Limited Resources 844 - The Best Deck in TMNT and Irreplaceable Cube Cards!

What is up everybody? Welcome to another episode of Limited Resources. This episode number 844. My name is Marshall. I'm one of your limited resources and joining me on the line all the way from Denver, Colorado. It's Louis Scott Vargas. We're going to be talking about two very different formats today, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and also Cube. Yeah, I mean, we've both been enjoying turtles. I've been drafting it. You've been drafting it. So we want to chat a little bit more about that. And of course, all was down to talk to you. Got to talk our cube. We've got so much cube content available to us now. Right. We feel kind of unleashed upon the world and we're going to start meeting that out and including with this very episode. Before we get started, I want to say thank you to everybody who supports us over on Patreon. It's patreon.com slash limited resources. And we also want to say thank you to Ultimate Guard for their support of the show. You can find their products at ultimateguard.com. And when you look, you'll be like, OK, yeah, this is the good stuff. They really do know how to make a fantastic product there. They've been in the game for a long time. And they use premium materials with really, really great designs to protect everything from your cards to your decks, to your whole entire collection. You can see their full line of products at ultimateguard.com. And if you want to pick something up, you can pick it up at your favorite online retailer or local games or thank you, Ultimate Guard. We do appreciate it. I just mentioned the Patreon. You get some perks for being a Patreon supporter of LR, including we put up a thread for the Patreon question of the week. This one comes from David, who says, hey, guys, thanks as always for the show. How do you think the recent small sets? So, you know, the last two we've had have been TMNT. And of course, the Spider Man set compared to the it to drafted small sets of the past, like, for example, standalone sets like Cold Snap or parts of blocks like IPA Invasion, Plainshift, Apocalypse David clarifies for us. Is there anything these new small sets do better than the old ones from a draft perspective and just for some perspective, like particularly with Cold Snap, it's considered like one of, if not the worst draft formats ever, right? Not enough cards. Don't we hadn't played Spider Man then. So we didn't have that to compare it to. That Spider Man set hold my beer. It really did. Yeah. But I think that I think that in general, there are not that many small sets in Magic's history that were meant to be drafted individually. I think Cold Snap is one of the few that I can really think of because it is true that you would have like triple invasion draft and then it would be Invasion, Invasion, Plainshift, and then it was IPA Invasion, Plainshift, Apocalypse. And that's how it used to work. And I actually think that the current system is much better just because there's a lot of weird stuff when you're like, all right, my set three mechanic. It's new. How are we going to support it? You get one pack out of three and it was after you drafted the rest of your deck. So, you know, like that, that I think had had some flaws. But. I think that the current small sets, the one that the thing that they do better and this is true kind of across the board doesn't really have much to them being a small set or a big set is that the overall they're just so much more organized about how they make limited sets and just sets in general. And they have this template, right? They have this like we kind of make fun of it a little bit when all right, there's, you know, the six mana, six, six gain for and, you know, some version of that in every set. And then there's the four mana, put a card on top and do a little trinkety thing. And while on the one hand, yeah, it's like every set, there's probably like 10 slots that you'll see. Maybe there's like 20 slots and 10 of them are full every set. So like we don't get the we get the four mana bounce, but almost every single set. We get the green six drop that gains life. Every other set or two out of every three sets. Well, the upside of all that is that the sets are more consistent. Like they they're less likely to make a one out of 10. I don't know how they managed it with Spider-Man. It was impressive. But for the most part, whatever, whatever set you like least of the last year that wasn't Spider-Man, I don't want to bash just on Spider-Man. But whatever, let's say like, you know, you know, I didn't really like echoes or edge of eternity, whatever. I do remember the edge of eternity. Yeah. Edge of eternity. Yeah. Or bloom, bro. And like, does it like valid sets to not enjoy that much? Not valid to not like Final Fantasy. I'm afraid that actually is. Valid opinion. But whatever of what those sets you didn't like. Sure, that was your least favorite. But they just really don't make one, two or even three out of 10s that often. Like I would say the lowest non-Spider-Man grade I would give in the set the last couple of years are probably closer to like a five out of 10. Right. You know. Right. And like that's good. The floor is generally higher. And I think that's good. The ceiling is I don't know that it's lower. It's a little different. You're less likely to get some an experience that's like completely different. And again, I'm not really speaking to the small set thing very much. So I'm not I'm taking the question to the starting off point. But here we are. These are discussion starters. Yeah. And every I remember old sets sometimes would be like, you know, Lorwin actually the first Lorwin was not that good. I didn't like it that much, right? Kind of bad. But every now and then they would drop a set that was like cons and it would be like, dear Lord, cons is so good. Or original Ravnica was was awesome at the time. I mean, honestly, if you want to go even further back, invasion, plane shift, apocalypse, all threes or or just invasion, whatever you want to say was incredibly groundbreaking in a lot of different ways. And like, we're not getting as much of that. Though as time goes on, you're going to get less of that too. There's less ground to break, you know, there's there's right. And magic, they really, I think, don't want failure sets. So like they're they're they're in a place where like pushing the envelope in some ways is probably not like their first priority. They want to deliver a somewhat consistent experience. And it comes to small sets. I actually just think they're worse. Like, I understand why they'd make them. Limited is not the only reason you design a set size, right? Like sometimes you want a small set for X, Y, Z reasons. There's a lot of different ones. When it comes to limited, I don't think I'd ever choose like, hey, you get to choose what are you going to draft it for the next month? Do you want a small set or do you want a big set? You'd be like, I want a big set. I'll always actually choose that. I'm not saying a small set can't be really good. In fact, turtles is pretty good. But I just would never pick a small set over a big set because big sets have more variety. They're going to support more archetypes. Like it's not a coincidence that small sets have five archetypes every time they can't support more. Big sets having 10. Also, that makes drafting a lot cooler because. Imagine, you know, like you can tell the difference to some degree. Like I do a lot of four on four cubes or three on three cubes, eight or six. Sixes are a little different. Sixes, a little less on synergy, a little bit more on just like mid range decks. You're less likely open combo pieces. Actually, he's going to line up nicely with what we're going to talk about for cubes later. And it's magnified when you do a four player draft, you did a two player draft. Right. You're seeing fewer packs, a bigger set with more cards and more archetypes rewards you more for being in the right one and finding and it gives you more higher likelihood like I'm drafting the burning vengeance deck while I get past one. Well, no one else the table wants one. And now there's more packs being opened in a bigger player number draft. Or in a bigger set, there's not one specific card. Actually, you're less likely to see one specific card in a big set, but you're more likely to filter and see like, oh, no one wants cards of this kind of deck. I'm the only one at the table doing it. And now we're opening a bunch of packs and we're seeing a bunch of cards and I'm collecting all of those. I just think that big sets are better. So I don't know that like cold snap was really bad. In fact, one of cold snaps mechanics was surge, which is when you play a card with surge, you flip over to top four cards and play any other copies you find there. And those copies also have surge. So, for example, there's one in a black sorcery, your opponent discards a card with surge. If you drafted a bunch of those, a lot of times on turn two, you would cast one hit five more and your opponent discards the whole hand. Or there is surging sentinels two and a white for a two one first strike. And this is before they figured out that first strike on defense is annoying. With surge, I remember actually you remember VD VD onto a giant. It was Ripple, right? Oh, Ripple. Sorry. They were called surging, whatever. Yes. Ripple was the mechanic. They were called. It was called surging sentinels. Yeah, I remember VD. Yeah, VD at the Cold Snap Grand Prix, Phoenix. I remember the Grand Prix for Cold Snap. I didn't know that. Yeah, I drove there. Actually, I drove from Oakland to LA to pick up Chian and Sam Stein and then drove to Phoenix. Yeah, it was limited. And it was. Oh, my God. It was Ravnica sealed day one, Cold Snap draft day two. Oh, no. I didn't know they actually did that. Oh, my God. I mean, this was actually one of the one of the bigger road trips I ever did. It was my parents, Honda Previa, this like old minivan. AC didn't work. And me, my roommates at the time, so you know, I, you know, Ben, and then this other guy, Ian, we drove down to LA, picked up Chian and Sam Stein. Oh, we had Fobb with us too. So seven of us. There were seven of us in the van. In a Toyota Previa. Driving to Phoenix with no AC in the middle of the summer. Oh, I'm sure that was smelled really great in that car. I loved it. It was great. It was a fantastic, it was a fantastic event. But did you drive? I drove. Yeah. Oh, my God. Just full on clown car. That is. Especially with that crew. XC clown car, X equal seven. And anyway, VD drafted like 11 surging sentinels on day two. And every single game, he would just mulligan any hand that didn't have one because they're one out of every like 3.5 cards in his deck or whatever. And every game turned three, you'd be facing down all 11 or whatever. You know, minus the ones he had drawn in his hand. And yeah, that's pretty dumb. I'm not going to defend cold snap, but I also just think small sets in general are way more likely to not be that