I don’t have a patreon, but I feel like this is one of those things that would be on a Patreon; I wanted to give those who still follow this thing an early peek into the War of the Spark cube review so that you’ll be prepped for the pre-release. I’m copying and pasting from Word it so it’s not going to have pictures, condensing decklists, card links, other things to break up the text and all of that great stuff that the editorial staff at CoolStuffInc do to help make sure that my articles aren’t an unreadable giant wall of text.

Speaking of Wall of Text, this is easily the longest thing I’ve written in my near-decade of cube writing, with it being about 42 pages as this set is a great cube set.

Enjoy!

In the last two set reviews, I’ve talked about how the previous blocks had influence by Play Design, with this being the first set with full Play Design focus:

“The first set to have Play Design input is Dominaria, the first set to have a full Play Design focus (I’ll explain the schedule below) is codenamed Milk (War of the Spark), and the first set to have Play Design input in vision is ‘Archery.’”

Of note: these evaluations are based on actual play in my Cube and not just outsourced to other formats like the Early Streamer Early Access Event and the prereleases, as this article was completed before those events occurred, so if I’m saying a card has been working well based on my experience, it’s based on experience from trying them out in my Cube (it has power but my experiences likely should mirror yours, assuming it has rares) – I try new cards out VERY aggressively as soon as cards are known and the findings in this article are based on 6 cube drafts’ worth of experience, not speculation.

As I’ve been doing in recent reviews, I’ll be referencing decks that have utilized War of the Spark cards that won/had the best record in Cube drafts. Of course, going 3-0 with a card in a deck isn’t ironclad proof of a card being good, but I’ll be citing how these cards have manifested in winning Cube decks.

Like Guilds of Ravnica and Ravnica Allegiance, this set is another really good one and like those sets, there isn’t anything that’s a busted card that’s going to be a staple in every cube (this likely stems from Play Design influence) but a lot of good workhorse cards: Guilds of Ravnica had cards like Assassin’s Trophy that was an incredible Golgari card, but also had a lot of solid non-obviously good performers like Risk Factor and Venerated Loxodon. Ravnica Allegiance continued this trend with cards like Gutterbones, Biogenic Ooze, Light up the Stage and Tithe Taker to name a few. However, as you can tell by the scroll bar, this isn’t a short article (it’s the longest article I’ve written) as there are a lot of great cube cards here. Stay a while, and listen.

White

Gideon Blackblade – When looking at Gideon Blackblade in the lens of a normal planeswalker, he looks weak since he can’t defend himself, and doesn’t do much when he comes into play. While we’ve had over a decade of planeswalkers in the game, since there are relatively few, they tend to fall prey to incorrect analyses, due to relying on few data points.

Gideon Blackblade follows the Gideon trope of being a creature. Gideons mostly have a good track record in cube, with the only misses being the planeswalker deck Gideons (and even then, he’s not straight-up awful) and Gideon, Champion of Justice, who was awful.

What’s unique about Gideon Blackblade is that he’s always a 4/4 on your turn, so he’s able to use his +1 while attacking for 4. While it’s tempting to dismiss him as a bad creature because he can’t block and can be attacked, passively being a 4/4 while having other board impact has made him a very useful threat, like in this deck:

4 Island

8 Plains

1 Mishra’s Factory

1 Plateau

1 Scalding Tarn

1 Strip Mine

1 Volcanic Island

1 Mana Crypt

1 Path to Exile

1 Mother of Runes

1 Thraben Inspector

1 Mardu Woe-Reaper

1 Legion’s Landing

1 Figure of Destiny

1 Isamaru, Hound of Konda

1 Dauntless Bodyguard

1 GO TO JAIL

1 Remand

1 Leonin Relic-Warder

1 Adanto Vanguard

1 Snapcaster Mage

1 Heirloom Blade

1 Gideon of the Trials

1 Teferi, Time Raveler

1 Gideon Blackblade

1 Ravages of War

1 Armageddon

1 Gideon, Ally of Zendikar

1 Serra the Benevolent

1 Fractured Identity

This is where he tended to be most at home, as an aggressive pile of stats (since midrange and control decks aren’t in the market for such a creature, like other piles of stats like Goblin Guide which primarily attack), and as a hard-to-deal with creature first and a planeswalker second. It’s true that his +1 ability isn’t the most amazing thing, since it can’t target himself, but the combined package of it and being an attacking indestructible 4/4 has made him a great performer in beatdown decks. Even still, I’ve found his +1 to be subtly useful for board states, and found myself using all of them during testing, like giving Mother of Runes vigilance, a random 2/2 lifelink or a random creature indestructible before equipping it.

Even his ultimate of being an Oblivion Ring that can’t be removed has been surprisingly useful as a “use in case of emergency” tool, because even if it doesn’t end the game like most other ultimates, it still has been great when it mattered.

While white 3-drops have gotten better over the years, don’t discount him because he doesn’t fit your standard definition of a planeswalker or aggro beater.

Teyo, the Shieldmage is a card aimed to keep you alive, so aggro obviously wants nothing to do with this. Commonly cubed white 3-drops like Brimaz, King of Oreskos, Brightling and Thalia, Heretic Cathar just blow this out of the water and when I tried him out, cube decks just weren’t interested since his mana ROI is low. Giving hexproof is nice but not really worth playing a mediocre card like this, and does it worse than True Believer and Aegis of the Gods. In peasant, this looks better and its role as a non aggro card is better since its competition is more along the lines of Dauntless Cathar and Aerial Responder, but if anything, a lot of cubes need more aggro cards, not aggro hosers. Understandably, a lot of the uncommon walkers had to be lower-power due to limited considerations and while not all of the uncommon walkers are uncubeable, a lot unfortunately are, including Teyo.

The Wanderer – the best thing about this is that it shares the name of an Emperor song, but does little else. Abilities are mostly a wonky anti-red (for the most part) with a few Reprisals for value. This certainly doesn’t compete with white’s current 4-drop crop and even for peasant, her minus is just too situational as she’s pretty bad, only being decent against decks with a lot of haymakers. Worse than Teyo, don’t bother.

Law-Rune Enforcer – 1 mana tappers are solid underrated cube cards for creature matchups. I’ve been trying Gideon’s Lawkeeper and Goldmeadow Harrier at the suggestion of friend Sirfunchalot and found them to be impressive in decks like aggro, even if they can’t attack for 2.

I had thought that subsequent 1-mana tappers would be like Fan Bearer and Law-Rune Enforcer has been a workhorse 1-drop as well, like in this deck:

1 Strip Mine

1 Verdant Catacombs

1 Mox Pearl

1 Scrubland

1 Mox Jet

1 City of Brass

1 Flooded Strand

1 Shambling Vent

1 Godless Shrine

1 Swamp

7 Plains

1 Law-Rune Enforcer

1 Cabal Therapist

1 Isamaru, Hound of Konda

1 Figure of Destiny

1 Phyrexian Revoker

1 Tomik, Distinguished Advokist

1 Thalia, Guardian of Thraben

1 Knight of the Holy Nimbus

1 Monastery Mentor

1 Plaguecrafter

1 Brimaz, King of Oreskos

1 Elspeth, Sun’s Champion

1 Elspeth, Knight-Errant

1 Secure the Wastes

1 Liliana’s Triumph

1 Oblivion Ring

1 Serra the Benevolent

1 Ajani, Adversary of Tyrants

1 Liliana, Dreadhorde General

1 Banishing Light

1 Nether Void

1 Ravages of War

1 Mana Vault

There are some notable things that this can’t tap: tokens, 1-mana creatures like Mother of Runes, mana elves and aggro 1-drops. It’s tempting to look at a card that isn’t commonly played (Goldmeadow Harrier/Gideon’s Lawkeeper) and look at a version that can’t do things that those can’t do, and dismiss it as a bad card as I saw this happen with evaluations of Kitesail Freebooter. But I found that this wasn’t enough to render this card bad and generally when wanting to tap a creature, Law-Rune Enforcer was able to do it and the ability to tap using a colorless mana was useful to have and overall, I’ve liked this one more. If you haven’t tried the 1-mana tappers, this is a good introduction.

Tomik, Distinguished Advokist

Tomik works as a pile of stats as ⅔ flying is pretty pushed, as Tomik’s preview article talks about how he was created as primarily a ⅔ flier for WW to attack planeswalkers and secondarily a way to combat decks that were popular in Legacy:

As Tom Ross noted in his Tomik article, Tomik also prevents the opponent from interacting with their own lands, so they can’t equip creature lands, put beneficial auras on them like Fertile Ground, Overgrowth and Utopia Sprawl (which more people should play in their cubes.) Again, in cube, it’s a small effect but it’s a nice benefit for what’s essentially gravy on top of an already good white aggro creature.

It’s been many years since we’ve seen cards like White Knight and Mistral Charger in cubes (outside of peasant) as white 2s have gotten better over the years, as having at least 2 power and 3 toughness for 2 mana is an unprecedented rate outside of weird cards like Serra Avenger and Jotun Grunt that can’t start attacking on turn 3 and we haven’t seen a first striking flier 2/1 or 2/2 for 2 mana.

Even outside of cubes with a plethora of Shocks and Pyroclasms, this still defends well and attacks well. When I tried Tomik out, didn’t come up incredibly often, but it’s nice to have in decks with creature lands ala Mishra’s Factory, etc to give them hexproof, especially when buffing them via equipment and other pump effects (Elspeth, Knight-Errant) so you don’t get blown out by investing mana into buffing a threat.

There aren’t a lot of S-tier white 2s outside of things like Stoneforge Mystic, with a cast of generally solid supporters like Adanto Vanguard, Knight of the Holy Nimbus, Wall of Omens and others. This joins the latter, especially if you’re wanting to make sure white aggro is a consistent and powerful strategy in your cube.

Finale of Glory – If this is your first time here, a point that I frequently talk about for flexible cards is that they need to have what I call a good “base rate” in that cards with flexibility in their cost and/or function need to do what a cube deck generally wants to do at a base rate that is reasonable for the deck as a starting point (Burst Lightning and Shriekmaw, for example.)

A lot of X cards have failed this test in cube – as cards like Fireball, Rolling Thunder and Comet Storm may be busted in retail limited, but these don’t hit on a good “base rate” for cube decks and thus don’t see cube play.

Finale of Glory doesn’t really start to pay off until x=3, much like how Hydroid Krasis doesn’t really start paying off until x=4. It’s a tale as old as time to discount X spells because they look weak at low rates and as such, flexible cards are easy to underrate as we saw similar things with Sphinx’s Revelation, which didn’t do a whole lot until x=3. While it doesn’t sound good when using it as a talking point, sometimes it was the right thing to do to cast a Sphinx’s Revelation for x=1 or 2 and when thinking of them on a pure rate basis, a Sphinx’s Revelation for 1 or 2 looks terrible – and while it is inefficient, a small Sphinx’s Revelation is thankfully not where the story ends with that card.

Essentially, this is a riff on Secure the Wastes, although they end up playing differently and in different decks, as Secure represents something to do at End Of Turn, as something to do while holding up countermagic, combat trick and as a “white flash” card, while Finale of Glory is much more of a card that battles on rate, as it generates 6 vigilant power for 5 mana.

