So I'm covering a couple of bases with this update. Firstly, I feel that I rushed my Core Set 2020 review a bit and made some incorrect decisions because of it. The set was just so underwhelming that I just wanted to get it over with as opposed to letting it stew. In a way, I'm glad I did because even so I only made a couple choices I want to amend. Secondly, I have a little cleanup from previous sets that I wanted to touch upon. Lastly, and most excitingly, I am finally taking the plunge into the Un-set territory. Since the cube's inception I had made the decision to just not include Un-cards as as rule. This was based on the fact that I saw them more as fan-made cards and less like legitimate Magic cards. I've come down on that a bit after having played with Unstable and enjoying it much more than I thought I was going to. Many of the cards are just very close to actual magic cards in function and some really stood out as upgrades to existing tech. I'm still going to shy away from cards that are too off the wall or make people focus on things I don't think is worth the mental load. I'm also keeping away from cards that require physical dexterity or verbal play to function. Keeping this in mind, I'm going to be trying to maintain a balance between needless complexity, gameplay, fun and power level with each card. I'll give examples below but there are some powerful cards that I'm not including for varying reasons. I'm talking about some older Un-cards as well, so keep that in mind. It's not a super long one this time so let's just get to it already.
White
In Out
GO TO JAIL was integral in my Unstable league deck as I had multiple copies and played them often. They definitely skew aggressive as those decks will care less about permanent answers and more about gaining tempo. Often, if they can take a threat off the board for even a couple turns it can be enough to win the game. Being one mana is also ludicrous for this effect if it sticks around. On average, this stayed in play for longer than you might think making it closer to a hard removal spell as opposed to a blink spell. It definitely overperformed my expectations and even when your opponent lucked out and rolled doubles immediately, it was more hilarious than anything else. The tension felt by both players every upkeep is hard to replicate and felt good for everyone involved.
Prison Realm is a fine card but there really isn't comparing one mana removal to three mana. The Scry isn't nearly enough to make up for that. Even as a "temporary" solution, GO TO JAIL is more fun, powerful and leads to better gameplay.
Didn't Make the Cut
Knight of the Kitchen Sink is the first of several cards that have multiple copies of themselves that all do different things. They all share a theme (in this case, protection from X, first strike and the 2/2 for WW). Protection really leaves this out in the cold for me as it goes against my philosophy of interactivity. The body without the protection isn't good enough if you include some of the less powerful iterations and protection from black borders is oppressive as its essentially protection from everything. This one just doesn't strike the balance needed to be included. The iterations are all either to powerful or not powerful enough to be worth the upkeep.
Rules Lawyer essentially wins the game by itself as long as your opponent doesn't remove it. It's an easy to kill enchantment that turns the entire game upside down immediately. Unfortunately, it's also really confusing for newer (and experienced) players and it's just not worth the mental load necessary to both comprehend and explain what it does to people. Newer players especially are going to feel bad when this is used against them as it's absolutely not fun for the vast majority of players, especially upon repeat castings and drafts.
In Out
When I added Cloudkin Seer I removed the wrong card. I didn't realize Tandem Lookout was still in my cube so I went with the next lowest blue three drop creature. Tandem Lookout is very underwhelming, never getting played or talked about even in the decks where it should conceivably shine. Soulbond as a mechanic really unimpressed me the more I played with it and I'm glad the last of it is out of cube. Pestermite comes back in to be a middling curve filler that varies wildly between overperformer and chaff depending on board state and deck build. That's good enough for now, but this time it really is on the edge.
In Out
Clocknapper is incredibly powerful. The key here is understanding that "beginning phase" includes all of untap, upkeep and draw. That means if you steal the beginning phase you untap INSTEAD of your opponent on their turn and then draw a card for them. This is backbreaking in many matchups and gives you an essential Time Walk attached to a 2/2 body that can be reanimated, blinked or bounced for recasting. Endlessly abusable and flexible depending on board state and game plan, this should go in a wide variety of decks and has gotten very good testing results in other cubes.