fun. And that has kind of borne out in my experience with the small set. So yeah, I see. I'm not a big fan of those for limited. Yeah, I think that, you know, it's just what we've seen is, you know, with these last two small sets that they have aimed lower. But that's appropriate, meaning that they said, well, we're only going to focus on five archetypes, you know, which I mean, that's just a sentence, but like that matters a lot for gameplay. That matters a lot for drafts ability to self correct. That matters a lot for depth of experience. Right. I mean, are you a enjoyer of blue black decks? Because get out of here. Right. Like it's terrible and undrafted. Like these aren't even a thing in last two sets. Actually, yeah, right. For, you know, so it's like they've recognized it and appropriately recalibrated. But the two things that we have to note from these last two sets, because the first off is that if you do not put the proper effort and detail and love into a set, it does not matter where you aim, you will not hit it. And they didn't for Spider-Man. But I do think that Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles is the savior of that approach. It says if you do it right, you can make a set that you can actually draft. And it can be at least somewhat enjoyable. But we have to recognize that they are aiming lower to accommodate the fewer number of cards. And that means that not that like my draft experience for these first drafts that I've done, I've done quite a few now, actually, but, you know, for the since it's come out has been roughly similar to what a normal set would feel like, but the runway is going to run out very, very quickly. Because again, the format doesn't have the ability to adapt to itself quite as much and then the depth of play. I mean, I've just there's just decks that I just don't get to draft. And that just feels like leaving too much on the table. So my conclusion is the same as you, Louise, these small sets, there's a reason that they haven't done them. There's just not enough meat on the bone to make a fully fleshed out, super deep, super interesting, correctable draft format with that number of cards. That said, if you aim a little lower and only go for five archetypes, I think Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles shows you can make that work. It's just, I mean, come on, if this is all they gave us, it would just feel it would just feel like such a huge loss of opportunity, you know, just because there's, I mean, a regular draft set with all the extra cards can make for that fully fleshed out, you know, beautiful experience that we're all kind of going for. But Cold Snap was when they didn't even adjust and and then also made somehow made mechanics that exasperated the exact issue that they should have been trying to avoid. So that was well in their era of like someone clearly was like, wouldn't it be cool if in the small set we rewarded you for getting as many copies of the same card? Oh, that's kind of neat. That's taking advantage of it being a small set. Right. Let's try it. And then you play it twice and, you know, which they might not have done. Why don't we do Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Crack-A-Pack, you know, because we want to keep people abreast about what's going on where we're at in the format. And then we're going to go over the current archetype rankings and then do a little dive on the current best deck in case you haven't tried it yet so that you know how to play with or even against it. So our Crack-A-Pack first card off is Tenderize, one of the green instant target you control deals damage equal to his power to target creature opponent controls, just a classic instant speed bite and it performs as well as those do, which is actually pretty darn good. I mean, this is, you know, real ish removal for green. Yeah, it totally plays great. Like it's really no complaints. Now, this is a good design that I'm happy to see, you know, as often as they want to print it. Next is Leonardo Big Brother. This is the two in a white one three with sneak one, and he gets plus one, plus zero for each other creature you control. This card can end the game quite easily. This is a very solid finisher for the sneak deck, you know, allowing you to get five, six, sometimes even seven damage in from an unblocked creature making it so that no matter how your opponent decided to block, they end up dying. It's also a little sneak preview here. One of the better cards at common for the sneak deck because it's snake cost is so cheap. It's just white and normally you're paying three mana for this thing. Yeah, totally solid card. I mean, we're hoping not to first pick this card, but you're not cutting this from black, white dimension X is next. This is a gain land for white and red, which is probably like the least desirable gain land, I guess. I don't know. When I think of the egg rodex, I do think that they'd like to have that mana available at any point on the curve and not ever have to play a taplan, but I don't know. Yeah, I think you still play it. But yes, I right. But you also still play it because you don't have that many one drops. And if you have it in your opener, it just kind of fixes everything. Next is Stockman Mad Fly Intest. This is the four in a blue three, four flying island cycler. And when it enters, you draw a card and discard a card. They definitely push these, Luis. I mean, yeah, you know, I love it when the land cyclers are good. Me too. They, you know, they're not always good, certainly. And in fact, often they're they're they're actually on the weaker side. But we've had we've had a decent run of having some good ones. And I really enjoy it because I just think land cycling is a cool card. You want people to play it. That is what you want people to be doing. So I think rewarding that is really nice. This next card is an important one, I think, for the format because they did push this card too, and they needed to. And they maybe even could have pushed a little further on some of the cards around it. But this is Frog Butler. This is the one in green one one with death touch. Taps that one amount of any color and you can pay to to give it reach. So it really does exactly what this deck wants to do, which is get you multiple colors, ramp you up and then eventually trade off for something that costs more. That is a very good set of stats for this card. And I think if you start taking away these stats, then the deck starts to fall apart. Basically, the way things have played out for me is if I'm playing blue, green, more or less straight up or with just like a small splash, it's a little too slow. Like the other decks tend to run it over often enough that you kind of don't feel incentivized to do it. But if you are willing to go bigger than that and go for four or five colors, then I found that it actually does have the ability to like come back or take a few hits early and then stabilize that type of thing. And Frog Butler is a very important part of that puzzle. So I still like it. But I mean, we're kind of getting into the territory, Luis, now where even though I will still draft that deck, I'm kind of in the back of my head knowing that, you know, that that isn't necessarily the most winning thing I could be doing. Yeah, I agree. I I have enjoyed playing blue, green, but it does definitely have a bit of an issue against black, white or red, white or being on the draw. Yes. That's tough. I I'm pretty frequently going to be taking Frog Butler, though. Like the thing, the fact that it enables the five color strategy as well as just being an awesome defender is pretty nice. And Ramsey just does everything. It really does it all. I really like that gains reach thing, too. Like those little things really do add up. Next is Mutant Town Musicians. This is two in a red, two for trampler with Alliance. It gets plus one plus so until in a turn. I don't play this card very much, Luis. I actually don't know how good or bad it is, but it doesn't seem to be a card that ends up on my radar when I'm playing red. I'm usually playing blue, red artifacts, and this card is kind of a whatever in that deck. I guess I'm supposed to be red, white more often, but I don't I don't find myself drafting that deck that often for whatever reason. Well, the whatever reason is that you don't like the strategy that red, white employees, so you're less likely to be drafting it. Maybe so. Yeah. I mean, I think it's like if I do take red cards, I really like the artifacts deck. So I just start going that direction. Yes. I mean, is this card good? Like am I missing the boat on the musicians here? No, no, I don't think so. I'm just saying it's not a coincidence that this is not something that you've played a lot. I hear you. Yeah. I'm sure I have my biases for the type of decks I actually want to play. Next one is Uneasy Alliance. This card's been good. This is the one in a white Enchant creature. It can't attack or block and you can pay five and sacrifice this aura to make a one one. Ninja at sorcery speed and exile the creature. Yeah, I mean, it's a good card. I would I would take Frog Butler over it. But I think Uneasy Alliance is pretty good. Next is Buzz bots. This is the one in a blue one one flying vigilance artifact creature. And when it dies, you draw a card. So it's OK. Also a pretty good card. Yeah, there are times it can be quite good. It can be really annoying against their one toughness. It's like they have the three one ninja and they're just like, oh, my God. Next is Foot Mystic. This is the three in a black two for life linker with disappear. You get a one one ninja creature token. I've had good experiences with this. Not saying it's a good card, but it has overperformed a bit for me, but it's not a card I'm really going to be. I feel the same way. It's just the stats do just work enough. And if you ever get the token, it is quite solid. Next and last common, by the way, is tunnel rats. This is the one in a black two to rat, and you can pay for in a black to return it from the graveyard to you to the battlefield tapped. I've actually played this a bit more than I thought. I'm not as interested in like the graveyard synergies and stuff, but I do find that just enough I need another two drop. I need another one in my sneak deck just to get another two down that can enable sneak and then, you know, sometimes you do find yourself in the lake game where you're recycling a tunnel rats, though. I will say in times that I found myself doing that, I don't feel like I'm in a good, you know, I'm not in a winning position by doing so. Yeah, I I don't think that that you were really competing with Butler or uneasy Alliance here. Exactly. Let's get to the uncommon stuff. Oh, boy. First off, we're going to be talking about this one in a little bit, too, here. Dream Beavers. This is the card when they played on Turn 1. It is the straight grown test, right? It's just absolutely. Yes. This is black one one beaver nightmare with flying. And when this creature enters, each opponent loses one life and you gain