MTG Salvation

Don't think the payoffs are there to be worth supporting yet, but it's close! I don't believe legends matters differentiates these decks enough from a generic white agro list to be interesting. However, with the popularity of commander it's only a matter of time before that changes.

Thanks for making this thread. I'll look out for more synergies in the future!

Plaza of heroes is another payoff missing from the list that's good enough to see constructed play

Quote from steve_man »

Quote from Alan Yuan »

Does anyone have any feedback for this or share something that has worked well for your playgroup?

Personally I think errata like this just makes things worse and inconsistent with the actual game. My motto is that if my players can drive a car, they can learn any rules that Magic throws at them as long as they already have a basic understanding of the game. It's not like Warhammer / DnD where you literally need a pile of books / sheets just to interpret how everything works at any given time. It's not the end of the world if players mess up the rules by missing monarch / initiative triggers or incorrectly tracking day / night/ etc. I prefer to give my players an opportunity to learn and grow their knowledge of the game rather than underestimate their abilities to adapt to new rules / mechanics.

I agree with this, but only up to a point. If a card fits my design criteria for a card I want to cube, I prioritize that highly. I believe my cubers capable of understanding complex rule additions. However, if the difference in value an overly complex card adds to my cube is negligible relative to its competitors, I'll avoid that card/mechanic.
For example, in the case of the "ring tempts".. This is an expensive mechanic on my playgroups attention span. The "ring tempts" requires a 5 minute seminar. If I were to add it, I want to be clearly interested in a card with that mechanic.

Some of my playgroup were top level players back in the day, but no longer play magic competitively. We used to cube multiple times a week with a stable core, now it's closer to once a month while pulling from a more "retired" player pool.

When the dinosaurs come out and play my cube they often have to read multiple complex cards a pack and it reduces the enjoyment of their experience.

If it wasn’t for having to explain the mechanic to my playgroup I’d definitly be testing this card.

it’s a little slow, but the final mode of the ring grants evasion and extra damage to make up for that a bit.

A fully powered up ring is easily worth a card AND you can draw a card every turn on top of that. That’s a lot of value for a 2 mana hard to answer permanent.

I like how the card draw option is a may, so if your life total is precarious you can elect not to use it. In contrast to most other black draw engines.

between discard, planeswlakers, equipment and removal there’s a lot of competition for the non creature slots in aggressive creature decks, so the bar is high… but I think the power level of this card is high enough to give it a spin.

Easily the best Jeskai card. Semi-broken. It's a card that must be killed , but even if it is, you have to deal with the monarch.

If over the next 5 years , supplemental sets keep returning monarch and initiative, are half the best 3+ mana agressive creatures going to have these effects?
Seems like a miserable play experience if so?

I enjoy the monarch, but much less if every game revolves around it.
(I post this like every other good monarch card, apologize for the broken record)

Figuring out how to navigate this as a cube designer is an interesting dilema. Do you embrace MTG: The monarch? Do you ban it outright? Do you choose a select few of them with the most interesting gameplay/constructed history?

Certainly "decent".
Big score is a card that saw some fringe standard play and was a reasonable limited card.
It mainly saw play when you can take advantage of the discard by binning something to reanimate or flashback.
A big downside of that card was the cost of getting your spell countered, which this side gets around.
Treasure's are great in all formats!

I view it as a modal big score that guarantees a discard of a tier 3 reanimation target and has an option
to pay a premium to hardcast (or be cheated in) a strong creature. That looks pretty solid, but likely not good enough to be worth a rakdos slot for my cube.

encourage the testing!

I’d lean towards closer to S tier than tier 2.
Awsome card

Quote from steve_man »

Quote from LucidVision »

Most people don’t run that card as far as I’m aware.

A lot of this has to do with it being an obscure commander card. Sevinne's Reclamation has been quite powerful / popular in my cube, right now it's floating in and out as I test other things.

This fitting into a not so deep Selesnya section rather than an overcrowded white section is a big point in this card's favor.

fair. Selesnya is terrible. This could be in its top 5. I think perfect guild symmetry is followed reflexively by a lot of cube managers without thinking why?
Running a harder to cast, lower powered multi color card instead of an easier to cast , higher powerful mono color card because you need enough selesnya cards to make your symmetry quota is strange to me.
Understand it matters to a lot (most) people though.

I’m not oblivious to its pros but this is a great example of one of its cons

Quote from Alan Yuan »

Does anyone have any experience with her? I've seen her do amazing work in legacy.

Yeah, Emry is incredible in the artifact deck. As I increased the density of trinkets and baubles she became really really powerful.
Especially broken with black lotus.

My initial evaluation underestimated the number of artifact decks that wanted her and drastically underestimated her upside.

No experience with her outside of an artifact heavy powered cube tho

This card has impressed me a lot in early MOM standard and draft.

this card really shines in midrange wars where both players are battling for card advantage , must answer threats and the games go long.

on turn 4, hitting a must answer threat with less than 5 toughness and getting a land out of it or on turn 6-7 getting to double proactive spell is a really great rate.

the versatility of a 5 damage removal spell for a must answer threat AND additional card advantage on a smaller threat is a good package.

that being said , I don’t think it translates nearly as well to a high powered cube where red is trying to go under the format or way over it (Agro/combo/ramp).

