Conspiracy: Take the Crown - Initial Review

[ There will be a more concise and refined version of this only talking about the stuff you might want rather than talking about why you don't want certain things for your cube. It will be found on TrollTraderCards websit and I'll post a link when it is up. ]


Conspiracy is a far out set in terms of what to expect. Being aimed for draft and multiplayer purposed and not constructed play it has things ranging from the grossly over powered to stuff that doesn't really work properly. It also incorporates several mechanics and card types that require consideration as to whether to put them in cube that is based on more than just the cards power.

The three things from this set that would seem to fit under these special mechanics are "the monarch", conspiracies themselves, and the cards that have a "when you draft this" clause. The latter only really work in draft and as I do so many formats with my cube the effort of taking them in and out all the time sounds like it means they are not worth it for me. For those of you who exclusively draft cube or have the willingness to mirco-manage them I will include such cards in the review.

The conspiracies are very interesting and from what I recall would generally work in whatever format you were using with the cube. I never got round to collecting the ones from the first set that seemed interesting and as such I have never tested them. I likely will if I fancy something a bit new and exciting but I seem to think they didn't seem that balanced for cube with some being too mild even for a free effect while others seemed unreasonably good. While only some conspiracies are powerful, as they are all free in some respects there are cube formats and situations where all of them, new and old are playable. Even the ones not reviewed here could be used should you feel the need to be a bit more exotic.

The monarch is a new idea for this set and seems like it will translate into one on one cube fairly well. I assume it simply works that no one is the monarch until a card is played that makes someone the monarch. This means it won't be a major deal in cube but will add an interesting dynamic to some games where it does occur. Once the monarch is in play it seems someone will always be said monarch till that game is done. I really like the design in much the same way as planeswalkers are good. It will encourage attacks that might otherwise be unfavourable. The control player may take their turn to swing in with a man land simply to become the monarch where they would have preferred to pass with all their lands untapped. Drawing a card every turn at the end of your turn is a powerful thing that you cannot let stand for long else the game will get out of reach. There are some potential downsides to it as well though. It is a bit of a win more mechanic, when you dominate the board it will be easy to retain the monarch and still apply pressure meaning you won't run out of gas nor will you be that able to over extend. It also really punishes some archetypes that are creature light and cannot easily claim the title even when they are in a good position. A Phyrexian Arena is a decent enough cube card. One that draws you cards half a turn cycle quicker, causes you no pain and in immune to removal seems well worth 3 mana, probably more like 4.

Goad is a new mechanic that doesn't really work in heads up games as intended. Goad is a little like a reverse provoke or exactly like the effect of Norrit or Siren style cards. Forcing a guy to attack you is not that exciting, occasionally it will kill something small or a utility dork without a tap effect but you have to have a blocker for this to work. It is slow, situational and not all that powerful and as such I don't expect to see goad being worth much on a cube card. If any makes it to the cube the chances are the card would do so even without the goad on it!


Kaya, Ghost Assassin 5.5 - 6

First off we have a card with none of the set specific mechanics! The design on this card is delightful. Sarkhan the Mad was one of the most interesting planeswalkers but he never really got to see play so we could enjoy all his unique design perks. This was because he was go awful but Kaya looks a lot more playable than old Mad Sarkhan. The reason I am comparing these cards is because they are the only planeswalkers with no plus loyalty effects. Generally this means you have much more initial power, options and robustness but far less ongoing value or inevitability. Part of what makes Kaya so interesting is that despite not having a plus loyalty effect she has the capacity to reset her loyalty to the starting point of five. This means she does have the more conventional inevitability of planeswalkers with plus loyalty effects and good ways to use that loyalty.

Overall the 0 loyalty option for Kaya is one of the most versatile and one of the most effective protection mechanisms on a planeswalker. It can gain up to four loyalty and it can make Kaya completely immune to attacks and sorceries. If it is only one attacker you care about then you can exile that instead so neither you or Kaya take the attack. It is also useful for removing blockers should you wish to attack in. You can even do your own dorks to trigger EtB effects or protect them from sorceries. With all this taken into account the fact that you have to personally pay 2 life for the effect seems more than fair.

Both the -1 and -2 apply decent pressure, one to life totals and one to card advantage. Both are threatening and cannot just be left going rampant. While neither can be done repeatedly they can be done often enough that it is back breaking and both can be endlessly cycled with use of the first ability to reset loyalty. Over five turns you gain 6 and they lose 8 or over three turns you draw two, lose two life and they discard two. One of the two - loyalty effect should always be appropriate for a given situation. Either you are in a resource war and a 2 card swing is really savage or you are in a race and a 4 point life swing is significant. Even in a top deck stalemate two unblockable damage a turn is a threat. Part of what is so interesting about Kaya being able to do these infinite loops of her effects despite having no plus loyalty is that each subsequent effect use makes her a little easier to pick off. The first time you -2 or -1 her she is still relatively safe however the last time you do either without putting her in the bin she will be on just one loyalty. You have to chose between maximum efficiency or risk reduction.

While I am excited to play with this new exotic planeswalker I do also have some concerns about the card. Firstly it is a four mana Orzhov planeswalker. A colour pairing not overdone with archetypes yet fairly laden with good planeswalkers and other top end. Secondly the card is a poor tempo play. Beyond the ability to wave out their guys for a turn at a life cost Kaya cannot effect the board. She makes no tokens, doesn't buff anything, doesn't kill anything etc. Until the game is near over the change in life is of little consequence and cannot really be considered that much of a tempo thing. You either need to have a dominant early game with loads of dorks or great board control with spot and mass removal spells to play Kaya I think. You need to offset her inability to control the board by having a deck that does that well before you can really milk the huge value she offers in all other aspects of the game. While I think she is powerful enough for cube and probably the second best Orzhov planeswalker she still could easily be one one of those cards that doesn't see enough play to merit a cube slot.


Animus of Predation 7/10 (draft only)

A cool and interesting design for a card that is easily of enough power to play in cube but one that encourages too many things I am not into for me to really want one. Firstly, it is very easy to make this utterly nutty in the cube. A couple of guys that are going late because no one is in that archetype and this is like an indestructible lifelink flying haste no trouble. Firstly the draft only nature of this card is a bit of a turn off. Secondly, no matter how good you make it the Animus is still just a five mana dork. There are loads of those, and planeswalkers too. At best it is some kind of True-Name Nemesis, a card we don't need more of. At worst it is unplayable. Despite being far closer to the top end of that spectrum I am still not keen.

The main thing I have against this is that it encourages random drafting strategies. Perhaps you are some kind of Oath or Sneak Attack deck and really wanted that Ulamog that no one else wanted but then wait, stupid Animus has "hate" drafted away your card to make theirs better. Essentially Animus removes random cards from the draft and makes peoples decks worse. To make things even rougher this is all done open so that the players can foster some deep hatred for each other going into the games. True-Name Nemesis is already one of the top contenders for most unpopular cards and I fear that this Animus would be worse in cube.


Capital Punishment 0

Far too expensive for heads up magic where two votes is the norm.


Crown-Hunter Hireling 0

A five mana 4/4 with a conditional attack is pretty god awful. He has counter-synergy with the monarch mechanic which is an issue because that is the only reason you might play him. If you can be pretty assured you will stay the monarch then this card is powerful but a bit too top end for most red decks to be super hot for. If you lose the monarch then this guy is of no help getting it back and might cost you the game. I think that too few decks will be unable to challenge a monarchy that this card will generally be too much of a liability to risk playing. Interesting but no.


Illusion of Choice 2/10

This has got to be one of the most over powered cards in the actual intended conspiracy draft. It seems like it does some impressive things where there are enough vote cards going around. In cube this is just a way to get a 2 for 1 with Council's Judgement. This is as narrow as it gets but for a one blue instant that draws a card it doesn't stop it being playable. With much more voting stuff it might actually be quite reasonable in cube. Like a reactive Quicken!


Knight's of the Black Rose 1/10

Now this is a 5 mana 4/4 I can actually get behind. This one has positive synergy with the monarch mechanic. He punishes people for taking it from you and then helps you to get it back if they do. This is a five mana 4/4 with a built in card draw and then either a mini Siege Rhino effect or a free Dark Confidant. It is quite slow and midrange but it is very powerful indeed. Until we saw some 4 CMC monarch cards I quite liked this and had some hope for it in the cube but being 5 mana and gold makes this too clunky comparatively.


Summoner's Bond -  very good

Good design and a very powerful effect. For cube this is somewhat above the curve. It is a completely free card for one. It is a completely free Tutor in the right deck and this is what makes it probably too dangerous. Ornithopter does not need to come with a free Ravager to be good enough. You can link any two cards that have synergy with each other or that are just really good all rounders with high power level and Summoner's Bond is the total business. You have good odds on seeing one of two cads in a typical game and so bingo, free top quality bonus card for little cost. In weaker cubes with lower counts of playables the card will be a little harder to pickup as it doesn't take the place of a potentially weak card in your deck. In my cube, even with my stupid high land count, there is such a high playability rate that this would be first pickable.


