Card/Deck Low Power Card Spotlight

[RavebornMuse]

Pariah has a lot of potential applications, and is better in control decks, which I like a lot; it's good to have removal that fits a particular deck orientation, rather than just being . I've just never found it quite tempting enough to slot in.

No Rest for the Wicked looks interesting, but I think you need a deck in mind for it to perform in to justify running it over something more flexible; I could see it serving a purpose in a Aristocrats shell, but personally, I think black has more exciting tools to provide there than that.

Stab Wound was insane in the core set it was hosted in as an uncommon; I'm very fond of it, and I highly recommend it. It has a lot of cool applications. Faith Unbroken I have no experience with, but looks really dependent on your removal power level to justify a slot.

 

[inscho]

Stab Wound and Faith Unbroken seem like fun lower powered removal spells that introduce more decisions to the board-state. Any luck with these?

Lust for War is another fun one...tag it on a mana elf or looter. Stab Wound saw some play in my old peasant cube.

 

[Salmo2]

Stab Wound was insane in the core set it was hosted in as an uncommon

tangent here, but: It was even more insane in triple RTR where there was the aggressive rakdos decks where it slotted in both nicely as removal and reach, and it was a common. It was easily first pickable, over a number of rares and uncommons too, helped out by the fact that you have both Rakdos and Golgari gates at common to splash it with. Plus you literally always played black whenever you cracked a pack rat as that is one of the best limited cards of all time, probably Jitte at 1 and Pack Rat at 2, so having a deck with pack rat + one of the only cards that could maybe answer the pack rat was a real ceiling to hit. You could be izzet going into pack 3 and you would probably have to convert to rakdos if you cracked a rat, it was really that good.

 

[Grillo_Parlante]

Can these two cards exist in the same format without one invalidating the other?



My instinct is probably no, because the power gap seems to me pretty broad, but maybe being one drops makes it ok?

 

[inscho]

I think both could exist in an environment that puts extra burden on exiling from your graveyard. With maybe an abundance of delve and cards that need to be in the graveyard, care about a large graveyard (Circular Logic,Tarmogoyf) or flashback. For example if your graveyard consists of Bloodstained Mire, Firebolt and Anger, and you have Murderous Cut in hand...

I find that lowers Lavamancer's power level in my cube quite a bit.

EDIT: Also if there is significant graveyard disruption.

 

[Salmo2]

Spikeshot Elder sucks lol I think it's one of the most overrated cards to consistently see/have seen cube play. 1RR is a *lot* for 1 damage, and Voltroning Spikeshot is a lot more clunky in practice than in theory. So most of the time you have a 1/1 for R that can ping for 1RR, and that has been awful in my experience.

Lavamancer is good but I don't think it's OP. There are often games where you spend a number of turns with a 1/1 for R, and that feels bad enough to make the ceiling not too unbearable.

 

[inscho]

I do prefer Soul-Scar Mage as a 1cmc red buildaround over the Elder.

 

[Grillo_Parlante]

In lower power, slower formats, spikeshot has been very good in practice. It comes down as a low investment threat, that later can grow to become a dominating piece of board control and reach. Even the floor can be very good, as some decks will be set back considerably on board by the presence of a 1 damage pinger working in conjunction with a few tokens. Its also a great mana sink, which is important for the health of those formats.

That being said, it rapidly becomes terrible once the power level of the format accelerates, for all the reasons you provided, and grim lavamancer is the clearly better card due to the speed it can operate. Thats why I didn't post them in fight club.

My main concern with it is whether its capable of just invalidating small creature strategies unless dealt with, in a lower power, graveyard leaning format that already runs spikeshot. One of the nice things about spikeshot, is that it is a bit clunky and mana intensive, so it can't just machine gun down small creatures in the early to early-midgame the same way lavamancer can. I can imagine hands lining up in certain matchups where the lavamancer player has effectively won off of the draw, just due to the amount of early game disruption lavamancer is capable of.

So than the question becomes, can the two even play in the same format together, and I think the answer is leaning towards no.

How are you setting up soul-scar? I found it a bit lacking in practice.

