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
Protection Racket 0
Useless in 1v1 play. This never draws you lands or useful cheap spells. It taxes their life total while being a very tempo negative play with an effect that is value based. This means it is not only bad but at odds with itself. Worst of all it gives agency to your opponent. Absolute shocker of a 1v1 card.
Wave of Rats 3
This is cute. It is like a 4/2 trample haste for five that draws you a card on EtB and that has indestructible for the first turn. It even threatens to recur again if sloppily blocked or some trick is used. I am inclined to give this a test as I suspect haste in black will be quite saucy. That being said I fear a 4/2 stat line that is essentially a five drop will not cut it, even with a pile of perks. For such a linear card it is too far up the curve even if the power level appeals.
Bellowing Mauler 2
A bit of a bland body with a fairly hefty cost. The ongoing effect is interesting and fairly powerful but it is slow and conditional and gives away too much agency to your opponent. This is a fine card and well suited to things like aristocrats and aggressive black decks with recursive dorks but it is only fine and that isn't enough, especially for a top end card that is pretty dull.
Next of Kin 1
Cool flavour but very hard to do anything all that useful with. For this to be doing anything you need dorks in hand and in play and for the ones in play to die after you put this on them. Your stuff in play has to cost more than the stuff in hand and you need the stuff in hand to be things that you want to deploy. To save mana with this you need to chain a four drop into a three drop and then another dork from that or start on a five drop or bigger. Next of Kin isn't value, nor is it really tempo. You can get a bit of a flash vibe out of it I guess? This card is sufficiently weak that I fear I have missed something!
Riveteers Confluence 4
A chunk weaker than either Fiery or Wretched Confluence. This is a fine enough card but given the comparisons and with this being so very gold I am not even going bother trying this out.
Industrial Advancement 2
A build around card and one that rather desires you to have dorks with high mana values you can easily get into play. Things like Bedlam Reveler and Greater Gargadon. Then you can likely have some fun with this.
Weathered Sentinels 1
Not a reliable enough threat and not all that impressive as far as walls go. Give me a Blade Splicer in either of those roles over this. Sentinels is cool design but it is lacking in power and is rather too linear for my liking.
Turf War 0
This is an over cost conditional Annex. No deal.
Swindler's Scheme 2
A very silly card indeed mixing Counterbalance, Hive Mind, and Shared Fate. I can still see this getting a bit of play as redundancy for Counterbalance. Both thrive off having control over the top of your library and both cards want builds that would resemble prison control. Scheme has a different build requirement to Counterbalance but they do not get in the way of each other. The worst thing about Scheme is that you have to build your deck in such a way that it is hard to use your own stuff against you. This will mean things like (non-enchantment) removal and counter magic. Fun to build but probably not all that fun to play against even if it isn't all that powerful looking.
Caldaia Guardian 4
This is a bit vanilla but it does pack some punch, offers some modality, and affords reasonable stats. For three mana we are doing 4 damage somewhere, drawing a card and Raising the Alarm! That is a good price for such things. It isn't even a terrible curve play. As a four drop the card is a less good return on the mana, even if you do manage to trigger the effect on another dork while it is in play. Technically you can do this with the blitz mode as well but it is less likely due to smaller window. It is still a reasonably meaty four drop so it is a useful mode to have much like Ghor-Clan Rampager even if it is very much not the primary mode. While Guardian is fine on power it isn't a card that grabs me. There are no decks that are after this kind of thing other than a hyper aggressive green deck that uses things like Vine Dryad and the green Ball Lightning!
Dodgy Jalopy 5
Intuitively I don't like this being a card entirely conditional on other things to be good. That being said, it seems pretty scary. It is cheap to deploy and tough to kill. It provides a lot of threat too being a trampler that can come at you for an undisclosed amount of damage. Even as a 3/5 this is still not a trivial thing to get attacked by and it can easily be more, green has plenty of dorks in the 4-7 range that get a lot more action that other colours top end dorks in cube. Crew three is a mild bummer as it on the high side and lowers the pressure you can apply and the frequency you can apply it. It is the scavenge that really pushes this from just a dull threat into something a bit more interesting. It can be a threat in the bin as well as in play. It offers value and synergy working with both self mill and counters stuff. It makes you super happy about just getting stuck in with the vehicle as there is value to be had elsewhere. It reminds me a little of Esika's Chariot in this regard as you often attack with Chariot into a trade so that you can get that extra cat value before the first two are dealt with. The scavenge has a mana cost so it is not quite such free value as the populate effect of chariot but it is still nice. Vorinclex into scavenged Jalopy is ending things all sorts of sharpish! While this is good enough for cube it is likely a little too narrow and a little too much of a luxury card. You likely need to play a threat over this in your deck for the sake of consistency. That is where this card differs more problematically from Chariot and loses substantially amounts of playability. The bar for cards that don't do much by themselves is substantially higher than those that do.
Grime Gorger 0
Hill Giant alert. This is a terrible threat and a terrible way to disrupt graveyards. Combining the two does little to improve the viability of this card for one vs. one play.
First Responder 1
A cute way to get repeat use from an EtB effect, the old Eternal Wtiness, Time Walk loop as the classic. Beyond this kind of use however the card doesn't much interest, it is low tempo, low threat, low consistency and value. It isn't like Stampeding Wildebeast has been getting play...
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