Avatar: The Last Airbender - Cube Set Review P1

Part 1 of our cube set review for Magic x Avatar: The Last Airbender. In this episode we cover White, Blue and Black.

Timecodes:
4:24 - White
20:07 - Blue
34:14 - Black

Video Version: https://youtu.be/SaENXwc6C_w

Card Gallery: https://moxfield.com/decks/Vjy9xCwaRUWwDScCDU6ZEQ

My Cube: https://cubecobra.com/cube/list/sweet
The Treat Yourself Cube: https://cubecobra.com/cube/overview/treatyourself
James Cube: https://cubecobra.com/cube/list/ba642a54-a6c7-4587-b97e-1d95429c59b5
MTGO Vintage Cube: https://cubecobra.com/cube/list/modovintage

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Chapters

• 4:57 White
• 20:40 Blue
• 34:47 Black

Transcript

0:36

Hello everyone, and welcome back to Powerful Nothing and Magic The Gathering Cube podcast. I'm your host, Dan, and as always, I'm joined by James. James, how are you doing this week? Are you ready for our next set review? I'm always ready for that review. Yeah. No, we've got a new set and it's not rubbish. And it's not Spider-Man. Hahahahaha. Yeah, this one looks at least fun to draft. Today we have part one of our cube set review for Avatar The Last Airbender. We have a lot of cool cards to get through today. It's always the way with these universes. Beyond is that of all the IPS. This is the one that I'm probably the least familiar with of the ones this year. But with anything I can get excited about new core magic cards and we have an awesome two episodes for everyone to go through. Today we're gonna be doing half the set, and then we're back next week with our, with our part two. Yeah, I have no idea what is going on in avatar really or what on their benders, but, there's there's a weird flying bison dude, so that's cool. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. There are some cool cards. Let's quickly touch on some notes on the set. Before we jump into the set review. Specifically that from a mechanic point of view, this is oddly quite a parasitic set. And by that I mean there's a lot of cars that care about other specific cards, like there are lessons in this set. They care about cards with learn, like there are shrines in this set that care about other shrines. And also there's like a whole ally matters subset in this set. There are creatures that care about like allies being around. Now, to be honest, those are fairly niche archetypes that we might not go into too much detail in this review because they won't come up in the majority of of cubes. Like I know shrines sees a fair bit of all shrines has seen play in, Peasant Cube a fair bit, but from a set review point of view, it isn't interesting for us to just be run this in your shrine deck and say that five times. You know what I mean? So I think to me, what me and Jones been talking about is what we're going to do in the coming months is come back to these archetypes. I kind of do spend a bit more time on them and how they can properly be, reflected in Q but let's make things like shrines, things like alleyways, but also specifically in this set we have bunch of cards with lesson, but not actually any cards with learn. Well, we've seen them in Strix Haven and we're going to see more next year when we go back to Strix even. Maybe that's a better time to talk about some of the lessons in this set, because a lot of the cards with lessons are cards. We have seen before, but with lessons attached to it basically. Yeah, for shoving stuff like shrine stuff like lessons. It needs to be talked about as a whole, as a package. You can't really talk about the cards in isolation because they're not interesting in isolation. So yeah, we're going to come back to that in a future show, but today is going to be about vs of a cards, which can go in a wider variety of cubes and kind of stand on their own a little bit more. Yeah. That's it. Exactly. With all of our set reviews, we are comparing every card in a set to every card ever printed. And when we do our set of views, we are trying to hit the broadest range of cards possible that will go in the most cubes possible. That does kind of nicely bring us on to how we're going to be evaluating cards today. But these set reviews, when we talk about cards, were generally going to be talking about them in terms of what cubes they could see playing. We'll be talking about them in terms of power level of cube. So you have like your vintage powered cube at the top with all the best and broken cards where things have to be quick and super efficient. And then as you go down the power level, you have your unpowered cubes, your more mid powered cubes like legacy and modern cubes. Things are getting a bit slower, and then you end up with your more entry level cubes and your budget cubes, where things don't have to be as far as they don't have to be as broken. You can run cards that need a bit more time to do their thing. We'll also maybe talk about sizes of cubes. The rule here is that the larger the cube is, the more you're looking for multiples of the same effect. So if we say a card could see playing a 540 or a 720 cube, we're saying that there's probably a better version of this card out there. But if you want multiples, then you could look at running it as well. We'll also shout out where relevant. If the cards we're talking about we think could make a splash in peasant, which is a cube made up of comments and uncommon or pauper, which is a cube made up of just comments. For what it's worth as well. Me and James both own our own cubes. James, a very high powered vintage cube, and I have an unpowered vintage cube which is a little slower and lower powered than James, but still runs most of the broken cards. And I have the Treat Yourself cube, which is a lot slower and is trying to do bigger, more impactful things. But later in the game so if we mentioned our own cubes, that's what we'll be talking about. All right, with all that out of the way, James and I take it away with our first white card of the day. Yeah for sure. First up in white, we have Airbender Ascension. This is one the white fan enchantment says when this enchantment enters, you Airbender up to one target creature. So straight in there with one with a new mechanics. Airbending is, we've got four different, bending mechanics, I guess. And, from these sets, airbending is the first of them. It's, and to Airbender a creature or a permanent of any sort, you'll get to exile it. And while it's exiled, its owner can pay to love and pay its mana cost to cast it. So you can think of it sort of like a bounce effect, but above them paying the mana cost to recast it. You've always painted Aster note as well for the, the normal timing rules apply to recasting it so you airbender creature. Unless it has flash, you can only play this sorcery speed. And it will also just blip out tokens completely. You can't recast the tokens because they're not cards. Yes. Yeah. Great point. Yeah. If I don't, they stop existing. My man on the battlefield. So yeah, tokens are gone forever. Okay, so back to Airbender assumption one the white enchantment. When two answers, you ab end up to one target creature. Whenever a creature you control enters, you put a quest counter on this enchantment and the beginning of your end step if this and Shannon has them. Furthermore, quest counters on it you like exile up to one target creature. You control them, return it to the battlefield under its owner's control. So when the white Ebon target creature is like a pretty and efficient sorcery speed bounce spell is basically how you can think about that. So you can obviously, get a blocker out of the way