The next update on my cube is probably the biggest one I've done since my initial de-powering ~7 years ago.
I've learned an enormous amount from 17lands.com about what kinds of cards over/underperform in opposition to my heuristics. Combat tricks and cards that make "minor" objects, for the most part. Even more adventure cards than I expected. The good creatures with backup. etc.
Also, a bunch of older cards have gotten better over time all at once due to the cumulative support that has crept in since eldraine 1.0: artifact token "tribal". Oh, and O-naginata is finally ready for showtime.
Finally going to experiment with 10 more rare fixing lands: Triomes, ex indatha triome.
I've always been an outlier but I never had a problem with it. My games seemed great from my perspective and from anyone I could rope in. Problems arose when expanding to 8 people. So I am hoping this gets that off my back.
Funny: Makes [[Boseju, who endures]] worse.
Downside: Expensive option. Lots of text and money for upsides that might only be rarely relevant. I don't run their jungle shrine-and-co uncles for a reason (they're just bad thriving lands) but I hope the upsides will matter enough.
Probably Leelue and Rushing River, but rescuer chwinga is truly a very good magic card. Unlike most charms, it has a fair baseline to go with its flexibility (and its applications are so broad)
That's kinda the point I want to get at. I saw that abrade got played like 10x as much as Fire prophecy, and thought "But if you aren't using it to destroy artifacts often, I have to assume that the extremely often occurrence that you churn a card from fire prophecy not only is more useful but also just makes more magic because it helps with the nongames"
I removed abrade in an attempt to downtune my removal, but I think I accidentally upgraded to a fire prophecy variant and I'm probably not going back
I already asked Arbor this question, but I'm curious:
If you could be as accurate as you're willing to be, what fraction of the time do you think your Abrades are used in shatter mode?
Oji, the exquisite blade has been performing pretty well since I added it recently. Flickerwisp's statline is good and probably will remain good for a while. For Kor hookmaster, besides Wall of omens may I interest you in a Rescuer Chwinga or a Githzerai Monk?
Oh, Unless you're omitting Universes Beyond cards, Sicarian Infiltrator is one of the best cards printed for us in the last couple years.
For me it's not about having dead gold cards. It's about having gold cards that make up for the fact that they are not useful for the large majority of players and are artificially making the packs they're in smaller. If the value a gold card adds to a deck/cube is approximately the same as a monocolored card, then it should probably just be a monocolored slot.
That's why I didn't go up to a third spell for years and why I was an early adopter of not playing cards like terminate.
But it hardly feels like they make gold commons and uncommons stronger than their monocolored counterparts these days unless they're downshifts. Strong ones are often some set-parasitic nonsense like Disturb-matters or Heroic tribal.
What percentage of everyone's cubes are multicolored? (preferably not counting hybrids but anything you would generally play with both colors). Oh, this is including dual lands.
I just added a third spell per color so I'm up to 9%.
Centaur glade was a decent card during the Obama administration, maybe even scary, but I would have a string of questions for the cube owner about their environment if it was still scary in 2024. Someone in a discord recently mentioned this cube as if they were a known entity, and after seeing their cube I can say she and I are building environments with very little in common.
The card can work, but you'd probably need to have a cube as far away from mine as possible: She has are defenders matter cards in here, no blue 1 drops, multiple eldrazi, 80 gold cards, etc.
Three slow, unpopular cards I've been thinking about for a few weeks: Tor Wauki the Younger
Upside after upside, after having Taigam, sidisi's hand run a ton of games I think there's more room for 5 drops that just need to untap and have outsized impacts on games.
Sword Coast Serpent
Adventure spells have been doing so well for me, and I'm such a sucker for cards that work in any stage of the game. Mirrorshell Crab is an unfair comparison, but you do get to draw a late-game fatty in exchange for having a worse spell attached.
Sylvok Battle-Chair Roar of the wurm is something of a fair comparison? Pulling a 6/6 on 4 out of your yard never came up as commonly as anyone hoped with the sorcery, and the chair might be unbeatable in a topdeck war?
On a different note, what sort of physical set up do you all use for managing lands and tokens during deck construction and game play? Do you keep everything in the cube box? A separate box? Does anyone have a land station like this one? Do you just pass stacks of lands / tokens around and let people take what they need?
I have recently switched to this system: I have 2 different kinds of 1/1 grounded tokens, 2 different kinds of 1/1 flying tokens, and then one of everything else. It's pretty rare for there to be multiple things on the same side of the board makings larger tokens, and I having two of the 1/1 varieties means that something like sever the bloodline or cloudgoat ranger can keep track.
There are two more (stalking vengeance and siege of towers), but they are cards so bad I won't even put the card tags on them.
