Card/Deck Single Card Spotlight
- Thread starter Dom Harvey
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Chris Taylor
Contributor
#NotAllAngels
Shitposting may have gone too far...
FSR I think you should try out your modified proclamation of rebirth. The change sounds fair and makes it a lot more tempting to draft.
Did anybody try this origins card out? Looking to cut one of my creature bouncers at 3 in blue and thinking about an ophidian effect...
I know there are a few people on here that enjoy the ninja. How often does he connect more than once?
Did anybody try this origins card out? Looking to cut one of my creature bouncers at 3 in blue and thinking about an ophidian effect...
I know there are a few people on here that enjoy the ninja. How often does he connect more than once?
Jhessian Thief plays even better than she looks over here. A 1/3 is fair, but a 2/4~3/5 can eat a lot; the threat of activation means you can usually swing in and draw every turn, because folks get shy to block or "waste" removal on her. Even if your drafters don't underestimate drawing free cards every turn, she still has plenty to offer. I'd throw her in and never look back, your blue section will thank you for it if your cube is at my power level or below.
Did anybody try this origins card out? Looking to cut one of my creature bouncers at 3 in blue and thinking about an ophidian effect...
I know there are a few people on here that enjoy the ninja. How often does he connect more than once?
I think the more apt comparison is:
Same mana cost, same p/t, similar roles. Up-front digging vs. potential for strong attacking and true card advantage. The question is whether or not your blue decks really ever attack with their blockers- Azure Mage makes its way into control decks all the time, but I'm not sure people would rather have thief over oracle.
For what it's worth I think the thief is worth a try. Neurok Commando and then Stealer of Secrets both made progressively-larger splashes in the (admittedly peasant) cubeosphere, and Jhessian Thief is the best by far IMO.
Hmmm, I always saw Sea Gate Oracle as purely a control card, whereas Jhessian Thief looks like a solid tem- uh, disruptive aggro-control guy. Tandem Lookout would actually be the slot I'd look to swap out when considering another Ophidian, but I love the Lookout way too much for the time being.
Meanwhile, Sea Gate Oracle is as close to a staple as it gets over here, because blue control needs those value guys.
Meanwhile, Sea Gate Oracle is as close to a staple as it gets over here, because blue control needs those value guys.
Jhessian Thief is great. Prowess is ridiculously easy to trigger and she can usually swing in without fear because people are afraid of a potential blowout or they just don't want to use up premier removal. Scroll Thief is unplayable, but one that can actually survive combat and get through is amazing. Prowess makes all the difference.
I wouldn't classify Sea Gate Oracle in the same category, I don't think they're remotely similar. You're just using Oracle in most control decks to gum up the board whereas you want to be proactive with Jhessian Thief.
I wouldn't classify Sea Gate Oracle in the same category, I don't think they're remotely similar. You're just using Oracle in most control decks to gum up the board whereas you want to be proactive with Jhessian Thief.
I run all three (Tandem Lookout, Jhessian Thief, Sea Gate) and I'd cut Sea Gate first if I was ever inclined to cut one. I think there are now plenty of tools allowing for blue to be more aggressive and board-state-oriented, so to me imho the comparison of "Sea Gate vs Jhessian Thief" feels as out of place as saying "okay guys, which 3-drop flyer is better for black, Herald of Torment, or Bone Shredder?" Both could find their way into the same deck, and both are okay (if not super exciting) options, but both are suggesting very different potential lines of play; the Herald is more aggressive and might support enchantress plans, whereas the Shredder is more reactive and plays better with sac/recursion plans. While we could certainly pick one or the other if we had to, it's important to consider what sort of decks you are allowing or not allowing in those sorts of decisions. Passing on Thief for Sea Gate is explicitly a decision to keep blue durdle/control/blink-oriented, whereas picking up Thief over Sea Gate is a decision to push spells-matter/blue aggression and even reward aggressive blue plans. I'm not saying everyone should be putting aggressive tools in blue, but I think it feels like a Real Option now, whereas before it was more of a Wild Dogs-style cube designer mistake.
And also: similar to the issue that most people run too much ramp in green, most people also tend to bloat blue's spell section with card selection spells, and I think strapping more of that to bodies helps blue feel a little less like a 1-player game.
And also: similar to the issue that most people run too much ramp in green, most people also tend to bloat blue's spell section with card selection spells, and I think strapping more of that to bodies helps blue feel a little less like a 1-player game.
