Dom's Rave Yard

[Dom Harvey]

Time to grow up and actually get my main Cube list in a tangible form. What better way than to reinvent it from scratch in public?



I'll be working on the template here and talking through it in this thread. For similar Cubes I've been drawing a lot of ideas from:
- Returning the love to Nanonox and their Cube
- Erik Twice and inscho
- Julien Henry's Compost Cube (I've CubeCobra drafted it an obsessive-ish amount, it's nice!)

For broader context you can check my general thread here (and the OP quoted) but I want this to be a ~complete summary + intro to it. Here's the brief:

Size: In flux but I expect 450+ to be right/required for everything I want

Power level: Mid-high; think Vintage Cube minus the P9/fast mana/top-shelf Commander cards (Minsc & Boo etc)

Fixing: A high quality and quantity of fixing: double fetches + triple typed duals (shocks + OG duals + surveils) + misc XY lands as well as various 5c lands (some generic, some themed), mana rocks/dorks, green ramp, Treasures etc

Complexity: High; this is aimed at experienced and adventurous drafters (with some safer fallbacks for a less hungry crowd). Literal complexity is tolerated to a point; gameplay complexity is encouraged.

Philosophy: The heart of this Cube is Good Cards that are good at their jobs - and you'll build a synergistic engine that makes them more than the sum of their parts. You can put together normal UR Control with some neat flourishes or you can build combo-control UR that looks and feels unique

You'll find a lot of Magic's most iconic staples (Counterspell and STP) and unique build-arounds (Sneak Attack or Greater Good) as well as cards that mean a lot to me personally (if you see something that looks weak or odd, I probably find it cool as hell or miss casting it). I want each card to mean something - even among the bread-and-butter effects, you'll find the classics you never tire of casting alongside the weird ones you want to try and the themed ones that are ideal for your deck. You can pair Lightning Bolt with Galvanic Blast and enjoy a Blast from the Past.

The guardrails are mostly vibes-based. You won't die on T2 to Channel + Emrakul but there is a lot of degenerate nonsense as well as play patterns (mass LD and hard locks) that would make the Commander crowd burn you in effigy. I'm fine with UB stuff that fits in high fantasy and my paper list has a sprinkling of exotic Alchemy stuff.

There is a lot of card filtering and mana sinks abound; most cards have at least some use at most stages of the game. I want games to feel contested and complicated but satisfying.

Themes: There are loosely defined archetypes for colour pairs etc but the important themes are felt throughout the entire Cube. There is a lot of bullshit coming from the titular graveyard and other themes/ideas converge there; every colour wants to reanimate something but red is Welding while green is churning through lands and white is shuffling its pawns around or summoning its enchantments. Every card type matters in this Cube but they all matter there and all the classic archetypes have that inflection - your UR Spellslinger deck is rebuying its best spells or doubling down on triggers with escape, flashback, et al; your RG Madness deck uses those synergies for a fast finish; your combo decks use the GY as a stage for their big show.

There's an explicit historic theme throughout the colour pie; a lot of artifacts and a lot of trinkets. Tokens are supplied; this is not a Bar Cube in any sense.

Notes on archetypes, cards etc to follow

 

[inscho]

Great to see you working on a new list! I see why you're drawn to the Compost Cube.

I've always enjoyed referring to your cubes, because while we have some similar design sensibilities, you tend to prioritize "indiviudally fun/powerful" cards more often than I do. It's a good reminder when I'm lost in the synergy sauce, and all my Inferno Titans have become Combustible Gearhulks, of the value of in-draft highs. Those cards create levity, air, and excitement in a draft. I often feel that my power band is a little too narrow, and the draft feels more tedious/serious as a result. I'm looking forward to seeing what a Dom cube looks like in 2025.

 

[Nanonox]

It's a good reminder when I'm lost in the synergy sauce, and all my Inferno Titans have become Combustible Gearhulks,

Get with the times old man! They should be Overlord of the Boilerbidges for Replenish

 

[shamizy]

Great to see you working on a new list! I see why you're drawn to the Compost Cube.

I've always enjoyed referring to your cubes, because while we have some similar design sensibilities, you tend to prioritize "indiviudally fun/powerful" cards more often than I do. It's a good reminder when I'm lost in the synergy sauce, and all my Inferno Titans have become Combustible Gearhulks, of the value of in-draft highs. Those cards create levity, air, and excitement in a draft. I often feel that my power band is a little too narrow, and the draft feels more tedious/serious as a result. I'm looking forward to seeing what a Dom cube looks like in 2025.

