Lorwyn Eclipsed - Cube Set Review P2

This is part 2 of our cube set review for Lorwyn Eclipsed. In this episode we cover Green, Red, Multicoloured, Artifacts and lands.

Timecodes:
4:08 - Red
14:51 - Green
38:02 - Multicoloured
1:17:14 - Colourless
1:24:29 - Lands
1:26:53 - Final Thoughs & Our Tests

Video Version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eR8rNRtPens

Card Gallery: https://moxfield.com/decks/iodIZTVNlUyWni8bxVS4wg

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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https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/deed.en_US

Chapters

• 4:08 Red
• 14:51 Green
• 38:02 Multicoloured
• 1:17:14 Colourless
• 1:24:29 Lands
• 1:26:53 Final Thoughs & Our Tests

Transcript

0:03

Hello everyone. 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. We're back with part two of our lone eclipse review. And this for this episode we've actually played with some of the cards. How are you doing this week and what do you think of Logan so far? Yeah, we certainly have. We both did a prerelease and I am currently to two matches into an arena track, but that's released two hours ago on arena. So, we don't hang around. And. Yeah, no, that seems fairly fun, actually. Prerelease was a lot of fun. I built well, I can only describe sort of green white idiots. It wasn't really chicken, it was just big dudes. But, it seemed pretty effective for fear with that. And, And you did a two headed giant prerelease, right? How was that? Yeah. Yeah, that was a lot of fun. I mean, a friend did two to giant. I ended up in kind of like a white black. All the removal, I think, like 14 cards of my deck were removal. So that was quite tight. I didn't even have too much synergy, but my, tag team partner had, like, quite a clutch elementals deck that really did all the things. So, yeah, we ended up going to one. We lost, like, some kind of, elf reanimation combo that ended up them exiling all of our library. So, but the set seems really fun. I really enjoyed it. Like, there's a lot of cool synergies in this set. Yeah. Generally quite positive so far. Nice. Yeah. It seems it seems like an interesting one for sure. And I think the impression I've got is that there's a little bit more depth than some of the titles that we have seen in the past. I, I think I have reason to hope, at least for these, is not quite as unveils as things like, bloom though, and Zane and another such, such encounters we've had with the, creature type matters that. Yeah. Just from from my brief experience of the set, just having decent changelings everywhere makes so many of the decks more viable. Like, again, to to John is a bit the deck constructions are a bit different because obviously you have so many more packs, but just we had so many choices on where we could take the deck just based on we could have gone goblins, we could have gone elves, all with my half of the pool, basically just from the amount of changelings available and the payoffs. And I really got the impression from the set that the payoff will be what drive the decks a lot of the time, yes, I think so. I think there's there's not a shortage of sort of enablers and, and cheap creatures and most of the colors. I think what if you get some good pay offs, you should be able to sort of round out your curve pretty nicely in most of the tribes. Maybe elementals being the slight exception. There's not many like great cheap elementals, but I will say I think elemental doesn't really need fast as much. You know, it's not looking to go to Mana Elemental and three Mana Elemental every game, right? That's not really what that decks about. Yeah, that makes more get to five man and then just play five drops and be rewarded for it. Yes, exactly. But very strong. We in our second game, we all I'm going to say we my partner did 47 damage or something like that in one turn out of nowhere with the elemental deck. So that part was seriously very scary. And I did my job. I killed everything that very pleased on that board. Nice. That that's kind of how you meant to play it. And you had to join a lot of the time, like it's one person's job to end the game and one person's shelf to disrupt their opponents. So, yeah, based on pretty much since I've, I've added a couple of cards, the list, we still have plenty to go over. As a reminder, this is part two of our set review. They were going to be, covering red, green, multicolored, colorless, and some lands. Part a link to part one will be down in the show notes below. If you want to check out our thoughts on white, blue, and black. But those are out of the way. James. Don't take it away with our first red card of the day. A card that has it has got a lot of people talking. Yeah for sure. So first up in red we have hex sing squelch shout. This is one of that for A22 creature a goblin sorcerer. It's a new creature type in this set I believe. It's a that says this spell can't be counted. Countered. Has what? Pay to life says spells you control can't be counted. And other creatures you control have what pace you like. This is going to be a really nine creature. I know that people are excited about this for constructed. I actually don't think this is a cube card. Really? I think people are excited about it for constructed for like, specifically formats that are very much dominated by counter magic. I think that's just not the case for most cubes. If it is the case for your cube and you think that's a problem, you should probably like cut some of the counter magic rather than add this card as a way to fight it. I would suggest, because when they're not about the counter spells, this card is not that good. It's a grizzly bear with, that makes you play a couple of life occasionally. I it's fine. I guess if you're doing goblins, this is a goblin, but, it's pretty low impact, honestly, as, given the range of two drops so available even just in the goblin stack. I think you can do better than this. Like ice cubes. If you put it in, it would be a sideboard card most of the time. Yeah, I would agree with this. Like the the deck that this kind of wants to go into isn't really one that we're, that you support in the majority of cubes like this doesn't go in the generic bog that Boris Aggro killed you type deck, which is kind of what the majority of all red twos are doing, and it doesn't really feel like it goes anywhere else. Like it's an annoying card, but it's just I just eats the first removal spell I think a lot of the time. And yes, it in those counterspell match ups against controls like it will be okay, but those decks will have other ways of answering threats a lot of the time. Yeah, the same year, as you said, this seems very strong in or the wife is very high on this for like vintage and legacy where those decks are more apparent. Yeah. I, like this seems fine in a deck that's kind of like hate. HBC isn't really a it isn't really a deck we see in red. It's more of, like if if somehow you've got like, Blood Moon and that kind of archetype going in your cube, then maybe there's a place for this, but I just not seen that come together, because that's just quite a miserable archetype and isn't really one people supporting cube because generally what we want to enjoy ourselves and like Blood Moon has a place, but it isn't really in cube. And that's where I kind of see this card doing best. Basically. Yeah, for sure. It's just too low impact when people are progressing their own proactive plan. You know, it's not it's not fucking them quickly. It's not it doesn't have any sort of evasion. They just play us with logic. Richards. It just sits there. Yeah. I think you can do better. All right, let's keep the ball rolling. Let's move on to our next card. Next up, we have mic attack. This is two in a red for an enchantment that has one in the red. You may put a creature card with total power toughness five or less from your hand onto the battlefield. That creature gains haste at the beginning of your next end step. Sacrifice that creature. So this is a card I really want to like. Like Sneak Attack is one of my favorite cards in all of magic, and this is definitely an homage to that card, and it would be nice to have some redundancy in Sneak Attack, but the point of that card is we have to put any creature into play for a single red for return. This is worse than that. It's more manageable and it has a restriction like yes, you can do cool things with it, like there's some creatures with powerful effects, and that'd be nice to give flesh to this and concrete as you can. Cheating with this. Like I think some of the pitch elementals will still work really well with this agent of treachery. Works really well with this, but the point of sneak attack is that it unlocks your whole deck. Your whole deck will have haste. You don't have to add an additional constraint like this. Feels more like collected company, like the collected company version of things like. Like so much of your deck would have to be built around it to make it work. I just don't think it's going to come together. And for me, one of the big one of the biggest things with this card is sneak attack is great because it lets you cheat on mana. Like you can put an eight drop into play for a turn for one manor. Most creatures with power and toughness five or less are going to cost around the mark of cosmic attack cost. The creature. So are you kind of up on mana or like like like like is the is the juice going to be worth the squeeze or this I think this is cool, but my gut is it's not going to get there. Kind of. What do you think, James? I what's your thoughts on on make attack. Yeah I'm, I'm not really buying this one I think can it's not for that isn't expensive stuff you could cheating for would be effective with with mic attack. Like you mentioned agent of treachery. I think. I think that's probably the best one. That's chaotic. I quite like anyway. And cube, but it's just that you're not going to like if you've already running some ways to exploit expensive creatures, you're not going to change a whole suite of expensive creatures just to make them work with this card. And I think that's realistically what you'd have to do, because none of these good, expensive creatures we've running cube otherwise work with this. And so then you're thinking, okay, well, am I meant to be doing more sort of value? We stuck with this fight. Why? I'm activating it multiple times. Maybe I'm like flickering creatures after I put it in something like that, but this makes it harder to activate multiple times compared to sneak attack, because the activation cost is two every time. Like if you're only activating once, then this set of costs is better than