Boros

Originally, were planning to add an Auras strategy to Orzhov, but we quickly realized that, even if you were to draft the payoffs for it, you'd find it difficult to find enough auras to justify those picks. Like, for example, Sram, Senior Edificer or All that Glitters are excellent cards, but require a certain amount of their corresponding types to be impactful enough to justify running. I don't know what that amount really is, but it felt at the moment like someone picking one or two auras or payoffs would ruin your entire attempt at building the strategy. So, after some thought, we decided to remove auras from the cube.

Okay, fun bit of trivia, but aren't we talking about Boros?

Well, much of the same issues seem to be plaguing the Boros archetype. You need both creatures that want to be targeted, normally with the Heroic/Valiant mechanic, and spells to target them, usually pump spells. So, when another player takes that away from you, you're left with a subpar pile of vaguely synergistic, unsupported cards.

This card pool depredation usually comes from Izzet Prowess, as many of the cards that Boros plays fit really well into that archetype. Which, make no mistake, is by design! We thought that making archetypes work together would be best, since it'd allow players to create their own decks instead of just trying to build whatever decks we designed. Hence why Narset, Enlightened Exile is the three-color Jeskai commander.

This is aggravated by the fact that many of the Heroic/Valiant cards are just terrible, like look at Wingsteed Rider and tell me why you would run that card in your deck? Many of these cards are in the cube in service of Heroic/Valiant being a thing, and not because they fit the power level or are interesting in some way.

In any case, we'll evaluate what other archetypes could potentially fit in Boros and we'll probably change Heroic into something else.

Okay!

13 games so far, and a lot of cards to go over. So, let's just get down to it.

Removed from the cube I understand the Golos ban now

Golos, Tireless Pilgrim is no more! It's gone, bye bye.

We're not sure if adding another five color commander is a good idea or not, but Golos was defiantly the wrong choice for a five color creature if we wanted to go that route.

Gunkn't

Even though—and mostly because—no one plays Gunk Slug, it does feel like a good card to cut. Originally we were looking at it through the lens of its 'fun factor', but people just aren't interested in playing the card at all. It sits at the end of every pack whenever it shows up, making one pack have 19 cards.

No longer on the Watchlist Some potential

I was wrong! I've ran Unexpected Potential twice and it's been great.
The card is mostly used for three-to-four color decks to splash an otherwise unplayable card of their lest played color. Other times, it's just used on your commander so you always have a turn X play, regardless of how good you're doing on your mana fixing.

The card feels useful, yet not oppressive. You can safely ignore it during draft and not feel like you're missing out, and still be happy to pick it up when you run out of cards on your colors.

The commander identity rule keeps the card fair, and Regalia allows you to break that fairness by playing something way outside what should be possible for your deck.

We want Conspiracies to have effects that are small, yet impactful, and this card perfectly aligns with that.

New additions Two strokes is one stroke too many

Double Stroke is a broken card.

Time and time again we've run into the issue where Double Stroke takes something that's already powerful, like Command the Chaff, Time Stretch or Mind Grind, and makes it waaay too powerful for the environment. Even still, copying a cheap spell a Pyretic Ritual is really strong, just not broken.

The main issue we've had with the card, however, came when played alongside Arcane Savant. Since the cards remain in exile, playing Arcane Savant over and over again gives you extra copies of whatever it is that you duplicated, and since Double Stroke can name the same card, you get two free spells each time.

"But why not remove Arcane Savant, then?", I hear you ask. Well, we might.

Arcane Savant

Arcane Savant, in paper at least, just ramps you. You're paying just 5 mana for a spell that often costs way more, which is inline with the power level of the cube. So, what's the problem exactly?

Well, it copies the card and lets you cast the copy, so the card you copied stays exiled for the next Arcane Savant trigger. This means that reviving Arcane Savant is really good, not to mention card synergies like Time Wipe which just locks the game.

We really like that the card allows you to break the color identity rule and play some card from outside your colors, allowing for cool, unexpected plays to happen, but as of this moment, we're not sure if that alone is worth the infinite recursion that seems way too common when the card is played.

