FDN is a really great set for pauper cube - a lot of the cards are strong but straightforward, and skew towards attacking with on-curve creatures.

It kills me to cut Spellstutter Sprite, but everyone misreads it as a Force Spike instead of a Spell Blast. It's a touch underpowered in here, and leads to a lot of confusion, so it's out. Elementalist Adept is a simple tempo creature with a lot of cool play to it, so I expect it to play really well.

Icewind Stalwart is fine but unremarkable, and you really want more for your 4. Prideful Parent is another Attended Knight, which has been a staple forever.

Seraph of Dawn used to be completely unbeatable, but suffers from being 4 mana. I really want white 4+ to be top-of-curve payoffs instead of stat wads, so Felidar Savior is an easy add.

Holy Cow is another card that is Fine but doesn't really achieve my goals for its color. Inspiring Paladin is a great on-curve body that also serves as a +1/+1 counter lord - can't ask for much else.

Planar Disruption is a solid card, but I'm replacing it with Banishing Light, despite it being worse. I like the old-frame foil, and I prefer running resonant cards over ones folk probably don't know. This also takes a reference to planeswalkers out of the cube.

I really like Ichor Slick but it's past its prime, and I don't love having one madness card (even if it fires itself). Stab is Yet Another Disfigure which I'm always happy to run.

Carrier Thrall is a little expensive for what it does, and I don't like the one-off token. Infestation Sage is cheaper and cleaner.

Springbloom Druid is a Harrow with legs, which you'd think would be better than it is! 3 is just too much to ramp in this cube, though. I think Cackling Prowler is an excellent stat wad that will do really well in green.

Sylvan Might was added to fix the issue of green getting moated by random 1/1s, since it gives trample twice. That's not really a problem anymore, so now it's just expensive. Bushwhack is a great modal card that I'm thrilled to add. I'd love to add the pump/lay-of-the-land card from Jumpstart, but until it's in foil, it's out.

This is both a very small update and a very big one. The only card change is swapping Krenko's Command in over Goblin Instigator. The cards are 90% identical (Command is very slightly more synergistic) but it's mostly because I wanted to run the old-frame card. There are also a bunch of swaps to old-border versions, or non-promo ones. I've moved towards keeping cards visually consistent, and the dark text boxes of 2019 era promos were bothering me.

The big change here is that the cube is now 100% foiled. I broke my longstanding ban on 7th Edition foils to run Remove Soul, since it's the only old-border version of the effect. Crypt Rats is now (and hopefully only temporarily) new-border, but it was the last non-foil holdout. Being able to say "this cube is all-foil" is a huge improvement over "it's almost all foil, except for a few cards", and I'm very pleased that I've managed to pull it off.

Another set of lands, and a fair number of changes overall:

The choose-a-color lands are swapped for the new cycling fetches. The choose-a-colors were very strong but have memory demands, suck a little tempo from the cube, and awkwardly are playable even off their main color. The cycling fetches are useful on-curve, require that you play at least two of the colors of the card, and helpfully have their colors printed on them. This isn't a huge change, but should be a nice quality-of-life improvement.

I'm excited to swap Aerie Auxiliary for Gallant Cavalry. As the cube's curve goes down, 4 drops should be more payoffs than setup, and a Phantom Monster that rewards on-curve play is fantastic here.

Unruly Mob was experimental, and didn't last long. Having a pseudo-Unearth in white is fairly exciting - there are a lot of 1-2 mana creatures that are worth rebuying, plus the off chance of having spare energy from elsewhere.

I've been increasingly moving away from engine cards like Persistent Speciment, instead favoring more proactive ways to spend mana. Accursed Marauder is solid removal that could theoretically leave a 2/1, and rebuys well. I considered cutting Diabolic Edict, but the classic manages to hold on for another round.

Defile just never got the job done - Bx decks often only had 2-3 Swamps in play, and 0-1 in the key early turns - so I'm happy to swap it for removal with pseudo-flashback.

Phyrexian Gargantua is too expensive for the cube, so it's swapped for Scurrilous Sentry. 4 mana is a lot, but I could see Sentry becoming one of the best late creatures in this environment.

