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Welcome to the age of Arena. I'm just not a fan of these mechanics and cards that are getting tedious to keep track of in paper. Works on a platform that does it for you, but man is a chore in paper to do things like track ability counters, remember the super wordy front and back sides to cards...

Yeah it's very much YMMV dependent upon your playgroup. My group is pretty experienced, but every now and then pre-pandemic I'd bring my cube over to the LGS and have 1-2 new people give it a go in an 8 man. Cube is already complex and I also have many extra features in my draft that I'd rather...

Absolutely essential with how many wonky mechanics we get year to year now. It was one thing when we had gotten Clues for the first time, but now we get Food and Treasure and like randomly. I like promo cards and minimal text whenever possible to remove clutter and just for a cleaner display...

If Bitterblossom is too powerful then I'd definitely stay away from Foundry. Blossom is strong early but bad late, Foundry is just good always. It looks more manageable, but I'd argue that it's more powerful than BB because it requires so little of you once you've already played it. If you have...

Now that's a strong Rakdos card. 3/3 First Strike fine on its own, has the increasingly relevant Vampire typing, and it gives some additional reach to the more low to the ground Aggro decks allowing them to dig deeper. Sold!

Jim Davis just finished up a small series going through his Cube as he re-sleeved it recently. Pretty entertaining with some good insight into his selections and thought process, he's definitely put a lot of time into working on this over the years. Here's the first of eight vids:

For Bitterblossom specifically I can recall a match where it kind of just grinded into a board stall between a RW Aggro deck and the BW Bitterblossom deck. The active BB put a real clock on the player as every additional piece of burn just went straight to the face even if they couldn't push...

I just realized that while most of these cards don't really need a whole lot of extra info for context, a few might be a little unclear. Mother of Runes: The most memorable match I remember is from like 4-5 years back when my cube also ran Sarkhan Vol and there was a matchup that featured Mom +...

Sometimes it's individual cards, sometimes it ends up being a sequence of plays/cards. For me I remember early on after implementing BW Human Aggro in my cube that I was able to draft a pretty sweet deck and showcase the potential. I was on the play and curved out with T1 Champion of the Parish...

Absolutely. A lot of my criteria for inclusion at this point like 7 years into working on my cube is the expansion of existing archetypes and cards that help branch themes. A lot of times these do end up being the more powerful cards in a set where they're willing to push a little more with...

I'd go as far as saying that this is the best cube set we've had from a normal Standard release since Eldraine. Horizons sets are the most fruitful when it comes to cube inclusions with how much they're willing to push and experiment with one-off designs, but this set is real solid as a whole...

Yeah, that's kind of where I ended up with this card. In comparison to other two drops we've gotten in this set like Jadar and the black Adversary, this just isn't nearly as exciting for me unless I was looking for a big beater for cheap. I'm likely to include it with the Innistrad cube that I'm...

Excellent, I'm all for more incidental graveyard hate on playable bodies. Turning into an evasive beater after going wide makes this super appealing to me for my B/W Human Aggro. Turning on pseudo protection that can mostly be used aggressively is very appealing to me, I'm glad it can't be used...

I agree with this in most scenarios, but I don't think it's as applicable for this card. It's never really going to be on curve where you cast this, usually something you fire off in the later game once you've stabilized or when both players are grinding it out. I don't think I'd ever want to...

Sweet card and beautiful art. I saw this art featured with one of the story articles and was hoping it wasn't just a set piece, pleased that it's on a highly playable card. A recurrable Regrowth effect in the self-milling BG/Sultai builds is going to be a great addition. This set is the best.

Was a fan of Goblin Dark Dwellers when I ran it for a brief stint, but it was definitely a little clunky and didn't really have a great home to slot into for my environment. This one having the modal flipside of being a base 2/2 with haste is pretty handy. I like the flexibility of early board...

Sweet card, I'm all for more incidental artifacts tied to playable bodies to help flesh out synergies even further. Human typing to synergize with Champion of the Parish and Thalia's Lieutenant, generates some card advantage with Clues, and has decent stats for its cost as a 4/3 Vigilance. Plays...

For me the first thing I thought of when I saw it was playing it in something like RB Aggro with Gravecrawler and growing Champion of the Perished either on curve by 1 or by 3 power off the trigger later in game. I like that it's not actual kicker which can lead to some cool corner case...

I'd say as long as there aren't too many cheap 2/3s in the format to where you're consistently clogging the board ala Bant Coco Standard, you're mostly going to be fine. I think I would have been more against this in the past, but I've come around to thinking that having these type of statlines...

I agree in general for Constructed and most Limited formats since you can always trade up against a 3/2, but for cube specifically and the role I see for this card I'd much rather have a 2/3 than a 3/2.