MTG Salvation

Cubed a bunch this past weekend and finally got first hand experience with a couple new cards including Quarantine Field (one I wanted to try).

Played a pretty sweet Balance/Planeswalkers/Tolarian Academy/Artifact WRU deck that was expecting to leverage the power of Quarantine field.

Very very happy with Hedron Archive in this deck. When I had academy ruins + tolarian academy online was able to draw 3 cards in a turn with it when I ran out of gas. Sac Hedron Archive, with it's ability on the stack, put it on top of the library with academy ruins. Cast it again, sac it.

Quarantine field was as good as I expected in this deck. Went very well with the theme of

1. Spend resources to put mana into play, fall behind in tempo.
2. Play a huge bomb that catches you up on the tempo you lost, with you now up on mana.

Cast it 3 times for 6,8,6 mana, each time it was devastating. Never had to cast it for 4.

The other time, it was cast against me. My opponent was playing UW control and I was playing reanimator that could grind (unburial rites, mulldrifter, skullclamp/lingeringsouls, library of alexandria). He cast it for 6 exiling my dragonlord atarka (preventing me from reanimating it as well) and skullclamp. Felt gross.

I also opened it in my first pre-release for BFZ, and while not very relevant at all to cube, is probably the best card in the whole set in that format heh. Felt unfair in my 4c converge ramp deck (including nissa's revelation)

I know my playtesting experience is biased since I've been championing the card, so have incentive to not look silly, but even stronger convinced this card is a must test for mid sized powered cubes that don't overload on enchantment hate. It's a control/big-mana card only, keep that in mind. You don't want to cast it for 4 unless you have to. Sort of like a sphinx's revelation.


Side note:
Kytheons flip mode gideon's untap ability is AWSOME with mother of runes. Didn't see the interaction till this week, Double protect while leaving her invincible is pretty sick.
Had a fun game where it was a multi-turn race between Feldon of the third path hurling wurmcoil engines and true-name nemesis equipped with batterskull. Pretty funny.

Ran 3 8 mans last night with the new cards.

Some quick thoughts.

1)Power start -> Ob Nixilis is basically game over. This is One big advantage Ob nixilis has over a card like vraska, which I see it compared to occasionally. This is true for other good 5 mana cards in cube, but definitely not all. If your way of dealing with planeswalkers is attacking with creatures, and you don't have anything broken of yourself to catch up.... Ob nix ends the game.
Watched it pull it's weight a couple times. Further affirmed my opinion of him (450-540+ Planeswalker), but noticed a lot of people even in larger cubes are not looking at him.

2)I think I overrated Drana a bit. I didn't actually get to play her, but I had a deck that was basically perfect for her and ran the thought of experiment "if I had drana here, how good would she be" and it wasn't that great most of the time. Still think she's great, but I was anticipating her being on the flesh carver/ophiomancer tier in black agro decks...
Retracting that prediction.

3) Gideon, Played with him the most over the past month. He's very good, but not spectacular. a tier behind elspeth, but still plays in the same league. He's basically exactly as good as he looks.

4)I still believe people are sleeping on Quarantine Field :). Was discussing it with the best player in Toronto (Lucas Siow) and he was fully on board with it being great in cube in the right deck.

5) Played with scatter to the winds a few games, never came close to awakening, but was always great. Never underestimate "counter target spell" in cube Worked very well with the mix of mana leak, force spike, condescend type counters I had that my opponents were attempting to play around. Further reinforces that cancel isn't far from cube playable in itself.

6) Manlands are great BW one showed up for me again, and was much better than the filter land it replaced. No surprises here

Relative Evaluations:
Ob Nixilis +
Scatter to the winds =
Manlands =
Gideon =
Drana -


But the only power level opinion I'm confident in by now is Gideon and the man lands, everything else still developing experience with.

Quote from Marl_Karx »

Excuse my tardiness, but you are wrong; so wrong in fact that the issue is barely debatable. You say that ramping is what green does best as though the color exists in a vacuum.

You are (presumably) trying to craft a LIMITED environment. This necessitates that each color be functional/coherent. From this starting premise, we can propose without controversy that each color needs a large number of twos and many of them need to be aggressive (even Blue is not completely excepted from this tenet).