Sneak Attack five, which cost Force Player One to activate, but if you're activating it multiple times, then it isn't so you kind of need to just have one really good activation for maximize this. But but yeah, that feels pretty tough with the power and toughness constraint. So yeah, I think this is going to be a kind of a tricky one to get to work for most cubes, which are shinx. It's yeah, six packs are really cool. Card. And I think a, a slightly more restricted version of that could be interesting, but I don't think this is one really. Yeah. I really want to like this card, but yeah, I it's too much of a building constraint like but and it's just not worth it. Like flash worth the deck building constraint. Like if you know what I mean. Like this doesn't feel like we get that with it. But moving on to a card with probably no deck building constraint apart from you being able to, tap a read monitor, cost it. James, what do you think of seer? Yeah, this is very solid. So seer is one of read for an instant. And seer deals for damage to target creature or planeswalker. This is really solid for removal. It's instant speed is great hitting. Planeswalker. Planeswalker is great. I've. I will say things walkers aren't sort of as big a part of the average cube experience as they were. So 5 or 10 years ago. The issue here is just for there's only so many slots for burn spells. You want a decent chunk of your burn spells to be able to go face in a lot of cubes, which this obviously doesn't. And so you've got to solve an even smaller set of slots outside of that. And we've already got some really good ones. I think flame Slash is pretty much it's either unparalleled in how efficient it is. That's a spawn mana for for damage. Right. Is it sorcery speed. And then you've got cards like a blade and suplex, which have the added, the added flexibility of killing artifacts so it cuts off from round to. Is it more important for you to be able to kill an ax for spells killing artifacts? I guess that is a, that is a call you make based on your cube, right? I, I guess if you're running both suplex and the blade, you could certainly look at, like, switching one of them out for this. I think, that that would be reasonable. There's, Yeah, there's something bad to say about this card. It's just, Yeah, there's a lot of competition. Yeah, I think you've nailed it. I do like this being innocent. No. Over something like blaming. Like this is like, this does feel like the modern problems require modern solutions. And this is kind of the power grip version of this effect. Like, there was a point where we had to discard a card at random for this effect. Any Sonic Burst fans out there? But and yeah, and what you said about cubes, like the planeswalker part not being as like, I think in high powered level cubes. That is true. I think more legacy and like modern power cubes. That's where you see more planes, walkers again, because that's kind of they're more like the power level from a few years ago, if that makes sense. In the higher power. Part of the reason why I like more mid-range cubes tend to have more planes. Walkers because they tend to work better in those environments. So I think this card is a slam dunk in in those kind of environments. Again, to five from more efficient, from a raw efficiency point of view, it is probably gonna get tested. But yeah. Yeah. If it stays in or not to, it'll just be because we have every other read Burn Spell in Magic to compare it to. And it didn't get in like a 360 maybe in a five 4720. That's where they can kind of get there from a power level point of view. Yeah for sure. For sure. You can also potentially look at switching this in for one of the, they have a one mana one. So it don't care if I say something like galvanic discharge for the energy one, which is basically one mana deal free to a creature. You could like, however, be the extra mana is worth five for an extra damage or the toughness on shields, or it is that 4 or 5 is progressively five. Okay, so we still haven't found a solution to it. Okay. Never mind. Yeah, I killed one. I may attack for me, for fact, for no, that's bad spells. Kill a shelter. I'll stop looking like they're just about sitting there. Is that is a distressing time. I'm so sorry, James. I'm so sorry. All right, but let's get the ball rolling. Next up, we have our first green card. We have formidable speaker. This is two and a green for two for creature. Elf druid. When this creature enters, you may discard a card. If you do search a library for a creature card, reveal it to put it into your hand. Then shuffle it also as one generic and tap it to untap another target. Permanent. So I think this is actually a really cool card. So this is, a invitational card from, Jeanne Emmanuel Depressors, being the world champion, I'm assuming. Yeah, being the 29th world champion. Let's go with that. It's been a hot minute since my Roman numerals and lowest go, but back to the card. So picking the worst card in your hand to get the best creature in your deck is very nice. This feels in the vein of your survival of the fittest and your fauna. Shamans. This is different. I'm not saying it's better. I'm not saying it's worse. Those are repeatable versions of witch duties. This one can be repeatable if you flick it, but it. Generally speaking, this is going to be a one time shooter. Importantly with this, you do not have to discard a creature card to get the best creature on your deck. Like you can pitch a land. You can pitch like the worst, the worst spell in your hand to go and get a creature. You don't have to have a creature like we've all like. Survival of the fittest. Fans will have all been there with the survival in play, but no creature like waiting to draw a creature so you can get the ball rolling. With this. You get your creature straight away as long as you have a card discard, which is very nice. So any kind of deck that wants a creature due to the creature combos and the aforementioned survival of the fittest is like madness style stuff. Cool. It's going to go well. Then. The other upside of this is that obviously we can untap another permanent and in high power level cubes, the most obvious one in a green deck. Anyway, he's going to be like Gaia's cradle, but we also have the ability to untap like, Grim Monolith, Basalt monolith, and other type of big mana producers. And also in the highest level cubes, we also have Time Vault, which is not normally a green deck, but now it can be, yeah, in any cube that wants a creature tutor, I think this is going to be a very solid include. I'm probably gonna be testing it in both of mine if it's not too wildly expensive. Yeah. And the untap is nice. It just adds a nice, like. I think you run it again in your queue for the creature to do it, but the additional ability to just untap anything that taps on more than two mana is going to be nice. James, what do you think about formidable speaker? Yeah, I think this is a really nice design. Apparently your manual to fast specifically said he he wanted this card to be good and cube and, which is a good requirement, and I think he got that, Yeah. Like, what? A one shot creature, too. So I want one shot at survival activation. This is pretty nice. And it's also just a very solid body AI. It blocks really well, that that does matter if you're dead. Laying around and setting up for his combat is just having a little bit of a roadblock. Can be the difference in, for getting that extra turn, like, sometimes need, you know? Yeah, I think, like, basically any sort of feature combo deck this is going to slot in very nicely. I think for higher power level cubes, like a Naidoo deck is a very good home for this. Oh, yes. Yes. You're not to all be safe keep forever condos if you are Naidoo, but also a few. It also just fetches your Naidoo and targets it itself, you know, and triggers the not. Yeah okay. Which seems fair. It gives your Naidoo vigilance. Exactly. Got him. Nice. Yeah. And it's also I mean it's very much a sort of card where the power level scales with the cards around that. Right. This is never going to be busters in any cube. Because it's, it's only as good as what you're getting, really. And what you're setting up. So I think it's still like, yeah, you can put it in very high power level cubes, but you can also put it in in lots of power level cubes, like, I call it for day, for example, like a blink stack. And then you cast this and go and got a soul herder and then you're just touching every turn. That seems kind of cool. Yeah, I'm definitely going to try it. And some cubes. I imagine you'll see it being tested in a lot of different for kids. Will power levels really. I know Modo Cube has, Hoegaarden stuff in that for moment, so I imagine they will give it a try with that. That seems like a really nice time for, also for green, I think one of the best thing green does in the higher power level cubes at the moment is for, Titania, bail off time and safe keeper stuff. So just having a card which tutors all of those pieces seems really nice as well. Oh yeah. This is seems like. But the majority of these, not all of them, but the majority of these world championship reward cards are kind of slam dunks, cubes like we have bulb, we have, snap cast of mage. There's the fairy from a few sets ago. Like most of them generally tend to be quite good. So yeah, formidable speaker. I think it's going to be in queue for quite a while. We have a cool card next. James one that is, kind of cool. Back to a card from original Lauren. Talk to us about Mutable Explorer. Yeah. For sure. So beautiful explorer is two in a green for A11 creature shapeshifter with changeling. So it's every creature type. And it says when this creature enters, create a captive mute vault token. So for those who don't know, immutable is a land that says tap. Add a man of any color, or you can spend one and it becomes a two to creature with all creature types inside of ten. So this is cool. Assembly. You know, it's in the sort of wood elves thing. Bloom. Druid. Yeah. Three mana green, one one. Get a land, get next to land. Is is a card. We've seen a few times before. Right. The downside of this one compared to the others, it doesn't fix your mana, right? You look at something like Spring Bloom Druid that that basically casts have own ATV's. So that's going to fix your colors. This doesn't do that, but this has ShapeShift, which has Changeling, and it doesn't create a regular land. It creates a meta vault. So you're potentially getting two of whatever creature type you care about from this card. Yeah. Listen, I don't think this belongs in cubes. Fit. Don't care about creature types, but, if you do, I think this