Hello all. I feel like I have been doing these cube updates constantly since the end of last year. The sets are just coming out too fast. It's a shame that Modern Horizons is going to have virtually no time at all for people to enjoy the limited environment. The drafting seems really rewarding and I really enjoyed the one draft and sealed I was able to attend. This is especially true because core set is so unexciting for enfranchised players by comparison. This core set in particular looks incredibly boring. The limited environment might end up being fun but for cube, this looks like the worst set in a very long time. I still have some cards to talk about but I really don't have high hopes for very many of them. In fact, most of my changes here are going to be amendments unrelated to Magic 2020 entirely. That's okay, I kind of needed a break to be able to test out all the changes that War of the Spark and Modern Horizons made...let's get to it, then.
White
In Out
I'm putting Hanged Executioner on the lower end of white's creatures as it's mostly an upgrade over Midnight Haunting but still not on a very high power level. Being a creature gains a lot of utility as opposed to being an instant. You lose flash but you gain reanimation and blink interactions. The activated ability is both a bit expensive and hampered by requiring exile to utilize but it's going to be very useful when you need it. This isn't the kind of effect that is typically on an evasive body and even if you have to use it right away you still get an extra token out of the deal. Not having to tap it to use it is also very nice because you can keep attacking if they don't have flying bodies. It just does a lot more than Midnight Haunting does even if it's not on the level as some of the better white creatures.
In Out
So upon further though I find myself to be a little bit more attached to Flickerwisp than I thought. I'm also a little less attached to Sunhome Stalwart. The big thing I forgot to mention about Flickerwisp is that because of the timing of the blink, it can be used to clear blockers out of the way. This is a really nice bonus for a white card that usually doesn't have access to that ability. Sunhome Stalwart, on the other hand, just never actually triggers it's Mentor ability. Only having two power means it's only hitting tokens and while that's fine, it also only hits one power tokens. A lot of the tokens made in cube happen to be 2/2's and this misses all of them. The first strike is nice but it just doesn't do enough. White could use some better two drops.
In Out
Intangible Virtue has long gotten stellar cube reviews in other lists and I definitely have strong token support. I had held out for a long time on adding it in because I was nervous about how often it would be relevant. While I still have some concerns, tokens are only going to be more of a thing, now present across more colors than before, and when this is relevant it's a reason to enter the deck. Signpost cards are important in drafting and this does a great job of doing that.
Ghostly Prison is a really annoying card. It's value ranges from a complete blank to something that slows down a game to an absolute crawl depending on your opponent's mana base, game plan and board state. It's never fun or rewarding to play with and often didn't get put into main decks because of this.
In Out
I just don't think there is a reason to have an effect like Disenchant in the cube anymore. That's not to say that I don't want ways to deal with problematic artifact and enchantments but I think it works out better with cards like Collective Effort where it's a mode on the card that you have access to but it's not the reason you draft the card. Disenchant is an important effect but the card itself is just always a late pick and never makes the main. Collective Effort provides a similar effect but allows a more proactive approach and should always be relevant as opposed to sitting in your hand as you wait for your opponent to walk into it. The counter ability should play well in token decks and the escalate cost isn't that difficult even if you are almost always only ever going to choose one or two modes at most. I feel like you will almost always put counters on your team no matter what but there will be a good amount of games where you just cast this for the counter ability alone. It's just really powerful in aggressive decks as a way to upgrade your smaller creatures to better interact with the mid-game creatures that start to stall you out.
In Out
I'm excited to bring back Unexpectedly Absent. I really enjoyed this card while it was in my cube in the past and it provides a unique effect at instant speed, something that is really important for control decks that want to keep their options open. Even just putting something on top of their library to deny them a draw step and set them back a turn can be extremely relevant so X doesn't really need to be that high. It's castable at any stage of a game meaning it's never a dead draw and can answer any problem.
Pulse of the Fields just doesn't do anything. The life gain is relevant only in some matchups relegating it to the sideboard and a very late draft pick. There aren't any decks that really want it and if your strategy for staying alive is to cast this over and over you aren't committing to the board and you aren't answering their threat. This helps you not die, it doesn't do anything proactive to actually win you a game.
