White

Toolcraft Exemplar has been such a pillar of WR Historic Aggro for so long that I really didn't want to cut it but Seasoned Warrenguard operates in a very similar space as Toolcraft Exemplar but works better across WR and WB. I considered cutting Court Homunculus but I really like that Court Homunculus is itself an artifact creature for things like Cyberman Patrol.

This is one of the most common kinds of changes I'm inclined to try to make in a Spikeless Update. Invariably, the mana value that always gets the most clogged in my environment is the 3-mv slot and just like how in the last update I cut Crow of Dark Tidings to add some black utility on two in Fledgling Djinn, Essence Channeler has a lot of the same strategic texture as Metropolis Reformer but for one mana less. I really love the new bats and in particular the way that they expand on the space of what's possible in WB in an interesting way and I may wind up revisiting some of the Bloomburrow bats in the future. (Starscape Cleric for instance is perhaps my favorite Vampire Interloper variant I've ever played with.)

I didn't even really have a chance to test Bill the Pony but I knew from the moment I saw it that Star Charter was a perfect sort of Spikeless card. A 3/1 flyer for 4, especially one with as cool and unique of an ability as this, is exactly the kind of card that most curators will look at in preview season and go "that's kinda cool but the stats are too bad for it to cube-playable". This cube is the home for those cards. I love Star Charter and I foresee it staying in the cube for a long time.

Dewdrop Cure is the kind of card that I feel deeply nervous about adding to the cube. Yes, Gift a Card is a non-negligible drawback but there is a lot of opportunity to generate a lot of impact with three 2-mv creatures. Proclamation of Rebirth is a classic and was already a reasonably good card in the environment and Dewdrop Cure feels like a sizeable upgrade. This card will be a bomb in my cube; time will tell if it is problematically so.

Blue

Grazilaxx, Illithid Scholar is also quite an iconic Spikeless card. It's a janky build around that has tanked me many a game of AFR limited trying to make it happen and one of the original cards that informed the archetypal structure of the environment. Dour Port-Mage feels like it provides a lot of the same archetypal support and has similar strategic texture to Grazilaxx but, again, it moves that utility from 3 mana down to 2.

This is a boring change. Putting Saiba Cryptomancer's ability on a flyer makes it more appealing to more decks. Hence, Plumecreed Escort replaces it.

Gossip's Talent and in fact most of the new class cards from Bloomburrow are kind of insane. The more I read this card the better and better it seemed to me as a way to just open up a lot of opportunity for strategic exploration within blue. The Theros Beyond Death omen cycle are all fine cards and I'm happy to be able to go back to them but Gossip's Talent is just a wildly more exciting enabler than Omen of the Sea.

Black

Only one change in black and that's taking out a Mind Rot for a Wrench Mind. It's wild to me that Wizards has never printed a sorcery with the first ability of Bandit's Talent because that feels like the perfect text for a 2-mv Mind Rot. I like Rakshasa's Secret because it's a Mind Rot with added texture for BG graveyard by self-milling a little bit but Bandit's Talent is two mana, has the opportunity for enabling BG Delirium if you mill it/sacrifice it to bargain/etc., but also has these level abilities reminiscent of something like Prickle Fairies that gives players incentive to try out 'the Raven deck'.

Red

I've been specifically in the market for another Abrade. I wanted more exile-based removal but I also wanted more way to deal with problem artifacts so Agate Assault feels like it was specifically made for me. Now among Cast into the Fire, Agate Assault and Aftershock I feel like red has a much better variety and texture of removal options. Fire Prophecy is a fine card as a way to get a little extra card selection but does not serve the red removal suite as well as I'd hoped.

Green

BIG MOOSE! I don't know if it's a stronger card, but I like Galewind Moose a whole lot better than Rampaging Baloths as a top-end for green. It's uniquely well suited to the UG Flash deck I envisioned to be able to pass the turn with six mana up and just dare the opponent to try to play the game of Magic. Rampaging Baloths has that "Titania Control" aspect that I like for UG but has at times felt excessively bomby for relatively little investment in this environment.

These are connected changes. I really like Gift a Card as a way to slightly promote a bigger-game environment and Peerless Recycling feels like a slick little way to push the Fungal Rebirth utility onto a two-drop. However, I have two cards that make Saproling tokens, the other being Tribune of Rot. Tribune of Rot is an extremely good card. So good in fact that it has rightfully been criticized for being too generically high-impact for a hybrid card. The trouble is I really wanted a good hybrid card for BG. Corpseberry Cultivator feels like a better option as a BG hybrid card because it plays in the space of caring about filling the graveyard for BG Graveyard but it has natural overlap with WB Tokens and WG Food without feeling as generically good as Tribune of Rot.

Speaking of slick little ways to push a 3-mana utility into the two drop slot, it seems like every set has a new, compelling Broken Wings variant. Pawpatch Formation is strictly less flexible in terms of what targets in can hit than Shower of Arrows since it's only a strictly better Crushing Canopy and not a strictly better Broken Wings but I loved Atraxa's Fall as a two-mana sorcery Broken Wings and really appreciate that Pawpatch Formation has a Break Ties-style failcase mode that just cantrips and makes a food. Pawpatch Formation feels like everything that Spider Food wanted and failed to be and I really like it as the newest member of the Green Veggies crew.

"...and when you sacrifice it!?" I was perfectly happy for this to just be a food that did a Rampant Growth on ETB but that fact that this is ramps coming and going and is a green artifact for Delirium and Food synergies and Scrap Trawler and friends makes this a slam dunk in my environment. What a perfect archetypal cross-pollinator for green.

Gold

I like Elas il-Kor, Sadisitic Pilgrim as a great curve filler for WB but I feel like she's a little too generically artistocrats-y for my taste. Lunar Convocation is a Hidden Stockpile-style two-mana token generator that, I hope, will help to open up a new direction of what kinds of decks and synergies are possible in WB. Also it's just a Greed on top of everything else which is just quite good.

I had originally planned to do the Bloomburrow update as a single update with the Bloomburrow and non-Bloomburrow cards together but despite the main mechanics of the set there turned out to be more Bloomburrow cards that are well-suited to the environment than I initially expected and more other changes that I wanted to make that weren't related to the new set release. Most of these are just tinkering changes--taking out like for like--but I'm still aiming to reduce overall complexity, lower the curve, and simplify the token box where possible.

White

Angelic Sell-Sword is a fine card at the top-end of White it just feels a little too generically good for what I want out of Spikeless. It would probably lead to more W+ goodstuff decks than I'd reasonably like. Throughout these two updates I'm also taking out and lowering the power of a lot of the top-end cards specifically to try to nerf Command the Chaff a bit. Command the Chaff is a great design but feels a little too much like a must-pick bomb when every deck has some 5+ mana monster lurking in its sideboard. If more of the high-mv cards end up in decks, Command the Chaff has a more reasonable floor-to-ceiling. That said, Escarpment Fortress supports the same decks as Angelic Sell-Sword (WB and WU) but is less of a standalone threat.

Courageous Resolve just screams "commander card". For being a overcosted Shelter 99% of the time it's one of the longest card texts I currently cube. Razor Barrier is uniquely well-suited to the texture of the environment in the same way that Scatter Ray is and I'm happy to add it back in.

What Must Be Done might prove to be a little bit too generically good for the environment but it does a lot of really good things and helps me save on card real-estate in white. Late to Dinner has been a pretty lackluster Resurrection all things considered and therefore must make way for the new hotness.

Blue

Spyglass Siren has been surprisingly too good for this environment. In the decks that want it--Abiding Grace and Ninjas--making a map over and over again is just an enormous amount of value over the course of a game. Hookblade Veteran on the other hand is an interesting spin on the old Flying Men that can't block fliers but can trade favorably with 1/1s.

