Chris Taylor
Contributor
Ooo!
oh man he's even got surge in his name if you look at it sideways
Card/Deck Low Power Card Spotlight
- Thread starter Grillo_Parlante
- Start date
oh man he's even got surge in his name if you look at it sideways
I've only Limited drafted it, not cubed it so far, but Coralhelm does a very good Citadel Siege impression but has the grace to occasionally "miss" which is a very good thing.
e: citadel not outpost
e: citadel not outpost
Retreat to Valakut is pretty solid. Both effects are desirable and landfall decks can do scary things with it in play. I had high hopes for Corelhelm, but it's not doing enough in early testing.
Grillo_Parlante
Contributor
I finally took the time to look over the oath of the gatewatch common list, and there are actually good cards here. These are the ones I found most interesting.
There is a ton to like about vines of recluse: one mana, instant speed, grants reach, and works with untap interactions. Isolation zone is, of course, super clunky for removal, but it exiles and can hit enchantments, which is enough of a premium to consider. Sparksmith's gambit offers evasion as well as a psudo board clearing effect for X/1 heavy formats.
Both corpse churn and pulse of murasa are probably the two best inclusions, good efficient sources of card advantage for the G/B graveyard decks.
There is a ton to like about vines of recluse: one mana, instant speed, grants reach, and works with untap interactions. Isolation zone is, of course, super clunky for removal, but it exiles and can hit enchantments, which is enough of a premium to consider. Sparksmith's gambit offers evasion as well as a psudo board clearing effect for X/1 heavy formats.
Both corpse churn and pulse of murasa are probably the two best inclusions, good efficient sources of card advantage for the G/B graveyard decks.
Onderzeeboot
Ecstatic Orb
Some observations from playing with and against these cards in Oath limited:
Vines of the Recluse seems like a wonderful trick to counter burn or create a surprise blocker. I sided it in a few times but sadly never got to play it.
Scion Summoner starter in my main but consistently underperformed. By a lot. The Grey Ogre body is really mediocre and matched up poorly to the 2/3's and 1/4's in the format.
Pulse of Murasa on the other hand, started in the side but got promoted to the main after it won me a post-board game. The life gain allowed me to win multiple games that I would have lost otherwise. This card is awesome!
Isolation Zone is strictly worse than Banishing Light and Oblivion Ring. I guess if those two are too good in your environment or you consider them too easy to splash, or you want a third option without breaking singleton and exiling the enchantment is important enough that Journey into Nowhere isn't that third option, yay?
Holdout Settlement is playable because of colorless mana only. Unlike Springleaf Drum it won't accelerate your mana development, which means this mostly is just tying up a creature each turn you need the fixing. Not great.
Umara Entangler I didn't see in action, but it's a good baseline, as we know from Abbot of Keral Keep.
Corpse Churn is cute if you have graveyard access besides this. Again, they made it an instant, which is just gravy.
Crumbling Vestige has been the standout common for me. That card has tremendous play to it. Finding the right time to play it was rewarding in and of itself. Multiple people were talking about how well this card played for them. I'm actually contemplating to add these to the basic land stack in my cube instead of Wastes if I want to support colorless.
Sparkmage's Gambit hasn't been played either. Nightbird's Clutches is better for the unblockable part, so unless you have a lot of 1 toughness critters in your environ, I wouldn't bother with this.
Vines of the Recluse seems like a wonderful trick to counter burn or create a surprise blocker. I sided it in a few times but sadly never got to play it.
Scion Summoner starter in my main but consistently underperformed. By a lot. The Grey Ogre body is really mediocre and matched up poorly to the 2/3's and 1/4's in the format.
Pulse of Murasa on the other hand, started in the side but got promoted to the main after it won me a post-board game. The life gain allowed me to win multiple games that I would have lost otherwise. This card is awesome!
Isolation Zone is strictly worse than Banishing Light and Oblivion Ring. I guess if those two are too good in your environment or you consider them too easy to splash, or you want a third option without breaking singleton and exiling the enchantment is important enough that Journey into Nowhere isn't that third option, yay?
