This is a card that is in nearly every list on these forums (and many other lists outside of here) and I was wondering what people's honest experiences and thoughts were on it. I've had it in my list for years and attempted to make it work in nearly every type of archetype (while also trying to get other drafters to do the same), but it has simply failed to perform time and time again. Four-mana is just the sweet spot for all colors in the cube, and asking to to spend that crucial turn on a card which does absolutely nothing no matter what stage of the game it's cast has proven to be far to much of a drawback. It's like an opposite Tangle-Wire in that it does nothing immediately and slowly builds momentum. Unfortunately, that just hasn't shown to be something that cube decks really want (in comparison to Tangle Wire which is a 1st-pick slam around here). Maybe I'm alone on an island regarding my views of this card here, lets hear what the rest of you think about it!
It's just one of those cards that is occasionally the best card ever, but do nothing/durdly a bunch of the time, much like Tradewind Rider, Opposition, Trading Post etc. at the same CMC
It's harder to make it consistently as awesome as in constructed, but my players have had pretty good success with it over the years, particularly in token decks, or with Crucible of Worlds, other recursion etc. I think it's worth keeping in my cube for the potential, but I do understand that it's not always going to be awesome.
It's a sweet durdle card that fits in a very griefer style of deck. It's not always going to be good for every deck (very bad in aggro unless it's pox) and can be too little too late. You really have to build around it to make it good. It's got a very low floor and a high ceiling, and it's a cool effect I like to have in my cube, even if the deck doesn't come together every draft. It's also a hard deck to build, so a lot of the less experienced cubers don't normally touch it, which can also make it seem like it's not doing enough work.
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It's a very strong card that wants to be built around and has a very high skill cap.
The thing that makes it such a difficult card to use, and why it may seem weak at times, is that each turn you have to make multiple decisions regarding it. You have to ask if it's the right time to add a counter to it, or how many counters you want on it in the near future, you have to ask which permanent(s) you want to sacrifice to it, and you have to ask if it's beneficial to keep it around. All of this happens in one upkeep, which makes it all the more difficult.
A lot of people will put it at one counter and leave it there, but really there are a lot of times where you can put it at two counters and just lock a person out instead. Other times it's just a game reset button, you put a counter on it each turn and have it bring the game back to turn zero essentially... There are also times in which you ramp it up to a high number and then destroy it yourself with a Disenchant after your opponent sacrifices so that you gain that much more advantage.
So while it can be a bit durdly, I wouldn't say that's the case for it as a card at all.
I think it's pretty bad. To quote Greg Hatch: "You're opponent gets to untap THREE TIMES before Smokestack does anything." And I've gotta agree with that statement and tbh that's not where I want my cube cards to be, let alone a 4-mana artifact. Also the reason Tangle Wire is so much better is because it breaks it's own drawback every single turn by tapping itself whereas Smokestack can only be sacrificed once. On top of that cube is really about tempo nowadays rather than grinding people out with cards like this.
I think the card is completely awesome. It's a centerpiece for multiple combo decks, and it has an insane impact on the game. I'd cube it in the smallest of lists.
I really enjoy smokestack decks. Just this Sunday a player in my group drafted ug ramp deck that lead out early with ramp, strip mine and crucible of worlds. He then followed up with this and proceeded to make his opponent sac all his permanents.
When this card is good everyone playing fears it, then other times it does nothing. That's cube sometimes things work sometimes they don't.
If you can set up Smokestack without artifact destruction it's going to crush because it is inherently unfair because you can stack the upkeep triggers as you wish... Which makes you sacrifice one less a turn:
Me: 0, 1, 2, etc
You: 1, 2, 3, etc
It's slow and sometimes is just not going to do much.
Plus, laying down Smokestack doesn't mean you have to put counters on it.
Smokestack and Tangle Wire are completely different animals. I can imagine that the former can disappoint if you're trying to use it in the same way.
Tangle Wire is short term disruption, which makes it an ideal way for aggro to seal the win. I completely love this card and first pick it all the time.
