Pestilence is a bunch of individual activations; Crypt Rats is not. Sure, you could activate it for X=1 over and over, but why not just activate it for X=5? Or give it Deathtouch and do X=1? (Also fun with Lifelink). Either way, it kills everything, including itself, and then Undying Evil brings it back to do it all another turn.
You are right and I am wrong. Was sure the rats utilized the same mechanic as Pestilence. I can definitely see the appeal.
I think under an older rules set you could treat mass activations of Pestilence as one big damage blob. But that would've been over a decade ago at least. (and I could be wrong, I am hazy on how the rules on damage used to work)
Thoughts on where Orcish Hellraiser lines up with other red 2-drops? I am inclined to say it looks decent next to the other 3-power red 2s (Borderland Marauder, Thriving Grubs, Gore-House Chainwalker). The drawback of Echo R could sap some explosive starts, but having a 3/2 that deals 2 to the dome when it dies feels mighty good.
Thoughts on where Orcish Hellraiser lines up with other red 2-drops? I am inclined to say it looks decent next to the other 3-power red 2s (Borderland Marauder, Thriving Grubs, Gore-House Chainwalker). The drawback of Echo R could sap some explosive starts, but having a 3/2 that deals 2 to the dome when it dies feels mighty good.
I like it more than any of those more vanilla 1R 3 power guys. At 360 I'm only running Chainwalker, so I'll probably make that swap.
Maybe it's just me being cynical, but I'm honestly not too impressed with what we've gotten at peasant legal in this set so far. Some decent stuff for midsize or larger peasant cubes, but not much for 360. Only halfway through spoilers, though, so I'm probably speaking too soon.
I think our red 2s are good enough that you can just play whatever you want and it'll be fine. There are some minor synergy based ones tucked in too for diversity. I think I like this new guy more than war-name aspirant though.
I'm pretty sure Orcish Hellraiser is worse than every other 3/2 for 2 because... this one costs more than 2 mana.
Your first three turns are so important for aggro; tossing out an extra red mana that adds no board presence does not justify Hellraiser's upside
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I've got little interest in discarding a card to make a Safehold Elite, even if it gets me a 12-mana Arc Lightning eventually.
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Agree with Calibretto with this set being fairly weak for our context thus far. Some options, esp if you like Tribal synergies, nothing that's gonna be a high pick
I agree with io about the manticore. Im pretty sure that outside of reanimator its completely unplayable. Does black not have enough discard outlets for it?
And what about a counters theme is really helped by a persist counter?
I think hellraiser will be too clunky to be worth running, ultimately.
Splicer's Skill is probably just too slow. 4 mana for a 3/3 is not really where you want to be most of the time, and there's only so many cheap spells in white.
Orcish Hellraiser costing 3 mana for 3 power just isn't really good enough for a 2 drop or for a later game drop. You don't really care about 2 drop versatility in aggro either.
4 mana for a ping on Lesser Masticore is a horrific rate, and you have to discard a card as well for an unimpressive body.
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So many cards are just lacking raw power in this set. Scale Up, Ravenous Giant, and Mother Bear are the only cards I'm considering atm, but I'm not very excited about any of them.
Scale Up is like a mono-color Flower // Flourish but instead of kinda useful landcycling in the mode you'll actually cast 90% of the time you get an unplayable sorcery pump spell
Agreed on Scale Up. Only reason I can see running it is as part of going deep to support a combo package (Berserk, Fling], infect, or maybe some weird flyers/shadow/unblockable archetype.
Im pretty sure that outside of reanimator its completely unplayable. Does black not have enough discard outlets for it?
Black does, blue does, even red does. Maybe green as well, nowadays, at least green has self-mill. However, this being colorless makes it a liiiittle more versatile if you have multiple graveyard and/or discard based archetypes. I've run Gathan Raiders before, which is worse for reanimator but better for madness and aggro, but overall not great either.
I'm sad though. Masticore is so iconic, I wish this was slightly better so I could justify running it for the sake of being its little bro.
@ Orcish Hellraiser: I like it. The guaranteed damage is pretty nice. Echo R is clunky, but not full-turn clunky. We'll have to see how much it matters.
Blue and black can do similarly with the amount of evasive threats they have. It's also entirely reasonable in a RG aggro shell just for the base mode (+5/+3 for G is no joke). Green can use it the least, but it still has high amounts of synergy with Untamed Kavu/Rancor/Spider Spawning etc..
Scale Up can actually kill from 20 with a really low power board and the base spell actually has a high ceiling. Comparing it to Flower // Flourish, which is entirely filler, is not a remotely apt comparison.
