Did a 2 person grid draft and an 8 person pod. One insight, which is not new but was reinforced, is that the interaction density is still a bit too low, meaning games can more easily sprawl, stall, and snowball. Another is that Green-White is maybe a bit too strong (it's undefeated match-wise across the last 5 times it was drafted), probably related to the former issue. I've been considering whether sweepers would be appropriate for this environment, and I think it's time to try them out. While they aren't as synergistic per se, they do unlock their own category of archetype (a more true control deck), and I think could paradoxically help with the game length issue.

Some notes on cuts:

• Sheltered by ghosts - probably a bit too strong especially in a lower removal density environment, also the lifelink could be problematic for game length reasons
• Windfall/narset - I had a deck with basically the perfect setup for these, and it was just a bit too inconsistent/durdley. Windfall is just not that exciting of a card in an environment when people are mostly going to have maybe 2-3 cards in hand most of the time, even when you have the payoffs.
• The Aesir Escape Valhalla - I really wish this card didn't also return itself to your hand, but it's just brutal to see it across the board in any kind of attrition situation, and it's still good even in tempo games.
• Fireblast/Livaan - I love the idea of livaan alongside free/reduced cost cards, but never really saw it come together, and running fireblast as a support card has turned out to be mostly too narrow. Fireblast is just a bit too all in of a card to really be taking up a removal slot in an environment that is already on the removal light side.
• Golden Egg/Prophetic Prism - Swapping these for candy trail and mindstone for slightly less durdley versions of these effects (they also felt a bit samey alongside lembas)

The adds are mostly in the category of either removal/sweeper or things that push the game towards a conclusion, like big evasive threats (eg feaster of fools, junk winder) or something like aether grid or cranial plating which converts piles of cardboard into death or stall-busting removal. Chatterstorm and patchwork beastie aim to push green a little bit away from the recently dominant themes. Plus now I get another card with patchwork in the name.

Also I accidentally left the gold/colorless swaps out of the initial post, so I'm gonna copy over the WUBRG changes from that update here:

Sheltered by Ghosts -> Spring-Loaded Sawblades
Envoy of the Ancestors -> Kirtar's Wrath
Favored Hoplite -> Decree of Justice
Rise from the Tides -> Aether Spellbomb
Narset, Parter of Veils -> Kenku Artificer
Windfall -> Deem Inferior
Solve the Equation -> Junk Winder
Tormod, the Desecrator -> Extinguish All Hope
Ovalchase Daredevil -> Feaster of Fools
Ruthless Sniper -> Night Clubber
Mask of Immolation -> Torch the Witness
Fireblast -> Slice and Dice
Anger -> Ghirapur Aether Grid
Livaan, Cultist of Tiamat -> Kami's Flare
Flameblade Adept -> Experimental Synthesizer
The Aesir Escape Valhalla -> Cankerbloom
Kami of Whispered Hopes -> Chatterstorm
Hero of Leina Tower -> Insidious Fungus
Stocking the Pantry -> Patchwork Beastie

Update for Foundations and (more significantly) Foundations Jumpstart. J25 has a lot of really interesting legends at uncommon, mostly supporting existing themes, but Dionus in particular inspired me to try fitting in a light elf theme. Ivora also provided the excuse I've been looking for to try out windfall alongside narset. Also, with the recent addition of the MDFC dual lands, I came across the Ghostly Flicker interaction where you can turn them from their land form into permanents, so flicker comes back in along with a couple more MDFC permanents. I might try fitting Flickerwisp back in for the same reason at some point.

Couple other minor things of note:

• Kreat provides more goblin support, which was enough to nudge me towards including Gleeful Demolition which is nice as a piece of interaction that goes well with goblin, artifact, sacrifice, and token themes.
• Centaur glade gets swapped out for the returning hometown hero (ran him for years and loved him) Duskwatch Recruiter, who can act as a wildnerness rec payoff while also functioning in just normal creature decks. The elf profusion also wants a creature-based mana sink - gotta have something to pump those priest of titania taps into.
• Disciple of Freyalise also fits the bill, while being an elf that works with Wirewood Symbiote and Ghostly Flicker.
• Tamiyo Meets the Story Circle does a lot here - more support for windfall/ivora/discard, artifact/tokens.

As far as some of the choices of cuts go, I've been trying to keep in mind the slot efficiency that I'm gaining with the MDFC duals, so I think I can afford to run a bit lower density of heroic/aura enablers in my color sections given the presence of Strength of the Harvest, Glasswing Grace, Stump Stomp, Revitalizing Repast, and Legion Leadership.

EDIT:
Forgot to include the multicolor swaps:
Psychatog -> Dreadwing Scavenger
Markov Purifier -> Fiendish Panda

Finally got a copy of Open the Armory and Solve the Equation, so did some trimming to fit those in. Hoping that some additional tutors will help some more specific build around strats come together more often, like colossus hammer or storm, while still functioning in other contexts.

