Fell Stinger is a very clean and moderately pushed card. Not sure if I'm interested though since I've cut most of my 2cmc sac fodder.
I was a lot more interested in Vilespawn Spider before I realized it sacced itself. Simic isn't a particularly strong guild, but this probably still doesn't make the cut.
I'll probably finally get around to cutting Deep Analysis and run Thirst for Discovery alongside Compulsive Research.
I've cast FoF enough times with the intention to basically always take the 3 pile regardless of the split that I can't imagine Scattered Thoughts is better; hitting 5 more or less equally valued cards with FoF isn't remotely uncommon. Even if it was close I'd favour FoF since it's just a way more interesting card.
It looks solid from what little I've seen of it. I think a lot of the differences between it and most cubes here are mainly from it being 540 cards rather than ~360. MDFCs and CA midranged cards (the green card draw and all the Pilgrim's Eyes being some examples) are both good filler options since they have a decent power level and go in most decks, but at 360 they just aren't focused or powerful enough to make the cut. Most of the token cards you mentioned are similarly a bit too awkward at 360 (ignoring Rhox Veteran). The format being slower also makes big creatures much more castable, so going further up the curve compared to 360 makes sense.
Deathbonnet Sprout being cheap mill and a cheap threat makes me interested. 3 creatures isn't nothing, but I kinda doubt it's hard to trigger in graveyard decks.
Sunrise Cavalier is pretty boring but probably good enough for RW.
Big fan of Rite of Oblivion. Being repeatable is particularly nice for BW since aristocrats don't really want that many non-creatures.
Ambitious Farmhand is a pretty nice role player for blink/aristocrats or just slower white decks in general, particularly with life gain on the flipside. I can't imagine that coven is that hard to trigger in most white decks.
Chaplain of Alms has good synergy with counters/equipment/general graveyard stuff. It's also just a very annoying card for a lot of decks to deal with between first strike, ward, and recursion.
Ghoulish Procession is insanely cheap. The bodies aren't good, but triggering on your opponent's stuff as well makes triggering it pretty easy. Even without synergy it threatens a good amount of damage pretty quickly.
At a glance Gavony Dawnguard has less hits than Militia Bugler along with a harder casting cost and not being blinkable. On the other hand it is cheap engine.
Getting any CA off Flame Channeler seems rare enough that it's not really worth playing it for. Not being able to curve it into a 3 drop creature is really awkward when we've gotten lots of good ones recently.
Foul Play is pretty solid early game removal now that a lot of the aggressive 2 drops are 2/x's.
Worn Powerstone basically always beats it out in dedicated big mana decks; having a 45% chance to not be able to curve 6 into 6/7 is pretty bad. Outside of big mana decks I don't remember it being super unusual for Powerstone to sit for a turn, which would let you charge up the Pouch (notably you can charge it infinitely).
A good amount of the value does come from being double fixer. Obviously converge isn't a big deal for us (though a 10/10 Glinting Creeper on t4 and Kaleidoscorch are pretty exciting), but there's a fair deal of value in letting you cast basically anything while also doing a Worn Powerstone impression. Hell, it lets you hard cast Trostani's Summoner in UB reanimator with no other fixing (on t5 no less!). Even though the uptime doesn't let you curve out, I do think there are a decent number of decks that would be happy getting the fixing in exchange for mana.
...And there are other cards that are better or more reliable for color-fixing.
What cards are you talking about here? Cultivate comes to mind, but that's green and forces you to run basics. Manaliths produce less mana and imo even the worst case of 2 mana every other turn is better than 1 mana every turn since you don't need fixing every turn.
I think I'm only adding Death-Priest of Myrkul. Power Word Kill is obviously good but I've been off cheap near unconditional removal for a while now. Otherwise the set added some stuff for pants but I'll wait for a few more equipment with creature etbs to try that out.
Liliana's Devotee and Death-Priest of Myrkul seem different enough that I'll probably just play both. They also have great synergy together since they don't need non-tokens to die (Death-Priest also buffs the zombie tokens to 4/3).
