Jules' Vintage Vending-Machine receives its first major overhaul, with 150 cards switched out as the cube nears its two year anniversary. In that time, the 540 card list has never been drafted, but it serves as a good skeleton for the 8-person Value-Pack to be built upon - expect that to be updated within the coming week as well.

The TLDR is this: This version of the cube aims make use of the many efficient threats given to us in the last 2 years. The cube unforunately trades a lot of its own identity for a high-power 2025 draft environment. Thassa's Oracle and Nadu are in, Dark Depths is out. Signets have been cut for lands, and more colourless cards have been added. White and Green have received special attention, Red looks much scarier.

While my autistic ass would love to detail the reasoning for every individual change, nobody will read that and I'm busy enough as it is, so I'll simply be outlining some of the changes in philosophy, archetypes, and meaningful combos in this post.

Mistakes were Made
The original purpose of having two different lists was for the 8-person cube to be a focused, highest-power environment. With players seeing every single card, the idea was to make combos accessible, fast-mana abundant, and create a focused and well-balanced experience. Where does that leave the 540 card list?
I originally envisioned this cube to represent 3 things: A vintage-power draft environment, my personal collection of magic rarities, and my pet cards / personal favourites.
This led to compromises that were, looking back, very odd. Nobody cared much to ramp into hardcasting Ulamog, the Infinite Gyre or Ugin, the Spirit Dragon. Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite was always going to be a mediocre reanimator target, and Karmic Guide wasn't going to convince anyone to play Orzhov reanimator. Mishra's Factory is far from impressive, and blue players had much better things to do than use Dig Through Time or Treasure Cruise, and why did I think Inferno Titan was a good payoff for Birthing Pod?

None of these choices are offensively bad, but they certainly raise eyebrows.

This new version of the cube trims the fat away completely. This new version aims to try out many of the high-power toys we've been granted over the last two years and replaces less efficient creatures, less versatile effects, or includes you get to laugh at Jules for. What is there to look out for?

Creatures got way more efficient

First of all, the average mana-curves across the board got more aggressive. A comparison of the average CMC in each colour looks somethingt like this:

New Threats like Pyrogoyf, Caustic Bronco, and Ocelot Pride are low-cost, high impact gamepieces that together speed up the clock for aggro decks and enable midrange strategies to keep up with the faster combo decks.
As a result, interaction and removal got more efficient as well, with Oust, Portable Hole, Cut Down, and Firebolt replacing their slower friends in Condemn, March of Otherworldly Light, Bloodchief's Thirst, and Char.

Revamping White and Green

Or, at least, trying to.
White was in the most desperate need of a fixup - white weenie is not to be underestimated at its best, but my cube made sure you played it at its worst. Additionally, while the flicker package had plenty of support, it only ever had one taker - shoutout to you, Jacob! - and took up too many slots for an archetype few sought to risk. I like that Ocelot Pride, Jacked Rabbit and Sanguine Evangelist bring some greater focus to the token strategies and that Enduring Innocence or Staff of the Storyteller keep the value high.
Most importantly, white is the only colour with two great initiative creatures in White Plume Adventurer and the well deserved Seasoned Dungeoneer.

Green's had its ineffective 3-drops slashed to guide players into one of two broad gameplans. The first leverages green's mana dorks - Fanatic of Rhonas and Tender Wildguide are exciting additions - to cast 4 and 5 mana beaters like Balustrade Wurm and Bristlebud Farmer, or ride the Craterhoof Behemoth home. The second encourages players to play land-based strategies paid off with Bristly Bill, Spine Sower, Springheart Nantuko, Six, and of course, Titania, Protector of Argoth.

These colours still have major weaknesses however. They seem strongest when paired with other colours - Forth Eorlingas! and Minsc & Boo, Timeless Heroes make this especially tempting. Additionally, the Selesnya offerings remain weak, with Torsten, Founder of Benalia making a good Atraxa impression, and Arwen, Mortal Queen being the best I could find for the pair.

Taking the Initiative

I'm reluctant to embrace new bullshit. It took months for me to finally accept including the MH2 Evoke Elementals (Reanimating Grief finally warmed me up to the idea) and I similarly found Initiative to be cheap and unintuitive to players who aren't dweebs.
However, giving the aggressive decks a strong advantage to defend was a tempting way to give them tools against whatever blue is doing, so giving the mechanic to white, red, and green felt like a good compromise...
Wait how did Feywild Caretaker get in there?

Lands, not Signets

Eager to give a boost to artifact decks, I gave every colour pair 10 Signets and 10 Talisman to play with, thinking it would give my cube a unique dynamic that you wouldn't find elsewhere, making lands sparce and fixing slower.
I will definitely revisit this idea in the future, but 10 signets have made way for the 10 fetchable surveil lands, and other undesireables were removed for the fastlands.
This has made domain cards like Leyline Binding and Territorial Kavu stronger, and made Wasteland and Strip Mine sexier than ever. Nishoba Brawler hasn't made the cut, but its on my radar.
Expect fetch lands to be taken even quicker.

Thassa's Oracle / Doomsday

Thassa's Oracle and Doomsday have both been on my radar for a while. I love Doomsday as a black player eager to take weird risks and I hate Thassa's Oracle because the only thing this card takes is my fucking patience. Thassa's Oracle is also just great by itself in blue decks as a backup plan, and Doomsday is exciting enough as a Timmy card.

So why not Demonic Consultation and why not Jace, Wielder of Mysteries?
In short, Demonic Consultation feels cheap, making a two card win for 3 mana that is relatively tricky to interact with, in colours that really don't need the help. Cubes like the MTGO No-Holds Barred Vintage Cube address this by adding Mental Misstep and Dress Down, with Misstep being the only good way for every colour to address the combo. I don't believe this is a kind of playpattern I want to encourage or dedicate slots to.
As a result, Jace, Wielder of Mysteries without Demonic Consultation is also less strong. I like having the Thassa's Oracle in the cube as a strong backup plan or for decks that shred deep into their library, with Doomsday out there for the Timmies to try out. I'll keep an eye how this plays out.

Nadu

For how consistently strong Simic has been as a colour pair, there aren't necessarily that many impressive options for vintage cube past Uro, Titan of Nature's Wrath and Oko, Thief of Crowns. I've seen Sail into the West tried out as a wheel effect, and Bring to Light to reward domain decks but I dislike both.
Nadu, Winged Wisdom is an impressive value engine that doesn't take away many slots, and pairs with cards that already serve other strategies: the boots are good enough for some aggressive strategies and the safekeeper pairs well with Titania, Protector of Argoth or the Balance + Zuran Orb + Crucible of Worlds bullshit. The only risk for non-deterministic combos like this is for the turns to be long and uninteresting, so we'll see how it plays.

So long, Dark Depths

All the cards above have been cut. While its certainly iconic, the combo takes up too many slots for too little: a 20/20 indestructible is no longer the untouchable game-ender it used to be, and requires too slow a setup. Additionally, lands decks have different options I would rather encourage. While stuff like Expedition map, Crop Rotation, and the new Sowing Mycospawn could've leaned harder into assembling a faster combo, but I prefered to cut it for now.

Overall, while I believe these changes are for the better in terms of freshening up the draft environment and powering it up, the finished product undoubtedly feels less personal.