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

shamizy

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.
 
ravnic

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:

 
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Onderzeeboot

Onderzeeboot

Ecstatic Orb

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!
 
ravnic

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

Onderzeeboot

Ecstatic Orb
ravnic said:
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.
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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.
 
wahoopride

wahoopride

Onderzeeboot said:
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.
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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
 
MilesOfficial

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 {1}{U} 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.
 
Seeker

Seeker

MilesOfficial said:
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?).
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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

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.
 
ravnic

ravnic

Regarding vibes and art, SOK, like the whole Kamigawa block, was one of the all time best sets imo. That makes it even more painful how bad the designs were, mechanically, for huge parts of the set. Like other said before, it really feels like the theme was "prevent people from playing the game" ...

I was surprised how few cards from SOK are in my cube.



This is the only card in my core cube. A noncreature spell that creates multiple bodies and triggers on death branches multiple themes for me. It also sacs itself so it can be recurred with Sevinne's Reclamation. Pretty cool card that I like enough that it survived my attempts to reduce unique tokens so far.




This card is exactly what occasionals are for. Like Miles pointed out, it is not fun losing to it, but when that happens once every ten drafts, the excitement trumps that easily imo. Has yet to happen, but people love these wacky effects, so it will happen at some point.
 
PyreDream

PyreDream

MilesOfficial said:
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.
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I was going to say that only three cards care about having seven cards in hand - Ebony Owl Netsuke, Ivory Crane Netsuke, and Scroll of Origins and they exist only because they're such clear callbacks to older cards that just happen to play well with the actual theme (Black Vise, Ivory Tower, and Library of Alexandria). I didn't think it was fair to imply that the entire set is all about seven-cards-matter, but then there's two random critters at common in the form of Akki Underling and Deathmask Nezumi. To me it seems like they didn't even believe in their own mechanic enough to support it properly, so there's all this vestigial support for it that exists in a weird thematic tension between wanting more cards in hand than your opponent and wanting exactly seven cards in hand, and sometimes just wanting four cards in hand.

That being said, the set does have cantrips (Curtain of Light, Rending Vines, Dosan's Oldest Chant) even if they're not particularly maindeckable. I suppose that if I put my designer hat on, I might guess that they were deliberately staying away from cantrips and experimenting with weirdass ways of putting cards in your hand, like the moonfolk's Trade Routes mechanic, the Sweep mechanic (not much point in trying to build around it though, because 3/4 of them basically end the game) , splice encouraging you to keep the spliced spell in hand, reducing the opponent's hand size, the Stampeding Serow mechanic, the Niko-Onna mechanic, big plays like Overwhelming Intellect or Death Denied, the soulshift mechanic. Even Epic kinda pushes you to keep cards in hand. That's a lot of stuff to work with, but it's all so clunky.

Interestingly, the karoo lands from Ravnica would have worked much better in this set with whatever they were trying to push.

Putting One With Nothing in the set that cares about having cards in hand was certainly a decision.

For more specialized cubes, I have Death Denied in a pauper cube. It occupies a uniquely powerful slot at common since it functions as a 5 mana instant that can reload you for a big play on your turn, and scales down or up as the game dictates. Black gets very few instant speed options at common that aren't removal, so having spells like Death Denied lets you do things even with nothing to kill.

And Reki, History of Kamigawa is like one of the main reasons to have a legendary cube.
 
Seeker

Seeker

PyreDream said:
I was going to say that only three cards care about having seven cards in hand - Ebony Owl Netsuke, Ivory Crane Netsuke, and Scroll of Origins and they exist only because they're such clear callbacks to older cards that just happen to play well with the actual theme (Black Vise, Ivory Tower, and Library of Alexandria). I didn't think it was fair to imply that the entire set is all about seven-cards-matter, but then there's two random critters at common in the form of Akki Underling and Deathmask Nezumi. To me it seems like they didn't even believe in their own mechanic enough to support it properly, so there's all this vestigial support for it that exists in a weird thematic tension between wanting more cards in hand than your opponent and wanting exactly seven cards in hand, and sometimes just wanting four cards in hand.
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It's not exactly seven! It's seven or more!


And in addition to "7+" and "4+" there's "just have more" (we've already posted Descendant of Kiyomaro/Exile Into Darkness but there's also Secretkeeper and unplayable garbage like Kitsune Bonesetter)

A record that I can only imagine will never be broken: SOK is a 165 card set, and it has a whopping 71 cards with "hand" in their Oracle text, 43% of the set.

Admittedly, this includes bounce and discard, but for comparison, Fifth Dawn has 17.
Dissension, with multiple cycles and two whole mechanics that all reference hands, still only hits 53.

...SOK also has Hand of Honor/Hand of Cruelty. So you can cheat and get that number even higher if you so choose.
 
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MilesOfficial

MilesOfficial

Day: 028
Set: Magic 2013 (M13)
Release Date: June 3, 2005
Cards: 249 (~100 new)
Design & Development: Doug Beyer (Design Lead), Zac Hill (Development Lead)
Art Direction: Jeremy Jarvis
All New Cards, Sorted by ELO: Link

I don't have much to say about this set. This came out when I was playing standard most aggressively, so I poured over it in a way that non-Titan cards from Core sets don't really merit (hi Thragtusk), but I liked the new legends for the burgeoning EDH scene, which finally was relatively easy to play at an LGS. The limited format was boring. But what is great about it is the refreshed staple cards and cards that should always have existed like:



I don't run any cards from this set any longer, but there are some great individual designs:



Ajani, Caller of the Pride was one of my favorite Planeswalkers from the era where they were far too over-represented in Cube. It felt strong but not oppressive, really asking a lot of out you as a player to make the most of it. Basri Ket pretty much ruined Ajani's chances of returning to my Cube (who I also no longer play) but I have fond memories of getting got with my greedy decks by my friends who leaned on Ajani.



Krenko, Mob Boss was an early commander for me, and an endlessly fun build-around for red midrange decks during the 2010s in my Cube. So much of my red section then was goblin-focused, and it only got better as more goblin token makers were printed in the years following. Surely too slow for what I do these days, but still a must-kill threat in any medium or slow environment.



neat2.png



I ran this for a while, and it never really worked. But I always really wanted it to.



This is the kind of evocative design that I love core sets for. I wish the knobs on it were tweaked such that I could justify it, and I do like Smoldering Egg and am frequently tempted to put it back in, but the Slumbering part of this dragon is really the most engaging part.



I ran Thundermaw Hellkite for a long time... more than 13 years, jeez! I only took it out earlier this year, but I'm amazed at how much I don't miss it. It kind of makes me sad. It went straight into the red box, skipping the on-deck binder altogether. Kind of wild. It shows you the meaning of haste!
 
Seeker

Seeker

I love Augur of Bolas, the piece of garbage that always whiffs and makes me mad. Still love it though. It's no Thundertrap Trainer so obviously I don't run it anymore.

Omniscience isn't in my cube for obvious reasons, but any cube that it is in can probably trick me into first-picking it.

Talrand's Invocation is nothing to write home about, but I actually like it better than Talrand, Sky Summoner himself. It just does what it does and it's a fair rate.

Disciple of Bolas was in and out for a bit for me. It's a fun one. We ended up getting Disciple of Freyalise a decade+ later in MH3 and that's more like it!

I do love me a Chronomaton but it's not really all that fun to play with or against. I just think it's neat! Everyone's got a potato in this set apparently.
 
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