Welcome to part 4 of the Modern Horizons 3 mechanics article series for the Awesome Cube. So far, we have discussed every mechanic relevant to Modern Horizons 3 up through the letter P. Check out my other articles in my profile if you are interested in any of those mechanics. After this, we will have covered every single mechanic in the set and wow has it been longer than I had anticipated. As always, I'll be grading these mechanics in two ways. The first will be a grade for the mechanic within a curated limited environment based on the design and gameplay it generates. I will not be taking any constructed applications into account, as it would be outside the scope of the article. The second will be a context grade based on how I expect it to perform, and be supported, within my own cube ONLY. The effectiveness of individual mechanics is as variable as the cubes themselves, and a mechanic that is a D in my cube may be an A in yours. I'll lay out the grading criteria below.
A - Contributes to interesting gameplay and deck building decisions, may have cross synergies, no baggage. Sparks joy.
Cube - Actively looking to include.
B - Works as intended, may have cross synergies and/or existing support structure, but has at least one developmental/design frustration.
Cube - Actively looking to include.
C - Mechanic is inoffensive. Does not spark joy or enhance an environment, but it does not create issues or confusion when considered.
Cube - Will include as appropriate.
D - Mechanic is functional, but has baggage, may not be supported properly, and/or has some frustrating lines of play.
Cube - Cards must excel in spite of mechanic.
F - Mechanic does not work as intended, is not supported, and/or contributes to an actively frustrating experience.
Cube - Excluded from consideration.
N/A - I won't be giving any mechanic this grade overall as all mechanics are intended by design to work within their own environment.
Cube - Mechanic does not function in singleton, two-player Magic and would therefore be unfair to grade within the context of my cube.
With that out of the way, let's jam!
Quests
Quests are an unofficial type of enchantment introduced in Zendikar that represents the adventuring being performed across the plane. Each quest demands something unique of its controller and accrues a quest counter when that something is achieved. They then provide some sort of benefit once you accrue a certain number of quest counters. While not a requirement, quests have yet to provide any sort of functional upside until you've achieved the requisite number of quest counters. This is mostly due to the sheer amount of text required to detail both the triggered ability to gain counters and the activated ability to use them.
Even in retail limited it can be difficult to justify playing a card that cannot provide some sort of immediate value or board presence. Even if you are accruing counters through normal game actions or by utilizing intended synergies, the time spent developing these quest cards needs to be made up for by whatever payoff they provide, and that's rarely the case. While that's not to say that a card could not be designed to do so, it's not an exciting proposition. What is potentially exciting is treating quests as build around uncommons to provide longevity to a format. Whether they are fulcrums of, or payoffs for, synergy decks, quests have the potential to be niche cards that give players something to do when a format is getting stale. The power level is always going to be tempered because of the delayed value but at least they'd be interesting. The delayed value and fiddly nature of quests have unsurprisingly kept them out of the cube so far, and I don't see anything in their design structure that suggests they will be a consideration in the future.
Quests Grade: C-
Quests Grade in Cube: F
Reach is an evergreen creature keyword introduced in Alpha that allows creatures without flying to block creatures with flying. Usually limited to creatures that can spin webs in the air, shoot projectiles, or are just really, really tall, reach provides colors that don't have a lot of creatures with flying (basically just 
and 
) with an onboard way to interact with those that do. This is important because while has access to direct damage, lacks ways to deal with creatures outside of combat. Neither color wants to waste the few removals spells in their deck on a mediocre creature just because it has flying, and reach provides them with a way to stabilize without doing so.
While reach serves an indisputably important part of balancing a limited format, it also needs to be handled carefully. Creatures with reach tend to be slightly larger than flying creatures at the same cost. This allows them to block profitably, putting the onus back on the player with the flying creature. However, this also means that too much reach in a format can completely choke out flying entirely. This can lead to frustrating board stalls, longer games, and devaluation of cards whose main goal is to actually end games of limited.
Reach can also be a frustrating when it's not communicated properly through artwork and flavor. Giant Spider and Aerie Bowmasters very clearly have reach by virtue of being a huge spider and a creature with aerial weaponry, respectively. There's almost nothing about War Historian, Intrepid Stablemaster, or Master Symmetrist that suggests these creatures would be capable of snatching a bird out of the air. This leads to frustrating combat steps where people make confusing attacks, which in turn leads to one of my least favorite situations in all of Magic: the defending player asking "you know my creature has reach, right?". I know that this is often just the defending player trying to be helpful, but it becomes very, very awkward when combat tricks are involved. Maybe the attack was made without consideration for reach, maybe it was made as a bluff, or maybe it was actually trying to goad a block because of a combat trick or post combat effect. There are a lot of different situations that get very difficult to navigate when that question is asked. Properly communicating reach in the artwork and flavor of a card helps mitigate these instances.
Reach plays a very similar role in cube as it does in retail limited, both from the role it plays in the environment and the onus of proper execution it puts on the curator. I play creatures with reach as needed, but am careful not to include it excessively, lest it debilitate strategies that rely on it. A little goes a long way, and you do need to be conscious of both how much you are playing, and the rate of the creatures with it in your environment. Reach is an elegant and crucial mechanic for limited, allowing certain colors to interact with flying creatures within color pie in a way that feels flavorful. It just needs to be used thoughtfully, because excessive or sloppy executions on it can lead to metagame imbalances and unnecessary on board comprehension complexity, respectively.
Reach Grade: B-
Reach Grade in Cube: C
Reconfigure is an artifact creature keyword ability introduced in Kamigawa: Neon Dynasty to represent the transitive properties of mechanical creatures on the plane. Creatures with reconfigure are both artifact creatures and equipment, able to attach to another creature if you pay their reconfigure cost at sorcery speed. Reconfigured creatures are no longer creatures when attached, but they can become creatures again if you pay the reconfigure cost a second time to unattach them, or if they become unattached for any other reason. Typically, whatever abilities these creatures have are granted to whatever they are attached to when they are equipment. This greatly simplifies on board complexity as players don't have to differentiate between two different sets of abilities per card, and is greatly appreciated in such an inherently complex mechanic. The fact that creatures and equipment rarely occupy the same physical positioning on the board further minimizes this complexity. Creatures usually sit aside other creatures, while attached equipment sit behind whatever creature they are attached to. As such, I've never been confused as to the current state of a reconfigure card. For a mechanic that requires detailed understanding of two different card types and how they interact with each other, reconfigure has performed pretty intuitively.
Reconfigure seeks to address one of the main weaknesses of equipment: that they don't really do anything if you don't have any creatures in play. This risk restricts how many equipment a deck can reasonably play, as getting flooded with equipment without anything to equip is a very easy way to lose a game. Because every reconfigure card is a creature by default, there is essentially no risk associated with playing as many as you feel appropriate. This doesn't mean reconfigure is easy to play with though, because every time you attach one of these creatures as an equipment, you sacrifice board presence. Reconfigure requires you to determine which mode (creature or equipment) is more advantageous each turn, and provides the means to swap between the two as needed. Providing this flexibility is critical, because it prevents instances where a player gets their reconfigure creature trapped underneath something that is no longer relevant in combat. If this wasn't the case, attaching a reconfigure creature would be incredibly risky in a way that punishes players for using their cards as intended. As it is though, the game play is rewarding and satisfying, especially when it comes seeded with artifact synergies for limited archetypal support.
Artifact synergies have proved to be difficult to support in my cube because I have trouble reaching the necessary density of artifacts without skimping on card quality. Part of this is due to my cube being so large, but a significant complication is the way I choose to collate packs. When drafting, I only include one colorless artifact per pack, which limits how many a single deck can reasonably attain. While two cards are randomly added from among any other section of the cube, it's still very difficult to reach critical mass. This is even more difficult when we play our usual format, cube pre-cons (I'll probably write an article about this in the future once we hammer out the remaining details). In brief, this is a format we play when we don't have time to draft and want to maximize the amount of games played. It works great, but it's been difficult to figure out how to squeeze artifacts into the equation so far. This is why having artifact creatures in both 
and is so important, because it's a way to increase the density of artifacts without reaching out into artifacts proper. Between the flexibility on display and the archetypal support, I'm definitely looking for more reconfigure creatures to make their way into my list.
