This one might not be worth it but I was surprised no one mentioned it so far. Are people still running Shadowmage Infiltrator and is this an upgrade or downgrade?
- BIG negative, no Fear. It's possible this comes in and is just a 1/3 waste of a card.
- You reveal the draw, giving your opponent some information.
+ The card you draw drains the opponent. Could be useful in a damage race as this seems to be more of a tempo deck critter.
+ Ninjitsu. This could potentially connect on turn 2, and maybe that low cost can help it get in for a couple early attacks before blockers are deployed. Ninjitsu also helps it connect later in the game (at least once). You can also rebuy the ninjitsu'd creature if it has an etb bonus vendilion clique, etc.
I'd love the dream of going t1 black 1-drop, t2 ninjitsu this in for damage + draw, then leaving counter/removal mana up the rest of the game. I'd have to imagine the ACS is at least sneaking it in on one attack and/or rebuying an etb effect creature, so is that worth trying out?
lim-dul's vault in 2018! i still think this deserves to be in the discussion for dimir's top 5. my group still really likes it.
cons:
card disadvantage
wall of text
life loss can be a real cost if you're close to dead and looking for a specific answer
double the cost and colors for essentially vampiric tutor
may take a long time to resolve for a newer player or someone who doesn't have an exact target in mind
lots of splashier dimir cards. this doesn't necessarily draw you into the color combo
pros
instant speed
2 mana vamp tutor+ is still a pretty good deal
good in the types of dimir decks that normally get drafted here (finds your counterspell, tinker, upheaval, show and tell, reanimation spell, mind twist)
knowing your next 4 draws after the card you tutored for can help with decisions on when to shuffle or how to play out future turns. not a good effect by itself, but still useful when tacked onto an already useful spell
newer players tend to not draft it because of the wall of text which lessens that con
plenty of other single color bombs in blue and black, so maybe the splashy dimir bombs aren't as necessary. vault is closer to strix in that you'll likely play it if you're already leaning toward those colors
went 2-0 in a 3-person draft with monoblack stax this weekend. missing actual smokestack, but i got pretty much everything else i could have dreamed of. t2 braids is hard to beat, busted mana rocks are busted, crucible strip mine is always fun, and masterful ninja showed up in a few games to deal early damage and then get clamped for no mana investment. probably my favorite stax deck i've drafted, was sad i only got to play 2 matches.
after every draft my friends fill out a piece of scrap paper with their name, the name of their deck (which i'll normally tweak to match an existing archetype if it's previously been drafted), their record, and up to 3 cards that they think were exceptional. usually we all discuss it and people will give opinions on other decks as well, in case there is a card they feel was really good against them, but the person playing the card might not have realized how important it was (for example, "i was about to stabilize, but avalanche riders kept me off my mana just long enough for you to get there") but the final choices are made by the deck builder.
on my individual card scores impact cards get extra points. i don't really have a scientific method for the number of extra points each instance of being an impact card is, right now i divide it by the total number of instances of impact cards and multiply by 5000, which works out to ~24 bonus points added to the card's final score at the moment. i'd like to keep that number around 25-50 points, as it gives a little boost to the cards that players are enjoying, but doesn't skew the card's overall score greatly for cards that have been impact cards multiple times. i plan to reset that column every so often or once a card reaches some number of instances of being an impact card.
again, this is my completely unscientific method, but i really wanted input on cards my drafters liked, and i wanted that input to have an impact on card scores.
i appreciate the compliment, you have no idea. i lurk around here quite a bit but rarely comment. the last time i brought this kind of data collection up it was mostly dismissed. luckily for everyone cubetutor does pretty much everything in terms of cube sorting and organization, but i wanted to try to find something meaningful from my group's cube drafts. i don't get people together to draft nearly as often as i'd like, so fiddling with a spreadsheet is one of the main ways i get to interact with my cube.