Didn't Make the Cut
Even if Sephara's alternate cost ability allowed you to tap any four creatures instead of requiring them all to have flying it would still be on the fence in terms of how feasible that is. It's likely it would be tested in aggro decks but you are getting a large creature that doesn't do anything the turn you cast it and prevents you from attacking with your team for a turn. The upside is nice but you really are paying a cost even if it's not one in terms of available mana. Requiring only flying creatures makes this comfortably unplayable.
Cavalier of Dawn has a fairly nice body with vigilance but I've never been impressed with the Beast Within ability. I have cut all those cards out of my cube because they play so poorly and I haven't regretted it at all. The death trigger is also really narrow as it requires you to have sequenced something that is very hard to have control over. Too much has to go right for you to be able to gain value off of it. The set of bodies is nice if you are destroying your own permanent but restricting it to nonlands really hurts its utility as you have to get rid of something meaningful in order to upgrade to the 3/3 body. Depending on what's available you might just not want to do that at all. White five drops are way to powerful for this to make an impact.
Didn't Make the Cut
This is kind of crazy but almost across the board I like the six mana intro deck planeswalkers better than the ones in the actual set. There is one exception to that but I'll get to that in another color. Neither of these cards are very impressive, especially when you stack them up against the existing planeswalker competition. Gaining life is just not impactful enough and teh ultimate on both of these are just really hard to make work. Strength of the Pride is just not synergistic with the rest of my cube strategy and Inspiring Leader (while closer) costs six mana and doesn't really win you a game. It kind of meanders around getting good value but doing nothing to close the door, a theme that all the intro deck planeswalkers share. They are all good, but all of them lack closing power and that's what you really need in a six drop.
In Out
Cloudkin Seer is a solid, if unexciting card. It's an evasive body that replaces itself for a reasonable investment. The body isn't very good which is the one thing that might make this a cut in the near future. I'd like to try it out for now though as it seems pretty good on the surface.
I've grown to really dislike Soulbond as a mechanic as it never delivers on the cool gameplay that it promises. In practice, the opponent just kills the creature with Soulbond so you don't get to reuse the ability. There is something to be said about forcing your opponent to answer a particular creature instead of a different one but Tandem Lookout doesn't really do this. It's nice that you get the draw effect immediately if you hit with a two drop but the actual Lookout is such a bad body that it can't interact in combat at all. I don't think its ever actually dealt damage to a player and it gets drafted really low. Cloudkin Seer should see more play while providing guaranteed card advantage.
In Out
Spectral Sailor is a weird card. Why does this card have flash? It doesn't have an ETB and it is a 1/1 so it's not like it can surprise block anything. It's strictly upside but I just don't know why this card has it. It doesn't add anything to the design. In any case...we've seen this ability before on Azure Mage and it turned out that the ability was just way too expensive to use. You really couldn't use the ability and still cast spells so the only use was to hold up counter magic and then draw a card if you didn't have to use your spell. It was good there but in most shells it was ineffective. Because of the evasive body, this fits into a wider range of decks than Azure Mage did. Not having to tap is key here because you can still use the ability while you attack. This is a pretty good curve starter for tempo decks.
Dakra Mystic was too difficult to use effectively and its usefulness varied heavily based on if you or your opponent cared about the graveyard. If you aren't a graveyard deck you probably aren't even playing this as missing is too much of a loss in tempo and mana. If you are both in graveyard themes then it gets really sticky because milling them is just as bad as milling yourself. You really need to be able to get something out of this and it's too hard to control where your opponent gets the value. There was skill involved in figuring out if your card was worth more than theirs but it worked off of a lot of unknown information and when you decided that yours was worse, it felt really bad. Milling a land off the top of your deck is fine if you don't want to draw it but when you see a spell you need and your opponent flips a bomb of their own, it's just not rewarding. Because of this, it rarely got played. I love the design but it was just too hard to rely on in practice.
