Dictate is a card that costs five and is purely a support card. If you have no creatures out, it does nothing. If you have only one or two, it's not worth its cost. Jazal has a solid body on its own, and if you have 3+ creatures his ability kills quickly. He is also pretty good on the defense. Jazal is also not great and I think it will be cut in the upcoming year.
Fiend Hunter is a temporary solution. It is so easy to kill it, and that is especially worse against ETB creatures. Banisher Priest, having 2 power, is better in an aggressive deck. Both of them are not quite worth their restrictive cost. Spiritkeeper has a weak body, being 3/2 on the ground. That said, he is excellent against mass removals and great in a race situation. It will become better the longer the game goes. It's noteworthy it counts itself in the graveyard so it will always create at least one spirit token.
Gilded Drake is only playable with bounce. That is too narrow, even if the effect is strong. Treasure Cruise can be a really cheap draw spell. Like Dig Through Time it will be great in the lategame. Unlike Dig, if it costs 5 or 4 it will be pretty terrible. Do graveyards fill often enough? I don't think so.
Capsize is not necessary or anything, but I really dislike Delver. Delver needs to have an aggressive deck with a lot of spells, and that is too much to ask for. Capsize is unnecessary, but is a serviceable spell. It will likely get cut again soon.
Despise is the fourth one mana selective discard spell. It's true that every deck should have targets to hit, but not necessarily numerous and very often they will be the easiest cards for the black decks to answer anyway. When you have spot removal(s) + Despise, Despise is often very subpar. Hitting planeswalkers is better but also much rarer. Other discard spells can answer artifacts and enchantment or prevents instants and sorceries from happening, which are things otherwise black wouldn't be able to do.
Flesh Carver is really good. It's a splashable, evasive threat. It immediately replaces itself in the face of removal or Braids. It is a sacrifice outlet for abuse with recurring creatures like Bloodghast or Bloodsoaked Champion. Even one pump makes it a 4/4 intimidate that attacks on the fourth turn, that creates a 4/4 when it dies. Awesome.
I pondered cutting Xathrid Necromancer for Flesh Carver since it is so much worse, but they have great synergy and I need redundancy of sacrifice fodder in a large cube.
Old ob is a good midrange win condition. What it doesn't do well is defending you, as it only blocks one creature. Furthermore, it's horrible without more lands. On the offense it's good, but having no evasion for the body is problematic. Overall it was a very cuttable card for years. The new Ob-Nixilis biggest selling point is that it doesn't die to a single removal spell. Having a 5/5 flier with the potential to create more is great. Against aggressive decks it's definitely at its worst, costing life and leaving something fragile behind. That said, it can block fliers, it immediately protects itself and because all the tokens have evasion it is very good at closing out games. The card is good in Wildfire or stacks shell. Control decks will have a very hard time if they try to answer each individual token. It hits most of the marks I could want in a black midrange card, I'm excited to have it.
With the rise of tokens and against aggro decks, Diabolic Edict is just worse than a spot removal most of the time. It's even not at its greatest against midrange decks, with all their mana elves. It is an out to Simic Sky Swallower and the like, but black still has plenty of edict effects with Chainer's Edict, Smallpox, Liliana of the Veil, Fleshbag Marauder, Consuming Vapors, Far//Away, and of course mass removals.
Malicious Affliction is at the worst case scenario a difficult to cast doom blade. When hitting morbid it becomes an unprecedentedly cheap two for one removal and tempo advantage. How to trigger morbid? Black has a few sacrifice outlets, from Braids, Cabal Minion to the new Flesh Carver. Creatures die in combat and to removals. I am not sure how often will you have both morbid AND two targets, but I am willing to try.
Know how you are getting stomped by four Lingering Souls tokens and wish you hope for mass removal? Or when you get beaten by a curve of one-two-three? Yeah, Barter in Blood doesn't deliver what you want from a mass removal. It doesn't target, but killing their worst two creatures is not a stabilizing effect a significant portion of the time.
Crux of Fate is a 5cc wrath. I'm cutting those from white. How so? Black simply has fewer options. Damnation and Toxic Deluge are better for sure. Black Sun's Zenith is also good, and I'd say stronger than Crux. After that, nothing. Mass removals are crucial for the formation of control decks, and I feel black control decks certainly need that help.
Djinn is terrible in any kind of a race situation, and black has too many self damage inflicting cards, with the added Ob. Skullhunter can be a pretty reliable source of card advantage and the ETBT drawback is pretty negligible. If he was a bit stronger I'd not hesitate adding him. He is bad when you are behind but probably still way better than Mardu Skullhunter.
Troll is a fine dude, but the color is not aggressive and he is awful on the defense. The regenerate costs too much and he dies to everything, including one drops. Song is a removal for any permanent, including creatures. You give a land in return but you do get a pseudo Oblivion Ring in a color without removals. It's splashable, powerful, what's not to like?
Life from the Loam loses a lot of value in a large cube when your fetches are much rarer. It isn't playable in the majority of deck and honestly, I've never seen a deck where it was a real bomb. I'm trying pushing a little land aura based ramp (inspiration from colby). Fertile Ground doesn't thin or activate landfall, but it does fix wonderfully. If you have more than two untapped lands it basically only costs one mana. Land boosts play very well with things that untap your lands like Garruk Wildspeaker, Nissa, Worldwaker, Time Spiral, Treachery, Koth of the Hammer and Arbor Elf.
Behemoth is the worst green superfattie by far. It doesn't help when you are behind. It isn't very good when you accelerate into it with mana elves. Genesis Wave can only be ramped into, and not cheated into play with Natural Order and Eureka, but it both has a higher ceiling and it's an exciting card. It's better when you are behind and doesn't care how you ramp into it. It probably begins to be good with X=5, so it costs about the same.
The Soltari brothers are effective at what they do but they cost WW which limits their playability severely. They are no longer justifiable with the amount of new cards we get for white in each of the aggressive casting costs each set. The protections, while a definite positive and not something I exclude cards for, is a very random ability that varies a lot in performance. Against most of the field it's dead and against mono colored decks it's busted. Some amount of that is good, as I want there to be tools to keep those decks in check, and I don't want the performance of every card to be flat, but I could have less. I hope this change will promote white to join other colors in its aggro. Additionally it should bolster U/W tempo, which needs the aid.
Woe-Reaper is a better Savannah Lions so it's an auto include. Yes, the ability to hose Gravecrawler and the like is sweet as is gaining life, and there are warriors in the cube, making it one of the top white one drops. Even as a vanilla creature it would have made the cut.
Grand master has a not-so-bad worst case scenario of being a 2/2 for two with lifelink. The second ability is great in Boros decks with all the burn spells. That would have been enough to make the cut. Then it has the ability to recur burn spells and even Time Walk, making it better. It's stronger than many two drops, including Seeker of the Way, Daring Skyjek and Nearheath Pilgrim. Also better than the next card I'm cutting.
Enchantment only removal is too narrow and not needed at this incarnation of the cube. White got lately so many versatile good removals it's hard to see situations where one board in the Kami and it is not very maindeckable.
Mentor is a bomb in the right deck. He makes an army all by himself, like Young Pyromancer. Unlike Pyro, he triggers off enchantments like Oblivion Ring, Glorious Anthem, equipments and planeswalkers. The tokens themselves have prowess and he has a splashable cost, making it easier for him to take a game.
White loses two two drops in order to diversify the curve, I think it is a positive change. Champion of the Parish didn't prove himself yet but I still need all the playable one drops I can get and this update includes many new humans for him to play with.
Humility is not very effective. It slows down the game, but if two-three creatures beat you, you still die, you still need a mass removal. Then you have effectively rendered your creature finishers useless. Not to mention the terrible rules issues that card creates.
Wall is strong as a stabilizing force, being a huge air blocker and gaining you life. It is good against aggro, but should also be good against midrange and it is splashable. There is an issue that it hoses aggro a lot, but aggro decks are stronger than control decks currently and it doesn't feel stronger than Sulfuric Vortex or Armageddon against control. Black and white aggro decks have removals to deal with it, mono red will have trouble but I'm fine with that.
Blue wants more cheap counters but this is diving too far. Being situationally as good as Rune Snag is not a good place to be. With nonbasic lands, especially considering that those that enter the battlefield tapped are better played on the first turn, it was not consistent enough and the ceiling is not high. Delay is another cheap, splashable counter, the last one I will try. It is a tempo counter, but it might be what blue needs.
Not long ago we had a dearth of black three drops. The latest few sets gave us so many: Ophiomancer, Flesh Carver, Master of the Feast, Grim Haruspex and Xathrid Necromancer. I'm very happy to be cutting Marauder for a much better aggro card. One toughness means it dies to everything and it cannot even block. Serviceable but I'd rather cube without.
Leader provides card advantage with each attack. It lets you be offensive while leaving defense behind. The tokens go well with black's sacrifice theme as well as red token cards, Opposition, Skullclamp etc. Obviously, it already makes the cut. The Dash is surprisingly relevant, giving immediate pressure. This creature is good at forcing a wrath and at recovering from it. It can eternally dodge sorcery speed removal, it can shoot planeswalkers and leave a threat behind, what's not to like?
Note to wizards: now PLEASE print more black two drops! Three drops got enough love already!
Brutal Hordechief is a black aggro curve topper, something it lacks. The Hellrider trigger is a life gain effect in black, which is highly needed. Chief is Splashable. Yes, it makes the cut without the last ability. To be honest that ability is narrow. It requires you untapping with Chief with five mana, playing red or white not as a splash, and for each player to have board presence to matter. That said it WILL win games, so it's a nice cherry on top.
Desecration was a filler at the aggro curve topper spot. It has the opposite of evasion, a more difficult cost and it's soft to tokens while being close to nothing on the defense. Good riddance.
Tasigur has a huge body compared to his cost. It will usually cost 2B or less, up to a single black mana. Dredge has multiples synergies with his second ability (which unlike previous cards is crucial for his cubeability ) limiting your opponent's choices and allowing you to cast and use it on the same turn. A good, repeatable card advantage engine while being a monster is awesome.
Tasigur will fulfill every role Persecutor ever could, being cheaper and more splashable. It better in aggro, midrange and control. Not to mention the demon is a bit narrow to begin with.
Devil's Play is a card very few decks actively want. Red already has enough midrange support cards and enough X cards. It was consistently a very late pick.
Alesha's body is a good enough reason to play her. After all I play Splatter Thug. First strike makes her a potent attacking force at that stage of the game. But she gets significantly better from here, with her off color trigger doing wonders in aggro decks, with all the aggro color combinations my cube supports. In black it goes well with the sacrifice theme, in white it is another Reveillark effect. Yes she doesn't check converted mana costs, only power.
Thunder is a slow unsplashable player burn. It's true it usually goes for eight damage or four and a card (either a chump block or removal). It shines against permission. Then, permission decks are a lot weaker now and for aggro decks it's sometimes a problem to get to five mana. It's hard to justify it's inclusion over a more versatile burn or a permanent threat.
Feldon is a combo card. It's great with ETB creatures, and great in re animator. Red has a low number of discard outlets, from Faithless Looting to Dack Fayden. It's such a unique effect and so many players had success with it that I have to try it.
Phoenix has a hard cost which it doesn't justify. Yes it has evasion and haste, but only two power make it not impressive on the turn you cast it. It rarely if ever returned from the graveyard and it's bad defensively. For a heavy red burn deck it's fine but that's too narrow for a three drop. I have enough cards that do that better like Shrine of Burning Rage.
Goblin Heelcutter represents a lot of sudden damage if you cast it him in dash mode. Again, dashing him repeatedly means no sorcery speed removal will kill him and it effectively nullifies a blocker. The option to hard cast him looks less appealing but it gives a decent aggressive creature if you have the time and mana, say after a mass removal.
Rift bolt has two very subpar modes. As a burn spell it does see play sometimes in red burn decks, but otherwise it is the first burn spell not to make it in the main deck. I think there are enough tools for red burn decks here and not enough creatures.
Warhound was the weakest of the remaining two drops as it is weak as a two drop or on an empty board, unplayable in anything not hardcore aggro and it feels like kind of a trap to play it. Also, dies to Disenchant.
Primal command is a good utility card, but sometimes I find my midrange decks lacking for threats. Green has many creature tutors already, and while the other modes are good they don't compare to the board presence of a five drop.
Whisperwood Elemental provides six power spread over two bodies, continues to generate more for free and even protects some of it against mass removals. Hitting your other fatties with the manifest will end games quickly, although it is relatively uncommon. It is probably among the bottom two five drops, but it will serve for now.
Wayfinder virtually finds a home in every deck, but the fact is green three drops are becoming more potent and better catered to the different decks. There is a limit to how many three drops green can support, so the weaker ones has to get kicked out. I did not think this day would come so soon, but Wayfinder, his brother and Phyrexian Rager will all get cut soon. I wanted to cut Nantuko Vigilante, but Dragons of Tarkir has enough appealing morphs that I don't want to take any existing ones out just yet. Yasova has an aggressive body and an ability that can be lethal in many board states. I don't support green aggro but I believe it's strong enough as a multicolored midrange card to make the cut.
Druid got in and out of the cube. It's still among the weakest two drops, but it is better in ramp, which is what green tries to do. Aggro in green is not supported so Mayor becomes a weird situational hate against passive control decks and a card X/g can play, but very few decks will be thrilled to. It just fits better the composition of green in the cube.
The colorless section became too top heavy. Blightsteel is of the narrower ones, his main two appeals are being a third eldrazi and being a Tinker target. Having synergy with one other card in a large cube doesn't pull much weight, and I believe there are still enough tinker targets, especially now with two new six drops. Ugin is the bombness, a different sort of colorless mass removal that will probably win the game if you cast it. It's not as easy to cheat, not being a creature or an artifact. It works with Channel, Eureka and the plain old super ramp. It's a LOT better in ramp and super ramp though, costing three less, being harder to answer and rescuing you from almost any situation.
SSS is a worse version of a card already existing in the guild. It is a ramp target, but now the cube has a lot of colorless cards that fit that role. It is a Natural Order target, but I prefer NO targets to be in green and not a guild - requiring both two colors and a specific cheat card is really narrow.
Warden is an aggressive card, but I believe it to be stellar in midrange as well. Yes it starts to attack for three from turn two, but it also gains you life and infinite pumps are a great mana sink on a trample body. Selesnya and Golgari will have a hard time cutting it.
Dragons of Tarkir was a great set for cubes, especially so for large cubes. I'm beginning to finally have enough playables in most of the aggro section, so I am starting to upgrade cards instead of adding to fill quotas. It took seven years to get there, pretty exciting!
This set brought us morph. Many cubes include morphs as a theme. The more morphs you play, the better they all become, as your opponent has to guess and play around more scenarios. However, even if I include every half decent morph, in a large cube it is just a drop in the sea. That's why I try to include only the morphs that are good on themselves. I did not include any of the older morph cards. The only card which could be considered an exception is Nantuko Vigilante, which was already in the cube, but would probably not survive the update if this set did not have many morph creatures. Now I think it gained just enough value to outdo Uktabi Orangutan.
For reference, the morphs I've played before this update are: Exalted Angel, Sagu Mauler, Blistering Firecat, Nantuko Vigilante and Rattleclaw Mystic.
Decree was most often used in cycling mode. In most often I mean around 90% of the time. That mode is really great in the control mirror, as it evades permission, is an instant so it does not leave you tapped out and it demand a mass removal on its own. Nowadays, when aggro and midrange decks are stronger, and many control decks don't rely on permission, it's not optimal. As a ramp/control finisher we now have Entreat the Angels (which is also not the best, btw). I was looking to replace it for some time now.
Secure doesn't give you a card, but gives you two more tokens. It's a boon for aggro and token decks. End of their turn, make tokens, alpha strike. It's also great against aggressive decks. You can play it before declaring blockers, kill a bunch of guys and chump others. It's great in white with many mass pump effects, black's sacrificial theme and red's token theme. And yes, it's still great as a finisher in the control mirror.
I might want to dip a little more into white's token cards, with Raise the Alarm, Gather the Townsfolk and so on to increase the synergies stated above. The presence of this card certainly pulls me in this direction.
Banisher Priest suffers the same fate of his brother, Fiend Hunter. The double white in the cost is restrictive, the removal is very temporary and the body is not impressive.
Dragonslayer offers a lot of utility. The two drop option is not exciting, but it is better than not playing a two drop should you need it. It will be most often used to megamorph, which is a good deal. Most decks will have targets to it, except some very aggressive decks or very creature light planeswalker based control decks. Killing a creature and leaving behind a three power lifelinker is quite impressive, and ironically very good against aggro. I think it’s a card both fast and slow decks would like and the card advantage here is hopefully solid and not too conditional.
White has a bit too many two drops. Knight of Glory might not be objectively the worst two drop, but it's among the bottom three. White, and the whole cube, is headed in the direction of going wide and not tall. The 2/1 body with no combat abilities dies to anything, trades down, dies to dividable burn or tokens and doesn't offer much in return in the form of evasion. The protection is more random than reliable. White has like 15 better two drops in the cube easily. Hunter is a solid one drop; I still need a lot of these so I'm happy they are seeing print. The cube doesn't have a lot of dragons, but for reference: Eternal Dragon, Keiga, the Tide Star (hopefully will not be there for long), Sarkhan, the Dragonspeaker, Thundermaw Hellkite and after this update also Dragonlord Atarka and Dragonlord Silumgar.
Black three drops have exploded recently and the trend continues. I feel it's kind of a milestone - a basic two for one for one for three mana with little impact on the board doesn't cut it in the cube anymore! Pitiless Horde is a very aggressive card. The lifeloss is real, so I believe it will be dashed quite often. That said, five points of power on turn three demand an answer or it takes over games, especially if paired with black removals.
Cutting Wretched Anurid is another milestone for me, black finally has enough good aggressive two drops that I don't have to run embarrassing cards. Anurid loses a lot of life. Since it comes early in the curve, you usually play a few more creatures after him. Then your opponent usually plays a bunch. God forbid if either one of you has a token producer. Talking about nonbos with Bitterblossom. Anurid was especially bad in the aggro mirror, since it loses you so much life.
Rager has a good form of evasion, a decently sized body and it can block, a rarity among black's two drops. It grants a bonus to all your warriors. This update alone adds five warriors o the cube, with black having nine others and they all cost 4 or less, so I expect that to be somewhat relevant.
Black's three drops are getting great. Xathrid has a subpar body for cost, and there are not that many humans. Usually it was just a strictly worse Flesh Carver, and did not offer much Wrath protection or sacrifice shenanigans. It had a hard time making it to the maindeck.
Liliana works well with blacks sacrifice themes. She has a useful lifelink body in black and great potential. It's interesting she is a planeswalker you can reanimate. I'm not sure if she is very consistent but she is probably still strong enough to see play. I start having a concern with too many black three drops costing 1BB, if another one of those gets printed I will ship out Liliana's Specter.
Black's two drops are increasing in quality too. Knight of Infamy gets cut for the same reasons as Knight of Glory. Silumgar Assassin would make it in without his megamorph ability, having decent evasion, an ability to block and no drawback which is instantly better than Vampire Interloper and Nezumi Cutthroat. But the Megamorph ability is the real deal, gaining card advantage and resulting in a medium threat. This form of removal should have plenty of targets in any deck.
Pillar is the worst burn spell. It would still make it into heavy aggro decks if you don't have enough burn, and into burn decks, but midrange and control decks won't touch it with a stick. It is slow and can only kill small creatures. The other upside is occasionally great, but not common enough to be the saving grace of this card. Twin Bolt is basically the Fire part of Fire//Ice, a card that sees regular play in decks without access to blue. Dividable burn is great for decks of all theaters at creating card and board advantage. It's a natural solution against tokens. Red has a lot of dividable burn now, it's a great tool for allowing red control to grow without hurting red aggro much.
Speaking of which I've realized red has too many sweepers. With the amount of dividable burn it just isn't necessary; the weaker ones could safely be cut. Bombardment is included as another support tool for red tokens, alongside the recent update. It is good in many situations, for example against mass removals. Some creatures go into the graveyard anyway, like Keldon Marauders and Hellspark Elemental. If you don't want to pay Echo costs of Avalanche Riders, Mogg Fanatic and Keldon Vandals, you can squeeze extra value. You can also sacrifice your chump blockers and you nullify Control Magic effects. You can sacrifice what you have stolen with Zealous Conscripts. Killing small creatures with it and finishing players is only the beginning though, as the sacrifice outlet is great in black, for example with the new Liliana.
The obvious problem is that it is unplayable in decks with a low creature count and dead on an empty board. I hope the synergies this card has will be worth running it.
I am trying to lessen the tendency of red to go mono-colored. A few tools are good, but not too many. Stonewright is a weak one drop, it basically was a placeholder until better one drops will come. Stonewright requires another creature and access to a lot of red mana to do something. Zurgo is confidently the second best red one drop in the cube, being large, nearly drawbackless and having a dash mode in the late game. Dash is good for alpha striking, killing planeswalkers and avoiding sorcery speed removals.
Red two drops have also increased in quality a lot lately, so much so that I can start to upgrade them instead of cutting them. Kruin Striker is bad if you cannot follow up with creatures, and a really bad two drop to topdeck. Three red two drops now have three power unconditionally, and more toughness too. Ire Shaman has the same evasion ability as Stormblood Berserker, which we know is good. It basically means it will always trade with something; a single token will never kill it. The orc's megamorph mode, besides giving you a good evasive body, is basically card draw and it is very cheap.
I wanted another green super fattie. The ramp and super ramp decks should have incentives to get into them. Foe-razer is big flier which is nonexistent in green, and is a green removal. The problem is it sucks if your opponent does not have something it can kill. I wonder how often that will happen. I'm not sure if it is better than Pelakka Wurm of not, but one of the two is the worst green fattie right now.
Thornling is the worst green five drop. It really plays like a card costing 3GGG though, so it's not a stretch to cut for a less green heavy seven drop. You have to invest a lot of mana in it, and it isn't as good as the other fatties when you are behind.
My original plan was to cut Nantuko Vigilante, but with the morph theme I think it becomes a bit better, enough to prefer it to the instant. Survivalist is basically better though as the unmorphed body is much better to the cost. Survivalist can never kill your stuff in mistake (now it can force them to sacrifice their Memory Jar when you want even if you have Sylvan Library on board), but can also never kill your Mana Crypt or Bitterblossom on purpose, so that part is a neutral change.
With two morph disenchants, I don't think green has space for that many shattering two drops. Viridian Shaman is better for the fringe case of synergy with Joraga Treespeaker. Shaman is better than Somberwald Sage, for while it provides less mana it has three points of toughness so it doesn't die nearly as easily. The two points of power mean it can fend off small threats or attack itself, when you don't have a creature to accelerate into. Not being able to cast Tooth and Nail and Genesis Wave with it is bad, but I want to test it out.
Ranger gets cut shortly after its brother Civic Wayfinder. Green three drops are better now, and Borderland Ranger is always playable but never great or necessary for any deck, and there is a limit to how many green three drops green can have. Den Protector has a good aggressive body, which is a good option to have, especially with Rancor or an equipment. The Regrowth with a body, however, is why I include it and I expect it to be great.
Surrak has a good body for his cost, and his ability only requires three more points of power on your board for him to be active. That means a considerable amount of time when you will play him on turn four he will immediately bash for five. Not so much so on turn three, but he will also give haste to all your next fatties, and green's fatties have the best use for haste. He is one of the better four drops to topdeck as well. He is nice to fetch together with an eldrazi via Tooth and Nail.
The question was what to take out. I don't like to have both Chameleon Colossus and Phantom Centaur as a protection from black four drop. Colossus is a bit weaker against burn perhaps, but having that fourth toughness is huge. Centaur can kill large creatures and survive, and also becomes unkillable with equipments. Chameleon is stronger as it is a fast clock and a great mana sink for the late game. But the biggest difference is that Centaur actually dies if creatures chump block him, wears down on the defense and small pings quickly kill him or weaken him enough to render him useless.
That said, I think Goliath is even worse. Goliath usually dies to a removal spell. The scavenge mode is nice to have, but it's almost always a win more - you need to have a creature out, six mana, and be able to afford to pump a single threat instead of adding another one, or interacting with your opponents board. Phantom Centaur has interactions with Reveillark, Imperial Recruiters, Alesha, Kalonian Hydra and it survives all of red's mass removals, so even if it is roughly in the same powerlevel it is a much more interesting card. That said he might be taken out very soon, as he is the weakest green four drop now.
Smiter is a good card, but it is just vanilla. It is efficient, but green white usually plays midrange and would rather play ramp at three into beefier targets. Selesnya has the most cards of all the guilds in the cube, so I try to balance it a little. Kolaghan's Command has six modes of creating card advantage at instant speed. Playable Shatter variants are always in high demand. The usual mode will probably be shatter + shock to a creature, with discard replacing either in the lack of targets. Raise Dead is also useful to bring back a killed Dark Confidant or a Hero of Oxid Ridge at the end of turn, and it can even burn the face. It's likely the second best Rakdos card after Cackling Fiend.
Far and Away is just a too expensive at what it does. I like the utility, but no deck will play it without access to both colors of mana, and all modes are too fair. Even in Dimir decks, black's spot removals usually make the maindeck before it. Dragonlord draws an obvious comparison to Sower of Temptation. It is more expensive but has a better, more resilient body, both because he has a higher toughness and because he is black. But the real draw here is the ability to steal planeswalkers, and games.
Red has too many sweepers, see above for Whipflare. I've wanted a good ramp target for R/G for a while now, and Dragonlord Atarka is the perfect one. Huge evasive body for the cost, and an excellent stabilizing ability against every deck in the field and guaranteed amount of value even if it dies to removal - what's not to like? She works very well when cheated into play, say with Sneak Attack or Eureka, benefits from haste, which both colors have ways of granting and she is a good reanimation and blink target if you delve into a third color.
There are almost no removals in white that send to the graveyard. They either exile or are enchantment based. Burial is exactly the same as (but worse than) Terminus. Killing an equipment once in a blue moon is not exciting and it is still the worst white mass removal, but I still think its better.
The quality one drop targets are few and far between, and even in decks with them the card is merely good, not great or insane - not enough payoff. Exemplars are good in both aggro and control decks, a rare quality. In a deck with enough spells, it's a legitimate finisher that can protect itself, mess combat math, has "evasion" via tap and is good on the defense too. It obviously requires enough spell, so it's a test run now. I'm not thrilled to add another 2WW creature, but the 3W options are really lackluster.
I've tried to find more playable counters. Broken Ambitions is not one of them. It does make the maindeck sometimes, but it's never good. Talrand I have never tried before and I see it did pass the test of time in many cube so I'm trying it too. Spells matters has more support now than ever before, with Monastery Mentor and Ojutai Exemplars. It's a serviceable win condition if you can protect it and have enough instants and sorceries.
Gush is just too narrow and not strong enough. I'd rather have a draw spell, even in tempo decks. This is limited after all; you have high drops and things to do with your mana. Withdraw should be a good card for tempo decks and good for control decks against aggro - and they need the help. Double blue is tough but costs the same as the hard counters, so if you keep mana up for them anyway you have another option.
Makeshift Mannaquin is an instant reanimation spell, but it costs four mana. The drawback means that it cannot reliably serve as a finisher, and more as a value spell. Diabolic Servitude is better at that. Draw-go decks are less common now so the instant speed matters less, and ever since I have lessened the support of reanimator, I felt like I have one reanimation spell too many.
On the other hand, I think black needs slightly more spot removals. I decided I'd rather test a new card over those I have tried before. Cut can kill anything, a point in its favor, and every black deck will probably include it, but it might cost too much on average to be really worth a slot.
Skeleton is too dependent on synergies to do anything. Even decks that have ways to abuse him sometimes draw it without them. It's bad on turn two and is also usually a bad topdeck. Urborg is not a powerful card, but will always make the maindeck and honestly my black section is big enough to include it easily. Its not going to be a high pick ever, but you are never sad to have it if you are black. I also don't foresee it getting cut from the cube, ever. It just increases the amount of maindeckable drafted cards, reduces the amount of hand you will have to mulligan and allows you to play more cards, more often in your deck. A big point in its favor is that is also good in aggro.
Redcap just loses out to the hard competition at CMC4, a competitive mana cost in black, red and the rest of the cube. It doesn't often make the cut due to that insane competition. W/U could use another cheap finisher, and Ojutai has evasion, card advantage and is a reasonable clock. Blue should be able to protect it the turn it attacks. White has many five drops, and both colors have many four drops, so it might not stand in the competition but it deserves a chance.
Fixing
I've noticed some of the green mana stones are having a hard time making it into maindecks due to the abundance of green 2cc acceleration. More lands would increase the number of playable cards and solidify mana bases. I wanted to cut some artifact mana but not too much - it's better to be cautions here, as cutting too much could really throw off the archetype balance in the cube. Blue rocks are still highly playable and sought after, but all the rest are arguably expandable. Luckily, enemy colors just don't have 8 good fixing options, so Golgari, Orzhov and Boros signets has to stay for now. Three rocks are going out, the question was just what to put in.
Grove is pretty akin to a painland, but in the pair of ramp decks, giving your opponents life is pretty negligible. Points in its favor for being a unique land in the cube and not another piece in a cycle.
