I think these are significant. I mainly protest when the card, on its own, seems like it should do something and then doesn't. For example, Whippoorwill doesn't fly.
Whippoorwill is a bizarre card for lots of flavor reasons. Why in gods name is that ability green and on a small bird that exists in the real world? Is there something about whippoorwills what I never learned that would make this ability make sense? It should be on a ghost, or a magic user, or something, not some random woodland creature.
They want Auras to be a thing. Conventional thinking will just have to adjust if they keep pushing that.
Except that Auras still won't be a thing.
Did you miss all of Theros?
Did you miss that the reason that auras were good in theros, heroic and bestow, both serve to counteract what is generally the biggest problem - getting 2-for-1'ed?
Making the +1 last until your next turn would be far too powerful. There needs to be some downside to a 3/3 first striker for 2 that's also a walker. I think we can sacrifice a little elegance to control the power level, which is already probably too high.
Under the influence of type changing cards maybe? An enchant artifact with mycosynth lattice in play? Add March of the Machines and without that rule, Rancor could rancor itself.
Could it though? It couldn't from hand, because it would still need a target in play. Maybe with aura finesse or aura graft?
Edit - Not with aura graft as it specifies another permanent, so maybe you could do it with finesse?
Yeah, while this guy is going to be fantastic in normal limited, just not enough going for it to make it in normal, small cubes. The color intensive cost and super fragile body just kills it, along with how many other amazing 3-drops white has.
Why have I not thought of this or seen this in action?!
Well, it did hit dorks fairly often, and it's also not great if you get a hornet queen or grave titan in play and essentially give your opponent a free creature every turn for the rest of the game, but it seemed to be a pretty good alternate plan and way to deal with aggro. I also killed it with woodfall primus in one game to stop my opponent getting a trigger.
I play in Flutter's playgroup and we played your cube a couple weeks ago. I think we all had a blast, although I'm not sure if I'd want to draft such a crazy cube weekly =P
General thoughts - I think you succeeded really well in making a combo cube. Almost every deck drafted had a comboey way to win, although since we were only drafting with 5 the attempted storm deck didn't come together as well as it could have. That being said, the "fair" decks that got drafted also seemed competitive which is nice to see. I admit I was a little worried that the cube would really only be able to make combo decks, but the second place deck was a 3-color aggro control with some powerful interactions (bloodghast, carrion feeder, and fetch lands, double stroke on path to exile) and powerful fair cards like jitte. He did also have key/vault, but I don't know if he ever won that way.
My biggest concern, and again this may be because we didn't see the whole cube, was the lack of GY hate. I drafted the straight nuts BG reanimator deck with bazaar of baghdad, reanimate, necromancy, recurring nightmare, various mana dorks, and survival and once I got guys in the yard other decks had no way to get rid of them or really interrupt my plan in any meaningful way short of counterspells (I was also running oath of druids). My reanimation targets were terrastadon, primus, grave titan, sundering titan, and hornet queen so removal just didn't do much against me either. Granted, this was a limited sample size, but just in our experience reanimator seemed really hard to deal with.
P.S. - muzzio's preperations with woodfall primus is pretty hilarious, especially with recurring nightmare. Those are the kind of cube interactions I love to see and play with.
P.P.S. - Oath of druidsing into hornet queen to stabilize at 5 life is a good feeling.
Ok at killing you really fast. In a 4 person game you are taking 4 damage every round, and you better believe that with drawing 5 cards a round you are going to be a big target.
The fact that both the token and the card itself grow rather than checking number of forests 1 time is definitely a plus, although you will still occasionally end up with 2 3/3's in 2 color decks. That said, you still end up with 2 non-evasive creatures that can be chumped till the end of time and one of them has all the inherent weaknesses of tokens. I am leaning towards not playable in small cubes because 6 drops need to be super impactful there and this guy is horrendous to cheat into play, but he does pass the vindicate test fairly well so I wouldn't be surprised if some cubes find a place for him.
I'm not sure it's that much better than dungrove elder though.
Carrion Feeder has been working out decently here. It's been good against enemy Control Magic and Treachery, even though you rarely get to see it in action, it's a good amount of virtual card advantage.
He's somewhere between a 2/2-3/3 for us consistently, although I've seen him at 5/5 before, which isn't bad for a B spell.
I'm going to give him some more time in the cube, but at this point I'm on the fence with him. I'm likely going to cut him for a non-aggro card in the future. I think I'd play him at 450 though.
We actually drafted your cube recently, and the 2nd place deck was an oddball rakdos aggro/control deck (splashing white for a double stroked path to exile)...thing that used feeder and bloodghast to great effect. Have to say it upped my opinion of this guy a lot. The no block clause really hurt it against my deck (I ended up winning with an insane BG reanimator deck where bazaar was my clear standout card), but it got a lot of damage in every game it came down early.
