Hour of Devastation Initial Review Part III

Sunset Pyramid 2

Cheap to play and use compared to most other cards of this ilk such as Jayamdae Tome. Sadly, for some reason these kinds of cards have always been grossly over priced. Every colour has value in some shape or form so there shouldn't be that much of a premium for this kind of effect on a colourless card. To draw 3 cards with this you have to pay 8 mana and wait at least three turns. It is nice that you can spread the mana cost out but still, this is a very mana inefficient card for the effect. The scry is nice but even worse on the good value front. The only chance this has in the cube is in concert with artifact synergies. This does at least qualify as a cheap artifact and will therefore support other things pretty well. Too narrow for an unpowered cube but OK filler in a powered one.


Oketra's Last Mercy 1

After Bontu's card I was hoping this was a cycle and I was then hoping Oketra's would be essentially a Swords to Plowshares with the lands not untapping bit. That would have been very interesting. Oketra's Last Mercy isn't. Lifegain and nothing else on a three mana sorcery. No thanks. While this is awful and shouldn't feature in any drafting cube it is not quite as bad as it looks. It has some strong sideboard potential against burn decks for example. If you gain over 10 life in that matchup you are fairly OK with skipping your next turns casting. This is like an inverse Final Fortune, you kind of skip your next turn to have potentially many more turns after that! Mostly this is bad because mostly this doesn't do anything to stop the things that are killing you. Sure, gain yourself 15 life, I'll just carry on hitting you for 8 a turn and we will see how good your life gain card is. I guess I didn't really need to go on much about this card, if a three mana Wrath with this drawback isn't good then a lifegain spell with the same cost and drawback is looking very sad.


Pride Sovereign 1

To my surprise there are actually a number of decent white and green cats in the cube. When this reliably comes down as a 3/3 or bigger it starts to get decent. This is why I haven't just written this off, you could play this in a tribal cat deck. Such a deck would just be a quirky version of some better Selesnya list but it would be fun and different at least! While this card is ultimately good value on its own it is just painfully slow. It is a Grey Ogre for a turn most of the time and that is very bad. Then it is a pair of 1/1 lifelink cats for the next two turns. Finally after three turns of very low value and tempo you actually have a decent card and board. Your Pride Sovereign is a 4/4 and able to become a 6/6 at instant speed making more dorks and likely block as well. It is not unlike a Grave Titan once it has been around for a while. The thing is you might as well just make some more expensive card that isn't a risky play instead. Just play that Angel of Invention, Cloudgoat Ranger or Deranged Hermit! They might not come down sooner but they will absolutely be relevant sooner.


Mirage Mirror 6

This has a lot of cool uses. You can copy a Grim Monolith and generate mana without any untap issues which is my personal favourite! I fully anticipate this being a rules nightmare in multiple ways. By the looks of it you can stack the effect and do it again on something else. You could copy and Arcanis and the Grim Monolith and then Arcanis again and tap to draw three and then pay four to untap it with the last Arcanis copy still on the stack and then draw another three. This is a silly example but I am sure there are some more practical uses for it. Initially I thought this was awful. I already hate Clone effects and rarely play them myself. This is a Clone that is expensive and has an ongoing use cost. That sounds like piling bad upon bad. Upon deeper consideration however the things I mostly hate about Clones do not overly apply to this little card. You can just dump this down without any targets. It is a rare example of a proactive Clone that doesn't rely on you keeping something in play or making two things at once or your opponent having a worthy target. Once in play this is kind of dangerous and awkward to play around. I can give a lot of my cards pseudo-haste should I have the two mana spare afterwards. Any dork with a good on attack trigger works very nicely with this be that a Titan or a Hanwier Garrison. You don't have to commit either, you can jsut copy whatever is useful there and copy something better later on when siad better thing is in play. Other Clones you have to wait or get low value.

Just having this in play will be a little like having a Vedalken Shackles. It will prevent opponents from laying certain cards or playing a certain way. It is almost like a Spellskite, just a total ballache to play into. There is no way your opponent is Show and Telling in Emrakul if you have this in play as you will get the first attack. This is likely true of most top end stuff, no one wants to get hit by a Titan. The Mirror has all sorts of nice subtle things going on as well. You can just use it to colour fix. Pay 2, copy a land and then tap for a mana, the Mirror is always a Prophetic Prism! It is also one of those annoying threats that evades a lot of sorcery speed removal like vehicles and man lands. This is cheap, it has synergies, it is proactive, it is disruptive, it is threat diversification, it is utility, it basically has too much going for it for it not to work out well in cube. A cool an interesting card that seems pretty playable in most cube archetypes. I certainly like this more than Phyrexian Metamorph. Mirror might not be quite as powerful (it also might be!) as the Metamorph but it is substantially broader and more playable.


Ramunap Hydra 0

As a 5/5 this is pretty good but it isn't even close to the levels of good it would need to be to make deserts playable yet. This is just a dork, a slow conventional dork. It is like a very bad Baneslayer Angel. As a mostly Hill Giant card this isn't close to playable.


Scavenger Grounds 2

Mostly this is another Bojuka Bog. It is more expensive to use by a long old way but it comes in untapped, it can exile things at instant speed and it can be laid and used as a land before you need to exile stuff. This is a pretty narrow sideboard tool but I do expect it to see some play. It might even sneak in main in some lists when there is a known meta. Lots of good sideboard options in this set so far it seems.


