Time for another update, although we only managed to play one more (three player) game with this cube since the last update.

I'm making cuts that I've been thinking about for a while now, mainly reducing board wipes and cards that just haven't seen any play in all the games to date (including four commanders!). Also I'm adding cards from a wider pool of Options now as I'm not limiting these changes to what I happen to have in my current collection.

One factor in my decision making is that our cube games have consistently lasted over an hour, and I want to work towards enabling faster games. Mainly because drafting and deck building takes us around 50 minutes, essentially replacing one of the 3 (occasionally 4) games we can get in when we play on a week night$^1$.

$^1$: Our "normal" Commander games also typically last anywhere between 1h - 1h30 so maybe we're just slow players or our decks overall are just not "explosive" enough to close games? Anyway, that's a topic for another day...

I won't go through every single card, but I think the overarching aim is radically reducing the number of board wipes in the cube. Last time we had three board wipes in our game (+ Massacre Wurm so arguably four) - sure, perhaps this was an outlier game, but it nudged me enough to make these changes now.

So I've taken out most board wipes and left only a few that are asymmetrical in nature such as Disrupt Decorum or Massacre Wurm. I decided to add Aetherize as a more situational, but asymmetrical pseudo board wipe and I left Nevinyrral's Disk as a colourless option and because that one you "see coming" so at least it gives players a chance to interact before it untaps.

I've also taken out Cyclonic Rift despite its asymmetrical nature, because I fear it could lead to "feel bad" moments as there's little effective counter play here.

To avoid the reduced board wipes resulting in sticky board stalls that also end up dragging out the game, I tried to add more cards that enable attacks or disrupt opponents' blockers and creatures in other ways, building on changes I made last time. This includes for example Bident of Thassa, Atraxa's Skitterfang, Bothersome Quasit, or just more evasive threats such as Bonehoard Dracosaur or Lady of Laughter.

Swapping four Commanders is arguably a change that warrants to be talked about before anything else but I was just more bothered about the board wipe situation to be honest.

Anyway, I'm swapping Commanders that haven't seen play to hopefully entice their respective colour combinations to see more play:

Brago, King Eternal might end up being too strong, but at the same time the "Blink" archetype has not really seen play so far, we'll see if Brago changes that.

Rakdos, the Muscle comes in as an attempt at a more enticing Commander for Rakdos Sacrifice, another colour pair that has not yet seen any real play.

Soul of Windgrace replaces Lord Windgrace (thanks @samuraisaktio for the suggestion), again just to switch things up a bit as Jund's not seen any play yet either.

Finally, Atla Palani, Nest Tender was always bit of a shoe-in just to have a Commander for Naya colours, but the new Ghired, Mirror of the Wilds seems interesting and I want to give it a try in this cube where there's plenty of tokens being generated.

A brief note on Purphoros, God of the Forge: I worry it could dominate games, but so far it has yet to really "pop off". However, I am adding more exile removal into the cube to balance the scales a bit against him and the other two gods in the cube.

Ok I said I want games to end quicker and now I'm talking about removing win cons from the cube, but I'm trying to replace win cons such as Akroma's Will or Triumph of the Hordes with ones that feel more "fair" and less "out of nowhere".

I'm cutting a bunch of cards that I thought might be good utility or "glue" pieces but they just never saw play and I never found myself putting them in any of my decks. This includes largely artifacts such as Panharmonicon or Conjurer's Closet, so I'm taking these out just to put more interesting cards in, for example Nazgul Battle-Mace was a card I only came across today which seems like a good fit to encourage more combat action.

I must admit I've not really kept up with the latest sets and releases, I drafted MKM twice and have been casually browsing reddit for spoilers but large parts of MKM, PIP, and OTJ (plus all the respective bonus sets and commander sets etc. etc.) I have not had the mental energy/drive to look through. Also, I don't want to introduce too many keyworded mechanics into the cube as one-offs and have one random creature with "Disguise" or one lonely card with "Saddle" or whatever as that will just increase overall complexity and make games and board states harder to track for everyone involved.

