Just a few new cards from TDM ahead of Boston Cube Party on 4/12-13, the cube's first major test with Green added. Can't wait to hear feedback!

Not on Cobra:
Explosive Entry -> Overwhelming Surge

THAT'S RIGHT, GREEN PASSED THE TEST AND IS NOW ROAD-CERTIFIED!

AETHERDRIFT BROUGHT US OVER 100 CARDS, SO WE'VE HAD TO DO A BIT OF RESTRUCTURING! THE CUBE IS NOW 450 CARDS, SINGLETON EXCEPT FOR RARE LANDS, ALL 5 COLORS, AND BACK TO BEING DRAFTED IN 3 PACKS OF 15! IF YOU MISS THE OLD WAY, YOU CAN ALWAYS VISIT

THE NEW ARCHETYPES ARE:
RED-GREEN: RAMP OUT BIG VEHICLES AND ATTACK, THEN BOOST INTO THE LATE GAME WITH EXHAUST

GREEN-WHITE: +1/+1 COUNTERS MAKE YOUR PILOTS BETTER AT CREWING AND YOUR CARS BETTER AT SMASHING!

BLUE-RED: SHIFTING FOCUS FROM ARTIFACTS TO PIRATE DISCARD!

BLACK-GREEN: FILL UP YOUR GRAVEYARD AND PULL THE BEST SALVAGE RIGHT BACK OUT!

RED-WHITE: DWARVES AND EQUIPMENT STILL HAVE A SMALL PRESENCE, BUT TOKENS ARE A NEW OPTION!

GREEN-BLUE: RAMP OUT BIG VEHICLES AND ATTACK, THEN BOOST INTO THE LATE GAME WITH EXH- NO THIS ISN'T THE SAME THING AS GRUUL WHY WOULD YOU EVEN ASK THAT?

FOR THOSE WORRIED ABOUT THE NUMBER OF VEHICLES DECREASING IN THE SIZE INCREASE, CHECK THIS OUT:
OLD VEHICLE COUNT: 85/360 = 23.6%
NEW VEHICLE COUNT: 115/450 = 25.6%

IT'S QUITE AN EXCITING UPDATE! THE NEXT BIG TEST FOR THE CUBE WILL BE AT BOSTON CUBE PARTY, HOPE TO SEE YOU THERE!

A small update, despite the fact I loved the Survival mechanic for this cube. The problem is, most of the cool ones are in Green! I took at hard look at Veteran Survivor, but I just don't like it more than the White creatures I'm running already.

This should be my last update before the Death Race set, when everything changes. Will it finally be Driver's Ed for Green? Will I have to stop breaking singleton on nonlands? Will the size increase to 432, or even 450? Find out next time!

I DID NOT EXPECT TWO VEHICLES FROM THIS ONE!

(This cube just got back from its Pittsburgh debut at Steel City Cube! Players seemed to enjoy it and had a lot of positive feedback! No changes to be made from that event at this time.)

One cool new ship! Adrestia has islandwalk and cares too much about Assassins to be included.

And two cool new Pirates! Invasion of Kaladesh being the only Battle, and having a pretty reasonable stand-in for the backside's Aetherwing in Brotherhood Vertibird had me thinking about cutting it already. And I wasn't originally going to add Adewale, but I think I actually do like it with the other UB cards, especially reinforcing UB Pirates. Edward Kenway is just a bit too much of a commander design for us I think, and not worth being the only tricolor card.

What Must Be Done was also considered, since I don't have any wraths for creatures and artifacts currently, but I think the flavor being a little off and the second ability not putting counters on a Vehicle are enough to keep me uninterested.

At Cali Cube Champs this weekend, Mistmeadow Vanisher proved way too strong! So Dovin comes in to hand out speeding tickets and impound a few vehicles.

TRAINS AND DERAILMENT! A STAGECOACH FROM HELL!
AND ONE! LAST! JOB!

COOL NEW RIDES

AND A COOL OLD MAN

Foreboding Steamboat, finally a vehicle with a BB cost!! And a very cool, flavorful one at that.

