My primary mis-alignment with your post is: In my experiences, traditional control decks no longer prey on midrange decks.
This. Was true with monarch / planeswalkers and such even before initiative came along. Initiative just made it worse. Back in the day you just had a few key threats you had to contain, but now everything is a bomb and very few ways to fully diffuse all of them. Control lost its key advantage of being able to outgrind midrange decks into the ground since every 3-4 other cmc creature / planeswalker is a value engine. You can deal with the planeswalker half of Minsc & Boo, but you still got a giant hamster to worry about. Or you can deal with the initiative enabler, but it won't matter if you can't secure initiative yourself.
The rock paper scissors of agro keeps control in check, control keeps midrange in check, midrange keeps agro in check, no longer holds true.
Also this. The lines between midrange and everything else can be really blurry since it can lean in any direction it wants: aggressive / grindy / random combos / etc and can hedge itself in X directions to really hedge against whatever matchup it wants. Part of me increasing the presence of combo in my cube was that it's the best way to fight aggro / midrange now, not control. But luckily control still naturally checks combo decks, bringing a bit more balance to the ecosystem.
IMO this is generally how the rock / paper / scissors diagram goes now:
Control > Combo > Aggro / Midrange > Control
Another reason why I shifted away from Savannah Lions with more of a focus on Thraben Inspectors / Esper Sentinel is that they help dig for whatever I need for whatever matchup. I can't emphasize how much more useful drawing an extra card or two is than having an extra power on a 1-cmc creature. Savannah Lions aggro is certainly still effective, but it's become an inefficient use of cube real estate for me since aggro still thrives without them.
How is artifact critical mass relevant for an aggro deck?
Broadside Bombardiers / Gut would be the main reason for Thraben Inspector / Novice Inspector. Versatility in general since white generally has the highest critical mass of artifacts / artifact tokens for artifact decks. A lot of artifact shells can lean aggressive now, especially with things like Urza’s Saga / Nettlecyst / Legion Extuder / Galvanic Blast / etc. Shrapnel Blast is also much more consistent these days too.
Quote from Fredo »
Drawing cards is always nice, but I'm not going to slow down my aggro deck in order to do it (which rules Thraben Inspector right out for aggro). Heck, I think it's too slow for midrange decks, too - I could see Sentinel and the Inspectors for control though.
In my cube I’ve found availability and card flow to be more important to aggro than just raw damage output for 1-cmc creatures, since they’re easily killed / walled anyways. Finding your actual bombs / living longer to contest monarch / initiative / providing fodder to Bombardiers / Gut makes Thraben Inspectors much more useful than a mundane 2/1, not to mention their actual sources of card advantage and can be blinked / recurred for value. I’ve found Savannah Lion variants to be pretty extraneous at this point. They’re by far the least important aggro creatures to me, which makes them very cuttable since that’s they’re only job.
I was originally in the “Thraben Inspector is a filler card” camp for a long time, but it’s really a great glue card in any white deck. In the 300 drafts of my cube since the release of NEO (early 2021), Thraben Inspector is currently the third most represented white card in my 3-0 archive, making it quite ubiquitous.
My play group and I have had 7 drafts between my cube and a similar powered cube with since the new set release, and OTJ has been making quite the splash.
Going over some of the winning decks first:
- This deck featured Lively Dirge / Vaultborn Tyrant in the main deck and [Harvester of Misery] in the sideboard. This was my deck I played last night, and it's quite possibly the most heavily concentrated reaniamtor deck I've ever built because I had such an open draft lane.
- The extreme nature of this deck was a good example showing that Lively Dirge can be main decked in such a highly concentrated Reanimator deck that also had Entomb / Unmarked Grave / literally every other UB tutor not named Demonic tutor.
- Likewise for Vaultborn Tyrant, since I pretty much had every premium Flash hit sans Atraxa / Woodfall Primus. Vaultborn Tyrant is definitely one of the lesser Flash hits in comparison, but is also one of the more hard castable ones (just not in this deck, lol).
- Harvester of Misery was a key sideboard card, taking out problematic creatures like Dauthi Voidwalker / Scavenging Ooze in match deciding games. Granted, that could've bee any black removal spell, but the hard cast mode would've been extremely relevant in those match ups also, I just never had the chance to hard cast / recur / flash it.
