Am I the only one who thinks that Undercity Plague could break standard?
Standard forum
Posted on Jan. 9, 2013, 12:18 a.m. by soothslyr
for those of you who haven't seen it, here''s Undercity Plague
Undercity Plague
- Sorcery
Target player loses 1 life, discards a card, then sacrifices a permanent.Cipher (Then you may exile this spell card encoded on a creature you control. Whenever that creature deals combat damage to a player, its controller may cast a copy of the encoded card without paying its mana cost)
all i can see, is t2 cavern of souls -> Invisible Stalker -> cypher Undercity Plague -> win
dorminjake says... #3
There is an awful lot of time between t2 Invisible Stalker and t6 Undercity Plague . All manner of things could happen along the way. And then, by turn 6, the plague's likely to have a much smaller impact per casting.
January 9, 2013 12:34 a.m.
It will literally break your own Standard deck by making it useless, but certainly not the format. If people try this then I will get a lot of free FNM wins, which I'm fine with.
January 9, 2013 12:38 a.m.
CallMeCrazy says... #5
Ya, you have to actually cast the card before you cipher
January 9, 2013 1:21 a.m.
Maybe with Crypt Ghast or green ramp you can power that out quicker, but yeah I don't see that breaking much of anything.
Invisible Stalker was so great in limited because the games dragged on long enough for you to see it often, there was a lot of slow but powerful artifacts that cared about humans and removal that could hit it was much less prevalent.
In standard, there's still a lot of spells that hit Invisible Stalker , but the biggest problem is that while Invisible Stalker is the dream here, it only represents 6% of your deck. There's still like a 30% chance you haven't seen a 4-of by T10. And Undercity Plague on any other creature is much easier to interact with.
January 9, 2013 1:39 a.m.
No
Late game 1 life? Probably not gonna do much
Discard a card? Who says they'll have any?
Sac a permenent? How about that extra land or that spare token?
It will be good in casual, maybe, but not constructed. IMO.
January 9, 2013 2:33 a.m.
evil_monkey says... #8
Way too slow. I think that tap a creature cipher card is closer to actually seeing play than this. All in all, I'm not seeing a whole lot of cipher cards that will really be worth playing. Maybe a targeted kill spell with cipher on it would be awesome, but underwhelming so far IMO.
January 9, 2013 2:47 a.m.
SwiftDeath says... #9
I agree undercity is way to slow to be competitive but Hands of Binding is so good for a control deck working to keep threats like Thragtusk and Thundermaw Hellkite from attacking (passed the second turn for the hellkite) and keeping opposing pressure as low as possible.
January 9, 2013 3:10 a.m.
Bloodbraid Elf broke standard.
Stoneforge Mystic + Mirrodin Swords broke standard.
Jace, the Mind Sculptor broke standard.
Snapcaster Mage + Mana Leak + Delver of Secrets Flip broke standard.
Thragtusk broke standard.
This sorcery won't even see play.
January 9, 2013 5:18 a.m.
turn 6 isnt a long wait i agree it will probably break standard
January 9, 2013 7:04 a.m.
Valentine35 says... #12
it's a great card, and cipher is by far my favorite ability but i don't see it breaking standard. Maybe being a very big threat but a threat that you can deal with once you know your opponent is playing it. That's what sideboards are for.Standard decks are usually focused on who can play stuff the fastest. If your waiting for 1 card to make its way out by turn 6 your probably already losing the match... And btw Thragtusk never broke standard...Primeval Titan +Kessig Wolf Run +Inkmoth Nexus broke the crap out of standard!
January 9, 2013 7:19 a.m.
Rhadamanthus says... #13
I think you have the wrong idea about how Cipher works. It's not an ability that works from your hand and lets you encode the card for free. You have to cast the spell first. Notice the reminder text for Cipher starts with "Then you may...", which indicates it's part of the resolving spell's effect, and means it happens after you've done all the other stuff written above it.
It's better than some people may think, but it's still a 6-mana sorcery. The fact that you have to cast the spell first is a good balancing factor for the Cipher mechanic.
January 9, 2013 9:36 a.m.
Thragtusk is a far cry away from "breaking standard".
January 9, 2013 1:38 p.m.
