Lately I've been making a lot of changes to my cube, and some of the cards that get put on the chopping block a lot are the basic removal cards that are pretty unexciting. Things like Disenchant and Krosan Grip are always early on people's list of suggested cuts as they try to suggest their favorite card that actually wins you the game.
As a result, my cube is getting dangerously low on actual answers. I've noticed lately that Equipment is getting incredibly good, and I had a deck with Survival/Recurring Nightmare/Sneak Attack last night, and nobody had a way to answer any of my game changing enchantments.
I decided to take a look through my cube, and found the following ways to kill artifacts and enchantments at instant speed.
I run a 455 cube. That's very, very few cards that let you kill game changing cards as instants.
Questions, then, are:
1) Is this kind of effect important in cubes? Do you want to make casting and equipping equipment the kind of thing that actually involves risk? Attacking with equipment that gets answered and then the guy getting blocked almost never happens anymore, and I think that kind of interaction is good.
2) How many cards with this effect do you need? Obviously right now I only have 4 that someone wouldn't see coming, since the other 4 effects are on-board tricks.
3) Are there any obvious cards that people should be including, but aren't?
At least half of those cards are sorcery speed. I run most of them. The question was about the ability to do those things at instant speed. One of the chief things i've noticed lately is that the combat step in my cube is very straightforward. There are no pump spells, and there very little instant speed equipment removal. This means there's very little bluffing, because there's virtually nothing to bluff. I find that leads to subpar gameplay, and so I'm asking specifically about instant speed answers to cards like equipment.
I definitely used to run Mortify, and I run a lot of those artifact removal things, but they're all on board tricks.
Question #3 on my original post really wasn't the big one. It's questions 1 and 2. How important is the ability to play removal during combat? How important is more interactive gameplay?
If youre looking for combat tricks consider bounce, flash creatures, and blinking. Not as swingy as straight up removal but it should spice up your combat phase more.
Atifact and Enchantment removal is important for the cube. Answers are important especially that there are multiple artifacts and enchantments in the cube.
Add in the green dudes Acidic Slime, Terastodon, Woodfall Primus for more removal. They are not dead cards as they can hinder an opponents mana development or even deny them a color.
Also add Beast Within. Not an uber powerful card but is an instant that can kill anything or provide an instant "rogue elephant" 3/3 blocker.
As for combat, I think it can still be interesting. Bounce, removal, burn (plus first strike), dismember and disfigure. Green still has pump in Stonewood Invocation and Vines of Vastwood. You cant really expect a lot of combat tricks in classic cubes as it is full of powerful cards.
Why do the disenchants have to be at instant speed? I get that it's sometimes relevant to have it be an instant, but making sure you have enough naturalize effects is the important part; not how many of them are instants.
I'm not sure if I explained my question well enough. I'm well aware of what the cards I could include are. I'm asking how important people think the combat phase is. It looks like Krosan Grip is in under half of cubes, and Naturalize and Nature's claim are in even fewer. People clearly aren't running these cards.
So the question is: Has anyone else noticed that the combat phase has gotten stale as dedicated artifact and enchantment removal cards get cut for more and more removal attached to dudes?
Why do the disenchants have to be at instant speed? I get that it's sometimes relevant to have it be an instant, but making sure you have enough naturalize effects is the important part; not how many of them are instants.
Because specifically I've noticed that in my cube it's starting to play out very straightforward. You play your dudes, they play their dudes, back and forth. There just aren't any cool blowouts, because the cards that create blowouts are usually instants. Every blowout story lately has involved a counterspell (like the time I mana tithed a turn 3 Karn ;).
I miss the stories that involved naturalizing a sword and then blocking the guy. i was really just wondering if other people ran as few instant speed cards as I did, and if they'd noticed the same quality to their games.
I can't say I noticed the 'staleness' you describe - cube games tend to be on the crazy side if anything
If you're looking for an interesting instant, I can second JinxedIdol's recommendation of Beast Within. Most people who added it when it was printed cut it not long afterwards but it has been surprisingly useful for us, sometimes to transform a game-winning permanent into an elephant but more often as a surprise blocker or an extra 'pseudo haste' attacker.
