M19 Preliminary Reviews Part IV

Rouge's Gloves 0

Holy hell they did a number on Mask of Memory... I was unaware that Mask was too powerful and in need of reigning in! I have not used or seen Mask of Memory in cube for over a decade. The card was fine but that is all it was. Gloves are not fine, don't let them near a cube.


The Various Planeswalker Deck Things

Luckily none of these are cube worthy although the way things are going it feels like we will soon be finding pushed playables in these product lines which would be awful. Court Cleric comes pretty close, if there were some more better Ajani walkers it might start to see some play.


Meteor Golem 1

This seems like an OK card to have as an out in your Goblin Welder sort of decks. I feel like this is low enough power that you probably try and find better solutions or forgo some entirely but still, nice to have options.


Blood Divination 0

Terrible. So bad it begs the question why both wasting the ink and card. This could have cost three and been interesting, and still not good enough I might add, just interesting.


Declare Dominance 0

Like a mass removal fight effect. Sadly this is awful. It is situational and easily blown out with removal. It isn't even able to kill any dork with a tap effect, or say, anything of relevance while a vehicle is in play...


Colossal Majesty 0

Lots of things like this in green and they all see zero play. Slow and unreliable.


Viashano Pyromancer 1

Not all that long ago I would have been impressed with this. Now it pales in comparison to cards like Earthshaker Khenra. Pyromancer is far too fair for cube play. The only chance this has is as a tribal card and even then it is pretty filler.


Thud 4

Fling for one less mana but at sorcery speed. This will absolutely see play all over the place. Most of the times Fling is used it is as a combo kill and the instant matters less than the cost. Thud is less versatile than Fling but Thud is better in the majority of the places you would actually play either. I am already designing a Ghoultree Fork Thud deck! I think too narrow for the drafting cube, I would rather the more flexible Fling there and I have not yet found myself wanting said Fling in the drafting cube in all the many years I have had access to it in.


Exclusion Mage 3

A Man-O'-War with better creature types and poorer utility. Or indeed an Aether Adept with lower utility but easier to cast. Presently in drafting cube the types on dorks in blue matters little. As a splash in a white weenie deck with a humans theme Exlusion Mage might be the best of the three but beyond that it feels less useful. I don't find I tend to run these cards very often, they are not enough tempo nor really enough power to achieve what you want them to do in cube. Exlusion Mage is fine and it is comparable but it is far from exciting. I hope I will never run one.


Skilled Animator 2

In some ways this looks like a really really good Blade Splicer while in others it looks like a risky and overcost Ensoul Artifact. To play this you need lots of artifacts which makes it too narrow for a drafting cube. For an aggressive artifact deck it probably just isn't powerful enough given what else is on offer for such things.


Cavalry Drillmaster 2

The overall package looks punchy and good value but I feel breaking it down dispels that initial impressive feel of the card. Basically a 2 mana 2/1 is pretty limp, it is weaker than all the aggressive white one drops and will need buffs or removal to do much of much in combat. Like sure, you play this and get to swing with your 1 drop past their 2/3 and they take four in the face, but then what? You sit there with a pair or 2/1s being held off by a Sylvan Advocate? Sounds poor. Two mana for a Shock to the face and a 2/1 is almost exactly what we ruled out in Viashano Pyromacer. This looks a bit better because of the first strike but it absolutely isn't. You need another dork for this to do anything. It is fair to say that white would be a lot more interested in Viashano Pyromacer than red due to not having the same reach or planeswalker control but not by enough to overcome how limp Drillmaster is. I will give this a little try just to confirm my suspicions. While I am pretty sure it is far too low powered and unreliable there is still a part of me that won't let this down. The card is a whole lot more impressive if you can give it flash! Even haste makes it a lot better.


Ajani, Adversary of Tyrants 6

Probably the best mono white Ajani and also the most cube playable Ajani. The original is still the most powerful in a specific sort of place but it is super narrow and linear in those. Goldmane does still get dug up for use frequently enough but he has long been gone from the drafting cube and will not be returning (for being too narrow). Adversary of Tyrants feels a lot more all round playable. He has two useful abilities which do not both rely on having stuff in play. That is the critical failing of more previous iterations of the walker. While you ideally want to flop Adversary down and pump a pair of dorks up you can still usefully make him without that capability in a lot of cases. Even the less aggressive decks should have some decent cheaper dorks it wants back. If you can buff two dorks you are in a great position, five loyalty on a four drop walker whilst adding +2/+2 to the board is about as much buffer as you can find on four drop walker. If not then a two drop back in play and a 2 loyalty walker is probably still good. While I do like this Ajani there is no hope of it being better than Knight-Errant or Ally of Zendikar. White would happily have another walker in the four slot but it does have to be a decent one. Just being better than previous Ajani's doesn't make for a decent card! This is good but it is isn't amazing. It is more playable than other Ajanis but does still need that bit more support than Knight Errant and Ally of Zendikar all of which leads me to think that Adversary of Tyrants probably will still get cut eventually. That being said, very few four mana walkers that are at least decent have been cut from my cube. Good design I would say, feels white, feels like Ajani and sits right on the line for power. The ultimate is a lovely design too, it isn't an auto win but it is powerful and flavourful and relatively accessible.


Nicol Bolas, the Ravager 7

Hmm, curious. A 4 mana 4/4 flying Ravenous Rats is OK. It is in fact really rather good. It is very Thought-Knot Seer. Not as disruptive but better value and power. Better late game too! The issue is obviously not in three colours when considered for playability within a draft. I cut Siege Rhino from my cube as it was just too narrow and Rhino is awesomely powerful. Grixis is a more common colour grouping than Abzan and this Bolas is quite close to the Rhino in power just on the upfront aspect. That is however most of the card as the majority of times Bolas will close the game out as an Air Elemental or eat removal before you get near seven mana. Flipping this Bolas is certainly a very powerful effect and should lead to winning the game but then most other seven mana plays win the game. The power difference in the Bolas planeswalkers is fairly negligible as they are all quite nutty. While I would rather a Nicol Bolas, Planeswalker in play than most other things I would absolutely rather have Nicol Bolas, the Ravager in my deck. I suspect that you would find that Nicol Bolas, the Arisen is in play far less than say a God-Pharaoh however you would find that Nicol Bolas, the Ravager was substantially more played than any 7 mana card within a deck! Essentially I am saying the upside on having a potent four mana mode vastly outweighs any difference in the top end modes. If you are fine with very gold cards in your cube then this is one of the better options. I am wary of such things but suspect such a cool card will be too appealing for mine and most other player bases to leave out of the cube. This card lets you harness the power of a Bolas walker without compromising your build. I have built many a bad deck just because I wanted to play big bad Bolas and I have seen others do it an awful lot too. This new offering will let people do that without hurting them. It might even show them why a gold 7+ mana walker is a dodgy include in a list! This will see play than cards like Siege Rhino not just for potential power reasons but also because Izzet, Dimir and Rakdos are all powerful and commonly played guilds and will often splash into the third colour of that trio. Splashing for this will not be too hard.

One final word of warning on this card, it is much much worse as a planeswalker than all the other Bolas cards. Probably even the event deck one although I don't know what that does off hand! This is a better card all round, a much better card, but when you want just the walker it will be a liability. Imagine a control mirror game where you know their hand is full of things like Swords to Plowshares, or even Wrath of God effects which is a fairly common state of affairs. Either they can kill it at instant speed with the discard trigger on the stack which is really bad, even though it might be a 2 for 1. The point is you turned one of their low value or dead cards into an answer for your  power plays. Control games are all about lining up answers to threats appropriately and this Bolas isn't great at that. Even if they just have the Wrath you will need 11 mana to get your walker online or you will have to wait a bit and waste countermagic on their dead mass removal. All in all, 11 mana for the Arisen is dodgy and pretty low value, even with a discard and a potential attack in the sky for 4 thrown in. I really don't expect to see this flipped all that often. Like the final level on Figure of Destiny or Kargan Dragonlord. Likely less often than those even. Again, this isn't a problem, the front half of the card is plenty enough to carry this. The flip is just lovely flavour. It wins hearts and minds and makes the odd longer game a bit spicier and more exciting.


