The Hobbit Cube Set Review - Part One | #103

This episode of Powerful Nothing, we're back in Middle Earth with part one of our cube set review for The Hobbit, where we cover all the goodness in White, Blue and Black.

Card Gallery: https://moxfield.com/decks/MO4UAWfX10SiksvZX45-yg

Timecodes:
4:34 - White
28:09 - Blue
58:05 - Black

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

Cube Skeleton Episode: https://youtu.be/92aS4ZU_nd8

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

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Hello everyone, and welcome back to Powerful Nothing and Magic The Gathering Cube podcast. I'm your host, Dan. As always, I'm joined by James James. We're heading back to middle earth this week. How are you feeling? Yeah, we sure love going back to The Hobbit, a classic of, fantasy literature as I've read that book many, many times. It's a great one. I'm excited to see what, what for? Magic designers have done for. Yeah, definitely. The first Lord of the rings set, is probably one of my favorite sets of all time. And, yeah, Hobbit, the book, one of my favorite books. Films less hot on. Not sure if that's the hardest take, but yeah, I'm very excited to be back in the world. In middle earth, there's a bunch of cool cards for us to get to in this episode, and our episode next week. This is part one of our Cube Set review, where we are going to be going over white, blue, and black. And then next week we're going over red, green and everything else. One thing to kind of caveat before we get into the set is that the last Lord of the rings, that gave us a bunch of really impactful, powerful cards. But, off the bat, it's worth pointing out that that first set was a modern powered set. This is a full standard set, so there are some cool cards in this set. But like there is not an orc bow masters like that. And there is not a one ring. I think that's kind of important to just say off the bat. Yeah, for sure. For sure. If if they printed cards of that power level in this set, favorite course and some serious balance issues across multiple formats. So, this we're expecting to be more of a parallel level of the Strix havens and whatnot. So what we've seen recently, which is not a bad thing, I'm personally, I quite like it when cube gets, more incremental improvements and new additions and a few good, nice cards from each set rather than being completely overhauls, but which we saw from stuff like Modern Horizons and, and the original a lot of things that in a lot of ways, no, exactly. But that doesn't mean there isn't some bangers that we're going to be talking about today. Before we get into our keepsake, review some housekeeping to get out of the way first. Firstly, there will be a link to a card gallery and a video version down in the show notes below. If you want to see the pretty cards that we're talking about today while you're down there, please consider giving the podcast a thumbs up or a like greatly helps us out. The next thing we need to touch on is what we do in these set reviews. Basically, what me and James are going to be going over is the cards that we like from this set, and we're going to be evaluating them depending on what cubes we think they could go into. Importantly, when we are doing this, it's important to remember that this isn't standard, this isn't modern, this is cube. Our pool of cards is every card ever printed. Our panelists are self enforced. When we do evaluate cards with generally trying to describe the type of cube that that card could go in. And generally with that we have three rough buckets that we tend to talk about. We have our high powered cubes which are looking to run the best of the best. Like think the MC go Vintage Cube and the arena powered cube here. And probably the best examples that people might know. And this will also include cubes that aren't actually running the power nine, such as my main cube. It doesn't have power or cause like mints can bring forth links, but it's still looking for super efficient cards. So. So if we're talking about high powered cards or super efficient cards, that's kind of that ballpark. They will go into. You then have your more mid powered cubes. This is, I would say, is likely the type of cubes that most people will have here. You probably are still running some efficient cards. Things like Lightning Bolt and Counterspell, but you have more cards for things that you like and cards that you own. You then have your lower powered and budget cubes. These are often where people start out your list, like to see staples from formats, and you might see cards that have gone through standard that people might have opened at prerelease, that kind of thing. At the moment, for example, I'm still in the process of building a bar cube, and that's very much out of cards I own, and that would fall into this category. I'm just working with what I have. So if you have a cube, try and think roughly what category yours falls into and that will help you work out. If a card we're talking about is right for you. And then also we will try and touch on peasant and pauper cubes, which are made up of comments and, comments if we think there are any relevant cards for them. Yeah, for sure. And oh, all the cards we're going to talk about today have have the opportunity to be powerful. If I have I have a lot of potential is just some of them maybe need a little bit more setup time maybe or a little bit less resilience for me though. And phase of the cards which are going to fall behind phase middle low power level cube categories because I just can't quite stand up to be the pace of the most powerful cubes. No, that's a 100% all right. But with that preamble out of the way, James, I think should we take it away with our first card of the day? We're starting with white James, talk to us about Bilbo's gambit. Yeah, sure. So Bilbo's gambit is one of white for an instant, it says you can gift a treasure. So gifting is mechanic, where as part of casting the spell, you give something to your opponent and that makes the spell better. So in this case, you are gifting a treasure. So as part of casting a spell, you can have your opponent cast treasure. It says return target spell to its own his hand. If a guest gift was promised. So if you gave him a treasure. Players can't cast spells. This turn. So this, I think, is a bit tough to use. The traditional application we've had for this sort of, silence effects where we set up the opponents casting spells is like protecting our combo in some way. The problem with this is it's symmetrical. We can't cast spells even after this is resolved. So I don't think it really has that application. I think more of a use case you would be hoping for is I am a head on board. I cast this as a sort of time walk to, to stop my opponent getting back into the game. A bit like you do use a, a man. But instead of giving you the card back, it's, silencing your opponent. And that's fine. The problem is, in every other situation, when you're not really had this, this isn't really doing much for you. You're not. It just doesn't justify going down the card, really, which is ultimately what's happening here. Honestly, I think even if you didn't have to give them a treasure for this effects, it wouldn't be that good. And, the fact that you give them an untapped treasure is, it's pretty tough because they're going to have that as extra mana available on your turn, to interact with you. So for me, yeah, very much. You know, it promises, typically it looks like a card, like the Eve or something. It's very much not that big trading, which was a card for this pseudo silence. In fact, it's really not a good exchange. I don't think there's much you much reason to include this. The only interesting thing I could think of is if you put it under an ice Queen scepter, it will make your opponent's life quite so. That's kind of fine. I'm not sure that's enough reason. Enough itself. You should probably just fund arms chant or silence. No, I think that's it. I, I think for me, it's closer to like, why? Maybe not the end result of the card, but like the reason for including it is closer to a card like reprieve, like the counter target spell. The fevers. Yeah. Basically remand, return a spell to it, say in his hand for a card. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I think I think if you would include this, it's because you want that effect more than, this silence effect and kind of like it's, this is a card that I think will be situationally fantastic. Like, I could see games where, like, if everything comes to plan, you can stop your opponent from combo going off, and then you could crash proof that bits of damage and that's how you win. But yeah, like it's that's like the the dream situation. Yeah I think I like it is you know a tempo positive play. But I don't think the amount of tempo you're gaining is often going to justify going down a card. But you compare this even to something like unsubstantiated blue. That's what I want. A blue return a spell of permanent to its own ass. And, that card is so much more flexible than this. Because you can you can hit permanence off the battlefield as well. I think it's not like an entire creature. Maybe, and no one ever wants that card, because it's still that the tempo is still not enough to, to justify just being straight up down a card. This for me is a much weaker card. And that I think. I think it's tough for this one to see play like. Yes. And why white doesn't have as many options to interact. So I'm going to stack I and that's why we tend to talk about them from when they do come up. But yeah, I think it's certainly a lot worse than the five. And I would run something like minus five. I think I've no, I think that's fair. I think like yeah, in my notes I kind of have down here that like may I on turn two, it's effectively just like, it is just a you blink their play. But then I'm the more I'm thinking about it. Like what white deck wants that on turn to what white deck nowadays and most peeps doesn't want to just play a threat or do something to actually kind of further your game plan like this is the best thing you're doing on turn two. In a white heavy deck, you're probably not winning that game. So yeah. So I think that's maybe a tough one for Bilbo's gambit, but let's keep it going. We have the first of our company, to talk about today. We have Kelly the Resourceful. This is one and a white, very one two legendary creature dwarf scout with storied. This is the first time we're seeing this mechanic. I'll read it for the first time. It says if you control three or more artifacts, legendaries and or sagas, you have an enduring story for the rest of the game. The rest of Kelly says, as long as you have an enduring story, you may pay zero. Rather than pay the equip cost of the first equip ability, you activate each turn whenever another dwarf or equipment you control enters. DrawCard. This ability triggers only once each turn. So I'm going to get the part I don't like about this card up. Like before I get to the part I do like. I'm not a big fan of story as a mechanic. Personally, I'm glad is something that you don't have to constantly keep track of. Like it's not day bound, night bound, but it is just an additional thing you have to track. And generally cube is complicated, that kind of thing. I'm not the biggest fan of it. That makes sense. It's kind of like a smaller version of the city's blessing. But as a card, I think it's okay if you're pushing that equipment matters. Like, I'm gonna surprise you at this. At this, it's James. Normally it's me pushing the equipment matters deck. But for this to be good, you need that deck to exist. Like, you need, like, you need that deck to exist in your cube. And we are kind of getting to the bits, like. Like there's a world where you can curb this out, where you go from turn one, colossal hammer, turn to Kelly, turn three and the other legendary equipment, and then you start swinging for 11. And that's quite tempting. That's kind of like the high end of this card, or that's what we like the best thing this card can do. But there's other equipment with expensive equipped costs that getting around the oh, that with the storied ability we can start activating. But we really need to be able to be equipping that and like to do that. It means running artifacts. It means running legendaries. The saga is less common. I would say. So yeah, I won't, I won't. What I'm trying to say is like, this is not just a card you can add in a vacuum. You need to be putting this into an environment where you already have a bunch of equipment and a bunch of other support, and also just a word of warning. We're not putting this like, don't put this in and then think, oh, I need to add dwarves to make this card good. That is a trap. The things that make this card good is other legendary creatures that care about equipment and also equipment. So like a card like a Bruin or battle hammer is fine. That's like a four man, Boris dwarf that does like a similar thing. It it makes the first equip you do each turn free. Like that kind of effect. That's fine. Awesome. But we're not going to run like dwarven recruiter to make Kili better. Like, this is a equipment matters card that goes well with with with with with other with other legendary creatures. If we have those in our cube, then I think it might be something we can support. One last note is that kind of like this archetype has been getting more and more, cause we've been talking about a bunch. I think the way to build this is to really lean into the reconfigure creatures, because those are creatures that are also equipment. We're going back to cam our next year, so hopefully we'll see more of those there. I think one, two. Yeah. Maybe I as someone. James, I need to do a actual breakdown of this archetype because I think we are at a point where there's probably enough bits to make it be solid. But what do you think of the resourceful? Yeah, I think it's cool. I think it does a lot of the things that Dak wants. I haven't even registered it. Two cards of two offs to be honest. That's, That's cool. I guess you could run the seven dwarves for me. I'll train them. Right. All cantrip. That would be cool. Yeah, I think obviously you only want this if you, really kind of committing a little bit to the equipment archetype. I think if you are, this kind of ticks all the boxes, right? Like drawing cards about equipment. Antlers is exactly what you need. And then you get to cheat on the equip costs. Phenomenal. I think we do now have enough redundancy of this effect that, that something like Colossal Hammer is a reasonable thing to look at. But it's not like you have to be doing something like Colossal Hammer to to get value out of that. Right? It can just be like my, duty on my side. If I have a nice eclipse for three and that sets in some manner, and that's really nice. And it's not really asking a lot of you to get that going because, it's asking for free artifacts, equipment. So. Legendaries. Well, this is a legendary. So that's one equipment you want to equip is an artifact. So that's two. You only need one more thing and you already that right. Like this. And this is not as strong as something like feel steel Paladin on the face of it. Because that control multiple cards in a ton. But realistically, I can't normally do as far as one kind of set. And yeah, this is sure the effect is is a little bit it is gated, but also it's way easier to cast white. White is steel. Paladin is absolutely horrendous. Yeah. This deck does seem quite borrows a lot this time. Yeah. You will also have some dwarves in your equipment matters that, like, this is just. That has been a bit of a reoccurring thing. I think Cal Time had some equipment. He matters. Dwarf stuff. Even just random good stuff. Cause like magma Magno is a dwarf. Like it will come up and I have Sram senior officer. That one's a dwarf. That's there. Just whenever you cast a quick, absolutely banging dwarf. Yeah. And it's just giving you it doesn't seem that effect. Yeah I agree V the equipments which are also creatures are quite an important part of the puzzle here because you just can't have you can't have ten actual equipment in your deck, which need to be equipped. So something else. So, so that this makes sense and you've got some options that like you've got for reconfigure stuff, but you've also got, the form of it and stuff, behind the lens and fence and the living and stuff, at all counts. And there's another one as well. Job select, I'm going to say, job select. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. From Final Fantasy. There's that stupid blue planet sphere thing that people play. Yeah. No, I, I think lots of the pieces actually have this deck. I bet it's quite good. I haven't put it into a cube. Yeah, but I'm kind of interested to see how it plays out if. Yeah, yeah, I think it's at the point where we should probably start looking to test it in one of. Or in one of my many kilos. I'm playing. I'm actually kind of. I'm looking at it. Yeah. I'm wondering if, if the issue is just finding the right equipment package because when you said like, sort of fire and ice, it's like that card would be quite that, like that. Cards are unplayable nowadays because it's effectively five mana and you need a creature to do something, but if it's three mana to do, it's to do something. If we can consistently ignore the equip cost, if we have enough effects of that and it draws, I can't. Yeah. And like it's kind of sick, right? That's kind of hot. Especially in a world where like we do have like like not like Noddy floating around as well. Like like like other decks want equipment. Now it's not just this. Maybe there's something there. Yeah, I think there's some. I think that's impossible. So I will say I don't think you want to go all the configure living life and stuff. That's a creature because not, not that that would be bad. But to me it kind of it sort of loses the purpose of equipment in the first place, you know, like it feels like a lot of what they have done to make equipment better and limited especially is to make it not actually equipment. Right. Like, well, if it was just a creature that had required equipment on it. Oh, I agree, it's just more just having the density to actually make a card like Kili actually be good, if that makes sense. Like like it's it's more we're running a card like lizard blades. That's the two mana. I think two, two with Double Strike or something like that. Or you might have one, one with Double Strike. It's more the fact that that is an aggressive red card that are red aggro, that can run, but also with Kili draws as a card. If we're doing that deck, that kind of thing. That's more why I'm going with that one. Yeah, for sure. There's, and then a very similar thing that you can now do more with equipment. The you specify, there's even stuff like chainsaw, which is essential. I've been really impressed by that card is really good. Yeah. And that just lets you cut. Want to feel that burn spells for the not equipment having that game that sort of utility slot to say equipment on it makes the stack a lot better. Nice. Okay. So we're committing now, James, at some point in the next step before Christmas, that's enough time. We will have do we will do an episode on various equipment in cube and why it is now the premium borrow strategy. I am willing to make commitments. I'm not willing to put timescales on. Christmas is fine. It's what it's. It's summer. I don't worry about it. All right. We have a few more white cards. James, talk to us about the Mountain Kings. Return. Yeah. So vis the mountains, King return is two a white for a enchantments saga. It's, it has three chapters. So starts off chapter one. It says recruit to recruit as a new mechanic from this sap. When you recruit, you draw a card, then discard a card. If you discard that a non land card, you create A11 white human soldier creature token. So essentially this is connive, except instead of getting a counter you get a woman. So fine of an connive like that. Second chapter two is the turn target creature card with mana value three or less from your graveyard to the battlefield. Chapter three is put a platform stone counter on target. Creature. This is quite slow. You need quite a lot to work. Obviously the idea I have is that chapter. I play this one. So for chapter one I loot away a free drop, get A11. Then on chapter two, just be ten four. You get that three drop back, then you get to put a counter on something. So compared to just casting the free drop on ten free, where up a one on the counter. It all happens more slowly, right? But if we didn't have like a convenient free drop, it makes sense for us to discard chapter one. Then it all starts to look a bit sketchy, like, because we need to be getting value off that chapter two. That's like where you're getting sort of 80% of your money from this card, right? So for me this is like we're introducing some inconsistency towards that. Like if you compare this just putting another free mana creature in our deck, we're like introducing some inconsistency. We're making our text slower. And I don't think the payoff is enough to justify it. A little bit of selection of one one counter like these are all nice things, but I don't know. I don't think you will win more putting this card in your deck versus just playing another good free mana creature in your deck. So from a raw efficiency point of view, I do completely agree with you. I'm a little higher on this card on this purely just because so so this is an uncommon and I think this could see playing peasant just because it does a little bit of everything that a number of decks in that format kind of want, like it's a bit of card selection, it's a bit of value. Like it makes us, it makes us a token. It puts a counter on a creature like those. I completely agree, those are slow, but like, there's enough decks that kind of want at least 1 or 2 of those things that I think it might be okay. And like late game it if you're not playing it on curve, like you could hold this up for that, on like turn six or something like that, you pay not you play this in a land. Yes. You don't make the one one. But then next time you can bring back a good creature. This died, that kind of thing. Like it's I think. Yeah. Not the most impactful card in the world, but I think there's enough utility and enough things that kind of like it does. Like if each step was an individual card, you wouldn't run it. But because each step is on one card, I think it might be enough value to give a go. Basically. Yeah, I, I think there'll be games where it's fine. I just worry about being consistency. I am here for more sagas. Focus one for Dex. I've always wanted to get to work with cube. This way y'all like moving counters between your sagas and getting value. I think that's really dope. And we kind of need more cheap sockets, so maybe maybe that's the spark fire. James, you can do that. It's called Commander. Yeah, I know, but what if what if I wanted to draft it, you know? No. That's fair. I mean, I am kind of faffing around with different types of deserts at the moment. That's my current hotness. Yeah, maybe. Maybe I can make that work. Who knows? That seems like the perfect place, actually, because I do definitely have time there. But yeah, that seems fun, right? Let's keep it going though, I we have a bunch of more middle goodness to get to. Next up we have the Queen of Dale. This is one and a white 321 legendary creature human noble. It says whenever an opponent casts their first non-google spell each time you recruit. So we're saying recruit again. It's coming back immediately. I think this is one of the cards people are most high on from the set. I'm going to call this like a Hate Bears adjacent card, like you're not directly stopping your opponent from doing something, but it is punishing them from when they do something like the card selection will be nice if you get this add on to, you will be able to help sculpt your hand and filter through. That will be okay. Like, I'm not really sure how many tokens you're going to be making from this because you do have to on a real card. Like if we got tokens from discarding lands, I'd like this card a lot more. But but because we actually have to put our actual good spells that we've drafted into the bin to get a token, it will mean that it won't come up as often as you think. Like, the filtering will be nice, but this is not a token. Make. It is what I'm trying to say. And like in some matchups this is going to be really good, especially if our opponents is like casting lots of spells, like in Power Cube where I think people are quite excited for this card. There are like a lot of zero drop artifacts. We'll get value off of those. That is quite like, so in some matchups this will be really good. Like think like if I, if I opponent's like a spell slinger deck and they're playing like a bunch of candy and stuff, we're going to be quite consistently, recruiting every turn that that could be quite nice. But there's a bunch of other matchups I'm thinking, like group beat down or like Boris aggro, where I don't think we're gonna get any value of this card because we're going to have to block with our two mana creature, otherwise we just die. Our bones of being creatures. I don't think we're gonna get that much value of it. And like, I think the main issue I have with this card is just, like in this slot that just things that kind of do this roll better. Like, maybe I am not evaluating the card filtering and like, like highly enough, but like to me, I think I want a card like Thalia Garden of Thriving in this slot, just more like it's actually making the spells. I don't like casting harder to cast against us. And also it's got strikes as a relevant feature on the board. Like if this had a keyword, if the Queen of del had a keyword, I would be so much higher on it. But like it's 2026, this is it's a piker for two mana with a incidental bit of card selection. Like maybe I am undervaluing it. Like like people are very hyped for this card. I think it could be solid and it's probably one I'll test, but like, it's not one that kind of, for me anyway, is immediately blowing me away that the one place I see it being quite strong is with a lower companion deck. Where that where the discarding is not a downside. That I think is super awesome, but yeah. James, what do you think of the Queen of Dale? Oh, I think I'm a bit higher than that for new. So comparing it to something like Thalia. Yeah, yeah. If right match up will be better. It is for strict that mana and the keyword is huge. But this goes in so many more attacks from failure. Like