During a discussion about Star Charter being 'too bad' to be playable in cube I realized that I care a lot about being able to showcase especially cards with unique abilities that are held back by having 'too bad' statlines. Kapsho Kitefins was a good card in the cube when I tested it held back only by the fact that it's outclassed by other comparable cards in-slot. So I'm cutting Dream Eater--a mythic with a strong limited pedigree--for the jankier card with the more unique ability. There have only been two blue creatures ever with a generic Creaturefall abilities and the Kitefins remains a great way to clear blockers and push damage in UB, UG, and WU.

Black

Likewise, Orc Sureshot is a design I love a lot that gets written off because it dies to most removal. Vrock is a bit messed up in 1v1 so out it goes to make way for the jankier, more interesting card.

Fledgling Djinn has held up surprisingly well despite being an old card. I like it as a cheap flyer for UB but it's also just a solid blaggro beater that can wear a Vulshok Morningstar like a champ like Dauthi Slayer. Crow of Dark Tidings, much like Mire Triton before it, has always felt like kind of a filler card.

I was on the hunt for a black creature that could repeatedly be sacrificed and could repeatedly trigger leaves the graveyard abilities and which, importantly, went back to the hand so you could cast it again and Brood of Cockroaches feels like exactly the power level and effect I was looking for. Extractor Demon is a cool card but I still feel like I have too many high drops in black especially.

I'm really keen on trying to lower the overall complexity of the environment still and Orochi Soul-Reaver is the longest, most complex card in my environment by a non-negligible margin. Even though I intended to have it as a boss monster it still does too much. Instead, I'll swap out Grimgrin, Corpse-Born--who feels somewhat out of place in UB now that Satoru Umezawa is gone--and replace him with the newly reprinted Silent-Blade Oni as the gold boss monster of the ninjas deck. This leaves room for me to test what might prove to be the next Arboria: Encroach. I love cubing cards like Bind // Liberate and Defabricate because even though the environment is 'Spikeless' I love including the texture of letting players stifle fetches. Because of this, one of my drafters suggested Encroach as an interesting hand-hate spell now that the environment is so non-basic rich. It might be too much of a tempo blowout but I just have to test it.

Likewise, even though Alms of the Vein is a fun reference to the pauper blood burn list that partially inspired the BR archetype, it's a little too cute in the environment. Psychotic Episode is a very cool and unique and powerful hand-hate effect for environments with a lot of madness support.

Even though March of Wretched Sorrow isn't a free pitch-spell, a pitch-spell is probably still to strong for the environment and March has gotten a fair amount of complaints. Epic Downfall adds more exile-based removal to the environment and feels more reasonable given the power delta of the environment.

Red

I have more Dangerous Wagers than I reasonably need and I don't have as many Smelts as I'd like so I'm cutting Connecting the Dots to add Aftershock.

Green

I mentioned before that Axebane Ferox has been disappointing as 'fair grave hate' and I expressed interest in Sowing Mycospawn during MH3 spoiler season. Fortunately, while Sowing Mycospawn has remained stubbornly out of budget range while modern players decide if there's an Eldrazi deck worth playing, it's incorporeal counterpart Reap and Sow is super budget-friendly. It may be more of tempo hit that I'm comfortable with at my power level but it feels like a fun and interesting include.

Warped Tusker feels like unnecessary top-end clutter and has been one of the least interesting big creatures I've cube in this environment. Caustic Caterpillar on the other hand is a very cool Naturalize variant that passively supports (and actively hates) on the Abiding Grace deck.

Lastly, I'll be cutting Beast Attack from the environment in order to remove 4/4 Beast tokens from the tokens box since I fully intend to replace Rampaging Baloths with Galewind Moose after Bloomburrow drops. I don't know if I'll stick with Hornet Sting in the long run but it's such a cool and unique effect that I at least want to give it a try. If it winds up being unplayable I might look into something like a Skyshroud Elite.

Gold

I really want to have a 7+ mv boss monster in RG to go with the last ability of Raggadragga, Goreguts Boss and Borborygmos Enraged is really cool and iconic especially now that I've brought back more ways to interact with lands and recycle them from the graveyard to hand. Satyr Hedonist on the other hand is kind of lackluster redundancy compared to things like Wild Cantor and Reckless Barbarian.

Nahiri's Resolve is too slow and clunky to be desirable for WR Historic Aggro. Arbaaz Mir feels like it was made for this cube.

Colorless

Myr Scrapling was a mistake. It does too much for too little effort in the decks that want it. Lightning-Core Excavator on the other hand, introduces new space for colorless one-drops, adds more generic removal to the environment and potentially gives Abiding Grace players a way to close out games.

At Amsterdam, a drafter mentioned to me that the artifact creature lords like Cybermat and Cyberman Patrol felt a little too narrow because just as many WR aggro lists run non-artifact creatures that care about artifacts as run artifact creatures. I still like Cyberman Patrol but I agree that two slots is too much to devote to WR sub-archetype support. Leering Emblem, on the other hand, is a really cool and unique equipment for storm-ish decks like UR and RG.

I realized too late that with Spine of Ish Sah and Spirit-Sister's Call gone I had no ways left in the environment to "cheat" Spine of Ish Sah into play and that it had become just really bad. Boom Box does a passable impression of Casualties of War and feels like a solid include.

MagicCon Amsterdam was fun. I got to play a bunch of cubes at Cube Corner include a version of the very trendy Ornithopter Cube which mainly served to remind me how much I like Leering Emblem and how I really want to add that to this environment to support UR multispell. Drafts of my cube went really well! A couple of cards that I had worried about being too pushed when I added them proved to be fine and only a couple of cards turned out to be problems.

Fine

I worried in the post-MH3 draft night that Angelic Sell-Sword and Nyxborn Hydra were way too generically good for Spikeless but while they are higher on the power delta that a lot of cards they aren't problematically pushed. As the meta readjusts I think that people will learn to respect these cards and they'll end up as bombs but people won't allow super goodstuff piles.

Less Fine

As the Abiding Grace/Proclamation of Rebirth deck becomes more of a known value in the environment Spyglass Siren increasingly feels like too much value for a one-drop and Myr Scrapling just feels like a mistake as an almost strictly better Iron Apprentice. I'll almost certainly cut Myr Scrapling in the near future for Lightning-Core Excavator and replace Spyglass Siren with the new Hookblade Veteran maybe.

I made a big effort a while back to cut all of the free pitch spells from the environment and March of Wretched Sorrow has received complaints for being adjacent to that space. It will probably be replaced with Epic Downfall or some other similarly-powered black removal spell.

Not Fine

Arboria was such a bad idea. A UG drafter finally pulled the trigger on mainboarding it and their opponent tilted out so hard. The problem with Arboria is that it is strong when it working as intended but obnoxious the rest of the time. Essentially it gives the UG player a great boon when they're at parity/ahead but when they're behind they can essentially stop the game until they or their opponent draws an out which is not the kind of play pattern I want to encourage in this environment. I hadn't planned to make any changes immediately after Amsterdam but this is essentially an emergency ban with a couple other unrelated changes. In it's place I'm playing a much tamer brain-worm of mine in Centaur Omenreader. Drafters are already sceptical of this card but I believe it has the potential to do cool things especially alongside vehicles and ways to give it a mana ability like Inga and Esika or Song of Freyalise.

Rosie Cotton of South Lane was not problematically powerful but increasingly drafters have a bad experience with it because even in low-power/budget environments people expect it to be a signal for the A+B combos with Basking Broodscale and/or Scurry Oak and especially now that I've added the energy disclaimer to the preamble I want to just cut false A+B signals in order to avoid potential feel-bads in the future. Bill The Pony is a sweet target for Vesperlark and adds a different, fun texture to WG food-matters.

