Pretty sure this has been all been mentioned in the feeder thread, but Carrion Feeder has a lot of great interactions. I think it's greatly undervalued here.
Sacrifice effects just have a lot of uses in cube. They can blank removal (avoids exile effects in particular which can be very powerful). Gives you something to do with chump blockers or creatures you have to sacrifice anyway. Black in particular just wants this effect, whether it's getting rid of Bob or Abyssal Persecutor or just getting an ETB guy into the yard so you can regrow/reanimate it (Gary, Shriekmaw). Echo suddenly has a small upside with feeder. Need to trigger lark and don't have that 6th land? No problem. 5 + feeder works too.
There are obviously more aggressive one drops, but carrion feeder oozes synergy and if your opponent doesn't use a removal spell on it (which they won't want to do), it can grow to be a real threat as the game progresses. Hyper fast metas may not have time to really exploit feeder, so YMMV. But I'd probably never cut this card unless I went way off the program with my cube's design direction.
I run a zombie theme cube, and a lot of token support, so this is a staple for me.
I noticed your running quadruple Gravecrawlers, so that alone probably makes Carrion Feeder a monster in your cube. Any other synergies with Carrion Feeder in your cube the rest of us might not have thought of?
Not really. Just really good with the obvious stuff, other zombies and tokens.
I don't have any experience with this card at all. It seems like it should be a good value creature, but it would probably be at its best in a 3+ color build where it would let you Cascade into a removal spell. To be honest, I don't quite get why Shardless Agent is so much more expensive, yet so much less popular in cube than her big sister. Is it just that the potential to Cascade into a counterspell is awkward?
There's only one version of Shardless Agent available, but the original Planechase version is rare and expensive enough that just having one in your cube is pretty pimp in and of itself.
EDIT: I was wrong, if a $20+ uncommon isn't pimp enough for you there is a Judge Foil available. Thanks to Tengu Drum for letting me know.
Shardless Agent has a Judge Promo so it is available in foil. As for the card itself I think its less popular than Bloodbraid due to having a weak body and worse colors for a cascade effect in general. I've found it to be a solid card but can be very high variance.
I like the card. Last time I played it I cascaded into Time Walk. It turned out well for me Only real negative is the anti-synergy with counterspells. Also worth mentioning is the bonus that it is an artifact so it buffs Tolarian Academy, interacts with Tezzerets etc.
Shardless agent is a decent card but the competition for good Simic cards is quite a bit higher then Gruul, Gruul has less Card advantage options and cascades into burn instead of counter. The haste on BBE is also huge.
Yup. Shardless is no bloodbraid, that's for sure. Shardless suffers from that classic cube problem, great in constructed, meh in cube. It's hard to build a UG deck that's all great hits for it and the body not super relevant as a 2/2, especially in UG. If you are pushing artifacts super hard or have big guild sections, go for it, otherwise I don't love this guy in most lists.
There are some number of decks that can't/shouldn't play Shardless Agent cause blue doesn't always play the best with cascade ("yeah, I probably won't hit the counter", we've all been there!) but more often Agent acts as minimum a Wood Elves that is getting an elf instead of land, and with a much higher ceiling. Agent performs better in a powered cube where you can draft Recall/Time Walk, but is still quite good in unpowered as value is huge and going t1 elf into t2 Agent when mana permits is a strong line of play. Plus he's an artifact, which while it means he eats more removal means he also helps enable a lot of the blue-artifact strategies that are available.
I'm a fan. I like him a bit more than others as I love cards with tons of value attached, and there's always the BBE->Agent dream to live. Cascade is a fair mechanic.
I like Shardless Agent, it's good value most of the time and it's always fun to roll the dice. Yeah, hitting a counterspell sucks, but at least blue has ways to mitigate this through library manipulation / all the one mana tutors. Goes well in Opposition decks and has artifact synergy in powered cubes. Not a staple, but I don't consider Simic to be a very competitive guild so I'm happy with it at 540.
