I think I was being pretty generous with some of what I put in mid-tier. 15/35 having favorable matchups vs it and 24/35 not being bad to it sounds like about half to me. And yes, I know it can switch its attention over time. You don't need to keep describing cards' normal functions to me. But it sure does start as a ~5 mana soft removal spell and it takes a lot of time and a relevant amount of mana to recoup that god awful start.
Again, not sure what you're trying to say here. Removal is bad because there are etb effects? More than 50% of the cards that still get 'value' when Icy taps them down don't care about Infernal Grasp or Swords to Plowshares either. And why only 4 cmc creatures? Because Icy costs 4 mana? That makes no sense. You overpay for the ability to tap down a different creature, land or artifact each turn. I know you said you know how the card works and I know that you know, yet you completely ignore its other functions.
Yes, if you want to remove one specific creature and no other creature and no land and no artifact for the rest of the game then a more efficient card that solves the problem once and for all like Infernal Grasp is better. And if the game ends a turn after Icy Manipulator comes down then Infernal Grasp is also better. But if that's not the case then chances are high that Icy Manipulator will be better after a few turns.
Also, it seems from your tone that you think I'm coming into this from the position of "crystal shard is bad, why are you running it?"
Is faerie seer really one of the best bounce targets or are we just making a terrible crystal ball?
The same is true about your evaluation for Crystal Shard. You say bouncing Faerie Seer is bad because it's just 'a terrible Crystal Ball'. Yes, who would have thought, there are more efficient ways to scry if that's all you want to do. But Crystal Shard can do so much more than Crystal Ball, the comparison makes even less sense than comparing Icy Manipulator to regular removal spells.
I of course agree that Crystal Shard becomes worse the faster games become. And peasant has become faster during the last few years. But from my personal experience you exaggerate the speed boost a lot. Like I said, my low power rare cube is certainly noticeably faster than your peasant cube and I still get very consistent and good results from Crystal Shard in that cube. Shard is not the bomb it used to be when I started cubing, but it still has a lot to offer and is nowhere near the power level where it should be removed from a peasant cube for lack of power.
But maybe that's all you wanted to say? That Crystal Shard is not the bomb it used to be? You said in the op you thought about cutting it for lack of power and that's something I can't agree with - the power level is still more than high enough for any 360 peasant cube. But I do agree that it is maybe not the no-brainer 1st pick bomb it was in 2015.
I don't see how Icy Manipulator doesn't help against half of that list. Yes, some cards have additional abilities it can't shut down, but that doesn't mean it can't always stop a creature from attacking. The value it has is that you can tap down a different creature, land or artifact each turn and that is a very powerful effect. It is not a one-off 5 mana creature removal spell and that's what you make it look like.
I never said that Crystal Shard is making its money by bouncing expensive creatures only. Creatures in the 5+ cmc range usually had good etb abilities 5 years ago as well. Bouncing any creature is good enough. Plus of course you get value by abusing etb effects and the creatures you can bounce have become better as well - some of the best bounce targets like Faerie Seer, Watcher for Tomorrow or Circuit Mender are all relatively new.
And I think you exaggerate a bit with 'things have changed'. Yes, peasant cubes are faster than five years ago. But it's not like every game suddenly ends on turn 4 now. Against an efficient aggro deck that plays all its creatures on curve you certainly don't want to play Crystal Shard on turn 3, but that wasn't the case five years ago either.
Oh, and both Ravenous Giant and Halana, Kessig Ranger are great targets for bouncing so I'm not sure what you're trying to say here. If your opponent plays three creatures Crystal Shard is bad because it can only bounce one of them?
I started cubing in 2015, so maybe I have a different perspective than someone who started cubing ten years earlier. But I have never considered any of the cards mentioned in the op staples except for Crystal Shard.
Sprout Swarm was maybe in 50% of lists when I started cubing, if at all. And almost no one played Capsize. I think I remember seeing it in a list or two and reading up on it and how powerful it used to be, but it was so insanely slow that even 8-9 years ago it was too slow to be playable. Sprout Swarm is a little bit better as it can do some work in a token deck if you build around it, but it's still very slow. IIRC more people played Centaur Glade than Sprout Swarm and Centaur Glade is unplayable by modern standards.
