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Cube Overview: Secrets of Strixhaven and SOS Commander

(Originally posted on my Substack on 4/13/26.)

This article discusses Secrets of Strixhaven’s impact on cube, using a higher-powered non-thematic perspective for evaluation via real-world cube testing.

Although I physically test cards with reps in my own cube (tl;dr it’s currently a “Legacy-lite cube”), that isn’t the sole context of evaluation; as someone who works on the Magic Online Vintage Cube and the “Official Pauper Cube” list and is familiar with cubes across the power level spectrum, keeping various environments in mind via my ratings scale is always forefront in my mind*.

But before talking about the individual cards, I’ll go over some big-picture things from the set (click here if you want to skip all of that.)

Prepare

Essentially, these cards break down into a few categories:

The first category is essentially a creature with an ETB (Enter the Battlefield) trigger, where you can pay the Mulldrifter’s cost in investments, if need be, and helps to buff prowess (but gets counterred by cards like Negate.) Like other mulldrifters, those who enter prepared are nice with blinking to reset their virtual ETBs.

The second type is closer to Titan range, where the cards do something immediately but then can continue to do so. There’s a nearly 20-year old Evan Erwin video where one of the drafters talk about how cards like Waterfront Bouncer and Crystal Shard are so good in cube because they can take over a game.

We’re obviously a ways from that as that kind of guaranteed value isn’t guaranteed anymore, but because it’s so hard to quantify how often these kinds of repeatable effects happen, generally speculative evaluation tends to ignore this, so the default assumption is that they happen once, which isn’t always the case. Since their spells are tacked onto bodies, killing the creature does stop the spell from happening again (if priority is passed), so your engine for making infinite Demonic Tutors and Regrowths isn’t perpetual. But I found that it’s not uncommon for these to trigger more than once.

For the latter category, they tended to play closer to Baneslayer-style cards or cards that need to untap to work, which was an obstacle to not have that guaranteed value. We saw this happen with cards like Dirgur Focusmage, Grave Researcher, Joined Researchers, Striding Shotcaller, Emeritus of Conflict and others, where not having that guaranteed value makes them worse – anyone who’s played with/against the Alchemy rebalance of Orcish Bowmasters on Arena can attest to how much worse it got when its ETB trigger was lost.

Cards that care about things leaving the graveyard.

Gau, Feral Youth and Kishla Skimmer tread those waters already. I’d initially underrated Gau as I thought that there wouldn’t be many times when his EOT trigger would happen (it turns out, it did and sometimes when something operates on an axis that we don’t usually care about, it’s easy to underrate.) They’re obviously not all winners, but I’ll highlight the winners here. Cards with Flashback and recursive creatures help to trigger these, which helps.

Opus

I’ll be referring to “5+ mana cards” in this article although unfortunately, these cards are templated so that you can’t get free value off of Force of Will, Pyrokinesis, cards with Delve, when cheated, but paying full retail cost, as well as with X-cards like Occult Epiphany and Traumatic Critique are nice to have as an option to have in pocket when using Opus cards. As expected, the 5+ mana upside almost never happened and was more aspirational than consistent.

Repartee

Repartee has been described as Heroic meets crime since they also trigger on casting spells that target an opponent’s creatures. Unfortunately, we found them to be middling outside of some exceptions.

Arguably, these could be supported more via more instants and sorceries that target it, but the well runs dry fast as you only have so many tricks as good as Monstrous Rage and Berserk. Overall, the mechanic didn’t do much and this looks like it’ll be more of a constructed mechanic than cube. Valiant, unfortunately, this is not.

Lifegain

Historically, “life gain matters” hasn’t been a good cube archetype since the juice is generally not worth the squeeze due to how weak many cards with lifegain have historically been. I don’t expect that to change much, but it’s a knob that can be tweaked with cards like Gix’s Command and Dissection Tools, which may be on the outside looking in on some cubes as an option.

Tl;dr; Here’s what I like most from the set:

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White:

Erode

Power: 5 Vibes: 3

I wouldn’t be surprised if this was slightly overrated as exiling creatures is an upside that’s sneakily useful in cube (Death in the Family/Anoint with Affliction’s exile making these solid cube cards) but this is mostly what it says on the tin – it’s cheap removal and is nice to have as a 1-mana removal against high-loyalty/high-impact planeswalkers (since Pithing Needle is just so narrow.) Likely a staple for many years to come.

Ceaseless Conflict

Power: 3.5 Vibes: 2

Its most obvious analog is Sunfall, which wipes the board but leaves you with a creature. Generally playing wraths in proactive decks is a bad idea since it’s counterproductive to your own game plan. Ceaseless Conflict in a creature deck is likely still incorrect, but it kinda lets it be a Plague Wind variant, to an extent, but this plays out best in more controlling decks that happen to have value creatures, like Thundertrap Trainer, Palace Jailer and Solitude. Usually, this at least got a 3/2, if not several, which was a great way to apply pressure after wiping the board and made up for losing Sunfall’s exile and the potential for a larger incubated creature.

