Don't misunderstand me. I'm not sacrificing power for flavor or mechanics. I'm just applying a secondary filter after the powerlevel filter to help in decision-making.
It's a common misconception that larger cubes suffer from lower power level. That hasn't been true for some years now. I look at 360 lists and see monocolor sections of 40 or 50 cards that could easily be expanded by 20 or so cards each, without suffering an appreciable drop in power level. If you were to actually go and count the number of cubeables in the Evaluate Everything project, you'd find that the number of cubeables far exceeds the limits of a 360 cube, even accounting for misevaluations. There is a significant luxury of choice that seems to have crept in at common. One of the main benefits of smaller cubes will always be the consistency and strength of the archetypes you choose to include, but even that distinction is fading as more and more functional replacements appear. That's where the secondary filter of "how does this play to the color's strengths?" comes into play.
Ambuscade - call me a fan of discussing marginal cards. It wouldn't be much of a discussion if we all agreed where this or that spell fell on the scale, would it? This spell gives green some play at instant speed, where an aura like Cartouche might open you up to the good old 2-for-1. I don't run nearly as much hexproof as some - I prefer to relegate it to finishers like Benthic Giant /Cold-Water Snapper - so Cartouche might not be the guaranteed value you think it is.
Celestial Flare - I can sort of see the appeal if hexproof is an issue, but it seems a bit corner case when cubes are littered with so many cheap, efficient creatures and token generators. I'm still not certain it's much better than Reproach.
Striped Riverwinder - Yeah, I expected a lot of its value came from the one mana cantrip. It's interesting how its costs were balanced vs the other cycling fatties (Granitic Titan / Rampaging Hippo / Greater Sandwurm) which mostly have more castable fronts but more expensive cycle costs.
Kujar Seedsculptor - will likely make my shortlist for possible aggro inclusions, alongside Nettle Sentinel/ Rhonas's Stalwart. It does have a semi-haste ability when passing its +1/+1 counter on to ready beaters, with an extra toughness to help fight on the ground. Like Marl said, I'm also a fan of above-curve stats, although I don't think the 1C 2/3 vanilla statline is particularly relevant at common with Centaur Courser at 2C (I don't see the hype for Shambling Ghoul either, but I am a fan of Extremely Slow Zombie )
Thanks for going deeper on this. In the past, regular cubes had dedicated number-crunching people who could set this up as its own thread with mod support. Usually they solicited participation from forum members first - that might help if you're casting about for more 360 cubes. There's several cubers like Usman, Marl or Izor who probably have 360s lying around somewhere, plus possible lurkers who could donate their lists to such a project
EDIT: In the interest of discussion, there were some other interesting results I noticed:
Beetleform Mage was one of only two gold cards that saw near-universal adoption. It's a way to sneak Air Elemental into common cubes, so it makes sense. You'll need some pretty strong stuff out of Ravnica Allegiance to dethrone it, I think. Cartouche of Strength's popularity makes me wonder again why Ambuscade isn't included more. It's not a question of mana cost. Is the addition of an aura that much of an improvement over instant speed?
Why is Celestial Flare so popular at 75% adoption? It's a CC cost instant, which makes it harder to cast - not a huge deal for noncreature spells since you don't need this to come out on curve, but still doesn't offer much for the increase in difficulty vs, say, Gideon's Reproach. There aren't that many big hexproof creatures running around, and white already has an excellent removal suite without it.
I can't see the interest in Striped Riverwinder. You're almost never going to actually cast it. And the kind of control deck that would want this finisher probably can't afford to cycle it away and lose one of its few threats.
Lastly, I noticed a lot of Kujar Seedsculptor running around in the cubes here. Can someone explain the card's value to me? As far as I know, it was mostly ignored on release - seems more or less on par with Ironshell Beetle.
