General What is your stickiest glue card?

[Chris Taylor]

I'm replaying Shandalar right now (Big ups by the way) and flying men is okay in a format where the average starting life total is 12.
I tried to believe in Pterry for a while but while there's a lot of words on there I like, but it just doesn't add up to a magic card I'd play.

 

[blacksmithy]

pteramander would be cool if it didn’t cost a bazillion mana to become a real card

 

[sigh]

Man your gys must be empty for it to cost a bazillion

 

[Karshtakavaar]

See, this is why we don't put Bojuka Bog in the basic land box

 

[ravnic]

I'm replaying Shandalar right now (Big ups by the way) and flying men is okay in a format where the average starting life total is 12.
I tried to believe in Pterry for a while but while there's a lot of words on there I like, but it just doesn't add up to a magic card I'd play.

I don't buy that. See, my format is a little lower powered than most around here even, but I can't believe it's so unique a format, that nowhere else a turn 1 flying men with upside is a very good start for any aggressive deck. Savannah Lions style cards just get stonewalled quickly, don't synergize so well and are worse topdecks when you have to get the last few points of damage through. "Oh, cool, you got a 4/4. Well, I'm sticking this Bonesplitter to my Topplegeist and now you got three rounds left to answer it."

Don't you guys run equipment? Or ninjas?

 

[Chris Taylor]

I feel like you've just argued decently well for Bonesplitter, not flying men
Like yes, when combined with a ham sandwich, you can kill your opponent with equipment

 

[safra]

No, I don't run any ninjas.

 

[TrainmasterGT]

Man your gys must be empty for it to cost a bazillion

I literally have a spells graveyard deck, and Pteramander still takes too long to come online. Pteramander is a cool card, but it's hard to scale fast enough to fully leverage it if your games end before turn 6 or so. It's not like Dragon's Rage Channeler, Delver of Secrets, or even Tarmogoyf, which can usually be big by turn 3. Having to cast, mill, or discard 7 instants and sorceries usually takes a while longer. Even though you don't have to go all the way up to 7, you're likely to spend your entire turn adapting the Pteramander if you don't.

Pteramander isn't a bad card, but the amount of milling you have to do to bring it online and/or the amount of mana you have to spend to adapt it just makes it too slow for a lot of environments.

 

[sigh]

if your games end before turn 6 or so

Somehow I doubt this is the case in Ravnics cube, and is definitely not the case in mine.

Just cast 4 spells as part of normal gameplay and then it's a nice 4 mana play to smash in for 5. It costing "an entire turn" isn't really a bad thing when that entire turn is turning it into a big flying beater (that may be the last thing you need to do in that game). Tombstalker and most other 5/5 fliers being cast in a cube will also cost the entire turn, and also usually be on T4 or later, so I really don't see that as a particular downside.

 

[Onderzeeboot]

This, on the other hand, does scale quickly enough

 

[blacksmithy]

kinda depends on how fast is fast enough

 

[TrainmasterGT]

Somehow I doubt this is the case in Ravnics cube, and is definitely not the case in mine.

No one is saying your Cubes work the way I described, I was simply trying to illustrate the scenario where Pteremander is less desirable.

Tombstalker and most other 5/5 fliers being cast in a cube will also cost the entire turn, and also usually be on T4 or later, so I really don't see that as a particular downside.

The big thing with Delve threats is that they can exile anything from the yard to cast, indiscriminate of card type. For example, if I want to cast a Tombstalker (which is the hardest commonly played delve creature to cast), I could reasonably get the cost down to three mana just by playing commune with the gods and nothing else. I'd still have to pay if I played nothing else, but it's not unlikely that I could have played a fetchland or spell on turn 1 that has also found its way into the yard. For the same line to appear with my Pteremander, my Commune with the Gods would have needed to mill exactly 4 instants and sorceries. While that's not impossible, it's statistically less likely.

This paradigm doesn't make the Pteremander bad, it just means that it can't work as well in faster environments because it's harder to meet its requirements in a timely fashion. Like you said, there are times when one can just spend 4 mana on adapting a Pteramander and be happy. However, the chances of that happening decrease significantly the faster the game gets.

 

[blacksmithy]

Pterry that counted ALL noncreature cards would be kinda sick

 

[Chris Taylor]

Pterry that counted ALL noncreature cards would be kinda sick

Maybe not lands but maybe I'm disappointed enough that this might be true.

 

[spicewitch]

let's make a whole cube out of glue cards

 

[Chris Taylor]

Call that yugioh

 

[blacksmithy]

Maybe not lands but maybe I'm disappointed enough that this might be true.

i WANT one that just counts everything, ill accept one that counts noncreatures

 

[Mown]

No, I don't run any ninjas.