Lathliss, Dragon Queen 0

This is all sorts of win more. I guess it is a cute way of deck space saving in a Dragonstorm deck. With six mana cards just play stand alone bombs not cards that need subsequent big cards to hit the value bar needed. I am sure people will have lots of fun with this in EDH but it isn't good for much outside of that. I can think of multiple cheaper dragons I would rather have put into play that this even disregarding cost. 


Vaevictis Asmadi, the Dire 0

I would much rather run a Broodmate. Or indeed most of the other Jund colour dragons. This has no immediate impact and it has wildly random outcomes. You can turn your own stuff into nothing more than information for your opponent while upgrading their threats into more powerful ones. Generally the attack trigger will put you ahead but it isn't reliable or even that easy to setup. As with Lathliss, this feels much more of a multiplayer card than anything else. Cute as an answer to things but cute does not cut it on tri coloured Six drops. Far too vulnerable of a card to removal as well for what it is trying to do.

M19 Preliminary Reviews Part III

Militia Bugler 3

I am not looking forward to the many ways this is going to be pronounced. As for the card, I love it but I do not hold out all that much hope for it. The card draw element of Bugler is restrictive on deck design in quite a brutal way. With 25% of your deck as targets you are still missing nearly a third of the time (31.6% of the time to be more precise). You are also not getting a choice on 86.7% of goes (don't hold me to that, I did the math myself and rather suck at probability).  This is all to say that Bugler isn't just a long way off being an Impulse but to suggest it isn't even that close to draw a card. Not forgetting of course that if you want a nice beefy planeswalker, a land or a removal spell then your Bugler is unlikely to be of much assistance. Bugler finds low powered cards with questionable reliability and only if you go to some lengths to support him. Things like Accorder Paladin and Raise the Alarm all start to look a lot worse. The reason I spent so long on this is that white has many flicker effects but has few good EtB value triggers to abuse them with. I can see this being used in a few such decks where he slots in nicely but I fear this will not even be close to enough to merit inclusion in a drafting cube. This is probably only ever going to be the bad backup to Recruiter of the Guard. Aluren is likely one of the better homes for the Bugler.


Elvish Rejuvenator 6

So this is a new incarnation of Farhaven Elf or Wood Elves. While the latter can get non-basics and lets them come in untapped they cannot get utility lands. If Rejuvenator had a 100% hit rate I would prefer it to Wood Elves (or Farhaven ones) in almost every case. Combo elf decks benefit from the burst of Wood Elves and are the most likely place to still want them but the ability to find Cradle and perhaps things like Wolf Run feel like they offset that. Probably you just run both in the cube elf ball lists! So, what is the hit rate of Rejuvenator? Bottom end is around the 85% mark. Basically no cube decks run less than a third land so unless you go nuts pulling them out of your deck and drawing them you are looking at 85% to hit moving towards 97%  as you progress towards half the deck as lands. These are pretty good rates. I certainly want the upper end of that range (above 90%) for Rejuvenator to feel like the better choice on just the consistency versus the value of any lands. In practice more is at play. For one thing, neither of the other elves are 100% hit rate in cube where you frequently drain all the basic lands or all the lands of one type from the deck. That is a pretty late game problem though and as such much less of an issue than the ability to miss on turns two or three. Beyond this there is one major and one minor perk Rejuvenator has over the other cards like it. The minor perk is that you can use one of the many ways of making creatures at instant speed to make a land with a relevant EtB effect at instant speed. Super corner case but I would love to blow someone out with a Turntimber Grove as found by my instant speed elf courtesy of Aether Vial, Collected Company, or Yeva, Nature's Herald. So that is probably never happening but that was the minor perk! The major one is that Rejuvenator gives you information. Knowing the bottom four cards of your deck is way more relevant than you might think, certainly a lot more in cube than constructed. Where four cards is 10% of your starting deck size and your list is singleton knowing which four are not turning up is useful and can often dictate which lines of play are best. This all adds up to a fine looking cube support card. While very close in power to the alternatives the extra choices and information it offers makes it a more interesting and skill intense card which in turn will make me more eager to run it.


Patient Rebuilding 0

Terrible. Very slow and costly mill and dodgy card draw to boot. It is a bit planeswalkery in that it slowly gets you value and ultimately is a win consdition. It might even be better if it triggered when it came into play as well.


Demon of Catastrophes 0

Asking for a two for one or failing that asking to sit dead in hand. Don't play this anywhere ideally. It isn't even a good sac outlet. I actually think Desecration Demon is better than this and Desecration Demon is comically weak in cube.


Desecrated Tomb 4

This is super potent in a deck built to abuse it but it takes a bit too much effort to achieve that for it to be any use in a drafting cube. Cards like Scavening Ooze and Deathrite Shaman easily empower it as do things like Bloodghast, Bloodsoaked Champion and Gravecrawler. One bat a turn (Bitterblossom speed) is enough to make this good and it can go a lot faster than that. You likely need to run this with self mill so as to find the things that recur from your bin and also fill it up with fuel for the exile effects. While potentially game winning power when built around it is still a bit slow and awkward and that stops it from being a bomb build around. This in turn means it is just a good card you get the option on when you otherwise happen to be running the various support tools it needs.


Nexus of Fate 6.5

If what I understand to be true about the buy a box promo then Wizards are on some fairly shameless sales boosting mission. Either they are desperate or they are gearing up to sell. This year is just loaded with examples that raise the eyebrow. The unbanning and subsequent reprinting of Jace TMS. The nostalgia trip with Dominaria. The release of infinite product, with Masters 25, battlebond, challenger decks, anthologies, the return of the core sets, and I am sure many more, all alongside the continued normal sets, expected reprint sets and commander stuff. It is rather too much. I am hungry for new magic but I am feeling the fatigue of too much stuff, it feels wildly unsustainable. Nexus of Fate really shouldn't be instant. Seven mana kept it pretty safe but instant went and broke that. While I do generally approve of cards that counter mill strategies I cannot say I like any of the rest of this card. It is too much of an all in one tedium machine. Much as I love to take infinite turns I feel like I should have to work a bit harder for it than this card makes me. Much as most players want to take infinite turns no one wants to be on the other side of that. The net enjoyment this card will bring is absolutely negative and that is another poor aspect of design. If you are going to push the power level of cards to push sales at least have the decency to make those cards a bit better for the game. There is a place for cards that are not fun to play against and that is below the power curve. This certainly feels cube worthy, it isn't too oppressive there but still. It feels somehow like Sphinx's Revelation although more like the constructed decks that used it and would chain them into each other. Rev was dodgy in cube because it was gold but mostly because there was a very small window between having enough mana for it to be game breaking and having too few cards left in your deck to bother casting it. Nexus of Fate solves both those problems. I imagine my game plan when using Nexus of Fate will be to get to seven, cast it at the end of their turn and then use my first turn deploy a planeswalker. Ideally I will also find my Nexus of Fate again to cast on my second turn at which point I expect almost everyone to scoop. Even just getting two turns in a row with full mana should be enough to swing most games assuming you have any gas in hand. If this was sorcery or just didn't reshuffle itself then I would probably have reviewed it in a line or two and given it very little consideration. As it stands the card is pretty terrifying. At least you can't use this with Gearhulk...


Infernal Judgement 3

This is a very powerful tool against a few archetypes and a few tedious cards. It is too narrow to run in a drafting cube but it is clearly one of the best sideboard cards you could hope for. Sadly it misses both Emrakul versions which are one of the more likely things it will encounter and wish it could kill. It will be interesting to see how this card affects modern. While it will appear in some of the more constructed style cube events that I do it will not be having any noticeable effect on the meta.