Arguments like “I’ll never get to 5WW, so I’m not putting in a bad 3WW card in my cube” also are reductive since these kinds of scenarios do happen and decks end up in areas outside of their comfort zones, since, as philosopher Mike Tyson put it, “Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face.”

One of the things I liked most about Thraben Inspector is that although we tend to think of games happening with us perfectly hitting our mana curves, the reality is that this just doesn’t always happen in Magic; Thraben Inspector was able to utilize unused mana later in the game, if it got that far. The ability to scale up a Finale of Glory works in a similar fashion, as something to do if your deck hits the later stage of the game. At the end of the article, there’s a 3-0 mostly white aggro deck that had Finale of Glory and while, in theory, it wanted to just cast it for 3, there were times when it got cast for more mana because the game just happened to get to that stage.

While the 2/2 vigilant soldiers die to wraths but only really get punished on a mana basis by Pyroclasms and Balances, and even then it’s just a 1 for 1, and 2/2s having vigilance is surprisingly good for chump attacking if x is reasonably high.

With this cycle, hitting X=10+ is a pipe dream as it hardly happens unless your cube is mono-durdle mirror matchups, so don’t get too caught up in how much it impacts the game; much like the power on something like a Liliana of the Veil’s mostly comes from her two non ultimate abilities. Like activating a planeswalker ultimate, 60 power of vigilant angels out requires an immediate answer or loss the next turn.

I liked this so far when trying it out; white 5s are mostly angels that have weaknesses to spot removal and this helps to diversify that weakness while being a generally good card at 3WW that can go higher if need be.

Prison Realm is a mix between Oblivion Ring, Stasis Snare and Hero’s Downfall. For some time, white removal was weakened and cards like Stasis Snare were played, at least in Standard, because they were the status quo. At first, I thought of Prison Realm as a card like Stasis Snare – a bad version of B-team white removal like Journey to Nowhere or Declaration in Stone, until my friend SirFunchalot had it in his includes for things to try out. This isn’t an Oblivion Ring/Banishing Light as this only gets creatures and planeswalkers, although I generally have found that when one of these targets an opposing creature, generally it’s a creature or a planeswalker and with War of the Spark introducing a bunch of good planeswalkers, that bonus becomes more relevant.

Is this a marginally better Never or Ruinous Path? It is, but that doesn’t mean that it’s bad. It’s true that being able to nab planeswalkers is useful and what makes a 1BB removal spell (Hero’s Downfall) to be something decent in cube. An easier mana cost certainly helps, and while scry 1 can’t turn a bad card into a good one, it generally is enough to turn something that’s on the fence to be something pretty good, like the Temple cycle or Dissolve. The possibility of a blowout from being hit by a Naturalize effect is annoying, but I find that doesn’t happen very often, making it a small negative against Never or Ruinous Path. While it can’t hit creatures for 2 mana, it’s something nice to have once you’ve exhausted all of your premium removal slots.

God-Eternal, Oketra is a prime example of a “Baneslayer” style creature. Years ago, Patrick Chapin defined Baneslayers and Mulldrifters as follows:

The other thing I love about Entomber Exarch (outside of just being another fabulous mediocre black two-for-one) is that he doesn’t make your opponent’s removal good. There are only two types of creatures in Magic:

1) Baneslayers 2) Mulldrifters

Baneslayers are creatures where the value is in the creature itself. Mulldrifters are creatures that give you value outside of the creature.

Baneslayers:

Lotus Cobra, Hero of Bladehold, Birds of Paradise, Consecrated Sphinx, Kor Firewalker

Mulldrifters:

Entomber Exarch,Wall of Omens, Sea Gate Oracle, Manic Vandal, Stoneforge Mystic

There are a few creatures that are truly both which are quite rare and are normally identifiable by the word “Titan” appearing on the card. Emeria Angel, Cunning Sparkmage, Oracle of Mul Daya and Ulamog are examples. A good rule of thumb is: “If you care about killing it it’s a Baneslayer.” If killing it loses value it tends to be a Mulldrifter. Drawing extra cards has nothing to do with being a Mulldrifter as Consecrated Sphinx Dark Confidant and Scroll Thief are all Baneslayers. Card advantage is not a must for a card to be a Mulldrifter. If you’re playing an aggressive deck most creatures with haste can end up being Mulldrifters since you can often get at least one hit in before it dies. Understanding the difference between Baneslayers and Mulldrifters is a crucial element of high-level deckbuilding.

As the m10/m11 titans were too powerful for R&D standards, there have been various attempts at recreating these types of titanic creatures: the Soul cycle and the Ixalan dinosaur cycle and neither of these cut the mustard for cube with only Zetalpa getting included in cubes as a reanimation target. Oketra’s value doesn’t become manifest unless you’re able to cast a creature and I found this wasn’t hard to accomplish in white midrange decks, with control decks playing too few creatures to be worthwhile. The ability for Oketra (and the rest of the gods) to become tucked back into the library was generally too slow to be relevant in the majority of the games also, but it wasn’t uncommon for it to get a 4/4 or two out of it and for the mana, that was usually fine, but Oketra’s not going to crack into small or medium cubes.

Topple the Statue is artifact hate that can cycle itself, but it’s just too much mana at 3 mana, especially since this can’t hit enchantments. Tempo decks don’t want it for an alpha strike option, either and while white may have fewer good artifact hate cards than red or green, it isn’t in dire enough straits to run this unless white artifact hate is really needed.

Single Combat – Cards like Harsh Mercy, Tragic Arrogance and Divine Reckoning generally aren’t good because opponent can just choose the best thing that they control. They generally don’t work out well in cube because they’re pretty narrow in application since generally the decks that want wraths want to be able to kill everything and these can’t. Single Combat is no exception, especially since this costs 3WW, where there are much better wraths that don’t see common play nowadays, like Rout. It gives an extra turn to get the leg up but it’s still not worth it unless extremely desperate for more wraths and even then, don’t bother.

Blue

Jace, Wielder of Mysteries is unique for a 4-mana planeswalker as he plusses to draw, which is unseen out of Karn, Scion of Urza for one-sided card draw as a plus. He doesn’t defend himself and with a 1UUU deck, he’s only fitting in mono-blue or, most likely, dual-colored decks with good fixing, and I’ve found that it isn’t that hard to defend him since his 5 loyalty is decent on a board state. His milling generally wasn’t that relevant, and I’d seen a few Laboratory Maniac style wins off of him, but for the most part, he draws cards and that’s fine with him being a Coercive Portal with some extra play to him. His 1UUU cost means that he has an endangered shelf life but he’s a nice option to have while you have him in your cube.

Kasmina, Enigmatic Mentor has a good static ala Kira, Great Glass-Spinner to protect your own creatures and she’s a pretty decent pile of value with her making several 2/2s that loot when they enter the battlefield as she was able to gum up the board well and get a significant amount of value. However, with Jace, Wielder of Mysteries and God-Eternal Kefnet in this set, she has a hard time competing with other options, but she’s excellent for Peasant.

Narset, Parter of Veils has a highly situational static and her ability is reminiscent of Search for Azcanta, as she compares somewhat to Jace Beleren. I’ve talked before about how these abilities generally tend to be harder to utilize in cube because of the way that cubes aren’t as focused as constructed decks. This deck was able to utilize her, and had nearly half of the deck count as hits:

1 Myr Battlesphere

1 Sundering Titan

1 Retrofitter Foundry

1 Karn Liberated

1 Karn, Scion of Urza

1 Karn, the Great Creator

1 Nissa, Who Shakes the World

1 Narset, Parter of Veils

1 Tezzeret, Master of the Bridge

1 Jace, Wielder of Mysteries

1 Kiora, Behemoth Beckoner

1 Bioessence Hydra

1 Opposition

1 Mana Drain

1 Mana Leak

1 Tangle Wire

1 Winter Orb

1 Contentious Plan

1 Tinker

1 Simic Signet

1 Gruul Signet

1 Black Lotus

1 Mox Opal

3 Swamp

6 Forest

1 Tree of Tales

6 Island

As cliche as it may sound, she’s better in decks that can utilize her well, but things like Oath of Jace and Thirst for Knowledge do the job better of draw spells for control and while she can’t refill her loyalty without a lot of work, 2 Azcanta hits is generally a decent value. But again, there’s likely better options that you’re not running.

Callous Dismissal is the cheapest Man-o’-War effect that we’ve seen as, essentially, a 1U 1/1 that bounces a non-land permanent instead of creature, which is incredibly pushed. These types of cards have historically been great in cubes as they slow down the opponent and work in a tempo-positive direction for those decks, since Man-o’-War almost always got you ahead on your mana’s ROI.

Amass’ cards are currently very underrated due to fear of diminishing returns and fear of boosting something when all you want is another creature. However, even with the increased density of testing new cards and having the maximum concentration of amass cards, the drawback of wanting to have a card with amass boost a creature when you just want a body has hardly come up, with only a few cards having that happen (Angrath, Captain of Chaos.)

When compared to instant versions like Into the Roil, Blink of an Eye and Cyclonic Rift, this ends up being better as having the effect on a body is really good, as it’s easier to cast on curve (casting an Into the Roil on your opponent’s turn 2 play generally feels awful) and to pressure the opponent with, after all, cards like Phyrexian Revoker see a lot more cube play than Pithing Needle, as having the effect on a creature makes the effect significantly better due to having a clock attached to your reactive answer. As tempting as it may be to dismiss this as yet another bounce effect, this is a much better version of them and worth a round in your cube.

Crush Dissent – multicolor cards can sometimes get weird evaluations because they get compared to their monocolored counterparts – which makes some sense because they’re easy analogues; we’ve seen a billion variants on Lightning Bolt over 25+ years but not many Lightning Helixes, etc.

Crush Dissent is an interesting case where the immediate comparison is something like Mystic Snake, which requires about a billion multicolor mana and doesn’t really have a lot of direct analogues, since there’s Mystic Snake, Venser, Shaper Savant and Draining Whelk in the “creature + counter something” role.

Consider this as a much easier to cast but more restrictive Mystic Snake. Even countering a ham sandwich in the early-to-mid game is fine since it’s almost always worth the mana and presents a clock – which is also incredible in control mirrors when getting a threat on board is great. While it can’t be cast without a target, I found that hardly mattered.

We’ve got several good 4s in this set and blue isn’t exactly hurting for them, but this is a decent one and if you have a cube with rarity restrictions, this should definitely be in your cube.

Commence the Endgame is yet another blue finisher, that’s somewhat analogous to Torrential Gearhulk for being a powerful threat to deploy at instant speed. In its absolute case, it’s a 2/2 but that in reality, it was almost always a between 4/4-6/6. While it can be smaller and can’t get any instant in the grave and isn’t reliant on one being in the grave, but found that when Torrential Gearhulk was cast, it generally had something to flash back and certainly wasn’t a win-more card.

In the Ravnica Allegiance review, I talked about how blue generally doesn’t need more big-mana plays in cubes, and the same applies to finishers, but this fills the role of both well and while you can’t evoke this like you could with Mulldrifter, but the upside of getting a huge threat is more than worth it.

