This article talks about the Hobbit’s impact on cube, using a generalist non-thematic perspective for 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 is always forefront in mind. At the bottom of the article, you’ll find my ratings scale.
For this article, I’m working again with Kai, who’s been doing some great cube articles on his Substack.
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White:
The Queen of Dale
Usman:
Power: 2.5
Vibes: 2
Currently, there are a ton of white 2-drops available for cubes, and I’ve generally found this to be decent, but hardly a standout. Essentially, this is a Young Pyromancer riff, but one where the opponent has some control over it. The opponent controlling it means that the opponent ultimately can control how often you’re able to recruit (and if the opponent killed it via a FTK, it didn’t do anything,) unless she died from a creature with a non-creature ETB trigger, but found it usually didn’t demand an immediate answer – partially because it wasn’t a huge threat and partially from other things on board doing more, since her 2/1 body usually didn’t do a lot on its own.
Overall, recruiting played well and I’ve found that it plays differently than most bog standard looting effects, since it gives you something tangible, even if it was a chump blocker, while improving your draws, but even in spite of that, usually it didn’t feel like it did that much, since in the average game, this made a couple of tokens in a game. This was usually… fine, but not really that stellar when compared to other white 2s and I’ve grown less impressed with it over time in testing, when compared to generic 2-drops like Spectacular Spider-Man.
Kai:
In regards to playable cards in the set, I think it would be difficult to ignore the power level that The Queen of Dale brings to the table. Barring a few special instances (FTK-effects like Usman mentioned), this card should give you card advantage, selection, and a possible body, at least once. For those reasons and the fact that it is only 2 CMC, it definitely deserves a good look at a spot in your white two drops.
However, despite being worth a consideration, I, personally, am not overly excited about this card. In 2026, in a powered vintage cube environment, I like having most cards, specifically 2+ drops, to be able to do something by themselves. The bar is low for The Queen of Dales ability to trigger, but if your opponent is playing a creature heavy deck, this just reads as an overcosted Savannah Lions. I will be giving this card a shot still since I do like tokens and my white two-drops have more flexibility than some of my other CMCs but I don’t have the highest hopes. However, I would not mind being pleasantly surprised.
The Eagles are Coming!
Usman:
Power: 2.5
Vibes: 4
What stuck out to me was that the rate is extremely good for upgrading creatures into 4/4 fliers, but unlike other self-bounce like Sunpearl Kirin, its bounce targets are restricted to creatures you don’t get the 4/4s until your next turn, so you can’t use this to ambush attackers. Having to wait for another turn cycle to be able to attack with your 4/4s makes it slow but the rate on turning small and/or and value creatures into very large threats, even if they take a while to get online, may just be worth it, even though it didn’t really pop off in testing, despite its potential.
Kai:
First off, I want to say that this is probably my favorite white card that we are looking at in this review. That being said, this card is weird and clunky but I think for 2 CMC, it is flexible enough that I think it could be really fun. At face value, this card looks like it slots into blink and token synergies very well to just either retrigger for value or build a super wide flying board. The instant speed gives you the ability to save your important creatures but I think a lot of the value the card has is acting like a single turn clock if casted on your turn. It turns a Voice of Victory’s swing into 8 power of flying blockers on your opponents upkeep. Not exactly sure how it shakes out meta-wise but looks to be a fun card I’m excited to try.
Bilbo’s Gambit
Usman:
Power: 2
Vibes: 4
Like most everyone else, I initially compared this to Reprieve, its most obvious analog since not many white cards bounce a spell, and this doesn’t cantrip. It’s also being compared to Unsubstantiate but that misses the point.
This doesn’t get the card draw of Reprieve but the ability to lock the opponent out of casting stuff (it impacts you too, but who cares) makes it great when pushing advantage to protect a winning gamestate, since the opponent can’t rely on casting the spell again, if it’s cheap. This restricts its timing window since you were usually fine firing off a Reprieve whenever, and only delaying the spell without cantripping makes it worse than Reprieve.
Duh.
But does that make it *bad*, since we shouldn’t be assigning arbitrary limits to unique effects in cube like this. That said, it didn’t really see much play in testing and although I think this is going to be better than people think as a proactive tool in tempo, I’m just unsure if it’s worth the slot in a very powerful cube color.
