Howdy, partners, and welcome to the Outlaws of Thunder Junction update article for the Awesome Cube! These sets are coming fast and furious, and I'm still in catch up mode as I trade out my Deerstalker for my Cattleman. Outlaws of Thunder Junction was a very enjoyable limited environment provided you showed up to the table ready to fight through as many bomb rares as you were able to deploy yourself. Despite the overall power level of the individual cards, you couldn't just slam together as many bombs as possible and call it a deck. You still needed to construct a cohesive strategy that actually had a plan for not only winning the game, but interacting favorably with your opponent. In many ways, this describes my experience with cube, and it should come as no surprise that I enjoyed my time with the set and am excited to discuss the cards and mechanics.
The cube landscape has evolved to the point where nearly every card in existence could theoretically find a home in someone's cube. As such, I'm going to try to avoid making suggestions for cube play at large. I find the sweeping generalizations much less helpful than focused changelog discussions. After all, it's easy to say that a card is "good enough" for cube, and much more difficult to identify which card it should replace. In doing so, I will limit all discussions to within my personal cube, The Awesome Cube, whose list you can find in my profile. Hopefully the community finds these discussions as beneficial as I do.
Before I discuss the actual changelog though, I'll cover the mechanics in the set. As always, I'll evaluate these mechanics using two different grading criteria. The first will be a grade for the mechanic within its own 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!
The term Outlaw refers to any of the following creature types: Warlock, Assassin, Rogue, Mercenary, and Pirate. Much like Party, there are many cards in the set that provide an additional effect if you control an outlaw. While party could be remembered more easily if you were familiar with Dungeons & Dragons, outlaws can be remembered by the helpful anagram, WARM P, popularized by the Lords of Limited (shout out to the Discord). Once you learn which creatures are outlaws, it's critical that you are able to identify them visually on the battlefield, particularly in more crowded board states.
Being able to do so will reduce frustrating play mistakes and on board complexity, leading to more satisfying gameplay. Unfortunately, differentiating between outlaws and non-outlaws without reading the creature type is nearly impossible. Take, for example, Dust Animus, Frontier Seeker, Prosperity Tycoon, and Sterling Keykeeper. I'd challenge anyone to identify which of these creatures is an outlaw at first glance. They're all 
creatures that are wearing cowboy hats in a similar setting. Two of them reference outlaws mechanically, and yet it's one of the other two that's the only actual outlaw. It's critical that players be able to grok which creatures are affected by outlaw-matters cards by looking at the artwork or reading the text box. They cannot be expected to re-read the type line of every creature every time a new card is cast or an ability activates.
When it comes to grading the mechanic, I feel that this was an issue of execution and not a shortcoming of the design itself. These creature types can be differentiated more clearly, they simply were not in Outlaws of Thunder Junction. For example, imagine if every outlaw creature, and ONLY the outlaw creatures, wore cowboy hats. This would be been a rough, imperfect, yet effective way to communicate which creatures were outlaws at a glance. This is particularly frustrating because the same issues arose during Zendikar Rising with the aforementioned party mechanic. I really hope that future iterations of these batching mechanics more clearly communicate and differentiate which creatures are affected by their effects.
Mechanically, outlaws function identically to party, as the value of the cards that reference them are completely dependent on the density of these creature types in an environment. The more WARM P you have, the better these cards and effects are going to perform. When properly supported, the value of these cards will change throughout a draft, benefiting savvy drafters and deck builders. As such, the more "outlaws matter" cards you have in your deck, the worse non-outlaws become, to the point that any creature that isn't an outlaw could be considered unplayable. This, along with sequencing issues experienced with drawing your payoffs before your enablers, can lead to some frustrating gameplay and a familiar on-rails experience. Balancing the density of these effects in your environment is critical to maximizing the mechanic, and it can be very challenging to do so, particularly in a more traditional cube.
I have no intentional Kindred synergies in my cube and, in fact, I tend to shy away from cards that suggest that they are supported. It's the reason I stopped playing with cards like Gemhide Sliver and Imperious Perfect, even when they were considered playable. I found that they sent misleading signals to drafters about what was supported. I'm not going to avoid batching mechanics like outlaw and party on principle, but I'm not going to put much weight on these effects either, as I highly doubt any deck will be able to trigger them with any sort of consistency.
Outlaws Grade: C+
Outlaws Grade in Cube: D
Committing a crime is a new designation for whenever you target an opponent, a spell an opponent controls, a permanent an opponent controls, or a card in an opponent's graveyard, with a spell or ability. The key word here is "target", as forcing an opponent to sacrifice creatures with Barter in Blood and milling them with Deepmuck Desperado would not constitute committing crimes, since neither of those effects actually target anything. It hasn't been too difficult to internalize what is and what is not considered a crime once you make the mental link to the word "target", but it definitely feels like less things are crimes than should be. Aside from that, there isn't much of a learning curve with crimes. Interacting with your opponent is such a fundamental aspect of Magic itself that there isn't really any additional work that would need to be put in to support it as a mechanic. This holds true for my cube, as interaction is one of my fundamental design principles.
Crimes were designed thoughtfully, as most of the cards that trigger in response to crimes do so only once per turn. This is a necessity to facilitate backwards compatibility with older cards. The gameplay would be much less rewarding if every crime card revolved around finding some interaction that allowed you to go infinite. It would be more powerful, but it would also become stale and repetitive extremely quickly. My only real point of contention with the mechanic is how the flavor will translate across different planes, and whether or not we will see references to crimes continuing into new sets. A crime is such a specific term that refers to a structured form of government, legislation, and enforcement of said crimes, that seeing the word could be jarring outside of that context. For this reason, the mechanic doesn't spark emotional joy so much as it is conceptually and mechanically successful.
Crimes Grade: B+
Crimes Grade in Cube: B+
Spree is a keyword that shows up on modal instants and sorceries that allows you to choose from among a list of potential effects as you cast the spell. Like Escalate, you can choose one or more additional costs as long as you can pay for them and have the appropriate targets for their effects. Unlike escalate, which features one cost that you can pay multiple times for each effect, spree features unique casting costs for each effect. Additionally, the spell itself does not have a base casting cost, instead featuring a miniscule + symbol at the top right of the card that indicates an additional cost must be paid for the spell to be cast at all.
These differences result in spree being far more complex, often requiring an extended amount of time looking at the different casting costs and mathing out what you can and cannot afford. It simply takes too much time and energy to determine which options are on the table each turn, and I find it more frustrating than rewarding. The mechanic and cards themselves are not overly confusing conceptually, it's the presentation that leaves much to be desired.
Like all modal cards, the ones whose effects self synergize feel far more rewarding to play with than those that feel tacked on at random. There is an additional layer of strategy when it comes to casting Dance of the Tumbleweeds and Lively Dirge that's absent with cards like Metamorphic Blast and Explosive Derailment. While spree might be my least favorite implementation of a modal spell mechanic, it's functionally acceptable and will translate to cubes without additional baggage. However, if a similar card exists that utilizes a different modal mechanic, I'm going to lean preferentially towards the other card.
Spree Grade: C-
Spree Grade in Cube: D+
Mounts and Saddle are a new variation on Vehicles and Crew, as both allow you to tap untapped creatures you control (saddle/crew) to activate abilities on another permanent you control (mount/vehicle). While you tap creatures at instant speed to crew a vehicle, turning it into a creature until the end of the current turn, you tap creatures at sorcery speed to saddle a mount, providing a bonus specific to that mounted creature during combat. These bonuses can augment the attacking creature, they can augment the mount, or they can provide ancillary bonuses independent of the current combat. It's a mechanic that provides a wide array of benefits so long as you are committed to playing creatures and attacking with them.
Because you can only saddle a mount a sorcery speed, the mechanic has no defensive value whatsoever. This is not inherently a downside, it merely provides context to the types of decks and strategies that would be able to properly support the mechanic. It actually translates quite favorably to cube play, providing you with a way to use your early game creatures that no longer have favorable attacks. It also solves one of the annoyances of using vehicles in aggressive decks: that they provide no value whatsoever if you draw too many vehicles and not enough actual creatures. Because all mounts are already creatures, you are free to load up on as many mounts as you want without having to worry about drawing them out of sequence.
Mounts and saddle provide you with a way to utilize creatures that have been otherwise obsoleted without affecting your threat density, they're easy to understand, and they lack excessive rules baggage. I would be thrilled to see more mount and saddle moving forward, as it's relatively flavor neutral and should find some applications across various planes.
Mounts/Saddle Grade: A-
Mounts/Saddle in Cube: A-
Plot is an alternative cost you can pay at sorcery speed to exile a card face up instead of casting it. Once the plotted spell is placed into exile, it can be cast as a sorcery on a later turn without paying its mana cost. The exact advantages of plotting a spell differ from card to card, ranging from a mere cost reduction to bonuses gained when being cast from exile. Foretell struggled mightily in cube because you were unable to take advantage of the hidden information aspect of the design, something that rendered the exercise meaningless. Because plot exiles face up, it's usable in any capacity without having to worry about density of effect. This also allows both players to strategize preemptively, and I think the gameplay is much better for it.
The other lesson from foretell is that a cost reduction alone is not a sufficient reason to put these cards into exile, as it gives up too much equity and board presence. Tapping your mana for no material gain in the interim needs to be made up for, especially when behind. The most successful plot cards will be ones that create a real decision point as to whether or not they should be plotted. One that, ideally, will change depending on the game state. Fortunately, many of these designs exist and there are a host of cards with plot to discuss.
Plot Grade: A
Plot in Cube: A
Magic has a long history of printing nonbasic lands with an associated land type. While Desert was printed in Alpha, it didn't officially receive its land type until the Eighth Edition rules changes. This change allowed designers to clearly reference specific land types on cards as a way to grant them mechanical importance. This has been used as a way to highlight thematically important spaces on a given plane such as the Gates of Ravnica during the Return to Ravnica block, and the Caves of Ixalan in The Lost Caverns of Ixalan. Thunder Junction is the latest set to attribute mechanical important to Deserts, following Arabian Nights and Amonkhet block.
Like all sets where nonbasic land types matter, lands of the chosen land type are called out by name on cards and can be tutored for, counted towards a beneficial or detrimental effect, act as a binary switch for turning on abilities, etc. They're fairly multipurpose and are normally regarded as relatively high picks in the sets that mechanically care about them. This tends to add an interesting wrinkle to the draft process as you would normally put a lower emphasis on drafting lands, particularly those that do not fix your mana. This design space helps provide value to cards that are otherwise marginalized, and that should be applauded. The best implementation of this mechanic comes when there is a unique trait tied to an individual land type, such as Caves being tied to Discover. This allows them to be easily distinguished from other nonbasic land types at a glance while providing key flavor to a set and its plane.
It's much more difficult to recommend these as a supportable mechanic in cube, though. With the singleton nature of the format, it's almost impossible to line up the necessary density of nonbasic land types with the cards that care about them unless you are building a set or theme cube. As I am doing neither, they have almost no mechanical upside of any kind, and would have to be graded on their own merits.
Nonbasic Land Types Grade: A-
Nonbasic Land Types Grade in Cube: D-
Much like Planechase or Archenemy, Bounties are a set of supplemental materials introduced in the Outlaws of Thunder Junction Commander decks that provide an alternative way to play the game. When playing with bounties you use a shared side deck, called a Bounty Deck, consisting of bounty cards like those pictured above. If you are able to satisfy the bounty condition listed on the revealed card on your turn, you capture that bounty and receive a reward based on how many turns the bounty has been available for capture. There are a ton of additional rules and quirks associated with bounty that really make it entirely its own game.
I'm not very enthusiastic about bounties in general, as I really do not like supplementary supplies that I have to track and maintain. I maintain a token box, and that's the extent of what I'm willing to commit to. Bounties specifically are also incredibly insular. They make sense on Thunder Junction, and really only on Thunder Junction. I can't imagine this way of playing has any legs at all, and I fully expect it to be forgotten entirely, if it hasn't been already. While technically usable in single player Magic, it's clearly designed for multiplayer Commander play, and is therefore quite awkward when used outside of that context. Since the mechanic is not designed for use with my preferred style of play, I'm just not going to give it a cube context grade at all.
Bounties Grade: D-
Bounties in Cube: N/A
Dust Animus is above curve as an evasive creature for two mana, and it scales well into the late game as a 4/5 that gains lifelink for the same cost. Both modes attack and block reasonably well for their mana investment, and only costing two mana to cast or plot lets it fit in alongside a second spell when cast off curve. This efficiency allows plot to exist as a strategic option instead of a logistical requirement, greatly increasing its playability in the process.
Dust Animus should excel in any deck despite "just" being a Baneslayer Angel that provides little value outside of combat. Because the triggered ability is an ETB and not a cast effect, it interacts favorably with both blink and reanimation. While this increases its value in 
and 
, respectively, it should be considered playable in any deck because of its ability to play both offense and defense. Slower decks can still play it as an early game blocker that doubles as a mid-game way to gain life and gum up the board. It even dampens the frustrations involved with using ability counters since the lifelink counter will always be linked together with the +1/+1 counters. This makes it easier to track without having to utilize multiple types of counters.
Collector's Cage is another card that makes me extremely happy that WotC removed the ETB tapped restriction from Hideaway. Being able to cast the exiled card the turn Collector's Cage enters play makes it not only playable, but actively desirable. While it does depend on having multiple creatures in play, the ability to spread out +1/+1 counters amongst them makes it much easier to trigger "Coven" than something like Augur of Autumn, provided you actually draw multiple creatures. It's not a card that's designed to be cast on curve, but it's cheap enough to fit alongside another creature in the early turns if you just want to maximize your mana usage. Given the option though, most players will wait until they can activate its ability the turn its cast in order to guarantee an immediate return.
