Well I'm onto the colourless section for my revisions so I thought this was a good opportunity to ask a few questions regarding a set of cards which have been bothering me.
The cards in question are:
I'm currently running disk and it's seen some play but often gets cut in favour of the white (and blue) wraths since they have the surprise factor and don't destroy your own mana rocks. It's safe in my list for the time.
Oblivion Stone is rather slow and as such doesn't seem to see much play.
The last two seem fairly widely run but I'm curious as to their merits.
Ratchet Bomb is pretty slow unless you're wrathing a token army, which I can't see happening very often.
Explosives is versatile but if the majority of your decks are dual-colour then it's not gonna wrath above CC 2 very often which seems to limit it's usefulness. I guess 4 mana wrathing most of an aggro decks early plays is good, but what if they've dropped a 3 drop?
I'd like to hear what other think.
Feel free to add any cards I've missed. Guess and obvious on is Karn Liberated but I think it's a lot more obvious why he's good.
Academy Ruins is important to remember with the four examples you gave. Getting able to buy them back, especially Engineered Explosives in decks that can cast it with 3+ colors, gains a lot of value.
All is dust is pretty good, since it protects your artifact mana you ramped up with and wipe out their board. Not an insane card by any means, but it's fairly neat.
If your cube is heavy with token-based strategies, Engineered Explosives, Ratchet Bomb and Powder Keg are excellent counters to that (you can basically pop them straight away to blow all the tokens off the board).
Generally speaking, I lean towards the Disk. I'd probably also run All is Dust if I had a copy.
As you note, O-Stone is somewhat slower. Its value is in its selectivity, but its lack of speed is sometimes its undoing.
I still run explosives, ratchet bomb, nev disk, and oblivion stone, I don't think oblivion stone has much longer in my cube though, it's a very slow card and unlike disk requires pretty much your entire mana when you want to pop it. It used to be great because you could spend time saving your own permanent, but nowadays it just gets played and then popped a turn or two later without saving anything, and that's not what I want in my mass removal.
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I run Disk, EE and Ratchet Bomb at 540. I'd add in O Stone if I went up to 630, and All is Dust if I went up to 720. I'll add Powder Keg back in when/if we get the enemy manland cycle.
I classify Engineered Explosives as a gold card, not a colorless one. The less colors you play, the more colorless cards are useful, as they complement your colors weakness. The more color you play, the more gold cards become interesting.
I count it as colorless, because pretty much all of our decks are 2-color decks, and EE doesn't need more than 2 colors to be maindeckable.
I currently run Ratchet Bomb and Disk @ 360. Disk has been great, but Bomb has been weak so far. Might end up cutting it when I get some artifacts I am missing, like Cursed Scroll, Smoke Stack, etc.
At 500 cards, I run Disk, Ratchet Bomb, Powder Keg, Engineered Explosives, and Oblivion Stone. Out of those, the only one I consider uncuttable is Disk. None of others really impress me and I just run them so every color has mass removal options. Powder Keg is closest to the chopping block.
At 450 I only run Disk, O-Stone an EE. Disk is still great, and sufficiently iconic that it will probably never be cut. EE often stay in the sideboard but have flashes of brilliance that make me want to keep them. O-Stone is not likely to stay much longer. It doesn't fit nicely with any archetypes, and perhaps could be given the award for Card Most Likely To Be Run Out of Desperation When Your Draft Has Gone Tits Up.
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I am surprised Ratchet Bomb is not universally loved. It seems to be run in almost everything and is usually used to deal with someones aggro push. almost always killing 2 creatures or a creature and the equipment it is carrying. It can pinpoint better than a lot of sweepers and it is fairly cheap.
At 450 I only run Disk. But after reading this thread I am considering Ratchet Bomb.
Have you done any extensive testing with Engineered Explosives? I like it more than Ratchet Bomb, because it's a full turn or two faster in dealing with pretty much every type of card that Bomb can reliably hit. Plus, it's an awesome Trinket Mage target.
Have you done any extensive testing with Engineered Explosives? I like it more than Ratchet Bomb, because it's a full turn or two faster in dealing with pretty much every type of card that Bomb can reliably hit. Plus, it's an awesome Trinket Mage target.
At 450, all I run are Disk and EE.
I'm also in the EE>Ratchet Bomb camp. In addition to the mentioned bonuses, letting your opponent over-extend into your Engineered Explosives instead of telegraphing your Ratchet bomb play is often a lot better. It's tough to get stuff with CMC 4 or 5 with EE, but I've also found the same true with Ratchet bomb as it takes forever to get there, and by that time they'll probably have other cards on the curve spectrum that are more important to deal with than the previous CMC you were worrying about.