I think the fastlands are in general better than the Wooded Bastion cycle. In many games it will not have a drawback, you can split the mana between phases and it's better for splashes.
It's not just an irrational love for thickets; in Gruul I think it is better than Copperline Gorge. The color is a slower ramp than G/W, in which topdecking a land that enters the battlefield tapped as your seventh source to cast that fattie is terrible. Also, G/R decks are usually heavy on the colored mana, with usually multiple cards with doubles of each color and occasionally triple greens as well (Genesis Wave, Pelakka Wurm).
The cube saw a lot of action recently, with it come a few improvements. The two major things that happen is red losing its wildfire package and the bouncelands getting a final axe. Besides that there are five pin point improvements.
Both cards are control finishers, but AoS can also be cheated into play via reanimation, Sneak Attack, Eureka etc. The bad thing about AoS is the triple white, and the fact that it dies too easily to be a reliable finisher, but Entreat was rarely miracled anyway. Looking at some of the white control decks from the last drafts, they would happily play AoS over Entreat. Midrange would vastly prefer a creature, though it is not a top ramp target.
There are just way too few humans for Champion to be worth it. Even worse, in a large cube it is harder for the amount of humans to be high consistently in every eight man draft. Champion is not simply weaker with a low count of humans; it is flat out unplayable.
Karakas is a card with low power and maximal playability. I think a large cube can afford that. I am going dwell on those points in length below, but first I want to support those statements.
Every white player will maindeck Karakas. It is a land that has no drawback and an extra ability over a plains. The only possible issue is being nonbasic, making it destroyable by Wasteland and Tectonic Edge. This is pretty easy to ignore, as besides the two being mere two cards out of 720, that is assuming there is no better nonbasic land on your side of the table, which can mean that either Karakas is bad in this matchup and the nonbasic land hate will be sided out in the remaining games of the match, or it is strong in the matchup, profit. The drawback is close to nonexistent.
It will never be a high pick. There are only 35 cards in the cube which it affects, which will average around two cards per player. This is actually quite good if we assume they all see play all the time. It is an unrealistic assumption though. Yet even if we do, Thassa and Purphoros will rarely be affected by Karakas anyway. It is worth noting that Khans block alone gave us nine new targets, making Karakas a lot more playable than before.
What does it do? It's pretty clear that if a card does nothing, it has no place in the cube. I'm not considering Eiganjo Castle, after all. Obviously it hoses opposing legendary creatures. It is one of the only answers in the cube to a second turn Channel into Ulamog, it's only a pity most of the other answers are white as well. Blanking Sheoldred, Jazal Goldmane and even Rofellos can win games, especially for a drawbackless card that doesn't require a spell slot in the deck.
The legendaries it is not good against, it is good with. Buybacking Venser, Shaper Savant, Vendilion Clique and even fatties like Dragonlord Atarka can be savage. Even for legends without ETB abilities, protection from removal spells for as long as the land is untapped is great. Against certain forms of removals, like Control Magic, Faith's Fetters or Dungeon Geists it works even if draw Karakas later in the game. Karakas works well with mass removals - you can bounce the legend then wrath the board. Karakas allows you to bash for four per turn with Geist of Saint Traft even if your opponent has a ground blocker.
Karakas can even be a niche engine, especially with the cheap legends Isamaru and Zurgo. It works well with them and Iterative Analysis or Purphoros.
Overall, it has enough of an impact of the game to both sides of the table, enables plays and engines while answering other difficult threats that it is worth considering.
There is no doubt it is too narrow to be worth his effect, if not for the fact it comes for free. I think that in a large cube at least, it is a good thing to improve the quality of the decks and the amount of playable cards. Currently I feel my quotas for every effect in white is full - e.g. I don't need more white two drop or more mass removals. I don't have another card I want to experiment with or a new theme I want to introduce right now. I feel that any card I include at this stage is doomed to both be a really low pick that will see play little play (the sixth white mass removal spell might might make it in a white control deck if not enough mass removals were drafted by the white control player - once every three drafts maybe) and is doomed to be replaced by the next cube update. Karakas is guaranteed to see play all the time and is unlikely to be replaced.
Second, I play all the conspiracies and love how they play - even the low powered ones are pure gain and add to the power of the decks. Recently Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth was added and I really like that card too.
Furthermore, I think it is creates a good feeling for the drafters, the more of the drafted cards they are using.
In a small way, it is also a skill tester. After all, it is always better to have Karakas than your 25th best card for the maindeck, and during the draft it is not always easy to pass something splashy for this small gain.
Finally, I like the feeling cards like these create - it further differentiates cube from other forms of limited and the small edges and synergies are a great spice to the draft.
The giant wall of text above is not only to defend a controversial choice, but also kind of a prelude as I try to look into more cards in this vein in the near future.
Chasm Skulker is slow and chump blockable. Most of the time it grows by a mere counter a turn, and he is a mere 2/2 by his first attack. That doesn't cut it. I don't like Stratus Dancer much at all, being able to cast Negate is not the best megamorph trigger, but it is still better for blue tempo decks. It is natural card advantage, and the best time to ever try it is probably now with the high morph count.
Black had exploded in the three drop slot and now has too many, especially ones that cost 1BB. Specter is by far the weakest. Sidisi is a midrange card, something black doesn't have a lot of, but she is also good in control if you have a few cheap dudes. The 4/6 deathtouch body is a serious roadblock, and a tutor on legs that can be blinked and reanimated is ripe for abuse. I don't think it's better than any existing black five drop, but I might as well test it.
Red was trying to do too many things: Aggro, burn, tokens, control and wildfire. It gets too crowded. Wildfire was hard to assemble in a large cube - there is not enough redundancy. Ember Swallower helps in that regard but it's just a weak card in a deck not dedicated to that, and it's weaker than both wildfires. For example, tokens is a theme that is gaining stronger and stronger cards from each set, while it is very unlikely that Wizards will print any playable wildfire variants anytime soon. It is time to let that small combo like package go, after years of trying it.
In their wake I am currently adding three new cards, two for tokens and one for ramp, generally belonging to the same theater as wildfire did. There are two possible packages to try in red, but I do not think they are supportable in a large cube. If tokens fails, at least one will be tried. They are (they have overlaps):
Artifacts (Goblin Welder, Daretti, Scrap Savant, Bosh, Iron Golem etc)
Reanimator (Through the Breach, Firestorm etc)
Stoke is a versatile burn spell which is very good with tokens. Four once upon a time was a hard threshold to pass - creature with toughness four or more were virtually immune to red spells. That is not true anymore, with Sarkhan, the Dragonspeaker, Chandra Nalaar, Char, Flametongue Kavu, Mizzium Mortars, Flame Slash and to some extent Brimstone Volley and Fireblast providing answers for sturdy creatures within red. However Stoke can do that and go to the face at instant speed. The only real downside is how unsplashable it is.
I'm not sure a four drop is what the red section wants, but this is a versatile creature. It is not the best curvetopper in aggro, due to the fact it dies to everything, but it is good in serving that role especially considering it is so splashable. His second ability makes him shine in token decks, which I'm trying to push in red. The activated ability is a great mana sink in R/G ramp decks, and U/R tempo decks. His versatility is great, but I still fear his weak back end might prevent him from attacking favorably a bit too often. If the token theme in red is cut, his future is in immediate danger.
A ramp, reanimation and Sneak Attack target that is great when you are behind and when you are ahead, shoots planeswalkers and multiple creatures and is probably the best creature to blink in the entire cube.
Both artifacts cost two and are anti aggro cards. Perilous Myr is on the weak side. Many two drops nowadays have evasion, and your opponent can usually just go into it one-for one with most beaters. Bomb dropped on turn two can get one and two drops quite easily. Bomb can explode all tokens, regardless of size, which is a growing theme that demands answers. Bomb gives black and red some answer to enchantments (Sylvan Library, Survival of the Fittest etc.) and answers Hexproof creatures. However, it is very slow at what it does and gets progressively worse the later you draw it. Myr also gets progressively bad the later you draw it though, and as a hoser against aggro it is not too big of a strike. I'm testing the waters here, and if Bomb is good enough Powder Keg will also probably come in. I think it should be fairly common to generate card advantage with it.
The temples are just a lot better at accommodating splashes. Bouncelands have the drawback of succumbing to land destruction, bounce (Venser, Cryptic Command etc.) and Flickerwisp. Temples, OTOH are synergistic with Flickerwisp. I think this is the final nail in the coffin for bouncelands and they will not be coming back ever, in partial or full form.
Only a month has passed, but another medium update (14 cards) is upon us. The cube saw some action in the passing time, which gave a lot of feedback. Two big themes occurring here is adding more artifact hate, changing classification of green hybrid cards in the multicolored section and in general lowering the mana curve of the cube.
Ghostly Prison is a bit of a trap card. The only deck it is really good against is tokens, which doesn't need hosing - in fact I'm trying to encourage it. The turn you play it is a wasted turn, in which your opponent will likely just bash with the 1-2 creatures he owns. It actually promotes your opponent not to overextend. The mana is rarely relevant enough to really screw your opponent up and it gives him choices. Also importantly, it doesn't protect your planeswalkers. Both versions are getting cut in this update.
Oust is a tempo card that is mostly good in control against aggro. It's a cheap answer we have never played before, so that is already a good enough reason to try it. It kills tokens and you can even play it on own creature to gain some life and regain the ETB effect. ETBs also double as the card's secret weakness.
The pair of two mana token producers is better than the worst two drops, especially when they are followed up by Mirror Entity, Soltari Champion or Spear of Heliod. Of course, in white there are more anthem effects higher up the curve, like Ajani Goldmane. They also provide two chump blockers and are good against edict effects, but what pushed them in the cube for now is the small spells matter theme having a foothold in white (Monastery Mentor, Ojutai Exemplars, Seeker of the Way).
Skyjek is mostly a vanilla that dies to everything, against an empty board it is good but that's pretty much it. Loyal Cathar is card advantage and mass removal protection; however it is stopped by 3/3s and up. It gets progressively worse as the game goes on, but is hard to cast on the first turn. It's important to mention it is not a must-answer threat by any means like Precinct Captain, so many decks will just ignore it until their fattie comes. All in all it would have been a superb card if not for that difficult casting cost.
Sanctifiers is card advantage, but the four drop is competitive and the 2/3 body isn't impressive. The unsplashable cost is a hit too. The ability is not so easy to abuse as other ETB effects. The combined high cost and white demands make it an answer that is not reliably quick, and that form of removal is too situational to be considered solid card advantage for a four drop. Revoke is the next best Disenchant effect. It gets rid of Purphoros, God of the Forge, Wurmcoil Engine, now also Epochrasite and in general avoids shenanigans with reanimation and Regrowth. It is the worst such effect, but I'm upping the number of answers to artifacts in all colors right now so until something better comes along, it will stay.
For propaganda, see Ghostly Prison. I was very skeptic adding Serum Visions - it reads much worse than the trio of Brainstorm, Ponder and Preordain. However, it is a huge success and basically every blue deck plays it. Control decks want something to do on the first turn, it's never bad to topdeck this and I think the spells matters cards (like Talrand) want another one of these. Sleight appears very close in power level to Serum Visions, so I am carefully optimistic.
Fettergeist is not good in tempo decks, but it has a tempo body. It's a good blocker, if you have no other creatures. And that is too narrow and not very powerful anyway.
The cube has three looters: Looter Il-Kor, Enclave Cryptologist and Merfolk Looter. That is a low density of looters for a large cube. All but the most aggressive blue decks will play it. It feeds delve, helps enable reanimation decks and shenanigans, and advances your game plan on your way to more lands/counters/finishers. It is also a human rather than a merfolk, which is more interactive.
Blue's curve was too high, blue needs a bit more action at the lower spots of the curve. Capsize was in the cube and cut before, it is obviously a filler. It's decent in both modes. The recurring bounce is not bad, but is not game winning at all. Threats nowadays are cheap and draw go decks are scarce. The low version of it is bad with the double blue. The card only fits control decks. I'd much rather have a real finisher if able.
Cloudskate is good in tempo shells as both a turn two play and a curve topper. Cloudskate has a lot of synergy in the cube, from Waterfront Bouncer and Crystal Shard to Reveillark, Flickerwisp, Imperial Recruiters and Whip of Erebos. I believe it will see wide play as it is also decent against aggro decks.
Tragic Slip is not reliable enough, especially for control decks with few creatures. Consistency is one of the most valued aspects of removals. We now have Malicious Affliction that treads on the same space, but with a solid floor and much higher ceiling. Slaughter Pact is probably around the power level of Murderous Cut. It has cute interactions with draw spells, Yawgmoth's Will, Talrand, Sky Summoner, dodging counterspells and more. I'm not sure if it is the weakest or second weakest black spot removal spell right now.
Red
I found out the cube is lacking in artifact destruction cards, especially cheap ones. The problem is more profound in red. White has the most maindeckable answers, in Oblivion Ring, Banishing Light, Council's Judgment, Faith's Fetters, Unexpectedly Absent and more. So in white I've merely replaced an expensive removal with a cheaper one, to increase the number of answers for Sol Ring, Jitte and Winter Orb. Red has three two drops that destroy artifacts, that are highly playable, as well as two three drops. But out of 97 cards, that's too few. I'm including two more pieces, both cost two or less and I believe are the best of the bunch out there. Perhaps red will need even more than that.
Bushwhacker is a conflicted card. It's a two drop that you want to play late, with board presence. It's not terrible, but it is just too narrow with both a difficult cost and a very low ceiling in an empty board. Obviously as a one drop it is worth next to nothing.
Smash is one of the best of the shatter effects, as it allows you to keep the pressure while answering cards. In red aggressive decks this can be as good as card advantage. Many cubes have success with the card. I just hope players will maindeck it and not leave it to rot in sideboards.
Red has too many mass removals, with two earthquakes, Mizzium Mortars, Bonfire of the Damned and Sudden Demise. Pyroclasm is also outclassed by most dividable damage burn spells, from Forked Bolt to Arc Trail, even in control decks. It had a very low maindeck percentage. Chewer is perhaps the cheapest destruction out there, and it doubles as a late game creature. It throws itself to the graveyard for easy reanimation in case you will need it, and the creature form can be bounced and blinked to eternity.
Green
Green has the highest amount cards that destroy artifacts and enchantments by far. However, most of them are not cheap, and I find out a bit more is needed. Orangutan was missed.
Green doesn't do aggro, therefore Mongrel is essentially a discard outlet. A very good one that does serious work in B/G reanimator, but that is such a narrow description, especially since now reanimator is not as supported as before.
Orzhov now had the most cards per any guild, with simic the lowest. Second Sorin is okay, but it is just a midrange four drop at the end of the day, and not a special one at that. Edric suffers a bit in this cube, as green doesn't feature aggro and blue is not heavy on the tempo side. However tempo has becomes big enough that I cannot ignore the card's potential anymore. It is a unique effect, provides card advantage cheaply and blue tempo decks will splash for it. It's not difficult to imagine situations in which the spymaster takes over the game.
Masticore is an anti aggro control card at heart. But not every game against aggro will get to turn five, and fatties across all colors are better. Epochrasite is a small road block, but it is better at filling the same role. It returns after your mass removal, is cute with and against Smokestack cards in black and combos with Flickerwisp. I don't think Epochrasite is great though, but I hope to be proved wrong.
Classification Change
Since green doesn't support aggro, putting Dryad Militant and Tattermunge Maniac in the multicolored section is not accurate. No green deck will play them (unless it also plays the other color obviously). Yasova Dragonclaw is not really playable in any standard green deck, only in R/G midrange or U/G midrange. It's a multicolored card. It might be argued that other cards in this cycle have the same quality. Alesha, Who Smiles at Death is certainly playable without her ability, probably so it Tasigur, the Golden Fang. Soulfire Grand Master is good with blue, green and red, making it essentially playable in almost every white deck anyway. However I will be keeping an eye over them so don't be surprised to see another change in this vein.
Knight was the next best Selesnya card. It ramps, it thins, and it fetches specialty lands all day while getting fat, for a cheap price. It is still the worst Selesnya card in the cube probably, but that still will probably give the knight at least one year.
There are too many four drops in white, especially aggro curve toppers, with two Armageddons and three planeswalkers in addition to the creatures. Calciderm can just be chumped until it dies away, cannot be equipped, and is terrible on the defense. I simply don't think it will be missed.
Green is very good at ramping. However for some reason I've never tried the ramp versions at four. We have plenty of ramp at three, super ramps at five as well, but four needs to be tested as well. I prefer Claim to Explosive Vegetation, as the two forests come untapped, being better for ramp chains, and it also fetches duals.
Since we having a cube draft today, I wanted to add a few of the already spoiled Origins cards. If I already do that, I might as wlel make other tweaks that were in the pipe. There are more spoiled cards I want to try, but they are not available yet with a high quality image.
I agree it is weird that I cut Exemplars, while (semi-) trying to bolster the spells matter archetype during the last update, but it is just the weakest four drop that I care the least about. As an aggro card it is weaker than the card I am including, I do not want to cut a token support card (Ajani Steadfast), and all the other midrange/control four drops are better. Exemplars are a fine card, but is far from impressive. Cataclysm is a really strong boost for aggressive decks in white, so the next swap will empower control. You usually drop Cataclysm after a three drop, and that is usually enough to carry the game. It kills planeswalkers and keeps your equipment alive. It requires more work than Armageddon probably, but is playable by a few more decks and redundancy is key.
Sacred Mesa is a permission control vs. control finisher. If you have enough mana, it is inevitable you will win the game. But it is expensive, does nothing before reaching four mana and nothing relevant until six. Tap out control would rather use something quicker, and counter heavy decks don't need their own finisher in white (counter heavy decks can still win with a Sun Titan just fine, it works fine the other way around). In general in control the problem of surviving until the late game is much more apparent than finding finishers in white, so Timely Reinforcements would fix that. It can be too narrow, which would kill it, but I am hopeful. About hating aggro, I don't think it's as offensive as something like Armageddon and control needs that help.
Syndic is a solid card, but it's the worst white two drop now. It is mana intensive and bad without follow up. It's worse than Seeker of the Way, the second worst white two drop by a bit. Kytheon is crazy good. The front side on its own would be the best aggressive white one drop ever printed. The activated ability to make it indestructible is expensive, but gives him late game relevance and allows him to survive long enough to flip. Having three attackers is easy. The flip side is obviously awesome, as it protects you, your creature and itself while gaining loyalty, bashing for 4 every turn after, deterring attackers if you are behind and prevents you from overextending.
Cloudskate is too low impact for a five drop. Both modes are middleground, and it is not that effective when you are losing, we've found out.
Blue has very few five drops. Sphinx has survived the test of time in many cubes. It has a huge butt, removal protection, evasion and scry 3 is a serious deal. It's an enormous card quality engine that can win games.
This change is mostly happening due to the disappointment from Talrand. The four drop in blue is exploding. Talrand is good if you untap with it in a spell heavy deck, and that is too narrow. It is not good in general control, not so hot in general tempo even. It almost always dies to removal, or is a win more once you play it in the late game with a grip full of cards where any finisher would do, and probably do better.
I was looking for an exciting blue card and found none. In general Miracle is not so strong in cube. However it is the strongest in blue, with Brainstorm, Ponder, Preordain, Mystical Tutor, Personal Tutor, Jace the Mind Sculptor, Omenspeaker, Condescend and more. In addition to that, this is virtually a miracle you would always pay for, unlike Terminus. There is a chance this card will play out great, so it's better than to try a card I know will be low tier.
Smallpox is a bit too narrow for a large cube. I had to decide between it and Sinkhole, but I think Sinkhole is a bit better. Black needs less BB cards and more answers. The truth is, one mana discard spells are too good. Planeswalkers are increasing in number and despise is almost guaranteed to find a target against every deck.
Red
-Splatter Thug, +Vaultbreaker
Red starts to have reasonable three drops! Thug got very outclassed when Alesha got printed. It's terrible on the defense, making it one of the worst three drops later in the game, and while acceptable he is not a great follow up for an aggressive start. Vaultbreaker is. Dash is a great ability in cube. I've written why before, but I'll repeat shortly. It makes Vaultbreaker a massively better topdeck, especially as it immediately dig for another burn spell or value card. Repeated dashing, btw, due to the loot effect, is a good way to have an edge in longer games. It dodges all sorcery speed removals, including Wrath of God, Oblivion Ring, Consuming Vapors and all planeswalker abilities. Dash is good at killing planeswalkers. Especially as a three drop, that will usually follow a one drop and two drop, it allows you to advance your game without overcommitting. Dash is also great with Purphoros, God of the Forge.
The 4/2 body will die to anything, which prevents Vaultbreaker from being a great card. But on the other hand, if you hardcast him he will trade with anything on the defense. In testing I've compared the two cards and Vaultbreaker was vastly superior. It can still be the worst three drop, depending how well Hordeling Outburst will perform, but it is likely superior to Shaman of the Great Hunt so I predict it will stay for at least a few months.
It's time to admit - Coliseum is just a worse vivid. An on-color vivid produces a color, and fixes twice pain-free. An off-color vivd still fixes twice pain free, while able to produce "colorless". When a whole cycle is better than you, and that cycle isn't a high pick to begin with, it's time to say goodbye. Coliseum had low maindeck percentages and never failed to table.
I'm so happy with Ratchet Bomb, having another one in the cube makes me happy. Besides answering tokens really well, it is just a generally good turn two play against aggro. It kills moxen, and gives all colors answers to troublesome cards, like Bitterblossom, Jitte, Skullclamp, Sol Ring, Survival and so many more.
Soul is not good without the activated ability, and that ability is expensive. Triskelion got much better recently due to the composition of the cube. Now there are a lot more token cards it can kill with his Arc Lightning. Unlike soul, you get that Arc Lightning if he gets a removal immediately. It can attack for seven if you need to finish the deal, is better on the defense, and is a good target for blink/bounce/reanimation. Again, as a one power creature it plays well with Imperial Recruiters and Reveillark.
It is still a bit low impact on an empty board or against control, so it is still a placeholder IMO.
If you are trying to support spells matter, I don't see how you can cut Talrand and Exemplars. I mean, I read what you wrote, but by other accounts those cards are fantastic in that deck.
Grand Colesium is not a worse Vivid. It's better than Vivids. I think this is a bad move.
If you are trying to support spells matter, I don't see how you can cut Talrand and Exemplars. I mean, I read what you wrote, but by other accounts those cards are fantastic in that deck.
Grand Colesium is not a worse Vivid. It's better than Vivids. I think this is a bad move.
Rest looks good!
Cheers,
rant
Yeah, I wasn't clear on that point... spells matters was a failed experiment. In general building synergy specific decks in a large cube is hard, this was just one more instance of that. The archetype needs more inherently powerful cards to be supportable in 720 from what I've found. After all, you cannot build a deck with 20 spells and only Talrand (and the chance to get two such effects is rather low).
I'd play Grand Coliseum at 360. It's close to the Vivids in terms of powerlevel, but the fact that it can fix colored mana more that twice if you need it to is an important aspect of the card. Matching Vivids are better, but off-color Vivids are not. It's considered the #13 overall best land in the entire cube by the 2015 Power Rankings for a reason. It just goes in everything.
Khans was a really good set for cube. There are lots of upgrades and interesting cards. Red in particular got some significant changes. A nice goodbye to core sets.
Liliana and Kytheon were already included before, both are great. The rest of the planeswalker cycle is also added, but it is unlikely all of it would survive in the long term.
The monk had forsaken his spiritual path in his quest for worldly glory. Today's society is materialistic and the cards should reflect that! Seeker of the Way is the worst two drop in white. In a creature heavy deck it is nearly a Glory Seeker, and heavy spells matters decks are both rare and don't really want a low drop beater. Relic Seeker offers potential for card advantage. It is a creature you absolutely must prevent connecting, and costs only two mana. Equipments in the cube are broken a lot of times, as we know from Stoneforge Mystic. It also grows to be a 3/3, a perfectly reasonable card for all aggressive decks in white with at least one equipment.
Blue has too many three drops, and Jace basically does what Thassa does but better. Thassa had trouble reaching devotion and the unblockable part, while good is usually win more, as creature stalls are rare in this cube. Jace is a looter early and a card advantage machine late. It protects itself, lets you replay broken cards and is good early and late game. It is very easy to flip, evident from how easy it is to play Treasure Cruise and Dig Through Time. It can even do shenanigans like block and then flip. An awesome blue two drop, that is probably better than all looters but Looter Il-Kor so it will have a long lifespan in cube.
Geists is too fragile on the defense, so it mostly an offensive curvetopper. Blue has too many four drops and it is easily the worst of them. Whirler provides four power for four mana, spread over three bodies. It is better on the defense, as it can block three creatures and usually trade with at least two of them (and yes, it doesn't die to a single Lightning Bolt). On the offense, it attacks for more damage than geist and in the turn it enters the battlefield it can immediately make one creature unblockable. Note that it taps any artifact, not just the tokens. After that, it has an abusable ETB effect, which blue has ways to reuse, such as Crystal Shard. Finally it is a great combo card with Opposition. It is hard to imagine when you will not want this; possibly in control mirrors. It is still an easy include, however.
Spell Pierce is too narrow. It costs only one mana, but Rune Snag is bad enough, even though it is much less restrictive. Control needs tools against aggro, and Harbinger is one of them. Getting a tempo advantage and trading with a body is great for two mana. Against ramp it will often hit a mana elf. The four mana mode is very relevant if you leave mana open for counters anyway, it is a great combat trick later in the game. All in all it fills a needed hole so I expect it to stick in the cube for a long time.
Mastery is narrow, and certainly not worth the full price. Blue decks that want 1cc cantrip will play every one of them they can get. Thought Scour got more mileage recently for several reasons. First, the amount of delve cards in blue and black rose significantly. In this set we also have micro Jace that will love this card. Secondly, the new mulligan rule allows the player who took a mulligan to scry 1. By milling the top card on the first turn, you get a huge advantage.
I assume you'd play this card as soon as your curve allows, but there is still relevance to the fact that it hoses tutors, scry effects and the like.
Profane Command is too expensive and color intensive for what it does. It is a two for one for decks with cheap creatures, but another threat or more efficient removal is almost always better than it. I know people love it here, but it underperformed consistently here for years. Angler is a card we want to test. It is worse than Tasigur, but the delve mechanic in general is very successful here. Gurmag will be a cheap monster later in the game. It had success across various formats, I hope it will translate to cube as well.
A simple upgrade. I do play some five mana mass removals in white, but they all have an additional upside and white has less ways to kill creatures. Needless to say, they are also on the bottom shelf of white cards. Languish is one of the better mass removals, much better than Black Sun's Zenith for comparison. It wipes boards clean at turn four, and many of the high toughness creatures in cube are black, from Tasigur to the reanimation targets and Dragonlord Silumgar, so it could be a selective mass removal. I do not expect this to ever leave the cube.
Sidisi is very very bad in an empty board. Finding a body to sacrifice was not always easy. For aggressive decks she is too expensive and slow. Control decks don't have the needed creature density. She was only good in B/G decks, and even there not amazing. Priest offers tremendous 7 power for five mana. The body is small enough for Alesha, Imperial Recruiter and Reveillark and is abusable in black with Recurring Nightmare and all forms of reanimation. Of we venture out of black, it is a best friend with bounce and blink effects.
Disfigure is at best against aggro, or mana elves. It is very underwhelming in later stages in the game however, as those creature lose importance and you are facing bigger threats. Against control, it is usually pretty bad (it can kill looters or a random Ophiomancer, so it's not dead just conditional). Diabolic Edict does most of these things without the weaknesses. Against aggro decks Edict is at his worst, yet playing this on turn two is still quite good. They will sacrifice their one drop and keep their two drop in the worst case scenario, but that is almost as good as Disfigure, for one more mana. If they had a start with an equipment, or turn one discard or something else, they will be equal. Edict will still kill mana elves. However, facing a single big threat, it provides an out to all fatties, including control finishers, reanimated threats or whatnot, including Hexproof. It is a bit less efficient against small creatures but has more versatility, while still being a good foil to aggressive strategies.
Carrion Feeder is not worth a slot in a deck on his lonesome. It is a sacrifice outlet, but without serious ways to abuse it, the payoff of having a big ground creature that cannot block is not big enough. It doesn't protect creatures against mass removals. As a one drop it is unexciting. It's super bad after a mass removal or in creature light draws. It is a card I was constantly disappointed to see. Despoiler is a solid two drop for the aggro deck. It is great to play before a mass removal, and in general creates card advantage. I don't think it will be recurred twice a game in any reasonable frequency, but even if it only happens once, the card has done its job. The two biggest drawbacks are tokens, which pretty much nullify him, and the heavy black cost. Black has a bit too many heavy black cards at the two and three mana slots. I'm looking to cut Sinkhole soon to ease that up a little. Despoiler will probably go when we get another solid BB card, but testing might prove otherwise.
Red
Red sees a decrease in the token support department. Tokens have been here a long time and did not prove themselves. On the other hand, we got plenty of inclusions for aggro and mono red aggro. Red still needs some diversification, especially in the mono-red tendency, but I don't have a solution to that problem right now.
