It’s time for another cube review, this time… IN SPACE!
Since the Aetherdrift review, two scales were used for rating cards: power and vibes. The latter scale looked to encompass the non-power ratings that people use for rating cards. I’ve decided to name it the “vibes” scale instead, since it encompasses the concept better. The power scale is based on how we think the cards are, power-wise, in a generalist nature (but may be in some way influenced by our individualcubes.)
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Inspired by Scuffle D. Lux’s set reviews, I’m noting a power level band for some cards, since some are highly contextual and it’s about time that reviews do that more often (I had done that when talking about Tifa Lockhart in the Final Fantasy review) using the “floor” as the average cube case with the higher number being its ceiling.
As I’ve been doing for years, my method of trying new cards out new cards is to seed them in during weekly cube drafts. Unfortunately, due to cancellations, we haven’t been able to get in as many reps with the new cards as I would have liked, especially as I didduring Final Fantasy previewseason.
For the tl;dr, these are my 10 favorites from the set:
As you can tell by the top 10, I don’t think this is a pushed power level set but it has some nice role-fillers.
Major Mechanics:
Void - “It’s a bad revolt; they’re bad because they don't work with fetches” is something I’ve already heard too many times when looking at evaluations of cards with Void, since it’s escaping having to critically think about the cards from Void not working with the most obvious enablers of revolt. A pattern I’ve noticed over time is when there’s a riff on something that isn’t represented often, evaluation tends to get overly centered around that initial point of comparison. This truncated graphic that my buddy Erik made for the Heirloom Blade article sums it up well:
Void still works with most of the things that work with Revolt: things that blink themselves or other things (and there’s already some solid white enablers of this which aren’t a big power level hit: Nurturing Pixie, Sunpearl Kirin, Ambrosia Whiteheart), sacrifice, good ol’ chump attacking and even working off of your opponent’s things getting removed - making Void closer to something like Morbid-meets-Revolt than purely as a “bad Revolt.” Void wasn’t always live, but was live more often than you’d think, especially with Plasma Bolt.
Warp - Blink cards like Ephemerate and Touch the Spirit Realm work incredibly well with Warp cards since they let you keep the creatures out, like with Void, these… kinda with sacrifice cards, at least if you’re thinking that the game isn’t going to go long and cards that grant haste like Lavaspur Boots, Lightning Greaves and Rabbit Battery are cards that I found were great for turning the temporary Warp mode into some real damage.
There’s some minor upsides and downsides with the warp cards having higher costs - they work well with cards like Up the Beanstalk and other things that care about high mana value and are worse with Dark Confidant and friends.
Many of the better adventure cards have had modes with an inherently equal or cheaper adventure mode like Brazen Borrower, Bonecrusher Giant, Questing Druid and Kellan, Daring Traveler (the only exception has been Hildibrand Manderville) so that the default play was to adventure them and to then cast the creature mode when you had nothing better to do. Many of the marquee Warp cards played this way, where you were incentivized to warp something out earlier and then cast the creature for full retail cost later on.
That’s something that’s been a factor in these warp cards, they don’t feel like the all-or-nothing nature that Evoke had, where if you needed to evoke something out to get the best use out of your mana, it was something you did. Warp does both.
Lander - These were some nice organic ways for landfall to happen, as a lot of cards like Rampant Growth and Farseek were usually on the weaker side of things to do in green, even back in the early days of cube. Obviously, not all of the cards that use Landers are priced to move, but they’re nice with the landfall payoffs in Final Fantasy, using these. With landfall, they also represent some on-board combat trick potential to make combat math weird, or just some good burst damage if you need it.
I’ve been using the green landscapes (shoutouts to heisenb3rg on discord for the idea) in my own cube to success and these give a nice little boost to that, since it helps with not only buffing landfall strategies but also with cards that care about lands in the graveyard.
Spacecraft/Planets - My gut is that these were likely overly cautiously made, since there’s cards like “Combo Golem” which work well with the Spacecraft with high “crew” cost.
Boiled down, there are types of spacecraft: Ones with a low crew mode and an “ultimate” like Uthros Research Craft. Ones with an ETB but with higher crew mode, that generally takes several turns to go active, like The Seriema. The 5 planets are similar with having an astronomically high “crew” cost, and I’m thinking that the Mars riff is the marquee one of the cycle, much like with Gustav Holst’s Mars, the Bringer of War in The Planets.
