Card/Deck Low Power Card Spotlight

Velrun

Velrun

Uff it’s a tough one. First of all thanks to Brad, ravnic and blacksmithy!

Allow me to elaborate a little bit.

The players do not get all the cards but only a random subset of the cards and I cannot beforehand know which ones. Unlike a regular cube I can’t keep it on 360 cards to know that all cards will get drafted. Let’s say Player A chooses to play as an Avian which is an Azorius-colored race. This means Player A will get 7 random white low-powered starter cards and 7 blue. And 3 colorless. The themes among those 60 white and blue cards are self-bounce, Adventure, raid and ninjutsu which should work fine together since often a self-bounce card is an efficient beater and you want to ninjutsu your Adventures back to hand.

Can you guys come up with something like this for every color combination there is? I know it is a large task. It doesn’t have to be perfect. If we take a look at Boros the best we’ve got is late game bounce some stuff back to discard them for a loot. Also Adventures work fine with prowess.

And I got lost when I had to find something good for black :)

I like having multiple Undead Servant because it works with self-bounce, ninjutsu, Aristocrats, loot(?) and graveyard interaction. However I worry about a player getting only a single copy OR a player getting 7 copies. Which is the correct number to add?

I don’t think Zombies will do it for me as a theme because it seems like it doesn’t work with any of the other colors. Devotion is also tricky.

Final note: A player could also get a monocolored race but I don’t think I can choose a theme for a color and have it be at half strength as soon as you add an extra color like with devotion where you need a high density. Devotion is hurt if you go from mono black to Rakdos I would say.

Thoughts?
 
Brad

Brad

I have no idea for Undead Servant. I haven't played it yet and bought 20 to be safe lol.

This is a limited color wheel because that's how I do things, but maybe my Jumpstarts could provide ideas for themes that are at least somewhat supportable?
https://riptidelab.com/forum/threads/the-best-jumpstart-cube.3153/
They're 25 card packs with 16-17 spells, so that's basically the number you're looking for here. They aren't mono/colorless like you want, but it's full of ideas is the main appeal.
 
LadyMapi

LadyMapi

That's pretty much what I was expecting to hear, so I'm glad that I wasn't off-base.

Going through my other pet cards, how about...



(Sorry for the questions - I'm tinkering with my first cube (that isn't just 180 random cards jammed together), and I'm going through cards that I personally really like to see what I should do with them.)
 
inscho

inscho

Cube link for context?

I'm most intrigued by Reality Scramble of the three, but I think I prefer Throes of Chaos to it. For scramble to be worth the hoops of jumping through, you'll need targets that are juicy enough to make the effort worth it....which can be a challenging thing to balance in low power environments. If you just want a chaos/randomness factor...throes is much less cumbersome while still having a build-around quality.

Living Lore is pretty bad. I suppose ethereal forager is too good for low powered cubes? Informer is a real card if you want mill and self-mill to be a thing (to get the most value from it, you want both to be options). It needs some additional support, and I don't know if I can recommend it as a one-card archetype.

Pia's Revolution, Informer, and Scramble all encourage midrange wheel spinning, and I'd argue lore does to some extent as well. It's something that is very easy to over-emphasize in lower powered environments...having access to all of the weird/intricate cards that are too slow for standard power environments is a big draw to lowering a cube's power. The main danger is lengthy, arduous, mentally-taxing games of incremental attrition becoming a little too frequent, and leading to some exhausting cube nights for your drafters. I'm speaking from personal experience...just something to consider when designing your first cube.
 
ravnic

ravnic

I like Scramble and Informer. The former looks like a really juicy card to try and build around, but more like a one off for some crazy decks once in a while. The latter can be a really nice glue card for different archetypes. It mills your opponent ({U/B} Mill), mills yourself ({B/G} Dredge) and is a sac outlet ({W/B} or {B/R} Sacrifice). Just make sure you have the archetype support and he can move from a weak standalone to an early picked card.

Lore feels to situational for me to work out in cube. It's a 4-drop that ideally wants to have a 4+ mana card in your graveyard already. So see it more like Zombify for spells than a spells payoff. If you have enough discard (or selfmill) going on, and a bunch of desireable high cmc instats/sorceries, go for it and try. But it's not a card for every meta, that's for sure.

I don't want to walk over your request, but I have also one for this thread to maybe be discussed parallel.



This guy looks really risky, since I'd play him next to Enigma Drake, Rise from the Tides, Runechanter's Pike ... most of my spells payoffs want them to be in graveyard. If I understand the Cheister correctl, the spells go back to the yard after he casts them, right? But it still seems sketchy to risk him getting killed before that happens. Maybe haste and EoT activations make him better than he looks like to me?
 
LadyMapi

LadyMapi

inscho said:
Cube link for context?
Click to expand...

I don't even have a proper skeleton for the cube yet - I'm still in the "look at cards I like and try to think about whether or not they'd lead to cool stuff" stage.

I might use my 180-card pile as a base, though.

EDIT: Yeah, the spells would go back to your graveyard after you cast them. I will say that the Chemister feels really slow unless you're running ways to protect/untap it.
 
Brad

Brad

LadyMapi said:
I don't even have a proper skeleton for the cube yet - I'm still in the "look at cards I like and try to think about whether or not they'd lead to cool stuff" stage.

I might use my 180-card pile as a base, though.

EDIT: Yeah, the spells would go back to your graveyard after you cast them. I will say that the Chemister feels really slow unless you're running ways to protect/untap it.
Click to expand...