Smokestack on the other hand is disruption for midrange: it's slower, but ultimately more destructive on its own. You want to make sure you win the permanent race by simply having more of them and/or having permanents that take out one of your opponent's when they ETB (Bone Shredder, Viridian Shaman, etc).
Both cards are A grade, but they don't have the same role and they go in different decks.
@Darkmindtone: I would assume that your disappointment with this card is related to the huge size of your cube, which reduces the density of cards that allow you to break the symmetry and the amount of pressure that beatdown decks can put up in the early turns.
I'm not so sure about that to be honest...aggro generally produces the best decks in my drafts as I push how playable they are pretty hard (and we usually do 8 to 10 person drafts). They just don't want to spend the crucial turn where they can lay their finisher (aka turn four) on a card that does literally nothing to the opponent for an entire turn cycle, and then after another turn cycle makes them sacrifice a permanent of their choosing.
As for the responses on here saying the card is requires a certain threshold of skill correctly or assuming that those not in favor of the card don't know the optimal way to stack the triggers, I assure you that both of those are not the case. If the card was worded like Braids, Cabal Minion it would be one of my favorite cards in the cube I assure you.
Indeed. Aggro decks are almost never the right place for Smokestack (unlike Braids). It also comes as no surprise to me that it is not performing in a large cube (where it is tougher to assemble the right cards) dominated by aggro (which Smokestack is weak against).
Smokestack certainly seems weak as a four drop in terms of immediate impact, but the card is really more of a finisher. It has gotten even stronger with the addition of the Pox subtheme in my cube.
To quote Greg Hatch: "You're opponent gets to untap THREE TIMES before Smokestack does anything."
I don't understand the math here. I count two, and it's somewhat disingenuous to say "untapped twice" anyway because you're sacrificing immediately after the second untap.
When I see Healing Salve, I'm often like "Oh girl, I wish I could turn every card into this." Thanks they removed the gain life part, otherwise this would have been broken.
Smokestack is not an aggro card. Tangle Wire is. That's probably where the problem's coming from.
Smokestack is a mid-range card that's geared towards beating control. Which is why I love it so much, because it shores up a deck's greatest weakness.
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I don't understand the math here. I count two, and it's somewhat disingenuous to say "untapped twice" anyway because you're sacrificing immediately after the second untap.
Agreed. They have one turn before the Stack starts grinding them down. Since your deck is designed to mitigate the drawback, Stack will hit them faster and harder than it does you. Additionally, since so much of the artifact removal is at sorcery speed, they're not likely able to use your Stack against you. Once you elect to run up that second counter, its really hard for your opponent to recover from the effect.
I think the card is completely awesome. It's a centerpiece for multiple combo decks, and it has an insane impact on the game. I'd cube it in the smallest of lists.
Would you mind elaborating? I don't think I've seen this card played, and I could use something of a brief primer on when to grab it and how to use it.
I love this card. The apparent symmetry isn't actually symmetrical and it just takes time to grind players down. If you can run any sort of support by making tokens, grabbing lands with Crucible or Loam or abusing Bloodghast and the like, it gets even more crazy. Even if it did make you sacrifice first so that you are always 1 for 1 or 3 for 3, I would still like it because the effect is just so powerful against a slower deck! That should say a lot.
Smokestack is incredibly powerfull. I have won games by just playing this and see my opponent be crippled in two or three turns. I have also seen this card be too slow.
The thing is that Smoketack does not work in every deck. I works great in stax builds (Braids, Bloodghast, Crucible,...), but it doesn't need to have a deck built around it. It just needs permanants and if possible some acceleration.
Decks it works in :
- Stax
- Green based decks with lots of elves (accelerate + extra permanents!)
- decks with a land destruction subtheme or with tons of removal
- certain comboish build (with Life from the loam, Crucible, artifact.dec,...
- certain token builds
Note that this doesn't include most aggro or control builds and that it will be too slow for a slow midrange decks without support. So even though its brute power is top tier material, you cannot just shove it in every deck you draft. Unlike let's say Tangle Wire, which is great in aggro, but will also be superb in most other archetype.