to enable an attack, but you could also say, bend one of your own creatures with a good answer for battlefield effects and v cast value. Normally that's a play. You know, if it a bounce spell, you don't want to bounce a cheap creature to get BTB back, but with this, locking the casting cast into an. I'm doing a more expensive thing. If you want a really where you're getting the money, have this, if you get up to fall class counters. You know, we've played cards in the past, like, as a teleportation circle, which is just a form of enchantment that flickers something and then stab this. If it works, can get you that effect for two mana. Right. Which is very, very powerful. The issue is you kind of have to play it fairly early to start building up those quest counters. Also, you'd probably rather be casting a creature something on sensitive and casting this. So if there's a little bit of tension, I think, it's for that reason is by not going in, you know, your viciously efficient high power level cube. But something more middle, mid power level, with a strong link archetype. I think this could actually be very solid because, I like the flexibility you get off of that's, that ETP. And I think that that gives it a lot more of application than if it was just doing this quest counter thing. No. Yeah, I do agree with that. I think with there's a cycle of ascensions in this set and they're all effects that are good but a little bit inefficient. So I think you completely nailed it in terms of definitely one for a slow environment where you are supporting something like flicker. Where this is a nice little removal spell and it can then synergize later on in the game. I do think that late game, this is a little bit like, like late game generally this is a bit miserable, but there is a world where just flipping one of their creatures out can get, can help you swing through for some good damage or something like that. Just just removing a blocker out the way tempo wise, I think it's okay. But yeah, I, I think this is a perfectly fine, effect for these kind of decks. Like, as you mentioned, there are effects like this kind of already include the fact that this can be even more spell or if like a thing is quite nice, like, like if you just want the flicker thing like you mentioned teleportation circle. There is also cause like Soul Herder would see a bit of a playing cube. I think for flicker decks, those are quite strong. But yeah, I mean the Ascension perfectly fine magic. I think you pretty solid one. All right, let's keep it rolling. Next up we have APA steadfast Guardian. It is two white white 334. Legendary creature bison ally with flash flying. And when enters air and any number of other target nonaligned permanents you control, it also has whenever you cast a spell from exile, create A11 white ally creature token. So just off the bat base level four mana for A34 for A34 flash fire is just fine. A is a perfectly respectable body. It can do a nice job on, on on defense, jumping in, and removing a creature in combat. That's quite nice. That's just the base level of this card where I see this kind of as a slot where this could see play as I kind of see this as a little bit of a to fairies protection. But in cube. And so that's a card you play and it just gives your whole board protection. Until next time. And while at that effect that is way better, this one is actually playable in cube, because it's also just a creature that you would run anyway, while you also have the ability to reset your whole board. I think that is a fine effect. I think that's kind of like I call base level for this card. There are some cool things you can do with this card, specifically, because with airbending you have the ability to reset ETB, and the flash makes this incredibly, quite strong because this works really well with things like pitch elementals like you can evoke a solitude, flash this in and basically then for six manor you have two, you have swords to plowshares, two creatures, and you have six power and play and half of it flies. That's a really nice little combination. And I think that's generally quite good. The bottom ability I think is fine. You're mainly going to be getting it when you recast your spells, off of them being air bended. But more things than you think will trigger this. Like foretell. And effects like that will also trigger and make you, make you some tokens. You're not running this as a token. Make it. I think it's a nice little additional value on it. Basically. But yeah, perfectly fine. Yeah, yeah. I think this is a pretty decent creature. What do you think of Appa? James? Yeah, I quite like it. It's giving giving me good restoration. Angel vibes. You name? The good stats. It's. You know, if you're just appending one thing, then probably for Vasto Angel, I've just apple cheeks just blinking. It is better. Right. So you have it back straight away. But, this letting you have multiple things, letting you, save even like other non land permanence. These don't have to just be creatures. That's really nice flexibility. You can also do stuff like it actually works very well with sagas because you can let it go to the last chapter. You get all all of your chapter effects and then before it goes for sacrificing it, you flash this Ben Airbender out of the saga. Your saga has then sat there, ready to be recast for just two mana and get all your value bound again, but that seems kind of strong. Yeah. Fever pitch elemental Fang seems great. And just having that ability to have a bunch of stuff means that often, you know, you'll you'll flash missing, say, pointer to removal, spell your guy, and you want to save it. But then while you're here, you can also flick around that, elvish visionary type creature that was hanging around on the bard, too, you know, I think this will just end up doing quite a lot in most of the games. Sometimes you'll get some tokens off it. That's nice. I don't think this is a card where you're, like, building around trying to cast cards from exile. I don't think that's really what's going on here, but, Yeah, you'll quite often get 1 or 2 when you recast your stuff, and that's nice. Sick love the bison. And I realized as soon as I started saying it, I have no idea how any of the names in this setup pronounce. So apologies from the start if we are butchering someone's favorite cartoon here, but we're doing our best. Okay, this next one should be a bit easier. James, what do you think of Avatar's wrath? Yeah, they can call this a wrath. This isn't one. Well, Avatar's wrath is is two white. Wait for sorcery. She's up to one target creature, then airbender all other creatures. So exile them and burn a can. Potentially arson until end of until your next turn. Your opponents conquer spells from anywhere other than by hands, so you get a turn before they can start mistrusting their stuff. And you exile avatars that, yeah, definitely not a laugh. It's much more of a sort of mass bound spell type situation. But gangs keep that creature and getting the extra turn before they start redeploying stuff, means this is potentially a huge tempo play. Like this will win a bunch of games. It kind of feels like you have to win the game a lot of the time before they start redeploying that stuff. But if you have enough, I think this is quite strong. The ideal case, right, is you have one really big creature. I have a decent sized spot. You have a task that you got hit from with your creature. You may even redeploy one of your fish to the same turn. Maybe not. Next turn, they hopefully don't have make plays. I can't replay that