Kai:
I think there are very niche instances where this card plays out at its best, but feel like 90% of the time, this is going to read like a worse reprieve. Although a minor benefit for your opponents, gifting a treasure to make sure they can’t recast the spell isn’t nothing and it also restricts your ability to cast spells too. I think this card plays best in a mono white/boros aggro deck where you just need to buy one more turn to finish out a game. At the same time, in these decks, holding up two mana is restrictive and kind of plays against the premise of the archetype. I think it could be a fun tempo piece on occasion, but don’t think it’s strong enough by itself to be anything more than that.
Blue:
Bilbo, Thief in the Night
Usman:
Power: 5
Vibes: 4
When this was previewed, I had the impression that it was a good card, but getting some reps in with it makes me confident that this is the best card in the set.
Essentially, this is a better Dreadhorde Arcanist with some knobs tweaked:
- It’s legendary.
- It can cast artifacts from the grave and they don’t get exiled if they go to the graveyard, which is nice with self-sacrificing artifacts like baubles and Chromatic artifacts.
- Note: Instants and sorceries get exiled if “flashed back” but artifacts that go to the graveyard after being brought back don’t, so you can only loop the latter.
- The targets aren’t restricted to 1-mana cards like Dreadhorde Arcanist, which DA generally is (without help)
- 2 toughness means it dies more easily but being a 2/2 makes it an actual threat, which came up in testing, which was relevant since it wasn’t *as* reliant on having things to get back from the grave to have impact and being a 2/2 wasn’t a big hindrance for letting it swing for the fences.
Kai:
I don’t think this is going to surprise anybody after reading my sections in the Marvel set review but this is by far my favorite card in the set. The amount of value that is simply stapled to a blue two drop is insane. I could write an entirely different article on simply the best things to loop with Bilbo, but instead I will just give a few examples ranked in a list of how excited I am to play them.
- Time Walk for 1 blue
- Breachless Brain Freeze Storm from a double cast
- Rebuying Black Lotus/Lotus Petal
- Rebuying Baubles
- Rebuying Spellbombs
There is simply just an absurd amount of good text on this card at face value that doesn’t even consider some of the strong corner cases (decreasing cost on flashback cards, impulse drew cards, etc.)
Most Decrepit Old Bird
Usman:
Power: 2-3.5
Vibes: 3
This compares to Picklock Prankster, and my initial thought is that the adventure mode is significantly worse due to being a sorcery, similar to being a sorcery made cards like Grim Bauble and Virtue of Persistence play so much worse than they look. In testing, when this whiffed, it felt *awful* but I’m curious to see how often decks want to take advantage of having a severely undercosted threat, and if playing this for 1 in the late game is its best role. Having more ways to care about the graveyard definitely helps make this better, since it can make it so that the adventure mode isn’t a total whiff if it misses, which I found happened far more often than I would have liked in testing. It has more use in decks with a high density of instants and sorceries and tempo strategies but I ended up being pretty disappointed by this, at least as a generalist card, ala Flow State.
Kai:
I think this card is slightly under the power level for most powered cubes but I like the name and flexibility of the card too much to not give it a try. 1 mana 1/1 with flying is not good enough on its own but a vanilla 2/2 with flying is still not really good enough in most cube environments. However, when analyzing this card, I’m trying to imagine it as a 3 mana play to mill 4, get a spell, and (fingers crossed) get a 2/2 flyer as well. I think with all of that, it seems okay? Think there is just enough text on a 1 drop to maybe make it work. Would not plan on this sticking in cubes for too long.
Great Gilded Boat
Usman:
Power: 3.5
Vibes: 2
This played pretty well and impressed me more as testing went on. This played as a pseudo-Smuggler’s Copter with haste by ensuring looting on any attack, and usually enabled its own crewing with the recruit soldiers. It usually wasn’t hard to enable recruiting (humorously, was enabled once via Spellskite attacking.)
The decks that played it usually had something to throw into the red zone after playing it, and being a 4/4 was big enough to where it was able to join the fight if need be or just be a strong threat on its own. Discard-mattering cards made this feel incredible, and especially if the soldiers could crew it, but its floor was still fine as a 4/4 that looted when crewed. Not as strong as Copter, of course, but still great.
Kai:
As soon as I saw this card, I was excited to give it a try. It reads like a slightly stronger, higher costed Smuggler’s Copter that can enable itself to swing later in the game. Being blue and an aggro pay off feels weird but I think the decks that can splash it or benefit off of the discard are really going to like it. Card selection, board build, and discard all attached seem like too much value to not at least be given a chance in a powered cube.