Reconfigure Grade: B
Reconfigure Grade in Cube: B+
Regenerate is a retired evergreen creature keyword ability first introduced in Alpha that allows a creature to survive what would otherwise have been a killing blow. If a creature is about to die, you may regenerate it via an activated ability on the creature or through an effect tied to another card. When this happens, the creature does not die, and becomes tapped, instead. Regenerating your creature creates a kind of protective bubble that protects it from the next instance of death before wearing off at the end of the current turn. Because of this, you can technically regenerate it far ahead of any potential death. The exact mechanisms of regeneration are unintuitive and unnecessarily complex in when it functions, how it functions, how it affects combat, and how it works within its intended flavor. After all, protecting your creature before it dies is a poor implementation of regenerative properties.
In addition to being problematic mechanically and flavorfully, creatures that can regenerate demand specific types of removal if you want to interact with them. This led to a ton of cards being printed with language that specifically prevented regeneration from occurring. Incinerate and Wrath of God would be so clean and easy to understand if they didn't have the anti-regeneration clause on them. Compare them to Searing Spear and Day of Judgment, which clearly communicate their effects without drawing unnecessary attention to regeneration. The more regeneration is a part of a format, the more concessions it demands of designers and curators. This is a lot of baggage for a mechanic that has essentially been made obsolete with the inclusion of indestructibility. Whether you are protecting your creatures from combat damage or removal spells, indestructibility is both easier to play with and has more consistent flavor.
Regenerate Grade: F
Regenerate Grade in Cube: F+
Reinforce N is an activated ability keyword introduced in Morningtide that allows you to discard a card from your hand for its reinforce cost to put N +1/+1 counters on target creature. You can reinforce a card at any time in lieu of casting it without have to worry about it getting countered. This allows each reinforce card to serve as a modal spell where one mode is always a combat trick. This can be leveraged to win encounters in combat or protect against damage based removal. This is convenient since reinforce is centered in and , which is commonly a creature heavy color pair focused on attacking an opponent, often with +1/+1 counter synergies in tow.
As a supplement for these strategies, reinforce is fine but unexciting. This is an example of something being effective in spite of not producing satisfying play patterns. The main issue with reinforce is that the choice between casting a spell and reinforcing it feels prescriptive far too often. Unless you are using reinforce to counter a removal spell, win a combat, or kill your opponent outright, you'd be much better off actually casting these cards instead. Putting a couple of +1/+1 counters on a creature just isn't worth a full card outside of these circumstances. It's just a very narrow effect to devote so much design space to in a single limited format, especially when pushing it too hard would adversely affect combat in general. At too high of a rate or frequency, blocking simply becomes untenable and damage based removal too unreliable. It's not even buoyed by resonant theming, as being able to discard any card type to reinforce muddies whatever flavor they were aiming for. The lack of interesting game play or flavor relegates reinforce to the list of completely forgettable mechanics that are functional yet uninspired.
Reinforce Grade: D
Reinforce Grade in Cube: D-
Replicate is a keyword ability from Guildpact that served as the keystone mechanic for the Izzet League, representing their affinity for wild experimentation with instants and sorceries. Replicate is an additional cost you may pay any number of times when casting a spell. The spell is copied for each time you paid its replicate cost, and you may choose new targets for each copy. As with any copied spell, players are unable to counter all instances of a replicated spell with a single Counterspell unless it counters all spells on the stack or the actual replicate ability itself.
Despite its initial design space being limited to instants and sorceries, replicate has since been expanded to appear on many card types. This opens it up to being more than just a generic 
spells archetype enabler. On the other hand, it weakens the overall flavor significantly, as replicating creatures and enchantments doesn't quite make as much sense or feel as thematic. This is especially true considering mechanics like squad and offspring are much more satisfying implementations involving creature duplication. Add in that replicate either doesn't support (prowess) or can't coincide with (magecraft) some of the more popular spells matters mechanics, and it's a somewhat underwhelming mechanic for retail limited. It's a better fit in cube, where effects can be pushed and the broken interactions are part of the experience.
When I previously reviewed the squad mechanic I spoke of my disappointment in how misleading the mechanic was in a limited environment. The promise of the mechanic lay in being able to make multiple copies, something you were never going to be able to do due to limited time and resources. Replicate delivers on that promise much more reliably, as it's able to appear alongside diminutive effects without being unbalanced. This creates a much more positive experience overall, as their cards actually perform as expected, instead of consistently underwhelming. Replicate plays well in spite of its complexity, unclear flavor, and inability to serve as archetypal support. It's just not going to be able to serve as a featured part of any environment it's in. I'm also downgrading squad comparatively from my original grades.
Replicate Grade: C+
Replicate Grade in Cube: C+
Squad Grade: C-
Squad Grade in Cube: C
Cards with retrace can be cast from your graveyard if you discard a land card in addition to paying their other costs. These cards are not exiled when retraced, allowing you to cast them as many times as you have lands to discard. Despite only appearing on instants and sorceries when it was first printed in Morningtide, retrace can technically appear on any card type. Unfortunately, the lack of any clear internal or external flavor does little to justify this, making it difficult to grok or attach to emotionally.
Retrace was intended to provide late game utility as players drew excess lands, turning a useless card into something of value. While these play patterns do exist, the majority of the time your opponent is either ignoring it in favor of casting other spells, is either unable or cannot afford to discard lands, or they are retracing something obnoxious turn after turn. This is particularly true of cards like Raven's Crime and Flame Jab, which can be cast as early as turn one, when players nearly always have lands to discard, regardless of whether it's strategically beneficial to do so. Presenting this choice to newer players is problematic, as you don't want to punish the inexperienced for actually using the mechanics as printed. These play patterns greatly restrict what effects retrace can be attached to, lest players create a degenerative game state where one player is locked out of interacting entirely. Retrace is much more satisfying and rewarding when used on cards like Call the Skybreaker and Spitting Image, which reward higher land counts and provide late game excitement and eventuality.
While there could potentially be designs with cube applications, I would only be interested in cards that grant retrace conditionally, as it provides your opponent with a way to shut it off. It ultimately doesn't really matter what card you are retracing, as the mere act of doing so every single turn is problematic. There are plenty of ways to reward players for playing to the late game, or bail them out if they draw extra lands, that promote more positive play patterns. I would basically never want to see retrace in retail limited again, as playing both with and against it was mostly miserable.
Retrace Grade: F
Retrace Grade in Cube: D-
Revolt is an ability word introduced in Aether Revolt to represent the rebel uprising against the Consulate on Avishkar nee Kaladesh. Cards with revolt provide an additional benefit if you had a permanent leave play on the same turn. Revolt does not care about the specifics of a permanent leaving play, it only checks whether one did before a revolt ability resolves. Mechanically, it's essentially an expanded take on morbid, which only triggered when creatures died, as opposed to permanents leaving play.
When I discussed morbid in the last article, I lamented how difficult it was to reliably trigger it, particularly at sorcery speed. Fortunately, revolt is easier to trigger, synergizing with exile and blink effects in combination with any noncreature permanents. It still suffers from a similar reliance on your opponent to assist in things leaving play in many cases, but it has more applications for different limited archetypes. Appropriately, Aether Revolt featured an increased number of creature tokens, sacrifice outlets, and blink effects as compared to Innistrad block. Despite these improvements, the complete and total lack of flavor justification is a huge hit to revolt from a design perspective. The mechanical implementation just doesn't communicate anything about the plane of Avishkar, the plight of its populous, or the name itself. While I'm generally less worried about these factors for cube play, I think it matters quite a lot for retail limited play, in which mechanics need to communicate a set's themes to players clearly. As such, I actually think revolt is a little worse for retail limited despite its mechanical upside.
