Welcome to the Aether Revolt cube update. In addition to those new cards I am also going to be talking about a couple of cards from the Commander 2016 set as I did not get to those in the last update article. Artifact sets are usually hit or miss for my cube. Many cubes are excited to add the artifact centric cards due to their inclusion of power and pseudo-power cards (many of which are artifacts). Those type of cards lose a lot of value when you remove pseudo-power and I'll discuss why individually below. Nonetheless, there are a lot of interesting cards and many of them are extremely difficult to evaluate properly. More so than normal I would not be surprised to see disagreements about whether or not a handful of cards should be included.
In Out
Didn't Make the Cut
White
In Out
Sram's Expertise doesn't look overly impressive and is part of the Expertise cycle that I believe is going to cause a lot of good discussion. The card is definitely not good enough to stand without the free card cast but you don't need very much value at all to make it instantly worthwhile. Hordeling Outburst is a cube worthy card in red and here you are paying an extra mana to get a potential free card. Three mana can get you a lot in cube and while you have to have the card in your hand it's easy to play with that in mind. Even if you have to cast this without the bonus it's not the worst thing ever. What makes this a little better is that white usually doesn't get very much card advantage and this is a great way to flood the board with threats or cast a removal spell without having to take a turn off from committing to the board.
I hate, hate, hate to take out Charge Across the Araba because it is a really exciting card for mono-white aggro decks to go over the top of their opponent that nobody sees coming. However, due to the fact that my cube is now almost exclusively drafted with 2-4 people at most it is very difficult to end up in a mono-colored deck. You are almost always playing two colors just due to the card availability with so few players. It's just never played because nobody is ever mono-white.
Didn't Make the Cut
Aethergeode Miner (good god, that was annoying to spell) is another 3/1 for 1W with a minor upside. Even if this said you could blink it at will (which it definitely does not) I still don't think it's better than the Battle Cry ability on Accorder Paladin. It doesn't look impressive but it adds so much power to a board flooded with tokens. Blinking just makes an annoying attacker since if you blink you aren't dealing damage. It's just not that impactful.
Double strike is powerful and it doesn't take very many counters for this to feel oppressive. However, it doesn't have evasion and revolt isn't the most reliable of triggers to hit. You are likely to trigger it through losing a creature in combat but you likely won't want to swing with this until it's got a counter on it. It plays well in limited but there are times when it is awkward and non-impactful. I can see some people who are enamored with double strike include this but I just don't see a cut available.
Blue
In Out
I thought about cutting Augur of Bolas because it hasn't been as consistent as I would like with hitting spells. However, I like the mix of tempo to control two drops in my blue section right now so I thought a swap would be more appropriate. Vaporkin is just a strictly worse Skyship Plunderer. The ability might not come up very often (+1/+1 counters, planeswalkers...that's about it) but being able to block just makes it a lot better if things aren't going according to plan. Sometimes the lazy cut is the right one. Augur of Bolas is on the chopping block when we get a better two drop control creature.
In Out
Just an strict upgrade that I previously missed. A direct upgrading trading the blocking restriction for flash and a marginal upside in the off chance you have other spirits (rarely going to come up).
In Out
Baral's Expertise has a very, very big gap between ceiling and floor. Sometimes this is a five mana unsummon and other times you get to bounce multiple threats, bounce a creature with a cast effect to your hand and then drop a planeswalker all for five mana. I think this will on average bounce one good creature and one whatever one and let you cast something that doesn't have much impact. I think that will still feel really good for five mana and the sky is the limit for what you can do. This will create stories and that's what I want from my cube cards.
Day's Undoing got played a couple of times but the downside of your opponent casting their spells before you can automatically sets you back. Against blue they get to hold up their counter magic and against creature decks they commit to the board before you can. It is usually played in a tempo deck as a free restock of creatures but not being able to at least drop a cheap creature afterwards really hurts it.
Didn't Make the Cut
I'm not that impressed with Baral. On paper it looks like an efficient support card for blue decks. The problem is that the body doesn't fit well in tempo decks (half of blue) and while it's fine in a control deck as an early blocker, the looting only works on countering spells. The cost reduction is the real reason to play this as if you are already countering all your opponent's spells you are likely winning the game already. If you could loot on any instants/sorceries I would include it but you aren't going to have more than 3 or 4 counterspells max in your deck. You better be taking full advantage of the cost reduction for this to be worth it and I just don't think that is going to be consistent.