Another thought I've been toying with in the back of my head was potentially dropping the colour identity restriction for decks in this cube, just to enable more splashes and more diverse decks. However, a) colour identity seems like a core thing that makes Commander... well, Commander and b) our POD is still unexperienced in all things Limited Magic so the restriction of colours in a way adds "guard rails" and perhaps makes it easier for us to "know what to draft" instead of ending up with "aimless soup" decks every time. I might try it as a one off at some point in future!

Queen Marchesa
Jolrael, Voice of Zhalfir
Zimone and Dina

Our pod's putting the 4 in 2024 and we finally managed to end the stretch of 3-player games and this meant the cube got it's first 4 player spin, too!

Of course the sample size is still 1 (one) so early days but that won't stop me from making changes to the cube (lel)

A big thank you to @samuraisaktio for some solid suggestions for future additions, these will definitely be considered the next time I'm buying new cards to test in this cube (see Future Considerations below) for more detail.)

"Aesthetic Balance" is for the weak, I decided to start embracing a cube where not all sections have a neat, even number of cards. Thanks Lucky Paper Radio, your podcasts have certainly "freed" me in this regard recently.

General theme of the additions is more evasive threats and a touch more removal perhaps?

Additions were based on my collection, so perhaps not "ideal" card choices here, just didn't want to order a handful cards at this time, I'll wait until I place my next larger order of new cards for other stuff before I explicitly buy new cards for this cube.

White was lacking somewhat of a "finisher" so I decided to add Moonshaker Cavalry as that's just sitting in my binder at the moment. Initially I was worried about the restrictive but then I realised I also run Massacre Wurm so why not just give it a go? Steel Seraph adds more evasive threat stuff and hopefully enables better attacks in games and is also a neat flicker/blink target. Shire Shirriff is just a bit more removal that leans into making use of tokens.

Faerie Slumber Party replaces Perplpexing Test to hopefully give Blue a more meaningful boardwipe, Mercurial Spelldancer is another evasive threat that hopefully also adds a bit more payoff to non-creature spells, and finally Phyrexian Metamorph is another "generically good" card I had lying around without a home (the Metal Gear Solid Secret Lair version no less)

An evasive threat I had lying around and that can be flexibly fit in a deck's curve, another spellslinger removal piece, and a land cycler that hopefully enables more attacks when boards are stalled (I know the red one is probably the weakest of the land cyclers from LTR but I generally like all of them, if I had spares for White and Blue I would probably put those in here, too)

Whilst very different cards in nature, they all fail for a similar reason in that decks that are very heavy in one colour just seem very unlikely or hard to achieve. Therefore, Runaway Steam-Kin has never actually ran away with anything, Defiler of Faith doesn't enable any meaningful discounts, and Valakut, the Molten Pinnacle is essentially a tapland that produces .

Ramp is pretty insignificant in this cube and fixing seems plentiful as it is at the moment, meaning that these cards just haven't seen any reason to be played. Also, I wanted to reduce the number of artifacts to add more coloured playables as we had drafts where people were essentially forced to play every card they drafted in the colours of their chosen commander which led to 0 deck building decisions in those cases. Will keep an eye on this one.

Thought with the curve in this cube reasonably low Recruitment Officer might be a nice card selection tool but it's just now made any splashes in our games and now I've added more higher mana value cards as well (although most of them have utility or use cases at lower mana values, too). If I get interested again in this sort of effect perhaps I might lean more into tutors such as Imperial Recruiter or Recruiter of the Guard perhaps?

I've yet to see a board state where Perplexing Test would have created a one-sided enough advantage for the caster. Tokens are a thing in the cube but they seem to be intertwined enough with non-token creatures that this card just never feels good to cast.

Past in Flames - I thought the spellslinger archetype might benefit from more recursive cards but so far this card just hasn't seen any play (or perhaps our group is just not skilled/experienced enough to play it "correctly"?) - anyway, I'll take it out to make room for hopefully something more universally useful.

Finally, Strip Mine just doesn't do much in the current cube where there's not enough "meaty" targets for it.

I'll keep my eye on some of the potential future cuts like Cyclonic Rift and Triumph of the Hoardes, however, I've taken some other cards like Blasphemous Act and Neviryinnal's Dsik off the list for the time being as having board wipes around can be useful, especially in a four player game.