In Out
Cavalier of Gales does an awful lot. The evasive body is quite large for the cost (although the triple blue really does complicate matters) and the ETB replaces itself while setting up your future draws a bit better. It's just better than ETB draw a card but I really wish you could put the cards on top of your library or in your graveyard. The death trigger is a nice bonus that further sets up your draws. This presents a real clock while setting you up well for future turns so you don't run out of gas. Blue five drops are notoriously unexciting so it's cool to get on that has promise.
Speaking of notoriously unexciting five drops in blue. Illusory Ambusher looks like such an exciting card but in practice it just doesn't do anything. It's a situational removal spell that draws cards but in a very inconsistent amount. You are guaranteed to lose the body if you block because of the one toughness so you better get something good for the investment. This is pretty much a noncreature spell and it's really difficult to crack the list at this spot in the curve when you don't guarantee value. It's not bad but it's just so rare that it pushes something else out of that spot in your deck. You can only have so many five drops and this just doesn't win you a game. Yes, it can come down at EOT and start attacking but it trades for a token so often that that just isn't appealing.
Didn't Make the Cut
Requiring a flying creature is far from a guarantee even if you are playing blue and having to play this for its full cost sounds terrible. The cost reduction is nice but what it really needed was to either allow you to draw more cards, provide card selection in addition to the draw or put some cards in your graveyard to increase those synergies. Just reducing the cost isn't that great of a bonus as you aren't playing this on curve anyway. One extra mana probably isn't going to allow you to play any of the cards you draw unless its really late game in which case the full price isn't that difficult. This just isn't that much better than Divination. If all of your blue creatures have flying and you support flying token strategies then this goes up in value for most lists this will just be too inconsistent and low impact.
Didn't Make the Cut
Drawn from Dreams does a really bad impersonation of Dig Through Time. Cost reduction from Delve aside, losing instant speed absolutely cripples this effect. You just can't take a turn off entirely to draw cards even if you are getting to select them. Sorcery card draw in cube needs to provide ancillary effects (as mentioned before) to really be worthwhile because of the tempo loss experienced. The bonus here is nice but not putting the rest of the cards in the graveyard prevents this from being a role player in those decks and sorcery speed prevents control from really wanting this either.
Flood of Tears is probably going to get some people excited because they really like this effect. In all honesty, I think this is stone unplayable. This is probably just worse than Evacuation and that hasn't seen play in forever. Six mana is an absolute ton and even Upheaval is only good when you get to replay your fast mana and end up way ahead of your opponent. This doesn't break synergy in the same way as you get to keep one permanent in play but your opponent still has access to all their mana. Sorcery speed means you don't have a chance to attack before they recommit to the board and six mana means you aren't doing anything else until your untap the next turn. You need to actually have a board presence for this to actually allow you your free permanent so this isn't even that good when behind. I'd much rather just play Baral's Expertise and that's on the lower end of blue spells.
Didn't Make the Cut
Both versions of Mu Yanling are underwhelming compared to the existing planeswalker options in cube (get used to hearing that). MYCS seems really annoying to play against as she gets you at least a turn of reprieve with her minus before shrinking a target with her plus. Her ultimate also ends a game with reasonable certainty. If you are behind, she does a pretty good job of temporarily staving off the board but she also doesn't do anything to actually pull you ahead by herself. She is purely defensive and if you don't have a board presence she fails to give you one or further a game plan. We need more than delaying the inevitable for a six mana investment. MYSD is frustrating because her play pattern is baked in. She ETB and pluses because its the only ability she can use. If she survives, she minuses because it's way, way better than the plus. After that she just keeps plusing only in order to minus. The minus is so good and reasonably costed that there is never a reason to go for the ultimate. I just don't like the play here as there aren't any interesting decisions or variance. It can be powerful, so so can every planeswalker and I expect good gameplay as well.
In Out
Cavalier of Night provides you with a decently sized body that is tailor made to make use of lifelink due to its high toughness. Black decks really appreciate life gain due to all the cards that utilize your life as a resource and the grindy nature of the color. It counts for more than it would if it was in another color. The ETB works well with sacrifice decks and the death effect works well with reanimator. Those are the two main themes in black so this kind of fits perfectly. The triple black in the mana cost is the only pausing point but largely, this is a great value creature that should make most builds playing black.
