Welcome to part 3 of the Modern Horizons 3 mechanics article for the Awesome Cube. So far, we have discussed every mechanic relevant to Modern Horizons 3 up through the letter I. We are going to keep this going and cover all the mechanics through the letter P. 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!
Imprint is a rather complicated mechanic on permanents that requires you to exile a certain number of cards from a particular zone when the permanent enters play. These cards are imprinted on the permanent, granting you an ability related to the imprinted cards. The actual abilities vary, but always directly relate to the cards you chose to imprint. Restricted to artifacts during its initial printing in Mirrodin, imprint expanded to other permanents when it returned in New Phyrexia, albeit in a reduced quantity. The actual comprehension complexity of these abilities can vary quite a bit from card to card, ranging from minor to problematic. At a minimum though, imprint always requires you to continuously reference one or more exiled cards and relate them to the card they are imprinted on.
While imprint can technically work with any card type, being tied to artifacts offered a thematic consistency that helped provide context to the mechanic. The mechanisms feel more abstract and less resonant when they appear on other permanent types as, outside of having to exile a card, there are very few mental shortcuts one can make when regarding imprint. This results in its cards being difficult to commit to memory, particularly for newer players. Many iterations of imprint promote a repetitive play experience, rewarding players for doing the same thing turn after turn. Casting the same spell repeatedly with Isochron Scepter is powerful, but gets frustrating extremely quickly, particularly when it impedes your opponent's ability to play the game. Alternatively, gaining activated abilities with Myr Welder makes you feel clever while still providing your opponent an opportunity to interact with it. Meanwhile, Semblance Anvil and Strata Scythe don't feel repetitive at all, providing static abilities that merely care about one aspect of the card that's imprinted upon them.
Imprint allows for some very unique drafting and deck building experiences, often creating minor synergy packages and toolboxes. This can result in very powerful combos even in retail limited, rewarding players for being knowledgeable about the cards in the format and providing unique drafts that increase its longevity. This is true for cube as well, although my dislike of outright combos, repetitive gameplay loops, and the inherent card disadvantage that imprint requires restricts how many cards I would want to play in my own cube. I'm not opposed to including imprint, particularly with an increased focus on artifact count in , but it would need to be something that aligns with my design goals and intended play experience.
Despite the dangerous play patterns and comprehension complexity, imprint can spark joy in a way that feels very unique in retail limited. Its play patterns mirror those of constructed, making it very difficult to merely put a card with the mechanic into a deck without careful planning. While those cards do exist, there is a vast gulf of potential value that can be extracted by more seasoned players. Unlike more polished mechanics, imprint lacks the lenticular design necessary to play well with newer players, making it a more appropriate inclusion in sets that are more complex by design, like Modern Masters 3. In the right environment, imprint can create stories that players will be excited to discuss with others, it just comes with a lot of associated baggage.
Imprint Grade: D+
Imprint Grade in Cube: D
Improvise is a keyword ability that allows you to tap artifacts you control to help pay for the generic mana requirements of a spell you are casting. Each artifact you tap pays for mana towards the spell's casting cost. As a mixture of convoke and affinity for artifacts, improvise is balanced by not allowing you to pay for colored mana requirements, preventing you from playing most spells for free. It also prevents your artifacts from netting you mana, since casting costs are not reduced like they are for affinity. Whether you grok improvise as "convoke for artifacts" or "balanced affinity", it builds on familiar infrastructure to create a mechanic that's easy to understand with less degenerate play patterns.
Because it requires a critical mass of artifacts to function as intended, improvise can only exist in an environment tailored to its needs, like Mirrodin or Kaladesh. In those environments, it serves as a unique way to mitigate mana screw while promoting synergistic gameplay. Providing additional utility to equipment and noncreature artifacts is a unique use of permanents that often sit in play providing passive benefits. It also creates interesting gameplay decisions with disposable artifacts like Food and Servo tokens. Determining whether to expend them now for immediate value (gaining 3 life or chump blocking), or save them for the Herald of Anguish in your deck, is a skill testing decision that provides depth to a format. Improvise can also be used as an effective way to seed cards that you want certain archetypes to have access to without having to worry about them being drafted by everyone playing that color.
Despite an increased focus on artifact synergies, my cube lacks the sheer number of artifacts needed to reliably support improvise. The miscellaneous tokens and artifacts present in my environment do not appear at a frequency that would justify the signals sent to drafters if they see these cards in a pack. Nevertheless, improvise serves as an excellent throughline in an artifact set that sends a clear message to drafters while promoting strategic, rewarding gameplay.
Improvise Grade: A-
Improvise Grade in Cube: F
Indestructible is an evergreen mechanic that first appeared in Alpha and was officially keyworded in Darksteel. Permanents that are indestructible cannot be destroyed. If the permanent would be destroyed through damage or effects, it is not destroyed. While this sounds very straight forward, there is a lot of rules baggage associated with indestructibility that has led to confusion. Indestructible permanents can still be exiled, bounced, sacrificed, or, in the case of creatures, killed if their toughness is reduced to zero through -X/-X effects. The only thing that indestructible protects against is being destroyed, something that players continuously misconstrue. Part of the issue is that the term "indestructibility" is commonly interpreted as "unanswerable" as opposed to its literal definition within the rules. Many players don't realize that the term "destroy" is a specific term with its own rules baggage, which leads to the aforementioned confusion and frustration.
Comprehension complexity aside, indestructibility is still problematic from a game balance perspective. While has access to exile, can bounce cards and counter spells, and can exile creatures and force an opponent to discard, and have very few ways to interact with indestructible permanents. This means that opponents can turtle up behind something as inocuous as Darksteel Myr for turns at a time, completely halting not only combat, but interaction altogether. There are a few spells and abilities in every set that grant indestructibility until the end of turn, allowing you to respond to removal or protect your creature in combat. However, these effects go away at the end of turn, and are often conditional in nature if they can be repeated across multiple turns. While you do see it appear on certain permanents from time to time naturally, these tend to be either higher rarity cards or utility permanents that promote consistency, not those that impact the quality of game play.
In low quantities, on transient effects that promote aggression, indestructibility can be a useful tool in a retail limited set or cube environment. In most other circumstances though, it leads to frustrating gameplay that dissuades interaction. The comprehension complexity makes a potentially frustrating mechanic even worse, as players become angry when they realize the futility of their actions far too late.
Indestructible Grade: C-
Indestructible Grade in Cube: D
Investigate is a deciduous keyword action first introduced in Shadows Over Innistrad that creates a Clue token. Clue tokens are artifacts that can be sacrificed for in order to draw a card. Investigate has proven to be a highly effective mechanic that improves the overall limited experience by providing reliable card advantage without sacrificing flavor. While certain iterations have been extremely on the nose (Shadows Over Innistrad and Murders at Karlov Manor), it's also been sprinkled throughout sets as needed simply to enhance the overall game play experience. Whether it's mitigating late game mana flood or allowing decks to draw into a land in the mid-game, Clue tokens have resulted in better limited formats.
One of the most notable characteristics of modern limited design has been the importance of board presence, particularly on curve. Taking a turn off to play a card like Divination has been difficult to justify for a long time, especially if your opponent is curving out with creatures. Investigate has served as a satisfying way to provide card draw without sacrificing your ability to play to the board. Whether Clue tokens are created due to a creature entering or leaving play, or whether they are tacked on to removal or combat tricks, investigating has helped games maintain natural momentum. It's been particularly helpful for and , which lack the straight card draw of other colors to begin with, particularly in cube.
The lack of comprehension complexity, game play smoothing nature of Clue tokens, powerfully resonant flavor, and cross synergies with artifacts have helped make investigate one of the more successful mechanics in recent memory. It's powerful without being overwhelming, asks something of the player in order to accrue value, and is just fun to play with. I'm always excited to see it return, even in limited quantities, and I'm always looking for more cards with the mechanic to squeeze into my cube.
Investigate Grade: A
Investigate Grade in Cube: A
Jump-start is a keyword ability on instants and sorceries that was first introduced as the keystone mechanic of the Izzet League in Guilds of Ravnica. Cards with jump-start can be cast from the graveyard if you discard a card in addition to paying their other costs. Cards cast this way are then exiled. An obvious homage to to flashback, jump-start lacks the flexible design capabilities and play patterns of its predecessor.
One of the reasons that flashback has returned as many times as it has is because having a variable flashback cost allows for the creation of cards with variable play patterns. By adjusting the flashback cost, both in terms of color requirements, total required mana, and utilizing alternative costs, such as life loss, flashback cards hold different value depending on the deck and board state. Allowing these cards to serve unique roles in their environment makes them less interchangeable and provides a significant amount of variety, especially when returning to the mechanic multiple times.
