I read your series today and I really liked them. Your opinions are well supported, and your analysis covers each keyword from many different aspects in a broad view.
I have one correction to make though. Suspend wasn't the first ability to use the exile zone in a way that no other card could, imprint in Mirrodin block did it first (albeit in an unexciting and not very memorable way). This mechanic still has quite a lot of untapped design space.
I don't have an idea what the first keyword would be. Trample is one of the most beloved mechanics of all time, that plays well and has history. However, it's not very innovative - many attacking/blocking mechanic have been made alongside it from the very beginning, and it's not as resonant as flying.
OTOH I definitely know what will make the worst ten keywords of all time: Shroud!
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- Metamind
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I never understoood why people play Hoofprints of the Stag. OTOH, I envy people who play holiday and un-cards, they seem so fun and powerful.
Magus of the Scroll is great at giving aggro enough reach. Black Knight is the same as White Knight, but in a color with weaker creatures by far. Both performed well here. I only disagree with these cuts.
A very functional update. Most of what you have included were overlooked staples. Nekrataal, Rout, Duergar Hedge-Mage etc. never failed us, so I think they will be worth their addition in your cube as well.
720 cards cube.
So, opinions about the update?
- Rathi Dragon
a) The lands have to be mountains.
b) It's just too dangerous in a format with so many removals.
+ Rakka Mar
Seems like a huge source of card advantage.
- Fissure, +Fiery Fall
Fissure costs a lot. Fiery Fall fills the role of red heavy removal while useful early on.
-Fireball, +Banefire
The definition of strict improvement is this.
-Smash to Smithereens
It's good when you face artifacts, but isn't playable when not. Overall, too conditional.
+Hellspark Elemental
Great option for aggro.
-Shard Volley
Sacrificing a land is too much for this lowly burn spell.
+ Hissing Iguanar
Broken in alara drafts, and fills the red three-drop nicely.
-Furystoke Giant
The tokens colors are white and green, not red.
+Tahngarth, Talruum Hero
Damage on a stick. A bit small for it's cost, but whatever.
-Kird Ape, -Orcish Lumberjack
They both move to the gold section
+Skizzik, +Blistering Firecat
All the similar effects were good, so this will prolly be as well.
Green
I haven't seen the previous update well enough to see if green as a whole got stronger. The updates here are just a few unconnected upgrades.
-Boreal Druid, +Noble Hierarch
That's the first. Again, if this isn't pure upgrade nothing is.
-Naturalize, +Nantuko Vigilante
How did I miss a naturalize on a stick?
-Granger Guildmage
Low impact.
+Thornling
Awesome. This is a fattie you can count on to do the job.
-Crop Rotation
Few lands deserve that card disadvantage.
+Shard Convergence
This card gets a lot of card advantage, so it might be worth it.
-Quirion Ranger
Extremely narrow. Isn't worth the slot.
+Hermit Druid
Card advantage and milling on this guy seems nice.
-Grizzly Fate
It's so not easy to get threshold in my cube.
+Cliffrunner Behemoth
Powerful, splashable fattie.
Multicolored
-Doran, the Siege Tower
Three colored cards that aren't that good turn 5 shouldn't make the cut.
+Shambling Remains
Gouger taught us that
-Crosis's Charm
While this charm is playable, we have...
+Nicol Bolas, Planeswalker
which is twelve times more exciting, and could prolly win the game on it's own if he gets down. Bonus point for being a planeswalker.
-Inkfathom Infiltrator
That's not the color pair for aggro. Unplayable.
+Countersquall
I wanted to try Negate for some time. This seems solid.
-Moroii
UB doesn't like those aggro critters
+Undermine
UB likes it better. It may be a lot harder to play, and it's effect isn't as good, that why I've avoided it so far. I'll try it for now, but I don't have high hopes.
-Dromar's Charm
Playable, but barely so.
+Ethersworn Adjudicator
The effect is more powerful if it gets going. This will prolly be cut until the end of the year. For now though, I'll try it.
-Wrecking Ball
Too slow. Fissure was cut, this meets a similar fate.
+Blazing Specter
Seems like a hell to deal with.
-Goblin Trenches
That gets you goblin, but the price to start making them is high.
+Blightning
It seems I'm wrong and this is good, so I'll include it. I'll always add improvements to aggro, they are the basis to raising the overall powerlevel.
