General [Almost Daily] Every Set in Magic, Cube Edition

[shamizy]

Ixalan was a neat set when it came out, lots of cool cards between all the flip lands and various tribal cards. Unfortunately not much long term staying power as FIRE came into being not long afterwards and also we just got improved versions of multiple effects over time. I think the only card that still has a home in my cube nowadays is Chart a Course which is just a very clean and effective design. Two mana to draw two cards is always a great rate, love the utility in self-mill/reanimator decks. I remember running and liking Search for Azcanta for a long time before swapping over to other cards and eventually settling on Narset, Parter of Veils. Maybe I'll revisit it again someday because the play patterns were pretty cool and the late game inevitability was great for the grindier decks that my drafters would put together.

Funnily enough, my favorite memory from this set is with Limited when Fatal Push was the FNM promo card.

At the time myself and my playgroup were super into Modern and really looked forward to the chance of winning one of these which were in high demand. I think the store fired off 4 full pods of 8 for this set just because people wanted the promo. Anyway, I think I drafted some weird Naya Dinos deck that was okay but nothing to write home about while my buddy in the same pod ended up being the only drafted in U/G Merfolk so he had like every single card wheel to him. Everyone else is fighting over Vampires and Dinosaurs and Pirates while he's sitting pretty with this insane deck. He proceeds to crush the entire draft going 3-0, 6-0 which included myself getting absolutely curbstomped. I'm talking every relevant uncommon, all the Merfolk tricks, and I think two lords? It was disgusting and I had no chance at all.

I did eventually win my own copy a week or two later, but then decided nah this Limited environment is actually not worth running it back any further. Especially once they were out of FNM promos.

 

[Humpty_Dumpty]

Always forget about



I like it as a soft answer to PW before they can get value or specific enchantments. You can even use it as mana denial, might need to give it a second look.

How do you use it as mana denial? Mana abilities are explicitly excluded.

 

[Nanonox]

Fetches was my idea since I run two sets of them

 

[ravnic]

I was pretty hyped for Ixalan back in the day, as I'm a huge dinosaur fan and I adored the choice to put feathers on them (closer to how they actually looked liked). However, looking back at the set, it is pretty boring. Super low power mostly, very high typal. Currently, I am only cubing these two:



Chart is one of my best performing blue cards, works with well in every blue deck, most of which either want to attack with evasive creatures or discard cards anyway. I added Munitions when I realized that Goblin Bombardement was too much and now I am happy about the artifact synergies too.

I am also sometimes flirting with Ruin Raider, which is a cool, slightly worse Bob variant.

However, my vote for the best design here has to go to:

Spoiler: Best Ixalan Design

 

[Onderzeeboot]

I cut DFC’s from my cube, because no matter how you look at it, they’re a logistical hassle, and this is one of the two I honestly miss (the other being Jace, Vryn’s Prodigy). It’s such a sweet one drop, and I love how cleanly this lets aggro decks skimp on lands a bit.


I don’t run this card, and I’m wondering why. I have ninja’s that want to attack, and discard matters and graveyard matters decks that want to discard stuff…


I switched to Deep-Cavern Bat, but only because humans aren’t an archetype anymore, and because I want Brain Maggot for Zur the Enchanter. The Freebooter is a tight card that plays very well.


This might recently have been outclassed by Quaketusk Boar, but the single red pip matters in a cube that pushes towards three-color decks, plus dinosaurs are cooler than boars. This card hits like a truck, and always seems to overperform when it hits the battlefield. Love it!


I actually found Goblin Bombardment too free, and prefer sacrificing stuff for damage to have a mana cost. This and Weaponize the Monsters are a nice tag team for this effect in red.


Somehow still surviving in my cube, this is just a nice little ramper that works really well with pump and fight effects.


You all know I love me some Wildfires, and what’s sweet than stapling card draw onto that effect? I really hope to see enrage return one day, because I think it’s a really neat mechanic!


Speaking of pump and fight effects, this is a lovely one if you run a couple of dinosaurs. It’s still decent at three mana, because the +1/+1 counters stays around, but at one mana this is pretty nasty!


A couple of years ago, I decided to cut all permanent steal effects from my cube, because they caused players to end up with each other’s cards in their decks. After all, with the cards already sleeved, there’s no telling your and your opponent’s cards apart. Hostage Taker rules though, it’s a super sweet removal and value spell, highly recommend it if you don’t mind the memory issues!

 

[Seeker]

This might recently have been outclassed by Quaketusk Boar

They have the same abilities, because Reach does nothing when you're attacking. You forgot that they're both Juggernauts. So obviously the one-pip one is better!

 

[ravnic]

Hmm. Maybe I should put Charging Monstrosaur in my Occasionals. It's the kind of card that I like as a brutal surprise, that will only actually come up like once a year but will put some fear in peoples minds even when it wasn't in the pool.

 

[Onderzeeboot]

Hmm. Maybe I should put Charging Monstrosaur in my Occasionals. It's the kind of card that I like as a brutal surprise, that will only actually come up like once a year but will put some fear in peoples minds even when it wasn't in the pool.