Shardless agent is a decent card but the competition for good Simic cards is quite a bit higher then Gruul, Gruul has less Card advantage options and cascades into burn instead of counter. The haste on BBE is also huge.
Are you saying that Simic is more stacked than Gruul? If so, I disagree. Gruul is probably the 2nd most stacked guild where Simic's only true staple is Edric (and Trygon if you're powered I guess).
I typically build my Agent decks to try and never have a counter be able to be hit. Counters are kind of awkward in UG as is since you're often facing the question of tap out vs holding open a spell in certain builds where curve and ramping is important, so a lot of the counters that you could hit may not be optimal for that type of build as is. Usually I highly prioritize Force of Will in UG where there are enough blue cards to make it the free counter since it's so important to be able to tap out for your fatty/NO/whatever and not have it blow up in your face. A consistently-hitting Agent is super high power level for the cost since the card you are hitting is a cube card, and I've found the trade off of having less counters at that cost or less is worth the high ceiling you allow Agent to reach.
I've already changed the post to reflect the Judge Foil. For some reason it's not listed on the magiccards.info page on Agent. It sounds like it's definitely better in powered cube than unpowered, but would any of you consider running it in an unpowered list over, say, Trygon Predator?
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465 card Unpowered cube thread. Draft it here and I'll be happy to return the favor.
450 card Peasant cube thread. Draft it here.
Ive had this card in and out of my cube, and I am currently running it. Its a good value creature, I just make sure I dont play 2 CC counterspells if I am running this guy.
It sounds like it's definitely better in powered cube than unpowered, but would any of you consider running it in an unpowered list over, say, Trygon Predator?
I would. I find that artifact/enchantment destruction is less important in an unpowered cube. It's not like there aren't problem artifacts--in fact, the opposite--but it's way less common to have moxen and mana rocks to knock off in the first few turns. Some cubes REALLY embody this (see: MODO Legacy Cube) and the switch is fairly easy there. In a "standard" unpowered cube, i.e. runs weapons, some artifact ramp, maybe some other qualifications, I think there are usually 1-3 problem artifacts you have to deal with over the course of a game, and green has plenty of ways to deal with those in a more immediate fashion that the unique effect of Shardless Agent will prob have more impact then the delayed multi-hits.
That being said, Trygon is still pretty good and definitely wouldn't seem out of place. I just like the unique effect of Shardless more.
Shardless Agent is a very interesting card and if I had a copy I'd probably run it (but I'm not paying $25 for one).
A mechanic that we are getting a lot of tools for is top of library manipulation. If you know what is on top of your library, you can maximize the value of cascade. Look at what you have to work with. TOL tutor effects (mystical tutor, vampiric tutor). Play/reveal top card of library dudes and effects (Oracle of Mul Daya, Courser of Kruphix, Future Sight, Sensei's divining top, Brainstorm, cards with scry). Other effects that get really great if you know what is on top of your library or can put something there before you draw it (Bob and family, Collected Company, every miracle card).
That's an interesting direction for Ux decks to go.
If you tutor in order to make shardless good, you've just gotten a 2-for-2 (super meh) and paid 4 mana (3 of which is colored) in order to get, AT MOST, 4 mana worth of cards (a 2/2 and a 2 mana card you tutored for). That is pretty bad.
You just can't make shardless as good as you can in constructed in cube and it gets very inconsistent. Unless you can blink it a bunch, I don't like it.
If you tutor in order to make shardless good, you've just gotten a 2-for-2 (super meh) and paid 4 mana (3 of which is colored) in order to get, AT MOST, 4 mana worth of cards (a 2/2 and a 2 mana card you tutored for). That is pretty bad.
You just can't make shardless as good as you can in constructed in cube and it gets very inconsistent. Unless you can blink it a bunch, I don't like it.
I agree higher cascade let's you do more unfair things. But you can still orchestrate a cascade with Shardless into Ancestral Vision for example. That's a pretty good play.
It's certainly power level dependent though. If the bar you have set for a competitive strategy in your cube is T3 Tinker into Inkwell Leviathan, there are a great deal of interesting synergy based deck concepts that will effectively be obsoleted. That's just a design decision you have to make when building your cube.
