This is a weird card flavor wise. An axe that makes copies of itself when it draws blood? Eh...what?
Maybe it will be really effective giving one dude multiple axes. This is sort of like pay 2 to level up your attacker and they get +2/+0. Decent mana sink I suppose. Cool in Stax decks as the token is a permanent you can sac. Random metacraft enabler? I'm unsure what to think of this card.
Thanks Spike Rogue for keeping this thread going for so long. It's great revisiting some of these cards since cubing has evolved a lot from when some of these cards were originally introduced.
As far as Imperious Perfect, I would agree with others that it hasn't aged too well. Most cubes have gotten faster and more efficient over the years and so this card is a turn late and doing just a tad too little for G, tap.
I'm also not excited about this for elf tribal, which might seem weird. But +1/+1 and a token is not what I think elf decks want to do anyway. They are better when generating tons of mana and not swinging unless you are doing an overrun (craterhoof). When I was pushing elf tribal more, I considered the more important card Wirewood Symbiote because it abused Rofellos, Hermit and saved key cards from removal. That's a card worth throwing in a list if you want to make an elf deck come together. The only elf lord I would consider in cube is Ezuri, Renegade Leader because of the overrun effect.
On a related note for those considering more zombie tribal support.. I don't think it's worth it. And this is NOT coming from the normal anti-tribal sentiment of the forum. I am someone who believes you can successfully run Goblin tribal in cube if you really want to do it. Zombies tribal though, there just isn't enough payoff IMO. Both Goblins and Elves offer combo potential - that's why I believe they are supportable as a tribe. Zombie tribal has a lot less to offer on that front IMO, so what exactly is the payoff for a narrow card in your cube? When you go off with Wirewood or Goblin Piledriver, they can just win you the game. What zombie card does that because you have a critical mass of zombies in your deck?
You bring up a good point about cube size though, which also extends to how a cube is drafted and by how many people. If you see substantially less than 100% of the cube in a draft, the power of decks will go down. But it's not even across all cards and archetypes. Linear strategies and those with little redundancy suffer more. That again increases the power of generic value cards, midrange strategies, and archetypes with a ton of redundancy.
This was something I have always struggled with balancing because my group was always inconsistent (how many I'd have) and we tended to experiment a lot with draft formats for variety. I also didn't really understand this dynamic completely until pretty recently so didn't attribute enough of card evaluation to the impact all this has. Different cube sizes and draft formats adds a lot of variability to how a cube plays, making it that much harder to accurately gauge how good cards like Cryptbreaker will be.
For those on the fence about Cryptbreaker, my feeling is it will be too slow and low value in a cube that revolves around tier 1 archetypes where tight deck lists come together often. I have not tested it in that meta so don't know this for certain though.
I think it's mostly semantics. Combo is probably not the right word to use. We can call it degeneracy if that makes it less confusing. Powered cubes revolve around unfair magic. I'm calling it combo because mechanically it's not much different. Reanimation is combo - you cheat in something that you shouldn't be able to have at an early stage of the game. Black Lotus does the same thing. A cube with those cards will revolve around that type of gameplay. It's not a bad thing, it simply changes the value and playability of certain types of cards. Cryptbreaker IMO is a really good example of a card the excels in more fair metas. It's ability is great for getting value out of cards you don't need and later in the game it's a CA engine. Cards like this are great in midrange cubes and often not so great in combo/degenerate cubes.
My list is better suited for the card than most tho...
FWIW, I don't know if that is true honestly. I get that you have multiples (crawler for example), so in theory the zombie synergy is higher. But you are running fully powered. Which means it's heavily combo. Cyrptbreaker is a midrange value card more than anything else, so if it's holding it's own in this sort of meta, to me that indicates it's exceeding expectations. I love this card and it's on the outside looking it in my combo list. I don't think most midrange is good enough. I'd like to be wrong about cryptbreaker though and it's on a short list of things to bring in after I get some iterative testing done (whenever I actually find time to do it).