It gets a lot better with acceleration (elves ,mana rocks) and it can really shine if your deck has a mox or two. Put this out turn 2 or three and your with more permanents and it will even be too fast for most aggro decks.
I can't say much about this card, but the one time I was able to play it personally, was on a turn five after a turn 3 Sacred Mesa, and it was over at that point. It was a joke.
Cool, thanks. It seems obvious in retrospect how to break this card.
It's harder to do in practice, if you're going for a smokestack deck or want to include it you do have to change you pick priorities. Acceleration becomes highly sought after, as does anything that makes board presence favor you (tokens, 2-1 kill spells etc...)
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It's harder to do in practice, if you're going for a smokestack deck or want to include it you do have to change you pick priorities. Acceleration becomes highly sought after, as does anything that makes board presence favor you (tokens, 2-1 kill spells etc...)
This is extremely crucial. This and many cards like it cannot be thrown in to a deck very easily if you managed to pick it up p3p4 or something.
I very much appreciate the responses here, and I'll continue to push this card to try and make it work (with an emphasis in playing it in midrange versus control matchups). I've played it in midrange (most often token builds featuring mana accelerators) a reasonable amount before, and it almost always sits in my hand in favor of a more board-impacting spell until it's too late to do much of any real damage. This isn't because I don't attempt to weigh the effects of having the card in play over the course of a few turns, but that I simply need to maximize those crucial early turns and by the time I have the luxury of spending four mana on something that "does nothing" it's power is generally minimized. We don't often have control decks that don't also feature artifact acceleration here in my cube, so this card's target opposition might just not really exist much my cube, I'm not sure (I also don't really promote the Pox strategy, so that might be an additional reason).
I very much appreciate the responses here, and I'll continue to push this card to try and make it work (with an emphasis in playing it in midrange versus control matchups). I've played it in midrange (most often token builds featuring mana accelerators) a reasonable amount before, and it almost always sits in my hand in favor of a more board-impacting spell until it's too late to do much of any real damage. This isn't because I don't attempt to weigh the effects of having the card in play over the course of a few turns, but that I simply need to maximize those crucial early turns and by the time I have the luxury of spending four mana on something that "does nothing" it's power is generally minimized. We don't often have control decks that don't also feature artifact acceleration here in my cube, so this card's target opposition might just not really exist much my cube, I'm not sure (I also don't really promote the Pox strategy, so that might be an additional reason).
There is nothing wrong with removing a card that is constantly going to the 15th pick of a pack and tables more than once.
I never try to force cards, I simple keep the average up on what is considered awesome by everyone elses standards. See, while no one else may play the card, I would, I just never get it soon enough to start building around it.
I very much appreciate the responses here, and I'll continue to push this card to try and make it work (with an emphasis in playing it in midrange versus control matchups). I've played it in midrange (most often token builds featuring mana accelerators) a reasonable amount before, and it almost always sits in my hand in favor of a more board-impacting spell until it's too late to do much of any real damage. This isn't because I don't attempt to weigh the effects of having the card in play over the course of a few turns, but that I simply need to maximize those crucial early turns and by the time I have the luxury of spending four mana on something that "does nothing" it's power is generally minimized. We don't often have control decks that don't also feature artifact acceleration here in my cube, so this card's target opposition might just not really exist much my cube, I'm not sure (I also don't really promote the Pox strategy, so that might be an additional reason).
I think a true token deck will often have better things to do than drop Smokestack. Generally, I will suppliment a recursion theme with some token producers (Bitterblossom, Spectral Procession, Cloudgoat Ranger).
I very much appreciate the responses here, and I'll continue to push this card to try and make it work (with an emphasis in playing it in midrange versus control matchups). I've played it in midrange (most often token builds featuring mana accelerators) a reasonable amount before, and it almost always sits in my hand in favor of a more board-impacting spell until it's too late to do much of any real damage. This isn't because I don't attempt to weigh the effects of having the card in play over the course of a few turns, but that I simply need to maximize those crucial early turns and by the time I have the luxury of spending four mana on something that "does nothing" it's power is generally minimized. We don't often have control decks that don't also feature artifact acceleration here in my cube, so this card's target opposition might just not really exist much my cube, I'm not sure (I also don't really promote the Pox strategy, so that might be an additional reason).
