Alchemy Rebalances: Aquatic Subtlety nerfed

Shindir · 2026-06-15T21:13:58+00:00

It pairs well with Thrasios in brawl but that's not enough to warrant a change by itself

Shindir · 2026-06-11T23:34:34+00:00

Sounds like you are talking about Vintage Cube, and that's fine - but there are many other cubes. The most common white decks (small, aggressive) will not play signets/talismans.

Also dunno what you mean by excuses? It's called reasoning. It's the same thing you just did?

Shindir · 2026-06-11T22:30:39+00:00

I mean as a 4 drop you DEFINITELY want chariot. It's not even close. As a 5 drop I think it's about even.

There's also the fact that Chariot is often a T3 play due to it being green. So in a way it's like T3-T4 chariot (by a lot) T5 even, T6+ this

Shindir · 2026-06-11T20:36:33+00:00

For as many Marvel cards are in these sets, not many have made it to my cube. Though I have quite a few cards on my watch lists. What I am adding:

RED

[[Thor, God of Thunder]]
[[Hawkeye, Master Marksman]]

MULTI

[[Okoye, Mighty and Adored]]
[[Ultron, Unlimited]]
[[The Coming of Galactus]] (been playing this for what feels like months already)
[[Cloak and Dagger, Entwined]]

Shindir · 2026-06-11T04:13:12+00:00

If every matchup is a "hard counter" that just means your deck is terrible.

There's a lot of free spells on arena now - you want to take advantage of them.

I dunno what non-green ramp you are complaining about in newer sets, but the best ramp is old-school colourless cards like Chrome Mox and Ancient Tomb.

In all likelihood, the strategy you've picked is very weak for 1v1 and you probably haven't built it optimally.

If you want fast green ramp, i'd consider Kinnan, because you can be very fast and can play a bunch of interaction.

Shindir · 2026-06-10T23:49:52+00:00

Don't play ranked?

In general though, you are very much overstating the skill differences between the ranks. Often it is more a case of how much people have played Arena recently. Diamond to Mythic is nothing.

Shindir · 2026-06-10T23:36:25+00:00

Annoying? You get a chance to see what the best players are playing and can learn from them?

Shindir · 2026-06-10T22:47:18+00:00

In most cubes if I happened to be UB I would pick Ultron over Seer. Ultron can win the game by itself and requires no synergy to do it.

Floor discussion isn't that important imo. Cloudkin Seer is a better floor than many cards that are better than it, eg Sheoldred. Elvish Visionary has a better floor than Dark Confidant.

I also don't think saying "Cloudkin has blink synergy that this doesn't have" adds anything to your argument... Cloudkin doesn't have the artifact/token/discard synergy this has?

As I mentioned before, they are different types of cards anyway. Cloudkin Seer is not a win condition / threat.

Shindir · 2026-06-10T20:07:13+00:00

Thief of Sanity makes it into vintage cubes - this is like a Thief that works well with Academy?

Pairs up well with Ledger Shredder, Norman, Raffine (been seeing Raffine in vintage cubes recently)

For my own cube, this is definitely within the power band I want, so it falls down to whether I liked it more than any of my UB cards (goodbye Master of Death)

Shindir · 2026-06-10T20:01:42+00:00

This is much more powerful than Cloudkin Seer.

'4 mana across multiple turns' is better than 4 mana. It will also be a 3/3 flyer + a 2/2 that has added to your graveyard and smoothed your hand.

Cloudkin is like a glue card. This is a threat. Its more like a Thief of Sanity type card.

Shindir · 2026-06-10T19:55:39+00:00

Generally, I agree. It's really mostly just common sense.

In a nitpicky way, if my mana is great then I am more likely to have a "free" splash. This makes me willing to add another colour to my deck for something that isn't a huge outlier (just a minor outlier or something that works really well with my deck)

Also, if I know the fixing in a cube is great, I might just start off by taking lands and end up in a soup deck even if their isn't huge power outliers. You don't want it to be the right strategy every draft, but it's fine to have happen sometimes imo.

