MTG Salvation

I dislike the promotion and won’t be playing with any of these cards unless they are functionally reprinted in another setting. The card itself compares pretty well to Sword of Body and Mind, but I think the color restriction combined with 6 mana for the initial equip makes it just a wee bit too narrow.

Yeah, I’m not really a fan of snow basics in cube either. In my mind it cheapens the balance these cards were designed around and contains none of the backwards compatibility or mana fixing decisions that colorless mana offers. I would offer basic Wastes long before basic snow lands, and I don’t do that either.

Generally speaking I count hybrids as “half a card” in each monocolor section. For example, if I’m running Finks and Dryad Militant in Selesnya, I’ll simply dock one slot from each monocolor section. If a tie needs to be broken, it’ll go against whichever color uses it more.

I guess if other colors want Search For Tomorrow, they now have access to a really bad one.

This is one of those weird cards that exists at the intersection of beatdown and synergy, and I think suffers for it. There will be decks where this shines, but it’s neither a premium graveyard enabler nor aggro card, and I’d rarely if ever play this in a normal midrange deck. You need to have a deck interested in both gameplans, and I don’t think this is a strong enough payoff to incentivize that.

Getting to add substantial power/toughness to the board for free is not something to be trifled with. The floor is reasonable, and the ceiling will push many aggressive starts over the edge. Red players are going to be really irritated when their burn spell gets stymied by this.

Could always cut Meloku...

Am I greedy to think this somehow isn’t good enough? I mean, many of the artifacts in cube tap for mana or have things you’d rather be doing with them anyway... and the mana sink is kinda expensive... but artifact decks can make so much mana... nah card’s gonna be great lol.

Card might be playable even without snow basics anyway, depending on how much emphasis you put on Coiling Oracle’s ramp potential. Flash and flying are some pretty relevant upsides.

I mean, in the alternate dimension where there’s a Stoneforge Mystic for vehicles, maybe...

Agreed on this being a major archetype piece for Fires. The nice thing about this as Sneak redundancy is that there’s almost no removal outside of countermagic that can deal with it forever, so your opponent will have to spend the rest of the game answering it every few turns to stop it from cheating in an Eldrazi. The not-so-nice thing is that it doesn’t give attack triggers, so no annihilator (poor you, attacking with a mere 15/15 flying trampler).

This falls into the Scarab God category for me: it’s just so efficiently costed and does so much with no downside that I can’t imagine there’s any world where it would be an objectively weak card in your cube, even if it isn’t the best thing you could be doing.

Cube Maxim

I aim to create the most fun, exciting, powerful and balanced custom limited environment
that I can for my playgroup within the confines of a Vintage legal and Singleton legal frame.

Basic Info

Cube Size: 450 Cards

Breakdown: 55 Each Color, 105 Guild/Multicolor, 70 Colorless

Standard or Theme Cube: Standard

Average Draft: 3-6 players

Cube CMC: 2.762


Design Restrictions

Powered?: Yes

Vintage Legal?: Yes

Singleton Legal?: Yes

The only cards I ban from the cube are cards that aren't Vintage legal (Ante cards, Dexterity cards, Un- Cards, Conspiracies & Holiday Promos, etc), cards that can't function within all game types (like draft manipulators that are blanks in Sealed Deck, or cards that would require a commander to function, etc) and cards thar reference "outside of the game" as a zone (Wishes, Companions, etc).

Color Balance?: Yes

Guild Balance?: Yes

Mana Support?: No

Mana Support?: No


Other Info

Here's a link to the cube on CubeCobra if you want to mock draft it:

https://cubecobra.com/cube/list/wtwlf123

That is too bad. I wonder if we could host a similar form on manaburn.org? It's slowly becoming as good or better than cube tutor. I reached out to him and let's see if we get a response. I also found a few tools that allow for website forums to be easily generated. They cost a little bit to use as a monthly fee which is out of my budget right now, but it could be a start. If we want to make this happen, I am sure we can find a way to find a place. I really like having forums that are easy to search, and have old information on them compared to say reddit, where after 1 week the thread seems to get lost for ever and is way less organized.


Edit: Update So Far. Manaburn said they would be willing to do it if there is some value to it. Doesn't mean he will, if it's a place you would like to move the forums, maybe comment below to show your support of the community?

