What can you do with this?
If it has some value, perhaps it can be a more interesting alternative to a second Chromatic Star.
If it has some value, perhaps it can be a more interesting alternative to a second Chromatic Star.
Card/Deck Single Card Spotlight
- Thread starter Dom Harvey
- Start date
In your Zur the Enchanter Commander deck after you've lost your Pemmin's Aura to a counter spell you attack with Zur to fetch Urza's Saga, wait a few turns, let it go to chapter 3, sacrifice, fetch Expedition Map, activate Map, search for Hall of Heliod's Generosity and put into hand, play hall, attack with Zur, put trigger on the stack, activate hall, put Saga on top of library, search library with Zur, fetch Saga, wait a few turns, let it go to chapter 3, sacrifice, fetch Conjurer's Bauble, activate bauble, put aura on the bottom of library, draw, search library with Zur, attach aura to Zur, win. Easy.What can you do with this?
If it has some value, perhaps it can be a more interesting alternative to a second Chromatic Star.
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I dunno if I'd say that it's worse, necessarily, since you get the creature (albeit temporarily).
Like, you could theoretically use Preacher to repeatedly steal creatures from your opponent before combat on their turn, and then chump their attackers with their own creatures.
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On a different note, I was looking at this fine fellow earlier today, and was wondering if there's a version without any of that Day/Night nonsense:
The answer, weirdly enough, is no! Oh, sure, there's cards like Halana and Alena, Partners or Xenagos, God of Revels, but they're on a completely different scale.
Without the haste, there is Valor Singer
Dom Harvey
Contributor
What can you do with this?
If it has some value, perhaps it can be a more interesting alternative to a second Chromatic Star.
-- Puts stuff back into your deck for effects that need that (Oath, Polymorphs, Elvish Reclaimer etc)
-- One of the few ways to draw a card for free at instant speed -> good with Miracles and the Jolrael/Irencrag Pyromancer family of cards
-- Buys back the 'big finish' card if you can mill most/all of your deck - Thassa's Oracle is the obvious one but also stuff like Replenish, Living Death, Reanimate (for something that will win that turn)
-- Efficient cantrip to rebuy with Scrap Trawler
This is a good magic card if you’re doing prowess and artifact stuff. I’d play it in addition to the second Chromatic Star (and the third Chromatic Star as well, tbh. Grillo had it right all along, play more Chromatic Stars for Artifacts! But also this card.)What can you do with this?
If it has some value, perhaps it can be a more interesting alternative to a second Chromatic Star.
The haste is the bit I'm interested in, is the thing.
I'd love a version of the Stormchaser that was, like, a 1/1 for
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it's pretty nutty withWhat can you do with this?
If it has some value, perhaps it can be a more interesting alternative to a second Chromatic Star.
I also have all snow basics in my cube, so "snow matters" cards basically become "basic lands matter". Then mono colored aggro decks can be rewarded with things like Faceless Haven and Icehide Golem
Dom Harvey
Contributor
This lad isn't what he used to be in Constructed. What about Cube? I keep flirting with including it again as a generally strong card that also supports a bunch of synergies but shied away in the past because it was so dominating if played/defended early and I want to deemphasize planeswalkers. Now my formats tend to have a lot of manlands, Mulldrifters/Splicers (great both with and against Jace), and other ways to punish a Jace that bounced something, and I'm in search of an iconic win condition that supports control decks. What are your recent experiences with it?
The big thing that makes me shy away from JTMS is just how miserable you feel when your opponent +2's and leaves the card there. Its like "Well, I'm not getting out from under this next turn either..." - but they're not rapidly advancing to a win themselves because his ult's so far away, and maybe you'll have two relevant cards immediately under that bad one, so you also want to drag it out, and ugh game slows to a crawl.
He's significantly more answerable than he used to be, so if he's not coming down and +2-ing freely for three turns he's probably a great include.
If his +2 had been literally anything else (and if I ran anything other than flipwalkers and baby Saheeli) hell yeah I'd run it - I need more Scroll Racks, Brainstorms and Sylvan Libraries to set up Polymorphs and Calibrated Blasts and so on, and the rest of the card is eminently fair.
He's significantly more answerable than he used to be, so if he's not coming down and +2-ing freely for three turns he's probably a great include.
If his +2 had been literally anything else (and if I ran anything other than flipwalkers and baby Saheeli) hell yeah I'd run it - I need more Scroll Racks, Brainstorms and Sylvan Libraries to set up Polymorphs and Calibrated Blasts and so on, and the rest of the card is eminently fair.
This lad isn't what he used to be in Constructed. What about Cube? I keep flirting with including it again as a generally strong card that also supports a bunch of synergies but shied away in the past because it was so dominating if played/defended early and I want to deemphasize planeswalkers. Now my formats tend to have a lot of manlands, Mulldrifters/Splicers (great both with and against Jace), and other ways to punish a Jace that bounced something, and I'm in search of an iconic win condition that supports control decks. What are your recent experiences with it?
It's still strong if the game is at parity or has ground to a halt. The sheer number of cards you end up seeing lets you bump up your card quality in a big way and break through. It's gravy if you're ahead in any way. However I don't think it's dominant at all nowadays, especially if your cube features strong aggressive shells that can put pressure on the board. If your cube has decks that can go wide consistently or can just outvalue by going over the top, you won't have too much to worry about. There are so many above rate creatures at lower CMC nowadays that unless they're able to fire off wraths for protection, Jace will always be threatened by an on board presence. A protected Jace can do work in midrange matchups, but that gets much tougher to accomplish if a deck can get under you and put you low enough to where it's a bad play. I've had games where I've just had Jace stranded in hand because a 4 mana Brainstorm wasn't about to do anything to help with a given board state.