My friend SirFunchalot had similar experiences with it being good, noting that:

“did some more testing last night. man that big blue instant is insane

I’m pretty sure it’s just better consecrated sphinx

when your consecrated sphinx eats a doom blade or a mana leak it feels real rough

this thing is like at worst a 3 for 1, usually a 4 for 1

6 mana 5/5 flash etb draw 2 can’t be countered is absurd

one game it came in as an 8/8 and blocked a carnage tyrant

such an obscene blow out”

I was a fan of Dream Eater when testing it as a big flash threat that had value outside of its body, and found that this is significantly better at that role. While this isn’t Torrential Gearhulk, it is very good and performs a similar role as a good big blue finisher.

Lazotep Plating – In theory, Lazotep Plating is a Negate with some other play to it, like stopping Enter The Battlefield triggers on creatures, but I often saw this hamstrung in hand or just casting it at end of turn to make a 1/1. I really wanted to like this but this was another card that kept disappointing during the testing process.

Fblthp, the Lost – I’ve talked often about Additive Distraction and how it’s a common misevaluation trope, impacting cards from Sphinx of Jwar Isle to History of Benalia.

Well, here we go again:

The problem we found as more people playtested it (cards that explicitly stated teammates), though, is an issue I call the “additive distraction.”

To explain, imagine I made a vanilla creature (this is design so creative hasn’t seen it yet):

Bear on Steroids

1G

Creature – Bear

3/4

If I showed that around, I’d probably get pretty good responses. We’ve only done one card with the same cost and stats before (Plant Elemental from Portal) and it required you to sacrifice a Forest. Now imagine I tweak the card:

Geeky Bear on Steroids

1G

Creature – Bear

If you control at least ten artifacts, CARDNAME gains trample.

3/4

If I show this card around, I’m going to get a lot fewer positive responses. People will focus on the condition about ten artifacts, and many will come to the conclusion that there isn’t really a deck for this card.

But here’s the thing: players were excited by the card without the extra line of text. Geeky Bear on Steroids is by every definition of the term “strictly better” than Bear on Steroids from a power standpoint. It has a conditional upside. It’s just as good as the original and, in a very narrow case, can be even better.

My point is that how players perceive cards is very connected to how they process what’s on it.

Fblthp being a meme and having some weird abilities to be cast from the library and whatnot likely impacts evaluation even if it happens on a more subconscious level, although it looks like people overall are starting to realize that he’s just fine as a blue Elvish Visionary.

It seems like an odd talking point *for* the card since cubes don’t really run Elvish Visionary and comparing a card to a card that many people don’t cube is generally a talking point *against* cards, but it’s similar to why people play Harmonize and Sunlance much more often than Concentrate and Strafe (and if your argument is that you’re not playing either, you’re missing the point) as Harmonize’s and Sunlance’s effects are more unique and useful in their respective colors than Concentrate and Strafe, cards that are a dime a dozen in their respective colors.

So why care about Fblthp? It’s a nice value cantrip as blue decks generally want to stymie life loss and gain card advantage for the later stages of the game.

The ability to draw 2 generally doesn’t happen since there are so few cards that care about it (Experimental Frenzy, Future Sight, etc.) Most spells that would target him would kill him anyway, so the drawback is mostly a wash, that mainly only matters if needing to draw something specific, as his shuffle slightly dilutes your draws.

It hasn’t been staple status, but I’ve found that it’s definitely better than just a joke card as a good roleplayer in all kinds of blue decks.

Kasmina’s Transformation – As noted earlier, this mainly gets consideration because of its role in its color, as blue hard removal is either Psionic Blast or things like Reality Shift. Like with Beast Within, it does leave something behind, although a 1/1 isn’t all that threatening. That being said, as a sorcery speed removal effect, even with blue having lacking options for cheap removal, generally blue decks either branched out to other colors or didn’t bother with this. Don’t bother with this card in your cube.

Narset’s Reversal – only getting instants and sorceries makes this act like a Remand meets Muddle the Mixture, but it doesn’t even counter the spell, making it so that if the opponent wraths the board, this does nothing against it. It’s more a Twincast upgrade than anything and overall, the effect is just too narrow. Even something like Flusterstorm, which is great at stopping instants and sorceries in the early game, has more uses than Narset’s Reversal and Flusterstorm barely sees cube play because it’s so narrow. This is more so.

Finale of Revelation – This is an improved Mind Spring but it can’t kill people like Braingeyser or Stroke of Genius. Being a sorcery makes it worse than Pull from Tomorrow and even as a pure card draw spell, it’s atrocious on base rate. A deck like combo can utilize this to draw a ton of cards and then get a pseudo-emblem but overall, it’s just not worth it.

God-Eternal, Kefnet – When Kefnet was previewed, thecubemiser noted how Kefnet outmuscles almost everything at 4 mana on a pure power and toughness basis and looking at the Cubetutor 450-card average, only Polukranos, World Eater, Hero of Bladehold and Gideon, Ally of Zendikar (if the latter two count) come close to raw stats for a 4-mana creature.

When I was testing Curator of Mysteries and Sphinx of Foresight, I found that their 4/4 bodies were pretty solid at holding down the fort and beating down life totals and planeswalkers and this obviously beats those in pure stats.

Repeatable library manipulation like Sensei’s Divining Top and Scroll Rack as well as one-shot effects like Ponder help make miracles happen more often but generally, I found that Kefnet’s miracle ability triggered only about once or twice in a game (more often once) unless it had some way to explicitly manipulate the top card of the deck and the impact of getting a miracle varied greatly from getting another Ponder, which was fine, to another Fact or Fiction or Commence the Endgame, which was significantly better. Because of this, Kefnet is primarily a Baneslayer and miracle maker second. I personally don’t mind that, while I don’t mind that because Kefnet is primarily a large threat, the issue with inclusion was mainly that it’s another 4-mana main phase threat in a color with a good number of them already and with another Jace being printed in this set, the color isn’t hurting for these kinds of cards.

Initially, I had thought that this card was absurd and on a pure stats basis, in blue no less, it is but found that Kefnet’s ability to make miracles happen didn’t happen as often as I liked; hardly a staple, but hardly a bad card either.

Contentious Plan – In this set, the thing that I wanted most was a good proliferate card since the best proliferate card in previous sets was arguably Contagion Clasp. Planeswalkers with concentrated loyalties (think Ajani Vengeant) get significantly better with a proliferate since it vastly reduces the clock for a planeswalker to go ultimate.

Many of the set’s other cards with proliferate, like Pollenbright Druid, Grateful Apparition, Martyr for the Cause, came down too early to be worth using, as generally you want proliferate cards to be fine even if you don’t have a planeswalker out, as even with the increased number of planeswalkers from War of the Spark, a deck can’t *always* rely on a walker being present when one of these are online. (That and they cost more than these cheap cards)

Others like Wanderer’s Strike are just too inefficient to bother playing.

Is this the proliferate card that we want for cube? If it was an instant, yes, but as a sorcery, it just doesn’t get there as it’s a poor effect when there isn’t a walker out. Its base effect of being a sorcery speed cantrip is also poor and found this to be lackluster as it was often a 1U cantrip with no other effect, which is awful by cube standards when much better options exist.

Spark Double is an obvious comparison to Clever Impersonator as a 4 mana clone that can get planeswalkers, but unfortunately, it gets knocked out of contention in a lot of cubes because it only targets your own things, as one of the better aspects of Clone effects is being able to clone opposing threats, so you can either get a mana advantage or take advantage of the opponent having something that’s advantageous to the board state. Getting a boost to the types that usually get cloned with Clever Impersonator – creatures, planeswalkers while being able to double up on legendary creatures, but overall it’s just not enough to make up for the inability to copy your opponent’s things. Earlier I had talked about the glut of 4 mana sorcery speed blue cube cards. Cards like Kefnet hold up to the competition and they do work while Spark Double doesn’t.

Silent Submarine – even not taking into account how bad this looks when compared to Smuggler’s Copter, it falls into the trap of being a saboteur without evasion. 3 toughness is a slight boost to go over the top of 2-power aggro beaters and value creatures, but it’s not worth a card on its own, especially with a cost of UU, making it such that if you somehow wanted to splash this, the UU mana cost makes that a pipe dream. Don’t bother.

Black

Liliana, Deathhorde General – while her +1 to make a 2/2 looks weak, it’s synergistic with making 2/2 chump blockers that draw cards when they die. Decks going deep on sacrifice shenanigans can use her extremely well but don’t *need* a sacrifice deck for it to be good since her 2/2 zombies work with her static ability.

Barter in Blood isn’t bad not and, much like Elspeth, Sun’s Champion’s Retribution of the Meek ability, both are “overcosted” on a 6-mana card, but found them both to be just fine if the board calls for it for board control.

Black 6-mana creatures lag way behind Grave Titan with cards like Noxious Gearhulk, Massacre Wurm and Demonlord Belzenlok acting as filler. I’ve found that the new Liliana performs that role significantly better than any of those cards, at least for being a big threat. She obviously can’t be brought back from the dead via Reanimate and Animate Dead but I’ve found that to be fine as she’s a much better 6-drop than the others, Grave Titan aside.

She acts as a must-answer threat that can gum up the board or to clear out annoying threats. She isn’t as good as Elspeth, Sun’s Champion, but she’s certainly welcome as black control threats are lacking in cube. Welcome to the team!

Davriel, the Shadowmage – I found that Davriel either played as a Mind Rot (that takes 2 turns) combined with The Rack or as a discounted slow-release Fugue. Rack effects generally aren’t represented in cube as you don’t tend to see many Nezumi Shortfangs around nowadays, and seeing a Rack or Shrieking Affliction is extremely rare in cube.

Being slow-release discard is worse than regular discard, not just because of time for the card advantage to occur but when the opponent knows about it, it’s significantly easier to play around it and brace for impact. Sometimes when the opponent has a ton of cards, it may as well be a blank, especially if the black deck isn’t attacking the opponent’s hand through other avenues. In aggressive decks, their non-creature slots can be stressed, so I found it’s not uncommon for Davriel to not make the final 40 of a black aggro deck. Because of this, while it’s certainly not a bad card, I found that aggressive decks weren’t including it even if it was a “good” card; and slower black decks found it to be too low-impact unless they were siding it into a mirror when getting 3 cards from the opponent was big game.

Ob Nixilis, the Hate-Twisted – This version of Ob Nixilis represents 2 highly-costed removal spells and while he’s at least better at his job of being an uncommon value removal planeswalker, since you can kill your own creatures as a weird Altar’s Reap and take advantage of his Underworld Dreams ability to make the opponent take 2 damage. That being said, even with his slight flexibility, he’s worse than the other Ob Nixilis planeswalkers for cube because he’s just so slow. Even at peasant, with the plethora of good 187 creatures like Nekrataal, Shriekmaw and Skinrender, so even there, I don’t think he’s going to do all that much.

