Green 5's are one of the weakest slots in cube, in my opinion. This card looks incredible, and I imagine will be taking a slot for a long time to come. It's even a persist combo enabler that you can prepare the turn prior.
I wouldn't cube 1B destroy target creature. If I wanted to cube a card like that I'd be playing Power Word Kill, it hits everything you'd want to remove early except for Carnage Interpreter. Holding this up and having your opponent play one of the cheap aggressive rogues or pirates is a crushing tempo loss.
The likely average case of getting one zombie out of this is not that bad, and it's not hard to imagine a 3-spell turn or multiple 2-spell turns if this sticks around. Above all, this just looks like a really fun card to build around. And of course, for cubes supporting storm, this is a slam dunk as a 3-mana Aeve, Progenitor Ooze variant that you can even prepare the turn before you go off.
Definitely the best recursive 1-drop, and I think an easy include.
I'm just very sad that they went with the "cannot block" drawback instead of "enters tapped". A lot of black creatures cannot block, and too much of that makes black recursive decks way more one-dimensional.
That first mode looks really good. If it hit permanents instead of creatures I'd play this for the first mode alone. The third mode is a great trick, and the second mode can be pretty insane when built around.
This and these steps ahead, the two spree cards shown so far with good <= 3 mana modes both look great.
The flexibility here is insane, and even just the "counter a spell" and "draw 2 discard 1" modes are enough to make this a better Confounding Riddle. With enough mana this even makes a great Sublime Epiphany impression. Just took bad it doesn't work with Torrential Gearhulk.
I really like how unlike Spell Queller this card can be blinked by the instant-speed blink effects to counter more spells. Also, this is very situational, but you can counter your own Valki, God of Lies to cast Tibalt for free the next turn, or perhaps more relevantly, counter your own Solitude at the end of your opponent's turn and cast it for free on yours.
While not necessarily the most powerful, I think this will be an amazing cube card.
A two-mana planeswalker. Not being able to generate value kinda sucks, but he becomes mana positive even if he dies before you get your second turn with him. Notably this is insane with Delayed Blast Fireball.
I missed this card during the initial spoiler, but wow, this is the perfect BW aristocrats archetype support card. It's a free repeatable sacrifice outlet, is hard to remove and has extremely relevant board presence, and functions as an anthem for tokens, which black and white can both generate massive amounts of. This really puts a card like Bartolomé del Presidio to shame.
On first glance this card looks very underwhelming, but comparing it to Nahiri's Warcrafting, it actually seems worth considering. For 3 mana, you get 4 damage versus 5 but for an easier mana cost, and the clue from overkilling is value even when you don't have excess mana to cast what Warcrafting would have found for you. This card also has a very relevant 2-mana mode to pick off a 1-toughness creature, and even gives red decks a reasonable backup plan against massive creatures like Atraxa or Griselbrand.
This is an equipment (a card type which requires heavy focus on creatures to work) that cares about instants and sorceries, and the protection from spells instead of colours means this has no inbuilt way to prevent chumping, which greatly devalues the plan of cloning removal spells with the on-hit trigger. Many cubes don't even run Sword of Fire and Ice, I have a hard time seeing this make it.
Green 5's are one of the weakest slots in cube, in my opinion. This card looks incredible, and I imagine will be taking a slot for a long time to come. It's even a persist combo enabler that you can prepare the turn prior.
2R for a 7/7 dragon is good stats for the cost. It's pretty slow though unless you can grant it haste.
I think this card should be of interest for cubes with either a haste-granting archetype in red, or a power-matters theme.
The likely average case of getting one zombie out of this is not that bad, and it's not hard to imagine a 3-spell turn or multiple 2-spell turns if this sticks around. Above all, this just looks like a really fun card to build around. And of course, for cubes supporting storm, this is a slam dunk as a 3-mana Aeve, Progenitor Ooze variant that you can even prepare the turn before you go off.
I'm just very sad that they went with the "cannot block" drawback instead of "enters tapped". A lot of black creatures cannot block, and too much of that makes black recursive decks way more one-dimensional.
This and these steps ahead, the two spree cards shown so far with good <= 3 mana modes both look great.
The flexibility here is insane, and even just the "counter a spell" and "draw 2 discard 1" modes are enough to make this a better Confounding Riddle. With enough mana this even makes a great Sublime Epiphany impression. Just took bad it doesn't work with Torrential Gearhulk.
For me, this is an easy swap in over the Riddle.
Remember Vinelasher Kudzu? This is (it?) now.
While not necessarily the most powerful, I think this will be an amazing cube card.
The tokens entering tapped does suck, but especially with the ward, if you can trigger this once, you are already getting a great deal.
I don't know yet how hard committing crimes will end up being, but black has some great cube cards that can repeatedly fulfill the condition, like Yawgmoth, Thran Physician, Lord Skitter, Sewer King, Urborg Scavengers, Blood Artist and Liliana, the Last Hope, as well as many cheap plays that can commit a crime the turn you play Gisa. There's some great colourless enablers too, notably Walking Ballista, Rishadan Port and the graveyard hate cards (Relic of Progenitus, Scrabbling Claws, Unlicensed Hearse and Agatha's Soul Cauldron), plus Mishra's Bauble for one free trigger.
This is fantastic with Flash though, and gets much better in general if you have ways to get to the token on your own.
I took would expect this to be the best green 7, but I'm not particularly impressed by any of them.
A two-mana planeswalker. Not being able to generate value kinda sucks, but he becomes mana positive even if he dies before you get your second turn with him. Notably this is insane with Delayed Blast Fireball.
I missed this card during the initial spoiler, but wow, this is the perfect BW aristocrats archetype support card. It's a free repeatable sacrifice outlet, is hard to remove and has extremely relevant board presence, and functions as an anthem for tokens, which black and white can both generate massive amounts of. This really puts a card like Bartolomé del Presidio to shame.
On first glance this card looks very underwhelming, but comparing it to Nahiri's Warcrafting, it actually seems worth considering. For 3 mana, you get 4 damage versus 5 but for an easier mana cost, and the clue from overkilling is value even when you don't have excess mana to cast what Warcrafting would have found for you. This card also has a very relevant 2-mana mode to pick off a 1-toughness creature, and even gives red decks a reasonable backup plan against massive creatures like Atraxa or Griselbrand.