I plan on doing some testing with this card. While it's true that it has some win-more aspects to it, it does a couple of unique things for the cube. It's a playable combat trick, which is quite welcome. It's also an aggro-centric piece of equipment, and most equipment cards are better suited for midrange deck nowadays. It'll be nice to have another Wargear kind of card floating around. It also brings in some extra double strike, which is an underrepresented keyword. But most importantly, it adds in a card that makes blocking assignments relevant. There are several cards (like flash creatures, for example) that can make attacking into open mana a little perilous, and players are becoming more cognizant of that. But there are few cube cards that change how you block when the attacking player has open mana, and Embercleave is exactly that card. I don't expect it to be broken, but I do think it can contribute to R/x aggressive strategies well, and I like the idea of having another aggro equipment piece floating around, as well as another offensive-oriented combat trick. At 2 mana, the card's obviously sick. At 5 mana, the card is underwhelming and overcosted. But in the 3-4 mana range, which I expect its ACS to be, the card will be adding 4-5 power to the board on average, which makes it comparable to (or better than?) Wargear in terms of the power/cost it delivers.
It's a super expensive combat trick that's always going to cast at least RR. If you're casting this for 2-3 mana in a red deck, you've probably already won.
I'll report back with how it plays out.
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!
Ding.
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!