This is gonna be a long one... Mystery Booster 2 is coming out with a slew of new playtest cards, many of which are playable in this cube and I'm considering. Cutting is going to be extra rough given how tight space already is, so I might have to end up bumping the numbers up. However, that's a future consideration, so I want to first go over the cards spoiled (so far) and evaluate them on a 1-5 scale of Cube playability here, 5 being a strong consideration and 1 being unplayable.

Indicate: 1, its a classic meme but doesn't do anything meaningful.
Kozilek, Compleated: 2, good but too costly.
Who's that Praetor?: 5, VERY powerful on a Sorcery with great outcomes.
Abbot of the Sacred Meeple: 1, pretty funny though.
A Girl and Her Dogs: 4, this has potential with the naming tools.
Avacyn's Collar, the Symbol of her Church: 2, decent but not a standout.
Brigid, Who's Seen Some Stuff: 2, not enough synergy here, but neat.
Defender of the Queue: 4, welcome to Keyforge?
Friarball: 3, effect is awesome but requires a big mana investment.
Jeskai Baller: 3, four power across two turns and 3 creatures is nice.
New Master of Arms: 2, its cute but not strong.
Plain Walker: 2, not impressed.
Tax Taker: 4, this is potentially insane, I would need to number crunch
Alberix, the Trade Planet: 2, I love the idea but its too slow.
Blurry Visionary: 1, too much potential to damage cards.
Duelists' Convocation International: 5 very cool, maybe can replace ABCs?
Heart of Duelist: 4, you can actually break this in many ways.
Night of the Flying Merfolk: 3, good but a bit boring.
No-Regrets Egret: 5, incredibly good at setting up a strong hand.
Search Elemental: 4, I think this may have a home, need to number crunch.
Subgoyf: 3, I think you can scale this easily.
There/They're/Their: 1, not that good.
Cleaver Blow: 4, this is very good removal and super modular.
Creepy Crawler: 2, I like the batching, but its not quite good enough.
Lich's Duel Mastery: 3, this might actually be playable, I need to think.
Magus of the Chains: 5, yes Chains of Mephistopheles is playable.
Oddric, Lunar Marquis: 2, funny but not good here.
Pinchy McStingbutt: 1, all three options are bad and you have to cast it.
TL;DR: 5, wow this is actually really pushed. This hits like 99% of creatures these days.
Toofer, Keeper of the Full Grip: 5, this is so easy to pull off.
Yawgmoth's Day Planner: 3, its a build around, but not here.
You Compleat Me: 2, I don't think there's enough life gain to support this.
Boltfire: 1, wayyy too situational.
Dwarven Confluencer: 2, such a cool effect, but land destruction isn't great here.
Flanking Licid: 1, the joke is that this was designed in the 90's so its just bad.
Immerstrum Battlefield: 4, really cool idea.
Pyromancy 101: 2, you still have to pay R to activate so subpar.
Snap Judgment: (1/5), I really think this is incredibly funny but I don't know if it will have enough effect.
Toddler's Rage: 2, I like it but its a bit weak.
Vuzzle Spaceship: 3, the concept is solid, but it may be overcosted.
Zone of Flame: 5, if I can find a slot this a great death match card.
The Colossal Dreadmaw: 4, memes aside this is a good deal.
Dairy Cow: 1, doesn't do anything but sick reference bro.
Flavor Disaster: 1, the joke is that the card is bad.
Glade of the Pump Spells: 3, this is hard to evaluate, but I think its good?
Keeper of the Crown // Coronation of the Wilds: 3, it has potential.
Meandered Towershell: 1, I love Towershell but its bad.
Naturalize 2: 5, incredible especially here in silver border.
Plant a Sapling/Fully Grown Treefolk: 4, very strong and easy to track.
Phyrexian Seedling: 5, I think this has potential with all the weird counters around here.
Questing Cosplayer: 5, what the hell?
Spuzzem Strategist: 1, the Spuzzem has chosen to be unplayable.
Starting Town NPC: 5, really neat idea, I dig it.
Wherewhat: 5, this is way better than Blurry Visionary's idea.
Anax and Cymede & Kynaios and Tiro: 2, its fine but too group hug.
Chatzuk, Mighty Guitarist: 1, we don't do banding here.
Chea, Friend to Maybe Too Many: 3, this needs a number crunch.
Don't Worry About It: 2, I think this is actually a bit undertuned.
Fludge, Gunk Guardian: 3, I love Gunk as a concept, but I need to come up with a reasonable way of tracking it.
Glimpse the Unthinkable: 1, its funny but I can't think of a good reason to play it.
Jund 'Em Out: 5, fantastic.
Narod, the Beige Flower: 4, I think this is a fun effect.
Pokey, the Scallywagg: 1, no real reason to do this.
Stone Drake: 2, the 2nd mode is better, but I don't think it fits here.
Terry Pin, Turboturtle: 3, needs a number crunch but I love it.
Wowzer, the Aspirational: 1, not currently possible here, but I dig it.
Luxior, Ignited: 2, I think the idea is good but is kinda in the space of Jitte which is too powerful.
Microscope: 1, this doesn't really do anything of value.
Mox Poison: 5, I think this might be broken?
Runed Terror: 5, this deserves a slot.
Fetching Garden: 1, not enough fetch options to make work.
Madlands: 3, this is neat but maybe not good enough.
Omenpath to Naya: 5, this is very powerful early on.
Processing Plant: 3, unlike Omenpath this is a hard sell.
Temur Elevator: 4, weaker than Omenpath but still strong.
Value Town: 4, a bit expensive but still nice.