Holdout Settlement is playable because of colorless mana only. Unlike Springleaf Drum it won't accelerate your mana development, which means this mostly is just tying up a creature each turn you need the fixing. Not great.
Umara Entangler I didn't see in action, but it's a good baseline, as we know from Abbot of Keral Keep.
Corpse Churn is cute if you have graveyard access besides this. Again, they made it an instant, which is just gravy.
Crumbling Vestige has been the standout common for me. That card has tremendous play to it. Finding the right time to play it was rewarding in and of itself. Multiple people were talking about how well this card played for them. I'm actually contemplating to add these to the basic land stack in my cube instead of Wastes if I want to support colorless.
Sparkmage's Gambit hasn't been played either. Nightbird's Clutches is better for the unblockable part, so unless you have a lot of 1 toughness critters in your environ, I wouldn't bother with this.
Onderzeeboot
Ecstatic Orb
To continue the discussion, there's so many playable commons in this set that I think your list is far from complete. A few more highlights.
Blinding Drone is the best Master Decoy yet, in a color that actually wants that effect. 1/3 defends pretty well too!
Kozilek's Shrieker is a 4/2 menace with upkeep
and firebreathing for . That's pretty saucy for a common!
Vampire Envoy is a pretty good wall, and once you've stabilized, it slowly puts you out of reach. Really a fan of this in more defensive black decks!
Zada's Commando is the first unconditional 2-powered first strike for
! Can you believe that? And it's a common! And it has a relevant ability in any cube that pushes allies (of which there are quite a few playables by now).
Seer's Lantern is much better than it looks in slow decks. I won at least two games on the back of repeated scrying this prerelease.
Blinding Drone is the best Master Decoy yet, in a color that actually wants that effect. 1/3 defends pretty well too!
Kozilek's Shrieker is a 4/2 menace with upkeep
and firebreathing for . That's pretty saucy for a common!Vampire Envoy is a pretty good wall, and once you've stabilized, it slowly puts you out of reach. Really a fan of this in more defensive black decks!
Zada's Commando is the first unconditional 2-powered first strike for
! Can you believe that? And it's a common! And it has a relevant ability in any cube that pushes allies (of which there are quite a few playables by now).Seer's Lantern is much better than it looks in slow decks. I won at least two games on the back of repeated scrying this prerelease.
I've found tappers to be scarier in aggro decks: they make it very hard for a slower deck to attack while maintaining defense and can remove two blockers. It may be the best defensive tapper, though.
Zada's Commando is the first unconditional 2-powered first strike for
I completely missed this card going through the spoilers. I never thought red would get a card like this before getting a no downside hasty 2/1 for 1R.
Tapping an opponent's creature on your turn is significantly worse than getting to do so on their turn, so you'd need a lot of fetches to make Coralhelm look close to Citadel Siege.
Grillo_Parlante
Contributor
I'm not sold about the other ones (would like to hear more about the lantern), but Zada's commando looks pretty good.
Combos with this this guy:
Combos with this this guy:
Onderzeeboot
Ecstatic Orb
Yeah, I'm actually looking if there's a critical mass of allies yet, so I can add them to my cube. There's a lot of neat effects to be had, and as mentioned before, cohort plays much better than I anticipated.I'm not sold about the other ones (would like to hear more about the lantern), but Zada's commando looks pretty good.
Combos with this this guy:
The memory issues of knowing which creatures are incidental allies are too big for me to want to mess with it. Even in BFZ limited it's pretty confusing to know what's an ally and what isn't unless you've memorized the whole set. I have thought about doing a Slivers vs. Allies theme cube at some point though.
This just reminds me that I really wish Resolute Blademaster just gave a single-shot ETB double strike anthem instead of being tied to rally since I don't want to support allies as an explicit theme.
This just reminds me that I really wish Resolute Blademaster just gave a single-shot ETB double strike anthem instead of being tied to rally since I don't want to support allies as an explicit theme.
The memory issues of knowing which creatures are incidental allies are too big for me to want to mess with it. Even in BFZ limited it's pretty confusing to know what's an ally and what isn't unless you've memorized the whole set. I have thought about doing a Slivers vs. Allies theme cube at some point though.