Other Changes

I had no intention to cut Malevolent Rumble. I love this card and its very well-suited to my environment but sadly it's been hit by the MTGO rule. Malevolent Rumble was added to the MTGO Vintage Cube in the latest update and is the only MH3 card so far that is in both my cube and that cube. In its place I'm adding the very exciting Propagator Drone though so I can't be too sad. The Drone does cool stuff for both RG and UG and creates a cool potential splash for Abzan token decks running Elder Arthur Maxson or Teysa Karlov.

Will, Scion of Peace I'm calling a failed experiment. I think without free, repeatable ways to gain life, it's not enough juice relative to the squeeze and even though the potential is there for a very high ceiling with the right parts it's just so unlikely to come together that drafters aren't interested in it. Plus, it opens up Blue and White to the return of Prototype cards and Devoid cards and whatnot which makes me quite happy. In his place, I'm adding Hyldra of the Icy Crown now that she's gone down into budget range. She's kind of the de facto boss monster of WU Tap Tempo and while I dislike that she makes a unique token I like a lot that she's not a lunchable. That is to say she provides a very powerful payoff worth building toward but she herself does not enable it. You have to draft tappers to trigger her. I like designs like that. Not every boss monster needs to be enabler and payoff.

Lastly, Golden Egg was just kind of a placeholder card. While I was looking around at weird top-end angels I remembered that Thunderstaff exists and immediately wanted to add it to the environment. I love this card so dang much. I don't even know if it's good it's just so interesting that I have to play it.

Possible Future Changes

As far as WR "lords" go Cybermat has the potential to be good but also lacks a bit of oomph. A lot of WR historic aggro are non-artifact creatures that have metalcraft-like abilities like Toolcraft Exemplar and Goblin Tomb Raider and this has increasingly made me thing that I don't need to be using up two slots for both Cybermat and Cyberman Patrol when they're both sort of honorary WR cards and they won't even make it into every WR historic aggro brew. By contrast, Leering Emblem gives a colorless slot to UR multispell with a very cool and unique effect. I love this card a lot.

Seal of Primordium is nice for Delirium and Tragic Poet and I might just keep it because of that, but I recently remembered that Caustic Caterpillar exists and I do like that a lot for the Willow Geist/Abiding Grace value especially if I wind up downgrading the targets elsewhere.

I still feel as though red lacks artifact removal. I'm not 100% sold on Aftershock but I like the unique texture of it and, among the removal spells I'm currently on, would be most okay with cutting Fire Prophecy for it.

As soon as I get my hands on one, Nahiri's Resolve is out for Arbaaz Mir. Arbaaz is a perfect card for WR historic aggro. Nahiri's Resolve, while cool, has consistently been side-boarded for just being too slow and clunky for the WR aggro decks to want it.

Lastly, while I wasn't able to get a Sowing Mycospawn, I'm still interested in cutting Axebane Ferox. It's just not grave-hate in any tangible way and I like Entrails Feaster a whole lot more. Given how popular Sowing Mycospawn has proven to be, I'm keen to at least test it's without-a-body version, Reap and Sow. I don't know how good Reap and Sow is with the best payloads for it being Restless Vinestalk and The Shire but it's interesting. It's also potentially a huge tempo blowout against Rav Karoos which may end up being a negative play pattern. Other green cards I have on my mind are Primitive Etchings and good ol' Hornet Sting.

The Extra Cuts

In addition to all of the MTGO Vintage Cube cards, the remaining planeswalkers, and Magar of the Magic Strings, a few extra cards were cut for adjusting the power level.

I picked up a Shrieking Drake from the Modern Horzions 3 pre-release. I haven't seen people even try to go off with Dream Stalker so I'm willing to try this since I don't have to go out of my way to get one.

Omen of the Sea has felt increasingly appropriate again. It does Deliberate impression on a flash permanent for Errant and Giada-synergy while also being a self-sacrificing enchantment for Tragic Poet. I don't mind Strategic Planning but I dislike that it doesn't count as "drawing a card" for effects that care about that.

Of the three that were out of budget from the end of the last update, I was only able to pick up Marionette Apprentice.

I like Mourner's Surprise as a very cheap Gravedigger but I like the utility of being able to hold Omen of the Dead until the end step as well as the texture of this being on an enchantment for black Delirium and Delirium-adjacent effects.

With all of the other goblin token producers gone, Blast from the Past gets downgraded to Violent Eruption alongside all of the other changes happening to BR Discard.

Likewise, Ant Queen is the last of the insect token producers and a power outlier to boot. I considered both rotating Verdant Embrace back in or adding Omen of the Hunt for the flash/delirium value but I landed on Seal of Primordium instead because I like the impact this card has on gameplay as preemptive removal and it somewhat fills in the void left by Thrashing Brontodon.

Especially with the influx of fetchlands, Pair o' Dice Lost can fish a whole bunch of milled/discarded/sacrificed lands back from the bin on the end step before your turn. I've recently added in a lot of Retrace effects as well as Conflagrate and. Pair o' Dice Lost is as close to Life from the Loam as possible at this budget/power level. It replaces Nature's Resurgence since they both go in the same deck but Pair o' Dice Lost has the upside of being an instant for the UG deck and also triggering leaves-graveyard abilities like Soul Enervation and Willow Geist.

With the loss of Old Rutstein and the addition of Revitalizing Repast I felt that BG, more than any other color pair, skewed too heavily on hybrid cards. Skyfisher Spider is a great removal spell that's also a sweet signpost for BG with its Undergrowth-like triggered ability.

The Major Additions

Of the 79 cuts, 35 of the additions back in are for lands. Three new cycles of fixing lands go in. The checklands join the shadowlands and snarls while the signetlands are sort of like the poor-man's slowlands since they ETB untapped unconditionally but can only produce mana if you have another source to filter into them which can make tapping tricky. The MH3 mdfc tap duals further increase the fixing density with minimal opportunity cost while a cycle of MH3 mdfc bolts help fill the void left by losing the LTR -landcyclers.

The Other Half White

Ministrant of Obligation, Belfry Spirit and Omen of the Sun help replace some lost token producers. Omen of the Sun also works with lifegain-matter payoffs like Will, Scion of Peace and Lathiel, the Bounteous Dawn and is a flash permanent for Errant and Giada. Order of Whiteclay and Vesperlark fill in for some of the small-stuff renanimator cards that were lost in the update. The re-addition of cards like Mindless Automaton and Arcbound Tracker as well as the introduction of Belfry Spirit makes Vesperlark an exciting include. It also works with both Outlaw Stitcher and Storm Entity for UR decks that can splash for white. Angelic Sell-Sword is strictly better Serra Angel and just a respectable top-end all around for WB or WU. Lastly, Valor in Akros is an interesting payoff for WB Tokens or any deck that can dump a bunch of bodies into play for cheap.

Blue

Overcharged Amalgam was an easy card to add back in. I like these Counterspells on a stick hence why I ran Mystic Snake as a UG signpost but with both Mystic Snake and Stoic Sphinx gone the exploit Disallow seemed like an obvious re-addition as a solid flash-flyer with some ETB value. Magus of the Jar, on the other hand, is a bit more experimental. Just like Magus of the Library this design is much maligned as "unplayably bad" especially when compared to their original reserved list counterparts but just as Magus of the Library has turned out to be surprisingly good in my environment, I'm willing to at least test Magus of the Jar since it has the potential to do really strong things in the fair storm deck as well as being a draw seven for Conflagrate.

