My understanding is that these cards are good in ramp decks that have a fair amount of artifact mana to break the symmetry. The idea, as I understand it, is to ramp until you can get a creature that survives the sweeper on the board, then cause destruction, and ideally win from there.
A couple of questions:
1. Do these cards essentially form an archetype of their own? I know it's a variant of ramp, but it seems like these decks have some special needs of their own. Can someone with more experience post a more detailed description of the archetype, types of cards you need, examples of each type, etc.?
2. How many of these do you need in your cube for it to be a viable archetype? Is just running Wildfire enough or do you at least need Burning of Xinye as well for it to be effective?
4. Of special concern to myself, do you feel that you need broken and/or colour-producing mana rocks for this archetype to be viable? (I'm adding some colourless mana rocks to my cube along the lines of Mind Stone. However, I don't run the broken mana rocks like Sol Ring and I don't run signets. Is the archetype still viable in this situation if all other pieces are in place?)
I LOVE wildfire and burning of xinye. Absolutely love them. Combined with artifacts (artifact mana in particular) enchantments, planeswalkers, and 5-toughness (or pro:red) creatures, it's such disgusting advantage. It's also bonkers with Crucible, Loam and Land Tax.
The 5th damage and 7th mana on D Force was a liability, and made it harder to make asymmetrical.
The loss of the single-shot fast mana isn't a big deal. Wildfires are better with repeatable sources of artifact mana. If each Monolith/Vault effect is replaced with mana rocks (of any kind) Wildfires will actually improve.
The real question with my cube lately has been whether my 450 needs Burning of Xinye. I've got Wildfire in, and it almost never gets drafted. Would you push to include both of them?
The real question with my cube lately has been whether my 450 needs Burning of Xinye. I've got Wildfire in, and it almost never gets drafted. Would you push to include both of them?
That was my experience as well. So I cut wildfire.
I don't like Wildfire - I gave it its shot and the deck never came together, so as a result WF sat in a lot of sideboards. I could somewhat alleviate the problem by including BoX as well, making the deck more draftable, but for two player drafts there are better options than attempting to build a deck which relies on two particular cards, which may or may not show up, and whose pieces form a bad deck without them. Lastly, I don't include cards that only see play in one deck.
In a larger drafting group, I imagine that the archetype is a whole lot more playable, because no-one who doesn't want to build Wildfire.dec will take the pieces. If you can bring it together, it's probably a decent deck.
I really love the Wildfire deck, too. It is a bit risky, but very rewarding to draft. While other players who draft broader archetypes often say that they have enough cards for their decks after only two boosters, you are often looking for the right pieces until the very end, if you draft the Wildfire deck. This has lead to me first picking a Signet in the third booster. If your cube supports this archetype though, it is certainly possible to draft it, if you are careful (and a little bit lucky). If you can get a working deck together, you feel that you succeded in a difficult task and that you achieved something.
1. The Wildfire deck is basically an archetype of its own. When I first saw the card, I thought: "Meh. Aggro decks don't want to kill their own creatures and control decks don't want to sacrifice four lands. This card is bad for most decks... it just has no home." However, that is the point of the card: It is great against both aggressive and controlish strategies. As long as your deck accommodates the card, your opponent will always be hit harder by it then you.
There are two main strategies with a Wildfire deck:
- Get a big threat (that survives the Wildfire effect) out the turn before you blow everything else up. This can be a creature with high enough toughness or a planeswalker.
- Leave your opponent with as few permanents as possible (optimally: none), while keeping mana producers (lands or manafacts) on your side. While your opponent does nothing but hope to draw lands, you can rebuild much faster.
