big ups to EE from me. it's awesome. really fun to recur w Academy Ruins
Card/Deck Single Card Spotlight
- Thread starter Dom Harvey
- Start date
Onderzeeboot
Ecstatic Orb
Anyone got any experience with this card in the context of cube?
He is my favorite 1/3 for 1U in cube by far. He can do some serious work in tempo oriented UR builds. Playing him on curve just opens up a box of possible lines the rest of the way with burn spells and counters being even more efficient and tricky than they were previously. I remember getting blown out pretty hard in the finals of a cube draft against the deck below due to the efficiency of being able to jam 2+ spells after T4 with Baral out there across the table:
Izzet Tempo
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Dom Harvey
Contributor
Baral is great; it incentivizes you to build around it and there are few scarier things to see across the table than a T2 Baral you can't answer
Onderzeeboot
Ecstatic Orb
Cool, thanks for the input!
I remember running this guy for a stretch and then subbing him out to try other stuff, but never got back around to bringing him back. Does anyone still run him? What do your spellslinger shells look like currently? I feel like I get a sweet spellslinger deck every now and then, but usually my UR decks end up being some kind of Kiki-Jiki combo build with value cards filling in the gaps.
Onderzeeboot
Ecstatic Orb
I need a few days to chronicle last Sunday's cube drafts, but the second one was won by an UR spells shell splashing Kess, Dissident Mage.
Dom Harvey
Contributor
I've found Reveler clunky even in the shells that it should be best in (you see this in Constructed too; a lot of the Arclight Phoenix decks in Modern initially leaned hard into Reveler and now it's being cut more and more). It's a shame, because I like the idea of it a lot and I don't want it to be a trap, but you have to look very carefully at how it fits in these strategies (and your format more widely).
Keep thinking about trying Jaya out, but I'm still worried about my format being warped by Planeswalkers again. Has anyone tried her? Did anyone face against her in Dominaria drafts, and if so, how was she there? (Note: my list is pretty medium-low power these days!)
I had Jaya in a DOM draft and she wasn't that great. She was hard to cast, and she generally let me loot a few times or cheat on kicking a Grow from the Ashes and then died. Now, granted I was GR, so she may have just been a poor fit for my deck, but I was not super impressed. Which breaks my heart, because I've been a Jaya Ballard fan since Ice Age. Sarkhan, Fireblood just does everything she does but cheaper.
This is pretty much what I was hoping to hear, really, since my list is pretty medium-low powered these days (editing my initial post to clarify that). Thanks for the feedback!
Can this work in cube, particularly one with spell trigger and spell velocity themes? Or is it constructed only?
Can this work in cube, particularly one with spell trigger and spell velocity themes? Or is it constructed only?
I've ran it before. If you strip out 1cmc cantrips, spells decks will generally play it, but I don't think that's really a meaningful upgrade. It only very rarely helps you cast something, and I can't say I prefer it over, say, Magma Jet, Faithless Looting, Vessel of Nascency, Prophetic Prism, Chromatic Star (and friends), etc for the role of "draw smoother than can fix".
There's a really smart environment to be built using things like Manamorphose, Blood Celebrant, Ceta Disciple, and similar to cast some "forbidden, powerful color" in the cube (probably white is the best candidate, under the pretense of invoking some ~Divine Law~ or something), but in a regular list, I don't see the point unless it's a combo cube.
jaya is a self contained engine like daretti. is itself and helps existing spell recursion. and red flip chandra which i still play . . metallurgic summonings ,hordeling outburst,pirate's pillage .valorous stance.shelter. gods willing. apostle's blessing. gush, mental misstep. mutagenic growth . are decent outliers. i kinda like titan's strength. if you get enough mana rocks or jaya chandra torch of defiance theres yawgmoth's will. mizzix's mastery. sentinel tower
sarkhan feels more faithless looting with some good fringe payoffs / entreat the angels
now the real question. is runaway steam-kin a thing
sarkhan feels more faithless looting with some good fringe payoffs / entreat the angels
now the real question. is runaway steam-kin a thing
Dom Harvey
Contributor
The issue with Manamorphose is that it doesn't do anything. You'll often put it in your deck, and you might have some cute interactions with spells matter or w/e, but is that enough for a slot in your Cube and a pick in the draft? I want to say yes, but YMMV
(Though I've also been trying this solely because the floor of 'draw a card' is a rare effect in red and green and a riggable Regrowth, especially in red, is highly intriguing: )
(Though I've also been trying this solely because the floor of 'draw a card' is a rare effect in red and green and a riggable Regrowth, especially in red, is highly intriguing: )
Manamorphose has worked for me in part thanks to cards like warfire javelineer, rise from the tides and beacon bolt. Admittedly that's still pretty narrow, but at least there's a flavor of spells matters that doesn't just begrudgingly run it, but activately want one
Onderzeeboot
Ecstatic Orb
I'm testing the mana doublers to see if I can support non-poisonous storm, because they also go in red-green ramp. I'm talking about these two...