Black

Clacky B is back! Clacky is one of my all-time favorite cards and this drastic overhaul was the perfect opportunity to put him back in the main cube. He even adds a second goat producer alongside Trading Post. Likewise, Zombie Infestation is a sweet instant-speed discard outlet like Putrid Imp before it that joins Dying to Serve in making zombie tokens. Necrologia is a big, dumb card. It's the poor man's Ad Nauseam and is exactly the kind of weird card I've always wanted to test but have never found a cut for.

Red

I have had a lot of unique enablers and payoffs for both WR Artifacts and BR Discard over the years so going back into the box it was easy to find replacements for all of the cards that got cut in the overhaul. For discard I've added Insolent Neonate, Merchant of the Vale, Rakdos Pit Dragon, Conflagrate, and Connecting the Dots while for WR red I've added in Simian Sling Molten Gatekeeper and Frogmyr Enforcer. Merchant of the Vale has some exciting overlap with UR multispell due to its adventure whereas Molten Gatekeeper has live-from-graveyard value for BR as well as being Impact Tremors on an arifact body for WR. Connecting the Dots is just generally a card that I like a lot since it provides red with the utility of Bomat Courier but with less of the risk. Rakdos Pit Dragon is one of my favorite aggressive top-ends for red and is more in-line power-wise with the other threats in red now.

Green

Most of the changes to green are to help round out WG some more. Tireless Provisioner and Peregrin Took help create some powerful artifactfall/lifegain/food engines for Yotian Dissident/Lathiel the Bounteous Dawn/Samwise Gamgee while Sarinth Steelseeker provides redundancy and value alongside Teething Wurmlet and Elvish Archivist. Briarhorn rotates back in as a cool card for the flash deck and The Mending of Dominaria rotates back in as a cool mill and regrowth effect for BG Delirum. Lastly, Gurzigost is a weird, cool card that I've just always wanted to find a home for and just like Necrologia this update gives me the chance to give it a spin.

Gold

Errant and Giada returns as a cool flyer with lots of opportuntity for incidental synergy.

Colorless

Last but not least a whole bunch of assorted artifacts for added synergy with a variety of decks. Myr Scrapling is a great Abiding Grace target. Mindless Automaton and Zephyr Boots have some discard synergy. Golden Egg, Brainstone, and Chromatic Sphere help make value ladders with Scrap Trawler while Cloud Key and Bone Saw have fair storm value. Cybermat returns as a artifact lord for WR aggro and Scarecrow Guide is just a generally good little creature that can put in work in any deck.

Gold

When the early previews for MH3 were coming out I had the idea that I was going to swap out Silver-Fur Master, Ingenious Infiltrator and Prosperous Thief for cards like Mistblade Shinobi, Satoru, the Infiltrator, and Psychic Frog because I prefer the synergies among cards to be more implicit than explicit where possible. In the same way that I prefer Daxos of Meletis to Sharae of Numbing Depths as an incentive to build WU tap tempo and I'm choosing not to add cards like Titans' Vanguard and Writhing Chrysalis over Raggadragga, Goreguts Boss and Gimli, Mournful Avenger, I wanted to find UB ninjas signposts that encouraged the play patterns I wanted without having to spell out the words "ninja" or "ninjutsu" as much as possible.

In the end, Satoru, the Infiltrator wound up being out of budget so I replaced Silver-Fur Master with Kaito, Dancing Shadow. Even though Kaito is fine, the card adds a lot of complexity. Horrid Shadowspinner I wound up liking better than Psychic Frog because, even though it's less objectively powerful, the fact that its ability triggers on attack instead of on combat damage means that it works better specifically in the niche of a ninjutsu enabler than Psychic Frog which I worried would be too good as a standalone threat to be worth bouncing back to hand. I'm cutting Ingenious Infiltrator to add in Horrid Shadowspinner and I'm cutting Kaito, Dancing Shadow along with a few other gold cards I'm less passionate about, to make space for the full cycle of landscapes.

After some testing it's emerged that Helbrute is probably just too good for the environment. This is not a surprise as the card is pretty messed up. In its place I'm choosing to test good ol' Thundermare as suggested by @spiced. This card is cool.

In addition to Kaito Dancing Shadow, I'm also cutting Alchemist's Gambit and Afterlife Insurance to make room for the landscape cycle. Alchemist's Gambit is cute but ultimately people aren't eager to play it for the Final Fortune side and it's a bit too slow and narrow to be desirable as a Time Warp. Afterlife Insurance on the other is a really good card in a way that felt a bit too generic and easy even for a deck like WB tokens that I'm trying to push. I like and want to keep the other cards that make up that gold section way more.

Colorless

Eldrazi galore! Most of the changes to colorless are just adding a bunch of eldrazi, new and old, to not only push as something to build toward in drafting but also to open up the colorless space so that more color pairs than just WR get to really benefit from it. It That Heralds the End and Glaring Fleshraker, while requiring a little more work to put on the battlefield, are great payoffs for both RG 'dork tribal' and WR artifact aggro since they benefit colorless artifact creature inasmuch as they specifically benefit eldrazi. As such, I'm cutting Cybermat and Patchwork Automaton for them. Additionally, I really like Matter Reshaper as yet another payoff and C.A.M.P. was way slower and clunkier in testing than I really liked on top of being super wordy and not very easy to grok. Lastly, Endless One joins the ranks of Nyxborn Hydra and Hormagaunt Horde as another way to pay-off Raggadragga, Goreguts Boss's last ability while also working with It That Heralds the End's first ability. To make space for Endless One, I cut Sarinth Steelseeker which is a whatever card.

Lands

Last but certainly not least are the lands. The landscape cycle is one of the most exciting parts of Modern Horizons 3 for my environment and power level specifically. Going into MH3 previews I hoped for something like this--I predicted "colorless trilands" that entered tapped and produced two colors or --but these are even better. This entire double cycle puts the panoramas and the SNC lifefetches to shame. First of all, I've already run into problems with players running out of fetchable basics. The fact that all of these lands have fail-cases of either being able to be cycled away for their colors or just being a Wastes makes them preferrable to the SNC lands in general. On top of that, however, they're also way more visually clear. One of my biggest gripes with cards like Obscura Storefront, Brokers Hideout and Riveteers Overlook is that you can't tell at a glance from the frame, art, or text what colors of basic these lands can fetch for. By contrast, not only are the arts of Tranquil Landscape, Contaminated Landscape, and Twisted Landscape clearer in terms of what their color identity is supposed to be the three-color cycling cost also makes what colors of basics they can fetch for much easier to glean as you're fanning through draft packs. They're also better, in general, than Shire Terrace or Promising Vein because you don't have to pay mana to cash them in for a basic! These are a slam dunk for me and even if I wasn't trying to encourage building toward payoffs, these would be staples of the environment with tremendous staying power.

The Other Three

As of writing this, I'm getting ready to go to CubeCorner at MagicCon Amsterdam at the end of this month. There were three more cards from Modern Horizons 3 but at the moment they are currently out of budget range of the enviornment. Looking at price trends on CardMarket UK, I don't expect their current prices to hold and, a couple of weeks from now, I'll hopefully be able to pick up and add them. These three cards are Arena of Glory which I was hoping to have replace Castle Embereth as my mono-red utility land of choice, Marionette Apprentice which is currently the closest to being in budget and is a sweet alternative to Nadier's Nightblade to help push the curve of WB tokens down, and Sowing Mycospawn, a Reap and Sow on a stick and another incentive for and replacement for Axebane Ferox which, while a fine beater, is kind of fundamentally anti-pattern as a grave-hate piece because graveyard decks are better equipped to deal with it than non-graveyard decks where it's ward ability is closer to hexproof. It makes sense in retrospect but at the time I thought that templating made it closer to Scrabbling Claws than it really is in practice. This is also why I'm testing Entrails Feaster since that card actually does feel much closer to Scrabbling Claws.