I think generally if you support sac combos and/or zombie aggro, he's worth testing for sure to see if your group likes him.
I dunno, it was just a thought for a new and interesting archetype. I mean, people run cards like Sphinx of the Steel Wind just to support Tinker/Reanimate decks, and cards like Wildfire that are only good in a specific deck built around them. I think if there were more than one interesting expensive aura, there might be something to this deck, but the second best thing outside of Eldrazi Conscription is Mythic Proportions, which is just straight worse.
How's about:
Savage Essence 4GG
Enchantment - Aura
Enchant creature
Flash, Split second
Enchanted creature gets +6/+6 and gains Hexproof, Trample, and Indestructible.
This at least
A) Is a pretty sweet card in a ramp deck, because it can be played as a killer combat trick/removal trump
B) Is immune to the standard weaknesses of auras
C) Makes the dude a pretty sick six drop
D) Is also good as an Auratouched target because good luck dealing with it.
The reason reanimator works so well is because it's heavily supported, almost all of the cards are playable in other archetypes (tinker, super ramp, etc) and the reanimation spells are fine in normal decks as a way to recur your value creatures or take your opponent's best creature after you kill it.
Which is why I would really like auras like this one. I'm not sure if it's too powerful, but if there were more auras like this that ramp or even midrange decks would be happy playing, that get value by countering a removal spell (and making it much harder to get 2-for-1'ed) and making your ramp elves into insane threats later on and also work well with auratouched mage effects, it might make it a viable package to run.
I think i'd also like a trinket-mage, auratouched mage combo guy to fetch little auras.
Minitouched Mage
1WW
Creature - Human wizard
2/2
When ~ enters the battlefield, search your library for an aura card with converted mana cost 3 or less that could enchant it. If ~ is still s still on the battlefield, put that Aura card onto the battlefield attached to it. Otherwise (put it onto the battlefield attached to another creature you control/put it into your hand). Shuffle.
Obviously this would need some balancing, but it you let you fetch value auras like rancor, would be great in peasant or pauper cube if appropriately raritied for grabbing armadillo cloak/unflinching courage, and might make more borderline auras cubable because you don't get blown out so much by removal.
I don't think it works with Mindslaver, actually, which is why I left that of my list.
See here for the Rings of Brighthearth interaction, which is equivalent.
Ah, yup, you just double-control the next turn, which is meaningless. For some reason I assumed it was worded like, and would work like, "take an extra turn" effects. Although it would let you control 2 players' turns in a multiplayer game.
Yes, seems like a narrow card like you say. But if someone runs the Time Vault combo anyways, maybe this card is worth testing. Although i suspect that it isn't good enough there either. The number of cards that interact in a very favorable way with it is too low even for smaller cubes.
I think if you run the time vault combo it might be worth it to have redundancies for voltaic key, but if all you want is redundancy for that specific combo there are many better ways to untap permanents at 4 or less mana (ral, koira's follower, aphetto alchemist, galvanic key, etc) so I think this guy has to rise and fall on his other interactions.
It's nice that his body is OK for the cost, although if he could have been a 4/4 and dodged a lot more removal it obviously would have been better. He does go infinite with grim monolith and basalt monolith if you have any way to turn colorless mana into red mana, but I imagine most cubes don't. However, he still lets you trade every R for 3 or 2 colorless mana, which should let you power out some fatties. Additionally, in our cube, he makes the following artifacts better in a meaningful way - erratic portal, icy manipulator, mimic vat, coalition relic (letting you spend R to bank an extra charge counter), ratchet bomb (you can ramp up counters faster), jitte, moletn-tail, and cursed scroll. That's actually a fair number of targets, and we don't even have an artifacts matter subtheme. I think he's not good enough for our cube, but in bigger cubes or cubes with more artifacts, I think he's testable. One mana to copy an effect is a very low cost. Would be amazing if you ran mindslaver lol.
Any card becoming boomerang as a + ability on a 2 mana PW is absurdly good. That + would need to be something else
The green guys 0 is not land grant. Did you mean crop rotation?
Whippoorwill is a bizarre card for lots of flavor reasons. Why in gods name is that ability green and on a small bird that exists in the real world? Is there something about whippoorwills what I never learned that would make this ability make sense? It should be on a ghost, or a magic user, or something, not some random woodland creature.
Did you miss that the reason that auras were good in theros, heroic and bestow, both serve to counteract what is generally the biggest problem - getting 2-for-1'ed?
Could it though? It couldn't from hand, because it would still need a target in play. Maybe with aura finesse or aura graft?
Edit - Not with aura graft as it specifies another permanent, so maybe you could do it with finesse?
Well, it did hit dorks fairly often, and it's also not great if you get a hornet queen or grave titan in play and essentially give your opponent a free creature every turn for the rest of the game, but it seemed to be a pretty good alternate plan and way to deal with aggro. I also killed it with woodfall primus in one game to stop my opponent getting a trigger.