Sounds like something a ninja would say.

 

[Dom Harvey]

Playing with Prowess, Sprite Dragon etc really drove home how big the difference between instant/sorcery and noncreature is

 

[ravnic]

I agree with almost everything written here, yet I stick with this: A 1/1 flier on turn one is a good start for aggro decks in almost any environment. A 1/1 flier with mid/lategame relevance is a card, that can hold it's ground even higher powered formats.

Just today I listened to Andy from Lucky Paper Radio defending Faerie Guidemother in his max power fair cube. That further convinced me, that people don't give flying men+ cards a fair chance.

 

[Chris Taylor]

I'm on the wrong colors for it at the moment but I'd run Guidemother but still think Pterry is bad
Hmmmm maybe blue guidemother?

 

[Karshtakavaar]

FWIW, if I had to pick a Flying Men, Pteremander would not top the list (That goes to Vault Skirge) - but I do think having the option to upgrade a dude by 4 power permanently for like, ~4 mana at instant speed, puts the lil guy in my top 5 - and I think he's the best if you end up doing something other than an aggressive deck, as he's the most relevant in lategame.

 

[Erik Twice]

I've been dissapointed by Pteramander. It just hasn't pulled its weight.

First, it's a pretty narrow card. You need to run a pretty large number of instant and sorceries for it to be good and that's a pretty stiff requirement right now. Magic is increasingly creature-based so if you want to run instant-matter cards, you must draft for it.

Second, it's a tempo card. You are only going to play it if a 1/1 flyer is fine to you. Otherwise, you will just play whatever control creature you like at a higher mana cost.

So it's a tempo card. But do tempo decks really want it? Tempo decks, by definition, try to win before the opponent and will sacrifice long-term power to win earlier. But Pteramander does the opposite! It's a very weak card early on and only becomes stronger when the game has advanced. So it's actually kind of backwards.

In practice, it's a card that it's bad at your deck's main goal and becomes good when you are weaker. That's kind of shaky and it all comes crashing down when you least want it to. If you activate and your opponent kills it in response, you lose a massive amount of tempo. If your opponent isn't on its back feet in the early game, it's useless. If you cannot attack with a 1/1 flyer, it's a paper weight.

I just don't think the card works.

 

[Chris Taylor]

I mean the concerns I have with Pterry are:
-I'll (or it'll) die before I get to activate it
-My graveyard won't fill fast enough for me to activate it
-My opponent will punish me for paying 4 mana to upgrade my 1/1 by killing it.

Look, if the average game length is like 15 turns, and removal is super scarce, these are just not issues whatsoever.
Like sure, have fun using one of the 3 removal spells in your whole deck on my 1 drop, you should really save that for serra angel but you do you

 

[ravnic]

See, I understand that some environments have a hard time getting to the adapt, which makes it just a flying men without the plus, and in that case I'm with @Chris Taylor here. But ...

First, it's a pretty narrow card. You need to run a pretty large number of instant and sorceries for it to be good and that's a pretty stiff requirement right now. Magic is increasingly creature-based so if you want to run instant-matter cards, you must draft for it.

Second, it's a tempo card. You are only going to play it if a 1/1 flyer is fine to you. Otherwise, you will just play whatever control creature you like at a higher mana cost.

So it's a tempo card. But do tempo decks really want it? Tempo decks, by definition, try to win before the opponent and will sacrifice long-term power to win earlier. But Pteramander does the opposite! It's a very weak card early on and only becomes stronger when the game has advanced. So it's actually kind of backwards.

In practice, it's a card that it's bad at your deck's main goal and becomes good when you are weaker. That's kind of shaky and it all comes crashing down when you least want it to. If you activate and your opponent kills it in response, you lose a massive amount of tempo. If your opponent isn't on its back feet in the early game, it's useless. If you cannot attack with a 1/1 flyer, it's a paper weight.

I just don't think the card works.

... I can't agree with these statements. It is to me the opposite of a narrow card, as it goes in tempo and control decks. In the former it's a solid 1-drop that has mid/lategame relevance, in the latter it's a 5/5 flier for three mana, allowing you to keep up a protecting counterspell. I think most peoples blue sections are naturally spell heavy enough to make that work, even today. So it's not just a tempo card either.

A turn one Pteramander, even just as a flying men, ist undervalued by the cube community at large, I'll stick with that, and this card in particular even gives you the option (!) to grow it later and maybe have a shot at turning around a game you might have lost otherwise.

I also don't buy the tempo loss argument, because why would you activate if it wasn't very cheap OR you didn't have anything better to do anyway?