Neheb, the Eternal 4

If you have Karakas in your cube this isn't playable. That applies to any legends that cost like 3 or more and don't have an immediate effect. Assuming you don't have Karakas Neheb starts to look rather interesting indeed. Big cards that can offer an immediate mana return (Nissa Worldwaker, Garruk Wilderspeaker, Teferi Temporal Archmage) are a lot more playable than comparable cards of the same price range. It is why Hour of Reckoning seems pretty good while Bontu's Last Reckoning seems pretty awful. Neheb is a five mana 4/6 that has some pseudo evasion in that he will always deal 3 or 4 per attack. That isn't bad, it is quite durable and relatively effective but as a top end cube threat that is a long way from being enough. This is OK because the interesting/powerful thing about Neheb is his potential to generate loads of mana, and with the right cards or board this can be done the same turn as making him. If you cast Neheb pre-combat and manage to get in for even a couple of damage them Neheb is much more like a three mana investment and is wildly more powerful. You can do some pretty bonkers things as well. Neheb can pretty easily generate mana rather than jsut getting a discoutn, lay him, in for a whole bunch and then perhaps throw a Fireblast at your face. Pay five mana, get a big old body and the best part of ten mana back! Turning all my Lightning Bolts into Dark Rituals sounds like a nice option to have. Neheb also does 3 or 4 mana himself when attacking, great if you can give him haste and not the worst if you just have him on the go.

This does all sounds massively fun and potentially broken but it has some issues. Red is not a colour that often wants to go long. It tends to play less in the way of mana sink cards than most other colours. With less demand there are just less of those kinds of cards in most cubes and that means it will be a lot harder to get Neheb performing as well as he could. Every now and again you mill make Neheb and then get to max level your Figure of Destniy or Kargan Dragonlord on the same turn and it will be great. What I expect to happen more is that Neheb will sit in hand as your last card for a few turns waiting for your fifth land. He will then come down and have basically no follow up with any mana you might generate will him. The more top end and sinks you play to empower him the less chances you have of being able to get good returns on mana with him. Presently I don't think red is setup such that this is something you are able to get much value from. I think you can force red more into that potential with cube design if you are so inclined. I also think red will eventually have some good and viable midrange options where it is the main or even only colour. When that day finally arrives there is a good chance Neheb will be a big name in that archetype. I want this to be good now and will absolutely be trying it out in the cube but my expectations are not super high.


The Locus God 2

Nice card but is it better than Keranos, Niz-Mizzet, Consecrated Sphinx, Inferno Titan etc? And even if it is, is it any more playable? Big gold things have to be really really above the curve or utterly unique and this is neither. I have no room for either Keranos or the Dracogenius which doesn't look great for the Locust God. Worst case scenario this is a bad Ephemeron. Not awful but pretty weak in power and tempo. Best case scenario you have a Jace or Dack in play and get to generate a swarm of hasting locusts for no mana cost. In that situation The Locust God is pretty spicy. It is all about the ability to make tokens, the more you can make immediately the better this is. If you are relying on the 4 mana loot then the card is very weak. The recursion on death is nice but not great. Lots of things exile or counter and even if they don't, having to repeatedly pay 6 mana for a 4/4 isn't winning many games. Draw is a lot weaker if you are holding it back till after you make your top end threat. Planeswalkers are the best thing to work with this but if you start your turn with a walker in play you are already winning. As such this is a bit of a win more card. It has quite a lot going on but needs too much supporting for my liking. A six mana gold card needs to be bonkers right away all on its own and this misses the mark.


Solemnity 1

Another lame white hoser card that can only be played in sideboards. There is every chance that there is or will be some combo with this but that isn't likely going to translate well into cube. I'm not even sure this is quick enough against infect for modern use as a sideboard tool. Infect isn't a thing in cubes. It doesn't do enough to be something you would bring in against affinity (in any format) either. One to watch but a pretty limp card from a cube perspective.


Freying Sanity 4

This is a very high powered mill card. It is able to be so powerful as you need to support it before it is doing enough. If this is just milling them for one a turn when they cast a spell or use a sac land or eat a removal spell then this is a poor card. If however you lay this after a Mesmeric Orb or perhaps follow this up with a Glimpse the Unthinkable then it is going to be doing a lot of work. It is like a Furnace of Wrath for mill but a lot better as it is cheaper and gets some value out of them just doing stuff. This is both a mill tool and a way of empowering your other mill cards, it is like a mill lord! With this you should be able to reduce how many resources (cards and mana) you invest in winning and as such will be able to include more stuff to increase consistency and survivability. I think this will be oppressive in cube mill decks and it might even be powerful enough to enable some 60 card mill decks, likely standard but I wouldn't be shocked to see a modern mill deck one day. I don't like powerful mill cards, mill isn't a fun game to play and mill is substantially more powerful in cube than anywhere else. This is a good card but in only one place and that isn't a good place to have more good cards. Thankfully most people don't run mill stuff in their cubes so we won't have to see too much of this. If you run mill themes in your cube then run this too, if not don't. Simple at least.


Swarm Intelligence 0

Seven mana... Why even print this? Commander I guess but then stick it in those sets. Yeah, so either play affordable card draw or play a seven mana card that wins the game and don't play this. If you really must then play Twincast or Fork but don't do that either.

Hour of Devastation: Initial Review Part II

Adorned Pouncer 6

A two mana 1/1 doublestrike dork is a fine baseline. It is pretty comparable to an Elvish Archer at the low end performance and scales rather well with most of the white buff options. Almost all aggressive white decks make use of buffs and so this is a pretty good fit. White does already have rather a lot of one toughness dorks and those that cost two mana are somewhat risky against ping. This is why Fencing Ace never got any cube love. While the Pouncer lacks any human synergy the eternalize is worth far more. Eternalize works well in a vacuum and it covers not only the main weakness of this card but also the main weakness of white weenie decks. Adorned Pouncer is a great answer to mass removal and a nice way to cram in some "free" value and late game. A 3WW 4/4 doublestrike is pretty serious and surprisingly well costed. It is rare to have both ends of a card like this competitively cost. Take Firebolt as an example, the Shock end is reasonable but the 5 mana end is far far away from well costed. The one thing I don't like much about this card is how polar it is. If it eats an early Arc Trail you are going to be pretty far behind despite the eternalize however if it lives and you pair it with a good buff card it will be pretty unfair. Its average performance might be totally fine but that will be made up of some total flops and some total beatings. The most fun cards to play with are those that have a lower range on performance than this. Either way, this seems plenty good enough for cube. It is not wildly exciting but it fits the bill and packs enough of what you want.


