MTG Salvation

Quote from Sliver Lord »

It doesn't work in sealed, but it would work if you decided to do a draft with 5 9-card boosters per person. So if you do a "draft" with 90 1-card boosters per person...

Ha!

Yeah, I'm not sure where I fall on that point. The card is busted good, but is there a reason they printed "draft" on the card rather than "card pool"? Is the card weaker or stronger in draft than it is in sealed? If a tree falls in the woods . . .

Quote from wtwlf123 »

Quote from Theogony_IX »

In what cube format could you not include this card? Would you not allow it to be played in sealed?

Correct. Doesn't work in sealed deck.

I refuse to errata because it adds complexity, so this is also how I've been handling the draft altering constructs like Lore Seeker. Nothing that says "draft" is relevant in a Sealed deck matchup, so it's a vanilla creature with no special abilities. Palliano, the High City really sucks to have in your sealed pool, but dem's da breaks!

Quote from Theogony_IX »

Ha!

Yeah, I'm not sure where I fall on that point. The card is busted good, but is there a reason they printed "draft" on the card rather than "card pool"? Is the card weaker or stronger in draft than it is in sealed? If a tree falls in the woods . . .

Conspiracy as a set was designed and meant to be a draft only format.

I'm telling you, Wizard's printed this card specifically with cube in mind. And there's probably an employee or two watching this thread to see what y'all are going to do with it.

In fact, the person working there that came up with this card probably did so because he/she wanted it for their own cube. How many times have you gone to gatherer and searched for a creature that does X when it ETB. And then been disappointed that no such creature exists (or the one that does sucks)? You no longer have to do that because this guy does pretty much anything you want when it ETB. Just draft the card and make it so.

Quote from Zapgaze »

Quote from Theogony_IX »

Ha!

Yeah, I'm not sure where I fall on that point. The card is busted good, but is there a reason they printed "draft" on the card rather than "card pool"? Is the card weaker or stronger in draft than it is in sealed? If a tree falls in the woods . . .

Conspiracy as a set was designed and meant to be a draft only format.

If that is the only reason, then I can see little reason not to allow it in sealed deck. It doesn't work functionally different in either format the way Paliano, the High City does. Why bother with a super strict interpretation if that interpretation is more coincidental than purposeful?

I think the wording was intentional, otherwise it could've been worded differently.

You can call it a "strict" interpretation if you want, but it's simply playing the card as it's worded. It was designed to specifically work with "drafted" cards, and Sealed Pools contain no "drafted cards".

The card would probably be even more broken in Sealed, since you'll have the remainder of a 90 card pool to choose from.

The WOTC stance on it as already been confirmed:

Q: "Do cards obtained as part of a Sealed Pool count as cards "drafted" for the purposes of Arcane Savant?" -Me
A: "No. There are no "drafted" cards in Sealed Deck." -Matt Tabak

Ah, very cool, thanks for clearing that up. Kind of a bummer though. We do lots of sealed in our cube too. It sounds intentional though if they have an answer ready to go.

They have to know how ridiculous this card is and want to limit where you can play it.

Oh goodie. Busted instant/sorcery support. It'll fit right in and support and under-loved archetype. (Despite how busted Jeleva and Narset are with the massive splashy spells a available.)

A lot of these Conspiracy cards kinda come off as unset stuff to me, not the stuff I am looking for in my Cube. Cool card and powerful but I am going to steer clear of this one.

Oh, right, chiming in: It's worded that way for a reason, and that reason so it's not absurd in constructed formats. If it was worded to use cards outside the game it's basically be spending a sideboard slot to break the game. It's nothing against sealed or other limited formats, and my opinion is that it should be seen as perfectly fine in sealed, it's just that the wording that excludes constructed technically also forces it to exclude sealed.

They could've used the term "limited pool" if they wanted it to extend beyond basic drafts, but they didn't. It's much cleaner this way, and the disfunction in sealed is just an unfortunate byproduct of that cleaner wording.

Quote from wtwlf123 »

They could've used the term "limited pool" if they wanted it to extend beyond basic drafts, but they didn't. It's much cleaner this way, and the disfunction in sealed is just an unfortunate byproduct of that cleaner wording.

Which is essentially what I'm trying to communicate; it isn't excluded from sealed for a very deliberate reason. It's excluded mainly as a biproduct, since conspiracy cards in sealed is very much an afterthought. (As they know you can't do sealed with the product anyway, since other cards outright don't work)

That's reason enough for me to allow it. Then again, I've never done sealed with my cube.

EDIT: Just realized with how it's worded it lets you play off-color spells in commander cube since the card is never in your deck. Neat!

I personally have zero qualms running this in my normal cube and playing sealed with it. To each his/her own.

We play a lot of sealed deck, which is why Savant will wind up in my Conspiracy Module.

Makes sense. We rarely play sealed, even in 1v1. The closest we get is poker draft.

I have never drafted sealed with a cube in my life.

Oh man, that's a bummer. Sealed Deck is a blast in this format.

It's nice to do when you've only got 4 people, as is common in my playgroups. Draft is still the preferred, but it's fun to see all the pieces fit together in a different way than getting the same archetypes handed to you on a silver platter.

Sealed churns out cool decks that often don't show up organically during a regular draft. I like to mix up the cube formats to get a lot of different deckbuilding circumstances. Sealed is often far more challenging too, which our players enjoy testing themselves with.

Even of off-color utility spell is good though. Blue wants access to a lot of good non-blue spells; something like a Council's Judgment or Hero's Downfall might very well be exactly what the deck needs/wants.

Agree. Lets keep in mind here that Flametongue Kavu is an insane cube card and the ETB effect is a 1-2 mana common removal spell that isn't cube playable on it's own. Stapling top tier removal to a 5 drop 3/3 is still really solid value.

Yeah, lightning bolt on this guy seems pretty legit.

My question is why would you ever stick an on color effect on this? It should really only be a nonblue spell. Brainstorm ponder should never be on this card, timewalk sure, but that's the only one I can think of.