Honestly, a lot of the cards you mention are super playable at a very high power level OR lower power level. The big difference is with singleton, you need to stretch farther afield for consistency (to make GR madness a thing for example), and so the final product ends up being most natural at a slightly lower power. The colorless duplicate breaking is more important for making a non-on-rails high power version. I think that might explain some
@Erik Twice 's difficulties when asking "how can I make LED playable" or things like that.
Yeah, most of those are pretty high octane in the right context. My dredge and discard/madness oriented aggro decks can be stupid fast.
At least that's my current state of thinking.
@inscho is probably facing a lot of these tensions as he explores different options for higher power while maintaining strict singleton. But Klavier, I think most of your examples are in inscho's list.
It's easy enough to dial up the power of discard and graveyard strategies in black and red based guilds by omitting efficient exiling effects (graveyard and permanents). The tension for me has always been keeping selesnya and azorius (and to a lesser extent simic) thematically interesting and competitive in a graveyard environment. Fortunately, NEO has allowed the artifact subtheme to expand which has solved a handful of my problems. Selesnya is still the problem child.
In my experience, there has historically been three types of cards that allow white and green to scale up in power in a graveyard environment:
The efficient exiling effects that hinder graveyard strategies from thriving:
Single card engines/bombs that require more premium removal, graveyard hate (see above), or format speed [1] to keep in check:
Fast mana:
[1] I've recently focused on pushing my format's speed while still avoiding single card bombs to see if it solves some of my problems. I've brought in more fast mana and lowered the general curve....prioritized cards that return from the graveyard (
phoenix of ash) rather than ones that have fussy sequencing (
anje's ravager). The increased speed has started to make some of the above cards feel more reasonable for my environment: Scavenging Ooze is only oppressive if the player has the time to activate it multiple times, Titania's casting cost is beginning to feel a little cumbersome, better removal is needed to deal with faster recursive threats, etc.
Red is almost getting to the point where
Burning Inquiry feels like my format's
Ancestral Recall. I've been similarly eyeing
Lion's Eye Diamond, because it's starting to feel less like a niche combo card and more like a build-your-own
Black Lotus....which sounds delicious. If I can support LED in a holistic way then I'm one step closer to a holistic Storm deck (
Underworld Breach was a big piece to solving that puzzle). My ultimate goal is to create a high-powered synergy-driven combo cube that avoids the compartmentalized groups of cards of a traditional combo cube (
palinchron +
high tide,
voltaic key +
time vault, etc)
Things are in a great place for discard and graveyard themes, and they are only getting better.
