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
Entish Restoration 5
Modernized Harrow. Much safer, some potential upside, but no abuse with the lands coming in untapped. This will not see play in Heartbeat of Spring storm decks and that is all really Harrow ever had going on once there was enough actual Rampant Growth effect to chose from. The third land offer from this is nice but it is not going to be common, especially on curve when you want to play this, or indeed, in the decks that most want a card like this. Restoration is a fine card for sure but it shouldn't be upto cube standards.
Shelob, Child of Ungoliant 3
Good flavour, this feels like Shelob. As far as playability in cube goes however this is not so good. Just big stats are unimpressive and that is really all this is bringing to the party. Not many other spiders to buff, no evasion to enable that 8 power, and a measly ward 2 attempting to protect this 6 drop with otherwise no real impact on the game.
Fiery Inscription 8
This card tries to look innocuous but it is in fact an egregious bomb. Ring tempting not important here at all. Just shocks for spells thank you very much. This with some burn and some cantrips and that is about a deck. You could toss some prowess style dorks in there too if you wanted. This is going to be super hard to beat as it is a lot of easy to access direct damage at low low cost and with great difficulty in answering. Red damage effects need very little push to get them easily closing out the game. Torbran is great. Mechanized Warfare is great. Urabrask has been surprisingly good. All those carious two drop dorks like Firebrand Archer and Electrostatic Barrier are all cards that perform well in cube and have impressive reach. Inscription is cheaper than most, works with cards outside of red, offers a lot of punch compared to most, and is the hardest to answer. I can't see this not being essentially an archetype all by itself and a total first pick card.
Oath of the Grey Host 2
Just a little slow to be impactful. It is really all about those spirit tokens and they come as late as they can rather ruining the chances of this cool looking card.
Fear, Fire, Foes! 6
This is quite a good clear out spell. You can do X = 0 quite often and just clear out all the 1 toughness dorks they have leaving at least one thing behind. You can do X as a bit more and have this be a bit more Arc Trail or Seismic Wave like, or you can go a lot more and have this somewhat inefficiently answer a big thing. A versatile removal spell for sure, and one with some significant potential upside. I am a little torn on this as it seems super polar on the one hand but also a nice way to give some versatile and playable mass removal to red. Well worth testing for sure. It lacks the efficiency of Arc Trail or Seismic Wave and efficiently is arguably the main thing for burn and that makes me somewhat wary. It all comes down to how useful the psuedo modality this card offers. My guess is that I would rather an X spell that can go face and so this will lose out to a combination of those and the Arc Trail or Seismic Wave cards.
King of the Oathbreakers 7.5
This appears to be unkillable with targetted removal. That is a nice start for a Phantom Monster. We got the indestructible Grey Ogre, now this! It also makes all the other spirits unkillable too because why not? You can even use your own stuff to phase them out to protect against mass removal too making this a very tricky puppy to answer. You are rewarded with more 1/1 flying spirits for doing so as well. Unkillable ones remember! I don't like this card much but I fail to see how it is anything other than pretty egregious. It is one of those Jitte or True-Name Nemesis cards that you can absolutely overrun and beat but in any kind of fairer or slower game you just can't stand up to their inevitability. People don't tend to like cards like that very much. It is also just a 3/3 that might fail to do enough on the board for that cost. Sure, it is unkillable with spells but it is very killable in combat and if you are making Hill Giants then perhaps you are also liable to get overrun in the combat step! Those things were the only things that really kept Jitte or True-Name beatable. This isn't really in quite the same league as those thankfully but it should still perform well enough for cube.
Arwen Undomiel 2
I quite like the idea of this scry empowered dork deck as a build around but it seems pretty weak. Just as stand alones these cards are not sufficiently supported in cube draft. Jamming a load of scry into a dork deck is just at odds as well. It might be fun but it shouldn't be competitive. You might as well say I am going to add a lot of tempo negative cards to my tempo deck. So, not only is Elrond and co. a bit underpowered mechanically they are fundamentally flawed too. Oops.
Elven Chorus 7
A different spin on Guardian Project. While worse as a means to draw cards the addition of the Crypolith Rite pushes this a good amount beyond in terms of raw power. It seems a little overkill of a card for 1v1 play and likely best suited to EDH however it is still probably going to perform well enough in cube to get some love. Cards that offer mana and cards are eye openers. This lets you do stuff with it the turn you make it even on curve should you have some dorks already down. I think this is fun and interesting and I hope it gets enough play.
Glorfindel 1
This might be the most mechanically off card thus far, even over Elrond. What is with making these elven big dicks measly 3/2s? Pretty sure this guy is supposed to be hard. Like casually killing balrogs hard. Scaring the nine hard. Not, resembling Tireless Tracker hard. With all the things that have had so much obvious care and love put into them in this set it is pretty clear from cards like this that they are not interested in the more hardcore LotR fans and are aiming more at the general LotR enthusiast. The kind of person that is much more likely to have just seen the films. That obviously makes sense, it is going to be a much bigger demographic and have a lot more capital to blow on. Anywho, flavour-fail aside, this is a dull card with no where near required cube power level.
The Watcher in the Water 3
Cool card design but I fear this could have rather done with some ward. Five is a lot of mana to invest in a card that is eating the next Wrath or Doom Blade. Five is also a lot of mana to conditionally make some 1/1 tokens, or to wait a couple of games worth of turns to do anything. Certainly this can be a lot of fun and you can make a lot of tentacles with the right cards but in practice it is too much messing around and hoping things line up.
Anduril, Flame of the West 7
This is a Sword of This and That kind of card that I can get behind. Taking away the protection and making the trigger an "on attack" one rather than a combat damage to player one all make this card a lot more rounded than a Sword. The costing on this still means it is quite the clunky equipment but overall it offers all you could really ask for. It is a significant stat boost turning any dork into a relevant threat while also producing tokens equating to more board presence, threat, and value. After one attack you have generated more attackers too so you can reasonably easily keep up the pressure with this once you get it started. I don't think this is a bomb, I don't even think it is all that exciting and powerful. It has enough bang to let it perform well enough in cube and does seem to be the best designed of that kind of equipment. This is top end as far as equipment being used as intended (as opposed to being Stoneforge abused). This might not be more powerful than Fire and Ice but it is comparable and should play a lot better and that is much more important for I would argue. This does what you want a big powerful piece of equipment to do, it is about as expensive as you can make these kinds of cards and still have them playable in cube, and so it fills a role. There is plenty of competition however, even outside the many many Swords, so while this is suitable it might well not get there.
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