MTG Salvation

These cards are starting to give me flashbacks to Caw-Blade in Standard.

Sword of Feast and Famine



Is there a card you would like to see receive a Judge Foil or other promo in the old frame?

Probably one of the lesser Swords on average, but it has some insane ceilings. Still a great card, and not near the block for me.

There are a ton of cards I wish were available as old-frame foils.

The second worst sword in my opinion, yet significantly better than the last (Sword of War and Peace). This sword has abilities that can do literally nothing, yet on the other hand the ceiling on the untap ability is perhaps the highest of all sword triggers.
I do not like the old frames.

Old frame judge foils are gorgeous.

I've toyed with pulling this sword from my cube just to put it in an EDH deck, and if we get another sweet piece of equipment, I may do that, especially if the cost is anything other than 3.

i run a non protection cube so i cant say much about this card.

I like the old frames better but have been converting my cub to modern frame to give it a more cohesive feel.

I thought it would be really cool to print iconic masters in the old style frame! that would have made it iconic.

Second worst Sword is still one of the best pieces of equipment available. None of the Swords are near the chopping block.

I love the nostalgia of the old frames but the 8th Edition frame is the best in terms of being easy to read everything. I don't care if anything gets printed in old frame judge foils or not. They wouldn't be the versions I run unless that's the only foil available.

Cheers,
rant

I swear I'm not doing this on purpose.

Day of Judgment



Do you have a favorite disaster movie or apocalypse trope?

I'll start the discussion, I suppose. Day of Judgment is a very efficient, but very boring staple. Wizards has moved away from four-mana wraths (without downside, at least) in Standard because they make it difficult for creature decks to succeed because aggressive decks in Standard aren't as fast as they can be in cube. However, for a cube running all of the best one and two-drop creatures in the game, five-mana wraths like Rout or Hallowed Burial may not come down in time.

That being said, for a lower-powered or lower-budget cube that doesn't have access to the fastest aggressive creatures like Goblin Guide, would four-mana wraths make it difficult for aggro decks to beat midrange and control decks consistently? That could lead to the best decks in the cube being slow, grindy control and combo decks that don't have to worry about protecting their life total early. Although, the best aggressive cards are typically less expensive to buy than the best control cards, so I guess this probably isn't a problem?

Those who run multiplayer and/or Commander focused cubes, do you find yourself running a higher density of board wipes in your cube than other cubes because they get more value in multiplayer games, or less because they can end up making games go really long?

Card is good, not much else to say about it, and is basically a staple for most cubes unless you are worried about power level. I think wizards has issues printing 4 mana wraths these days because aggro decks on the draw can't compete very well. On the other hand, in cube, 5 mana wraths on the draw are usually to slow and you are often dead before you can play the card. Unfortunately, there usually isn't to much middle ground. I think they tried with Bontu's Last Reckoning, but not untapping is to painful to make it a staple. Hopefully rivals has some cards though for cube, however, I think there will only be a couple since a large portion of the set will be dedicated to pirate dino tribal etc...

4-mana wraths are pretty critical for control to be able to effectively stabilize against aggro in this format. They're pretty much all staples, IMHO.

I'm not sure about a movie, but my favorite post-apocalyptic story is The Stand.

Quote from Radiant Dragon »

That being said, for a lower-powered or lower-budget cube that doesn't have access to the fastest aggressive creatures like Goblin Guide, would four-mana wraths make it difficult for aggro decks to beat midrange and control decks consistently? That could lead to the best decks in the cube being slow, grindy control and combo decks that don't have to worry about protecting their life total early.

This was my experience when building my budget 1994 cube (revised through fallen empires). Wrath of God was just too efficient and overbearing. In a traditional cube, you can play around sweepers by holding some threats in hand, but for an environment where creatures have a much lower power level, you can't afford not to over-extend, or else you won't be able to put on the necessary pressure before the control deck stabilizes and takes over the game.

DoJ is a staple effect we need in cube. If we ever get to a fast standard like Zendikar (disclaimer:not a standard player - so I may be wrong), we may get another 4 mana variant, but probably weaker or has some drawback such as Bontu's Last reckoning.

As for Art, I like the Zendikar version as it has actual creatures in it.

Both the 4 mana wraths are staples as far as I'm concerned, I cant really see what I would cut either for. Even if we got a 3 mana wrath in white I could see just running it on the of the 4 mana ones.

We play 3-man games a lot so having extra access to wraths is definitely handy, with how efficient cube creatures can be it's pretty important to be able to deal with them without burning 1-for-1 removal on smaller threats or walls of tokens. Multiplayer games tend to go longer and have a lot more complicated board states so being able to clear all that out of the way is great.

Who would have ever thought that this card was a tribal plant when AER was spoiled?

