Ok, that's a really compelling argument. I'll pick up a copy of Vizkopa Guildmage and run her in Karlov's slot, who's been ok but not great so far. Maybe I'll also run Cutthroat over Merciless Executioner for a bit while I'm at it.
Taking 2 white cards and replacing them with multicolored cards is a pretty big thing - it wipes out two solid cards that are playable in 10 multicolored schemes and puts cards that are playable in only 4.
Oh, my Cube is a general MP Cube, not an EDH one. Color identity issues don't really play a part for my Cube, and I subscribe to the organizing cards in the colors that'll be used to play them philosophy. Avacyn plays as white even though she flips to red, and the red ability on Nahiri's Machinations is pretty much superfluous.
The full spoiler is out! It generally looks like a pretty strong set, but unfortunately the best cards seem to be in the low-cost aggro support in black and red. Still though, the planeswalkers look interesting even if I don't think I'll be testing them out personally.
So, after running this past my own playgroup in the last 24hrs, they're balking add the Thopter Engineer and Thopter Spy Network swaps, but good for everything else. I think I can live with that.
If you're purposefully excluding Daretti, then another artifact deck enabler worth considering is Trash for Treasure which also happens to be same CC as Thopter Engineer. Thopter Engineer is an ok card in my implementation of the archetype, but she's more of a placeholder until something better comes along as opposed to a key piece of the deck.
Yah, that's something I'm still working out in my own brain. Myr Battlesphere was in until just a couple of months ago. We've dropped it to test out Deceiver of Form. But I suspect we might unswap that if Deceiver turns out to be underwhelming. Sundering Titan won't get a gig due to my playgroup haaaaaaating land destruction, but Scuttling Doom Engine and Soul of New Phyrexia are fair calls. I've considered both in the past, and they've both never quite made it in.
The Monument and the Memorial are excellent suggestions, too - I've considered chasing copies of them for a long time, and we've already been considering dropping Panoptic Mirror, so there's already a slot there for either one. Given we're planning on spamming the board with Thopters, I suppose Eldrazi Monument is likely the better option of the two, given the archetype we're building?
I think Eldrazi Monument is the better choice over the Memorial, though I'd probably also try to include a couple more token spammers in my list if I wanted to use the Monument as a finisher.
Since there's not that much room to play around in 360, I try to prioritize big artifact creatures over Eldrazi. They interact better with the rest of the Cube, and without the artifact archetype I feel R is really flailing around for relevancy in MP Cube. I think Battlesphere at least is pretty necessary to support the archetype in the direction that you're taking it, if you prefer wide over tall I can understand not running Inkwell or Sundering Titan. I'd probably still look for another couple of big splashy artifacts in the 7+ slots if you want the deck to come together consistently.
Since your approach is a bit different, perhaps you can consider the original Voltrons?
Thopter Squadron The cost to body ratio is a bit painful compared to modern creatures but it's well within hard castable range and could also help token strategies in other colors. Unlike the others this one also plays well with the new thopter tokens from the Origins cards.
Tetravus It's a little bit wonky in that you can only transform it during your upkeep but unlike the others, the transformation is free.
Pentavus Has the advantage of being the biggest, but that's about it.
Triskelavus He can also ping, but the cost / body ratio on this one is pretty rough.
Pia and Kiran Nalaar in for Fanatic of Mogis. Fanatic hasn't taken off for us... given red's traditional crapitude in Multiplayer and/or Cube, it's pretty hard to get a decent red devotion count. My playgroup has almost dropped it once already.
Whirler Rogue in for Vedalken Archmage. The Archmage is running out of things to draw cards off. Whirler Rogue is a crazy Deadeye Navigator soulbond target, and plays around with combat to boot.
Thopter Spy Network in for Bident of Thassa. Two very similar cards, but my playgroup don't seem too keen on the "on combat damage, draw a card" effect. They'd be likely to play the Spy Network more for its token production.
Grand Architect in for Chasm Skulker. Skulker barely sees play. The Architect is pretty good in these situations, and would send Memnarch absolutely bananas.
