In my opinion, this is kind of more of the same when it comes to black common removal in theros. Pharika's Cure is still the best, but just think of this around about the power level of Sip or Lash and you'll be fine.
At 360 or higher you have to run 10 guildgates, 10 karoos and 5 borderposts as well as both teramorphic expanses, in my opinion. That's not even enough fixing, but it has to be because all of the other fixing lands suck a lot. Borderposts are better than gates, but gates are all good enough to make the cut. It does annoy me that there's more fixing for allied colours, but the only other option is to have even worse fixing.
The Phyrexian guys should be colorless and you don't need more multi cards really. They reduce options in drafting and some aren't all that impressive.
I also like Flayer Husk and I like Scimitar too. Vault Skirge was never very impressive for me.
All three cards are mediocre but good enough to include. I like Vault Skirge and Scimitar the most out of the three - a 1/1 flier is a fine one drop for any aggressive deck but a 1/1 on the ground even with an upside is more marginal.
I really like borderposts and hate gold cards for pauper cube. We need fixing and borderposts are actually really fine fixing. Gold cards are hard to cast and make drafting more awkward as the last picks are almost always gold cards
I almost never mull. If I have nothing castable, I mull. If I have six lands and a six-drop,
I mull. That's close to it.
In limited, the chances of either of those being true is relatively high, though. Those conditions are only slightly more lenient than the average drafter, and even with that standard you'll have to mulligan a fair amount.
Agree. Experience is the only thing, that shows if a card is good or not for a cube, that has it's own environment.
I think a good example for constructed bombs are Brainstorm and Delver, that simply depend on well constructed decks with a lot of shuffle effects in the first case and a huge amount of noncreature spells in the 2nd case. Favored Hoplite is a great example for the other case. In Theros limited it's an insane card. It's maybe the strongest Uncommon for that limited. Even if it would be common, no one would even think about considering it, because Heroic is the weakest keyword , that has been printed for years. It's just so good in Theros, because it has a huge amount of card that enable Heroic and way too less removal.
Wingsteed Rider is very good actually, even in pauper cube. Anyone running an aura theme should run it for sure.
There are many worse keywords. Heroic is fun and good in draft, in constructed it doesn't really matter as there are often no cards with a particular key word that are very good. Noone's running any bestow cards in standard either.
The shuffler is based off a mathematical algorithm, so realistically its not actually random since it has a set formula of what it gives you each time. In real life your moving your cards around a lot differently and shuffling them in a different fashion. Trust me the shuffler will give you some pretty horrible hands more often than IRL, sometimes you dont even play games with your opponent since one of you wont get the right mana. That rarely happens IRL since you have the ability to randomize your deck a lot better. It really has nothing to do with skill level at times.
If you seriously think that your shuffling in real life is as random as the modo shuffler, then I don't know what to say to you - that's just not true. Yes, you can get a degree of randomness (well, unpredictability) by shuffling well, but it is not nearly as random as the shuffler online regardless of whether the modo shuffler is truly random or not.
If you get worse hands on modo than in real life, and you use the same deckbuilding techniques and draft as well in both, then it's overwhelmingly more likely that you're not being sufficiently random in real life, not that the modo shuffler "isn't random enough".
The problem here is not that it's not a powerful effect, but that only a decreasing proportion of decks want the effect. Most control decks play some number of creatures these days, and a card that's purely good in very slow control decks could well not be worth the space.
Last night I FINALLY realized why Waterfront Bouncer was a Blue staple thanks to AL; he turns every dead land card draw into an Unsummon.
GG
Yeah, the bouncer is very strong in nearly all blue decks. He's an easy card to cut in deckbuilding until you see the work that it does in play nearly every game.
Sedge Scorpion on the other hand gets a few points of damage in, then sits and waits to doom blade something. Excellent choice for a 1 drop that you can usually get picks 8-11.
That's very late for this card. I think it's a 6-8 pick. It's very good against some decks (the green mirror for example) and is always a fine card.
Phalanx Leader for sure. Picking a non-white card and the ~4th best card in the pack is just ridiculous. It's the kind of thinking where you think you're being clever but your "pro draft strategy" is making you make a worse pick than someone who's been drafting a week. Yes, there's a little benefit that you get from sending a signal, but you're assuming people read into the very early signals very strongly - that's probably not the case anyway.