I agree with MTGNoobs in a sense that Thragtusk "breaks standard". there are so many ways to deal with him. the only reason why i think Thragtusk changed the current metagame so much is that so many people were splashing green just to play the card. U/W Flash became Bant, Human decks became Naya Decks, creatureless control decks splashed green for Farseek and Thragtusk to stabilize against aggro board position.
January 9, 2013 6:50 p.m.
evil_monkey says... #16
If Thragtusk was "broken" we'd be seeing a stagnant meta similar to the days of Caw-Blade and Delver. Fortunately, this is one of the most diverse standard metas I've seen since I started playing magic.
January 9, 2013 6:54 p.m.
co-sign with evil_monkey. this varying metagame is such a joy to play with, and also kind of sucks because you never know what to expect when you to to FNM or tournaments. speaking of tournaments, the most recent SCG Open in Columbus featured the winning deck to NOT have Thragtusk in it. (it was a mono red deck)
January 9, 2013 6:58 p.m.
evil_monkey says... #18
There has actually been quite a few first place decks that used no green whatsoever. TCGplayer 50K Had UWR Mid Range as first in that and I have been seeing Rakdos aggro and RDW take home several first place finishes.
January 9, 2013 7:21 p.m.
Play 4 crypt ghast play this turn 4 or 5 like Griselbrand, nerf 2 permanents 2 cards, and 2 life. If they're playing Farseeks. Thats usually a turn 2-3 play followed by a Boros Reckoner. This hates, HATES on frites decks. go ahead and Mulch or Grisly Salvage while I ramp into this and kill all lands. There are ways of making it work. I really want to try this out with either U/B for Arcane Melee or just go full freaking black :P Ill follow you and then post the deck when I have it, Sooth!
March 15, 2013 5:29 p.m.
On the topic somewhat, what does RDW stand for? It's been bugging me and I can't find what it is.
March 15, 2013 7:54 p.m.
@acbooster: "RDW" stands for "Red Deck Wins." Traditionally, it was a mono-red control deck that dominated extended for a long time using cards like Grim Lavamancer and Mogg Fanatic to control the board. You can view one of the original builds here (it's Shuhei Nakamura's build. He and his team would put Japan as one of the most dominating teams on the Pro Tour circuit)
@evil_monkey: Without Thragtusk, however, I doubt we'd see very many control decks. The lifegain and token are what enable them to keep their heads up in the face of Naya Blitz or even Zombies. Things have gotten better now that Gatecrash has cycled in, but Return to Ravnica was nothing but Thragtusk and Restoration Angel.
March 15, 2013 8:22 p.m.
Ah ok, that makes sense. It's been bugging me for a while lol.
March 15, 2013 8:22 p.m.
Yeah it got its name because it completely dominated extended for a long time. It literally was a red deck that just won games, hence "Red Deck Wins!"
March 15, 2013 8:31 p.m.
My current mono-red deck is just like that in my local casual group. Tons of burn, aggro, and Tibalt, the Fiend-Blooded are what does it. Enough card cycling goes on that all of my cards are about equally good, so the discard at random of his +1 doesn't matter.
March 15, 2013 8:33 p.m.
KrazyCaley says... #25
RDW is not generally a control deck; usually it's fast aggro relying on quick creatures and direct damage spells. That one back in the days of Affinity was pretty controlly, but that's because it had to be because, well, Affinity.
March 16, 2013 1:33 a.m.
Yeah RDW isn't really control anymore. Current RDW is more like Sligh than anything else, but names change.
March 16, 2013 4:47 a.m.
10vernothin says... #27
the only way I can see it being powerful in the future is
a)low costed creatures/spells that lets you cast it on turn 3
b) an cheap evasive creature with double-strike or hexproof or something to cipher it on
c) grixis control gets a big boost ( but with Izzet and Dimir weak guilds, I donno)
this card is a tempo card printed for late game. The "combat" damage part prevents any cool combos, so =(
March 16, 2013 7:29 p.m.
lord_of_the_snakes says... #29
in my meta, almost everyone would run Restoration Angel and Thragtusk and a ton of other flicker cards to break the crap out of him, i love theros, its killing them both!
10vernothin says... #2
too slow.
for 6 mana, they lose 2 life, discard 2 cards and sacrifices 2 permanent. Nice and all, but you won't be playing that until turn 7/8
January 9, 2013 12:32 a.m.