You're missing the 2G treefolk 1/3 guy from lorwyn.
Battlewand Oak? Neat; never noticed him before. The proto-landfall ability is certainly cool from an historian's viewpoint, but I don't like how it only triggers on forest drops. The tribal pump is useless since I won't run nearly enough treefolk to trigger it often. (Currently I don't run any.)
Frankly I'd rather run Snapping Creeper as my second 2G landfall critter. I hear that 2/3 vigilant creatures are pretty good against aggro bears.
PS:Sporemound. If there's a pauper cube where it belongs, it's gonna be the BLM Box.
Arguably you could think of including both type of cards - cards that benefit keeping lands and cards that benefit playing them all. That makes players start thinking about when it's worth dumping lands onto the battlefield rather than keeping them, and forces them to be aware and make those decisions, which I think would be more valuable than simply teaching them to hold back lands.
As usual, Lanxal cuts straight to the beating heart of the matter.
Dawnglare Invoker (and most of the other Invokers) are definitely worth looking into for the former.
Huh. I had been planning to trim some excess removal spells anyway, which might make board stalls more common. And invokers are pretty good for breaking those. I wonder if I could mix and match from ROE and Legions to create a playable cycle? I love cycles.
The ROE invokers look superior in general, but Smokespew's repeatable -3/-3 looks like it could break board stalls much faster than the Bloodrite Invoker could win them. If I just wanted to win a board stall with burn to the dome, Flamewave does it so much better. And I think my new red section will have enough alpha-strike tech already that it shouldn't need the Lavafume Invoker to get there. But I might have to keep the black and red ROE guys in my reserve binder just in case my initial evaluation proves wrong.
Discard always makes people realize they should've held back lands!
Indeed.
So do looters. Besides the obvious options, weren't you running Soratami Cloudskater for a while, Lanxal? I'm surprised I didn't see it before: the activation cost of her ability is an engine for retrace, landfall, AND repeating ETB triggers with the common Zen-lands, while the ability itself is still useful enough on its own when you need to draw gas out of a flood. And like Looter il-Kor, she carries equipment into the red zone pretty well too.
There are several other common moonfolk with return-a-land activation costs: Soratami Rainshaper and Soratami Mirror-Guard appear to have the most draft potential. On the spell side of blue there's Deprive, Daze, and Gush. In green there's Quirion Ranger, of course, who we all know and love. Are there any other return-a-land activation costs at common that I've overlooked?
I like where this cube theme is going.
**********************
PS: I just found Shard Volley and Thunderclap as extra land-sac outlets for red. This theme just keeps getting crazier. I think I'm going to dub this new incarnation of my cube the BLM Edition when it's done. (That's the Bureau of Land Management for any non-Americans who were wondering.)
PPS: More finds with sacrifice or return-a-land costs...
Troubled Healer: duh. Its merits have been discussed enough in the main pauper thread.
Also, Walking Atlas and Sakura-Tribe Scout for setting up two landfalls in one turn, an instant landfall on your opponent's turn, or flashing in something evil like Desert or Quicksand.
Wow, great discussion with some good points guys. Looking over my provisional list that I've been working on over at cubetutor.com, I really don't think I have room for very many LD cards anyway, so I'll just try out those few that have other uses. Like I said, I'm not looking to make old-fashioned land-denial decks a thing... but in a cube that stresses the importance of land, it seems only fitting that players should occasionally get to blow one of them up. Making a player ask herself questions like: "Should I use this Aftershock to destroy his Rupture Spire now, or save it for a later threat?" is in keeping with my desire to make players think harder about land.
A little background: I'm in the process of overhauling my cube list and shopping for new cards, and I've been searching for a new theme (or set of subthemes) to lend some coherence to my draft environment. Since I mostly play head-to-head formats (Winchester, grid drafting, sealed deck) it's rather difficult to support niche archetypes like storm or tribal decks that depend on the drafter collecting a critical mass of the right cards.
