Haven't quite figured out how exactly to fit the colorless cards in just yet, but I've got a few miscellaneous impressions from a round with the new cards last night:
-Linvala, the Preserver is geniunely nuts in creature matchups. 8 power of flying across bodies, with lifegain to boot doesn't just catch you up, it puts you in the drivers seat against most board states. She's got a bit of Dragonlord Silumgar in her in that she's not always insane, but when she is, she can turn a losing game into a winning one on the spot.
-Oath of Jace was fine. The scry came up a couple of times, and it felt pretty good whenever I got to squeeze a bit of extra value out of it. I do fear that not being able to flash it back is going to come up more often than blinking it, especially now that UW Venser is firmly on the outside looking in. Not sure if this will have a long-term stay.
-Reflector Mage was very, very satisfying. That second clause makes it good in so many situations where regular old Man o' War just won't do. I bounced at least two creatures with ETB effects over the course of the evening that would have been out of the question with the old jellyfish; Mage gained me enough of a tempo boost that I could either duck under the creature or hold up countermagic for when it got cast again. That third toughness was a pretty huge game against aggro decks as well, since it stonewalls their glut of bears and pikers. And this was in a control deck; I can't wait to see what it does in a tempo shell.
-Oath of Nissa is slowly winning over the hearts and minds of my playgroup. In spite of being a fine cantrip as is, I was told that the fixing clause definitely came up over the course of the night. I'm also starting to wonder if maybe green wants this effect even more than blue does, since there's less air and more inconsistency in green decks on the whole.
-Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet was drafted highly, but didn't get drawn much apparently. Still a good sign that he's getting people excited, since most of my playgroup needs a little extra incentive to play black midrange cards that aren't Nekrataal.
Moved back to vancouver, been playing/testing with my regular playgroup an unhealty amount of hours.
Preliminary conclusions-
WASTE MANA ELDRAZI
I don't think this theme is going to last long.
Since the eldrazi has been in, they've mostly hit sideboards. A couple times they saw play in a Mono Color + utility lands deck, but those decks performed poorly.
I haven't seen enough of the eldrazi in action to judge their overall power level, but they've hit a bit too many sideboards, or been a 1 of in decks that I feel like they don't belong (IE reality smasher in an artifact ramp deck). Time will tell if this trend sticks.
Eldrazi Displacer was drafted twice in different blink decks it was PERFECT for, but each of those blink decks had 0-2 colorless producing sources, and couldn't justify the inclusion.
Based on my prelimary impressions, I have a feeling the "colorless" section was 1-2 powerful midrange eldrazi creatures/spells short of being a thing worth supporting. Also convinced for it to work, you need to HEAVILY support it via your non-basic land base. I've learned I didn't have enough ways to support the mana. I'm running a handful of nonbasics that fix colorless + colored mana, but only a few filters/pain.
Kozilek is an exception. Card is as good as it seems, and in mega-ramp decks, it's a high-caliber target. Getting colorless in those decks are not hard with most default cube mana-bases/artifacts. It's won many games, and is a crowd favourite amongst the big creature deck drafters around here.
COLORLESS NONBASIC LANDS
The real payoff of the eldrazi theme is for decks with a lot of strong colorless non-basic lands. The colorless lands can be very strong (mutavault, mishras factory, rishadan port) giving a few extra reasonable threats to add to these decks card pool is nice. Probably couldn't jusfiy many of these lands in a deck without the eldrazi, but also probably wouldn't draft the eldrazi without the payoff of these lands.
I played a green ramp deck with sea gate wreckage. Never got to activate it. The situations where I wanted to felt rare. Perhaps it wasn't the deck for it, but it made me lower on the card. Small sample, testing inconclusive.
Mirror pool was played against me in a UR control deck, that had snapcaster, timewalk, true name nemesis, jace vryn's prodigy and felt very strong. Once it copied a true name nemsis, nuff said. Later it copied a suspended ancestral visions, drawing my opponent 6! cards in a spot where we were trading threat/answer. Effectively made it impossible for me to come back. Obviously time walk was the ideal target. That experience was the highlight of colorless mana support for me.
Tectonic Edge seems like it's an obvious inclusion right now. 3-4 color decks with plenty of manlands have been cropping up, that have felt really powerful. The new man lands are really making their prescence felt in those decks. Having an answer to the man lands, disrupting greedy mana bases and being a colorless mana source for the eldrazi all are something that appeal to me.
