I played Persecutor briefly, but it was unfun and unpopular. I'd also prefer not to have to find a way to sacrifice my 6/6 flier to win a game.
The worst card I lost to is Kaboom!. It was a draft. My opponent was going to lose next turn. So he played Kaboom!, hit the one card he had that could win him the game (Havoc Demon -- I was at 6), and won.
I'm surprised to see so little love for the prosecutor as it's been nothing but stellar for us. A four mana 6/6 flying trampler is an excellent aggro curve topper, midrange beater, and control finisher. Yeah, there have been a couple times where the opponent hangs on in the negative for a couple turns while its controller digs for a way to kill it, but I believe it's only backfired once in all of the games it's hit the field. It's also excellent on defense once the opponent is in the negatives, as they can't afford to attack with anything big enough to kill it, making it really difficult for non-burn decks to win through it. I have no plans to remove it from my cube at the moment.
Abyssal Persecutor is rather unpopular on here but I've found it does tremendous work in my cube. As a 6/6 flyer for 4CC it beats out even green creatures in efficiency to cost and the stacked forms of evasion guarantee damage absent removal by the opponent. It's strong on curve or later and isn't even embarrassing as a reanimation target. This keeps on winning games so I don't see myself cutting it anytime soon in my unpowered 450.
Back when Faith's Fetters and the like took up slots in cube there was the possibility that this card could end up dead on board with its drawback still punishing you but with Fetters out of most cubes now this is going to bait removal that also takes it off the board for you.
Abyssal Persecutor is rather unpopular on here but I've found it does tremendous work in my cube. As a 6/6 flyer for 4CC it beats out even green creatures in efficiency to cost and the stacked forms of evasion guarantee damage absent removal by the opponent. It's strong on curve or later and isn't even embarrassing as a reanimation target. This keeps on winning games so I don't see myself cutting it anytime soon in my unpowered 450.
Back when Faith's Fetters and the like took up slots in cube there was the possibility that this card could end up dead on board with its drawback still punishing you but with Fetters out of most cubes now this is going to bait removal that also takes it off the board for you.
There is always Maze of Ith and various other tap and prevention effects, like the newest Gideon.
Persecutor's biggest problem here was lack of homes. In aggro decks, he will buy your opponent time until you find a way to remove him so he is de-facto just a slow way to finish a game. In control, he provides little defense and offers no value if answered (or bounced). He was good in midrange, but again, not every midrange deck can play him as they might have enough sacrifice outlets or answers.
Count me among the Persecutor fans. There are plenty of ways to get rid of it once its done its job, and sometimes Magic is just as simple as swinging a giant undercosted monster at your opponent and daring them to stop it.
I've lost to a lot of bad cards, but perhaps the worst loss I ever took was outside of a cube setting. My playgroup does random periodic challenges, one of which we call a restriction draft, in which we create and then draft restrictions around which we have to build a deck. One of my selected restrictions involved playing cards that required coin flips. And so it was that in a game against one of my friends, I was winning 8 to 4 following an attack, and attempted to finish him off by casting Mana Clash.
When the spell had completed its resolution, I had lost -3 to 2.
Windfall was too inconsistent. Sometimes you could use it for big card advantage, but other times, the opponent got a quick jump and their hand count was too low to break Windfall's ability.
I won over $1K in a poker tournament at the Talking Stick casino in Phoenix once.
Blood Artist has been solid for us. Sometimes its fairly incremental advantage that puts you just ahead in a race, but other times it lets you clear your own board for the win. I have been caught before with a wrath in hand but unable to cast be because blood artist will kill me, sometime you just cant attack into a board with him either.
The floor is pretty low and its a not a great topdeck when your behind, but those criticisms hold for a lot of 2 drops.
I've warmed up to Blood Artist, black has a problem with reach and this fixes that in a major way, letting you make lethal attacks that are otherwise silly. Being a 0/1 is really *****ty in a number of spots since he finds himself in decks that want to apply pressure, but it can really warp games.
I'm a *horrendous* painter, I can't even get walls right, but I do like art. Van Gogh is my fav, prob a 'basic' answer but whatever, its beautiful stuff.
I like Blood artist but had to cut him recently as I have moved the power level of my cube up. I would love a functional reprint though of him as a 2/1 though or with his on sac outlet built in like carrion feeder. If that happened though He would probably be to good for all the edh players out there. I have also ran into times where my opponent had him on board with a sweeper in hand and couldn't play it or attack into it until I was able to go Treachery into supreme verdict and finish my opponent off with all the damage from creatures dying.
I don't paint and I am not artistic at all. The closest I get to painting is the thought of building painter's servant in legacy
I like blood artist. Seems inconspicuous but can be such a pain for the opponent. anti wrath, gives all removal upside, can swing into a stalled board for the win. leads to lots of fun scenarios and makes more complicated decisions and game play. thats what I want for my cube.
