MTG Salvation

It's not very good. The tempo disruption against yourself is too rough.

The tempo hit is pretty big, but in decks like UG that can easily negate the draw back and have plenty of low casting cost cards (bears etc) Gush is pretty good. Also decks that don't mind bouncing lands late for extra benefits, such as feeding them to Seismic Assault or Faithless Looting.

One time in my cube someone was playing UG Tempo Bounce with things like Mystic Snake and Crystal Shard, and one turn against me he used a combination of cards, including Gush to go from 2 cards in hand to 7, without really falling behind thanks to an early Coiling Oracle.

With Gush being restricted in vintage, a few of my players have asked me about my opinions about Gush. Playing Gush and replaying lands when you would otherwise miss a land drop is pretty sweet, but generally, I've always thought that setting yourself two islands would hurt your development too much. It's sick with Fastbond, but almost no one here runs the enchantment. That said, Gush feels like it has more of a home in powered cubes with fast mana that might be able to power through bouncing 2 islands. Have any of you guys reconsidered or really tested this card?

It's also very good with Armageddon or Cataclysm type effects. Decent with Oracle of Mul Daya and other explore effects. Storm also likes this card.

Still, we found it a little too narrow and lackluster without synergy (even in my combo list that should theoretically want this card). Consistency is really the problem. The effect is definitely powerful.

Needing to draft the specific things to make Gush good really hurts the card, and even when it's 'good' it can be pretty underwhelming. Plus it's not like I'm ever asking "how do I make blue better?!", so including a card that needs a lot of work to make it playable is a stretch for me.

I would say Gush is too much of a constructed card to be good in cube. If you have total control over your deck construction, it can be absurd, but if you have to draft the cards, the perfect pieces rarely come together in high enough volume to make this card reliably good. I guess you can put it into very dedicated combo cubes with storm and Fastbond combo and stuff like that? Normal cubes aren't the right place for it though.

Quote from steve_man »

Any body remember when Quirion Dryad used to be a thing with Gush?

Ages ago, I had an extended deck with those cards. Plus Werebear, Force of Will, Daze and Frostbringer. And a total of only ten lands, most of which were island+x dual lands. Original dual lands. It was a very different extended format from a very different time. Cool deck, btw.

I see Gush in a lot of lists nowadays. Is it seeing so much play now because of Storm, or is it good in other decks as well? There are a lot of possible synergies. I have limited experience playing this card in Cube.

Good with Fastbond and in Storm decks. I don't play it in other decks very often, unless I'm scraping for playables.

It's pretty good in blue aggressive/midrange decks too, especially in combination with Armageddon effects, but the main problem we found with it is that it requires exactly 2 islands. Getting 2 island/shock/abur lands in play in a fast deck is surprisingly inconsistent. The land return isn't even that bad with cards like Gush and Daze, but in Gushes case the fact you need to return 2 of a specific type of land and the regular cost is nearly uncastable makes it just a little too inconstant except in big cubes.