Natural Unity - incredibly limited but not without use

This effect is narrow as well as relatively low impact. This is not worth a card slot in your draft, you probably only take this when you have no picks and nothing worth hate drafting in a pack. There are some cards this would have fun synergy with but this just isn't worth a card slot for what it does. This is pretty much the same story for all the single creature affecting conspiracies.


Hold the Perimeter - weak and silly

Lovely design for a multiplayer card. For a heads up game this is doing far too little to be worth the card slot. Certainly there are some applications for having a free dork in play at the start of the game, even if it can't attack but those are too narrow for any sort of drafting cube.


Paliano Vanguard 6.5/10 (draft only)

While wordy and clumsy this is a really cool card that unlike the Animus works nicely in a draft. This dork is the lord of anything you want it to be a lord of. Being a white weenie card this will broadly be humans, occasionally soldiers but costing only 1W does make it a viable splash for some other tribal lordship. Great card for a drafting cube with a tribal theme. Basically every tribal synergy card I have is no longer in the cube as they were too narrow to draft but there is still a reasonable quantity of non-synergy tribal cards for which a two drop lord would be juicy. Although only practical when used in drafts this card offers enough to be viable in most cubes and will really shine in the more dedicated tribal ones. As you have to exile a card of a type you are playing odds on it is hurting you more than it is randomly hurting another drafter. It brings a new dynamic of choice to a draft while being an otherwise fair and broadly playable card.


Queen Marchesa 3.5/10

I have been burned by Mardu cards before so I approach this one with much caution. On paper this card is pretty nuts, certainly a whole lot more so than Butcher of the Horde! As with Knights of the Black Rose this is a card that has synergy with the monarch. A 3/3 haste deathtouch for 4 isn't bad, you can use it offensively or defensively to reasonable effect. Drawing a guaranteed card off the back of that is huge. You do risk giving the perk away to your opponent but then Marchesa gets really good at getting it back. You would certainly rather be the monarch then getting free 1/1 haste deathtouch tokens but it greatly offsets the risk of losing it. To get ahead they really need to kill her and deal you some combat damage which is a fairly big ask. The Queen should push on several fronts and be quite the pain. Despite all this I don't expect her to get any play just because of her awkward three colour pairing. I'll try her out but my expecations are pretty much zero for her.


Sovereign's Realm - ranging from totally overpowered to fine

This card is a bit too bonkers for the cube! Turn one this with Fastbond seems unreasonable. Even just cards like Exploration and Oracle of Mul Daya make this pretty nutty. Without the specific things that abuse it you are trying to just build a deck of the most powerful things. This means if you don't get it early in the draft you won't have setup well enough to abuse it. Often the cost of two cards will be too great to offset playing whatever you want. If you do get it early then you will suddenly be the most annoying person at the table just hovering up everyone else's juice! While very interesting this card seems a bit too random and swingy to be fun and balanced in the cube setting, certainly not for very long!


Archdemon of Paliano 0

Not really powerful enough to offset the drawback. In cube you can often be relying on late picks no one else wants tabling and Archdemon ruins that plan. Picked early in a booster he is a total liability too. I am not sure how good a 4 mana 5/4 flier would be in cube anyway so no real need to examine this trainwreak much further.


Arcane Savant 7-8/10 depending on support (draft only)

Certainly powerful enough for cube but awkward it its way and far too random and swingy for my liking. Get this with Cruel Ultimatum and that isn't even in the realms of cube fair. It will never be bad, it is decent value even when you are only playing a 2 CMC card with it. I will happily take a 5 mana 3/3 that casts a Lightning Helix for my blue deck thanks! Having this in a cube greatly improves the value of cards like Cruel Ultimatum or Time Stretch but I think that is a trap. At its best this card is far too powerful and not that fun but when you have to construct some sort of Battlemage with it I think it is very cool. It has a preemptive Wish style effect where you can draft some (off colour) cards that are good against the various matchups and then exile that card for your Savant. Only good in drafting and perhaps a bit too good to be fun so I am wary of this card but it is also interesting and cool enough that I want to play with it as well.


Assemble the Rank and File - super narrow

Nope, a conditional 2/2 is not worth a card even if you don't have to include it, draw it or cast it. Just having to pick this card and not having the option on another random cube card is far too much of a cost to pay to have this effect in your deck. Even if you are a zombie deck. Awful. In non-singleton cubes it might be a little less awful. Certainly you can combo it with a recursive dork and a sac outlet even in the singleton cubes but this is again, at the far end of narrow. Cool card design but unlikely to be seen doing much in cubes.


Thorn of the Black Rose 4/10

This is surprisingly comparable to Graveborn Muse. A 1/3 deathtouch scales better into the late game and is a better defensive tool. These are things you likely want when you are tying to protect your monarchy and use your extra cards. The card draw from Thorn is not tied to the body nor does it cause you pain as with Graveborn Muse. Thorn should always be a two for one right away as it will draw a card then force them to attack into it and trade. The risk with Muse is losing tempo when they instantly kill it with removal or losing too much life and dying too it drawing you more cards than you can play! Thorn has neither of these drawbacks but does risk your opponent becoming the monarch and drawing free cards. I think that makes this card narrower as you have to carefully consider how you are using it but I think it is still probably just strong enough for the cube. I like it more than I like a Phyrexian Arena, it may be too risky to claim its place however.



Ballot Broker 0

Too expensive, narrow and vanilla to be good even if we had a whole load more good vote cards join the cube.


Protector of the Throne 1/10

This is a really elegant card and something that white would love to be good. Sadly I fear this card has way too low stats to be worth a six mana price tag. Five is not enough health to be an exciting barrier to damage nor will it hold off that much extra pressure from creatures. This does provide card advantage which is rare in white on top of some protection for both you and your monarchy but it is just painfully small for a giant!


Custodi Lich 6/10

This looks like a pretty brutal card that can get out of hand. Not only is it a 3 for one when you make it the Lich also has some really serious swing potential when regaining a lost monarchy. There has always been a bit of a place for a good Edict on a stick in the cube because of Recurring Nightmare and how sacrifice gets around most of the top end protection mechanisms. Gatekeeper of Malakir saw reasonable play but didn't have the desired interactions to be a mainstay in the cube. This is a lot higher up the curve with is a bit of a problem for the scaling of Edict effects but it does come with card draw, potentially ongoing, and a 4/2 body. I think black has the tools to abuse this and so I see it being one of the more commonly used monarch makers used in cube. Cards that can give you monarch before combat such as Thorn of the Black Rose work very nicely with this card too should you have lost monarch somehow.


Hired Heist - underwhelming at best

Much as I like this it falls into the problem as the rest of the cycle. Simply too narrow to be worth the card slot. Some nice mind game potential, decent scaling with evasion creatures. Quite a lot better than the zombie generator which in turn is quite significantly better than the +1/+1 counter giver. I like the things this card does and so I can imagine it is one of the ones I would be more inclined to throw in to the cube. It certainly isn't as random or damaging as some of the other more obviously powerful ones are at least.


Throne Warden 0

Narrow, overly vanilla and not even that powerful.


Wings of the Guard 1/10

Pretty comparable to Stormfront Pegasus all round. I think I prefer a 2/1 all the time and it is hardly a cube powerhouse! Melee does not carry over in an exciting capacity to cube.


Adriana, Captain of the Guard 0

Deceptively bad. Like a Glorious Anthem only when you are attacking on an over cost do nothing vanilla body. Remeniscent of Marton Stromgald should you be in an 8 on 8 draft but in heads up this is the weakness.


Recruiter of the Guard 4/10

Functionally very comparable to Imperial Recruiter or even Fierce Empath, Goblin Matron, Trinket Mage or any other 3 drop dork that Tutors up a thing. Non-green (non-black) creature tutoring is quite exciting in itself as it opens up a lot of possibilities within the colour and existing archetypes. Overall I think Imperial Recruiter gets more things in the cube but Recruiter of the Guard feels like it has more homes than Imperial which is almost exclusively Splinter Twin lists. The card is far from over powered, you are playing a restricted Eladamri's Call / even more restricted Demonic Tutor for 2 colourless mana and then getting a free 1/1 for W into the deal. This puts it in the same sort of power level as a Reclamation Sage or Fierce Empath. The tempo is low and the value is mild at best. You have to want to tutor specific things up before this is a good card. It will certainly still get cube play but I expect people to get a bit carried away with this card simply because Imperial is so rare and valuable.
 

Confiscate Riches 1/10

So this is either a Time Stretch or a Time Walk plus a Confiscate. You can only sensibly not take the Time Walk option yourself if they have previously stolen something of yours which gives it minor utility. If they have a game ending bomb in play they will elect to eat the Time Stretch and hope you don't find an answer. If they have nothing then they will let you have some kind of token or land. It will be pretty brutal but it will never be as brutal as a nine mana card should be. This should win the game and it really doesn't in heads up. The only time I expect to see this getting use is when you have ways to cast it for free, then you have unfair value regardless of the game state!


Keeper of the Keys 0

While better than the red 5 mana 4/4 that gives you the monarchy I like this less. Blue doesn't need ways to draw cards, especially five mana sorcery speed ones that risk your opponent getting them instead of you. Give me a Future Sight or a Mulldrfiter over this, hell, give me a Honden of the Seeing Winds or whatever it is called! I don't think I actually mean that last one but you get the point. Blue isn't the best at stalemating a board and it is the best at drawing cards. Blue is not the colour for playing the game of monarchs.