Fair enough. The only Gruul walker I really like is Xenagos, but most of the best Gruul cards are 4 cmc for some reason. There's not a lot of great 5 or 6 costs, and the handful of 2 aren't great. Though 3 and 4 are the windmill for them.
As for Shardless Agent I just ordered a Chaos Reigns planechase deck, so in the upcoming weeks I'll finally have one for my cube. Cascade is one of those abilities that can be gamebreaking, but usually isn't anywhere near as good in limited as it is constructed. In limited, it's very hit or miss, while in constructed.... it's like a 12 on the Storm Scale.
Shardless Agent was a card I wanted to like just because it was so much different than what we were used to seeing in that color combo. It just never really clicked here because it was like an honorary tri color card. We rarely played it in actual UG decks and ended up splashing for it in decks that didn't worry about whiffing on a counterspell. Because of that it didn't really see much play, it ultimately got the axe. People just didn't play it that much. I wouldn't be opposed to bringing it back sometime in the future, but we're pretty happy with our current Simic section.
Shardless is a pet card of mine and a very powerful creature, but enticing you to cut most of your cheap counterspells is something that traditional UG tempo is really not in the market for. It's been in and out of my Simic section over time, currently on the verge of being put back in over one of the Kioras.
Great discussion on Shardless Agent, everyone. I really learned a lot from this one, and if I ever manage to pry a Shardless Agent out of someone's trade binder or get it through Puca Trade I'll give it a shot in my Simic section. Worst comes to worst, it'll still find a good home in my Peasant cube.
Restoration Angel, why do I love thee? Let me count the reasons.... You ambush attackers during combat, even effectively untapping a second blocker to help turn the tide. You give ETB abilities on so many creatures the chance to retrigger. You fly over annoying blockers, killing planeswalkers when they least expect it. You give control decks something awesome to do with the mana they hold up for countermagic so their whole turn doesn't go to waste. I'm pretty sure you even slice, dice, and chop tin cans.
In many ways Restoration Angel is the epitome of what I want a cube staple to be. It's an efficient creature with solid stats and useful abilities that provide so much value that it's almost impossible not to get at least a 2-for-1 when you cast it. You can build around its ETB trigger to make it better, but it's still a great creature even if you don't. It's even splashable! I've first picked Restoration Angel plenty of times and it's been great in all kinds of decks as an aggro curve-topper, a control midgame stabiliser, a midrange value beater, and part of dedicated blink builds. It's hard to imagine a white deck Restoration Angel wouldn't fit well in. It's a skill-testing card, but even a first-time cube drafter who's never seen Restoration Angel before can still understand its power level and make good use of it. Yet, as solid and versatile as Restoration Angel is, it doesn't just take over and win games automatically when you cast it, so it shouldn't be too oppressive to see play in lower power-level cubes. It's hard to imagine a cube with rares that couldn't make good use of this card.
One thing I think this could benefit from is a devil's advocate figure: someone to flesh out the -minor- pitfalls of the cards we all consider staples....
Someone else is going to have to play devil's advocate on this one. I really can't think of anything bad to say about Restoration Angel, even in the brutally competitive slot of white 4-drops she still shines.
Aesthetically, you have two choices, the original and the Release Day foil. I'm running the Release Foil in my cube, but I think the original Johannes Voss art is much better.
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465 card Unpowered cube thread. Draft it here and I'll be happy to return the favor.
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Someone else is going to have to play devil's advocate on this one. I really can't think of anything bad to say about Restoration Angel, even in the brutally competitive slot of white 4-drops she still shines.
The non-Angel clause is occasionally relevant. You can't save your Baneslayer Angel or Mirror Entity from a Doom Blade, and you can't go ham with Karmic Guide (some people don't realize this, because the first printing does not have the Angel type)
Probably white's only true staple creature at 4 mana, Restoration Angel is one of those cards that just gets better over time. I actually run Sublime Archangel / Emeria Angel / Karmic Guide alongside all the other angel staples, so the non-angel clause is actually quite relevant in my cube. On the flipside, it can turn a certain 2/2 morph card into an angel, lol.
