Checking in on the Arena Powered Cube - #84

In this episode of Powerful Nothing, we check in on the Arena Powered Cube, and see whats changed since its first outing last year, and see if Boros is still the menace it once was.

Timecodes:
1:12 - Main Topic
6:21 - Main Changes
32:14 - Whats good in the cube?
50:33 - What have we been drafting?

Card Gallery: https://moxfield.com/decks/4JQKT9Di5EexyvAt_oyUcQ
Arena Cube: https://cubecobra.com/cube/list/mtgapc

Video Version: https://youtu.be/H0iDVl53wrY

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

Social Links: https://linktr.ee/toosweetmtg

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Creative Commons / Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported (CC BY-SA 3.0)
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/deed.en_US

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. How are you doing this week? Yeah, I'm doing well. I'm doing well. We are checking in on one of our favorites today. We have Venus Powered Cube. Yeah. That's it. It's definitely had a massive impact on cube, just in terms of the number of people playing it. It's just brought more eyes to the world of cube, which is always fantastic. So yeah, we're going to do a quick check in, because the latest season has just ended, we're going to have a look at how it's been and what they've done to balance things and what they've changed. Before we get into our main topic, a couple of quick bits up top. Firstly, if you're enjoying power for nothing, please consider giving the podcast a five star review a like tell a friend all that good stuff greatly helps us out. Also, there will be time goes down below. If there's a if there's a specific thing you want to jump straight to. And also there'll also be a link to a card gallery down below. We do try and read out every card as we go, but in case we don't, there will be a card gallery so you can follow along and see all the nice pretty pictures as we're going out. And also obviously there'll be a link to the YouTube version if you want to watch inglorious ten ATP, because my computer can't do 4K yet, but let's jump in and let's have a look again and touch base with the arena powered cube. So this arrived on arena last year and I think the general consensus and feedback is that everyone liked it. Everyone thought it was good. And yeah, yeah, as it does on this is great at bringing cube to a whole new audience because, because, because there isn't the barrier to entry of specifically Mitko or knowing someone who owns a cube or building a cube yourself. So just in terms of accessibility, it will just some parts of the doors open and so many more people have been able to get the hands on cube, which is great. We just finished our third season, and this is the episode where we're going to touch base and see where we are. James, I know that you've played a lot of the Arena Cube. Just as an overview, like how do you think the Power Cube has been doing, since it's been first introduced on arena? Yeah, I think it's been good. I think it's been on a little bit of a journey. So, last time we talked about this was just after it done its first, its first run on a vina, and it was still fun, but there was some pretty serious balance issues going on. I think boss was drafted solid as much as all the other color paths combined. If you looked at the 17 LAN states, which isn't super healthy, and was winning at Ton And you know, boss has been good in pilot cubes forever. That's not new, but, but it sort of had so much redundancy. And like every slot on the curve, it just kind of had all the bangers and the combo decks that could play on that were missing some pretty key pieces. From what you might see in sort of paper powered cubes, either from the Magic Online version and that led in season one to power just being kind of kind of stupidly overpowered. And what it wasn't like you couldn't when playing anything else, but you just play against it so much in that first season, it felt like, you know, you you do one for, you know, seven round leagues and you'd play against boss like 4 or 5 times, you know, which isn't super fun. So from that start point, they, they've certainly made some changes to try and redress that, which, which has been pretty good to see, actually, I think it is moving in the right direction for sure. Yeah. Which tertiary white rare from, from the last excellent set was it. That was ridiculously high up the power rankings. Oh, God. Yeah. I was like sanguine evangelist with something like the third highest win rate card in the Q favor of a box, and that's five minutes, you know. Yeah, perfectly like fine magic card, but just not one you expect to see above like time walk, for example, in terms of like win rate. But yeah, but I think that shows us more on the first iteration. Yeah. Part of it was they were still working out what worked for arena, and part of it was working with the card availability, like some of the more combo cards, by their nature, harder to code on to arena, basically. So so I don't think it was surprising we didn't have as many of the more broken cards on that at launch. Because also another part of as well as a lot of the cards that we're talking about in this borrower's deck are cards that were on arena already, cause I've been print because most of them have been printed in the last couple of years as well, and there's just so much redundancy with them, which is why I think it was one of the reasons we discussed it was that it was just a bit of a menace, was because a pod of eight could support two very good Boris decks. Yeah for sure, for sure. And then, yeah, the missing combo cards. It wasn't so much. We didn't have the Buster cards. It was the combo decks. Didn't have a lot of that redundancy. So it seems like we had sneak attack, but we didn't have further breach because I didn't want to listen to arcane non arena. For what? I've. Fair enough. That mechanics nonsense. But, when you only have one way set, for ten year sneak target, you do actually feel that, you know, like, fifth of each is a lot worse, but actually only having one of those effects in the cube does does make that archetype a lot weaker. I think, similarly with the, the animation stuff, we're missing, Cop Stance and Shallow Grave because they didn't want to put graveyard order into arena, which, by the way, I think makes total sense that, if I put graveyard order on, then whenever you put a bunch of cards in the graveyard, you have to pick what order they go. And that's not a good user experience. Good decision, but it does affect the cube. Missing those cards? No, exactly. It's one of the things that just like