OTHER CARDS
Oath of Nissa felt like the real deal. Played it twice, once in a green ramp deck where it was good, but not convinced if the tempo slow-down was worth the selection (over say another threat/land). Another time in a bant blink deck where it was amazing. It was a strong card selection cantrip that had synergy with multiple cards in the deck.
One game I was playing vs a midrange/controlish esper deck, had a really bad start with a mull to 6, kept a loose hand (4 lands, oath of nissa, into the roil) I whiffed on the oath of nissa that was hoping to find a threat (3 lands that I was very happy to bottom 2 of them).
By turn 4, I still hadn't drawn a threat. Into the roil + kicker on my oath of nissa, casting it again. Generated card advantage, managed to draw a threat off the into the roil, and dig for another good threat with the oath of nissa. The smidgen of card advantage + card selection allowed me to compete in the mid game with my esper opponent who was flooding a bit. I ended up narrowly winning the game.
Im reasonably confident it will survive the testing phase, and that this card is legit.
Slyvan Advocate, while not seeing it much in action myself, I watched a friend, attack with it as a 4/5 + 2 4/4 manlands into my opponent. I'm not sure how good it will end up being without manlands, but WITH manlands, I'm digging the card. Need more testing results to be sure.
Reflector Mage, drafted it twice, was played against me once. It was good. Felt like it belonged in the cube of my power level. Nothing spectacular, but served it's role well. The "can't play again next turn" clause was relevant in many ways for getting in damage needed to win games, I didn't mind playing it on creatures with ETB effects as a way to get in damage, not the case with man-o-war. The cannot play creature next turn clause was particular devastating with a critical amount of blink/clone. Man-o-war has been playing out about as good as I remembered (borderline cut/playable at 460 size), but reflector mage will likely stick around... Not sure for how long.
SUMMARY
New evaluations relative to my initial predictions of cards that I got to see in action for multiple games
Mirror Pool +++
Oath of Nissa ++
Nissa, Voice of Zendikar ++ (better than what I predicted, but I evaluated her quite low)
Reflector Mage + (a bit higher than what I predicted, but a bit lower than some of the more optimistic forum members)
Kozilek, the great distortion ==
Seagate wreckage - (Less good in ramp decks than I initially thought)
Eldrazi Package - (expectations were not high to begin with)
Your testing reflects what I predict would happen if I decided to test colorless required cards. The one exception is Mirror Pool, I love the concept of the card but the whole coming into play tapped, only tapping for colorless, and colorless requirement for the activations really turned me off to the card. Hopefully it continues to impress!
Eldrazi Displacer was drafted twice in different blink decks it was PERFECT for, but each of those blink decks had 0-2 colorless producing sources, and couldn't justify the inclusion.
Do you think that if you were playing a bigger list where including more sources of C is easier, that a lot of the eldrazi cards would be easier to play and therefore better? In our testing so far, we've been capable of hitting our sources of C pretty reliably, but that has had a lot to do with painlands, fringe mana rocks and some of the lesser green support cards that can snag Wastes. I felt that small cubes (450 or smaller) would have too hard a time getting the necessary sources of colorless mana to play most of the C cost cards, and that the package as a whole would be relegated to bigger lists. Is that consistent with your playtesting so far?
LucidVision, awesome post thanks for taking the time to type that up. I would echo wtwlf123's question. I'm at 540 unpowered and plan on including the full suite of painlands and all five of the Mirrodin Talisman when I implement my <> update, so I hope to have better results.
Eldrazi Displacer was drafted twice in different blink decks it was PERFECT for, but each of those blink decks had 0-2 colorless producing sources, and couldn't justify the inclusion.
Do you think that if you were playing a bigger list where including more sources of C is easier, that a lot of the eldrazi cards would be easier to play and therefore better? In our testing so far, we've been capable of hitting our sources of C pretty reliably, but that has had a lot to do with painlands, fringe mana rocks and some of the lesser green support cards that can snag Wastes. I felt that small cubes (450 or smaller) would have too hard a time getting the necessary sources of colorless mana to play most of the C cost cards, and that the package as a whole would be relegated to bigger lists. Is that consistent with your playtesting so far?