Revolt Grade: C-
Revolt Grade in Cube: C
Sagas are an enchantment subtype introduced in Dominaria as a way to tell the history of the plane and its people. Sagas accrue a lore counter when they enter play and another at the end of your draw step. The roman numerals on the left of the card indicate the number of lore counters needed to trigger their associated abilities. When the final ability triggers, the saga is sacrificed. This card style is unique to sagas and communicates both their mechanical identity and importance while allowing more space for artwork depicting the historical event being described. Since it flows downward, the art is free to depict either the events as they happen or one large piece representative of the event, whichever is more appropriate. My only complaint is that triggering at the end of the draw step is extremely unintuitive, as players nearly always expect them to trigger during their upkeep. While this allows you to have full information before deciding how to resolve your trigger, it does make it quite easy to miss at REL events.
The marriage of flavor and mechanical execution is an unmitigated success, allowing sagas to provide expansive world building while being powerful cards. Simply having a card that provides guaranteed value over the course of several turns is going to be desirable in retail limited. If you're able to craft an environment where there are synergistic opportunities associated with either the enchantment card type or the abilities provided by sagas, they have a real chance to be a special part of the format. You can also combine them with blink effects, proliferate, recursion, etc. to trigger abilities multiple times.
The inherent value associated with sagas make them slam dunks for retail limited, but they do need to provide immediate upside to be considered for cube. It's one of the main reasons why Elspeth Conquers Death has been an excellent cube card, while The Eldest Reborn merely saw a trial run. Giving your opponent time to prepare for your later abilities provides them with an avenue to either play around them or destroy your saga. Nevertheless, the play patterns, power level, and thematic resonance is outstanding, making sagas one of my favorite designs in recent memory.
Sagas Grade: A
Sagas Grade in Cube: A-
Scry N is an evergreen keyword action that allows you look at the top N cards of your library, then put any number of those cards on the bottom of your library and the rest on the top in any order. First introduced mechanically in Alliance, scry wasn't promoted to keyword status until Fifth Dawn. Surveil N is a deciduous keyword action first introduced in Guilds of Ravnica as the keystone mechanic for House Dimir. When a player surveils N, they look at the top N cards of their library, then put any number of those cards in their graveyard and the rest on the top in any order. Both mechanics have been used as needed over the years to smooth draws, reduce mulligans, and generally facilitate fewer non-games of limited. Scry is typically used under most circumstances, while surveil can be leveraged in environments with significant graveyard synergies.
Both scry and surveil have excelled in their intended roles, proving to be desirable abilities when attached to routine effects, even at the lowest values of N. Early in the game they help players hit their land drops and find a good balance of spells to cast on curve. Late game, they are able to clear excess lands from your library, helping to mitigate flood and ensure players have more spells to cast. They're at their worst when players don't have a clear idea of what cards would improve their current hand, as it can be difficult for players to assign value to mediocre spells. Nevertheless, this provides strategic complexity, as opposed to comprehension complexity.
While both mechanics translate extremely well to cube, surveil is considered preferable in a vacuum, since so many decks have access to graveyard synergies. There are a finite number of ways to mill yourself without making concessions on power level, especially considering the sheer number of ways to profit from having cards in your graveyard.. I would always opt for surveil over scry given the choice between two otherwise identical cards, but I'm excited to include both in my cube regardless.
Scry Grade: A
Scry Grade in Cube: A
Surveil Grade: A
Surveil Grade in Cube: A
Shield counters are a type of counter on permanents introduced in Streets of New Capenna as the keystone mechanic for the Brokers family. The Brokers are a demonic crime family that essentially mete out protective service contracts, and shield counters are a representation of their protective magic. If a permanent with a shield counter on it would be destroyed or dealt damage, a shield counter is removed instead. Since they do not grant shroud or hexproof, permanents with them can still be exiled, bounced, or otherwise interacted with profitably. This captures the essence of the Brokers family and their services very clearly, dissuading interaction through both removal and combat. Frustratingly, shield counters, like ability counters, rely on low quality paperboard counters to track them while in play. As I've lamented in the past, these counters are not practical for long term use, resulting in the use of six-sided dice, which can easily be confused for +1/+1 counters.
While I was able to locate custom dice to use for ability counters, I'm less excited about these as a solution for shield counters due to their higher level of complexity and less favorable play patterns. A significant amount of the value that shield counters are able to provide is dependent on what your opponent is playing. Against and decks, shield counters essentially provide indestructibility, requiring multiple resources to deal with permanently. Against and decks, they can potentially be ignored entirely due to the presence of enchantment-based removal and bounce spells, respectively. Having virtually no control over how these counters play out makes it very difficult to evaluate them during a draft or deck building. It also ensures that they are frustrating for at least one player whenever they are in play. They're not even particularly satisfying on combat tricks, as it's a very convoluted way to make your creature indestructible until end of turn. It's difficult to craft a game state where shield counters are both impactful and provide satisfying gameplay for both players. Perhaps unsurprisingly, basically no part of shield counters interest me for cube play.
Shield Counters Grade: D
Shield Counters Grade in Cube: F
Shroud is a keyword ability introduced mechanically in Legends, and granted keyword status in Future Sight, that represents the protective magic that shields a permanent or player from harm. A permanent or player with shroud cannot be targeted by spells or abilities by either player. They can still be affected by effects that do not target. Hexproof is a keyword ability with similar flavor that saw mechanical implementation in Portal: Three Kingdoms before it was granted keyword status in Magic 2012. Permanents and players with hexproof cannot be targeted by spells or abilities that your opponents control. As such, they can still be targeted by spells and abilities you control, allowing you to equip, enchant, or affect them in any way you would normally be able to.
These abilities exist for the same reason, to protect you and your permanents from your opponent's interaction. While this sounds great in theory, it's an exercise in frustration in practice. Defensive creatures with these abilities threaten to completely dominate combat if the opponent doesn't have any good attacks. This immediately bogs down the game unless they are able to find an alternative solution to the problematic creature, which some decks just don't have access to. Hexproof actually makes this worse because it allows you to equip and enchant creatures with the ability. With access to the right enhancements, it doesn't really matter how good the creature is on its own, as you are able to turn it into something that cannot be dealt with inside or outside of combat.
These gameplay issues led to the development of conditional hexproof, where a permanent would have hexproof from something in particular, or would be able to gain hexproof temporarily. These are much better implementations of the mechanic, as they restrict the ways your opponent can interact without preventing it entirely. Combat tricks that provide hexproof have been even better, acting as in-color ways to counter detrimental spells and effects without causing ongoing issues. While shroud plays similarly in all of these cases, it also lends itself to potential onboard misplays if a player tries to equip or target their own creature later in the same turn. Hexproof is just less messy when it's not being abused turn after turn, which essentially renders shroud obsolete. While design space has been explored on removing shroud and hexproof from problematic permanents, it's a lot simpler and less ham-fisted to just print less cards with the mechanics altogether.
One of the main design philosophies of my cube is to promote interactive games where both players are able to enjoy themselves. Shroud and hexproof fundamentally go against this design goal, as they serve no purpose other than to dissuade interaction. Because of this, I'm not interested in supporting either mechanic in my cube when they appear as static abilities on a card. I'm not even a huge fan of conditional hexproof on cards like Dragonlord Ojutai, Prognostic Sphinx, and Stoic Sphinx because it's far too easy to play in a way where the condition doesn't matter. Whether you just stop attacking and casting spells, or have enough resources to threaten paying for the ability, these creatures essentially have hexproof whenever you need them to. I will consider combat tricks though, as there is real value in providing and with a cheap way to protect a single creature from a single removal spell.
Shroud Grade: F
Shroud Grade in Cube: F
Hexproof Grade: D
Hexproof Grade in Cube: D
Ward is an evergreen keyword ability introduced in Strixhaven: School of Mages that builds off of what was successful about hexproof while avoiding its worst play patterns. Whenever a creature or player with ward is targeted by a spell or ability an opponent controls, counter it unless that opponent pays the ward cost. Ward costs can require players to pay mana or life, discard cards from their hand, sacrifice creatures, etc. It can also be either permanent or conditional based on the needs of a card and/or set. Whereas hexproof is best used on combat tricks as a transient ability, ward is more appropriate as a static ability, where your opponent has time to figure out a way to pay for the ward cost. Regardless, both should be used with a careful hand, as too much in a single environment is going to similarly dissuade interaction as a whole.
