Tarkir: Dragonstorm looks like a great set, but its focus on splashy rares and mythics means it doesn't have that much to offer pauper.
I'm pretty happy with most of these edits, but found blue the hardest.
Wingspan Stride probably isn't that good, even if it is better than similar Auras, and there's a good chance I undo the Rain of Revelation/Focus the Mind swap. Dirgur Island Dragon (the common blue Omen dragon) could also be included as an alternative to Rimeshield Frost Giant or Quicksilver Fisher. At first, I valued ward as fairly insignificant on a 6-mana creature, but the option to cast it as Skimming Strike (tap up to one target creature, draw a card) for 2 mana could make up for it.
The card I'm most excited for in this update is Magmakin Artillerist. In hindsight, I should also replace Writhing Necromass with Chitin Gravestalker. Flood the Engine is also apparently quite good in Aetherdrift limited, but the cube already has better versions of the same thing.
I like the idea of Start Your Engines, but there weren't a lot of impressive payoffs at common.
Light of Hope has actually been in the cube for a while, but I accidentally entered an extra Unbounded Potential instead of it. Bartered Cow can give a bit more value to discard decks. I'm undoing the swap Nettle Guard-Cathar Commando swap, as the Heroic/Valiant archetype will probably not receive much future support.
A 20-ish card update, going deeper into +1/+1 counters, Auras, and a little bit of reanimator. Summon Undead was cut for being too slow in comparison to Late to Dinner and Dread Return, but might see a comeback. We're leaning more into the suggestion that instant-speed, 0-mana sac outlets are too good, which is why Plagued Rusalka and Novice Dissector are in.
Makeshift Munitions is the only change to red, and I'll be keeping a close eye on it as it could easily prove to be too oppressive.
I'm trying to plant the beginnings of GW and RW Heroic/Valiant archetypes. The card pools are not particularly deep, and I suspect they will need more support than I've given them.
The removal of Carrion Feeder following the Departure of Bloodthrone Vampire could signal a large drop in power for the dominant BR aristocrats midrange deck. I don't want to make the archetype unplayable, but we'll have to see how big this change is.
More Tortured Existence has been added in the form of Golgari Brownscale, Sanitarium Skeleton, Basking Rootwalla and Rot Farm Mortipede. I'm most curious to see if this brings self-mill/TortEx as the main (or even only) black-based synergy shell.
On a whim, I've decided to test out a card I've long considered too oppressive for the cube: Waterfront Bouncer. Only draft will tell how good it is.
We had only 6 players this time, each getting four packs of 11 cards. We only played one round, so there isn't as much to be gleaned from match results. In every matchup, the winning player won 2-0. This means we only saw 264 cards, leaving over 100 unseen.
Decks drafted:
UBRG token soup (Hamlet Glutton, Moldervine Cloak)
WBG TortEx (boarded to GW aggro after game 1)
WUGB Gond combo
BR aristocrats (splashing white for Swift Response)
WU flying/flicker
UR prowess
Matchups:
UBRG vs UR: UBRG wins
WBG vs BR: BR wins
WUGB vs WU: WU wins
After a long and heated discussion about whether Tortured Existence should still be in the cube, I've decided I probably weakened it too much for fear that a strong TortEx deck would make games slow and repetitive. To bring it back a little, I'll be re-adding synergy pieces like Golgari Brownscale and Sanitarium Skeleton.
BR sacrifice continues to be the likely best archetype in the cube. The sacrifice outlets and payoffs it wants are not likely to be taken by other drafters and have increased noticeably in quality. On top of that, black and red have the strongest removal at common. I don't want to completely destroy the archetype, but I'll be removing some of its cards to show some love to other decks that use black or red.
GW's lack of identity was also discussed, and heroic/Auras was decided as a good direction to go in.
I played two prereleases and did bad at both, but at least I got some sweet cube cards out of it. This update is mostly notable for removing the three foretell cards in the cube.
Elementalist Adept and Mocking Sprite were contenders to be added, but I couldn't find suitable cuts for them.