I maindeck Disenchant and friends all the time. Think of it this way: when's the last time you saw a cube deck that didn't have at least one busted artifact or enchantment?
Surprised Acidic Slime is not in your list. I think it's superior to the Stomphowler. Also, I think Viridian Zealot's time in cubes is past. I'd run Naturalize or Deglamer over it.
I'm doing my first online rotisserie draft of my cube, and realized that ten of the first sixteen picks could be hit by Disenchant. It is only not maindecked in GW decks with multiple ETB-disenchant effects.
Surprised Acidic Slime is not in your list. I think it's superior to the Stomphowler. Also, I think Viridian Zealot's time in cubes is past. I'd run Naturalize or Deglamer over it.
Acidic Slime is in my list. I guess I didn't mention every card that could conceivably be a Disenchant (another notable card I didn't list in my post was Trygon Predator).
I still like Viridian Zealot but I'm coming around to the mana cost + the activation cost in sum being too high for what you get. He might get handed the mitten when my foil Reclamation Sage arrives. Is Nantuko Vigilante better to keep or could they both be safely cut?
You could cut them both, but I did find the Vigilante superior because you never need more than one green mana to use it and it doesn't die when you use its ability. I just cut Vigilante because I added Reclamation Sage and Song of the Dryads.
No-one has mentioned Viashino Heretic yet, either... that thing has managed to hang around in my cube forever. It's a fair old wrecking ball against artifact decks.
I should also add that I am running Seal of Primordium (the colour-shifted Seal of Cleansing) - I brought a GW Enchantress archetype into my cube, and it was a straight-up replacement for Naturalize. Obviously still recurses with Sun Titan and so forth, but it also has the added goodness of triggering card draw with Enchantress effects.
I can't see cutting Disenchant, Sundering Growth and Naturalize particularly soon. It's nice to get these effects on bodies, but 1) Instant speed removal of the relevant permanents, like Swords, can lead to a blowout, and 2) they only cost two mana. I will never not maindeck these cards in either green or white. Sometimes you need to kill something earlier, with extra mana up, at instant speed, or just more of these effects. The ETB ones cost 3-5 mana so 2 is very reasonable.
This is a topic near and dear to my heart. It's something I am constantly struggling over. How much of this effect do you run? And which cards?
As mentioned, there are a lot of SB heavy choices. While disenchant is almost always useful, there are some games where it's a dead card. And in those games, you are effectively playing with a handicap (1 card disadvantage). And so I see the argument of focusing more on cards that are not useless if their disenchant effect is not required. But often times those cards are huge compromises. Manic Vandal is a card I personally despise. Gray Ogre's have no business being in cube. Worse, this guy can actually be worse than a Gray Ogre if you are the only one with an artifact.
But these effects are absolutely needed. I can't count how many games I have lost (and had no way to win) because I didn't draw a disenchant effect. So while that is certainly a SB effect, in cube some of the things you need to destroy are so broken that you can't afford to keep your disenchants in your SB.
It's a maddening situation because it starts to boil down to playing the meta instead of the game of magic. Best 2 out of 3 and SB's are all bandaids for a fundamental problem in the game of magic - card types with powerful effects with limited ways to interact with them (namely artifacts and enchantments). And there really isn't a great solution unless you want to change some of the fundamental rules of the game.
In that vein, I've wanted to try a variant where you could exile a card in your hand before your draw phase to draw a card. It would be a filtering mechanic essentially (I call it Exile/Draw). While it has tested well, I have yet to be able to convince my regular group to try it. Something about Magic the Gathering that makes people really squeamish about messing with the rules of the game. As someone that plays table top RPG's, board games and such, changing rules (or ignoring ones that don't work) seems perfectly normal to me. But that mindset doesn't carry over to ever genre unfortunately.
A little off topic, but wanted to share my thoughts on this because I spend a lot of time thinking about it.
to find that right balance I always examine my drafters decks, if they are over loaded on artifact/enchantment destruction or lacking it.
It's a trial and error process, no magic behind it.
You don't want them rare, you don't want decks overflowing with them.
1-2 per main deck is the sweet spot. Maybe 3 if some are more catch all removal spells like oring
It's a maddening situation because it starts to boil down to playing the meta instead of the game of magic.