Modern Horzion 3 is here and with a handful of exciting new cards for Spikeless Cube. Of particular note are the new Eldrazi Spawn producers that have come with the set to clean up and power up the RG 'dork tribal' list. Between these and the new Landscape cycle I'm excited to try pushing wingdings in the environment to see what happens.

White

The main thing that White gets is a bunch of clean, slick new removal. I really love the emergent modularity of Dog Umbra and Curse of Chains, while having some cool niche synergy opportunity, has under-performed as removal because it is slow and easy to misplay. Also, since I'm upgrading to another new strictly-better pacifism to join the ranks of Cooped Up, I'm also swapping Planar Disruption back in over Petrify. Planeswalker removal has become more relevant in the environment since the last update. Expel the Unworthy replaces Solitary Sanctuary as a mid-way point between Bloodchief's Thirst and Last Breath--two removal spells that have been entirely respectable in this environment.

The other thing White gets is some sweet new tokens cards. Indebted Spirit is potentially four bodies for three mana and is both the best Doomed Traveller we've ever gotten and one of the best tokens enablers we've gotten period. It's just strictly better than Garrison Cat. Likewise, Muster the Departed is exactly the kind of card I wanted for WB. While it doesn't work with Teysa Karlov like Field of Souls does it's a super clean, cheap, repeatable token producer for that deck and is way cleaner and easier to grok than Vault 101: Birthday Party even though it might go in fewer decks.

Lastly, I'm shuffling around some reanimator pieces. It felt, after the addition of Extraction Specialist that there were too many small stuff reanimation pieces and not enough small stuff to go around for them. As such, I was inspired to cut Recommission for Loyal Sentry as a new Abiding Grace target. Additionally, Abuelo's Awakening has been a little bit clunky and, after playing with Miraculous Recovery recently I realized and appreciated how good instant speed reanimation can be.

Blue

All of the changes in blue are just to change up the removal suite and lower the overall mana curve. Utter Insignificance is almost a strictly better Eaten By Piranhas and is a nice, clean way to push . I received complains about Neutralize and Hinder feeling too slow for the control gameplan and so I'm cutting them for 2-mana countermagic in the form of Scatter Ray and Reasonable Doubt both of which seem better suited to the specifics of the environment. Lastly, I cut Overcharged Amalgam and Kapsho Kitefins for Vortex Elemental and Deem Inferior. I'm very excited about Vortex Elemental as a potential hate-blocker effect and ninjutsu enabler whereas Deem Inferior I'm less confident about but received a lot of positive attention. It's obviously good with Horrid Shadowspinner which is a card I'm very excited about.

Black

Black doesn't get changed by MH3 a whole lot. Mainly I was feeling that the top-end of black had gotten too cluttered so I wanted to add some new, cheap cards and thin out some of the redundancy at the top of the curve. As such, out come Xathrid Demon and Necropolis Fiend. In their places go Accursed Marauder and Entrails Feaster. Accursed Marauder is fantastic as a Fleshbag Marauder against nontokens and Entrails Feaster is a cool little grave hate piece that I think is of an appropriate power level for the environment.

Red

Glimpse the Impossible is quite possibly my favorite red card ever. I was hoping that this set would help me flesh out red's role in RG 'dork tribal' and it has delivered in spades. This is a card that every deck can enjoy. As a base line, it's an Act on Impulse with no risk. If you can't play the cards in, say, UR multispell, they go in your yard and you get some free ramp. In RG, it's a great way to progress you toward your big threats. It does more for more decks than Dragon Fodder did so out it goes. Likewise, Skittering Precursor is just a profoundly messed up card. Sibylline Soothsayer is a card that I heard a lot of hype about but nobody in my cube group seems eager to try it because it's hard to evaluate and probably reads slower than it is. Lastly, to better support , I'm cutting Rodeo Pyromancers to put Grinning Ignus back in. Not only is Grinning Ignus a great way to pay for and another 'mana dork' for the purposes of effects like Raggadragga, Goreguts Boss, it's probably a better enabler for UR multispell than Rodeo Pyromancers was because it puts itself back in your hand so you can recast it for multispell matters stuff.

Additionally, Sarpadian Simulacrum is just a wonderfully clean card for WR artifact aggro. It's a target for Abiding Grace and it synergizes with Zirda, the Dawnwaker as well if not better than Lightning Spear did.

Green

Most of the changes to green are just swapping out the Eldrazi Scion producers and adding more Eldrazi Spawn producers as well as some new payoffs for . Elrazi Repurposer is better than Eyeless Watcher and Malevolent Rumble is a secret Satyr Wayfinder and is mostly better than Gather the Pack. Wumpus Aberration replaces Vile Redeemer as a Iwamori of the Open Fist-like that pays off , Rubblebelt Maverick replaces Blisterpod to give green more real one-drops, and Warped Tusker replaces Thrasta, Tempest's Roar as a big green beater that's more in-line with the power level of the environment which also works better in RG curve alongside cards like It the Heralds the End and Raggadragga, Goreguts Boss.

The other new cards from MH3 for green are some new removal and a new big creature. Collective Resistance, while not as strictly as good as Gaea's Gift is way more flexible and thus gets my vote on account of saving card real-estate. Likewise, Trickster's Elk isn't great interaction but compared to Noble Quarry is an extremely flexible spell that supports the delirium deck brilliantly. Lastly, after some convincing, I'm going to test Nyxborn Hydra in place of Jadelight Spelunker. Originally, I was planning to test Cenote Scout in this slot because Jadelight Spelunker has sort of received a vote of no confidence by the draft group on account of being unpredictable in it's size/effect. I realize, however, that Nyxborn Hydra is perfectly situated to be a great -cost spell for my environment. For you can get a better-than-vanilla creature that incidentally helps delirium but for you can pump a creature up before combat and have it leave behind a big body. It's locked to sorcery speed so it's not as abusable as Strength of the Tajuru or Wren's Run Hydra as a "green fireball" but it is just a reasonable body at every point in the curve, like Hormagaunt Horde that also can help push through damage to close out games.

@TheTapDancer, my friend, fellow cube curator, and the wretched soul who inflicted Hibernation's End on me, has gifted me a copy of Ranger of Eos. This card will be here to explicitly support the Proclamation of Rebirth sub-archetype but is also just a sweet toolbox card in the vein of effects like Yisan, the Wanderer Bard that can tutor up some little guys to give you extra value. To make space for Ranger of Eos, I'm finally cutting Mandate of Peace. Even thought the ceiling on this card is theoretically high, it has the same problem as Wyll's Reversal had where it's hard to evaluate and has a high opportunity cost since it might just die in the hand while you wait for the perfect opportunity to bamboozle your opponent with it.

I reckon I'll swap Resolute Reinforcements back out for Countless Gears Renegade since I was double-goozled and not only was Marionette Apprentice leaked right before I was set to cut Servo tokens from the cube but also I forgot that Reinforcements makes a different Soldier token then everything else I currently run in the cube so it doesn't help the token complexity problem.

Lastly, to bolster the count of little guys for Abiding Grace.dec, I'm cutting Quicksmith Genius to put good ol' Shambling Ghast back in.

I was looking over how much the cube has changed since the CubeCon 2023 list and I remember that Arcbound Tracker exists and is in the big commons box. Even though I don't explicitly support Modular anymore, this card is still so clean as a multispell-matters payoff--way better than Iron-Fist Pulverizer even if it doesn't have secret reach.