- This was a very crime heavy deck for Duelist of the Mind, which really helped dig for and fuel Uro / From the Catacombs. This was a good example of Duelist doing a lot of work in a deck that lacked draw 7s. The only other ways I had to draw cards were off Uro / Occult Epiphany.
- Duelist was also very key in contesting monarch / initiative, especially since this deck had 2 initiative enablers. Not only that, but Duelist having flying and vigilance is a prime target for the two +1/+1 counters from the Forge room.
- I didn't notice it at the time, but this deck had a lot of token generators for Sandstorm Salvager with Occult Epiphany / Bitterblossom / Grist / Oko / Caldaia Guardian / Esika's Chariot / Sandstorm Salvager itself. I only saw it in play once in this particular deck where it pumped its own golem token + two tokens from Caldaia Guardian, but it was ultimately stalling for time as I waited for my opponent to over extend into my Damnation. I have seen Sandstorm Salvager a lot in other decks though where it's been doing A LOT of work pumping other tokens.
- This deck featured Dust Animus, but I was told it either came in scenarios where the game was already won / lost. Was at least good enough to make the main deck at least.
- Another deck where Duelist of the Mind shined. This was also a pretty heavy crime deck, but also had more card draw (especially repeatable things like Library of Alexandria / Kaito Shizuki).
- This was a good shell for Goldvein Hydra since it had a lot of ramp and ways to give it more counters with Court of Garenbrig + Minsc & Boo. It was also good at softening up the opponent and having the death trigger set up Craterhoof Behemoth for lethal.
Some other notes from cards I've seen outside of 3-0 decks.
- I saw Slickshot Show-Off in one deck. I never saw it go crazy, but the games that I saw showcased how flying + haste can provide a lot of inevitability to closing out games.
- I saw Smirking Spelljacker once when I was playing an Oath deck. I was in a scenario where I could either cast Oko or hard cast Trumpeting Carnosaur. I decided to bait with Oko first and was met with Smirking Spelljacker. Luckily I was able to kill it with Trumpeting Carnosaur's "channel" ability. This could've been a really bad scenario if I didn't correctly bait out my opponent.
- Legion Extuder has been doing a lot of work in artifact heavy shells. It can be really annoying to just keep on recycling your 3/3 in response to removal or after a chump block. And just having more critical mass for Tolarian Academy is really nice.
- I've seen Aven Interrupter a few times, and I think it always died the next turn so they were able to cast their spell for free.
There were two other drafts with OTJ, but two of the 3-0s didn't contain any OTJ cards (tends to happen in a lot of cheaty face decks).
Self fulfilling prophecy right here. True story, the first OTJ draft I won with Oath of Druids + zero OTJ cards, lol.
Overall thoughts
- Duelist of the Mind has been the most impressive out of the gate. I feel like a lot of people were underestimating it, but I'm extremely confident that I was correct in putting it as a top 2 card from this set alongside Slickshot Show-Off.
- I'm pretty confident in my theory of Lively Dirge being able to make the main deck of any reanimator shell. Not just from the decks I've already seen it in, but also going back through my 3-0 archive and seeing how it could've been slotted in to any of those reanimator decks over other cards.
- I'm feeling less good about Phantom Interference / Three Steps Ahead. Phantom Interference is fine, but it's definitely currently at the bottom of my counterspell totem pole. I'd imagine Three Steps Ahead would be even lower than that.
Won a draft last night featuring Duelist of the Mind in a Sultai Uro Initiaitve Midrange deck (blue was really just the "splash" for Uro / Oko / Occult Epiphany / Duelist). This deck was short on ways to draw cards (only had Uro / Occult Epiphany). However, this did showcase how good Duelist can stil be outside of a heavy cantrip / draw 7 shell since this did have a lot of crime enablers. I had 8 cards that can commit crimes, with 3 of them being repeatable (Oko / Grist / From the Catacombs).
- Being able to play offense and defense IN THE AIR with 3 toughness is highly valuable. In addition to contesting monarch / initiative very well, it's also a very prime target to put your +1/+1 counters on with initiative.
- Duelist + Grist was very key in digging for and fueling both Uro and From the Catacombs. This was especially key in game 3 of the finals where Duelist + Grist let me keep up with my opponent's turn 2 Palantir of Orthanc.