The Aesir Escape Valhalla and Idol of Oblivion come in as potentially powerful payoffs for building your deck to enable them - they both play well off existing themes but in a unique way.

The biggest change from this round is including the full cycle of MH3 MDFC dual lands, which I squeezed in by replacing the thriving lands (not reducing untapped lands), and trimming a card from each color (always painful). I think they seem worth it given the goals of the cube, since they are very slot efficient - they can lend support to a variety of strategies (heroic/prowess, ramp, sharae/tap, auras/enchantments, etc) while upping the fixing quotient, synergizing with bouncelands, reducing screw/flood variance, increasing the proportion of your pool that you can play, etc. It's true that some of them are clearly better than others, but I'm not super concerned when the floor is a guildgate. I did give the sharpie treatment to the UR and WU ones to remove the distracting, irrelevant energy text.

Ok I guess WOE came out like a year ago, but it was hard to ignore how many cards from that set made it into this update. That's in large part due to the little Hatching Plans/The Princess Takes Flight bargain package that I'm trying out. I've already got artifact, enchantment, token, and sacrifice themes going on so it seems like it could be a good fit. Hatching Plans and TPTF are just super sweet payoffs, and the bargain cards fit nicely alongside the existing themes.

Also juicing up the goblin subtheme a bit with Sling-Gang Lieutenant and Gempalm Incinerator being payoffs that don't ask much of you but still pay you off pretty well for supporting them.

A few notes on some specific swaps:

• Sazacap's Brew -> Witch's Mark: In the discard/draw that works with heroic slot, witch's mark gets the nod for actually working properly with Zada. Also the enchantment token works well with the new bargain stuff, and the newly added Champion of the Flame.
• Sage of Lat-Nam -> Favorable Winds: Still not sure on the right artifact payoff cards, but the sage seems a bit lackluster when a lot of the artifacts in the cube already sac to draw. Winds makes it back in as another deckbuild vector.
• Skullport Merchant -> Dockside Chef: Kept finding myself wishing the merchant could sac any artifact rather than just treasures.
• Brainstorm -> Cloak of Feathers: Wanted a cantrip that also lent itself to ninja/prowess attacker strats. Cloak isn't necessarily the strongest of these effects, but I think it'll do the job and above all look great doing it.

On the note of cutting Brainstorm, this update involves letting the great axe fall on just about the last of the powermax holdovers, who've held on due to nostalgia, old school swag, and cope (fact or fiction is a synergy card because it puts cards in the graveyard, right?? murderous redcap isn't just a slam dunk nekrataal, it's... sacrifice and +1/+1 counter synergy right??). Reanimate leaves while Animate Dead stays, for now - I do kinda like the whimsy of having one somewhat hard to assemble, goofy 2 card infinite hanging around but maybe I'll get over it. Also, I've been meaning to get my hands on an Open the Armory and I think it's neat that you can fetch Animate Dead with that.

Small duskmourn update - there are several other cards from the set that I'm considering, but I'd like to see how some recent changes perform before swapping stuff out for them. The changes I did make here seemed more straightforward.

Swapping in more enchantment based targeting in white to pull heroic/enchantment double duty, and splitskin doll just hits several notes.

Arabella, and the wickerfolk seem like great fits that help expand their respective color pairs' possible identity suite.

Drowner nicely hits ETB, tapping, ninja enabling, flash, and removal density notes all at once.

In non duskmourn swaps, Bloodtithe I think helps diversify BR a bit away from pure sacrifice - it still works well with sac, but also hits artifact, madness/graveyard, and removal density. Mayhem devil is also just a bit of an obnoxious card.

Arcanist's owl is the best I can come up with at the moment for giving WU an artifacts signpost - not that it's a hugely supported theme but it is there and I like to have a multicolor card pointing that direction if possible. The owl also works well with white's enchantment theme, and with blink.

Cutting spider spawning and pyrokinesis for gameplay reasons. Spawning makes for drawn out games too easily, and pyro is I think just a bit too strong on tempo in this small creature heavy environment.

Filling out the artifact theme a bit more in blue especially. Slightly diversifying black with another lifegain payoff in Starscape Cleric, gray merchant as a gameplan plus some support in the form of a sac payoff that adds a minor typal wrinkle (zombies), and a flexible tutor. Also a very light typal tutor in Goblin Matron, who can fetch a lot of the neater goblins (squee, zada, toggo etc). Tarfire to further flesh that out.

Gleaming geardrake and markov purifier as more payoffs for the aforementioned artifacts and lifegain, hopefully they can be a bit signposty as well, and not in a misleading way.

Other misc:
Captain Ripley vance is a sweet prowess/storm type payoff that I've been wanting to try out.
Mask of Immolation as a slightly more theme overlapping sac outlet.
Colossal dreadmask as an additional ramp payoff and something else to do with Ardenn.

