Two cards that unfortunately have aged out of this legacy environment. They will be moving to GTTXIV. Seems like the perfect place for them to shine!

(Huntmaster is still uncuttable and I think better than BBE nowadays)

I have been considering ABUR dual lands for about a year now. With the additions of surveil lands, the cube has gotten a little bit slower. Shocks previously were the only untapped fetch-able dual cycle, resulting in aggro players desiring mostly mono color decks. I am hoping the OG duals will:

1. Encourage players to splash powerful spells in their aggro decks and
2. Allow more curve-out-oriented, three-color midrange decks

Also, a few single card swaps ahead of Mid Michigan cube champs on 12/15. Enduring Curiosity joins the newest Uncuttable card as a christmas gift from my wife (and its a cat!).

Golf and Terminus have proven too strong. The black one drops have been too weak. Trying some new things!

Trying some things ahead of cube being back in my local area! Likely more updates to come. Foundations and Duskmourne feel closer to what I originally loved about magic than any other recent set. Probably cutting more UniBeyond & MH cards.

Cube will outlive magic etc etc

Cards from the new set, replacing some old cards that don't see a lot of play.

Also always trying to make green better; replacing Vernal Sovereign with Old One Eye (it will be on a tight leash).

Cutting cards that never see main decks to try some other stuff. Hogaak is tentative to see if it is playable.

• Fireblast: Community addition by Rich for 3-0ing our monthly tournament! Trigger Happy has proven very very good with Dark Depths and makes it harder to anticipate Marit Lage. Not gone forever but taking a break on it.

• Six: Green always feels underpowered and I think Six is the fix. Great card advantage and rewards lands synergies. Thrun has seemed unnecessary as the green decks prefer Carnage Tyrant.

• Valakut: Trying this out with Dryad of the Ilysian Grove for the big lands/ Prime Time decks. May even be good in big red.

• Cinder Glade: See above :)

After going to 540, I saw that the larger size did not actually change much in terms of replayability compared to 450. It actual made drafting more diluted, especially for 3v3 team drafts. Cutting some redundancy pieces, some overpowered cards, and some under-performers. Also cut a lot from the niche archetypes like Faeries and Artifacts. They still exist as synergy pieces, but only the generically powerful cards from each remains.

RIP to Digsite Engineer & Mistbind Clique. You will be missed.

Making a variety of changes to shift the balance of the cube. Many removed cards were antithetical to the intended goal/vibe of the environment; A mix of new and old that highlighted decision making in drafting, deck building, and gameplay.

• These lands made 3-4 color value piles too prevalent in drafting. This trend was exasperated when the surveil lands introduced 10 more typed-duals.
• Control decks especially began to spend all of pack 1 taking lands in order to just take the most powerful card of every pack. Resulted in confusing draft signals and dragged-out gameplay.
• I would rather lose some fetchables than remove any of the 20 fetchlands because the synergy’s with fetches are strong and fun.
• Slight concern for the green domain-aggro decks.

• A handful of cards that I was unimpressed with or felt the vibe was off.
• I wish Sentinel of the Nameless City did not have vigilance, makes it play slightly boring. Could see it going back in some day.
• Players felt that there was too many board wipes and that midrange match ups were determined by who could benefit off of one sooner. Cutting Damn, feels like the least iconic of the bunch and Horizons cards in general are stinky.
• Had to cut custom-no-flipping Graveyard Trespasser for CubeCon.

• Boros Charm and Showdown of the Skalds were added to give aggro more powerful rewards like other color combos.
• Rotting Regisaur and Cryptbreaker were added as rewards for drafting aggressive black synergy decks with Carrion Feeder, Gravecrawler, and Poxwalker.
• Even tho it is newer and played a lot in constructed, I am interested to see if anything comes from Crashing Footfalls. Has interesting combos with new Jace and Dreadhorde Arcanist. Can see cutting in near future.

More cube updates as mail comes in:

• Spelunker seems better in theory than branchwalker. Not as much power if played on turn 2, but scaling for the green decks is much appreciated.
• Warleaders call seemed cool but in the end never got drafted. The Boros aggro decks are too often mono- or - with just a splash of the second color with little room for this in the deck.
• Signal Pest had middling test results. Cutting to try Syr Ginger as I’ve heard good things of the card. However, expect a swap back if Ginger doesn’t pass vibe checks.

Another round of cutting fringe cards and trying to balance out colors.

• Players felt very strongly that there lacked obvious reasons to be in heavy-green ramp decks. Players also felt that Grixis colors were slowly out-powering the threats in green. Adding Carnage Tyrant and Thrun as beefy beaters that fight off the control decks. Thrun will be on heavy watch.

• It was also felt that if green wanted to be midrange, it need more ways to get aggressive quickly. Ulvenwald Oddity is getting back in to let players try to smash in with it on turn 3.

• Hypnotic Siren was just bad. I had dreams of it being an early sword holder with late game upside, but it never played well. Replacing its spot with Sheoldred's Edict (players have asked for it and I am a champion of the people). May get cut in the future for other edicts.

