MTG Salvation

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The guttersnipe.dec is one of my absolute favorite to play. I think I might test this guy out. That said, I played a lot with him at the prerelease this afternoon (he was my promo, and I played against him 6 games) and I am not sure he will stay around. The double strike being able to target any creature is what makes him interesting - several times I saw a player bounce or tap a creature in combat then give another blocker double strike for a pretty huge blow-out. He BiS is amazing, but his WiS is pretty horrid.

I am in the midst of totally rebuilding my cube, so we'll see if he makes it in for testing.

I have always wanted to run this guy for art alone. If I hit 540+, I will certainly try him out. Cause art.

Crazy! I hope it works out for ya! Excited to read all about it.

Hey All,

After the huge discussion (and some what derailing) of the Pelakka Wurm thread, I wanted to make a place to discuss Green Super Fatty MCD so that future users can easily find the great information that has been produced. Hopefully other users will be willing to copy and paste their great posts here for others.

For the purposes of this thread I will define a Super Fattie as a creature costing 7 or more mana, usually having a large stabilizing impact on the board. Below is a list of contenders for that role in cube in ALPHABETICAL ORDER:



I tried to include a wide net so that as many options are on the table as possible. Please to not assume that these are created equal or that you should rank them all! I will add new options as they appear. I am sure I missed a few!

I hope we can have a great discussion about the merits of these and more below!

I am just catching on this back and forth, and wanted to chime in that I am also quite surprised by this revelation. I feel usually when a new set comes out I want to test a bunch of C and U cards, a few rares, and usually an auto-include mythic (those darn auto-mythics). Given that I guess I'm surprised that ppl search for new cards with rarity filters. Floored actually. But it is very interesting to know. For M15 the three cards I am most excited about are C/U (plus hornet tokens!).

This thread has gotten very far off path. I shudder to think of how hard it would be to find this thread as a new cube manager looking for Green Fatty Info. I suppose I'll make an MCD for that so we can make this really great info easily available for future users.

I think this is better then people are giving credit for. It shuts down a ton of creatures, even in white, but it extremely flexible in terms of when you play it. You don't have to cast it on t3 and hose yourself - that is why it has flash. You can play your cards getting the triggers until something comes up that you can't deal with. Responding to Natural Order for Hornet Queen by playing this will be worth turning off your Wall of Omens you have stuck in your hand. (Or even Sun Titan.) Sure that is the best case, but hitting any Titan with it is pretty amazing, or a Thragtusk, or a Sundering Titan. There are just so many huge triggers - most of which are not in white.

In my cube there are 9 ETB triggers in White, only 2 of which are often game-altering (Sun Titan, Stoneforge Mystic). Of course Stoneforge is extremely cheap, so can often be played before you need to respond to a major trigger. Sun Titan will often be screwed significantly, but even there will still trigger when it attacks. Other cards do become really bad when this is in play (looking at you Wall of Omens and Silverblade Paladin). I am willing to harm my own wall to respond to a Hornet Queen, or even Nekrataal.

So I think it is testable. I do not think it is anywhere near an auto include for 450, let alone 360. But certainly seems like some solid testing time would go a long way to understanding a very interesting card.

Colby,

We finally got your cube up and running, so we will try it out tonight! You cube is something like 10-12% different then mine, which is huge (most cubes are more like 3-5% different) - def excited!

Just wanted to say I also enjoyed the work you three are doing! I will watch out for new episodes now. Was great to hear what you guys all think, and also what Mark had to say too. Not that your cast should be too MTGS-centric, bout it would be awesome to hear from some of the other big wigs around here too.

Should you gents ever looking for a discussion of UN cards, I'd love to chime in. Also, there is some very interesting work happening locally here with a fine fellow making what he calls the Meta-cube, from which he can build all our cubes at will. He probably has some interesting things to say as well.

Just out of curiosity, you guys have an American, a Frenchman, and Portuguese voice - why are you hosted in Canada? Whatever the reason, love it. Props for making the community that much better.

Colby, I hope you don't mind me attempting to put words in your mouth. I am just trying to clarify. If I'm wrong, let me know and I'll edit this away.