Squirrel Nest and Jade Mage were always rather mediocre filler cards to me and I wouldn't have thought that anyone would consider them staples. Squirrel Nest is a very old card and there weren't many token makers in Magic when it was released, so I can understand that it was a pretty good and unique card in the 2000s. But Jade Mage? It's not that old and it's...ok? Even for a card from 2011 a 2/1 for 2 with a useful, but overcosted mana sink doesn't scream 'staple' to me.
Guardian of the Guildpact is still a powerful card, but it needs a deck you can build around it. As a vanilla 2/3 it isn't great, but I can't remember that I ever felt that it would be an unbeatable bomb without any help from other cards. I have it in my cube (and I only added it two years ago or so) mainly for the equipment deck. The problem with a card like this is more that it's not fun to play with since you can't interact with it at all, but not because it's too weak. There is a reason why it still gets played in Pauper, which is, despite its name, a rather fast and powerful format. I believe most people cut it because it's an unfun card you can't interact with and/or because they don't have an equipment theme in their cube, but not because it is too weak.
The shrines always had the problem that they either win the game on their own or do nothing or almost nothing at all. They're boring cards that rely on your opponent having artifact removal at the right time if you play them early and that do nothing if they are played too late. The power level is still there if you don't mind cards like that though. I cut them because they were among the most boring and unsatisfying card I ever had in my cube, not because they weren't powerful enough. They can still win games.
And last, but not least Crystal Shard. I have no idea why you think it's not good enough anymore. I have it in my low power rare cube (which I mainly play nowadays) and it does some good work in there even though the power level of that cube is higher than peasant. You can bounce your opponent's creatures and your opponent needs to hold up 2 mana to prevent that since you can use it in your opponent's turn and your own after untap. And of course you can bounce your own. Save them from removal, get additional value out of your etb effects. It's such a versatile card. It's like Icy Manipulator, where the 4 mana initial cost always feels steep, but in an actual game it almost always plays better than you would have thought.
If a midrange deck in your cube can't even afford to play a 3 mana artifact like Crystal Shard without losing to aggro then depowering removal maybe wasn't as good of an idea as you thought it was? I generally think that creatures caught up to removal nowadays and there simply is no reason to depower it anymore if you run all the best creatures.
Which leads me to my last point. For me power creep is more visible when I look at the run-off-the-mill creatures, especially aggressive ones. Only 5 years ago cubes were full of cards like Vaporkin, Vampire Interloper, Savannah Lions or Terrain Elemental. Now we have Zephyr Sentinel, Triarch Praetorian, Usher of the Fallen and Kraul Harpooner. Notice how none of the old cards and all of the new cards generate extra value either immediately or quickly after they come down despite being 1-2 cmc creatures? That's why depowering removal is not a good idea from my pov. But that's for a different discussion.
I can also recommend Battle Box as it's the perfect format for beginners. You draw 4 cards and you only need to read and understand these 4 cards. No need to know your deck like it would be the case with a preconstructed deck, no need to read and understand dozens of other cards like in cube. And no mana flood or mana screw. And best of all every game is different so it doesn't get boring because you play the same five spells over and over each game.
I only have a Premodern and Old School Battle Box, but here is a Battle Box that is cheap (~$30) with relatively simple cards (mostly c/u as far as I can see).
A while ago we had someone join our group who didn't play for about two decades and he could play Battle Box perfectly fine and had fun doing it.
I also made five decks for my son so he could teach his friends how to play Magic. He's in 5th grade already though, so the decks may be a bit too complicated (especially the blue one...of course) for elementary school children:
I have a question on a similar topic. I've reviewed my black section this week, and realized that, although I'm supporting sacrifice synergies, I have few black token or fodder makers in low CMCs (1-3). What black fodder makers do you guys run in your Cubes?