Abrade 6

My gut reaction to this was huge disappointment as any burn spell that fails to go face is vastly less playable. Obviously if this went face it would be the best of the Searing Spear group of 2 for 3 burn cards by a decently large margin. Even if it just did 2 to any target it would be an incredibly versatile and playable card. As it is however it needs looking at in a very different light. This is not a burn spell but more of an Abrupt Decay or Disenchant. It is a fairly wide range cheap removal spell and in that capacity the card is actually pretty good in cube. In aggressive red decks it is not what you want to be playing but you still might have to. In anything more midrange or controlling there is a decent chance you would just want this over a Searing Spear. The aggressive red decks thrive on being able to turn their removal into reach but the more midrange and control strategies are far less inclined towards using burn as reach.

Versatility in huge in cube and having ways to interact with as much as possible is pretty big. You don't know what you are facing a lot of the time and so having broad answers and options is of more value than it is in constructed formats where you know the problem cards you need to deal with. Being able to have access to Shatter in your list without having to play a narrow or low power card is a big deal. It means you are not just cold to that Batterskull or something. Three damage for two mana is pretty decent, it kills most things and is a good tempo play. You don't lose that much in power by playing this at all. Back in the day you would run things like Manic Vandal and Torch Fiend main to give you some outs against artifacts. The issue is that cards like that are too weak and cost your deck a lot in terms of power level. Even when they hit you are not gaining that much and when they don't you have a tragically low powered card. Abrade solves this issue nicely but letting you have the options on artifact removal without having to risk a dead card or a low power card. Much as RDW lists won't want to play this over a Searing Spear I think they often times will. It is no fun being cold to a number of cards. It will not be that hard to predict when you might need a Shatter or not and as such the cost of having one burn spell that can't go face isn't huge. Most Boros aggro decks find room to squeeze in a hard removal spell such as a Path to Exile. Me feeling is that the mono red decks will do the same with this card. It isn't ideal but it is still more appropriate than any alternate options. Presently Fiery Confluence is getting a lot of play to increase the versatility and interactive capabilities of red decks. While the Confluence is very powerful and much more versatile than Abrade it being a four mana sorcery rather cancels that out. You want your spot removal answer cards to be cheap and instant. Abrade is, Confluence isn't. Another thing I like about Abrade is that is broadens what red does or can offer. It makes it a more appealing pairing for other colours and that is just healthy for a format. One final note on Abrade, it will be much better in creature heavy decks than creature light ones. The more dorks you have the more you will want burn to target creatures. Even when facing planeswalkers, when you have your own dorks, you want to burn away theirs and attack their walkers rather than just aiming the burn at the walkers.


Ramunap Excavator  5.5

It's a walking Crucible of Worlds! This is sadly a bit too good with Strip Mine to not get played in most peoples cubes. Having banned out Strip Mine along with the rest of the "power" in my cube I don't think this is enough to cut it. This just seems like a pretty bad Courser of Kruphix when you are not abusing it with Strip Mine and Fastbond style bombs. If you are just playing this with fair cards and sac lands it really isn't all that. A 2/3 for 3 is weaksauce. You have to have land in your bin to gain value and that is all that is. With Courser you are preventing upcoming draws from being land and so effectively drawing into more gas, all be it slowly. The Excavator has little baring on your draws and just means you will have loads more lands. Getting value via lands is not hard in green at all, there are far more powerful cards like Life from the Loam than the Excavator. When you want the effect the body will just be a drawback and make it easier to disrupt. It will always just be the 2nd Crucible in those cases and they are likely the best reasons to be playing this guy. When you are playing this as an "all rounder" Courser style midrange card it under performs both in tempo and in value. I think this card is much narrower than it might seem and will generally perform poorly. It won't be at all fun when it performs well either. This does have a place but I don't think this is going to bring more enjoyment to the cube world overall. So, in a powered cube this is pretty tedious but pretty good however in my cube it shouldn't quite cut it when competing with Courser and Tireless Tracker.


Wildfire Eternal 0

Well this is just bad. It might look like it has some game but it really doesn't at all. This gives too much control to your opponent, has too little impact right away and isn't actually very good when it is working as you want it to. This is a four mana 1/4!!! That is all you get when you tap out turn four to make this. It has awful board presence and has none of the tempo impact you want from such a weighty card. You have to get to attack with this before you can get any value and that is pretty bad on top of being a four mana 1/4. What makes it even worse is that just attacking isn't enough. Your opponent has to make a poor call on how to do combat. Either they overrate the affect and needlessly take 4 or they let it through and you have to have something relevant to do with the effect. There are pitifully few heavy instants or sorceries that you would really pair with a card like this. A deck with loads of them would be bad. Best case you will hit a good spell that is like 4 or more CMC and then a couple of fine one or two mana spells. A lot of the time you will lead with a free Shock. Imagine that, paying four mana for a terrible dork that then deals them one damage and generates one mana. Embarassing. Imagine doing even worse the turn after with no free Shock. Best case scenario this card isn't even very impressive and it has a much more likely and very very poor worst case outcome!


Jace's Defeat 2

Gainsay gets play and so this should replace it. You see a lot of Gainsay in sideboards but that is it. You can't run sideboard cards in a drafting cube, there isn't the room for things that narrow. If you only draft your cube you will never need this. If you like to do rotisserie events and such this is a good pickup that does a job well.


Liliana's Defeat 2.5

This is a very good sideboard card against black. It has a decent chance of hitting a Liliana for one thing! Beyond that it is just very efficient removal that does exactly what a lot of black removal struggles to do! This is a very clean sideboard exchange for a Doom Blade for example. A half price mono coloured Dreadbore with a dash of the Searing Blaze about it. This is the closest thing to an Elemental Blast we have seen in a very long time. One issue with this is that if you are black there are less black opponents and as such you are using a valuable SB slot for not use. The better black gets the better this will get. Presently I can't think of a meta where this would be of enough value to use a SB slot on but that could well change and when it does this will be a great pickup for some sideboards.


