Welcome to part 2 of the Modern Horizons 3 mechanics article for the Awesome Cube. For part 1, where I discussed every mechanic in Modern Horizons 3 through the letter D, please refer to my profile. I'll be continuing this task here by discussing every mechanic through the letter H. In the interest of being thorough, I'll also be covering any legacy mechanics that appeared in Outlaws of Thunder Junction.
As always, I'll be grading these mechanics in two ways. The first will be a grade for the mechanic within a curated limited environment based on the design and gameplay it generates. I will not be taking any constructed applications into account, as it would be outside the scope of the article. The second will be a context grade based on how I expect it to perform, and be supported, within my own cube ONLY. The effectiveness of individual mechanics is as variable as the cubes themselves, and a mechanic that is a D in my cube may be an A in yours. I'll lay out the grading criteria below.
A - Contributes to interesting gameplay and deck building decisions, may have cross synergies, no baggage. Sparks joy.
Cube - Actively looking to include.
B - Works as intended, may have cross synergies and/or existing support structure, but has at least one developmental/design frustration.
Cube - Actively looking to include.
C - Mechanic is inoffensive. Does not spark joy or enhance an environment, but it does not create issues or confusion when considered.
Cube - Will include as appropriate.
D - Mechanic is functional, but has baggage, may not be supported properly, and/or has some frustrating lines of play.
Cube - Cards must excel in spite of mechanic.
F - Mechanic does not work as intended, is not supported, and/or contributes to an actively frustrating experience.
Cube - Excluded from consideration.
N/A - I won't be giving any mechanic this grade overall as all mechanics are intended by design to work within their own environment.
Cube - Mechanic does not function in singleton, two-player Magic and would therefore be unfair to grade within the context of my cube.
With that out of the way, let's jam!
Emerge was first introduced in Eldritch Moon to represent the Eldrazi sprouting from seemingly normal creatures across the plane of Innistrad. Emerge is an alternate casting cost that can be paid by sacrificing a nonland permanent of the indicated type and paying that spell's emerge cost reduced by the sacrificed permanent's mana value. Unlike convoke, which let you skirt the colored mana requirements by tapping creatures, emerge only ever lets you reduce the generic mana requirements of spells. You'll always be responsible for any colored mana in a spell's emerge cost. Thankfully, because sacrificing a permanent is part of the emerge cost, opponents cannot respond to emerge by destroying the permanent you are intending to sacrifice.
Emerge primarily exists as a flavorful way to put Eldrazi (which are, by nature, both colorless and inherently expensive to cast) in a set without having to rely on Eldrazi Spawn and Eldrazi Scion tokens. While it was very successful in this venture, the printing of Adipose Offspring and Crabomination show the real promise of the mechanic. By tying effects to paying the emerge cost, creatures can be designed that skirt the conventional implementation of emerge. There can be inexpensive creatures that provide a scalable effect based on what is sacrificed. There can be gold cards that play with multicolored requirements similar to the Eldrazi's relationship with colorless mana. You can restrict what can be sacrificed, opening up additional deck building restraints and synergies. There's a lot of unexplored depth to emerge should another set arise with the necessary thematic resonance.
Mechanically, emerge provides you with a way to cash in early game nonland permanents that have already provided value or have become less relevant in combat. The traditional Eldrazi designs are so expensive without emerge that there is a certain amount of pressure to cast them while it's still possible. Fortunately, any two or three drop provides more than enough savings to accomplish this while still feeling like a bargain. Exploratory designs like Adipose Offspring and Crabomination are completely castable on their own, asking players to choose between two viable modes that offer different sets of value.
Emerge plays much better with seeded cards meant to be sacrificed like Biolume Egg and Hobbling Zombie which is easily accomplished in retail limited. While emerge will still function with recursive creatures in , there are much fewer nontoken permanents that exist to be sacrificed. You can still sacrifice a Zombie token to choose to pay an emerge cost in full, but you won't be able to save any additional mana in the process. Fortunately, there are plenty of creatures like Reclamation Sage, Barrin, Tolarian Archmage, and Charming Prince whose main function is tied to an enters play effect as opposed to providing any meaningful ongoing value. These creatures are prime sacrifice targets for emerge, and have interacted favorably with emerge in the past.
Emerge provides an interactive, variable experience that requires players to make strategic decisions across the drafting, deck building, and gameplay phases. There is some comprehension complexity at play when it comes to understanding mana value and effects going on the stack, but it's not too overwhelming. I'm actively excited to see more emerge, particularly if they lean on novel designs that expand the implementation of the mechanic. It's a shame that the flavor is so restrictive, as it limits where it can be reprinted.
Emerge Grade: B
Emerge Grade in Cube: B+
Energy, the keystone mechanic of Kaladesh and Aether Revolt, produces a novel resource (energy counters) that are later consumed to provide beneficial effects. Energy persists between turns and can only be consumed by cards that reference it directly, as it provides no value on its own and cannot be utilized independently. Energy uses an immediately recognizable and unique symbol (seen above) to represent it visually on cards. This symbol was originally printed once for each energy generated by, or required to pay for, an effect. While this was fine in lower quantities, it had severe readability concerns once the total number of energy exceeded three. For example, it's almost impossible to tell at a glance how much energy Aethersquall Ancient's activated ability requires in its original printing. Thankfully, later printings would alleviate this concern by writing out the number in words, as seen here.
Energy is a naturally parasitic mechanic that functions best in an environment with a lot of cards that both generate and consume it. This ensures that it remains relevant at all stages of a game, particularly since it requires independent tracking at all times. This limitation is somewhat mitigated by providing most of the cards that generate mana with a way to consume it as well. This way, energy remains relevant for as long as that card remains in play, even if you don't draw another card that cares about it mechanically. Despite this conceit, seeing energy still sends a message to drafters that the strategy is supported. The draft evaluation of Confiscation Coup and Die Young changes significantly once you know there isn't a way to supplement their abilities with additional energy. This gap between expected and actual performance is why I choose not to include any cards with energy in my cube. Similarly, I'm not interested in including cards like Glimmer of Genius and Attune with Aether that generate energy but function independently of it. Players would draft those cards thinking that the energy generation was an additional upside, when it's actually irrelevant.
Energy can be quite a lot of fun in an environment that's crafted around using it as a resource, though. There's a lot of strategic complexity that goes into utilizing energy due to having so many outlets and so few ways to generate it. Most of the ways to produce energy do so in one time effects as opposed to continuous generation. Becuase of this, energy decks typically want to eliminate any cards that don't produce it from their deck, becoming as streamlined as absolutely possible. Playing a slightly worse card just because it produces energy is generally preferable if it means streamlining and maximizing your intended synergies. This means cutting energy hard during the drafting process, bailing when appropriate, and accepting your losses if you incorrectly gauge how open it is. In a typical draft pod you can expect to see either one broken energy deck, two very good energy decks, or several that are quite poor depending on what is opened and who went in. Between the generally positive gameplay, underwhelming draft experience, and poor performance in cube, energy is all over the map in terms of quality of experience. Nevertheless, it's a unique experience that does contain enough depth to successfully carry a limited environment, which counts for a lot.
Energy Grade: B
Energy Grade in Cube: F
Entwine is an optional cost on modal spells that, when paid in addition to the card's mana value, allows you to choose all effects displayed on the card. If you choose not to pay the entwine cost, you choose one mode instead. Like any modal spell, the effects resolve in the order they are printed if the entwine cost is paid. The best entwine cards are those whose abilities self synergize with each other, thereby providing an additional layer of value if the entwine cost is paid.
Tooth and Nail essentially lets you put two creature cards from your library into play, Blinding Beam taps creatures that it prevents from untapping, Goblin War Party creates new creatures to benefit from its pump effect, and Grab the Reins steals an opponent's creature to provide a better sacrifice target. Compare these synergies to cards like Mirage Mockery and Rain of Rust which provide mirrored effects that don't necessarily make each other better or more interesting. While these cards are still playable, they are much less satisfying to cast, particularly since entwine lacks any sort of thematic resonance.
