Random Izzet (feeling) card? This actually seems kind of interesting to me. A RR tax to turn the CMC of your next spell into burn. Curious to hear everyone's thoughts on this.
Cool card, but too inefficient and you’re never guaranteed a payoff:
1RR: 1 damage / free 1 cmc spell
2RR: 2 damage / free 2 cmc spell
3RR 3 damage / free 3 cmc spell
4RR 4 damage / free 4 cmc spell (this is where you really start to see any sort of payoff, and that’s assuming you had a (good) 4-cmc spell
I think the flexibility and the ability to flash stuff out makes this testable. X=1 and X=2 are not super efficient, but once you get to X=3 you start paying base rate for flexible burn (2 mana for 3 damage to any target). Paying base rate for burn at the cost of a card is definitely not enough, but granting any spell flash on top of that seems pretty sweet to me. I'm leaning towards giving this a spin.
I got burned by the expertise cycle, but cube does have some pretty sick and twisted stuff to be able to flash into play. Draw 7s, reanimation spells, and control magics are all nasty, but even just EOT Fireballing your opponent’s face, dropping a big threat, untapping, and casting a finisher will win games out of nowhere.
This card is going to require a lot of testing to figure out, because it’s hard to gauge how well casting a fireball and your other spells will best sync up, particularly when you’re trying to kill creatures or planeswalkers with it. It’ll almost certainly create some very exciting moments.
Although I was intrigued by the thought of adding Quicken a while back, it fell short because its only real use was doing some UW control insta-wrathing.
Expanding your options to instant-casting any card is good. I think the cost is about as fair as one could hope for. I wonder if red control decks with mana rocks would care for it?
I got burned by the expertise cycle, but cube does have some pretty sick and twisted stuff to be able to flash into play. Draw 7s, reanimation spells, and control magics are all nasty, but even just EOT Fireballing your opponent’s face, dropping a big threat, untapping, and casting a finisher will win games out of nowhere.
This card is going to require a lot of testing to figure out, because it’s hard to gauge how well casting a fireball and your other spells will best sync up, particularly when you’re trying to kill creatures or planeswalkers with it. It’ll almost certainly create some very exciting moments.
I felt the same way about the expertise cycle, overestimated it a bit. Too often I didn’t have anything efficient in my hand (since it was cheaper I often played the other spell out before).
However this card allowing you to do instant speed shenanigans gives a level of freedom that the expertise couldn’t provide. I believe they were all sorceries.
I wish there a couple more ancestral vision like cards to really break this it
In general, I’m skeptical of the card , as the extra R eliminates one of the better modes from traditional fireballs (pinging an elf on the play).
The reduced efficiency could easily be made up for the instant speed nature of this spell and the shenagnins that can be pulled with it. Hard to say.. I believe it requires a big mana deck , while fireballs aren’t embarrassing in monoR with a sol ring or something.
I’m gonna test probably, but doubt it’ll stick. Regardless if it does, think it’s FUN
@LucidVision, I agree that this feels like a big mana card for sure and I don't see it being cast for less than X=3 all that often. Although, dropping a mana rock and shocking something on your opponent's turn isn't a terrible move at x=2 and could be effective in certain scenarios.
I feel like my red section has room for another "big red" kind of spell and I'm definitely going to give this a test.
I think the unique effect and the possibility of huge blowouts makes this at least testable. It won't go in every red deck but I think it will be great in big mana decks.
Im surprised so many people aren't even willing to test this card. Personally, I'm really excited by the idea of casting all my broken Cube spells at instant speed. With a fiery confluence you can deal 10 damage to the face on eot. A more common play is probably just to kill a creature, cast any creature with an etb effect and swing combat massively in your favor. There's a lot of ways to get creative with Electrodominance.
We all know what an advantage playing at instant speed is and this card opens the possibility of playing multiple cards at instant speed at the same time. I do understand there's an RR 'tax' to be paid but that RR will also be netting you 2-5 damage and can also fix your mana so I don't buy that argument.
I think when you look at any one aspect of the card it looks weak, but as a package together the card is quite good and I will definitely be trying it out.
Because it costs more than the spells you want to "quicken", there may be too high a chance that you don't have a good spell to cast at instant speed from it.. Especially in a big mana deck that generally wants to dump their threats out on curve.
Generally the decks that really want to abuse the instant speed nature of this, aren't generating large amounts of mana to get to the very high X thresholds.
Like, the more I think about it... I see this being better in a control deck with a mana vault type card or two, that has access to a fair amount of card draw.
More likely to be OK at the lower CMC's in that kind of deck as well.
I'm still quite skeptical, but I see it as a low % sleeper potential. I want it to be good.