Yes, definitely relegated to bigger lists...
Should have emphasized that I felt the package wasn't working in my cube, and not that it wouldn't work in anyones cube.
I went up to 485 for the test, and even at that size, it's constrained my design space (can't test other fringe archetypes) and I didn't provide enough fixing for it , despite adding a considerable amount of fixing.
I am now certain for it to work in anybody's cube they have to go heavier on the fixing than I was hoping. I'm guessing at least a full cycle of pain/filters as well as many non-basic lands that fix your mana AND colorless.
Is a few payoff cards worth that big of a shift? I'm guessing no. If the cards were borderline broken, or there were a couple more that helped support it's own archetype, my opinion would change.
Looking forward to hearing your experiences with the eldrazi after a couple months of testing.
Your testing reflects what I predict would happen if I decided to test colorless required cards. The one exception is Mirror Pool, I love the concept of the card but the whole coming into play tapped, only tapping for colorless, and colorless requirement for the activations really turned me off to the card. Hopefully it continues to impress!
I was on the receiving end of it's power, and it felt gross... But I didn't get to see how much all those restrictions you mentioned negatively impacted his curve/color requirements.
More testing needed, but man... Not hard to see it's upside.
Yeah, Mirror Pool + Primetime alone makes me want to play the card. Right now my cube update this time around is going to be bigger than I thought because I'm re-adding the swords and testing out the Sneak and Show / Eureka package, so I really don't want to dice more things up at once by adding the colorless package.
Im always glad I have a large cube. I can include a lot more archetypes that smaller cubes cannot support. Colorless seems almost impossible to support on a large scale in anything less than 540.
I think it has a lot to do with the size of your drafting group. The colorless section is small enough, and there are few enough fixing cards, that I wouldn't include it unless you get all/most of your cube drafted at a time. Some people make 540 to a varied experience more than having 12 friends. In that case colorless is not worth it.
On the other hand Glimpse drafting (as Wtwlf and others have devised) has been a great way to get smaller archetypes together.
Honestly couldn't tell the difference when I moved from 360~375 cards to 405~420 power-wise. I've been looking at cards I would include if I go 450 and yeah, I don't see any of them as filler. We've been drafting with a smaller group of 3-4 people lately though so there's no big push to go bigger yet.
We were Glimpse drafting for a while with 3 guys and 405 cards but the decks turned out to be *gasp* too strong (personally I didn't mind).
If anyone is testing Linvala please share your experiences. I'd like to know how good she is when only one of her abilities trigger. I can see the life gain triggering reasonably often but have my doubts about the 3/3 Angel.
Im always glad I have a large cube. I can include a lot more archetypes that smaller cubes cannot support. Colorless seems almost impossible to support on a large scale in anything less than 540.
Yeah, but the bigger a cube is the more likely it is that important pieces of various archetypes aren't in the draft.
Honestly couldn't tell the difference when I moved from 360~375 cards to 405~420 power-wise. I've been looking at cards I would include if I go 450 and yeah, I don't see any of them as filler. We've been drafting with a smaller group of 3-4 people lately though so there's no big push to go bigger yet.
We were Glimpse drafting for a while with 3 guys and 405 cards but the decks turned out to be *gasp* too strong (personally I didn't mind).
If anyone is testing Linvala please share your experiences. I'd like to know how good she is when only one of her abilities trigger. I can see the life gain triggering reasonably often but have my doubts about the 3/3 Angel.
I don't personally run the card in my own cube, but a friend of mine do have it at the moment in a big unpowered cube (power nine less) with no size restriction. Basicly, it's a 720 and more cube in which he keeps adding new cards at every set release.
He said that the card is fine but that it's mostly a lifegainer angel, period. FWIW, Control is pretty well support in its cube and his playgroup knows how to play smartly against that archetype. So in most cases, the token ability never happens to trigger. Also, I think it's important to notice that aggro is not really prevalant in his cube and the format is closer to what some call a Midrange slugfest. Some aggro cards are still present though. But ultimatly, he said that he's going to cut the card. To say the least, my friend rarely end up cutting stuff and prefer to continually adding new cards, so it is very significative for me. The card seems bad overall. Maybe it could be different in a full powered environment with enough aggro support, but I doubt it is that much.
