It is finally here, the big tribe change for green that I have been hinting about. This update changes the green tribe from Shamans to Warriors, and drags every other card that might have had association with shamans as well. This is more of an overall vision and aesthetic choice than a gameplay choice. I was fairly disappointed by the lack of choice that shamans provided the design space for the cube, so I shopped around for other class type creature types. Warriors was the obvious choice when I was deciding on this years ago, but I found the lack of mechanical variety that the creature type offered a problem. As a result, I put the swap on hold for a while. Now I feel confident that I can make the warriors creature type have a solid enough base to create a fleshed out archetype. The main benefit is a MUCH more solid set of multicolored cards flanking the warrior tribe, with all the cards being their respective types.

Design-space-wise, warriors are still somewhat limited like their shaman brethren. The representative legendary is mediocre, and some of the creatures feel like they are missing half a note mechanically, but they also have some unique things going for them. G/R warriors has a three card infinite combo to set them apart, and they represent a stompy/aggro strategy quite well. Time will tell if Warriors has what it take to play with the other four tribes of the Micro Tribal Cube.

The other small change was with the white tribe, humans. Most of this with making the tribe more representative of humans with some of the creature cards. Mangara was a wizard payoff that was somehow acting as the representative legendary creature for the human tribe? No, he had to go. Hero of Bladehold was also a good choice for replacement, as the tokens the card made weren't humans. I also removed the enchantment microtheme that was made up of the monowhite Human Wizard cards, as it didn't really show through very well. There still seems to be more work that I can do here, but I can leave the tinkering and fine-tuning for Humans for a later date.

I really feel happier about the overall design state that the change of Shamans to Warriors the cube now has. Hopefully, this results in a better draft experience for my players.

This is a moderate sized update adding most of the tribal cards printed in the last couple of years, along with doubling the number of non-basics in the cube. With less chaff, more of the cards will be played, making for a more diverse deck construction process. There is still the elephant in the room of whether to change the green tribe to warriors, as the tribal cohesiveness is better with warriors than with shamans. On top of that, there would be better miscibility between Humans/Warriors/Goblins, and less weird outliers like Sigarda. I'll likely make the change at some point barring Wizards introducing a new Class creature type archetype for Green. This change would require further research before I make the jump though, but most of my ducks are already set up for it.