Quote from teach_the_controversy »

I think Mizzium Tank is exactly what I want in a cube card - it bridges multiple archetypes, as an aggro threat that dodges Sorcery removal, as an undercosted fatty for spellslinger and for its random synergy with Red artifacts-matter effects. Before testing, it looks like the baseline power is there, and it seems like a healthier use of a slot from a cube design standpoint than a random Rampaging Ferocidon or Ahn-Crop Crasher. It’s on my short list for testing.

It's definitely an efficient card. Being an artifact gives it extra synergy, and crew 1 is not hard to do even when you aren't casting spells. You're right that it bridges multiple archetypes, which is important. I might have underestimated it. 1RR is annoying though.

I missed these because they aren't on the main page yet:


Kor Skyfisher is a good card, and a 4/3 flying for 4 is reasonable. Skyfisher showed me how often you want this ability. It sucks that it misses lands though, as an extra landfall trigger can be a big deal, and bouncing and replaying a land is a common Skyfisher play. Also 2UU is a much less appealing cost than 1W for the effect, and part of Skyfisher's appeal is that it is an undercosted beater, which this isn't.


Thrummingbird is a personal pet card. It's not the most powerful, but it has worked as a decent engine in my cube enough times to earn a little respect. It's an ability that only gets better with more redundancy. White can use proliferate at least as well as blue I think.


This card is extremely efficient. If you have a slot for a red/blue burn spell, this is a very good one. At first glance, I rank it above Electrolyze, but still slightly below Fire // Ice and Izzet Charm.

EDIT: Added Ral's Outburst

I may make this a tradition. SCD threads are great for the mainstream cards, but a lot of cards fly under the radar. A lot of cards were never meant to be mainstream cubeable, but are still worth playing in some archetypes. But if a card turns out to be great, it should get it's own SCD thread. I made threads for Grim Initiate and Deathsprout which both more properly belong here. I also made a thread for the planeswalkers, most of which have some application, so I won't talk about them here.

So what do we have so far:


If anybody is interested in a land to support five-color superfriends. Karn's Bastion is a better Superfriends land in general, but if you want color support for it, here it is.


Utility lands are good. Land recursion obviously works well with this, but it's nothing broken. There's not really an archetype that needs this card, but if one arises, there isn't going to be another card quite like this one.


Redundancy is redundancy. However, I don't think all that many people need a Zulaport Cutthroat in their guild sections.


I'm still looking for the perfect rainbow card. In a five-color-stuff deck in my cube, I can't imagine this not getting value. It's not the card I'm really waiting for, but it's probably a little better than Chromanticore in that slot.


This card is just good. It's pretty far behind the best of the best. As a matter of fact I like both Deathsprout and Leyline Prowler better, but it's undeniably good. If you can get an attack, you can generally get pretty great value out of this. Being able to get back a planeswalker with a -X ability is particularly useful I think.


Are you kidding? This card is nuts! An artifact focused ramp deck can get loads of use out of this. It makes the opponent's life miserable, and even provides a slow but inexorable clock. Sure this is slow, but it's horrible to play against. Imagine getting this in a deck with things like Propaganda and Magus of the Tabernacle.


Getting a dude out of your "counterspell" is never a bad thing. Nevertheless, this comes nowhere near the good 1U counterspells since it only stops targeted removal and hand disruption.


Mmm, keyword soup. A BoP activation is no small keyword to add, and lifelink and deathtouch are both good in different ways when you're behind. This card is sweet. It's a shame there aren't really cubes for it to shine in. Maybe peasant, but guild slots are probably too tight there too.


Getting spells back is no small thing. There aren't a lot of efficient cards that do it. This does an adequate if uninspiring job in that department. Sacrificing the creature makes it easy to recur in a lot of decks. This doesn't quite get there for me, but I'm very hungry for playable versions of this effect.


This gets huge. Pyre Hound proved to me how powerful this effect is. It's too fair for any traditional cube, but in a weaker cube with a spellslinger theme, this slides in alongside the Hound very well, though I think Hound's trample makes it a sidegrade.


Also for a spellslinger theme. I like this less. What I do like is that it's a noncreature spell itself that provides a board presence for a spellslinger deck. However I like it less than more traditional token generator spells like Hordeling Outburst for that purpose.