this is the arena client. This is what we are dealing with. I guess as well though. Like what other major changes have we seen since season one? James. Yes, they've made a pretty big, big effort to rein in the power level of Ballas. Which I think has been pretty successful. Slave cut some of the real soft, heavy hitters of the ball stack. So Gus is gone broadside bombardiers is gone for failing us is gone as so Guide of souls. And they've replaced them with, you know, in part just slightly more toned down boss cards, but also, they've used some of those slots to, to spot other archetypes, which means that bar has missing a bit, a bit of a power level it had, and missing a bit of redundancy. It had, just both really important. And I think that, you know, you know, it's not to say that you can't have brilliant bar sex. You still can sell one of most winning archetypes, but you probably can't be fighting with two of the people at the table for bars and have a good deck, which is a much healthier place for the cubes. Yeah, definitely. I think one of those things where, like, I don't think anyone is if someone has the nutso version of a deck and they beat you with it, it's kind of like, cool, well done. You drafted what was open in your say. Nailed it. It's when you're it's when you're being beaten down by the second and third choice options in a deck. And it's still putting up numbers. That's when it's a bit. That's when that's when it's problematic. And I'm not surprised that they it was one of the main takeaways. It was one of the main things that everyone was talking about after the first cube. And I like the feedback from the first run was, was if you took out the Boris part was overwhelmingly positive. It's just the conversation about Boris was so big because it it did affect people's enjoyment of it, because it was, well, do I want to like, oh, it's vintage, it's vintage cube. I can do the weird storm thing or I can do the react big Re-Animator thing, but when there's a correct decision to do something else, that does take away the enjoyment of it a little bit. Yeah, for sure. And I think, boy, I think for everybody, it's like I'm, I'm actually okay, like consciously throwing away a little bit of inequity to do the cool thing. You know, that's fine. I'll, I have put your vicar in my deck more often than I would have done if I was being fake. I mean, fully optimal. You know, I'll admit that. That's fine. I'm okay with that. But you don't want to feel like you're just being a complete idiot, and there's no upside. Why? You want to feel like you're in the games when you're doing your nonsense? And, And if you're trying to go draft optimally in the hard way, you want, you want to feel like they're still decisions, you know, and it got to a point where you were just playing against power so much that you were making all of your draft decisions and all of your deck building decisions with, you know, assumption that they were going want off into two most games. Which does just make you engage with a format like Vintage Cube. Very definitely. So I think it's yeah, it's, it's it's nice to change it up. No, I agree and like, I can just see from the list that they just there have been it's not just removing redundancy in Boris creatures. It looks like they've just added more removal and interaction as well into some of the other colors like. Yeah. And since the first edition we've lost cards like Murderous Cut and Wrath of God. But but we've added cards like Sky cave, apparition, Heartless act, try to trajectory, Bonecrusher, Giant Seer, and Damn and like that's a very classic. Like I've done that a bunch of time in my cubes of like, oh, aggro is too good. Here's some removal. Like, do you think that's another kind of deal, Dave, to end with this? James Yeah, for sure. And it's it's having the right removal as well. Like it it's yeah, it's having that cheap removal that can nullify the via leaf fan base. Yeah. And I think, I think they've taken a very good approach to this. And boss is, you know, if you look at the stats, bias is still actually the most winning color combination. But it is now within normal levels and drafted a normal amount of time, like, and when you. Yeah, when you look at the numbers from, from season one, they're absurd. Sees them. Those from season two, were still pretty high actually. Season three, they look much more reasonable. So yeah, I, I think this is a win for the cube. Cube curators have a shot. Yeah, I definitely agree with that. Like it's from the way you describe it. Just it again, I like when I play cube, I like being able to do different things. And I like being able to try, like like having the having the opportunity to try new things and not just be run over because there's a world where it would have been different if it was a combo deck, that one on turn 4 or 5, because at least then it's like, oh, how am I going to interact with this? Is it counter magic? Is it hand attack? Is it do I race them? But because it's the deck that kills you super quickly, it's not like you're like, there's a world where you just don't really get to play a game of magic as well. Yeah. For sure. And it's, it's it's quite hard to really attack a plus in a but because they grind so well, you know, it's not like it's you kill the first two fats in there in their outfit. It's like you killed the first you fat. So you got to engage in this game, you know? Yeah. You still have a game to it, and they can still do well in that game. It's. Yeah, I think, like, it wasn't not fun to play that cube. It was like, I wouldn't have wanted to keep playing it if it was the same in the second season, you know, because it's kind of like if it was just a beast draft format, right? Like the really quick. These swap formats are still quite fun when you're figuring it out, right? You're sort of figuring out the rules of a format, what you need to do to succeed. And you didn't just have to draft balls and in season one succeeded, but you had to very highly prioritize, answering balls as fat. If if that wasn't, they have a new you're going down and that's fine for a bit. But then it was like, I kind of felt like we got to the point where you figured out what you needed to do to win in this format. I was a little bit solved, you know? So I think we have had a big dynamic change since then, setups. And there's a lot more variety in what you can expect to play against now, which is very good. You know, that does sound already positive. Cool. So that's the bar side of things. But there's been a bunch of other changes as well. It's kind of James. Are there any other like what else stands out to you in terms of