Preliminary Review Innistrad: Midnight Hunt Part V

 

Larder Zombie 2

A quirky little card that I obviously like due to the low low cost. Certainly there are constructed places you might want a card such as this thanks to an array of potential synergies and that low low cost. The big question is how much a card like this is of interest in a drafting cube and the answer is sadly a likely not. A 1/3 is a sizeable wall for the cost which does help to justify the rather less impactful card quality effects but it is still nominally very small. Surveil is lovely but tapping three total dorks is a long way from a low cost. Being a blue zombie isn't a huge deal in most cubes either. 

Bladestitched Skaab 3

A nice cheap little lord that does rather invite you to play blue with your zombie tribal lists thanks to the high power and spot on suitability of this card. Tribal only card but a good 'un.

Gavony Dawnguard  2

Interesting design. Normally a card like this is a bit slow and a bit too much of a risk being a three drop that doesn't offer returns right away. The ward 1 might help solve that though because it means any removal used on it will not gain nearly as much tempo, if at all, and will make Dawnguard that much safer. Most aggressive white decks should have a hit rate on 3 CMC or less dorks in four cards well over 60% which would be good if you stood much chance of flipping day and night around much. Sadly it is slow and hard trying to cycle through day and night and the payoff isn't worth it here. I do hope to see more cards without immediate impact made playable with low ward values. I like the idea of it not to be a protection for the dork per se but a protection against tempo losses. It would also just be nice to not instantly have to rule out a load of more expensive cards on the spot because playing them into cheap removal is game endingly bad. 

Devoted Grafkeeper // Departed Soulkeeper 4

A bit of a Mire Triton card. The mill makes it great support for loads of things. The tap is minor but will come up here and there and is reasonably useful. The disturb effect gives you some real punch on your card too with a useful threat that is cheap on mana and effectively free on cards. As a mono coloured card this would be a great support tool for cube. In gold it isn't playable or powerful enough to clear the bar. I do at least anticipate playing this in some constructed decks.

Lunar Frenzy 5

This is an intriguing combat trick come Fireball card. The first strike and trample make it something you can often play at one mana usefully. The X means this can do a lot of work late. I suspect it is not range or utility that harm this card but how often it is useful and how much return you can get from it. Certainly worth testing but I just can't see people putting a situational luxury card like this in a list very often over a threat or a removal spell. 

Falkenrath Pit Fighter 7

A Savannah Lions with upside is always a nice starting place. A few years back it would have already meant at least and 8/10 rating. The upside here doesn't help the Pit Fighter out much as a 2/1 beater but it is a highly useful and rounded ability that has plenty of synergies. It also complements the low power of the card in that you can effectively cycle it away later in the game and dig into some gas. A big upgrade to Wild Dogs! Pit Fighter will do good work in vampire tribal and is comfortably enough to join the ranks of generic cheap red beaters in cube. It will get in some early damage and cash out later down the line. A more contained version of Bomat Courier if you will. Less cap on the value but less risk with more upfront punch as well. You can even sack off other vampires and get some real dig out of Pit Fighter. Not a bomb as it is still just a 2/1 beater as the primary function and that is just fine these days. 

Arcane Infusion 4

Powerful but narrow. You have to be Izzet and you have to have a very high count of instants and sorceries. That is some tempo decks, some control decks, and a lot of storm deck but even if you support all these in your cube it still isn't really enough to justify running Infusion. Especially with Expressive Iteration competing with it. As far as card quality goes this not finding lands is a bit of an issue. Impulse is so much safer, more reliable, and more playable. As far as value goes the second part costing five makes it rather less impressive in tempo and combo decks. 

Kessig Naturalist // Lord of the Ulvenwald 2

A Bear that tries to be a lord and a mana dork and fails a bit at both. I would play this in a tribal deck but it isn't as good as it looks as you need to get it to night time. I am certainly not interested in this when the Anthem isn't even potentially relevant. During the day this is just a bad Magda.

The Celestus 1

An over priced mana rock that lets you mess about with day and night and offers a smattering of life and loots as they change. Cute but not the kind of thing offering enough payoff in cube. At significantly reduced costs the life and loots would become good but we are talking some serious reductions! As it is cost you would need like a quarter of the cards in your cube to have day and night synergies before this gets good. 

