MTGO Vintage Cube SOS Updates | #91

In this weeks episode of Powerful Nothing, we take a look at the recent changes to the MTGO Vintage Cube, including talking about Aristocrats place in powered cube, and a new take on the 5 colour deck.

1:39 - Colourfull Cornicopia
22:43 - Combo Support
30:58 - Final Adds
33:49 - Cuts and the state of Aristocrats in Powered Cube

MTGO Changelist: https://www.mtgo.com/news/sos-vintage-cube-update

Card Gallery: https://moxfield.com/decks/cMmaHQhdQkqO1nE9gz-MxQ

Video Version: https://youtu.be/FKnkEbKuT7g

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

Runaway by Diamond Ace | https://soundcloud.com/diamond-ace-music
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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

0:02

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? Don't forget, I am pretty good. How are you? I'm doing good. Thank you. Yeah. We're back with our regularly scheduled weekly program we took last week off primarily because, a member of the podcast team ate something they shouldn't have and were very ill. It was my cat. A very important member of the podcast team, was very, very ill last week. So the day we were going to be recording, I spent the evening in the vet's instead. But the feline is all good now, and we're back. For those who didn't see, I did do a little live stream last week. I spent a few hours trying to build a bar cube. So if you want to see me actually in work, putting everything we talk about to use, check that out. Links will be down in the show notes below, along with time codes, but for our topic today and a card gallery with images of all the cards that we talk about today. While you're down there, please consider giving the podcast a thumbs up. Five star review. All that good stuff, because today we have a very topical topic. The video Vintage Cube is back up. It went live on May 6th and it's been updated for Secrets District seven, along with some cool archive changes. So the goal today is we're going to talk through those changes. We're gonna talk through the ads. I'm going gonna talk through the cuts. I'm gonna talk about what we'd like and what we don't like. But I think the best place to start is probably with the ads now. So let's talk about the new shininess before we talk about, the lovely cards that we're not going to be seeing for a little bit. The main adjustment for this, for this version of the MC garbage cube, they're always trying new packages, trying new cards. The main package is they're calling it colorful cornucopia. This is a multicolored matters deck. And kind of the vibe is they've added every charm from Strix Haven. But, every new charm has come in. They've they've added a bunch of additional multicolored cards, so, like, saturate the flux. Genius. It's the jest guy. Energy matters card. That kind of it. It generates energy and energy and does it make you a token or take things into play? So it's one that just gave for free. Five minutes haste. When it attacks, create a tap, an attacking copy of up to one other target, non-NATO concrete you control. You get to energy of getting a V step. You suck it. Unless you pay energy equal to its mana value. So it's. Yeah, it's powerful. If you have some extra energy and you get to keep something. But mostly what you're doing here is just getting an ETB and then attack from the thing that that you, that you copied. Also side note it combos insanely well with ocelot fied. Oh, Jesus. Does it because the ocelot try to make fight you make is a token. So it it sees itself and makes copies of itself. And then the ocelot fight for the original one that you'd copied also makes copies of it. And oh damn, that's really dumb. You end up with like 20 cats and I have no idea how much. Basically what happens is you go to the end step and then calculable number of cats will appear on your screen then and then go crashes is why I'm here. Yes, I honestly if if this happens in paper I will not know how to work, I will not be able to. I have a number of cats, but on Magic Online loads of attached cats just appear. And that's that's all of them. Yeah yeah yeah. Okay. So yeah. So so Sacha's coming back in along with Leopold, emissary of trust, a kind of a card that is always kind of coming in and out and then. And of the crossroads. This is, a this this is the Bant, and that transforms into an destined savior. Kind of like like they're not exactly in from a synergy point of view. Like, like Leopold isn't in from a oh, it's energizes with this deck. It's more in that it's a multicolored card. And this deck wants as many multicolored cards as possible. So they've been added along with things like, like on that locus of creation and like a track so that are already in the cube. Basically what they're trying to do is that they're trying to raise the number of multicolored permanents there. So that's why, yeah, as I mentioned, we've got five, the five chance of six Haven coming in. The reason for that is they're trying to combine them with cards like Ancient Cornucopia is, a card from the big score, which was the addendum set to outlaws, the Thunder Junction. That's two in a green for an artifact. Whenever you cast a spell, that's one or more colors. You may gain