By my count, there's 43 playtest cards still unaccounted for, so I'll have to revisit this at a later date.

It's that time of year again, a new Holiday card graces the cube:

Seasonal Sequels
Instant
Pitch the titles of up to X holiday-themed sequels to target spell. Copy that spell for each title pitched, except the copy has that name. You may choose new targets for the copies. (Simply adding numbers isn't festive enough.)

This is neat, though the cost is somewhat prohibitive. I think the one major bonus here is that its not instant/sorcery, but spell. This means you can copy creatures, artifacts, planeswalkers, etc.

This link is gonna be MVP: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Christmas_films

(I'd really like to see "Don't Opening Ceremony Until Christmas" pop off in Cube)

As for cuts, I think Ambiguity's time has finally come, I did a pass of cards that could trigger either of its two conditions, and the number has decreased over recent years.

Oh boy, an unexpected Silver Border release out of nowhere, and one that will actually slot into the cube fairly well.

Applejack: This effect is fun and versatile, so its a definite include. G/W has historically been lacking in silver-border support due to the mechanics of Unstable making most of their cards unplayable. This will probably replace Dhalsim, since the Street Fighter cards got non-UB versions making them less "special". This also applies to the Stranger Things cards, but I'll need another round of multicolored silver-border permanents before making changes there.

Fluttershy: This is a neat combat trick that also supports the go-wide combat strat with Squirrels. This will replace Mike in G/W.

Pinkie Pie: In absence of any weird recursion tricks, the first ability can be treated as a cost reducer for many cards in the cube. A lot of silver-border cards are smiling! The second ability is odd, there aren't any party synergies in the cube but the effect is really strong with that mechanic. It's a shame this effect was printed in silver, and not given a chance to appear in some random Commander product. This replaces Ken, since R/W isn't as spellcasting focused as an archetype in this cube.

Rainbow Dash: This is super fun, its a very interesting 5c support card and there's tons of haste/flying creatures available. Masterful Ninja anyone? I think I'm going to take out Coalition Victory for it here, since I've never seen anyone try to draft into it. It seems counter intuitive, since you can use the mana to cast Victory, but there's enough other payoffs in the cube for it to work.

Also, this set is a major win for Twilight Sparkle, since you can now activate the effect without having to do some rules shenanigans.

First paper draft in a while, with a single 4-player pod. We only played a total of two matches, but they were very long, comparable to multiple EDH matches.

The draft went slightly faster than expected, probably because of how much more streamlined the Unfinity cards are.

P1 (Me): B/G Dice Roll Tribal, featuring If Luck Would Have It and Krark's Other Thumb.

P2: U/W/R Goodstuff, plenty of powerful board creatures like Rick, Steadfast Leader and Katerina of Myra's Marvels. The crux of the deck was Form of the Approach of the Second Sun and Starfield of Nyx, more on that later.

P3: 4c Midrange, lots of good cards including Rare-B-Gone which is absolutely devastating in a pod, A Good Thing and Hangman.

P4: R/G Aggro, very effective deck with cards like Spelling Bee and Unicycle.

Game 1: This one was a heck of a game, I got knocked out relatively early and the other players were stuck in a standstill for a bit. The winning combo of the game was very tricky. Since you can continuously loop Form of the Approach of the Second Sun using Starfield of Nyx, you can return it at upkeep to put yourself in your library, draw a card, then choose to fail the physical component. This thins your deck until you get to zero cards in library. Then, at your next upkeep, you return the enchantment to play with Starfield, which puts yourself as the top card of the library. You then draw yourself to win, creating a psuedo-Oracle of Thassa effect. P3 died to their own copy of A Good Thing at 1696 life.

Game 2: This was pretty grindy, a lot of back and forth. Notable incidents were everyone teaming up to try and get Hangman off the field, and many many many coin flips using the Mana Screw ability of Everythingamajig. Ultimately Spelling Bee was able to get the win. I was able to assemble a pretty neat pair of Steel Squirrel and Lobe Lobber to both ping and pump the creature to swing in with the bonus P/T.