one life and you scry one. And it's this is kind of the opposite, you know, there's the cards that we talk about on the sunsets where it's like I read it. I think it's good. It just doesn't see play. This is like I read it. It looks like OK to me. This thing has like a 63 percent win rate overall, making it the second best uncommon and better than many rares. And in black, white, little spoiler alert, it's even higher. And I'm not talking about one. It's three percent higher. I mean, it's a straight up bomb in black, white, and it's like really good outside of it. And you read it and you're like, yeah, that's nice, right? Good one on fire. You get a little bonuses here and there. Now, this thing is the the number one sneak enabler, and it is brutal when they play this thing on one and then start going off. Yeah, I mean, this it just ends up doing everything you want at such a good cost that like it just makes your whole deck work and it's pretty strong in its own right. So totally fine card to take here. In fact, this is what I would be taking. Oh, absolutely. Yeah, I believe you can get me through the night dream beavers. Next is tainted treats. I like this one, too. This is one green black for an instant destroy an artifact or creature. If its mana value was four or less, like that's a pretty wide range. You get a food token as well. Tainted treats is also really good. Yeah, it's funny, because on first read, I was like, OK, I destroyed a small thing, gets a food. It's like, no, it destroys a small thing, gets a food or kills anything. Like, yeah, like it's not that small. Like it's their four drop. It still gets you the food. Like that's a lot of range to get the food. It is mostly. Three mana instant speed destroy thing, get a food. I really like the card. I could not pass dream beavers because it's just absurd. But tainted treats is where my heart is at this point. Next up is Baxter Stockman. This is the three blue red three three. And when it enters, you get a one one robot. And at the beginning of combat on your turn, an artifact creature you control gets plus three plus so first strike and vigilance and talent of turn. Very powerful five drop. I mean, this card's good. Yeah, that's great. I mean, I think when I look at this pack so far, it's like you could take the black white card dream beavers. You can take a black green card tainted treats or you take a blue red card Baxter Stockman. They're pretty close, but dream beavers is, I think, reasonably ahead of the other two. In fact, my ordering would be dream beavers, tainted treats and then Baxter. Same. But I have all those over the comments that we've got, which is, I guess. How Garfield intended. We do have a rare. I don't think you're going to be interested in it, though. Maybe it's Turtles forever, three in a white instant search your library and or outside the game for exactly four legendary creature cards you own with different names. Exactly for then reveal those cards. An opponent chooses two of them, put the chosen cards into your hand and shuffle the rest into your library. Hope you brought extra sleeves. Yeah, I don't know about this one. I don't think that we're doing this. It's cool card, though. I think you should make this card, for example. But I just not really one that I want to put my deck. And by the way, this is an interesting little callback to what we were talking about before, where we were talking about, you know, how it kind of like cold snap kind of had that feel that you mentioned where it's like, well, hey, let's lean into it. Well, this is leaning into it in a more appropriate way. Yeah, we've complained because there's too many legendary cards, particularly common, but that does mean that you can make a card like Turtles forever and you will have four unique legends, like even just in a normal draft. Right. And I think that does go a long way. But it makes me kind of sad. I when I see a card called Turtles forever, I'm thinking four. So like, where did the other two? Like we just we just split up the game. Turtles two ever. Yeah, so it's a little rough at any rate. I would take Dream Beavers and I'd be thrilled with it. What are you worried about? I think you could take Tana, Tana, Tana or Baxter. And those are all like defensible. I did. I do think Dream Beavers is ultimately the best thing to be taken. So part of the reason why we would take Dream Beavers is because white black sneak is definitely the best deck there. There is a this doesn't happen every time, but it does come out. Every once in a while like this, where the best deck is also the most drafted deck, like Elves was like this in the last set, where it isn't always the case. But that is the case here, where, you know, you've got this combination of depth and power where it can support two to three drafters and those decks at their baseline are better than the others. And so that is kind of the normal deck. We're going to talk about it a little bit to give you a bigger picture view of the main supported archetypes. Blue red is the next one, and it's it's a couple of percentage points behind. So it's significant, but still it's right up there and boros. The red white deck is another, you know, I don't half a percent behind behind or whatever. But still right up there. Any of those three decks, if you draft blue, red, red, white or white, black, you're probably doing just fine for yourself. Then there is a significant dip down to both Golgari and Simic, which are the other two supported archetypes. They're way less drafted and way worse. So you got to keep that in mind. And then I there there's the other five archetypes. But honestly, the sample size is still so small for they are just not drafted that it's really hard to take away much from them. From the numbers that we do have Azorius is the best of the group. So if you maybe there's a little wiggle room to end up in a blue white deck. But again, it's been drafted like it's so fractional. It's just absolutely insane, you know, how many times these things get drafted by comparison because this I don't think that popular either. Yeah, that doesn't surprise me. Yeah, I think that generally like the to the extent that I'm playing off color stuff, if that I'm playing five colors. Yes. And that you can actually do that. There is again, the sample size isn't that big, but it is not as small as these two color decks. And the numbers look actually fine. Like there it is above the average win rate. But the interesting part is that it actually rewards you for going deeper. Like you you you actually want to go, you know, for the four to five color decks, at least from what I can see right now. My guess is that's mainly because of cards like everything pizza, which really rewards you for for getting to that five color level. It's a very powerful card. I mean, it's performing extremely well. And, you know, I assume it's because people are actually going for the full, you know, Wuburg plus two sack it thing. And if you do, I mean, it's a big payoff. So, you know, I will say that, you know, the interesting thing is, is that it feels like going four to five colors better than going three, which is kind of interesting. I want to see a bit more data on that first. But that is what the early indicators surprise me. It doesn't surprise you. Yeah. I mean, I guess when you have these specific cards, like everything pizza that might, you know, do that. And also the bombs in the set have been really good. The rares, like that there's some there's some really gnarly rares in, you know, being a small set, you do see them pretty often. There was also, I don't think we mentioned on the show last time, but there was that issue like arena had an issue with the early run where it was populating too many rares or mythics or something in the past. I think specifically, yeah. And people were like, what is going on here? And then it was like, yeah, that's actually not how it's supposed to be. And they did sort it out. So it's a good point now. So anyway, I just wanted to talk about the black, white deck for a few minutes because if you haven't tried it yet, or if you're wondering how it works, or if you haven't tried the format and you kind of want to know where to start, black, white really is the best deck. And again, it is, it supports the most number of players as well. So it occupies that top spot in both of the categories. And basically this is a sneak agro deck is a good way to look at it. It's not the fastest, fastest, most agro deck, but it does reward a curve better than really any of these others. And the cards break down into three broad strokes categories. There's cards that enable sneak. There's the good sneak cards themselves. And then there's removal ways to get blockers out of the way so that you can get your sneak, cheap sneak cards going. And some of the common enablers are cards like April O'Neill, you know, which is the the one that we actually talked about that Paul had, like, what did he have? Six of them or something like that? And was like, and he didn't know he was like, how many, how many am I supposed to play? Right. And it's the one in a white two, two when she enters you, scry two, and she can't be blocked by creatures with power three or greater. And, you know, that actually is like a pretty low threshold, like, you know, it's like, oh, OK, this thing doesn't, you know, there's a lot of creatures that just can't block April O'Neill. So that's why she's one of the best enablers. Another one is interesting because it's it's clearly built for a different deck, but it goes well here. It's mechanized ninja cavalry. That's the one in a white red hybrid for a one one robot. And then when it E.T.B.s, you get another one one, just two one ones. It allows you to, you know, sacrifice one of these effectively to get through. And by the way, that is a good reason where, you know, if you have a two, two and your opponent attacks you with mechanized ninja cavalry plus the token like block the cavalry, don't let him pick that up and then recast it. That's how this sneak deck, you know, really gets ahead of you is by picking up cards that have valuable E.T.B.s. See the dream beavers, by the way, that's the reason why it's so good. It's cheap and has a relevant E.T.B. ability. So you get to do that two or three times over the course of a game. And you can kind of pull away. Same thing with ninja cavalry. If you let them pick that up and then replay it and they get another one one for free. Now you're just falling even further and further behind another one. I really like it. It's scrollanoids. So that's the black one one death toucher, right? And it's like, it has these. What's that? Yeah, it's cool. It's fantastic. Yeah, it's really good. Obviously can switch to defense, but, you know, it's a one drop that they really don't want to block with anything that costs even two mana or more kind of doesn't feel great and you can force the issue. But it also just comes down and turn one. And sometimes if you're on the play, they go land, go and you go land, attack with this, sneak in my