Like some cube enthusiasts, I like to keep up with the latest expansions and products of Magic: the Gathering and skim through various reviews, made by a broad range of individuals, and base my decision off their opinions of which cards are worth running. Often times I’m happy to agree with them. However, at random times, I find myself flipping through my cube and thinking to myself, “Why do I run this card?”.

The giant automation Triskelion, or so its original artwork implies, has been in many a cube since I’ve been viewing them. When I first created my cube, I ran Triskelion alongside Wurmcoil Engine in my six CMC colorless creature slot. After my cube group met for our fifth time, Triskelion rounded the table twice through two separate drafts. The following week I grabbed him alongside Goblin Welder, Tinker, Wurmcoil Engine, Myr Battlesphere, Mox Ruby, Black Lotus, Mana Vault, and Mana Crypt, and the deck functioned like a well lubed machine. Even after running Treskelion in a deck with major support, I only found him useful once in the all of my matches. During that match, I was faced with an opposing field of two spirit tokens from a resolved Lingering Souls, a vampire token from Sorin, Lord of Innistrad, and a Elesh Norn in his yard waiting to come back into play with known reanimation spells waiting to be top-decked. During that turn I Tinkered away a Mox Ruby and searched for Triskelion. When he came into play, I pinged the three tokens and then recurred Triskelion back into play with my Goblin Welder, then pinged Sorin for two, killing him. The following turn he flashbacked Lingering Souls and then played Recurring Nightmare, which I countered with Mana Drain and then pinged one of the spirit tokens with my remaining counter on Triskelion. I’m not going to lie, he was a blast in that situation. However, during my other matches, I primarily focused on Wurmcoil and Battlesphere.

The following week I asked my playgroup if they wanted Triskelion replaced. The group decided that Triskelion was a bit slow and underwhelming in a powered cube. After some time on Google, we decided that we would replace Triskelion with Steel Hellkite. After the swap was made, Hellkite was snatched very often and saw mainboard in Green Ramp, Mud, Tinker/Welder, Junk/Reanimation, and various other decks.

I not going to claim that our decision was the best or that Triskelion isn’t worth running. I am sure there are groups of players that embrace Trisk as an all-time staple. All I am saying is, In the end, my group enjoyed Hellkite much more than Trisk and never looked back.

Nowadays we have Ugin in the mix and I have considered running him as a colorless damage dealer like Trisk in a sense; granted the damage can’t be divided, which was handy in the situation I mentioned before, but Ugin does clear the board better than Trisk with his second ability. It is a bummer that Ugin isn’t an artifact that could be ran in a Welder/Tinker deck, but that would also make him weaker to artifact removal.

To get back on topic, what do you guys think of Triskelion? Feel free to leave a comment below.

Disclaimer: The purpose of this blog is create individual thoughts and opinions of why you, fellow cubers, run the cards you run and to ask yourself why you run them. PLEASE keep an open mind to every opinion that is shared in this blog and PLEASE be kind to each other.

Thanks for stopping by! –Hanzelgravey

P.S. Shoot me a message If you have a recommendation on a cube card you would like me to analyze in a future post.