10. Worm Harvest
9. Golgari Charm
8. Putrid Leech
7. Dreg Mangler
6. Vraska, the Unseen
5. Lotleth Troll
4. Maelstrom Pulse
3. Abrupt Decay
2. Deathrite Shaman
1. Pernicious Deed
We probably all know already how good Deathrite is, getting banned in modern after a very short innings and being generally obnoxious in a wide array of other magic formats. It is not that he does any one thing so brilliantly just that he does so so very much at the bargain basement price of one mana. In the cube he is at his very best with sac lands and the like filling up graveyards with lands to eat and his two other tap effects come in incredibly handy in a wide array of match ups. He even a relatively beefy 1/2 when compared to the like of Birds of Paradise. The best way to summarise the little Shaman is that he is all good.
Lotleth Troll is a lot of monster for the price and reminds me most of a mini Spirit Monger. In reality it is a sexed up River Boa come Wild Mongrel that needs to offer strong synergy or methods of abuse to really warrant a place in any given decklist. Black and green love a discard outlet and can put it to use in a wide range of decks all the way to zombie bidding! Regenerate is not the defence it used to be and with an action card investment required per pump you typically do not want to overly invest in making the Troll a large threat. Great value and utility that is held back a little by his slightly narrow applications when push comes to shove.
Vraska the Unseen is really pretty bad compared to the good planeswalkers but being a planeswalker she is still unreasonably playable. Her best role is in sniping out other planeswalkers but then she starts to look rather like an expensive Maelstrom Pulse. The two loyalty walker you are left with should you use her to kill something right away is very easy to kill, slow to regain loyalty and not that threatening as something to have in play. With the really good planeswalkers you always feel like you have lost if they get to keep one in play for several turns. This is far from the case with Vraska, her ultimate is terrible, the best use for it is in humiliating opponents. It is almost always better to just keep Pulsing things they make with spare loyalty rather than trying to make silly assassins. It is hard to get a good two for one with Vraska, even when you lay her and use the +1 to make her only killable with at least 2 or 3 dorks you pass to option to you opponent just to ignore her and go to the face. Fine to play as good all round utility filler come removal but not something you can overly consider as a threat which is a very rare thing to be able to say about a planeswalker.
Dreg Mangler is one of the more surprising cards on this list. It is not played loads but is always impressive when it is. A 3/3 haste for 3 mana is very solid tempo and is particularly scary off the back of a one drop mana critter. It is the size of monster than tangles well in combat and cannot be long overlooked as a threat. The scavenge is then a late game kick in the teeth that comes along and adds a whole extra bunch of value at a point when everyones solutions are near spent. Giving +3/+3 to any body will make it a decent threat, put it on a flier, lifelinker etc and you are getting even mroe value. Sure, it costs five mana to do which is not cost efficient, but this just means you are not doing it till it is really good to do so or you have little else. Every time you do scavenge it completely feels like it was free to do, you don't feel like you had to pay the cost earlier by having a weaker card in the first place. Early game tempo and late game value on a direct card that is never something you could call dead. Such attributes rarely add up to a card not cube worthy.
Golgari Charm has become far more interesting lately with Theros block adding a bunch of random extra enchantments into the cube. It has always been rather a clumsy card whose abilities rather counter certain different things rather than offering any particular synergy with your own strategies. Having a way to save one or more dorks is handy and potentially blow out good. Much the same can be said about -1/-1 to all dorks, especially at instant speed. Both are quite situational and are likely to be useful against the opposite sort of decks. With the generic enchantment removal aspect suddenly becoming far more widely useful the card has shot up in value. It is a dangerous tool for the Golgari mage although is in danger of being a meta choice.
Worm Harvest is the final card to make the list over many other very powerful options. It is the unique way in which the card works that makes it so interesting for cube play. It can be your main win condition and you can have it do so without ever having to tutor it up or even draw it. You can have it countered and just play it again and again until you have resolved enough to overwhelm and kill with. Obviously things like Life from the Loam and other graveyard focused things are the reason the card has so much potential but there is nothing else quite so convenient that is like it. Most commonly found in Gifts Ungiven style control decks and Death Cloud based denial decks but not restricted to those archetypes.
Cadaverous Bloom
Squandered Resources
Glissa, the Traitor
Grisly Salvage
Reaper of the Wilds
Shambling Shell
Skullbriar, the Walking Grave
Spirit Monger
Varolz, the Scar-Striped
Vulturous Zombie
Putrefy
Cadaverous Bloom and Squandered Resources are both great combo enabler cards. They are the non blue versions of things like Dream Halls and Mind Over Matter. There are a wide variety you can use either or both of these cards to fire off some mana intensive way of killings someone. Glissa is a lot of monster and offers some powerful returns yet is very hard to find suitable homes for and so despite her high power has never seen much play. Grisly Salvage is a very nice little synergic filler card that will help setup and fuel your engine simultaneously. Not a powerful card but a perfect support card in the right deck and the kind of card that makes the more unusual archetypes viable.
Shambling Shell rather died when they stopped damage going on the stack. It is a fine way to fill up a graveyard and offered a nice little combat trick to make combat awkward all on a body that was acceptably agro for the cost. Skullbriar is mostly a gimmicky card, Slith Firewalker is not really good enough these days and Mr Walking Grave is only the slightest of bits better. Zombie themed decks sometimes call upon this rare legend as does the occasional super agro rock deck but there are many better GB two drops ahead of this in the que.
Vulturous Zombie is an overlooked card that is actually far more useful than Spirit Monger as a game ender. The speed at which it ends games if you fire off a Mind Twist, Pernicious Deed or Death Cloud before your first swing with it is unreasonable. Kalonian Hydra is now the more reliable five mana super clock card but this does fly offering better defensive options and it is a zombie should you be all about the tribal themes.