decks or archetypes? They've kind of been given a bit of a boost or a shake up. Yeah. So I've been trying a few different things. I think green is sort of a color that's probably had been in flux for most. And this is not a new thing, because green is generally the weakest color these days. And in sort of power cube, and they've tried a few different things. For one thing they seem to have leant into in the most recent version, which is interesting, is channel the cards. They've gone for a lot more big colors, fat, even down to some of the kind of questionable ones. You know, we've got a Summon Bahamut in there and, lomography for Sango. Which is kind of a cool approach. I'm here for channel IV. It's one of these cards which used to be used to be like, what? Of, sort of hallmark buffs? The things you could do in pirate Q VI, and it's kind of fallen out of favor a little bit. So it's it's good to see them give it another go. I think part of the issue is that a lot of the stuff they've added is it's kind of hard to justify outside of a channel deck, you know, which makes it a little bit, a little bit narrow, like stuff like summoned back, moved to new la manga, just not quite good enough to be worth reanimating or sneaking in. Very, I guess ultimately you get 20 cards that live for you when you sneak it in, but that's, you know, they can still and still kill you from there. So, but I guess that falls into the lack of redundancy on Sneak Attack, though. It's kind of the issue with that. Like that. Like like so there is, I guess, show and tell as well. If you're fine on tapping, I guess someone it doesn't feel as bad show and telling him because you can answer, the thing that they put in, I guess. And then you have a nine, nine. Yeah. Yeah, you can do that. I found a lot of the time. The thing they show and tell nonsense. If I show them salad, which is very fun, I have nothing. I, I spend my time casting a show until, you know, yeah, I'm a little bit suspicious of show and tell outside of cards, which let you win that turn. So I like sort of shown bolts of Citadel, for example, I think can be quite good because with my Citadel deck, I can try and win right now, right? I don't need to on top. I'm, I don't like generally show and tell in my creature hope I on top of my creature like it is a bit better if. Yeah if you get the the vindicate on the way in, as you say. But I think it's, generally I'd still laugh. I'd still rather not, you know, I do think those green cheat decks are kind of missing out. Sure. It's. Which I guess is maybe just too hard to put on arena. It doesn't inherently care about sort of graveyard order or anything, but it is just a very unusual cards. Maybe it's just tricky for them to program. Yeah. It doesn't inherently break the game that they have made on arena. I guess it's just it's a lot of, no, you know what I think? Like, the Druids would be fine. Oh, I'll read Oath of Druids for those unaware. Just. And then we'll try and work out as I'm reading it, where the pain point is. There's one on a green from enchantment. At the beginning of each player's upkeep, that player chooses target player who controls more creatures than they do, and is their opponent. The first player might reveal cards at the top of their library until they reveal a creature card, if that. If the first player does, the player puts the cards onto the battlefield and all other cards are revealed this way into their graveyard. That is the ever altered version. Yeah, it it's a word. It's a card that's very easy to explain what it does, but the wording of the card is a little bit the nicotine, if that makes sense. It's for nicotine a word. Yeah I think for nicotine a word it isn't it. Yes. I mean, you know, it's it's not a card there would be printing in 2026 for sure. But, I think it's really cool. And it adds, yeah, it's one of those cards where for one card slot, you add sort of a whole new archetype to the cube thing. And that's, that's fairly cool. I guess the other one for Colorless Decks might just be I know, I know everything we have said about show and tell, but just Eureka being another one seems like a not seems like a doable option. Like Eureka is actually another show and lets you put things into play from your hand. Yeah, you could say it's an the Violet. The thing is, for a few weeks it you really don't win that much. She's trying to record too much. It's I would give you that. I could get it because before that. That's just so you've got so quick these days. But, when it works, I think it's like one of the sweetest things you can do. Yeah. Yeah, it's it's it's just in my head, if that's what we're supporting in green. Really support it, I guess, because like, like as we talked about a bunch on on this on this podcast, like green has struggled and like it's if you're going to do the big thing, you need it. Like you need to commit to it. For it to even get even close, I think is kind of where I'm coming from. It from it. Yeah. Now I do I do agree, yeah. I think maybe they should try Eureka. I think it would be cool. It's very good actually. It got a lot better when they printed Fault Bone Tyrant because the tyrant, you put it in first and then you put in your other big stuff and you got triggers on all of them from the tyrant. See how like that's practice in life, which is quite good. Yeah. We tried some different green cheat cards. I tried, I let Damari call, tell is how I'm going to try and save out. This is another modern horizon three card that I don't think we actually boot. We probably reviewed this one. I remember talking about modern horizons free for just hours and hours and hours. So I assume we talked about it. It's a card I'd honestly forgotten existed. Fo. And I think it's kind of cool. It services one green green 533. Legendary creature, elf warrior. You can look at the top card for your library at any time. You can cast feature spells from the top, but crucially, it has green untap and tap to untouched creatures. You control the velar card from the land on the top to your library. If you have a creature this way, put it onto the battlefield. Activates only during your turn. That's pretty cool, I think. Yeah, I think it's kind of sick. But probably for a different cube, you know, I, I think it is just a bit too weak for something like Powered cube, but, as one of these cards, when I saw it on the list, I was like, oh, I might try that. And some other cubes. Actually, I think it's kind of interesting. Yeah, definitely a cool card. My gut is. It was already programed onto arena show. Yeah. So it was available. But, yeah, that does seem like a lot. And like it's. Yes. Okay. We don't