While it's clear that Wrenn is good, especially for fixing, I'm not too sure that it holds its own in the aggro matchup.
The land that you pick becomes a 3/3 and gains hexproof so that it can defend. It still can't protect you if you play the Walker on curve, and even if it stays untapped on later turns, when trading you are down a land, since it doesn't have indestructible.
If you want to reach 4 or 5 mana for a board wipe or Hermit to stabilize, you're faced with an impossible choice... Let an attacker hit you, which may end up killing you, or losing a land and getting further away from saving yourself in the long run.
Nissa, Voice of Zendikar may be a mid-tier planeswalker, but at least she generates blockers that you don't care to lose. While her -2 is generally worse and her ult isn't quite as good, getting there consistently with a better +1 seems better for the matchup than Wrenn's risk vs reward.
The payoff, other than opponents' random draws, is obviously activating its ability on their turn.
However, note that if the faerie is killed before the ability resolves, you'll be paying 4 mana for a Temple Bell effect instead of 2 cards for you and 1 for them, making you feel like you're playing white in commander.
This becomes easier to abuse with the new Loran, though. Or Jace 1.0, if anyone's still cubing that card.
Argentum Masticore 5
Artifact Creature - Phyrexian Masticore
First strike, protection from multicolored
At the beginning of your upkeep, sacrifice Argentum Masticore unless you discard a card. When you discard a card this way, destroy target nonland permanent an opponent controls with mana value less than or equal to the mana value of the discarded card.
5/5
Okay, so hear me out. I know that this probably won't make most cubes, but this honestly seems like a decent card.
The body is decent in combat even if it doesn't have evasion, and protection from multicolored has certainly helped Stonecoil Serpent make an impression.
The ability is the real spice here. Similar to most other masticores, you need to choose between discarding a card or saccing the creature, however this time you get to kill something according to the mana value of what you discarded.
A few notes:
Less than or equal to means that discarding higher MV means higher flexibility of targets. While discarding 4+ drops is still highly unlikely, since the cards themselves are likely to be more valuable, there are still plenty of 3>=mv cards that can be conditional and situational, so getting an alternative for them is a great idea. Worst case, discarding a land to kill a token seems fair.
Nonland permanent in colorless means that you can break color pie restrictions. Blue likes this most since it has the most trouble dealing with permanents that were allowed to resolve, but black, red and green also have trouble dealing with specific permanent types.
Four-shotting a player while killing their stuff is decent for a colorless 5 drop! What do you think?
Swords of X and Y have certainly suffered from the blazingly fast cards that MTG has gained over the years. Newer swords, such as Sword of Truth and Justice and Sword of Hearth and Home, have suffered a lot from being printed as synergy cards.
However, this sword offers proper card advantage, or at least as proper as red and green can offer. I'm sure that midrange decks will appreciate getting to dig deeper into their deck, and getting to play more lands is also something that they probably appreciate as well.
The question, then, is whether this effect is good enough for other decks. Aggressive decks probably don't want to spend 5 mana to maybe get an effect, and control will dislike this effect with their counterspells.
I think that if large cubes tested Sword of Sinew and Steel, which has a more conditional ability but better protection colors, they can probably give this sword a whirl.
What do you think?
Comes down T3 with 3 loyalty or T4 with 5 loyalty.
+1 prevents 3 damage, fairly straightforward. Similar abilities have proven useful, i.e. Mu Yanling, Sky Dancer.
-2 is mostly there for the card draw, with some mill and a graveyard clause being very minor upsides.
-X is where the power resides, in my opinion. Playing Jace T4 and spending all his loyalty on this means milling 15 cards from the opponent, with each +1 adding 3 to the possible future mill amount. 15 cards is no joke but not quite enough to guarantee a kill, but if you stall for 2 turns you can reach 21 cards, more than half a limited deck, which is closer to representing a fatal amount of milling.
Obviously, this ability has the same caveats as Jace, Memory Adept, in that milling out an opponent with an Eldrazi titan will be impossible, and if they are a graveyard synergy deck you will probably be doing them a favor unless you can actually mill their entire deck.
