Greetings, gamers, and welcome to my final article of 2023! It’s been a great year for Cube draft, and now it’s time for my third annual Cube year in review, where I look back on every set and compare my initial impressions with what I’ve learned over time playing with this year’s releases.
I went back and reread my first two year in review articles before writing today, in addition to glancing over my Top 10 lists from this year, and as of now I’m feeling like my calls this year were a significant improvement over my first two years writing about Cube. We’ll see how that holds up as I really dive into things, but I did at the very least succeed in my goal from last year of having my Cube card of the year actually on one my Top 10 lists! In the number one spot from its respective set, no less!
Come along as I revisit every Magic release from this year and my early picks for the top 10 Cube cards from those releases, to see how my expectations stacked up against reality as well as to shine light on cards that I missed or that were featured in Commander decks that I don’t generally cover. Let’s dig in!
Phyrexia: All Will Be One
I would fail a pop quiz that involved differentiating Phyrexia: All Will be One and March of the Machine in any meaningful way. I can see looking at the card files that this was the toxic set, but for the most part, the most iconic cards from either set could have realistically been printed in one set or the other. They’re solid sets and I Cube with a good number of cards from both, but the cards definitely feel more memorable than the sets here.
I generally feel good about my Top 10 list here, but I’ll admit that Bloated Contaminator and Experimental Augury are on the specific side and there are contenders that could have and should have pushed them off the list. I didn’t discuss Elesh Norn, Mother of Machines because I find the Torpor Orb aspect to be tremendously unfun, but even still, it is a noteworthy printing for Cube designers with different sensibilities.
The two cards that I would have subbed in in retrospect would be Glissa Sunslayer and Archfiend of the Dross. The first strike plus deathtouch combo on Glissa is just enough to show up in almost any Golgari deck, even if the card isn’t a huge draw to playing those colors.
I scoffed a bit seeing Archfiend of the Dross in the AlphaFrog Vintage Cube on Magic Online (MTGO) absent the Metamorphic Alteration combo, but I was pleasantly surprised the first time I found myself putting the card in a deck. It’s just kind of a solid big monster that sometimes deals the full twenty on its own! It can hang in powered environments, and doesn’t seem oppressive for lower-powered Cubes either.
I’ve also personally been enjoying Mercurial Spelldancer in the Tempo Twobert, but blue beatdown is so often weak in Cubes that I don’t see the card as a great candidate for the world of Cube broadly.
All Will Be One Commander was a solid release, and actually featured three cards in the current run of the MTGO Vintage Cube! Glimmer Lens is a modest card that offers some nice support to artifact themes, white aggressive decks, and Stoneforge Mystic specifically. Staff of the Storyteller is subtly powerful if you’ve never seen it in action, and while it’s not a dominating force in Vintage Cube, it does have the potential to be oppressive in lower-powered environments. I’m lower on Otharri, Suns’ Glory than a lot of players in Vintage Cube, but the card is really messed up if you dial the power back from there much at all.
March of the Machine
My Top 10 list for March of the Machine got a lot right, but it is, by my estimation, my most flawed list of the year. Again, most of these picks and even a lot of the order of the cards are pretty accurate, but Bloodfeather Phoenix probably just shouldn’t be on the list, and putting Khenra Spellspear at number two was definitely the result of me wearing my Prowess goggles and channeling 2019 Ryan. The card can and does fit into a lot of Cubes, but it just doesn’t make all that much difference with the volume of red two-mana creatures otherwise available. I’ve also become a pretty firm Rampaging Raptor hater, but the card at least has a following and it is literally in the MTGO Vintage Cube.
I had some more significant misses here as well. I underrated the backup mechanic entirely, which was largely due to me finding the mechanic pretty unintuitive at first blush. To be fair, if you have to play with a lot of backup cards, the keyword is just more difficult to parse than designs that play similarly with exalted and giving an ability to any creature attacking alone, but once you start playing with them, the ability is easy enough to retain on an individual card basis. Boon-Bringer Valkyrie specifically was a bigger deal in the Baneslayer Angel space than those red two-drops were in theirs.
The other two cards that deserved shout-outs were Etali, Primal Conqueror and, to a lesser extent, Breach the Multiverse. The milling aspect of Breach is something of a turnoff, but the card is quite powerful and can be really fun to resolve. Etali is mostly only acceptable in high-power formats, yet may be my favorite card printed this year to put on the battlefield. I am always happy to go out of my way to play and cast that one, and it should have had a Top 5 slot in this set for sure. Likely Top 3.