Elrond, Moon-Reader
Usman:
Power: 2
Vibes: 3.5
I generally saw Loki as a Constructed card as a card that would easily hit critical mass for its effect, but have a much harder time in cube, but Elrond working with mana dorks makes me think this has potential as an honorary UG card/UW card that works with Mother of Runes-style creatures, but if you search your cube for o:”:” as a filter, you’ll see a lot more matches than you’d think, similarly to how to how I found Gau, Feral Youth had a lot more targets than I would have thought.
When searching for activated creatures, I saw this when looking at the MTGO Vintage Cube:
My general rule of thumb for these kinds of cards is needing a critical mass of cards to work with, and usually that bar is at 5.
Opposition is a card that saw cube play for years, and was generally a Simic card that played occasionally in other color pairs and ended up disappointing. So far, I’ve found it struggling to hit critical mass for activated abilities, since his innate activated ability costing so much. It could have potential in Simic but my impression is that this card’s fate lies as mostly a Simic card that’s worse than other Simic broken cards and mid elsewhere.
Kai:
Elrond caught my eye when it was first spoiled but the longer that I looked at it, the less convinced that I am that it’s good enough. I think the card has a lot of sneaky value where it can sit on the table and draw you a lot of cards and I also think that it’s not good enough at face value to draw a lot of removal. However, being limited to one card and also requiring a creature with an activated ability seems like it could be a little restrictive. I think the decks that want this are going to be the green-heavy Simic decks that play Badgermole Cub and all the mana dorks to easily enable Elrond. However, I’m not entirely sure how strong it is outside of those.
Riddles in the Dark
Usman:
Power: 2
Vibes: 5
Fact or Fiction tends to get brought up in conversations with these kinds of blue cards where someone splits up the cards, but Fortune’s Favor and its LoTR cousin, Sauron’s Ransom, are closer analogs.
There’s some important distinctions between this and Sauron’s Ransom (aside from the ring text) since the opponent gets the last say in what you’d get, and in testing, it’s been a real drawback against this card.
I used to grind mythic Alchemy back when Sauron’s Ransom was legal, and my in-the-trenches experience with Sauron’s Ransom was that it was an instant speed draw 2 when you weren’t digging for something that you needed. At the risk of oversimplification, this is how the card generally played out (I’m using “good cards” and “bad cards” to roughly describe a card’s utility given the context of a game state.):
- 4 cards of roughly equal utility: For the most part, this means it’s a draw 2 at instant speed. Not bad.
- 3 “good cards,” 1 “bad card.”: You’re almost assuredly at least getting one good card out of the deal, and potentially 2 if there isn’t a card that’s head-and-shoulders better than the others.
- 2 “good cards,” 2 “bad cards”: Usually this means that there’s roughly equal piles, so you’re likely getting a good card out of it, since the piles usually get split as good-bad // good-bad.
- 1 “good card,” 3 “bad cards”: Opponent (usually) puts the good card in a 1-card face down pile, and hopes you don’t pick that pile. There are some mind games that the opponent can play by hiding that the card in the down-facing pile is the one that’s “the good card” but usually if the cards revealed don’t look great, it’s because the ones flipped over are good.
The reason that I bring all of this up is because Riddles flips the script, since the opponent gets to choose:
- 4 cards of roughly equal utility: For the most part, this is the same. You split them into roughly equal piles, and get a couple of cards, but likely the worst of the two.
- 3 “good cards,” 1 “bad card.”: You split these into good-good/good-bad. The issue here is that:
- If you reveal the good-good pile, the opponent likely gives the unknown pile (bad-good.)
- If you reveal the bad-good pile, the opponent likely just gives that to you, unless that revealed card
- 2 “good cards,” 2 “bad cards”: Usually this means that there’s roughly equal piles, so you’re likely getting a good card out of it, since the piles usually get split as good-bad // good-bad.
- 1 “good card,” 3 “bad cards”: This is where Riddles in the Dark played worst, since it’s very difficult to get what you really want, especially when digging for an answer to a given state. Rolling the dice either by showing the good card was risky, but potentially the better of the options since the opponent could just see 3 bad cards and let you keep them.