Dragonlord is slow, needs a mono red deck and still dies to spot removals. There are too many cards that push red decks to be good only in heavy red decks. I want to diversify aggro decks, so I'm not increasing their number. Chandra should be easy to flip, as an attack + a red spell does the job, as do two red spells. If she transforms she does a lot of damage. The question is will it be consistent enough.
Yes, she is of the worst part of her cycle. She will probably not stay in the cube for long. But she has potential, so she merits testing.
Pyromaster was a serviceable yet slow curvetopper in aggro. Her card advantage ability is not very fitting for control. She was pretty good in a planeswalker control deck, but that is narrow. She is the worst of the red four drops, or the most unnecessary one, depending how you look at it.
Pia and Kiran are a mini Siege-Gang Commander. They provide four power across three bodies, two of which have evasion. The targeted burn is great against small creatures and planeswalkers. It combos so well with other cards in the cube, from blink, bounce and reanimation effects, through Alesha, Imperial Recruiter and Reveillark and ending in Purphoros and token decks. To boot it can also throw away other artifact you have, like now useless mana rocks, empty Tangle Wires and so on. Overall a very versatile card, with good face value, A+.
Most red decks are aggressive. In those decks hitting a land in the same turn as you need the burn spell is not so easy, with most of them packing only 16, but especially since now red is encouraging you to loot extra lands with Vaultbreaker, Faithless Looting and Molten Vortex. The double red is also a problem and the instant speed is nearly fictional. Requiring a creature to shoot is also a drawback, especially when you need to shoot a planeswalker. 4 damage for three mana is solid. The spell mastery is not hard to achieve in burn decks, but is not very relevant as counter based control is such a good matchup for burn decks. It will kill Glen Elendra Archmage though, and killing planeswalkers in G/R midrange will be good.
I'm not sure if it is the worst burn spell in the cube, or Brimstone Volley is. Depending on how many good burn spells will be printed, this could be out of the cube very quickly.
Some of the token support cards in red are getting cut. Red is not white, there are not as many ways to abuse tokens and this set was very generous to red. Marshal is unplayable in regular aggro or control decks, so as a synergy-only card it is certainly narrow and not strong enough. Abbot is fine on turn two and better in the late game. The monk is card advantage for red, with versatility. In red aggressive decks, almost everything is cheap making the hit rate of the ability very high.
Outburst on his lonesome is subpar. Costing double red limits his usefulness in white token decks. Unless you have heavy synergy it is a very lacking three drop. Berserker will be used in aggro decks, which are the vast majority of red decks anyway. It will have an easy time to connect and activate itself. It is a decent topdeck due to haste. If the ground is not free it does nothing, and it will trade with any bear, so I don't expect it to be great, but it's better suited to what red does.
Yes, a regular burn spell is better than Bombardment. Vortex in an aggressive deck can discard a decent number of lands. It makes every spell you draw gas, combos with Wheel of Fortune and the draw sevens, and increases your reach dramatically and cheaply. It might also be worse than a regular burn spell, but I'm optimistic.
Loyalist has a 1/1 body which is simply unimpressive. Even aggressive decks didn't maindeck him. Glory Chaser on turn one is a good card. No other one drop has both two power and evasion. It's comparable to Stromkirk Noble, and that's a good place to be in.
Dragon was here before and it was a better performer. Having haste and evasion made it have a lot more impact on the turn it comes into play. Protection from white made it more reliable. Both cards explode when you get to untap with them with mana. Soul has a really nice synergy with haste granting effects in red, like Sneak Attack, Generator Servant and Lightning Mauler, but having haste organically is still better.
Both cards are very similar. Shaman provides more ramp, but only for creatures. It has a bigger body, but if it dies you get nothing. Nissa can be a simple two for one against aggro in a pinch, but is much better in the late game. Repeatable card advantage and a returning 4/4 will be important against midrange's toughest matchup - control. In every other matchup she is mediocre (but still playable), but control is such an uphill battle she is probably needed.
Centaur fades away too often. It is bad against tokens and random blockers. Red decks can often kill it, or simply ignore it. It has shenanigans with equipments etc, but is ultimately too bad in both offense and defense. Green has too many four drops, and usually old centaur was left in the sideboard, except against black decks. Collected Company is attractive due to the potential card advantage at instant speed. It is good against mass removals, and is splashable. The drawback is obviously the low hit rate in a deck with a low number of cheap drops. Overall it is worth testing.
Green aggro is not supported. Curse is a good card but does not have a deck. Pilgrimage is a third version of Cultivate. Yes, it is worse as it doesn't fix mana. Fetching three lands in the late game does not make up for that, but it does improve your draws by quite a bit. Overall it might be better than Krosan Tusker or might be the worst ramp spell at 3cc.
Before anyone jumps, I do like Searcher. I think it is a good creature to cheat or curvetop with, and it always plays differently which I appreciate. But no one else here does. It was last pick several times, and over several months few wanted to play it. I do notice the number of artifact fatties dropped, making it harder to play Tinker. I'm keeping an eye on that.
Sword provides card advantage and repeatable ramp and fixing. It is not so much of an aggro card, but is great at midrange. The number of equipments in a large cube is low; it is only fitting to up it with the addition of Relic Seeker.
A small update. We didn't get much experience with the origins cards yet, so no new changes on that front yet. However, some origins cards have proven themselves elsewhere and are now entering the cube for the first time.
Reinforcements does its job really well, but nothing but that. It is destined to be a sideboard card forever, and has no use outside of specific matchups. Kor Haven takes a land slot during dekbuilding, which increases the number of playables in your draft (or in the cube). It will see play in midrange white decks as well as control, and has uses against midrange and control and not just as a foil against aggro. Haven is a card I haven't tried yet but many cubes have played it successfully. In summary, it's a less powerful effect that has far broader applications.
Spirit is a simple 3/1 for 1W 95% of the time. The drawback can hurt you, and being an enchantment creature is more often a drawback than a boon. It is the worst white two drop.
Consul's Lieutenant is so very close to Precinct Captain. It has equal damage output against an empty board by its lonesome until the third attack, and much better if you have any other aggro cards lying around. On the off side, it cannot play both offense and defense. Both cards are so close I've decided to keep them both in for now. White can have two WW drops out of 97 cards.
Elspeth needs three turns to get to the token amount of devotion. The lifegain is negligible and if you are so far behind you need a mass removal, you probably cannot afford to let her get up to six loyalty. Devotion is much better in immediate defense, and it buys you enough time to get to the ultimate. Two Elspeths are enough.
Kira is a difficult to cast creature for tempo decks, which are usually light on blue. The body is unimpressive and the ability backfires with equipment, while your team still dies to mass removals, removals in response or double removals. Now that the artifact section has both Powder Keg and Ratchet Bomb, there are five recurable mass removals with this land. In addition it fetches back Tangle Wire and your killed win-condition. It is a bit narrow, but we had success so far with increasing the number of lands with abilities in the cube, so it's worth a shot.
Hyppie was a good fella. Hyppie needs to connect to do anything, it attacks for less and doesn't exile. Zombie will sometimes provide immediate card advantage, and while not always, looking at your opponent's hand is strong. Hyppie is better against control but weaker against midrange, and midrange is a worse matchup for black aggro. In addition, Lifebane Zombie is playable outside of aggro, as a sideboard card.
I didn't add Bellower before, because I think he is weak compared to other six drops in the cube. That said, green has only one six drop. In a ramp color, that is too few. Furthermore, in green creatures have much more synergy than sorceries. Bellower can be tutored for with Worldly Tutor, Sylvan Tutor, Green Sun's Zenith, Survival of the Fittest, Fauna Shaman, Tooth and Nail, Eureka and Natural Order.
What does it do? There are many green three drops, so it is highly unlikely any deck will not have enough targets for it. The first tier of targets are cards that consistently make a 2-for-one, and they are Reclamation Sage and Eternal Witness. With hem Woodland Bellower is well worth his mana cost.
Tier one a half are the answer cards, Viridian Shaman and Uktabi Orangutan. With them Bellower will sometimes be a 3-for-1. More importantly, in ramp decks with the aforementioned tutors, if you have the mana, it is better to search for him to fetch the answer bear than to fetch the small critter directly, filling a hole in the deck.
The second tier includes the big bodies that are still significant at later stages of the game, like Knight of the Reliquary, Tarmogoyf and Scavenging Ooze. With them Woodland Bellower is a simple 2-for-1, but a double big threat is still solid. Wall of Blossoms is second tier, as by that stage of the game the 0/4 body is usually not worth much.
Third tier will include most ramp cards, including all mana elves, Devoted Druid, Courser of Kruphix etc. This is just a very bad impression of Primeval Titan, but it still helps you to cast your next big thing and thins your deck.
Fourth tier will include your Ainok Survivalist, Den Protector and Lotus Cobra, which is just abysmal.
Overall, it is a weak six drop, but still will see play because of the great demand for six drops and the inherent synergies creatures have in green.
Hangarback Walker is what Epochrasite wanted to be but never could. Walker gives you immediate value upon death. Let's examine it as a two drop. Against aggro, it blocks twice and kills Savannah Lions. Against control and midrange it is a ticking clock that will create a monster. It has to be answered eventually, and will create an army when you do so. It is good against mass removals, or with your own. All that is without taking into account the flexibility the card offers - it is a good play in all stages of the game due to scalability.
Crucible is very very narrow. It is great with Strip Mine and good with Wasteland, but those are just two cards out of a large cube. It is not great with fetches, and there are not that many fetches as well. Life from the Loam was cut, now its CoW's turn. Star Compass is comparable to Guardian Idol. Idol is almost never reanimated outside of chump blocking. Compass can produce colored mana. The worst case scenario of producing no color of mana at all is downright terrible. At the average case scenario it will add one of two colors, and that is just fine. It might be a whiff too often, but I'm willing to give it a chance.
Cursed Scroll is too slow and expensive for modern cubes. Aggro is very prevalent and could lose a colorless card. Greaves is a good card for midrange decks vs. control or in the mirror. Relic Seeker implies we need more equipments in the cube, however it is slightly unlikely the two will see play in the same deck.
Battle for Zendikar was a tremendous set for large cubes. Our renewed affection with nonbasic lands got new ways to realize itself. Fixing got upgraded and finally we have some of the enemy dual lands. This alone would impact the cube for years to come.
The rest of the set didn't disappoint either. This is one of the largest set updates to date with 39 new cards (!). Therefore it will be split in two, for ease of reading and me writing.
White
White got upgrades for all of its theaters this time around.
Steadfast is a filler planeswalker. White non-creature four drops are stacked. Gideon is absurdly powerful. It creates an endless stream of bears, permanent mass pumps and is a tank himself. He is good in every deck archetype, in every matchup, whether you are ahead or behind. A bomb, even in cube standards.
Expedition envoy is a two power one drop. Such cards are essential for aggro. White is starting to get a lot of them, yet we are not close to a full saturation of them (at least in a cube as big as 720). They are almost always preferable to two drops in an aggressive shell. I like Wizards' new trend of printing one new two power white one drop every block now.
From here, it's just a matter of finding the weakest two drop. Spectral lynx shores up a weak matchup for white, green midrange. Yet is it always a filler card, never a high pick, never exciting. It was serviceable; I just think it is the weakest card now.
5cc wraths are historically weak. We had tried Hallowed Burial and Rout, and both were mediocre. End Hostilities is a bit better than them, but still very underwhelming. Black just got rid of its last 5 casting cost mass removal. End Hostilities offers a good payoff when you can afford to pay the awaken cost. It will be rarely relevant though so it is clearly the new worst white mass removal.
Catastrophe is a midrange/control card only due to its mana cost. Using the Armageddon option was very rare for those archetypes, mass removal is expensive at six and control decks usually wanted a finisher at that mana cost which pushed it out of decks. I understand why the card is good, we were playing it for seven years, and it just doesn't do enough for us now. Quarantine Field is superior at six in most board states. It has a weak but very playable mode at 4 and is an obviously great mana sink at 8+ mana. Mirari's Wake new BFF.
Kor Hookmaster is great for aggressive decks facing midrange, and very solid against aggro. It is honestly a good card, but the amount of three drops in white is a bit too high at the moment and it is just the weakest card. On an empty board it just doesn't do much.
Windbrisk Heights is another experiment with a land that has an ability. Such cards increase the amount of playables in the draft. Aggro decks dislike ETBT lands, and this even has a condition for it to do anything so it's a risky experiment. Most large cubes play it, and I'm willing to try it out too. The trigger is not too hard to activate, as seen by Kytheon.
Blue
Blue got a wave of small upgrades. Weak cards became better, which at this quantity should be noticeable, but none of the new cards are a high picks.
The exile clause is very rarely relevant, but scry is always good. It's true that when you need the exile clause it's great, but that is still too rare (one out of ten games? Maybe less?). An upgrade.
Blue needs more hard counters. Complicate is splashable but definitely on the weak side. Many times players have cycled it for nothing. Awaken will be a useful mode in slow matchups, on an already acceptable base. I know it's not stellar, but it should do us good service for now.
Blue decks always want card advantage, often leave mana open and sometimes run out of gas. The opportunity cost of adding this land to your deck is minimal, and for a land it is a great topdeck. I really think his card is undervalued currently. I have hard times seeing a blue midrange or control deck not playing this, even as the 18th land. I didn't want too many colorless lands in blue for now, and ruins is narrow in a large cube. It might be back though, if the new utility lands prove to be a success and decks are left wanting more.
Thought Scour's improvement with the new mulligan rule was low - your opponent has to take a mulligan, keep the top card and you have to cast Thought Scour on the first turn. It's relevant, but not enough. Scour is great in Delve decks, but that's it: in reanimation you have an equal chance to discard your reanimation spell, and in milling decks… well they don't exist. Opt with its scry 1 is always providing card quality. For most decks, it will be basically strictly better.
Rune Snag loses relevance very quickly. Countering on the second turn is important, but this is almost a blank card in the late game. Secondly, a lot more decks nowadays are tap out control and not draw go. Augur is a good card against aggressive strategies. The draw rate will never be very high, but it has relevance in the late game too and you have some desperate synergies with Crystal Shard. I don't like the card but I think it fills the slot better.
My dislike for Keiga is well known around here. It is very easily raced in aggro and in the control mirror, the opponent often doesn't have a premium target to steal. Blue has four other finishers at six mana, it's time to diversify. For one more mana, and negligible more difficulty in casting, Sphinx is passes the Terminate test with flying colors, making it good against midrange and control, and better against aggro. It is a better reanimation target, it combos well with Crystal Shard and is all around quite impressive. It is still not great doing work as a finisher though, and it is expensive, so it will probably get cut as soon as we get a new finisher, but that might take a while.
I don't like Geists but it is better. For impersonator to be worth its mana cost, you need to copy a 4cc and up card. It sucks against aggro. Many times what your opponent has is not great for you (a few examples include Koth of the Hammer, Ajani Goldmane, Survival of the Fittest, Dark Confidant, Goblin Rabblemaster, Mana Crypt even). Geists is usually better if you target a creature with Impersonator (probably more than 80% of the time really).
Black
Black improvements also spread nicely across midrange, aggro and reanimator even. Control is left a bit wanting, but also got new removals and a fresh planeswalker to play with.
The worst black three drop is getting cut. Pitiless Horde is certainly not bad and did see play in aggro decks, but is expensive - either mana wise or life wise. He sucks in the aggro mirror, as it can be chumped quite easily and dies to most red removals, after losing you life. Against midrange it is, obviously, subpar. New Drana pumps your whole team after the first strike, permanently. That is quite scary and test worthy, even though it is another 1BB card.
Murderous Cut is terrible in the early game, and doesn't remove a threat when you need it removed right now. Think of Dark Confidant, Rofellos, Llanowar Emissary or Goblin Rabblemaster. Now black has three delve fatties, and delve cards don't play well together. Black decks in cube are short in removals lately, but there are not many good ones that are not already included or tested. That's why I was very happy when Ruinous Path was spoiled. Killing planeswalkers gets ever more important, and the late game awaken is very relevant.
Whip is a very slow card. It does nothing the turn it comes into play unless you already have creatures out, using the four mana ability on many creatures is not worth it and you may not have any targets in the graveyard. Ob Nixilis is good in decks that don't have many creatures, good against control and against midrange. It is not a tier 1 five drop like Ob Nixilis of the Black Oath or Shriekmaw, but it is better than Bloodgift Demon for sure and possibly better than Priest of the Blood Rite. Finally black has enough five drops!
Blood scrivener triggers so rarely it might as well be vanilla. Emptying your hand is not always easy, and usually not worth the risk of spending your answer cards on subpar targets for a random new card. Thrall is not amazing, but it does provide sort of advantage when it dies, especially in combat and to a mass removal. It goes well with sacrificial themes in black, such as Braids, Fleshbag Marauder, Smokestack and Skullclamp. Overall certainly not amazing, but even after this swap there are still probably two or three worse black two drops. This part of the curve could definitely use some love.
Sinkhole is another BB spell, which I have too many of. It is hard justifying playing it over a removal or a creature, considering land destruction is not a theme in the cube. It is useful in aggro, but there is a limit to how many non-creature spells can you play, and removals and card advantage sources, as well as equipments and targeted discard are all higher priority. If the stax theme was still present, it would probably stay. Death is a good reanimation spell. Until now I'd force myself to include it as a multicolored card, but as a regular black spell it easily makes it in.
Unfortunately red is just getting more and more aggro oriented with time. I dislike that, but cannot think of ways to change that that will be consistent enough in a large cube.
Tokens in red failed as a package. In the previous update many cards that benefit from tokens were gone, now the token generators themselves start to get the axe.
Slide runner is a nice two drop, as it will often attack for two consecutive turns for three trample damage, and that's better than some other red two drops in the cube. It gets big with fetches, even if it trades with a token you get some damage through and it's a nice bearer of swords. Definitely not top tier, but not at the absolute bottom either.
Shaman dies to every creature. Now that tokens are a weaker theme, it loses even more of its relevance. Midrange decks don't want such a fragile threat. On the other hand, planeswalkers are becoming ever more relevant, making Champion stronger than before.
Green
Two new engine cards and two new ramp targets will benefit green this time around.
It's no secret green lacks good six drops. GoM is better than Woodland Bellower, most likely, but I am not cutting that one yet, as we have so few six drops. On the other hand Greenwarden is not Primeval Titan either. It provides very solid value when ramped into or Natural Ordered. It plays very well with reanimation spells, and you can chose not to exile it if you want to continue the shenanigans. The body is not as impressive for the cost, but the value is there. Pelakka Wurm is the weakest green high drop. The triple green is sometimes a problem, and against a significant part of the field the lifegain is negligible. Pelakka Wurm might come back and replace Foe-Razer Regent, but for now I value the green removal and flying more.
Woodland wanderer will be on average a 4/4, as mono green is virtually nonexistent with the ease green has for splashing. That's a great worst case scenario. The vigilance will make it awesome against aggressive decks, and it tramples over tokens. But making it a 5/5 shouldn't be hard, and the ceiling of 6/6 is absolutely bonkers. Blastoderm is a resilient threat, but lacks evasion and fades away. It has issues against tokens, but it will usually deal 5-10 damage to the opponent and take a creature or two. That is obviously worth four mana, especially as how well it is threatening planeswalkers. But it is very lacking on the defense. Wanderer can just be both, simultaneously.
Dictate can backfire and is very narrow. It does nothing unless you have something crazy expensive in hand. Oath is a narrow card, but in a deck with many planeswalkers and few creatures it's a reliable cheat outlet. A very narrow yet very powerful card. A high-risk experiment which I have never tried yet. It is time.
Tusker's cycling became outdated. Green now has three cards that grant you the same amount of card advantage while ramping. You can rarely afford to cycle this on the early turns. The late monster is underwhelming for the price. The utility was nice, but it did not hold up to standards anymore. Evolutionary Leap is a wrath insurance and removal insurance card, as well as card advantage engine with token cards or recurring creatures. It is somewhat abusable and many cubes have had success with it.
Multicolored
Multicolored features lots of small, unrelated updated.
Yasova just doesn't fit in the R/G or U/G decks we build. They are usually midrange, so the body and added pressure won't add much. Those decks usually tap out on turns four and five, and not have chunks of mana open to use the ability. Kiora has potential. It is hard to evaluate her, but she has more starting loyalty than Kiora, the Crashing Wave. She won't die to every burn spell. The card advantage ability is better, but she is much worse at protecting herself, her ultimate is slower and less attainable (older kiora's ultimate happens relatively often and wins the game) and she is near useless if you don't have creatures out. She is still worth testing before we pull a verdict.
Knight grows very slowly in decks without fetches. It is also in immediate burn range and starts out very small. Township is a land and therefore doesn't take a place out of your spells in the deck, which increases your number of playables. Gavony is great against control decks, which have a very hard time stopping it. It encourages token decks very well. We had very successful results in including utility lands recently and I am pushing that trend.
Duplicate, like all copy effects, has an inherent weakness against aggro and control decks. Against aggro, the creatures are often not worth four mana, against control there are very few creatures resulting in a dead card most of the time. When you are behind and cannot afford to attack, which in U/R is often the case, the haste and dethrone don't matter. Redcap is playable in great many decks, good on the defense as well as the offense and has a few combos. It can go infinite with Muzzio's Preparations, it can be sacrificed twice, it is solid against mass removal and it is a win condition for blink/Crystal Shard decks.
Magister is powerful card, it just costs so much. The card might as well be blank when you are ahead. Added to that W/B is usually an aggro pair in the cube, and the angel saw very very little play. Utter End is expensive for a 1-for-1 removal spell, but it is versatile and guaranteed to see play in more decks, even as a splash or sideboard cards. More answers to planeswalkers are good and it exiles, at instant speed.
Ulamog is an eldrazi that can be reanimated. It will usually win with the first attack, and if not the second. The cast trigger is the best of all the eldrazis so far. Three eldrazis in a large cube is still not a lot and super ramp decks need consistency, so no existing eldrazi is cut, although he is the best of them. Memory Jar is just way too narrow in its applications to justify a slot in a large cube.
Guardian Idol comes into play tapped, and that's a really bad trait for a mana rock. It doesn't fit easily into your curve, unlike all the signets and talismans. Obviously it also doesn't produce any color. That advantage of becoming a 2/2 is rarely relevant, usually resulting in a chump blocker. We think that Mana Compass' ability to create colors is more important. Hedron Archive is a much welcomed ramp spell. We need more cubeable midgame ramp spells for super ramp decks, and this is a very good one. Often ramp decks run out of gas, Archive fixes that nicely. However, it is even better in control decks, which will happily embrace it.
The number of nonbasics in the cube has increased lately, and nonbasic lands need more answers. Especially true for the new manlands. Paradise is a color fixer for aggro decks only, but a weak one. The cube has enough fixing, and it is getting better. Dust Bowl is a very good land for aggro decks, but will see play everywhere. For now it will play side by side with Tectonic Edge to see who is better. We might reach the conclusion that both are needed.
The potential for an extra power is already more significant in aggro decks than the indestructibility. Aggro decks are the only decks that will play that cheap equipment. If your opponent spent tempo to destroy your equipment, you probably don't care too much, not to mention most of the games it will not be relevant. There is a high amount of humans in all the aggro colors in cube, so the bonus is significant. A lot of the tokens in the cube are humans too.
Ankh is terrible in the aggro mirror, which is a bit too common here. It only has meaning if drawn and played early, but you will often prefer to play a two drop. It saw little main deck play. Thopter Foundry is a card for control decks, but doesn't hate aggro decks much. It is an easily playable card in matchups of midrange and control. Never a high pick, but will see play a decent amount of the time and that seems fine. The latest experiments with utility lands were a huge success.
Two-colored Fixing
One of the things that shape the environment the most is the quality of the fixing options. In a big cube even large updates generally have a relatively low impact. A good set offers 20 new cards (in a large cube the bottom gets replaced more quickly), but that's a change of less than 3% of the cube. Lands always see a fair amount of play and they stay for far longer than the average card. The better the fixing, the more playable decks you will end up having at the end of the draft, more of the drafted cards will get played, less losses will occur due to mana problems and it's a better time for all. This set has almost two cycles for us, which is enormous.
Check lands are not very good - they don't allow you to split mana between phases and turns and do not provide you colored mana for the first turn. They are bad for splashes, and bad in 4+ colored decks. The new lands are great for splashing.
W/G is not really an aggro color pair, but more midrange. The drawback of Thicket is all too relevant there. Also green has by far the best synergies with lands that have the forest type.
Okay, the new lands are cute and all, but in this set we got something far better: enemy manlands! The previous cycle was a powerhouse, and this will probably be no different, smashing planeswalkers after mass removals, winning off of standstill and just increasing your amount of win conditions or pressure when you are out of gas.
The Signet is a mana rock and therefore randomly playable sometimes, but it doesn't fit W/B, an aggro-centric color pair. Shambling Vent is better for slower decks anyway. It is a good land, especially against aggro.
I haven't seen much love for blood Scrivener elsewhere in this forum so I am rooting for him. I run 360 so I couldn't fit him in but think he deserves to be in the conversation. A lot of value for for a black card in that 2 mana slot.
I haven't seen much love for blood Scrivener elsewhere in this forum so I am rooting for him. I run 360 so I couldn't fit him in but think he deserves to be in the conversation. A lot of value for for a black card in that 2 mana slot.
Which black two drop that I play you think is worse than Blood Scrivener?
Commander 12 was a small set, therefore gave us few cards for inclusion. Their quality, however, is quite high, especially in red which needed it the most.
White
-Oust, +Grasp of Fate
A massively better removal option. Grasp hits every permanent, deals with problems forever and doesn’t grant life. Yes, it is a redundant effect with Oblivion Ring, Banishing Light, Quarantine Field and Detention Sphere. But by the fact that D-Sphere is still the strongest Azorius card in the cube, it is good enough. Yes, most of the other similar effects are better, but Grasp is still far from the chopping block.
-Consul's Lieutenant, +Oreskos Explorer
A WW cost is very troublesome for a creature that loses value so quickly after turn two. Explorer is a two drop that provides card advantage, which is always something worth noticing. The main selling point is that every deck type will play it, from aggro to control. Grabbing every kind of plains is good for fixing too. I believe it will stay for at least a while due to versatility.
-Increasing Devotion, +Righteous Confluence
Confluence is massively better against aggro, a big part of this cube’s playing field. Not only do you gain huge amounts of life, but the tokens have vigilance. It is also better offensively without anthems. Once in a few games, removing enchantments is crucial, be it Sulfuric Vortex, Sylvan Library or Control Magic. Devotion has a near useless flashback. It is only better in a dedicated token deck (i.e. not a random midrange or control deck). But in that deck, Confluence isn’t bad either, providing three bodies. Overall, an improvement.
For cubes with much slower metagames changes like this could be wrong. In honesty, this card is definitely close to the bottom of the barrel still.
Blue
-Sphinx of Uthuun, +Mystic Confluence
I hate how much sense this change makes. I want blue to have more finishers so badly. But, Mystic Confluence is great, having many forms of card advantage, ability to bounce their side of the board only or acting as a super Dismiss. I didn’t want to cut one of blue’s early game cards, and the weakest that costs five or more is definitely Sphinx. I can barely envision decks that would prefer Sphinx to Confluence in practice. Sphinx was not that great at being a finisher anyway though, and as a card advantage outlet, Confluence is far superior. When they’ll print a good finisher, I’ll find a cut for it.
In short, the color that least needed bombs got yet another one.
-Wake Thrasher, +Eldrazi Skyspawner
Blue decks are still control at least 70% of the time and cannot play Wake Thrasher. Skyspawner is not as strong aggressively but is universally playable. In control it blocks two creatures or blocks and ramps. Evasion is good against many board states. Tokens play well with Opposition and the ETB trigger in the color of Crystal Shard is abusable. Massive consistency upgrade.
-Hinder, +Deprive
The cube just got faster. Another 2cc hard counter will better address the threats blue decks face nowadays. Reanimator is not frightening anymore, there are much less recurring threats like Vengevine or Genesis to fear and the Memory Lapse mode, while winning some games before, doesn’t really fit counter heavy blue decks. Deprive has a tempo setback, but being a cheap hard counter is very appealing.
-Augur of Bolas, +Anticipate
Even decks with high instant and sorcery counts have hard time hitting with Augur of Bolas. Anticipate is a weaker Impulse, but Impulse is good enough that a weaker version might still be good enough. Its true Augur is there mostly for the body against aggressive decks, but when it is bad for the second consecutive time in a row, it is time to admit defeat.
-Waterfront Bouncer, +Sky Diamond
With a few signets getting cut due to the print of the new manlands, and more to get cut soon, their number fell a bit too low. It is known that blue is the main client for them. Basically, almost every blue deck would play Sky Diamond. Bouncer is a good card that is hard to play in practice and the playgroup doesn’t like it.
-Withdraw, +Silent Departure
Withdraw is conditional. It costs double blue, needs two targets and requires your opponent to tap out for full potential. When it works, it is a beating, but it is not consistent. Also, now we have Harbinger of the Tides which does basically the same thing. Silent Departure is a tempo card, mostly, but I wonder how playable it is in control decks, especially after sideboard.
