Fate Reforged Preliminary Review

Yasova Dragon Claw 5.5

A 4/2 trample for 2G is not the worst deal in the world and this quirky human comes with bonus inbuilt Threaten each turn. This is certainly good enough to see cube play however we are very much now in a place where there are so many cube worthy magic cards that a lot comes down to personal preference or the themes in your cube. I will certainly try this card out as it is quite hard to judge on paper alone. It has many qualities and lots of potential however it has a few awkward aspects to counterbalance this. The big one is that you only get 2 toughness for your three mana which can really hurt your tempo when you stand to get no free value as you do with Kitchen Finks or Trinket Mage. A simple Arc Trail will ruin the aggressive turn one Elf into this turn two and that is something to be wary of with cards like this. A little like with Boon Satyr, you can flop this down on turn two or three to smooth your curve but more often you want to make it later when you can use it more fully. When you have six mana you can make Yasova and threaten right away giving helping to ensure you do not get blown out with cheap removal. Another drawback to Yasova is that she is basically gold as you ideally want access to the ability. Certainly it is a flexible and convenient style of gold card but it is still more restrictive than the afore mentioned Boon Satyr. Yasova is aggessive early, has the potential to dominate a late game and offers some decent synergy options. A few years ago Yasova would have have been a lock in for the cube but now, with such fierce competition from other great cards, she will have to earn a main cube slot.


Valorous Stance 7

Not an especially exciting card but a real gem none the less. Comparable removal and combat tricks have been played in the cube and so this offering an option on either makes it a real winner. This is better than a lot of the two mana RtR Charms and it is just one colour! Usually cards like this are a cost such that neither aspect of the card is that powerful compared to cards with less utility, see Izzet Charm for two or Careful Study, Shock and Spell Pierce for one. Valorous Stance compared to Reprisal seems altogether rather more reasonable. Mostly I suspect this will be included for the removal option so as to make your deck more robust however I think you will wind up using both portions of the card fairly frequently. Combat tricks are good, counterspelling removal effects are good and they are all the better when you don't have to dedicate a card to having that option available. All the very best cube effects of this nature all have other uses so as to offset the situational aspect and Valorous Stance does this exceptionally well. It is good enough to be viable in aggro, mid-range and control decks which is not something many cards can boast.


Sandsteppe Mastodon 2

Wolfir Silverheart this is not. While you can flop this out as a 10/10 with no other dorks around it is still just bad compared to alternatives. Seven mana cards should do a whole lot more than this even if this does seem powerful in a nominal sort of way.


Ugin, the Spirit Dragon 7.5

Somewhere between a Karn Liberated and a Nicol Bolas Planeswalker. Lots of power for lots of mana but being so versatile and so colourless I suspect this top end planeswalker will see quite a lot of play, certainly more than Nicol Bolas. Lots of starting loyalty with a strong and readily useful +2 ability allow you to safely, efficiently and quickly grow this beast. If things are a bit rougher you have a panic button mode which should leave you with Ugin in play and deal with everything else. Indeed, the minus X ability alone on this should see All is Dust removed to the B cube and getting very little play thereafter. Ugin even has a more useful ultimate than most other walkers. He should be able to close out games with the top two abilities but the ultimate offers far more in the way of outs and power to Ugin. It is fairly easy to get Ugin to 10 or more loyalty and if you are in burn range or need a specific card the -10 can help on both accounts. It gives you a huge influx of resources and will be very hard to beat. All in all there are no downsides to Ugin beyond his immense cost, he is well rounded, offers lots of utility and lots of power. If you think you will get to 8 mana with your deck Ugin is going to be a strong candidate for it. For one more mana you get a lot more power than you do with Karn, for normal decks that one extra mana will be very slow to come by however for any sort of ramp deck the difference will be fairly negligible.


Ethereal Ambush 4

Five mana for a pair of 2/2s, even at instant speed, is not enough for the cube however the potential for those 2/2s to be creatures you can "morph" in rather increases the value of the card. I still think it is a bit slow, expensive and situational to see play but it is none the less an interesting card. There are some silly combos with manifest effects as well such as Phyrexian Dreadnaught (which I assume works) for which blue and green are good colour hosts.


Soul Summons 4

Much less exciting than Ethereal Ambush this cheaper more basic version of the card is likely going to be the go to spell for and manifest synergy simply because it is so cheap. A 2/2 for two is also acceptable enough that even with just some synergy with the card you may play it in a white weenie style deck. Not powerful but doing a specific thing as cheaply as we are likely to see it.


Gurmag Angler 2

This is likely better than Tombstalker now as it can be reduced to one mana and because it is a zombie but Tombstalker has not seen any cube play in quite a few years now. I think this is overall to narrow for the cube however it is exactly the kind of card that will slot perfectly into some synergy/tribal based aggro decks.


Jeskai Sage 6

While not an obvious bomb this new incarnation of Survielling Sprite / Alchemist's Apprentice seems like it does the job you want it to better than the others. Blue has very little in the way of cheap creatures making cards like Thassa and Master of Waves much harder to abuse as well as a more general difficulty in creating tempo decks. All the good cheap blue dorks either offer pathetic stats or they are just to low power compared to the other colours dorks. This card being more than a 1/1 actually has a relevant board presence beyond being a chump blocker and the fact that it is not as powerful as a Tarmogoyf is well offset by the replacement card you get when it dies. Alone this card is very average however it does a huge amount of work to make the strong blue three and four drop tempo cards that much better and more viable. Previously Looter-il Kor was about the best thing you could hope to play on turn two in a (non-merfolk) tempo blue deck and for that reason I would expect this to be a mainstay aggro blue card for some time to come. Prowess is at its best in blue decks as well which helps this little critter too.


Soulflayer 6.5

Another better than Tombstalker card but for rather different reasons than Gurmag Angler. Soulflayer has great utility, scaling and abuses that Tombstalker lacked, it is just a 5/5 flier. Soulflayer is cheaper and has the potential to be far far better. Haste, indestructible, hexproof, doublestrike and lifelink are all obnoxious things you can give Soulflayer that can make it far more troublesome than just a 5/5 flier. Trample and flying are also very strong for it and any other ability is a perk. Many of these abilities can be found on widely playable creatures and sometimes several on just one. The humble Vampire Nighthawk alone makes Soulflayer look very good and that is a low end outcome for the card. You can simply throw Soulflayer into a midrangy dork deck where there are some nice abilities for it to pick up and a reasonable chance it is costing 4 or less fairly early in the game. You can also go a bit more focused on the card and include slightly more awkward critters with the right key words and a heavier discard theme. Overall this is a versatile minion that can be nutty and will never be awful while also being a card that rewards skilled deck design.


Whisperwood Elemental 5.5

While a very powerful card there is fierce competition in green on the five slot from both planeswalker and creatures. Whisperwood offers incremental value much like a planeswalker as well as a little bit of security against mass removal effects. Not only does it put things onto the board and offer reasonable tempo but with the manifest mechanic and a half decent creature count you should also be getting decent card advantage as well which is a much more exciting and rare ability in green. The downsides of the card are that it is slow to do that much and is quite a weak body for the mana itself. You can even have it killed before your end step and gain no advantage at all from it. Despite being a creature it does feel like it compares more to the various five mana planeswalkers in green than it does to the other five mana creatures. As with all manifest the Elemental is improved with library manipulation however being an ongoing (hopefully) effect it will scale better with Sylvan Library and such than Soul Summons etc. The verdict is that it is comfortably powerful enough for the cube but may not see enough play to keep a slot due to the potent alternatives. Master of the Wild Hunt is another card similar to this, offering removal instead of card advantage and protection and having a cheaper cost for a smaller body. The difference between and end step trigger and an unkeep one is huge and makes the Whisperwood a far better card in a vacuum. I am tempted to do a direct swap for the two cards as Master sees very little play these days despite greens lack of removal options. It is a little of an awkward swap as the cards are at different pionts on the curve and can be used for completely different reasons.


Outpost Siege 2

Good options to have on a card however both are a bit pricey for what you get in return. It is unlikely you will have a deck that frequently wants to use both sides of the card and for just one of the abilities you have much better alternatives you can use instead. At three mana this would be vastly more appealing, as it is I suspect it will never see cube play.


Kolaghan, the Storm's Fury 3.5

Powerful but not enough better or different that Falkenrath Aristocrat or Thundermaw Hellkite to merit a cube slot. Dash is a useful mechanic but really I would just rather have haste on my dork when the costs are the same as they are with Kolaghan. A powered up version of battlecry is also nice but again, done better by cheaper more streamlined cards like Hero of Oxid Ridge (who isn't even in the cube himself) and Hellrider.


Shemanic Revelation  3.5

I like the card a lot and imagine it will outperform Sphinx's Revaltion in the right decks however it is narrow and is awful when you don't have a board presence. While green is a little light on card draw effects it prefers to have them on the back of planeswalkers or creatures like Regal Force so that they are not so dead when you cannot effectively draw with them. This also has potential use as redundancy for this kind of effect in a more combo style deck but again, such things are narrow and as such this will never have a permanent A cube slot. It is a whole lot better than Collective Unconcious at least!


Flamerush Rider 3

This is quite an awkward card to review as it is very polar. When it is bad it is very very bad and when it is good it is lovely. With a good attacking board position and something like a Flametongue Kavu that has a great enter the battlefield effect to copy you can wreak people with this, the slightly cheaper dash will really help you to set up and surprise people with it as well. Overall I would say this card is a win more card and despite it being quite fun I cannot see it being a cube mainstay or performing at all consistently.


Sage-Eye Avengers 1

This is so far from the power level of the various other blue six drops that it isn't much worth discussing the various merits of this card. It is good, but not good enough, and it does a thing quite well but the thing it does it a bit late in the day for when this Djinn offers it. No evasion, no protection, no card advantage, not that much of a threat, just some very late to the party tempo.


Palace Siege 0

Both halves of this card are grossly over cost for the effect and neither are that exciting on top of that. This is the worst of the Siege cycle of which none are very good.


Temporal Trespass 6

A good card, likely better than Temporal Mastery however not a bomb card by any means. Eight is a lot to delve, unless you are hitting more than six cards the vast majority of the time then this is quite a lot worse than conventional five mana Time Walks. Delve cards scale poorly with each other and for my money I would rather be Digging Through Time and Cruising for Treasure than Trespassing the Temporal if I felt like I would have a full enough yard to use such cards consistently. I do wonder if a critical mass of top rate delve cards is being reached such that Mental Note style cards are becoming viable A cube cards. The low end of this card is unplayably bad and the top end is not that much more exciting than Temporal Manipulation and Time Warp. Compare that to Dig Through Time which is quite acceptable when you cannot delve hard or at all and is so much better than some thing like a Fact or Fiction when cast for just UU. Self exile ensures the card is hard to abuse but I feel like the delve would have done that anyway for cube at least. Triple blue cost also goes a long way to restricting the applications of the card to the point where I think it will only see play in heavy blue tempo decks that have ways to pitch it to other effects or graveyard based combo decks like reanimator.


Jeskai Infiltrator 1

A cute card that is quite fun and can offer a fair amount of value. The issues with this card are poor stats for the mana, that it is very slow to yield advantage, that there are many other good blue three drops and that it has counter synergy with other creatures which are exactly the kind of decks you might play such a dork. Overall this shouldn't be seeing any play.


Soulfire Grandmaster 6.5

It is fairly hard to go wrong with this card although unless you are also a red mage this is little more than a 2/2 lifelinker. Turning all your Lightning Bolts into Lightning Helix is a cute perk and makes this a decent value and tempo play early. Being able to recur your spells gives this Grandmaster some real late game legs. Although dissimilar in effect and ability I suspect this will feel quite a lot like the level up dorks like Kargan Dragon Lord and Figure of Destiny. Get to six mana with this chap and have a Counterspell or an Incinerate in hand and you have a pretty potent engine on the go. I do consider this a gold card but like Yasova, it is far more flexible and convenient than your typical gold cards, it can be Jeskai, Boros or Azorious and it can get to work if you are stitched for any colour other than white. This card is very potent but it is also somewhat niche. I suspect people will play it more often than it should be included in decks and feel it will frequently be out performed by more humble cards like Young Pyromancer.