Let's look at the support a Wildfire deck can get: R The card's own color gives you land destruction to make sure that your opponent has zero lands, while you keep a few. Red also has a few mass destruction spells that give you redundancy against aggressive decks. G This color gives you land ramp, to achieve a similar effect to the land destruciton strategy: Both leave you with more lands than your opponent. I prefer ramp though, because it also speeds you up, leading to turn 4 or 5 Wildfires. Which is crucial, if pressured by early creatures. Green also has a few decent fatties that survive the Wildfire and can then attack on an empty board. U Here you have soft counters (Mana Leak and friends are mostly effective in the early game... and after blowing up lots of lands). It also has card draw to find your Wildfire or additional lands after casting it and bounce to get rid of stuff that would survive. Here you can also find a good Wildfire substitue (see below). W Not much to find here. You can get a few mass destrucion spells to accompany your namesake card though. Wrath of God and co. help against attacks, even if they leave your opponent's lands intact. B This is the worst support color. Spot removal and edicts help against creatures that would survive Wildfire. If you are in this color (even though you should not be), you could get a Wrath-like mass removal or two. Not much beyond that though. 1 Artifact mana is really important for this deck. Even if you are green, a few 2- or 3-cost manafacts more are always welcome. If you are not green, try to pick up at least three of those. I often run four or five. The Wildfire deck is a reason why I still run all 10 Signets (at 600 cards). Even those that only fit with half their color are decent additions to the deck, if you can't get anything better.
2. A good Wildfire deck needs at least two Wildfire-like effects. Three are better, but tutors or card draw can help here. So, if you want to support this deck, add enough of those effects... or add none at all. Redundancy is king here! I can see cubes without proper support cutting the namesake card, because the deck will be highly unlikely to get drafted and the card will often be a dead pick.
Wildfire effects from best to worst:
1. Wildfire
Obviously the best one. Very good mana to effect ratio: Four lands is enough to cripple your opponent and 4 damage is enough to get rid of most creatues (especially against aggressive decks), while being low enough to let your 5-drop guy survive.
2. Burning of Xinye
Same effect, but harder to acquire. As I said, redundancy is important and in this regard, your can't get better than adding the same card twice. If you really want to support this archetype, try to get one of these.
3. Upheaval
This may look quite different, but it works great in the same deck: Just like a good Wildfire, it leaves your opponent with no permanents, while you still have a land and one or more other permanents out. Lots of manafacts in your deck help both Upheaval and Wildfire.
4. Destructive Force
The cost to effect ratio isn't as good as with the original card, but it is still a brutal effect. Just make sure that (A) you survive the additional turn that you need to reach seven mana and (B) your opponent has no Titan out.
5. All is Dust
Another card that works well with the manafacts and green land ramp that the Wildfire deck loves. It doesn't blow up lands, but unlike the other cards on this list, it gets rid of opposing planeswalkers. Also, it has no color requirements.
6. Catastrophe
Unlike Wildfire, you only kill lands or creatures, but you can choose, depending on the situation. Have a bigger guy than your opponent? Blow up lands! Do you get beaten down? Kill all creatures!
7. Devastation
This won't work with the "drop a fatty first" plan (unless that fatty is Vorapede or is indestructible or you have enough mana to regenerate it), but it works great if you are the only player with a planeswalker out. It also works if you have some manafacts and your opponent doesn't. It is a less flexible than most of the other cards on this list, but at least it is in the right color.
3. "Good enough" is a great description for Destructive Force (see above).
4. You don't want "broken" accelaration, because that would help your opponent to recover from a Wildfire more, than it would help you setting it up. Signet-like artifacts and green ramp is enough. Just make sure that there are enough of those cards, relative to your cube size.
One final word of warning: Wildfire decks have become a bit worse in my cube, due to the rising amount of planeswalkers. Those are threats, just like creatures, but while Wildfire handles critters, it does nothing against an active planeswalker. This means, that you must get rid of the planeswalker before blowing everything else up or have a creature that survives on your side, to kill the walker right away.
Edit: Added Devastation to the list of Wildfire effects.
I don't like Wildfire - I gave it its shot and the deck never came together, so as a result WF sat in a lot of sideboards. I could somewhat alleviate the problem by including BoX as well, making the deck more draftable, but for two player drafts there are better options than attempting to build a deck which relies on two particular cards, which may or may not show up, and whose pieces form a bad deck without them. Lastly, I don't include cards that only see play in one deck.
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A good Wildfire deck needs at least two Wildfire-like effects. Three are better, but tutors or card draw can help here. So, if you want to support this deck, add enough of those effects... or add none at all.
