Greetings, gamers! This week’s article is similar to a lot of my usual set reviews for Cube, though instead of focusing on a specific release, I have a spread of several smaller topics prepared for you today! Murders at Karlov Manor releases alongside two supplemental products, and while neither packs many broadly Cubeable goodies, both do have a few cards worth shining the spotlight on. Today I’ll touch on Karlov Manor Commander and Ravnica: Clue Edition, and as a treat I’ll be offering expanded thoughts on the new surveil duals.
Karlov Manor Commander
As per usual, Karlov Manor Commander consists of four preconstructed decks, each with a theme expanding on the main set release. Blame Game gives us some suspect cards, Deep Clue Sea does exactly what you would expect, Revenant Recon boasts a surveil theme, and Deadly Disguise offers tools to support the named mechanic and other shenanigans with face-down cards.
Deadly Disguise definitely warrants the closest look if you want a Cube environment designed around tricky three-mana 2/2s. Kaust, Eyes of the Glade and Panoptic Projektor both jump off the page as powerful options for such environments, and Duskana, the Rage Mother is positively charming.
We’re a long way from being able to fully support surveil as a Cube archetype in a singleton environment, and further still from suspecting and goading creatures being the framework for their own style of deck. Some individual cards like Copy Catchers and Serene Sleuth do jump off the page, though. There are plenty of two-mana 2/1 flyers in blue with better abilities abstractly these days, but Copy Catchers does have an exciting text box nonetheless! Serene Sleuth violates my rule about not reading any card with the word “goad,” but an Eager Cadet that makes a Clue is noteworthy, even if it’s notably weaker than Thraben Inspector. I could definitely see the card shining in some sort of Combat Cube, particularly one that doesn’t embraces goading creatures as a central aspect of the gameplay.
Investigating is just a generally powerful thing to do in a game of Magic, and will be even more powerful in some specific Cubes. I don’t personally see much appeal in going into three colors for Morska, Undersea Sleuth, and I similarly see Armed with Proof as below rate for something that I’d be actively excited to cast, but there is some merit to both cards. Merchant of Truth is also a little below rate when compared to other white four-mana spells, but it does interest me.
Finally, there is one card from these decks that I find actively appealing, independent of any synergies. Feather, Radiant Arbiter would have made a bigger splash a few years ago, but even today, a three-mana 4/3 lifelinking flyer is a big deal in a damage race. Any aversion I have to the card has to do with reading its triggered ability or the comparative difficulty of playing Boros over mono-white or mono-red. While I don’t see it as a Vintage Cube-caliber card, it offers formidable stats for lower-powered and combat-centric Cubes.
Ravnica: Clue Edition
The power level on Ravnica: Clue Edition is a little all over the place. Some cards are appealing if a little under rate, some cards are plainly unappealing, and a couple look actively pushed. I don’t really know what development of a release such as this looks like, but the power band on these cards is really wide.
On the bottom of the power band, we have cards like Syndicate Heavy, which I would have considered for my Pauper Twobert if it were a common instead of a rare. In the middle of the power band, we get to cards like Lavinia, Foil to Conspiracy and Ecstatic Electromancer, which have appealing abilities but ask for a specific, lower-power environment to really shine. Boros Strike-Captain, Scuttling Sentinel, and Unruly Krasis are a few more examples of cards that I almost like but are just a little too modest to have many homes.
One last specific card that I think is a home run if you have something of a Game Objects Cube is Apothecary White. The card is very similar to Merchant of Truth in that it’s looking for specific support as well as an aversion to the most independently powerful white four-drops, but making a Food token when you attack with any creature and giving you something to do with Food when you don’t need the life are both very powerful in the right environment.
At the top of the power band, we have a new Hellrider variant in Headliner Scarlett and another game object-generating machine in Carnage Interpreter. There’s give and take between Headliner Scarlett and Hellrider, but the card is generally an upgrade for 2024 Magic when you consider how powerful creatures (see: blockers) have become, as well as how important generating card advantage is to closing games.
Carnage Interpreter is just wild to me. I guess if your deck has a lot of other three-plus-mana spells and/or you draw too many lands, you’ll have to discard a bunch of cards, but there are many, many ways to take advantage of generating four Clues. Not to mention that the card just gets to be a 5/5 with menace most of the time when it sticks around.
If you don’t have much battlefield presence and the Interpreter dies right away, I suppose it takes some time to crack all of those Clues, but the ceiling on this card is so high that I expect it will only find homes in high-powered Cubes, which really makes the card stick out like a sore thumb in this release. Amusingly, I do expect that this card is closer to Avatar of Discord than it might appear if you try to stick it in a Cube or deck with a high mana curve, but this one packs a ton of punch in decks that are otherwise good at emptying their hand.
Lastly, Ravnica: Clue Edition offers us a cycle of two-color lands that enter the battlefield tapped and can tap for four additional mana to investigate. You’re functionally paying seven mana to draw a card with these, so I don’t expect them to make a ton of waves, but Peasant Cubes and Game Object Cubes have something to chew on here. The slower the gameplay in your environment, the more lands like this can shine.
Expanded Thoughts on Surveil Lands
I touched on the surveil land cycle a little in my Murders at Karlov Manor Top 10 article. As promised, here I am to offer more insight.
These lands initially stood out to me as an appealing option for graveyard themes, but as I’ve thought more about them and watched the impact they’ve had on Magic broadly, I’ve come around on them just being generally powerful. The best evidence is that they have already made their presence known in Modern Constructed, even in decks like Golgari Yawgmoth that want to play quickly to the battlefield. They are of course heavily subsidized by fetchlands, but when a creature deck is willing to register a land that enters the battlefield tapped in such a large and powerful format, that is a very loud endorsement.
What I really like about these cards for Cube is that they’re as good as or better than the next land if your environment eschews fetchlands, and just like in Constructed, they get much more powerful in conjunction with them. It’s more difficult to find the right surveil land for a two-color deck than a Triome that you can play, but you’ll generally be happier to have it in a two-color deck that can fetch for it. When the Triome cycle was completed, I wrote about how these lands incentivize four and five-color decks more than three-color ones (linked below), and on similar lines, I see the surveil lands as the better option for Cubes looking to keep things to two or three colors.
Magic Online (MTGO) Spotlight Cube designers often break singleton to double up on mana-fixing lands and/or fetchlands. I wouldn’t presume to tell anyone else how to curate their own Cube, but this break from singleton shatters verisimilitude for me, and it makes me look more critically at every other card and whether it could be argued to be a weaker version of some other card in the Cube, which stands out once you’re willing to break singleton at all. I would assume the average player isn’t remotely as sensitive to this as I am, but I go out of my way to avoid breaking singleton in my designs, and that’s a big part of why I do so.
The reason I bring this up is, again, not to offer any “advice” on what anyone “should” do, but to state that these lands scale very well with power level and increase the volume of great mana-fixing lands for any Cube environment while being fetchable. There’s still an argument to double-up on fetches and duals in Cubes that want to incentivize players to play four or five colors often, and/or that just want more untapped lands to support faster games, but my bias is clearly in support of maintaining singleton, and I see these lands as a very welcome way to make this easier to do.
Murders at Karlov Manor felt like a pretty middle-of-the-road release to me at first blush, and the supplemental sets don’t add all that much to the world of Cube, but there are a number of specific as well as individually powerful cards to note. I don’t know where the chips will fall, but at this point I’m leaning on the surveil lands having a much bigger impact on Magic broadly and Cube specifically than I originally anticipated. I’m always happy to get new Cube goodies, and this package of releases gives us plenty to chew on!