Jump-start lacks these variable play patterns while also requiring players to jump through more hoops to utilize it. While players can selectively discard cards to lessen the card disadvantage, such as discarding cards that want to be in the graveyard, or lands in the late game, jump-start is at best a net neutral exchange. Certain decks are going to have a difficult time finding cards to discard before the late game, simply because they need to maximize their land drops and don't want to trade a card in their hand for a second casting of something with jump-start. Middling flashback cards still see play in limited because they provide actual card advantage, which lowers the barrier for entry. Jump-start cards need to be of a high enough quality to make up for their inherent disadvantages, making them less exciting to actually play with.
The barrier for entry is even higher in cube, where jump-start needs to compete directly with flashback for a limited number of slots. Any cards that are even remotely similar are going to be excluded in favor of flashback, which provides better returns on investment, particularly in a format that already has plenty of ways to filter cards from a player's hand. Flashback being excellent does not inherently make jump-start a bad mechanic, but it does make it very difficult to compete head to head against it. It also makes it difficult to justify bringing back for a retail limited environment in lieu of flashback since the two are so similar mechanically. Jump-start is functional as a "spells-matter" mechanic for retail limited play, but it fails to extend beyond that utilization in any meaningful way.
Jump-start Grade: C
Jump-start Grade in Cube: D
Keyword counters are physical counters that are placed on permanents and grant a certain keyword to that permanent. Like +1/+1, -1/-1, or any other named counter, keyword counters remain on that permanent until the permanent leaves play. If the permanent were to change permanent types (such as a creature being turned into an artifact or enchantment), the counters would remain in place, even if they are no longer able to apply a relevant effect. While most of the currently established keyword counters only benefit creatures (reach, haste, trample, etc.), there are a number of keywords that can be applied to noncreature permanents as well (hexproof, shroud, indestructible, etc.).
I've been in staunch opposition to keyword counters since their initial appearance in Ikoria because while they play well mechanically, they have significant memory and readability issues. This stems from the lack of an official game piece that indicates what type of counter is on a permanent. While six sided dice have historically been utilized to represent both +1/+1 and -1/-1 counters, this works because Wizards largely avoids putting them alongside each other in the same retail limited environment. Even in cube, where they appear side by side, the fact that they offset each other when placed on the same permanent limits how often they need to be distinguished. Other weirdo counters are either transient or restricted to the only permanent that creates or cares about them, making them much easier to identify. Since keyword counters persist across turns, provide so many different functions, and often exist independently of whatever created them, it's much more important that they be easily identifiable.
It's a shame because keyword counters play extremely well, providing tangible, permanent benefits in a way that opens up a lot of design space. Wizards currently provides punch out paper tokens for these counters, but they are of rather poor craftsmanship and fail to clearly communicate the keyword being granted. Instead of the keyword name, each token is inscribed with a symbol that corresponds to the appropriate keyword. Unfortunately, these symbols have no historical basis, and are not immediately recognizable, which defeats the purpose entirely.
Given these factors, I would have given keyword counters grades of D+ and F. However, I've just recently obtained some custom made six sided dice with clear, easy to read writing on each side that spell out each keyword. These have made it extremely easy to differentiate between the different keyword counters, essentially rendering my main complaint against them null and void. They're still more of a design tool than an outright mechanic that players can draft and build a deck around, but they're now functional in their intended role. The overall grade for keyword counters is incredibly dependent on your ability to differentiate them, and your mileage may vary.
Keyword Counters Grade: B
Keyword Counters Grade in Cube: B
Kicker is a deciduous mechanic that has served as the base for many, many mechanics since its debut in Invasion. Mechanically, kicker is very simple, as it serves as an additional cost on spells that can be paid to obtain an additional effect. You may also ignore kicker and cast a spell for its base effect. The actual kicker cost varies much in the same way that flashback's does, offering designs that utilize different mana values, colors of mana, and alternative forms of payment. The actual benefits for paying the kicker cost also vary without restriction, ranging from simple +1/+1 counters on creatures, to expanded versions of instants and sorceries, to adding effects that are completely unrelated to the original spell.
In a vacuum, kicker provides decks with an outlet for excess mana, rewards for stretching their mana base, and various synergy opportunities depending on the actual execution. It's often included in sets looking for a way to smooth game play, particularly in the mid-to-late game without stepping on the toes of any existing infrastructure. Kicker's broad design space and lack of any tangible flavor make it a perfect jumping off point for more targeted mechanics that fit a set's needs both mechanically and thematically. So many mechanics are "just" an evolution of kicker than it's been seen as a bit of a meme, but one can also say that none of these mechanics would exist at all if kicker had not been developed in the first place.
Nearly every time kicker returns it does so with a slight tweak to its execution, and it often leads to interesting and satisfying gameplay. Deciding whether to cast a spell for its mana cost or kick it requires forward thinking strategy, as you need to determine whether the immediate return outweighs the benefits and risks incurred with waiting to kick. Accomplishing this without causing unnecessary comprehension complexity is a real triumph, especially considering how complex current Magic sets are on average. All of this extends to cube as well, where it's just another generically good mechanic that players are happy to see in action. The only real question when it comes to grading is whether to reward it for being a pioneering and foundational mechanic, or punish it since its presence makes other mechanics look derivative in comparison. I think it makes sense rewarding the base design for its triumphs and holding its successors to a higher standard when it comes to carving out a niche of their own, especially considering they have the opportunity to justify their iterations with the appropriate flavor.
Kicker Grade: A
Kicker Grade in Cube: A
Multikicker is a variant of kicker first introduced in Worldwake that allows you to pay a kicker cost multiple times to gain access to that many copies of the effect. You must choose how many times to kick the spell at the time of casting and you must be able to pay the cost for each time the spell is kicked. The effect goes on the stack and then resolves based on how many times you kicked the spell. Like kicker, paying the multikicker cost is optional, and much of the strategy lies in determining how and when to pay the cost. Multikicker also requires costs that can actually be paid multiple times, reducing much of the exploratory design space that kicker enjoyed.
Multikicker still presents the choice between playing your spell on curve for immediate value, or waiting until you have more mana for an increased effect. Whereas kicker asks you to compare two iterations of the same spell, multikicker asks you to evaluate a card's scalability against your mana and the game state. Because most of the excitement of multikicker comes in actually being able to kick your spells multiple times, it's really only appropriate in formats that allot you the time and resources necessary to achieve that goal. It performs best in limited formats where games are expected to last longer, although it would probably work just fine in most sealed deck formats.
Multikicker is certainly a more niche addition to cube, where the cards would be much more dependent on sheer rate and effect, requiring not only a functional base rate but reasonable expectation that they can be kicked more than once. While cards like Everflowing Chalice and Marshal's Anthem saw an extended run in my cube, players were noticeably disappointed with how often they failed to take full advantage of multikicker. This was due to having diminishing returns and being played in a deck that couldn't generate the necessary mana on a consistent basis, respectively. This is the current plight of Flametongue Yearling, a card that is good on rate but doesn't really utilize multikicker as advertised. Alternatively, players were much more excited to cast Comet Storm and Wolfbriar Elemental because their play experience mirrored expectations, even if they weren't necessarily as objectively powerful. Threading the needle between expectations and reality is very important for a mechanic like multikicker that promises exciting, over the top game play. It's just a difficult needle to thread for cube.
Multikicker Grade: B
Multikicker Grade in Cube: C
Kindred, originally named Tribal during its premiere in Lorwyn, is a rarely used card type that only appears on noncreature cards. Kindred indicates that the card is of a particular creature type, even though the card itself is not a creature. Kindred allows for the existence of Demon Enchantments, Elf Instants, Rogue Sorceries, and Shaman Artifacts, just to name a few. The presence of these creature types allows these cards to be referenced and counted towards cards that care about spells you cast or permanents you control of a particular creature type. The actual wording on these cards is critical, because they need to reference a creature type without indicating a particular card type. For example, Unholy Annex will drain your opponent for 2 if you control a Demonic Covenant, but you can't tutor for it with Shadowborn Apostle. Playing with kindred cards requires more attention to detail than it may appear, and this can lead to frustration when it comes to properly communicating what is, and what is not, considered a kindred card.
Kindred takes something that has existed since Alpha, creature types, and applies them to noncreature permanents. While this creates the opportunity for increased synergies and deck building opportunities, it also creates significant issues when experienced across curated environments. I don't usually discuss constructed in these mechanics articles, but the existence of kindred has complicated every past and future set because of its presence. Kindred not being backward OR forward compatible renders the mechanic extremely confusing for players who actually want to interact with it. Why does Giant's Ire have the giant creature type but not Invasion of the Giants or Fire Giant's Fury? What about cards whose artwork appears to suggest kindred, but only in certain printings? You can't provide functional errata for every noncreature card in Magic, especially since identifying what would and what would not be considered a kindred card would require a lot of subjectivity. While my cube doesn't support creature type matters synergies, rending kindred irrelevant regardless of its successes or shortcomings, this is a relevant problem in any cube that does.
