Kaladesh Cube Preview Part 1/3
When I am evaluating a new set release for cube cards I like to group them into three categories. First, those that are obviously good enough to be added. It is this first group I am going to look at in this part of the review. Secondly, those that probably are not quite good enough for a drafting cube but are very close and have interesting or new mechanics that I would like to test in a cube setting. A couple of those usually surprise me and become mainstays. Lastly, those that I know are too narrow or weak for most cube uses but do have some specific applications or reasons to keep an eye on them.
Presently I have ten cards that I think are good enough to auto include in my cube. This may not sound like a lot but I can assure you that it is. It tells me right away the set has a very high power level. Few other sets have that number of clearly viable cards added upon release and very few indeed still have that kind of card numbers in cube. This is doubly impressive as energy is significant in Kaladesh. Being a mechanic that is best when used as a theme yet having no presence on cards outside of this set makes it harder to support it in cube. Only the very best standalone energy cards are likely to be viable in a drafting cube. This will not be the case for standard and perhaps even modern where far more of the energy cards will be constructed mainstays.
Without further ado let us get into the ten cards that stand out from Kaladesh as the most powerful and impressive. I will start with the least exciting or bomb like of the cards and end with those that will have most impact and see most play.
This is somewhere between a Kitchen Finks and a Solemn Simulacrum. While it isn’t as powerful as either it is a lot more playable and convenient. Cards like Filigree Familiar are what you need to make several other kinds of deck more consistent. In control and ramp decks you are just trying to survive long enough to do your powerful things and this helps with that nicely. It is a speed bump card that you use to stave off aggression without costing you much. It is a nice two for one if they have to use removal on it or trade with it in combat. It is almost a three for one when you are against burn decks where two life roughly equates to a card. Several archetypes don’t have great access to decent life gain and this will be even more appreciated in those. There is some potential for artifact synergy with this, but mostly I suspect it will be upgrading Sea Gate Oracle in that sort of role.
Here we have everything you want from a top end play for any sort of aggressive creature deck. Angel of Invention is a one man army that provides a lot of board presence. It is also an evasive threat itself and a Glorious Anthem should you have an existing board. You can use this card like a Sublime Archangel or Celestial Crusader, you can use it like a Cloudgoat Ranger or you can use it like a Baneslayer Angel. It might not always outperform all those comparisons in every situation but this is more than offset by its vast utility. The general case will be to make a pair of 1/1 tokens with the fabricate effect as you want to ensure you have some lasting value should the Angel become the recipient of removal. Aggressive decks get to fully exploit all the various modes of this card best but the Angel is so rounded and powerful that it is also a very good midrange card and a fine enough control card too. This card has plenty of power, lots of utility and doesn’t really have any major drawback.
This is another card that has some strong comparisons to Solemn Simulacrum. It is a value four drop that clogs up the board and acts as a disincentive to attack into. Having deathtouch makes Gonti a formidable blocker as he can trade with most things. Having three toughness helps as well, as he survives combat with most of the cheaper creatures in the cube. If he just drew you a card when he came into play he probably wouldn’t be good enough for the cube. While his effect isn’t always better than drawing from your own deck (if you need a specific card in your deck or just a land drop) the general case will be far more potent. Firstly it is a choice of four cards so your range of options should be decent. It also gives you good information on what your opponent has in their deck and what they won’t be drawing or don’t have in hand. With cube being singleton the exile can be brutal if it is a deck light on threats or answers or some kind of combo deck. You don’t even need to cast the card you exile for it to be game winning on occasion! The last perk of Gonti’s effect over a conventional card draw is simply when you find things you quite need in the given situation but don’t have access to in your deck. Perhaps you need a Disenchant effect but don’t have one in your deck. Gonti can be an out when you have no outs.
This is a fine example of a well rounded planeswalker. It has a strong protection mechanism that helps you and Dovin Baan live. It has the ability to gain ongoing value and it has an ultimate that is quite scary. What makes a good planeswalker good is how easy they are to play into any given situation and how much value they can give back right away in any given situation. You can run Dovin Baan into the ground with three successive -1 activations if nothing else is going on and get great value. Alternatively you can negate their best threat every turn while growing Dovin’s loyalty to threaten an ultimate or foolish levels of value from the -1. Static Orb for -7 shouldn’t happen often as games will be won from the -1 ability more effectively however the threat of the -7 will be significant none the less. The +1 to shrink a creature’s attack and prevent it using abilities is substantially better than anything like this we have seen before. Being able to turn off a creature mana source or an attacking threat means Dovin is decent disruption He is pretty safe to lay into a board with stuff going on and still plenty useful when nothing is going on. Dovin Baan cannot directly win a game himself but he can control it to such an extent that you should be able to win with any kind of threat. He is exactly the kind of planeswalker that just means the game is over if it hasn’t been dealt with in a couple of turns.
Power wise I rate Dovin Baan above Jace, Architect of Thought however as a gold card Dovin is marginally less playable. Azorius colours suit Dovin Baan well and do not presently have an option on a rounded planeswalker that works in any old deck regardless of the support. Venser and Narset are quite specific in how they must be used while Dovin is good no matter what you are doing. Lifegain and card draw have always gone hand in hand, giving you all the gas you need to survive and then win. Dovin is better suited to midrange and control decks but by no means bad in more aggressive ones.