At higher mana costs I ran Marsh Flitter. I'm stacked in Sac outlets but I'm lacking sac fodder.
I don't think there are many good sac fodder cards in black that aren't extremely narrow. You run more than I do already, I only run Reassembling Skeleton and Cult Conscript in the low cmc range. In my cube the sacrifice archetype is either WB (midrange) or BR (aggressive). And in these colors there are plenty of token makers or other cheap creatures you can sacrifice.
I have switched from Marsh Flitter to Sling-Gang Lieutenant, the sac ability is a lot more useful than turning Marsh Flitter into a 3/3 imo. Quite easy to have some synergies - with a Blood Artist effect out you can deal 6 damage and get 6 life immediately and it's even possible that you have some other goblins if you play red for even more damage. This more than makes up for the lack of flying. Plus I could remove those weird black Goblin Rogue tokens that weren't used for any other card.
Gut, True Soul Zealot
This card completely ran over every game he got to untap in. Never mind when you have actual synergy, but an army of 4/1s is not something that can be raced or defended against reasonably.
I'm a bit late to the party as I have only started to finally play again more often with my peasant cube a few weeks ago, but I just have to say how disgusted I am by Gut, True Soul Zealot. I very rarely ban cards for power level, but I think I will have to burn this card to ensure it never comes close to my cube again. It literally sucked all the fun out of the games it was played in unless the player defending against it had removal ready to remove it immediately.
In my opinion this is easily among the top 5 most broken cards available at uncommon. I think the people over at the rare cube forum aren't giving it enough credit, imo it's far better than cards like Goblin Rabblemaster, Hanweir Garrison or similar Vintage cube 3 cmc token makers.
End of rant, but if you want a balanced cube get rid of this abomination asap. This was clearly made for a four player game where every player has 40 life and not for 1 vs 1 with 20 life.
But this is how Planeswalkers work, right? We happily send 4 damage at a Garruk Wildspeaker to deny our opponent a resource to build their board. Why would we not do the same to defeat a Invasion of Zendikar and cast an Awakened Skyclave?
Because Planeswalkers are a threat that (often) needs to be removed while battles do nothing if you choose not to interact with them. That's a huge difference. If your opponent wins the game with their planeswalker you are under pressure to remove it, but the battle flipside is just a bonus that may or may not help you.
To me battles feel very casual. The front side of a battle is naturally weaker than a real card with the same effect. And the flipside is hardly ever worth it unless it has a high amount of life. But if you need to deal 5+ damage to get the reward, wouldn't it be much more efficient to cast a better spell and deal 5+ damage to your opponent?
There will be times where the battle reward will be better, but it is next to impossible to determine whether your deck will reliably be able to flip the card and/or whether you actually need the reward more than the damage.
I'm not really a fan of the new card type. Seems more aimed at kitchen table/casual edh play.
Well, O-ring's most common job is hitting creatures and Oring is like an A- card. I think turning a creature in to a Wastes is still worth something valuable (Imprison in the moon)
I'm a bit surprised that you would include something like Imprisoned in the Moon as it can mess up a player's mana base pretty badly and from all I know about your cube that's something you try to avoid. Turn their only dual land into a colorless land and they get mana screwed. May not always work, but it's certainly a possibility in >10% of games. And that's really the only true upside it has over a card like Ravenform, which exiles, can be foretold and can hit artifacts.
In commander the card is good because the commander isn't returned to the command zone and because land and, to a lesser degree, planeswalker hate actually has a purpose there, but in peasant I see it like a mediocre creature removal spell that occassionally wrecks games with land hate.
I have a completely random question
If you took a random card from the mid-to-late game, what would make the card better: Basic landcycling 1, or Cycling R? (Well, whatever the color is)
I think about this sort of thing a lot. How much better does savannah lions get if it has cycling 1 than if it had... say... haste.
Basic landcycling 1 would even out games more and if you had enough of these cards you could possibly play more colors, but cycling is always good even if you get land flooded or for whatever reason don't need that high cmc creature in the mid to late game. Hard to answer what would be better.
