Card/Deck [MCD] Equipment

[Dom Harvey]

Haven't played with Plate Mail, would like to although costing 4 is a real downer.

Lifestaff was a fun and competitive card in my Cube circa 2011, haven't touched it in a long time though.

Lens is garbage imo.

O-Naginata is more of an archetype-defining card than a generic aggro weapon. It's like a colourless Rancor in the right deck, and that sounds very appealing.

Given the lack of fun white cards and the abundance of fun equipment, I think the time has come for:

 

[Jason Waddell]

I thought about double Stoneforge. I've also thought about having 0 Stoneforge.

 

[CML]

i have enjoyed 0 stoneforge, but, i hate the equipment they have printed more than wadds.

CT do you wanna take a spin at making a nice "fair" equipment for Cube?

 

[Changling Bob]

What's the closest equipment to fair you think they've printed? Clearly the swords are dumb, and there's some real junk equipment, I'm wondering where the sweet spot is perceived to be.

 

[Laz]

I'm wondering where the sweet spot is perceived to be.

 

[James Stevenson]

I wish there was a good living weapon that wasn't so busted as Batterskull. It seems like fun to search up creatures with Stoneforge Mystic but Butterskall is too powerful for my cube. It doesn't seem worth including just to fetch Bonesplitter or Adventuring Gear, though maybe it's fine getting Runechanter's Pike and Grafted Wargear (that seems quite good. Wargear cured my cancer). The only other equipment in my cube is Mortarpod, which is also ok to fetch sometimes. Still, it doesn't seem worth it.

 

[Konge]

Have you considered Bonehoard?

 

[Jason Waddell]

Bonehoard is pretty interesting in a lower power environment. Combat trick with Stoneforge (but usually not), and has overlap with cards like Sewer Nemesis if you want to push it into an archetype.

I would say that Stoneforge and Batterskull help control, but the two are so good that any deck can play them.

 

[James Stevenson]

A little bit. It didn't seem worth it at 4 mana. Does it grow big enough?

 

[Jason Waddell]

It gains value as the game goes on and provides inevitably because it turns any random duder into a monster.

 

[Goldenpineapple]

I'm ok with bonehoard. The change in expression between "wow that's bad" fetching it on turn 2 vs "oh god that's huge" four or five turns later is always great.

"Dudes will get big enough eventually" was the idea behind banshee's blade and limited-coolcard pennon blade, bonehoard was called "creature pike" by my players despite coming out first.

 

[Jason Waddell]

Bonehoard is often nonembarrassing played on curve. Probably more interesting than something like Deadbridge Goliath

 

[James Stevenson]

Could help on my quest to define some kind of self-mill archetype.

 

[Goldenpineapple]

Bonehoard is often nonembarrassing played on curve. Probably more interesting than something like Deadbridge Goliath

In a dude-removal-dude-removal-dude-removal game sure, I can see bonehoard being a respectable 4, but in my experience it's just more often a dead card when you'd rather have a real four drop to top your curve with, and after this happened to multiple people it just stopped getting played, so I cut it.

 

[OCPunisher]

This discussion on the oppression generated by the Swords is really interesting. My group has had some pretty mixed results on each of them:
- Body/Mind is by far the most annoying, or the one that has caused the most trouble. It has drawn comparisons to Jace, Memory Adept for its ability to end games in 2-3 turns (which is why I don't run JMA).
- Fire/Ice and Feast/Famine are powerful, but not game-breaking. I would certainly not fault anyone for spending a high-pick on them, but they aren't automatically included in every deck ever drafted.
- War/Peace is just OK. If the effect wasn't named "Sword of...", it probably would be rated higher, but I think the comparisons to other swords make it seem less good. It does turn any old body into a relevant threat, and it does protect against two of the more common colors of removal, but it's certainly not OP.
- Light and Shadow is the "worst" by far, and by "worst" I mean "least game-breaking OP broken".

That being said, my group routinely seems to ignore their presence in my cube. We usually keep track of all the last-pick cards in each pack when we draft to try and see what isn't being used, and Shatter effects are routinely on the last-pick list. When I was making room for Theros cards recently, I actually ended up cutting Torch Fiend due to the fact that no one ever used it to blow up Swords.

 

[Dom Harvey]

I found SoBaM to be lackluster, to the extent that I cut it for not being good enough. One hit doesn't do anything, even two hits isn't good enough most of the time if the milling doesn't kill them, and in any case two hits with a Sword should be enough to wrap up the game (and is, I would argue, for most of the others).

SoFaI is the best Sword out of context, SoFaF is situationally more powerful but occasionally mediocre. Don't sleep on SoWaP: the card can turn a winning game into a losing one very quickly.

...SoLaS is probably not good enough for almost any Cube?

 

[Jason Waddell]

Probably not but I will test it as part of my Lifegain update. Not optimistic! Maybe it should be War and Peace instead?

 

[CML]

wtf SOLAS is way better than SOWAP. It's an incredibly powerful card, though the graveyard dependence makes it worse than in constructed, where as we know things tend to die. (on the other hand, when was the last time any of us bitched about difficulties triggering a Sun Titan?)

in the "hard to bin stuff in cube" vein (which is still true in comparison to constructed, no matter how hard we all try with dredge and gravecrawlers and fetches and discard spells), Bonehoard is a different card than the Heroes or Sublime Angel or on-curve beaters like that, but within a Cube context it is also almost certainly worse. i played the hell out of it in Standard and it was so, so good against Caw-Blade's Wraths or RUG's pyroclasms, but in Cube it's been pretty lackluster, to the point where it might not even justify its own inclusion in the 4-slot. one way of looking at it is that equipment is supposed to give resilience against removal, but da hoard (by requiring removal to turn it on) takes this to a weakening extreme.

 

[James Stevenson]

How could we tweak this cycle to remove the protection abilities and make the cards good? Make them cost 2? I kinda love their effects, but I really hate protection from colors. I took the swords out because sometimes you played the XY sword against the XY deck and nothing really happened except you won.
What about costing them 1 xor making them equip for 1 (which is huge) and only giving +1/+1? Then we could call them like "Knife of X and Y" or "Dagger" or "Prison Shank" or something. And they're be room for flavor text like "Don't make me have to shank a nigga" or something. I shouldn't say that here right? My articles apparently already make me a racist.

 

[CML]

Shotgun of It's All In The Game
Shiv of Stop Snitchin'
Your ideas here!

 

[Eric Chan]

I kinda love their effects, but I really hate protection from colors. I took the swords out because sometimes you played the XY sword against the XY deck and nothing really happened except you won.

This is pretty much the reason I cut the last sword from my cube. Not because it was too powerful, as it was mostly a pile of do-nothing, but because I sat beside Calvin as his BW aggro deck randomly got steamrolled by a guy who drew the Sword in two out of the three games. I think I was more upset than he was.

 

[Jason Waddell]

Did any of you duders ever end up trying either of these?

 

[Arjan]

It gains value as the game goes on and provides inevitably because it turns any random duder into a monster.

I used to run that card in my rare-cube with a selfmill theme, but it was too weak.

 

[Goldenpineapple]

Did any of you duders ever end up trying either of these?

My list has always run O-Naginata and it has met with varying degrees of success but is typically good. I forced BoB in a red/black sacrifice deck and went for a shotgun (goblin bombardment a bunch of shit, swing at you for a lot) that got me an unsummon. Very sad.

 

[Mondschwein]

Blade of the Bloodchief cut fit very well into any +1/+1 counter deck and may still be used in any other kind of deck.
I think I'm going to test it.