If you are saying every cube needs a lot of two drops, yes this is reasonable premise. If you are saying that every color needs agressive 2 drops (which the rest of your quote implies) you are wrong. The MAJORITY of limited formats have 1-3 colors that either don't support agro at all or have very limited support.
You can create a limited environment where a color offers SUPPORT to an agressive strategy, but is not considered a primary aggressive color. This is how I design green in cube and it works perfectly.

Instead, you advocate for filling out this crucial spot in green with a hodgepodge of "enablers" and ramp creatures. Ramp creatures (especially the 2+ mana variety) can easily be obviated since Green ramp can just as easily be defined by land auras, Natural Order (where mana elves are just as good for fodder), Channel, Eureka, etc. In fact, some of those are obviously superior options.

Land aura's and non-creature ramp does not synergize as well with the other powerful cards in cube. Natural order, Craterhoof behemoth, Gaea's cradle, green-sun zenith , mirrari's wake, garruk wildspeakers ultimate all want creatures. Some of the best non-creature ramp I run along side the creature ramp, the less powerful options I prefer the creatures.

Ramp-midrange IS green's primary role, but it's not it's exclusive roll. The ratios of aggressive 2 drops vs ramp/fixing 2 drops vs "archetype enabling" 2 drops reflect that.
Wall of roots, Sylvan caraytid, Rofellos, Lotus Cobra and sakura-tribe elder all do their jobs quite well.

Meanwhile you go out of your way to bad mouth the stable of green multicolor creatures that are far more balanced and interesting but which crimp the color since they are not mono-green cards.

The path of least resistance is to build a Cube where are all the decks are midrange (and aggro decks prominently featuring 5 mana cards are decidedly midrange, before anyone tries to interject). This decision has very detrimental effects overall and has never produced a great Cube experience for any group I've played with. The surest way to combat that type of decline is to flood the Cube with 2s (and 1s, but those tend to be delimited by availability) -- niche cards like Rofellos are fine, but they can't be substituted for the backbone of the color.

I was "bad-mouthing" gaddock teeg, burning-tree emissary, lotleth troll and your understanding of the word staple.

Yeah, a cube where all the decks are midrange doesn't sound that great, but that's not very relevant to the discussion. A cube where 70%+ of green decks are midrange/ramp, where black/white/red is heavily focused with an aggressive base (WITHOUT 5 drops) is another story completely.
The underlying assumption you seem to be making here is that green NEEDS to aggressively support agro (and thus need more agro creature in it's 2 drop slot).. and that I strongly disagree with... with plenty of experience with multiple cubes to back up my position.

Quote from Goodking »

Nice review! I agree with all the synopses. I think the overwhelming theme from this set has been strong upgrades to already very well resourced sections in the cube: a new 4 drop White 'walker; a three drop black aggro creature; good black removal; a big colourless fatty; a great mana artifact, extra dual lands...

This exactly.

Nice set review as always, very useful resource for anyone who doesn't follow frequent discussions on the threads and an enjoyable read for the regulars as well. Thanks for taking the time.

I think people be sleeping on quarantine field tho, surprised it didn't make your top 20. Not that I think it's a stellar card.. But think in big mana decks it's going to blow games wide open enough to justify it's weak base power level as well as a possible slot in mid+ powered cubes... Def could be wrong, will find out in testing

Quote from Goodking »

Quote from LucidVision »

Curious why people running large cubes put manlands in their guild instead of fixing section, they are way closer to dual lands than they are to spells when it comes to their effect on cube archetype ratios.

Small cubes I sort of understand because u might be uncomfortable running uneven dual cycles and don't want 4 dual lands for each guild.

If you're running all of them surely it doesn't matter what they're classified as, they could be monopurple for all the numbers care. If you're not running all of them it does make sense to put them in that flexible section since you can then replace the ones you don't like with other lands or non-lands. In my cube I might end up running all except G/W just because I have other cards I need to be running ahead of Wildwood there!

If u care less about uneven fixing than uneven representation of each guild, I guess that makes sense.

I give 5 fixing slots to each guild and put the best 5 dual lands for each guild In that space , rather than think of it as land cycles.. but to each their own.