Trophy Mage might be good enough in a small cube where you have swords and other powered 3 mana cost cards. My cube only has like 8 targets and zero swords making this a blue Grey Ogre.
Didn't Make the Cut
Disallow isn't really that different from Cancel and despite people being excited about an easier to cast Voidslime, it's been years since Voidslime was cube worthy even in a guild as middling as Simic. The Stifle part of this just doesn't come up very often since nobody wants to pay 1UU to counter a single activation most of the time. It's just so much better 99% of the time to cancel any spell than a single activation of a card. When you take fetchlands out of the equation it's just not that great. I'd rather Scry 1 with Dissolve then just counter a spell without Scry 99% of the time.
Black
In Out
Fatal Push kills everything. Okay, obviously that's not true but the revolt trigger is frivolously easy to turn on in black and while it won't deal with every threat it does more than its fair share for one mana. Even with revolt off this deals with a good number of cards that you would be happy spending B to kill...at instant speed no less.
I was playing with five one mana discard spells and I think that's just a little too many, especially since Appetite is mediocre at best. It lets you see their hand and get rid of a threat (if it hits) but it is also taking away a card that likely won't be impactful for a few turns. I think it's just a bit worse than Despise although that one isn't terribly exciting either. I'd like to see one more one mana discard spell to replace Despise but I'm not holding my breath for it.
In Out
Whip works really well with the sacrifice theme while also giving you reach and value while being interesting and fun at the same time. It's pretty mana intensive but is also decidedly midrange which is the space most black decks occupy.
I was under the impression that Curse of Shallow Graves gave you the token no matter who triggered it so it could be played on yourself to give you defenders against attacking decks. It doens't work that way and I am a lot less impressed with it. It's fine for aggro decks but is abysmal elsewhere. Whip is more interesting and fun.
I was under the impression that Curse of Shallow Graves gave you the token no matter who triggered it so it could be played on yourself to give you defenders against attacking decks. It doens't work that way and I am a lot less impressed with it. It's fine for aggro decks but is abysmal elsewhere. Whip is more interesting and fun.
In Out
Bloodsoaked Champion was taken out when I cut black aggro but in retrospect it's still more impactful then Nezumi Graverobber. It still works in sacrifice decks and raid is really easy to trigger even in decks that aren't all in aggro. Graverobber always got main decked a lot but never did anything impactful. By the time you have five mana and have it flipped it will always die. The stars just never align the way you imagine them to. It was best when it was a turn three 4/2 which is...fine...I guess.
In Out
I am a big fan of Decree of Pain but this is just a really easy upgrade. For one mana less (than the cycling cost) you get an extra -1/-1 and the ability to cast a card from your hand instead of drawing one. You lose the upside of always drawing the card and randomly having access to 8 mana lolz but Yahenni's Expertise will be consistently better and more exciting than Decree of Pain.
I really like the stats on this guy (minus the BB cost). It works well in both aggro and control decks and if you can play it on curve it is a very solid wall against aggro. Deathtouch works very well in cube where most finishers actually have to be involved in combat and this actually attacks pretty well due to the three toughness. I don't think this will make the cut in every deck but there are plenty of times when you will windmill slam it from your sideboard if you didn't main deck it and regret not doing so from the start.
Pitiless Horde probably got Dashed out 90% of the time and the other 10% of the time it was played on curve as a 5/3 that attacked once before trading in combat. It wasn't terrible but the dash cost got prohibitive quickly. You could pretty much never dash it and cast something else from your hand and there were a lot of turns where it stood there because you were a mana short of actually being able to do all the things you wanted to do. The 3 toughness really is what killed it since it rarely won a combat if it got blocked.
Yahenni is another card that is better in black aggro and mediocre elsewhere. The problem is that even if it has a sacrifice effect its effects on bolster itself and it never gains evasion meaning it can be blocked into oblivion. The indestructibility is nice but the only way to grow it (which is what you actually want to be doing with it) is reliant on your opponent blocking. Sure, you can pop off multiple removal spells but you are so far ahead by doing that anyway that it doesn't really make a difference in assessing this.