Theoretically, these can be crewed with creatures that have nothing better to do but the impression that I got was that it required tapping a creature or two over several turns to make these active. The whole “the opponent can see this coming from a while away and they just die to removal” thing seems like it’s going to be the common case for it and I really just hope that it isn’t, ala Omen when they were dismissed as “bad adventures” - missing out on cards like Marang River Regent.
Things that care about artifacts! I’ve found over the years that cards that create artifacts or happen to make artifacts helpful to make artifact decks/artifact parasitic cards tick, since cards like Thraben Inspector and Securitron Squadron are solid cards even in cube decks that don’t care about artifacts. It helps to help cards like Nettlecyst to hit the critical mass to be worth playing in a deck. Recent cards like Astrologian’s Planisphere are nice to see as artifacts and we have more in this set.
Like many when first seeing the card, I had a lot of hype for it but I’ve come down on it since, although I still think it’s a solid add for cube aggro decks.
It’s pretty good as a tempo play that slows the opponent down - it isn’t that high impact which is why I’ve come down on it, but it does throw some sand at the opponent’s face, which is nice. Hosing lands is a good fail case as well, since it only makes revealing a tapland a true whiff. Even though it’s more a Ravenous Rat than an Elite Spellbinder, due to the opponent having a choice, the body is still fine for the rate and works surprisingly well with all of the blink that’s in white - there aren’t many good 1-drops that are blink targets and while the payoff isn’t worth a whole card, it’s still something nice to blink with a Phelia or Flickerwisp if need be. I don’t see vigilance being super relevant unless it becomes buffed, but if the spacecraft are better than I think, it’s a nice bonus for that as well.
It’s another Portable Hole and plays similarly as a card that hits more than you’d think, but one that’s slightly less good because there aren’t many good enchantment payoffs in cube. If you’re playing Portable Hole and on singleton inclusions, you’re likely in the market for this one too.
Like with Monastery Mentor and friends, this gets better with a bunch of cheap stuff so that this can consistently make bodies. Being a creature means that it has some vulnerabilities that Cori-Steel Cutter doesn’t have (Cutter doesn’t die to Doom Blade) but the token making mode creating 2 bodies makes it if you get it to Raise the Alarm once, it’s fine if it gets Doom Bladed, and if it you get it to trigger twice, it’s on the better side of cubable 3-drops (even with the high competition there.)
Unlike a lot of the ones from Kaldheim, the rate is still *fine* as a 3-mana 2/4 and the payoffs are significantly better than just getting a 1/1 flyer. I’m giving a mid rating since white 3s are so good in the “cube with rares” space these days, but the potential is absolutely there (and even better with lower curves/fast mana.)
Trainmaster Note:
I love how this card works as “single card archetype” enabler that helps to further spell-velocity’s foothold in White. Tarkir: Dragonstorm really did not give White any flurry cards that were remotely close to as interesting Red’s Cori-Steel Cutter. Cosmogrand Zenith helps to rectify this situation!
Like with the newest Tezzeret, this one is mainly contextual with the strength of 0 and 1-drops in a deck, since getting a basic Plains is the failsafe mode on this. Some things that this can fetch, like Mother of Runes, Walking Ballista and Guide of Souls still hold value in the later game.
When looking at toolbox cards like Stoneforge Mystic or Cloud, I generally want either a *very* good target (so that you effectively have a second copy) or a robust toolbox of cards to find. Creatures like the above 3 are good examples of solid cards that you don’t mind playing on turns 3+ but ones like Kytheon, Esper Sentinel and Descendent of Storms don’t age as well. That said, it could be that having a toolbox of 5+ 1-drops to get in the late game is enough, if they have enough gameplay spread. That and it may just be a way to tutor up a ham sandwich to apply pressure.
Like with a lot of warp cards, the 5-mana mode was a mode if you had nothing better to do, since the body’s pretty middling and the Warp mode was one that usually just felt below-rate unless you were tutoring for a busted 1-drop. In theory, it’s a 3-for-1, but the rate is just so low on the cards that I never felt that this passed the “base rate test”, where there’s a mode that does something on a base rate that you want a card to do something (ala Shriekmaw and Burst Lightning.)
I’ve heard some praise for this card but I’m just not feeling it.
Cards that raise small creatures back from the grave tend to play worse than they look, since they can just rot in the hand if there’s not a dead creature to bring back. This one is notable because it works nicely with 0 drops, especially Hangarback Walker and Walking Ballista, as it loses some luster outside of that, but it is nice that it gives a stat boost to the army that comes back - getting back at least a 1-drop and a 2-drop is a pretty sizable boost to them.