Meloku hasn't been an exciting finisher for a very long time. It has, however, been just good enough to cling to the dregs that are blue five drops. The competition just isn't there. Meloku is abysmally slow unless you just want to go all in and bounce all of your lands, something that really isn't that appealing. Control decks tend to want their mana more than the fliers as they have an abundance of things to do. Probably best in Simic, she has been playable there but is still much less exciting than other options that provide immediate value. You likely can't even make more than a single token the turn you cast her meaning your tokens can't even attack until two turns later. That gives your opponent a ton of time to repond.
In Out
I went back and forth a bit on which version of Very Cryptic Command was my favorite and I settled in on this one. It provides card advantage, disruption, limited counter magic and a unique effect that when it's relevant will be insanely relevant. Turning over a nontoken creature means that it becomes a 2/2 with no abilities ala a morph card. That mode is likely just going to be a safety valve but depending on the board state it can be one that is used more often than it seems. It's not likely worth an entire card but stapling it to one of the other effects will be fantastic. This is good in pretty much any blue deck and I'm excited to have more modal cards!
I've been frustrated with Baral's Expertise for a while now and, much like the rest of the Expertise cycle, really wanted it to be better than it is. Being a sorcery is just so back breaking for this effect as you really need to be ahead on board and be able to get a free effect for this to be worth it. There are so many creatures that have ETB effects that you actively don't want to bounce that this becomes nigh uncastable when behind on board. By the time you can cast it you likely don't have a lot of options for the free card and being limited to sorcery speed removes a ton of functionality that this would otherwise provide.
Didn't Make the Cut
Cheatyface is a card that a lot of people get very excited about and have a lot of fun stories around. It's definitely one of the most iconic Un-cards in history. However, once people know it exists, its very existence warps games and formats in an un-fun way even if it never actually comes up. People start looking for it and it distracts from games consistently. It's best used as a literal one time thing and then burned in a fire in front of everyone. It's miserable to constantly have to think about it and after the first time (where it's definitely funny) nobody wants to actually deal with it. Easy pass.
In Out
Booster Tutor is an older card that provides an incredibly unique play experience that will vary wildly from game to game while being very fun. It does require a bit of cube errata as instead of opening a sealed booster pack we will be using pre-made cube packs from the undrafted cards. My cube is big enough to really never run out of packs even if it gets casted multiple times a draft. The variety and story telling abilities of this card are just too fun to pass up and the power level is definitely there as you are guaranteed at least a couple of relevant cards just because of how I format my cube packs.
Victimize isn't bad but it has really specific requirements that make it an awkward draw at certain stages of the game. Needing to both sacrifice a creature and have multiple targets to cast, there are circumstances where it's stuck in your hand, waiting for chaff to die. The power level is there but it's definitely on the lower end of black cards.
In Out
Summon the Pack is an expensive 8 mana but will likely end a game when it is cast and almost always in hilarious and exciting fashion. Like with Booster Tutor, above, premade cube packs are wildly variant and fun to open. You really don't need to hit that many cards to threaten lethal or swing the tide even if you are way behind and the story telling potential is off the charts. This one is a hit with both power and fun and an easy inclusion. If this one doesn't work out, it will be because 8 mana turns to to just be too much but for now it's worth testing.
Dictate of Erebos is just too expensive and slow. Its power level ranges from game ending to do nothing depending on the board state and, like Victimize, there are a lot of things that need to go right for this to be more than just a win more card. It's effective in most cases but really slow and expensive. Sacrifice decks skew aggressive and this just isn't what those decks want to be playing. Control decks historically don't need this effect as they have better options to control the board and win longer games.
Didn't Make the Cut
Both Hangman and Masterful Ninja hold a lot more value for cubes supporting black aggro sections as they are just really awkward in other builds. They don't have good reanimation, sacrifice or token synergies and both want to be played on curve and require repeated mana infusion to be effective. Hangman has the potential to get out of hand quickly but will also set you way behind if your opponent guesses well. Masterful Ninja plays with some design space that makes it functionally awkward as being both in one's hand and in play simultaneously proved to be a bit confusing and unwieldy. Ultimately, it wasn't worth the mental upkeep.
