I like the snapster, at first I thought I wouldn't but I do. My favorite combo is in ISD itself, Increasing Savagery. For 6 mana you get a 12/11 unless you have out somthing else. I have been playing with Invisible stalker with this combo and even more fun with the Tree of Redemption. I do like the Uncanny Speed combo, I might just have to make a UR burn deck but first I need a playset of Tibalt. I like this Tibalt guy and dont't quite know why. I think his appeal is his price, both of them.
Give Caverns 1 month...they will be in the $10-15 range...especially if recent standard tournament result hold up (it's not as prominant as some would believe).
P1P4: T1 hippie is actually going to be huge precisely because there aren't that many early answers, and on average half of them are missing because they aren't in the packs. The singleton nature of the cube makes this more devastating than in constructed. I would speculate that in cube, turn 1 hippie just wins the game > 25% of the time, meaning you mana or color screw them or deprive them of any meaningful plays and hippie literally wins the game by itself.
There are less than a dozen cards in the cube that your opponent can have to answer a turn 1 hippie without losing a card. Remember that only half the cards show up in any given draft, you'll have some of them, and so there are roughly 4 cards spread between the other 7 drafters (on average). Assume they're all maindecked, so there's about a 40% chance your opponent even has one of them at all. Assume again they have the right land to play it, then there's about a 20% chance they have it in their opening hand. So there's somewhere between a 5-10% chance that you get 2-for-1ed with early removal. If you don't get 2-for-1ed the odds are massively in your favor and get better every time hippie hits. Getting 2-for-1ed in this case is just a mulligan, so you the rest of your deck has a shot. This isn't Channel-Fireball into FoW risk.
P1P12: You're not reanimating and you're not flickering, so the kicker drawback is moot in this case. At any rate, I think you are seriously undervaluing this guy. Calling it situational removal is disingenuous--everything but Vindicate (and Vindicate on a stick) is situational removal in some way. Several commentators have mentioned that Planeswalkers are the most powerful card type in this format, and I agree. There just aren't many cards that outright destroy them and a lot are super expensive or multi-color. Given that you can also hit swords, control magic, animate dead, man lands, etc this is one of the premier answer cards in the format. You can even play it as just a 3/3 if there are no targets, so it's never a dead card, unlike cards I would consider truly situational like say Celestial Purge. Also, I wanted to clarify, I don't necessarily think hippie is better than Visara; I just felt picking Visara over hippie was inconsistent with passing Sheoldred.
P3P2: Again, like with Mold Shambler, I look it like this--how many games will I win that I would otherwise lose if I have land tax over any other card? Finks over any other card? The games where you need Land Tax you *really* need Land Tax, it turns a lots of losing hands into winning hands, and it's the best at what it does by a country mile. Land Tax will also just win games when you have it T1 on the draw. Kitchen finks is good at what it does, but there's lots of alternatives; most situations where Kitchen Finks turns a losing situation into a winning situation would also be won by many other cards.
Finally Land Tax will be *amazing* in a ramp deck like yours. You didn't have Rampant Growth and Cultivate style ramp, you had mana dorks and artifact mana. Having dorks and artifacts forces your opponent to play out more lands to keep up, triggering the tax. Also, you can decline to play lands and just play dorks to keep triggering tax to thin your deck.
P3P4: Obviously, there is a trend here. I like answers. Most people like Acidic Slime and don't like Leatherback Baloth. I guess I feel like you lose to Jitte and Swords more than you win with Student or Mikaeus. Also, with Porcelain Legionnaire, Baneslayer Angel, Admonition Angel and Kitchen Finks, you are well set up to take advantage of Exalted. Ranger is better than mediocre, though, you're right.
P3P7: You have no removal except olivia, which you're not playing. You could easily splash if you wanted to. Not saying it's the pick, just that I think it's in the mix, possibly as a SB card for Sower of Temptations and the like.
P3P8: This card is where we disagree the most. You call it unplayable, I think it would have been one of the 5 best cards in your deck. I really don't understand your point of view. It would have been a good to great card in every single game you posted. Seems like you're expecting 70% aggro matchups, where from what I've seen it's more like 25-30% overall, and in the matches you posted, 0%. You had the early drops and fliers to make it work--a couple of tappers, Emeria Angel, Wall of Omens, Kitchen Finks, Porcelain Legionnaire early, and later, get it behind a Garruk or Baneslayer and ride it home. It breaks all stalemates. Blue/Black style control decks don't tend to have much to deal with enchantments. If you had Mold Shambler and Qasali Pridemage from earlier, this would be a better pick still, with fewer answers out against you. This card still demands an answer and punishes mulligans, bad keeps, missing land drops and slow starts, of which you saw several.
