Both players start with an emblem that has Chains of Mephistopholes' oracle text, and once they hit five life are given a Teferi's Puzzle Box.
Chris Taylor
Contributor
This sounds like the perfect format to Rotisserie for
Descent seems pretty off-the-charts to me, but what do yall think about Eruption?
Grillo_Parlante
Contributor
I never actually ran Eruption, and its a cool card, but I have some concerns about how it would play.
In its original format the mana accelerates were also creatures, so it very nicely worked as a ramp target that could turn late game mana dorks into something impactful. In cube, I would imagine it happiest in a format defined by mana dorks, where it could act as a sort of craterhoof behemoth.
In a lot of cubes, I could see a lot of configurations where its either very so-so, or a draft trap. If your tokens decks are defined by small token makers--mogg war marshal, krenko's command etc--those are generally better in decks gravitating towards a low CC. Mixing high CC token payoff cards, with low CC token makers in an aggressive color, would sometimes result in these split intentioned decks, with an aggressive portion made up of tokens and a ramp payoff portion, and they needed to be drawn in a proper order.
They would have all of the same problems of a ramp deck, but none of the actual ramping.
The other issue is that when you run it in an unfocused midrange shell--say something without saproling burst--I would imagine you get a lot of board states where its not much of an upgrade, and due to the vanilla creatures in cube, probably a downgrade even where the base stats are lower. 6 mana is a lot, and there has probably been a fair amount of back and forth by that point, with a couple threats picked off by removal or combat. Maybe you have a board of anywhere between 1-3, 3-5cc threats at that point, maybe some of those are lingering 2-3cc threats? But if you're not about to win, probably a fairly mediocre board.
And a few 4/4 non-evasive tokens can be surprisingly easy to deal with. We've been running sandwurm convergence over here (really cool card), and that extra point of power and toughness on the tokens makes a big difference.
In its original format the mana accelerates were also creatures, so it very nicely worked as a ramp target that could turn late game mana dorks into something impactful. In cube, I would imagine it happiest in a format defined by mana dorks, where it could act as a sort of craterhoof behemoth.
In a lot of cubes, I could see a lot of configurations where its either very so-so, or a draft trap. If your tokens decks are defined by small token makers--mogg war marshal, krenko's command etc--those are generally better in decks gravitating towards a low CC. Mixing high CC token payoff cards, with low CC token makers in an aggressive color, would sometimes result in these split intentioned decks, with an aggressive portion made up of tokens and a ramp payoff portion, and they needed to be drawn in a proper order.
They would have all of the same problems of a ramp deck, but none of the actual ramping.
The other issue is that when you run it in an unfocused midrange shell--say something without saproling burst--I would imagine you get a lot of board states where its not much of an upgrade, and due to the vanilla creatures in cube, probably a downgrade even where the base stats are lower. 6 mana is a lot, and there has probably been a fair amount of back and forth by that point, with a couple threats picked off by removal or combat. Maybe you have a board of anywhere between 1-3, 3-5cc threats at that point, maybe some of those are lingering 2-3cc threats? But if you're not about to win, probably a fairly mediocre board.
And a few 4/4 non-evasive tokens can be surprisingly easy to deal with. We've been running sandwurm convergence over here (really cool card), and that extra point of power and toughness on the tokens makes a big difference.
Dom Harvey
Contributor
This seems like a case where it's hard to make a useful suggestion. Fracture is the obviously better card but is that the right cost for that effect at your power level?
Onderzeeboot
Ecstatic Orb
This one is awesome. You get to have a "gotcha!" moment when they tap out, or you can use it to save one of your own creatures from a removal spell / reuse a powerful etb effect without losing tempo.
Chris Taylor
Contributor
I'm kind of amazed there's this 2-->6 curve of "Bounce two creatures" spells throughout history
Onderzeeboot
Ecstatic Orb
For sure, this can give you some mad mana advantage. If they tap out.
I'm kind of amazed there's this 2-->6 curve of "Bounce two creatures" spells throughout history
2-->8 actually
I'm not sure either if Withdraw is low power. That thing creates some nasty blowouts.
On one hand, high power envs tend to have more ETB creatures, so bouncing two of the opponent's creatures is less advantageous. On the other hand, bouncing one of the opponents creature and one of yours with ETB comes up more often.
Onderzeeboot
Ecstatic Orb
Back when my cube ran way more powerful cards, I managed to ultimate Tamiyo, the Moon Sage with Withdraw and Venser, Shaper Savant in hand. I did not lose that game
Is Pariah a thing? Flavorful removal/lifegain that I imagine can be used in a wide variety of ways.
How about No Rest For The Wicked? This seems like a thematic effect for black that can be pretty powerful if you take the time to set it up.
Stab Wound and Faith Unbroken seem like fun lower powered removal spells that introduce more decisions to the board-state. Any luck with these?
How about No Rest For The Wicked? This seems like a thematic effect for black that can be pretty powerful if you take the time to set it up.
Stab Wound and Faith Unbroken seem like fun lower powered removal spells that introduce more decisions to the board-state. Any luck with these?
You're probably better served with Arrest or the Arrest variants. That creature being able to block kinda sucks, kinda nullifies the removal aspect of it.
Stab Wound isn't the worst though. It's probably worse than Dead Weight in most all scenarios, but it's still fine in aggressive decks where minimizing a big creature + the 2 life could be relevant.
But I think both of those are worse version of cards that are already low power.
Stab Wound isn't the worst though. It's probably worse than Dead Weight in most all scenarios, but it's still fine in aggressive decks where minimizing a big creature + the 2 life could be relevant.
But I think both of those are worse version of cards that are already low power.