| Color Category | Adds | Removes |
|---|---|---|
White(Additions:3, Removals: 2) |
Hero of the Pride | Suture Priest |
Blue(Additions:4, Removals: 5) |
Shore Up | Cruel Witness |
Black(Additions:3, Removals: 3) |
Cut Down | Plagued Rusalka |
Red(Additions:2, Removals: 2) |
Thunderhead Gunner | Fireball |
Green(Additions:3, Removals: 3) |
Something Worth Saving | Trumpeting Herd |
Multicolored(Additions:6, Removals: 5) |
Charge the Sanctum | Quandrix Pledgemage |
Colorless(Additions:1, Removals: 2) |
Giant’s Boulder | Prophetic Prism |
There are 4 main themes on this update:
- Abandoning the strict slot based system
- A little heroic push
- More UB (in more than one sense) Ninjas
- A couple of cards from the Zeta Set
No more slots!
This update marks a change in how the list is maintained. In the past we’ve kept colors, gold cards, even hybrids in tight order. Starting with this update that will no longer be the case. What does this mean for the cube? Mostly nothing, the differences between different colors and even gold cards will be minimal, however this does mean that in some cases a card might be cut to make way for something in another color. We don’t anticipate becoming a highly color imbalanced cube, merely that we want to be able to make decisions that are the best for the cube rather than looking nice in a spreadsheet.
Heroic
We’re adding Tethmos High Priest
, Hero of the Pride
and Gnarlback Rhino
and several cards that help you target them. We wanted to give these colors (plus red, with the already included Tenth District Legionnaire
) another kind of build. Priest will let you grind a bit more, Hero supports the go wide theme if you picked up a mix of both styles of deck (Homestead Courage
becomes a higher pick!), and Rhino is just a good card if you manage to trigger it once. Imagine having some protection spells for it ready to fire (we’ve added a couple, including a “colorless” one in Apostle's Blessing
).
Ninjas
We’re adding a couple of “ninjas” for UB: Moonblade Shinobi
and Oroku Saki, Shredder Rising
, and a good support card in Harrier Strix
. Shore Up
is good protection for your ninjas (or a counterspell that triggers heroic?). We hope having a couple of extra cards for this style of deck will make drafting UB more interesting (and contested from the UB Control player).
Zeta Set
A big question/discussion for us this update was: should we include the downshifted power outliers from the Zeta Set? We decided that yes, we want people to test for themselves how good/oppressive can Baleful Strix
be. If it turns out it’s too frustrating to play against, we’re not opposed to cutting it. And speaking about cutting, Cut Down
is another downshift we’re adding, albeit a bit more innocent, just an efficient removal, great for any kind of black deck.
Other notes
Observant readers might notice that we’re moving towards trying to support small synergistic clusters/multiple ways to run the same color pairs. The hope is that as we move forward we’ll be less overly reliant on the traditional retail draft 2 color pairs and lean more into things like being able to play a midrange deck that has a heroic package in it. This is building off last update adding in a few typal payoffs that while not explicitly supported as a large archetype have their own little corner to explore and can create memorable decks for those who make it work. If you have suggestions for similar small subthemes you’d like to see, be sure to swing by the discord and share your thoughts.
Cards not mentioned before
The new iteration of the blue card draw spell. We like that you can discard it for value, and it being an instant.
This is just a decent combat trick with card draw, put it on a pinger (or Crypt Rats
!) for extra spice.
Adding another multiple-bodies-per-card option, like Rally at the Hornburg
these goblins come with haste (both of them, if you already have another Army of any type).
We’re giving red an extra top end option with this great body and very relevant ability that was overlooked when Aetherdrift released.
These two increase our support for self-mill in green, but both are very decent on their own even without synergies.
In a sense we’re swapping this card for both Candy Trail
and Prophetic Prism
, while adding a free colorless removal for decks that want to go long. Very versatile card.
GW has been doing great as the counters pair, so we’re giving this a whirl as a card that while not amazing at the base mode of “bear that gains 1”, the flexibility of figuring out when and where you want to make use of that counter is a nice upside.
Izzet loves casting spells, so giving them another spell that gets cast twice is a no brainer. Enjoy casting this off your impulse draw effects to draw 2 when you get to live that little dream
Ferocity is a fun riff on the Feign Death
style of effect we’ve been seeing a lot in recent years. We really like that this one both works as removal and also a way to rebuy your various etb effects all wrapped into one.
Charge is a fun little combat trick that either kills someone with a Trumpet Blast
or it lets you win one strategic combat and leave the creature just a little bigger.
Pauper cubes love their ETB effects and reusing them. Nurturer lets you do that while being a slightly above rate body,
Other non-cube updates
Cube Cobra has made us able to better import draft data from people! If you want to help the committee have a better idea of the real matches of magic that are playing out in the cube, you can now do just that! Start by cloning the cube if you haven’t already, then when you next draft make sure to collect deck lists as well as tracking who played who in each match and what the result was. When you’ve gotten all that data into Cube Cobra, let us know on the discord and we’ll work with you to import that data into the core copy so you can help us better understand how each and every card is performing.