Hahhahah I've been trying to convince Eric we should start referring to the cube meetings as our Cuban Dance Lessons.
Card/Deck [MCD] Sweeperz
- Thread starter CML
- Start date
Hahhahah I've been trying to convince Eric we should start referring to the cube meetings as our Cuban Dance Lessons.
I've been trying to convince Eric of a lot of things. Keep trying.
Sweepers are pretty great. i’ve been trying to port the Wildfire strategy (break sweeper symmetry) to my environment using 3 toughness as the magic number instead of 4:
Clarion Ultimatum
Yahenni’s Expertise
i’m backing these up with a couple customs in red and RW that deal 3 damage to each creature with a little upside, but there’s plenty of red sweepers that deal 3 damage if you wanted to try something similar.
some of the critters i have that can survive:
Clarion Ultimatum
Yahenni’s Expertise
i’m backing these up with a couple customs in red and RW that deal 3 damage to each creature with a little upside, but there’s plenty of red sweepers that deal 3 damage if you wanted to try something similar.
some of the critters i have that can survive:
I love sweepers too. They're swingy but their mere existence adds a lot of excitement - for the players and even spectators. But as I am running a lower powered cube that's not super fast, I have to be very careful in how I balance them. I run these currently:
White is king of boardwipes and gets 5 mana hard sweepers that can have small upsides. However, there are only three and one requires at least a few blue sources.
I love the bounce sweepers blue gets, and Aetherize is such a great card to have in a format. Players quickly learn to fear it.
Black gets four boardwipes, as it's king in killing, but it sweeps more conditionally. It's always size-based and sometimes scales with a thing you do (Mutilate) or takes time (Necroplasm).
Red gets two pretty strong, scaleable sweepers. But Wildfire/Force are clearly more specific buildarounds that can't be thrown into every control deck, and Ryusei is at it's best if you have ways to sacrifice and recur him at will.
So, these are 14 cards at 680 total, and with some quite conditional ones. That's my way to keep sweepers as a strong and interesting tool for control decks, yet also keep them in check.
Edit: people might say I just love talking about my cube and they're right, but I also thought it would be cool to have some examples from a cube much lower powered than most mentioned here so far.
White is king of boardwipes and gets 5 mana hard sweepers that can have small upsides. However, there are only three and one requires at least a few blue sources.
I love the bounce sweepers blue gets, and Aetherize is such a great card to have in a format. Players quickly learn to fear it.
Black gets four boardwipes, as it's king in killing, but it sweeps more conditionally. It's always size-based and sometimes scales with a thing you do (Mutilate) or takes time (Necroplasm).
Red gets two pretty strong, scaleable sweepers. But Wildfire/Force are clearly more specific buildarounds that can't be thrown into every control deck, and Ryusei is at it's best if you have ways to sacrifice and recur him at will.
So, these are 14 cards at 680 total, and with some quite conditional ones. That's my way to keep sweepers as a strong and interesting tool for control decks, yet also keep them in check.
Edit: people might say I just love talking about my cube and they're right, but I also thought it would be cool to have some examples from a cube much lower powered than most mentioned here so far.
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in my current core list size 224 (none of the occasionals i mentioned above)…
DoJ
Plague Engineer (lol)
Yahenni’s Expertise
Brushfire
Engineered Explosives
so 4/224
DoJ
Plague Engineer (lol)
Yahenni’s Expertise
Brushfire
Engineered Explosives
so 4/224
i’m thinking maybe i should pick up either a Boros sweeper or Supreme Verdict after seeing the math haha
actually JUST bought this at ye olde local game store!Toot
i also have this in my “custom occasionals” back pocket, would probably run both together to make “sweepers a thing”
Onderzeeboot
Ecstatic Orb
Without looking I have an inkling I run even less!13/450=.0288 Me
14/680=.0206 ravnic
4/224=.0179 blacksmithy
10/400=.0250 sigh
So maybe I should cut 1-2. I was thinking I was probably 2-3 high, so that's what I was expecting. Thanks.
I'd like to highlight
as a sweeper I expect to do well with golems and fabricate, etc.
With looking.
And arguably.
Then there's the slow "sweepers", which can eventually clear the board, but it doesn't feel right to count them as actual sweepers.
So, let's call it a 7/450, or 1.56%. Easily the lowest so far.
As someone who was looking for Inkling tokens to purchase earlier, this confused me for a second.
Are we bumping old CML threads now?
Onderzeeboot
Ecstatic Orb
Apparently. These are some deep cut necro's by @blacksmithy.
I want to give a shoutout to my boy the blue sweeper on a legs:
Pros:
- It's one-sided! That's broken!
- You get a body out of the deal
- Sacrifice effects in Blue offer some interesting novelty
- Blue doesn't get many good sweepers
- Choices, choices, choices
Cons:
- Hard to deal with an opponent's biggest thing unless you sac something big
- This dude bounces and does not kill
Overall, this makes Profaner of the Dead a weak but interesting addition to a sweeper suite in that it's best used offensively in Ninjas. It also bolsters Control's weakest matchup against Aggro while being a sweeper that's pretty mediocre against Midrange, so I think it does good things for an environment in general. But most of all, I like the tension it creates, and so would recommend it chiefly if someone is looking to spice up a lower-powered cube.
Pros:
- It's one-sided! That's broken!
- You get a body out of the deal
- Sacrifice effects in Blue offer some interesting novelty
- Blue doesn't get many good sweepers
- Choices, choices, choices
Cons:
- Hard to deal with an opponent's biggest thing unless you sac something big
- This dude bounces and does not kill
Overall, this makes Profaner of the Dead a weak but interesting addition to a sweeper suite in that it's best used offensively in Ninjas. It also bolsters Control's weakest matchup against Aggro while being a sweeper that's pretty mediocre against Midrange, so I think it does good things for an environment in general. But most of all, I like the tension it creates, and so would recommend it chiefly if someone is looking to spice up a lower-powered cube.
i don’t think it’s a hard and fast rule, just interesting that our tiny sample tends to hover around a 2% median
EDIT: welcome to the forum!
Someone who's a thicc fucking nerd with the world's most complex spreadsheet could probably answer this. I'd just playtest it.
For what it's worth, I have 37 one drops. So your count's around right (if mine is), assuming you've excluded blue.
my cubes one drop to wrath ratio has gotta be pretty wild