Glint-Sleeve Siphoner is almost always going to draw one card at maximum. If you cast it on turn two you need to attack three times and have it survive until the following upkeep to draw your card. This really needs to be able to draw the card whenever you want or not use so much energy. There just aren't any energy producers in cube and this isn't fast enough (even with Menace making it harder to block) on its own. It might be good in cubes that really push black aggro but I'm still skeptical.
Red
In Out
Kari Zev is very good. She is easy to cast, is difficult to actually kill in combat and makes a legendary monkey that has a name. His name is Ragavan. He has his own token. Joking aside, the monkey token attacks for 2 every turn and can be sacrificed if you have instant speed effects...of which there are plenty. This is one of the better two drops in red and will be a staple for a long time.
Thriving Grubs how we hardly knew ye. It's a 2/1 that could hopefully be a 3/2 once you attacked once. It was a lower tier two drop now being heavily upgraded. Yay!
In Out
Clash is just such a weird ability. It loses a lot of value in red in particular because of how low to the ground your spells are but even so...it's just so weird. Sometimes you lose and you didn't do anything wrong but it just feels like you did. Hungry Flames is paying an extra mana to just win 2/3 of your clash every time. I'll take that extra mana to just not worry about clashing.
In Out
A Threaten effect here and there for variety is a nice addition to cube play and I think Kari Zev's Expertise is potentially the best threaten they have ever printed. Being able to cast a blocker after swinging for the fences is huge. You can also take a creature and kill a potential blocker before swinging. There is a lot you can do with this card and while the free card is limited to only 2 mana or less in red that is going to be a large portion of your deck. Literally anything you cast will make this worth the mana.
That being said, it's still "just" a threaten and I don't want to load up on this effect so I am just making the easy cut of getting rid of one interesting threaten variant for a cheaper one.
Didn't Make the Cut
Rarely in my cube is there more than one target at a single time for pure artifact destruction. This means that this will likely be a Manic Vandal variant. That's a fine cube card but I cut it ages ago when I got rid of swords because it made artifact removal so much less crucial to have in every deck. I haven't looked back or regretted it since so I don't see the upside to adding this unless you are a power cube with fast mana.
If Kari Zev wasn't in this set I would have an interesting decision to make with Aether Chaser vs. Thriving Grubs. However, Kari Zev took that away from me by just being much better than either of them. Aether Chaser is a perfectly ordinary two drop that I would not be surprised to see make a home in cubes...mostly because the lower two drops are just so replaceable and slight variances of each other. The token is nice but I would rather it get a counter and since you can't make continued tokens due to the lack of energy what you see is what you get. Thanks for making my decisions easier Kari Zev!
Green
In Out
Rishkar does a nice job of toeing the line between beat down and ramp. Complaints can be made that he doesn't do both effectively simultaneously but that's asking for an awful lot out of three mana. At worst he comes in as a 3/3 mana elf for three which isn't horrible and at best he makes two of your creatures threats while threatening six mana on turn four. That's a lot of value at a spot in the curve that green desperately wanted more power at.
There are quite a few creatures that happen to be elves in green and zero in all other sections combined. I don't think Imperious Perfect has ever done anything other than make a 2/2 every turn until it dies and while that's fine it's also not on the power level of newer cards that have come out recently if you aren't taking advantage of the lord effect. This just always feels like a weird card for everyone and gets left in sideboards a lot.
In Out
I just wanted to make room for more mana elves and Arbor Elf easily fits the bill as being cube worthy. Just more redundancy with my large cube size since so many green decks love one mana elves.
Skinshifter was fine but I wanted to make room for another mana elf and it was the most replaceable card in green creatures. Being able to only trigger thea ability once per turn really hit the brakes on its power level. You also have to keep a green up every turn or it stops being a card entirely.
In Out
More mana elves!
The tracker was a little slow and clunky and I really wanted to make room for another mana elf. Not too much to say.
In Out
I'm counting Lifecrafter's Bestiary as a green card because while it's playable without the second ability it's really not what you want to be doing. Scry 1 every turn is criminally underrated and in practice this has been an absolute monster with a deck full of relatively inexpensive creatures. It's also not bad in ramp decks that really don't want to be drawing excess Rampant Growth effects late in the game. Giving green some repeatable card draw is also very appreciated. I hear people complaining about how the extra G isn't free and while they are correct it's also not nearly as taxing as they are making it out to be. This doesn't have to do very much to be worth its weight and in any sort of stale mate it will pull you ahead quickly.