The key moment to play it is when you are slighlty ahead in permanents. Preferably turn 2, 3 or four. Going for the Smokestack option will cost you lives and tempo. They will retaliate by using that 'lost' turn to bash your face. Ignore this. :cool2:The focus is not on life total (theirs or yours), but on the number of lands your opponent has. Playing Smokestack might be better then dealing 5 or 10 damage with an extra creature. When your opponent has no mana, he will die a natural death.
Often a well timed Vampiric Tutor for Smokestack ends the game.
In a way it is an alternative win condition. But it will always be a hit or miss card. Which is understandable, because a colourless 4 mana card that just wins games has to a bit harder to abuse.
I also agree with Phantizle that token decks are not the best archetype for Smokestack. The whole focus of the deck is on tokens and boost. Smokestack is more a weird grafted on addition in decks like this. I hesitated to put them on my list, but Smokestack can work in these decks too as long as the timing is right.
This is a card that is in nearly every list on these forums (and many other lists outside of here) and I was wondering what people's honest experiences and thoughts were on it. I've had it in my list for years and attempted to make it work in nearly every type of archetype (while also trying to get other drafters to do the same), but it has simply failed to perform time and time again. Four-mana is just the sweet spot for all colors in the cube, and asking to to spend that crucial turn on a card which does absolutely nothing no matter what stage of the game it's cast has proven to be far to much of a drawback. It's like an opposite Tangle-Wire in that it does nothing immediately and slowly builds momentum. Unfortunately, that just hasn't shown to be something that cube decks really want (in comparison to Tangle Wire which is a 1st-pick slam around here). Maybe I'm alone on an island regarding my views of this card here, lets hear what the rest of you think about it!
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It's harder to make it consistently as awesome as in constructed, but my players have had pretty good success with it over the years, particularly in token decks, or with Crucible of Worlds, other recursion etc. I think it's worth keeping in my cube for the potential, but I do understand that it's not always going to be awesome.
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The thing that makes it such a difficult card to use, and why it may seem weak at times, is that each turn you have to make multiple decisions regarding it. You have to ask if it's the right time to add a counter to it, or how many counters you want on it in the near future, you have to ask which permanent(s) you want to sacrifice to it, and you have to ask if it's beneficial to keep it around. All of this happens in one upkeep, which makes it all the more difficult.
A lot of people will put it at one counter and leave it there, but really there are a lot of times where you can put it at two counters and just lock a person out instead. Other times it's just a game reset button, you put a counter on it each turn and have it bring the game back to turn zero essentially... There are also times in which you ramp it up to a high number and then destroy it yourself with a Disenchant after your opponent sacrifices so that you gain that much more advantage.
So while it can be a bit durdly, I wouldn't say that's the case for it as a card at all.
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When this card is good everyone playing fears it, then other times it does nothing. That's cube sometimes things work sometimes they don't.
http://forums.mtgsalvation.com/showthread.php?t=537903
Me: 0, 1, 2, etc
You: 1, 2, 3, etc
It's slow and sometimes is just not going to do much.
Plus, laying down Smokestack doesn't mean you have to put counters on it.
Tangle Wire is short term disruption, which makes it an ideal way for aggro to seal the win. I completely love this card and first pick it all the time.
Smokestack on the other hand is disruption for midrange: it's slower, but ultimately more destructive on its own. You want to make sure you win the permanent race by simply having more of them and/or having permanents that take out one of your opponent's when they ETB (Bone Shredder, Viridian Shaman, etc).
Both cards are A grade, but they don't have the same role and they go in different decks.
I'm not so sure about that to be honest...aggro generally produces the best decks in my drafts as I push how playable they are pretty hard (and we usually do 8 to 10 person drafts). They just don't want to spend the crucial turn where they can lay their finisher (aka turn four) on a card that does literally nothing to the opponent for an entire turn cycle, and then after another turn cycle makes them sacrifice a permanent of their choosing.
