Card/Deck Low Power Card Spotlight

[Seeker]

There's also new Rosheen!


Feels unlikely you'd get to the necessary density for her in a cube, let alone in a draft that doesn't contain the full cube, but maybe not impossible. What makes her not work for me is the "spend this mana only on costs that contain X" bit. Just let us have fun, wotc!

 

[ravnic]

I don't think I want to go that deep. Original Rosheen will be my only enabler for now. She is a flexible hybrid and, as you convinced me, probably worth it with very few X costs in the deck.

I'm already running 10 cards with X costs right now without even trying, and I will add one in three different colors with my winter update. I'll see if this is enough for Rosheen making a main deck every now and then

 

[henkdetenk]

How many cards with X costs would you want in your deck before you include her? Talking about a power level where you wouldn't want to put a four mana 4/4 in your deck but you're also not ashamed to cast one, since stats are relatively old school in the environment.

I'd play it as a 4/4 for 4, if I had room for it, the hybrid mana helps a lot. To make it worthwhile for the ability, though, I'd want at least 1 splashy X spell finisher in my deck. 2, preferably.

 

[ravnic]

Would that card be fine a lower powered list? It would seem pretty sick if you could hit strong three drops all the time like Flickerwisp or such, but it probably doesn't always work out like that. How does it compare, for example, to Call of the Herd?

 

[Humpty_Dumpty]

It's a fairly strong card, but will only be as strong as the permanents you are returning with it. I think it is fun and rewards creative deck building.

 

[MilesOfficial]

It scales well with the power level of your Cube, I think there are few environments in which it's overly strong or too weak.

 

[gaytransmulldrifter]

I think you mostly just want to think of the card in terms of card economy. In a slow enough environment where you expect the flashback to get paid more often than not, the card is essentially a very slow 8 mana 3-for-1. So you gotta decide if that's what you want players to be able to do or not. I think it is a very fun card to play with though, at least for the person casting it

 

[Humpty_Dumpty]

... a very slow 8 mana 3-for-1...

This is true but bear in mind that you can get up to 9 mana worth of permanents onto the battlefield.

 

[Brad]

This is true but bear in mind that you can get up to 9 mana worth of permanents onto the battlefield.

In ravnic's cube, that could be up to 6 power!!!
(It scales to your environment and almost anyone can safely run it.)

 

[gaytransmulldrifter]

Fwiw since nobody answered I would say on average it is probably stronger than Call of the Herd, but doesn't fill the same role.

Call of the Herd is like the ultimate midrange curve filler thing since it's always a 3 -> 4 if you need it to be, and it has the extra flexibility of being a meh 7 drop in the late game.

I think it's pretty rare that you're playing Sevinne's on curve if you're doing fair stuff with it. It's a bit more of a late-game turn-the-game-around card than a keep pace card.

I imagine your average three drop is quite a bit better than a vanilla 3/3, and Sevinne's has way way more late game value, but Call of the Herd has the early game consistency going for it. Sevinne's is still better but in your cube probably not insanely crazy better. Call of the Herd is pretty good!

 

[ravnic]

I just played some jumpstart games on arena and I got to play these two in the same turn:



I had six Saprolings and a random 3/2 on board. I drew eight cards and attacked for 51 trample damage. It was glorious.

Now I am sitting here wondering how much effort it would take to support Zada in my cube. Not a full blown heroic deck but a fun buildaround that can change how your prowess aggro deck or token deck plays.

Well, I barely run any spells that pop off with Zada. At 500 I have:

Raze the Effigy
Niveous Wisp
Shelter
Harm's Way
Supernatural Stamina
Snakeform

How much do you need?

 

[MilesOfficial]

How much do you need?

If you don't have 5 in your deck, it's probably not enough, right? That means you'd draw ~2 of them per game on average, and if you don't get two of them, it won't feel like you're getting enough for your hill giant...and even then, that's really the absolute minimum needed to justify it, even at your power level.

So to make sure the Zada drafter reasonably has a chance to get a minimum of 5 targetable cards, you'd want 20+ of the effect in a 500 if you draft regularly with 8 people, in which case there'd be an average of 72% of your cards in the draft pool, or 14 cards. If you have 6 drafters, it'd be ~11 cards, so you'd need to get half of the Zada-able cards in the entire draft pool to feel good about it. That doesn't seem impossible, since I imagine tricks will go later than average in the CCC, but there's no scenario here where the Zada drafter isn't sweating a little.

Yeah. I'm going to say 20 Zada-capable spells is your number.

The upside? Rosnakht, Heir of Rohgahh becomes much more reasonable.

 

[Onderzeeboot]

Adventures are the way to increase pump spell density without sacrificing threat density!

 

[MilesOfficial]

Speaking of which, definitely consider Intrepid Trufflesnout, a delightful card that I've tried out a few times in my on-deck binder and, worst case, has a perpetual home in my on-deck binder. I love the little Boar.



I'm a big fan of the random adventure cards we've been getting in Commander sets as well. Brightcap Badger was a bright spot in the Bloomburrow spoiler season, and Karvanista, Loyal Lupari would already be in my Cube if it didn't remind me of an awful season of Who every time it were cast. Unfortunately, neither of these would work terribly well with your Zada plans (unlike the pig), but I want to mention them any time I can all the same.