Elephant Guide just isn't played anymore. Creatures are just too good compared to how they used to be and a random bonus 3/3 is pretty whatever. The bonus is nice but this just always got left in sideboards and last picked.
In Out
Nature's Way is just a strict upgrade to Rabid Bite that I missed from Kaladesh. Same cost and speed for same effect except you also get vigilance and trample. Sure.
Didn't Make the Cut
This isn't the first moderately expensive card that promised riches in the form of cards drawn and, in this case, a spell cast for free. These have, historically, been underwhelming and I don't think this is any different. The only upside to this is that you get to draw into a spell to cast making it very difficult to brick. That said, six mana is a lot and unlike the other Expertise cards you really need to hit something good on your free spell. Either that or you have to draw like five cards. That has been unreliable in the past with cards like this and I don't see a reason why it would be any different with this one. The upside is high I'm just not convinced that it's going to happen with any sort of frequency. Remember, you could have just cast the spell you got for free instead of this with that six mana so this better be doing something worthwhile.
Colorless
In Out
Walking Ballista is an absolute house. I definitely underrated it when I first saw it and I don't think I was the only one. The ability to put more counters on is mana intensive but even as a four mana 2/2 this can do some work and gets extremely frustrating to deal with as the game goes on if it's not answered. It makes combat math a nightmare and is impossible to kill with upside because you just ping them in response to their spell.
Epochrasite has lost a lot of value over the years. The suspend on it just lasts forever and while you can get one nice use of it you rarely ever get more than that. The dream of repeatedly abusing it just never happens and you usually get a crappy 1/1 that you hope to upgrade to a 4/4 before the game ends. But you don't. Because they won't block it or attack into it. Or they do...but you win or lose before the counters come off. Meh.
In Out
Aethersphere Harvester is a nice boon to all types of decks and a difficult to kill evasive threat that is easy to Crew. The control decks will like the lifelink and tougness while aggro decks will like the evasive power upgrade over their now irrelevant one or two drops. I really like that this can only use lifelink twice as it gives slower decks some breathing room against aggro but doesn't make it impossible to race as if it just had lifelink all the time.
Tappers that cost mana in cube really are quite a bit worse than in regular limited as you always have something to do with your mana and it's really tough to leave two mana open every turn on offense and defense . It's just too slow and mana intensive.
Didn't Make the Cut
Treasure Keeper is not Bloodbraid Elf. You lose haste in favor of an extra power but only get the extra card when it dies instead of cast. That is a huge difference as just running this into something to get a free card isn't necessarily worthwhile making this more of a happy accident when it does die card. It works well with sacrifice but the body needs to be more significant in order to actually make someone want to kill it. Otherwise it's just a vanilla do nothing.
The difference between Crew 2 and Crew 3 is much larger than the difference between Crew 1 and Crew 2. Heart of Kiran is extremely good if you have multiple planeswalkers in your deck but really suffers if you don't. Planeswalkers are going to be the only way to take real advantage of the vigilance ability as you won't have that much extra power in creatures lying around to both attack and block reliably. I don't want to put cards in the cube that just make planeswalkers even better and this really does just act as an impenetrable wall in front of one just from the threat of ticking the loyalty down to block. Realistically you don't lose the loyalty when blocking because they just can't attack into it meaning you just keep your planeswalker much longer than normal.
Didn't Make the Cut
Untethered Express is really powerful but has one problem. Four mana is the most competitive spot in the cube in almost every deck. There are just so many other cards and a deck can only play so many. This is especially true for aggro decks that just need two or so as curve toppers. This is a nice curve topper but I don't think the goal is to have the game last multiple turns after you cast it to let it get huge. I wouldn't begrudge people adding this to their cube but I'm going to start with it on the outside and see just how good vehicles are overall and how often aggro decks want one regardless of what it is.
Dimir
In Out
I've always been really fond of Recoil as it gives Dimir decks an out to problematic artifacts or enchantments that it otherwise would have a lot of trouble dealing with. It's not a guaranteed answer but it's also a really efficient card at instant speed. I've also been unimpressed with Dimir Charm and I found that I always just wished it would do what Recoil would already have been doing anyway. Viva la Recoil!
Didn't Make the Cut
This iteration of Tezzeret is as equally reliant on artifacts as its predecessors (as it should be). Unfortunately, that doesn't make a good cube card as discussed in the introduction. If you have a dedicated artifact theme then this is probably still worse than both Ashiok and Tezzeret, Agent of Bolas and I certainly don't have enough artifacts to make this playable.
