Card/Deck Single Card Spotlight

ahadabans

ahadabans

The diamonds are brown border yes, but they come into play tapped. Seemed super slow to me (though I could be wrong). At least with medallions you can drop them and with enough mana get value immediately. I also really like how that value snowballs if you chain spells. Might be illogical (bad idea) to run a medallion in an aggressive deck, but say you drop pearl medallion T2, you can then play 5 mana worth of dudes on T3. 1W and 1WW for example. That's a pretty serious T3 play. Running mono colored eliminates mana screw (of the color variety), removes you having to choose dual lands over playable, and let's you run all the CC cards you want without fear. Drafting this is difficult and I get that it rarely pans out that way except on cubetutor. I don't think I have ever successfully drafted a truly mono colored deck with real people.
 
ahadabans

ahadabans

Absolutely. But if you trend a bit more midrange or have a source of CA (where mana is your bottleneck not cards), you can keep chaining spells turn after turn. On T4, you can a 4 drop and a 2 drop. Or a 3 drop and two 2 drops. And with 5 mana.. you get the idea. Is it worth the temp loss early? Probably not in a really fast aggro deck. But as a general rule, he or she who spends the most mana (virtual or otherwise) in a game of Magic generally wins.
 
Laz

Laz

Developer
I feel you probably want effects more of the order of 'exchange control of two target permanents' than simply Donate. It just seems a little more versatile (Plus, think of the value with Demonic Pact... You get their guy, AND they lose the game!).

EDIT: Oh... those cards don't exist. Now I am saddened.

EDIT TWO: Ha! Puca's Mischief!

EDIT THREE: Really, I just wanted Switcheroo for non-land permanents. Everything is all about 'sharing card-types' though. Apparently they really don't want you giving away Enchantments (probably to do with the fact that exchanging control of Auras would be pretty busted). Nonland, non-Aura permanent?
 
safra

safra

Laz said:
I feel you probably want effects more of the order of 'exchange control of two target permanents' than simply Donate. It just seems a little more versatile (Plus, think of the value with Demonic Pact... You get their guy, AND they lose the game!).

EDIT: Oh... those cards don't exist. Now I am saddened.

EDIT TWO: Ha! Puca's Mischief!

EDIT THREE: Really, I just wanted Switcheroo for non-land permanents. Everything is all about 'sharing card-types' though. Apparently they really don't want you giving away Enchantments (probably to do with the fact that exchanging control of Auras would be pretty busted). Nonland, non-Aura permanent?
Click to expand...
 
RavebornMuse

RavebornMuse

A cross-post from Fight Club! Eric said the following, which got me thinking:

Eric Chan said:
Profane Command is safe, as one of the premier black control anchors - it's been in there since the beginning, and is only getting better as I lower my format's power level. I'm just trying to figure out how to supplement the archetype with more grindy value spells, in lieu of overpowered finishers like Grave Titan.
Click to expand...



Is this really a fun and good card? I cut it shortly after my cube began because the fear mode and life-loss mode were extremely consistently paired together for a black aggro win-con. I've long considered bringing it back, but I remember some serious feelbads re: fear + life loss in the beginning. How does everyone else like it?
 
Alfonzo Bonzo

Alfonzo Bonzo

I have similar concerns, it's the fear part for me particularly, but depends on your tolerance for 'I win' type effects which I try to minimise.
 
Meltyman

Meltyman


Last weekend we had a situation where i had Imprisoned in the Moon stuck on a big creature and we somehow started to talk what would happen if someone played a Vesuva to the big creature. It appears you don't get a land, but you copy the permanent it was before the Imprisoned in the Moon. Since my cube now has Imprisoned and Songs of the Dryads, i really want this synergy in there for my drafters to explore. Any other funky synergies with Vesuva except Dark Depts?
 
Dom Harvey

Dom Harvey

Contributor
There were lots of fun synergies with Vesuva in the Amulet deck, but none of them are really applicable to Cube:

- Copy your/your opponent's basic to play around Blood Moon
- Copy nothing so you can get an untapped land under Urborg/Blood Moon
- Copy nothing so you can play a bounceland next turn
 
safra

safra

Vesuva doesn't get around Depths' ice counters FYI. It's good with a Cloudpost package though!

You want
Meltyman said:

Last weekend we had a situation where i had Imprisoned in the Moon stuck on a big creature and we somehow started to talk what would happen if someone played a Vesuva to the big creature. It appears you don't get a land, but you copy the permanent it was before the Imprisoned in the Moon. Since my cube now has Imprisoned and Songs of the Dryads, i really want this synergy in there for my drafters to explore. Any other funky synergies with Vesuva except Dark Depts?
Click to expand...
 
Peter LaCara

Peter LaCara



As long as we're talking about black control...

Let's say reanimation and cheating big creatures in general isn't really a strategy in your cube. Can you run this guy? Is he too good? Too bad? I have a sweet GP promo in my binder, should I put him in, coach?
 
Chris Taylor

Chris Taylor

Contributor
If games go long enough that you can just cast him off lands you've drawn, he's probably too impactful in a format designed to go that long.

you need to do some drastic warping of your deck to cast 7 drops, and things get progressively harder as each mana gets added, Every deck can reliably get to 4 each game, and probably 90% to 5. At 6, it gets to the point where you might not hit it on turn 6, and at 7, from just drawing lands, on average you'll hit it on turn 10+, which is noticeably later than you want.
(Someone around here has the stats on which turn on average it takes to draw N lands, I'm sure)
 
Eric Chan

Eric Chan

Hyalopterous Lemure
Staff member
Peter LaCara said:
As long as we're talking about black control...

Let's say reanimation and cheating big creatures in general isn't really a strategy in your cube. Can you run this guy? Is he too good? Too bad? I have a sweet GP promo in my binder, should I put him in, coach?
Click to expand...
Yeah, I echo what the others have said about naturally casting eight drops; it's not a reasonable expectation to place on your drafters, especially when the card in question only goes into one deck (B/x control). The great thing about black, though, is that there are a number of sweet seven-drop finishers that aren't anywhere close to GRBS, and seven mana is actually an achievable goal for a black control deck going for the long game. I've been pretty happy with all of these at one time or another:

 
sigh

sigh

I run Griselbrand, and people have fun with him around here. Probably not the most consistent card, but have seen it hard cast >1 time, and lead to both wins and losses after he hits the table. He's a great payoff card for reanimator, so I'm happy to have a nice anchor to draw someone into that archetype as well. All of this is Def that emotional spike thingy
 
ahadabans

ahadabans

8 mana is very achievable with some of the cards I listed. Dark Ritual plus 6 lands is 8. Crypt Ghast T4, untap with 4 swamps gets you 8. Lake of the Dead on T5 with 4 lands and 2 swamps gets you 8. Two of those plays only requires a total of 2 swamps to get the BBBB you need too.

So if you go that route, Griselbrand becomes a two card combo play (and theoretically hard castable in a really long game). Which seems totally fine to me.

Just to put this in perspective, you have more options for hard casting a Griselbrand than we ever did for hard casting Akroma, Angel of Wrath. Depending on your cube, this doesn't feel unreasonable to me.
 
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