Ya, this card is good. Based on my history/experience with delve as a mechanic in the cube, this should be a 1UU 3/3 flier on average, and if you can exile a spell or two to it when casting it, it might represent +1 or +2 card advantage as it attacks during a typical game. It has a higher ceiling and lower floor (like all delve cards) but that feels like a reasonable baseline. Not sure if this is a slam-dunk or not, but spell-based tempo shells (like ones that would be playing Delver of Secrets and Pteramander and the like) might be in the market for this flying whale. Cool card!
I expect to see some of these in Legacy for sure, though the weakness to both Bolt and ReB/Pyroblast may prove to be a problem there.
This is awesome! More support for the aggressive blue deck is high on our wish list, and this looks like a slam dunk. I think the average case in that deck is going to represent at least 1 potential spell drawn.
I like how we do have alot more payoffs for spells matters, but the problem is that cube just doesn't have that density of cantrips to support cards like this.
I've replaced my black one drop creatures with alot of 1-2 mana discard/ removal that are less than optimal to move black towards a more support color and I still don't feel I have the sorcery/ instant density.
Another issue is right now I don't really want the spells matters cards to be in blue (as weird as that sounds). I much prefer these cards to be in red, similar to young pyro or bedlam revelar.
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I don’t think you need a lot of spells to make this good though.
If it threatens to draw 1-2 cards then it feels like a homerun in a blue aggressive or midrange deck. Like I’m imagining what this looks like in a deck that plays the typical density of blue + either red or black spells. Seems solid in those decks.
I don’t know what the cut would be is the problem, Blue is so stacked at 540. Plus I don’t support blue aggro/tempo so it loses some of its luster there so it’s probably not for me, but I thought it deserved to be talked about here
Delve
3/3 Flying
Whenever Heavenly Whale attacks you may put an instant or sorcery exiled by Heavenly Whale into your hand
I expect to see some of these in Legacy for sure, though the weakness to both Bolt and ReB/Pyroblast may prove to be a problem there.
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I've replaced my black one drop creatures with alot of 1-2 mana discard/ removal that are less than optimal to move black towards a more support color and I still don't feel I have the sorcery/ instant density.
Another issue is right now I don't really want the spells matters cards to be in blue (as weird as that sounds). I much prefer these cards to be in red, similar to young pyro or bedlam revelar.
Vintage Cube Cards Explained
Here are some other articles I've written about fine tuning your cube:
1. Minimum Archetype Support
2. Improving Green Archetypes
3. Improving White Archetypes
4. Matchup Analysis
5. Cube Combos (Work in Progress)
Draft my Cube - https://cubecobra.com/cube/overview/d8i
If it threatens to draw 1-2 cards then it feels like a homerun in a blue aggressive or midrange deck. Like I’m imagining what this looks like in a deck that plays the typical density of blue + either red or black spells. Seems solid in those decks.