I can't put failure in my, like, ten creature. Just guide that because it's going to punish me too much. Why? This is a one sided effect. This, that. That's huge. That means it goes in so many more places. I think this is more of a key, akin to something like, s percentile in terms of for, the decks that can slot into, and yeah, you're not getting the token every time that I'd say that if the scenario is you do a spell and then discarded a land you didn't need, like that's also great for you. You know, that's not necessarily feeling bad about the fact I didn't get to make a token out of that exchange, because I kind of just drew a card, but I want all the value. James, you want to have your cake and. Yes. Yes. Have you met her? I can't help you with that. But, but, you know, maybe maybe there's value to you. Made some tokens. You know, we can't say, Yeah. Listen, the I agree, the stats are bad. This isn't going to get to attack very often, but, I think in a lot of matchups, this is going to be pretty annoying for your opponent. And even if they have the answer for this, you're generally getting one figure on the way through. Like, I think that makes this fairly strong. I would certainly be trying this in Pirate Cube. I think, you know, time will tell. I'm not saying it's going to be a staple forever, but, I think it certainly won't test. No, that's a part of it. Might just be that when I started making my notes for today, the first thing that comes out to me is this is a $42 preorder card. But also, I should just not ignore because I am. I'm old enough to know you should, just not. You should ignore the preorder costs. But yeah, no. Very fair. All right, James, moving on to blue. We have, main character talk to us about Bilbo. Thief in the night. Yeah, this one's pretty good, actually, I think so. This is Bilbo, a thief in the night one and the Blue Fae two. Two legendary creature, halfling Voke. It says spells you cast from anywhere other than your hand. Cost of one generic mana less to cast. And whenever Bilbo attacks you, may casts an artifact, instance or sorcery spell from your graveyard. If an instant or sorcery spell cast this way would be put into your graveyard, exile instead. I think if this card gets to attack, it's pretty strong actually. It's really not difficult to meet the requirement of having a spell in your bed. And by turn three, plus, even if, you know you didn't have anything in your pen, when you're in top surface, you could just play, for example, a two mana removal spell attack and flash it back for just one mana. That's that's very strong. Two and three, artifacts is going to be slightly less common for turn. Just artifact center. Sam play for a while, but it is nice that it can take up something like a bauble mathematics star. That's that's pretty good. Black Lotus James. Let's live big. I close this is certainly valid. Plus like later in the game. Yeah. This isn't like, dreadful darkness type thing where you get it's cheap spells later in the game. This just got super powerful light. You can start threatening to flash back your big five six mana spells and listen. It's vulnerable to removal. It's a two mana. Two, two. It doesn't have any protection. It doesn't have any effects. It doesn't have a def trigger. But I think for two mana, you know, you can you can live with that risk sometimes, you know, sometimes for your features. That's fine. And when you do get to attack, I think this is really frightening. Like, sure, it doesn't have any evasion. So trying to block this is a reasonable plan. But, man, you are going to be nervous even if you're sitting there with, like, three creatures. If your plan is to block first, because the fact that you have it can kill your creature and then flash back to the removal spell to kill another one of your creatures, means it feels like you're going to have to leave so much more material back in this, try and block it. And even then, you know, they got a bunch of value before it died. Yeah. I think this is very, quite strong. I expect it, I think it's one of the strongest cards in the set. I expect to see play playing higher power level cubes. I look forward to putting it in a lower stack. Not only is it a great thing to return with lowers and your lower sets going to have good stuff to flashback with that, it also just makes the other permanents you cast stuff less cheapo, which is pretty cool. It's a shame we don't have the old companion rules actually, where with my casting the lowest I would be kind of alien. And there's also, yeah, there's probably, you know, a bunch of interesting stuff you can do just for that first line of text that we're not even touching on here, right? By casting spells. Anyway, have a few in your hand. I've got a bunch for, yeah, like over read effects. There's so many for red specks like exile casts. And you can cast them, right. That's pretty cool. Yeah, like like old, like the indie style, like impulse red card rockets type of X where, like, you exile a permanent. Oh, you exile some cards. You can cast them until the end of your next turn. All this time they all get reduced by Bobo. They're all not from your hands. They're quite nice. Like, there's also like, adventure. Like warp and er, bend, I think will work how you want it to, as well as, like flashback. They're all quite nice. And also like, like I seen people talking about this as a potential storm card because, like, it technically makes the spells you're casting off of, like, after you've cast your, your most will, everything costs cheaper with this same also with like underworld breach. It makes those spells cost cheaper as well because you're costing them from the graveyard. You still have to exile cards but you as Covid it makes your frantic search mana positive off your bleach, right? That's quite nice. It maybe means you can do the whole thing without needing like a petal or something. Yeah, like like it's. When I first saw this card, I thought the top ability only like the static cost reduction, only exists to make the bottom part better. But like, the more you go, like when you go, like, go through your cube dailies, now you will find like more hits than you think. And especially as they're making more just like that's how read is drawing cards or getting card advantage. This will get better because of that, which I think is nice, and the only thing I will say is like IQ getting like the bottom ability, the reanimation part. I see you getting that exactly once because your opponent will block it the first opportunity they get. Like if you have the removal spells that James mentioned that that's awesome. But like this becomes a must kill card and they will definitely block it if they can. But that probably just means that it's a good card. They'll block vagabond because it's a good card, you know? I mean like it's I think yeah, good God is good card. Yeah for sure for sure I think and it, it's one of these cards where there are a lot of synergies. And they built available. But you don't need the synergies for it to be a good card fight. It's already a good card. You have possibilities to make it better. Yeah exactly. Yeah. But you should mostly just put this card in your deck and player exactly like it's a card. Kind of like snap customize that. Kind of like they can go in mid power tubes and in hype out because it will scale like the things you're getting back with. It will scale dependent on what your cube is like in a mid powered cube it'll be like time warp. The five minute extra turns spell in a power cube. It'll be time walk. The two manner actually turns about, you know what I mean? Like, oh, with this one mana. And that's quite good. All right. Yeah, I think I think we're both a fan of Bilbo. Thief in the night. Let's keep it going with another mythic. Next up we have Elrond Moon reader. This is two and a blue for three. Three legendary creature, elf noble. It has. Whenever you activate the ability of a creature, draw a card. This ability triggers only once each turn. It also has. You can pay five blue blue to exert up to two other target online permanents you control. Return those cards the battlefield under their own control at the beginning of the next end. Step. So for the vast majority of tubes, I think this will be a little slow. Like, you need another card with an ability to make this three drop like playable, which I think is tough, like, like part like why this is of this is because part of me loves the idea in a lower powered cube of making my merfolk looter. Draw two cards and discard one. That's kind of. But with Bilbo, the possibilities are endless. With Elrond moon reader, you could, in my opinion, you play it if you're if your cube as merfolk looter. That's kind of the ceiling, I'm saying. And I am here for that. I think that's cool. But like, that's kind of where we're looking at. The flicker is nice, but like ten mana to do it all I think is very