Demon of Dark Schemes is fine but clearly the weakest of black's finishers. The body and ETB are good but that's largely the only thing that ever happens. The reanimation clause is expensive both in mana and energy and with no other energy producers in cube, it's just too difficult to use before the game ends. It's just win more and you are paying a steep cost for that. Cavalier of Night should go in more decks and fills a spot in the curve badly wanting better cards.
In Out
Kitesail Freebooter is a card that doesn't really synergize particularly well with any theme but should be a glue card making many main decks just for its effect. An evasive body that provides disruption is good and while it doesn't hit creatures it does hit the cards you are most likely to take. Black has so much removal but has little to no answers for problematic artifacts or enchantments. This provides a safety valve to those effects as well as blanking opposing removal or spells. It's gotten very good reviews and I'm excited to see how it performs in my cube now.
Asylum Visitor is a fine card that really provides a ton of value if you are able to get its ability online. The problem is that it's incredibly easy for your opponent to just hold a land in their land to prevent you from triggering on their turn. On your own turn, you can usually start making it happen but it's grindy nature is at odds with its body and mana cost. This goes best in aggressive decks that empty their hand and are able to afford the life loss to keep pressure on the opponent. Often, you won't want to attack with this for fear of trading down and lose your ability. It hasn't performed badly but it's not something black needs or has been utilizing to full effect. It's easily one of the least aggressive colors in my cube and this gets a lot worse as you grind out a game with removal and incremental value.
Didn't Make the Cut
Dread Presence is a cool design that provides extra utility to your land drops at the cost of a largely forgettable body and expensive mana cost. It only provides value if you continue to hit land drops and while the value can be very nice, you only trigger it off of Swamps, not all basic lands which badly restricts its effectiveness. Consider the average deck will play 10 swamps at most and you are looking at only being able to trigger this a couple of times over the course of a game at best.
Knight of the Ebon Legion is a really pushed one drop. The activated ability makes it very difficult to block as it is likely going to survive whatever combat its involved in and essentially cannot be double blocked due to deathtouch. The threat of activation alone is annoying as you can often just attack for free and play something unrelated during the second main. You are likely only going to be able to trigger the last ability once or twice over the course of a game because they will just run out of life so it doesn't snowball as quickly as it seems but it's a nice bonus that works well with the pump ability. If you are running traditional black aggro this is probably a pretty easy include but most black cubes (mine included) won't want to dedicate a slot to a card that doesn't work in the majority of black strategies.
Didn't Make the Cut
Embodiment of Agonies is a difficult card to make work in regular limited. It works best when you just dump your entire deck into your graveyard to guarantee hitting as many CMCs as possible. It's likely you aren't even able to cast this on curve unless you are playing with fueling cards or the game played out in a very particular way. Even if you do, it's a three mana 1/1 or 2/2 until later in the game. Even though it flies, that's just not very good and deathtouch doesn't really do anything on an evasive body that doesn't ever need to get double blocked. I don't like this one at all.
Vilis is at a mana cost that usually restricts it to reanimation decks, it's probably much better in ramp decks. If you cheat Vilis into play, you have precious little mana to use for his abilities and every mana you spend is one less mana you have to cast whatever you draw. It's a large body that promises removal, card advantage and a fast clock but requiring mana to activate any of these benefits badly restricts its effectiveness. Griselbrand is great because you are guaranteed to draw cards even if he is immediately killed as long as you have the life to spare. This has to wait a turn before you have your mana untapped and loses lifelink so you can only activate his ability a couple of times before you start running the risk of going too low in life. This looks like Griselbrand but it's sorely lacking in some key areas.