This has just enough extra abilities to make the Gaea's Skyfolk base decent. If you want to build a proliferate theme, this is neither the best nor the worst card for it. I might be playing this.


This is a straight aristocrats card, and I think you'd usually do better with a less narrow card. It punishes fetchlands pretty nicely, and works well with a lot of things, so maybe this is good enough if you're really pushing the archetype. The ceiling here is awfully high, but of course guild slots are murder.


Good with counters. Also good with blinks, but you're playing this for counters support. It's great that it has a backup option for when you don't have anything to proliferate. You can really build a counters theme several different ways now. It's pretty cool.


A more stompy, and less important version. This is probably a little better than Quarry Hauler, but I love the ability to remove a counter. Kiora's Dambreaker is an even stompier blue version, but seems less playable.


Eldritch Evolution is a little awkward for cube, and so is this. In constructed you can really plan for what to sac and what to fetch to optimize. Nevertheless, this is a pretty good card. It's especially worthwhile if you support a bant blink archetype, sine ETBs are what this does best.

If you think I missed any that are worthwhile and don't have or need an SCD thread, please note them. Or if you think anything here is worth having its own thread (God-Pharaoh's Statue maybe), feel free to make one.

Mistake? That's the Magic word us Cubers like to hear!

Quote from TheTennesseeFireman »

I would like two rankings of the artifact planeswalkers, please: one based on overall playability, and one based on importance/usefulness to artifact decks.

Dovin, Grand Arbiter
Tezzeret, the Seeker (no Time Vault combo)
Tezzeret, Agent of Bolas
Tezzeret, Artifice Master
Saheeli, the Gifted
Saheeli Rai
Daretti, Ingenius Iconoclast
Daretti, Scrap Savant
Karn, Scion of Urza

Good stuff, Lowish, but not zero artifact count deck:
1. Daretti Ingenius Iconoclast (better than Karn but more restrictive mana, unsure how to compare)
2. Karn
3. Tezzeret , artifice master (much worse than Karn)
4. Dovin (Needs a specific deck, but has more uses than just artifact stuff and not terrible in control)
5. Saheeli , the gifted (Not really playable unless you have some artifacts or something to ramp into)
6. Daretti , scrap svant (big drop from #5, but can be played in reanimator? Kind of?)
7. Saheeli rai (It's #4 planeswalker in izzet, so dont play it without intentionally supporting the combo... which also isnt good)
8- who cares


Artifact, ramp/combo, high artifact count:
1. Karn, The best artifact planeswalker by a solid margin.
2. Tezzeret, artifice master is my personal favourite "artifact support" planeswalker of this group , since it is very very good in the artifact deck, but also solid in control decks with a couple signets/artifact power. But he actually has slightly lower upside than most of the walkers below it. He is generically great in all versions of artifact decks.
3. Saheeli The gifted, can ramp at an incredible pace, and really pushes the huge mana artifact decks that leverage tolarian academy. It's not hard to assemble a deck that leverages her, and when she is leveraged she is very good.
4. Tezzeret the seeker probably has the highest upside of literally all of these walkers, but it is routinely mediocore even in some artifact decks. Needs high quality utility targets to tutor for, or ideally sol ring/mana vault type cards, which are obviously not easy to get.
5. Tezzeret Agent of bolas is very powerful as a win condition, but black is 4th place color in artifact decks, so things like dimir signets and good fixin matter. It is as powerful ore more than all of these walkers, but quite narrow. The black mana and it's high artifact count dependency really kills it for me. Dimir is stacked, so I don't want to spend a dimir slot on a card that is narrow on two levels and isn't that much better than the competing support.
6. Daretti, Ingenius iconoclast This ranking is misleading, becaues his mana cost makes him kind of narrow for a deck deep on artifacts, but it's so powerful when the mana is good. Plus he doesn't really need artifacts to be great, so I don't really see him as an artifact support walker. He's probably #2 in power overall tho.
7. Daretti, scrap savant is great with specific welder/mind slaver/reanimator type synergies, but I don't like it much in the ramp versions without a combo. I like it as an interesting support card, but I don't think it's critical. I believe it's an overrated card, but I like supporting the reanimator/artifact sub-archtype that he is great in.
8. Dovin is totally playable in artifact decks, but he is not amazing in that archetype like the other walkers above.