Wildfire is good in control just in the "most of wrath most of 'geddon in one spell" function it has there. And you don't have to draw Wildfire for the rest of your "wildfire deck" to perform well. Artifacts, mana ramp, enchantments, planeswalkers and 5-toughness creatures play well together anyways. Combining them with sweepers of all kinds, wraths, 'clasms, wildfires, earthquakes, etc... it's all good. I find the cards to be cube staples. There are decks that Wildfire is good in, and you don't have to already have the Wildfires in your pile to start building it. WR midrange, for example, is an archetype that can scoop up and play Wildfires on a whim. As can "big red", red control, planeswalker control and several other archetypes.
I agree with wtwlf. If your 40 card highlander deck relies on drawing one of a couple of cards you are doing it wrong. Wildfire fits well into RG ramp and RU artifact decks very nicely for us, thank you.
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I don't have much to add to this discussion other than to say Wildfire is my favorite red card and if I get it early enough in the draft, I'm picking it and going for the Wildfire.dec. I really need to proxy Burning of Xinye.
It also synergizes nicely with any regenerator, indestructible creature, or creature that has a leaves-play ability. I'm dying to someday draft Wildfire and Reveillark together. I can just imagine this: I'll play Wildfire. Reveillark triggers, and I'll return Lone Missionary and Avalanche Riders to play.
Btw, Upheaval is actually the best Wildfire effect...but it's actually that Wildfire is a good Upheaval effect.
Wildfire is an oft-misunderstood card that people see as bad. As it turns out, it is a great build-around card that requires you to draft the pieces that make it good, like ramp (artifacts, especially)/large creatures/planeswalkers. You just need to find ways to break the symmetry (like most sweepers).
That's a sweet few posts. I understand what people are saying about cards that just table and end up in sideboards. For the most part, I'm also trying to have most cards be good in multiple strategies. However, if a handful of cards in the cube enable strategies that otherwise wouldn't exist, I'm fine if half the time they fire and the other half they are sideboard fodder. In some cubes I've seen 15th pick Tinker, but I think it's still worth having in the cube (I'm adding this coming update).
That said, I agree with wtwlf123 that ramp with Green and/or artifact mana (especially the latter), planeswalkers and fatties is still a viable strategy so not getting the Wildfire should still be fine. However, it would be prudent to add support for it. Looks like Burning of Xinye may have to be one of my next purchases. I think the card is interesting enough for me to run it for a good while and see how I get on.
@Star_Slayer: Thanks for the rundown! I'm going to use that as a basis for my archetype breakdown (something I put together for each archetype for my own purposes when I can).
The increasing density of planeswalkers (especially at 360) makes it more and more difficult to break the symmetry of Wildfire and friends. Also the creature power creep makes the aggro decks faster, thus wilfire will sweep the board too late.
Don't get me wrong. I am a huge fan of the card and tried to push it with heavy signet and talisman support, but in the times of planeswalkers and heavy aggro beats, this card is not anymore what it was a few years ago. Since it became more cute than successful, WF and BoX got cut from my list.
I don't run planeswalkers, but had assumed that this would be as much a disadvantage for decks running Wildfire (as they lose a way of breaking the symmetry) as it is an advantage for opponents.
I have found the rise of aggro strengthens Wildfire, as it used to be dead in the common midrange matchups my cube used to favour.
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I just got reminded of the existence of Devastation. I actually think this is the fifth best Wildfire effect (pushing All is Dust and Catastrophe one level lower each on my list above).
I love Wildfire for all the reasons already stated, but only run one copy because it's not a popular card among my group. I'm basically the only person that ever plays it, so I felt like I was taking up space with an unplayed card while I had BoX in.
Wildfire and Burning are awesome, and I only don't run Burning because I haven't found one for trade yet. D-Force was actually a little too hard to make asymmetrical with the extra damage and extra mana.
Wildfire and Burning are awesome, and I only don't run Burning because I haven't found one for trade yet. D-Force was actually a little too hard to make asymmetrical with the extra damage and extra mana.
-AA
I'd like to support the Wildfire archetype a bit more, but I don't really like the Portal cards that are functional reprints (kind of defeats the singleton spirit, imo), and so I was thinking about including D-Force. It's obviously worse than Wildfire by a good deal, but is it just not worth running?