Entwine is a functional mechanic that would work in nearly any Magic set, including cube. However, it fails to distinguish itself from much more interesting modal mechanics such as adventures, bestow, evoke, etc. It doesn't have the readability or complexity concerns that spree and escalate do, but it's just as reliant on having paired abilities that feel cohesive. Entwine is a bit of a workhorse mechanic that is able to serve a mechanical purpose in an environment, but it's not memorable, and blends together with other forgettable kicker offshoots.
Entwine Grade: C
Entwine Grade in Cube: C
Like entwine, escalate is an ability attached to modal spells that allows you to choose multiple effects if an additional cost is paid. Unlike entwine though, you have to pay the escalate cost for each additional mode chosen. Because of the continued lack of flavor, escalate doesn't really feel all that different from entwine. They're incredibly similar mechanically, and even the ways that escalate evolved the design, like having more than two modes and having non-mana escalate costs, could easily be printed with entwine. The only real difference is that escalate is more resource hungry in general, as it asks players to pay whatever cost is required multiple times instead of once.
Escalate is a variation on entwine, but the differences are negligible, and it fails to provide any thematic resonance or mechanical identity that justifies its existence. It's not inherently synergistic with any existing strategies, can't really be drafted around, but would be generally successful as a supporting mechanic in any retail limited set. There are some immensely successful individual designs, but that has more to do with modal spells as a whole than anything that escalate is doing specifically.
Escalate Grade: C
Escalate Grade in Cube: C
While equipment is now evergreen, showing up in nearly every single set, it wasn't actually introduced until Mirrodin block. Equipment is an artifact subtype that can be attached to creatures by paying an equip cost at sorcery speed. Once attached, equipment provides some sort of bonus to the equipped creature. Some equipment attaches to a creature automatically when they enter play, or in response to a particular trigger, allowing you to skirt paying the equip cost altogether. There are also abilities that allow you to attach an equipment to a creature at instant speed, although this comes up much less often.
Equipment is a very complex mechanic, with many specific interactions that require clarification until you become more familiarized with playing them. Exchanging control of equipped creatures, paying an equip cost multiple times, and the aforementioned attachment timing all create confusion when initially experienced. Fortunately, these corner cases don't come up all the time, and are easily understood once they do. Players have a natural understanding of what it means to equip a creature, which goes a long way towards quelling complexity concerns.
Characters using tools and weapons is one of the oldest tropes in film and literature, and equipment taps into this splendidly. Some players do suffer from a bit of thematic disconnect when a creature equips something that they would not realistically be able to wear. A Scavenging Ooze equipped with Lightning Greaves, for example. But accommodating for these corner cases would cause a significant amount of comprehension complexity for almost no gain whatsoever. I've never had a problem accepting that creatures are wearing clothes, holding weapons, and using tools, regardless of their morphology. It's a fantasy card game, after all.
What does cause some legitimate issues is the threat of ubiquitously playable equipment creating a repetitive game state. Since equipment moves around from creature to creature, removal spells don't adequately answer the threat they are able to present. Any creature equipped with Umezawa's Jitte or the Sword of X and Y cycle is going to be a must answer threat, regardless of what creature is actually equipped. The only way to cleanly answer equipment is to target them directly with Disenchant or Shatter effects. This become even more important when you consider that many of the best equipment do not require any colored mana to cast or equip. This makes them so ubiquitously playable that you should expect to play with or against them in every single draft in which they are opened. Fortunately, since you never want to draw them without having a creature in play, equipment have diminishing returns. This forces players to be thoughtful during a draft and deck building process. Regardless, we now see fewer pushed, colorless equipment in modern Magic, and it's resulted in more satisfying gameplay overall.
At an appropriate power level and density of effect, equipment are able to supplement aggressive strategies by augmenting early game creatures, helping them scale with opposing creatures as a game progresses. This limits the amount of games where those decks peter out, unable to deal the final points of damage. They also help break board stalls, as even innocuous equipment like Neurok Hoversail can be moved around to create new attacks. Linking effects to attack and damage triggers allows for basically any archetypal support that a set demands, while mechanics like reconfigure, living weapon, and for Mirrodin! plumb specific areas of design space even more thoroughly.
Strong thematic resonance for equipment imbues a deep well of design space that continues to be mined for successful innovations. R&D has demonstrated that they can successfully design around the unique challenges that equipment present to accentuate its positive elements. Retail limited and cube are better formats because of equipment, and I'm always excited for future iterations.
Equipment Grade: A
Equipment Grade in Cube: A
Escape was first introduced in Theros Beyond Death as a way to cast spells from your graveyard repeatedly. This alternate casting cost requires you to exile a certain number of cards from your graveyard in addition to paying the required amount of mana. In addition to returning to the battlefield, some permanents receive additional bonuses if they escape, such as gaining new static abilities or +1/+1 counters. While no instants or sorceries have been printed with additional effects, there is quite a bit of design space available in this vein. Spells that escape go on the stack as normal, returning to the graveyard through their normal means, ready to escape again if the cost is paid another time.
Like delve, escape is limited via the natural bottleneck of available cards in your graveyard. However, whereas delve grants you access to cards that are too expensive to cast without it, escape largely exists as a bonus on otherwise playable cards. So while you may not be able to escape every card in your deck every time they go to your graveyard, you also don't have to worry about those cards being stuck in your hand if you draw them. The exceptions, of course, being the Elder Giants, which play out much more like traditional delve cards.
In a retail limited environment, escape provides inevitability with synergistic upside. Aggro decks gain late game reach and mana sinks, making it harder for them to run out of gas. Other decks are rewarded for milling themselves and aggressively trading in combat to preserve their life total. It also forces players to value graveyard interaction and exile effects higher than normal, while slightly devaluing single target removal spells. Because escape is rather slow and resource hungry, it's important to plan for the early game to avoid being run over before you can establish a recursive engine. Planning during drafting is important too, since the relative value of each successive card with escape goes down as you draft more. You can only escape so many times in a game, and you'd much rather use that limited resource to recur Polukranos, Unchained than Underworld Charger or Fruit of Tizerus. While this does lend itself towards repetitive game states, as seen with dredge, smaller deck sizes and thoughtful design and development cap how many times you can reliably accomplish this.
Escape plays out much better in cube than delve does due to the inherently playable base rate of its cards. While it still fights with other graveyard mechanics for the same expendable resource, the floor is much higher since it's more easily ignored. If your deck is hostile to removing cards from your graveyard, or if you drew your escape card out of sequence, you can still accrue value in the interim. I really like having different types of graveyard payoffs and enablers in my cube, and escape is one of the better ones available. It has enough levers for developers to mitigate its more dangerous tendencies, has excellent flavor (depicting the escape from Theros' underworld), and provides an opportunity for synergistic game play.
Escape Grade: B+
Escape Grade in Cube: B
Embalm is a creature keyword ability that can only be activated from your graveyard. By paying the embalm cost and exiling the card at sorcery speed, you can make a token copy of the exiled creature. This copy retains the power, toughness, and all abilities of the original creature, except that you won't be able to activate its embalm ability since it will never go to the graveyard. Unlike many cards that utilize Copy tokens, embalm uses specific tokens for each creature with the mechanic. While this requires players to acquire and track more unique tokens, having the tokens simplifies on board complexity significantly, as it doesn't require anyone to remember or compare the Copy token against the original card. Eternalize is essentially the same mechanic, except that instead of retaining the power and toughness of the original creature, eternalized copies are always 4/4 creature tokens.
As mechanics for limited, embalm and eternalize play out similar to escape, providing late game inevitability while serving as a payoff for graveyard synergies. The main difference is that, unlike escape, both embalm and eternalize are one time effects that provide your opponent with a way to permanently answer your recursive creatures. There is still a repetitive element to these mechanics, but it's preferable to having a player escape the same spell three or four times over the course of a game. Eternalize is especially novel since the copies affect the board differently than the original creatures due to the amended power and toughness.
