The game itself was actually pretty fun. The board got clogged because both people were making 3+ creatures per turn, but both of us were doing so much to find what we needed in order to break through that it felt more like an arms race than a staring contest.
Card/Deck Single Card Spotlight
- Thread starter Dom Harvey
- Start date
Onderzeeboot
Ecstatic Orb
Oops, I obviously meant less
Honestly, the biggest issue with them is that they don't tap for any mana on their own.
Compare it to the (much sexier) version from the full filterland cycle:
EDIT: I realize that that was kinda vague, and didn't touch on an important difference — Catacombs can filter off-color mana, while Ruins can't. I don't think that that's as big of a problem as it initially seems:
In A
Deck, splashing : While you might be running some utility lands that tap for 
(which Ruins can't filter off of), most of your lands are going to tap for (which Ruins can filter). Also, if you splash something that costs (like, say, Counterspell), you can cast it with Ruins+Swamp while Catacombs would need Swamp + another blue source.
In A Deck: At this point, you're probably not running too many lands that tap for , so Sunken Ruins is effectively a dual land that turns another land into a dual land, while Catacombs might as well be a Nimbus Maze (it's an Island if you have a Swamp and a Swamp if you have an Island).
It's a bit more complicated with a three-, four-, or five-color deck, but if you're running filterlands I'm not sure that supporting those decks is high on your priority list (since either set does so awkwardly).
...
On a completely different note, did you ever consider this cycle for the Black Cube?
Compare it to the (much sexier) version from the full filterland cycle:
EDIT: I realize that that was kinda vague, and didn't touch on an important difference — Catacombs can filter off-color mana, while Ruins can't. I don't think that that's as big of a problem as it initially seems:
In A
Deck, splashing : While you might be running some utility lands that tap for (which Ruins can't filter off of), most of your lands are going to tap for (which Ruins can filter). Also, if you splash something that costs (like, say, Counterspell), you can cast it with Ruins+Swamp while Catacombs would need Swamp + another blue source.In A
Deck: At this point, you're probably not running too many lands that tap for , so Sunken Ruins is effectively a dual land that turns another land into a dual land, while Catacombs might as well be a Nimbus Maze (it's an Island if you have a Swamp and a Swamp if you have an Island).It's a bit more complicated with a three-, four-, or five-color deck, but if you're running filterlands I'm not sure that supporting those decks is high on your priority list (since either set does so awkwardly).
...
On a completely different note, did you ever consider this cycle for the Black Cube?
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It's mostly a budget pick to go for the old one. It's 100x more expensive for the real thing in this case.Honestly, the biggest issue with them is that they don't tap for any mana on their own.
Compare it to the (much sexier) version from the full filterland cycle:
Do I really expect people to keep very many one landers? I'm skeptical that the card's bad.
I've liked having them in my aggro-heavy environment. Anger of the Gods is the stronger of the two (upside of exiling is bigger than upside of 'each player' option).How do people feel about
etc?
I always worry that the turn 3 board wipe against aggro is too brutal.
Onderzeeboot
Ecstatic Orb
Note that these get better the fewer CC cards you have in your cube. Darkwater Catacombs sucks when you have a Counterspell in hand, but is perfectly fine when you have a Mana Leak in hand.
Are these that bad? Obviously, I don't want to draw a bunch of them, but it seems like one copy in a two color deck only inhibits players from paying MM?
In my cube 3/3s are reasonably large creatures, so them getting wiped by 3 mana wrath is too much of a blow. I run Sulfurous Blast instead, and would keep the 3 mana wipes at Choking Miasma power level.
A key thing is that on the draw you can't go 1 drop, 2 drop, hold up protection with 3 mana wipes. With 4+ mana wipes there is no T3 window and it's possible to have a 1-drop plus a 2-drop applying pressure, instead of only a 1-drop. That makes aggro-control more viable.
It depends on the power level of your threats and on how good you want board wipes to be against them, though.
A key thing is that on the draw you can't go 1 drop, 2 drop, hold up protection with 3 mana wipes. With 4+ mana wipes there is no T3 window and it's possible to have a 1-drop plus a 2-drop applying pressure, instead of only a 1-drop. That makes aggro-control more viable.
It depends on the power level of your threats and on how good you want board wipes to be against them, though.
these are actually really good if you are on singleton fixing and don’t have a ton of CC pips, IMO. they enter untapped with no drawback and turn any color/less into the ones you decided you needed when you maindecked them. probably one of the top 3 un-typed duals
Are these that bad? Obviously, I don't want to draw a bunch of them, but it seems like one copy in a two color deck only inhibits players from paying MM?
i like anger and radiant flames, don’t care too much about the ones below those. i also don’t support linear aggro. aggro deserves to sufferHow do people feel about
etc?
I always worry that the turn 3 board wipe against aggro is too brutal.
Chris Taylor
Contributor
The big thing is that they're HORRIBLE in multiples. Sure nobody's keeping a 1 lander with just these, but if you draw 2....
Are these that bad? Obviously, I don't want to draw a bunch of them, but it seems like one copy in a two color deck only inhibits players from paying MM?
