Cube Card Spotlight: Thassa, God of the Sea

Welcome back for another episode of Cube Card spotlight. I'm your host, Plaid Magic and today I'll be taking advantage of this thread and asking about a card I have argued about for a while.

Thassa, God of the Sea

2U

5/5
Legendary Enchantment Creature - God

Rules Text: Indestructible As long as your devotion to blue is less than five, Thassa isn't a creature. (Each Blue in the mana costs of permanents you control counts toward your devotion to blue.) At the beginning of your upkeep, scry 1. 1U: Target creature you control can't be blocked this turn.

The Synopsys

The Rundown:
So, here we have an enchantment with upside. Low curve, and doesn't affect the board immediately, but has upside every proceeding turn. Top deck efficiency increased by 50% with the auto scrye. Added plus side of making creatures unblockable is not nothing. This card is certainly no chump, but there is downside, which is what I wanted to bring up here. I'm sold on it, but my co-cube creator has some valid arguments. Even if it never "Turns on" it's powerful and hard to get rid of. Is that good or bad? You decide.

TL:DR

Power Level
I think this certainly could be/is included in powered cubes.

Cube Tutor Stats as of Today (8/31/2015):
Pick: 23933
Pass: 128540
Pick Percent: 15.7%
Cube Count: 3972

Collective Pros:

• Cheap toolbelt card
• Indestructible
• Topdeck fixing
• Evasion Enabler

Collective Cons:

• Difficult to provide non-specific answers for other players, unless its "turned on"
• Doesn't affect the board immediately
• May signal to players that devotion is supported, even if its not
• Generic "Good Card" in a color full of good cards, but doesn't fit any specific strategy
• If reaching devotion is required for this to work in your cube, it may not be a good option unless explicitly supported

Swap/Compare

• Monastery Siege - Similar in terms of CMC, being an enchantment and having multiple modes, one of which is topdeck filtering.  This is, however, one or the other and chosen when cast.  There is definitely an argument here, especially if you simply don't want the possibility of that 5/5 Indestructable body on 3.
• Jace Beleren - I like that as ab alternative as well, but it comes down to what you're looking to do.  Card advantage and topdeck filtering are not the same, so its up to the cube builder
• Whirler Rogue - So here's a 4 CMC that drops some flyers, so we have an effective 4 points of power on the board for 4, two points of which have evasion (either via flyers or tapping them to give the rogue unblockable).  This is pretty cool, plus it scales with bigger threats as you drop them, but if the goal is topdeck fixing, this doesn't get you there
• Crystal Ball - Though it doesn't help evasion, this certainly helps the topdeck

Overall, this is a very hard card to compare, as it's a Blue enchantment that has auto topdeck fixing and evasion as an activated ability.  That is a unique combination by itself without even mentioning the indestructibility and possible body.

Verdict(Compliments of Fleme):

The strength of Thassa is indeed the value she gives through a variety of ways. She's seldom turned on in my cube (with 40~ + guild cards in blue permanents) but still contributes to wins and is a great card for the cost. The times she's turned on are just gravy but the other two modes are plenty in making her a staple card. You can't really afford to run cards that grant just unblockability, or scry 1, or are a 5/5 indestructible but all those in one? Yes please.

I absolutely love cards that do a lot of things in one package - commands, modal spells and cards that just do a lot of things well and fit in a lot of decks are just the types of things that make for interesting cube cards.

The Conversation

Chirdaki
Thassa is the type of card people should be embracing. It is part of a new age style of finishers. They come down early, provide incremental advantage and then just win the game through relatively easy devotion gating. There are a ton of UU blue permanents and even if you are not a blue based deck the unblockable ability can do work.
I hope more of these types of win conditions come out in other colors over the next few years. Needing to get to 8 mana to resolve a win condition + keep mana up is not easy.

Fleme
The strength of Thassa is indeed the value she gives through a variety of ways. She's seldom turned on in my cube (with 40~ + guild cards in blue permanents) but still contributes to wins and is a great card for the cost. The times she's turned on are just gravy but the other two modes are plenty in making her a staple card. You can't really afford to run cards that grant just unblockability, or scry 1, or are a 5/5 indestructible but all those in one? Yes please.
I absolutely love cards that do a lot of things in one package - commands, modal spells and cards that just do a lot of things well and fit in a lot of decks are just the types of things that make for interesting cube cards.

Rogue_Diplomacy
I run all 5 of the mono color gods for flavor reasons, but Thassa is certainly good enough to run without that consideration. The biggest selling point is her activated ability, which will make short work of your opponent with even the most minor of threats.
Add to that the incremental value of scrying every turn and your odds of victory should increase dramatically.

Fleme
Card selection is so good. I hate that I had to cut the temples to make my non-basics faster and I'm just anticipating cheap (CMC-wise) and effective scry-cards from BFZ to include just to get more "casual" card selection going.

wox1510
This card has been a workhorse in my group's cube. It almost always makes its way into a deck and does its scry thing. The incremental advantage is almost invisible, but it adds up. It almost never becomes a creature; partly because blue is usually low on permanents, and partly because getting there makes it prone to white removal. The games where it's memorable is when the activated ability pushes something dumb through (like Wurmcoil).
Comparable cards are tough because the combination of abilities is pretty unique, but these came to mind: Monastery Siege, Jace Beleren, Whirler Rogue, Crystal Ball

SinibusUSG 
I don't currently run Thassa, and while originally that was for price point back in the early days of Blue Devotion, I've often considered and then passed over it when buying new cards.
I want to like it, I do. But I find devotion is just too hard to reach in blue. Yes, there's some double-blue permanents out there, but blue is just not a color which focuses on committing tons of permanents to the board. Without the devotion side of things, it's too low-impact as a 3-drop to keep the blue decks alive against more aggressive decks. And against control decks it's even harder to maintain devotion. Even if the Scry is nice, I feel like I'd rather just draw cards.
Thassa just feels like it's not good enough at doing the things any given deck wants it for. It's a very cool, even goodcard, but it's like a B-level card that plays as a D in most decks, and doesn't play as an A in any.

spiderdoofus
I don't like this card for cube for a couple of reasons. For me, the most important reason is that it is just a "good card" but not a card for any particular deck. There are plenty of good cards, especially in blue, so I'd rather play something that's an all-star or something that's good AND fits into a specific strategy.
Second, I think it's only marginally powerful enough. The effect is fine, but you need a few turns before it equals the power of even something like Thirst for Knowledge. Thirst is a great example of a card that is played in some cubes and not in others that I would rather play over this. They are both fine, if unexciting, cards on their own, but Thirst plays much better in its deck (artifacts) than Thassa does in hers (blue devotion? blue tempo?). I'm mostly speaking from an unpowered perspective, where I see Thassa making the cut around 540+.
I think a lot of people have or will cut Thassa in the future.