In terms of Onslaught vs Leader, I prefer the leader because getting enough powerful heroic creatures is harder than getting enough heroic triggers. If I'm drafting white in this format I'm drafting heroic.
Yeh, one of the harder match-ups, but that doesn't make it hard! Just look to Wafo-Tapa being 3-1'ed by this deck at the Pro Tour, and he's probably one of the best control players ever.
As I said, if the meta focuses on hating it out, then it'll be hated out. No deck is immune to that. But then those decks are making themselves considerably weaker against everything else, and eventually something will prey on that and they'll shift away from hating this out to protect themselves again. This deck has an insane power-level, and only specifically targetting it in sideboard (and even mainboard) construction will stop it being the best deck in the format.
As someone said about this deck in this thread or another, it's a case of: "Do you have the specific card you need to deal with my threats right now, or can you draw it in a turn? If not, I win."
Esper is a bad matchup. Yeah, Wafo-Tapa was beaten in one match, but that means hardly anything. Google "statistics".
I think that Deveri is actually a very good card. It's a shame that the functionality of the card is severely hindered in any format other than commander but I still actually think it's a fine card. It's a 2/3 flier for 3 that taps a blocker and refunds some of the mana investment you payed to cast it, and every turn after produces some amount of mana. It's probably not good enough for cube given how ridiculously good a three colour card has to be to see cube play, but I'd certainly be interested at 1 or 2 colours. It might even have potential at its current cost.
This is a ridiculously good card, just not for this format. Until you can run blue-based aggressive decks in cube that maximise their blue mana symbols on permanents they play this isn't going to be any good - ie never. If it was any other colour, it would probably be great. Yeah, it's relatively vulnerable but so are Oracle of Mul Daya and Master of the Wild Hunt . This guy at least has an insane best case scenario to make up for it.
Wow, I feel really sorry for you having to go through all of tha. I wish it was me :-/. Be strong man, you are obviously recovering. I hope you see better days soon.
EDIT: You are serious, right? The last line makes it seem, well, a bit weird.
All three cards are mediocre but good enough to include. I like Vault Skirge and Scimitar the most out of the three - a 1/1 flier is a fine one drop for any aggressive deck but a 1/1 on the ground even with an upside is more marginal.
I really like borderposts and hate gold cards for pauper cube. We need fixing and borderposts are actually really fine fixing. Gold cards are hard to cast and make drafting more awkward as the last picks are almost always gold cards
In limited, the chances of either of those being true is relatively high, though. Those conditions are only slightly more lenient than the average drafter, and even with that standard you'll have to mulligan a fair amount.
Wingsteed Rider is very good actually, even in pauper cube. Anyone running an aura theme should run it for sure.
There are many worse keywords. Heroic is fun and good in draft, in constructed it doesn't really matter as there are often no cards with a particular key word that are very good. Noone's running any bestow cards in standard either.
If you seriously think that your shuffling in real life is as random as the modo shuffler, then I don't know what to say to you - that's just not true. Yes, you can get a degree of randomness (well, unpredictability) by shuffling well, but it is not nearly as random as the shuffler online regardless of whether the modo shuffler is truly random or not.
If you get worse hands on modo than in real life, and you use the same deckbuilding techniques and draft as well in both, then it's overwhelmingly more likely that you're not being sufficiently random in real life, not that the modo shuffler "isn't random enough".
Yeah, the bouncer is very strong in nearly all blue decks. He's an easy card to cut in deckbuilding until you see the work that it does in play nearly every game.
That's very late for this card. I think it's a 6-8 pick. It's very good against some decks (the green mirror for example) and is always a fine card.
In terms of Onslaught vs Leader, I prefer the leader because getting enough powerful heroic creatures is harder than getting enough heroic triggers. If I'm drafting white in this format I'm drafting heroic.
No. Casting it on yourself is not a good idea
Esper is a bad matchup. Yeah, Wafo-Tapa was beaten in one match, but that means hardly anything. Google "statistics".
Ashiok is terrible in this deck, it's far too aggressive for that plan. Your FNM is not a high level event.