Onderzeeboot
Ecstatic Orb
I like how you don't even bother to mention Grave Titan
General Unpopular Fun/Effective Cards in Your Cube
- Thread starter Diakonov
- Start date
All these walls and not the one "walls matters" card?
I was actually thinking of:
Wish Vent Sentinel was one mana cheaper to be worth running. Not sure if I like Overgrown Battlement, doesn't it feel awkward since it often can't block because it tapped for mana?
I was actually thinking of:
Wish Vent Sentinel was one mana cheaper to be worth running. Not sure if I like Overgrown Battlement, doesn't it feel awkward since it often can't block because it tapped for mana?
Yeah, Vent Sentinel is super cool. It's one of those cards I wouldn't mind tweaking to numbers on and printing out.
Dom Harvey
Contributor
I don't know how unpopular this is, but this card is perfect - there isn't much reanimation that's cheap enough to add variety without being bonkers in a dedicated Reanimator deck, but this fits the bill. There are so many good, cheap creatures to return, whether it's Mogg War Marshal for value/combo or Tarmogoyf/Warden of the First Tree to add a threat to the table. There are neat mini-combos with the likes of Eternal Witness and Snapcaster Mage, and the Origins flip planeswalkers add another set of excellent targets. Cycling is a great bonus too, especially in a colour with multiple good delve cards.
Another shoutout for its colleague Apprentice Necromancer, who enables a ton of ridiculous turns while being limited by the 'at end of turn' clause and summoning sickness.
It does a more fair imitation of Grafted Wargear while scaling nicely and opening yourself up to fewer blowouts. You can play it for 0 to stop your Kor Skyfisher losing you tempo, get a free Prowess trigger, or set up Daretti/Tezzeret; or you can draw it when you have 8 lands in play and turn any creature into a serious threat. The manaless activation cost means it doesn't interfere with future turns and you can hold it to get a massive hit in out of nowhere by sinking all your mana into it.
On the other hand, I've been running Palladium Myr and it feels very fair.Inferno Titan was a bit too strong for my cube, but the real culprits that make these cards game warping are (in ascending order of bullshit):
I'm very happy I cut the first two, and I never tried the other three.
I don't know how unpopular this is, but this card is perfect - there isn't much reanimation that's cheap enough to add variety without being bonkers in a dedicated Reanimator deck, but this fits the bill. There are so many good, cheap creatures to return, whether it's Mogg War Marshal for value/combo or Tarmogoyf/Warden of the First Tree to add a threat to the table. There are neat mini-combos with the likes of Eternal Witness and Snapcaster Mage, and the Origins flip planeswalkers add another set of excellent targets. Cycling is a great bonus too, especially in a colour with multiple good delve cards.
Another shoutout for its colleague Apprentice Necromancer, who enables a ton of ridiculous turns while being limited by the 'at end of turn' clause and summoning sickness.
It does a more fair imitation of Grafted Wargear while scaling nicely and opening yourself up to fewer blowouts. You can play it for 0 to stop your Kor Skyfisher losing you tempo, get a free Prowess trigger, or set up Daretti/Tezzeret; or you can draw it when you have 8 lands in play and turn any creature into a serious threat. The manaless activation cost means it doesn't interfere with future turns and you can hold it to get a massive hit in out of nowhere by sinking all your mana into it.
I agree on Unearth, but your Sigil evaluation seems super optimistic. I've never run it, so I can't say first-hand, but I have difficulty imagining my aggro deck spending 6 mana to get +2/+2 on a single creature.
Dom Harvey
Contributor
3 mana, it's not XX (unless I'm misunderstanding you)
Oops, I can't read.
Aoret
Developer
That's a damn cool suggestion Dom. I'm gonna give sigil a spin. Even if it ends up being slightly worse than wargear, averaged out over a bunch of games, the fact that it has so much more play to it makes me want to give it the nod. And I'm not even sure that it will work out being worse than wargear.
Grillo_Parlante
Contributor
Dom those are some really great suggestions. I don't remember Apprentice Necromancer at all, but the card looks like a blast. Sigil of distinction seems about perfect: mana sink, charge counters, and you can even grab it with trinket mage.
Unearth, of course, is an amazing card.
Unearth, of course, is an amazing card.