have Eureka, but like, they have at least looked in the folder and see what else can we do. So. So it is nice they are trying to give us something there. What else is up in the green? James? There seems to be a hell of a lot of earthbending in this cube. Now. Yeah, if if kind of lanterns were. Which is cool. Because, I mean, the interaction between Earthbending and Flatlands and even stuff like strip mine and wasteland is really good, right? Because you you turned your land into a creature, you suck it. And then. Because how how earthbending works, a land comes right back. So they put in Badger Mole Club, which I think is kind of a not included. And I think you mentioned has really good stats, actually, which makes sense to me. Yeah. It, it's the top performing according to 17 lands in terms of win rate in hand. So either in opener or drawn it is the top performing green card. Oh that's cool. Yeah I mean I've been I've every time it's been in play it's it's been quite impressive against me. I will say but they are really lanterns. We're bending stuff for some extra bending cards. They've got, earth benders Ascension, which is the, two in a green enchantment. And when tbs you, spend two and search your library for a basic put on for battlefield and landfall, put a quest council on it when it has four or more quest counters on it. Put a creature on something. This is fine. It's, It does a lot. It's that you are paying quite like you're paying quite a lot to not affect the board very much. Right. It's the problem. But, if you're leaning into, like, a bit more land for this stuff or doing the effort, not too much strip mine thing, I could see it getting better. Bumi unleashed is an interesting one as well. I'm not sure we actually talked about this card when we did for, avatar set review services, free event and a green for a legendary creature with some creature types. It's a five for trample when ATVs you have and for, when it deals combat damage to a player. You untap all your lands. After this phase has an additional combat phase, only land creatures can attack during that phase so that this card is an. I mean, it's five mana, which is not a amount of cost. We like, but when it lives, it's really scary, actually. Like when you vamp this out quickly, it it it this you've got to kill that thing, you know? Because that extra combat saving, you know, it's not just it's not just I getting another fall damage or if I offended land. It's also I get all my mana packs, you know, it's, you can have some some very explosive terms for that card. So I kind of like these as taking some shots, you know, I think they, they have good upside, even if they aren't, you know, the, like, fancy home runs on the efficiency which which very often, like, fall in power to keep. No. Let's go again. Yeah. We are still trying to find what to do in and green to an extent. So yeah. So and like I'm personally fine with them trying something cool with some loot where I was the new cards we have available to them, I think generally we were all quite high on Earthbending as a mechanic. And if it's playing well, finding more ways of adding it in, then I'm kind of here for, also in green, I did notice that there appears to be a bit of a changing of the guard in terms of what I have considered to be like classic staple green cards, kind of like we've seen cars like scavenging ooze come out, cars like reclamation sage come out and other green utility cards like Canker Bloom and even like Nissa ascended animist. More of a big green payoff, but could remove artifacts and enchantments. And instead, we've got things like heritage reclamation, which is a instant destroy artifact, or enchantment, or eggs on the card from a graveyard, and scrap shooter, which is like a beefy, Rex sage with, with, like, gifts, a gift, a card in order to get the Rex. I just that kind of like, is that just where green utility is now? Like, am I just being a bit too boomer with my. There's no rex age. Like like it's not a cube, like, or is this just where we are in terms of, like, ones like I can see the instant one, like like we still have an instant speed way of interacting with all of those enchantments. And we have a bit of green base, like, like like the scrap shooter isn't one of those anymore. I think I'll wait it out just because it was new to me. One green green for for creature type raccoon archer. So it's obvious. So little hint to that that that was from bloom, though. Thank you. James. It has gift a card, which is you may promise there an opponent, a gift of a gift as you cast a spell. If you do, when it enters, they draw a card. It has reach and it has when enters. If it gets its promise, destroy artifact or enchantment and opponent controls. There's just. Yes, they get a card, but you get some beef down like is is this is this like, is this what we're doing with green now? Like, is this where green is or do you think it will swing back the other way? So I think part of the thing that is maybe guiding some of these choices for VNA cube specifically, is for this is a cube where I would guess upwards of 90% of the matches played a best of one. Right? Okay. It's just how those people, playing level set on on arena. Right. And that means stuff like Vex age is, is a little bit harder to make that right. Whereas I got to support for at least like it's a bit easier for me to put it in my deck because at least I could attack with it. You know? No, that's very interesting. Yeah. Like that is going to be a that's an interesting. Oh like I didn't think about the best of one aspect of it. And it is an interesting way of, oh, it's interesting to see how it affects cubes because yeah, having effects that are main deck able make sense. Like, but like like the other one I mentioned, the heritage reclamation is very sideboard but it's one on the green. For instance, choose one. Destroy an artifact destroying enchantment or eggs up to one card from a graveyard and draw a card. Like the worst case with that is it's cycles, I guess. So it's a it is main deck of all basically is what I'm saying with it. It is, it is, it is in about two minutes. The cycle is still no. And yes, I actually don't I actually don't like that as an inclusion. I think from them I think I'd rather have something like Canker Bloom. Because I think to me it's 2 to 10 power negative to cycle. And the nice thing about Kankakee Bloom, which I think I prefer over of x8 second bloom is one that green free to you can pay one and suck it to destroy an artifact for enchantment. The nice thing about that, like compared to Vex H, is I can play my canker bloom when there isn't an artifact. So a Chapman