So I’ve been continuing along this path of balancing and tightening my cube and have decided to cut combo-cheat entirely from my list. Without super ramp in green and a bunch of mana rocks my fatty targets were literally uncastable and only viable in reanimate and sneak/show decks. This left about 20% of my cube that was only viable in one archetype between all the fatties, discard outlets, and reanimate/cheat spells. My cube is now entirely aggro/midrange/control with no synergy archetypes or combo decks.
It is a strong card in the right archetypes, but it is very narrow which keeps it out of my cube. I played it for a while but ultimately ended up cutting it due to low maindeck %. I’d rather just play something like Mirri’s Guile.
This is a winner in my book. You can make instant speed bears, turn all your lands into creatures, and pull of some seriously hilarious creature flip shenanigans. I think this card is fantastic and I'm super excited to cube with it.
EDIT: Basically turn all of your big dumb beaters into Exalted Angels
He’s been good for me. A repulse in tempo decks and a super annoying blue leyline esque effect that turns on combat step wrath’s in control. I’m really happy with him.
Yea I hear you there. It's not a snazzy card by any stretch but it's the kind of inclusion that gives every other card in your deck a slight boost and increases overall deck consistency. Since I cut a lot of archetype support and some of the more broken cards from my list I have a little more room in my cube than most to play with effects like this.
Totally. I've been really happy with the new snow cards from MH1 so far. On Thin Ice is the best Journey to Nowhere ever printed, Dead of Winter is a sweet cross between Toxic Deluge and Infest, Icehide Golem is a 5 color Isumaru, and Ice Fang Coatl is a top shelf simic card that is very close to being a Baleful Strix. I get the aesthetic oogyness of running all snow basics, but if you can stomach it the benefits are great.
I've been messing around with this innocuous little artifact in my cube and I have to say, I'm impressed. In my unpowered environment that no longer supports artifact strategies, it's basically a colorless cantrip that fixes your mana, which has made it one of the most maindeckable cards in my entire cube. It's not a super high pick or anything, but literally every 2+ color deck is happy to run it. For cubes that push artifact synergies I have to assume that the ceiling will be even higher.
Obviously, if you don't provide snow basics or have house rules errata for your current basics Astrolabe won't work.
Yea but you run a powered cube. Brightling is an extremely fair card and can really mess with fair decks and invalidate a lot of fair offensive/defensive options. I rocked it in a tempo/aggro deck over the weekend vs. control and it was able to dodge removal and put serious pressure on my opponent and their walkers. That is until it got Control Magic’d away from me because I tapped out like an idiot. It can have the same kind of board impact as Lyra type creatures in a lot of matchups (except flying obviously) in a mug cheaper and harder to kill package. My experience, though limited has been the polar opposite of what you guys report so I’m chalking it up to a difference in our cube metas.
I'd cut one of the Angels for Serra instead of one of the Gideons. Exalted Angel is the worst of the three you mentioned, but any of them would make good cuts in my book.
EDIT: Basically turn all of your big dumb beaters into Exalted Angels
I've been messing around with this innocuous little artifact in my cube and I have to say, I'm impressed. In my unpowered environment that no longer supports artifact strategies, it's basically a colorless cantrip that fixes your mana, which has made it one of the most maindeckable cards in my entire cube. It's not a super high pick or anything, but literally every 2+ color deck is happy to run it. For cubes that push artifact synergies I have to assume that the ceiling will be even higher.
Obviously, if you don't provide snow basics or have house rules errata for your current basics Astrolabe won't work.
It may be the card shines more in my environment than your high octane cube as I have less ways to go over the top.