Sharding Sphinx in for Inkwell Leviathan. Inky is fun, but he's got no Tinker anymore, so you have to ramp into him. I suspect the Sphinx would produce more insanity when paired with all of these other cards (and I can tell you from experience that it's really good next to Grand Architect, for one).
These all generally seem like good swaps. I'd personally take out Prophetic Flamespeaker for Thopter Engineer because I find the card a bit too inconsistent for my tastes. I don't really like Thopter Spy Network even in this strategy, especially since the magpie ability only goes off once per attack as opposed to once per creature. The token production is ok but too slow and conditional for me at that cost. If you're looking for something that has synergy with the artifact strategy that also fits into that CMC slot, Master Transmuter is worth considering.
I am also still cubing with Metalworker, who remains awesome, but is suffering the same fate as Vedalken Archmage (it's running out of artifact cards to use). I've no idea what to replace it with, though. You'd ideally want an artifact creature that at least dropped a Thopter on resolution or something, but about the best thing in print at the moment is Precursor Golem (which is likely too expensive to cast, given all the Eldrazi at the top of the colourless curve... and it's... well, it's Precursor Golem... no bigger target ever got painted on a creature's head in Multiplayer, much as I'd like to see someone try and pair it with Mirror Entity one day).
How are you expecting the artifact archetype to come together? You seem to be missing a couple of the standard enablers (it looks like you're intentionally leaving out Tinker, but what about Daretti?), and the curve toppers in artifacts look to be on the weaker side outside of Wurmcoil Engine (no Sundering Titan, Myr Battlesphere, Scuttling Doom Engine, or Soul of New Phyrexia). Are you aiming towards a tokens / go-wide sort of strategy with control elements? Then maybe something more like Eldrazi Monument or Akroma's Memorial are the curve-toppers that you're looking for.
Boros is awesome in mine. Gisela, Aurelia, Assemble the Legion, Boros Charm, and some other stuff... I could see her bumping something like Aurelia's Fury or Legion's Initiative based on power level, but 4 mana sorcery speed cards are not what I want to be adding in there.
Ah, I often forget that my MP Cube is a bit more aggressive than most, and as a result I don't use some of the more common choices in the MP Boros section. I'd like Gisela more if she were in colors that were better at cheating things into play, her high cost and the lack of cheating options often means that you have to wait at least turn to take advantage of her offensive abilities. That and her vulnerability never made her too popular in my Cube. I have the same issue with Assemble the Legion, that one is harder to remove but you have to wait even longer before you get a meaningful effect from it. I've always found it to be too slow and there are too many cards at around that casting cost in Mono-W and Mono-R that I feel can clog the board with more tokens more effectively.
I think Ajani Vengeant is still better, but it probably depends on what you want Boros to achieve.
There's no way I'd put Nahiri ahead of Assemble the Legion, Vengeant and Gisela are still ahead of her. So that puts her at least #4 in Boros. Do you fit her in with those three ahead of some of the other cards you may be running?
My playgroup is currently shunning Gisela for fairness concerns, so my 5-wide Boros section is currently Vengeant / Assemble / Boros Charm / Aurelia's Fury / Firemane Avenger. Fury has just come in for Brion Stoutarm, so if anything, I'd want to drop Boros Charm or Firemane Avenger for her, but both of those work really well with Assemble the Legion... man, it makes a guy's brain hurt.
More token / going wide support would be great, but as I said above I generally find Assemble the Legion to be too slow. I have only one pure Boros card, Iroas, God of Victory. I have half Boros cards in Soulfire Grand Master and Alesha, Who Smiles at Death. Thinking about this some more, I don't think I like Nahiri more than Ajani Vengeant and that card was passed over pretty often.
Walkers are good in three situations, with the first two being more common than the third:
1) Being a source of incremental value by repeatedly using the first two abilities to generate board position.
2) Being effectively a powerful one-shot spell by using one ability when the planeswalker will almost certainly die thereafter. Multiple immediately usable modes are strong here.