Spined Thopter - I cut this card recently. Not because it was bad, although it's not great either. It's under par compared to blue and white's flyers. I cut it to help reinforce some of Magic's color themes. Green gets the biggest creatures. White gets the most keywords (call it martial prowess or something). Red gets the fastest creatures. And blue gets the most flyers. Haven't considered black yet, but black might be a catch-all, do-a-bit-of-everything-for-a-price to help reinforce the price of power thing it usually runs with.
I realized that I don't really want or need this card to help shore up a perceived weakness in green or red decks, for example, because I'm OK with those decks being really really good at what they do (being the biggest gorilla on the battlefield, and being the most aggressive respectively). Am I the only one who manages their cube somewhat along these lines?
In constructed theyre no build around cards, you just add them to normal decks that wants to win the grindgame.
So it only took me five minutes to look up Boros Monarch, which uses Battle Screech to both gum up the board and steal back the monarch, Kor Skyfisher to bounce monarch creatures and regain the monarch, cheap cyclers to get to the cards you need, and multiple copies of Palace Guards that can also re-trigger and regain the monarch. On top of a dozen cheap, efficient removal spells to further protect yourself.
That's what I mean by abusing it. I hope that clears it up, but I doubt how consistently that sort of deckbuilding can happen in Cube limited. I'm still waiting for actual cube experiences to provide some perspective.
My criticism doesn't particularly matter if the goal is just to provide a snapshot of those four cubes to discuss their individual differences. But using it as a prescriptive tool to draw some general conclusions about pauper cubes would be kind of sketchy. Four cubes is barely more than a two-cube comparison. Not to mention the individual biases and rules each cuber has.
As i often mentioned here, i think the looters are horribly overrated in this format and usually much worse than cantrip spells. There are no deckfiller to loot away and a 1/1 it too fragile and card disadvantage. Therefore I dont run them.
This seems wrong. No cube deck really contains "deckfiller". But depending on the situation, you may want to trade a land for a kill spell. Or a kill spell for a land. Etc. If looters are cut, it's not because they're overrated, but because the quality of blue's spells is so high that the looters become redundant.
The monarch cards are insane. With the amount of removal in the format I wonder how one could question their powerelevel. They are also played in pauper constucted.
This actually makes me question their inclusion even more. Removal spells in pauper are so efficient that you can easily turn this statement around and use it to point out how easy it is to remove a monarchy creature. I would also venture a guess that, aside from constructed environments being very different from limited, a constructed deck can much better protect their monarch investment since the entire deck can be built around abusing the mechanic. Not the same as limited.
I had a look at the list of cubes in the Cube Lists thread, and picked the cubes that had been updated in 2018, that had 360 cards, and that were (at least self-described as being) "powered".
The last cube to be added to that list was three years ago. I'm not sure how Al curates the list, since he seems to have edited it in 2018, but the list also has multiple dead links. This data should be viewed with a pinch of salt. Most cubers, myself included, have migrated over to cubetutor for bookkeeping. So I would see this less as some sort of general tool for pauper cubers, and more as a snapshot of the four or five most prolific cubers on the forum. I would recommend checking the data on cubetutor in addition to this - they have a much broader base and it's a lot easier to update cubes on, with some amazing built-in tools for comparison (I'm thinking not just of update time, but also stuff like number of updates, date the cube was created, cube size etc).
That said, I do love the number crunching done here. Even if it's limited in scope, it's a lot of work that helps generate discussion and highlight some interesting trends.
Those initial multicolor cards seem... not good (Abzan Guide et al). Especially if most of those sample cubes are at 360 where you could be including much better monocolor/artifact/guild cards.
Not including Ambuscade seems weird, but green got some nice removal in the last few sets (most recently with Aggressive Instinct I think) which could lead to an interesting discussion on the best options here (two mana sorcery vs three mana instant?). I'm a bit behind since I cut Savage Punch at 540 not too long ago Thought Courier's lack of adoption seems weird too, but I guess it depends whether you want a third looter since Merfolk Looter and Looter il-Kor are probably universal adds already. Strangling Soot seeing the same level of adoption as Terminate is interesting. Thorn of the Black Rose - I initially dismissed this as the forums are a bit biased towards deathtouchers, but it's also popular on cubetutor. How often does it actually protect the monarchy, vs the times when it's stuck in your hand against creatures that can steal your monarch, vs times when you're ok with just drawing one card? Tandem Lookout seems overhyped. It's relatively easy to turn off, or not have a decent soulbond target to draw with.
