MTG Salvation

Quote from LucidVision »

Too slow imo in a slot that’s too stacked.
It’s only application is aggressive and recursive durability is not the axis you want to attack on with a heavy red deck.

no interest

What's the axis on which you'd want to attack on with red aggro?

With the caveat that I haven't been able to cube for a long time outside of MTGO cubes... My constant experience with "standard" powered cubes has been that red aggro is just worse than white aggro. White has all the best toys: removal that can hit anything, one-drops that help blank removal and blockers, Wrath-proof two-drops, Bolt-proof three-drops and several flavors of 4-drops that give you longevity (PWs) or end the game if you're even just a tiny bit ahead on board ('Geddons).

Red aggro feels one-note, much more likely to fold to a Wrath, has little options in terms of grinding back from bad board positions. I'm drawn to the idea of red threats that keep coming back. Is my impression of red completely off, and/or have new cards like Laelia changed things?

I'd like to hear more on the reasoning here - assume I have a "high-octane" unpowered cube - competitive but without P8 (Timetwister is fine), Library of Alexandria, Sol Ring or Mana Crypt. What does Lutri, quite concretely, do that gives the drafter that picks the card such an edge?

I think this kind of tax is, in the end, too weak. Thalia can prevent them from getting their PW down on a crucial turn, but once the PW is down, adding a tax of one mana to an already free spell seems anemic. I could imagine a scenario where they need to activate JTMS to dig for a fifth land to cast a spell that turns the board to their favor, but not really much else?

Quote from wtwlf123 »

I don't love the cards, but they're solid and effective, so they're in. If I had one instant-speed Incendiary Flow (to give me a "strictly better" Incinerate/Spear variant) and maybe one more utility burn spell along the lines of Abrade, that might spell the end for the Incinerate clones for me.

This. Some other potential scenarios I can come up with:

* Power creep on creatures getting to the point that a certain threshold of aggro creatures simply can't be killed with three direct damage
* More ridiculous cheap divisible burn cards like Arc Trail getting printed
* Cheap red temporary card advantage spells getting better

How? With Ponder, you get to shuffle, then draw. You lose that mode here anyway. Ponder always nets you a card, here you have a chance of whiffing. There are benefits to putting the cards on the bottom I guess, but I still wouldn't call this a Ponder on steroids under any circumstances.

I actually still have Outpost Siege in my cube - included it in 450, IIRC, because I couldn't find a copy of some red staple in my collection and it was sold out in my LGS. I quite liked Siege, and it was practically always there for CA and used for damage mode possibly once. Gonna test this in its place in 540. I think one possibly janky red 4 is acceptable there.

Not them, but as someone who's fond of Reveillark even though I try to remain critical of cards like this... Picking Reveillark early if there's not a completely bonkers card in the pack can be though of as a pretty cheap speculative pick that doesn't commit you too much, but if you get passed a bunch of bonkers 2 power creatures and other ETB enablers, hey, even more reason to pick them. I'd pick it about as high as Purphoros or Crystal Shard. In general, I think it's completely fine to pick build-around cards early in cube if you know that the cube has enough support.

I've had a couple crazy 'Lark decks in different cubes, but I will admit sometimes breaking the card can feel pretty hard. It absolutely needs a deck that can otherwise win with it's 2 power creatures and other threats, or enough draw or tutoring to set up a value engine. Reading older threads and descriptions of card choices for cubes years ago, I think 'Lark might've been a lot more versatile some years back when aggro decks in most cubes just couldn't be as fast and consistent as nowadays, and adding a potentially value-generating five-drop was more reasonable.

The back half, without having to flip, is strictly better than Gaea's Cradle. Even if I were running Powered, that would feel kind of wrong. A land is not supposed to better than Cradle/Academy/Maze.

Man, on one hand I hate trolling and aggressive out-of-place arguments, but on the other hand, this is the best thread in a while.

Also, what kind of a person plays Legacy FFA? Are we talking a casual multiplayer fun hour at an LGS where someone just joins in with a Legacy deck? That's like the people who have $5000+ competitive 1v1 EDH Storm decks that ask to join a group of kids playing with the newest Commander precons.

^ This. It's also pretty easy to draft an "almost constructed" deck in cube and once you have such a deck, Gifts is really good value.

It probably works best with green due to all of the Regrowth effects, and now that we have Magus of the Crucible, UGx Loam is even more of an archetype.

