Card/Deck Single Card Spotlight

Tzenmoroth

Tzenmoroth



Found this card in my collection. I feel like Bx aggro, pox, reanimator would love a good 2B: Discard our hands, esp with black having draw engines to recover. Too much mana? Too miserable? Dies too much to revealing a hand of lands? Too much of me wanting Haakon to be P1P1 material? Too much of me wanting bad cards to be good and asking about them on this thread?
 
Onderzeeboot

Onderzeeboot

Ecstatic Orb
Main thing with Last Rites is that it's card disadvantage. You really have to make use of those discarded lands, otherwise you're just down a card. I can't remember this seeing play in Odyssey-era standard, and that format was full of graveyard value plays. Stupor would be a better card at that spot 99% of the time I feel
 
Tzenmoroth

Tzenmoroth

So its like bitterblossom but you pay 2W for it then pay 2WW a turn to for it, or 1W if you don't want to get anything out of it this turn. But I guess I don't lose life....? I guess its fine if I can dump 5WWWWW into it each turn but if I can do that, why aren't I winning? I'm trying to find the situation in which this card does work but I can't even figure out a halfway decent magical Christmas land scenario. o_O
 
Chris Taylor

Chris Taylor

Contributor
I think bitterblossom is a bit of a cheap comparison there because bitterblossom is so insaely mana efficient, but mesa still isn't that great. Basically all they have in common is they make 1/1 fliers.

Bitterblossom is an early game card, mesa is a lategame card, one costs you life the other costs you lands.

And the "magical chrismasland" scenario of mesa being good is any point after turn 7 assuming you aren't dead already.
 
Jason Waddell

Jason Waddell

Administrator
Staff member
Kuldahar said:


It's instant. It ramps (read land, as in can put non-basics onto the battlefield). It buffs. The art is pretty. It's Kiora.
What's there not to love?

This card did some work for me over the weekend, esp. when paired with landfall.
Click to expand...

Give Steppe Lynx +6/+6 at instant speed. :)
 
Chris Taylor

Chris Taylor

Contributor
I think y'all are forgetting how shit elvish pioneer is :p

In terms of GW landfall, I think Sythe Leapord and the new bear actually give it a lot of life, assuming landfall is something you want at base, since while it's powerful, it's the old "Gravecrawler Can't Block" as a GW archetype.
It's cool, and an interesting, almost always on bonus to an existing creature (assuming it's low enough on the curve), but not something I'd build an archetype around
 
Aoret

Aoret

Developer
This kinda raises the question then of how many combat tricks are desirable in a format. Generally speaking, I feel like my own format has too few (I can think of 3 off the top of my head in my 360. One each in white, green, and black, not counting reckless charge in red because it's not really a 'trick' as such). I actually really like the way games feel when combat tricks are prevalent. I find they make best of 3 series really interesting too, in much the same way that seeing Daze in game 1 or 2 can.

But how many tricks does a good cube deck want? And then, extrapolating from there, how many does my cube want? I think you can probably make them feel less like filler if you support double strike, heroic, or prowess, but I also don't want my cube to turn into Become Immense cube (although the occasionally blowout on a double striker is funny...)

I don't think I want to go the route of Utility Trick Draft, but I dunno how many slots I want to "waste" on tricks either
 
FlowerSunRain

FlowerSunRain

Contributor
My cube loves these themes and I only run 8 instant speed combat spells (not including stuff like darkblast). I think this is probably 1 cards too light at the moment, but more then that is completely unneeded as decks only want 2-3 of these cards tops. So even in format dense with types of cards, 1.5% of non-land cards is probably all you want, so like 4 at a normal 360.
 
Grillo_Parlante

Grillo_Parlante

Contributor
I run 10ish at 360, which feels right. A good percentage of them are temp protection though, which pulls multiple duties.

Those decks only want 2-3 of those effects total, otherwise they become unstable without draw smoothing tech. I think I have 6 effects total which grow a creature at instant speed.
 
Chris Taylor

Chris Taylor

Contributor
Well, two quick questions:

1) Are your control decks blocking at all? combat tricks seem poor if they're sideboard cards for the aggro/midrange mirror
2) Does the difference between Demon's Grasp in normal limited and Doom Blade in your average cube make tricks fundamentally awful?
 
Tyrole

Tyrole

I agree that combat tricks make for much more interesting games (where interesting is defined as meaningful interaction in combat...which it often is). The trouble in my environment has been similar to auras and equipment: which tricks are good enough to be worth drafting and including in a deck, yet are not so good that they are game breaking? It is also important that they are low CMC (almost always 3 or less; often 2 or less) or else they tend to become strictly offensive tricks. To complicate matters, the effectiveness of tricks decreases with the prevalence of instant-speed removal.

One partial answer is flash creatures, especially those with ETB or pseudo-ETB effects. I recently updated my trick suite to increase the number and color variety. Hoping to see that combat is a bit more dynamic in my next draft.


Here are my current tricks. I did not include direct removal or bounce spells, or which there are quite a few more.




While my environment is a bit lower-powered than the average cube around here, some of these (particularly in white) are kind of bad and likely need to get swapped asap. So that's 26, though most of those creatures I would not really include as meaningful tricks.
 
Aoret

Aoret

Developer
Great points here. You're probably right CT that tricks might just be terrible in environments with a lot of good removal (which mine definitely is). Maybe in a sense Grillo's point about temp protection addresses that a little bit and creates some interesting tension. The point about doom blade also makes me more okay with aforementioned Immense Paladin beats.
 
Grillo_Parlante

Grillo_Parlante

Contributor
I used to think that combat tricks were unplayable with high power removal, but where they shine is as reactive disruptive tools that also provide pressure. Take a look at legacy infect, pauper stompy, or standard heroic. Those are all decks that force the opp to play around the perceived pressure of those buffs.
 
Lucre

Lucre

Kuldahar said:


It's instant. It ramps (read land, as in can put non-basics onto the battlefield). It buffs. The art is pretty. It's Kiora.
What's there not to love?

This card did some work for me over the weekend, esp. when paired with landfall.
Click to expand...
Do you cube bouncelands or something?
 
Grillo_Parlante

Grillo_Parlante

Contributor
I don't really see where that specific card fits in. The buff is negligable and those decks dont really care about ramping. The going rate for +2 +2 is 0 mana via mutagentic growth, and I don't think that card is good enough in cube. It either needs to hexproof/shroud/protection or grant enough toughness to counter damage based removal.
 
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