Swapping out some less than amazing lands for much better manlands.

Mizzium Tank was always a meh card, Zariel should be a lot better. It also gives another planeswalker should someone decide to make mono red walkers a thing.

Rankle doesn't play into cube archetypes. Ebondeath does.

Wyleth is fine, but Bruenor is much better. It is another 4 drop, but that should be fine since Bruenor doesn't have to be in an equipment deck like Wyleth.

Hero and Icingdeath both fill very similar slots in the cube, but there are other cards that can pump the token team. Icingdeath wins the vindicate test better than hero does.

Luminarch Ascension is really low and unlikely to get going, even in the control lists. Plate Armor is just a much better card.

I wanted another main archetype for black. Lifegain is the least swingy/feel bad archetype that black has. I didn't want to add traditional reanimator or discard.

Of the way to do lifegain I think the "many little instances" is easier to balance and better for the cube as a whole than the "gain a lot and make them kill me some other way" style.

Clackbridge troll is a really cool card, but with tokens and aristocrats both being primary archetypes this card is just gives your opponents way too many resources most of the time. Tivash is an interesting way to turn lifegain into threats. On the turn it comes down it's likely to make a 1/1 or 2/2.

Sedgemoor Witch is a strong card for lifegain and for midrange. It's a decent threat that's hard to kill. Weaponcraft Enthusiast plays into archetypes, but is overall much lower power level.

Nightveil Specter is a fun card, that never saw any play. It's hard to make use of your opponents card without good fixing, but it's also only good in mono black. Bloodthirsty Aerialist has the exact same body, but is much more relevant.

Daemogoth Titan was a bit of a meme, it's 4 mana force an opponent to sacrifice a creature every turn most of the time, but it's also not useful if your opponent doesn't attack, but has good blocks. Twilight Prophet is a much cooler card that provides a threat, card advantage, and plays into the lifegain.

Rune-Scarred Demon is unlikely to be cast, and most of the time the tutor is the least relevant part of the card. Vito, Thorn of the Dusk Rose is the backbone of the lifegain archetype, turning random lifegain into a wincon.

Since I removed reanimator, Makeshift Mannequin is just bad. For 4 mana I'd rather play a better threat than recur my 3 mana threat from the prior turn. Cauldron Familiar is going to be a Voucher card, it's very narrow, just for the Witch's Oven deck, but in that deck it's amazing.

Hagra Mauling is just bad murder and bad swamp. Having both on the same card doesn't really make it much better. Erebos's Intervention triggers lifegain, is a combat trick, exiles key graveyard cards, and is removal. It does everything.

Demonic Embrace was a really cool discard outlet for the reanimator deck that let you turn your Putrid Imp into a real threat when you didn't have anything else to do. Without that archetype the card is not amazing. Veinwitch Coven is a lot better for the aristocrats build and for the lifegain deck. It synergizes really well with Blood Artist and Zulaport Cutthroat giving the aristocrats a bit of speed early in the game.

Hope of Ghirapur is a fine card, but also not great. It can hold a sword, and the aristocrats deck can use it as a repeatable Silence, but it doesn't shine particularly bright. Witch's Oven is a lot more narrow in nature, but provides a lot more value over all.

Felidar Retreat was competing with Court of Grace for a spot in the cube and lost. Blind Obedience triggers lifegain and can help slow down the game for control decks.

Mila, Crafty Companion felt weird in the cube. Even in the planeswalker deck it didn't do much. Kambal, Consul of Allocation is a much better card and the Orzhov multicolor section needed some love.

Temples out for Bridges. Artifact lands really help make the "equal to the number of artifacts" cards have a higher floor.

Mutavault > Mishra's Factory. Mishra's is an artifact and blocks better than Mutavault. I'm also very tempted to add The Book of Exalted Deeds, and I don't want people to have to figure out how to deal with the counter on a land.

Blast Zone > Treasure Vault. Vault looks so cool. Magda and vault go well together. Storm and vault go well together. Artifact matters and vault go well together. Seems amazing in the cube.

This was hard. There are so many cards that I want to have in the cube. There are so many good cards that I want to have there to support things.

It's hard to cut pet cards, but there is always a nagging feeling telling you that it's for the best. I find it even harder to cut generically good cards. Unless something is obviously oppressive or far to powerful for the cube, there isn't that same feeling you can lean into for comfort.

