One of my favorite games was a comeback victory after i mulled to 4. If you don't want varience don't play card games. If I brick on my third land 5 draws in a row do you mind if I just search for one on my next draw? Dumb.
If variance means 'I win without any deckbuilding or playing skills involved because my opponent was locked out of the game by bad luck and the game of Magic we didn't play was less fun than a game of coin flip' then the only thing that is dumb is if you allow it to happen if you can avoid it because it's just a waste of time.
With a free mulligan you already have the option to mull without penalty if you only have 2 lands in your starting hand, so if you don't draw a third one it's your fault most of the time. But yes, if you start with 2 lands in your hand and still haven't drawn the third one by turn 7 then it sucks all the fun out of the game and the time spent playing such a non-game was wasted. Thankfully the game will be over anyway at that point usually, so no need to adjust anything (and yet another reason why a free mulligan is a good idea). Plus it statistically only happens in ~1% of games started with a 2 land hand, so that's nothing you need to be too concerned about.
And for the one fun game where you came back after mulling to 4 you got a dozen games where you mulled to 4 and sat there hopelessly staring at your useless cards while only your opponent was playing Magic. You can have exactly the same fun of a 'comeback victory' when both players start with 7 cards in their hand, so why bother with this?
You people play with free mulligans? Gross. Mulligans can be one of the most interesting things in the game.
Sometimes it can be an interesting decision, but a lot of times the first mulligan is a no-brainer because you have 0-1 or 6-7 lands in your hand. Then it's not interesting, it's annoying because you get a disadvantage solely due to bad luck.
There is a reason why the mulligan rule was improved throughout the years, I remember the super boring pro tour final before the London mulligan was introduced where the winner only won because his opponent drew bad hands and either couldn't do anything or only had four cards in his hand when the game started. Imo the only reason why they don't play with a free mulligan in tournaments are combo decks and generally the highly streamlined and fast decks especially in non-rotating formats. The London mulligan is already a huge improvement and actually not far away from a free mulligan anyway.
In a tame limited environment like CU/be there is absolutely no reason not to allow a free mulligan. If you use your free mulligan to get rid of a playable, but not great hand you are still taking a high risk as the next mulligan will give you one card less, so if you draw something even worse you will get a disadvantage. That's why it's mostly an insurance against boring non-games and not a way to let people stupidly draw cards until they have the perfect starting hand.
When I read that people are so excited about keeping a starting hand that they play a card that is either a Woodland Mystic, which is probably the worst mana dork ever printed in 27 years of Magic, or a Timber Gorge that doesn't tap for red mana, I have to wonder what kind of mulligan rules they play with in a casual limited format like CU/be. I think the last time there was a discussion about it many people (including me) said they play with one free mulligan, which I can say from personal experience has worked great and without problems in hundreds of CU/be games. And now we even have the London mulligan on top of it, which is almost like (another) free mulligan.
Is keeping a bad starting hand really that great of a feat in a casual setting that suddenly even the trashiest trash cards become playable in CU/be? Wouldn't it be much easier to simply adjust the mulligan rule until you don't lose a game just because the first hand you drew only had a single land? Especially considering that adding land #18 is raising your chance to have at least 2 lands in your starting hand by a whopping 2%, so the big (or even noticeable) difference these cards make is just in your imagination unless you play half a dozen of them.
At least in my cube 9 mana is one hell of a lot to cast even for a green ramp deck. I rarely play Artisan in such a deck and I never play it in a deck that is not ramp or reanimator. It's mostly a reanimator target in my cube. Sure, you lose a bit of functionality, but if you resurrect it on turn 3 or 4 and your opponent doesn't remove it before you can attack it's game over anyway, so who cares?
I very much dislike that it can get removed by unconditional removal even at sorcery speed without having any impact at all and I usually avoid high cmc cards like that, but for one big, colorless Eldrazi like that there has to be room in my cube.
Personally I wouldn't play it if I wouldn't support reanimator unless I had some kind of super ramp archetype with cards like Basalt Monolith, Thran Dynamo and the like. I have a lot of 'normal' ramp cards in green and the highest cmc targets I consider playable cost 7 mana. When you think about it that is already a lot. If you play 2 ramp cards and 5 lands you won't be able to cast any of these before turn 6 on average. And that's with a near perfect hand in a deck that sacrifices reliability for mana, so most of the time it's probably more like turn 7-8.