Gigantosaurus 3

What a silly card indeed! Being so extreme yet so linear this card will find uses I am sure. When you are purely after stats for mana this is a very good deal. It makes me want to run Greater Good! It also has application in any sort of devotion capacity. Despite being very efficient on stats the card is awful on its own. Even if it were 4G to play I wouldn't be super hot on it. As I say a lot, past about 5 power makes very little difference without evasion in cube. This could be a 5/6 and it would get about as much done as it would as a 10/10! Most of that will be eating removal. Almost all the green five drops in my cube presently offer more capacity to close a game than Gigantosaurus while also offering more value and utility. While this big dino might well see some cube play it will be like Draco does - not for being a dork in the conventional sense. The real applications for this card are not face value ones.


Vivien Reid 6.5

I like the feel of this walker but I am not sold on her power. For +1 you get Seek the Wilds which is a fine card. That is more powerful than any blue planeswalker draw effect on a +1. It is arguably one of the best card draw abilities on a walker but it is a little limited on what it gets and does restrict your build a small amount. While super powerful as value generators go the quality of a walker is first defined by its capacity to protect itself and Vivien is a little less reliable in that regard. Her -3 is like a Crushing Canopy/Vines meld! Both of those cards are very close to cube worthy and the melded version absolutely would be. A big part of that is due to how poor green is at coping with fliers. Initially I thought Vivien was too unreliable at protecting herself but that was under the lense of the general planeswalker. In specifically green you are fairly unlikely to have a walker threatened on the ground in any meaningful way, even less so against 6 loyalty. Green walkers get countered, hit with spot removal or taken down by evasive dorks. Vivien protects herself well against burn with high loyalty, as well as is really possible against spot removal with a high quality value effect, and really well against fliers. She is also nice and safe to vehicles which are another common way of controlling walkers. Assuming you can clog the ground a bit Vivien feels nice and safe. She then offers reliable value, some reasonable control and great utility. Her ultimate is fairly game ending being much like a cross between the two good Elspeth ultimates. While Vivien doesn't make tokens to power up the ultimate she does at least find creatures to play. She can't win all by herself but in any deck that sensibly houses her she should facilitate a win if needed. Vivien is unlike the five mana Nissa and Garruk options in green and feels like a much improved five mana Vraska, Freyalise or even Acidic Slime. I think in place of those sorts of cards is where Vivien will find her best homes.

M19 Preliminary Reviews Part II

Salvager of Secrets 0

When Archaeomancer is too expensive for cube I see little hope for this thing. The extra power is not close to worth the mana and I don't see the tribal tags being relevant.


Sovereign's Bite 1

This is a face burn spell and burn decks don't want life gain. Bump in the Night is good because it is cheap and efficient. Lightning Helix is good because it is removal. This is not good because it is none of those things. I want to rule it out completely but it is a fairly big swing for the cost and it is lifegain in black. Although I can't being myself to fully rule it out I have absolutely no idea where you could play a card like this to good effect.


Sky Scanner 4

While pitifully low power this is quite appealing. In cube 1/1 fliers are really good and artifacts are typically useful. On a support card like this the artifact tag is always a bonus. On more valuable cards being opened up to a wider range of removal is usually bad but getting this Disenchanted is going to feel like a win. Sky Scanner will be good at keeping opposing walkers in check and protection your own. It will help with curving out and it will no doubt help with other more specific synergies. It feels like a more playable Solemn Simulacrum. The body is more useful and the cost is more suited to the type of card it is so while it is substantially less powerful than the Crum it looks like it has more playability. Given how much play Dusk Legion Zealot gets I can legitimately see this becoming a staple in my cube. I have marked it down because it seems mental giving this the 6/10 it legitimately could wind up being if it gets enough play to remain in my cube.


Sigiled Sword of Valeron 2

I rate this decently above Loxodon Warhammer which in it's time was not just cube worthy but actually powerful and strong. It was taking down games as late as 2011 happily sat in the arms of Thrun! Sadly it was not the power level of Warhammer that saw it cut but the vulnerabilities of the card which Sigiled Sword shares. You need to pay six mana and have a dork before this does anything and you have to dodge removal too. This will take over a game and win it far quicker and more effectively than a Sword of This and That but I fear the risk with Sigiled Sword is too high for that to be a strong game plan. I think the best chance this has of seeing cube play and being decent is in a knight tribal deck and presently that sounds rather low tier.


Prodigious Growth 0

Green has quite the array of these kinds of cards and none of them see play. None of them are as potent as Eldrazi Conscription either so I think we can probably safely move on.


Apex of Power 0

Well this is all rather extreme! While quite fun I don't see where I am playing this. You need to cast it as without the ten mana you are not doing all that much with the cards you exile. I want a card like this to win the game and this very much does not. Being so high cost you need to build your deck around casting it at which point casting it will just give you some random ramp, filter and defensive spells.


Aggressive Mammoth 0

I like this but it isn't good enough for cube. Far too easily traded with 1 for 1 without gaining you any value. If you want trample play Crash Through or indeed one of the many better options than this. If you want a fatty then again, you have many better options.


Gravewaker 0

Far too expensive on all fronts.


Riddlemaster Sphinx  3

A 5/5 flying Man-O-War for six sounds like a good deal. While Man-O-War still sees some play I am not sure this would despite being clearly more powerful per mana. The issue is that you want cards like Man-O-War to help you stabilize and fight early tempo. The bounce aspect of Sphinx is substantially worse than the same bounce on a three drop and you are playing such cards more for the bounce than the body. I like this card but it feels far too fair for a six mana card.


Highland Game 0

Just not close to enough power. Lone Missionary isn't even that good and it blows this out of the water. This is so crap I didn't even notice it is a reprint.


Aven Windmage 1

I probably prefer the 2/1 dorks with prowess to this although there will certainly be times that this is the best. Not that it matters much as these cards are too fair to feature much in cube. I don't expect I will play any of the iterations of this sort of card, I certainly won't need redundancy for them!


Vivien's Invocation 0

This is a fine card, I somewhat prefer it to things like Tooth and Nail. That being said, I don't think it is playable for much the same reasons I don't run Tooth and Nail. Basically if you are playing a big card in cube you want it to have a big effect. Playing a big card that just assists or enhances other big cards does one of two things. Either it leaves you painfully top heavy or it leaves you threat light. When this is good it is great, it saves a couple of mana and kills something for free. When it is bad it is shocking but I fear that the aspects of this card that you don't really see are what is worst about the card.


Fountain of Renewal 6

Perfect! This is exactly the kind of card the game needs and is really good design. Twenty life has felt thin for a while now with some of the punch dorks pack these days. While a higher starting life total would be an interesting change there is absolutely no need of doing so as you can affect that change by printing cards like this instead which is a much cleaner fix. This feels like the Chromatic Star equivalent of life gain. That being said, Mind Stone is a much better comparison in terms of design rather than feel. If what you need is not better colour fixing or indeed ramp but a little bit more of a life buffer then bingo, have a happy little Fountain of Renewal. I actually like that the cost to cash this in for a card is three mana, if it were two I think this would wind up too many decks. At three it is much more of a choice. You cannot easily just cash it in for value, it will take pretty much a whole turn and so to play this you will have to actively want life gain and have the ability to stomach long term investments. Fountain of Renewal is very much not a card that you can think of as reducing deck size as per Baubles or the Chromatic things I earlier compared this to. Things really need to cost one or less total before you can consider your deck as smaller and thus thinning down land counts. Fountain may feel like a Chromatic Star and have the design style of Mind Stone but it very much has the function of Ivory Tower. Fountain is better all round than Ivory Tower, it will go in all the deck types that used to be interested in the Tower and it will likely sneak into a few more as well as you don't need to maintain that large hand for it to work. Mostly it is about Fountain ultimately not being a dead card in the matchups where you don't need life as to why it is superior to Ivory Tower. It hasn't been good for a long time but Ivory Tower was legitimately one of the best lifegain tools in the game when cubes started to be a thing. A lot of decks needed it and a lot of them looked to Tower. It was a staple of the Necro decks as well as the blue based control decks. Fountain also has a decent shot of being used as generic artifact support in any deck that wants them. Being cheap and having the ability to be card neutral is usually more than enough to secure a slot in a lot of decks. Any that fancy some free life are going to be tossing this in going forwards. Really glad to see a card like this get printed and hopeful that more will follow.