I'm still baffled as to how Grasping Scoundrel got stuck with a borderline rating. If you want any kind of aggro in black, and most cubes do, you need this card. Firebrand Archer's rating should probably be upgraded. Palace Sentinels is another monarch card I was curious about. Does it do work?
Yeah I think even Keldon Raider might be a nicer fit. That card is better in multiple ways - you don't need to discard if you don't want to, and it loots for you if you do. Still only borderline. (on a side note, I just noticed the nice thematic riff between Gathan Raiders and Keldon Raider. And since Gathan is one of my favorite beaters, Keldon Raider might be better than I think )
Pretty much the only thing going for Horde is the body (fairly easy to negate) and the fact that it opens up more design space for undercosted-beater-with-a-drawback in the future. Bloodrage Brawler isn't too far off from common printable if you tweak a couple levers.
Fencing Ace is cubable to me. On its own its strong enough and with some kind of pump it gets crazy. Geist of the Moors only borderline. double W and toughness 1. meh Dragon's Eye Savants borderline 0/6 blocks pretty much every non evasive in paupercubes and it has the flexibility in an offensive mode
Horde still bad for me. I dont see any deck thats wants it.
I was going to disagree with you on Fencing Ace, but on its own, it's only slightly worse thanYouthful Knight, which is marked cubeable here. The fact that it gets better with equipment and auras, and can represent a ton of burst damage with instant-speed pump, might bring it up to the cubeable level. For me it's somewhere in between, as I'm not sure how often you can leverage your pump to lift it out of subpar range.
I do agree on Geist. One point of toughness is a massive liability in a format with pingers, dividable burn and flying tokens.
Balduvian Horde... poor thing. Well, if Reckless Wurm ever gets downshifted like Arrogant Wurm, then I might have a case for this guy. With all the pseudo-looting available, it could help push some sort of madness/graveyard theme in red.
Yeah concerning [card]Soul of the Rapids, I leaned to Borderline with it being more of an archetype card or at least requires some consideration when cube building but I could see it at cubeable as a resilient and evasive control finisher. That or maybe some borderline creatures in that cmc slot aren't as good anymore. Could be a combination of the two also.
Giltgrove Stalker isn't really a strictly worse Wandering Wolf because just as is, wolf can be blocked by 2/X's unlike stalker. I think wolf may be more a borderline archetype card, since it require a decent amount of equipments/auras to make use of it's full potential, or at least as good as Stalker.
Yep, that's my bad. I think they can still be grouped together though as a push for the auras theme.
I do like Soul of the Rapids-style finishers. I currently have Whirlwind Adept in that spot, but it really feels like it should have flying (it looks like it should, and with a name like that, it kind of feels like it should too). Ideally for that cost we could get them combined in one card eventually for a 3/2 hexproof prowess flyer. I might even take it at six mana if it came as a 3/3
I like the ratings overall. Being stricter is a good thing.
I would switch Vampire Champion and Brazen Freebooter's ratings. Deathtouch on a 3/3 is super-overrated in pauper since those stats already trade with about 75% of a cube's creatures. And you're in ideal removal colors where you don't need a creature as pseudo-removal. Ramp in red is unusual enough that it opens up new strategies outside of aggro.
Swaggering Corsair: Borderline unless you have a decent +1/+1 counter theme going. Red 3s are just too good for a conditional Courser to see play.
Jungleborn Pioneer: Super cubeable. Like Marl said, you're getting a Gladecover Scout which is worth the cost and shields you against red's dividable burn.