expensive and like and but like in super slow cubes, you can get there if you're building your engine, if you're taking your time, like maybe my treat yourself cube. But I do have, flicker in there. People are going to get to seven mana to activate this. That's kind of fine. And just I'm just having people draw more cards I do quite like. But, like, in more efficient cubes, like, don't consider this a flicker card. The flicker is a nice bonus. If you want flicker on a card like you're wrong. Like this is not that. What do you think of Aaron James? Yeah. I mean, like, for me, it's not super powerful. I think best use case for me is a civic deck with some mana docks. That's quite nice. Yeah, yeah, this doesn't say, you know, often these effects say that, to mana ability or something. This doesn't say you can, you know, you can just use for dark where you like, ten on land will send you this when you just have a card for. I can go from that stage. Right. Plus, it's only once. It's once you turn that you can do it on your turn and your opponent's turn, potentially. So that's quite nice. Ooh. A flash deck then. Do you think? Yeah. Yeah, yeah. I mean, you know, you can just tap your ladder alpha man stats and draw a card, right? I'm kind of into that. The flicker ability is not nothing, but it's not what the card's about. Like it's seven mana. That is a thing that will occasionally come up, but it's not for thing. You should include this card in your deck for, You should put this card in your deck as a card for action in a relatively slow cube. I would say, but listen, like, you know, it's a center for sale. Sometimes for some cards, it's not the end of the world. You will find ways to use this even if you just have something like, say, ambitious Factory, you can just animate at every turn, tap it for mana. That strong? Yeah. But there are ways you can use this, but, it's not like the quickest card in that. Well, it's, Yeah, it doesn't give you anything up front, so it's kind of one of those cards where there will be occurrence games where you can't really enabling it. It just doesn't do anything. And then for games where you're threatening to actually make it into a card for engine has a pretty good chance they can just kill it. No, I agree, yeah. So that one but I think has a ceiling. What do you think of this lovely boat, James? What do you think of the great gilded boat? It is a very nice boat, actually. Yeah, yeah, I think the design would be quite top heavy. It doesn't. It looks like it might topple over in a storm. Yes. Yeah, I yeah, I wouldn't want to, like, cross the North Sea on this boat thankfully. Though maybe like a leisurely cruise down the river, you know. But what does it do? It is the great gilded boat. Is two in a blue for a full for artifact vehicle says whenever you attack the flute. So that's draw cards and discard a card. If you discard some non land card, you make a one on and it has crew two. Generally vehicles vehicles with a crew cost of more than three. I almost always hate crew two is like kind of acceptable. Just if it's really good. But but even crew two like, you're, you know, you're setting down a veil for each of, taking it out of combat. And also to enable this, there'll be a bunch of games where this is just dead because they killed all your creatures, and then they didn't have to kill this. They just left it abandoned without any crew. The effect is not terrible. Like, yeah, if you can get this figure going a couple of seconds in a row. Yeah, that'll be really good for you. But, I just don't know if it justifies the crew costs particularly. And, you know, it's. And, like, the stats are decent, but it's not amazing, you know, like, often you see these vehicles with a male crew cast, you have a very oversize of mana costs that a female to fall for. Like, it's not that big. It doesn't snowball that hard. Plus, like a lot of blue decks just aren't going to have a creature density to want to put a crew two vehicle in that together for free. 12 slot. Let's have a few synergies for this enables, you know, for example, it's it's obviously it's an artifact. If you have artifacts, maybe that's that's a good thing if you're doing that like the second card synergies, we've seen a bunch of stats do that in blue recently. And this is a way to enable that I think for all of these things, for better ways of enabling fan and I just have not found this sort of vehicle to play out that well in general. Yeah, I agree with everything you said. I, I'm definitely a bit higher on this card than you. And the reason for that is like, this is like my favorite type of card. Like this. This, this is technically like a to me. Anyway, this is like a playable do nothing enchantment. Like technically this does nothing, but it sort of does enough. Like one thing you use, one thing you said that was very important is like, it's just mostly Dex not having the creature count to make this work for me. This is like, we don't. I don't even consider this. Even I. I don't even consider it. If I was doing something more tempo based in my blue deck. Like if I was running a like if the goal of my of a blue deck in my cube was to like, attack with like two minor unblockable creatures, maybe get some ninjas in there then. I like this more because we're triggering at each turn. Because for me, I think the way I kind of say this is like it's a we played like a unblockable threat on one and two on two. We're attacking. We start making tokens, and then eventually those tokens are the ones that crew. This is the tokens that this has made, then suddenly turn it into a fourth. Like effectively this is and again, I'm I'm capping everything by saying, this is this is a do nothing enchantment. For all intents and purposes, it's a we're getting some value, we're making some bodies and then it can attack itself. And like I think that's solid. Like it's again, not one for every cube but like mid powered cubes or budget cubes that are doing some kind of ninja deco or some kind of, blue tempo based deck where, where it once it's 1 or 2 drops attacking, not just getting value in other ways. I think this card is fine. Not gangbusters, not a slam dunk in any and anything. Not like a super slam dunk in like, high powered cubes. But yeah, I think a fine card. Yeah for sure by that. All right, let's keep going. Next up we have Plunder the Troll Shores. This is one and a Blu ray instance that says drawcard. If this bell was cast from from a graveyard. Draw two cards instead. And it has flashback for three and a blue, which is a reminder as you make this card from your graveyard for a specific cost and then you exile it. So this is a nice take, on a think twice or two effect, like inactive in actuality is just a it is think twice. But the flashback is one extra mana for one extra card. And I propose think thrice. Right? Yes. He's good. That's why I've got you on the podcast day night. Yeah. Yeah. Like so. So this is importantly a common. And I think that might be the that's probably the ceiling of this card, if I'm honest with you. And like it's tricky because even in pop you still have most of the good blue cantrip. Like you have brainstorm, you ponder, you have preordained, you have all of these cards. But like if you're actively supporting, like a blue discard deck, that's when you want to run cards like think twice or discard. I'm thinking like Simic madness, which I know I am a fiend for. I could see this getting into like, James, do you know what the card ray of erasure does? I can't say, but I do imagine just the worst. Thought scour. Imagine you drew the card next turn. That's ray of rage. I've run that in, pauper Madness deck before, because I just wanted. Would it more cantrip some more? Kind of like spells that did things in the graveyard or got cards in the graveyard? This is better than that. So I think, like, again, pauper. And if you're actively supporting the discard madness, things like threshold things in Graveyard Deck, then I think you consider this, outside of that, I think it might be tricky just because again, I've mentioned, like ponder and preordained our cards, we can run in pop at that. Yeah, I got cool card. I'm glad it exists because I like smack, but yeah. What do you think, James? Yeah, I quite like it. I still see think twice in quite a lot of cubes. And I think you can. There's that. Cubes we play, though. Yeah, maybe. Maybe that's the problem. I might have a problem. I think you can make a reasonable argument that this card is better than think twice, because normally, the way think twice plays out, right? Is that you ever cast it, on Miller over, alley or discard it, whatever it might be, and then you flash it back later in the game when you've kind of run out of stuff to do with your mana. Right? And I think often in that spot, you would rather have Fall Manager two from your graveyard from two manage, or one from the