My friend also said that his playgroup do prefer Resolute Archangel a lot for that role. That card isn't a classic staple for powered cube, but like I said, he does run a particular powerless cube...
Once you go above 450 in cube size, it's the cheaty/broken archetypes that take the biggest hit.
Tolarian academy, tinker, sneak attack, channel.. These cards are build around cards, have no redundant equivalent at larger cube sizes. cards like quicksilver amulet or pattern of rebirth are not on the same stratosphere of power of sneak
Attack.
The difference in power between animate dead and say makeshift mannequin is muchhh bigger than the difference between brimaz and like a silverblade paladin or (insert decent but not quite there white 3 drop).
Certain exceptions for fair decks apply (ie jitte) but those cards aren't anywhere as crucial to fair decks, the way a sneak attack type card is to an unfair deck
It depends a lot on the formats you play too. A 3-man Glimpse Draft with my 540 cube uses about the same percentage of cards as a 6-man event does with a 360. And arguably produces stronger and more streamlined decks than even a full 8-man does with a 360 because of all the full-pack picks you get. So it's not just about size, it's also about context.
Honestly couldn't tell the difference when I moved from 360~375 cards to 405~420 power-wise. I've been looking at cards I would include if I go 450 and yeah, I don't see any of them as filler. We've been drafting with a smaller group of 3-4 people lately though so there's no big push to go bigger yet.
We were Glimpse drafting for a while with 3 guys and 405 cards but the decks turned out to be *gasp* too strong (personally I didn't mind).
If anyone is testing Linvala please share your experiences. I'd like to know how good she is when only one of her abilities trigger. I can see the life gain triggering reasonably often but have my doubts about the 3/3 Angel.
I don't personally run the card in my own cube, but a friend of mine do have it at the moment in a big unpowered cube (power nine less) with no size restriction. Basicly, it's a 720 and more cube in which he keeps adding new cards at every set release.
He said that the card is fine but that it's mostly a lifegainer angel, period. FWIW, Control is pretty well support in its cube and his playgroup knows how to play smartly against that archetype. So in most cases, the token ability never happens to trigger. Also, I think it's important to notice that aggro is not really prevalant in his cube and the format is closer to what some call a Midrange slugfest. Some aggro cards are still present though. But ultimatly, he said that he's going to cut the card. To say the least, my friend rarely end up cutting stuff and prefer to continually adding new cards, so it is very significative for me. The card seems bad overall. Maybe it could be different in a full powered environment with enough aggro support, but I doubt it is that much.
My friend also said that his playgroup do prefer Resolute Archangel a lot for that role. That card isn't a classic staple for powered cube, but like I said, he does run a particular powerless cube...
As a reminder to anyone who didn't go to the m15 prerelease resolute archangel made almost every single game go to time at my lgs because she was a prerelease pack rare for white, i feel like that oversight contributed to prerelease packs getting rid of the set promo. ( It should still probably increase gametime by a fair margin for cube)
It depends a lot on the formats you play too. A 3-man Glimpse Draft with my 540 cube uses about the same percentage of cards as a 6-man event does with a 360. And arguably produces stronger and more streamlined decks than even a full 8-man does with a 360 because of all the full-pack picks you get. So it's not just about size, it's also about context.
I think it 100% makes better decks. It's nearly impossible to end up with a bad deck when you're getting 9 first picks.
Agree with wtwlf123 and Salmo. I pretty much exclusively glimpse 1v1 in my 540 powered cube and can usually bring together the combo-y archetypes if I want to. They key is having enough support.
I have a question for all of you, before spending my money in some colorless cards and the free wastes. (Yes, I should test with proxies but I won't have time for testing till summer )
What do you think? Is it a good idea to add such small number of cards? Wouldn't be better to just pass? I like the idea of the few new cards I want to add but I am a little bit loss here... (I have been reading all your posts and while being still on the fence it seems to me that the best idea would be to pass, but I love the new cards...)
For right now, I'm only adding cards that still pull their weight even you can't hit the colorless requirement. So for me, that means Bearer of Silence, Dimensional Infiltrator, and Mirrorpool (pretty bad if you can't activate it, but the upside is high enough to offset that, IMO). I'm still going to try to get my hands on the rest though. I think one day after another colorless set there will be enough support to do a colorless subtheme justice, just not quite yet.