one life for each of that spells. Colors do this only once each turn, and it taps to add one man of any color that combining it also with cards like General Verus, Rock, Rick. This is actually quite a solid one. One red and a white for three. One legendary creature human soldier, hex moon for multicolored. Whenever you cast a multicolored spell to create a four for red and white Golem artifact creature token, that's very nice. Like, if you if you go that into any kind of charm, you're going to make a four for it. You can do that multiple turns in a game. You will probably win that game. And then they've also added in a card like I think also added Miss Reborn in that's the Warburg. Never miss it from before the spark six six flier when it enters the battlefield. Reveal the top ten cards of your library. For each color pair, choose a card that's exactly those colored colors from among them. Put the chosen cards into your hand, the rest the bottom of the library in a random order. So that is a card that specifically wants charms. If he wants cards that are two colors. Because in theory, if you you could draw in very ten cards if they are every color pairs or it's Boris, ragdolls, etc. etc. etc. etc. etc. but that is a card that can in theory could be a five man or A66 that could draw you 4 or 5 cards in the right deck. Those are kind of like what they're trying to reward you with. James initial thoughts on that as, Jack kind of from my end. I like the idea of, like the five color nonsense deck actually getting some support. I think Ancient Cornucopia isn't the strongest, but like, I like name as it be. Born in, like, general rock. There's a world of just like when we did our set review, like our opinions on like the charms, for example, with that kind of like all the ones that we reviewed anyway. Like they're all fine, they're all solid magic cards. The reality is we don't really have slots for them in most cubes, because there's just more like there's more interesting gold cards. But with this, they're trying to make I don't say they're trying to make the vanilla card interesting, but they're trying to make the charms be. We're trying to reward you for playing those cards, which is kind of like what this deck is was once an archetype this is built on. What do you think about the colorful cornucopia package as they're calling it? Yeah. So it's kind of an interesting twist. The five color stuff, like because normally the way, you get paid off for having a lot of colors, it's just casting better cards because you have you can cast whichever powerful cards you see, or, you know, pay off with like, super cards. So I only very specific tax fables cast them. I think they've gone for. Here's trying to reward you for having multicolored cards specifically and putting them on the stack for something like General Pharaoh saying whenever you cast a color card so that pushes you to have a bunch of obstacles, but also having cheap ones, right? So you can cast a bunch of them. It's it's interesting to I've, I've had General Ferris in before and it's not been very good, but and believe me, I had I did try, and will not show you tonight. But I think the thing that was lacking was that density of multicolored cards. So. Yeah, I'm kind of down to try it. Never has been in before as well. I really like this. Miss it. I think it's really cool. It is, I will admit, like, the thing it is doing is powerful, but it is not the thing the cube is about. Now, like Big Dude, which was adventure cards. Cool. But that can't be, like the main thing my deck does, you know, because it's a lot of matte. It's quite a lot of mana. You gotta have it that early every game. And it's just not like the other five drops are so good, you know? Is the problem. The ones that just cost normal colors of mana already easier to pass. Exactly. Yeah. So it's like a lot of hoops to jump through to get to putting Miss out on the stack, and that it's just not that much more powerful than the other five. It's cool. I, I'm into I'm trying. Honestly, it's like funny to me that other people need more incentives to play five cards. I was already bad, you know, you didn't give me that. I'll play, I'm sure. I don't know why we need to put in all the bad gold cards. Nice series. Charms aren't very good for Power Cube like. I mean, I like funk, obviously. Like, not objectively terrible magic cards in a vacuum, but they're not, the power level that you need for this sort of cube. Especially. I if you're if your motivation for adding more gold cards is to push this five color gold cards matter deck, then you need to add gold cards for compliment that like Knight like not Silver Quell charm. You know, like to white black for an instant. Choose one or more two counters on a creature. I don't care about that in my five color deck. Yeah, each of these three you gain three don't care about that that that 20 it doesn't matter. So I'm using it for exile. Target creature with power two or less. What was that? Last, last gasp, last breath? Something like that. That's not a good removal spell. There are much better ones available, I don't know, give us vindicate want. Why do we have this? No, it is a thing of. Yeah I'm like I'm like that kind of like like like so