Leovold, Emissary of Trest 2/10

Really hard to know what to make of this. Certainly a whole lot of power for the mana but does it work well together and then does it go in enough decks? Three colour cards not only have to be significantly above the curve but they also need to slot into a common and powerful existing archetype. Sultai isn't as rare as Mardu by a long shot but it isn't super common either. His first ability is a bit of a random hoser, some decks it will do nothing to at all and others it will be a royal pain for. The second makes it unprofitable to use spot removal or other interactive effects with your stuff. This is good against most decks but not all. It either means you are eating mass removal, getting your Leovold killed sharpish and them just eating the 2 for 1 or they are going to just cast dorks at you and kill you while ignoring your board. A 3/3 for 3 isn't bad stats but it isn't doing a lot without any combat abilities. Leovold gives too much control over his power to your opponents and has too bland of a body to make up for it. As a 3 colour card I can't see this getting close to enough play in cube. Good cards have an immediate impact on the game which this doesn't really. Even with his lack of cohesive design he is of enough power to be played in cube, just one of the many that wind up too narrow.


Entourage of Trest 0

I don't see this one much either. Certainly a lot better than Kavu Climber but green isn't great at stopping things getting through with zero removal, zero spell control and pathetic flying prowess. Green also has cheaper or more powerful ways to draw cards quicker. This is not what the colour needs in cube.


Sanctum Prelate 3/10

While certainly quite a nasty hoser card it is of such low base power that it will be hard to include in most decks. This is a "hate ogre" which sounds as lame as it is. This is absolutely not the new Containment Priest. It is far closer to a Meddling Mage or a Glowrider (bad Vryn Wingamre) than any other type of hoser card. There are some decks this will just end, some combo decks will have fits about this and some control decks might hurt quite a bit. The problem is that it is a 3 mana vanilla 2/2, it isn't getting much work done beyond perhaps preventing some card being cast. It is like a pricey Brain Maggot / Mesmeric Fiend.It is stall rather than full on disruption. It makes building your deck a little more difficult and has far too many associated costs to including it for a card that is only useful in some matchups. Reasonable sideboard potential but still dangerously low powered body and high price tag. I'm pretty sure I would always be playing Thalia Mark One, Thorn of Amethyst, Vryn Wingmare and then like Sphere of Resistance and Gaddok Teeg and so many other cards before I was playing this.


Daretti, Ingenious Iconoclast 7.5/10

Three mana walkers are always an eye opener and this one does not disappoint. This is the best 3 mana walker at protecting themselves, and you for that matter. Churning out 1/1 chumps and gaining loyalty is a potent combination. Having defender on them is a mild drawback and makes Daretti less aggressive but he would absolutely be overpowered if they could attack. They are already artifacts which has a whole world of potential uses, not least of all the second of Daretti's abilities. It is incredibly powerful in an artifact heavy deck where you can flop down Daretti, sac off something spent and kill a significant card of your opponents for just one loyalty. In a deck without many artifacts it will be far fairer, a bit like Dack Fayden when you are playing against artifact decks or not! When you have to pump up Daretti and keep the 1/1 alive to use it next turn to kill something you are being slow and ineffective. Daretti is not a great recovery card. It might be a decent late game stall card but if you are under much pressure and don't have other artifacts then Daretti will not bail the situation. This isn't that much of an issue as he is so cheap. Rarely will you be under that much pressure, if you are then some free 1/1s will sort it right out. As such you will be able to amass some loyalty and some 1/1s and threaten to either kill anything significant they make or perhaps threaten to ultimate. Although you don't need to have artifacts yourself, nor even ones you want to sac, to make Daretti's ultimate work you are then relying on your opponent to have something you can copy. Without the threat of something significant being able to happen with the ulti Daretti is a purely defensive planeswalker. Still a very powerful one in that capacity at least. Again, this makes him similar to Dack Fayden as his ultimate can also be a blank. Both are 3 mana gold planeswalkers that offer insane power level when the situation is appropriate but that can equally be basically dead cards later on.


Weight Advantage - ranging from broken to a mild setback

Narrow but not overly so and abusive with the right support cards. You can pull off the turn one Tireless Tribe win with this quite easily. It is hardly shabby as a 1 mana, 1 card turn two kill combo either... Warping your draft just to pick up dorks with higher toughness than power is likely going to do more damage than good if you pass up the good stuff that has negative synergy with your conspiracy. As such this is probably not a good enough card without the support stuff that abuses it and with such things it is probably a little over powered.


Dragonlair Spider 0

Common, with such a cool name and extravagant cost this should really be a lot better. Even in multiplayer this is pretty narrow and pretty lackluster. Bad bad card.


Spire Phanstasm 2/10

Really cool design and a provider of in draft information which is always nice. Sadly this is just a 4 mana 3/2 flier that might draw you a card. You don't play it in your deck if you wiffed your guess and you might not even if you didn't. It is quite a clumsy card and not insane value at best. I'd much rather me a Muldrifter and that doesn't see much love these days. The fun factor of this card probably makes it cube worthy in the right cubes but powerwise it isn't really there.


Illusory Informant 3/10

This is similar to the Phantasm in what it offers, that being draft info. The card is less powerful but actually more playable. A 2 mana 1/3 flier is fine in the right deck, you can expect to be able to play that without falling behind. A 4 mana 3/2, even with a free card, is just going to get attacked into or Shocked or Force Spiked and leave you wide open way more often than not. So this has a playable body and it offers valuable insight into the draft. This is only useful if you get it early in the draft and so this card is ultimately not worth it. Very cool design and very close to worth it! Situational utility, low power and narrow playability. Shame.


Grenzo, Havoc Raiser 7/10

One of the best cards from the set. Like Edric, Spymaster of Trest but fully ramped in power. Being one colour less and one mana less makes Grenzo highly playable in any aggressive red deck. He is fine on his own, has immediate impact on the board when you have other dorks and he affords lots of options and control. Goad is the weaker of the modes but still very useful. It can force people into unfavourable races, it can force people to chump attack or it can simply clear the path for another round of Grenzo triggers.

The second ability is the more obvious comparison to Edric however it is actually really rather different. You are not really ever drawing cards, you can't hit land, the cards will never be ones you put in your deck, your hand size won't increase and a lot of the time you won't have the mana to play the things you exile. This doesn't overly matter nor stop the effect being very powerful. The exile itself is very frightening for a lot of cube decks, combo control and even some midrange decks really fear the exile of certain cards. While drawing cards from other people's decks will be on average less powerful than doing so from yours it does give you some outs you otherwise don't have access to as the (presumably) red aggro player. Being able to hit a Disenchant or something like that outside of red's colour pie then it might be your best line of play. Lastly, even if it isn't really card draw it should be pretty reasonable value. An unchecked Grenzo will get out of hand very fast.


Skyline Despot 2/10

One of the most powerful monarch cards but really not a card that is going to find a home. You are not casting this, you might cheat it in but it is a little slow to take impact and as such is quite the risk. Obviously if you untap with this still in play and you still as the monarch you really shouldn't be able to lose. That just isn't a thing that is likely to happen. Stick to solid stand alone cards not wishful things like this.


Volatile Chimera 3/10

The ability to  have this become one of three 10+ CMC Eldrazi is a thing in cube. That would make this really rather good! The problem is of course consistency. This is not quite as easy to power up nor so smooth in its increase of power while doing so. This is really quite awful until it is a bomb. A lot of the time you won't hit enough super powerful things and this will be a bit of a lottery. I don't much like the design of this one but I can see it being super good in the right kind of cube.


Subterranean Tremors 1/10

Fine enough card with some unusual top end scaling. This is just an Earthquake that doesn't hit players and Earthquake, even the Rolling one, are just that bit too slow to be good in cube. This is a very underwhelming mass removal effect and that is the primary role of the card. Five to blow up all artifacts is pricey and playing this for 9 is almost never happening. The worst thing is that is you were ever acsting this for 9 or more the odds are you would blow up far more of your own artifacts than you would theirs! Cute, perhaps a clever Burning Wish target but other than that not a cube thing.


Regal Behemoth 2/10

Too pricey for the ramp to be that exciting, not a great body for the mana and a little risky being the monarch in green with such poor removal and capacity to block fliers. Powerful card for sure but I don't think it is something for my cube.


Hymn of the Wilds - fun, interesting and powerful in a fair way if a little narrow

For drafting this needs to be seen super early or you won't be able to draft around it enough to be worth. As such it is far too narrow a card for a drafting cube. In a more constructed setting this is one of the better balanced conspiracies, it is powerful but not abusive. Could be a lot of fun to play with this a little bit.


Palace Sentinels - 5/10

Comically I think this is one of the best monarch cards in the set for cube. White is the natural home for the mechanic as white has the best cheap creatures, the best defensive creature mechanics, the best creature removal and a total lack of card draw. Palace Sentinels is just quite a good deal, a 2/4 to defend the monarchy and hopefully an extra card every turn.


