Rakdos And Lutri, Best Friends | Vintage Cube Draft 

It’s actually chain lightning, but you know… same same

came to say this. sith lord LSV

Super interesting question. At that point, though, fury is effectively always three mana and a much worse card. Could you do it if you were low on playables, sure. Would you do include it because it’s a good card? Not a good card anymore so probably not.

as far as i kno tainted pact requires you have no duplicates of basic lands? def possible to make it work in cube but much harder than consultation

how not? most fair decks crush the format lmao

@@kevinmanginelli6932 Fair decks are cool and neat, but if a deck can get some nice unfair plays and the fair deck can't stop it, then you probably lose See: LSV in round 2 going "Yeah I probably don't win against a Show and Tell Portal or Show and Tell Colossus", fair decks have a much lower ceiling but also have a higher floor, a combo deck will have a much higher ceiling and a much lower floor But I also usually visualize decks as a power rating gradient, so I think that makes sense?

​@@LizEllwood i pretty much think of fairness as "how much of a mana discount/advantage can I get." like Show and Tell Portal saves 6 mana, or Animate Dead Atraxa saves 5 mana. likewise, Mana Crypt allows LSV to "save" mana in this draft, effectively putting him ahead on turns, and making his "fair" deck vastly more unfair.

its honestly not that great lmao

Taking Shatterskull Smashing over Bonecrusher Giant at that point have been crazy.

@@sjake8308 I disagree, the land always makes it in the deck adding tons of value to the deck as a replacement for a basic land, while whatever replaces the bone crusher as the 23rd card if you take shatterskull will be on par with it. So you have to compare those relative improvements. In other words I think the bonecrusher is slightly better, but you only have 23 slots for nonland cards and get many more than needed, while all the lands you draft always make the deck and add that value.

@@bumpasaurus487 You're applying the same logic here as you are lower in the comments in defense of Lutri. Yes, both Lutri and Shatterskull Smashing offer free upside once they're in your pool: free upgrades over an empty companion slot and a basic Mountain. But that added upside is quite inefficient and conditional. In an environment as fast and powerful as vintage cube, their effect will rarely be the difference between a win and a loss. (As we saw here with Lutri.) If your take is based more on having a low opinion of Bonecrusher Giant, fair enough, but I would rate it as an above replacement-level playable. And looking at LSV's final deck, he basically had to run every single playable in his pool. His best/only sideboard card was a Tourach that his manabase couldn't reliably pay 1BBB for.

My thought also. Hold up turn 1 removal and all his other lands in hand are basic Mountain. He draws the Vantage later.

Yeah, that game was BS. I'd have been so tilted if I'd been in LSV's shoes there! 😆

Tis the season

to be fair in a 3v3, the broken combos are less likely to be seen since fewer packs are opened, so they're even more risky spec picks than in the normal 4v4.

if you know anything about these drafts you would know its not that shocking lmao

Fire Covenant is also an instant, which is huge.

I take Laelia there for sure. I was also very tempted to take Hullbreacher over Strip Mine.

​@@dementievatz I feel you on breacher but it would mostly be a hate draft or sb card without combos or fixing

Laelia is better in a vaccuum I think. It literally needs zero synergy with your deck to be good. Lutri does let you either play base blue or base red which is a bit more flexible. I also think lutri has a higher ceiling, but with LSV getting mana crypt the ceiling on laelia may actually be higher. For me I take laelia, I think lutri is overrated.

@@turbobrew lutri ceiling is higher (time walk). but laelia floor is higher imho. btw tw also good w laelia as well as every other thing that is good

LSV is so high on Lutri with seemingly nothing to back it up. He's also generally down on Jitte, which in a cube that he keeps saying is midrange creature soup I don't understand.

Lutri might not seem intrinsically powerful, but starting each game with an effective eight card hand is.

​@@sjake8308I definitely see its power as a free card, especially with the pitch cards. Beyond the theoretical power, though, your P1P1 still needs to do something, which Lutri seems to struggle to do.

one sided board wipes sound pretty ok when you're jamming creatures

I like Fire Covenant unless you’re definitely not in red.

Yes, unless you're not playing red (and if you're not, it might be a reason to move into red): Three-mana wraths are good, but three-mana instant-speed Plague Winds are a lot better.

Not even in magical Christmas land, it pitches to Force of Will/Negation and Fury, can copy vital interaction, ancestral/time walk, rituals in storm, and so on. The opportunity coat of missing one draft pick is nothing compared to the potential of Lutri. After the draft, there is zero opportunity cost to include Lutri.

@@Billyboy22ish every single card you named is a premium card you can't get after 3rd or 4th. Paying 6 mana for that effect has never been worth it & there are no more rituals outside of dark ritual because there in no more storm. Just brain freeze breach. But yeah sure i guess. Guess i live in "magical disney land" or whatever. If you could show me a place in this draft where lutri was good id be happy to defer to your "expertise"

That’s because lutri being good doesn’t look “good” all that often. It showing up ever as a free card to discard or just the body is a huge effect on the game for a card you never draw.

@@bumpasaurus487 🤦🏻‍♂️ you're not getting the point so I will stop here.

@@rezzytheskyguyit’s 3 mana not 6 bro for the cards he named. And it’s free because it’s an option, not because when you play it, it’s not free. The card isn’t “free” in every sense of the word, don’t be so literal. It costs 3 mana and $ in the store. The “free” we all refer to is that it doesn’t count as one of your draws in a game or slots in a deck, and that never isn’t the case. Mtgo doesn’t shuffle it in sometimes. Even if it was a vanilla 1/1 companion with no ability and it cost 5 to put in hand, it’s still a free roll to add to your deck and will always add some amount of value.

Heyo!😂