Black
-Night's Whisper, +Mortuary Mire
An experiment. Whisper has a problem that no deck really needs it. Every deck likes some card advantage, but you usually need threats and answers more on the second turn, especially discard. Life loss in black adds fast, so it is sub-optimal against aggro. In aggressive decks, you will usually play it after your curve, in which case another threat, removal or simply a larger draw spell will usually do a better job, and again it is bad in the mirror. The card saw very little play. I like the utility lands so far. None of the spell lands were included yet, but Mire seems the strongest out of them. I hope it will be better than a swamp the vast majority of the time and will be maindecked.
-Bloodgift Demon, +Wretched Confluence
Bloodgift is a midrange only card. It is too expensive and slow as an aggro curve topper, control has no interest in a fragile body that doesn’t pass the Vindicate test, loses you life and sucks at defense. It is not even good in reanimator. The three black delvers just blow demon out of the water. Wretched Confluence is a card black midrange and control decks will play. It offers you a 3-for-1 in myriad ways. Killing small creatures is relevant and the raise dead can be occasionally useful. I think it close in powerlevel to Ob Nixilis Reignited. One of the two will probably be cut rather soon, when a better black five drop or slow utility card will be printed.
Red
-Tempt with Vengeance, +Fiery Confluence
Another red token theme remnant being cut. Confluence looks universally playable in red. Six damage to the dome is attractive to aggressive decks, Anger of the Gods is good for control, destroying artifacts is a life saver while needing to destroy two is not rare and dealing with planeswalkers on top of all that creates a card that will rarely not win the game or provide card advantage.
-Molten Vortex, +Magus of the Wheel
Vortex is another failed experiment. Magus is a serviceable three drop. It will usually beat down a little bit until it cannot any more, then it will quietly wait until the end of your opponent’s turn and will refuel your hand with burn to seal the game. You can do more novel things with it too. It’s a discard outlet, a draw engine and is splashable, but that is just gravy to a solid body with a scary effect that just demands an answer.
-Purphoros, God of the Forge, +Daretti, Scrap Savant
Daretti does not fit aggro at all, which is why I shied away from it until now. It obviously works in artifact decks and reanimator, but is good in any combo deck. Many cubes, large and small, had success with it so I want to try it out myself. Pulling specific archetypes in a large cube is difficult and there are relatively few artifact fatties. I’m not going all in on that archetype yet, so it is a high risk experiment. Purphoros can be safely taken out as a past experiment that failed. It might be back one day, if enough Pia and Kiran Nalaars are printed.
-Vaultbreaker, +Thunderbreak Regent
Red has increased its amount of three drops, including a brand new one in this update. Vaultbreaker is expensive and has a weak back. Regent as a 4/4 flier demands an answer, in which case getting a Lava Spike is good value. The main selling point is that while Regent is a good aggro curve topper it is also a good midrange card.
-Chandra Nalaar, +Roast
Chandra does basically what Roast does, but at more than twice the price, for leaving a planeswalker behind and hitting fliers. I think the trade-off is not worth it. Roast will at least be a solid sideboard card. It performs best against midrange, red’s worst matchup so it shores up a weakness.
-Twin Bolt, +Fire // Ice
The day finally came that a dividable burn spell is cut. It was often the worst card and missed maindecks. Not to mention the replacement is strictly better here. Fire//Ice is technically Izzet, but the blue parts is not relevant often enough so I ignore that.
-Ghitu Encampment, +Goblin Welder
Encampment doesn’t fit red well. It is an aggressive card, but aggressive decks don’t want a land that enters the battlefield tapped. It is good post wrath, but it gets outclassed way too easily and dies to anything. In many red aggressive decks, a mountain was better. Goblin Welder is another piece to support Daretti. It might enable crazy plays.
Green
-Nantuko Vigilante, +Frontier Siege
Vigilante is very redundant right now in green, with Ainok Survivalist especially tripping on its tows. Siege is of the better 4 mana ramp cards, as it gives you two back right away. After that, if you can split the mana, it gives you four back every turn, the best value for investment that can be found. I’m quite confident it will be a mainstay.
-Dragonlord Silumgar, +Tezzeret, Agent of Bolas
Stealing planeswalkers is novel, but dying to everything while leaving nothing behind is a big drawback, especially as decks that play it usually pack few creatures. Against some decks, especially aggro, there is nothing good to steal. In many cases Mind Control would have been better. Dimir decks usually have a few mana rocks for Tezzeret to play with and it really doesn’t require many artifacts for him to be solid.
Colorless
-Star Compass, +Thought Vessel
Yes, maximum hand size will rarely matter, but a 2cc stone that does not come into play tapped is a rarity. It is a card that would not be printed today in a standard legal set. Compass has consistency issues about granting colors and types of colors. It is by far the worst stone we play, but it still is probably a slight upgrade.
-Lightning Greaves, +Signal Pest
Lightning Greaves are weak for the second try. They are a support only card for very specific matchups. It would always be picked below the bread and butter of your deck, and lowering threat density against removal heavy control goes against your plan. A promise for a colorless one drop is exciting, and justifies some trial time. Pest does nothing alone, but plays well with decks that go wide and carries swords well. Many large cubes play it successfully, so it is worth a shot.
A small update mostly fixing a metagame issue in black.
White
-Revoke Existence, +Rout
White got many broad removals lately like Grasp of Fate that can hit every permanent type. The need for Disenchant effects is diminished, so just Disenchant and Seal of Cleansing suffice. Furthermore, most of the effects that hit every permanent exile anyway, so that utility is not lost. White needs another mass removal. Rout and Hallowed Burial are very close in powerlevel. Because white has Terminus, I prefer to go with Rout for the different effect (not to mention most white removals don’t send to the graveyard anyway).
Black
The cube’s metagame was a bit imbalanced. Midrange was a lot less played than control and aggro. Only green supported midrange, and that is too big of a burden to take for one color. Black, being distant third in both aggro and control, was underrepresented in winning decks. Black’s curve was extremely skewed to the bottom, with cards that don’t justify it. It is fine for black, as a third aggro color, to have lower aggro support for aggro by volume in favor of more midrange. The individual powerlevel of cards will rise up and hopefully the metagame will be more balanced.
-Diabolic Servitude, +Bloodline Keeper
There are a bit too many reanimation spells for the amount of other support available for reanimator. This is the durdliest. Right now midrange bodies get a priority. Bloodline Keeper is a common ground for all large cubes, it is among the best 4cc black creatures. Easy to answer, but can take over a game by its own, providing card advantage and evasive power.
-Vampire Interloper, +Desecration Demon
Interloper is a bad version of Mistral Charger. Blocking is relevant. Demon was played before, it is a serviceable card for all archetypes. It is not great on the defense but it is still far from dead.
-Mardu Skullhunter, +Abyssal Persecutor
Skullhunter is too conditional and slow. Persecutor provides another massive body for midrange. Killing him is usually not a problem, and your opponent cannot really afford keeping him alive for long anyway.
-Curse of Shallow Graves, +Bloodgift Demon
Curse does nothing alone, and in case an opponent has a 2/2 first striker or x/3 on the defense, doesn’t add much to your attack. The tokens come tapped, making the card do nothing the turn it comes into play. The stacks theme in black is not as deep as it used to be. Bloodgift is the best 5cc black drop I don’t play, welcome back.
-Fleshbag Marauder, +Gray Merchant of Asphodel
In order to balance the metagame, black midrange should have a favorable matchup against aggro. Enter Gary. Now with more midrange support it should be very playable. Black is aching for lifegain, and the ETB effect plays well with reanimation. Fleshbag is cute but unnecessary, the worst black three drop in such a stacked spot just had to go.
-Thrill-Kill Assassin, +Charcoal Diamond
Thrill-Kill is another dude that cannot block, a bottom card. Diamond is there to help black midrange and control that naturally lack any kind of acceleration. It is aided by the successful integration of Sky Diamond. I expect to cut Boros Signet and likely Golgari Signet in the next set when the new manlands come out, so more mana rocks are necessary.
-Gloom Surgeon, +Raven's Crime
Gloom Surgeon doesn’t die in combat, it just gets outclassed and blocked easily. Crime is a playable discard outlet for black reanimator (hopefully). Definitely the card with the lowest chances of success.
Colorless
-Oblivion Stone, +Memory Jar
O-Stone is just too slow nowadays. Memory Jar still enables broken plays sometimes, even if it not played every draft.
Oath of the Gatewatch is a weird case for cube. It was destined to be at least an average set on the merit of manlands alone, and it did deliver. Accompanying the new set is a medium-sized tweak: adding back mana rocks for some of the lost signets in the transition.
The most exciting thing about the set is the new colorless mana symbol. It bring new considerations to the draft table, and that is always welcomed. The cube currently has 66 sources of colorless mana, assuming fetching a lone Wastes in your deck counts and including fringe ones (to see them look in the appendix at the end of this update).
Obviously changes can be made to the mana base to make it more accommodating to colorless cards, but the amount of cards added that care about that type of mana is not meaningful enough to really affect fixing evaluation. That said, the Glacial Fortress and painlands cycle are close enough to begin with. If the colorless cards will prove to be a mainstay, or even increase in number, they will be swapped (Tendo Ice Bridge would be added too). Wastes were added to the basic land pool, and they are free for everyone to use.
-Raise the Alarm, +Seeker of the Way
Raise the Alarm is better than Gather the Townsfolk, but not by much. Seeker is the best two drop I have left out of the cube. It enables interesting plays, is relevant some of the time against the 3/3s of midrange and lifelink is relevant in the aggro mirror. Seeker could easily be kicked when a better two drop comes along, but next time it might be Mistral Charger or Precinct Captain who gets the axe.
-Angel of Serenity, +Linvala, the Preserver
Triple white is too difficult of a cost, as it has been in AoS’s first run. Linvala has a good cost for a control finisher with not a lot of competition. She is great when you are behind, instantly stabilizing you. The ETB effect is also good with blink and reanimation. When you are not behind, a 5/5 flier would still do the job and close the game neatly for you. Her weak spot is definitely the control mirror, or in midrange vs. control. She is still better than Archangel of Thune and Eternal Dragon so her place is safe in the cube for a while.
-Wall of Reverence, +Arashin Cleric
White four cc is stacked. The unnecessary cards there are getting slowly trimmed, with eyes closely on Cataclysm. Against aggro decks, you are not always alive long enough to cast Wall of Reverence. Arashin Cleric comes down in time to save the day. Also it has a much less binary effect. It is very good against aggro decks, but not so much so that it is game over like Wall is (with a creature with relevant power). Not to mention Arashin Cleric is good in the aggro mirror, when an aggro deck will not board in a 4cc hate card.
Arashin also has more synergies in white, with Flickerwisp, Eldrazi Displacer and Reveillark.
-Righteous Confluence, +Eldrazi Displacer
White has a lot of lifegain with its two drops and other midrange cards now. Confluence is just a low powered in every mode, the same logic that applies to Raise the Alarm applies here too with the 2/2 tokens on turn 5. Displacer is not very easy to activate, but will probably see some play due to the acceptable body. It has many functions. It is a token-killer. It can clear blockers out of the way. It can tap potential attackers. Finally it can abuse creature with ETB-effects. It might be worse than the next worst three drop, Silverblade Paladin, so unless achieving C is far more consistent than I think, it will be out soon. However it did overperform at the pre-release, I think it has potential to surprise.
Blue
-Silent Departure, +Spreading Seas
Silent Departure is too tempo centric. It might come back one day with more tempo support. Spreading Seas helps combating the new manlands, which are otherwise difficult for control decks to deal with. It is also good against other nonbasics such as Volrath's Stronghold, Library of Alexandria, Maze of Ith and more. It is good for randomly color-screwing opponents, especially aggro decks. I think this card will be quite solid.
-Daze, +Dimensional Infiltrator
I’ve decided to finally cut Force Spike, Mana Tithe and Daze in this update. They have been in the cube for yeas and they simply see little play. No one wants them to stay. The curves are not tight enough and they are way too often just dead cards. Infiltrator has a great body for tempo decks, which is admittedly not played here often. The flash is good as it allows you to keep up mana for counters. The ability is randomly good for protecting it from spot removals and your own mass removals. It makes him a repeatable chump blocker. It can slowly mill opponents in control decks. As a cherry on top, it nullifies tutors.
-Force Spike, +Negate
For the Force Spike cut, see Daze. Negate was recommended around here, and it is among the last cheap splashable counters I haven’t tried.
Black
-Bloodline Keeper, +Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet
Keeper had a really short time in the cube, but who would have thought such a new beast would get printed! Keeper is slow and fragile. Kalitas provides black control exactly what it needs – life gain on a durable body. Creating tokens is great with mass removals, and black has tons of spot removals. Especially cool with the likes of The Abyss. The exile ability can randomly be relevant too, say against Recurring Nightmare, or self-recurring threats (see in the Containment Priest swap in white).
My wish is to have enough lifegain so I could replay Read the Bones and Night's Whisper, to finally give black control its much needed card advantage.
-Nezumi Cutthroat, +Bearer of Silence
Cutthroat is fine but a bit low powered. There is a serious problem with how few black creatures cannot block, so I want to limit their number. Bearer is on worst-case nothing more than Vampire Interloper, which is about equal to Cutthroat. However, when the kicker will be active it will be far superior. An easy upgrade, really. It is not the bottom of the barrel for two drops yet, but could be in the very near future if providing wastes mana proves to be difficult. If not, this can be Nekrataal level good, or even better, which will make it nigh uncuttable.
-Lifebane Zombie, +Reaver Drone
The black three drop section is just too stacked, especially with double black costing cards. This warp had to be fixed. Drone is the worse black one drop with two power, but we still need them.
Red
-Bogardan Hellkite, +Chandra, Flamecaller
Hellkite is narrow still, and with new eldrazis cheating decks have more toys to play with. Chandra is great for ramp and control. She digs for answers rapidly, clears small armies and has her own built in win condition. I desperately try to make red non-aggro decks good, and ramp/control is the most consistent option.
-Chandra, Fire of Kaladesh, +Goblin Dark-Dwellers
Chandra is a bit scary in the red deck, but only if drawn and played early, and only if you are nearly mono red aggro. That is a bit too narrow and a bit too low powered to be worthy of a slot. She is a terrible topdeck, she is near useless if you have a slow draw, color screw screws you twice as hard with her in hand. Dark dwellers will on average just fetch a cheap burn spell, making it a bigger, evasive Flametongue Kavu. That is very fine for R/G ramp. However, in U/R decks, it can go really nuts with fetching Time Walk, Ancestral Recall and the like. A durable body, a potentially abusable ETB effect, seems like an all-around winner.
Green
-Woodland Bellower, +Oath of Nissa
Bellower has too few targets to fetch, and now we have Greenwarden of Murasa so the 6th drop slot is not as bad as before. Wtwlf has summarized everything perfectly about Oath of Nissa so I will just quote him:
Quote from wtwlf »
Let's assume we're playing a deck with 11-12 creatures, 1-2 planeswalkers (so 14 "hits"), 17 lands (also "hits"), and 8 other cards in a combination of instants, sorceries, artifacts and enchantments. I don't think that's an unreasonable skeleton for a typical green deck.
The opening hand contains an Oath of Nissa and a land that produces G (among 5 other random cards). That leaves a composition of 30 remaining "hits" from a random pool of 38 total other cards. Since the other 5 in the hand will be a random distribution of those 38 in the pool, these calculations will be based off 30/38 cards.
The chances of Oath = 3 "hits": 48.13%
The chances of Oath ≥ 2 "hits": 89.38%
The chances of Oath ≥ 1 "hits": 99.34%
The chances of Oath = 0 "hits": 00.66%
So what does that mean?
About half the time you cast this spell, it will select any of your top 3. That's incredible and puts it about on par with a green Preordain. Sometimes better because you can bottom both other cards, and see the 3rd before choosing; sometimes worse because you can't choose to top-top 2+ great draws.
Roughly 9/10 times, this card will be at least as good as Sleight of Hand, since you can choose 1 of 2 cards for one mana, which is fine. Sometimes better because you can bottom a 2nd unwanted card; sometimes worse because you won't be able to select certain spells from it.
Unfortunately, there will be times (~10%) where there will only be one card to pick from, and it's worse than being forced to cycle a spell at sorcery speed for G.
And then there's the catastrophic miss, which will happen slightly less than 1/100 iterations, but it can completely blank.
..........
Interesting. What do I do with that information? Would you play a green cantrip that ~90% of the time will be a hybrid of Sleight of Hand & Preordain? Probably, yes. Even with the ~10% chance of it being a bad cycler or ~1% complete blank? That makes it harder. But what else is there to consider?
The fact that it's an enchantment AND can bottom unwanted cards from the top of your library makes it interact positively with several cards in the cube. This includes commonly played cards like Kor Skyfisher, Flickerwisp, Venser, Shaper Savant, Brainstorm, Jace, the Mind Sculptor, Sylvan Library, Sensei's Divining Top, Scroll Rack, Smokestack and a handful of others. This certainly adds value, and decks containing any of these cards (especially in multiples) have ways to mitigate the ~11% chance of the card being less than a serviceable cantrip.
Additionally, the card fixes your mana for casting planeswalkers. Meh. It will occasionally be useful in functioning as a 2nd source of colored mana for that Liliana of the Veil, Koth of the Hammer or Elspeth, Knight-Errant in your final 40. But green decks are usually loaded with good options for mana fixing, and the effect is too inconsistent in this format to allow you to really stretch your mana just because you have it (unlike in constructed where a 4x Oath of Nissa can do some reliable things for your manabase). Randomly useful, but unreliable and I don't think it contributes as much to the value of the card as the interaction element does. It could randomly be great in a 4-5 color planeswalker control deck (which does come together sometimes) but simply having this one card in your deck won't allow you to bastardize your manabase.
-Oath of Druids, +Sylvan Advocate
Oath is a very narrow card. You need to have a fattie cheating deck with little to no mana critters, with your opponent playing his own critters. Advocate does a good Tarmogoyf impression. It has a much better worst case scenario, where the 2/3 vigilance body for two mana owns aggro decks. If you draw it later, or it just survives while you do the normal thing you would in a magic game, it grows to a respectable size. Cards like this are always a problem to control, as it can be dropped early before counter mana is up and is big enough to kill them. The land rider is not irrelevant with the full cycle of dual manlands, Treetop Village, Faerie Conclave, Mutavault, Mishra's Factory, Nissa, Worldwaker, Scatter to the Winds, Planar Outburst, Ruinous Path, Koth of the Hammer and Life // Death gaining relevant bonuses (20 cards!). I think it will have a permanent home in the green two drop section.
Multicolored
-Utter End, +Ayli, Eternal Pilgrim
Utter End costs too much for a simple 1-for-1 removal. It is playable in a lot of decks, but great in none. Very skippable in the colors with the best and most versatile removals. Ayli has large stats for her cost, is a sacrifice outlet and life gain source and her last ability will be rarely relevant but a fun achievement to unlock. Good in aggro decks and good against them, relevant against midrange too. What’s not to like?
-Boros Reckoner, +Reflector Mage
White and red three drops have gotten better. Reckoner has heavy color requirements, is good only in aggro decks and still not better than a large part of the monocolored options. Reflector Mage is very good in two scenarios: control decks on the defense and tempo deck on the offense. On the defense not only do you gain a lot of tempo, not only is it now acceptable to target a haste creature, not only is a 2/3 body much better than a 2/2 (Man-O'-War) against aggressive decks, but you can bounce a threat on one turn, then be up and ready to counter it by the next time they will be able to cast it. On the offense, it gets rid of a blocker for two turns – easily enough time to turn over a game.
Colorless
Because in the last two sets many signets were cut in favor of manlands, I wanted to add a few more generic mana stones back. To be honest I still feel the number of mana rocks is too low, so it is likely that in the near future I will decide to add the whole diamond cycle, the whole signet cycle or both. The low number of mana rocks makes it hard for control and midrange decks to compete.
For Mana Tithe, see Force Spike above.
Exclude is too narrow for a three mana counterspell. Countering the 4th turn play is usually key, with most planeswalkers and Armageddon coming down.
Confluence we admittedly didn’t have much experience with, but a black midrange card was cuttable and people in MTGS said it is worse than Ob Nixilis Reignited, and I don’t like him nearly enough to want inferiors.
Dragon Fodder is of the last remnants of the failed red tokens experiment. See Gather the Townsfolk in white.
Rancor has no home without green aggro, it saw little play for over a year.
+Reflecting Pool, +Kozilek, the Great Distortion, +Guardian Idol, +Star Compass, +Sphere of the Suns
Guardian Idol, Sphere of the Suns and Star Compass are needed mana rocks, see above for thorough explanation.
Reflecting pool gets a second chance after years. Now there are at least 15 more mana fixing lands in the cube than before, which improves it dramatically. The whole outlook on lands have changed from a roadblock preventing support for new archetype to cards that always see play, help players cast their cards and have fun, raise the overall powerlevel and differentiate cube from other limited formats. I have high hopes for it this time around. Having colorless costing cards only helps here.
Kozilek is scary when it comes down. Massive card advantage, hard to block and can counter opposing spells. I am very happy to have four eldrazis – the consistency is much needed for the super ramp deck. The double colorless in the casting cost is relevant but not too deterring. That is because by that late turn, the chances of drawing your colorless producers are high. Super ramp decks already played colorless producers, from Thran Dynamo to Mana Vault. Green has an easy time to fix colorless. Not to mention this Kozilek is actually reanimatable, and plays exactly the same with Channel, Eureka, Show and Tell and the like.
-Silver-Inlaid Dagger, +Captain's Claws
An upgrade. Claws are cheaper to move around, which is a major bonus for aggressive decks. It also virtually adds two points of power, but that increase is harder to block. Obviously good with anthems and the like. The token, if survives, can carry on the equipment the next turn. We have learnt from Sword of Body and Mind that that is a powerful combination.
-Signal Pest, +Metalworker
Pest too often just deals no damage to the opponent and dies to the next mass removal. It is so frustrating having him alone on the battlefield. Metalworker is a high risk experiment. High ceiling but requires A LOT of artifacts. It is probably scary enough to warrant immediate removal, which is a good sign.
Two-colored Fixing
Finally the manland cycle is complete! I will write it once here so I won’t have to repeat it for every individual card: increasing threat density for such a little cost while fixing your mana makes all of them playable. They are good for control decks that are often light in finishers, they’re good against mass removals and they’re a mana sink for when you run out of gas.
-Boros Signet, +Needle Spires
A signet doesn’t fit the color pair at all. Neither does an ETBT land, but it beats for four, and double strike has synergy with many white pump effects and equipments.
-Golgari Signet, +Hissing Quagmire
Green has a lot of ramp options itself. Quagmire will always trade with their best attacker, or punch through on the offense.
Appendix II: Watch list
The colorless theme could end up being much easier to manage and desirable than I currently speculate. If so, the most interesting cards are: Reality Smasher, Mirrorpool, Eldrazi Obligator Nissa, Voice of Zendikar also has a chance to surprise, as planeswalkers are harder to evaluate.
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The list on cube cobra
Read my blog on cube - Latest post June 2nd 2022
White
-Dictate of Heliod, +Jazal Goldmane
Dictate is a card that costs five and is purely a support card. If you have no creatures out, it does nothing. If you have only one or two, it's not worth its cost. Jazal has a solid body on its own, and if you have 3+ creatures his ability kills quickly. He is also pretty good on the defense. Jazal is also not great and I think it will be cut in the upcoming year.
-Fiend Hunter, +Hallowed Spiritkeeper
Fiend Hunter is a temporary solution. It is so easy to kill it, and that is especially worse against ETB creatures. Banisher Priest, having 2 power, is better in an aggressive deck. Both of them are not quite worth their restrictive cost. Spiritkeeper has a weak body, being 3/2 on the ground. That said, he is excellent against mass removals and great in a race situation. It will become better the longer the game goes. It's noteworthy it counts itself in the graveyard so it will always create at least one spirit token.
Blue
-Gilded Drake, +Treasure Cruise
Gilded Drake is only playable with bounce. That is too narrow, even if the effect is strong. Treasure Cruise can be a really cheap draw spell. Like Dig Through Time it will be great in the lategame. Unlike Dig, if it costs 5 or 4 it will be pretty terrible. Do graveyards fill often enough? I don't think so.
-Delver of Secrets, +Capsize
Capsize is not necessary or anything, but I really dislike Delver. Delver needs to have an aggressive deck with a lot of spells, and that is too much to ask for. Capsize is unnecessary, but is a serviceable spell. It will likely get cut again soon.
Black
-Despise, +Flesh Carver
Despise is the fourth one mana selective discard spell. It's true that every deck should have targets to hit, but not necessarily numerous and very often they will be the easiest cards for the black decks to answer anyway. When you have spot removal(s) + Despise, Despise is often very subpar. Hitting planeswalkers is better but also much rarer. Other discard spells can answer artifacts and enchantment or prevents instants and sorceries from happening, which are things otherwise black wouldn't be able to do.
Flesh Carver is really good. It's a splashable, evasive threat. It immediately replaces itself in the face of removal or Braids. It is a sacrifice outlet for abuse with recurring creatures like Bloodghast or Bloodsoaked Champion. Even one pump makes it a 4/4 intimidate that attacks on the fourth turn, that creates a 4/4 when it dies. Awesome.
I pondered cutting Xathrid Necromancer for Flesh Carver since it is so much worse, but they have great synergy and I need redundancy of sacrifice fodder in a large cube.
-Ob Nixilis, the Fallen, +Ob Nixilis of the Black Oath
Old ob is a good midrange win condition. What it doesn't do well is defending you, as it only blocks one creature. Furthermore, it's horrible without more lands. On the offense it's good, but having no evasion for the body is problematic. Overall it was a very cuttable card for years. The new Ob-Nixilis biggest selling point is that it doesn't die to a single removal spell. Having a 5/5 flier with the potential to create more is great. Against aggressive decks it's definitely at its worst, costing life and leaving something fragile behind. That said, it can block fliers, it immediately protects itself and because all the tokens have evasion it is very good at closing out games. The card is good in Wildfire or stacks shell. Control decks will have a very hard time if they try to answer each individual token. It hits most of the marks I could want in a black midrange card, I'm excited to have it.
-Diabolic Edict, +Malicious Affliction
With the rise of tokens and against aggro decks, Diabolic Edict is just worse than a spot removal most of the time. It's even not at its greatest against midrange decks, with all their mana elves. It is an out to Simic Sky Swallower and the like, but black still has plenty of edict effects with Chainer's Edict, Smallpox, Liliana of the Veil, Fleshbag Marauder, Consuming Vapors, Far//Away, and of course mass removals.
Malicious Affliction is at the worst case scenario a difficult to cast doom blade. When hitting morbid it becomes an unprecedentedly cheap two for one removal and tempo advantage. How to trigger morbid? Black has a few sacrifice outlets, from Braids, Cabal Minion to the new Flesh Carver. Creatures die in combat and to removals. I am not sure how often will you have both morbid AND two targets, but I am willing to try.
-Barter in Blood, +Crux of Fate
Know how you are getting stomped by four Lingering Souls tokens and wish you hope for mass removal? Or when you get beaten by a curve of one-two-three? Yeah, Barter in Blood doesn't deliver what you want from a mass removal. It doesn't target, but killing their worst two creatures is not a stabilizing effect a significant portion of the time.
Crux of Fate is a 5cc wrath. I'm cutting those from white. How so? Black simply has fewer options. Damnation and Toxic Deluge are better for sure. Black Sun's Zenith is also good, and I'd say stronger than Crux. After that, nothing. Mass removals are crucial for the formation of control decks, and I feel black control decks certainly need that help.
-Fledgling Djinn, +Mardu SKullhunter
Djinn is terrible in any kind of a race situation, and black has too many self damage inflicting cards, with the added Ob. Skullhunter can be a pretty reliable source of card advantage and the ETBT drawback is pretty negligible. If he was a bit stronger I'd not hesitate adding him. He is bad when you are behind but probably still way better than Mardu Skullhunter.
Green
-Troll Ascetic, +Song of the Dryads
Troll is a fine dude, but the color is not aggressive and he is awful on the defense. The regenerate costs too much and he dies to everything, including one drops. Song is a removal for any permanent, including creatures. You give a land in return but you do get a pseudo Oblivion Ring in a color without removals. It's splashable, powerful, what's not to like?
-Life from the Loam, +Fertile Ground
Life from the Loam loses a lot of value in a large cube when your fetches are much rarer. It isn't playable in the majority of deck and honestly, I've never seen a deck where it was a real bomb. I'm trying pushing a little land aura based ramp (inspiration from colby). Fertile Ground doesn't thin or activate landfall, but it does fix wonderfully. If you have more than two untapped lands it basically only costs one mana. Land boosts play very well with things that untap your lands like Garruk Wildspeaker, Nissa, Worldwaker, Time Spiral, Treachery, Koth of the Hammer and Arbor Elf.
The thing that makes me wary of this change is the amount of effects that can two-for-one you. There are few land destruction cards that are not global. Besides the four colorless lands, there is Avalanche Riders, Vindicate, Woodfall Primus, Terastodon, Karn Liberated and Plow Under. That said, Flickerwisp, Venser, Shaper Savant, Cryptic Command, Tamiyo, the Moon Sage and Ajani Vengeant hose it hard. It also dies to many more effects, from Pernicious Deed (nombo), Engineered Explosives, Oblivion Stone, Abrupt decay, Kami of Ancient Law, Naturalize, Oblivion ring etc.