If you can stomach Universes Beyond cards and multiplayer wording, there is also



It's a great effect, but Charging Monstrosaur is a lot cleaner and fits the vibe of Magic a lot better in my humble opinion. Anyway, the General is there for people who just want better cards and don't care about feathered dinosaurs.

 

[ravnic]

I think with Sontaran General in your cube, you start and stay at 0% coolness.

 

[Onderzeeboot]

I think with Sontaran General in your cube, you start and stay at 0% coolness.

Hahahaha, that made me laugh out loud XD

 

[wahoopride]

This set definitely is way too synergistic for its own good. The power level already isn’t there, especially compared to modern sets, but this fact is only exacerbated by how much of the set’s “power” level is hidden in synergies. Gempalm Incinerator is a fine card if you run a goblin deck, but supporting it in cube means you have to dedicate so many slots to the Goblin deck.

Maybe I’m not as good at mtg as other people and that is the disconnect here, but I don’t really feel like Gempalm Incinerator requires you to have to support goblin tribal to be good. There are so many incidental goblins that make there way in to my cube that gempalm feels like it would be fine in most decks running red. In many ways if your supported goblin tribal it feels like it would be TOO good (killing a 5 toughness creature while getting a card advantage). And it also has the flexibility to just cast it as a body.
Maybe it’s just the power level of our cubes our different, but that feels very powerful in the games I’m used to playing. Just off the top of my head, siege gang commander, kuldotha rebirth, dragon fodder all make enough goblins to make this playable and that doesn’t take in to account a ton more random incidental goblins that would be available to drafters. Maybe I’m way off, though

 

[ravnic]

[Almost Daily]

 

[MilesOfficial]

Day: 027
Set: Saviors of Kamigawa (SOK)
Release Date: June 3, 2005
Cards: 165
Design & Development: Brian Tinsman (Design Lead), Randy Buehler (Development Lead)
Art Direction: Jeremy Cranford
All New Cards, Sorted by ELO: Link

The Kamigawa block got glazed on Blogatog for too many years and so people think it was actually good. It wasn't! There were some great designs, and I can defend Champions, but Saviors is both testament to the issue with a block format thematically (why wait for ninjas and Kirin?) and structurally (how do you mechanically extend / complicate four different mechanics from the anchor set while making each small set feel like it has its own identity?).

The new mechanics for the set are amongst the game's worst and didn't really interact well with anything else from the block. Epic and Sweep are both rightfully at the bottom of named mechanics in any listing I've ever seen, and caring about having seven cards in hand is the most perverse incentive you could ever introduce, particularly in a set bereft of cantrips.

That said, a bad set doesn't mean bad cards. Plenty of beloved cards still come from the Kamigawa block. This is the origin of Pithing Needle, for goodness' sake! Individual cards are really quite interesting here, which I'll talk about shortly.

Currently, there is one card in my Cube originally from Saviors of Kamigawa:



Basically, since I have so many 3/1s for 2 in my Cube (or have at various points), it's a super over-powered equipment. HOWEVER, it's a late-pick reward for the midrange decks, as the low-to-the-ground aggro decks can't stomach a frequently useless equipment, and it doesn't get taken by the ubiquitous token strategies in my Cube. This is definitely on the fringe for me, even with such a large list, but it does make it into more decks than you'd expect...even when it shouldn't. But I do like having a card from every expansion I can, so that does help it survive when I'm considering tie-breakers.

In the past, I've run the following at one time or another:



It makes me really appreciate just how many cards have visited my Cube at one time or another, yeah? A lot of these are from very early versions of my Cube; Michiko Konda, Truth Seeker was a favorite of mine from my 60-card multiplayer casual days to discourage attacks, and in a low-power environment, still seems like a lot of fun.



Tomb of Urami is the kind of card that makes you go "hell yeah" and I want cards like that in my Cubes. I used to run this in both Legacy and Modern Pox as a one-of! That said, I'm not even running Tomb Fortress, so I think Urami's final resting place is probably a long shot to ever return. I think I'm the only person who ever fired this off in my Cube, and I lost that game. Now days, there are a dozen black lands worth running, but it wasn't long ago that this wasn't a terrible choice if you wanted to have at least one land for every color identity.



Ideas Unbound still gets me giddy whenever I look at it. The evocative art, the question of "why would I want to use this?", the gears that immediately turn once you see this in a booster pack that make you marvel at just what else could be in the Cube...the issue is, no one wanted to play with it. The downsides are too many. I wish it cost and/or was an instant, I think it could've gotten there. I still want to play it, it's just so much more exciting than similar cards like Careful Study and lets you feel greedy.



I ran this before I was able to pick up a copy of Desertion, which felt much better. Since then, I upgraded that into Smirking Spelljacker and now Transcendent Dragon, which is not totally an upgrade but feels better and cleaner. But back in the day, paying 6 mana to counter their big haymaker and draw a bunch of cards was the ultimate reversal. It was very satisfying, and often, the blue player pursuing such greed (rightfully) lost before they could do it. That's what Magic is all about, yeah?



