General What is your stickiest glue card?

Humpty_Dumpty

Humpty_Dumpty

The term “glue card” has been used to describe those cards in a cube that can work across multiple supported archetypes. I’m interested to learn what card in your cube is the most adhesive, gumming together the widest assortment of strategies into one sticky blob.

For me it is


This most strongly supports Naya go-wide, with both three bodies and a +1/+1 payoff. It is also a reasonable Esper blink target; produces counters for Bant; and produces servos for Mardu sacrifice and Abzan tokens. The only on-colour archetype it doesn’t support is Jeskai spells, though it may have coincidental interaction with Grixis cards looking for tokens.

So, what’s your stickiest glue card?
 
Onderzeeboot

Onderzeeboot

Ecstatic Orb
Since Wheel of Change revolves around three color pairings (triplings?) even my monocolored cards have only two guilds they can go into (but three triplings). Rankle, Master of Pranks is certainly sweet in Mardu aggro, Orzhov Smokestack, and UB Ninjas, but I don't know if it's the glue-iest cast in my cube. Maybe it's...



It's an artifact, it's a hasty beater, it can become unblockable to enable ninja's or to provide reach to aggro decks, it can be recurred to repeatedly gain life with Muldrotha, the Gravetide... Yeah, it's quite versatile!
 
shamizy

shamizy



Probably my favorite design of all time. It just does a little bit of everything and can slot into so many archetypes. I've had this article draft sitting on CubeCobra for the last year, on this exact topic, but I'll just post the bit about Tracker I had written up:

It's funny to mention nowadays, but there was once a time where Green 3-drops had a relatively sparse offering of impact cards. We had options, sure, but nothing like the abundance of riches that we now have in 2021. When Tireless Tracker was first spoiled, it wasn't a card that I spent much time on and glossed over it on first glance. I didn't quite understand how useful or powerful Clue tokens would be and just brushed them off for the most part. A few weeks later during an SOI draft I was paired against a friend of mine in the 2nd round who ended up drafting it and assembling a sweet G/W Humans deck with an abundance of clue synergies. It's not until you realize how trivially easy it is to generate value with the Tracker that it becomes apparent how good of a card it is. I may be completely off base here, but this feels like one of the earlier instances of cards that reward you for doing things you were already doing that are so common with today's card designs.

A 3/2 for 3 isn't anything special on its own, but when every land drop creates an additional Clue and becomes a way to cycle 2 mana into another card it gets out of hand very quickly. In that draft, it wasn't long before I was facing down a sizable Tracker that had grown to 5/4 off of cracking two clues, my opponent had drawn two more cards, and they had hit another land drop to generate yet another clue. All clues were ready to cash in down the line, even if I were to remove the Tracker somehow, and I just could not overcome that virtual card advantage. In addition to these features, it's got a splashy 2{G} mana cost and the relevant Human typing allowing you to take advantage of synergies with the likes of Champion of the Parish and Thalia's Lieutenant. The +1/+1 counters gained off cracking clues lets it play well in
g-w
midrange or
u-g
counters decks allowing you to extract extra value off cards like Basri's Lieutenant and Zegana, Utopian Speaker. Playing a grindy
b-g
deck? Those clue tokens can be used to win the game of attrition after trading threats and removal and you could even turbo out an earlier Herald of Anguish to keep applying pressure if you're so inclined. Tireless Tracker is just one of the most dense cards I've ever come across in my years of cubing fulfilling a variety of roles and being an absolute stud across multiple archetypes.
Click to expand...
 
Chris Taylor

Chris Taylor

Contributor
I have my stuff pretty sectioned off, so it's pretty hard for any one card to hit 4+ specific synergies

I'm running
Naya Tokens
Esper Artifacts
Temur Prowess
Mardu Aristocrats
Sultai Self Mill

So lets just post a few of my favorites
1661346472708.png
Tokens, smoothing, multiple bodies, each big enough to be a threat.

1661346501468.png
Technically this hits graveyard, artifacts and spells. It's relatively medium honestly.

1661346525849.png
My beautiful boy! A decent part of the self mill deck is oversold cemetery style recursion engines, so this fits well there and triggers blood artist/can be sac'd in aristocrats. Don't think I haven't thought about making this an artifact creature.

1661346613820.png
I've doubled up on this card it hits so many notes. Creates a token each turn to sac for aristocrats, but it also triggers shit like Chatterfang or corpse knight. It's also a prowess card less directly in that it's a cheap threat which can win the game on its own if protected.
10/10

1661346719512.png
This is the best green prowess creature btw. Most enablers specifically demand you cast them and follow it up with spells, but he doesn't.
Also yeah I guess you could mill yourself.
 
Dom Harvey

Dom Harvey

Contributor


This little guy does it all in a colour that needs good bridges between its themes. It's both a sacrifice outlet and a source of sacrifice fodder and can fill this role several times as a recursive threat for a graveyard theme (there's even a minor +1/+1 counters tie-in too). It does a good job of stalling the board but not in an obnoxious way like Ophiomancer. Just a real workhorse
 
ravnic

ravnic



You are a spells matter deck looking for some payoff?
You are a ninja deck looking for some cheap fliers?
You are a control deck looking for a finisher?

I don't even support counter shenanigans, but still give my vote to this cute little salamander, because no other one-drop goes that smoothly into aggressive and controlling decks at the same time.
 
ravnic

ravnic

Big upside over delve monsters is, that he keeps your graveard intact. I can turn him into a 5/5 and still recur my Last Gasp with something or cast a huge Rise from the Tides later.

To be fair, just a flying men isn't the worst in my cube either. And I think most players still undervalue 1/1 fliers. For example, I so far I heard NOBODY talk about Battlefly Swarm, neither in the context of their cube nor retail limited. That card has been great for me in DMU and I expect it to be even better in my cube. It does all you's expect from a 1/1 flier, like attacking early and holding equipments well, but this one is even better, because his threat of activation deathtouch either means, they won't block it with their flying 3-drop, or it trades up, after it has been a Lava Spike of course.

But just like Pteramander, this ugly friend also works well in control decks. Play it turn 1 when you couldn't keep up mana any way or sometime you don't have anything better to do with 1 or 2 mana. It will hold back their bigger attackers and usually, at the very least, trade for a 3-drop or a removal spell.
 
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