Nissa's Defeat 0

To narrow a range of targets and also too slow. The removal options don't even synergize well together on the card.


Gideon's Defeat 0

This just isn't good enough compared to other white removal options. Again, obviously only a SB tool and if you are using a slot on a narrow removal spell you want it to be busted and not decidedly average by cube standards.


Deserts of the (God's aspects) 2

While I can't complain at more cycling lands these are just the worst of the four cycles (Urza's, Odyssey, Amonkhet and these). They all come into play tapped and these have the most onerous cycling cost of the lot. I can't see desert synergy breaking through into cube so that should rarely be relevant. These are great cards but they are somewhat superfluous to requirement for cube. Perhaps some fringe play for the cycling themed decks in just one or two colours...



Grind // Dust 3

I rather like this but I fear it is too narrow being somewhat of a gold card. If Grind performs sufficiently well that you are happy running this as just a black spell then it has good prospects in cube. If however you need both black and white mana in your deck for this card to cut it then it isn't going to last in cube. Grind does have some very nice Arc Trail aspects to it but sadly my gut says this card is too restricted to be the removal spell you want. It is bad if they only have one guy, especially if it has more than one toughness! It is pretty good when they have two even if you only kill off one of them. Chances are as an early play you will have neutered their other card with the counter. If it were instant and allowed you to dump both counters on the same thing then Grind would be a very potent removal spell. With such small things making such a big difference to the cheap cards I don't see Grind getting enough value on average to stand alone. Nice card design but just too narrow and too fair.


Hour of Revelation 7

This I like a lot. Planar Cleansing has a lot of merit in cubes. It is one of the best mass removal spells at actually dealing with the threats as it handles planeswalkers. This is directly better than Cleansing. It does exactly the same thing except sometimes it is half the price. While 10 or more non-land things in play sounds like a lot, well, it is a lot, it is not all that uncommon in cube. Lots of decks swarm and make a load of stuff. Loads of things churn out tokens. Loads of cards are like half of the 10 by themselves (Myr Battlesphere, Grave Titan, Elspeth, Sun's Champion etc). Investigating, three mana walkers that make tokens, all sorts of things are seeming to up the number of things in play.If you can clear the board for three mana then that is huge. Normally clears take your turn. This is easy to play and ensure you remain safe afterwards when you get the discount. I can totally see plays where people are extending themselves just to get the discount on this. Perhaps they need the effect before they will get to six mana or perhaps they really need to be able to do two things in one turn to survive and as such it is worth throwing a few of your own things away for free. Great design. This is a fair card but a potentially very powerful one as well. It also does this without being narrow or requiring loads of support as is the case with something like Terminus. It also doesn't stand to be over powered in specific cases which again is testament to good design. This is the kind of thing that will really help boost Azorius control strategies. This will be a three mana Wrath far more often than Bontu's Last Reckoning will be! That said it is super unlikely you play a turn three Hour of Reckoning in an unpowered cube, both of you need to go nuts on making things. The strength of this is not so much as an early mass removal card but one that enables you to do more at the same time. Using it turn five with counter backup for example. One of the issues with Planar Cleansing is that it offers no direction. There are no good permanents to play with it specifically other than lands which you will be doing anyway. If you are playing a Wrath heavy deck then loading up on non-creature permanents is fine. With Hour of Revelation only things like Aetherling work with it. As such it supports the more old school draw go style of control far better than it supports a more current tap out control style although it will be played in both I expect. Mystic Gate will get more valuable as a result of this too! If you want to cast this, Cryptic Command and Counterspell you better have a lovely mana base.



The Scorpion God 4

Clearly this is a powerful card. You could stick it in a cube and it would do pretty well and not seem at all out of place. The issue with this is not so much its power level but if you can justify giving it a cube slot amid so many other insane 5+ mana cards and gold bombs. This has to be better than so much to get into a cube and that doesn't just mean more powerful, it also means more playable and more suitable. The Scorpion God is not a card that jumps out and says put me in this archetype where I am a perfect fit. He is just a high power midrange dork. In colours that are not desperate for that kind of midrange card and have so many options on such things this is going to see infrequent play. This isn't just competing with Olivia Voldaren (which is the most direct comparison) but also cards like Pia and Kiran Nalaar, Sarkhan the Dragonspeaker, even Kalitas.

I am pretty sure this will just ultimately be a card that is too easy to cut from cubes and won't really be a feature in any once we have all gotten over the initial excitement of a new card! Despite this I still feel compelled somehow to break this down... There are four aspects to this card. The first is that it is just a big dork meaning it is a late game threat. The body isn't at all exciting but it is big and not overcost either. It will do some work in combat and that is always nice. Next up it is a recursive dork that only really dies to exile effects. This makes it a better threat and goes a long way to improving a vanilla 6/5 as it is that much more expendable in combat. It adds a level of awkward to the card that will make it a problem card against a number of archetypes. A Golgari midrange deck for example will struggle to exile this and it will struggle to get far enough ahead before five mana hits that it can largely ignore it. Its dorks wont even match up very well against it. Against an Azorius control deck however this is easy to exile, tap down, counter and bounce all day and should pose very little threat.