the the so the actual answer is they need to test. They need, they need to add new cards from the new set. But don't worry about that. But like, like there's the thing of like yeah, yeah I do. Yeah. Because like like there's like I like wonder. It's charm. I think the charm is a cool card, but with this deck I prefer growth spiral with this deck. Just prefer a way of just getting more of getting through your deck, putting more lands into play so you can cast your five color spells. Is that I? I like the I like looking at these updates because like one thing that I will give the team credit for, they are they are very good at finding packages and finding new things, but I don't think they always go about it. They're kind of hampered in the fact that they are putting these cards in the go vintage cube. It's just the power level is so high that ultimately I think this will be a test that will get rotated out. But what I like about this is the fact, like this is a framework for a lower power level cube. Like not that much. Not like super lower like this could go into maybe my unpowered vintage cube, but with some amendments. But like any kind of like, low power of a cube or like a modern power level cube or something like that, or like a more budget cube, this is a nice, cool thing to do with multiple colors, like a five color deck is like run cards like nemesis in general. First, real quick to like reward you for or as an additional reward for playing all these different colors. Like one thing is that nice is is like most of the time we've seen this kind of fly call the deck and the rewards for it. It's been more based on like the lands and like the colors of like manner your lands make. Also, you have cards like field of the dead. That was like a reward for the fly on the deck before. I like that it's moving to be more spells based than lands I guess, because in theory, like in my head, the lands. Oh, the optimal land package is more expensive and more out of reach. A more players than the than this kind of fly on the deck and like a slower cube. But yeah, yeah, I think I like the idea. My gut is this will rotate out in a couple of iterations as they try something else. But like, like I think there's a stronger version of this. If they weren't forcing having to use all the charms, basically all the new cards. Yeah. The, yeah, you could switch for this alphabetical cards and the deck would be better. Absolutely. But the payoffs are still, like, not brilliant, right? The, like, Harris is interesting. Farris is a card. I could imagine being powerful. Nemesis is cool. And I will like you will then in some decks, the Connor copia like this is not a payoff. Come on. No. Just find the next worst. Birds of Paradise from the list. I, I love Amanda left with upside every drop that there's, there we got for, the Dragon one and talk. Yeah, that was great. Painter's trove. And this is phenomenal. If it's, Well, malefic and gave me some life as well. We're talking about Powered Cube, though. The good artifacts, the good mana rocks in this for max costs zero mana. No, not three. It's it's a little bit tough, I think, for the old Astral Cornucopia. Yeah, I don't know. I'll. I'll play some of these cards, but I'm not super optimistic on this as a package, to be honest. I'm just looking at it. I don't think Hero of Precinct one is in this. That seems a bit of an oversight. One like two. Two in every cast, a multicolored spell create A11 white human creature token. I'm looking I don't it's not. It's not in that list of updates. I don't know if it was in the cube already. Yeah, I just don't control F and I don't find it. That would be, to some, a nice additional reward for, playing multicolored spells. Like, like there's a bunch of effects that kind of can punish multicolor spells, but as a reward, that one seems just like a nice like that would go in a bonus aggro deck. Fine. Like reward you for for Spain and Portugal. But, but but but would be good in this deck as well. Yeah. Interesting. One actually thing I do want to get your opinion on, James is, there are currently six jewels of each color, including things like that shock jewel. And then we have trims as well. Do you think that just from a logistic point of view, is that enough to make a deck like this work? Can you make the mana work as they intend with this, or do you think you have to be kind of heavy green running, like your rampant growth effects and your cornucopia of that kind of stuff to splash out for? It's like, how hard is casting all these spells going to be? Do you think, the man is really good power Cube now? Because the the fat shocked fire mana base is just so efficient. Plus there's actually a bunch more lands and it looks like fight because you have all the land cycles from a lot of things, like a lot of Enfield Eagle to the north that will end. So that's almost like the dungeon like patch lands. Six through ten, obviously not as efficient as the thatch lands, but they do the thing of vape. They will often factual five colors if you have for vegetables and that's for that if you're trying to draft. So yeah, I could see the, the option of like, oh we're doing this five color thing. So we should add more lands. I actually think it's a good