Emeritus of Truce

Power: 2.5 Vibes: 4

The right call is to look at this as more of a Daysquad Marshal riff than as a removal on a creature, although giving an opponent a 1/1 can prepare this to cast a virtual Afterlife on a creature in the right circumstances. There were board states where, even though it didn’t give an opponent a creature, it still was able to make 2 bodies and prepare itself. Still, I overall think of this as more of a midrange white card ala Beza than as a Nekrataal, since you aren’t guaranteed the removal, where if you get access to the Swords to Plowshares, it’s nice upside.

Augusta, Order Returned

Power: 2.5 Vibes: 2

Augusta ended up surprising me as a way to nuke graveyards and act as a card like Agent Bishop.

It looked better than we had thought since it usually put 2 counters on things, usually itself and the ability to keep graveyards in check was useful. It has to attack to do it, but that felt like a fair tradeoff to give this flying and vigilance. So far, I’ve liked it more (but not significantly more) than Agent Bishop, its closest comparison, since it usually just becomes a big threat like Agent Bishop tends to do.

Practiced Offense and Antiquities on the Loose

Power: 2 Vibes: 3

Practiced Offense represents a lot of burst damage of double strike for 3 mana, or 5 if you flash it back. I’m lumping this and Antiquities on the Loose as 3-mana effects that don’t do a lot on their front side but can via flash back. Anyone who remembers History of Benalia remembers how useful getting a couple of knights for 3 mana could be; this lacks the burst damage of the final chapter but this has some nice late game use if need be to get some 3/3s.

These ended up being middling in decks, but they ended up in more midrange decks than aggressive ones.

Informed Inkwright, Stirring Hopesinger

Power: 2 Vibes: 2

Triggering off of any spell that targets a creature is nice, although my general impression from testing was that Repartee didn’t trigger as often as I’d like for a card to be good in cube. A point of comparison is Clarion Spirit, which likely makes more tokens, since it’s much easier to build around and overall.

The same happened with Stirring Hopesinger, although that only really needed to trigger once to be worthwhile. Competition’s much more fierce there, though.

Eiganjo Dynastorian

Power: 1 Vibes: 4

This doesn’t enter prepared, but it can at least threaten to get a Replenish if a couple of things attack. I’m just unsure how many decks want a Replenish multiple times, let alone decks with multiple creatures.

Elite Interceptor

Power: 1 Vibes: 2.5

Initially, I thought of this as a Thraben/Novice Inspector, since it trades being able to use the “clue” at instant speed and having an artifact object for being able to tap or untap a creature. We found that the drawbacks (no game object created, so the value’s lost when the creature dies and can’t even be used at instant speed) made it significantly worse than the old inspectors and this just wasn’t performing well in white decks, even white aggro decks that would theoretically be best for it.

Blue:

Skycoach Conductor

Power: 4 Vibes: 3.5

Blue likes flash creatures, and having a virtual Restoration Angel in blue is nice, since you trade off +1/+1 for the ability to play it in installments or to have it as a blue pseudo-“seal” effect to protect something else, ala Spellskite. It didn’t have many impressions in testing but the base rates are good enough that I think it’s got staying potential.

Fractal Anomaly

Power: 1.5-4 Vibes: 4

As a generalist blue card, there were many times that it was a virtual dead draw as a Merfolk of the Pearl Trident. Because of that, this played as a A+B card to work with having a critical mass of draw cards, especially draw 7s, where the ceiling lies.

That said, it’s fine if cast as a 2/2, and good if cast as a 3/3. This is a case where having old decks on hand is useful as a cube designer – for being able to look at how many cantrippy cards are in a cube’s blue decks. I’m rating its floor low and ceiling high, like with Casey Jones, Vigilante is because of the potential it has for being absurd in the right circumstances.

Flow State

Power: 2-3.5 Vibes: 3

This card has been drawing comparisons to Expressive Iteration by being a virtual draw 2 for 3, but overall I’ve found it to be closer to be to Accumulate Wisdom by being a card that cares about specific cards in the graveyard (of course, this is much easier to enable in cube than AW.) Unlike EI, this can’t be a 3rd turn play to guarantee a land drop, but that’s hardly a death knell.

Its floor isn’t great since it’s a sorcery since it’s a really bad Anticipate. A point that I’ve not seen in discussion is that the bottleneck is in the number of sorceries in a deck (and cube), since it’s not hard to get a lot of instants in a reactive blue deck, but found that getting to enough sorceries required some work. I looked at some popular cubes for comparison:

Arena Powered cube: 62 (23 blue) / 540 are instants, 56 (14 are blue) are sorcery.

