Card/Deck Single Card Spotlight

Chris Taylor

Chris Taylor

Contributor
TekLazar said:
If you're looking for a Dragonsguard Elite that neatly slots into everyone's cube, why not

Yes, it doesn't do copies, but very few run copying spells in their Cubes anyway :p
Imo the starting power and toughness doesn't matter as much if the other player is going to be removing it early. Because even at this power level you're probably running shock and volcanic hammer variants.
But yes the starting toughness makes a difference, I just dunno if it'll make that much of a difference.
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I think this might be a "why not both"
 
kModz

kModz


Has impressed me in testing, and it works well with D. Champ, D. Elite, and the other counter cards in your list. At worst, it's a 2mv proliferate (the fight is optional)
 
B

blacksmithy

fwiw having a head start with the 2/2 base body is more important for “being the biggest critter in combat” than for dodging burn. one trigger and you’ve got a 3/3 for 2 -basically, the floor is better and the average case is better by about 33% which makes it easier to get value from the presence of the large body without being able to trigger it a bunch right away
 
Nanonox

Nanonox

I realize that my cube is set up to support the Dragonsguard Elite, but that I never included it ><

Just drafted this as an example deck, which looks decent IMO as a base version.











This particular deck uses very high-powered cards so that it might not be transferable to many cubes here, but the base composition should be.

Cantrips (Faithless Looting, Abundant Harvest), spell based threats (Call of the Herd, Pest Infestation), payoffs (Managorger Hydra, Dragonsguard Elite) and spell recursion (Chandra, Acolyte of Flame, Underworld Breach) make the deck.

Then you can go in different directions with the rest of the deck depending on what you support in your cube. For example, I had the chance to pick up Earthcraft to go with Garruk Wildspeaker. If I had a Young Pyromancer too, I probably would have gone with a tokens subtheme.
 
shamizy

shamizy

Yeah honestly this discussion has inspired me to pick up a copy when I stop by the LGS for Modern FNM later tonight. I think I had initially just brushed it off along with many cards from Strixhaven as it was a set that I didn't really care for much.

I may not run it immediately as I'm still picking up pieces from Midnight Hunt for my next paper cube update, but I can see this being included down the line. It checks off a lot of boxes with +1/+1 counters, additional G/x Aggro support, and a Human to boot for Champion of the Parish and Thalia's Lieutenant interactions.
 
TekLazar

TekLazar

blacksmithy said:
fwiw having a head start with the 2/2 base body is more important for “being the biggest critter in combat” than for dodging burn. one trigger and you’ve got a 3/3 for 2 -basically, the floor is better and the average case is better by about 33% which makes it easier to get value from the presence of the large body without being able to trigger it a bunch right away
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Yeah fair, it's definitely a lot quicker in becoming combat relevant.
 
Velrun

Velrun



I have had this enchantment in my cube since Ravnica Allegiance despite people telling me it's no good.
Does anyone have any good experiences with it?
 
Humpty_Dumpty

Humpty_Dumpty

It was good in retail draft. Mostly it would ensure your creatures outmatch those of your opponents, but haste could also create headaches in terms of what to leave for blocking.

For it to have a place in my cube I’d want to be taking full advantage of the +1/+1 counters, but that is mostly a Bant archetype. Randomly negating counterspells could also feel bad.
 
TrainmasterGT

TrainmasterGT

Velrun said:


I have had this enchantment in my cube since Ravnica Allegiance despite people telling me it's no good.
Does anyone have any good experiences with it?
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I think this card is much better than Fires of Yavimaya, but there are definitely better things Gruul can be doing. That said, I have always enjoyed playing with this card, and it's not terrible if your Cube has a 1-3-4 ramp curve.

I wouldn't touch this if you're not on one mv mana dorks, though.
 
japahn

japahn

Card was very strong in my cube. In an environment that can afford to do nothing on T3, this is pretty good and at times haste will be absurd, at others +1/+1 will be absurd. In faster environments it would depend on T1 ramp like train said.

I didn't the raw power and genericness (it just comboes with creatures), and didn't actually feel like counter or haste was a meaningful choice very often, most of the time it was obvious. It's dependent on sequencing too, making it a dud topdeck but stellar starting hand card. From the other side of the table, it felt like it removed your agency because you never knew what was coming and didn't have time to react to it - which might mean just that it as at the wrong power level.
 
Sheltem

Sheltem

I don‘t like it because it cares for a game state that isn’t recorded anywhere. So this might lead to unfun discussions.
 
TrainmasterGT

TrainmasterGT

LadyMapi said:
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What are people's thoughts about this one in a cube with land untappers?
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I'd like some more context than simply "Cube with land untappers," but I would imagine it is a little better as an engine piece than it might otherwise be. The fact that this card doesn't tap for mana in its own right makes it a little bit sketchy in general, unfortunately. However, if you can activate it two or three times in a turn and get all of the basics out of your deck, that would be pretty bloody powerful.
 
MilesOfficial

MilesOfficial

LadyMapi said:


What are people's thoughts about this one in a cube with land untappers?
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I'm likely going to be taking it out of my cube after a decade here, though it kills me to lose yet another card from my favorite "block".

Creatures are just too good these days, even in lower-powered or rarity-restricted lists. Glaciers are slow, if you didn't know. I used to love it in my 5-color piles, but it's an oppressive tax that's becoming impossible to accommodate. You can still get away with if your cube supports draw-go style decks on the regular, but those are more and more rare.
 
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japahn

japahn

I think Glaciers is interesting and the untap interaction is cool and seems natural. But yeah, it lives up to its name in being glacially slow and won't work in most cube environments, though in slow environments, it could be usable in a slow deck. I wouldn't run it solely as a payoff for untapping because the fail case is too bad.

In slow environments, I have seen games where it dominated the game, by the way - not in a bad way, since the tempo cost is so hefty it felt fair. Making you accumulate all the mana you need and thin out your deck is close to inevitability. It's one of those cards that's horrible in tempo-oriented games and great in CA-oriented games.
 
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