Guilds of Ravnica Preliminary Review Part II

Firemind's Research 2

I want to like this but it is just a bit too fair for how narrow it is. It is like a limited Shrine of Burning Rage and a bad Trail of Evidence. Essentially this adds "draw 0.4 cards" or "deal one damage" to your instants or sorceries for a cost of 1 and 0.4 extra mana respectively. These are reasonable prices for these perks, made even more reasonable by being able to store up those things and use them at the time of your choosing. The issue is two fold. For limited cube it is not just restricted to Izzet colours but also to card type heavy builds and this means it needs to be a lot better than it is. For constructed decks it has more hope but it is still somewhat on the fair side. The upfront cost of a card and two mana really trashes the efficiency of the subsequent card draw or damage for some activations worth. You are not paying 2 mana for five damage but four mana and a card. Likewise with the draw, you need to be removing nearer the ten counters mark before you are sufficiently close to the desired efficiency. Cute card, versatile and ultimately good value but super slow and really in need of heavy build around. Assume your deck is half lands and half things that trigger Firemind's Research and that consider drawing this when half way through your deck. That gives you ten triggers if you see the rest of your deck. Without a bunch of reshuffle and flashback support this isn't even going to be able to get where it needs to be just to be playable in the average case.


Murmuring Mystic 6

This is strongly reminiscent of both Talrand, Sky Summoner and Docent of Perfection. If you were solely to look at the numbers you might conclude Mystic was the worst of the three however when you consider context I think that reverses. Five toughness is pretty huge. When you are playing a card like this all you really care about is how cheap it is and how survivable. Those two things let you have it in play longer which obviously lets you milk it for more value. Blue has plenty of spells, cheap ones and ones that draw and select cards. Cards that trigger off such things are very powerful, all you need is for them to stick and Mystic does that well. You might argue that Talrand is better what with making 2/2s but even if you say a 2/2 flier is twice as good as a 1/1 (which I would argue against) I would still say that Mystic will be in play for over twice as long on average. Mystic will also do relevant things himself while in play. It is desperate times when Talrand is getting in on the combat action! Mystic however can block things all day and still mostly stay safer than a Talrand.


Radical Idea 5

I am a little sad that this is so underpowered but to be honest if it had much more power than it does it would be everywhere. This is basically a good Think Twice and Think Twice is a fine enough card. Why is this better? Well, it allows for more synergy  and it costs less. If you are using Think Twice as card advantage it is pretty limp. It is when you are combining it with other effects that it starts to look alright. Radical Idea is much better suited to the kinds of places that might want such things. It works brilliantly with self mill and discard themed decks. Just having an instant speed option on a rummage for two mana is good. I suspect this is a little bit too in need of synergy to perform at cube level and thus won't be stellar in drafts but I think this will do good work in more tailored decks. Useful enough that I will also give this a trial in the cube.


Healer's Hawk 2

Much as I highly rate Rustwing Falcon I am not so into this. This is still a 1/1 and is easily killed and does poorly in combat. The lifelink doesn't add to the baseline of this card like toughness does for Falcon. The lifelink only helps with the scaling potential, and not in a particularly exciting way I might add. White aggressive decks are least in need of lifegain support, that is not their weakness. Vulnerability to ping and -1/-1 effects is however! If I really wanted lifegain on a one drop with combat potential I would play Leonin Vanguard, or Mardu Woe Reaper or Legion's Landing or Soldier of the Pantheon. That being said, if I want evasion on my one drop there are only a couple of superior cards to a Suntail Hawk (Judge's Familiar, Topplegiest, Skymarcher, Rustwing is all of the unrestricted white options I think off the top of my head). As such this might just wind up getting some love. Perhaps even Soltari Foot Soldier is better if you are just about the evasion!


Direct Current 1

This is pretty weak. Compared to Firebolt we lose all the initial tempo with a card thrice the cost. Although we gain the mana back on the back end going from five to three is nothing like the same as going from one to three. Just considering it as a percentage change paints a lot of the picture as to why it isn't a saving grace. A Shock is fine so getting a free but woefully bad shock with it is great. Terrible three mana Shock is so terrible that giving you the option on playing it again is really more of an insult than an improvement. So just on the mana elements this card has it fails pretty spectacularly compared to Firebolt and that is before you account for having to discard a card to play the god awful card again. It is hard to rule out a card that can just sit in your bin and give you a discard outlet while doing something useful. This card is sufficiently bad however that I am not even confident that it is playable when the drawback is turned into an advantage.


Arboretum Elemental 1

In cube hexproof is generally better than indestructible. Comically this might outperform the Impervious Greatwurm despite having about a third of the stats and much the same cost! Much as this might outperform it I doubt I will ever get to find out as I don't plan on bothering much with this card. It needs way too much else to make it good and when you have those kinds of things you can use them to facilitate much better things than this.