Since Savannah Lions is a pure aggro card I believe that haste would be better than cycling. Aggro decks can be streamlined enough in peasant cubes that a faster, more powerful one drop is better than a one drop that allows you to spend mana for something you don't really want to spend mana on if everything works as planned. There is a reason why Goblin Guide is a staple in Modern burn decks even though it has a pretty severe downside.
Whoops, good catch. I read blink effect and assumed it was instant; sorcery is a definite downgrade, but I still stand by that both choices create a lot of value.
The card isn't terrible, but to get really good value out of it you need a perfect setup that is very hard to achieve. If you blink a Wall of Omens and reanimate a Dauntless Bodyguard that's hardly impressive for 4 mana at sorcery speed and even that already requires that you have both a worthwhile blink target out and a creature in the graveyard. The artifact part should hardly matter in a CU/be setting and casting it for a single mode will be extremely inefficient almost no matter what you blink or resurrect.
Compared to cards like Unearth or Call of the Death-Dweller (black cards, but still) the card is quite overcosted for what it does unless you have the perfect setup like a Cloudgoat Ranger out and a Vampire Nighthawk in the yard. I would think about it if it cost 2W, but for 3W it is too expensive imo.
Bladehold War-Whip's equip cost seems unnecessarily excessive. But, attaching Skullclamp and Bonesplitter for free is really good.
Yes, the equip cost is insanely expensive, but it would be way too good if the equipment was a Fireshrieker or close to it (like an equip cost of 1WR). Still, it can be a late game mana sink (assuming you have a creature on the board) like Recruitment Officer's ability and the rest of the package is pretty great on its own already even if you never equip it to another creature. Pretty sure I will test it.
I don't run Journey to Nowhere and Ossification is almost the same card and only a sidegrade anyway I'd say, so I'm not interested. But it's not a bad card.
Proliferate is simply something that is close to useless in blue, at least in my cube. Sure, combined with other colors like white or green it could be very playable, but I try to avoid mono color cards that work like guild cards if I can help it and Anticipate on its own is simply not good enough.
I also like Bladehold War-Whip as support for Boros equipment decks. An Iroas's Champion with an equip cost reduction that leaves an equipment and the cost reduction ability behind is pretty good.
Personally I still run both Aerial Responder and Flickerwisp since they're different cards that do different things.
My issue is not with them being in direct competition with one another for the "3 drop flyer slot", it's that I am trying to wean myself down to only one 1CC card per color at maximum.
I know, that's why I said what I said. If these were all 2W cards I'd probably play Rumor Gatherer as well, but since I try to limit cc cost cards in the 2-3 mana range as well I rather play cards that do different things than what is basically a weaker Mentor of the Meek. If I only wanted to run one of them I'd agree with Calibretto and play Flickerwisp.
Because CC or 1CC (and even 2CC) cards usually can't be played on curve with peasant cube mana bases unless you play a mono color deck. It's a bit of a trap if you have a three drop that can't be played before turn 4-5 on average.
If you could pick just one of Flickerwisp, Aerial Responder, and Rumor Gatherer, is it possible that Rumor gatherer is the defensible choice?
White has no other realistic access to card draw.
White has other blink effects to make up for the loss of flickerwisp.
Aerial responder is merely solid, but boring?
IIRC many people (like me) exchanged Rumor Gatherer for Mentor of the Meek when it was shifted to uncommon shortly after Rumor Gatherer was new, so while it is a pretty good card Rumor Gatherer never had a chance to get played a lot I guess. Personally I still run both Aerial Responder and Flickerwisp since they're different cards that do different things. If I wanted another white card draw creature I would probably cut Aerial Responder since like you said, it's just a very solid creature.
Again, not sure what you're trying to say here. Removal is bad because there are etb effects? More than 50% of the cards that still get 'value' when Icy taps them down don't care about Infernal Grasp or Swords to Plowshares either. And why only 4 cmc creatures? Because Icy costs 4 mana? That makes no sense. You overpay for the ability to tap down a different creature, land or artifact each turn. I know you said you know how the card works and I know that you know, yet you completely ignore its other functions.