it's been a long time since i've taken any statistics classes, and cube is about the feel and what drafters like more than anything, but i like messing around with spreadsheets and pretending i can find meaningful results. i'm always interested in seeing what data other cube managers look at and taking suggestions to add to my own.
if you see anything that doesn't make sense or have any suggestions i'd love to hear them.
i think i'd try it in my UN module if it had vigilance. it's still a 6-drop that needs to survive a turn to do anything, but i think a lot of the stronger plays with it would require being able to tap it after attacking. hitting with it and turning it into a vedalken shackles, mana rock, disk, or memory jar would be pretty great. turning it into a birthing pod and saccing it to itself to grab a battlesphere, elesh norn or hornet queen would be pretty epic.
if you exile wurmcoil with this it would just be a 4/4 flying, ll, dt, right? wurmcoil reads "when wurmcoil engine dies..." so i would think you wouldn't get the tokens if seraph died.
I want to add this card as soon as I can pucatrade for it. Besides the opponent being able to sac their own monster, another downside is that some normally good sneak/show/reanimate targets are less good under the opponent's control - titans, griselbrand, elesh norn, anything with lifelink, etc. Better targets would be big dumb beaters with detrimental attack triggers - eldrazi, inkwell, thundermaw, etc.
One question I have is who owns any enters the battlefield triggers. If I give you a hornet queen or avenger of zendikar, I assume you get the tokens as well since it's under your control as it enters the battlefield. Would the caster or receiver get to choose terastodon or sundering titan targets? I'm not sure if there are any vintage-legal cards that set a precedent for this type of interaction.
love pirates, monkeys, and this card. and there are at least a few cuttable red 2's, so this card makes it in at minimum because it's interesting and has minimal competition. the more i think about it though, some of the shine has come off. lots of people have mentioned synergies, can you list some of them to help me back on the hype train?
monkey exiles at end of combat, so no clamp shenanigans
menace does make it a better sword carrier, but most creatures can carry a sword decently
monkey enters attacking, can it get the battlecry buff from hero of oxid ridge and does it trigger hellrider? judge?
2 attacking bodies swing better into a single wall (wall of roots, caryatid, steve, courser). my red aggro decks always seem to run into dumb green creatures with fat butts, but i guess getting through for 1 damage is better than 0.
purphuros and bombardment synergies as others mentioned
first strike and menace are strong when combined, but less useful after a couple turns if she's only swinging for 1.
again, still like the card, just looking for other examples of synergies. i really wanted to clamp the monkey.
i do a module, similar to the others. i agree with calibretto on the conspiracies that only reference one card in your pool to make it more powerful. i also have cards in this group that i don't think are strong enough for my main cube, but i let frequent cubers put one card each of their choice into the board. this module creates additional rules and odd situations to a game that is already very complicated, so i wouldn't want these cards in my main cube. but sometimes my usual group wants to do bizarre or busted things, so the sideboard lets us tweak the game just enough. my cube sideboard is:
UN cards topsy turvy booster tutor (open a "pack" of 15 undrafted cube cards, you get the chosen card for the current game, the whole pack shuffles back into the unused cards at the end of game)
rule-bending cards arcane savant contract from below (we don't play for ante, but if you cast this card you ante the first card you draw off it. your opponent adds that card to their pool if they win. stocking tiger (use a "pack" of 15 undrafted cube cards, you get the cards for the current game, the whole pack shuffles back into the unused cards at the end of game)
thanks! it drives me crazy when i'm searching for an old borderline card on these forums and find out the card name was off by one letter!
i'm not 100% in love with this guy, but it's close enough that i'd like to test. being a weird love-child of finks and solemn makes me at least want to try it a few times. also as i said on another thread, i'd like to get more artifact creatures in my cube (especially true colorless ones). i've decided to call this one "kitchen fox."
people have stated that this competes with the 3rd or 4th best black 6 drops. it seems massacre wurm is the consensus #2, but what are the #3 and 4 this would compete with? or is this grouped with anything cmc 6 or more? just want to make sure i'm not missing any sweet cards in my cube.
this seems great to blink and recur, and i'd like more artifact creatures in my cube to interact with tinker/metalworker/academy. sometimes this will be less than optimal against tokens, but sometimes the removal will be needed and the lifegain may put you out of reach. i agree with everyone about the downsides, but i think it's close enough for me to want to try out.