I don't really think blue decks want Bag of Holding and outside of blue there isn't really enough discard to make it worthwhile imo. Playing it without other discard effects seems way too slow and you need to go out of your way in most colours to get more than 1.
Have we gotten a once per turn free sac-outlet like Sepulcher Ghoul before? Decent body + the convenience of a free sac-outlet seems pretty good even if it can't always do what unrestricted free sac-outlets can.
I can't really see Grim Wanderer being better than Bone Picker. The only thing it has over Bone Picker is instant speed, but in aggro that's a pretty marginal upside.
Not big on Battle Cry Goblin (ignoring goblin tribal). Pack tactics is difficult enough to trigger that it seems hard for it to beat out Aether Chaser (a fairly unimpressive 2 drop). And in general 2 mana 2/2s with late game upside are just not where aggro wants to be since there's a good chance they're dead by the end of turn 3.
It is good support for tokens/artifacts if you wanted to go deep there. Afaik there isn't enough support for a full blown artifact theme (especially in green), but Animating Faerie, Ensoul Artifact, Skilled Animator, and Tinker are all good cards that don't necessarily require a ton of artifacts to function. Tokens is similarly without a ton of support in UG, but Junk Winder, Combine Chrysalis, and Woodland Champion are all powerful cards if you can trigger them 2-3 times.
Expect to be good: Archfiend of Sorrows - Very solid card and a rare 7 drop worth including Scurry Oak - Evolve is great, squirrels are great, repeatable token makers are great Flametongue Yearling - Harder to splash buffed Fire Imp
Good archetype support, if a bit boring: Barbed Spike - Good all around archetype support (aggro, flyers, pants, tokens, artifacts) and just a solid card in general Legion Vanguard - Sac outlets that don't need to combo to be good are rare Sinister Starfish - Filtering yay Arcus Acoltye - All 4 abilities sound good even if I have doubts about outlast Abundant Harvest - Filtering yay
High hopes, but probably just okay: Squirrel Sanctuary - Reasonably efficient with decent synergy Blazing Rootwalla - Not sure how good the buff is or if delaying for madness is worthwhile Captain Ripley Vance - Exciting card
Barbed Point is finally an upgrade to some really old cards. Also free pants support.
Tireless Provisioner is a great dedicated ramp card with repeatable lifegain + storable mana, but not accelerating 4 drops and trading down on mana vs removal makes it way worse elsewhere.
With how multicolour friendly our duals are Glinting Creeper isn't that hard to get big. A 5 mana 8/8 isn't too unrealistic, though it is a bit boring.
Arcus Acolyte having lifelink and reach on a growing body as well as a build your own anthem seems pretty solid. That being said, I'm a bit hesitant since I was not impressed by outlast in the past. Obviously great if you support +1/+1 counters.
Captain Ripley Vance is a sick card. Getting 1 trigger isn't super easy, but obviously makes the card excellent. Also Reckless Charge + flashback + spell is lethal on an open board (if that spell is Temur Battle Rage it's lethal against <11 toughness boards).
Herd Baloth might be justifiable with only heavy combo support. It and Scurry Oak go infinite with Ivy Lane Denizen, but they both also work with the +1/+1 on etb cards that enable the persist combo. Renata, Called to the Hunt, Grumgully the Generous, Good-Fortune Unicorn, and Rhythm of the Wild are 4 entirely reasonable cards that turn Herd Baloth into 2 5/5s. It's a lot of specific cards, but even just in RG you can have 4 enablers, 2 Ivy Lane specific pieces, 2 persist creatures, then Goblin Bombardment + alternate sac outlet of choice, which is a lot of redundancy for infinite combos that is playing reasonable midrange cards.
Prophetic Titan being expensive and needing delirium makes it a bit hard to recommend over most UR cards that see play but it is an incredibly abusable card with a bit of work. Using the etb impulse to find reanimation/blink effects makes it into a single card engine in the right deck (It + Ephemerate is reasonably close to lethal by itself). Without blink/reanimation I think its powerlevel doesn't make up for how much more expensive and clunky it is than most played UR cards.