-Deus of Calamity, +Apocalypse Hydra
upgrade. Never liked Deus.
-Nucklavee
As much as I liked it in theory, it never recurred two cards. It's impossible to cast it and the spell it recurs in the same turn, so this is better out, at least for now.
+Call the Skybreaker
Many cube owners praised this, so I'll try it. You rarely miss, my fellow large cube owners.
Wait, I've got another five extra multicolored slots, right?
+Desolation Angel, +Kird Ape, +Orcish Lumberjack, +Wild Nacatl
They moved from their respective colored sections.
+Court Hussar
Wanted to add it in for a long time. UW has bad multicolored cards, so I'll try this one.
Artifacts
-Mana Crypt
We hate the coin flipping and randomness.
+Erratic Portal
Screw it, if I expect it to come in anyway, why not to put it in there now?
I decided to keep Memory Jar in for now, but it's still on the chopping block.
Lands -
I didn't stop by changing only ten land slots.
-Krosan Verge
Too slow to be effective
+Ancient Ziggurat
I think it has potential to be used in two-colored heavy-creatures decks. If not, I'll cut it.
-Tolarian Academy, +Shelldock Isle
No, I still think it's subpar but it's that much less narrow, I'll even include it back.
If the effect was as devastating as you present it, I would have preferred to play Swerve.
I'll try to post the second part soon.
EDIT - I've toned down the number of morphs in this update, so I really don't know now. However, no one plays differently if they see a morph with the mana open. The chance it'll screw them is so low they can (and should) ignore it completely.
The morph creatures I play now are the ones I think good enough even without the "morph bluff", with morph tacked on as means of triggered abilities that generate card advantage or to cheat creaures into play at a lower mana cost.
That's what I try to do. I know I sacrifice powerlevel, but I think it makes the cube more fun. Really, with all those great WW creatures, you do feel a bit forced to a white aggro archetype.
We also play Windfall, Memory Jar and Wheel of Fortune. I don't think I should play that many draw-seven effects.
Not searching for a fat flier, but a hard-to-deal with evasive finisher. I didn't think his ability would matter.
I had played against him though, and he was very subpar and unexciting (in hand of a good player as well. Maybe his strategy with Jace was flawed. How do you all play with it?).
There is a limit how many narrow cards I can play to push a single theme, and I don't want to come to the point where players feel forced to play reanimator. It's strong enough as is.
Given that, I think Rotting Rats are better and so deserve replacing it.
So, unlike my usual updates I'll begin from the bottom up. I made a major change to my land section. I've been planning cutting five more lands for more than three months, and I finally did it. I added all those five slots in my multicolored section, because I think that area had the most untapped potential. This also gave me the space to move some of my pseudo-mono cards to their rightful place.
- Lake of the Dead
Too slow and didn't do a lot in the long run.
- Temple to the False God
Too narrow, and even when it works it's unimpressive.
- Flagstones of Trokair
"Plays nicely with Armageddons" is too narrow, and I've cut the number of land destruction spells a bit in this update anyway.
- Riptide Laboratory
That's very narrow.
- Mishra's Workshop
Never seems to do anything. It has been played once, but really a deck cannot count on drafting that high number of artifacts to make this worthy.
Aditionally, I decided to replace all my cycling lands with the vivids. The cycling lands are easily playable, but they aren't exciting, the need to support my growing multicolored section and the player's demand are the reasons to this change.
-5*Cycling Lands (Barren Moor)
+5*Vivid Lands (Vivid Crag)
This change alone will significantly change my cube, but that's far from all. This update contains 47(!) cards, by far the largest I've ever made.
White:
- Scourglass
A weak Wrath effect. Nowhere near Disk.
+Martial Scoop
That's an amazing tempo boost. I don't think it wins games on it's own, but it's certainly strong and exciting.
- Samurai of the Pale Curtain
It always seems to be the worst 2/2 for WW creature. Once every few games (less than once in a draft) the graveyard hose effect will be awesome, but we've got a better card for that by far.
+Path to Exile
- Adarkar Valkyrie
Never survives. The power of white is really rising a lot in the last few sets, and she's one of the outdated victims.
+ Scepter of Dominance
Icy dominates, and the scepter's title describes it well.
- Whipcorder
Playable, but not so splashable and not so exciting. I'm tuning down the number of morph cards I run in this update.