and play attack with it a couple of times. Then when they play something, I can blow it up, whereas Vex H I need to hold in my hand and it does nothing until they've played an artifactual enchantment. Right? And before for version is like 4 or 4 is big enough for this. Okay, let's just play it out. Like where there's. You can't just be casting Vex H with no targets. Really? That makes sense. Yeah, yeah, yeah. My feeling is that. Yeah, I agree with what you're saying. I think they're thinking is, well, we can cycle it like so that that's an awakening. Yeah, I can say that. Some other bits. I know we mentioned Re-Animator doesn't have the instant speed effects. But it does have every other effect. Like, we go as deep as life, death, necromancy, animated, recurring nightmare. Kind of like it's. Is it still like, is it better now? Like, do you like, like, Because it does. Still, it has all the payoffs in terms of arc on grizzle around and attractive and such like just, just quickly on Re-Animator, like, is it like how good you think Re-Animator is right now in the arena cube? Is it is it viable if you want to win a lot of games? I think if you get, like, the nuts version, it's still really good. Like, you know, if you get that version where you kind of need specifically in tomb, I think, to have a really excellent animator deck because it just makes, makes it all so much simpler that it makes into essentially a two card combo. It's nice draw into the animation spell and you get the tutors, and then it's fairly strong. I have generally not found it to be worthwhile, though. It feel, like version where you slightly got there and it's a little bit of a package in your fair deck. In that sort of slot. I much prefer it to have, say, a flash and a couple of things to flash when a lot of animation package. So I just need so much more to come together for my Re-Animator to be good. You know, what I need I do is ultimately like a free card combo, right? I need to do all my my, animate my. This got out and the creature and people are very good at removing the creature, so you kind of need for really, really good ones that just send the game. You know, you need fat artifacts for that. Archon. Once you get below that tier I have, I have a lot less consistent, you know, like, something like a Tali can be really good, but it can wear off pretty badly as well. So, yeah, my, my my advice for, for animators, if it's like, you know, beating your overhead open, then absolutely go for it. It can be worth speculating on, but I wouldn't try and force it, I wouldn't like. That's not some way I'm hoping. I'm aiming to end up. When I saw a draft. You know, if I'm. If I'm making this interesting. Yeah, yeah, that is a bit of a difference from, Re-Animator in other high powered console. Yeah, yeah. I mean, something to keep in mind. Also, originally there was no universes beyond cards. That in now it doesn't. We're not being beaten over the head by Ninja Turtles and the like, but like there is a spring to spring of this. It's the ones you expect. It's like this thing is like the One Ring. It's things like bow masters, like, very powerful cards, and then like a sprinkling of some reskinned, Spider-Man cards and a couple of like, I'm cause, like, badger mock up, like very good cards that have gone through standard. But I mean, universes be on like like there was a there was a few more, Final Fantasy cards in the, in the, in version two, some of them have come out in version three. It seems like we're just kind of like I think originally it was a selling point. There was no universes. Beyond cards in it, but now it's just a it's kind of more on track with the MC augmented cube in terms of this is our pool of cards. We're just working with it now. Is that fair to say? Yeah, yeah, I think so. And I'm fine with this. You know, we're set for the Spider-Man cards are still great thing to me every time I see them in the pack. As fine. I'll, I'll let for that. Yeah. I think we're always going to have end up with a lot of throwing stuff, and I think they are just kind of cube staples at this point. Exactly. And and they were already on arena, so it seems quite an obvious little switch. All right. So those are kind of some of the changes. Let's talk about, just some more things in terms of how things are looking from a results point of view, in terms of top cards, as we kind of alluded to previously, it was I'm going to nicely say Boris heavy. We still have cards like parallax Wave, ocelots, pride, and the greatest cube card of all time, a Johnny the Cat or pariah. High up on the rankings. And again, we're going by, we're going by win rate in hand. So that's if you if you see the card at any point during the game. But notably, no Boris card is above things like time walk, Ancestral Recall or Black Lotus. It does feel a little bit like nature's healing. Would you go along with that, James? Yeah, I think so. I think so, I'm not surprised. We have a few, a few why we need cards up top. I think a lot of the reason for that is right for, And this always happens with the 17 land. That's when you look at the, then that this is a draft as well for there's a big premium on cards that just kind of work on their own. Like you can put a Johnny Newcastle pariah in the wrong deck and it would be bad really. You know, like a that that card is just really strong and it will pretty much always be strong. And it pushes you towards the sort of back which again, you can't really screw up that badly. Like if, if you know, you're looking at the stats for something like underworld breach, you can underworld breach so badly. Like it's it's a really powerful card. But I think you do it wrong. You do it very wrong and your deck will never win. You know, I feel personally attacked by James. Oh, I do it probably all the time. It's, It's not a criticism, but it is a fact. Whereas, you know, you put your Ajani in a castle fire and you're at slot five and your, like, wave and your back and your decks just going to win a lot of games. You know, it doesn't mean that I actually higher power level than the, the beach stuff. It's just it's a more consistent plan for a lot of people to win more games. You know. Exactly. And it is always and we touched on this when we did our big review of the 17 lands to the first time, is that people who are giving their stats to 17 lands are generally spikier because they have opted into installing a opted into giving them their data. Therefore, they're more likely to look at the data and get something from it. So there is tilted more towards the players who are trying to Spike Lee's, Spike Lee's a little bit more. Yeah, for sure. And