Agree with Arbor, most of the modal lands are simply very weak cards on the front and cycling for a random card would most likely be the better option in >50% of cases. The main reason why I play Striped Riverwinder is because it's a powerful finisher for control decks and a great card for reanimator, not because it's a random crap creature or spell with cycling. If it was for example a vanilla 7/7 I wouldn't even think about playing it.
Also, I think retail limited and CU/be can't be compared at all since the drawback of having an etb tapped land is far, far smaller in retail limited. Not only is the overall power level lower and thus the environment slower, you also often don't get a perfect curve for your deck since there is so much variance in card power that it's often a good idea to play eg fewer two drops and more three drops than you normally would just because you happened to draft a lot of high quality three drops and/or a lot of low quality two drops. In CU/be the difference between the best and the worst cards isn't nearly as big.
An etb tapped land can fill the gap when you don't have a two drop to play and wait to cast your quality three drop next turn. But in CU/be that happens far less often than in retail limited.
I wouldn't say either card is better than the other, they're just different. Sunset Pyramid gives a lot more value than Spare Supplies in the long run, but I also agree that not getting anything for the initial investment of two mana at sorcery speed can be problematic. It's much more realistic to play Spare Supplies early in a CU/be game than Sunset Pyramid. Don't think flicker/bounce matters much for non-creature permanents though as only very few cards can do that.
Personally I wouldn't play either. Think Twice didn't impress me and that's certainly better than both of these cards. Sure, it's blue, but I'm not that desperate for card advantage in other colors.
Somehow completely missed Akoum Hellhound. Red has a shortage of good aggro one drops and while Steppe Lynx may not be good enough for white it doesn't have that much competition in red. Will most likely find room for it.
The only card I will certainly add from this set is Fearless Fledgling because I have enough room in white and because I'm quite sure it will be an awesome card if played on curve, similar to Experiment One and in many cases even better than that. Natural +1/+1 counters support in white isn't bad either.
Bubble Snare is efficient and very playable, but I simply don't look for removal in blue.
Windrider Wizard is a nice flyer, but there are so many good 3 cmc creatures with evasion in blue that it won't make the cut.
Bala Ged Recovery is probably the best of the modal lands. If it wasn't a flip card I'd maybe, just maybe consider it. A problem I often run into with green decks is that if you run Arbor Elf and/or Utopia Sprawl it's hard to get the critical amount of forests into the deck if you run a lot of ramp cards and thus only run 14-16 lands total. So a non-forest is always a bit less useful than a non-basic is in other colors.
Akoum Warrior isn't super terrible, but the only reason I still run Ghitu Encampment is because it fills a role in the sweeper control deck where you play it early and then deal a few points of damage every once in a while with in-built protection against sorcery speed removal. Akoum Warrior doesn't offer anything in that regard and from my pov it's just a very mediocre and boring midrange only card.
Malakir Rebirth doesn't look exciting to me. Etb tapped lands are a no-go in aggro decks and >50% of decks that want Undying Evil are aggro. Plus if you have a deck full of creatures and don't need Undying Evil you're winning anyway, so I'd rather take the +1/+1 bonus than a mostly useless land mode.
Bloodchief's Thirst isn't bad, but overall it's worse than a lot of other black removal from my pov. Plus I don't run any Planeswalkers, so that part is just flavor text for me.
Skyclave Geopede isn't bad, but at 3 mana in an aggro deck it may be a problem a bit too often to attack as a 5/3 even if played on curve. Still, I like it and would give it a try if there was a shortage of red aggro creatures.
A question I think I know the answer to, but just asking some more experienced cubers - are 2 drops with a 2 pip color cost (eg WW) basically a no go due to mana difficulties? The only three I see in the cubetutor average 720 are Consul's Lieutenant, Gifted Aetherborn, and Strangleroot Geist. What turn do you usually find yourself able to put these down?
For aggressive cards cc costs are a no-go in my cube since you can only reliably cast them on curve in a mono color deck. I cut everything including Consul's Lieutenant because of it. It's a powerful two drop on paper, but he's not that good if you can't cast him before turn 5+ in many games and never get a chance to make him renowned.
It's slightly different for a cards like Gifted Aetherborn or his big brother Vampire Nighthawk since they are still useful later on, but even for these cards it's not ideal since I when I build my deck I can't treat them like a two or three drop in most cases. That's why I like to have as few cc or 1cc cost cards as possible.
