update fix

I didn't bother making a post for strixhaven since it was fairly lackluster for my cube in general (only change was Baleful Mastery), however where Strix had 1 addition, MH2 has many, so very many.

Ragavan is a slam dunk for cube, in fact it may be too good, and is probably now the best 1 drop in red (if not the cube). Four of the evoke emotions from MH2 were also slam dunks and support a wide variety of archetypes. Damn was also an easy addition, but was hard to classify as a card. Dauthi Voidwalker is one hell of a card, and easily rounded out the black 2's. Ignoble Hierarch was another easy addition, and makes for a critical mass of 1-drop dorks that I was looking for. The new sword is pretty darn good, not perfect, but it brings the cube to the required density for stoneforge (finally). Lastly, Grist is just plain bonkers in BG.

The drops were a bit hard this go around, as things are getting tighter. and are subject to change.

I wanted to add in a bit more support for the reanimation archetype since many f the main reanimation cards are high picks for other archetypes as well for value purposes. Kalitas will be missed, but the quality of Black 4-drops has gone through the roof recently, and there really wasn't enough room to justify him. Slaughter pact might come in again, but it has been a bit lackluster as well since no one archetype was clamoring for the removal. An update I will also make for now will also to be trying dark ritual over death cloud again, but if I fell like I miss the cloud I will be adding it back in.

Not many changes for this set, but Reidane looks like it might be what solidifies white stax so it needs to be included and Usher probably solidifies token strats as a viable sub theme for more aggressive decks.

I often edit my cube irl, but lag behind updating it here, so here is the final version before kaldheim!

Over the course of time I find that most cube designers either expand their cube sizes or shrink them to better accommodate their drafting needs. However, I find that I needed to do both in order to capture what I wanted in my draft environment. Originally I had my cube modeled after wtwlf's 540 cube, but I found that the density of quality cards was not high enough in all colors to justify the inclusion many of the cards I had. It was then I shrank my cube down to 450, but that didn't leave any room for testing out other cards. So, in order to make space, I added in 14 cards (and a lore seeker), with the goal of adding enough space to give the cube some flex space, but in doing so I found that there was still room for improvement. It was then that I decided to do something I had done in another one of my cube projects, expand the lands section.

In my C/UC sube I had a very large array of utility lands and fixing (I even included Crop Rotation for it), and this made the entire draft very rewarding. This was something I felt that my Legacy cube was lacking, so I hit the drawing board and chose a selection of lands to add for testing, but after I expanded the cube from 465 to 496 I found that my multi-color decks were really suffering disproportionately when compared to 1-2 colors. I found that the amount of fixing I included was far from enough to sustain consistent 3 color strategies, so I started looking into including even more fixing.

The problem with this idea was that the quality of fixing is very subjective after leaving the realm of fetch + shock + trimoe. Some fixers are better in aggro (fast lands), some in control (bounce/scry lands), and some were just hard to evaluate (pathways). So, rather than just test those out, I decided to just double up on what was already good and then shrink the overall size of the cube to increase the density of the lands we were opening. This brings me to these series of updates.

In this and several other updates to follow I will be re-structuring my cube to be a 416 card cube (enough for 8 people to open three 16 card packs and have 2 packs for lore seeker to choose from) with 3 guaranteed lands in every pack. I am hoping this change will help further the drafting experience even further.

After doing around 20 drafts trying to make the dark depths strat work (resetting till hitting DD p1p1) I have come to the conclusion that it is too narrow and unreliable to keep in the cube, so I am cutting it for some more fixing.

During my time drafting I find that playing with utility in your mana base is very, very fun. However the way to do this was always been a challenge. On one hand, including utility lands is fun, but what do you cut? my solution is to just add a 16th card to the packs and just add 31 (I run an extra pack for Lore Seeker) lands to the draft. These lands take up the basic land slot that would otherwise be in the pack, so in a way I am still staying true to the idea of traditional drafts. And since I was already messing with the lands I decided it was time to help out aggro a bit by making the mana fixing a bit more painful (and cheaper) with a second set of shocks and fetches. Rounding out the additions is the set of triomes, which replace a set of not so great gold fixers. The rest of the replacements at this time are general aggro support cards along with some lands matters cards that are now worth adding.

Not many additions as of this set, only the two courts, but this gives me a chance to evaluate some of the new tools and flatten out the ELO ratings of the colors. White needed the most help so I took out the under-preforming cards like Procession and Bane.. sorry Lyra because they consistently see little play and add little to the decks that they are included in. Other drops for this reason this round include: Metalworker (seems good on paper not in practice), Dromcom, Graveyard Marshall, Tajic, Edric, Nezumi and Servitude. In addition to dropping these under-performers I also dropped oko for being too powerful and fast. I have no problems with powerful cards in the cube, however this is only true as long as there are answers for those cards readily available, and oko breaks that balance by being to big to answer for to little mana. Unlike other high ELO cards like the moxen (which drain resources for speed) or JTMS (who at 4 mana double blue is much slower and also balances himself with 3-5 loyalty with a bad plus instead of 5-6 with a good choice of pluses) he requires no deckbuilding requirements for him to be good. He is nuts in control, he is nuts in midrange, and if you could justify the colors, he is nuts in aggro, in fact he is just too good to pass, in fact there is no reason to pass him so he gets the axe. Uro is an equally good card, however he comes with significant deck building requirements, so we will see how he fares and perhaps even add in his counterpart to the rakdos section.

Sorry for the long delay to this update, I have no excuse, just forgot to update..
Anyway, the first add is the new Jace because it seems to be a better fit for the cube by servicing both mid-range and control strategies equally, and will probably play better than Architect.
Next I added in all the the DFC mythic lands that had playable sides in cube which include the red, black and green ones. Firebrand was an easy swap, dread return will be missed (but not terribly), and finally regrowth was a fine card, but did little to pull people into green so I decided it was time to go (also there is a cooler regrowth to consider now).
Next I added in soul shatter and bloodchief's thirst over go for the throat and fatal push because they accomplish the same goals (mostly) for a better (more consistent) rate.
Finally, the last add for this update cycle is Skyclave apparition over banisher priest because it is mostly just a superior card. Banisher had a place in my cube because it was the go to removal spell for taxes decks with recruiter(s), but it was a narrow card with an ok rate and only answered things temporarily, skyclave fixes sall those problems by being a permanent (kinda) answer and way, way better in blink.
I still have a few cards I am still considering (magmatic Channeler, Kargan intimidator, felidar retreat, ondu inversion, glasspool mimic, nighthawk scavenger, and skyclave shade to name a few) but for now these are the immediate adds.