OG Thalia is my favorite. Lodestone Golem overlaps nicely with it I feel since it’s a similar tax mechanic. Both cards are good in aggressive decks so fit nicely in the disruption theme. Imposing Sovereign is a new addition for me at least, but I think a lot of others have been running it awhile to good effect (I like it quite a bit). New Thalia is good as well.
From there, it’s a bit of a drop off. You can go deep with things like Aven Mindcensor, but I think most other options are a bit narrow and janky. Gaddock Teeg if you really want to go ham and make it Selesnya. But gold cards are awkward to try and hinge things around unless they are first pickable (which Teeg clearly is not in the vast majority of cubes).
I like Stax a great deal as a complimentary package. WB is a pretty loose color combination in combo specifically. There’s good midrange value there but not much else that you can’t do better in other color combinations. And it’s a bit of a liability the more your meta focuses on tier 1 archetypes. If your cube is lower power or a little slower, there’s more to work with though. Tokens get better, you can even slide in things like aristocrats which while RB primarily has some reasonable overlap with tokens in white. Hate bears works well in these strategies since they gain value when the game is extended and that's exactly what tax mechanics do.
Still though, it can be feast or famine and power level will dictate how playable some of this ends up. If other decks are breaking through the hate easily, these decks will look pretty bad since they are not doing anything super unfair. They are just trying to be efficient and just disruptive enough to win before they lose. It's a delicate balance.
I don't like Spirit of the Labyrinth. It dies to a stiff breeze, is easier to kill than a creature also being an enchantment, and has a very narrow hoser effect that crushes certain decks and does nothing against others.
That said, I DO like hate bears as an archetype. I just prefer slightly less polar cards like the Thalia's or Lodestone Golem, etc. I feel like white is the weakest color in cube (particularly in combo). The higher power a cube is, the worse this effects seems to be which is where hate bears gets really interesting. Disruption is more valuable IMO in these types of metas because as degeneracy goes up proactive mechanics generally get more effective than reactive ones. As soon as you've cast whatever horribly broken thing you were planning, that is usually too late. Preventing it's casting is just more effective. In lower powered metas, your gameplay revolves around incremental advantage and in these cases reactive elements can compete (even be OP).
If you only have one slot for one of those lands, I would just run pains across the board. I think they are better than the fast and check lands. Aggro doesn't care about the loss of life and the ETBT conditions on the other two isn't really worth saving some life even for most decks worried about life loss. My 2 cents.
I think Emeria Angel is pretty good. If it lives, it can generate a lot of ongoing value. And once it's done that, the value sticks around after Emeria dies (barring mass removal).
Angel of Condemnation is sort of a hot mess. 50 words of text crammed onto it. The abilities are slow and costly. More importantly, they are dependent on having other cards in play (either your own for blink or your opponents for exile). There are much better removal options in white. There are much better blink options (and I'm not even sure most cube should be over supporting that archetype anyway). I don't see the appeal of Angel of Condemnation personally.
The haste on Vengevine is really valuable for aggressive decks though. Especially great when you can hold it or keep two creatures back and post wrath be pressuring right away. Polukranos is a lot slower and more midrange/ramp. It blocks much better - sure - but if you are playing an aggressive deck and blocking, you probably aren't in a great position. I don't want Polukranos in aggro, personally.
I get that GG is not really ideal since green as the base for aggro is a tad awkward given how shallow the support for it is. That said, a lot of good aggressive cards have been printed in green and I think it's much easier to support these days. Again, this card synergizes with so much. GB in particular gets a lot more resilient with Vengevine. Between black removal to clear the path and things like gravecrawler to help make the recursion on Vengevine easier to trigger (I get that the trigger doesn't work with all recursion - bloodghast for example).
And it doesn't have to be pure aggro either. This is technically a value card. Discard to survival effects, get a dude. Play two dudes and get Vengevine back. Natural Order it away (get it back later by playing some mana critters), etc. Vengevine is plenty good enough in midrange/ramp decks. 4 power is 4 power. People can't ignore it and outside exile style removal it's a pain to get rid of. Bolting this feels real bad when it's back a turn later. Maybe Polukranos is better in slower builds but I'm not even sure that's always going to be true depending on how much value you get out of the recursion and how hard it is in your cube to neutralize a 4 power creature.
