I wonder if it’s worth including heliod in your cube if you ONLY have say walking ballista + triskellion?
walking ballista is such a powerful interaction (turn 4 kill w/o acceleration) id be tempted to say yes.
the downside of that is , you probably can’t justify draftinn heliod until you already have a combo piece. Whereas with more support you can maybe justify building around heliod itself.
it’s not a turn 4 kill without acceleration because ballista dies when heliods trigger is on the stack unless ballista has a second counter. I guess it’s a turn 4 kill if you play ballista in turn 2 and can attack with it unblocked, but that seems unlikely.
Unless I’m missing some interaction, which is entirely possible.
We've loved the card over here. Any combo deck will happily play it, and fair decks can play it if they have access to combos (e.g. Wren + Strip Mine, Opposition + Creatures), cards that break Talisman (e.g. Teferi, Time Raveler, Dack Fayden, Goblin Engineer), or a set of cards that are generally good however extremely polarizing in some matchups (e.g. Jitte/Batterskull vs aggro, Carnage Tyrant vs control).
I don't think I'll ever cut the card, so I got the foil full-art version
Frenzy has been pretty great for my group so far. It sees play in the following decks:
1 - top-end of Red-Aggro
2 - Splash in G decks for source of card advantage, and especially sought after splash in G decks with Fastbond
3 - Artifact decks with a ton of mana can play the card, but U card advantage is often better there. However, with Top or Scroll Rack, then Frenzy becomes a phenomenal card for those decks.
It's most commonly played in mono red, but it's a nice combo-piece to look for when you have something that goes with it!
One of the key parts of supporting Aristocrats is supporting black aggro. The best shell for the archetype in my opinion is black aggro because it gives the additional reach an extra layer of potency. I'm honestly debating cutting Zulaport Cutthroat because I think the deck is totally fine without it and don't need to have two blood artists.
How is this faring in your cube. it's definitely strong but does make for un-fun games? or too strong of a hoser for control?
There are enough ways to handle the walker that it hasn't felt problematic at all. When it feels bad, sure it feels bad, but so do A LOT of cube cards given how incredibly powerful they are. I don't see myself cutting this card anytime soon, especially because I love there being a quicken in my cube.
Nissa, Worldwaker by a long shot. Can untap with 4 mana compared to 1 the turn it comes down. Also produces 4/4's with trample, vs. 3/3's with no evasion.
This was my original opinion. After some play in both my cube and the online cube, I believe it is Nissa, Who Shakes the World by a large margin. Here are the intuitive differences between the cards:
1 - 2 mana vs 4 mana on turn 5
2 - 3/3 vigilance vs 4/4 trample
At first glance, it looks like Nissa, Worldwaker is just a better card, but when you dig deeper it's not so clear.
1 - If it's not specifically on turn 5, the mana generation is comparable ... AND Nissa, Who Shakes the World makes a creature.
2 - Nissa, Who Shakes the World creates threats that also protect her immediately. Untapping the land the turn she comes into play alongside the vigilance makes it easy to protect her. I drastically underestimated the power of having two creatures AND the extra mana the turn you untap. Which leads me to my final point
3 - 6 loyalty is WAY MORE than 4. On your five-mana walker, the probability of untapping with Nissa, Who Shakes the World is much much higher than Nissa, Worldwaker. For both loyalty and the reason I said above. The immediate rate of mana and creature might be slightly lower, but the overall play pattern I find to be more potent and the value over time goes to Nissa, Who Shakes the World since she basically gets to do both Nissa, Worldwaker's +1s every turn.
I really like this card, but I think in order to cube it, I need to reorient more of my list. With Charming Prince, this, Kor Skyfisher, and FlickerWisp, it could be easier to facilitate a UW flicker archetype without actually playing parasitic cards (e.g. Momentary Blink). I'd have to toy with the structure of it, but I'm all for small cube changes that enable a larger diversity of archetypes. An example for this is, if I choose to add Prince, Skyfisher, and this, I would probably swap some one-drop with Legion's Landing. This would help support a new midrange-y Wx deck, while also adding texture to W aggro without removing existing archetypes.
Anyways, I'm going to think about how/if I want to do that, but it's pretty cool!
It's the best Endless One variant. Trample is especially nice on scalable creatures. Cubeable, but no deck particularly wants / needs it, which relegates this to a filler card that can be played in any deck that doesn't involve Oath of Druids.
This is exactly how I feel. Cool card that I wouldn’t be surprised to see in any cube, but I try and having minimal cards that are filler+ at best.
I’m confused at why many here are expecting such a bump from the opponents board. Sure, if your opponent has like 5+ tiny creatures and you are at a low lifetotal without a board presence, you’re dead. But this gives you two 3/3s and a 4/5 to block your opponents 3/3. If they kill this, their creatures are smaller again (and you have some tokens), and if they don’t, any attacks are AT BEST suiciding one creature and trading with 2.