Anyone got any experience with these in lower power cubes?
One thing I already found out is that they are super duper good with big daddy dinosaur!
Anyone got any experience with these in lower power cubes?
One thing I already found out is that they are super duper good with big daddy dinosaur!
My environment is high powered (albeit not in a traditional way) and Time Spiral, double Frantic Search, etc, cause the mana doublers to typically shine in blue decks. But I think I can provide some good examples of how to use the doublers in purely Red/Green decks which can work in high and low power-level environments alike.
Let's start by looking at green land cards. Obviously Heartbeat decks scale with the number of lands you can amass. For example these cards are good in the lands deck, but also shine on the heartbeat turn itself.
The same goes for anything that searches lands untapped:
Aside:
also gets you lands untapped.
The all-star lands win condition also works wonders w/ heartbeat:
Red serves as a way to make green heartbeat decks feel more "storm"-y. Red has a lot of card advantage cards that typically require you to invest more mana all at once, which fits perfectly with the mana doublers. Some examples:
Works wonders with oracle/mina. Then you can also throw in Top-of-Library manipulation which riptiders sometimes put in their RUG sections:
e.g.
The red card advantage suite which fits in the heartbeat/mana flare decks:
Reforge fits in the ToL manip theme too.
Aside: don't forget that red also has access to:
Red also gives X spells and Pyromancer's Goggles for a possible win-con (although I hesitate to include literal Fireball with this in my environment. I chose ravaging blaze instead).
R/G incidentally has
which rounds out some good playables which aren't heartbeat specific. I really like that RG gives you the flexibility to go either the creature route or a noncreature route.
Win Conditions:
- x spells
- big creatures
- noncreature-specific payoffs
- spell velocity payoffs
Note: that you have to be really careful with heartbeat and mana flare. I think a lot of drafters will get trapped by them the first time around. It's extremely dangerous to just play one and then pass the turn (often your opponent will abuse it and then destroy your heartbeat). I typically like a way to get out from under the effect in emergencies e.g. Reclamation Sage at the end of your big heartbeat turn. This is even easier in blue where you have:
which are all good in storm-style decks anyway (although upheaval is way higher power level).
Let's start by looking at green land cards. Obviously Heartbeat decks scale with the number of lands you can amass. For example these cards are good in the lands deck, but also shine on the heartbeat turn itself.
The same goes for anything that searches lands untapped:
Aside:
also gets you lands untapped.
The all-star lands win condition also works wonders w/ heartbeat:
Red serves as a way to make green heartbeat decks feel more "storm"-y. Red has a lot of card advantage cards that typically require you to invest more mana all at once, which fits perfectly with the mana doublers. Some examples:
Works wonders with oracle/mina. Then you can also throw in Top-of-Library manipulation which riptiders sometimes put in their RUG sections:
e.g.
The red card advantage suite which fits in the heartbeat/mana flare decks:
Reforge fits in the ToL manip theme too.
Aside: don't forget that red also has access to:
Red also gives X spells and Pyromancer's Goggles for a possible win-con (although I hesitate to include literal Fireball with this in my environment. I chose ravaging blaze instead).
R/G incidentally has
which rounds out some good playables which aren't heartbeat specific. I really like that RG gives you the flexibility to go either the creature route or a noncreature route.
Win Conditions:
- x spells
- big creatures
- noncreature-specific payoffs
- spell velocity payoffs
Note: that you have to be really careful with heartbeat and mana flare. I think a lot of drafters will get trapped by them the first time around. It's extremely dangerous to just play one and then pass the turn (often your opponent will abuse it and then destroy your heartbeat). I typically like a way to get out from under the effect in emergencies e.g. Reclamation Sage at the end of your big heartbeat turn. This is even easier in blue where you have:
which are all good in storm-style decks anyway (although upheaval is way higher power level).
