Quote from Fredo »Quote from steve_man »
Broadside Bombardiers / Gut would be the main reason for Thraben Inspector / Novice Inspector. Versatility in general since white generally has the highest critical mass of artifacts / artifact tokens for artifact decks. A lot of artifact shells can lean aggressive now, especially with things like Urza’s Saga / Nettlecyst / Legion Extuder / Galvanic Blast / etc. Shrapnel Blast is also much more consistent these days too.
Ok, then it's probably not relevant for my cube. We don't run Urza's Saga, Legion Extruder, Galvanic Blast or Shrapnel Blast. We do run Bombardier and Gut, but neither card needs Inspectors to be great.
In my cube I’ve found availability and card flow to be more important to aggro than just raw damage output for 1-cmc creatures, since they’re easily killed / walled anyways. Finding your actual bombs / living longer to contest monarch / initiative / providing fodder to Bombardiers / Gut makes Thraben Inspectors much more useful than a mundane 2/1, not to mention their actual sources of card advantage and can be blinked / recurred for value. I’ve found Savannah Lion variants to be pretty extraneous at this point. They’re by far the least important aggro creatures to me, which makes them very cuttable since that’s they’re only job.
I was originally in the “Thraben Inspector is a filler card” camp for a long time, but it’s really a great glue card in any white deck. In the 300 drafts of my cube since the release of NEO (early 2021), Thraben Inspector is currently the third most represented white card in my 3-0 archive, making it quite ubiquitous.
I hear what you're saying, although there seems to be a kind of vocabulary disconnect, as what you are describing definitely isn't aggro in my book, I call that midrange. Cutting purely aggro 1-drops in favor of 1-drops which can work in aggressive midrange and other decks as well certainly is a defensible design choice.
Thanks for the feedback in any case. More points of view from other people still welcome
In the cubes I've been playing (my own, LSV and MTGO), "savannah lion" agro is dead.
Agro decks now are actually agressive mid-range decks. That's partially by design and partially because of how the format's evolved.
Bulletpoint breakdown of why I think that's the case:
1. Way more POWERFUL 2-4 cmc cards have been printed that can win the game on their own. This incentivizes playing disruption and acceleration (ancient tomb, lotus petal, simian spirit guide) over a swarm of cheap creatures. LSV plays rite of flame as a fair card and only has 3 red 1 drops in this list.
2. Agressive Mid-range as a strategy has gotten so much better over the years. Better at grinding against control and better at ending the game fast vs combo decks. The more midrange decks exist, the more chaep creatures in the format , the worse 1 drops are (mirror matches).
3.If my 2-4 drops are very good and the 2-4 drops of my opponent are very good, I'd rather have cards that can interact well with my opponents 2-4 drops like a cut-down, flame slash or an oust, instead of a 2/1 with upside.
4. 1 cmc agro creatures are more parasitic than the 2-4 cmc cards (harder to make it as a secondary color) so there's incentive to cut them for efficient use of cube real estate.
Thraben inspector and esper sentinel work well in a midrange strategy that is trying to win by a combination of pressure, disruption and card advantage.
Drawing a card + a body is much more powerful in an agro-midrange deck than it is in an all-in agro deck.
Mana Support?: No
Mana Support?: No
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Indeed acceleration could play the role of an aggressive 1-drop, although it's a bit more volatile (since it doesn't do anything on its own). However it's perfectly possible to play all-in aggro today, making use of those very powerful 2-4 drops to win matches against pretty much any deck/archetype in the cube. So it's mainly a style/design choice.
A final point I want to make is that playing a mother, inspector or Esper Sentinel on turn 1 is really not what an aggressive deck wants to be doing. I mean, stalling in the early game and then winning with powerful higher drops is a fine and perfectly valid game plan, but it shouldn't be called aggro, because that term means something else.
Food for thought! Thanks again for the insights Lucid & Steve_man.
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Ok, then it's probably not relevant for my cube. We don't run Urza's Saga, Legion Extruder, Galvanic Blast or Shrapnel Blast. We do run Bombardier and Gut, but neither card needs Inspectors to be great.
I hear what you're saying, although there seems to be a kind of vocabulary disconnect, as what you are describing definitely isn't aggro in my book, I call that midrange. Cutting purely aggro 1-drops in favor of 1-drops which can work in aggressive midrange and other decks as well certainly is a defensible design choice.
Thanks for the feedback in any case. More points of view from other people still welcome
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In fact we're just testing The Raven Man for this very reason. Hostile Investigator goes quite well with this, but... it's really tough to fit in another 4-drop.
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We're just experimenting with a +1/+1 counters theme so this has come at exactly the right time.
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What's noteworthy is that you don't need to attack with Caesar to get the trigger, so it has an impact from turn 1. The third ability can become game-ending pretty quickly, and the first adds 2 tokens to the board; black has plenty of self-recurring creatures to sacrifice and if you run aristocrats, a sacrifice outlet is nice to have. If the third ability isn't worth taking yet, you can draw a card.
The only real disadvantage this card has is it being tricolor IMO, it's the only factor preventing me from just slamming it in.
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Wowza! Seems like a crazy dangerous creature, pretty much must-kill or get steamrolled. 4 mana seems right. I like it.
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