-Growth Spasm, +Overgrowth
See above. Growth Spasm is pretty terrible compared to Cultivate. The one shot token is not worth costing one more than Rampant Growth.
-Craterhoof Behemoth, +Genesis Wave
Behemoth is the worst green superfattie by far. It doesn't help when you are behind. It isn't very good when you accelerate into it with mana elves. Genesis Wave can only be ramped into, and not cheated into play with Natural Order and Eureka, but it both has a higher ceiling and it's an exciting card. It's better when you are behind and doesn't care how you ramp into it. It probably begins to be good with X=5, so it costs about the same.
The list on cube cobra
Read my blog on cube - Latest post June 2nd 2022
Fate reforged was a great set for cube. Many cards are actually "overpowered" - they could be a lot worse and still make the cut!
WHITE
-Soltari Monk, +Mardu Woe-Reaper
The Soltari brothers are effective at what they do but they cost WW which limits their playability severely. They are no longer justifiable with the amount of new cards we get for white in each of the aggressive casting costs each set. The protections, while a definite positive and not something I exclude cards for, is a very random ability that varies a lot in performance. Against most of the field it's dead and against mono colored decks it's busted. Some amount of that is good, as I want there to be tools to keep those decks in check, and I don't want the performance of every card to be flat, but I could have less. I hope this change will promote white to join other colors in its aggro. Additionally it should bolster U/W tempo, which needs the aid.
Woe-Reaper is a better Savannah Lions so it's an auto include. Yes, the ability to hose Gravecrawler and the like is sweet as is gaining life, and there are warriors in the cube, making it one of the top white one drops. Even as a vanilla creature it would have made the cut.
-Soltari Priest, +Soulfire Grand Master
Grand master has a not-so-bad worst case scenario of being a 2/2 for two with lifelink. The second ability is great in Boros decks with all the burn spells. That would have been enough to make the cut. Then it has the ability to recur burn spells and even Time Walk, making it better. It's stronger than many two drops, including Seeker of the Way, Daring Skyjek and Nearheath Pilgrim. Also better than the next card I'm cutting.
-Kami of Ancient Law, +Monastery Mentor
Enchantment only removal is too narrow and not needed at this incarnation of the cube. White got lately so many versatile good removals it's hard to see situations where one board in the Kami and it is not very maindeckable.
Mentor is a bomb in the right deck. He makes an army all by himself, like Young Pyromancer. Unlike Pyro, he triggers off enchantments like Oblivion Ring, Glorious Anthem, equipments and planeswalkers. The tokens themselves have prowess and he has a splashable cost, making it easier for him to take a game.
White loses two two drops in order to diversify the curve, I think it is a positive change. Champion of the Parish didn't prove himself yet but I still need all the playable one drops I can get and this update includes many new humans for him to play with.
-Humility, +Wall of Reverence
Humility is not very effective. It slows down the game, but if two-three creatures beat you, you still die, you still need a mass removal. Then you have effectively rendered your creature finishers useless. Not to mention the terrible rules issues that card creates.
Wall is strong as a stabilizing force, being a huge air blocker and gaining you life. It is good against aggro, but should also be good against midrange and it is splashable. There is an issue that it hoses aggro a lot, but aggro decks are stronger than control decks currently and it doesn't feel stronger than Sulfuric Vortex or Armageddon against control. Black and white aggro decks have removals to deal with it, mono red will have trouble but I'm fine with that.
BLUE
-Evasive Action, +Delay
Blue wants more cheap counters but this is diving too far. Being situationally as good as Rune Snag is not a good place to be. With nonbasic lands, especially considering that those that enter the battlefield tapped are better played on the first turn, it was not consistent enough and the ceiling is not high. Delay is another cheap, splashable counter, the last one I will try. It is a tempo counter, but it might be what blue needs.
BLACK
-Dauthi Marauder, +Mardu Strike Leader
Not long ago we had a dearth of black three drops. The latest few sets gave us so many: Ophiomancer, Flesh Carver, Master of the Feast, Grim Haruspex and Xathrid Necromancer. I'm very happy to be cutting Marauder for a much better aggro card. One toughness means it dies to everything and it cannot even block. Serviceable but I'd rather cube without.
Leader provides card advantage with each attack. It lets you be offensive while leaving defense behind. The tokens go well with black's sacrifice theme as well as red token cards, Opposition, Skullclamp etc. Obviously, it already makes the cut. The Dash is surprisingly relevant, giving immediate pressure. This creature is good at forcing a wrath and at recovering from it. It can eternally dodge sorcery speed removal, it can shoot planeswalkers and leave a threat behind, what's not to like?
Note to wizards: now PLEASE print more black two drops! Three drops got enough love already!
-Desecration Demon, +Brutal Hordechief
Brutal Hordechief is a black aggro curve topper, something it lacks. The Hellrider trigger is a life gain effect in black, which is highly needed. Chief is Splashable. Yes, it makes the cut without the last ability. To be honest that ability is narrow. It requires you untapping with Chief with five mana, playing red or white not as a splash, and for each player to have board presence to matter. That said it WILL win games, so it's a nice cherry on top.
Desecration was a filler at the aggro curve topper spot. It has the opposite of evasion, a more difficult cost and it's soft to tokens while being close to nothing on the defense. Good riddance.
-Abyssal Persecutor, +Tasigur, the Golden Fang
Tasigur has a huge body compared to his cost. It will usually cost 2B or less, up to a single black mana. Dredge has multiples synergies with his second ability (which unlike previous cards is crucial for his cubeability ) limiting your opponent's choices and allowing you to cast and use it on the same turn. A good, repeatable card advantage engine while being a monster is awesome.
Tasigur will fulfill every role Persecutor ever could, being cheaper and more splashable. It better in aggro, midrange and control. Not to mention the demon is a bit narrow to begin with.
RED
-Devil's Play, +Alesha, Who Smiles at Death
Devil's Play is a card very few decks actively want. Red already has enough midrange support cards and enough X cards. It was consistently a very late pick.
Alesha's body is a good enough reason to play her. After all I play Splatter Thug. First strike makes her a potent attacking force at that stage of the game. But she gets significantly better from here, with her off color trigger doing wonders in aggro decks, with all the aggro color combinations my cube supports. In black it goes well with the sacrifice theme, in white it is another Reveillark effect. Yes she doesn't check converted mana costs, only power.
-Hell's Thunder, +Feldon of the Third Path
Thunder is a slow unsplashable player burn. It's true it usually goes for eight damage or four and a card (either a chump block or removal). It shines against permission. Then, permission decks are a lot weaker now and for aggro decks it's sometimes a problem to get to five mana. It's hard to justify it's inclusion over a more versatile burn or a permanent threat.
Feldon is a combo card. It's great with ETB creatures, and great in re animator. Red has a low number of discard outlets, from Faithless Looting to Dack Fayden. It's such a unique effect and so many players had success with it that I have to try it.
-Chandra's Phoenix, +Goblin Heelcutter
Phoenix has a hard cost which it doesn't justify. Yes it has evasion and haste, but only two power make it not impressive on the turn you cast it. It rarely if ever returned from the graveyard and it's bad defensively. For a heavy red burn deck it's fine but that's too narrow for a three drop. I have enough cards that do that better like Shrine of Burning Rage.
Goblin Heelcutter represents a lot of sudden damage if you cast it him in dash mode. Again, dashing him repeatedly means no sorcery speed removal will kill him and it effectively nullifies a blocker. The option to hard cast him looks less appealing but it gives a decent aggressive creature if you have the time and mana, say after a mass removal.
In order to enforce the red token theme, I've decided to include the three red cheap token makers. I'm not sure if they are strong enough, but I'd rather give the package a real chance. Three cards is real redundancy, the kind needed for a large cube. On the flip side there were a few cards I really wanted to kick out of the red section. Many large cubes like them, I hope I will too.
As a refreshment, in red the other token producers are Siege-Gang Commander, Mogg War Marshal and Tempt with Vengeance. Cards that care about them include Purphoros, God of the Forge, Hellrider, Hero of Oxid Ridge, Goblin Bushwhacker, Goblin Rabblemaster and Siege-Gang Commander. It might be possible to include Goblin Bombardment too at some point.
-Rift Bolt, +Hordeling Outburst
Rift bolt has two very subpar modes. As a burn spell it does see play sometimes in red burn decks, but otherwise it is the first burn spell not to make it in the main deck. I think there are enough tools for red burn decks here and not enough creatures.
-Altac Bloodseeker, +Dragon Fodder
Bloodseeker is too inconsistent and was too often a Goblin Piker to be worth it.
-Mogis's Warhound, +Krenko's Command
Warhound was the weakest of the remaining two drops as it is weak as a two drop or on an empty board, unplayable in anything not hardcore aggro and it feels like kind of a trap to play it. Also, dies to Disenchant.
GREEN
-Primal Command, +Whisperwood Elemental
Primal command is a good utility card, but sometimes I find my midrange decks lacking for threats. Green has many creature tutors already, and while the other modes are good they don't compare to the board presence of a five drop.
Whisperwood Elemental provides six power spread over two bodies, continues to generate more for free and even protects some of it against mass removals. Hitting your other fatties with the manifest will end games quickly, although it is relatively uncommon. It is probably among the bottom two five drops, but it will serve for now.
-Civic Wayfinder, +Yasova Dragonclaw
Wayfinder virtually finds a home in every deck, but the fact is green three drops are becoming more potent and better catered to the different decks. There is a limit to how many three drops green can support, so the weaker ones has to get kicked out. I did not think this day would come so soon, but Wayfinder, his brother and Phyrexian Rager will all get cut soon. I wanted to cut Nantuko Vigilante, but Dragons of Tarkir has enough appealing morphs that I don't want to take any existing ones out just yet. Yasova has an aggressive body and an ability that can be lethal in many board states. I don't support green aggro but I believe it's strong enough as a multicolored midrange card to make the cut.
-Mayor of Avabruck, +Devoted Druid
Druid got in and out of the cube. It's still among the weakest two drops, but it is better in ramp, which is what green tries to do. Aggro in green is not supported so Mayor becomes a weird situational hate against passive control decks and a card X/g can play, but very few decks will be thrilled to. It just fits better the composition of green in the cube.
ARTIFACT
-Blightsteel Colossus, +Ugin, the Spirit Dragon
The colorless section became too top heavy. Blightsteel is of the narrower ones, his main two appeals are being a third eldrazi and being a Tinker target. Having synergy with one other card in a large cube doesn't pull much weight, and I believe there are still enough tinker targets, especially now with two new six drops. Ugin is the bombness, a different sort of colorless mass removal that will probably win the game if you cast it. It's not as easy to cheat, not being a creature or an artifact. It works with Channel, Eureka and the plain old super ramp. It's a LOT better in ramp and super ramp though, costing three less, being harder to answer and rescuing you from almost any situation.
MULTICOLORED
-Simic Sky Swallower, +Warden of the First Tree
SSS is a worse version of a card already existing in the guild. It is a ramp target, but now the cube has a lot of colorless cards that fit that role. It is a Natural Order target, but I prefer NO targets to be in green and not a guild - requiring both two colors and a specific cheat card is really narrow.
Warden is an aggressive card, but I believe it to be stellar in midrange as well. Yes it starts to attack for three from turn two, but it also gains you life and infinite pumps are a great mana sink on a trample body. Selesnya and Golgari will have a hard time cutting it.
The list on cube cobra
Read my blog on cube - Latest post June 2nd 2022
This set brought us morph. Many cubes include morphs as a theme. The more morphs you play, the better they all become, as your opponent has to guess and play around more scenarios. However, even if I include every half decent morph, in a large cube it is just a drop in the sea. That's why I try to include only the morphs that are good on themselves. I did not include any of the older morph cards. The only card which could be considered an exception is Nantuko Vigilante, which was already in the cube, but would probably not survive the update if this set did not have many morph creatures. Now I think it gained just enough value to outdo Uktabi Orangutan.
For reference, the morphs I've played before this update are: Exalted Angel, Sagu Mauler, Blistering Firecat, Nantuko Vigilante and Rattleclaw Mystic.
White
-Decree of Justice, +Secure the Wastes
Decree was most often used in cycling mode. In most often I mean around 90% of the time. That mode is really great in the control mirror, as it evades permission, is an instant so it does not leave you tapped out and it demand a mass removal on its own. Nowadays, when aggro and midrange decks are stronger, and many control decks don't rely on permission, it's not optimal. As a ramp/control finisher we now have Entreat the Angels (which is also not the best, btw). I was looking to replace it for some time now.
Secure doesn't give you a card, but gives you two more tokens. It's a boon for aggro and token decks. End of their turn, make tokens, alpha strike. It's also great against aggressive decks. You can play it before declaring blockers, kill a bunch of guys and chump others. It's great in white with many mass pump effects, black's sacrificial theme and red's token theme. And yes, it's still great as a finisher in the control mirror.
I might want to dip a little more into white's token cards, with Raise the Alarm, Gather the Townsfolk and so on to increase the synergies stated above. The presence of this card certainly pulls me in this direction.
-Banisher Priest, +Hidden Dragonslayer
Banisher Priest suffers the same fate of his brother, Fiend Hunter. The double white in the cost is restrictive, the removal is very temporary and the body is not impressive.
Dragonslayer offers a lot of utility. The two drop option is not exciting, but it is better than not playing a two drop should you need it. It will be most often used to megamorph, which is a good deal. Most decks will have targets to it, except some very aggressive decks or very creature light planeswalker based control decks. Killing a creature and leaving behind a three power lifelinker is quite impressive, and ironically very good against aggro. I think it’s a card both fast and slow decks would like and the card advantage here is hopefully solid and not too conditional.
-Knight of Glory, +Dragon Hunter
White has a bit too many two drops. Knight of Glory might not be objectively the worst two drop, but it's among the bottom three. White, and the whole cube, is headed in the direction of going wide and not tall. The 2/1 body with no combat abilities dies to anything, trades down, dies to dividable burn or tokens and doesn't offer much in return in the form of evasion. The protection is more random than reliable. White has like 15 better two drops in the cube easily. Hunter is a solid one drop; I still need a lot of these so I'm happy they are seeing print. The cube doesn't have a lot of dragons, but for reference: Eternal Dragon, Keiga, the Tide Star (hopefully will not be there for long), Sarkhan, the Dragonspeaker, Thundermaw Hellkite and after this update also Dragonlord Atarka and Dragonlord Silumgar.
Black
-Phyrexian Rager, +Pitiless Horde
Black three drops have exploded recently and the trend continues. I feel it's kind of a milestone - a basic two for one for one for three mana with little impact on the board doesn't cut it in the cube anymore! Pitiless Horde is a very aggressive card. The lifeloss is real, so I believe it will be dashed quite often. That said, five points of power on turn three demand an answer or it takes over games, especially if paired with black removals.
-Wretched Anurid, +Blood-Chin Rager
Cutting Wretched Anurid is another milestone for me, black finally has enough good aggressive two drops that I don't have to run embarrassing cards. Anurid loses a lot of life. Since it comes early in the curve, you usually play a few more creatures after him. Then your opponent usually plays a bunch. God forbid if either one of you has a token producer. Talking about nonbos with Bitterblossom. Anurid was especially bad in the aggro mirror, since it loses you so much life.
Rager has a good form of evasion, a decently sized body and it can block, a rarity among black's two drops. It grants a bonus to all your warriors. This update alone adds five warriors o the cube, with black having nine others and they all cost 4 or less, so I expect that to be somewhat relevant.
-Xathrid Necromancer, +Liliana, Heretical Healer
Black's three drops are getting great. Xathrid has a subpar body for cost, and there are not that many humans. Usually it was just a strictly worse Flesh Carver, and did not offer much Wrath protection or sacrifice shenanigans. It had a hard time making it to the maindeck.
Liliana works well with blacks sacrifice themes. She has a useful lifelink body in black and great potential. It's interesting she is a planeswalker you can reanimate. I'm not sure if she is very consistent but she is probably still strong enough to see play. I start having a concern with too many black three drops costing 1BB, if another one of those gets printed I will ship out Liliana's Specter.
-Knight of Infamy, +Silumgar Assassin
Black's two drops are increasing in quality too. Knight of Infamy gets cut for the same reasons as Knight of Glory. Silumgar Assassin would make it in without his megamorph ability, having decent evasion, an ability to block and no drawback which is instantly better than Vampire Interloper and Nezumi Cutthroat. But the Megamorph ability is the real deal, gaining card advantage and resulting in a medium threat. This form of removal should have plenty of targets in any deck.
Red
-Pillar of Flame, +Twin Bolt
Pillar is the worst burn spell. It would still make it into heavy aggro decks if you don't have enough burn, and into burn decks, but midrange and control decks won't touch it with a stick. It is slow and can only kill small creatures. The other upside is occasionally great, but not common enough to be the saving grace of this card. Twin Bolt is basically the Fire part of Fire//Ice, a card that sees regular play in decks without access to blue. Dividable burn is great for decks of all theaters at creating card and board advantage. It's a natural solution against tokens. Red has a lot of dividable burn now, it's a great tool for allowing red control to grow without hurting red aggro much.
-Whipflare, +Goblin Bombardment
Speaking of which I've realized red has too many sweepers. With the amount of dividable burn it just isn't necessary; the weaker ones could safely be cut. Bombardment is included as another support tool for red tokens, alongside the recent update. It is good in many situations, for example against mass removals. Some creatures go into the graveyard anyway, like Keldon Marauders and Hellspark Elemental. If you don't want to pay Echo costs of Avalanche Riders, Mogg Fanatic and Keldon Vandals, you can squeeze extra value. You can also sacrifice your chump blockers and you nullify Control Magic effects. You can sacrifice what you have stolen with Zealous Conscripts. Killing small creatures with it and finishing players is only the beginning though, as the sacrifice outlet is great in black, for example with the new Liliana.
The obvious problem is that it is unplayable in decks with a low creature count and dead on an empty board. I hope the synergies this card has will be worth running it.
-Stonewright, +Zurgo Bellstriker
I am trying to lessen the tendency of red to go mono-colored. A few tools are good, but not too many. Stonewright is a weak one drop, it basically was a placeholder until better one drops will come. Stonewright requires another creature and access to a lot of red mana to do something. Zurgo is confidently the second best red one drop in the cube, being large, nearly drawbackless and having a dash mode in the late game. Dash is good for alpha striking, killing planeswalkers and avoiding sorcery speed removals.
-Kruin Striker, +Ire Shaman
Red two drops have also increased in quality a lot lately, so much so that I can start to upgrade them instead of cutting them. Kruin Striker is bad if you cannot follow up with creatures, and a really bad two drop to topdeck. Three red two drops now have three power unconditionally, and more toughness too. Ire Shaman has the same evasion ability as Stormblood Berserker, which we know is good. It basically means it will always trade with something; a single token will never kill it. The orc's megamorph mode, besides giving you a good evasive body, is basically card draw and it is very cheap.
-Ashmouth Hound, +Kolaghan Aspirant
This is basically a creature type change. Being human is good for Falkenrath Aristocrat and Champion of the Parish (but worse against Stromkirk Noble) while being warrior is good for Mardu Woe-Reaper and the new Blood-Chin Rager. It is now officially the worst red two drop in the cube though.
Green
-Thornling, +Foe-Razer Regent
I wanted another green super fattie. The ramp and super ramp decks should have incentives to get into them. Foe-razer is big flier which is nonexistent in green, and is a green removal. The problem is it sucks if your opponent does not have something it can kill. I wonder how often that will happen. I'm not sure if it is better than Pelakka Wurm of not, but one of the two is the worst green fattie right now.
Thornling is the worst green five drop. It really plays like a card costing 3GGG though, so it's not a stretch to cut for a less green heavy seven drop. You have to invest a lot of mana in it, and it isn't as good as the other fatties when you are behind.
-Deglamer, +Ainok Survivalist
My original plan was to cut Nantuko Vigilante, but with the morph theme I think it becomes a bit better, enough to prefer it to the instant. Survivalist is basically better though as the unmorphed body is much better to the cost. Survivalist can never kill your stuff in mistake (now it can force them to sacrifice their Memory Jar when you want even if you have Sylvan Library on board), but can also never kill your Mana Crypt or Bitterblossom on purpose, so that part is a neutral change.
-Uktabi Orangutan, +Shaman of the Forgotten Ways
With two morph disenchants, I don't think green has space for that many shattering two drops. Viridian Shaman is better for the fringe case of synergy with Joraga Treespeaker. Shaman is better than Somberwald Sage, for while it provides less mana it has three points of toughness so it doesn't die nearly as easily. The two points of power mean it can fend off small threats or attack itself, when you don't have a creature to accelerate into. Not being able to cast Tooth and Nail and Genesis Wave with it is bad, but I want to test it out.
-Borderland Ranger, +Den Protector
Ranger gets cut shortly after its brother Civic Wayfinder. Green three drops are better now, and Borderland Ranger is always playable but never great or necessary for any deck, and there is a limit to how many green three drops green can have. Den Protector has a good aggressive body, which is a good option to have, especially with Rancor or an equipment. The Regrowth with a body, however, is why I include it and I expect it to be great.
-Deadbridge Goliath, +Surrak, the Hunt Caller
Surrak has a good body for his cost, and his ability only requires three more points of power on your board for him to be active. That means a considerable amount of time when you will play him on turn four he will immediately bash for five. Not so much so on turn three, but he will also give haste to all your next fatties, and green's fatties have the best use for haste. He is one of the better four drops to topdeck as well. He is nice to fetch together with an eldrazi via Tooth and Nail.
The question was what to take out. I don't like to have both Chameleon Colossus and Phantom Centaur as a protection from black four drop. Colossus is a bit weaker against burn perhaps, but having that fourth toughness is huge. Centaur can kill large creatures and survive, and also becomes unkillable with equipments. Chameleon is stronger as it is a fast clock and a great mana sink for the late game. But the biggest difference is that Centaur actually dies if creatures chump block him, wears down on the defense and small pings quickly kill him or weaken him enough to render him useless.
That said, I think Goliath is even worse. Goliath usually dies to a removal spell. The scavenge mode is nice to have, but it's almost always a win more - you need to have a creature out, six mana, and be able to afford to pump a single threat instead of adding another one, or interacting with your opponents board. Phantom Centaur has interactions with Reveillark, Imperial Recruiters, Alesha, Kalonian Hydra and it survives all of red's mass removals, so even if it is roughly in the same powerlevel it is a much more interesting card. That said he might be taken out very soon, as he is the weakest green four drop now.
Multicolored
-Loxodon Smiter, +Kolaghan's Command
Smiter is a good card, but it is just vanilla. It is efficient, but green white usually plays midrange and would rather play ramp at three into beefier targets. Selesnya has the most cards of all the guilds in the cube, so I try to balance it a little. Kolaghan's Command has six modes of creating card advantage at instant speed. Playable Shatter variants are always in high demand. The usual mode will probably be shatter + shock to a creature, with discard replacing either in the lack of targets. Raise Dead is also useful to bring back a killed Dark Confidant or a Hero of Oxid Ridge at the end of turn, and it can even burn the face. It's likely the second best Rakdos card after Cackling Fiend.
-Far//Away, +Dragonlord Silumgar
Far and Away is just a too expensive at what it does. I like the utility, but no deck will play it without access to both colors of mana, and all modes are too fair. Even in Dimir decks, black's spot removals usually make the maindeck before it. Dragonlord draws an obvious comparison to Sower of Temptation. It is more expensive but has a better, more resilient body, both because he has a higher toughness and because he is black. But the real draw here is the ability to steal planeswalkers, and games.
-Firespout, +Dragonlord Atarka
Red has too many sweepers, see above for Whipflare. I've wanted a good ramp target for R/G for a while now, and Dragonlord Atarka is the perfect one. Huge evasive body for the cost, and an excellent stabilizing ability against every deck in the field and guaranteed amount of value even if it dies to removal - what's not to like? She works very well when cheated into play, say with Sneak Attack or Eureka, benefits from haste, which both colors have ways of granting and she is a good reanimation and blink target if you delve into a third color.
The list on cube cobra
Read my blog on cube - Latest post June 2nd 2022
White
-Hallowed Burial, +End Hostilities
There are almost no removals in white that send to the graveyard. They either exile or are enchantment based. Burial is exactly the same as (but worse than) Terminus. Killing an equipment once in a blue moon is not exciting and it is still the worst white mass removal, but I still think its better.
-Ranger of Eos, +Ojutai Exemplars
The quality one drop targets are few and far between, and even in decks with them the card is merely good, not great or insane - not enough payoff. Exemplars are good in both aggro and control decks, a rare quality. In a deck with enough spells, it's a legitimate finisher that can protect itself, mess combat math, has "evasion" via tap and is good on the defense too. It obviously requires enough spell, so it's a test run now. I'm not thrilled to add another 2WW creature, but the 3W options are really lackluster.
Blue
-Broken Ambitions, +Talrand, Sky Summoner
I've tried to find more playable counters. Broken Ambitions is not one of them. It does make the maindeck sometimes, but it's never good. Talrand I have never tried before and I see it did pass the test of time in many cube so I'm trying it too. Spells matters has more support now than ever before, with Monastery Mentor and Ojutai Exemplars. It's a serviceable win condition if you can protect it and have enough instants and sorceries.
-Gush, +Withdraw
Gush is just too narrow and not strong enough. I'd rather have a draw spell, even in tempo decks. This is limited after all; you have high drops and things to do with your mana. Withdraw should be a good card for tempo decks and good for control decks against aggro - and they need the help. Double blue is tough but costs the same as the hard counters, so if you keep mana up for them anyway you have another option.
Black
-Makeshift Mannequin, +Murderous Cut
Makeshift Mannaquin is an instant reanimation spell, but it costs four mana. The drawback means that it cannot reliably serve as a finisher, and more as a value spell. Diabolic Servitude is better at that. Draw-go decks are less common now so the instant speed matters less, and ever since I have lessened the support of reanimator, I felt like I have one reanimation spell too many.
On the other hand, I think black needs slightly more spot removals. I decided I'd rather test a new card over those I have tried before. Cut can kill anything, a point in its favor, and every black deck will probably include it, but it might cost too much on average to be really worth a slot.
-Reassembling Skeleton, +Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
Skeleton is too dependent on synergies to do anything. Even decks that have ways to abuse him sometimes draw it without them. It's bad on turn two and is also usually a bad topdeck. Urborg is not a powerful card, but will always make the maindeck and honestly my black section is big enough to include it easily. Its not going to be a high pick ever, but you are never sad to have it if you are black. I also don't foresee it getting cut from the cube, ever. It just increases the amount of maindeckable drafted cards, reduces the amount of hand you will have to mulligan and allows you to play more cards, more often in your deck. A big point in its favor is that is also good in aggro.
Multicolored
-Murderous Redcap, +Dragonlord Ojutai
Redcap just loses out to the hard competition at CMC4, a competitive mana cost in black, red and the rest of the cube. It doesn't often make the cut due to that insane competition. W/U could use another cheap finisher, and Ojutai has evasion, card advantage and is a reasonable clock. Blue should be able to protect it the turn it attacks. White has many five drops, and both colors have many four drops, so it might not stand in the competition but it deserves a chance.
Fixing
I've noticed some of the green mana stones are having a hard time making it into maindecks due to the abundance of green 2cc acceleration. More lands would increase the number of playable cards and solidify mana bases. I wanted to cut some artifact mana but not too much - it's better to be cautions here, as cutting too much could really throw off the archetype balance in the cube. Blue rocks are still highly playable and sought after, but all the rest are arguably expandable. Luckily, enemy colors just don't have 8 good fixing options, so Golgari, Orzhov and Boros signets has to stay for now. Three rocks are going out, the question was just what to put in.
-Talisman of Impulse, +Grove of the Burnwillows
Grove is pretty akin to a painland, but in the pair of ramp decks, giving your opponents life is pretty negligible. Points in its favor for being a unique land in the cube and not another piece in a cycle.
-Selesnya Signet, +Razorverge Thicket
I think the fastlands are in general better than the Wooded Bastion cycle. In many games it will not have a drawback, you can split the mana between phases and it's better for splashes.
-Gruul Signet, +Fire-lit Thicket
It's not just an irrational love for thickets; in Gruul I think it is better than Copperline Gorge. The color is a slower ramp than G/W, in which topdecking a land that enters the battlefield tapped as your seventh source to cast that fattie is terrible. Also, G/R decks are usually heavy on the colored mana, with usually multiple cards with doubles of each color and occasionally triple greens as well (Genesis Wave, Pelakka Wurm).
The list on cube cobra
Read my blog on cube - Latest post June 2nd 2022
White
-Entreat the Angels, +Angel of Serenity
Both cards are control finishers, but AoS can also be cheated into play via reanimation, Sneak Attack, Eureka etc. The bad thing about AoS is the triple white, and the fact that it dies too easily to be a reliable finisher, but Entreat was rarely miracled anyway. Looking at some of the white control decks from the last drafts, they would happily play AoS over Entreat. Midrange would vastly prefer a creature, though it is not a top ramp target.