graveyard. Right. And then, you know, if this card is better than think twice, then it's then it is going to save. See a fair bit of play, right. And I unless it is for think twice is only seeing a bunch of plays nostalgia reasons and it's not actually that good of might also be true, but but I think this card is definitely worth testing. I think it's fairly powerful. And also like imagine you just cast, say, to Wayfinder and you mail this card over, like, how could you possibly lose that? You want to be gaming games? Exactly, exactly, exactly, exactly. No, I think this is cool. Listen, it's not the fastest card in the world. You know, we're playing magic in the year 2026 for, certainly games of magic with this card, it's not very good, but, in a slower cube, it's more about value while you have the time. Favors, slow cards, advanced game. I think this can be quite strong. It did. Ultimately drawing you three cards and three cards is lots of cards. Yeah, we do like that. We do like that. You have another card draw spell, James. And this one's a rare. Talk to us about riddles in the dark. Yeah, this is a cool one. I quite like the artwork as well. Yeah, this one's from Three People is in the background. Yeah. Very, very could be fatal. Yeah. So riddles in the dark is two in a blue for an instant says, look at the top four cards for your library and separate them into a face down pile and a face up pile, and opponent chooses one to face piles. Put that pile into your hand and the other into your graveyard. So this is an interesting effect. This is quite similar to, jumper, and it's a circle of half truths like two and a. Yeah, mere three, two minutes, I think. Do this maybe for one or more cards. Notice one less card. That's, Sorry. I've got up. Yeah, it's four mana for three, two minutes, but you do it with three cards. Yeah, yeah. I mean, this is not a bad card advantage spell for sure. It's, you know, it's getting you up cause it's sucking your graveyard. These are all good things, but, I think it's worth emphasizing that this way, where you make five piles and your opponent chooses is much less powerful than something like a fact or fiction. Where your opponent makes the piles and you choose, they just if you're digging for specific things, it is much and you hit it is much harder to end up with that thing in your hand, you know? And that does ultimately make this less powerful. Like, obviously, you know, there's ways you can do it where you make the first face up pile expressing enough, and then they give you the facedown pile, and that has everything you really wanted. But, ultimately how this is normally going to play out is you'll present them with a face up pile and a face down pile, a look at the face up pile of say, can I beat that face up pile? Is that face up pile enough to give my opponent an advantage in this game? And if it isn't, then they'll give you the face up pile. If it is, then they'll give you a face down pile. And how that plays out is you ultimately need to hit a lot of good cards in your top four, and I'll just, to get a good pile out of this. I think they're much better. Three mana culture effects, simply. And I'm not just talking about stock up. Obviously soccer face facts. We all know soccer face facts. But I think, you know, this is, in my mind, much weaker than something like compulsive research. Something like first for discovery. I think the fact that your opponent ultimately gets for final choice means that you will often not end up with the cards that you wanted. No, I would agree. I think in my head, I like the thought of this card more than the actual card, if that makes sense. Like in my head, I like the I like the riddle part of it. I like the ooh, am I going to get them? Am I going to trick them by putting one really broken card face up and two cards face down? Oh, will I get them? And I don't think it's going to. Yeah, I think as I, as you suggest, it's not going to play out like that as much. And also I've realized that we are without realizing it, I so as you were talking, I when you mentioned Atreus, or actress I looked up on Skyfall and the card Saurons Ransom came up, which, is effectively the same card. But it's one a to me. But you your opponent makes the piles, and you pick them, and the ring tempt you. And I've gone and found my notes from our survey for that. And they're basically the same as what I have for this card. At least to be consistent, they both start with a cool take on fact or fiction. Yeah, it's. Let's see the same thing. Okay. That's cool. Well, this is only one color, so that's that's what's missing. And it doesn't add the ring tempts you was like, I like the ring tempts you. But again, like I said with Kelly and storied not if you don't need to run additional mechanics. I don't, if that makes sense. So so so yeah, basically what I'm saying is I like we're in the dark. I'm probably gonna play it in like the blue desert thing we talked about last week, because again, that's kind of vibey in there. We can try and do that kind of stuff. But like realistically, I think it yeah, considering we have this card and it I, I think I think someone's ransom did see a bit of legacy play. Probably didn't stick around too much, but yeah, I don't think I think dark dark will kind of get ceilinged. I in like mid powered cubes where you kind of are looking for those like stories a bit more, where you're running cards because they're cool and vibe rather than just overall efficiency. Yeah, I do agree that the tiles part is cool and having that hidden information is cool. Like I hate like factor fixes already. I think a great design and I think, and and this is like a, the face down thing is a very interesting twist on it. So I think that is a good reason to include that. If, if you're going for optimizing on power level, it's probably not quite fair, but certainly not bad. All right. Cool. Yeah. We have one more blue card at home before we move on. Last have been blue. We have wizard stuff. This is one on a blue three artifact. Equipment with equipped creature has prowess. It has if an ability of equipped creature triggers that ability, triggers an additional time, it has equipped Wizard for a single mana. Otherwise, it's three to equip. So I don't think I need to say this. I'm gonna say the obvious thing first, that this does get better if your cube has wizards in it. I did a quick check, actually, so my main cube has nine wizards in blue, which is actually a third of my blue creatures, and that's actually the same as the mic go vintage cube. The mic go Vintage Cube. A third of its creatures are wizards. Oh, sorry. No, I thought it was blue creatures of wizards. Important caveat there. So I think there is a chance if you draft this in your deck, you will be able to equip this for one. But it's not free. Like, we need to keep in mind that the magic of the time this is. I will bring forth three mana, which is a fair whack. But it can be done. But we need to keep that in. In the back of my head when we're talking about this card, if we do get it equipped, I like giving a creature prowess. And then with the ability, I like the fact that it becomes double prowess, because the second ability of this card will work with the ability of the creature getting prowess. It'll double that up, but that is quite nice. There will also just be a bunch of other effects, like any, like doubling up abilities is something that we like as magic players is something that kind of is very big and very splashy. We we say this and I'm all like, I say this quite a lot like that might be a bit too commander for cube, like, especially where with the staff is in command, it is a thing that that we can build around. We know we're going to have it every time we have that creature. We want to double up in the commands already for us. When we're not guaranteed to have that in cube, we're not guaranteed to have that ability that we want to double up. The only double up we are guaranteed to get, if it's only creature, is the double prowess, and that when you're equipping that and casting this, it does feel like a little slow because we also then need like if we're relying on the prowess, we then we need a creature to equip it to. We need the manner to equip it, and then we need spells to come afterwards in order to get the value out of it. That's a lot of setup like this. That will mean that this will only be one for either cubes that are limited in their power, or the ones that are really trying to go slow and build an engine like, or and importantly as well, like if you're actually doing type matters, like if like that kind of ballpark, like if you're if wizards matter in your cube and there's changelings in there, then this becomes a lot more interesting to me. Outside of that, I think it might struggle, because there's, there's other equipment that rewards you for casting instead of sorcerer. You use like, like, do you want