General (MOM) March of the Machines Testing/Includes Thread!

This is a testing/includes thread. Post pictures using /ci or a text list using /c with what cards you plan to include and what cards you plan to test.
Including:


Likely Test:


Want to Test:


Unstable Cubicorns:

(I know Phyrexian Gargantua isn't new, but I like the new art).

I'm definitely a bit suspicious of Polukranos Reborn because {G}{G}{G} is such a hyper-specific cost, but I think as I improve my mana base it's becoming more viable, especially with the wealth of mana dorks that tap for {G}. It's definitely my favorite DFC in the set.

What are your plans for this set?
 
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Mostly guaranteed:

Complete the Circuit is the kind of card that gets my head spinning, and maybe looking for ways to add some more incidental token creation to enable it, but I think it's already somewhat reasonable. Cards like Murderous Cut, Dig Through Time and No One Left Behind help reduce the need for too many creatures to make it splashy.
Death-Greeter's Champion looks very fun to play with, Double Strike is always an exciting keyword and Dash gives it a lot of play patterns. I'll probably make a custom version with the backup keyword just replace with "put a counter on a creature and give it double strike" to save myself some rules questions.
Wildfire Awakener is a mana-cheaty card and I'm not too happy with one of my Boros cards. Plus the art is cool.

Big maybe:

I hate that Knight-Errant shuffles your entire deck, because I can't imagine anyone reading the wall of text thoroughly enough to realize it, so it's going to lead to a lot of accidental rules violations.
Pile On is a substitute if Lethal Scheme is too much of a power outlier. I'd rather have some more incidental discard if I can afford it.
Seed of Hope I am extremely ambivalent on, I think I like my current green card-filtering options more. It did make me think about Tranquil Thicket, which I might add as an exclusive green cantrip option.
Mistmeadow Vanisher flickers any permanent which I didn't really think of on first glance, so it works very well with Sagas as well, and unless you have a Vehicle you have to get into the red zone to get repeated value. Probably not though.

Cards I'd like to include if not for card complexity and logistics:
 
i dont think ill be including or testing anything from this set. just got cards in for a major update and likely won't update again until 2024.
that said, i quite like a few of the designs:
1G-3/1 that surveils twice
1U-1/3 that loots twice
wrenn and realmbreaker
green cantrip that gains life
2W- 3/3 flier that blinks
 


I think I've tried at least twelve different cards, probably even more, in this slot within the last ~8 years. I always was looking for the right sac card there, especially since I've went down to only one gold card per guild. And with the rise of artifact themes, I was looking for something that could sac these too. With Stormclaw Rager I finally found the perfect solution, I think. it's elegant, hits a sweet spot power level wise and pays you off with board presence AND card advantage.




Gixian Infiltrator hasn't been as good as I had hoped, and thus I'll likely replace him in July with my next update. Blightreaper Thallid could be the new guy. I feel like black needs more sacrifice fodder and this is a serviceable aggro dude too.
 
I can’t believe y’all are willing to post your testing lists before the full set is up on the only real Magic search tool (scryfall)
I'm like 90% sure this list is going to change after I have a chance to play with the cards. I know my All Will Be One list went from almost 40 cards down to like 6 after I had a chance to actually play with the set. There's a non-zero chance I'm ending up with only Mercurial Spelldancer and Glimmer Lens from that set!

It's doubly true here because I don't know how good Battles are yet. I'm confident I'll like Invasion of Ixalan, and Invasion of Tarkir is probably good and on theme, but I can't say for any of the rest. If Battles are good then this test list is conservative.

Likewise, I don't have super high hopes for the midrange top end. A lot of them just feel "generically good" in a way that may not be compelling. But like– I can't know that for sure until I actually play with the cards. Polukranos Reborn and Sheoldred both look like they could be a lot of fun if transforming them is doable.
 
Big set for me! I'm a big fan of a lot of the designs here, and am very excited about how many cards are going to be meaningful inclusions in my list for a long time.

Should I include MOC stuff here as well?

Likely Includes:


CONTINUED IN NEXT POST
 
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Velrun only thinks about one thing and it’s fucking disgusting :p

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Jokes aside I will most likely also include these because I find them super useful without breaking anything. And they also seem to fit well into a D&D setting.



And I have all the other swords so I will also get Once and Future.



But don’t worry for my players. The ten swords arrive late in the tournament when everyone has powerful cards.
 
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Chris Taylor

Contributor
Should I include MOC stuff here as well?
I think so, a 3rd thread seems odd.
Maybe section them out?

Testing:



Maybes:

I don't think I need 2 support 5 drops, and I think the dragon is cooler, but this thing is great. Imagine trying to race this.

Lord every time I read this something changes I swear. It's ETB or Dies? What?