Archfiend of Depravity 3.5

I like this dork, it does a powerful thing and it is good threat on top of this. Unfortunately it is not quite cube worthy as the thing it does is both too slow and too situational. Not that many decks need more than two dorks in play to be getting the job done and so this will be far less use most of the time than Shriekmaw. Archfiend gives your opponent time and choices both of which lower the vale of the card.


Temur War Shaman 0

Overcost, slow and frankly just a poor imitation of Whisperwood Elemental.


Lightform 5

Not as cheap as Soul Summons but still a low cost card that not only has manifest synergy but also aura and enchantment synergy as well as a much more relevant intermediate facedown dork. Not quite a Vampire Nighthawk but fairly close. Perhaps not quite powerful enough to be a cube mainstay this card has so much going on I think it will fairly find itself neatly slotted into a relatively wide and exotic selection of decks.


Dromoka, the Eternal 4

A fine card but I think I would rather have Ajani or Sigarda, Host of Herons in my Selesnya five slot. This dragon will end the game quick enough if not answered but isn't doing much else for you nor is it as quick as alternatives in its killing of people.


Frontier Siege 1

There are cheaper and better ways to ramp for two and given the distinct lack of green fliers, or the fact that fliers are not good fighters, or even the fact that there are better ways of getting to fight the dragons half of the card is really quite weak. All in all pretty unplayable.


Wandering Champion 4.5

I am drawn to this card two fold, firstly for the aggressive stats balance on a cheap beater and secondly as a proactive card quality effect. For the latter you need to be in more than just white and without it the card isn't good or exciting enough. As such it is basically yet another gold card like Yasova or Grandmaster. Jeskai is one of the most powerful and diverse three colour combo in the the cube and looting, even if it is the weaker red style discard first, is a powerful effect alone and has a vast array of synergies and things it enables. Sadly the odds on you getting to loot are low, the card is vulnerable itself, is easily blocked, is a fairly high priority to block and the loot is conditional on both having a blue/red permanent and doing damage to a player. Looter il-Kor is the far more consistent card and will remain much more playable but this is a good option to have and might just sneak a cube slot.


Marang River Prowler 4.5

Much as I want to give this a slot in my cube it is not really powerful enough and is on the niche side of things on top of that. Essentially it is a gold card, it needs enablers to make it really good and all told, playing three mana for a 2/1 is pretty sucky. The most comparable card to this is Bloodghast where being unblockable really doesn't make up for a three mana difference in the return cost. Marang River Prowler cannot be abused with sacrifice outlets and is therefore only a persistent threat, a very slow one. I love a free card, I love a recurring card, I love a card I can be happy putting in the bin and I love a card I can tutor up in sneaky ways but all my love cannot change it from being a three mana 2/1 that can't block.


Battle Brawler 4

A decent enough body that would have been quite the powerhouse ten years ago. These days situational dorks that are slightly above the power curve but do nothing else just don't cut it. In very specific decks this might be slightly better than something else but there just isn't room to include marginal luxury cards like that in the cube. Powerful enough, just, but offering nothing new and in no way needed by anything.


Silumgar, the Drifting Death 5.5

I am a little loath to clog up the cube with narrow gold cards however this has some serious things going for it. A 3/7 flying hexproof is incredibly hard to deal with and blocks like a total champion. On the offensive he is slow to kill but very hard to block while being the complete bane of weenie decks. It will likely come down to whether I prefer the more versatile Oona, Queen of Fea or this immovable object as to which has a slot and this will likely alternate somewhat regularly to keep things fresh.


Shaman of the Great Hunt 7

This bad boy is the best of this cycle when you fail to have the other colours available. He is really quite comparable to Hero of Oxid Ridge and Hellrider, both of which he can outperform fairly well without spending any more than 3R on him. He pumps himself and he turns your other dorks into Slith Firewalkers. Being a high priority thing to block you will likely still get some permanent value from him beyond the creature he trades with. The pumping of your other dorks also works well with his ferocious ability which should be averaging you well over one card per use. Four mana for a card is going to win you any late game situation and will be worth taking a midgame tempo hit fairly often when you can get two or more cards from it. The Shaman is dangerous when attacking, he is dangerous when your other dorks are attacking and he is staying safely back and he is even still dangerous when you have no good attacks and you are sitting there in a stalemate. For cube purposes this is the stand out card from this cycle of dorks as it is so good in so many situations. It is not narrow like Grandmaster in the archetypes that support it nor is it weak without using the mana ability like Yasova.


Monastery Mentor 7

I have heard this called the white Rabblemaster which is generous but not unreasonable. The main reason this is not quite the card Rabblemaster is is because you need to activate it with other things, it does not just make an army and kill you totally of its own accord. This makes Monastry Mentor a card you need to build carefully around, too low a spell count and it is not that exciting. White also does not have the most in the way of good cheap spells, enough to make this strong but not enough to totally abuse, for that you will need to step into more Jeskai looking colours. As soon as you can reliably trigger it once per turn you have a card that is quite some distance better than Rabblemaster. You can get quite a big tempo jump by making a bunch of tokens right away unlike the goblin which is limited to one a turn. Monastry Mentor also has a kind of triple effect scaling with non creature spells, he grows, he makes a 1/1 and then he grows all previously made 1/1s. Prowess is an annoying ability that makes combat much more awkward and complicated, having it on one guy is trouble enough but Mentor makes an army of them! In an unpowered cube you can get some stupidly early kills with just the Mentor and a bunch of spells.


Shu Yun, the Silent Tempest 5

A potent midrange beater that can get quite obnoxious if you have spells and red or white mana to go with it. Blue is a bit full on three drops, this is a bit gold, a bit situational, a bit vulnerable and a bit of a do nothing should it get killed. As with Monastery Mentor you can get some pretty darn quick goldfish kills using this card but they are a lot more speculative and you stand to get a lot less value from this when you are not killing them. Another one of the cards with enough power for cube but that is too narrow and fiddly to make the cut.

Monastery Seige 3

Likely the best of the Seige cycle but as with all the others I feel like I don't often feel like I would want both of these options in a deck to warrant the expense of the card. In a reanimator deck you want to loot and protect your big things but this is so slow you might as well just cast your things rather than loot them and then play another threat instead of this and just utterly change your deck so that you are not considering bad cards for it any more. So many other things loot better than this does, that is pretty much where this comment should have ended.


Daghatar the Adamant 1

Slow, fiddly and a bit underwhelming. Sure, he is an acceptable body for the mana and some combat trickery. He has some very annoying applications against cards and some great synergy with others however none of that is worth a four mana durdle dork, especially not a gold one.


Torrent Elemental 4

A rare card that adds a bit more interest to the only other card I know that has inbuilt exile protection - Misthollow Griffin. A 3/5 for five is likely better than a 3/3 for three and coming back from exile tapped is probably equally offset by tapping down blockers when it attacks. Alas that this is basically a gold card making it that much harder to build with. Misthollow Griffin has seen no play at all thus far however it predated all the juicy delve cards and was forgotten about. I am not sure it is worth all the trouble discarding cards, then delving them and then getting them back from exile but it reeks of value at each step of the journey and so has a lot of appeal. It is the only real way there is of being able to repeatedly delve cast spells without running out of cards, not that this is much of a thing with Time Walk based Simic combo decks being less common. I think just one cast of Treasure Cruise is quite enough! Essentially this is a very cool card that you can do some really cool stuff with but that isn't powerful or impactive enough to be bothering to include.


Mardu Strike Leader 6

Black is getting a bit like blue these days with too many good three drops to chose from, this Leader being another example of one. A 3/2 for 3 is OK, a free 2/1 each time you attack is decent, you will get value even when chump attacking with it and left unanswered it will close out a game in Rabblemaster like fashion. The dash option also gives the card better utility, curve options and a top deck tempo play. Usually you will want to slap this down for three for mana efficiency however against mass removal the dash option will be more appealing.


Supplant Form 3

A potent card that is simply too expensive for the cube for the kind of effect it offers. The general reason you play bounce effects is for tempo and for versatility. This only hits dorks and costs six which means it fails to offer you early tempo when you need it most and is not a versatile card, not only can you not hit anything non-creature but you really don't want to be aiming this at anything small. This is not just a bounce card however, it is also a bit of a Clone. To my mind the reasons you play Clone effect cards are because you can often get a really good deal paying four or less for something like a Titan which can greatly recover your position in a game you fall behind. With this at six is is unlikely to get you a dork that is that much more converted mana cost than six and against a lot of the time you will be getting dorks that cost less than six. This kind of card falls into the same category as Spelljack, powerful and swingy but just too expensive for the role it performs.


Citadel Siege 4

Although neither the dragons or the khans half of this card is bad and you could well want either effect in the same sort of deck this is still not a cube worthy card. It is quite a clunky card that is not really much of a threat alone. You get far more power and versatility from planeswalkers and creatures that are also actual threats.


Flamewake Phoenix 6

This is unrealistically close in power and effect to Chandra's Phoenix - a card that was a complete mainstay when it was first released and has gradually seen less and less play since then. The issue with the original Chandra's Phoenix is that three is quite a lot of mana to pay for a 2/2, in the more control decks you don't have the mana spare to cast it lots and in aggro decks the damage output and level of threat is just pitiful compared to what you can be doing with three mana that it is left in the sidelines. That all said, haste and flying are two of the best abilities going in magic and a recursive threat that offers synergy as well still has a lot of clout. I am wary that having both in the cube might be a little bit too much however choosing between them is very tricky. As there is some merit in having both for a bit of redundancy in their synergies I suspect it will be either both or neither that I support in my cube. Once you move past the shared discard and recursion synergy these two cards are actually suited to very different decks. Flamewake Phoenix requires you to have ferocious to come back while Chandra's triggers from spell and planeswalker damage. The more creatures you have in your deck the less spells and planeswalkers you will have and vice versa so the better one Phoenix becomes the weaker the other is. Generally I would say that the Chandra's Phoenix is either a control card or burn deck card while Flamewake is better suited to midrange and stompy decks. Flamewake only costs one to return and so can be much better tempo however you cannot return it to hand and so it has no ongoing synergy with discard outlets. I have used Chandra's Phoenix to good effect as a second Squee in a Forbid lock deck which will not be helped much at all by Flamewake. Flamewake is carefully designed so that you cannot use it as a way to continually have a chump blocker up nor can you repeatedly make it for one and abuse it with a sacrifice outlet. So, this is a great little card that offers a great many things all in a neat little package that I fear will see only light play due to having somewhat low immediate impact on a game.


Mardu Shadowspear 3.5

Pulse Tracker is back, and this time he has dash! While I briefly ran the original Vampire in the cube when he was first released there was a lot less choice for one drops back then. There are many reasons why this and Pulse Tracker are just worse than a 2/1 for one including weak combat strength against other creatures, poor planeswalker attrition, poor scaling with a bunch of creature keywords like lifelink etc etc. Gone are the days where any dork that costs one and hits for two being thrown in the cube. Dash is not nearly enough to make this card interesting, especially when it is twice the cost of just throwing the card down first.


Brutal Hordechief 4

Very powerful limited style card but all too much of a phaff on what is mostly just a Hill Giant to be worth a cube slot. Giving a sinlge point drain life on all your attackers is nice but barely compensates for the Hill Giant body, you certainly wouldn't be happy playing this without the R/W activated ability available. Certainly it is powerful and should easily win you any stalemate board positions but it does fairly little from behind and very expensive to use.