decision not to. I don't think I need to. I feel like you could already draft a lot of colors and five cube without this package existing. Yeah. I don't think I needed to add more land. No, that makes sense. But no, but it's good to know from a base level to kind of like if you wanted, if you wanted to draft this, that it's not that it will work if like the cube is already set for it, that's that's nice. Yeah. For sure. Like five color was already good. It will continue to be pretty good. I just have my doubts that these are for cards that are going to make us care. Yeah. So, honestly, the cards they could add, if they want to make five color, that's a the, I don't think Cyan of Draco is currently in. Oh, okay. Yeah. Yeah. That's a pretty cool five color payoff. But, you know, cost to mana is really powerful. We do have stuff like ley line binding is still in, I believe. Yeah, but but but these, V's of a five color payoff that matter? It's not. Sorry. Never miss a it's not about. No. No, I do agree. Certainly not about color. Okay. Yeah, I agree in this power level of cube. Yeah. Again what I'm saying is I think I like it. This is like I think there is a, a lower power version of this that I think puts it quite nicely. And basically, yeah, you just pick the two color charms. Oh. You pick the best two color utility spell in each color pair. Add that in your cube, and then you add some of the other. Almost got the payoff cards with the good amount of base. That's that. That's the package. Yeah for sure. If you're doing if you want to do V when you cast a multicolored spell gets a payoff thing. There's certainly some nice stuff that you can even do. Stuff like running the like hybrid cards count. Right. And a very easy to cast. You could do something like Thrill of Possibility is a card that shows up in a bunch of cubes. There's literally a fill of possibility that is blue, that hybrid in the lesson. And it's just easier to cast and will trick of all this stuff. Right. But that that's those sorts of options are quite nice guy this to work as well. Nice. What I just mentioned might just be a nice little bit of foreshadowing for next week. But let's talk about some of the other additions that they've added. Just some cards from the new set. They've added that they're testing. And I think we're not surprised that some of these are going in. They've added three of the Americas is they've added a mix of true, which is the one that, can cost the source to plowshares. Amount of ideation is the most obvious test I think they've ever added. That's the one that comes in unless you cast Ancestral Recall and they've added emeritus of abundance. That's the one that costs regrowth. They have added a bit of flicker in on top of what was already there to help support these and a couple of the other cards. I don't think we were surprised by all of these. I think you were higher on Americas of truce than I was in the set review, but, it cost us sort to plowshares. They're going to test it. I think it kind of, I think I think I'm not surprised by any of these coming in. I'm a bit surprised they didn't add the black one just because black falls are not that deep. And I personally think the black one is better than the white one. That's the one. The black one is the for matter 1 or -5 for that cast. Demonic tutor and has the base level of being a format of five for that is just good enough. What do you think, James? Like, are you surprised these came in or surprised that the black one wasn't included, though? I think blue and green are both quite strong. I would have been surprised if I hadn't included both of them. The green, the green one I'm interested in. You can do a silly loop with displacer kiss and then a time walk and I'm all about infinite turns. So that's cool. It can also make. And it goes pretty easily with kiss and actually also like, kiss and the emeritus, Black Lotus is infinite mana, right? So basically, we've figured out how to make both Black Lotus and Time walk and to get this same. So that's good. We nailed it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And that's what we call is also good card. So I like an outline of emotions for ideation. I'm not sure it's gonna, you know, stay in forever, but I think it's certainly a card for you. You can put in your deck and will be pretty good. Kind of a six drop and six is a lot of manners to play, but it does pay you off. And it's slightly hard to kill as well. The white one is like, save a weaker stuff. I think it's not a bad card. I think, you know, three mana, three three plus one one is fine. Sometimes you'll get two swords. Something that's pretty nice. It was slightly odd to me that if that. Trying to add more flicker to support fees. This is one on they chose. Just because this actually isn't great to flicker, right? Because at some point you're going to stop getting the swords. Unless you keep giving them a bunch of tokens, which seems like it has its own problems. And you know, if you're sorting that stuff, then they have less features and then they're got the swords back, you know, I guess maybe if you keep separate, you can, like, gradually turn all their creatures into one ones. And if I carry this way, I don't know that that's the