CML
Contributor
It's a power-level thing, too. Jhessian Thief dominates games of Origins and will never see play in Standard. Sea Gate Oracle was about as good in Rise draft as it was in a Standard format with Stoneforge Mystic and JTMS. Plan for your Cube accordingly, but Sea Gate Oracle is the more flexible card for designers.
Grillo_Parlante
Contributor
Just want to say I agree with the notion of sea gate being a control card rather than anything else, and that we tend to overload on card selection in blue.
I was a bit hesitant to post because of the controversy it would cause, but i.m.o. we tend to really overload on specifically brainstorm, which is much more of a niche card due to environmental differences between cube and the two eternal formats where its really strong.
Brainstorms worth is connected to the density and availability of fetchlands; and fetchlands (or shuffle effect) based strategies will be niche in cube for the time being. In a 360 cube running the standard x2 fetch, x2 shock, 5.5% of your format is fetchlands, and each player in an 8 man draft should get about 2.5 fetchlands apiece. Fetchlands will make up around 5% of your average final 40.
Looking at mtg goldfish. The top miracles deck is 15% fetchlands at 60, RUG delver is 13%, RWU stoneblade is 15%, and bug delver is 15%.
Now, there is another eternal enviornment where brainstorm is legal, but fetchlands are not (besides terramorphic expanse and evolving wilds), and that format is pauper. I think every single person new to the format goes through a phase where they want to jam brainstorm into their decks, and its just not great. The only deck in the format that can use brainstorm as a card selection piece is the thought scour running UB delver deck. The rationalization for brainstorm usually revolves around some combination of ponder or expanse/wilds as shuffle mechanisms, but at the end of the day you never really reach the eloquence, density, or efficency of running 15% actual fetchlands in a deck like you can in legacy, and brainstorm feels much more akin to how it felt back when iceage was released.
Brainstorm gets overevaluated in pauper as a powerful card precisely due to enviornments like legacy, and people miss that its a synergy card, for which they are missing an important density of a key part of that relationship. Thats not to say that brainstorm is a bad card in pauper, just that its a niche card, and isn't well positioned to be one of the defining cards of that format. Unlike say, ponder or preordain, which are actual independently powerful card selection spells.
I feel this applies to cube as well, where people feel the card is powerful, they want it to be a powerful card, it may be anecdotally powerful, but its much more appropriate to view it as a niche card, due to the limited access to fetchlands. If you are going to poach a metagame relationship from another format, you can't poach half of the relationship and expect it to standup in the new environment. This is the same problem that stifle has in cube, and I would argue wasteland has as well (though wasteland can be justified on different grounds, making it only overrated).
Now, if we cut shocklands, and just run a full 40 fetchlands, our players are getting around 5 fetchlands a piece, and their final number is more akin to what you would have in legacy, with your average 40 being about 12.5% fetchlands.
Unless you are looking to increase your fetchland density (and coincidentally I've seen some people here discuss precisely that), cutting brainstorm down to 1 copy shouldn't be too much of a loss. Most of you guys aren't running the really robust discard, self-mill, or tutor into play suites that could justify so many copies. I also don't actually think its correct to run multiple copies specifically to flip delver (even more of a vanishingly small % metagame relationship), or that its even generally correct to go out of your way to flip delver.
Even if we increased fetchland desnity, I'm also not sure that its even good to be running a large selection of these blue cantrips due to how powerful the effect is. At 360, I think its fine to narrow that pure card selection mechanism down to say 3 cards (maybe even 2), and than start attaching that effect to other more conditional bodies or spells that push people into actual strategies: condescend, sea gate oracle, looter il-kor, or jace, vryn's prodigy for example.
Eh, call me a scrooge.
Some numbers. 2.5 fetch / deck = 6.25% of the final 40. Toss in some more and some evolving wilds in ULD, and I'm up to about 9% fetchlands in a deck. I don't even think it's about Delver, but, I will say when I ludicrously increased from 3 Brainstorm to 6 the drafters liked it, they got spread over 4-5 decks, and nobody missed Preordain or Ponder.
Some numbers. 2.5 fetch / deck = 6.25% of the final 40. Toss in some more and some evolving wilds in ULD, and I'm up to about 9% fetchlands in a deck. I don't even think it's about Delver, but, I will say when I ludicrously increased from 3 Brainstorm to 6 the drafters liked it, they got spread over 4-5 decks, and nobody missed Preordain or Ponder.