The final two abilities are somewhat linked. You have the 1BR to place -1/-1 counters on things which is super slow and mana intense. In the slow grindy games this will be very good but against anything tempo driven this will just be too slow to offer much in the way of recovery potential. If you are looking for cards that can swing the game back in your favour then Inferno Titan or Pia and Kiran Nalaar, even a Skinrender are going to be far superior choices. Olivia Voldaren is a far better tool to control the board with outside of combat being that much cheaper and more versatile. Lastly the card draw element with the death of dorks with -1/-1 counters on this is a nice perk but it doesn't really help the card out in the ways in which it is weak. The recursion effect is already a form of value, as it the ability to shrink and kill dorks. Drawing extra cards is always nice but it isn't what this card lacks at all. Yes, it has synergy with the activated ability making it more likely you will get to draw some extra stuff and yes, it absolutely doesn't detract from the card. My point is more that it is quiet a good ability and as such comes at some cost to the card. I would much much rather this thing was a mana cheaper or had an effect that would make it more rounded such as coming into play with some token dorks or something instead of the card draw. It would make it vastly better. This is still a good card with a lot going on. It will absolutely win a lot of games but I still don't see this becoming any sort of cube mainstay.


Supreme Will 4

A supreme disappointment, god knows why power creep is so polar. Three mana Lightning Bolt and Mana Leak.... Mana Leak isn't even that good! Mostly this is a let down because I want it to be good. The card is still quite playable in cube but it could have been Cryptic Command levels of juicy had it cost UU instead. This is a lovely effect and I just wish it was more cube worthy that it is. Modal cards are great. Modal countermagic is really great and Impulse is another great thing. At three mana this card is a bit of an Izzet Charm, all the effects are good and complement each other well but they are all overpriced by a mana and as such you will never feel like you are pulling ahead that much with this thing. While this is a perfect filler card I fear the three mana price tag will just mean people will elect to play more powerful cards or cheaper cards instead. I can't see myself ever playing this over a Mana Leak or an Impulse for example. It is more of a Think Twice level of card. It offers flexibility in utility rather than in cost but power wise they are similar I would say. Although blue doesn't have any obvious comparisons in the three mana slot, something like a Dromar's Charm likely comes closest to it. This I think is a the crux of the issue. There are no cards like Supreme Will in the three slot because you can get some really serious power out of a three mana card meaning that fair filler doesn't get a look in. I'm sure this will work wonders in standard and while playable in cube we would be kidding ourselves if we were to think it was actually good.


Dreamstealer 0

Cute design but not enough to make it into cube. A three mana 1/2, even with menace and discard value on connecting with face, is just super awful. At the front end of things a Hypnotic Specter is better than this is basically all ways. Better body, better evasion, better disruption! While I like eternalize it is not really what you want on this thing at that cost. A six mana 4/4, even if you can play it from the bin and even with these extra abilities, is just not a game changing play for the cost. The eternalize would be a nice bit of late game value and gas if the front end was at all good. As it isn't the eternalize aspect has to be significantly above the curve, which it isn't.

Hour of Devastation Initial Review Part 1

Bontu's Last Reckoning 5.5

As eye opening as a three mana Wrath is this card seems pretty bad. You have to really need hard and early mass removal to consider this. A simple Infest style card usually does enough if you are desperate for those earlier clears. Or if you are going to be needing harder clears you can just wait a turn for your Damnation and not ruin your own options. The drawback on this thing is huge. It is broadly worse than having echo. It is super rare you will incur less than a three mana lockdown the next turn and often you will find it hurts you more than that. In a list powered mainly off artifact mana this looks a whole lot better but that is a pretty narrow use. For control and midrange decks this will hurt to play. A lot. I think it will still get play, usually out of desperation. What with black having relatively few good Wraths this will be a little in higher demand.

I see this rather like the Pact cycle. Pretty powerful in the niche cases where you can largely mitigate the drawback however pretty significantly below par in the more usual decks. A Wrath is rarely a card you are incorporating into a win there and then and that is where the Pacts shone most. The most likely way that happens is when you have an Abyssal Persecutor in play and they are on less than 1 life! I see Bontu's Last Reckoning as having far less ability to sidestep the drawback than the Pacts and so the play it will get will be that desperation kind. Sometimes, as mentioned this will be due to lack of other mass removal options however I think more often it will be to hedge against bad matchups. A lot of aggressive decks will be able to output critical damage prior to a four mana mass removal spell, especially on the play. A valid strategy for aggressive decks against mass removal can still be to wildly over extend if they are going to do enough work with that initial surge. Sure, a Damnation might 4 for 1 them but if they are on 4 life that is not often a problem. A three mana Wrath, even one that prevents you doing anything on your following turn is much more likely to rescue a game against such a plan. You skipped turn will matter that much less as they will be that much more out of gas and applying so much less pressure. This is even more the case against cheat in decks who think they can outpace a four mana Wrath and will put something like an Emrakul into play while you only have one turn at three mana to deal with. As such this feels like much more of a sideboard tool but none the less one you still want in cube. Having to consider the possibility of three mana wraths will make the game more interesting even if the three mana Wrath isn't being played.

Obviously Toxic Deluge is already a reliable stand alone three mana Wrath but against 15/15 dorks or hyper aggression the life cost can be even more dangerous than locking down your lands! Deluge is wildly better than Last Reckoning but it being such a known thing makes it more on people's radar. With both Deluge and Bontu's in black it will just be that much more likely that a black player can wipe the board with just three mana! You cannot easily play around both even if you were able to play around one to some extent. Much as I don't think this is a good cube card I think it is a necessary one in a number of places. At the very least it will add something to the decision making process of early all in plays.

The cube has lots of cheap cards you can't play early. Mechanic like delve and suspend achieve this end as do some card specific things like Sera Avenger. Some cards generate mana or untap and act like they cost less, Frantic Search it typically a zero mana spell you can't play prior to three mana. Garruk Wildspeaker is often a two mana spell that you needed four to get out etc. Only echo and the Pact cycle really explore the opposite idea - expensive spells you can play early. Last Reckoning joins these few cards and may well yet surprise. With so few examples of similar mechanics, especially good rounded playable ones, it is very hard to draw comparisons from "known" quantities. While this card seems really bad there is some chance that a turn three Wrath is so powerful that it is ultimately worth the extra 50% total mana cost over Damnation. I hope to see at least a cycle of this new mechanic  as I think it is incredibly interesting and should throw up some unexpected results. Just the idea of a Lightning Bolt, Swords to Plowshares or Counterspell level card with this drawback is exciting, fascinating and somewhat plausible!