One thing that I've come around to in recent years is that having power outliers is a good thing for most cubes. Flat power bands are fine to explore certain ideas, but Magic at it's core is about variance. You shouldn't have just haymakers duking it out back-and-forth, but clearly best in class cards ala Sheoldred, the Apocalypse or Fable of the Mirror-Breaker are fine inclusions here and there. And the bigger your cube the more flexibility when including these because they won't be in every final 360 card pool. It's no different than in Limited where you get that big rush when you open a pack and see the exact bomb you need to carry your alright U/R draft deck to the finish line.

Swings in gameplay and variance are important to cultivating games of Magic. Synergies and exploiting them are very fun and scale with the experience of your players, which is why I like to have as many "bleeders" across archetypes as I can, but having straight up bombs now and then also leads to memorable gameplay. As such I've gone back and started including cards that were previous boogeymen in the format like Griselbrand or Wurmcoil Engine because in 2025 it's just a different game with creature design and interaction. Incidental graveyard hate more common to find without it being completely narrow and artifacts have cards like Supplex and Flame of Anor with flexibility to keep things in check.

As long as you give your drafters tools to deal with certain cards then it's all good.

 

[inscho]

One thing that I've come around to in recent years is that having power outliers is a good thing for most cubes. Flat power bands are fine to explore certain ideas, but Magic at it's core is about variance. You shouldn't have just haymakers duking it out back-and-forth, but clearly best in class cards ala Sheoldred, the Apocalypse or Fable of the Mirror-Breaker are fine inclusions here and there. And the bigger your cube the more flexibility when including these because they won't be in every final 360 card pool. It's no different than in Limited where you get that big rush when you open a pack and see the exact bomb you need to carry your alright U/R draft deck to the finish line.

Swings in gameplay and variance are important to cultivating games of Magic. Synergies and exploiting them are very fun and scale with the experience of your players, which is why I like to have as many "bleeders" across archetypes as I can, but having straight up bombs now and then also leads to memorable gameplay. As such I've gone back and started including cards that were previous boogeymen in the format like Griselbrand or Wurmcoil Engine because in 2025 it's just a different game with creature design and interaction. Incidental graveyard hate more common to find without it being completely narrow and artifacts have cards like Supplex and Flame of Anor with flexibility to keep things in check.

As long as you give your drafters tools to deal with certain cards then it's all good.

Yeah for sure! My cube has a lot more of those cards than it used to, but that is probably more of a symptom of the general floor of my power level being raised to take advantage of the great new cube cards being released. I usually only include those outliers when they are perfectly in line with my design goals. I really obsess over each card that I include that is fun/good/strong but maybe not a perfect fit. For instance, I finally included Primeval Titan in my cube for the first time in 13 years, and I still can't stop myself from thinking...."maybe it would be more thematically appropriate to run Lumra, Bellower of the Woods instead" lol

 

[Dom Harvey]

To take an extreme example, I think Black Lotus is a much better card to add to a Cube than Moxes even though it's stronger - you're much more excited to see it, it's more unique, it makes you prioritise cards that find/loop it, it leads to better stories (I cast this thing on T1 and/or I beat the T1 thing!) while nobody is excited to tell their friends about drawing a hand with Mox Ruby and going 0.5th

I think cards being pushed versions of an effect can make them more interesting by themselves and let them do more for a Cube overall. Consider these:



Back in the day I flirted with Bident but it felt like blue tempo wasn't there (in part because you didn't have the vast array of flexible + cheap blue creatures you have now so you had to dedicate your blue section to tempo the way the average white or red section was committed to aggro). Curiosity is much stronger of course but it's not just power creep:

- Curiosity being better makes the strategies it's best in easier to embrace; for this deck to be worth it you need an incentive to hook people who aren't dedicated Flying Men or Horsemanship Girls
- A blue tempo deck that didn't quite come together can still make great use of Curiosity while Bident is more conditional on things going well already
- A generic/scrappy blue deck can win games against stronger or more coherent decks with Curiosity + backup which helps less experienced/adventurous drafters
- On its own Curiosity is appealing as a control finisher or a tool in a slower/creature-light Flash deck - I'll gladly scoop it up if I'm UG with Wilderness Reclamation and Nightpack Ambusher - which in turn makes it easier to pivot if I'm in one of those decks but the slower stuff dries up and I see tempo tools coming to me late
- The Enduring mode opens up other synergies I like in blue (blink + self-bounce)