is a nice, a nice way to get some more changelings into those cubes. That that generally something you need, I find to to have those pivot cards that go in multiple different decks rather than just, just everything being in one lane. Yeah, you've nailed it. Like, this gets into a cube. If this if you if you want this to be two elves or two merfolk or something like that, that's generally where this is going to go. And like I do like the design space of this card. This is effectively like I remember listening to, Microsoft's podcast a few years ago. And like, I actually this is what he said, this is how he wants rampant growth to work like rather than you go get it from your deck. You create the you create a token from outside. So it kind of doesn't involve shuffling and that kind of stuff like I think doing it on a rare as like a one off is a nice, cool way of doing it. Like we don't need forest tokens and that kind of stuff, but like, like, like like as a design space of a card, I do quite like this. Yes, I, I'm fine with it in a way that in this case, because creating beautiful art is cool. I hope this isn't to have an enclave start to work, because I'm not buying this. No, no, no, from my point of view, it won't be that way. My, two giant partner did bring Mewtwo Vaults with him to rerelease, just in the assumption that you actually know. That's okay, I did you. I we did not know for sure, but. Oh, good. Yeah, yeah. I mean, to be explorer one if you're doing the, creature don't matter stuff. And I think our next card is going to be a similar type of thing. Next up we have Spring Leaf Parade. This is ex green going for enchantment that says when it enters create X11 colorless shapeshifter feature tokens with changeling. It also has creature tokens. You can also have tap add one manner of any color. So we kind of seen both half of these effects before. Plenty of time. We've seen plenty of I mean we've seen plenty of X and eye color make a bunch of tokens. We've seen X color color, make a bunch of tokens. And we've seen versions of, either creatures you control have tap to add any color or tokens have tactility. So this is kind of, if I'm honest, as an individual card. This is doing kind of two things that we've already seen inefficiently. But this is the first time that we've got both of them really on one card. And that's why this is interesting. And also because these tokens are, shapeshifters, that they are changelings. They can't as every creature type. Similarly to our last card, where we were kind of talking about mutable Explorer being playable. If you want two bodies of any creature type in a deck, this is if you want a lot of creature types in a deck like this has potential to be like, this is a great I think in a cube where you're supporting something like elves, where this could put six elves on the board and they all are animals. That is entirely what that deck wants to do outside of those types of cubes. I think this will struggle like just from a raw efficiency point of view. This doesn't like like if you're not doing the type matters thing with this effectively, this is this is ramping into more ramp, which isn't really like some cubes are fine with that. Some cubes are fine doing the big thing to then do the next bigger thing. But my gut is this will only see a see a place I we'll only see play if it is in that cube that wants that wants this to be ten merfolk, or wants us to be ten dryads or whatever. Like, are you on board with that, James? Yeah, I think you're probably right. The only other place that could be interesting, though, is if you just really care about that text of creature tokens, slap mana. Like, if you have so many other tokens for you, you just want that, like, I guess if you have a board, it could just be green. Green to make a bunch of money. Exactly. Yeah, exactly. I think that's interesting stuff you can do with that. Like a card I've really liked and in a few cubes is to have a friend of a forest like match you for all your tokens that vote for green. But part of the thing that made that card great was and also effect works with your non creature tokens. It works for treasure and your clues. Yes. And this is just creature token size. I suspect it probably will end up basically just being that that the changeling thing if you just want to. Yeah, but there's not a ton of ways to put lots of shapeshifters into play at one time. Right? So, it does have a niche for. Yeah. I don't think there's many other like if I'm, I don't say any because I don't know every card in magic, but I different points in our lives. We've both built the changeling everything everything type of matters deck in commander and I don't like I've played some janky changelings in the past. I think I would have snapped the hand off of anything like this previously. So yeah, that's a great point, actually. Where this is good is like, if you're playing this with another Lord effect, like if this is getting buffed up by like a Lord of Atlantis or something like that, where, where it's not making one once, it's this is making two twos in a deck or three threes because of other Lord effects pumping up the power and toughness, then this becomes exponentially better. That's kind of why we're saying it's better in those types of decks, because those decks are kind of like it's not just an individual card. It like the it becomes a combination of cards when you combine it with these other Lord effects. And that's kind of where this will really kind of will shine. If you're not doing that, then I think it will struggle. But yeah, that that has been a bunch of stuff from the set for those types of cubes and like, oh, and I know that that type of matters is a like in commander, some of the most popular decks because they're kind of they're quite easy to kind of like get your teeth into if that makes sense. It's like, oh, I'm going to play all the cool elves, I'm gonna play all the cool goblins, that kind of stuff. And it's got an easy it's like a good starting off point for a lot of people. We don't see as much in Q, but it might be something that we have to have a look at after the set because of all the new bits that we've got from it. But I think it's be best if we move on to our next card. What do you think of, Tristan Callis cultivated James. Yeah. So Tristan is turning to green for a free for legendary creature elf druid. It has such so free amount of C4. That's a great start. It says whenever this creature enters or transforms into Tristan Callis cultivator. You Melfi cards. Then if there's an elf card in your graveyard to gain to life and beginning of your first main phase may pay black if you do transform it, it transforms into Tristan, that color, which is also a free for death touch. This. This side is black and it says when this creature transforms into fists and pellets and color Melfi cards, then you maxed out now elf card from your graveyard. If you do, each opponent loses to life and then beginning of your main phase, you can pay a green card back. So he saw a couple of his transform cards and in part one the that review. They're really annoying to read out. There's loads of text. Mostly what this adds up to is it's a free mana free for Dafoe, for Mills, your bunch. And I think that's pretty interesting, actually. Like we thought, F touch is such a good body that just blocks absolutely everything is an absolute nightmare to attack. And that and it's they're not going to be able to block it profitably if you're on the front foot most of the time ever. So that's a great start. You have to care about killing yourself, for sure. Like, I wouldn't want this if you didn't have a strong graveyard theme. But if you if you do want to stock that graveyard, I think this is a really nice way to do it in a way that doesn't make you fall behind. Bots, you know, we're not talking about, say, paying a, you know, say to Wayfinder or something, which is behind the curve, power and toughness wise here. Graveyard. This is going to keep pace with your opponent's aggressive draws while stalking that graveyard and fueling your synergies. So that's pretty nice if you have some elves to trigger it, then great. But I don't actually think that's an essential part of this card. Yeah, I get I get the impression in most keeps the elves is going to be incidental. Like you have some like you have some mana dorks in your deck because you're a green deck. Like, do you want to play your overpowered, costed betas on turn two? And this is kind of one of them. Like, like like it compares quite nicely to a card like Sentinel in The Nameless City, which like as a card, I kind of, I like, performs better than I think I have a I tend to perform better than I ever kind of thought it would like. It's just been a very solid green beta, and this is similar, but like like you do have to put manor into this to kind of continually get the middle, but it's nice that that is an option. Like a lot of the cards that you're running in your mail deck, ones that kind of come in and that's what they do. Like, like James mentioned, say, to find, you like a lot of the more dorky ones come in and do that. And a lot of, like the, the old, incidental ones that you have returned generally aren't that have shown their age like there's like a go. Gary spider, from Ferris that kind of, like, very commandery. Not so much cube. This feels like a card that's kind of kept up power level wise. We've kind of where we're doing and like, yeah, you do have to like, with some of these flip cards, we could have had the discussion of, like, are they a mono color card or are they like a two color card? And I, I think this is, this probably still gets into a, a green deck just because it's stats are decent. Like probably not super happy, but it gets into a deck because it's it is in the playable section is what I'm saying. It's not like a high but it's in the playable. But it obviously is better if you have that synergy and like you, you need that middle deck in your queue for this to get in. But I'm saying that it is still in the in the playable section. If you are not basically, but like like like some the other ones we've discussed are like, is it a white card? Is it a white blue card? They have been both like the I feel this is this is playable enough that that's less of a conversation for me. Yeah for sure. It's it's respectable. But next I see I figured have, have black matter. I mean, it's probably so fine if you really want familiar selves, but you don't have black mana. The other thing that's nice. It means you're you're happy playing this, even if you only have, say, 4 or 5 black sources. Right? Because you just don't need to be able to flip it right away. Basically, the the black power accounts to you can pay a man. I want to turn to melee yourself for free and that's, that's pretty good. And a lot of decks, it's not an essential part of the card. Yeah, that seems like a solid one. I'm on a on a general conversation. I do like the fact that elves are doing something different in this set. Like, I like the fact that elves are doing stuff with the graveyard. Shockingly, I like elves, I like graveyard, I love it when they mix. Mean we have seen some, like from some of the, there's like a command, a legend, a set which had some elves that carry about the graveyard as well. But like, it's nice that it's not just elf, elf elf overrun. Yes. Yeah. It's I like the fact they're doing something different and like, it's a different space that you can play with. And like, from a design point of view, if you're doing a typo Matters cube, it's nice that it's it's nice that every strategy isn't just play as many of the cards of the same type as possible, and profit like this is doing something different. This is more of an engine piece, and like that is a cool way to take go get elves in your cube. If you're thinking of doing a type of matters, some environment, yeah for sure. And yeah so it's this is very typical fields in the sense actually it has more about having an elf in its graveyard than an elf in play. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I think it's a very cool design space. And it's also, I think, very smart from Wizards to do that for this. Like, I like we touched on in the notes about prerelease like like like elementals is doing five CMC above like matters that kind of thing. It's like it's real. It means that there's more interesting things to do than just curve out. And that's kind of what we're looking for from the cube environment. So yeah, a great example of that here with Tristan. Let's keep it moving. We have our last green card is also an elf variant. Let's go with that virulent emissary. It is a single green for A11 creature elf assassin with desktop with death touch. And whenever another creature you can drop enters, you gain one life. So there are plenty of soul sisters in white, and there aren't that many in green. This is probably the best one in green like it's an elf, so it'll work with other elemental stuff. And it has death touch like that is a great little combination in those decks because generally speaking, the game life style of decks are trying to go long. They're trying to build some kind of engine that rewards you for gaining life, or they're looking for a combo. And this being a one man, A11 death toucher means that it will hold down the board for long enough or it'll hold down the board release a little bit so you can then find the rest. Your pieces, and either assemble your engine to gain a bunch of life, make some angels properly, or to make your game winning combo like like there's the squirrel twin combo in pioneer recently there. Like, basically it makes a bunch of infinite tokens with cause like Scary Oak. If you're doing that type of archetype, I think this is a slam dunk. If you're not, then it will probably just like we know that kind of like mono black likes, death touchy rat variant. That isn't really what green is doing in a lot of cubes. It's not really like green is normally on the front foot is normally like a minor dork, or it's ramping. It's kind of it's doing something. So I think it's really needs that kind of like like it needs an archetype for to go into. But in those I think, like if you're doing life gain or like in combos and you're running, soul says, I think this becomes an auto include in your greens lot for those decks. Yeah. For the combo side is interesting. I mean, give giving death touch to a soul lot is a nice upgrade because soul wardens generally, you know, if they're good when they're enabling a synergy, then when that isn't working out for you in a game, they don't do anything at all. Right. So this this has nice upside of matic. You can trade for an attacking creature from the ground. For combo size is interesting. But I do think this would be much better if it was in white, you know, because, yeah, like an outside of a few very specific combos, I don't see many cubes wanting green. It's a green soul warden that much like when people are supporting life gains synergy stuff, it tends to be very much white centered, maybe white black. So yeah, outside of some quite specific combos, I think that there's not an actual home. But yeah, if you if this is something that you want to support a Companion Cube fan, it's it's probably, you know, is the best version available. Right. So certainly one needs to be aware of. Yeah. It it is like for my end I'm thinking that from the like the pioneer deck that is like yeah it has but also like especially in green for cards like Trello. So that's like a two mana, two to whenever you gain, I've put a counter on it and scry one. It's like it's like it's that it's scary. Okay. It's already running Prosperous Innkeeper, which is a soul warden. That is two mana makes you a treasure when it comes into play. Kind of like it's. That's kind of the shell for it was like like like like like eye for me. In cube, I see this deck as isolating your deck, partly because it is something interesting to do with Celestia, but it also means that you can run things like, like like like spike feeder combos as well. That's also in green card like, like it's it's kind of like a it's a jet for me is more of a general vibe of what, like Celestia can do in a cube of like insertion in my cube is doing life game combos. Here you go in. Kind of like here is a decent creature that you can run in that section. Okay. Yeah, that checks out. Oh, by the. Yeah. So that's a cool card. Anyway. Nice. All right. We're moving on to multicolor. We have some two color elementals with evoke. Now, James, talk to us about deceit. Yeah, for sure. This one has a lot of words to actually. So deceit is four and two blue black hybrid mana. So you can play for blue, blue or for blue? Back off of blue or for black? Black. For A55 creature elemental incarnation says when this creature was when this creature enters, if blue blue is spent, cast it the turn up to one target. Non land permanent to its own. This hand and black was meant to cast it. Target opponent reveals for hand. You choose a non land card format and they discard that card and you can invoke it for two blue black hybrid mana. So obviously if you evoke it, you're only getting one of those modes because you're either playing blue blue or black black for the love of God, do not evoke this card for a blue and a black mana hahahahahahahaha you'll be. It's going to be a combination of yeah, but that feels like the like, are you sure thing comes up on arena? Well, I really hope this one is implemented. Far side of it. It's gonna go so poorly. The answer is you get a sometimes you need a creature in your graveyard. I mean, that is not not like, technically true. Like, if you if you want to reanimate it or something. But yes, if you need a five, five, yeah. But that leads into my second point about this, which is, listen, this is not a low power. This is not a weak card. It is. You know, it's a it's a very good, it gives you the choice of two sort of cheap interactive spells. What a pretty powerful six shot right there. Six mana bounce. The thing forces you like. That's good. And it's in the right order, so you can bounce the thing and then take the thing that you bounced. That's all. Oh, good. We like all that. But just this templating wave. And there's a whole cycle templates of, like, there's this template thing that means you don't get the effects if you, for example, flicker this card or reanimate this card, or you do the, scam undying thing with this card. So, yes, it's very isn't it really fair? It's. I understand why they've done it this way. Because, there have been a lot of other creatures making big waves and constructed that she needed to be done. Yeah, but in seven years, ones, it didn't cost mana. You know, like, you can already just this vicious amount of cost so much. And it would have been fun, but, yeah, I think it's not that it's not strong enough for cube, but it's just for cube for me is more fun when the cards have, have the possibility to be more than what they say on the face of them. Right. Where you can build a deck for this more than the sum of its parts. And, The templating of this cycle really takes that away, right? It's, it's really just saying that this is all you can get out of this card. If you try and do anything else with it, it won't work. So listen like it's not a back. I would very happily put this in any like, slower blue black deck, and I think it would be good. But I'm kind of not excited to put it in a cube, you know, I mostly agree with that. The only additional thing I think you can really do with that is that this does trigger. Oh. I believe it triggers up the beanstalk. If you are doing something like five color nonsense with it, there is a well there. What? Whether you want too many double pip spells in that deck is a separate question. Yeah. And I agree with everything you you said about the whole cycle. With all that being said, though, this is the one of them I'm highest on, and I think I would, I would actually run this card, like if I open one or if they go down in price a little bit. I am tempted to run this in my, powered vintage cube, just primarily because double black to thought sees something is probably good enough though. Like does this become like. I'm not saying this is like the first to third best hand attack spell, but it's probably the fourth. And the fact that you get the creature on it as well. And it can be it's like like I'm go with me on this. What if this is just in your cube section? This is listed under sorcery Black Black Sorcery two drop and the rest of the card is bonus. So how would you feel about that deep cavern that exists? You know, we have four of my other ones, I don't know. You could. I think that card exists anyway, right? Like this. Is it distress or something like that? There's certainly a bunch of one, the black ones, which, like exile and have some magical upside. Oh, it is distress. Well done. Yeah. I'm actually, you know, that's for card. I've lost friends in magic 2012, but James, take a bow. Well done. Yeah, I'm. And I'm also, I'm just concerned that I'm putting this in my backpack and I just get have beyond ten two. And I need to add to that. I'm going to have an island, a swamp in play. You know, honestly, the mode I'm sort of nice. Okay. With this is just as a six drop to cast, you know, like it's actually a fine six drop fight. But