In a retail limited environment like Lorwyn or Modern Horizons 3, these issues are less severe, but still present. The gameplay provided by linking noncreature cards to those that care about particular creature types doesn't add enough depth to a format to justify the immense comprehension complexity. Kindred was an attempt to increase the asfan of certain creature types in a pack without increasing the actual creature count in the set. In this respect, it succeeds. I just wish it didn't feel like opening Pandora's Box in the process.
Kindred (Tribal) Grade: D
Kindred (Tribal) Grade in Cube: F
Landfall is an ability word that triggers whenever a land enters the battlefield under its owner's control to provide some sort of benefit. Landfall triggers separately for each land that enters play, regardless of how the land(s) entered play. Whether it be your land drop for the turn, a second land that entered with a Rampant Growth, or dropping two lands during your opponent's attack step with Harrow, all landfall abilities will trigger for each land that entered play under your control.
One of the design challenges of landfall is that in order to make it a relevant part of a limited format, it needs to be centralized at the lower end of the mana curve. After all, that's when players are guaranteed to be playing lands every turn. If landfall was centralized on four and five drops, there would be too many turns spent without it triggering at all. Because of this, landfall tends to skew aggressive in nature, as seen in how aggressive Zendikar limited was. Fortunately, there is definitely design space that focuses on alternative strategies as well. Realistically, as long as the effect is functional at sorcery speed, and can be repeated turn after turn without developmental concerns, it's a reasonable landfall trigger. Variety in execution is important to ensure that decks can take advantage of landfall throughout the entirety of a game, as it highlights what makes landfall so special in the first place.
Attributing a positive emotional response to drawing and playing your land for the turn throughout the entirety of a game is easily landfall's greatest triumph. While there is already a lot of tension tied to playing the first couple of lands every game, the excitement dulls significantly once your mana base has been established, making future land draws increasingly frustrating. Being able to trigger a landfall ability with those excess lands not only makes this experience more palatable, it actually results in players actively hoping for another land drop in certain situations. Landfall makes every single card in your deck a live draw, something that is very unique among established mechanics. Having a mechanical and potentially synergistic reason to draw lands more often adjusts how players draft and build their decks, providing depth to all phases of a limited format. This extends to both retail limited and cube, and it's been a pleasure to play with during its numerous iterations.
Landfall Grade: A
Landfall Grade in Cube: A
Lifelink has had quite a tumultuous history since its mechanical conception in Arabian Nights. While the design of lifelink is very simple, it's a keyword ability that causes damage dealt by creatures to gain their controller that much life, the mechanical execution is more complex. During its initial conception, it functioned very similarly to how it does now, despite not having an official keyword name. When it was first keyworded in Mirrodin, it was actually a triggered ability that used the stack, resulting in an unintuitive gap between damage and life gain. This was particularly frustrating if a creature with lifelink was blocking in a combat step involving lethal damage, as the defending player would die before lifelink would resolve. This was incredibly unintuitive and caused a great deal of frustration, particularly for newer players. Fortunately, lifelink was updated in Magic 2010 to resemble the present day implementation. Now, damage is dealt and life is gained simultaneously, allowing players to survive otherwise lethal combat steps as the wording and flavor of the mechanic suggest.
Mechanically, lifelink has several important functions. It can be used as a way for defensive decks to offset aggressive starts by an opponent, it can be used to swing races in the aggro mirror, and it has obvious synergy potential with life gain matters archetypes. Because aggro decks often work on razor thin margins, too much lifelink in an environment can be oppressive, pushing out aggressive strategies that lack the ability to deal 25-30 damage to an opponent. This is why you normally see only a couple of creatures with lifelink alongside one or two ways to grant it conditionally. This allows players to leverage it strategically instead of relying on it heavily. It's also why environments with dedicated lifegain strategies tend to support it in small, conditional increments as opposed to utilizing multiple creatures with lifelink that gain larger swaths of life at a time.
Most of the issues concerning lifelink are focused around repeatedly gaining life, particularly in larger increments. Equipment that grants lifelink in particular can be very dangerous, as it can quickly create a game state that few opponents can reasonably overcome. As long as it's used in moderation though, it can be a helpful tool for any limited environment that forces players to reevaluate their existing clock and strategy. It helps supplement life gain strategies organically, can help offset poor draws against aggressive opponents, and it's interesting when attached to combat tricks and other temporary effects. I support lifelink in my cube as appropriate, but I'm not looking to actively increase the density of effect since I'm not currently supporting any life gain synergies en masse.
Lifelink Grade: B
Lifelink Grade in Cube: B
Living weapon is a keyword ability on equipment that creates a 0/0 black Germ creature token when the equipment enters play. The equipment then immediately attaches to the Germ token. Because the Germ is a 0/0 creature, the equipment is the only thing keeping it alive. If it were to be unequipped for any reason, its toughness would be reduced to 0, and it would immediately die. Now, this is assuming that the equipment actually provides a boost to toughness, something that every living weapon equipment does. While not technically required, it would be extremely confusing to play with one that doesn't, as it would be extremely unintuitive and lead to Skullclamp levels of degenerative gameplay.
One of the biggest drawbacks to playing equipment is that you have to forgo developing your board presence the turn you cast them. You then need to spend further resources to equip them to creatures, providing your opponent with opportunities to disrupt your investment. This is assuming that you actually have creatures and mana to begin with. This is why there tends to be a very real hard cap on how expensive equipment can realistically be to both cast and equip to retain playability in limited. Living weapon ensures that players get immediate use out of their equipment the turn they play it, regardless of their existing mana base or board state. Even if Germ tokens do nothing other than chump block before you untap with them, they are making equipment more generically playable simply by virtue of existing.
Unfortunately, being tied to creating Germ tokens greatly reduces the design space available for living weapon. Flavorfully, it's intrinsically tied to the Phyrexians, and mechanically, it demands certain bonuses to work properly with a 0/0 Germ token. Ultimately though, living weapon performed such an important function that it would be iterated on numerous times over the years. From singleton cards in sets to whole mechanics, living weapon pioneered important design space that continues to be plumbed for value. These evolutions of design make it difficult to be excited about future living weapon designs though. Being tied to the Germ token is just so unnecessarily restrictive in comparison. Despite this, I appreciate the commitment to flavor, especially since it allowed for future iterations without monopolizing all available design space like cycling and kicker.
Living Weapon Grade: A-
Living Weapon Grade in Cube: A-
Madness is a keyword ability on nonland cards that allows you to cast them for an alternate cost if you discard them. Madness can be used regardless of how a card is discarded, whether it be to an opposing Mind Rot, to your own Merfolk Looter, or to hand size at the end of your turn. Because cards can be discarded during any phase, and during either player's turn, madness ignores any timing restrictions on cards you cast with it. Madness is quite complicated, as it requires not only a detailed understanding of the associated rules, but it's also an A + B mechanic that only functions in a very specific circumstance. You simply cannot put a madness card into any deck and expect the mechanic to be relevant, you need dedicated support from cards that you might not normally expect to play or use in this way. There's a lot of complex intricacies going on underneath the hood with madness, but these are the most relevant concerns under most circumstances.
Normally, cards that make you discard use that lost resource as payment for whatever ability you are gaining access to. Madness provides an opportunity to turn that into card advantage instead, as long as you can sequence correctly. This requires a lot of foresight across all three stages of limited play. You need to prioritize discard outlets and madness cards during the draft, you need to include the proper mix of the two in your deck, and you need to develop a fluid plan for how to navigate the two throughout a game. Madness is straight forward when you curve enablers into payoffs, but it gets much more complex when drawn out of sequence. Determining when you cast your madness cards for their base rate, utilize your discard effects without casting spells with madness, and when you should hold one or the other in your hand for future use is highly skill testing.
Even in limited formats dedicated to supporting it, like Shadows Over Innistrad, madness has produced inconsistent results. It's very rewarding when it works as intended, but it can be frustrating when the pieces aren't lining up properly. It can also be somewhat annoying to play against, as a single Merfolk Looter can threaten an unreasonable amount of cards that could be cast at instant speed. This makes attacking into a madness player with open mana very difficult in a way that doesn't feel like it can be overcome with strategy. Perhaps that is the reason why madness has skewed aggressive in recent iterations, focusing on high power and low toughness creatures to avoid too many mid-combat blowouts. I'm generally less concerned about these play patterns in cube than I am in retail limited, as you're less reliant on creatures whose only value lies in attacking and blocking.
Madness requires a lot of infrastructural support to serve as a functional limited mechanic. In those confines however, it can provide unique, skill testing gameplay that capitalizes on excellent flavor. I've always enjoyed my time with the mechanic, despite its somewhat messy execution and comprehension complexity. Unfortunately, I haven't found room for too many madness cards in my cube. While part of that is because of power level and consistency concerns, it's also because I don't feel my cube is set up to maximize it. If a card with madness gets by on its own merits, I'm not opposed to adding it, but it would have to be in either or , as they are the only colors that can realistically utilize it.