If you want to know about chances read the manamath article in Leelue's signature. It will show you how difficult it really is to cast a card like Consul's Lieutenant or even a 1cc card like Vampire Nighthawk reliably on curve.
It also depends a lot on your mana fixing what is reasonable. If you break peasant or regular cube rules it can help (and I do that already), but with a strictly peasant singleton land section it's out of question to reliably cast these cards on curve.
Wow, I might be in the minority here, but I am loving these DFCs. For example Spikefield Hazard is better flood protection than a basic land would be, no matter how poor of a floor it may have. I think many people are looking at cards like Bala Ged Recovery and making unfair comparisons to Regrowth, because it's not competing for a spell slot in your deck at all. Bala Ged Recovery is going to count towards your 17 lands when you're drafting, not as a spell, and because of this you get to play more spells. The opportunity cost is almost 0, and the ceiling is huge, because of your deck is getting to play more spells than an opponent's whose deck does not contain these DFCs. And again, it costs you virtually nothing to unlock that potential, you simply play a tapped land instead of a Basic Forest. All told these DFCs are more reliable and consistent than cycling to find a land, and their effects are potentially insanely powerful as they allow you to play more spells than your opponents who do not play them. As Leelue said: Akoum Warrior effectively has 'cycling for Akoum Teeth', and that similar enough to how Striped Riverwinder plays out in the early game a large portion of the time.
There are already plenty of etb tapped basics with upside and yet hardly any of them get played. There are two problems with these cards.
First off they cost you a precious cube slot for a card that has a very minor effect on the game. An overcosted Regrowth that is nothing but a bad basic land in at least 50% of games? There are simply better and more interesting cards you can fill your cube with.
Secondly you underestimate the opportunity cost of playing an etb tapped basic a lot. If you play anything but a mono color deck you will most likely already play some etb tapped lands to fix your mana. Adding an etb tapped basic land on top of that just for a little upside will often cost you half a turn or even a full turn in the early game if you draw and need that land. The upside has to be very much worth it or you're not making your deck better with it. And for an aggro deck it's pretty much out of question to play such a land anyway.
Regarding the new lands I think their biggest downside is that they're either or. If you draw them early they're a lot worse than a basic land. And they never give you any upside in that case. They don't fix your mana and they don't have any additional effect in the late game like the Dominaria memorial lands. Sure, the Regrowth effect for example is an ok effect even for three mana, but the cost of running it is a lot higher than just one additional mana.
I would play Memorial to Unity over Bala Ged Recovery and I never considered running it at all. And Spikefield Hazard is just a terrible card. An etb tapped land in red has to offer more than that, much more. I would have removed Ghitu Encampment from my cube already if red wasn't such a shallow color and that is so much better than Spikefield Hazard.
And how much impact will Skyclave Cleric have in the late game? And how often will Skyclave Basilica prevent you from playing a card like Lone Missionary on turn 2 where it can still have an impact as a blocker against aggro?
I'm not saying all of these cards are unplayable, but some are and the ones that aren't are they're certainly lower tier cards for CU/be at best.
Also, Akoum Warrior (as a creature) is a lot worse than Striped Riverwinder and while cycling may be a bit worse than an etb tapped basic when you desperately need a land it is vastly superior in any other situation, plus I heard getting Riverwinder into the yard early can have upside at times. I at least would be much more inclined to play Akoum Warrior if he had cycling R.
Do we have enchantment removal in black? I think it's unfair to compare it to creature removal. In my cube it is close to a dissenchant/naturalize, with a second mode being able to kill any creature in play (given enough life). I think this might be the best enchantment removal spell outside of green/white?
Enchantment removal is so narrow I highly doubt it can make up for the really bad creature removal part of the spell. Just like most removal Feed the Swarm is still a playable card, but I believe it's fair to say that you'd only run it if you wanted to depower your removal as I'd pick Go for the Throat/Cast Down/Ultimate Price over this every single time during a draft. It's not Incinerate vs Abrade, where Abrade can actually be the better choice for a control or midrange deck.
And from my experience it's a fallacy to believe you can play with powerful enchantments just because you have a few enchantment removal spells in your cube. Either you are ok with enchantments that can take over the game on their own or you are not ok with it, but trying to balance these cards with more enchantment removal and enchantment removal in every color is a futile effort. Been there, done that. Or in other words whether black has enchantment removal or not doesn't matter.