stuff. You can. Then on your next turn, redeploy your bot again. Hit them again with the same creature. Now, hopefully you're so far ahead that even that FMV redeploying that stuff isn't going to be quick enough. Having said that, they're redeploying my stuff for two mana, so I think you do need to, like, really be taking advantage of that tempo, during that window that you have. I think if you don't have, this just isn't a good card. It's also worth noting that if you target your creature with this, and then they kill your creature in response, that will fizzle the spell, which is kind of brutal. Oh, really? Yeah. This sucks, I don't know. Okay, I found it. Yeah, even though it's up to one. Once you have selected one creature as a target, the spell can be fizzled. You can choose to not select the creatures at target, and then they can't fizzle. The scale. But then you're not getting the upside of keeping a creature and hitting them with it right? Okay. Yeah, I'm on board with what you're saying with this. I think this is more it's it's it is not a rest. This is more like, I'm going to say a budget parallax wave in that it's, in that it's an effect that it's, it's more like a form amount of top end that like, the aggro deck is running. This is not like a card for like a control deck, trying to, like, pin down the board, like, like, like if this is going to see play, it is in a deck that is trying to swing through with creatures. And this is what my I like when your opponent stabilizes, this is what is going to, push damage through it. And I know and change is definitely giving me a look when I said the word parallax. Right. But parallax wave is £25. Now, this hopefully will be like 50 paid like in a more budget environment which which realistically is where this is going to see play. I don't think this gets near any high power level cubes in those more budget environments. This type of effect, I think will be fine at pushing like, but like pushing damage through like like the white fours that we generally run. Like the days of like mass land destruction in order for drop in white isn't really there anymore. Like, I think that this is a fine way of trying to push them, to push some damage through if you've curved out in your white deck. Basically, that's kind of where I see this. Yeah, for sure. For sure. It's the, it's it's for fall off the wall back over the board stolen. That is good at doing, All right, let's keep it rolling. Next up, we have Momo, a friendly flier. This is a single white for A11 legendary creature. Lemur. Bat ally. It has flying. And the first non lemur creature spell with flying. You cost during each of your turns. Cost one generic less the cost scale also has. Whenever another creature you control with flying enters. Remember gets lost one plus one until end of turn. I'm gonna be honest, definitely thought that at least one of those clauses didn't care about flying. All right. This is much worse, actually, than I thought it was. I do like the idea of, like, a white one drop that makes your creatures cheaper to cast. Like, play this on turn one, and then you can play your three drops on turn two. I guess you do have things like flicker Wisp and Elite Spellbinder you can curve into. Yeah, I think the fact that only discounts off fliers means you you really do have to be pretty committed to the flying fiend, right? Yeah, I definitely thought it was make all your creatures cheaper. And if you played a fly, it it got a counter like, that's actually, I think, a playable card. But I think this will really struggle. I think if you're like, blue white fliers is a thing. Like if you have favorable winds in your cube, you know, then you can pop this in and that will be good. Aside of value proposition. Yeah. A nice little quick one there. What do you think of our last white card game? What do you think of Suki? Courageous. Rescue her. Oh, it's a lot better than. Believe me, I'll tell you that. Yes. Suki is one white. White for a two for legendary creature. Human warrior, ally says other creatures you control get plus one plus. So. And whenever another permanent you control leaves the battlefield during your turn, create A11 white ally creature token. This ability only triggers one each turn. I think this is really solid if you're going white with white stuff, especially if you're doing some sort of black white out of that's thing. It seems really nice. Getting the token of any permanent leaving, though, means you probably don't even need to build a ramp as that much. You know, like you'll get a token off the fetch launch. You'll get a token when they just block your stuff. I don't think it's that hard to get a token that nice. Turns out with this. And, to follow that, that's your team. And I go white deck, a free mana. That's pretty solid. I like this is in addition to basically any cube phase, doing some vaguely go white stuff in white. Like, it's not quite at the level of, you know, an athlete or something that is just a completely self-contained flat. But, it needs a little bit of health and is a little bit of a ball set to go along with that. But, it's it's a very strong card. I think. Yeah. I do like with this that in theory, once you've made one token, it can then just continually pump like a kind of fuel itself because if that token dies, you're just going to make another token. Like, I like the fact that it says permanent. It doesn't say non token. No whatever. So yeah yeah definitely agree. This isn't on par with the with like the white rebel masters. Kind of like Adeline or probably not Brahmas or the buff rabbit. But I do think this is. Yeah, I agree, I think this is going to be quite solid in. Yeah. Any go way I like it in a deck that's making it, making a lot of fun ones because then you're doubling the power that that for me. That's why that seems pretty strong. Yeah for sure. All right. Moving on to blue. First up we have the Mechanist Ariel Artisan. It is two in a blue for A13 legendary creature. Human artificer alloy. It has whenever you cast a non creature spell create a clue token and it has tap until end of turn target artifact token. New control becomes A31 construct artifact creature with flying. So there are actually quite a large number of effects in blue now that make an artifact. When you do something. Those are pretty solid in decks that shockingly care about having a large amount of artifacts in play. Things like Dex with Talon Academy, things like Dex with Ursa or Dex with like, as a saga, we're just we're just having a bunch of artifacts in play is kind of your game plan, and then you'll profit from it later. This is fine. There. Like, this isn't as good as things like Forensic Gadget here or Chrome Seed Shark, or even like Psi Master Top Twist. I think those are all stronger than that, but they like those. I think about it because they make better bodies or they go infinite with things like those I think are generally stronger, but I think this is still a nice option. And in lower powered level, cubes like this is the kind of effect I would want if I was trying to make a go white artifact deck because like Krumholz said, shark and like psi are actually very, very strong magic cards and kind of like they can be too powerful for some lower power level cubes. And my friends at gadget making Infinite Manor, that might not be something that you want in your cube, but if you want this kind of effect like this and like this, the Healey and third party iconoclasts, I think, are just like pretty solid ways of just like pooping out a little bit of artifacts. And then the fact that you can