Madness Grade: B-
Madness Grade in Cube: D+
Prowess is a deciduous mechanic on creatures that grants +1/+1 until end of turn whenever you cast a noncreature spell. Prowess is not limited to once per turn, which allows you to chain together multiple spells consecutively to stack bonuses. While this can be done to push extra damage onto an opponent, it can also be triggered mid combat, serving as a pseudo combat trick. It's for this reason that prowess is much more powerful with instants than it is with any other card type. Nevertheless, working with such a wide array of card types greatly increases how often prowess can realistically be triggered in a game. It also allows it to be more generally playable across formats, as it retains value in artifact and/or enchantment blocks, triggering reliably on whatever the critical noncreature card type may be.
Ever since its inception in Khans of Tarkir, where it stood as the core mechanic for the Jeskai Way clan, prowess has been a critical part of retail limited formats. and had long struggled to find a combat centric mechanic that took advantage of their shared section of the color pie. Since they are a spells matter archetype in nearly every limited format, prowess has served as an excellent solution to this problem. It's easy to understand, highly flavorful and synergistic, and works well with the typically undersized early game creatures in both and . As my cube also focuses on this strategy for , it's a natural fit there as well.
Prowess provides a very specific payoff (+1/+1 until end of turn) for doing a very generalized thing (playing a noncreature spell). It works in nearly any limited deck, in nearly any format, without occupying too much complexity space or drawing attention to itself. However, it's also fairly specialized in what it provides. It only works on creatures and it only provides +1/+1. It's also perhaps too generalized for formats with hyper focused theming (Strixhaven or Theros). While it certainly functions in these environments, more focused implementations like Magecraft and Constellation send stronger signals to drafters as to what the limited format is about. For sets without these hyper focused strategies, including cube, prowess is an excellent combat mechanic that just feels great to play with.
Prowess Grade: A
Prowess Grade in Cube: A
Magecraft is the aforementioned iteration on prowess. Whereas prowess grants a creature +1/+1 whenever you cast a noncreature spell, magecraft can provide a wide array of bonuses whenever you cast or copy an instant or sorcery. Magecraft is a hyper focused mechanic designed to support Strixhaven: School of Mages, a set focused on, appropriately, instants and sorceries. Copying may seem like a very strange and rather obscure trigger, but it comes up more often than it may appear, synergizing with a number of mechanics and frequently seen effects. Because magecraft can provide a wider array of bonuses than prowess, it's also not limited to appearing on creatures. This allows for more dynamic execution, albeit in a much more narrow band of environments.
In the right setting, magecraft plays out just as well as prowess while sending a more detailed signal to drafters. Being able to benefit in different ways allows for much broader design space and providing support for a wider array of strategies. Different colors and combinations of colors can have their own interpretation of magecraft, providing significant depth to a format by supporting multiple archetypes under the same umbrella. One combination can care about aggressive magecraft, one can be more defensive, one can play independently of combat, and another can focus on the copying aspect of the mechanic. This broad design space comes with quite a lot more comprehension complexity though, especially when copying spells is considered. Putting copies onto the stack and triggering magecraft is not intuitive, requiring heightened attention to detail. Copying is also an obscure enough trigger that the first emotion players are going to have when they read it is going to be confusion, regardless of how well supported it is.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, magecraft lacks the support necessary for it to shine across all five colors in cube. Both and lack the density of instants and sorceries needed to reliably trigger it. This pigeonholes it into the same archetypes as prowess, being largely contained to the end of the spectrum. Even in those confines, it can be frustrating when magecraft fails to trigger on enchantments, artifacts, and planeswalkers, as they are well represented in totality. Perhaps unsurprisingly, players will always make the mental comparison to prowess, and often feel frustrated that their ability triggers less often than expected. I'm a big fan of magecraft in the right environment, but it does lack consistency outside of those confines.
Magecraft Grade: B
Magecraft Grade in Cube: B-
First seen in Fate Reforged, manifest is a variant of morph that allows you to play cards from different zones, face down, as 2/2 creatures. A creature that has been played face down in this way may be turned face up at any time by paying its mana cost. Creatures that turn face up become their actual card, but do not trigger any enters play abilities since the card was already in play beforehand. Noncreature cards that have been manifested cannot be turned face up, but remain 2/2 creatures as long as they remain face down. If a manifested creature were to be turned face up or change zones, it will revert to its original card type and be put into the graveyard if it is still in play. Manifest is an immensely complex mechanic that requires full understanding of Morph, another complex mechanic, to fully understand. There are a lot of rules intricacies that I'm not going to get into in the interest of time, but suffice it to say that the complexity is a very real barrier to entry.
Manifest attempts to get around one of the main issues with playing with morph in modern Magic: that paying for a vanilla 2/2 creature is well below curve. Since manifesting creatures usually happens as part of the resolution of other effects, you are no longer tied to this egregious exchange rate. It also helps get around any telegraphing of cards experienced when playing with morph outside of a dedicated format. This was a problem in cube in particular, where basically any morph card could be identified as soon as it was played face down, simply because there were so few in the cube. This interplay was so unsatisfying that I ended up removing morph from my cube altogether, a decision that nobody has regretted. While these factors go a long way towards making manifest more generically playable than morph, it doesn't make up for the combination of comprehension complexity and inconsistent game play.
While manifest can technically be played outside of a curated environment, doing so introduces a number of additional frustrations. The biggest is that manifesting an actual creature, something that should be an exciting moment, prevents you from taking advantage of any ETB effects that creature may have. ETB effects are a huge part of modern creature design, and because of that, this interaction comes up constantly. A vanilla 2/2 creature is so bad in modern Magic, that it's actually difficult to leverage it to a meaningful extent. You need to manifest actual creatures to justify the investment, and having half of the creatures in your deck not work smoothly with the mechanic is immensely frustrating. Simply increasing its power and toughness often isn't worth paying the additional mana to turn it face up, particularly when much of that cost is tied into effects you no longer have access to. Unless you are manifesting a large number of creatures, manifesting often doesn't provide the game play intricacies that it promises. This makes it difficult to justify outside of the most curated environments imaginable (where creatures specify that their abilities trigger as they enter play or are turned face up), as every advantage is needed to justify the comprehension complexity.
Manifest Grade: D+
Manifest Grade in Cube: D
Menace is an evergreen creature keyword ability that prevents a creature from being blocked except by two or more creatures. Menace was first introduced mechanically in Fallen Empires before being officially keyworded in Magic Origins. Menace is a basic but important keyword for retail limited as, like flying, it helps break board stalls and propels a game towards completion. Whereas flying is primary in and , menace is primary in and secondary in , allowing all four colors to have a common form of evasion within their color pie. This comparison often results in menace being slightly overvalued, as players evaluate it as stronger and more reliable than it is.
Menace, especially on inexpensive creatures played on curve, allows you to punish opponents who are either playing a low creature count, stumble on mana and/or board presence, or are attempting to stabilize behind a single blocker. You can further leverage menace by aggressively using cheap removal, keeping your opponent off of multiple creatures while you whittle away at their life total. Menace often demands removal from opponents that fall into these patterns, regardless of how imposing your creature happens to be. Once a defending player has stabilized, menace falls off quite a bit as your opponent can often offer a trade of one of two lesser creatures that may not be appealing. Interestingly, it gains in value once you approach your final attack, as opponents often struggle to find enough blocks when one of your creatures demands multiple bodies be thrown in front of it.
Menace loses a lot of luster in environments where creature tokens are prevalent, as every miscellaneous Human and Goblin allows your opponents to block your "evasive" creature. This is the main reason that menace is somewhat middling in cube, as every color except has easy access to some sort of creature token, regardless of strategy. Because of that, creatures with menace often trade down more than you'd like, which makes it difficult to include creatures that rely on it as their main attribute. It still holds value on early game aggressive creatures for the reasons listed above, but its power is tempered a bit.
As a common form of evasion, menace serves an important purpose in retail limited sets. It propels games to their conclusion while supporting aggressive decks in the early game. It also sends a subtle yet powerful signal to newer players to make sure they are playing enough creatures in their deck to interact with their opponent in combat. These players often struggle finding the right balance of lands, creatures, and spells, and mechanics like this explain the importance of playing creature through gameplay, something that's very rewarding to discover on your own.
Menace Grade: B
Menace Grade in Cube: C
Mentor was first introduced as the guild mechanic for the Boros Legion in Guilds of Ravnica. Mentor is a creature keyword that states "whenever this creature attacks, put a +1/+1 counter on target attacking creature with lesser power". Aside from corner case interactions involving malleable creature powers, mentor is fairly easy to understand and functions as expected. Strategically, however, mentor presents a number of issues that hampers its ability to serve as a functional aggro mechanic.