It pains me to cut Mogg Fanatic, but it just hasn't kept up at all. I recently drafted a low-curving mono-red deck and couldn't justify playing it, which was the sign for me that it was time to go. Inventor's Axe is a bit of an experiment, but I think that a two-shot +2/+0 for one mana is solid enough to see play across a variety of red decks.

Contagious Vorrac needs a flowchart to resolve, and is sent packing. Evolution Witness might be too slow for this environment - it's dreadful on resolution - but rebuys are valuable enough that it may work out. There's also combo potential with proliferate and other counter sources, so this could be a very exciting card to play with.

Havenwood Wurm has stuck around forever but has gotten worse over time; a 7 mana 5/6 trick just isn't doing it anymore. Colossal Dreadmask may be too strong as a finisher, but I'm willing to err on the side of giant green monsters.

...which does make cutting Qasali Pridemage a bit awkward, but the GW slot is tight, and I really wanted to find room for a vigilant Watchwolf that proliferates well.

There's absolutely nothing wrong with Skyknight Legionnaire, but 3 mana's a bit much for aggro now, and I'm a Goblin Legionnaire believer. I expect Conduit Goblin to curve well, although it's a bit crummy off-curve; I'll keep an eye on it and assess over time. I could see a Goblin->Shock+3/x creature opening being very strong.

I swapped the gainlands from KTK for the ping deserts; this may seem like a weird choice at first, since I left the strictly worse gates in. This is a case where the worse cards (gates) are better for the environment than the better cards (gainlands) - I'm thrilled to take 10 life out of the cube (via deserts), and would prefer to take another 10 life out (via cutting gainlands). If I ever break singleton, it'd probably be to run 40 deserts, but until then gates are likely staying in.

Pollenbright Druid almost never makes decks, so it's retired for a Naturalize on a 2/2.

Young Red Dragon was added in the hopes of giving slower red decks something to do, but it was too orthogonal to the rest of the color, so it's cut for a great 1-drop.

Silumgar Scavenger suffers from having too many damn words on it; if it didn't have exploit it would honestly be better for the cube. I'm swapping it for Yet Another Phyrexian Rager.

Heliod's Pilgrim was a player favorite, but is severely under-statted for the cube today, and pushed players towards grindier resource fights. I'm bringing in a 3 mana 3/3 that benefits from active combat and trading, which is more of what the cube wants to be doing.

Bonds of Faith is a pauper cube classic, but suffers from being clunky and occasionally requiring outside knowledge (is Coalition Honor Guard a human?). Holy Cow looks like a fine wad-o'-value that can be played at instant speed.

Blue gets a lot of changes here - it's been long neglected and long overdue. Drawing cards was the Obvious Best Thing for a long while, so I wanted to limit pure card draw in blue; however, over time, other colors have caught up, so blue's expensive card draw just felt worse than cantrip creatures. This update puts some more hard card advantage into blue as cheaper instants, with the goal of pushing blue towards being the color that can best use all of its mana every turn. A recent drafter had the great idea of adding in the two discounted snakes, which serve as an additional payoff for casting lots of spells. There's no self-mill synergy, so the goal is to encourage players to cast cheap Terrors after burning through their cantrips.

Goblin Legionnaire and Qasali Pridemage come back to replace two underperforming gold cards. Travel Preparations was great in 2013, but just isn't pulling its weight anymore, and Seal creatures play really well. Tenth District was signaling a deck that didn't exist, so it's out in favor of another classic Seal. Lawmage's Binding was fine but unremarkable, so guess what, Bird Seal.

Imperious Oligarch gets special mention, since with the coming printing of Vengeful Townsfolk, I wanted to rethink what BW was doing. I realized that I liked how incidental on-death synergies played, but not so much The Aristocrats Deck(tm), which never came together and just felt clunky vs. playing generally good cards. I brought in the two afterlife creatures, as they're fine on-rate and can occasionally pay off via a Village Rites or Nantuko Husk. I'm also trying Unruly Mob as another incidental payoff, although I'm pessimistic on it. My hope is that the on-dies creatures will benefit enough from trading in combat to be playable, but they're a bit experimental. One of the engine creatures gets cut here also for Village Rites 2.

Dynacharge is the only overload card in the cube, so it gets cut for a cleaner version that's much better. Custodi Squire includes a paragraph of needless text, so I swapped it for a cleaner replacement.

Auramancer hasn't been in for a while, but I missed this swap before.