I think under an older rules set you could treat mass activations of Pestilence as one big damage blob. But that would've been over a decade ago at least. (and I could be wrong, I am hazy on how the rules on damage used to work)
Old timer coming in. This was correct pre sixth-edition rules. The rule was loosely: Each player may add effects to the "batch". Once no player wishes to add more effects to the batch, the batch resolves in last-in-firs-out order. Once the batch has started to resolve, no new effects may be added to the batch. Damage is not applied while the batch resolves, but is being saved up until the rest of the batch is finished resolving. Then there is the "damage prevention and redirection step", which is the only time you could play a spell like Bandage. After the damage and redirection step, damage happens. Then if a creature died, the regeneration-window opened and you could regenerate it.
Consequences of this was that:
Pestilence used to "combo" with CoP:Black.
A lightning bolt in response to a Giant Growth could not kill the creature, but a giant growth in response to the bolt would save it.
A brainstorm could not be used to dig for answers to things on the stack, since you would not have a chance to do anything with the cards you drew until everything finished resolving.
We had no places to play and we had to get up before we went to bed and walk 48 hours in the snow to buy Fallen Empire and Homelands boosters.
I think under an older rules set you could treat mass activations of Pestilence as one big damage blob. But that would've been over a decade ago at least. (and I could be wrong, I am hazy on how the rules on damage used to work)
Old timer coming in. This was correct pre sixth-edition rules. The rule was loosely: Each player may add effects to the "batch". Once no player wishes to add more effects to the batch, the batch resolves in last-in-firs-out order. Once the batch has started to resolve, no new effects may be added to the batch. Damage is not applied while the batch resolves, but is being saved up until the rest of the batch is finished resolving. Then there is the "damage prevention and redirection step", which is the only time you could play a spell like Bandage. After the damage and redirection step, damage happens. Then if a creature died, the regeneration-window opened and you could regenerate it.
Consequences of this was that:
Pestilence used to "combo" with CoP:Black.
A lightning bolt in response to a Giant Growth could not kill the creature, but a giant growth in response to the bolt would save it.
A brainstorm could not be used to dig for answers to things on the stack, since you would not have a chance to do anything with the cards you drew until everything finished resolving.
We had no places to play and we had to get up before we went to bed and walk 48 hours in the snow to buy Fallen Empire and Homelands boosters.
Thanks! Bought boxes of FE myself (at retail price from KB no less) and I'm pretty sure I knew all of that but I didn't want to play the expert since I wasn't totally sure. I also thought the "damage resolves last" rule might have been purged before the major overhaul.
Blue and black can do similarly with the amount of evasive threats they have. It's also entirely reasonable in a RG aggro shell just for the base mode (+5/+3 for G is no joke). Green can use it the least, but it still has high amounts of synergy with Untamed Kavu/Rancor/Spider Spawning etc..
Scale Up can actually kill from 20 with a really low power board and the base spell actually has a high ceiling. Comparing it to Flower // Flourish, which is entirely filler, is not a remotely apt comparison.
There's a bunch of reasons why Flower // Flourish is indeed filler, and "not adding enough power" is only ONE of them and absolutely not the most important.
Both cards are 6cmc, do nothing on defense, and depend entirely on you having the right boardstate / opponent's life total... the kind of board state that's appealing to think about winning single-handedly with your 6-drop, but will infrequently show up in real life.
There's an even more infrequent range of games where +2/+2 on Flourish is game-changingly worse than Scale Up's effect, but far more relevant is what happens when you need to hit land drops 4, 5, 6. One of the two cards has a solid backup mode of basic landcycling... the other is a sorcery speed version of an already unpopular / unplayable Might of Old Krosa
As a fellow old timer (started in '98 just before Stronghold), this explanation made me remember how much the sixth edition rules change and the stack was originally hated by the masses, even though it was exactly what the game needed to thrive and move forward.
I think this card is really good. It's probably realistic to be able to drop this turn 4, which is the same as Scrapper Champion, with the potential for more. Imagine going Dryad Militant, Gust Walker. That's a 3/3 double strike on turn three, and not even in a very magical Christmas land-y scenario. It also has pretty good synergy with all the incidental tribal stuff like Blood-chin Rager or Cenn's Tactician. Really cool card.
There's a bunch of reasons why Flower // Flourish is indeed filler, and "not adding enough power" is only ONE of them and absolutely not the most important.
Both cards are 6cmc, do nothing on defense, and depend entirely on you having the right boardstate / opponent's life total... the kind of board state that's appealing to think about winning single-handedly with your 6-drop, but will infrequently show up in real life.
There's an even more infrequent range of games where +2/+2 on Flourish is game-changingly worse than Scale Up's effect, but far more relevant is what happens when you need to hit land drops 4, 5, 6. One of the two cards has a solid backup mode of basic landcycling... the other is a sorcery speed version of an already unpopular / unplayable Might of Old Krosa
My point was that Flower // Flourish takes a lot of effort to find a deck where it is actively good. High floor, low ceiling type of situation. That's what filler is to me. Scale Up has a low floor and a high ceiling, which means it is not filler to me.