Just make a pile of cards that you haven't refined and play it with the homies. You can only do that a few times before you get too smart for what you're doing and it's an experience you can't get back.
 
LadyMapi

LadyMapi

Brad said:
Just make a pile of cards that you haven't refined and play it with the homies. You can only do that a few times before you get too smart for what you're doing and it's an experience you can't get back.
Click to expand...


That's a fair point - I might have to take the pile of cards I have sitting on my desk over to the FLGS and give them a try.
 
ravnic

ravnic

Has anyone seen this legend do its thing in cube? Do you think he would be too much for a lower powered environment?



Its activated abilities read scary, but his drawback is, well, certainly a drawback.
 
Velrun

Velrun

I have always hated that card but I think I am bias from Urza's Destiny Standard. Back then creature decks were outnumbered by combo and control decks and even though I mostly enjoyed control decks, it was still too hurtful in my opinion to have a single card poop on all creature decks. It was meta-defining in that regard. Since then I have not touched the card.
 
Chriskool

Chriskool

ravnic said:
Has anyone seen this legend do its thing in cube? Do you think he would be too much for a lower powered environment?



Its activated abilities read scary, but his drawback is, well, certainly a drawback.
Click to expand...


There's a decent amount of conversation in the PP2.0 Inventor's Fair thread: https://riptidelab.com/forum/search/2308475/?q=masticore&t=post&o=date&c[thread]=1672 I think Kirblinx even has videos linked in one of his comments!

That being said, I like Masticore better when creatures mostly have 2+ toughness, and there are a plethora of ways to kill it through regeneration. It hasn't aged well against Planeswalker Magic, but the card can be quite oppressive if the environment doesn't respect it. Having played Standard during Urza's Block, it's not my cup of tea. :)
 
ravnic

ravnic



This card I had not heard of before, yet it seems rather strong. It is no FTK, but FTK is busted and too strong for my cube. This guy however fits perfectly for the subtle mono color theme I'm trying to etablish. It's also a Goblin the one relevant creature type next to ninja in my meta. But he is also just a good card, being an overcosted Fire Imp is not a bad failcase. I'm also not really asking if I should run him, I will fore sure, just trying to give this hidden gem with a failed mechanic (that technically is a succesful mechanic) a spotlight here.
 
Onderzeeboot

Onderzeeboot

Ecstatic Orb
Devotion is basically a subset of chroma. In case of Outrage Shaman it is exactly devotion! While the card is not bad, do realize that 5 mana is a whole lot of mana to pay for what amounts to an unreliable Ravenous Chupacabra.
 
ravnic

ravnic

Yeah, but like FTK, Chupacabra is something many cube managers avoid, as they agree with my man patrick here:


I perdonally decided, thatvan effect that strong, should be a reward, not something that you can just use in every deck/situation. I am similarly happy about this guy

 
Onderzeeboot

Onderzeeboot

Ecstatic Orb
Oh yeah, completely agree that (for me) Chupa isn't a fun* card in cube, even though it is certainly efficient. The relevant difference is 5 vs. 4 mana though, similarly to how Flesh to Dust is a relatively awful removal spell, while a 4 mana version of that would be much more playable in cube.

*NB Fun is kind of a nebulous concept, as it's highly subjective. For a results-oriented player, Chupa might be fun, because it's an good removal spell that also leaves a body behind. A body that can be recurred with on color cards when it hits the graveyard, meaning it's also a possible source of repeated removal. A benefit that is harder to realize with, say, Murder. What I really mean, is that Chupa is an extremely straightforward card. It doesn't ask you to jump through any hoops, it (mostly) doesn't reward you for drafting a certain deck, it's just always a very, very solid inclusion that does what it says on the tin at a very efficient rate. To me, that is not a super interesting inclusion, but it might be to someone with different design goals, e.g. designing a more spike-y cube.
 
japahn

japahn

I don't think it's so much that Ravenous Chupacabra is a problem in a vacuum. Flametongue Kavu is divisive, but because it was just 1 in the cube, it felt a bit broken, but happened to you every now and then.


What people take more issue with is the shift in design philosophy where Ravenous Chupacabra is not considered a one-time mistake, but is now par for the course for value + tempo. Where value used to cost you tempo, synergy, or some jumping through hoops, now everything that costs more than 3 mana is value. Cards used to require trading tempo for value or value for tempo. The ones that didn't were broken. New cards get everything with no downside.

And that's how many bucks for the swear jar? :(
 
NimbusToad

NimbusToad

I am intrigued by the possibility of an aggro combo deck which uses these cards:



Does anyone run these cards and have you seen a Rakdos aggro deck come together that uses these Magi? I'll need to throw a casual constructed deck together with them as I'm kind of stuck on the possibility of this being awesome but I've never seen it in action.
 
Brad

Brad

I think you're gonna have a tough time making that specific two card combination come together, but they're both graveyard focused cards and you could easily make them play into your Rakdos theme. They're both nice 3/3 for threes as well.
 
Dom Harvey

Dom Harvey

Contributor
Yawgmoth's Will is very hard to use well in my experience and Magus attaches significant costs + weaknesses to it. Magus of the Wheel interests me more because an instant-speed two-mana Wheel breaks the symmetry on the effect enough to feel unique and worthwhile (plus it's great with reanimation in a BR discard/graveyard deck)
 
sigh

sigh

Magus of the Will is definitely more difficult to maximize, but imo it's much more fun to try to maximize, so don't discount it if your playgroup likes that sort of challenge.
 
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