 

[Dom Harvey]

Some general thoughts before starting on archetypes:

- A reminder to myself that I know I have a very bad perfectionist streak at all levels when it comes to Cube: this is an iterative and imperfect process, that's the whole point!
- Especially as the main form of 'feedback' is drafting vs bots on CubeCobra which is better than it was a few years ago but still artificial and skewed
- As I tell newer Cubers trying to design their own, as long as you don't do anything too egregious people will mostly have fun regardless and will not pick up on whatever seemingly horrible flaws are giving you shame
- Drafters tend to have a much less strict idea of how coherent a deck should be or what that looks like than me; they are happy to play small packages or sweet individual cards that go against the grain of most of the deck
- Even given my stricter standards there, it's very rare that I find myself lacking playables in ~any Cube these days and with my explicit focus on cross-pollination, easy fixing etc that's even less likely here; most ideas probably need less support than I think and I should be eager to include high risk high reward cards or more narrow payoffs that can raise the ceiling on a deck

The usual 'each colour pair has an Archetype, here's a rundown' model isn't ideal but you have to start somewhere so I'll post from a few angles: the archetypes, their role in a colour (/pair), what those colours are trying to do, and how they interact with the other archetypes most accessible to them

 

[Nanonox]

The usual 'each colour pair has an Archetype, here's a rundown' model isn't ideal but you have to start somewhere

I had trouble starting a list (at one point I had 4 20o+ card cubes trying to do the same thing) and what I tried was adding cards in packages. So for a cheat package you could add Oath, Tinker and Welder and some of your favourite cheat targets for example. Get enough packages you like and then flesh out the glue cards. Wasn’t perfect but got me through the start of the project.

I’ll be thrilled to draft the list when you have a skeleton and return the many drafts.

 

[inscho]

I've been stuck on a half-finished primer for my cube for years, because I keep trying to find a more contemporary way to communicate my cube's architecture than the guild archetype snapshots. Archetypes exist much more on a spectrum now, and they are not as clearly defined as they used to be. The alternatives I've tried are either too inefficient at delivering information or too abstract. I'm leaning towards something visual like Radar Charts or more organic like a Mind-Map.

 

[Dom Harvey]

UR

I've struggled with blue, red, and UR for a long time (to the extent that I once made an Abzan Cube more out of frustration than anything else). There's a lot to like in each colour but it felt like every possible theme was a bit too shallow and you had to settle for generic blue and/or red cards or the typical power-max Vintage Cube approach - remember when every stock list had 20 RDW cards that maybe one person in each pod wanted and a pair of Wildfires (differently named, avoiding the cardinal sin of breaking singleton) as their only variety?

My problem now is a good one to have - there are so many options for cards/themes that it's hard to cut through the fog and make decisions! Well-worn UR themes like Prowess/spells and more unusual ones both feel much better supported now. I'll start with a theme that I want as a centerpiece in its own right and also helps to anchor the rest of these colours and the whole Cube; not everything shown here will make the final cut but this is me thinking out loud too.

LOOT

I don't (just) mean that sinister furby on a crime spree throughout the multiverse but the most platonic Izzet play pattern of drawing and having/getting to discard cards. The payoffs and enablers have really taken off recently - just look at this roster:



Go back just a few years and generic blue sections had trouble finding *any* reasonable two-drops - now there are more than you can reasonably play just among two-drop looters (without even touching more narrow options like Baral, Ghostly Pilferer, Wharf Infiltrator, Wonderscape Sage...). Looters joins the ranks of archetypes that it's easy to oversupport - I don't expect all/most cards listed here to have tenure in a year or two - but I'm fine erring on the side of that for now because the support cards for the loot deck are good scaffolding for everything else. Many banal archetypes have relied on quantity over quality - look at any traditional white or red aggro deck or the four Fyndhorn Elves in many Cubes! - and it's fine for a more compelling one to take up some space. This block also meets the Cube's mission statement - Rona through Shredder will all make the cut in the average blue deck, you want as many as possible in the dedicated loot deck, and they all specialize:

Rona - Often racks up free triggers with how many new cards are legendary but goes completely berserk in focused historic/Legends decks (plus once you start looking you find more legends than you think - just look at how many legends are in this post as well as misc stuff like Proft's, Soul Cauldron, Triad, Mox Amber/Opal, various equipment, Yggdrasil, One Ring etc)