I think this card is reminiscent of previous good planeswalkers, and adds some important flexibility, enough to warrant discussion. Any planeswalker that can be played on T3 and can eventually kill a player is nothing to scoff at. what are your thoughts?
Increased redundancy
To fast bond combo ?!
Yeees please.
an extra mana on a “do nothing” permanent is a huge cost, but the ability more than makes up for it.
A 4 mana engine that can “draw” up to 2 extra cards a turn is really powerful.
It’s not for most decks, but in a deck that breaks it, it’s incredible.
especially nuts with black lotus.
this card isn’t for every cube fwiw
Of all cards it's great with, Lotus isn't quite one of them, since if it's your one spell for the turn it won't do a lot.
But yeah Shriekmaw / Deranged Hermit every turn is obnoxious, plus recurring M&B or Oko has to be game-ending most of the time. Uro becomes a 3 mana Explore from the graveyard.
Giving green the ability to recast their planeswalker or Deranged Hermit every turn has got to be one of the most irresponsible things ever printed. Even if that's the only spell they'll play for the turn, it's more than enough to beat control and aggro on the spot.
And when you have cards like M&B or Oko in green, replaying them is an instant win against anything. Absolutely stone cold nuts.
Unlike original Thrun, this card won't survive wraths, which is a big deal. I'm not sure Carnage Tyrant would have been as good for cube if it were a 5 drop with weaker p/t, since green 5 drops are notoriously overstacked. I don't think many cubes will pick this up.
I love that her +1 has so many niche interactions that are super fun and interesting. Forcing opponent to use Jitte counters, wiping out tokens, resetting Glen Elendra Archmage or cards brought back with Serra Paragon or your Portable Hole... The list is endless and will be explored in cube for a long while.
One important note is that the card is returned on OWNER'S end step, so if targeting an opposing creature, it won't be able to attack the Wanderer during their next turn, which is quite strong! Especially against big evasive creatures.
But the card is so much more than that ability - the token is great on defense, especially when only one creature can attack her in combat, and the facts that you get to choose the cards for her -4 and having it as an option immediately make this absolutely terrifying to play against.
Feels like a slam dunk in any size.
I agree that this is not quite as strong as Kaito 1.0, since the difference between 3 mana and 4 mana is pretty huge, but I know some cubes that are still running Ashiok, Nightmare Muse, and this definitely seems better, even if a bit more build-around.
Has Ashiok's star faded? I've still been happy with it but haven't reevaluated it for afew years. My brother has a full art Kaito 1.0 he offered me but I had just skipped over it. Is it just worth making the swap?
Just to reiterate, I'm speaking of the 5mv Ashiok from Theros Beyond Death. 5 mana is a lot for a planeswalker that creates weak creatures, doesn't really remove anything, and is dependent on what your opponent is playing to activate its ultimate ability. So yes, I'd definitely say that new Kaito seems better, and Kaito 1.0 seems to prove quite versatile and effective, especially for a 3 mana walker, so even better than that.
I'm not sure about Ashiok, Nightmare Weaver, though (original Theros). That card has been great up to this day.
Originally I was quite cool on the card. I thought it was reserved for synergies in dedicated decks. But I'm beginning to wonder if this card isn't being slept on.
+1 places a Pacifism on an opponent's creature for a turn, which seems pretty strong, and single handedly makes it better than Sorin, the Mirthless since it defends well on a + ability. While it's not quite reaching Will Kenrith levels, since it's 1 creature, the body stays, and other abilities can still be relevant (a la Sheoldred, the Apocalypse), it can still be somewhat better than Will - because Will's creatures can still block, while the affected creature can't - highly relevant for offensive purposes.
0 ability is simple and effective as a failsafe. Stuck versus planeswalkers with no loyalty? Dig for answers.
-2 ability seems somewhat benign since it's only a 2/2 for 2 loyalty, a steep cost. However it has two abilities with serious impact: Deathtouch makes it a great defender, and its last ability is a 4 point life swing, only 2 less than Siege Rhino, on LTB - so not only when dying. Great at keeping you alive on defense, but also deceptively powerful when pressuring your opponent's life total.
So far it's a decent but not exciting planeswalker. But the passive makes things interesting.