And maybe that's fine if there's 5 of these in the cube, but don't like, center your cube's fixing on these.
These lands were ok with painlands in 2002 standard and I think they are among the worst duals, but I'd still pick and play one in limited in the absence of other fixing. What blacksmith said about them being good because they enter untapped is an advantage, but they are quite bad at low curving environments.
I'm a sucker for wishes. Is this playable without a particular high artifact density?
I'm a sucker for wishes. Is this playable without a particular high artifact density?
Dom Harvey
Contributor
In Cube Karn is a very clunky way to find a card that you are more likely to want in your deck (if that card is important enough for you to jump through those hoops to find) that also incidentally hoses random artifacts for no good reason
I'd even go so far as to say that wishes kinda suck in cube, simply because the situations where wishes are good hardly come up in draft formats.
Like, a wish is good when you're using it to pretend that you have seven copies of a key combo piece (3x in deck, 1x in board, 4x wishes), when you're using it to "tutor" up silver bullets against decks that are vulnerable to them, or in, like, ramp decks where they let you shove some of your payoffs into your sideboard and open up space for more ramp spells (which helps solves the old "what if I draw the wrong half of my deck?" problem). All of these are things that can and will come up in constructed, where you've had the opportunity to fine-tune your 75 into an efficient game-winning machine.
In comparison, a draft deck is the rough equivalent of trying to build a car after a smash-and-grab at the local junkyard. When you take into account all of the unplayable garbage that you were forced to pick up and how rough it is to get to your 23-24 playables as a result, all three of those scenarios seem pretty unlikely. Using wishes to stretch the number of combo pieces you have doesn't work if you only have one copy in the first place, draft decks tend to be far more robust against silver bullets than their constructed counterparts, and your ramp archetype is going to be so comparatively jank that you wouldn't notice the difference.
This isn't really restricted to wishes (tutors also kinda suck in less-curated decks), but wishes definitely run into these problems harder than most similar "find a single card" things.
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If you wanted to make a cube where wishes were useful and cool, you probably want an environment like japahn's Smooth Twin cube or the like, since if you can have N copies of a given card in your deck, wishes let you pretend you have 2N-1 copies instead. And you also probably want really good fixing so that more of your non-playables are valid wish targets.
Like, a wish is good when you're using it to pretend that you have seven copies of a key combo piece (3x in deck, 1x in board, 4x wishes), when you're using it to "tutor" up silver bullets against decks that are vulnerable to them, or in, like, ramp decks where they let you shove some of your payoffs into your sideboard and open up space for more ramp spells (which helps solves the old "what if I draw the wrong half of my deck?" problem). All of these are things that can and will come up in constructed, where you've had the opportunity to fine-tune your 75 into an efficient game-winning machine.
In comparison, a draft deck is the rough equivalent of trying to build a car after a smash-and-grab at the local junkyard. When you take into account all of the unplayable garbage that you were forced to pick up and how rough it is to get to your 23-24 playables as a result, all three of those scenarios seem pretty unlikely. Using wishes to stretch the number of combo pieces you have doesn't work if you only have one copy in the first place, draft decks tend to be far more robust against silver bullets than their constructed counterparts, and your ramp archetype is going to be so comparatively jank that you wouldn't notice the difference.
This isn't really restricted to wishes (tutors also kinda suck in less-curated decks), but wishes definitely run into these problems harder than most similar "find a single card" things.
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If you wanted to make a cube where wishes were useful and cool, you probably want an environment like japahn's Smooth Twin cube or the like, since if you can have N copies of a given card in your deck, wishes let you pretend you have 2N-1 copies instead. And you also probably want really good fixing so that more of your non-playables are valid wish targets.
Onderzeeboot
Ecstatic Orb
me when trying to cut the last 7 cards after drafting a cube with a flat power band:
(PS great points on why wishes are bad in (most) draft formats, totally agree
)
Well, this exactly does not hold for tutors. Tutors are just like the good cards in your deck so a tutor becomes the best card you can tutor for as opposed to wishes where the wish requires the card to be outside the deck. In other words, a tutor is exactly like you had the card in question twice in your deck. That is also why tutors make commander or draft more boring since the deck that has tutors plays the same more often that decks without.
Onderzeeboot
Ecstatic Orb
On the one hand, yes, on the other hand, tutors cost tempo. Tutoring may be a liability when you sacrifice tempo for something that your opponent might be able to deal with quite easily anyway. This is the case in many of our cubes, where your best tutor target might be a value piece or high mv and high impact creature instead of a game-winning combo piece. In those cases, taking a turn off to play your tutor might give your opponent an opening to deploy to and overwhelm the board.
True, but this also holds for wishes…
The point was that wishes suck in cube due to forcing the target to be out of your deck as opposed to the tutors.
The tempo argument is valid, but I prefer it when you can durdle a turn without losing (but also not without a penalty).
Onderzeeboot
Ecstatic Orb
For sure. At least tutors double your chances to find your bombs. Wishes just make you jump through hoops for no discernible gain (in Cube).