This ended up playing more as a “bulk draw” spell rather than something where you could get something specific, which Sauron’s Ransom and Fact or Fiction usually could. Fleish_dawg compared this as a reverse Stock Up, which… isn’t glowing praise, but pretty accurate. I really wanted to like this.
Kai:
I like Fact or Fiction. In fact, I still run it in my Vintage Cube (even though I probably shouldn’t). I read it as an instant speed draw two that half of the time gives you the best card, and the other half draws you two random cards. I think if you think you can best your cube mates in a bluffing match over half of the time, I would include it. Otherwise, I think you can group it together with Fact or Fiction and make your decision based on that card. If you have FoF, try Riddles in the Dark. If you don’t, you can probably ignore this card.
Black:
Head of the Hunt
Usman:
Power: 3
Vibes: 3
Somewhat like a Kalitas, where it can eat things for value. As expected, it was at its best in creature-heavy matchups where it could ambush a small creature and let you get a 2/2, and turn all of your removal spells into Chupacabras. Having flash really changed how it played, since it wasn’t bad to just sandbag and play at EOT. There’s some utility with exiling against death triggers and it’s amazing vs the escape titans. Decently solid threat.
Kai:
A creature that can flash in as a combat trick and provide a 2/2 body if it kills is exactly what I like to see out of black in 2026. I don’t foresee the exile effect being that relevant but I could also see it potentially being able to ruin an opponent’s reanimation strategy. I think if you’re able to stack up kill spells in a more Dimir based control strategy that this definitely has a spot but I don’t think this is just a generically good card on its own.
Desolation Prowler
Usman:
Power: 3
Vibes:1.5
I’ve cubed Putrid Leech a decent amount before it got powercrept out of Golgari, since – as efficient as an attacker as it was, an efficient pile of stats doesn’t align with the midrange Golgari gameplan, as, even though the bar for inclusion of XY-costed cards is that they need to punch well above their weight class, not fitting the midrange gameplan made it fall off.
I’ve been able to give this a whirl and it’s been decently performing, since, when played early, it’s difficult to block, closes games out quickly when needing to turn the corner and, so long as you can afford the life loss, being a 4/4 gives it more staying power than most 3-power creatures, as they tend to have low toughness. It’s at its worst against red decks, since they can shock it in response to its ability and can take advantage of you losing life, but found that’s what the sideboard is for anyway.
Kai:
It’s not a bad card inherently and does attack better for a small cost. It kind of reminds me of an Adanto Vanguard/hard to block, low-cost, aggro card. I really don’t see it making waves but I wouldn’t fault somebody for testing it out. If it stays in a powered cube for more than a couple months, I’m really going to have to take a hard look at how I evaluate cards.
Nighthowl Pursuer
Usman:
Power: 2.5
Vibes: 2
I’m mainly looking at this as a virtual 3/3 for 1 that has evasion, which helps it to peck in damage/enable ninjutsu if it’s not ferocious. Pound-for-pound, it’s one of the better black 1-drops *if* it’s enabled with other things, and found that Nasty Little Rabbit was easier to enable than I would have thought, but green tends to play better for that by having bigger threats and having more ways to buff things. I’m cautiously optimistic on this (which usually just means it’s bad) but the raw potential piques my curiosity, as it worked well in my friend Morgan’s undefeated B/R sacrifice aggro deck.
Kai:
To begin, I don’t believe this card is good enough for a powered vintage cube. However, this card rocks in lower powered environments and I want to talk about it. A 1/1 for menace in lower environments is a good enough early turn aggressor but the fact that it grows as you get larger creatures makes hard blocks harder. For one black mana, I really don’t know how much more you can ask out of a fair card.
Gollum, Riddle Master
Usman:
Power: 2.5
Vibes:4
Depending on the matchup and especially in subsequent games where you know more of the opponent’s deck, this suffers by being lacking if the opponent doesn’t have an easy-to-choose value and being harder to trigger than you may think.
In testing, it usually drew a card, and sometimes did something else, before dying, which wasn’t bad. Black 2-drops generally tend to be more utility based and it’s nice to see one that’s more of a beatstick than a discard effect.
Kai:
This is another one of those cards that I think are going to tend to stick around on the battlefield for a little bit too long. It’s not that oppressive of a card with a 3/1 body and a conditional ability. The conditional ability, however, is easy to trigger and provides ok value after one cast of the chosen CMC (even or odd) and great to insane value on 2+ triggers. I enjoy these passive value cards a lot and at a 1B mana cost, I think is most likely one of the better cards in the set.