Collector's Cage possess a lot of cross synergy support which should make it desirable for any deck whose strategy revolves around attacking with creatures. It's an artifact for the 
decks, it utilizes +1/+1 counters for the 
decks, and you can activate the ability at instant speed in decks with reactive spells. You don't even have to sacrifice it when you cast your hideaway spell, allowing you to continue spreading +1/+1 counters on subsequent turns. Collector's Cage is playable in a wide variety of decks, provides consistent ongoing value, and has the potential for explosive turns, all while being synergistic with supported strategies. It's a slam dunk inclusion in the cube.
Fortune, Loyal Steed is a card I didn't see mentioned anywhere online as a potential cube addition, and I think people are sleeping on it a little bit. I understand the hesitation about playing a creature that needs to attack to reach its ceiling, despite not playing particularly well in aggressive decks. Nevertheless, there is a lot to like here if it's being played in a supportive environment. All you really need is a combat centric cube that supports a mid-range deck playing lots of creatures with ETB effects, and I think that describes my cube perfectly.
Four toughness puts Fortune, Loyal Steed outside of common burn range, while Scry 2 on ETB helps mitigate your losses should it die before you are able to attack with it. There are enough relevant creatures to blink that it shouldn't be too difficult to accrue value on a single attack, especially considering you will scry 2 again after it returns to play. This blink trigger will resolve even if Fortune dies in combat, allowing you to attack into a larger creature if the extra trigger is worth the sacrifice. And since you aren't forced to blink the saddling creature at all, it even plays well with tokens if all you want is an extra scry trigger. This is one of the rare instances where I actually really like a 2/4 body on something that actively wants to attack. It provides a little more survivability while its pseudo-vigilance allows it to serve as a functional blocker without detracting from its main purpose.
Fortune, Loyal Steed is probably more of a fun addition than an objectively powerful one. Despite this, it retains playability in any deck that plays creatures and isn't hyper focused on aggression. There are grindy version of and that can make good use of the defensive body and abusable ETB affect, and it's another source of repeatable blink for the blink decks. One of the advantages of having a larger cube list is more room for cards that promote archetypal support and fun interactions, and I'm excited to see how this little horsie performs on its maiden voyage.
I had originally included Lion Sash as a aligned Scavenging Ooze, but I think I ignored the fact that Scavenging Ooze just plays worse in decks than ones. The decks are slanted more aggressively, and it's difficult to get cards into your graveyard organically. This makes it almost impossible to utilize Reconfigure before you've experienced a certain amount of natural attrition, likely in the mid-to-late game. While it's able to serve its expected role in those situations, it severely underperforms basically everywhere else.
Starting out as a 1/1 creature makes it nearly unplayable as a two drop on curve, lagging badly behind creatures that can actually attack, block, and provide immediate value. Unlike Scavenging Ooze, it needs two or three +1/+1 counters before you're satisfied with it in combat, something that is unrealistic to expect in the developing turns. It's slightly more playable in mid-range decks, but those decks are going bigger and wider by the time they're able to invest the mana, resources, and time necessary to make it relevant. Lion Sash is a hair too slow and resource hungry, which makes it a poor fit in decks that aren't set up to maximize what it's able to provide.
Spear of Heliod is about as close to a straight Glorious Anthem as you can get despite having a secondary ability. Paying three mana to destroy a creature that dealt you damage just never comes up. The only times I've ever activated this ability were when my opponent determined that the amount of damage they were able to deal to me was worth losing a creature over. The rest of the time, I was either unable or unwilling to hold up the mana, or my opponent opted not to attack entirely. This often had very little to do with the fear of losing a creature, as they simply decided that they needed to hold creatures back to block with. Spear of Heliod's ceiling is arbitrarily lowered because of this, as your opponent has full control over whether you're even able to activate it.
Most are not capable of leveraging both an anthem and such a defensively focused activated ability. Aggressive decks that make use of the anthem spend their mana on their own turn to commit to the board, using their leftover mana to remove potential blockers. These decks seek to kill an opponent before such an ability would even be a consideration. They would much rather run something like Flowering of the White Tree, an anthem with ancillary bonuses that align with their intended strategy. The more controlling decks put no value on the anthem at all, and often have more direct methods of creature control that don't involve taking damage in the first place. Spear of Heliod is an awkward combination of abilities that tries to remain relevant throughout the entirety of a game, but ends up feeling unfocused and awkward in the process.
Monastery Mentor is an explosive creature that provides decks capable of casting a large number of instants and sorceries with board presence that goes as wide as it does tall. In these decks, it is able to serve as a win condition in the same vein as Young Pyromancer or Poppet Stitcher. The difference between Monastery Mentor and these other cards, is that the spells archetype is centered in both and . relies much less heavily on casting noncreature spells, particularly in volume, which makes it more difficult to support unless it's being splashed. This is made doubly awkward since I do not intentionally support three color decks, eschewing tri-lands in favor of more dedicated two color support. I cut Leonin Lightscribe for these reasons, and both cards rarely see play outside of Jeskai shells, often struggling to perform as expected when they do. Making a Monk token every other turn simply is not good enough, and players frequently misbuild their decks in an attempt to support a strategy that is not well supported. Monastery Mentor may be an exceptionally powerful creature for many cubes, but it's been an awkward and inconsistent performer in mine.
Aven Interrupter is another disruptive creature with evasion for the tempo decks. Whereas Elite Spellbinder can only exile cards from an opponent's hand, Aven Interrupter acts as a pseudo-Remand, forcing your opponent to re-cast their spell on a later turn while drawing you a 2/2 flier in the process. The precise wording of plot is doing a lot of work here, as it prevents your opponent from immediately re-casting the same spell in the late game, while taxing them once they are able to do so. This helps the ability remain relevant throughout a game, instead of dropping off significantly when played off curve. Limiting the re-cast to sorcery speed restricts your opponents' options too, including permanently exiling Counterspells since they can only be cast at instant speed. It also randomly taxes spells being cast from the graveyard and exile via flashback, escape, Reckless Impulse, etc. These effects normally exist on razor thin margins, and adding 
to the effect can significantly impact whether those spells can even be cast in the first place.
Like many reactive spells in , Aven Interrupter will continue to get better as is able to play more at instant speed. Adding more instant speed interaction and creatures with flash helps aggressive decks maintain pressure while not forcing them to tap out every single turn. We aren't at the point where this is a reliable strategy without heavily relying on a secondary color, but every card helps the cause. This does make the double pips in the casting cost more difficult to justify, as you ideally need at least 10 sources of , which limits the decks that can reliably cast it. At the moment, its most natural home is in tempo, where it can leverage the instant speed interaction in while making good use of any Momentary Blink effects. As long as it remains castable on curve and doesn't impact a deck's ability to curve out, Aven Interrupter provides variable gameplay, abusable synergy, and a uniquely powerful effect that remains desirable.
Sun Titan was one of my favorite cards in the cube, and while it hasn't aged particularly well, it's nice to see creatures like Angel of Indemnity and Guardian Scalelord keeping the design alive. Angel of Indemnity may only trigger on ETB, but it upgrades the ability by allowing you to return permanents with CMC 4 or less to the battlefield, instead of CMC 3 or less. Having both lifelink and flying allows it to stabilize the board more effectively while being difficult to block profitably. It's also a recursive threat, although isn't set up to take full advantage of that. Regardless, returning a planeswalker or four drop creature to play is a significant upgrade over a beloved design, turning an ability that was largely focused on accruing value into one that legitimately threatens to ends a game.
While I correctly anticipated the strain having to pay 
to tap a creature would inflict upon mana bases, Law-Rune Enforcer being unable to tap tokens has come up far more often than I had anticipated. Nearly every deck is capable of creating at least a couple different types of tokens, many of which perform critical functions in gumming up a board or attacking for chip damage. Being unable to tap down a key Cat or Spirit token can be incredibly frustrating, particularly when Law-Rune Enforcer is unable to serve any other purpose.
Law-Rune Enforcer, and tappers in general, slow down combat significantly. The player with Law-Rune Enforcer will undoubtedly go into the tank on each and every combat step to verify the board state before often making the same decision they made the previous turn. This creates an immensely repetitive, and boring, game state. At least Giant Killer already provided ancillary benefits by the time it's providing subpar gameplay, a utility that Law-Rune Enforcer lacks. The combination of poor play patterns and a lack of general utility make Law-Rune Enforcer an eminently replaceable card.
The Monarch is a powerful and game warping ability that decks need to be able to interact with regardless of their desired strategy, particularly at higher frequencies. At a high enough density, it's able to warp the entire cube around its gameplay conceits. Because of this, I don't want to make it too prevalent, opting instead for more sporadic usage so players won't tire of the gameplay it promotes. As such, I'm not really interested in playing cards whose only upside is The Monarch. I'm certainly not interested in cards that are problematic independent of it.
Archon of Coronation is a very slow game ending threat for control decks. It accomplishes this by prolonging the game through damage prevention and incremental card advantage. This just isn't a very fun gameplay pattern, and it makes racing nearly impossible since you can freely trade ownership of The Monarch without ever risking your life total. The gameplay isn't interesting or satisfying, and I'm much more excited to play with a card like Angel of Indemnity, that will more proactively end a game in a way that's more interactive.
The difference between returning a permanent to your hand, and simply blinking it outright, makes a massive difference in which decks are actively willing and able to play a card. Creatures like Flickerwisp, and Guardian of Ghirapur are playable in both tempo and mid-range blink decks because of their ability to maintain consistent board presence and pressure. Kor Skyfisher ended up being largely unplayable in proactive decks because of how far it set you behind on board if it was removed from play. Forcing you to recast one of your own creatures, and potentially taking a turn off from attacking because of it, prevented you from being able to cast it on curve and made it, ultimately, a disappointing card for cube.
Nurturing Pixie is eminently more playable on curve than Kor Skyfisher, but it falls into the same trappings by relying on overly risky lines that alienate the more aggressive decks. I'm currently playing both Faerie Guidemother and Spyglass Siren as Flying Men with upside, but those cards provide bonuses that work organically with the decks that would be interested in playing them. Because it's so tempo negative, the only decks interested in playing Nurturing Pixie would be blink decks that are desperate for redundancy of effect, something that I'm not interested in stretching on card quality for. Nurturing Pixie utilizes an effect that has consistently underperformed in my cube, and the flexibility of having a Flying Men doesn't make up for the negative experiences.
I've seen Requisition Raid discussed as a monocolored Hull Breach with upside, and while I don't disagree with that assessment, that still describes the type of card I've been trying to move away from including. Far too much of the equity at play here is tied up in the actual process of destroying an artifact and/or enchantment. While there do need to be answers for these permanents in my cube, they don't show up at a frequency, or warp a game state enough, to warrant these kinds of heavy handed implements. Basri's Solidarity provides some ancillary benefit when it's relevant, but it's too much of an unnecessary, win-more effect when restricted to sorcery speed. In order to make use of it you need to have an established board presence and be in a position to make an all-out attack. Like the rest of Requisition Raid, it is irrelevant far too often to be considered for main deck play.
My general dislike of spree comes into play here too, as these cards really need to shine under different circumstances to warrant the readability concerns I have with the mechanic. Flexibility is not the same as strategic decision making, and Requisition Raid almost entirely lacks the latter, and more important, of the two. A card like Three Steps Ahead has three modes that are live at all times, and asks the player which combination of abilities they need, and which combination they can afford to cast. Requisition Raid has three modes that are essentially check boxes. Is there an artifact and/or enchantment in play? Can you even make use of the pump effect? If yes, cast. If not, don't. There isn't any strategy involved, it's simply checking the status of the game board and firing it off for the most value you can as soon as you can. It's a combination of narrow effects that don't mesh particularly well with each other, which results in the gameplay being unable to elevate the design as a whole.
Final Showdown is another unsatisfying spree card, but for entirely different reasons than Requisition Raid. Whereas Requisition Raid lacks an effect that justifies its usage in main decks, Final Showdown's modes are all far too expensive to justify casting at all. Five mana Wrath of God effects require a significant upside to warrant consideration since they allow aggro decks too many turns to push their advantage. Cards like Doomskar, Fumigate, Planar Outburst, Realm-Cloaked Giant, Rout, and several more have all been replaced in cubes because their collective upsides were unable to make up for their casting cost. Final Showdown is a six-mana Wrath of God whose upsides are largely irrelevant in any decks it would be played in.
While I think there is real value in a Wrath of God that is able to serve a purpose when drawn after you've already stabilized the board, protecting a creature from removal, and removing all creature's abilities (seriously?), don't change the play pattern in a meaningful way. The most exciting usage of Final Showdown is certainly going to be protecting your biggest creature and wiping the board at the end of your opponent's turn, making full usage of the instant speed effects. However, as we've seen with Rout, a seven mana Wrath of God comes up so rarely that it's hardly worth considering as a possibility. Without that as a realistic and attainable goal, the rest of the card falls apart entirely.
