I'd say card density is absolutely one of the key factors when I'm evaluating cards for inclusion. I love introduces nuanced interactions and various avenue for my drafters and I get excited when I see them come to life in an actual draft. Finding greater utility for cards and multiple interactions that you don't grok on first glace is probably my favorite part of Magic in general and why I've been hooked for so many years. When I have the room to experiment in Cube or EDH, I'll just go wild with trying to uncover synergies and interactions. It's the most fun part of the game for me.
My favorite dense cards currently in my cube include the following:
Usually when I'm adding cards to my cube it's either due to a new set coming out and my desire to try out new toys or it's a matter of refining/revisiting ideas. I think all of these cards have a decent base case, but they allow for players to discover different avenues to extricate the most value.
Champion of Wits lets you sift through your deck for card quality and doubles as a blocker for control strategies, sets up your graveyard for potential reanimation/flashback in UB and UR decks, and it can be a great blink target to dig for impact pieces in a
Soulherder driven shell.
Mardu Strike Leader and
Kari Zev, Skyship Raider give you additional bodies that can trigger other cards and serve as nice fodder for sacrificial outlets.
Whirler Rogue +
Pia and Kiran Nalaar allow you to attack your opponent from different angles and serve to beef up token-based strategies or artifact based synergies. The green suite of creatures gives you a means of pitching cards to the grave, card selection/advantage, and allow you to hit crucial land drops.
Vengevine just makes me warm inside and feel things I haven't in years
.
Corpse Knight plays great with token strategies, recursive aggro, reach for aggressive decks through a non-combat avenue, and serves as a zombie to help set up
Gravecrawler loops. Zegana lets me create a kind of payoff/signal card for strategies with counters. It slots well into UG decks that have creatures capable of generating their own, it plays very well with blink strategies by drawing you cards off a
Soulherder blink, and it can close out games on its own by serving as an outlet for excess mana. Saheeli is a quirky girl who slots well with spellslinger decks doing a
Young Pyromancer impression and also helps beef up the suite of artifact bodies in the cube.
Sidisi, Brood Tyrant just slots in across the board as a graveyard filler, token creator, and a means of extracting value from self-mill.
I've got hope for these newer inclusions as well:
I've sung my praises of
Verge Rangers in the spoiler thread so there's no need to rehash it, ditto for Rielle in my latest cube blog post. Monk can slot into tokens, go-wide decks as a big finisher, and in UWx blink strategies as a means of filling the board right on curve and color. I can't wait to flip it off of
Winota, Joiner of Forces in a bigger RW shell!
Mire Triton does it all as a ground blocker with deathtouch for slower decks, a self-mill card for graveyard strategies, a source of lifegain to trigger a card like
Heliod, Sun-Crowned, and is a zombie for
Gravecrawler recursion. I think it's one of the more brilliant designs I've seen at lower rarities in a long time, just fucking beautiful.
Phoenix of Ash is great for aggressive decks as an evasive hasty threat, can be recurred from the grave readily with any burn spells/tricks that have ended up there, and you can even pitch it early when looting through your deck to have action arrive from the grave later in the game once you've worn down your opponents resources.
These type of cards are Magic design at their finest; cards that are good in their base case (not overwhelming), but give the player moments of triumph when they discover interactions and synergies that aren't readily apparent. I strive to include as many of these as I can when working on my cube and they're just a major major element of the core identity of my cube. Like just imagine a combination of some of these cards like Soulherder + Corpse Knight + Monk in an Esper blink shell. You get to your End Step and you're cooking with gas. You've got blinks off the Herder growing itself, Corpse Knight triggering to drain three each turn, and two additional spirits generated each time from the Monk.
Now That What I Call Value (Volume 42)!
I've also found that they just lead to more rewarding cube experiences for my drafters in general and they feel more accomplished when they can assemble something with sweet interactions rather than a pile of cards with raw power. The games where you stomp someone with a nut draw are cool, but the ones where you assembled some wonky compound with multiple reactions are what you remember fondly. I want my players to experience that as often as possible.