March of the Machine Commander didn’t hit as hard as One, but that bar is impossibly high. I personally like Chivalric Alliance as a white discard outlet in Spooky Cube, and Death-Greeter’s Champion is a really solid red aggressive creature. Guardian Scalelord is another card that is literally in the current MTGO Vintage Cube, and while five-mana creatures are replacement-level as a category in Vintage Cube in my experience, the card definitely does powerful things from time to time largely by virtue of the ability to backup a different creature.
Chivalric Alliance; Death-Greeter’s Champion; Guardian Scalelord
March of the Machine: The Aftermath
In more than one way, March of the Machine: The Aftermath was the worst release of 2023. Commander Masters is the biggest competition in that regard, though the lack of new content in that set makes it not especially relevant for the purpose of today’s article. Both products left local game stores wondering how the hell they were supposed to sell these things.
There are really only two especially noteworthy cards for Cube in this release, and I had them at one and two on my list. Nissa, Resurgent Animist can show up in Vintage Cube as well as somewhat lower-powered environments, and Feast of the Victorious Dead is a really powerful Peasant Cube option that can show up in other lower-powered environments as well.
Coppercoat Vanguard is the other card from this release that I personally Cube with, but I will say that Ob Nixilis, Captive Kingpin does deserve some attention here. It’s kind of a funky build-around, but that’s a good use of a gold slot in the right Cube. It’s very specific, but there’s something fun to chase there. Pia Nalaar, Consul of Revival is an even more specific challenge, but it’s definitely on my Cube bucket list after playing it a good amount in Explorer.
The Lords of the Rings: Tales of Middle-earth
I generally like my Top 10 list for The Lord of the Rings, though two things read very loudly looking over it. Most of the cards I listed are powerful in the ways that I said they are, but Shadow Summoning is kind of a dud. It’s not unplayable, but it’s at a pretty specific power level when you consider the range of Orzhov options in the Sacrifice space. I think putting The One Ring in the middle of the list was a good call, but I think my write-up gave the wrong reasons. The card is too powerful to be fun at all for most Cubes, but it’s something of a high-power staple. Reprieve remains my favorite card for Cube from the set, and is easily a Top 5 Cube card of the year for me.
The most notable miss was not mentioning Palantír of Orthanc. It only took playing with the card one time in Vintage Cube to fall in love, and while the one-sided Howling Mine is too much for lower-powered Cubes, it is at least a Vintage Cube staple. The other misses are the land cyclers, and while I’m not as big on them as others, both Troll of Khazad-dûm and Lórien Revealed have homes in a lot of Cube. Lórien Revealed definitely should have made the list specifically for what it adds to Pauper.
In terms of card volume, Tales of Middle-earth Commander offers fewer total cards than All Will Be One Commander, but it does have a massively impactful Vintage Cube card in Forth Eorlingas! The card singlehandedly turned Boros Aggro from an awkward compromise when you couldn’t get enough red or white playables to the de facto best aggressive archetype in Vintage Cube. Sail into the West is another nice one that hasn’t quite lived up to my expectations but can excel given the right conditions as an instant-speed Wheel of Fortune.
Wilds of Eldraine
This is another list that I think I got mostly right. Virtue of Locthwain at number one is just correct, and I’m proud of myself for sticking my neck out a little for Heartflame Duelist. The two misses on my list were Embereth Veteran and Godric, Cloaked Reveler. Both technically playable, both fine cards, and both near the bottom of the list at least, but they offer more supporting evidence that I was a little too generous to red creatures in my evaluations this year. I like any Cube with Royal Treatment, but it’s another one of those very specific cards that is just redundant with existing effects that I should have listed lower if at all.
There are two significant misses from my Top 10 list, and two additional cards that are worth at least a shoutout. The card that I’ve been waiting to write about for specifically this article ever since this list went live is Werefox Bodyguard. I read the card as a Guardians of Faith variant and not the Fiend Hunter upgrade that it is. The card is not especially fun, but it is strong and could realistically hang even in Vintage Cube. The other big miss was not mentioning Agatha’s Soul Cauldron. I find the card to be tremendously complex, but it was a neat addition during its brief stay in the MTGO Vintage Cube and is a very powerful feature of my Artifact Twobert. The card is unique, powerful, and worthy of praise.
