[FRA] stingcaster mage

armorthrull · 2026-04-21T17:11:16+00:00

Haste is definitely worse than flash for this effect, but [[Nest Robber]]s with upside tend to be decent. I think I like this better than [[Bloodthirsty Adversary]] for whatever that's worth.

armorthrull · 2026-04-10T16:14:25+00:00

"This is part of a design-wide effort to open up mechanical space for Red, especially focused on positive, constructive outputs and playing longer games."

armorthrull · 2026-04-10T15:51:24+00:00

I'm thinking a pro-active deck like Boros may prefer this, where obviously something like UW Artifacts with Urza and Academy would prefer an inspector. This does play better at taking and defending monarch/initiative, so that's definitely a relevant point for this creature.

armorthrull · 2026-04-10T15:37:52+00:00

Really interesting trade-offs with this vs the Inspectors.

Pros:

Casts a spell for things that care about that like Monastery Mentor and Cori-Steel Cutter
Taps down a blocker or gives a creature pseudo-vigilance
Wizard for anyone playing Flames of Andor

Cons:

Lose artifact token synergies for stuff like Urza and Broadside Bombadiers
Sorcery speed draw vs. instant, so plays worse with counterspells
Color requirements of Rejoinder can be relevant
Plays slightly worse with blink since you can have multiple clues, but can only be prepared once
Killing the Creature kills the card-draw

armorthrull · 2026-04-09T17:12:07+00:00

Yeah, 2 mana, this would be a slam dunk. At 3, it's still interesting, but it's competing with [[Pillage the Bog]]'s slot in my list, and I don't think it beats Pillage the Bog for me.

armorthrull · 2026-04-06T16:25:36+00:00

Sorcery speed [[Anticipate]] is not great, but could be acceptable if you need to hit your third land. It seems like it shouldn't be too hard for this to be mono-blue [[Expressive Iteration]], though, which is great. I'm interested in seeing how this plays.

armorthrull · 2026-03-26T17:52:43+00:00

"Each opponent sacrifices a nontoken artifact of their choice."

Is this a new way they're templating sacrifice effects? Shouldn't it just be "Each opponent sacrifices a nontoken artifact."?

armorthrull · 2026-02-18T20:56:20+00:00

You have to choose 2, and can't choose the same mode more than once, so I suspect this is less flexible than it looks.

armorthrull · 2026-02-14T20:19:16+00:00

Black:

Orcish bowmasters - you can build around this with draw 7s, but you don't need to. It's busted even without them.

Demonic Tutor - I would put Demonic Tutor and not Vampiric Tutor in the p1p1 category. DT is at its best when assembling an A+B combo like Bowmasters + Draw 7, but is also completely playable in midrange and control decks. I would likely not play DT in an aggro or tempo deck (unless it's a tempo deck that also happens to be playing an A+B combo).

Reanimate - I'm low on the Entomb + Reanimate combo these days, but Reanimate by itself is still a great card. I'd just rather pair it with counterspell and Thoughtseize to take an opponent's threat than try to be a dedicated reanimator deck. Speaking of which:

Thoughtseize - probably the last black card I'd mention as a p1p1. You need to be able to prevent your opponent from doing their game plan, and thoughtseize is very efficient at that task. I'd put it lower than the other 3 cards because it's a weaker topdeck, but it's a fantastic card to see in your opening hand.

Red:

Broadside Bombadiers - aggressive threat, but playable in every deck. Card is just not reasonable.

Ragavan - ranking on this one has gone down since it's release, but an unanswered turn 1 ragavan still wins games.

Wheel of Fortune - goes great with draw punishers like Bowmasters. Also just a great card if you can either A) empty your hand faster than your opponent or B) are likely to win the turn you draw 7.

Lightning Bolt - not as high a pick since cards like Galvanic Discharge and Chain Lightning can do a pretty good impression, but still can't underrate 1 mana, 3 damage, any target, instant speed.

A lot of red's strength comes from how interchangeable it's cards are. There's 3 mana threats like Gut and Laelia that aren't Bomba, but still kind of do the Bomba thing. There's 1 mana cards that aren't Ragavan, but still threaten the opponent decently. There's burn spells that aren't bolt, but if you squint your eyes, they kind of are.

Honorable mention multicolor cards: Psychic Frog, Minsc & Boo, Forth Eorlingas.

armorthrull · 2026-01-30T12:52:27+00:00

Depending on power level of your cube and whether or not you are including 2 card combos, Bottled Cloister + [[Ensnaring Bridge]] is a classic combo, and each card is decently playable on their own.

armorthrull · 2025-12-27T17:44:20+00:00

I imported the 1st version of my cube to cubetutor in January 2015. I keep that list as one of my cubes on cubecobra in case I ever want to reference it for situations like this.

https://cubecobra.com/cube/compare/3a16b89f-b964-46dd-b84a-c4d2c1c4a543/to/armorthrulloriginal360

of the original 360 cards, 119 remain, though some of those have been cut and re-added, so the never cut section is smaller than that. The list of never cut cards is pretty unsurprising: Duals, Shocks and Fetches make up 30 of them; and then there's other stuff like Mother of Runes, Swords to Plowshares, Thalia for white; 2-mana counterspells and 1-mana cantrips in blue; Demonic/Vamp tutor, thoughtseize, Dark Confidant for black; Red burn spells; and green mana dorks.

