For us the Boros Charm indestructible mode almost never came up except for some cheeky combos with Armageddon. That’s my best comp for Cube experience with an indestructible combat trick / wrath protection.
I’ll be watching this to see if you all have positive experiences with this though.
I’ve tested pretty much all of these effects, and I think the extra mana is a pretty big deal. If you exchange instant and indestructible for sorcery the 1/1s can be 2/2 vigilance (Finale). You can also get a sorcery version that wraths everything else at 7 mana (Martial Coup). In Selesnya add a green to the cost and suddenly you get convoke and all the tokens have lifelink. Now this card might be better than those, but when you play those other cards you do get a feel for the costs and how they differ from Secure the Wastes. Secure often makes 2 or 3 creatures and even blocks an aggro attacker in a pinch. The XW cost is everything in my opinion.
We’ve actually liked this archetype quite a bit since adding it, but The Gitrog Monster is the one card that we did not add. We have some cheaper Exploration effects like Exploration itself and Dryad of the Ilysian Grove. The Gitrog Monster seems clunky due too the expensive multicolored mana cost and is unnecessary for the deck, even though it’s a really cool card.
360 seems like a totally different beast than 720 at this point. Aggro benefits from the redundancy of creatures at larger sizes. All those 3-mana powerhouses are twice as likely to appear at 360 while the aggro curve is only marginally better.
Thoughts on Edric in 2022? I’ve always liked him but am under the impression current Cubers think this is a fringe card. I saw some MODO Cube streams where the streamer thought Edric was a “Spicy” addition to the Cube. In my opinion this card is still quite good in Simic Opposition-style shells, and there are now 2 squirrel army producers instead of one.
I know this is different because it’s a colorless artifact, but Cryptbreaker was super disappointing for us. It was never even good or needed in Reanimator decks.
I’ve realized recently that this card got a lot better with the printings of Solitude and The Wandering Emperor. Assuming lists also have Restoration Angel there are now 2 flash 4-drops and 2 flash 5-drops in white that all have varying effects and impact how the opponent plays depending on which they think you have.
I agree with a lot of that for sure. I don’t think I’d go as far as to say 4-drops are scarce for my drafters, but they are healthily less common than a few years ago when there was a glut of 4cc bombs relative to 1,2,3. My group still likes some of the more grindy middle of the curve stuff that I don’t see in some other lists (thinking about Rekindling Phoenix as an example), but we also have more cheap sweepers than other lists (especially in red).
I’d be curious what constitutes “midrange” in this discussion. I’m guessing green midrange decks often have Hexdrinker and red midrange has Ragavan and dragons at 5cc. But that makes definitions wonky because we’ve had great “long game” 1-drops printed recently which makes decks that like to attack with 1-drops more like midrange decks instead of “put all my 2-power 1-drops that can’t block on the board and hope they get there.” I remember when every third Cube card was some jank common/uncommon with decent P/T and a defensive drawback. Couple this creature trend with 3cc walker bombs taking the previously held throne of the 4cc Walker.
In general my claim is that midrange decks have gotten more aggressive which has made hard aggro less prominent, and that has been great for Cube.
Sidenote: our experience with “tempo” is quite different. Ux tempo is always one of the best ways to compete for a 3-0 in our Cube.
I enjoy reading posts like this about macro-design philosophy.
40-50% seems like a lot to me, but definitions are important. If blue tempo is part of this aggro density then it makes sense, because you’re not really saying “half the draft is hard aggro.” In our 8-person drafts it feels right to have 2 of the players drafting dedicated/hard aggro, one that’s more tempo, and one that’s a bit more oddball like combo-aggro or aggressively slanted midrange.
It could look something like this:
-Red aggro
-White aggro
-BlueX tempo (often Izzet but sometimes Dimir, Azorius, or mono)
-Secondary aggressive-style deck (aggro reanimator, aggro black devotion/stax aggressively slanted green midrange)
It’s also common for us to have a Boros aggro drafter in which case the aggro decks at the table may look more like:
-Boros aggro
-Rakdos aggro/midrange
-BW tokens (aggro)
-BlueX tempo
I like the drafts that shape up like this because they are more interesting than “find my mono aggro lane.”
I’ll be watching this to see if you all have positive experiences with this though.
2 - Adanto Vanguard > Seasoned Hallowblade
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Elder Gargaroth vs Workshop Warchief?
I think that’s exactly the cut at your size. This card has an awesome ceiling.
In general my claim is that midrange decks have gotten more aggressive which has made hard aggro less prominent, and that has been great for Cube.
Sidenote: our experience with “tempo” is quite different. Ux tempo is always one of the best ways to compete for a 3-0 in our Cube.
40-50% seems like a lot to me, but definitions are important. If blue tempo is part of this aggro density then it makes sense, because you’re not really saying “half the draft is hard aggro.” In our 8-person drafts it feels right to have 2 of the players drafting dedicated/hard aggro, one that’s more tempo, and one that’s a bit more oddball like combo-aggro or aggressively slanted midrange.
It could look something like this:
-Red aggro
-White aggro
-BlueX tempo (often Izzet but sometimes Dimir, Azorius, or mono)
-Secondary aggressive-style deck (aggro reanimator, aggro black devotion/stax aggressively slanted green midrange)
It’s also common for us to have a Boros aggro drafter in which case the aggro decks at the table may look more like:
-Boros aggro
-Rakdos aggro/midrange
-BW tokens (aggro)
-BlueX tempo
I like the drafts that shape up like this because they are more interesting than “find my mono aggro lane.”
Oh I see. I was confused and thought we were getting this in the supplemental commander set with SNC release…