Unfortunately, being tied to a single power and toughness does limit the design space of eternalize considerably, especially when compared to embalm. As seen Sacred Cat, Anointer Priest, Aven Initiate, and Honored Hydra, embalm allows for variation among the relative casting and embalm costs to promote different play patterns. This is much more difficult to accomplish with eternalize, as development needs to balance the cost around creating a 4/4 iteration of the creature. This results in increased homogeneity among its designs, as nearly all the creatures with the mechanic are intended to be cast first and later eternalized in the mid-to-late game. Embalm is a flexible mechanic that plays well in decks of different speeds and strategies, lending itself well to the late game. Eternalize demands that players plan for the late game more intentionally, often requiring more mana and early game concessions in the process.
Like escape, both embalm and eternalize lend themselves exceptionally well to cube, where concerns over repetitive game states are mitigated. , and naturally lend themselves well to maximizing graveyard strategies, while both and would benefit from being able to more actively utilize that zone. Neither mechanic requires specific dedication to filling your graveyard, as both Earthshaker Khenra and Champion of Wits have performed admirably even in the absence of additional enablers. While I'd be interested in future iterations of these mechanics, it seems unlikely that either will be revived in a standard level expansion due to their extremely restrictive flavor. Embalm is intrinsically linked to the Egyptian-inspired plane of Amonkhet, while eternalize is defined by lazotep technology, a plot device from Hour of Devastation and War of the Spark. Regardless of these limitations, I'm a fan of both embalm and eternalize, and I'm happy we were able to get another taste in Modern Horizons 3.
Embalm Grade: B
Embalm Grade in Cube: B
Eternalize Grade: B-
Eternalize Grade in Cube: B
Evoke is a keyword ability from Lorwyn block that allows you to cast a creature spell for an alternate casting cost. Creatures cast via their evoke cost are sacrificed once they enter play. While this seems counterintuitive, since you won't be able to attack or block with these creatures, it can be used as an alternative way to gain access to any abilities that trigger when these creatures would enter play, leave play, or die. As such, every creature with evoke has one of these abilities, allowing players to use them as pseudo instants or sorceries, should they value the immediate effect more than the permanence of the creature itself.
Evoke has quite a lot of design space that leads to a wide variety of play patterns. In addition to tying different abilities to the aforementioned timing restrictions, variable casting and evoke costs force players to make interesting decisions. Shriekmaw can be cast as a Terror to kill an opposing two drop on curve, Mulldrifter can be cast as a Divination if you are in danger of missing a land drop, Reveillark can be evoked to gain immediate access to its recursive ability, and Briarhorn can be used to save your creature from a burn spell if you were unable to hold up all four mana. All of these creatures can be cast for their actual casting cost without sacrificing their effect, albeit on a potential delay.
Evoke can be leveraged as a way to manipulate the as-fan of certain effects without altering the percentage of card types in a set's card file. This allows for more focused support for certain strategies, particularly those that require specific effects that may not warrant multiple individual cards. Evoke is both strategically and emotionally satisfying, and rewards thoughtful planning and sequencing of turns. There is a lot of lenticular design at play as newer players are happy just being able to cast their spell in multiple ways, while experienced players appreciate the more involved strategy of maximizing their singular card. While there has been some historical confusion attributed to newer players being unable to identify their ability to cast creatures for their evoke cost, modern complexity renders evoke rather simple by comparison.
Modal spells have long been a successful and important part of my cube environment, and evoke is one of the simpler and more satisfying executions on this concept. Mulldrifter and Shriekmaw are always relatively high draft picks due to their ability to fit in multiple spots on a curve while providing card advantage. The pitch elementals have been tremendously powerful due to their alternative casting cost lacking mana, and Reveillark has supported one of the few decks that cares about the graveyard for years. I wish the flavor was a little less generic, but that hasn't dampened my enthusiasm for the gameplay. Evoke is one of my favorite mechanics, and I'm always excited to it come back in any capacity.
Evoke Grade: A
Evoke Grade in Cube: A
Evolve was first introduced as the keystone mechanic for the Simic Combine in Gatecrash. Evolve is a creature keyword that accrues a +1/+1 counter whenever another creature with greater power or toughness enters play under your control. When triggering evolve, power is only compared against power, and toughness is only compared against toughness. These checks are made individually for every creature that enters play, regardless of how many actually enter play. This allows you to stack triggers in a way that maximizes your +1/+1 counter generation. For example, your Cloudfin Raptor would accrue two +1/+1 counters when you cast either Blade Splicer or Finale of Glory. Alternatively, casting Sandsteppe Outcast will only result in two counters if you delay the first evolve trigger until after you make the Spirit token. Stacking triggers with evolve is more complex than it appears at first glance, especially with any effects that create multiple creatures or provide parallel augmentation.
Evolve fits naturally into nearly any limited format since its only real requirement is that there be a wide swath of creatures to play with. Ideally, this includes creatures with a variety of power and toughness combinations. For example, Adaptive Snapjaw and Crocanura play out much better as printed than they would with square stats, since having a low power or toughness increases the likelihood of triggering evolve. They even curve into each other well regardless of which is actually cast first. This flexibility is also key in maintaining consistent triggers, and results in much more satisfying gameplay than boom or bust options like Experiment One and Cloudfin Raptor. These cards snowball quickly when triggered consistently on curve, but provide very little value when played later in a game, at which point they struggle to scale with opposing creatures. It's because of this reliance on sequencing that my favorite evolve creatures are more focused on ancillary benefits than their actual power and toughness.
Creatures like Renegade Krasis, Simic Manipulator, Gyre Sage, and Fathom Mage acknowledge that you simply can't trigger evolve every turn. These cards instead leverage the presence of +1/+1 counters as a way to provide synergy upside even if evolve is not triggering as expected. These are also the types of cards that perform best in cube, particularly with the advent of +1/+1 counter synergies in . Despite this, it's been difficult to find room for evolve in my cube because of how much its cards struggle when behind on board. Creatures in cube need to be on or above rate when they enter play and/or provide some sort of immediate ancillary benefit. Far too many evolve creatures require additional support to provide any value at all, which increases the required impact that their benefit would provide.
Despite the struggles of evolve in cube, it's been able to serve as a successful mechanic for retail limited. It's a flavorful, evocative mechanic that requires proper drafting and deck construction to maximize, while providing an opportunity for synergistic upside in the process. It requires some luck of the draw to fully realize its potential, and it has more than a few moments of comprehension complexity when revolving triggers, but it's a solid mechanic that I wouldn't mind seeing more interesting executions on.
Evolve Grade: B-
Evolve Grade in Cube: D+
Exalted was first introduced as the keystone mechanic for the aligned Bant shard in Shards of Alara block before later returning as one of the main mechanics of the Magic 2013 core set. Exalted is a triggered ability on permanents that gives a creature that attacks alone +1/+1 until end of turn. Each instance of exalted you have in play will trigger separately as soon as a single creature you control is declared to be attacking alone. These triggers go on the stack individually and resolve before blockers are declared. Exalted is best utilized alongside evasive creatures that can leverage the +1/+1 bonuses to actually deal damage to your opponent.
The classic skies archetype that relies on flying creatures, tempo positive interaction, and ground blockers is an excellent example of a deck built to maximize exalted. These decks only want to attack with one or two key creatures at a time, using the rest of their creatures and mana to prevent their opponent from successfully racing or stabilizing. Utility creatures are another style of creature that excels with exalted, since they largely function independent of combat. Exalted starts to get awkward when your decks is full of aggressive creatures that all want to attack together. Curving out with Akrasan Squire, Aven Squire, Servant of Nefarox, and Outrider of Jhess doesn't actually accomplish much because while you're attacking with one large creature every turn, your remaining creatures are unable to serve as functional blockers. Finding the right mix of creatures and spells that reward you for attacking with only one creature is key to utilizing exalted.
