Squee - what's the point?

Matthew

Gunmix25 said:

@Laeuftbeidir

Here is a snippet of my comment from another thread I was posting in [Leader?]

"He is basically a respawning unit that provides the fuel for the following cards:

Fungal Plots: (G) support … UC

Goblin Barrage: ( R ) Spell … UC

Goblin Warchief: ( R ) Creature … UC

Mox Amber: (colorless) Support … M

Siege-Gang Commander: ( R ) Creature … R

Skirk Prospector: ( R ) Creature … C

Torgaar, Famine Incarnate: ( B ) Creature … R

Vicious Offering: ( B ) Spell … C

Zahid, Djinn of the Lamp: ( U ) Creature … R

He easily provides the necessary requirements to cast these cards and the developers cleverly found a way to make sure we would use him by making sure he comes back with all his reinforcements. In short, exile is his achilles heel."

I hope that helps explain why I said that Squee is an engine for that mechanic

*** note: not all are goblins of course. but I did focus on cards that Squee would likely be used in conjunction with.

I've tested him out with just goblins (based on the Expert-level deck for Jaya), and I'm very unimpressed. There's no good way to dump cards in that deck, so that strategy isn't even considered. The various goblin cards that care about reinforcements are all just too underwhelming to be of use. Of course, part of that could be the fact that Training Grounds is a completely useless place to test anything currently in the Standard rotation (cough @Brigby
cough).

I think there might be some potential to take advantage of him with Torgaar, pairing it with Costly Plunder and other creature sacrifice cards in a B/R deck. I think there might also be some potential in R/G, with cards like Gather the Pack, Journey to Eternity, Itlimoc, and Reclaim. But the experience I had just trying to use his goblin minions buddies alongside him was just so underwhelming that I haven't bothered trying him anywhere else just yet.

Also, @Gunmix25  Zahid cares about support reinforcements, not creature reinforcements.

wickedwitch74

I was really hoping that this set would empower more reanimator tactics. Squee could be pretty cool, but at that mana cost...

Hey DEV team, since you nerfed Gilded Lotus, maybe you could kick Squee in the pants for us. Lower his cost to, say, 12 and we'd be able to use him properly.

morgue427

does he work like the other leader in the training? he teaks all goblins and esentailly absord them? gaining each time he does? His power/ toughness goes up with each one absorbedso it becomes his base. so dregon fodder from origins for 6 i think puts 2 tokens out that buffs him.

DumasAG

just had someone using him as fodder for heart-piercer manticore (they had the innistrad white support that gives everything +2/+2 and vigilance to give him more utility and damage). It was cute, and not innefective

DBJones

Does he keep anything besides reinforcements when he comes back from the dead? Casting Saving Grace or similar on him could be useful in that case.

Gunmix25

Matthew said:

Gunmix25 said:

@Laeuftbeidir

Here is a snippet of my comment from another thread I was posting in [Leader?]

"He is basically a respawning unit that provides the fuel for the following cards:

Fungal Plots: (G) support … UC

Goblin Barrage: ( R ) Spell … UC

Goblin Warchief: ( R ) Creature … UC

Mox Amber: (colorless) Support … M

Siege-Gang Commander: ( R ) Creature … R

Skirk Prospector: ( R ) Creature … C

Torgaar, Famine Incarnate: ( B ) Creature … R

Vicious Offering: ( B ) Spell … C

Zahid, Djinn of the Lamp: ( U ) Creature … R

He easily provides the necessary requirements to cast these cards and the developers cleverly found a way to make sure we would use him by making sure he comes back with all his reinforcements. In short, exile is his achilles heel."

I hope that helps explain why I said that Squee is an engine for that mechanic

*** note: not all are goblins of course. but I did focus on cards that Squee would likely be used in conjunction with.

I've tested him out with just goblins (based on the Expert-level deck for Jaya), and I'm very unimpressed. There's no good way to dump cards in that deck, so that strategy isn't even considered. The various goblin cards that care about reinforcements are all just too underwhelming to be of use. Of course, part of that could be the fact that Training Grounds is a completely useless place to test anything currently in the Standard rotation (cough @Brigby
cough).

I think there might be some potential to take advantage of him with Torgaar, pairing it with Costly Plunder and other creature sacrifice cards in a B/R deck. I think there might also be some potential in R/G, with cards like Gather the Pack, Journey to Eternity, Itlimoc, and Reclaim. But the experience I had just trying to use his goblin minions buddies alongside him was just so underwhelming that I haven't bothered trying him anywhere else just yet.

Also, @Gunmix25  Zahid cares about support reinforcements, not creature reinforcements.

This gives more insight on the matter. Apologies on the mix up about Zahid and thanks for the correction, I did not realize that it was support related. Sad that so much effort went into the mechanic without much output designed into the interactions.  

Brakkis

So I have Squee (my first rare, unfortunately) and I think about half of those cards that can be run with red and work by consuming reinforcements. It's not a good deck, or even a halfway viable deck in Platinum.

I will outright state that Squee is a worthless immortal creature that, even if you were to give him Berserk & First Strike, he'd be a tiny 3/2 trying to kill 8/8's over 3+ turns and accomplishing nothing.

FindingHeart8

Brakkis said:

So I have Squee (my first rare, unfortunately) and I think about half of those cards that can be run with red and work by consuming reinforcements. It's not a good deck, or even a halfway viable deck in Platinum.