+ Aven Squire
Splashable, aggressive, evasive beater. Exalted is a great mechanic for cube so far, so I hope this won't let me down.
Blue
I promised upgrading the blue creatures, and I did. First, the easy cuts.
-Timetwister , +Time Spiral
That's virtually a pure upgrade.
-Willbender, +Quicksilver Dragon
Willbender never works. One of my attempts to improve the blue creature's section.
-Telling Time
low impact
+Traumatic Visions
Seems perfect for blue. Cheap instant speed fixing + thinning or a counter (though expensive, a large part of the times it won't matter).
-Maelstrom Djinn, +Esperzoa
An upgrade IMO. With all the moxen I can see Esperzoa easily played, and she's huge for her cost.
-Brine Elemental
Morph as a theme isn't strong enough for our cube. Brine Elemental has a low impact outside of that theme.
+Old Man of the Sea
Again, trying to improve my blue creatures. Steal effect have proven good, repetition is desirable as well. Steals only small creatures, but still worth a try. I mean, Threads of Disloyalty is easily playable, so why not?
-Gush
The tempo disadvantage is way too severe. Was never more than a five mana Inspiration.
+Waterfront Bouncer
Not the best, but a few players really wanted it. It's still better than the card Iv'e just cut, but I expect it to get out again before the end of the year.
-Intuition
Gifts is good, but the effect is still narrow and I don't need that many.
+Jace Beleren
I still don't like it, but:
a) Player's demand. Since when do I listen to them?
b) I probably underrate it
c) Planeswalker's have style in their veins. I just need to play them all. They are fun, they are thrilling and they add more decisions to the game.
d) The new arts rock (the old art is also cool, but not as much).
e) I have the space anyway
Black
-Bone Splinters, +Ashes to Ashes
Upgrade. Saccing a critter was harder than I thought it would, Ashes to Ashes is a huge tempo and card advantage.
-Putrid Imp, +Rotting Rats
Upgrade. Since you almost never need the discard in your very first turn, and discarding two cards is usually enough, the broader card wins here.
-Grim Tutor
We don't have combos, and this is slow, expensive and painful. Was bad when used.
+Silent Specter
Even without a morph theme, this seems good.
-Choking Sands
It's playable, but the number of nonbasics lands goes down, and their importance becomes greater. Wasn't that good anyway.
+Bane of the Living
Black has so many mass removals now it's sick.
- Desolation Angel
It just moves to the BW section.
+ Phyrexian Reclamation
Tempting
-Shadow Guildmage
Doesn't do enough
+Cabal Interrogator
DerBK recommended it, and it seems good. Black creatures are awful.
Okay this update is just too massive for one post. I'll post the rest in a few days, that'll also ease the discussion.
That's why I prefer ten signets to five talismans.
Also, what will you take out of my white to include Lapse of Certainty (if at all)? I'm already taking out Samurai of the Pale Curtain, Adarkar Valkyrie and Scourglass.
The way I see it, combos are just very linear themes in the cube, as you will want to include them in high numbers to be draftable, and not entirely parasitic so that they can be more reliable. Many cubes out there include themes of different kinds. In my cube I support reanimator, land destruction and so on.
Another way to support combos is to play more open-ended cards that can be used in more than one combo and add them all to a deck, increasing your chances. Squee is awesome with many discard outlets, Sneak Attack is very open-ended, Kiki-Jiki has some awesome applications and Recurring Nightmare is one of the most broken cards ever for cube. Greater Gargadon is an infinite sacrifice outlet and that's useful to many combos. Traditional cubes would include only the broad pieces which are also reasonable or more by themselves, so you can be creative and find many more which aren't.
Also, take the number of tutors and card selection way up. Given enough combos, they'll be playable. Take down the number of disruption spells - targeted discard, free/cheap counters, and any other imaginable hosers (no Rule of Law if you play storm, for example).
Storm doesn't seem easy to support because while it has a reasonable number of enables (especially with power) it has a low count of finishers and it's spread among three colors. I think a small cube can support it, but you'll have to sacrifice some of the overall powerlevel for it to happen.
I like Ancient Ziggurat, I'll try it. Rupture Spire seems too slow, though I'm certain some cubes will like it. Exotic Orchard really depends on the concentration of multicolored lands in your cube. The more you have, the better it is though it's too early to know if it's good enough for the average cube.