Walking Bulwark 3
This is fantastic support for defender decks being both a cheap defender itself, essentially a one mana 3/3 in most cases, and a card that can activate your other defenders should you not have found your High Alert/Assault Formation enabler card. I am pretty sure I am playing this in all my defender decks, you just need that consistency. Nothing ruins a plan harder than your wall animator getting removed and all your threats immediately becoming do nothings. This lets you protect against that without having to harm your defender count.
Pilfer 5
Nice clean hand disruption. I think I probably play Check for Traps over this for the exile effect, perhaps even Agonizing Remorse. Pilfer is certainly the neatest, and likely the least painful of the playable cheap hand disruption that can hit any spell but two mana hand disruption is a little on the slow side for most cubes.
Temporary Lockdown 6
This is very powerful indeed. It is a three mana mass clear for most really quick decks developing the board, especially in places like modern. In cube draft this is too polar for my liking. There are plenty of decks where this either has too few or only low relevance things that it is hitting and against others it will be a three mana super wrath. I certainly view this as more of a sideboard tool. Yes, decks with lots of card quality could play this to good effect but I am loath to give precious cube slots to narrow polar cards you have to work around. I might use this as a fairly heavy handed tool to curtail aggro decks if they were becoming oppressive but it doesn't much feel like I need to do that.
Twinferno 4
Seems good but it probably just another overly situational card. Why play this when I can just play a more reliable Lightening Strike? As far as Fork effects go I like it but cube has never managed to effectively support a Fork so I do not see this being the card to change that.
Fires of Victory 0
This has a floor of being a five mana gold Zap. Sure, it is quite good at killing stuff early in the game but then so is most cheap burn.
Coral Colony 2
Walls and mill go somewhat hand in hand. This is not on theme enough to play in a High Alert sort of deck but I might well play it in a mill one as it does help slow down the game while being a bit of a bonus threat. Mill is very well supported with great cards and it is a little cheesy and oppressive in most 40 card deck settings so mostly I will look to avoid playing this but that doesn't stop it having some game.
Blight Pile 3
This means of closing a game is more on theme with a defender and so I can see playing this as a better Vent Sentinel. Like the Bulwark this helps you win the game when you wall amination effects get removed.
Joint Exploration 7
Where Growth Spiral and Deliberate meet! Deliberate is a fine floor and the ceiling is pretty tasty. Instant speed is pretty exciting on this kind of card. It makes blue green rampy control decks a lot more exciting and appealing. This is exactly the kind of card Wilderness Reclamation decks hunger for while still being pretty playable in a general sense. Being a three drop it is weaker ramp than a lot of the one and two mana options but as a non ramp card, be it a card quality spell, a cycling filler, or whatever, it is a whole lot better than the alternatives. My cube isn't really very well suited to Simic based control decks but this is a big push for them. Should they become more of a thing then this will likely see enough play but as my cube is currently setup I don't think this is quite there yet. Very much a card to keep an eye on.
Argivian Cavalier 1
This is very close to the mark for such a simple and linear common. With some enlist synergies I can see this getting a bit of love.
Urborg Lhurgoyf 2
Cheap, versatile, scaling, good colours for this sort of thing. This card has a lot going for it but it is also a card that needs both a high creature count and the capacity to get them in the bin quickly. There are a couple of decks that fit the bill but none of those are decks you can sensibly draft or support in cubes. This has a lot of ceiling but you have to get there and that is rather the rub.
Stronghold Arena 2
Needing to connect with dorks turns me right off this. There are certainly decks where it will do well but they are build arounds rather than cube archetypes. Things need to be very cheap for this not to be pretty painful on life. It also only triggers once a turn keeping the ceiling very tame. All in all I am never putting this in a cube over Phyrexian Arena despite there being a couple of builds where this would probably outperform it.
Weatherlight Compleated 2
Lots of power but fairly well locked away. Initially this gives a scry when creatures of yours die. That is worth neither a card nor two mana. Four of the buggers have to die before this becomes anything resembling good value. Yes, a two mana 5/5 flier is impressive but how long did we have to wait to get there? How many of our things were exiled, or bounced, or reshuffled into our deck instead or dying? How often do we die before four of our dorks do? I think I prefer Serra Avenger as far as under cost fliers that are not threats on curve go. If we are wary about this getting to 4 phyresis counters then good luck getting to seven. Congratulations if you did and this is still alive, you probably won the game with your big flier before then but if not you get to enjoy some extra cards as well while you win more. All in all this is a very unreliable do nothing of a card. A cool looking one that will dominate some of the slow grindy games when drawn early but one that will underperform critically in most other situations.
Timely Interference 2
Cheap on cards and mana with some versatility. Mostly I will not be playing this because it is not always something I can cast, because it is a very low impact card, and because the kinds of deck that this effect is going to be strong in are not currently the kinds of decks you draft and do well with in cube.
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