Claim Jumper features a catch up mechanic in the vein of the old cube stalwart, Knight of the White Orchid. The problem with this effect is that because it only triggers when you're behind on lands, its cards are nearly unplayable on curve. After all, the only way to have fewer lands than your opponent on curve is for them to have previously played a ramp effect. You can always play these cards before your land on the following turn, but that often requires you to forgo utilizing all of your available mana. This can be rather frustrating for cards whose design goal is to allow you to catch up quickly. This is doubly true for Claim Jumper since the land(s) it tutors for enter the battlefield tapped, making it much less likely that you'll be able to double spell the turn you cast it. Whereas Knight of the White Orchid allowed you to cast it on turn four and follow it up with a two drop, Claim Jumper makes you wait a turn to start casting the spells that may be stranded in your hand. These issues are exacerbated by choosing to be on the play, something that nearly every deck that would be interested in playing it would choose to do.
Claim Jumper is at its best not when it makes the difference between winning and losing, but when it's the thing that allows you to play a functional game in the first place. Being able to tutor for nonbasic plains doesn't have the same upside in my cube as it does in others since I'm not playing a high enough density of fetchable nonbasic lands. Because of this, it's actually pretty unlikely that you'd be able to use this ability to fix your mana. Tutoring for multiple lands is most likely to come up once you've been behind on lands for several turns, or well into the late game. In the first situation, you're usually far enough behind that preparing mana for your NEXT turn is unlikely to make much of a difference. In the second, it's arguably no longer providing a relevant effect at all. In either case, aggro decks are tuned to operate on a minimal amount of mana, making excess lands rather superfluous. Midrange, control, and synergy decks are unlikely to be interested in the french vanilla body that doesn't align with the rest of their game plan. Claim Jumper attempts to facilitate a functional game while providing a relevant body in the process, it just does so in an inefficient way that makes it difficult for decks to take advantage of reliably.
Angelic Sell-Sword badly needed to be able to ensure you could draw a card with it on your first attack step. This could have been accomplished through making multiple Mercenary tokens when it entered play, or by adjusting the required power to trigger its ability. Regardless, needing to follow your five drop up with a second creature spell, and then wait another turn for your Mercenary to be able to tap, is way too slow. While you can accomplish this quicker through the use of equipment or a Glorious Anthem effect, you shouldn't need to rely on these interactions to make your five drop competitive. The pipe dream of making multiple Mercenary tokens is also far too unreliable as it requires this to remain in play over the course of several turns while you continuously commit to the board. Angelic Sell-Sword is an interesting design that just isn't pushed for cube play from a power level perspective.
BlueDuelist of the Mind is able to play both offense and defense while providing card selection so long as you continuously interact with your opponent and draw cards. Fortunately, is set up exceedingly well to do both of those things without even dipping into a second color. It cannot be understated how critical vigilance is to making this a successful design for cube, as it allows you to play this in nearly any deck regardless of strategy. Without adding any synergies, it's able to attack as a 1/3 with evasion and block 2 power creatures. This is a somewhat unique function in , which doesn't have many creatures capable of doing both.
Once you add synergies, Duelist of the Mind becomes a potentially explosive offensive threat, particularly in combination with cards like Memory Deluge and Fact or Fiction. The lack of Wheel of Fortune effects in my cube limits the amount of burst damage it can do, but I think it can comfortably deal anywhere between 2-4 damage consistently. It serves as a discard outlet, spells matters payoff, and early game blocker for reanimator, , and control, respectively. Its ability to simultaneously provide value in more tempo oriented versions of each of these decks makes it an ideal glue card that should be drafted highly.
I cut Desertion a long time ago because I concluded that five mana was too expensive for what was almost always a conditional Counterspell, and I largely haven't missed it at all. Voracious Greatshark is essentially the same card with the exception that you always get a 5/4 creature instead of whatever was countered. But what really put it over the edge was the ability to simply cast it as a creature if no target presented itself, often interrupting your opponent's combat step in the process. Smirking Spelljacker retains these flexible play patterns while removing the conditional nature of the Counterspell, adding evasion, and having the ability to cast the countered spell for free on the following turn, all while having a less restrictive casting cost. Opening up the list of potential targets makes it less dependent on your opponent's game plan, which is always key in ensuring a card sees main deck play.
Voracious Greatshark always felt like more of a value play in the vein of Mystic Snake than something decks were going out of their way to include. The relative weakness of five drops across the board had as much to do with its inclusion in the cube as anything it was doing on its own merit. Smirking Spelljacker takes the core concept and gameplay patterns and adds a legitimate layer of excitement and power.
Avalanche Caller was added during my somewhat ill-fated experiment with snow-covered basic lands. While the snow lands have remained, some of the less impressive cards that relied on them have not. Avalanche Caller failed to accomplish much of what I expected it to when it actually saw play. Despite being able to threaten a lot of damage out of nowhere with creatures that were robust and difficult to interact with, it required you to invest too many resources turn after turn. This proved to be impractical during the developing turns. This put too much importance on the Maritime Guard body, which didn't block well enough to interest control decks, and provided absolutely no value at all for more proactive ones. Normally, cards that lack abject power or efficiency are able to make up for that deficiency through synergy, something that Avalanche Caller was also lacking.
For discussion of Voracious Greatshark see Smirking Spelljacker, above.
I've seen Three Steps Ahead compared to both Mystic Confluence and Sublime Epiphany, and both of those comparisons ring extremely false to me. The reason why both of those cards excel in cube is not because they are Counterspells with random upsides. It's because they are Counterspells that actively impact the board. Nearly every single time these spells are cast, something relevant is returned to its owner's hand. They've both been cast plenty of times without countering a single spell. decks have always had a very difficult time interacting with resolved threats that sneak into play underneath or around their Counterspells. These cards are able to answer BOTH a threat on the stack and a previously resolved threat while providing direct card advantage. It's this combination of factors that makes them so flexible and, ultimately, powerful.
Three Steps Ahead only impacts the board by creating a copy of a creature or artifact you control, an effect that I've never held much stock in. It's simply too easy to lack a relevant target to Clone, particularly in control decks. Tempo decks would be able to make better use of the Clone, but aren't interested in combining it with either of the other two abilities at that cost. Regardless of the mode that is chosen, you end up paying full price for mediocre effects. Cancel + upside cards like Dissolve, Forbid, and Hinder saw play because they provided their upsides without costing additional mana. They acknowledged that Cancel is a below rate effect for cube, and leaned into it. Three Steps Ahead feels like it would function almost always as a generic role player in the 23rd or 24th card slot of any deck. I'd rather play the existing utility spells like Confounding Riddle and Multiple Choice that are at least splashable, and either commit to the board reliably or provide archetypal support.
Phantom Interference actually is a Counterspell that affects the board, but it does so at such an egregiously poor rate that it's almost never going to come up. Like Cancel variants, Quench variants have succeeded because the bonuses make up for the deficiencies of the base effect. Whereas the main concern with Cancel is mana efficiency, Quench variants need to be able to provide value during the mid-to-late game, when the opponent has enough mana to reliably pay for the tax. I'm currently playing Lose Focus, whose tax can be increased with additional mana, and both Miscalculation and Censor which can be cycled away when they are no longer useful. Phantom Interference is unable to adjust its tax requirement, and requires an additional 
mana to produce its additional effect. While you can forgo the Quench entirely, paying for a single Spirit token is incredibly underwhelming. Flexibility is important, but like so many of these spree effects, you need to balance power level, mana efficiency, AND flexibility in order to justify their inclusion, and Phantom Interference does not do that well enough.
Early iterations of my cube played with Serra Avenger, and we collectively found it to be a very frustrating experience. Needing to remember which turn of the game it was turned out to be sneakily annoying, despite not being very difficult to verify. It took just enough time for each player to check their lands, confirm whether they had missed a land drop or not, and then re-read Serra Avenger, to bog down the game. This doesn't even take into account times when the player with Serra Avenger drew it and immediately realized they had not been tracking turns. It didn't matter that the creature you cast was above rate, because by turn four it was no longer the biggest threat on a board. The whole advantage of playing above curve spells is to enjoy their benefits before your opponent can measure up to what they're able to provide.
Jace Reawakened has many of the same pitfalls that leave it reading better than it plays. It can't be cast before turn four, it has two pips in its mana cost, it's unable to enter play before your opponent has an opportunity to commit to the board, and it doesn't defend itself. That was always the problem with Jace Beleren, and it came down a turn earlier than this iteration despite being more expensive to actually cast. Card advantage is nice, but you can't afford to just run these planeswalkers out there unprotected and expect them to survive until you untap.
Stoic Sphinx is one of the more aggressively costed four drops in , as it presents a four turn clock while preventing all interaction with it so long as you stop casting spells. The fact that the optimal way to play with Stoic Sphinx is to stop playing Magic, and hope that your opponent doesn't play a creature with flying that can profitably block it, makes for miserable gameplay. I'm not a fan of hexproof in general, and this is far too close to the real thing to even be considered conditional. Your opponent has an extremely small window of interactability on the turn you cast it to actually remove it from play, assuming of course you didn't cast it when they were tapped out.
These play patterns won't always present themselves, of course. After all, if you're behind on board and need to keep casting spells, it'll lose hexproof every time you do. In these cases, Stoic Sphinx will attack, block, and die to removal like any other creature, providing minimal value unless its able to attack unopposed. It's going to feel quite underwhelming when it doesn't have hexproof too, as it lags way behind other four drops in value provided outside of combat. The fact that the most favorable play patterns are those that completely prevent interaction with your opponent is problematic, and I'd rather not play creatures that propagate such an experience.
BlackForsaken Miner is another crime payoff that works beautifully with the cards that will be naturally drafted highly in the decks that want it. Nearly every deck heavily prioritizes cheap interaction, whether it be removal or discard spells. Being cheap is important here since you need to pay if you want to recur it from the graveyard to the battlefield. It's important to note that this ability can be activated as long as you've committed a crime, regardless of whose turn it is. This allows it to play organically well with removal that you may not want to cast during your main phase. Reanimating it on your opponent's end step allows it to attack immediately, putting less of an emphasis on its inability to block in aggressive decks that prioritize the 2/2 creature.
While being unable to block does make it more awkward in the grindy aristocrats decks, they've been playing Bloodghast and Scrapheap Scrounger for years with great success. These decks thrive on these interactions, and they have their own ways of controlling the battlefield without gumming up the board with blockers. The most important thing is having a creature that you can attack with for chip damage and sacrifice for value turn after turn. Forsaken Miner compares favorably to existing recursive one drops and should serve as a supplement for aggressive decks while retaining playability in the more grindy decks that frequently generates.
Priest of Forgotten Gods is a card that I liked upon its initial release, but was worried about how demanding its sacrifice requirement would be. Being unable to activate its ability the turn you cast it, and then requiring you to sacrifice two other creatures, requires an established board presence and gives your opponent enough time to draw into an answer for your 1/2 creature. However, after playing with it in the Arena Cube, the costs ended up being less steep than I expected, as it allows you to sacrifice tokens in addition to the naturally recursive creatures that fuel additional activations. The benefits also proved to be more potent than I had anticipated.
The reason why cards like Diabolic Edict fail in cube is because nearly every deck has at least a baseline access to token generation. It's not uncommon that your opponent will have a token or two lying around that they can safely sacrifice to these effects, which is why it's generally not worth committing an entire card to it. Priest of Forgotten Gods provides enough additional benefits that it makes up for the inherent inconsistency. I had also underestimated the combination of drawing a card and adding on the same effect. This often allows you to cast the card that you drew immediately, especially because the effect itself costs no mana to activate. Being able to do this at instant speed lets you do things like cast Ultimate Price at the end of your opponent's turn while tapped out. This versatility makes the ability not only fun, but consistently powerful, albeit in different ways. Sometimes, the card draw and mana generation will carry the majority of the weight. Other times you will be able to spike an important creature when your opponent doesn't have sacrifice fodder lying around. You can even kill your opponent directly if they are at a low enough life total, especially when used in combination with proactive creatures and burn.
The benefits that Priest of Forgotten Gods is able to provide outweigh the risks associated with playing it, especially when it fits so naturally into one of 's most common archetypes. It has an incredibly high ceiling that remains interactive while being powerful, and I had a ton of fun playing with it during my time with the Arena Cube. I'm thrilled that I got the chance to test it out, and I'm excited to see how it performs in my own cube.
Hostile Investigator is a value engine that will innocuously produce Clue tokens until either it trades with something in combat or your opponent uses a removal spell on it. Its absolute floor is as a Highborn Vampire that forces your opponent to discard a card and investigates when it enters play. That represents a three for one at its absolute worst. Add in that it then investigates again whenever any player discards a card, and you have an opportunity to absolutely bury your opponent in card advantage.
With looting effects like Ghostly Pilferer and Jace, Vryn's Prodigy in , targeted discard and discard outlets like Thoughtseize and Collective Brutality in , and rummaging effects like Demand Answers and Charming Scoundrel in , it shouldn't be very difficult for Hostile Investigator to find repeatable, abusable synergy among the Grixis color pairs. And because it triggers regardless of who discards, any opponent who isn't playing will likely have ways to contribute to your investigations. The ability is limited to one trigger per turn, so you do need to pay attention to when you are discarding cards. Playing Thoughtseize on your turn and looting with Jace, Vryn's Prodigy on your opponent's works great. You might want to wait a turn to cast Charming Scoundrel if you're already going to cast Thoughtseize though. Either way, the opportunity for abuse is there, and I like that we are continuing support for Clue tokens across all five colors as it contributes to artifact synergies that I'm slowly developing throughout the cube. Playing with Hostile Investigator is a race to see how much value you can squeeze from a single card, and it's well worth the investment in decks that are looking to grind out their opponent.