Status // Statue 6.5

Hard to know exactly where to place this. Typically I want my top end removal to hit planeswalkers but that is the only real failing of this card. It makes up for being gold and for being four mana reasonably well with a one mana mode playable in either of its colours. This makes it comfortably the most splashable gold removal card and also one of the most versatile. It ranges from one to four mana and it has four modes of action. It isn't really able to get tempo or value like a Kolaghan's Command but it is not really trying to be that sort of card. It is much more in competition with Cast Out and is probably more comparable to it in power level as well. Much as I prefer cycling, mono coloured and the ability to hit walkers to how Statue works I think all that combined is only just weightier than the lack of permanence of Oblivion Ring style removal enchantments. Being a little worse than Cast Out is no bad thing, that card is seeing a vast amount of play. I like this card, I find it interesting and I am a huge fan of the splashability of this particular flavour of gold card design. I want it to perform but it could well prove a little too inefficient. Vraska's Contempt is far more worth the four mana as a kill spell with lifegain and exile on offer. I think the value and performance of Status will ultimately determine how good this is in cube. If Status is rarely useful then this card will just be a bad overcost Maelstrom Pulse. If it is proving to be something good then we should have another Cast Out level of card to play around with.


Rosemane Centuar 1

Basically a limited card but it is impressively powerful. Not only is it reasonably priced for what you get but it continues to help with convoke strategies once in play and beating down. An elegant card and likely a pretty terrifying one to face in a Rav draft deck with cheap dorks to ramp it and subsequent ones out. It makes me wonder if there is a viable convoke deck in cube on its way.


Barging Sergeant and Hammer Dropper 0

These are kindof the same card. Both are also very much limited cards and they would seem to suggest a pretty high bar for common power level. No one is paying 4 or more mana for a two toughness dork in cube with basically just mentor though.


Moodmark Painter 2

This is a bit of a Grey Merchant of Asphodel. Obviously this scales with dead dorks rather than devotion and it allows for much more counterplay. The latter is likely a good thing, and the card is reduced in cost as well. Sadly this has poor tribal tags. As a zombie there would have been a number of decks that supported it with sufficient stuff in the bin. As it stands I don't think there are many archetypes that would look to a card like this. I like it, certainly one to keep an eye on but presently I don't see this offering a consistent enough punch to tempt anyone into playing it. My fear for these undergrowth cards is that they seem to counterable with any sort of graveyard hate. They needed to be a little more powerful than they are to offset the very real chance they do nothing of much at all. If your graveyard was untouchable the two undergrowth cards I have seen would be more in line with the requisite power for cube contenders.


Sonic Assault 0

I'm going to go ahead and call this one unplayable although it probably isn't in much the same way that Direct Current is woeful and yet still playable. Discard, graveyard and direct direct damage are all useful themes. I would be unhappy about playing this in booster draft...


Deadly Visit 0

Well, it is a lot better than Sonic Assault in booster draft at least! Probably less playable in cube but when you are already past the floor that sort of thing doesn't matter.


Unexplained Disappearance 0

A slightly better Voyage's End. While both are fine cards there is simply way too much in the way of better creature bounce than these sorts of things. There just isn't the level of demand on bounce as there is on other core effects like discard, burn, countermagic, card quality, ramp etc. If there was this might enjoy some play. I have precisely one creature only bounce card in cube and unshockingly it costs one. It only just gets enough action to merit its slot.

Guilds of Ravnica Preliminary Review Part I

Impervious Greatwurm 3

This is relatively castable for a 10 mana card being both green and having convoke. It is also the biggest printed numbers on a creature card. Josu Vess can put more stats into play and Marit Lage token is also bigger but just as a big dorky dork card the Greatwurm is the new top billing name. Size has pretty diminishing returns in magic, significantly past 5/5 and vastly past 10/10. The relevance of size is how it assists in combat, the clock it offers and how it protects against removal. Indestructible makes the high toughness fairly unimportant here. The occasions where this being a 16/16 rather than say an 8/8 in combat will be infrequent to say the least. As for the power, without trample or some other evasions it might as well be a third of what it is, this isn't connecting when it matters. I am just not sure what one does with this card. If I want a big dork with built in cost reduction Ghalta is a lot better than this. If I want an indestructible or otherwise hard to remove fatty then there still seems to be multiple options that are more powerful or suitable. I don't want to rule this out as it is nominally still a powerful card and it is something that is more physically playable than most of the cards that offer this sort of power. Cards like Rhonas make it actually a good thing to have in play and with a few more of those in the meta perhaps Greatwurm becomes viable. 


"Macabre Hatchery" 4

A one stop combo shop! I will Bury Alive a Carrion Feeder/Viscera Seer, a Merlira/Vizier and a Kitchen Finks. Then I will cast my Macabre Hatchery and gain my infinite life and enjoy my infinite scry or P/T Feeder. I imagine there are many combos one can put into play with this. Over all it is only a one mana saving on casting those cards but when you get multiple cards and a mana saving it is hard not to be a bomb. Look at Paradoxical Outcome in vintage or Collected Company pretty much anywhere! Indeed Collected Company is one of the closest comparisons to this card. Company is more stand alone in when you can play it but it requires a very focused build to be much good. Hatchery requires setup before you can play it but it is potentially kinder on your build. It feels a bit expensive for a deck that is looking to get cheap dorks back from the bin in a general sort of aggro or midrange deck but that depends more on the cards you are getting back. There are absolutely plenty combinations of one drop, two drop and three drop, even just limited to black cards, that I would happily pay five to put into play in most cube games. It will be interesting to see if this is powerful, desirable and consistent enough for general cube use. I would guess at no but the power level and potential is there. Failing that I do expect this to see play in several different combo lists either as the best way to go off or a backup to give you a second shot at your combo.