This is much better than Finale of Devastation since it's more mana efficient and is more versatile since this can go into more decks. I'm okay paying an extra mana for Palace Jailer / Sheoldred / any initiative enabler, but was never okay paying 4GG for them with Finale of Devastation. Not to mention that this has modes at 3 and 4 mana too. The Entomb effect alone will make the main deck of any reanimator / Recurring Nightmare deck.
The three natural homes for this card will be the following:
The last bullet especially covers a good amount of ground, not to mention a good amount of creature based combo decks this can sneak into, like draw 7 / persist / etc. If anything, this card should be compared to Bring to Light more than Finale of Devastation. I like this spree card much more than any other spree card in my cube.
I'm surprised you rate Duelist of the Mind so high. I thought the card is good, but outside draw 7 decks it doesn't hit that hard, and regardless of deck it isn't spectacular on defense, which kinda sucks when some of its best synergies cost you life (Sylvan Library) or need you to protect them (Jace, the Mind Sculptor). Also surprised by Sandstorm Salvager being so far down the list, that was one of the headliners for me this set.
It's not hard to trigger Duelist of the Mind off normal cantrips or its crime trigger. Its value goes up substantially in a cube that heavily supports draw 7s and monarch / initiative. I think its average case scenario will be far above most 2-cmc creatures, especially given its insane ceiling. Also, you don't have to pay life for Sylvan Library to draw more cards, you pay life to keep them.
Sandstorm Salvager is pretty much where I'd put Blade Splicer today. And I'd argue that Blade Splicer is better in white than Salvager is in green due to its blink synergies.
My 21st HOT TAKES article on CubeCobra! Let me know if there’s a card that I missed and I’ll respond back with the hottest of takes. Also, feel free to join the Online Cube Drafts Discord Group to discuss all things Cube plus use Xmage to host tournaments to draft / play with our own cubes!
Considering this card for the sac fodder and incidental crime/graveyard hate. Any impressions?
It's been good. Graveyard hate has gotten really important, and this still goes wide and hits hard against non graveyard decks. This is one of black's better 3-cmc creatures, IMO.
For Rakdos and Gruul, I'm having trouble deciding whether to replace the manlands (Raging Ravine and Restless Vents) or the pathway lands to fit the Surveil lands in. Thoughts?
Cheers,
rant
Can't go wrong with either. Maybe split it down the middle and keep Raging Ravine and replace Restless Vents?
I've arrived at the conclusion that my black 2-drop section is one card short. I'm running 360 powered an find all of the remaining options so lackluster...
I'm already running Dark Confidant, Bloodghast, Oona's Prowler and Pack Rat.
We've played all 3 of those cards with very lukewarm results. What are people's experience with these guys? Any other options?
-------------------
Aside from that, I've also recently cut Earthquake for Fiery Confluence. Am I crazy?
We're running the Wildfire package so we felt like 2 earthquakes + 2 wildfires + Confluence seemed like too many sweepers. Thoughts?
1
This. Was true with monarch / planeswalkers and such even before initiative came along. Initiative just made it worse. Back in the day you just had a few key threats you had to contain, but now everything is a bomb and very few ways to fully diffuse all of them. Control lost its key advantage of being able to outgrind midrange decks into the ground since every 3-4 other cmc creature / planeswalker is a value engine. You can deal with the planeswalker half of Minsc & Boo, but you still got a giant hamster to worry about. Or you can deal with the initiative enabler, but it won't matter if you can't secure initiative yourself.
Also this. The lines between midrange and everything else can be really blurry since it can lean in any direction it wants: aggressive / grindy / random combos / etc and can hedge itself in X directions to really hedge against whatever matchup it wants. Part of me increasing the presence of combo in my cube was that it's the best way to fight aggro / midrange now, not control. But luckily control still naturally checks combo decks, bringing a bit more balance to the ecosystem.
IMO this is generally how the rock / paper / scissors diagram goes now:
Control > Combo > Aggro / Midrange > Control
Another reason why I shifted away from Savannah Lions with more of a focus on Thraben Inspectors / Esper Sentinel is that they help dig for whatever I need for whatever matchup. I can't emphasize how much more useful drawing an extra card or two is than having an extra power on a 1-cmc creature. Savannah Lions aggro is certainly still effective, but it's become an inefficient use of cube real estate for me since aggro still thrives without them.