I'm thinking of cutting Panharmonicon and Conjurer's Closet in future as they're both somewhat narrow and could make way for more coloured spells as sometimes players have struggled to get enough playables in their colours to make meaningful deckbuilding decisions (but then again we might just all suck at drafting, who knows).

There's definitely some new cards I am also thinking about like Get Lost or Bonehoard Dragon, as well as Tishana's Tidebinder or Bitter Triumph (plus whatever just released in MKM, product fatigue anyone?)

Big thanks to @samuraisaktio for helpful suggestions for future adds, I have added them to the maybeboard. I like Thraben Inspector and Moorland Rescuer in particular, but Usher of the Fallen and Palace Jailer are also great cards (just slightly worried my white section in this cube and my other project of a Red-White 1v1 cube might get too similar). Triumph of Saint Catherine is also a really interesting cards, I don't think I'm very aware of all of the 40K cards so that also prompted me to look at those in future for more potential adds! Finally, Lena, Selfless Champion sounds fun, but I'd like to keep each colour to two Legends and at the moment I struggle to see it replace either Adeline, Resplendent Cathar or Bennie Bracks, Zoologist]

For completeness sake, results since the last post, notably yielding the first games where a non-green deck won a game and the first appearances of partnered mono-coloured commanders.

Winning decks below in bold

Adeline, Resplendent Cathar x Thassa, Deep-Dwelling
Ovika, Enigma Goliath
Omnath, Locus of Rage

Teysa Karlov
Ovika, Enigma Goliath
Omnath, Locus of Rage

Zimone and Dina
Bennie Bracks, Zoologist x Jadar, Ghoulcaller of Nephalia
Omnath, Locus of Rage
Chulane, Teller of Tales

Right folks, the cube's seen a few rounds of play now, giving me bit more of a feel of play patterns and decks coming together. The big caveat is that all sessions to date with the cube were played with only three players and not four, which led to drafts with six packs per player, leaving two packs at the end undrafted (i.e. 24 cards each time that were not seen).

Despite this, I want to make some initial changes and will also leave a few early reflections that I won't transact into changes just yet, hoping to eventually get some play experience with four players in.

I didn't keep records of deck lists and draft pools, but colour identities and commanders that were played as per the below, the winning deck is highlighted in bold.

Riku of Two Reflections
Teysa Karlov
Jolrael, Voice of Zhalfir

Meren of Clan Nel Toth
Zimone, Quandrix Prodigy
Kykar, Wind's Fury

Atla Palani, Nest Tender
Jarad, Golgari Lichlord
Kykar, Wind's Fury

Radha, Heart of Keld
Neyali, Suns' Vanguard
Zimone and Dina

Zimone and Dina
Lord of the Nazgul
Atla Palani, Nest Tender

As far as 'patterns' go, so far Green has always been part of the winning decks, but with different strategies and paths to victory overall - perhaps we all just like green as a colour instinctively?

Anyway, let's talk about the changes: I'm taking all the Talismans out, reason being that they don't add much to the gameplay experience. They rarely come out turn 2, games are generally battlecruiser-y and ramp isn't that important. I put them in originally to try to emulate some of the 'typical commander game feel' with mana rocks and whatnot but it just doesn't add much to our games I don't think and fixing is plentiful given the multiple land cycles in the cube. This might be different when drafting with four players, but it feels better to run more spells that do interesting and fun things.

The additions are evenly split across all colours and just picked from my existing collection - I tried to add more (spot) removal (e.g. Stroke of Midnight, Candy Grapple), partly to enable more/better attacks, but also to try and keep games smaller and offer options to deal with threats. If this results in too grindy games then I will reconsider, but for now games have had somewhat stalled boards at times where no-one really had favourable attacks. On the flip side this has given space to other ways to drain life and win such as Suture Priest or Zimone and Dina.

Other additions such as Man-O'-War or Combat Thresher are in to give more creatures with ETB effects as blink targets, as that strategy/element hasn't really seen any meaningful density so far (but then again Blue-White as a combo has not yet come together as a deck in our games).