-Champion of the Parish, +Karakas
There are just way too few humans for Champion to be worth it. Even worse, in a large cube it is harder for the amount of humans to be high consistently in every eight man draft. Champion is not simply weaker with a low count of humans; it is flat out unplayable.
Karakas is a card with low power and maximal playability. I think a large cube can afford that. I am going dwell on those points in length below, but first I want to support those statements.
Every white player will maindeck Karakas. It is a land that has no drawback and an extra ability over a plains. The only possible issue is being nonbasic, making it destroyable by Wasteland and Tectonic Edge. This is pretty easy to ignore, as besides the two being mere two cards out of 720, that is assuming there is no better nonbasic land on your side of the table, which can mean that either Karakas is bad in this matchup and the nonbasic land hate will be sided out in the remaining games of the match, or it is strong in the matchup, profit. The drawback is close to nonexistent.
It will never be a high pick. There are only 35 cards in the cube which it affects, which will average around two cards per player. This is actually quite good if we assume they all see play all the time. It is an unrealistic assumption though. Yet even if we do, Thassa and Purphoros will rarely be affected by Karakas anyway. It is worth noting that Khans block alone gave us nine new targets, making Karakas a lot more playable than before.
What does it do? It's pretty clear that if a card does nothing, it has no place in the cube. I'm not considering Eiganjo Castle, after all. Obviously it hoses opposing legendary creatures. It is one of the only answers in the cube to a second turn Channel into Ulamog, it's only a pity most of the other answers are white as well. Blanking Sheoldred, Jazal Goldmane and even Rofellos can win games, especially for a drawbackless card that doesn't require a spell slot in the deck.
The legendaries it is not good against, it is good with. Buybacking Venser, Shaper Savant, Vendilion Clique and even fatties like Dragonlord Atarka can be savage. Even for legends without ETB abilities, protection from removal spells for as long as the land is untapped is great. Against certain forms of removals, like Control Magic, Faith's Fetters or Dungeon Geists it works even if draw Karakas later in the game. Karakas works well with mass removals - you can bounce the legend then wrath the board. Karakas allows you to bash for four per turn with Geist of Saint Traft even if your opponent has a ground blocker.
Karakas can even be a niche engine, especially with the cheap legends Isamaru and Zurgo. It works well with them and Iterative Analysis or Purphoros.
Overall, it has enough of an impact of the game to both sides of the table, enables plays and engines while answering other difficult threats that it is worth considering.
There is no doubt it is too narrow to be worth his effect, if not for the fact it comes for free. I think that in a large cube at least, it is a good thing to improve the quality of the decks and the amount of playable cards. Currently I feel my quotas for every effect in white is full - e.g. I don't need more white two drop or more mass removals. I don't have another card I want to experiment with or a new theme I want to introduce right now. I feel that any card I include at this stage is doomed to both be a really low pick that will see play little play (the sixth white mass removal spell might might make it in a white control deck if not enough mass removals were drafted by the white control player - once every three drafts maybe) and is doomed to be replaced by the next cube update. Karakas is guaranteed to see play all the time and is unlikely to be replaced.
Second, I play all the conspiracies and love how they play - even the low powered ones are pure gain and add to the power of the decks. Recently Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth was added and I really like that card too.
Furthermore, I think it is creates a good feeling for the drafters, the more of the drafted cards they are using.
In a small way, it is also a skill tester. After all, it is always better to have Karakas than your 25th best card for the maindeck, and during the draft it is not always easy to pass something splashy for this small gain.
Finally, I like the feeling cards like these create - it further differentiates cube from other forms of limited and the small edges and synergies are a great spice to the draft.
The giant wall of text above is not only to defend a controversial choice, but also kind of a prelude as I try to look into more cards in this vein in the near future.
Blue
-Chasm Skulker, +Stratus Dancer
Chasm Skulker is slow and chump blockable. Most of the time it grows by a mere counter a turn, and he is a mere 2/2 by his first attack. That doesn't cut it. I don't like Stratus Dancer much at all, being able to cast Negate is not the best megamorph trigger, but it is still better for blue tempo decks. It is natural card advantage, and the best time to ever try it is probably now with the high morph count.
Black
-Liliana's Specter, +Sidisi, Undead Vizier
Black had exploded in the three drop slot and now has too many, especially ones that cost 1BB. Specter is by far the weakest. Sidisi is a midrange card, something black doesn't have a lot of, but she is also good in control if you have a few cheap dudes. The 4/6 deathtouch body is a serious roadblock, and a tutor on legs that can be blinked and reanimated is ripe for abuse. I don't think it's better than any existing black five drop, but I might as well test it.
Red
-Ember Swallower, -Wildfire, -Burning of Xinye
Red was trying to do too many things: Aggro, burn, tokens, control and wildfire. It gets too crowded. Wildfire was hard to assemble in a large cube - there is not enough redundancy. Ember Swallower helps in that regard but it's just a weak card in a deck not dedicated to that, and it's weaker than both wildfires. For example, tokens is a theme that is gaining stronger and stronger cards from each set, while it is very unlikely that Wizards will print any playable wildfire variants anytime soon. It is time to let that small combo like package go, after years of trying it.
In their wake I am currently adding three new cards, two for tokens and one for ramp, generally belonging to the same theater as wildfire did. There are two possible packages to try in red, but I do not think they are supportable in a large cube. If tokens fails, at least one will be tried. They are (they have overlaps):
Artifacts (Goblin Welder, Daretti, Scrap Savant, Bosh, Iron Golem etc)
Reanimator (Through the Breach, Firestorm etc)
+Stoke the Flames
Stoke is a versatile burn spell which is very good with tokens. Four once upon a time was a hard threshold to pass - creature with toughness four or more were virtually immune to red spells. That is not true anymore, with Sarkhan, the Dragonspeaker, Chandra Nalaar, Char, Flametongue Kavu, Mizzium Mortars, Flame Slash and to some extent Brimstone Volley and Fireblast providing answers for sturdy creatures within red. However Stoke can do that and go to the face at instant speed. The only real downside is how unsplashable it is.
+Shaman of the Great Hunt
I'm not sure a four drop is what the red section wants, but this is a versatile creature. It is not the best curvetopper in aggro, due to the fact it dies to everything, but it is good in serving that role especially considering it is so splashable. His second ability makes him shine in token decks, which I'm trying to push in red. The activated ability is a great mana sink in R/G ramp decks, and U/R tempo decks. His versatility is great, but I still fear his weak back end might prevent him from attacking favorably a bit too often. If the token theme in red is cut, his future is in immediate danger.
+Bogardan Hellkite
A ramp, reanimation and Sneak Attack target that is great when you are behind and when you are ahead, shoots planeswalkers and multiple creatures and is probably the best creature to blink in the entire cube.
Colorless
-Perilous Myr, +Ratchet Bomb
Both artifacts cost two and are anti aggro cards. Perilous Myr is on the weak side. Many two drops nowadays have evasion, and your opponent can usually just go into it one-for one with most beaters. Bomb dropped on turn two can get one and two drops quite easily. Bomb can explode all tokens, regardless of size, which is a growing theme that demands answers. Bomb gives black and red some answer to enchantments (Sylvan Library, Survival of the Fittest etc.) and answers Hexproof creatures. However, it is very slow at what it does and gets progressively worse the later you draw it. Myr also gets progressively bad the later you draw it though, and as a hoser against aggro it is not too big of a strike. I'm testing the waters here, and if Bomb is good enough Powder Keg will also probably come in. I think it should be fairly common to generate card advantage with it.
Guild Fixing
-Simic Growth Chamber, +Temple of Mystery
-Izzet Boilerworks, +Temple of Epiphany
The temples are just a lot better at accommodating splashes. Bouncelands have the drawback of succumbing to land destruction, bounce (Venser, Cryptic Command etc.) and Flickerwisp. Temples, OTOH are synergistic with Flickerwisp. I think this is the final nail in the coffin for bouncelands and they will not be coming back ever, in partial or full form.
The list on cube cobra
Read my blog on cube - Latest post June 2nd 2022
White
-Ghostly Prison, +Oust
Ghostly Prison is a bit of a trap card. The only deck it is really good against is tokens, which doesn't need hosing - in fact I'm trying to encourage it. The turn you play it is a wasted turn, in which your opponent will likely just bash with the 1-2 creatures he owns. It actually promotes your opponent not to overextend. The mana is rarely relevant enough to really screw your opponent up and it gives him choices. Also importantly, it doesn't protect your planeswalkers. Both versions are getting cut in this update.
Oust is a tempo card that is mostly good in control against aggro. It's a cheap answer we have never played before, so that is already a good enough reason to try it. It kills tokens and you can even play it on own creature to gain some life and regain the ETB effect. ETBs also double as the card's secret weakness.
-Daring Skyjek, +Raise the Alarm
-Loyal Cathar, +Gather the Townsfolk
The pair of two mana token producers is better than the worst two drops, especially when they are followed up by Mirror Entity, Soltari Champion or Spear of Heliod. Of course, in white there are more anthem effects higher up the curve, like Ajani Goldmane. They also provide two chump blockers and are good against edict effects, but what pushed them in the cube for now is the small spells matter theme having a foothold in white (Monastery Mentor, Ojutai Exemplars, Seeker of the Way).
Skyjek is mostly a vanilla that dies to everything, against an empty board it is good but that's pretty much it. Loyal Cathar is card advantage and mass removal protection; however it is stopped by 3/3s and up. It gets progressively worse as the game goes on, but is hard to cast on the first turn. It's important to mention it is not a must-answer threat by any means like Precinct Captain, so many decks will just ignore it until their fattie comes. All in all it would have been a superb card if not for that difficult casting cost.
-Kor Sanctifiers, +Revoke Existence
Sanctifiers is card advantage, but the four drop is competitive and the 2/3 body isn't impressive. The unsplashable cost is a hit too. The ability is not so easy to abuse as other ETB effects. The combined high cost and white demands make it an answer that is not reliably quick, and that form of removal is too situational to be considered solid card advantage for a four drop. Revoke is the next best Disenchant effect. It gets rid of Purphoros, God of the Forge, Wurmcoil Engine, now also Epochrasite and in general avoids shenanigans with reanimation and Regrowth. It is the worst such effect, but I'm upping the number of answers to artifacts in all colors right now so until something better comes along, it will stay.
Blue
-Propaganda, +Sleight of Hand
For propaganda, see Ghostly Prison. I was very skeptic adding Serum Visions - it reads much worse than the trio of Brainstorm, Ponder and Preordain. However, it is a huge success and basically every blue deck plays it. Control decks want something to do on the first turn, it's never bad to topdeck this and I think the spells matters cards (like Talrand) want another one of these. Sleight appears very close in power level to Serum Visions, so I am carefully optimistic.
-Fettergeist, +Thought Courier
Fettergeist is not good in tempo decks, but it has a tempo body. It's a good blocker, if you have no other creatures. And that is too narrow and not very powerful anyway.
The cube has three looters: Looter Il-Kor, Enclave Cryptologist and Merfolk Looter. That is a low density of looters for a large cube. All but the most aggressive blue decks will play it. It feeds delve, helps enable reanimation decks and shenanigans, and advances your game plan on your way to more lands/counters/finishers. It is also a human rather than a merfolk, which is more interactive.
-Capsize, +Riftwing Cloudskate
Blue's curve was too high, blue needs a bit more action at the lower spots of the curve. Capsize was in the cube and cut before, it is obviously a filler. It's decent in both modes. The recurring bounce is not bad, but is not game winning at all. Threats nowadays are cheap and draw go decks are scarce. The low version of it is bad with the double blue. The card only fits control decks. I'd much rather have a real finisher if able.
Cloudskate is good in tempo shells as both a turn two play and a curve topper. Cloudskate has a lot of synergy in the cube, from Waterfront Bouncer and Crystal Shard to Reveillark, Flickerwisp, Imperial Recruiters and Whip of Erebos. I believe it will see wide play as it is also decent against aggro decks.
Black
-Tragic Slip, +Slaughter Pact
Tragic Slip is not reliable enough, especially for control decks with few creatures. Consistency is one of the most valued aspects of removals. We now have Malicious Affliction that treads on the same space, but with a solid floor and much higher ceiling. Slaughter Pact is probably around the power level of Murderous Cut. It has cute interactions with draw spells, Yawgmoth's Will, Talrand, Sky Summoner, dodging counterspells and more. I'm not sure if it is the weakest or second weakest black spot removal spell right now.
Red
I found out the cube is lacking in artifact destruction cards, especially cheap ones. The problem is more profound in red. White has the most maindeckable answers, in Oblivion Ring, Banishing Light, Council's Judgment, Faith's Fetters, Unexpectedly Absent and more. So in white I've merely replaced an expensive removal with a cheaper one, to increase the number of answers for Sol Ring, Jitte and Winter Orb. Red has three two drops that destroy artifacts, that are highly playable, as well as two three drops. But out of 97 cards, that's too few. I'm including two more pieces, both cost two or less and I believe are the best of the bunch out there. Perhaps red will need even more than that.
-Goblin Bushwhacker, +Smash to Smithereens
Bushwhacker is a conflicted card. It's a two drop that you want to play late, with board presence. It's not terrible, but it is just too narrow with both a difficult cost and a very low ceiling in an empty board. Obviously as a one drop it is worth next to nothing.
Smash is one of the best of the shatter effects, as it allows you to keep the pressure while answering cards. In red aggressive decks this can be as good as card advantage. Many cubes have success with the card. I just hope players will maindeck it and not leave it to rot in sideboards.
-Pyroclasm, +Ingot Chewer
Red has too many mass removals, with two earthquakes, Mizzium Mortars, Bonfire of the Damned and Sudden Demise. Pyroclasm is also outclassed by most dividable damage burn spells, from Forked Bolt to Arc Trail, even in control decks. It had a very low maindeck percentage. Chewer is perhaps the cheapest destruction out there, and it doubles as a late game creature. It throws itself to the graveyard for easy reanimation in case you will need it, and the creature form can be bounced and blinked to eternity.
Green
Green has the highest amount cards that destroy artifacts and enchantments by far. However, most of them are not cheap, and I find out a bit more is needed. Orangutan was missed.
-Wild Mongrel, +Uktabi Orangutan
Green doesn't do aggro, therefore Mongrel is essentially a discard outlet. A very good one that does serious work in B/G reanimator, but that is such a narrow description, especially since now reanimator is not as supported as before.
Multicolored
-Sorin, Solemn Visitor, +Edric, Spymaster of Trest
Orzhov now had the most cards per any guild, with simic the lowest. Second Sorin is okay, but it is just a midrange four drop at the end of the day, and not a special one at that. Edric suffers a bit in this cube, as green doesn't feature aggro and blue is not heavy on the tempo side. However tempo has becomes big enough that I cannot ignore the card's potential anymore. It is a unique effect, provides card advantage cheaply and blue tempo decks will splash for it. It's not difficult to imagine situations in which the spymaster takes over the game.
Artifact
-Razormane Masticore, +Epochrasite
Masticore is an anti aggro control card at heart. But not every game against aggro will get to turn five, and fatties across all colors are better. Epochrasite is a small road block, but it is better at filling the same role. It returns after your mass removal, is cute with and against Smokestack cards in black and combos with Flickerwisp. I don't think Epochrasite is great though, but I hope to be proved wrong.
Classification Change
Since green doesn't support aggro, putting Dryad Militant and Tattermunge Maniac in the multicolored section is not accurate. No green deck will play them (unless it also plays the other color obviously). Yasova Dragonclaw is not really playable in any standard green deck, only in R/G midrange or U/G midrange. It's a multicolored card. It might be argued that other cards in this cycle have the same quality. Alesha, Who Smiles at Death is certainly playable without her ability, probably so it Tasigur, the Golden Fang. Soulfire Grand Master is good with blue, green and red, making it essentially playable in almost every white deck anyway. However I will be keeping an eye over them so don't be surprised to see another change in this vein.
Multicolored: -Dryad Militant, -Tattermunge Maniac, +Yasova Dragonclaw, +Knight of the Reliquary
Knight was the next best Selesnya card. It ramps, it thins, and it fetches specialty lands all day while getting fat, for a cheap price. It is still the worst Selesnya card in the cube probably, but that still will probably give the knight at least one year.
White: -Calciderm, +Dryad Militant
There are too many four drops in white, especially aggro curve toppers, with two Armageddons and three planeswalkers in addition to the creatures. Calciderm can just be chumped until it dies away, cannot be equipped, and is terrible on the defense. I simply don't think it will be missed.
Red: -Kolaghan Aspirant, +Tattermunge Maniac
We knew it would be filler from day one. Red likes its one drops.
Green: -Yasova Dragonclaw, +Skyshroud Claim
Green is very good at ramping. However for some reason I've never tried the ramp versions at four. We have plenty of ramp at three, super ramps at five as well, but four needs to be tested as well. I prefer Claim to Explosive Vegetation, as the two forests come untapped, being better for ramp chains, and it also fetches duals.
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White
-Ojutai Exemplars, +Cataclysm
I agree it is weird that I cut Exemplars, while (semi-) trying to bolster the spells matter archetype during the last update, but it is just the weakest four drop that I care the least about. As an aggro card it is weaker than the card I am including, I do not want to cut a token support card (Ajani Steadfast), and all the other midrange/control four drops are better. Exemplars are a fine card, but is far from impressive. Cataclysm is a really strong boost for aggressive decks in white, so the next swap will empower control. You usually drop Cataclysm after a three drop, and that is usually enough to carry the game. It kills planeswalkers and keeps your equipment alive. It requires more work than Armageddon probably, but is playable by a few more decks and redundancy is key.
-Sacred Mesa, +Timely Reinforcements
Sacred Mesa is a permission control vs. control finisher. If you have enough mana, it is inevitable you will win the game. But it is expensive, does nothing before reaching four mana and nothing relevant until six. Tap out control would rather use something quicker, and counter heavy decks don't need their own finisher in white (counter heavy decks can still win with a Sun Titan just fine, it works fine the other way around). In general in control the problem of surviving until the late game is much more apparent than finding finishers in white, so Timely Reinforcements would fix that. It can be too narrow, which would kill it, but I am hopeful. About hating aggro, I don't think it's as offensive as something like Armageddon and control needs that help.
-Syndic of Tithes, +Kytheon, Hero of Akros
Syndic is a solid card, but it's the worst white two drop now. It is mana intensive and bad without follow up. It's worse than Seeker of the Way, the second worst white two drop by a bit. Kytheon is crazy good. The front side on its own would be the best aggressive white one drop ever printed. The activated ability to make it indestructible is expensive, but gives him late game relevance and allows him to survive long enough to flip. Having three attackers is easy. The flip side is obviously awesome, as it protects you, your creature and itself while gaining loyalty, bashing for 4 every turn after, deterring attackers if you are behind and prevents you from overextending.
Blue
-Riftwing Cloudskate, +Prognostic Sphinx
Cloudskate is too low impact for a five drop. Both modes are middleground, and it is not that effective when you are losing, we've found out.
Blue has very few five drops. Sphinx has survived the test of time in many cubes. It has a huge butt, removal protection, evasion and scry 3 is a serious deal. It's an enormous card quality engine that can win games.
-Talrand, Sky Summoner, +Temporal Mastery
This change is mostly happening due to the disappointment from Talrand. The four drop in blue is exploding. Talrand is good if you untap with it in a spell heavy deck, and that is too narrow. It is not good in general control, not so hot in general tempo even. It almost always dies to removal, or is a win more once you play it in the late game with a grip full of cards where any finisher would do, and probably do better.
I was looking for an exciting blue card and found none. In general Miracle is not so strong in cube. However it is the strongest in blue, with Brainstorm, Ponder, Preordain, Mystical Tutor, Personal Tutor, Jace the Mind Sculptor, Omenspeaker, Condescend and more. In addition to that, this is virtually a miracle you would always pay for, unlike Terminus. There is a chance this card will play out great, so it's better than to try a card I know will be low tier.
Black
-Smallpox, +Despise
Smallpox is a bit too narrow for a large cube. I had to decide between it and Sinkhole, but I think Sinkhole is a bit better. Black needs less BB cards and more answers. The truth is, one mana discard spells are too good. Planeswalkers are increasing in number and despise is almost guaranteed to find a target against every deck.
Red
-Splatter Thug, +Vaultbreaker
Red starts to have reasonable three drops! Thug got very outclassed when Alesha got printed. It's terrible on the defense, making it one of the worst three drops later in the game, and while acceptable he is not a great follow up for an aggressive start. Vaultbreaker is. Dash is a great ability in cube. I've written why before, but I'll repeat shortly. It makes Vaultbreaker a massively better topdeck, especially as it immediately dig for another burn spell or value card. Repeated dashing, btw, due to the loot effect, is a good way to have an edge in longer games. It dodges all sorcery speed removals, including Wrath of God, Oblivion Ring, Consuming Vapors and all planeswalker abilities. Dash is good at killing planeswalkers. Especially as a three drop, that will usually follow a one drop and two drop, it allows you to advance your game without overcommitting. Dash is also great with Purphoros, God of the Forge.
The 4/2 body will die to anything, which prevents Vaultbreaker from being a great card. But on the other hand, if you hardcast him he will trade with anything on the defense. In testing I've compared the two cards and Vaultbreaker was vastly superior. It can still be the worst three drop, depending how well Hordeling Outburst will perform, but it is likely superior to Shaman of the Great Hunt so I predict it will stay for at least a few months.
Colorless
-Grand Coliseum, +Powder Keg
It's time to admit - Coliseum is just a worse vivid. An on-color vivid produces a color, and fixes twice pain-free. An off-color vivd still fixes twice pain free, while able to produce "colorless". When a whole cycle is better than you, and that cycle isn't a high pick to begin with, it's time to say goodbye. Coliseum had low maindeck percentages and never failed to table.
I'm so happy with Ratchet Bomb, having another one in the cube makes me happy. Besides answering tokens really well, it is just a generally good turn two play against aggro. It kills moxen, and gives all colors answers to troublesome cards, like Bitterblossom, Jitte, Skullclamp, Sol Ring, Survival and so many more.
-Soul of New Phyrexia, +Triskelion
Soul is not good without the activated ability, and that ability is expensive. Triskelion got much better recently due to the composition of the cube. Now there are a lot more token cards it can kill with his Arc Lightning. Unlike soul, you get that Arc Lightning if he gets a removal immediately. It can attack for seven if you need to finish the deal, is better on the defense, and is a good target for blink/bounce/reanimation. Again, as a one power creature it plays well with Imperial Recruiters and Reveillark.
It is still a bit low impact on an empty board or against control, so it is still a placeholder IMO.
The list on cube cobra
Read my blog on cube - Latest post June 2nd 2022
Grand Colesium is not a worse Vivid. It's better than Vivids. I think this is a bad move.
Rest looks good!
Cheers,
rant
My Cube
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Yeah, I wasn't clear on that point... spells matters was a failed experiment. In general building synergy specific decks in a large cube is hard, this was just one more instance of that. The archetype needs more inherently powerful cards to be supportable in 720 from what I've found. After all, you cannot build a deck with 20 spells and only Talrand (and the chance to get two such effects is rather low).
About Coliseum - care to elaborate?
Thanks for commenting!
The list on cube cobra
Read my blog on cube - Latest post June 2nd 2022
My 630 Card Powered Cube
My Article - "Cube Design Philosophy"
My Article - "Mana Short: A study in limited resource management."
My 50th Set (P)review - Discusses my top 20 Cube cards from OTJ!
Cheers,
rant
My Cube
CubeCobra: https://cubecobra.com/cube/overview/5f5d0310ed602310515d4c32
Cube Tutor: http://cubetutor.com/viewcube/1963
Liliana and Kytheon were already included before, both are great. The rest of the planeswalker cycle is also added, but it is unlikely all of it would survive in the long term.
White
-Seeker of the Way, +Relic Seeker
The monk had forsaken his spiritual path in his quest for worldly glory. Today's society is materialistic and the cards should reflect that! Seeker of the Way is the worst two drop in white. In a creature heavy deck it is nearly a Glory Seeker, and heavy spells matters decks are both rare and don't really want a low drop beater. Relic Seeker offers potential for card advantage. It is a creature you absolutely must prevent connecting, and costs only two mana. Equipments in the cube are broken a lot of times, as we know from Stoneforge Mystic. It also grows to be a 3/3, a perfectly reasonable card for all aggressive decks in white with at least one equipment.
Blue
-Thassa, god of the Sea, +Jace, Vryn's Prodigy
Blue has too many three drops, and Jace basically does what Thassa does but better. Thassa had trouble reaching devotion and the unblockable part, while good is usually win more, as creature stalls are rare in this cube. Jace is a looter early and a card advantage machine late. It protects itself, lets you replay broken cards and is good early and late game. It is very easy to flip, evident from how easy it is to play Treasure Cruise and Dig Through Time. It can even do shenanigans like block and then flip. An awesome blue two drop, that is probably better than all looters but Looter Il-Kor so it will have a long lifespan in cube.
-Dungeon Geists, +Whirler Rogue
Geists is too fragile on the defense, so it mostly an offensive curvetopper. Blue has too many four drops and it is easily the worst of them. Whirler provides four power for four mana, spread over three bodies. It is better on the defense, as it can block three creatures and usually trade with at least two of them (and yes, it doesn't die to a single Lightning Bolt). On the offense, it attacks for more damage than geist and in the turn it enters the battlefield it can immediately make one creature unblockable. Note that it taps any artifact, not just the tokens. After that, it has an abusable ETB effect, which blue has ways to reuse, such as Crystal Shard. Finally it is a great combo card with Opposition. It is hard to imagine when you will not want this; possibly in control mirrors. It is still an easy include, however.
-Spell Pierce, +Harbinger of the Tides
Spell Pierce is too narrow. It costs only one mana, but Rune Snag is bad enough, even though it is much less restrictive. Control needs tools against aggro, and Harbinger is one of them. Getting a tempo advantage and trading with a body is great for two mana. Against ramp it will often hit a mana elf. The four mana mode is very relevant if you leave mana open for counters anyway, it is a great combat trick later in the game. All in all it fills a needed hole so I expect it to stick in the cube for a long time.
-Temporal Mastery, +Thought Scour
Mastery is narrow, and certainly not worth the full price. Blue decks that want 1cc cantrip will play every one of them they can get. Thought Scour got more mileage recently for several reasons. First, the amount of delve cards in blue and black rose significantly. In this set we also have micro Jace that will love this card. Secondly, the new mulligan rule allows the player who took a mulligan to scry 1. By milling the top card on the first turn, you get a huge advantage.
I assume you'd play this card as soon as your curve allows, but there is still relevance to the fact that it hoses tutors, scry effects and the like.
Black
-Profane Command, +Gurmag Angler
Profane Command is too expensive and color intensive for what it does. It is a two for one for decks with cheap creatures, but another threat or more efficient removal is almost always better than it. I know people love it here, but it underperformed consistently here for years. Angler is a card we want to test. It is worse than Tasigur, but the delve mechanic in general is very successful here. Gurmag will be a cheap monster later in the game. It had success across various formats, I hope it will translate to cube as well.
-Crux of Fate, +Languish
A simple upgrade. I do play some five mana mass removals in white, but they all have an additional upside and white has less ways to kill creatures. Needless to say, they are also on the bottom shelf of white cards. Languish is one of the better mass removals, much better than Black Sun's Zenith for comparison. It wipes boards clean at turn four, and many of the high toughness creatures in cube are black, from Tasigur to the reanimation targets and Dragonlord Silumgar, so it could be a selective mass removal. I do not expect this to ever leave the cube.
-Sidisi, Undead Vizier, +Priest of the Blood Rite
Sidisi is very very bad in an empty board. Finding a body to sacrifice was not always easy. For aggressive decks she is too expensive and slow. Control decks don't have the needed creature density. She was only good in B/G decks, and even there not amazing. Priest offers tremendous 7 power for five mana. The body is small enough for Alesha, Imperial Recruiter and Reveillark and is abusable in black with Recurring Nightmare and all forms of reanimation. Of we venture out of black, it is a best friend with bounce and blink effects.
-Disfigure, +Diabolic Edict
Disfigure is at best against aggro, or mana elves. It is very underwhelming in later stages in the game however, as those creature lose importance and you are facing bigger threats. Against control, it is usually pretty bad (it can kill looters or a random Ophiomancer, so it's not dead just conditional). Diabolic Edict does most of these things without the weaknesses. Against aggro decks Edict is at his worst, yet playing this on turn two is still quite good. They will sacrifice their one drop and keep their two drop in the worst case scenario, but that is almost as good as Disfigure, for one more mana. If they had a start with an equipment, or turn one discard or something else, they will be equal. Edict will still kill mana elves. However, facing a single big threat, it provides an out to all fatties, including control finishers, reanimated threats or whatnot, including Hexproof. It is a bit less efficient against small creatures but has more versatility, while still being a good foil to aggressive strategies.