I tried to be disciplined. I tried to wait until MH3 to update the cube again because I know even from the previews and leaks thus far that there are easily 8-ish cards I'm already interested in but I got some good feedback and I had a lot of ideas of cards that I liked from the experiments in the Pointless Cube so I'm making one last update before MH3.

White and Black

Helping Hand isn't great. It's fine but there are more exciting and synergistic versions of this effect around that I could be playing instead. I liked the idea of Pre-War Formalwear but sadly that card is out of budget, instead I'm opting for Extraction Specialist especially considering the really slick synergy with Nurturing Pixie.

For the moment I'm taking out Countless Gears Renegade for Resolute Reinforcements. I want to take out Cogworker's Puzzleknot because it nonbos with Will, Scion of Peace and I want to run more sagas like Of Herbs and Stewed Rabbit and Vault 101: Birthday Party to justify including Tragic Poet.

I want to cut Hidden Stockpile for Elder Arthur Maxson but I'll probably wind up adding Countless Gears Renegade back in post-MH3 because Marionette Apprentice is cleaner and more extensible than Nadier's Nightblade, which I'm adding back in for now to fill the void left by Orc Sureshot. Orc Sureshot was pretty bad and, sadly, Hostile Investigator--the most obvious replacement for it--has remained stubbornly out of range.

A lot of the changes I'm making reflect the removal of Norin the Wary. That card proved to be too cute to be worth building around and a lot of the cards that I wound up adding to synergize with it are also unnecessarily convoluted. Myrsmith comes out since I no longer want Genesis Chamber especially since I no longer run Caparocti Sunborn which was one of the best way to consistently tap the chamber down. Instead I'm adding C.A.M.P. for more Junk production and Elspeth, Sun's Champion since I want to add a second cycle of planeswalkers and I've heard good things about Elspeth's ability to be good at cubes approximating my power level.

Additionally, since it technically has typal text, I'm cutting Spirit Bonds in favor of Field of Souls especially since that card has better synergy with Teysa Karlov and I'm trying to push the WB deck to be a little bit better since that deck often feels really outshined by what other W+ and B+ decks are capable of in the current meta.

For space reasons, I cut the Bartered Cow since that cross synergy never proved fruitful and the card was too cute and narrow to even be desirable for the WG Food deck.

As far as other 1-for-1 swaps, I cut Presumed Dead to put Fungal Fortitude back in--again, for the Tragic Poet synergy--as well as Fell Stinger for the cheaper and more potent Caustic Bronco whose attack trigger seems like a compelling reason to play UB Ninjas.

Speaking of Ninjas, I also cut the mediocre Fell Stinger for the new hotness of Orochi Soul-Reaver who helps fill the hole left behind by Fallen Shinobi as potentially one of the bombiest boss monsters for the UB Ninjas deck. It's still less swingy than the Shinobi but has enough extra gravy that it feels appealing as a boss monster.

Mind Shatter was a cut experiment but Rakshasa's Secret is better synergy as far as Mind Rot variants go and Rankle's Prank has let me down one too many times so it comes out to make room for Ashiok, Wicked Manipulator who, for better or worse, is one of very few other PWs that are even available for this environment. So as to not cut too much from B+ control decks, however, I am cutting Scaretiller to add Nevinyrral's Disk back in. I think this card has potential in the enviornment again as a sort of 5-mana instant board wipe. Being able to wipe in a way that opens you up to rebuild first feels more important than ever lately.

Lastly, in an effort to improve the play patterns of WB, I'm swapping out Bartolome del Presidio to put Elas il-Kor back in. Bartolome is awkward because he rewards you for having already built in the WB deck with a scaling threat and sac outlet but is often just a Goblin Piker when played early. Elas, on the other hand, fills the 2-drop slot much better by rewarding the WB deck for continuing to build after he comes down.

Blue and Black

In order to cut down on explicit ninja-matters synergies, I'm cutting Prosperous Thief in favor of Mistblade Shinobi and Silver-Fur Master for Kaito, Dancing Shadow. Hopefully after MH3, I'll also be able to repalce Ingenious Infiltrator with Psychic Frog so I'll have no typal effects left in the environment period.

I like Party Jace, and I wound up not being super fond of suspected as a weirdo untracked indefinite effect that I didn't want to make space in the box to keep the chit for so Reasonable Doubt seemed like a reasonable cut to make space for Jace.

Red and Blue

I want UR multispell to have a little more gas in general. Rakdos Pit Dragon comes out to make space for Iron-Fist Pulverizer as another payoff for multi-spell matters and Kraum, Violent Cacophony makes room so that I can add Jori En, Ruin Diver back in and Scalding Viper as a strong enabler for multispelling. Noble's Purse comes out for space.

Arc Blade comes out as a kind of bad Up the Beanstalk card in favor of Koth, Fire of Resistance whose Mountain-tutoring ability has taken on extra relevance for the BR discard deck in this era of more Retrace effects than ever. I also cut Risk Factor in favor of Embrace the Unknown since the floor of Flames of the Blood Hand with Jump-Start is pretty bad and Embrace represents more consistent psuedo-card advantage when you cast it from the graveyard.

Lastly, Highway Robbery comes out for Pyretic Charge. Pyretic Charge may prove to be too good for this environment but I loved Rites of Initiation when it was in the environment even though it was really bad and am excited by the possibility of a playable version of that effect.

Green and White

I really want the "Cookie Cutter" version of WG to be more appealing and have wound up really hating Kellan, Daring Traveler since that card never gets played as a WG card and always winds up just being a hard-to-kill white threat in aggro decks. Fang of Shigeki is a bit narrow and supports and already somewhat oversupported deck in BG while Veteran Explorer is probably too janky to be reasonable in the current environment. Instead Teething Wurmlet and Sarinth Steelseeker go in as more artifactfall cards for food while Farmer Cotton replaces Cosmic Rebirth as a more compelling reason to go WG food. Cease // Desist is a very clean Abzan hybrid that will just be a solid hoser for several decks without feeling too unbeatable. It might not stick around long-term.

I'm not sure long-term about some of the changes in green and some cards might wind up just needing more testing. I like Vivien on the Hunt as the second planeswalker for green and that means I wanted to add Workshop Warchief back in so I had multiple Rhino Warrior producers. To make room for them I wound up cutting Briarbridge Tracker since that card has always felt very generic to me, and Briarhorn since I was already planning to cut Sprout for a better UG flash/BG graveyard crossover card in Become Immense.

Lastly for this section, I'm replacing Glowcap Lantern 1-for-1 with Rope since I like that card's ability to put itself in the bin for Delirium and I'm cutting Verdant Embrace for the time being for Fall of Gil-Galad since I like the patterns of sagas in green especially and, once again, I want to justify Tragic Poet.

Simic

Rashmi, Eternities Crafter comes out for Inga and Esika since that card seems plenty p

I did not enjoy Murders at Karlov Manner at all. And after how much of a disappointment that set was for me on every level, I went into spoiler season with no expectations about Oulaws of Thunder Junction.

And then the leaks came out and I started getting excited. Canyon Crab had new templating for the UG flash deck. Malcolm, the Eyes was a sweet new take on Jori En, Ruin Diver. Rodeo Pyromancers made me reconsider how much I liked Raging Battle Mouse for my cube.

Then more spoilers happened. New support for UG Flash, new support for UR Spells. The first worthwhile Ghoultree variant in Hollow Marauder. I was genuinely getting hyped.

