Hey look, a Merlin! I like this guy. Early/mid-game body to fend off aggro, ability to draw buttloads of cards late game, and some extra spice to all your cantrips and interaction. I'll give this guy a shot!
I'd play any all of these (and several others) before running Oracle of Mul Daya or Master of the Wild Hunt.
I want my green 4 drops to be hasty/flashy/hexproofy or come with an enter the battlefield ability. Mull Daya and MotWH are overcosted and outdated.
Rather than just quoting everything back to you I'll try and keep it brief. Additional 1 drop slots don't really detract from my overall environment because I only support 3 archetypes. They are parasitic to aggro only, sure, but sweepers are parasitic to control only and mana dorks are parasitic to control only. There is a certain amount of these cards I need to run to support my archetypes, everything else I try to make as flexible as possible.
I could totally see myself going up another cycle of lands at some point, definitely not against it.
My main disagreement here, and I think the one core principal we disagree on, is how detrimental mulligans are to aggro. Midrange decks have the ability to stall with cheap beef out or stick a planeswalker and start accruing value while they dig for lands. Control decks (in my environment) run a multitude of cantrips and cheap draw spells to dig through their libraries and find lands/sweepers/finishers/whatever. Aggro decks compete on consistency and tempo and have very limited ways to break mana parity or increase their card quality. They need to have 7 cards in their opening hand as often as possible because every possible resource is used to get the opponent to 0 life as quickly as possible. Keep in mind, the ideal aggro deck in my environment has 10ish one drops 5-7 two drops, a few 3s and some interaction. They are usually on 15 lands. I wonder if the difference between our draft environments is exacerbating this point.
Master is a pretty dead horse at this point so I don’t want to go too far down the rabbit hole of bashing it, but I will say that if I’m playing any sort of proactive creature based deck and have any form of removal in hand, I’d be way happier to see my opponent drop MotWH than Wicked Wolf.
The food ability is flavor text, 90% of this card’s power is in the ability to kill a majority of critters in cube and leave behind a solid body.
Yea the counter half is just fine and as a standalone can't hold up to pretty much every other counterspell in most cubes, but it draws you a Welkin Tern. Not to mention the flexibility of being able to just be a UU Welkin Tern if you are the aggressor and need to keep the pressure one.
And hey, it can't counter all that many planeswalkers, but you know what's good against walkers? Fliers!
Looks like the EtB fight tradition continues. This is no Ravenous Hydra, and it seems weak when compared directly to Questing Beast, but this creature is a slam dunk for my cube. Don't get hung up on the Food flavor text. This creature reads: "EtB, kill a majority of creatures in your cube." In GREEN. IMO Big Bad Wolf is an order a magnitude better for cube than Master of the Wild Hunt.
I think this guy could be pretty good. I've been very impressed with the 1 mana white tappers in my cube. 2 mana for a tap ability is nowhere close to as good as the 1 mana versions, getting a Smite the Monstrous mode for three mana seems pretty great. For a one mana creature, this little peasant can do a great deal of work.
The best Ashcoat Bear variant we've seen yet. I'll be testing this. Note that the counter ability triggers on etb, not cast, so anything that makes non-human tokens can help grow this tricky little elf.
Hey look, a Merlin! I like this guy. Early/mid-game body to fend off aggro, ability to draw buttloads of cards late game, and some extra spice to all your cantrips and interaction. I'll give this guy a shot!
Nightpack Ambusher
Thrun, the Last Troll
Questing Beast
Yeva, Nature's Herald
Wolfbriar Elemental
Wicked Wolf
Vengevine
I'd play any all of these (and several others) before running Oracle of Mul Daya or Master of the Wild Hunt.
I want my green 4 drops to be hasty/flashy/hexproofy or come with an enter the battlefield ability. Mull Daya and MotWH are overcosted and outdated.
Rather than just quoting everything back to you I'll try and keep it brief. Additional 1 drop slots don't really detract from my overall environment because I only support 3 archetypes. They are parasitic to aggro only, sure, but sweepers are parasitic to control only and mana dorks are parasitic to control only. There is a certain amount of these cards I need to run to support my archetypes, everything else I try to make as flexible as possible.
I could totally see myself going up another cycle of lands at some point, definitely not against it.
My main disagreement here, and I think the one core principal we disagree on, is how detrimental mulligans are to aggro. Midrange decks have the ability to stall with cheap beef out or stick a planeswalker and start accruing value while they dig for lands. Control decks (in my environment) run a multitude of cantrips and cheap draw spells to dig through their libraries and find lands/sweepers/finishers/whatever. Aggro decks compete on consistency and tempo and have very limited ways to break mana parity or increase their card quality. They need to have 7 cards in their opening hand as often as possible because every possible resource is used to get the opponent to 0 life as quickly as possible. Keep in mind, the ideal aggro deck in my environment has 10ish one drops 5-7 two drops, a few 3s and some interaction. They are usually on 15 lands. I wonder if the difference between our draft environments is exacerbating this point.
The food ability is flavor text, 90% of this card’s power is in the ability to kill a majority of critters in cube and leave behind a solid body.
This set is taking modality to the next level <3
This guy doesn't have to compete with aggro one drops in my cube. It might get a crack at being #17.
And hey, it can't counter all that many planeswalkers, but you know what's good against walkers? Fliers!
Inefficient counter + color intensive two drop = cube gold. This card seems low key great.
Looks like the EtB fight tradition continues. This is no Ravenous Hydra, and it seems weak when compared directly to Questing Beast, but this creature is a slam dunk for my cube. Don't get hung up on the Food flavor text. This creature reads: "EtB, kill a majority of creatures in your cube." In GREEN. IMO Big Bad Wolf is an order a magnitude better for cube than Master of the Wild Hunt.
I think this guy could be pretty good. I've been very impressed with the 1 mana white tappers in my cube. 2 mana for a tap ability is nowhere close to as good as the 1 mana versions, getting a Smite the Monstrous mode for three mana seems pretty great. For a one mana creature, this little peasant can do a great deal of work.
The best Ashcoat Bear variant we've seen yet. I'll be testing this. Note that the counter ability triggers on etb, not cast, so anything that makes non-human tokens can help grow this tricky little elf.
100% agree with this statement. This creature is pushed and strong, but it's not going to warp any environments.