General thoughts - I think you succeeded really well in making a combo cube. Almost every deck drafted had a comboey way to win, although since we were only drafting with 5 the attempted storm deck didn't come together as well as it could have. That being said, the "fair" decks that got drafted also seemed competitive which is nice to see. I admit I was a little worried that the cube would really only be able to make combo decks, but the second place deck was a 3-color aggro control with some powerful interactions (bloodghast, carrion feeder, and fetch lands, double stroke on path to exile) and powerful fair cards like jitte. He did also have key/vault, but I don't know if he ever won that way.
My biggest concern, and again this may be because we didn't see the whole cube, was the lack of GY hate. I drafted the straight nuts BG reanimator deck with bazaar of baghdad, reanimate, necromancy, recurring nightmare, various mana dorks, and survival and once I got guys in the yard other decks had no way to get rid of them or really interrupt my plan in any meaningful way short of counterspells (I was also running oath of druids). My reanimation targets were terrastadon, primus, grave titan, sundering titan, and hornet queen so removal just didn't do much against me either. Granted, this was a limited sample size, but just in our experience reanimator seemed really hard to deal with.
P.S. - muzzio's preperations with woodfall primus is pretty hilarious, especially with recurring nightmare. Those are the kind of cube interactions I love to see and play with.
P.P.S. - Oath of druidsing into hornet queen to stabilize at 5 life is a good feeling.
Ok at killing you really fast. In a 4 person game you are taking 4 damage every round, and you better believe that with drawing 5 cards a round you are going to be a big target.
I agree that the interactions with wildfire and earthquake are cool though.
I'm not sure it's that much better than dungrove elder though.
We actually drafted your cube recently, and the 2nd place deck was an oddball rakdos aggro/control deck (splashing white for a double stroked path to exile)...thing that used feeder and bloodghast to great effect. Have to say it upped my opinion of this guy a lot. The no block clause really hurt it against my deck (I ended up winning with an insane BG reanimator deck where bazaar was my clear standout card), but it got a lot of damage in every game it came down early.
I think generally if you support sac combos and/or zombie aggro, he's worth testing for sure to see if your group likes him.
The reason reanimator works so well is because it's heavily supported, almost all of the cards are playable in other archetypes (tinker, super ramp, etc) and the reanimation spells are fine in normal decks as a way to recur your value creatures or take your opponent's best creature after you kill it.
Which is why I would really like auras like this one. I'm not sure if it's too powerful, but if there were more auras like this that ramp or even midrange decks would be happy playing, that get value by countering a removal spell (and making it much harder to get 2-for-1'ed) and making your ramp elves into insane threats later on and also work well with auratouched mage effects, it might make it a viable package to run.
I think i'd also like a trinket-mage, auratouched mage combo guy to fetch little auras.
Minitouched Mage
1WW
Creature - Human wizard
2/2
When ~ enters the battlefield, search your library for an aura card with converted mana cost 3 or less that could enchant it. If ~ is still s still on the battlefield, put that Aura card onto the battlefield attached to it. Otherwise (put it onto the battlefield attached to another creature you control/put it into your hand). Shuffle.
Obviously this would need some balancing, but it you let you fetch value auras like rancor, would be great in peasant or pauper cube if appropriately raritied for grabbing armadillo cloak/unflinching courage, and might make more borderline auras cubable because you don't get blown out so much by removal.
Ah, yup, you just double-control the next turn, which is meaningless. For some reason I assumed it was worded like, and would work like, "take an extra turn" effects. Although it would let you control 2 players' turns in a multiplayer game.
I think if you run the time vault combo it might be worth it to have redundancies for voltaic key, but if all you want is redundancy for that specific combo there are many better ways to untap permanents at 4 or less mana (ral, koira's follower, aphetto alchemist, galvanic key, etc) so I think this guy has to rise and fall on his other interactions.
It's nice that his body is OK for the cost, although if he could have been a 4/4 and dodged a lot more removal it obviously would have been better. He does go infinite with grim monolith and basalt monolith if you have any way to turn colorless mana into red mana, but I imagine most cubes don't. However, he still lets you trade every R for 3 or 2 colorless mana, which should let you power out some fatties. Additionally, in our cube, he makes the following artifacts better in a meaningful way - erratic portal, icy manipulator, mimic vat, coalition relic (letting you spend R to bank an extra charge counter), ratchet bomb (you can ramp up counters faster), jitte, moletn-tail, and cursed scroll. That's actually a fair number of targets, and we don't even have an artifacts matter subtheme. I think he's not good enough for our cube, but in bigger cubes or cubes with more artifacts, I think he's testable. One mana to copy an effect is a very low cost. Would be amazing if you ran mindslaver lol.