Small followup to the last round of changes - have been meaning to get an equipment package in here. Spices up boros, plays nicely alongside valiant/artifact/sac/etc themes. Even managed to get in a little colossus hammer combo, we'll see how that plays out. Also some nice art updates.

Cut vivids to expand the colorless section - feels like I have a lot of fixing anyhow and now that there's a fair amount of untapped fixing lands, the value of tapped ones has been going down I think.

Hulking metamorph added since I wanted another tinker target, and it's a nice blink/reanimation synergy card as well.

Also, generally a slight power down on the whole, with some heavy hitters leaving like lingering souls and whirler rogue. Tough cuts since they are theoretically synergistic across a few areas, but they're also just so strong on their own that the synergy almost feels like an afterthought.

Finally got a draft in with this version of the cube. Overall it went well, but it definitely tilted a bit too much in the grindy direction for my tastes. I enjoy a good grind as much as the next person, but I drafted GB food and between managing all the different triggers/abilities and the lifegain/recursion/draw loops prolonging the game, it felt like a bit of a slog to get through 3 matches. I do think there are already viable aggressive decks possible, and I don't want to eliminate the slower engine cards, but I want to try turning the dial a notch or two in the direction of speedier games on average. There was also a sense that I went just a bit too light on interaction, which meant that assembling these complicated game-extending machines was maybe a bit too unfettered. The upshot:

• More interaction, including removal and graveyard hate specifically
• Fewer durdley engine cards and lifegain payoffs - still a few lifegain holdouts, we'll see if they stay in long term, but I do still like the fact that they take advantage of the actual printed text on food tokens
• More aggressive synergy, such as the juiced up heroic/valiant package, an adjacent aura-centric enchantment theme, and a little bit of tapping-matters with sharae (see ya soulherder)

Still considering a few extra pieces for some of these new packages, but these are the swaps I could make with the cards on hand.

Ok one more little update before testing - getting white in on the artifact action a bit, and squeezing in a fun tinker package. Doing some shuffling around to expand the artifact section a bit to support those and the existing artifact stuff.

Ok I think this is the last big update that I do before I actually take these last few big changes for a real test drive. I just keep having those pesky ideas - the recent addition of the food theme got me thinking that it was time to try doing some light artifact support, specifically in the form of token/sacrifice oriented cards. So red and black both got a bunch of treasure/sac juice, and the artifact section got a revamp. The new proliferation of food got me thinking that it was time to actually try supporting lifegain a bit, so white got a bunch of that - I had also been thinking that the white power cards (swords, path, cloudgoat) needed a culling to bring it in line with the cuts I've been making elsewhere across the pie.

Adding picklock prankster reminded me that faerie tribal matters could be a thing since so many cards I was playing and considering were incidentally faeries. Spellstutter sprite seemed like a natural light payoff, and the rest here were all either in or under consideration before. Faeries have a nice natural synergy with ninjas and some other light themes. Had been considering switching some generically powerful counterspells to more synergistic cards and this seemed like a promising opportunity

Trying out a light food subtheme since it also has some nice notes of lifegain and artifact synergies to play around with. Decided that 2 card infinites weren't that exciting long term , which is a shame since I actually like all the pieces individually, but decided I wanted to keep Rosie Cotton, particularly because of the food addition, so needed to cut all the cards that went infinite with her, then decided ivy lane denizen wasn't that cool without them anyway.

Also continuing the de-nekrataalization process. Mine collapse helps support prowess/storm/livaan, and vengeful rebel seems like an acceptable amount of work to get a nekrataal that also works well with the other themes of sacrifice, food, blink, etc.

Lotta stuff going on in this update. Did a practice draft after the update from the prior week and ended up in WG +1/+1 counters and sideboarded like 5+ counter synergy cards, made me think I was going too hard to support it, so I wanted a bit more theme diversity. Been wanting to make wilderness reclamation work for a while, so it seemed like it could be a small enough package, but it also lead me down wanting to put bouncelands back in, and also wanting to support ramp more, and then I came across Crow Storm and wanted to make storm work and it happens that bouncelands and storm both work great with stuff like Cloud of Faeries, etc etc. Ended up also shaving down the gold section by a card apiece, and expanding the hybrid section.

Major synergy support and power cull - problematic faves, sacred cows, beloved pet cards put out to pasture. Cutting Ravenous Chupacabra last round of changes has unblocked some unknown number of my chakra gates and I'm severing my earthly bonds. Duskwatch recruiter, we loved you dearly.

Big synergy pushes include Graveyard, Madness, +1 counters, plus a smattering of some other little synergy nodes.

Adding in shocklands as another untapped dual cycle, increasing the total fixing land count to 40 (recovering and then some from swapping out bouncelands for thriving lands). Also swapping out the reveal lands for the remaining painlands.