One thing I've noticed during my matches is a tendency for my opponents to play their lands immediately even during a board stall when they gain nothing by doing so -- they don't even think about holding onto them to bluff a combat trick or play around discard effects. Since I often use my cube as a teaching tool for friends who don't have much limited-format experience, I thought it might be fun to cube more cards that reward players who use their lands thoughtfully to grind out extra value.
This isn't a narrow deck archetype so much as a broad mechanical thread that should get woven into many different aggro, midrange, and control decks. Think back to Zendikar/Worldwake limited, where every deck had some kind of land-based shenanigans between the landfall, Zendikons, utility lands, and manlands in that format. That's what I'm shooting for here.
The major mechanics I'm looking at are landfall, Zendikons, retrace, spellshapers (frequently used to discard extra lands for value), land sacrifice costs, utility lands, cycling lands, and land destruction/mana screw. Many of these cards show up in pauper lists already. I'm looking for feedback on what I'm already considering for my lands-matter theme, and card suggestions that I may have overlooked.
Naturally, green's deep bullpen of other land-fetching effects also help to keep the landfall triggers flowing. The utility lands squeeze extra value out of landfall triggers, especially during later turns when the mana isn't needed so much and ETBT clauses are less problematic. After landfalls have been triggered, the Zendikons turn an excess land on the battlefield into a mana-efficient body -- a hasty body if there's an untapped land to spare after casting the Aura.
I like how the cards which reward you for discarding lands (or possibly other cards in the case of spellshapers, but mostly lands in practice) kind of work against the landfall package. A drafter may not want both types of cards in his or her forty. On the other hand, land-sac effects work quite well with landfall -- they give players something to do with all that excess land they've already played.
Of course, if a cube environment pays this much attention to lands, then it almost HAS to include a little land destruction for thematic reasons. I don't think we'll see a dedicated LD deck come together very often in Winchester or sealed-deck play, but those formats do feature a lot of 3-color decks with sketchy mana bases -- which creates real blowout potential for judiciously applied mana screw. And blowing up a Zendikon is just funny. But I have no idea how many of these are worth including at 360:
Spellshapers are kind of fun: I always like having the option to pitch a dead card for some value. Here's a mix-and-match cycle I'm thinking about throwing into my own cube when I finally get around to overhauling it.
Syphon Life was just reprinted as a common in Modern Masters, too, if you want another retrace option for black. And speaking of Modern Masters, I've been impressed by this cycle while watching online MMA drafts:
Obviously Sylvan Bounty is outclassed by the deep stack of superior mana-fixing options available in green and should never be cubed. But I'm actually thinking about adding the other four to my own cube, since I do a lot of Winchester drafting and mana-fixing is so crucial in that format. Don't think of them as horribly overcosted spells -- think of them as cheap instant land tutors for each color that do something else if you topdeck them during the late game, long after other land tutors would do nothing but thin your deck.
Experiment Two - UG
Creature - Fungus Bear (U)
Graft 2, evolve
0/0
-----
Hellkite Yearling is cool, but seems a bit complex for a NWO common. I'd just set the triggered ability to a constant number instead of X.
That is one crescent-fresh bear. Custom cube folks would have a field day with it. Just needs art and an MTG Set-Builder mockup.
RE: Hellkite Yearling -- Maybe 3RR to deal 3 damage to target creature instead?
Also, on the subject of NWO... is that why we haven't seen any common charms since the Planar Chaos cycle? Because mono-colored pauper charms are one of the things I miss most about old-school Magic. Seems like you can't get a charm these days without it being gold and uncommon. *sigh*
New design challenge, for those who choose to accept it: create a new 5-card cycle of mono-colored charms, or 10 hybrid-mana charms (one for each 2-color pair).
