General Spells Matter: Astonished With a Freedom

ravnic

ravnic

RavebornMuse said:


Both of these are the best spell recursion creatures imho, with spells decks generally preferring the 0/4 wall body rather than the 1-mana discount for Archaeomancer and a wimpy 1/2. Both are solid, though if you're running Snapcaster Mage, I'd stay you probably just want the Wall, as you really don't want too many of those effects.
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But isn't Salvager of Secrets just better than the wall? I mean, even in a control deck I would image that trading with some X/2 is better value than just keeping a 3/X in check for a few turns. And in tempo decks for example, having that relevant body on the board to attack after you got your Removal spell back is also nice, right?
 
Karn Cuberated

Karn Cuberated

I don't think I'm decent enough as a Tempo player, but Salvager doesn't seem to be a good card for such decks. AFAIR, Tempo decks need cheap and efficient evasive creatures, and this one, maybe, is just too awkard/slow for this type of strategy. Correct me if I'm wrong.
 
ravnic

ravnic

I would not.kind him getting back my Wash Out or Windfall in such a deck, but that's not the main approach here I'd say.

Let's discuss these spell diggers in the light of a controlish version of the spells matter deck. Even in this deck I think I would prefer merfolk over wall because the fish can trade with relevant creatures and also swing at some point if needed.
 
Karn Cuberated

Karn Cuberated

Hmmmm... I think, Control decks prefer dealing with opponent's threats via removal to trading in combat. Also, they typically run few creatures, so they, probably, don't want to trade too much. That's what I see.
 
RavebornMuse

RavebornMuse

ravnic said:
But isn't Salvager of Secrets just better than the wall? I mean, even in a control deck I would image that trading with some X/2 is better value than just keeping a 3/X in check for a few turns. And in tempo decks for example, having that relevant body on the board to attack after you got your Removal spell back is also nice, right?
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In my experience, I'd always prefer the Wall. The cases where you are ahead on the board and can swing with a 2/2 or trade it away quickly don't seem to outweigh the times the Wall buys you enough time to recover from a barrage of early aggression, which is a top concern a fiddly control/durdle deck will contend with, and is exactly the sort of deck this card tends to be in.
 
ravnic

ravnic

Okay, you guys convinced me. I'm probably testing out the wall now.

Additionally, I even want to add, that the splashability of the wall is not irrelevant. In my meta, there are often decks like {B}{G}{U} dredge, where {U} could sometimes end up to be not more than a light splash. The wall could make such a splash tempting on it's own, because it could buy back game winning spells you might have milled away, like Living Death or Twilight's Call - getting creatures back is far easier in those decks after all.


edit. Got ninja'd by venny
 
Karn Cuberated

Karn Cuberated

I second ravnic's qustion and add a new one of mine: does Forbidden Alchemy need some special deck for it? and does it fit well into Spells Matter? It just seems to be so good for Control decks (it's like a Fact or Fiction's younger brother) and for Spells Matter in particular (there're cards which benefit from instants and sorceries in a graveyard).
 
RavebornMuse

RavebornMuse

ravnic said:
What would you guys say, how many payoffs does a cube of a certain size need to have Spells matter be a clear, draftable archetype?
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It depends on the variance of your cube and how niche the archetype is. For mine, I see 80% of it each draft, so I aim for 3-5 signs of an archetype, isolated to two colors. This means that, on average, between 2-4 pieces will appear in any draft, giving drafters a reasonable chance of seeing the signs and picking into the archetype.