Liliana’s Triumph is a Diabolic Edict with a few upsides, although they aren’t super huge. It isn’t strictly better as there are corner cases where you’d want to sacrifice your own things (Treachery with the spell on the stack so the opponent doesn’t untap lands, killing your own Abyssal Persecutor, etc) but I hardly ever see these scenarios come up, so consider these to be extremely minor upsides lost to Liliana’s Triumph. Liliana’s Triumph didn’t often interact with the Liliana planeswalker bonus, but it’s mostly gravy if it happens on all of these Triumph cards.

Edicts are still great unless your cube meta is mono wall-of-creature board states; so play this and while it’s an upgrade to Diabolic Edict, there’s likely something worse than Diabolic Edict in your cube. Do the work and find out what it is and cut that instead.

Banehound suffers as it doesn’t have enough board impact for aggro and no other deck wants it. It’s similar to Healer’s Hawk in the regard of being great with ways to buff it up and marginally useful, but too low-impact otherwise. Black’s cadre of 1drops are much shallower than white’s but outside of pauper cube, this doesn’t cut the mustard for black aggro sections.

Bleeding Edge was one of the last previews for the set and functions as a riff on Fire Imp. It’s been a while since we’ve seen Fire Imp get a lot of cube play, and the recent additions of the various Rabblemasters likely haven’t helped. Black doesn’t tend to get a lot of small removal effects with them being centered around things like Terrors and Edicts, making this is one of the smallest removals on a (virtual) creature with an enter the battlefield trigger.

Early in my cubing experience, it seemed like having these kinds of effects onto creatures was better than having just a spell, likely because cubes weren’t doing their due diligence on supporting proactive decks, and likely from subconscious influence from retail limited, where cards like Bone Shredder were extremely high picks. Nowadays, I’d prefer to have a Doom Blade and don’t think cubes need another Nekrataal type of effect, but if you’re looking for another one, this performs similarly to what you’d expect.

Bolas’s Citadel – Frank Karsten did some math on how many cards that Bolas’s Citadel can draw here – https://www.channelfireball.com/articles/bolass-citadel-is-a-new-powerhouse-combo-engine/.

While it’s regarding Experimental Frenzy, the basic math checks out, since they’re doing similar things and have similar bottlenecks (hitting 2 lands) in a turn. Of course, hitting 3R is significantly easier in an aggro deck or a deck that mostly utilizes cheap cards than it is for that kind of deck to hit, or even include, a card that costs 3BBB.

I found that “Going off” feels absurd but going off can have times when it can’t go further if life’s low or in matchups where life totals can change quickly, so the amount that you can draw is highly contingent on the opponent’s clock.

As cliche as it sounds, it’s something that can be included as a miser’s Yawgmoth’s Bargain but it was weird for aggressive decks since they generally didn’t want to use a card that costed 3BBB but those decks were able to utilize the ability to kill an opponent by sacrificing 10 things which was surprising. My expectations were low so I was surprised to see it work at times but it was just too resource-taxing to decks: too much mana for aggro and life loss was awkward for non-aggro decks, and while there’s certainly raw potential for it, but I found that cube may not be the place for it.

Bontu, Eternal-God was a card that overperformed my expectations. When looking at a card like Bontu, it’s tempting to look at it as a card that’s just for aristocrats since it utilizes sacrifice fodder, but found that it was nice as either a top end for aggressive decks or even as just a value card that’s strapped to a big body. It wasn’t uncommon for Bontu to sacrifice several things, like 2 irrelevant creatures and 2 lands, be up on cards and force the opponent to deal with a ⅚ menace.

Is this card a Mulldrifter in the literal sense? Generally I found that you can’t just slam this on turn 5 and have 3 random things lying around, but even by then there’s a 2/2 that has done its job and is just fine to sacrifice, even more so if it’s something that’s easily recurrable like a Bloodghast.

Black 5-drops aren’t exactly amazing, but this is a good one. There’s generally not a lot of good sacrifice engines for cube as they end up being Rube Goldberg machines that generally aren’t worth the effort when there are better things to do. Don’t count out this croc.

Command the Dreadhorde – my initial thought with this card was to ask how much mana’s worth of reanimation makes this worth it, since traditional reanimation effects like Reanimate jump the gun on mana curve and use the lifeloss as a drawback. Command the Dreadhorde scales this up significantly, but requires using a lot of life to get your 4BB’s mana’s worth as a one-sided Living Death.

Overall mana needs to be about 10 life for it to be worthwhile. Good planeswalkers generally punch above their weight class and can mitigate the life loss and it just wasn’t worth it.

Dreadhorde Invasion – as Mike Sigrist noted, this isn’t Bitterblossom, nor is it Fretwork Colony, and as cards tend to not work with our idealized notions, being grounded in the reality that things don’t fall isn’t the worst case or the best case. Where does it fall in that scope?

I found that Dreadhorde Invasion had 2 modes:

A defender generator making 1/1s for 1 life, acting like a Forcefield, ala Bitterblossom. A threat that slowly got larger but then reset itself if it died.

While being able to continually generate zombie army tokens is something that Dreadhorde Invasion could do, it didn’t see play in the “sacrifice deck” as it was mainly played as either an aggro threat or a value engine. The text for giving a 6+ power zombie token was mostly irrelevant, unsurprisingly. It’s best against decks that are reliant on 1-for-1 removal to grind them out of resources and while it takes some time for a new Zombie Army to start snowballing, not having to wait a turn like you do with Bitterblossom is nice for those decks.

It’s closer to Bitterblossom if you absolutely have to make that comparison, but it’s more just a generally good value engine and a 2-drop and while it’s no Dark Confidant, it’s pretty good for a cheap black engine card.

Eternal Taskmaster has a 3rd toughness that helps attack through 2/2s with a decent ability that’s reminiscent of Isareth, but one that works better with recursive creatures. That said, this is pretty decent for black aggro decks as a way to use mana in the later stage of the game. Them going back to hand makes it much less powerful than something like Alesha, who Smiles at Death, since Eternal Taskmaster generally just gets small creatures – at least in aggro – as midrange and control decks aren’t in the market for a 2 mana ⅔ that can’t block when it enters the battlefield.

It’s hardly “god-tier” but closer to filler tier, like Extremely Slow Zombie. Fine but hardly a staple.

Finale of Eternity played out more as an anti-aggro small wrath than something like a Languish or Yahenni’s Expertise. It can play like a small Plague Wind but found it was mainly sideboard fodder for bringing it in against aggro and if utilizing a slot for a non-Damnation wrath, there are better options than this for your cube.

Lazotep Reaver is the best Krenko’s Command ever; cards like Marsh Flitter saw slight cube play when Pox was in vogue years ago. Krenko’s Command was always just short of cubability since it didn’t have enough board impact and it was weird in aggro decks since it only provided 2 power for 1R. This only has 2 power as well, but what separates this from the Krenko’s Commands of the world is the ability to block well against 2/2s (by blocking with both a 1/1 and the ½) and opposing tokens. Like Krenko’s Command and similar cards, of course it gets more value in decks that care about the bodies and can sacrifice them, but ultimately, I found it to be filler.

Deliver Onto Evil is an odd take on Yawgmoth’s Will since it can’t be used until the later stages of the game, since it takes a while to get a setup where this card can get you back 2 good cards. In the Guilds of Ravnica review, I talked about how giving the opponent a choice, with regards to Risk Factor, is a drawback of the card but not enough to make it a bad card. Unfortunately, Deliver Onto Evil takes a whole lot of things to be worth it – either a lot of cards or 4 in the grave that do similar enough things, like 4 burn spells, to make Deliver onto Evil a Sophie’s Choice but even then, it’s not worth it.

The Elderspell begs the question: How many walkers are needed in opponent’s deck for The Elderspell to be any good? It depends on how bad they are for you and your deck (I’d say about 5) but generally things like Vampire Hexmage, Hero’s Downfall and Vraska’s Contempt are better as they aren’t stone blanks if the opponent doesn’t have a planeswalker.

You can hit your own walkers though as the weirdest proliferate but even then, that’s not enough to make this any good unless a planeswalker silver bullet is really needed because they’re taking over your cube, but even then, adjust your meta, don’t rely on band-aids.

Massacre Girl was a card that was too variant in her board impact, I found, as she was mostly good against aggressive decks and green decks utilizing mana elves, but pretty mediocre otherwise. Her 4/4 menacing body isn’t commonly seen but found that the overall package that she provided just didn’t do enough in the overall scope of cube matches.

Red

Tibalt, Rakish Instigator is better than his initial iteration but he still lags behind other 3-mana options. He does have some difference in game play because it doesn’t put all of the eggs in the basket, but it still doesn’t have quite enough board impact to compete with the Rabblemasters, cards like Chandra’s Phoenix and others. The devils at least are able to trade with 2/2s but his Everlasting Torment ability doesn’t make him worth using in cube, as there’s 2 better 3 drops in red in this set alone.

Sarkhan, the Masterless acts as primarily, a Broodmate Dragon for 3RR that doesn’t immediately give 8 flying power, but does when he attacks. He has some additional text by providing a static Circle of Flame that gets better with more dragons (but is by no means necessary to make the ability good) and the ability to turn other planeswalkers into their own offensive threats which lets them deal a ton of damage out of nowhere (just make sure to activate them in case the opponent has removal for them.) Sarkhan the Dragonspeaker, Sarkhan the Masterless’s closest analog, was questionable in red aggro and decent in slower red decks since he could at least Flame Slash something but I’ve liked the new Sarkhan more because he fits slower red decks better by creating a 4/4 flying creature and defending the fort, while having the ability to close out the game quickly. My friend Zolthux compared it to a red Serra Angel and even without vigilance, it reflects what is about the worst case for it, which is still fine.

The only concern for long-term shelf life is that red 5s have a lot of options with hasty dragons and Kiki-Jiki combo pieces, but this has worked well enough to be a solid addition even if Sarkhan, the Masterless doesn’t fit into either category, but don’t be too scared to shake the foundations of what your cube’s WUBRG sections do.

Jaya, Venerated Firemage continues her streak of weak cube cards with this, since her static ability doesn’t turn her minus ability into Lightning Bolts. Cards like this, like Embermaw Hellion just don’t do enough for their cost and while, in theory, they can act as curve toppers for aggro, cards like Skarrgan Hellkite do this job, as well as midrange value engine, much better. Don’t bother.

Chandra, Fire Artisan is another “yolo draw” card like Outpost Siege, Vance’s Blasting Cannons and Chandra Pyromaster. Her static ability has a rattlesnake effect where she it takes damage or is able to go ultimate, it hits the opponent, but it’s overall been poor as my expectations were low and she somehow did worse than that as she can’t defend herself, her static was situationally useful at best as it was useless for matches like Jund mirrors and, unsurprisingly, she never ultimated. I’d play Chandra Pyromaster before I kept this in my cube and even then, it’d likely be a ways away from inclusion.

Jaya’s Greeting – earlier, I talked about how scry 1 can be enough to give a card an extra push over the cliff into something that’s cube-able, but it can’t make a bad card into a good one.

Being a 3-damage spell that only hits creatures is not enough. A lot of creature-only removal in red tends to be able to hit multiple things to make up for times and matchups when it’s just dead, like how Abrade has game against creature-light decks that utilize mana rocks and the ability to kill small things, in more fast decks.

