Card/Deck Single Card Spotlight
- Thread starter Dom Harvey
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Chris Taylor
Contributor
I can't remember, do we get pacifism anymore?
Pacifism was in M14. Not in M15, supposedly because of Heliod's Pilgrim.
Chris Taylor
Contributor
Wow. Soul Reap is cool (already got Tragic Slip I concur it's awesome).
I'm going to swap Soul Reap in for Dark Banishing and gain the following benefits:
1) Add a bit of variety in regards to instant vs sorcery speed removal.
2) Add a bit of variety in regards to how/when you play a removal spell.
3) Make green better.
4) Make aggro better.
5) Make Grave Titan worse.
6) Reduce baseless regeneration hosing.
To be fair, there is one drawback:
1) The loss of Shakespeare
Grillo_Parlante
Contributor
The more powerful your removal is, the harder it is to build a synergistic board presence due to answer density. If you are going to go with a weaker removal package you are, of course, going to have to make other changes to the cube to accommodate it, which may or may not be something that you wish to do.
One of the things I like about running diversified and weakened removal is the tempo tension it creates, as well as encouraging control decks to commit early blockers to the board, rather than durdling. In addition, it helps me avoid the control and midrange dominated formats I had in the past when I was running a more traditional removal suite. Also, some of us enjoy running combat tricks in our cubes or wish to explore auras in cube. I don't know if you saw the laboratory manic deck I posted earlier, but that was way more fun than anything I ever did with my "powered" cube, and it wouldn't have been possible if I was running more powered removal, as instant speed blowouts would have resulted when I went to win. Their are advantages and disadvantages to each approach; I compared them and choose what was the best fit for me and my group.
ROE and triple innistrad were weak removal formats (ROE proportional to the threats being powered out) that were a lot of fun to play. In comparison M14 draft was a slow removal heavy control fest. Anecdotal data points are just that--anecdotal, and if you don't wish to build triple theroes, that’s fine--neither did I.
I'm a little surprised at some of the hostility towards people exploring this area of cube design, as it’s not even really new to riptide. In this article written by someone we may all know, we are reminded that one of the lessons of M14 is to "vary and limit your removal" so as to avoid the slow and "exquisite torture of being digested by a self-satisfied blue mage or sarlacc." My cube, I will admit, is an extreme example of that principle, but if I should choose to run a lower power format, and design it around the concept of varied and limited removal because WOTZ hit it out of the park a couple times doing just that--I really don't see what’s wrong with doing so.
Yeah, every forum has its biases, even if people don't want to look in the mirror and admit it. As much as we like to say we aren't about power-max here at Riptide Lab, there's still very much an expectation that everyone's cubes are of the very-high-powered-just-not-with-stupid-cards mold. It makes it hard for people with cubes of different shapes and sizes to "fit in" here, as it were, but I'm glad you're doing just that, Grillo.
wait Lucas has a bias...? this is the first I've heard of that
I loved this post except I think the example is kinda super wrongheaded. For one, I would have just as much luck against that start with a shock as a bolt. It feels pretty wrong killing 1 drops with 2cc spells, but thats why one drops are good and I can get behind that entirely, but what you have to remember is unless you are really holding the right card for the job, most of the strong white and black removal options tend to fall between the 2-3 cc mark. I guess white has it's ousts and whatever and I'm probably not giving those the credit they deserve.
I really feel for whoever is playing this Auger - Hammer - Demise deck too, that guy was probably really reaching.
Ah I could go on and on about this subject, but truly I am glad grillo is having such a great time with the cube he's decided to sculpt, and all this conversation has been serving to make me really want to draft some triple theros as MC was saying. If he's got a great format for building megadorks and making control decks around profitable blocks, more power to him. I've enjoyed those formats and although I find combat somewhat daunting sometimes, I really think more cubes could use more emphasis on blocking.
I've got a lot of angles I'd like to cover here, but I keep getting drawn back to 2 points when I see these posts.
- 1) I don't like this association between control and midranged you guys seem to foster a lot. When those decks start getting too inbred I feel like it's a sign of a problem and I don't really see that as being overly related to how accessible cheap trades are in your cube. Like good removal does a lot more to make midranged decks feel dumb then they do for aggro decks in my opinion, and my goal in most control decks I'm playing is to get to a point where I am casting more than one spell per turn or spending mana activating a permanent like a man land, not really going above anyone's head or crushing spirits with grave titans upon baneslayers one after another. If anything I find better removal forces control decks to rely less on stabilizing dumb idiots (total midranged move bro) and makes midranged a scarier bet because now aggro decks and control decks can make their 5 mana werewolf look really dumb, or feel less bad about killing a thragtusk because they ended up out a lot of mana for their beast token. It's not as if threats aren't super resistant to removal these days anyway.