I still don’t think this will be great with decks with no 0-drops, but I’m hoping to be pleasantly surprised.
Sunstar Chaplain (not Sinistar) is something that I’ve heard compared to Luminarch Aspirant and in the grand scheme of things, it likely is due to Aspirant being able to attack as a 3/3 if going all-in on it, but I can’t help but think of this more as different than Aspirant, as this is more of a payoff for going wide rather than a self-contained engine, since it has a sizable body as is and gets to above-rate state if it triggers once.
The activated ability is mostly just there to make blocking potentially annoying for an opponent when representing an alpha strike. But all of that said, white 2-drops are likely going to push this out of contention in a lot of cubes because of competition being so fierce.
As time has gone on, I’ve been cooler on this It is nice that this becomes an anthem with only a 2-drop and, in theory, a curve of 1-drop into this makes it active, but I just can’t help but think that this is just a worse anthem, since those don’t require help to become active. So far, I’ve been evaluating these Spacecraft with 2 modes as having their last mode as the “ultimate”, and its anthem does help to hit the ultimate, but even that doesn’t seem that great.
Like I said at the top, I really am hoping that there’s a good Spacecraft out there, but this and The Seriema always felt so below-rate when cast, since they took so much work to become active.
I’m still iffy on this, but Yoman5 said this which piqued my interest: “This is actually a really nice split card for white aggro. It's nice to see something like an Elspeth’s Smite tacked on to protection so that white aggro can interact with more deck types at once”
I’ve personally been enjoying having more good combat tricks ala Monstrous Rage and Yuna’s Whistle in my cube and in theory, having a mode that deals with creatures helps in the times when this is bad, but I have the feeling that this might be like Goblin Cratermaker these days, a jack of all trades but not good enough at either for cube.
I’m hesitant on this because I don’t think a white Krenko’s Command does enough in most cube worlds these days and that it really needs flash/instant for that base rate to be worth it and the ability to turn it into an equipment for 6 mana is a lot. Arguably, it’s something to do when flooded out and can potentially make combat math awkward for an opponent when you turn this into a piece of equipment, and this at least isn’t gated to sorcery speed and puts the equipment directly into play. I don’t see us getting more Kaldra Compleat/Batterskull types of equipment, but I could see its role being as a combo card with those.
But that 6 mana cost makes me *very* hesitant to say that.
A lot of the discourse that I’ve seen about this has been around comparing this to Stock Up, since it plays somewhat similarly by letting you dig pretty deep and choosing some cards.
But I found it wasn't the best point of comparison - comparing it to something like an Impulse was a better comparison. Cards like Impulse are never the all-stars in a cube deck, but they’re good cards that tie the room together, by representing something to do when holding up counterspell magic.
Some points of comparison were that “it’s a bad Impulse” because it doesn’t dig very far in the early stage of the game, which dismisses how useful this is in the late game. It makes sense because it’s not a common axis of evaluation, but I found that it played remarkably well on turns 5+ and it wasn’t uncommon to just fire it off for 2 mana. In general, I found that the unkicked mode was its primary mode and found that the kicker mode was upside, making it closer to something like Burst Lightning, where its primary mode was fine and had a pretty good kicker mode.
Initial thought is that it’s worse than Stock Up, but not by a lot, but that it’s one of the best Impulse variants. Adjust expectations accordingly and you’ll see why the card is good.
If played as a mid-game play without a small hand, it’s not very good, as it emulates Young Blue Dragon with a worse “adventure” and a better frontside, so the juice with this is in decks with low mana curves, much like with Possibility Technician. This plays worse than the Technician in decks with low curves since it’s going to be harder to cast this as a 5-mana threat, but it’s something to do in the late game as something to potentially refuel. In theory, this could also be a card to splash for in beatdown decks as a virtual draw 2 for 2, which may depend on whether it’s worth the splash, but my gut feeling is that it probably isn’t.
Still, I give it high marks for its potential and how absurd it can be with cantrips.
TrainmasterGT Comment:
I really want to put this into a deck with Up the Beanstalk. Can you imagine the value? Pepperidge Farm Imagines.
Like Ichor Wellspring meets Think Twice (kinda), it’s a way to effectively cantrip for 2 and to potentially another by cashing it out or sacrificing it for free, the latter of which we have seen with cards like Umbral Collar Zealot. It’s another type of card that I don’t think gets there in a lot of metas if played fairly, but gets so much better if you can reliably sacrifice it, since locking something down if it’s tapped isn’t useless but… isn’t great either. It’s at least something that can be done at instant speed.