I'd like to support the Wildfire archetype a bit more, but I don't really like the Portal cards that are functional reprints (kind of defeats the singleton spirit, imo), and so I was thinking about including D-Force. It's obviously worse than Wildfire by a good deal, but is it just not worth running?
It's harder to set up a Destructive Force. You need a bigger creature or a bigger land advantage. It also drops a turn later, giving your opponent another turn to drop something that would prevent you from having a leg up once it resolves. I'd run BoX way before Force.
I just got reminded of the existence of Devastation. I actually think this is the fifth best Wildfire effect (pushing All is Dust and Catastrophe one level lower each on my list above).
Devastation is more of a jokulhaups/obliterate varient. Except better because it doesn't nuke artifacts and thus is easier to build around.
I think I will give Wildfire / Burning another try when I make my M13 updates. Thanks discussion thread.
Also note that Burning, thanks to Oracle updates, is not exactly the same as wildfire. You don't sack lands with Burning. This has some niche applications with indestructible lands and whatnot.
Wildfire is easily my favorite archetype in Cube. Both versions of this card should be auto-includes in every Cube in my opinion. I run Destructive Force as well, but it is 20x worse, and I would not run it in a small Cube. I do recommend this card to others with large Cubes. The RG Wildfire deck specifically is much better in unpowered Cubes.
Devastation is more of a jokulhaups/obliterate varient. Except better because it doesn't nuke artifacts and thus is easier to build around.
And this makes it so much better that Jokulhaups/Obliterate. Those leave each player with zero mana. Devastation leaves you with 2+ mana and the opponent optimally at none. If you draft a Wildfire deck, you should pick your artifact mana highly and this is yet another card that rewards you for doing so. It doesn't have many applications outside a Wildfire deck, but in such a deck, it looks pretty good.
Wildfire is easily my favorite archetype in Cube. Both versions of this card should be auto-includes in every Cube in my opinion. I run Destructive Force as well, but it is 20x worse, and I would not run it in a small Cube. I do recommend this card to others with large Cubes. The RG Wildfire deck specifically is much better in unpowered Cubes.
Why would Wildfire be better in unpowered cubes? I would think it would be much better in powered cubes, the ability to accelerate into fatties then Wildfire with moxen and then blow out all of your opponents mana sources and creatures would be even more back-breaking than normal.
My understanding is that these cards are good in ramp decks that have a fair amount of artifact mana to break the symmetry. The idea, as I understand it, is to ramp until you can get a creature that survives the sweeper on the board, then cause destruction, and ideally win from there.
A couple of questions:
1. Do these cards essentially form an archetype of their own? I know it's a variant of ramp, but it seems like these decks have some special needs of their own. Can someone with more experience post a more detailed description of the archetype, types of cards you need, examples of each type, etc.?
2. How many of these do you need in your cube for it to be a viable archetype? Is just running Wildfire enough or do you at least need Burning of Xinye as well for it to be effective?
3. Is Destructive Force good enough or just too expensive?
4. Of special concern to myself, do you feel that you need broken and/or colour-producing mana rocks for this archetype to be viable? (I'm adding some colourless mana rocks to my cube along the lines of Mind Stone. However, I don't run the broken mana rocks like Sol Ring and I don't run signets. Is the archetype still viable in this situation if all other pieces are in place?)
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The 5th damage and 7th mana on D Force was a liability, and made it harder to make asymmetrical.
The loss of the single-shot fast mana isn't a big deal. Wildfires are better with repeatable sources of artifact mana. If each Monolith/Vault effect is replaced with mana rocks (of any kind) Wildfires will actually improve.
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That was my experience as well. So I cut wildfire.
In a larger drafting group, I imagine that the archetype is a whole lot more playable, because no-one who doesn't want to build Wildfire.dec will take the pieces. If you can bring it together, it's probably a decent deck.
On spoiled card wishlisting and 'should-have-had'-isms:
1. The Wildfire deck is basically an archetype of its own. When I first saw the card, I thought: "Meh. Aggro decks don't want to kill their own creatures and control decks don't want to sacrifice four lands. This card is bad for most decks... it just has no home." However, that is the point of the card: It is great against both aggressive and controlish strategies. As long as your deck accommodates the card, your opponent will always be hit harder by it then you.