three one draw card. And then all of a sudden, you know, the game's already getting away from your opponent. And then every once in a while, you can use escape tunnel. You know, that's the land that will allow you to get a creature through. Sometimes it is just that one big hit or the, you know, if you happen to have one of the upper rarity sneak cards that really rewards you for like hitting your opponent off of sneak, you can get a card back from your yard. There's a whole bunch of stuff you can do there. Good sneak cards. There's a lot. I've included on comments on this as well. But I mean, there are many. This is, of course, one of the big payoffs here is that there's a ton of these things. And by the way, I only mentioned comments there like dream beavers. You know, there's a whole bunch of amazing ones when you go up in level. But the good sneak cards, Oroku, Saki, Shredder, Rising, you know, that's the three one that when it hits them, you lose life and draw card for and it sneaks for one in a black. Yeah. I mean, that is that is a very real thing that you will see all the time. And again, if you can do a one drop into this, it hits for three on turn two and you get the card right away and it's still there. Like they do have to block it or deal with it at some point. Trades with everything at that point in the game. So that's a good way to get ahead. If it ever hits twice, it feels kind of kind of broken. Leonardo Big Brother, the card that we opened up in our in our crack a pack. There's foot ninjas. There's the last Ronin's technique. This is a little bit different. This is the one that makes three one one ninja turtles and it sneaks for one in a white. You can just cast it for three in a white. But if you sneak it, then they're also tapped and attacking. So that's a nice extra hit. And then it almost always enables the next sneak because again, you've got these somewhat expendable one ones. And if any of them get through, then you can sneak that. And then you've got Splinter, Hamato, Yoshi, which is the ninja Lord. It gives your other other ninjas plus one plus one. And it has menace and it sneaks for just black. So it pays you off because many of the cards are ninjas. It has the cheapest knee cost and it even has a vision on a two drop with relatively high toughness. This thing is just tailor made for this deck. And it does a really, really good job of finishing the game as well. And then removal, I kept it just in the comments here, but you know, you've got some really nice common removal that we've talked about. We've got uneasy alliance that want the pacifism effect that we that we talked about. Really good for this deck, not just because of the thing, but also because in a late game, you can get yourself an extra token. And sometimes that's the difference between being able to sneak in a game winner or not stopped by the foot. That's a minus two, minus two, or you could attack a thing to give minus five, minus five, cheap removal that scales well with the game. And Chovy and banana pizzas just kind of catch all removal and same with grounded for life. So these are the the things that you can use to get blockers out of the way. And again, that's only the common. So it does get better as you go up up in rarity. And speaking of rarity, that is actually a part of the equation here as well. This color pair is well supported at all rarities, including at the very top of the top current top 10 rares and mythics. Six of them can be cast in black, white, including the best card in the set, Sally pride. So if you open one of these six, you know, six of the top 10 cards in the set, you are not off of the black, white track. You can either include it in your deck if you're already there or use it as a starting point to go down that road. If you go down to uncommon, it's a similar story. The two best uncommons in the set are both black and or white. They're also really good in this deck. Mighty Mutantimals is number one. And then dream beavers that we talked about is number two. And I'm not talking about just for this, I'm talking about like overall. So these are great places to start, just like we did in our cracker pack to lead you down this road. And as I mentioned, the beavers is 3% better in this deck somehow than it that it's already absurd win rate. It's like 60, like high 66 low 67% in this deck at uncommon for one man of card that that is just unbelievable. So that's good. As far as play of the deck goes, it plays out in a relatively traditional curve out style way. But the benefit you get is a few things. One, sneaking usually costs less and still gets you the creature on of the battlefield. Yes, you do have to recast. But a lot of times that can also be a benefit to you. And also it does put your opponent in an awkward situation. You know, they can really be between a rock and a hard place, whether it's like, do I want to trade down or do I want to let you sneak in a creature? And these can be like both bad spots for your opponent. And I think that it really leverages a good low curve plus the sneaking to kill them. And then, you know, big picture wise, this just seems like a very classic case of a good solid mechanic where the cards are just better. All right, this doesn't like the synergies are nice. They do work. They definitely check the box on getting, you know, a version of ninjutsu into the set and making it work and all that. But really, it's like you look down the list and the card power level to support this and the card power level of those sneak cards is really high. And to me, it's like there's nothing magical about it. It's just, you know, really well supported and in some cases overpowered cards that go to the deck. And when you have a deep color, like deep pool of colors like this and you, you know, make a good mechanic and then give it this really power level cards where you're going to get the best deck in the format. And that's what this one is. Yeah. I mean, you the deck ends up being able to play out as an aggro deck primarily, but also just win games of attrition without trouble. Like playing you, animals, you know. And I think that that does kind of speak to your point that the cards are just very good. And like that, having a deck full of cards that are slightly better than your opponents is really easy to win. It really is. And that's all you really need to do. So if you have not tried out that deck, dive in and give it a shot. It is very forgiving within the draft. There's so many options in it. So deep. It is a little tricky to play, but if you use the rule of thumb as like, you know, you generally do want to do the thing. You want to try to be sneaking as much as you can. And you will also be seen a bunch of interesting little interactions. You can sneak and re-sneak. A lot of times they took away the incentive to do that because they want you to actually hit your opponent with the creature. But yeah, and I will say it is fun. Like it is cool to do the sneak thing. It feels different. It is not just the normal stuff that we're used to with combat. And I think they did a pretty good job with that. OK, so try out that deck if you haven't yet. And if you aren't playing that deck right now and somebody is playing against you, hopefully you have a little bit better of an idea of how it works and what to do against it. Let's talk cube, Luis. We have so many different topics that we can go into now because because the cube is going to be ubiquitous. I mean, you know, there's going to be how many times will they release cube over the course of a year now, you know, 10, 8? I mean, it's going to be it is now the default format for limited players. It is a difficult format. It's deep. It has old cards. It's complicated. But that's also, you know, compliments to it because it makes it more interesting over the long run. And that means that we're going to start doing a lot more cube content as it will be probably, you know, one of the most drafted formats every year, no matter what, because it's just going to come out all the time. This time around, we wanted to talk about irreplaceable cards in the cube, Luis. Yes. So we want to talk about where, like the different combos that. When you're when you're drafting them, which are the pieces you can replace in which you can't and kind of how that ends up playing out in terms of what you should do during the draft. So let's kick things off with like one of the most well known combos in the entire cube, which is the underworld breach brain freeze lines. I diamond. I know we've talked about this this one or not. So I'm not going to I'm not going to belabor the point. But when evaluating this combo, underworld breach and brain freeze are not replaceable. You need both of those lines. I diamond funnily enough, the best individual card, in my opinion, of the three, because it works with Echo Vian's other draw sevens. It's just Oriak salvagers. If you have that in your cube, it just does a lot. It's a very powerful card, but you know, Yagma's will. It's goes on. But if you don't have lines, I diamond, but you have breach and brain freeze. You can you can use Lotus pedal. You can use black Lotus. That's obviously harder to find. But you know, sometimes you open black Lotus, or at least other people do. You can use frantic search. So underworld breach plus frantic search into just brain freeze them after frantic searching a bunch. So when you're drafting this deck, you just it's just really important to know that LED is the most fungible of them. You can replace it with other cards. The other two are not what are the use cases? Well, brain freeze, you can put as like a combo finisher. I would say of the three cards, brain freeze is the one I play the least by itself. If it's not part of this whole combo. Underworld breach, I like with time walk specifically. I actually view that a very similar combo where you just try to set up breach plus time walk plus six lands and you just go breach time walk time walk. And you made a time stretch and that can be really good. If you have more mana, if you have like a Lotus pedal or LED, like you can do stuff like that. Underworld breach, LED Wheel of Fortune goes pretty hard. Like you get to you get to go pretty hard on that. So when you're drafting this combo, yeah, the brain freeze and the breach are the least replaceable and you have to kind of prioritize thusly. As well, starting with one of those is going to make you push you towards the combo more than starting with LED. Though LED is again a safer pick by itself because it has other applications, it's less committal to the combo than taking either breach or brain freeze. Is is Black Lotus or LED better in that specific deck? I mean, Black Lotus is still better because there's all the times of the game where you don't do the combo with Underworld breach. Specifically, LED is actually stronger. LED Wheel of Fortune breach is a lot better than Black Lotus because it lets you discard a bunch of cards and start using those to fuel breach. Right. And then the other card that comes up every once in a while, I think