Orcish Bowmasters

Like, that was one of the main reasons why I settled on Cephalid Breakfast initially, is because I really liked, you know, I like drawing cards, I like getting free lands.

Yeah, who doesn't, right? And, and Nadu allowed you to do both of those things and got around Orcish Bowmasters in so many ways, right? It has a four butt.

It doesn't actually draw you cards, it puts them into your hand.

It got around Bowmasters that way.

But, you know, we've seen, uh, you know...

And, and if you look at our power outlier videos, the, the threat level assessments we do, Orcish Bowmasters has dropped a little bit.

So it allowed me to think about, "Okay, maybe I can still play Cephalid Breakfast." And we've tried it with, uh, I've tried it with, uh, Stoneforge Mystic and stuff like that.

But I think that Loki, getting more cards, being able to get that velocity, and then winning the game.

the artifact mana's all good because it als- again, doesn't get hit by Wasteland, Sinkhole, et cetera.

The Kappa also dodges, like- Orcish Bowmasters, Wrath of the Skies, Meltdown, Fatal Push-

Yes

... like just a huge list of cards.

But that is where we are, and I c- I'm not comfortable saying that it's well positioned.

I think since I last started ...

I played it in Eternal Mania, and I was very happy with that, but since then the meta game has changed where essentially the stock of cheap tempo aggressive decks has risen quite a lot, and specifically cards like Orcish Bowmasters and removal to combat those cheap creature, cheap aggressive decks has all gone up quite a lot.

And all of those cards are really good against Cephalid.

Uh, plus it's a two-one first striker, which is hard to attack into with Felida.

Um, uh, Orcish Bowmasters, Flow States, um, sometimes your opponents are playing Bilbo, uh, things like that.

So Spell Snare, uh, I'm really impressed with as well.

Um, also it's a deck that plays Karakas, and Karakas is very good right now, so.

Maybe something, uh, just happens a little bit differently and he's able to top eight with that record, you know? Just, like, one win away.

Um, and in black, you get access to Thoughtseize, so you can clear the way for your tho- for your Felida, which is one thing.

But you can also get access to Orcish Bowmasters, which is a card that is really good to flicker with your Felida.

You were talking about how there's not options.

So yeah, I think in the early game you're using the X tutors to grab- The sweet spot is like X is two.

You get Badger Mole, you get Springheart Nantuko, you can get Orcish Bowmasters, Collector Ouphe, Marionette Apprentice, Dauthi Voidwalker.

You know, whatever feels right for that game state.

But then once your board is fleshed out and you have a payoff spell on your hand, or even just to develop knowing that you'll probably draw one, then you cast Witherbloom 'cause you don't actually have to devote much resource to it.

I've mentioned a couple times over the life of the podcast that something that happens every once in a while is you goldfish a deck, you take the best, you play it, you look at the seven-point event results, Moxfield, you take the most winningest X archetype deck of your choice, and you goldfish it, and you don't engage...

As much as maybe you should with the specific deck building inclusions, the exclusions, the points, the spread, the idea behind it and understanding why Emperor of Bones over Orcish Bowmasters? Why are we taking Nethergoif over Quantum Riddler? How are we shifting and moving points around intentionally and giving people a better means to understand their own deck?

Yeah, absolutely.

And the number of interesting one-point cards has kind of reached that critical mass where 10 years ago, it actually wasn't easy to spend all your points in certain archetypes.

Dimir.

always plays it.

So now it's going to be a decision of, do you want to have that grindy late game that Quantum Riddler provides at a pretty low deck building cost? Or do you want to spend a point on Nethergoif and Orcish Bowmasters and kill the opponent quickly? And I think that forcible divide between tempo and grind is good.

You don't get to do everything for free.

And so you have, you have data on, um, if this card is drawn and, um, and then you have data on if you, uh, uh, then you have data on if you then went on to win the game right so for example the base win rate of somebody who's recording this data is is something like 54 generally if you're nerdy enough to like record your data that means you're a slightly winning player and the highest win rate when drawn card in the vintage cube on magic arena right now is time walk right and um Now, and then now we have kind of this anchor point, which like this card is really powerful and you know, whatnot.

But the ones that are kind of weird on this list are like in spots three and five are Orcish Bowmasters and Parallax Wave.

Orcish Bowmasters being like kind of reasonable.

This is just like a powerful card that shuts off a lot of strategies and you can combo with it.

But P-Wave is just like one of the weirdest like cube superstar cards ever because it's just like not obvious what makes it good.

Every time Kinnan does a flip, it seems like it gives you the ability to do two more flips now.

Like, if you have a way to make blue mana with a Mana Dork that comes in, well, you had Badrum Orc up in play, so it made the green to help the Kennen activation, and then you start to spin into clones, so now you get to get not just Biomancers familiar, but two more Biomancers familiar as you continue to go through your deck that tap for mana because you have Enduring Vitality in play.

Last night, I lost to Tyler at a situation where, like, the end state was he had two Biomancers familiar out, which means that his Kynan activations were down to three, from seven to five to three now.

So his Kynan activations were three.

The green decks, they kind of have to have a good pod for them to work.

If they're playing against three turbo decks, there's like no way for them to win.

Yeah, right? If there's an opponent playing black in their deck, and Orcish Bowmaster has a chance of showing up, right? Yeah, much harder.

Much