I’m lumping these together since they’re artifact-centric cards that mainly look to be best with a lot of support, although Emissary Escort has one of the better floors since it defends as an 0/4 and can, theoretically, close the game out when the coast is clear, but it might just be a 2/4 via mana rocks which is fine. Uthros Research Craft requires crewing with a decent amount of creatures to be worth it, and I get the feeling that it won’t be worth the mana investment.
I really do hope that one of these Spacecraft get there in cube - if so, I get the feeling that the research craft will be one of them that does.
Although it needs help to do something on the turn when it’s a turn 4 play via its combat damage trigger, the void on Elegy Acolyte is very real on it. It was nice that the bodies that it created helped to enable itself ala Alchemy hidden gem Xander’s Wake via chump attacking and removal, and it wasn’t uncommon for it to at least make a robot. Being a 4/4 lifelink was useful in the aggressive mirrors to race and even though this is only gated at one draw per turn, usually that was enough for me to be satisfied.
This was another one that I was unable to try out, but I’m mostly curious on this because it just hits so hard and targeting it with spot removal requires a discard ala Graveyard Trespasser, which had a very real ward cost. Having menace means that this doesn’t just trade with a 1/1. It’s priced low enough to where a beatstick with a drawback could potentially get there, but I get the feeling that this is going to be either absurd or unplayable. So, 3.
Like Tenacious Underdog, it’s a 2-drop with fine stats that comes back from the graveyard. I like that this inherently has haste and has a dirt-cheap warp cost - even if I expect it to be mostly utilized from the graveyard and not hand, since it always represents a source of damage in the face of mass removal or something to buff this; it isn’t a machine gun with Goblin Bombardment, but it is at least another point of damage which is nice.
Like with Frenzied Baloth, it’s a double-pip card in a color that doesn’t always lean aggressive, but its ability recur easily helps - although I do expect the lifeloss to be a liability in more aggressive mirrors.
Trainmaster Comment:
This card is an excellent use of the Warp mechanic: it’s a novel spin on the keyword with real gameplay implications! While I can’t yet speak to the card’s quality, I think it provides some interesting synergy opportunities which will give it potential homes in many environments!
I’ve usually been loath to play aristocrats style decks in cube since they require a lot of moving pieces and it usually doesn’t pan out very well. Cards like Sephiroth and the recently resurged Goblin Bombardment, along with cards that produce tokens (while still being fine on-rate) seek to change that narrative. Umbral Collar Zealot is a card that interests me because of it being a fine on-rate threat that is also a sacrifice outlet, especially since it doesn’t require mana, which is massive for these kinds of sacrifice cards.
Surveil is a big upgrade too, since you can proactively dump things in the graveyard with this, which is always nice with recursive threats. I would like some more good engines with it, since cards like the original Braids and Smokestack are long in the tooth these days, but if the archetype works well, it’ll be off of the back of cards like this.
Like with Archmage’s and Archdruid’s charms, all of the modes are about on-rate with what the color does for the cost (Counterspell/Quick Study/Dominate for 1?) with none of the modes being particularly efficient but having enough gameplay spread to cover the bases of many game states. I’m hedging on this covering a similar spread.
My concern is that the mode that I see this using most often is the Hero’s Downfall mode, which is… fine by current standards, but triple back is annoying as blue and green are able to swing the triple costs most easily (being colors that play to the late game/ having access to better mana fixing) which makes it difficult.
The last mode emulates the creature-boosting mode on Gix’s Command but being an instant helps make it a combat trick.
It might just be that the 2x Raise Dead/Raise… Planeswalker is the mode that ties the room together ala Kolaghan’s Command, where it looks like it’s weakest on-rate but it’s remarkably useful when it’s live. It’s another card that I’m trying out but wouldn’t be surprised for it to get shoved into the maybeboard before 2026.
Much like with Grim Bauble, the juice is trading relative efficiency with the potential of using it as a game object to re-use/sacrifice and its on-board abilities. I ended up souring on Grim Bauble and Momentum Breaker as I preferred more efficient options, but more self-bounce may move that needle but I doubt that the needle can be moved that much in the face of a 3-mana buy-in cost.
I’m cautiously optimistic about this since it can do a lot of things, although I haven’t had a chance to try this one out yet. Fell Stinger is a pretty obvious comparison and it’s worse at that mode, but it does have some potential with working well with chump attacks and potentially being something to clear the way for lethal damage. These Euthanist effects never really get there in cube since their rates are poor, which makes me weary.