At 450 I play Disk, Bomb, and Explosives. I ran stone for a LONG time but eventually cut it a few months ago. I can see Explosives being better than Bomb, maybe, but I do still like them both and I don't see any reason not to run both at 450 unpowered.
FWIW I run Explosives and I don't play Trinket Mage.
Explosives has firmly secured its spot in my cube. It's pretty easy to end up with an off-color dual land to improve the range of fetch lands, so even 2-color decks can probably sunburst for 3. Hell, I once killed a Gideon in a GRw deck.
Ratchet Bomb isn't nearly as good, but it's does well enough. It will often sit on 2 counters so that anything at 2 or 3 is immediately in range. I also consider it important that any color can have an answer to some of the bigger token generators in my cube (Entreat the Angels, Armada Wurm, Deranged Hermit).
Disk is never leaving. It does have the same sometimes good/sometimes bad quality that Deed has where it doesn't see planeswalkers but that's fine. Having an inexpensive, colorless mass removal option is significant. Both Oblivion Stone and AiD can deal with planeswalkers, but I'm currently just on Oblivion Stone because it can be active on 5 mana. It has interaction with Academy Ruins and Sun Titan, which is convenient.
The cards in question are:
I'm currently running disk and it's seen some play but often gets cut in favour of the white (and blue) wraths since they have the surprise factor and don't destroy your own mana rocks. It's safe in my list for the time.
Oblivion Stone is rather slow and as such doesn't seem to see much play.
The last two seem fairly widely run but I'm curious as to their merits.
Ratchet Bomb is pretty slow unless you're wrathing a token army, which I can't see happening very often.
Explosives is versatile but if the majority of your decks are dual-colour then it's not gonna wrath above CC 2 very often which seems to limit it's usefulness. I guess 4 mana wrathing most of an aggro decks early plays is good, but what if they've dropped a 3 drop?
I'd like to hear what other think.
Feel free to add any cards I've missed. Guess and obvious on is Karn Liberated but I think it's a lot more obvious why he's good.
Thanks
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It's late and I somehow got confused. :-P
Altered the thread title now.
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All is dust is pretty good, since it protects your artifact mana you ramped up with and wipe out their board. Not an insane card by any means, but it's fairly neat.
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Generally speaking, I lean towards the Disk. I'd probably also run All is Dust if I had a copy.
As you note, O-Stone is somewhat slower. Its value is in its selectivity, but its lack of speed is sometimes its undoing.
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Salvo: You make a good point with the Ruins, which I do run atm.
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I count it as colorless, because pretty much all of our decks are 2-color decks, and EE doesn't need more than 2 colors to be maindeckable.
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Have you done any extensive testing with Engineered Explosives? I like it more than Ratchet Bomb, because it's a full turn or two faster in dealing with pretty much every type of card that Bomb can reliably hit. Plus, it's an awesome Trinket Mage target.
At 450, all I run are Disk and EE.
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I'm also in the EE>Ratchet Bomb camp. In addition to the mentioned bonuses, letting your opponent over-extend into your Engineered Explosives instead of telegraphing your Ratchet bomb play is often a lot better. It's tough to get stuff with CMC 4 or 5 with EE, but I've also found the same true with Ratchet bomb as it takes forever to get there, and by that time they'll probably have other cards on the curve spectrum that are more important to deal with than the previous CMC you were worrying about.
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FWIW I run Explosives and I don't play Trinket Mage.
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Ratchet Bomb isn't nearly as good, but it's does well enough. It will often sit on 2 counters so that anything at 2 or 3 is immediately in range. I also consider it important that any color can have an answer to some of the bigger token generators in my cube (Entreat the Angels, Armada Wurm, Deranged Hermit).
Disk is never leaving. It does have the same sometimes good/sometimes bad quality that Deed has where it doesn't see planeswalkers but that's fine. Having an inexpensive, colorless mass removal option is significant. Both Oblivion Stone and AiD can deal with planeswalkers, but I'm currently just on Oblivion Stone because it can be active on 5 mana. It has interaction with Academy Ruins and Sun Titan, which is convenient.
Anyways wish we got some more colorless removal, cube has gotten faster and made a lot of the slower stuff less good.
I try not to play broken spells no matter how fun to cast.
...But they both go off on the same turn. Except Disk costs less mana.
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