Whisperer of the Wilds 6

I am a big fan of this new ramp option. I find it quite similar to Joraga Tree Speaker although overall less potent. It is also very similar to Devoted Druid, a card I have not frequently run in my A cube. Devoted Druid has some potential for abuse and can reliably offer two mana on a turn of your choosing however outside of that one turn it is mostly just a bad Llanowar Elf. The reason I prefer Whisperer of the Wilds to Devoted Druid is that it can fairly reliably provide two mana most turns which allows you to pack that much more fat and things to spend mana on. Whisperer is narrower than many of the other ramp critters as you need to have a reasonable count of dorks that provide ferocious before it is worth playing at all however this is the case for most of the decks that would want such a two drop. It is also not an elf meaning you will not be finding this in many tribal decks. At worst this is still very playable even if there are better alternatives but when it is good it offers so much extra power for so little risk, investment or messing around that it is well worth it.


Arcbond 2

Very narrow and a little silly but being cheapish and instant with no upper limit on its output there are some abuses and combos lurking about for this card I am sure. Doubtful that they will make this cube worthy but still one to watch.


Wild Slash  6.5

For me this is one of the stand out cards in the set. There is precious little in the way of good one mana instant speed burn in the cube. After Burst Lightning and Bolt there is nothing much better than Shock on offer, you either have to suck up sorcery speed, or pay more than one mana, or have weak unexciting spells, or overly situational spells. Wild Slash is not exciting, numbers wise it is still just Shock. Wild Slash is reliable and consistent and every now and again it will totally bail you. Most of the time you probably won't have ferocious, most of the times that you do having unpreventable damage will be irrelevant however when it is relevant it will be pretty huge and swingy, and you get this perk for free. Oddly I quite liken it to Boros Charm, a card you are typically playing as something that just reads "do four damage to a player" but then every now and again it makes all your things indestructible and wins the game on the spot. Wild Slash is not quite so swingy nor as frequent in its alternate use coming up useful however it is a far more versatile and broadly playable card to begin with than Boros Charm. Wild Slash makes all damage unpreventable so you can use it in combination with other cards to do much more brutal things. You can get round protection from red or True-Name Nemesis or just get past tedious white lock down enchantments with your creatures for a turn. Unpreventable damage is an effect red can put to great use but historically has had to forgo such things main deck as it cannot afford slots on situational things. Flaring Pain has often been seen in sideboards to allow red to cope with things when it knows it will be facing them but now we have Wild Slash we can happily play main deck and afford us much the same effect while saving sideboard slots and retaining high average card power and redundancy. This is not just a great cube card, I expect to see copies of this cropping up in almost every format, certainly not any where near the extent of Treasure Cruise but still out there none the less.


Tasigur, the Golden Fang 6

This guy kind of has it all, he offers a wide array of synergies, he has some with himself and he is powerful as he is. You can use him aggressively as a cheap fat dork or you can use him defensively and generate card advantage. He makes Gurmag Angler look really quite unplayable by comparison! Four is a fair amount of mana to pay to get one card however you can do it at instant speed meaning you can leave mana up and somewhat negate the high cost when being the control player. The card is also one from your graveyard meaning you can potentially abuse certainly things repeatedly, with library manipulation and delve effects you can have a lot of control over what you will be getting back thus furthering the value of the effect. He has double synergy with discard themed decks as he can be cast that much sooner and then can contribute further to the putting of things into the graveyard. He is basically gold, although still playable as just a black card even if rather bland. Being gold and a bit of a midrange card with further costs I cannot get too excited about him although he is rather cool.


Warden of the First Tree 6.5

Highly comparable to Figure of Destiny in most regards, Warden is slightly better early and has more top end scaling potential however it can never be a mono coloured card. Warden is easier to grow than Figure in general as it is less colour intense, this is most the case when you are Azban but still true if you are only in black or white. While my gut is still to prefer Figure as it is playable in mono coloured decks I am finding more and more that mono decks are less common and less powerful. RtR and now Khans has really upped the value of being in multiple colours and as such Figure is probably less overall playable than Warden in the current environment as it is so hard to include it in a deck that has any non red or white colours in it. Despite these subtle differences Warden is a great little card, it gives you great flexibility and really really helps to smooth out your curve, both by having cheaper plays and more options on how to spend your mana. It is a dangerous threat and all round winner.

Ojutai, Soul of Winter 2

This is fine but not good, for seven mana and a gold card you could do a lot lot better. This can win games and can help you in rough spots but it is very underwhelming for what you pay for it. White and blue do not have many other dragons so you will usually be waiting to get the tap down trigger making this painfully slow. Give me a Timayo every day.


Wildcall 5

Much like Soul Summons but with much better late game scaling for the penalty of a heavier colour requirement. Having +1/+1 counters on manifest cards is extra good as it gives you lots of potential to abuse things, a Kalonian Hydra under a Wildcall, even with just X as 2, is going to be brutal. One of the main reasons to be playing Soul Summons is the prowess and similar style triggers than come with it which are far less useful in green. This card is cool and has some synergy to offer but I am not sure if it is doing enough of anything specific to merit inclusion. I hope I am wrong as I really like everything about this card but I just cannot see where I am playing it.


Reality Shift 6

Curse of the Swine but this time cheaper and more instanterer. Curse of the Swine was a flop because it failed to do what you most need from removal which is gaining tempo. Sorcery speeds and 3 mana minimum is a bad start, leaving behind 2/2's doesn't help much either. Pongify and company deal with some of the problems but make others worse and comes with new ones. Exile is worlds more useful than destroy effects in the cube and a 3/3 is a much nastier threat than a 2/2, more so than the numbers alone suggest. Reality Shift is a lovely medium ground between the two, it gives blue a solid cheap instant exile effect that provides reliable removal as well as good tempo potential. While I initially jumped all over this when I saw it first due to blues impotency in the removal department I do have one concern about this card on more careful reflection. Typically blue deals with tokens easily using bounce however against random manifested cards this is not a viable option. This in turn means that you will typically have to kill the manifest card in combat meaning your opponent has a lot of control over the card which means if it is good a creature they can usually save it to a time it is convenient to turn face up. As such you have a card that is not unlike Chaos Warp, potent removal that comes with a risk of giving them something pretty potent back. At least with Reality Shift you can be confident of safely using it early in the game. Overall I think the card is valuable enough in blue that it will see some play but I suspect more of the time people will just splash black or white for simpler removal.


Write into Being 3

Another card that I love but sadly one that is just too slow for what cube does. There are so many cool things you can do with manifest and that extra bit of card quality built in makes all of those cool things much more likely. Sadly a 3 mana 2/2 is just not bringing home the bacon.


Sultai Emissary 5

Another slight upgrade on a previously close card. I was a fan of Butcher Ghoul when it was first spoiled despite desperately wishing it cost 1! Even back then it was too weak for cube and so this slight upgrade seems like it will similarly be too weak for present cube. The Emissary is a little better with things like Recurring Nightmare and obviously when you hit good things to flip over but in a vacuum is broadly just a 1/1 for 2 than dies into a 2/2, nothing that is getting much done nor representing the worlds best value. Vampiric Tutor offers some nice synergy with this too. I think ultimately I just don't quite know how yet to evaluate manifest as I have not played with it nor fully grasped how it can be used and how it will effect other cards. It may just be good in some colours, it may not be good enough or it might be better than expected. If I am underrating manifest then this is likely good enough and more than just a little better than Butcher Ghoul.


Humble Defector 6

I love it! I am also overrating it a little like I did with Wild Guess and similar because I love to draw cards. There is a lot about this that stops it being too abused or too powerful in a vacuum. Having to tap it to exchange it for cards makes it hard to do much quickly or get bonus value attacking then dumping for cards. Having only one toughness makes it very easy for you to kill once you have traded it in for cards but it also makes its easily disrupted and weak in combat. Restricting it to your turn makes it worse against removal and less use blocking. All that said and done it is still a card that can draw two for two mana or just be a 2 power beater. I like the idea of games where people draw three cards a turn also!


Atarka, World Render 3

Big, fat and killy but pricey and unexciting. The only cube home for this is a dragon themed deck, even Dragonstorm probably doesn't need this kind of sillyness.


Alesha Who Smiles at Death 5.5

A wholly acceptable body for the mana that comes with potent utility and value options. If you get to attack and have black and/or white mana you get to start putting your dead weenies back into action very efficiently indeed. She is fairly vulnerable and is only really good in combat against things of the same cost or less meaning you will likely average less than one activation with Alesha. This is still fine, you will have pulled removal with a cheap card at worst. One trigger, even with a chump attack from Alesha can still get you great value, 2 for 1 or better, some forced through damage or some naughty creature recurred like a Stoneforge Mystic. A bit gold and a bit low initial impact for my liking but powerful enough for sure and reasonably convenient as well.


Mastery of the Unseen 4.5

Expensive and slow but very powerful and full of lots of potential to be part of a themed manifest deck. As a way of putting dorks into play this is not the best option white has nor even that close to it. It has anti-synergy with itself as you are dumping mana into it therefore having less spare to turn your things face up.


Temur Sabertooth 4

I want this to be good but it feels like Cudgel Troll is just better. This has great interaction with manifest and will be a limited bomb but for cube it is too pricey for just a solid midrange beater. Vengevine or Thrun, the Last Troll have much more appeal than this.


Jeskai Barricade 4

A very cute defensive enabler. Great with Wall of Omens, Knight of the White Orchid and Blade Splicer but at heart it is a control card in which it is too narrow to be a mainstay. Great when it is good but awful too often resulting in a card quite a lot worse than Wall of Omens.


Abzan Beastmaster 3

Nearly a green Dark Confidant except that it costs three and is overly situational on the trigger... Three mana 2/1s are sad, especailly ones you need to keep alive. I'll stick to my Ohran Viper for now.


Frost Walker 5.5

Aggro blue two drop! This is weak, would not make the cut in any other colour yet could probably be a 3/1 and still be a consideration simply due to how little blue has available to it in this area. There are relatively few things that target dorks that wouldn't kill this despite the sacrifice clause. Of those effects that wouldn't otherwise kill Frost Walker there are even less that do so in a way that makes you feel ripped off, trading a two drop for a planeswalker activation isn't that bad. So what you get with this is a very offensive dork you can play on turn two pretty happily. If they deal with it you have likely maintained tempo and if not it will do a gross amount of damage. It will greatly help power up blue devotion cards and is a real win for any aggro blue strategy not relying on a tribal theme. Narrow, not the most powerful but sorely needed!


Mardu Woe-Reaper 6.5

A double blow to both Elite Vanguard and the sad sad Savannah Lions. Vanguard will still get a little play in human theme decks but is so low down the pick order of one drops that this will be very rare. So, tried and tested 2/1 for 1 winds up in most aggro decks, this comes with a minor but useful perk. A little bit of disruption against several graveyard focused strategies complete with some bonus life gain. A similar sort of disruption to Dryad Militant but the Mardu Woe-Reaper is quite a bit better other than not being castable for green. Creatures tend to be better targets, life gain is nice and targeted proactive disruption feels better than pre-emptive passive disruption. Soldier of the Pantheon is still the number one white 2/1 for one but this is a comfortable second.


Rally the Ancestors 2

Interesting and powerful but far too narrow for general cube use. The only applications I can see for this in cube are combo ones and those seem like you could probably just do better things and use better cards than Rally the Ancestors.


Renowned Weaponsmith 5

Vedalken Engineer is back and this time he has mystery utility and extra toughness at the small cost of no longer colour fixing. Colour fixing is usually quite a big deal but with artifact restrictions in place it is significantly less important with very few cube artifacts needing coloured mana. Extra toughness is a big deal and goes a long way to protecting himself so as to ramp more reliably as well as protecting you so as to not die! I suspect the mystery utility will not be worthy of main cube inclusion but it cannot make the card worse. Finding a Heart-Piercer Bow is not a thing I want to be doing. This is narrow but very powerful indeed, it is the kind of card that would make me want to add an artifact theme to a deck so as to be able to play effectively.


Mardu Scout 4

Not quite powerful enough these days. Double red to cast is broadly going to be lame too although this card is very nice with Perphorus. Dash gives you some casting flexiblity, a bit of a tempo boost or protection for the card but while it increases the utility of the card somewhat it is always just a 3/1 dork that always costs at least two which leaves it underpowered.


