I've been mulling over this set of changes for a while. I expected Modern Horizons 2 to bring a many new cards and making cuts to keep the cube from growing too much would be a challenge. After a sudden, maybe unrelated, change of heart I ended up making many more cuts than adds.

Cutting Down on Power

I'm surprising myself here, making substantial cuts to power outliers on both ends of the spectrum.

At the top end cards like Gonti, Lord of Luxury, Kess, Dissident Mage, Krenko, Tin Street Kingpin, and Heirloom Blade are out. It breaks my heart a little. An exciting aspect of designing this cube was creating a space for particular cards to shine that otherwise did not. Unfortunately they shine a little too bright and shape too many games. These cards that either generate a lot of value at little cost to playing them or snowball if not immediately answered go against the goal of an environment for spikes, where squeezing as much value from your cards as possible is key.

I'm even bringing myself to cut Booster Tutor. It was fun for a while (I still enjoy it), but it's a bad combination of extremely powerful, difficult to resolve, and high variance (at least perceived).

Atris, Oracle of Half-Truths was at first exciting, and is quietly very powerful here. The effect has lost its luster for me though. What seemed like an interesting mini-game quickly degenerates to a single, optimal strategy. Once you and your opponent know the card, it just makes work, not interesting decisions.

Find // Finality has tremendous flexibility, interesting draft patterns, and interesting decisions, but all that's overshadowed when it's more often just: play this and win.

I'll miss these cards, but as my playgroup has gotten more familiar with the environment, they illicit more groans than delight. It helps that many, if not all, these cards will find a new home as rares in this cube's spiritual successor.

The Low End

On the other side of the spectrum I've taken out a big chunk of cards that consistently under-perform or have been misleading.

Some of these cuts are disappointing as well. Flux Channeler was thrown into the initial list without too much thought except there are plenty of spells and counters in Magic and it's an exciting (to some at least) build around. Even in this context it's too much work for too little reward, particularly in blue. Satyr Wayfinder similarly was never intended to signal a particular strategy but provides some value and filtering for the many things that care about graveyards, but just doesn't do quite enough to feel like it makes sense. Ob Nixilis, the Hate-Twisted is a card I was quite excited to see at this power level. I love the play patterns in theory, a high downside card that can be used in multiple ways, but it never gets played, and I'm not blaming anyone.

Some of the other cards are more middling. Knight of Grace and Sea Gate Oracle and others get played, but they don't feel quite at home any more. Do we really want random color interactions? Do we really want blue decks to just have easy roadblocks with card selection? I will always love Changeling Hero, but it's another card that's almost never played and if it is is quite swingy. Relic Robber is a very cool design, and can play out well, but is clearly not a good fit for this environment. The consistent source of damage is far from guaranteed. Red decks here are much more interested in finding reach and ways to close out the game as your opponent develops their board, not a 3 mana creature that already had to have had a way through.

Green is Hard

Green retains the title of the color with the most churn. As usual I feel like I've fixed it. My initial design of the cube included quite a few two mana ramp creatures. This fit the plan of bumping everything up in cost and supporting tapped lands. I think this was a mistake. I don't think dedicated ramp is a requirement for green. I've never really been interested in emphasizing a big ramp strategy and that's what players expect from them. What results is a misleading draft and decks that just 'feel bad'. I'm cutting most of the ramp creatures and plan to focus more on proactive green stuff. The remaining two mana dorks are (mostly) 2/2s for two. Hopefully they'll be effective as a way to play a four or five drop early and still be relevant creatures. Adding a few more 4 mana green creatures in favor of bigger things helps this as well.

Lands

The triomes are cool. I'd be lying if I wasn't influenced by the amazing illustrations. They're played, but feel slightly at odds with the rest of the environment. Cycling 3 is less relevant than I'd like, we don't really need more tapped lands, and something about getting all five colors in two lands is just a bit rude.

Maze of Ith was a clear power outlier in an earlier version of the cube. Labyrinth of Skophos is on the other end of the spectrum, and when it is relevant is just enhancing board stalls. I'm always interested in lands that 'do stuff', but this is not it.

Lotus Field is powerful fixing with a number of neat interactions, but I've been consistently coming down on it since its release. The downside of seeing it in a two land hand feels more and more real, especially as the environment evolves. It's truly horrible interactions with other lands, especially bounce lands, push it over the edge.

In the last update I added Tranquil Cove just to bring up the floor on lands in all color pairs. The life gain isn't particularly relevant. As an artifact Razortide Bridge is also pretty marginal but has a much better chance to come up. It's a weird color pair for an artifact land, but increasingly less so. I could see adding more in relevant colors if I increase lands more. It being indestructible could also come up.

New Stuff!

While the cube is shrinking a bit, MH2 does have a ton of relevant cards. Barbed Spike is another tidy design to enable equipment while mitigating equipment flood. I initially compared it to Ancestral Blade and thought I preferred the blade before I realized I was asking the wrong question. They're doing similar things and they belong together. Bone Shards is a perfect fit. I love downsides that can be turned into upsides. Offering a choice of downsides makes this card so much less narrow, enough to make it 'just good', but also much more likely to lead to interesting plays.

Green gets beef with Bannerhide Krushok, Scurry Oak, Wren's Run Hydra, and maybe some less stable includes. Reinforce does it all between targeting creatures, making counters, and, like living weapons do for equipment, enabling more combat tricks to see play.

For the first time in a while I'm gleefully adding more gold cards rather than forcing myself to cut them (although I did that too!). Captured by Lagacs needs no explanation. Graceful Restoration is a perfect twist on Zombify. Zombify's not going to make it into many fair environments and outside of them is hard to make work. The option to buy back two creatures which may have gone to the yard naturally by mana-five makes it much less of a liability. It may be a perfect fit. I expect it to buy back Cruel Celebrant and Corpse Knight and destroy me.

Master of Death could be pushing the power level a bit and have some undesirable, repetitive play patterns. But I love surveil, opening up more graveyard interactions, and providing a different tool for slower decks as other powerful cards are on their way out. Chrome Courier is also a less obvious fit in these colors, but it works well on a few axes. The artifact bit may be a bit of a distraction, but plenty of cards in blue care about it being an artifact and plenty of white cards interact well with a small flying creature with an ETB.

Beyond MH2

With these changes a few cards beyond MH2 make a little more sense. Daring Archaeologist was in the initial list for the cube, but failed to do much of anything. With the artifact and counter themes being consistently bolstered, and the power level and easy card advantage being lowered, it's much more appealing. I can't give up 'champion' altogether and Changeling Berserker may actually be a great fit. A 5/3 haste is something that needs an answer. It lets red decks get some value out of creatures that are no longer relevant and is very likely to trade of making it's ability to re-trigger ETBs something you can actually play towards.

Narrowing the Power Level

This change is another big jump towards an even flatter power level. This isn't itself a goal, but I think is a step towards other goals of repeatable gameplay and games revolving less around individual cards but the interactions between them. There's also a big downside in removing some of the powerful cards that lead to exciting games (at least at first) and have become defining parts of the cube's identity. Overall I'm happy with these changes. I'm optimistic and excited to see how it plays differently, but it also makes more more excited for the opportunity to solve these issues in a different way in the Irregular Cube.