The warp mode is mostly for the decks with low curves ala Amped Raptor and Summon: Brynhildr, as the payoff with this is getting a Elkin Bottle-style draw and then getting it for free on top of a 3/3 later on. The “3-for-1” fits this much better than Starfield Shepherd, since you’re getting draws out of this, even if they may just be temporary. Like with Quantum Riddler, it’s a card that you really want low mana curves for, to be able to reliably get a card’s worth out of it and the hardcast mode of 3 isn’t bad either if it draws a card.
Red skews low enough to where I have its power level average as higher than with the riddler; since there aren’t many Kavu. it’s mostly just idealized evaluation, and should be considered as just a standalone thing, but fun when it happens.
Easily a 5 on the vibes scale that has some potential if a deck is able to get its mana’s worth. I’ve been using 2-4 power as a band but this is one where I feel that strongly fits - since it doesn’t do anything on its own if played on turn 4, it requires untapping with it to get its true potential which prevents it from being something mega-powerful, but the potential is *certainly* there.
Although the artifact text looks like flavor text, some things like Portal to Phyrexia and Coveted Jewel play remarkably well with it, alongside the usual types of “big creatures that do things” threats, which stick around in the exile zone to be hardcast later, if need be.
Other creatures having haste isn’t useless either, since it does help midrange threats swing if you have the mana to hardcast them instead of warping them into play.
Overall, I’m thinking that this will be a pretty good card for midrange decks, but one where its power may be curtailed by removal.
I mentioned Plasma Bolt at the top of the article as a marquee example of Void being better than it looks. There’s a mile gap between 2 and 3 damage, and since individual Lava Spikes don’t tend to be very good without critical mass, Lava Spike decks (without breaking singleton,) don’t manifest in cube that often, since a Boltwave isn’t good without a LOT of help since the deck mainly just wants to deal 20 with bolts ASAP ala the Philosophy of Fire.
Because of that, usually these types of bolts tend to manifest in red aggro - an archetype that’s in a similar vein and a deck that tends to share similar pieces (Monastery Swiftspear, Lightning Bolt) but isn’t not the same, per Patrick Chapin’s Next Level Deckbuilding:
I was around when Tragic Slip was hyped to hell and didn’t perform to my lukewarm expectations, so there’s some precedent on this not working out in cube, but a sorcery speed Shock looked to be a fine enough floor. In the following red deck:
It performed pretty well, as the drafter noted this, regarding if Void on it was active:
“More often than I thought it would be. Nova Hellkite enabled it once, and I also played the Walking Ballista for 2, sacrificed it to deal a point & then bolted for 3 (that was fun). And that’s not counting a few times where I attacked with some guys that were obviously destined to get blocked & killed, allowing me to net the additional point of damage. It was an all-around fun card that proved to be more versatile than I expected it to be.”
TrainmasterGT Comment:
This card is the first “build-a-bolt” card that can hit players. In fact, this is the first new one-mana card that can deal three damage to a creature or player since Collateral Damage in 2015. While I think this card is played pretty safe from a balance perspective, the fact that we are getting it at all means WOTC is comfortable with charting design space which really hasn’t been explored since the early days of Magic!
I’ve heard comparisons to this and Grim Lavamancer but this is harder to activate - Grim Lavamancer usually got enough fuel by just playing the game, and getting artifacts in the graveyard takes significantly more work. Things like thebaubles and Chromatic Star/Sphere can do some lifting to give this fodder - I’m just unsure how often you want Star/Sphere in the aggressive decks that want Harvester. Its activated ability gets much better with buffs, though and being a 1/1 menace as a floor isn’t awful… but it’s not that great either, by 2025 standards.
Currently, it’s not that easy to organically support, but it’s one of those cards that get better with time, as we get more “thisgoodcreature just happens to be an artifact” types of threats, this can be easier to make work since the opponent is incentivized to kill those threats, providing more fuel.
But even with all of that said, the impression that I got was that it was fine. It not being a quick clock didn’t align with the red aggro gameplan, but it being something that represented damage when the opponent was at a low life total was still fine. I get the feeling that it’ll eventually make its way to my cube’s maybeboard and then come out of retirement later.