this or do you want a card like rune? Giant as pike? Like, I know there's probably a modern horizons version of that, but that's like the two minor equipment that, gives a creature first. Or I can protect my soul access number into the sort cards in your graveyard. Is that more what this deck wants? I'm not sure. Yeah. My initial take on this card was that it's not playable because, I think. The bar for equipment is quite high, for. It would be better to put an equipment in your deck rather than putting another creature in your deck. And this. Not only do we need to play it, have a creature in play, pace and manner to equip it for that creature. Have that creature be a wizard. Realistically, it's just outrageously expensive. Otherwise and have them not kill that creature. We then still need another thing to do, right? Because we still need to trigger that flower. So insurance double flowers. But But we better be getting highly paid off of that, you know? The doubling, the other triggered abilities thing is, is can be a bit tough because realistically, the most like 90% of the trigger abilities you get on creatures, when this creature enters the battlefield, this does not work with that. It does not work with activated abilities. The only thing I can think of it would make this card interesting to me is if you put this on a creature that already has powers. Now you have quad powers. That's kind of nuts. Okay, that's kind of cool. I like venom, then it's interesting because then I'm kind of looking at, can I kill the opponent in one hand? And a bunch of creatures are wizards. Yeah, but one I see that seems most interesting to me is, slick shot show off. Is that a wizard? That is V? Is it the otj? Okay. Yeah, it's a wizard. So this is one of Ed one, two flying haste and have you cast non creature spell gets plus two plus. So it's a bird wizard and also has plot for one of that. So I think this is kind of cool that I can plot my because I can plot my initial off. I can already have my Wizards thing in play. Nothing's been exposed for removal yet, right? And then in one turn, I can cast my show off for free as a quick hit for just one mana. It's then not very hard for me to cast enough spells to kill my opponent. Each instance and sorcery spell I cast at this point is plus six power. That's quite a lot like. Yeah, I know, I'm not saying that this card is is very good. Like, you know, just six. I'll show. It's already a very fattening card. You don't need this card to make it good. But in a deck with enough power creatures that I'll wizards. May I can see it doing something? So maybe it's a little bit better than just straight up unplayable, but it's not bad. But it's having reviews. Maybe slightly better than then. Unplayable. I like I mean, it's still just the thing of we have to jump through so many of I a lot has to align first to actually want to put this card in your deck, I think. But, you know, it's cool when it does. Now I get you know, that makes sense. There is I think I think there was a card in March of machines, at least one that already had double flowers. So if you had this, it would that and it has six prowess. Six X was cool I like that. Yeah. That's not. Yeah. Think of all those triggers. I'll spend a long time with them on the stack of magic on. Think of the I think it good times. Think of the clock. All right, James, I'm moving on to black. We've seen Bilbo. We've had some riddles in the dark. Now it's time to finally look at Gollum. What do you think about Gollum? Riddle master? Yeah. Comes back looking. Looking is as dubious as ever. He's, Such as ever. Yeah, yeah, it's, it's you. You wouldn't. You wouldn't go and have a drink from Valley, would he? So this is Gollum riddle, master. This is one a black for a free one. Legendary creature, halfling horror says as Gollum enters. Choose Otto. Or even they helpfully tell you that zero is even. And whenever an opponent cast a spell with manor, value of fetches and quality choose one that hasn't been chosen. You can put a plus one plus one counter on column and have each opponent lose two life, and you gain two life or two for a card. This isn't a bad card, but it's the. And there will be games where it plays out well, but you are kind of just guessing. As for Fang, because if your opponent if you know, if you choose, even the menu opponent goes like shock. This, you are just pretty sad about that. And there's the thing for free ones just don't tend to do very well at attacking. They, they tend to trade down very easily. They can the trade for any token, any low value creature was lying around. And this is, you know, it's face up what you've chosen. Right? So your your opponent does have an element of control over when this triggers. Like obviously if it's just sitting in play, they come sit around and not play off the spells in their hand because because that's simply that's not going to be winning formula. But if they have a removal spell that doesn't figure this, they can again, you know, they're going to play that before they play the for spells. Something like that. Plus one plus one counter. If it's a board, stay where that actually matters. While your opponent has quite a lot of control over when that comes about. I don't think it's a bad card, but it's, Is it as strong as you? But I think it's because it's not a synergy card. Right? It's kind of just a rate card. It's a general variant. Lots of better rate. Two tops in black that actually have a potential sort of snowball of that. But you think of, like, your dark confidence, your classic Bronco's even like, the Black Widow card from the recent stats I quite like, the, And bonus, there's a lot of really good options of this, Super Shredder. This is not anywhere near the weight of any of those cards, and I don't really see a reason why to include this unsolved synergy ground side just so struggle to see. Will, what cube is it going to make for cuts in? Unless you just sort of like lot of wrinkly stuff and which and you want some more golems, in which case crack. Put this in like people will put it in that deck. It's not a bad card, but, it does just seem like they're better options. No, I agree, I, I, I think more than Queen of dial actually, like, this really needs a keyword because for me, putting counters on this is just so almost pointless, if that makes sense. Like that one toughness look like, how many counters on how much is this going to need on it before I'm comfortable attacking with it? Well, you only ever get one counter. Oh, it's never mentioned. Oh I hate that so much more. Really? Okay. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. It hasn't been chosen. Yeah. Reading the card, explaining the cards. Oh yeah. Yeah. I'm so low on it. Like, if it had menace, it would be a better card. That's that's obvious. But, like, if it had something if if ever someone deserved. Exactly. Look up the guy or fear or something like that. Like fear would be vibe. Yeah. Yeah. Once ever. It's really tough actually. Because like, yeah, that Raiders like limit this card quite dramatically because like I, I'm a bit higher on like the ability to get get some value out of it because I think like the base level is if you're on the play you play this on to your opponent was likely going to cast an even spell next if they want to play on curve. If you're on the draw, you pick odd because it's going to be your opponent's turn three. So, like they're likely going to want to curve out like I, one of the damning things about this card is I don't think the abilities on it is enough to like, if my opponent played this, I wouldn't stop playing my three drop. Oh, yeah. No, I think can not play off free job, but you might, I mean, you wouldn't not play your free drop and say nothing. If you had another two drop, that was good. You might cast valid stat, right? Yeah, potentially. But I think, you know, this is good if you go for if you get all three over the course of a game like that is good. It is a good card, but it's, but it's not so powerful that it makes up for the times when it doesn't really pan out. I guess one thing to say for that is, you in black, you have hand disruption spells. This is a bit better when you know your opponent's hand right? No, that's very fair, but I the flip side of that is that this is competing for mana with cards like Deep Cabin Bat and Brain Magnet, which I think I'd rather have. Yes, I would rather have. At a sustained. Yeah. Gone is all my favorite characters I like. I like the the two mana. I think black one from the last set was really vibey, but it's it's nowhere near strong enough for Q but I was kind of hoping we might get something on this set. So Bilbo was a banger? Gollum, I thought. He doesn't get there as hard, but we have a couple more black cards before we finish up for the day. Next up we have head of the hunt. This is two black black for a 4 or 3 creature wolf with flash. And