Samut, the Tested 3

This name. I dunno if it is just me but it really sounds like she went down the clinic expecting to be riddled but came back clean and is now raring to go! Hopefully the awkward name won't matter much as this doesn't seem very playable. When Samut is good she will be very good. Going to five loyalty and Assault Strobing a three or more powered dork is going to be a massive tempo swing and threat doubly whammy. When you get to take out two things with the Forked Bolt mode and be left with a decent planeswalker you a laughing too. The issue is that both of these things are pretty situational. Samut has no good default abilities. She can be pretty blank in most cases. As a source of ongoing face damage with the -2 she is laughable. Only having a relevant + loyalty ability when you not only have a decent dork but are in a position to be aggressive with that dork as well is a problem. Samut's defensive capabilities are really poor. By turn four a mere Forked Bolt isn't holding off that much and the doublestrike can't even be used to block. A 3/3 on their side of the board is enough to make Samut a much weaker play. Samut is a massive win more card. She is gold and simply outclassed by a lot of alternatives. There isn't room for things like this in the cube. While very much not the worst planeswalker you only really want planeswalkers that do specific things you require, that are always offering some useful things, or are simply very high power level. Samut is none of these three things, she is fine but not what you want. She might not even be in the top three red green planeswalkers....



Nicol Bolas, God-Pharaoh 3


The third most expensive planewalker of all time (if we are taking colour difficulty into account at least, and still top five if not!). Obviously this is very very powerful but that doesn't make it good or, more importantly, playable in the cube. Not only does this need to do something you really want it to it also has to be better than the alternatives to get much of a look in. A three colour seven drop that you are aiming to hard cast is not something you are going to see a lot of. It will be in very few lists and hit play far less than that! Being such a rare thing to get action just by virtue of its cost it pretty much needs to say win the game to be of interest. Like Samut, this is a fine card, it might even be a good card however in the cube this is very aimless indeed. It will just take up space and lead to less consistent drafts. This has last pick written all over it just because no one will be in a position to play it.

The first real blow for this thing is that if you can play it you might as well just play the original Nicol Bolas Planeswalker. Despite having one ability less the original offering is a much better game closer and problem solver card. It has more immediate and relevant impact on the game and generally does read "win the game". God-Pharaoh on the other hand seems like a slow and awkward tool to do what you need to do. The +2 is powerful but utterly unreliable and slow. On average you are getting a low power thing that won't help solve your larger problems. Don't get me wrong, a 2 or 3 free mana, a free card and 2 loyalty is good but it is a slow value tool which is not why you play seven drops in cube. The +1 is great too, it will destroy slow decks. Unfortunately when you are playing seven mana planeswalkers you are the slowest deck. It doesn't win you the game, it just shuts down your opponent somewhat if for some reason they still held action... The ultimate would be great if you could use it without having to do at least 3 turns worth of plus loyalty effects. Again it is slow and again it doesn't win the game. It isn't a good problem solver even though it should be just because it is so slow and unreliable to get there. Lastly the -4, it is good, it has a bit of reach and some control over the board. It is what you want to be doing with a card like this but it is too pricey. You can't do it back to back, you leave your Bolas on 3 loyalty if you do it right away. If this were a -3 cost then this would be a whole lot more interesting, it would have enough threat level to merit its cost. Very powerful but not what you need in cubes.

Laboratory Maniac Deck

I am a big fan of the pure decks from a design point of view as you can use some maths to aid your build. Burn decks and rush mill decks are examples of these kinds of pure decks that do only one linear thing. As such they can be reduced to mill or burn per card and mill or burn per mana. With that knowledge you can know which your best cards are and you can tweak the ratios of the filler cards to give you a consistent and optimal clock. This is a rather silly deck and not quite as pure as the burn or mill decks but it should be all sorts of fun to design and play with.

The idea is simply to win through drawing cards. Although you rely on getting your Laboratory Maniac into play before you deck yourself the fact that you plan to draw through your deck means you don't need to bother assembling your combo, it will just appear. What it does mean sadly is that you have to include a card that has a 3 mana price tag and draws no cards which hurts your overall possible draw per mana and per card. This deck will be a lot slower than the mill or burn options but it does have some perks as well.

With this list we are aiming for a turn seven kill. That will mean we need to draw through up to 28 cards with a total of 28 mana. We are assuming we start with seven cards in hand, this deck really shouldn't mulligan! As such by turn seven we will have 26 or 27 cards in our library if we had done nothing. That means we will need to draw through 27 or 28 cards so as to actually trigger the Lab Maniac. You could look to do this with just things that cycle for one if you wanted but that would mean you were getting nothing else done. Cycle for one cards are nice to consider as they are a simple 1:1 ratio of draw to mana cost. It would also fail to take into account the card and mana cost of the Lab Maniac. The card cost isn't huge, even with laying seven lands and being on the play you will have five spare cards so to speak as everything else replaced itself. As such we already have a way to improve the deck. We have up to five slots where we can allow a card to not replace itself if we are able to improve on the cards per mana or cards per card. A nice simple example of this is to put in a Careful Study. It is twice as good as a one mana cycle card if you can afford the card disadvantage.

We mostly want cheap cards, ideally loads and loads of one drops so that we can reliably spend out mana every turn. That being said we are planning to go to seven lands meaning we are able to pack a few expensive cards if we want. A Fact or Fiction clears five cards for four mana and is therefor slightly more effective than one mana cyclers at depleting your library. It also should get you at least two cards which in turn will allow you to include more things like Careful Study.

If we just play draw effects plus our Lab Maniac we are going to be cold to so many things stopping our combo not to mentioned out raced by anything at all quick. We are going to have to use some of our deck to help us stay alive and to protect the Lab Maniac itself. This will take away form the purity of the deck a little but ultimately won't stop this exercise being useful. We still need the right averages so we can still tailor the best balance using some math regardless of whether or not we are playing a Force of Will. Testing might reveal we need more or less protection/disruption but the maths will always be there to tell us how to balance the list around what else we want.

