Thursday, 31 October 2024

Homemade Cube Card Reviews: O

 



Oblationer

Power 7

Design 8

We took Oblation and we gave it legs. Simple stuff. That makes a pretty sketchy wierd card into a versatile limited tool. This answers almost anything pretty effectively while providing some board presence. Yes, you concede some value in the process but it is not immediate and they must really harm their tempo to recoup that value. This makes it great as an aggro player applying pressure, or as a control player trying to slow it down. You initially get a great rate on value and tempo, and while you can lose the first value component, it is done so while you gain more back in the tempo department. The thing that really pushes this for me is using it on your own stuff. Sticking a thing back in the deck and getting some cards for it is quite nice. Calling it Harmonize is quite the disservice to card draw but it is 4 mana and you do get a 2/3 and a pair of clues, all of which are like cards! It might not be good rate but when you need gas and have nothing you need to answer, this is an acceptable mode. Probably one of the most interesting white cards, and certainly one of my favourite. 




Oblivion Binding

Power 6

Design 6

Oblivion Ring but given the Phyrexian mana treatment. This is a fine card, it is versatile and broad. It answers a thing you need answering at an impressive rate but it does so with mild risk of return and at sorcery speed. The mild risk of return becomes a lot more great when you wish to remove things with EtB triggers, much like Ring. That tension is interesting, all be it uncomfortable. It is very white at least and one of the few interesting things baked within the colour pie. Ring has always been more of a standard card in terms of power level. Pushing it towards a modern/cube power level is needed to make that tension interesting rather than just a barrier to playing! Doing that power pushing and we wind up around here. 





Ocean Temptress

Power 7

Design 6

Inspired by Baleful Strix. This trades some of that immediate convenience for a bit more slow paced utility. This is not just a good blocker but can also be a threatening removal spell or means to force through other attackers. It is hard to get to excited about above rate gold cards that in some way replace themselves. I have a lot in the set and they are a little close to auto include cards on the whole which gets a little dull if the cards are not great. This is better than most in terms of play but I wouldn't go as far as to call it exciting. Pleasing flavour is propping this up in the design ranks rather. 




Ode to Joy (cut)

Power 5

Design 6


I think what probably happened here is that I was listening to Ode to Joy while making cards and got carried away in the moment. Felt like I had to pay tribute to the greatest song etc. Certainly would explain the lotus in the art... Beyond that this is a top down pile of red flavoured random revelry. The card is pretty powerful but it is absolutely all over the place. The phase II risk is really the turn off here. Your deck has to be resilient to random discard somehow. Technically it is card quality but still, it is card quality statistically, while practically rather more bum clenchy. I think this is one of those slow burn cards that people will slowly come to learn how to use effectively and it will start to see a bit more play. Or it might if I had'nt already cut it for space. This is always the case with the less clear application cards. I think really however, there needs to be archetypes that strongly want to fill up the bin before this starts to shine, and perhaps that red cost needs to come down to 2R so as to allow some other colours an easy go with this.. 




Old Tinkerer (reworked)

Power 2

Design 4

In my head this was a one mana looter but in practice it is very much a bad two mana Looter. A double blue one at that. If the powerstone could be cast after the creature it would be a lot better. As it stands however you either need to pay UU upfront or have a one drop Looter than you need to pay to use. The latter sounds unplayable in booster draft these days, let along cube level. The upside of getting a powerstone is not enough upside when you are mostly expecting to have that locked down... This is a card I plan to de-adventure. Looting isn't in high demand in my cube either and I have made several options, this may well just stay cut. The obvious starting place for this should have been a 1/1 with the same ability that cost 1U and make a powerstone on EtB. That however probably isn't enough better to see any real play either outside of decks all about the powerstone! Shame this was such a miss as I am a big fan of all the different things this card does. I want it to work. 





Ogre Battlemage


Power 7

Design 6


Somehow this guy isn't anywhere near as broken as the green, white, and black versions. They all can go wide as it were while this dude is only ever taking out one thing. This is a solid two for one with more range, more killing power, and a better body than Flame Tongue Kavu. That being said, you need to be fairly heavy red to play this and you are not getting that much more of a card than the infamous FTK. I am more than happy leaving this dork entirely unchanged. It might even just be too narrow, I could just fix the numbers on it, to say 3 or 4 damage, and have it be a bit more playable. Adding some raised flooring at the cost of ceiling. Regardless, the card is fine, it does what you expect it to and is a fairly simple staple in the back and forth play of cube magic. I usually play this in mono red but not always, and I will also play it in two colour decks. I don't really need to fiddle with this, it is just a somewhat dull card.






One Sided Battle (reworking)

Power 8

Design 5

This has been reworked to cost 2WWW and lost the cycling. If you are playing a card like this it is not to cycle it away at a bad rate. The jury is still out on this one, the card is one of those that scales with play. If you walk into this it is a one sided instant speed Wrath and it seems egregious. If you play around it the card is an over priced Wingshards. It is still a fine card, and those choices to play around important unknowns are a thing in magic. That is a lot of the value when it is a bad wingshards, or better still when they play around it and you don't even have it! Regardless, it is hard to know how to feel about cards you have to play around somewhat in a format of hitherto unknown cards that I have imposed on the player base. Seems cruel and decidedly unequal! With few such cards and sufficient time I am not sure it is a problem, at which point this card is likely fine. Getting there might be more of an issue however. 