Jace VP - Ideal for control or combo-ish decks with build-around or high-impact spells (including Reanimator)

Kitsa - Solid Prowess threat that sets up unique and explosive lines

Malcolm - Nice with reactive cards + other flash threats and in decks that care about the damage

Ledger Shredder - Also great with and against Prowess + at its best vs other similar strategies/curves

Duelist of the Mind - The most narrow of these but rewards other looters, converts cards/actions into damage, and lets you build sudden OHKOs with draw-7s, Brainstorm etc

Those six will make the cut for now - let's check in on red:



Inti and Ivora are the perfect pair of self-contained enablers + payoffs in one - I've seen some backlash against that trend (where the cards help themselves instead of leaving it to you to figure out) but I love these cards in a Cube context. Buccaneer is clean and a bit more unique while Veronica is more fiddly and wordy but still appealing.



Red keeps offering new premium enablers that any deck will fight you for - I kinda wish Tersa didn't have its reverse threshold juke but much love for all of these otherwise. Blue has its own skins of these:



I always loved Champion of Wits and it lives on here in spirit (maybe in reality too??). I like that Scholar can leave you neutral on cards but the Kiora subquest makes it my first choice here



Blue cares about drawing extras - Proft's is a real standout here as a way to convert this wheel spinning into a tangible advantage. Some bigger payoffs like Detective of the Month and Alandra, Sky Dreamer as well as Riptide darling Irencrag Pyromancer pique my interest too

Teferi's Tutelage may prove too obnoxious or uninteresting but it's one slot to let you combo off with your existing tools in a totally new direction.

I really like the look of Quantum Riddler and I can picture some disgusting turns fuelled by that card on the cheap (or some mundane turns where it's the finisher your control deck casts on T6+, whatever floats your boat)



Artifact payoffs are especially tempting as UR is a colour pair likely to care a little/lot about artifacts. Currency Converter would have a guaranteed spot in any Cube I built but the others have to prove themselves. I'm sceptical of Containment Construct on paper but have heard enough good things to try it. Monument is a big splashy question mark I'm keen to see in action and want to be good.



Rielle was the card that sparked my interest in this deck initially and gave me something to ponder endlessly in the early pandemic days. There are a LOT of good Izzet cards now and even on-theme ones that aren't as exclusive to this deck but it's nice to have some signposts that are very clear on what they are about. It's harder for these decks in this Cube to load up on instants/sorceries than I'd like so that part is misleading (though they may not be fatal for Haughty Djinn either) and to some extent enhancing your looting means you're just doing more of the same but turning that from card neutral into card advantage is a big deal.

Howler is interesting but need to see it in action first; I worry that needing specifically timed loots + ideally an evasive attacker to buff with it is too much. I fear Surly Badgersaur is not it these days either



By contrast, Drake Haven is the kind of card I want to love but is squeezed by a higher power level (you need to spend how much just to get a Drake or two?!), ongoing investment vs triggering repeatedly for free (ala Monument to Endurance), and the rise of payoffs that also self-enable. I'd look at it if I was trying this theme at a lower power level



Curator of Mysteries will only feel worse to cast on T4 over time but I think the total package is still worth it especially with various ways to reanimate/rebuy cycled creatures (shoutout to Waker of Waves there too)

Cycling in general is a natural fit and looting sets up all the various GY mechanics in some way - I'm glad that the theme can be so woven into the Cube that mentioning every card would be pointless + prohibitive



Madness is more bespoke and polarizing; I like Rootwalla and Ravager a lot less than others seem to. Fiery Temper is clean and cool but Violent Eruption is the real prize for me as it feels unique and good spread damage is much harder to get through other means though it's a much more committed Madness Card

Circular Logic has absurd upside and with enough looters etc might get across the line again; Blast from the Past is still my baby even though its rate isn't as impressive now

It's easy to find other versions of staple U/R effects that hook into this theme:



Miscalc is a classic; Refute is new but already feels like a timeless + clean card. Three Steps Ahead is complex but very rewarding in my experience; Forbid makes a lot of people bored/feral but certainly commits to the bit (and once a certain amount of other nonsense is possible maybe Loam + Forbid or whatever looks more charming than offensive?)

Crab isn't flashy but 'self-binning big artifact creature' ticks a LOT of boxes and countering abilities (including your own, as we'll see) is a great option to have



Axe (specifically my foil TSP Blitzaxt) is a shoe-in once you go deep on this theme. Dragonhunt has been frustratingly bad for me in Standard and isn't flashy for a gold card but maybe?