I have kept this list mono blue for purity and simplicity sake however I am pretty sure that the inclusion of Demonic Consultation is a must if you are seriously considering playing a deck like this in any sort of cube setting. You can pull off a turn two win with a Mox, a Gitaxian Probe and a very lucky Consultation. With something like an Impulse or scry you could look to setup the Consultation to one-shot your library too.


13 Lands

4 Ux Sac
9 Islands

27 Spells

Gitaxian Probe

Careful Study
Mental Note
Thoughtscour
Erasure

Ponder
Serum Visions
Brainstorm
Portent

Visions of Beyond
Conjurer's Bauble
Preordain
Slight of Hand

Strategic Planning
Compelling Argument
Remand
Arcane Denial

Jace, Vryn's Prodigy
Spellskite
Foresight

Frantic Search
Laboratory Maniac

Cryptic Command

Time Warp
Temporal Manipulation
Force of Will

Treasure Cruise



This is my first draft for the list however there are many many more potential options to refine and tweak it with. Overall this list has an average CMC of just below one (assuming the cheapest modes on the top end) which is about 1.3 average CMC per spell. That means you have the mana for 21 spells on average by turn seven. This means you need 26/21 (roughly 1.25) draw/mill per cards on average to be able to deplete your library in that time. Sadly for this list to get to 1.25 draw/mill per card on average you have to assume the top end performance from most cards. The reality is more likely to prohibit some of the most potent effects from being safe plays. You can certainly add some more draw to the list but it will not be high draw per mana as the best of those are in. There is a little more wiggle room in the cost than there is in the draw aspect of the build at least. Putting in more draw would also mean losing a number of the safety cards like Force of Will and Spellskite which would drastically reduce your ability to win.

Due to how this deck works and the cards in it you have to make more some assumptions as to how cards are working and what they are doing. With pure decks you can do math on I am always as conservative as possible with the stats so as to over engineer the deck so to speak. Overshooting your targets is good as it means the deck will perform better! In this deck I am willing however to forgo some of my conservative aims and let certain aspects of the stats slip below the requires par. This is due to how a lot of the cards work for you. The card quality stuff greatly helps ensure you sift through your list only having to play the very best cards to get the job done while getting few bad draws. This means you can expect the performance to be better than the average. Also cards like Time Warp can generate you a chunk of free mana. Unless they are countered you are getting at worst a zero mana cycle. Any other lands or ongoing effects will scale very well with these otherwise top rate cards in the list.Considering them, as with the Frantic Search, to be zero mana cards is a little bit imperfect as countermagic will upset that but it isn't an unreasonable fudge.


Lastly we will take a quick look at the expenditure rate of cards. We start with seven and use one a turn in land drops meaning we will be out of gas by turn seven if all our non-lands just cycle. Worse than that however we have a number of cards in the list that don't even cycle such as the Spellskite and the Lab Manic himself. We will need to offset the loss of these cards with things that generate them so that we are not always out of gas after turn seven. Visions of Beyond and Treasure Cruise help massively in this regard even though they don't work early or with each other that well. There are incredibly few cheap two for one or better draw effects. If you cannot get enough draw without cutting card disadvantage effects like the Careful Study then you will have to play more top heavy things like Fact or Fiction and look to cut other clumsy top end things, perhaps the oh so good Time Warps.

Self Mill is a mixed blessing in this list. While it is incredibly potent in depleting your library for the cost it is not a safe way to play unless you know where you Maniac is. You do have the Bauble as a way to get the Maniac back if he finds himself in the graveyard but it is more a solution to hand disruption than your own self mill. The more safety effects like the Bauble you have the more reckless you can be with self mill. The cheap ones cycle and mill so little you can often set them up to be safe with Ponder and the like. Compelling Argument is a new gem for this deck that lets you do whatever you need at the time, it is the best flex card for the list. For just two mana it can lop 5 off your deck or it can cycle for a nice cheap one mana. When you have some gas and the Maniac in a known place you can go ham, if not you can play safe.

Cantrip countermagic is great. It lets you safely buy time against all kinds of threats while still working towards your own goals and not costing you cards. The deck is very light on ways to live and so you really want to get good value out of them. Censor may be a worthy addition being either a counter or a cantrip. Spellskite, on of your few other interactive cards, doubles up as a wall to calm early aggression in addition to protecting the Maniac when his time comes. The only other defensive tool you have is the Jace. He helps with your aim should he get to loot and will offer more draw and some protection should he flip. While one of the more cuttable cards he is easily one of the most powerful too. I would love to fit in some better kind of disruption. With both Time Warps you can look to play Cyclonic Rift or Crush of Tentacles as you should reach the required level of mana in time. While both fantastic survival tools both really hurt the deck for being expensive and not progressing the game plan.

This list should perform a lot better than it looks like it should! It will have plenty of very good matchups and isn't totally cold to anything. It is a pure race deck that is slower than a creature zerg deck, a burn deck or a rush mill deck. While it may be the slowest of the options for linear and uninteractive game plans it has one big thing going for it. Drawing cards is a good thing to do before it is a win condition! For one, it means you can fit in some disruption without hurting youself and thus offset your speed issues. You will have a lot more control over the flow of the game with all your selection. You will see your whole deck and quickly meaning that despite having relatively few tools to slow your opponents or force through your combo it doesn't matter as you will typically have access to all of them by turn seven. This deck is a combo engine deck but it is also still very like a burn deck or a pure mill deck. It should be a lot of fun to draw your way to the win and should entail a lot of play skill, especially compared to a burn deck!