Selvala, Heart of the Wilds 6.5/10

I like this one quite a lot and think it is a far better risk for green to take as a card draw tool than any monarch card. There is a bit of a risk to playing Selvala but overall I think even when you do give away free cards you should still wind up ahead. If you make this on curve, which is what you want to do with ramp cards, then you are in the worst position for your opponent to be able to get a free card right away. While this isn't great for you it should be fine because it means they didn't deal with Selvala herself and as such you should be in for a huge influx of mana. It is so dangerous to leave Selvala in play I think it will soon be known that you just kill her, even if you can draw a card. If you don't kill her green will have loads of mana to make an even fatter dork which will in turn give even more mana for increasingly larger dorks. Green is the best suited colour to abuse the momentum you can get from this card and as such she is incredibly powerful.


Borderland Explorer 7.5/10

Not the most powerful card in the set but my money is on it being the most played. This card is the dream! It does everything you want and it does it super well. This is pretty much the best one shot discard outlet on offer. You don't wind up down on cards as you do with all the other cheap ones. You won't find yourself short on mana either. Regardless of your discard synergy this is the best thing to play when you are mana screwed. It is a decent tempo play regardless. It is the complete package for Recurring Nightmare. Even if you are flooded the card is fine as you can thin your deck of a land. I look forward to having access to this card in deck construction. Delicious options! It is even made more interesting by giving your opponent the option as well.


Leovold's Operative 5/10 (draft only)

A draft only card that is basically just another Clockwork Librarian. A very powerful effect in cube where it is possible to have several top picks in a pack late on in a draft. This one is a bit weaker to gain the double pick but it at least a little more playable itself.


Regicide 7/10 (draft only)

This is my favourite of the draft only cards. Not only is it a great removal spell that compliments other black removal effects well and scales better than any of the other one mana options. I like it so much because it gives you free information in the draft as to perhaps what colours to avoid. It might even be worth taking early on just to get that information. Great design and a powerful yet fair effect.


Throne of the High City 4/10

Cute card but so late game I doubt it will ever be worth having to play a colourless land. Decks with lots of mana production and little to no coloured mana requierment might play it but that is about it. In principle the idea of having a land that can turn into a Phyrexian Arena is super powerful but there are some real concerns I have about this. Either you can do it mid to late game because you are so far ahead already and the extra cards won't really be relevant or you can't afford to do it until super late game where presumably you are in a bit of a top deck war. Here the monarch is so incredibly risky, any sort of man land is going to be an issue. I like the card and it is powerful but sensibly play with it makes it too narrow for a maincube slot.


Palace Jailer 6.5/10

This is really quite the swingy card. A 2/2, a Phyrexian Arena and a Swords to Plowshares, the latter two without their usual drawbacks. In an even game this should end it, it has the swing feeling of Sower of Temptation except that it can't all be undone right away with a simple Shock/Terror. While Palace Sentinels is the safer, more rounded and less situational of the white monarch options the Jailer offers so much more power that I can't imagine people not playing it first if given the choice. The best thing about Jailer is that he offsets the risk of losing the monarch better than most other cards. You go a guy up, they go one down meaning they probably need more than just one thing to get out of the situation. Every turn they don't threaten the monarchy they are falling further behind.


Custodi Soulcaller 2/10

Melee makes this pretty weak in heads up cube. It only ever gets back one drops and only ever attacks as a 2/3 while being the target of any old Shock the rest of the time. That basically means this is a Grey Ogre and should be treated as one first and foremost. Even with all of whites great one drops this still isn't playable.


Best normal cards you could add to any cube

1. Daretti, Ingenious Iconoclast
2. Borderland Ranger
3. Grenzo, Havoc Raiser
4. Selvala, Heart of the Wilds
5. Palace Jailer
6. Custodi Lich
7. Kaya, Ghost Assassin
8. Palace Sentinels
9. Recruiter of the Guard


Cards you should add to a draft only cube


1. Arcane Savant
2. Animus of Predation
3. Regicide
4. Paliano's Vanguard
5. Leovold's Operative

Green, the New Blue?

Pro Tour Eldritch Moon has pretty clearly demonstrated the power of cheap card quality effects. For the first time in Magic history green has access to more good card quality effects of this nature than blue does in standard. Shock horror, all the best decks are green and all have a boat load of these card quality spells. We have the good cube cards Grapple with the Past, Traverse the Ulvenwald and Oath of Nissa and we also have the more awkward but interesting Vessel of Narcency and Gather the Pack doing a fair bit of work in standard. It would seem the only decks not playing a significant number of these cards are the Collected Company decks which rely on having a very high percentage of their decks as creatures. Collected Company is somewhat a card quality effect on top of its other perks so all in all green has the good cards of this nature and consequently is dominating standard.

Green may well deserve the title "the new blue" in standard where most decks are what I consider midrange affairs, the format is slower and less powerful and only really Anticipate exists in blue as a card quality spell. Standard is highly driven by creatures and these green cards are at their best when creatures are the main source of action you are looking for. The cube is a different story, all the older blue card quality cards are still in the format. Green may have jumped from having basically just Sylvan Library to having a decent spread of effects of this kind but it is still a third of what blue has at best. Further to that the blue stuff in cube is not fussy about card types. Blue card quality can provide quality regardless of your deck makeup while green card quality is a little more restricted in where you can play it. A classic example is the blue green infinite turn style deck where most of your action is instant or sorcery type. In such decks Sylvan Scrying is probably going to be better than any of these cards as all you will be getting is lands, and by that logic some kind of Rampant Growth likely better still. While these green card quality effects may not be great in certain combo and control cube decks it by no means makes them too narrow or too weak. The cards are very well suited to most green decks as the makeup of green is so creature heavy. There are some creature based combo decks which these will be pretty interesting additions to. Another reason these cards hold their own in cube despite being narrower than the blue alternatives they typically pack a little more punch for the mana. On a one or two mana card a little more punch goes a really long way!

Green is still green in the cube and blue is still blue. Green just got way better recently because it gained access to all these potentent card quality cards that help it to do what it does better. Green often curves steep and hard but now it can do it smoothly and consistently too. In a deck which is all mana and threats the difference between a good draw and a bad one is huge and these cards sort that out so well. It is all so new and so sudden I have yet to fully understand how to best be using these various cards despite playing with them plenty and finding them to be generally good.

That is sort of all I have to say specifically in relation to the title however I intend to have a little look at each of the cards individually. If you're not into card review and analysis then the rest of this in not for you! Chronologically ordered we start with Gather the Pack. While I tested out Gather the Pack out in the cube it never really worked out too well. The card is good but the things you need to make it good are awkward to achieve in cube. It was too hard to build a deck that wanted card quality/advantage for two mana that also had a really high creature count (40%+) while being able to achieve spell mastery. Without the ability to gain spell mastery Gather the Pack isn't all that exciting as it is too narrow. It just finds creatures and nothing else so despite digging five deep and having the ability to gain a cheap two for one it didn't see close to enough play.

That historically has been the trouble with the green card quality effects. There are lots of them but too many of them only found one kind of thing which then wasn't really sufficient quality for your mana. You basically need card quality to be able to find land or action. Card quality smooths draws by reducing the risk of both floods and screws. You have lands or spells as a better option than card quality if you only need to reduce your odds on one of screw or flood but no deck is really immune to either hence the value of good card quality.  It doesn't matter so much what that action is provided you can play enough of it but you do need both land and action options on your card. Ancient Stirrings was the first that kind of found you either but it is incredibly restricting on what action you can find so it only gets played in a select few decks. Then along came Seek the Wilds, a card I dubbed the green Impulse. It was the first of many green cards like this that found both land and action. I was excited about playing it but found it relatively rarely getting deck slots. I can't really say why it wasn't cutting it at the time, perhaps we were not ready to use green in that way yet! While it mimics Impulse it is weaker in every way and offers nothing else. Later green card quality effects started to offer bonus perks on top of just card qaulity. I hope Seek will find its way back into the cube in some manner but certainly for now it is rather overshadowed by the more recent additions.

Oath of Nissa was our next green gift. Comparable to Seek but effectively more in all areas. Now we get to find planeswalkers as well as dorks broadening our scope for action. We also only have to pay half the price for three quarters of the dig. Oath of Nissa also does a tiny amount of work in making planeswalkers easier to cast. It has some synergy with devotion and a broad selection of other things because it is a permanent. Fundamentally Oath of Nissa is most alike in mechanism to Slight of Hand except you look at 3 rather than two. Obviously the payment for this is the type restriction. Assuming your deck is entirely targets for Oath then it is on average more powerful than Ponder, Preordain and Serum Visions leaving Slight of Hand in the dust! It is not categorically better, even with all tergets there are situations each of the others would outperform the Oath but baseline Oath gives you the "most" card quality. This scale diminishes to unplayable as you reduce the target count in your deck so Oath is interesting in that regard too. Oath does a lot of work for the mana, it gives you information and then choices all while digging pretty deep.

Traverse was next up and it is really quite special. Lay of the Land was playable and Traverse scales quite significantly better! Most of the time just Lay of the Land early game is fine enough, you often only cast Demonic Tutor early game when you need to get a land as the tempo cost of spending two mana to do nothing is steep (obviously combo decks love to fire off a turn two Tutor but other decks not so much). In this role Traverse is far better than Demonic as it is half the cost! Late game you should be able to have delirium, otherwise you probably shouldn't play the Traverse. This is easy enough to do but is made a lot easier with sensible deck design. When you have delirium Traverse is one of the best tutors in the game. The cost is so minor and the range is very broad. Traverse has the best scaling of all the green card quality effects and that is typically the area in which they out perform the blue ones. Synergy and scaling.

