MTG Salvation

This looks like a pretty easy include. Not sure which removal card it's going to push out for me... Doom Blade, Murderous Cut, Chainer's Edict... could see any of them going.

Snap include. Now, what to cut...

Definitely seems like a solid inclusion. Also not sure what to cut, since my pinpoint removal in black is Snuff Out, Dismember, Go for the Throat, Heartless Act, Hero's Donwfall and Murderous Rider at 630, plus Chupacabra/Shriekmaw (plus Collective Brutality). I'm not sure which of these it's better than, and not sure I want another removal spell.

Quote from Cythare »

Definitely seems like a solid inclusion. Also not sure what to cut, since my pinpoint removal in black is Snuff Out, Dismember, Go for the Throat, Heartless Act, Hero's Donwfall and Murderous Rider at 630, plus Chupacabra/Shriekmaw (plus Collective Brutality). I'm not sure which of these it's better than, and not sure I want another removal spell.

I initially got real excited about it but I looked at the same cards you are and ummm....... not sure it will work out better. There are what about 6 3 mana walkers people might be running and the black player might have a chunk of those. I can see runnng this over GftT or HA but those cards are so good specifically because they hit almost everything. Never cutting brutality from my cube nor snuff out for reasons this card isn't touching. So maybe dismemeber? does your group like to play it off color? Move it to colorless, if not, it can go.

So, in my 630 cube, I do run sixteen planeswalkers this can hit. There's a reasonable chance that it's going to be live to kill a walker in a match. I'm just not sure that's better than being able to destroy creatures at 4+ cmc.

Walker list, for reference:
Gideon of the Trials
Jace Beleren
Narset, Parter of Veils
Liliana of the Veil
Liliana, the Last Hope
Chandra, Acolyte of Flame
Nissa, Voice of Zendikar
Teferi, Time Raveler
Ashiok, Nightmare Weaver
Daretti, Ingenious Iconoclast
Wrenn and Six
Nissa, Steward of Elements
Oko, Thief of Crowns
Dack Fayden
Saheeli Rai
Saheeli, Sublime Artificer

I don't know that Smother+ is worth it when we have access to any creature or PW removal at 1BB at instant speed (Hero's Downfall) or instant speed, lose 2 life, any creature or PW + a 2/3 lifelinker for 1BB (Murderous Rider) already. You lose a lot of targets for that 1 mana discount.

Smother is not all that good in cubes unless you're at 720+ sizes, but hitting walkers is a decent upside.

The better comparison is probably with Abrupt Decay, which would be in more cubes if BG wasn't removal tribal already. You miss on the uncounterability and hitting enchantments and non-creature artifacts, but you also have a card that is much easier to cast.

Sure it misses a lot of targets compared to Murderous Rider and Hero's Downfall, but 1B is much less than 1BB to cast.

I'm not sure if adding ~15 or so planeswalker targets to a Smother makes up for the ~99 creature targets I lose off of a Go For the Throat/Heartless Act kind of spell for the same 1B mana cost.

I wish this card had Cycling 3 (or was a B Sorcery).

Quote from wtwlf123 »

I'm not sure if adding ~15 or so planeswalker targets to a Smother makes up for the ~99 creature targets I lose off of a Go For the Throat/Heartless Act kind of spell for the same 1B mana cost.

I wish this card had Cycling 3 (or was a B Sorcery).

I don't think its necessarily better than HA or GFTT but in your list, I think it would be better than the edict or fatal push on average.

I don't agree, but thanks for the feedback. I already only run one of those Doom Blade variants as it is, and I think I'd definitely add the other one in before playing this.

Now this is just my gut reaction to the card. It's obviously a useful removal spell, and it has some really high priority targets that it can snag in addition to the cheap creatures it hits, so I don't want to undersell it as a bad card or anything like that. I just think it falls a tad short. Would be happy to be wrong though.

I think people forget that while Planeswalkers can be quite powerful in Cube, a lot of things can easily scale past them, especially the ones that this spell can interact with.

I don't think the concession to better removal is worth forgetting the above statement.

Pass for me. Honestly, I'm still in doubt if that would be better than Epic Downfall ?

My gut tells me this is 99% as good as heartless act, and not sure I’m in the market for another 1B reactive spell.

There are a decent number of cheatY decks or artifact ramp decks that this will have few targets...

It really depends on the format. In standard I think this is going to be significantly better than heartless act.

The spell's name is Eliminate, FYI.

with a lower walker cap than most this is just too narrow for my list.