Yes, if you want to remove one specific creature and no other creature and no land and no artifact for the rest of the game then a more efficient card that solves the problem once and for all like Infernal Grasp is better. And if the game ends a turn after Icy Manipulator comes down then Infernal Grasp is also better. But if that's not the case then chances are high that Icy Manipulator will be better after a few turns.
The same is true about your evaluation for Crystal Shard. You say bouncing Faerie Seer is bad because it's just 'a terrible Crystal Ball'. Yes, who would have thought, there are more efficient ways to scry if that's all you want to do. But Crystal Shard can do so much more than Crystal Ball, the comparison makes even less sense than comparing Icy Manipulator to regular removal spells.
I of course agree that Crystal Shard becomes worse the faster games become. And peasant has become faster during the last few years. But from my personal experience you exaggerate the speed boost a lot. Like I said, my low power rare cube is certainly noticeably faster than your peasant cube and I still get very consistent and good results from Crystal Shard in that cube. Shard is not the bomb it used to be when I started cubing, but it still has a lot to offer and is nowhere near the power level where it should be removed from a peasant cube for lack of power.
But maybe that's all you wanted to say? That Crystal Shard is not the bomb it used to be? You said in the op you thought about cutting it for lack of power and that's something I can't agree with - the power level is still more than high enough for any 360 peasant cube. But I do agree that it is maybe not the no-brainer 1st pick bomb it was in 2015.
I never said that Crystal Shard is making its money by bouncing expensive creatures only. Creatures in the 5+ cmc range usually had good etb abilities 5 years ago as well. Bouncing any creature is good enough. Plus of course you get value by abusing etb effects and the creatures you can bounce have become better as well - some of the best bounce targets like Faerie Seer, Watcher for Tomorrow or Circuit Mender are all relatively new.
And I think you exaggerate a bit with 'things have changed'. Yes, peasant cubes are faster than five years ago. But it's not like every game suddenly ends on turn 4 now. Against an efficient aggro deck that plays all its creatures on curve you certainly don't want to play Crystal Shard on turn 3, but that wasn't the case five years ago either.
Oh, and both Ravenous Giant and Halana, Kessig Ranger are great targets for bouncing so I'm not sure what you're trying to say here. If your opponent plays three creatures Crystal Shard is bad because it can only bounce one of them?
Sprout Swarm was maybe in 50% of lists when I started cubing, if at all. And almost no one played Capsize. I think I remember seeing it in a list or two and reading up on it and how powerful it used to be, but it was so insanely slow that even 8-9 years ago it was too slow to be playable. Sprout Swarm is a little bit better as it can do some work in a token deck if you build around it, but it's still very slow. IIRC more people played Centaur Glade than Sprout Swarm and Centaur Glade is unplayable by modern standards.
Squirrel Nest and Jade Mage were always rather mediocre filler cards to me and I wouldn't have thought that anyone would consider them staples. Squirrel Nest is a very old card and there weren't many token makers in Magic when it was released, so I can understand that it was a pretty good and unique card in the 2000s. But Jade Mage? It's not that old and it's...ok? Even for a card from 2011 a 2/1 for 2 with a useful, but overcosted mana sink doesn't scream 'staple' to me.
Guardian of the Guildpact is still a powerful card, but it needs a deck you can build around it. As a vanilla 2/3 it isn't great, but I can't remember that I ever felt that it would be an unbeatable bomb without any help from other cards. I have it in my cube (and I only added it two years ago or so) mainly for the equipment deck. The problem with a card like this is more that it's not fun to play with since you can't interact with it at all, but not because it's too weak. There is a reason why it still gets played in Pauper, which is, despite its name, a rather fast and powerful format. I believe most people cut it because it's an unfun card you can't interact with and/or because they don't have an equipment theme in their cube, but not because it is too weak.