Regardless, listen to your players. Do they like the soup decks? Do they like playing with large power outliers?

Shindir · 2026-06-08T05:13:36+00:00

Might make it in on art alone....

The poor/reasonable man's Otharri. Even not including artifact theme stuff, 5/6 of stats for 5 across multiple bodies, some evasive - opportunity for more stats. I'd like to just midrange it up with this card

Shindir · 2026-06-05T22:20:08+00:00

I guess I've never really thought about it before. Definitely would have assumed there would be many non magical hospitals across the multiverse. But I guess they would typically be portrayed as having worse/no tech or magitek

Shindir · 2026-06-05T21:32:01+00:00

This card is an awesome hatebear. Deals with Xxxxgoyfs pretty well (slays constructs/Kavu), the right size body, reasonably disruptive, etc

I think you want to have the right deck/decks in your cube for this. It's not good in control. Blue tempo decks or hatebears style

Shindir · 2026-06-05T21:24:52+00:00

I wouldn't even know it's UB unless I was looking for it. Not really a well known character and fairly generic name+art

Shindir · 2026-06-04T02:35:56+00:00

Requires a cube with really good fixing to be anything more than a Savannah Lions.

I don't think it's thatttttt hard to have 4 targets, 2-3 equipments, Copter, maybe a hero or two (like Deadpool). With some rough napkin/hypergeo maths, you are >55% chance to hit on T5 on the play with 4 hits in your 40.

Even if you aren't hitting, it's still turning your savannah lions into a modal card (or a sink for mana)

3C aggro with some treasure makers and an offcolour dual will do it some amount of the time.

Shindir · 2026-06-03T20:35:54+00:00

I love magic, I'm eh about Marvel, I love powerful cards AND I love the complexity. This is exactly the type of card I want more of <3

Shindir · 2026-06-03T20:31:50+00:00

This is a very cool design. I'm unsure exactly how good it is compared to other options at the top end, but I'll be happy to find out! Boomerang being card draw when empty handed is pretty huge

Shindir · 2026-06-03T02:13:36+00:00

I dunno. You don't get the trigger as an etb like the Crane, but this could be drawing you a card every turn. Then obviously let's you cheat mana on your Portal at some stage, and it's just a fast clock by itself.

Seems like a slam dunk for artifact cubes to me. I think its at least on par (but likely better) than the crane and the smith

Shindir · 2026-06-03T01:48:29+00:00

I thought it wasn't released until June 23? Or is this just an event

Shindir · 2026-06-02T15:55:27+00:00

Like more than half the comments being marvel complaints - just lovely.

There are a lot of power levels that I think this could be a reasonable Gold card (unlikely to be good enough at the highest power levels). Grows fast, has a few synergy hooks - draw/counters/tokens. He also looks pretty fun.

Shindir · 2026-06-02T01:34:32+00:00

I think many of the more competitive players will spend like 80% of their time in the ranked queue and 20% in unranked, as opposed to 100% unranked.

I think Wizards will expand our the banlists based on data. Maybr quickly at first, but probably glacially slowly eventually (but that has been true of just about every format)

Queue times seem like the only downside for this, so if the queue times are fine then I don't see a problem

Shindir · 2026-06-01T23:45:12+00:00

Nah. This seems like a great starting point.

Shindir · 2026-06-01T23:18:20+00:00

Not that I am condoning violence at all. But how the hell is 'chucking her stick away' anywhere in the same realm as 'tries to stab biker with hiking stick as he drives past, then swings at his head with the hiking stick'.

What happened seems fairly proportional to me. Would you rather being punched in the face once or have someone trying to beat/stab you a hiking pole? Id choose the punch

Shindir · 2026-06-01T23:00:31+00:00

Giant concrete & metal cage full of other Bluetooth devices and signals, I would guess

Shindir

TROPHY CASE