I personally believe that the meat of the power of artifact decks are not in the planeswalkers, despite how good they are... The meat of the power is in Tolarian academy, Tinker, Balance, Draw 7's, Upheavel and Mishra's workshop.

So... I don't think supporting the narrower ones are necessary to make the deck competitive. That's why im a big fan of tezzeret artifice master, and saheeli the gifted... over the slightly more powerful but much more narrow tezzert seeker and agent of bolas.

New post up:

Masters 25 downgrade review

I'm interested enough to test.
I personally had a passing interest in genesis hydra as a green threat that gains value through countermagic... I tested it out, and ultimately felt it was a little too narrow and underpowered... Being unable to cheat it out, or fetch it with GSZ was a big strike against it.

I believe that Hydroid Krasis fills the same role, but is a notch or two more powerful.
At x > 9, it is arguable (both are amazing).. But in the more commonly "castable" region, the flying and trample make it a very reasonable x = 4 play. If you cast genesis hydra for anything less than X = 5, you were desperate.

I'm a pretty big fan of X spells in my cube. There are a few decks that have ways of generating absurd amounts of mana with Tolarian academy or Gae's cradle, that are in the market for a mana sink. X spells are better than very expensive ramp targets, because when those decks don't draw their broken lands, they still need ways to interact.

Hydroid's mana cost is a bit more appealing to me than Genesis Hydra's, because it's a very reasonble splash in an artifact mana deck AND in a green creature ramp strategy.. Which are the decks that want X spells the most.
Plus simic sucks so...

Quote from Cythare »

I'll admit that I was pleasantly surprised by how many cubeable cards there were in this set for me, given that multicolor-heavy sets tend to be more miss than hit due to competition. I'm planning to add the Top 8 cards you have listed here. I'm hoping that Connive//Concoct will earn its spot, as it's been a while since I've had a noncreature permanent in Dimir (I don't run Signets, but would if I made the jump to 540).

Thanks as always for your set review!

I hope so too. Limited testing with it so far, but all positive. It's odd, because the abilities are so different, but it's been cast equal halves Connive and equal halves Concoct, so it's versatile at the very least.

Quote from rpgking4 »

Plaguecrafter is the only home-run card I can see excluded from this list. I'm almost 100% on board with the top half of the picks you made.

Glad you agree with the top half of the list. I don't think Plaguecrafter's any good, but that's just my $0.02.

Quote from TheTennesseeFireman »

I too am a Plaguecrafter diehard, but there are a lot of highlights to cover in this review and I understand why you’re lower on it. I expect there to be several cards on and off that list that we’re underrating, but there’s so much good stuff in this set that there’s no way we can be sure exactly what will get there.

Thanks again for these reviews; I think they’re a big part of what has kept this community together for so long. Happy cubing!

You're most welcome! Thanks for the kind words.

Quote from Sky.Rokit »

Hey wtwlf, can you help me evaluate a card like Risk Factor in your cube?

I know letting your opponent choose is bad, but even the worst case scenario for this card seems good in a powered red aggro deck.

I know letting your opponent choose is bad...

...letting your opponent choose is bad...

...bad...

See, you secretly knew why all along.

Hello again fellow cube enthusiasts!

This is my 27th installment of the "top 20" set preview articles! Just like the previous reviews, it will be in a spoiled top X countdown format, with each section having an image, a brief summary/description, and my verdict on what cubes I think it could potentially see some play in. I got a lot of positive feedback on the format from the last few articles, so I’m going to keep the “what I like” and “what I don’t like” sections.


It’s the Return to the Return to Ravnica! And as expected, the set delivers cards that are steeped in Ravnica flavor, and it’s heavily centered around the individual guilds. The set features good cards in both mono-colored and multi-colored sections, and was a real joy to follow during spoiler season. It’s a powerful set for cubes of all sizes, and I’ve had great success in testing with a lot of Guilds of Ravnica cards so far.

Without further ado, I can start the countdown!





















Thanks for reading! I hope you enjoyed the article. Please comment below and we can discuss any and all things Guilds of Ravnica and the cube!

Cheers, and happy cubing.