Podcast - (Amonkhet Review All the rest)

https://drive.google.com/open?id=0BynbVRCUs2vMeGYxQ3dXMFF4NnM

Podcast - (Amonkhet Review Red & Black)

https://drive.google.com/open?id=0BynbVRCUs2vMSS1mOHpGeS1nTFU

Card Spotlight: Lava Dart

Lava Dart feels like it has been around in magic forever now. Burn over the years is something that has remained more consistent in power level than other types of cards. Dorks have consistently gotten better, counterspells have gotten worse etc etc but burn has just had some mild ups and downs over the years. Lava Dart is a fairly middle-aged burn spell, it is no longer new and exciting, it is no longer relevant in many formats, it is not even that standout in power level. When there was less burn options on offer this was in my cube, then more rounded burn was printed and Lava Dart became a fringe card. With the high number of new additions to the cube since Tarkir/MtG Origins my cube has rather grown and to retain the right balance of effects and CMC a lot of the fringe but core stlyle of cards returned to the mainstream. Pretty much any half decent one mana burn, mana dork, card quality spell or targetted discard spell are in. That includes Lava Dart. While Lava Dart was a fringe card they printed a swathe of prowess cards. Lava Dart obviously has good interactions with the prowess style effects however so do many other cards. It wasn't an exciting go to card to mess about with in the same way something like a Gush might be, Obviously Dart has always worked well in the prowess style decks but it is a subtle tool that takes a while to fully appreciate how much work it is doing and quite how good it is.

What makes Lava Dart so good is its versatility without having to compromise on actual power. Assuming you have some mountains the Dart is all the best bits of Shock and Forked Bolt in one card. Lava Dart isn't just an instant speed Forked Bolt though, it is two spells in one, it is a free spell, it is something you can discard for value, it can kill something now and something else much later. The only cost of playing a Lava Dart is that in the early game it is pretty harmful to use this for the full two damage. If you need a Shock and just have this it is a problem and that is the worst case scenario for this card. On the flip side, if you only need to ping something for one and your only burn is a Shock then you will waste one damage. Lava Dart is an amazing tool to ensure you are efficient in your ability to allocate burn to things. Lava Dart is incredibly good at turning things that would two for one you into things that only 1.5 for one you! That might not sound great but it really is. Lava Dart is just so on theme for what most red decks are doing. Lava Dart is very cheap and so even when you are using it and another spell to solve a problem it is likely gaining you back tempo. Red is also very much about getting maximum value from its things. Red is highly redundant and typically likes to win using small bits of damage. When you have a card that offers two damage for one mana that is OK but when it frequently adds a couple of effective damage to a couple of other cards it is pretty huge.

The nature of red also ensures the Dart is always getting you its full 2 damage value even if you don't get to usefully take things out with it. As with any split damage card the best case scenario is killing two things as it is the highest tempo, not to mention card advantage in the non-Dart cases. They may well play around your Dart's flashback and as such it will just sit in the bin. That is fine though as they will be on one less life as a result. You only have to get them to one as the Dart can do the rest! In the case of something like Arc Trail either you get the two for one on the spot or you do a bit of face damage. If you do the face damage then you lose the option on taking out another thing with it and the card will not ever reach its maximum potential. Dart always represents the ability to take out two things and defers the decision to go face until later when you will be better placed to use it accordingly. This is a long winded way of saying that even though this has an awkward early condition to reach Shock/Forked Bolt power levels you don't ultimately forgo that power, you just save it and as such are generally able to use it more effectively.

These upsides are nice but is that worth the risk of not being able to sensibly kill anything with two power in the early game? That entirely depends on your deck. The more traditional red you are the better this seems to get. With no synergy and little other burn you are probably best off with a Shock or Forked Bolt instead. When you have a lot of redundancy in burn the risk of not having the right one is diminished and the benefits of being more efficient with your damage increase. Burn seems to be the main thing this wants to be paired with however there is plenty more in the way of strong synergies you can add in for your dart. Discard effects empower this greatly. The flashback is arguably the better half of the card in high synergy decks and so having this in the bin from earlyish on can be a real issue to play around. When you have prowess dorks a zero mana instant is a pretty big deal and gives you a massive combat and tempo edge. They will usually have to play around your ability to use the Dart and so you will get some free value without even having to.

Lava Dart is the cheapest and most contained two in one spells in the game. For one mana and one card you get to play two things. That is +2/+2 to all prowess dorks for one mana and a free Chandra's Pyrohelix! Imagine the horror of blocking my Swiftspear on your Courser of Kruphix, my Stormchaser Mage with a Smugglers Copter with me on just one mana with a Young Pyromancer in play made precombat. You expect a trick from that line of play and so you expect to be putting one guy in the bin to my spell and killing none of mine due to the trigger. That is still fine, you got a 1 for 1. You have a mana elf back and should be able to get plenty of value from the Copter or the Courser, whichever survives and should be in a good position to race given you are taking no combat damage. Sadly you didn't consider the Lava Dart and I completely clear your board for one mana and make a pair of 1/1 tokens as well. Despite it only being turn three I probably won't need that mountain to win from that position!

I have blown people out really hard with this before as a hidden free spell too. I tap out into a combat where I have an active Jace, Vryn's Prodigy and some prowess dorks. They block as if I am done making spells and then I loot away my Dart and flash it back and devastate the combat. Lava Dart even combats mill strategies as it is an extra free damage when you don't draw it!

Lava Dart is a nominally high powered burn spell with a much greater potential to scale with appropriate synergy cards than most others. It does have a drawback but it is fairly easily mitigated. When you start with already a good card (instant speed Forked Bolt with delay options) yet are able to scale that card up much more effectively you can end with a truly unreasonable power level in your card. Lightning Bolt is obviously the best all round Burn spell on average by quite a long margin. A lot of burn spells never out perform it. Of those that do Lava Dart is one of the more frequent to do so and the one that does so by some of the biggest margins. Lava Dart is a pretty simple and direct spell yet it offers far more options that those like it and lets you do more to outplay people as well. With ever more discard and prowess cards making it into the cube and with mountains not going away any time soon I expect the Dart to continue improving within the cube and it is in a pretty good place already!