turn one of them into an invasive creature and like, you have that way of grinding out the game as well as your main, your main game plan, I think is fine. Like, definitely. I don't want for the highest power level games, but not a bad magic card. Yeah for sure. VS make make an artifact. Fine cast spells type features often v wave v blue artifact decks get up to the very absurd artifact count. Where that. Yeah. Popping off with our Academy of averse. This is, I think certainly in in contention for that slot V so you're right that it's worse than it's, doesn't make for bodies, right? So somebody keeps your life. The thing I like about this card so compared to, sci fi and compared to forensic gadget here is that those cards trigger off casting artifacts, whereas this is any non feature spell, which is a lot easier like. Yeah. So like your ponders and your preordained or your lightning bolts or whatever will also make you an artifact. That is quite nice. Yeah, yeah yeah I that's a very good point. Exactly. And it means you need to be slightly less all in on the artifact thing. Right. To make this a good card. Like, you probably want to be getting paid off for having artifacts in some way, but you don't need to be the, like, 15 artifact deck, which, like, catch tier and whatnot really ask you to do, plus, like, the artifact techs are really good at making a lot of mana. So you will be able to turn these clues into cards when you need to, to to restock. I think on average, making one one is probably better than making a clue. But I don't, you know, certainly not contrived. Right. That's very context dependent question. The magic players will always like a card over A11. James. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure, for sure. Well, what if you had a skull clamp and the one one is two cards, so there we go. But yeah. No, I think if you've, like, gotten us or an academy or something in your deck, he's like, basically always run this card. And I think is pretty strong. The question is just like, do we find the slot for that? I think, you know, we're not cutting fed path. We're not cutting, Swahili. So it's like, could we check for this maybe from some of the high power cubes? You could consider it. I think this is a better card 90% of the time, but gods tier does go infinite with, with monoliths, which Festus is obviously isn't able to do. So, I think that's kind of a judgment call. I think it's a perfectly reasonable card to include. All right. Nice. We have another blue card. James, what do you think of Tilly G. Blocker? Yeah. So this is two in a blue for A21 legendary creature, human performer, ally has flash and powers. And when Tilly enters, tap up to one target creature, it doesn't untap during its control. Untap snap. As long as you control Tilly. So when this works, this is going to be pretty strong. Like you'll get a you have a move. Left, and you've got a very solid attacker. Right. Like this is quite often, like, pretty routinely going to be attacking for free evasive damage. That's keeping your opponent's best creature tops. You got a good deal. The issue is for you, you're paying three mana for one toughness. And it's kind of a rough deal, you know, like that just shock this too often, I think. Yeah. I've never seen something eat a shock so quickly. Exactly, exactly. And you didn't. It's not like you got a card on the way and like, you just got it for. Just shock it. Like you tap a guy down for ten. You're not happy with that exchange? Yeah. So I'd get I would guess this doesn't end up making the cut too many places. Yeah, I would agree. The like the the aggressive process creatures are always ones that I find are great in theory, but don't really come like that deck really struggles just because like, you know, a deck that wants to have all these prowess creatures, but then everyone is taking all your good, insane sorceries because they're just good cars that go in every deck. Like, I think I think this is a good card. And like, like if you was really doing prowess tempo, I think this is one of the better prowess, like aggressive creatures out there. But, you'll know if you want this. Basically like that is definitely one that for more kind of mid-range cubes where the deck is like this kind of it's like prowess creatures, it's like a maybe pump spells like feather, the redeemed ways of recasting spells. That kind of thing. I yeah, I think it's fine. But that deck does tend to struggle in higher power level cubes. Because this will just be to remove like. Yeah, yeah, I think it's a fine card, but yeah, I'm not super blown away by it. Next up we have one sheet on all knowing this is a three blue blue for a four for legendary creature bird spirit with flying. And when it enters targeting online permanents owner, it puts it into their library second from the top or on the bottom. And whenever one or more cars are put into a library from anywhere, create 211 colorless spirit creature tokens with this token can't block or can't be blocked by non spirit creatures. So I think this is a cool card. How we're basically reading it is. It's five mana for six power with evasion and a temporary removal spell on something on its own that is a decent rate in quite a lot of budget and lower power level cubes. Getting synergy out of this is a bit more tricky, if I'm honest with you. Like most of the ways in higher power level cubes that we're going to be putting things back into our library are things like time twister style effects, where we're going to shuffling a whole graveyard back into our library, that kind of thing. But the issue with like, Time twister is with this, and the way that's worded, you'll only ever make 211 spirit creature tokens. Like if it was unlimited and this could be a wheel's pay off, I'd be really, really high on this. But as it is, I think that will stop it getting into higher, higher power level cubes. But there are plenty of more budget environments where five mana, four six power evasive with a removal spell is pretty good. Like like there might be a world where kind of like in the future the like soul tie, insidious roots decks can kind of find ways to repeatedly make tokens with this. But I don't think that deck really exists right now in cube. So it's kind of so as it is, is kind of like like it's the fate of the card. I don't see much synergy for it, but on raw power level for five manor, I think this is perfectly solid. Like if you like this card or if you if you're vibing with it and you're running a cube, run it. It'll be fine. I, I think this is really good, right? I do like it. I do like it, but like but like okay. Do you like it as it is or are you is there more synergy with it you can think of? I mean, I think the synergies will come up, but I mean, mostly right. I'm like, man, I get six evasive power across three bodies and kill that thing like this, any non land permanent as well. I know that seems like a lot but five to me. Like, I know we're not really allowed to cast many five drops and enough powerful cubes anymore, but, I know I think if I wanted to put a five man up to the value feature or just like a five manor value creature, add the cube. Like, I just know that many that I would take over this. I think this is fairly I think this is a lot. Okay. I just looked I can't I don't have any blue five drops in my keep, so maybe I should just run this now. Neither do I have a torrential five drop creatures. Yeah, yeah, I have a torrential girl, which sounds questionable in my power cubes. And maybe I'll switch that out for one of these and give it a try. Like, I'm not