- 2) My understanding of removal is very much around the lines I was describing earlier as tempo plays. I feel like it's also more important to have slight removal for one deck than the others and I think it helps foster diversity. I think there's also the problem I've brought up before that premium removal is exciting for most decks but usually more accessible to midranged and aggro than control. I pretty much don't want removal if I'm not trading up. If I'm more concerned with simply not dying I'm already wrong footed and my deck isn't doing something right and I might as well just pack it in. Wanting removal to push damage through or to feel safe are real situations that do come up, but the whole idea there is that this thing needs to be giving me tempo dollars or why am I not just playing a creature deck. Like lightning bolt is a special case, but for the most part removal spells are really shitty cards compared to creatures if they aren't going some distance for you. Like this thing can't attack. It has two major advantages that you need to be making use of for the card to be functionally a smart decision, it avoids your opponent's decision making for the most part and it should be in bad cases be trading more or less evenly with the cost of the opposing creature at your leisure. Now this rule applies less to traditional limited for me, but I'm taking a constructed line here because cube is full of yavimaya elders and other such value creatures or monsters that are hard to deal with.
When I think about this stuff I always remember an early flores article on Mirrodin where he looked at platinum angel and said something like "it's got a good ability, but that's 7 mana for a 4/4 and in this format 4/4s cost 0-2 mana." Look at how good your attacking creatures are. Look how resourceful threats are these days. If you're trying to cultivate a lot of diversity in your archetypes I think more thought could be put into how you nurture the control deck and make it feel distinct from "go bigger than aggro" or "good stuff". Do you guys know how awful it feels to mana leak a frogmite? Like thank god almighty for vedalkan shackles because you don't win games by trading instants and sorceries down all day. And every Compulsive Research is putting you farther and farther behind in the spend all your money game. We've all played starcraft right? We are talking about a format with incredible saturation of strong and aggressive body 1 and 2 drops and we are really having a conversation about Murder?
P.S. Yeah I've liked eric's focus on sorcery speed removal in creating a different feel for the game but I've been wondering for a while what it does beyond make dorky creature buffing better? You get a big free swing with a were wolf or maybe when you reveal the wolf run you've been holding right? I'm honestly just trying to remember what it does because I can't remember all the implications.
I guess I have an outward control bias, but I think I talk about it because I feel like we have a good handle on how to buff aggro and how midranged decks work. I think control is more tricky because it's relies so much on construction that you don't get to finesse in a draft environment. And to be really honest, I think allowing white decks to attack with battalion more often etc is like the least interesting thing in the game we could be enabling
I don't know if I've been an influence. I wrote an articles that was a proponent of "strong removal, strong aggro" as a fun way to play Magic. I am distinctly aggro biased, but my arguments line up pretty well with Lucas' earlier post.
FlowerSunRain
Contributor
FWIW I run cube powerhouses like Mark of Fury and Give // Take and I've never had a problem feeling like I fit in. Maybe I have early adopter bias on my side.
I mean, people don't necessarily agree with each others decisions, but the great thing here is that people are also willing to ignore the fact that you are completely wrong and help you or get inspired by you.
My favorite example is the lifegain theme thread.
Grillo_Parlante
Contributor
I wanted to single out this exert because I think it pinpoints our disagreement and i.m.o provides a lot of context to the discussion. I am not taking a constructed line with my cube, nor am I running a high density of value creatures. Certain caliber threats require the existence of certain caliber answers, and certain design goals may also require the existence of those answers. There are certain lists that absolutely should be running powered removal, and the quality of their games will suffer if they don't.
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As an aside (and hopefully to provide some context why someone might want to do this) I think that when people look over my list they get a little caught up in the existence of things like sever the bloodline. One thing that WOTZ does in their lower power formats is use removal restrictions to push players down certain deck building paths. I have a line of mediocre to poor removal options, but to access the choice removal, it requires synergistic drafting and deck building.
So, for example, I have a lot of top of library bounce in my format, which is hard removal in conjunction with the mill cards. There is a great density of sac. outlets, which turn threaten effects into hard removal. My fight effects can be exploited to reanimate your opponent’s creatures. To the hand bounce can be exploited by thoughtseize or mesmeric fiend effects--and Mez. Fiend becomes hard removal in conjunction with sac. outlets. Or you could just use burning vengeance with flashback cards to control the board.
Because I am taking a synergy approach and applying it to removal, I need to run weakened removal, as no one is going to explore those interactions if they can just STP or path away threats.
Probably a good indicator of where you fall on this spectrum is whether or not you run this guy:
I don't mean to simplify it to just a spectrum, but on an n-dimensional plane (n=2ish?) I don't think you can really be in a good place if you run Hero and low-power removal.