This is even more important in environments like cube that contain a high density of strong, single target removal spells. The propensity of powerful interaction has largely prevented exalted from performing in cube as it does in retail limited. Cards like Battlegrace Angel and Sublime Archangel set you up for big turns that would be summarily cancelled out by a single removal spell. Instead, it's been Noble Hierarch, Ignoble Hierarch, and Qasali Pridemage that provided the longest lasting support, as exalted was merely a bonus on top of their intended role in the cube.
Exalted may still have succeeded in cube if it were not for the complete and total lack of board stalls. In retail limited, being able to attack with a single, massive creature during a board stall is an excellent use of exalted. You can force your opponent into successive bad blocks without allowing them to attack you back in turn. This propensity to end games is a massive positive in exalted's favor, it's just not one that is needed in cube as games have a way of ending without too much intentionality. Exalted won't fit in every retail limited format, but in the right environment it should be able to provide a positive impact as a somewhat generic combat oriented mechanic, albeit in the absence of any meaningful flavor.
Exalted Grade: C
Exalted Grade in Cube: D
Exert is a keyword action from Amonkhet that provides a creature with a bonus at the cost of being unable to untap that creature on the following turn. As such, all bonuses granted by exerting your creatures are either tied to combat, or are activated abilities that require your creatures to tap as part of the cost. It's important to note that unlike stun counters, which prevent one instance of untapping outright, exert only prevents a creature from untapping during its untap step. It can still be untapped through other means to bypass the restriction, allowing it to be exerted on consecutive turns. Distinguishing which creatures are exerted, and which are merely tapped, is critical to facilitating a smooth gameplay experience. Unfortunately, the mechanic lacks a clear method of doing this, leading to the utilization of punch card technology. I've had very negative experiences with punch cards due to their general low production quality and complications with both storage and maintenance. As such, I typically use miscellaneous markers to indicate a creature has been exerted. This communication is less than ideal, and while it's not a death knell for exert, it is a mark against it.
Exert naturally lends itself to more aggressive strategies that are able to concede future flexibility in favor of immediate returns. Exert triggers that raise your creature's combat potential can often lead to a faster clock overall, even if you're restricted to a single combat step over two turns. Gust Walker and Ahn-Crop Crasher create novel attacks by providing evasion or removing potential blockers. Hooded Brawler and Nef-Crop Entangler create less favorable blocks, while Watchful Naga and Devoted Crop-Mate set you up for future turns if the existing clock looks insufficient. None of these creatures are particularly effective blockers, and seek only to maximize your combat steps. Utility creatures like Hope Tender and Oasis Ritualist provide a spin on this formula, providing value independent of combat. These creatures make up a rather small percentage of the creatures with exert, and you see even fewer that shine in more defensive strategies. This is because it's much more difficult to justify exerting a creature in decks that need to use their creatures to block.
In general, the more interesting a player's decision is as to whether or not to exert a creature, the more satisfying the mechanic as a whole. There is always a certain snowballing aspect to mechanics like this, and exert can fall into those play patterns when your opponent doesn't have a way to properly stabilize the board. Nevertheless, knowing that your opponent's creature won't untap for a turn gives players a certain level of optimism, as they know they have at least one draw step to stabilize. This hope is key to limiting frustration, and makes it resonate more positively on average. Fortunately, this decision is often quite interesting, as you aren't often curving out perfectly against an opponent who can't interact with you. Exert requires you to look ahead and determine which route leads to the more advantageous game state considering future turns from your opponent, existing life totals, and your preferred path to victory.
The decision making process is often less interesting in cube, where the relative power level and quality of interaction excludes the more marginal exert creatures and streamlines the play patterns of those that do get played. Glorybringer, Glory-Bound Initiate, Ahn-Crop Crasher, and Gust Walker nearly always get exerted, as there are always problematic creatures in play that either stymie your existing attacks, or demand an answer. Your opponent is much more likely to have removal as well, which heightens the importance of maximizing your immediate returns. Exert still plays well, and the decisions are occasionally interesting, but it tends to be less dynamic than in retail limited.
Exert Grade: C+
Exert Grade in Cube: C-
Exploit was first introduced in Dragons of Tarkir as the keystone mechanic of the Silumgar clan. When a creature with exploit enters play, you may sacrifice a creature to receive a beneficial effect. You have the option to exploit any creature, including the creature with exploit itself, or you can decline to exploit altogether. This flexibility ensures that players don't run into gameplay scenarios where they are forced to make a counterproductive sacrifice or be unable to cast their creature. It also ensures that they always have access to the exploit effect, even if they control no other creatures.
Despite these design considerations, exploit contains enough inherent strategic complexity to complicate drafting, deck building, and gameplay alike. Each instance of exploit asks players to weigh their existing board presence against the creature with exploit and the effect they would receive upon exploiting. Certain situations require you to sacrifice creatures you may feel uncomfortable losing. You may even need to decline exploiting altogether. Determining how to resolve these effects is incredibly skill testing, particularly when you lack clear sacrifice fodder. Finding the right balance of exploit enablers and payoffs can be tricky, as the more instances of exploit you have in your deck, the more consistently you will need to have disposable creatures.
Whereas this can be a delicate balance in retail limited, you're nearly always going to have a surplus of creatures and tokens to sacrifice in cube. While maintaining this balance with other sacrifice outlets still requires attention, the environment is naturally conducive to this requirement. Sacrificing creatures is so supported that using a keyword for such a mundane action actually feels a little strange sometimes. Nevertheless, it's never caused undue confusion or complication beyond the existing rigors of the mechanic. Sacrifice synergies already serve as one of the main cores of in cube, so its a natural inclusion to the environment.
While I feel comfortable with my play group's ability to leverage exploit, particularly in cube, there are enough complexity concerns inherent in the design to make it uncomfortable for newer players. There are just so many avenues for players to lower their own win percentage when sacrificing their own creatures. It makes me feel slightly uncomfortable when that design space occupies a significant percentage of a retail limited environment. I've simply watched too many opponents play themselves into a concession for no reason.
Exploit Grade: C-
Exploit Grade in Cube: B
Extort was first introduced in Gatecrash as the keystone mechanic for the Orzhov Syndicate where it represented the guild's incessant taxation of the populous of Ravnica. Mechanically, it's a keyword on permanents that allows you to pay whenever you cast a spell to drain your opponent for 1 life. Spells can be extorted once for each instance of extort you control so long as you pay the cost. While the hybrid nature of extort allows you to play it in decks that only have access to or mana, it can be surprisingly difficult to cast your spells and pay an extort cost on a consistent basis. For example, while a deck should be able to support a single Blind Obedience easily enough, any game where you only draw a single mana source will essentially prevent you from casting and extorting any spells in your deck. This becomes exacerbated with increased density of extort, or the worse your mana base is, where it starts to become more of an actual mechanic simply from a feasibility standpoint.
Despite being restricted to only and cards, extort can be a very powerful part of a limited environment, providing decks with inevitability regardless of their functional speed. Even a single instance of extort can add up quickly when triggered repeatedly, and multiple can kill an opponent outright faster than you might expect. It can serve as a solid win condition in midrange and control decks looking to muck up the ground and disrupt an opponent's game plan, chipping away at their life total while mitigating life loss in the process. It can also be used in aggressive decks to deal the last few points of damage to an opponent independent of combat. The real cost, aside from color restrictions, is that it requires you to have enough mana to funnel into its activation cost. This means playing cheap spells, the right amount of lands, and paying very close attention to sequencing. Curving out with Syndic of Tithes, Basilica Guards, and Syndicate Heavy leaves a lot of value on the table despite using all of your mana each turn. These sequencing decisions are interesting and skill testing enough to provide depth to a format, even in the absence of dedicated synergies.