I have a question for all of you, before spending my money in some colorless cards and the free wastes. (Yes, I should test with proxies but I won't have time for testing till summer )
What do you think? Is it a good idea to add such small number of cards? Wouldn't be better to just pass? I like the idea of the few new cards I want to add but I am a little bit loss here... (I have been reading all your posts and while being still on the fence it seems to me that the best idea would be to pass, but I love the new cards...)
For right now, I'm only adding cards that still pull their weight even you can't hit the colorless requirement. So for me, that means Bearer of Silence, Dimensional Infiltrator, and Mirrorpool (pretty bad if you can't activate it, but the upside is high enough to offset that, IMO). I'm still going to try to get my hands on the rest though. I think one day after another colorless set there will be enough support to do a colorless subtheme justice, just not quite yet.
Id recommend adding Kozilek, the Great Distortion He was cast more than once this week in my cube. He had Oblivion Sower into Kozilek a couple of games. Kozilek is the real deal.
My issue with Kozilek, the Great Distortion is that he seems to lose too much of his value if you can't get the cast trigger. The decks I want a big scary eldrazi in are sneak/show, ramp, and now reanimator with the removal of the eldrazi graveyard reshuffle effect. While Ulamog, the Ceaseless Hunger is still ridiculous without his cast effect, I'm not convinced Kozilek is. He's basically just a big dumb creature in the cheaty decks, which just leaves ramp as the only deck that really wants him. And ramp already has plenty of other targets that play nicer with other strategies.
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-Linvala, the Preserver is geniunely nuts in creature matchups. 8 power of flying across bodies, with lifegain to boot doesn't just catch you up, it puts you in the drivers seat against most board states. She's got a bit of Dragonlord Silumgar in her in that she's not always insane, but when she is, she can turn a losing game into a winning one on the spot.
-Oath of Jace was fine. The scry came up a couple of times, and it felt pretty good whenever I got to squeeze a bit of extra value out of it. I do fear that not being able to flash it back is going to come up more often than blinking it, especially now that UW Venser is firmly on the outside looking in. Not sure if this will have a long-term stay.
-Reflector Mage was very, very satisfying. That second clause makes it good in so many situations where regular old Man o' War just won't do. I bounced at least two creatures with ETB effects over the course of the evening that would have been out of the question with the old jellyfish; Mage gained me enough of a tempo boost that I could either duck under the creature or hold up countermagic for when it got cast again. That third toughness was a pretty huge game against aggro decks as well, since it stonewalls their glut of bears and pikers. And this was in a control deck; I can't wait to see what it does in a tempo shell.
-Oath of Nissa is slowly winning over the hearts and minds of my playgroup. In spite of being a fine cantrip as is, I was told that the fixing clause definitely came up over the course of the night. I'm also starting to wonder if maybe green wants this effect even more than blue does, since there's less air and more inconsistency in green decks on the whole.
-Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet was drafted highly, but didn't get drawn much apparently. Still a good sign that he's getting people excited, since most of my playgroup needs a little extra incentive to play black midrange cards that aren't Nekrataal.
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Preliminary conclusions-
WASTE MANA ELDRAZI
I don't think this theme is going to last long.
Since the eldrazi has been in, they've mostly hit sideboards. A couple times they saw play in a Mono Color + utility lands deck, but those decks performed poorly.
I haven't seen enough of the eldrazi in action to judge their overall power level, but they've hit a bit too many sideboards, or been a 1 of in decks that I feel like they don't belong (IE reality smasher in an artifact ramp deck). Time will tell if this trend sticks.
Eldrazi Displacer was drafted twice in different blink decks it was PERFECT for, but each of those blink decks had 0-2 colorless producing sources, and couldn't justify the inclusion.
Based on my prelimary impressions, I have a feeling the "colorless" section was 1-2 powerful midrange eldrazi creatures/spells short of being a thing worth supporting. Also convinced for it to work, you need to HEAVILY support it via your non-basic land base. I've learned I didn't have enough ways to support the mana. I'm running a handful of nonbasics that fix colorless + colored mana, but only a few filters/pain.