I’ve been looking at this as less of a dragon and more of a Flames of the Blood Hand with kinda-flashback ala Hell’s Thunder, where being cast for 5 lets you have a permanent threat ala 2025 creature power level. As mentioned earlier, pure Lava Spikes don’t tend to be very good in cubes, making it a rough sell as a turn 3 play, since you’d rather just play something with board presence. The mono-red deck with Plasma Bolt had this and it was nice that a single card represented 8 damage, even if it was inefficient at that role, since the option was there.
But it’s also a bog standard 5-mana dragon, which we’ve seen over the years, which is a nice mode to have to close games out.
Something dying to the 1 damage makes it better vs small creature decks and mana elves, somewhat like a mana elf hoser, but you never really *want* to use this to kill a mana elf on turn 3 so I’m unsure how much that really holds up. It could just be that it just helps your smaller burn take down bigger things, but I hadn’t seen that occur.
I’m cautiously optimistic that this works out as a pure burn spell that can play in aggressive decks that also happens to have a dragon upside, rather than as a dragon that’s just ok by modern creature standards.
Over the years, I’ve dabbled with cards that care about artifacts and some of the cards that do some quiet heavy lifting are those that naturally add high artifact counts to the board for decks that care about that, but are also solid cards for decks that don’t care about artifact counts.
Although it looks like an Usher of the Fallen riff, since the robot isn’t permanent, its activated ability is mostly there for the later stages of the game to extract value out your early game threats into the late game. Cards that care about warm bodies (even if temporary), artifacts and/or wide boards are potential use cases, but I’m mainly looking at this as a 2-mana card with late game use, ala Greasewrench Goblin. It’s definitely better with cards that can utilize a temporary body, like cards with void, Sephiroth, Goblin Bombardment, etc.
My expectations are pretty middle of the road for it, but I’m hopeful that the little things that it brings to the table push it from being a filler-tier red aggro beater.
This is another in the line cards like Through the Breach with a line that lets the card as an AOE that deals damage - the artifact text won’t matter too much since most big artifacts happen to be creatures, but it’ll be nice when that happens (Portal to Phyrexia, The Endstone.) It’s interesting to note that the “blow up all of the things” mode isn’t a strict upside. There was a mostly-green deck that was drafted that could have potentially played it, but since the deck had a lot of creatures, the AOE would have been a drawback, since the deck played to the board so heavily.
The high cost also makes me think of it more as a bargain bin Through the Breach piece to support cheatyface decks.
Green:
As mentioned above, using the green landscapes and some other underplayedlands have been helping to organically make landfall shenanigans happen more - I haven’t gone down the Baltimore singleton path yet. The best cards that make landers are in green, which is also where the best landfall payoffs/enablers are, making it a strength that can be integrated without having to sacrifice strength.
It’s a 2/2 for 1 in green, with a death trigger that arguably isn’t even a drawback, especially if green is tailored to make better use of landfall than the opponent. Green often manifests in strategies that go bigger than the opponent, which makes me unsure on how well it’ll play with most green decks’ game plans in cube but as a pure beater, it’s very good with reach not being flavor text either.
Trainmaster Comments:
I’ve been calling this card “Green Goblin Guide,” although I don’t know if the cards are actually comparable in function. While it doesn’t have Haste, it doesn’t have nearly as much of a downside. The nice thing about this card is that even though the Lander creation is symmetrical, the opponent will still have to sink two mana into utilizing the effect, making it less of a drawback than one might initially expect.
I’ve usually been mid on Crucible of Worlds type effects in cube, since they’re usually not very powerful and usually tend to not be worth the initial cost of mana investment unless you have a lot of fetchlands in a deck. Arguably, this has similar pitfalls - it cares about lands in the graveyard and has an Explore text that may not matter much on turn 4.
[Edit: I usually don’t edit these articles but I did forget to mention that it does work incredibly well with Wasteland and Strip Mine, the latter having done some heavy lifting to make Crucible effects better (although I’d argue that cubes with Strip Mine in them are generally beyond the power level of Crucible effects) so I’ve bumped it up to a 4-4.25. They’re nice ways to be proactive with these effects and not just getting lands. The Horizon lands are nice too, since being able to double-land makes it so that cracking those lands aren’t tempo-negative.]
Combined, I’ve found those abilities worked incredibly well together (although that could be in part from playing green landscapes) by being able to represent playing a fetchland from the graveyard even after playing it - if it dies to removal, it’s still not great, but being able to get a fetchland from the grave was still a fine consolation prize. Untapping with it usually meant rifling through the deck (if there was a fetchland) so it does have the issue that Crucible of Worlds effects have - it’s pretty mid if you don’t have a few fetches in the deck, but it’s good enough with them that I liked how it played with them so far.