idea. But yeah, it seems like maybe the weakest of the three. Yeah, I, I think the black one would be cool, but it is, it is quite a lot of mana, right? Because it's if you want to play it and use them the same turn at six manor and unlike, you know, unlike the white one, you don't get and you're not going ETB on the way in. So it's, it could be a little bit tough, but it's just I think it would have been a good add as well. Yeah. I mean, there's, there's room for them to add stuff later. I think like I guess one reason which kind of brings us onto our next section is they kind of they, they describe this as adding more support for combo. So I guess specifically they instead of adding amounts of, the black one, they've added a card like withdraw talisman, and pillage the bog. Which are, which are, I guess, more efficient shooters. So you don't have to cast a spell and then call something else. You just cast a wish for talisman and go and true to the thing you want. They've specifically mentioned that these are in to help chain of smoke combos. I'm personally not the. But this is weird because go carry is like, go glory is like go go is love. But like, I am not a fan of these combos. Like, I've got a note here that the only time I've ever seen it come off in my cube was the cube that where we added Canal dredger, which is the conspiracy Dwarf mantis card. That means one player gets the last card in every pack, and they were effectively the the whole chain of smoke combo and deck was left last pack in everyone's packs. So that they got the whole combo. That's the only time I've ever seen it fully come together. So they got effectively an extra like 20 cards over everyone else. And it still wasn't great that that might just be bias of that one thing, but like, and maybe with these additional charges on top of cards like demoted to to vamp, which you did that already in the cube. Maybe that would make it better, but like change from your point of view, like how have you found Chain of Smoke combo and will this buff to it help it become more real? So I think it's a little bit better than people think it is because it does it. You're right. It goes like last pick in every cube, but it's ever been included and stuff, I can tell, I think it is a little bit better than that, because it is just a pretty mana efficient way to win the game, right? Like a fancy strand of smoke bomb is just for mana. But when the game from your hand now you don't have to untap with anything. Savvy upside. Is there. But the thing that's tricky about it, right, is. So maybe we should just briefly explain what combo is actually so that the best version of its combo is whether Bloom Fan test, which is, green black fall two two has mage craft. When after you cast or copy a spell, you drains them for one combo combos. You cast that you cast chain of spark, which is target player discards two cards. Then that player may, copy it and target a different player with a copy of the ideas. You target yourself. You just got two cards. You can copy it. You target yourself. Again, you're copying as valid for that time. You train them out. The tricky thing is that you can disrupt this combo with a removal spell. And if I do disrupt it, you just lose the game vibe because it's not like they just dealt with your two cards and you move on. You also discarded your hand. Because they don't even have to kill the offensive right away. Right? They can let you do it a couple of times until you're empty handed, then kill it. And that's pretty tough to come back from. So one thing I really value, if I'm trying to get this combo to work, is ways to look at my opponent's hand. So ideally that's discard spells. But even, you know, something like a gift action phobe because, you know, the removal is fairly efficient. And vintage cube, it's it feels very, very risky to go for this combo into even one open manner. And that's kind of tough. You know? No, I'd agree. Like, like I think for me, playing the smoke feels it's like a less cool dark depths in the dark day, like you have to see the chain of smoke, like there's redundancy on the other end, but there's no redundancy on the chain of smoke with dark depths. There is kind of now with, like, bait of prime, which is tight, but like, there isn't really that there hasn't traditionally been the redundancy on dark depths. So if you don't see it, what's your thespian stage doing in your cube like the support for it? It's so many slots that it's difficult in a 540 Q but you don't see every card means that it's there is like a a third of the time it is not going to be opened and therefore you've just wasted like two other slots for these players combo. And the the reality is dark depth stays in because dark DPS is vibey as hell. We like making a 2020 squiggly fish that is cool. I think this combo is better than Dark Depths. I love to go back. I think dorks have sucks in Power Cave. I think it's really I would yeah, I, I would generally yeah. Yeah. The that's where I, I would generally agree from, from high level point of view because again that they have added another source to plowshares to the cube famously doesn't do well with dark depths. But yeah, like this one does, at least when you have a game on the