Vessel of Nascency also arrived on the scene at the same time as Traverse. I overlooked the card somewhat based on the lack of success of Seek the Wilds. Given the results of PT Eldritch Moon however I think I need to give this card another go. Vessel does a lot more things than Seek the Wilds and indeed some more than Impulse. My early dismissal came from the feeling that three mana is too much to pay for card quality. This is an assumption brought over from blue card quality and may well not be the case. Three is a lot but green can likely stomach it best. Further to this the card is split into a one mana sorcery speed play and a two mana instant ability. Some times this will make it easier to use than Seek the Wilds. The range on Vessel is also huge, hitting every card type excepts instants and sorceries (and tribal kind of). Vessel is an enchantment itself which can contribute to delirium or devotion or do something extra synergic that was not the main function of the card. Lastly it puts things in the bin which is generally pretty helpful for a lot of green synergies including many other cards talked about today. While certainly the clunkiest the Vessel is the most powerful baseline and has the most it can potentially offer synergy wise.

Grapple with the Past is the most recent addition and probably the most powerful.  It actually has a lot of similarities to Evolution Charm that I hadn't quite realised. Grapple is more direct and more powerful but Evolution Charm isn't a bad card by any means and may merit a little testing revisit. Grapple is the green Anticipate combined with a bit of Regrowth and a bit of Strategic Planning. It scales better late game and scales better with any graveyard synergies. It is pretty much Anticipate as your first play for finding you action or land drops and it is pretty much regrowth late game recurring you a juicy threat. Solid all round and even stronger when used with other cards on this list like Gather the Pack and Traverse the Ulvenwald.

Blue has more rounded card quality, it still has the premium effects and it still has the most. Green however has become the colour with the best card quality if lands and creatures are all you care about. Further to this the green card quality offers some of the best graveyard synergies too. Green has been the strongest colour in the midrange cubes for a little while and these cards all coming along together have only pushed green further ahead in cube and hands down the best colour in standard. Blue is still the most "powerful" cube colour but green decks do more winning and should continue in that trend. The real question is whether this surge in green power will allow it to topple red as the knig of cube!

Top 10 Demons

Given the popularity of my top 10 Angels list I decided to give some other arbitrary creature types a go at a top 10 list. Turns out some of the more iconic creature types have very few cube mainstays. I have played and tested every demon and demon related card on this list and while most are fine in cube very few of them last the test of time or excel in the cube. I only presently have the top three of the actual list in the cube, I could squeeze in a few more but really, demons are not all that, they certainly are not as good as Angels on the whole. There are less iconic demons of past eras as there was with Angels. As such I have decided to entirely base this list on how good stuff currently is in cube. There are only two demons that were once fine in cube and saw play that are now unthinkably bad and those are Yokuara, the Prisoner and Grinning Demon. Even the angels that have fallen by the wayside like Exalted and Platinum are still reasonably playable!

There are also a lot of honorable mentions for demon related cards that are not actually demons themselves. For the most part a lot of these are better than the demons on the actual list!


Skirsdag High Priest is quite brutal in the right circumstances. I would have him about 4th on the list. Better and more playable than most of the demons not in the cube. When he is good he is unreasonably good, making 5/5 fliers for no mana or life cost, just tapping some dorks, is hard to beat. This guy owns most stalemates and he is just a painless two drop. The reason he isn't played loads is that he does so pathetically little when you don't have an excess of guys or ways to get guys dead. Black has actually recently gained some useful cheap utility dorks in Carrier Thrall and Cryptbreaker than should make this card perform better. If you have cheap utility dorks and useful things to do with pointless bodies (such as Recurring Nightmare or equipment) then Skirsdag High Priest is a potent tool, if not he is liable to not do anything.

 


Promise of Power is a blast from the past! While it offered some utility it was rare to entwine and rarer to be any good at all when just making a token. Five life and five mana for five cards is decent but it is inflexible and not a better tool than Skeletal Scrying, Necropotence, Necrology, Yawgmoth's Agenda or any of the top end alternatives really. As such this saw too little play and was cut never to return many years ago. Investing so much mana into a token that can easily be bounced to death equates to too much risk. Probably better than Grinning Demon or Yokura but not by enough!

Ob Nixilus comes in several shapes and forms. All his creature forms have been too convoluted or pricey to merit cube attention however his planeswalker forms have been far more impressive. Reignited would come in at 3rd on this list and Black Oath only a couple of places below. Reignited is either a Phyrexian Arena or a removal effect as you need which provides a lot of gas and utility and has him as one of the most rounded planeswalker in the game. Black Oath is narrower but dangerously high impact. The ability to have a 5/5 flying demon in play and a planeswalker right away is pretty swingy. The drain life in minor but gains loads of loyalty and life can usually be turned into cards in black decks! Both offer more to your deck than most of the four and five mana demons that are on this list and are widely playable.

I lied, I have not properly tested Priest of the Bloodrite! Given how remarkably close it is to Ob Nixilis of the Black Oath I don't feel I entirely need to. It is better in decks where you have creature synergy, specifically Recurring Nightmare but general sacrifice outlets but potentially flicker effects as well improve the card. Situations where you just need blockers it also outperforms Ob Nixilis of the Black Oath. Without synergies the card is narrower, less powerful, offers less utility and hurts you going forwards rather than aiding you. Given that Black Oath is infrequently played in cube the Priest seems a bit over indulgent although it probably still makes the top ten either directly behind Black Oath or pretty close to there.

Now for the actual demons that are too weak to make a top 10 list......

Sire of Insanity didn't last out the testing phase in cube. He was too high up the curve for the effect and not enough body for the mana. He was utterly brutal for some of the slowest decks but then most six drops should do that and be playable in other places! Cute but weak and really more of a hoser. Scaled down to a four or even five mana card and in only one colour and it might have stood a chance.

Extractor Demon is an interesting cube option. While pretty unplayable if you plan to hard cast him the unearth is great value. In any dredge / discard themed deck Extractor Demon is an interesting option. He also has the ability to further mill you making him both the enabled and the enabler in synergy decks. Sadly far too narrow to include in the main drafting cube but one of the few demons that performs a specific role rather than just being big and demony!

Speaking of just big and demony, Desecration Demon is quite a lot of card for the mana and not the kind of drawback that will wreak you, just one that leads to a bit of a dead do nothing card too much of the time for this to be all that good. Unlike Abyssal Persecutor where the onus is all on you to mitigate the drawback of the card Desecration Demon just depends on what you are up against. Versus control the card is generally just a complete beating but against any sort of weenie or token deck you have a four mana card that will do basically nothing. No blocking, no attacking, just a load of eating plant and soldier tokens or off the top one drops. While this demon can't go rogue as it were and just kill you itself a four mana do nothing card is pretty much the same as killing you. Desecration Demon always seems nice enough when building as you don't have to think about it too much, just a nice good value 6/6 flier for the bargain cost of 4. The issue is when you come to cast it and wish it was an Abyssal Persecutor instead or indeed any creature without a built in Pacifism. The +1/+1 counters may seem like some compensation for the tap drawback but it is basically just being given a tissue to wipe away the blood from the beating you just received, more humiliating than useful or comforting.















Shadowborn Demon had some promise but it turns out six creatures in your bin just never is a thing any time early. This makes Shadowborn pretty niche, you want to be playing it in some dredge style deck or one with loads of recursive stuff like Bloodghast. The real tragedy is how much better Shriekmaw is than this. Certianly the spot removal aspect of this hits a wider range of dorks than Shreikmaw but you can't do it for two. Even when you do them both for five the Shreikmaw has comparable evasion, a not wildly lower amount of power and has no upkeep costs. Cube cards want to be reliable and flexible and not impose things on your deck design. Shadowborn Demon fails at these things pretty hard. At best he is a five mana two for one that comes on a body not exactly above the curve in cube terms. At worst he is a five mana spot removal one for one that also fogs them for a turn. Playable, occasionally good enough, even in the wrong decks but far from broken at its best and way too narrow.


10. Rakshasa Deathdealer


A bit of a jumped up Putrid Leech come Nantuko Shade! Golgari has a wide range of good two drops of which this is one of the less exciting. Its abilities all cost mana to use making it basically a Grisly Bear for most of the early game. Late game it is certainly one of the better two drops you can top deck but a card which shines most as a late game topdeck is not the kind of thing I look for in a cube card. Certainly quite playable but no where near the power level needed for a gold card to be an auto include. Getting much out of this requires having too much spare mana which is not a thing one associates with cheap aggressive monsters. Potentially very powerful but ultimately less effective than Putrid Leech or River Boa!