Disfigure has always been a playable effect in cube, as it can help stave off fast starts by an opponent while picking off key utility creatures in the mid-to-late game. Likewise, Infest effects are important in keeping token decks under control, as they are naturally resilient to single target removal spells. Finding space for such narrow cards in the cube is challenging though, as they would usually be relegated to sideboards in favor of comparatively effective, and less narrow, removal spells. Harvester of Misery is a modal card that emulates successful cube creatures in the vein of Waker of Waves, Mulldrifter, and Shriekmaw, among others. It's able to act as an inexpensive spell in the developing turns while doubling as an evasive threat with upside in the late game. This modality allows it to remain relevant throughout an entire game, ensuring that it's played in the main deck despite the narrowness of its individual components.
The symmetrical nature of Infest does restrict Harvester of Misery to more controlling decks, lest you find yourself playing it into boards where you are affected as much as your opponent. You can mitigate this drawback further by utilizing recursive creatures that you don't mind seeing sent to the graveyard. Like its contemporaries, Harvester of Misery interacts beautifully with reanimation spells, as it's able to send itself to the graveyard without relying on other cards. It raises the floor of these decks significantly by adding reliable redundancy, complementing Griselbrand and Archon of Cruelty , which require a discard outlets in addition to a reanimation spell. In the right decks, Harvester of Misery is a flexible creature that provides you with early game interaction and late game power without clogging up your mana curve. It requires the right game state to truly shine, but provides enough synergy and adaptability to find a home in any non-aggressive deck.
As a four mana 3/4 menace that Vendilion Clique's your opponent when it enters play, Concealing Curtains does not disappoint as a generically powerful value creature. Add in the fact that you can split its mana cost up across multiple turns, gaining a valuable early game blocker in the process, and you have a flexible creature that provides value across multiple stages of a game. I just wish it played better with the existing decks, and didn't rely on double faced technology to accomplish its design goals.
My philosophy on DFC's in general is that I'm open to including them as long as they provide flavorful or mechanical justification for why they use both sides of the card, as well as evoke emotions from the players when they are transformed. Something like Vorinclex is evocative, powerful, and legitimately exciting to transform, giving players something to play towards that justifies taking it out of its sleeve. Concealing Curtains has a really cool "Wizard of Oz" inspiration, but is mechanically a little awkward in practice. Because the discard trigger is tied to the transformation, and not the creature entering play, you need to pay an additional every time you blink or reanimate it if you want to re-trigger its ability or take advantage of its 3/4 body. Transforming it feels more like a necessary evil than something players are actively looking forward to. As a generically good creature that lacks a natural home and provides no synergy support, this falls below the necessary threshold for DFC inclusion.
I'm really losing interest in these Figure of Destiny style creatures that require you to put mana in them over the course of several turns, and Evolved Sleeper is no exception. The mana to effect ratio is really underwhelming, as neither of the two first stages are even close to functional creatures. It's not until you've paid that you create something that can be troublesome in combat, and even then it requires far too much mana for what is essentially an annoying roadblock. I had thought this would be playable in aggressive decks, but because they play primarily at sorcery speed, you're forced to decide between upgrading Evolved Sleeper, and casting your other spells. The risks are highest when played on curve, as you are punished heavily if your opponent wipes out your first three turns with a single removal spell. This is particularly frustrating because being able to split up the total cost is the conceit behind the entire design. After all, nobody in their right mind would pay for a 4/4 Phyrexian Rager with deathtouch.
I also really wish it was easier to distinguish which level of advancement these cards were currently at. There's no visual indication whatsoever between it being a 1/1 creature and a 2/2, and it actually gets more confusing from there as you have to utilize both an ability counter AND +1/+1 counters. Having multiple, different types of counters on the same permanent nearly always leads to confusion, especially when I refuse to utilize the provided ability counters. Level Up cards like Brimstone Mage are able to use counters to signify their level in a clear and understandable way, but Evolved Sleeper just has "modes", which are confusing to visualize and discuss clearly. The combination of underwhelming sequencing and confusing gameplay bookkeeping makes me just not want to interact with the card at all.
After having played with The Initiative several times recently, I've come to the conclusion that it creates a tense, interesting game state as long as both players are in a position to take advantage of it. When one player cannot attack, or even make an attempt to race, it snowballs far too quickly and feels overwhelming in a way that is unsatisfying. As long as you are able to attack a single time with Passageway Seer, it's nearly impossible for your opponent to reasonably race. The amount of life it gains skews the game far too much into your favor and brings out the more frustrating aspects of the mechanic. The Initiative is already a borderline unacceptable mechanic, only buoyed in my cube by how consistently decks play to the board, regardless of strategy. Limiting how often the mechanic appears in drafts, and removing cards that prevent your opponent from being able to effectively race it, are key to keeping it reasonable for inclusion.
I think my love and nostalgia for the original Kamigawa dragon cycle, and Kokusho, the Evening Star in particular, clouded my judgment when it came to evaluating Junji, the Midnight Sky. The reason why decks don't play any of the original Kamigawa dragons anymore isn't because their evasive bodies aren't worth the mana investment, or because their death triggers are unsatisfying. It's because their abilities are tied to death triggers in the first place.
There's an inherent disconnect between playing a creature that you want to survive until it kills your opponent, and receiving additional benefits only when it is removed from play. Regardless of whether the creature lives or dies, a portion of the total card goes unrealized. After all, it's very uncommon for a creature like this to survive through multiple attack steps and then satisfy its death trigger. Because of this, you really want creatures that provide a reliable way to accrue value while serving as a functional creature in combat.
With the propensity of exile based removal in cube, it's simply too easy for opponents to answer Junji, the Midnight Sky without outright killing it. While it can be sacrificed to trigger its abilities, so could Kokusho, the Evening Star, and that was able to kill them directly with enough triggers. Both of these creatures play out as a Baneslayer Angel far more than they actually reach their intended ceilings. The delta between actual and expected is wider than I'd like for a creature that costs five mana.
Typhoid Rats variants have never fared that well in cube due to how often decks play to the board in the early game with either creature tokens or creatures that are difficult to block profitably in general. This neuters their only real attractive quality, as they're so easy to ignore when they're attacking. Tinybones, the Pickpocket is unique in that its most powerful play patterns actually come when it's attacking, not defending. However, even when cast on curve, actually casting a spell from your opponent's graveyard still requires a lot of things to go right.
In order to successfully cast a spell from your opponent's graveyard, the following things must occur on the same turn. Tinybones, the Pickpocket must attack unopposed, dealing combat damage to your opponent. They must have at least one nonland card in their graveyard. You must have enough untapped mana on your second main phase to cast the chosen spell. The chosen spell must be relevant in the current game state. Attacking unopposed is obviously easiest when played on curve, but it's very unlikely your opponent has a nonland card in their graveyard at that point in the game. You can use a removal spell to clear out an opposing blocker, but that detracts from your available mana to cast whatever is in their graveyard. Later in the game, when there should be plenty of spells in the graveyard and your mana base is established, it's going to be much more difficult to attack without being blocked. While deathtouch ensures that you will at least trade with something, that trade is made at the discretion of your opponent, who is going to decide which creature they can afford to lose. In these scenarios you are left with a Typhoid Rats that can't effectively block the creatures you most need to. The ceiling on Tinybones, the Pickpocket is incredibly high, it just requires both you and your opponent to play into its strengths in a way that isn't reliable or realistic in my cube.
Shoot the Sheriff is designed around one of my least favorite Doom Blade restrictions, tallying up an arbitrary number of loosely associated creature types. Whereas the WARMP acronym made sense within the confines of Outlaws of Thunder Junction limited, it just feels random in cube. I expect it to produce a feeling similar to Power Word Kill, where players individually list each creature type out loud when resolving the spell to verify it didn't accidentally target something it's not supposed to. This isn't confusing, it's just unproductive bookkeeping for flavor reasons that don't resonate within the cube environment. As I'm actively looking for a replacement for Power Word Kill, it would feel silly to include what is essentially a card with all the same advantages and disadvantages.
Dark Confidant is considered one of the best creatures of all time because it provides inexpensive, repeatable, card advantage without asking anything of the player. It comes at a cost, but one that you can mitigate with proper deck building and reliably outpace because of the advantage it provides. Despite being able to attack for chip damage when appropriate, you don't need to do so to trigger its ability, which makes it a good draw regardless of the board state or deck strategy. As long as you aren't about to die, it's able to make the most of your mana investment.
Caustic Bronco joins the long list of Dark Confidant inspired creatures that fail to live up to the pedigree, and it's almost entirely due to its reliance on attacking to trigger its ability. The problems associated with this design are twofold. First, it restricts which decks are interested in playing it, as slower control decks aren't set up to leverage its strengths. Secondly, it limits how often you can trigger its ability, as it's not difficult to profitably block a Walking Corpse. Whereas Dark Confidant consistently performs when drawn off curve, Caustic Bronco quickly gets outclassed by opposing defenders, limiting its usefulness. You can always suicide attack into something just to draw a card, but then you're signing up to lose your creature. It's a design that pushes an advantage when you're ahead, but isn't capable of pulling you back into a game that you are losing.
The saddle ability leans into these limitations, as you can only activate it when you have an established board presence. Just think of how difficult it is to successfully crew Heart of Kiran or Skysovereign, Consul Flagship. There are some interesting deck building decisions you can make if you think you can reliably saddle it though, such as freely including more expensive cards than you normally would with Dark Confidant. This gives you the potential to spike an expensive spell off of its draw trigger, increasing its damage potential and making up for any lost damage involved with saddling it.
In aggressive decks that are actively seeking a critical mass of early game attackers, Caustic Bronco can pressure an opponent while providing you with card advantage. Its saddle ability turns a downside into an upside, and greatly increases its damage potential. There are some extremely explosive turns you can have when attacking unimpeded. However, you really need to be able to saddle it in order to justify its inclusion in the cube, something that I'm not convinced will occur reliably. I prefer to supplement aggressive strategies in {B] with creatures that are also playable in at least one other archetype, and Caustic Bronco is a little too all-in aggro for my preferences.
Orochi Soul-Reaver is a unique payoff for supporting the ninja strategy because despite having ninjutsu, its effect actually triggers whenever any creature you control deals combat damage to a player. This allows your early game evasive creatures to continuously provide value beyond simply being bounced for new ninjas. It also allows it to exist more smoothly outside the confines of ninjas-matter kindred decks. Unfortunately, the actual reward for triggering this ability is underwhelming, largely due to how it utilizes manifest.
Manifest has always lived and died with the ability to threaten to transform your face down creatures. By manifesting from the top of your opponent's library, you are providing them with key information about what could possibly be manifested. You are also playing away from the strengths of your deck, something that becomes more pronounced the more synergistic your cards are. Orochi Soul-Reaver provides you with a Treasure token to assist in turning these cards face up, and depending on the colors of each deck, that may be your only way to do so. This prevents you from leveraging them to their fullest extent, as without the ability to turn cards face up, the manifested tokens go way down in value. This can be offset by manifesting en masse, but since the effect can only trigger once per turn, it's very difficult to do so. Between my lack of existing support for a tempo deck, being forced to manifest your opponent's cards instead of your own, and being limited to manifesting once per turn, Orochi Soul-Reaver becomes much less exciting to draft and play with.
Gisa, the Hellraiser is a bit too slow to act as an army in a can finisher for five mana. While it shouldn't be too difficult to commit crimes, especially in a deck, being able to make enough Zombie Rogue creature tokens isn't really the concern. The problem is that unless you have a way to commit a crime on the turn you cast her, you're not going to be able to attack or block with any of those tokens for two more turns. The combination of having to cast a second spell to create her tokens, and having those tokens enter play tapped, prevents her from stabilizing the board immediately the way Cloudgoat Ranger and Deep Forest Hermit do. She's able to go wider than any similar card in the cube, provided you untap and fire off a couple of targeted discard or removal spells, but her scope of usefulness is much more narrow.
Because of her inability to reliably defend your life total and how long it takes her to apply pressure, Gisa, the Hellraiser is best suited to proactive midrange decks that can take advantage of going wide while maximizing the life loss associated with her ward ability. If you can put her in a deck that can make other Zombie tokens or recursive beaters to leverage her kindred bonuses, she also goes up in value. Ultimately, she just takes too long to provide value commensurate to her mana cost, an issue that is compounded by her reliance on you casting other spells in the first place.
RedFiguring out what to discard to Tormenting Voice is often just as difficult as figuring out when to cast the spell in the first place. It's usually not a good idea to cast it in the developing turns unless you are desperate for a land or are using it as a discard outlet in reanimator decks. After all, it's not always clear what your hand needs until later in the game. It can also be difficult to ensure you are using all of your available mana when you don't know what cards you are going to be drawing. Demand Answers addresses these concerns by being an instant and letting you sacrifice an artifact instead of discarding a card when you cast it. Highway Robbery lets you sacrifice a land, and leverages plot as a way to ensure you have full information, and all of your lands untapped, when you actually resolve the spell.
Being able to pay for Highway Robbery on curve without being forced to make decisions based on limited information is a significant boon in its favor, and it represents a very unique utilization of plot as a mechanic. Most cards with plot leverage the delayed resolution as a cost, allowing you to spend less mana towards the spell as their main benefit. Highway Robbery requires that you pay the full mana cost up front, with the understanding that resolving the spell on a later turn actually leads to greater impact. The ability to cast Highway Robbery in two very different ways depending on when it is drawn and the state of the game at the time, without negatively impacting your curve, is a triumph of design, and really speaks to the depth of plot as a mechanic.
