This long overdue, Strixhaven related update includes a few new cards from the set and some unrelated minor changes.

White

I really like the design of Thunderous Orator. It's a serviceable card in a proactive deck and offers a high, but disrupt-able, ceiling for putting in just a little effort drafting, and playing around it.

Beaming Defiance is a strictly worse Blossoming Defense, which is already played marginally, but I think the effect is slightly more appealing in white. I'm not confident it'll last long, but I'm happy to have more options for combat tricks that can also be relevant in more situations, but proactively and defensively.

Luminarch Apirant was on the fence, obviously pushing the power level immediately. After seeing it in play a few times it has definitely had an 'answer me now or lose' vibe. I don't think it's a problem, but that's also not particularly inline with the rest of the gameplay here, so for now it's getting kicked all the way to the rare module of another cube.

Blue

I did not intend these as one-for-one swaps, but Frost Trickster is going in, and Cloudkin Seer is coming out. Seer has been quietly extremely powerful here. With a very relevant body without the cost of the card, it slots into any blue deck and doesn't lead to much interesting play. I expect trickster to be a much better fit, playing into tempo rather than easy value, and even still having some of the same minor card interactions. Frost Lynx has always been an appealing card to me, but is pretty clearly below the power level here.

Curate might just be the perfect cantrip for this cube. At two mana, not every deck will want it, but instant speed keeps it relevant, and I love the opportunity for graveyard interactions. Chart a Course has been another quiet but clear power outlier and I'm happy to kick it down a notch.

Black

Lash of Malice: Instant speed small removal with potential alternate play patterns in combat? Perfect.

Plumb the Forbidden is my favorite variant of this effect. I love Altar's Reap and similar, but the floor on them is just too low to be happy includes. Being able to cycle Plumb makes a narrow effect much more appealing, as does the possibility of having a high ceiling. It even has the (marginal) upside of not being a tremendous risk against counter magic.

Ravenous Chupacabra has always bothered me a bit for being a little too similar to Skinrender and a bit suspect in terms of power. But let's be honest, I'm cutting another black four just to bargain with the little voice in my head telling me Gonti, Lord of Luxury is the real problem here.

Piper of the Swarm has never been as relevant as I hoped or expected. It's a little too slow, even in this environment. A complicated card that promises a lot and doesn't deliver is exactly what I don't want.

Red

no change

weird

Green

Emergent Sequence is a perfect upgrade over Druid of the Cowl. I'm not saying green is in a perfect place here, but I'm pushing it to have some more proactive options and having a 2/2 over a 1/3 makes much more sense overall. The fact that it also touches on +1/+1 counters and land synergies is exciting to me. I'm not sure how relevant those interactions will actually be. If they aren't relevant, I could see cutting the card for being very complex without being meaningfully different.

World Shaper is another over complicated card that signals a specific theme which isn't actually powerful enough to make the cut. I do think it's a little under-rated by my local group, but not by much.

Pheres-Band Brawler is coming in over Affectionate Indrik. I'm very happy to remove the 'may' clause. The Indrik is technically more powerful, but when that difference is relevant, no one feels good about it. I also don't hate the double green pips.

Caller of the Claw, Mother Bear, and Basking Rootwalla have been misses. I will miss that lizard though.

Gold

With every update I take a look at my aspirational gold section for any easy cuts. Zhur-Taa Druid is a card I like quite a bit, but as a card which really needs to be played early and isn't powerful enough to draw you into the color pair it misses on a lot of axes.

The complexity of Status // Statue isn't pulling its weight as Status is almost never cast, and that makes it much less of a hybrid card than others in this cycle. It's also been confused in the draft and in hands with Find // Finality a non-zero number of times which knocks a few points off it too.

Lands

I've liked the idea of Rishadan Port as very soft resource denial that punishes bounce lands, which are more often played than not, but the format isn't fast or focused on efficiency enough for it to be relevant.

I'm always looking for ways for proactive decks to get some extra reach and I'm very interested in how Access Tunnel will play. Rogue's Passage really doesn't appeal to me as a card you could (but maybe shouldn't) put in any deck and can suddenly win a stalled game for no reason. The restriction and cheaper cost makes the tunnel much more appealing, but I wouldn't be surprised if it's still just not worth the tax on your mana base.

I love lands with abilities and mana sinks and am always looking for ways to diversify lands and break up cycles between colors in this environment. I'm adding two campuses, Prismari Campus and Witherbloom Campus.

While I'm at it, I'm adding Tranquil Cove and Sulfurous Springs to bring all color pairs up to a minimum of four land cycles. I'm no stickler about balancing that, but it was looking pretty wonky. I have no particular attachment to specific lands and would be happy to have even more options that add choices to gameplay.

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Unrelated to these changes, I've been working on a new cube, tentatively named Irregular Cube. The new cube is largely taking the same design goals as this one and focusing on another set of mechanics. It's also a way to start form scratch to shake myself out of what could be a local maximum of my design abilities in this cube without upending a cube which ultimately I'm pretty happy with.

It's possible I'll keep playing and updating both in parallel, but as I'm discovering some of the structural changes may be doing a much better job of serving my goals, it's also possible Irregular Cube just supersedes and replaces this one.