9. Butcher of the Horde

This guy is really good. Really really good. What he is not is playable. It is so rare to see a Mardu deck in cube that this just never gets played despite being good enough to play in any deck with other creatures in it. The other massive issue for the card is that Falkenrath Aristocrat is just better. The one colour less makes it quite spectacularly more playable. Indestructible is a better effect than any of those offered by Butcher and also makes up a lot for the toughness difference. Further to this having haste without the need to sacrifice a dork more than makes up for the one power difference. When you have a load of disposable tokens and are not facing any removal while also being in Mardu colours the Butcher of the Horde can out perform Falkenrath but this doesn't happen. This is why some cards wildly above the curve just don't see play. Something does their job more conveniently or you just have no place to play it in.

8. Master of the Feast

While a 3 mana 5/5 flier is juicy it is a big old risk to give your opponent a Howling Mine. As it is such a threat it is often killed with sorcery speed stuff before the card draw triggers leaving everyone at a fair one for one trade. The blow out it when they have instant effects like tap, bounce, destroy etc where they can get a two for one at your expense. Worse still if they lock it down with a Tamiyo or something. All told the risk is too great for this to be a good standalone card. Fine against some archetypes but a liability against others. Where it does have its uses is when you have enchantment synergy. This can me more than enough to push it over the top. A 3 mana 5/5 flier is a seriously powerful card. If you can trigger enough things with it being an enchantment then it doesn't matter if you go zero for one with it to instant removal. Alternatively you can just play if off the back of a mana elf on turn two where it has so much tempo that any card disadvantage you give away is negligible as the game will be done too quickly for it to matter. In this regard there is a lot of comparison to Goblin Guide. Sadly green black doesn't quite have the same finishing power as red with its burn to pull of the same kind of strategies.



7. Overseer of the Damned

At seven mana this is a little outside the realms of the commonly cast cards. It is the sort of thing midrange decks love, a well rounded card with no drawbacks and value all over the shop. If it were scaled down and made a five or six drop it would be a cube mainstay. If you are actually going to the effort of hard casting a seven drop you don't just want good value you want something that ends games. In reality this has a bit of a 4 turn clock and only affords ongoing value if you have more removal. As a reanimate target it is a little too fair. It offers a slow clock and only gives value if they have things to kill. Typically you are better of with proactive cards not reactive cards for recursion effects. His best home is a Golgari Recurring Nightmare style deck where you have ramp and discard outlets to stop him being a liability in your hand. Certainly viable for cube but not played as much as the quality of the card suggests. Sheoldred is more exciting as top end goes, Grave Titan packs a lot more punch for the mana and things like Shriekmaw and Kalitas are far more preferable in any sort of midrange affair simply because they are relevant in the game that much sooner.



6. Bloodgift Demon

This is the all rounder of the group. It is a decent enough body for the mana and has the promise of value should it not be dealt with right away. It even has a rare get out of jail effect built in which allows you to direct the life loss and card draw towards your opponent. Not ideal but at least it means you are hitting for 6 over 5. In many ways Bloodgift Demon is an amalgamation of the best modes from both the 5 mana Ob Nixilus planeswalkers. He is a big flier than costs you some life and he does a bit of Phyrexian Arena for you too. A great limited card but a bit vulnerable to removal to make a lot of the more streamlined decks. Planeswalkers tend to get more immediate value regardless and are generally harder and costlier to kill with removal. There is still a lot to be said for a big fat flier in cube and this is one of those that works in most places.



5. Herald of Torment

The black Boon Satyr (kind of). Herald of Torment is a nice rounded little card that is far more playable on the cheap end than Boon Satyr and far easier to engineer playing as an aura as well. While it is never a combat trick it is a significant threat. When you bestow anything with Herald you end up with effectively a massive evasive haste threat and utterly break any stalemates. Then, they are in a rush to deal with the dork you bestowed which will usually get in enough damage that the 3/3 flying leftover you get is also a serious threat as well. The enchantment aspect of the card allows for it to work fine in some synergy decks but for general use it just makes it a bit easier to deal with. The lifeloss is negligible most of the time but forces you to play and build with it in a certain way that does leave it a tiny bit on the narrow side. Certainly a card of sufficient power to be in cubes but fighting with a lot of top rate three drops for a slot.


4. Daxos's Torment

Speaking of enchantment synergies we have this somewhat demon card. This is one of the best threats in the game if you are able to reliably trigger it. Thundermaw Hellkite is one of the best threat in the game and it costs a mana more and dies to far more sorcery speed removal. There are some decks you can play this in and it is truely outstanding. The issue is that you can't draft those kinds of deck as no sensibly balanced drafting cube will contain enough of the weak enchantment support cards you need. In the more constructed style cube things however this card is all sorts of powerful and interesting. Not only is a four mana 5/5 semi-hexproof flying haste but it has no painful or sacrificial drawback that you would normally expect from an above curve black card. This is absolutely a potential sleeper for if we ever go back to Theros and reach a critical mass of playable black enchantments. Most of the demons on this list have gotten worse over time but this one should do the opposite.



3. Abyssal Persecutor

Despite not being such a main feature anymore this big dork had a few years where he was one of the biggest names in cube. I still have him in my cube and he still sees enough play to retain his slot. These days he is not so far above the curve in power level that it is that worth it making your deck suitable for him, you just play him when your deck happens to ork with him (ie have ways to remove him from play). He is just a nice efficient threat and generally you don't want those making your life difficult. There are several reasons Persecutor is all sorts of good. Firstly he is comfortably 6 manas worth of body and secondly his drawback is more often than not completely blank text. The general rule is that either your opponent kills the Persecutor for you or it kills them. You do sensibly need answers to it or sac outlets for it yourself but these are relatively easy to pick up and include. Even if you don't have one to hand your opponent has to respect that you might well have one and will likely draw one in enough time. Sometimes it will put them to 0 or less and you have to wait a little to draw your removal but I have only ever seen the drawback cost one game in hundreds. The thing is, when you get someone to 0 most of the time you don't have to attack more. A 6/6 flying blocker that you can't remove in anyway really does make winning hard. Abyssal Persecutor is still one of the best outright beaty threats on offer. It hits really hard and really reliably while being a bugger to remove. It is not that better four drops are on offer it is just that a lot of the outright midrange threats have moved to the three slot with the four drop and up being more value cards and more robust things.



2.   Ormendahl, the Profane Prince

The most recent demon to grace the cube and it is quite the unusual one given that it starts life as a land. What I have come to appreciate about Ormendahl is the incredible power he can bring to even the most meek of decks. Most of the decks that consider including colourless manlands like Mishra's Factory are those that have a high count of small dorks. In such decks you are essentially taking a tiny consistency hit on your mana base for the chance to eek out a few free damage in floods and late game situations. Usually when you are using man lands in aggressive decks you are losing, not always but more often than not. For the control decks it tends to be the other way round that when they start activating their man lands you have probably lost. Playing Mishra's Factory in something like RDW might cost your good and average draws a small fraction of a % (total stab in the dark but we will call it 0.2%) in exchange for a slight improvement to your weaker draws. You are generally best off aiming for good draws more of the time than trying to make things better when it doesn't happen. You should be hoping to have a favourable win % with your deck. Although far too big, for the sake of argument lets say you are 60 to 40 to win with your aggressive red deck across the board. An improvement made to your losing draws will only be in affect 40% of the time while improving your winning ones will be in affect 60% of the time. Same logic as to why post sideboard matchups are more important for all decks that don't go to time on the round. If you can tip the balance of the scale either side by an arbitrary 10% then you get a value of 6 by improving your strengths and only a value of 4 from your weaknesses. Mishra's Factory is still a fine card and has plenty of application but it is far from an auto include in aggro lists, even mono coloured ones (apart from the fact there are often other better colourless lands options on offer). I have made it sound far weaker than it is by exaggerating the numbers significantly to make them neat.

Now, along comes Ormendahl, he has the exact same cost to inclusion as a Mishra's Factory or Mutavault or Blinkmoth Nexus and as such he has a comparable effect to your top end win percentages. The difference is that he has a vast impact on games unlike the smaller man lands. The odd extra damage or body from the man lands is a mild help that happens fairly often and is relevant fairly infrequently. Ormendahl occurs fairly infrequently but is hugely significant when he does. Ormendahl actually turns losses into wins, something other man lands do a lot less often. It is not just unfavourable situations he can get wins out of but ones where you would simply concede if you had a Mishra's Factory in your deck instead of Ormendalh. He attacks on so many different fronts and is so powerful that he just adds a whole different dimension to any deck that can support him. Green ramp decks and weenie creatures decks are the best place for him but I frequently see him getting put into midrange and control lists. While the token generation aspect of Westvale Abbey is incredibly weak is does allow you to justify playing Ormendalh in decks with lighter creature counts. Both incredibly hard to remove and to race Ormandahl gives a lot of decks a lot of reach they couldn't otherwise justify playing. Lack of trample keeps Ormendahl from being a bit silly, it gives you a bit of time chump blocking to find an answer that it now unlikely to be damage related in any way! If Ormendalh had trample flipping him would mean winning the game the following turn far too reliably. He is pretty impressive in his odds for doing that as it stands anyway.