I'm not sold on Scale Up (Might of Old Krosa comparison on the base mode being fair), but I don't think you can dismiss it offhand, considering the relative ease of imagining scenarios where the overload does 15+ damage with very little support.
Sigh... Seems like I should get at least 20 of all Snow basics. Luckily, I already have Mountains and Plains covered if memory serves, thanks to EDH and Extraplanar Lens. (The main reason being the 2/2 for but there might be others, some of which I have considered before and some of which will be printed in the future.)
For the record, as someone with a Double Strike theme, I approve of Valiant Changeling. If you play creatures on curve, it is really easy to enable it as a 3-drop on turn 3.
So excited about Valiant Changeling! It should be great in my tribal peasant cube.
I absolutely love the references in this set. Goblin Oriflamme (misprinted Alpha Orcish Oriflamme cost 1R). Segovian Angel (Segovia is a 'small' plane: Segovian Leviathan. Also the planeswalkers mentioned in the flavor text are from the original rules book, I think). Set's a flavor homerun afaic.
I think under an older rules set you could treat mass activations of Pestilence as one big damage blob. But that would've been over a decade ago at least. (and I could be wrong, I am hazy on how the rules on damage used to work)
As of now, I plan on adding it.
https://cubecobra.com/cube/list/peasantsnowcube
-- Updated with Fallout Commander
The PioneWer Peasant CUbe
https://cubecobra.com/cube/list/pionewer
-- Updated with Murders at Karlov Manor
I like it more than any of those more vanilla 1R 3 power guys. At 360 I'm only running Chainwalker, so I'll probably make that swap.
Maybe it's just me being cynical, but I'm honestly not too impressed with what we've gotten at peasant legal in this set so far. Some decent stuff for midsize or larger peasant cubes, but not much for 360. Only halfway through spoilers, though, so I'm probably speaking too soon.
MTGS Average Peasant Cube 2023 Edition
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I also like lesser masticore, it's useful for a lot of different archetypes.
Pioneer:UR Pheonix
Modern:U Mono U Tron
EDH
GB Glissa, the traitor: Army of Cans
UW Dragonlord Ojutai: Dragonlord NOjutai
UWGDerevi, Empyrial Tactician "you cannot fight the storm"
R Zirilan of the claw. The solution to every problem is dragons
UB Etrata, the Silencer Cloning assassination
Peasant cube: Cards I own
Your first three turns are so important for aggro; tossing out an extra red mana that adds no board presence does not justify Hellraiser's upside
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I've got little interest in discarding a card to make a Safehold Elite, even if it gets me a 12-mana Arc Lightning eventually.
--
Agree with Calibretto with this set being fairly weak for our context thus far. Some options, esp if you like Tribal synergies, nothing that's gonna be a high pick
And what about a counters theme is really helped by a persist counter?
I think hellraiser will be too clunky to be worth running, ultimately.
My CubeCobra (draft 20 card packs, 2 packs.)
430, Peasant, Very Unpowered
Why you should take your hybrids out of your gold section
Manamath Article
Orcish Hellraiser costing 3 mana for 3 power just isn't really good enough for a 2 drop or for a later game drop. You don't really care about 2 drop versatility in aggro either.
4 mana for a ping on Lesser Masticore is a horrific rate, and you have to discard a card as well for an unimpressive body.
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So many cards are just lacking raw power in this set. Scale Up, Ravenous Giant, and Mother Bear are the only cards I'm considering atm, but I'm not very excited about any of them.
Black does, blue does, even red does. Maybe green as well, nowadays, at least green has self-mill. However, this being colorless makes it a liiiittle more versatile if you have multiple graveyard and/or discard based archetypes. I've run Gathan Raiders before, which is worse for reanimator but better for madness and aggro, but overall not great either.
I'm sad though. Masticore is so iconic, I wish this was slightly better so I could justify running it for the sake of being its little bro.
@ Orcish Hellraiser: I like it. The guaranteed damage is pretty nice. Echo R is clunky, but not full-turn clunky. We'll have to see how much it matters.
My Cubes:
Peasant Travel Cube on CubeCobra (180 cards, modern frames) (mtgsalvation thread can be found here)
I had a blog for a while @ peasant-cube.blogspot.com where I may or may not post again, lol
Blue and black can do similarly with the amount of evasive threats they have. It's also entirely reasonable in a RG aggro shell just for the base mode (+5/+3 for G is no joke). Green can use it the least, but it still has high amounts of synergy with Untamed Kavu/Rancor/Spider Spawning etc..