Could you imagine casting this at x=6 and casting an instant speed wildfire while simultaneously being able to add an additional 6 damage to their face or biggest dude? I hate being in that aituation where the opponent cheats out some huge fatty right before I find my wildfire/burning
Johnny-ing aside, I feel like I agree that this card will only be interesting for big red decks, and likely be too slow for more typical red decks, especially poor for aggro
This is not quicken. This says "A CARD." I will gladly tack an additional red mana onto my X=6 banefire to instant speed an inferno titan on them EOT. Even if not as high as 6 though, I believe this card has a lot of application in midrange
I think this card could play well in big mana decks, but my intuition is that it plays worse than it looks. 2 reasons for this, one of which has already been stated:
1) It's a tempo hit to play cards with this thing. Casting a 4 drop with it on t6 requires you to take 2 turns off playing said 4 drop. I don't think the flash makes up for this. Sure, topdecking cards happens and you will draw cards off curve, but this card will often play clunky as a result.
2) This card requires 2 cards to function. This point is kind of hard to phrase, but its the reason the expertise cycle isn't that good. It's really easy to evaluate these cards without really remembering that you use two cards for this effect. And in cube where each card has a ridiculous power level, two cards should get you more than this effect. The hit to card quality isn't worth the increase in mana efficiency in my eyes.
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I see this as a strong contender. A previous poster put the math at 4RR being the big pay off amount. I can see that happening in cube. It gives the R/X decks another neat little tool. Of course, its main weakness is its dependability on the other cards around it. I think it is definitely worth testing especially paired with all the fast artifact mana.
Random Izzet (feeling) card? This actually seems kind of interesting to me. A RR tax to turn the CMC of your next spell into burn. Curious to hear everyone's thoughts on this.
Killing one attacker and flashing in a blocker seems quite strong.
1RR: 1 damage / free 1 cmc spell
2RR: 2 damage / free 2 cmc spell
3RR 3 damage / free 3 cmc spell
4RR 4 damage / free 4 cmc spell (this is where you really start to see any sort of payoff, and that’s assuming you had a (good) 4-cmc spell
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This card is going to require a lot of testing to figure out, because it’s hard to gauge how well casting a fireball and your other spells will best sync up, particularly when you’re trying to kill creatures or planeswalkers with it. It’ll almost certainly create some very exciting moments.
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Expanding your options to instant-casting any card is good. I think the cost is about as fair as one could hope for. I wonder if red control decks with mana rocks would care for it?
I felt the same way about the expertise cycle, overestimated it a bit. Too often I didn’t have anything efficient in my hand (since it was cheaper I often played the other spell out before).
However this card allowing you to do instant speed shenanigans gives a level of freedom that the expertise couldn’t provide. I believe they were all sorceries.
I wish there a couple more ancestral vision like cards to really break this it
In general, I’m skeptical of the card , as the extra R eliminates one of the better modes from traditional fireballs (pinging an elf on the play).
The reduced efficiency could easily be made up for the instant speed nature of this spell and the shenagnins that can be pulled with it. Hard to say.. I believe it requires a big mana deck , while fireballs aren’t embarrassing in monoR with a sol ring or something.
I’m gonna test probably, but doubt it’ll stick. Regardless if it does, think it’s FUN
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I feel like my red section has room for another "big red" kind of spell and I'm definitely going to give this a test.
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We all know what an advantage playing at instant speed is and this card opens the possibility of playing multiple cards at instant speed at the same time. I do understand there's an RR 'tax' to be paid but that RR will also be netting you 2-5 damage and can also fix your mana so I don't buy that argument.
I think when you look at any one aspect of the card it looks weak, but as a package together the card is quite good and I will definitely be trying it out.
Because it costs more than the spells you want to "quicken", there may be too high a chance that you don't have a good spell to cast at instant speed from it.. Especially in a big mana deck that generally wants to dump their threats out on curve.
Generally the decks that really want to abuse the instant speed nature of this, aren't generating large amounts of mana to get to the very high X thresholds.
Like, the more I think about it... I see this being better in a control deck with a mana vault type card or two, that has access to a fair amount of card draw.
More likely to be OK at the lower CMC's in that kind of deck as well.
I'm still quite skeptical, but I see it as a low % sleeper potential. I want it to be good.
Last Updated 02/07/24
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Johnny-ing aside, I feel like I agree that this card will only be interesting for big red decks, and likely be too slow for more typical red decks, especially poor for aggro
1) It's a tempo hit to play cards with this thing. Casting a 4 drop with it on t6 requires you to take 2 turns off playing said 4 drop. I don't think the flash makes up for this. Sure, topdecking cards happens and you will draw cards off curve, but this card will often play clunky as a result.
2) This card requires 2 cards to function. This point is kind of hard to phrase, but its the reason the expertise cycle isn't that good. It's really easy to evaluate these cards without really remembering that you use two cards for this effect. And in cube where each card has a ridiculous power level, two cards should get you more than this effect. The hit to card quality isn't worth the increase in mana efficiency in my eyes.
Regular 450 unpowered cube (with some custom cards) - 450 Unpowered
With this one you will probably hole until it is your last card in hand then use it when you topdeck a spell you can use.
Seems unpredictable. Might test over devils play for a bit since that’s already wonky.