Quote from SirPicaro »

Quote from LucidVision »

Too slow imo in a slot that’s too stacked.
It’s only application is aggressive and recursive durability is not the axis you want to attack on with a heavy red deck.

no interest

What's the axis on which you'd want to attack on with red aggro?

With the caveat that I haven't been able to cube for a long time outside of MTGO cubes... My constant experience with "standard" powered cubes has been that red aggro is just worse than white aggro. White has all the best toys: removal that can hit anything, one-drops that help blank removal and blockers, Wrath-proof two-drops, Bolt-proof three-drops and several flavors of 4-drops that give you longevity (PWs) or end the game if you're even just a tiny bit ahead on board ('Geddons).

Red aggro feels one-note, much more likely to fold to a Wrath, has little options in terms of grinding back from bad board positions. I'm drawn to the idea of red threats that keep coming back. Is my impression of red completely off, and/or have new cards like Laelia changed things?

Red aggro has gotten much stronger over the last couple years.
It think it's actually the strongest aggressive color, better than both white and black.

One reason is the extreme amount of efficient card advantage packed onto aggressive threats, such as:
Ragavan, Nimble Pilferer
Bonecrusher Giant
Robber of the Rich
Light up the Stage
Laelia, the Blade Reforged

If you're running a low curve (which red wants to do), red might now sneakily be the best card advantage color over blue - blue card draw is much slower and just can't match the rate / efficiency of red, although it still has the best cantrips / card selection by far.

Plus all the Goblin Rabblemaster variants still set the standard for 3 cmc goldfish damage output.

It also obviously has the best go to the face burn as well as lots of great creatures with etb removal.

That being said, I'm not a fan of this card.

As an aside, I think this might be the best mono-red card in the cube.

I don't think people understand how good casting cards from your sideboard is. It's free guaranteed card advantage and a threat. That you're guaranteed to have. That can't be disrupted because it's never in your hand. It has flash. It can be played in 70% of decks (more, actually, since any deck that can even remotely cast it off of like a Coalition Relic or a couple City/Birds effects can cast it too). It guarantees that red beatdown decks will ALWAYS have a 3-power 3-drop. It guarantees that tempo decks will always have a threat to cast in on T3 when they leave their mana open to cast other spells. And if it ever copies anything, you're getting at least +2 card advantage. That's a 2-for-0 mind you, which is the same card advantage rate as a 3-for-1, like Ancestral Recall is. Except you always have it, it impacts the board and... you don't have to draw it. It's not the same as always having it on top of your library to start the game, and it's better than an "8-card hand" with this as one of the cards.

I can't put it any other way than "If you don't think this among the best cards in the cube, you're 100% misevaluating it". The real question is about figuring out where among the top 20 powered cube cards does this will ultimately land.

Quote from SirPicaro »

Is there any way ATM to view your cube the way it was when it was 450 or 540? I'm thinking of including green aggro in unpowered 540 and just wanted to have a reference for numbers and what I can afford to include in terms of space.

Go look at my cube: https://www.cubetutor.com/viewcube/11937 It's not super current, but it was pretty in line with wtwlf123's when I was keeping this list updated.

This list was close to his years ago, just realized it's not super aggro for green as far as lots of 1 drops. I think he supported green aggro better like a year after I stopped updating.

If you go to Cube Tutor and search 'wtwlf' you will get a bunch of cubes where people have copied the cube list over the years, so that may be of help.

Quote from hoodwink »

Wait, so does everyone think these are better than signets? I always thought the conventional wisdom was the opposite.

Signets sometimes lead to situations where you have two islands and a blue signet, with Force Spike and Counterspell in hand, but can't keep both up because of the way Signets filter. Talismans let you cast both. Talismans also let you cast a talisman turn 2 and follow it up with a 1-drop, where Signets only let you cast the Signet turn 2.

I think Alesha is much better, but I think the fact that this functions as an entirely mono-black card makes it a pretty decent option.

FWIW, I think Ophiomancer, Flesh Carver and Drana are much better than this creature will turn out to be.

I feel like this set is full of cube traps. There are so many cards that look insane on their face but when you step back and evaluate the cards in the context of various cube archetypes or its strength relative to current inclusions in your cube you realize this isn't what you're looking for.

This is true for Brightling, Arcane Artisan, Spellseeker, Najeela, the Blade-Blossom, Bramble Sovereign, Arena Rector, and Mindblade Render.

That isn't to say I don't think a few of these still merit testing, but so far the only slam dunk is Will Kenrith IMO.