The general takeaway I've had with ward is that the cost is often more difficult to pay than it appears at first glance. Even ward 
can complicate sequencing, often requiring a player to commit their whole turn to dealing with a problematic permanent. Anything higher than that can actually lead to outright delays, requiring players to draw more mana than they currently have. Alternate costs vary depending on the requirement and the surrounding environment. It's going to be much easier to pay the ward cost for Mishra, Tamer of Mak Fawa in an environment with easy access to tokens, for example. These costs open up a lot of design space that can be tailored to different limited formats, especially since you're only going to have one or two instances of ward within a single set.
While I largely eschewed both shroud and hexproof under most circumstances in my cube, I'm much more open to ward as a way to ensure a permanent stays in play for at least a little while. It's still something I'm planning on including thoughtfully though, as I don't want to dissuade interaction. I also want to minimize misplays where a player doesn't realize that something has ward and targets it without being able to pay the cost, thereby countering teh spell or ability. Walking into this onboard trick can be extremely frustrating, as opposed to being blown out by a combat trick which is surprising by design. The complex nature of cube increases the likelihood of these misplays, as players simply have their focus stretched farther than in retail limited.
Ward Grade: C-
Ward Grade in Cube: D+
Snow is a supertype that first appeared in Ice Age on basic lands. It has since appeared on many card types and merely designates a particular permanent as a "snow-covered" permanent so it can be mechanically referenced by other cards. Some cards check to see if you control a snow permanent, while others count those that are currently in play. Snow-covered lands produce whatever color of mana they would normally produce, regardless of the fact that they are a snow permanent. Likewise, other snow permanents are not affected in any way by being snow permanents. It only matters if another card references snow mechanically. Despite the rather large amount of potential design space, snow requires a plane with a climate that can support it. You wouldn't expect to see snow in the deserts of Amonkhet, for example.
Mechanically, the most important thing to discuss regarding snow is the fact that snow-covered basic lands count as snow permanents. Since you aren't allowed to fill your deck with these lands from a land station in retail limited, you are limited to those you open in the actual packs. This is a bit of a double-edged sword because while it increases the asfan of snow within the set, it also greatly complicates the drafting process. Whereas players usually ignore basic lands as they go around the table, these lands suddenly become highly desired for anyone who has snow payoffs. There's also no guarantee that the snow lands that you draft produce the colors of mana that you need to cast your spells. This is extremely unintuitive for anyone who is either a new player or who has not drafted with snow before, and it would likely require a discussion prior to the drafting process. I've seen many people go into a draft assuming they could just put 17 snow-covered basic lands in their deck as they would with regular basic lands. Finding out that this is not the case is both frustrating and confusing, and it can ruin an entire draft if you are now aware before starting.
Outside of the basic land conundrum, snow really just requires the proper balance of enablers and payoffs. Determining how many snow drafters a typical pod can support is important because it helps determine how high to pick its cards. Understanding the difference between the types of payoffs, how many snow permanents you need to support them, and determining how much simply being snow counts towards a card's valuation takes a lot of time and repetition with the set. This creates a very steep learning curve, and players that are more familiar with the environment are going to be at a significant advantage because of it. Snow is easy to understand mechanically, and kind of a logistical nightmare to optimize strategically. Snow is certainly an acquired taste, and I'm going to give my grade with the understanding that I personally enjoy the unique experience it provides. Speaking objectively, it's problematic in a significant number of ways, and the payoff will not be worth all of the logistical complexity for a certain percentage of players.
Despite this, I currently support snow in my cube almost entirely through the utilization of snow-covered basic lands. Every single basic land in my cube is a snow-covered land. This means that any card that checks for or counts your snow permanents are nearly always simply referring to your basic lands. Players don't have to worry about adjusting their draft picks to account for basic lands, and I don't need to worry about how many snow permanents I have in my cube. This has not caused any confusion so far, and it's a very quick explanation if anyone new to the cube has any questions about it. There is a financial burden associated with handling snow this way, and I wouldn't blame anyone for opting out of the experience. I also understand players that miss the strategy associated with drafting their snow lands, I just don't think it's a good fit for cube, where the concessions on power level needed to draft basic lands would be nearly impossible to justify (in which case the cube grade would be substantially lower).
Subjective grades
Snow Grade: B-
Snow Grade in Cube: B
Objective grades
Snow Grade: D
Snow Grade in Cube: F
Split second is a keyword ability on nonland cards introduced in Time Spiral that represents spells and abilities that occur instantaneously, before anyone can react to their presence. Mechanically, this means that players are unable to cast spells or activate abilities, that aren't mana abilities, as long as a spell with split second is on the stack. Directly referencing the stack in rules text introduces a significant amount of complexity immediately, pun intended. The concept of the stack is very confusing for many players, and most rules explanations omit mentioning it at any cost since doing so only leads to more questions. Differentiating between activated abilities and mana abilities only creates further confusion, as most players would not be able to explain what the difference between these two abilities is, or why it's even relevant in this context. I'm not going to get into all of the corner cases involving split second because there are simply too many to explain concisely. Suffice it to say that while it prevents your opponent from interacting in some ways, there are still ways to get around it. Split second is a textbook example of why a simple concept (you can't stop me from doing this) isn't always easy to execute within the rules.
Unfortunately, split second does little to justify all of this complexity. The actual functionality of split second provides no opportunity for strategy and doesn't change your evaluation of any cards during any stage of limited play. In fact, all it really does is suppress interaction and strategy on the part of both players. With split second, you don't need to consider what mana your opponent has available or what cards they might have. Even if they crafted their entire game plan around holding up interaction, it doesn't matter, because split second prevents them from using it. Responding to spells and abilities is part of the back and forth experience that makes Magic so enjoyable. I'm not really excited about effects that limit those opportunities for interaction, especially when they come with no real flavor justification or opportunities for synergistic play.
I've previously played Celestial Crusader, Sudden Death, Sudden Shock, Krosan Grip, and yet more cards with split second, but it's never been because of split second, and the ability has never actually felt satisfying. Every time one of these spells were cast I braced myself for a potential rules question, knowing that the explanation was going to be underwhelming at best. At least Legolas's Quick Reflexes leverages it in an interesting way, giving you access to a narrow but powerful ability that otherwise would never actually be playable in the cube. While these examples are few and far between, it's the type of unique design space I'm looking for. Just putting split second on routine effects is both boring and unnecessarily complicated. Using it to increase the playability of borderline effects is much more likely to interest players and justify the complexity at hand.
Split Second Grade: D
Split Second Grade in Cube: D-
Storm is a keyword ability on nonland cards introduced in Scourge. Whenever you cast a spell with storm, it gets copied for each spell cast before it that turn, with new targets being chosen for each copy. When determining a spell's storm count, all spells cast on that turn are counted, regardless of which player cast them. This means that players can unknowingly contribute to their opponent's storm count. Like with replicate, these copies are not considered to be spells being cast, since they go directly on the stack. Playing with storm requires both players to keep track of every single spell that is cast each turn, even on turns where a spell with storm is not cast. This quickly becomes onerous, particularly for the player that isn't playing with storm, since they have to dedicate a portion of their limited mental capacity to something that might not even matter for the majority of the game.
When I spoke about dredge in part 1 of this article series, I mentioned that the affect the mechanic had on standard significantly impacted its available design space. There were simply too many cards that could not be printed for limited play because of how they would affect constructed formats. Storm has a similar problem, as it's much easier to cast multiple spells per turn in constructed, where you have full control over your mana curve and enablers. This makes spells that are interesting limited designs, like Chatterstorm and Grapeshot, extremely problematic to actually print. It also greatly reduces the chances of seeing future iterations of the mechanic, as seen with Mark Rosewater's Storm Scale.