MTGO Vintage Cube: 68 (25 blue) / 540 are instants, 59 (13 are blue) are sorcery.

Other popular cubes have similar breakdowns, where there are plenty of the cards, but it may be difficult to get there for sorceries just in blue.

Overall, I found it more to be a late-game play due to sorceries being a bottleneck and more of a build-around than expected. That didn’t make it bad, but less of a generalist blue card than you’d think.

Muse Seeker

Power: 2.5 Vibes: 2

While it looks like a generic looter, I found that it was surprisingly not hard to loot twice a turn with this, with cheap instants/sorceries, since looting feeds into itself for finding gas. Unsurprisingly, the 5+ mana mode never came up, but I still think it’s pretty replaceable.

Emeritus of Ideation

Power: 2.5 Vibes: 5

I’ve been looking at this as a 5/5 flier for 6 that draws you a card, like a big ol’ Mulldrifter that can, if the stars align, do it again via being able to re-prepare itself (if you do, you probably won the game.) During testing, it pretty much played as that – a 6-mana card that could draw 3. It didn’t re-prepare but that’s likely gg if that ever happens.

Because of that, I think of it more as a Lord of Change-style card, although its ETB trigger does trigger cards that care about spells being cast (Mentor, things with Prowess, etc) although it may be as more of a build-around card than as a generalist card like Quantum Riddler. Overall, it was fine.

Jadzi, Steward of Fate

Power: 2 Vibes: 3

Yoman5 said it’s a Steamcore Scholar riff, where you trade an actual spell for Oracle’s Gift, which is markedly worse than an actual card. Kiora, the Rising Tide is another analog, trading the upside of making 8/8s for an X spell does look similar. I mostly look at Oracle’s Gift as a late-game effect to be cast for X=2+, which is fine for holding down the fort if you have nothing better to do.

It’s cheap enough to be cast early, but I found that due to the general inefficiency of its sorcery, needing to commit to that much mana meant you made Fractals only if you had nothing better to do. It does threaten lethal when cast for X=4-5, but that mode didn’t really come up.

Exhibition Tidecaller, Harmonized Trio

Power: 2 Vibes: 4

These seem like Greg Hatch mono-blue Martyr cards if anything; blue tempo with small creatures isn’t a typically supported cube archetype, but these do pair decently well with small creatures in other decks. Tidecaller can mill to fuel self-mill and can be a miser’s wincon if the game goes long, but I never saw that happen. .

Harmonized Trio was in this undefeated UW aggro-control deck, and it was fine there and other blue decks with lots of other bodies; nice with vigilant tokens but tapping 3 creatures to make a Brainstorm was a very very real cost, which was usually done either with vigilant creatures or in a standstill state.

Mathemagics

Power: 1 Vibes: 5

It’s nice when your utility spell can also serve as a wincon, and I really wanted cards like Virtue of Persistence to do that – act as something utilitarian early and then act as a wincon later, but the relatively inefficiency of these kinds of cards like Virtue and Grim Bauble really do hurt their playability. With this, it never felt like there was a good time to cast it when we were testing it out, as its various modes never felt like what decks were wanting to do for the mana investment.

Black:

Intermediate Chirography

Power: 3 Vibes: 4

I look at this as having a floor of it making a 2/1 flier and a game object to be bounced or levelled up if the game goes long. When levelled, its trigger – like with many things, works with fetchlands (and on the opponent’s turn, so it does punish attacks/burn by the opponent.) Modified cares about +1/+1 counters, which is becoming more of a thing in green, which can help to shape an identity in a color pair that tends to play as generic midrange piles.

Eternal Student

Power: 2-3 Vibes: 4

I’d seen some comparisons that it was a Lingering Souls, but unless it gets thrown into the graveyard without dying, it more emulates the various creatures that can exile themselves from the grave to get a creature.

When played fairly, being able to get a couple of fliers acts kind of like a death trigger; usually the issue for these creatures was that if they weren’t efficient on their front side, they tended to play worse than they look. Although trading with smaller creatures isn’t the worst thing for a creature with the ability to make a couple of fliers at instant speed, I mainly think this works best in decks that have ways to discard it/sacrifice it, and relatively mediocre outside of that.

Ral Zarek, Guest Lecturer

Power: 2.5 Vibes: 3

Comparisons to other 3-mana Lilianas are easy but inaccurate, as this is more of a Davriel instead of a 3-mana Liliana. 4 abilities ain’t nothing either, and while I never saw this go ultimate, but usually its first abilities were pretty good, as being able to surveil on a plus for a planeswalker wasn’t bad, and being targeted discard (instead of Liliana of the Veil’s symmetrical one) was great on boards where he wasn’t being threatened, since it could ride the wave of surveiling + discarding.