 

Vampire Socialite 2

This is a bit of a wannabe lord as it needs triggers to activate it which generally means it will not be on lord detail for the first attack possible as Socialite will need making post combat. Likely still cheap and powerful enough to make it into most vampire decks in Rakdos but not seeing play anywhere else. 

Seize the Storm 1

Big tokens for lots of mana and lots of setup. Yes, this can make big tokens but often it won't and even when it does those tokens will tend to do little. This isn't useful outside of combo one shot abuse and that feels like far too much work to be close to a good combo.

Graveyard Trespasser 5

While the ward protects this nicely from spot removal blowouts the card simply isn't very threatening or powerful. The 3/3 mode struggles to get work done in combat and even the 4/4 side isn't terrifying. It still gets easily taken out in combat. Exile effects are handy but it seems to be the main thing this card has going on. Medium stats, meagre lifegain potential, and limited yard disruption do not excite in this package. The ward is great but it has to protect something worth protecting to be good and this doesn't seem like it is that. A card needs to be good on one or more of the following metrics of the game, value (card advantage), tempo, threat, or disruption. This only achieves any of these metrics mildly, calling it good in one would be more than generous. I still probably need to test it to confirm my suspicions that this is bad in cube as there is still quite a lot of raw power in this card.

Curse of Silence 6

I love this. Used well this is just a tax, you pay 1 and they pay 2 leaving you ahead. Obviously in singleton you always sac and draw your card. It gets rather better in formats containing multiples. The issue facing this is naming correctly. This can be easy when the draft format allows for it and you pay attention. It can be a free roll when you have cards like Peek and Elite Spellbinder but when you are just guessing blind the card isn't playable. At best this is super proactive Remand. At worst it is a do nothing. I want to play with this but I fear it is likely all a bit too Meddling Mage to sensibly run in a draft cube. 

Ghoulish Procession 6

This is a decently efficient and effective token producer in any deck with a wealth of cheap dorks and some control over the time of their death. If only partially supported the card can still be great but it relies on your opponent having a deck that involves a lot of their dorks winding up dead. Really I think this can only be played in Aristocrat style decks that make use of the tokens as sac fodder and aggressive lists that can usefully apply pressure with the decayed tokens. The once per turn limit doesn't ruin the card as the trigger works on both your dork sand the opponent's dorks and it works in both players turns ensuring a good steady flow of decayed zombies. The cost is right for the potential and expected outlay of this enchantment. This is a little narrow and conditional for my liking but it still has a lot of potential and certainly merits testing. 

Preliminary Review Innistrad: Midnight Hunt Part IV

 

Foul Play 6

A delightful cheap disruptive two for one. This is pretty poor tempo and might also wind up being relatively low value too. The average CMC of things you kill are not going to exceed the cost of playing this and of the things you kill many will have otherwise gained value or just not cost much to deploy. I can see this killing a lot of thopter tokens for example. The danger with this card is having it sit in hand without targets. I want it to be viable as I love both investigate and this kind of card but there is a high chance this lacks the range and power for cube. When you kill off one of the pricier cards like low power like Torbran or a Yawgmoth with Foul Play it will feel great but at sorcery speed that could still be too late.

Heirloom Mirror / Inherited Fiend 2

This is a bad looter than turns into a dull threat. To get to the Fiend you need to pay 5 total mana and three life while waiting three turns. Sure, Fiend is fairly big and threatening but it is fairly easily answered and doesn't afford tempo or value in any way. If you want the loot part you probably don't want it to flip a bunch of the time. If you want the dork side then the loots are going to feel like a real chore. An awkward pairing of effects on a deceptively low power overall package. 

Geistflame Reservoir 4

This is a bit of a value Shrine of Burning Rage. It charges slower but it is both reusable and has an actual card draw mode. The nature of the card advantage does mean that paying two is a little uncomfortable. You can dig for lands or make solid use of it late game but in the midgame it will just misfire too often to be worth activating for gas. Even so, a card that is both reach, control, and value has to be taken seriously. The downside with this card is speed and tempo. Similar but not the same. The speed relates to how many turns you need this around before it does much, which is lots, and thus why this card is slow. Tempo relates to how efficient the card is for the mana and on an infinite timescale it is indeed quite efficient. Over three or four turns however, which is a much more reasonable number to consider for the practical performance estimations of a card, the efficiency is going to blow. I like this card a great deal, there are places it will fit in, and there are even going to be games in which it dominates. Overall though, this card is just too fun and fancy to compete at the big boys table. 