Kozilek is an exception. Card is as good as it seems, and in mega-ramp decks, it's a high-caliber target. Getting colorless in those decks are not hard with most default cube mana-bases/artifacts. It's won many games, and is a crowd favourite amongst the big creature deck drafters around here.
COLORLESS NONBASIC LANDS
The real payoff of the eldrazi theme is for decks with a lot of strong colorless non-basic lands. The colorless lands can be very strong (mutavault, mishras factory, rishadan port) giving a few extra reasonable threats to add to these decks card pool is nice. Probably couldn't jusfiy many of these lands in a deck without the eldrazi, but also probably wouldn't draft the eldrazi without the payoff of these lands.
I played a green ramp deck with sea gate wreckage. Never got to activate it. The situations where I wanted to felt rare. Perhaps it wasn't the deck for it, but it made me lower on the card. Small sample, testing inconclusive.
Mirror pool was played against me in a UR control deck, that had snapcaster, timewalk, true name nemesis, jace vryn's prodigy and felt very strong. Once it copied a true name nemsis, nuff said. Later it copied a suspended ancestral visions, drawing my opponent 6! cards in a spot where we were trading threat/answer. Effectively made it impossible for me to come back. Obviously time walk was the ideal target. That experience was the highlight of colorless mana support for me.
Tectonic Edge seems like it's an obvious inclusion right now. 3-4 color decks with plenty of manlands have been cropping up, that have felt really powerful. The new man lands are really making their prescence felt in those decks. Having an answer to the man lands, disrupting greedy mana bases and being a colorless mana source for the eldrazi all are something that appeal to me.
OTHER CARDS
Oath of Nissa felt like the real deal. Played it twice, once in a green ramp deck where it was good, but not convinced if the tempo slow-down was worth the selection (over say another threat/land). Another time in a bant blink deck where it was amazing. It was a strong card selection cantrip that had synergy with multiple cards in the deck.
One game I was playing vs a midrange/controlish esper deck, had a really bad start with a mull to 6, kept a loose hand (4 lands, oath of nissa, into the roil) I whiffed on the oath of nissa that was hoping to find a threat (3 lands that I was very happy to bottom 2 of them).
By turn 4, I still hadn't drawn a threat. Into the roil + kicker on my oath of nissa, casting it again. Generated card advantage, managed to draw a threat off the into the roil, and dig for another good threat with the oath of nissa. The smidgen of card advantage + card selection allowed me to compete in the mid game with my esper opponent who was flooding a bit. I ended up narrowly winning the game.
Im reasonably confident it will survive the testing phase, and that this card is legit.
Slyvan Advocate, while not seeing it much in action myself, I watched a friend, attack with it as a 4/5 + 2 4/4 manlands into my opponent. I'm not sure how good it will end up being without manlands, but WITH manlands, I'm digging the card. Need more testing results to be sure.
Reflector Mage, drafted it twice, was played against me once. It was good. Felt like it belonged in the cube of my power level. Nothing spectacular, but served it's role well. The "can't play again next turn" clause was relevant in many ways for getting in damage needed to win games, I didn't mind playing it on creatures with ETB effects as a way to get in damage, not the case with man-o-war. The cannot play creature next turn clause was particular devastating with a critical amount of blink/clone. Man-o-war has been playing out about as good as I remembered (borderline cut/playable at 460 size), but reflector mage will likely stick around... Not sure for how long.
SUMMARY
New evaluations relative to my initial predictions of cards that I got to see in action for multiple games
Mirror Pool +++
Oath of Nissa ++
Nissa, Voice of Zendikar ++ (better than what I predicted, but I evaluated her quite low)
Reflector Mage + (a bit higher than what I predicted, but a bit lower than some of the more optimistic forum members)
Kozilek, the great distortion ==
Seagate wreckage - (Less good in ramp decks than I initially thought)
Eldrazi Package - (expectations were not high to begin with)
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Do you think that if you were playing a bigger list where including more sources of C is easier, that a lot of the eldrazi cards would be easier to play and therefore better? In our testing so far, we've been capable of hitting our sources of C pretty reliably, but that has had a lot to do with painlands, fringe mana rocks and some of the lesser green support cards that can snag Wastes. I felt that small cubes (450 or smaller) would have too hard a time getting the necessary sources of colorless mana to play most of the C cost cards, and that the package as a whole would be relegated to bigger lists. Is that consistent with your playtesting so far?