The main part is that it only happens when you connect with your opponent, and requires bouncing an attacking creature. While this thought of as a drawback at first, I don't think it's an unrealistic one. There are plenty of tokens that can connect with the opponent that you can "sac" for this ability (i.e. flying sharks, Bitterblossom faeries, and more), but there are also plenty of cheap creatures with good evasion in blue and black, like Dauthi Voidwalker, Looter il-Kor, True-Name Nemesis, and more.
And what do you get for bouncing a creature? Another Kaito ability. Most of the time I'd imagine this to be another +1 to push your advantage in combat, which is where this card actually gets close to Will Kenrith. On problematic boards it'll probably generate a token along with a +1.
Realistically, the passive will probably not get triggered every game, but as long as it'll happen every 2nd game, I think it'd be a consistent enough way to come back from a losing position.
I agree that this is not quite as strong as Kaito 1.0, since the difference between 3 mana and 4 mana is pretty huge, but I know some cubes that are still running Ashiok, Nightmare Muse, and this definitely seems better, even if a bit more build-around.
I'm not sure what you mean by quality of removal not going up.
Cheapness? The recent Cut Down is a far cry better than cards that used to be played at that cost, like Regicide, with much more examples from recent sets.
Flexibility? Arguably has gone up to a terrifying degree in multiple aspects:
The cards themselves - you now have good modal removal in Bloodchief's Thirst, Murder on a land (Hagra Mauling), and even Damn that's also a Wrath.
Target flexibility - Prismatic Ending, Chaos Defiler, Tear Asunder and others beg to differ.
Effect saturation - whereas Ravenous Chupacabra used to be unmatched, 40k gave us 2 more variations of this effect on solid bodies. White even has Skyclave Apparition to get rid of most anything on a stick.
Castability - Lethal Scheme and Solitude join Snuff Out and Dismember as almost-or-completely free instant speed removal.
Your statement seems to be incredibly broad and generalizing. Perhaps you should try and specify any criteria that you feel is missing for your removal and we could help it out.
Important to note that this is a self-binning enchantment, and so is great support for red in cubes that support delirium. DRC is notoriously powerful, but Unholy Heat is considered premium removal in Modern, and I think it has decent potential in cube.
When you choose both token and counter options, don't you create the tokens then put counters on your team?
Wouldn't that mean this is 8/8 worth of value as a baseline?
Awaken the Woods XGG
Sorcery
Rare
Create X 1/1 green Forest Dryad land creature tokens. (They suffer from summoning sickness)
Ranger's Path normally isn't close to inclusion for most cubes. This card improves upon that design by:
A. Letting the player decide how much to pay and how much to ramp
B. Making the lands into 1/1 tokens
Furthermore, it's quite probable that the tokens count as Forests as well as 1/1 creatures, which allows for synergies with some cards, like Arbor Elf and Nissa, Who Shakes the World as well as Nissa, Worldwaker.
This makes the card function as both a ramp spell (ranging from a 3 mana elf to possibly Eldrazi-casting amounts) and a board presence spell at a similar rate to Grand Crescendo. It's also very obscene in Upheaval decks.
In my books, all of this makes it into a bit of a terrifying card. What do you guys think?
The land that you pick becomes a 3/3 and gains hexproof so that it can defend. It still can't protect you if you play the Walker on curve, and even if it stays untapped on later turns, when trading you are down a land, since it doesn't have indestructible.
If you want to reach 4 or 5 mana for a board wipe or Hermit to stabilize, you're faced with an impossible choice... Let an attacker hit you, which may end up killing you, or losing a land and getting further away from saving yourself in the long run.
Nissa, Voice of Zendikar may be a mid-tier planeswalker, but at least she generates blockers that you don't care to lose. While her -2 is generally worse and her ult isn't quite as good, getting there consistently with a better +1 seems better for the matchup than Wrenn's risk vs reward.
However, note that if the faerie is killed before the ability resolves, you'll be paying 4 mana for a Temple Bell effect instead of 2 cards for you and 1 for them, making you feel like you're playing white in commander.
This becomes easier to abuse with the new Loran, though. Or Jace 1.0, if anyone's still cubing that card.