A few final thoughts on potential future cuts and changes: I'll keep my eye on cards such as Triumph of the Hordes or Cyclonic Rift, i.e. cards that can 'win out of nowhere' with the only way to stop them being essentially a counter spell at the right time. Might feel somewhat 'unfun' to just lose all of a sudden to an overloaded Cyclonic Rift of Poison counters, perhaps despite having been in a leading position up to that point in the game? Our games so far haven't ended that way a lot yet, but I have started thinking about swapping these cards for other, perhaps more manageable wincons. Having said that, games have to end at some point, and games so far have been on the longer side. Other thoughts for future additions include more mechanics such as goad or monarch that incentivise or force attacks/combat, as well as more evasive threats. Anyway, I'll hold off with those for now until we've actually had a few more (four player) games.

Two more swaps as upon finalising my cube overview and re-reading the signpost commanders for each colour pair I realised two things that I just had to address before I go about even ordering the cards to bring this cube to life:

1. Judith, the Scourge Diva only triggers off non-token creatures dying. With tokens being an underlying theme that cuts across most if not all colours and archetypes, this feels like a big oversight ("Reading the card explains the card"). So Judith out, Juri, Master of the Revue in - this fits more generally with the "sacrifice" theme I think (I hope...did I mention I'm a cube noob?).

2. Dimir just doesn't really have a proper 'theme'. I like the idea of Rona, Sheoldred's Faithful, but I am not sure if the whole "Spellslinger lifedrain" archetype actually works and if Rona is poewrful and/or supported aenough as a commander. Meanwhile, Lazav, the Multifarious always felt like bit like a desperate and unfocussed choice. So, I'm swapping Lazav in favour of Lord of the Nazgul - theere is no such thing as 'too many Lord of the Rings cards', plus, this actually also supports the 'spellslinger' theme to complement Rona.

I'll stop promising now that there won't be any more changes before the first play test - whatever will be, will be.

okay okay I said I wouldn't make any further changes until I got a chance to actually play this cube at least once. Well, playing the Wilds of Eldraine Pre-Release reminded me of adventures as a card type which I had completely overlooked so far. The "2 spells on 1 card" nature of adventures feels quite fitting to try and fit more content into this space constrained micro cube.

Inclusions include Murderous Rider and Sword Coast Serpent, both add decent removal/bounce options whilst also providing another creature on top. Blessed Hippogriff and Pegasus Guardian provide further spell/creature combos that are generically useful but also tie into the archetypes in the cube. Beanstalk Giant provides a ramp spell and another lands matter payoff. I'm perhaps less convinced about Brazen Borrower, but it does provide another noncreature spell/creature package - just not sure how good the creature side is in Commander?

Cuts include Elspeth, Sun's Champion - having just a single Planeswalker felt odd and white has enough board wipe and token generator options (I think). Nerfed blue's removal suite slightly by cutting Reality Shift, also taking out Essence Scatter for now. Given the token prevalence I'm expecting I'm swapping Night's Whisper for the new Rowan's Grim Search with the Bargain mechanic. I decided to cut Grapple With the Past as I felt there is enough self-mill and graveyard enablers in the cube (especially in black-green), also I cut Farseek to make way for the aforementioned adventure giant. Two cuts I was less sure about are Keeper of the Accord and Witch of the Moors - the former seemed like a versatile card but ultimately felt somewhat superfluous, the latter seemed to fit in the reanimation category but I realised I may not have enough ways to gain life as outside of the black lifedrain cards there is hardly any incidental lifegain in this cube. Also, I needed to make space for Blightwing Bandit, which seems too much fun to not give it a go, even though it doesn't really fit with any of the archetypes in the cube.

Right, that's it for now - at least that's the plan. If I can get this cube ready for playtesting before the next set comes out then I will leave things as they are. Should timelines slip again then I might find myself tinkering with it again once the next set has dropped, although I am really struggling to think which cards I'd want to swap as I like all the cards in this cube at the moment...only thing I can think of would be perhaps some more appealing Dimir commanders, not terribly convinced by Lazav at the moment...

Right, a few days have gone by since declaring the first ‘release’ of this cube and I had a few doubts about card choices and am making a number of swaps to refine the cube.

23 cards, i.e. almost 10% of the cube, hopefully the scale of changes will gradually go down in future! Needless to say at this point the cube has not seen any actual play yet, only a handful of bot drafts.