There are two main strategies with a Wildfire deck:
- Get a big threat (that survives the Wildfire effect) out the turn before you blow everything else up. This can be a creature with high enough toughness or a planeswalker.
- Leave your opponent with as few permanents as possible (optimally: none), while keeping mana producers (lands or manafacts) on your side. While your opponent does nothing but hope to draw lands, you can rebuild much faster.
Let's look at the support a Wildfire deck can get:
R The card's own color gives you land destruction to make sure that your opponent has zero lands, while you keep a few. Red also has a few mass destruction spells that give you redundancy against aggressive decks.
G This color gives you land ramp, to achieve a similar effect to the land destruciton strategy: Both leave you with more lands than your opponent. I prefer ramp though, because it also speeds you up, leading to turn 4 or 5 Wildfires. Which is crucial, if pressured by early creatures. Green also has a few decent fatties that survive the Wildfire and can then attack on an empty board.
U Here you have soft counters (Mana Leak and friends are mostly effective in the early game... and after blowing up lots of lands). It also has card draw to find your Wildfire or additional lands after casting it and bounce to get rid of stuff that would survive. Here you can also find a good Wildfire substitue (see below).
W Not much to find here. You can get a few mass destrucion spells to accompany your namesake card though. Wrath of God and co. help against attacks, even if they leave your opponent's lands intact.
B This is the worst support color. Spot removal and edicts help against creatures that would survive Wildfire. If you are in this color (even though you should not be), you could get a Wrath-like mass removal or two. Not much beyond that though.
1 Artifact mana is really important for this deck. Even if you are green, a few 2- or 3-cost manafacts more are always welcome. If you are not green, try to pick up at least three of those. I often run four or five. The Wildfire deck is a reason why I still run all 10 Signets (at 600 cards). Even those that only fit with half their color are decent additions to the deck, if you can't get anything better.
2. A good Wildfire deck needs at least two Wildfire-like effects. Three are better, but tutors or card draw can help here. So, if you want to support this deck, add enough of those effects... or add none at all. Redundancy is king here! I can see cubes without proper support cutting the namesake card, because the deck will be highly unlikely to get drafted and the card will often be a dead pick.
Wildfire effects from best to worst:
1. Wildfire
Obviously the best one. Very good mana to effect ratio: Four lands is enough to cripple your opponent and 4 damage is enough to get rid of most creatues (especially against aggressive decks), while being low enough to let your 5-drop guy survive.
2. Burning of Xinye
Same effect, but harder to acquire. As I said, redundancy is important and in this regard, your can't get better than adding the same card twice. If you really want to support this archetype, try to get one of these.
3. Upheaval
This may look quite different, but it works great in the same deck: Just like a good Wildfire, it leaves your opponent with no permanents, while you still have a land and one or more other permanents out. Lots of manafacts in your deck help both Upheaval and Wildfire.
4. Destructive Force
The cost to effect ratio isn't as good as with the original card, but it is still a brutal effect. Just make sure that (A) you survive the additional turn that you need to reach seven mana and (B) your opponent has no Titan out.
5. All is Dust
Another card that works well with the manafacts and green land ramp that the Wildfire deck loves. It doesn't blow up lands, but unlike the other cards on this list, it gets rid of opposing planeswalkers. Also, it has no color requirements.
6. Catastrophe
Unlike Wildfire, you only kill lands or creatures, but you can choose, depending on the situation. Have a bigger guy than your opponent? Blow up lands! Do you get beaten down? Kill all creatures!
7. Devastation
This won't work with the "drop a fatty first" plan (unless that fatty is Vorapede or is indestructible or you have enough mana to regenerate it), but it works great if you are the only player with a planeswalker out. It also works if you have some manafacts and your opponent doesn't. It is a less flexible than most of the other cards on this list, but at least it is in the right color.
3. "Good enough" is a great description for Destructive Force (see above).
4. You don't want "broken" accelaration, because that would help your opponent to recover from a Wildfire more, than it would help you setting it up. Signet-like artifacts and green ramp is enough. Just make sure that there are enough of those cards, relative to your cube size.