My Precious
Usman:
Power: 2
Vibes: 4
This at least follows the pattern of “cheap adventure, equal or higher cost non-adventure” which tends to be where the better adventure cards have played (Questing Druid, Brazen Borrower, Bonecrusher Giant, Picklock Prankster – but not always) but it was generally mediocre when it wasn’t in a deck that had a lot of sacrifice fodder, as it felt clunky. It worked pretty well in a deck that cared about sacrificing, so its ceiling mostly lies there, since the rate of turning your small sacrifice fodder into an evasive clock isn’t nothing, but as a generalist card, it never really felt like the mana rate was ever worth it to equip something, which was how I felt about the other adventure equipment.
Kai:
My Precious is definitely a card from the Hobbit set. I like the 2-3 adventure, non-adventure cost for the card and both sides are pretty good. A more expensive Village Rites on the adventure side into a strong finisher on the non-adventure side seems pretty good. I think both sides being slightly overcosted is a little bit rough in the playability aspect but I think having an adventure card with the cost structure and relevant effects could probably see play.
The Sackville-Bagginses
Usman:
Power: 1.5
Vibes: 3
I’ve seen some hype for this as a way to cash in a token for a card, but I’ve been whelmed by this, since it’s awful without something to sacrifice and not even that great with it. It does represent a big life drain if you have a lot of treasures out, but the average case makes me not feel the hype on it.
Kai:
As a Chatterfang player in Commander, I am incredibly excited for this card. As a cube designer, not as much. It reads like a weird token synergy card that struggles to get full value of the drain effect. There are a handful of cards in the average powered cube that can use this as a value piece but it just feels lackluster.
Red:
Smaug, the Magnificent
Usman:
Power: 4.25
Vibes: 3
I’ve been able to play Smaug a few times since it was previewed and I’ve been continually impressed with how it’s been playing out in red aggressive decks, even outside of those without a lot of ways to make treasures.
My buddy Tim had Smaug in several undefeated decks: one was in an undefeated Boros deck during Marvel testing and the drafter found it to be a very good finisher, even though there were no other ways to make treasures, and it made another appearance in another undefeated UR deck with only one other way to make treasures.
Being a 4-power flying beatstick has usually been enough to make it perform well, even if it lines up poorly against red bolts, and overall has played as a card that just happens to get better *if* you have a treasure or two to pump its ability, and being able to incidentally have excess mana and/or artifacts ain’t nothing either.
I’ve played a lot of curve-topper 4-drops in red over the years and I’ve liked it more than something like Rampaging Raptor; it isn’t Pyrogoyf-levels of broken, but it’ll likely stick around.
Kai:
I think Smaug is probably going to be one of the longer stays from the cube, solely because the archetype for flying, dragon, finisher has already existed in medium red cube decks for an eternity. The difference with Smaug is that it is now crossing that 5 CMC threshold where we usually see cards of this power level at. For myself, I am considering just 1 for 1 replacing Goldspan Dragon with this now due to the decreased cost and more relevant ability. I like it, not love it, but think that it will be able to be a mainstay for as long as medium red decks want hasty beaters on turn four.
Bothersome Noisemaker
Usman:
Power: 3.75
Vibes: 2.5
Its most obvious comparison is Young Peezy/Third Path Iconoclast, with the latter being closer since it triggers off of all non-creature spells. Unlike those, it can’t go wide but it’s mostly played similarly as a role-filler that makes chump blockers/fodder, and although the ability for the army tokens to go tall hasn’t come up much (since instants can also serve as a combat trick to make a Goblin Army bigger), it having 2 toughness has been a surprisingly useful upside. Peezy has felt long in the tooth for some time but this has been performing decently well, especially with there being creatures-that-aren’t-actually-creatures like Fable of the Mirror-Breaker and Nettlecyst and I’ve overall been impressed by this.
Kai:
Bothersome Noisemaker asks the question, “What if Young Pyromancer went tall instead of wide?” I’m not sold on this card being better (wide usually being better in these decks) but I am excited to try it out. I think it’s going to be able to give a more defensive side to some spellslinger or control decks that just need to weather the storm for a few extra turns. I think this card will be better when chump blocking with the token isn’t necessary but I think the goblin amassing could get out of hand fairly easily and you can sneakily have a 5/5 goblin army later in the game.