I am a pretty good artist. In my younger days I used to paint graffiti murals for bars and skate shops. I still enjoy painting and drawing. Long term, my end goal would be to do art for MTG. Current mtg artist Philip Burburan also began his art career in graffiti which i always thought was pretty cool.
Blood Artist is a fine card if you support Aristocrat strategies. I'd run it in a lower powered cube, but Aristocrats just can't hang in the broken environments of higher powered cubes.
I can't draw stick figures to save my life, let alone paint... I really do envy people who can paint and draw though. I wouldn't be able to stand all the mess though. Thank god music is much cleaner than drawing / painting / sculpting / etc.
I ran Kira while I still ran the blue devotion package. She can be super annoying and difficult to deal with. Unfortunately, competition got really stiff with True-Name and Vendillion Clique. Kira’s effect can be annoying with your own equipment / blink effects : / I’m always tempted to bring her back but right now I have Pestermite / Deceiver taking up slots since I’m curerently re-testing Kiki-Twin.
I have a cool glass teapot that I use to show off to guests.
I like Kira in devotion tempo, but not a big fan otherwise.
My wife and I got a cool hand-blown carafe and cup set when we were in Italy on our honeymoon. It's pretty cool Murano Glass, and it's showcased in our dining room china cabinet.
Smokestack is one of those old school cards that really suffered from power creep, and the speed creep of cubes.
The effect is very powerful if you break the symmetry, but it is slow to get going...
I've found that many decks have ways of generating multiple permanents that make it harder to break the symmetry than it used to be. From tokens created by planeswalkers, army in a can creatures, resilient creatures like kitchen finks/voice of resurgence. Fast artifact mana + draw 7's... black agro with recursive agro creatures. Red agro going way under it. There aren't many archetypes that are soft to it.
The "nut" smoke stack deck is a prison style deck with a lot of ways of clearing your opponents permanents, while having plenty of fodder to feed smokestack on your side of the battlefield. Wraths/Wildfire to stop mutliple creatures, exile effects to clear out recursive creatures, fiery confluence to take out multiple artifacts, crucible of worlds/bitterblossom for an engine etc.
The card is still powerful enough to be in my cube, but I wouldn't run it at 360 and it's MUCH weaker than it was when I first started cubing.
It took many 0-3 and 1-2 drafts when I built around it to figure that out
This has been my general experience. I know some people swear by it, but it's a 4 mana do nothing when it comes into play, and if your opponent is putting pressure onto you or has their own engines it can be so bad. Yes, sometimes it's an actual lock-out, but in other games by the time they've sacrificed their first permanent they've already had a full turn to play around it as much as possible. I get that some people experience the card drastically different, but it has not been consistently stellar.
I absolutely love Smokestack. It's a powerful build-around card that when you can break the symmetry, it can dominate games as they get drawn out. I can't imagine ever cutting it.
I absolutely love Smokestack. It's a powerful build-around card that when you can break the symmetry, it can dominate games as they get drawn out. I can't imagine ever cutting it.
Does Smokestack make appearances outside of black-based decks in your cube? It's essentially a black card in my list. I clicked through the first page or so of your cubetutor drafts and didn't find a deck that had stax without recursive black creatures.
I like it a lot but it's not too popular with my playgroup. They don't find it particularly oppressive, but it rides the boards a lot.
It sees play in token decks, Alesha/'Lark/Recruiter decks and loam decks too.
It's not a card that gets used for its utility against fast decks anyways. It's a midrange card used with token makers, Loam/Crucible effects and recursive creature engines to grind out prolonged midrange mirrors and shore up the decks' weaknesses to control. It's such a bomb when the games slow down/go long that its speed isn't much of a concern in my aggressive matchups. The decks that tend to play Smokestack are already favored against beatdown shells most of the time anyways.
I really like smokestack. In any deck where I plan to have more creatures or have ways to recur them I will at least consider it.
It doesn't have the immediate effect of Braids, Cabal Minion but it has the ability to keep ratcheting up. Having a smoke stack at 3 with perminants to spare feels pretty good.
I wouldn't say you need black to abuse it, It just happens that black is the go to colour as it has the recurable creatures and redundency for the effect. Green and White have a lot of ways to get ahead and are possibly better suited to maintaining a high soot counter smokestack as they are better at creating multiple bodies a turn, where as black is better at getting the same guy back over and over (in my cube anyway).
I smoke, my worst nightmare is faceing down a Stone-Cold Basilisk if you catch my drift.
The worst card I lost to is Kaboom!. It was a draft. My opponent was going to lose next turn. So he played Kaboom!, hit the one card he had that could win him the game (Havoc Demon -- I was at 6), and won.
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I used to write for MTGS, including Cranial Insertion and cube articles. Good on you if you can find those after the upgrade.
Back when Faith's Fetters and the like took up slots in cube there was the possibility that this card could end up dead on board with its drawback still punishing you but with Fetters out of most cubes now this is going to bait removal that also takes it off the board for you.
There is always Maze of Ith and various other tap and prevention effects, like the newest Gideon.