I'm thinking about adding Hearth Charm to my cube the next time I update, as part of an ongoing effort to diversify red's noncreature portfolio so it brings more to the table than just burn. The last two modes should play well with weenie-rush aggro, and the first mode removes artifact creatures that are too big for most burn spells to handle (Pith Driller, Thundering Tanadon, Phyrexian War Beast, etc).
What do people think: better or worse than Fury Charm for a cube that doesn't do much with time counters?
I cut Delver ages ago. There just isn't enough support for a low creature count, high spell count deck at common. No Augur of Bolas, Pyromancer, Gelectrode, etc. We've got Kiln Fiend, Wee Dragonauts and Delver, but I don't think that's enough to support the archetype.
I think most of the non-striker support cards have enough utility to get drafted and played outside of the Delver/Kiln Fiend deck. How much more support does the archetype need?
Hexproof Dude honestly doesn't seem much more playable than Sacred Wolf. 2 toughness means it'll still trade with most 2-drops in the format. Make it a 2/2 for 1G instead (Hexproof Bear? Hexproof Budoka?) and aggro would love it. Make it 2/3 for 2G and then control and midrange would gladly play it as an early trump against aggro's customary flood of 2/1s and 2/2s.
Rabid Rabbit is quite the upgrade from Bull Ceradon! 6/6 and mono-colored is quite a bit stronger than 5/5 and multicolored. I guess it could still see print at uncommon though. If somebody had told me a few years ago that WOTC would print a 5-CMC 4/4 vigilant spider at common, I would have written it off as wishful thinking.
The Delve cards could be very strong if your cube pushes the dredge/self-mill archetype. They might still be playable in the mid to late game without any extra support, but I haven't played around with delve enough to get a good feel for that.
*********************************
My inner Timmy and Vorthos are rankled by the lack of playable dragons and sea monsters in the pauper format. Why does blue get a bunch of common drakes but red only gets Dragon Hatchling? Why do the forests teem with great trampling wurms (Yavimaya and Havenwood FTW) while the oceans can only muster a Harbor Serpent? Surely we can do better.
Hellkite Yearling2RR
Creature - Dragon (C)
Flying
Whenever Hellkite Yearling attacks, you may pay XRR, where X is no greater than 3. If you do, Hellkite Yearling deals X damage to target creature defending player controls but deals no combat damage this turn.
2/2
I bashed on Harbor Serpent earlier but the newer take on islandhome was far less crippling than the drawback of the old serpents. Harbor Serpent may even have been maindeckable in Core Limited if it had an upside outside of the blue mirror match.
Shipwrecker Serpent4UU
Creature - Serpent (C)
Flash (You may cast this spell any time you could cast an instant.)
Shipwrecker Serpent can't attack unless there are five or more Islands on the battlefield. They didn't see it in time to deploy the harpoons. Or the lifeboats.
5/5
Oh sweet, us poor folks have our own version of the thread now. (Yeah, I've been away from the forums for a while.)
Here's a pauper candidate I posted in the original Print This thread:
Panoramic Vista
Land T: Add 1 to your mana pool. ,T, Sacrifice Panoramic Vista: Search your library for a basic land card and put that card onto the battlefield tapped. Then shuffle your library.
So yeah, it's just a Panorama that doesn't limit itself to fetching basic lands from Jund, Grixis, Esper, Bant, or Naya. Nothing terribly exciting, but I'll wager it would find a home in many pauper-cube land sections -- if not as an addition then at least as a replacement for one of the less popular 5-color fixers like Shimmering Grotto. And I don't doubt that something like the Vista could be printed at common in a future core set because we already have a precedent for this sort of upgrade: compare the common Obelisk cycle to Manalith.
Thanks for bringing up Madcap Skills, jonboyjon. I actually kind of like this aura; I have fond memories of beating face with a bloodthirsty Stormblood Berzerker a couple of summers ago at FNM. It still suffers from aura syndrome of course but the low cost and potentially high upside might make this worth testing. I'm always looking for ways to expand my red noncreature section's identity beyond "BURN ALL OF THE THINGS!" and blocker denial is one of the themes I've been trying to push.