I have good and bad feelings with it. I like it but it could be it's expensive, or slow... I don't know if it's worth to include it.
I believe the double red mana cost for a kicked Cinderclasm is more often a problem than it is an upside to be able to cast a weaker version for 2 mana. I'd rather play a card like Flame Sweep if I wanted another one of these effects after Pyroclasm.
Roil Eruption is a Volcanic Hammer with upside. I wouldn't run it in a small cube, but at your size it may be worth it. If you play aggro 2 additional damage can make all the difference if you need to finish your opponent after running out of other means to defeat him. If you play control the spell doesn't become useless in the late(r) game against aggro finishers or midrange creatures. Sorcery speed is obviously a downside, but since you run both Searing Spear and Lightning Strike I would consider replacing one of them with Roil Eruption. You can't really do anything wrong as even Volcanic Hammer would be a playable card in a CU/be environment and it's certainly more fun than having two cards that do exactly the same.
Well, the speed of the format is entirely variable, so whether or not mill can get there fast enough could entirely be a matter of YMMV I assume. Ultimately, I think it's possible iceberg cancrix and hedron crab could be playable in lists where blue/x benefits from self milling, and it might not take much work for psychic spiral and one of the tutalages/this new crab to be in as a plan b win condition.
I think you need to create a really slow cube if you want to enable a strategy that only has a chance to win if you manage to get to turn 15+ (without Psychic Spiral). Especially if it's not really a control deck, but a deck that is based on small creatures that need to stay on the board and that maybe even need to connect, such as the crabs or some of the creatures spoiled in this set.
Psychic Spiral has always been a decent win condition for control or self-mill decks, it's just not something I want for my cube as it's a card that either does nothing or wins immediately. It's a bit like a blue Overrun, only even more all-or-nothing.
The small mill effects (if you target the other player) often do less than nothing until you win as they can help the opponent quite a bit and do absolutely nothing for you until you win, so that is nothing I'd want to do.
And self-mill has been a viable strategy in my cube for quite some time, but it's not powerful enough to make something like Hedron Crab worth running. And just to make Psychic Spiral or Sphinx's Tutelage (which is borderline playable at best from my pov) better is not a reason to run these minor effects either for me when there are plenty of self-mill cards that are playable on their own, such as Merfolk Looter and friends, Hermit Druid, Grapple with the Past, Nyx Weaver and some others.
I absolutely hate flip cards and I won't consider any of them, especially not since so far none of them really stand out.
Kor Blademaster is nice, even though I doubt the upside over Fencing Ace will make any difference in 95% of games. But since I run Fencing Ace it's definitely in.
I'm not convinced mill as an archetype is viable now. CU/be games are fast and it requires more than a few cards that mill 1-3 cards on average to deck your opponent.
The party mechanic is a fun idea, but I doubt it will be fun to play during cube draft. Too annoying, too much randomness involved and too many old cards without proper creature types in my cube.
I like Fearless Fledgling. If you play him on curve in an aggro deck the average case will be 2/2 flying on turn 3, 3/3 flying on turn 4, 3/3 on turn 5 and 4/4 flying on turn 6. That is pretty awesome for a 1c creature. And in the late(r) game (or if you get land flooded) he will become 5/5 or more also quite easily. On top of that he is another support card for the +1/+1 archetype.
Of course he's a bad top deck and if you get mana screwed he won't make things better for you either. But if you're stuck with 2 lands you probably have other problems anyway.
The variance is low, but that shouldn't distract from how it's a Gurmag Angler with 2x the cost if you have other relevant removal targets (it's particularly funny if you have both it and Angler in play). Waker of Waves should easily win the game if you overwhelm their unconditional removal suite (which is rarely that large) with threat density / counterspells / reanimation / taking it in draft / them being in the wrong colours, but in my experience Striped Riverwinder needs the game to be basically already won to start attacking.
The purpose of a control deck is to control the board. It doesn't mean the control deck has won already if the board on the opponent's side is empty or almost empty. And the nature of control decks is that they don't have a lot of other relevant removal targets, maybe even none at all. I would never consider a finisher without resilience for a control deck, not in my cube at least.
For reanimator it's even more important to have resilience unless the creature can end the game with a single attack (like Artisan of Kozilek). Reanimator decks only run 4-5 reanimation targets at best, if your opponent can simply cast Go for the Throat to remove them without any effect it's a card that has no business in such a deck.
