Complete the Circuit > Reenact the Crime

Complete the Circuit is too expensive to be playable and Reenact the Crime is exciting and efficient enough.

Thoughtpicker Witch > Thieves' Guild Enforcer

Thoughtpicker was definitely too cute. Thieves' Guild Enforcer also may be too cute, but at least it has flash.

Ruthless Technomancer > Halving Season > Into the Pit
Ruthless Technomancer has been just skirting by for a long time. Being sorcery speed and quite expensive for what it does has had me off it for a while. I briefly went insane and replaced it with Halving Season but that sounds like abject misery so lets try Into the Pit instead. At minimum its still an interesting sacrifice outlet.

Long Goodbye > Demonic Junker

This card rules. It's extremely below rate but it's sorcery speed removal so why not. I appreciate it doing a sacrifice outlet impression as well.

Marionette Master > Pactdoll Terror

Marionette Master has historically been a card that people overrate. It does as much damage as a 2-3 mana card for twice as much mana, but reads really flashy. Pactdoll is just a really solid pinger to replace it with.

Return to Action > Feign Death

Unexciting change. I just felt like this needed a better rate.

Contraband Kingpin > Cunning Nightbonder

This is really cute, arguably too cute, but neither were bringing home any awards. Flashing this in in response to countermagic would be pretty exciting.

Mystical Teachings > Memory Plunder

Mystical Teachings is so much mana for what it does.

Tor Wauki the Younger > Rakdos, the Muscle

Hopefully I'll edit in a proper blogpost about these changes later but I feel like dirt rn.

After running with it for a while I'm certain that 2 grixis commanders is 1 more than I want. I don't enjoy half the players in every draft ignoring magic's color mechanic entirely, and the 2 color commanders are more interesting. If I'm pairing down to 1, I'm keeping Parnesse. That's for a lot of reasons:

First is sentimental: Chris Mooney signed Parnesse at the 2023 cubecon after party, excited because they never see anyone playing her.

Second is that I favor cards that play off the environment in ways you have to really think through to arrive at, and Parnesse's ward is a really good, subtle, example; Zevlor on the other hand is straightforward. She has higher Aha! equity.

Third is that Parnesse is probably worse. I want the 3 color option to be pretty well below most 2 color commanders for balance reasons, and I think Parnesse is marginally worse but I'm not confident in that assessment.

Fourth is that she has triggered abilities and not activated abilities so she works with Harmonic Prodigy.

I'm a sucker for conspiracies, and I enjoy using this environment to explore more bafflingly powerful weird cards. Unfortunately most conspiracies either do nothing or are way too good.

Brago's Favor is boring but in the correct power band and feels interesting to evaluate during that draft. I like having a second hidden agenda to create a tiny bit of uncertainty with immediate action.

Hymn of the wilds sounds really funny, but I have no idea where the power level lands. It's a way bigger challenge than normal, but the payoff with flash creatures is huge.

So hear me out. The card is funny.

I'm leaving it in for a little bit. If it doesn't get played it'll become halving season.

The only change here is adding Delightful Discovery. It's not exciting, but I think it's about what I want. It digs well for emergency answers, interacts cutely with the nature of the cube, and the rate is good. It's not exciting but I expect it'll do the job well.

I am putting Bloodthirsty Conqueror on price watch in case it drops into the $5 range. I'm interested in the card, though it may ultimately be a bad idea. I think the idea of a control deck with Conqueror plus ~3 elixirs and a pile of interaction to protect both is intriguing, though I'm willing to entertain it just being a kinda exhausting hurdle for damage based decks.

Will edit this with an overview of changes later today probably.

Swapping out Shard of the Nightbringer and Battle at the Bridge since they're pretty unexciting sorcery speed cards. They do their jobs but not consistently and usually they just get cut.

Tomb is going in pre flipped. I've wanted a land that would stick for a while and this makes sense. It should be incredibly powerful and gives black a nice boost that it could use.

I want to see what this does. I needed a sac outlet to replace the two I had cut recently. Witch seems decently powerful; who knows if it lives up to that expectation.

Bumping an elixir (I keep going back and forth whether 4 or 5 if the right number) for immediate action. I wanted more haste enablers (for reasons that'll be immediately obvious shortly) and this is kinda the mother of all haste enablers.

I've wanted to include this card since I first made this cube, but the lack of haste was just too big of a barrier to playability. Now that there are two powerful haste enablers in the cube I'm more interested. I'm not confident it'll do big things, but I'm optimistic.

Meanwhile I've never seen anyone activate the Ancient One, so it'll be sunset for Truss's spot.

Some cards have been trimmed due to their price creeping up and them not being essential enough to the format to justify the price.

Brudiclad has consistently sounded cooler than he is in practice. I'm tired of him being consistently almost cool.

This is Maria's fault.

Cutting some underperforming colorless cards for more monocolored cards.

Gift a card feels sweet here. I'm always looking for players to finish off a milled out opponent. These are just some solid pieces of interaction that are just a little bit better in Avernus.

Some new UR commanders showed up in the last 2 sets.

Shao Jun is a solid way to invest unspent mana, and hints at a more aggressive UR build which I'm interested in.

Alania is a fun spellslinger payoff that randomly kills people, and I want to at least give her a chance.

I've been wanting to try this for a while. It's a weird angle of interaction and I'm actually quite fond of it.

Seems like a reasonable enough replacement for Altar. Gives miracle grow decks an immediate threat, probably a bit more dangerous than Altar, but I'll keep my eye on it.

