(This blog post is a follow-up to the previous post, part 1.)

--Power level outliers (in addition to those mentioned in part 1.)--

Blade Historian and Fulminator Mage - these cards also were included to err on the side of pushing aggressive strategies, and may just be unnecessary. Fulminator Mage is also just incredibly punishing to anyone daring to play a bounceland and leads to bad times when people are being punished for playing by the rules dictated by the format. Arguably, the Krenkos and Warboss fall under this as well (although they’re native to Ravnica) from some comments from one of the trophy leaders saying that the goblins usually required dealing with them very quickly, or getting a free win.

Finale of Eternity - one of the sneakily better removal options in the format, and while I didn’t see it destroy aggro players that often (on stream), it was one of the best ways to destroy a board for not a lot of mana.

Keeper of the Accord - one of the Ravnica-flavored cards from another set, but may be too above rate for the format for mana and creature generation. It’s the one that I’m less confident on vs the others as an outlier.

Remand - One of the cards that I put in thinking that it’d be a card that is, on-rate, a very powerful card for disruption and tempo. I didn’t see it buoying tempo strategies (which wasn’t surprising) but I felt that it was close enough to the power-level line; it’s something that I’m the most interested in for data but if I had to choose without knowing, it’d likely be cut.

--Things I'll probably cut--

Single Combat – I wanted to make sure that the control decks had options for wraths and this was one which, in theory, could wipe out an opponent’s board while leaving you with something bigger, but it just did nothing.

Undercity Informer - I only saw a streamer play this once and I didn’t really do anything and I don’t recall ever seeing it in a trophy list. Mainly included to work with the "cares if stuff dies" cards in black but it didn't seem like it was worth the card slot.

Pillar of the Paruns - the only time that I saw this was when Caleb Durward had it in a Niv-Mizzet deck. Interested in seeing if it ends up being worth the drawbacks or just bad.

One cycle of fixing lands - I’m not entirely sure on this, but it’s something I thought to see how it’d change behaviors of drafters and how highly they take lands (since it seemed like drafters didn’t take them that highly.) Could just be a small cycle like the Vivids, since there are 9 cycles of dual-making lands, compared to 6 in MTGO’s Vintage and Legacy cubes.

--Things I'll probably try--

Blink things - something that people expected and could be integrated without too much effort, even if it includes bringing in some non-planar cards like Turn to Mist, as blink cards work incredibly well with ETB creatures.

Finale of Promise - I didn’t include this because of assumptions that drafters may have with Arclight Phoenix (I didn’t include it for mana-cheat reasons) as I didn’t include some cards like District Guide and Circuitous Route as they mention the Gate land subtype and didn’t want drafters assuming that they were in the cube list.

Sunforger - I didn’t include this because it had too few targets, but it could easily work with a few more targets, like Unbounded Potential, Sundering Growth and a few others.

Some 4-toughness burn to help red punch through midrange beefers. Mizzium Mortars is almost assuredly above the power level of the meta but something like Chandra's Outrage (featuring art from a card that was once in Ravnica, Snapping Drake) or Flame Spill are likely fine.

I had some more thoughts (which says... something, considering this blog had to be split into two) which may be worth writing an article about, but I wanted to get these thoughts down without knowing the data and just having a "in the trenches" POV, like many others who drafted the cube would have.