I'd make that swap. I love Vengevine (admittedly more than most here). Polukranos, World Eater is maybe more powerful in a vacuum, but vengevine oozes synergy, has a higher ceiling (IMO) and rewards deck building in a very satisfying way. It's an ideal cube card honestly - powerful enough on it's own but just gets much better the more you build around it. This is exactly the sort of card that makes the format so deep. World Eater is big, offers some expensive slow creature removal - I mean, it's fine it's just a bit boring.
Skaab Ruinator + Unearth is sweet. I like ruinator in Dimir Tempo decks, but you definiely need to go deep with the gy support for it to work. It can be done but I don't think a conventional cube list can support it. You'll have to deviate a bit.
Ponder is sweet. I like that it comes with a built in shuffle effect. I like it more than preordain.
Brainstorm is better as it has a much higher ceiling. It's weaker in a vacuum I suppose but I don't think it makes sense to look at cards that way. You really don't need a lot for brainstorm to be better. Any sort of TOL effect. Shuffle effects. Works great with miracles. It's awesome with Tinker/Natural Order. It's great against targeted discard if you need to hide an important spell. The list of uses goes on and on. Ponder is excellent. Brainstorm was a mistake, that's how much better it is.
Maybe it will be really effective giving one dude multiple axes. This is sort of like pay 2 to level up your attacker and they get +2/+0. Decent mana sink I suppose. Cool in Stax decks as the token is a permanent you can sac. Random metacraft enabler? I'm unsure what to think of this card.
As far as Imperious Perfect, I would agree with others that it hasn't aged too well. Most cubes have gotten faster and more efficient over the years and so this card is a turn late and doing just a tad too little for G, tap.
I'm also not excited about this for elf tribal, which might seem weird. But +1/+1 and a token is not what I think elf decks want to do anyway. They are better when generating tons of mana and not swinging unless you are doing an overrun (craterhoof). When I was pushing elf tribal more, I considered the more important card Wirewood Symbiote because it abused Rofellos, Hermit and saved key cards from removal. That's a card worth throwing in a list if you want to make an elf deck come together. The only elf lord I would consider in cube is Ezuri, Renegade Leader because of the overrun effect.
On a related note for those considering more zombie tribal support.. I don't think it's worth it. And this is NOT coming from the normal anti-tribal sentiment of the forum. I am someone who believes you can successfully run Goblin tribal in cube if you really want to do it. Zombies tribal though, there just isn't enough payoff IMO. Both Goblins and Elves offer combo potential - that's why I believe they are supportable as a tribe. Zombie tribal has a lot less to offer on that front IMO, so what exactly is the payoff for a narrow card in your cube? When you go off with Wirewood or Goblin Piledriver, they can just win you the game. What zombie card does that because you have a critical mass of zombies in your deck?
You bring up a good point about cube size though, which also extends to how a cube is drafted and by how many people. If you see substantially less than 100% of the cube in a draft, the power of decks will go down. But it's not even across all cards and archetypes. Linear strategies and those with little redundancy suffer more. That again increases the power of generic value cards, midrange strategies, and archetypes with a ton of redundancy.
This was something I have always struggled with balancing because my group was always inconsistent (how many I'd have) and we tended to experiment a lot with draft formats for variety. I also didn't really understand this dynamic completely until pretty recently so didn't attribute enough of card evaluation to the impact all this has. Different cube sizes and draft formats adds a lot of variability to how a cube plays, making it that much harder to accurately gauge how good cards like Cryptbreaker will be.
For those on the fence about Cryptbreaker, my feeling is it will be too slow and low value in a cube that revolves around tier 1 archetypes where tight deck lists come together often. I have not tested it in that meta so don't know this for certain though.
