The "downside" of course assumes in this case that the stand out card is specifically not a creature (or land I suppose), which they often are anyways.
You can also put a card in the GY that activates other cards in ways that drawing them can't do (putting spell in GY for mizzix's mastery...
yeah it's a perception thing. The card being in the GY is visibly negative. If the milling is still undesirable for some reason, Abundant Harvest is strong, as mentioned.
Timeless Witness works fine in my cube.
I have never seen a custom card IRL*. I just think it's not a big "thing" with my groups, positive or negative. Just. not a thing.
*Except for cards I accidentally made 'custom' by leaving something out when printing it. Oops.
Just run two bloodmage if you want two of that specific mediocre cantrip effect. Roil eruption and Bolt are very different cards, if you had said "I run Bolt but also Shock" it would be closer, and I would just say "why not run 2 bolts"
I think the real chad selection for a black cube would be callous bloodmage, which you already run. Don't think you need to put in a (mostly) worse version of it.
For me at least, it's a pretty un-intuitive niche concept of the card's abilities that is liable to "get" a newer player at least once. Also a really strong rate for a manland. 1 mana activation for a 3/3 blocker is wicked good.
I think lurrus is only busted with an *extremely* trim mana curve. I generally see it as fairly middling in decks I've drafted it in so far in my environment.
Requires a ton of mana to pull off, but yes you could do that. I prefer this for the three turn win spread:
approach of the second sun
drawn from dreams
yeah, my main gripe with it. You don't need to build special deck support for it. If anything Kiki-Jiki supports a wide range of other strategies via the copying ability (blink strats, on attack triggers, etc).
Seems to be just mucking around trying to find 'precise' wordings honestly. Someone bluffing removal is making a risky decision to play into what they hope you will take their bluff for. Both players are in control of their decisions and usage of cards, hence my usage of the word "agency". I...