Gandalf, Goblins’ Bane
Usman:
Power: 2
Vibes: 3.5
I’ve come down and up on this card in the time since it’s been previewed, partially as a Questing Druid riff that’s an instant, or a 5-drop to play while adventuring and playing Gandalf on the same turn. The issue was that there never felt like there was a *good* turn to cast this, since casting as a 2-mana sorcery was clunky and was only truly unlocked if you had another wizard, which was usually Gandalf himself, making that plan vulnerable to removal. Playing this as a 5-drop didn’t feel great either.
Kai:
A strong creature with a good adventure effect but feels like it needs a lot to really get going. It runs into that awkward timing situation where you want to have the creature side out before the adventure so you’re stuck either spending two turns setting up or having to wait until turn five to play it. I think the creature side is still pretty good on its own as a prowess plus ping effect but looks like it will be a little bit clunky to use.
The other thing I want to point out is that you actually can’t play the cards you exile with Flameshape unless you control a wizard. It can lead to playing the sorcery, having Gandalf countered, and then being stuck with two cards in exile with no way to get them out unless you can land another wizard. Overall, one of the more disappointing adventure cards in the set.
The Lonely Mountain
Usman:
Power: 1
Vibes: 2
This mostly is notable because of it being fetchable but I found this to be glacially slow in testing, even in decks with a lot of equipment. Having to commit a ton of mana during your turn just isn’t worth the weak payoff, even if a deck has several fetches to be able to fetch it out.
Kai:
I’m fairly certain this card is pretty bad in almost all instances. However, with decks running multiple equipment, I think you can justify this in decks that can regularly get out two of them. I think four mana for a 2/2 at sorcery speed on a land is not great, but for three mana I’m a little more intrigued. In my head, I’m visualizing this in Nadu decks where you want to be running equipment like Lightning Greaves and Lavaspur Boots as is and sometimes just need one more creature to go over the top. Outside of that, I just don’t think it’s got a spot.
Green:
Necklace of Girion
Usman:
Power: 3.5
Vibes: 4
This wasn’t on my radar until Kai brought it up but it’s been working well as a pseudo-Bristly Bill, that makes up for only triggering off of Forests for its landfall by giving counters when casting green spells.
My buddy Tom’s mostly-green undefeated deck used it well, as it generally got several counters on creatures over the course of the game. I wouldn’t like it if it didn’t make mana, but it wasn’t difficult to get 2+ triggers off of this. Potentially a bad topdeck but that didn’t come up often.
Kai:
They say that redundancy is how to build stronger cube decks and this gives the mono green/UG decks another kick of power. Bristly Bill and Scythecat Cub are already great cards in those decks and this gives you a new version of it. Adding +1/+1 counters for playing spells or forests rewards you even more so for playing the game than the previously mentioned cards. Every draw in a mono green deck now becomes a counter and I can see this getting out of hand quickly. It helps with either the go-wide or go-tall strategies and synergizes really well with the existing counter synergies in the cube. May not be my pick of the set but it is good to see green get some redundancy on some of their stronger cube effects.
Nasty Little Rabbit
Usman:
Power: 3.5
Vibes: 4
This card also surprised me since the creature goes from being under-rate to being pushed from one ferocious trigger and once this becomes a 4-power creature, it doesn’t need much help. We found that it wasn’t too difficult to make this active, especially when paired with other green midrange beef and other buffs like counters and equipment. A pleasant surprise.
Kai:
I’m a lot lower on this card in a powered cube environment than Usman. I think it’s a really interesting card and the Ferocious doesn’t seem incredibly hard to trigger but I don’t love the inconsistency of it. I’m definitely going to give it a try in lower powered cubes but I’m not sold on it right now. I do think if you can get itself to four power, it snowballs hard enough to warrant. However, I think I prefer Sazh’s Chocobo for my green growing one drop.
Beorn, the Fierce
Usman:
Power: 2.5
Vibes: 4
This card pleasantly surprised me as a top-end card that usually survived to give something +2/+2 and trample, and sometimes buffed several, but getting to 3 bears usually was a pipe dream. Usually it was nice as a way to push something else over the top and generally had a lot of impact when it was alive, but being vulnerable to spot removal, as cliche as the trope is, was an issue when compared to 5-drops that had more resilience; I’ve generally found other 5-drops to be better although this certainly was *solid*, but we do have the Reality Fracture Garruk right around the corner too, so cubes aren’t hurting for 5-drop options.