Chandra’s Triumph is marginally better than Jaya’s Greeting as it can act like a mini-Hero’s Downfall but being unable to go face means that cube isn’t the place for it.

Dreadhorde Arcanist – When I initially saw Heirloom Blade, I looked to previous 3-0 decks to see how it’d work in decks, rather than having to look for idealized notions for what cube decks *can* look like, as having those decks on hand showed what they actually *did* look like. I found that it would likely work well, tested it and found that it’s been working well, with it only trailing behind Grafted Wargear, Umezawa’s Jitte, Skullclamp in equipment 3-0 representation over the past year (it’s 2019, play Heirloom Blade in your cube already.)

I did the same checking with 3-0 decklists with Dreadhorde Arcanist for hits. A lot only had a handful of targets, maxing out at about 4.

A deck that looks to utilize Dreadhorde Arcanist is one that has a lot of proactive 1-mana instants and sorceries, as regrowing a Force Spike or a Spell Pierce does nothing for him. This 2-1 deck utilized it pretty well:

1 Firedrinker Satyr

1 Bloodsoaked Champion

1 Gnarled Scarhide

1 Dreadhorde Arcanist

1 Burning-Tree Emissary

1 Ash Zealot

1 Goblin Rabblemaster

1 Legion Warboss

1 Hellrider

1 Tasigur, the Golden Fang

1 Duress

1 Lightning Bolt

1 Galvanic Blast

1 Vampiric Tutor

1 Thoughtseize

1 Chain Lightning

1 Abrade

1 Lightning Strike

1 Tangle Wire

1 Light up the Stage

1 Liliana of the Veil

1 Fiery Confluence

1 Nicol Bolas, Dragon-God

1 Mind Twist

1 Creeping Tar Pit

1 Volcanic Island

1 Arid Mesa

1 Marsh Flats

1 Underground Sea

1 Strip Mine

1 Bloodstained Mire

1 Badlands

3 Swamp

5 Mountain

With 6 hits, it wasn’t terribly difficult to get immediate or near-immediate value out of Dreadhorde Arcanist’s trigger and it acted similarly to a Dark Confidant if it untapped. This was definitely amongst the higher numbers of 1-mana proactive cards that one can realistically expect to get in a cube deck.

Equipping Dreadhorde Arcanist results in more hits and being able to use his trample but generally relying on equipment is a risky proposition (because after all, if that was the case, we’d see a lot more double strikers in cubes) but if you’re able to put an Heirloom Blade on this and flash back a Fiery Confluence for free, enjoy the ride on the gravy train.

Some cards like Delver of Secrets, have potential that gets seen in Constructed formats if built around but in cube, they don’t have the required support to make them work anywhere near as well as they can in Constructed, since it’s difficult to make perfect support happen in a singleton format – compare 4x Ponder, Preordain or Brainstorm to go along with 4 Delver of Secrets vs 1 Delver of Secrets and a Ponder, Preordain, Brainstorm, Serum Visions and Opt. Of course, Dreadhorde Arcanist in cube is likely going to be a watered down version of its Constructed self, but I found it’s nowhere near as diluted as something like Delver of Secrets. It’s about a Shock or two from seeing more mainstream cube play, but I found that to make the stars align for it in cube isn’t too hard.

Burning Prophet is a filler 2-drop but it’s a ways away from inclusion in non-pauper cubes. It’s nice that she does at least trigger on non-creatures, so she can trigger on planeswalkers that act like creatures, like Koth of the Hammer, and having 3 toughness is nice for attacking through 2/2s. Oddly, I did think it was overall underrated but red 2-drops aren’t in need for more cards and Burning Prophet doesn’t beat a lot of options, as we’re a ways away from getting excited about cards like Gore-House Chainwalker.

Grim Initiate – You may have noticed that there’s no 2/1 for 1 that we’ve been seeing in most sets, even as recently as Ravnica Allegiance with Gutterbones. On Andrew Cuneo’s stream, some time after talking about his preview card, he talked about how he talked with some people in Play Design and how he felt that there were too many 1-drops. He said that they agreed and it looks like the 1-drop creatures are going to be closer to this and Banehound than things like Skymarcher Aspirant and Gutterbones.

Of course, this can’t attack for 2 and is in the vein of Doomed Traveler, Hunted Witness and Young Wolf that it’s a creature replaces itself. In the last article, I talked about how creatures with death triggers usually need to be objectively powerful to make them good, since if the opponent can safely ignore them if they’re not good threats, as cards like Brindle Shoat, Hatchling and Skin Invasion show. Their death triggers, like Grim Initiate, are also too low to act as a Moat like Arena Rector.

So where does Grim Initiate fit? Like a lot of other creatures in this set, it serves as filler, mostly for resilience and for aggro mirrors where 2/1s awkwardly stare at this and while I generally advise cube designers to put more 1-drops in their cubes, this one isn’t a high priority add.

Krenko, Tin Street Kingpin – Reddit poster opterown calculated the goldfish damage rates for this new Rabblemaster here:

In a vacuum, against a goldfish:

Krenko goes 2/7/16/30

Garrison goes 4/10/18/28

Najeela goes 4/10/20/38

Warboss goes 6/13/22/33

Rabblemaster goes 7/15/25/37

On a pure damage goldfish rate, this is the worst of them. However, Magic games don’t happen in idealized scenarios and our opponents generally aren’t piñatas. How does this fare in reality?

Krenko has some synergy with equipment, but in general, cube decks don’t have a ton of ways to pump their own creatures, usually with less than a handful of buffs in the form of equipment and some cards like Elspeth, Knight-Errant and Curse of Predation. I’ve found that when the vultron assembles, its clock becomes absurd but unlike a lot of anemic double strikers like Viashino Slaughtermaster, equipment isn’t needed to make Krenko good, but it certainly helps his damage output.

Like Hanweir Garrison, it attacks as a ⅔ and eventually gets larger on subsequent attacks, although I found that the latter isn’t as important since getting to a ⅔ is the first hurdle for getting through defenses but getting to where he starts beating 3/3 beast tokens in combat is nice if he lives to do so.

This was a 3-0 deck that utilized it; good ol’ meat-and-potatoes Boros Aggro:

1 Legion’s Landing

1 Skymarcher Aspirant

1 Dauntless Bodyguard

1 Kytheon, Hero of Akros

1 Monastery Swiftspear

1 Young Pyromancer

1 Adanto Vanguard

1 Tithe Taker

1 Kari Zev, Skyship Raider

1 Goblin Rabblemaster

1 Krenko, Tin Street Hooligan

1 Flametongue Kavu

1 Thundermaw Hellkite

1 Faithless Looting

1 Chain Lightning

1 Galvanic Blast

1 Burst Lightning

1 Throne of the God-Pharaoh

1 Searing Blaze

1 Umezawa’s Jitte

1 Experimental Frenzy

1 Chandra, Fire Artisan

1 Marsh Flats

1 Windswept Heath

1 Plateau

1 Sacred Foundry

1 Arid Mesa

1 City of Brass

1 Mox Sapphire

8 Mountain

3 Plains

This deck only had one way to pump Krenko and even then, usually it took a turn to get online, but it still performed well in the deck.

Surprisingly, Krenko’s goblins creatures being on defense can be useful when racing. Generally, you almost always would rather have the creatures attacking but being able to block is nice for when it matters in racing scenarios and I’d seen it come up more than I’d have thought – where having tokens back is an asset, not a liability for racing scenarios as he creates a lot of goblins, and in those racing scenarios, I’ve found that it can be hard to get through the wall of goblins.

At the end of the day, it is “yet another Rabblemaster” and having 5 (Goblin Rabblemaster, Legion Warboss, Najeela, the Blade-Blossom, Hanweir Garrison and this) in a cube can feel weird since they all essentially do the same thing, with similar strengths and weaknesses: bad vs instant speed spot removal and can be blanked by big ground pounders but can snowball at absurd rates if left unchecked for a few turns with their own small strengths and weaknesses. (tribal synergies, etc)

Although Goblin Rabblemaster is the king of damage dealers, Krenko isn’t the worst, either (I’ve found that in 3-0 representation, it’s Hanweir Garrison although it’s certainly not bad.)

Including it mainly depends on if you want another solid pure damage dealer (in addition to the next card) in a slot that was previously filled with value creatures and anemic damage dealers.

Mizzium Tank is underrated as it’s been pigeonholed as a vehicle that doesn’t add much power to a creature or as just a “spellslinger” card, but it’s much more of a solid tanky threat.

I found that it that hardly ever needs to be crewed since it turns on by itself, but it’s nice to have that as a backup just in case and even then, sometimes it’s right to crew it with a creature to bluff a combat trick or trample over blockers with an instant-speed trick.

Just about everything on Mizzium Tank helps it to act as a great clock and, like with Gideon’s +1, found that just about everything was useful – being a non-creature to avoid mass removal, and getting huge with direct damage to swing for a ton of damage. Even being a non-creature when being cast and passing the turn on turn 3 helps with the “EOT Doom Blade your threat” plan. My friend SirFunchalot and I had been talking since it seemed so under the radar and his first draft report with it found that it had performed well, unsurprisingly:

“the tank survived a wrath earlier in the game and I managed to stick an experimental frenzy on a tap out for chandra flamecaller

the following turn frenzy found me four burn spells

normally it was swinging for 4 or 5 a turn, did have one game where it swung for 6 on turn 4 which just ended the game”

Saying that it’s just a 4/3 for 3 is surface level analysis and ignores much of what makes it great – dodging sorcery speed removal, etc, acting somewhat similarly to Chimeric Idol.

I talked earlier about how we’ve got so many good purely attacking 3-drops in the past few years and at the core, Mizzium Tank is another one of these types of cards that is a pile of damage that only aggro decks wants. It not being a creature when initially cast plays slightly different than the snowballers and evades some weaknesses that they do. Don’t count this out, it’s great.

Neheb, Dreadhorde Champion – as cliche as it sounds, this is yet another creature that tends to fail the “vindicate” test hard, since he doesn’t do anything when he comes into play and requires connecting to do anything. 5 trample damage makes that easier, but red aggro decks aren’t really in the market for a curve-topper that can just die to a Doom Blade. Slower red decks aren’t in the market for a pile of stats either and this isn’t to say that this guy is awful and has no place in a cube, but he unfortunately gets cut from the final 40 of many cube decks because of his weaknesses as other red curve toppers perform their role better for red aggro decks.

Finale of Promise is reminiscent of Nucklavee where mostly useless if you can’t get both an instant and a sorcery card out of it. It’s mostly a storm support card to be able to flash back a variety of things as storm is a deck that can reliably have both card types in the graveyard when going off. While in theory, it’s a card that can be played in things like burn, it never happened and I found this to be a poor performer as my cube has no storm deck. It’s worth a look for storm deck support but just know that it’s mostly what it’s going to be used in.

Tibalt’s Rager has a variant of firebreathing and its death trigger is nice, but it’s just so little effect that it compares weakly to other red 2s (even the ones in this set) and non-aggro decks aren’t in the market for a firebreathing Squire making it an easy pass.