maybe that throws people off track a little bit is Yagmoth's Will. That is not a Underworld breach substitute, is it? No, so it's kind of interesting. It goes both ways. A good breach deck, I will typically not include Yagmoth's Will because I don't want to exile my cards. I want to set up breach. The worse you are at breaching or the worse your deck is at finding breach, then you'd be a little bit more inclined to play Yagmoth. The funny thing about Yagmoth is it works really well in decks that look very similar to breach decks, but you tend to build around one or the other. Sometimes you play both and that's fine too. Like if you have like the full combo, Grixus, I have Dark Ritual, Cabal Ritual, Lotus Petal, LED. Like, yeah, you're always going to play Yagmoth on that deck, even if you have Underworld breach. But the blue red, straight blue red, I've got a bunch of cantrips and some counter spells and some burn spells. That deck doesn't really want Yagmoth that much. So it's it's kind of like a breach adjacent card. And it plays with a lot of the same cards, manomorphos, Strynic Search, Storm cards. But it's not really a replacement, exactly. You do have to draft those decks a little bit differently. Yeah. And if I showed you a deck that had brain freeze, LED and the accompanying cards, and then I said, and look, I didn't get Underworld breach, but I did get Yagmoth's will. You would say, well, I'm sorry. You're not going to win very much. Like they're just different enough, right? That there's no one to one swap there. Agreed. So moving on to like Tinker, for example, Tinker is irreplaceable because Tinker is like the whole thing you're doing with with this strategy. And by that strategy, I mean putting big artifacts into play. Show and tell is like a really bad substitute that you can try. In my experience, show and tell does not win very many games. And in fact, I'm actually a little lower on Tinker than some because I feel like Tinker or Portal to Frexia. The win rate on that is not as high as I would like. I have lost. Interesting. I think the last couple of times I Tinker for Portal, I did not win. And that's been a little more in my experience, both me me not winning, doing it, my opponent's not winning, doing it. Partially because you built your deck around this, you paid the cost of having a nine drop landmine that if you ever draw is usually quite bad. And you have to sack an artifact and play a Tinker, and maybe you got mystical tutor in your deck and all this stuff. You're making all these consciousness to make this work. And sometimes they have four creatures in play and you play this and them keeping their best creature still puts in a lot of pressure. So your expectation with that level of setup cost is I win. If not, I win. I win like I put myself in a position to win most of the games I play, like that where this happens. And you think Portals not quite at that threshold. I think Tinker for both is Citadel. Well, it has its own flaws. If you're too low of life total, sometimes you just hit land, land, or if you've played your land, because it's like turn three, you have to play your land first and their top card is just a land. Yeah, it can definitely fail. But I feel like Tinker for Citadel, my win rate is higher doing that than it is trying to Tinker for Portal. Interesting. I'm not saying I wouldn't put Portal in my deck if I had Tinker, but I don't view Portal as like a sufficient draw for Tinker. I'm really looking for both of Citadel, though I will say there's a new new champion of the arena. Crang, Ultram Warlord is from Ninja Turtles. It's a nine mana, nine nine flying trample, indestructible, haste, and your other artifact creatures also have those abilities. So if you Tinker for that, you immediately whack them for nine and it's indestructible. And if they don't kill it, you probably kill them on the second hit. It seems OK. I'm trying it. I don't know if it's going to be good enough. It sounds better than triple hit Titan to me, because indestructible is a little worse than if this dies make three things I feel like, though. I guess they both get around the same things because indestructible and dies kind of are adjacent like they. Excel, you know, and balance kind of get around either. Right. And I'd rather just like the haste, I think, is better. So yeah, this is actually just straight up in it and triple get Titan. Blight steel colossus also fine. Tinker for coveted jewel. That's kind of a losing place. Sometimes it works, but often doesn't Tinker for the endstone. Not that great. So I'm a little lower on Tinker, but it is the glue holding all these together. And to the extent that it is a good strategy, you do need the Tinker. The rest of the pieces don't even matter. This is the most extreme version of this, because. If you don't have Tinker, the other cards aren't even on your radar. Like you are just not putting those cards in your deck very often. I have had really turbo Academy decks that have like Academy workshop, Candelabra, Urza, ton of token making. I'll play a portal in those decks, because I do reasonably expect to be able to cast it from time to time. You can play a bolusus, Citadel in a deck with enough rituals. That can also be fine. If you've got dark ritual and cabal ritual, like maybe Black Lotus, whatever, you know, like those are things, but really Tinker is what makes this engine work. And without it, you're not really looking at these cards with an eye to playing them very often. I think one of the more interesting ones is the next one, though. So this is kind of like the overall lands package. And this is going to have a little bit of a rock to meet. They mean that this is my favorite deck. I love this one. So lands is an expensive package. It's got a lot of terrain. So the kind of like engine cards that so that the payoff cards, Strip Mine, number one, Strip Mine is what makes a lot of these cards work. Well, number one ish, I'm going to elaborate. Wasteland, obviously, worse version of Strip Mine, but it still works pretty well. Wasteland, Wasteland is still pretty strong. Fetched lands are a big part of this, though you're not drafting fetch lands to draft the lands deck so much as they are a really good part of it. Here, I think, are the actual two best cards for the lands deck. Titania and Bailoth Prime. Bailoth Prime is not in the arena cube. Yeah, what is that? It's it's in the Magical Line cube and it's in my cube. It's three in a green for a 10-10. And it comes to play tap with six stun counters on it. OK, so it's not untapping normally. And you can pay four mana and sacrifice a land to gain two life. OK. Is there anything else? Do you think there's more text or? I hope so. Whenever one of your lands goes to a graver from the battlefield, untapped this creature and make a four four. So it removes a stun counter effectively and you get a four four. Holy crap. That's awesome. I actually I actually think it's better than Titania. If you have enough of the trappings, it's worse by itself because Titania by itself. You've cast Titania, gotten a fetch land back and felt great about it. And we're gotten stripped. Yeah, or gotten stripped. Mine felt even better. Bailoth Prime doesn't do those things. But if you have Zeran Orb or Sylvan Safekeeper, Bailoth Prime's better because only costs four mana. It makes four fours instead of five threes. I think four fours actually comparable. Yeah, I think I'll go faster. But four four is a pretty good stat line. It doesn't get bolted and it gives you a 10 10. Like you actually do get the 10 10 eventually. Yeah. But basically, I think that Titania and Bailoth Prime. This is the lands deck. This is more than any other card. Yeah. And what you're trying to do with them is primarily combine them with Zeran Orb or Sylvan Safekeeper as a way to sacrifice all your lands. And that just kills them. I mean, if you have Zeran Orb, Titania, you it's actually a lot more like a two card combo than you might think. It really is. You gain a bunch of lives. So it's not like you're dying. Even if they have flyers, you're not dying. Right. You're gaining 10 life or something. Sylvan Safekeeper doesn't have that luxury, but it does protect your Titania. Not that the Titania needs protection. Part of the reason this combo is so strong. If you have Zeran Orb in play and you play this one first and you cast Titania, your opponent can have swords to plowshairs in their hand and you still just make all your lands in a five threes and they probably lose an extra. Right. And and there and it is very common play patterns. You just go all in. Right. You just say you say go on their step and you just go. Everything. The sword's example is actually trickier because if you sack all your lands, then they untap and cast Sunfall. Like you're obviously going to lose. Right. But I'm when you have Titania and a Zeran Orb, how many times with both those cards in play at the end of their turn, have you not sacrificed all your I just do it basically every time. Like I'm just like, this is what my deck was trying to do. I'm this is what I'm here for. Yeah. The biggest, the biggest way to lose that game is probably Cryptic Command. Or if you don't have enough lands and they have something like Mystic Confluence or two removal spells to like not die. Right. Right. My my experience is if a player has those two cards in play or Bailoth Prime instead of Titania, same thing or Zeran Orb or Sylvan Safe Keeper Zeran Orb, kind of same thing. Mm hmm. If it goes to the opponent's end step that you always win. Like there's just not really that many times when that's not the case. So when I look at the lands deck, I actually think it's a Titania deck primarily. That's cool. Titania slash Bailoth Prime. So I'm looking for A plus B, which is Titania Prime plus Zeran Orb or Safe Keeper. There is additional functionality with Strip Mind, Wasteland and Fetch Lands. And Titania specifically, I will play if I have like two Fetches and a Strip Mind. That's enough for me to play in Titania. Because if you get back a land like a Sac Land with Titania, you spent five mana for two, five threes and a land or two, five threes and kill one of their land. Or you strip mine in your own land and you just get three, five threes. Totally. Like that happens too. And here's the part of the lands deck. I no longer think it's good. And in fact, talk me off a ledge here. I'm thinking of cutting all this for my cube. