Shoebox
  • Phantasmal Bear: To my eternal dismay this still hasn't been performing. It has two major strikes against it. First, it's not evasive, so it doesn't mesh with that angle of synergy in the x/U aggro decks. Second, it can't hold equipment, so it's not even particularly useful with other cards that go well with evasive creatures.

  • Mockingbird: In for Phantasmal Bear. An at-cost clone isn't generally great, even with upside, but the thing that puts this over the top is the ability to just cast it as a 1/1 flier on turn 1.

  • Plan the Heist: I think when I read this the first time I assumed that the surveil happened when you had no lands untapped, not when you have no cards in hand. It's a LOT harder to hit this way, which makes the card pretty bad.

  • Kitnap: The really cool thing about this is that if you don't give the gift, it still takes the creature out of commission if the aura gets removed. Is that relevant enough? Let's find out! If this is bad, it should probably just go back to being a draw spell.

  • Thief of Sanity: Removing because I'm recategorizing Connnive // Concoct as UB proper rather than hybrid, so it needs to compete for a proper UB slot. I'm cutting this rather than C//C despite this having a somewhat more interesting effect because I want the multicolor section to point at least somewhat to what the color pair is doing, and reani is a big part of the UB identity.

  • Season of Weaving: The flexibility on this is really impressive, and the fact that it's specifically helpful for whatever combination of card or board advantage you need puts it over the top.

  • Virtue of Persistence: Virtue is pretty much dead air. The lifegain on this is more relevant, but not relevant enough.

  • Sheoldred: This was fine, sometimes threatening, but ultimately just a replacement-level five-drop.

  • Maha: Love a good flampler. I'm curious how relevant the toughness clause will end up being.

  • Dire Fleet Daredevil: Out for something that's not just sideboard fodder.

  • Emberheart Challenger: Heroic was historically really bad in cube, but caring about abilities MIGHT change the equation. The fact that this is a decent body on its own helps as well, of course.

  • Lotus Cobra: Lotus Cobra is cool, no doubt, but the fetch-heavy builds it incentivizes are already extremely good on their own merits and it's pretty conditional a lot of the time.

  • Pawpatch Recruit: I'm not sure how good the triggered ability is here, but a Savannah Lions doesn't need that much juice to be good, and being able to cast this on 3 for extra value might already be enough.

  • Cenote Scout: So this is a split card 1-mana 1/1 draw a card or 1-mana 2/2 scry 1? That actually seems kind of sick.

  • Tender Wildguide: The fact that this is a split card Rampant Growth/Explosive Vegetation is very tasty. The rest of the upside I'm expecting to be generally less important, although it doesn't seem too hard to get this to a 4/4 and start bashing.

  • Rhonas: I really liked this guy, and I think he's still solid, but he's only good in decks that are both aggressive enough to not really care about blocking AND beefy enough to trigger him semi-regularly, and that's too narrow to continue justifying a slot.

  • Innkeeper's Talent: In for Farseek. This is essentially a pure buff, but the ward makes it very compelling and Level 3 of course goes crazy with planeswalkers.

  • Chaos Defiler: Seems like a pretty sick value reani engine, not to mention just an out and out good card. "Choose" as a workaround for "target" sucks on its own, but the addition of "at random" which means absolutely nothing in 1v1 really puts this over the edge. I'm a bit heartbroken about this cut, since I was waiting so long to be able to use this on MTGO in the first place, but I think it must be done.

  • The Infamous Cruelclaw: If nothing else this seems really fun to activate.

  • Banishing Light: Out because I'm fed up with the "choose" workaround for targeting.

  • Invert Polarity: I don't think anyone has even cast this yet, but Quetzy already hates it and all else being equal when I have two cards I'm considering for a slot I'd rather cut the horizons card.

  • Bria: Mini Narset, or too slow to matter? It'll be interesting to see.

  • Slimefoot and Squee: No one's been playing this anyway, but I'm going to cut it for a non-reani 3c card that looks interesting.

  • Glarb: Every ablity here seems pretty relevant for decks that can cast this reliably.

  • Discovery//Dispersal: Surveil has become frequent enough that this is no longer exciting.

  • Deadly Dispute: This isn't super synergistic as it stands, but it's a very soft slot and maybe someone will find a way to use it.