And the story was good! Things that felt like weird discrepancies at first became interesting foreshadowing. It seemed weird that Ashiok had all the unprecedented powers and behaviors--because it was Jace all along! For a plane that was theoretically Terra Nullius there sure are a bunch of dead everywhere--because the Coin Empire probably wiped out and desertified whoever was there before. People complained bitterly about the Terra Nullius thing and, to be fair, the notion of "uncultivated land" as it pertains to the American West is certainly problematic but I feel like Wizards was intentionally burying the lead because it isn't really. It probably was an inhabited plane but if the Coin Empire has space travel and the ability to understand how isolated or not a plane is within the blind eternities, it's possible they just wiped out the former world of Thunder Junction to hide their spoils! Unlike MKM, it felt like things were moving toward the greater plot. Kellan felt like a real character with actual development.

And then I played the set! And wow, I don't think I've had this much fun in a prerelease since MH2. OTJ might be the perfect limited environment for me. Many prereleases go one of two ways for me.

1. I make a boring powerful deck that does well (ONE, THB, LCI, CMB). This is usually because the deck is just good cards--a lean creature curve and good removal supported by a couple bombs--the set doesn't really reward creative, synergistic deck building.
2. I make a cool, creative deck that does terribly (AFR, MOM, SNC, LTR). This is usually because the things that I think are cool that I want to build are just underpowered or underserved. The environment doesn't feel like it rewards you for playing synergistically, rather you should just take the good card.

When a set comes around where I feel like I can do both--I can make a cool, synergistic, creative deck AND it's powerful and wins games (NEO, MH2, DMU, OTJ)--that's when I'm happiest. That's the vibe I try to cultivate in the Spikeless Cube and from what little I've experienced, that's what OTJ delivers. I'm super excited to draft this set more. Breaking News is possibly my favorite extra sheet ever because it increases the density of interaction. The format is very bomb-heavy but with all the extra interaction running around it never feels like you're just locked out of a game. I wound up going 3-0 at the prerelease but so many games felt so close. Like every decision mattered and the win came down to very tight plays.

Most importantly, this set will revolutionize my cube. I feel like I'm on the top-end of new cards tested because this set helps fix so many little problems that I had with my cube. I imagine that with MH3 just around the corner, my cube will end up rocked again soon but for now I'll enjoy my favorite set so far of 2024.

UR Spells

With the new density of multi-spell matters cards I am cutting every single card that mentions "noncreature" or "instant or sorcery" from my cube. Ever since I decided to embrace UR Fair Storm, I've waited for the day that there was enough density to make this happen and it's finally time. That means I'm cutting Atmosphere Surgeon, Elusive Spellfist, Haughty Djinn, Stormwing Entity, Sword Coast Serpent, Tolarian Terror, Said // Done, Case of the Ransacked Lab, Magmatic Channeler, Burning Prophet, Hearth Elemental, Past in Flames, Mizzium Tank, Goblinslide, Balmor, Battlemage Captain, Melek, Reforged Researcher, and Baral and Kari Zev. I'm also cutting Jori En, Ruin Diver because, sadly, she's just outclasses by Malcolm, the Eyes and Kraum, Violent Cacophony. In their place are new enablers like Plan the Heist and Fblthp, Lost on the Range, new payoffs like Razzle-Dazzler and Slick Sequence and recontextualized cards like Rimrock Knight and Two-Handed Axe.

UG Flash

UG Flash got so many cool new payoffs in this set. In many respects OTJ feels like it repairs the hole left in my cube by the Day/Night designs from MID and VOW. Inasmuch as Malcolm, the Eyes and Brimstone Roundup fill in the multi-spell-matters part of cards like Vadrik, Astral Archmage and Obsessive Astronomer, cast no spells card like Canyon Crab and Emergent Haunting help fill in the cast no spells parts of cards like Suspicious Stowaway and Firmament Sage. Lastly, I'm adding Arboria because the card has lived rent-free in my brain since it was reprinted in DMR. I don't know if it's good, bad, or somewhere in between but it feels like a cool payoff for UG flash and I have to try it. Scattered Thoughts, Snaremaster Sprite, Aether Channeler, Storm Fleet Negotiator, Naiad of Hidden Coves, and Over the Edge get cut to make space for new enablers like Geyser Drake and new payoffs like Harrier Strix and This Town Ain't Big Enough (which works with Up the Beanstalk by the way).

Black and Red

So there are a few cool new cards for BR discard from OTJ and its associated products but sadly, as of right now, they remain stubbornly out of budget. Hostile Investigator, Embrace the Unknown, and Pyretic Charge all feel like cards I want to try and will certainly revisit in the near-future if they end up coming down in price. For now though, I've reconsidered my stance on Junk and will be testing Veronica, Dissident Scribe and Thrill-Kill Disciple and adding in some retrace in Raven's Crime and Throes of Chaos to go with Dakmor Salvage. Additionally, I'm replacing Rats with Mercenaries by taking out Tangled Colony and Lord Skitter's Butcher for Mourner's Surprise and Nezumi Linkbreaker, replacing Pale Rider of Trostad with the severely messed-up Servant of the Stinger as a ninjutsu enabler and swapping out Sultai Scavenger for Hollow Marauder. Blackmail, Wheel of Fate, Sudden Breakthrough, Furyblade Vampire, and Seismic Assault come out and Highway Robbery goes in.

White

Finally, Nurturing Pixie is just mostly strictly-better Kor Skyfisher. In the absence of Heliod, the Radiant Dawn, Love Song of Night and Day makes way for Cogworker's Puzzleknot.

I've had a lot on my mind lately and I wound up wanting to change around some cards before testing.

This feels like a classic Circuits Act/Mishra's Onslaught situation where I jumped too quickly on Suspicious Detonation as being a great Up the Beanstalk card for WR aggro when Bottle-Cap Blast was right around the corner and has added overlap with RG ramp. I might come back to Suspicious Detonation in the future since it's still a good card but Bottle-Cap Blast's Improvise makes it more closely aligned with what Stoke the Flames was doing before it. I just overlooked Bottle-Cap Blast in the deluge of spoilers lately.

Likewise, Keymaster Rogue is one I was called out on by drafters. I probably let my imagination run away from me on this one. Dream Stalker is closer to Kor Skyfisher in terms of relative power level and is just vastly more playable outside of the specific scenario with Will, Scion of Peace.

The other swaps came out of my recent (mis)adventures playing vintage-ish cubes. Get to play with and against some of the most powerful cards in magic led me to reflect on an idea that I had during the prototype era of the Spikeless Cube. Wizards has often played in the space of making fixed versions of broken cards from Magic's history as a way to cash in on nostalgia without breaking the formats wide open again. At its inception, when the Spikeless Cube was just the MTGO Vintage Cube pared down to only cards valued at $0.79 or less, I looked into a lot of these fixed versions of cards as ways to be evocative of powerful magic without actually being powerful magic. Among these were Magus of the Library and Mind Shatter.

2 mana is huge in terms of taking a card from broken to bulk bin but having experienced Library of Alexandria and Hymn to Tourach in action lately made me think about the impact these cards might have on the shape of my environment. I like Magus of the Library as a Boreal Druid that can also be a continuous card advantage engine for controlling draw-go style decks like UG Flash because I also want another card for Raggadragga, Goreguts Boss that can help pay for Vile Redeemer.

I like Mind Shatter because I wanted to add some manner of Mind Rot to the texture of the environment. I like that this one works well with Melek, Reforged Researcher and Bog Witch and Up the Beanstalk but I also just have a curiosity--an itch--to see how 4 mv Hymn to Tourach plays in my environment. This one is less likely to stick around and I have lots of ideas about discard spells I could try. Raven's Crime could be cool now that I have Dakmor Salvage. Obviously I still like Rakshasa's Secret as a way to get extra synergy out of an environmental staple. Stupor is always interesting.