Cloudform 5

Another very interesting manifest card I wish mostly to sit on the fence about. Three mana 2/2s are a bit iffy, flying and hexproof go a good way to improving that but all you have really is a pathetic clock or a planeswalker deterrent. You cannot get it into combat with much beyond spirit tokens and so you have spent a chunk of mana to do not very much. You have to abuse the manifest or the comes into play effect heavily to make this card worth it. Both of those things are very easy to do with blue and so this card has some great potential synergy despite the lack lustre body.


Pressure Point 5.5

Quite a long way from Ice let alone Fire / Ice as a package. That said I often find myself playing Abeyance just as a cheap cycling card that has some disruptive effects to which this is going to be far less situational and often more useful as well. This is a boring card, it is also not that much of a bargain but it is still very playable and strong because of its widely useful effect while being cheap and replacing itself with a new card.


Refocus 1

Not nearly as playable as Pressure Point as it cannot be used as control disruption, at best it is a limp combat trick or a wishful way to abuse good monsters with tap effects. Neither are worth a card, even a cheap self replacing one.


Dark Deal 3

This resembles lots of cards like Wheel of Fortune, Winds of Change, Windfall etc. Being black is quite nice just for the opening up of new options. Not so powerful a draw tool but more effective as disruption while remaining great as a way of filling up your graveyard. A pretty terrible late game top deck and a very narrow card but certainly one that has a place in some obscure decks.


Quarsi High Priest 3

I love a one drop sac outlet. This is a bit on the mana intense side so has no combo applications but does fairly useful things so may see some play in the role of Carrion Feeder in some decks desiring sacrifice synergy.


Break Through the Line 4

An interesting alternative to burn as a finisher style card for weenie decks. This is one of those cards that is a lot better in cube than in other formats. Haste is a nice boost too as it gives the card more utility and in a proactive way, it can be handy when your opponent isn't doing anything! You need creatures for this and so it is a bit of a Lightning Greaves, it is uncomfortable using valuable deck slots on things that do nothing alone. Narrow but potentially very abusive, I like the fact that it makes one and two drops better in a format where 3 and up drop minions are vastly more powerful per mana.


Collateral Damage 3

Shard Volley in a creature cost form, fine in the right deck but way less good than Shard Volley as you won't always have creatures to sac. I rarely find I want that extra damage enough to resort to this kind of drivel however Shard Volley sees a lot of play and sacing creatures can be a good thing!


Sudden Reclamation 6

I am going to go out on a limb here and give this card a big thumbs up. It is green card advantage, it is instant, it pro-actively aids any graveyard synergy you may have, it is recursion and it is cool. Most of the time getting a land back will be a good thing, this card is quite controlly looking and you always want land with control. Raw draw wise Harmonize has this beat but this is very close to it and does quite a lot of other useful things as well. Being restricted to a creature on the other card returned is a little more uncomfortable as control and combo have less of these. I am not sure if ramp decks will want this sort of low impact card over just another high quality threat. I hope this finds a home but I am not exactly sure what that looks like other than some vague UGx control thing.


Hewed Stone Retainers 1

These are fine in an affinity deck but seem deeply weak compared to Myr Enforcer, Etched Champion or really any of the threats they play.

Testing Results from Khans of Tarkir

As ever I miss-evaluated some cards on the spoiler and wish to amend my position on the cards I got most wrong. Slight over excitement or lack of enthusiasm for a card is no big deal but when you completely miss something it is more useful a learning experience. You can ask yourself why you didn't like the card on first sight and as such will be less likely to make the same error again. You tend to find you base a lot on how much you like a card rather than how good it is, you see the bad in designs you are averse to and all the good in the quirky weak cards you are find of. I have been doing set reviews now since Innistrad block and have improved a lot over that time. My first review is really quite off the mark with few of the predicted top cards matching my opinion now. I was so unimpressed with Wolfir Silverheart at the time I didn't even write about it, suffice it to say that felt a little awkward when 32 copies of the card showed up in the next Pro Tour top 8....

Although I am now less likely to miss as many or as significant cards I still miss some each set and more concerning, I am starting to miss-read them too! Rabblemaster last set and from this one Jeskai Ascendancy. Senility on the rise alongside experience means I am probably not far from my peak in terms of review astuteness! That aside, I have played with (and read) a bunch of the new cards and can make some more informed claims about them.


Jeskai Ascendancy - C cube 3.0

Initially I thought the prowess was triggered by non-creature spells and the looting by creatures hence my previous review making so little sense. It is a lot more streamlined as a card with the triggers both working together and as such does have a cube role to play if not a very big one. The combo usage of Jeskai Charm will work in cube but will be overly vulnerable due to the lack of redundancy and so will likely only ever get played to try something new rather than as a serious attempt to win games. In a tokens deck however Jeskai Ascendancy is suddenly very powerful indeed. Cards like Raise the Alarm give you both guys and Ascendancy triggers and there are a healthy quantity of these things available in cube so as to build a deck around it. Sadly being three colours and only being really powerful in a specific archetype still leaves this card lacking what it takes to get a slot in the main cube. Powerful, fun and versatile so worth having a go with but ultimately too narrow in application and requirements.


Monastery Swiftspear - A cube 7.0

Compared to Blistercoil Wierd this card doesn't seem that much more exciting however being a one drop, you don't have to add much before you have a very powerful card. It turns out non-creature is a far easier trigger than instants and sorceries and that haste is preferable to pseudo vigilance for an aggressive dork! Throw in an extra toughness for good measure and you have a very dangerous, robust and rounded one drop. A 2/3 is pretty awkward to block when you are getting beaten up, even as a 1/2 you have to show some respect for the ease at which you can obtain instant prowess triggers even without mana up. In a dedicated deck Swiftspear slightly outdoes Goblin Guide for damage, gives away no card advantage and is harder to kill. In your more average red aggro deck the Swiftspear might get slightly out damaged by Goblin Guide but it is comparable to any other top quality red one drop for damage output (on average) as well as being robust, having no further mana investment or other drawback associated with it. Overall I would say this is the card I got most wrong in my initial review of Khans. I disliked Plated Geopede for basically the same reasons I disliked Swiftspear, both in worst case scenarios are just one power beaters, and favouring consistency in my aggro red decks I formed a gut dislike for the cards despite their upside being incredibly powerful and fairly likely on average to be working.


Treasure Cruise - A cube 6.0

My failure to analyse this correctly was due to being closed minded. When looking at blue card draw I automatically imagine control decks which is an example of a bad assumption to make. Certainly I don't exclusively consider control decks for card draw however when I get such a bad early impression of a card I will then spend less time thinking about other potential uses for it. My criticisms for this card were that the delve cost would be too onerous for decks to do early and without damaging their ability to reuse key spells later in the game. Although I considered quicker and cheaper decks it was mostly in the context of combo where exiling your graveyard is rarely something you want to do. As soon as you have a quick cheap deck that is full of redundancy then Treasure Cruise becomes incredibly powerful. Legacy has provided us with an example of the perfect kind of home for this card and it is an archetype that translates into the cube format very well indeed. Although Treasure Cruise is narrower than a lot of the other card draw spells in the cube it is one of the most powerful when in the right kind of deck. The beauty of the design of the card is that its power scales with the archetype, it will be playable in control decks but likely a bit of an awkward Concentrate. In a blue red aggro burn deck it will be damn near an Ancestral Recall. If you do have it for your control deck you can easily draft with it in mind to make it better by grabbing more sac lands or more cycling cards etc. Although it is narrow in terms of the archetypes it is a staple powerhouse it is still playable in other archetypes and becomes a good skill tester in deck design terms.


Temur Charm - A cube 5.0

I have not yet obtained Jeskai or Mardu Charm and while I stand by my claim that Temur Charm is the weakest of the Khans Charm cycle I have been far more impressed with it than anticipated. Initially I wasn't going to give it a slot however other people wanted to play with it and have been consistently killing me with it since. It helps that it is usually found with Savage Nuckleblade, another card that is performing very well in the cube thus far! Temur Charm is a real game ender of a card, the abilities are a little situational and perhaps overpriced however between them they offer a card that does lots of work and is seemingly never dead. Typically it is going in tempo and midrange Temur decks where you cannot afford to play much in the way of situational utility spells however Temur Charm offers a perfect balance of reach and utility to such a deck and does not seem to be harming consistency at all. Based on Temur Charms outstanding performance I suspect all of the new Charms will get full time main cube slots. Far more of the Return to Ravnica Charms became cube mainstays than I originally thought would.

True-Name Nemesis

This card looked dull and over powered so I was in no rush to get one however one has found its way into my hands and so I have felt obliged to put it in the cube and at least try it out. Thus far I have not been too offended by the card. While it is clearly one of the best three drops you can make there are lots of reasons it is not too good for the cube. Goblin Rabblemaster has been outperforming the True-Name Nemesis which I guess speaks more for the quality of Rabblemaster rather than the reasonable power level of True-Name.


The reason I disliked True-Name so much when it was first spoiled is that it seemed far too powerful in a heads up format while offering very little in terms of skill tests. Certainly it is powerful, a 3 power unblockable, near unkillable 3 drop is a fine clock or a pretty serious wall if you need it to be. This is however all it really ever is. Unless you have a merfolk tribal theme in your cube the only synergy you can really get with True-Name is combining him with equipment. True-Name cannot just win games on his own, a single blocker doesn't do much to stop a swarm of weenies or a couple of fatties and alone it's clock gives too much time to your opponent. It doesn't even add much to a race, most other 3 drop tempo dorks offer more damage, quicker damage, or at least added utility. It has been called the blue Sulfuric Vortex and while True-Name is more damage after 3 turns, harder to kill and no self harm involved, the Vortex's ability to prevent life gain is a large part of the strength of the card and entirely missing from True-Name. Vortex is also quicker to apply damage and has good synergy with red cards in general making it a far more purposeful card.

As it is double blue you cannot easily splash it in things like zoo where it would be a potent threat and so for the most part it has found homes in heavier blue decks that cannot apply enough pressure to exploit the aggressive side of the card. When you do some soft of agro creature based deck in UX True-Name is better but leaves you fairly vulnerable to sweepers. Despite being in the category of hard to kill threats it does not offer the same resiliance to sweepers as the more humble persist and undying monsters or the terrifying Voice of Resurgence! By not covering an area of weakness in such decks you rather miss out on getting the full use of its abilities. Spot removal will just hit other things and save a comparable amount of damage and sweepers will still be just as ruinous. When going agro dorks True-Name feels much more like a 3/1 unblockable than a mini Progenitus.

Finally in control True-Name has found a happy role of protecting planeswalkers but it is still arguably less good than a Wall of Omens or Sea Gate Oracle. You still have to tap in your turn to make it and you still kill it with your own sweepers. It can double up as a cheap finisher but even things like the old school Psychatog get it done a lot faster. Both trample and flying make True-Name a fairly useless defender and even for a control deck a 7 turn clock does not really constitute a finisher, most planeswalkers can take the game in that amount of time and will have yielded far more value in the process.

Don't get me wrong, True-Name is still a very powerful and very tedious card. It reminds me of Jitte, fairly easy to outplay it but a slow and painful game over when you can't. Jitte is a higher pick as it is easier to play and offers far more utility. I rate True-Name 5th-10th best blue card in an unpowered cube. Highly powerful but hard to use to its full potential within the cube. The other top blue cards all do a lot of work to increase the power of the other cards in your deck, True-Name does this far less. The best home I have found for True-Name thus far is an UW cawblade style deck using few powerful creatures, Stoneforge and equipment and finished off with control stuff. You never have to overcommit to the board and have sufficient tempo and control to be able to be attacking.