Speaking of what Magic is all about, Hidetsugu's Second Rite is one hell of a Magic card. The biggest issue is that it inspires people to play poorly, because people are so excited to "do the thing" that they'll nerf their whole draft night and have less net fun overall. I think an important part of designing a Cube is skipping the Hidetsugu's Second Rites, no matter how aspirational they could be, while still providing a bunch of potential dreams to live that are similarly satisfying but are not quite so detrimental to the actual gameplay for all parties. It's not fun to lose to this card, and you're going to undermine your draft to play it.



Kataki, War's Wage is a card I'm insistent is good and will not take out of my on-deck binder even though I've really shifted my Cube towards best-of-one (to allow all ~10 players to actually play each other during draft night). I don't like cards that say "I kill your strategy" with one card, but this one, I dunno, feels like it works. The imbalance is why I don't run it, to be sure, but I like that it affects most players and TAXES. I wish there were more taxing effects in the color that punished for more common behaviors. In my Cube, artifacts are super common behavior, but it just feels overwhelming to try to play against this card with the right deck that I can't stomach it...but I want to.

 

[Nemo]

I feel bad for Torii Watchward, which is in last place in ELO behind the infamous One With Nothing.

 

[Seeker]

The Kamigawa block got glazed on Blogatog for too many years and so people think it was actually good. It wasn't! There were som great designs, and I can defend Champions, but Saviors is both testament to the issue with a block format thematically (why wait for ninjas and Kirin?) and structurally (how do you mechanically extend / complicate four different mechanics from the anchor set while making each small set feel like it has its own identity?).

CCC was great, CCB was better if nobody opened Jitte (unpersoning that single card makes that an all-timer of a draft format to this day imo)

...also, you know, people like the flavor. That's the real reason.

As for Saviors in Cube, my first take is that I have literally nothing to say because you already covered every relevant card in the set. (turns out this is wrong - I misremembered which set Footsteps of the Goryo is from!)

So let's do "Seeker shows people cards they forgot/never saw and/or tells random stories" again! I won't double up on what Miles already posted.


In a recurring theme for Kamigawa block in general and Saviors in particular, this card would be way more interesting if it had a more realistic trigger. Shining Shoal/Sickening Shoal let you dial in the exact number you needed to turn symmetry into sad-metry (for your opponent). You can also do a stupid thing with like, As Foretold + Evermind = Armageddon, a dream that I have never desired to live but many others have.


If you really hate Steve who always forces mono-red...


You're not gonna play this one - hell, you won't even play Stampeding Serow (or Stampeding Wildebeests) - but there was a marginally funny discussion on the wotc forums in 2008 where a forum poster named Toggo was certain this card had computer-generated artwork.

/ / / /
Incredibly tempting mechanic... and garbage for cube because of the five cards it's on. I didn't have to look any of these five names up, which shows you what my neurons are dedicated to. Good thing my parents' anniversary is in my phone because I don't know that off the top of my head.


Splice is an additive distraction here - your lower power cube with a prowess/tempo theme genuinely might want Noncreature Zealous Guardian.


The theme of this set is "cards that prevent people from playing Magic", but sadly WotC accidentally bumped Sensei's Divining Top up two sets


Perennial combo all-star. Amazed it's only a $10 ($20 foil) card, though it did have a reprint in A25.


Day zero errata! Read it again and you'll see it.


There's probably a better version of this I don't know about, but it's not Sakashima of a Thousand Faces. It's interesting, if slow and two-colored-pips.

/
If your theme is "the most miserable play experience imaginable", Saviors of Kamigawa is a great set for your cube.


...okay, I actually forgot this wasn't in Betrayers alongside Goryo's Vengeance. This one's fun as hell! I'm not at the point where I can support it, but I really wish I was.


I think this is among my favorite black Wrath variants, and it's definitely #1 on the list of ones that are also creatures. Not something that meets my power level expectations in 2025, but it sure was good back in the day.


Get it, it's the same effect as actual Kagemaro! Also one of the two best commons in black along with Sink into Takenuma, because, again, Saviors is a set where all the cards suck.


Justice Strike does it better. Remember that Great Designer Search where they tricked people by asking if Lightning Helix could be a monocolor card so that they forgot Essence Drain? (but I like this card, and I wish it was an instant or 1B or literally anything)

/
If you really want your wraths to be uncounterable, the rates on these are bad enough to make them not dangerous.


Great if you want a red Armageddon. You just don't, probably.

/
It's been 20 years and I still don't know which of these is the best common in the set. I know I'm biased in favor of Elder Pine because it's slow durdly garbage that stacks my entire deck rather than just killing my opponent. But I really don't know.


Block playable (barely), Modern Pro Tour-winning, never anything in between.


Did this really need to be symmetric? Also draws the game with Ashaya, Soul of the Wild, whatever.

(We all know about Ebony Owl Netsuke t8ing a Standard Pro Tour so I won't waste your time with that.)


Someone here hasn't seen this and should at least consider it. Sac outlet + Lifegain + taps for colorless, the rate's not great on any of it but it's a perfectly cromulent card.

 

[Mown]

Erayo would be in my cube, but I think I struggled making it in cardconjurer when I was making my mpc order for reasons I don't necessarily remember.