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Don't do it. OK. You sold me. No, but I really do think fast bond, exploration, crucible of worlds, Romano. I don't think these are above the bar. No, they did not say I still explore a red and six. I think both red and six and ice tail are actually pretty good. If I have a stripper waste plus one fetch, I'll probably play them or two fetches, or if I just have like three fetches, I'll play them. And the reason I like those ones specifically, red and six only cost two mana, the ping for one is massive. It's it kills so much. Sometimes you play this and kill a birds or a Raghavan or a Thalia, you know, and you're just like, wow, this card's amazing. Or as crucible just rocks in your hand and does nothing. And then ice tail lets you play an extra land of return and it fills the graveyard so it kind of self fuels. So I still in Romano very good. Crucible and Romano not very good. I still in red and six very good. Yeah. Yeah. Or sorry, that's what I meant. Ice tail and red and six very good. Crucible and Romano not very good. Fast bond exploration hurts me to say this, but honestly, I just don't think either is very good. I you can build decks where you'd play them and I'm not saying I'm going to cut them from the cube, but. It's just I could live with exploration, but I think fast bond should be in just for the draw seven deck and whatever. It's just interesting and iconic and it's also relatively unique effect. And then, you know, and then there's also the three card combo, right? The fast bond, Zeran or Zeran or plus. Yeah. Yeah. That's infinite life, by the way. It's also infinite mana. So and then depending on what kind of lance you have, you can do some other stuff too with drawing cards and maybe even see your whole deck. So there's a, you know, that to me. It is really interesting how you frame this because I draft this. I forced this deck sometimes, but I have found the same thing that titanium. I'm doing it on the arena cube, so I haven't played with bailoff prime, but it would be similar, you know, does end up being actually the most powerful thing. But the things that I look for beyond that and the card that I think about the most is definitely strip mine as far as, you know, we're talking about irreplaceable combo cards here. Strip mine is the one that I'm like that, you know, again, you know, the fast bond strip mine way to get it back. Like just knock out their lands. That's almost an immediate concession, you know, for most decks, the Zeran or bring something back, uh, ability plus fast bond is, is usually a concession for most players because they recognize that you can just gain as much life as you want. Make as much man as you want. And that's just most decks can't overcome that unless they're doing something weird. But so many more games end to titanium plus sack outlet, safe, safekeeper or it is much more common to just win the game on the spot. I mean, it's, you know, we are talking about two card combos versus three. Um, but I love the, I mean, aiming for, you know, if you're going to. Have Zeran orb in your cube. I mean, you kind of have to keep fast bond. I think yeah. Yeah. This is my favorite deck where I'm at, but I might cut exploration and ramen up and then leave crucible or maybe cut exploration crucible and leave ramen up. I think I might cut two of the pieces that I could get behind and note. We're not even touching. That's being staged dark depths, feel the dead. Oh, sure. Can I wear all garbage crop rotation? Just get them all out. I don't do any of that. Yeah. Blinds next to a pretty good beloved rumbles great in the deck. I like basically, I like it best in like kind of an assertive green deck that's true that, you know, is happy to see cards like questing beast or sentinel velocity and definitely. And it's just like playing these cards because strip mines also great with those cards. If you go turn on birds, turn to sentinel and they play their two drop, then you go like strip mine plus play another thing like, yeah, that looks really good. So I usually pair black with it or red and black with it. That's the those are the most common. Red green is very, very good. I also, it's like a sub theme. The Time Walk deck is often blue green. No, I actually want to talk about the Time Walk deck specifically. So now we should just jump kind of segue into that, which is. What are you doing? You open Time Walk and it feels, it feels weird to be talking about Time Walk when it's like, how do you maximize black lotus? But the reality is, do you want your Time Walk to be better? Yeah. Do you want to win more when you open Time Walk? Yeah, of course. Who doesn't? I actually have a great example of this that went up on YouTube yesterday. It's a perfect Time Walk deck where what you're looking for when you open Time Walk, the best thing you can do is typically recurrent because multiple turns tend to stack in a way that is really, really tough to beat because basically the more turns you take, the more resources you have in each turn because you're drawing a card each turn, you're maybe playing a land if you haven't, using your planes, walkers, et cetera. And it's snowballs where now I'm doing this plus this on my turn. And then my next one I'm doing this plus this plus this and like. It feels like compounding interests. Yeah, exactly. It is exactly is. Or if you have one attacker, every turn you take is like an extra attack. But then if you add another to your board, they just die. So the best card to combine with Time Walk is Tamiya Collector of Tales. This is the two blue, green planes walker because she's at minus three. You get a card back from your graveyard, plus one name a card. Look at your top four cards and put it in your hand if you hit. Starts with five loyalty. So the easiest way to win with this, if you can set it up is just go play a Tamiya plus one. And who cares if you hit, right? It's at six loyalty. If they don't kill the Tamiya or attack the Tamiya, which is a tall order, but sometimes can happen, you go Time Walk, get it back Time Walk. That you're taking at least three turns in a row there. And you're even getting an extra Tamiya activation among them. Like you're not losing that game. But the most common way to play this, because you don't count on it surviving, is turn six Tamiya, get back Time Walk, cast Time Walk. Maybe after having cast Time Walk, ideally, so that you it's really like turn five for you because you took an extra turn somewhere in there and did whatever you did on that turn. Green also specifically pairs so well with it because acceleration is good. Creatures are good. Mana ramp is good. Like all this, like all the stuff that you want, it has a lot of ways to fill and use the graveyard like Malovalin Rumble and, you know, Euro pairs nicely with all this Tamiya fills the graveyard, all that stuff. And then Eternal Witness is another way to get back Time Walk. Regrow. Storm Chasers talent and Snapcaster Mage and Jasper and his Prodigy are also ways. Note with Jason, Snapcaster does exile the Time Walk, so you're done with it at that point. But I just am trying to build it. So I go turn five because you because you did Time Walk. Tamiya minus three, get back Time Walk. You don't get to then untap and take another turn because it's at two loyalty. But you do get to plus one Tamiya to look for whatever the best card in your deck is. Often another way to get back Time Walk. And if you have anything on that extra turn, like you're usually going to end up in a pretty dominating position. Now, there is Time Warp in the queue, but you still have Time Walk as the irreplaceable piece, right? I will play Time Warp in these decks. And in fact, the deck I'm talking about that went up yesterday did have a Time Warp because you have all this shell that's trying to take advantage of the extra turn ability. So Time Warp is fine there. But Time Warp is just not in the same ballpark. It's like setting up Time Warp Tamiya was nine man instead of six man. Like we're not talking about the same thing. But they're both pretty good at the questing beast and play, which is kind of what you got going on. Like so that if I pick one pack one Time Walk, I mean, you'd have to, you, you take a while, but you could look at all the videos I posted where I pick one pack one Time Walk. I probably end up in green like 75 or 80 percent of the time. Okay. It's my guess. It's really a strong pair. Somewhere else, but it's just such a good pairing. When I open Time Walk in a later pack, it's a lot less because I don't go into green that often. I do need the cards that send me to green most likely are Time Walk and Mana Crypt, I think are the two cards that said, because I just feel like green utilizes them really well. Is, is regrowth on your radar? Yeah. Regrowth totally counts if you have it in your cube. I don't have it in my cube right now, so I don't really think about it. But yeah, any card that gets your Time Walk back from the graveyard is a card. I mean, the one man at 03 Tamiya is also, is also great. It takes a little more work, but if you ever flip her, she gets back Time Walk too. And it's just a good card. Yeah. The animate decks, another one I want to talk about where it's got a lot of redundancy, which is good because, you know, that's what you need to build a deck. I do think the deck's kind of bad, so I typically don't draft it, but in Tomb is like the number one with a bullet card for the deck. Like it's better than all the animates, it's better than all the creatures, it's better than all the tutors, because in Tomb does, it's a tutor plus a discard outlet in one card. Like all the bust it draws start with in Tomb. They're all turn one in Tomb, turn two animate. We always talk about the three things you need to do for a reanimator deck. And in Tomb is the one card that covers two of them and it's cheap in instant speed. I mean, that is, that is cutting a corner in a major way. And of course, in Tomb is a force multiplier every time you have tutors, because now you have two in Tomb or three in Tomb, since like your best card. The reason I don't like animates is because you need those three things. You need an animate, you need a way to get the card in the graveyard and you need the big creature in Tomb. Doing two of them makes it a lot more palatable, but I'm not first picking in Tomb these days. I'm just not like it would take a pretty bad pack. The way I would get into animate is like imagine you first pick Psychic Frog, second pick Thotsys, and then I see it in Tomb. Yeah, sure. I would be totally willing to entertain it at that point. Or maybe I start with Flash and then I took like Flash and then Demonic Tutor. Yeah, if I took, if I saw in Tomb there, I would be happy to take in Tomb. But I'm not taking in Tomb over Manileek. I'm not taking over Swords to Plowshares. I'm not taking it over Scalding Tarn. Like there's a lot of cards that I can name that I would take over in Tomb. Like it's it's probably dropped. You know, I think there was a time when in Tomb was considered a top 20 to 30 card, maybe even a top 40 card, whatever, something in that range. Yeah, I think in Tomb is like a top 100 card now. Like I don't I don't think it's as good as it used to be by a long time. So still a powerful, narrow enabler, but maybe the archetype that it goes in is not. I mean, you know, there's been times when it was kind of the best deck and now it's not. Yeah, there's an iteration of the magic online queue, but just a year ago, right, really like drafting in Reanimator. We've got the Monoliths combo. So we've got Zerta and Forensic Gadgetier. And then we've got Grim Monolith and Basalt Monolith. The way the