Seems like this might be pretty good. It seems like the one advantage this has over go for the throat in my cube are being able to hit some of the strongest creatures, where as this card seems to miss more middle of the road type creatures, but can often reduce them to where they are no longer as much as a threat in a pinch. Not entirely sure how to evaluate this, to be honest, but this card might actually be more fun in cube by giving you more options of what to do with the card. Even simple plays like removing a -1/-1 counter from one of your own persist creatures can be good in the right situations.
In standard and draft this is balanced by the amount of trample counters and such, but in cube it's different. Not only does this hit more creatures than go for the throat, it still often kills a lot of creatures with counters:
And while there are creatures it won't hit, it will still function as a mean combat trick against them. Imagine deleveling a student of war midcombat. As the opponent, there are ways to play around this card by spreading counters. While this is harder to remember to use correct and more complex, I welcome the extra power and cool plays it will allow.
I didn't like this at first glance because I was thinking about the creatures I couldn't kill due to having counters, but the second mode will still often get there.
I'm still not sure it's better than Go for the Throat, since I think GFTT still kills more creatures, but you can also use this mid-combat to mug a creature that you otherwise wouldn't (take that, Student of Warfare!), which isn't nothing.
If it isn't better than GFTT, I probably won't cut something else for it.
In my cube, there are 20 artifact creatures (plus Inkwell Leviathan, which is excluded due to shroud).
On the other hand, there are 23 creatures that could have various kinds of counters that don't just instantly die (so Deep Forest Hermit is excluded), plus a couple half-pointers like Thing in the Ice (and relevant support cards like Grumgully/Good-Fortune Unicorn).
After further consideration, Heartless Act is probably slightly better because it's able to interact with most of those creatures even if it doesn't kill them outright. It can also remove three loyalty counters from an animated Gideon in a pinch.
In my cube, I have 17 artifact creatures that relevantly can't be hit by GffT.
It looks like I have ~19 creatures that get counters of some variety. However, some of those will die from losing their counters and this can sometimes kill a gideon, whereas GffT usually can't, so I think it's a wash.
I think they best thing will be to look at how often big artifacts are being cheated into play in your cube and how often GffT not being able to deal with them is a problem.
I wonder how many targets this hits/misses compared to Go For the Throat and its brethren
Assuming I counted everything from my cube right...
36 artifact creatures (18 artifact creatures + 18 cards that either produce or turn into an artifact creature)
30-ish that can put a counter on themselves or other creatures? It's a bit hard to narrow it down even using CubeTutor filters since there's a lot of different verbage and sometimes it catches reminder text, sometimes it doesn't? Granted, a lot of times it won't start off with a +1/+1 counter.
How many of these effects do you want to run in a powered cube? I don’t have that many when I take a look: Dismember, Fatal Push, Go for the Throat, Liliana’s Triumph, Hero’s Downfall, Snuff Out along with mass removal of toxic deluge, languish, damnation, and living dead. This is definitely better than Liliana’s Triumph but I think you need a way to make your opponent sac a creature to handle cheaty strategies. This is definitely good enough for cube and I will make room for it, but should I get rid of something besides other removal or can I make room for more?
I think this is likely slightly better than Go For the Throat. If it turns out the be the case, I'll likely make that swap.
I have 41 cards that are either artifact creatures or make artifact creatures.
I have ~55 creatures that can have counters on them. But among those, HA would kill or neutralize a lot of them, and meaningfully interacts with the rest. Funnily enough, you can also use it to remove -1/-1 counters from your own creatures to make them stronger or reset Persist or whatever, which is kinda funny.
Might be worth testing Act over GFtT and seeing how it fares on average. My guess is that Heartless Act will be marginally better.
I think this is likely slightly better than Go For the Throat. If it turns out the be the case, I'll likely make that swap.
I have 41 cards that are either artifact creatures or make artifact creatures.
I have ~55 creatures that can have counters on them. But among those, HA would kill or neutralize a lot of them, and meaningfully interacts with the rest. Funnily enough, you can also use it to remove -1/-1 counters from your own creatures to make them stronger or reset Persist or whatever, which is kinda funny.
Might be worth testing Act over GFtT and seeing how it fares on average. My guess is that Heartless Act will be marginally better.
Call me crazy but I think I like this more than Fatal Push. I get the double spell capability with Fatal Push being lower costed, but outside of fetches it’s hard to trigger fatal push to get up to 4 cmc creatures so it’s really a good constructed card but not at its most optimal in cube. I think the power of this card to know it will remove what you want it to makes it stronger in the cube setting. I think you can have room for both GFTT and HA.
So according to reddit discussion...
It's only a partial combo with thing in the Ice.
Thing in the Ice is in play.
1. Cast this targeting thing in the ice to remove 3 counter goes on the stack
2. Thing in the Ice Trigger goes on the stack removing 1 counter
>>>> Stack resolves in reverse order.
2. So you remove 1 counter, part of the trigger checks to see if TITI has 0 counters on it. It dosn't so it wont flip.
1. Heartless act resolves removing 3 counters. The trigger for thing in the ice to check never happens.
so you have to cast an additional spell after this one, which wastes a card to get the counter off 1 spell early...
I'm actively maintaining a comprehensive article to help explain to new cube players how some complex vintage level cards work in a cube environment. Vintage Cube Cards Explained
So according to reddit discussion...
It's only a partial combo with thing in the Ice.
Thing in the Ice is in play.