saying it's like, you know, you should put it at all the power to give it away. Because I think, you know, red feather issues with cost like this. But, I think, and it's all I think it's excellent. And I think for me, you will find spots where you get more tokens, like this even. Just so if I brainstorm gets you two tokens. Oh, that's quite hot. Yeah. Things like Chase the mind sculptor. There you go. Best mind sculpt, I guess. You two tokens of turn sensei's divining top gets you two tokens at hand. Okay, okay. Sylvan Library is two tokens that, I think if you get one of the two of those for Peaceable Basin, I think that's fairly nice. Okay. Yeah, yeah. Okay. Yeah, yeah. And I guess actually, just. And I'm thinking about it, if they answer this, you've still tucked their thing and got two evasive creatures, so. Yeah. Okay, maybe this one. She. Yeah. Okay. And I like I liked it. I just wasn't sure how much higher we can go, but yeah, you you have just listed a bunch of cars that are in powered cubes. That or either. So you play a lot of cubes. So yeah, that is that is quite hot. But we have another one. She tongue. James, what do you think of when she tongue librarian. Yeah. This one's also interesting. It's, it's blue. Blue for A11 legendary creature. Bird spirit has flash flying and vigilance. And when one she tongue enters. But X plus one plus one cancels on him. And for half X cards rounded down and whatever an opponent search is for library. Plus one plus one counter on banshee tongue and for card. So here's like pretty solid if you can make a lot of mana. It's not dissimilar to hydrophobic faces. Right. And yeah. And wait, you're getting the same number of cards. You're getting basically the same size creature. Like, I has chapel. This guy has flash and vigilance. I think I take for flash for, I think I think this is pretty solid. Yeah. The flash, I think, makes it a lot more flexible. Like, it gives you the ability to play as a big finisher and a control deck because you can cast it in your opponents and step right. And, and that's like a nice angle to have on a card like this. It means it's not limited to just going in vamp decks. But you do need to be like have reasonable avenues to cast this for, like, access five. You know, where I think if you're just trying to cast it for access to this is not that exciting as a full develop, you know, you you kind of need routes to make a lot of mana here. But it is also true for like, you know, sometimes your opponent will just crack effects and you'll flash in on like A3 and you'll get an extra value on the way in, and that's fine, too. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah, yeah, yeah. This this one I do think gets better in higher power level environments where where fetch lands are more common in the manor base and also just general tutors like demonic tutor, MySQL tutor, all of those type of things that it's just going to naturally be better in those environment because there's more places where kind of you get the counter for free, and the flash doesn't mean that you can respond like, can you respond to fetch lands with this, James will that will you get the counter? And if you flash is in response to effect. Yeah. Because you they do the searching when the trigger themselves. So yeah you'll get you'll get your counter. You'll get your card very hot like like I probably going to test this in my queue because I also have double fetches. And just an environment where there's naturally more of them means that on average, everyone's gonna be doing it slightly more. And like, I mean, this is just going to I kind of love the fact that this does rack the, like, full color triumph deck just because we need a nice way of punishing amount of aces. And maybe when she told me is the way to do it that way. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The only other thing I would just add is, on the hydro crisis comparison, this being monarch colored, I do think is actually quite huge. You don't have to splash into a second color in green. I like the hydro crisis. And that is a card that I think is. But was I was in a lot of cubes until relatively recently. It is a strong magic card. And just this being a mono colored version of it, I think it's pretty cool. Yeah, yeah, I am quite high on this one. This might be one of the most generically strongest cards in the set, if I'm honest, but I yeah, I quite like why don't you don't like both of them? In fact. Yeah. Go full bird librarian tribal. There's got to be some more out there we can run. Maybe some sphinxes or something. Anyway, we have a lot of ways to get through it. Let's move on to black now with a Fire Nation occupation. Oh, I do, I do like the rhyme. There. Two and a black for an excitement when this when this enchantment enters. Create a two to red soldier switch token with firebending one. This is, as I was saying, firebending. Firebending is whenever the creature with fire bending attacks you add a red mana equal to its firebending number. This manner last until the end of combat. Whenever you cast a spell during an opponent's turn, create a two to red soldier creature token with firebending one. So I think it's is okay. Not fantastic, but this really doesn't need to go into like a certain kind of deck. And the deck I'm thinking of does exist in a lot of cubes, and that's the billion removal axis control deck. But I kind of like the deck where you just playing all the removal spells, all the counter magic ingresses colors, and you're just basically kind of one for one what your opponent is doing. That, this, that I think is quite nice because eventually what you're doing is you're going to have the resources to cast spells on your opponents that like the fact that at the base, we are getting a creature out of this means that it's not a just dead card in our deck. Worst case, it will make us a blocker. Fine, if we can then get some more tokens out of this. And I think it does get better and actually kind of playable. And it does become a nice little engine when it gets going. I like the fact that the fire we just they will stack very nicely. I like, like if we can start making two or 3 or 4 manner out of this, in theory, what that will do is that lets us cast some instance on our turn while still leaving our lands up on our opponent's turn with which fuels the, I guess, graces controlling nature of our deck. Like we can we can cast our burn spells on our turn and, counter spells on our opponents time, that kind of thing. The main issue is that, like, that is a tricky deck to kind of support. Like there is an argument of like, do you want this or do you just want another removal spell? That is the tricky part of this. Like, like I think this card is cool. I think it's got is fun. Yeah. What do you think of Fire Nation occupation? James I like saying it. At least it is fun to say that it's strong. Yeah, I think it's a cool effect. It's, I kind of wish it was in blue, you know, black feels like a win. This would be really good in. Yeah, black feels like a weird color to have this effect to me. But it's not weak. Like getting a two to for each value has some. That's an and it's not limited to one necessarily. But you know, you often see them putting one turn on these things because they don't like fun. But this time they let us, this time they let us stack them up and, it it's cool. I personally wouldn't get too attached trying to use a firebending mana. I think. Like this is maybe just your Thor of invisibility. I'm gonna. Now, this is, like, for one time in the game that I'm tapping man on my turn. All