The “lands entering untapped” thing wasn’t as much of a factor outside of the lander ability since there aren’t many lands that enter tapped outside of the MKM surveil lands and creature lands ala Restless Anchorage, which made cracking a lander virtually cost 1, which really helped for ramping quickly.
It was nice that it triggered on ANY attack, not just from it attacking, so that it could work with other creatures, but having 4 toughness helped make it so that it could attack early without many problems.
I decided to try this out on a whim and it performed much better than I expected, given the relative lack of attention that it’s received. It looked like it would be useless, but I found that even with a small board state, it can get out of hand quickly and even on its own, it doesn’t take long for it to become a solid beatstick, as it initially blocks as a 2/4, attacks as a 4/6 - which doesn’t even count other creatures which also just get huge. Buffing this with something like equipment or a planeswalker buff is nice, but I didn’t see that happen, mainly just being a self-contained threat. It is annoying if it dies to a removal spell, but like with a lot of things, usually I found that to be an exaggerated concern.
Density of removal can make this worse, since it does need to survive to a combat step to do anything, but I’ve been finding it to be a solid performer thus far.
Like with Tifa, this represents a ton of burst damage if you have a few ways to get lands into play; it makes it so that the Warp mode isn’t flavor text - if the coast is clear, but having the ability to just play this on a later turn makes that a lot less risky.
I’m giving it a pretty high ceiling on its potential, it’s another card that I haven’t been able to try out yet but I think that it might get there as part of a landfall strategy.
One with high potential if it’s pumped, since it’s a pushed rate on combat stats if buffed and mediocre if not; like Tifa, it’s a card that’s below rate if played fairly but gets significantly better with help, but it is nice it provides free Valianttriggers if that’s a thing in your cube. Equipment are a common sight in cube, but thankfully we’ve seen our fair share of combattricks and buffsthataresufficientlypowerful in a cube world and this triggering on tapping makes it a combo with vehicles too. I’m just weary on if the juice is worth the squeeze on this in a lot of cube metas.
While this doesn’t fit the landfall theme of the set, it’s a card that’s a generalist beatstick in green. The abilities other than trample and haste are mostly secondary to it being a pile of stats, which may be useful in a cube environment based on green’s goals. Double green makes it something that makes it difficult to play on turn 2 in a dual/multicolor deck, but it’s still fine on turn 3. This would be better in a color like red or white that plays more aggressively, I still like this in G/X aggressive decks, even if not played on turn 2.
My main concern is that it trades down with a lot of cards in aggressive decks, but if played early, that may not matter, but if using cards that care about damaging an opponent (monarch/initiative), that does help some.
While this does nothing on its own since it’s stunned for ages, like Titania, if you have a fetchland in play to sacrifice, it gets a 4/4 immediately, and promises to spam several 4/4s for little cost. The activated cost isn’t… completely useless either to make 4/4s, even if cost inefficient but it’s at least the opponent can’t respond to the ability with a kill spell.
Mass LD isn’t played in a lot of cubes these days, but it’s a combo there if you run those. Think of this as another Titania, even if it’s a bargain bin one.
This set’s Naturalize with a keyword, but this time having a benefit if it kills something cheap. In theory, it’s something to give you a bonus for killing a cheap mana rock but not giving board presence is annoying. I just don’t see these types of Naturalizes as being the force in cube that they once were, even with more cards that are naturally artifacts. I’m going to give this a whirl to see if this impression is wrong, though.
Pinnacle Emissary’s Warp is a great example of how it can be used early to burst out a bunch of cards if you have the potential for it, but also to just be played on turn 3 if you want. It’s a card that’s very reliant on hitting a critical mass of artifacts to get your mana’s worth out of it - I’d say getting 2 drones out of this is where it starts to feel like a good card. Played as a standalone card, it’s not very good but the ability to represent a lot of threats without additional mana investment makes me think that this has a very high ceiling. Given the “generic value spells” that Izzet has had in years past, I’m glad to see these kinds of high-value cards in the color pair.
I’m lumping these together since they’re cards that work with landfall and aren’t going to be high picks, but can be used as middle-of-the-road multicolor picks that shape color pair identity towards more landfall strategies. Biotech Specialist is kinda like an Explosive Veggies on top of your ⅓ for 2, which is something, and being able to represent double landfall off of either of these can make landfall threats a Godzilla-sized threat.
