Hey there!

At this point, I've had this cube built in paper for around a year, and I've been fortunate to have people who've been willing to play it both in-person and online. This gave me ample opportunities to observe how people were drafting. I wanted to take those insights and apply them, so I worked with my friend Silas, who graciously gave ten to twelve hours of his time reviewing the cube with me. Here's what we came up with.

Goals:

• Increase the presence of more blue-based and controlling archetypes
• Give green players early-game options beyond ramp
• Move Golgari away from something graveyard oriented to a more generic “value” archetype
• Move Izzet towards a more dedicated spellslinger archetype

Methodology:

• Review each card for impact on gameplay experience and assign the following tags to cards:
  • Core (cards that define the experience of the cube; likely to never be cut)
  • Plus (more good than bad)
  • Minus (more bad than good)
  • Cut (cards that have been unpopular or unsuccessful)
• Rebuild the cube including all the Core cards, many of the Plus cards, some of the Minus cards, and none of the Cut cards
• Fill in gaps based on the needs of the color and archetypes

Notable Changes:

• “Signature Spell” for each color pair:
  • No More Lies
  • Tyrant's Scorn
  • Molten Collapse
  • Domri's Ambush
  • March of the Multitudes
  • Anguished Unmaking
  • Expressive Iteration
  • Abrupt Decay
  • Lightning Helix
  • Growth Spiral
• Surveil Lands
• Walking Ballista/Heliod, Sun-Crowned/Agatha's Soul Cauldron combo
• Nishoba Brawler and Herd Migration as Domain payoffs