While it obviously goes up in value with a supported life gain strategy, the raw power of extort could theoretically be leveraged to great success in cube. So far, however, the general power level of its cards have been somewhat muted, leaving relatively few that are even worthy of consideration. I'm not going to hold the lack of viable cards against the mechanic when it comes to grading though, especially since there are absolutely cube worthy extort cards that could be printed. Extort is easy to understand, plays well, and contains more strategic depth than it appears on the surface, regardless of the environment it's being played in. While it does present unique problems when played in multiplayer, neither of my grades are going to reflect that as I never play those formats.
Extort Grade: B+
Extort Grade in Cube: B+
Fabricate N is a modal keyword ability on creatures first introduced in Kaladesh. When a creature with fabricate enters play, you may put N +1/+1 counters on it. If you don't, you create N 1/1 Servo creature tokens instead. Because fabricate is a stepwise trigger, your opponent cannot prevent you from accruing value with a single removal spell. They can kill your triggering creature in response to you putting +1/+1 counters on it, but you'll always be able to make Servo tokens upon resolution instead. Interestingly enough, the actual reminder text on fabricate suggests that this is a binary decision that can be interrupted. While the actual ruling of the ability creates better gameplay, this comprehension complexity interferes with its grokability.
Having somewhat misleading reminder text matters less the more players interact with a specific mechanic. Devotion, for example, has notoriously unclear reminder text, but has intuitive gameplay and works the way most players expect it to. Fabricate lacks a natural mental shortcut beyond "+1/+1 counters or Servo tokens" to facilitate this association, making it harder to internalize. While this is mitigated in retail limited, where players will play with fabricate in higher densities and frequency, it causes real confusion in cube, where it blends with so many mechanics and synergies. This isn't a deal breaker, but it does contribute to a slightly more frustrating experience than feels necessary.
Comprehension complexity aside, fabricate feels good to trigger and allows for strategic depth in all three phases of limited. It simultaneously serves as an enabler for +1/+1 counters, artifacts matter, and sacrifice synergies while retaining enough flexibility to provide a variable function at different stages of a game. Despite the natural inclination to create Servo tokens, and thereby protect yourself against single target removal spells, choosing how to resolve a fabricate trigger has not felt prescriptive. Whether it be due to existing synergies, or evaluating combat math, fabricating feels satisfying when it presents an actual decision, particularly in retail limited. That satisfaction decreases drastically with cards like Highspire Artisan that require the +1/+1 counters to create a relevant body, as it feels like you are making a concession instead of receiving a bonus.
The relative power level of cube does result in fabricate cards being a bit less dynamic than in retail limited, but they still feel good to cast and play with. The difference is that they tend to be more reliant on their associated abilities and synergies than the actual fabricate decision itself. There would need to be a very good reason to put +1/+1 counters on your creature in cube, whereas playing a large creature in retail limited is completely acceptable. Nevertheless, because it synergizes so well with my cube environment, I'd be interested in considering additional designs for inclusion.
Fabricate Grade: B+
Fabricate Grade in Cube: B
Introduced mechanically in Alpha, and later keyworded in Onslaught, fear is a creature keyword that makes it so a creature cannot be blocked except by or artifact creatures. Like all keyword abilities, fear can appear naturally on creatures or be granted through spells and abilities. Despite being evergreen at one point, fear was retired as of Magic 2010 due to a litany of gameplay and design related issues. It still appears from time to time on select reprints, but it won't be showing up in any standard level sets for the foreseeable future.
Whereas most evergreen keywords can be understood and memorized easily, rendering reminder text superfluous, fear proved very difficult to internalize. While players tended to remember that a creature with fear could not be blocked except by creatures, they routinely forgot that artifact creatures could also block them. Part of this had to do with the relative scarcity of playable artifact creatures at the time, especially compared to creatures in general. But the main reason was that the flavor just didn't communicate how the mechanic functioned in an obvious way. Other evergreen keywords like haste, lifelink, deathtouch, reach, flying, and first strike communicate their mechanism through both etymology and through resonant flavor. It's relatively obvious what each of these abilities do just from a glance at a card's artwork and the name of the keyword. Fear has strong emotional resonance, but not in a way that specifically makes players think of black or artifact creatures, nor their particular role in attacking and blocking. It's clear that blocking is in someway affected due to the defending creatures being scared, but not to what extent.
In addition to being mechanically problematic, fear also creates issues when balancing an environment, particularly at higher numbers. Because it plays differently depending on the colors your opponent is playing, it creates the same issues that protection against a color does. That is, your opponent is going to be randomly punished simply because of the colors they decided to draft and play. While colorless artifact creatures can technically be played in any deck, they are commonly of a lower power level for balancing purposes, appearing rather infrequently in most retail limited formats. While fear is merely frustrating with one or two instances in your environment, at larger numbers it actually begins to warp the format around it. suddenly becomes more powerful simply because it allows you to interact with creatures in the format asymmetrically. While this can be designed around, it's difficult to do so without impacting the relative color balance.
Fear provides virtually no opportunities for strategy or synergy beyond hoping you play against an opponent who isn't playing . If you get lucky, your creatures with fear are likely going to be unblockable. If you get unlucky, you'd better hope they have some sort of additional upside because fear will be nothing more than flavor text. Being entirely reliant on what colors your opponent happens to be playing is not the basis for a successful or fun mechanic. It serves as an active detriment to any environment while being messy mechanically and flavorfully. Modern Magic has enough combat centric mechanics that are easier to understand and provide more consistent and controllable value.
Fear Grade: D-
Fear Grade in Cube: D
Ferocious is an ability word first introduced in Khans of Tarkir to represent the Temur Clan. As an ability word, ferocious only exists to raise awareness and provide cohesiveness to effects that become relevant when you control a creature with power 4 or greater. Ferocious can appear on any card type, providing a unique bonus at the indicated time. As long as you control a creature with power 4 or greater when that effect resolves, you will receive the bonus. Cards like Beastbond Outcaster, Boundary Lands Ranger, and Ilysian Caryatid function identically to cards with ferocious, even though they lack the actual ability word. While this reduces the number of named mechanics in sets with only one or two cards with the ability, it also contributes to ferocious feeling underwhelming as a named mechanic. It's a shame because while naming the mechanic makes sense, and it's flavor neutral enough to apply to various sets, keyword creep does have to be considered for newer players.
Playing with ferocious means paying attention to the number of qualified creatures in your deck and evaluating cards accordingly. Since you can't guarantee obtaining the desired threshold of creatures, it's difficult to value ferocious cards very highly. Cards like Force Away and Savage Punch can be frustrating because they are well below rate when behind and merely perform as expected when ahead. I much prefer cards like Wild Slash and Heir of the Wilds that are on rate early or when behind, and scale appropriately with the game. These cards resonate more positively, as players feel rewarded for triggering ferocious, instead of feeling swindled when they can't. This is particularly important for inexpensive cards that can routinely be played before you could reasonably expect to control a qualifying creature.
Despite cube's notoriously high power level, it's actually more difficult to accrue a critical mass of creatures with 4 or greater power when compared to retail limited. This is because so much of the power is tied up in a creature's abilities as opposed to its power and toughness, regardless of how much mana it costs to cast. For example, only 16% of the creatures in my cube would count towards ferocious, and while has twice as many as any other color, that accounts for only 27% of its creatures. Compare that to retail limited where both Khans of Tarkir (30%) and Foundations (29%) have nearly twice as many qualifying creatures to support ferocious, while sets without the mechanic, like Outlaws of Thunder Junction (26%) and Wilds of Eldraine (20%), also exceed cube merely by chance.