combo works is these are artifacts that you pay mana to untap. You have one of these cards that makes them cheaper to untap. So now you get infinite mana. Note Grim Monolith plus Forensic Gadgetier is not a combo because it now costs three to untap and taps for three. So that doesn't do it. Zerta works with either. Forensic only works with Basalt. Not to say that you wouldn't put it in your deck for other reasons, but in terms of infinite combo. So overall, Basalt Monolith is actually the best one of these three for the combo. Grim is a better card. Like you're more excited to put Grim in your deck without the combo. And that's the only one in the arena cube, right? Is Grim. I don't think Basalt, Zerta or I know if Zerta and Gadgetier are not in it. Yeah, I don't think so. I don't think Basalt is either. No. Yeah, they could totally put those cards in. They've shied away from infinite click combos, which makes sense to me, which is why part of my salvagers isn't. Honestly, I don't think salvagers should be the magical line cube either. The only reason we play it in the draft server is because if you just get the salvagers, can only be your point, we'll just concede because they know that's kind the rules we play by is like if you have a lion's eye diamond, a pirate spellbomb and a salvagers, you actually are obliged to concede by the by the rules we've laid out because like, what are you doing? You know, like we're just trying to we're just trying to play good, good games of magic here. So by the way, as I always mentioned, if you want to join the server, you just drop me a DM, respond to a comment on YouTube. I look at all the comments like, you know, I always like getting people into into cube draft and more specifically team draft. There's a lot of cool things that, you know, like it's not, oh, there do I take a mox or something else? It's like, oh, maybe I passed two moxes. So my team gets one or I'm going to pass them on a consultation and I'm not going to pass losses oracle, you know, like that sort of thing. Adding that teamwork element is a game changer. Yeah. It's really fun. There's a lot of angles there. Um, I think this combo is like on the mediocre side at this point. I do like the cards. You get infinite colorless mana. That's the deal. You get infinite colorless mana. And so you do need another thing. The reason I like the gadget tier the most is because it makes a clue every time you play an artifact. I don't think I've seen gadget here basalt fail to win almost ever because you're drawing a card off the basalt if you play it second because of the clue. Every artifact in your deck now replaces itself with a clue. So it's like how you can fizzle, of course, if these are your last two cards, you have nothing else. But I would say most of the time you end up you end up winning there. Zerda is really cool, though. I really like companions. So I think that, uh, I think it's a fun combo, but not when I go for that often. That said, if I'm playing an Academy deck and I have basalt, I'll take gadget here and I'll play them and sometimes it'll come together and sometimes it'll be great. So you can have Academy. I've, see, I've got, I've got it laid out. So I can kind of segue them nicely. Look at that. Uh, professionalism at its finest. Yeah, that's what this is. Academy is a card that obviously though, like number one is just get a bunch of artifacts, try to get things that make tokens, multiple artifacts, all that. It, it's a irreplaceable card in the artifacts deck. It is the better than anything else. In fact, you can take Academy over a mox and like pack three, if you're the artifact deck and then it's a totally legit play. I mean, you play against Academy decks. The, the games where they draw Academy, it's like you're competing on a completely different wavelength. 100% It's not even you're playing the same game. I had, I had a game the other day where in one of the team drafts where my opponent just had a good Academy deck and it's like on turn three, they had 11 mana and I had two, cause they were on the play and I had two tapped lands. And it was just like, yeah, this isn't, this isn't even close. Yeah. You know, the, it's funny cause the closest comparison is with another irreplaceable card though, it's not a combo card. It's Caracas. If you've ever played a game where Caracas was destroying you, that's how Academy feels on the other hand, where it's like, if they're doing the thing with Academy, it's a land drop that costs them nothing and you cannot beat it. Like if you most decks don't have the ability to interact with the land and it will absolutely wreck you. It feels similar. Yeah. It's, it's just, and this probably fuels your desire to play strip mines a little bit more too. Like it absolutely does. Cause those two. It's actually so sick when they have a stripper away and it's like the, the card I built my deck run, you just get to kill for a land drop and I can't counter it. Right. But there are some cards that I basically only play when I have Academy. Candle of Rotanos is number one. It goes from unplayable without Academy to artifact that adds seven mana to seven mana when you do have Academy. Sometimes more with like displace or kitten or ways to untap it, like a key or something. So just, just card, Candle of Rotanos specifically is a card. It's like, if you don't have Academy, just don't put this card in your deck. Expedition map is another card. I'm not really putting Expedition map in many decks. You can, you can sometimes put it in a strip mine deck. You can sometimes get a Urza Saga with it. I don't really don't think it's very good unless you have Academy because Academy gets that mana back, you know, with interests extremely quickly. So exactly. You know, not groundbreaking. Academy is a not replaceable part of the artifact deck, but it's worth noting that there are some cards I'll spec on like map or Candle of Rotanos that only work with Academy. Yeah. And it's one of the best examples of the type of card that we're focusing on today. Yeah. Another one is Nadu, Nadu decks. So Nadu, you know. That card's good, man. Yeah. Nadu is another one of the green cards I actually like and will take early. The number one combo is Nadu's Lighting Gryphs because it's a zero mana repeatable activated ability. It doesn't require you to sacrifice anything. It just works and it even gives haste. So like sometimes it enables you to like kill a combo deck when you wouldn't have been able to otherwise. And you can protect your Nadu. And when it's on Nadu, they can't do anything. The one caveat is that you do need another thing to bound. Like you can't re-equip it to the same creature it's on, right? Yeah. You have to bounce it back. I've seen that happen. I have too. I'm not in it too often, but it can happen. The back, so there's no replacement for Nadu. If you don't have Nadu, I don't want to see a Gryphs in your deck. Like you can maybe make some like Tinker Colossus arguments. I know. I think that's fine. I just don't really buy it, but yeah. There are a lot of Gryphs replacements though. There's Sylvan Safekeeper, which is good because it protects Nadu all the time at instant speed. It's bad because if you go Sylvan Safekeeper, Nadu, you're not supposed to sack our lands most of the time. Right. Right. Like the more stuff you have in play, the more that's good because you can Safekeeper until you hit your Gryphs or Bristly Bill or whatever. And you'll hit lands intermittently to replace the Wizzing. Right, to replace that. But there's also Bristly Bill, Scythecat Cog, these are the landfall. Ones which can go off pretty hard because Nadu obviously hits lands. And then there's Lavasper Boots, which costs a mana every time. So that's like a little bit more awkward. I refuse, by the way, to put Lavasper Boots in your deck. To put the boots in your deck. Yeah, yeah, no, I know. So it's basically with Nadu, Nadu's good enough, by the way, that if you drop the blue-green deck, let's say you took a Nadu and pack one and you never found any of the good combos, you just put the Nadu in your deck. Like there are two things. One, every time they interact that you'll get a card no matter what. Two, they're not going to let it sit and play because they don't know if you have a lightning grease in your deck. No, they will kill it. It's a lightning rod that's a two for one and it is kind of hard to kill too. Imagine a three-mana, three-four that when they target it you draw a card and this is a lot better than that. But that with flying, that they have to kill, that they feel like they must kill. It's not like they can ignore it. Like Leovold sometimes, if you're playing against like a black red deck that doesn't have card draw, they might ignore the Leovold and just get my creatures. Right. And then it's just not doing anything. Nadu, that's not going to happen very often. No. Once you decide to ignore Nadu, if they do the thing, it's too late. Like they already won. And you also have like minor combos like Caracas or other equipment. Umu's Gta in particular can also be pretty sick because you can start pinging your own creatures to do all that. But yeah, Nadu's a guard. I don't mind taking early and does a lot of good stuff. Oh, we actually skipped one because I wanted to talk about the time walks. Yeah. I didn't have one other note because the Sylvan's Safekeeper is a really good one. And I couldn't hear if you mentioned it, but you do have to be careful because once you let the thing resolve, you can't retarget that creature again because it gives shroud. You can do it with the ability on the stack if you want to get your two on for something, but you do have to be a little bit careful with the Safekeeper because you can kind of lock yourself out. Yeah. Yeah. That I have seen that happen. I want to talk about Flash real quick because this was this was in conjunction with the animate deck. Flash is irreplaceable, right? An irreplaceable card in this deck. And the best cards to Flash in are Torsten and World's Spineworm. I think by a pretty decent margin, World's Spine is the best because it just kills them. 3, 5, 5. High correlation of victory. Torsten is pretty good too because it draws a much card and makes 7-1-1s. And then the kind of like Tier 2 Flash targets are Atroxa because it puts nothing on the board. So Flash Atroxa can be good, but you really want an animate because the whole joke is you go Flash Atroxa, get reanimate, then reanimate the Atroxa. That's just nasty. And also works really nicely atroxa specifically with pitch cards because Flash Atroxa, pick up a Forza Will to stop their next play is huge. Itali and Vaultborne Tyrant are fine too. I have won plenty of games against Flash Atali, Flash Vaultborne, Flash Atroxa. I have won fewer games by a lot against World's Spineworm and Torsten. And then Flash also can put Archon or Emerald Cold into the graveyard if you have an instant speedway to get Emerald Cold back or just reanimate for Archon and that's fine too, but it's not doing anything special at that point. But it's a powerful card to