When he was, not impacting the board was a very real drawback, although there’s certainly states when neither Liliana’s respective board impacts did much. He was able to defend himself pretty well if there was something to Unearth and it’s been nice when it’s been a 3-mana Unearth that leaves behind something, ala Pre-War Formalwear. This is where its ceiling was, as either a way to get something small back + surveil bot or something to shred hands when it wasn’t threatened. The ultimate never came up but that’s hardly shocking.

I don’t see a need to restrict planeswalkers and viewed this more like an enchantment like Phyrexian Arena. In that context, he was ok.

Emeritus of Woe

Power: 2.5 Vibes: 4

The base rate of being a 5/4 for 4 isn’t too bad by current creature standards, and this played similarly to Rune-Scarred Demon for being a high-mana creature that tutors. In testing, we never saw it get re-prepared but being able to proactively make it happen via sacrifice could be a sideways Aristocrats payoff.

Grave Researcher

Power: 2 Vibes: 2

Although this evokes reanimate, it played more as Zombify meets Recurring Nightmare than Reanimate. It was nice that it can continue to reanimate once it’s active, but the lifeloss does add up if reanimating several things. One of our drafters said “my feedback on the black prepare cards is that they all die before I can do anything with them”, which honestly felt pretty accurate since this and many others have to wait to do their thing. Surveiling on upkeep was nice to feed into the prepare condition, but unless you were reanimating things with this, it was not a great turn 3 play.

Moseo, Vein’s New Dean

Power: 2 Vibes: 2

This has flying, which is uncommon for a creature that makes another token and is a fine pile of stats for the cost. This likely will just recur 1-drops ala Leonardo, Sewer Samurai, but is much worse at that role and found that at the pile of stats role, it didn’t do much in decks that played it (although the decks didn’t have a lot of 1-drops to get back.) Lifegain as an archetype helps, but it generally was too little for its cost.

Tragedy Feaster

Power: 2 Vibes: 2

This has a super pushed rate with a way to protect itself, with a drawback that isn’t the absolute worst in decks that can spit out fodder. These types of creatures haven’t done much in cube lately, although having ward helps to get around the whole “kill this thing after the drawback, get rekt nerd” play pattern, although the ward doesn’t do anything against wraths. doesn’t help if the opponent just wraths after, though. This didn’t really get played though, since the drawback can still be real, even in the newly recharged aristocrats archetype.

Lecturing Scornmage

Power: 1.5 Vibes: 2

Theoretically, this takes just one Doom Blade to make this a 2/2, but we found this to be pretty disappointing, even in decks with many ways to target opposing creatures.

A drafter drafted a Grixis deck (it did not go undefeated) and looked to be an ideal home for this, with many ways to target an opponent’s creatures, and it was still inconsistent. If it’s not great in a deck like that, I’m unsure how realistic it would be to make a deck for it tick in cube and may just be more of a constructed card than a cube card.

Red:

Flashback

Power: 2.5 Vibes: 4.5

Mission Briefing had some hype when it was shown, but it never really did anything. Costing 1 is the cheapest rate which may be enough to get there, although I get the feeling that it may be too restrictive.

So far, it’s been fine. Somewhat of a build-around for high-impact cards that you want to recur, and only tacking a mana onto an instant/sorcery has been nice. Still, it’s just been fine.

Molten-Core Maestro

Power: 2.5 Vibes: 2

Being a 2/2 that gets buffs off of instants and sorceries made me think of Dragonsguard Elite, but being in a color more suited for being able to reliably pump it. It played as a meat-and-potatoes beatstick in this undefeated Boros deck, and never got to do the Opus thing, but it being evasive and decently-sized let it be a nice role filler. Hardly S tier amongst red 2s, but not a bad one.

Maelstrom Artisan

Power: 2 Vibes: 1.5

Red 3s are extremely stacked these days, but even if excluding the power outlier 3-drops, I’m unsure how often this gets there as a 3-power creature that can kill a non-basic land when “kicked.” I see this as one of those cards that’s just ok at both modes, which tends to not bode well in cube; arguably, turn 4 or 5 is too late for killing a non-basic land to matter, but it could be useful against late-game lands like Karakas. Initial impressions haven’t been great.

Emeritus of Conflict

Power: 1-2.5 Vibes: 2

Several drafters made attempts to build around this with a bevy of cheap cards, and it never got to Lightning Bolting anything. Being on Legacy legality meant that my drafters couldn’t get to the 3x spell count via fast mana, but as much as I found cards like Sea Gate Stormcaller to be a disappointment because the assumption of “you’ll always have something to hold in hand for it” don’t happen as often as you’d think, so it was significantly worse with this since that required several other cards (this is also why Choreographed Sparks is disappointing.) A 2/2 first strike wasn’t great either.