Scale Up can actually kill from 20 with a really low power board and the base spell actually has a high ceiling. Comparing it to Flower // Flourish, which is entirely filler, is not a remotely apt comparison.
Old timer coming in. This was correct pre sixth-edition rules. The rule was loosely: Each player may add effects to the "batch". Once no player wishes to add more effects to the batch, the batch resolves in last-in-firs-out order. Once the batch has started to resolve, no new effects may be added to the batch. Damage is not applied while the batch resolves, but is being saved up until the rest of the batch is finished resolving. Then there is the "damage prevention and redirection step", which is the only time you could play a spell like Bandage. After the damage and redirection step, damage happens. Then if a creature died, the regeneration-window opened and you could regenerate it.
Consequences of this was that:
Pestilence used to "combo" with CoP:Black.
A lightning bolt in response to a Giant Growth could not kill the creature, but a giant growth in response to the bolt would save it.
A brainstorm could not be used to dig for answers to things on the stack, since you would not have a chance to do anything with the cards you drew until everything finished resolving.
We had no places to play and we had to get up before we went to bed and walk 48 hours in the snow to buy Fallen Empire and Homelands boosters.
Cubetutor Peasant'ish-Funbox
Project: Khans of Tarkir Cube (cubetutor)
Thanks! Bought boxes of FE myself (at retail price from KB no less) and I'm pretty sure I knew all of that but I didn't want to play the expert since I wasn't totally sure. I also thought the "damage resolves last" rule might have been purged before the major overhaul.
There's a bunch of reasons why Flower // Flourish is indeed filler, and "not adding enough power" is only ONE of them and absolutely not the most important.
Both cards are 6cmc, do nothing on defense, and depend entirely on you having the right boardstate / opponent's life total... the kind of board state that's appealing to think about winning single-handedly with your 6-drop, but will infrequently show up in real life.
There's an even more infrequent range of games where +2/+2 on Flourish is game-changingly worse than Scale Up's effect, but far more relevant is what happens when you need to hit land drops 4, 5, 6. One of the two cards has a solid backup mode of basic landcycling... the other is a sorcery speed version of an already unpopular / unplayable Might of Old Krosa
As a fellow old timer (started in '98 just before Stronghold), this explanation made me remember how much the sixth edition rules change and the stack was originally hated by the masses, even though it was exactly what the game needed to thrive and move forward.
MTGS Average Peasant Cube 2023 Edition
Follow me. I tweet.
Cubetutor Peasant'ish-Funbox
Project: Khans of Tarkir Cube (cubetutor)
I think this card is really good. It's probably realistic to be able to drop this turn 4, which is the same as Scrapper Champion, with the potential for more. Imagine going Dryad Militant, Gust Walker. That's a 3/3 double strike on turn three, and not even in a very magical Christmas land-y scenario. It also has pretty good synergy with all the incidental tribal stuff like Blood-chin Rager or Cenn's Tactician. Really cool card.
WiJ
Peasant 540 Cube
T2 Valiant Changeling
Sounds good.
Hand also has to have uptapped w/b land on T1
My point was that Flower // Flourish takes a lot of effort to find a deck where it is actively good. High floor, low ceiling type of situation. That's what filler is to me. Scale Up has a low floor and a high ceiling, which means it is not filler to me.
I'm not sold on Scale Up (Might of Old Krosa comparison on the base mode being fair), but I don't think you can dismiss it offhand, considering the relative ease of imagining scenarios where the overload does 15+ damage with very little support.
Goblin Oriflamme better than a one creature effect like Madcap skills particularly since I have a lot of can't block effects in red.
Pioneer:UR Pheonix
Modern:U Mono U Tron
EDH
GB Glissa, the traitor: Army of Cans
UW Dragonlord Ojutai: Dragonlord NOjutai
UWGDerevi, Empyrial Tactician "you cannot fight the storm"
R Zirilan of the claw. The solution to every problem is dragons
UB Etrata, the Silencer Cloning assassination
Peasant cube: Cards I own
For the record, as someone with a Double Strike theme, I approve of Valiant Changeling. If you play creatures on curve, it is really easy to enable it as a 3-drop on turn 3.
I absolutely love the references in this set. Goblin Oriflamme (misprinted Alpha Orcish Oriflamme cost 1R). Segovian Angel (Segovia is a 'small' plane: Segovian Leviathan. Also the planeswalkers mentioned in the flavor text are from the original rules book, I think). Set's a flavor homerun afaic.
My Cubes:
Peasant Travel Cube on CubeCobra (180 cards, modern frames) (mtgsalvation thread can be found here)
I had a blog for a while @ peasant-cube.blogspot.com where I may or may not post again, lol