Slickshot Show-Off also utilizes plot in a unique way, as it again forgoes a cost reduction in favor of flexibility and strategic advantage. Combining plot and haste is immensely satisfying since, like suspend, it feels like these creatures should be able to attack right away, having spent time in exile beforehand. Plotting it allows you to set up an explosive turn backed by multiple noncreature spells including removal, to clear the path of any blockers, and a Counterspell to both protect it from removal and to deal more damage if they try to kill it before it attacks. You won't be able to surprise your opponent since everything is plotted face up, but you can force them to respect its damage potential even when its not in play.
Like Highway Robbery, you don't have to plot Slickshot Show-Off at all, as it's perfectly acceptable on curve with the potential to deal 3-5 damage on turn 3 if you follow it up with noncreature spells. Not being limited to only instants and sorceries makes it more playable in and , even if its natural home is still going to be in . As an evasive two drop that provides variable gameplay and is playable in multiple decks, Slickshot Show-Off is an easy inclusion.
I don't typically play straight build around cards in my cube unless they are also playable for their base rate. I find that it's too difficult to ensure that the intended synergies are seen reliably with so large of a cube. I've seen too many players draft cards like Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker and Birthing Pod, only to derail their own draft while searching for combo pieces that were never in the draft pod to begin with. Legion Extruder is an artifact-matters synergy piece for the aggro deck, but it's ostensibly playable in any deck that can generate enough Clue, Food, and Treasure tokens. When drafting Legion Extruder there is an expectation that you will have something to sacrifice every turn, so this will be an opportunity for me to get some data on how often these pieces come together.
Including Legion Extruder is a bit of an experiment as I try and introduce more artifact matters synergies into the cube, something I've long shied away from. This was largely on the basis of not having a robust artifact section in my cube to begin with. After all, once you remove the noninteractive and oppressive fast mana artifacts from the list, the overall power level drops significantly. I'm excited to see how it performs, especially since has so few interesting noncreature spells compared to the other colors with so much real estate dedicated to redundant burn.
Despite how poorly dealing 2 damage for at sorcery speed compares to the rest of 's burn spells, Legion Extruder does provide an immediate effect should you find yourself without artifacts to sacrifice for a couple of turns. Of course, turning your trinket artifacts into Golem tokens is the real attraction, and as long as you can create at least two, you are getting a reasonable return on your investment. It'll be interesting to see how often it gets played in decks without dedicated artifact support as that will likely determine how long it stays in the cube.
Many of the risks associated with playing Tormenting Voice apply to Reckless Impulse in a similar fashion. They can be extremely risky to play on curve, the value they provide can be difficult to maximize, they require you to cast them at sorcery speed without a guarantee that you can use the rest of your mana on the same turn, and there are more efficient ways to accrue card advantage within the same color.
In order to make up for these deficiencies, and justify playing Reckless Impulse in your deck, you really need to be able to play both of the cards it exiles. The ability to play lands is crucial to accomplishing this consistently, as it mitigates the issue of exiling two cards whose mana value exceeds your available mana production. You can also mitigate it by playing an extremely low curve, but these things just aren't as much of an issue with Highway Robbery, which is more consistent and provides opportunities for synergy and more strategic gameplay.
I had added Khenra Spellspear as a two drop with synergistic upside, and while that premise held true, it wasn't worth playing another DFC. Transforming it was exciting solely because of double prowess and trample. The novelty of this wore off quickly enough to recognize that while Khenra Spellspear was effective, it was fairly replaceable in its role as an aggressive two drop for the deck. This also eliminates another instance of ward which has become more of a cliche than an interesting design lever. Slickshot Show-Off is able to serve a similar role while being more explosive on curve, all while not being a DFC.
Sarkhan, the Dragonspeaker almost exclusively uses his +1 ability when he enters play, since using him as a five mana Flame Slash is a horrific use of your mana that often does not line up with his intended role in your deck. This option is best suited to being used as an emergency lever when you are unable to attack or lack other removal capable of killing a key creature. I've actually never even seen his ultimate be used, since he was usually busy trying to kill the opponent instead of playing to the late game. I find planeswalkers to be most satisfying when they aren't so prescriptive, as it allows them to shine under different circumstances. Sarkhan, the Dragonspeaker might as well be a creature with how rarely the rest of his abilities actually get activated.
As a creature, Sarkhan, the Dragonspeaker has long been outclassed as a top of the curve finisher by those that that either provide a secondary bonus in addition to being an evasive attacker with haste (Glorybringer and Thundermaw Hellkite), or those that have a higher ceiling when unopposed (Bonehoard Dracosaur). That's not even including the numerous other creatures I'm not playing that are able to serve a similar role at a comparable rate. I'd much rather use this slot in the cube to try out a synergy piece like Legion Extruder than play the Nth best five mana Dragon creature.
I've never been a fan of Relentless Assault effects because they can only be cast with the premise that you have made a profitable attack and would be able to make another one with the same creatures. They provide zero value when behind or at parity, and even when you can attack it's often with only one or two creatures, not an entire team. It's very rare that it becomes worth paying for, especially when it monopolizes an entire card in your deck. Great Train Heist utilizes spree with this effect to ostensibly offer versatility, but combines it with two other equally narrow and win-more effects.
The narrowness of Great Train Heist's options would be mitigated if any of them actually created new attacks, but they don't. Only one of them, Rally the Forces, even improves your existing attacks. While that effect can lead to a blowout, it's at a very bad rate unless you are going very wide, which aligns with the weaknesses of the rest of the card. There just isn't a clear, default combination of effects that can guarantee a return on your investment, and it's going to get stuck in your hand unless you're already winning the game. This is especially frustrating because of how much mana it takes to actually combine any of these effects. I want to find a way to include more combat tricks in cube, but playing overly expensive and narrow cards isn't the way to do it. Great Train Heist looks flexible, but really consists of three modes that are all good under the exact same circumstances, which pigeonholes the card into too narrow of a role.
Valley Dasher that can actually block is a perfectly acceptable play on curve, and if your opponent has an adequate blocker by the time you draw Cunning Coyote, you can plot it to set up for a future turn while ensuring you use all of your available mana. Like Slickshot Show-Off, there is value in forcing your opponent to respect a spell you have yet to actually cast, and the threat of activation can alter your opponent's decision making process. However, unlike Slickshot Show-Off, Cunning Coyote gets much worse as a creature once the game drags on, becoming more and more dependent on the quality of the creature it gives +1/+1 and haste.
Finding a creature to grant +1/+1 and haste shouldn't be too much of an issue as that should be a priority in any deck playing Cunning Coyote. There's just a really big difference between targeting Rampaging Raptor and targeting Hero of Bladehold. Your opponent's board also comes into play as targeting Bonecrusher Giant isn't nearly as exciting when your opponent has a Soldier token in play. +1/+1 and haste puts pressure on your opponent, but it's not evasion. You won't always be able to take advantage of it the way you need to if you are trying to justify plotting your two drop for delayed value. This is particularly true in an aggressive deck that's trying to prevent their opponent from stabilizing.
Magda, the Hoardmaster has the potential to curve out into a Scorpion Dragon token on turn 3 or 4 when used in combination with cards like Charming Scoundrel and Ragavan, Nimble Pilferer. Left up to her own devices though, and you're going to have to wait much longer than you'd like, even with how easy it is to commit crimes in . The combination of only being able to make one tapped Treasure token per turn, and being forced to create your Dragons at sorcery speed is just too restrictive for cube.
You really needed to be able to chain together multiple crimes in a row to create a Scorpion Dragon on your opponent's turn. This would force your opponent to make decisions regarding how to play around her much sooner. As it is, they can safely ignore her until you've created your third Treasure token. Being unable to use your Treasure tokens immediately prevents her from being used as a way to cast several inexpensive spells on the same turn. This would create variable play patterns and make her more generally desirable. You can still decide on following turns whether it's better to sacrifice your Treasure for mana or save them for a potential Dragon. It just makes her more of a grindy or card than one that fits in a wide array of aggressive decks. Regardless, the most likely play pattern with Magda, the Hoardmaster is that you almost create a Scorpion Dragon every time you cast her, and that's going to make it a frustrating card to play with.
Generous Plunderer has an absolutely massive gap between its floor and ceiling, and it's very difficult to ascertain how good it's going to be on average. The crux of this problem is that it's just not going to be possible to know how impactful giving your opponent multiple Treasure tokens, even ones that enters play tapped, is going to be until they see their opening hand. The possibility that you are both fixing their mana and ramping them into a Wrath of God or creature that stabilizes the board is a significant risk.
Generous Plunderer attempts to mitigate these risks by preventing your opponent from using their Treasure tokens immediately, and by dealing extra damage directly to their face for each Treasure token they have. Unfortunately, this is never going to deal more than a single extra damage unless your opponent really needs multiple Treasure tokens on their following turn. It's completely free for them to sacrifice them before you attack, even if they don't have a spell to cast. While you can also make use of your own Treasure to improve your mana base, there's going to be a lot of pressure on you to maximize your tokens. After all, drawing a land heavy hand defeats the purpose of them entirely. You can always keep a land light hand in hopes of relying on them, but this puts you at risk of not even playing a game if your opponent kills Generous Plunderer before you untap with it.
Generous Plunderer is a good, aggressive creature that holds the potential to attack for 3 damage with menace on turn three. It also creates Treasure tokens that can fix your mana, ramp you, and/or supplement artifact synergies in your deck. It's also going to lead to an unknown amount of games where its main attraction is actively winning the game for your opponent. I'm not comfortable with the delta in expected vs. actual value and how little control you have over it.
GreenSmuggler's Surprise mostly has two modes; one that mills and draws cards, and one that cheats creatures from your hand into play. I've been looking for more ways to fill your graveyard without skimping on card quality and I'm thrilled to find a card that can do that in the mid-game while still providing late game value. It's disappointing that the cards drawn from the first ability are restricted to among those that are milled because it results in a card that's both less reliable and less explosive than I'd like. You should still be able to draw two cards if you've built your deck appropriately, but it would be nice to have more actual choice when it comes to the cards drawn.
The second ability is actually a little tricky to use since spending 
to put less than seven mana's worth of creatures into play from your hand doesn't actually accomplish anything at first glance. However, you can make up for this mana inefficiency by casting the spell at instant speed. This lets you play creatures when your opponent won't expect them, interrupting combat math and setting up a larger attack on the following turn that your opponent can't prepare for. With enough mana you can even combine these two effects. This is helpful if you don't have two creatures in hand or it just provides a chance to improve the quality of creatures played. The last ability is admittedly situational, requiring specific creatures you control to be either positioned to trade in combat or die to a removal spell being cast. Fortunately, the presence of the first two abilities provides enough strategic depth and play variation to make up for when you can't cast the third.
So far we've covered spree cards that were too narrow to stay out of the sideboard, had only one justifiable mode, failed to impact the board, lacked an effect at a reasonable rate, and one that was only playable in exactly one scenario. Smuggler's Surprise meets all of this criteria by providing a synergistic combination of effects that you can confidently put in your deck. Collectively, it provides card advantage and affects the board at a reasonable rate while retaining usefulness during different stages of a game. The fact that this all comes at instant speed, in the color that most lacks impactful noncreature spells, only strengthens its case for inclusion.
Bristly Bill, Spine Sower is a bit of a heavy handed +1/+1 counters matter card, but its ability to serve as an enabler in the early game and a payoff in the late game provides dynamic gameplay that is unique in its role. Luminarch Aspirant has demonstrated how effective putting a +1/+1 counter on a single creature every turn can be. As such, I'm not too worried about how frequently Bill triggers multiple times a turn; it's enough to me that he can. Both fetch lands and Rampant Growth effects can enable this organically, but Bill can still enable new attacks and alter combat math for your opponent as long as you play him on curve and hit your land drops consistently.
After all, Bill attacks as a 3/3 on turn 3 and as a 10/10 on turn 5 if you target itself with all of its triggers and activate it on curve. This greatly outpaces Luminarch Aspirant's clock, especially if you combine it with any other +1/+1 counter generation. The ability to double counters on every creature you control rewards you for spreading your counters around, so you don't need to put all of your eggs in Bill's basket. +1/+1 counters generated by other cards make him much more explosive, forcing your opponent to have removal for him before you activate him, and your whole board afterwards.
There's more risk associated with Bill than both Luminarch Aspirant and Siege Veteran since the triggers aren't guaranteed, but it has the ability to become a must kill creature even if it's not actively able to generate counters itself. I've added a lot of +1/+1 counters synergies within the past couple of years, and I've been looking for payoffs that aren't quite as all-in as Hardened Scales. I've never liked build arounds that are useless if the deck isn't being drafted, and Bill is definitely playable in any creature based deck with even slight pocket synergies.
Ornery Tumblewagg is another +1/+1 matters card that acts as both an enabler and payoff, except you don't have to do any work to start accruing counters. Whereas Bristly Bill, Spine Sower promotes going as wide as possible, Tumblewagg rewards you for going tall. You can attack as a 6/6 on turn four and a 12/12 on turn 5 if you focus all of your counters towards itself, but that damage is greatly reduced if even a single counter is dispersed elsewhere. You can also push all of its counters onto another creature to diversity your threats, but since doubling counters requires Tumblewagg to attack, you risk losing your creature in the process. Of course, making your other attacking creature into something that demands a block does make it easier for this to get through unimpeded.