-Carrion Feeder, +Despoiler of Souls
Carrion Feeder is not worth a slot in a deck on his lonesome. It is a sacrifice outlet, but without serious ways to abuse it, the payoff of having a big ground creature that cannot block is not big enough. It doesn't protect creatures against mass removals. As a one drop it is unexciting. It's super bad after a mass removal or in creature light draws. It is a card I was constantly disappointed to see. Despoiler is a solid two drop for the aggro deck. It is great to play before a mass removal, and in general creates card advantage. I don't think it will be recurred twice a game in any reasonable frequency, but even if it only happens once, the card has done its job. The two biggest drawbacks are tokens, which pretty much nullify him, and the heavy black cost. Black has a bit too many heavy black cards at the two and three mana slots. I'm looking to cut Sinkhole soon to ease that up a little. Despoiler will probably go when we get another solid BB card, but testing might prove otherwise.
Red
Red sees a decrease in the token support department. Tokens have been here a long time and did not prove themselves. On the other hand, we got plenty of inclusions for aggro and mono red aggro. Red still needs some diversification, especially in the mono-red tendency, but I don't have a solution to that problem right now.
-Kargan Dragonlord, +Chandra, Fire of Kaladesh
Dragonlord is slow, needs a mono red deck and still dies to spot removals. There are too many cards that push red decks to be good only in heavy red decks. I want to diversify aggro decks, so I'm not increasing their number. Chandra should be easy to flip, as an attack + a red spell does the job, as do two red spells. If she transforms she does a lot of damage. The question is will it be consistent enough.
Yes, she is of the worst part of her cycle. She will probably not stay in the cube for long. But she has potential, so she merits testing.
-Chandra, Pyromaster, +Pia and Kiran Nalaar
Pyromaster was a serviceable yet slow curvetopper in aggro. Her card advantage ability is not very fitting for control. She was pretty good in a planeswalker control deck, but that is narrow. She is the worst of the red four drops, or the most unnecessary one, depending how you look at it.
Pia and Kiran are a mini Siege-Gang Commander. They provide four power across three bodies, two of which have evasion. The targeted burn is great against small creatures and planeswalkers. It combos so well with other cards in the cube, from blink, bounce and reanimation effects, through Alesha, Imperial Recruiter and Reveillark and ending in Purphoros and token decks. To boot it can also throw away other artifact you have, like now useless mana rocks, empty Tangle Wires and so on. Overall a very versatile card, with good face value, A+.
-Searing Blaze, +Exquisite Firecraft
Most red decks are aggressive. In those decks hitting a land in the same turn as you need the burn spell is not so easy, with most of them packing only 16, but especially since now red is encouraging you to loot extra lands with Vaultbreaker, Faithless Looting and Molten Vortex. The double red is also a problem and the instant speed is nearly fictional. Requiring a creature to shoot is also a drawback, especially when you need to shoot a planeswalker. 4 damage for three mana is solid. The spell mastery is not hard to achieve in burn decks, but is not very relevant as counter based control is such a good matchup for burn decks. It will kill Glen Elendra Archmage though, and killing planeswalkers in G/R midrange will be good.
I'm not sure if it is the worst burn spell in the cube, or Brimstone Volley is. Depending on how many good burn spells will be printed, this could be out of the cube very quickly.
-Mogg War Marshal, +Abbot of Keral Keep
Some of the token support cards in red are getting cut. Red is not white, there are not as many ways to abuse tokens and this set was very generous to red. Marshal is unplayable in regular aggro or control decks, so as a synergy-only card it is certainly narrow and not strong enough. Abbot is fine on turn two and better in the late game. The monk is card advantage for red, with versatility. In red aggressive decks, almost everything is cheap making the hit rate of the ability very high.
-Hordeling Outburst, +Scab-Clan Berserker
Outburst on his lonesome is subpar. Costing double red limits his usefulness in white token decks. Unless you have heavy synergy it is a very lacking three drop. Berserker will be used in aggro decks, which are the vast majority of red decks anyway. It will have an easy time to connect and activate itself. It is a decent topdeck due to haste. If the ground is not free it does nothing, and it will trade with any bear, so I don't expect it to be great, but it's better suited to what red does.
-Goblin Bombardment, +Molten Vortex
Yes, a regular burn spell is better than Bombardment. Vortex in an aggressive deck can discard a decent number of lands. It makes every spell you draw gas, combos with Wheel of Fortune and the draw sevens, and increases your reach dramatically and cheaply. It might also be worse than a regular burn spell, but I'm optimistic.
-Legion Loyalist, +Goblin Glory Chaser
Loyalist has a 1/1 body which is simply unimpressive. Even aggressive decks didn't maindeck him. Glory Chaser on turn one is a good card. No other one drop has both two power and evasion. It's comparable to Stromkirk Noble, and that's a good place to be in.
-Soul of Shandalar, +Stormbreath Dragon
Dragon was here before and it was a better performer. Having haste and evasion made it have a lot more impact on the turn it comes into play. Protection from white made it more reliable. Both cards explode when you get to untap with them with mana. Soul has a really nice synergy with haste granting effects in red, like Sneak Attack, Generator Servant and Lightning Mauler, but having haste organically is still better.
Green
-Shaman of Forgotten Ways, +Nissa, Vastwood Seer
Both cards are very similar. Shaman provides more ramp, but only for creatures. It has a bigger body, but if it dies you get nothing. Nissa can be a simple two for one against aggro in a pinch, but is much better in the late game. Repeatable card advantage and a returning 4/4 will be important against midrange's toughest matchup - control. In every other matchup she is mediocre (but still playable), but control is such an uphill battle she is probably needed.
-Phantom Centaur, +Collected Company
Centaur fades away too often. It is bad against tokens and random blockers. Red decks can often kill it, or simply ignore it. It has shenanigans with equipments etc, but is ultimately too bad in both offense and defense. Green has too many four drops, and usually old centaur was left in the sideboard, except against black decks. Collected Company is attractive due to the potential card advantage at instant speed. It is good against mass removals, and is splashable. The drawback is obviously the low hit rate in a deck with a low number of cheap drops. Overall it is worth testing.
-Curse of Predation, +Nissa's Pilgrimage
Green aggro is not supported. Curse is a good card but does not have a deck. Pilgrimage is a third version of Cultivate. Yes, it is worse as it doesn't fix mana. Fetching three lands in the late game does not make up for that, but it does improve your draws by quite a bit. Overall it might be better than Krosan Tusker or might be the worst ramp spell at 3cc.
Colorless
-Aether Searcher, +Sword of the Animist
Before anyone jumps, I do like Searcher. I think it is a good creature to cheat or curvetop with, and it always plays differently which I appreciate. But no one else here does. It was last pick several times, and over several months few wanted to play it. I do notice the number of artifact fatties dropped, making it harder to play Tinker. I'm keeping an eye on that.
Sword provides card advantage and repeatable ramp and fixing. It is not so much of an aggro card, but is great at midrange. The number of equipments in a large cube is low; it is only fitting to up it with the addition of Relic Seeker.
The list on cube cobra
Read my blog on cube - Latest post June 2nd 2022
White
-Timely Reinforcements, +Kor Haven
Reinforcements does its job really well, but nothing but that. It is destined to be a sideboard card forever, and has no use outside of specific matchups. Kor Haven takes a land slot during dekbuilding, which increases the number of playables in your draft (or in the cube). It will see play in midrange white decks as well as control, and has uses against midrange and control and not just as a foil against aggro. Haven is a card I haven't tried yet but many cubes have played it successfully. In summary, it's a less powerful effect that has far broader applications.
-Spirit of the Labyrinth, +Consul's Lieutenant
Spirit is a simple 3/1 for 1W 95% of the time. The drawback can hurt you, and being an enchantment creature is more often a drawback than a boon. It is the worst white two drop.
Consul's Lieutenant is so very close to Precinct Captain. It has equal damage output against an empty board by its lonesome until the third attack, and much better if you have any other aggro cards lying around. On the off side, it cannot play both offense and defense. Both cards are so close I've decided to keep them both in for now. White can have two WW drops out of 97 cards.
-Elspeth Tirel, +Increasing Devotion
Elspeth needs three turns to get to the token amount of devotion. The lifegain is negligible and if you are so far behind you need a mass removal, you probably cannot afford to let her get up to six loyalty. Devotion is much better in immediate defense, and it buys you enough time to get to the ultimate. Two Elspeths are enough.
Blue
-Kira, Great Glass-Spinner, +Academy Ruins
Kira is a difficult to cast creature for tempo decks, which are usually light on blue. The body is unimpressive and the ability backfires with equipment, while your team still dies to mass removals, removals in response or double removals. Now that the artifact section has both Powder Keg and Ratchet Bomb, there are five recurable mass removals with this land. In addition it fetches back Tangle Wire and your killed win-condition. It is a bit narrow, but we had success so far with increasing the number of lands with abilities in the cube, so it's worth a shot.
Black
-Hypnotic Specter, +Lifebane Zombie
Hyppie was a good fella. Hyppie needs to connect to do anything, it attacks for less and doesn't exile. Zombie will sometimes provide immediate card advantage, and while not always, looking at your opponent's hand is strong. Hyppie is better against control but weaker against midrange, and midrange is a worse matchup for black aggro. In addition, Lifebane Zombie is playable outside of aggro, as a sideboard card.
Green
-Pelakka Wurm, +Woodland Bellower
I didn't add Bellower before, because I think he is weak compared to other six drops in the cube. That said, green has only one six drop. In a ramp color, that is too few. Furthermore, in green creatures have much more synergy than sorceries. Bellower can be tutored for with Worldly Tutor, Sylvan Tutor, Green Sun's Zenith, Survival of the Fittest, Fauna Shaman, Tooth and Nail, Eureka and Natural Order.
What does it do? There are many green three drops, so it is highly unlikely any deck will not have enough targets for it. The first tier of targets are cards that consistently make a 2-for-one, and they are Reclamation Sage and Eternal Witness. With hem Woodland Bellower is well worth his mana cost.
Tier one a half are the answer cards, Viridian Shaman and Uktabi Orangutan. With them Bellower will sometimes be a 3-for-1. More importantly, in ramp decks with the aforementioned tutors, if you have the mana, it is better to search for him to fetch the answer bear than to fetch the small critter directly, filling a hole in the deck.
The second tier includes the big bodies that are still significant at later stages of the game, like Knight of the Reliquary, Tarmogoyf and Scavenging Ooze. With them Woodland Bellower is a simple 2-for-1, but a double big threat is still solid. Wall of Blossoms is second tier, as by that stage of the game the 0/4 body is usually not worth much.
Third tier will include most ramp cards, including all mana elves, Devoted Druid, Courser of Kruphix etc. This is just a very bad impression of Primeval Titan, but it still helps you to cast your next big thing and thins your deck.
Fourth tier will include your Ainok Survivalist, Den Protector and Lotus Cobra, which is just abysmal.
Overall, it is a weak six drop, but still will see play because of the great demand for six drops and the inherent synergies creatures have in green.
Colorless
-Epochrasite, +Hangarback Walker
Hangarback Walker is what Epochrasite wanted to be but never could. Walker gives you immediate value upon death. Let's examine it as a two drop. Against aggro, it blocks twice and kills Savannah Lions. Against control and midrange it is a ticking clock that will create a monster. It has to be answered eventually, and will create an army when you do so. It is good against mass removals, or with your own. All that is without taking into account the flexibility the card offers - it is a good play in all stages of the game due to scalability.
-Crucible of Worlds, +Star Compass
Crucible is very very narrow. It is great with Strip Mine and good with Wasteland, but those are just two cards out of a large cube. It is not great with fetches, and there are not that many fetches as well. Life from the Loam was cut, now its CoW's turn. Star Compass is comparable to Guardian Idol. Idol is almost never reanimated outside of chump blocking. Compass can produce colored mana. The worst case scenario of producing no color of mana at all is downright terrible. At the average case scenario it will add one of two colors, and that is just fine. It might be a whiff too often, but I'm willing to give it a chance.
-Cursed Scroll, +Lightning Greaves
Cursed Scroll is too slow and expensive for modern cubes. Aggro is very prevalent and could lose a colorless card. Greaves is a good card for midrange decks vs. control or in the mirror. Relic Seeker implies we need more equipments in the cube, however it is slightly unlikely the two will see play in the same deck.
The list on cube cobra
Read my blog on cube - Latest post June 2nd 2022
The list on cube cobra
Read my blog on cube - Latest post June 2nd 2022
The list on cube cobra
Read my blog on cube - Latest post June 2nd 2022
The rest of the set didn't disappoint either. This is one of the largest set updates to date with 39 new cards (!). Therefore it will be split in two, for ease of reading and me writing.
White
White got upgrades for all of its theaters this time around.
-Ajani Steadfast, +Gideon, Ally of Zendikar
Steadfast is a filler planeswalker. White non-creature four drops are stacked. Gideon is absurdly powerful. It creates an endless stream of bears, permanent mass pumps and is a tank himself. He is good in every deck archetype, in every matchup, whether you are ahead or behind. A bomb, even in cube standards.
-Spectral Lynx, +Expedition Envoy
Expedition envoy is a two power one drop. Such cards are essential for aggro. White is starting to get a lot of them, yet we are not close to a full saturation of them (at least in a cube as big as 720). They are almost always preferable to two drops in an aggressive shell. I like Wizards' new trend of printing one new two power white one drop every block now.
From here, it's just a matter of finding the weakest two drop. Spectral lynx shores up a weak matchup for white, green midrange. Yet is it always a filler card, never a high pick, never exciting. It was serviceable; I just think it is the weakest card now.
-End Hostilities, +Planar Outburst
5cc wraths are historically weak. We had tried Hallowed Burial and Rout, and both were mediocre. End Hostilities is a bit better than them, but still very underwhelming. Black just got rid of its last 5 casting cost mass removal. End Hostilities offers a good payoff when you can afford to pay the awaken cost. It will be rarely relevant though so it is clearly the new worst white mass removal.
-Catastrophe, +Quarantine Field
Catastrophe is a midrange/control card only due to its mana cost. Using the Armageddon option was very rare for those archetypes, mass removal is expensive at six and control decks usually wanted a finisher at that mana cost which pushed it out of decks. I understand why the card is good, we were playing it for seven years, and it just doesn't do enough for us now. Quarantine Field is superior at six in most board states. It has a weak but very playable mode at 4 and is an obviously great mana sink at 8+ mana. Mirari's Wake new BFF.
-Kor Hookmaster, +Windbrisk Heights
Kor Hookmaster is great for aggressive decks facing midrange, and very solid against aggro. It is honestly a good card, but the amount of three drops in white is a bit too high at the moment and it is just the weakest card. On an empty board it just doesn't do much.
Windbrisk Heights is another experiment with a land that has an ability. Such cards increase the amount of playables in the draft. Aggro decks dislike ETBT lands, and this even has a condition for it to do anything so it's a risky experiment. Most large cubes play it, and I'm willing to try it out too. The trigger is not too hard to activate, as seen by Kytheon.
Blue
Blue got a wave of small upgrades. Weak cards became better, which at this quantity should be noticeable, but none of the new cards are a high picks.
-Dissipate, +Dissolve
The exile clause is very rarely relevant, but scry is always good. It's true that when you need the exile clause it's great, but that is still too rare (one out of ten games? Maybe less?). An upgrade.
-Complicate, +Scatter to the Winds
Blue needs more hard counters. Complicate is splashable but definitely on the weak side. Many times players have cycled it for nothing. Awaken will be a useful mode in slow matchups, on an already acceptable base. I know it's not stellar, but it should do us good service for now.
-Academy Ruins, +Blighted Cataract
Blue decks always want card advantage, often leave mana open and sometimes run out of gas. The opportunity cost of adding this land to your deck is minimal, and for a land it is a great topdeck. I really think his card is undervalued currently. I have hard times seeing a blue midrange or control deck not playing this, even as the 18th land. I didn't want too many colorless lands in blue for now, and ruins is narrow in a large cube. It might be back though, if the new utility lands prove to be a success and decks are left wanting more.
-Thought Scour, +Opt
Thought Scour's improvement with the new mulligan rule was low - your opponent has to take a mulligan, keep the top card and you have to cast Thought Scour on the first turn. It's relevant, but not enough. Scour is great in Delve decks, but that's it: in reanimation you have an equal chance to discard your reanimation spell, and in milling decks… well they don't exist. Opt with its scry 1 is always providing card quality. For most decks, it will be basically strictly better.
-Rune Snag, +Augur of Bolas
Rune Snag loses relevance very quickly. Countering on the second turn is important, but this is almost a blank card in the late game. Secondly, a lot more decks nowadays are tap out control and not draw go. Augur is a good card against aggressive strategies. The draw rate will never be very high, but it has relevance in the late game too and you have some desperate synergies with Crystal Shard. I don't like the card but I think it fills the slot better.
-Keiga, the Tide Star, +Sphinx of Uthuun
My dislike for Keiga is well known around here. It is very easily raced in aggro and in the control mirror, the opponent often doesn't have a premium target to steal. Blue has four other finishers at six mana, it's time to diversify. For one more mana, and negligible more difficulty in casting, Sphinx is passes the Terminate test with flying colors, making it good against midrange and control, and better against aggro. It is a better reanimation target, it combos well with Crystal Shard and is all around quite impressive. It is still not great doing work as a finisher though, and it is expensive, so it will probably get cut as soon as we get a new finisher, but that might take a while.
-Clever Impersonator, +Dungeon Geists
I don't like Geists but it is better. For impersonator to be worth its mana cost, you need to copy a 4cc and up card. It sucks against aggro. Many times what your opponent has is not great for you (a few examples include Koth of the Hammer, Ajani Goldmane, Survival of the Fittest, Dark Confidant, Goblin Rabblemaster, Mana Crypt even). Geists is usually better if you target a creature with Impersonator (probably more than 80% of the time really).
Black
Black improvements also spread nicely across midrange, aggro and reanimator even. Control is left a bit wanting, but also got new removals and a fresh planeswalker to play with.
-Pitiless Horde, +Drana, Liberator of Malakir
The worst black three drop is getting cut. Pitiless Horde is certainly not bad and did see play in aggro decks, but is expensive - either mana wise or life wise. He sucks in the aggro mirror, as it can be chumped quite easily and dies to most red removals, after losing you life. Against midrange it is, obviously, subpar. New Drana pumps your whole team after the first strike, permanently. That is quite scary and test worthy, even though it is another 1BB card.
-Murderous Cut, +Ruinous Path
Murderous Cut is terrible in the early game, and doesn't remove a threat when you need it removed right now. Think of Dark Confidant, Rofellos, Llanowar Emissary or Goblin Rabblemaster. Now black has three delve fatties, and delve cards don't play well together. Black decks in cube are short in removals lately, but there are not many good ones that are not already included or tested. That's why I was very happy when Ruinous Path was spoiled. Killing planeswalkers gets ever more important, and the late game awaken is very relevant.
-Whip of Erebos, +Ob Nixilis Reignited
Whip is a very slow card. It does nothing the turn it comes into play unless you already have creatures out, using the four mana ability on many creatures is not worth it and you may not have any targets in the graveyard. Ob Nixilis is good in decks that don't have many creatures, good against control and against midrange. It is not a tier 1 five drop like Ob Nixilis of the Black Oath or Shriekmaw, but it is better than Bloodgift Demon for sure and possibly better than Priest of the Blood Rite. Finally black has enough five drops!
-Blood Scrivener, +Carrier Thrall
Blood scrivener triggers so rarely it might as well be vanilla. Emptying your hand is not always easy, and usually not worth the risk of spending your answer cards on subpar targets for a random new card. Thrall is not amazing, but it does provide sort of advantage when it dies, especially in combat and to a mass removal. It goes well with sacrificial themes in black, such as Braids, Fleshbag Marauder, Smokestack and Skullclamp. Overall certainly not amazing, but even after this swap there are still probably two or three worse black two drops. This part of the curve could definitely use some love.
-Sinkhole, +Life//Death
Sinkhole is another BB spell, which I have too many of. It is hard justifying playing it over a removal or a creature, considering land destruction is not a theme in the cube. It is useful in aggro, but there is a limit to how many non-creature spells can you play, and removals and card advantage sources, as well as equipments and targeted discard are all higher priority. If the stax theme was still present, it would probably stay. Death is a good reanimation spell. Until now I'd force myself to include it as a multicolored card, but as a regular black spell it easily makes it in.
The list on cube cobra
Read my blog on cube - Latest post June 2nd 2022
Unfortunately red is just getting more and more aggro oriented with time. I dislike that, but cannot think of ways to change that that will be consistent enough in a large cube.
-Krenko's Command, +Makindi Sliderunner
Tokens in red failed as a package. In the previous update many cards that benefit from tokens were gone, now the token generators themselves start to get the axe.
Slide runner is a nice two drop, as it will often attack for two consecutive turns for three trample damage, and that's better than some other red two drops in the cube. It gets big with fetches, even if it trades with a token you get some damage through and it's a nice bearer of swords. Definitely not top tier, but not at the absolute bottom either.
-Shaman of the Great Hunt, +Keldon Champion
Shaman dies to every creature. Now that tokens are a weaker theme, it loses even more of its relevance. Midrange decks don't want such a fragile threat. On the other hand, planeswalkers are becoming ever more relevant, making Champion stronger than before.
Green
Two new engine cards and two new ramp targets will benefit green this time around.
-Pelakka Wurm, +Greenwarden of Murasa
It's no secret green lacks good six drops. GoM is better than Woodland Bellower, most likely, but I am not cutting that one yet, as we have so few six drops. On the other hand Greenwarden is not Primeval Titan either. It provides very solid value when ramped into or Natural Ordered. It plays very well with reanimation spells, and you can chose not to exile it if you want to continue the shenanigans. The body is not as impressive for the cost, but the value is there. Pelakka Wurm is the weakest green high drop. The triple green is sometimes a problem, and against a significant part of the field the lifegain is negligible. Pelakka Wurm might come back and replace Foe-Razer Regent, but for now I value the green removal and flying more.
-Blastoderm, +Woodland Wanderer
Woodland wanderer will be on average a 4/4, as mono green is virtually nonexistent with the ease green has for splashing. That's a great worst case scenario. The vigilance will make it awesome against aggressive decks, and it tramples over tokens. But making it a 5/5 shouldn't be hard, and the ceiling of 6/6 is absolutely bonkers. Blastoderm is a resilient threat, but lacks evasion and fades away. It has issues against tokens, but it will usually deal 5-10 damage to the opponent and take a creature or two. That is obviously worth four mana, especially as how well it is threatening planeswalkers. But it is very lacking on the defense. Wanderer can just be both, simultaneously.
-Dictate of Karametra, +Oath of Druids
Dictate can backfire and is very narrow. It does nothing unless you have something crazy expensive in hand. Oath is a narrow card, but in a deck with many planeswalkers and few creatures it's a reliable cheat outlet. A very narrow yet very powerful card. A high-risk experiment which I have never tried yet. It is time.
-Krosan Tusker, +Evolutionary Leap
Tusker's cycling became outdated. Green now has three cards that grant you the same amount of card advantage while ramping. You can rarely afford to cycle this on the early turns. The late monster is underwhelming for the price. The utility was nice, but it did not hold up to standards anymore. Evolutionary Leap is a wrath insurance and removal insurance card, as well as card advantage engine with token cards or recurring creatures. It is somewhat abusable and many cubes have had success with it.
Multicolored
Multicolored features lots of small, unrelated updated.
-Yasova Dragonclaw, +Kiora, Master of the Depths
Yasova just doesn't fit in the R/G or U/G decks we build. They are usually midrange, so the body and added pressure won't add much. Those decks usually tap out on turns four and five, and not have chunks of mana open to use the ability. Kiora has potential. It is hard to evaluate her, but she has more starting loyalty than Kiora, the Crashing Wave. She won't die to every burn spell. The card advantage ability is better, but she is much worse at protecting herself, her ultimate is slower and less attainable (older kiora's ultimate happens relatively often and wins the game) and she is near useless if you don't have creatures out. She is still worth testing before we pull a verdict.
-Knight of the Reliquary, +Gavony Township
Knight grows very slowly in decks without fetches. It is also in immediate burn range and starts out very small. Township is a land and therefore doesn't take a place out of your spells in the deck, which increases your number of playables. Gavony is great against control decks, which have a very hard time stopping it. It encourages token decks very well. We had very successful results in including utility lands recently and I am pushing that trend.
-Dack's Duplicate, +Murderous Redcap
Duplicate, like all copy effects, has an inherent weakness against aggro and control decks. Against aggro, the creatures are often not worth four mana, against control there are very few creatures resulting in a dead card most of the time. When you are behind and cannot afford to attack, which in U/R is often the case, the haste and dethrone don't matter. Redcap is playable in great many decks, good on the defense as well as the offense and has a few combos. It can go infinite with Muzzio's Preparations, it can be sacrificed twice, it is solid against mass removal and it is a win condition for blink/Crystal Shard decks.
-Magister of Worth, +Utter End
Magister is powerful card, it just costs so much. The card might as well be blank when you are ahead. Added to that W/B is usually an aggro pair in the cube, and the angel saw very very little play. Utter End is expensive for a 1-for-1 removal spell, but it is versatile and guaranteed to see play in more decks, even as a splash or sideboard cards. More answers to planeswalkers are good and it exiles, at instant speed.
Colorless
Only one eldrazi, but lots of new tech.
-Memory Jar, +Ulamog, the Ceaseless Hunger
Ulamog is an eldrazi that can be reanimated. It will usually win with the first attack, and if not the second. The cast trigger is the best of all the eldrazis so far. Three eldrazis in a large cube is still not a lot and super ramp decks need consistency, so no existing eldrazi is cut, although he is the best of them. Memory Jar is just way too narrow in its applications to justify a slot in a large cube.
-Guardian Idol, +Hedron Archive
Guardian Idol comes into play tapped, and that's a really bad trait for a mana rock. It doesn't fit easily into your curve, unlike all the signets and talismans. Obviously it also doesn't produce any color. That advantage of becoming a 2/2 is rarely relevant, usually resulting in a chump blocker. We think that Mana Compass' ability to create colors is more important. Hedron Archive is a much welcomed ramp spell. We need more cubeable midgame ramp spells for super ramp decks, and this is a very good one. Often ramp decks run out of gas, Archive fixes that nicely. However, it is even better in control decks, which will happily embrace it.
-Undiscovered Paradise, +Dust Bowl
The number of nonbasics in the cube has increased lately, and nonbasic lands need more answers. Especially true for the new manlands. Paradise is a color fixer for aggro decks only, but a weak one. The cube has enough fixing, and it is getting better. Dust Bowl is a very good land for aggro decks, but will see play everywhere. For now it will play side by side with Tectonic Edge to see who is better. We might reach the conclusion that both are needed.
-Darksteel Axe, +Silver-Inlaid Dagger
The potential for an extra power is already more significant in aggro decks than the indestructibility. Aggro decks are the only decks that will play that cheap equipment. If your opponent spent tempo to destroy your equipment, you probably don't care too much, not to mention most of the games it will not be relevant. There is a high amount of humans in all the aggro colors in cube, so the bonus is significant. A lot of the tokens in the cube are humans too.
-Ankh of Mishra, +Foundry of the Consuls
Ankh is terrible in the aggro mirror, which is a bit too common here. It only has meaning if drawn and played early, but you will often prefer to play a two drop. It saw little main deck play. Thopter Foundry is a card for control decks, but doesn't hate aggro decks much. It is an easily playable card in matchups of midrange and control. Never a high pick, but will see play a decent amount of the time and that seems fine. The latest experiments with utility lands were a huge success.
Two-colored Fixing
One of the things that shape the environment the most is the quality of the fixing options. In a big cube even large updates generally have a relatively low impact. A good set offers 20 new cards (in a large cube the bottom gets replaced more quickly), but that's a change of less than 3% of the cube. Lands always see a fair amount of play and they stay for far longer than the average card. The better the fixing, the more playable decks you will end up having at the end of the draft, more of the drafted cards will get played, less losses will occur due to mana problems and it's a better time for all. This set has almost two cycles for us, which is enormous.
The new cycle of fetchable lands is bliss. They won't always come into play untapped, but often will. Basic land types play well with fetch lands and check lands, as well as many green cards (Arbor Elf, Farseek, Nature's Lore, Three Visits, Nissa, Worldwaker, Rofellos, Llanowar Emissary, Skyshroud Claim, Utopia Sprawl). They also have positive interactions with Vedalken Shackles, Daze, Snuff Out, Fireblast and Koth of the Hammer (Eternal Dragon too until it will get the axe). They are certainly better than the last fixing options in each guild.
-Flood Plain, +Prairie Stream
-Bad River, +Sunken Hollow
The old fetches always come into play tapped, they were never good or liked here. An upgrade.
-Graven Cairns, +Smoldering Marsh
-Fire-lit Thicket, +Cinder Glade
Check lands are not very good - they don't allow you to split mana between phases and turns and do not provide you colored mana for the first turn. They are bad for splashes, and bad in 4+ colored decks. The new lands are great for splashing.
-Razorverge Thicket, +Canopy Vista
W/G is not really an aggro color pair, but more midrange. The drawback of Thicket is all too relevant there. Also green has by far the best synergies with lands that have the forest type.
Okay, the new lands are cute and all, but in this set we got something far better: enemy manlands! The previous cycle was a powerhouse, and this will probably be no different, smashing planeswalkers after mass removals, winning off of standstill and just increasing your amount of win conditions or pressure when you are out of gas.
