MTG Salvation

Crucible of Worlds

I don't currently run this, but apart from the obvious locks (e.g. Stripmine, Wasteland), reusing fetches, and replaying manlands, are there any other powerful things this card can do? What sort of decks/archetypes want to run it?

Thanks in advance for your help

The cycle lands are pretty good, Harrow, replaying lands you discards off draw spells like Compulsive Research, Thirst For Knowledge, for card effects like Wild Mongrel and such, or lands you discarded due to opponent's effects. They're many synergies, you just have to look for them, even if they aren't broken and insane.

Quote from Wildfire393

Armageddon and similar effects are also great.

Ah yes, completely forgot about Armageddon and Ravages of War. Wildfire and Destructive Force fall in that section too.

It's really good with Braids and Smokestack.

Braids, Cabal Minion, Smokestack, Armageddon, and World Queller are the "are you kidding me" cards with it.

Don't forget Strip Mine/Wasteland.

-AA

After we brought Crucible in to play with Smokestack and Wasteland/Strip Mind, we ended up bringing in Barbarian Ring, which has been pretty cool.

When Crucible is good, it's fan-freakin-tastic. The problem with it is that it's never just ok. If it's not being amazing, it's taking up sideboard space. I never play it unless I have multiple uses for it. A couple fetches and a man land just aren't enough to warrant inclusion in my deck, IMO. I need to have Braids, Strip Mine, a fetch, and maybe even something else. I just don't want to risk it ever being a dead card. It doesn't get played that often, but its good mode is so good that I just can't cut it.

Crucible is much like Squee in that it works well with a good amount of targets, and works amazingly well with a few targets. All you really need to make it worthy of inclusion is a few good targets (sac effects, discard effects, manlands) and one great target (Strip/Waste, Geddon/Wildfire, Braids/Stax).

It's a weird card to me in that it doesn't get played every time we Cube or even every other time. But when it does get played its in a dedicated deck and comes in at an 8 on the "Uggghhhhh" test. It will probably never leave my 720.

I love this card. Every time it's in play, we fine more and more reasons why it's amazing.

ghost quarter and this. Slowly draw out all of the lands in their deck... evil laugh... profit.. lol

Cube isn't all about omnipotent cards that can fit in every deck. Yes, it's about those kind of cards (like Sol Ring), but it's ALSO about cards that are mundane by themselves yet can get incredibly powerful when they work with at least one of four or more other cards in the cube. Cards like Stoneforge Mystic, Squee, and Show and Tell are great examples. Crucible of Worlds is another great example. These are the kind of cards that make cube so fun.

well otherwise u are just destroying their lands then when they come out

Quote from Trunkers

Also, I saw the following play happen once (and likely never again):
Player has creature, fastbond, strip mine and crucible of worlds in play.
Plays Teetering Peaks to pump the creature. Strip Mines the Teetering Peaks to pump again, and plays both lands from the graveyard, and repeats the cycle for lethal.

Since I've had Fastbond in, I've seen someone do this with a Crucible of Worlds + Fastbond + Greater Gargadon + Plated Geopede. Pretty sick.

Quote from Trunkers

Player has creature, fastbond, strip mine and crucible of worlds in play.
[Wins with a complex sequence of plays]

I assume the opponent has no lands at this point anyways? And obviously the guy is at a high enough life total to basically cast channel/fireball.
The Gargadon/Geopede move is a good one though.

never thought about using the landfalls and lands with unique abilities to abuse this a bit more, especially with fastbond... hmmm me likey

On a scale of 1-10, how necessary is Crucible? It's expensive for such a niche card, but I see on pretty much every list.

Necessary? 0. But when you have some money and are starting to try and give your cube some less straightforward decks and more opportunities for interesting situations, it's high on my list of cards you should pick up.

Without crucible, you're never going to be drafting and be like "Man, if I only I had crucible this cube would be good". However, with crucible you'll constantly find yourself picking up and realizing all these cool synergies your deck has, and how awesome it is that you can do such amazing things with it. And for me, that's what cubing is about. I love finding unique little things to build way more than I enjoy drafting the best red aggro deck. Crucible is one of the cards that encourages that kind of drafting.

Quote from JeffDerek

Necessary? 0. But when you have some money and are starting to try and give your cube some less straightforward decks and more opportunities for interesting situations, it's high on my list of cards you should pick up.

Without crucible, you're never going to be drafting and be like "Man, if I only I had crucible this cube would be good". However, with crucible you'll constantly find yourself picking up and realizing all these cool synergies your deck has, and how awesome it is that you can do such amazing things with it. And for me, that's what cubing is about. I love finding unique little things to build way more than I enjoy drafting the best red aggro deck. Crucible is one of the cards that encourages that kind of drafting.

Every last bit of this. Crucible gets nothing but better with each draft we play and each set that comes out.

Reviving this thread because I'm a skeptic, and still don't understand why it's a cube staple. In all the dozens of MTGO cube drafts I've watched, I've never seen this do anything. People who've grabbed an early Strip Mine or Wasteland will usually grab this late, but then it always ends up in the sideboard. And that's in the MTGO cube, seemingly the perfect, grindy environment for this to thrive in, eking out a gradual advantage. Heck, I've seen the fabled storm deck work more times than this.

So how many synergistic cards do you need to run before this becomes something other than a sideboard card? Clearly just a Strip Mine doesn't cut it. A Strip and a fetch? A Strip and two fetches?

Other combo type cards in the cube at least do something in their WCS. Squee, Goblin Nabob can chump over and over again. Splinter Twin is fine on anything with an etb effect, and can also create chumps.

Thank you advance for your edification.

Crucible arguably gets better the smaller your cube is.

I've never thought it was that spectacular of a card. Sure, it has some cool interactions but I usually want to play another card in my deck over crucible, so it gets left out of the maindeck. I'll play it if it has 4+ ways to work with it, but those decks aren't very common.

It's pretty insane with Smokestack and Braids though.

It's an okay card, but I think a lot of people on the boards give it more credit than it deserves.

its super fun and CAN be made powerful in the right deck. Thats the reason to run it, not "its ancestral recall you put it in every blue deck ever no matter what"

We run it because when it works, it's super fun. It does interesting things with Loam, Fetches, Strip Mine, etc, and we really push Pox/Stax, where it's also quite good.

Lately I've been making sure there are more "build around" type cards in my cube, to push interesting archetypes. This means that some of the pick 14s and 15s are build arounds that don't get taken. It also means that our decks are more interesting, more diverse, and less repetitive from draft to draft. Crucible is fun because there are lots of different ways to build it. You can make it an integral part of staxx with Strip/Waste/etc, you can just use it as a card advantage engine with a few fetches in a control deck to make sure you never miss a land drop, you can play it in a loam deck that also plays entomb and maze of ith and volrath's stronghold to do interesting things.

I don't know how good it would be in a 720 where you're only drafting with half the cube each time, though, like the MTGO cube. I have a 450 and we draft with the whole thing on a decently regular basis, so build around cards get more love.