MTG Salvation

Unexpectedly Absent, and by a lot, IMO. Soul Partition did not play well for us at all, and Absent has been consistently great. I don't want to be playing a card disadvantage removal spell that can't even permanently remove the card I'm targeting.

I don't agree with that assessment

Here's a crosspost from my CubeCobra blog that discusses my thoughts on the increase to 630:

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For those that have been following my content for years, you know that big shakeups in my cube are not something I’m afraid to do. I’ve run every size from 360 to 720, and have experimented with a lot of different archetypes and structural arrangements. I aim to find the best environment I can cultivate for my playgroup, regardless of what that takes to achieve.

In recent months, I had been observing a few things while drafting my cube that I wasn’t 100% happy with, but was unsure of how to go about solving the issues. Overall, the list still played great, and didn’t require any major changes to run smoothly, but I wanted to run some thought exercises to see if I could make some adjustments and see if it would improve gameplay overall.

The issues:

1. I wanted to reduce the density of 3+ color cards and 3+ color mana fixing. Decks were often deep into 3 or more colors, and it didn’t take much discipline to draft functional manabases to make them work. I want those decks to be draftable and competitive, but I want it to require effort to assemble them. But I really like the tri-lands and the 3+ color cards in the cube, and didn’t want to remove them.

2. I wanted to increase the concentration of mono-colored and colorless cards by percentage without sacrificing the suite of guild cards I had in the cube.

3. I wanted to reduce the density of mana rocks without sacrificing the infrastructure I had built around them. Basically, playing with both Signets and Talisman felt like too much at 540, but only running one of the two cycles didn’t feel like enough. The big rocks used for super-ramp, upheaval and wildfire shells are great in those decks, but were representing too much of the pool.

The solution that jumped out was an increase in size. By moving the cube to 630, I could keep my guild and multicolor infrastructure together, but by adding in mostly monocolored and colorless cards, and no additional 3+ color identity cards, I could keep the multicolored cards I wanted to play and decrease their density at the same time. By adding in only one more cycle of fixing lands, I could bolster the support for 2-color decks without adding to the fixing density for 4+ color control. Additionally, the includes could be free of additional mana rocks, allowing me to keep in the suite of cards I wanted to run but reduce the frequency in which they take up real estate in my packs. 


Additional benefits showed up when I explored the size increase as well. I was gifted the real estate to re-include archetypes like lands and storm, which I couldn’t find room for before. It gave me the flexibility to include a few more powerful guild cards and another suite of guild fixing without tinkering with the suite of 3+ color cards. It provided me the room to smooth out the curve in various places that had become compressed due to the powerlevels of cards in given spots.

Overall, it’s been playing well at 630 and I’m enjoying the feel of the cube. Mana rocks are available, but not in a dominating density. Mana fixing is better for 2-color decks and decks that are splashing, and building 4+ color goodstuff/control is still viable (but now takes appropriate effort). I hope it has been playing well for those folks that closely follow my list too, and I’m always taking feedback.

As always, cheers, and happy cubing!

Quote from Alan Yuan »

Quote from steve_man »

Quote from LucidVision »

I think this is only playable in a deck with workshop or academy (and a couple other fringe artifact decks).

I don't agree with this take. I think you're looking at this too much as a mana sink and not enough as a modal 2 drop that can go crazy with token generators. The value of this card doesn't come from how much mana you can pump into it, but with how many tokens your deck can pump out. It's rarely going to scale beyond 5 mana, but that's not unrealistic since green pairs best with this since it has the best combination of ramp and token generation. It's a pretty reasonable 2 drop considering the 5 mana mode it has , this is essentially a different take on Intrepid Adversary really.

Then I think what you're looking for might be virtue of loyalty

I like this card a lot more than Virtue of Loyalty, FWIW. Virtue can't ever pump other tokens as a 2-drop, or provide 6 power for 5 mana on its own, or drop multiple artifacts to the table ...which are the things that make Squadron appealing.

I love this card, and you saved me from having to make a thread here for it.

Free discard outlet, permanent +1/+1 counters, obnoxious to block or attack into in combat, hard to block and then draws cards when it connects... gross synergy with draw-7 effects. I'm 100% in for this card, and can't wait to cube it. Good in reanimator, tempo, and draw-7 shells.

I like K Command the most, but I also love Daretti. I'd find a way to play both of those in addition to the Defiler if you can.