A number of commanders have been swapped, primarily to get rid of potentially misleading sign-posts and also to refine the commander choices to be more in line with what the individual colours ate looking to do.

For example, I’m cutting Ob Nixilis, Captive Kingpin, Ob Nixilis, The Fallen, and Mazirek, Kraul Deathpriest to not mislead people thinking there may be a +1/+1 counter theme. Instead, I swap in Jadar, Ghoulcaller of Nephalia, Judith, the Scourge Diva, and Meren of Clan Nel Toth. I am slightly concerned whether Meren might be too powerful in this cube, but I’ll just give it a go - I wanted to build a Meren deck at some point, so including her in the cube felt a good way to scratch that itch of mine.

Dimir also gets a substantial Commander overhaul - Sygg, River Cutthroat and Lazav, Dimir Mastermind both get axed for Rona, Sheoldred’s Faithful and Lazav, the Multifarious. Wonder if Dimir Commanders are somewhat lacking, but we shall see once I managed a few games with this cube.

Not going over every card, but I tried to tighten up the colours a bit in what they’re bringing to the mix. With Golgari being more focussed now as a graveyard / reanimatir archetype I added more self-mill and recursion enablers to green and black, such as Eerie Soultender, Life from the Loam, and Phyrexian Reclamation.

Blue definitely lacked some spell pay-offs, so I added Murmuring Mystic, which probably should have made the cut the first time round. Also Red sees some more spells added, for example Past in Flames to support more spellslinger stuff, as well as Fear, Fire, Foes! as a token / go-wide hate card.

Finally, white in a way may now be the most card-draw heavy colour - I removed Mentor of the Meek but added Errand-Rider of Gondor for some ETB effect that’s worth blinking (and because LotR is cool), as well as Dawn of a New Age. Also threw in Ephemerate for good measure as a additional flicker enabler.

For colourless, I removed Atraxa’s Skitterfang to remove unsupported token stuff and instead added Cloud Key as a versatile Ramp/Cost Reducer option that a lot of decks/archetypes may find useful.

I think before I make any further changes this cube needs to see some real-world play at least once (Hopefully in the not so distant future). I generally stuck to the design decision to not include any more Legends in the non-Commander slots, partly to keep the signposting of which commanders are meant to be commanders very clear, but also to make sure Legendaries are somewhat ‘special’. This is also partly because I’m not 100% sure yet about whether I will keep the partner rules change for all mono-coloured commanders as this was a relatively spontaneous decision off the back of the fact that Commander Masters uses this rule.

Anyway, hopefully I can give this cube a few spins in our playgroup soon, and then I may be back with further updates.

Finally, it is done - the first iteration of my 240 card cube is ready to be tested, at the very least virtually by myself before I decide to unleash it on my local playgroup.

Final additions for this 'release' include artifacts and a handful more lands to provide some utility aside from fixing.

Originally intended to have 20 slots but reduced it to 15 in the end. I actually struggled a bit to fill the whole 20 so the reduction was actually rather useful. I added a bit more fixing support with Chromatic Lantern and Ornithopter of Paradise to hopefully encourage people to play the three-colour commanders, I also added a bit more generic ramp with Burnished Hart and Solemn Simulacrum.

Included a few broad utililty cards that I felt might be useful such as Bladegriff Prototype for removal (with a twist), Lithoform Engine to lean more into copying spells, and Atraxa's Skitterfang seemed a versatile creature (this is probably a bit shaky as I don't have any notable counter themes or synergies in the cube).

Also added Phyrexian Altar as another free sac outlet as Black was missing those a bit, and included Skullclamp as a card draw tool for token strategies (or way to enable aristocrats).

Embarrassingly, I originally intended to add 50 lands total to my cube - 40 fixing lands pplus an additional ten for utility. However, I relaised too late that doing so would leave me with only 150 slots remaining and not 160, so as a compromise I took 5 of the land slots and 5 of the artifact slots off to not have to review and agonise over cutting down the 26 cards for each of the five main colours...

Anyway, I decided to just grab five lands that stood out to me here, I think I do need to revisit if I can find a few more land slots in this cube, for example to include more land destruction or graveyard hate. Perhaps I can reduce the fixing aspects slightly and swap in the cycle of 'Thriving" Lands?