I was reared on Compulsive Research and Thirst for Knowledge; now you can thirst for Discovery and Meaning too. Normal blue decks want these bigger churn spells as long as they will reliably be card advantage; in this brave new world even the blue decks can be creature-heavy enough for Stories to pass that test and the harmonize upside is so appealing with everything else going on. With enough emphasis on these themes draw spells that don't literally draw - even best in class like Expressive Iteration, Stock Up, and Memory Deluge or aging icon Fact or Fiction - suffer but it's hard to turn down the raw output of a Stock Up (or exciting new candidates like Consult the Star Charts) in a synergy Cube. I've long maintained that Chart a Course is the platonical ideal of a Magic card and it does what I need here (while fending off the siren song of Roiling Dragonstorm et al)



If you sacrifice card advantage you can get that vital churn at an impressive rate but other archetypes will struggle to fit these (unless, again, they are so steeped in GY stuff); that delicate balance will be an ongoing struggle. Maybe part of the solution is just to have a lot of the more generic versions as well so that everyone gets some if they want it and the real sickos can get some treats. Breakthrough is too rich for my blood regardless I fear



Narrow cards get a fair hearing here because a deck full of looting can more often dig for them when they're great and cash them in when they're dead. That goes for on-plan bangers like these but also for any polarized card - please suggest feast/famine cards in UR or beyond that you'd be excited to see with that in mind!



Draw-7s are a good gift to the combo decks in your life - they might not be exactly what they want but you know they will get something from them. Here you can care about drawing, the indirect mill for either player, or set up draw punishers like Sheoldred too



For combo decks that want to find/copy/recur Big Spells the loot core lets you throw them a bone without trying too hard



Spellslinger and combo decks can enjoy their own enablers too - Jeskai Ascendancy is one of my all-time favourites and was a lock as soon as I started this route, and Artist's Talent has impressed enough with Arclight Phoenix in Pioneer and the usual Storm stuff in Modern to get an audition here



The big blue curvetoppers I like all have buyouts that touch on these themes



If you like planeswalkers as your control headliners, these all ace that job and help here while giving their own direction



The Phoenixes give you repeatable aggression to let an aggressive Rx deck get across the line or a grindier deck trade off cards and then turn the corner. Anger speaks for itself, as they say



UR is less involved in direct reanimation than other colour combos but you can still play in that space without splashing



The channel lands are free for all but a giveaway to a deck that likes discarding, is full of legends, and maybe even has ways to rebuy lands; cycling lands have a cost but are clean, fun, familiar cards

Cephalid Coliseum is a wonderful card if you treat it more as a narrow spell than a freebie

The same logic about narrow cards (easier to find + ditch) applies to splashes too. What do other colours offer?



Looters let you skip the hardcast phase of your Titans if needed and jump to the here's my chungus phase much faster; you'll gladly take a turn off to set up when it means Phlage can stabilize you later



Frog is a lock for a Top X card in the Cube and is the literal perfect payoff for everything above; you'll go out of your way to splash for it and be thrilled about it, and maybe you'll dabble in black's embarrassment of riches as the official GY colour too



White's small reanimation is good backup for your cheap creature enablers (see the Standard Oculus or Vivi Cauldron decks) but there are a few striking gold cards for the loot-curious



Green gives you THE iconic Madness enabler (or a better, cleaner, more ugly version) and some hard drugs for the landlubbers:



Loam and friends are great at padding your hand but most decks can't convert that into something useful; this one sure can (+ dredge lets you tear through your deck on demand with looters). Rydia really juices your engines if you care about either landfall or discard and goes nuts with both

 

[Nanonox]

please suggest feast/famine cards in UR or beyond that you'd be excited to see with that in mind!

Storm, Song and Niv-Mizzet are mostly just storm cards, but I love maybe getting there.

Eruth sees a lot of cards and can probably easily mill yourself so I’d look for Lab man effects.

Cayth does stuff? It’s so open-ended that you have to adjust mid-draft which is super sweet. Probably my favourite here.

 

[Nanonox]

Now that is feast or famine!

 

[Zoss]

Can I tempt you with an Underworld Breach? It's kind of the red Snapcaster if you squint and can do good work even in fair decks.