Either Fear, fire, foes! or meteor blast is the best X spell, and they're both cheating.
Honestly I doubt I would run blaze at instant speed, and being an instant buffs a card by a whole mana. All that extra text on demonfire isn't worth a half a mana.
I doubt we'll ever get a playable, true X spell at this point. Not unless they go mad and power creep rolling thunder, or maybe add card-advantage in a set specific mechanic or something.
Since you can't cast woebringer demon on too many board states, and since your opponent could do some silliness to clear one side of the board or the other that you couldn't foresee, I don't see it happening. Too inconsistent.
Dark ritual is just too much variance. At least reanimator spells work as topdecks and with more mana costs. We also have the well-worn fact that our format has access to so many good removal spells and almost none of the most explosive early drops. A turn one... audacious thief? Cute. A turn two... Phyrexian scuta? Scary, sure, but we don't have a lot of cards like those.
//
I stopped running Bloodbraid elf and switched to ghor clan rampager because while BBE is probably a bit better, it doesn't... do... things. You can't often build to make it much better other than to avoid running certain cards and it doesn't facilitate any interesting gameplay decisions. And the last thing I really want in this game is more variance.
Unfortunately almost all the cards that gruul has that I would like are very similar to one another and have weird holes in their reliability (Grumgully, the generous and the enchantments like him).
That's funny. I *only* draft with 2 packs of 20, so if there's an issue with the third pack I wouldn't know.
@Frontier Warmonger and Trygon Prime
Warmonger is a *****, but it's not curse of shallow graves level of crazy. It punishes some decks disproportionately (anything relying on a big blocker) but it does give you multiple ways to make it better (synergizing with deathtouch, for example). It wouldn't surprise me if someone thought it was too good, but it's worth a shot.
Trygon prime is scary but at least it's a gold card to build around. Anything that makes jhessian thief better is a win in my book. go go blue aggro
I've learned an enormous amount from 17lands.com about what kinds of cards over/underperform in opposition to my heuristics. Combat tricks and cards that make "minor" objects, for the most part. Even more adventure cards than I expected. The good creatures with backup. etc.
Also, a bunch of older cards have gotten better over time all at once due to the cumulative support that has crept in since eldraine 1.0: artifact token "tribal". Oh, and O-naginata is finally ready for showtime.
Be back soon...
My CubeCobra (draft 20 card packs, 2 packs.)
430, Peasant, Very Unpowered
Why you should take your hybrids out of your gold section
Manamath Article
I've always been an outlier but I never had a problem with it. My games seemed great from my perspective and from anyone I could rope in. Problems arose when expanding to 8 people. So I am hoping this gets that off my back.
Funny: Makes [[Boseju, who endures]] worse.
Downside: Expensive option. Lots of text and money for upsides that might only be rarely relevant. I don't run their jungle shrine-and-co uncles for a reason (they're just bad thriving lands) but I hope the upsides will matter enough.
//
Cali, I still have my snow lands in because swapping is annoying: https://scryfall.com/card/mh1/251/snow-covered-island
I used to use mostly the Veronique Meignaud lands from ZEN: https://scryfall.com/card/zen/236/island
When I get money, I am either going with NEO full arts: https://scryfall.com/search?q=set:neo unique:prints t:basic is:full&unique=cards&as=grid&order=name
(second forest, second island, either mountain, first plains, either swamp)
or these meditation lands: https://scryfall.com/search?order=set&q=e:sld cn≥1399 cn≤1403&unique=prints.
I like the jubilee lands a lot too, so I will probably try to stick them in something: https://scryfall.com/search?q=a:jubilee type:basic -t:snow&unique=cards&as=grid&order=name
If I ever remake my bad card cube, I'll try to remember to get these too https://scryfall.com/card/sld/258/forest
My CubeCobra (draft 20 card packs, 2 packs.)
430, Peasant, Very Unpowered
Why you should take your hybrids out of your gold section
Manamath Article
Probably Leelue and Rushing River, but rescuer chwinga is truly a very good magic card. Unlike most charms, it has a fair baseline to go with its flexibility (and its applications are so broad)
My CubeCobra (draft 20 card packs, 2 packs.)
430, Peasant, Very Unpowered
Why you should take your hybrids out of your gold section
Manamath Article
I removed abrade in an attempt to downtune my removal, but I think I accidentally upgraded to a fire prophecy variant and I'm probably not going back
My CubeCobra (draft 20 card packs, 2 packs.)
430, Peasant, Very Unpowered
Why you should take your hybrids out of your gold section
Manamath Article
If you could be as accurate as you're willing to be, what fraction of the time do you think your Abrades are used in shatter mode?
My CubeCobra (draft 20 card packs, 2 packs.)
