MTG Salvation

Haven't seen any thread on this card in here... What do you guys think of it?



It has been pretty good for us since we added it to the cube recently. Honestly, it went under our radar during the Commander 2016 spoiler season, but man, it seems by far to be the best card in the set behind Ash Barrens. It's a so welcome addition to the red section! Really interesting design and surprisingly not that hard to put up in a Oath of Druids/Sneak Attack shell. We'd say that the instant speed clause is also a pretty great part of it. In addition, you can either get two creatures for yourself or either get rid of the most problematic thing your opponent has on the battlefield while getting your owen fatty out.

I can't say I've tried this card, but it looks like there's a problem with your hot linked photo of Divergent Transformations. Here's a photo that will show up:

Not really that interested for the reasons Steve man gives, plus it's a 6 mana card.

Quote from steve_man »

Seems like a dead card in Oath / Sneak Attack since you need two creatures [...] which you should be in a winning position at that point anyways.

Humm

I sincerly think that part of statement is untrue. I will just argue with this recent decklist of us that went pretty good in a recent draft we had in which Divergent Transformations wasn't a win-more card at all :


PS : About the picture, Thanks steve_man. Yeah I guess Photobucket.com is going nuts on 3rd party hosting... Man, they want us to pay 400$ boxes, are they crazy? Any one has a solution against it? I know some folks do use that same uploading website. Have you recently had the same issue?

To be honest, it looks really bad in that deck. But it seems like it would be bad in most decks, so I'm not sure which it is.

Quote from wtwlf123 »

To be honest, it looks really bad in that deck. But it seems like it would be bad in most decks, so I'm not sure which it is.

Can you at least argue and explain why it looks that bad in that specific decklist?

Seriously, it was near bonker-level this past weekend. We've seen it exile a opposing Blightsteel Colussus, replacing it with a Looter il-Kor, while trading a Wolf Token against a Worldspin Wurm . We've also seen it exile a Mutavault and a Elemental token for the Kiki win. All that at instant speed. Tell us how that's not at least decent?

It costs 6 mana, and requires a very specific set of circumstances to even be okay. And Why are you running token engines in your Oath deck anyways? Like, shells that play Oath of Druids don't (or at least shouldn't) be playing the cheap creatures/token engines necessary to make Divergent Transformations playable for you. I have no idea what deck would actually want this card.

yeah it seems kinda forced in there, replace the token generators and divergent for some card draw and this deck seems a lot better. I'd rather just go more all-in on the cheaper/better versions of what you're trying to do instead of needing tokens in play for it to be good.

Quote from wtwlf123 »

Why are you running token engines in your Oath deck anyways?

Maybe because you don't always have Oath of Druids onto play?

Anyways, I think people should give a shot before judging this card. It's pretty good in fact.

The issue there though is that, instead of going all-in on the general plan, you have enablers for one the most expensive part of the plan that have to live by the time you get to 6 mana. So compared to the rest of the deck--which is a streamlined oath/sneak/show/nahiri deck--you have these awkward cards that have minimal synergy outside of the worst tool in your deck for that plan, and it's the worst due to both the cost and the requirements. In a deck full of card draw/selection, I should be able to put together the combo pieces for oath/sneak/show pretty easily, but instead there were draft picks and deck slots dedicated to Garruk Relentless, Arlinn Kord (more excusable as a pseudo fires, but even then it's a stretch), Temp with Vengeance (also more excusable as a potential 'fireball', but still underpowered there since you will face a lot of boards that don't care about a bunch of tokens from the otherwise non-token deck), and Divergent Transformations.

So, because you're enabling the latter with the token makers and I guess giving yourself some marginal amount of play vs other decks that care about the few token makers, you weaken the overall goal of the deck that wants to land oath/sneak/show/nahiri with cards that don't directly play into that plan. A deck that ensures it can find one of those 4 is much-much-much better than one that does an OK job of doing that and a fairly poor job of ensuring the worse backup plan.

I don't really want to give this card a shot because it looks like the opposite of what I want my oath and cheat decks doing, and that deck list isn't a great argument for its inclusion because it seems awkward as **** there.

Just because you don't always have Oath of Druids in play doesn't mean that I want to play a strategy that is entirely contradictory to it in the same deck. It's like playing a Wrath of God in my hard aggro deck as a "backup plan" instead of just making my main strategy better. I would never, ever, put Tempt with Vengeance and Oath of Druids into the same final 40.