Thought Erasure 6.5

Well this is certainly very powerful. Two mana feels about right for Coercion. Surveil is usually a bit better than scry too. Slapping scry one on a cheap card that is about right power wise should turn it into a bomb. This feels sufficiently above the curve while remaining cheap and broadly desirable that it should overcome its gold issues. It is certainly the best targetted two mana hand disruption card ever printed. Negate is great and sees a lot of play while the "better" Countersquall sees near none in my cube. That is a parallel you could draw with Thought Erasure and most one and two mana black discard effects. Early in the game scry is a lot more valuable than life loss and there are a lot more playable Negate effects on offer than there are good hand disruption cards. I feel like these two factors should stop Thought Erasure suffering the same fate as Counterquall.


Conclave Tribunal 6

This is no Cast Out but I still think I like it more than Oblivion Ring and the like. I suspect this is bias on my behalf, I think this is more interesting and so I like it more than it is actually powerful. This is only better than Oblivion Ring when you can reduce it by more than one consistently without that costing you anything else. That first part is already a bit tricky and the second bit is reasonably unlikely. It is only really going to be cheap when you play it alongside something like a Sepctral Procession / Raise the Alarm or when you are in board stall. In the latter case you are unlikely to be that mana pressed either. Overall I suspect the average performance of this is a smidge under Oblivion Ring. That in itself might not be a problem, the increased option density of this card might alone be enough to carry it. This card might be fair but it is useful and interesting . It also looks like there are some cards that will benefit from being tapped which will further push this in performance. I will absolutely test this and have reasonably high hopes considering the mediocre power level of the card.


Sinister Sabotage 3

Basically just Dissolve and as such not quite there for cube. I have just always found three mana countermagic to be too slow and clunky. There is enough reasonably cheaper countermagic that you don't need to run these kinds of cards, good though they are. This is very much one of the best three mana counterspells but not quite there is still not there.


Necrotic Wound 4

Cute card but too situational for mainstay cube removal use. This is no good on turn one (short of cycled Street Wraiths). Later in the game it starts to look pretty good and should deal with most threats and in a way more effective than most other removal. This handles indestructible dorks and any sort of recursive shenanigans. It can even just be used as a combat trick to help take down a bigger dork when you only have a couple of things in the bin. This certainly has a higher ceiling than Murderous Cut but it is sadly also rather narrower. Necrotic Wound is likely also a little slower to turn on than Murderous Cut as well. Further issues for Wound include having it fizzled by a graveyard exile like Relic of Progenitus or just having it kept useless with an ongoing graveyard consumer like Scavenging Ooze. In the creature heavy graveyards based decks this card will compete for best removal spell in the game. On average it will sit a little below Murderous Cut and Tragic Slip in power and effectiveness. I would like to be able to include this card in cube but I am expecting it not to be playable in limited formats (cube ones obviously, go listen to Mr Sutcliffe if you want limited advice!). In the more themed constructed cube decks this will look rather more potent and should see play in the appropriate decks that will support it.


Boros Challenger 5

This looks impressively powerful. I even like that it is a 2/3 over a 3/2 despite that working less well with its mentor ability.  It is going to make one power cards a lot better as one drops in Boros colours. Rustwing Falcon got a lot better. Thraben Inspector and Mogg Fanatic also just got better. Kari Zev, etc etc. While this is comfortably powerful enough I am concerned it won't do much of much. People only play Boros when their mono red or mono white decks are not quite there. That extra card pool doesn't offset the consistency losses. This is certainly not powerful enough of a card to pull you into a two colour deck. Perhaps with enough synergy this will be more desirable but Boros is not really the home of the +1/+1 counter. I like this a lot, I will absolutely play it in some constructed cube decks and in those it will be high power level, on-theme, fine on its own, and interesting to play with. Boros has some very potent RW two drops and for what Boros likes to do I am inclined towards rating this the best of the lot. Bear in mind that is over a 3/2 with battlecry and that I also really really like scry 2! 


Emmara, Soul of the Accord 5

A nicely placed card. This obviously works wonders with convoke. Also a good card to pair with vehicles and things like Earthcraft. If you are just using this as a dork then Emmara loses her luster rather. She becomes like a limp Precinct Captain without the synergies. Sure, she makes a better token and she doesn't need to connect to do so but she has no combat abilities and is just a 2/2. She dies to basically all removal and stands little chance of surviving combat. Being in two colours and lacking first strike make her weaker than Captain overall and Captain is hardly a powerhouse in cube. Much like the previous Boros Challenger I suspect Emmara will be an excellent addition to the right sort of constructed deck but a bit of a non-event in a draft.


Quasiduplicate 1

This card sucks arse. Clones for only your own stuff really struggle to be anything other than dead or win more. Clones that make token copies are a bit dodgy too as so much deals with them so easily and permanently. I do like jump-start though. A good blend of flashback and retrace that allows for some nice new design space to be explored. It is neither card advantage nor perpetually available and so there is far less potential for abuse of the mechanism which in turn allows for some reasonably powerful printings with it. I look forward to seeing what other, better, cards have this mechanic.


Ral, Izzet Viceroy 1

Certainly powerful but this would struggle to compete as a mono coloured walker. The plus one is great and taking it to six loyalty is sturdy but the cost of the removal (and thus protection) ability is just too high. Kill something and leave Ral at 2 poxy loyalty? No ability to use it back to back. No guarantee that it even kills anything, let alone the thing you want. If you can have Ral sit in play drawing you cards then he is outstanding but most walkers sound great when you start throwing ifs about. The emblem is filthy good and not too hard to get to. Sadly there are more than one cheaper planeswalker in red and in blue that I would want in any deck before this dude. The kinds of things that might make me want to run Ral over the good planeswalkers just push me towards Keranos, God of the Storm. Between gods and good walkers this Ral seems even less use than the last.


