Alright, guys, this set is a BANGER. There's a lot of stuff going on in this update- new testers, a few cards I've been holding off on, and some progress to ongoing changes with this cube.

Going out, we're seeing some cuts of cards like Balance, Persist, and Hymn to Tourach which are varyingly still here for reasons of "if I don't play this here, it goes back in a box". The last infinite combo leaves with Swift Recongifuration going out, and I'm pretty confident now that White has enough 1 and 2 mana removal that the colour won't significantly miss it. I'm also removing Urza's and Mishra's Baubles, as- while they are powerful and synergistic, they tend to be auto-picks over all other cards. Emrakul, the Aeons Torn also leaves now, replaced by a more castable counterpart that can still Breach pretty well.

Coming in to take their places are a collection of LOTR cards- something something Bowmasters- and a few Commander / multiplayer cards that I either slept on or couldn't get my hands on a copy. Notably, I slept HARD on Aerial Extortionist and Lethal Scheme, with both cards being prominent standouts.

There's more transitioning to do from here- I'm still eyeing Kaldra Compleat as an unbeatable T3 Tinker target- but the cube is really shaping up under the new philosophy, and I'm excited for future iterations.

Whoo, boy, this one is an update. A couple of old sacred cows are dying here, and a couple of cards I've struggled to get my hands on are coming in.

This update continues my ongoing efforts to figure out the identity of this cube. The cutting of Dimir Inverter removes the last vestige of "combo" from the environment, leaving behind a cube very focused on fair, interactive Magic. The addition of Battles gives even control decks a reason to consider attacking proactively or have blockers to protect them.

My next step will probably be killing the 0 mana cantrips, which- while powerful and popular- continue to irk me as colourless auto-picks that reduce the number of cards in your deck.

A few small tweaks. Finally got my hands on a Sheoldred, the Apocalypse, and I'm making some adjustments to push my Golgari section to be more about proactive threats than versatile removal. Banishing Light trades out for Planar Disrupion, since White control decks have recently gained both Prismatic Ending and Leyline Binding to help diversify their removal suites.

Yeah, straight-up forgot this guy in the Phyrexia update. Whoops.

Whooooo, big changes, big changes! In this update, I've trimmed down my colourless section to cull some big uncastable cards, pulled the Splinter Twin and Heliod combos in the name of balance and found room for a metric FUCKTON of new test cards.

I feel like the Splinter Twin combo in particular took up a lot of space while contributing very little to my desired play patterns for the cube, and I'm excited to see the newly-comboless GOAT Cube in action.

Two cards with "whenever you attack" triggers that I slept on heavily. In particular, I misread Adeline when she was first released and have- for over a year now- thought that she only triggered when SHE attacks. Wasn't until I played against it at a local Pioneer night that I realized.

Alright, this update has a lot of little ideas crystalizing in it about the overall direction of the cube. First of all, I'm continuing to look for ways to intergrate creature cheat into the cube in a way that feels fun, fair and interactable while still being powerful enough to be worth doing. The Prototype creatures from Brother's War are a great addition for this- castable at reasonable price points, but having multiple avenues to upgrade them to bigger, badder versions.

On that subject, I've been unhappy with the black reanimation suite for awhile. The deck would only rarely come together, and when it did, it would often create undesirable play patterns and cause one match to end long before the rest of the round. This update scales back reanimation spells to the best of the best and the targets to the most "castable" in an effort to re-focus reanimation as an aspect of a Black deck's gameplan rather than a gameplan in itself.

This update also marks the beginning of a "cleaning up" of the high-end threats in my colourless section. Cards like Karn Liberated and Emrakul, the Promised End- while fun, impactful and splashy- feel like relics of a bygone era where 7 mana was more than a fabled Magical Christmasland. Control decks aren't interested in grinding until turn 7 anymore, and ramp decks have equally impactful payoffs at 5 or 6 mana.

Small tweaks to the cube's landbase are being made, notably a modest effort to increase the density of creature lands in the cube. My goal is to ensure decks of every variety continue to have a diverse base of threats well into the late game, enabling decks to end in a timely fashion.

Admittedly, not a whole lot to talk about with this one. Just a few scattered tests and changes, furthering my goal of enabling a wider range of Green strategies and cleaning out a few vestiges of my unsuccessful Enchantress testing. Once Brother's War drops, I'm mulling over a small structural update- cutting one gold card per pair and adding 5 new mono-colour cards and 5 new colourless / land cards. The idea is that it would give mono-colour / 2 colour decks a bit more breathing room while still leaving 3+ colour decks around at a lower rate of occurrence, helping to promote overall deck diversity.

I continually feel like the GOAT Cube is moving infinitely close to a state of eventual perfection, and small updates like this are a big part of why.

Another month, another set! This update focuses primarily on new cards to test, as well as re-introducing a few cheap / free spells I've previously excluded. Over time, the cube has moved to lean heavily in favour of aggressive, creature-focused decks, and while that isn't a bad thing, my next few updates will focus on tweaking the balance a bit to help midrange and control thrive more easily. This will mean cutting back a bit on some of aggro's weaker redundancies, including one or two more cheap catch-up tools for various colours, and promoting more strong blockers to help keep up with the strong attackers.

Overall, the GOAT Cube is in an amazing place right now, and I look forward to continuing to develop it over time.