(Also sorry for phrasing this like you might not know what notorious Modern+ boogeyman Underworld Breach is lmao my only excuse is that my back is out and I'm not quite firing on all cylinders)

To clear out my murderers' row of cards I'm surprised you didn't mention, even if they're not as directly related to the draw/discard and artifacts themes:



Also, The Everflowing Well is a shockingly good card as a Divination ++ that occasionally ramps you and lets you go absolutely nutty sometimes even if you're not planning to do so.



Mary Read and Anne Bonny is admittedly a weird card from a weird set, but it does fun things.



Finally, Ecstatic Electromancer ties a couple of basic themes together really nicely. It's from the awful Clue set, but there's nothing wrong with the card intrinsically.

 

[inscho]

Can I tempt you with an Underworld Breach?



To clear out my murderers' row of cards I'm surprised you didn't mention, even if they're not as directly related to the draw/discard and artifacts themes:



Also, The Everflowing Well is a shockingly good card as a Divination ++ that occasionally ramps you and lets you go absolutely nutty sometimes even if you're not planning to do so.



Mary Read and Anne Bonny is admittedly a weird card from a weird set, but it does fun things.



Finally, Ecstatic Electromancer ties a couple of basic themes together really nicely. It's from the awful Clue set, but there's nothing wrong with the card intrinsically.

I heavily recommend underworld breach and legion extruder

 

[Chris Taylor]

 

[Dom Harvey]

SPELL ENJOYERS

As I apparently posted years ago (along with thoughts on UR Artifacts and UR discard/draw... time is a flat circle, if not a Cube), I want to cast spells and get a pat on the head for it but that was always harder than it seemed. The bounty of cards for those decks over the past year (and the steady trickle of related cards with this being the default theme for UR in most sets) means I can do that in the way I want while gesturing at these other themes too

Attempts to transplant the Delver decks of Modern and Legacy yore to Cube have always failed in my experience. Those decks rely on card filtering to make up for their low threat density (and because of this they can just run a playset of the two or three best threats without scraping the bottom of the barrel for more) and have cheap ways to defend their threats. In Cube you struggle to get that ratio of spells at all (let alone premiere one-drops), it's a mostly singleton format so there aren't many good threats in the first place, and there's much more good removal than there are cheap ways to stop it.

There's also a familiar trap of assuming that cards that have 'instant or sorcery' on them must play well together when, often, they place competing incentives on you. Any slot devoted to a threat is one that can't be used on a spell to enable them (barring stuff like Adventure creatures, which are even better here than they always are). Once you've been lured into an aggressive UR Spells deck, a generically strong threat like Kari Zev or Serendib Efreet is probably better than a weaker on-theme threat that tugs you in another direction. Look at how many ways there are to care about spells:

- Key off one spell (Delver of Secrets)
- Play as many spells as you can (Prowess creatures, Kiln Fiend but also Young Pyromancer, Guttersnipe, WAR Saheeli etc)
- Play N spells (Magmatic Channeler, Thing in the Ice, Arclight Phoenix)
- You need N spells first (Stormwing Entity, Ethereal Forager)
- Your spells are better/cheaper (Baral)
- Spells with restrictions (Dreadhorde Arcanist)
- Rebuy your spells (Snapcaster Mage)
- Play good spells to copy (Sea Gate Stormcaller, God-Eternal Kefnet, Lutri)

This analysis extends to the type of spells you add to support this theme. It's obvious that cards with flashback, rebound, jump-start and the like that can be cast multiple times work well here but most of these are somewhat conditional - Reckless Charge and Lava Dart are terrifying in an aggro spells deck but poor in a controlling one. If your environment is fast and cutthroat, the gap between a one-mana and two-mana spell is even larger.

Why is the outlook different now?

- There are just a lot more cards in this space so quality and quantity are both accounted for
- The broad shift from instant/sorcery to noncreature spell was massive; you don't fully realize until you build + play with both just how much more restrictive a Young Pyromancer is than a Third Path Iconoclast. This flexibility was always baked into the Prowess mechanic but is now thankfully the default
- The 'cast multiple spells' payoffs that count creatures lift even this restriction and make the various creatures that chain into other spells (including self-contained ones like Adventures) even more satisfying
- Many of the Prowess threats are noncreatures themselves, helping the balance between threats and the things that make them threatening
- The best newer threats are good at many/all phases of the game, removing the extra requirement to have all the pieces in the right order