Orzhov
Didn't Make the Cut
I am really partial towards anthem effects. It took me a while to realize that this guy just isn't good enough even with the anthem effect. The body is just too small and the delayed draw a card is too slow. If you put the creature in play or if you drew it at the end of your turn it would be closer. You just give your opponent a full turn to have an answer and not get anything out of this.
Rakdos
Selesnya
In Out
In another case of returning to the basics, Blightning is coming back in. It just always over performed and felt so devastating when it was cast. Cards in cube are paramount and tagging three damage on top really did make the discard two feel worthwhile. You don't get the back to back Blightning plays that dominated constructed in its heyday but you are still getting a card that will rarely be left in sideboards.
So Daretti. My mistake. I didn't realize two things. One, you can only trigger his second ability by sacrificing an artifact. Two, due to the constraints of artifacts in your deck you are likely just going to be toggling this back and forth between his plus and minus abilities killing a creature every other turn forever. That's not interesting or fun and leads to repetitive gameplay. This is especially true because otherwise you are just chumping infinitely until you get to his bad ultimate. My bad readers, my bad. He's out.
Didn't Make the Cut
Ajani Unyielding is guilty of boring planeswalker tempalting 101. Plus for card advantage and minus for removal with ultimate that does something who cares what. It also costs six. This isn't a bad card but I'm not cutting an efficient creature or spell for an expensive planeswalker that isn't remotely interesting. I do think this is the best GW planeswalker they have printed so far so if you are still running one of the other Ajani's I think this is an easy upgrade to those.
Despite costing only two mana you are likely going to want to cast Oath of Ajani on turn five or six when you can either cast a creature and immediately buff your party with this on the follow up or when you run out of things to commit to the board. The planewalker clause is entirely flavor text like all the Oaths. It's not that it won't come up but since planeswalkers are already so good and you are only going to have so many of them that something that makes them better shouldn't be taken into account as a bonus. I'm just not impressed with this. It's not bad but there are a lot of times when it's just put a counter on two creatures for a card. The guild is filled with strong cards and doesn't need borderline ones.
Didn't Make the Cut
I think Renegade Rallier is probably closer to inclusion than either of the two other cards I talked about already just because it fits the existing gameplan of Selesnya so well already. Revolt isn't hard to trigger here because you are likely just getting back whatever just went to the yard if you played this on curve. Note that this says permanent and non creature so enchantments and lands are fair game! It's just so much smaller than Loxodon Smiter and Knight of the Reliquary to justify cutting those. I can see this going in over Smiter if it plays well in testing but for right now I am going to keep the beef. I do like this better than Centaur Healer if you are still running that for what it's worth.
Grixis
In Out
Which would you be more excited to open P1P1? Which would make you think...man I should really splash a third color to include this in my deck? Which makes you smile more when you cast it? I thought so. That's what three color cards should do.
Land
Didn't Make the Cut
This card is probably quite good in a powered cube or small cube where you have a ton of noncreature artifacts that are drafted highly and always maindecked. My cube is just so big that you can't rely on getting a couple signets or equipment that you don't have to worry about dying to a removal spell. My artifact section just isn't large enough or impactful enough to turn this on enough of the time before late game.
Conclusion
I'm excited we are done with artifact sets for a little while as I always see a ton of cards that just don't fit into my particular cube. That said, we did well for ourselves in this block and I am really grateful for vehicles in particular. Aggro decks always want at least one equipment to give them some reach and vehicles just act as more of them in a different vein. If they aren't going to print more good non-protection equipment then this was a nice supplement for cubes that don't want to play swords. The next set is Amonkhet which has a cool artwork but that's about all we know so far. Looking forward to finding out more.
Happy cubing!
I'm excited we are done with artifact sets for a little while as I always see a ton of cards that just don't fit into my particular cube. That said, we did well for ourselves in this block and I am really grateful for vehicles in particular. Aggro decks always want at least one equipment to give them some reach and vehicles just act as more of them in a different vein. If they aren't going to print more good non-protection equipment then this was a nice supplement for cubes that don't want to play swords. The next set is Amonkhet which has a cool artwork but that's about all we know so far. Looking forward to finding out more.
Happy cubing!