 

[ahadabans]

I think they are fine together, but Grim Lavamancer has never struck me as broken. Exiling 2 cards is a lot and 2 damage is sweet but not absurd. Spikeshot Elder has the higher ceiling for sure. Lavamncer is more efficient and maybe red's best 1 drop in a vacuum but it can't really be a machine gun or true board control option. Spikeshot with equipment gets ridiculous and can drift into unfair pretty easily, you need time to set that up though. Power max cubes ran both for a long time but eventually dropped elder since it is slower and clunkier. In a typical lower powered riptide cube, elder is going to be pretty good and occasionally an allstar. It's probably even better than lavamancer honestly.

 

[Grillo_Parlante]

Thanks, I'll give it a whirl.

I've been running



in that slot, but been pretty unimpressed with it as of late. One of the weird side effects of running cards like reunion, and tormenting voice, is that the self-discard decks kind of struggle with getting their hands down to size, which made magus pretty narrow. You can't just really justify a three mana speculative investment in most iterations of that deck, which surprised me.

Asylum visitor has worked out pretty well though, just because being able to value madness it is so good, even if it doesn't draw cards every game.

 

[ahadabans]

Cursed Scroll is really strong in a low curve deck where you get to one card in hand. Magus of the Scroll is super vulnerable so offers considerably less late game inevitability which is the whole purpose behind scroll. I personally think Magus sucks.

 

[Grillo_Parlante]

The other nice thing about scroll is that you can grab it with trinket mage, so even if we end up waiting until the late game to turn it on, you still cantriped.

Trinket Mage is just so good in these low power lists, and has consistently impressed me. It signals artifacts, but can also signal a number of U/x combinations as well, depending on which colors its 0-1cc target tends to fold into.

 

[ahadabans]

Yeah, I've really warmed up to Trinket Mage. Clearly insane in a powered list, but there are tons of nice pickups in unpowered. Bonesplitter, Engineered Explosives, Chromatic Star, Everflowing Chalice to name a few. I feel like you can run mage in a deck with two targets and be OK, especially if you things like brainstorm to make sure you get the CA.

 

[Aston]

I found Trinket Mage got way better with Hangarback Walker and Walking Ballista. Letting it get a finisher keeps it relevant through the whole game.

 

[Salmo2]

Also you can always efficiently use your mana grabbing those t3 and then playing them t4.

 

[inscho]

I found Trinket Mage got way better with Hangarback Walker and Walking Ballista. Letting it get a finisher keeps it relevant through the whole game.

Same for Ranger of Eos' stock. Being able to grab Hangarback Walker with Mikaeus, the Lunarch or Carrion Feeder is pretty rad for token decks.

 

[Onderzeeboot]

There's a ton of cool things Ranger can get. Mother of Runes, Figure of Destiny, Kytheon, Hero of Akros, Gravecrawler + Cryptbreaker

 

[ahadabans]

Yup. Ranger of Eos is sweet. One of the best uses I've found is in conjunction with Vengevine. You can build up your board with reckless abandon, hold Ranger and post wrath have an army back out in one turn.

 

[frostymoose]

This is the low power thread and we're talking about hangarback and walking ballista. I'm not so sure about this...

Here's a low power trinket mage finisher:

 

[Aston]

I play mass as well as the other two and it's been alright. Dodging sorcery speed removal, especially Wildfire, is pretty relevant and with Cloudposts you can pump it up pretty big.

 

[Alfonzo Bonzo]

Any experience with this? What kind of decks appreciate it?

 

[japahn]

Grindy midrange appreciates this because:

• Lots of mana = doing a lot of things quickly
• Ramp
• Draw quality - this makes a real difference in long games, in two occasions the player running it was impressed with this aspect
• Fixing

It was decent in my cube, being the star in some games, but obviously needs an attacker every turn to be useful. The environment needs to be slow to be playable. Even then, most of the time it sat in sideboards in my cube.

I've removed it in the last update because I wanted Empyrial Plate and had too many 2-mana equipments. The others were Lightning Greaves and Vulshok Morningstar.

 

[ahadabans]

It's a little slow, but was pretty good in landfall decks.

 

[Mondschwein]

Empyrial Plate looks quite playable and way more interesting than Vulshok Morningstar.

 

[japahn]

I value elegance, and vanilla equipment is simple to understand but fairly deep. Compare Leonin Scimitar, Vulshok Morningstar and Vulshok Battlegear. Empyrial Plate does look interesting, but I haven't played with it yet. I added it hoping to push aggro-control.

Empyrial Plate looks quite playable and way more interesting than Vulshok Morningstar.