I love how this thing works, but I'm not sure this actually gets there. 3 is a lot more than 2 (Clarion Spirit), especially recently.

I think if this was white it would have an insane adoption rate. I know people don't love ability counters, but honestly given how infrequently they pop up, I've found that you can deal with ability counters the way we used to deal with tokens, by just taking like a penny or glass bead or something; that you don't need dedicated meeples that say "FLYING" on them.
At least that has been my experience playing Luminous Broodmoth, which I've found to be solid.
Obviously this calculus changes the more ability counters there are, and the higher variety of counters there are (I'd still be on only flying, for eg)

Backup is just a sweet, flexible "hasty" mechanic. You still need to connect here, and Archpriest doesn't have (or grant) real evasion, but I could easily see this being sweet.

Look backup looks like it plays well, and this also seems like a sweet way to use it.

3 Defense is so achievable, and boomveggies is already decent if 7 is where the power is in your cube.

This card is good! Slice in twain is a nice backup mode, and the concept of 6 mana ETB fight something is solid. Plus this can ETB fight your opponent's face! (Or Teferi's face)

Commander:
 
Velrun only think about one thing and it’s fucking disgusting :p

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Holy battles batman!
 
Including


I've been adding these to the cube as they were being spoiled, so some of these have been played with and other are waiting to be tried out. Guardian Scalelord, Chrome Host Seedshard, and Archpriest of Shadows have been very effective. The Guardian and Archpriest are both really fun cards that've spiced up the graveyard themes in those colors. And my players have used Seedshark in so many different decks, it's an awesomecard.

Tiller of Flesh is being included in hopes that the UW auras voltron/control package with Transcendent Envoy and Rootwater Shaman becomes a real deck. We'll see how that actually goes though.

Want to Try


Vanisher hitting any nonland permanent sounds really nice, but I'd want to see about finding more vehicles or other tapping abilities to be confident in it. I definitely want to try the Oracle but gotta find room for it. I'm always looking for more xerox in red, so Volcanic Spite is something I want to try. Strobe-Knight is only if Seedshark proves too powerful.
 
as Bad Finale of Devastation (that may turn out to be good)
and probably gonna try

because they don't put world champs on bad cards (even if Fervent Champion doesn't really have a home in mine)

e: after a day of play on Arena, I'm also tempted by - turns out that's easier to flip than I expected and the payoff is immediate...

edit two: my god Glistening Dawn is unbeatable, that one might be good in a relatively high power cube that cares about artifacts, counters, and land-based ramp
 
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Lucky Paper released their Community Set Review Episode and Set Prospective Results! I have a couple of thoughts...

1) The Community is Underrating Battles
Obviously battles have been very contentious, but I think they're being ranked a little lower than other cards. For example, Invasion of Innistrad, a certified Bomb and fantastic card, was tested by only 5.3% of survey respondents with an average rating of 4.8. By contrast, Beamtown Beatstick, an aggressively mediocre common, was tested by 6.1% of survey respondents with an average rating of 5.3. While this is only one example, I think it's representative of the larger trend.

To be fair, battles are new and weird, so it's not surprising that people aren't rating them "correctly" yet. I only had Invasion of Mercadia ranked at 4.8 when I filled out my survey even though I think it's probably more like a 7 or 8 for me now after having actually played with it in the wild. Additionally, I think battles are not going to ever reach the same highs as cards like Ragavan, Nimble Pilferer and Usher of the Fallen, which were tested by a huge portion of the community. The fact that battles are so novel also seems to work against their favor. Having said all of this, I do still think this survey is representative of early opinions not fully backed by gameplay data.

2) Double-Faced Hate may be Dissipating
Double-faced cards represent logistics and comprehension issues that many designers like to avoid. However, I think part of the reason DFCs have always ranked so poorly with Cube designers is because almost all of them have been needlessly complex. The DFC mechanic was originally invented to service Werewolves, which aren't well balanced and constantly flip back and forth. Outside of the few unique werewolves that have different abilities on both sides, most werewolves are just inconsistent, which often leads to mediocre gameplay. The next implementation of DFCs were wordy legendary creatures that transformed into Planeswalkers. While some of these cards are good, they are still difficult to parse. In the years sense, double-faced complexity has gotten even worse, with cards like the MDFCs being incredibly wordy on both sides for little gain. Even the best previous implementation of DFCs, the Double-Faced Sagas, were still extremely wordy, which still turned off a lot of Cube designers.

