Card/Deck Warrior Tribal

Aoret

Developer
I'm trying to decide how deep I want to go on Blood-Chin Rager or whether I even want to run the card at all. He'd be competing for slots against 2x bloodghast, 2x blood artist, 2x dark confidant, 1x oona's prowler. I'm not sure I'm willing to cut anything other than the prowler (which doesn't currently do much other than attack).

I'm a little concerned that he's just a menace bear given my relatively low density of warriors, and that a menace bear probably isn't good enough. I'm sure that, as always, the correct answer is "just trying running him and see what happens" but I thought I'd solicit ideas just in case there's something obvious I'm missing here.

Currently the warriors I'm running in my 360 are:
 
Blood-Chin Rager is pretty decent by itself and with other warriors even better. Arashin Foremost is also solid with other warriors. Even solo, he's respectable (better than Silverblade is without a buddy since Arashin always has double strike). I really like double strike though, so take that into consideration.
 
Honestly, between Blood-Chin and Prowler I would always recommend running the Prowler if you have any sort of graveyard shenanigans, which imho is one of the cooler things about black and deserves supporting. Besides that, I love all the play to Prowler, because it forces your opponent to make weird decisions sometimes, and I like that interactivity when it isn't being used to dump cool stuff into your graveyard. I've thought about doubling up on it many times.

Personally, I think there are far too few Warriors to get enough benefit from the card and I consider him easily outclassed by his red cousin, Pyreheart Wolf, who does more and sticks the board harder for just 1 mana more. Human tribal is hard enough to really profit off of - rarely does a Champion of the Parish get bigger than a 3/3 over here without running into trouble. Since Humans needs next to no work to pay off, I have to be a bit of a miser here and say that the Warrior tribal direction feels like an even worse one with an even tinier payoff. I think he might be cool in a much lower powered format that has some cool synergy potential, but above that zone, he seems like a bit of a waste. That said, Strike Leader has always been too do-nothing over here and I cut him, so if your cube power level is low enough that he gets much value, I suppose the Blood-Chin may pass the bar.

(Personally, I also prefer to focus Menace effects in red to give the colour more of an identity, but that's a philosophical position moreso than a universally useful one.)
 

Aoret

Developer
You're probably right on all counts here RM, particularly the pyreheart wolf thing, I kinda forgot about him.

I may dabble with slotting a custom into my red section somewhere with has the Blood-Chin effect on an otherwise playable body. The idea of having a few fringe bonuses like this in cube appeals to me a lot, and I think it just requires having weirdly specific bonuses on cards that are reasonable without them. (I also think that's something that could VERY easily be taken too far)

As far as Strike Leader is concerned, he's new, not sure if he's staying. My only experience so far has been playing a pure grindy UW control deck against Bug graveyard value. I think we played 6 games or so that way, switched decks and played again. In that matchup, he was quite good at playing around the numerous wraths while applying consistent board pressure. That's a super anecdotal story though and I'm not sure the card isn't just embarrassing against any deck that plays creatures. I'll keep an eye on it :)
 

Grillo_Parlante

Contributor
I considered this as well, I think the only way its worthwhile is if you have a heavy graveyard theme. At this point mardu-woe reaper could act as a reasonable disruptive engine for an aggro deck. Otherwise I don't really see the payoff.
 
Not gonna lie, kinda mad this thread isn't linked/redirected to MY MUCH BETTER TITLED THREAD ABOUT THE SAME EXACT THING FROM MONTHS AGO.
 

Aoret

Developer
Not gonna lie, kinda mad this thread isn't linked/redirected to MY MUCH BETTER TITLED THREAD ABOUT THE SAME EXACT THING FROM MONTHS AGO.
search function is for wussies


(feel free to kill the thread, oh gods of wizard bouncing)
 
Top