Ponder without fetchlands suffers from basically the same problem as Brainstorm. A built-in shuffle is nice, true, but if you are digging for, say, a board wipe and see it? You're also getting the other two cards.
Ponder gives you the option of accepting 1 of 3 or shipping them back for a new 1. Brainstorm gives you 1 of three with no option, which is why I'm more inclined to pick Ponder over Brainstorm if I'm not running enough fetches/any Miracles to make Brainstorm feel "good". That said, my format's draft experience is radically different from everyone else's here, so I don't feel that I should talk about why I run 3 Brainstorms, because it's not relevant to anyone here but me.
Grillo_Parlante
Contributor
I agree that it can be a fun card that people would enjoy playing, and in that context it would be fine to support. Brainstorm is an iconic card for a lot of people, and a certain amount of subconscious bias goes with that, which is fine to appeal to.
However, we go some pretty extreme lengths here to make some cards work (multi-picks), and while I think thats good to do, it should factor into the way the card is evaluated. In order to support brainstorm, you are having to devout a lot of support space in the main cube, a seperate land draft, a specific density of a certain type of land, and some of those supporting cards in the land draft aren't even particularly good.
Compare that with Ponder or preordain, which don't require any explicit support.
Grillo_Parlante
Contributor
In pauper, you have the option of running preordain, ponder, and brainstorm in the mono blue delver decks. Those decks have no shuffle effects (outside of the shuffle effect if you pair brainstorm with ponder, which I have tried and discarded as being poor).
I consider ponder to probably be the independently strongest of the blue cantrip effects, though ponder vs. preordain will probably be a debate that never ends. The big advantage of ponder is that it gives you a lot more control when searching for a specific card: you get to dig 3 and if you whiff, you have a shot on the redraw. Preordain, on the other hand, only lets you see 2 cards ever, and than decide if you want to gamble on a 3rd. Its just less information.
Brainstorm without a shuffle or self-mill is the undisputed worst of the options. You are pretty much priced into using it as an EOT spell, rather than as a mainphase spell like in legacy, which makes it so much worse (this is one of the numerious problems with trying to pair it with expanse/evolving wilds, to the point I wouldn't even count those shuffle effects in a % breakdown). Even with thought scour I am not a big fan, because of the mana investment. Where as with ponder or preordain, they can be a lategame topdeck to main phase in the hopes of eventually drawing out of a bad situation. Brainstorm is a lot worse in those situations, as a certain % of the time it just locks you out of further draws, and effectively ends the game.
I can see why people like the card, I just think it has a lot of warts in cube that get swept under the rug.
I've always thought that Ponder is better in combo and synergy decks, where you're looking for a specific card to break the game wide open, and being able to dig up to four cards deep for is a heckuva deal. Meanwhile, Preordain tends to be better in straight value decks or leaner decks with a curve, that are just looking to filter through the chaff for overall card quality without needing any one particular card. Still, they're both amazing, and are very comparable in power level - like, we're talking one is a 92/100 and the other is a 94/100, and I'm not sure which is which. Either way, in any given cube deck, you probably wouldn't mind if your Preordain somehow got swapped out for a Ponder, and vice versa.
is a heckuva deal. Meanwhile, Preordain tends to be better in straight value decks or leaner decks with a curve, that are just looking to filter through the chaff for overall card quality without needing any one particular card. Still, they're both amazing, and are very comparable in power level - like, we're talking one is a 92/100 and the other is a 94/100, and I'm not sure which is which. Either way, in any given cube deck, you probably wouldn't mind if your Preordain somehow got swapped out for a Ponder, and vice versa.
I mean, the floor on Brainstorm isn't that low even. At worst, it's a 1 mana instant speed cantrip. At best it has loads of interactions with shuffle effects, top of library effects, things that care about drawing cards, etc.
I agree with Eric that Preordain is my favorite in the absence of interactions, but it is really just the definition of filler to me. The presence of Preordain has almost zero impact on my drafting or deckbuilding.
I agree with Eric that Preordain is my favorite in the absence of interactions, but it is really just the definition of filler to me. The presence of Preordain has almost zero impact on my drafting or deckbuilding.
Grillo_Parlante
Contributor
The floor is a lot worse because of brainstorm lock, even if you are casting it EOT (which is not how you want to be casting brainstorm). Impulse or even telling time are better in that spot.