If 5 toughness midrange threats were a bigger part of the pool I could see this as a metagame include to deal with reds weakness. Sheoldred and baneslayer come to mind, but nothing else.

I think this is a MUST add to a grindy modern cube and I’ll be paying closer attention to it for mine.

Quote from Mangolassi »

If you can't make use of the ability, this is a worse Verdurous Gearhulk for 1 more mana. To make use of the ability you need to hit the opponent, and the benefit you gain from that is a large, tapped creature, which doesn't help you stabilise at all. I feel like this is just way too weak from behind.

I agree with too weak from behind, but not that If you can't make use of it's ability it's a worse gearhulk for 1 more mana. This takes 2 hits to kill 7-> 14, gearhulk takes 3. Also, gearhulk dies to any artifact destruction spell which is a big deal in cubes with a lot of disenchant effects.
I like the comparison tho, as they are similar in function, one costs an extra mana and gearhulk isn't played in cubes at all anymore.

I'd windmill slam this at 5 cmc fwiw, but think it's a safe pass at 6.

My top 20 article for Lost Caverns of Ixalan is up!

https://www.mtgsalvation.com/forums/the-game/the-cube-forum/articles-podcasts-and-guides/831092-set-p-review-my-top-20-lost-caverns-of-ixalan-lci

My top 20 article for Lost Caverns of Ixalan is up!

https://www.mtgsalvation.com/forums/the-game/the-cube-forum/articles-podcasts-and-guides/831092-set-p-review-my-top-20-lost-caverns-of-ixalan-lci

This is a really high variance card. If your opponent has removal, has larger creatures than you or doesn't have creatures down at all it's terrible. If your 3-drop slaps their 1-drop, you just paid 2 mana to remove a creature and get a 2-drop, incredible.

I think it's a bit gimmicky even if pushed. I'll wait for others' testing on this.

Role of Sweepers

1. Combo Decks:

My experience is sweepers in general, will buy 2+ turns against faster strategies, which becoming and more dominant. Aggressive decks are required to play to the board as quickly as possible. Combo decks could deploy Damnation/ Languish consistently on turns 3 off signets/ fast mana while setting up for their win on turns 5+ (Storm, Reanimator etc.). Red X-Based sweepers such as Earthquake are also fairly strong as they could be played as early as turn 2 against Mana dorks/ white 1-drops if they have a clunker hand.

I've seen combo decks that play almost zero interaction because they have redundant combo pieces, but in most cases, I would recommend combo decks play 2+ sweepers.

2. Control Decks:

I would argue the OP is correct that if sweepers are used as they were in 2+ years ago prior to initiative etc. then they would run into those problems. However, my experience is that Control Decks in 2023 shouldn't try to aim for clean 1 for 1 using Lightning Bolt/ Counterspell/ Wrath of God and then play a massive Sphinx's Revelation. It is very difficult to have your cards line up perfectly with your opponent's threats.

I've found the best way to play Control is to trade 1 for 1 early and land a CA engine/ threat such as Jace, Oko, Teferi etc. and slowly pull ahead in the mid to game. I've found that sweepers aren't effective on their own, but they are very effective if the control deck has access to a PW, which forces aggressive decks to play to the board.

Viability of Go-Wide Strategies

I've found that Go-Wide strategies (GW) have improved not because the absence of sweepers, but that there is a huge uptick in aggressive decks, which GW performs well against. The problem with GW is historically it has bad matchups against Ramp and Combo, which its not fast enough to go underneath AND it lacks strong answers.

I'm not an expert with GW decks - My GW decks are more combo based - Flicker/ Melira etc and GW combo decks have a more even matchup against ramp/ control decks. Thus I'm not really qualified to comment, but my instincts still say GW is only really competitive as a stax archetype.

This compares so incredibly unfavourably to Smuggler's Copter that even though that card is pretty incredible, I'm not interested in this.

Ok, let me get this straight. Mana abilities do not use the stack, so you cannot use this card to stifle a mana rock or dork and render it inert. That's a lot of potential utility which this card misses out on. Creatures with activated or triggered abilities are basically ubiquitous at this point, but the problem is you're just trading your card's triggered ability for theirs, and the 3/2 body you are left with probably isn't much better than the one your opponent is left with. So, the only exchanges in which you're really coming out ahead is when you're stifling either a fetchland, a planeswalker, or a non-mana producing artifact. That's not a particularly deep lineup, so this will be a safe pass for me.

Quote from steve_man »

Quote from Sliver Lord »

Absent >>>> Partition > Lost >Absence in my estimation. I would want this to hit artifacts or to exile before trying particularly hard to find room.

I actually like Unexpectedly Absent the least out of all of these. I've been playing all the similar white removal spells for a while now and Unexpectedly Absent has been the worst performer by far. The WW in the mana cost can be a pain, as is paying extra mana to banish things like Minsc & Boo / initiative creatures because I really don't want my opponent to draw those again. Being able to hit artifacts isn't a big deal for me since a lot of other cards already cover that ground. I'm concerned most about is being able to hit creatures / planeswalkers at instant speed for 2 mana.

absent is the only 1-for-1 on the list which is pretty big game, tied for most flexible targeting, usually the best vs early creatures and rocks and by far the best vs cheated stuff. Not strictly better or anything of course but all in all one of W’s best removal spells in my experience while the other 3 are fillerish

I don’t run a jund one but would probably run soul of windgrace if I did.