The UR Prowess deck that just dominated Standard is a great showcase for all this - it could kill on Turn 4 or even Turn 3 with a fast draw but could also chain Cori-Steel Cutter into Stormchaser's Talent for a big Turn 5 or 6 - with another batch of Prowess triggers to boot

The more specialized tools are great too - the aggro Prowess decks have cards their 2015 or even 2020 counterparts could only dream of - so we'll jump around there too



Cutter has already got itself banned in Standard and on notice elsewhere but it's a very fun card to play with even if there are some tracking/bookkeeping issues and it's almost not restrictive enough

Stormchaser's Talent is the real gem I want to draw attention to: I dismissed it at first and if you haven't followed Standard there's no reason you would be aware of it but it plays beautifully. Proactive decks with lots of cheap spells can maximize the token; bigger decks with high-impact spells can double down on those; the best versions of this can do both at once (and maybe even set up a loop with Cryptic Command or similar)



Cutter and Planisphere join a long list of equipment that bring a body with them while triggering Prowess. It's easy now to link up a proactive artifact theme in WRx with the spellslinger stuff in URx (both themes will happily span all the Jeskai colours but this lets you preserve a focus for the two-colour pairs at the level you want)

Cryptic Coat was one of my favourites from last year (which brought more Cube hits than any other year!) - it's a weirdo with some unique mechanical baggage but given that it should be a loud statement that I like it this much. It's perfect for any aggro/tempo deck but also works with artifact and blink stuff (both for Coat itself and the manifested thing) and a spells theme and its an inevitable win con for the hardest of hard control decks



The best Vehicles bridge that gap too - Schooner in particular has impressed even if it looks like Copter at home



Even Auras get a look in here thanks to MH3 riffing on Bestow again - Nantuko is an all-time banger and Detective's Phoenix has gone somewhat mainstream but the un/common ones are quiet workhorses too



Sagas are still great + on-message (even if the big step forward in Saga design with FF was making them creatures up-front)



Even the quickly abandoned Battles do this job! Invasion of Segovia is a pet card of mine and Invasion of Ixalan is the best on rate for that effect (it doesn't pad the GY ala Rumble, Cache Grab etc but being a unique card type when Green is delirious and working with bounce effects is clutch); I wish there were more good Dragon payoffs ala Invasion of Tarkir because the Dragons themselves are getting better and better (as you can see glimpses of in this post)



Planeswalkers have always helped here; they aren't a focal point of new sets now but Ral is a recent hit that's explicitly on-theme and has been fun for me elsewhere. I forgot to mention The Royal Scions in the discard/draw post but it gains loyalty at a dizzying rate and is a great thing to curve into for an aggressive Prowess deck



Even if you don't care about artifacts explicitly (and it's hard to avoid caring about them incidentally these days), the cheap trinkets really are so good at triggering Prowess etc compared to 'just' instants/sorceries



Of course if you do mostly care about instants and sorceries there's a deep bench of heavy hitters; I remain heavily conflicted on Murktide Regent (my preview card! but also a crime against the colour pie) but if I'm increasingly tolerant to other pushed cards maybe Regent is worth texting back? Maybe a nice Eddymurk Crab instead...



Once you have enough creatures some of the most iconic old frame hits become compelling build-arounds



...or a more modern one, which has cemented its place in history already and which is almost more satisfying if you manually stitch together a ridiculous turn than if you have it all rolled up with Brain Freeze etc



Casting multiple spells (aka 'Flurry' though they didn't embrace that branding fully even in its own set?) is the most natural thing you can do and only gets easier as the average Good Spell gets cheaper and cheaper. Pour one out for Bloodsky Berserker too I guess

The gold signposts are a treat:



Sprite Dragon and 3PI are clean and appealing while pointing directly at their time in totally different ways - the perfect signposts. If these were Foundations-esque staples I would be glad. Sprite Dragon encourages a replaceable form of aggression while Iconoclast goes ~everywhere (and is an artifact tie-in too!) so if you have to choose I think 3PI gets the slot. Balmor is specialized in its own way and only counts instant/sorcery but can lead to some truly impressive turns for an uncommon

Then you have the headline act:



Few cards get me excited like Vivi. I love him in FF - a soulful lil' guy who turns his ennui into explosions - and he's a real firecracker in Magic. Just casting spells is enough but he makes you think about a lot - how to front-load enough cheap spells to build his power while having good mana sinks as a reward, whether you care more about equipment and pump spells now that they are all Rituals - and the power -> mana conversion is a rare and fun problem to optimize