spot, right? Yes, I like that. Yeah I don't you don't have a dark Depths thing where they have a whole turn cycle to find a removal spell or like a, I think, lingering souls to block with, you know, which is kind of where Dark Depths falls down. So, yeah, I think it's fine to go for it. And in principle, I like them trying to lean into combo stuff more. I think one of my frustrations with Power Cube and why I play a little bit less of it than I used to, is, it does feel I'm not, like, monotone, but, because the powerful Modern Horizons stuff is so loud. It's sort of drowns out a lot of the other stuff. And the that, you know, the modern horizon stuff isn't combo stuff, right? It's all, it's all that betas. Yeah. But a fair and inaccurate to a certain extent there. And I think it's really important for this sort of cube for you have some combo stuff and combo stuff. It isn't solve. Just reanimate isn't just cheating a giant thing into play. I think you need that, you need that range and the decks that are available to draft, right? So in principle, I like from leading into combo a bit more. I think for whether the inventive stuff is fine to have and I don't think it's great, but I'm not against studying by solving pillage for bulk. I think that that both they're very good. They're just good cards for me. I mean, for wishful ID, like, you really do need some minor, you come away for talisman. If you're not winning, that term is generally. Folks, you should take, you know, if you're winning that turn, there's no downside. If you're not winning that turn, it's it's very, very tough because they can then wish claw for whatever thing they need to just focus for what you have going on. Box. Just really powerful cards. It's, you often end up splashing it and, you know, you're not like, straight gold going that much and powder cube, but, I know you were. You may be up for the nice speak. Thank you for that. But the penalties is just a good card. It just. You just see so many cards for two mana, right? Yeah. I, I don't think I have any issues with, with slow or pillage the boat coming in. Yeah. Yeah. I think it's just. Yeah, I'm not the biggest fan of chain as well, but I, I do want thank you I do agree like I, I do want there to be combos in cube and like if this is the like it is it is when it comes together it is cheap and and it is efficient and and it can be touchable in these colors. So that is nice. I've got some maybe more support is the thing that that deck needed. We'll touch on a few more ads before we get onto the cuts. Just, just some general cards that are worth mentioning. Erode is coming in that is the new don't the plowshares Path to exile variant from the set. I think we'd like that. Sage of the skies has come in. This one's been doing a bunch of work in the arena cube now, coming into here, chromatic traumatic critique is the. Is it, rare from school districts? Haven. It's the one that is a it's, loot. But if you have enough mana, it can be, like, fireball to the face and then a card that we actually missed on the set with you. Vicious rivalry to black and a green for sorcery. As an additional cost to cast a spell packs life. Destroy all artifacts and creatures with mana value X or less. So it's sort of a it's a version of toxic. They lose basically. Seems solid. Like I like another board wipe. Especially in a world where, Boris is still pretty good. An extra board weight. We like, for mana more than three, but if that's what it's got, Gary is now the color of the combo deck, adding, board white for it. It's probably a good thing for that deck. Yeah, that card does not seem that, I could see I can see that there's. And, you know, if you've got to include X amount of cards and then you set. I like that more. And I like silver quill charm, put it that way. Well I was kind of surprised they didn't add actually was together as one, given that doing this multicolor theme, that's the six mana, color sorcery with converge. You draw x steel x gain x life, where x is the number of colors of mana spent. Cast it like fast to me. Seems like a cool payoff for multicolor deck. Like, you know, sure, it's not going to be, it's not going to be great in every match up five. So some decks are too quick versus some decks are combo decks and don't care about. You can like features and fun cards, but in in a fair match up that seems pretty strong. Like you want to be casting it for like minimum four colors, right? But I think if you, if you have a card is pretty reasonable. Yeah, I don't know seem fun and this is the. Yeah okay. This is the place where you would play that because like this, this doesn't go into like other big spells, like a deck. So that kind of cheating, casting spells because you won't get anything from it if you, if you cast this off of a, if you cheat, cast this, you will not be spending any money on it. Therefore you'll it'll do nothing. Whereas in this we are actively trying to do multiple colors. This actively the place for it. So that is an interesting point. Let's move on to the cuts now. An interesting way. They've done the cuts with this. So outside of a couple of like the generic cuts where they're rotating through cards and reason sets. So like some of the cuts have been