3) Playing alongside Doubling Season to immediately drop a powerful Ultimate ability.
I've never put down a formal methodology for evaluating walkers for MP Cube, but this is really close to how I think about it as well (though I don't use criterion #3 since I don't run Doubling Season).
On that note, what do you guys think of Nahiri, the Harbinger? Boros is probably the weakest section in our Cubes, and she seems...okay? The + ability isn't great in WR, but the - ability seems solid and you can build loyalty without discarding if you really want to. I'm not sure if I'm evaluating her fairly due to the fact that I really want to jam in some decent MP Boros cards already.
Eldrazi Displacer is the one card that really makes me want to try out the C theme but unfortunately it's only one card.
For Vile Redeemer, do you think it's better than Caller of the Claw? It seems to cost more and provide less bang for that buck, even if it does have some interesting synergies that Caller doesn't.
I was not aware of Sigil Captain's existence and now I want to jam it into my Cube immediately.
Ah, my young padawan... that is why God gave us Grave Pact!
New Chandra does play well with a lot of other cards, I mean with Purphoros, God of the Forge it's at least 10 damage even if you don't have complete control over where that damage is going to go. Plays well with other sac outlets, like Goblin Bombardment, of course. When it comes down to it I think the quality of the card is just more conditionally dependent on the board state than I'd like, especially for something that costs 6.
Suffice to say a fair few of us are probably scared off by 6CC red planeswalkers after Chandra Ablaze...
... but I have a sneaking suspicion that Chandra, Flamecaller is really good, certainly in EDH / Multiplayer anyway (where we have a little more time to get to six mana before we croak). I'd play the hell out of it for that 0 ability alone (and I suspect that's probably going to be its strength... very good next to reanimation and decks that burn through their cards).
Not like it's up against stiff competition in the red planeswalker stakes, either. I was so unexcited by Chandra Nalaar that I dropped it like it was hot when I pulled Sarkhan, Dragonspeaker. And now Sarkhan feels much the same - he's good for one swing normally.
Right now I'm running Chandra, the Firebrand, Daretti, Scrap Savant, and Koth of the Hammer which is more than enough planeswalkers for the color. I'm pretty open to replacing Chandra or Koth, but I don't think this new Chandra is going to cut it.
My main issue with this card is that it's not great at advancing your board state. Tokens on the +1 disappear EOT so don't help on defense. The +0 is a good ability, but not one you want to see at 6 mana. The Savage Twister ability might be the best ability on the card, but once again at 6 mana it's a bitter pill to swallow.
I can see merit in spamming the +1 and then using -X to clear the board, as a sort of Seal of Wildfire, maybe? But I'm also not sure if that's good enough to warrant inclusion.
For those of you who are considering cards like Mirrorpool (cards with C as part of their costs), are you going to be running wastes as available basics in your cube, or are you just hoping to use C sources already available to us (IE: Sol Ring, Brushland, etc)? OR, do you plan on using your own errata?
If I include any of the cards with C cost, I'll be adding some Wastes into the basic land pool. Adding them as draftable cards would be weird, and I stay away from house errata.
I'm going to find room for Kalitas definitely and I'll see if I can find a spot for the new Nissa. The hellbent draw land also looks like it should be pretty good for us, R/W manland looks like a pass and I'm honestly not sure how to evaluate the new Chandra.
Yowza, that Orzhov card from Oath of the Gatewatch is strong if it's real...
It's a sweet card. I had a casual lifegain theme going on in Orzhov already with the Extort cards, the Soul Sisters, Ajani 1, and Archangel of Thune. I was already wanting to add in Karlov from the Commander deck, and given that this card plays so well with him, I might try to shoehorn in this odd couple when OGW comes out. Can't cut Sorin or Vindicate either, so I'm probably just going to mess around with my multicolored section a bit.
