MTG Salvation

The entire intervention cycle is hot garbage including Thassa's. I would take Supreme Will in a pack before that card.

I think Nightmare Shepherd is a bit underrated here. It suffers from being a black 4 drop which is a slot that has gotten more competitive with Rankle and Yawgmoth taking up real estate. Still 4/4 with evasion for 4 is fantastic and cube is stacked with awesome ETB creatures. The limited experience I've had with this in standard has shown it is a card that demands an answer--it makes combat a "nightmare" for an opponent.

Wrath of Storms is probably the best red "wrath" yet, but with existing scaling options like Earthquake and red's general tilt towards aggro/burn it probably still isn't enough to make people want to run it.

You confirmed my suspicion about Nadir Kraken though I may still test it. Going big and wide simultaneously is great, but having to be down a mana consistently to do so is not. Cube can do better things with that unused mana than a +1/+1 counter and a 1/1 token.

Honestly don't think there is a better Dimir walker than the new Ashiok. Tezzeret, Agent of Bolas is only a good pick in artifact.dec and old Ashiok is strong but situational. It might not compare favorably to The Scarab God which is an insane limited bomb but looking at your Dimir section, I think there is certainly room for this over a couple things. This is probably the most underrated card on your list.

The Titans are neat and should play well for constructed formats, but I don't think the type of deck that can take advantage of them often materializes in cube.

Shadowspear is good, but I'd take Loxodon Warhammer over it usually. The difference between making any creature you topdeck (or any token) into a 4 power at minimum, trampling, lifelinking threat is huge compared to paying nearly the same equip cost to get a 2/2 trampling, lifelinking elf. Both lifelink and trample are abilities you want paired with a big power boost, not a modest one even if its more cost friendly.

I've seen Thassa do some gross things in constructed. I know cube has the ETB creatures for this to be good, but its floor can be extremely bad too. As someone who loves blink and was really sad that Soulherder just couldn't beat the Azorious competition, I'm struggling with whether or not this can make it into a fairly stacked blue 4 drop section.

Phoenix of Ash is probably going to replace Feldon in my cube. I liked Chandra's Phoenix, but it was just missing exactly what this card has. Feldon just hasn't worked out unfortunately.

I'm unsure about Heliod, but I think he's probably better than Hallowed Spiritkeeper or Mirror Entity for my cube and I do run Ballista and Finks so there is that. I'm leaning more towards yes on this one.

Maybe Breach just isn't for me....I mean it would be actively terrible in my cube.

My first instinct with Shatter the Sky was to pass as I already have Wrath of God, Day of Judgment, Catastrophe, and Winds of Abandon in my white cube section, but I think I may actually take a cue from others and free up an Azorious slot by taking out Supreme Verdict and replacing it with this.

Woe Strider is a great card that does a little bit of everything in all the right ways. It creates two bodies on etb, its a sac outlet without a mana cost, it recurs and comes back stronger on curve. It works with so many existing strategies. I'm a huge fan.

Thanks for the detailed feedback and insight.

Cheers, and happy cubing!

Woe Strider over Plague Engineer and Drana, Liberator of Malakir? I dunno about that. I'm more interested than I was since reading your write-up though.

Yes.

Quote from happyjosiah »

Woe Strider over Plague Engineer and Drana, Liberator of Malakir? I dunno about that. I'm more interested than I was since reading your write-up though.

Based on the cube I wouldn't be surprised at all if woe strider was better than Drana. Drana is a very good beater/go wide enabler, but that's basically it. Woe Strider fills a whole bunch of roles so if you support stax, or aristocrats, or a sac infinite combo deck, or even just value self-mill it does well.

Plague engineer has just been *chef's kiss* for us, though, so I don't think I'd run woe strider over it.

Engineer has been hit or miss for us. In some matchups and situations it's been stellar. Other times, I've seen it do next to nothing. I do like it though, and plan to keep it around for now.

Thanks for the write-up. We didn't cube a lot recently, and there wasn't that much in TBD to excite me for cube. That said there are a few reasonable additions. Woe Strider and Shatter the Sky in particular seem to be solid inclusions so far and were nice and cheap to get (in fancy borderless version too!). We might try out Shadowspear as well, since I've been super impressed by it in other formats. I guess the Titans, Nightmare Shepherd and Kiora Bests the Sea God could be interesting in the right cube. Does anyone have much testing experience with those?

I ultimately added in Uro, Titan of Nature's Wrath too. Card was just too good to leave out.

Cool, good to know. I'm wondering if it could kick out any of Nissa, Steward of Elements, Edric, Spymaster of Trest, or Oko, Thief of Crowns? I'm not sure, but I have a flex slot currently occupied by a Signet...

I like it more than Nissa. And Edric's only better if you support both UG Tempo and Simic tokens/go-wide decks. You should probably find a way to get Hydroid Krasis in there somewhere too though, that card's nutz.

Hmm. Maybe I've been sleeping on Uro, then. Is it better than Mystic Snake?

As a face-value card, absolutely. But it can depend on your cube composition. They're both good in an ETB trigger abuse deck. But Snake can also be used to support Tempo and Bant Flash, and if you support all 3 of those decks, Snake might still have a slight edge. But everywhere else, Uro is just a baller.