the rest of the time, I tap my man on your turn and eventually, like, I don't need my two things to be synergistic because I got 12 of them from this one card. And like the first, a soul jumps in the way of of stuff, and then eventually faculty, you know, so I think that's kind of fine. Yeah, maybe like Vic says, this is the place. Yeah, I'd be very into it if it was in blue. I still think it's fine. Yeah. Could be an interesting test. I guess it does go. I kind of like it with, like, the free spells, actually, with, like, spell I. But I mean, like, spells that untap your lands when you cast them. Like, if you can cast a spell pre combat, use the firebending to cast like, not turn about, but I like the, like, frantic search caused a frantic search during combat. Untap your lands. That's kind of hard to. While doing it, but like. But yeah, this card is cool and but yeah, I do agree. If this was blue, I think we'll be a bit more higher on it. But yeah, so like that stuff does sound cool. But then also wouldn't I love it, just cast my spells on my opponent's turn and make like a bunch more treaties? You know, that's true. Maybe you're you're drawing cards into the removal spells range. Maybe, maybe. But yeah, fair but fair. Yeah, yeah. Fun. What would you say? It's more of an engine card than just like a generically strong card. Yes. Yeah, yeah. I think you can put this in this in like a black mid-range stack that's going to top banner on its turn. Like you can't be registering player because then in 2025 I am Cat Firefly landing. I was thinking more just like the worst fable of the mirror Breaker variant, actually. But no, it's fine, don't worry. All right. What about the next one, James? We have a big, shapeshifting spirit. Next. Yes. Next up, we have co, the face stealer. This is for black. Black, A66 legendary creature shapeshifter spirit says when Ko enters exile up to one other target creature, whenever another non token creature dies, you may exile it. And you can pay one life to choose a creature card. Exiled with Ko. Ko has all activated and triggered abilities of a chosen card. So the thing is, with this activated ability, triggered ability stuff is for. I don't think it's sort of worth trying to do something fancy where you set up for like a synergistic feature of your own to exile with this, that, that I think is is too cute, right? So, I think mostly it's we're treating this as a giant, ravenous chupacabra, and occasionally that'll be a cool ability, but we'll get to use. But I don't honestly think it's a huge part of a card. Like any triggered abilities as well as, like, space, I guess is some thing. So you could get, for example, if you kill something with board, you could you can get reward ability. Although I do bear in mind with that, you have to pay for life before they target this stat again. For what? Work. But, yeah, I think in general and just viewing this as like a, yeah, like a noxious type, you know, giant to kill something. I know I don't think it's that good. Like, compare this to the, five mana blue guy. Viper one. She tongue like this is a whole extra mana, isn't evasive, doesn't create multiple bodies, only hits creatures. And now I think it's many, many as against. A lot worse than that card. Just for comparison. Okay, yeah. At some point in time, it did not have the word last chosen card on it. And at that point I think it would have been awesome if you could stack it all up. That would be sweet. Yeah, yeah, yeah. If you have ways of just getting. Yeah, just doing cool things with it. But yeah. Yeah, I think it's. Yeah, you have completely nailed it. Like it, it is a exiling six mana chupacabra basically like yeah I it it doesn't have evasion either. It was kind of annoying. Like I was looking at, like, even like Tetsu monk. Like the really like the very powerful but slow dinosaur. Like, even has death touch. Like, it's not the most powerful, like, ability on A66, but like, it's better than nothing, if that makes sense. Just doesn't have, like, trample or flying or anything like that. Or swamp walk, I don't know, just like like, yeah, I, I think it's a cool one. I like to be fair. Like like it is also in a, in a tough spot. The just black sixes are incredibly good. But if I was looking at this in a cube, I'd be comparing. It's like troll of cards are doing more grave. Titan is incredibly difficult. But if I saw this in the cube, I it will do a job. But it's not one that I'm super excited by, if I'm honest with you. And that is a mythic. So it could randomly be expensive. Yeah, you can damn sure you can do some nonsense in Commando. This I kind of wish, with the ability they gave you a way to like exile cards from your graveyard or something, so you could actually set this up a little bit. It feels like the way it's done, it's it's very dis incentivizing. You've been trying to, like, build around it and put cards in your taxes. So you're kind of just hoping that it comes up every now and again. Right. You're not like making it work. Yeah. Nice. I think the effect is just quite underwhelming. Like it's a very safe ability. So your opponent has a blood artist. It's it's not a replacement effect. It happens after. Is that right. So like, you still get drained from a blood artist because it will die and go to the graveyard and then it goes to exile. Yes. It's a trigger, I think, right when that's sort of it reaches eyes, you may exile it. So it'll go to the graveyard if there's a trigger that lets you at the end of this. Yeah. Because. Because if it was going, it was like the void Walker thing as well of like nothing like that. Like some decks out of the game. Like it was like a sideboard card as well. If it was like a mucking up the graveyard struggle style card as well. And then there might be some play, but yeah, the more we're talking about it, the more I'm off of Call the Face Dealer. Yeah, seems kind of tough. So let's get the ball rolling. We have my scornful strike next. This is one and a black 322. Legendary creature, human noble ally. It has first strike. And whenever a player casts a non creature spell, they lose two life. This does seem like a cool card if you're doing like, anything like a Hate Bears related style black and white deck. But this feels very much like the like a color shifted failure. Basically, it's punishing players for casting non creature spells like Starly. Hitting the mana is definitely better, but like an additional piece of that deck. I do think this is fine. Like hose of bait. Also of hate bears isn't the most common archetype that you see, but it definitely has enough bits to exist nowadays. There's plenty of cards in white and black that punish your opponents, like there's like hand attack in both colors. Now there's good creatures. Like, this is a nice, cheap creature that you can land, and it will do a bit of damage as a game goes on. Without going into that deck, I think this will struggle because, well, one reason we still run solely in cubes is because white aggro is good and Thalia is a fine, aggressive creature. On top of being an annoying piece. This doesn't have that. Like black isn't generally the aggro color anymore. And by anymore I mean like since carnage was printed. What? I mean, like, I think this is a like it's a very cool, cheap, efficient card. But I it needs that deck to exist, basically. Like, like you need to be doing something where there's multiple of these kind of like like there's plenty of like like is, is there like, Campbell's that kind of does a similar thing. Like, you could make a whole package with these cards now. And I