Friday 9 September 2022

Preliminary Review: Dominaria United Part X

 

Leyline Binding 7.5

A bomb for modern and still very good for cube where this can still easily cost a single mana by turn two. This is basically Prismatic Ending with the scaling reversed. This is better against big things later while Ending has you covered better early for cheaper things. Both want you to be multicoloured (ideally at least three) and both have a downside, Ending is sorcery and Binding can give them their thing back. It is not impossible that my cube doesn't support both this and Ending as you do want removal a mono white aggro deck is happy playing where possible. If that is the case I imagine this wins out over Ending with cards like Portable Hole covering the bases of Ending quite well while Binding has no clear comparison (Cast Out?)






Electrostatic Infantry 7

A mono coloured Sprite Dragon (or near enough) with trample instead of flying and an extra toughness. Quite a narrow card but well supported and plenty powerful. This is a dangerous, reaching, and scaling form of cheap threat, and those are the characteristics that are most desirable for a cheap beater. This will help prowess decks to not rely so hard on blue support to be viable which is always nice and contributes to greater variation in cube drafts, decks, and games.





Tail Swipe 7.5

This is the fight spell. One mana, instant speed, and unconditional (as far as fights and the intrinsic prerequisites those entail go). Fight cards have really struggled to take hold in cube for obvious reasons but green still aches for creature removal. My gut says a hard yes to this but I have been into many fight spells in the past and all have failed me. 





Valliant Veteran 4

One of the weaker lords in this set and in one of the lesser tribes and yet still this is an impressive card that I will play in a number of places and 100% of solider decks. This is likely the lord I could most easily play in a draft cube if I were so inclined due to lots of support from plenty of playable soldiers. 





Vesuvan Duplimancy 2

Very fun, very powerful, and so very narrow. You have to be building around this and then with everything else to consider that likely makes you a combo deck or a commander deck. 





Knight of Dawn's Light 2

This is quite powerful and has some synergies going on and yet even in the aggressive lifegain builds I wouldn't be shocked if this didn't always make the cut. There is just so much support for lifegain strategies now and this is a bit aimless. Equally, without the lifegain synergy this fails to pack enough punch. 





The Elder Dragon War 1

A four mana Pyroclasm effect is not impressing anyone. Neither is a 4/4 token dragon. Both might be interesting if there was not a two turn delay between them and even a bit of card quality in between is not enough to make up for the janky and low power pairing. I fear if you read ahead here you sacrificing far too much power on your card to the point that the flexibility is no longer worth it. 





Shield-Wall Sentinel 1

Four mana is rather too much to pay for a tutor. This needed to be cheaper or a significant amount bigger. 




Smash to Dust 2

This is a bad Abrade. We are never killing defenders with this and so all we have is a Shatter with a Simoon. Both very narrow effects and while a Simoon can be brutal that kind of polarity is not good for game play. A dirty sorcery too. 





Defiler of Instinct 4

Perhaps the worst of the cycle but none the less pretty playable. Pings on red cards, a meaty body and some cost reduction thrown in. Built around I am sure you can find a way to go off an do some kind of combo kill with this. Not a cube draft card but a fun and interesting one at least. 




Relic of Legends 3

A barely playable mana rock by itself but built around to any degree and it starts to get pretty funky. Any Norin the Wary style decks looking for some more mana? There is starting to be enough support that a deck built around the legend subtype might be both interesting and decent. 





Aether Channeler 8

Well this is just all round solidness for cube. It is exactly the sort of card that lives it's best life in cube and it is a card plenty good enough to be doing quite well for itself outside of cube as well. This is a cheap and option rich card that lets you play it in a variety of ways. All the modes are ever so slightly below par but all are things you often want to do and are different from each other which is what you want from modal cards. Bird mode is likely the least often used and probably only done so when under significant attacking pressure from smaller dorks. Bounce will kill a lot of tokens and buy a lot of time and the draw card mode will be the default when you either have nothing better to do or just want to be hitting land drops. 





Academy Loremaster 0

Don't play this. It is a bad magic card. Give your opponents options, and ones on more resources. Then give yourself the option to make poor choices and punt. 





Shadow-Rite Priest 4

Another very powerful lord. Clerics is a lesser tribe but it does have some very interesting cards at its disposal and has a number of directions you can take it. This dude likely goes in most and has a very scary and relevant ability that can win a game pretty much by itself without needed to have gone super wide with tribal dorks.  





Prayer of Binding 3

Better than Faiths Fetters but a long way off good enough for most types of cube these days. Removal has really started to catch up to creatures in power creep and Fetters is very old now...




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