Thanks again and looking forward to more cube drafts in the future!
Sorry Zach, Affinity is good and it'll be around for awhile. Until people start running dedicated hate for it. Your usual hate isn't enough. Spot removal doesn't stop it - too many dudes. Artifact hate and "pay or sac" effects like Kataki, Energy Flux, or even Tabernacle don't stop it because Ravager is such an unfair card (I like Serenity though, good suggestion). Hurkyl's Recall is pretty good, but even then, you'd better win this turn or possibly next because it won't take them long to build their army back up. Tons of dudes, evasion, super fast, resilient to removal, with more than one mana per land and an unfair draw engine. Seems good.
Cavern of Souls is going to be awesome. Sucks that there are two $20 4-of cards in this set that we need for Classic. Maybe it's time to sell my foil promo Ponders.
I like it! I'm off to get a playset of barbarian guilds. Oh and jar of eyeballs of course. But really heretic's punishment and elder of laurels for new stuff would be fun too. I like some heretic's punishment, it won me lotsa drafts.
Its been a while since I read the book, but I believe that the characters in Neil Gaiman's "American Gods" spent some time at the House on the Rock. Made me want to visit if I'm ever in the area.
If I use "House on the Rock" as the subject my message triggers the spam filter! That's why I shortened it to just "House".
As a commander player you comment about playing some paper commander with other judges caught my attention. What deck do you play? You should include a decklist sometime.
Whoops! It does! I guess they were confused about it too and fixed it ahah.
Bonfire isn't really the kind of card that helps RW humans; RW humans would have loved something like Thatcher Revolt if it didn't sac the tokens @ EOT, maybe give you two turns of the tokens, or leave them in play. RW was hurt by every other deck getting at least a little better while gaining very little actual upgrade themselves.
Bonfire is the card that wipes RW humans' board out, not the other way around sadly.
Nice article. Had a few quick comments. You mentioned r/w didnt add enough.. what about bonfire? Also the naya humans you said you were confused by the lack of wolfirs.. the deck runs 4.
I think Zealous Conscripts sounds like one of the most fun cards out of the new set. The fact that you can steal ANY permanent for the turn is great. You could steal someone's 'walker just before it goes ultimate, or just nag an annoying enchantment, equipment, or land for the turn. Imagine taking someone's Maze of Ith so they can't hide behind it when you attack, or better snagging a tapped Strip Mine and using it on another of their own lands.
Very low chances that they add karoos, taking out colorless mana. The point of colorless mana in this cube is to enable ramp decks (Wildfires, Gx, Edrazi Ramp) of all sorts and to minimize the actual fixing. I like Strip Mine in the cube. If you don't, that's fine, but the colorless fixing is there by design, not just to enable Eldrazi. Wizards (or at least the cube designers) don't want a ton of fixing. I wouldn't mind ~5 more fixers, preferably the Odyssey Skyshroud Expanse set or something, but I am almost certain they won't Karoo us. Karoos seem similarly negative to Strip Mine too; between Sinkhole, Flickerwisp, Wasteland/tec edge, Riftwing Cloudskate, the various red land destruction, and Tangle Wire, you're kind of just asking to be blown out. Strip Mine can lead to some blowouts if the opponent has it, Karoos will probably lead to quite a few blowouts for the person playing them when they get shelled back to like 1-2 lands from 3-4 mana.
P1P4 - I can see the advantages of Hippie. I think it's a tough choice because Hippie and Visara fit different roles, and Cube is all about filling roles in your deck. I don't think Ritual + Hippie is quite as strong as it has been in the past considering how much removal there is in the format.
P2P12 - I'm not a big fan of the Shambler, unkicked it's way below average and kicked it is situational removal. Because it has a kicker effect, reanimation and flickering does little. I think the Viper is better for many of the same reasons you think Hippie is better than Visara.
P3P1 - hindsight is 20/20, Karn is definitely the pick and I didn't need the early cantrips as much as I thought I would.
P3P2 - I love Land Tax, but I've found that it is slow and sometimes completely useless if you're playing first or draw it late-game, especially if you are playing ramp white green and will likely have more lands than my opponent in the mid and late game.
P3P4 - Ranger is not mediocre for me. Getting three creatures with 1 card is not mediocre especially when it can summon 2 late-game finishers (Mikaeas and Student of Warfare)
P3P6 - agreed, the anti-graveyard sideboard card is better for my deck.
P3P7 - I don't think there's much chance I'll be going red for any reason. I already have 2 lifelink angels, so the lifegain isn't much of an issue, therefore I don't think Helix is worth splashing.