One of the most aggressive two drops we have ever seen, and in the best colour combination to abuse that fact! Being able to hit for four with a two drop is pretty huge and having access to trample is also incredibly significant. This thing deals a lot of damage very efficiently and reliably. You might only get the energy for two attacks as a 4/3 trample supplied with the card but two attacks is going to get the job done most of the time. The odd attack for three isn’t exactly a bum deal for your two mana card either! Having to chose when you use the pump and when you want to save some energy makes the card a lot more interesting and skill intensive than a lot of creatures designed to be turned sideways, making this really nice card design as well. The quality of the Voltaic Brawler will go up slightly, as will the number of options you have with him if any other energy cards manage to live up to cube standards.
I remember the first Pro Tour where Wolfir Silverheart became standard legal and there were 20 copies of it in the top 8. Well, Verdurous Gearhulk is better than Wolfir Silverheart! In the optimal case Wolfir is 12/12 worth of stats for five mana while Gearhulk is only ever 8/8 but you never want to look at best case scenarios for magic card evaluation. You want to look at worst case and average case, and on both of those accounts Gearhulk crushes the Wolfir. The pump from Gearhulk does not go away if the Gearhulk itself does. You can run into some awkward combat situations if you get the Wolfir removed at instant speed. You can spread the +1/+1 counters as you see fit over your creatures to give you the optimum edge over your opponent which you cannot do with the Wolfir. You can put all the counters on the Gearhulk itself if you have no other board while sad Wolfir sits around as a 4/4. Lastly but far from least, we have trample on Gearhulk while Wolfir had no evasion. An 8/8 is all well and good but very rarely does it end games. An 8/8 trample has to die really quickly and absolutely ends games. Verdurous Gearhulk is better against removal, better on its own, provides a better buff and is a much more significant threat than lupine predecessor. Verdurous Gearhulk is set to be the new big impact play for green. It will come down fast and create a huge tempo swing that is hard to answer efficiently and hard to recover from.
Here we have another very good rounded planeswalker and another high impact green five drop! It is worth noting at this point that the planeswalkers in Kaladesh have been tuned up a notch. Nissa, Vital Force is rounded in much the same way than Dovin Baal is rounded. They have good solid self protection mechanisms and the ability to gain value when that isn’t needed. Nissa offers a little more than just those core requirements too. She can send the 5/5 animated land in to attack and do quite a bit of damage. This ability to go offensive makes her one of the planeswalkers with the quickest kill clocks. Nissa also has two ways she can give you value. Either she gets you things you need back from the graveyard or she can easily fire off her ultimate and turn all your land drops into bonus card draw. Vital Force is able to ultimate the turn after making her with just a single +1 activation. If you are expecting a resource war then this is a great way to ensure victory.
The one thing slightly reducing the playability of Vital Force is Nissa, Worldwaker, the other really powerful and underrated five drop version of our favourite planewalking elf! Worldwaker is one of the most powerful threats in the cube. She is the only planeswalker with a faster kill clock than Vital Force! She also leaves behind her army of lands if she gets killed. While they share type, subtype and CMC I don’t think they will get in each others way too often. You play Worldwaker when you just want another threat. You will play Vital Force when you want a more conventional planeswalker that is able to do a more rounded selection of things as the game state requires. Vital Force can apply good pressure but she can also put up good defense and get you some card advantage instead.
http://articles.trolltradercards.com/2016/09/06/preview-spotligh…orch-of-defiance/
This planeswalker is so good we published an article just for her! She has the hallmarks of the two most powerful cube planeswalkers. Jace, the Mind Sculptor with his four abilities and Elspeth, Knight-Errant with her pair of +1 loyalty abilities. Chandra, Torch of Defiance is no doubt one of the top tier planeswalkers. She can protect herself well, she is a reasonable threat and can supply ongoing card advantage or mana advantage. Her first +1 ability is cleverly designed so as to functionally be two abilities in itself giving her an even wider range of options. Perhaps the most significant thing for cube play is that you can lay her and immediately gain back two red mana effectively making her only cost two mana that turn. If you are able to use that mana to play something else that gives you a good tempo swing then you are so far ahead at that point.
This one was also good enough to get it’s own preview and as that one also had a cube focus so I’ll say little more here. It is not as powerful as the new planeswalkers or other mythics on this list but being a 2 mana colourless card it will see far more active play and inclusion and that is why I have rated it so highly.
- The Enemy Quick Lands
I am sorry to perhaps disappoint people who were hoping for some total bomb card that had been overlooked and be a nice surprise as the number one card. It is always the boring stuff that is most powerful, most important and has most impact on things. Not only are these lands lovely looking but they are also one of the most powerful land cycles in magic. They were by a long way the most powerful land cycle without enemy colour pairings till now. Dual lands that come into play untapped and can be used on turn one are typically the best lands. After the obvious original duals, shocks and fetches the best lands at fixing and being lands are the quick lands and the pain lands. By having these new top quality fixing options in cube the balance of things may change. UR Delver may start to outperform red deck wins. Boros deck wins might start to outperform white weenie. Consistency is one of the most important things in cube, it is certainly more important than raw power. It is even more important for the aggressive and quicker decks which these lands support best. I know a lot of cubes skimp on lands because they are not that exciting, they would rather use those slots for juicy powerful spells. To me the most enjoyable cube gets is when you get good close games with lots of complex choices. The more consistency in the format the better the quality of the games. Less are decided by floods and screws and more come down to the choices people make. Having a wealth of good fixing available in your cube is the best way to improve the consistency of it. The quick lands are tried and tested top quality fixing and are a very welcome addition to my cube.
Any cards you think I should also be auto including? Perhaps there are ones you disagree on here? Let me know, I am always interested to hear other people’s thoughts on cube.