Is a third regrowth effect in Timeless Witness worth playing at 360? Or is it better than Eternal Witness / Regrowth? Even playing more than one in a deck feels pretty slow.
Lose Focus is a good counterspell. Imitating a hard counter while also being able to be cast for 2 is really nice.
Blazing Rootwalla is pretty good. 3/1 is big enough aggressive midrange decks could easily play it. With some discard it's actively worth playing and even without discard it's solid curve filler.
Needing to trigger delirium on Dragon's Rage Channeler to get the payoff of a 1 mana 3/3 flyer with a downside just isn't that good in most decks. The surveil is nice but is most impactful late in the game, which goes against how aggressive the payoff is. There's certainly some decks that want this card, but in general aggro doesn't like its inconsistency and dedicated spells matter builds have better (and less fragile) payoffs.
Junk Winder is great but entirely in the wrong colour. In blue it's pretty heavily restricted to Whirler Rogue/Talrand's Invocation/Kasmina, Enigmatic Mentor, which makes it incredibly dependent on other colours while being CC and having an incredibly bad worst case. If it was 6U I would probably test it with the intention of mainly splashing it, but that's not really doable with 5UU.
Fell Stinger is a very clean and moderately pushed card. Not sure if I'm interested though since I've cut most of my 2cmc sac fodder.
I was a lot more interested in Vilespawn Spider before I realized it sacced itself. Simic isn't a particularly strong guild, but this probably still doesn't make the cut.
I'll probably finally get around to cutting Deep Analysis and run Thirst for Discovery alongside Compulsive Research.
I've cast FoF enough times with the intention to basically always take the 3 pile regardless of the split that I can't imagine Scattered Thoughts is better; hitting 5 more or less equally valued cards with FoF isn't remotely uncommon. Even if it was close I'd favour FoF since it's just a way more interesting card.
Sunrise Cavalier is pretty boring but probably good enough for RW.
Big fan of Rite of Oblivion. Being repeatable is particularly nice for BW since aristocrats don't really want that many non-creatures.
Ambitious Farmhand is a pretty nice role player for blink/aristocrats or just slower white decks in general, particularly with life gain on the flipside. I can't imagine that coven is that hard to trigger in most white decks.
Chaplain of Alms has good synergy with counters/equipment/general graveyard stuff. It's also just a very annoying card for a lot of decks to deal with between first strike, ward, and recursion.
At a glance Gavony Dawnguard has less hits than Militia Bugler along with a harder casting cost and not being blinkable. On the other hand it is cheap engine.
Getting any CA off Flame Channeler seems rare enough that it's not really worth playing it for. Not being able to curve it into a 3 drop creature is really awkward when we've gotten lots of good ones recently.
Foul Play is pretty solid early game removal now that a lot of the aggressive 2 drops are 2/x's.
A good amount of the value does come from being double fixer. Obviously converge isn't a big deal for us (though a 10/10 Glinting Creeper on t4 and Kaleidoscorch are pretty exciting), but there's a fair deal of value in letting you cast basically anything while also doing a Worn Powerstone impression. Hell, it lets you hard cast Trostani's Summoner in UB reanimator with no other fixing (on t5 no less!). Even though the uptime doesn't let you curve out, I do think there are a decent number of decks that would be happy getting the fixing in exchange for mana. What cards are you talking about here? Cultivate comes to mind, but that's green and forces you to run basics. Manaliths produce less mana and imo even the worst case of 2 mana every other turn is better than 1 mana every turn since you don't need fixing every turn.
I don't really think blue decks want Bag of Holding and outside of blue there isn't really enough discard to make it worthwhile imo. Playing it without other discard effects seems way too slow and you need to go out of your way in most colours to get more than 1.
Have we gotten a once per turn free sac-outlet like Sepulcher Ghoul before? Decent body + the convenience of a free sac-outlet seems pretty good even if it can't always do what unrestricted free sac-outlets can.