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Yes, definitely relegated to bigger lists...
Should have emphasized that I felt the package wasn't working in my cube, and not that it wouldn't work in anyones cube.
I went up to 485 for the test, and even at that size, it's constrained my design space (can't test other fringe archetypes) and I didn't provide enough fixing for it , despite adding a considerable amount of fixing.
I am now certain for it to work in anybody's cube they have to go heavier on the fixing than I was hoping. I'm guessing at least a full cycle of pain/filters as well as many non-basic lands that fix your mana AND colorless.
Is a few payoff cards worth that big of a shift? I'm guessing no. If the cards were borderline broken, or there were a couple more that helped support it's own archetype, my opinion would change.
Looking forward to hearing your experiences with the eldrazi after a couple months of testing.
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I was on the receiving end of it's power, and it felt gross... But I didn't get to see how much all those restrictions you mentioned negatively impacted his curve/color requirements.
More testing needed, but man... Not hard to see it's upside.
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Agree, but we are definitely at the point where even a 540 unpowered cube has very few filler cards, if any.
On the other hand Glimpse drafting (as Wtwlf and others have devised) has been a great way to get smaller archetypes together.
We were Glimpse drafting for a while with 3 guys and 405 cards but the decks turned out to be *gasp* too strong (personally I didn't mind).
If anyone is testing Linvala please share your experiences. I'd like to know how good she is when only one of her abilities trigger. I can see the life gain triggering reasonably often but have my doubts about the 3/3 Angel.
Yeah, but the bigger a cube is the more likely it is that important pieces of various archetypes aren't in the draft.
375 unpowered cube - https://cubecobra.com/cube/list/601ac624832cdf1039947588
I don't personally run the card in my own cube, but a friend of mine do have it at the moment in a big unpowered cube (power nine less) with no size restriction. Basicly, it's a 720 and more cube in which he keeps adding new cards at every set release.
He said that the card is fine but that it's mostly a lifegainer angel, period. FWIW, Control is pretty well support in its cube and his playgroup knows how to play smartly against that archetype. So in most cases, the token ability never happens to trigger. Also, I think it's important to notice that aggro is not really prevalant in his cube and the format is closer to what some call a Midrange slugfest. Some aggro cards are still present though. But ultimatly, he said that he's going to cut the card. To say the least, my friend rarely end up cutting stuff and prefer to continually adding new cards, so it is very significative for me. The card seems bad overall. Maybe it could be different in a full powered environment with enough aggro support, but I doubt it is that much.
My friend also said that his playgroup do prefer Resolute Archangel a lot for that role. That card isn't a classic staple for powered cube, but like I said, he does run a particular powerless cube...
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Tolarian academy, tinker, sneak attack, channel.. These cards are build around cards, have no redundant equivalent at larger cube sizes. cards like quicksilver amulet or pattern of rebirth are not on the same stratosphere of power of sneak
Attack.
The difference in power between animate dead and say makeshift mannequin is muchhh bigger than the difference between brimaz and like a silverblade paladin or (insert decent but not quite there white 3 drop).
Certain exceptions for fair decks apply (ie jitte) but those cards aren't anywhere as crucial to fair decks, the way a sneak attack type card is to an unfair deck
Last Updated 02/07/24
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As a reminder to anyone who didn't go to the m15 prerelease resolute archangel made almost every single game go to time at my lgs because she was a prerelease pack rare for white, i feel like that oversight contributed to prerelease packs getting rid of the set promo. ( It should still probably increase gametime by a fair margin for cube)
thats my cube
I think it 100% makes better decks. It's nearly impossible to end up with a bad deck when you're getting 9 first picks.
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For right now, I'm only adding cards that still pull their weight even you can't hit the colorless requirement. So for me, that means Bearer of Silence, Dimensional Infiltrator, and Mirrorpool (pretty bad if you can't activate it, but the upside is high enough to offset that, IMO). I'm still going to try to get my hands on the rest though. I think one day after another colorless set there will be enough support to do a colorless subtheme justice, just not quite yet.
Id recommend adding Kozilek, the Great Distortion He was cast more than once this week in my cube. He had Oblivion Sower into Kozilek a couple of games. Kozilek is the real deal.
https://cubecobra.com/cube/list/3pq
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