One case where I can see this working out is as a miser’s storm/Underworld Breach wincon like a store band Grapeshot, but I’m still weary there. Likely it’s its best case, since as a generalist red card, it was a big disappointment.

Blazing Firesinger

Power: 2 Vibes: 3

I’m mainly mentioning this as a combo piece that makes infinite mana with Displacer Kitten. Otherwise, it’s like a creature form of something like Pentad Prism that you cast and then use later to burst mana.

Impractical Joke

Power: 2 Vibes: 2

Strangle with some extra text, to get around protection… somewhat. You can’t use this to target something with protection itself and Mother of Runes still laughs at it (you can choose no targets to prevent Impractical Joke from being countered, but you’ll still need to follow it up with some sort of damage source after since this can’t prevent the mother from being targeted) but it’s a nice little upside to have. It’s another card to have in the toolbox if you’re looking to define 3 toughness/loyalty as a toughness “test” in a format and/or redundancy for cheap removal options.

Naktamun Lorespinner

Power: 1 Vibes: 2

Having to wait a turn (at least) to get this prepared really put a dent into this card’s quality. Churning through your deck with multiple wheels is something that this can do, so I don’t think it’s strictly worse than Magus of the Wheel, but it never got to wheeling once and red 3-drops are good enough to not need to bother with this.

Green:

Ambitious Augmenter

Power: 4.5 Vibes: 4

Likely the best green card in the set. This was frequently a 3/3 and larger, since triggering off of any spell (even if countered!) and not just being restricted to larger creatures has made this significantly better than previous versions like Experiment One. Its death trigger has been relevant since when it got large, it helped apply continue to apply pressure (kill my 5/5? Ok, I get a 4/4.) These days, having 1-drops that scale well helps to help these kinds of creatures punch up to 2026-level creatures and this has been performing well in that role.

Emeritus of Abundance

Power: 4 Vibes: 4

While the red Emeritus was a disappointment, I’ve been digging this one so far. I’ve heard comparisons between this and Eternal Witness since this gets back something from the graveyard but it’s more like a stat pile like Sentinel of the Nameless City, which trades maps for Regrowths.

Generally, with Eternal Witness, you’re looking to loop something back with high enough impact where you aren’t punished for playing an under-rate 3-drop, so usually she’s best friends with power outliers like Ancestral Recall and Time Walk.

Because of the increased mana cost, Emeritus of Abdundance is worse at that specific role of being a 5-mana “get a 2/1, Time Walk again” role, since the Emeritus requires 7 mana to do that.

But, stopping analysis there does a disservice to how the card played out. Instead of being a 3-mana recursion card, it was more of a midrange beatstick that could hold the fort pretty well. While it was annoying when it got stonewalled and thus couldn’t re-prepare, decks with a lot of removal to clear the path had this acting as a recursive card advantage engine. Overall, quite impressive.

Kinetic Ooze

Power: 3.75 Vibes: 4

Historically, Reclamation Sage effects are effects that tend to come to mind when thinking of “cube cards” as early cube preview cards, from a time when artifacts (and some enchantments like Sulfuric Vortex and Treachery) were seen as power outliers.

Prismatic Ending axis of effectiveness instead of efficiency, but that mainly gets there based on how effective it is at dealing with things. It’s a bit of a cop-out answer but its power is mostly reliant on how many cheap things there are to kill and how important running this out is to kill a 0-mana thing is.

This undefeated Simic deck had it and it was nice there as a catch-all. Usually, this didn’t get cast for X=5 in either that or the UW deck that splashed for it; since most targets have small mana values, usually casting it for 1-2 was fine, and losing out on the ability to blink it wasn’t that big of a deal. My only concern is that, although there aren’t many 3+ cost artifacts and enchantments out there, the cost for this to kill something like a Batterskull, Dissection Tools or a cheated out artifact is atrocious. Depending on the cube meta, that may not matter too much.

Vastlands Scavenger

Power: 3.75 Vibes: 3

This being a 3-mana 4/4 with deathtouch has been great on its own. The opponent is incentivized to kill it quickly since it’s an above-rate creature, which doesn’t help with the inherent weakness of these kinds of “baneslayer” creatures and losing out on the spell half, but it lived to cast its instant surprisingly often.

The spell half was something that was done if you had nothing better to do, but unlike with Jadzi, you weren’t locked into using a bunch of mana in your main phase. For the most part, the juice on this was on it being a 3-mana 4/4 with deathtouch (being big meant that it couldn’t be ignored like small deathtouchers can) with a bonus spell if need be, which worked well for green midrange decks.