Right, now that the first iteration is complete, I will go and set up the draft mechanics and rules here on Cube Cobra and will move to drafting this cube against the bots. I hope I manage to evaluate the decks I end up with well enough to gauge what may need immediate tweaking, worst case I might goldfish the drafted decks on Moxfield or something I guess?

Anyway, stay tuned...

Right, large bulk update here, adding all the cards for each of the five colours in one go. I won't go over every single card choice of course, but will try to capture some of my thinking for each colour and highlight some of the inclusions made.

Following the choice of commanders and Fixing Lands, I have 150 slots left which I chose to split out as follows:

• 26 cards per colour (WUBRG) - 130 total
• 15 artifacts/colourless
• 5 more utility lands

Note: artifacts and additional lands will be detailed in the next update.

• I decided to avoid adding further legendary creatures in each of the 26 per colour. In hindsight I could have probably added some as the commander slots in each pack during the draft will be seeded anyway but I wanted to a) avoid confusion by keeping each pack to exactly two (seeded) commanders per pack and b) I wondered if adding more mono-coloured commanders that are allowed to partner in this cube would disincentivise players to go for the two and three-coloured choices. I will certainly see how this plays out and consider changing this approach
• The creature/non-creature split for each colour is mostly based on gut feel more so than anything. Probably showing my inexperience here (and laziness to research this too deeply). I generally want to encourage more creature-heavy and combat-based gameplay with the exception of the more spellslinger-ish archetypes in red and blue. My gut feel made me land on a 18 creatures and 8 non-creature split as a baseline, but I have leaned more towards non-creature spells in red and blue.

White's primary function in this cube is to synergise with tokens' so it has token generators like Felidar Retreat or Clarion Spirit, as well as things that reward creatures entering pplay such as Rumour Gatherer or Welcoming Vampire and Mentor of the Meek. Also included cards like Suture Priest and Canyon Gerboa to cross over into some of the other achetype themes.

"Bombs" or cards I thought could be white win conditions include things like Elspeth, Sun's Resplendent or Akroma's Will, as well as Martial Coup.

BlueI tried to focus on non-creature spells and relevant payoffs, as well as payoffs for drawing cards as some of the commanders with blue help draw at least one additional card per turn.

• Archmage Emeritus and Ledger Shredder fit this category.

Also included blink enablers such as Displacer Kitten and cards that like being blinked like Mulldrifter.

The non-spell portion ended up very counter spell and cantrip-heavy, this might need revision once I've managed to test draft this cube a few times. Similarly, as I'm writing this it strikes me I don!t actually have that many non-creature spell payoffs in blue, so that might need tweaking further (maybe something like Shark Typhoon or Murmuring Mystic?)

Black focusses on lifedrain, so unsurprising 'staples' like Blood Artist and Zulaport Cutthroat made the list. Perhaps a it light on sacrifice outlets as I've only got Viscera Seer as a free, repeatable one?

Also included cards to support a graveyard/recursion theme (black-green) with cards like Stitcher Supplier to fill the graveyard and cards like Unearth to bring creatures back.

Win conditions include Gray Merchant of Asphodel and Rise of the Dark Realms.

Red leans into the spell-slinger theme with boue, as well as a sacrifice theme with black, therefore the card choice focuses around pinging for damage off of non-creature spells such as Guttersnipe or Firebrand Archer, as well as Goblin Bombardment. Tokens are also supported with cards like Young Pyromancer and Witty Roastmaster, other themes such as landfall are supported with cards like Tunneling Geopede and Valakut Exploration.

Finally, green - providing a mix of ramp and landfall cards such as Lotus Cobra, Sakura-Tribe Elder, or Farhaven Elk. Included a lot of creature-based ramp for recursion potential for repeated value, but perhaps I need to include more ways to recur creatures in green other than Eternal Witness?

Win conditions revolve largely around landfall I suppose with for example Rampaging Baloths or Avenger of Zendikar, as well as Overwehleming Stampede as a more general go-wide/token strategy finisher.

After adding fixing lands, I'm adding the ten Talismans for further artifact-based fixing (and some ramp I suppose). Given the limited number of slots in the cube this might be the only fixing/ramp cycle I'll include for now, I'd rather use the other artifact slots for other stuff instead of say the cycle of Signets.