Underrealm Lich 3

Well this is a funny old card. It is like some horrible fusion of Adanto Vanguard, Grim Flayer and Tomorrow, Azami's Familiar! I fear this is one of those cards that underperforms in cube for unfortunate reasons. This is a fairly late game card by cube standards. There is lots of card draw in cube, even in Golgari. There is also a bunch of self mill in Golgari too. The dig ability on this is mandatory. There is not an unreasonable chance that the clock this puts on your opponents is less than the clock it puts on you! While that is probably true the fact that you Anticipate instead of drawing means you should be able to win with your other cards in that time frame more often than not but it is still a very scary prospect. Dark Confidant and Mana Crypt are the sort of power level of card I demand when I am risking my own neck to run them. This Lich doesn't come close to that. The indestructible mechanic almost makes it worse. I am sure games will be lost to people paying four life to save the Lich only then to have it mill them to death. If you could somehow control the mill then this card would be great in cube. It offers fantastic card quality, some synergy setup potential and is not all that far off a 4/3 indestructible dork at the bargain price of five. Knowing your five drop that is going to provide you value is going to stick is a great way to make that five drop a whole lot better. I am sure this will get some love because it is so powerful while also having synergy potential. I am sure when it is made on curve with minimal self mill risk and maximum indestructible payments in the bank that the card will be devastating to most opponents and seem mentally good. Sadly this card is all a bit polar in performance potential for cube which is a bad start. The killer is that the average performance will also be below par.


Legion Warboss 7.75

This is about as close to Goblin Rabblemaster as you can get without being a functional reprint.  That is a great place to be. It is also how I can be a bit more precise with the rating. Rabblemaster is great, it is not quite an eight but it is pretty close. It is actually how playable the card rather than raw power that gets it to such a lofty rating but either way, I think Warboss might be a little better all round! Warboss is great like Rabblemaster as he provides some immediate token value and pressure, he provides a serious clock and further ongoing value. There is the token support, the tribal support, the aggressive support, the sacrifice stuff support. Great card that will see lots of play. As to why Warboss is better than Rabblemaster it is a few subtle things. Not forcing your other goblins into attacking is a mild perk. Warboss has some potential synergies with other counter based things. It is a free charge on a 1/1 Walking Ballista for example. Certainly Rabblemaster scales up in damage itself with more goblins supporting it but that is contained to the card itself which is more counterable, less open and thus a lot less scope. Rabblemaster does output a touch more damage in a goldfish but both do a full lethal in the same time frame. Rabblemaster goes 1, 6, 8, 10 while Warboss goes 1, 5 7, 9. While Rabblemaster is slightly punchier Warboss spreads that damage a lot better and attacks with more total stats. It also allows those buffs to persist. Say you get in two attacks with both, having 5/5 stats in three goblin tokens is going to be a lot better than the three 1/1s and that extra two damage in most cases. So yeah, Warboss is a really good card I expect to play with a lot. I suspect that added redundancy in three drop token producers in red will also be an even bigger bolster to archetypes and strategies that like such things.

The Trouble With Gold Cards

In every review of every gold card, I feel like I drone on about their reduced playability for cube and how it’s a problem. As a time saving tool, I am going to cover why that’s the case in this article and simply refer to it in future. With another gold heavy Ravnica set due, now seems like the pertinent time for this!

In terms of how good a card is generally, you are looking at a couple of things – First and foremost, how powerful the card is, which is determined by what it does and how much it costs. You just compare it to other cards you know the power level of and triangulate a power level for it, based on that. Fairly straight forward.... when you accurately understand the power level of all the cards *and* how much each component element of a card should cost *and* how each of those things scales with all other effects!

Next up, you look at the context of the card, you consider it for standard/modern/whatever and look at which decks it might fit in, or what cards pair well with it. Some cards are so powerful that they will form new archetypes around them, while others might be relatively weak but fit into a gap in an existing and powerful deck. The context for where you are aiming to use a card is a modifier on the power level you "triangulated" in your initial appraisal of the card. It can make it better or worse and it can be a minor change, or a big one. It requires a experience and understanding of the meta in question to be able to take into account usefully.

For most of magic that’s you done for card evaluation, but for cube there is another step. In cube, you are essentially designing a format. You are not just doing the deck building stage, but also building the format prior to that within which those decks are built. This means it all gets a lot more complicated. For one, you have control over the context. This means you have near-infinite variation and scope to build a framework from. You can make good cards poor and bad cards viable. You are not building a deck but you are building a limited format which contains the potential for as many or as few decks as you choose. Building good decks has rules like sensible curves and good land to spell ratios, and building draft formats also have these kinds of elements. There are many different interpretations of cube and many different parameters people build to. A long time ago, I was almost entirely driven by card power levels and I would let that determine the meta, but over time I have used my control over the meta and my understanding of that to craft a "better" format.

My interpretation of "better", in this case, is a blend of good diversity in decks, minimizing random elements, and maximizing choice. These things are what I think lead to good games of magic. Ultimately, that is what these games are for – fun! - and that is how I like to play my magic, and hence that is how I tailor my cube. I build a cube in a way that I would argue maximizes my fun. I am aiming at using the best cards, sure, but now my overriding principle is to create the best format. A good cube card for me has a good blend of power and playability. The former effects the latter, but the latter is the more important attribute for drafting cube inclusion. Playability is what most helps to increase the choice in draft and reduce the random element.