cards from the turtle set, some have been from Lauren. The biggest change to the cube in terms of cuts is that so much of the room of the room for all the cuts have come from them, removing every aristocrat card from the cube? Yeah. The vintage cube hasn't really stuck to rigid color balances, but this really does take it to the next level. Like there's so many red and black cards being cut for like multicolor gold cards that don't have red or black in them like generally did last night. If you're making the change your cube, I wouldn't recommend making changes like this. Like, I wouldn't cut a bunch of red and black cards and add a bunch of SIM cards like that does not normally lead to a well-balanced cube, but like the Vintage Cube specifically, is an exception to this. Like, that card is always that cube has always had 20 more blue cards than white cards. It's a cube that's built more in packages like these than specific color pairs, which you tend to find in like more lower power level cubes or more entry level cubes, or like, like to be fair, like like my real, about vintage cube is it has more emphasis on two color pairs than the MC of intuitive in the game. To make them cheap is very much based on like, packages of their personalities. We cut this package to add this package. It's more of like a deck, if that makes sense. This like also worth noting, the arena cube is actually more balanced as well. Even like like it has a way more even number of card distribution, which actually might be a reason why Boris Aggro was stronger there than going to ship, is they actually just more redundancy because they're trying to balance a bit more. But that's a side topic. Let's go back to aristocrats. I think it's fair to say, James kind of aristocrats has generally struggled at the very highest power level of. Q what kind of like where did you see it went last time you played the MacGuffin? Just cheap. And I'm like, do you think it's fair that they cut it from a power level point of view? Like, was it just not putting up numbers? You could win with it. So this, I think, is in a similar place to the, very old and discard masses like Venge vine, Voot wallah stuff, which in which they have caps and I think it's cool. Where basically almost no on facet. And if you say you can sort of get all the pieces, and when you get all the pieces, it can be pretty good, but it's, but you really can't afford to fight anyone for that ever. You're relying on. But it's cool because, you know, you get like, two cards out of each pack, right? Because, yeah, like, I, I'm going to first take this full size and I'm 100% of a lot. So we all mayhem dabble and we can get crooked, you know, but even when you got all of that, it was either you just still like, you know, obviously not every card is open. It's a 540. You still need to some stuff to go your way. I like and I like it less than the loot. Bala Bazaar venge fine stuff. Actually, that deck I think works a little bit better than they have a scrap stack, I think. Yeah, stick that stack is a little bit half. So yeah, I think it's a fine cut. I don't see I quite like this approach to power cubes I have where, they have packages that come in and out and, you know, obviously fares v the packages that never leave, but really powerful ones and there's ones for very cheap in for an iteration or two and then come out. I kind of think given that the power cube is up so much more for time these days, if they want people to keep playing it at that rate and they want to maintain interest, they need to do stuff like this where they rotate stuff in and out, because otherwise I think people we play a lot, they're just going to get bored of it. You know? So I don't mind, first of all, yeah, you do kind of need more seasons, but yeah, you need like different. Yeah. You you need reasons for people to come back. You need new decks for people to try and like with the ones they've done. Like we've seen aristocrats a bunch like aristocrats is like a staple. Like. Like I think most people's first cube. What does black X do? Well, things die, creatures die. We're doing aristocrats like I. I can understand why. They have, like, you can do the other places. And if it's not putting up numbers from a power level point of view and there isn't really any combo stuff with it right now, like it's it's hasn't been the it's been more the I'm outgrowing you. I win with some life drain rather than here is my three card sac creature combo thing. Yeah. It's not bloodlust feels infinite. It's mayhem. Devil deals for the last six, you know, and most of the time what it is like a pretty good mid-range to aggressive red black sac with some creatures and. Not there are good fat black cards that sacrifice stuff. And yeah, you have like, a mayhem devil, and that's a payoff. It's it's fine. You can make it work, but it's not brilliant. The thing is, the, Yeah, I keep coming back from London and stuff. There's so much of what Powder Cube is these days. Is people's powerful London Horizons cards. So, like, as powerful as your whole engine that they don't need for setup, you know, but, like, psychic fog that you can put on the stack. It's as powerful as your mayhem devil that you built your whole deck around, you know, and