Some cards I love that I don't see often in lists:
A blue artifact that pretends to be colourless, the Shard is fantastic. It provides a very gentle tax effect, allowing you to keep your opponent leaving 1-2 mana open to pay the toll to keep their dudes. It's balanced greatly by the steep investment cost (at least, in fast formats like mine), and the fact that so many of your opponent's creatures will have ETB effects that you don't necessarily want to let them re-use. It also plays a mean game against tokens, which is fair considering how cheap tokens are, anyway. Best of all - YOU CAN BOUNCE YOUR OWN DUDES! Most people overlook that. Re-buying a Harbinger of the Tides for a 3-mana, once-per-turn guaranteed tapped creature bounce? Sounds pretty cool (and pretty fair) to me!
This guy is fantastic. He can dig you out of topdeck wars really easily, has relevant type(s), and a 2/1 body that does a fine job of swinging in or trading when it needs to. Last night I won a game I was going to lose by aggressively pitching my 4-card hand to Oona's Prowler so I could draw 2 cards every turn instead of one. He has a lot of potential for cool plays like that, and makes cantrips a lot better randomly, too. His zombie typing and ability to feed control or aggro strategies cards just really delights me.
If you aren't running this yet, it's probably because it looks too powerful - and it kinda might be! Getting 4 in the yard is not as easy as it sounds unless you build towards it, but even getting this value engine turned on late is a real beating, forcing your opponent to decide carefully what's worth chumping and how to keep the recursion train stalled. This card is quite beatable in incompetent decks but a real menace in the hands of a good player, which is something I like a lot - it's never as straightfowardly useful as it looks for all decks. Where it does the best work is aggressive strategies with lots of creatures - midrange really wants to use it, but it usually generates value too slowly for them unless they can self-mill or pitch cards from their hand. It is a bit too strong for some formats and perhaps a bit too slow in others, but I love this card and pick it highly.
I don't like tokens, except when I do. 5/5 Demons with flying and nipple rings? Now, there's my kind of token. He requires a bit of work, but rewards you greatly for it, and does a great job in my format, which is faster and more removal-efficient than most. He's plenty disruptable but very strong when he's left alone, which is the kind of gamble I'm happy to take at 2 mana.
The most solid member of the Ring cycle, this is a red artifact that grants haste for 1 mana after an initial investment of 2 that generates further value in the form of counters for your red things. Hammer of Purphoros never got as much love over here as the Ring did, and while that's probably because my Red section isn't full of tokens, I think it's a pretty nice card, so it stays around. Not the most thrilling card, but an unpopular and generally playable one.
Titania's boy toy, this dude has a lot of play to him, allowing for interesting decisions around who's worth a land to protect. Just playing him out on a land-filled board can be game over for an opponent relying on spot removal, his value goes up a lot with landlovers like Titania and Knight of the Reliquary. Much better than he looks, he feels like a green Mother of Runes that actually connects with some other strategies.
A blue artifact that pretends to be colourless, the Shard is fantastic. It provides a very gentle tax effect, allowing you to keep your opponent leaving 1-2 mana open to pay the toll to keep their dudes. It's balanced greatly by the steep investment cost (at least, in fast formats like mine), and the fact that so many of your opponent's creatures will have ETB effects that you don't necessarily want to let them re-use. It also plays a mean game against tokens, which is fair considering how cheap tokens are, anyway. Best of all - YOU CAN BOUNCE YOUR OWN DUDES! Most people overlook that. Re-buying a Harbinger of the Tides for a 3-mana, once-per-turn guaranteed tapped creature bounce? Sounds pretty cool (and pretty fair) to me!
This guy is fantastic. He can dig you out of topdeck wars really easily, has relevant type(s), and a 2/1 body that does a fine job of swinging in or trading when it needs to. Last night I won a game I was going to lose by aggressively pitching my 4-card hand to Oona's Prowler so I could draw 2 cards every turn instead of one. He has a lot of potential for cool plays like that, and makes cantrips a lot better randomly, too. His zombie typing and ability to feed control or aggro strategies cards just really delights me.
If you aren't running this yet, it's probably because it looks too powerful - and it kinda might be! Getting 4 in the yard is not as easy as it sounds unless you build towards it, but even getting this value engine turned on late is a real beating, forcing your opponent to decide carefully what's worth chumping and how to keep the recursion train stalled. This card is quite beatable in incompetent decks but a real menace in the hands of a good player, which is something I like a lot - it's never as straightfowardly useful as it looks for all decks. Where it does the best work is aggressive strategies with lots of creatures - midrange really wants to use it, but it usually generates value too slowly for them unless they can self-mill or pitch cards from their hand. It is a bit too strong for some formats and perhaps a bit too slow in others, but I love this card and pick it highly.
I don't like tokens, except when I do. 5/5 Demons with flying and nipple rings? Now, there's my kind of token. He requires a bit of work, but rewards you greatly for it, and does a great job in my format, which is faster and more removal-efficient than most. He's plenty disruptable but very strong when he's left alone, which is the kind of gamble I'm happy to take at 2 mana.
