Large Update to Multiple Colour Archetypes. Some general design philosophies used in this update:
Move away from Tribal archetypes:
A lot of support in the cube was being given to tribal archetypes which meant that for some drafts, these cards were taking up a slot the drafter would never want or could use. As such, all tribal archetypes were moved out of the cube and replaced with another.
Provide more cohesive themes for colour pairs:
A few of the colour pairs themes were not super cohesive, generally with one colour being favoured over the other (e.g. Gruul with landfall) or too much support being dedicated to a subtheme because the main theme did not have enough cards to tie it together (e.g. Selesnya, +1 Counters were overtaking lifegain payoffs). As such retooled these pairs to use archetypes which have a good toolbox of support from both colours.
Summary of Themes
Azorius: New theme - Investigate Blink
Flying units were found not to be as cohesive an identity as originally expected and the archetype devolved into a split tribal archetype between angels and spirits, but this meant there was not enough of a crossover between the two colours. Investigate had a lot of support added in Karlov Manor, however still not enough for a full archetype to be built exclusively on that, so two subthemes were identified. Blink, in order to get extra value from Investigate ETBs and Artifact Animation, to turn those clues into beaters.
Boros: New theme - Populate
One of the previous tribal archetypes in humans, the humans forced to be included were often mediocre and did not really support what the archtype wanted to do (especially from red). As such moved to what was the original goal with Boros in a blink theme with Populate. This was helped by Azorius having a blink subtheme as it meant support for blink was not restricted to Boros and they could have more room for dedicated Populate cards.
Orzhov: Minor Changes
Orzhov only had a few minor changes made, some of which were related to some cards specific to tribes being removed, introducing some new cards and remove some weaker cards and some power outliers.
Selesnya: New theme - Food Lifegain
While there was support for a mix of lifegain and +1 Counters in Selesnya, drafting the colours always felt like a pull in one direction or the other and it was hard to build a good mix of the two without getting specific payoff cards. It also felt that +1 Counter cards dominated the archetype, but actually playing did feel as though there were not enough counters being thrown around for what the colour pair wanted to do. As such moved to a lifegain archetype with more support in Food tokens, which fits better into Whites overall token theme as well.
Dimir: New theme - Surveil
Dimir has struggled to find an archetype which offers interesting and/or powerful builds and has synergy with the other blue black archetypes in cube. The pair also needed to move away from tribal which it has stuck with since the start of the cube, with ninjas and then rogues. Luckily Karlov manor provided support for a relatively unsupported archetype with Surveil. This offers good level of support from both colours, although the mono-colour commanders are not exactly synergistic with the archetype, simply because they do not exist and offer room for improvement if more cards are released.
Izzet: Minor Changes
Izzet had a few weaker cards and cards which weren't very synergistic with the overall archetype. As such added more support for sacrificing artefacts as well as a lot more coloured artefacts which were recently released.
Simic: Minor Changes
Simic had a bit of an identity crisis and was being pulled in too many directions with what they wanted to do- a few cards created tokens on draw while others would grow bigger or have power/toughness equal to cards in hand. Tided this up so that the pair was focused more on tokens which synergise more with the commanders in the pair and has more power behind it in general.
Rakdos: Minor Changes
With Gruul moving away from Impulse draw synergies, there was very little impulse draw for Prosper to function with. As such removed him and a lot of the other impulse draw and shifted around a few of the cards to make the archetype function better.
Golgari: Minor Changes
Most changes were too gold cards to have more power in the slot and shuffled around the mono-colour cards to make the archetype have a bit more power.
Gruul: New theme - Power Matters
Gruul Landfall struggled to find cards that mattered in Red so ended up being hard to draft as it also had an impulse draw theme which did not really synergise with the landfall theme and took up a lot of card slots. As such, Power matters was identified as a theme which both Green and Red could support. This was somewhat the original theme for Gruul but going much harder on this theme now.