Cube List post Khans of Tarkir

It has been a long while since I posted a list for my cube. As I change it about so frequently it is hard to pick moments that represent the general feel of the cube. Presently it is more limited focused than it has been ever before with narrow cards and enablers mostly removed. These have been replaced with vast swathes of gold cards and generally more midrange stuff. Having not gotten my hands on much of the new Khans cards nor had much chance to test those I do have I am sure that there will be many more Khans cards popping in and out of the cube for the next few months.



Lands


10x Original Duals
10x Shock Lands
10x Sac Lands
10x Pain Lands
10x Scry Lands
10x Filter Lands
10x Check Lands
10x Bounce Lands

5x Quick Lands
5x Man Lands
5x Wedge Lands
5x Off Colour Life Lands
5x Mirage Sac Lands
5x Artifact Lands
5x Cycling Lands

Nephalia Drownyard
Kessig Wolf Run
Desolate Lighthouse
Darksteel Citadel
Wasteland
Rishadan Port
Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx
Blinkmoth Nexus
Mutavault
Mishra's Factory
Temple of the False God
City of Traitors
Ancient Tomb

Teetering Peaks
Barbarian Ring
Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
Lake of the Dead
Gaea's Cradle
Treetop Village
Faerie Conclave
Shelldock Isle
Karakas


Artifacts


Engineered Explosives
Mox Diamond
Mox Opal
Chrome Mox

Cursed Scroll
Elixir Of Immortality
Sensei's Divining Top
Aether Vial
Skullclamp
Mana Vault
Voltaic Key
Chromatic Star

5x Talisman
Ankh of Mishra
Winter Orb
Ratchet Bomb
Spellskite
Grim Monolith
Umezawa's Jitte
Scroll Rack

Vedalken Shackles
Palladium Myr
Tangle Wire
Sword of War and Peace
Sword of Fire and Ice
Sword of Feast and Famine

Molten-Tail Masticore
Smokestack
Thran Dynamo
Solemn Simulacrum
Nevinyrral's Disk

Memory Jar
Batterskull
Gilded Lotus

Duplicant
Wurmcoil Engine

Myr Battlesphere
Karn Liberated
All is Dust

Blightsteel Colossus
Emrakul. the Aeons Torn


Gold


Sultai Charm
Butcher of the Horde
Bant Charm
Broodmate Dragon
Nicol Bolas, Planeswalker
Mantis Rider
Savage Nuckleblade
Sphinx of the Steel Wind
Dromar's Charm
Azban Charm

Coiling Oracle
Voidslime
Shardless Agent
Edric, Spymaster of Trest
Trygon Predator
Kiora, the Crashing Wave
Mystic Snake
Simic Skyswallower (Sagu Mauler likely to replace when I get one)

Deathrite Shaman
Abrupt Decay
Golgari Charm
Dreg Mangler
Maelstrom Pulse
Pernicious Deed
Reaper of the Wilds
Vraska the Unseen
Garruk, Apex Predator

Qasali Pridemage
Selesnya Charm
Fleecemane Lion
Voice of Resurgence
Kitchen Finks
Knight of the Reliquary
Advent of the Wurm

Azorius Charm
Geist of Saint Traft
Detention Sphere
Absorb
Supreme Verdict
Venser, the Sojourner
Sphinx's Revelation

Rackdos Cackler
Dreadbore
Spike Jester
Rackdos Charm
Falkenrath Aristocrat
Olivia Voldaren

Domri Rade
Boggart Ram-Gang
Xenagos, the Reveler
Ghor-Clan Rampager
Bloodbraid Elf
Xenagos, God of Revels

Vindicate
Sorin, Lord of Innistrad
Obzedat, Ghost Council
Merciless Eviction
Ashen Rider

Dimir Charm
Baleful Strix
Ashiok, Nightmare Weaver
Oona, Queen of the Fae

Fire / Ice
Izzet Charm
Electrolyse
Dack Fayden
Ral Zarek

Figure of Destiny
Lightning Helix
Boros Charm
Ajani Vengeant


Blue


Quicken
Opt
Brainstorm
Gitaxian Probe
Preordain
Ponder

Vapor Snag
Seal of Removal
Force Spike
Spell Pierce
Spell Snare
Mental Misstep

Delver of Secrets
Enclave Cryptologist
Phantasmal Bear
Cloudfin Raptor

Memory Lapse
Mana Leak
Counterspell
Daze
Arcane Denial
Negate
Remand

Boomerang
Cyclonic Rift
Impulse
See Beyond
Lat-Nam's Legacy

Waterfront Bouncer
Lighthouse Chronologist
Looter il-Kor
Snapcaster Mage
Phantasmal Image

Chasm Skulker
Kira, Great Glass-Spinner
Vendilion Clique
Trinket Mage
Thassa, God of the Sea
Grand Architect
True-Name Nemesis

Forbid
Tinker
Frantic Search
Show and Tell
Jace Beleren
Compulsive Research

Jace, Architect of Thought
Jace, the Mind Sculptor
Cryptic Command
Opposition
Fact or Fiction

Phyrexian Metamorph
Master of Waves
Glen Elandra Archmage
Venser, Shaper Savant

Riftwing Cloundskate
Force of Will
Temporal Manipulation
Time Warp
Treachery
Timayo, the Moon Sage

Upheaval
Time Spiral
Frost Titan
Consecrated Sphinx
Aetherling

Temporal Mastery
Dig Through Time


White


Path to Exile
Swords to Plowshares
Mana Tithe
Land Tax

Champion of the Parish
Soldier of the Pantheon
Mother of Runes
Gideon's Law Keeper
Student of Warfare
Elite Vanguard
Boros Elite
Steppe Lynx

Knight of the White Orchid
Precinct Captain
Loyal Cathar
Thalia, Guardian of Threben
Kami of Ancient Law
Wall of Omens
Stoneforge Mystic

Gather the Townsfolk
Raise the Alarm
Balance
Honor the Pure
Journey to Nowhere
Disenchant
Abeyance

Silverblade Paladin
Hushwing Gryff
Brimaz, King of Oreskos
Blade Splicer
Flickerwisp

Wing Shards
Spectral Procession
Oblivion Ring
Banishing Light
Lingering Souls
Spear of Heliod
Oblation

Restoration Angel
Linvala, Keeper of Silence
Sublime Archangel

Elspeth, Knight-Errant
Armageddon
Heliod, God of the Sun
Ajani Steadfast
Cataclysm
Wrath of God
Day of Judgement

Gideon Jura
Elspeth Tirel
Cloudgoat Ranger
Baneslayer Angel

Planar Cleansing
Terminus
Austere Command
Akroma's Vengeance
Sun Titan
Elspeth, Sun's Champion

Eternal Dragon
Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite

Unexpectedly Absent
Entreat the Angels
Descree of Justice
Mikaeus, the Lunarch


Green


Elvish Mystic
Llanowar Elf
Fyndhorn Elf
Avacyn's Pilgrim
Elves of Deep Shadow
Noble Hierarch
Birds of Paradise
Joraga Treespeaker
Wild Nacatl
Experiment One
Nature's Claim

Deglamer
Oath of Druids
Nature's Lore
Survival of the Fittest
Life from the Loam
Sylvan Library
Explore

Lotus Cobra
Sylvan Caryatid
Sakura-Tribe Elder
Wall of Roots
Rofellos, Llanowar Emissary
Wall of Blossoms
Elvish Visionary
Flinthoof Boar
Fauna Shaman
Strangleroot Geist
Tarmogoyf
Scavenging Ooze

Bow of Nylea
Beast Within
Search for Tomorrow

Courser of Kruphix
Eternal Witness
Wood Elves
Boon Satyr
Reclamation Sage
Ohran Viper
Yavimaya Elder

Polukranos, World Eater
Master of the Wild Hunt
Thrun, the Last Troll
Vengevine
Oracle of Mul Daya
Wickerbough Elder

Birthing Pod
Garruk Relentless
Natural Order
Garruk Wildspeaker

Wolfir Silverheart
Kalonian Hydra
Thragtask
Acidic Slime

Plow Under
Garruk, Primal Hunter
Primal Command
Nissa, Worldwaker

Primeval Titan
Cloudthresher
Chancellor of the Tangle
Avenger of Zendikar
Regal Force
Craterhoof Behemoth

Green Sun's Zenith
Hurricane
Worldspine Wurm


Red


Lightning Bolt
Chain Lightning
Lava Dart
Seal of Fire
Firebolt
Burst Lightning
Titan's Strength
Reckless Charge
Faithless Looting

Goblin Guide
Firedrinker Satyr
Stromkirk Noble
Kird Ape
Mogg Fanatic
Legion Loyalist
Orcish Lumberjack
Goblin Welder
Grim Lavamancer

Ash Zealot
Eidolon of the Great Revel
Kargan Dragonlord
Young Pyromancer
Plated Geopede
Lightning Mauler
Keldon Marauders
Hellspark Elemental

Searing Blaze
Incinerate
Magma Jet
Arc Trail
Mizzium Mortars
Searing Spear
Lightning Strike
Tormenting Voice
Searing Blood

Chaos Warp
Wheel of Fortune
Silfuric Vortex
Molten Rain
Pillage
Slagstorm

Zo-Zu the Punisher
Goblin Rablemaster
Prophetic Flamespeaker
Chandra's Phoenix
Manic Vandal
Squee, Goblin Nabob
Ball Lightning

Chandra, the Firebrand
Chandra, Pyromancer
Sneak Attack
Koth of the Hammer
Aggressive Mining
Stoke the Flames

Purphoros, God of the Forge
Flametongue Kavu
Hellrider

Siege-Gange Commander
Stormbreath Dragon
Thundermaw Hellkite
Sarkhan, the Dragonspeaker

Wildfire
Inferno Titan
Jokulhaups
Fireblast

Obliterate
Devil's Play
Bonfire of the Damned


Black


Thoughtseize
Inquisition of Kozilek
Duress
Vampiric Turor
Disfigure
Dark Ritual
Reanimate
Entomb

Gravecrawler
Sarcomancy
Gnarled Scarhide
Carnophage
Diregraf Ghoul
Carrion Feeder

Doomblade
Go for the Throat
Smallpox
Demonic Tutor
Bitterblossom
Sinkhole
Hymn to Tourach
Exhume

Dark Confidant
Pain Seer
Blood Scrivener
Pack Rat
Vampire Hexmage
Brain Maggot
Nantuko Shade
Bloodghast

Master of the Feast
Vampire Nighthawk
Herald of Torment
Geralf's Messengers
Ophiomancer

Liliana of the Veil
Necropotence
Recurring Nightmare
Hero's Downfall
Dismember
Toxic Deluge
Phyrexian Arena

Bloodline Keeper
Erebos, God of the Dead
Skinrender
Braids, Cabal Minion
Graveborn Muse
Phyrexian Obliterator
Damnation
Whip of Erebos

Doomwake Giant
Drana, Kalastria Bloodchief
Grey Merchant of Asphodel
Liliana Vess
Living Death
Shriekmaw

Grave Titan
Sorin Markov
Ink-Eyes, Servant of Oni

Sheoldred, the Whispering One
Sickening Shoal
Death Cloud
Mind Twist
Griselbrand

Khans of Tarkir Review (complete)

Jeskai Elder - C cube  4/10

I am a big fan of the Looter il-Kor and so I want this to be good despite knowing deep down it won't get the job done most of the time. Having to make contact and not having shadow, or "unblockable" as it basically is, makes this a very different card from the other looters simply because you cannot so reliably assume you will get to use this for card quality. As such you have to start looking at this as a tempo creature with added utility. A 1/2 with prowess is acceptable early game and will make blocking it annoying should you have mana up so as to represent the ability to trigger the prowess. Without a good supply of instants to back up the Elder however he is too insignificant to go in many tempo decks. There are certainly archetypes where he will shine such as Delver of Secrets style decks but outside of these few niche decks he is pretty unplayable. Blue does lack "beefy" two drops that are worth playing and this isn't that but it is closer than most of the other options so might be played as desperate filler for a devotion theme.