1
Broadside Bombardiers / Gut would be the main reason for Thraben Inspector / Novice Inspector. Versatility in general since white generally has the highest critical mass of artifacts / artifact tokens for artifact decks. A lot of artifact shells can lean aggressive now, especially with things like Urza’s Saga / Nettlecyst / Legion Extuder / Galvanic Blast / etc. Shrapnel Blast is also much more consistent these days too.
In my cube I’ve found availability and card flow to be more important to aggro than just raw damage output for 1-cmc creatures, since they’re easily killed / walled anyways. Finding your actual bombs / living longer to contest monarch / initiative / providing fodder to Bombardiers / Gut makes Thraben Inspectors much more useful than a mundane 2/1, not to mention their actual sources of card advantage and can be blinked / recurred for value. I’ve found Savannah Lion variants to be pretty extraneous at this point. They’re by far the least important aggro creatures to me, which makes them very cuttable since that’s they’re only job.
I was originally in the “Thraben Inspector is a filler card” camp for a long time, but it’s really a great glue card in any white deck. In the 300 drafts of my cube since the release of NEO (early 2021), Thraben Inspector is currently the third most represented white card in my 3-0 archive, making it quite ubiquitous.
- Palace Jailer: 38
- White Plume Adventurer: 31
- Thraben Inspector: 30
- Swords to Plowshares: 30
- Seasoned Dungeoneer: 28
- Path to Exile: 28
- Parallax Wave: 27
- Solitude: 27
- Blade Splicer: 25
3
Going over some of the winning decks first:
- This deck featured Lively Dirge / Vaultborn Tyrant in the main deck and [Harvester of Misery] in the sideboard. This was my deck I played last night, and it's quite possibly the most heavily concentrated reaniamtor deck I've ever built because I had such an open draft lane.
- The extreme nature of this deck was a good example showing that Lively Dirge can be main decked in such a highly concentrated Reanimator deck that also had Entomb / Unmarked Grave / literally every other UB tutor not named Demonic tutor.
- Likewise for Vaultborn Tyrant, since I pretty much had every premium Flash hit sans Atraxa / Woodfall Primus. Vaultborn Tyrant is definitely one of the lesser Flash hits in comparison, but is also one of the more hard castable ones (just not in this deck, lol).
- Harvester of Misery was a key sideboard card, taking out problematic creatures like Dauthi Voidwalker / Scavenging Ooze in match deciding games. Granted, that could've bee any black removal spell, but the hard cast mode would've been extremely relevant in those match ups also, I just never had the chance to hard cast / recur / flash it.
- This was a very crime heavy deck for Duelist of the Mind, which really helped dig for and fuel Uro / From the Catacombs. This was a good example of Duelist doing a lot of work in a deck that lacked draw 7s. The only other ways I had to draw cards were off Uro / Occult Epiphany.
- Duelist was also very key in contesting monarch / initiative, especially since this deck had 2 initiative enablers. Not only that, but Duelist having flying and vigilance is a prime target for the two +1/+1 counters from the Forge room.
- I didn't notice it at the time, but this deck had a lot of token generators for Sandstorm Salvager with Occult Epiphany / Bitterblossom / Grist / Oko / Caldaia Guardian / Esika's Chariot / Sandstorm Salvager itself. I only saw it in play once in this particular deck where it pumped its own golem token + two tokens from Caldaia Guardian, but it was ultimately stalling for time as I waited for my opponent to over extend into my Damnation. I have seen Sandstorm Salvager a lot in other decks though where it's been doing A LOT of work pumping other tokens.
- This deck featured Dust Animus, but I was told it either came in scenarios where the game was already won / lost. Was at least good enough to make the main deck at least.
- Another deck where Duelist of the Mind shined. This was also a pretty heavy crime deck, but also had more card draw (especially repeatable things like Library of Alexandria / Kaito Shizuki).
- This was a good shell for Goldvein Hydra since it had a lot of ramp and ways to give it more counters with Court of Garenbrig + Minsc & Boo. It was also good at softening up the opponent and having the death trigger set up Craterhoof Behemoth for lethal.
Some other notes from cards I've seen outside of 3-0 decks.
- I saw Slickshot Show-Off in one deck. I never saw it go crazy, but the games that I saw showcased how flying + haste can provide a lot of inevitability to closing out games.