Not big on Battle Cry Goblin (ignoring goblin tribal). Pack tactics is difficult enough to trigger that it seems hard for it to beat out Aether Chaser (a fairly unimpressive 2 drop). And in general 2 mana 2/2s with late game upside are just not where aggro wants to be since there's a good chance they're dead by the end of turn 3.
It is good support for tokens/artifacts if you wanted to go deep there. Afaik there isn't enough support for a full blown artifact theme (especially in green), but Animating Faerie, Ensoul Artifact, Skilled Animator, and Tinker are all good cards that don't necessarily require a ton of artifacts to function. Tokens is similarly without a ton of support in UG, but Junk Winder, Combine Chrysalis, and Woodland Champion are all powerful cards if you can trigger them 2-3 times.
Archfiend of Sorrows - Very solid card and a rare 7 drop worth including
Scurry Oak - Evolve is great, squirrels are great, repeatable token makers are great
Flametongue Yearling - Harder to splash buffed Fire Imp
Good archetype support, if a bit boring:
Barbed Spike - Good all around archetype support (aggro, flyers, pants, tokens, artifacts) and just a solid card in general
Legion Vanguard - Sac outlets that don't need to combo to be good are rare
Sinister Starfish - Filtering yay
Arcus Acoltye - All 4 abilities sound good even if I have doubts about outlast
Abundant Harvest - Filtering yay
High hopes, but probably just okay:
Squirrel Sanctuary - Reasonably efficient with decent synergy
Blazing Rootwalla - Not sure how good the buff is or if delaying for madness is worthwhile
Captain Ripley Vance - Exciting card
Thoughts on Unbounded Potential?
Tireless Provisioner is a great dedicated ramp card with repeatable lifegain + storable mana, but not accelerating 4 drops and trading down on mana vs removal makes it way worse elsewhere.
With how multicolour friendly our duals are Glinting Creeper isn't that hard to get big. A 5 mana 8/8 isn't too unrealistic, though it is a bit boring.
Arcus Acolyte having lifelink and reach on a growing body as well as a build your own anthem seems pretty solid. That being said, I'm a bit hesitant since I was not impressed by outlast in the past. Obviously great if you support +1/+1 counters.
Captain Ripley Vance is a sick card. Getting 1 trigger isn't super easy, but obviously makes the card excellent. Also Reckless Charge + flashback + spell is lethal on an open board (if that spell is Temur Battle Rage it's lethal against <11 toughness boards).
Rakdos Headliner is an excellent BR aggro card.
Prophetic Titan being expensive and needing delirium makes it a bit hard to recommend over most UR cards that see play but it is an incredibly abusable card with a bit of work. Using the etb impulse to find reanimation/blink effects makes it into a single card engine in the right deck (It + Ephemerate is reasonably close to lethal by itself). Without blink/reanimation I think its powerlevel doesn't make up for how much more expensive and clunky it is than most played UR cards.
Is a third regrowth effect in Timeless Witness worth playing at 360? Or is it better than Eternal Witness / Regrowth? Even playing more than one in a deck feels pretty slow.
In the average cube Abiding Grace probably needs to be targeting Thraben Inspector/Mother of Runes/Thoughtpicker Witch/Carrion Feeder to worthwhile. Given the inconsistency problems on top of that it's probably too narrow.
Lose Focus is a good counterspell. Imitating a hard counter while also being able to be cast for 2 is really nice.
Blazing Rootwalla is pretty good. 3/1 is big enough aggressive midrange decks could easily play it. With some discard it's actively worth playing and even without discard it's solid curve filler.
Junk Winder is great but entirely in the wrong colour. In blue it's pretty heavily restricted to Whirler Rogue/Talrand's Invocation/Kasmina, Enigmatic Mentor, which makes it incredibly dependent on other colours while being CC and having an incredibly bad worst case. If it was 6U I would probably test it with the intention of mainly splashing it, but that's not really doable with 5UU.