I’m mostly noting this since it looks to be the best “generic” spacecraft, as it kinda gives Shorukai vibes in its functionality as a vehicle-ish card that does its own thing. Not being able to do anything without something to crew it and mana is annoying and may just be the biggest downfall of it, and requires several turns to get your mana’s value worth, although getting to draw 2 off of a land is massive.
I’m mainly looking at this as a card to play with delve and other cards that care about exiling things - it works with adventure, warp and other things but I don’t see this being very good unless you have a few cards with delve to make this an actual threat. Powering this without delve via other means just doesn’t look like it’s worth it.
I haven’t heard a lot of attention about this card, but at least in its initial showings, it’s been pretty good as an aspirational top-end. One thing I found was something that hasn’t been talked about - if it stays in play, the opponent can’t win with chip damage anymore, which happens more often than you’d think as we’ve all seen our fair share of games where the board is stabilized and a ham sandwich closes out the game. With The Endstone in play, that’s no longer realistic, as I found it in games where the opponent had a sizable clock (5-7 damage) but it wasn’t enough to deal with the Endstone’s end game.
Unlike Extinguisher Battleship, as a Tinker target/top end - it’s something that can end the game fairly quickly as it snowballs fairly easily and it wasn’t uncommon for it to represent 3+ cards a turn. One drawback is that it is brutal if this thing gets destroyed without any cards drawn (the card’s power range reflects that vulnerability) and overall, I found it worse than Ugin, Eye of the Storms as top-end but it’s still a good ramp target.
This was played in the mono-red deck that had Plasma Bolt and it’s a good example of a Warp card, where its Warp was used first and then cast as creature later on, especially since the Vestige’s trigger is a leaves trigger, not an enter. You can never cheat mana with the trigger and it was mostly used to draw a card and then play something for 3-4 mana for 4 mana, which was fine - somewhat like a colorless riff on Explore.
I’m cautiously optimistic on it working out but I wouldn’t be surprised if it falls off before the end of the year either.
Trainmaster Comment:
I think this card is sweet! Most big Eldrazi aren’t priced to function on the same axis as normal Magic cards: they either require Colorless mana or cost eight or more mana to cast. As a six drop with a four mana ability, Anticausal Vestige is closer to where Magic decks normally want to play, while still feeling like a real Eldrazi due to its large size. This may be the single best Eldrazi design since Ulamog, the Ceaseless Hunger was printed ten years ago.
I didn’t find the + ability to be that useful since it was pretty middling outside of decks with mana rocks and mana elves. For the most part, it was mostly just a tutor for cheap artifacts and one that really ended up disappointing me, although it certainly gets much better in decks with multiple marquee 0-1 mana artifacts and ways to get its loyalty up quickly. Played fairly, though, meh.
As a cheat target, it has a decent trigger when it enters the battlefield, at least against creature decks, since it nukes their best threat and should kill everything else. It’s notable that its trigger isn’t a cast trigger, so it can work well with things like Goblin Welder and other things that repeatedly put it into play. It’s one of those Spacecraft that has a relatively low crew cost compared to its body (5+ crew, for a 10/10 flample) which ends games quickly, but requires some effort to do.
Usually cheat targets tend to be best if they can solo an opponent or at least end the game without a lot of help, and my concern with this is that it can’t really perform in that function.
Utility lands tend to have a hard time surviving in cube, especially ones that only produce colorless mana. Most don’t tend to be the all-stars in decks and they aren’t the types of cards that excite drafters and oftentimes in cubes, I tend to see the raw number of lands lower than I’d expect. Every once in a while, we get these types of “dude ranch” types of cards; historically, they’d represent an inevitable game clock to close out the game once the board is stable or to represent chump blockers. We recently got Fountainport, which is a card that isn’t represented in many cubes, and the overall talking point that I’ve heard about this is that it’s a worse Fountainport.
…but is it?
The artifact ability being sorcery speed does mean that it’s not a combat trick, but in artifact-heavy decks, means that it can just be used to aggressively trade warm bodies into larger threats and may be part of the puzzle on how this card can represent a very real quick clock, which cards like Fountainport don’t. Not having to lose life to make blockers isn’t nothing either, although requiring virtually 6 mana to make a blocker relegates this to “if I have nothing better to do” territory, which never hurt cards like Castle Ardenvale in Constructed formats, even if it had an inefficient rate of “5 mana for a 1/1.”
As much of a copout answer this is, I don’t think this is as much as better/worse than Fountainport as it is different, since this trades synergies with tokens with the ability to close out games quickly, via larger bodies and the activated ability. They’re likely close.
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