All in all, the card feels like it's a disaster waiting to happen. Our last game featured Arcane Savant, Double Stroke, and Prophet of Kruphix, making the game basically a one-sided stomp.

Maybe they ban cards for a reason

Prophet of Kruphix is a fun magic card!, for the one playing it, at least.

Surprise, surprise! Prophet of Kruphix is broken. We thought that the draft nature of the environment would make Prophet of Kruphix less of a problem, since you're not really building around it like you would in constructed play, not to mention actually needing to draft into those colors to be able to play it. What we failed to realize is that Simic decks are often just a pile of really good cards, and what is a draft deck if not exactly that?

So, what's strong about it? Well, the fact that it gives you both flash and the mana to cast your creatures. Yeah, should have seen that one coming.

For now we'll just see how the card preforms on future drafts, but it feels like it's a bit much for the current iteration of the cube.

Too many wheels might make your car move too fast

Mill might be a bit of an issue, since it's way too prevalent. Someone always ends up drafting a mill deck, and wheels make an appearance on every iteration of those decks.

Jace's Archivist isn't exactly at fault here, since the one time someone picked it up it didn't do much, but you start cutting an onion by first pealing it off, so something has to go.

Jace's Archivist provides, at least, one wheel a turn, and since we're trying to reduce the number of wheels, this feels like a good place to start.

Expect to see some more wheels gone when and if Jace's Archivist leaves the cube.

Underpreforming

Neither of the Rakdos commanders, The Master, Multiplied and Alesha, Who Laughs at Fate, are seeing play. We think this might be a power-level issue, but we're not sure just yet. We'll probably change both if we see that players continue to ignore them.

Aria of Flame, Trench Gorger, and Vandalblast are just not strong enough.

We finally played our first game, and the experience was amazing! And, even though we're clearly great designers, there were a few cards that were less—or more—than we were hoping they'd be.

So, here's the cards we're adding to our Watchlist. After a few more games, we'll probably replace these cards with others that align better with what we envision for the environment.

Golos is just built different

Golos, Tireless Pilgrim trivializes the draft portion of the experience to a point where it undoes a lot of the fun of building a deck. It's always the correct choice to pick it and build the same deck you were building but using it as the commander, instead. We were already aware that this might be the case, but decided to try it out before making any assumptions, because science.

At the very least, it lets you pick Talismans and Moxes outside your colors, which wasn't great.

The biggest issue is the fact that you can pick Golos very late, after having built something you're actually happy with and, even then, it remains the correct decision.

Gunk is no funk

We originally thought that Gunk Slug's ability would be a novel way to interact with your opponents without affecting the board, but the card mostly sits on players hands without being played and, quite frankly, it's for the better. The effect doesn't give any feedback when a player draws one a Gunk, so there's no positive experience for the player that uses the card. Even more so, the card doesn't generate a good experience for anyone on the table when its played.

It's impact is low, the effect has no immediate feedback, and it only leads to bad experiences.

Zero potential

For a Conspiracy, Unexpected Potential feels really low impact. You're making a card easier to cast, yes, but you were already able to play that card on your deck, so it doesn't feel like a big deal. We want Conspiracies to have effects that are small, yet impactful, and this card doesn't align with that.

Maybe extinction was the right choice

Zilortha, Strength Incarnate is a good enough card, to be honest. It's part of the power-matters synergy package that Gruul has going on and it does its job as a beater decently, too. The main issue with this dinosaur is that, while its a goodish card, it doesn't really help its strategy that much.

There aren't enough creatures with a large enough disparity between power and toughness in favor of power to justify picking this card over any other option. While a toughness-matters commander could see play and be built in a way that fulfils its proposed fantasy in a much more satisfying way, the amount of higher-power-than-toughness creatures doesn't reach the amount that'd be necessary to make the commander satisfying to play.

What makes this an issue, however, is the fact that you can't figure this out while drafting. It's a birds-eye-view kind of problem. Since the creature is good even without support, it doesn't really underperform, it just doesn't really scratch the itch it's supposed to.