Card/Deck Low Power Card Spotlight

Zoss

Zoss



People have been really into the whole Death's Shadow thing recently and I saw one of these in my bulk box yesterday. Might be worth a try! It's also a lot easier to get your opponent to 10 with the rise of double/triple shock/fetch manabases virtually starting games at 14-16 life, making it more palatable than it was in 2019.

Downside is that it's kind of criminally boring.
 
Zoss

Zoss

Sure! But the downside seemed particularly useful in Death's Shadow-centric sections, and I don't think many (any?) of those used in in that specific context.
 
ravnic

ravnic

I am curious towards two cards.



Does this work? How consistent of a blink enabler is it, considering it has to survive attacks to do it multiple time? I guess a 3/6 often can safely attack and at least threaten to trade with something real?



Does the second ability matter or could I as well be cubing Cogmentor?
 
LadyMapi

LadyMapi

I can't speak to Golden Argosy (I've never played with it), but your cube lists are nowhere near degenerate enough for Hope of Ghirapur's ability to actually put in work.
 
gaytransmulldrifter

gaytransmulldrifter

I run Golden Argosy and it's been quite strong. It's definitely slow so it will most likely show up in more grindy decks but you are correct that the 3/6 stats mean it will get to attack a lot, and it can also play strong defense in a pinch. The fact that it can blink multiple things at once makes it pretty scary to face down and I like that it's a colorless blink enabler so it can show up in any combination of the usual Bant blink colors. I think it is in a good spot for low power top end, strong but requires a build around and not unanswerable.
 
ravnic

ravnic

@LadyMapi @Chris Taylor You see, I am too innocent for those kinds of effects. i didn't even really think of it as combo protection. I though you would potentially sac it to delay a board wipe you could see coming or the like. What I wanted was actually just a colorless flying men with potentially some upside. Like a second Vault Skirge. That's why I compared it, if the ability wouldn't matter, to Cogmentor.
 
Modin

Modin

It's a really cool card that has a lot of potential. (If) you can take one turn of it more or less doubles your mana. I run it in my cube and enjoy it quite a bit. It's especially busted with cards like Tatyova, Steward of Tides. It hasn't felt oppressive though but that will also depend on the availability of board wipes and such.
 
safra

safra

it's also a much better game piece than secure the wastes etc. Awaken the Woods at small X ramps you into your bigger X spell, and if you don't have a bigger X spell, it's a really solid fireball also
 
ravnic

ravnic

I want to bring up a card I've overlooked again and again while doing scryfall searches, but now I realized something ...



Isn't this technically a pretty decent madness card in disguise? You don't have to discard it but instead a basic land, and you don't even have to have mana up right away. Sure, if a 3/2 for two isn't interesting in your environment it probably wouldn't see play, but that's still a really strong stat line in mine. Also, it can of course also be a value play in a self mill deck.
 
Humpty_Dumpty

Humpty_Dumpty

I don't think the card is strong enough to fit in my cube, despite touching on the discard, graveyard and land themes represented in green.

The pen, ink and watercolour art is charming, though, and reminds me of fantasy art styles that were more prevalent when I was young. I love how the card tells a story, particularly combined with Fallow Wurm, about how these scaly creatures are both a boon and a menace to agriculture.
 
Rusje

Rusje

ravnic said:
I want to bring up a card I've overlooked again and again while doing scryfall searches, but now I realized something ...



Isn't this technically a pretty decent madness card in disguise? You don't have to discard it but instead a basic land, and you don't even have to have mana up right away. Sure, if a 3/2 for two isn't interesting in your environment it probably wouldn't see play, but that's still a really strong stat line in mine. Also, it can of course also be a value play in a self mill deck.
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It is a strong comeback card with


Thing is, low powered as I play, it is often a dead card in your hand until much later due to not having a basic land in the graveyard. At that time a 3/2 is not going to cut it.
 
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ravnic

ravnic

But your cube is only Urza's Block, right? You don't have access to nearly as many good discard and self mill outlets. I mean, it might still be a little rough to make it work on turn two in a singleton draft environment, but it's possible. Faithless Looting and Haggle are currently my only two ways to actually cast the wurm on turn two, but maybe it's good enough on turn three or four with something alongside it? I probably don't have room anyway, but don't think it's as far off as one might think with a good aggro madness support.
 
Rusje

Rusje

ravnic said:
But your cube is only Urza's Block, right? You don't have access to nearly as many good discard and self mill outlets. I mean, it might still be a little rough to make it work on turn two in a singleton draft environment, but it's possible. Faithless Looting and Haggle are currently my only two ways to actually cast the wurm on turn two, but maybe it's good enough on turn three or four with something alongside it? I probably don't have room anyway, but don't think it's as far off as one might think with a good aggro madness support.
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True. Thing is, it is a good card if you can put a basic land in your graveyard in turn 1 or 2. However, it is definitely haggling when discarding your only land on turn 1 and not drawing a land to cast the wurm. The wurm is even in low powered likely weak on turn 4 (unless you have smokestack or other shenanigans going on).
Roar of the wurm is better aggro madness support.
 
ravnic

ravnic



Has anyone ever cubed with this? Was it good in retail limited with Spawn tokens? Because I could see this be a really nice reward/finisher for a token spam deck.
 
EzPzJapanezy

EzPzJapanezy

A card I am legitimately surprised I haven't seen much discussion regarding:



Has anyone tested this card in a list that doesn't run a massive amount of Legendries? I am curious at density it goes from 'A strong but restrictive build-around' to 'not even worth an attempt'.

Additionally, do y'all value 'instant' speed reanimation at all if not running the OG Eldrazis?
 
Velrun

Velrun

ravnic said:
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The problem is that you don’t want to discard lands in the early game because you want to play your lands in the early game.

Imagine you look at a starting hand of 3 lands, wurm and a way to discard a card. Are you really going to discard a Basic land on turn 1 or 2 in order to cast the 3/2 on turn 2 or 3?
 
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