Triggering mentor requires you to have profitable attacks with multiple creatures on the same turn. Triggering it multiple times means that those attacks must persist across multiple turns, something that rarely happens against an opponent that is playing lands and casting spells. Even when you do trigger mentor, putting a +1/+1 counter on a creature only makes it harder to trigger the next turn, since you are reducing the difference in power between the two creatures that enabled mentor. Once you no longer control two applicable creatures, it takes at least two turns to enable mentor again. You have to spend a turn casting or creating a creature with lesser power, or a creature with mentor, and then you have to wait for that creature to no longer have summoning sickness. This gives your opponent a lot of time to prepare for that exact combination of creatures. While this can be sped up with haste or a way to augment the mentor creature's power, it's inherently slow and too impact, particularly for an aggro mechanic.
Mentor can be frustrating because even if you can trigger it, a single +1/+1 counter often doesn't make the difference between a bad attack and a profitable one. It can break parity if you could currently offer a trade, or it can offer a trade where you would previously have been chump attacking. What it can't do is allow you to survive a combat that you would have previously lost, and those are important attacks to enable. Aggro decks already struggle against opponents with a lot of interaction and board presence, and those are the conditions where mentor is the worst. It's functional if you're already ahead and terrible when behind, leaning into aggro's existing strengths and weaknesses.
Because of this, mentor is quite a bit worse in cube, where interaction and board presence are both more efficient and plentiful. These barriers make it difficult to trigger mentor even a single time, let alone turn after turn. It's a win more mechanic in a format with no shortage of ways to press an existing advantage. I'd much rather have something that either allows you to claw back into a game you are behind in, or provides a more immediate and guaranteed return on investment.
Figuring out a way to turn mentor into a profitable ability is an exercise in frustration. It's both too difficult to trigger and doesn't provide a significant enough bonus to justify its requirements. When it works, it's likely because your opponent has failed to present a minimal amount of resistance. Basically any other time, you're looking at making mediocre attacks for mediocre rewards. Aggro decks need to push through adversity in order to kill their opponent before they get outclassed on card quality and quantity. Mentor does not do enough in this regard, which relegates it to a functional yet mediocre mechanic for retail limited.
Mentor Grade: C-
Mentor Grade in Cube: D+
Mill N is an evergreen mechanic that causes a player to put the top N cards from the top of their library into their graveyard. Yet another mechanic that appeared entirely in rules text (Antiquities) long before it was officially keyworded, mill was evergreen in execution before it ever received that designation in Core Set 2021. Mechanically, milling is very simple to understand and execute, rarely causing any comprehension complexity at any level. Strategically however, milling has a lot of depth and design space to explore.
The main crux of decision making with milling comes in deciding which player should actually be targeted with the effect. Milling your opponent can be used as an alternate win condition when reproduced en masse, or it can be done to disrupt effects that have stacked the top of their deck. While milling yourself can also be used as an alternate win condition, it's much more commonly used to set up synergies you have drafted and built your deck around. As most sets have some sort of graveyard synergy or archetype, milling is an important part of the infrastructure of nearly every set, albeit in different quantities. It's even served as a limited archetype of its own from time to time, providing depth to limited formats.
While mill has largely been used to great effect when considered carefully, cards that mill for an egregious amount are a different story entirely. Cards like Court of Cunning and Increasing Confusion can be incredibly frustrating to play against since a 40 card deck runs out of cards so quickly. What makes matters worse is that these cards are complete blanks unless they kill an opponent outright, as milling a player doesn't actually accomplish anything productive on its own. In fact, every card your opponent mills has the potential to set up synergies and enable mechanics that may be seeded into their deck. It's for this reason that unless you are an extremely dedicated mill deck, it's usually better to just mill yourself, instead. This is something that newer players struggle with mightily, as the fear of milling a bomb or piece of removal can often be more memorable than the times you milled TO those cards instead.
While I don't support targeted mill in my cube, as I find it to be noninteractive and frustrating, I'm definitely a fan of self-mill, as it enables a number of previously mentioned cards. Whether it be flashback, delirium, delve, or any other individual card that cares about your graveyard, milling makes these cards relevant much faster than casting your spells and waiting for them to get there naturally. Mill is a difficult mechanic to grade because of how polarizing it is under different circumstances and executions, but I want to reward the design and flexibility of the mechanic more than punish its poor executions.
Mill Grade: A
Mill Grade in Cube: B+
Modal double-faced cards are a unique style of double-faced card that present two independent cards on either side of the MDFC. As such, you can choose to play them for either their front side or their back side. Unlike typical DFCs, MDFCs do not transform back and forth, and they instead remain in play on whichever side they were originally played. Like all DFCs, MDFCs have the characteristics of the front face in all zones while they are not in play.
First introduced in Zendikar Rising, MDFCs featured nonland cards on the front side and land cards on the back side. This provided players with a way to squeeze more land AND nonland cards into their deck without increasing their overall card count. This allowed players to reliably hit their land drops without running out of relevant cards in the late game. It also let players squeeze expensive/narrow cards into their main deck without having to worry about them being dead when they lacked the mana to cast them or the cards themselves lacked relevance, respectively. Despite WotC being cautious with the overall power level of the cards, the game play was rewarding and skill testing, and the choice of which side to play was often interesting and seldom prescriptive. Knowing that all MDFCs had a spell on the front side and a land on the back kept the complexity low despite the inherent complications with DFCs. Players rarely had to take a card out of their sleeve to read the back since it was obvious what the back side did.
When MDFCs returned in Kaldheim and Strixhaven, they featured nonland cards on both sides, which eliminated much of the elegance of the original design. It also leaned into all of the worst traits of DFCs. Players were no longer able to remember both sides of the card, which required players to de-sleeve during games to their competitive disadvantage. It was made worse by how complex the designs were, as they were nearly impossible to remember without continued attention. MDFCs provide modality at the cost of complexity, and I'm not sure that tightrope is worth walking outside of the most basic implementations.
My experience with the later MDFCs was so negative that it completely turned me off to the entire design space. Even if I was able to perfectly remember both sides of every MDFC in my cube, it wouldn't be fair for players that aren't as familiar with my list to do the same. As the curator of the cube I already have a competitive advantage, and I don't want my players to feel further encumbered with unnecessary complexity. As such, I have begun the process of eliminating MDFCs from my cube entirely while actively raising the barrier for entry for any other style of DFC.
Modal Double-Faced Cards Grade: D+
Modal Double-Faced Cards Grade in Cube: F
Modified is a creature designation first introduced in Kamigawa: Neon Dynasty. A creature is considered to be modified if it is enchanted by an aura you control, equipped, or has any sort of counter on it. It does not matter which or how many of these a creature has, as cards don't care about the type of modification, only whether a creature is modified or not. Cards can also care about how many modified creatures you control, provide bonuses to each modified creature you control, or have a trigger based on something a modified creature does. I will say that it can be a little difficult to remember the specificities of modified. After all, Pacifism-like auras don't count as modifications, but equipment attached to a creature you steal with Act of Treason do. While the rules text does a lot of heavy lifting in helping players remember what qualifies, it can get confusing on higher rarity cards that lack it. Fortunately, once you actually understand what modified means, it does provide satisfying gameplay.
Between the variety of ways to modify a creature and the various rewards for doing so, modify has a lot of design space to explore. Auras, equipment, and counters show up in every single limited format, allowing modify to exist in most sets without warping the base design. This variety allows modify to function as a supporting mechanic that plays out different across multiple limited archetypes in the same set. You do want all three to be present in a high enough degree to be visible though, lest portions of the rules text feel out of place. This is most critical in a retail limited environment where keeping complexity reigned in is critical.
There is a little more wiggle room in cube, where I'd be comfortable including it even though auras are mostly irrelevant. That said, Thundering Raiju really struggled to trigger its modified ability during its time in my cube. While and have seen a recent influx of +1/+1 counters that would support modified, the other colors have to rely on equipment, something that only gets played in aggro decks and only then in small numbers. Modify can exist as an added bonus, but it won't be able to carry the weight of an entire card like it can in retail limited.
Modified Grade: B
Modified Grade in Cube: D+
Modular N is a keyword ability first introduced in Darksteel that appears only on permanents. Permanents with modified N enter play with N +1/+1 counters on them. When they die, you may move their counters onto target artifact creature. This triggered ability is an all or nothing choice, you cannot split up the counters among multiple creatures, and you cannot choose to move only some of the counters. You also don't move the counters at all if the permanent with modular leaves play without going to the graveyard. Modular can be a little confusing because the rules text all appears in a single string, even though its components occur at completely different times. The first half is only relevant when it enters play and the second half is only relevant if it dies and you control an artifact creature. Additionally, while it has only appeared on artifact permanents, modular can technically be printed on nonartifact permanents, which feels at odds with its flavor and grokability.