Quote from hardb0dy »

S Tier

• Ophiomancer
• Flesh Carver

A Tier

• Drana, Liberator of Malakir
• Liliana, Heretical Healer (+/-)
• Master of the Feast (+/-)
• Mardu Strike Leader (I see this one more as a 4cc though)
• Vampire Nighthawk

B Tier

• Hypnotic Specter
• Grim Haruspex

Is the s-a-b tier system done in anything besides fighting games? Haven't seen that since my street fighter days haha.

I agree with this order mostly, although place master of the feast lower, grim haruspex higher and change where I'd insert noticeable power drops.
I'd include drana at the bottom of s and up haruspex a tier

Curious why people running large cubes put manlands in their guild instead of fixing section, they are way closer to dual lands than they are to spells when it comes to their effect on cube archetype ratios.

Small cubes I sort of understand because u might be uncomfortable running uneven dual cycles and don't want 4 dual lands for each guild.

Lot's of great cards for 540+ cubes, surprised I'm not seeing larger include lists here.

As of 9/17/2015, Sorted by prediction of likelyhood of staying for a year+. I like to test anything with potential. Keeps the cube fresh and increases the likelihood I don't let something slip through the cracks.

Auto Include:
Drana
Lumbering Falls
Shambling Vent
Gideon

90%+ Of include:
Kiora 2.0
Ulamog 2.0

75%+ of include
Hedron Archive

50%+ of include
Ruinous Path
Scatter to the winds
Greenwarden of Murasa

0-50% Include
Woodland wanderer
Ob-Nixilis Reignited
Quarantine field
Bring to Light

Quote from ahadabans »

Quote from LucidVision »

That's selling her short. Her body is very important to the evaluation and over half the power of the card. 2/3 flying first strike for 3 lines up well with a ton of creatures in cube.

A 2/3 Flying, FS creature for 1CC would not make it into any color in the average cube (not even my list), so the cubability of that card hinges entirely on that +1/+1 counter trigger. How often will it trigger before it gets removed? I don't think it's a sure thing which is why I don't feel it's a slam dunk auto-include.

1 drop, 2 drop, this, into a wrath on the other side is going to hurt immensely. So is T4 swing with army, this meets instant removal.

2/3 flying first strike with +1/+1 to itself when it connects is not ON cube curve, but it's clearly closer to 3 mana than 2 mana. So it doesn't need much of a support ability to put it into the cubeable range. Thankfully a slow-conditional curse of predation is not just a small ability, it's a huge one... In the right deck.

Gravecrawler into bloodghast into drana, get wrathed is not the end of the world
She's definitely worse than a lot of other 3 drops vs control, but control is already a very good matchup for black agro. vs proactive decks that won't remove her or your army, her damage output is on another stratosphere than the cards you mentioned.

She will definitely underperform the top cards in certain (reasonably likely) scenarios, but she will also OVERperform the top cards in certain reasonably likely scenarios.

There's not another card that she can easily be compared to, so how relatively likely those scenarios are is a fair bit of guess work/speculation at this point. Looking forward to finding out soon

Wheee.... card spoiled as speculated.

I think Drana is awsome, easily the most powerful card spoiled in the set so far.
It's a shame she fails the lightning bolt test so it's unlikely she'll see any eternal play, but in cube her dying to efficient removal is less of an issue.
She'sat least sideboard material in any black deck on defense, solid in control decks with anything like bitterblosm, elspeth sun's champion or lingering souls and obviously unreal in agressive decks.

Think she's very close to brimaz power level in cube and likely equivalent +- a bit to ophiomancer/flesh carver.

She doesn't provide the value against removal like they do, but she can block great (flying creatures too), she's evasive AND with support can end the game as well most of the highest damage output 3 drops.

Absolutely makes the Cube better. Absolutely changes the format from singleton/Highlander to something else. Not for me, but to each their own.

-AA

P.S. Caveat: if you have a LARGE cube (like Kenny Mayer does), I could see doing this so there are actually enough playable fixing lands.

Knight for me. He does yeoman's work in any deck I've ever had him in.

I run Sneak Attack, Through the Breach and Generator Servant at 600 cards. Works well so far.

Disk > Stone > Vault

Quote from wtwlf123 »

Sneak Attack is a 360 card, but I don't know about Breach. And I don't even play Servant at 450, so I'd say no there too. And I play a lot of graveyard-based red decks. Feldon is damn-sweet though, and he should likely go in at 360, if not 450 for sure.