The other two cards worth mentioning are Syr Ginger, the Meal Ender and Blossoming Tortoise. A two-mana colorless threat isn’t a huge deal in the world of Cube, but it is definitely useful as either an easy-to-cast threat for two-plus-color aggressive decks or as a colorless spell to round out a mono-color build. It’s also another great addition to the Artifact Twobert.
I thought about Blossoming Tortoise a lot during preview season, but I convinced myself that the card was cooler than it is good. That may be true, but it’s really cool and pretty good! It’s just a solid semi-consistent ramp card that can really boost Lands archetypes, with some cute combo stuff like infinite power Lavaclaw Reaches as an option as well.
Wilds of Eldraine Commander mostly offers a cycle of cards to consider for high-powered Cubes with a taste for the monarchy. Court of Garenbrig is the big get for costing three, and is currently in the MTGO Vintage Cube.
Doctor Who Commander
The Doctor Who Commander decks are very specific, very wordy, and mostly offer cards for Doctor Who fans to play in their casual Commander decks. A lot of the designs are awesome, though they are specific enough that there’s nothing in this release that I really expect to be a Cube staple. My Top 10 list mostly gets things right, but I would move Astrid Peth to number one. It offers the most for the most environments and has occupied my thoughts the most since these decks released.
I gave Sonic Screwdriver an honorable mention for the Time Vault combo, and the other card that I personally Cube with is Cyberman Patrol in the Artifact Twobert. I have a lot of appreciation for this product, but admittedly there’s not a ton here for non-Commander Cubes.
The Lost Caverns of Ixalan
And that brings us to the final release of the year in The Lost Caverns of Ixalan! This is another Top 10 list that I think go things mostly right, though I was probably bigger on both Confounding Riddle and Hulking Raptor than they deserved. Both great cards, though, and both totally Cubeable. This set was had a lot of great Cube cards!
A card that I had on my short list but ultimately eschewed was Sentinel of the Nameless City, and that definitely should have been in my Top 10. I don’t think that the card is a Cube staple or anything, given how crowded the space for green threes is, but it is quite strong and a very natural pairing with Llanowar Elves. The other card that I think is worth mentioning, even if it still might not have made my list, is Trumpeting Carnosaur. The modality is nice and discover five is just fun.
It was amusing to me to look back and see that I put the Restless lands on my Wilds of Eldraine list while eschewing them from my The Lost Caverns of Ixalan list. The honorable mention treatment is more consistent with how I have handled land cycles in the past, and I think I got it right with Ixalan and wrong with Wilds.
I have two reasons for this. The first is that there are so many land options and reasons to pick one over the other that, even though these lands will be Cubed with a lot, that’s just kind of a known quantity, and I think these Top 10 lists are more valuable when I critically find ten spells worth discussing. The second reason is somewhat related, and it’s that this framing allows me to give these land cycles their own article and really dig into where they shine.
The Lost Caverns of Ixalan Commander is the only release that I wrote about when it was released, which I did in conjunction with the Jurassic World Collection.
This release was solid, though a lot of the most significant cards are support for specific creature types. Broadside Bombardiers is a Vintage Cube-caliber card that I remain hopeful to see in future iterations of the MTGO list.
A Global Review
2023 was another great year for the world of Cube broadly, with a ton of generally playable cards being printed and even more great options for more specific environments. Beyond that, the Universes Beyond releases offer new aesthetics to explore. I’ve heard rumblings of players designing just general Universes Beyond-themed Cubes, and I’m sure that there are plenty Lord of the Rings Cubes out there already.
Looking back on my Top 10 calls, I’m proud of the work that I did this year. Most of my Top 5 lists look very accurate in retrospect, and I didn’t miss too terribly much outside of that. Certainly nothing on the level of last year’s omission of Fable of the Mirror-Breaker!
Cube Card of the Year
On that note, it’s time to name my 2023 Cube card of the year. A few cards come to mind, but I’ve gotta give it to Bitter Triumph.
I’ve found that a lot of players are more willing to first-pick a Doom Blade than they maybe should be, and Bitter Triumph is well with a first pick in most Cubes. As a baseline, it’s just good interaction at a great rate that also opens up powerful potential synergies. Most notably, this card is a massive upgrade for Reanimator decks.
I’ll be thrilled if I call next year’s most Cubeable cards at a similar rate, and I’ll be striving to improve where I can as always. I’ll do my best to report on fewer medium red creatures! That’s all for me this year. I’ll catch you in 2024, gamers!