Ya, I think I agree. I originally read this like a confluence template where I could choose the same mode more than once. But having to split the choices prevents me from making the 4 attacking power from one sacrifice. It's certainly not Gut, especially since you can't sacrifice artifacts, but it does look significantly more interesting than most other Mardu options, even if it's only on par with (or slightly below) Marchesa.

Yes, it works with Terrarion to make +1 mana, since it reduces the activation cost from 2 to 1 .

It doesn't work to make +2 mana with Signets however, because it can't reduce the activation cost below the base 1 .

Quote from Alan Yuan »

Quote from 19_f_cali »

Neither this nor zirda reduce costs below one, so they don’t work with signets, stars, or keys.

No but the thing is stars are mana neutral, signets net 1 mana. If you're able to discount the activation cost by 1, then stars are +1 mana, signets are +2 mana.

Ya ...but you can't. Signets still cost the same ( 1 ) to activate even with this in play. Signets, Stars, Keys ...everything that already has an activation cost of just 1 mana doesn't benefit at all from this card (or Zirda).

I think it's still a good spell, and it performs well in the kinds of decks that want it. But I could certainly see cutting it from small cubes; slots are competitive.

Excited to read it!

Thanks a lot as usual for the article. As you know it is very well appreciated by the community

I do agree to most things and specially about the hard to fit mechanics like morph v3 and collect.

I think the only one card/s I differ more with you are the surveil lands. In the past I had temples in my cube and loved how they worked. They had to go precisely because lacking of basic land types. Now that they're back and tweaked perfectly to me I'm planning to remove fetchable tri-lands cycle in favor of them. Reason is I felt kind of boring the ultra-fixing they were and the cycling cost is too much to be used often. I like much more the decission and play style scry/surveil puts in play rather than paying mana to get a card for 3 mana (triomes) or 2 mana (amonkhet dual ones).

Loved to see the blue equipment. I would have totally missed it without you.

Thanks again!!

Quote from wtwlf123 »

Quote from Alan Yuan »

This was just a terrible set. Escape Tunnel is likely the only card I’ll be adding - I’m an advocate for evolving wilds variants

Who doesn't like a good Evolving Wilds variant?

I've find people have been cutting them.

Quote from PrimeNumber »

Thank you as always for the content! Like most people, this set is on the weaker side.

I do think the Surveil lands are better than people are giving them credit for, especially in cubes that care about the graveyard. They're still safely below Triomes to me, but being fetchable is huge.

One card I'm into that you didn't mention is Aftermath Analyst. Besides thinking it's not a top 20 card in the set, what's your opinion of it?

I think they're great lands, but space is limited.

Even as a low-power cuber, there's not too much I can do with this set. There's some weird stuff that might be fun like Barbed Servitor, Proft's Eidetic Memory, and Case of the Stashed Skeleton.

There are some commons and uncommons that are further pushed than previous versions, like Hard-Hitting Question, Escape Tunnel, Pick Your Poison, and Demand Answers.

But all in all, there's not much here for anyone unless you have a full-on Ravnica cube.

I was surprised to see Delney, Streetwise Lookout miss the top 20 on such an underwhelming set. Looks pretty fun, but people are trying to hype it as a chase card, so I'm not getting one.

Thanks as always for these! As I've said before, they are so helpful when I'm returning to sets to see if I missed any cards that were worth adding.

Thank you as always for the content! Like most people, this set is on the weaker side.

I do think the Surveil lands are better than people are giving them credit for, especially in cubes that care about the graveyard. They're still safely below Triomes to me, but being fetchable is huge.

One card I'm into that you didn't mention is Aftermath Analyst. Besides thinking it's not a top 20 card in the set, what's your opinion of it?

We have reached a point where standard cards have little effect on cubes now. Seems that we are now waiting for Modern Horizons 3

Nonetheless I find the article useful and insightful. For lesser powered cubes, there are a lot of interesting choices.

Kellan is very good in an artifact cube. Works well with any indestructible artifacts, notably the lands.

Forensic Gadgeteer is great for combo cubes.

Demand Answers is really a good card for Welder/Reanimator decks.

Huge props to you for finding 20 cards in this set worth talking about. Bringing back Morph in 2024... good grief.

This was just a terrible set. Escape Tunnel is likely the only card I’ll be adding - I’m an advocate for evolving wilds variants

Once again, thanks for writing these reviews! I'm sorry I don't have anything insightful to say here. It's just not a good set for cube, so I got nothin'. With a 465-card cube, this set is a total bust.

Cheers,
rant