Because it directly references artifact creatures, modular can really only appear in an artifact set like Mirrodin or The Brothers' War. In those environments it can serve as a way to retain your existing combat stats across multiple turns, regardless of whether your creatures die in the meantime. It plays well with sacrifice outlets, letting you control when and where your stats move. It also leans aggressive, forcing your opponent to have a proactive solution, as your attackers will continue to grow each time another one is dealt with. Modular presents an opportunity for multiple archetypal synergies with interesting game play decisions, but it comes with an unavoidable cloud of complexity.
Playing against modular can be particularly annoying, as there isn't really a clean way to interact with it unless you have access to exile effects. A single sacrifice outlet can make it actively impossible to prevent from triggering, and I've seen many people misplay based on an incomplete understanding of its rules. It's essentially an on board trick that is always live because it requires no mana to use, allowing players to walk into transparent traps and misplays. The gameplay is satisfying for the one controlling the modular creature, and pretty irritating for everyone else. In formats lacking the proper density of artifact creatures, modular is frustrating for everyone. It was very underwhelming in Modern Masters because of this, and I expect it would be even worse in my cube. I just don't have enough artifact creatures to adequately support the ability, making it an easy pass for me.
Modular Grade: D+
Modular Grade in Cube: F
Monstrosity N is a creature keyword action first introduced in Theros to represent the "monsters" section of the Gods, Monsters, and Heroes dynamic of the block. Creatures with monstrosity have an activated ability that causes them to become "monstrous", putting N +1/+1 counters on the creature when activated. A creature can only become "monstrous" once per game, although the designation will be reset if the creature leaves play for any reason. Unfortunately, there isn't an established way to visually indicate that a creature has become monstrous aside from it having +1/+1 counters. As there are any number of alternative ways to put those counters on a creature, this often leads to memory issues over the course of longer games.
The memory issues associated with monstrosity are more of an annoyance than something that actively affects the quality of game play. Players can use an unofficial marker to indicate that the creature is monstrous if they need to, it's just messy and aesthetically unappealing. For best results, monstrosity should really only appear in sets with limited access to +1/+1 counters. Unfortunately, +1/+1 counters appear in nearly every single set, restricting how often I would feel comfortable seeing it. It's a shame because monstrosity has excellent flavor, plays exceedingly well as a mana sink that provides synergistic upside, and has a number of developmental levers that can be pulled to balance it. Having a creature with monstrosity is threatening, as your opponent knows it can become stronger if given enough time. Players do need to be attentive to when they attempt to activate monstrosity though, as having your creature killed in response would be devastating.
The density of efficient removal in cube limits how effective monstrosity can be in that environment. It's generally much more difficult for players to navigate their opponent's mana looking for a safe turn to activate it. The memory issues are also more explicitly problematic, as there are many ways to put not only +1/+1 counters but other types of counters on creatures. There are also a number of ways for creatures to change zones, resetting monstrous. While this is one of the more interesting ways to leverage the ability, it also leans into the memory issues that we're trying to avoid. If an efficient and aesthetically pleasing way to denote monstrous arises, one of its biggest barriers could be overcome, although it would still be at the mercy of cube's power delta.
Monstrosity Grade: B
Monstrosity Grade in Cube: D+
Morbid is an ability word first introduced in Innistrad to represent the never-ending cycle of death that plagues the plane. Cards with morbid gain an additional ability or effect if a creature previously died on the same turn. It does not matter which creature died, or who controlled it at the time of its death. Most of the complexity associated with morbid actually revolves in figuring out how to trigger it when desired as opposed to any comprehension complexity with the mechanic itself. Players generally understand how it works, even if getting it to work the way you want it to is harder than it appears.
The three most common ways to trigger morbid in limited are with sacrifice outlets, combat damage, and removal spells. Combat damage is certainly the most common, as it presents itself as a possibility nearly every turn. However, for any sorcery speed morbid effects, the onus is actually on your opponent to choose to block your creatures. If they simply choose to take the damage, morbid won't trigger without additional help. Likewise, blocking to trigger morbid requires both your opponent to present an attack where a creature can die, and you an instant speed morbid effect at the same time. With both removal and sacrifice outlets you are somewhat at the mercy of the ongoing game state. The creatures, sacrifice outlets, and removal spells that both players have must line up with your morbid payoffs. While this does occur with some frequency, it's not a guarantee, and often requires your opponent to be complicit in triggering morbid for you.
Because of these factors, you do need to be an active participant in drafting, building, and sequencing a deck in a way that enables morbid. You cannot simply play a game and expect it to trigger exactly when you need it to every time you need it to. This means playing sacrifice outlets and tokens to trigger morbid repeatedly, being proactive to force an opponent to interact with your creatures in combat, and patiently waiting to deploy your spells. Fortunately, this is a satisfying game play loop, even if it's not objectively powerful and consistent. This makes morbid more appropriate for retail limited than it is for cube, where reliability is key, especially with so much competition for similar effects.
Morbid Grade: C+
Morbid Grade in Cube: C-
Ninjutsu is a creature keyword ability introduced in Betrayers of Kamigawa that served as the representative mechanic for the ninja that called Kamigawa home. Creatures with ninjutsu can be put into play tapped and attacking if you pay their ninjutsu cost and return an unblocked attacking creature you control to your hand. While ninjutsu can only be used after your creature has been declared unblocked, it can actually be used before or after combat damage has been dealt. This is because the attacking player retains priority until the end of combat, allowing for a very small, and unintuitive, window where your creature that dealt combat damage to your opponent is still considered unblocked. Because these creatures enter play, but are not declared as attacking, they will only trigger ETB and saboteur abilities, and not any attacking triggers. There's actually a lot of additional minutiae to the exact timing and triggers associated with ninjutsu but suffice it to say that it's a very complicated mechanic that is buoyed by excellent flavor and exciting game play, albeit with a steep learning curve on both sides of the table.
Learning and maximizing your ninjutsu windows is but one aspect of maximizing the mechanic. It also asks players to draft an up tempo deck that wants to be attacking with cheap, evasive creatures. This allows you to reliably use ninjutsu ahead of curve, trigger their saboteur abilities, and still be able to recast your evasive creature without sacrificing tempo. You'll also need cheap interaction that enables attacks from your ninjas once they are in play, since they can no longer use ninjutsu. After that you just have to have a full understanding of the various ways to utilize ninjutsu, like putting Moonsnare Specialist into play after damage is dealt if you're returning a larger creature to your hand, or saving Azra Smokeshaper to protect against a combat trick instead of dealing one more damage.
Playing against ninjutsu means having a comprehensive knowledge of what creatures with the ability exist in the format and factoring untapped mana into blocking decisions. This gets easier once you know an opponent's deck, but it can be so challenging before that point that the correct call often becomes to just block everything you can as often as you can. The biggest impact on normal decision making is the complete inability to play around combat tricks. You just can't afford to let one or two damage through under the pretense of wanting to avoid being blown out by a Giant Growth, as letting your opponent ninjutsu a random ninja is so much worse. This can be frustrating until you have a more complete understanding of a format, often making you feel like you had no way to interact with their line of play. Nevertheless, by playing inexpensive blockers, loading up on instant speed removal, and not being flippant with your life total, you can play around ninjutsu in a way that feels rewarding.
In order for ninjutsu to have a role in cube, you need to be supporting an aggro or tempo strategy in either or , and preferably both. While I do support tempo. my section does not align with the game style necessary to maximize it. Likewise, is largely a more controlling color combination when put together, which makes many of these cards a tough sell. I'm still playing a couple in , but there are some really exciting creatures that I just can't justify due to design constraints. If I ever wanted to push in a more proactive direction for , leaning into ninjutsu would be at the top of the list for potential strategies to support. After all, being able to return evasive creatures with ETBs to your hand for value is an extremely fun and powerful line of play. It's just not advisable under the current design philosophy.
Ninjutsu Grade: B
Ninjutsu Grade in Cube: C
Oil counters were introduced in Phyrexia: All Will Be One as a way to represent the glistening Phyrexian oil that coats the plane and its denizens. Mechanically, oil counters can really serve as a stand in for any named counter that cards care about within a set, as they serve no function on their own beyond being referenced by other cards. Some use them as a resource, some care about how many you have, and others merely check for their presence when resolving an ability or effect. Unfortunately, like many of these named counters, there aren't established, high quality markers to represent them, allowing them to be confused with other counters that go on permanents. While this can be remedied with some custom dice, it's a messy solution that puts the onus on the players to reduce confusion.
When playing with these types of mechanics it's important to make sure that the asfan of the counters is appropriate to support the available payoffs. Cards that supply their own oil counters are going to be much more reliable than those that need outside assistance. The more of the latter you have in a format, the more critical it is to include ways to generate additional oil counters at lower rarities. It's also critical that your environment isn't so aggressive that it chokes out decks looking to accrue incremental advantage over time, as that occupies a large share of the available design space. Ironically, this was somewhat awkward in the lightning fast draft environment of WOE, as you lacked the time needed to set up and grind out your engine, which prevented some of the more synergistic aspects of the design from truly shining.