Didn't Make the Cut
Spike is a little more problematic when compared the pack cards, above. As mentioned online, you have a couple design choices to consider when looking at "outside the game". If that counts all of your collection, then broken combos become the go to which isn't that fun. If you consider the entirety of the cube, you are looking at a really narrow subset of cards since I don't run power. Limiting it to sideboards renders this completely unplayable as the card pool just isn't wide enough to have targets to actually get. Cool design that is hampered by some of the restrictions that make cube what it is.
Over My Dead Bodies is a lot like Masterful Ninja where the upside just isn't worth the mental load required to deal with the mess it creates. It's even worse here where you suddenly have to keep track of two board states for each player and while it's cool, it's also very confusing and deals with design space a little too far out of my comfort zone. It's not even clear that it's good enough as the effect isn't necessarily symmetrical. You can't spend the whole game answering creatures and then cast this so it's only useful against a control deck or with self mill. If you can abuse it, it becomes absurd but without abusing it there just isn't enough of a guaranteed effect.
In Out
Arc Trail is a card that really went under the radar for me and it's high time it got the respect it deserves. My initial thought was that losing the full flexibility provided by Arc Lightning wasn't worth the cost restriction. While you do miss out on wiping the board of tokens, it turns out that's just not what you do with the card most of the time. You almost always ping one target and the player for the remainder and Arc Trail does that already while being easier to cast and serving as a much quicker answer for aggressive starts. The biggest thing Arc Lightning did was help the red player stabilize the board against those going wide and Arc Trail just does that with more consistency.
In Out
Super-Duper Death Ray is a really cool design and provides red with one of its few ways to deal with 4 toughness. The trample is key as you don't feel bad for using this on smaller creatures since nothing goes to "waste". There might even be times when you purposely deal with a single token just to maximize the damage done to your opponent. There is quite a bit of interesting play here and it's a cool take on burn, something that red really appreciates.
Seal of Fire is a fine card that suffers from being really awkward most of the time. The "minigame" of letting this sit in play and forcing your opponent to be aware of its presence doesn't make things as awkward in cube as it does in regular limited. Players have enough good cards that playing around it is more annoying than difficult. The two damage is nice but this is often times just treated as a Shock. My cube doesn't attach much relevance to it being an enchantment so it loses further upside.
In Out
While Blast from the Past is slower than your typical burn spell it's also a lot more interesting and resilient. Because of its keyword soup it runs well in a number of decks including tokens, graveyard, big mana, spells matters, etc. The most typical mode will likely be the cycling and madness combo but don't discount putting more mana into this when you draw it late as it becomes a one card strategy whose value greatly outpaces its cost.
Dealing 3 damage for one mana is the golden standard for burn in magic. Those cards have proven to be among the best answers due to their cost to effect ratio. Rift Bolt is a little misleading as you can't actually have the effect immediately, meaning you have to pay a full three mana to answer a problem the turn you cast it. That's devastating as telegraphing it gives your opponent a turn to get value out of their creature before you are able to remove it. That means holding up counter magic, attacking, adding mana, setting up sacrifice effects, or whatever else they are able to do. It's most common mode is just Suspending it and using it on whatever is immediately relevant. Straight burn isn't really a deck anymore so counting to 20 as soon as possible isn't that important.
In Out
I'm still not convinced Voracious Hydra is the cube all-star that other reviewers are saying it is. However, I'll admit I was a bit bullish on it in my initial set review. I still don't love the cost to size ratio until it gets larger but I failed to see just how important it was to get the bigger green decks relevant late game spells. This does a great job of being castable at different stages of the game, making mulligans easier and allowing those decks to pack an extra threat without loading their hand with cards they can't cast until turn seven. When you do cast this for X=6 or something it's a must answer threat and even though X=2 isn't going to be back breaking, it is going to be relevant and that's likely good enough.
