0 - unplayable in 40 card singleton
1 - effectively unplayable
2 - has low tier constructed decks it might go in
3 - has mid tier constructed decks it does go in
4 - pretty powerful stuff with several potential homes, able to perform well in lower powered cubes
5 - powerful stuff that is either just too narrow or has too many superior alternatives
6 - fringe cube worthy
7 - cube worthy
8 - cube staple
9 - unpowered cube bomb
10 - powered cube bomb
Corpse Examiner 3
A 3/3 for three with a Ransack the Lab / Strategic Planning on EtB would be fantastic. A superchargers Sea Gate Oracle! Being a support card intensifies the problems with being three colours, and then the need of a target in the bin to get the trigger pretty much kills it. Often exiling something will be upside but when you just want to flop this out early to help curve and develop and can't you will wish you had something more reliable. In a deck that is comfortable casting this and has graveyard synergies that this can both feed and be supported by then I am all over it. As a card to just add into a draft format I think it would be a mistake. In a cube with no energy Rogue Refiner is a superior inclusion to Corpse Examiner. It is easier to play and wont let you down for those on curve card draws. Rogue Refiner is not in my cube nor has it been since initial testing. It falls short to Coiling Oracle and now also Ice-fang Coatl. If this falls short of cards falling short we can comfortably move on.
Maestros Theater 2
Lovely to see more low rarity sac land like cards. For cube these are simply less good than things like Evolving Wilds as they are more restricted. The life is nice but it isn't enough to look better than Expanse/Wilds and they are not quick enough to have performed well in my cube.
Illicit Shipment 1
A double tutor can find all of a combo which is really the only reason we are even talking about this. A five mana sorcery speed tutor realistically isn't getting a look in. Three mana tutors are typically too slow for cube like formats I play these days so good luck with this one. Gifts Ungiven doesn't even get much love anymore and that is instant and has significantly lower costs to play!
Dig Up the Body 1
Broadly this seems a bit too costly for a support card but it does tick a lot of nice boxes. I have found cards like Grapple With the Past that mill and recur to be quite pleasing in many cube settings. I also quite like the Village Rites feel these instant speed low casualty cost cards have. Even so, support cards at three or more mana rarely make lists.
Maestros Ascendancy 2
This needs lots of support beyond just mana base. For this to work you need a high spell count of good cheap spells, that is no trouble for Grixis. You also then need a good density of critters you are happy to sacrifice. While this is also easy for Grixis doing that while keeping up spell density feels really tough. Like, are you playing lots of Krenko's Command? Suddenly it doesn't sound all that good. Certainly a card not easily played to much effect.
Maestros Diabolist 4
As a mono coloured card I would play this in cube without much hesitation. You want a sac outlet to really abuse this but it is perfectly strong without. Power wise it sits around Ophiomancer level but it is more aggressive. Sadly at three colours with an aggressive lean I cannot justify this a cube slot. Just another one of those many gold cards sitting in teh purgatory range of having enough raw power but being too narrow solely on cost.
Evelyn, the Covetous 6
This looks gold but for cube design perspective it is not. This is easier to play than a mono coloured card and has some hope based on those high playability grounds. Assuming no other vampires Evelyn is a 5 mana 2/5 flash that should get you two cards drawn. That seems solid. Not broken, but pretty solid. Flash makes it pretty convenient at which point it is just good value. The only real issue I can see for this is that it is not very threatening. Five drops and up tend to require some degree of game ending threat to them and not just be sources of value. You will get some bonus triggers from vampires in cube from time to time but I think it is best to assume just the one or an average very near that, say 1.05 vampire triggers per Evelyn. This is mostly a messy take on Muldrifter and while it it a lot flashier and more powerful I am not sure it would get more play down to how generally convenient Muldrifter is.
Arcane Bombardment 2
This gets out of hand very fast indeed. In a deck full of instants and sorceries this seems like a great way to end the game. Too narrow for a draft setting and too risky in a more constructed setting where relying on a 1 of copy to carry so much weight will wind up costing you against enchantment removal or targetted discard or countermagic etc. You probably need to run Bombardment in a deck with your own counters and even that will not be enough protection. This is another fun card that looks pretty tasty for EDH and not all that much else.
Professional Face-Breaker 6
Poor name, wordy, hyphenated, and just lacking any real imagination. I would much rather just random made up word - thing, Capenna Thug for example. Any who, the card itself is pretty reasonable. Much as I think it would perform well enough in cube I don't think it will outperform the existing three drops in red like Rabblemaster and Pyromancer and Leila. Those cards are all fantastic and this is just decent. For it to do something right away you need to have not just another dork but one that can get in for face damage. That will often result in this not making a treasure right away which in turn makes it overly vulnerable to getting blown out by something like a Wrath or a Ravenous Chupacabra. Even just a cheap removal spell will be getting tempo advantage against this if it isn't making treasure first. In a deck with enough other treasure generators the draw card mode on this might well push it enough but we are not there yet on treasure density in the cube.
Make Disappear 4
Bad Mana Leak is playable but not exactly powerful. I am not really sure what the casualty is adding. It will be cute when you can counter two different things with it but that is rare to say the least. Mostly this is just going a bit harder on the same spell. That comes at quite a high cost and is relatively hard to setup. I think the option to cycle away when it won't work that Miscalculate offers is rather more useful than the ability to fork it at the cost of a dork. I might play this in a cube with lots of on death trigger dorks or creature centric blue strategies but in the more conventional cubes there are too many superior cards to this.
Fight Rigging 5
This is interesting. It is powerful, surprisingly so, but I fear it isn't going to get enough cube love thanks to not standing up on its own very well. Luminarch Aspirant is less powerful than this but Aspirant, while preferring support, does not by any means need it. Fight Rigging is blank by itself meaning we need it to be quite a lot better than Aspirant which it doesn't seem to be. Hideaway is achievable but it is a little win more. I don't suspect it will be deciding that many games.
Cormela, Glamour Thief 1
Double narrow and only of medium power level. If you can make her effectively 2 mana by usefully producing three with her the turn she comes in then you actually do have a good card but good luck with that. It makes her a five drop and you need a three mana instant/sorcery with only single colour pips of any one of the types.
Security Rhox 1
I like it but lack of anything spicy to make the body more appealing makes this not feel like it is worth the effort of getting a bunch of treasure. Strike it Rich into Prosperous Innkeeper could be a solid opener into Security Rhox, and the less said about Ragavan the better. Sadly no trample or ward or haste leaves me a little cold on this vanilla pile of stats.
All-Seeing Arbiter 7
A kind of new blue Titan. This does not offer the same nutty level of card draw as Consecrated Sphinx nor is it as impactful to the board as a Frost Titan however it does do a pretty reasonable job of both at the same time. The EtB trigger ensures that even in the face of instant speed removal you still end up with card advantage. The discard trigger should help to calm down a board situation and can be scaled up with other discard outlets. Arbiter should control a game well enough and provide enough all round advantage to win most games in which it sticks around complete with a passable floor for when it does not. I think this has a reasonable shot. It seems better than Cavalier of Gales and that card performed very well in cube. I think it is more suitable than the other non-flash blue six drop dorks commonly found in cubes presently.
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