I'm on the fence about Riot Gear. I don't like running "strictly worse" versions of cards that are already in the cube, especially when it's strictly worse than Vulshok Morningstar in the power department, but equipment is so important to aggro decks that I might want the extra redundancy if I can make room for it. Turning a 2/1 piker into a 3/3 isn't as good as making it a 4/3 beater but it's still pretty good.
In other news, I'm sad we didn't get a better set of hybrids; Pit Fight appears to be the best of the common hybrids. The reprint of Beckon Apparition is decent if you need pinpoint graveyard hate. Shattering Blow is basically a Shatter that fits into more sideboards... which isn't that terrible, really. Deathcult Rogue might also make the cut for anybody who wants to push a dedicated hybrid section. Bioshift was just not intended for our format.
I was right about them printing a common 5-color fixer for GTC limited, but it's a reprint of Prophetic Prism. I'm a little sad we didn't see anything new, but the Prism's not bad if you haven't tried it before.
I'll second the request for discussion on the ratio of removal spells to their targets. This is an important topic for ALL cube designers, pauper or otherwise. Finding the sweet spot is hard, and I would welcome any insights you might be able to share.
Battlewand Oak? Neat; never noticed him before. The proto-landfall ability is certainly cool from an historian's viewpoint, but I don't like how it only triggers on forest drops. The tribal pump is useless since I won't run nearly enough treefolk to trigger it often. (Currently I don't run any.)
Frankly I'd rather run Snapping Creeper as my second 2G landfall critter. I hear that 2/3 vigilant creatures are pretty good against aggro bears.
PS: Sporemound. If there's a pauper cube where it belongs, it's gonna be the BLM Box.
As usual, Lanxal cuts straight to the beating heart of the matter.
Huh. I had been planning to trim some excess removal spells anyway, which might make board stalls more common. And invokers are pretty good for breaking those. I wonder if I could mix and match from ROE and Legions to create a playable cycle? I love cycles.
1 Wildheart Invoker
1 Dawnglare Invoker
1 Frostwind Invoker
1 Smokespew Invoker
1 Flamewave Invoker
The ROE invokers look superior in general, but Smokespew's repeatable -3/-3 looks like it could break board stalls much faster than the Bloodrite Invoker could win them. If I just wanted to win a board stall with burn to the dome, Flamewave does it so much better. And I think my new red section will have enough alpha-strike tech already that it shouldn't need the Lavafume Invoker to get there. But I might have to keep the black and red ROE guys in my reserve binder just in case my initial evaluation proves wrong.
Indeed.
So do looters. Besides the obvious options, weren't you running Soratami Cloudskater for a while, Lanxal? I'm surprised I didn't see it before: the activation cost of her ability is an engine for retrace, landfall, AND repeating ETB triggers with the common Zen-lands, while the ability itself is still useful enough on its own when you need to draw gas out of a flood. And like Looter il-Kor, she carries equipment into the red zone pretty well too.
There are several other common moonfolk with return-a-land activation costs: Soratami Rainshaper and Soratami Mirror-Guard appear to have the most draft potential. On the spell side of blue there's Deprive, Daze, and Gush. In green there's Quirion Ranger, of course, who we all know and love. Are there any other return-a-land activation costs at common that I've overlooked?
I like where this cube theme is going.
**********************
PS: I just found Shard Volley and Thunderclap as extra land-sac outlets for red. This theme just keeps getting crazier. I think I'm going to dub this new incarnation of my cube the BLM Edition when it's done. (That's the Bureau of Land Management for any non-Americans who were wondering.)
PPS: More finds with sacrifice or return-a-land costs...
Also, Walking Atlas and Sakura-Tribe Scout for setting up two landfalls in one turn, an instant landfall on your opponent's turn, or flashing in something evil like Desert or Quicksand.