P3P8 - This format seems fast enough that getting an active Luminarch Ascension seems impossible. Even if I'm playing against a control deck, that control deck will probably have Engineered Explosives, a disenchant effect, or similar removal for the Ascension. Once again I don't really like enchantments that don't do much when I topdeck them in the late game.
Sound on the videos - I'm working on it. I just need a time to record when my 3 year old daughter is not awake.
I think this is the main thing that makes cube much more exciting than normal drafting! You can have these picks where there are loads of real options and you can actually take the cards you like! In a normal draft you invariably only have 1-3 cards to pick between in a pack but cube lets you off the leash, as it were. Commonly I feel like there are 4 or more cards i'm interested in in a pack.
FWIW my first 3 picks would probably have been dismember, treachery, garruk. That certainly doesn't mean I disagree with yours though, just that i'd prefer something a little less restrictive for my pick 1.
Here is the relevant portion of Angel of Jubilation's text:
"Players can't pay life or sacrifice creatures to cast spells or activate abilities."
This means that if the phrase "pay X life" appears anywhere before the colon of an activation cost, like on fetchlands, Griselbrand, Necropotence, Greed, whatever, then you can't do it when this Angel is in play. It also means that if you try to use the alternative cost of a Phyrexian mana card to cast it by paying life, you can't do it.
The sacrifice creatures part relates to cards like Diabolic Intent, Birthing Pod, and Ashnod's Altar.
I think the e-mail list is a great idea. There is undoubtedly some people that have missed the notification and wanted to play.
Call me a dreamer, but I think that if we could all get on Twitter, it might actually be a better form of communication among the community. Not only could we announce the Classic league and any other PR events, but it could also be a method of drumming up people to play in a DE. Especially now that the DE schedule is likely to change, it may be difficult to round up the troops the first week or so while people adjust to the new schedule.
I have a twitter account, I hope people can join suit and form a great commnity on twitter as well... @enderfall
wow great i would like to take the series of delver burn games.
Hindi Movies
I like the snapster, at first I thought I wouldn't but I do. My favorite combo is in ISD itself, Increasing Savagery. For 6 mana you get a 12/11 unless you have out somthing else. I have been playing with Invisible stalker with this combo and even more fun with the Tree of Redemption. I do like the Uncanny Speed combo, I might just have to make a UR burn deck but first I need a playset of Tibalt. I like this Tibalt guy and dont't quite know why. I think his appeal is his price, both of them.
Give Caverns 1 month...they will be in the $10-15 range...especially if recent standard tournament result hold up (it's not as prominant as some would believe).
training grounds + Izzet guildmage + metamorphose = good times,
Unfortunately, Training Grounds only affects creatures
Hey, thanks for responding.
P1P4: T1 hippie is actually going to be huge precisely because there aren't that many early answers, and on average half of them are missing because they aren't in the packs. The singleton nature of the cube makes this more devastating than in constructed. I would speculate that in cube, turn 1 hippie just wins the game > 25% of the time, meaning you mana or color screw them or deprive them of any meaningful plays and hippie literally wins the game by itself.
There are less than a dozen cards in the cube that your opponent can have to answer a turn 1 hippie without losing a card. Remember that only half the cards show up in any given draft, you'll have some of them, and so there are roughly 4 cards spread between the other 7 drafters (on average). Assume they're all maindecked, so there's about a 40% chance your opponent even has one of them at all. Assume again they have the right land to play it, then there's about a 20% chance they have it in their opening hand. So there's somewhere between a 5-10% chance that you get 2-for-1ed with early removal. If you don't get 2-for-1ed the odds are massively in your favor and get better every time hippie hits. Getting 2-for-1ed in this case is just a mulligan, so you the rest of your deck has a shot. This isn't Channel-Fireball into FoW risk.
P1P12: You're not reanimating and you're not flickering, so the kicker drawback is moot in this case. At any rate, I think you are seriously undervaluing this guy. Calling it situational removal is disingenuous--everything but Vindicate (and Vindicate on a stick) is situational removal in some way. Several commentators have mentioned that Planeswalkers are the most powerful card type in this format, and I agree. There just aren't many cards that outright destroy them and a lot are super expensive or multi-color. Given that you can also hit swords, control magic, animate dead, man lands, etc this is one of the premier answer cards in the format. You can even play it as just a 3/3 if there are no targets, so it's never a dead card, unlike cards I would consider truly situational like say Celestial Purge. Also, I wanted to clarify, I don't necessarily think hippie is better than Visara; I just felt picking Visara over hippie was inconsistent with passing Sheoldred.