If I was playing a channel deck that also played Oath and wanted/needed a fireball variant and had lots of ways to put the combo together then it would be fine, but it would easily be the last one I would choose. I could see a world where they end up together, but it's not a place I would want to be consistently. Too many if's and and's for that scenarios, but because magic is a weird game there is a scenario where it's valid.

It's sad because you're going to miss a pretty good peice of cube. A really unique non agressive red card. I guess we'll have to agree to disagree on that. Maybe other members have different opinions and could share it moving foward. For our part, I guess we're done here. I found the never, ever thing went a bit far in the judging paradigm.

Quote from Zetsu_Sensei »

It's sad

It's not. I'm glad you're enjoying it, but it's not for us

I'm not judging, I'm explaining my deckbuilding process. I don't put mass token generators into my Oath decks. Therefore, DT will not add value to the kinds of Oath decks that we build. Therefore, it doesn't have a home in my playgroup. I'm happy you're enjoying it, but it's not a card I'm going to cube with, for ...several reasons.

All the best, and happy cubing.

e: You guys should look into Polymorph effects if you play those kinds of shells. We don't, but that card looks much better than this red one; I'd try that first.

Agreed on Polymorph, it would be a lot better here. Also Selvala's Stampede, you lost instant speed playability but you don't need to run tokens in the oath deck.

Quote from Zetsu_Sensei »

It's sad because you're going to miss a pretty good peice of cube. A really unique non agressive red card. I guess we'll have to agree to disagree on that. Maybe other members have different opinions and could share it moving foward. For our part, I guess we're done here. I found the never, ever thing went a bit far in the judging paradigm.

For what it's worth, I thought that deck is a good example of a deck where this card can shine in... And glad you are posting cards that are working for you, even if the collective might disagree with you.

I agree with the others tho, that a DOUBLE combo deck that combines both sneak/oath AND kiki combo, really wants all it's cards to contribute to that gameplan.. Either via controlling the board state until it can combo, or finding those combo peices. Most of the token producers in that deck don't do either of those things.
Because the token producers don't synergize with anything but divergent transformations, You've essentially built a TRIPLE combo deck, where only part of the peices overlap.
That deck can win games, and can run good, but it seems atrociously inconsistent.

Where I agree with you, is that divergent transformations seems like a solid card IN that deck. Though, it is still a 6 mana card that requires a specific board state to be busted... and if it doesn't have that board state, it does close to nothing.

I really appreciate how Lucid Vision responded and hope it can encourage others to temper their rhetoric a bit. Just wanted to add that there is a thread for unpopular cards/archetypes that you found great success with! If you have a minute, throw in a few words about this card in there (copy/paste even if easier). http://www.mtgsalvation.com/forums/the-game/the-cube-forum/776102-your-unpopular-successes-cuts-additions

Quote from BlackWaltz3 »

temper their rhetoric a bit.

Everybody is good dawg don't worry, we're just talking cardboard here lol

Quote from Salmo »

Quote from BlackWaltz3 »

temper their rhetoric a bit.

Everybody is good dawg don't worry, we're just talking cardboard here lol

Also, everyone is using lengthy and well thought out back and forth. I really don't see the rhetoric.

We've looked into Polymorph before, but we've ultimately found it a bit too much one-trick poney for our taste. The exile clause is really important in Divergent Transformations because it prevent your opponent from using back their creature if you want to use half of it as a removal spell. And we think being red and instant speed is also a big part of its niceness.

About the decklist, combine with a couple removals spells (MD and SB), the walkers in it were pretty good at providing decent board control in practice. The decklist didn't went 3-0 for nothing. I would describe the list as a really polyvalent combo deck. It was also pretty surprisly consistent. FWIW, the metagame that night was compose of UW Mentor Tempo, UB Tempo, Grixis Artifact, UW Moat Control, UG Promise End Mega Ramp, GR Wildfire Control and Bant Opposition.

I mean, you're still playing with cube cards so it's never surprising that any deck can go 3-0 especially one that's almost there like the one above and especially on the back of walkers, but that's a pretty small sample size to be doing any results-oriented thinking on the overall viability of the card. I get that you've played with it more than that one night, but you also have to see the other side of the coin in why people would very much not be interested in the card and why that's totally valid/reasonable for all the valid/reasonable statements made above.

And I do understand those points. FWIW, that's exactly why I've posted informations about it, since people could see it from a different angle ans perspective. Our playgroup thinks the card is great for several reasons as well, as I'd already mentionned before. I just thought some folks could discovered this little gem as we did. I guess initial negative impression of the card is too huge to overcome and process to actual testing. That's what is sad in fact. Because the card deserves cube time, I could tell. Can't really blame people for it though. I understand.