Card/Deck Sands of Delirium

[Hathaway]

Is it worth a spot in cube? Or does it ruin games?

I added a Millstone for fun a while back, and it gets drafted, but hasn't destroyed any games. I want to add a few more cards to enable a mill strategy, but don't want to accidentally do bad things to the environment.

Anyone have any experience with Sands of Delirium and its friends in limited?

 

[Eric Chan]

It was really good in M13 draft, from what I remember, though that's a world and a half away from cube draft!

I think there's a place for a couple of select library-attacking control finishers, as long as you place them in your cube for that purpose - i.e., not to support some vaunted mill theme, but rather, to be an Aetherling that has an utter and complete contempt for the combat phase. Sands of Delirium is one of the better ones, and I think Sphinx's Tutelage has now entered that discussion, as well. There's no real danger of these cards ruining games, as it were, as they aren't particularly high powered in most cube environments; GRBS status on mill cards is reserved for real crapola like Sword of Body and Mind and Jace, Memory Adept.

My preference would be for

 

[RavebornMuse]

It seems dreadful. Solid cards for mill that I run:



The trick to mill is to make sure the cards do something other than simply mill, and to interlock it into other game plans (ie, I also run Laboratory Maniac). There's gallons of potential and depth to mill in cube, but it requires a delicate touch. Don't just jam simple mill effects like Sands; you need things that have incidental mill value or that can force too much extra card draw for your opponent to reliably utilize. Personally, I'm strongly of the belief that without the Altar, the strategy will practically never play out successfully, and the Orb is extremely handy for making mill happen a lot more easily while adding a fun twist to games when it appears. The rest are less "necessary", but every bit helps!

Edit: and Nephalia Drownyard is also pretty sweet!
Edit2: and Reforge the Soul! There are possibly others in my list I'm forgetting...
Edit3: Riddlekeeper too! That should be all the obvious ones..

 

[James Stevenson]

It was a lame bomb in whatever format it was in