One final word of warning: Wildfire decks have become a bit worse in my cube, due to the rising amount of planeswalkers. Those are threats, just like creatures, but while Wildfire handles critters, it does nothing against an active planeswalker. This means, that you must get rid of the planeswalker before blowing everything else up or have a creature that survives on your side, to kill the walker right away.
Edit: Added Devastation to the list of Wildfire effects.
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Wildfire is good in control just in the "most of wrath most of 'geddon in one spell" function it has there. And you don't have to draw Wildfire for the rest of your "wildfire deck" to perform well. Artifacts, mana ramp, enchantments, planeswalkers and 5-toughness creatures play well together anyways. Combining them with sweepers of all kinds, wraths, 'clasms, wildfires, earthquakes, etc... it's all good. I find the cards to be cube staples. There are decks that Wildfire is good in, and you don't have to already have the Wildfires in your pile to start building it. WR midrange, for example, is an archetype that can scoop up and play Wildfires on a whim. As can "big red", red control, planeswalker control and several other archetypes.
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It also synergizes nicely with any regenerator, indestructible creature, or creature that has a leaves-play ability. I'm dying to someday draft Wildfire and Reveillark together. I can just imagine this: I'll play Wildfire. Reveillark triggers, and I'll return Lone Missionary and Avalanche Riders to play.
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Wildfire is an oft-misunderstood card that people see as bad. As it turns out, it is a great build-around card that requires you to draft the pieces that make it good, like ramp (artifacts, especially)/large creatures/planeswalkers. You just need to find ways to break the symmetry (like most sweepers).
-AA
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That said, I agree with wtwlf123 that ramp with Green and/or artifact mana (especially the latter), planeswalkers and fatties is still a viable strategy so not getting the Wildfire should still be fine. However, it would be prudent to add support for it. Looks like Burning of Xinye may have to be one of my next purchases. I think the card is interesting enough for me to run it for a good while and see how I get on.
@Star_Slayer: Thanks for the rundown! I'm going to use that as a basis for my archetype breakdown (something I put together for each archetype for my own purposes when I can).
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Don't get me wrong. I am a huge fan of the card and tried to push it with heavy signet and talisman support, but in the times of planeswalkers and heavy aggro beats, this card is not anymore what it was a few years ago. Since it became more cute than successful, WF and BoX got cut from my list.
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I have found the rise of aggro strengthens Wildfire, as it used to be dead in the common midrange matchups my cube used to favour.
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I'd like to support the Wildfire archetype a bit more, but I don't really like the Portal cards that are functional reprints (kind of defeats the singleton spirit, imo), and so I was thinking about including D-Force. It's obviously worse than Wildfire by a good deal, but is it just not worth running?
It's harder to set up a Destructive Force. You need a bigger creature or a bigger land advantage. It also drops a turn later, giving your opponent another turn to drop something that would prevent you from having a leg up once it resolves. I'd run BoX way before Force.
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Devastation is more of a jokulhaups/obliterate varient. Except better because it doesn't nuke artifacts and thus is easier to build around.
Also note that Burning, thanks to Oracle updates, is not exactly the same as wildfire. You don't sack lands with Burning. This has some niche applications with indestructible lands and whatnot.
And this makes it so much better that Jokulhaups/Obliterate. Those leave each player with zero mana. Devastation leaves you with 2+ mana and the opponent optimally at none. If you draft a Wildfire deck, you should pick your artifact mana highly and this is yet another card that rewards you for doing so. It doesn't have many applications outside a Wildfire deck, but in such a deck, it looks pretty good.
Uril, the Miststalker RGW -- Ulamog, the Infinite Gyre C -- Vhati il-Dal BG -- Jor Kadeen, the Prevailer RW -- Animar, Soul of Elements URG
Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker R -- Maga, Traitor to Mortals B -- Ghave, Guru of Spores BGW -- Sliver Hivelord WUBRG
Why would Wildfire be better in unpowered cubes? I would think it would be much better in powered cubes, the ability to accelerate into fatties then Wildfire with moxen and then blow out all of your opponents mana sources and creatures would be even more back-breaking than normal.
Blimpy's Aggro-Focused Cube (powered 360)
I'm always open to suggestions on how to improve my cube. Take a look and ask a question, or give a constructive critique whenever you can.