Environmental Scientist

Power: 2.5 Vibes: 2

As a 2-mana Civic Wayfinder, this plays differently than Satyr Wayfinder, as these cards tend to be more cards that want to fill the graveyard rather than look for lands. Historically, Civic Wayfinder was a decent card that tied the room together for 2-3 cube decks. Being a 2-mana 2/2 really helped and it had some good first impressions for being a relatively cheap pile of value, although its value did suffer as the game went on, unless looking for a land to splash things.

Wildgrowth Archaic

Power: 2.5 Vibes: 3

This card ended up being merely ok, as it was either cast as an under-rate GG 1/1 that pumped other creatures, as a 3-mana 3/3 ala Thunderous Velocipede or as a 4-mana 4/4, which didn’t happen often. It usually ended up eating a removal spell immediately, which is fine for a cheap creature, but it at least had the promise of making future threats huge. (The red archaic played similarly, although in an arguably more competitive mana slot although funnily, that tended to stick around to be able to pump other creatures relatively easily, go figure.)

Germination Practicum

Power: 2 Vibes: 4

This card gave me some vibes of Kinbinding, Multiple Choice and Valgavoth’s Onslaught – S tier cards in their respective retail limited formats, but mediocre outside of that. This somewhat fills the Kinbinding role, since it’s an AOE pump, ala Overrun without trample and other similar retail legends, but keeping the buff and being able to keep buffing your board can turn games around ala Virtue of Loyalty. Like with Virtue, if you have a board, it’s hard to lose but it can’t just solo a game like Ouroboroid. More cautious optimism, since it didn’t see testing play, but I wouldn’t be surprised to see it do stone nothing either.

Slumbering Trudge

Power: 2 Vibes: 3

Usually this was either played on turn 1, or cast it for 4 as an untapped 6/6. The rate is pretty good and works well with fight spells. Green 4s tend to be piles of stats and this is no exception, and it was ok at that role – big but replaceable.

Multicolor:

The 5 charms:

Prismari Charm
Power: 3 Vibes: 3

Silverquill Charm
Power: 3 Vibes: 3

Quandrix Charm
Power: 3.5 Vibes: 3

Witherbloom Charm
Power: 4 Vibes: 3

Lorehold Charm
Power: 3.5 Vibes: 3

There hasn’t been a consensus on which of these is the best but I’m digging all of them for cube as role-filler cards. Right now, I’m seeing Witherbloom as being the best charm, although the cycle in general is underrated.

They all seem to follow the pattern of having at least one good “base rate” mode, and a situationally useful mode that you wouldn’t want on its own, but is nice to have.

Witherbloom Charm’s kill mode can’t kill broken red or the strong Simic 3-drops but has been great for being a catch-all for cheap things ala Abrupt Decay and I’ve been very impressed with it, even though it can’t trade up in tempo, and being able to sacrifice lands to its draw mode to give it a megacycling mode has been a great upside as well. Feed The Clan is a card that you never want to have in the main deck, let alone a cube, but being able to gain 5 life as a mode to win races/survive out of nowhere as well. I’ve liked it more than Witherbloom Command which had issues where its modes weren’t active, even in cubes that have moxen as a way to use its kill mode. This undefeated Jund deck had Witherbloom Charm and I expect it to work similarly well in base GB and greedy decks splashing it.

Lorehold Charm tends to make me think of Monstrous Rage meets Overrun, although this doesn’t leave anything behind like the former. The closest we’ve seen to a mass pump that gives trample at instant speed is Invigorated Rampage, and this looks close to it; not strictly worse or better (likely slightly better since it helps things survive combat and can potentially go wider) but good to bash over chump blockers. Its ability to destroy non-token artifacts or to be an instant Unearth look to be situational, but useful – I’m looking forward to seeing this bring back either strong or hate pieces in white like Voice of Victory, Ajani, Nacatl Pariah and Containment Priest which died to removal earlier in the game. It’s not seen a ton of play yet, but I’m cautiously optimistic.

Quandrix Charm has performed well by virtue of being a Quench that can be used in other ways – similar to Miscalculation, trading the ability to trade itself into something unknown into a couple of situational modes (Demystify, Serpentine Ambush – both cards that aren’t strong enough for cubes but are nice to have in pocket depending on the board state.)

Prismari Charm and Silverquill Charm have been fine, although their base modes are amongst the weaker of the charms (bouncing a thing, exiling a small thing) although Silverquill’s was better in aggressively slanted decks.

Prismari (UR)

Vibrant Outburst

Power: 4 Vibes: 4

Is tapping a creature better than a gaining 3 life? Most likely; in a format that’s becoming more centered around creatures, it isn’t flavor text to be able to tap something down EOT. It’s mediocre outside of creature matchups (I never saw it sided out for that specific purpose, but I don’t really have unfair decks in my cube, so that may slightly influence things.) Besides, that’s what your sideboard is for.