it's a six shop you can't reanimate. That's not very good. I don't know. Yeah, I'm kind of off it. Okay, so the fact that you've told me so, the fact that the thing I'm excited to do is replaceable with a common from magic 2012. Also, if you want to black black sorcery cast him to talk. It's an absolute delight. You know, that's a I did not say the best. I said like the fourth or fifth. Okay, I have some, but I it's more the fact that this was the one that I was highest on. I'm going to read vibrance now. This is the girl one. It is three. Hybrid girl. Hybrid girl for a four for four creature elemental incarnation. It also has evoke hybrid girl, hybrid group and its abilities are when this enters if read red was spent to cast it. This deals three damage to any target. If green green was meant to cast it such a like be for a land card, reveal it to put it onto your hat, put it into your hand, then shuffle and you gain to life. So this one is an even harder sell for me. If we're voting it double red to bolt something, it's sorcery. Speed, I think is fine, but unexciting like we've already seen seer in this set, and we're kind of commenting like, meh, does that get in like this does go to any target, which is nice. It means it can go face, which is good, but then double Red is a real cost. Real green. Green to put a land into your hand feels dreadful though, like there will be times where you need to do that. But like fixing if you need fixing, double green seems miserable. Both of the. I think we're at a point where both of these effects. I think I would like in cube spaces, everything. We love cards that like combine cards together because it means we get to cut two cards to put one card in, to find space and be efficient and like it makes room for another cool card. But I'm looking at vibrance. It's a very cute doggy, I think, but we're at the point with this card where I think I would rather run two more efficient versions of these effects than this one card, and I'd rather run them both in the deck and risk drawing them independently of each other than have this one card. Am I being too hard on vibrance, James, or would you go along with that? Yeah, I might stick with aspect with all of these. I think the V double pips on the two drops is is really tough. Like I've obviously if I had to do it at that, that had to be the case in all different templates it this way. But Yeah. Like it it sure. Because you don't I don't think you'd play this outside of that green. So you're, you are automatically a two color deck. And there's just a lot of a time in your to call it that. Q can I have your double pips on turn two? You know, this very frequently won't kill that two drop, but you need to kill on on turn two. The only thing that makes this card interesting to me is that it is not search for a basic land. It's just search for land. Oh, that is something. Okay, so I'm trying to find that. That's nice. And finding a dark depths or a glacial chasm or a strip mine. Something along those lines. Then maybe this is something for you. But again, you know, very, very often if I was on, like, a feel for colors and, so having green, green on turn two might not always be a thing, but maybe you cast it later and that's fine. You know, like, I think if you, if you're sort of, in the crop rotation space, you know, maybe that's. Yeah, I think now that tracks. Yeah. I didn't like I guess specifically like the field of the Dead deck. I know like I know that card that's for a colorless. But it's one that if you control a bunch of different, different name lands, you start making tutus. That deck will probably be able to cast all modes of this just by like, fetch land and into all of the trims. Yeah. So yeah, maybe there is a place for, vibrance in a innersloth key. Maybe I'm making a lot of it. Maybe. Yeah. I think field of the dead itself has fallen out of favor in hyper level cubes. The maybe that kind of like tier below where feel that that is fine. Maybe that's where vibrance can kind of see the, play. Yeah, that makes sense to me. Okay, nice. All right. Our next card games. I think people are quite high on this one. Talk to me about Figure of Babel. Yeah, this is a very powerful one shot. So figure of fable is a Celestia hybrid manor. So you can spend either one queen on one light manor Fae one one creature can and has three activated abilities. You can spend a single celestial manor. So a green or a white manor, this creature becomes a kitchen stout with base power and toughness. Two three. You can pay one and two Nia hybrid two. And if this creature is a stout, it becomes a kick can soldier with base power and toughness for five and finally four, three and three Celestia. So six mana total. If this creature is a soldier, it becomes a kickin avatar with base power and toughness. Seven eight and protection from each of your opponents. It's just a figure of destiny. Call back. Templating is the same way. Checks for creature types. That sort of goes up through the three levels. This is really powerful. Figure Destiny's a staple and high power level cubes for good reason. It's that you can get out early and scales really well into the late game. That becomes really, really fattening. In terms of just if you just put this in a mono white deck, I think this card is better. And that's a good shout. It has it has more toughness on both of the first two stages. Right. I think it goes one 1 to 2, 2 to 4 for that. And I think if A6X ray, say, in the last one, whereas this goes one to 2 or 3 to 4 or 5. So there's extra points of stuff, this will unlock attacks for you. Well, the blacks and then they evolve. That's fairly important. The I think the, the argument for figure of destiny over it would be the boss is a color combination that's a little bit more interested in this effect than than Celeste. Nia. As in fable both goes. And, so I figure if Destiny goes in both mono red aggro and mono white aggro and bah sacro and those are all sort of veiled attacks, this has the upsides that it goes in green Dex. I think it will see play in green decks. I think it's less exciting than it is in in sort of white aggro, but, it's just sort of a possible hex in current fashion in your green deck, right? Yeah, yeah. I think maybe that like, green isn't as wanting for like power and toughness as like white it so yeah. So, so again I, I was viewing this entirely as this last card, but actually just in mono way. Yes. Kind of seems quite broken because I also don't it has some benefits and it has some downsides over a bigger destiny, like the oddly like in that mono white builds. I think the colorless pips in this, the fact you can spend like three generic and then the hybrid is going to mean that like like there are some white decks that will run. I mean, like in high power level cubes, like a souring or something like that. Like that will like, like artifact ramp can still work with this. Whereas speaking of Destiny isn't. That's quite nice. I do think the lack of evasion on this ultimate is a downside. So I think the protection from your opponents ability is more powerful than you think it is. It is. It is also includes your opponents creatures. They can't. They cannot, I believe block this. They can't block. Okay. Right. So okay. So yes, I would agree that is that is a very good form of evasion. That right. I did not realize that. I thought it was you couldn't target that or something like that. But if you can't go to block it blocks against it, then okay, I will that. This way. This is better. Yeah yeah yeah I like I like figure available okay. That's very I no it's I think it's a pretty messed up card. Yeah. Like the only I think the only reason to think of is if you just want the card to also go in mono. That isn't the only advantage of figure of Destiny, but this is a better card, I think. Also worth noting because of those color steps, you totally could put this in your boss stack, right? So it's a little bit harder to level up, but if you've got good fixing, you can make it work. Yeah. No, this is going to be a staple. I think this is, As, I suspect this is the best card in the set if you just go on. You know how many high power level cubes is it going to be in and for how long? I think we'll be seeing this for a long time. Okay. Wow, yeah I am. That does change my entire opinion on the card. Yeah. This is this is awesome. There is something to be said for the sizing. The, more power than toughness deck. Like the Celestria watch wall style deck of this is full of two manner three threes and that kind of stuff like that deck I've liked in the past, and it does seem like quite a strong card in that sort of shell, just like just play cards that are more power and toughness than mana. Like Celestia has really struggled for an identity and just efficient. Death has worked pretty well for Boris. Yeah, that's maybe that's what Celestia is doing now. Yeah, for sure. That makes sense for, yeah, it's such a threatening card as well. I'm like, you know, because this isn't like field level up mechanic where you have to do it. Sorcery speeds. You can do this in combat. You can do this in response to a removal spell. You know, it's, I won't say it's. Yeah. Like getting it, you know, even before five mode is good, but once it's fire, it's. Yeah, you can be on such a clock to kill this before it gets to that final level and becomes A78, which you can't kill and can't block. Yeah. Seems like a very, very powerful addition. Yeah. Your opponent really has to find an answer for it quite swiftly. Otherwise this gets out of hand. Okay, cool. Very strong magic card. Right. Let's keep the ball rolling. We're moving on to all of next. Next up we have Abigail. Alec. Eloquent. First year is a hybrid also of hybrid. Also for A11 legendary creature bird bard with flying first strike and lifelink. And when it enters up to one other, a creature loses all abilities but a flying counter. A first rate counter, and a lifelink counter on that creature. So I quite like this card. I think it's a very interesting effect. So if we want to interact with our opponent, it can turn off an engine piece, like it could turn off like a combo card or something like that, but it also has cool offensive abilities as well. Like you can turn off downsides on your own creatures like make it like turning off the downside of a rotting register and giving it flying first like an Lifelink seems really good. Or maybe this is the card that makes Death Shadow finally playable, and you like that seems pretty good. Nine like you're going to struggle to do it on curve, but making it a nine like A99 flying first strike Lifelink that's a hell of a vibe. Like, if I those are kind of the