It's going to heavily depend on what <> mana actually means. If <> is colorless mana and not dedicated Eldrazi mana, then it does make a certain set of cards worth visiting again. Off the top of my head, I can think of Boreal Druid, Rampant Growth, Farhaven Elf, Civic Wayfinder and friends, the original painlands, and Grand Coliseum for Cubes not running it already.
For there to be that kind of payoff though, that also means there have to be cards worth playing that have <> in their costs in OGW. I think new Kozilek is decent but probably not enough payoff to dedicate space to the mechanic. Mirrorpool is pretty interesting too. It feels like you'd only need a couple more cards to achieve critical mass.
As always feedback and suggestions are welcome. Here are a few issues I currently have:
- I have one too many card in black and green. Just don't know what to cut!
- Red early plays. Red is so bad at 2 drops that I'm not ready to play the terrible ones. I already think Ashling, the Pilgrim and Young Pyromancer are subpar...
- Not a fan of Jhoira of the Ghitu, but not sure what else to play in Izzet.
- Thinking of ditching Golgari Signet in favor of Deathrite Shaman to free up space for Maelstrom Pulse.
- Similarly, I'm considering dropping Simic Signet in favor of Coiling Oracle.
I'd cut Withered Wretch from black and agree with Nissa's Revelation for green.
I'm also at a loss for what to do with early red drops (and red in general, actually). Artifacts works pretty well, but even that theme isn't deep enough to cover the entire section. Right now I'm using big burn but I'm pretty sure it's not going to stay.
Not a fan of Ral Zarek? I like Dominus of Fealty here but the casting cost might be a bit rough. At least when you have an artifact theme you can fill Izzet with some decent cards.
Right now I'm running a small Soul Sisters package since the parts play decently evenly separately:
Anything else that you guys think is worth running?
Oh, my Cube is a general MP Cube, not an EDH one. Color identity issues don't really play a part for my Cube, and I subscribe to the organizing cards in the colors that'll be used to play them philosophy. Avacyn plays as white even though she flips to red, and the red ability on Nahiri's Machinations is pretty much superfluous.
I'm only looking at two cards at the moment:
Archangel Avacyn replacing Geist-Honored Monk
Nahiri's Machinations replacing Eight-and-a-Half-Tails
What's on everyone else's lists?
If you're purposefully excluding Daretti, then another artifact deck enabler worth considering is Trash for Treasure which also happens to be same CC as Thopter Engineer. Thopter Engineer is an ok card in my implementation of the archetype, but she's more of a placeholder until something better comes along as opposed to a key piece of the deck.
I think Eldrazi Monument is the better choice over the Memorial, though I'd probably also try to include a couple more token spammers in my list if I wanted to use the Monument as a finisher.
Since there's not that much room to play around in 360, I try to prioritize big artifact creatures over Eldrazi. They interact better with the rest of the Cube, and without the artifact archetype I feel R is really flailing around for relevancy in MP Cube. I think Battlesphere at least is pretty necessary to support the archetype in the direction that you're taking it, if you prefer wide over tall I can understand not running Inkwell or Sundering Titan. I'd probably still look for another couple of big splashy artifacts in the 7+ slots if you want the deck to come together consistently.
Since your approach is a bit different, perhaps you can consider the original Voltrons?
These all generally seem like good swaps. I'd personally take out Prophetic Flamespeaker for Thopter Engineer because I find the card a bit too inconsistent for my tastes. I don't really like Thopter Spy Network even in this strategy, especially since the magpie ability only goes off once per attack as opposed to once per creature. The token production is ok but too slow and conditional for me at that cost. If you're looking for something that has synergy with the artifact strategy that also fits into that CMC slot, Master Transmuter is worth considering.
How are you expecting the artifact archetype to come together? You seem to be missing a couple of the standard enablers (it looks like you're intentionally leaving out Tinker, but what about Daretti?), and the curve toppers in artifacts look to be on the weaker side outside of Wurmcoil Engine (no Sundering Titan, Myr Battlesphere, Scuttling Doom Engine, or Soul of New Phyrexia). Are you aiming towards a tokens / go-wide sort of strategy with control elements? Then maybe something more like Eldrazi Monument or Akroma's Memorial are the curve-toppers that you're looking for.
