MTG Salvation

I don't think the flexibility of Hangerback Walker would be enough to consider cubing with it if you didn't get some sort of value out of it dying but more importantly is the ability to continually crank up the power with your extra mana as the game goes on. The mix of being a Everflowing Chalice Doomed Traveler with the Chronomaton ability tacked on is a perfect storm.

As someone who has long ago locked Epocrasite in his cube I can say that this card is like cube bacon. Nobody needs bacon but you can put it everthing, and it's so good. I have been crying for more colorless creatures that are interesting and this has really hit the sweet spot. It has been in aggro, midrange, and control in decks of all 5 colors and has never been bad. Surprisingly since I love some narrow archetype cards I need my other cards to pull a lot of weight.

At first I thought this card was just going to be a slow but flexible aggro card, nice against removal, and fun in the token deck. But it is so much more. I agree that it is for colorless creatures what chalice is for mana rocks. But guess what I have tons of great mana rocks that do exactly what I want and are cheap. How many colorless creatures does anyone play that are considered staples besides Wurmcoil Engine? How many can be dropped on turn 2?


What do you do when this is dropped on 2? Kill it and give up a removal spell while the opponent gets a flyer? Ignore it and hope to stall it on the ground? Waste the top tie exile removal?

I don't think there is a good answer.

I've a feeling that if it was missing one of the elements (flexibility in X, the tap ability, the death trigger,) I probably would be meh on it and likely wouldn't include it.

Quote from Toad »

I Now rank this 2nd best artifact creature after Wurmcoil Engine, and it will stay for a very long time in my 360. It is solid at all costs. Great Control creature.

Bold words! I disagree that it's second best robot behind Wurmcoil but I do think it is a strong and unique card that will likely be in my cube for a good bit. I would rank Solemn Simulacrum, Phyrexian Revoker, Myr Battlesphere, and Molten-Tail Masticore higher, and I'm probably forgetting a few.

For me, it gets most of its points on sheer flexibility. Hangarback hasn't completely awed me, but it's playable in more decks than literally any other cube creature. It's the perfect filler card for any deck. Aggro can use it as wrath insurance, control wants it as an early stream of blockers, and midrange is happy to have something flexible enough to fill any spot on the curve.

This is why exile removal are all the more important. I'm actually considering Carbonize and Yamabushi's Flame, and already running Pillar of Flame and Anger of the Gods in red...

Quote from TheTennesseeFireman »

Hangarback hasn't completely awed me, but it's playable in more decks than literally any other cube creature. It's the perfect filler card for any deck. Aggro can use it as wrath insurance

I think that's a stretch. Aggro doesn't want this because the base stats are weak, it has no evasion, and it's way too slow and durdly. It's a midrange/control card only.

Quote from Kouri »

Quote from TheTennesseeFireman »

Hangarback hasn't completely awed me, but it's playable in more decks than literally any other cube creature. It's the perfect filler card for any deck. Aggro can use it as wrath insurance

I think that's a stretch. Aggro doesn't want this because the base stats are weak, it has no evasion, and it's way too slow and durdly. It's a midrange/control card only.

All in agro (most cube agro decks are all in) I agree it's not main deckable.

But it's a very solid sideboard card for those decks. It's interesting because it's great in agro mirrors and vs wrath heavy reactive control decks.

I would never play it in red agro, but white/green id sideboard it and black id main deck it if I had the right synergies

It's a decent card for an aggressive midrange deck, but I wouldn't play it in hard aggro unless I was desperate for playables.

Quote from Salmo »

Quote from Hicham »

Interesting card, too durdly for most cubes. Unless you can play it for 0 and get a Thopter token. My rules knowledge is not up to date enough to know if that counts as dying.I am guessing not as otherwise this card is a 1/1 flyer for 0 which is pretty nifty. Does a 0/0 that goes to the graveyard (as a state-based effect?) count as dying?

EDIT: I seem to suck at including images in my posts Sorry, too late to fix this. Off to bed.

What is this? A preview for ants?!


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On the card: seems too durdly. Even in its cheapest mode, you start with too small of a creature for the investment and it takes too long to get to a point where the mana invested is worthwhile. Easy pass.

'Easy pass.' pukingeverywhere.jpg

Like with Ballista, really wrong here too. Ballista is definitely the bette card, but I take Walker so high right now because it fits into like every deck and is often a great T2 play. Even in aggro decks it's great, I've 3-0d twice recently with mono black and it was in at least one of those decks. dschumm's description of 'cube bacon' is pretty apt, as none of those decks needed Hangarback but it slotted in as a two drop and if I top decked it later it was a decent-enough mana sink that maybe a Flesh Carver could sac.

It's important to go back in time and figure out WTF you were thinking lol

Yeah I was super wrong on Ballista... But my love of Braids.dec had me high on Hangarback from the beginning. Typing this makes me want to revisit Trinket Mage thread...