So I think Reforge the Soul is a lot like Colby's third Wildfire. We have had a lot of discussion on what card to use if you want a third Wildfire - I believe the community consensus is that the different 3rd versions are all too bad to run but some might in order to make Wildfire just that much more playable. Colby wants a 5th Timetwister in order to support a storm archetype that he really cares about, just someone who wants to run Destructive Force would for Wildfire. He has a very specific and rational reason for wanting that, and for mentioning it here in case anyone else wants it for their support package. He is not recommending that everyone slam Reforge into their cube no matter what. Nor that we should be cutting Wheel of Fortune for its way better brother Reforge.

I think it is good to have discussions about these more fringe archetype support cards. It seems that like Destructive Force, much of the community is not interested in going to these lengths to support draw-7s. But that does not mean the card is the worst thing ever, or that Colby is wrong for bringing it up. I don't plan on running it in my cube, but I will save one of my copies in order to have it around should I change my mind. Which I think is very helpful.

Quote from snorful

I found some renders where both of the cards sides are on the front, and then I just keep the actual cards with the tokens, so you can flip it however much you want. It is a very simple and elegant solution, and most of the renders look good.

Some examples:

Whoa, surreal. I made those! (the Reckless Waif & Delver of Secrets)

I think I might make the rest of the playable DFCs, actually. I wanted to remove the flavor text to de-clutter these anyway. Let me know if you have any requests!


EDIT:

Quote from BetweenWalls »

Here is where you can find all the single-side DFC renders I've done:

Delver of Secrets, Reckless Waif, Cloistered Youth, Huntmaster of the Fells, Bloodline Keeper, Mayor of Avabruck, Garruk Relentless, Wolfbitten Captive: see post #5081 of the rendering thread.

Nissa, Kytheon, Liliana, Jace: see post #5076 of the rendering thread.

Loyal Cathar, Grizzled Outcasts, Hinterland Hermit, Villagers of Estwald: see post #316 of the rendering thread.

I just can't see a Standard set being able to maintain 5 non-mythics any higher than $15, and that's if the rest of the set - including every other rare and mythic in the set - is trash. Not trash as in Born of the Gods or Dragon's Maze. I mean trash as in Fallen Empires level of mediocrity.

Simply put, after the supply crunch that always seems to happen at set release (i.e. after about two months), and for as long as the set remains in print, the average value of the cards in the pack must be no higher than the typical price that dealers (read: your local game stores) pay to buy product, by the Law of Zero Arbitrage - if a store can get a positive expected rate of return from cracking packs and selling the singles, they will do so.

There will be one fetchland in every 12 packs (10 in 121, for those who want the technical nuance). Assuming that every other rare in the set is worth $0.75 on average, and every mythic is worth $2, then in 121 packs, you can expect to get 10 fetchlands, 15 mythics, and 96 "other rares", for a total value of $174, plus the value of the fetchlands. Noting that 121 packs is roughly 3.5 boxes, and stores can sell product to us at $90 a box on the low end, it stands to reason that the maximum sustainable value of fetchlands is somewhere around ((90 * 3.5) - 174 = 141) / 10 = ~$14 per fetchland.

I just don't see a way for prices to go any higher than this barring massive supply crunches.

As requested by the community, here is the Standard gainers thread! All discussion retaining to standard cards should be in this thread.

Gainer threads are here:

Journey into Nyx: http://www.mtgsalvation.com/forums/market-street/market-street-cafe/557203-jou-running-tally-of-highest-priced-cards-updated]

Born of the Gods: http://www.mtgsalvation.com/forums/market-street/market-street-cafe/541918-bng-running-tally-of-highest-priced-cards-updated]

Theros: http://www.mtgsalvation.com/forums/market-street/market-street-cafe/517349-theros-running-tally-thread-updated-6-27-14]

Can a mod just transfer the discussion from the other thread? We just did this.

It's not required to be mono-green, and I think people are way overstating that. If I drop another land the turn after, I only actually need to untap 2 forests to play the most expensive thing in my cube, not 4. If not, still three forests is fine. Even if I untap all four, it's unlikely I can actually use all the mana. You can make any land a 4/4.

Rofellos gets more from having a high density of Forests and he's just dandy in G/x, so I don't think it's worth focussing too much on that aspect of Nissa.

Quote from KBH »

I find the level of backlash here disconcerting. Reforge the Soul is at least *close* to being good enough (if it isn't, which I'm not qualified to say).

Obviously it is storm centric, so I would think no reprimand is in order for not writing 100 words about how it is is best in a Storm deck/Cube -- since that GOES WITHOUT SAYING.