The shrines always had the problem that they either win the game on their own or do nothing or almost nothing at all. They're boring cards that rely on your opponent having artifact removal at the right time if you play them early and that do nothing if they are played too late. The power level is still there if you don't mind cards like that though. I cut them because they were among the most boring and unsatisfying card I ever had in my cube, not because they weren't powerful enough. They can still win games.
And last, but not least Crystal Shard. I have no idea why you think it's not good enough anymore. I have it in my low power rare cube (which I mainly play nowadays) and it does some good work in there even though the power level of that cube is higher than peasant. You can bounce your opponent's creatures and your opponent needs to hold up 2 mana to prevent that since you can use it in your opponent's turn and your own after untap. And of course you can bounce your own. Save them from removal, get additional value out of your etb effects. It's such a versatile card. It's like Icy Manipulator, where the 4 mana initial cost always feels steep, but in an actual game it almost always plays better than you would have thought.
If a midrange deck in your cube can't even afford to play a 3 mana artifact like Crystal Shard without losing to aggro then depowering removal maybe wasn't as good of an idea as you thought it was? I generally think that creatures caught up to removal nowadays and there simply is no reason to depower it anymore if you run all the best creatures.
Which leads me to my last point. For me power creep is more visible when I look at the run-off-the-mill creatures, especially aggressive ones. Only 5 years ago cubes were full of cards like Vaporkin, Vampire Interloper, Savannah Lions or Terrain Elemental. Now we have Zephyr Sentinel, Triarch Praetorian, Usher of the Fallen and Kraul Harpooner. Notice how none of the old cards and all of the new cards generate extra value either immediately or quickly after they come down despite being 1-2 cmc creatures? That's why depowering removal is not a good idea from my pov. But that's for a different discussion.
I only have a Premodern and Old School Battle Box, but here is a Battle Box that is cheap (~$30) with relatively simple cards (mostly c/u as far as I can see).
A while ago we had someone join our group who didn't play for about two decades and he could play Battle Box perfectly fine and had fun doing it.
I also made five decks for my son so he could teach his friends how to play Magic. He's in 5th grade already though, so the decks may be a bit too complicated (especially the blue one...of course) for elementary school children:
White, Blue, Black, Red, Green
I don't think there are many good sac fodder cards in black that aren't extremely narrow. You run more than I do already, I only run Reassembling Skeleton and Cult Conscript in the low cmc range. In my cube the sacrifice archetype is either WB (midrange) or BR (aggressive). And in these colors there are plenty of token makers or other cheap creatures you can sacrifice.
I have switched from Marsh Flitter to Sling-Gang Lieutenant, the sac ability is a lot more useful than turning Marsh Flitter into a 3/3 imo. Quite easy to have some synergies - with a Blood Artist effect out you can deal 6 damage and get 6 life immediately and it's even possible that you have some other goblins if you play red for even more damage. This more than makes up for the lack of flying. Plus I could remove those weird black Goblin Rogue tokens that weren't used for any other card.
I'm a bit late to the party as I have only started to finally play again more often with my peasant cube a few weeks ago, but I just have to say how disgusted I am by Gut, True Soul Zealot. I very rarely ban cards for power level, but I think I will have to burn this card to ensure it never comes close to my cube again. It literally sucked all the fun out of the games it was played in unless the player defending against it had removal ready to remove it immediately.
In my opinion this is easily among the top 5 most broken cards available at uncommon. I think the people over at the rare cube forum aren't giving it enough credit, imo it's far better than cards like Goblin Rabblemaster, Hanweir Garrison or similar Vintage cube 3 cmc token makers.
End of rant, but if you want a balanced cube get rid of this abomination asap. This was clearly made for a four player game where every player has 40 life and not for 1 vs 1 with 20 life.
Because Planeswalkers are a threat that (often) needs to be removed while battles do nothing if you choose not to interact with them. That's a huge difference. If your opponent wins the game with their planeswalker you are under pressure to remove it, but the battle flipside is just a bonus that may or may not help you.