Can't Stay Away 1

If you are bothering to recur stuff in cube then you can just get a real threat for a similar cost. If you are trying to play this for value in a more conventional sense then the situational nature on top of the being gold all rule it out comfortably. This might get some love in a creature based combo deck where it can help to recur key combo pieces. Beyond that I see little application for this. 

Curse of Leeches / Leeching Lurker 3

A cute card but a bit slow and aimless. I am most likely to play this for aura/curse synergy or because I want lifegain. These are all constructed synergy settings. There is no way I am playing this in just a deck. The front end is terrible tempo and far to slow to really offer reach. The back end is meatier but a bit of a do nothing that easily dies or just goes back to not being a board presence. An interesting card and not without a degree of power. More a case of poor suitability and internal disharmonies. 

Consuming Blob 3

A Tarmogoyf that spawns another every one of your end steps. It does only count your own graveyard so it will be smaller than Goyf and more easily disrupted for that matter too. I rather prefer the reliability of Whisperwood Elemental and Biogenic Ooze. This may have some perks over alternatives and does the kind of thing you want a five drop to do but the upsides do not outweigh the drawbacks when faced with such stiff opposition. 

Rite of Harmony 2

Golden flashbacking Glimpse of Nature with an enchantment trigger slapped on for good measure. This is a lot of card to be sure but I am not exactly sure how excited I am about any of these extra aspects. Mostly this seems like a bad Glimpse that might not even get play over Beck // Call due to colours. You certainly shouldn't play a card like this unless you are fully building around it and that is hard enough to do already in singleton. Redundancy in this effect certainly helps but we are still talking a fringe deck you make just for fun.

Curse of Shaken Faith 3

Quite delicious anti storm hate here. Too easily played round to be of general use but as a targetted sideboard tool this has some roles to play. 

Flame Channeler // Embodiment of Flame 6

Normally a card like this with a limp front end and an appealing back end is a total trap. This has a bit more chance of success for a couple of reasons. Firstly, the flip condition is actually pretty easy, you only need to do damage with your spell, it isn't just to a player. That nearly translates into just casting an instant or sorcery. You can do it reliably and easily and sometimes even for 0 mana and blow someone out with it. Embodiment of Flame is the other thing that makes this enticing. Obviously the power is high when it is a two mana investment. It is also just a great thing to have in all metrics. It is good early for being high tempo, it is good late for the value. It is good as an aggressive card or as a more midrange affair. It reminds me most of Dragon's Rage Channeler. A cheap dork than can become overstatted and provides some ongoing value on cast triggers. DRC is better at the former, this is better at the latter. This certainly isn't anywhere near as busted as DRC but I do imagine it stands some chance in cube. A test candidate for sure. 

Gisa, Glorious Resurrector 6

A lot of overlap with Kalitas on this card. Both exile opponents dorks when they die and both reward you for doing so. Both are also four mana dorks with no EtB triggers or otherwise reliable value. This raises the bar for what they need to accomplish. Kalitas is a more defensive dork as he produces dorks that can block, has lifelink, and has the capacity to grow himself further putting him out of reach. Gisa on the other hand seems to have a rather higher ceiling with a decayed version of most cube dorks being substantially more impressive than a 2/2 token. Cheaper things tend to have EtB effects and bigger things are so powerful that just one hit with them is going to do way more work than a 2/2 token could dream of. The bigger things often have EtB effects themselves and then there are those many dorks that have triggered and passive effects that the decayed downside doesn't impinge upon. Much as Gisa seems more powerful than Kalitas I am not sure she is more suited to cube. The strength of Kalitas is in his stabilizing ability which Gisa lacks. Gisa feels rather a win more card and thus not a good fit for cubes. I will very much need to test this one as there is a point where the power is just enough to carry a card past these kinds of issues. I would guess at Gisa not having it but she is still worthy of some playtesting to confirm. 

Hobbling Zombie 0

Another one of those cards that clearly has no chance in any sort of cube setting due to low power and lack of unique effect. This in turn highlights quite the extent of the power creep as not all that long ago this would have been playable, and if we go back over a decade then this would absolutely be a lock in card for cube. Two bodies in one with a useful ability on the first and a total load of stats above the curve on mana paid used to tick all the boxes. This is not that far off a Flesh Carver and for a long time that was one of blacks best creatures. Sadly now Carver is just clinging on, largely due to the memory of power once held.  . 