There are also a lot of unknowns. Which variables does a single card change? Which of those variables are ones that I want to change? Do I have too much removal or too little? Does the card play into archetypes too much or not enough? Does the card support a play style that I want to encourage?

These are questions that I find really hard to answer without a lot of play data. I would pay so much money for a black box that gave it a "fun" score. I could tweak individual choices plug it in and let it tell me if I'm making a good decision or a bad one.

It's been about a month since the previous part. I've been pretty busy. I've also been pretty stumped on how to handle black.

I decided that I wanted to cut traditional reanimator. It's way to swingy and not as interactive as I want it to be. I had also previously decided that I didn't want to run discard as a major theme. This doesn't leave a lot of mono-black themes left to build around.

Black is the aristocrats color, but I wanted a secondary theme like I have with the other colors. Aristocrats is also shared with the other colors, and I wanted a theme that was all its own.

I don't think I'm really going to find exactly what I want, so I think I'm going to just ignore the problem as a whole and just shove something in here.

I may add life gain as a secondary archetype. Black has a lot of incidental lifegain, and Strixhaven gave us a lot of hybrid and other payoff cards that I could easily see adding some Pest cards in.

For now though we are just cutting down to 375. Reworks and tweaks come later.

White has always been in a bit of a weird place in the cube. It's one drops have always been better than red's (2/1s over 1/1s). But at the same time it's also the "control" color.

I'm cutting a lot of the aggro cards. If you want to play aggro you'll either need to play with equipment or splash a different color.

My end goal is I want White to be equipment and tokens, with a control sub-theme.

I'm cutting a bunch of board wipes right now, with the intent to put some in other colors and to buff them just a bit. (Damn looking good).

All of the rest of the cuts are either too weak cards, too strong cards, or cards that I don't know how to evaluate or didn't like.

Godsend felt weird during draft. I'm still not sure if it's too strong or not playable.

Monastery Mentor is a great card, and may eventually make it's way back in. But it rewards midrange more than it rewards tokens.

I was worried about Goblin Guide when I put it in. It's faster than I want the cube to go. There aren't any 1 cmc removal spells that can deal with it. The only quick response is Novice Knight, any other defense means guide has been 4 damage for 1 mana, or has been a 1 mana removal spell.

A lot of these spells are ones that don't do anything most of the time, are too slow, or don't play into any real archetypes.

Terror of the Peaks feels really good and may eventually go back in, but at $20 I don't want to get it right now.

Chandra's Incinerator and Chandra's Spitfire are both good spells matters cards, but I want to push the spells deck closer to storm than to burn.

After playing in person I feel the variability in the cube size negatively affects the cubing experience. There were too many instances where an archetype that seemed open was neutered by the lack of payoffs or supporting cards.

It also skews the data I use to determine cube changes. And since this cube isn't drafted often in person I need all the data I can manage.

Since this is a large change to the cube I'll be splitting it up over a number of Blog Posts. One for colorless, one for each color, and a final post or two cleaning up the count and tweaking other numbers.

Most of the cards being cut from the colorless section are low impact cards that don't support particular archetypes as well as others in the cube.

Some of the artifact creatures existed just to be artifact creatures and served no other purpose. They just inflated the count of artifacts.

While I think Deathrender is a fun card, it can be expensive and kind of hard to get to work.

Thieves' Guild Enforcer doesn't really synergize with anything, but the champion does with a lot.

Strixhaven added a bunch of support for RW spells and W artifact creatures. In addition they printed a lot of MDFCs with effects that are relevant to the cube. I'm a big fan of cards that give you options and those do a good job of it.

There are a few cards that I'm cutting for much more battle tested cube cards.
Rograkh, Son of Rohgahh > Goblin Guide
Winota, Joiner of Forces > Nahiri, the Harbinger
Underworld Breach > Past in Flames
Basri Ket > Council's Judgement
Firestorm > Boros Charm

Every time I drafted Forsaken Monument or even saw it during the draft I thought it was bad. I'm replacing it with Extraplanar Lens because I want to enable ramp, without requiring them to pull every 2 mana artifact.

A large portion of white's flicker effects are getting cut. There aren't a lot of good ETB effects that can be repeated and getting half of a good known cube deck is frustrating. I'm replacing a number of the cards with new artifact creatures matter cards.

Scepter of Dominance is the kind of White control card I was looking for. 3 mana Icy Manipulator seems like a great addition.

I finally decided to cut Helm of the Host it would have been fun in a janky EDH kinda way, but I don't think it would have been great outside of Godo-helm. I'm replacing it with a similar big-costed equipment, but one that I hope will have a higher floor.