1.   Griselbrand

No shock here that the most played demon in any format is the best cube demon as well. This is the card you most want for most of your cheat stuff in decks. He works with basically all the mechanics bar those that find a green dork and he instantly gives you near infinite gas. Further to this he provides a wall near impossible to attack into and then a threat that is near impossible to race. While it doesn't happen often Griselbrand is even hardcast in the cube. If you have the mana then a threat plus cards is what you want most of the time. I am really quite glad that his card draw has to happen in chunks of seven rather than being a direct copy of Yawgmoth's Bargain. Griselbrand is already pretty much the complete package when it comes to a fat dork. Having to draw cards in painful lumps of seven makes for a much more interesting card.

2/3s and the Decline of White Weenie

There has been an influx of high quality 2/3 creatures joining the cube ranks recently and this has had a surprisingly noticeable effect on the meta. We have Sylvan Advocate, Reflector Mage, Ayli the Eternal Pilgrim, Bygone Bishop, Jori En the Ruin Diver, Shambling Vent, Drana the Liberator of Malakir and you might as well include Stormchaser Mage in that list too as you generally have to respect the fact that it usually has two or more power. That 2/3s are a really good size to be is not new news. Kird Ape is basically the only aggressive creature in the cube that was printed in the first ten years of Magic's existence that still has the quality needed for cube use.

A three toughness creature is hard to deal with, it will survive combat with the vast majority of cube creatures and an even larger portion of the more relevant <4 converted mana cost ones. Only the very premium removal will take down a three toughness creature for one mana, otherwise you are looking at two or three mana to clear the path. All the really cheap efficient ways to deal with gribbly chaff dorks are just one or two damage, things like Fire (/Ice), Cursed Scroll, Arc Trail wont help with a 2/3. On the offensive two damage is enough to be relevant, it kills most things, all be it not as much of a % as the things three toughness survives. Two is enough to threaten planeswalkers and enough to kill the threats you might face one turns one or two. Most utility dorks also die to two damage.


As a tempo play or board control tool a 2/3 is likely your best cheap option. Nothing takes the wind out of the sails of a 1 drop 2 drop start from an aggressive deck like white weenie than a 2/3. If they go 2/1 into 2/2 with first strike and you make your 2/3 that is pretty much a two for one right there, it is comparable to having Arc Trailed them both but your 2/3 isn't a dead card when they have no targets. Sure, they can use a removal spell to undo the work your 2/3 promised but if they are using a removal spell to kill a Kird Ape and you are in the control role you haven't done too badly out of the exchange. If they don't have removal then a lot of the time the 2/3 is better than the Arc Trail, it will still threaten to somewhat counter subsequent <3 power creatures and can be ready to go on the offensive if you need to counter planeswalkers.

Answers like Arc Trail are safer than controlling the board with creatures but they are much more situational and therefor unreliable. While a 2/3 can be answered more effectively than an Arc Trail the downside to not answering it will typically be much more severe. A lot of the mentioned 2/3 cards are much more than just the stats, only the original Kird Ape doesn't threaten to affect the game in a fairly significant capacity if allowed to survive. An Ayli or a Sylvan Advocate are tedious walls early on but as the game progresses they become game winning in their value, threat level and/or utility.

While 2/3s being more common has affected all aggressive decks to some extent it has hurt white the most. White has always relied on its deep base of high quality one and two mana two power dorks to perform well. Aggressive green decks tend to have larger dorks that don't overly care about the vast majority of blockers and make ramp rather than threats on turn one (and two if they didn't ramp into a three drop threat). Blue aggressive decks have a lot more evasion. Red aggressive decks have a very high number of removal spells that will work on creatures with <4 toughness. Black is usually a support in those other colours archetypes and is a little on the janky side when done as the main colour. There are certainly lists for black aggro decks that are shut down even harder by a 2/3 than white weenie decks but that unfortunately for them is not their biggest problem...


White has removal but it is premium, it will deal with a Wurmcoil Engine about as well as a Kird Ape and so "wasting" it on a 2/3 is really not something you want to do. White aggro decks have a much lower number of removal spells than red decks and they make up for it by being better able to take out serious threats and by having higher quality one and two drop dorks. Higher quality sadly doesn't count for a lot when you are still countered by a 2/3 and therefor fail at your primary function of hitting face. Better removal is no good if you still have to use it on the cheap stuff.


It is unlucky that white feels the effect of better creatures more so that the other colours. White weenie has always been quite a dull deck, it made up for this by winning a lot but recently this is not so much the case. It would feel weird taking out staple white weenie cards because the archetype was too weak! I don't think it will come to that, white is deep and has a lot of directions it can go. Either join blue in the evasion game or focus more on themes like token generation or equipment as possibilities. Just running things like Boros Elite and Town Gossipmonger over more classic one drop options might be a solution as well. Certainly the latter of those two has been wildly out performing expectation in the cube so far. It is not the strategy of white weenie that has become weaker, just the tools it has traditionally used. Cheap aggressive dorks with 2 power and no evasion are getting less work done and presently this hits white decks the hardest. I can't imagine they will stop printing powerful 2/3s and so white is going to have to adapt a little going forwards. To be able to prepare for this change and to test and learn about which are the best directions to go I have added a selection of cards to the cube. White has regained some combat tricks, some evasive aggressive dorks, some 3 power 2 drops. Hopefully I can add to this with more of the same plus more good token generation and more good pumping effects as new sets are released and I learn about what is most helpful.

Sagu Mauler vs. Simic Sky Swallower

This is a classic case of application and suitability to purpose trumping raw power. On paper the Mauler is quite a bit more card but in practice it simply doesn't do enough. At a glance both are just big untargetable threats with some evasion. The Mauler looks better in almost every way here. Hexproof is more convenient than Shroud even in the combat trick light cube. The Mauler costs one less mana and has morph giving it some early game utility and the ability to start the beatdown on turn five without any ramp. The only thing the Mauler doesn't have over the Sky Swallower is flying which should be made somewhat less relevant as they both have trample as a means of evasion as well.

The reality is that the flying makes all the difference. A 6/6 is not all that big at all and can easily be multiple blocked to death by enough boards or simply outclassed by something fatter. Sagu Mauler is a mildly annoying fatty but it really isn't very good at finishing games. Hexproof is less value when you have to attack into everything they have with your dork to get anything done with them. With just the addition of flying you make the 6/6 untargetable trample body a really potent game ender. There are precious few creatures in the cube that can block and kill Sky Swallower. It is also pretty unheard of to have a board that can amass enough smaller fliers to group block a Sky Swallower down.

For six or more mana you really want to reliably get something out of your card, lots of value or a potent threat. Sky Swallower is a fairly reliable game ender while Mauler just isn't. Neither bring much else to the table and so you are always going to play a Titan, Consecrated Sphinx or Aetherling over Sagu Mauler. Seven is a lot to pay for a threat but it is essentially what you would have to have for Aetherling and Swallower is a better blocker and less of an ongoing cost. Swallower is sufficiently good that it is the target of Natural Order, Oath of Druids and some reanimate shenanigans. Sagu Mauler was never even a consideration for such decks and this should have been the clue that hinted towards it being pretty weak for cube. Sky Swallower is not the best value for mana card but it is one of the best suited to task which is a whole lot more important for cards like this.

Winners and Losers from Eldritch Moon

Curious Homonculus - good but not as good as hoped: 6.5 to 5.5

In an aggressive setting this card suffers much of the same problems as Thing in the Ice. Not so much that it is a horrible late game top deck like Thing but that it can sit around and not do enough quickly enough. The kinds of aggressive deck that generally want to play this have relatively few instants and sorceries that cost any colourless mana at all, with so many being one drops. The ramp it offers aggressive decks is too slow and way too situational to be worth the card. Really what you have here is a two drop 3/4 prowess that ever so occasionally gives you a mana discount on stuff. This is why you play it in aggressive decks and at that it would be very very good. The problem is that it doesn't come down as a 3/4 but a 1/1 and has to survive a whole turn like that without doing any useful blocking. In addition to this it is incredibly hard to have it flipped and attacking on turn three. I assume you can fire off some instants with the trigger on the stack to get your count up to 3 which makes it easier to do but not wildly efficient. Whatever the case, it is better to consider this more like a Serra Avenger, a card you can't do a lot with before turn 4. The other balance on the card is that you need to play a lot of instants and sorceries, this suits the prowess deck well but leaves most other aggressive lists unable to house it. I suspect it will perform better in a control deck where the ramp aspect will be far more relevant. For prowess decks it is fine filler but a little to awkward and fair to be a must have. With that in mind it does need to be a pretty strong card in control lists to remain a cube mainstay but I am still fairly hopeful for it there.






Thermo-Alchemist - Far exceeding expectations: 4 to 6.5

There seems to be two homes for this card, both aggressive red decks. Those being RDW and prowess. The card is very fair but does perform a specific task well while helping out a little in some other ways. It is not as good as Stormchaser Mage, it is less robust, less damage and a less useful defensive card in several ways. That said, it is still pretty playable. On the offense it is at worst a 1/3 with unblockable and in the right deck is hitting for more like 2 or 3 a turn. Call it 2 and you have an unblockable 2/3 for 1R, pretty decent. In the spell heavy decks it is far more important to have heavy, robust or evasive threats, things like Stromkirk Noble can be better than Firedrinker Satyr. With less creatures you have more odds on those you do have being killed or blocked. The two power three drop flying haste phoenix see a lot of play in these kinds of decks as acceptable filler cards because they perform all those roles. The thing is Thermo Alchemist is a whole mana less! Alchemist also doubles up as a wall. Being able to leave him untapped until the last minute means you can block with him leading to a pseudo-vigilance effect. Obviously without any power he isn't a scary blocker but he can still absorb one or two damage a turn. This makes him a pretty good race card, they have to race as your damage is unstoppable but you have a bonus blocker. The card is not the fastest, it is not the hardest hitting nor it is the most abusable but it does everything you want a card like this to do. Boros decks won't play it if they can avoid it as they tend to be far too creature heavy to have the Alchemist be much more than a ping each turn.