The only deck where the whale is possibly (slightly) better than Riverwinder would be ramp, but since it's a blue card it's not a reason to run it from my pov.
If variance means 'I win without any deckbuilding or playing skills involved because my opponent was locked out of the game by bad luck and the game of Magic we didn't play was less fun than a game of coin flip' then the only thing that is dumb is if you allow it to happen if you can avoid it because it's just a waste of time.
With a free mulligan you already have the option to mull without penalty if you only have 2 lands in your starting hand, so if you don't draw a third one it's your fault most of the time. But yes, if you start with 2 lands in your hand and still haven't drawn the third one by turn 7 then it sucks all the fun out of the game and the time spent playing such a non-game was wasted. Thankfully the game will be over anyway at that point usually, so no need to adjust anything (and yet another reason why a free mulligan is a good idea). Plus it statistically only happens in ~1% of games started with a 2 land hand, so that's nothing you need to be too concerned about.
And for the one fun game where you came back after mulling to 4 you got a dozen games where you mulled to 4 and sat there hopelessly staring at your useless cards while only your opponent was playing Magic. You can have exactly the same fun of a 'comeback victory' when both players start with 7 cards in their hand, so why bother with this?
Sometimes it can be an interesting decision, but a lot of times the first mulligan is a no-brainer because you have 0-1 or 6-7 lands in your hand. Then it's not interesting, it's annoying because you get a disadvantage solely due to bad luck.
There is a reason why the mulligan rule was improved throughout the years, I remember the super boring pro tour final before the London mulligan was introduced where the winner only won because his opponent drew bad hands and either couldn't do anything or only had four cards in his hand when the game started. Imo the only reason why they don't play with a free mulligan in tournaments are combo decks and generally the highly streamlined and fast decks especially in non-rotating formats. The London mulligan is already a huge improvement and actually not far away from a free mulligan anyway.
In a tame limited environment like CU/be there is absolutely no reason not to allow a free mulligan. If you use your free mulligan to get rid of a playable, but not great hand you are still taking a high risk as the next mulligan will give you one card less, so if you draw something even worse you will get a disadvantage. That's why it's mostly an insurance against boring non-games and not a way to let people stupidly draw cards until they have the perfect starting hand.
Is keeping a bad starting hand really that great of a feat in a casual setting that suddenly even the trashiest trash cards become playable in CU/be? Wouldn't it be much easier to simply adjust the mulligan rule until you don't lose a game just because the first hand you drew only had a single land? Especially considering that adding land #18 is raising your chance to have at least 2 lands in your starting hand by a whopping 2%, so the big (or even noticeable) difference these cards make is just in your imagination unless you play half a dozen of them.
I very much dislike that it can get removed by unconditional removal even at sorcery speed without having any impact at all and I usually avoid high cmc cards like that, but for one big, colorless Eldrazi like that there has to be room in my cube.
Personally I wouldn't play it if I wouldn't support reanimator unless I had some kind of super ramp archetype with cards like Basalt Monolith, Thran Dynamo and the like. I have a lot of 'normal' ramp cards in green and the highest cmc targets I consider playable cost 7 mana. When you think about it that is already a lot. If you play 2 ramp cards and 5 lands you won't be able to cast any of these before turn 6 on average. And that's with a near perfect hand in a deck that sacrifices reliability for mana, so most of the time it's probably more like turn 7-8.
Also, I think retail limited and CU/be can't be compared at all since the drawback of having an etb tapped land is far, far smaller in retail limited. Not only is the overall power level lower and thus the environment slower, you also often don't get a perfect curve for your deck since there is so much variance in card power that it's often a good idea to play eg fewer two drops and more three drops than you normally would just because you happened to draft a lot of high quality three drops and/or a lot of low quality two drops. In CU/be the difference between the best and the worst cards isn't nearly as big.
An etb tapped land can fill the gap when you don't have a two drop to play and wait to cast your quality three drop next turn. But in CU/be that happens far less often than in retail limited.
Personally I wouldn't play either. Think Twice didn't impress me and that's certainly better than both of these cards. Sure, it's blue, but I'm not that desperate for card advantage in other colors.
Bubble Snare is efficient and very playable, but I simply don't look for removal in blue.
Windrider Wizard is a nice flyer, but there are so many good 3 cmc creatures with evasion in blue that it won't make the cut.
