This card is going to kick Brutal Hordechief out of my rainbow section, and I hope it'll stay there for a while. Trample/Vigilance on a 5/5 (usually) is big business.
Sorry to necro another Origins thread during spoiler season, but I want to ask you folks how you feel about this card now that some time has passed. Are you all happy with it? What tier would you put it in, power-level wise? I neglected to add it to my origins update for my 405-card cube; does it belong there?
Neat card, snap include. Plus it comes with the added benefit of keeping up anthem equilibrium, since I'm tossing Ajani Goldmane out for the new Gideon. Kismet!
Thanks for the feedback, guys. Sort of confirmed my suspicion, then. Definitely not long for most cubes, unless we get a raft of really good support cards sometime soon.
Folks who have been playing this for a few months now: where does this card fit in terms of power level? 360? 450? 540? I neglected to add it in my Origins update and now I'm not sure if I should. Help is appreciated!
We don't play any morphs at 405, but when my cube was at 360 we ran one per color and found that it was generally enough to introduce some level of doubt for your opponent. Now that there are even more cubeable morphs, it really shouldn't be a concern.
We took them out of our cube because I think the mechanic is tacky, and, secondarily, because it was a pain the ass to teach to new players. There are some really good morph cards, but none are slam-dunk, honest-to-god cube staples so I don't feel like I'm missing out on some tremendous cubing experience. But give them a shot! You might find that you get a whole bunch of fun out of them. There's never any harm taking out a couple cards from each section and screwing around.
I'm pretty sure this is the best review so far, wtwlf. Thanks a lot for including both your own testing experience, as well as the evolution of your thought process on certain cards. Both are exceedingly helpful and, more importantly, interesting.
Hey, cool writeup! And thanks for sounding the klaxon so I could actually find it in this neglected part of our neighborhood. I totally didn't notice Usman's or Hawkeye's posts until just now. for just that reason. (Your writeups are great, too, guys!)
What a monster set--I ended up including the top 10 cards from this countdown into my 400 card cube. I have a sneaking suspicion that Brutal Hordechief is a little bit better than we all gave it credit for initially. It's a perfectly cromulent splashable 4-drop for aggro in a color that needs one, and it's disgusting in B/R or B/W tokens (both of which see play here) as a pseudo-anthem on a stick. It's also one of the few playable lifegain cards in black, so I wouldn't be too put off putting it in a generic midrange deck to offset black's tendency to savage your life total. I know it didn't really pass muster for your group, wtwlf, but it's been lovely for us over here. It's a utility knife, in other words, and I value the hell out of versatility.
I'm a little bit more down on Monastery Mentor than you are, since it's great in theory but less so in practice (we don't really play many light-creature aggro decks, and our control decks are pretty keen on sweepers), so it's a bit narrow for my liking. And Soulfire Grand Warden's activated ability reeks a little bit of Dualcaster Mage to me in that it's a bit pricey. Don't get me wrong, I'm happy with both of them, but I'm not sure they're the staple-for-years cards I thought they were a month ago.
Interesting that you pulled out Personal Tutor and Sylvan Tutor. I was just about to include them in my own list owing largely to your full-throated advocacy of those cards. Did it transpire that they weren't as amazing as they were during initial testing? Or are they just less necessary now that you've cut down on a lot of the narrower archetypes?
Ulamog, the Ceaseless Hunger or Ugin, the Spirit Dragon?
We took them out of our cube because I think the mechanic is tacky, and, secondarily, because it was a pain the ass to teach to new players. There are some really good morph cards, but none are slam-dunk, honest-to-god cube staples so I don't feel like I'm missing out on some tremendous cubing experience. But give them a shot! You might find that you get a whole bunch of fun out of them. There's never any harm taking out a couple cards from each section and screwing around.
What a monster set--I ended up including the top 10 cards from this countdown into my 400 card cube. I have a sneaking suspicion that Brutal Hordechief is a little bit better than we all gave it credit for initially. It's a perfectly cromulent splashable 4-drop for aggro in a color that needs one, and it's disgusting in B/R or B/W tokens (both of which see play here) as a pseudo-anthem on a stick. It's also one of the few playable lifegain cards in black, so I wouldn't be too put off putting it in a generic midrange deck to offset black's tendency to savage your life total. I know it didn't really pass muster for your group, wtwlf, but it's been lovely for us over here. It's a utility knife, in other words, and I value the hell out of versatility.
I'm a little bit more down on Monastery Mentor than you are, since it's great in theory but less so in practice (we don't really play many light-creature aggro decks, and our control decks are pretty keen on sweepers), so it's a bit narrow for my liking. And Soulfire Grand Warden's activated ability reeks a little bit of Dualcaster Mage to me in that it's a bit pricey. Don't get me wrong, I'm happy with both of them, but I'm not sure they're the staple-for-years cards I thought they were a month ago.
Still, though. If all we got from this set was Warden of the First Tree, dayenu.