The most solid member of the Ring cycle, this is a red artifact that grants haste for 1 mana after an initial investment of 2 that generates further value in the form of counters for your red things. Hammer of Purphoros never got as much love over here as the Ring did, and while that's probably because my Red section isn't full of tokens, I think it's a pretty nice card, so it stays around. Not the most thrilling card, but an unpopular and generally playable one.
Titania's boy toy, this dude has a lot of play to him, allowing for interesting decisions around who's worth a land to protect. Just playing him out on a land-filled board can be game over for an opponent relying on spot removal, his value goes up a lot with landlovers like Titania and Knight of the Reliquary. Much better than he looks, he feels like a green Mother of Runes that actually connects with some other strategies.
I can't remember if I play Crystal Shard any more. I like it, sort of, but it's really busted. People don't find it very fun, and there's General Groaning when it comes down. The last few times I've played against it it's wrecked me.
I've really been meaning to try oversold cemetary. Sylvan Safekeeper is a card I want to like but his ability simply can't be used early without just wrecking your mana development. So he's really more like a 5 drop and at that point in the game I feel like I could be casting other things. I see a great interaction with Whisperwood though.
Aoret
Developer
Crystal Shard is broken as fuck but I have too much fun every time I draft it so it stays. It might secretly be one of the best cards in my cube. Sylvan Safekeeper looks interesting.. I kinda wish it was protection instead of shroud... is it good enough this way?
Chris Taylor
Contributor
Crystal Shard is so slow
I'm a Crystal Shard fan. I can't count how many times guys forget to save that one mana and just wind up losing tons of tempo when I bounce their expensive creature. It's a little slow I guess, but perfectly fine here (nowhere near getting cut). And it combos with your stuff too. I love that card.
Protection would be bah-roken. Shroud blanks removal in a very polite way, so there are minimal feel-bads, especially since they a) know it's coming, and b) it sets you back a land (or two, if they respond to the trigger with another piece of removal). It's a fantastic card that has a lot more play to it than it seems, and the threat of using it makes your opponent very shy to cast removal until they're sure they can outclass you, which can at the least buy a few turns - and all this coming from a 1-drop. It's an underrated powerhouse like Zuran Orb, in that he doesn't look like he can steal a win, but he does all the time. I really can't give it a strong enough endorsement, and it's a 1-drop. Most people run too many 1-drop ramp effects, so he's easy to slide in and test.
Several people have highly recommended Sylvan Safekeeper, but I keep coming back to the same problem. Sacing your own lands is very detrimental early in the game. If I cast doom blade on something and it blows up a land, I am pretty happy about that. If I cast firebolt and it blows up a land, I'm even more happy. To me, this ability is only good when you are protecting something big and expensive. Sacing a land to save Wolfir Silverheart is GREAT. So late game, this dude certainly has a lot of value. But early? I just don't see it.
So is that how you have typically used it? As a late game shroud giver to your key threats?
So is that how you have typically used it? As a late game shroud giver to your key threats?
Aoret
Developer
Theoretically I see either this or low curve aggro decks in the mid game as the applications. If my curve tops at four, maybe losing land 3 or 4 to blank removal and keep pressure on is worthwhile to me. It isn't even tempo loss the first turn unless you're using it to blank lightning bolt*. I think the card creates a lot of interesting decisions that players won't be used to making. To me,** that is one of the best things a card can do in cube and I'm likely to run it due to that alone.
*I spend 1 for safekeeper, you spend 2 for doom blade, I blank it losing 1 mana next turn and 1 mana per turn forever, but over the course of my next turn we come out even on mana and I got to half-ass time walk you.
**it looked like a leprechaun to me
I've never been a fan of saccing lands for effects unless it's like an all-in sort of thing to try and win that turn. It's too steep a cost for me, but then again I might value mana too much (which is weird to think about). He does seem like a sweet way to protect a threat in the later game when you're trying to close out the game. Safekeeper seems interesting and I do have a copy from the Green Commander deck. Will probably swap out a dork for him in time for whenever my next draft is and check him out.
Grillo_Parlante
Contributor
I don't know, being able to disrupt an opponent's anti-aggro plan seems pretty good in a low curve deck, and it protects key threats. I really don't think it needs to do more than that.
But than I've never played it, so don't really know. The closest analogy is what, spellskite, standard bearer and mizzium meddler?
But than I've never played it, so don't really know. The closest analogy is what, spellskite, standard bearer and mizzium meddler?