Lots of upgrades from the recent sets. Green goes down on noncreature mill-jank because it has enough creatures that mill and incidental mill. Lots of flexible cards from MH3, especially for the enchantment theme.
Artifact and graveyard archetypes get new toys. Some enchantment stuff from Eldraine as well.
Updating Jumpstart sometime in the future.
The new landcyclers from LotR are great flexible additions that I will treat like lands in the cube. All but the white one get added alongside great additions for all archetypes.
I had to let go of some clunky pet cards of mine like revolutionist, circular logic and argivian restoration as they simply weren't as playable as they seemed and ended up cut from the deck or stuck in hand most of the time.
One is not a slam dunk like the last few sets have been for Spectrum but a few artifact creatures are nice up- or sidegrades that I am excited to try out.
BRO finally brings new tech for Spectrum. Artifacts and graveyard strategies get melded further together and my goal of having these seemingly disconnected archetypes come together in the same deck.
CMC6+ matters gets further reinforced by dragon wings and reanimation like summon undead.
The extra variety was not worth expanding the list with the last 20 cards you'd want to draft.
In preparation of the brothers war update I am making the appropriate cuts right now.
Not as many great commons in this edition of commander legends as I had expected. Some cuts like unexpected results were hard to justify and might come back later or if the list keeps growing in size.
Dire Mimic might look like jank but some decks really value artifacts entering the battlefield so flash can work like a combat trick. Belligerent Guest finally makes the cut as I feel it slots more flexibly into artifacts and madness.
Ethereal armor, although powerful, is very linear and most decks look to generate value rather than go full Voltron, so after years in the cube it finally gets the cut.
5 fetch lands and 5 dual lands that can be sacrificed late game were a good reason to expand the cubes overall size.
Treasure tokens are welcome and flashy artifacts and enchantments spice up combat quite a bit.
With NEO a few new ideas for two-color jumpstart boosters have popped up and made me realize that artifacts, discard, control and reanimation can become an archetype together. Thanks, Kamigawa!
I feel like while these small updates might be irritating I don't want to subtract from my freedom of designing.
Oh boy this is a big one. Like most recent sets, there are a lot of great options for almost all archetypes. Especially the artifact sacrifice theme is finally getting some recognition. The sagas flipping into creatures are middling but really fit well with constellation as they trigger it twice.
A last archetype integration with these +30 extra cards.
Equipment becomes a viable strategy in alongside it's artifact synergies.
gets 4 relevant creatures,
gets 3 and I added 3 extra colorless equipment that also work great in the regular artifact archetypes.
The artifact creature archetype gets cemented in as well.
This set works even better than MID in this list: my wish of combining archetypes finally was heard and enchanent and milling has overlap with Lantern Bearer and artifacts and discard has massive overlap with blood tokens like Blood Fountain. This finally makes Disciple of the Vault and Ancestral Mask viable inclusions as well.
Upgraded to 330 cards as there were too many cards I didn't find cuts for.
A fantastic set and a great year overall for Spectrum!
This is the set this cube has been waiting for. Finally graveyard strategies get an overhaul after many sets pushing artifacts. Especially blueβs graveyard was underdeveloped and now has more playable options.
Typo
Expanding the list with fifteen extra cards, including lots of instants and combat tricks.
Kinda forgot about unearth.
Spectrum is now 300 cards big and will feature more two-color jumpstart boosters.