Includes:
Ranger-Captain of Eos: White 3 drop slot has gotten pretty stacked in recent years, but I'm very very interested in this one. The base 3/3 body is solid at the rate, the ability to tutor up an impact 1 drop like
Mother of Runes or
Giver of Runes or utility creatures like
Walking Ballista and
Hangarback Walker has some cool play to it. Sad day for my boy Ranger of Eos, but I hardly ever had a 2nd impact 1 drop to pick up and this coming down a turn earlier is just more appealing. The ability to blank out a wrath for a turn is crucial for W/x Aggro decks to cross the finish line and I feel like this will end up playing much better than it looks.
Giver of Runes:
Mother of Runes might be the most powerful 1 drop creature in White, maybe only 2nd all-time to
Deathrite Shaman, and this is a fairer riff on it with a slightly bigger bottom and similar gameplay without doing the weird flagbearer subgame. I'm a little bummed that it's not a human for my cube, glad that that's the case for Modern. It's going to be a solid 1 drop, I think Stepmom will remain in my cube for a very long time.
Winds of Abandon: This will be a straight replacement for Declaration in Stone which I like in aggressive decks, but have found myself disliking in just about every other W/x build because your opponent will often be able to grind out an advantage with that extra card at some point. I'm also trying to make a tokens subtheme work so getting rid of Declaration for this should help in that regard. I'm also very interested in the Overload mode because this can more or less function as a sorcery speed
Path to Exile or a 6 mana
Settle the Wreckage hybrid. I'm actually going to be able to free up that Settle slot as well for something else since this will be pulling double-duty, which is great. Also that art is fantastic, this'll be a very pretty foil.
Urza, Lord High Artificer: The card that is making me re-evaluate UR Artifacts as an archetype entirely. I'm working on an in-depth write-up centered on the archetype that I'll post sometime this week in my Cube Blog. He's a 1000% snap include.
Bazaar Trademage: That's a big body on a splashable flier. Going down a card isn't great in most scenarios, but being a roadblock while filling your grave with something relevant to reanimate is very appealing to me. I just love loot effects stapled to bodies.
Watcher for Tomorrow: I glanced over this one on the initial reveal, but the more I think about it the more I like it. It gives you an early body that you can block with after it untaps, looking at 4 and picking 1 is MUCH better than just drawing a card, and it plays well with any blink strategy giving you card selection and drawing you a card. It's also a Wizard, so janky
Riptide Laboratory loops can happen in grindier games.
Yawgmoth, Thran Physician: Incredible card. It's a sac outlet, an engine all on its own, and it's extremely flavorful. The 2/4 body ensures that he won't die to just any piece of common spot removal, can block effectively, and he'll have some staying power being able to shrink and deal with bigger bodies on his own. This is going to be gross with anything recurrable like
Bloodghast or
Gravecrawler. Might be even nastier in decks that can generate a bunch of token bodies for fodder. This +
Bitterblossom would be a very quick way to kill yourself but hey, greatness at any cost right?
Plague Engineer: I really like this card as a means of dealing with tokens and aggressive decks which can run right through games if they get set up. The 2/2 body is small enough that just about any piece of removal can deal with it, the -1/-1 is enough to kill most tokens produced in my cube, and I just think this is a really solid roleplayer in a variety of decks. You could also snipe down x/1s or use it as a weird one-shot removal spell after combat to get that final point of damage on a bigger body. Not bad at all. Saw it in action during LoadingReadyRun's pre-prerelease, did some serious work while out there. I think this will play better than it looks.
Seasoned Pyromancer: More loot effects stapled to bodies, hell yeah brother. Great card for token strategies, can put relevant cards into the graveyard for Reanimation/Daretti decks, and you can use it as a blocker and later cash it in for two more bodies at any point later in the game. Awesome card, that's a lot of value tied up in a tidy 1RR package.
Goblin Engineer: The 3rd card I've always needed to make Welder/Daretti decks more consistent. Red
Entomb, pseudo-Welder ability, and it's right on curve for these kind of decks at 2cmc. Excellent card, I can't wait to give this a run.
Magmatic Sinkhole: I really like this card as a means of dealing with big bodies or walker from an aggressive leaning R/x deck. It's not incredible, but I could see it being pretty solid value for a color that has issues dealing with bigger bodies. This is pretty much Red's
Murderous Cut. Nice.
Wrenn and Six: Another single card that made me want to try out an entire archetype in G/R Lands. I've got a lot of ideas for this one and a write-up on this will be coming down the pipeline at some point. I think this card is an All-Star, it's going to be incredible in action.