There are a few black cards that felt really out of place. Black doesn't really care about artifacts like red and white, and it's a weird color to splash when playing them. In addition, dredge isn't supported enough for stinkweed or ransack the lab. These cards have been cut for cards I hope will be generally better in a variety of decks.

Strixhaven gave red a lot of fancy toys to try out. I'm buffing red's spell list.

I'm honestly not sure which I like better Sundering Titan or Triplicate Titan. I have more experience with Sundering Titan, but Triplicate Titan feels a lot better with the aristocrats & token themes in the cube as a whole.

Beacon of Unrest is a much worse card than I originally thought. There is plenty of other recursion in the cube that a 5 mana card with no real bonus isn't worth it most of the time. Damnation gives black an out to Starnheim Unleashed et al.

Gravepurge is a cute with Syr Konrad, the Grim, but otherwise doesn't do much.

Due to popular demand (and because cycles are interesting), I've added Obosh, the Preypiercer back. I hate to see Angrath, the Flame-Chained go, but they both occupy a similar spot in the cube's color/cmc layout.

After completing a draft of the cube I actually have some data and opinions that I can use to tweak things.

Selfless Squire is a great flicker target, and is good for the Approach of the Second Sun deck, but isn't great for anything else.

I'm still scared of protection and while I know that Akroma, Angel of Wrath is supposed to be a game ender she still scares me. She is basically this cube's Emrakul.

Starnheim Unleashed exceeded expectations, so much so that I'm adding it to the watchlist. 5 mana for two 4/4 fliers is very good, 7 for three is game ending.

As a random value card Liliana's Standard Bearer isn't particularly great. I have yet to see it in the aristocrats deck though.

First up, it was pointed out to me that Lutri was a much better card than Galvanoth. The spells deck is looking to double up on burn spells not mess with top of deck or cast big spells.

Mana Fixing didn't seem too bad or too good during the first draft, but I always felt kinda bad about including gainlands, they just don't feel like much. The new snow duals are fetchable and can have a minor impact for Draugr Necromancer.

Eat to Extinction clearing a card is better than the life from Vraska's Contempt

Kolaghan's Command is far better of a card than I thought it would be.

In the same vein Umezawa's Jitte is already bonkers, adding heavy equipment support on top pushes this card completely out of the power range for this cube. Shadowspear is much closer to what I want.

Inspiring Statuary was just as disappointing as I was worried it would be. Cutting it in favor of Phyrexian Altar. I'm hoping the altar will help out aristocrats and give tokens ramp without being too overpowered. I am going to keep an eye on it.

When evaluating cards I highly value the opinions of others. Sometimes I forget to take into account context. When I read about how awesome Mortarpod was in cube I completely neglected that they were talking about peasant cube. In this cube it felt very bad. I'm replacing it with Idol of Oblivion, which should help a lot with the lack of blue card draw. There are a lot of once a turn token makers to help keep this churning through your deck.

Since I wanted to cut Tomb Robber I needed a good replacement discard outlet, why not go for the popular Oona's Prowler.

I didn't actually see Doomed Artisan drafted, but every time I look at its floor I see a storm-less Empty the Warrens.

I think a couple extra boardwipes would be good for the cube overall. Doomskar has gotten a lot of buzz recently and I'd like to see how it plays. If Anger of the Gods is too good I can replace it with Pyroclasm if its not good enough I can replace it with Blasphemous Act or upgrade an X spell and replace Collective Defiance.

One complaint I received was that the Flicker deck didn't have enough payoffs. After evaluating things I have to agree, so a large part of this update is adding better flicker targets in all colors. This will also have the benefit of buffing Birthing Pod.

Sin Collector not having a "leaves the battlefield" clause makes it really useful for the more controlling BW flicker deck.

Corpse Knight synergizes with tokens, aristocrats, and flicker which is always something I'm looking for in a card. I'm using the 2/2 version since it's the official one and what will show in dr4ft. I may eventually decide to use 2/3 in paper though.

Obosh, the Preypiercer is going to be very hard to get working even as a card in the deck. Murderous Redcap is a card I'm very wary of. I don't want any accidental T3 combos, but as it stands the cube doesn't have any free ways of making it infinite (that I know of). So it will probably be fine.

Lazier Goblin is an interesting card. It's a shock that can be sac'd, flickered, and reanimated.

