MTG Salvation

Definitely an interesting design. My bar for artifacts is slightly slower as I felt Tezzeret, Tolarian Academy and Tinker decks were lacking targets.

My initial reaction is it feels a bit too restrictive to be good.

Omg I am so happy about your updates to includes storm/ combo. I'm going to keep a close eye on your new updates

Especially curious about how the aristocrats deck fairs.

Quote from Hermes_ »

Well folks have asked for a Serra PW...and I almost missed the comma on her ultimate lol

If you control a creature damage. lol

I'm personally a bit disappointed about the power level of this set all in all

So here's how it works:

Suppose you say "I reanimate Iona using Unburial rites". When thats on the stack, your opponent has a chance to respond by pathing one of your creatures etc

After unburial rites resolves, Iona is going to come into play. Naming a color is part of a resolution, its not a trigger on the stack. Once you name a color, the ability applies (therefore the opponent cannot path Iona)

I like the card. Seems nice in Red Aggressive strategies where you want to bin a land or re animator style strategies.

Quote from Chalsis »

Rakdos... have really gone to seed. In the original Ravnica, they were thrill-killers, assassins, slavers, and miners, doers of unsavory tasks and truly felt like a murderous cult of psychopaths. Their carnival aspect was second-fiddle to all that, but now that side has been flanderized to the point where it's their main shtick, they're "Ravnica's entertainment" and essentially just a mad circus, and "Spectacle" is their keyword.

Here's what I want to know - how does a murderous demon cult make it as "Ravnica's entertainment"? How is that mainstream? They're vermin who are only allowed to exist because the Guildpact needs 10 guilds, and no amount of clown makeup is ever going to cover that.

Look at this new art for Golgari Grave-Troll...

Wizards has made alot of this demonic/ undead stuff alot more PC. Similar to Diablo 2 to Diablo 3 where World of Warcraft took over development and you get this "cartoon horror"

Quote from void_nothing »

Quote from einhorn303 »

I don't think they'd actually do this, but in my wildest dreams, Spectacle is "You may cast this for it's spectacle cost. If you do, each other player puts a copy of this spell onto the stack. They may choose new targets."

Call it a hunch, but you may not be as far off as you think. After all, this makes a lot of sense with the exact design we see in the promo.

I personally see two issues with a card like this:

- This is way too complicated for a format like commander where there are 4 people and everyone gets triggers. This opens up a giant stack issue. Suppose Player A casts this. Player A Light the stage is on the stack, Then Player B, Player C, Player D. Player A resolves. Then Player B Resolve, picks up his 2 cards, then decides to respond to the stack while Player C's trigger is still on the stack. Player C responds to Player B's trigger with his own Spectacle card that adds 4 more triggers to the stack. This is just a disaster waiting to happen.

- my second issue is that Wizards prints alot of these supposedly balanced cards, i.e. Balance, heartbeat of spring, etc that is suppose to seem like both players get the "same" effect but the casting player can break the effect a bit more. The problem with spectacle is player A would be able to cast anything, while Player B would be only able to cast instants. That really doesn't sound like a "balanced" card that is meant to be broken by the casting side

*EDIT: Void_nothing pointed out the card says "until the end of your next turn". Issue #2 is invalid

Quote from Descendant Of Dusk »

I will speculate, given that rakdos was originally about having no hand

Spectacle X (If this is the only card on your hand, you may cast it by paying it's Spectacle cost)

- I think this makes a lot more sense to be honest. Play the top 2 cards really is really weakly costed for a 3 mana ability.

- This would be a pretty good effect that could be used in a non-storm deck,

Quote from H3RAC71TU5 »

Seems like Rakdos traditionally make a spectacle out of sacrificing creatures. "You may cast this spell for its spectacle cost if you sacrificed a creature this turn" would be pretty balanced but require sacrifice outlets. Alternatively, "you may cast this spell for its spectacle cost if a player discarded a card this turn" which is mostly weaker than madness but enabled by lots of common black and red effects and also jives with jump-start.

I don't think it has to do with sacrifice for this reason:

Selesyna and Boros (and pretty much any white guild) is pretty token heavy. Sacrifice a creature is best used in white based archetypes. I don't think it is a good idea to create a mechanic that is best used in other archetypes

Comment Hidden

Do you think Collected Company will be playable in the cube?

