As blacksmithy is fond of saying, a proxy isn't $65.
Card/Deck Single Card Spotlight
- Thread starter Dom Harvey
- Start date
Is this card preferable to Thousand-Faced Shadow? If you squint hard enough, they are nearly the inverse of eachother but one is also Flying Men. Please don't tell me to run both; that is not what I want to hear!
(Related-unrelated, $65 for *this* card is a straight-up obscenity. I know people love it, but I really do think Commander (and related #MTGFinance) has ruined everything I used to love about this game...sheesh. It truly is a Cancer.)
(Related-unrelated, $65 for *this* card is a straight-up obscenity. I know people love it, but I really do think Commander (and related #MTGFinance) has ruined everything I used to love about this game...sheesh. It truly is a Cancer.)
From my armchair perspective, I feel like it depends on what you want the card for.
Thousand-Faced Shadow is a better ninjitsu enabler, but the Student is a way better clone. There's a big difference between a clone that can only copy your attacking stuff and one that can copy any creature on the battlefield, after all.
Thousand-Faced Shadow is a better ninjitsu enabler, but the Student is a way better clone. There's a big difference between a clone that can only copy your attacking stuff and one that can copy any creature on the battlefield, after all.
Chris Taylor
Contributor
Too bad, run both
This is a significant difference; completely overlooked that nuance and that's a big plus in SS's favor.
Well, I'm primarily running him to beef up my uncomfortably-thin blue 1-drop section. I'm currently running Spectral Sailor and Hard Evidence* but would like a couple more. I was hoping Shadow had enough play to him to try it out and see.
I recently cut Phantasmal Image for Mirrorhall Mimic so there went my 2-cmc clone. I do think Sakashima's Student is far better than Phantasmal Image--wish I had known about him a long time ago!
*I don't think it's entirely unreasonable to treat Hard Evidence as a blue Thraben Inspector
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I originally had planned on running Thousand-Faced Shadow and even had considered putting it in for Sakashima's Student, but the circumstances where you want to copy 1) a creature you control 2) a creature you control that's attacking and 3) a creature you control that's attacking with a second creature and it's *not* necessarily the one that's already gotten in without a block, you realize that it's just a much, much narrower card.
The backup plan of hard casting it is dramatically better for sure, don't get me wrong, but having Flying Men as a backup is only so interesting compared to how much worse the ninjitsu plan is.
blame companies, not consumers
Student certainly has a lot better of a floor than Shadow. I'm trying out Shadow primarily because I wanted more blue 1-drops and you can get it with Ranger of Eos.
Yeah, honestly not sure I will keep him.. I will try him out first but I also run him in a 60-card Legacy-legal ninja deck and (to be completely honest) he has not impressed me too much so far. In four games so far, he has only been a Flying Man and nothing beyond that. His Ninjitsu cost is a lot to ask to keep up.. We'll have to keep testing but so far has been underwhelming.
I really am looking for some better blue 1-drops if anyone has any they highly recommend...
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It's a flying men early and later (or not so much later in some blue decks) it turns into a blue Tombstalker. It's my favorite blue 1-drop in the game.
Depending on what you want to do and your definition of "1-drop," I've found these to be reasonable creature and creature-adjacent cards that mostly get played on turn one. But you're absolutely right that the roster isn't deep; I haven't been happy with anything else and saying that all of these delight me is a bit of a stretch. Hapless Researcher might be okay too if your cube is very low powered.
Can be a powerful enabler depending on your themes.
Has been decent in most non-controlling Blue decks. If you are holding interaction and nothing happens, you draw. If you are flooding out, you draw. (Saw you already have it in your cube. Oops).
You already have some snow in your cube. If you tend to have Blue heavy attacking decks this scales super well. Since you have Faceless Haven, maybe this fits too.
+1 to Pteramander. Flying blue spells payoff that rewards you for playing the game without much in the way of timing restrictions. And it also synergizes with any GY synergies that the deck may have as it's not tied to casting the spells or whatnot.
Yes, I found Ascendant Spirit to be a little bit on the trap-side but he was in there for a bit. Snow-basics make him much more tempting for sure. Petty sure Pteramander was added (later removed) as well. I have a big problem with making too many swaps with each new set and my "planned archetypes" take a hit. My cube is big and we typically only draft a small portion of it so I gave up on a while ago and just try to run cards that look powerful and very synergistic with many archetypes if possible. Pteramander does synergize with more stuff than I realized..
Can be a powerful enabler depending on your themes.
Has been decent in most non-controlling Blue decks. If you are holding interaction and nothing happens, you draw. If you are flooding out, you draw. (Saw you already have it in your cube. Oops).
You already have some snow in your cube. If you tend to have Blue heavy attacking decks this scales super well. Since you have Faceless Haven, maybe this fits too.
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These are all great suggestions, folks--thank you! I need to sit down and think through some of these. I was actually looking at that Siren the other day but that Vortex Elemental is extremely cool; forgot that guy exists.
The ascendant spirit allows to use the last ability multiple times not? The sad thing is that the opponent will let you use the last ability and then blows it up…
Did anyone else notice the squirrels crawling all over Junk Winder?
This is a sneaky reference to the fact that Squirrel Tokens were a minor theme in Modern Horizons 2.
This is a sneaky reference to the fact that Squirrel Tokens were a minor theme in Modern Horizons 2.
This spooky boy has always been looking in on cubes from the outside, but I think the success of Network Disruptor has shown that a card like this has a home. I'm envisioning a sort of UW blink/ninjas tempo deck looking something like this:
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This deck is bad at enabling delirium, but it's more of a case in point: a second copy of Network Disruptor is a good thing, and Topplegeist can sometimes overperform in that slot in a very fun way. I'm sure you can go even harder on it and Tameshi, but this felt like a fun take on a tempo deck and I didn't want to dilute that spirit too much, as doing so would likely skew towards midrange durdle.
Onderzeeboot
Ecstatic Orb
Topplegeist plays pretty good, especially if you run fetches and a small spells package in white.
Regarding Junk Winder, I’d noticed the squirrels, but not the treasure or food (watermelon?) to reference the other supported tokens from MH2. I can’t see a clue, but that may be too abstract to easily portray.
The random watermelon and chicken legs make a lot more sense now