Bala Ged Recovery is probably the best of the modal lands. If it wasn't a flip card I'd maybe, just maybe consider it. A problem I often run into with green decks is that if you run Arbor Elf and/or Utopia Sprawl it's hard to get the critical amount of forests into the deck if you run a lot of ramp cards and thus only run 14-16 lands total. So a non-forest is always a bit less useful than a non-basic is in other colors.
Akoum Warrior isn't super terrible, but the only reason I still run Ghitu Encampment is because it fills a role in the sweeper control deck where you play it early and then deal a few points of damage every once in a while with in-built protection against sorcery speed removal. Akoum Warrior doesn't offer anything in that regard and from my pov it's just a very mediocre and boring midrange only card.
Malakir Rebirth doesn't look exciting to me. Etb tapped lands are a no-go in aggro decks and >50% of decks that want Undying Evil are aggro. Plus if you have a deck full of creatures and don't need Undying Evil you're winning anyway, so I'd rather take the +1/+1 bonus than a mostly useless land mode.
Bloodchief's Thirst isn't bad, but overall it's worse than a lot of other black removal from my pov. Plus I don't run any Planeswalkers, so that part is just flavor text for me.
Skyclave Geopede isn't bad, but at 3 mana in an aggro deck it may be a problem a bit too often to attack as a 5/3 even if played on curve. Still, I like it and would give it a try if there was a shortage of red aggro creatures.
For aggressive cards cc costs are a no-go in my cube since you can only reliably cast them on curve in a mono color deck. I cut everything including Consul's Lieutenant because of it. It's a powerful two drop on paper, but he's not that good if you can't cast him before turn 5+ in many games and never get a chance to make him renowned.
It's slightly different for a cards like Gifted Aetherborn or his big brother Vampire Nighthawk since they are still useful later on, but even for these cards it's not ideal since I when I build my deck I can't treat them like a two or three drop in most cases. That's why I like to have as few cc or 1cc cost cards as possible.
If you want to know about chances read the manamath article in Leelue's signature. It will show you how difficult it really is to cast a card like Consul's Lieutenant or even a 1cc card like Vampire Nighthawk reliably on curve.
It also depends a lot on your mana fixing what is reasonable. If you break peasant or regular cube rules it can help (and I do that already), but with a strictly peasant singleton land section it's out of question to reliably cast these cards on curve.
There are already plenty of etb tapped basics with upside and yet hardly any of them get played. There are two problems with these cards.
First off they cost you a precious cube slot for a card that has a very minor effect on the game. An overcosted Regrowth that is nothing but a bad basic land in at least 50% of games? There are simply better and more interesting cards you can fill your cube with.
Secondly you underestimate the opportunity cost of playing an etb tapped basic a lot. If you play anything but a mono color deck you will most likely already play some etb tapped lands to fix your mana. Adding an etb tapped basic land on top of that just for a little upside will often cost you half a turn or even a full turn in the early game if you draw and need that land. The upside has to be very much worth it or you're not making your deck better with it. And for an aggro deck it's pretty much out of question to play such a land anyway.
Regarding the new lands I think their biggest downside is that they're either or. If you draw them early they're a lot worse than a basic land. And they never give you any upside in that case. They don't fix your mana and they don't have any additional effect in the late game like the Dominaria memorial lands. Sure, the Regrowth effect for example is an ok effect even for three mana, but the cost of running it is a lot higher than just one additional mana.
I would play Memorial to Unity over Bala Ged Recovery and I never considered running it at all. And Spikefield Hazard is just a terrible card. An etb tapped land in red has to offer more than that, much more. I would have removed Ghitu Encampment from my cube already if red wasn't such a shallow color and that is so much better than Spikefield Hazard.
And how much impact will Skyclave Cleric have in the late game? And how often will Skyclave Basilica prevent you from playing a card like Lone Missionary on turn 2 where it can still have an impact as a blocker against aggro?
I'm not saying all of these cards are unplayable, but some are and the ones that aren't are they're certainly lower tier cards for CU/be at best.
Also, Akoum Warrior (as a creature) is a lot worse than Striped Riverwinder and while cycling may be a bit worse than an etb tapped basic when you desperately need a land it is vastly superior in any other situation, plus I heard getting Riverwinder into the yard early can have upside at times. I at least would be much more inclined to play Akoum Warrior if he had cycling R.