Despite its deserved reputation as a broken mechanic in constructed, storm plays quite fairly in retail limited. It just requires an environment conducive to not only enabling it but supporting the payoffs that have been included. There aren't enough cheap, playable spells to organically or reliably build up a storm count, and the ones that do exist will be desired by every player at the table. This means including cards like Snap, Pyretic Ritual, Manamorphose, etc. as a way to chain spells and card draw together, and even then you are unlikely to accrue a storm count like you would in constructed. Modest storm counts demand payoffs that blend cohesively with the rest of the deck. You likely won't be able to deal lethal with Grapeshot in a control deck, or mill your opponent for lethal with Brain Freeze without any other mill cards. Finding a way to do this while retaining cross-archetype playability is very difficult to accomplish.
It's also the main reason I don't support storm in my cube. Doing so requires the use of many cards that I'm currently not running, and very few of them would support any of my existing strategies in a satisfying way. Without fast mana, rituals, tutors, or ways to recur spells en masse or untap lands, it's just not possible to support without making significant concessions to power level and synergy. I did play Wing Shards for a while, but players found it extremely frustrating to lose multiple creatures just because they cast a spell pre-combat. They were then so worried about the card that it affected their enjoyment in future drafts, even if they hadn't seen the card at all. Because of this, I'm just not that interested in including any storm cards at all. They need too much support to fully realize, and playing a value Chatterstorm-like design would send misleading signals about what might be supported.
Storm Grade: D-
Storm Grade in Cube: F
Stun counters are a type of counter introduced in Dominaria United that are used to track permanents that have been made unable to untap for a set period of time. If a permanent with a stun counter on it would become untapped, remove a stun counter from it instead. Stun counters function regardless of why a permanent is untapping, whether it be during the untap step or through some other means. Stun counters are put onto permanents through spells and abilities as part of the unofficial "freezing" mechanic, see on Frost Lynx.
"Freezing" permanents has been a foundational part of the color pie since way back in Homelands, where cards simply stated that a permanent did not untap during its controller's untap step. Before stun counters, this required players to remember which permanent was frozen, as there was no way to visually indicate that it had been affected by this ability. Stun counters provide a tangible way to track this status easily, reducing confusion and allowing for designs that "freeze" things for multiple turns consecutively. The fact that these counters are temporary has helped mitigate confusion when used in conjunction with +1/+1 counters, which stay on permanents permanently.
Stun counters also clean up a bit of freezing's more awkward play patterns, where players could simply ignore it through unconventional methods of untapping their creatures. This always felt weird as it cleanly countered these abilities, which were often the main reason to play the cards that have them. Stun counters ensure that these abilities accrue at least some value, even if it's just wasting a single trigger from an opposing card. Stun counters are a significant improvement over the hoops previous cards had to leap through to fully realize this design space. I do hope to obtain some high quality custom dice to more clearly signify stun counters in the future, but it's less of an emergent need than something like shield or ability counters.
Stun Counters Grade: A
Stun Counters Grade in Cube: A
Support N is a keyword action introduced in Oath of the Gatewatch to represent the allied forces in their fight against the Eldrazi Titans. Whenever a player supports N, they put a +1/+1 counter on each of up to N target creatures. Creatures with support cannot target themselves with this ability, regardless of how many other creatures you control. Likewise, each creature that is supported can only gain a single +1/+1 counter, which means that some support triggers will resolve without each +1/+1 counter being placed on a creature.
Support is an obvious payoff for go wide strategies in while serving as a simultaneous enabler for +1/+1 counters synergies. Despite these upsides, it's also a bit of a win more mechanic, since it's not actually able to do anything unless you have multiple creatures in play. This restriction makes it almost impossible to put it on two and three mana creatures and expect to profit from it consistently. Likewise, anything above support 2 is unlikely to reach full value because of how difficult it can be to accrue that many creatures. You'd also want your +1/+1 counters to be the difference between a profitable attack and/or block being made, which also won't always be the case. This makes it difficult to justify playing cards like Lead by Example and Unity of Purpose, that need support to function optimally to justify their inclusion. Support has a reasonably high ceiling that allows it to function as both a synergy payoff and enabler, but its average case scenario is dragged down by its extremely low floor.
Support is not a poorly designed mechanic, it just has a limit on how powerful and consistent it can be. While this makes it a functional yet forgettable mechanic for retail limited, it makes it really difficult to break into cube. They synergy upside is enough to interest some decks, but it would need to be as part of a card that's providing some other kind of guaranteed, immediate value.
Support Grade: C+
Support Grade in Cube: D+
Threshold is a deciduous ability word introduced in Odyssey that provides upside once you have seven or more cards in your graveyard. Threshold can provide one time effects that check the number of cards in your graveyard at the time of resolution, or ongoing effects that monitor constantly. If you fall beneath seven cards while one of these effects or cards are on the stack or in play, respectively, the threshold ability will no longer apply. Interestingly, activated and triggered abilities check for threshold at activation, and will resolve as intended regardless of how many cards remain in your graveyard during resolution.
These slight differences in how threshold is handled within the rules contribute to its somewhat sneaky level of complexity. While counting cards in your graveyard sounds very simple, it's actually more difficult to track than it may appear at first glance. For whatever reason, it's very difficult to commit a player's threshold count to memory, resulting in continuous back and forth questions. I've taken to placing a die in front of my graveyard when threshold is relevant, which has helped to some extent. But the constant threat of cards being added to the graveyard through instant speed effects and mill makes it very difficult to strategize against it from turn to turn. This becomes more frustrating at higher densities of effect, as more permanents have on board abilities that may or may not be active on any given turn.
Leveraging the different methods of filling your graveyard allows for a lot of design freedom between sets, making each iterance of threshold feel somewhat unique in its own environment. One archetype or set can rely on self-mill, another on surveil, and yet another can focus on filling the graveyard through attrition for benefits focused on the late game. Thoughtfully limiting both the enablers to, and the payoffs for. threshold is key to making the mechanic more palatable in retail limited. There's a bit more freedom in cube, which is already rife with different ways to interact with the graveyard, allowing you to simply play those threshold cards that provide the best gameplay experience and opportunities for synergy. The complexity is somewhat subdued with only one or two instances of threshold in the cube, as you don't really need to worry about having multiple cards in play simultaneously that all interact differently within the rules.
Regardless of how or where you are considering threshold, you need to make sure that it's even possible to accrue seven cards in your graveyard. This is enough cards that you cannot expect to do so within the first couple turns of the game, even with dedicated support. This makes it difficult for cards like Werebear to benefit on curve. Instead, these cards need to retain relevancy in the early game until you achieve threshold. Leaning into designs like this helps make these cards feel relevant throughout a game, instead of basically only being rewarded for drawing them off curve. Threshold is a complicated mechanic both structurally and within the rules, it demands a lot of an environment to support it and can be frustrating for players who are unfamiliar with it. However, it lends itself to interesting designs and can enhance an environment with its presence when handled thoughtfully. I'd be interested to see how threshold would function with variable scaling (Threshold N), as has been suggested in the past.
Threshold Grade: D+
Threshold Grade in Cube: C-
Trample is an evergreen creature keyword ability first introduced in Alpha. If a creature with trample is blocked and deals lethal damage to all creatures blocking it, the remaining combat damage is dealt to the defending player. This is actually quite complicated once you introduce additional keywords such as deathtouch, indestructible, etc. Since any damage from a source with deathtouch is considered lethal, a creature with deathtouch and trample only needs to deal 1 damage to each creature blocking it, with the rest trampling over. However, if a creature with indestructible or protection is blocking a creature with trample, damage is handled normally, even though any amount of damage would not be lethal to the blocking creature. Trample has been around so long that it's easy to dismiss how complicated it actually is mechanically, as it's frequently a source of confusion for newer players.
Trample normally appears on large, expensive creatures, and/or those with a greater power than toughness. In either case, it makes it difficult for a defending player to profitably stabilize behind smaller creatures, particularly tokens. Creatures with trample deal chip damage in the early-to-mid game and outright break board stalls in the late game, providing terminal momentum in the process. This makes it a very good ability to be able to grant as part of equipment or combat tricks, as it messes with combat math and pressures your opponent into blocks that would otherwise never be made. It's also an important part of balancing a format, enabling designs like Pygmy Razorback and Viashino Grappler that would be unplayable in formats with a preponderance of 1 toughness creatures.