I think there are two issues. The first is whether there is sufficient enchantment/artifact destruction (and are people valuing it highly enough in draft and deckbuilding).
The second issue is making the combat phase exciting. If this is important to you then sacrificing the efficiency of naturalise-on-a-stick creatures for instants seems reasonable. Putting instant speed effects on the board may be a good compromise, perhaps including the Seals and Viridian Zealot. Wickerbough Elder is a double trick, as you get both the naturalise effect and "pump".
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I don't think adding more instant speed enchantment/artifact removal is going to make the combat step more exciting. Maybe you get a few situations where someone will block with an equipped creature, and you destroy the equipment leaving the creature vulnerable. Sure it's nice, but it's not going to come up often enough to warrant people putting those spells in decks over the more universally useful On-A-Stick removal guys like Sex Monkeys etc.
That said, I do play Disenchant and Krosan Grip in my cube.
I also don't think you can count things like Hearth Kami, Torch Fiend, Wickerbough Elder and co as "instant speed" artifact/enchantment removal, considering the opponent sees it coming, and you can't use it as a combat trick like you seem to be hinting at in your OP.
I run Disenchant in my cube and I'm always surprised how often people just side board it and forget about it... Most of the time you can maindeck it and be rather happy, but hey, if some people are happy losing to a Sword of Light and Shadow when they are playing B/W because they forgot about their boarded Disenchant they shouldn't complain that they had no answers to the sword.
Dudes~ I would say the best instant speed artifact/enchantment removal spell with potentially game changing effects would be Sundering Growth. Who knows what creature someone might populate?! Could be nuts! Plus, it can be played in any deck with white OR green. Definitely go with Sundering Growth.
Dudes~ I would say the best instant speed artifact/enchantment removal spell with potentially game changing effects would be Sundering Growth. Who knows what creature someone might populate?! Could be nuts! Plus, it can be played in any deck with white OR green. Definitely go with Sundering Growth.
I agree with this. At this point I rate Sundering Growth higher than Disenchant.
It goes into more decks and populate is not flavor text.
@Chisinf: it's a hybrid. Whatever system you use to keep the number of gold cards in check, it should not keep good hybrids out.
We found that the decks that want Disenchant don't want to pay WW for it, and that drawback didn't make up for the ability to also play it in green. Outside of a deck that can populate with it early and often (specifically a WG token deck), I'd rather have Disenchant in white, or one of the naturalize creatures in green. I get that it can be both, but that flexibility didn't make up for the cost inefficiency.
Some of this is because the cube is powered though, and not being able to blow up that Mox or Sol Ring because you have 1W but not WW is a crushing disadvantage. In an unpowered cube where I can wait until turn 3+ before blowing up relevant targets (and having a better chance of populating because you're casting it later), its value likely goes up by quite a bit.
Our cube is powered, too - we have not experienced the same problem. In fact, we found the cost to be less restrictive than 1W, and the populate a very good, sometimes back-breaking ability.
I'm happy to run Disenchant and Naturalize in my cube. They aren't flashy, but they're still unconditional removal at instant speed for a large array of very powerful permanents. It's more common to need one and not have one, than to have one dead in hand.
In fact, we found the cost to be less restrictive than 1w, and the populate a very good, sometimes back-breaking ability.
I like Sundering Growth a lot (an awesome foil, incidentally), but saying that its cost is less restrictive than 1W makes literally no sense at all.
I like Sundering Growth a lot (an awesome foil, incidentally), but saying that its cost is less restrictive than 1W makes literally no sense at all.
Sure it does. You can play it a GB deck or a RG deck. Try that with Disenchant. In white based deck it has a harder cost, but overall it being a two colour hybrid should make it easier to cast in more decks.
That being said I prefer Disenchant in white decks, because Sundering Growth mainly rocks in Garruk.dec. But even if you only get a 1/1 soldier or goblin, it is very good.
As a result, my cube is getting dangerously low on actual answers. I've noticed lately that Equipment is getting incredibly good, and I had a deck with Survival/Recurring Nightmare/Sneak Attack last night, and nobody had a way to answer any of my game changing enchantments.
I decided to take a look through my cube, and found the following ways to kill artifacts and enchantments at instant speed.