Traumatic Critique

Power: 4 Vibes: 4

Naturally, when we see X-damage spells, we think of them as pure damage spells, but it’s better to think of this as a card with X kicker than as a Blaze effect. I pointed this out in the Spider-Man review with Morlun and with Choco-Comet in the Final Fantasy review and so far, I’ve found it to be closer to Morlun in power level. The Kavu Titan effect is still real as it does cause it to not get cast early as often as it should, but it being an instant does help with casting something large on your end step and not locking you into using a lot of mana on your main phase, and getting a kill spell in the same piece of cardboard as your early play Abandon Attachments/Catalog is nice.

The relative inefficiency of the Blaze mode does make me weary as it can make its “kicker” small if cast for non-lethal damage, but my gut says that the base mode where cast for X=0 or 1 is where the juice is with this.

Colorstorm Stallion

Power: 2.5 Vibes: 3

The definition of fine – it had fine stats by being a 3/3 for 3 with haste and a small ward buff, a fine trigger (although only being a temporary buff was annoying) but it’s one of those cards that I test out, find it’s expendable and then gets missed by no one when it leaves.

Inspired Skypainter, Sanar, Unfinished Genius

Power: 2 Vibes: 3.5

Both of these ended up being mid-level 2-mana Izzet creatures that are decently sized for current creature standards. Skypainter threatened to clone something (but since it’s telegraphed by its high mana cost, the target ate removal in response.) I never saw either of these pop off, either, unfortunately, even though they had the potential to cast large spells. I wouldn’t be surprised if Sanar was sneakily good in decks, since making a treasure for free, multiple times, is a fine rate for a 2-drop.

Splatter Technique

Power: 1.5 Vibes: 1.5

The mana cost is annoying, preventing it from being splashed in decks outside of Izzet; it’s been pretty underwhelming in testing since it doesn’t cover a weakness in red (5+ toughness creatures) and cashing it in for Tidings is usually just slow and clunky.

Theoretically, it’s a wrath that can cash itself in but it just ended up being bad at both roles and being like a bad Ill-Timed Explosion.

Lorehold (RW)

Quintorius, History Chaser

Power: 2-4 Vibes: 4

My method of testing cards for cube is to seed cards into the draft, so naturally Quintorius had plenty of things to support him and we saw him pop off a good amount of the time, with Lorehold focusing on cards leaving the graveyard. The juice is with his ability to make 3/2s, which isn’t restricted to once a turn, which usually happened in this context, but I’m weary of how good it is in a more generalized world (where that level of support isn’t guaranteed) since he’s mostly a 1-mode planeswalker, although the mode is a good one to accrue card advantage.

Lorehold, the Historian

Power: 3.5 Vibes: 3

I liked this when I tried it, and it gets around the worst part of miracle (when you have it in a deck or cube, you have to do the whole “miracle draw” thing.) It never did miracle things but I expect that to be more achievement unlock than a reason to play it, since it was good enough as a flying hasty beatstick that rummages on an opponent’s turn. In a way, it played like a less broken Otharri since it was 5 power of haste for 5 mana.

Excava, the Risen Past

Power: 3.5 Vibes: 4

Having haste let this work out well as a curve-topper for aggro decks, and usually the creature coming back as a 1/1 wasn’t the worst thing (especially if they were already small creatures with ETB triggers) and helped those decks grind to the late game. Arguably, Boros decks don’t really need that, though.

Hardened Academic

Power: 3.5 Vibes: 4

As an aggro beater, this performed pretty well since it’s cheap, has haste and evasion. One of my drafters noted as follows:

“I had similarly high hopes for Hardened Academic but it seldom survived long enough to make an impact, other than the one game where I had a strong & fast start. In that game it got up to a 5/4 by turn 3 I think. Other than that it was a removal magnet from opponents (which i guess is a testament to how much of a threat it is?)”

Like Gau, if this gets to be a 3+ power creature, I think that makes up for the 2-mana cost, and being able to dump things into the graveyard is nice too, since red discard is becoming a very real cube archetype now, but even being a 2-power flying haster tested well thus far.

Suspend Aggression

Power: 3 Vibes: 3

SaffronOlive described this as a Soul Partition that draws you a card, which is a pretty good comparison. Usually this is a 2-for-1, which is nice for 3 mana and can get annoying things out of the way/kill tokens, the latter of which happened with the undefeated Boros deck. Hardly a staple, but a nice blink-type card that worked well outside of that archetype.

Silverquill (BW)

Silverquill, the Disputant

Power: 3 Vibes: 4

This undefeated Esper flash deck had it as a top-end and played as I had expected; where if it untapped, it usually was able to copy things and able to swing the game in its caster’s favor.