Because of the token heavy nature of cube, it's basically a necessity for creature decks to have a way to attack through chump blockers. While , , 
, and have some combination of flying and menace to interact with these board states favorably, relies on trample as a way to push damage and pressure an opponent's life total. Without trample, it would be difficult to justify paying more mana for larger creatures that are staved off turn after turn by creatures that your opponent can afford to lose in combat. Trample is a significant factor in Primeval Titan, Workshop Warchief, and Vorinclex being as powerful and efficient as they are, and it would be much more difficult to support based creature decks without it.
Trample Grade: B+
Trample Grade in Cube: A-
First introduced in Innistrad to represent werewolves, Transforming Double-Faced Cards (TDFCs) are a type of DFC that are able to transform from front side to back side (and potentially back to front again). Unlike MDFCs, these cards are always cast on the front side and have some sort of trigger that transforms them. Since their inception, TDFCs have expanded to incorporate new mechanics like disturb, craft, and battles, displaying a wide array of available design space. Like all DFCs, TDFCs require use of either opaque card sleeves or helper cards that you put in your deck until you play the actual card. Regardless of which you prefer, these require manual manipulation in excess of what would normally be required. In one case you need to constantly remove the card from its sleeve to transform it, and in the other you need to keep a secondary sideboard of unsleeved DFCs that you can put into play as needed.
DFCs can be an exercise in frustration, as players continually forget what is on the other side of the card. Sometimes, players forget to return a DFC to its front side after a game. This results in them either having to remove the card from the sleeve to verify what it does, or risk remembering incorrectly. It even complicates the drafting process, as players essentially have to reveal their DFC to every player at the table when they open it. While this is the same for every player at the table, there's a big difference between revealing Gatstaf Shepherd and revealing Bloodline Keeper when it comes to information. Regardless of the circumstance, being unable to have view of the full card at all times is a competitive disadvantage. TDFCs are less onerous than MDFCs since you always cast their front side, but the margins are negligible.
The main drawing point of TDFCs is their ability to communicate flavor and tell a story. Whether it's telling the story of a man whose experiments affected his own physiology, or the story of a little girl possessed by a demon, they are able to convey more information than a single faced card. They can also create larger than life effects that provide depth to a character's psychology. These cards can be exciting to play with, as they create a sense of anticipation and dread, as both players know what can happen if the right conditions are met. This tension is undoubtedly fun, so long as the comprehension complexity is within reason. Players should be more worried about a card transforming than they are worried about what that transformation does. If players are asking to read the back of a TDFC multiple times, the complexity is likely too high, an issue that these cards run into nearly every time they are introduced.
This complexity concern is of a much greater significance in cube, where players are already unfamiliar with a vast majority of a cube's list of cards. Players nearly always have to remove a TDFC from its sleeve to read both sides, and are always frustrated when they do. This is slightly complicated by the fact that my cube is double sleeved, as they are not the easiest cards to resleeve if you are unfamiliar with doing it. This has led me to exclude TDFCs unless they are providing something truly unique and special to the environment. If there is a card that can provide comparable value that isn't a DFC, I'm going to play that instead. Likewise, if a DFC is a borderline playable card or role player, I'm simply not going to play it to avoid these frustrations.
Transforming Double-Faced Cards Grade: C-
Transforming Double-Faced Cards Grade in Cube: D
Gold and Treasure tokens are predefined token types introduced in Born of the Gods and Ixalan, respectively. While both tokens can be sacrificed to create one mana of any color, Treasure tokens must be tapped in addition to that cost. While this doesn't have much mechanical relevance, there are some corner cases where Gold is functionally different. Notably, Treasure tokens allow for more design space since you can have effects that create tapped Treasure tokens as a way to balance power level, something you cannot do with Gold tokens. Regardless, these tokens can be leveraged for mana fixing, acceleration, or both depending on what stage of the game they are created.
In addition to being wonderfully flavorful, Treasure and Gold tokens serve as legitimately exciting upsides when attached to otherwise mediocre cards. Between the various mana sinks, ways to draw cards, and how bad mana bases typically are in retail limited, it takes much longer than expected for players to run out of ways to use these tokens. Since they are also artifacts, they provide cross synergies in sets where either artifacts or sacrificing permanents matter mechanically. These advantages are shared between retail limited and cube, as consistency and synergy are appreciated regardless of the format.
Between the nearly identical flavor, and the mechanical flexibility provided by Treasure, I don't see much need for Gold tokens in future sets. They certainly feel like a rough draft of a concept that Treasure improved upon, and having both is somewhat confusing considering how similar they are. While I wouldn't go so far as to exclude Gold tokens from my cube on principle, I would certainly prefer that any cards that created them just made Treasure tokens instead.
Gold Tokens Grade: B+
Gold Tokens Grade in Cube: B+
Treasure Tokens Grade: A
Treasure Tokens Grade in Cube: A
Totem Armor is a keyword ability on creature enchantment auras originally introduced in Rise of the Eldrazi that has since been renamed Umbra Armor for its return in Modern Horizons 3. If a creature with umbra armor would be destroyed, instead remove all damage from it and destroy the aura providing umbra armor. If a creature is enchanted by multiple auras that are granting umbra armor when it dies, you choose one of them to be destroyed. Because umbra armor only protects a creature from being destroyed, it will not affect a creature that is sacrificed, bounced, or exiled. Umbra armor typically depicts a creature being enshrouded by a protective guardian spirit, and grants some sort of thematic bonus in addition to its protective barrier. While umbra armor has almost exclusively appeared on creature auras so far, it can technically be made to enchant other permanent types as well.
One of the main risks associated with playing creature auras is that it provides your opponent with an opportunity for a two for one. Whether you are getting blown out in response to casting it or simply because your creature eventually traded with something else, you're putting equity into accruing more value over the course of the time that the package remains in play. A resolved umbra armor flips that equation, and puts the onus on your opponent to figure out how to avoid losing card advantage. This puts an even greater importance on being cautious about playing into open mana, as having your creature killed in response wastes the main advantage and interplay of the mechanic. It's still high risk, high reward, but the opportunity to come out ahead is much closer to parity. There is a bit of zero-sum gameplay associated with this, as one player always comes out decidedly ahead. Part of this is psychological, as players may not be willing to treat a Doom Blade as a Demystify, or trade a creature for an aura, even if it's the correct play at the time. That said, I like that it's promoting an aspect of the game that is typically weak, instead of leaning into something that is already powerful. This helps makes formats feel unique and infinitely more replayable.
While the unique play patterns would be appreciated in cube, the preponderance of cheap interaction that exiles, bounces, and in other ways interrupts umbra armor limit how effective it can be. , , and {B] have plenty of ways to deal with these creatures without losing card advantage, and I don't like the idea of specifically punishing and for being unable to. I'm a big fan of cards like Eel Umbra and Dog Umbra because they can be treated as combat tricks, but I would largely avoid the auras with more linear play patterns.
Umbra Armor (Totem Armor) Grade: B-
Umbra Armor (Totem Armor) Grade in Cube: D+
Undergrowth is an ability word introduced in Guilds of Ravnica as the keystone mechanic for the Golgari Swarm. Undergrowth can appear on any permanent type and provides a scalable bonus based on the number of creature cards in your graveyard. The number of creature cards is counted as the associated ability resolves, which gives your opponent a chance to respond by exiling something in response if they are able to. Every undergrowth ability is tied to either an enters the battlefield or on cast trigger. This prevents players from having to track graveyards throughout every single phase of every single turn, like they have to with threshold. It also provides consistency across the various cards with the mechanic, allowing for reduced comprehension complexity and mental load.