A little background: I'm in the process of overhauling my cube list and shopping for new cards, and I've been searching for a new theme (or set of subthemes) to lend some coherence to my draft environment. Since I mostly play head-to-head formats (Winchester, grid drafting, sealed deck) it's rather difficult to support niche archetypes like storm or tribal decks that depend on the drafter collecting a critical mass of the right cards.
One thing I've noticed during my matches is a tendency for my opponents to play their lands immediately even during a board stall when they gain nothing by doing so -- they don't even think about holding onto them to bluff a combat trick or play around discard effects. Since I often use my cube as a teaching tool for friends who don't have much limited-format experience, I thought it might be fun to cube more cards that reward players who use their lands thoughtfully to grind out extra value.
This isn't a narrow deck archetype so much as a broad mechanical thread that should get woven into many different aggro, midrange, and control decks. Think back to Zendikar/Worldwake limited, where every deck had some kind of land-based shenanigans between the landfall, Zendikons, utility lands, and manlands in that format. That's what I'm shooting for here.
The major mechanics I'm looking at are landfall, Zendikons, retrace, spellshapers (frequently used to discard extra lands for value), land sacrifice costs, utility lands, cycling lands, and land destruction/mana screw. Many of these cards show up in pauper lists already. I'm looking for feedback on what I'm already considering for my lands-matter theme, and card suggestions that I may have overlooked.
1 Calcite Snapper
1 Fledgling Griffin
1 Grazing Gladehart
1 Hagra Crocodile
1 Plated Geopede
1 Steppe Lynx
1 Surrakar Marauder
1 Windrider Eel
Notable Noncreatures
1 Adventuring Gear
1 Groundswell
1 Ior Ruin Expedition
1 Rest for the Weary
1 Searing Blaze
1 Soul Stair Expedition
1 Zektar Shrine Expedition
1 Dreamscape Artist
1 Explorer's Scope
1 Harrow
1 Wayfarer's Bauble
1 Evolving Wilds
1 Terramorphic Expanse
5 Panoramas
Zendikon Auras
1 Corrupted Zendikon
1 Crusher Zendikon
1 Guardian Zendikon
1 Vastwood Zendikon
1 Wind Zendikon
1 Desert
1 Halimar Depths
1 Haunted Fengraf
1 Quicksand
1 Sejiri Steppe
1 Teetering Peaks
1 Turntimber Grove
Naturally, green's deep bullpen of other land-fetching effects also help to keep the landfall triggers flowing. The utility lands squeeze extra value out of landfall triggers, especially during later turns when the mana isn't needed so much and ETBT clauses are less problematic. After landfalls have been triggered, the Zendikons turn an excess land on the battlefield into a mana-efficient body -- a hasty body if there's an untapped land to spare after casting the Aura.
1 Cenn's Enlistment
1 Flame Jab
1 Monstrify
1 Oona's Grace
1 Raven's Crime
1 Syphon Life
Land Sacrifice Cost
1 Arcane Spyglass
1 Bog Down
1 Fault Riders
1 Magma Burst
1 Pollen Remedy
1 Raze
1 Rushing River
1 Scythe Tiger
1 Deepwood Drummer
1 Firefright Mage
1 Icatian Crier
1 Undertaker
1 Waterfront Bouncer
Cycling Lands
1 Barren Moor
1 Forgotten Cave
1 Lonely Sandbar
1 Secluded Steppe
1 Tranquil Thicket
I like how the cards which reward you for discarding lands (or possibly other cards in the case of spellshapers, but mostly lands in practice) kind of work against the landfall package. A drafter may not want both types of cards in his or her forty. On the other hand, land-sac effects work quite well with landfall -- they give players something to do with all that excess land they've already played.