The same could be said about removal. Wrath of God is useless against a lot of control decks, Lightning Bolt is pretty crappy against combo-reanimator decks, Bribery subpar against aggro.
If you remove this and allow sideboarding in game one, you will need to allow for better sideboard cards. If you know you can sideboard right away, narrower solutions will be better then more genrally playable cards. Pyroclasm will be better, Exclude might become playable, protection creatures will be stronger and so on.
In my experience it is rare for that Disenchant to be dead in my hands. It wins the game a lot more then that. Sideboarding it out if not needed is a better strategy long run then sideboarding it in when needed.
About house rules you are correct. Magic is not a good game for that. People play with their own decks in constructed(so your house rules might be a disadvantage.People play in multiple groups and players will want cards to be equally good wherever they play. Also don't underestimate that if you start to fiddle with Magic rules there will be a lot of unforseen consequences, especially if you have players that love to break cards and formats.
They rarely sit in sideboards (unless someone really went to town and drafted/hated a bunch of them) and are needed to keep a bunch of really strong cards in check. Just when I think I have enough of these in my cube, I'm actually one short.
It's a maddening situation because it starts to boil down to playing the meta instead of the game of magic.
All Magic is played in respect to its meta. All Magic. Every card evaluation starts with understanding the format.
I don't disagree with that. For me though, it's one of the big reasons I became disillusioned with the game. I stopped playing for years and only came back when I found this format (cube).
I think cube helps solve this issue for me. By controlling the card pool (and running largely singleton), it really combats the meta component of the game. You still have matchup issues of course, but it's not nearly as dramatic as constructed. Obviously, SB's really still apply if you are playing the game as competitively as possible, but it's a much better situation now.
When I played constructed, there really were games you couldn't win without using a SB. The matchup was un-winnable otherwise. It didn't matter how you played your hand. And that is what I mean by playing the meta. Not suggesting there isn't skill in that, but for me it's just not fun. I'd much rather be able to react in game to things I'm seeing and be able to outplay my opponent with the cards in my deck. Those are always the best games of Magic and in constructed it's the exception not the rule in my experience. Cube is the opposite, and that's why for me at least it's such a more interesting format. My friend had this Naya zoo deck and it was unstoppable unless you boarded in specific cards against it. That wasn't fun for either of us. He won when I didn't board and after I boarded, I won.
Back on topic of disenchant effects… they are usually not dead cards I agree (if they can target both enchantments and artifacts anyway), but the ones which only do one or the other I think are weakest of the bunch due to how often they whiff. I won't run those cards unless they are attached to a body, and even then I've tried to remove all those cards because they are so inconsistent.
The example of Wrath effects being similar, I don't agree with that. Not all decks rely on enchantments and artifacts. Pretty much every deck relies on creatures though. While you may not always get a two for one with a Wrath, it's never going to be useless. I don't play walkers either, so there is pretty much no deck you can even build that doesn't win the game by turning dudes sideways. Wrath is always good and sometimes it's backbreaking. Disenchant can be a dead card or a lackluster one if there are no juicy targets.
That's one of the reasons. The other is that white is often part of a control shell where having cheap instant speed cards is more important because all the bodies are casualties to your sweepers anyways. If both colors had infinite reclamation sages those would be the only disenchants you'd see, but since white has almost none of those options and green has a ton, the Disenchants are a lot more needed. Plus, the body versions fit green better, with Zenith, Worldly, Survival, Fauna ...it's just better in that color to have them on bodies.
Interesting to see others opinions on this. I personally have never run Disenchant, always opting for Revoke Existence, primarily for themarginalupsides against crazy recursion/death triggers or reanimation targets. Sorcery speed hurts and, like wtwlf123 said, does seriously alter the effectiveness of those cards in certain decks. I love Seals because of the "free" nature of their activation later, but that much on-board information can often outweigh the value.
Furthermore now we have a plethora of more generic sorcery speed removal (Oblivion Ring variants, Anguished Unmaking, Declaration in Stone) that are just better.
