Idol of Endurance 2I like this but it is far too narrow for cube. You cannot do anything with this before you have filled up your bin with cheap dorks. Even then you are getting one card and perhaps a tiny mana saving each turn there after. It is just far too slow and situational for cube use. Give me Dusk / Dawn over this please! Or some kind of Rally the Ancestors card.
Volcanic Salvo 1
A situational win more card. Unplayable without a big board and the scaling is too extreme. It is still expensive even when you have a pretty big board. The potential on this card is there but you can only sensibly run this is unusual decks with unusual support cards that will not happen in drafts, or at all often outside them for that matter. Very like Ghalta, when it is good you are winning, when it is bad it is because you have no hope of playing it.
Obsessive Stitcher 5
A bog standard Looter meets some kind of Doomed Necromancer or Hell's Caretaker. This is an all in one recursion tool, make it turn 3, loot turn 4, recur a fatty turn 5. Powerful but slow, and being gold also reduces the playability a bit too. With a lack of combo and reanimation themes in my main drafting cube I don't think this offers enough. In my combo cube though it might cut it despite being a little slow.
Alpine Houndmaster 6This is surprisingly good. What I like most about this is that it is a Squadron Hawk style of card that works in singleton. That will be a really refreshing thing to play with. While neither the Cur nor the Watchdog are great cards they are not blanks either. They are cheap bodies and so you are happy enough playing them to empower your Ancestral Recall Houndmaster! Make no Mistake, drawing two sub par cards is still outstanding. There are of course issues. Firstly, you can't play this in a draft. Getting all the pieces is unlikely and super narrow. If you always have 8 ppl and have a small cube that uses all or most of the cube then you can run it but otherwise this is a card for constructed. The other issue is that in 40 card decks it is likely you will draw one of the targets before you play the Houndmaster. As the cards are subpar that does start to detract rather from the value of the Houndmaster. You replace a normal draw with lower quality and you are only drawing one card with Houndmaster. It is still very good, a powerful aggressive two drop that draws an OK card is Rogue Refiner levels of good. You empower it with looting effects, or better still reshuffle from hand effects. Sadly it is rare that you get to play Brainstorm in a Boros beaters deck. There is so much value here you are happy to play in control or midrange too, much like Cawblade! Easily making any tribal decks too. Lovely card to see made. Hope to see more such things. Wish I could rate above a 6 but kind of capped for cards you can't really run in cube drafts.
Traitorous Greed 1
An odd take on Threaten/Act of Treason. It costs both one more and one less! All told I cannot see much high end use for this short of untapping your own dorks and trying to generate mana. You just play the actually cheaper versions otherwise. Threaten effects are not very interesting in cube either.
Garruk's Uprising 6This is very pushed. It is an Elemental Bond that has range reduced slightly for loads of other powerful effects. The first perk of giving all your dorks trample is huge, it makes most things a threat and turns this card from just a value tool into a reach one as well. It kind of feels like a planeswalker with entirely passive effects! The EtB trigger just works with the plan of this card and greatly reduces the risk. It is fine early with no trigger and fine late with a trigger but little fuel to subsequently dump into it. It also greatly increases the speed of the card and the ceiling. It doesn't force you into a line of play that is awkward in order to not suck. Absolutely this will do good work in fatty decks. The things is, you don't see all that many of those in cube presently. I think the limited supply of good 4 or more power dorks in my cube presently makes this a little narrow. One to watch for sure, probably even one I could support suitably at minimal cost. Really powerful and effective at it's job and a big boost to any fatty plan. I will get to testing this one for sure.
Light of Promise 1I'm sure there is a combo for this somewhere but short of that we are not desperate for Pridemate redundancy enough for this to get a look in. While this is a fairly heavy payoff card in a lifegain deck it likes big life rather than just triggers meaning it fails to work well with a number of the other cards. It also is all take and no give. It needs a target, it needs lifegain and it isn't even a body. It is just lots of risk.
Lofty Denial 2
Probably limited to skies decks and pretty solid there, not far off a 1U hard counter. A really nice thing to pair with the likes of Spectral Sailor. It is fairly unrealistic to expect this to work out anywhere else that well.
Leafkin Avenger 0
Far to pricey and slow for a ramp card. The scaling for it is foolishly win more as well. It is at least a mana sink too but there are many better options. When there is an infinite mana combo in an elemental tribal shell then this card can come out to play.
Conspicuous Snoop 6
Aside from the simple two card combo this has this is a solid card for a goblin deck. I would look to play it in any of the ones with more value, utility, or mana production slants. Somewhat sadly this is rather foolish as a combo tool with Kikijikki which means that is probably the vast majority of what we see this thing doing in most formats. In modern it will be Harbinger, in Legacy it will be Recruiter or Brainstorm and Ponder supporting this.
Drowsing Tyrannodon 1
Tribal curve filler potential.
Burlfist Oak 0
Nearly a combo kill card but a bit pricey and slow. Needs some protection and trample to really bother pairing this with draw 7 effects.
Frantic Inventory 0
They like to keep teasing the lack of Accumulate Knowledge in singleton. At least they gave us singleton folk Alpine Houndmaster!
Transmogrify 3
Polymorph in red. It exiles too which is a mildly relevant difference. This will see some play in combo settings but that is it. Red is becoming the colour that does this sort of thing now rather than blue so this could well end up seeing more play than Polymorph in the years to come.
Heartfire Immolator 7.5
In almost every way this is an ungraded Emberhauler. It is easier to cast, has prowess, and can scale up the damage it does to things beyond two. Fairly easily on the latter scaling point too what with the prowess. All it fails to do is go face. A trade off I am happy to make given quite how much more card this is. A bit dull but doing everything right. Cheap, versatile, scalable, option rich, widely playable. Just a good solid cube dork.
Fiery Emancipation 6
This is rather silly! A whole lot of power but rather hard to work with. It is a six mana do nothing but you win so so quickly if you make it while you have things going on, or you have gas to follow it with and manage to survive. Shockingly I think this is worth testing. I think, and somewhat hope, that this fails to last but it really is quite extreme. It turns everything there is in red into a mental mental card. This represents vast, tempo, value and reach with not all that much else. Just having a Seal of Fire in play, a Fireblast in hand and ramping out this is a legitimate plan and not all that hard to set up
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