Orazca Frillback: Borderline. I like the efficiency of the stats, but I don't think anyone actually wants this or Alpine Grizzly. They hit hard but trade with two-drops. My guess is that if red is the most aggressive color in the cube and still doesn't like including these cards (they get two as well in Onakke Ogre and Frenzied Raptor) then they are probably just under the curve for inclusion.
What are everyone's thoughts on these ratings/placements for Ixalan cards?
Bishop's Soldier (Cubeable):
A lifelink 2/2 body is alright and can make for a nice roadblock for against agressive decks.
How often will this be better than Lone Missionary? I get that it's much better with auras and equipment, but I think the lack of value upfront and the average-case scenario makes this card Borderline.
Kinjalli's Caller (Borderline):
I'd say this is pretty bad but should probably be grouped with the similar tribal creatures, that are good with enough support, which should maybe be bumped down to bad, where tribal cards are at in nearly every other section of project ratings.
Agree this should be bad. Not nearly enough support for dinos at pauper.
Looming Altisaur (Borderline):
Can be a big roadblock for control decks, but it doesn't have a lot of power.
This will almost always be a 4 mana wall, which is bad.
Pious Interdiction (Cubeable):
It's a strictly worse Faith's Fetters, but it still good for eliminating a threat and helping stabilize against aggressive decks.
Borderline. Four mana for removal is a big ask and I would normally consider it bad, but it has synergy with white's aura subtheme.
How on earth is that a knock against Cloud Spirit? You can't compare a three-drop with a two-drop. Those same two-drops are ground pounders that trade with any old bear, whereas the Spirit demands an answer since it's an evasive seven-turn clock just by itself. And in that comparison, Cloud Elemental is still the loser in the damage race because 2 is smaller than 3 (ten turns vs seven). The only virtue I see in the Cloud Elemental bros is their ability to profitably block Wind Drakes, a defensive ability (already narrow-use) which is extremely cube-dependent (how many Wind Drakes, pingers or 1-power flyers do you actually run? ) Hinterland Drake is an upgrade to the Elemental variants because there are way less artifact creatures than flyers in a regular pauper cube, but it's still a very contextual upgrade (profitable blocks) vs straight quality (more damage).
Two power for three mana is too slow and floaty for me. I'd rather have the Cloud Spirit variants, which are pretty amazing for your curve. Of course they die to a stiff breeze, but that's why they have evasion, and you're not playing them to block with
Good job! Here's the ones I think are a bit contentious:
Bastion Mastodon: Borderline. Five-drops are pretty ridiculous in white already. This is arguably a lot worse than Noble Templar. Eddytrail Hawk: Bad. Evasive beaters with less power than their casting cost need amazing abilities to make up for it, and a short-supply of Jump effect isn't it. Dukhara Peafowl: Bad. To make it to borderline, it needed a static ability, not an activated ability. Blue has much better 4-cost flyers on the outside of the cube already. Cathartic Reunion: Borderline. Two cards is a huge ask.
The artifact creatures with colored activations seem a bit too highly rated in general. The rest I more or less agree with. Even if some borderline/bad cards could be switched, I consider them practically interchangeable for the most part
I think Crown-Hunter Hireling is possibly the most polarizing pauper card of the last three years. I consider it borderline (how does it stack up to middle-road stuff like Kuldotha Ringleader anyway?) but the effect is clearly powerful enough for pauper since Entourage of Trest is a thing. If you hang on to the monarchy for more than one turn, then the 4/4 defender is basically a free card and you don't care about the drawback anyway (or it helps you hang on to the monarchy) . I just hate the strictly-worse approach to card design even if you take a color's context into consideration. Seems lazy.
Agree with everything except one thing. How is Wings of the Guard bad when Stormfront Pegasus is a staple? How much does blocking actually factor into an evaluation of Pegasus? This should be upgraded at least to borderline if not cubeable
Don't misunderstand me. I'm not sacrificing power for flavor or mechanics. I'm just applying a secondary filter after the powerlevel filter to help in decision-making.
