MTG Salvation

The card is really good in standard, but that's never been a great indication about how well a card would do in cube. I'd definitely run Coercive Portal before this card as it's better in most ways (it doesn't have a second mode, though)

I think this card is being pretty heavily overrated here. It's about as good as Telling Time, so I don't think that it's really good enough barring really large cubes. 720 is a lot tighter than people seem to realise.

While I think Dig Through Time may be better in cube because cards like cantrips and fetchlands are in lower concentrations, Treasure Cruise is really powerful. Look at what the card is doing in modern and legacy, I don't think that it is that much worse in the cube than in modern.

Lurking Automaton is clearly good. It will sort itself out - it will generally get picked by the threshold where it becomes good (5/5 or 6/6, depending on the deck?) or by a couple of picks after that. It's a card that can't sit in the pack until the 15th pick because somewhere along the line it's going to become insane. It's only ever bad if someone picks it too early for it to be good in their deck, but that seems like their fault rather than the fault of the card.

The conspiracies are interesting because they all confer some relatively small advantage (or in the case of a few, like Backup Plan, a large advantage) at the cost of a draft pick and a slot in the cube. Putting aside personal preference, I see a couple of the draft constructs and maybe 5 or 6 conspiracies being good enough to include - some of the lower impact conspiracies are probably not worth it.

I think I'd rather have a 3/1 than either armorer or the cavalry. Having a 2 drop trade with everything is honestly ok, and being able to deal 3 to the face or to an attacker is important.

It dies to bolt, and that's a huge problem. Countryside Crusher isn't really very strong in this format anyway, and Knight is often a 4/4 when it hits play. Certainly not always, but if you're scared of a bolt you often have the option of playing around it, and you can even do that with countryside crusher.

I really don't think you can try and have a serious discussion while ignoring lightning bolt.

1)They enchant your guy with opressive rays
2)On your next turn, you don't attack with that creature, and leave at least 3 mana open
3)On their next turn, it is likely that the threat of activation to make the creature block will prevent them from attacking with some number of their creatures.
4)After their attack step, you can use that mana on something useful, provided that it's instant speed.

Basically the same threat of activation effect that a card like Darkthicket Wolf has but in a slightly different context. The card seems like it removes the creature for all intents and purposes until the owner has 3 spare mana lying around, but that's not quite true.

I generally draft quite a lot. I play constructed every now and then, but I draft a lot more. I do some prereleases but I don't really find them that fun, I prefer just to draft.

As far as white 5 drops are concerned, I really think that Totem Guide Hartebeest is strong but the other options are only alright, including the cranes.

Also, while Theros block is clearly somewhat underpowered (which is generally a good thing as power creep is a bad thing) it's certainly better than Kamigawa. I don't mind the flavour, though the gameplay is pretty boring.

Opressive rays is interesting, and it's the kind of card that could see fringe play in formats like Legacy or Modern because it's clearly a strong card. However, I think that mana is significantly less tight here than in those formats. The fact that you can leave up mana to stop them attacking then later use that mana on something at instant speed seems to make the card a lot worse.

I don't think they're ever going to print a card with both flashback and buyback ever again because it's so confusing, but it would sure be awesome.

I don't think that this is good enough, but I do think it's better than Venser. It's kind of a dead horse, but I do really think Venser should only be in cubes if you're looking for a wacky, synergy driven card in that slot. This could certainly compete for that particular slot as it's conditionally insane and extremely synergy driven.

Also, there's a good reason that born cards are still in new card discussion - the new sets were originally just moved to Card/Archetype discussion when they were released, but for the first couple months after a set is released you still get rather preliminary notions of how good the cards are as people are still testing them out.

Also, this forum is in >The Game>The Cube Forum>Card and archetype discussion>New Card Discussion, I think it's pretty clear

Quote from willdice

If you really want to run only full cycles, I'd go safe:
Allied pairs: ABU, shock, fetch, manland, buddy
Enemy pairs: ABU, shock, fetch, buddy, pain

I really don't like this because the buddy lands are really a lot worse than the fastlands. Look at modern - it is dominated by fetches, buddies and shocks with some filter lands, some manlands and very few buddy lands and painlands. Fast and consistent mana is even more important in cube given that you're going to have to run a whole bunch of basics and that the format is at least as defined by cheap early plays. In my opinion, after you've included ABUs, fetches, shocks and manlands, there are no more powerful lands in allied colours apart from Horizon Canopy regardless of the colour combination.

I think that pauper and peasant are formats that include things that have been defined as common/uncommon rather than cards that haven't been specifically defined as rare. It does seem that these promos would have been rare had they been printed in a normal printing.

However, do what you want! It's your cube. Though mana crypt is incredibly powerful even in powered cubes.

I'd like to say that I've tried 450 and 360 and 360 has been much more fun for me. The power level of commons when trying to fill up 450 really does become quite low - I have that problem even at 360!

I think that a land-themed cube would have to be a rare cube. Too many of the cards that synergise with lands are uncommon or rare for that to be possible in pauper.