Card/Deck Single Card Spotlight
- Thread starter Dom Harvey
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Unless you run a powered cube or give someone a stack of artifact lands, I'm not a huge fan of Trinket Mage, either.
I tried Hedron Crab, but without explicit support for a mill-you theme, he was most relegated to side duty for the self-mill decks. Even then, I found that I wanted to play ol' fashioned dredge cards more, as they typically have some other secondary function, and aren't as do-nothing as the Crab.
I tried Hedron Crab, but without explicit support for a mill-you theme, he was most relegated to side duty for the self-mill decks. Even then, I found that I wanted to play ol' fashioned dredge cards more, as they typically have some other secondary function, and aren't as do-nothing as the Crab.
He's very nice in pauper as a pseudo-stoneforge, picking up Bonesplitter or artifact lands. He was disappointing in cube, though
Do we count Mox Diamond as a cool thing Trinket Mage can do? Mox Diamond only accelerates you if you have two lands in hand, and by the time you play the Mage that's not often a guarantee.
You can pitch colorless lands like Mutavault to Mox Diamond to make any color mana.
Chris Taylor
Contributor
For those not wanting to mouseover all of those:
Chimeric Mass: I've never found this card to be that great, tutorable or not
Mox Diamond: See Jason's comment, on turn 3-4 this card might just rot in your hand
Elixir of Immortality: This seems super niche
Poor for lifegain and gives you and edge in the GRINDYEST of control mirrorssylvok lifestaff: I'm even less sure of this source of pure lifegain
wayfarer's Bauble: Eh, seems mediocre. Why does Trinket mage always seem to have Echo?
Brittle Effigy: POISON PRINCIPLE. This card is garbage.
Bonesplitter: the card is fine, but I don't think the deck that wants a cantripping grey ogre wants bonesplitter
I dunno, I'm not really sold on borderland ranger either, so maybe that's the problem here
Fact: Wayfarer's Bauble is banned in my cube, for powering up the control decks too much.
*ducks and runs*
*ducks and runs*
Chris Taylor
Contributor
I have no words
This card is amazing even in an aggro cube:
Sphinx's Revelation is really good. It's definitely better in constructed, just because the second one is pretty much going to win you the game, and in cube you have to do a little work to cast a second one. Even so, excellent card.
I've been pleasantly surprised by this guy, as he feels like a fair Baneslayer / Consecrated Sphinx mash-up that doesn't stymie aggro decks as early on, but can still take over the game eventually if left unchecked. Would this and Sphinx's Revelation be too much for a UW section, though, considering they're both essentially seven drops?
I wouldn't play the Reaver. The flexibility of the letter 'X' and the instant-speed make Revelation the superior card.
FlowerSunRain
Contributor
Sphinx's Revelation is just a baller design. Who knew an unplayable card like stroke of genius would be so great with a more restrictive cost and some lifegain. The Reaver is a brutal, brutal card, but you can only run a couple of 6+ drops in the whole cube, I'm not sure this is one of them.
Anyway, thoughts on. She's certainly mana intensive and powerful, but what decks does she actually encourage? I've seen her most of the time she ends up as the "I missed Falkenrath Aristocrat and Hero of Oxid Ridge and all I got was this stupid 4 drop" booby prize in a R/B aggro deck. She's probably the princess of Jund Midrage Goodstuff (with Liliana of the Veil being the queen), but is that actually worth a cube slot? There's, like a million other 4 drops Jund can play. . .
Anyway, thoughts on
. She's certainly mana intensive and powerful, but what decks does she actually encourage? I've seen her most of the time she ends up as the "I missed Falkenrath Aristocrat and Hero of Oxid Ridge and all I got was this stupid 4 drop" booby prize in a R/B aggro deck. She's probably the princess of Jund Midrage Goodstuff (with Liliana of the Veil being the queen), but is that actually worth a cube slot? There's, like a million other 4 drops Jund can play. . .I've felt the same way about Olivia, except she's usually in a Grixis deck in our group, but the same concept applies.
My replacement of choice for her in Rakdos would be Falkenrath Aristocrat, but that just feels like yet another hasty red four-drop to me. Maybe Blightning instead? Is Sarkhan the Mad even worth considering?