Just an FYI in that it's not "strictly" better than Impulse. There are situations where you want one of the top three cards MORE than the fourth card down, but you would still like to be able to draw that fourth card afterwards. In those narrow situations this card is actually better. That said, this is included in cubes for redundancies sake, pure and simple.
Strictly better doesn't mean "strictly better in every single possible scenario," otherwise bolt wouldn't be strictly better than shock because if you're at 3 and your opponent is at 2 and has eye for an eye you would rather have shock. Impulseis strictly better than anticipate because for the same mana and at the same speed you get a larger effect. Any other definition of strictly better is meaningless.
On to anticipate - I still run impulse, but it's definitely in the bottom of blue cards. I think I'd need to be around 650+ to want anticipate.
Apologies, as I'm traditionally not one to haggle over semantics. I should have led with a disclaimer of "within the context of situations that can occur with cards tradionally played in cubes outside of Mindslaver effects", as the situation I detailed above is a very real possibility that can occur without any additional card interaction. Again, I know just how far down the rabbit hole talks like these can go, but this is one I feel people should at the least be aware of. Apologies again for possible thread derailing.
also keep in mind for every time there are 2 cards in the top 4 you need but only 1 in the top 3, there is a situation where the 1 card you need is the 4th card, or later in the game if the 10th card from the top wins it for you but the 9th card doesn't. because your deck is (typically) randomized, there is no way to tell where the card you need is, so it is strictly better to look at 4 cards than 3 cards.
This one might not be worth it but I was surprised no one mentioned it so far. Are people still running Shadowmage Infiltrator and is this an upgrade or downgrade?
- BIG negative, no Fear. It's possible this comes in and is just a 1/3 waste of a card.
- You reveal the draw, giving your opponent some information.
+ The card you draw drains the opponent. Could be useful in a damage race as this seems to be more of a tempo deck critter.
+ Ninjitsu. This could potentially connect on turn 2, and maybe that low cost can help it get in for a couple early attacks before blockers are deployed. Ninjitsu also helps it connect later in the game (at least once). You can also rebuy the ninjitsu'd creature if it has an etb bonus vendilion clique, etc.
I'd love the dream of going t1 black 1-drop, t2 ninjitsu this in for damage + draw, then leaving counter/removal mana up the rest of the game. I'd have to imagine the ACS is at least sneaking it in on one attack and/or rebuying an etb effect creature, so is that worth trying out?
cons:
card disadvantage
wall of text
life loss can be a real cost if you're close to dead and looking for a specific answer
double the cost and colors for essentially vampiric tutor
may take a long time to resolve for a newer player or someone who doesn't have an exact target in mind
lots of splashier dimir cards. this doesn't necessarily draw you into the color combo
pros
instant speed
2 mana vamp tutor+ is still a pretty good deal
good in the types of dimir decks that normally get drafted here (finds your counterspell, tinker, upheaval, show and tell, reanimation spell, mind twist)
knowing your next 4 draws after the card you tutored for can help with decisions on when to shuffle or how to play out future turns. not a good effect by itself, but still useful when tacked onto an already useful spell
newer players tend to not draft it because of the wall of text which lessens that con
plenty of other single color bombs in blue and black, so maybe the splashy dimir bombs aren't as necessary. vault is closer to strix in that you'll likely play it if you're already leaning toward those colors
on my individual card scores impact cards get extra points. i don't really have a scientific method for the number of extra points each instance of being an impact card is, right now i divide it by the total number of instances of impact cards and multiply by 5000, which works out to ~24 bonus points added to the card's final score at the moment. i'd like to keep that number around 25-50 points, as it gives a little boost to the cards that players are enjoying, but doesn't skew the card's overall score greatly for cards that have been impact cards multiple times. i plan to reset that column every so often or once a card reaches some number of instances of being an impact card.