Ferocious has excellent flavor, translates clearly to gameplay, and results in minimal rules complications. Despite this, it's just not exciting to play with and lacks the emotional spark that draws players to it. Part of that is because it feels so win more, easily shut off with targeted removal and subpar draws. It also appears frequently enough in retail limited, albeit unnamed, that it doesn't feel special or unique. Ferocious feels good to play with when everything is working as intended, and is completely nonexistent when it's not, leading to massively unbalanced gameplay experiences that results in an underwhelming overall experience, particularly in cube.
Ferocious Grade: D+
Ferocious Grade in Cube: D
Fight is a keyword action that was introduced in Innistrad, assigning a mechanical identity to the Arena effect first seen way back in 1994. Fighting refers to when two creatures simultaneously deal damage equal to their power to each other. This, along with the unofficially named "bite" mechanic, have become a key part of 's color identity, and serve as the primary way for to deal with opposing creatures. Fighting requires you to not only control a creature, but one capable of dealing lethal damage to an opposing creature. Ideally, your creature would survive the ensuing fight, leaving you with neutral card advantage and improved board presence. However, fighting can be responded to with pump spells and removal, which can result in you ending up with significant card disadvantage instead. As such, fighting requires careful consideration of the current board state and attention paid to the spells your opponent could cast in response.
While fight spells certainly have a place in retail limited, the risks associated with the effect demand that not only do they occur at a good rate, but that they come with additional upside if they are to be considered playable. It's actually been rather challenging to determine the appropriate level of commensurate value that is tied to a fight effect. Playing with casting cost, casting speed, and ancillary bonuses has led to a wide variety of cards that are normally within the top few commons or uncommons in a retail limited set. Much of this has to do with their ability to press an advantage in a way 's other cards are unable to replicate. needs answers to problematic creatures, and fight serves as an in color method to do so, even if you aren't killing their best creature every time you fight.
Despite their functionality in retail limited, relatively few fight cards are even worth considering for cube. Interaction in cube needs to be effective regardless of your current board position, it needs to be able to answer specific targets, and it can't result in you ending up with card disadvantage. Fighting fails to align with any of these parameters, an issue that's exacerbated by strictly better "biting" cards being largely preferrable, despite their own poor representation. The only time fighting finds its way into cube is when it's tied to an actual creature, since you're always going to be guaranteed to have something to fight with. Even then, it's generally not seen as an effect that excites players, as playing a second color for interaction is nearly always more effective.
Fight Grade: B-
Fight Grade in Cube: D
Finality counters were first introduced in The Lost Caverns of Ixalan as a way to clearly indicate that a permanent has been reanimated from a graveyard, and that the permanent will be exiled if it leaves play. This not only prevents effects from looping the same permanents between zones multiple times, but it makes it easier for players to identify which permanents have actually been reanimated. Cards like Serra Paragon were notoriously frustrating to play with because they require players to mentally note which cards are affected by her ability, something that becomes less obvious with each passing turn. Finality counters open up this design space and make its cards more palatable, particularly on more complicated board states. As is the case with other named counters, finding a clear way to differentiate between them and +1/+1 counters is something of a challenge. I'm hopeful that emerging dice technology will alleviate this concern, but it's yet to be officially embraced.
As long as they can be clearly distinguished, I rather enjoy playing with finality counters. It's felt rewarding to play with them and knowing that your opponent won't infinitely loop you with the same creature has provided hope when playing against them. Reanimating permanents is powerful, even if you are restricted to one instance per card, and I appreciate this design space being opened up and explored in a safe way developmentally. I don't see a discernable difference between retail limited and cube when it comes to gameplay or implementation. If they're easy to distinguish, I expect them to continue to play well. If they aren't, they're going to be mildly irritating to play with despite their functionality.
Finality Counters Grade: B+
Finality Counters Grade in Cube: B+
First strike is one of the original evergreen keywords first printed in Alpha and has continued through to present day. Combat damage in Magic is dealt across two distinct phases. Creatures with first strike deal their combat damage first, and then normal combat damage is dealt. This allows creatures with first strike to survive combat steps by dealing lethal damage before opposing creatures have a chance to do the same. First strike is deceptively powerful, particularly on defense where you can safely hold off multiple creatures with a relatively small blocker without needing to worry about trading in combat. On offense, it similarly lets aggressive decks attack through defending creatures they would otherwise be unable to attack through profitably. It also interacts extremely well deathtouch, as you can kill any creature you rumble with and survive, even as a meager 1/1.
First strike is so powerful that it actually warps combat in retail limited around its presence. Creatures that would ostensibly be intended for aggressive decks like White Knight and Voiceless Spirit can instead be sat behind, clogging boards with their presence. This is particularly problematic with high toughness or difficult to interact with creatures like Ancient Spider and Deft Duelist, which are relatively safe to turtle up behind as they are resistant to some common removal spells. In order to dissuade these play patterns, particularly in newer players, modern creatures tend to have conditional first strike, which is only applied if the creature is attacking. This promotes aggression, and allows players to leverage it in ways that result in more satisfying gameplay.
The issues with defensive first strike are less prominent in cube, as the propensity of quality removal mitigates board stalls created by turtling up. Creatures effectively pressure opponents through evasion or by accruing card advantage, making active blocking more of a temporary measure. The modern design philosophy on first strike still creates better gameplay in a vacuum though, and I'd just rather not play creatures designed to bog down combat by design, regardless of power level. Being able to enjoy the combat prowess that first strike provides without having to worry about the consequences makes it much more palatable when pushed at higher rarities.
First Strike Grade: B
First Strike Grade in Cube: B+
Double strike is an evergreen keyword ability that allows creatures to deal both first strike and regular combat damage within a single combat step. This results in creatures with the mechanic dealing twice as much damage as their power to whatever they are attacking into or blocking. As such, creatures with double strike survive combat steps they would normally be unable to if they simply had twice the normal power. For example, Grizzly Bears will trade with Alpine Grizzly, but can only chump block Hearthfire Hobgoblin, because it will take 2 first strike damage and die before regular combat damage is dealt.
Double strike escalates in power incredibly quickly, as even a 2/2 with the ability can make attacking and blocking difficult for your opponent. Because of this, most of the creatures with double strike are under-statted on their own, and often look rather unappealing at first glance. This is a necessity though, because even seemingly innocuous cards like Temur Battle Rage can kill an opponent out of nowhere, particularly if the affected creature has trample. A creature with double strike and trample is almost impossible to block profitably, and it can get completely unmanageable with combat tricks or equipment.
While designing around the existence of combat tricks results in a favorable experience in retail limited, it often leaves creatures with double strike feeling underwhelming in cube. All too often these creatures are mediocre to bad until they become equipped or augmented where they suddenly become incredible. I find those swings extremely unsatisfying, as these creatures spend far more of their time bad than incredible. Everyone talks about the game where someone equipped Swiftblade Vindicator with Sword of Fire and Ice, but rarely remember how often it sits around without a viable attack. In fairness, this is a limitation that restricts how many cube viable creatures with double strike are printed, and I'm not counting it against the mechanic itself.
Most of my concerns around double strike are focused on it requiring thoughtful development than it being inherently problematic to play with. Creatures with double strike are undoubtedly fun, giving players reasons to play combat tricks and other augmentations they may not consider otherwise. It's not challenging to understand, as the complexity builds naturally around two things players already functionally understand: first strike and combat damage. It does have some small complexities, but nothing that gets in the way of enjoying it.
Double Strike Grade: B
Double Strike Grade in Cube: C+
Flash is an evergreen mechanic first introduced in Visions, and officially keyworded in Time Spiral, that allows you to cast spells at instant speed, regardless of their card type. This means you can cast creatures, enchantments, planeswalkers, etc. in the middle of either player's combat, at the end of your opponent's turn, or in response to a spell or ability that is currently on the stack. Being able to skirt timing restrictions feels incredibly powerful and is exciting, regardless of actual card quality. It interacts favorably with instant speed reactive spells and allows players to delay decisions strategically. It also provides colors like and , that lack as many instant speed effects as the other colors, with a way to interact at that speed. Adding a bit of unpredictability to those colors makes gameplay more robust and helps to mask the instant speed spells they do have. The only major concern comes with keeping the quantity of flash in an environment within moderation.