In online discussions about Magus of the Library, Jushi Apprentice was suggested to me as a support card and I like this card a lot. It plays well in the space of the UG flash deck as another mana-sink/draw engine that rewards that style of slower, draw-go play and sports an interesting, non-negligible historical competitive pedigree. I was looking to add in another Kamigawa flip card after Nezumi Graverobber and Jushi Apprentice seems like a compelling one. Plus, it's another sweet card for Zirda, the Dawnwaker. Wavebreak Hippocamp is more expensive, easier to remove, and, notably, more explicitly synergistic with UG Flash. I've been thinking about ways to encourage building toward archetypes without spelling them out on cards and I like that Jushi Apprentice more implicitly points a player in the direction of UG Flash. I'll likewise be keen to add Canyon Crab when that card comes out in Outlaws of Thunder Junction since that card is UG Flash support but with text that encourages more invention and experimentation then a Brineborn Cutthroat or a Wavebreak Hippocamp.

A lot of the changes throughout this part are the results of votes of no confidence on cards being good in the cube. Just as Goblin Lore before, Keep Safe is a card that drafters just never seem excited about. Perilous Research, like Demand Answers, is color-shifted redundancy for Costly Plunder-style effects like Fanatical Offering. If it was in budget, I'd even consider adding something like Life's Legacy to green as a Skulltap-like since these are cool ways to generate positive card advantage for cheap.

Additionally, I decided to add Suspicious Detonation over Spitebellows for the added UR spell synergy but also but Pile On for the largely strictly-worse Mob since I'm greedy about Up the Beanstalk and want more cards that work with it now that I'm off pitch spells.

In addition to Unnatural Aggression, I also liked the idea of adding a cycle of exile-based removal to the cube since I cut out almost all of the explicit grave hate. This gave decks a way to stop opponents value engines based on recursion without explicitly having to call out grave decks. Equal Treatment gets cut for a different janky old white instant in Last Breath which hits a surprising number of targets in my environment. Shore Up joins Keep Safe in that failed experiment and is replaced with the more generically-playable Syncopate. Skyclave Shade is cut in favor of Ob Nixili's Cruelty and, lastly, Stoke the Flames is pared down to Scorching Dragonfire.

Part of the reason why I cut Skyclave Shade and added Thrashing Brontodon is because I wanted to add back in some more of the fair storm payoffs to UR now that I was losing battles but I still didn't want to have Cascade and Discover together. I cut Zoetic Glyph for just more removal in Hinder but I cut Hit the Mother Lode, Etali's Favor, and Trumpeting Carnosaur in order to put Noise Marine and Volcanic Torrent back in and add Captain Ripley Vance now that her cannons were gone. Lastly, I cut Caparocti Sunborn in favor of Nahiri's Resolve as an interesting enabler for WR artifacts. I'll have to see it in action to decide how I feel about it but in the meantime it gave me a new card with the ZNR poster style.

Also, to the end of having more effects to cost reduce with Zirda, the Dawnwaker, I cut Dancing Sword and Footfall Crater for some more equipment-based removal in Deconstruction Hammer and Lightning Spear. These cards are cool if I ever decide to add something like Magnetic Snuffler as well since they bin themselves.

A couple more changes were just feedback on power outliers from drafts. Inti, Seneschal of the Sun has been more powerful than I ever imagined in a bad way. The card is super cracked and is a kill-on-sight kind of enabler. I'm cutting him for the much more reasonable Furyblade Vampire. Meanwhile, Vengeant Earth has been called "unplayable" at my power level despite my affinity for the card so I've chosen to replace it with Noble Quarry as yet another cool Bestow creature and a fun lure effect for breaking up board stalls. Likewise, Tempest Hart, despite being another hot-take favorite of mine is not a card that most drafters like and Mystic Snake is a much more appealing UG card and signpost.

The next thing I did was finally remove Fear by repalcing Inkfathom Witch with Inkfathom Infiltrator now that that card is finally in budget thanks to the LCI list reprint.

After that, I cut Aven Envoy because drafters didn't like it for being too weak. I considered Shrieking Drake and Dream Stalker but landed on Keymaster Rogue for it's power in crossing over UB ninjas with whatever jeskai weirdness I'm cooking up with Will, Scion of Peace. Ultimately, Keymaster Rogue might still be too bad outside of that narrow context but I stand by that Shrieking Drake feels too high of impact for a 1-drop. Dream Stalker pay prove the way to go though I don't like that card's stat spread.

The last change that I made as far as cleaning up complexity was removing Regenerate and references to regeneration from the environment. Ultimately, even though Vitality Charm is strictly better than Sprout I don't like the stray typal text and I don't like the reference to regeneration in an environment where it can but will rarely come up. Same for the lot of these. Consume the Meek is replaced by Marsh Casulties as a one-sided wipe. Wolfir Avenger gets downgraded to the funky Simian Grunts a card which I like a lot but will undoubtedly get criticized for being bad. Devouring Strossus gets replaced with a different Lord of the Pit in Xathrid Demon and Jaya Ballard gets replaced with the only new card from the Fallout commander precons that I'm testing: Ian the Reckless. As a new 2-mana legend with synergistic build-around potential that's also a repeatable removal engine, I'm excited to test Ian.

I recently realized that cards like Umezawa's Jitte have different templating the conventional, contemporary, saboteur-style equipment in that they trigger on any combat damage. This is cool and has made me reconsider cards like Ceremonial Knife and Banshee's Blade that I previous thought were more on par with cards like Prying Blade and Armory of Iroas. Cellar Door is a card that drafters have just not found worth the mana sink and Barrow-Blade, despite being a strictly-better Leonin Scimitar suffers from being unclear as to its intended use case.

Axebane Ferox is the kind of card that I'm excited to add. Sentinel of the Nameless City has been called out for being a bit overpowered for my environment and I tend to agree. Titan-coded effects on 3-mv creatures feels a bit too generically good for my power level and Sentinel has taken over games by itself on occasion. Axebane Ferox on the other hand exists in the same space of "grave hate" as Scrabbling Claws in that it puts control of the hate in the hands of the graveyard player which I think is much fairer and more compelling. Jewel Thief was also cut along the way for space considerations.

Since I added a new proper gold card in the form of Will, Scion of Peace and wanted to cut Planar Disruption in favor of Curse of Chains for that sweet WU tap synergy, I cut Pippin, Guard of the Citadel from WU so I wouldn't have too many gold cards there and added Ingenious Smith to white as a fair Jackknight-like that can also potentially find you more gas on ETB.

I felt like I went too far afield in trying to support Norin the Wary. The card is fun and cool but ultimately still kind of chore to build around. Compare that to self-bounce creatures like Kor Skyfisher and Dream Stalker and it's clear that there are easier and more generically playable ways to support creaturefall than Norin, the Wary. That said, I am adding Dragon Fodder back in after four years since I've officially come full circle on that card being good. I like spells that make tokens alongside cards like Goblinslide and Mizzium Tank and this is the one that doesn't require me to add new tokens or introduce new typal text. It's just a clean, simple, easily recognizable card and effect. I've also added Collective Defiance back in now that I've taken Battles out.

Lastly, I've finally gotten my hands on the hybrid uncommons from Ravnica: Clue Edition that I was excited about. These cards are all highly-flexbile and synergistic gold signposts that lots of decks will be happy to pick up. I've heard some dissent against cards like Tribune of Rot for taking mono-color utilities that you'd otherwise have to get through cards like Tymaret Calls the Dead or Crawling Infestation and making them too accessible, but I don't have a problem with that. Yes Scuttling Sentinel is more flexible in terms of what decks can play it than either Saiba Cryptomancer or Airtight Alibi but that's what I like about it. I can do in one slot what I'd otherwise want to have in two.