Flametongue Kavu is really good and Captivating Crew is really medium.

Weaponcraft Enthusiast plays much better for flicker, aristocrats, and artifacts than Tomb Robber or Mire Triton did for reanimator. It's also a nice curve filler for Birthing Pod.

Tergrid, God of Fright is an interesting card, but doesn't make the cut for a lot of decks unless you are bringing it in from the side to hate a particular archetype. Clackbridge Troll has a lot more play. I'm concerned that the tokens are a major draw back since it plays into major archetypes. We'll see how it goes.

Cloudgoat Ranger is just a better Captain of the Watch a lot of the time. It's also slightly less likely to make people think there is support for a tribe.

Thraben Inspector just feels to at home in the cube to not be here. It's nice for flicker and it blocks 1/1s. It's floor is much higher than Quest for the Holy Relic's.

Oblation is too cute. Silverblade Paladin is much less likely to wheel the table.

There isn't a particular reason to cut Nahiri, the Lithomancer outside of it's my lowest ranking white 5 drop. Archangel Avacyn is so much better.

The floor on Keeper of the Accord is a 4 mana 3/4. At its ceiling it keeps you on par with your opponent, but its ceiling is so far away from the average that I don't think it's worth it. Compared to Kor cartographer which will always get you a Plains and plays much better into cube archetypes.

Fiery Confluence is a card that I thought I had added early. This is a card that helps almost every deck it's in. But it really helps buff the burn deck. Casting a confluence off of Pyromancer's Goggles can win the game very easily.

Geth, Lord of the Vault has felt very out of place every time I look at him. Even though the cube is full of artifacts I just feel like it's not unique or fun. So to replace it I'm choosing Oona, Queen of the Fae which I think is very unique and fun. I'm sure she'll be a great build around card that fits the "Play your opponent's creatures" deck and the Bx tokens deck.

K'rrik, Son of Yawgmoth is a very powerful card, and will immediately be put on the watchlist. Turn 3 Bolas's Citadel off the back of T2 Dark Ritual -> K'rrik might be better than I really want for the cube. I'm adding this card because it's still risky in a cube filled with aggro and burn. It's a big flashy play that you won't feel bad if it ends up killing you because you got to do something fun with.

This all stemmed from the question "What are the payoffs for artifacts matters?". Specifically, the non-welder, non-equipment decks; the kind that would play Forsaken Monument. Most of the time the pieces for the generic artifact deck will get parted out to other decks that either need random creatures or random artifacts. But I do see a case for the once in a while Forsaken Monument + Metalworker deck. When that happens I think the best way to help support it is having payoffs not for artifacts specifically but payoffs for lots and lots of mana. There are a ton of large mana rocks (Thran Dynamo, Gilded Lotus, & Coveted Jewel), but not many ways to spend that mana outside of big creatures, most of which are castable without the ramp. In comes Retrofitter Foundry to fill that slot. It's a great mana sink that comes down early to provide value throughout the game. It can be played in tokens and aristocrats in a pinch.

In addition to looking at payoffs I also counted all the sources available that Forksaken Monument could double. To help increase that number I'm swapping out the signets for talismans.

Myr Retriever -> Junk Diver was a remnant of trying to fit Krark-Clan Ironworks in the cube as a value card while also trying to forgo the combo. That was obviously a bad idea, so I'm reverting that change.

Immersturm Predator looks cool, but I was overvaluing it's dragon typing and graveyard hate ability. Falkenrath Aristocrat is a much better card in general.

It was brought to my attention that red has less one drops than other colors. Since it has less cards than white or black I'm removing a card each to support Fervent Champion and Bloodlust Inciter. If mono red aggro still needs a buff I can upgrade Dragonmaster Outcast, Rograkh, Son of Rohgahh, or Bloodlust Inciter.

Kargan Dragonlord has better creature types than Ire Shaman and has an extra devotion for Anax, Hardened in the Forge and Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx.

Adorned Pouncer is not only good in equipment decks like Leonin Shikari but is playable in tokens along side Spear of Heliod and in aristocrats because of it's built in recursion.

Similarly, Siege-Gang Commander has much more play than Dong Zhou, the Tyrant. It fits in RDW, aristocrats, tokens, and midrange.

Boros has many more dual color cards than Rakdos or Orzhov and it's the color least likely to play them. It also has two other artifact/enchantment removal cards. Angrath, the Flame-Chained plays well with aristocrats and with Tergrid, God of Fright