I really like the interaction that Ornery Tumblewagg has with saddle, as it can put a +1/+1 counter on a 1/1 to enable its ability, essentially guaranteeing it will always be an option as long as you control another creature. Not having to worry about having the correct creature at any given time makes the ability much less situational, which is needed due to how situational doubling +1/+1 counters already is. Both Luminarch Aspirant and Siege Veteran have proved to be valuable aggressive creatures without added synergy. Both Ornery Tumblewagg and Bristly Bill, Spine Sower should be able to emulate that performance in while making a focused +1/+1 counters matter deck more of an actionable strategy.
Blade Splicer is a fantastic cube card because it's able to serve as a generically good curve filler while providing synergistic upsides for players who are able to take advantage of it fully. As long as you are being proactive, Blade Splicer makes your deck better, but if you're focusing on blink or artifact themes, it goes way up in your pick order. Sandstorm Salvager should be able to emulate Blade Splicer in that regard, except it also excels in decks playing token and +1/+1 counter synergies. This makes it a natural fit in , particularly as a way to blend both strategies together. Doing so will continue to add some much needed strategic depth to a color pair that has long been known for merely playing creatures and attacking with them.
Since tokens and +1/+1 counters are central to 's identity, I still expect Sandstorm Salvager to be a playable card outside of . decks can use the Golem token to clog up the board until it dies, upon which time they can freely sacrifice the remaining 1/1 for profit. decks can use the Golem token more proactively, particularly when combined with Llanowar Elves. Attacking with a 4/4 trample on turn three can put a lot of pressure on your opponent, and even more so if you can follow it up with another two mana spell on the same turn.
The biggest difference between and any other deck is how good Sandstorm Salvager can be when drawn off curve. When you are maximizing the available synergies, it becomes an extremely threatening late game play. This is due to your ability to leverage the activated ability on a board already containing multiple token creatures. Sandstorm Salvager is an efficient creature on curve, provides archetypal support to numerous on color strategies, and it's easy to make clear allusions to another massively successful creature with proven longevity. As such, I expect it to stay in the cube for as long as tokens and +1/+1 counters are a part of 's identity.
I knew when I added Finale of Devastation that you would almost never be able to reach the twelve mana required to trigger its Craterhoof Behemoth-esque ability, and that has played out as expected. What surprised me was just how difficult it was to justify paying an extra to tutor up for a creature in general. While it still worked as expected in ramp decks, this mana tax completely turned away any players looking to cast it for value in the mid-game. I was banking on this being a possibility that might interest decks looking to grind their opponent out, but there are just better and more efficient ways to do that. The inability to tutor up any combo pieces in my cube is also a huge knock against tutors in general, something I usually try to keep in mind when evaluating cards. Without the ability to tutor up meaningful creatures at all points in the curve, through a wider span of the game, I'm just not that interested in actually playing with Finale of Devastation, especially since what it does isn't unique until you get to twelve mana.
Cankerbloom is essentially a monocolored Qasali Pridemage, a card I cut because its two divergent parts caused enough conflict with each other to make it difficult to maximize your investment. While I found a more satisfying way to utilize the gold slot, I was hoping that Cankerbloom could serve a similar function in a slot with less competition. Unfortunately, the creature portion of the card didn't interest players enough to warrant them playing it on the off chance its sacrifice ability would be relevant. Aggressively trading away the creature only to have your opponent cast an Esika's Chariot the turn afterwards is immensely frustrating, especially with so few truly great targets for the ability. The value of proliferate provides is also entirely overstated in my cube, as it's almost never worth a card on its own, and I can't imagine a scenario where I'm sacrificing Cankerbloom for that trigger.
I need cards that provide immediate effects instead of delayed ones, as it allows players to better leverage all aspects of a card. These types of creatures are good for retail limited since they force players to make interesting decisions that matter while preserving balance. The power level of cube makes them a more difficult proposition. It would be different if the body was something that decks actively wanted, but Kraul Harpooner showed that they just don't.
I absolutely love the design of Shigeki, Jukai Visionary as an early game blocker that provides both self mill and late game recursion, but it's just way too slow and inefficient for cube play. It's extremely difficult to find time to both cast and activate Shigeki's ability from both a mana and tempo perspective. Early in the game it means taking an entire turn off to set yourself back on board. You can squeeze it in alongside other spells in the mid-to-late game, but by then the extra land is much less important, and the creature is completely irrelevant. It's at its best as an expensive Regrowth / Restock variant in the late game, but that alone isn't enough to carry it, especially when playing and activating it on curve is actively counterproductive. I've watched players lose games simply because they chose to cast and activate this instead of doing literally anything else. I don't want to include cards whose suggested play patterns lower your win percentage, regardless of how much I enjoy the design.
Augur of Autumn was included as a more offensively minded Courser of Kruphix with a higher ceiling. Courser is an ideal defensive creature when played on curve, ensuring you hit your land drops while stabilizing through life gain and blocking early game creatures. All aspects of the card coalesce with the type of deck that wants to play it. Augur of Autumn is composed of pieces that fit together much less cleanly. It lacks the ability to meaningfully impact combat, either offensively or defensively, and it doesn't synergize particularly well with any of the established archetypes. The only defining feature of its design is that it clearly needs to be played in a deck featuring a heavy creature count. This is so you can reliably activate coven, and to ensure that you have enough creatures remaining in your deck to actually cast with its ability. Perhaps because of this, it ended up resembling Oracle of Mul Daya, a creature that was basically an easy to kill enchantment, more than I'd like. Cube is just too hostile to creatures that sit in play over the course of several turns, providing incremental advantage independent of combat.
The biggest opportunity that Augur of Autumn had to live up to expectations was to be able to reliably cast creatures with its coven ability. Unfortunately, coven proved much more difficult to attain, and easier to interrupt, than I had anticipated. You almost always reach coven by casting a creature on your turn, which often leaves you without enough mana to cast whatever sits on top of your deck, if it's even a creature at all. This gives your opponent a full turn cycle to find an answer for whichever one of your creatures was allowing coven to be active, or, more likely, Augur of Autumn itself. The inability to reliably attain coven only highlighted its aforementioned deficiencies, making it less appealing than it already was.
Bristlebud Farmer is a really interesting synergy piece for decks because of its ability to generate Food, mill yourself, and recur cards from your graveyard, all while being an above the curve creature with trample. Food tokens are generally less helpful in cube than they are in retail limited because the cost to cracking them is steeper when the overall card quality is so high. Every mana spent towards gaining 3 life is spent at the expense of a much more impactful card. The life gain can still be helpful in more grindy decks, but they're matchup dependent and unlikely to be the reason a card is included. That's why it's so important for Bristlebud Farmer to have a built in way to utilize them as a resource aside from gaining life. There aren't a ton of ways to make Food in the cube, so it's going to be difficult to accrue more than two triggers, but it's unlikely for you to have more than two clean attacks anyway.
Bristlebud Farmer is best in , but simply being a 5/5 trample for 4 with upside is going to make it playable in both and decks as a curve filler. Making multiple artifact tokens has micro-synergies in both color combinations as well. The biggest knock against it is that if your opponent has a removal spell before you can attack, you leave a lot of value on the table. Two Food tokens don't really make up for the mana you invested in your creature. Regardless, I like its fit in enough to give it a trial run, especially since it's not a secret gold card. This reads like a card that will overperform people's expectations because of its raw stats and synergy potential, and I think it's worth testing out.
Vaultborn Tyrant checks a lot of the necessary boxes when it comes to evaluating expensive creatures for the cube. By gaining 3 life and drawing a card when it enters play, it provides instant, guaranteed value in case it is killed before you can attack or block with it. Making a token copy of itself (which gains 3 life and draws a card) when it dies provides insurance against non exile based removal. If your opponent doesn't have exile based removal, it stabilizes the board while providing continued upside. It costs seven mana, which I consider the upper limit of what most decks can reasonably reach without relying on intentional mana ramp. After all, most decks will have a couple of ways to eke out an extra mana or two in their deck. This ensures midrange decks can play it at the top of their curve, especially important here since that's the deck most apt to take advantage of having other creatures with power 4 or greater. It plays well with both ramp and reanimation spells. This ensures it's a good fit in both and , respectively.
The ceiling of Vaultborn Tyrant is extremely high, as paying 7 mana for two 6/6 creatures with trample, gaining 6 life, and drawing 2 cards is very likely going to win you a game, even if half of that value is staggered across multiple turns. The floor is also pretty high as long as you can cast it, because you will at least gain some life and draw a card even if it's exiled immediately. With a high floor and ludicrous ceiling, Vaultborn Tyrant justifies the mana investment it demands, and I'm excited to see it in action.
Whereas Voracious Hydra presents as an efficient creature with trample at any point in the mana curve, and an Indrik Stomphowler in the late game, Goldvein Hydra provides archetypal support while still being a creature that scales with your mana. While it may not scale as efficiently, producing Treasure tokens when it dies allows it to be a much more interesting early game play. You're basically never casting Voracious Hydra with less than five mana and being satisfied with the result unless you are lucky enough to pick off a key x/2 for four mana. Comparatively, imagine playing Goldvein Hydra for three mana in a ramp deck and immediately attacking into a potential trade. Is your opponent really blocking it to ramp you into six mana on turn four? Are they attacking into it on their turn? This is a really interesting minigame that exists until you reach enough mana to cast it as an actually imposing creature. Goldvein Hydra's combination of keywords and Treasure production allow it to be a relevant play across more stages of a game than Voracious Hydra while retaining playability in the , , and decks. It's also easier to cast, as it doesn't require two mana. While this matters less in decks than other colors because of their access to Llanowar Elves and other mana generation, it allows players to play it in decks with fewer mana sources.
Voracious Hydra provides you with more self-contained, raw power, but I find its play patterns to be generally less rewarding than Goldvein Hydra's. It has the same problem that Ravager Wurm had during its time in the cube. Because of how generally underwhelming large French vanilla creatures can feel in cube, it needs to fight something in order to justify its casting cost. However, every time you cast it with the intent to fight something, it feels undersized because of how poorly it scales without doubling its +1/+1 counters. It's a good card that does provide situational versatility, it just doesn't spark joy in the way that Goldvein Hydra does.
Ulvenwald Oddity is a somewhat generic four mana creature that attacks and blocks. It's good in aggressive decks and provides ramp decks that play to the board an extra outlet to dump their excess mana. It's not doing anything particularly important or interesting though. It's pretty replaceable with any of the Hellrider variants in , which is it's most natural home. It's more aggressive than you typically expect in {G], and lacks any synergy with what the decks are trying to do until you put seven mana into it. It's playable in basically every deck, but it doesn't spark joy in a way that DFCs need to if I'm going to play them in my cube. Bristlebud Farmer is just as playable in all of the same decks, but provides far more synergy upside. I'm really grading DFCs on a curve, and keeping their number low is crucial to making them feel special.
Regrowth's value was always contingent on the quality of card it was able to return to your hand. It's at its best when it's returning a key piece of a combo, essentially acting as a Demonic Tutor for your graveyard. It's much less powerful when it's returning a generically powerful creature or piece of interaction, as they tend to be much more replaceable. In such situations, it's usually better to draw multiple cards off the top of your deck instead. This nets you get more cards overall, while still giving you a chance at drawing something that provides as similar effect to whatever you would have returned from your graveyard in the first place. My cube supports heavily synergistic decks, but very few outright combos. Because of this, Regrowth rarely sees play, even in dedicated graveyard decks. I'd rather play graveyard support that recurs multiple cards as opposed to tutors, a design decision that largely extends to libraries as well.
For discussion of Voracious Hydra see Goldvein Hydra, above.
Freestrider Lookout is a victim of 's inability to reliably commit crimes, and the creature lacks an exciting enough reason to actually attempt to. I'm generally not a fan of including cards that heavily rely on off color effects to function as intended, as it's just going to be too difficult for them to produce consistent results. So while you can use or interactive spells to trigger Freestrider Lookout's ability, the amount of times you can do that is going to be much lower than if the card itself was or . You want cards that you can both reliably cast and maximize without stretching your mana base, and it's simply too difficult to ensure both of those on a consistent enough basis.
This risk could be mitigated if the reward for committing a crime was more significant or synergistic, but ramping into your fifth or sixth land has far less value than getting your third or fourth. It has even further diminishing returns when played off curve as lands are needed exponentially less by the later stages of a game. There might be some interesting synergies if you could mill yourself in the process, but all the remaining cards are put onto the bottom of your library instead. Freestrider Lookout just doesn't provide enough incentive to go out of your way to include it in decks that cannot trigger it reliably.
Railway Brawler's ability to perform in cube is going to be nearly entirely reliant on triggering its ability to put +1/+1 counters on creatures you control. Running it out there and waiting a turn or two to follow it up with a meaningful creature is a strategy that's proven to be unsuccessful. This is particularly true when you line it up against Deep Forest Hermit, Deranged Hermit, Workshop Warchief, Verdurous Gearhulk, and the rest of the expensive creatures that provide immediate dividends. As such, you're going to have to rely on plot more heavily than the other cards I've discussed so far.
Being able to plot Railway Brawler early and cast it once you have an appropriate follow up play, or your opponent is tapped out, certainly makes it more playable in cube. The problem is that regardless of which mode you choose, you are leaving your opponent with a full turn cycle to untap and draw into removal. The odds of you being able to play it, and a second creature consecutively, goes down the later in the game you are, since you're unlikely to be hoarding creatures in hand. Earlier in the game you are unlikely to have enough mana to play the creatures you do have. This leaves a very tiny window where you can maximize the play associated with Railway Brawler, meaning it's going to play out somewhat awkwardly most of the time. This is also really minor but I hate that it has reach for virtually no reason whatsoever. It makes it more powerful, yes, but it doesn't contribute to more satisfying gameplay. If Railway Brawler remains in play over the course of several turns where you play multiple creatures, and your opponent doesn't play a Wrath of God, it probably wins you the game. This is just too much setup compared to the existing options that don't require as much to go right.