To me battles feel very casual. The front side of a battle is naturally weaker than a real card with the same effect. And the flipside is hardly ever worth it unless it has a high amount of life. But if you need to deal 5+ damage to get the reward, wouldn't it be much more efficient to cast a better spell and deal 5+ damage to your opponent?
There will be times where the battle reward will be better, but it is next to impossible to determine whether your deck will reliably be able to flip the card and/or whether you actually need the reward more than the damage.
I'm not really a fan of the new card type. Seems more aimed at kitchen table/casual edh play.
I'm a bit surprised that you would include something like Imprisoned in the Moon as it can mess up a player's mana base pretty badly and from all I know about your cube that's something you try to avoid. Turn their only dual land into a colorless land and they get mana screwed. May not always work, but it's certainly a possibility in >10% of games. And that's really the only true upside it has over a card like Ravenform, which exiles, can be foretold and can hit artifacts.
In commander the card is good because the commander isn't returned to the command zone and because land and, to a lesser degree, planeswalker hate actually has a purpose there, but in peasant I see it like a mediocre creature removal spell that occassionally wrecks games with land hate.
Basic landcycling 1 would even out games more and if you had enough of these cards you could possibly play more colors, but cycling is always good even if you get land flooded or for whatever reason don't need that high cmc creature in the mid to late game. Hard to answer what would be better.
Since Savannah Lions is a pure aggro card I believe that haste would be better than cycling. Aggro decks can be streamlined enough in peasant cubes that a faster, more powerful one drop is better than a one drop that allows you to spend mana for something you don't really want to spend mana on if everything works as planned. There is a reason why Goblin Guide is a staple in Modern burn decks even though it has a pretty severe downside.
The card isn't terrible, but to get really good value out of it you need a perfect setup that is very hard to achieve. If you blink a Wall of Omens and reanimate a Dauntless Bodyguard that's hardly impressive for 4 mana at sorcery speed and even that already requires that you have both a worthwhile blink target out and a creature in the graveyard. The artifact part should hardly matter in a CU/be setting and casting it for a single mode will be extremely inefficient almost no matter what you blink or resurrect.
Compared to cards like Unearth or Call of the Death-Dweller (black cards, but still) the card is quite overcosted for what it does unless you have the perfect setup like a Cloudgoat Ranger out and a Vampire Nighthawk in the yard. I would think about it if it cost 2W, but for 3W it is too expensive imo.
Yes, the equip cost is insanely expensive, but it would be way too good if the equipment was a Fireshrieker or close to it (like an equip cost of 1WR). Still, it can be a late game mana sink (assuming you have a creature on the board) like Recruitment Officer's ability and the rest of the package is pretty great on its own already even if you never equip it to another creature. Pretty sure I will test it.
Proliferate is simply something that is close to useless in blue, at least in my cube. Sure, combined with other colors like white or green it could be very playable, but I try to avoid mono color cards that work like guild cards if I can help it and Anticipate on its own is simply not good enough.
I also like Bladehold War-Whip as support for Boros equipment decks. An Iroas's Champion with an equip cost reduction that leaves an equipment and the cost reduction ability behind is pretty good.
I know, that's why I said what I said. If these were all 2W cards I'd probably play Rumor Gatherer as well, but since I try to limit cc cost cards in the 2-3 mana range as well I rather play cards that do different things than what is basically a weaker Mentor of the Meek. If I only wanted to run one of them I'd agree with Calibretto and play Flickerwisp.
Because CC or 1CC (and even 2CC) cards usually can't be played on curve with peasant cube mana bases unless you play a mono color deck. It's a bit of a trap if you have a three drop that can't be played before turn 4-5 on average.
IIRC many people (like me) exchanged Rumor Gatherer for Mentor of the Meek when it was shifted to uncommon shortly after Rumor Gatherer was new, so while it is a pretty good card Rumor Gatherer never had a chance to get played a lot I guess. Personally I still run both Aerial Responder and Flickerwisp since they're different cards that do different things. If I wanted another white card draw creature I would probably cut Aerial Responder since like you said, it's just a very solid creature.