The Wedge Lands - A cube 7/10

Lands that can tap for three colours without an ongoing penalty are both strong and rare. Loads of lands come into play tapped and while it is annoying it is a more than acceptable price to pay for such reliable and broad fixing. The Shard Lands see cube play and are a very efficient way to offer a lot of fixing using relatively few card slots. Although a little rarer to get them when you are all three colours, when you do you are very grateful. I don't have them in my main cube because I have plenty of allied colour fixing and vast quantities of other dual lands as well. The Wedge lands however, as they offer two enemy colour fixing options each, go a long way to addressing the imbalance of fixing in my cube between allied colours and enemy ones. They are OK at bolstering a wide array of two colour mana bases and are golden when you are an exact match three colour deck.


Rattleclaw Mystic - C cube 3/10

Two mana ramp effects have to be fairly special in green to get cube play and this I fear is not in that special category. It looks like it does a lot but sadly it doesn't do it in the right way. The Mystic is vulnerable with only one or two toughness. To get the double ramp out of the card you have to spend three mana the turn before. Ramping to six mana on turn four is good but it is hardly explosive for the cube and unexciting compared to even the humble Generator Servant. The colour fixing Mystic offers is OK but not close to Sylvan Caryatid or even Lotus Cobra. The only thing that Mystic does that other green ramp doesn't is offer the ability to fix your green when you have none to begin with which is nice but so slow it is unlikely to sort out your bad situation very often. This is so far from Noble Hierarch it is offensive to have mentioned them in the same context.


Dragon Style Twins - C cube 3/10

This understated card is actually a really serious beater. It hits for six alone and effectively gets double prowess, something fairly easy to trigger a bunch in red. Sadly this is competing the slot with dragons that fly and haste, two things this card would really like! Five or so years ago this would likely have had a good run in the cube, today it probably wont get a look in.


Sultai Charm - A cube 7/10

One of the best three mana charms I have seen. All the abilities work well together and ensure you have a lot of options and control over any given situation. It fulfils several important control roles for cube decks thus offering you slot efficiency while remaining very powerful at the same time. In these colours you have a fairly decent array of broad removal  so it won't necessaily be an auto include in any such control deck. Having a good card quality option built into removal is the golden ticket for control, you can go pretty weak on both the card quality side and the removal side and still have a good cube card, as demonstrated by Azorius Charm. Sultai Charm is pretty strong at both ends as well as being far broader. It also offers some graveyard synergy potential as well. While it is clearly a control card I am sure it will see some play in more tempo focused decks simply because it covers so many bases effectively while never being dead weight.


Crackling Doom - B cube 4.5/10

I am not a fan of this card but it does smack a little of Searing Blaze. Three colours and no colourless to ease the casting of this card make it unwieldy and a bit too narrow for my liking. That said it is very potent removal. It can go two for one should they have a low loyalty planeswalker out. It gets around a lot of annoying abilities like hexproof and indestructible. It is instant so as to cover you against pesky man lands and trickert and most importantly of all, unlike all other reasonable Edict effects Crackling Doom will get the scariest threat rather than the least relevant dork. Three is still a lot to pay for some spot removal even in mono coloured decks so I think this will not be commonly played but when it is it will be pretty decent for both agro and control decks.


Temur Ascendency - B cube 5/10

More Fires of Yavimaya style cards, for a bit more colour you get to draw cards along with your haste which not only gives you real punch but also some long game too. Usually the issue with cards like this is that they do nothing without other cards, obviously that is still the case with this as well but it fuels you getting more cards so overall you will wind up with this dead far less often than you would the classic Fires. Typically agro decks don't pack much card advantage and can find then run out of gas too soon if they are running too much support cards like these. Many of the good big agro red and green dorks already have haste however there are also very many that become very unreasonable when you do give them haste such as the Titans or Kalonian Hydra. If you have good mana I can see this being something you would splash for in an appropriate red green beatdown deck. Very narrow but suitably powerful is the verdict.


Narsef, Enlightened Master - C cube 3/10

Six mana for two toughness and only a bit of hexproof to help keep it safe terrifies me about this dork. You get value from just attacking but you need to get to the attack step and ideally survive it a couple of times before I think you have enough value to merit playing this dork. It is a lot of colours and requires you to have a high number of spells you want to cast off the trigger in your deck on top of this. All a bit too steep for me.


Mardu Skullhunter - C cube 2/10

Nice idea but neither large enough nor reliable enough to be replacing anything else you might want in this capacity. If you want them discarding cards you are playing Ravenous Rats, if you want to get generic card advantage on a fair body then you are going down the Dark Confidant and pals route and if you want to just beat down then you have so many better options...


Sarkhan the Dragonspeaker - A cube 8.5/10

Finally we have a well rounded red planeswalker on offer that gets the job done in most decks without much need to build around or be a specific archetype. Koth can be very powerful but is typically quite a linear planeswalker as well as really needing a tempo lead when you make him due to being so poor defensively. The various incarnations of Chandra don't really do enough on the board to make an immediate impact on the game. They are either situational, slow or fiddly and despite all of this they still see a bunch of play, all be it mostly the four mana variants. Dragonspeaker does serious things and he does them right away, either he burns away a pesky creature for a sizeable four damage or he is swinging into one of your planeswalkers or face for four. This makes him one of the best anti planeswalker planeswalkers on offer as well as one of the quickest to close out a game. He is a little weaker to lots of small creatures but can race fairly well even if he can't very effectively kill them off. Typically the Chandra's have the opposite issue, that they are weak to fat dorks but great against weenies which means they complement each other fairly well too. The ultimate is good fun as well, very powerful but certainly not as game winningly broken as some others which has the nice aside of it being cost so that you can get to use it with rather more frequency than most. I place this on a very comparable power level to Gideon Jura, comfortably one of the top ten planeswalkers of all time.


Icefeather Aven - C cube 3/10

Certainly better than Gaea's Skyfolk and Echo Tracer but then neither of those cards come close to getting cube play so I am not sure combining them does much to increase its chances of play. Elegant and versatile and I am sure a brilliant limited card but not a cube card.


Lens of Clarity - C cube 1/10

Needed some way to sacrifice and draw a card for this to be useful, as it is you can't support the card disadvantage for this effect in any deck I can think that would like it. Nice effect and well cost for it but not quite there. A far cry from Divining Top.


Mardu Warshrieker - C cube 3/10

Coal Stoker is very niche and far more a combo card than an agro one in cube. With this being more unreliable I cannot really see it seeing play in the same way however there is a small chance of it being used more as a midgame tempo boost like a slow Burning-Tree Emissary.


Ugin's Nexus - C cube 2/10

A funny way to hose certain strategies but not a reason it should ever be in a cube. As a way of taking extra turns outside of blue it is very interesting but due to needing a sacrifice outlet as well as having no way to really abuse because of its self exiling I cannot see this getting played more than once or twice.


Sorin, Solemn Visitor - A cube (just) 5/10

Comparable to the other Orzhoz Sorin and my gut is that the newer is the slightly weaker. Four loyalty for four mana is decent however his ability to protect himself reduces his loyalty significantly and is a better offensive tool than a defensive one. His plus one ability does nothing at all without you having a board presence already which greatly reduces the options he offers, which is one of the main strengths of planeswalkers. In an agro deck this will be pretty good, it will make racing hard and will pose as a dangerous threat however in a control deck I think this will be slow, underwhelming and overly restricted. Ral Zarek springs most to mind as a similar sort of planeswalker that typically does too little with its plus loyalty effect to be worth it in most decks. It is nice to see a planeswalker that finally makes flying tokens however I think a little too much caution has been used.


End Hostilities - no slot 0/10

With so many other board sweeper options this is a very specific half mast affair. To my mind either play simple four mana wraths or cover all six mana ones. This is too much mana for not a commonly useful effect.


Howl of the Hoard - C cube 3/10

Lots of potential fun and power but realistically it is going to be very hard to set up for maximum efficiency in the (few) decks that might want such an effect. Good old two mana Fork is just going to be better almost all of the time. BDM did suggest the fantastic play of Electromancer getting in for the raid trigger than casting this into triple Manamorphose!


Sidisi, Brood Tyrant - A cube 5.5/10

A mini Grave Titan that can be triggered outside of entering the battlefield or attacking. There are a lot of easy combos you can use to create a total army with this on the spot. You need a fairly creature heavy deck for Sidisi to be worth playing but you certainly don't need to be triggering him externally, so to speak, for him to be very powerful. He also has added value for any graveyard synergy your deck might be packing. This is a whole lot of monster however being three colours and needing around a third of your deck being dorks he is a very narrow card indeed. Comfortably A cube power level however if it will see enough play to retain the spot remains to be seen. This I suspect will be a strong theme from this set.


Sagu Mauler - A cube 6/10

I think this is just a direct replacement for Simic Sky Swallower in my cube. I think it will have overall a lot more playability due to doing more earlier in the game. The Sky Swallower is a better game ender as the flying makes it so hard to match with blockers however there are a wealth of strong game enders you can cheat into play. Aetherling is doing a lot of the work for control decks now that was done by Sky Swallower back in the day. Sagu Mauler represents a serious clock that needs some specific answers. Hexproof is vastly better than shroud and allows you more deck construction freedom. With the morph you can be attacking with it when you get to five mana as well as having more options with it. Certainly losing the flying changes the application of the card somewhat from how Sky Swallower was used but I think you gain much more overall from the hexproof, morph and reduced cost. More decks will be able to play it yet it will still do a similar and often better job in the old decks and roles it was found in.


Anafenza, the Foremost - B cube 4/10

Another card that is above the power curve in cube however on this occasion I don't think it does enough to merit the narrow cost. Doran the Seige Tower is a bigger dork than this for the same cost and has a more interesting effect and it rarely gets any play. The exile aspect of Anafenza is incredibly minor and does little more than hose the odd card and a few archetypes. Random hosing is not fun nor especially skill intensive so puts me off the card a lot. The counters on tapped attackers is strong but a bit clumsy, it has annoying synergy with vigilance for instance. It is not doing something you always will find useful nor is it contained within the card. For this level of restriction on cost you want a powerful unrestricted card which this doesn't quite achieve.


Mardu Ascendancy - B cube 3/10

This is a very powerful card indeed but I think too niche. Not only do you need to be an aggro deck in these three colours but you also really need to be focusing somewhat on working well with it by using haste creatures, battlecry effects and having lots of cheap dorks. As a persistent threat that gains you value you can do better with the more broadly playable Sulphuric Vortex, Bitterblossom or even just an appropriate god. The sac ability is a bonus and will help against some red mass removal or for an epic combat step. It adds to the interest and power of the card but certainly isn't the reason you should be considering playing it and will be blank most of the time.


Utter End - B cube 5/10

So close but ruined by the non-land clause I fear. Instant, exile, no drawbacks, no requirements and a near full range of targets gain this card top marks in almost all the categories for good removal. Then you have a two colour, four mana casting cost and you have to wonder how often you are going to be gaining a tempo advantage with your one for one removal spell? Without the ability to gain card advantage or much tempo you have to really want a total solution to certain things to run this in your deck. It is slot efficient but that is about it. Control decks are those that like really good answers that are broad however one of their main weaknesses is the man-land which this totally fails against and so I cannot see this getting enough play.


Abzan Ascendancy - C cube 3/10

If I wanted to turn my real dorks into tokens I would likely be running Spirit Bonds or things like Xathrid Necromancer. If I want to pump my guys I am running permanent pump like Spear of Heliod, versatile pump like Ajani Goldmane or gamewinning pump like Overrun. The pump is OK but a bit awkward as it does not work smoothly with the other half. This card is too narrow and way too much of a do nothing in many situations to cut it in cube play.


See the Unwritten - B cube 4/10

A kind of Tooth and Nail card that is very very cheap for what it can do but it a little bit unpredictable for my liking in the kinds of decks that flop out big guys. Eight cards is a lot, especially in 40 card decks and will usually find you something pretty good but it will be a lot weaker than you might hope for when it comes to choosing two dorks to flop out. The card is also a little middle of the road. Either I want it cheap like Natural Order or I want it really powerful like Tooth and Nail or Green Sun's Zenith. Even six mana Garruk does a better job in the midrange area than this as it comes with so many other options. A powerful card but one without a home in the cube.