Argentum Masticore
5
Artifact Creature - Phyrexian Masticore
First strike, protection from multicolored
At the beginning of your upkeep, sacrifice Argentum Masticore unless you discard a card. When you discard a card this way, destroy target nonland permanent an opponent controls with mana value less than or equal to the mana value of the discarded card.
5/5
Okay, so hear me out. I know that this probably won't make most cubes, but this honestly seems like a decent card.
The body is decent in combat even if it doesn't have evasion, and protection from multicolored has certainly helped Stonecoil Serpent make an impression.
The ability is the real spice here. Similar to most other masticores, you need to choose between discarding a card or saccing the creature, however this time you get to kill something according to the mana value of what you discarded.
A few notes:
- Less than or equal to means that discarding higher MV means higher flexibility of targets. While discarding 4+ drops is still highly unlikely, since the cards themselves are likely to be more valuable, there are still plenty of 3>=mv cards that can be conditional and situational, so getting an alternative for them is a great idea. Worst case, discarding a land to kill a token seems fair.
- Nonland permanent in colorless means that you can break color pie restrictions. Blue likes this most since it has the most trouble dealing with permanents that were allowed to resolve, but black, red and green also have trouble dealing with specific permanent types.
Four-shotting a player while killing their stuff is decent for a colorless 5 drop! What do you think?Swords of X and Y have certainly suffered from the blazingly fast cards that MTG has gained over the years. Newer swords, such as Sword of Truth and Justice and Sword of Hearth and Home, have suffered a lot from being printed as synergy cards.
However, this sword offers proper card advantage, or at least as proper as red and green can offer. I'm sure that midrange decks will appreciate getting to dig deeper into their deck, and getting to play more lands is also something that they probably appreciate as well.
The question, then, is whether this effect is good enough for other decks. Aggressive decks probably don't want to spend 5 mana to maybe get an effect, and control will dislike this effect with their counterspells.
I think that if large cubes tested Sword of Sinew and Steel, which has a more conditional ability but better protection colors, they can probably give this sword a whirl.
What do you think?
An interesting hybrid between Mu Yanling, Sky Dancer, Jace, Architect of Thought and Jace, Memory Adept.
Comes down T3 with 3 loyalty or T4 with 5 loyalty.
+1 prevents 3 damage, fairly straightforward. Similar abilities have proven useful, i.e. Mu Yanling, Sky Dancer.
-2 is mostly there for the card draw, with some mill and a graveyard clause being very minor upsides.
-X is where the power resides, in my opinion. Playing Jace T4 and spending all his loyalty on this means milling 15 cards from the opponent, with each +1 adding 3 to the possible future mill amount. 15 cards is no joke but not quite enough to guarantee a kill, but if you stall for 2 turns you can reach 21 cards, more than half a limited deck, which is closer to representing a fatal amount of milling.
Obviously, this ability has the same caveats as Jace, Memory Adept, in that milling out an opponent with an Eldrazi titan will be impossible, and if they are a graveyard synergy deck you will probably be doing them a favor unless you can actually mill their entire deck.
I think this card is reminiscent of previous good planeswalkers, and adds some important flexibility, enough to warrant discussion. Any planeswalker that can be played on T3 and can eventually kill a player is nothing to scoff at. what are your thoughts?
Of all cards it's great with, Lotus isn't quite one of them, since if it's your one spell for the turn it won't do a lot.
But yeah Shriekmaw / Deranged Hermit every turn is obnoxious, plus recurring M&B or Oko has to be game-ending most of the time. Uro becomes a 3 mana Explore from the graveyard.
And when you have cards like M&B or Oko in green, replaying them is an instant win against anything. Absolutely stone cold nuts.
One important note is that the card is returned on OWNER'S end step, so if targeting an opposing creature, it won't be able to attack the Wanderer during their next turn, which is quite strong! Especially against big evasive creatures.
But the card is so much more than that ability - the token is great on defense, especially when only one creature can attack her in combat, and the facts that you get to choose the cards for her -4 and having it as an option immediately make this absolutely terrifying to play against.
Feels like a slam dunk in any size.