I don't mean to simplify it to just a spectrum, but on an n-dimensional plane (n=2ish?) I don't think you can really be in a good place if you run Hero and low-power removal.
Hmmm maybe I can use your example to help illustrate something too!
Okay, this one was something I realized that contributed to my understanding of removal spellz. If I'm reading this right, to me and Jason, top of library bounce is always hard removal. Now there are some aspects to it that isn't quite like normal removal spells, but for the most part I just consider it a flat hard removal spell not unlike murder. Now if it said "Put target creature on top of it's owners library if it had 3 toughness or less" I would consider it a soft removal spell.
To me putting that card onto the top of their library is making a 1 for 1 trade to remove that card from a productive area and it's setting them back a card they would have otherwise seen. I try not to let the implications that this card is going to be available to them again get me down. To me maybe they just drew another copy of this dumb creature they have in their deck, what mattered was I removed it from play at a cost to my opponent, they spent mana on it already and they must replay their spell again. It sort of reminds me of remand but top of library business has more of the immediate halting effects on the game that I associate with removal.
The problem here is that most of these cards don't trade up very often, you aren't making time with them, you're spending 3 sorcery speed mana or 4 instant mana on a creature of equivalent cost or usually smaller (how often are you really hitting a 5 or 6 cc creature in cube? I don't like cubing with too many of those) and that seems absurd to me. It forces you to rely on your opponent trying to sink another resource into their creature to feel like you have done anything particularly advantageous with your shite instant so you wait for them to target their creatures or group block or activate monsterous or something while you are bleeding your turn away.
Anyway does that help? Like to me, bounce is hard ass removal at the cost of card advantage, time ebbs are just straight removal where you have a little more information than usual and it doesn't deal with "unanswerable questions" too well. Murder is a removal spell that I want to cast on an expensive creature, or when I am terrified for my life and by then I already assume I am losing because I'm not playing a resource game anymore, I'm making bad decisions because the designer decided I should or because my deck doesn't work.
I also think onboard synergy things we protect this way are usually not very interesting parts of the game, but you know I love me some tradewind rider so I could be wrong. Heart all you guys, great conversation!
Okay, this one was something I realized that contributed to my understanding of removal spellz. If I'm reading this right, to me and Jason, top of library bounce is always hard removal. Now there are some aspects to it that isn't quite like normal removal spells, but for the most part I just consider it a flat hard removal spell not unlike murder. Now if it said "Put target creature on top of it's owners library if it had 3 toughness or less" I would consider it a soft removal spell.
To me putting that card onto the top of their library is making a 1 for 1 trade to remove that card from a productive area and it's setting them back a card they would have otherwise seen. I try not to let the implications that this card is going to be available to them again get me down. To me maybe they just drew another copy of this dumb creature they have in their deck, what mattered was I removed it from play at a cost to my opponent, they spent mana on it already and they must replay their spell again. It sort of reminds me of remand but top of library business has more of the immediate halting effects on the game that I associate with removal.
The problem here is that most of these cards don't trade up very often, you aren't making time with them, you're spending 3 sorcery speed mana or 4 instant mana on a creature of equivalent cost or usually smaller (how often are you really hitting a 5 or 6 cc creature in cube? I don't like cubing with too many of those) and that seems absurd to me. It forces you to rely on your opponent trying to sink another resource into their creature to feel like you have done anything particularly advantageous with your shite instant so you wait for them to target their creatures or group block or activate monsterous or something while you are bleeding your turn away.
Anyway does that help? Like to me, bounce is hard ass removal at the cost of card advantage, time ebbs are just straight removal where you have a little more information than usual and it doesn't deal with "unanswerable questions" too well. Murder is a removal spell that I want to cast on an expensive creature, or when I am terrified for my life and by then I already assume I am losing because I'm not playing a resource game anymore, I'm making bad decisions because the designer decided I should or because my deck doesn't work.
I also think onboard synergy things we protect this way are usually not very interesting parts of the game, but you know I love me some tradewind rider so I could be wrong. Heart all you guys, great conversation!
Probably a good indicator of where you fall on this spectrum is whether or not you run this guy:
I don't mean to simplify it to just a spectrum, but on an n-dimensional plane (n=2ish?) I don't think you can really be in a good place if you run Hero and low-power removal.
I agree. This guy is the perfect example I think.
He is specifically excluded from my cube for power reasons. And while I still run pretty strong removal, I don't run some of the top choices (lightning bolt, STP, toxic deluge, etc.). So I guess I fall somewhere in the middle of the crowd here.
FlowerSunRain
Contributor
Fuck it, I'm in, but I'm running it at
since thats what I thought it was when I first read it.On a related note recently I've been thinking about how much I would love this card if it costFuck it, I'm in, but I'm running it at
Now that is slow removal, that asks no questions, allows dumb buffed attacks to exist and is probably a tempo neutral or profitable play.