Battlebond Red .dec

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This list is a brew trying to highlight the power of a couple of the more niche Battlebond cards. Bonus Round is immensely powerful and allows for some disgusting plays. It is to storm style combo decks as Insult is to burn decks. The other new card well suited to this kind of deck is Sentinel Tower which proves to be a very potent win condition. Now, the list below is mono red because that is harder to do and much cooler. If you want the most powerful version of this deck then you cull a bunch of the more exotic cards and you play black spells in their place. Dark and Cabal Ritual, Yawgmoth's Will, Tendrils of Agony and probably some Demonic Tutor, Night's Whisper and Duress technology as well. That is the most powerful build of the deck but this version is less demanding on high value cards and gets to play with some really cool ones that you otherwise rarely see. The way the deck turned out is not far off a cross between my Pyromancer's Goggles deck and my friends Big Ritual Red deck which I recently did an article on. While I suspect my friends build is the most powerful of the three this one is a lot better than the last Goggles deck and a lot more fun than both of them. Conceptually the deck is pretty simple, it is all the red dig and (very nearly) all the red burst mana effects garnished with a pair of ways to win and basically nothing else!

25 Spells

Chrome Mox
Lotus Petal

Rite of Flame
Faithless Looting
Magmatic Insight
Gamble

Overmaster

Pyretic Ritual
Desperate Ritual
Manamorphose
Cathartic Reunion

Tormenting Voice
Wild Guess
Helm of Awakening
Ruby Medallion

Simian Spirit Guide
Seething Song
Bonus Round
Wheel of Fortune

Pirate's Pillage
Past in Flames
Sentinel Tower
Daretti, Scrap Savant

Pyromancer's Goggles

Devil's Play

15 Lands

13 Mountains
Ancient Tomb
City of Traitors


The potency of the deck arises from the potency of Forking what is in the deck! A Forked Ritual is more than double the returns which makes it rather easier to go off out of nowhere in a powerful way. More excitingly most of the red dig effects require the discard as part of the cost of the spell and thus turn into mentally good draw spells when Forked. It is surprisingly easy to Fireball someone for 20 with this list off the back of a half decent Bonus Round. You don't need much in hand to go off and play your whole deck. All the dig spells suddenly go four deep and most now provide card advantage while the rituals provide more than enough mana to carry on going through the deck with enough left over for that fatal X spell at the end. It may sound like a tall order to win with a single X spell but Bonus Round into Seething Song is 10 mana which will do 18 when sunk into said X spell. Usually you will do rather more than that too!

My first version of this built lent on Empty the Warrens as it's backup win condition but Sentinel Tower proved so effective I cut the creature element and tried to up the instant and sorcery count. I had a cute little goblin support crew incluing the new ramping Cheering Fanatic, the Warrens empowering Bushwhacker, Wily Goblin for some free defense with my early setup plays and a lovely Skirk Prospector allowing all those things to become mana! While a nice synergic package they didn't have great synergy with the Past in Flames and perhaps don't suit this exact list. I also had Vessel of Volatility in my first go at this deck but found it lacking for exactly the same reasons. This list just wants instants and sorceries where possible. 

I also started out with loads of planeswalkers. Jaya Ballard, Koth of the Hammer and Chandra, Torch of Defiance. While the mana, utility and value of these walkers is great in goldfishing they need at least 2 activations to merit their inclusion. In a deck with no real defenses you don't get more than one useful activation unless you are lucky. Koth limits your use of exotic lands and has low utility. Chandra is too much of an all round card and doesn't excel in the way the others do in this kind of list. Jaya is great for the deck offering both looting and bonus mana and would be the walker I would replace Daretti with (I think one is the most you want ). Daretti being cheaper and gaining loyalty quicker is rather safer but the main reason he is included is that he is the only way I have to recur the Sentinel Tower. I could run lands to recur it but they are not efficient lands. I even considered running something like Elixir of Immortality so as to be able to go through the deck again. It is very possible to burn through all your win conditions with this list! I can use Daretti to power out Goggles as well which is surprisingly powerful. 

Dualcaster Mage, Increasing Vengeance and Chandra, the Firebrand offer some fork redundancy. These are great for some value plays with Tormenting Voice cards in the mid game they are too much mana to use and only offer limited Forks meaning they don't assist much in going off. I think I would need a little bit more incentive to run any of these. I like the idea of casting Increasing Vengeance from the graveyard for little to no mana but that is cute rather than actual incentive. Too many things need to align for that to afford much value and is likely overkill when it does! Past in Flames does this but so does Mizzik's Mastery and Recoup both of which I looked at and the latter of which I tried. Mostly this was due to my inclusion of Empty the Warrens which I wanted tools to get back. With Devil's Play having built in recursion and Daretti getting the Tower back I felt I was clear to drop the Recoup. Cool though it is it doesn't offer enough power or a wide enough range of uses. Really, the only time you want it in this list is when you need to play Wheel of Fortune but it is in your bin along with your Past in Flames and you can't afford to waste it. Recoup also feels like it makes the Gamble safer. I like the card and I want it in the deck and while I think it doesn't hurt you when you draw it (as is the case with most weak inclusions in decks) I think it does hurt you in the space it takes up in your deck.  Mizzik's Mastery isn't quite right for this list either as it doesn't work with the X spells I hope to win the game with. If there was a bigger Lava Axe style of card then perhaps that would be a good direction to take the deck in.

Really what this list wants is another Tormenting Voice and another couple of Rituals. The Lotus Petal and Spirit Guide are really quite weak in the deck and have very little synergy indeed. It feels like you need them but this list isn't very refined so perhaps with some fine tuning you could find a way to do away with some of the weaker filler. I would love Mox Diamond or even Opal but while these are much more potent mana sources than Petal etc you need to warp your build around them and I didn't find a way to do so.

One of the surprise standout cards in the list is Pirate's Pillage. Turns out it is exactly what you want to do pretty much all the time. Forked and cost reduced you generate mana and draw cards. Three mana and two cards turns into four mana and four cards! Being able to carry that mana into the following turns also makes Pillage one of your best possible setup plays. Turn 1 or 2 make a Medallion or Helm, follow it with Pillage and win the turn after.

This deck is a lot more fun to play against than the storm style decks using more or different colours. It is a lot more fun to build and play than most other red decks too and I love a red deck! It has dangerously low levels of interaction and may well need some better cards and tools so as to be able to include some without losing viability. This list can't beat a lot of things but it can also win on the first turn so swings and roundabouts! A word of warning, Bonus Round effects everyone. I lost to a Fireblast for 8 I was not expecting...  

Top 10 Cards from 2010

So this list is pretty much a joke, it is chock full of some of the best cube cards with a whopping 31 currently active cube cards. I suspect this will be one of the most potent years, if not the most potent years for cube. It has some nice cheap playables but it also has all the premium top end as well! The six drop slot has been pretty much locked out to so many cards since 2010 due to the extreme power of the year in specifically that area. Rise of the Eldrazi also brought the most powerful cards ever seen in magic to the game. If your deck has no cap on mana or is focused on cheating out a thing then you want Eldrazi. If your deck is a more conventional deck then you want to cap out around the six mana mark on some juicy Titan! Even if you are restricted to Tinker/Welder cheat in effects 2010 also has most of the best artifact top end. Whatever your needs 2010 has you covered for game ending cards. The other thing that stands out from this year is the sheer quality of the many cube cards. I could do a top 10 of those cards from this year not in my top 10 list and it would still be better than most other years! Even after we move away from the premium top end this year has to offer we are still left with some pretty insane cards. There are some of the best turn one plays, some of the best turn two plays, one of the best planeswalkers, and even a Mox! Magic 2011 pushed harder than Magic 2010 and made sure it trumped the Baneslayer. Scars of Mirrodin and Worldwake were no slackers either. Here are some of the fantastic cards not making the top 10 as well as many more useful cube cards from the year;