430, Peasant, Very Unpowered
Why you should take your hybrids out of your gold section
Manamath Article
Oh, Unless you're omitting Universes Beyond cards, Sicarian Infiltrator is one of the best cards printed for us in the last couple years.
My CubeCobra (draft 20 card packs, 2 packs.)
430, Peasant, Very Unpowered
Why you should take your hybrids out of your gold section
Manamath Article
That's why I didn't go up to a third spell for years and why I was an early adopter of not playing cards like terminate.
But it hardly feels like they make gold commons and uncommons stronger than their monocolored counterparts these days unless they're downshifts. Strong ones are often some set-parasitic nonsense like Disturb-matters or Heroic tribal.
My CubeCobra (draft 20 card packs, 2 packs.)
430, Peasant, Very Unpowered
Why you should take your hybrids out of your gold section
Manamath Article
I just added a third spell per color so I'm up to 9%.
My CubeCobra (draft 20 card packs, 2 packs.)
430, Peasant, Very Unpowered
Why you should take your hybrids out of your gold section
Manamath Article
The card can work, but you'd probably need to have a cube as far away from mine as possible: She has are defenders matter cards in here, no blue 1 drops, multiple eldrazi, 80 gold cards, etc.
My CubeCobra (draft 20 card packs, 2 packs.)
430, Peasant, Very Unpowered
Why you should take your hybrids out of your gold section
Manamath Article
Tor Wauki the Younger
Upside after upside, after having Taigam, sidisi's hand run a ton of games I think there's more room for 5 drops that just need to untap and have outsized impacts on games.
Sword Coast Serpent
Adventure spells have been doing so well for me, and I'm such a sucker for cards that work in any stage of the game. Mirrorshell Crab is an unfair comparison, but you do get to draw a late-game fatty in exchange for having a worse spell attached.
Sylvok Battle-Chair
Roar of the wurm is something of a fair comparison? Pulling a 6/6 on 4 out of your yard never came up as commonly as anyone hoped with the sorcery, and the chair might be unbeatable in a topdeck war?
My CubeCobra (draft 20 card packs, 2 packs.)
430, Peasant, Very Unpowered
Why you should take your hybrids out of your gold section
Manamath Article
I have recently switched to this system: I have 2 different kinds of 1/1 grounded tokens, 2 different kinds of 1/1 flying tokens, and then one of everything else. It's pretty rare for there to be multiple things on the same side of the board makings larger tokens, and I having two of the 1/1 varieties means that something like sever the bloodline or cloudgoat ranger can keep track.
My CubeCobra (draft 20 card packs, 2 packs.)
430, Peasant, Very Unpowered
Why you should take your hybrids out of your gold section
Manamath Article
Either Fear, fire, foes! or meteor blast is the best X spell, and they're both cheating.
Honestly I doubt I would run blaze at instant speed, and being an instant buffs a card by a whole mana. All that extra text on demonfire isn't worth a half a mana.
I doubt we'll ever get a playable, true X spell at this point. Not unless they go mad and power creep rolling thunder, or maybe add card-advantage in a set specific mechanic or something.
Since you can't cast woebringer demon on too many board states, and since your opponent could do some silliness to clear one side of the board or the other that you couldn't foresee, I don't see it happening. Too inconsistent.
My CubeCobra (draft 20 card packs, 2 packs.)
430, Peasant, Very Unpowered
Why you should take your hybrids out of your gold section
Manamath Article
My CubeCobra (draft 20 card packs, 2 packs.)
430, Peasant, Very Unpowered
Why you should take your hybrids out of your gold section
Manamath Article
//
I stopped running Bloodbraid elf and switched to ghor clan rampager because while BBE is probably a bit better, it doesn't... do... things. You can't often build to make it much better other than to avoid running certain cards and it doesn't facilitate any interesting gameplay decisions. And the last thing I really want in this game is more variance.
Unfortunately almost all the cards that gruul has that I would like are very similar to one another and have weird holes in their reliability (Grumgully, the generous and the enchantments like him).
My CubeCobra (draft 20 card packs, 2 packs.)
430, Peasant, Very Unpowered
Why you should take your hybrids out of your gold section
Manamath Article
@Frontier Warmonger and Trygon Prime
Warmonger is a *****, but it's not curse of shallow graves level of crazy. It punishes some decks disproportionately (anything relying on a big blocker) but it does give you multiple ways to make it better (synergizing with deathtouch, for example). It wouldn't surprise me if someone thought it was too good, but it's worth a shot.
Trygon prime is scary but at least it's a gold card to build around. Anything that makes jhessian thief better is a win in my book. go go blue aggro
My CubeCobra (draft 20 card packs, 2 packs.)
430, Peasant, Very Unpowered
Why you should take your hybrids out of your gold section
Manamath Article