extreme versions. If I'm honest, I think the most likely outcome is you just you're just upgrading a card you already running that has like a cool job and you're just making it a better creature because it has, I think, to be evasion and other forms of like another Bettys. I think that's pretty good. Like, like this seems quite good at kind of like mucking around with board stores and that kind of stuff. Just like the flying everywhere seems pretty good. Yeah. I want to get this card. Got a test. James, what do you think of Abigail? Yeah, I think it's an interesting card. So I had this in my prerelease pool, actually, and my hot take certainly for limited. But maybe this applies for cube as well as I think this is a better Celeste Nia card than it is an awesome card. Oh, because I think you just want stats to go with this. I think just hey, I have this four mana five power creature, and now it has first shrike flying and Lifelink is kind of messed up and, yes, sure. That it's it's harder to cast in those colors, but you're not you're not casting this lantern to anyway, right? I think you want to cast this later on in the game when you already have a big creature in play, and you get that giant lifelink kit in right away, your big lifelink is going to dominate the board. Plus, this is going to hang out and be annoying as a little Lifelink King flier. Yeah, I think this is solid out has some utility hitting that creature's like, maybe it's something where, you know, they play mana out from turn one. If you can't kill this and you really want to kill it, you could play this and a contact for mana anymore, right? But that's not how you want to use the card. I think you you want to use it, to, defeat counters on on something big of yours. Something with stats. Yeah. So I like Celestia as a home for that reason. But, yeah, I think anything with, with big, understated creatures could work. Not one for like, like super high power level, I think. But, certainly like an interesting card. Nice. Yeah, yeah, this one. The more I think about it, the more just the simple use case is probably going to be the effective one. Like, make my dream 66A fly. It seems actually pretty good. And I like. Yeah, this is a I like game card but also one one first strike is going to be fine at holding down the board in some games. Like if you need to play it early, it is a thing you can play early, which I like as well. Like like it's not embarrassing to do early, basically. Like you would prefer to do it late to jump something. But if you need to block a Raghavan, this will do that. Yeah for sure, for sure. Yeah. I think it's nice to have that utility like, yeah, I'd say probably more with a white card and a black card would be would be my take. I think. Black, you know, the creatures are a little bit small. It tends not to be that aggressive. And because, yeah, white is like a nicer home. Probably a lot of time, but, All right, we're keeping it. Also, though, can you, James, what do you think about emptiness? Our next incarnation? Yeah, it's just for next one of the same cycle would be if I can be double pips. So emptiness is four and two also of mana. So six total for A35 creature elemental incarnation. When this creature answers if White White's was sent to cast it, return target creature card with mana value. Feel less from your graveyard to the battlefield and if black black was fantastic for three minus one minus one counter target creature so this is interesting for, I like for black black modes a little more than the discard mode, because you don't need to sort of have it on turn two as much. And, three counters five and just minus three minus three is quite nice if you need to shrink something bigger. It also sort of plays into, I think, a vaguely interesting theme, but we've all I mean, theme is less of subtheme. We've seen in a few cubes where, sort of reanimating, low mana cost, but high value creatures, things like, and I'll kill us, with, with, you know, on a helping hand this has a sort of white equivalent. But we've seen and this is a way to get that sort of effect in this, well, in a spot where it has a lot more utility. Right? It's also a removal spell, and it's also like a big six mana value play if you need that. Having said that, as a six mana value play, you know, we could be casting various types of this over here. So I that know what to do with that. I, I think again, with all of these incarnation, the biggest issue actually with them for cube is the these are probably going to be these are mythic from the set these up. These are probably still playable in standard. They're probably going to be not budget cards, but the types of cubes that they go into from a power level point of view, I think are more aligned with budget environments. Like I don't think like deceit was the only one that I was kind of quite high on. And then James took me off. It, and I think I, I like the abilities on, on on emptiness. They are both very flexible. The issue is I'm just not forced by it in any kind of like high synergy powered environment. And just like the crafty consumer in me is just like, I could just spend my money on a cooler or like, like like, am I always have section? I'd rather on Abigail because that seems cooler. I again, there's a world where Abigail is way more expensive. I'm not looked at the price of these cards, but just like, you know what I mean? Like like I feel there's more bang for my buck in other places. If I want a cool all of card, like if you open in your prerelease and you like this card because the artwork is very pretty, like it is a fine card to see in an all of section. Because like all of has plenty of things it can do. It can do like it can be aristocrats, it can be Re-Animator. It okay. But like control is a quite general thing that also does quite well. And in that kind of build, this is a perfectly fine card to run in that slot. I just wouldn't personally pick one up if I had a lower powered environment, because I. I don't think it's good enough. That's my issue with a lot of these cards and like, I want to be hyped for the set, but I'm also just being honest about them when we need to be. Yeah for sure. Yeah, I, I sort of feel that this cycle like they're not bad, but I sort of don't think they're cool enough to, to from an execution, you know. Yeah. I, I need some give me a dream. And they took a while for sure even with their irritating template saying, you know, it's almost like they ruined a bunch of sets the last time they did these gems. Yeah, but like, well, what if stuff just cost mana, you know, like, maybe that was the issue. If modern devices. I was like, offended. It is. It's just like but so so say say if this was an ETB like it still does all the scan things, which is cool for us. Like again, I am fine with cards ruining other formats because like don't play other formats do cool like print cool cue cards. I'm fine with that. Yeah, I absolutely agree. Let it be known to all standard players out there. We will willingly throw your formats under the bus and as long as we got a cool gift card out of that. That's what emergency bans are for. It's fine. It's very healthy. Don't worry about it. All right, let's keep it going. Jet. Let's now, next up, we have. Hi. Perfect moment. It is two black and a green. Three for four. Legendary creature, elf, noble. When it or another elf control enters, each opponent blights one. So we saw blight quite a lot in the last episode. But just as a reminder, because this is also the first time we've seen an opponent blights, which is quite cool. All the previous blight cards, you had to put a minus one on one counter on your own creature, but with this, your opponent has to put the counter on their creature, which is quite nice. With this, you can also tap three untapped elves you control to proliferate, which you can only activate as a sorcery. So as a reminder, you choose any number of permanents and or players. Then give each each of each another counter of each kind already there, so you can add an additional minus one minus one counter. You get up an energy, all that kind of stuff. So why would you run high? Perfect. More potent. It's effectively this is a pay off for the Elf stack. This is the payoff for glory elves. This doesn't go anywhere else. This is a card we are playing as well. After we have played more elves. And before we are going to play more elves. This is on our curve of elves and bodies, where we are wanting a large amount of elf ball in play and what we kind of touched on earlier of it being nice, that there's different things to do with elves that isn't just elf ball into over on. This is kind of like that. Like this is a more controlling card, like being able to play this and then start sniping your opponent's deck. This is this. It might be this is a one card engine. Like like I don't feel you need much, but like two cards or minus one, minus one counter synergy. To make this work, you just need elves in your deck. And if you have that, this can start controlling the ball like this comes down on four and then every other one mana L for every other elf on your deck becomes a minus one, minus one counter on on. To be fair, your opponent's worst creature. But the goal is you're playing so many elves that you're just controlling it. And like that is not the type of deck that we normally see out of elves. Like, really anywhere. Like like elf control. Like like there's a few calls like that come command like that. There's like NAF, which I think makes your opponent discard a car. Like when you play an elf, like someone discard a card or something of that. Like there's that element of control and like that, like we've really like this also doesn't really go into the middle elves. It is an entirely different type of strategy, but it is a cool way of being rewarded for playing a bunch of elves that isn't one we've seen before. And for that aspect, I quite like it. But again, it's only going in the cube where the deck that you can draft has 15 elves in it. Basically. Yeah. It's nice to have a tribal payoff that isn't just creatures of a particular type gets plus one plus one. Again, you know, this is a cool attrition card. You do need to get quite a lot of chickens off first before it becomes good, I think because the first couple of counters generally are often your opponent will be able to sort of hide them somewhere that isn't that impactful, right? They're sort of one free with a activated ability, becomes A02 with an activated ability. And it didn't matter. It wasn't blocking anyway. But once you got the second, third, fourth counter, they're going to have to start sacrificing creatures or making their creatures for they actually want to be attacking and blocking with much weaker and on top of that, you've got their Festivus activated ability where, you know, if they if they put, save a like put a cancer on their 2 or 2 to make it a lot more on the counter, on the other two to, to make it one, one that this is fine. So I'm not losing creatures. You're then fanning to just tap for elves proliferate kill by fat creatures. Right. So that's that's a nice angle to, Yeah, kind of a narrow card because you need to be very specifically doing gold elves, but I think a good one if you are. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Like it goes in that deck, but it's real. It's an engine by itself, which I think is cool. It's like a nice little is very much it is a build around. It's very much a build around. But I think it is cool. There. All right. Keeping the ball rolling James we have an exit card next. What do you think of Sanaa. Innovative first year. Yeah for sure. So this is a two and two is it's hybrid manner. So you can play two blue blue two blue red or two red red. Very legendary creature. Goblin sorcerer. And it has vivid I think this is the first time we've met. Vivid. So, yeah, so vivid is a ability word which cares about the number of colors amongst permanents you have in play. So what always worth noting with this stuff. Lands are, by default colorless. But, you know, good luck. Your features are enchantment, sunlight and it's just going to care about colors you have in play. So this one has it's, two, four for four, and it says vivid at the beginning of your first main phase, reveal cards from the top of your library until you reveal X non land cards, where X is the number of colors among permanents you control. And for each of those colors, you may exile a card of that color from among the field cards. Then shuffle. You may cast the exiles cards this turn. So basically, let's say you have three colors of permanence and play. You'll flip cards from the top until you hit three non lands. Then let's say you have a blue of that in the green permanent. You can exile a blue one, a red one and a green one. So the downside, of course, is that if you if you hit three blue ones, you only get to cast one of them. Thus, if you hit a fat, then that's generally bad. I see. Or if you hit a cut card of a color you don't have in play. Yeah, I believe you wish there as well. If you had colorless cards, you can you can with, so weirdly, with this, it's actually better, even though it's an is it hybrid card. It's better if you're not specifically is it? You know, if you're a two color deck, better to be great, for example, because, because then if you play this and you have this in a green permanent in play, then you'll see thing three cards, not two cards. Whereas if you were just straight blue that you'd always only hit two boxes very. Where you want to be with this is for your playing a lot of colors. And have a bunch of colors of permanents. But I also it's actually better just having gold cards in your deck because it gives you that flexibility. Right? If you, if you hit, say, a, a vectors card, that can be, that card for you cast all the black cards that you cast it, it gives you that little bit of choice. I think this is a really powerful card advantage. Effect. But obviously, that being said, it's for mana. It has no ETB, it has no protection, but it does limit which cubes it can go in. If if your cube is full of extremely efficient removal, it's going to punish this card pretty hard. But if not, if it's a cube wise, you can play this sort of card advantage engine and advise on sticking around for a couple of turns. This will get a lot of cards advantage very, very quickly, especially if you have that could spread of colors amongst permanents. You control. Yeah. Okay. Great. Yeah. This is a nice little like value engine that it's not super broken, but it's like, it's for the cubes that like, want to do, like the four five. Kind of like, Nafdac, but maybe all math is a bit much going like maybe like, low style, like 4 or 5 color. You're just rewarded for playing like. But basically this rewards you for drafting your Latins. This is like the epitome of I've been good. I've drafted my lands, I can play whatever I want. Here's a card that also rewards me for doing that. I think that's pretty cool. Yeah, for sure, for sure. And it's not like it's completely embarrassing when you don't have the other colors. Likes it. Still looking at two cards. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. But so definitely one for for slow environments. But like yeah, if the word mid-range is anywhere in your cube description, I think this could see play for real. All right. We have the last of our incarnation cycle. They're again be talking about today. We have wistfulness. It is three hybrid Simic hybrid Simic 365 creature elemental incarnation when it enters if green green was spent to cast it exile, target, artifact or enchantment. An opponent controls when the switch enters is blue, blue is meant to cast it, draw two cards, then discard a card, or obviously it has evoke for hybrid Simic. Hybrid Simic. So. I think my opinions on the incarnations are kind of we've we've discussed those on this card specifically. I again, this is fine. Like neither of these are phenomenal. Like this is at least a conversation because we generally run some kind of creature that, when it comes in exile, is an artifact or enchantment. And in that aspect, like this is a it's harder to cast, but it's cheaper than something like reclamation. Sage like, like pest infestation is probably best in class of this type of effect. But this isn't this isn't a terrible version of that. If you want that type of effect of it is like a big it is a if you're putting like I can, it can go in your deck because it's a green, it's a green creature that can answer something. So you can choose to for it with things like natural order, it's not there. I don't know, that doesn't even work with that. Ignore me. Wow. Yeah. We're not cool things that, Oh, I was, I was vamping, I was on a roll, and then immediately I tripped over, yeah. Yeah, it's a thing of both of these. Both of these effects are fine. Like, I like with all of these. Both of these effects are fine. Simic is stacked like I. Yeah, I again, both of these effects are effects that we want to include. Like the green creature, interacting with our opponent. Stuff is good. Blue, blue, blue to draw, to discard a card. We will run that. It can go in, reanimate it can go in value. Dex. That comes up. That's all fine. I'm just not again, blown away by this. It's bit like if I was having a hard time with the ORS of one because I was wanting to run other cards. I'm having a much harder time with this one. What do you think, James? So I actually like this for best of the cycle. Mostly because I think it's a good five shot. Because most of the others were six. The difference between 5 and 6 is huge, especially in green green dex quite routinely, like put five mana creatures in an attack with the goal of just casting them, right? Whereas they do black Dex, for example. Don't play six mana creatures for they just cast and it's absolutely huge. Five mana six five you get a disenchant on the way in. That's also nice. Modalities have this for cheap mode and you get your card back right away. So I was thinking about this in the same terms as, so, so for example, cuz not that long ago and even quite high power level. Cuz voting something like Elder Card, right. This is this unlike call to have, this gets you something on the way in and always gets you. That sort of charter calls the fact I'm assuming you can make your blue blue. Plus it gets you a disenchant like plus it gets that modality. I think that's pretty good. Let's. I'm not, like, fighting home about it. I'm not putting it in Power Cube, but, I think if I was going to run one of these, it would be this one, because I think this is for most like, imagine if you removed vocal text. I think this is just a pretty okay, five sharp. If I had cast one. This has the benefit of its power and toughness is not below par like all the other ones. Like emptiness is a six mana three five. Vibrance in gruel is a five man of four four. This, at least is a five minus six five. That is, at least we we can kill. We can work with that. I can I can get on board with six power. Yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure, for sure. And it's, And it's also the disenchant isn't exile which is quite relevant to destroys. The One Ring is is a pretty big deal in some cubes. Oh. It's exile. That is nice. Yeah. Okay. Kill a, black sail. Colossus is not nothing. Yeah. So it's not. It's not like a card I'm super psyched for. But if I was if I wanted to run bottom of a cycle, I think it would be this one. Okay. That's fair. Tight. All right, all right, we moving on to our only artifact of the day. This is actually quite a creature. Heavy set. James, what do you think of Chronicle of Victory? Yeah, this is a cool answer. This is six generic mana for a legendary artifact. It says as Chronicle of Victory enters, you choose a creature type creatures. You control the chosen type. Get plus two plus two and have fur strike and trample. And whenever you cast a spell of a chosen type, you draw a card. This is a very nice or flexible type payoff. I think, if you're doing a creature type matters cubes, it's good to have some of these, choose a creature type cards, especially in colors, because if I can, I go in a bunch of different decks, which is something you need. So yeah, it can be a very nice pivot card in those cubes. But it's obviously it's six mana, so, it's not going to go insult the most low to the ground. I feel your beat down creature tribal decks. But for anything that's going a little bit bigger, this is going to come chipping off all your creatures and just making your board huge. Seems really nice. Also, I'm pretty surprised that on this card they put, it wasn't first strike on your turn. It's just first strike because when all your creatures have first strike, which is the goal here, right? To be pretty much one type, when all your creatures are first strike, it's kind of impossible for your opponent to make. First of all, attack space the time because your double blocks and whatever just become kind of messed up. Fate. Yeah. So it's got a lot going on going for this card. So the closer thing we had previously to this was vanquishes banner, which is, and mana cheaper. It's five mana, but it's only plus one plus one and. No, no, no first strike or trample. I think that face similar power level, like, I think that's close to being enough for an extra mana. You