• Bloodsoaked Champion never got there for aggro decks, but Bloodghast may be better since it has free recursion with 2x fetchlands.

• Another response to blue control being too good is cutting down counterspells. Force of Negation is slightly stale so spicing things up with a Yorion. May pull control players into other, more exciting lanes (like giving them a reason to play defensive Blade Splicer, etc.)

• Slowly going to replace some painlands. UW down.

Oh mighty CubeCon organizers, please accept this offering. Name Sticker Goblins will die for my sins and be reborn in his natural state.

Removing some less exciting cards at the discretion of my drafters.

• Adding Fyndhorn Elves back because I felt like 7 elves was low for 540.
• Cathar Commando helps fight the recently added artifact packages and is better than Gather the Townsfolk.
• Trying Changeling Outcast which might get swapped for Nethergoyf soon. We will see if it does anything with equipment, humans, or faeries.
• I am not a fan of Hymn but my players always told me that they wished their wrench mind was always Hymn.

Bumping up the cube to 540. This size was my end goal, so now I am holding myself to cuts if I want to add different cards. Using the space to test out some stuff from OTJ, include some powerful cards, and flesh out some of my niche archetypes.

Artifacts is getting a lot of cheap cards and better payoffs. Previously only in aggro decks, the artifact theme now dips into blue with Tolarian Academy and Urza, Lord High Artificer. Still love for the battlebots with Signal Pest, Etched Champion, and Mox Opal.

Adding in Stifle - Phyrexian Dreadnought as a new combo. I like a lot of the "stifles" on their own, especially the white hatebirds.

Slickshot Show-Off was a slam dunk as soon as it was spoiled and inspired some of the combat tricks and domain cards to get added. Berserk is going to be sick for aggro decks.

Cuts made in this update are pretty self-explanatory. They were very underpowered compared to the rest of the cube. Ophiomancer is showing its age sadly. Trostani was deece but is very restrictive, which isn't good for the domain aggro decks.

• Lower the average deck curve
• Power up blue midrange decks
• Implement threats that create interesting game decisions
• Remove fluff/gimmicks

• Bolas's Citadel
  • There aren't any obvious combos with this card like storm or explore-lifegain. Mostly a trap card that didn't do much.
• Nicol Bolas
  • A card that was fine but control decks didn't need. They can accrue value other ways and mostly kill in combat. Also, historically, three and four color decks in my cube have been bad.
• Gift/Rights/Karmic Guide/
  • Combo cards that where too expensive to ever really pull off. The cube is also over 360 so often they are not worth the risk vs reward when drafting more efficient cards; the combo may not even be in the pool.

• A little cool for a while, but as a designer I didn't like that UR and RB were taking the big bombs away from green decks so they could use them with Chimera.

• Red used to be bad, so I weighed more cards to it to see how it would improve. It got way better and now I can cut the less palatable stuff for cooler stuff. Similar to Chimera, I didn't like that otherwise Mono-R decks started taking duals from people to activate this card.

• Constructs are cool, gnomes are less cool and less elegant. Not worth the extra book-keeping and double sided cards are cringe. I'm excited to see an explosive Venerated Loxodon deck come together.

• I tried it and it is not fun. Like other combos, it sucked when it didn't come together in its best form. Even when it did, it made some games randomly un-interactive and end on turn 4. Replacing it with a test of Stern Scolding; I really like Spell Snare in this cube so I'm hoping Scolding is as interesting.

• I've wanted to test Strangleroot Geist and someone told me at draft day that Hystrodon is still bad at 3-mana (╥﹏╥)

Unmentioned add ins are mostly tentative tests, seeing how I vibe with them.

Cutting a lot of newer and wordy cards for simpler text-boxes. Some cards also included on merit of being well known or iconic in cube.

Specific Notes:

• Trying Psychic Frog, very excited for it. Kaito is cool but not a fan of the ninja tokens.
• Joraga Treespeaker either leads to busted openers of 6-drops on turn three or is super underwhelming. Going to try a rampant growth effect via Into the North now that I am on snow basics. Also get Dark Depths which is a cool corner case for lands decks.
• Approach of the Second Sun was almost never fun.
• Same with Mercurial Spelldancer.
• Guardian of New Benalia is my most uncertain cut. Can see it going back in very soon, it's just wordy and enlist isn't the most known mechanic.
• I love hystrodon and just want somewhere to play it; Custom rule that it can be cast for . Hexdrinker is never fun when it pops off.

Marking more cards that have been on my mind for cuts. Cards do either too much or too little based on the goal of the cube (interactive, aggro/control/midrange axis).

Adding a new tag to go along with the tag I have for cards that may be too good or too bad. Uncuttable cards are cards that will always be in my cube for sentimental reasons; alters and gifts from my wife, mostly. At the end of the day, I will tune up or down the power level of the cube to ensure these tagged cards are playable(ish) <3