again, this is my completely unscientific method, but i really wanted input on cards my drafters liked, and i wanted that input to have an impact on card scores.
it's been a long time since i've taken any statistics classes, and cube is about the feel and what drafters like more than anything, but i like messing around with spreadsheets and pretending i can find meaningful results. i'm always interested in seeing what data other cube managers look at and taking suggestions to add to my own.
if you see anything that doesn't make sense or have any suggestions i'd love to hear them.
tinyurl.com/shuflw
"Decks" tab
Data -> Filter views -> Create new temporary filter view
filter column L to show 3 or 4 wins and column M to show 0 losses.
looks like there are 21 (3/4 and 0) decks out of the 244 decks drafted.
my meta analysis tab also has fun stuff like overall win % of each color combination, theater and deck archetype that has been drafted.
if you exile wurmcoil with this it would just be a 4/4 flying, ll, dt, right? wurmcoil reads "when wurmcoil engine dies..." so i would think you wouldn't get the tokens if seraph died.
One question I have is who owns any enters the battlefield triggers. If I give you a hornet queen or avenger of zendikar, I assume you get the tokens as well since it's under your control as it enters the battlefield. Would the caster or receiver get to choose terastodon or sundering titan targets? I'm not sure if there are any vintage-legal cards that set a precedent for this type of interaction.
monkey exiles at end of combat, so no clamp shenanigans
menace does make it a better sword carrier, but most creatures can carry a sword decently
monkey enters attacking, can it get the battlecry buff from hero of oxid ridge and does it trigger hellrider? judge?
2 attacking bodies swing better into a single wall (wall of roots, caryatid, steve, courser). my red aggro decks always seem to run into dumb green creatures with fat butts, but i guess getting through for 1 damage is better than 0.
purphuros and bombardment synergies as others mentioned
first strike and menace are strong when combined, but less useful after a couple turns if she's only swinging for 1.
again, still like the card, just looking for other examples of synergies. i really wanted to clamp the monkey.
conspiracies:
draft altering constructs
UN cards
topsy turvy
booster tutor (open a "pack" of 15 undrafted cube cards, you get the chosen card for the current game, the whole pack shuffles back into the unused cards at the end of game)
blacker lotus (after activating, you don't tear the card, but it is exiled for the rest of the match)
rule-bending cards
arcane savant
contract from below (we don't play for ante, but if you cast this card you ante the first card you draw off it. your opponent adds that card to their pool if they win.
stocking tiger (use a "pack" of 15 undrafted cube cards, you get the cards for the current game, the whole pack shuffles back into the unused cards at the end of game)
"frequent cuber" picks
5c cards (to take advantage of some of the mana altering conspiracies)
i'm not 100% in love with this guy, but it's close enough that i'd like to test. being a weird love-child of finks and solemn makes me at least want to try it a few times. also as i said on another thread, i'd like to get more artifact creatures in my cube (especially true colorless ones). i've decided to call this one "kitchen fox."
this seems great to blink and recur, and i'd like more artifact creatures in my cube to interact with tinker/metalworker/academy. sometimes this will be less than optimal against tokens, but sometimes the removal will be needed and the lifegain may put you out of reach. i agree with everyone about the downsides, but i think it's close enough for me to want to try out.
also keep in mind for every time there are 2 cards in the top 4 you need but only 1 in the top 3, there is a situation where the 1 card you need is the 4th card, or later in the game if the 10th card from the top wins it for you but the 9th card doesn't. because your deck is (typically) randomized, there is no way to tell where the card you need is, so it is strictly better to look at 4 cards than 3 cards.