Trying to stigmatize the poster because the card doesn't fit into a Cube that doesn't emphasize combo (no duh?) is only trying to force your own vision of how to build a Cube on everyone else.

If you are completely incapable of considering a card in a context that is appropriate for it, why not simply say "Not for me" and leave it at that. Trying to "weigh" its merits using your own disingenuous crtieria is open disrespect to people who choose to construct a Cube on different terms.

Trying to steer the conversation on top of that to insinuate that the poster has violated discussion norms strikes me as manipulative and a bit slmiy.

But that doesn't go without saying. I'm rather new to cube and haven't played magic in a long time. Reforge the Soul happens to be a card I have in my collection and I came to this looking for a discussion about its inclusion in cube.

Context is everything, and without it I had assumed we were discussing the card. Not the card in an archetype that apparently I'm too stupid to get is the context. Clarification and broadening a discussion aren't bad things. Asking for some added detail or the appropriately labeled discussion doesn't seem to out of line.

Edit: To respond

Quote from ColbyCube »

I think this is a very slippery slope to try to argue. What exactly is "widely cubed?" What is exactly is the "most common view point?"

What exactly are your parameters for deciding this, and why would everyone else automatically agree with what your parameters are?

If you want a quick answer, I'd go by the average cubes on cube tutor. They all include certain cards, and there's a clear general zeitgeist for what a lot of people consider cube-able.

If you've got a drastically different environment than what's in the "average" cube, expect different replies and experiences than what you've had. And I'd expect a lot of the discussion to default around there.

Quote from flutterguy

[b]
Why Not?: A lot of people simply feel that cards that are illegal in all sanctioned formats should also be illegal in cube. A very understandable position. There is no way to argue against this position, and it is certainly valid. Personally, I just find this rule is less fun. The NLO cards are also compared to custom cards. While I can see that point, these are designed by Wizards, and not designed to fill a specific role as usually the case with custom cards.

I would add to this list two things: Firstly, the cards aren't a flavourful fit with the rest of Magic. There's all kinds of nonsense going on, from bizarre mechanics of putting cards on players or shoes on cards to singing stuff, to weird flavour that is at a total contrast to the usual environments. I actually loved the Unhinged release event and had a ton of fun drafting that set, but when I had many of those cards in the cube it felt kind of wrong.

Second thing is simple aesthetics. The border colour being something other than black bothers a lot of players.

Despite this there is a surprising number of strong UN-cards. Symbol Status, City of Ass, Rare-B-Gone, Booster Tutor and Topsy Turvy are the best ones that come to mind. EDIT: Oh yeah, and Blast from the Past.

just my 2 cents, but in my 336 powered cube, both blast from the past & cheatyface have been fine cards. blast from the past has been a utilitarian burn spell, providing red some additional reach & card draw. cheatyface on the other hand has been a workhorse. its amazing how any deck gets better w/ a free 2/2 flyer; especially when he shows up early in the game!

All of that and no discussion of what is probably close to the single best silver-bordered card you can run?
Gifts Given
If you draft some 5 color fixing, that card is insane. You just have to remember not to leave your opponent's cards in your deck.

Fruitcake Elemental is pretty cool too. I currently have it in my list, but plan to trade it off. One of my friend's dropped a fruitcake while he had some token maker out, so he always had a chump blocker, but his opponent didn't have anything reusable, so the fruitcake wore him down quickly. Its also very good if it can come down with haste.

I think those are really the only 2 holiday promos you would want to run in a normal cube.

Thanks for a very good summary.

I run Blast from the Past as my sole silver-bordered card at present. Although it has a lot of rules on it, as long as players are familiar with them (all the keywords are on other cube cards) it is fairly straightforward. It functions completely within the normal Magic rules set too.

I used to run Topsy Turvy. It was a powerful card, particularly if you could work out how to abuse it, but it created unpleasant headaches for too many players trying to keep track of the phase, and so was cut.

Token strategies are supported in my cube, so I'll be on the lookout for a copy of Symbol Status.

I used to run Rare-B-Gone, but it was annoying trying to remember which cards from before the coloured expansion symbols were used were rare.

Booster Tutor was another card I used to run, but cut because of laziness. Once the novelty had worn off it felt like a chore digging out a cube booster each time it was cast.