Didn't Make the Cut
Undercosted creatures with heavy drawbacks are a staple of magic design and it always comes down to the sames thing when evaluating them for cube. How bad is the drawback, how good is the creature without it, and can you exploit it. Discarding a card one is exploitable but having to do it every turn is likely not something you are going to be able to take advantage of in a positive way unless you run out of cards when it essentially loses the drawback. The body is really good as it kills an opponent in three swings and will kill anything that blocks it while still living. That's it though. It just attacks every turn. It isn't interesting and likely results in games where you go all in on this and hope they don't have removal. If they do, you get to discard a card and then lose your creature which is terrible. It punishes slow hands but doesn't work particularly well in any existing shell and ends up feeling way too all in for my liking. You will either win the game because of the creature or lose the game because of the drawback too often and neither of those sound appealing.
Didn't Make the Cut
Third verse same as the first. I like the six mana intro pack Sorin better than the cheaper one and neither is particularly exciting. Sorin, Imperious Bloodlord is only good in a vampire tribal deck and that's just not going to happen in cube. Sorin, Vampire Lord is at least playable in other shells but it turns his ultimate off completely. The minus is really good but the plus is terrible and it's likely your only going to be using the minus, and casting this in order to minus twice in a row sounds awful. Neither are even close to good enough.
In Out
So let's talk about Purphoros, God of the Forge for a minute. I had originally cut him in the last update amid concerns about how one sided and noninteractive his ability feels. I've come down a bit since then as it is a great sign post card for token decks and has a little bit more answers than I had previously thought. Being indestructible is miserable and I had lamented how often he remains only an enchantment. It turns out that not being a creature all the time is fine because he is extremely formidable with his passive ability that punishes control decks that just want to durdle their opponents into oblivion. This forces them to actually have a proactive strategy and gives inevitability to an aggressive deck, something they almost never have against control. It does a lot of really unique things that I think have a place for a while longer.
Goblin Dark-Dwellers almost always acts as a Flametongue Kavu. I had visions of interesting interactions and variable game play but because of the nature of red's noncreature spells it just recasts burn spells every time. It's not bad but it's also not very exciting. Purphoros is a more unique design that promotes better gameplay and more interesting draft decisions. The body on GDD is also just...fine? It's just not that exciting if you aren't getting a lot of value out of the ETB ability. Sending damage to their face isn't that rewarding or interesting either.
Didn't Make the Cut
Flame Sweep is an easier to cast Volcanic Fallout that can be countered and doesn't hit players. The flying creature clause isn't that relevant in cube as most of red's creatures with flying have more than two toughness. I really like the damage to players that Fallout provides and I'm not in the market for a more expensive Pyroclasm even if it grants instant speed. When you need these effects, you really need them and waiting an extra turn for that extra mana can be the difference between taking quite a bit of damage. You are likely going to have to cast this precombat anyway to mitigate the damage dealt because not casting it and then having them cast a four toughness creature would be catastrophic.
Chandra #1 has only two relevant abilities because the Elemental plus will never hit anything in cube. That means she can go up in loyalty but it likely won't do anything. Ramping and dealing 2 are pretty good but if you are already at four mana in a red deck, getting to six really doesn't have the same effect it would in a control deck. The shock will be the most commonly used ability and it loses a lot of luster after the first trigger. The opponent will likely have one target for the shock but I'd be surprised if they had many more that are meaningful. Taking out a single token isn't really worth the card and without being able to gain value on the turns she pluses, she makes it difficult to recoup your mana investment. Chandra is fine, but all uncommon planeswalkers are going to be at least "fine". I'm not adding more planeswalkers in unless they really earn their keep.
Didn't Make the Cut
Four toughness is kind of the magic number in cube. Three toughness is functional but four survives quite a bit more than three does. It dodges a lot of the burn and edges into surviving combat more often than not. That's kind of the best part of Glint-Horn Buccaneer. The two power isn't great as it doesn't so much attack through things as bounce off of them. Cube doesn't have a ton of discard cards so it's not like you can make this the linchpin of a deck and rummaging, as always, is underwhelming. It will mostly trigger of itself but only being able to activate its ability when its attacking prevents you from having full information when deciding how to handle your attackers and blockers. In the end that really hurts the functionality a lot. Having to pay mana hurts further as you are less likely to be able to cast what you draw.