When too many cards in your deck have flash, or when an effect grants it to a wide swath of cards (see Leyline of Anticipation and Yeva, Nature's Herald), gameplay actually becomes more frustrating and prescriptive. Part of what makes Magic so interesting and strategic is forcing players to make decisions based on a certain amount of unknown information. Deciding which creature or spell to play during your own turn, knowing your opponent will be able to respond before you untap, builds critical tension and is immensely skill testing. Spending every turn waiting until your opponent does something first results in players feeling empowered, but it comes at the cost of what makes Magic so interesting to actually play. Instants feel special because they supersede other spells in a unique way. If everything is an instant, nothing is, and the resulting games are often frustrating to play through for the opposing player. I know that many players love this feeling of control and superiority, having knowledge of what their opponent is going to do before they are forced to make a decision. I'm not saying anyone is wrong to feel that way, but I feel confidant in saying that Magic is less fun when players have full information and are never forced to take risks.
Fortunately, all of this can easily be mitigated by controlling how much flash is present in an environment. It's basically never a concern in retail limited and it's something I actively monitor in my cube, having cut Yeva, Nature's Herald for exactly that reason in the past. When properly implemented, flash is a fun, powerful addition to an environment that forces players to think on their feet, expect the unexpected, and be aware of what cards could be in their opponent's deck.
Flash Grade: A-
Flash Grade in Cube: A-
Flashback was first introduced in Odyssey as a way to cast instant and sorcery spells from your graveyard. If a card with flashback is in your graveyard, you may pay the flashback cost and any additional costs to cast the spell. The card is then exiled to prevent you from casting it repeatedly. Flashback costs have evolved from their first iteration to include not only mana matching the card's actual casting cost, but different colors of mana entirely, and alternative casting costs aside from mana (such as life loss and sacrificing permanents). This has allowed for different variations of the mechanic to appear based on the needs of a limited format.
Flashback has served as format glue across many different graveyard focused limited formats by supplying payoffs for self-mill and discard strategies, and serving as late game mana sinks and general card advantage. Being able to tailor the flashback cost to suit a format's needs has made it a very flexible tool that is frequently utilized to great success. Inexpensive flashback costs allow you to chain together both castings of a card, while disparate costs demand that you split them up strategically. Whether you are casting the spell for the first or second time, it feels immensely satisfying and rewarding. Playing against flashback is manageable in part because players play with their graveyards revealed and because you know they can only flashback once. This makes it feel less repetitive and allows players to strategize ahead of time.
Like retail limited, flashback is an excellent payoff for graveyard strategies that have ways to fill their own graveyard. Being able to filter your hand and draws in the early game without sacrificing value down the road is paramount to applying continued pressure and maintaining your gameplan. It can get a little awkward when combined with mechanics like Delve, Collect Evidence, Threshold, Delirium, etc. that also care about counting or exiling cards from your graveyard. They are, after all, vying for the same limited resource in non-complementary ways. Nevertheless, building a toolbox that consists of these disparate yet related mechanics is one of the joys of cube design. I'm always happy to see additional flashback cards, and I don't expect that to change any time soon.
Flashback Grade: A
Flashback Grade in Cube: A
Like first strike, flying is one of the original creature keywords introduced in Alpha and remains unchanged to present day. Creatures with flying can only be blocked by other creatures with flying, or by creatures with reach. It can appear on creatures naturally or be granted to them through temporary effects, abilities, enchantments, or enhancements. These transient effects can be leveraged aggressively or defensively depending on the board state, although using it to propel a game towards its eventual conclusion is the most natural use.
Forward momentum of a game state is far and away the best mechanical attribute that flying has, as it's the most common form of evasion and integral to avoiding endless board stalls in retail limited. While this feature is less pronounced in cube, where board stalls are relatively rare to begin with, it is part of the reason why that is the case. Allowing creatures to attack around defending creatures supplements both aggro and tempo decks and prevents creature tokens from bogging down combat through sheer numbers. Flying also has excellent thematic resonance, serving as one of the defining features of the iconic creature types in , , , and (Angels, Sphinxes, Demons, and Dragons, respectively) in addition to a significant number of other creature types. One of the reasons it's so resonant is because it's instantly communicated via artwork, independent of the text box. If a creature has wings, it's a near certainty that the creature has flying. Of course, this can lead to confusion with cards that fail to communicate flying as clearly, usually resulting in an attack or block being made that one player will be frustrated about. This happens only rarely though, as the gameplay is almost always smooth and easy to understand.
Flying is one of the easiest mechanics to grade due to how integral it is to Magic as a whole, from both a flavor and gameplay perspective. The game simply would not work without it on a fundamental level. It does require that attention be paid to how much flying exists in a format, ensuring that the proper interplay exists between flying and nonflying creatures. But this is far from a detraction, particularly considering how key it is to the game as a whole.
Flying Grade: A
Flying Grade in Cube: A
Food is an artifact subtype for both permanents and tokens that allows you to gain 3 life if you pay , tap, and sacrifice the Food. First introduced in Throne of Eldraine, Food has become a deciduous mechanic due to its broad appeal across a wide range of planes both flavorfully and mechanically. Increasing the instances of tokens, artifacts, and life gain for the appropriate limited archetypes is a common use for Food, typically acting as either a primary or secondary enabler. Regardless of their intended use in a set, the ability to repeatedly gain life does threaten to prolong games as long as people can continually pay the required costs. Because of this, they tend to appear in sets with robust aggressive strategies as a way to offset some aggression and supplement some of the more grindy or synergistic strategies in the process.
Because gaining life on its own holds so little value, Food tends to hang around in play until players have nothing better to do with their mana. The general summation is that if you are sacrificing Food to stabilize, you're generally very far behind. You really need to be leveraging some of the aforementioned synergies to increase the inherent value associated with Food, as gaining life on its own just is not sufficient. This holds even more true in cube than it does in retail limited, as aggressive strategies do not give you the time to sink mana into gaining 3 life. The best use for Food in cube is merely utilizing as a flexible rectangle with cards that use it as a resource, synergize with the life gain, or artifact synergies. This makes Food generally less playable than other trinket artifacts like Treasure and Clue tokens, which are able to provide their own value in a meaningful way.
Food has rarely been overwhelmingly powerful in a vacuum (combo considerations, aside), but it has consistently served as format glue, providing support to format archetypes while providing ancillary value in the meantime. There's real value in that, particularly when it comes alongside such effortless and effective flavor. On planes and in sets where Food is specifically resonant, like Eldraine and The Lord of the Rings, it's not only functional mechanically, but provides effective world building in the process.
Food Grade: B
Food Grade in Cube: D+
Grandeur is an ability word first introduced in Future Sight that gives players something to do with additional copies of legendary creatures they draw after having played one. When a creature with grandeur is in play, its controller may discard another card of the same name from their hand, and pay any additional costs, to receive the listed bonus. The bonus is typically linked to the design of the legendary creature in question, effectively turning an unplayable card into an instant speed spell instead.
The usefulness of grandeur in limited is intrinsically tied to the rarity of the legendary creature with the ability. Rares and mythic rares like Tarox Bladewing are basically never going to trigger under normal circumstances because of how difficult obtaining multiple copies of the same creature would be. Skoa, Embermage, on the other hand, demonstrated that there is design space allocatable to common and uncommon legendary creatures with grandeur so long as players are willing to discard a creature for their effect. Since the card would otherwise be uncastable, this is a nice option in planes with a higher than average numbers of legendary creatures, like Dominaria or Kamigawa.