These things are true to an extreme extent in cube, an environment that's hostile to durdling, and where it's going to be virtually impossible to support cards that aren't fully self-contained. I would also want to avoid cards that suggest to drafters that their is additional support available in the format, regardless of power level or synergy potential. This leaves relatively few cards of this ilk that I would feel comfortable playing, although I wouldn't outright ban them from my list.
Oil Counters Grade: C
Oil Counters Grade in Cube: D-
Outlast is a creature keyword activated ability introduced in Khans of Tarkir where it served as the Abzan Houses clan mechanic. If you pay a creature's outlast cost and tap it at sorcery speed, the creature gains a +1/+1 counter. It's extremely simple as far as comprehension complexity goes, as most of the complexity lies in how to leverage it strategically. Some creatures provide bonuses tied to having +1/+1 counters or activating their outlast ability, while others merely use it as a way to grow bigger over time. Because you can only outlast as a sorcery, players need to decide between holding their creature back to block or using the ability. This can make for some interesting combat decisions, particularly against an aggressive opponent. If taking an attack this turn prevents your opponent from attacking on the next, it may be worth considering. Forgoing an attack on the current turn to enable a future attack can also be beneficial.
Unfortunately, outlast is easily disrupted by any kind of interaction, and removing your creature from combat as an attacker and blocker is a significant cost. As such, the only outlast cards that really perform well in limited are those that function independently of actually using their outlast ability. Abzan Falconer and Ainok Bond-Kin were excellent in limited because of the keywords they granted alongside other ways to accrue +1/+1 counters. Once a creature had gained a keyword, there was often little reason to keep outlasting unless you were stuck in a board stall. Even in those conditions, outlasting takes so long to actually break though that it was difficult to rely on.
Outlast was buoyed by the relatively slow pace of Khans limited, which gave players more leeway to actually activate the ability without outright conceding a game. It's difficult to imagine that being a realistic proposition in modern formats. This is the reason why outlast just doesn't work in cube, it's simply too slow and low impact compared to the competition. There's also something to be said about how emotionally unsatisfying it is to actually activate an outlast ability. Regardless of how powerful it may or may not be, it feels unsatisfying, particularly if you are conceding damage or your creature gets killed in the process. That matters, especially in retail limited where these mechanics serve as the glue of entire formats.
Outlast Grade: D+
Outlast Grade in Cube: D-
Overload is a keyword ability on instants and sorceries that was first introduced in Return to Ravnica as the guild mechanic for the Izzet League. Overload is an alternate casting cost that changes all instances of the word "target" with the word "each" when resolving a spell. If the original spell would have targeted a permanent or player/opponent, it will affect every creature in play or every player/opponent in the game instead, notably without targeting anything. These can be beneficial effects for you or detrimental effects for your opponent. Since overload presents an expanded use of the initial effect, most overload costs are more expensive than the base casting costs.
Overload isn't a "spells matter" payoff in the traditional sense, as you can very easily only play one or two copies of these spells in any deck playing those colors of mana without issue. As such, they don't really lend themselves to any particular strategy or archetype. They merely exist as castable cards in an environment so long as you are in the market for a card that can affect everything or everyone. Cards that affect players can be particularly awkward in a two player game from a templating and feasibility standpoint. Only having one opponent would render many overload effects useless, and you wouldn't want to overload many detrimental or beneficial effects in the first place. Designing a Divination or Lava Spike with overload would only cause confusion and create negative experiences, for example.
As they are mostly at the mercy of rate and effect, overload cards can be considered for the cube without any real complications, provided they are not directed towards multiplayer play. Cyclonic Rift and Damn have been excellent, and Mizzium Mortars saw some play during its time without issue as well. Being able to have options on scalability lets these cards serve different roles based on the stage of the game. They are typically efficient in the early game and significantly more impactful once you've developed your mana base. You won't always overload a spell even if you have the mana for it though, as you are at the mercy of the board state, but it's a great option to have. Overload isn't something I'm going to go out of my way to include, but it's proved to be functional with what little design space is appropriate for the environment.
Overload Grade: C
Overload Grade in Cube: C
Persist is a creature keyword ability introduced in Shadowmoor to reflect the resiliency of creatures after their transformation induced by the Great Aurora. Undying is a creature keyword ability introduced in Dark Ascension to represent the relentlessness of the monsters on Innistrad. When a creature with persist or undying dies without a -1/-1 or +1/+1 counter on it, respectively, it returns to play with one of those counters. Persist and undying are mirrored mechanics that are functionally identical with the exception that persist brings creatures back smaller and undying brings them back bigger. These mechanics only trigger on a creature's death, and won't trigger if that creature leaves play for any other reason or if it is exiled from the graveyard with the trigger on the stack.
It's important to note that when a +1/+1 counter is put on a creature with a -1/-1 counter, and vice versa, those counters offset, leaving the creature without any counters at all. This serves as a way to simplify board states and avoid situations where a creature has multiple counters that aren't serving a mechanical purpose (because the power and toughness would actually be unchanged). Players can leverage this interaction when playing with persist and undying to repeatedly remove the appropriate counters, allowing their creatures to keep coming back repeatedly. With the right combination of cards, these interactions can go infinite, allowing for degenerative combos in larger environments. Because of the ubiquitous nature of +1/+1 counters, it's generally easier to abuse persist than undying, but each mechanic comes with a significant amount of developmental baggage.
Combo interactions aside, both mechanics demand environmental support for their associated counter to integrate seamlessly. This allows for not only archetypal support, but gives opponents ways to interact with these mechanics profitably. If the only way to kill these creatures was with a combination of removal spells and/or trading in combat, it would be nearly impossible for other decks to grind through the card advantage. This is particularly true of undying, whose creatures only get more difficult to kill once you devote resources to doing so the first time. At least persist creatures get easier to deal with, potentially allowing you to throw a token or disposable creature in the way the second time. Being able to put a miscellaneous +1/+1 or -1/-1 counter on an undying or persist creature, respectively, is a creative way to get around having to deal with those creatures a second time. It also allows those commonly seen counters to be evaluated in a unique way, which is always a calling card of an interesting format. Regardless, it's critical that the total number of these creatures is at the appropriate level, lest they warp the entire format around their presence any more than they already do.
As I don't actively support any intentional combos, both mechanics are played somewhat fairly in my cube, and have been very satisfying in that role. I have ways to put both types of counters on creatures, allowing for the desired interplay to occur naturally, have exile effects to strategize around the mechanics, and have sacrifice outlets to synergize with them. Being able to embrace the full experience of both mechanics makes me actively excited for future iterations if they see print, as they are natural inclusions to my environment from both a power and synergy perspective. The repetitive gameplay experience is also mitigated a bit when they show up in lower numbers, something that is more prominent in retail limited.
Persist Grade: B
Persist Grade in Cube: B+
Undying Grade: B-
Undying Grade in Cube: B+
Phasing is an immensely complicated mechanic introduced in Tempest to represent the temporal magic wielded by Teferi. Permanents with phasing alternate between two separate states at the beginning of your untap step. If a permanent with phasing is in play at the beginning of your untap step, it phases out. If there were any counters on it or any equipment or auras that were attached to it at the time, they phase out with it. When phased out, these permanents are essentially removed from the game entirely (although they do not move to the exile zone). They cannot be interacted with by either player and are, for all intents and purposes, treated as though they do not exist. They will then phase in at the start of your next untap step. Because they technically did not leave play, they would not be subject to summoning sickness when they phase in. As this cycle repeats during each of your untap steps, you only have access to permanents with phasing every other turn.
Phasing is extremely confusing, unintuitive, and actively frustrating to play with. It's very difficult to explain to players how it works, especially since the rules text is lacking a mind-boggling amount of detail. Interestingly, phasing out (as a keyword action) is actually deciduous, able to be used in any set where it's deemed appropriate. The difference being that while a creature with phasing phases continuously, phasing as a keyword action is a one time effect that is limited to that particular instance. In practice, this tends to be limited to commander products as opposed to retail limited, as it's just not worth using the limited amount of comprehension complexity allotted to these sets on this effect. "Just not worth it" kind of sums up my feeling on this effect as a whole though. It's not particularly fun to play with or against, often leads to players being confused about what their cards do, and then leads to further frustration when they realize how much of a drawback it really is. I can't imagine wanting to add any phasing into my cube because that would require me to explain the rules every time it became relevant. It's just not worth it.