FlowerSunRain
Contributor
That card would be sweet and if I ever drop the massive space vacuum that is the enchantment theme it would be an option.
Grillo_Parlante
Contributor
It works out a little different over here due to the nature of the early threats. Most of my 1CC threats carry a tempo cost to get going which balances things: stromkirk noble, delver of secrets, reckless waif, champion of the parish. To get noble up to 3/3 represents a two turn investment, and you may have to invest a threaten effect or burn spell to connect with it. Delver can spend multiple turns not flipping. Waif and the other wolves may require you pass your turn without doing anything. Even the mighty champion into gather represents a sacrifice in the sense that you have to play gather over a real 2 drop.
Since the premiere beaters require a tempo investment, just bouncing those cards with silent departure (of which I run 2) can be devastating, let alone a TOL effect. Yes, you paid three for excommunicate and had to do it at sorcery speed, but they invested two turns and a brimstone volley into their noble plan to get those counters. You also essentially just blanked their next draw, since that noble probably won't be doing anything great for the rest of the game--its virtual card advantage for the control player and probably more powerful than remand since you deny them the ability to dig.
In addition, the base bodies on those creatures are terrible, and fall within the range of even the worse early removal and blockers. I've seen a turn 1 Tinder wall, of all things, shut down entire assaults, and even an un-morbid tragic slip can tragically slip champion of the parish before he gets a chance to be pumped.
I understand the concern, and I put a lot of thought into it when I was building the format. I'm not really interested in nerfing control out of existance by going this route. In fact, certain control strategies like burning vengeance only become viable because of the limited removal.
FlowerSunRain
Contributor
Let's pretend the perma-exile loophole doesn't exist. Is this card awesome?
I like it with the loop! I hear they changed the power level errata so that it's easier now than ever so maybe it's no fun.
You know if you use your Riptide Laboratory to bounce your Mangara of Corondor you get to do something similar?
You know if you use your Riptide Laboratory to bounce your Mangara of Corondor you get to do something similar?
FlowerSunRain
Contributor
Whether or not I like the loophole (and I'll be honest, I don't), its not intuitive. Needing to explain an interaction with the technicalities of a rule rather then simply the face value intention is inelegant. More simply, the people I play with don't care enough to study the rules technicalities involved and are happy to play with cards as they appear to look. I run oblivion ring and journey to nowhere with no problems.
Being a 5 for 2 with Ronom Unicorn or Seal of Cleansing both seems unfun and a needless "gotcha" for the average player.
Being a 5 for 2 with Ronom Unicorn or Seal of Cleansing both seems unfun and a needless "gotcha" for the average player.
I really don't consider those creatures terrible on their own. Actually it makes a lot of sense to me to have better removal if you have one drops that are capable of getting above the curve.
When you describe a tinder wall or a slip neutering a 1/1 I am not as depressed as you are. You are describing a card that is in your deck to deal with opposing creatures trading evenly with a card that is in your opponents deck that can attack and block and get bigger and win games for you and similarly deal with creatures though discouraging attacks and combat. I payed one mana to put off your one mana spell that probably has way more potential than the dumb defensive or tempo card I put in my deck. One cc creatures, in my book, should be able to be killed for one mana. Especially if there is a pretty good saturation of solid 1 drops. The more good one drops you've got kicking around the more it's gonna feel dumb spending 2 mana on my turn pointing a volcanic hammer at a kird ape, when you have the potential to play more 1cc spells that have infinitely more potential than my lame wall or disfigure right?
I don't think I want to be fighting gravecrawlers with expensive removal, even if it does exile. Anyway I realize I've stopped impassionedly arguing now, I just saw what you said and it seemed weird to me because champion and stormkirk aren't tempo loses to me, unless your baseline is at 2/1 for 1 mana, and to me that is not the impression you want to be nerfing removal under. Getting into medium creature territory from doing things you'd be doing anyway (attacking, playing small creatures) is not a tempo hit. Neither is waiting for your 1/1 to turn into a 3/2 flyer at no investment of mana beyond the paltry 1 blue for a 1/1 which fits very nicely into most curves without much consequence. I think it's great if it's been working out for you but I know a lot of people here share your inclination and I have always had trouble explaining my view to them and I'm hoping through this folks might see where I'm come at odds with their reasoning. I think what you are probably successful with is making combat and keeping pace with creature size more relevant, which I think is admirable, but you do see people decrying stalled boards in cube all the time when anything like a booster limited boardstate arises.
I really like the wave, but I think you have laid out good arguments for not including it. I would be a lot happier if I didn't have seal and unicorn as you're less likely to be able to perma-exile. Are you still running opalescence? That will cause problems too.