Explore
Forked Bolt
Inferno Titan
Primeval Titan
Searing Blaze
Preordain
Skinrender
Joraga Treespeaker
Ancient Stirrings
Arbor Elf
Avenger of Zendikar
Dragonmaster Outcast
Student of Warfare
Vengevine
Myr Battlesphere
Oust
Abyssal Persecutor
All is Dust
Awakening Zone
Bloodthrone Vampire
Bojuka Bog
Captivating Vampire
Coralhelm Commander
Cultivate
Death's Shadow
Destructive Force
Dispel
Eldrazi Temple
Elspeth Tirrel
Ember Hauler
Enclave Cryptologist
Everflowing Chalice
Etched Champion
Eye of Ugin
Ezuri, Renegade Leader
Fauna Shaman
Flame Slash
Gideon Jura
Goblin Arsonist
Goblin Chieftain
Grul Draaz Assassin
Frost Titan
Kargan Dragonlord
Kiln Fiend
Kor Firewalker
Koth of the Hammer
Kozilek, Butcher of Truth
Ulamog, the Infinite Gyre
Leonin Arbiter
Layline of Sanctity
Lighthouse Chronologist
Linvala, Keeper of Secrets
Loam Lion
Lone Missionary
Lodestone Golem
Manic Vandal
Memnite
Mimic Vat
Mox Opal
Nature's Claim
Necrotic Ooze
Obstinate Baloth
Overgrown Battlement
Precursor Golem
Prophetic Prism
Pyretic Ritual
Ratchet Bomb
Realms Uncharted
Revoke Existence
Sea Gate Oracle
See Beyond
Serra Ascendant
Sign in Blood
Spikeshot Elder
Splinter Twin
Steel Overseer
Steady Progress
Tezzeret's Gambit
Sun Titan
Sword of Body and Mind
Sylvan Ranger
Tectonic Edge
Tempered Steel
Venser the Sojourner
Terastodon
Viscera Seer






10. Wall of Omens

This was a very close run thing with Explore which is pretty comfortably my favourite two mana ramp effect in green. While I find Explore more interesting of a card than Wall of Omens the list spot has to go to the Wall for how much of a premium it is in cube. There is little else like Wall of Omens in cube excluding of course the obvious functionally identical Wall of Blossoms! Wall of Blossoms is fine and has its place, all be it one behind Elvish Visionary these days. Wall of Omens, just for being white, is exactly the ticket. White is one of two things, an aggressive weenie deck or a control support colour, which is very much not what green does. In the control support case Wall of Omens is the perfect card. It is cheap, it replaces the card cost and it stalls the game and potentially even drains your opponents resources. Frequently Wall blocks a 2/1 and then gets Shocked at which point it is a 0 for 1 and two or four extra life depending on your view perspective. When Wall is not dealt with it forces over extensions so as to apply pressure around the sides of it which plays into white's abundant mass removal. Wall of Omens further excels in midrange and control white decks due to the other flicker effects commonly found in white cube cards and the dearth of good white EtB effects. Restoration Angel commonly draws a card courtesy of Wall of Omens which is pretty unreasonable. 

9.   Wurmcoil Engine

I have very mixed feelings about this card. In some respects it is one of the best threats in cube and in others one of the weakest. Wurmcoil is the biggest card in my drafting cube that fails the Jace test, the only other card above four mana that also fails it is Baneslayer Angel and there are not even that many four drops failing it these days either. If you invest six mana in your Wurmcoil to get it bounced with a Jace -1 you have almost certainly lost. The same goes for Control Magic effects including the ever sneaky Dack Fayden. Any exile removal, bounce or lockdown punishes Wurmcoil immensely hard too and all those kinds of effects absolutely make up the majority of cube removal. While Wurmcoil does have the advantage over Baneslayer of a potent upon death trigger to protect against destroy removal this is probably pretty equally offset by the extra mana on Wurmcoil and the added vulnerability of being an artifact. So, my reservations about Wurmcoil all stem from it being a pretty all in play with a lot of easy counters. In pretty much every other way the card is off the charts good. It is near impossible to race. It is horrific to get into combat with. It is an insanely high value of 12/12 stats over 3 bodies and with potent key words to boot. It is a great open card being easily cast and easily cheated into play. It feels like a pretty hard counter to red aggro decks. I have blocked it and burned my own dorks just to prevent them gaining 6 life so many times. It does feel harsh marking Wurmcoil down so hard based on the kinds of removal in cube counter it effectively because Wurmcoil is the main reason removal in cube is that way! Wurmcoil is just so damn good that removal that counters it effectively has added value. The best threats do have a habit of defining the removal in a format. It might not be hard to protect against a Wurmcoil but if you don't then you are absolutely going to lose to any you encounter!



8.   Emrakul, the Aeons Torn

Quite simply the most powerful magic card ever printed. This does a lot of everything really. Cast this and win. Attack with this and win. Just get this into play somehow and probably win. I have seen the first two lose but they are about as true as you can get with a sweeping claim in magic! The price tag is mentally prohibitive to consider this in anything other than a shell focused around playing her is some way. You cannot just stick this in a control deck as your win condition as you simply won't get there. There are plenty of cube decks that physically can't generate 15 mana in a turn even with all its lands in play! I presently don't have Emrakul in my cube simply because I am resting the Sneak Attacks, Show and Tells and Reanimate effects presently. They will return some day to keep things fresh and with them will come Emrakul. Not that she will be missed in the interim as she is a common feature of any constructed cube events I do.


7.   Grave Titan

For my money I rate this as one of the best all round top end dorks. It is immediate value and good on both offense and defense, indeed, it is one of the few dorks able to do both at once! The only real counter to Grave Titan is a Wrath or a counterspell. Beyond that it is landing somewhere between loads of value and tempo to winning the game. Grave Titan is more resilient to removal and bounce than Wurmcoil due to making the 2/2 zombies when it comes in. It is also a better blocker providing more toughness and bodies right away. While the lifelink is a great stabilizer it is another thing too easily negated on Wurmcoil for it to outclass the simple yet effective bodies of Titan. Grave Titan is a beast to take down in combat as well. Committing six power worth of blockers to it leaves you super exposed to the 2/2 tokens and indeed anything else. It also means you fold to a trick of some sort. Even if they have nothing the deathtouch ensures all of the group block die. At best they are trading a very big dork, two medium dorks or like four small dorks for the Titan and there are still four 2/2 zombie tokens floating about. Six mana to kill most of your opponents board is decent, six mana to make four 2/2 tokens is decent. Doing both is pretty unfair and that is a best case for them when no appropriate answer is to hand. Grave Titan is 10/10 in stats for six mana, you don't really need the attack trigger for it to be good! The only green cards that come close to that power are more conditional and lots of stats and bodies is what green does best. It is like if green had the best counterspell, or white had the best burn spell. The whole Titan cycle is of a power level never before or since seen again and Grave is the best of the Titans. Sun is narrow and Frost yields no value. Inferno is brutally good but is only value based on the board state and needs a bit of mana to keep pace with the clock on Grave. Primeval is the best in constructed but in cube you need the right utulity lands or a few 7+ mana cards to follow up the titan with making it a more focused card than Grave or even Inferno. It is testament to the power of this year that Grave Titan is this low on the list and the only Titan to make it.


6.   Quick Lands

These are amazing lands and have contributed a lot to the increase in tempo in cube. They are better in modern which has many decks capping out at three mana but they are still great in cube. The fact that a lot of decks do have four drops and higher makes these more interesting in cube. Regardless the quick lands sit comfortably within the top five symmetrical dual land cycles ever printed and that probably holds true for all formats. Quick lands are a clean design which is always nice to see on a well balanced card. One thing I love in cube is the complexity of land sequencing. It is complicated in a lot of formats but cube having so many lands with differing clauses rather than just the few best or the few currently legal ones it makes for a more varied and complex experience.