This just reminds me that I really wish Resolute Blademaster just gave a single-shot ETB double strike anthem instead of being tied to rally since I don't want to support allies as an explicit theme.
Cleaver Riot?
I've looked at Cleaver Riot before, but leaving a bear behind is a big deal. Without the body, I think I'd rather have Volcanic Rush as a 5-drop anthem effect in red since it scales better with tokens, provides trample, and is an instant.
Chris Taylor
Contributor
Volcanic Rush always struck me as "We want Trumpet Blast to be worse in this set"
Leaving a bear behind on your game-winning Overrun doesn't seem too impactful. I'd rather stick to a mono-red card so your Grizzly Fate or Moan of the Unhallowed can get in on the fun.
CML
Contributor
What if we just made a Cube composed of all the cards in this thread? How good would it be? How would we need to tweak it to support a balanced environment?
I really feel like we're zeroing in on something great, like RGD
To that end, please post all of your favorite cards that say "draw a card" on them right here, maybe even port them from that thread
Would we want to include this cycle of cantrips?
I really feel like we're zeroing in on something great, like RGD
To that end, please post all of your favorite cards that say "draw a card" on them right here, maybe even port them from that thread
Would we want to include this cycle of cantrips?
Dom Harvey
Contributor
Bouncelands are wonderful and I want at least a Cube where they are the focus of everything
Grillo_Parlante
Contributor
Indeed, how would a low power, bounceland based format look?
Grillo_Parlante
Contributor
Though seriously, in terms of low power, or low power power max (yes, such a thing exists), I've been thinking about these two:
One of the things I love about these formats is how deep R/G identity can get, and here we have just a brilliant card to run in a bounceland format.
1. The ability to return a land to hand acts as counter-disruption against every bounceland players greatest fear: land destruction
2. Bounceland formats facilitate a lot of discard based strategies, where excess lands can be returned to hand to be recycled for cards like stormbind. This feeds powerfully into those types of interactions.
3. The ability to play an additional land on each turn, effectively negates the tempo loss of playing bouncelands in the first place.
And this is before we get into how useful the ability to grant trample is, or that the stats and seize are perfectly reasonable to justify a gold card slot.
One of the things I love about these formats is how deep R/G identity can get, and here we have just a brilliant card to run in a bounceland format.
1. The ability to return a land to hand acts as counter-disruption against every bounceland players greatest fear: land destruction
2. Bounceland formats facilitate a lot of discard based strategies, where excess lands can be returned to hand to be recycled for cards like stormbind. This feeds powerfully into those types of interactions.
3. The ability to play an additional land on each turn, effectively negates the tempo loss of playing bouncelands in the first place.
And this is before we get into how useful the ability to grant trample is, or that the stats and seize are perfectly reasonable to justify a gold card slot.
CML
Contributor
Indeed, how would a low power, bounceland based format look?
http://www.amazon.com/Magic-Gathering-Ravnica-Guilds-Booster/dp/B000GM7FX2
Grillo_Parlante
Contributor
Drafted a sweet RUG control ramp deck, finally got to put this pair through the paces:
Pretty good. My basic strategy was to use untappers and gush effects to ramp up for reds big control sweepers. In that type of "spells matter" control setup, tibor and lumia act like a bit like a U/R thrashing wumpus.
There are all sorts of interesting sequencing decisions, like casting a blue spell first, to give one of your X/1s flying, so that when you cast your red spell and ping the board, it dosen't kill it (or bring it into range of an opponent's damage based removal). Also, really cool with spells like flame slash to boost their damage range.
Pretty good. My basic strategy was to use untappers and gush effects to ramp up for reds big control sweepers. In that type of "spells matter" control setup, tibor and lumia act like a bit like a U/R thrashing wumpus.
There are all sorts of interesting sequencing decisions, like casting a blue spell first, to give one of your X/1s flying, so that when you cast your red spell and ping the board, it dosen't kill it (or bring it into range of an opponent's damage based removal). Also, really cool with spells like flame slash to boost their damage range.