Decided to swap in some new cute cards in place of some of the slower ones that were on the chopping block.

There were just too many 3 drops in the cube, as well as some cards (like Kari Zev's Expertise and Ignite the Beacon) that I had literally never seen cast. I think that even if some of the two drops that replace these three drops are weaker, it's better that the cards can get cast.

Jaya may be incentivizing players to run spell-slinger, which is the dominant deck in the cube as it stands, but Zariel was unfortunately never worth it (cool art tho).

Although I like Torens and Wayfaring Temple, especially in the Bant tokens deck, I'm excited for Ajani, Sleeper Agent. It sucks that its -3 is the +1 of Ajani Mentor of Heroes, but I think +1/+1 synergies are strong throughout the cube.

Upgrading counterspells, swapping out Supreme Verdict for Doomskar, and changing green fastlands out with fetch lands to support ramunap excavator (and solidify green as a solid 3+ base)

Bloodbraid Elf doesn't hit any gruul cards and I prefer Cab Revels with the updated text "Creature cards in your hand have cascade"

Blood Artist is cool but Meathook Massacre is more versatile and doesn't prolong the game as badly as Blood Artist (because you'll only gain life on the opponent's creatures dying, so you can't survive just by sac'ing your creatures).

I've played the cube only three times now and I've already learned so much just from drafting. There's a couple of things that I think need tweaking:

• Biggest change is that I've removed what I consider the worst of each of the mono-colored planeswalkers (Teyo, Lili, Jace, kid Chandra, and Vivien)
• I replaced those walkers with low-cost creatures that I think will increase the speed and of the cube and give faster decks a chance.
• Bioessence Hydra is just too much. If you have even one planeswalker you'll start out with an overwhelming advantage. Genuinely warped the entire game around it at 5 mana, defended the planeswalkers and buffed itself, just a ridiculous win-more card
• Blue-Black is getting reworked, not because I played that much against mill but because I recognized that mill wasn't really enjoyable to play. You either land Jace Memory Adept and mill them 20, probably winning on the spot or you don't have one of the like 10 cards that support mill and you lose.
• Blue-Black is now about tempo & ninjas, essentially trying to attack with unblockable creatures. This gives them a sort of controlling role that wants to cut through the large boardstates.

Had our first playtest last night. Dreadhorde Arcanist was one of the few picks that I couldn't justify, and looking at it there's only like 4 1-mana spells you could get back and no spell-based way to buff it. So I went looking for a solution, and in fact the rw deck could use a little more something. Flamescroll celebrant is a perfect fit both on the axis of giving rw a taxing effect for opponents when they land walkers, and can be a late game extra turn spell if you need it to be.

Will make some more changes with more tests

Removing some of the gold cards that are just upgraded removal, as well as editing RW and GW to have more powerful walkers and lower curves. The addition of Iroas here, which would normally be way, way too powerful, is offset by the issue of Nahiri's ultimate never actually winning the game. I'm trying my absolute hardest not to add in Ajani Vengeant.

Vraska didn't support the deck's main goal and was mostly just removal. Diregraf Rebirth was way too slow and encouraged more sacrifice shenanigans than I wanted. Grist still has solid removal downtick and the ult doesn't straight up win unless there's a significant graveyard.