Returning all-timers.

Honorable Mention

Lol

Deadly dispute gets an upgrade.

Replacing some medium removal spells with condor, which is a messed up removal spell.

Added Marionette Apprentice because duh.

Looking at the red tempt with forks. Maybe replace wild ricochet.

Welp. Fomori vault settled about twice as high as I expected. I don't like it enough to swallow that extreme of a budget break.

For now I'll throw in swifties provisionally, probably replace it later when I've had time to think about it.

God
Damn
It.

Okay so lets talk about some stuff. Lets start with something I'm not running because I've gotten pinged about it a lot.

I'm not including Obeka, for a lot of reasons. One is limited space. Two slots for grixis commanders is honestly about a half of a slot more than I want, and it's not very much room. Parnesse is not coming out, it's too perfect for its slot and if anyone wants me to elaborate, DM me and I'll write you a manifesto. Zevior, I'm not in love with but it's at least interesting and it inspires some imagination.

Which brings us to point 2: Obeka doesn't really do anything. Much like extra turn effects it sounds like she's doing something really cool and valuable, but in reality she's accomplishes nothing. Avernus is symmetrical, and the advantage of getting the mana before your main phase, while extant, is pretty limited. Very flashy, though.

Okay, on to includes. These three are all just solid interactive spells. A lot could be said about each of them, but ultimately they're just a bunch of shoe-ins. Some day I'll need to question how many modal blue interactive spells I need. We're not there yet.

Onto my nonsense. I'm pretty confident this card is quite good. Three cards per opponent is a lot. It's more than it sounds. If this triggers twice it's the equivalent of a 5-storm brainfreeze. Extremely funny with Displacer Kitten.

So hey, finally an excuse to play a land here. I think this is fine. A repeatable tutor is probably worth 3 mana. Not confident in this, but lets see where it goes.

Not remotely a new card. But I've come around on it. I was opposed to it originally because I wanted this cube to be as interactive as possible, and it inherently limited interaction. But I've come around to obstacles being more interesting than a lack thereof, and the sorcery speed restriction on equipping sufficiently limits it for my revised tastes. Mostly, I want something to give Nin and Rowan haste, and this does a very neat job of it.

So this is my most controversial include. I sharpied every trace of the dragon off of a Decadent Dragon. I'm including just Expensive Taste to the cube, because the dragon just makes the card worse, and I want more good black cards because it frequently feels like its been left behind by this cube.

Okay this has gotta do something funny.

Saruman really only does anything with Altar of Dementia, and while that's intentional, I think he's very easy to misread as supposed to do more than he does. So I'm swapping him for a commander that does a little more, but still I imagine doesn't push the envelope too far.

Oh boy was this a wild one.

Vengeful Tracker was an easy include. Multiple different people pinged me the minute it was spoiled, lol. It's honestly a strong contender for top 5 cards in the cube because it's so efficient, and it's probably the single fastest clock in the cube now. Don't pass this for anything short of a Brainfreeze.

Crime Novelist is a slam dunk and has me really excited. A Goldspan Dragon in my price range and a decent miracle grow creature. People ask me about this sort of creature a lot. They're mostly bad because even if they get to enormous they only attack maybe twice a game. They need either evasion or utility, and fortunately this has absolutely heaps of the latter. Excited to draft this.

Follow the Bodies is my favorite include of the new set. Kinda a bookkeeping nightmare, but it's just so cool. I could list all the ways you can use this, but I'll leave it to the imagination; suffice to say it's very abusable.

Necromancy is on price watch. The reprint seems to have it trending into the cube's price range so I'm excited. Strong, instant-speed action in black is always welcome.

Long Goodbye is cool as an uncounterable removal spell. Unintuitive as it sounds, I've been wanting more uncounterable stuff in this cube to give players ways to cut through the noise and add texture to the different types of answers around. I want something a little less good at punishing creature decks than Curtain's Call so this seems like a good place.

Thought Distortion is a trip. I've been meditating on this for months and I've been convinced to add it. It's gonna be Fucked. Up. Black's always needed more heat, and this is certainly heat.

Chimil's price never settled, which is sad but it's not worth the bump to the cube's price. Tishana's Tidebinder I'm less willing to cut and is fortunately a little cheaper.

So the last few updates have been me making some post cubecon revisions based on getting about a half dozen drafts in, which was refreshing because I don't get to draft this cube enough.

I was convinced, in likely questionable fashion, to give Rakdos back the King, the one and only Mayhem Devil. Rakdos has been feeling like it needs a little heat to close out games, and Mayhem Devil is perhaps more than a little heat. I'm also considering dropping starting life to 80 to give "fair" Rakdos decks more of a chance to outrace unfair decks.

I'm trying out a minor Wizard typal theme. Harmonic Prodigy is obscenely cool, and catches an amazing incidental interaction with Juri. Maybe having to resolve to parts to a non-game winning combo that's vulnerable to creature removal is too much, but prodigy is too cool not to try. Flame of Anor is just cool. Might expand it to some other pieces like Archmage of Echoes if I end up really liking the direction. I just wish I had a satisfying Wizard typal commander.

LCI came offering a disproportionately high number of testable cards for this environment. Tidebinder is a slam dunk. Chimil seems very interesting, though I wouldn't be surprised if it got cut for being too awkward or landing outside of the price range. Tarrian's Soulcleaver is just good. The Ancient One is almost too perfect, because I never expect to get a dimir commander that can hang; hopefully it's not too strong.