Like with the other dinosaur seen above, Marauding Raptor has a drawback that completely overshadows its upsides. The body is undercosted and reducing creature casting costs is great. Being able to function in combat on offense or defense while making your spells more palatable is a great combination and it comes at a very reasonable cost. The downside is really significant though. Most of your creatures just won't survive the damage clause and almost none of your tokens will either. They also won't get a bonus for being Dinosaurs making this a really awkward card. It works best in low to the ground aggro decks that go wide and yet it hurts those decks worst of all with its drawback. Not a good combination.
Didn't Make the Cut
Drakuseth does a nice impression of Inferno Titan when it attacks but not doing anything until it attacks does this no favors. You can afford creatures like this when they don't cost a lot because you aren't out as much if they get killed before your next turn. You can't afford to pay seven mana for one though.
Chandra #2 is the closest planeswalker in this set to being cube worthy. It's cheap, has a reasonable amount of loyalty and immediately has the option of multiple, relevant abilities. The total lack of a plus ability that does anything really hurts it though. The zero doesn't do nearly enough since you have to sac the tokens each time, preventing you from really being able to go wide. Copying a spell from your graveyard is the best part of this card but it suffers from the same problem that plagued Goblin Dark-Dwellers, above. It's only ever going to be able to copy a burn spell. That's not interesting or fun. This kind of ability screams to be unique and interesting and it's just neither. It's fine, but you also aren't guaranteed to have a supply of spells in your graveyard to choose from. If you can't use that ability your options lose a lot of steam quickly. This isn't worth cutting the existing planeswalkers for.
Didn't Make the Cut
Ok, so these both cost six mana so I can't do the usual. I also don't feel the same as I do before because I think that Awakened Inferno is definitely cube worthy. It can't be countered and threatens to end the game in short order with repeated uses of its plus. It has a minus that does crowd control and an ultimate it has constant access to that can act as single target removal. It kind of does it all and has an absolute boat load of loyalty. So why am I not including it? Because she only fits into red control decks. Chandra, Flamecaller goes into a wider array of decks while having some of the same effects. I don't really want to nearly identical planeswalkers and I also don't really like the plus ability. Unless you are way behind I feel like the correct call is just going to be plusing as many times as humanly possible to end the game as soon as possible. Event then, Flamecaller represents more damage, a faster clock and is more interactive. I can see why people are going to be excited for Awakened Inferno but I'm not in on it.
Chandra, Flame's Fury is just worse all around and I don't want infinite six mana red planeswalkers. If I was going to add one, I'd add Awakened Inferno.
In Out
Rampant Growth is a cube staple for its cheap ability to ramp and fix your mana. Into the North is a functional reprint of that now that I have snow lands included. This was an easy addition.
From Beyond is just too slow. Four mana is too much even if it's making 1/1 tokens every turn. If it made a token the turn you casted it, it would be different but you get nothing until the following turn. Awakening Zone is a mana cheaper but it seems like an eternity in game play. The larger body hasn't made a difference at all as it ends up with all the same uses as the 0/1 tokens from Awakening Zone. Being able to search for Eldrazi cards would have helped the utility but I just don't run any. It's just too slow and low impact.
Didn't Make the Cut
Barkhide Troll is an undercosted beater that has a built in protection trigger that's pretty easy to use. Unfortunately for me, it's also really restricted to green aggro lists and I just don't do that all in strategy. Green, like black. can be a supplement to aggro decks but not the main attraction. Double green makes that unlikely on turn two.
Elvish Reclaimer isn't strictly for green aggro despite what it may look like. You also need to support turbo graveyard fueling. And by turbo I mean inhumanely fast because this needs to get larger as fast as possible to be playable. That's just not realistic and the Crop Rotation is criminally slow. It's a bad combination of abilities that make this less effective in all areas.