Lucky Paper's How Many Lands Should You Include in Your Cube? is a great article and I enjoyed the corresponding podcast episode, too. The oversimplified bottom line is "minimum of 60 lands in a 360 cube" - Quick maths determines that could be interpreted as "minimum of 40 lands in a 240 cube", so that's where I'll start.

Perhaps starting with the land slots after commanders is the wrong way round, but getting this sorted early I thought would give me certainty on the remaining slots rather than agonising at the end what cuts to make to create space for lands.

Long story short, I decided to include three cycles of duals (Shock Lands, Bond Lands, Pain Lands) and a set of 10 "fetchlands" but not the actual fetches - instead I went for other lands that sacrifice to fetch other (basic) lands. This includes Commander evergreens such as Evolving Wilds, Terramorphic Expanse, and the five Vistas, but also Shire Terrace as a relatively recent card. I thought about just putting in the fetches, but decided against them as I have no real experience in playing with them in any of my decks in any format.

Other considerations to note: I decided against tri-lands due to the low number of tri-colour commanders which make them 'dead picks' unless you're in the specific shard/clan. I also avoided including lands that tap for any colour, be it Command Tower, or even things like City of Brass or Exotic Orchard. Not a fan of giving every player 'free' cards outside of the draft, but equally I don't want to give anyone an (unfair?) advantage for picking the one rainbow land in the cube that is better and more versatile than any other lands in the cube. Not sure if that makes any sense or if that's just me being a cube noob...

Only now realised you can edit the Blog post titles - no more "Cube Update - Automatic Post"! Until I forget to change the title in one of my future updates, of course.

Anyway, this post adds three-colour commanders to my cube - interestingly, I found this much easier than the mono-coloured commanders where frankly I really struggled with some colours.

Chulane, Teller of Tales seemed to fit perfectly into the intersection of my two-colour pairs here so this was an easy enough choice. Thought briefly about Roon of the Hidden Realm, but still not convinced with the while blink theme...

Thought about Marneus Clagar but conscious not to just create "Tokens - the Cube" by building too much stuff around tokens. Drawing cards is another thing that Blue and it's archetypes want to do so Queza, Augur of Agonies looks like a good fit here.

Torn between Anhelo, the Painter and Kess, Dissident Mage. I've never played or built spell-slinger archetypes so I'm a bit shaky on how this might come together in my cube. Kess seems stronger, but may require a higher density of spells in the cube to be effective, which I don't know if that's something I will achieve in my cube. Anhelo works better with the sacrifice theme and I thought "tokens!" but then realised most tokens will be 1/1 so won't be any use for the casualty trigger...Going with Kess for now, let's see how it goes.

Lord Windgrace might be a boring choice at this point (plus perhaps a power outlier, I heard it's quite strong?), and I've seen people build interesting decks with Slimefoot and Squee. I think I'll go with the 'boring' one for now - also hopefully limits the number of unique tokens that can appear in the cube, less overhead that way.

Played against someone who had Jinnie Fay, Jetmir's Second in their deck and that card looked fun. The other card that I've seen a lot online is Atla Palani, Nest Tender. Minsc, Beloved Ranger was also briefly in the running, but in the end I went with Atla Palani because generally I expect most decks to be reasonably creature-heavy.

Surprisingly, I struggled with Mardu - nothing I came across really spoke to me so in the end I landed in Queen Marchesa, will see how that plays out.

A few cards here that caught my eye - Rashmi and Ragavan, Riku of Two Reflections, and Xyris, the Writhing Storm. Riku sounds too fun to not play so I'll pick this one over the other two.

Was very drawn to Karador, Ghost Chieftain, but Thalia and Gitrog Monster is the more interesting (read "funny") card so going with that one.

Another "spellslingery" colour combination that I find hard to get my head around. Thought about Elsha of the Infinte and Narset, Enlightened Exile, but then saw KykarWind's Fury which seemed a more versatile card so that got the spot.

Perhaps the toughest choice for me so far, as I came across three potential choices that I liked equally. Zimone and Dina seemed a great fit across the two-colour commanders I chose, Muldrotha, the Gravetide I heard good things about and just seems a great value commander, and Sidisi, Brood Tyrant also seemed a great fit for the archetypes in the cube so far. In the interest of trying to keep mana curves low, I'm going with Zimone and Dina for now.