Ilharg, the Raze Boar is a card that’s frequently compared to Sneak Attack but someone (HelloPikachu9) on discord compared it to Kari Zev, Skyship Raider, which was a brilliant analogy as Ilharg puts a creature that’s generally larger than a 2/1 onto the battlefield.

When Ilharg, the Raze Boar plays the role of a big Kari Zev, it’s generally best to not cross the streams and cheat giant monsters into play, as it can result in the giant monster being stuck in hand if Ilharg dies unless the game goes incredibly long and when played as an aggro curve topper, I’ve found it generally putting things like Viashino Pyromancer, Flametongue and Knight of the Holy Nimbus as attackers and while Ilharg doesn’t return the creature until the end of turn (so the creature can’t be recast), generally it just means it’ll do the same thing again next turn. Unfortunately, like Masterless Sarkhan, it doesn’t have haste so it’s not the optimal curve topper, but found it does the job in a pinch.

With cards like with Elvish Piper and Sneak Attack, the opponent usually has to respect what the opponent could – especially in slower red decks as they could put anything onto the battlefield – even an Emrakul! However, since this doesn’t have haste, Ilharg does telegraph a potential of a giant threat being put into play. However, I’ve liked it more as a gap between a big threat first and a Sneak Attack effect second, as Ilharg can’t perform the role of Sneak Attack as effectively. Surviving Wildfire and Burning of Xinye is also useful for this kind of effect as well, but if only one red 5-drop can be included, it’d be Masterless Sarkhan.

Green

Arlinn, Voice of the Pack is too low impact for cube – for the most part, she makes a few 3/3s for 6 mana and then does nothing, as her creature types aren’t often seen in cube outside of a handful of cards, so this really pales in comparison, even a lot of cube-able 5-drops are better than this at 6 mana. Green 6-drops, like black ones, are anemic with Carnage Tyrant, Primeval Titan and a whole lot of filler like Greenwarden of Murasa. This is worse than the filler, making it an easy pass.

Jiang Yanggu, Wildcrafter – Most cubes aren’t in the market for a worse Rishkar, Peema Renegade and Jiang Yanggu unfortunately acts as one, with the only use being if you really need a store brand Peema for counter synergies, but even that’s a stretch.

With rares, most green 3-drops are significantly better and even at peasant, you can do better.

Nissa, who Shakes the World played as a smaller version of Nissa Worldwaker as she makes smaller creatures than her Worldwaker iteration, although those lands do help to defend her via vigilance. Both have worked well in mono and mostly green ramp decks, since both utilize forests so well, as Nissa, who Shakes the World’s one-sided Vernal Bloom has been solid for green ramp decks. That being said, like Nissa Worldwaker, she’s seen play in decks like Sultai (there was a 3-0 decklist earlier featuring her) and is a generally good green 5-drop that isn’t as good as the other Nissas (Worldwaker, Vital Force, Voice of Zendikar) but has performed about as well as Vivien Reid. I’ve found that Nissas are better than most green 5-drops anyway, so that’s hardly a bar for inclusion, as I’m looking to keep her in my cube for some time.

Vivien, Champion of the Wilds – Like her and her bow, requires a significant number of creatures to work. Generally, that’s a fine ask since most green decks tend to be creature-based, and not showing the revealed card does help to bluff whiffs. Cards like Yeva, Nature’s Herald and Teferi, Mage of Zhalfir don’t see a lot of cube play, despite the power of flash, and although this can be cost on turn 2 off of a mana elf,her board impact was low as her +1 didn’t do much and her -2 generally only got whatever creature you got off the top. Planeswalkers, or at least repeatable effects help when these type of “look at the top X of your library and take a card that matches a criteria” cards, but I still wasn’t too impressed with this Vivien.

Arboreal Grazer is at least better than Elvish Pioneer since it can put any land into play tapped but it still isn’t very good since it’s reliant on drawing it in the first few stages of the game, and is abysmal if drawn late, as a Llanowar Elf at least taps for mana later in the game. It combines with some cards like Gruul Turf but about every mana elf is better. Yes, even Elves of Deep Shadow and Avacyn’s Pilgrim. Even Boreal Druid. Don’t bother with this.

Awakening of Vitu-Ghazi disappointed much like Animate Library (which has summoning sickness, per Maro),as it had too little impact for its cost. This at least has haste if used as a virtual 4GG card, but found it just didn’t do enough for green sections due to how vulnerable it is.

God-Eternal Rhonas promises to be a small overrun that can, in theory, help creatures in the middle stages of the game for “value overruns” that don’t end the game immediately while being a serviceable body, but Rhonas not having trample, nor granting it, made him a poor performer, even as a 5-drop creature and performed poorly as a Baneslayer and Mulldrifter style creature.

Evolution Sage – earlier I talked about what is needed for a card with proliferate to be good in cube, as Evolution Sage needs for something to proliferate and lands to fall to be more than a Leovold’s Operative. This has the potential to do a lot more than a generic draw spell, and found that decks that could build around Evolution Sage could utilize her well, as green decks were able to landfall without too much effort, especially if bolstered by things like Courser of Kruphix but it was too inconsistent for my liking for long-term cube adoption.

Finale of Devastation – going back to the base rate discussion, Green Sun’s Zenith ultimately gives a rider of a green mana to tutor for anything and to have it enter the battlefield, and while the ability to get any creature from the library ir graveyard was nice to have, having to utilize GG to start it up was clunky. While green is the best color at generating a ton of mana, it still was not enough to overcome this card’s inefficiencies.

Mowu, Loyal Companion – green 4-drops may be anemic but this requires too much work and not enough payoff and even then, it isn’t better than Polukranos, World Eater.

Nissa’s Triumph doesn’t ramp but does guarantee land drops, which can be useful in green decks. Nissa’s Triumph has one of the better upsides from having a Nissa planeswalker, but it’s fine for making sure that green ramp can consistently make land drops. If, for some reason, only one 2-mana green card can be added from this set into your cube, use the next card, as this is a fine middle-of-the-road card, but I personally found green ramp cards to be more effective for enacting their game plan.

Paradise Druid is great as a bird that can’t be bolted. Usually having your mana elf getting killed was backbreaking, and being able to attack opposing planeswalkers is great as well. There’s been some rumblings about making this a bogles type of creature and this strategy can be emulated, to an extent, with equipment, without being embarrassing like Slippery Bogle or Gladecover Scout while not boosted. I didn’t really see this happen though, as it was mainly a 2/1 that was hard to kill and made rainbow mana and that was just fine and a pretty good card to help green ramp.

Planewide Celebration – earlier, I talked about how War of the Spark hasn’t brought much good Proliferate for cube. It may have been toned down for interactions with planeswalkers, considering that Doubling Season is seen as being too good for Standard with planeswalkers, and that card hardly sees cube play as it has minimal impact when played.

This costs significantly more mana, but Planewide Celebration does do something when cast.

The question is – does it do enough? When I saw this card, I thought that it looked like a member of the Confluence cycle which has a few standouts (Mystic Confluence, Fiery Confluence), a pretty good card (Wretched Confluence) and a few stinkers (Righteous Confluence, Verdant Confluence.)

What initially caught my eye was its ability to proliferate 4 times, which got me to thinking how many walkers (that I could realistically see in a cube, not counting War of the Spark ones) would ultimate after this is cast. It turns out that it’s a lot.

Survives after ultimate & proliferating 4 times: 32 – Ajani Goldmane, Ajani Steadfast, Ajani, Adversary of Tyrants, Elspeth, Sun’s Champion, Gideon, Ally of Zendikar, Jace, Cunning Castaway, Jace, Memory Adept, Tezzeret the Seeker, Liliana of the Veil, Liliana, Death’s Majesty, Ob Nixilis, Reignited, Chandra, Roaring Flame, Chandra Pyromaster, Chandra, Torch of Defiance, Koth of the Hammer, Sarkhan, the Dragonspeaker, Freyalise, Llanowar’s Fury, Garruk, Primal Hunter, Nissa, Vital Force, Domri, Chaos Bringer, Xenagos, the Reveler, Dack Fayden,Saheeli, the Gifted, Daretti, Ingenious Iconoclast, Garruk, the Veil-Cursed, Vraska, Relic Seeker, Tezzeret, Agent of Bolas, Sorin, Lord of Innistrad, Sorin, Solemn Visitor, Sorin, Grim Nemesis, Sarkhan Vol, Ugin, the Spirit Dragon

Ultimates after proliferating 4 times (just enough loyalty): 13 – Ajani, Caller of the Pride, Elspeth, Knight-Errant, Jace, Telepath Unbound, Jace, Architect of Thought, Tamiyo, the Moon Sage, Will Kenrith, Liliana, the Last Hope, Nissa, Sage Animist, Nissa, Worldwaker, Ajani Vengeant, Dovin, Grand Arbiter, Nahiri, the Harbinger, Teferi, Hero of Dominaria, Nicol Bolas, Planeswalker

Ultimates after using a plus & proliferating 4 times: 4 – Liliana, Defiant Necromancer, Nicol Bolas, the Arisen, Nicol Bolas, God-Pharaoh

Can’t ultimate after proliferating 4 times: 5 – Jace Beleren, Jace, the Mind Sculptor, Daretti, Scrap Savant, Vraska, Golgari Queen and Ashiok, Nightmare Weaver

Generally, a planeswalker is going to be on the battlefield naturally when this is cast, because it costs a lot of mana to cast a planeswalker and then cast this.

But what does this mean? Typically, a walker is going to take a hit or two but for the most part, if you cast one of these planeswalkers and then Planar Celebration on the next turn, I found that the planeswalker will usually go ultimate. I generally don’t spend a lot of time talking about planeswalker ultimates because it isn’t super common to see one go ultimate, where sometimes it’ll be months between when a planeswalker goes ultimate from weekly cube drafting. But being able to ultimate, generally, wins the game.

What also caught my eye was that it could impact the board if there wasn’t a planeswalker out. Getting 4 2/2s isn’t going to do a lot if the opponent has a sizable threat out, but it’s still 8 power for 7 mana, which isn’t a bad rate. However, I found that usually when it was cast, the abilities to Nature’s Spiral and gain life were more useful than I thought, especially since Verdant Confluence just didn’t do enough.

A major strike against this is that it isn’t a creature, so it can’t be cheated into play or recurred. This also was another late showing which resulted in limited sample sizes, and this may just be worse than I think, but it’s something that I’m at least going to try out for the time being to see how it plays out in my own cube. I’m uncertain enough on its power to say that I’d consider it for other cubes if they have the space, but even then, it’s a tepid recommendation, but it’s likely better than the non-existent hype for this card for cube.

Return to Nature

Is a strictly better Naturalize, with some marginal upside to make sure it has more use but as I noted in my m19 cube review, most cube decks only have a few cards that care about the graveyard, so don’t go into Return to Nature expecting the Cremate mode to always have something to hit.

But does Return to Nature always have something to hit in cube? I found that while it increased the number of times that it was live, it wasn’t significantly higher as it didn’t cover the same spread that something like Abrade did, as most cube decks either have artifacts or small creatures, but the bonus gained for being able to exile something in the graveyard was small. Still, it’s a bonus as a strictly better upgrade, but if you felt that you didn’t have enough targets for Naturalize in your cube, the bonus won’t be enough to push it over the edge.