While we are on the topic, Nature's Claim seems to have everything going for it (instant, 1 mana) but is rarely seen on lists that do run naturalize variants in their green sections. Is the life gain too large in cube? As mentioned earlier, being able to break their ring turn 1 is great, and it never gets bad throughout the game, except during a race. How much is 4 life in today's 360 cubes?
Early artifact destruction and denial is really important for powered cubes with fast mana. I ran Oxidize and Ingot Chewer over it, however, since the drawback was really unpalatable for aggro decks, making your job 20% harder - but it is a fine card for other archetypes.
https://cubecobra.com/cube/list/3pq
Surprised Acidic Slime is not in your list. I think it's superior to the Stomphowler. Also, I think Viridian Zealot's time in cubes is past. I'd run Naturalize or Deglamer over it.
Cheers,
rant
My Cube
CubeCobra: https://cubecobra.com/cube/overview/5f5d0310ed602310515d4c32
Cube Tutor: http://cubetutor.com/viewcube/1963
My $40 MTGO cube
Draft my cube at Cubetutor!
Acidic Slime is in my list. I guess I didn't mention every card that could conceivably be a Disenchant (another notable card I didn't list in my post was Trygon Predator).
I still like Viridian Zealot but I'm coming around to the mana cost + the activation cost in sum being too high for what you get. He might get handed the mitten when my foil Reclamation Sage arrives. Is Nantuko Vigilante better to keep or could they both be safely cut?
My Eternal Cube on CubeTutor| |My Reject Rare Cube on CubeTutor| |My Peasant Cube on CubeTutor
I used to write for MTGS, including Cranial Insertion and cube articles. Good on you if you can find those after the upgrade.
Cheers,
rant
My Cube
CubeCobra: https://cubecobra.com/cube/overview/5f5d0310ed602310515d4c32
Cube Tutor: http://cubetutor.com/viewcube/1963
I should also add that I am running Seal of Primordium (the colour-shifted Seal of Cleansing) - I brought a GW Enchantress archetype into my cube, and it was a straight-up replacement for Naturalize. Obviously still recurses with Sun Titan and so forth, but it also has the added goodness of triggering card draw with Enchantress effects.
My Stupidly Large Number of Current Decks
PucaTrade with me!
The Multiplayer Power Rankings
Cube: the Gittening (My Multiplayer Cube) - MTGS Cube List | @ CubeTutor
The N00b Cube (Peasant cube for new players) - MTGS Cube List | @ CubeTutor
On spoiled card wishlisting and 'should-have-had'-isms:
My Stupidly Large Number of Current Decks
PucaTrade with me!
The Multiplayer Power Rankings
Cube: the Gittening (My Multiplayer Cube) - MTGS Cube List | @ CubeTutor
The N00b Cube (Peasant cube for new players) - MTGS Cube List | @ CubeTutor
As mentioned, there are a lot of SB heavy choices. While disenchant is almost always useful, there are some games where it's a dead card. And in those games, you are effectively playing with a handicap (1 card disadvantage). And so I see the argument of focusing more on cards that are not useless if their disenchant effect is not required. But often times those cards are huge compromises. Manic Vandal is a card I personally despise. Gray Ogre's have no business being in cube. Worse, this guy can actually be worse than a Gray Ogre if you are the only one with an artifact.
But these effects are absolutely needed. I can't count how many games I have lost (and had no way to win) because I didn't draw a disenchant effect. So while that is certainly a SB effect, in cube some of the things you need to destroy are so broken that you can't afford to keep your disenchants in your SB.
It's a maddening situation because it starts to boil down to playing the meta instead of the game of magic. Best 2 out of 3 and SB's are all bandaids for a fundamental problem in the game of magic - card types with powerful effects with limited ways to interact with them (namely artifacts and enchantments). And there really isn't a great solution unless you want to change some of the fundamental rules of the game.
In that vein, I've wanted to try a variant where you could exile a card in your hand before your draw phase to draw a card. It would be a filtering mechanic essentially (I call it Exile/Draw). While it has tested well, I have yet to be able to convince my regular group to try it. Something about Magic the Gathering that makes people really squeamish about messing with the rules of the game. As someone that plays table top RPG's, board games and such, changing rules (or ignoring ones that don't work) seems perfectly normal to me. But that mindset doesn't carry over to ever genre unfortunately.