-Temple of Mystery, +Lumbering Falls
Obviously the temple loses out in this competition. Falls is very hard to kill, needing a removal at instant speed that doesn't target.
-Orzhov Signet, +Shambling Vent
The Signet is a mana rock and therefore randomly playable sometimes, but it doesn't fit W/B, an aggro-centric color pair. Shambling Vent is better for slower decks anyway. It is a good land, especially against aggro.
The list on cube cobra
Read my blog on cube - Latest post June 2nd 2022
Which black two drop that I play you think is worse than Blood Scrivener?
The list on cube cobra
Read my blog on cube - Latest post June 2nd 2022
I know the art and what it does but I got the name completely wrong.
I'm really interested to see how Carrier Thrall goes.
1 Mystical Tutor
1 Personal Tutor
1 Ancestral Recall
1 Terminus
1 Arcane Denial
1 Memory Lapse
1 Temporal Isolation
1 Banishing Light
1 Tinker
1 Jace, the Mind Sculptor
1 Tezzeret the Seeker
1 Jace, memory Adept
1 Augur of Bolas
1 Omenspeaker
1 Hangarback Walker
1 Myr Battlesphere
1 Mana Vault
1 Talisman of Dominance
1 Azorius Signet
1 Coalition Relic
1 Maze of Ith
1 Kor Haven
1 Karakas
1 Misty Rainforest
1 Hallowed Fountain
2 Plains
8 Island
1 Advantageous Proclamation
1 Sentinel Dispatch
The list on cube cobra
Read my blog on cube - Latest post June 2nd 2022
Commander 12 was a small set, therefore gave us few cards for inclusion. Their quality, however, is quite high, especially in red which needed it the most.
White
-Oust, +Grasp of Fate
A massively better removal option. Grasp hits every permanent, deals with problems forever and doesn’t grant life. Yes, it is a redundant effect with Oblivion Ring, Banishing Light, Quarantine Field and Detention Sphere. But by the fact that D-Sphere is still the strongest Azorius card in the cube, it is good enough. Yes, most of the other similar effects are better, but Grasp is still far from the chopping block.
-Consul's Lieutenant, +Oreskos Explorer
A WW cost is very troublesome for a creature that loses value so quickly after turn two. Explorer is a two drop that provides card advantage, which is always something worth noticing. The main selling point is that every deck type will play it, from aggro to control. Grabbing every kind of plains is good for fixing too. I believe it will stay for at least a while due to versatility.
-Increasing Devotion, +Righteous Confluence
Confluence is massively better against aggro, a big part of this cube’s playing field. Not only do you gain huge amounts of life, but the tokens have vigilance. It is also better offensively without anthems. Once in a few games, removing enchantments is crucial, be it Sulfuric Vortex, Sylvan Library or Control Magic. Devotion has a near useless flashback. It is only better in a dedicated token deck (i.e. not a random midrange or control deck). But in that deck, Confluence isn’t bad either, providing three bodies. Overall, an improvement.
For cubes with much slower metagames changes like this could be wrong. In honesty, this card is definitely close to the bottom of the barrel still.
Blue
-Sphinx of Uthuun, +Mystic Confluence
I hate how much sense this change makes. I want blue to have more finishers so badly. But, Mystic Confluence is great, having many forms of card advantage, ability to bounce their side of the board only or acting as a super Dismiss. I didn’t want to cut one of blue’s early game cards, and the weakest that costs five or more is definitely Sphinx. I can barely envision decks that would prefer Sphinx to Confluence in practice. Sphinx was not that great at being a finisher anyway though, and as a card advantage outlet, Confluence is far superior. When they’ll print a good finisher, I’ll find a cut for it.
In short, the color that least needed bombs got yet another one.
-Wake Thrasher, +Eldrazi Skyspawner
Blue decks are still control at least 70% of the time and cannot play Wake Thrasher. Skyspawner is not as strong aggressively but is universally playable. In control it blocks two creatures or blocks and ramps. Evasion is good against many board states. Tokens play well with Opposition and the ETB trigger in the color of Crystal Shard is abusable. Massive consistency upgrade.
-Hinder, +Deprive
The cube just got faster. Another 2cc hard counter will better address the threats blue decks face nowadays. Reanimator is not frightening anymore, there are much less recurring threats like Vengevine or Genesis to fear and the Memory Lapse mode, while winning some games before, doesn’t really fit counter heavy blue decks. Deprive has a tempo setback, but being a cheap hard counter is very appealing.
-Augur of Bolas, +Anticipate
Even decks with high instant and sorcery counts have hard time hitting with Augur of Bolas. Anticipate is a weaker Impulse, but Impulse is good enough that a weaker version might still be good enough. Its true Augur is there mostly for the body against aggressive decks, but when it is bad for the second consecutive time in a row, it is time to admit defeat.
-Waterfront Bouncer, +Sky Diamond
With a few signets getting cut due to the print of the new manlands, and more to get cut soon, their number fell a bit too low. It is known that blue is the main client for them. Basically, almost every blue deck would play Sky Diamond. Bouncer is a good card that is hard to play in practice and the playgroup doesn’t like it.
-Withdraw, +Silent Departure
Withdraw is conditional. It costs double blue, needs two targets and requires your opponent to tap out for full potential. When it works, it is a beating, but it is not consistent. Also, now we have Harbinger of the Tides which does basically the same thing. Silent Departure is a tempo card, mostly, but I wonder how playable it is in control decks, especially after sideboard.
Black
-Night's Whisper, +Mortuary Mire
An experiment. Whisper has a problem that no deck really needs it. Every deck likes some card advantage, but you usually need threats and answers more on the second turn, especially discard. Life loss in black adds fast, so it is sub-optimal against aggro. In aggressive decks, you will usually play it after your curve, in which case another threat, removal or simply a larger draw spell will usually do a better job, and again it is bad in the mirror. The card saw very little play. I like the utility lands so far. None of the spell lands were included yet, but Mire seems the strongest out of them. I hope it will be better than a swamp the vast majority of the time and will be maindecked.
-Bloodgift Demon, +Wretched Confluence
Bloodgift is a midrange only card. It is too expensive and slow as an aggro curve topper, control has no interest in a fragile body that doesn’t pass the Vindicate test, loses you life and sucks at defense. It is not even good in reanimator. The three black delvers just blow demon out of the water. Wretched Confluence is a card black midrange and control decks will play. It offers you a 3-for-1 in myriad ways. Killing small creatures is relevant and the raise dead can be occasionally useful. I think it close in powerlevel to Ob Nixilis Reignited. One of the two will probably be cut rather soon, when a better black five drop or slow utility card will be printed.
Red
-Tempt with Vengeance, +Fiery Confluence
Another red token theme remnant being cut. Confluence looks universally playable in red. Six damage to the dome is attractive to aggressive decks, Anger of the Gods is good for control, destroying artifacts is a life saver while needing to destroy two is not rare and dealing with planeswalkers on top of all that creates a card that will rarely not win the game or provide card advantage.
-Molten Vortex, +Magus of the Wheel
Vortex is another failed experiment. Magus is a serviceable three drop. It will usually beat down a little bit until it cannot any more, then it will quietly wait until the end of your opponent’s turn and will refuel your hand with burn to seal the game. You can do more novel things with it too. It’s a discard outlet, a draw engine and is splashable, but that is just gravy to a solid body with a scary effect that just demands an answer.
-Purphoros, God of the Forge, +Daretti, Scrap Savant
Daretti does not fit aggro at all, which is why I shied away from it until now. It obviously works in artifact decks and reanimator, but is good in any combo deck. Many cubes, large and small, had success with it so I want to try it out myself. Pulling specific archetypes in a large cube is difficult and there are relatively few artifact fatties. I’m not going all in on that archetype yet, so it is a high risk experiment. Purphoros can be safely taken out as a past experiment that failed. It might be back one day, if enough Pia and Kiran Nalaars are printed.
-Vaultbreaker, +Thunderbreak Regent
Red has increased its amount of three drops, including a brand new one in this update. Vaultbreaker is expensive and has a weak back. Regent as a 4/4 flier demands an answer, in which case getting a Lava Spike is good value. The main selling point is that while Regent is a good aggro curve topper it is also a good midrange card.
-Chandra Nalaar, +Roast
Chandra does basically what Roast does, but at more than twice the price, for leaving a planeswalker behind and hitting fliers. I think the trade-off is not worth it. Roast will at least be a solid sideboard card. It performs best against midrange, red’s worst matchup so it shores up a weakness.
-Twin Bolt, +Fire // Ice
The day finally came that a dividable burn spell is cut. It was often the worst card and missed maindecks. Not to mention the replacement is strictly better here. Fire//Ice is technically Izzet, but the blue parts is not relevant often enough so I ignore that.
-Ghitu Encampment, +Goblin Welder
Encampment doesn’t fit red well. It is an aggressive card, but aggressive decks don’t want a land that enters the battlefield tapped. It is good post wrath, but it gets outclassed way too easily and dies to anything. In many red aggressive decks, a mountain was better. Goblin Welder is another piece to support Daretti. It might enable crazy plays.
Green
-Nantuko Vigilante, +Frontier Siege
Vigilante is very redundant right now in green, with Ainok Survivalist especially tripping on its tows. Siege is of the better 4 mana ramp cards, as it gives you two back right away. After that, if you can split the mana, it gives you four back every turn, the best value for investment that can be found. I’m quite confident it will be a mainstay.
Multicolored
-Fire // Ice, +Meren of Clan Nel Toth
Fire//Ice moves to red. Meren is a great machine for card advantage. She immediately gets creatures back the turn she comes into play and she has a respectable body. In BG there are some self-sacrificing creatures that synergize well with her, like Sakura-Tribe Elder, Bone Shredder, Shriekmaw, Yavimaya Elder, Wall of Roots, Tinder Wall, Fleshbag Marauder and Devoted Druid (if you need to get a counter). Not to mention sacrifice outlets like Evolutionary Leap, Recurring Nightmare, Braids, Cabal Minion, Liliana of the Veil, Smokestack and more. I believe her average case scenario to be good enough though, it’s not just situationally good.
-Dragonlord Silumgar, +Tezzeret, Agent of Bolas
Stealing planeswalkers is novel, but dying to everything while leaving nothing behind is a big drawback, especially as decks that play it usually pack few creatures. Against some decks, especially aggro, there is nothing good to steal. In many cases Mind Control would have been better. Dimir decks usually have a few mana rocks for Tezzeret to play with and it really doesn’t require many artifacts for him to be solid.
Colorless
-Star Compass, +Thought Vessel
Yes, maximum hand size will rarely matter, but a 2cc stone that does not come into play tapped is a rarity. It is a card that would not be printed today in a standard legal set. Compass has consistency issues about granting colors and types of colors. It is by far the worst stone we play, but it still is probably a slight upgrade.
-Lightning Greaves, +Signal Pest
Lightning Greaves are weak for the second try. They are a support only card for very specific matchups. It would always be picked below the bread and butter of your deck, and lowering threat density against removal heavy control goes against your plan. A promise for a colorless one drop is exciting, and justifies some trial time. Pest does nothing alone, but plays well with decks that go wide and carries swords well. Many large cubes play it successfully, so it is worth a shot.
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White
-Revoke Existence, +Rout
White got many broad removals lately like Grasp of Fate that can hit every permanent type. The need for Disenchant effects is diminished, so just Disenchant and Seal of Cleansing suffice. Furthermore, most of the effects that hit every permanent exile anyway, so that utility is not lost. White needs another mass removal. Rout and Hallowed Burial are very close in powerlevel. Because white has Terminus, I prefer to go with Rout for the different effect (not to mention most white removals don’t send to the graveyard anyway).
Black
The cube’s metagame was a bit imbalanced. Midrange was a lot less played than control and aggro. Only green supported midrange, and that is too big of a burden to take for one color. Black, being distant third in both aggro and control, was underrepresented in winning decks. Black’s curve was extremely skewed to the bottom, with cards that don’t justify it. It is fine for black, as a third aggro color, to have lower aggro support for aggro by volume in favor of more midrange. The individual powerlevel of cards will rise up and hopefully the metagame will be more balanced.
-Diabolic Servitude, +Bloodline Keeper
There are a bit too many reanimation spells for the amount of other support available for reanimator. This is the durdliest. Right now midrange bodies get a priority. Bloodline Keeper is a common ground for all large cubes, it is among the best 4cc black creatures. Easy to answer, but can take over a game by its own, providing card advantage and evasive power.
-Vampire Interloper, +Desecration Demon
Interloper is a bad version of Mistral Charger. Blocking is relevant. Demon was played before, it is a serviceable card for all archetypes. It is not great on the defense but it is still far from dead.
-Mardu Skullhunter, +Abyssal Persecutor
Skullhunter is too conditional and slow. Persecutor provides another massive body for midrange. Killing him is usually not a problem, and your opponent cannot really afford keeping him alive for long anyway.
-Curse of Shallow Graves, +Bloodgift Demon
Curse does nothing alone, and in case an opponent has a 2/2 first striker or x/3 on the defense, doesn’t add much to your attack. The tokens come tapped, making the card do nothing the turn it comes into play. The stacks theme in black is not as deep as it used to be. Bloodgift is the best 5cc black drop I don’t play, welcome back.
-Fleshbag Marauder, +Gray Merchant of Asphodel
In order to balance the metagame, black midrange should have a favorable matchup against aggro. Enter Gary. Now with more midrange support it should be very playable. Black is aching for lifegain, and the ETB effect plays well with reanimation. Fleshbag is cute but unnecessary, the worst black three drop in such a stacked spot just had to go.
-Thrill-Kill Assassin, +Charcoal Diamond
Thrill-Kill is another dude that cannot block, a bottom card. Diamond is there to help black midrange and control that naturally lack any kind of acceleration. It is aided by the successful integration of Sky Diamond. I expect to cut Boros Signet and likely Golgari Signet in the next set when the new manlands come out, so more mana rocks are necessary.
-Gloom Surgeon, +Raven's Crime
Gloom Surgeon doesn’t die in combat, it just gets outclassed and blocked easily. Crime is a playable discard outlet for black reanimator (hopefully). Definitely the card with the lowest chances of success.
Colorless
-Oblivion Stone, +Memory Jar
O-Stone is just too slow nowadays. Memory Jar still enables broken plays sometimes, even if it not played every draft.
The list on cube cobra
Read my blog on cube - Latest post June 2nd 2022
The most exciting thing about the set is the new colorless mana symbol. It bring new considerations to the draft table, and that is always welcomed. The cube currently has 66 sources of colorless mana, assuming fetching a lone Wastes in your deck counts and including fringe ones (to see them look in the appendix at the end of this update).
Obviously changes can be made to the mana base to make it more accommodating to colorless cards, but the amount of cards added that care about that type of mana is not meaningful enough to really affect fixing evaluation. That said, the Glacial Fortress and painlands cycle are close enough to begin with. If the colorless cards will prove to be a mainstay, or even increase in number, they will be swapped (Tendo Ice Bridge would be added too). Wastes were added to the basic land pool, and they are free for everyone to use.
White
-Gather the Townsfolk, +Containment Priest
The tokens have cute synergies, especially in white. They play well with anthems, battle cry and Mirror Entity, they are good against Smokestack and Chainer's Edict, they even chump block twice. However, they are bad against simple 2/2s, which are abundant in this format. Without synergies, they are by far the worst two drops in the cube, probably among the worse cards period. With synergies they are about equal to a mid-tier white two drop. They will not make or break your deck, ever, and are easily replaceable by a more solid two drop.
Priest is heavily played in large cubes. It shines in the difficult matchups against midrange. It is mainly a hate card against reanimation and engine cards*. It hoses self-recurring creatures, including persist and undying. It also has synergies in white with Flickerwisp, Parallax Wave, the new Eldrazi Displacer and all the Oblivion Ring effects (there are 6**). I still worry it might be too narrow, but it is given the test run it deserves.
*Engine cards: Recurring Nightmare, Eureka, Natural Order, Show and Tell, Sneak Attack, Bribery, Tooth and Nail, Tinker, Green Sun's Zenith, Reveillark and perhaps a few more I forgot
**Self-recurring creatures: Gravecrawler, Bloodsoaked Champion, Despoiler of Souls, Woodfall Primus, Vorapede, Glen Elendra Archmage, Kitchen Finks, Murderous Redcap and perhaps a few more cards I’ve forgotten
***Oblivion Ring effects: Journey to Nowhere, Oblivion Ring, Banishing Light, Grasp of Fate, Quarantine Field and Detention Sphere
-Raise the Alarm, +Seeker of the Way
Raise the Alarm is better than Gather the Townsfolk, but not by much. Seeker is the best two drop I have left out of the cube. It enables interesting plays, is relevant some of the time against the 3/3s of midrange and lifelink is relevant in the aggro mirror. Seeker could easily be kicked when a better two drop comes along, but next time it might be Mistral Charger or Precinct Captain who gets the axe.
-Angel of Serenity, +Linvala, the Preserver
Triple white is too difficult of a cost, as it has been in AoS’s first run. Linvala has a good cost for a control finisher with not a lot of competition. She is great when you are behind, instantly stabilizing you. The ETB effect is also good with blink and reanimation. When you are not behind, a 5/5 flier would still do the job and close the game neatly for you. Her weak spot is definitely the control mirror, or in midrange vs. control. She is still better than Archangel of Thune and Eternal Dragon so her place is safe in the cube for a while.
-Wall of Reverence, +Arashin Cleric
White four cc is stacked. The unnecessary cards there are getting slowly trimmed, with eyes closely on Cataclysm. Against aggro decks, you are not always alive long enough to cast Wall of Reverence. Arashin Cleric comes down in time to save the day. Also it has a much less binary effect. It is very good against aggro decks, but not so much so that it is game over like Wall is (with a creature with relevant power). Not to mention Arashin Cleric is good in the aggro mirror, when an aggro deck will not board in a 4cc hate card.
Arashin also has more synergies in white, with Flickerwisp, Eldrazi Displacer and Reveillark.
-Righteous Confluence, +Eldrazi Displacer
White has a lot of lifegain with its two drops and other midrange cards now. Confluence is just a low powered in every mode, the same logic that applies to Raise the Alarm applies here too with the 2/2 tokens on turn 5. Displacer is not very easy to activate, but will probably see some play due to the acceptable body. It has many functions. It is a token-killer. It can clear blockers out of the way. It can tap potential attackers. Finally it can abuse creature with ETB-effects. It might be worse than the next worst three drop, Silverblade Paladin, so unless achieving C is far more consistent than I think, it will be out soon. However it did overperform at the pre-release, I think it has potential to surprise.
Blue
-Silent Departure, +Spreading Seas
Silent Departure is too tempo centric. It might come back one day with more tempo support. Spreading Seas helps combating the new manlands, which are otherwise difficult for control decks to deal with. It is also good against other nonbasics such as Volrath's Stronghold, Library of Alexandria, Maze of Ith and more. It is good for randomly color-screwing opponents, especially aggro decks. I think this card will be quite solid.
-Daze, +Dimensional Infiltrator
I’ve decided to finally cut Force Spike, Mana Tithe and Daze in this update. They have been in the cube for yeas and they simply see little play. No one wants them to stay. The curves are not tight enough and they are way too often just dead cards. Infiltrator has a great body for tempo decks, which is admittedly not played here often. The flash is good as it allows you to keep up mana for counters. The ability is randomly good for protecting it from spot removals and your own mass removals. It makes him a repeatable chump blocker. It can slowly mill opponents in control decks. As a cherry on top, it nullifies tutors.
-Force Spike, +Negate
For the Force Spike cut, see Daze. Negate was recommended around here, and it is among the last cheap splashable counters I haven’t tried.
Black
-Bloodline Keeper, +Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet
Keeper had a really short time in the cube, but who would have thought such a new beast would get printed! Keeper is slow and fragile. Kalitas provides black control exactly what it needs – life gain on a durable body. Creating tokens is great with mass removals, and black has tons of spot removals. Especially cool with the likes of The Abyss. The exile ability can randomly be relevant too, say against Recurring Nightmare, or self-recurring threats (see in the Containment Priest swap in white).
My wish is to have enough lifegain so I could replay Read the Bones and Night's Whisper, to finally give black control its much needed card advantage.
-Nezumi Cutthroat, +Bearer of Silence
Cutthroat is fine but a bit low powered. There is a serious problem with how few black creatures cannot block, so I want to limit their number. Bearer is on worst-case nothing more than Vampire Interloper, which is about equal to Cutthroat. However, when the kicker will be active it will be far superior. An easy upgrade, really. It is not the bottom of the barrel for two drops yet, but could be in the very near future if providing wastes mana proves to be difficult. If not, this can be Nekrataal level good, or even better, which will make it nigh uncuttable.
-Lifebane Zombie, +Reaver Drone
The black three drop section is just too stacked, especially with double black costing cards. This warp had to be fixed. Drone is the worse black one drop with two power, but we still need them.
Red
-Bogardan Hellkite, +Chandra, Flamecaller
Hellkite is narrow still, and with new eldrazis cheating decks have more toys to play with. Chandra is great for ramp and control. She digs for answers rapidly, clears small armies and has her own built in win condition. I desperately try to make red non-aggro decks good, and ramp/control is the most consistent option.
-Chandra, Fire of Kaladesh, +Goblin Dark-Dwellers
Chandra is a bit scary in the red deck, but only if drawn and played early, and only if you are nearly mono red aggro. That is a bit too narrow and a bit too low powered to be worthy of a slot. She is a terrible topdeck, she is near useless if you have a slow draw, color screw screws you twice as hard with her in hand. Dark dwellers will on average just fetch a cheap burn spell, making it a bigger, evasive Flametongue Kavu. That is very fine for R/G ramp. However, in U/R decks, it can go really nuts with fetching Time Walk, Ancestral Recall and the like. A durable body, a potentially abusable ETB effect, seems like an all-around winner.
Green
-Woodland Bellower, +Oath of Nissa
Bellower has too few targets to fetch, and now we have Greenwarden of Murasa so the 6th drop slot is not as bad as before. Wtwlf has summarized everything perfectly about Oath of Nissa so I will just quote him:
-Oath of Druids, +Sylvan Advocate
Oath is a very narrow card. You need to have a fattie cheating deck with little to no mana critters, with your opponent playing his own critters. Advocate does a good Tarmogoyf impression. It has a much better worst case scenario, where the 2/3 vigilance body for two mana owns aggro decks. If you draw it later, or it just survives while you do the normal thing you would in a magic game, it grows to a respectable size. Cards like this are always a problem to control, as it can be dropped early before counter mana is up and is big enough to kill them. The land rider is not irrelevant with the full cycle of dual manlands, Treetop Village, Faerie Conclave, Mutavault, Mishra's Factory, Nissa, Worldwaker, Scatter to the Winds, Planar Outburst, Ruinous Path, Koth of the Hammer and Life // Death gaining relevant bonuses (20 cards!). I think it will have a permanent home in the green two drop section.
Multicolored
-Utter End, +Ayli, Eternal Pilgrim
Utter End costs too much for a simple 1-for-1 removal. It is playable in a lot of decks, but great in none. Very skippable in the colors with the best and most versatile removals. Ayli has large stats for her cost, is a sacrifice outlet and life gain source and her last ability will be rarely relevant but a fun achievement to unlock. Good in aggro decks and good against them, relevant against midrange too. What’s not to like?
-Boros Reckoner, +Reflector Mage
White and red three drops have gotten better. Reckoner has heavy color requirements, is good only in aggro decks and still not better than a large part of the monocolored options. Reflector Mage is very good in two scenarios: control decks on the defense and tempo deck on the offense. On the defense not only do you gain a lot of tempo, not only is it now acceptable to target a haste creature, not only is a 2/3 body much better than a 2/2 (Man-O'-War) against aggressive decks, but you can bounce a threat on one turn, then be up and ready to counter it by the next time they will be able to cast it. On the offense, it gets rid of a blocker for two turns – easily enough time to turn over a game.
Colorless
Because in the last two sets many signets were cut in favor of manlands, I wanted to add a few more generic mana stones back. To be honest I still feel the number of mana rocks is too low, so it is likely that in the near future I will decide to add the whole diamond cycle, the whole signet cycle or both. The low number of mana rocks makes it hard for control and midrange decks to compete.
-5 cards, one from each color: -Mana Tithe, -Exclude, -Wretched Confluence, -Dragon Fodder, -Rancor
For Mana Tithe, see Force Spike above.
Exclude is too narrow for a three mana counterspell. Countering the 4th turn play is usually key, with most planeswalkers and Armageddon coming down.
Confluence we admittedly didn’t have much experience with, but a black midrange card was cuttable and people in MTGS said it is worse than Ob Nixilis Reignited, and I don’t like him nearly enough to want inferiors.
Dragon Fodder is of the last remnants of the failed red tokens experiment. See Gather the Townsfolk in white.
Rancor has no home without green aggro, it saw little play for over a year.
+Reflecting Pool, +Kozilek, the Great Distortion, +Guardian Idol, +Star Compass, +Sphere of the Suns
Guardian Idol, Sphere of the Suns and Star Compass are needed mana rocks, see above for thorough explanation.
Reflecting pool gets a second chance after years. Now there are at least 15 more mana fixing lands in the cube than before, which improves it dramatically. The whole outlook on lands have changed from a roadblock preventing support for new archetype to cards that always see play, help players cast their cards and have fun, raise the overall powerlevel and differentiate cube from other limited formats. I have high hopes for it this time around. Having colorless costing cards only helps here.
Kozilek is scary when it comes down. Massive card advantage, hard to block and can counter opposing spells. I am very happy to have four eldrazis – the consistency is much needed for the super ramp deck. The double colorless in the casting cost is relevant but not too deterring. That is because by that late turn, the chances of drawing your colorless producers are high. Super ramp decks already played colorless producers, from Thran Dynamo to Mana Vault. Green has an easy time to fix colorless. Not to mention this Kozilek is actually reanimatable, and plays exactly the same with Channel, Eureka, Show and Tell and the like.
-Silver-Inlaid Dagger, +Captain's Claws
An upgrade. Claws are cheaper to move around, which is a major bonus for aggressive decks. It also virtually adds two points of power, but that increase is harder to block. Obviously good with anthems and the like. The token, if survives, can carry on the equipment the next turn. We have learnt from Sword of Body and Mind that that is a powerful combination.
-Signal Pest, +Metalworker
Pest too often just deals no damage to the opponent and dies to the next mass removal. It is so frustrating having him alone on the battlefield. Metalworker is a high risk experiment. High ceiling but requires A LOT of artifacts. It is probably scary enough to warrant immediate removal, which is a good sign.
Two-colored Fixing
Finally the manland cycle is complete! I will write it once here so I won’t have to repeat it for every individual card: increasing threat density for such a little cost while fixing your mana makes all of them playable. They are good for control decks that are often light in finishers, they’re good against mass removals and they’re a mana sink for when you run out of gas.
-Boros Signet, +Needle Spires
A signet doesn’t fit the color pair at all. Neither does an ETBT land, but it beats for four, and double strike has synergy with many white pump effects and equipments.
-Golgari Signet, +Hissing Quagmire
Green has a lot of ramp options itself. Quagmire will always trade with their best attacker, or punch through on the offense.
-Temple of Epiphany, +Wandering Fumarole
Massive upgrade.
Appendix: Rundown of all C producing sources (including fetching Wastes): 66
White – Land Tax, Kor Haven, Path to Exile
Blue – Blighted Cataract, Eldrazi Skyspawner, Mana Drain
Black – Volrath's Stronghold
Red – Generator Servant
Green – Boreal Druid, Rampant Growth, Edge of Autumn, Primeval Titan, Kodama's Reach, Cultivate, Channel, Sakura-Tribe Elder, Harrow, Search for Tomorrow, Yavimaya Elder
Multicolored - Kessig Wolf Run, Gavony Township
Two-colored Fixing – Talisman of Dominance, Grove of the Burnwillows, Talisman of Progress, Sulfurous Springs, Karplusan Forest, Brushland, Caves of Koilos, Battlefield Forge, Yavimaya Coast, Shivan Reef, Llanowar Wastes, Fetid Heath, Twilight Mire, Flooded Grove, Cascade Bluffs, Rugged Prairie
Colorless – Terramorphic Expanse, Evolving Wilds, Sol Ring, Grim Monolith, Mana Vault, Basalt Monolith, Hedron Archive, Mind Stone, Thought Vessel, Guardian Idol, Worn Powerstone, Solemn Simulacrum, Everflowing Chalice, Mana Crypt, Sword of the Animist, Prismatic Lens, Palladium Myr, Thran Dynamo, Reflecting Pool
Colorless/Rainbow Lands – Strip Mine, Tectonic Edge, Library of Alexandria, Dust Bowl, Wasteland, Rishadan Port, Ancient Tomb, Foundry of the Consuls, Mishra's Factory, Mutavault
Appendix II: Watch list
The colorless theme could end up being much easier to manage and desirable than I currently speculate. If so, the most interesting cards are: Reality Smasher, Mirrorpool, Eldrazi Obligator
Nissa, Voice of Zendikar also has a chance to surprise, as planeswalkers are harder to evaluate.
The list on cube cobra
Read my blog on cube - Latest post June 2nd 2022