As a scalable ability, undergrowth naturally provides little value in the developing turns, and gets progressively better as the game goes on. As long as you are playing a lot of creatures in your deck, and have ways to put them into your graveyard, undergrowth should function as expected. The real power comes with how the mechanic is balanced within an environment. Guilds of Ravnica lacked ways to fill your graveyard quickly and had payoffs that required a lot of creatures to be relevant. It was also a poor fit in a format that promoted a lot of proactive strategies and featured a Tier 1 Dimir archetype that cannibalized all of the good cards. This led to undergrowth getting a slightly worse reputation than I think it deserves. That said, counting the creatures in your graveyard isn't very exciting and does require a lot of repetitive actions, making it only marginally better than threshold in that respect.
While undergrowth is less complex than threshold, it also requires a much more specific style of deck, as you are extremely limited as to how many noncreature spells you can play. Finding creatures that provide noncreature effects should be placed at a premium, as it allows you to interact without making undergrowth weaker. While this describes many of the creatures in cube, it doesn't match the play patterns of the format. Graveyard decks in cube typically care about putting certain cards in the graveyard because they have recursive properties and look to spend the others as currency towards effects like delve and collect evidence. That's one of the reasons that delirium has been as difficult to support as it has been historically. The window of opportunity to profit from undergrowth is much smaller in cube than it is in retail limited, where many of your creatures are either interchangeable or have no inherent synergy with being in the graveyard.
Undergrowth Grade: C-
Undergrowth Grade in Cube: D-
Unearth is a keyword ability on permanents introduced in Shards of Alara as the keystone mechanic for the Grixis shard. Unearth is an activated ability that can only be activated at sorcery speed when the permanent with the ability is in the graveyard. When the unearth cost is paid, the permanent is returned to play, it gains haste, and it is exiled at the beginning of the next end step or if it would leave play. Ensuring that permanents are exiled after being unearthed prevents degenerative interactions and repetitive game play loops experienced by players repeatedly unearthing the same card. While primarily seen on creatures, unearth has also been seen on noncreature permanents.
Like flashback, unearth requires both players to pay attention to the contents of each player's graveyard. While flashback rarely leads to misplays, unearth needs to be taken into account when determining which creatures to attack and block with every single turn. Not doing so will provide your opponent an opportunity to not only make a free attack, but potentially trigger a beneficial effect in the process. Monitoring this is not confusing, but it does add to a player's ongoing mental load, especially when they remain in the graveyard over the course of several turns. While players can set aside cards that have unearth for easy reference, it would be a competitive disadvantage to do so, and is therefore unlikely to happen.
As a graveyard based mechanic, unearth has obvious synergy with mill, discard, and sacrifice effects. Basically any cost that has the potential to put a creature in your graveyard, can be made better by playing with unearth creatures. Despite this, unearth is actually at its most powerful when you force your opponents to grind through multiple iterations of your creatures. Hard casting creatures on curve and unearthing later in the game forces your opponent to commit more resources to protect their life total. Since your opponent is strongly dissuaded from trading an actual creature for your unearthed one, it's very easy to force through chip damage throughout a game. This inevitability is most easily leveraged by proactive decks that are designed to pressure an opponent's life total. Alternatively, unearth can act as a pseudo-flashback to gain access to key triggered or activated abilities.
Doubling up on useful abilities and synergies in a way that breaks symmetry is even more important in cube. This allows you to make efficient use of all aspects of your card, which lines up better with the more objectively powerful cards you may be facing. The bar for inclusion is obviously quite a bit higher for cube than retail limited, where nearly every unearth card would be considered playable. However, having so much inherent synergy makes it a good fit in the format. They just need to be cards that you would be happy to play on curve and unearth, not one or the other.
Unearth Grade: A-
Unearth Grade in Cube: B+
Encore is a multiplayer variant of unearth first printed in Commander Legends. When an encore cost of a permanent is paid at sorcery speed, the permanent is exiled and a copy of it is created for each opponent. All copies then gain haste, attack a different opponent if able, and are exiled at the beginning of the next end step or if they would leave play. Whereas a card with unearth can be exiled in response to its ability being activated, the same does not hold true for encore, since exiling the card is part of the cost of activating the ability. In a two player game, encore will always make a single token, which more closely mirrors its predecessor, unearth.
I've spoken before about how much I loathe Commander, and multiplayer games in general. While politicking is a significant part of this, games dragging on far too long is just as frustrating. Encore takes the choice out of the hands of players who may be nervous about being aggressive by forcing them to attack with their token copies. This propels a game towards an actual conclusion while allowing them to profit from any associated activated or triggered abilities in the process. This is less of a criticality in cube, as players are going to be more naturally inclined to attack their opponent since they have an easier grasp on life totals and board states. Regardless, since the tokens are transient, forcing them to attack is good design, as there is absolutely no reason not to attack with them. Exiling the creature and making a copy of it, instead of merely returning it to play for the turn, is more messy when you're only making a single copy, but I do like that players can't exile it from your graveyard in response to the ability. While it didn't come up very often, it felt very awkward when it happened since it did not feel like an intended consequence of unearth.
Encore has the potential to be a splashy mechanic that creates memorable moments, at least in multiplayer. In cube, players are going to read the rules text, imagine the possibilities, and then realize that the mechanic just doesn't work as intended in that format. This is disappointing, even if it doesn't render the mechanic unusable. The encore costs scaling with the multiplayer possibilities also reduces the amount of value designs that could be made like Scrapwork Mutt and Hellspark Elemental, since they wouldn't be balanced with multiple opponents. Since it shares the same synergies and gameplay patterns as unearth, it's still going to be a net positive for cube play, I'm just a little less exuberant about its prospects.
Encore Grade: B+
Encore Grade in Cube: C
Fading N is a keyword ability introduced in Nemesis to represent transient permanents that faded away over time. A permanent with fading N enters play with N fade counters on it. At the beginning of your upkeep, you remove one fade counter from that permanent. Once you are no longer able to remove a counter, the permanent is sacrificed. Vanishing N is also a keyword ability introduced in Planar Chaos as an alternate form of fading. A permanent with vanishing N enters play with N time counters on it. At the beginning of your upkeep, you remove one time counter from that permanent. Once the last counter is removed, the permanent is sacrificed. Fade and time counters serve no mechanical purpose other than to track how many turns remain before you have to sacrifice your permanent.
Knowing that these permanents will only remain in play for a set number of turns affects both players differently. As the controller, you are incentivized to squeeze every ounce of value out of these permanents while they remain in play. This often means being aggressive with creatures by openly offering trades in combat to maximize damage dealt to your opponent. Alternatively, your opponent is severely disincentivized to spend resources dealing with threats that they know will go away on their own. What makes this interesting is that the time limit set on these permanents allows for designs that push the boundaries of accepted power levels. This creates interesting decisions for both players as they try to navigate these key turns. There are also more unique designs that use fade and time counters as a resource to provide additional upside. Both mechanics have powerful synergies with blink and proliferate, since resetting the number of counters on these permanents buys you extra turns to take advantage of your above rate effects. Collectively, they're interesting and skill testing mechanics to play with and against, whether they are serving as an archetypal payoff or merely above rate effects within an environment.
Despite these positives, I find fading and vanishing to be among the more frustrating mechanics ever printed in Magic's history. Vanishing was only designed because players found it unintuitive that permanents were sacrificed the turn after the final fade counter was removed. This also allowed them to change the type of counter to the more ubiquitously used and flavorful time counter. While I agree with both of these concerns, designing vanishing only created more issues for players who were already aware of fading. Now, there are two nearly identical mechanics, both flavorfully and mechanically, that only differ in one slight way, making it very difficult to remember when players are supposed to sacrifice their permanent. This results in players picking up and reading the rules text constantly. I still see people misplay too, thinking that they had an extra turn before they were forced to sacrifice, or realizing a turn later that they were supposed to have already done so the turn before.
Fading and vanishing have a solid foundational design concept that has lent itself to interesting designs and play patterns. They're just so difficult to differentiate from each other, making them nearly impossible to commit to memory. If fading had been a more clean and intuitive design when originally printed, I think it would have been remembered more fondly. I want to give credit to vanishing for being a more functional iteration of this core design. I just can't bring myself to actually play with either mechanic, as they've only muddied the waters for each other.