Preliminary Review Innistrad: Midnight Hunt Part III

 

Tovolar, Dire Overlord / the Midnight Scourge 3

There is a lot of power locked up here but it is mostly rather contained behind tribal preconditions. In a deck where you can expect to flip this sometimes and have a good chance of getting to draw with it via another wolf then it is a premium threat. In all other places it is mostly a 3/3 Scroll Thief which remains a long way from good enough. The Kessig Wolf Run ability is particularly strong given the card draw mode but is plenty strong as it stands acting as a threat, a mana sink, and the general ruin of combat for your opponent. Shame it is locked behind a tribal clause...

Sigarda, Champion of Light 3

Humans are the most common type on dorks in cubes. This is still only around 30% which in addition to being gold makes Sigarda a little too narrow for my liking. The body is certainly powerful and the Anthem can be devastating but mostly the body will get answered and the Anthem will end up being minor. Obviously if you start to trigger and hit with Sigarda the game is going to be yours shortly but that will not be the norm, likely not even in tribal decks. Even so, Sigarda is an immensely good lord for those kinds of deck should your curve be going that far.

Secrets of the Key 4

This is some kind of crazy Think Twice. If you want to pay 11 mana to Ancestral Recall this is your best tool for the job. As a pure card draw spell this falls pretty short. It is convenient like a Mazemind Tome in how you spend your mana but it is still a long way from efficient, 4 cards and 4 life  for 10 mana is > 3 cards for 11 mana. The card isn't really about the draw so much as it is about putting useful artifacts into play. I quite like the idea of this supporting my Urza decks. This is a nice low cost way to safely bolster my artifact count early while still giving me some late game action. It is a somewhat narrow support card but it will get play being so cheap to cast and so clean in what it does.

Brutal Cathar 7

This is quite the upgrade to Banisher Priest. The more relevant question is if this is actually better than Fairgrounds Warden? When you play a card like this it is for the removal effect and so resilience is important. That starting toughness on Warden might simply be enough to outclass this despite Brutal Cathar having way more raw power. I think that in cube Cathar will rise to the top of the pile (excluding Skyclave Apparition of course) of these Oblivion Ring style dorks. This is down to it being something you are happy to have in play compared to the others which one tends to hold in hand for the right moment. This flips into something substantial and then threatens to exile more dorks again. I suspect I will often just flop this out whenever I can take out a token or even just disrupt some tempo. While this is of sufficient power and utility for cube play it looks like the kind of card I will just wind up cutting for space in the near future. It is a bit tempo and a bit removal, it does nothing that well or that reliably. Yes, it has high power levels but that is everything in cube for three mana or more. When you look at the three drops getting cut from cubes this starts to look less impressive.

Baithook Angler / Hook-Haunt Drifter 1

Nice interesting flavourful design. Cute card too but sadly a little lacking in the power department. There are no archetypes that want this set of bodies, likely even including constructed lists. Self mill getting you this for free still doesn't really excite. Insufficient on the old impact.

Candletrap 1

The card this has to compete with is On Thin Ice and it mostly fails at doing that. You do not want to play this in an aggressive deck as you give them a wall to absorb damage with until you cough up another 3 mana. In a control deck this is a little better but you are less likely to obtain coven. The main two things working against this are the same things that work against cards like Pacifism. It is too easy to get your dork back in action with flicker or even bounce effects on top of enchantment removal and it does nothing to stop activated and passive abilities on the creature. 

Might of the Old Ways 1

With coven active this is great. That however is not how you want combat tricks to be. They are situational to begin with so having to fulfil other criteria in order to not suck is very awkward. Two mana is also pretty steep for a combat trick and makes it a tougher thing to use well. Compare this to a Mutagenic Growth that is the same pump for zero mana and as such always active and impossible to play around. Then just imagine spending that two mana later down the line on a clue or something and never bother playing this. 

Famished Foragers 1

This has a lot going on but really it is a glorified yet ineffective Coal Stoker. You might have played this in a quirky synergy deck but needing to have caused life loss to get the relevant trigger makes this all too conditional to realistically get action. 