As far as art goes, I can't stand the promo, it looks too much like The Fairy Godmother from Cinderella.
Gravecrawler is the obvious one to pair with it, but Bloodghast is also great as are any other recurring creatures. Threaten effects like Zealous Conscripts or Yasova Dragonclaw are exceedingly harsh. Losing Sower of Temptation hurts less with a feeder in play. As someone already mentioned, life drain guys like blood artist work great with feeder.
Sacrifice effects just have a lot of uses in cube. They can blank removal (avoids exile effects in particular which can be very powerful). Gives you something to do with chump blockers or creatures you have to sacrifice anyway. Black in particular just wants this effect, whether it's getting rid of Bob or Abyssal Persecutor or just getting an ETB guy into the yard so you can regrow/reanimate it (Gary, Shriekmaw). Echo suddenly has a small upside with feeder. Need to trigger lark and don't have that 6th land? No problem. 5 + feeder works too.
There are obviously more aggressive one drops, but carrion feeder oozes synergy and if your opponent doesn't use a removal spell on it (which they won't want to do), it can grow to be a real threat as the game progresses. Hyper fast metas may not have time to really exploit feeder, so YMMV. But I'd probably never cut this card unless I went way off the program with my cube's design direction.
http://riptidelab.com/forum/threads/modular-cube-5-colors.800/
Retro combo cube thread
http://riptidelab.com/forum/threads/retro-combo-cube.1454/
Not really. Just really good with the obvious stuff, other zombies and tokens.
https://cubecobra.com/cube/list/3pq
I don't have any experience with this card at all. It seems like it should be a good value creature, but it would probably be at its best in a 3+ color build where it would let you Cascade into a removal spell. To be honest, I don't quite get why Shardless Agent is so much more expensive, yet so much less popular in cube than her big sister. Is it just that the potential to Cascade into a counterspell is awkward?
There's only one version of Shardless Agent available, but the original Planechase version is rare and expensive enough that just having one in your cube is pretty pimp in and of itself.
EDIT: I was wrong, if a $20+ uncommon isn't pimp enough for you there is a Judge Foil available. Thanks to Tengu Drum for letting me know.
450 card Peasant cube thread. Draft it here.
Yup. Shardless is no bloodbraid, that's for sure. Shardless suffers from that classic cube problem, great in constructed, meh in cube. It's hard to build a UG deck that's all great hits for it and the body not super relevant as a 2/2, especially in UG. If you are pushing artifacts super hard or have big guild sections, go for it, otherwise I don't love this guy in most lists.
375 unpowered cube - https://cubecobra.com/cube/list/601ac624832cdf1039947588
I'm a fan. I like him a bit more than others as I love cards with tons of value attached, and there's always the BBE->Agent dream to live. Cascade is a fair mechanic.
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Are you saying that Simic is more stacked than Gruul? If so, I disagree. Gruul is probably the 2nd most stacked guild where Simic's only true staple is Edric (and Trygon if you're powered I guess).
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450 card Peasant cube thread. Draft it here.
https://cubecobra.com/cube/list/3pq
I would. I find that artifact/enchantment destruction is less important in an unpowered cube. It's not like there aren't problem artifacts--in fact, the opposite--but it's way less common to have moxen and mana rocks to knock off in the first few turns. Some cubes REALLY embody this (see: MODO Legacy Cube) and the switch is fairly easy there. In a "standard" unpowered cube, i.e. runs weapons, some artifact ramp, maybe some other qualifications, I think there are usually 1-3 problem artifacts you have to deal with over the course of a game, and green has plenty of ways to deal with those in a more immediate fashion that the unique effect of Shardless Agent will prob have more impact then the delayed multi-hits.
That being said, Trygon is still pretty good and definitely wouldn't seem out of place. I just like the unique effect of Shardless more.