---------
Instant Speed Artifact and Enchantment Removal
Disenchant
Krosan Grip
On dudes
Wickerbough Elder
Qasali Pridemage
Instant Speed Artifact Removal
Smash to Smithereens
Putrefy
On dudes
Hearth Kami
Torch Fiend
Instant Speed Enchantment Removal
**None**
---------
I run a 455 cube. That's very, very few cards that let you kill game changing cards as instants.
Questions, then, are:
1) Is this kind of effect important in cubes? Do you want to make casting and equipping equipment the kind of thing that actually involves risk? Attacking with equipment that gets answered and then the guy getting blocked almost never happens anymore, and I think that kind of interaction is good.
2) How many cards with this effect do you need? Obviously right now I only have 4 that someone wouldn't see coming, since the other 4 effects are on-board tricks.
3) Are there any obvious cards that people should be including, but aren't?
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Question #3 on my original post really wasn't the big one. It's questions 1 and 2. How important is the ability to play removal during combat? How important is more interactive gameplay?
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Add in the green dudes Acidic Slime, Terastodon, Woodfall Primus for more removal. They are not dead cards as they can hinder an opponents mana development or even deny them a color.
Also add Beast Within. Not an uber powerful card but is an instant that can kill anything or provide an instant "rogue elephant" 3/3 blocker.
As for combat, I think it can still be interesting. Bounce, removal, burn (plus first strike), dismember and disfigure. Green still has pump in Stonewood Invocation and Vines of Vastwood. You cant really expect a lot of combat tricks in classic cubes as it is full of powerful cards.
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So the question is: Has anyone else noticed that the combat phase has gotten stale as dedicated artifact and enchantment removal cards get cut for more and more removal attached to dudes?
Because specifically I've noticed that in my cube it's starting to play out very straightforward. You play your dudes, they play their dudes, back and forth. There just aren't any cool blowouts, because the cards that create blowouts are usually instants. Every blowout story lately has involved a counterspell (like the time I mana tithed a turn 3 Karn ;).
I miss the stories that involved naturalizing a sword and then blocking the guy. i was really just wondering if other people ran as few instant speed cards as I did, and if they'd noticed the same quality to their games.
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If you're looking for an interesting instant, I can second JinxedIdol's recommendation of Beast Within. Most people who added it when it was printed cut it not long afterwards but it has been surprisingly useful for us, sometimes to transform a game-winning permanent into an elephant but more often as a surprise blocker or an extra 'pseudo haste' attacker.
The second issue is making the combat phase exciting. If this is important to you then sacrificing the efficiency of naturalise-on-a-stick creatures for instants seems reasonable. Putting instant speed effects on the board may be a good compromise, perhaps including the Seals and Viridian Zealot. Wickerbough Elder is a double trick, as you get both the naturalise effect and "pump".
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"When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, "it means just what I choose it to mean - neither more nor less." -Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking Glass
That said, I do play Disenchant and Krosan Grip in my cube.
I also don't think you can count things like Hearth Kami, Torch Fiend, Wickerbough Elder and co as "instant speed" artifact/enchantment removal, considering the opponent sees it coming, and you can't use it as a combat trick like you seem to be hinting at in your OP.
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It goes into more decks and populate is not flavor text.
@Chisinf: it's a hybrid. Whatever system you use to keep the number of gold cards in check, it should not keep good hybrids out.
Sundering Growth is REALLY good.
Some of this is because the cube is powered though, and not being able to blow up that Mox or Sol Ring because you have 1W but not WW is a crushing disadvantage. In an unpowered cube where I can wait until turn 3+ before blowing up relevant targets (and having a better chance of populating because you're casting it later), its value likely goes up by quite a bit.
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I like Sundering Growth a lot (an awesome foil, incidentally), but saying that its cost is less restrictive than 1W makes literally no sense at all.
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Sure it does. You can play it a GB deck or a RG deck. Try that with Disenchant. In white based deck it has a harder cost, but overall it being a two colour hybrid should make it easier to cast in more decks.
That being said I prefer Disenchant in white decks, because Sundering Growth mainly rocks in Garruk.dec. But even if you only get a 1/1 soldier or goblin, it is very good.
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