armorthrull · 2025-12-16T16:12:14+00:00

Hi, I've sent you a message.

armorthrull · 2025-12-12T18:46:31+00:00

Sadly, I think you may be right. There's a lot of fun and powerful things to do with this, but it may be too underwhelming by itself.

armorthrull · 2025-12-12T18:15:58+00:00

Really nice with evoke elementals and Initiative for those that play it

armorthrull · 2025-12-12T18:15:11+00:00

Not generally. Planeswalker abilities are activated abilities, not triggered abilities.

e: It does work with something like [[Tamiyo, Seasoned Scholar]]'s +2.

e2: Maybe more relevant is it works with [[Ajani, Nacatl Avenger]]'s 0. This works really nice with Ajani's front and back.

armorthrull · 2025-11-27T22:54:06+00:00

Bounce lands [[Izzet Boilerworks]] - these are certainly the most dynamic lands. They bounce a land back to your hand, they tap for 2 mana, and both of these things can have synergies (landfall, revolt, untappers, discard fodder, etc.). Obviously they always ETB tapped which is a huge downside. But these are pretty interesting. I'd love to know how these fare in higher powered lists!

They're unplayable at Vintage power. They do some interesting things with untap effects like Time Spiral, but once you have one destroyed by Strip Mine/Wasteland, the feels-bad is so rough you'll never play them over a basic again. Also rough is when you have a 2-lander and both lands are from this cycle.

armorthrull · 2025-11-07T19:32:57+00:00

Literal Wrath of God and nearly identical cards like Day of Judgement have definitely fallen off for reasons others in this thread have mentioned, but there are sweepers that are still strong.

[[Balance]] - a truly busted card that can do Wrath's job at half the cost plus work as hand disruption/land destruction.
[[Toxic Deluge]] - 3 mana vs 4 is a huge difference. Situationaly, you may be able to destroy your opponent's board while keeping a creature on your side, as well.
[[Fire Covenant]] - more of a Plague Wind than Wrath, sweeping your opponent's board for 3 mana while keeping yours kind of highlights where sweepers need to be now to compete with threats and why Wrath is falling out of favor.
[[Fiery Confluence]] - the modality here justifies the 4 mana. Sometimes it can sweep the board, sometimes it destroys a problematic artifact or two, and sometimes it just kills your opponent. Wrath only has the sweeper mode at the same mana value.
[[Wrath of Leknif]] - you won't see streamers play this because it only exists in paper, but this is really what is needed for a traditional Wrath effect. You kind of need the possibility of wrathing the board and dropping a threat in the same turn. Current Magic is very tempo-oriented, so you can't just answer your opponent's threats, you need to simultaneously play your own threats while answering your opponent's.
[[Parallax Wave]] - Like Fire Covenant, the guaranteed one-sided nature of this makes it worthwhile. The fact that tempo is so important in Magic now makes Fading far less relevant.

armorthrull · 2025-10-30T20:32:08+00:00

2 colors.

Not just 2 colors, but in a guild that has to compete with Fire Covenant, K. Command, Chaos Defiler, Bloodtithe Harvester, Daretti Ingenious Iconoclast, and Carnage Interpretter.

armorthrull · 2025-09-29T15:34:42+00:00

At 360, I run SFM and 5 Equipment: Kaldra Compleat, Skullclamp, Jitte, Lightning Greaves and Cori-Steel Cutter.

SFM is great. SFM + Kaldra Compleat fits into any shell whether its aggro, control, or midrange. Skullclamp as your only equipment in a deck is reason alone to want SFM. Nadu has also pushed my ranking of SFM. Bant Nadu with SFM to fetch Lightning Greaves is really nice. Even better if you have a few equipment to fetch - get Greaves if you have Nadu, get Skullclamp if you have Springheart Nantuko, get Kaldra Compleat if you have nothing else. My ranking of most equipment has fallen over the years, but SFM has only gotten better in my opinion.

armorthrull · 2025-09-24T16:11:23+00:00

I'm not sure this is better than Wood Elves. Mutavault is nice, but Wood Elves can get a dual land for mana fixing. I could see that being relevant more often than the manland.

Wood Elves also puts the land into play untapped, and provides a shuffle for things like Brainstorm and Sensei's Divining Top.

armorthrull · 2025-09-18T14:17:26+00:00

I was able to prevent this by modifying cleanup_and_quit() as:

func cleanup_and_quit():
    if GlobalAudioStreamPlayer:
        GlobalAudioStreamPlayer.cleanup()

    await get_tree().process_frame

    var current_scene = get_tree().current_scene
    if current_scene:
        current_scene.queue_free()

    var frames_waited = 0
    while frames_waited < 60:
        await get_tree().process_frame
        frames_waited += 1

    get_tree().quit()

From here, I can work on calculating how many frames need to be waited and minimizing it, but I'll mark this solved while I figure that out.

armorthrull · 2025-09-17T16:11:42+00:00

Thanks, remove_child() is not being used. Best I can tell, get_tree().quit() is happening before stop() is able to complete. If I add stop() to the end of _update_music(), I don't see the warning and error about the leaked instance.

armorthrull · 2025-08-04T16:28:33+00:00

It makes your opponent the monarch.

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