So, what does all this have to do with gold cards? In order to maximize choice and minimize random factors, you want as high a number of playables as possible in any given booster. That is basically the answer. Gold cards are inherently less playable in a limited setting than cards of fewer colours, and that means they reduce options simply by being there.

I have done this numerical look at it before at least once in this blog, but I have no idea where, so I’ll do it again here where it should be. There are 33 possible colour combinations in magic (if you include colourless). A colourless card can be played in all 33 of those. A card of single colour can be played in 16 of the 33 total. A two colour card, however, can only be played in 8 of the 33 possibilities. A three colour card can do 4 out of the 33. As we can clearly see, adding a colour halves the playability of a card, however it actually does more damage than that. With dual lands being contested and requiring picking, you find that even with good fixing options that people stick to relatively few colours. Two colours is the most common, with mono probably just edging out three colour decks in draft (in sealed where you don't have to use picks on fixing you find way more three plus colour decks). With that in mind, adding in colours is even more harmful to the playability of a card, as you remove the more commonly seen options first when you increase the colours.

The problem with cube design and this principle is that nothing is linear. Gold cards are absolutely not twice the power of mono coloured cards, which the maths would point towards as being the requirement for cube inclusion. This is the point at which it all gets sufficiently complex that math is no longer that useful. For example, it is nice to have a smattering of gold cards in the drafting cube for the case of colour signalling. You can use the wheeling of a solid gold card as a good indication that that pairing is open. Lands are too easily picked up speculatively for them to be a reliable test of availability of a colour pairings.

If you are just looking to maximize the playability of the cards in your cube, you should look to keep gold cards lean. If you were purely adding in cards to your cube based on power, you would have more gold cards than non-gold ones however. There is a weird tipping point of power level on gold cards where they start to warp the meta, and this is the point at which I try and include gold cards from. You expect your gold cards to be a little better than mono equivalents, as that is how they are designed. Most of those ‘slightly better’ cards see too little play to merit slots in cube. A step above this in power and you are usually at cards that see play in most to all decks of their colours. These are fine cube inclusions. They offer mild incentives towards going into a colour pairing, generally see enough play to merit their inclusion and obviously they pack plenty of power. The issue with these kinds of cards is that they need the colour pairing in question to be good to begin with. If you follow this power level guide for including gold cards, you will find that most of the gold cards in the weaker colour pairings see little play. If you go yet another step up in power, you reach a point where the meta warps around the gold card sufficiently that it sees enough play. It is almost as if the measure of power on gold cards is a logarithmic scale once you are above the power curve. You don't need your gold cards to be twice the power of the non-gold ones, just more powerful enough that people are willing to build for them, towards them or around them.

This is the main difficulty in reviewing and adding gold cards to the cube. I know they need to be more than just a bit above the curve, but beyond that it is mostly an educated guess as to how much above the curve a gold card needs to be before it sufficiently makes up for it's inherent lack of playability to be cube-worthy. The line is very fine and moves continually with all the changing contexts and new cards. What seem like tiny fluctuations in power can be the difference between a bomb that sees no play and a bomb that is meta defining. 

Lightning Helix is a great example of a card that is a significant amount above the curve but not enough to get any extra play. It goes in all the Boros decks, basically, but there are not enough of those drafted for Helix to see more play than any of Searing Spear, Lightning Strike or Incinerate. Terminate is subtly different to Helix, as it is in a color pairing that sees a lot of play but it doesn't see more play than cards like Go for the Throat, as it isn't ‘better’ enough. The Scarab God is a great example of a card that is so powerful that it does warp the meta around it. You go out of your way to play it, because it is so dominant in a game. There are loads of other black or blue top end cards with loads of power and game ending potential, but The Scarab God is sufficiently more powerful than those cards that it does see more play than they do.

So that is the trouble with gold cards. They are narrower by nature, which is a bigger problem than usual as a format designer rather than a deck builder. That issue poses questions about where you draw the line and what balances you want to achieve in your cube. It is an issue that limits your design scope somewhat, in that you will wind up with a pretty bad cube if you just go nuts on adding in gold things. The second issue is with evaluating them to begin with. Just knowing cards need to be at least two steps above the curve in power isn't a huge help. With no good way to tell exactly were a card sits in power and how much that specific card needs in terms of extra power, your only real recourse for adding gold cards in to the cube is to test them. Either you wait for the community to test things and follow their lead once enough time has passed, or you have to do it yourself in a long and manual process. This is what I do, but I still miss a bunch. I can only fit in so many gold cards at any given time without hurting the experience, and so I have limited capacity to test out gold cards manually. It has happened before that a card didn't get attention, for whatever reason, while it was in the cube for testing and I cut it before it had its chance to prove itself. 

Lastly, as a disclaimer, I am only talking about gold cards that require you to have two colours of mana to be anything other than a blank. Vindicate is useless unless you have your black and your white mana handy and is the kind of gold card I am discussing in this article. There are lots of cards that are technically gold, or have properties like gold cards, but that are actually far more playable in a general sense due to their partial functionality or flexibility. Lingering Souls and Fire / Ice are great examples of these partial gold cards. Then all the hybrid cards, such as Kitchen Finks, also fall under this umbrella as do things like Shalai, Voice of Plenty, and they are typically even more playable. 