I will outright state that Squee is a worthless immortal creature that, even if you were to give him Berserk & First Strike, he'd be a tiny 3/2 trying to kill 8/8's over 3+ turns and accomplishing nothing.

worthless?!  Worthless now, maybe.

wait until WotC brings back Worship again and mtgpq finally adds it in...then squee will be your new best friend

Brakkis

FindingHeart8 said:

Brakkis said:

So I have Squee (my first rare, unfortunately) and I think about half of those cards that can be run with red and work by consuming reinforcements. It's not a good deck, or even a halfway viable deck in Platinum.

I will outright state that Squee is a worthless immortal creature that, even if you were to give him Berserk & First Strike, he'd be a tiny 3/2 trying to kill 8/8's over 3+ turns and accomplishing nothing.

worthless?!  Worthless now, maybe.

wait until WotC brings back Worship again and mtgpq finally adds it in...then squee will be your new best friend

They will never add that card, even if it's brought back. It would be so broken in PQ.

DumasAG

He’s a pretty good reclaim target since he keeps coming back for more.

has anyone tested him with olivia? Does he get an activation for each reinforcement? Or just the original body? Or angel’s tomb, for that matter?

Laeuftbeidir

He was actually surprisingly good for 1.3 AWR. So much damage sources, he died a dozen times, but he just keeps doing his part snipping away health. Still way to costly

Quantius

If all copies of him bounced out of the GY to reinforce him, then he'd be useful (Similar to how Oathsworn Vampire works).

But paying 20 for a 3/2 to diddle around with Reclaim is poop. You can't build a meaningful reinforcement stack on him without hard casting him over and over at which point, you may as well have used literally any other strategy and been more effective.

Matthew

He should cost about half what he currently does. He's just prohibitively costly right now. I found myself automatically exiling him whenever I drew him because 20 mana is so steep.

It's not just Squee though whose cost is too high. I think nearly all of the goblins in this set are overpriced, at least those which care about reinforcements. Goblins are all about swarming in paper, but that mark was widely missed here in PQ. For them to really be worth using, I think they need to fit more closely to the mold of Slimefoot and the Saprolings. Slimefoot is absurd. He can get absolutely massive with the right setup. I don't think Squee needs to get that huge, but there just aren't enough ways to easily reinforce him at the moment.

As I was writing this though, I did come up with a question about Leader cards in general. Does anyone know what happens if a card with Leader that has been reinforced via tokens gets sent to the graveyard? This doesn't matter too much for Slimefoot, but it definitely does for Squee. What I'm wondering is if goblin tokens that are transformed to Squee reinforcements actually create another copy of Squee, or if they're just counted as a token. It could have implications on how large of a stack you can bring back when you recycle Squee.

Matthew

I decided to give him another shot, and I would like to take back what I said earlier. He's not completely useless. He's just very much a combo card. I used the following with Karn and had a stack of 27 by the end of my first match:

• Forebear's Blade
• Search for Azcanta
• Squee, the Immortal
• Siege-Gang Commander
• Storm the Vault
• Goblin Warchief
• Gather the Pack
• Reclaim
• Dragon Fodder
• Strategic Planning

I really wish I had Torgaar, Famine Incarnate. He would really add to the synergy here.

Quantius

I dunno, he still seems pretty useless. 27 copies of Squee is over 500 mana. I feel like you could have accomplished a lot more with that mana using nearly anything else instead of Squee.

DumasAG

Cost might be a bit high, but I like that they have a card which does a really interesting thing (recurs itself and it’s reinforcements without help). As we get more cards like torgaar that pay off high reinforcements, square will get more and more interesting. 

madwren

Quantius said:

I dunno, he still seems pretty useless. 27 copies of Squee is over 500 mana. I feel like you could have accomplished a lot more with that mana using nearly anything else instead of Squee.

Keep in mind he didn't actually spend 500 mana, though. He spent mana on cards like GtP and Reclaim and Strategic Planning.

Quantius

madwren said:

Quantius said:

I dunno, he still seems pretty useless. 27 copies of Squee is over 500 mana. I feel like you could have accomplished a lot more with that mana using nearly anything else instead of Squee.

Keep in mind he didn't actually spend 500 mana, though. He spent mana on cards like GtP and Reclaim and Strategic Planning.

Not sure how Gather the Pack or Strategic Planning help. Squee doesn't pull reinforcements out of the GY, he only returns with what he had on board — otherwise I'd be singing a different tune, that was the first thing I tried when I saw him.

So you have to cast Squee's all day in order to reinforce him. And while Reclaim + Squee has a nice synergy, using that 12 mana to offset the cost of a 20 mana reinforcement isn't the most efficient use of mana.

Mburn7

Can someone try comboing Squee with Slimefoot and the Thallid that sacrifices reinforcements?  That could be fun (would need to be B/R, though, although it might work with a card in green instead)

Brakkis

Matthew said:

I decided to give him another shot, and I would like to take back what I said earlier. He's not completely useless. He's just very much a combo card. I used the following with Karn and had a stack of 27 by the end of my first match:

• Forebear's Blade
• Search for Azcanta
• Squee, the Immortal
• Siege-Gang Commander
• Storm the Vault
• Goblin Warchief
• Gather the Pack
• Reclaim
• Dragon Fodder
• Strategic Planning

I really wish I had Torgaar, Famine Incarnate. He would really add to the synergy here.

All you had here was a 3/2 with 27 reinforcements stacked on him.

He's still only at 3/2. Being useless.