Having a legendary designation is nothing but a mechanical downside, despite the resonant flavor. It's a shame because players should be excited when they open or draw a legendary creature, not be disappointed because they already have a copy of it in their draft pool or hand. Having dead cards in your hand is particularly punishing in modern Magic, where tempo and consistency have superseded card advantage as the primary cog of most limited sets. Grandeur is but one way to mitigate these negative feelings, even if its unlikely to serve as a main component of any limited format. After all, it would be very difficult to communicate grandeur to newer players with a limited number of packs. It's also just not going to come up as often as one would like, more likely coming together through sheer coincidence than savvy drafting or deckbuilding. As might be expected, I'm not going to give grandeur a cube grade since it only functions in formats where you have the possibility of drawing duplicate cards.
Grandeur Grade: D+
Grandeur Grade in Cube: N/A
Haste is an evergreen creature keyword ability that allows creatures to attack and use activated abilities the turn they enter play. First written out using only the rules text in Alpha, haste didn't actually receive an official keyword name until Sixth Edition. In addition to appearing on creatures naturally, haste can be granted through various effects and abilities. Since haste only really matters the turn a creature enters play, it can be easily ignored on every subsequent turn. Of course, effects that blink, reanimate, gain control of, or would in any other way reactivate summoning sickness can be circumvented by haste, allowing the creature to continue to attack or tap unimpeded.
Haste is an obvious boon to aggro decks, allowing them to pressure an opponent before they have a chance to either play an appropriate blocker or untap and cast a removal spell. Haste creatures can be used to attack underneath or through unprepared opponents depending on the game state, changing combat math and your clock on the fly. This can potentially win a game out of nowhere, particularly with expensive Dragons in . Likewise, sandbagging a creature with haste to find a more opportune time to leverage its ability can be extremely beneficial. This is particularly relevant if you lack solid attacks and have something else to do with your mana.
Haste is also a key component of certain combo strategies, threaten effects, animating lands, creating transient attackers, and a number of other mechanical utilizations of the mechanic. This encompasses a wide array of design space across several colors that simply would not be possible without haste. Enabling additional design space is quite unique in an evergreen mechanic, and speaks to the importance of it as a design tool.
Haste is another mechanic whose play patterns and strengths in cube mirror those in retail limited. It's easily understood, can be leveraged strategically to create dynamic gameplay and add uncertainty to combat. It helps proactive decks kill an opponent before they can stabilize, and makes it difficult for opponents to game plan around your board presence. Given the synergies presented in , haste has become even more desirable than it ever has before. The Fires strategy has really breathed life into a color pair that had previous struggled maintaining an identity beyond attacking with generically large creatures.
Haste Grade: A
Haste Grade in Cube: A
Hideaway N is a keyword ability on permanents that allows you to exile one card from amongst the top N cards of your library under the pretense of being able to play it without paying its mana cost, or put it in your hand, if you meet the condition detailed on the card. When it was first introduced in Lorwyn, hideaway permanents entered the battlefield tapped by rule, and you always chose from among the top 4 cards of your library. The ability has evolved over time by removing the tapped restriction and specifying a particular number for N, instead of being locked into 4 cards every time. These changes broadened the design space available for hideaway, while making it easier to balance developmentally. Current implementations of the mechanic also require that you randomize the cards put on the bottom of your deck, although that has less functional relevance than the aforementioned changes.
Because you have little to no control over what card you exile with hideaway, most of the strategy and power is tied up in making sure that your deck can satisfy the requirement to actually gain access to the hidden card reliably. The more control you have over that requirement, and the higher your overall card quality, the better hideaway is going to be. The high power level and streamlined nature of cube plays exceptionally well with hideaway, so long as you support whatever requirement a given card has. This is doubly true if you can blink or reanimate a card with hideaway, thereby gaining access to additional hideaway triggers. The lack of design consistency across cards with hideaway certainly makes it feel like more of a generic card advantage mechanic than something you can draft around in a vacuum. A given card can theoretically serve as an enabler or payoff for any strategy, so long as the requirement is feasible and the rest of the card stands on its own reasonably well.
Casting spells for free, especially at instant speed, is undeniably exciting, and powerful. This is even more pronounced if it somehow synergizes with your deck. The design changes make hideaway feel like less of a drawback on a card as a whole, improving their general playability drastically. As long as you can reliably trigger a card's hideaway ability, and have card quality high enough to mitigate whiffing on your exile, it's going to feel both satisfying and powerful. I just wish the cards felt more intertwined in some way, instead of being so isolated despite the shared mechanic. The lack of any meaningful flavor or thematic throughline would go a long way towards building some cohesion, making these cards feel less like one off designs. I think that's ultimately my main frustration with hideaway, the mechanic name just literally describes what it does, at the expense of any sort of emotional or thematic resonance.
Hideaway Grade: B-
Hideaway Grade in Cube: B
Historic is a batching mechanic, in the vein of Party and Outlaws, that refers to a related set of items that are cared about collectively. In this case, historic refers to artifacts, legendaries, and sagas. There are cards with triggered abilities tied to casting a historic spell or controlling a historic permanent, cards that count the number of historic cards in a zone, cards that let you choose a historic card from among those in a zone, and still others that reference historic spells or cards in some way. The actual mechanisms vary, but all check or reference cards with the artifact, legendary, and saga subtypes.
Historically, batching mechanics have had the same issues that complicate their quality of play and role in an environment. First, you need to be able to identify all items in a batch at a glance, you can't be expected to have to carefully read every piece of text on every card. The batch items are simply referred to too frequently and in too many different ways for this to lead to comfortable game play. Fortunately, artifacts have their own unique border and sagas have a unique visual layout. Unfortunately, there isn't a way to distinguish legendary cards at a glance, making this easily the most annoying of the three to identify. Secondly, batching items need to share some sort of thematic resonance that helps players remember which items are contained within the batch. Historic grades out fairly well here, especially when compared to party and outlaws, which both felt somewhat haphazardly thrown together. All three items resonate with the theme of history and make sense within that context. Artifacts are remnants of the past, legendary cards are those that impacted history in a meaningful way, and sagas literally tell the story of an event in history. This shared resonance makes them relatively easy to subconsciously group together.
Batching mechanics also require a very specific environment that consists of an adequate density of each item within the batch. In this case, an environment needs to contain enough artifacts, legendary cards, and sagas to be allow those abilities to retain relevance. Each item needs to be represented in adequate proportion, too. You can't have a ton of artifacts and no legendaries or sagas, otherwise the cards that reference historic are going to be sending misleading signals to drafters. You don't want any of the referenced items to be reduced to useless rules text. This all adds up to an extremely specific retail limited environment, pigeonholing how often historic can realistically show up. In that environment though, historic can serve as decent glue, holding together the disparate themes of a set. This allows cards to hold varying significance depending on whether or not a player cares about historic synergies.
My cube lacks enough sagas for that branch of historic to feel represented, so while I won't dismiss those cards outright, they do need to justify their presence enough to overcome this annoyance. Interestingly enough, my section supports both artifacts and legendary card synergies, two main aspects of historic. While none of the other colors are likely to care, aggressive and/or cards with historic would be highly prioritized. Unfortunately, these cards don't really exist at this stage. Suffice it to say that I would be highly interested in evaluating any cards in that vein should they see print in the future. The grade for historic in cube is almost exclusively due to this specific cross synergy, as it's likely a D in every other circumstance.
Historic Grade: B
Historic Grade in Cube: B+
Thus does the second part of my ongoing series of reviewing Modern Horizons 3 mechanics come to a close. I covered a lot of ground here and we are all the up through the letter H. I'm going to continue sneaking in related mechanics as I go, as it provides needed context to certain discussions. It also gives me a very good reason to discuss certain mechanics that I've yet to grade, thereby checking them off the list in the process. In part 3 of this series I'll be discussing all mechanics from the letter I through the letter P. It's going to be another long one so look forward to it. I'm finding this series incredibly rewarding and I feel like it's improving and refining how I both evaluate and discuss mechanics in the process. I hope everyone is finding value in these discussions, because I know I sure am. Until next time, may all your packs contain a card for your cube.