Top 10 Cards from 2015

I’m finding that the more recent years are increasingly harder to do, as the cards are better designed, there are far more good cards and far less over powered ones. I had to leave out so many things from this list that I would consider staple cube cards. Of the 37 things I currently have in my cube from 2015, there is a lower range than for most years preceding it. Further to this, it is still very much a bell curve distribution, making most of them basically as good as each other. To be able to differentiate between very similar power level cards but incomparable effects takes a long time and is highly sensitive to meta changes. With the frequency of new content released, I can't say I’ve ever felt overly confident ranking the median cards in cube and median cards is what we mostly seem to have in 2015. That may sound like a poor year, but it is much more to do with total contribution than individual card power and for that, 2015 is a solid performer. Also good card design (and thus good games) has an inverse relationship with cards being over powered - the best cards for play all lie close to the power curve. While not as heavily influenced by commander as some years, there is still a significantly higher ratio of commander cards hitting the cube and the top ten of cards than the other sets, relative to their set sizes. Other than Commander 2015, the year was comprised of Fate Reforged, Dragons of Tarkir, Magic: Origins and Battle for Zendikar. Here are the cards from those sets which didn't make the top ten,although many of them felt like they should have;

Nissa,  Vastwood Seer /

Chandra, Fire of Kaladesh /

Surrak, the Hunt Caller

Liliana, Heretical Healer /

Kytheon, Hero of Akros /

Hangarback Walker

Monastery Mentor

Tasigur, the Golden Fang

Battle Lands

Lumbering Falls

Abbot of Keral Keep

Daxos' Torment

Righteous Confluence

Alesha, Who Smiles at Death

Anafenza, Kin Tree Spirit

Anticipate

Archangel of Tithes

Assault Formation

Atarka's Command

Avaricious Dragon

Avatar of the Resolute

Blisterpod

Carrier Thrall

Catacomb Sifter

Chief of the Foundry

Collected Company

Collateral Damage

Dark Petition

Demonic Pact

Den Protector

Dragonlord Atarka

Dragonlord Dromoka

Dragonlord Silumgar

Dragonlord Ojutai

Drana, Liberator of Malakir

Dromoka's Command

Drowner of Hope

Evolutionary Leap

Expedition Envoy

Eldrazi Skyspawner

Flamewake Phoenix

Frost Walker

Ghirapur Aether Grid

Gurmag Angler

Hallowed Moonlight

Harbinger of Tides

Hedron Archive

Hidden Dragonslayer

Icefall Regent

Impact Tremors

Inspiring Call

Jaddi Offshoot

Ire Shaman

Jeskai Sage

Jessian Theif

Languish

Lightning Berserker

Mage Ring Network

Magmatic Insigt

Molten Vortex

Managorge Hydra

Mardu Woe Reapre

Mardu Strike Leader

Narset Transcendant

Ob Nixilis Reignited

Oblivion Sower

Ojutai's Command

Outpost Seige

Pressure Point

Pyromancer's Goggles

Rally the Ancestors

Ruinous Path

Sarkhan Unbroken

Secure the Wastes

Silumgar's Command

Soulfire Grandmaster

Starfield of Nyx

Stratus Dancer

Sultai Emissary

Temporal Trespass

Temur Battlerage

Thopter Engineer

Thunderbreak Regent

Transgress the Mind

Ulamog, the Ceaseless Hunger

Valorous Stance

Vryn Wingmare

Warden of the First Tree

Wild Slash

Whisperwood Elemental

Whisperer of the Wilds

Yasova Dragonclaw

Zurgo Bellstriker

Zulaport Cutthroat

10. Gideon, Ally of Zendikar

This version of Gideon never achieved in cube what he did in standard. He is solid in cube, but nothing to get overly excited about. I find it relatively hard to keep him safe. Due to not wanting to attack with 5/5 Gideon if you are behind on the board, you tend to just churn out 2/2s and as such you never work up a buffer of loyalty. Evasion and direct damage are what deal with planeswalker well in cube and Ally of Zendikar is vulnerable to both. When ahead, the card is a beating - he makes a 2/2 and then starts beating you up with the 2/2 and his unkillable 5/5 self. Either that, or he just makes a permanent and game ending Glorious Anthem. The Anthem utility is OK when you are behind, but it is a fairly long term plan at that point and likely only a good option because your Gideon will slowly die anyway. I rate Ally of Zendikar roughly the same as Garruk Relentless. Certainly Gideon is a little more powerful, with more starting loyalty, but he is less useful to the colour with plenty of other Anthem and creature production options. Relentless is a removal option in green, which is rare, and ups his value if not his actual power. Gideon gets play for his raw power, rather than for any specific role. A big part of what makes Gideon good in cube is that he combines with Knight-Errant to ensure white has high-tempo, top-rate planeswalkers in the four slot. Redundancy and consistency allow for planning, and planning well gives you a big edge.