A little off topic, but wanted to share my thoughts on this because I spend a lot of time thinking about it.
http://riptidelab.com/forum/threads/modular-cube-5-colors.800/
Retro combo cube thread
http://riptidelab.com/forum/threads/retro-combo-cube.1454/
All Magic is played in respect to its meta. All Magic. Every card evaluation starts with understanding the format.
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's a trial and error process, no magic behind it.
You don't want them rare, you don't want decks overflowing with them.
1-2 per main deck is the sweet spot. Maybe 3 if some are more catch all removal spells like oring
Last Updated 02/07/24
Streaming Standard/Cube on Twitch https://www.twitch.tv/heisenb3rg96
Strategy Twitter https://www.twitter.com/heisenb3rg
The same could be said about removal. Wrath of God is useless against a lot of control decks, Lightning Bolt is pretty crappy against combo-reanimator decks, Bribery subpar against aggro.
If you remove this and allow sideboarding in game one, you will need to allow for better sideboard cards. If you know you can sideboard right away, narrower solutions will be better then more genrally playable cards. Pyroclasm will be better, Exclude might become playable, protection creatures will be stronger and so on.
In my experience it is rare for that Disenchant to be dead in my hands. It wins the game a lot more then that. Sideboarding it out if not needed is a better strategy long run then sideboarding it in when needed.
About house rules you are correct. Magic is not a good game for that. People play with their own decks in constructed(so your house rules might be a disadvantage.People play in multiple groups and players will want cards to be equally good wherever they play. Also don't underestimate that if you start to fiddle with Magic rules there will be a lot of unforseen consequences, especially if you have players that love to break cards and formats.
I feel compelled to repeat everything I hear
I don't disagree with that. For me though, it's one of the big reasons I became disillusioned with the game. I stopped playing for years and only came back when I found this format (cube).
I think cube helps solve this issue for me. By controlling the card pool (and running largely singleton), it really combats the meta component of the game. You still have matchup issues of course, but it's not nearly as dramatic as constructed. Obviously, SB's really still apply if you are playing the game as competitively as possible, but it's a much better situation now.
When I played constructed, there really were games you couldn't win without using a SB. The matchup was un-winnable otherwise. It didn't matter how you played your hand. And that is what I mean by playing the meta. Not suggesting there isn't skill in that, but for me it's just not fun. I'd much rather be able to react in game to things I'm seeing and be able to outplay my opponent with the cards in my deck. Those are always the best games of Magic and in constructed it's the exception not the rule in my experience. Cube is the opposite, and that's why for me at least it's such a more interesting format. My friend had this Naya zoo deck and it was unstoppable unless you boarded in specific cards against it. That wasn't fun for either of us. He won when I didn't board and after I boarded, I won.
Back on topic of disenchant effects… they are usually not dead cards I agree (if they can target both enchantments and artifacts anyway), but the ones which only do one or the other I think are weakest of the bunch due to how often they whiff. I won't run those cards unless they are attached to a body, and even then I've tried to remove all those cards because they are so inconsistent.
The example of Wrath effects being similar, I don't agree with that. Not all decks rely on enchantments and artifacts. Pretty much every deck relies on creatures though. While you may not always get a two for one with a Wrath, it's never going to be useless. I don't play walkers either, so there is pretty much no deck you can even build that doesn't win the game by turning dudes sideways. Wrath is always good and sometimes it's backbreaking. Disenchant can be a dead card or a lackluster one if there are no juicy targets.
http://riptidelab.com/forum/threads/modular-cube-5-colors.800/
Retro combo cube thread
http://riptidelab.com/forum/threads/retro-combo-cube.1454/
Bring to Light Scapeshift RUGB
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!
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!
Hmm I may be making the switch now...
This is still the best place for high-power-level cube chat & debate.
Here's to many more years at MTGS *clink*
Anguished Unmaking is an instant!
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!
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!
inb4 can also be a worse this
This is still the best place for high-power-level cube chat & debate.
Here's to many more years at MTGS *clink*
On spoiled card wishlisting and 'should-have-had'-isms:
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!