that that's kind of tough because, you know, when you kill the psychic fog, the rest of your deck is good cards wise. When you kill the Mayhem Devil, people are drawing bad blood at, they're like bits in bloom, berries and vegetables. And it's that suck out. That's that. That's just not quite doing it. And I'm. Yeah. No, I get it. Yeah. It is a state of just let me go into human like it is a again, it's probably like it, it's always worth touching on because the Mega man ship is probably most people's like either either this cube or the arena one will be the cube that most people know. It might not be the one that they, but it'll be the one they play the most always, or it's the most visible. Just in terms of content creators, like people make a lot of content about the mega images. When it's up, they'll see people playing it. It's always worth touching on it with this kind of stuff. But yeah, yeah, I do agree in terms of it is a thing of the maker. Vintage cube is trying to do them. It's trying to present the most powerful, balanced, I will say environment like it doesn't run things like initiative cars because they warp it too much, which I think is fair. But like generally it's trying to play the most powerful decks possible. And I do like the fact that they try new things. Like, I think we're both kind of in agreement that like the colorful cornucopia package might struggle to get there. But similarly to like the, like, like the madness deck. So I love that deck. I've had a Mickey for a while. I'm glad that they're also like like showing me some other cards I could consider running in my cube. That's quite nice. And also that they had that landfall deck I, from Final Fantasy with like the turn three kill with, like, Tifa Lockhart, that kind of stuff. That's cool. I'm glad they're pushing these packages and, like, you know, like, to be honest with you, I'm kind of. If these don't fit in this tube, they will fit in plenty of other cubes. And if I have to keep coming up with new things, it's just more for us to talk about and more for us to test out with our own cubes. And like it's one of the we're not getting political, but like it's one of the times trickle down economics actually kind of works. You get what I mean? So how can I phrase that if I do? Yeah. I'm not sure this is what I was talking about with that face, though. Yeah. No, I think it's a tough cube to design this stuff for because, like, I think I have lots of ideas and they want to keep it interesting and keep it changing, but it's a very unforgiving environment for new synergy packages. I will say the, the madness one does work and is cool. And that was a great job getting that to work, because yes, it's very, very tricky in this sort of cube. I mean, even that, you know, it is even that same thing of it works if you get absolutely everything and not really otherwise. But yeah, I think I don't mind the approach taken to it. I think I would like see them support a bit more of the combo stuff in terms of getting some of the some cards back. I think that would be cool. Because I think that's one of the. Like, I in some ways getting rid of like I'm sure the win percentage isn't very high if you take in VII for it and yada yada yada. But I think it's like one of the coolest things you can do in these tubes, and it's what makes them feel iconic and different. And it only really works in powered cube. So then with that, in my opinion, like I would rather see them dedicating slots to that stuff than to aristocrats or to, you know, this pick and astral Kaleidoscope, Copia and Silver Quill, that, you know, and I'm fine with them having new ideas and go ham with it. Right. I think that's going to be a good place to leave it for today. James. Man, I think that was a good chat. Yeah. We'll touch back in when they do some big changes on the Mega Vintage Cube in the future. Always good to kind of keep an eye on what they've got cooking over there. Yeah for sure. And I, I don't want to sound too negative. I just for context I do still like for cube, I think it's cool. I am play as much as I used to, but I think it's, it's a good one to drop into. And there's still a lot of really fun decks you can draft in that, I think. I think that cube is just a good product and it's, I think some people have got a little bit burnt out on it, and I include myself for that. Oh, I think it's probably a thing of you probably still have my honest opinion is you probably still play the same amount total that you did previously. It's as you're spreading out over 12 months, but it's it's up all the time. When it used to only be up to like 2 to 4 times a year. So that kind of makes sense. Yeah. Possibly as yeah like occasionally drop in there as you know, if I have a free evening in the, via for magic, you have a magic available on the internet is it's not to my taste. You know, we happen to be in the middle of ninja Turtles draft season, and, that slots available on the arena, then. Sure, maybe I'll pop over to Magic Online. You. No, no. No VoiceOver. All right. Yeah. Let's call it there James. All right. Thank you very much. Oh my pleasure. My son just leads me to thank you all very much for listening. 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