What I really like about Preview cards 1, 3 and 4 is it makes combat alot more interesting. I've noticed alot of creature mirrors devolve into who has the bigger creature. Adding decisions to combat step, without narrow/ weak cards like Giant Growth seems like a huge plus.

One of my favorite archetypes in cube is Stax and, while you don't necessarily need The Abyss to make a Stax deck work, it certainly doesn't hurt. Black has enough token makers to offset the sacrifice so that it doesn't hurt you as much. Occasionally a Porcelain Legionnaire ruins your plans, but I've also completely taken over the game with it. Heck, I've also played it in the same deck as Legionnaire to take advantage of that synergy myself. It's expensive and it's by no means a must have staple, but if you have access to one or don't mind proxies, I think it's a fun card and I like the decks it promotes.

I think there's exactly one reason to include this card: you support a Fires of Yavimaya archetype. Without haste, it's not only the worst of the cheatty cards --- which we really don't *need* more of --- it isn't a good rate in other decks. It would be better to play Glorybringer or Thundermaw in that slot for most cubes.

However, if you have a lot of cards that grant haste to support the fires archetype, I think you can consider it. I have Rhythm of the Wild, Surrak Huntcaller, Lightning Mauler, and Lightning Greaves in my 540. And I'm still not sure it'll be great in my list.

Sagas activate in the draw step and Portent during the upkeep. So Portent will trigger and resolve before the saga does anything.

If the saga had activated during the upkeep then it and portent would trigger and you as teh active player would put the ability on teh stack first so portent would draw the card before the saga had made your artifacts creatures.

Please use card tags for all the cards:

Portent

The delayed trigger from Portent will trigger, and resolve, in the upkeep. If the opponent wants to cast Terminus they will need to do so when they draw it in the Upkeep. Since this is long before the Main Phase, the Saga has not gotten another counter yet and will not trigger until after Terminus resolves.

Quote from alanyuan0408 »

I personally think gifts decks need to move away from the idea of 1 offs tutor for gifts piles:

1) Gifts decks, especially the Green version without any card draw cannot consistently draw their gifts ungivens. Even with with cards like Jace VP, you're at best 60% to draw your gifts in the matchup by turn 4.

2) You need to assume your graveyard is under attack post board. Especially post board, I think gifts deck needs to move away from their graveyard and move above ground with grindy cards or ways to protect their combo.

3) This Gifts into Radical Idea, Lingering Souls etc isn't really a "winning" line of play.

I'm a strong proponent of gifts decks maxing out on discard outlets such as Brualities, Cliques, Liliana, Nahiri etc and essentially allowing you to play a much higher curve than other archetypes given your combo and your discard outlets and winning that way. I'm also a proponent that 4c gifts lists need a sideboard option of something like Peer through depths or Merchant scroll to help belcher out the combo against non-interactive matchups.

While your first point holds some truth indeed, I think that Gifts isn't always needed in certain matchups. Most of the lists, especially the ones leaning more heavily on B and consequently on more discard as well can outgrind an opponent without seeing Gifts only once. Lingering Souls does a great job in this regard, but yes, sometimes one just can't find it in time and ends up a turn short, as one does with other combo decks as well. The more recent iteration holds a number of cantrips in Growth Spiral which might help speed up the deck and see 1 or 2 cards in addition, so we'll see. I considered running Merchant Scroll already, but I fear that it is just too slow or too low impact. On turn 2 or 3 one needs to have some form of disruption/removal available, so I don't think there is time for Scroll. Peer Through Depths could be worth a try, Gifts Storm often uses this post board to reduce the reliance on the GY, so maybe it is a valid strategy here, but we are on a pretty different strategy alltogether.

Moving away from the GY in a Gifts deck is a tough task. As said, R has the opportunity of Nahiri/Emrakul or simply Madcap/Emperion but I don't see how the BGUw lists should operate fully 'above ground' as you say, the GY is intrinsically woven into the strategy. You can't ask Dredge to play without their GY post board, although that admittedly is a little more drastic than with Gifts. And sure, Gifts into Souls/Radical Idea/Rites/X does not win the game on the spot but is a (deterministic!) possibility for discarding a reanimation target in hand without leaning too heavily on B.

