Cultivate sits at a weird point being almost useless for any commander up to four mana. If you need five or six it's great. I run it in my
Rosheen Meanderer deck for some Big Hydra reasons but other than that I prefer rocks, dorks and 2 CMC land ramp. Having said that I don't think I've ever been unsatisfied with the results. I also play all the other land ramp, just not any dorks (which is something I should probably do).
Except that one time when my friend used a
counterspell on my
Cultivate. To this day I still have no idea why. "Bolt the bird" I guess but a full
counterspell for that? I wouldn't waste removal or counters on someone else's ramp spells or dorks. They only set them back a turn or two maximum which isn't a whole lot in terms of a long game where politics drive the
balance of power on the board. Foiling someone's win condition on the other hand could lead to that player losing, being set back by many turns to look for another win condition or just simply unable to win anymore.
Morganator: for a 5 CMC commander
Cultivate on T3 will let you cast the commander T4 while securing that crucial fourth land drop (in addition to the one it ramps). With a dork you need the dork + four lands, which is a lot to ask.
Cultivate saves a card slot in the hand because it gets you two mana sources instead of just one (a dork). I presume this is a battlecruiser-only problem with nonexistent or high CMC draw power that can't offset the disadvantage of sacrificing a card slot to a land in the opening hand.
Cultivate is very similar to
Divination in my opinion. Both draw two and are sorcery speed.
Divination gives you two cards at random whereas
Cultivate guarantees two lands. Would I run
Divination in my decks? Probably not, I'll be looking at something like
Night's Whisper. Would I cast
Preordain and then
Growth Spiral in a single turn? That's an alright deal in my opinion - hence by this logic
Cultivate should be an alright deal too.
Let's look at the situations where
Cultivate is a dead draw: very early game and late game. Early game is a non-issue since you're most likely able to cast
Cultivate somewhere around T3 or T4 anyway. Late game? Would I rather see the
Divination I was comparing it to or
Cultivate? Definitely
Divination. Thus I don't think
Cultivate's problem is the high cost - it's a good deal - but the fact that it's good mid game when you want to be casting a lot of other things, too. It's not necessarily an issue of power but an issue of crowdedness in the mid game turns, T4-T6.
I'm actually gravitating towards dork ramp due to its sheer speed. There are very few 1-drops in many decks and dorks definitely can fill that role. Plus, you've got the body should you need one even if you don't need the mana late game anymore. This is probably relevant for something like
Overwhelming Stampede and the likes. People say dork ramp doesn't stick but what if they fill their purpose as long as you get a single activation out of a dork? It's like a Spirit Guide, a
Lotus Petal, a
Dark Ritual (
Pyretic Ritual) or a
Jeweled Amulet. I don't care if the dork dies as long as I get my Commander out and running. I get it that land ramp sticks better but so what, I'm a turn ahead of everyone else... Casting the commander a second time is highly unlikely anyway in many games so unless your commander is a kill-on-sight kind of creature I wouldn't worry about the commander tax being prohibitively large after losing a dork. With adequate draw you don't need to worry about casting things since you'll be hitting all your land drops.
Reasons why you keep cutting
Cultivate:
- It's crowded in the mid game
- It's a dead draw late game
- The sheer draw power of a Cultivate isn't stellar
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