MTG Salvation

Not going to the face has had me pull abrade from time to time. What stopped me from running dredbore is the fact that efficient removal no longer excites me for gold cards. Yes I still run some of them. I won't blame anyone for running this but I loathe to take up guild slots with cards like this. I find it like this will just be a give to the boros drafter or person with ample fixing late in a pack rather than make anyone go into the guild.

When I finally pulled the swords from my cube (tired of protection) I really started to think about how many pieces of equipment/vehicles I wanted. I fundamentally think they are great (primarily in aggro). But how many do you want in a deck or in your opening hand? one or two max? How many in the deck maybe 3 max? In a way this reminds me of Fleetwheel cruiser. No random narrow upside but it does slap as a threat, and sits there as a bump for your little aggro guys.

I never liked fleetwheel as just a vehicle or just as a threat but straddling that line was the god part.

I suspect this God feels good as being flexible. However being WW probably kills it for me in my small cube.

Thanks for this

I think it is fair to note that Agadeeem is triple black, meaning you have to draw 4 black mana sources before playing it. Not a deal breaker by any means but a downside that plays better in black heavy decks, which is why it slides behind the green and white for me. But that is silly because I'm trying all the non blue ones. It has been a while since I wanted to try so many cards.

Oddly enough I might be most excited for the mammoth, as I expect it to see more action than the big flip cards. I have always like playing cards like Rhonas and surrak, this besaty will do well there.

A few cards you are missing for me, but I can't argue this time as the set is deep.

Quote from happyjosiah »

This set is pretty overwhelming for 360 cubes for sure. I'm kind of tempted to let the dust settle a bit and see some results from other people before making huge amounts of changes.

I of where I am at. I will be cracking a box of collectors boosters and just play around with whatever is in there. For sure I will pursue the Naya colored mythic flip cards and do a bit of wait and see. We are getting so much turnover now I am less likely to jump on my full list right away. Certain cards like Shark Typhoon stand out enough for me to invest in foil alt art (many of the flip lands are on that list) but even at 360, I might have a list of 15-20 I am excited about. I think I will wait for the full spoiler to really think this through.

My point was not to compare the two in power level. My point was to have a real discussion about how this is gonna get played as we all get to run it practically for free.


I get the how good the mechanic is, I just feel like the use cases are different from the red and green. Maybe not enough to not run some of these but it certainly is relevant on when you pick these in drafts and what you try to do with them. Most likely I will find room for all of these except the blue one, but black will be hard to find a cut for.

I can't imagine cutting student or restoration angel. Not sure of the exact cut yet, won't worry about it until I actually get one. But my initial guess is this is a top 40 white section cube card. Trim an extra one drop, three drop, walker, whatever you are running too much of. This card shouldn't really compete with existing cards as white has no flood insurance otherwise.

Quote from wtwlf123 »

I really like this card. I like the tapland option more than cycling, and I plan on testing this. Having land options strapped to cards opens up opportunities to keep opening hands that even cycling can't make available. I value the ability to play this as a tapland on T1 and keep a hand I'd otherwise have to mulligan more than the ability to cycle a card away if it's dead late. Just my personal playstyle I guess.

I think people are missing this point. Both this and the cyling cards get dumped early but I really like this in the 3-4 land opening hands. You can counter a critical spell or hold it back if you are worried about. This seems like a card you play in a deck that might want 18 lands. While the other cards spells cards go in place of 1 of the 17. It is more screw insurance than flood insurance.

Quote from wtwlf123 »

True enough dschumm, there's definitely a cost with the real estate it takes up. Hard to find room in a super small cube, for sure. I just want to experiment with all these mythic ones, because there seems to be so much potential for such a low cost. But I'm 100% on board with tiny cubes struggling to find cuts. Even in my large cube, whatever the cut winds up being will almost assuredly be hard. I just want to test it out to see if that difficult cut might still be the correct one.

reminds me of the triomes in a way. I think they are awesome. I was determined to test them. I did. I liked them. Then I cut them. I think a lot of the flip lands will be the same for me. I can always make room in white though.