For aggressive versions it's not just about Monastery Swiftspear any more:



DRC has had a few years to dazzle us and Slickshot Show-Off squawks for itself but Emberheart Challenge illustrates my argument about good cards opening more doors - it's good enough as a Prowess threat to get in the room that way and from there you can think about pairing it in other shells with Equipment, Bristly Bill/Scythecat Cub, pump, etc

See here for a sketch of an aggressive UR list (with notes of the looter and artifact themes etc)



In my yearly flirtation with Storm, I tell myself that putting your Medallion/Familiar effects on good rate creatures that more normalized decks might want can let you keep that on the table without wasting too many slots. Haughty Djinn in particular is another of these 'exciting but/because elegant' cards that I know I want to play somewhere.

No reps with Lyse yet but it's very exciting on paper and I could see it joining the Vivi, Nadu etc tier of gold build-around legends; more on it soon!



For control or Big Spell decks, these finishers are generic enough but with some added oomph; Hermes is Murmuring Mystic for 2025 and Hraesvelgr is still a fine sticky threat if you never cast another spell but Seedshark lets you scheme about how to get big Incubators on the cheap or flipping immediately



It's nice when you can incidentally meet the goal of casting lots of spells while chasing your real goal of doubling up on the same spell (whether classics like Lightning Bolt or Wheel of Fortune or bangers like Fiery Confluence and Time Warp)



If you care about what those spells are, you want to maximize your odds of finding them even without the all-access pass of tutors; and, if you just want to keep the chain going, a spell that finds a spell (hopefully) is ideal for that. Now that so many of the good payoffs are themselves noncreatures, effects like this are that much more appealing - T2 Trainer into T3 Cutter + spell was a common line in Standard



I love the 'double' payoffs that reward a heavy commitment (Bria, Riptide Rogue and Narset, Enlightened Exile would qualify too). There are so many good Wizards in this theme (Trainer, Vivi, Kitsa, Drake Hatcher, Slickshot - and Floodcaller/Veyran!) and beyond (Tersa/Joshua, Nadu, Plagon, Rielle/Rona, Tamiyo, VClique/Venser/Sower Wildfire Awakener...) and even some nice Shamans like DRC, Seasoned Pyromancer, Eternal Witness

Floodcaller does the Ascendancy thing by itself with Earthcraft/Enduring Vitality but also with quite a few assorted animaux (Restless Anchorage, Mutavault, Birds of Paradise!) and gives even more buffs to the various Otters (Talent/Trainer/Kitsa/Mentor) and friends (Slickshot, Shredder, Battle Screech/Song of Totentanz); giving everything flash opens up some unique lines too

This naturally spills over into some form of Jeskai:



The other colour combos are a little harder to pin down



Black has a ton of good cheap spells but not much to make you care (despite FF's gesture towards this with the Black Mage stuff). The BR Arcanist decks from a few years ago were a promising template here but as with most Constructed analogues those rely on heavily on both specific spells and specific payoffs - and, however much you learn from Legacy, the mana is still very flimsy if you're trying to balance spells across 3 colours in the early turns



Green offers a Prowess/Berserkers crossover (though see the caveat about the mana that I literally just posted, pay attention!!) though there's not much that's uniquely green there



If you're building around a special lil guy like Vivi or Nadu, green has its own ways to find them or their partners in crime. This recent influx of noncreature payoffs means this isn't as reliable but cards like Rumble can find those too - and it's a good problem to have regardless



In that original post I noted that the UR spellslingers decks tend to rely heavily on creatures overall and often a specific creature but in the actual worst colour pair for leveraging that. Green can get those in circulation but white and black also have a lot of cheap reanimation that can bring those back for another swing (or chain off with Snapcaster Mage etc)

 

[Nanonox]

Another Green card that indirectly intersects looting and spells



I personally really enjoy this card even if it’s mostly a Temur one. Making strong tokens off cantrips or looting/rummaging/cycling is what you want.

I could see some enchantment cards being used too if you want to support that theme



You could also easily intersect with artifacts thanks to the Baubles, Stars, Spellbombs, Clues, Bloods, Staff of the Storyteller. Writting this out makes me realize I should add her back in!

On another note, I’ve been thinking about the equipments/enchantments you mentioned that produce bodies alongside self bounce. Pixie, Kirin, Shepherd, Fear of Isolation. Or even blink with Displacer Kitten, Ghostly Flicker and friends.