- I saw Smirking Spelljacker once when I was playing an Oath deck. I was in a scenario where I could either cast Oko or hard cast Trumpeting Carnosaur. I decided to bait with Oko first and was met with Smirking Spelljacker. Luckily I was able to kill it with Trumpeting Carnosaur's "channel" ability. This could've been a really bad scenario if I didn't correctly bait out my opponent.
- Legion Extuder has been doing a lot of work in artifact heavy shells. It can be really annoying to just keep on recycling your 3/3 in response to removal or after a chump block. And just having more critical mass for Tolarian Academy is really nice.
- I've seen Aven Interrupter a few times, and I think it always died the next turn so they were able to cast their spell for free.
There were two other drafts with OTJ, but two of the 3-0s didn't contain any OTJ cards (tends to happen in a lot of cheaty face decks).
Self fulfilling prophecy right here. True story, the first OTJ draft I won with Oath of Druids + zero OTJ cards, lol.
Overall thoughts
- Duelist of the Mind has been the most impressive out of the gate. I feel like a lot of people were underestimating it, but I'm extremely confident that I was correct in putting it as a top 2 card from this set alongside Slickshot Show-Off.
- I'm pretty confident in my theory of Lively Dirge being able to make the main deck of any reanimator shell. Not just from the decks I've already seen it in, but also going back through my 3-0 archive and seeing how it could've been slotted in to any of those reanimator decks over other cards.
- I'm feeling less good about Phantom Interference / Three Steps Ahead. Phantom Interference is fine, but it's definitely currently at the bottom of my counterspell totem pole. I'd imagine Three Steps Ahead would be even lower than that.
2
- Being able to play offense and defense IN THE AIR with 3 toughness is highly valuable. In addition to contesting monarch / initiative very well, it's also a very prime target to put your +1/+1 counters on with initiative.
- Duelist + Grist was very key in digging for and fueling both Uro and From the Catacombs. This was especially key in game 3 of the finals where Duelist + Grist let me keep up with my opponent's turn 2 Palantir of Orthanc.
Draft picks - https://magic.flooey.org/draft/show?id=nTwi-qSIEGgcc-XVGE69M32F0RM&deck=ahRzfmV1cGhvcmljLWRpb2RlLTYxNnIRCxIEZGVjaxiAgIDN4LicCQw
1
This is much better than Finale of Devastation since it's more mana efficient and is more versatile since this can go into more decks. I'm okay paying an extra mana for Palace Jailer / Sheoldred / any initiative enabler, but was never okay paying 4GG for them with Finale of Devastation. Not to mention that this has modes at 3 and 4 mana too. The Entomb effect alone will make the main deck of any reanimator / Recurring Nightmare deck.
The three natural homes for this card will be the following:
- Reanimator
- Recurring Nightmare
- Midrange decks with premium 4 drops
The last bullet especially covers a good amount of ground, not to mention a good amount of creature based combo decks this can sneak into, like draw 7 / persist / etc. If anything, this card should be compared to Bring to Light more than Finale of Devastation. I like this spree card much more than any other spree card in my cube.
1
It's not hard to trigger Duelist of the Mind off normal cantrips or its crime trigger. Its value goes up substantially in a cube that heavily supports draw 7s and monarch / initiative. I think its average case scenario will be far above most 2-cmc creatures, especially given its insane ceiling. Also, you don't have to pay life for Sylvan Library to draw more cards, you pay life to keep them.
Sandstorm Salvager is pretty much where I'd put Blade Splicer today. And I'd argue that Blade Splicer is better in white than Salvager is in green due to its blink synergies.
3
https://cubecobra.com/content/article/b119d171-ec9d-40e9-ae0e-a4d27c333b26
My 21st HOT TAKES article on CubeCobra! Let me know if there’s a card that I missed and I’ll respond back with the hottest of takes. Also, feel free to join the Online Cube Drafts Discord Group to discuss all things Cube plus use Xmage to host tournaments to draft / play with our own cubes!
https://discord.gg/wRVzHQR
10
https://cubecobra.com/content/article/b119d171-ec9d-40e9-ae0e-a4d27c333b26
1
It's been good. Graveyard hate has gotten really important, and this still goes wide and hits hard against non graveyard decks. This is one of black's better 3-cmc creatures, IMO.
2
Can't go wrong with either. Maybe split it down the middle and keep Raging Ravine and replace Restless Vents?