I liked Goreclaw as a way to give green more identity but, as it turns out, there just aren't that many creatures that this is able to work well with. So many creatures have their power wrapped up in abilities instead of stats and this just doesn't interact well with them at all.
In Out
Life from the Loam loses a lot of value in cube when you aren't abusing land destruction spells (which I'm not). It still works well with fetches and cycling and it provides green with a way to load its graveyard up while getting you some value. It's not exactly fast but it does guarantee you hit your land drops while furthering your game plan. I think it's worth testing now that green is more graveyard-centric. It also sends a clear signal to drafters of one of green's core identities and deck strategies.
So I just don't think that straight artifact and enchantment destruction is necessary in cube anymore. It never gets main decked and green has access to a number of flexible cards that deal with non-creature permanents while providing ancillary value. I'm not interested in including side board cards like this when I can be devoting slots to cards that make strategies work more consistently.
Didn't Make the Cut
I had a difficult time finding a variant of Ineffable Blessing that was both powerful and cared about things I want my players paying attention to. Things like counting the number of words in card names, artists and flavor text just isn't something I want to devote mental space to. Cube is complicated enough. The rarity version is probably the only one I'd consider and even then it's just not something I like caring about.
Symbol Status would be extremely powerful if I didn't just normalize all of my basic lands into full art snow lands. I love the way the lands look and I'm not about to change them any time soon. Without counting all of your lands separately, this misses the mark as its power largely relies on being able to obtain four to six tokens on turn four guaranteed. This just isn't going to be relevant without doing that.
Didn't Make the Cut
I desperately wanted Earl of Squirrel to be good but not having any appreciable effect until it attacks without evasion is just not functional for cube. The abilities are real but it needs to both attack and survive to be worth the steep mana cost and it's just too hard to guarantee that.
In Out
I always really liked Untethered Express but was nervous about loading my cube full of vehicles upon its release. It turns out that vehicles are great in gameplay and power level as long as the Crew costs are low. Untethered Express gets out of hand in a hurry trample makes every additional counter meaningful. This is great as an aggro curve topper or mid range powerhouse that gives your early game fodder meaningful impact later in games.
Mirage Mirror didn't work out the way I was hoping at all. Two mana is quite a bit of mana to hold up each turn and it never becomes better than your biggest problem. You also can't take advantage of any ETB effects which seriously restricts the list of relevant targets. It was never unplayable but it was awkward and inconsistent.
In Out
I got turned on to Metallic Mimic after listening to a couple of cube podcasts and being pleasantly surprised with Heirloom Blade. It turns out there are just quite a bit more tribal synergies in cube than it first appears. Metallic Mimic has some really nice synergies with tokens and doesn't need to do a whole lot to be worth the mana as it comes with a playable body to boot. Giving a couple tokens counters or even boosting a single creature the following turn is often enough to make you feel good about including this. Two mana is just so cheap and having no mana requirement means it works in any deck that runs creatures. This is just a solid card.
It feels really good to not be beholden to the entire cycle of signets. The signet for the more aggressive decks just never get played. The aggro decks don't want them and playing an off color signet for control decks is possible but always plays out so poorly as their mana creation is so specific. Nobody is actually going to miss this.
In Out
I've always liked Mind Stone and I'm happy to get it back in cube where it belongs. Giving decks that want to ramp cards that mitigate flood in the late game and help them to get to their finishers more reliably greatly helps the consistency of those decks. Mind Stone isn't overwhleming but is rather incredibly consistent. It will always be good at what it does and it makes the main more often than not. It increases the amount of keepable hands as it's just always a good card.
See Boros signet, above.
In Out
Treasure Map comes highly regarded in other cubes and I'm intrigued enough to give it a trial run. Word on the street is that it isn't as slow as I had feared, instead providing gradual advantages to slower decks that have access to a little bit of extra mana. Reactive decks appreciate the selection and card draw and I really underestimated how helpful having one extra mana is once it flips. Control decks always have a use for excess mana and this does just a little bit of everything just well enough.