Fading Grade: D
Fading Grade in Cube: F
Vanishing Grade: D+
Vanishing Grade in Cube: F
Vehicles are noncreature artifacts first introduced in Kaladesh (now known as Avishkar). Most vehicles have a crew cost (Crew N) that can be paid by tapping any number of creatures you control with at least N combined power. Some vehicles have alternate crew costs that can be paid according to their own requirements. When crewed, the vehicle becomes an artifact creature until end of turn, utilizing the power, toughness, and any relevant creature keywords and abilities printed on the card. Because crewing a vehicle is a cost tied to the vehicle itself, even creatures with summoning sickness can be tapped for this purpose. Unlike saddling mounts, crewing a vehicle can be done at any time, allowing you to attack or block with your vehicles.
One of the biggest costs of playing equipment in your deck is the risk of drawing your equipment without any creatures in play, as the cards are effectively worthless without anything to equip. Vehicles are even more demanding, as you not only need creatures and vehicles in play simultaneously, but you need creatures with enough power to collectively crew whatever vehicle you happen to have in play. Furthermore, your vehicle needs to provide enough value to justify removing the creature(s) crewing it from combat. Playing Futurist Sentinel onto a board where your only creatures are Pelakka Wurm and Thraben Inspector isn't going to be very helpful, since you don't want to remove Pelakka Wurm from combat, and Thraben Inspector doesn't have enough power to crew Futurist Sentinel on its own. Likewise, you can crew Fell Flagship by tapping two Azure Drake, but you are dealing less damage and conceding evasion in the process. This doesn't even take into account board states where you want to both attack and block, something you cannot do when controlling one creature and one vehicle.
Historically, these factors have resulted in vehicles with a crew cost >2 being difficult to justify in both retail limited and cube. Crew 1 has been both consistent and powerful, because you can leverage basically any miscellaneous creature token you have in play, and it's essentially guaranteed to be upgraded in combat. Crew 2 has been playable, but does have some awkward moments from a cost-value perspective, and you run into some awkward board states. Regardless of the circumstance, you want to avoid crewing with multiple creatures if at all possible. Doing so puts too much equity in a single vehicle, putting you at risk of being blown out by a removal spell, or being raced by an opponent who is able to leave a key blocker on defense.
When optimized, vehicles can be a very efficient, and potentially frustrating, way to press or create an advantage. Since they are only creatures the turn you crew them, they cannot be killed by sorcery speed removal unless you are using them to block. And since the threat of activation is often enough to dissuade attacking into them, they don't always need to be crewed to affect combat. Vehicles are able to make immediate use of newly cast creatures, they upgrade creatures that no longer have functional attacks or blocks, and they increase your artifact count for decks with relevant synergies. The best vehicles have variable game play that allows your opponent to affect your sequencing with interaction without shutting them down completely. The worst are either too inefficient and resource hungry to reliably provide value, or they are so efficient that they lend themselves to repetition and prescriptive game play. Fortunately, they have enough design space and developmental levers that they feel appropriate for both retail limited and cube.
Vehicles are one of the more successful mechanical implementations on a flavorful concept in recent memory. Flavor implications of shoving Blightsteel Colossus into a Sky Skiff aside, vehicles have strong thematic resonance. I do wish vehicles were more visually distinct though, as I have trouble differentiating Renegade Freighter, Getaway Car, and High-Speed Hoverbike, even though they are objectively different styles of transport. This results in a lot of card reading in formats with a higher density of vehicles, which is a little frustrating for a mechanic that already has a lot of strategic complexity to it.
Vehicles and Crew Grade: B
Vehicles and Crew Grade in Cube: C+
Vigilance is an evergreen creature keyword ability first introduced mechanically in Alpha and officially keyworded in Champions of Kamigawa. Attacking does not cause creatures with vigilance to tap, allowing them to attack on your turn and block on your opponent's. They can then tap to activate abilities, crew vehicles, saddle mounts, convoke spells, or tap towards any other costs you may have.
The ability to play offense and defense while providing synergistic utility is deceptively powerful, as it allows players to effectively race an opponent with fewer creatures on board. Vigilance tends to be much stronger in mid-range decks, as it allows them to chip away at an opponent's life total while stabilizing against more aggressive opponents. Aggro decks often aren't interested in blocking anyway, even if their creatures are capable of doing so. It's just so rarely worth losing board presence to protect your life total when you have your opponent on a quicker clock. It's also better on creatures whose toughness exceeds their power. This allows them more survivability when attacking and blocking, as opposed to creatures like Brushstrider, which essentially offer a trade every single combat. Functionally, this limits cards like Brushstrider to aggressive decks, while granting creatures like Griffin Sentinel more general playability.
One of the more interesting aspects of creature combat is determining whether you want a creature to attack or block. It requires you to read a board, compare life totals, identify which player is the aggressor, and assign creatures accordingly. It's actually one of the more skill testing aspects of the game, especially on more clogged boards. Vigilance does dilute this strategy to a certain extent, as players no longer need to concede anything by choosing to attack. It's for this reason that vigilance creates the best game play in smaller doses, as opposed to being something every creature in your deck has. This extends to cube as well, as the interplay between attackers, blockers, and racing needs to maintain the desired equilibrium. Nevertheless, it's very appreciated in smaller doses, as it allows players to interact in both phases of combat even when they don't draw as many creatures as desired.
Vigilance Grade: C+
Vigilance Grade in Cube: C+
Wastes are an untyped basic land introduced in Oath of the Gatewatch as a way to represent the path of destruction left behind by the Eldrazi titans and their spawn. Wastes come into play untapped and tap for colorless mana. As they do not have a basic land type, wastes will not contribute to your domain count and they cannot be affected by cards and effects that reference basic land types. They can, however, be tutored for, and they cannot be affected by cards and effects that target nonbasic lands.
Nonbasic lands that tap for colorless mana are nothing new in limited. Aether Hub, Bant Panorama, Blasted Landscape, Blighted Steppe, and Bountiful Landscape are all nonbasic lands that enter play untapped and create colorless mana in addition to providing some other mechanical upside. This additional upside is crucial to these cards being even remotely playable in retail limited, as every colorless land you add to your deck reduces the amount of colored mana you can generate. This leads to more mulligans, mana screw, and non-games in general. In Oath of the Gatewatch and Modern Horizons 3, wastes were leveraged as a way to cast and activate Eldrazi spells and abilities that require colorless mana in their costs. Despite this, nearly every other way to generate colorless mana in the set would be more desirable than actually wasting a draft pick and a deck slot on one of these lands. I discussed the issues associated with drafting and playing with snow basic lands earlier, but at least those lands created colored mana, making them eminently more playable if you were able to draft one in your actual colors. After all, even if you have colorless payoffs, the vast majority of your deck will need colored mana to function.
Wastes capitalize on an extremely niche strategy by utilizing extremely narrow design space, and they aren't even powerful in that capacity. They have always felt like more of a way to add thematic resonance to a card file than actively support a particular strategy. There's real value in that while trying to convey the themes of a set to your audience. In particular, it successfully presented the new colorless mana symbol to players that was featured as a key part of the limited environment. When introducing a new mana symbol to your audience, it makes sense that an associated basic land would be the way to do it. Power level and design are two very different things, and Wastes do an excellent job of highlighting these differences. As such, they're able to serve an important role in their limited environment without ever being put into a deck. I don't currently play any cards that require colorless mana to function in my cube, but I certainly wouldn't include Wastes as a way to enable them if I was.
Wastes Grade: C+
Wastes Grade in Cube: F
Phew, that was exhausting! Well, we've now discussed every single mechanic in Modern Horizons 3...and that sure was a decision that I made. It definitely took longer than I had originally anticipated, as I'm now behind by quite a few sets. Nevertheless, I've found it rewarding and it's put a huge dent in the legacy mechanics that I'll need to cover if I want to complete my goal of grading every mechanic in Magic's history. Now that this is done, I'm excited to get back to discussing the actual changelog again. That means my next article will be covering the actual cards contained within Modern Horizons 3, as I now try to crawl my way back towards the current release schedule. Until then, may all your packs contain a card for your cube!