Wingmate Roc - C cube 3/10

More powerful than the Cloudgoat Ranger but the raid requirement makes it too inconsistent. Cards like this you need to be powerful off the top late game when you both have nothing and not only good when you are curving out and maintaining tempo.


Crater's Claws - B cube 4.5/10

I am a big fan of the clause on this kind of Fireball card that allow you to do more damage than what you pay. When you have ferocious this is a Shock as well as a super hurty Fireball which vastly increases the utility of the card. It is the poor scaling with low mana investments that usually rules out X damage spells for most cube decks and this card gives you the potential for that not to be the case. Sadly I don't think you will be ferocious often enough when you want this as Shock for it to supplant the Devil's Play from my cube. A very interesting and different Fireball with some new potential applications. Not however as powerful, synergic or generally all round advantageous and stand alone good as just having a bit of flashback. Perhaps as they are so different the cube could support, for the first time ever, two Fireball equivalents.


War-Name Aspirant - B cube 3/10

The best in a long line of recent two mana three power 1R dorks but I suspect still not competing with the more direct aggro two drops like Hellspark elemental or the rarer RR ones like Kargan Dragonlord and Ash Zealot. Evading one power blockers is nice but likely not worth the drawback of needing to raid to not be just a 2/1. I am sure this will be a top rate limited and even standard aggro dork but for cube this is not enough dork. Suitable filler in a redundant deck but far too low power to get any play outside such strategies.


Suspension Field - no slot 0/10

Journey to Nowhere, but a whole lot worse. No thanks.


Clever Impersonator - A cube 6/10

I have never loved a Clone in cube as its usefulness very much depends on what you are playing against. That said they are still typically rather good, they give you a lot of power when your opponent is doing powerful things and they give you options. This clone is a lot more expensive than Phantasmal Image or Phyrexian Metalmorph (the two I have in my cube at present) but it can do a whole lot more. It is not specifically its broader range that makes it good but more what that means for more matchups. Lots of control decks are chock full of planeswalkers and have few other powerful permanents which they can make. Against these fairly common decks a more classic clone is poor while this remains useful. This is a more consistent Clone than any other which is good for a card effect that is inherently high variance in performance.


Mindswipe - No slot 0/10

Far far too expensive for cube play. This is not efficiently countering much nor is it doing any worthwhile damage when it does.


Mantis Rider - A cube 8/10

One of the best cards in the set. This has tempo and value all over it. In a meta rife with planeswalkers this dork is going to be getting a lot of work done. Three mana haste dorks with three power get a lot of cube play as it is, they offer a robust body that gets to work early, they are hard to play around and have a reasonable clock. Flinthoof Boar, Dreg Mangler and Boggart Ram-Gang are all powerful dangerous cube cards that get a lot of play in aggro decks. For just one more colour you get flying and vigilance thrown into the mix which is a world better than wither or scavenge, the vigilance alone likely is and flying is one of the very best things a dork can have making this head and shoulders above the comparisons. This blocks well, it attacks well, it offers a great threat to planeswalkers and as a result will often result in card advantage as it will Dreadbore then leave you with a Serra Avenger in play! It is colour intense but it is almost always going to be played when you are those colours, both aggro and control. It is simply one of the best, if not the best all round stand alone tempo dork for three mana. It is certainly competing for best three colour cube card too.


Savage Nuckleblade - A cube 6.5/10

Another well above the curve dork for an XYZ mana cost like the Mantis Rider. This one is fatter and has more utility but it is mana intense as well as a bit all over the place. Mantis Rider does one thing very well (the combat step), this does a bunch of different stuff that is going to be situationally useful. RUG is not a common colour combination which makes me a little concerned this guy won't see much play. Certainly more powerful and useful than Anafenza but similarly a card that is aimless, just fairly fat for the mana with some added bonus fluff. Very good fluff in Nuckleblades case but still fluff.


Sultai Ascendancy - C cube 3/10

Probably a more powerful effect overall than Sylvan Library but for three colours and a mana more you should really hope so! This gives you great control over your draw as well as some really nice graveyard synergy however it is a three mana total tempo void which I don't think you can afford in cube for an effect like this.


Mardu Charm - B cube 4/10

Very powerful and highly versatile however this Charm doesn't sit that well with me. Duress is an effect you typically want early and although instant is very handy it does not quite make up for the three mana cost. Four damage to a dork is nice too, it is widely useful and will kill most things in the cube. That is because most of the cube dorks cost one to three mana, once you get to four mana or more the Mardu Charm starts failing to deal with most monsters and as such is rather on the pricey side for what is essentially early removal. Making two 1/1s is the highest value ability on the Charm but it isn't very exciting and while it stops the card from ever being dead it is not even close to the card draw options on Sultai and Azban Charms. For an aggro deck Mardu Charm is not cheap enough to offer any real tempo advantages nor does it offer you any reach. For control decks the abilities are a little too limited, you should be able to put the card to use but it doesn't offer you the things you really need.


Rashaka Deathdealer - B cube 4/10

A cat demon you say? Fine, I guess it is no less silly than a bird wizard... This dork is like a mix of Putrid Leech, Nantuko Shade and Lotleth Troll. It is also more powerful than any of those three on paper but I think it will see less play. The thing about magic is that raw power is often trumped by synergy or consistency. Each of the three cards I compared this to serve quite specific purposes. The Shade is mono coloured and serves as a great tool in devotion decks, both aggro and control versions. It is a mana dump and a good devotion provider as well as a dangerous game ending threat for just two mana. Lotleth Troll is almost exclusively used when you have a discard or graveyard theme in the deck. Putrid Leech is used in very aggressive decks where it is a two drop that needs no further (relevant) investment that can potentially hit for four a turn. Deathdealer performs none of these roles and is just an OK cheap dork that scales better than most into the late game. When you flood, or even just in decks that you expect to have lots of available mana Deathdealer will be a strong card but most of the time he will either restrict you through forcing you to keep mana open or just be a Grizly Bear. I am sad to say I think River Boa is going to outperform this on average.


The Life Lands - A and B cubes 4.5 and 5.5 / 10 for allied and enemy colours respectively.

A set of functional reprints for the Refuges but this time complete with enemy colour pairings making them a whole lot more exciting. They have really nice art for the most part too which is a huge win for lands in particular. Overall Khans of Tarkir will really sort out the cube for decent balance options between allied and enemy colour pairings with these and the three colour lands now on offer. I intend only to put the enemy colour lands from this cycle into the cube. Presently I have the man lands, the quick lands and the Mirage sac lands that are only for allied and nothing that is just for enemy colours. I have no problem with enemy colours being harder to do or even less powerful for flavour and variation however it is no fun if that discrepancy is made up from mana and colour screws. The off colour versions of these lands will see lots of play simply through there being limited options. The allied ones much less so as demonstrated by the Refuge cycle as there are enough better options and hence why I wont bother adding them.


Temur Charm - B cube 2.5/10

Probably the worst of the cycle but still fairly strong. Mana Leak is a nice rounded option but sadly the other two are a bit situational and really only suited to creature based strategies. Even then this card isn't doing specific things you want in creature decks, like being a threat! A bit of evasion will break stalemates and allow for alpha strikes but not at all often, mostly it would be used to snipe out planeswalkers which is OK but more of a way to be less behind than one to get ahead. Fighting is also nice but like the evasion portion it needs you to have dorks in play, and the right sort too making it far less reliable or useful than the removal options on the other Charms. I am sure it would be fine but there is only so many slots you can have as non-threats in the decks this would be good it and this isn't powerful or versatile enough to get one of them very often.


Ashcloud Phoenix - B cube 3/10

A nicely designed card and one of the few morph cards that is interesting. Creatures that need a bit of extra killing are top rate in the cube as are those that fly. Sadly once you have killed this guy once he becomes a Grizly Bear and really doesn't do a lot until you throw six mana at him. Having only one toughness makes it a bit too easy to deal with this four mana card and six is too much to pay regularly to get it back again. I think I would just rather have a Hound of Griselbrand for that sort of thing to ensure both lives of my card were useful.


Stubborn Denial - B cube 5/10

Half the effect of Spell Pierce that turns into Negate at half the cost when you are ferocious! I really like this card and want it to be played but I have my doubts. Firstly there are only so many counters you can run with a limited range. Already I tend to run Negate or Spell Pierce in my control decks, not both. Stubborn Denial is a bit of a middle ground card between the other two. If you want a powerful one drop you play Pierce, if you want a reliable hard counter you play Negate. With Daze and Force Spike doing the rounds people will play around Stubborn Denial by accident and really diminish its value as a non-ferocious card. Obviously the overall quality of the card depends on how often you will have 4 power dork in play. The kinds of deck that want these kinds of effect are typically those with less ferocity about them. I want this to be good because I like the idea of using a Wolf Run or something to turn on ferocious. It just gives more options, more synergy and more interesting games.


Pearl Lake Ancient - B cube 4/10

If it were not for Aetherling doing this job better I think there may have been a place for this big fish. Flash is fantastic for control decks and it has a lot of stats compared to Aetherling. Sadly it lacks evasion and thus cannot be relied upon to end a game. Overall it is likely more mana intensive than Aetherling as you have to recast it after saving it as well as potentially getting back up to seven mana. With trample you might have to think about which unstoppable blue finisher you should go for but as it is I think it will rot for all of time in the B cube.


Murderous Cut - A cube 5.5/10

Instant unrestricted removal is interesting for black. Throw in the ability to have it cost one mana and you have quite a package. Sadly you want this cheap early in the game which isn't going to be happening as often as you would like. The scaling isn't great for the card but I think it is convenient enough to see play in a broad range of black decks.


Siege Rhino - B cube 5/10

Well above the curve and also has some synergy with the kinds of things its colour combination likes to do such as Recurring Nightmare. It is not doing anything that specific beyond being a high value dork and so with it being narrow as well due to three colour requirement I don't think it would see enough play to merit inclusion. Certainly I will try it out and almost as certainly it will perform well when it is played but as soon as a BWG deck passes it up I will look to relegate it!


Jeskai Charm - B cube 4/10

To me this just looks like Azorius Charm plus with a bit bolted on from Boros Charm. One of the best things about Azorius Charm for control was that it cycled away when you didn't want cheap removal, the other great thing about the Ravnica Charms in general was that they cost two mana and are only two colours! This is not particularly cheap removal given the quality of that removal. The best use of this card is going to be taking out planeswalkers in a control deck. Control has many better options than this but more tempo based decks do make good use of all the abilities. Lifelink and +1/+1 is a race winner as well as a decent combat trick. Being able to remove blockers is also handy which is something you cannot do with Azorius Charm. Probably this is just too clunky and niche for the cube despite likely being enough to see constructed play in tempo decks.


Hooded Hydra - no slot 0/10

A bit too mana intense for what it does. If you want dorks that make more dorks if they die you have a wealth of things to chose from that are better. The same applies if you want dorks with variable mana costs.


Kheru, Lich Lord - no slot

Six mana for a 4/4 with a three mana activation cost would need to be really good. At three colours it would need to be insane. Instead you get to Corpse Dance with a little more dazzle. No thank you cheers.


Butcher of the Hoard - A cube 7.5/10

Is it a Baneslayer? Is it a Thundermaw? No, it's kind of both! A four mana 5/4 flier with no drawback is a really good start. It would be a shoe in as two colour card. Add to this the ability to have lifelink, vigilance or haste and you have a winner even in a fairly awkward three colour pairing. Sacrificing a dork is quite a heavy price unless you have a strong token theme or are full of things like Bloodghast but it is an option not a requirement and makes the card better regardless of your deck. A sacrifice outlet is a useful thing to have in itself so coming on a bomb like dork that is reasonably cheap, and affords you powerful effects is another win. It is a dork that can put you ahead on the turn you make it and needs to die in short order or you will just win. A little narrow again but far enough above the curve to offset any such awkwardness.