5.   Jace, the Mind Sculptor

Just to have Jace this low on any list feels like I probably need to shit-talk him for the whole paragraph to justify myself! That isn't really what I want to do, Jace is great, everyone knows this. Even in cube, his worst format, he is still one of the top tier planeswalkers and an all round great card. He is fifth because 2010 is bats and has so many core cube cards. Jace is weak in the same way that Wurmcoil is weak, they are so strong that things that answer them well are substantially elevated in power. It is obviously not just those two cards, lots of things that counter Jace will also counter other walkers well and lots of things that exile Wurmcoil also prevent nasty things happening on many other potent cards. Things that counter Jace are things with haste so that he cannot defend against them or things with EtB triggers so that he cannot profitably bounce them. Things that pass "the Jace test" as I often refer to. Indeed I think it was discussed in the bit on Wurmcoil. With so few cards in cube failing the Jace test and with cube chock full of token production, flash dorks, haste dorks and many more nasty things to boot Jace doesn't fare too well. On an empty board Jace seals a game up quicker than most but that is not the norm. On a cluttered board other walkers have their edges. Jace is not a great tool to combat other planeswalkers either and cube is the format where planeswalkers shine most. An odd inversion of trend, the format in which planeswalkers are the best the best planeswalker is the worst he is out of any format!



4.   Arc Trail

This card instills fear in the hearts of cube players. In the fraught early turns of the game in a tempo driven environment Arc Trail is the earliest nail in the coffin you can produce. In any game, be it a 50/50 to start or a 60/40, regardless of where you fall on this scale, if you land a turn two or three (on the play) Arc Trail and kill two creatures with it your win percentage odds just went to over 90/10 in your favour. It is filthy, totally filthy. This continues for a lot longer than you might expect as well, that tempo tension often continues past turn six and Arc Trail still takes out a lot of things, perhaps taking out a dork and a token which in turn allows a clean attack kill on a walker etc. Currently I have Arc Trail as one of the most "confirmed kills" (of players, not cards) in cube. It is an arbitrary "statistic" I keep an eye on, just seeing which cards are those deciding games. In 2006 Force Spike was high on that list, in 2010 Baneslayer Angel was near the top likely taking the place of Elspeth. Force of Will has always lingered about the place. Arc Trail and Ashiok feel like the two biggest names on that list in this era of my cube and Arc Trail continues to improve. Part of what makes it so good is the limited amount of play around, sometimes your hand forces you to makes an X/1 and and X/2 and not doing so would be as much of a loss as feeding them to an Arc Trail..


3.   Stoneforge Mystic

This is another card I feel will seem lower than public opinion would have it. It was a fantastic card on release able to get bomb cards like Jitte, Clamp and SoFI. It quickly got better too with the release of Batterskull shortly after! Back then just having the appropriate equipment was enough to win a lot of games and so Stoneforge being an extra copy in your deck of one of those combined with being a Squire to equip was pretty absurd. The Demonic Tutor Thraben Inspector! Since 2010 equipment has fallen off a lot in power. They don't add much to tempo if at all and they usually come with high risk. While it is still good it is not the game winning bombs that equipment used to be. Stoneforge is therefor also diminished in power. It is narrow because you need to pair it with equipment and you need to have a deck that therefor wants equipment. It isn't such an oppressive mana cheat with Batterskull because Batterskull is not so threatening any more and both it and the Stoneforge are pretty easy to kill or negate in the earlier portions of the game. Indeed, you can often negate the 2 for 1 feel of Stoneforge just by Shocking it because a naturally cast Batterskull is just too slow and cumbersome to get it done in a lot of cases. Stoneforge is probably still the best white creature ever printed but it has come down a lot in power to the point where it is a close thing.


2.   Inquisition of Kozilek

This is made so premium due to scarcity rather than raw power. The card is indeed very very good but it is more to do with only it and Thoughtsieze offering that near total early game control. There is very few turn one plays that compete with Inquisition, even Thoughtseize is often worse, only showing its superiority over the course of a longer game. None is so universal either. A turn one Goblin Guide is great but it is rather linear, it is an aggressive opener exclusively. A turn one Serum Visions is nice but not a development in tempo nor a disruptive play. A turn one mana dork such as a Bird of Paradise is likely the other best turn one play but there is a significant amount of counterplay to that while there is not so much against the targetted hand disruption. If I make a Bird I am happy but I am mostly just hoping they don't have a Lava Dart or Oust. If I Inquisition I don't care that much what my opponent has, I am going to mess with their day and gain a pile of information to inform my game plan going forwards. If we are to be so bold as calling this the best turn one play you can make in an unpowered cube then surely it must be pretty poor later on in the game? Not overly, yes hand disruption doesn't scale brilliantly and yes, this does tend to scale a little worse than most of the other decent ones but not nearly enough to stop it being great! Most answer cards are viable targets and that tends to be what you are fishing for in the mid and late game. They tend to be the cards held back.

As a base line Inquisition hits 75% of spells in my cube and that might make it seem like it should be nearly that amount worse than Thoughtsieze but in practice you are trying to play these cards earlier in the game, in the first few turns where all the things that are going to be relevant plays are things that can be cast which in turn is basically only things Inquisition hits. Force of Will is one of the few exceptions.


1.   Celestial Colonnade, Raging Raving and Creeping Tarpit etc

I spent ages toying with the ordering of this list as so many of the cards from this era feel like they deserve the top slot. In practice, the average of these lands wouldn't command the top slot but the merits of a couple of them comfortably do. It is really Colonnade winning the top slot and sharing the podium with Tarpit so that I didn't have to waste another slot in the list to talk about it separately! The other three are just here to enjoy the celebrations and get an honourable mention. Even Lavaclaw reaches has helped win a few games over the years! These lands are some of the most game defining cards in cube and have been since their addition. So many games it is the man land that ultimately made the difference. It was that one extra body to go wide with on that final alpha strike or that one threat able to evade removal and thus fend off the planesalkers. Indeed, planeswalker control is the main reason these lands are so much better in cube than in constructed formats, where they are still pretty strong! Both the blue lands from this cycle rank up there as two of the best answers to planeswalkers that you can find. Most walkers really struggle to protect against either meaning you can't even really cast planeswalkers until you have a way of containing the lands. Just having a Tarpit on the board means a few cards in their hand/deck are basically dead. Man lands are also typically a nightmare to remove. Most generic removal is non-land and any creature specific removal needs to be instant and needs the thing to be animated which in turn makes it quite easy to avoid as the controller of the land. These lands have impressive threat levels and impressive game ending potential. They control a lot of game elements without ever needing to be animated, oh and they fix your mana too! Sweet. They are also some of the most splashed for cards. They are a fairly painless splash and can be done with far less fixing than other splashes with them not resulting in a dead card without the mana to activative them.

Card Spotlight: Goblin Chainwhirler

I don't recall a PT top 8 with more than 28 copies of a single card in main decks although some GPs have that acclaim. As far as I can find 28 is the top for a PT and previously this was held by Rishadan Port, which being a colourless land, I feel is rather less impressive that it is for a triple red card. Feels like there must be some others out there but I checked on some of the ones I recalled as heavy hitters and found nothing. Wolfir Silverheart only hit 20 copies. Stoneforge Mystic was around that at 22 copies in the famed Paris cawblade PT although there was a singleton, a pair, and a triple inclusions meaning ultimately seven people still had the card main. Even Smugglers Copter was only around the 16 mark. I feel like there was an Aether Hub PT where, if not the full 32 copies, it did make all the lists, but I cannot find it if there was. Seven out of eight decks all with four copies is pretty nuts for a card. It merits attention, a more scrupulous eye, if nothing else.

From a design perspective the card is not great but it is not due to excess power. Certainly the card is potent but it is more to do with how brutally polar it is. Firstly, you have to be nearly mono red to unlock the power of this card which is a narrowing effect on a format which isn't great. Secondly it utterly hoses one toughness dorks which warps a metagame around it. I think it probably should be banned in standard due to how heavily it determines what is viable in the meta but it is not upto me nor will it effect me, so moving on.