9.    Shambling Vent

This is the best of all the enemy colour manlands, however not by anywhere near as big of a spread as for the original five. All the enemy colour manlands are better than Lavaclaw Reaches, but none are better than Raging Ravine. Basically, they all sit fairly closely to Stirring Wildwood in power. Vent is perhaps the least underrated. Fumarole and Needle Spire are potent cards and even Hissing Quagmire does some useful stuff and yet they all seem to be regarded as weak. Obviously, everything seems weak compared to Colonnade and Tar Pit! Despite that large discrepancy, Vent is a great land. It offers the biggest life swing per mana used of all the dual manlands and it does so safely. The life makes you safe and the 3 toughness makes it relatively safe. Low animation cost makes it useful more often and available sooner in the game, if needs be. Pretty much most bad dual lands and bad man lands are useful and playable to some extent. Vent isn't the worst dual land and it is one of the better man lands all together, resulting in a solid old card.

8.   Fiery Confluence

This was the first, and remains one of few, red utility cards that is actually good. Fiery confluence is certainly expensive for a utility card, but the various effects it has are so potent that four is a good price. Six to the face is all sorts of better than Lava Axe. It represents an always relevant mode, it affords a lot of reach and it needs to be respected. Due to how clean Fiery Confluence is whenever you are expecting it, your life total somewhat starts at 14. You will avoid going to 6 or less, because it could mean sudden death. Confluence brings that Daze-like quality of having value without ever needing to be an option, perhaps even in the deck! That is also just the Lava Axe mode. Being a Starstorm of X = 1 to 3 is also great. It gives mass removal options to decks not suitable to run a card that is only mass removal, it gives control in mass removal effect allowing you to play creatures and break the symmetry, or simply respond efficiently to the situation. It is only an OK mass removal card, but given that it is on the back of a card that has several other good applications, that is a huge win. Shatter is, of course, a great thing to have as an option with it being amazing when good and dead much of the rest of the time. Two powerful but situational modes and one powerful but always usable mode is the best setup you can have on a three mode card.

7.   Mystic Confluence

 

The poor man's Cryptic Command! That, however, does not stop it being a pretty potent spell. At base level, it is Jace's Ingenuity which is an underrated draw card. You generally take the draw three mode when you have nothing to disrupt from your opponent and it reaches the end of their turn. Ideally, you want to bounce a big useless dork like a Wurmcoil, or counter a spell and draw some cards. A big part of what keeps this fair is that Mana Leak is missing a lot of things by the point in the game Mystic Confluence is getting cast. When you have to double Leak something, your end product of Dismiss for five feels less great. Equally, if you are just under loads of pressure and need to bounce three things just to stay alive, you don't really feel like you pulled ahead, just bought yourself some time at the cost of one of your big cards. This certainly got a load more powerful with the printing of Torrential Gearhulk, but it was plenty good enough before. Lots of utility, lots of core effects and a decent baseline all add up to give a strong card. When it is sat in your hand, you not only feel safe, but you also feel like you have a game plan. Cryptic makes you safer, but it doesn't offer you the "I am just going to draw three and that will win me the game" element to be working towards.

6.   Pia and Kiran Nalaar

The new Siege-Gang Commander. The Nalaar parents are better than the classic goblin Commander, in part, because they are cheaper and thus get to impact the game sooner. The flying tokens are also supremely good and make up most of the rest of the reason they are superior. The only real downside is that you have to pay more to sac for two damage. While both have a lot of synergy potential, goblin synergy is focused into solely goblin decks, while artifact synergies are to be found across a broad spectrum of decks. While Gang comes with a potential for 8 damage worth of sacrificed goblins all by itself, compared to the 4 of Pia and Kiran, you are generally able to find plenty of artifacts to sacrifice beyond the thopters. Indeed, you don't really want to sac off the thopters, a 1/1 flyer is surprisingly relevant in cube. Fliers are fantastic and feel generally more relevant than 2/2 (and even 3/3) tokens later on in a stalled game. Fliers tend to stay relevant at all stages of the game. So, we are ideally using the ability on artifacts other than our thopters. This can be clues and treasure tokens, the lesser ground based 1/1 servo tokens that crop up, Talisman and Signets past their best, a Mox (ideally an unimprinted one!) and so forth. As is so often the case, the best things to turn into Shocks are Chromatic Star and Terrarion, as they cost you so little total resources. Pia and Kiran Nalaar improve things like Galvanic Blast all the way to Bushwhackers, while themselves also being improved by Chromatic Star all the way to Wurmcoil Engine. Despite their abundant synergies, the card is outstanding all by itself. It is a complete all rounder offering good offence, good defense, and a tonne of options. It has reach and removal potential. It offers loads of value in the face of spot removal and even some compensation against mass removal, if you have mana up. It is enough of a card to be able to force a Wrath by itself, in a lot of cases. It is a safe thing to curve out into and remains good when ripped late into the game. Although it takes a little more time than with a card like Bloodbraid Elf, you stand to gain both value and tempo with Pia and Kiran Nalaar fighting for you.

5.   Whirler Rogue

This is a fantastic dork. It’s not just one of the best armies in a can but it is blue, a colour otherwise pretty devoid of cards like this. Rogue has good stats for the mana and goes wide, making it good defense and good value. The extensive evasion offered by Rogue also makes it a great offensive card. The token and artifact elements give it decent synergy, too. Hard to go wrong with this. It stabilizes well against aggression, and handles planeswalkers well while protecting your own. It has the ability to offer immediate effect by forcing something through, and that makes it even better planeswalker control. While Rogue is not more powerful than Pia and Kiran Nalaar, the activiated ability (and only difference bar the cost to the cards) being no mana and instantly useful makes it have greater impact in cube, simply through happening sooner and more often. This, combined with blue having no solid alternatives while red has endless strong three-, four-and five-drop dorks, is why I rate the less powerful of the pair higher on the top ten list. It is simply more desirable, more frequently played and more frequently uses its activated ability. Not only does Whirler Rogue get played a lot more, but it is also cast more per play than Pia and Kiran Nalaar. Blue decks dig to it faster and have less in the way of things they might play instead. Further to that, the card is so good in blue decks that it gets bounced and recast fairly regularly for another round of Thopters.