It's a common misconception that larger cubes suffer from lower power level. That hasn't been true for some years now. I look at 360 lists and see monocolor sections of 40 or 50 cards that could easily be expanded by 20 or so cards each, without suffering an appreciable drop in power level. If you were to actually go and count the number of cubeables in the Evaluate Everything project, you'd find that the number of cubeables far exceeds the limits of a 360 cube, even accounting for misevaluations. There is a significant luxury of choice that seems to have crept in at common. One of the main benefits of smaller cubes will always be the consistency and strength of the archetypes you choose to include, but even that distinction is fading as more and more functional replacements appear. That's where the secondary filter of "how does this play to the color's strengths?" comes into play.
Ambuscade - call me a fan of discussing marginal cards. It wouldn't be much of a discussion if we all agreed where this or that spell fell on the scale, would it? This spell gives green some play at instant speed, where an aura like Cartouche might open you up to the good old 2-for-1. I don't run nearly as much hexproof as some - I prefer to relegate it to finishers like Benthic Giant /Cold-Water Snapper - so Cartouche might not be the guaranteed value you think it is.
Celestial Flare - I can sort of see the appeal if hexproof is an issue, but it seems a bit corner case when cubes are littered with so many cheap, efficient creatures and token generators. I'm still not certain it's much better than Reproach.
Striped Riverwinder - Yeah, I expected a lot of its value came from the one mana cantrip. It's interesting how its costs were balanced vs the other cycling fatties (Granitic Titan / Rampaging Hippo / Greater Sandwurm) which mostly have more castable fronts but more expensive cycle costs.
Kujar Seedsculptor - will likely make my shortlist for possible aggro inclusions, alongside Nettle Sentinel/ Rhonas's Stalwart. It does have a semi-haste ability when passing its +1/+1 counter on to ready beaters, with an extra toughness to help fight on the ground. Like Marl said, I'm also a fan of above-curve stats, although I don't think the 1C 2/3 vanilla statline is particularly relevant at common with Centaur Courser at 2C (I don't see the hype for Shambling Ghoul either, but I am a fan of Extremely Slow Zombie )
My Cube (DeckStats)
My Pauper Cube: 540 (CubeTutor link!)
Level 1 Judge
EDIT: In the interest of discussion, there were some other interesting results I noticed:
Beetleform Mage was one of only two gold cards that saw near-universal adoption. It's a way to sneak Air Elemental into common cubes, so it makes sense. You'll need some pretty strong stuff out of Ravnica Allegiance to dethrone it, I think.
Cartouche of Strength's popularity makes me wonder again why Ambuscade isn't included more. It's not a question of mana cost. Is the addition of an aura that much of an improvement over instant speed?
Why is Celestial Flare so popular at 75% adoption? It's a CC cost instant, which makes it harder to cast - not a huge deal for noncreature spells since you don't need this to come out on curve, but still doesn't offer much for the increase in difficulty vs, say, Gideon's Reproach. There aren't that many big hexproof creatures running around, and white already has an excellent removal suite without it.
I can't see the interest in Striped Riverwinder. You're almost never going to actually cast it. And the kind of control deck that would want this finisher probably can't afford to cycle it away and lose one of its few threats.
Lastly, I noticed a lot of Kujar Seedsculptor running around in the cubes here. Can someone explain the card's value to me? As far as I know, it was mostly ignored on release - seems more or less on par with Ironshell Beetle.
Spined Thopter - I cut this card recently. Not because it was bad, although it's not great either. It's under par compared to blue and white's flyers. I cut it to help reinforce some of Magic's color themes. Green gets the biggest creatures. White gets the most keywords (call it martial prowess or something). Red gets the fastest creatures. And blue gets the most flyers. Haven't considered black yet, but black might be a catch-all, do-a-bit-of-everything-for-a-price to help reinforce the price of power thing it usually runs with.
I realized that I don't really want or need this card to help shore up a perceived weakness in green or red decks, for example, because I'm OK with those decks being really really good at what they do (being the biggest gorilla on the battlefield, and being the most aggressive respectively). Am I the only one who manages their cube somewhat along these lines?
