this is awesome, thanks for taking the time! I don't think I've ever really tried it outside of BW stax, so that RW deck you posted was helpful!
love that art on your retrofitter foundry btw
My experience with Braids, Cabal Minion is that its at its best as a tutor target for decks seeking to punish combo/ control decks as a Avalanche Riders variant. It's been fairly strong as the opponent has to sacrifice first. However, my problem with smokestack is that you need to essentially wait a turn before it becomes online, which has made it very unattractive IMO.
Still have great success with Smokestack. Despite the opponent having access to incidental token production, it's still hard for a random deck to out-produce the fodder dedicated smokestack builds can create, not to mention that the opposing decks aren't likely to be engineered to run a resource-light gameplan the way Stax shells are. Even if the opponent has a random Elspeth or whatever, surviving a 'Stack on 2 when the 'Stack's controller has a Bloodghast and a Crucible or whatever is still a tall order to overcome. It's one of the most successful tools we've found to grind out an advantage in a way that impacts a developed board.
Likely too slow to make the final 40 in a random goodstuff deck hoping to punish an opponent that can't survive the grind, but in a deck engineered to maximize the potential 1-sidedness, it's still a very powerful effect.
My experience with Braids, Cabal Minion is that its at its best as a tutor target for decks seeking to punish combo/ control decks as a Avalanche Riders variant. It's been fairly strong as the opponent has to sacrifice first. However, my problem with smokestack is that you need to essentially wait a turn before it becomes online, which has made it very unattractive IMO.
Would anyone like to share any feedback?
As somebody who played Stax in constructed formats for 10 years, Braids / Smokestack are probably two of my favorite cards of all time. That being said, I cut Smokestack / Braids years ago for being too slow then (probably 2018 - 2019), and the rise of initiative / reanimator / Minsc & Boo / etc has only made things worse. They can still cheese an opponent if ramped out fast enough, but a lot of threats creature / permanent based now and the general efficiency of things being better makes the mana denial worse. Smokestack is especially a huge liability since it doesn't do anything for 1.5 turn cycles. This was a much more viable strategy when creatures and aggressive strategies were pretty bad and grindy card advantage strategies were king. I find vintage cube environments today reward a lot more aggressive / tempo / combo based strategies now.
I'd have zero faith in Smokestack if I were to put it back into my cube today. I cut grindy strategies like Wildfire / Upheaval / Smokestack / etc for they have not kept up in my cube environment at all against today's top tier threats like Ragavan / Minsc & Boo / Forth Eorlingas / Oko / etc or strategies like initiative / reanimator. I recently built an Old Fashioned Cube which is a typical Legacy / Vintage cube minus supplemental sets (no Commander / Modern Horizons / Conspiracy / Universes Beyond / etc), and I wouldn't even consider Smokestack in that cube despite the lower power level ceiling since Smokestack felt out of date to me even before 2019 FIRE design kicked in.
I like smokestack but I think it’s incredibly narrow now. The bar for it to be good is so much higher than before.
You don’t need to simply break permanent assymetry, you need to be WAy better at putting permanents on the battlefield, accelerate much faster than your opponent and have some way of controlling their permanents (wraths, fiery confluence, pest infestation etc).
if those are true, the card is still fantastic. I wouldn’t even look twice at it in an unpowered cube as having an artifact power advantage is near critical to its power.
some exceptions with academy/workshop decks without power.
love that art on your retrofitter foundry btw
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Would anyone like to share any feedback?
Likely too slow to make the final 40 in a random goodstuff deck hoping to punish an opponent that can't survive the grind, but in a deck engineered to maximize the potential 1-sidedness, it's still a very powerful effect.
My 630 Card Powered Cube
My Article - "Cube Design Philosophy"
My Article - "Mana Short: A study in limited resource management."
My 50th Set (P)review - Discusses my top 20 Cube cards from OTJ!
As somebody who played Stax in constructed formats for 10 years, Braids / Smokestack are probably two of my favorite cards of all time. That being said, I cut Smokestack / Braids years ago for being too slow then (probably 2018 - 2019), and the rise of initiative / reanimator / Minsc & Boo / etc has only made things worse. They can still cheese an opponent if ramped out fast enough, but a lot of threats creature / permanent based now and the general efficiency of things being better makes the mana denial worse. Smokestack is especially a huge liability since it doesn't do anything for 1.5 turn cycles. This was a much more viable strategy when creatures and aggressive strategies were pretty bad and grindy card advantage strategies were king. I find vintage cube environments today reward a lot more aggressive / tempo / combo based strategies now.
I'd have zero faith in Smokestack if I were to put it back into my cube today. I cut grindy strategies like Wildfire / Upheaval / Smokestack / etc for they have not kept up in my cube environment at all against today's top tier threats like Ragavan / Minsc & Boo / Forth Eorlingas / Oko / etc or strategies like initiative / reanimator. I recently built an Old Fashioned Cube which is a typical Legacy / Vintage cube minus supplemental sets (no Commander / Modern Horizons / Conspiracy / Universes Beyond / etc), and I wouldn't even consider Smokestack in that cube despite the lower power level ceiling since Smokestack felt out of date to me even before 2019 FIRE design kicked in.
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You don’t need to simply break permanent assymetry, you need to be WAy better at putting permanents on the battlefield, accelerate much faster than your opponent and have some way of controlling their permanents (wraths, fiery confluence, pest infestation etc).
if those are true, the card is still fantastic. I wouldn’t even look twice at it in an unpowered cube as having an artifact power advantage is near critical to its power.
some exceptions with academy/workshop decks without power.
Last Updated 02/07/24
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