A few observations, both Now I Know My ABC's was drafted, but the player didn't realize that it was an instant-win with _____ choosing to name your creature "ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ".

Another strange interaction, B.O.B. (Bevy of Beebles) was in play, and a player cast It Came from Planet Glurg using it to copy two Beeble tokens. This made a creature that was simultaneously 1 creature, but counted as 2 Beebles for the purposes of B.O.B.'s loyalty.

I don't think any changes are needed at this time to the cube, it feels like its in a good place. I am a bit worried about the state of Black, since its going for a combination of "Big Mana" and "Reanimator", but further tests will be needed.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1L0X7XxtXBo-txVHl0LZraGdXCROQO0Hu/edit?usp=sharing&ouid=114438844109947027866&rtpof=true&sd=true

I went through the entire Unfinity set to determine which cards are viable for play in this cube (not in general). Overall, there's a lot of good stuff there, but pretty much 70% of the set is unplayable due to Stickers and Attractions. Those cards are called out in the comments field.

Stickers I don't believe are playable in any capacity without significant issue due to proxy tokens, affixing literal stickers, memory issues, etc. Just bad design.

Attractions I like more, but there's so many variants and you have to build around them just like Contraptions.

I'll be working on swaps based on my analysis, a yes to include doesn't mean there will be a slot, but I'm hopeful.

It's probably both a blessing and a curse that half of Unfinity is going to be centered around Sticker cards. On one hand, it seems like a fun mechanic, though absolutely terrible for a structured cube format. There isn't a good solution to including the sticker sheets, and re-using the stickers over the course of multiple drafts. Supposedly, they use a post-it style sticking, which should make them semi-reusable, but that will wear out over time. Also, in order to make the stickers function, it requires a deep investment in cards that produce the tickets (read: energy 2.0), to make that draft archetype work. There's already enough competition for archetypes that I feel fine saying it won't go in.

The silver lining is that it means a significant portion of Unfinity is now off the table for inclusion in the cube, which makes updates and decision making easier.

From the cards that have been revealed so far in Maro's SDCC 2022 show:

Far Out: This one is sick, definitely want to find a place for it. You can pull off some amazing tricks with Seek Bolas's Counsel and Growth Charm. I might need to identify some more modal support, but I'll have to see what Unfinity offers for that.

Magar of the Magic Strings: Definite inclusion, probably replacing something like Keldon Twilight. Making a B/R spellslinger archetype that runs back Summon the Pack? Yes please.

I almost forgot! New holiday card came out, almost missed it in the droll that is Covid... Fortunately my wallet remembered and is now $110 lighter.

Perplex -> Last-Minute Chopping

Easy enough swap!

Well, I'm way more happy with these cards being added than the Stranger Things ones, plus they're in colors the cube needed more support for!

Here's what I'm tentatively saying for swaps:

Atinlay Igpay -> E. Honda (arewellfay igpay , ouyay ereway erehay omfray ethay artstay.)

Boros Guildmage -> Ryu, World Warrior

Goblin Trenches -> Ken, Burning Brawler

Dance of the Manse -> Chun-Li, Countless Kicks

Kitchen Finks -> Dhalsim, Pliable Pacifist

Spellheart Chimera -> Guile, Sonic Soldier

Everlasting Torment -> Zangief, the Red Cyclone

I really want to find a slot for Blanka, but R/G is already kinda stacked. If I cut anything, it will be Cramped Bunker.

On to Unfinity, I am absurdly hyped for the set, and my dream is finally getting the other color pairs filled out that were not represented in Unstable. From the leaked cards, there's already a ton that I'm interested in, and the cube might very well reach the goal of removing the last of black border (minus Playtest cards).

B-I-N-G-O -> Killer Cosplay (Nobody has ever made BINGO work, which while sad, means its an easy cut)

Double Cross -> Saw in Half (The doubles are pretty much on the way out, just needed something better to replace them with)

The Space Family Goblinson is tricky, because historically dice has been a G/U archetype. It might find a slot.

Assembled Ensemble is very very interesting, but I need to know how much Robot/Clown matters in the greater set to make a decision, it could be influenced by many other cards.

Because the higher-ups at Hasbro continue to blight me, I'm obligated to put at least some of the Stranger Things secret lair cards into the cube...

Akroan Hoplite > Chief Jim Hopper
Hull Breach > Max the Daredevil
Fleetfoot Panther > Mike the Dungeon Master
Voracious Hatchling > Will the Wise (Happy about this one, Hatchling was a bomb)
Coronavirus Godzilla > Mind Flayer

Lucas is a "maybe" and Dustin/Eleven are too narrow for my tastes as inclusions.