P3P2: Again, like with Mold Shambler, I look it like this--how many games will I win that I would otherwise lose if I have land tax over any other card? Finks over any other card? The games where you need Land Tax you *really* need Land Tax, it turns a lots of losing hands into winning hands, and it's the best at what it does by a country mile. Land Tax will also just win games when you have it T1 on the draw. Kitchen finks is good at what it does, but there's lots of alternatives; most situations where Kitchen Finks turns a losing situation into a winning situation would also be won by many other cards.
Finally Land Tax will be *amazing* in a ramp deck like yours. You didn't have Rampant Growth and Cultivate style ramp, you had mana dorks and artifact mana. Having dorks and artifacts forces your opponent to play out more lands to keep up, triggering the tax. Also, you can decline to play lands and just play dorks to keep triggering tax to thin your deck.
P3P4: Obviously, there is a trend here. I like answers. Most people like Acidic Slime and don't like Leatherback Baloth. I guess I feel like you lose to Jitte and Swords more than you win with Student or Mikaeus. Also, with Porcelain Legionnaire, Baneslayer Angel, Admonition Angel and Kitchen Finks, you are well set up to take advantage of Exalted. Ranger is better than mediocre, though, you're right.
P3P7: You have no removal except olivia, which you're not playing. You could easily splash if you wanted to. Not saying it's the pick, just that I think it's in the mix, possibly as a SB card for Sower of Temptations and the like.
P3P8: This card is where we disagree the most. You call it unplayable, I think it would have been one of the 5 best cards in your deck. I really don't understand your point of view. It would have been a good to great card in every single game you posted. Seems like you're expecting 70% aggro matchups, where from what I've seen it's more like 25-30% overall, and in the matches you posted, 0%. You had the early drops and fliers to make it work--a couple of tappers, Emeria Angel, Wall of Omens, Kitchen Finks, Porcelain Legionnaire early, and later, get it behind a Garruk or Baneslayer and ride it home. It breaks all stalemates. Blue/Black style control decks don't tend to have much to deal with enchantments. If you had Mold Shambler and Qasali Pridemage from earlier, this would be a better pick still, with fewer answers out against you. This card still demands an answer and punishes mulligans, bad keeps, missing land drops and slow starts, of which you saw several.
Thanks again and looking forward to more cube drafts in the future!
I love Training Grounds and Sliver Overlord- pay 1 to tutor for a Sliver. Incredibly good.
Sorry Zach, Affinity is good and it'll be around for awhile. Until people start running dedicated hate for it. Your usual hate isn't enough. Spot removal doesn't stop it - too many dudes. Artifact hate and "pay or sac" effects like Kataki, Energy Flux, or even Tabernacle don't stop it because Ravager is such an unfair card (I like Serenity though, good suggestion). Hurkyl's Recall is pretty good, but even then, you'd better win this turn or possibly next because it won't take them long to build their army back up. Tons of dudes, evasion, super fast, resilient to removal, with more than one mana per land and an unfair draw engine. Seems good.
Cavern of Souls is going to be awesome. Sucks that there are two $20 4-of cards in this set that we need for Classic. Maybe it's time to sell my foil promo Ponders.
I like it! I'm off to get a playset of barbarian guilds. Oh and jar of eyeballs of course. But really heretic's punishment and elder of laurels for new stuff would be fun too. I like some heretic's punishment, it won me lotsa drafts.
Ryan, you pay 3 mana to get eight mana. pretty simple.
Its been a while since I read the book, but I believe that the characters in Neil Gaiman's "American Gods" spent some time at the House on the Rock. Made me want to visit if I'm ever in the area.
If I use "House on the Rock" as the subject my message triggers the spam filter! That's why I shortened it to just "House".
Great article as always.
As a commander player you comment about playing some paper commander with other judges caught my attention. What deck do you play? You should include a decklist sometime.
Whoops! It does! I guess they were confused about it too and fixed it ahah.
Bonfire isn't really the kind of card that helps RW humans; RW humans would have loved something like Thatcher Revolt if it didn't sac the tokens @ EOT, maybe give you two turns of the tokens, or leave them in play. RW was hurt by every other deck getting at least a little better while gaining very little actual upgrade themselves.
Bonfire is the card that wipes RW humans' board out, not the other way around sadly.
Nice article. Had a few quick comments. You mentioned r/w didnt add enough.. what about bonfire? Also the naya humans you said you were confused by the lack of wolfirs.. the deck runs 4.
Great list, I was waiting for the read.
I think Zealous Conscripts sounds like one of the most fun cards out of the new set. The fact that you can steal ANY permanent for the turn is great. You could steal someone's 'walker just before it goes ultimate, or just nag an annoying enchantment, equipment, or land for the turn. Imagine taking someone's Maze of Ith so they can't hide behind it when you attack, or better snagging a tapped Strip Mine and using it on another of their own lands.