this is why if you look at the stats for, the sort of average win rate is normally around 55%, right? It's not 50%, as you'd expect by default, because there's a bias fair towards the slightly more invested players who have gone to the effort of downloading an extension that saves that data. Yeah. No, but I think the top the top cards are pretty reasonable now. One I played is one I particularly like to call out. I feel like this card goes way too late. This is the, boss. Titan. I guess you call it, like, you know, the, the escape. Like the era that deals deal damage. Jump away, and, yeah, he likes something on the way. And you escape by ax on five of the cards. This doesn't just go in, boss. I like I really like dressed guy in this format. I think it's really powerful as a control deck. And because you don't, it's not like you need to have red, red, white, white on turn four, you know, and this is just like a kill something early for life game really matters. It keeps you in the game, and then you just have this little inevitability engine, you know? And you definitely have games where you, like, escape this multiple times, you know, and it's just, it's it costs you nothing of fun. Like the helix for free manner is totally fine. And then it just gives you that extra boost of late game power. Which which is really powerful, actually. Yeah, I see that card still very light, and that's, I think you should prioritize it. Yeah, I do like foliage is a very, very cool. Let's talk about some of the other new cards, actually. There's been a bunch of cards that because I haven't updated my cube and, like, in a few months, I. I don't play with it, and I kind of want to know how they've been playing, like, how have you found figure of fable games? Like, if you either played with it or had it played against you bigger? A fable is the figure of death is the Celestia figure of destiny. For those unaware, yeah, I think it's really good. I've been impressed with it. And why? And and green actually. I think it's in in the green version. It's, it's a, it's sort of a slightly worse extreme cut, but it's still very powerful. It's still still. Cause I think you should default to running your green decks. And if you're close to mono white, then it is. It's very, very powerful. It it does a lot of things for stacks. One to do. It's certainly one of the premium one tops in that decks. Now, the only thing is, you do need quite a lot of white sources. You really want, I think I would say, like, in the region of 12 plus, because obviously, like, you want to be able to, to level it up pretty quickly. Like, often you want to go play at level up in one turn, right, and then level up again next to. No, that's what I called. Yeah. Yeah, it's it's a card. We were both quite hot on on this at review and. Yeah. Good to see that. It's putting up some good numbers. Talk to me about formidable speaker. This is another one that I just haven't got around to buying just because it's a little bit pricey at time of recording. That's the, two in a green two for elf that when enters you just got a card. And if you do, you can search a library for each card. Print your hand. There was a nice one time survival effect. Then it also has one and tap it to untap another target. Permanent. How's that one then? James? So I really like this card. I don't think this is a great configuration for it to. There's not things like a Hogar kind of thing. There's not like really creature combos we're looking to set up. Let's go. Oh, God. Oh, no. It's that. No, Hogarth is disrespectful. It just it feels to me like it doesn't have a particularly natural home, I guess, in this cube. Like, I've seen it be okay, but I've never seen it. You know? I've never seen someone really look like I am maximizing it, I guess, that's fair. I guess there isn't really any creature tree creature combos in this deck either, which is where it has, like a nice additional place it can run. It's kind of what is it effectively finding you either an answer or a or your four drop. It's that kind of what it's doing. Exactly. Okay. It's not it's not that excitement. The only exception I guess is is not do. I've not really tried let's not do this season. But I think it probably it, it sure is very good in the not too dark fight it fetches your not too and it triggers your not do that which is is everything you want. Yeah I did I did try some pioneer recently though, which for the first time in a long time and it's very good. Five I can tell you I realized very quickly the deck I was, I was attempting to play could not be Chris Fang for the life of me and this, this does everything you need for Chris. Thanks. No. That's cool. Lots of the new ones that just I haven't had a chance to play with yet, actually, is, And swift survivor. This is the I don't I don't remember if we've reviewed this one. This one. White in the blue. Two, three. Legendary creature, human avatar. Ally with flash flying. And when enters air, bend up to one other target creature or spell and it has waterbending eight to transform it. I don't remember what Waterbending does, but it transforms into A55 reach scramble that when it attacks, but a count on each tapped creature you control. Have you played against James? Yeah, I I've, I think I've put it in one deck and it was okay. I've played against that a couple of times. It's one of those where you read it and it looks like a spell. Right? And it isn't a spell quella because it's okay. Especially like game fit feels a bit medium, you know, because quite often they can just cast a spell again right away. It's it's only two mana. Having said that, when you get it in like on turn three and it can be a really good tempo play, and the bottom end part is actually real. So what happened is you can sort of tap two features of artifacts to help pay for. Right? Okay. Yes. Convoke okay. Convoke. Yes. Yes yes. Okay. Exactly. I was three sets ago. How am I meant to remember what what that mechanic does. Yeah, that's no way to know. Oh, no. Know. It is kind of horrendous. I didn't bother with remind attack of, I think, So. Yeah. No. It's fine. It's a threat. It's a little bit disruptive, but it is, you know, I wouldn't be viewing this with so much as interaction as a as the is sort of a tiny bit of a delay, you know? Okay. Now that's cool. No, I heard when it was printed, some people were, talking about it in other formats, like things like Canadian Highlander, which has a nice overlap with cubes. So. Yeah. So, yeah. And I'm interested to see how it had played. What was it, a few final bits you're gonna want to touch on before we finish up for today. There's an another edition that