My guys don't have a legacy background, so when I went up to multiple brainstorms I was pretty disappointed at how it worked out. Again, if you are averaging 2 fetchlands a deck, and I have to pop a fetchland in the early game to setup my mana, I'm not in a good spot to use brainstorm in the same way that made it a format defining card in vintage or legacy.
To have an honest discussion of the card, you have to lay out the low, the average, and the high. We found that the low for brainstorm was you get locked; the average was you shot it off EOT, hit some cards you wanted, and didn't really mind being semi-locked; and the high was those sort of powerful legacy-like shuffle interactions you referenced above. As a result, it was always a middling pick here, and ponder or preordain have always been higher picks--they are just much more consistent of a turn 1 play to address negative variance.
Brainstorm is terrible in formats that lack a certain type of shuffle effect, swingy in formats that can't give it a certain density of that certain type of shuffle effect, and amazing in formats with a high density of that shuffle effect. If you are running x2 fetch, x2 shock at 360, you just don't have that density to be on the high end of the curve, which is what our playgroup experienced.
And this is coming from someone who built a format where TOL manipulation and shuffling were important mechanics. I know the "but I can get more shuffle effects from <x>" rationalization as I have made it many times myself. The problem with those arguments is that you don't want to be investing mana and time in whats supposed to be a simple draw smoother. I've tried evolving wilds and terramorphic expanse, but that generally pushes you into EOT brainstorm territory, and is just so clunky to sequence as to be actively bad.
I don't expect you personally to cut your brainstorms, nor do I think its correct for your specific group (they like the card and I think you've gone to some extremes to make it great), but as someone that learned that hard way that this is a YMMV card, I just wanted to plant the flag that a lot of formats probably are running way to many copies, and that they could afford to cut back.
And this can be a hard realization to come to because its such a sacred cow here.
Chris Taylor
Contributor
Jason, when you say preordain doesn't impact your deckbuilding decisions, what cards do for brainstorms? Is it just shuffle and miracle, or is there something I'm forgetting?
I may be misunderstanding your question, but targetted discard/hand discard effects being available in the format also make Brainstorm nicer to save desirable cards in your hand. Dakra Mystic also has desirable interactions, as do some pieces of self-mill, though these situations are admittedly a bit less common than the shuffle interaction.
Chris Taylor
Contributor
No you've got it right
Man, I've never seen the brainstorm/thoughtseize interaction ever.
Grillo_Parlante
Contributor
Thats another metagame relationship thats usually missing with higher power cubes: a density of good discard. Thoughtseize, cabal therapy, and inquisition of kozilek are the only playable ones, and thoughtseize is miles better than the other two.
The lack of it dovetails into the viability of a lot of other metagame relationships.
I never really realized what a void the lack of discard represented until I cut the usual anemic discard package from the penny cube in favor of a slower, larger, but more robust one (which that cube's slower speed supports). People play very differently when they can't consider the hand a safe zone, and its a great meta check on strategies that just want to build up to the point where they can leverage powerful threats (durdle midrange, ramp, or combo).
It felt like a big part of black identity was missing but returned. I think thats important because so many of the constructed relationships we try to poach are premised on the notion that discard is part of the metagame.
The lack of it dovetails into the viability of a lot of other metagame relationships.
I never really realized what a void the lack of discard represented until I cut the usual anemic discard package from the penny cube in favor of a slower, larger, but more robust one (which that cube's slower speed supports). People play very differently when they can't consider the hand a safe zone, and its a great meta check on strategies that just want to build up to the point where they can leverage powerful threats (durdle midrange, ramp, or combo).
It felt like a big part of black identity was missing but returned. I think thats important because so many of the constructed relationships we try to poach are premised on the notion that discard is part of the metagame.
Off the top of my head...
4/4 top of library sphinx
1/1 who flips into a 3/2
squid who gets +1/+1 every time you draw a card and makes lots of baby squids
snake who gets +1/+1 every time you draw a card
1/3 who reveals 3 and can grab an instant or sorcery
Domri
Loam
Courser
Prophetic Flamespeaker
Abbot of Keral Keep
Chandra
Bob
Flying 4/4 two-sided Bob
Prowess combat tricks (suck it Preordain and Ponder)
Someone test out 4x thoughtseize and cabal + kozilek and see how it runs.