As for the responses on here saying the card is requires a certain threshold of skill correctly or assuming that those not in favor of the card don't know the optimal way to stack the triggers, I assure you that both of those are not the case. If the card was worded like Braids, Cabal Minion it would be one of my favorite cards in the cube I assure you.
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Smokestack certainly seems weak as a four drop in terms of immediate impact, but the card is really more of a finisher. It has gotten even stronger with the addition of the Pox subtheme in my cube.
And kudos for asking the question.
I don't understand the math here. I count two, and it's somewhat disingenuous to say "untapped twice" anyway because you're sacrificing immediately after the second untap.
Smokestack is a mid-range card that's geared towards beating control. Which is why I love it so much, because it shores up a deck's greatest weakness.
Agreed. They have one turn before the Stack starts grinding them down. Since your deck is designed to mitigate the drawback, Stack will hit them faster and harder than it does you. Additionally, since so much of the artifact removal is at sorcery speed, they're not likely able to use your Stack against you. Once you elect to run up that second counter, its really hard for your opponent to recover from the effect.
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Would you mind elaborating? I don't think I've seen this card played, and I could use something of a brief primer on when to grab it and how to use it.
On spoiled card wishlisting and 'should-have-had'-isms:
The thing is that Smoketack does not work in every deck. I works great in stax builds (Braids, Bloodghast, Crucible,...), but it doesn't need to have a deck built around it. It just needs permanants and if possible some acceleration.
Decks it works in :
- Stax
- Green based decks with lots of elves (accelerate + extra permanents!)
- decks with a land destruction subtheme or with tons of removal
- certain comboish build (with Life from the loam, Crucible, artifact.dec,...
- certain token builds
Note that this doesn't include most aggro or control builds and that it will be too slow for a slow midrange decks without support. So even though its brute power is top tier material, you cannot just shove it in every deck you draft. Unlike let's say Tangle Wire, which is great in aggro, but will also be superb in most other archetype.
It gets a lot better with acceleration (elves ,mana rocks) and it can really shine if your deck has a mox or two. Put this out turn 2 or three and your with more permanents and it will even be too fast for most aggro decks.
I feel compelled to repeat everything I hear
It's harder to do in practice, if you're going for a smokestack deck or want to include it you do have to change you pick priorities. Acceleration becomes highly sought after, as does anything that makes board presence favor you (tokens, 2-1 kill spells etc...)
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This is extremely crucial. This and many cards like it cannot be thrown in to a deck very easily if you managed to pick it up p3p4 or something.
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There is nothing wrong with removing a card that is constantly going to the 15th pick of a pack and tables more than once.
I never try to force cards, I simple keep the average up on what is considered awesome by everyone elses standards. See, while no one else may play the card, I would, I just never get it soon enough to start building around it.
I think a true token deck will often have better things to do than drop Smokestack. Generally, I will suppliment a recursion theme with some token producers (Bitterblossom, Spectral Procession, Cloudgoat Ranger).
The key moment to play it is when you are slighlty ahead in permanents. Preferably turn 2, 3 or four. Going for the Smokestack option will cost you lives and tempo. They will retaliate by using that 'lost' turn to bash your face. Ignore this. :cool2:The focus is not on life total (theirs or yours), but on the number of lands your opponent has. Playing Smokestack might be better then dealing 5 or 10 damage with an extra creature. When your opponent has no mana, he will die a natural death.
Often a well timed Vampiric Tutor for Smokestack ends the game.
In a way it is an alternative win condition. But it will always be a hit or miss card. Which is understandable, because a colourless 4 mana card that just wins games has to a bit harder to abuse.
I also agree with Phantizle that token decks are not the best archetype for Smokestack. The whole focus of the deck is on tokens and boost. Smokestack is more a weird grafted on addition in decks like this. I hesitated to put them on my list, but Smokestack can work in these decks too as long as the timing is right.
I feel compelled to repeat everything I hear