I've only played with on arena. Oracle of the Alpha. One of the things they kind of said that there would be no alchemy cards when, the arena cube was printed, but I think this is one that people were asking for because it's it's an alchemy card. But isn't it? It's alchemy. But it's one of the times where we're doing a power cube. This makes the power like, oh, this kind of feels all right in a powered cube. Oracle, the Alpha, for those who don't know, is two and a blue for a two. Three. It's an uncommon. Wow. Wild. Creature wizard with its $150. Oh, sorry. I've. I've going through the range of emotions right now. A is A23 creature bird wizard with flying. And when it enters the battlefield, conjure the power nine into your library, then shuffle. And when it attacks, scry one. So conjure, I believe as you just the way it works is you just the power nine appear in your deck. Yeah, exactly. Very. So it's not really a card you can play on paper, but they did put it in Mystery Booster. Anyway, but yeah, I listen. I'm a very grumpy old man about alchemy specifically. You know, I, I think there not many people more grumpy about alchemy cards for me in general, and I'm actually okay with this one. I think it's cool. It's not I think people think it's way better than it is. It's. Yeah, I've. Yeah, yeah, I've spoken with some friends who have played this and. Yeah, in fact, like when it works it could be great. But I think really what you're doing is you're adding six lands to your deck, three other very powerful cards, but you're adding you're adding mana sources, which isn't always what you want in your deck. Is that fair, James? Yes. And I think if you're just putting it in like your generic blue control decks, that probably will go pop, go poorly for you. But I think it's an interesting puzzle to solve as to how you make it good, because clearly there is potential there, right? You're adding nine of the most busted cards in the history of magic to your deck. You can make that into an upside. I think the things I look for if I want to make our call work is, dual sevens are really, really good because locks and feel like lands if you're just drawing one card to ten, if you're drawing seven cards, locks and are not lands, you know, then locks in a busted, right? Also just tutors because, not so much that you want to tutor for the Oracle, but after you've cast, we are called. You now have a time to assess a tutor for or an ancestral vehicle or a time walk. So you can start sort of building around it, like you have the time walk in your deck if you can reliably cast. If I go and find for time lock, I'm just like big card for, you know, wastes go up lots of cards at the turn. Yep. And then you're making those Morrison into, into upsides to put to conjure into your deck rather than a downside. But yeah, it's this is one of those cards I like. I never gets it because I think everyone's taking it super, super high because it's like a very powerful card. And actually it is a card with potential, but it is a built around, you know, it's not just say take it and put it in the deck. Seems like it could be fun with paradoxical outcome that could be pretty spicy. Yeah, I quite like that. Yeah. I'll come back my my full Nocturne and my Oracle. I now locks it in my deck. Yeah. And that sounds like. Yeah, yeah. And of all the arena only cards Oracle the Alpha I think fits in this nicely because it's kind of to an extent it's one of the reasons why this cube exists. Because they had already coded the power nine onto it when this card was made. Like like there's the there's the one that shuffles lightning bolts into your deck. I'm kind of cool with that one, but I think after that I would be out just because I'm. I refuse to learn what more of them do. Yeah. And that's exactly my problem. They, they it was a lot of reasons why I never used to play the cubes on a VNA was I always had a bunch of alchemy cards and, and I was like, I don't want to read what this does. They don't explain what they do. I remember well, you know, I was like, oh, you draft a spell from the spell book and they'll have different spellbook doesn't really tell you what the spells, and it's like and now I'm going to go and do something else with my, with my time. And I believe specifically the spell books have can change as well. I think like I had the conversation somewhere and I dear listeners, this is very much a me and James problem. If you like them. Cool. Crack on. We're not here to yuck anyone's yarn, but like for us that is a barrier to entry. That kind of would put us off. But yeah, if you enjoy it, crack on. Are there any other cool and interesting cards or combinations that you've seen in this that you haven't, got a chance to play in, like in other cubes games? Yes. There was an interesting one. They included was, Dyson doing so. This is a solid new take on, on a time twist. It's it's two in a blue sorcery. Does the time twist fang shuffle in F1 12 seven. But then you end of a turn, which is generally really bad, right? Because normally what you want to do over time first is twist play a bunch more cards. It's generally very bad to have your opponent draw seven cards and then pass return to them. But there's a pretty spicy combination where for free mana to fairy, it's just very brutal. So that's 5 to 1 where you plus and you can, cast sources has favored flash. So you just plus your two fairy go to their upkeep days undoing their turn and then says back to you, you have your seven cards and all your mana. So you basically just get a time walk for free on top of your draw sevens off of your time for a star, which is, pretty savage, actually. I've, I've had a I had attacked for use that really well, and it sort of made me think about like, can you go deeper on that and like, put quicken in a cave or something and, and lead into this nonsense? But that does sound really cool. But I think to fairy time Ravel, it is, possibly my least favorite card of all time. And again, similarly to something like this is very much a user error. It's just no matter, it just ruins every game. I'm like, either I'm playing with it or against it. It's just yeah, the each opponent can only cast spells and it's time they could cause the sorcery on top of everything else it does is just it is the epitome of I am not having fun, but that does sound like a cool combination and it's like, if you're doing that against me, I'm at least impressed rather than just running out of planeswalker. That annoys me. So that's cool. That's cool. It is. I do, I do understand that's a fairy. Hey, I think it should have said why you other players can't cast spells on your turn. I