making way for more synergy cards. trollbred coming in for iwamori who isn't bad but isn't synergystic. howling giant can end the game with flicker and is also good against kill spells and resistant against blockers like plated crusher. temur sabertooth is obviously awesome and blastoderm, while great, is also not synergystic. syr faren is awesome with counters and kessig prowler is pretty meh. song of freyalise comes in for the mdfc which is alright but pretty meh compared to the red mdfc which can just end the game or kill a creature. mulch coming in for explore to fill a similar slot but supports self mill and reanimator
i want more interactivity and more synergy in the cube hence the adds. hard evidence is marginal. narset is okay but a lot better in higher power cubes. capsize was the hardest cut but the years have not been nice to it. ghostly flicker can do the same combo but for half the mana, although I will admit flicker is more difficult to assemble than just drawing 12 lands. but that's the thing, games rarely last that long without someone closing the deal. capsize was amazing like 20 years ago and cards are a lot better now, and it's getting the cut. at least it still has a home in pauper cube
when i think about it in the future, I may or may not remember this moment, but I think this might be where I go from a goodstuff cube to a synergy cube.
nekrataal and gravecaller have cousins at the same cmc and are getting replaced by a couple options to hopefully enable some spicy synergy options. whisper ties sacrifice to reanimation, alongside victimize, so hopefully that can be a blue black reanimator deck or something. crypt rats gets cut for incremental blight because you can actually cast it before dying. elspeth's nightmare gets cut for wrench mind because we have enough kill effects and the yard wipe feels pretty marginal in practice.
I want to push down the cmc of white a bit so these 4 drops gotta go. the warden is getting replaced with the hunter because you can do the mesmeric fiend trick with ghostly flicker. and topan seems marginal. the other three cards added are two drops that play well with others.
replacing a few red cards with some stuff that is hopefully a bit better. 1 toughness creatures are a hard sell in this format so rage hound goes. same with denizen. act of treason already has two brothers. thermo alchemist is basically strictly worse than the field. and curse is good and all but I figure something a little more interactive would be better. we will see if smoldering werewolf is good enough to stick around.
ruin crab already has a better twin and I'm not a huge fan of doubling up on semi functional reprints in cube
adding some stuff to support blue aggressive strats in anticipation of a fliers theme in azorious. Frost Trickster's effect unfortunately is significantly worse than a bounce effect in my opinion. Spiketail Hatchling seems bad in a format where you can just play an offer you can't refuse if your intention is to inhibit a wrath. wall of frost lost pestilence which was the only thing keeping it off the chopping block.
too many changes to list each one but mostly just moving in cards from newer sets. also added some help for +1/+1 counters in green and white. this was accomplished by taking out some middling white and green creatures and a lot of the two cmc mana dorks. there were just a lot of them and this will make the remaining stuff and the signets more valuable. lastly, added the thriving land cycle.
cutting selesnya to 10. these kind of warhammer effects aren't quite what they used to be and there are other options besides the pridemage in white and green. loch i had just sitting around and dimir happens to be short
despite what my small pile of shimmering grottos might imply I have not yet been able to find a place for it. probably because it's bad. hopefully the thriving lands are a bit better. i should probably throw out those grottos
I want to make way for some more gold slots. most of these cards see little play and feel pretty marginal and the others are mana rocks which i already have plenty of. izzet also needs to be cut to 10
finally picked up the copies i needed of this. took out a few kill spells just cause there are a lot. go nuts with your merfolk looter into ulamog's crusher on t3.
updating simic with a few cards that hopefully play more into the strat of going big
adding a few cards from the new kamigawa set. branching bolt > invigorating hot spring. branching bolt is alright but replacable and based on the gruul decks I have drafted I think hot spring is a better fit.
making way for better cards in the color pairs