See Boros Signet, above. Gruul largely wants more mana than Rakdos and Boros but it still doesn't play the signet as it has access to both creature and spell ramp that is more efficient and effective.
In Out
Including Sword of Dungeons and Dragons seems weird at first glance, I know. It has both protection and is a sword, two things I've decided against in more recent design philosophies. However, the protection is largely irrelevant as I run very few Rogues and Clerics making this much more interactive than your typical sword. The d20 ability is mostly flavor text with an outside chance at creating a great story every once in a while. The real power is in making a token and the power/toughness bonus. Being able to suit up the token you create makes this snowball quickly. The numbers on swords has always felt fair, it's just been the color protection that ruins games. I think this will be powerful but play well in decks that want to run equipment.
See Gruul Signet, above.
Didn't Make the Cut
Entirely Normal Armchair is a really interesting design but struggles in the same way that Cheatyface does, above. I don't want people to feel obligated to start searching for the armchair every turn after it appears. It's just not fun and too taxing on the mental resources, especially for newer players. When you get caught it doesn't feel fun, it feels punishing and frustrating. It's just not what I want in cube.
Everythingamajig has the exact same concerns as Ineffable Blessing, above. Trying to find a combination of abilities that doesn't require players to have to focus on really weird things was challenging. This variant focuses on counters but isn't efficient enough to really be worth the upfront mana investment. Every variant is either too expensive to cast or has one or more abilities that are too expensive to activate.
Didn't Make the Cut
The Great Calcutron is just way too complicated for reasonable play. While I understand what it does, it has so much writing and it greatly changes the base game for both players. Reactive decks definitely don't want to play it and I don't like how much it shoehorns gameplay into a pre-established pattern. Changing your plans on the fly is one of the more enjoyable parts of Magic and this takes that away. The card is cool but I'm not a fan of the complexity or the game play pattern this sets up.
Didn't Make the Cut
X is another card that is just too complicated for its own good. It just requires way too much attention to figure out what it does. The game play isn't good either as once you are able to use the last ability, it's all you will do until this leaves play. There just isn't a reason not to do that if you can get literally anything from your opponent's hand. Dimir already has a couple of cards that play your opponent's cards and I think they all have better play patterns and are more easily understood than this is.
In Out
Cruel Celebrant is another signpost card for the Orzhov go wide deck and works wonders in tandem with other cards that share the effects. The second toughness on the body is really appreciated for the cost and it's really nice that it counts both itself and planeswalkers as every point of damage matters in these decks.
Ayli proved to be just a bit too slow and didn't gain enough value on the life gain to be worthwhile. Almost all of the power in this is tied up in the body as you rarely were able to cast the removal mode without other lifelink synergies (rare in my cube). Most of the creatures in the Orzhov decks are small and numerous which works poorly with high toughness rewards provided by her sacrifice ability. Requiring mana is further annoying as it prevents you from being able to realistically gain value in the face of mass removal or when you are behind on mana.
In Out
Across the board, I like the cycling lands better than temples. Both ETB tapped but being able to trade your land in for an actual card in the late game greatly outclasses a single instance of Scry 1. Getting your lands into your graveyard is relevant for the green decks, particularly as Gruul continues its slow strategy shift towards lands matters.
In the end, I feel really good about this update. I was able to fix some mistakes, make some changes that will do some good and lighten up on a design philosophy I no longer feel is appropriate. In the end, cube is supposed to be a fun and interactive format and I feel that the Un-cards I've added are both of those things. They also work wonderfully in a cube as big as mine as an infrequent spice that should lead to fun stories and game play moments. Looking forward, we have Throne of Eldraine coming up in the fall and I am more excited about this set than any in recent memory. Both Camelot and Grimm's Fairy Tales resonate deeply with me and while I'm not sure how the set will be for cube (we still don't know anything mechanically speaking) I'm just excited to play with it and find out more. As always, I'm hoping it's going to be a hit. Until then though, Happy Cubing everyone!