Phasing Grade: F+
Phasing Grade in Cube: F
Populate is a keyword action from Return to Ravnica that served as the guild mechanic for the Selesnya Conclave. When a player populates, they create a token that's a copy of a creature token they control. Because populate does not target, an opponent cannot prevent you from populating with a removal spell unless they kill your only creature token. Populate is a fairly straight forward mechanic that incentivizes the creation of individually powerful tokens as opposed to going wide with them. This is a bit of a departure from normal token generation, which tends to go wide with Human, Zombie, Goblin, or Elf Warrior tokens, etc. While these tokens are still important to ensure you can always create something, you'd much rather create a single Dragon, Rhino, or Wurm token instead. This slight change in how players evaluate tokens makes formats with populate feel a little more unique to their benefit.
In order for a format to properly support populate, you need to be able to create a wide variety of tokens reliably, particularly in and . This prevents lines of play from becoming stale and repetitive while allowing players to experiment with different combinations of cards. Doing so widens the gap between ceiling and floor, but creates a more dynamic and interesting play experience in the process. You'd also want to avoid too many cards like Wake the Reflections, which you can't even cast profitably without a token in play. Provided that your format meets that criteria, populate can serve as a fine but unexciting payoff for token strategies.
While populate is unlikely to whiff entirely in cube, due to the amount of token generation, it's rarely going to create anything exciting. With that in mind, a card would likely have to create a token of its own in order for me to be excited about populating anything. A populate variant of Lingering Souls or Midnight Haunting would be interesting and powerful considerations, for example. Populate on its own just doesn't excite me as a curator or as a player enough for it to carry very much weight as an ancillary benefit on most cards.
Populate Grade: C+
Populate Grade in Cube: D
Proliferate is a keyword action from Scars of Mirrodin that represents the ever-growing influence of the Phyrexian glistening oil as it slowly takes over the plane of Mirrodin. When a player proliferates, they choose any number of permanents and/or players, then give each another counter of each kind already there. This works for poison counters on players, loyalty counters on planeswalkers, charge counters on artifacts, and any sort of counter (such as +1/+1 or -1/-1 counters) on creatures, etc. Because you are able to choose which counters proliferate and which do not, you are never forced to increase detrimental counters on your own permanents or person.
Proliferate is an incredibly fun mechanic that promises players a number of potential synergistic rewards without directing them down a particular avenue. It can support a number of different archetypes in a single limited format provided you have enough different counters to proliferate. Alternatively, you focus the design space on one or two types of counters for more linear execution. Either way, proliferate lends itself better to grindy formats that allow players time to generate counters, proliferate them, and then profit off of them. Aside from +1/+1 counters on creatures, nearly all of these implementations require multiple turns to do this. As we saw in Phyrexia: All Will Be One, aggro decks being too efficient can nearly push proliferate synergies out of a format entirely. That's a shame because when it comes together, proliferate is fun, synergistic, and rewarding, even if it does require a bit of bookkeeping.
The biggest concern with proliferate is that you don't control any permanents with counters on them when you draw your payoffs. Creatures die, planeswalkers show up too rarely to count on, and artifacts consume charge counters as a resource on the cards that generate them. Fortunately, there isn't a way to remove poison counters from players, ensuring that there's at least one reliable counter to proliferate when they share a format. While you can get away with some level of variance in retail limited, your margin for error in cube is much smaller. You not only need something to proliferate, but it has to be meaningful. With no poison or charge counters, this is largely coming down to counters on creatures, sagas, planeswalkers, and the cards that generate miscellaneous counters like PalantÃr of Orthanc and Shrine of Burning Rage. Fortunately, many of these effects are very good to proliferate, especially if you control multiple of them simultaneously. I'm very open to including proliferate in my cube provided the floor of the cards is high enough to justify casting it in situations where you are unable to proliferate.
Proliferate Grade: B+
Proliferate Grade in Cube: C+
Protection is a deciduous keyword ability from Alpha that represents the magical aura that shields certain permanents from harm. A permanent with protection from something cannot be blocked, targeted, dealt damage, enchanted, or equipped by anything of that source. A permanent can have protection from a particular color, card type, creature type, player, or literally everything. This protection can be a static ability on a permanent, or it can be granted temporarily or permanently by cards and effects. Despite how long it's been around, protection is one of the more complicated mechanics in the game due to how many different ways permanents can be interacted with and how long it takes for players to become comfortable with the concept. Why Paladin en-Vec dies to Wrath of God and Infest, but not to Pyroclasm, is a very difficult thing to explain to a new player, for example.
Similar to shroud and hexproof, protection is a very dangerous ability when it remains on a permanent turn after turn, able to completely invalidate any interaction with an opponent. It's particularly frustrating because, unlike hexproof and shroud, it's nearly always conditional. When your opponent plays a Sword of Fire and Ice and you just so happen to be playing , it feels like you got incredibly unlucky. Similarly, staring down Mother of Runes in a deck without Wrath of God makes you feel like you've done something wrong or stupid by drafting the way you did. Playing Invisible Stalker makes every single player at the table frustrated, it's unilaterally bad in a way that doesn't feel like its singling any one person out. This feeling of singular helplessness actually gets worse when you don't understand exactly how it works. At least shroud and hexproof are easy to understand, and work the same way regardless of what is interacting with them. Protection feels like it has fifty crevasses in its framework where it hides confusing specificities.
The only application where protection approaches acceptability, in my opinion, is when it's added as a rider on combat tricks or one time effects. This allows you to protect a creature or permanent from a removal spell, requires you to hold up mana and a card, and it doesn't extend beyond the current turn. The problem is that this also describes the experience provided by indestructible, hexproof, and shroud. And they at least function consistently regardless of what your opponent happens to be playing. I don't want effects that are irrelevant against 55% of your opponents and debilitating against 45% of them. It's too swingy, frustrating, and the function can easily be replicated by simpler mechanics that feel within color pie. I don't think protection creates good game play, lends itself to interesting designs, or requires any particular sense of understanding of core concepts. I wouldn't mind not seeing it show up at any point in the future, and I actively keep it out of my cube on principle alone. The very few cards I'm currently playing with protection have very good reasons why they were included, which I'll discuss in detail once they eventually come out (since they are all on the watch list for various reasons).
Protection Grade: F
Protection Grade in Cube: F
Prototype is a keyword ability from The Brothers' War that reflects the mechanical inventions created by Urza and Mishra during their conflict. As such, prototype only appears on artifact creatures and serves as an alternate casting cost that allows you to pay less mana for a smaller version of the creature. The prototype costs and creature stats are printed in a smaller window at the top of a card's text box. All abilities on the creature remain the same regardless of how you choose to cast it. In this way, prototype can be seen as a "reverse-kicker" ability, where instead of paying more mana for an enhanced effect, you get a discount on total mana for a diminutive effect. This is further balanced by having all prototype costs contain colored mana, while their base casting costs are colorless.
Prototype is a very flexible and interesting mechanic that allows creatures to serve multiple roles depending on the state of the game. Similar to kicker, they can either be cast on curve for their prototype costs to accrue immediate value, or they can be saved until later in a game for maximum value. Interestingly, they don't allow players to stretch on their mana like typical artifact creatures do since the only way to use prototype reliably is to have a decent mana base. Instead of playing out as giant colorless creatures that you can play for cheap, they actually play out as regular colored spells that you can play out for more mana. This is reflected in the drafting process, where they are almost always treated as colored cards. Being able to cheat expensive and exciting creatures into your draft deck without compromising your mana curve is existing though, especially if the format allows for more deliberate and grindy games. While The Brothers' War was actually pretty aggressive, these cards can be an interesting part of a more conducive format. Unfortunately, much of this interesting design is overshadowed by the completely egregious readability concerns.
Prototype lacks any sort of visual indicator that would signify which text box represents the current state of the creature. This requires players to simply remember which cost was paid for each prototype creature that remains in play. While this isn't impossible, it is an unnecessary complication that taxes players mentally. It gets extra problematic when these creatures are reanimated, blinked, or somehow cheated into play, as they would retain their base statistics despite not being cast for their base rate. The color of the permanent changes based on which cost was paid as well, introducing further opportunities for confusion. Whether it be a prototype counter, a paper cutout board that blocks the inactive power and toughness, or some other method, there needed to be a clear way to alleviate this burden from players. As it is, I find these cards not only infuriating to look at, but frustrating to play with. Prototype represents a failing in design from a readability and comprehension complexity perspective, not a game play one. However, that failing just makes me not want to play with these cards at all, leaving me to exclude them from my cube entirely on principle. While I appreciate the attempt at avoiding double-faced technology with these designs, this wasn't the way to solve this problem.
Prototype Grade: D+
Prototype Grade in Cube: F
And with that we are all the way through the letter P on our quest to review all the mechanics in Modern Horizons 3! Next time will be the fourth and final part of this article series and then I can FINALLY discuss the actual set. This has been a very rewarding process so far and it looks like many of you are getting something out of it too, which makes it all worthwhile. Until next time, may all your packs contain a card for your cube.