Geistblast: This just showed up in a heads up draft with my roommate. He had a UR Control Deck vs my GR Big Stompy Deck (a bunch of ramp at the small end, leading into
Hammer of Purphoros /
Surrak, the Hunt Caller and then other fattys). It was useful for killing my small utility guys (
Birds of Paradise ,
Lotus Cobra,
Oracle of Mul Daya), but I didn't have enough of them where
Staggershock would have been better. And he got to do some sweet stuff like copy 1)
Dig Through Time to close out a game and 2) NOT copy
Dig Through Time because the board demanded that he copy
Pyrokinesis instead. 3 mana to split 8 damage was really sweet for a red deck to deal with a board of bigger green creatures.
Build-around enchantments:
•
Eyes of the Watcher seems really low power and clunky. While
Jace's Sanctum costs more, reducing costs of other spells and NOT COSTING MANA to trigger the scry does wonders for being an engine. Costing less over time is generally better than costing less upfront (think about the equipment phenomena), and
Jace's Sanctum does the former in multiple ways. Either way, you would need a really specific environment to make it good.
• I'm not a fan of payoff cards that don't do anything on their own. The play patterns are generally disappointing. You have to take a turn off and spend a card to do nothing. And then next turn you still have to do the specific thing that the card says, at which point you're probably only even on cards and still down on tempo. And then if you can do it again you probably about even with someone spending 3 turns doing normal things. Depending on the environment, this can be good worth it. But if your cube's power level includes
Man-o'-Wars and
Flametongue Kavus, those angels are really just not up to snuff. And you had to go through all the trouble to draft a deck with a high enough synergy density! Unless your whole cube is built around that theme, critical mass decks won't work very well. It's the same principle of having more 1 and 2 cmc cards than you think you need so that aggro decks can function. It's the same reason draw go control and mono red burn shouldn't be coming together every draft if your cube is well rounded.
•
Sigil of the Empty Throne is especially egregious because the critical mass of stuff doesn't necessarily all work together well. The best solution I've seen is to errata it to a constellation trigger so that it's not insanely parasitic and at least baseline playable. Of course this does depend on if the environment can handle it, but on average this would make the card see play in more white decks across the board while situationally being SUPER awesome, which is where I think you want to be with build-arounds. I think
Doomwake Giant,
Eidolon of Blossoms, and
Academy Rector are the only good build-arounds for the average cube, and I do think they're very sweet. They're baseline playable, with very fun upsides.
•
Hardened Scales at least avoids the spend-your-whole-turn-to-do-nothing problem. I still don't like the sets-you-back-a-card thing though. I think
Abzan Falconer is exactly the pay off that the average (not extremely pushed for +1/+1 counter) cube wants for this theme. Proliferate cards are also great. If your cube is extremely pushed for it, then go deeper on payoffs.
Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker combo
• Re vennythekid: he's saying
Pestermite is too lower power, not Kiki-Jiki
• I disagree. I think Pestermite is reasonably strong in a blue flash/tempo/aggro deck. But it does require your play group to have that opinion and know how to draft that kind of a deck.
• Other more powerful options:
Bounding Krasis (standard power house
);
Great Oak Guardian (not narrow
Overrun! probably the green 6 drop with the most interesting play to it)
White pump enchantments: Same caveat about power level of your cube applies here, but in general I think these are both awesome and great incentives to push people towards white/x aggro decks (which are otherwise not often sought out) without feeding as hard into other strategies. Yes, they're good in almost every white deck...but they're really maximized when people max out on creatures and can curve 1-2-3-(4) into them. And it's pretty sweet that
Citadel Siege can operate as a removal spell in a control deck. Cards that fit into multiple decks make the drafting experience richer.
Nostalgic Dreams: I really wanted this to work, but found it to be under-desired; often a 14th-15th pick type of card. The problem is that the average case scenario is not up to snuff. Yes, the sweet interactions exist but there are not many of them ...and when you don't get the sweet interactions, it is worse than
Regrowth 90%+ of the time. You have to put in work to make it an above average card.