Soulherder: This card is such an awesome uncommon and signpost for a U/W blink subtheme. Doesn't require any additional hoops to jump through, gets going as soon as you reach the EOT, and it grows off any exile effect you might deploy. It's excellent along with amazing art to boot. I can't wait to grind some insane value with this and stuff like
Wall of Omens,
Blade Splicer,
Venser, Shaper Savant or even the upcoming
Urza, Lord High Artificer.
Scrapyard Recombiner: Wasn't too sure of this on first glace, but I like it the more that I think about it. Cashing in artifacts to tutor up constructs like any of the KLD Gearhulks or even
Myr Battlesphere is pretty sweet. Worst case you can transmute it into one of those a turn after deploying it. Anything that gives my Artifacts archetype further consistency is welcome in my cube with open arms.
All Canopy Lands except for B/W: I want to have the green ones in the cube to help out G/x decks by giving them some more gas in the late game, R/W land is excellent for aggressive strategies, and Fiery Islet is better than the U/R Manland. I actually really like
Shambling Vents power level wise, so I'll probably be keeping that in for my B/W decks.
Prismatic Vista: Pretty much another fetch, snap include. Nothing interesting to discuss.
Will Test:
Serra, the Benevolent: I've been wanting a 4 drop in White that was kind of token-y and could hold its own, a 4/4 Angel with a planeswalker attached (with gorgeous art) fits the bill. I don't like the gameplay that originates from either
Gideon, Ally of Zendikar or
Elspeth, Knight-Errant, but I feel like this is at the appropriate power level for what I want. I also like the weird plus ability interacting with existing fliers at 2 and 3 cmc slots in addition to token producers like
Lingering Souls,
Bitterblossom and
Spectral Procession. This might be the B/W tokens card I've been wanting for a while, eager to give it a try.
Generous Gift: This is definitely more a commander card than anything, but I find the idea of a White Elephant gift (except it's green, which bothers me) absolutely hilarious. Destroying any permanent is big game, not an effect we get very often, and it's right within White's slice of the color wheel. I'm gonna give this a run and see how it turns out.
Echo of Eons: I'm not very interested in playing full retail for this, but I am super interested in flashing this back in the late game after looting it away early to improve my card quality. This card changes drastically in effectiveness when it is
Timetwister vs.
Time Reversal. I could see this being big game for burn heavy U/R tempo decks refilling their hand with gas.
Tectonic Reformation: This card seems more cute than good, but the base case of just cycling it for 2 and getting a card is just fine with me. It's an interesting red card that isn't a creature or burn spell and I'm all for trying out more of these. Seems like a pretty decent card for a G/R Lands archetype I'm trying to build. I could see some cool things happening like a super cycle turn to churn through the deck alongside something like
Life From the Loam to get to something like
Multani, Yavimaya's Avatar or
Centaur Vinecrasher. This is also extremely gross if you can branch into black and play
The Gitrog Monster. That just sounds disgusting and seems like a ton of fun. I think I just convinced myself to move this to an Include.
Ore-Scale Guardian: I didn't even notice this card until right now. This looks like a nice signal for G/R lands. 4/4 Flying Haste is a fine rate at 5 mana for a normal card, if you can turbo this out any earlier it becomes really solid. I could see the base case of this being 3RR happening more often than not with my environment containing double fetches and other means of pitching lands into the grave. I like it, not bad at all.
Winding Way: Could be an okay support card for G/R lands and graveyard based G/x strategies. I'm not a fan of
Mulch in Cube and the looks at X pick on of Y or Z variants we've gotten in recent years haven't quite gotten there, but I kind of like the either-or of filling your hand with lands or bodies while pitching the other. I'm super duper excited for this in my Sidisi EDH deck though, you'll find me jamming this day 1.
Hogaak, Arisen Necropolis: I'm kind of interested in this, but Golgari is also my most stacked guild. I'll see if I can find space for it because it is pretty cool, but I don't really see it happening. I don't know how good this actually would be in practice because getting bricked is going to feel so bad, but recurrable threats from the graveyard that are humongous should never be underrated.
Good Fortune Unicorn: This is just a really strong uncommon that will play well in G/W Midrange. I don't really see a whole lot of synergies or anything super cool you can do with this in my cube, but you're mostly trying to smash with big bodies anyway so this will probably work out just fine. I guess there are cute infinite combo loops with
Kitchen Finks or
Murderous Redcap + this + sac outlet. I'll give it a shot, there aren't too many GW cards that are sacred cows for me aside from
Knight of the Reliquary.