if a creature an opponent control would die exalted instead. When you do create a two to green wolf creature token, so I look at the time how these flash creatures often work out. Is that the kind of base level that like a doom blade, your opponent attacks you, flashes in the new block. If you can eat something with your lovely wolf, you get a free tutu, which is quite nice, like four mana for six fives worth of stats. It's kind of like a build your own chupacabra. That's quite nice. Like if you trade, you still get a tutu and excel of that card. That's not bad. That's like the base level. And, like, if you can flashes in and then combine it with other ways of destroying creatures, then I like that a lot more like, this is good and this is good in the deck with 12 X removals, because you're not only answering that creatures one, it's not really one for one. You're one for doing because you're getting that card with your card and you're making a token every time. That's quite nice. And like if there's repeatable ways of destroying creatures, then I like it even more like this. And again, this one might be a bit too commandery. I will caveat it, but there's a card I really like called Stronghold Assassin, which is one black black for two, one tap sacrifice a creature, destroy target non-black creature that with this is kind of a machine gun. Like every time you kill something, you make a token. That token, then it's safe to kill something that's quite nice. And also, the exile effect is really annoying. Like, that's, oddly, the. For me. Anyway, the most annoying thing about. What's that? What? The best shadow creature, James? The best shadow creature. Oh. Dark void walk. That's it. Yeah, yeah. One of the most annoying things about that card is just that it turns off all the death triggers. So there's absolutely no fun for any aristocrat player out there at all. It's like all all the triggers do nothing. And just. That will be, incidentally, quite strong. Yeah. This is one for every cube. This is one for the strongest cubes. But if you have a budget cube or lower powered environment, like, I think this will actually be one of the better things. You can do it for Manor in black like, I think you'll just like it. It has a ceiling, like it's definitely one for like mid powered cubes and lower, but in those cubes I think it will do quite a lot of work. Yeah, I think it's cool. Do you think this is better or worse than Cletus last one? I'm not looked at in a while. I, oh, it's a banger. It's quite similar for Manaphy, for when lifelink, when a creature divine. So I was I got two, two. And you can stack for tutus to put counters on it. Cletus is Viva. Cletus is also I was not. It used to be. Cletus was really expensive for a while, which is why it wasn't in I mean, it sadly constructs constructed format. Constructed magic is generally Pascal. He's not afraid to say. Are you saying out of the gate what isn't in standard anymore? James? That's what I had. That's what I had the last time I have. I just decided that. Get myself in legal, I get it. Oh my God, what year is it? Yeah, I think this is, you know, everything is fine in my cube. It's it's not that powerful. It has a bit of a dream like where you are in a time where you saw flash this in, in combat, a bunch of creatures trade off and you get a bunch of tutus. That's pretty good. It's it's kind of interesting if you're doing. Imagine you had, like, braids or smokestack or something in your deck, right? And then you're getting a bunch of zombies. All I think that will syntax wolves when they start creatures. Man, you can sack for wolves. Pay for your spike sack. That's that's kind of cool. That being said, it has free toughness. It doesn't have an ATV, it doesn't have any resilience for removal. It's sort of as an ATV. The ATV is a block. Your two powered creature, right? You have, yeah it is. Yeah, yeah. Instant speed for movable is better for this card. So I think, yeah, maybe a cube without lightning bolt would be a good time for. Yeah. No. Very solid. James, we have one more card for today. What do you think of Ravening rampage? Yeah. The Fenian rampage is two in a black for A32 creature wolf. I believe green black is is bull of some with sap. Okay, that sounds fun. Yeah. It says whenever this creature attacks, you may sacrifice another creature. If you do put a number of plus one plus one counters on this creature equal to the sacrifice creature's power. And when this creature dies. And that's goblins x y axis, this creature's power. So this is obviously similar to how we seen a. We've amassed orcs previously. Now we're amassing goblins. So mass goblins axes put X plus one plus one counters an army you control. It's also a goblin. If you don't control an army, make zero zero goblin army. This is a decent card. It's, A32 of dies into A33 is already not terrible. And this has the potential to be quite a bit stronger than that. With the ability to suck other creatures to grow it. I kind of like it in a sacrifice stack. Not just because you're potentially triggering of, creatures with the. When you sacrifice stuff, you know, your blood assists and mayhem devils and all that good stuff. But it's also, if you have a sacrifice out lets it it's, mitigating. Quite a big downside of this is, the vulnerability to removal that doesn't kill your creature like, it's a bit of a liability if I. If you sack a veil creature to the very best, incentivizes you to sack a larger creature, right. If you do that, and then your opponent Exile's vessel bounces there or something, you got nothing. That that's a bit of a disaster. So and having some sacrifice out there at some bar does actually protect against that. Listen, it's not, it's free mana. You get quite a lot for free mana. Often you asked to about stacks, you know, very, I want the stack outlets to be the peaceable, but they don't always want to. Just. Just do it once. It doesn't, I think quite make it is just a beat down card. But it's certainly not terrible. Like if you wanted to, have some logic cards in your in your queue that people would visit. This is one people would play honestly, people would play free to dice and freely and quite a lot of decks. But it's it's certainly not like running away with that many games, I would say. Yeah, I think you've got Nailed It like, this is kind of an aristocrat card without actually being an aristocrat card. Does that make sense? Like, it's like, I want this to go in like an aristocrat adjacent deck. Like, like effectively, this is the best doom traveler they've ever printed. Like, we're kind of. I'm kind of used to, like, one mana, one one dies, gets A11, or is it doom? Dissenter? I think that's a one. One that dies into a tutu. Yeah. You said this is A33 that dies into A33 with also the ability to sack more stuff as well. I can sack my doom traveler to the rampage. For all the value in the world, like. Yeah, I think it's pretty like like like. Yeah, like for me, 100%. We are doing aristocrats. If we are considering Rome's guard. But if we have any kind of. But if that deck exists, I think this one gets it definitely gets tested. Like. Yeah, I think it's kind of up for that. Like, it's not as powerful as, like our actual sacrifice outlets like Warren all trade. And some of the cards we talked about when we did the episode on air strikes recently, but like, this is what that deck wants. And the worst case scenario, I, another player would have put it in the deck as a way of beating down their opponent and finishing up a game of magic. Like, it's it's like it's flaw is just not that bad. And it has like the possibility for some quite high potential upside as well. So I think pretty solid. Yeah. It's not one for first of all in that stack, that stack right where you're trying to stack everything and chain them out. But it's it's good if you're like that black beat down with a little bit of sacrifice synergies. Yeah, I do agree. All right James pleasure man I thought that was really good. Bunch of cool Hobbit cards to go over today. Yeah, always a pleasure. I look forward to next week. Nice. And then one thing before next week, because we will actually get to play some of these cards. We're both doing prerelease this weekend. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I should be cool. I have not actually done a few of these first last couple of that, so I'm excited to get back to them. Yeah I think my last one was the last, Strix Avon I think was my last one. Yeah. Looking forward to going down to I do an LGS for the first time in a little while. Should be a lot of fun. But yeah, that's where we're going to call it for today. Do make sure you like, do make sure you give the podcast a five star review. Give us a thumbs up. Tell a friend greatly helps us out. Until next week, you have been listening to powerful Nothing. So goodbye from me. I say bye from James and we'll see you all soon. Goodbye.