I'm saying all of this because March of the Machine has finally provided us with a clean implementation of DFCs: the Double-Faced Phyrexians. These cards have generally simple fronts and transform once into cards with more sophisticated but still easy to understand backs. These cards are fantastic, using Phyrexian mana and the double-faced nature of the cards to show Phyresis as a game mechanic in a fun and interesting way. The number one most tested card in the set, Khenra Spellspear, is one of these DFCs. Although it is only being tested by 33% of respondents, it is the First DFC ever to hold top spot in one of these surveys, and only the second ever to hold a testing rate above 30%. Additionally, it is the first unique DFC to have a ranking this high, as the previous most tested DFC, Suspicious Stowaway, was just a side grade to known card Looter il-kor.

Hopefully Khenra Spellspear and it's friends represent a new era of thoughtful DFC design that more Cube designers can get behind.

3) Low Consensus
This set is kind of weird, so there really isn't a "popular consensus" on the cards in this set. For example, the most tested Mythic Rare in the set is Wrenn and Realmbreaker, with only 16% of respondents, and the highest rated Mythic Rare is Zurgo and Ojutai, with a rating of 6.7 (although only a testing rate of roughly 3%). In fact, the highest rated card in the entire set is a common: Timberland Ancient. As a whole, people are just excited for different things here, which is kind of cool. Part of this paradigm may be the fact that the Battles are some of the most powerful cards in the set, but are not being well-represented in the survey. However, I think it's just as likely that people are getting excited over specific cards for their Cube due to the lack of "staple" cards such as new cantrips and cheap burn that were not printed here.

Thanks for reading!
–GT
 
I love all the takeaways, thanks for that analysis @TrainmasterGT!!

Can't help but love any episode of Lucky Paper that @landofMordor is on. Was very appreciative for the ardent defense of Battles, a card type I don't really care for in concept but adore in execution. I'm finding March of the Machine unbelievably fun as a retail draft and have a ton of thoughts I'm still working on for new ideas re: cube. Seriously, I agree with LSV - this is already one of my all-time favorite draft formats.

However, I wish battles were enchantments like Sagas. 1) I don't think the baggage of making an additional card type is worth it, 2) I'd love it to work backwards with other enchantment-matters and enchantment interaction spells, and 3) enchantments have already lost so much of their design space to equipment, then planeswalkers, then colored artifacts, then changes in the artifact design sensibility, then a continued increase in creatures with enchantment like abilities....
 
However, I wish battles were enchantments like Sagas.
There's probably some custom design space to make a Saga frame with P/T on it to get single-faced battles. Or surely single-faced NEO Sagas.

Code:
(As this CARDTYPE enters and after your draw step, add a lore counter. Becomes a creature after III.)
Then have it enter as just an enchantment so that is isn't a creature yet. Does that work? What's the wording here?

Code:
CARDNAME
Enchantment Creature - Goblin Spellshaper
When ~ enters the battlefield, you may discard a card. If you do, draw two cards.
~ isn't a creature if it has 8 or less battle counters on it.
Whenever you deal damage to an opponent, put that many battle counters on ~.
4/4
This might not work because it's a payoff for hitting the opponent rather than an alternate attack target. That's why I doubled the damage, but it still feels too snowbally. I also cut the back side's ability for text-space concerns and gave it +1/+1 as compensation. It's definitely a less interesting design, though.

I'll mess with it when I get home if I have time. I think there's gotta be a way to make a single faced battle.
 
@TrainmasterGT
I was wondering why you skipped the best and most succesful implementation of the double-faced cards. Did you forget or was there some reason I didn’t understand?

There's a number of reasons I didn't mention these. I think MDFCs are a little weird in the fact that the back side is a completely separate card from the front. The spell//lands aren't too bad compared to the spell//spells because the backs are less texty, but the fact that they don't all work the same can make them super awkward for Cube inclusion. Additionally, the effects are mostly "small" enough that they aren't cards people are always looking to put into their decks despite the incredibly low opportunity cost and reasonably high upside. I liked these cards when they were new, and I agree with you that these are a good implementation of DFCs, but I think they have some logistical issues that make them less desirable than on would initially think.

I think these cards were best for constructed where you can memorize your entire deck beforehand, but they don't see a ton of play there unfortunately.
 
Out of curiosity, I went through all of the Zendikar MDFCs, ignoring the mythics, and I'd be happy enough to draft these as "spells that you can play as a tapland that taps for their color":



EDIT: To be clear, there are other cards that I'd be willing to run from the batch, but most of them would require me to support some pretty specific archetypes. I also think they're fine unless you're also running the mythics — be consistent, and you're fine.
 
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No love for these?



Jwari Disruption is Censor that's guaranteed to draw an Island. Mauling is poor rate, but it and the hazard can both kill things. Skyclave Cleric is a great defensive tool for decks that need to hit their land drops--a 1/3 and 2 life is a shockingly large obstacle for 1W. I also think that Malakir Rebirth and Pelakka Predation are perfectly fine, even if the former is a little niche and the latter is a little overcosted.
 
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