Persecutor's biggest problem here was lack of homes. In aggro decks, he will buy your opponent time until you find a way to remove him so he is de-facto just a slow way to finish a game. In control, he provides little defense and offers no value if answered (or bounced). He was good in midrange, but again, not every midrange deck can play him as they might have enough sacrifice outlets or answers.
The list on cube cobra
Read my blog on cube - Latest post June 2nd 2022
I've lost to a lot of bad cards, but perhaps the worst loss I ever took was outside of a cube setting. My playgroup does random periodic challenges, one of which we call a restriction draft, in which we create and then draft restrictions around which we have to build a deck. One of my selected restrictions involved playing cards that required coin flips. And so it was that in a game against one of my friends, I was winning 8 to 4 following an attack, and attempted to finish him off by casting Mana Clash.
When the spell had completed its resolution, I had lost -3 to 2.
Windfall
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I won over $1K in a poker tournament at the Talking Stick casino in Phoenix once.
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Blood Artist
Do you paint? Do you have a favorite painting or painter?
The floor is pretty low and its a not a great topdeck when your behind, but those criticisms hold for a lot of 2 drops.
I'm a *horrendous* painter, I can't even get walls right, but I do like art. Van Gogh is my fav, prob a 'basic' answer but whatever, its beautiful stuff.
Also, follow us on twitter! @TurnOneMagic
I don't paint and I am not artistic at all. The closest I get to painting is the thought of building painter's servant in legacy
http://www.cubetutor.com/cubeblog/63569
I am a pretty good artist. In my younger days I used to paint graffiti murals for bars and skate shops. I still enjoy painting and drawing. Long term, my end goal would be to do art for MTG. Current mtg artist Philip Burburan also began his art career in graffiti which i always thought was pretty cool.
I can't draw stick figures to save my life, let alone paint... I really do envy people who can paint and draw though. I wouldn't be able to stand all the mess though. Thank god music is much cleaner than drawing / painting / sculpting / etc.
My High Octane Unpowered Cube on CubeCobra
Kira, Great Glass-Spinner
Do you own any cool glassware?
I have a cool glass teapot that I use to show off to guests.
My High Octane Unpowered Cube on CubeCobra
My wife and I got a cool hand-blown carafe and cup set when we were in Italy on our honeymoon. It's pretty cool Murano Glass, and it's showcased in our dining room china cabinet.
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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!
Smokestack
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Cheers,
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The effect is very powerful if you break the symmetry, but it is slow to get going...
I've found that many decks have ways of generating multiple permanents that make it harder to break the symmetry than it used to be. From tokens created by planeswalkers, army in a can creatures, resilient creatures like kitchen finks/voice of resurgence. Fast artifact mana + draw 7's... black agro with recursive agro creatures. Red agro going way under it. There aren't many archetypes that are soft to it.
The "nut" smoke stack deck is a prison style deck with a lot of ways of clearing your opponents permanents, while having plenty of fodder to feed smokestack on your side of the battlefield. Wraths/Wildfire to stop mutliple creatures, exile effects to clear out recursive creatures, fiery confluence to take out multiple artifacts, crucible of worlds/bitterblossom for an engine etc.
The card is still powerful enough to be in my cube, but I wouldn't run it at 360 and it's MUCH weaker than it was when I first started cubing.
It took many 0-3 and 1-2 drafts when I built around it to figure that out
Last Updated 02/07/24
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My 50th Set (P)review - Discusses my top 20 Cube cards from OTJ!
The list on cube cobra
Read my blog on cube - Latest post June 2nd 2022
Does Smokestack make appearances outside of black-based decks in your cube? It's essentially a black card in my list. I clicked through the first page or so of your cubetutor drafts and didn't find a deck that had stax without recursive black creatures.
I like it a lot but it's not too popular with my playgroup. They don't find it particularly oppressive, but it rides the boards a lot.
I quit smoking five years ago and do not miss it.
Here's my cube! Give it a draft!
It's not a card that gets used for its utility against fast decks anyways. It's a midrange card used with token makers, Loam/Crucible effects and recursive creature engines to grind out prolonged midrange mirrors and shore up the decks' weaknesses to control. It's such a bomb when the games slow down/go long that its speed isn't much of a concern in my aggressive matchups. The decks that tend to play Smokestack are already favored against beatdown shells most of the time anyways.
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!
It doesn't have the immediate effect of Braids, Cabal Minion but it has the ability to keep ratcheting up. Having a smoke stack at 3 with perminants to spare feels pretty good.
I wouldn't say you need black to abuse it, It just happens that black is the go to colour as it has the recurable creatures and redundency for the effect. Green and White have a lot of ways to get ahead and are possibly better suited to maintaining a high soot counter smokestack as they are better at creating multiple bodies a turn, where as black is better at getting the same guy back over and over (in my cube anyway).
I smoke, my worst nightmare is faceing down a Stone-Cold Basilisk if you catch my drift.