Of course, if a cube environment pays this much attention to lands, then it almost HAS to include a little land destruction for thematic reasons. I don't think we'll see a dedicated LD deck come together very often in Winchester or sealed-deck play, but those formats do feature a lot of 3-color decks with sketchy mana bases -- which creates real blowout potential for judiciously applied mana screw. And blowing up a Zendikon is just funny. But I have no idea how many of these are worth including at 360:
1 Mwonvuli Acid-Moss
1 Reap and Sow
Red
1 Aftershock
1 Lay Waste
1 Molten Rain
1 Raze
1 Stone Rain
1 Befoul
1 Choking Sands
1 Contaminated Ground
1 Desecrated Earth
1 Rancid Earth
1 Sinkhole
Blue
1 Boomerang
1 Capsize
1 Regress
1 Convincing Mirage
1 Spreading Seas
1 Frenzied Tilling
1 Temporal Spring
1 Wrecking Ball
Hybrid
1 Drain the Well
1 Poison the Well
What do you folks think?
Mist Raven (yeah, I'll agree with that)
Multicolor:
Armadillo Cloak
Hussar Patrol (big-butt flash FTW)
Land:
Quicksand for maximum lulz
Spellshapers are kind of fun: I always like having the option to pitch a dead card for some value. Here's a mix-and-match cycle I'm thinking about throwing into my own cube when I finally get around to overhauling it.
1 Undertaker
1 Firefright Mage
1 Deepwood Drummer
1 Icatian Crier
If you're restricting yourself to modern-legal cards, then I'd replace Waterfront Bouncer with Dreamscape Artist and Deepwood Drummer with Greenseeker. Both of those offer acceptable mana-fixing for the 5-color control deck.
Retrace is another fun modern mechanic:
1 Oona's Grace
1 Cenn's Enlistment
1 Monstrify
1 Flame Jab
Syphon Life was just reprinted as a common in Modern Masters, too, if you want another retrace option for black. And speaking of Modern Masters, I've been impressed by this cycle while watching online MMA drafts:
1 Traumatic Visions
1 Gleam of Resistance
1 Fiery Fall
1 Sylvan Bounty
Obviously Sylvan Bounty is outclassed by the deep stack of superior mana-fixing options available in green and should never be cubed. But I'm actually thinking about adding the other four to my own cube, since I do a lot of Winchester drafting and mana-fixing is so crucial in that format. Don't think of them as horribly overcosted spells -- think of them as cheap instant land tutors for each color that do something else if you topdeck them during the late game, long after other land tutors would do nothing but thin your deck.
That is one crescent-fresh bear. Custom cube folks would have a field day with it. Just needs art and an MTG Set-Builder mockup.
RE: Hellkite Yearling -- Maybe 3RR to deal 3 damage to target creature instead?
Also, on the subject of NWO... is that why we haven't seen any common charms since the Planar Chaos cycle? Because mono-colored pauper charms are one of the things I miss most about old-school Magic. Seems like you can't get a charm these days without it being gold and uncommon. *sigh*
New design challenge, for those who choose to accept it: create a new 5-card cycle of mono-colored charms, or 10 hybrid-mana charms (one for each 2-color pair).
What do people think: better or worse than Fury Charm for a cube that doesn't do much with time counters?
We've also got Nivix Cyclops now to potentially support that archetype. We also have a number of creatures that let us recur spells for the pump-strikers: Archeomancer, Mnemonic Wall, and Izzet Chronarch are the best, but we also have Anarchist and Scrivener if you want to go really deep. We could even toss in a couple of retrace spells (Flame Jab and Oona's Grace) to give our strikers more inevitability. And let's not forget the old Distortion Strike + Kiln Fiend combo. (Artful Dodge + any other striker works too.)
I think most of the non-striker support cards have enough utility to get drafted and played outside of the Delver/Kiln Fiend deck. How much more support does the archetype need?