4.   Ugin, the Spirit Dragon

This is one of those few cards that is just so powerful it almost transcends mana cost. There are very few situations Ugin doesn't sort out with ease and then go on to win from. I only have two cards in my whole cube that (always) cost more than seven and Ugin is one of them. If you can limp your way to eight mana, then there is a good chance Ugin will turn the game for you. It is lovely to be able to play a card that is both a threat and an answer (a really, really good answer!). Ugin is the mass removal version of Karn Liberated. He is safer, being better at removal, and he is more of a threat because a Bolt every turn races restarting the game! Ugin is such a strong card, I frequently use it as a point of interest when a card is especially good when going up against it, such as Thought-Knot Seer or Nissa, Worldwaker. The tragedy of Ugin in cube is that despite the ease of getting to his ulti, it is actually rarely good to use. The card draw is too much at that point in the game and it is not like you are shy on mana with Ugin already in play and the most expensive thing you can have! I have only seen it be good for the lifegain, which is pretty laughable. Gain seven and risk decking myself, just so this red player doesn't rip a Shock and win! Turns out that with two of the best abilities otherwise found on walkers, it really doesn't matter that the third isn't a winner.

3.  Wretched Confluence

It came as a surprise to me that this was the best of the Confluence cycle. I was expecting the Grixis ones to all shine, but I had them in reverse order for how they would perform in cube. Certainly the Fiery is best in constructed, but somehow Wretched is the thing for cube. One thing it has over the others is effectively four modes. You can force your opponent to lose up to three life - it may sound super-corner-case, but it really hasn't been. We are not quite a double figures for killing blows with Wretched Confluence yet, but we are not far off. Throw in the couple that have lead to mill victories and I think Wretched Confluence is in double figures. The three intended options are all really good, as well. Drawing cards is great, obviously, and the efficiency is decent enough. Raise Dead is situational, but often more powerful than drawing a card. Between those two modes, it ensures you have the right kind of value for both the mid- and late-game. Any deck leaning on any kind of creature for synergy or just finishing the game will be greatly reinforced simply by the ability to recur it from Confluence. The removal option is the real champion of this card, though. The other modes are both value and not tempo. Disfigure doesn't sound great, it sounds pretty ripped off when you think that blue got Mana Leak, painless draw and Unsummon which are more rounded abilities with higher CMC! It turns out not to matter, as again, Wretched seems to get double utility. Just as a pure removal spell Wretched Confluence is great, as it feels like a one sided Wrath a lot of the time. It can kill wide or tall and does a really good job of clearing out enough things you care about to swing the tide. Where it gets really filthy is when you get to use it in combat and it is like you get to fire off a couple of Seeds of Strength. All their dorks shrink to just the wrong sizes and you destroy their position with disgusting efficiency.

2.   Kolaghan's Command

A fantastic card, as clearly demonstrated by how commonly it is seen in the both modern and legacy. It is one of the easiest cards to get you a two-for-one. It does so cheaply, it does a good job of said two-for-one often gaining tempo, and it provides a wealth of utility. A perfect blend of situational and general effects all add up to make this an all round winner. You play it in control,as it is such a fantastic example of what you want from a control card, however you play it in midrange and aggro too because the card is just so great. It is not just a card you play 100% of the time (in my non-combo cube) when you are in BR, but it is also a card that pulls you into that colour pairing. I splash for this a lot, as do others. I think it was pretty much Command that put Rakdos on the map and catapulted the associated duals from one of the lowest of the ten pairings to one of the more exciting ones. Never bad and often devastating. Pure filth with creatures that recur it!

1.   Jace, Vryn's Prodigy / Jace, Telepath Unbound

If you take equal parts Snapcaster Mage and Search for Azcanta, this happy Jace-like midpoint is where you will end up. Not such assured long term value and quality as Search and not quite the immediacy of Snapcaster, which is why you see a bit less of him in constructed where the extreme ends of the spectrum are typically where you want cards positioned. In cube, however,where you want cards to be that bit more rounded or middle of the road, little Jace excels. There really isn't anything to dislike about the card. A 0/2 looter for 1U is a good baseline and arguably makes him the best tap to loot cards on offer, simply from surviving ping effects. Most decks enjoy the card quality and synergy of looting. Most decks also enjoy getting to recast their spells and having decent planeswalkers in play, which only cost them two mana! Being able to manipulate what card you have after a loot is nice, as well. A Jace that lives past summoning sickness becomes doubly hard to kill, as he can flop to a planeswalker at instant speed a lot of the time. You can also prevent him flipping if you want more loots, or would be unable to protect him, with delve effects and other graveyard manipluation. Lots of trickery, lots of options and lots of power. What is truely great about Jace is that despite all this, he is still pretty well designed. The power he offers comes slowly and so there is no real way to abuse him and plenty of counter play. Jace serves as a perfect example of how you can cram unreasonable amounts of power into a card without it being a problem, or oppressive. A design win, a flavour win and a game play win. Magic done right.