And yeah, Hangarback is really good in this deck.
Ah, I often forget that my MP Cube is a bit more aggressive than most, and as a result I don't use some of the more common choices in the MP Boros section. I'd like Gisela more if she were in colors that were better at cheating things into play, her high cost and the lack of cheating options often means that you have to wait at least turn to take advantage of her offensive abilities. That and her vulnerability never made her too popular in my Cube. I have the same issue with Assemble the Legion, that one is harder to remove but you have to wait even longer before you get a meaningful effect from it. I've always found it to be too slow and there are too many cards at around that casting cost in Mono-W and Mono-R that I feel can clog the board with more tokens more effectively.
More token / going wide support would be great, but as I said above I generally find Assemble the Legion to be too slow. I have only one pure Boros card, Iroas, God of Victory. I have half Boros cards in Soulfire Grand Master and Alesha, Who Smiles at Death. Thinking about this some more, I don't think I like Nahiri more than Ajani Vengeant and that card was passed over pretty often.
I've never put down a formal methodology for evaluating walkers for MP Cube, but this is really close to how I think about it as well (though I don't use criterion #3 since I don't run Doubling Season).
On that note, what do you guys think of Nahiri, the Harbinger? Boros is probably the weakest section in our Cubes, and she seems...okay? The + ability isn't great in WR, but the - ability seems solid and you can build loyalty without discarding if you really want to. I'm not sure if I'm evaluating her fairly due to the fact that I really want to jam in some decent MP Boros cards already.
For Vile Redeemer, do you think it's better than Caller of the Claw? It seems to cost more and provide less bang for that buck, even if it does have some interesting synergies that Caller doesn't.
I was not aware of Sigil Captain's existence and now I want to jam it into my Cube immediately.
New Chandra does play well with a lot of other cards, I mean with Purphoros, God of the Forge it's at least 10 damage even if you don't have complete control over where that damage is going to go. Plays well with other sac outlets, like Goblin Bombardment, of course. When it comes down to it I think the quality of the card is just more conditionally dependent on the board state than I'd like, especially for something that costs 6.
Right now I'm running Chandra, the Firebrand, Daretti, Scrap Savant, and Koth of the Hammer which is more than enough planeswalkers for the color. I'm pretty open to replacing Chandra or Koth, but I don't think this new Chandra is going to cut it.
My main issue with this card is that it's not great at advancing your board state. Tokens on the +1 disappear EOT so don't help on defense. The +0 is a good ability, but not one you want to see at 6 mana. The Savage Twister ability might be the best ability on the card, but once again at 6 mana it's a bitter pill to swallow.
I can see merit in spamming the +1 and then using -X to clear the board, as a sort of Seal of Wildfire, maybe? But I'm also not sure if that's good enough to warrant inclusion.
If I include any of the cards with C cost, I'll be adding some Wastes into the basic land pool. Adding them as draftable cards would be weird, and I stay away from house errata.
I'm going to find room for Kalitas definitely and I'll see if I can find a spot for the new Nissa. The hellbent draw land also looks like it should be pretty good for us, R/W manland looks like a pass and I'm honestly not sure how to evaluate the new Chandra.
Thoughts?
This got too real too fast.
It's a sweet card. I had a casual lifegain theme going on in Orzhov already with the Extort cards, the Soul Sisters, Ajani 1, and Archangel of Thune. I was already wanting to add in Karlov from the Commander deck, and given that this card plays so well with him, I might try to shoehorn in this odd couple when OGW comes out. Can't cut Sorin or Vindicate either, so I'm probably just going to mess around with my multicolored section a bit.
For there to be that kind of payoff though, that also means there have to be cards worth playing that have <> in their costs in OGW. I think new Kozilek is decent but probably not enough payoff to dedicate space to the mechanic. Mirrorpool is pretty interesting too. It feels like you'd only need a couple more cards to achieve critical mass.