I get the skepticism here, but I have really high hopes.
I built my cube this way for a long time as well but have recently overhauled my cube to favor consistency over diversity.
That's all I needed to hear! That environment honestly seems fun, and while it's antithetical to my approach to cube design, I can always appreciate a different lens. Have a good one
Aggro decks have a very powerful variant of virtual card advantage: killing the opponent. If my opponent dies with five cards in hand and I have zero, that is a version of card advantage.
While I understand what you are saying and where you are coming from, aggro is usually the best deck in cube environments without that kind of support. Even the MTGO cubes keep taking out the best aggro cards and don't have that density and they are still the best archetypes. All I can say is that if I sit down at a 540 cube with 12+ one drops per color, I'm hard forcing aggro because I can push towards the platonic ideal of the best deck. There should be variance. You shouldn't be guaranteed to hit the deck on every axis. You should have to figure out "*****, it's pack three and I only have 5 one-drops, how do I maneuver myself and make decisions to optimize the current situation". This is, of course, my opinion and you don't have to agree. But I do believe playing that many one drops decreases the density of other archetypes because the environment homogenizes between aggressive decks and decks that can compete with 3 one-drops by turn 2.
I've been thinking about cutting Sun Titan for quite a while. And I intend on adding this over it as well. It's hard to think about how beneficial the ability is without testing it and I'm excited to find out!
I hate everything
it’s not a turn 4 kill without acceleration because ballista dies when heliods trigger is on the stack unless ballista has a second counter. I guess it’s a turn 4 kill if you play ballista in turn 2 and can attack with it unblocked, but that seems unlikely.
Unless I’m missing some interaction, which is entirely possible.
I don't think I'll ever cut the card, so I got the foil full-art version
1 - top-end of Red-Aggro
2 - Splash in G decks for source of card advantage, and especially sought after splash in G decks with Fastbond
3 - Artifact decks with a ton of mana can play the card, but U card advantage is often better there. However, with Top or Scroll Rack, then Frenzy becomes a phenomenal card for those decks.
It's most commonly played in mono red, but it's a nice combo-piece to look for when you have something that goes with it!
There are enough ways to handle the walker that it hasn't felt problematic at all. When it feels bad, sure it feels bad, but so do A LOT of cube cards given how incredibly powerful they are. I don't see myself cutting this card anytime soon, especially because I love there being a quicken in my cube.
This was my original opinion. After some play in both my cube and the online cube, I believe it is Nissa, Who Shakes the World by a large margin. Here are the intuitive differences between the cards:
1 - 2 mana vs 4 mana on turn 5
2 - 3/3 vigilance vs 4/4 trample
At first glance, it looks like Nissa, Worldwaker is just a better card, but when you dig deeper it's not so clear.
1 - If it's not specifically on turn 5, the mana generation is comparable ... AND Nissa, Who Shakes the World makes a creature.
2 - Nissa, Who Shakes the World creates threats that also protect her immediately. Untapping the land the turn she comes into play alongside the vigilance makes it easy to protect her. I drastically underestimated the power of having two creatures AND the extra mana the turn you untap. Which leads me to my final point
3 - 6 loyalty is WAY MORE than 4. On your five-mana walker, the probability of untapping with Nissa, Who Shakes the World is much much higher than Nissa, Worldwaker. For both loyalty and the reason I said above. The immediate rate of mana and creature might be slightly lower, but the overall play pattern I find to be more potent and the value over time goes to Nissa, Who Shakes the World since she basically gets to do both Nissa, Worldwaker's +1s every turn.
Anyways, I'm going to think about how/if I want to do that, but it's pretty cool!
This is exactly how I feel. Cool card that I wouldn’t be surprised to see in any cube, but I try and having minimal cards that are filler+ at best.
I get the skepticism here, but I have really high hopes.
That's all I needed to hear! That environment honestly seems fun, and while it's antithetical to my approach to cube design, I can always appreciate a different lens. Have a good one
While I understand what you are saying and where you are coming from, aggro is usually the best deck in cube environments without that kind of support. Even the MTGO cubes keep taking out the best aggro cards and don't have that density and they are still the best archetypes. All I can say is that if I sit down at a 540 cube with 12+ one drops per color, I'm hard forcing aggro because I can push towards the platonic ideal of the best deck. There should be variance. You shouldn't be guaranteed to hit the deck on every axis. You should have to figure out "*****, it's pack three and I only have 5 one-drops, how do I maneuver myself and make decisions to optimize the current situation". This is, of course, my opinion and you don't have to agree. But I do believe playing that many one drops decreases the density of other archetypes because the environment homogenizes between aggressive decks and decks that can compete with 3 one-drops by turn 2.