Kai:
I like bears and I like Beorn. Beorn, the Fierce reads like an absolute bomb of a card. It carries a great body, trample, and the way to buff any existing creature on the board. This card coming down in your first main phase with an Ursine Monstrosity or Questing Beast, gives trample and +2/+2 to these already overloaded green creatures. The fact that the trample is permanent is just the icing on the cake with Beorn. It puts an ungodly amount of pressure on in the first turn and will be one of the best generic green game enders in cube.
Bejeweled Warg
Usman:
Power: 2.5
Vibes: 2
Part stat monster, part bigger Magda to get treasures for burst mana, but needs to survive to do that. It doesn’t get stonewalled as easily as Magda (since most of the time, Magda got treasures by attacking and you don’t get a treasure if this fails to connect.) It never soloed anyone but it was more giant beater than a true ramp card, which isn’t amazing but not the worst place to be for a 2-drop. Mostly just fine.
Kai:
I don’t think this card is as much of a powerhouse as its red Magda counterpart is. However, as a green two drop, I think it does enough to be included. Treasure ramp or +1/+1 counters on itself on combat damage are both relevant abilities. I see this card being hard to block in the early turns and a harder snowball card than Nasty Little Rabbit, even if it comes down on turn 2.
Little Bear
Usman:
Power: 1-2.5
Vibes: 3
If you’re still playing Kiki–Twin, it’s a nice creature to enable it, although the issue with supporting the deck was being bottlenecked on untap engines, not the untappers themselves. It’s atrocious if you aren’t on that plan; it’s what it says on the tin.
Kai:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Anybody who knows me knew I was going to include this card in any set review I did. As an avid enjoyer of the Kiki-Jiki and Twin combos, I absolutely had to include Little Bear. It’s really bad and narrow if you don’t have one of them, but it’s nice to see some support in another color.
Multicolor:
Bard, Heir of Girion
Usman:
Power: 5
Vibes: 4
Many UW cards tend to play in either the control or tempo space, with planeswalkers and flash threats. Although this is neither, I’ve been highly impressed with how this played with just how *much* this does – it usually drew a card when played since something was there to attack, buffing the team was useful and it having vigilance so that, if it was the only creature around, it still swung for 4 while being around on defense (and also having reach, because why not?) I’d waffled on rating this as a 5 but every time I’ve seen it played, it’s been great. I know we just got King T’Challa but now we’ve got another silly card. Welcome.
Kai:
This card bores me to no end. However, it is also one of the most powerful cards in the set and will be very competitive for Azorius slots in a powered environment. A 4/4 for four with just the last ability would probably be good enough to at least consider for cube but attaching an anthem effect and two relevant abilities takes this card to the next level. This is looking to be one of the cards that I emphatically pass and then proceed to get blown out by it every game that I play against it.
Bard’s Company
Usman:
Power: 4
Vibes: 3
Less absurd than the company’s namesake, this has also been great in testing, even though it hasn’t had flash that often. Recruiting with this generally resulted in making a 1/1 (buffed to a 2/2) making it small army in a can that threatened to make more, which was great when you were able to attack with it on the offense to close the game out. Since a lot of white creatures, especially those in Universes Beyond sets, tend to be human, it’s not as hard to give flash as you may think in base white decks.
Kai:
I’m beginning to think that they like to put Bard’s name on something and then make the card absurdly powerful. A 2/3 human with an anthem effect, a loot effect and a token creator for four mana feels like an insane amount of value for a reasonable cost. Granted, the token is not guaranteed but pitching a land for better card selection is also relevant in WU based decks. A look through my cube for humans made me realize that this card can be cast for flash a decent amount of the time and the surprise factor really pushes the card to auto include.
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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 and, as Universes Beyond sets tend to throw a wrench into that, I’m mostly just looking at that scale based on general vibes rather than in the context of it being a Marvel card.
Examples, using the vibes scale for the latter:
- Fuel the Flames: Power: 3, Vibes: 1
- Daretti, Rocketeer Engineer: Power: 1, Vibes: 4
- Opera Love Song: Power: 4.5, Vibes: 3
- The Endstone: Power 3-4, Vibes 5
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