think that could be a cool deck, but I think this is one for that deck. Not really one anywhere else. Yeah, I know this isn't exciting to me. I think it's fine. If you were trying to make black aggro a thing in your cube, then I guess this is a teed up. You could put in, but there's so many passages in black, you know, you look at your dark confidence, your, Oh, stick codes for even like, put bat, you know, but that's sack. I think we need to be doing this and it's not. Yeah, I do to me, this is like a never powerful not that cool. So I'm kind of not super high threat, but, Yeah, if you want to lean into, like, black high for, I guess you could make it. You could, you could try this. Maybe if you're doing the, the def shadow thing, you know, you can you can put this card in that. I am so skeptic of the def shadow thing. Oh, that's kind of hard. But when they print two more death shadows that are actually as powerful as their shadow, then we can make it work. I think that's more the issue with that deck. We can certainly try. All right, take it away with our next card. James. We have an enchantment coming up next. Yeah. Next up we have obsessive pursuit. This is one a black phone enchantment says one this enchantment enters. And the beginning of your upkeep. You lose one life and creates a clue. Token. And whenever you attack, you put X plus one plus one counters on target. Attacking creature where X is the number of permanence you've sacrificed. This turn. If X is three or greater, that creature gains lifelink until end of turn. So this represents a lot of value over the course of a game. The issue is it's very manor intensive to be cracking all of those clues. You're probably not going to want to do that until later in the game. And then I'd see, you know, you're relying on when you start cracking the clues. Do you have a creature that you're attacking? Whether that stay on a right, you might be digging to find a creature and then, yes, you have to attack with a creature. You might not get those, get that value if you just. Castle. Right. However, it does get a lot more interesting if you have other ways to stack permanence or even other ways to sacrifice these clues other than just paying for the full retail to manor every time. So, you know, maybe you're cracking some treasures and then you attackers get bigger. That's great. Maybe you have something like the, you know, the black two top. We got a couple of sets ago that can sack features or artifacts. You know, you're doing some mayhem, devil shenanigans. Now I'm getting infested in obsessive pursuit, you know, and we've seen a little bit more recently of for black sacrifice. Massive stuff. Caring about sacking any permanent rather than just caring about sacking creatures. And this sort of plays into that quite nicely, I think. And there's a further incentive to, you know, have a bone shift, fascism, bloods and clues and all of this nonsense which, which we do just see thrown onto cards quite freely now. So, yeah, I think there's, that's that's something that. Yeah, I, I do like this card, but I like, with, like with some of the other enchantments that we've touched on, like some of the ascensions. I do think it's, it is a little slow and like one thing that has me, has me a little down on this card is it does dictate when you do your sacrificing. Like one of the classic things of an aristocrat deck is kind of like you swing with like 2 or 3 aristocratic creatures that get. But when you sack a creature and your opponent can only block two of them, you put all the damage on the one that goes through. That's how you kind of push damage through and win the game, that kind of thing. I know that that specific build is more like, constructed than traditionally two, but just like it's with this, you have to do all your sacrificing pre combat. You're not you can't you can't like do it on like your opponent's end step for example, or like on their turn when they attack you and you block and then stack some stuff and do some cool stuff that is very much forcing you to get your value on or do your thing on your first main phase. So you do this. I do think like this could still be good. I like the fact it is counters. I do like, it is, it is. I guess it's swapping a timing restriction for a permanent effect. Like giving stuff counters is quite nice. And yeah, effectively, what is pretty much like, for an arena variant, you say that's fair in terms of it's the thing that's giving you a card in theory, every time. I think this is a fine card. Again, I'm a bit stuck on where it would go, like, I, I think you did kind of nail it with in a cube that is like wanting to do like aristocrats as well as, like, care about, like, artifacts going to the bits. So maybe you're kind of doing artifacts in AWS or even Arista scraps the artifact sack version and rack toss. And maybe this is a nice kind of like card that goes in both. I could see that working quite, quite, quite nicely, for example. Yeah. Sounds cool. All right. Next up in black we have Phoenix Fleet ship. This is two black black for a four for artifact vehicle with flying and crew one. It also has at the beginning of your in step if you sacrificed a permanent stone create a token. This a copy of this vehicle. And as long as you control eight or more opponents named Phoenix Flagship, this vehicle is an artifact creature. So a couple of bits of this card I actually, I think I like this card. We've seen crew one on a bunch of vehicles and of all the crews, crew one is probably the best because it is very much the thing. If you can just upgrade any dorky creature into into crew on your vehicle. And that is nice. I do think that this is very much a build around. I don't think this can just slot into a normal cube, like the cube needs ways of triggering this to be good. Like you need the aristocrat deck. You need the as the scrap deck. You need something where like, you need to put cards in a cube, or there needs to be cards in a cube to support this. And like, just fetch lands I don't think is enough. Like like you need to be like like putting like blood fountain or things like that in your cube and like baubles, these need to be in your cube. But if you have those and you can slot this in, I do quite like this because yes, you do need a creature in order to crew it back like if we've been sacrificing things they do importantly stat like the copying doing botany stack. So the first one on the first hand if you set something straight away. So you stack your bauble the turn you play this, you will then have two of these. If you do that again you will have four of these. It's the turn off that like like you could be making you could have your eight four fours in three turns. I think it is like, that's pretty good. I don't think that's be why you're putting it in here. Like like like like like it's a nice thing to have. Like I think you will get to it, especially in slower cubes. I'm interested in this more in my slower cube as like a I play this in here. It's kind of like a mini game that we're doing now. Am I going to win with an army of airships? And I think in slow environment I think you will get that. And I think that's quite good. The fact that you do need like like once you go past the first couple, you will need a lot of one ones as well, which is kind of where this gets a bit trickier because these can't attack by themselves until you get to eight. Like that is a download. They are vehicle size. A downside? I know that playing a four man, A44 flier, they can't attack unless you have A11 in most power cubes, almost five out of the other cubes is tricky, but in slower cubes. I really like this. And there's one other thing I wanted to touch on that might pique your interest. Interest. James. This could secretly be a stacks card, because if we get to the point where we're making multiple of these, maybe we're we're making companies in a turn. These work really nicely with cars like smokestacks or POCs because like in theory, with this, we can keep ahead of the stacks, count. If we if we get two of these and then play smokestacks, we can kind of we're making enough stuff like that. There's like this is like a better, better blossom at that point. Like, yes, I know it's formatter and a vehicle, but like I'm not saying that is white. Like I'm not saying this plus smokestacks equals stacks is back. But I think that there's something cool there is what I want to say. Yeah, that sounds cool. Like get like back my brains both enables less than this enables. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. That's cool. Yeah. No, I think this is an interesting payoff for sacrificing stuff. You can definitely do the thing. My issue is slightly the need for CPU, you know, like, if a creature where we made more creature, where we copied it in the end step, if we stack the thing and then, you know, one becomes two, becomes four, becomes eight, and that sounds sick. This isn't quite that because, you know, once we've made for the family very unlikely to be attacking with five and. Right. And sense of four, four, five, we don't necessarily need to be attacking with all of them, but, it feels like we need quite a lot to come together, right? Because we need this in play. We need to be sacrificing stuff. And we need creatures left behind to fail. Not saying that combination of things can't happen, but it's, it's asking more work of us than, than some of our payoffs. But I think this is, like, definitely worth looking at for. So cube gives you some time to develop your synergies and, Yeah, nice to see the nice thing. Right. What actually plays very well versus removal because, there's not a creature when you play it, so they can't they often won't be able to just kill it right then and there, and then you make a copy of it. So then even if they find some artifact removal, it's ineffective because the one that is left over will keep making more copies. So yeah, that part's nice. It just kind of give you inevitability. But yeah, I don't really want to be just sitting and waiting to get eight. I think that does generally take too long. And, you know, even if you get to eight, they can kill, kill, kill one of them. And then we have a seven fall out of. Yeah. Right. Until your next ten. So, yeah, I think you do need a way to keep them. Yeah. They won't stay creatures, will they? Yeah. So if you're attacking me with a phoenix fleet ships and I will push one, then the other seven seems to be creatures. Fight. That does kind of suck that the other line I had with this, which I then had to check myself on, was like, mechanized production. The one that makes you one on upkeep every ten. And if you have eight, you in the game, it's like, oh, that that'll easily get us to eight Phoenix fleet ships so we can attack with them. Wait a second, wait a second. We're almost okay. Yeah, I am very I'm very aware that Phoenix Fleet Air Ship could be a bit too commander for a lot of cubes, but I do think it's cool and kind of like, I don't know, I feel like treating myself to a Phoenix leadership, if I'm honest with you. So I'm probably gonna slip it into that cube. It is definitely cool. I was looking at fits for first, ship and magic of a first is absolutely magic. It is not. I was, stronghold. Zeppelin was in nemesis. I mean, it also looks like a Bane. Nemesis? Yeah. Yeah. Sir. Bob Manaphy free fire can only plant creatures with flying. Get that negative to, nice. All right, well, we have one more card for today. James, before we finish up, what do you think of Raven Eagle? Yes, the raven eagle is two in a black for a two free creature. Bird assassin as flying. And whenever this creature enters, all attacks, exile up to one target card from a graveyard. If a creature card was exiled this way, you create a clue token, and whenever you draw your second card each turn, each opponent loses one life and you gain one life. I feel like they could have given us a little bit more juice on that last ability. Like training for one, the only one to turn is is free. No feedback. But this is a nice solid little value creature, right? It's nice that you get the clue on the way in as well as as well as on attacks. So, you know, if a game is about value and the game is about card Quincy, then this will be a very strong card for you. But it's not a quick card. And it's not a card for, like, you know, snowballs super fast, right? Like it's, you've got to keep investing that manor. You're realistically not going to do that until until much later in the game. But there is something to be said for, you know, you you get in that spot where you've piled up a bunch of clues and you're like, I just need to progress the game for long enough. I can start thinking, man earned these clues, and then I'm going to wild card my opponent and that's a fine plan. This. This will ax you back. Yeah. It's not, I'd say a super exciting card, but it is very solid. Yeah, I think the thing where I like this card is that it's, it's actually, this is like a bit of graveyard hate isn't going to just completely destroy the graveyard deck. This is more kind of in line with, like, scavenging. Who's then, like a rest in peace, if that makes sense, and I don't, I, I do generally prefer those kind of hate pieces because, like, it still gives a bit of play to the situation. It doesn't just be like, okay, I play the sideboard card and now you can't do anything like there is a bit more bit of back and forth that I kind of like with this. That could be where the so you play like the, the place like where I think this would be fine is like, and it is like a cube environment that I don't like that I do like. And it's where things like merfolk glue to a good. Sometimes I do dislike drawing some cards and setting up a little dawdle engine. That kind of thing like that is that is a lower power level cube. But like in those environments, I think this is just gonna be a fine card. Like if you have any repeatable way of drawing a card a turn, this will just like chip in through some damage in the sky, drain them out. It'll be annoying while you're kind of filtering through your deck. Look at getting your answers, get in your control pieces, that kind of stuff. Like, again, this isn't the most busted card in the world. And, but for a three amount of fly, like, there'll be plenty of environments where this is just a solid card that kind of fits in nicely to what the environment of what the power level of an environment generally is. Yeah, for sure. It seems perfect. So I'm gonna have a thing to flag for it. Right. Is that if this comes down on turn three, probably not like reliably making it to every turn, you're just not going to have enough fuel. And a lot of games. You can't just assume that there's a nice, convenient pile of creatures in the graveyard at all points. Yeah, yeah, I definitely agree with that. All right. Marvelous. That's where we're going to leave it for today. Do make sure you subscribe to the podcast so you get notified when part two comes out. That should be next week where we'll be going over red, green, multicolored and lands. Until then, it's goodbye from me and it's goodbye from James. And we'll see you all soon. Goodbye.