Vivien’s Arkbow

Generally, Vivien’s Arkbow found homes in green ramp decks as a way to play things at instant speed to play around sorcery-speed removal and counterspells.

Ryan Saxe talked about some approximate hit rates for Vivien’s Arkbow here:

“If you have 17 Creatures cmc <= 4, you’ll miss 10% of the time you activate this for 4

If you have 17 Creatures cmc <= 3, you’ll miss 18% of the time you activate this for 3”

I found similar results when trying it out, it was a bit too inconsistent to put creatures into play. It was best in Golgari reanimation decks that were able to use the ability to bin a creature as a positive, but in your bread-and-butter green ramp deck, it didn’t do enough as missing typically felt like a gut punch and even when it did end up hitting something, sometimes it just got a random elf which isn’t that much of a hit and was a card that underperformed.

Other (Artifact/Colorless, Multicolor)

Artifacts/colorless

Karn, the Great Creator

When I talked about Spike in the Unstable review, I talked about the various house rules people use for sideboards, but if using sanctioned rules, getting something outside of the game refers to using the sideboard.

The issue with the downtick is the best cards tend to be those that you’d play in maindecks, which is why cards like Living Wish, Cunning Wish and Burning Wish don’t see a lot of cube play. Colorless artifacts having no color restrictions makes that harder too, so the minus ends up being such that it looks for artifacts that are second-stringers.

A one-sided Null Rod’s value varies a lot depending on the texture of your cube’s environment but overall, I found myself really disappointed by this Karn as my opinion of it tanked throughout the testing process and I run a larger artifact section than most cubes. Being able to animate artifacts helped to defend himself but his overall board impact and ability to tutor for second-stringer artifacts was just anemic. As much as I like artifact-centric cards in cube, this just didn’t cut the mustard and in your more average rare-including cube, it’d likely perform worse.

Ugin the Ineffable is a weird riff on Liliana, Dreadhorde General but plays closer to Vraska, Relic Seeker. Ugin’s static isn’t bad for getting out rocks for cheap but I found it doesn’t do a lot by the time he gets cast. While it doesn’t help to get out big things since they generally are going to get cast anyway (unless they’re giant robotic things like Blightsteel Colossus or Giant Stone Idol) but it’s a nice ability to have and being able to create 2/2s that draw a card when they die played out well for non-aggro decks, especially green ones. While I compared Biogenic Ooze to a Huntmaster of the Fells instead of a Whisperwood Elemental in the last review, Ugin’s ability to spam out 2/2s makes him a Whisperwood Elemental that has a planeswalker for 6 instead of a 4/4 for 3GG.

His ability to destroy a permanent with a color can very in usefulness, since Ugin falls to a stiff wind after killing something, and found that if he’s able to be defended afterwards, he swings the game massively, similarly to Karn Liberated but one that can close out games pretty easily. While Ugin isn’t quite as good as Wurmcoil Engine, he’s not far behind as the 2nd best 6-mana colorless threat in cube, and is a great addition to colorless/artifact sections.

Ugin’s Conjurant is an Endless One with a riff on the old Phantom mechanic (Phantom Centaur) but loses out on the ability to make an unkillable machine with things like equipment. It’s a scalable threat but it’s so inefficient and gets eaten alive by chump blockers and overall, the phantom ability isn’t that great in a creature like this. Don’t bother.

Firemind Vessel lags behind a lot of other mana rocks as it costs 4 and enters the battlefield tapped, and while it taps for rainbow mana (oddly it can’t tap for 2 of the same color) and it lags behind a lot of other rocks, even at 4 mana, like Thran Dynamo, Hedron Archive and (kinda) Everflowing Chalice. In theory, it bridges the gap between smaller mana rocks like signets/talismans and ones like Gilded Lotus, but entering the battlefield tapped is prohibitively awkward.

MULTICOLOR

Teferi, Time Raveler – is an odd card as its static is overrated, and his bounce is underrated. Most Teferi iterations are more on the control end, but this is another tempo card like Dovin, Grand Arbiter. I’ve found that generally, it’s best to use it as a value bounce spell that draws a card. Most of the other aspects of his abilities – his static and his plus weren’t that useful in decks (not just tempo) that played him. Azorius is stacked and there’s better options, even in tempo.

Tezzeret, Master of the Bridge is a card that has no immediate board impact but an artifact heavy deck can close out the game with him super fast.

Nice thing about recurring something to hand is that with enough artifacts, you can just cast whatever comes back. But not as good as other Dimir artifact supporting cards like Tezzeret, Agent of Bolas and Baleful Strix as he can’t defend himself. Doing a plus on 4+ artifacts closes the game out fast, but not defending himself is a big demerit against him, and I found it was enough of a big deal to knock him out of the top tier (that and him costing 6 mana.)

Ajani, the Greathearted has essentially the best features of Ajani Steadfast and Ajani Goldmane. Vigilance is underrated especially when creatures get huge, essentially the best parts of Ajani Goldmane and Ajani Steadfast. Like Ajani Goldmane, his +1 is mostly just to keep him alive, but it’s nice to have a Healing Salve when life totals are relevant. He can only minus twice before having to use his pretty bad lifegain mode, but the board impact is huge, moreso if he has a planeswalker friend, as being able to jump the gun on planeswalker loyalty is great to threaten ultimates quickly. This new cat is really underrated, and a solid competitor to the many cubeable Selesnya cards.

Sorin, Vengeful Bloodlord suffers as Orzhov has much better options, as his lifelink granting was only situationally useful and the rest of his abilities weren’t enough to make up for it. His +2 lets him recur 5-mana midrange things in the graveyard, but I found that it wasn’t worth the setup. While I had it in the sideboard of the Orzhov deck with Law-Rune Enforcer and it was clutch against an opposing red deck, he paled considerably when compared to other Orzhov cards.

Tamiyo, Collector of Tales – one nice thing about this Tamiyo is that she can at least Regrowth (instead of Nature’s Spiral, like Nissa, Vital Force) but Tamiyo doesn’t have a good plus, as her plus can’t get land, like other walkers with a strong minus (ajani vengeant comes to find.) While her plus can hit if you have something like an Oracle of Mul Daya, Sensei’s Divining Top or Scroll Rack, most of the time, it’s a blind guess and it’s just not worth it. Tamiyo, Collector of Tales may be for another format but she’s certainly not for cube.

Domri, Anarch of Bolas is, unlike a lot of good Gruul cards, castable on turn 2 with a mana elf. He’s about as close as we’ll get to Alpha Orcish Oriflamme and is somewhat close to Domri Rade, because he’s better when you’re ahead and can be awful if not. This kind of statement applies to things like equipment as well, so this isn’t really a decree saying that he’s a bad card. He’s been fine even in decks like midrange, as 2-power mana elves gives them a lot of additional board presence, but he’s mainly an aggressive tool. Not costing 3 mana also helps since most Gruul cards cost 4, and since he generates mana, he essentially costs 3 (much like Domri, Chaos Bringer costs 3, but the previous Domri is much more at home in midrange.)

This Domri didn’t do as much for me as the previous one, but it’s still pretty decent as a way to push aggression in Gruul, since, although we’ve got a ton of good red aggro 3-drops, there aren’t as many good aggro 3-drops in green.

Nicol Bolas, Dragon-God – with a BBB mana cost string, his mana can be awkward aa it’s only for straight grix or RBu or UBr but worth it as the plus is absurd and defends itself decently well (and the passive is pretty good too, depending on the board state, as he uses higher cast walker’s abilities well, like when I saw him make more zombies with Liliana, Deathhorde General.)

He’s able to be splashed in decks like Dimir or Rakdos unlike something like Cruel Ultimatum, which is objectively powerful but very narrow in decks that want to play it, which is why Cruel Ultimatum sees barely any cube play. Upon first glance, this looks like it’s similar to cards like Ob Nixilis, Reignited with a +1 that gains card advantage, a minus that deals with things that could threaten him and an ultimate that does whatever to win the game. How is this Bolas?

In general, I’ve found that it’s worth it for decks to play Bolas because he combines the good aspects of the previous Bolases – a plus that creates card advantage (the sacrifice/discard is mostly gravy) and the ability to Hero’s Downfall something helps to make sure he’s alive. The passive hasn’t come up too often since he generally has the best abilities on the board, but sometimes it picked up an ability that spat out tokens from another walker.

Generally it’s been seeing play in either Grixis or decks that are mostly Rakdos or Dimir, splashing for the other color, as the payoff’s worth it. There may be some inherent bias from seeding cards in draft pools and it, therefore, being easier for accounting for the new Bolas to be in the draft pod.

If questioning whether Nicol Bolas, the Ravager or this Bolas is better, as much of a cop out as it may seem, it all depends. Generally it’s harder to cast tri-color cards on curve, as Siege Rhino gets cast on turn 5 or 6 rather than 4 in cube because it’s harder to craft a mana base to cast it early.

Ral, Storm Conduit lives up to his title; my cube doesn’t have a storm deck, but my friend SirFunchalot does and he noted that Ral, Storm Conduit by being good with storm cards by acting as a storm enchantment ala Thousand Year Storm and making the clock on Grapeshot and Empty the Warrens go up much faster and copying something like a cantrip or a ritual when going off, enabling kills, finding it to be surprisingly powerful for the archetype. Without explicit storm support, I found it to be much worse as a value engine for generic Izzet decks, since he had a hard time impacting the board and his overall impact was mainly dependent on the quality of instants and sorceries to copy, since the ability to clock the opponent was occasionally useless. I had much better experiences with the new Saheeli.

Cruel Celebrant highlights where multicolor cards can be better than their monochromatic counterparts, but still may be hard to include in a cube. As a slightly larger Zulaport Cutthroat that triggers on your own planeswalkers, and how discussing cards as merely good or bad can be reductive. On rate, this is certainly not a bad card for BW aggro and token decks, but it isn’t enough of an upgrade to Zulaport Cutthroat to justify the slot given how restrictive multicolor cards naturally are.

Widespread Brutality is similar to Soul Snuffers by being a 4-mana AOE removal effect on a creature, but does the job significantly better than cards like Soul Snuffers as a 2-damage effect stapled onto effectively a 2/2. The difference between 1 and 2 damage is massive and I’ve been liking how it’s been working in slower decks like Grixis control. While it may tread on similar ground as the plethora of good Rakdos spot removal effects, but it’s solid as a mid-tier Rakdos card, and higher up if you’re looking to add more mass removals.

Dovin’s Veto is great as an upgraded Negate that is the ultimate ace in the hole for counterspell fights, but it may have a hard time finding room in your cube despite being an objectively, like the cards above; consider it as a toolbox option but hardly a staple.

Huatli’s Raptor is our best chance of getting a good cheap proliferate since it eats 2/2s and hold the fort down with vigilance, it saw some middling amounts of play in Selesnya and 3-color decks that had WG in them, but it’s a ways behind the multitude of good Selesnya cards.