Hexproof Dude honestly doesn't seem much more playable than Sacred Wolf. 2 toughness means it'll still trade with most 2-drops in the format. Make it a 2/2 for 1G instead (Hexproof Bear? Hexproof Budoka?) and aggro would love it. Make it 2/3 for 2G and then control and midrange would gladly play it as an early trump against aggro's customary flood of 2/1s and 2/2s.
Rabid Rabbit is quite the upgrade from Bull Ceradon! 6/6 and mono-colored is quite a bit stronger than 5/5 and multicolored. I guess it could still see print at uncommon though. If somebody had told me a few years ago that WOTC would print a 5-CMC 4/4 vigilant spider at common, I would have written it off as wishful thinking.
The Delve cards could be very strong if your cube pushes the dredge/self-mill archetype. They might still be playable in the mid to late game without any extra support, but I haven't played around with delve enough to get a good feel for that.
*********************************
My inner Timmy and Vorthos are rankled by the lack of playable dragons and sea monsters in the pauper format. Why does blue get a bunch of common drakes but red only gets Dragon Hatchling? Why do the forests teem with great trampling wurms (Yavimaya and Havenwood FTW) while the oceans can only muster a Harbor Serpent? Surely we can do better.
I love the old Dragon Whelp. I love Flameblast Dragon too. Here's what you get if you stick them in a blender:
Hellkite Yearling 2RR
Creature - Dragon (C)
Flying
Whenever Hellkite Yearling attacks, you may pay XRR, where X is no greater than 3. If you do, Hellkite Yearling deals X damage to target creature defending player controls but deals no combat damage this turn.
2/2
I bashed on Harbor Serpent earlier but the newer take on islandhome was far less crippling than the drawback of the old serpents. Harbor Serpent may even have been maindeckable in Core Limited if it had an upside outside of the blue mirror match.
Shipwrecker Serpent 4UU
Creature - Serpent (C)
Flash (You may cast this spell any time you could cast an instant.)
Shipwrecker Serpent can't attack unless there are five or more Islands on the battlefield.
They didn't see it in time to deploy the harpoons. Or the lifeboats.
5/5
Here's a pauper candidate I posted in the original Print This thread:
Panoramic Vista
Land
T: Add 1 to your mana pool.
,T, Sacrifice Panoramic Vista: Search your library for a basic land card and put that card onto the battlefield tapped. Then shuffle your library.
So yeah, it's just a Panorama that doesn't limit itself to fetching basic lands from Jund, Grixis, Esper, Bant, or Naya. Nothing terribly exciting, but I'll wager it would find a home in many pauper-cube land sections -- if not as an addition then at least as a replacement for one of the less popular 5-color fixers like Shimmering Grotto. And I don't doubt that something like the Vista could be printed at common in a future core set because we already have a precedent for this sort of upgrade: compare the common Obelisk cycle to Manalith.
I'm on the fence about Riot Gear. I don't like running "strictly worse" versions of cards that are already in the cube, especially when it's strictly worse than Vulshok Morningstar in the power department, but equipment is so important to aggro decks that I might want the extra redundancy if I can make room for it. Turning a 2/1 piker into a 3/3 isn't as good as making it a 4/3 beater but it's still pretty good.
In other news, I'm sad we didn't get a better set of hybrids; Pit Fight appears to be the best of the common hybrids. The reprint of Beckon Apparition is decent if you need pinpoint graveyard hate. Shattering Blow is basically a Shatter that fits into more sideboards... which isn't that terrible, really. Deathcult Rogue might also make the cut for anybody who wants to push a dedicated hybrid section. Bioshift was just not intended for our format.
I was right about them printing a common 5-color fixer for GTC limited, but it's a reprint of Prophetic Prism. I'm a little sad we didn't see anything new, but the Prism's not bad if you haven't tried it before.
I was about to start listing cards I found interesting but there were too many. Hoo boy. It's like Christmas. I'm not even through the list yet.
EDIT: After making my way through the list, Daring Skyjek and Skinbrand Goblin look like the most solid new contenders for cube slots.