think that would have been fine. Right. But but it's the cards that just randomly don't work into fairies. Play and play like you activated Shelter Island. Just nothing happens because you can't cast a spell. It's not like on the stack, or like spells that make you cast some spells as part of their solution. I remember and and pioneer at one point was, that finale was quite popular. But it just randomly doesn't work when you have a fairy in play. It, like, lets you cast spells make up, but you can't because they have a spell self resolving. And it's kind of not obvious, right? You gotta learn like, oh yeah, this this planeswalker just randomly stops this up. The small subsection of cards. Boo. If I, if I, I guess with all that, James, like, what have you been enjoying in the Q? What have you found yourself drafting a lot? Yeah, just a bit. This time around, I think I did maybe like ten ish drafts. I found just blue control to be really good. And it just doesn't have to be, like, super heavy blue. But I think blue is an important part because it gives you permission and cards advantage. And then you combine that with whatever color feels open to give you access to cheap removal. And that I found to be a pretty potent combination because there just, a ton of decks in this cube which don't have a lot of good targets for removal, you know, and when I say control, I'm not like, you know, we're dropping out of the game forever. I mean, we're going to win with whatever, like powerful 4 or 5 mana cards we saw, you know, and we're generally like, yeah, two and a splash, three colors, something like that. Like Jeff's guy is, is has been really good. This has been really good. Artifacts I think when it's open is, is is amongst the most powerful things you can be doing. Yeah. There's I think it's quite a overdraft, a dark side sometimes, like, people are very keen to jump into it, but, you know, if you see the signal there, you know, maybe you get sort of an opal or something slightly later than you'd expect. So I think it's good to speculate on because when the pieces come together, it's really powerful. And then the other thing that's been a big overachiever for me, I think has been Lois, I had a couple of lower stacks, which, were very good just because of the, that's having I think just loading up on cheap removal is very good. Is still very good. And, Lois plays very well fast with that strategy. Right. Because you just start with an extra card in your hand and with the removal spells, you develop a game, you give yourself time to pay for mana to get below this, and then it just becomes this engine. So yeah, I think I think that's a pretty good time to even talk about sort of Lotus in a more of a control deck. You're probably like fearful, colorless, and, it's looking to pay a lot of answers. Play some cheap permanents for go in that other graveyard stuff like the bubbles are really good here. And then you probably want F0, but a couple of ways to start buying back your Lotus. 1st May kill it because, it's just going to be that cost advantage engine, but wins you game. No, that's very cool. Yeah, I, I didn't get a chance to play much of the last season at all. But my yeah, it's got me to a point where I'm looking at, what is the lowest powered slash cheapest, tablet you can get to the whole run arena? I guess last thing before we get out of it is, one thing they have changed was just. Doesn't a play pattern point of view does seem like a solid thing. Like, unlike other matches on arena with cube now, they've changed it so that everyone gets an extra timeout at the start. So on arena, you had like, rather than the clock, you have a mic go on arena, you get like a number of timeouts. And if you keep effectively, it means that if you don't do anything for a number of turns, you lose. It's to keep games going and keep put players progressing the game state. And eventually what they have done is with cube, they've given everyone a freebie. Like a free extra, like guaranteed 30s or a minute, I'm assuming, because the games are more complicated. Kind of like like, have you found at times you're a good magic player, so maybe this hasn't affected you as much, but, like, have you noticed, I guess games taking longer or just, having more time to make your, decisions? Anything like that? Yeah, this kind of makes sense to me. The only time I sort of feel like this is useful for me is, playing storm specifically, like, for underworld breach tax. Via Venus system is not really built for that sort of deck. Right. Because it's the the arena system where you have this vote works fine. And most games where you, you know, you place all of a bunch of tens and all these tens have like a relatively similar amount of complexity in game actions. Right. Where it falls down is where you're playing something like storm, where you're quite doing nothing for a bunch of turns, and then you're going to do lots and lots of things in one turn, and it can become quite tricky to not time out in that turn. And it's where, you know, where is where you would probably ideally rather have something like a chess clock, like do a magic online policy arena by doing very. That's fine. And this, this seems like sort of the noble compromise to make that work. Plus, as you say, people who just haven't played with a ton of these cards before, there's a bunch of really complicated cards and cube, it kind of makes sense to me to give everyone a little bit more time because, yeah, they're getting used to the cards so that that seems fair. We have a nice thing with storm is they have they have fixed the issue they had in the first season where you had to go on to full control boats, blindside dive. Oh yes, I do. And I remember like a PSA from a number of people. Yeah, yeah. That was that I think everybody found that out the hard way. I found it deeply upsetting. So yeah. Good. Good job in fixing that. Certainly. Awesome. So yeah. Yeah, yeah, generally it does seem pretty positive. We need to keep an eye on they may, I have not seen. I'm going to be back, but as always, we'll be looking forward to it. And we'll be here to bring you the hotness when it does happen. All right. I think that's a good place to end it, James. Pleasure, man. Yeah, I thought I thought that was really good. I, I need to get some more of these cubes into me. When when it comes back next time. Yeah. Oh, it's a pleasure, man. Awesome. Right. That's going to do it for today. As a reminder, please give the podcast a five star review. Thumbs up. Tell a friend all that goodness. Until next time, it's goodbye from me and it's goodbye from James. And we'll see you all soon. Goodbye.