1. Cast this targeting thing in the ice to remove 3 counter goes on the stack
2. Thing in the Ice Trigger goes on the stack removing 1 counter
>>>> Stack resolves in reverse order.
2. So you remove 1 counter, part of the trigger checks to see if TITI has 0 counters on it. It dosn't so it wont flip.
1. Heartless act resolves removing 3 counters. The trigger for thing in the ice to check never happens.
so you have to cast an additional spell after this one, which wastes a card to get the counter off 1 spell early...
Seems about right. So sad it can’t be used as a surprise spell to flip the card.
Instant
Choose one—
•Destroy target creature with no counters on it.
•Remove up to three counters from target creature.
------
First reaction is that this is similar power level to Go for the Throat.
Thoughts?
EDIT: lol sorry I posted this in the wrong area. I suck at posting these things...
[180 classic cube]
Best Doom Blade variant we've seen since Go for the Throat. Can also kill Walking Ballista / Hangarback Walker most of the time probably?
My High Octane Unpowered Cube on CubeCobra
Deep Forest Hermit
Hangarback Walker
Hydroid Krasis
Walking Ballista
Voracious Hydra
And while there are creatures it won't hit, it will still function as a mean combat trick against them. Imagine deleveling a student of war midcombat. As the opponent, there are ways to play around this card by spreading counters. While this is harder to remember to use correct and more complex, I welcome the extra power and cool plays it will allow.
I'm still not sure it's better than Go for the Throat, since I think GFTT still kills more creatures, but you can also use this mid-combat to mug a creature that you otherwise wouldn't (take that, Student of Warfare!), which isn't nothing.
If it isn't better than GFTT, I probably won't cut something else for it.
Draft my cube! (630 cards)
On the other hand, there are 23 creatures that could have various kinds of counters that don't just instantly die (so Deep Forest Hermit is excluded), plus a couple half-pointers like Thing in the Ice (and relevant support cards like Grumgully/Good-Fortune Unicorn).
After further consideration, Heartless Act is probably slightly better because it's able to interact with most of those creatures even if it doesn't kill them outright. It can also remove three loyalty counters from an animated Gideon in a pinch.
Draft my cube! (630 cards)
It looks like I have ~19 creatures that get counters of some variety. However, some of those will die from losing their counters and this can sometimes kill a gideon, whereas GffT usually can't, so I think it's a wash.
I think they best thing will be to look at how often big artifacts are being cheated into play in your cube and how often GffT not being able to deal with them is a problem.
375 unpowered cube - https://cubecobra.com/cube/list/601ac624832cdf1039947588
Assuming I counted everything from my cube right...
36 artifact creatures (18 artifact creatures + 18 cards that either produce or turn into an artifact creature)
30-ish that can put a counter on themselves or other creatures? It's a bit hard to narrow it down even using CubeTutor filters since there's a lot of different verbage and sometimes it catches reminder text, sometimes it doesn't? Granted, a lot of times it won't start off with a +1/+1 counter.
My High Octane Unpowered Cube on CubeCobra
And the huge monsters that get cheated into play are more likely to be artifacts than have counters
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Seems better than GFTT to me, but I'd probably cut Murderous Cut for it.
Give a try to Sphinx's Tutelage, card is busted in Cube
I have 41 cards that are either artifact creatures or make artifact creatures.
I have ~55 creatures that can have counters on them. But among those, HA would kill or neutralize a lot of them, and meaningfully interacts with the rest. Funnily enough, you can also use it to remove -1/-1 counters from your own creatures to make them stronger or reset Persist or whatever, which is kinda funny.
Might be worth testing Act over GFtT and seeing how it fares on average. My guess is that Heartless Act will be marginally better.
My 630 Card Powered Cube
My Article - "Cube Design Philosophy"
My Article - "Mana Short: A study in limited resource management."
My 50th Set (P)review - Discusses my top 20 Cube cards from OTJ!
Call me crazy but I think I like this more than Fatal Push. I get the double spell capability with Fatal Push being lower costed, but outside of fetches it’s hard to trigger fatal push to get up to 4 cmc creatures so it’s really a good constructed card but not at its most optimal in cube. I think the power of this card to know it will remove what you want it to makes it stronger in the cube setting. I think you can have room for both GFTT and HA.
So according to reddit discussion...
It's only a partial combo with thing in the Ice.
Thing in the Ice is in play.
1. Cast this targeting thing in the ice to remove 3 counter goes on the stack
2. Thing in the Ice Trigger goes on the stack removing 1 counter
>>>> Stack resolves in reverse order.
2. So you remove 1 counter, part of the trigger checks to see if TITI has 0 counters on it. It dosn't so it wont flip.
1. Heartless act resolves removing 3 counters. The trigger for thing in the ice to check never happens.
so you have to cast an additional spell after this one, which wastes a card to get the counter off 1 spell early...
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
Seems about right. So sad it can’t be used as a surprise spell to flip the card.
I love cute stuff like this. That's probably enough right there to convince me to swap this in, even if it's slightly worse than whatever I take out.
This is probably better than Murderous Cut, right?
This. I think it's easily better than fatal push too. I just realized I'm still running Doom Blade so this is an easy swap.
375 unpowered cube - https://cubecobra.com/cube/list/601ac624832cdf1039947588
Cheers,
rant
My Cube
CubeCobra: https://cubecobra.com/cube/overview/5f5d0310ed602310515d4c32
Cube Tutor: http://cubetutor.com/viewcube/1963