If Player A and an opponent both control an Elesh Norn, a creature that's normally 1/1 will enter the battlefield under Player A's control as 1/1, as the two relevant Elesh Norn effects — +2/+2 and -2/-2 — cancel out (neither effect depends on the other) (C.R. 603.6b, 613.4, 613.1g, 613.3c, 613.6, 613.7).

EDIT: Correctness edit after comment 3 was posted.

Super excited to present to you the Beta release of www.mtgcubeforge.com. It's a whole new way to experience viewing and building cubes online, please check it out! It's powered by Scryfall api (but not endorsed), so it's completely free to use. Best experienced on a modern browser on a bigger screen device.

How do you create an account?

1. Choose an email and user name and password

2. Log in for the first time

The email is so that a password recovery feature can be added later on. The site uses JSON web token, so like most modern web apps, you only have to log in the first time.

How do you use it?

1. Creating a new cube, enter it's name, and press 'Start building'.

2. You will be directed to this cube's builder screen. Search for a card name, and once the preview appears, you can add that to your cube. You can also choose which edition of the card to add, if it has multiple printings. Adding or deleting cards saves your cube data.

3. Click on a card in your list to see a larger high res image of the card. Along with this is a panel of options, such as removing the card from the cube, or seeing it's Oracle text in Scryfall. Click on the expanded card to hide it.

4. There is an Upload List button on the cube builder. You can paste your cube list in there, preferably from a text file or csv. Please note that you actually have to copy paste the list, and the latest edition is automatically chosen, so please forgive these inconveniences.

5. Once you have enough cards, you can either View a Sample Pack or check out your cube's stats

6. Click the logo on the upper left to return to the dashboard. You should be able to see your cube. When a cube is opened in view mode, it will not have any edit functions.

I didn't want this post to be too long, since what you really want to do is look at your cube. Please try it out, and let me know what you think. DM or email mtgcubeforge@gmail.com for any private messages.

Hey wtwlf123

I just wanted to thank you for all the work you put in here on mtgsalvation in terms of answering questions about cube, stating your opinion, always backed up with reasonings, and, very importantly, do this all on a very respectful level! I created my first cube this summer and am constantly reading opinions here on mtgsalvation to reevaluate the decisions I've made.

There is one thing I could not find a good answer to - maybe emphasizing that it is a difficult question to adress in objective terms:
A core concept of many cube-discussions is power, and the term "Power" is synonymous with P9 for many people. It is then surely a question of taste to include cards from P9 and those with similar strengths in cube (e.g. Sol Ring/Recurring Nightmare) or to not do it.

I'm struggling with a different interpretation of power though. I once saw a formulation along the lines "If you decide to always remove the top-performers (which would in the strongest cubes be the P9 and cards alike), where do you stop? There will always be a selection of best picks in any pack, so the line to draw is arbitrary.".

I can understand this reasoning, but my issue is slightly different. I wish to have the cards of lowest power in my cube to not be miles away from the cards of highest power. There should of course be cards only fitting a theme, like Life from the Loam or Tinker, but in their respective niche they should be respectable and powerful picks (which these two definetly are). It it hence not only a question of adjusting the maximum power-level, but a question of simultaneously adjusting the maximum and the minimum power-level that makes for a fun cube, as far as I see it. Where the maximum and the minimum lie in comparison to all magiccards is a question of taste. I do think though that for a well-working cube, they should always be close enough to one another for every card in the cube to have deserved its spot.

Consistently thinking this through then might lead to a tier-categorization of cubes instead of the binary "powered/unpowered".
Maybe I'm completely off the track and miss something vital in the nature of cube, but for now I think this is an important consideration and it would be an immense help to see some sort of tier-list, extending through all colors simultaneously (probably impossible, but aim for the best) and telling you, which cards in your cube are just off-limits (The generalisation of the idea not to consider Primeval Titan and Colossal Dreadmaw to belong to the same tier, extending it to comparisons along the lines of Goblin Guide versus Isamaru, Hound of Konda).

Keep up the good work and a happy new year!