While the card is oppressive in standard that is more to do with the strong supporting cards for Chainwhirler. If it was not for them then Whirler decks would not be so prevalent and in turn the format wouldn't be so warped around the Whirler and one toughness dorks would be playable again! It is the obscene power of Rekindling Phoenix, Chandra and Glorybringer that are really to blame for how oppressive Chainwhirler is. Whirler is the four of card however because of where it is on the curve, if somehow you could flip it with one of those for or five drops (while still keeping function and power level the same) then you would find four of copies of those cards and reduced numbers of the Whirler. A 1RR 3/2 Rekindling Phoenix sounds exceptional!

Another thing propping up Whirler in constructed is that is does two jobs yet remains relevant and powerful enough when it just does the one job. A 3 mana 3/3 first strike that pings face when it comes in is fine. That when it kills anything is great and when it kills more than one thing, even if some of them are tokens, it is just oppressive. While Whirler is still nuts in cube when it kills things it is rather less exciting as a 3/3 first strike. Overall the card is still perfectly playable in cube but it is a far cry from the card it is in standard.

I was not super hot on the card in my reviews and still feel I was fairly on the money with where it sits. Power level it is comparable to Rampaging Ferocidon however the playability of the Whirler is substantially lower. Colour intense costs are a big downer for cube cards. White and red are the two best and most popular mono colour decks and so Benalish Marshal and Chainwhirler always had the best shot in the cube of that cycle. I was more keen for Marshal in my reviews as it is more on theme with what mono white cube decks need to do combined with the fact that white already supports the triple white three drop Spectral Procession. Red is already the hard counter to one toughness creatures and didn't need any help with the matter. Red is full of value ping effects but that isn't a theme or synergy, it is something that has diminishing returns. If you have Chainwhirler in your deck it reduces the value of your Lava Dart a tiny fraction. You only need one Forked Bolt to beat the Savannah Lion deck hard and with those cards and effects being weak against a number of other cube archetypes you do not want to over load on them. Just enough to beat the weenie decks while not so much as to gimp your punch against the bigger decks. In standard Whirler is just a good card that provides ping for free. In cube it is an OK card that performs the ping role and should take up a deck slot as a performer of that role in the place of a similar such card.

Magic is a game of scaling and the more things you have scaling together the more pronounced the overall effect is. Whirler scales the wrong way on three accounts as you move from standard to cube. The triple red cost gets more limiting. A 3/3 first strike for 3 gets less useful. Good ping is in increasingly good supply. These together are enough to turn a ban worthy card that is dominating standard in an oppressive way into marginal cube card. Cards like this are harder to spot when under performing in cubes. Absolutely it will still win games and offer huge swings and this will lead to some confirmation bias. It is great in standard and it just won me this cube game therefore it must be bomb disregarding context. When you can't cast it you will blame your lands and draw, when you cast it and it doesn't kill anything it isn't a dead card or a do nothing and so it won't seem bad in a note worthy way. You likely won't consider how much worse it made your Esper control deck just because of the random space in a pack it took up in the draft. Sure, you might argue that it would just be another equally irrelevant red dork but imagine it was an Ahn Crop Crasher instead which I grant is a weaker card. The point is that if that was the card the in the draft in place of the Whirler then a Boros aggro player might pick it up because they can play it. They might then leave a relevant white card in the pack for you to grab for your Esper control deck. Perhaps you are super lucky and get a Thraben Inspector, or perhaps you are light on cheap spot removal and that Oust plugs the gap nicely.

I like a new card so I will absolutely be running Whirler in my for a good amount of time. It is however a card I ultimately expect to cut in favour of cards that are more broadly playable. Just because my cube supports a couple of mono red builds doesn't mean it is good to include cards exclusive to those decks, it just means it isn't as bad as it could be! Being such a polar card also means I will likely cut it ahead of time. I like cards that are well designed and lead to better games of magic and that is not what Whirler really is. I feel like the main reason I am compelled to write this article is to warn people off feeling obliged to run cards like these in their cubes. The card has so much noise and hype from the community and it is backed up by tournament results that it will start turning up in cubes regardless of merit. I think the card is close enough that it will very much depend from cube to cube how viable and worthy the card is. Even when unworthy it won't always seem that way and will always have that ability to dominate a game. There is no doubt this card is cube worthy on power but the more I play cube the more I want a good format and good games. With that in mind I expect Chainwhirler to deliver less. By all means, run this card if you want to, but know why you are running it and don't do it just because you feel obliged to!

Thallid .dec

I have been working on this list since the Dominaria spoilers. Thallids are something I have a special soft spot for as they were my in my first ever deck back when I was a snotty kid. Upon seeing the offerings Dominaria had I suspected there would be just about enough to make a cube deck that was competitive. This particular design challenge took me a little longer than usual and sadly, although not at all surprisingly, we lost a lot of Thallids and fungi along the way. My first build did go Elvish Farmer and Nemata deep in my usual go full polar to test a new deck way. I even got a few wins with the thing, the deck, not either of those cards!

Obviously I was not winning by slowly developing a board and popping out saprolings every third turn. That strategy is going to get hard countered by almost everything else in the cube. I concluded that the only way I was going to get to play with Verdeloth, Sporesower Thallid and Sporoloth Ancient was by making an EDH deck. It is certainly the most tempted I have been to dip into the format. The price of Elvish Farmer suggests that a lot of EDH players also feel Thallids is a good direction in the format! Certainly it feels like a joke tribe which might get you left alone which is typically the best way to win all against all games. I may even try and make a Thallid EDH article complete with list at some point. This however will be the last mention of it in this article.

After my deep all in Thallid build and seeing the futility of the spore counter dorks first hand I was still unwilling to give up on the slow saproling generators. I tried a proliferate theme to boost production rates but this was arguably worse. It was win more when it worked out which was rare, it was even more all in than the previous build and it had less interactive capabilities with proper removal spells replaced with things like Grim Affliction and Contagion Clasp. Then it all sort of clicked and I worked out how I should try and build a deck that plays as many saproling and fungus cards as possible and here is a rough idea of what it should look like;


25 Spells

Thallid
Tukatongue Thallid
Utopia Mycon
Blisterpod

Skullclamp
Thoughtsieze
Vampiric Tutor
Fungal Infection

Saproling Migration
Fists of Ironwood
Cryptolith Rite
Song of Freyalise

Sprout Swarm
Fungal Plot
Sporecrown Thallid
Deathspore Thallid

Blood Artist
Zulaport Cutthroat
Jade Mage
Earthcraft

Slimefoot, the Stowaway
Maelstrom Pulse

Spore Swarm

Tendershoot Dryad
Scatter the Seeds

15 land including
Westvale Abbey



The breakthrough was not the use of the Cutthroat and Blood Artist, due to Slimefoot and the built in sacrifice outlets on many of the saproling generators it meant that they were always the planned win condition. The coming together of the deck was the use of Cryptolith Rites, Song of Freyalise and Earthcraft. Obviously you only need one of these cards and ideally not more than that. Once you have one in play however things get out of hand very quickly. The deck feels like an elf deck that trades a bit of burst at the start of the game for rather more resilience in the mid and late game. I was really impressed at how mad things got in no time at all. I kept mistiming my Song of Freyalise thinking I should hold it for a turn so that I get mode III when I expect to have the critical mass and would then seem to always end the game in mode II. Not much of a hardship I grant you. Ideally I would replace one of these three or have some sort of looter to cope with excess better. Smuggler's Copter sort of works but is a bit off theme and in an over populated spot on the curve. Faithless Looting would be a lovely addition but seems like a bit excessive as a splash! Saproling Cluster feels like an significant over investment unless you happen to have the Skullclamp active and easily fueled. I think that probably I should just suck up the curve issues and play something like Eternal Witness and Collective Brutality over one of Earthcraft / Rites and the Thoughtsieze or something like that. Earthcraft is certainly the harder to build with as it needs basics and restricts your mana base options. It also makes you want to play things like Wild Growth for the extra abuse which would be nice when it comes up but likely just leaves things a bit too thin.