After Kylox's Voltstrider was spoiled, I realized that it would have to replace Jhoira under my current 2 rare/4 uncommons system of gold cards and it made me sad. Jhoira and Saheeli both feel really appropriate in this environment, and what if they print a THIRD Izzet rare Vehicle! It was untenable, AND because of Mech Hangar they don't even really behave like Gold cards, more like...Hybrid! Which is an actual section in CubeCobra, so I've recategorized all of the gold Pilots and Vehicles to more accurately represent how they play in the draft.

THIS change pulled 4 of my 6 Boros cards out of 'Gold' and while looking for replacements, I decided Equipment might be a good theme to push a little more! Dwarves are already a major type, and their affinity for Equipment is prolific, so Koll and Reyav look like good adds. Rabbit Battery is an exciting addition beyond its car battery flavor, with a cool mechanical line to crew and then 'jumpstart' a Vehicle with haste.

NEW PIRATES!
NEW SHIPS!

No Vehicles here! And not much artifact synergy either, that we want to use. BUT we do get a new Dwarf for RW, so that's fun, and enough for now.

RATHER THAN HAVE 2 COPIES OF THE GOLD UNCOMMONS, WHY NOT HAVE FOUR DIFFERENT ONES PER PAIR? JUST AN IDEA. TIME FOR A TEST RUN!

(Edit note: With the improvement to monocolor removal in the last update, it felt odd to still have a lot of removal like Rip Apart and Despark in the gold uncommon slots. While looking for replacements, I found a ton of great cards. Some cards like Raff, Invasion of Kaladesh, and Hero of the Dunes can feel awkward to have two copies of, so why not just have one? It's a big change but one I'm excited to try.)

ALL RIGHT! I'm not gonna type this whole thing in caps. We had our first full-table draft last night, and I wasn't in it so the data is (mostly) unaffected by my beliefs about the format!

The decks were:
1st place: Azorius Vehicle Tempo
Runner-up: Grixis Historic
Runner-up: Izzet Start Your Engines
Esper Control
Rakdos Tokens
Orzhov Aggro (No Vehicles!)
Boros Vehicle aggro
Boros Vehicle midrange

The Orzhov no-vehicles Aggro deck was paired against Boros Vehicle Aggro round 1 and we were all curious to see how that would shape up. The Orzhov deck curves out a 3/1 into a 2/1 with recursion in hand and starts attacking. But the Boros deck goes t1 Colossal Plow, t2 Giant Ox crew the Plow, attack for 6 and gain 3. Use the mana and a mountain to play Consulate Dreadnought and Rip Apart your other creature. The Crew 6 beatdown was sufficient.

Among other lessons, I realized I was valuing efficient Vehicle interaction too highly at the expense of creature interaction. It was very difficult to stop King Macar or Daring Thief or Kotori or Jhoira from running away with the game. So we are hoping to address that here, with some good instant-speed removal to hit creatures as well as Vehicles while they are crewed. Jhoira, by the way, is the only one of them so generically strong that I'm ditching her for a more interesting version.

Another lesson was the speed of the format. I was expecting fast, but we got through draft and 3 rounds in just under 3 hours, of a format literally none of them had seen before. That's fast! That's also TOO fast for a card like Efficient Construction, which doesn't do anything to the board when it comes down at 4 mana, to be very effective. Thran Vigil was similarly in a deck that had multiple recursion spells and still found it to be too niche for the number of turns a game actually lasts here.

DID SOME SOLO TESTING AND MADE THESE CHANGES AS A RESULT. TONIGHT IS THE FIRST REAL, FULL-POD DRAFT OF THE CUBE. LET'S SEE WHAT WE GOT WRONG!

FINALLY, BLUE PILOTS! ALSO CUT SOME DUPLICATE RIDES FOR ONES I'D SKIPPED. TIME FOR SOME WACKY RACES.

Since any deck can play them using its Mech Hangar. Still trying to balance out the other colors at each rarity

TIME TO REALLY GET UNDER THE HOOD

Filter Out may prove too strong, but could be hilarious to incite a crew-off of vehicles crewing vehicles to save some from the bounce.

Hangar Scrounger IS a pilot!