Kari Zev, Skyship Raider



What's the worst layover or flight you've ever had?

Kari Zev is sick. Great aggressive creature that also works as a blocker if you're playing the control part of a match up in a midrange deck or aggro mirror.

On my way back from France to Boston, was in the middle seat between two large gentlemen in the back row so my chair couldn't go back. So I was squeezed between these two gentlemen for 10+ hours and had to sit up the whole time. Being a large gentleman myself, this was a tall order.

I love Kari Zev. She's one of my favorite reg aggro dorks. I especially love when I can combine her with sac outlet to give Ragavan some extra value. Also, I made my own Abu token for Ragavan.

I've only ever flown once (round trip) and it was a direct flight from Knoxville, TN to Dallas, TX. We flew out on a tiny plane and flew back on a giant plane. No layover at all. I may be taking a trip to Memphis in the next couple of months for work and I'm incredibly nervous about it. Not really about the flying, but more about the process of making my way from outside the airport to inside the plane. I have terrible anxiety about things like that.

Kari Zev is in the first tier of red two drops.
I was once flying from Moscow to NYC, and to my side was a non-English speaking Kazakh kid with no notion of personal space. His parents barely spoke English as well, and had 3 more kids to take care of.

Kari Zev is one of the best red 2-drops. Splashable cost, attacks for 3, useful keywords, functional double-evasion, and even some potential for shenanigans with the token.

What if Tarmogoyf had Vigilance?

Sylvan Advocate



Are you happy with how Wizards is pushing creatures these days to be as strong as spells used to be, or do you think they've gone too far? Not enough?

Sylvan Advocate's greatness is, I think, proved by the number of casual players I have in my cube. It's easy to overlook it if you've been keeping up with the game, but for someone who only plays occasionally or hasn't touched new sets in years, their eyes will bug at the Advocate's text box.

The problem with it is that Green's my cube's least popular color - it's been really hard to build an identity for it beyond ramp, and the amount of artifact mana I have makes even that hard as an identity, no matter how much I try to pull back on brown mana. There's not really a deck for Advocate except for fair midrange decks and the less explosive ramp decks (also known as: more midrange). I still love it, but it's a representation of a bigger cube design problem we're grappling with.

For the sake of Modern and Standard, I'm generally happy that creatures are taking the spotlight, but I'd rather see more thoughtful growth in power - cards that play along different lines than the existing super-efficient cards (see: love Torrential Gearhulk, less hot on the Gisela, the Broken Blade keyword spam stuff). Stoked we've gotten some really good spells this year, like Chart a Course and Fatal Push, I hope that continues, but generally, I don't mind the creature love.

Sylvan Advocate's greatness is, I think, proved by the number of casual players I have in my cube. It's easy to overlook it if you've been keeping up with the game, but for someone who only plays occasionally or hasn't touched new sets in years, their eyes will bug at the Advocate's text box.

The problem with it is that Green's my cube's least popular color - it's been really hard to build an identity for it beyond ramp, and the amount of artifact mana I have makes even that hard as an identity, no matter how much I try to pull back on brown mana. There's not really a deck for Advocate except for fair midrange decks and the less explosive ramp decks (also known as: more midrange). I still love it, but it's a representation of a bigger cube design problem we're grappling with.

For the sake of Modern and Standard, I'm generally happy that creatures are taking the spotlight, but I'd rather see more thoughtful growth in power - cards that play along different lines than the existing super-efficient cards (see: love Torrential Gearhulk, less hot on the Gisela, the Broken Blade keyword spam stuff). Stoked we've gotten some really good spells this year, like Chart a Course and Fatal Push, I hope that continues, but generally, I don't mind the creature love.

Sylvan Advocate is a solid creature. Not a staple, but it'll always be a fine critter to resolve.

I preferred Magic when it was a spell-dominant game, but having good creatures is fine too.

Sylvan Advocate is fine. It's better than a lot of the traditional green aggro/strictly midrange stuff, but at the end of the day it's a 2 drop that doesn't ramp and only attacks for 2 until the later game. If your green decks want that, he's great, but a percentage of ours were ramp decks where he would gain utility sometimes but for the most part was just a guy. I don't think it's bad at all, just not for us.

I'm OK with all that, never have a problem with adding new cards to cube!

sylvan advocate has been great for me. there is a smaller elf subtheme in green in my cube as well so it gets a litle extra boost from that.

As a kid i didnt care for spells and always loved opening a new cool creature. I think that still holds true to some extent as I have built a more creature combat focussed cube.

I like creative design on creatures that make tough combat decisions. creatures like kari zev, skyship raider are great. creatures like carnage tyrant are what i dont like about power creep.

To think, this could've been the great black five-drop we've been waiting for.

Noxious Gearhulk



What is your favorite life gain effect in cube?