Just to reiterate, I'm speaking of the 5mv Ashiok from Theros Beyond Death. 5 mana is a lot for a planeswalker that creates weak creatures, doesn't really remove anything, and is dependent on what your opponent is playing to activate its ultimate ability. So yes, I'd definitely say that new Kaito seems better, and Kaito 1.0 seems to prove quite versatile and effective, especially for a 3 mana walker, so even better than that.
I'm not sure about Ashiok, Nightmare Weaver, though (original Theros). That card has been great up to this day.
+1 places a Pacifism on an opponent's creature for a turn, which seems pretty strong, and single handedly makes it better than Sorin, the Mirthless since it defends well on a + ability. While it's not quite reaching Will Kenrith levels, since it's 1 creature, the body stays, and other abilities can still be relevant (a la Sheoldred, the Apocalypse), it can still be somewhat better than Will - because Will's creatures can still block, while the affected creature can't - highly relevant for offensive purposes.
0 ability is simple and effective as a failsafe. Stuck versus planeswalkers with no loyalty? Dig for answers.
-2 ability seems somewhat benign since it's only a 2/2 for 2 loyalty, a steep cost. However it has two abilities with serious impact: Deathtouch makes it a great defender, and its last ability is a 4 point life swing, only 2 less than Siege Rhino, on LTB - so not only when dying. Great at keeping you alive on defense, but also deceptively powerful when pressuring your opponent's life total.
So far it's a decent but not exciting planeswalker. But the passive makes things interesting.
The main part is that it only happens when you connect with your opponent, and requires bouncing an attacking creature. While this thought of as a drawback at first, I don't think it's an unrealistic one. There are plenty of tokens that can connect with the opponent that you can "sac" for this ability (i.e. flying sharks, Bitterblossom faeries, and more), but there are also plenty of cheap creatures with good evasion in blue and black, like Dauthi Voidwalker, Looter il-Kor, True-Name Nemesis, and more.
Realistically, the passive will probably not get triggered every game, but as long as it'll happen every 2nd game, I think it'd be a consistent enough way to come back from a losing position.
I agree that this is not quite as strong as Kaito 1.0, since the difference between 3 mana and 4 mana is pretty huge, but I know some cubes that are still running Ashiok, Nightmare Muse, and this definitely seems better, even if a bit more build-around.
Cheapness? The recent Cut Down is a far cry better than cards that used to be played at that cost, like Regicide, with much more examples from recent sets.
Card advantage? You now have Prismari Command to mirror K-Command, and in mono red you now have cards like Delayed Blast Fireball and Seismic Wave.
Flexibility? Arguably has gone up to a terrifying degree in multiple aspects:
The cards themselves - you now have good modal removal in Bloodchief's Thirst, Murder on a land (Hagra Mauling), and even Damn that's also a Wrath.
Target flexibility - Prismatic Ending, Chaos Defiler, Tear Asunder and others beg to differ.
Effect saturation - whereas Ravenous Chupacabra used to be unmatched, 40k gave us 2 more variations of this effect on solid bodies. White even has Skyclave Apparition to get rid of most anything on a stick.
Castability - Lethal Scheme and Solitude join Snuff Out and Dismember as almost-or-completely free instant speed removal.
Your statement seems to be incredibly broad and generalizing. Perhaps you should try and specify any criteria that you feel is missing for your removal and we could help it out.
Wouldn't that mean this is 8/8 worth of value as a baseline?
XGG
Sorcery
Rare
Create X 1/1 green Forest Dryad land creature tokens. (They suffer from summoning sickness)
Ranger's Path normally isn't close to inclusion for most cubes. This card improves upon that design by:
A. Letting the player decide how much to pay and how much to ramp
B. Making the lands into 1/1 tokens
Furthermore, it's quite probable that the tokens count as Forests as well as 1/1 creatures, which allows for synergies with some cards, like Arbor Elf and Nissa, Who Shakes the World as well as Nissa, Worldwaker.
This makes the card function as both a ramp spell (ranging from a 3 mana elf to possibly Eldrazi-casting amounts) and a board presence spell at a similar rate to Grand Crescendo. It's also very obscene in Upheaval decks.
In my books, all of this makes it into a bit of a terrifying card. What do you guys think?