could. And you could run either or both in your title matters cube. Specifically, I think this is very good for on the doctor cube. Just a little bit, on a there's a good time. I'm not sure. Oh, yeah. Zero mana. Draw a card or broken. Now I'm going to, paradoxical outcome on my on this back to my hand. Then I'm going to play from all again. I'm going to draw a lot of cards. But the fact is that I was already very nice with that cube, but, the trample is actually a very big game, and all of oopsies, because one of the issues you can run into if you're. Yeah, in the business of giving you on a fox, is lots of power and and attacking your opponent in that cube is that, because it's so easy to, like sacrifice sort of opposites of value. Remember curve? You can just end up in the spot where they, they profitably jump block, kill features for ages. And it's hard to push through that. So the temple's actually a very big deal. But that's quite a nice cube we're not here to talk about on the factors. And, in more cubes, whether you have more features that aren't zero twos. I think this is also a good card. All right, well, I have a spare one, James. I'll. I'll give you can have that going on, I thought. Does that sounds sick. Yeah. Yeah. This is. Yeah. Everything. James is right. This is like the top end for own. Like it's flexible in any like it goes in any type of matters. Deck. It is a fantastic top end like, yes, it's six mana and it has an ability that you want to have like the you want to play this and then like to get more like if it does, what's great is like if it doesn't end the game by giving all your by buffing up all your board, all you need to do is then play one more of your creature type, and then it will start digging you into more and build you that board state that will eventually win you. The game. Like this is very much a card. Like if you cast it and it sticks around like you've won that game, it just might take a few extra turns. Like this game. Very, very good. Like like, yeah, like there are. Yeah. James touched on, vanquishes banner. There are like, a bunch more as well. Like, there's, like chrome as Memorial. There's like a seven man. I think there was the the l draws you on. L draws a tiny monument. Yeah. That's kind of like this is more in kind of that kind of line and like in those kind of like go white creature base decks, all of those are good. But I think this might be the most impactful because there's no downside with this card. Like with L draws one when you have a second creature on your upkeep, that kind of thing. Like, there's no downside to this card. You just play this and you probably then win. Yeah, I think the only thing for flag, though, is, you do need to sort of really mean with for creature type matters, you know, that this isn't, Oh, look, I have a slight human subtheme in my cube. Not interested in this card for it's, but the type of matters stuff has to be a pretty major thing. What's going on in your cube? Because this card does ask you to be like, oh, nice. Exclusively one creature type, because it's a six shop which wants you to, have a bunch of that creature type in play, plus maybe play more offense in hand after resolving it so you can't afford to be having a bunch of f type stuff in your deck if you're if you're letting this card really? Yes. And like like when we should probably do an episode at some point about like a typo matters and. Right. Because like what in my head, what I'm thinking about in this environment is that like, it's like it's not just elves in like go GA. It's not just goblins and ragdolls. It's like warriors all kind of everywhere. Soldiers are everywhere like you. You're not just doing the, you're not just doing the creature type. It's also like the job. Like jobs are matching as well, if that makes sense. And like like that's how overlapping we're getting in this environment. So like so like like you don't just have to pick elves with this. You can pick wizard or something like that as well. Like, like that's kind of the level of overlap I'm thinking in like that's the environment for most of this type of matter stuff that I'm kind of envisioning. Like, like like it's something that's been crafted so that everything kind of works. And in that environment that is very strong. It can't just. Yeah, like like like like when we were talking about, like the about, like type of matters, things that we've seen like, like like I mentioned kind of like, yeah, humans is the most generic one that can go into general cubes, like, because just a lot of good creatures are humans, that kind of thing like this doesn't go there because it's only that I've actually this become this then becomes a humans card, not a type of matters card. And then is do you want it like in that or in creature types all the time type of cube. It goes there and yeah, maybe, maybe that's a whole conversation for another time I think. Yeah. If there's sort of only one creature type, which people are really going to be building around in your cube, then there's probably cooler payoffs for that type specifically. Right? This is for if there's a bunch of different type of matter stacks and a bunch of different creature types of people can be an asset naming, then this gives you flexibility, which is good. All right. We're going to touch on lands before we finish up. We've got two lands printed in this set. Rain slicked crops and sodden verdure. One of these is a cycle land. And another one is, the enters tapped unless you control two more basic lands. Basically, the. That's kind of annoyingly in one way, but also good another way, slowly completing cycles of lands. So it was the cycling lands so that the dual cycling lands from I'm gonna say Amman cat, this is the Simic one. And then I think this is like the is this a tango land from battle for Zendikar. I might just be making that one up, but, it sounded good. Basically, they're slowly working through these. I don't think we have full cycles yet. We. We are getting there. These are both great in budget cubes. They both have land types, so you can get them with, like, a far seek or a three visits. They're quite nice there. Just wanted to mention them because they are new cards that have been printed into the world of magic. But we don't have full cycles yet, so I'm not gonna spend too much time on them because we have seen them before. But I'm mentioning them because we've seen them before, and we know that they are good. Yeah, this is frankly annoying me at this point. Like just just finish the cycle. Just just have a set where it's like, okay, great. We're doing these color paths in this, here's for land's finish for cycle. Get it done with, because it's annoying to, if you want to play some of these lands, but you can't just play in the cycle, you know, and you've got to pick and choose. That being said, these are good lands. The cycle lands I really liked for a long time. I think in a lot of cubes, they've been a little bit supplanted by the surveillance in that, sort of tapped, catchable dual land slot, but certainly vessel that is solid. And I wouldn't, when criticize anyone for running them. The tango lands I'm a little less eye on, if that is what they're called. I want one of them around that time is called the Tango Lands. I'm just counting how many of the cycling ones we have. We have one, two, three on Skyfall. I see that we have seven. So by the end of the year we might have completed the set. James. But for the last three ins, like the most obscure supplemental products to make someone. But yeah. All right. So that's going to do it for our set review before we get you all out of here as a tradition. James, any card specifically from the set that stand out to you that you're excited by, that you're thinking of testing, in your high powered cube or yours or your top to, to boot, that kind of thing. Anything stand out to all your new shiny cube, your, dual commander cube. Like, does anything stand out to you here? Yeah, I think that's a cool a few really cool additions. So formidable speaker is what I really like. Certainly that's for, the sort of survival on a stick that's certainly going and, and dual commander extending the whole, Celeste nia creature combo section, setting up a very nice fit vibe. I think you can go in more powerful cubes as well. I think figure of fable is just going to be a staple across a lot of cubes. When I get around to updating my powered cube, it will certainly go in. It. Chronicle of victory. Absolute slam dunk on the foxes. And then there's a few just, kind of interesting cards which I want to do something with. I'm not sure what for. The sinister null back for the zero four where you can blight onto it and sell some cards. That's just such good, good grinding action, you know, also, especially for, I was really, like for the Dawn hand dissident. That's for the one two where you can solve blights and surveil and then recast cards out of your graveyard. I feel like there's some good, like a cube with insidious roots. I'm really needs that card, and I think, you know. Oh, yeah, I don't agree that cards, that card. So, yeah, there's a bunch from this that like, the only other ones that you haven't mentioned that I like is I like Bridget Clayton's heart. That's the one that flips into, like, cradle. Any way that you can add a guy's cradle to a budget or a lower powered environment. I'm kind of here for just just opens tubes up to more strategies. I really like that. I'll be honest, my favorite card of the set is Iron Shield Elf. The the one on the black three, one that has a free discard a card because I'm a fiend and I have a type, I only do those things, but but yeah, yeah. Like, in general, I it's really good to be back in a magic set. There's a bunch like there's so many like there's for every powerful card, there's a ton more cool cards that I liked playing with that prerelease and look forward to playing and like, budget decks and that kind of stuff. So yeah, overall very happy with our Twitch and Lauren. I think it's yeah, it looks like a really good set. Yeah. For sure. I'm excited to continue drafting it. Marvelous. All right. So that's going to do it for the episode. Thank you all very much for listening. Do give the podcast a five star review. Tell a friend, give us a thumbs up. Whatever. Positive affirmation you can give us would greatly help. James. Pleasure, man. Thank you. That was really good. Yeah. No, always a pleasure. Yeah. Excited for. Always excited for new magic cards. Hell, yeah. Right. That's. We're going to leave it. Thank you all. It's goodbye from me. Thank you. Bye from James. And until next week. We'll see you all soon. You'll take care. Goodbye.