It's not that I hate it. I think your argument has value,so much so that all of these will see crazy constructed and edh play so it will be plenty expensive. My issue is that my cube only has so many cards. I am a huge advocate of high land % of lands in your cube to make more picks matter but I am really trying to wrap my head around how many games a seven mana does not affect the board card will be cast. 10% of games? I am probably on board. 5% of games or 2% of games, I am not so sure.

So you are absolutely right, having a cad that makes a big comeback 2-5% of the time and minimal deck building cost... That is amazeballs. Placing a card into my tight blue 360 cube section is a real cost though. Compared to a solid card that makes a medium impact in 25% of games. Or a narrow but powerful card that makes a impact in 80% of games if it gets played? That is what we have to decide. Castle Vantress has a minimal deck building cost and is seeing very few people include it in cube because of the cube building cost.

I always thought dualcaster mage might be worth it as a fork variant in cube if it only cast 1 less. This is much worse as it does not have flash and has a cmc limit.

Checking out your list is one of my favorite things about spoiler season! Twinshot Sniper is a card that is certainly growing on me - I particularly appreciated you sharing the shriekmaw comparison, which hadn't occurred to me.

Something I like about this set is that there seems to be a high density of cards that interact with multiple archetypes. I find myself more drawn to cards like Sniper from a cube design standpoint because it makes me feel like I'm tinkering with lots of tiny parts that can fit into a deck identity I wish to play. I feel this would contrast with a card like Bosejiu, which feels more like just a strong card that doesn't care too much about what you're building. But ideally my list will find room for both.

Do you feel any pull towards either style of card? Would you prefer to see more of one than the other in future sets? I ask because I feel now more than ever, lists can afford to become more divergent due to there being a wider variety of powerful and interesting cards - some of which may be entirely dependent on the synergies found within a particular cube. If this phenomenon is real, I wonder how it could impact future card discussion. There will always be home runs in the New Card Discussion but I feel like a lot of the time I can't give a simple thumbs-up or -down ... it's like, "Well this card is good if you also have x, y, z ...". I dunno, just curious if that's something you ever think about.

Kamigawa Neon Dynasty Update

NEO is a great set for cube designers looking to support either an enchantments matter theme, an artifacts matter theme, or both. I fall into the first category, which influenced these choices.

Includes:
Spirited Companion replaces Wall of Omens
Touch the Spirit Realm replaces Gideon’s Lawkeeper
Jugan Defends the Temple //Remnant of the Rising Star replaces Awakening Zone

Edit: I’m also adding Swift Reconfiguration from the commander deck. Your Dragon is a now a car.

This card is obviously quite strong, but I don't know whether it'll make my cube because it has no specific synergy. The only cards that fits that bill in my black 2 drop section right now are Dauthi Voidwalker and Dark Confidant. Everything else is either recursive, a discard outlet, or a piece of a specific deck. It's nice you can find this with Stoneforge I guess, and the artifact tag can matter, but it's not like black has any other support for artifact.dec.

I think this looks quite good. It's a way to shoehorn in extra Stoneforge targets, and the card looks quite solid on its own. It can grow pretty large, and will make for a formidable piece of equipment after only a few activations.

I wish it were pushed a little more, it's so close!

Quote from Breathe1234 »

The problem is likely the price ... Likely well over 60$ on release.

I doubt that will be any issue whatsoever with this card. $60 feels quite ambitious for this card consider this is $20-25 all day long and is in a whole different league than this. I'll be pretty surprised if this settles much above $10 after a few weeks pass. Invest as you will but I think if you shell out anything close to $60 for this card, that will not pan out very well for you.

I look forward to testing this one out like everyone else though!

Great and boring. Auto include, but still super boring.

Can't wait to play this alongside cards like Force of Will, Fury, and Snuff Out.

You could make the argument that Night's Whisper and Opt are good enough for my cube - and I will likely agree with you.

But the problem I have with cards like this is they don't really add any value and feels like playing a Pendelhaven/ Great Furance/ Flagstone of Torkir.

I know these are a ton of work, but could we please please please get a top 20 for MH2? It seems so much more relevant to our cubes than AFR.