Collective Brutaility - outperforming expecatation so far: 6 to 6.5

The first cast in my cube for this card was a solitary Syphon Life for my opponents last remaining two life. When a card shines on its first outing I tend to be fond of that card and a little bias in its favour going forwards. I have only played the card twice, once it was in a reanimator style deck where you want the discard. That was the only kind of place I thought this card was playable. Certainly it is the best place for it but I am not so convinced that you only want it in that kind of deck. What I found was that having this in hand made me feel really safe regardless of what I was against. Versus the control mages I essentially had a Duress with some utility and for the aggressive decks I had a Disfigure plus some utility. With that kind of combo deck a little spanner in the works like either of those one mana spells is often enough of an edge to take down the game. This is more so the case when you get to enable your combo with discard should you need. Just having a Duress/Disfigure split card is pretty ideal for a lot of decks tight on spots. The card suffers in the way a lot of the charms do for being low value for mana when you use one effect however you have the power to change that should you have things to pitch and the situation is appropriate. Certainly not as powerful or playable as Kolghans Command but closer to it than I had expected. The second deck I played it in what an Orzhov weenie deck containing a few things like Bloodghast I was happy to pitch and a few other cards with hellbent style effects meaning I was far happier pitching things in the list than your normal aggro deck but didn't need to at all like the reanimator decks. I also had a Land Tax filling me up on discard fuel! Unsurprisingly the card performed very well with all that synergy and afforded a lot of options. As the card is so cheap the swing in power from when you play it when discarding things from your hand is a cost to when discarding things is a mild perk or just no cost is vast. It goes from being comparable to Izzet Charm to being much more like the good end of Arc Trail. This should be a mainstay in combo / synergy heavy cubes and is still a viable consideration in the more midrange cubes.


Unsubstantiate - suprisingly effective: 6 to 6.5

I wasn't convinced about this having enough power to stay in the cube at first but I am coming round to the card. It is great for being a good tempo tool regardless of your matchup. If you are an aggressive deck and were considering playing something like a Cyclonic Rift then this is almost certainly better. You have to play it like you would a bounce spell and not in the place of a Remand. Always having a card cost to playing it means you have to account for that card disadvantage within your deck design. There are plenty of decks that cannot afford to go zero for one just to gain a bit of tempo. As with Collective Brutality the real strength of this card is it being concise and convenient. It disrupts most things and at a reasonable cost. Against control it will force something through and against aggro it will buy you some time. Although Unsubstantiate is relatively low power and broadly what I would class as a filler card the fact that it fulfills so many roles makes it pretty good. Venser, Shaper Savant is a good cube card. He offers loads of utility some reasonable tempo and potential value. Certainly he gets played a lot because you want bodies with come into play effects however he does get played for being a rounded disruption effect where the 2/2 is usually just a chump. In such situations you are pretty much playing Snapcaster Mage plus Unsubstantiate. The cost split is near 2 and 2 for the two aspects of Venser. Cube being a cheap and powerful format it is generally the case that you want the cheapest card that does the thing you want. My point is basically that because Venser is so playable Unsubstantiate should obviously be playable. When you want the option on slowing down their stuff whatever it might be then Unsubstantiate is the cheapest and safest way to go. Yes, you don't get to have all the funky creature synergies nor do you get to Boomerang, only Unsummon, but it is half the cost of your Venser!


Wharf Infiltrator - far far worse: 6.5 to 3

It wasn't he card so much I overvalued as the skulk mechanic. This is the first skulk card I have properly played with and my god does skulk blow. This gets blocked by everything, walls, mana dorks, utility dorks, tokens, all the stuff that you really don't want blocking you. For the record, if you want a Looter, never play this, play Merfolk Looter or the human one. Even the one with no evasion and prowess trumps this! The creature discard effect applies to all your discards and so the spell still has some utility there but that was never part of the reason this might be a good card.

Decimator of Provinces
 - a bit weaker but mostly because I didn't understand it properly: 7.5 - 6.5

(did a separate card spotlight for this)


Lone Rider - simply unplayable: 5 to 1 at best

Not actually played it, just opened it in a sealed pool with good white weenie options and a lot of incidental life gain. Obviously the card was just going to be pure awful in that pretty optimal deck, it had a pathetic chance of flipping and you don't go round playing 2 mana 1 power beaters in cube! The only chance this ever has of seeing play is in some silly Serra Ascendant, Ajani Pridemate, Martyr of Sands stupidity!



Niblis of Frost - rather clunky: 7 to 6 at best.

Perhaps I am not yet using this right but I fear straight up Dungeon Geists may be the better card much of the time. This is either at least a 5 drop or it does nothing when you make it. At for mana sorcery speed no action right away is hard to play and not fall behind or risk some cheap blowout. At five it is painfully slow. Control decks are not well suited to playing it as their spells are not ones you can cast at will. Midrange is unlikely to have a high enough count of instants and sorceries to keep this doing things and prowess style decks do not love cards that cost more than a couple of mana. The card is still fine, it is an annoying flier that isn't too out of place in any midrange, control or aggro list. It just doesn't excel in the way I had hoped within the prowess deck.




Bedlam Reveler - also clunky! 6 to 5.5

Within the prowess deck this is likely better than Niblis of Frost but it does suffer many of the same issues. Pricey, hard to find a suitable time to cast, bad in your opening hand, awful in screws, uncomfortable in floods! Basically I slightly overestimated where this card would sit on average along its power range. This is not too unreasonable as it has to be one of the very highest ranges on any magic card. What makes this probably a little better than Niblis is that it also has a home in the super aggressive red decks while Niblis is just filler outside of prowess. Great cards with only a couple of homes tend to see more love than generic cards that are just OK in loads of places when higher up the curve.











Cryptbreaker - evry bit as good as expected! still an 8!

This will probably fall a little eventually but I am still in the honeymoon period with this little card. I have only cast this a few times still. The feel of the card was closer to Pack Rat than I expected but all round better. Pack Rat is so all in when you go for it while Cryptbreaker is far from that being that much cheaper and being able to return back card investment. If you make two zombies then draw two cards you are actually getting card quality as you would from a looter. You can play very safely with Cryptbreaker around wraths avoiding getting yourself be put as too much of a disadvantage. It is not the fastest nor dose it offer anywhere near the board power of Pack Rat but it is a far better card all round. You don't need other zombies, you don't need discard synergy, Cryptbreaker is still a fine card. Obviously either of those things improve the card but that just makes the card even better! Against a deck with limited removal I could totally see myself keeping this and six lands. Not many cards you can say that about. On the other end of the spectrum I could imagine keeping a hand with 2 lands, this and a pile of unplayable top end. That is the real sign of a good card, when it solves problems at either end of the spectrum.


Grapple with the Past - also just as good as hoped! 7 still

Yup, this is still Impulse plus Regrowth. I keep just putting it in every deck with green in it. It makes you feel safe early as you are going to hit lands. It makes you feel safe late because you can get back your important and relevant threats. In a midrange cube where creatures dominate this card is a total mainstay and is straight up better than Regrowth. In a more combo style powered cube this does fall off a bit as just getting lands and creatures greatly reduces its application and thus the number of decks that might want it. Almost all cubes have green able to make big fat things type decks and this will always be a fine card in them meaning this will crop up in a lot of cube lists. Being so boring it might take a little while for it to catch on as a powerhouse but probably not. The magic community is a savvy one!




Extricator of Sin - a lot narrower than exepcted: 6 to 4

Not bad by any means but sadly rather on the narrow side. White is one of the least flexible colours and has real difficulty getting anywhere near delirium. Without a decent amount of synergy this card is unplayable and that means it is likely not for most drafting cubes. In a typical white aggressive deck you are not going to want to put anything in the bin for your 3/2, even a token. You don't have the luxury of wasting resources as the white aggressor. The only places you can sensibly play this are those that want to sacrifice specific things or those that have stuff like Bloodghast, Flagstones of Trokair etc. The power level of this card in such decks is high but those decks are relatively uncommon and the power level of the Extricator is not enough to offset its narrowness.






Scour the Laboratory - reasonably on the money, perhaps a little conservative: 5.5 to 5.5+

Not blowing any minds but getting played and considered for play far more than expected. I have recently expanded my cube by about 100 cards and this means some generic playable redundancy is welcome. White got most of its one drop 2/1s back, red got basically all the Shocks bar shock itself back etc so as to keep the rations of core components of the colour pie appropriate. Scour has done a great job of providing a bit of Fact or Fiction like redundancy. I expect if my cube were 500 or fewer cards that Scour would have had a lot less attention.