Light up the Night 7.5

This has to be the best Fireball for cube play. It is passable flexible removal in the early and mid game while still having all that late game reach that Fireball offers. The issue with Fireball cards has always been that they have really poor early game damage output. Light up the Night solves this issue cleanly with an X+1 on non-player targets. The flashback is really interesting too. It increases the threat of your walkers, effectively giving any a new and dangerous ultimate you can fire at any time. This is particularly good with walkers like Dack Fayden who lack serious payoff when you have lots of loyalty. It is a cool combo with Chandra, Fire Artisan too. I suspect this will end a lot of games. A number of those as quite the surprise too. The flashback, much like with Devil's Play helps to offset lower early game impact as it is a card you are quite happy to loot away and just lean on the flashback value option. 

Poppet Stitcher 7

Blue loves payoff cards for playing instants and sorceries thanks to having a powerful and deep pool of cheap cantrips. Sadly a lot of the blue ones are shockly bad tempo four drops that are pretty hard to get working. As such blue is often using other colours for these pay offs (Sedgemoor Witch, Young Pyromancer, Monastery Mentor etc). Poppet Stitcher being a three drop greatly increases the viability. Three toughness also goes a good long way to helping with this viability. The flip side of the card in addition to this all help to make up for the somewhat weaker tokens. It is actually fairly dangerous, not only turning your decayed zombies into far more useful and threatening 3/3s but also protecting the Stitcher from mass removal. This guy has a lot of reach and value potential. It is a little slow and awkward but I think it ticks enough boxes to get work done in the cube. Unanswered he should end a game only a touch slower than Mentor. 

Ominous Roost 2

Making a token on entering play goes a long way to making this more playable but sadly it is still too demanding on support for a draft setting. Despite there being plenty of good ways to cast stuff from the bin you need more than you can reasonably expect to get in a draft to make this good. As such this is a build around only tool. Quite a cool one that makes me want to play it which is impressive for a simple card that is a long way from busted. Even when supported approrpriately this card is still really just a fair spell. 

Preliminary Review Innistrad: Midnight Hunt Part II

 

Arlinn, the Pack's Hope / The Moon's Fury 5

Flippy walker Arlinn returns with a new and tidied up version of the day/night transform mechanic. If you cast Arlinn while it is somehow night already she enters pre flipped which is interesting, although fairly minor as far as cube goes. Set mechanics such as this typically have such a low instance within cubes that interplay is infrequent. I do rather prefer Moon's Fury as the starting side. This would be a very impressive walker indeed if you could just chose which side it came down on. Both Moon Fury's modes are pretty high impact and good all round things you are likely to want. Sadly the Pack's Hope is more awkward as an opener. The +1 is amazing as far as helping you flip her the turn after you make her but it is terrible on the turn as you will rarely have both mana and plays left. Certainly curving with Arlinn the +1 is shocking. The -3 is very potent and reminds me of Huntsmaster of the Fells and Esika's Chariot. The issue is not the effect or the value, they are both fine to good. The issue is leaving Arlinn on 1 loyalty. A single Thopter, a Lava Dart, a stiff breeze, all end Arlinn. A lot of the time they will not even need to spend a card to kill her and you will have spent 4 mana on a pair of 2/2 dorks. Not awful but certainly not good. When they can't kill her immediately things are looking really good which increases the power of the card but not in a good way. It makes it polar and a bit of a win more card. A bit of a shame as I do quite like what is on offer here. Being gold on top of polar is a bit of a death sentence for cube cards these days with just such an abundance of choice. 

Saryth, the Viper's Fang 5

Certainly a potent card but very much in the Kalitas and Shalai, Voice of Plenty sort of camp. They are all cards that can lock down a game and cause real issues but at the cost of being vulnerable to spot removal cards thanks to high cost, no immediate value, and no inbuilt resilience either. Breaking this down, the deathtouch is the best bit here. It makes your stuff really tedious, things with trample become a nightmare, your small stuff becomes costly to block as well. The hexproof thing is nice but not overly impressive. It lets you do things like equip and enchant with some degree of security or add a bit of safety to something you really want to survive to attack with the following turn. Nice but infrequently useful, mostly Saryth would get killed first anyway and so it won't make a jot of difference in those cases. The untap utility is also nice but it isn't the kind of nice you want on a four drop dork. You might get a bit of ramp or fixing out of it but mostly you will be trying to represent the ability to protect another tapped dork you have. I do quite like this card but it isn't going to cut it in my cube. It seems more suited to EDH or perhaps other build around decks with deathtouch themes.  