FWIW, I don't know if that is true honestly. I get that you have multiples (crawler for example), so in theory the zombie synergy is higher. But you are running fully powered. Which means it's heavily combo. Cyrptbreaker is a midrange value card more than anything else, so if it's holding it's own in this sort of meta, to me that indicates it's exceeding expectations. I love this card and it's on the outside looking it in my combo list. I don't think most midrange is good enough. I'd like to be wrong about cryptbreaker though and it's on a short list of things to bring in after I get some iterative testing done (whenever I actually find time to do it).
From there, it’s a bit of a drop off. You can go deep with things like Aven Mindcensor, but I think most other options are a bit narrow and janky. Gaddock Teeg if you really want to go ham and make it Selesnya. But gold cards are awkward to try and hinge things around unless they are first pickable (which Teeg clearly is not in the vast majority of cubes).
I like Stax a great deal as a complimentary package. WB is a pretty loose color combination in combo specifically. There’s good midrange value there but not much else that you can’t do better in other color combinations. And it’s a bit of a liability the more your meta focuses on tier 1 archetypes. If your cube is lower power or a little slower, there’s more to work with though. Tokens get better, you can even slide in things like aristocrats which while RB primarily has some reasonable overlap with tokens in white. Hate bears works well in these strategies since they gain value when the game is extended and that's exactly what tax mechanics do.
Still though, it can be feast or famine and power level will dictate how playable some of this ends up. If other decks are breaking through the hate easily, these decks will look pretty bad since they are not doing anything super unfair. They are just trying to be efficient and just disruptive enough to win before they lose. It's a delicate balance.
That said, I DO like hate bears as an archetype. I just prefer slightly less polar cards like the Thalia's or Lodestone Golem, etc. I feel like white is the weakest color in cube (particularly in combo). The higher power a cube is, the worse this effects seems to be which is where hate bears gets really interesting. Disruption is more valuable IMO in these types of metas because as degeneracy goes up proactive mechanics generally get more effective than reactive ones. As soon as you've cast whatever horribly broken thing you were planning, that is usually too late. Preventing it's casting is just more effective. In lower powered metas, your gameplay revolves around incremental advantage and in these cases reactive elements can compete (even be OP).
Favorite elemental is definitely Reveillark, though I also love Vengevine.
Angel of Condemnation is sort of a hot mess. 50 words of text crammed onto it. The abilities are slow and costly. More importantly, they are dependent on having other cards in play (either your own for blink or your opponents for exile). There are much better removal options in white. There are much better blink options (and I'm not even sure most cube should be over supporting that archetype anyway). I don't see the appeal of Angel of Condemnation personally.
I get that GG is not really ideal since green as the base for aggro is a tad awkward given how shallow the support for it is. That said, a lot of good aggressive cards have been printed in green and I think it's much easier to support these days. Again, this card synergizes with so much. GB in particular gets a lot more resilient with Vengevine. Between black removal to clear the path and things like gravecrawler to help make the recursion on Vengevine easier to trigger (I get that the trigger doesn't work with all recursion - bloodghast for example).
And it doesn't have to be pure aggro either. This is technically a value card. Discard to survival effects, get a dude. Play two dudes and get Vengevine back. Natural Order it away (get it back later by playing some mana critters), etc. Vengevine is plenty good enough in midrange/ramp decks. 4 power is 4 power. People can't ignore it and outside exile style removal it's a pain to get rid of. Bolting this feels real bad when it's back a turn later. Maybe Polukranos is better in slower builds but I'm not even sure that's always going to be true depending on how much value you get out of the recursion and how hard it is in your cube to neutralize a 4 power creature.
Brainstorm is better as it has a much higher ceiling. It's weaker in a vacuum I suppose but I don't think it makes sense to look at cards that way. You really don't need a lot for brainstorm to be better. Any sort of TOL effect. Shuffle effects. Works great with miracles. It's awesome with Tinker/Natural Order. It's great against targeted discard if you need to hide an important spell. The list of uses goes on and on. Ponder is excellent. Brainstorm was a mistake, that's how much better it is.