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A mechanic that we are getting a lot of tools for is top of library manipulation. If you know what is on top of your library, you can maximize the value of cascade. Look at what you have to work with. TOL tutor effects (mystical tutor, vampiric tutor). Play/reveal top card of library dudes and effects (Oracle of Mul Daya, Courser of Kruphix, Future Sight, Sensei's divining top, Brainstorm, cards with scry). Other effects that get really great if you know what is on top of your library or can put something there before you draw it (Bob and family, Collected Company, every miracle card).
That's an interesting direction for Ux decks to go.
http://riptidelab.com/forum/threads/modular-cube-5-colors.800/
Retro combo cube thread
http://riptidelab.com/forum/threads/retro-combo-cube.1454/
You just can't make shardless as good as you can in constructed in cube and it gets very inconsistent. Unless you can blink it a bunch, I don't like it.
375 unpowered cube - https://cubecobra.com/cube/list/601ac624832cdf1039947588
My High Octane Unpowered Cube on CubeCobra
I agree higher cascade let's you do more unfair things. But you can still orchestrate a cascade with Shardless into Ancestral Vision for example. That's a pretty good play.
It's certainly power level dependent though. If the bar you have set for a competitive strategy in your cube is T3 Tinker into Inkwell Leviathan, there are a great deal of interesting synergy based deck concepts that will effectively be obsoleted. That's just a design decision you have to make when building your cube.
http://riptidelab.com/forum/threads/modular-cube-5-colors.800/
Retro combo cube thread
http://riptidelab.com/forum/threads/retro-combo-cube.1454/
You're right. Lol. I always forget that.
The blink decks usually have return to hand effects too, though, which do work with this.
375 unpowered cube - https://cubecobra.com/cube/list/601ac624832cdf1039947588
As for Shardless Agent I just ordered a Chaos Reigns planechase deck, so in the upcoming weeks I'll finally have one for my cube. Cascade is one of those abilities that can be gamebreaking, but usually isn't anywhere near as good in limited as it is constructed. In limited, it's very hit or miss, while in constructed.... it's like a 12 on the Storm Scale.
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Here's today's card....
Restoration Angel
Restoration Angel, why do I love thee? Let me count the reasons.... You ambush attackers during combat, even effectively untapping a second blocker to help turn the tide. You give ETB abilities on so many creatures the chance to retrigger. You fly over annoying blockers, killing planeswalkers when they least expect it. You give control decks something awesome to do with the mana they hold up for countermagic so their whole turn doesn't go to waste. I'm pretty sure you even slice, dice, and chop tin cans.
In many ways Restoration Angel is the epitome of what I want a cube staple to be. It's an efficient creature with solid stats and useful abilities that provide so much value that it's almost impossible not to get at least a 2-for-1 when you cast it. You can build around its ETB trigger to make it better, but it's still a great creature even if you don't. It's even splashable! I've first picked Restoration Angel plenty of times and it's been great in all kinds of decks as an aggro curve-topper, a control midgame stabiliser, a midrange value beater, and part of dedicated blink builds. It's hard to imagine a white deck Restoration Angel wouldn't fit well in. It's a skill-testing card, but even a first-time cube drafter who's never seen Restoration Angel before can still understand its power level and make good use of it. Yet, as solid and versatile as Restoration Angel is, it doesn't just take over and win games automatically when you cast it, so it shouldn't be too oppressive to see play in lower power-level cubes. It's hard to imagine a cube with rares that couldn't make good use of this card.
Someone else is going to have to play devil's advocate on this one. I really can't think of anything bad to say about Restoration Angel, even in the brutally competitive slot of white 4-drops she still shines.
Aesthetically, you have two choices, the original and the Release Day foil. I'm running the Release Foil in my cube, but I think the original Johannes Voss art is much better.
450 card Peasant cube thread. Draft it here.
The non-Angel clause is occasionally relevant. You can't save your Baneslayer Angel or Mirror Entity from a Doom Blade, and you can't go ham with Karmic Guide (some people don't realize this, because the first printing does not have the Angel type)
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As far as art goes, I can't stand the promo, it looks too much like The Fairy Godmother from Cinderella.
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