Onderzeeboot
Ecstatic Orb
I added in some cards, including some doubles, just to test out the archetype. It let me test out some custom cards as well Here they are:
And here's the list.
The deck certainly feels like storm, though it is a good bit slower than the vintage cube variant, and doesn't often win in one turn, though it can certainly do that with some mana doubling, untapping lands, and a well aimed "fireball". Aanetra is the bee's knees. Holy balls is getting to play spells twice in a turn good (who would have thought, right?). The interaction with storm is actually quite cool, when you cast Aanetra and another spell pre-combat, then another spell and the storm spell post combat. I was saving it here to cast Aanetra and a mana doubler precombat when they were tapped out, then go off post combat, but I imagine you can use it more straightforward in other decks, dropping this on turn three together with another critter and just applying pressure. Will have to test some more, because he might be too good at the moment honestly, maybe should just be a 2/1 and that would make him die to everything? Fragile but powerful!
Anyway, this is single card spotlight, not the lab, but the mana doublers do work in this list, with all of the untapping and big mana spells.
Here they are: And here's the list.
bant Peregrine Drake from CubeTutor.com
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The deck certainly feels like storm, though it is a good bit slower than the vintage cube variant, and doesn't often win in one turn, though it can certainly do that with some mana doubling, untapping lands, and a well aimed "fireball". Aanetra is the bee's knees. Holy balls is getting to play spells twice in a turn good (who would have thought, right?). The interaction with storm is actually quite cool, when you cast Aanetra and another spell pre-combat, then another spell and the storm spell post combat. I was saving it here to cast Aanetra and a mana doubler precombat when they were tapped out, then go off post combat, but I imagine you can use it more straightforward in other decks, dropping this on turn three together with another critter and just applying pressure. Will have to test some more, because he might be too good at the moment honestly, maybe should just be a 2/1 and that would make him die to everything? Fragile but powerful!
Anyway, this is single card spotlight, not the lab, but the mana doublers do work in this list, with all of the untapping and big mana spells.
Yup this is definitely going to play like a storm deck. For me it comes down to having the three ingredients: 1) mana generation, 2) replacement, and 3) payoffs. You've definitely got the mana generation. You have replacement in the form of blue cantrips, pull from the aether, and explosion. You have the payoffs in Zacama and X-spells. What makes it feel more like storm rather than ramp is the replacement effects letting you continue to chain spells together. I think this is true across power levels. At a lower power level you might play 3 spells in a row in one turn which set you up to play 3 more spells the next turn. Personally, that would still feel like "storm".
These three ingredients have their power levels tuned more or less separately. Compared to my cube, I'd say your payoffs in the form of x-spells are actually tuned very slightly stronger than what I play. I.e.
vs
On the other hand, your replacement effects are tuned down. I.e.
vs
So on average you'd maybe be playing fewer spells in one turn, but doing slightly more with it. Mana generation we look basically on par except for maybe my inclusion of Palinchron which I still waffle on.
One thing I really enjoy about storm is how modular these decks end up feeling. For example, you could take:
out, along with Aether and Chandra's Monument. Then stick in:
and you'd still have a deck that feels like a storm deck, but using creatures instead of instants/sorceries.
These three ingredients have their power levels tuned more or less separately. Compared to my cube, I'd say your payoffs in the form of x-spells are actually tuned very slightly stronger than what I play. I.e.
vs
On the other hand, your replacement effects are tuned down. I.e.
vs
So on average you'd maybe be playing fewer spells in one turn, but doing slightly more with it. Mana generation we look basically on par except for maybe my inclusion of Palinchron which I still waffle on.
One thing I really enjoy about storm is how modular these decks end up feeling. For example, you could take:
out, along with Aether and Chandra's Monument. Then stick in:
and you'd still have a deck that feels like a storm deck, but using creatures instead of instants/sorceries.
This is a very interesting subject. And it always looks so cool when someone is doing a complete overhaul of a section of their cube.
Please let us know how it goes.
Ps. I vote for the spell-variant over the creature variant if the cube has a Spell deck that includes red. However if the cube instead has a Blink theme in blue then I vote for the creature variant.
Please let us know how it goes.
Ps. I vote for the spell-variant over the creature variant if the cube has a Spell deck that includes red. However if the cube instead has a Blink theme in blue then I vote for the creature variant.
Onderzeeboot
Ecstatic Orb
Well, spell-based it is then!