Spinewoods Armadillo resembles both Waker of Waves and Krosan Tusker at first glance, but plays out in a way that is dramatically less satisfying. All three cards are expensive yet massive creatures that lack any sort of evasion whatsoever. Their main appeal lies in their ability to replace themselves with a more relevant card in the developing turns of the game. Waker of Waves doubles as an Orazca Puzzle-Door, Krosan Tusker doubles as a Horizon Spellbomb, and Spinewoods Armadillo doubles as an Environmental Sciences. These are all really helpful effects to have when they also put a creature in the graveyard that you can Reanimate or Regrowth later in the game.
Where Spinewoods Armadillo falls short of its contemporaries is in its propensity to completely bog down a board. The combination of reach, ward , and being a massive creature that can simply be chump blocked, results in both players being disincentivized to attack. Basically nothing can attack profitably into it unless it has deathtouch, and even that doesn't force your opponent to actually block with Spinewoods Armadillo. Players can kill it with non damage based removal, but the game screeches to a halt until they're able to. Removal is cheap in cube, but ward is a significant tax, and every turn spent waiting to draw that extra land sucks the enjoyment out of the game just a little bit more. Spinewoods Armadillo is an established design that unfortunately creates poor gameplay when it's actually on the battlefield.
Nexus of Becoming is a six mana artifact that draws you an extra card every turn, including the turn it enters play. It also creates 3/3 artifact creature tokens that are copies of creatures and/or artifacts that you exile from your hand. Exiling those cards instead of discarding them prevents you from looping recursive threats repeatedly, and the game play is much better with this in mind. Exiling ensures that you'll be forced to play a variety of creatures instead of treating it like a combo card that creates a repetitive game state. While I don't expect the most low to the ground aggro decks to be interested, most other decks playing a large number of creatures should be able to take advantage of Nexus of Becoming as a curve topper.
Overwriting the exiled card's power and toughness to 3/3 is better than it may appear at first glance. Most creatures in cube earn their slot on the back of their abilities and efficiency, as opposed to their stats alone. After all, 75% of the creatures in my cube have a power or toughness that is less than 3, and would become actively larger if copied in this way. Even the larger ones may be worth exiling in this way if it means being able to put them into play without having to pay for them. Proper deckbuilding is paramount to making Nexus of Becoming work, because without the ability to copy creatures, the card is simply not worth casting. While you won't always be able to create a token, drawing a card every turn will reduce this risk, while at least providing immediate dividends if you draw poorly. Nexus of Becoming is a fun, powerful, late game spell that can create stories, and I'm looking forward to experiencing them.
Nexus of Becoming provides more forward inertia than Obelisk of Alara does, and that's critical for a six mana play that you really should be using to try and finish a game. The spread of abilities on display provide enough coverage across different board states that it retains usefulness when ahead, behind, or at parity, but how useful the actual card is in practice depends entirely on what colors you have access to. Since four and five color decks almost never come together in my cube, intentionally, players very rarely have their choice of all five abilities. Aggressive decks usually aren't interested in Obelisk of Alara at all because of its status as a six mana artifact that requires multiple turns and additional mana to accrue any value at all. This means it's really only ever played in control decks, as big mana decks would normally rather just play a large creature that's more synergistic with the rest of their deck.
The and modes are far and away the most commonly activated abilities on Obelisk of Alara, as it gives these control decks a way to stabilize continuously while using their other cards to put away a game. The mode is often splashed for as it allows these decks to win the game outright, albeit over the course of many turns. Despite its effectiveness, it's never been a very fun way to win or lose a game. It just takes so long to fight through the life gain, and if the control deck can't stabilize with it, then the card isn't going to do anything at all because all of the other abilities are such mediocre effects individually. Nexus of Becoming is fun, interesting, and justifies itself far quicker than Obelisk of Alara ever has.
Lavaspur Boots are a colorless Boots of Speed that adds Ward to its ability suite. Unfortunately, neither one of these differences make the card any more desirable than its predecessor. Ward effectively disrupts sequencing and stifles interaction at even small mana requirements. Lavaspur Boots ensures that at least one of your creatures will have ward at all times, serving as a minor irritant that constantly has to be taken into account. While I'm generally fine with it as a way to insure against loss on large permanents, I don't want it to be something that your opponents have to deal with consistently. It bogs down the game maintaining the potential for an opponent to inadvertently target the creature without paying the ward cost, which can be immensely frustrating.
Being colorless is also not nearly as much of a boon as it normally would be. Basically any deck that would be interested in playing Lavaspur Boots is going to have in it. and decks aren't typically interested in aggro based equipment because they rely on tempo and grindy card advantage, respectively. It's at its best in both and , and Boots of Speed was a subpar card in both of those decks. Being colorless and granting ward don't change the functionality of the card, and it's therefore not going to be played in a wider array of decks. Boots of Speed is an underwhelming card for cube, and Lavaspur Boots grades out roughly equivalent, despite the upgrades.
Umezawa's Jitte was able to accrue relevant, on board value from any equipped creature on the same turn you attacked with it. Getting two charge counters per trigger and being able to give a creature +2/+2, or an opposing creature -1/-1, per counter made any equipped creature nearly impossible to block, regardless of whether or not there were counters on the equipment. Lost Jitte wisely reduces this effect to one charge counter per trigger in addition to removing any way to affect combat on the turn you get your first counter. While this results in an equipment that's not among the most powerful cards ever printed, it also ends up lacking the immediate impact needed to justify playing it in cube. None of these effects are worth making a bad attack to achieve, something that ends up being necessary if it's not going to augment the equipped creature in any way. Aggro decks would much rather just play Bonesplitter or Eater of Virtue that actually makes attacks better immediately. As it is, Lost Jitte rewards you for being ahead without providing you with any way to actually get ahead or fight at parity.
I'm basically only discussing new entries in the Sword of X and Y cycle as a public service announcement at this point. My dislike of protection, and this cycle specifically, is well documented, after all. The individual bonuses each sword provides pale in comparison to the harm that granting protection inflicts on a game. Realizing that you cannot interact with an equipped creature simply because you happened to play , and your opponent happened to draft Sword of Sinew and Steel, is among the worst feelings in cube. It goes against every tenent my cube is built on, and gameplay and player morale have improved immensely since their removal.
That said, Sword of Wealth and Power doesn't provide protection against colors, but against instants and sorceries. An equipped creature can be blocked or traded with in combat, regardless of what deck you are playing, without complication. However, you still can't interact with the equipped creature in a meaningful way without relying on enchantments and planeswalkers. The dissuasion of interaction is still present, and that's at the heart of what makes these cards frustrating. It's not as oppressive, but just like with Lavaspur Boots, I don't want to make that gameplay loop something your opponent has to deal with continuously.
It's a shame, because the actual abilities granted to the equipped creature are really unique and interesting. Copying instants and sorceries is always an exciting proposition, and creating a Treasure token eases the mana requirement in re-equipping the sword. Needing to have a plethora of both creatures to equip and spells to copy can lead to some awkward hands though. Turns where you deal combat damage but receive no benefit for it, or lack a creature to equip in the first place, can be frustrating. Sword of Wealth and Power is also much more of a strict saboteur effect than the rest of the cycle, as it provides no evasion of any kind. This makes equipping the appropriate creatures more important than usual. The combination of poor gameplay and ideological differences leads to me unsurprisingly passing on this one.
AzoriusAssimilation Aegis is a Journey to Nowhere equipment that can Clone the exiled creature when equipped. Despite the resemblance, this is a far cry from Fractured Identity, which provides you with an additional creature while triggering ETB effects in the process. As you need creatures to equip, and ones set to benefit from being Cloned at that, you really can't play Assimilation Aegis outside of tempo and expect to be satisfied. is an incredibly diverse color pair that's capable of supporting a number of decks at various speeds, and my gold section represents that. If I'm going to include one that's restricted to one style of deck, it needs to both send a clear signal and work well in those decks consistently. Assimilation Aegis has a stable floor, but its ceiling is all over the place and at least some of the time consists of extremely repetitive game play that might not even provide a tangible benefit. The swings are way too wide for what is ostensibly a removal spell with upside.
Bruse Tarl, Roving Rancher has a titan trigger that either makes Ox tokens or Reckless Impulse's one card depending on whether the top card of your library is a land or nonland, respectively. Because he naturally gives all Oxen double strike, neither outcome is necessarily bad, but the actual quality will depend on the game state. If you can accrue a couple of triggers, you can build quite a lot of card advantage for , but requiring you to attack with your vanilla 4/3 dampens much of the excitement. Knowing how your trigger is going to resolve before you attack would make a huge difference, as you might not mind trading in combat if it allows you to cast something impactful. You also might not want to trade this off if the only benefit is getting a single Ox token that loses double strike once Bruse Tarl, Roving Rancher leaves play. The comparable creatures in my gold section already provide either card advantage or board presence in a more reliable manner while serving as more impactful creatures in combat. Bruse just requires too many turns to get going, and there are going to be times when his provided benefit doesn't align with what you actually need.
Honest Rutstein is a 3/2 Gravedigger that makes all of your creatures cheaper for one less mana. This perfectly aligns with the strategy and is able to provide value regardless of when it's played. The 3/2 body and cost reduction hold more value when played on curve, allowing you to double spell while applying pressure if you're not behind. As the game progresses you are able to accrue more value from the Raise Dead effect, as you're not only more likely to have more targets in the graveyard, but you may even be able to cast one of them immediately with the cost reduction. While I'd normally prefer a more defensive body in , being a 3/2 makes it much more likely that you can at least trade off with something in combat. This achieves the desired 2 for 1, which was always the issue with Gravedigger variants in cube. Chump blocking doesn't provide enough value for the cost, and it's harder to trade off defensively as a 2/2 creature that can't effectively pressure an opponent.
I'm a big fan of sneaking retail limited effects into my cube, and Raise Dead fits perfectly into the grindy graveyard decks. My decks are grindy, card advantage machines that normally play a high number of creatures as opposed to some spell heavy variants seen in other cubes. Players get a clear message regarding this when they see Honest Rutstein in a pack. As an uncommon, the overall power level is somewhat tempered, but it should be a consistent role player and curve filer. I wouldn't be surprised to see it replaced with something within the following year, but I wanted to give it a trial run, especially since I have such an obvious cut available.
The biggest piece of feedback I've received recently is that there aren't enough payoffs for moving into the deck. This has been something I've been conscious of, but I was waiting for new and exciting cards to make updates. Well, I've been waiting for a long time and in the interest of addressing this concern, I'm making some adjustments now. Meren of Clan Nel Toth is a card I was playing at one point, but moved on from due to its perceived delay in expected value.
With the amount of tokens and sacrifice outlets across and , it shouldn't be too difficult to accrue a couple of experience counters. You really only need 2-3 counters to start reanimating creatures reliably, which shouldn't be too difficult since you can accrue multiple counters per turn. One Raise Dead per turn is a little slow when it happens on your end step, but she does have a body that can at least tangle in combat while you grind. I find that these decks work best when they are drowning their opponent in redundant waves of value, and Meren contributes to that end goal admirably.
Deathrite Shaman was just as big of a disappointment during its second tour of the cube as it was during its first. The complete inability to reliably produce mana in the absence of fetch lands relegated it to late game chip damage and life gain. Unfortunately, due to the nature of its ability, you rarely had control over which effect you had access to. Sometimes this was because there were no instants or sorceries in a graveyard. Other times there were things you actively didn't want to exile, like Bloodghast or a creature you were planning to Reanimate. Relying on your opponent to fill their graveyard appropriately has repeatedly provided inconsistent results, leaving you unable to activate the desired ability. This is problematic because the two abilities are good during two different stages of a game, and both ask you to activate them repeatedly.
Gaining life, even 2-4 over the course of several turns, can help decks stave off aggressive decks until they can develop their board and card advantage engine. Once they've successfully stabilized, gaining further life really doesn't provide anything of tangible value. Likewise, forcing your opponent to lose 2 life isn't really worth the investment when you aren't in a position to race. That mana could be better purposed elsewhere until you're looking for a way to close out a game. Having abilities that are as disparate as Deathrite Shaman's is only beneficial if you actually have access to the appropriate one at the appropriate time. Grim Lavamancer has retained its spot in the cube because it's a cheap creature that aligns with 's most common strategies and by being able to produce the desired effect reliably. Deathrite Shaman is inexpensive, but it's unreliable and resource hungry in a way that doesn't fully coalesce with the synergies contained most decks.
Maelstrom Pulse has always been a consistently average performer, but it's never drawn anyone in enough to actually draft a deck. The upside potential of being able to kill multiple tokens has almost never come up, mostly because there were other permanents you'd rather kill instead. There are also so many different types of tokens that it can be frustrating when your opponent controls Soldier, Human Soldier, and Human tokens and you can't kill more than one of them. Being able to destroy any nonland permanent is valuable, but it's less unique with the addition of Tear Asunder, and I'd rather use this slot on something that actively excites players enough to draw them into drafting the color pair.