Master of Pearls - C cube 2/10

Too weak as a stand alone guy to cut it in the cube. It is a nice effect to be able to have in a white weenie deck but it is hardly going to be much of a trick nor is it cheap compared to many of the other things you can do like this. Dictate of Heliod springs to mind as a card better on several fronts.


Bloodsoaked Champion - A cube 6.5/10

Hello Mr Gravecrawler MkII. Sadly not a zombie and doubly sadly twice the mana to recur. Having a zombie is comparable to having raid in fairly appropriately built decks however having to have a zombie is a much less potentially self harming thing to be doing and so this card is all round a fair chunk worse than the original but it remains cube worthy and each will increase the value of the other for redundancy in strategy. You cannot go too far wrong with one mana two power guys with added good effects in the cube and this is such a dork.


Jeskai Ascendancy - C cube 2/10

What a mess of a card. A do nothing alone, scales badly with itself, three colour horror! You need creatures to make it good, you need non-creatures to make it do anything. It is a huge investment to make for a loot effect and an even bigger one to make for a kind of global prowess. I don't see this having any combo application or sufficient aggro worth. Annoyingly it could still be bonkers, say after you make a Young Pyromancer and then chain cast cheap spells. Cool but all very wishful.


Disdainful Stroke - C cube 3.5/10

This is another card I quite want to be good but suspect it will be too inconsistent. My cube has a very cheap curve and while this counters all the most powerful cards it can easily face decks where it has no targets at all. Throw on top of this the fact that it is unlikely to be anything but a dead card in hand until turn four and you don't have the happiest looking spell. As things are still tend towards the midrange style of deck this will continue to improve in value but I can't see it appearing in cubes as a mainstay for a while yet.


Treasure Cruise - C cube 3/10

Oh to be instant! To be honest I am not sure that would be quite enough to make this good. A lot of the decks that want to draw cards, especially those happier to do it at instant speed, are those that want to reuse the cards in their graveyard. As such paying much of a delve cost will be damaging, the more you do it the more detrimental to your plan it will become. I am sure there will be the odd deck where this fits in rather well. It is a great late game top deck in most decks but likewise a pretty dead card for a lot of the early game.


Grim Haruspex - A cube 5/10

Somewhat of a Xathrid Necromancer effect, this in broader in range but offers less tempo despite having extra power over the zombie generator. This will be especially useful in decks where you have things like Gravecrawler and Bloodghast as well as a sacrifice outlet so that you have a draw engine to abuse that is made up of reasonable aggro monsters. It is a bit vulnerable and will be hard to get value out of it when facing any sort of removal but it is reasonably cost and has some nice synergies. You are not going to be distraught when this eats a Lightning Bolt or a Plow, often it will bait them and allow your better monster to get it done.


Surrak Dragonclaw - A cube 5.5/10

This doesn't at all excite me but I can't help thinking it is going to be rather good. It is a messy card that performs no particular role very well but that has so much value and power that it will likely get rammed into all sorts of decks and still be pretty good in them. A five mana 6/6 is a good start although not enough to be cube worthy when you compare it to things like Kalonian Hydra or Wolfir Silverheart for raw size. Throw in flash and you have a card that can engineer some added value as a surprise blocker or unexpected extra attacker when cast at end of turn. Then you make him uncounterable and you don't care that much about it but can't outright dismiss it as a little incidental bonus. Having all your dorks thereafter being uncounterable however is pretty significant in combination with his own counter-proofing and allows you to do whatever you want to do against any deck packing counter magic. Sure, it hoses one colour but it does so in a broad way and better than things like Thrun, the Lame Troll who is a bit of an auto pilot dullard. Finally gaining trample on all your dorks is really quite powerful even if he doesn't have it himself. Green is full of things that get chumped a lot, I find myself wishing I had trample a lot of the time, particularly for dealing with planeswalkers. Feeling like you are in an OK position to have this dork made at you end of turn throwing a 6/6 into the mix and also turning everything else trampling is going to be a huge swing in the game.


Goblinslide - C cube 1.5/10

Too much mana overall, it needed to be cheaper to play, have legs or have no cost for the trigger to cut it in cube. It is a little bit abusable and so I want a copy but I doubt anyone will ever bother trying to abuse it as it is just not as powerful as other things that can be abused.


Abzan Charm - A cube 7/10

One of the two best Charms with a good card draw ability, a top rate removal mode and a combat trick. A powerful card that will never be dead and affords you an abundance of options. Instant speed exile effects are what you want from a removal spell and this hits all the scary big things. Although it doesn't hit small dorks you ideally don't want to be using a three mana spell as the solution to them anyway. The combat trick covers you fairly well in this department. Of the various wedges the GBW pairing is one of the more popular which greatly helps the playability of this charm. This will work well in both aggro and control, as an out that doesn't deny a tempo option as well as not ever risking being dead for the agro player. For the control player it will be much more about having the option on card draw or really hard removal, a bit like a powered up Azorius Charm.


Chief of the Edge - C cube 2/10

Far more potent than the Scale Chief but not enough other good warrior synergy in those colours for this to be useful yet.


Gurmag Swiftwing - C cube 2/10

Too cheap with too many things for it not to be useful somewhere! A one power two mana beater isn't getting it done on its own even with a jumble of keyword abilities. I can't think what this would be helpful with and so until I do it will rot in the depths of my cube reserves.


Hordeling Outburst - C cube 2/10

Perphorus likes this! Spectral Procession this is not however there are a lot of things that work very well with goblins and mass tokens in general and so it would be remiss of me not to have this relatively clean and efficient midrange option unavailable.


Dig Through Time - A cube 8/10

While I poopooed the last delve draw spell I am much more drawn to this one despite its many similarities. Two cards from seven feels like it is going to be doing much more of what you need than just three random off the top. Doing it an instant speed means that you are far happier to play this for five mana in the mid game than you would be if it were a sorcery. This makes it far less of a dead card early and far less reliant on the delving to be good. Costing a minimum of UU seems a bunch worse than just U for Treasure Cruise however it will be so late in the day that you get to that level of delve that the difference of one U will be negligible. All in all this is a very powerful card advantage and card quality spell. It will go very well in many combo and control decks. I am going to go out on a limb here and compare this card to Fact or Fiction, it is refreshing to see card advantage being printed that isn't on dorks or planeswalkers or that require you to engineer some game state to become efficient. The power of dorks these days means you don't often have time to spend casting Fact or Fiction, hopefully this spell will be viable sooner as it gives more scope to do other things at the same time.


Monastery Swiftspear - C cube 4/10

As a stand alone card this is too much of a one power beater to be good. Even in an agro red deck with around half the non-lands as spells this would be getting through an unexciting amount of damage. I was trying to think of a card that I reckon would do a comparable amount of damage on average and the closest I came was with Mogg Fanatic! In a dedicated UR Kiln Fiend style of deck this becomes much more like a Goblin Guide and while such decks are fairly potent in cube they do have rather a lot of narrow cards and are hard to support. The potential for prowess trickery is nice but it comes back to being too much of a one power beater. It is not a high enough impact card given the degree of support it requires to become good.


Cranial Archive - C cube 2/10

Drawing cards is better than gaining life and so this is appealing over Elixir of Immortality despite the increased cost. Unfortunately this exiles itself thus giving you substantially less longevity than Elixir. In the kinds of decks that want this kind of thing you would probably still need to run something else better at that job and just use this as backup.


Alter of the Brood - C cube 3/10

Lots of infinite combos with this to mill someone to death but I can't think of one less than three cards nor one using cards that are all that useful outside of the combo. All in all I don't see this getting it done but it is cheap and potentially effective at doings its thing.


Kin-Tree Warden - C cube 1/10

Not doing enough but still a lot of stuff for one so cheap. I think River Boa is still the way to go for cheap green regenerators but this certainly puts Drudge Skeletons in their place.


Valley Dasher - B cube 3.5/10

This ranks close to the many options on 1R three power dorks in red. It is more reliable and more bursty but does rather lack combat prowess. Compared to Ash Zealot this is missing a lot of extra stuff but ultimately it comes down to the firststrike making it that much more combat ready. Fine but not powerful enough like the various 1R 3/X dorks on offer.


Tormenting Voice - A cube (very hopefully) 5/10

A very tenuous Lat-Nam's Legacy in red. Not only is it sorcery but it requires the discard as an additional cost making it vulnerable to counter magic and impossible to abuse on an empty hand. Wild Guess didn't see much play and is basically the same as this except with a double red cost. That all said, card quality is very good and rare outside of blue. This, unlike Faithless Looting costs no card advantage and still has graveyard synergies. Being 1R makes this a lot more playable in multi-colour decks and those with lots of colourless ramp than Wild Guess and those are the deck types which will want this sort of effect. Cheap card quality wants to be easy to cast and so the subtle casting cost difference I think will be just enough for this to see some play where Wild Guess did not.


Disowned Ancestor - C cube 3/10

Not a powerful card or a quick one however it is a rare cheap defensive dork in black which lets you hold the ground and even can become a threat later on. Black as a control colour is happy to tap out so outlast being a sorcery on this is no biggie. Pretty dull and weak card but performs a role better than a lot of alternatives.


Taigam's Scheming - C cube 4/10

Rather a specific combo binding tool. A reanimator deck is going to be all over this. It does more for you to set up your combo than a Careful Study usually achieves. Also particularly good with all the delve in this set. Sadly it is a card quality spell with card disadvantage and so you really need to have use for things in the graveyard for it to be considered.


Crippling Chill - C cube 2/10

This reminds me a little of Repulse, I like how it can lock out a dork for multiple turns but I don't like how it costs three mana for you and none for your opponent. It is also better than bounce when dealing with comes into play effect creatures. Average tempo filler on the three slot is fine but the cube is generally requiring better than that.


Timely Hoardmate - C cube 2/10

Mini Revailark meets Ranger of Eos.The requirement to have raid makes this worse than either of the comparison cards to my mind. If you have very specific two drops you want to be getting back then this is the cheapest way to do it but if you just want value and card advantage I think other cards are going to be better.


Seeker of the Way - B cube 4/10

Easy to cast, dangerous to block and a good tempo two drop. Knight of Meadowgrain is more robust and stand alone but has far less potential for abuse. Neither are that exciting and to my mind are filler cards that give good flavour and colour feel but that are also not at all missed. While perhaps not as rounded there are a lot of more interesting two drops like Thalia, Knight of the White Orchid, Precinct Captain etc. that do more specific things that consume the available two slots I have in the cube.


Zurgo Helmsmasher - B cube 4/10

Undeniably powerful but I fear missing a few key things to become a cube mainstay. With two toughness, perhaps three going in to your opponents turn Zurgo is very easy to deal with conventionally. Five mana for a threat that dies to a lot of removal is a little awkward. Haste means you get some value but not always in the way you want it. A Ball Lightning is always a big pile of damage, this might just be an expensive Edict or might be just an irrelevant seven to the face, either way, your opponent has a little too much control over things for my tastes. Indestructible isn't even that big of a deal in cube with rife Edict, exile, bounce, counter, wither, reshuffle effects and the humiliator Disfigure on offer allowing you to kill Zurgo whenever you like. Zurgo is best when you can do something like Wrath in your own turn but this seems a complete miss match of cards, really Zurgo wants to be a top end finisher in an aggro deck and nothing to do with board sweepers. While Zurgo will be fine in said aggro decks he is never going to look better than a five mana hasting dragon.


Top Cube Cards from Khans of Tarkir


1.   Sarkhan, the Dragonspeaker
2.   Mantis Rider
3.   Dig Through Time
4.   Butcher of the Hoard
5.   The Wedge Lands
6.   Azban Charm
7.   Sultai Charm
8.   Savage Nuckleblade
9.   Bloodsoaked Champion
10. Clever Impersonator