Solar Blaze – Similarly, Solar Blaze is mostly a wrath in Boros colors, being a cheaper Wave of Reckoning. I initially thought that Wave of Reckoning would miss a lot of creatures but in the CubeTutor average 450-card cube, it only misses these:



Thraben Inspector, Stoneforge Mystic, Wall of Omens, Brimaz, King of Oreskos, Fiend Hunter, Hero of Bladehold, Restoration Angel, Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite, Baral, Chief of Compliance, Jace, Vryn’s Prodigy, Thing in the Ice, Deceiver Exarch, Consecrated Sphinx, Torrential Gearhulk, Inkwell Leviathan, Blood Artist, Kitesail Freebooter, Oona’s Prowler (kinda), Drana, Liberator of Malakir, Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet, Gray Merchant of Asphodel, Tasigur, the Golden Rang, Monastery Swiftspear, Kari Zev, Skyship Raider, Hanweir Garrison, Noble Hierarch, Birds of Paradise, Joraga Treespeaker (if leveled), Sylvan Caryatid, Tarmogoyf, Wall of Roots, Wall of Blossoms, Ramunap Excavator, Courser of Kruphix, Avenger of Zendikar (its tokens), Hostage Taker, Deathrite Shaman, Trygon Predator, Spellskite and Myr Battlesphere.

Even though this list looks somewhat long, it’s only 38 creatures when looking at creatures in an entire cube, and that list doesn’t even count token generators like Batterskull and the various Elspeths and Garruks that make tokens. While, in theory, it can be built around by having cards that play well with it, it generally just plays the role of a generic wrath that can’t touch some things.

It’s a good add if using it to support non-aggro strategies in boros like Jeskai, etc, and although Boros generally leans aggressively in cube, a lot of the best Boros cards lean towards slower boros decks – Lightning Helix, Nahiri, the Harbinger and Ajani Vengeant see more cube play than Boros Charm, which makes sense since trying to hit 2 colors on turn 2 in cube is difficult, so inclusion in your cube mostly depends on where you want your Boros section to go, as it does perform on a pure power basis.

Tolsimir, Friend to Wolves is similar to Huntmaster of the Fells meets Flametongue Kavu, as a pile of value that can take something down. Being 6 power for 5 mana is pretty good on rate, and it covers the bases in all matchups. The issue is Selesnya having a boat load of good cards already and while this isn’t bad, it’s hardly absurd. As noted before, it’s a nice thing to have in your toolbox, but it isn’t a top tier card.

Invade the City – unlike cards like Cackling Drake and Enigma Drake, this doesn’t grow as the game goes on, although the creature has square stats if it’s cast late in the game. Overall, even Enigma Drake works better than Invade the City by being evasive and holding down the fort in the early stages of the game. Broken record as it may sound, Izzet can do much better.

Casualties of War – LSV previewed this card and he usually gets the “pushed” ones, like Courser of Kruphix, and generally those cards have a good track record for cube but I found this missed the mark, as it generally relies on getting 3 hits (including land) to be any good, and the stars just didn’t align that often, especially on a color-intensive multicolor 6-drop.

Living Twister is a card that looks like it was created specifically to be a Wildfire card which can be splashed on the green side. It does a lot for the Wildfire game plan, to stall defenses, eat 2/2s and eventually close the game out. Still, it was mostly a defensive creature and it didn’t do a whole lot as its ability suite was mainly used if the opponent was in burn range, since it was too resource-intensive to use otherwise.

Despark – an instant speed Vindicate is a good effect but only hitting 4+ mana targets is too restrictive, making it a much worse version of Abrupt Decay. If you’re looking for a silver bullet card for durdle matchups, this has some use but Orzhov is so stacked that this isn’t really worth consideration.

Time Wipe – in Constructed, Time Wipe looks to strengthen control decks that utilize creatures, and while 5 mana is about where wraths cost in Standard, in cube, strong 4-mana wraths set the pace.

For a multicolor wrath to make the grade, at 5 mana no less, they really need to do something worth the extra cost. This comes down and does too little, too late. Midrange decks like Bant midrange utilizing wraths can leverage the creature bounce effectively, but this is just not worth it for most cube decks and sections.

Angrath’s Rampage – sacrifice effects are solid in cube unless it’s a durdlefest with walls of creatures boardstates, and being able to choose gets rid of a lot of the “choice” for walkers; most of the time when you need to kill a specific planeswalker, I found Angrath’s Rampage does, even with the increased concentration of planeswalkers from War of the Spark testing.

Obviously, isn’t Dreadbore for reliability, but artifact hitting is great too to shore up matches. So much flexibility and I’ve been really impressed by its flexibility and efficiency. Rakdos has a ton of great removal cards and this is one of the better ones to have in your Rakdos arsenal.

Enter the God-Eternals – Ribbons of Night is a cube favorite of old but hardly sees play nowadays, even in peasant cubes.

This trades the ability to draw a card for creating a 4/4 and milling the opponent for 4, the latter being is mostly flavor text. It’s closer to Ravenous Baloth for immediate impact than Ribbons of Night and I found it to be fine for value and staying alive.

I wouldn’t say it cracks the top tier of Dimir cards but don’t dismiss this as merely a (retail) draft card as I found it does a great job at stabilizing against small to midsized threats.

Feather, the Redeemed cards that rely on targeting have a poor time in cube because single-target spell buffs are easily negated by spot and mass removal, after all, you can’t buff anything if your board got wrathed. This suffers similarly in cube and is pretty far back for cube cards, as Feather’s RWW cost for a ¾ flier is extremely awkward for cube decks.

Role Reversal has some flexibility in decks like tempo to trade small things for larger things while working on a unique axis for dealing with permanents that red can’t normally deal with but there’s much better things in Izzet.

Roalesk, Apex Hybrid is a Simic card that is a weird Baneslayer style pile of stats but is reliant on other creatures and/or planeswalkers to be useful. If you have a planeswalker out when Roalesk dies, you’re in business as proliferating twice is a lot of value, but the overall package is too situational to be useful for cube.

Bioessence Hydra was a surprise since I expected its stats to be lackluster, and it may very well have been influenced from seeding a truckload of War of the Spark cards (including a lot of planeswalkers) and when it was cast, it was generally enormous, with it generally being about a 10/10, although ironically, proliferate cards didn’t seem like they were punching above their weight class due to the increased number of planeswalkers during testing. Bioessence Hydra getting larger from planeswalkers entering the battlefield and increasing in loyalty made it huge.

It still died to most white and black removal, and suffered similar weaknesses that other Baneslayers have, but at least Bioessence Hydra generally presents a much faster trampling clock where it has to be dealt with quickly. Simic’s cards are weak enough to where it doesn’t have the embarrassment of riches that combinations like Azorius and Rakdos have, and unfortunately, this was previewed during the later stages of testing and as such, I didn’t get as much testing as I’d have liked. My gut says that it still falls under the same traps as other 5+ mana piles of stats, and that green has better 5-mana threats to lean onto, especially since it’s reliant on another specific permanent type to be on the battlefield. Much like many Simic experiments in the lab, approach cautiously.

Ral’s Outburst – as mentioned in the Ravnica Allegiance review, Izzet generally has value burn spells and walkers, with some exceptions like Dack’s Duplicate, with the walkers generally being the better cards in the combination. Ral’s Outburst is worse than a lot of the value burn spells, including Prophetic Bolt, which doesn’t see a lot of cube play nowadays. Since it only deals 3 to a single target, it also doesn’t work on a unique axis, nor an efficiency one, as cards like Prophetic Bolt deals 4 and Electrolyze casts a Chandra’s Pyrohelix; and while there are these effects in red’s damage arsenal, 3 damage is represented a lot in red.

Overall, it’s a miss unless desperate for options.

Leyline Prowler echoes Gifted Aetherborn with the lifelink and deathtouch combo, making it act as a mana source that can hold the fort when mana production is no longer relevant or not needed. However, it’s a jack of all trades and master of none since it’s poor at both roles, although better at being a defender and hard to block attacker, but it just didn’t do enough.

Oath of Kaya is, for the most part, a 3 mana Lightning Helix. While having access to a Lightning Helix is nice in a color combination that doesn’t have access to that kind of effect, even with her rattlesnake ability to defend planeswalkers, 3 mana was too much to pay for a Lightning Helix.

Storrev, Devkarin Lich was another relatively late preview and another Baneslayer that can get creatures that previously died back the grave. Normally, I’m not a huge fan of saboteurs without evasion but found that Storrev having trample helped get damage through, since Storrev also triggers when hitting planeswalkers, a welcome change.

This deck splashed for it and it was a pretty solid card in it, since it was able to present a nicely sized threat.

5 Swamp

4 Island

1 Underground Sea

1 Creeping Tar Pit

1 Overgrown Tomb

1 Gemstone Mine

1 Misty Rainforest

1 Polluted Delta

1 Mox Emerald

1 Mana Vault

1 Ponder

1 Thoughtseize

1 Spell Pierce

1 Fblthp, the Lost

1 Time Walk

1 Kitesail Freebooter

1 Mind Stone

1 Miscalculation

1 Necromancy

1 Narset, Parter of Veils

1 Liliana, the Last Hope

1 Damnation

1 Storrev, Devkarin Lich

1 Spawn of Mayhem

1 Venser, Shaper Savant

1 Kasmina, Enigmatic Mentor

1 Fact or Fiction

1 Enter the God-Eternals

1 Doom Whisperer

1 God-Eternal Bontu

1 Liliana, Dreadhorde General

1 Grave Titan

1 Karn Liberated

A lot of the best Golgari cards like Assassin’s Trophy, Abrupt Decay and Pernicious Deed act in a similar manner as removal options for a color pair that can suffer from a lack of identity. Storrev is a card that presents some other options than just being another removal spell and while it worked decently, it wasn’t as good as tried-and-true removal cards that Golgari has in abundance.

Neoform – Birthing Pod is already questionable and a one-shot one is even worse, especially in a multicolor slot. Getting a counter isn’t enough to make this much better.

Dreadhorde Butcher is analogous to Slith Firewalker which hasn’t seen cube play for over a decade. Obviously it’s better because it has a death trigger and can grow while hitting walkers but multicolor cards *have* to be better than their mono color counterparts because they’re harder to cast and playable in fewer decks than their monochromatic cousins. Even taking this into account, are these upgrades to Slith Firewalker enough to compete with other Rakdos cards? Not enough to make the grade in most cubes.

HYBRID

Years ago, when I examined the role of hybrids in my cube and what decks tended to play them, while I found that decks like GW had the *easiest* time playing Kitchen Finks, I found that for Kitchen Finks and many other hybrids, they tended to see more play in decks having just one color, like Dryad Militant in Boros Aggro, etc, with this trend continuing in the years since the blog post was posted.

The hybrid cards with triple mana generally were played more often in their respective pair, but in general, being hybrid was a boon, not a drawback like it is for other multicolor cards.

Because of this, I’ll talk about them separately from multicolor; if you have multicolor with hybrid, just ignore the separation.

Ashiok, Dream Render – standalone mill that can’t kill an opponent on its own is questionable in cube. It can used in a “mill theme” and if you really want to do that, go for it, but Ashiok doesn’t do enough outside of that. Ashiok’s static ability, self mill, opposing mill and graveyard exile help on some different axises, but overall, Ashiok’s impact is too low, due to only millin