know. Also, there's a little mini combo that someone posted in the comments in one of my videos, which I actually think is great. Flash plus Oculus, a born Oculus. What happens? What do you think happens? I guess nothing. You have never cast a manual Flash. You just cast Flash and then cast the Oculus for one mana and then you just have an Oculus. You cast Flash. You need to read the whole text of Flash. Okay, I do because I'm not. Because I guarantee you've never done this before because it just does not really come up. The whole point of Flash was to make it an instant speedway to put a creature into play. Right. They just were bad at templating. You may put a creature card from your hand onto the battlefield if you do sacrifice it unless you pay its mana cost reduced by two. Oh, that's cool. Yeah, it never happens. I've never done that. That's the whole point of the card. In fact, one of the most interesting cards for Cube, a card that was good in Legacy Till It Got Band, all that, is just because they did a bad job templating. All they wanted to do was wanted to blue your next creature it has Flash. Yeah, that's all this is supposed to do. That is really funny. What a combo. Isn't that great? Yeah. So it's really something. So yeah, Flash Oculus is a combo. It's actually really, really cool. You can also flash in like an enduring curiosity and then have it stay as an enchantment, I guess, if you wanted to. There's some weirdo stuff like that for sure. That's funny. And then lastly, here's a combo I know that you don't play with because it's not in the Magic Online or Arena Cube because it's in the full power cube only. Demonic Consultation, Thausas Oracle. So that's the busted combo. Consult Oracle is black, blue, blue, you win the game. Two cards, can't be interacted with with removal. The only thing that stops it is like a counter-spot. What happens with consultation? Do you just name something? Yeah, I like name like it's a good data pie or like overwhelming victory or whatever. You can just name whatever the top card is in the list. And then you exile your whole library. One black mana, instant speed, exile your whole deck. The way you typically play it actually is you cast a card on the top card. The way you actually is you cast Thausas Oracle holding control. If it resolves, you exile your whole deck. That way you don't go like consult and then cast Oracle and then lose. Counter it. It wouldn't counter it. Yeah. But there are backups. Doomsday is a backup for Demonic Consultation. It just takes a lot more work and a lot more mana is a lot worse. And Jace Wilder Mysteries is a backup for Thausas Oracle. But it also takes a lot more mana and is a lot worse because if they kill the Jace in response to the plus, you no longer have the like you win the game. So this is a funny one where both pieces are technically replaceable, but they're both massive downgrades. So it's like, yeah, I don't think I've ever made a Doomsday Jace Wilder Mysteries deck. I've made a lot of console Oracle decks. I've made some Doomsday Oracle decks and made some consult Jace decks. But Jace Doomsday is like a bridge too far. It is nice. You can also just play all four. Like if you just that deck's open, you will just keep playing pieces of the combo because they are backups. But there is not a replacement really on the like, you know, speed level of consult Oracle and it's a very strong combo. That's a nasty combo. Yeah. Maybe I'm not super sad that that's not in the cubes. Yeah. I go back and forth. I mean, Time Vault is the other card where you have all your ways to untap Time Vault and Time Vault is the one irreplaceable. And you've got Time Vault, Voltaic Key, Manaful Key, Tezret, Sahili, you know, now for Middable Speaker as well. That also works with it. Yeah, that's funny. But without the Time Vault, none of that stuff works. So all those cards have their own applications. They're not just trade one-offs. So yeah, I mean, it's interesting when you're drafting these decks, it is really important to know what are the cards that if A, I shouldn't pass because they're not replaceable or B, if this doesn't get opened, is my deck going to be functional? And unfortunately, like I had someone on my team today who had a demonic consultation with no Oracle or Jace. They had Breach, Brain Freeze, but no LED or pedal. They actually had like Crucible, Greensons and Ice Tail, but no Stripper Waste. They actually had all of these at the same time. As you can imagine, their deck was not functional because they just didn't get their combos. They didn't play any of those cards. They had to cobble together the rest of their deck and it just like didn't work. And that is because, and I'm not saying they did anything wrong. I've done plenty of drafts. In fact, the most common like crash out draft I do is I have a Thosas Oracle and I have another World Breach and I have all these things and I just don't open the corresponding piece and then you end up with not a functional deck and that can happen. So knowing which of these cards A, which are replaceable and B, which are like Candelabra, an only play in the event of Academy sort of deal. Right. Well, that's great stuff. Makes me want to play Cube, Luis. I'm not going to lie. It really, really makes me want that Cube back on Arena. But I'm enjoying Turtles enough for now, you know, to, it still has that newness of exploring and kind of trying out a few different decks and seeing what's working. So I will continue to do that until the Magic Gods deign me worthy of the Cube again. Let's call it a show there, Luis. If you at home have any questions about Turtles or Cube or anything like that, you can let us know. You can find us on social media, marshal underscore LR and LSV, mostly LSV at this point, because Twitter is kind of where magic happens or X or whatever it's called. And I'm not really on there anymore, but at any rate, yes, that is where you can find us. You can also find everything related to the podcast at lrcast.com. We want to say thanks to our Patreon supporters as well as Ultimate Guard for their support of the show. Make sure you check out Luis's YouTube channel for Cube and other limited content every single day. He does a draft or puts up something. And you can check that out on YouTube at LSV. There's also a link to that on the front page of LRcast.com. That's going to do it for this one. We'll see you next week. A new game came out. I don't know if you're aware. Slay the Spire 2. Have you? No. What is that? Do you know Slay the Spire? I've heard those words together. That's nice. You're not going to get into it because again, magic already kind of fills your cup in terms of gaming, as it does for many. But if you like Slay the Spire 1, which came out a long time ago at this point, 2017 or something, Slay the Spire 2, I've done now four runs, so it's not like I'm super deep into it. It's got some new bells and whistles, new characters, all that stuff, but it's the same game. So if you like Slay the Spire, you absolutely like this. It is the same game from that perspective. I'm not saying that is a bad thing. I think Slay the Spire is awesome. Played a lot of it. And I intend to play a lot of Slay the Spire 2. I actually made a video for TCG Player with me doing a Slay the Spire run. Oh, what kind of game is it? So it's a deck builder and it's a road like, yeah, so what happens is you start out as a character, let's say the Ironclad, which is the base character. And the Ironclad has its own starting deck, which is pretty weak when it starts. It's like five strikes, five defense, and then two slightly fancier cards. And then you go in, you're in this dungeon that's kind of like procedurally generated, right? So it's like, it's just a new one's generated every time you start. You go and you pick what path you want to go on and there's like monsters to fight. So the first thing, you go fight a monster. And basically you start the game with three mana, five cards in hand. At the end of every turn, you discard your hand, draw five new cards. The cards all cost mana to play. You know what your enemy's going to do. They telegraph their moves. And it's a turn-based game. So like, let's say on turn one, they're going to attack me for five. I know that's all they're going to do. I'll play my block to block five, and then I'll do two attacks and hit them for 10. And then next turn I'll, you know, do that. But when you beat an enemy, you get a little gold, you get a potion, which is like a one shot, and you get a new card for your deck. And you get to draft that card from a selection of three cards. Oh, that's cool. And if you go through the dungeon, you can upgrade your cards, make them better versions of themselves. You can get rid of cards, bad cards out of your deck if you find cards, you know, or like places. Does this carry on from game to game? Like, not game to game, but rather run. You're trying to go through three levels. There's, you climb this fire, beat the final boss, all that. But as you play more runs, you're unlocking metagame stuff. So you're unlocking a bigger card pool. You're unlocking more relics, which are basically like treasures that, you know, like you always have access to. You're unlocking just a variety of different things, including new characters to play that all have their own decks and sets of cards. So for example, the Silent is one of my favorite characters. And she's the second character to unlock and her like decks, her themes in her card pool, because each character has its own card pool is like shives. So there's like zero mana, deal four attacks. There's lots of ways to upgrade them and play lots of them and get benefits for playing lots of cards, kind of like storm. There's poison where you start poisoning your opponents and like dealing recursive damage in those ways to do more poison or get benefits from poison and so on and so forth. You kind of get the idea where like every character has its own themes. And as you go through the dungeon, you usually want to pick like one theme and maximize it. And that's generally how magic works too. Where now let's say I'm doing a poison run, I'll be looking to pick up all the cards that pay me off for poison or generate poison. I'll be looking to get rid of the cards out of my deck that don't do that. And at the end of the run, you have this like finely tuned machine and the fights get harder and harder and harder. And then once you do that, you unlock stuff. So like your runs get cooler over time too, even though at the start of everyone, you start with the same base terrible deck. So it's an awesome game. It kind of spawned a genre. I don't want to get to the whole historical thing of who came first or whatever, but this is one of the groundbreaking kind of like rogue like deck building games. And there's a lot of games. Do you remember Rogue Book? That game that was like a hex grid. It was like a Richard Garfield game. Anyway, Rogue Book was basically just Slay the Spire, but Slay the Spire is awesome. So Rogue Book is kind of cool too. And it's really sweet.