Enchantment removal is so narrow I highly doubt it can make up for the really bad creature removal part of the spell. Just like most removal Feed the Swarm is still a playable card, but I believe it's fair to say that you'd only run it if you wanted to depower your removal as I'd pick Go for the Throat/Cast Down/Ultimate Price over this every single time during a draft. It's not Incinerate vs Abrade, where Abrade can actually be the better choice for a control or midrange deck.
And from my experience it's a fallacy to believe you can play with powerful enchantments just because you have a few enchantment removal spells in your cube. Either you are ok with enchantments that can take over the game on their own or you are not ok with it, but trying to balance these cards with more enchantment removal and enchantment removal in every color is a futile effort. Been there, done that. Or in other words whether black has enchantment removal or not doesn't matter.
I believe the double red mana cost for a kicked Cinderclasm is more often a problem than it is an upside to be able to cast a weaker version for 2 mana. I'd rather play a card like Flame Sweep if I wanted another one of these effects after Pyroclasm.
Roil Eruption is a Volcanic Hammer with upside. I wouldn't run it in a small cube, but at your size it may be worth it. If you play aggro 2 additional damage can make all the difference if you need to finish your opponent after running out of other means to defeat him. If you play control the spell doesn't become useless in the late(r) game against aggro finishers or midrange creatures. Sorcery speed is obviously a downside, but since you run both Searing Spear and Lightning Strike I would consider replacing one of them with Roil Eruption. You can't really do anything wrong as even Volcanic Hammer would be a playable card in a CU/be environment and it's certainly more fun than having two cards that do exactly the same.
I think you need to create a really slow cube if you want to enable a strategy that only has a chance to win if you manage to get to turn 15+ (without Psychic Spiral). Especially if it's not really a control deck, but a deck that is based on small creatures that need to stay on the board and that maybe even need to connect, such as the crabs or some of the creatures spoiled in this set.
Psychic Spiral has always been a decent win condition for control or self-mill decks, it's just not something I want for my cube as it's a card that either does nothing or wins immediately. It's a bit like a blue Overrun, only even more all-or-nothing.
The small mill effects (if you target the other player) often do less than nothing until you win as they can help the opponent quite a bit and do absolutely nothing for you until you win, so that is nothing I'd want to do.
And self-mill has been a viable strategy in my cube for quite some time, but it's not powerful enough to make something like Hedron Crab worth running. And just to make Psychic Spiral or Sphinx's Tutelage (which is borderline playable at best from my pov) better is not a reason to run these minor effects either for me when there are plenty of self-mill cards that are playable on their own, such as Merfolk Looter and friends, Hermit Druid, Grapple with the Past, Nyx Weaver and some others.
Kor Blademaster is nice, even though I doubt the upside over Fencing Ace will make any difference in 95% of games. But since I run Fencing Ace it's definitely in.
I'm not convinced mill as an archetype is viable now. CU/be games are fast and it requires more than a few cards that mill 1-3 cards on average to deck your opponent.
The party mechanic is a fun idea, but I doubt it will be fun to play during cube draft. Too annoying, too much randomness involved and too many old cards without proper creature types in my cube.
I like Fearless Fledgling. If you play him on curve in an aggro deck the average case will be 2/2 flying on turn 3, 3/3 flying on turn 4, 3/3 on turn 5 and 4/4 flying on turn 6. That is pretty awesome for a 1c creature. And in the late(r) game (or if you get land flooded) he will become 5/5 or more also quite easily. On top of that he is another support card for the +1/+1 archetype.
Of course he's a bad top deck and if you get mana screwed he won't make things better for you either. But if you're stuck with 2 lands you probably have other problems anyway.
I will test him instead of Gust Walker.
The purpose of a control deck is to control the board. It doesn't mean the control deck has won already if the board on the opponent's side is empty or almost empty. And the nature of control decks is that they don't have a lot of other relevant removal targets, maybe even none at all. I would never consider a finisher without resilience for a control deck, not in my cube at least.
For reanimator it's even more important to have resilience unless the creature can end the game with a single attack (like Artisan of Kozilek). Reanimator decks only run 4-5 reanimation targets at best, if your opponent can simply cast Go for the Throat to remove them without any effect it's a card that has no business in such a deck.
The only deck where the whale is possibly (slightly) better than Riverwinder would be ramp, but since it's a blue card it's not a reason to run it from my pov.