MTG Salvation

Why do people view missed etb triggers in a negative light? That's the same mentality new players have when they're bomb gets milled away randomly and they think its the most broken thing ever. Unless you have a toolbox deck, I can't see it having any negative effect on your decks potential. Compared to the times those manifested cards got you closer to the eventual answer that won you the game, or got rid of a useless land, or gave you a sizeable creature for free.. the chance that it milled a card with an etb ability you needed seems pretty negligible.

Hmm, I've never been that impressed with Curse. Interesting that others have a different view on it.

Hey man, great content, in the middle of a draft as we speak with mono red (boring lol). I've only watched one draft, but you do a great job of always being vocal of your thought process, something I think would be hard. I did cringe once when you detention sphere'd the wurmcoil instead of the faith's fetters (which would of allowed you to use Dack's control magic ability on the Wurmcoil) but other than that it was pretty solid

Thanks Agent56k, I'm looking forward to getting them in the mail

@ Hardbody: Sick swords there man! Wish I could see them in person, since I'm sure the foil is stunning like that! I guess we both have a sweet set now

Went to GP Strassburg, just now getting around to posting the alter Ryan Yee did for me: The photo quality is terrible I know, poor lighting and shaky hands hehe. It is foil though.

Also, Modfly just completed my Mana Elf commission:

That basalt monolith is awesome! Same with the squirrel nest, very clean alters.

Bigup finally finished my shocks 😃

Here are some BW Clerics for a tribal cube featuring a mechanic I came up with, along with some supporting cards. Thoughts?

I think it'd be more elegant if the card gained the opponent 4 life to match with its p/t. Right now, 5 is kind of random. Cool drawback for undercosted beater though.

Another one NathanZimmerer and I came up with while working through his cube:


I love the way you can play this turn 2, then turn three pay echo and play the 1 drop you got.

@ NathanZimmer: Messaged you on your thread.

Another random one:

The Problem: I feel powered/unpowered cubes lack complexity during the combat step, something that seems very important to modern set design and leads to an overall more interesting game play experience (IMO of course). This is attributed to the lack of combat altering cards present in most cube environments because they simply don't stack up, power wise, to other cards competing for slots in each color. Complex combat, to me, is made up of three main ingredients: A plethora of diverse stat changing instants; strong, but not overwhelming removal; and creature abilities. Most powered/unpowered cubes have the latter two in excess, but are nearly void of the first. This leads to easy combat math and a lack of interesting/memorable plays during the combat step.

The Fix: The only thing I've come up with is lowering the average overall power level of the cube to something in between peasant and standard unpowered. I'd like to get everyone's opinion on this though. Do you agree/disagree with my assessment? Do you think it's worth fixing, and if so how? Keep in mind that there would need to be a good number of these pump effects to make a noticeable difference in how drafters approach combat steps.

This post by TheTennesseeFireman sums up the steps one would have to take to make combat more interesting:

Quote from TheTennesseeFireman »

Adding combat complexity to the cube is no small endeavor. One significant thing I think needs to be taken into account during cube design is greater Power/Toughness balance. In most limited formats, creatures skew slightly towards higher toughness in order to make combat tricks interesting and prevent the game from devolving into a race. In cube, where each creature needs to justify its existence independently, it skews towards higher power. As a result, we tend to rely too hard on removal and self-protecting planeswalkers to trade off creatures and slow down races, thus making combat uninteresting.

Some suggestions I'd make to improve combat quality:
-Skew back towards higher toughness creatures. This will help lower the number of mindless trades.
-In turn, increase the number of finisher effects/pump abilities in aggro to prevent them from getting bogged down.
-Cut back on instant speed removal and wrath. Fear of a 2-for-1 hurts the viability of combat tricks. Additionally, winning crucial battles over board state shouldn't constantly be undone by Supreme Verdict next turn.
-Add combat tricks, but make sure they truly punish the opponent for not respecting it. Hatred, Ghor-Clan Rampager, and damage redirection are good examples.
-Lower the number of evasion creatures. I've advocated the removal of the Soltari 2-drops for some time: they offer no interaction with which to work.

Possible Inclusions people can include in each color:

Awesome card, awesome flavor, and really good to boot. A+

Wow, Darkling is super awesome. I love that card.

He should have bee more specific that it falls off when the nexus ceases to be an artifact creature at EoT not because it stops being a creature (which the aura provides again), but because its no longer an artifact land creature, just a land creature, making it an invalid target for the aura, which falls off making it just a plain ol land

But its still an effective 4/4 pump for 2 cmc at sorcery speed for an inkmoth deck, hardly a bad option

Some commissions I have done recently.

Malthael from Diablo 3.


A quick step by step animation I did with the above card.

Hanna the ship's Navgator with new textbox. No idea who painted the original image.


The Moirae Sisters (Fates) from Persona 3.

Tartarus tower, also from Persona 3.
Bearer of Heavens with Attack on Titan art.

Quote from Altaurus321 »

I'm not sure if I've brought this up before Mark, but I really enjoy your group's newfound love for interesting over powerful (as in maybe the last few years). It makes it a lot more exciting for me to follow your updates and card testing. Anyways, thanks for the great work you do in the community and I look forward to keep seeing new and innovative ideas pop up here

Hey thanks man! Ya, we're trying a little bit of everything nowadays, experimenting with cards that have previously been removed and moving in new directions. I like how it's working out so far.

5 other additions to the cube.

2 new tool-themed, a 300-themed alter and an Escher duplicant. All done by Wotan.

Almost forgot to post this. My first commissioned alter.

My newest cube updates, aren't ya'll jealous.

Quote from sperry

Ughhh, so many punisher mechanic cards.


Don't know how to evaluate this at all.


As an enchantment that only does the Sac/Damage thing, it's not good enough. But it can become a 7/5 indestructible creature, which is obviously a really big game.



Honestly, I think it's impossible to say without testing. How often will you be able to turn on the creature mode is going to be the deciding factor, IMO.

You could also consider doing things like including the Borderposts if you are going to include the multicolor gods.

My initial thought is I havent seen anything to make me want to include very suboptimal cards to support Devotion.