For my list, I'm supporting the deck quite heavily in both {U} & {R}, so I've got:



A few additional points on supporting an archetype:
  • Of course other colors can contribute to a theme, and the majority of the pieces should be somewhat playable outside of the archetype, but if you spread an archetype out too thin across 3+ colors, your drafters have a harder time finding the pieces and putting them together successfully. Focus on building clear archetype support in one or two colors, then extend it into others.
  • It's okay to put more signs (payoffs/engines) in one half of a color pair if you have more lines (cards that can be leveraged into those payoffs/engines) in the other half. For {U}{R} spells, this means that red can get by on less signs of the theme than blue, because it has a high count of desirable lines to feed the deck due to its useful range of burn, token producers, & flashback spells.
  • Make sure you look at the curve of a theoretical archetypal deck. If the whole deck revolves around 7 3-drop spells and 2 6-drops, the deck is going to have a hard time succeeding; try and blend its tools through the curve. (As a sub-point to this, it's a good practice to build an idealized test deck out of your cube list using only 2 colors and artifacts to see if it looks viable and fun even under ideal conditions.)
  • Finally: it's okay if your pieces don't all fit together into one deck, all of the time, but they should each serve a role most of the time. For example, Shreds of Sanity is less likely to see play if you've got The Mirari Conjecture. But you still might want both! The key is to give your drafters enough pieces that can get the job done (redundancy) without giving them so many that the job takes no work or offers too many non-choices (unnecessary duplication).
 
shamizy

shamizy

The problem with Delver for me is that the circumstances to make it into a great card are limited. If you drop it early in the game and flip it over off a lucky reveal and manage to push in 6+ points of damage before defenses are up, it's awesome. If it's just a dorky 1/1 like it is most of the time, then it's a feelbad. It's a unique card and will put its own stamp onto a game, but it's anyone's guess whether that's fond memories of beating down for a ton or being frustrated with a vanilla 1/1 that flipped too late to be relevant.
 
Dom Harvey

Dom Harvey

Contributor
The aggressive spells decks always flopped hard for me. In Constructed - especially Legacy/Vintage - you have so much quality card draw/filtering that you don't need to have many threats (and it's usually 4 copies of the same 1 or 2 threats, which doesn't carry over to Cube well unless you're doubling up/down hard) and you can guarantee that you keep the cards (and hence the prowess/Pyromancer/whatever triggers) flowing. In Cube you have to warp your Cube's contents and go out on a limb during the draft to build a deck that either a. runs the opponent over and oppresses the surely more fun stuff they were doing, or b. loses its one threat to a removal spell and collapses like a house of cards
 
Jason Waddell

Jason Waddell

Administrator
Staff member
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Grixis Tempo











This is what my cubes 3-0 Delver decks looked like back in 2013. I always thought that, if you play Delver on Turn 1 and if flips, ever, you're getting decent value. If you run a dozen spells and some deckthinning from fetchlands, it flips fairly often within the first few turns even without library manipulation.
 
Karn Cuberated

Karn Cuberated

I feel I'm really unexperienced to discuss Delver x)
In fact, Spells Matter in our cube is more of a midrange/control archetype. Although midrange must be able to splash into some agressive creatures in a control matchup, but, as fasr as I understand, Delver is a separate strategy.
 
ravnic

ravnic

What are you're thought on spells matter future sight?




Looks like it would be able to generate lots of CA in any deck with 13+ instants/sorceries. Also exiling top deck lands or unneeded stuff in the late game is not bad either.
 
RavebornMuse

RavebornMuse

I think Precognition Field seems neat, but the spells deck is really easy to misdraft already by hitting a bad ratio of spells to creatures, so I think it's probably counterproductive to include it. Given that most of these decks are desperate to hit more Young Pyromancer triggers or develop a huge Rise from the Tides, I think that typically they'd benefit much more from Think Twice, Frantic Search, Forbidden Alchemy, and/or Deep Analysis, which are all great at functioning as format cogs that contribute to other decks as well.
 
Onderzeeboot

Onderzeeboot

Ecstatic Orb
Yeah, I'ld say the problem is that you have a limited amount of slots for non-instants / non-sorceries, and you want use those slots to either be game-changers or cards that shore up a weakness in your deck. This is neither of those. It's a value engine, but you're much better off using instants and sorceries for gaining value. Any cantrip or card draw spell will do, as long as it also triggers Young Pyromancer and ensures another zombie with Rise from the Tides :)

Precognition Field should probably be good in a slow control deck, but then you've got a card in your cube that's sending mixed signals. It looks like it should support spells matter decks, but in reality it supports control decks.
 
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