One-Stop Thopter Shop

Power 6

Design 7

Cards like this do a lot of work in cubes. I took the tap cost away from the prodcution modes here but that has not wildly affected it. Cards like this are little engines all by themselves acting as both support and payoff for certain synergies. Even more impressively this one is such a card for both artifact synergies and energy. Being able to act at instant speed is tedious. This puts in a really impressive shift just sacrificing your artifacts for loads of value. This is the sort of card than can ruin an Umezawa's Jitte all by itself. Having so many moving parts I am sure there are some tweaks that I could improve this with. It is a bit Retrofitter Foundry, all be it scaled back in power. The card is certainly fairly low power nominally. That is not the point though, this is all about synergy and utility and for those such things it escalates pretty sharpish.






Oni Glutton

Power 8

Design 8

Quite the best, very hard to answer and generally quite obnoxious. What I like about this is how black it feels. You can a lot of choice on how much risk you want to expose yourself to, the Glutton to, and how much pressure you wish to apply. Do you early Fodder and take some beats from them to rush a three mana Glutton? Do you wait till four mana and do it all at once? Do you devour both Thrulls for big stats or do you leave one back so that you can reset the persist upon death? Much as I love the card it is a little pushed power wise. It doesn't even have a vast degree of wiggle room in which to tune. You could have it a 1/2 baseline but that seems off. Fodder could cost a mana more but that would harm the rich tapestry of options. Lastly the lifelink could be lost or made something weaker. Trample likely works. For now I am leaving it as is, the black requirement is heavy and it is just a dork with plenty of answers.





Ophidian Witch Doctor (reworking)

Power 8.5

Design 5


Part of the series of really pushed cards to support an aristocrats sacrifice deck in the third printing. This was easily pushed enough to be playable anywhere really. It felt like a cross between an Ophiomancer and a Gonti. Just a good defensive value play. This having the ability to trigger from all dorks and not just your own meant it pretty much halted combat until removal gets found. This is clearly too much card and is going to get a fairly healthy nerf. Certainly going to be restricted to your own dorks. Will probably bring the toughness down to two as well. I also managed to fail at cropping on this one so need a reprint anyway! Apart from being clearly too good, I do quite like the feel of this card. It has that real card vibe and did fulfil the design remit too, although pushed power levels do help rather with that. 






Orchard (cut)

Power 3

Design 6

Part of a cycle of cute but wishful utility lands. This is likely the best of the bunch with green being able to mess around with lands most easily and also having a variety of cards that key off food. This has the issue shared by all utility lands in cube, the point at which they stop being reasonable and start being broken is before they are powerful enough to justify being in the cube. This is fine for sealed deck and the like, but you see it in a booster and you feel cheated. Coming in tapped affects you more than making food does and it is hard to tell if that trade off is worth it. Pretty marginal and infrequent stuff!






Orcish Outrider

Power 6

Design 8

Just a dork intended to do dork things and allow the game of magic to be fully played. These are some of the hardest cards to design. Simple creatures that are there to attack and block that are neither too powerful nor too weak. That line is so fine and really hard to hit. It is especially hard to hit while remaining neat and concise in design and/or trying to produce a card that is in some way interesting. Somehow this just about manages to tick all those boxes. Being cheap certainly helps with that. Riot is also an inherently good mechanic. It isn't overly complex nor taxing on the game but it gives choice and utility in a direct fair way. Conversely, intimidate is a garbage mechanic. I was trying to make a card using every mechanic in the game. It is all well and good identifying good things and replicating them. A far more interesting proposition is how one can fix, or safely use, the obviously bad mechanics. Why is intimidate bad? Because it is random and uninteractive. Sometimes it doesn't do anything making it dodgy, other times it can win games while people feel helpless. How do we mitigate these issues? Slap it behind a paywall and on a fairly low threat dork. Outrider is easy to kill. He is not quick to kill himself, and he is a whole lot easier to race if he is taxing the controller two each turn. There is also a fair old pile of artifact creatures out there to be made so most decks can at least find a way to chump him. The threat of this guy potentially having evasion at some stage is interesting too, it means you can get value from it without ever having to pay to use it. All in all this is a fairly welcome card in my cube. Things that threaten to close out the game are not as common as in other cubes. Somehow this is just desirable and suitable and has yet to play anything other than well. 






Order House (retuning)

Power 4

Design 6

This is more Pendelhaven than manland! Attacking with a ground based 2/2 or 3/3 fails to do a lot beyond throwing your land away much of the time. Paying two to give an attacker +1/+1 is quite useful though. Not powerful, just useful. And that is the rub. This is neither good fixing nor good as a manland. As such this is only played when it fits rather than making it fit, as is the case with actually good manlands. This cycle is really pleasant in feel but they are not weighted correctly for the most part. This should probably becomes a 2/3 if it is to do any real work as a manland in the format. 






Orzhov Command

Power 5

Design 6

This could probably have gotten away with costing seven. There are plenty of humans in my cube but few cost all that much mana. If you manage to get one of the juicy four or more mana humans with a good EtB effect then fire this off the back of it that is going to represent a colossal swing. Hard not to do good with with this one if you get to cast it. Like, if they have no dorks and no hand and you have no dorks in bin either, you can probably just win with your 4/4 vampire! Although I suspect holding is better there... Instant does let you offer a dork that is otherwise dying but that is yet to happen and is certainly not going to be common, holding up five or six mana is just not a frequent event. It is at least a powerful card that has interesting optimization and build requirements. It is generic enough that you don't want it too powerful such that every black white deck just plays it. Perhaps the solution is to reduce the total mana cost but up the colour intensity to make the card 3WWBB or there abouts.





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