Cards that copy other spells tend to look better than they play (Sea Gate Stormcaller was a prime semi-recent example) but the raw stats were good enough, and the ceiling of doing things twice is pretty absurd. I wouldn’t be surprised if this also was used as a miser’s splash for burn, since doubling up on burn can quickly end games, but overall this played as a nice value creature, not just in decks with a ton of fodder.

Witherbloom (BG)

Professor Dellian Fel

Power: 2 Vibes: 3

This makes me think of the mid-2010s walkers like the 5-mana Ob Nix and Jace, but with this costing 4 mana.

It can threaten to ultimate in a turn as a life gain payoff, and it’s nice when your kill spell value walker can threaten to just kill an opponent by being a life drain engine, if it does ultimate, but I never saw that happen. Usually it either killed something, or was a lifegain bot.

I liked Witherbloom Charm significantly better than this, although having lifegain as a deck can make its ultimate as a very real wincon, since it dying after going ultimate with little other ways to gain life can be sad.

Dina’s Guidance

Power: 2 Vibes: 3

2 mana would have made this broken. 3 is essentially a split with Eladamri’s Call and Entomb, with the latter usually costing significantly more than its namesake card and in a cube meta, one could argue that even a 3-mana instant Entomb is still great for reanimation decks. That’s where I’m imagining it play best – as a store brand Entomb that can occasionally nab a creature, or just grab a creature to hardcast late game. I’m unsure if that’s good enough, though.

Quandrix (UG)

Applied Geometry

Power: 3 Vibes: 5

Generally, expensive clones have a hard time cracking into cubes, and doubly so ones that only can target your own stuff. This feels underrated because of those historical hurdles, since this has a floor of being a 6/6 mana elf (since you can target your own lands) for 4 mana. The aforementioned Jund deck with Witherbloom Charm didn’t have it as an option to splash, but it’s a good example of a green-based deck with a lot of Mulldriftery permanents, where being a 6/6 token is a massive upside on the existing version. Simic’s a tough nut to crack if you have symmetric multicolor sections but both green (good mana fixing) and blue (plays to the long game, card draw) play well to including a lot of multicolor cards anyway.

Striding Shotcaller

Power: 2.5 Vibes: 2

Needing something else to prepare this is annoying as it’s just an 0/4, and its prepare trigger makes it like a weird Edric that can self-sustain after going off once, since a bunch of fliers are likely going to be able to deal combat damage to a player. This was also in the undefeated Simic deck, where being able to throw big chunguses into the air was nice. Likely mid-to-low tier but not bad.

Artifacts/Colorless:

The Dawning Archaic

Power: 2 Vibes: 4

Another “how many of this do you want” for this to work type of card. Like a weird Murktide Regent/Sailors’ Bane/Eddymurk Crab type of card, which I’ve seen work in some cubes that have a ton of cantrips but usually pretty middling outside of that context. In testing, this never popped off but a high cost of entry and not having any of the bells and whistles (ward, flash, the ability to grow) that the others have is a mark against this.

Together as One

Power: 2 Vibes: 4.5

This is somewhat like an Inspired Ultimatum if cast for 5 and close enough to one if cast for 4. It likely results in victory if cast for 4 which did happen for lethal in one of the green-based 4-color decks. I’m concerned that it being middling at 3 is the death knell for this, as it may just not be *enough* of a pull for greedy decks to want this to be in a cube, if you need it to converge for 4.

Great Hall of the Biblioplex

Power: 1.5 Vibes: 1.5

I’ve heard comparisons between this and Abundant Countryside but this seems worse – the upside on the former lets it be a rainbow land for a wide swath of cards (creatures) where this is much more limiting. Helps to cast broken splashy spells, which could be something. The land at least doesn’t stop being a creature if activated (like Soulstone Sanctuary) and it’s the cheapest of that kind so far. I’m still unsure if that’s enough for a land that’ll make colorless mana often, though.

Thanks for reading! You can find my socials and my cube lists on my Linktree, as well as other cube set review articles and design articles that I’ve written over the last 15 years.

Scales used for rating cards:

I use a couple of scales to rate a card, via power and “vibes.” The former is pretty self-explanatory like normal set reviews, like from LSV’s set reviews that talk about a card’s impact in a limited format:

Also, I’ve been using something from Scuffle D. Lux’s set reviews by noting a power level band for some cards that have variable power level based on context in some cube formats where factors like speed and effectiveness of removal, format considerations and explicit support change how a card can perform.

The latter is an approximate rating for “vibes.” It’s harder to quantify, but it’s a rating to describe non-power related factors.

Examples, using the vibes scale for the latter:

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