Sounds about right. I think you could make a case for TtB at 360 if you were all-in on this archetype and had some Eldrazi-type stuff as well for redundancy. But 5 is a LOT for a one-shot cheat effect.

Quote from BacchusNL »

Phyrexian Arena or Underworld Connections?

Arena>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>Underworld Connections. The 1 life/ability to not use Underworld Connections if you might die is way worse than effortless cards a turn for a 1-time cost. Arena is sweet and a card I would never cut at this point. My avatar may be an Arena art, but in this comparison there is no bias, Arena is far superior.

I'll make an exception for LucidVision and get his votes in here, it's gonna take me a bit to recalc things. No more submissions after this point though.

Alesha has been tremendous so far in testing. Couldn't be happier with her. The other cards discussed haven't really come up, but looking forward to testing Tasigur out though.

Got in a few more drafts tonight with my Cube. Even had 12 people there for the second draft so we divided into two 6-man pods & drafted the whole Cube! It was amazing.

Anyway, here are my updated rankings for FRF with random musings:

Includes at 540:

Monastery Mentor is bonkers. Just absolutely bonkers. I was very lukewarm when it was spoiled but it's so insane. It's an army in a can moreso than any other army in a can creature...maybe in the whole Cube. One game tonight I played Mentor then Lingering Souls with Flashback and bashed for 4 and adding 6 creatures to the board. Even without crazy synergy cards it just gets the board out of control in a hurry. My first deck tonight was a Boros deck & I attacked into Omenspeaker & Imposing Sovereign. He blocked with Omenspeaker so I Bolted Imposing Sovereign and crushed his face. And made a 1/1 (that also gets bigger). I'll stop gushing but I had this card at #2 in my rankings before we saw it in action & now it's the top card for me from this great set and it's not even close.

Soulfire Grand Master hasn't done a whole lot for us yet. Been drafted a few times but hasn't hit the board much that I've seen.

Goblin Heelcutter looks like a typical common but it does a ton of work. I totally beat a Baneslayer Angel tonight with a bunch of weenie to medium guys because of this card. Also dodging sorcery speed removal is a real problem for many decks. I even killed a Phantasmal Image with it for value. Being able to Falter past big butted creatures is great for aggro decks. I ran this crazy 5 color deck tonight with Heelcutter & it was the card that allowed me to win a match that I otherwise would have lost. Yeah, a red 3/2 with falter allowed me to win a game with a 5 color deck. Again the dash was key here.

Tasigur, the Golden Fang continues to impress us & rocket up the rankings. The average cost for him is 2 mana & he was even cast on turn 3 tonight. He's very much like Tarmogoyf except his P/T starts much higher and seems to at least be on par with Goyf's average P/T. Was run in a B/U control deck tonight and played well. I think this card merits testing in all Cubes.

Ugin, the Spirit Dragon has had a lot said about it. Was run in a two decks tonight and took over the game every time it hit the board. 8 mana, wins the game and is colorless. 8 is still a ton which restricts what decks can play it but it's earned a spot in my 540.

Yasova Dragonclaw fell down the rankings after disappointing me several times tonight. Facing down big & hexproof creatures it didn't help me at all. I may have moved it down too far because it's still a sweet card.

Mardu Woe-Reaper is too low on my list but it's not flashy so I have trouble appropriately rating it. Still a windmill slam at 540.

Alesha, Who Smiles at Death hasn't seen much play yet but I know she'll be sweet.

Brutal Hordechief continues to impress. Another Hellrider style effect albeit without haste. Guy had it in G/B midrange with minimal token support but it drew a lot of choice words from his opponent. He did get it with Hornet Queen once which was pretty awesome. Also a splashworthy card if you run a token deck in any color which is nice. This card plays better than it looks (even in decks without access to its activated ability). Definite include in our 540.

Will continue to test but are in for now:

Mardu Strike Leader
Whisperwood Elemental

We don't support green aggro so we haven't tried the new Figureish card. Maybe we should test it anyway? It did earn #1 on a certain set preview so maybe it's worth trying to see how it does in a midrange style deck.

Junk is way more popular in my playgroup than Dimir and Simic are. I consider cutting one card in unpopular color combinations in favor of others, but I'm not sure about it, yet...

Sounds like it's the less played combinations that need the help.