Festival Crasher 5

A rejigged Kiln Fiend that results in a more generally playable but less build around suited card. Essentially this is a bit more robust but grows a little less extremely. Still enough of a boost to be something you would want in any sort of Kiln Fiend deck. It does very much seem like the 2nd best Kiln Fiend for that sort of combo. A little bit narrow, cute, and likely fair, for most draft cubes however. 

Galvanic Iteration 4

A very cool Fork effect indeed but still not quite good enough for cube play. The power is there for sure but this seems too narrow. You need to be in the colours and you need to have the cheap spell still in hand to fork. Mostly that is burn and card quality which you are typically casting early. Situational cards are hard to justify in lists, this one is generally a value tool too which makes it less appealing. I am much happier making concession for tempo gains than I am for value. Despite not being a draft cube card this Fork will have plenty of homes, notably combo ones, where being able to have a functional Fork working from the bin will be impressive utility. 

Enduring Angel / Angelic Enforcer 2

We could deep dive into the value of the various effects this has and how it will be able to win a bunch of games on it's own. Or we could just look at the metrics for paying 5 mana for a 3 toughness dork with no EtB effects or protection which make it pretty unplayable. This is another wildly polar card that will tend to cost you the game when you spend five sorcery speed mana to do nothing or just occasionally win you the game against opponents with the wrong answers. Not interesting nor fun. Luckily also just not that powerful on average. 

Contortionist's Troupe 1

Far too slow and vanilla for drafting cube play but a bit of hope in a counters theme deck where by this is a doubly synergy payoff having and giving counters. The coven is also easier to trigger in such places where you have a greater degree of control over the power of your dorks. Cute though this might be it is still low tempo and situational which hurt it even in the synergy lists. 

Beloved Beggar 1

This is like a Wall of Omens that draws when it dies rather than on EtB and that instead of a card from your deck it always draws a six mana Serra Angel. In other words it is like a very bad Wall of Omens. You only want the disturb part when you have nothing else going on and so the early bit loses most of its appeal. 

The Slow Lands Cycle 7

Most interesting. The inverse of the quick lands although both landing good on three. Is it more important to have untapped lands from 4 mana onwards or on turns one and two? The answer is both archetype and format dependant. Broadly speaking the slower your format or deck the more the slow lands will shine over the quick lands. Even in my unpowered cube I expect quick lands to outclass these although not by loads. The sweet spot is around the 3 mana mark. The quick lands are weaker in my cube than they are in modern by quite a significant margin. I tend to prefer running pain lands to the quick lands although again, the specific contexts are important to these kinds of choice. A more appropriate comparison to these slow lands are the check lands. Both fail to produce mana immediately when played early and both are increasingly reliable as the game goes on. While I suspect on average a check land is coming in untapped more often than these that isn't painting the whole picture. You often can't sensibly play a check land as you have too few basic lands. Check lands are weaker when you are more than two colours while also being weaker in rotisserie settings where you pick up far more dual lands. If you were able to account for the times that check lands are not played into your averages for when these lands come in untapped the slow lands would start to win out. They are simply more reliable and convenient. There is generally enough good fixing for cubes now that these shouldn't see all that much love in drafting cubes outside of the very large and potentially budget ones depending on how much these wind up being worth. That does not stop them from being excellent little cards. 

Jadar, Ghoulcaller of Nephalia 7.5

This seems amazing for cube to me. Mostly it is the high levels of synergy this has but it is also quite acceptable as a stand alone. This sits somewhere between Kari Zev and Ophiomancer. Jadar is fine if you want to just attrition at someone with a disposable 2/2 attack every turn. Jadar is nuts if you want to sacrifice dorks for value. It is certainly less good offensively than Kari Zev as Jadar is more vulnerable and far less able to tangle himself. On the plus side you don't need to send in with him to get your dork as you do with Kari. Jadar is still 3 power over two bodies for a mere two mana which is just plain old good. Equally, it is less good defensively than Ophiomancer quite significantly what with the token neither having deathtouch nor able to block. Like I say, it is all about that synergy. So many cards play off dorks in one way or another, especially black ones. Jadar will provide a lot of fuel for a lot of abilities. Low cost, high power, and high suitability all add up to a very desirable cube tool.