Didn't Make the Cut
Gargos is a Hydra tribal card but there aren't any Hydras in cube to make use of it. It's actual use is an undercosted body with reach that acts as removal if its dealt with. That's not bad but it's also not worth six mana. This is too defensive and at six mana you need proactivity. Vigilance is nice on a creature this big but it doesn't size up well when you have to wait a turn to get value out of it. The fight clause is the best part about the card as it's large enough to actually draw attention to itself but it's not a better finisher than anything that already exists and I'm not in the market to add another six drop that just hangs out in the red zone.
Despite what I am reading elsewhere, I'm confident that Voracious Hydra is a bad cube card. Flexibility goes a long way towards making things good in cube but Voracious Hydra is a trap. Trample is important on a creature with scaling power and green should be able to make this a large creature but no matter how much mana you pump into it, choosing the doubling of counters ability is going to be underwhelming. Requiring GG in addition to X hamstrings its potential and paying a lot of mana for a large trampling creature that does nothing else is actively bad in cube. This means that almost all of the power is in taking advantage of the fight ability and, again, it's just too expensive to be able to do that. Yes, you can cast this according to your curve in order to spike whatever target there is in play but your remaining creature is going to be very underwhelming. This is absolutely no cheaper than a four drop and even then it's a 2GG 2/3 that fights or a 2GG 4/5 trample. It's just not exciting. If it costed XG it would be pushed but XGG is just too fair and balanced to be good in cube. The inherent power level just expects more out of its cards.
Didn't Make the Cut
Cavalier of Thorns is the worst in the cycle by about ten miles. Reach isn't great with the body as you are largely going to want to be attacking with this instead of sitting back on defense. The ETB doesn't really do anything as ramping into your sixth land just isn't needed. The death trigger is also really underwhelming as it doesn't even draw you a card, instead setting up your next draw only.
Vivien, Arkbow Ranger requires a creature in play for any of her abilities to work. She also doesn't make creatures so she doesn't fuel her own abilities requiring you to sequence appropriately. That's not a guarantee and her plus works best with multiple creatures which is even harder. Her minus is a one sided fight which I've railed on for a while how underwhelming it is. Her ultimate draws you a card you aren't even guaranteed to be able to cast and triple green just adds to the blah. This just needs too much to be going right already to hold any value and it's an actual blank when you don't have a board presence.
Didn't Make the Cut
Well that's a pass on every planeswalker we have for Core Set 2020. Vivien, Nature's Avenger requires creatures to be in play for her plus to do anything. It does a lot but six mana is also a lot and putting all your eggs in one basket usually doesn't end well in cube. The minus draws a card but she enters with so little loyalty and doesn't protect herself so it's unlikely you will be able to use her more than once.
Didn't Make the Cut
Cryptic Caves draws you one card in the late game at the cost of not making colored mana and setting you behind on board. This is bad.
Field of the Dead makes a token in the late game at the cost of not making colored mana and entering play tapped. This is worse.
Didn't Make the Cut
Lotus Field is probably going to make a lot of people excited but it's totally lame in cube. You don't end up with more mana than you would by playing regular lands and it restricts your ability to make only one type of mana instead of what you would have otherwise had. You also have to use all the mana at once instead of being able to split it throughout phases. This is a constructed plant and the worst of all the lands mentioned so far.
Well this was underwhelming. That's a whole lot of cards that didn't make the cut. Most of the ones that did aren't even from Magic 2020. Usually the core set is good for quite a few interesting cards and this was really mediocre. One last thing I wanted to mention that I didn't go into too much was how many mana symbols were on the cards I discussed. Nearly every one was two or three pips deep and that just further lowered the rating of each of them. I didn't want to harp on it excessively but keep in mind that was considered a detriment to every card that fits that bill even if I didn't mention it. If you heavily support Chroma/Devotion then you might see that as a bonus but I don't. Looking to the future, we know absolutely nothing about the next set other than Mark Rosewater claims to be very excited by it and that it's allegedly on a new plane. It can't be any worse than this was. At least we didn't have to worry about a ton of lead in time to get excited for it. I'm at least looking forward to playing with the cards in limited while we wait to find out more about the mystery fall set. In the meantime, happy cubing!