The Gitrog, Ravenous Ride is an aggressively slanted creature that rewards you for sacrificing other creatures, particularly those with a higher power. Because of the combination of trample and haste, it's not very difficult to trigger its saddle ability and draw some extra cards and potentially play some extra lands. Ramping up to 7-9 mana may seem superfluous, but when used in combination with the card draw, you should be able to cast upwards of 3-4 spells on the following turn. This can either stabilize you immediately, or put you so far ahead that anything short of a Wrath of God is unlikely to overcome your advantage. You do need to be at a stable life total when attempting this though, because it requires you to remove two creatures (The Gitrog and whatever saddled it) as potential blockers, utilizes all of your mana, and puts those lands into play tapped. While this is an acceptable risk when racing, it's much more risky in the typical decks that focus on stabilization and late game value grind.
And that's the main issue with The Gitrog, Ravenous Ride: it's a card for a different cube. It works best in aggressively skewed decks that are more focused on racing and maintaining pressure in the face of adversity. Neither nor is organically set up to act as the primary color in an aggressive deck. They can both support aggressive strategies as a secondary color, but neither is going to be the driving force. There isn't a viable avenue to use The Gitrog as a grindy card advantage option because you're unlikely to be able to attack with it more than 1-2 times per game. Your opponent is going to find an answer to it, trade with it in combat, or the game is going to end before you can set up some sort of recursive creature engine. It's better served in a cube whose infrastructure is designed to maximize its strengths, and I don't feel that describes mine.
decks have come to be defined by their hard hitting creatures that present more problems faster than their opponent has answers. They aren't focused on turn to turn grind so much as they provide pressure while accruing value that leads to an opponent being unable to stabilize with creatures or spells. Roxanne, Starfall Savant spreads a small amount of value out over too many turns to compare favorably with the existing options.
Creating tapped Meteorite tokens with a titan trigger is more of an annoyance than a way to clear the path for a 4/3 creature that needs to attack and survive every turn. Her greatest value probably comes in her ability to pick off a utility creature and ramp you to seven or eight mana on the following turn, but that's a tough sell on a five mana creature. She's much more interesting in combination with either Rhythm of the Wild or Invigorating Hot Spring, but you could say that about nearly any creature that doesn't already have haste. Roxanne, Starfall Savant is an undoubtedly interesting creature, she just lacks the offensive fire power and synergy potential that I'm looking for in my gold cards.
I've never been a fan of cards that require you to cast multiple spells in a turn to justify their inclusion. They tend to perform at an expected rate when ahead and grossly underperform at any other stage of a game. There basically isn't a way for them to overperform because their base expectation is their ceiling. Slick Sequence is quite good if you can trigger both effects, but it's a horrific use of mana any time you can't. already has an abundance of instants and sorceries that deal damage and draw cards, and all of them do so with more guaranteed value than this. I would much rather pay more for Electrolyze and Prismari Command with the knowledge that they have the ability to exceed expectations at least some of the time.
Kambal, Profiteering Mayor is an immensely confusing card because it has two abilities that seem mirrored, but aren't. Both abilities trigger whenever a token enters play under a players' control, but that's where the similarities end. Kambal drains your opponent for one whenever one or more tokens enters play under your control. This triggers separately for each effect that results in tokens being made, regardless of how many tokens are made. It's best with cards that make many tokens over multiple triggers, like Monastery Mentor and Sedgemoor Witch. Whenever your opponent has tokens enter play, you create a tapped copy of each one, but this only triggers once each turn. This works best with cards like Forth Eorlingas! and Finale of Glory.
In practice, this means that if you cast and flashback Lingering Souls on the same turn, you drain your opponent twice, one for each set of tokens that entered play. If your opponent casts and flashes back Lingering Souls on the same turn, you create two tapped Spirit tokens, and then drain your opponent once. This is because while both effects trigger once, the first triggers for each token that entered play and the second triggers as they enter play together. This is incredibly complex and unintuitive, and it's going to lead to a number of missed triggers, incorrectly resolved triggers, and judge calls. Cube is complex enough that I don't want to include cards that are as confusing as this, regardless of how synergistic or powerful they may be.
RakdosI'm currently running both Falkenrath Aristocrat and Immersturm Predator in my section, and I'm not in the market for a third iteration of the same design. As such, Rakdos, the Muscle is competing directly with these two creatures. Falkenrath Aristocrat is the most aggressive, as it has haste and the least survivability without activating the shared activated ability to become indestructible. It's very good as a curve topper in aggressive versions of and less desirable in the slower, grindy ones. As each of these styles does exist and is supported, I like the idea of having one of each represented with this design. The biggest knock against Falkenrath Aristocrat is that I don't really have a way to reliably sacrifice humans in any color. This lowers its floor considerably as it can be essentially stonewalled by a single Spirit token, forcing you to make a sacrifice if you want to attack at all.
Immersturm Predator is more robust as a 3/3 that attacks as a 4/4 at minimum. Its ability to block effectively makes it much better when behind or at parity, as Falkenrath Aristocrat, again, requires a sacrifice to do anything other than trade down. The lack of haste means it has a slower clock when unopposed, but that's less worrisome in less aggressive decks that aren't worried if the game goes a little longer. Not caring about what creatures are sacrificed, and providing secondary graveyard interaction, make it more generally playable in your average deck and gives it a much higher floor.
Rakdos, the Muscle lacks the ability to grow over time, but starts off much bigger than its predecessors. It also has trample, which means it can't be chump blocked into oblivion by opposing Spirit tokens. This increased combat prowess requires you to pay a more onerous mana cost, and more mana in general, but it's the secondary ability that really justifies the cost. Being forced to turn every sacrifice into an Act on Impulse equal to the sacrificed creature's mana value is a very powerful, and interesting, ability. It's made exponentially more interesting by being limited to one activation per turn, and by being able to target your opponent's library with the ability. Triggering this ability is a bit of a double-edged sword since it lowers the indestructibility shields while the ability is on the stack, opening it up to removal. These abilities always play out a bit too much like shroud for my liking, and this gives you a real incentive to open up a window of interactability, and I think the game play is better for it.
Rakdos, the Muscle has the most interesting play patterns by far, is the biggest threat in combat without activating its ability, and asks the most questions during the drafting and deck building process. Immersturm Predator is the most generically playable, provides secondary interactions and synergies, and is better during different stages of a game. Falkenrath Aristocrat is the most aggressive, but is also the narrowest and most reliant on its sacrifice ability to prove its worth. It also sends misleading signals to drafters, and that's the part that really grinds my gears. There just isn't a way to reliably sacrifice humans, and the game play suffers for it.
For discussion of Falkenrath Aristocrat see Rakdos, the Muscle, above.
SelesnyaSelvala, Eager Trailblazer is a bit too reliant on having an established board for a four drop. It needs you to not only curve into it, but curve after it if you want to generate mana and create Mercenary tokens, respectively. Lack one of those requirements and half of the card plummets in value. When everything is going according to plan Selvala presses an advantage by being the biggest creature on the table, helping you cast your spells through ramp and mana fixing, and goes wide with creature tokens that make blocking difficult for your opponent. She's not a particularly good top deck though, and she's underwhelming when played at the top of your curve. Being an efficient body for the cost matters much less in a gold card because of the importance on sending signals and generating excitement. Selvala can be good, but she feels extremely win-more in a way that feels unsatisfying.
SimicBonny Pall, Clearcutter plays out a lot like Roalesk, Apex Hybrid, but it provides more guaranteed value that isn't as dependent on your existing board state. Creating a 6/5 reach and a 6/6 Ox token is Bonny Pall's floor unless you ramp into it with Llanowar Elves or artifact mana. In those cases you create a smaller Ox token, but also gain access to the card sooner, so it's difficult to complain. The fact that Beau continues to grow with your mana base only mitigates the drawback further. Bonny Pall also offers an attack trigger that provides card advantage and mana ramp, something that retains value later in the game with cards like Hydroid Krasis and The Goose Mother running around. Being able to trigger this ability when any creature attacks gives your opponent a very small window to prevent this from occurring.
The obvious risk associated with Bonny Pall, Clearcutter is that you're paying a premium, both in total mana and mana specificity, for creatures that can simply be chump blocked. Having them in multiples certainly helps though, as your opponent will absolutely run out of disposable creatures quickly. While this normally isn't a recipe for success, I'm willing to give it a shot due to how well it organically fits in the color combination. isn't an aggro deck looking to end a game as quickly as possible, and Bonny Pall does present two significant threats on board while continuing to provide card advantage and ramp.
Roalesk, Apex Hybrid puts two +1/+1 counters on another creature when it enters, the exact value of which is entirely reliant on what creature is gaining these counters. Proliferating twice upon its death can add to this effect, but as I've said before, death triggers are notoriously unreliable and difficult to maximize. This is especially true on larger creatures that you actively don't want to have die, as they won't provide this upside at all if everything goes according to plan. Even if you do trigger it, losing your creature in the process, very few cards are able to take advantage of proliferate. It's a much more natural fit in , especially with my increased focus on +1/+1 counter synergies. While I would embrace a version of Roalesk, Apex Hybrid for that section, it's currently sending drafters mixed signals about what this color combination is trying to accomplish. As such, Bonny Pall, Clearcutter is a better fit for my section as currently constructed.
I'm currently playing Oko, Thief of Crowns as my planeswalker of choice, and I'm not particularly interested in replacing it unless something comes along that provides really fun and synergistic game play. Yes, it's a power level outlier, but I also want people to want to draft every color combination, and for a long time, was severely under drafted. It's representation has gone up over time due to having a more defined mechanical identity, but Oko has contributed to this as well despite, and partially due to, it not being present in every draft pool.
Oko, the Ringleader is a bit of an awkward fit in my cube as it plays best in proactive tempo decks that play a lot of sorcery speed interaction. This does not describe any of the most common decks, as they tend to rely on instant speed interaction and mana ramp. Neither color is particularly adept at committing crimes in the first place, which makes it very unlikely you'll ever be able to maximize the +1 ability. Careful Study is an effect that I've never been impressed with except in the most dedicated reanimator decks which again, does not describe .
Attacking as a copy of a creature you control is what raises the ceiling of Oko, the Ringleader, but you can't do that until the turn after you cast him. It also requires you to have creatures with powerful combat ability, as opposed to ETB effects, which it cannot trigger. This is another effect that has grossly underperformed, as it does very little from behind or when you can't attack, and granting conditional hexproof doesn't address the inherent problems with it. Creating Elk tokens at least guarantees you will have something to copy, but a vanilla 3/3 isn't exactly the most exciting option. This is especially true when, unlike the various Gideon planeswalkers, it can die in combat if blocked. Oko, the Ringleader promises card advantage, tempo, and board presence, but is in a color combination that's not set up to support it.
Outlaws at Thunder Junction was a really interesting set that continued a trend of rather blunt translations of popular tropes to Magic sets. Magic does The Wild Wild West is undoubtedly intriguing, and I thought they nailed the mechanics, game play, and limited environment. I just wish Wizards would use a more nuanced hand with the top down inspirations, as I feel some of the Universes Beyond design techniques creeping in. Zendikar and Innistrad feel like Magic planes inspired by popular tropes. Murders at Karlov Manor and Outlaws at Thunder Junction feel like popular tropes printed on Magic cards. There is an immense distinction between those two categories, and I find the former leads to more memorable experiences.
I want to be clear that I think there's absolutely a place in Magic for blunt executions of popular tropes. After all, everyone loved Delver of Secrets and Lavaball Trap despite them overtly depicting famous movies and scenes from The Fly and Indiana Jones, respectively. So when I hear people complaining about how lazy the design of Cunning Coyote and Great Train Heist are, I can't help but roll my eyes at the irony. Every reference made in these sets is obvious to some and veiled to others because everyone has their own life experiences they view these cards through. So I'm okay with designs that hit me over the head with a sledgehammer screaming "that's the joke" at the top of its lungs, because I know that for others, that sledgehammer isn't as blunt.
That said, the world design for Outlaws at Thunder Junction was lackluster. It felt like a placeholder setting without any real culture or history, and by all accounts, that's because it was. Murders at Karlov Manor felt like they dropped the game Clue into an established setting, Ravnica, and ignored much of what made that setting unique. They failed to effectively integrate the disparate elements organically, which resulted in a set that felt disingenuous.
I truly feel that Universes Beyond has done good for Magic, and I've fallen in love with some of its executions. I also think there needs to be a distinction between inspiration and translation, and that starts with proper world building and lore. I don't think it's a coincidence that Outlaws at Thunder Junction lacked a planeswalker's guide article. Murders at Karlov Manor had a fantastic article detailing how and why detectives starting populating Ravnica, and it wasn't at random. But those justifications weren't represented on the cards, which resulted in that critical information being lost to the common player, and forgotten by the invested Vorthos. Instead, detectives appeared all over the plane, even where they didn't feel natural.
Whatever methods future sets use to provide depth and flavor to their planes, it's critical that they feel unique and organic, even if they wear their inspirations on their sleeve. Leaning on the planeswalker's guide, and ensuring that information makes it to print is as good a starting point as any. As is having unique, captivating characters that feel organic to those planes, drawing players into their worlds and allowing them to overlook some of the more overt references. Reusing popular characters always has a place, but they must remain those characters in execution, instead of making them feel like they're simply wearing cosplay.
I didn't intend to wax poetically about this when I started writing but, here we are. Next up we have a four part series discussing the mechanics of Modern Horizons 3! It's a real doozy of a project, and I'm excited to put a huge dent in my list of ungraded mechanics. After that, I'll have my normal article discussing the cards in the actual set. Until then, may all your packs contain a card for your cube.