My Cube (DeckStats)
My Pauper Cube: 540 (CubeTutor link!)
Level 1 Judge
So it only took me five minutes to look up Boros Monarch, which uses Battle Screech to both gum up the board and steal back the monarch, Kor Skyfisher to bounce monarch creatures and regain the monarch, cheap cyclers to get to the cards you need, and multiple copies of Palace Guards that can also re-trigger and regain the monarch. On top of a dozen cheap, efficient removal spells to further protect yourself.
That's what I mean by abusing it. I hope that clears it up, but I doubt how consistently that sort of deckbuilding can happen in Cube limited. I'm still waiting for actual cube experiences to provide some perspective.
My Cube (DeckStats)
My Pauper Cube: 540 (CubeTutor link!)
Level 1 Judge
This seems wrong. No cube deck really contains "deckfiller". But depending on the situation, you may want to trade a land for a kill spell. Or a kill spell for a land. Etc. If looters are cut, it's not because they're overrated, but because the quality of blue's spells is so high that the looters become redundant.
This actually makes me question their inclusion even more. Removal spells in pauper are so efficient that you can easily turn this statement around and use it to point out how easy it is to remove a monarchy creature. I would also venture a guess that, aside from constructed environments being very different from limited, a constructed deck can much better protect their monarch investment since the entire deck can be built around abusing the mechanic. Not the same as limited.
My Cube (DeckStats)
My Pauper Cube: 540 (CubeTutor link!)
Level 1 Judge
The last cube to be added to that list was three years ago. I'm not sure how Al curates the list, since he seems to have edited it in 2018, but the list also has multiple dead links. This data should be viewed with a pinch of salt. Most cubers, myself included, have migrated over to cubetutor for bookkeeping. So I would see this less as some sort of general tool for pauper cubers, and more as a snapshot of the four or five most prolific cubers on the forum. I would recommend checking the data on cubetutor in addition to this - they have a much broader base and it's a lot easier to update cubes on, with some amazing built-in tools for comparison (I'm thinking not just of update time, but also stuff like number of updates, date the cube was created, cube size etc).
That said, I do love the number crunching done here. Even if it's limited in scope, it's a lot of work that helps generate discussion and highlight some interesting trends.
Those initial multicolor cards seem... not good (Abzan Guide et al). Especially if most of those sample cubes are at 360 where you could be including much better monocolor/artifact/guild cards.
Not including Ambuscade seems weird, but green got some nice removal in the last few sets (most recently with Aggressive Instinct I think) which could lead to an interesting discussion on the best options here (two mana sorcery vs three mana instant?). I'm a bit behind since I cut Savage Punch at 540 not too long ago
Thought Courier's lack of adoption seems weird too, but I guess it depends whether you want a third looter since Merfolk Looter and Looter il-Kor are probably universal adds already.
Strangling Soot seeing the same level of adoption as Terminate is interesting.
Thorn of the Black Rose - I initially dismissed this as the forums are a bit biased towards deathtouchers, but it's also popular on cubetutor. How often does it actually protect the monarchy, vs the times when it's stuck in your hand against creatures that can steal your monarch, vs times when you're ok with just drawing one card?
Tandem Lookout seems overhyped. It's relatively easy to turn off, or not have a decent soulbond target to draw with.
I'm still baffled as to how Grasping Scoundrel got stuck with a borderline rating. If you want any kind of aggro in black, and most cubes do, you need this card.
Firebrand Archer's rating should probably be upgraded.
Palace Sentinels is another monarch card I was curious about. Does it do work?
My Cube (DeckStats)
My Pauper Cube: 540 (CubeTutor link!)
Level 1 Judge
Pretty much the only thing going for Horde is the body (fairly easy to negate) and the fact that it opens up more design space for undercosted-beater-with-a-drawback in the future. Bloodrage Brawler isn't too far off from common printable if you tweak a couple levers.
My Cube (DeckStats)
My Pauper Cube: 540 (CubeTutor link!)
