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
Jolene, the Plunderer Queen 0
Another fairly bad attempt at a Curse of Opulence. Extra treasure is nice but on a 4 mana 2/2 I think not. If you are sacing treasure to put +1/+1 counters on a 2/2 you are doing it wrong!
Bennie Bracks, Zoologist 5
I fear it is on the narrow side. A 3/2 body is just not very useful or exciting, you need to be triggering this at least once consistently and that is presently a little tricky to do in my cube. I could tweak the build so that tokens were more common and then Bennie would be a pretty solid value tool. The ideal play for Bennie is playing him on turn three off the back of some card like Lingering Souls, Blade Splicer, or Spectral Procession. That will be a very high tempo turn with nice value as well. I will look to include Bennie wherever I can but I fear that will pretty exclusively be token based white aggro decks. It may be worth noting you can convoke him out with a citizen token, goat tokens, the dork from Bastion of Remembrance, an afterlife token, inklings, or even the human of Lovestruck Beast's Heart's Desire! These are a fair few ways you can play Bennie in a deck that isn't white and might help him find a home and really helps for a splash. I can picture and Aristocrats deck soft splashing white for Linger and Bennie. He is a fantastic little card for building around and with and any white card that can draw is exciting in my books.
Tenacious Truce 0
This is actively bad in 1v1, it gives your opponent perks and gives you less of these perks while restricting them in no way at all.
Threefold Signal 0
This is a very cool card indeed. Slow and narrow but cool. I suspect people in EDH will get to have fun with this. A card that needs a lot of 3 colour cards and at least six mana to use is sadly rather laughable for 1v1 play.
Oskar, Rubbish Reclaimer 4
In cube it will be very easy to deploy this for two mana, sometimes even on turn two. A lucky Mental Note, perhaps pushed with a sac land or Bauble. A two mana 3/3 is however still a long way from cube playable. Oskar needs you to be discarding things to get impressive and while this is common in cube it is not common enough to make this slow Watchwolf worth it. It will perform OK but I want better than OK in my very tight gold section.
Smuggler's Share 1
I love what this does for you but rather hate how unreliable it is. There are decks that will fold to this and a lot more than simply wont trigger it at all with most sat in between, triggering it a bit here and there. This means mostly this is unplayable 1v1 although it could be an interesting sideboard tool. I really like how it is all end steps that it triggers preventing opponents finding windows to get their effects done.
Shield Broker 2
This is playable but not as good as a Sower of Temptation which in turn is just not as good as a simple Control Magic. Broker costs a lot for a situational card. The body isn't very threatening and the Control Magic is very easy to undo and in such a way that you are not getting any value. With cards like Sower you could get the thing you stole killed in combat so that it didn't return to the opponent. Broker does not allow for this easily at all.
Lethal Scheme 8
This seems like it is probably going to be the best Hero's Downfall style card in black, a title currently held by Baleful Mastery. Both are instant, both can be low mana cost, both have a broad and unconditional range of targets to kill. Mastery exiles and can be cheaper regardless however Scheme offers you significant perks should you be able to reduce the cost, and allows you to reduce the cost all the way to zero. At three mana and a single loot Scheme seems like a reasonable deal, everything lower feels increasingly nutty. Black is the colour that gets most from filling up the graveyard. It also tends to be a colour with dorks sitting around unwilling to get into combat. Imagine attacking into what looks like a pile of 2/1 and 1/1 dorks while you opponent is tapped out and then they block a bit, convoke out Scheme and put a couple of counters on their dorks killing and trading with a few of yours. You want from a confidant position to vulnerable and behind. Scheme is one of the weaker spot removal spells in my cube for decks with low dork counts but that is not many builds these days and so I expect Scheme to do good things. Reasonable floor on a reliable removal spell with a whole lot of upside and ceiling potential. All things pointing towards this being a winner.
Bribe Taker 0
Just a big dumb dork that rather needs support to not totally suck and even when you are getting a bit of a stats boost and a shield counter the card is still not what you want in cube.
Cryptic Pursuit 3
A little too narrow but on-theme for Izzet in cubes and reasonably powerful. It is the build restrictions that I suspect will hurt the playability. You just need a really high count of instant and sorcery cards. It is better than Talrand. Sky Summoner mostly due to being less vulnerable. Cryptic Pursuit is more of a threat than a value card although it will be both over time. Even in the most packed decks you are not getting to play your card most of the time, 50% hit and play rate is beyond optimistic. Your typical deck is going to sit between a quarter and a third of the time. Still, churning out free 2/2s, some of which turn into cheap spells on death, is a decent enough thing to be doing. Worth the mana and card investment although perhaps not better than a more immediately impactful card like a planeswalker. Another issue the card has is that it is the sort of thing suited to tempo decks however they rather prefer cheap threats so that they can stay more open in the mid and late game to deploy critically timed disruption.
Determined Iteration 2
Really cool card, and with most things that are cool - too narrow. Not only do you need tokens in play for this to do anything you need them to either be serious tokens or you need to have things to do with those tokens like sacrificing them to something else for some kind of returns. I will absolutely do some building with this but I will not be including it in draft formats.
Body Count 1
Overcost for a protection against mass removal as well as lacking tempo returns. All a bit situational too. Best use for this is for firing off in some aristocrats deck with a Phyrexian Alter in play and that deck is so tight I can't imagine this getting a look in.
Audacious Swap 1
This is Chaos Warp but less good. I like my removal to cost 3 or ideally less, and not 4, even if I can fork it. Mostly I like my removal to not randomly give my opponents stuff. Yes, I can use this on my own things to try and trade up but at this cost I might as well do something good. Chaos Warp gets no action in my cube and this would get less if that were physically possible.
Maestros Confluence 0
Two great modes and a turdy goad mode to round it off. While I like the other modes a good amount on a three colour, six mana sorcery we do not need to discuss this card further.
Make an Example 7.5
This reminds me of Extinction Event but with a nicer range. You will never get that full Wrath effect with this but equally you will never have to bin off some of your own dorks so as to get the thing you need gone. At worst this is an Edict that never misses the thing you want. At best this is going to kill a little over half the value of their dorks in play. For control decks this is fairly poor, you just want a mass removal spell that kills everything. In midrange and aggressive decks however being able to wipe out half their board while leaving yours intact is impressive and should see this getting plenty of play.
Sinister Concierge 7
This does some things, either it is somewhat blanking an attacker, or it is a persistent little critter, or perhaps it is using a card like Sea Gate Oracle to get value from EtB triggers. To me the card looks slow, low in power, and a bit aimless however when I brake it down or compare it then it starts to seem powerful and versatile. It is just really annoying, like a Spellskite or a Watch for Tomorrow or a Bloodghast. I am not sure where I am playing it but I suspect people are going to hate facing it wherever I do!
Smuggler's Buggy 2
Some value and some threat. This is relatively big and easy to crew but given the casting cost and lack of combat abilities I am relatively unimpressed. Getting through with this will be tough and when you do it isn't exactly devastating. The kind of decks wanting a card like this absolutely will not be flopping out eldrazi. You might get lucky and hit a five or six drop but mostly it will be 2-4 drops played off the buggy. With it then bouncing itself you are somewhat losing tempo on average. Buggy is ultimately a very slow and clunky value tool masquerading as a fatty. It is fine but it isn't very cohesive.
Spellbinding Soprano 1
Much as we love reducing the cost of spells this is not the way to do it. Spell cost decks are not those wanting to win in combats making this Bear unlikely to do much of much. Electromancers and Baral are where you want to be, nice reliable passive effects rather than awkward triggers. Encore is not much of a buff here, certainly not at 4 mana...
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