I actually don't think it can function as a win-con nowadays in a higher-powered environment unless you draft the nut U/W Control deck that can just draw-go and answer everything forever. Kinda like in Modern where once you get past a certain point with control you can establish that inevitability to close things out; that's where Jace can be a win-con to close things out. In all honesty Teferi, Hero of Dominaria is just a much superior win-condition for Control decks in cube. It's abilities are much more proactive with drawing cards, tucking threats away, and actively advancing you twmoving towards an attainable ultimate at -8 that will definitely close the game out.
Still an exciting card to draft due to how iconic it is, still powerful in the right shells, but not anywhere near as oppressive as he once was.
No longer oppressive, but still very good. Great turn of events that allows my Cube to happily run a historically relevant and super sweet card.
Chris Taylor
Contributor
Jace is powerful like most other planeswalkers are powerful, but the difference is he stays at 3 loyalty the whole time
Definitely. Whenever I see an early JTMS I already start prepping myself for a classic U/x Control shell. Maybe splash red for some burn or black for more removal or Lingering Souls. If I see a wrath and some counterspells the next couple of picks I'll just go all in.
we don’t often agree on card evals but this was very well said and i feel the same way. i actually ended up buffing the card for these reasons
With the release of the Warhammer 40k set, artifact decks received a few new options in Black (Triarch Praetorian and Royal Warden mainly).
It’s given even more tools for Emry, Lurker of thr Loch, Goblin Engineer and Lurrus of the Dream-Den.
I'd like to bolster my grindy artifact decks a bit more and was looking at
How does the Myr play out? Is it an actually useful piece of the deck or is it interchangeable with something like Circuit Mender?
It’s given even more tools for Emry, Lurker of thr Loch, Goblin Engineer and Lurrus of the Dream-Den.
I'd like to bolster my grindy artifact decks a bit more and was looking at
How does the Myr play out? Is it an actually useful piece of the deck or is it interchangeable with something like Circuit Mender?
Retriever is much more powerful than Mender. I thought it was just a fringey include at the time I first added it to my list, but it’s really good in environments like ours with a high density of artifact support….so much that I sometimes consider adding junk diver as retriever #2
I don't know how it will play at higher power levels, but the lil' lad and his flying older brother both put in good work in my list, and the nastiest thing they can do there is get back a Noxious or Cataclysmic Gearhulk. Definitely feel like they'd still perform well with better targets and easier ways to get them into play.
I recently added Skaab Ruinator at the recommendation of folks here. Sweet card for sure, but it wasn't cast in the one draft played with it (it was in my sideboard oops). What are some good enablers for it I might not already be playing / how do I make it more enticing to draft?
I feel like you make it more enticing to draft by killing people with it. It also works well in a Kirb-style Thraben Inspector setting, with cantrip-on-legs creatures to fill up your graveyard.
Ways to cheat it into play are also nice to have.
Ways to cheat it into play are also nice to have.
Now you've got me thinking about it...
Are a bunch of cycling creatures enough to justify its inclusion, or does it need more enablers?
Are a bunch of cycling creatures enough to justify its inclusion, or does it need more enablers?
I think the deceptive thing about Ruinator is that it doesn't really need enablers. It benefits from them, but in an interactive cube with lots of removal / draw, graveyards fill up quickly.
I used to be one of the bigger Ruinator boosters here but I've softened on my love for the card in the past few years. Ruinator has three great things going for it (stats, mana value, castable from the yard) and one REALLY rough additional cost (exile three other creature cards per Ruinator). In terms of flavour the restriction is a home run - this guy is so big and brutal BECAUSE it's three creature cards sown together.
But if you want to cast this thing three times, NINE other creatures have to have found their way into your graveyard. That's most of a deck's creatures in a few Cube archetypes, cutting these decks' ability to play out the Ruinator. A less overwhelming, but easier to cast, expectation might be making either zero or two Ruinators a game (at 'zero or one', it's just a Skaab Goliath, right?). That doesn't "need enablers", but strongly wants them in order to make that second Ruinator in anything like a timely fashion.
If you want Ruinator to be more than the sum of its parts, think about cheat effects that care about cmc 3 (Unearth, Sevinne's, Coco, Pod) and maybe Gravecrawlers to come back once you make the big blue zombo. It's a great card but it is clunkier than you think.
But if you want to cast this thing three times, NINE other creatures have to have found their way into your graveyard. That's most of a deck's creatures in a few Cube archetypes, cutting these decks' ability to play out the Ruinator. A less overwhelming, but easier to cast, expectation might be making either zero or two Ruinators a game (at 'zero or one', it's just a Skaab Goliath, right?). That doesn't "need enablers", but strongly wants them in order to make that second Ruinator in anything like a timely fashion.
If you want Ruinator to be more than the sum of its parts, think about cheat effects that care about cmc 3 (Unearth, Sevinne's, Coco, Pod) and maybe Gravecrawlers to come back once you make the big blue zombo. It's a great card but it is clunkier than you think.
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If casting it twice is good enough, it's great--flavorful, powerful, not unfair, just good all around. If you think you'll need to cast it a third time for it to be worthwhile, it's a tough sell. You can make it more or less viable with things like Siren Stormtamer (my personal pick for Best Flying Man variant) or ninjas who will get into combat, but some/many/most of those require warping your environment around it unless it's just going in Sultai self-mill. It can work really well with Claire D'Loon, for instance.