Level 1 Judge
I was going to disagree with you on Fencing Ace, but on its own, it's only slightly worse thanYouthful Knight, which is marked cubeable here. The fact that it gets better with equipment and auras, and can represent a ton of burst damage with instant-speed pump, might bring it up to the cubeable level. For me it's somewhere in between, as I'm not sure how often you can leverage your pump to lift it out of subpar range.
I do agree on Geist. One point of toughness is a massive liability in a format with pingers, dividable burn and flying tokens.
Balduvian Horde... poor thing. Well, if Reckless Wurm ever gets downshifted like Arrogant Wurm, then I might have a case for this guy. With all the pseudo-looting available, it could help push some sort of madness/graveyard theme in red.
My Cube (DeckStats)
My Pauper Cube: 540 (CubeTutor link!)
Level 1 Judge
Yep, that's my bad. I think they can still be grouped together though as a push for the auras theme.
I do like Soul of the Rapids-style finishers. I currently have Whirlwind Adept in that spot, but it really feels like it should have flying (it looks like it should, and with a name like that, it kind of feels like it should too). Ideally for that cost we could get them combined in one card eventually for a 3/2 hexproof prowess flyer. I might even take it at six mana if it came as a 3/3
My Cube (DeckStats)
My Pauper Cube: 540 (CubeTutor link!)
Level 1 Judge
I would switch Vampire Champion and Brazen Freebooter's ratings. Deathtouch on a 3/3 is super-overrated in pauper since those stats already trade with about 75% of a cube's creatures. And you're in ideal removal colors where you don't need a creature as pseudo-removal. Ramp in red is unusual enough that it opens up new strategies outside of aggro.
Swaggering Corsair: Borderline unless you have a decent +1/+1 counter theme going. Red 3s are just too good for a conditional Courser to see play.
Giltgrove Stalker: Borderline. Strictly worse than Wandering Wolf which already sees very little play.
Jungleborn Pioneer: Super cubeable. Like Marl said, you're getting a Gladecover Scout which is worth the cost and shields you against red's dividable burn.
Orazca Frillback: Borderline. I like the efficiency of the stats, but I don't think anyone actually wants this or Alpine Grizzly. They hit hard but trade with two-drops. My guess is that if red is the most aggressive color in the cube and still doesn't like including these cards (they get two as well in Onakke Ogre and Frenzied Raptor) then they are probably just under the curve for inclusion.
Not a big deal, but you also have a typo in Goblin Trailblazer.
My Cube (DeckStats)
My Pauper Cube: 540 (CubeTutor link!)
Level 1 Judge
My Cube (DeckStats)
My Pauper Cube: 540 (CubeTutor link!)
Level 1 Judge
My Cube (DeckStats)
My Pauper Cube: 540 (CubeTutor link!)
Level 1 Judge
My Cube (DeckStats)
My Pauper Cube: 540 (CubeTutor link!)
Level 1 Judge
Bastion Mastodon: Borderline. Five-drops are pretty ridiculous in white already. This is arguably a lot worse than Noble Templar.
Eddytrail Hawk: Bad. Evasive beaters with less power than their casting cost need amazing abilities to make up for it, and a short-supply of Jump effect isn't it.
Dukhara Peafowl: Bad. To make it to borderline, it needed a static ability, not an activated ability. Blue has much better 4-cost flyers on the outside of the cube already.
Cathartic Reunion: Borderline. Two cards is a huge ask.
The artifact creatures with colored activations seem a bit too highly rated in general. The rest I more or less agree with. Even if some borderline/bad cards could be switched, I consider them practically interchangeable for the most part
My Cube (DeckStats)
My Pauper Cube: 540 (CubeTutor link!)
Level 1 Judge
My Cube (DeckStats)
My Pauper Cube: 540 (CubeTutor link!)
Level 1 Judge
My Cube (DeckStats)
My Pauper Cube: 540 (CubeTutor link!)
Level 1 Judge