My replacement of choice for her in Rakdos would be Falkenrath Aristocrat, but that just feels like yet another hasty red four-drop to me. Maybe Blightning instead? Is Sarkhan the Mad even worth considering?
FlowerSunRain
Contributor
I already run Aristocrat and love the card. She is not merely another red hasty four drop to me, particularly since I don't run hellrider or bloodbraid elf, I'm not exactly lousy with them. Being a sac outlet and potentially very resiliant are huge keys to her success.
I'm not looking to replace Olivia with a r/b card, I'm just wondering if she is worth a space overall in the overall scheme of the cube or if the space can support something elsewhere.
I'm not looking to replace Olivia with a r/b card, I'm just wondering if she is worth a space overall in the overall scheme of the cube or if the space can support something elsewhere.
Theoretically, Drogskol Reaver looks perfect to me. I would run it as a UW finisher, and I would cut something else for him. 7 mana is difficult to reach and stabilise, but not too hard. If you get one block and/or attack with him you should be winning the game. Cubes like Jason's might be too fast to safely reach 7, though. They still have a turn to kill you before he can attack, too. So basically what I'm saying is I would run it in my cube, but I won't be bothered to actually do it unless I start looking at a life gain theme. I'm happy with the finishers I have now.
Olivia is actually the Queen of Control Finishers. When she's in play, she functions much like a planeswalker: remove her, or die. In particular, she eats small aggro creatures for breakfast, and dominates the creature-based matchups. She routinely took over so many games here that I'm currently benching her for the time being, to give other cards some room to breathe.
It's funny, because while I don't run many monocolour sevens, I find that expensive multicolour drops are actually not that difficult to splash and include. While it's sometimes tough to justify running good, cheap, two-color aggro creatures, because you aren't guaranteed to cast them on curve, it's not hard to assemble all of your splash colours by the time you hit your seventh land drop. This has let a variety of big multicolour creatures shine here. I wouldn't be so quick to dismiss them without giving them a shot.
Of course, with all that said, Sphinx's Revelation is objectively the more powerful card. The only reason I don't have one is that I'm waiting for its $25 price tag to dip. I'm just wondering if it's at all plausible to run both of these cards in a UW section, which is always a popular colour combination, but surprisingly doesn't have many interesting gold cards.
It's funny, because while I don't run many monocolour sevens, I find that expensive multicolour drops are actually not that difficult to splash and include. While it's sometimes tough to justify running good, cheap, two-color aggro creatures, because you aren't guaranteed to cast them on curve, it's not hard to assemble all of your splash colours by the time you hit your seventh land drop. This has let a variety of big multicolour creatures shine here. I wouldn't be so quick to dismiss them without giving them a shot.
Of course, with all that said, Sphinx's Revelation is objectively the more powerful card. The only reason I don't have one is that I'm waiting for its $25 price tag to dip. I'm just wondering if it's at all plausible to run both of these cards in a UW section, which is always a popular colour combination, but surprisingly doesn't have many interesting gold cards.
FlowerSunRain
Contributor
Speaking of Spike Jester, that's another multicolor card I'm thinking about trimming. Does he add significant enough speed to B/R aggro to justify all the 15th picks he takes on being useless in any other deck.
I really want to jam Sejiri Merfolk in my cube too now, that's another slot that must be found!
I really want to jam Sejiri Merfolk in my cube too now, that's another slot that must be found!
I really love Sarkhan the Mad in my cube, he works perfectly with the themes I am running. One of my favorite cube decks involved ramping to Sarkhan with Growth Spasm then turning the token into a dragon.
Merfolk has entered my cube in place of Trinket Mage, and is super castable and sufficiently powerful for even my cube, and is even on theme for the new lifegain stuff.
CML
Contributor
I had trouble finding enough support for the super-powerful Trinket Mage, restrictive tutoring is really fun in Cube because it's not as good as it is in Constructed (see: Birthing Pod, Green Sun's Zenith, maybe even Zur the Enchanter, etc.) but you really have to push this particular one without "pushing it" too much, putting it in an odd spot without weaving it into another theme that has similar constraints.
The coolest thing Mr McVeigh can pull out is unquestionably Engineered Explosives
The coolest thing Mr McVeigh can pull out is unquestionably Engineered Explosives