PPS
(I obviously am an unfocused thinker quite often)
Very low chances that they add karoos, taking out colorless mana. The point of colorless mana in this cube is to enable ramp decks (Wildfires, Gx, Edrazi Ramp) of all sorts and to minimize the actual fixing. I like Strip Mine in the cube. If you don't, that's fine, but the colorless fixing is there by design, not just to enable Eldrazi. Wizards (or at least the cube designers) don't want a ton of fixing. I wouldn't mind ~5 more fixers, preferably the Odyssey Skyshroud Expanse set or something, but I am almost certain they won't Karoo us. Karoos seem similarly negative to Strip Mine too; between Sinkhole, Flickerwisp, Wasteland/tec edge, Riftwing Cloudskate, the various red land destruction, and Tangle Wire, you're kind of just asking to be blown out. Strip Mine can lead to some blowouts if the opponent has it, Karoos will probably lead to quite a few blowouts for the person playing them when they get shelled back to like 1-2 lands from 3-4 mana.
Yes, I have a weakness for Masques block cards since I haven't played in any Masques block tournaments It's a worthy consideration
P1P4 - I can see the advantages of Hippie. I think it's a tough choice because Hippie and Visara fit different roles, and Cube is all about filling roles in your deck. I don't think Ritual + Hippie is quite as strong as it has been in the past considering how much removal there is in the format.
P2P12 - I'm not a big fan of the Shambler, unkicked it's way below average and kicked it is situational removal. Because it has a kicker effect, reanimation and flickering does little. I think the Viper is better for many of the same reasons you think Hippie is better than Visara.
P3P1 - hindsight is 20/20, Karn is definitely the pick and I didn't need the early cantrips as much as I thought I would.
P3P2 - I love Land Tax, but I've found that it is slow and sometimes completely useless if you're playing first or draw it late-game, especially if you are playing ramp white green and will likely have more lands than my opponent in the mid and late game.
P3P4 - Ranger is not mediocre for me. Getting three creatures with 1 card is not mediocre especially when it can summon 2 late-game finishers (Mikaeas and Student of Warfare)
P3P6 - agreed, the anti-graveyard sideboard card is better for my deck.
P3P7 - I don't think there's much chance I'll be going red for any reason. I already have 2 lifelink angels, so the lifegain isn't much of an issue, therefore I don't think Helix is worth splashing.
P3P8 - This format seems fast enough that getting an active Luminarch Ascension seems impossible. Even if I'm playing against a control deck, that control deck will probably have Engineered Explosives, a disenchant effect, or similar removal for the Ascension. Once again I don't really like enchantments that don't do much when I topdeck them in the late game.
Sound on the videos - I'm working on it. I just need a time to record when my 3 year old daughter is not awake.
Surprised you didn't at least mention Parallax Wave P2P4. I love the format, great article.
I think this is the main thing that makes cube much more exciting than normal drafting! You can have these picks where there are loads of real options and you can actually take the cards you like! In a normal draft you invariably only have 1-3 cards to pick between in a pack but cube lets you off the leash, as it were. Commonly I feel like there are 4 or more cards i'm interested in in a pack.
FWIW my first 3 picks would probably have been dismember, treachery, garruk. That certainly doesn't mean I disagree with yours though, just that i'd prefer something a little less restrictive for my pick 1.
Ah right, I keep forgetting about the 1 life they tax.
Here is the relevant portion of Angel of Jubilation's text:
"Players can't pay life or sacrifice creatures to cast spells or activate abilities."
This means that if the phrase "pay X life" appears anywhere before the colon of an activation cost, like on fetchlands, Griselbrand, Necropotence, Greed, whatever, then you can't do it when this Angel is in play. It also means that if you try to use the alternative cost of a Phyrexian mana card to cast it by paying life, you can't do it.
The sacrifice creatures part relates to cards like Diabolic Intent, Birthing Pod, and Ashnod's Altar.
I did forget, Mox Diamond may have actually been the best card (colorlesswise) in the first pack.
I think the e-mail list is a great idea. There is undoubtedly some people that have missed the notification and wanted to play.
Call me a dreamer, but I think that if we could all get on Twitter, it might actually be a better form of communication among the community. Not only could we announce the Classic league and any other PR events, but it could also be a method of drumming up people to play in a DE. Especially now that the DE schedule is likely to change, it may be difficult to round up the troops the first week or so while people adjust to the new schedule.
I have a twitter account, I hope people can join suit and form a great commnity on twitter as well... @enderfall
Double post