Added another set of mono-coloured commanders to complete the selection for this cube of two per colour.

Definitely a deliberate choice to not include these in the previous update - nothing to do with the fact that I just forgot that I wanted to add two per colour to begin with despite saying so in my cube overview...

Added Adeline, Resplendent Cathar for more Token support in White.

Added Thassa, Deep-Dwelling as a good blink option. Not sure how much of a theme 'blink' erally is going to be in this cube but thought it's also a generically good enough card to include.

Added Ob Nixilis, the Fallen. Landfall in Black? To be honest, I struggled to find a second mono black choice that I liked enough to include. Particularly wanted to avoid adding too many cards I have in my Braids, Arisen Nightmare deck like Vito, Thorn of the Dusk Rose. Perhaps this card is only useful in decks with Green, but then again draining for 3 for each land feels strong even without explicit Landfall synergy?

Purphoros, God of the Forge seemed like a decent Commander, mainly for Black-Red perhaps but also some use for go-wide with the team buff ability?

Another colour I struggled to pick a second commander for. Didn't want to go too heavy into lands matter, but also tried to find a commander that wasn't mega high on the mana curve which was challenging for me. Nylea, Keen-Eyed seemed to be the best 'generically useful' commander that I liked enough to include for now.

Added one mono-coloured commander per colour support the two-coloured archetypes.

Initially I wanted to add Elesh Norn, but decided against it to avoid double-faced cards.

Instead, I decided to go with Bennie Bracks to improve white card draw and help provide a pay-off for creating tokens.

Went with Talrand as a spell pay-off and also to provide more token support.

Syr Konrad the Grim - Another 'classic' so to speak, but this felt fitting with many of the themes in this cube such as tokens, sacrifice, and lifedrain.

Urabrask seemed a great fit, but for similar reasons to not choosing Elesh Norn, I decided to go with Neheb the Eternal.

Once again, I was initially drawn to one of the new Praetors with Vorinclex, but as before I choose something else: Titania, Nature's Force is the include hereto support land matters and landfall themes.

Added two commanders for each two colour pair.

Generic blink theme with Oji, the Exquisite Blade alongside Faramir, Prince of Ithilien to support a token theme that will feature across a number of colour pairs.

• blink
• draw/go-wide

Not very clear theme(s) for Dimir with Sygg, River Cutthroat and Lazav, Dimir Mastermind, this will likely need reviewing in future.

• lifedrain/draw
• copy opponents’ creatures

Sacrifice for value (card advantage, +1/+1 counters, attacking) with Ob Nixilis, Captive Kingpin and Greven, Predator Captain.

• Sacrifice/impulse draw
• Sacrifice/draw/attack buff

Ramp and Lands Matter/Landfall theme with Radha, Heart of Keld and Omnath, Locus of Rage

• Ramp/Lands Matter
• Landfall

Token lead themes but either more self-contained with King Darien XLVIII or with cross-over into Landfall with Maja, Bretagard Protector.

• Token/Go-Wide
• Landfall/Token

Token-based Aristocrats theme with Denethor, Ruling Steward and Teysa Karloff.

• Sacrifice/Token/Lifedrain
• LTB doubler/Token

Light Spellslinger theme in the form of turning multi-spells into card draw (Jori En, Ruin Diver), and expanding Spellslinger to noncreature spells, crossing over into Tokens (Ovika, Enigma Goliah).

• Multi-spell/draw
• Noncreatue spells/Tokens

Sacrifice theme to support either go-wide (Mazirek, Kraul Death Priest) or lifedrain (Jarad, Golgari Lich Lord)

• Sacrifice/go-wide
• Sacrifice/graveyard/lifedrain

Boros supports Tokens and recursion with Quintorius, Loremaster and Neyali, Suns’ Vanguard.

• Token/Sacrifice/Graveyard
• Token/impulse draw

Simic features Ramp and Land Matters combined with card draw with Zimone, Quandrix Prodigy and Jolrael, Voice of Zhalfir.

• Ramp/draw
• Lands Matter/draw