i went against the "smaller atk, smaller cost" paradigm because of fractal/mitosis and rolhope- i didnt want it to be fractaled/mitosised into something similar to rolhope. higher cost, higher protection and slightly resistance to cc made sense.
if you want to try quint sages, youre welcome to try, but it has limitations. upped quints are 3
each, so youll need to use your mark and possibly a pend to get sufficient aether quick enough to make use of them, while still needing to come up with 8 water per sage. playing a sage while waiting for quint to either pop into your hand or to get that quanta will make it open to: antimatter (not only negates the shield, but boosts your enemy creatures damage), reverse time (lose 8 quanta and 1 draw, especially bad while waiting for a quint), lobo, virtually any damaging spell or effect, PU (copying a rol in comparison would be laughable), and all of these would be more potent against sages than rols- with rols a single firebolt or rage potion would kill a whopping 1 rol for 1 damage reduction, 1 sage killed is several times more impactful on your shield. shields such as thorns and fireshield will always be a great counter to sages.
a quint/sage deck is similar to a flying weapon deck, youll need 1 quint per sage for optimal results, and i think most of us at this point have tried a flying weapon deck in the past, and while effective, that 1 card for another 1 card typically doesnt come to fruition as often as we would like- and flying weapon even becomes essentially a mono, given the upped's 'other' cost.
sages are fragile, but not as fragile, as RoLs, they do however account for that by being more expensive and impacting you more when they are cc'd by any means, RT and antimatter especially.