The mana base is already pushed as it is. Westvale Abbey is impressively good in this list and easily the best utility land. I considered a Ghitu-Vazi splash but the card is just too slow to be worth it, I would rather just coloured sources to help the consistency. Gaea's Cradle is the other biggy. The card is obviously nuts and helps your game plan loads. It is also however a liability if you are a 15 land deck with colourless lands, two colours and a strong desire to always have a basic Swamp and Forest in play. I wanted to make room for Traverse the Ulvenwald in this list to soften the blow of running just the 15 lands, I think it would be of great value to make the room for it if you do also try and pack Cradle on this low a land count.

The list leans fairly hard on Skullclamp which in turn is the biggest incentive to go white. Stoneforge would be a lovely addition to this list although once you open those flood gates Lingering Souls also seems like a good thing and then you might need to find some more generic sac outlets and less in the way of saproling specific ones. You are probably going to wind up just an Abzan token deck at that point. A big part of what makes Westvale Abbey so strong in the deck is that it is like a free (in the sense of slots) sac outlet come finisher. I commonly one shot people with a Westvale from hand, instantly saccing off five things and doing nearly 10 worth of drain (often Slimefoot is one of the drainers and he won't drain for all 5 of the sacrificed things necessarily) and then the nine from surprise Ormendahl! Although Skullclamp is important it is not essential. Fungal Plots is some help in this department and if you are super brave Psychotrope Thallid is even better draw than Plots. Ultimately I am playing the Plots more as all round utility, it makes and sacs tokens and gains life and cards! It might not be efficient but it does damn near everything! If I really wanted more draw I reckon I would lean on something meaty like Yawgmoth's Bargain. The mana is no issue and the deck can comfortably support the life loss. While very fun I don't think you need to go that deep, the deck was powerful enough that I was able to get it done with my natural draws a lot of the time.

So, with Rites, Song and Earthcraft established as my means to abuse tokens in green I needed payoff. That comes in the form of Slimefoot and Jade Mage. Really all I needed to do for this deck was look at Slimefoot, he is the complete package and directs the way towards the best game plan. Rather than waiting three turns for a saproling you can just dump mana into these things and make as many as you need. It does not take long for that to get very out of hand as obviously each token made with something like Rites in play means even more mana next turn for yet more dudes and so on and so forth. You ignore this deck for long and it very quickly floods the board, and critically in a way that costs no extra cards. You can be sat there with a couple of tokens from a Fists plus a Jade Mage and with an Earthcraft plus a few turns you have 14 Saprolings and the Jade Mage. You can literally do that on turn five with just the three named cards and lands. Even if you eat a Wrath of God you only took a two for one on the Mage and the Firsts of Ironwood, you still have the lands and Earthcraft and the rest of the tokens came free. If they don't have mass removal or kill you first they are super dead to the exponential tide of saprolings! I should probably find room for the Selesnya Guildmage in this list over something like Sporecrown Thallid. Infact, that isn't even close, I absolutely should. It is like not including a combo piece for no good reason. "I don't need this Pestermite, I'll be fine with just Deceiver and Zealous Conscripts..." So yeah, play Guildmage. You can even with with it using the Overrun mode as you have several ways to access white mana even if your lands don't help you. I won't bother to change the list, mostly laziness but also to reward those who read the articles!

Sporecrown Thallid is the easiest cut in this deck, you are not really trying to attack for the win, you can but it isn't route one and a static +1/+1 actually makes fairly little difference it turns out. What it is quite good for is making your stuff more robust. This is nice but if you are in the market for that kind of thing you might aw well just run Spellskite or Heroic Intervention! Tendershoot Dryad on the other hand felt a very reasonable include. It is a nice stand alone power card you can go for if you are getting controlled and it is an otherwise decent support card. The +2/+2 is devastating and ends games very quickly. As does the rapid and ongoing production of extra saprolings. Dryad needs to be killed on sight really. Despite the low stats and vulnerability it offers enough power and synergy to feel good in the deck.

The last cut I made on the list was Vitalspore Thallid. Much as sac outlets are in demand in this deck there is no need of haste, certainly not at the cost of a saproling, and so a 1/1 body for 2 starts to look highly naff compared to alternatives. It seemed wrong cutting Thallids for cards like Bloodthrone Vampire and so I ended up just being light on sac outlets. With the many routes to victory this deck has it didn't feel like a big issue although it is a refinement I would like to be able to do. You can be super techy and Pulse your own saprolings for the Blood Artist drain kill at least! Not needing haste is how this list is able to catch up to elves in speed and feel so similar. Your kill will typically be through sacrificing stuff and draining to death and it is rather harder to defend against than an elf overrun kill. The Blood Artist cards also offer some protection against mass removal, insurance rather than protection but still. The turn slower this deck is in the early game is balanced by the turn quicker in which it levies the killing blow! Obviously that is a pretty loose claim and entirely depends on what is going on in any given game. A boost on turn one can go nuts and provide way more than a turns worth of speeding up.

The convoke cards provide a little bit more pseudo haste and give you some nice midgame burst. Sprout Swarm is often pseudo value too acting as another Jade Mage, all be it a pricey one. Ideally I would like another 3 or 4 mana token producer but the options are weak or situational. Yavimaya Shepherd is one of the best options and it is not exciting. Rith's Charm is the best but it is all sorts of awkward to cast, you might as well go for Spore Burst! Many of the four mana options look pretty busted in the right place, you can get loads with a full hand should that be your situation. Loads if you have a full board. You can even go nuts on conditional cards and seek to lean on what your opponent has in hand for your chance at loads of saprolings for a mere four mana! All nuts at best case and all four mana turn skipping levels of bad at floor level. A level far closer to the expected value! Sprouting Thrinax is actually the best three mana saproling card but without a reliable non-saproling specific sac outlet in play you cannot tap into that wealth of juice. It is almost tempting to run the red splash for Thrinax and Faithless Looting but it would need further support such as Cabal Therapy etc.

The Vampiric Tutor ties the deck together and feels pretty important. Not just because the deck is combo in nature nor because it leans hard on Skullclamp but also because it is just a chock full synergy list with few out cards. This is partly why Eternal Witness would be a helpful tool to have as well. I would absolutely run Demonic Tutor if I failed to pick up Vamp despite the bogged down two slot. Maelstrom Pulse and Thoughtsieze are your generic interaction tools and are showcased here as they are the broadest range within those kind of cards. Being a combo deck Duress is also a decent call. There are plenty of cards you can look to run in these slots, you want to keep it streamlined but you do need some interaction.

Deathspore Thallid is great for that bit of free bonus interaction and did steal a few games just by turning some cards into Arc Lightning. It is fairly strong mid to late game removal, offers further utility through being a sac outlet and is bodies in play to generate mana and drain triggers. Fungal Infection is similar but much lower impact. It is a rather polar card but with this list having so few viable one drops it seems well worth it. Blisterpod made the cut for much the same logic, you just want to be able to get some bodies into play early so that your Rites style cards do something! The only other actual old school style of Thallid in the deck is Utopia Mycon which is also really good. It offers utility like Deathspore but is a one drop and has greater resilience.

In trying to build a tribal deck I wound up building a combo deck! As far as tribal decks go it is one of the most complex to play with only certain iterations of goblins being harder. It is super fun to play with for sure. Loads of mana, loads of stuff, and not as much risk to mass removal as many such things are. I thought I was making a joke deck and somehow made a pretty decent deck considering it is 2.5% actual Thallid. Saproling Migration is the reason the deck is now viable and indeed why Cryptolith Rites etc are all that bit better. With one or two more cheap and potent saproling token generators were printed in green or black this kind of list might even be drafting cube worthy. Fists of Ironwood is a necessary evil, it is such a long way from Saproling Migration. It is not the level of card we are after! Perhaps I should look to go full combo and go for a squirrel theme. I hear Squirrel Nest works well with Earthcraft? Chatter of the Squirrel is certainly more the kind of token generator I am after in the low end of the list too! Again, at that point we are going the same was as the generic Abzan token deck just without the white, and again we come up with the issue of needing a more multipurpose sac outlet. So until we work out what that looks like just run a list like this, like this but with Selesnya Guildmage included!