Card/Deck Single Card Spotlight

Velrun

Velrun

Erik Twice said:
I want to know. How powerful are the Diamonds compared to Signets? I know that coming into play tapped is not a huge downgrade vis a vis wrath effects and other big plays but not fixing your mana is.

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It is like comparing a tapped Basic land to a Filter land.



Both can be useful and it really depends on the situation.. But most would prefer the untapped Filter.

(Signet don’t tap for colorless so my analogy is not spot on. But I feel like it i close.)
 
Mondschwein

Mondschwein

Those odyssey duals have some truely beautiful art attached to them. I'm kind of frustrated they didn't print the enemy coloured cycle back then, in the old frame. :(

@ mana rocks: even if they come down tapped, every deck still wants them. you'll need to restrict them further if your cube is mid-powered:

 
Rasmus Källqvist

Rasmus Källqvist

It's an interesting card, because for experience I know there are cubes that have an artifact density thanks to the presence of artifact token makers. How many non-token artifacts do you actually run to feed into this card?
 
Chris Taylor

Chris Taylor

Contributor
Mondschwein said:
Those odyssey duals have some truely beautiful art attached to them. I'm kind of frustrated they didn't print the enemy coloured cycle back then, in the old frame. :(

@ mana rocks: even if they come down tapped, every deck still wants them. you'll need to restrict them further if your cube is mid-powered:

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I don't have an install with the old frames on me right now, but let me see what I can do when I get home
 
dbs

dbs

Erik Twice said:
What do you guys think of this?

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I've found it to be fine. I'm not going to cut it because the flexibility is nice - I want to support as many different combo decks as possible, so having the flexible draft slot alongside Baral, or a familiar is valuable. That being said, Cloud Key is best by a considerable amount in the artifact combo decks. Those decks aren't slowed down by a 3 casting cost artifact (for various reasons) and colorless cost reduction tends to be much more powerful with a bunch of cards that cost 1 or 2 colorless. I've also found success with Cloud Key in the creature storm decks, but it's less explosive.

Multiple times, my players and I have found Cloud Key to be lackluster in the non-creature non-artifact storm decks. Costing 3 mana makes it hard to use as a "ritual" on the turn you're going off, and the fact that you can only target instants OR sorceries is relevant way more than you want it to be. I might have to errata that.

Overall, I run Cloud Key along side:



and I've found Helm to be way more fun in pretty much every draft. (1) Costing 2 is meaningfully cheaper in non-artifact decks. (2) Reducing the cost of all cards typically gets you a bunch more free mana. (3) Giving the symmetric effect to your opponent creates an enjoyable tension - an early YOLO helm has started a number of the most enjoyable cube games in my recent memory. It feels very different than Heartbeat which you can't cast and pass the turn without dying.
 
safra

safra

Erik Twice said:


So why isn't this played? It seems to be interesting and versatile.
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I played it for a while! He is best with cards like:


At his best, he doubles your kill spells, or gives you a mana advantage, or flashes back the CoCo in BGx company decks. But he's pretty clunky and Bushido mostly serves to punish people for not perfectly remembering the board state. If you wanna run him, enjoy - me and mine had fun - but I think that eventually you'll cut him just like I did.
 
Erik Twice

Erik Twice

Let's give it a try, then. I'm trying to push a little for more spells-based decks to broaden the playability of some cards and he seems worth a try. Requiering a density of instants is a pretty big limitation, though.

Here's a fairly controversial pair of cards I'm not sure about:



I don't know if it's wrong of me, but I often find myself putting these cards on the sideboard (to prevent mana screw) or simply picking them up when I know mana fixing or minor spell would be better. However, they are good and fun when picked properly and the interaction with Crucible of Worlds is very nice.
 
safra

safra

I would run both, but Mutavault is probably cheaper because what are you doing if you don't have the full 4 seasons set of factories, am i right

e: a note for people who haven't played with factory - it's more defensive than Mutavault because it blocks as a 3/3 but attacks as a 2/2, whereas Mutavault goes really great with all our favourite tribal stuff like Thalia's Lieutenant
 
Nanonox

Nanonox



I've been on the fence about this card for a while and I can't seem to find any recent feedback on her. The ones from here date back to 2016-2017 where most people didn't really know how to rate her power-level wise.

For me, she seems very strong but still reasonable and very synergistic with my red section. Her tokens disappearing and her lowish loyalty is what I think balances her out.

Do any of you have any experience?
 
shamizy

shamizy

Nanonox said:


I've been on the fence about this card for a while and I can't seem to find any recent feedback on her. The ones from here date back to 2016-2017 where most people didn't really know how to rate her power-level wise.

For me, she seems very strong but still reasonable and very synergistic with my red section. Her tokens disappearing and her lowish loyalty is what I think balances her out.

Do any of you have any experience?
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She's a strong finisher in Red, about on par with Inferno Titan in terms of board impact. 6 hasty power per turn closes out the game quickly after following up a mini-wrath to wipe most of the board. I like her better than the Titan because there are less ways to abuse her or cheat her out into play. She's not as universally playable as Chandra, Torch of Defiance, but I think she might be the best of all the Chandra's we currently have available with how good she is at closing out a game. She can wipe the board to return some semblance of parity if you're behind, her 0 ability will let you refuel your hand +1 card if you're in a deadlock, and the +1 will let you close out the game quickly if you're ahead. I think she's just an excellent card all-around.
 
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