Howdy, gamers! After taking a break to talk about Modern last week, we’re now back to our regularly scheduled Cube content!
A few weeks back, Mystery Booster 2 debuted at Gen Con, and while the set does not introduce any new tournament-legal cards to Magic, it does contain a lot of sweet stuff that you might find intriguing for your personal Cube! Today I’ll go over the most intriguing aspects of the set from my perspective as a Cube designer.
What’s in a Frame?
For players who only care about tournament-legal cards, the big draws of Mystery Booster 2 are the reprints showing up in new-to-them frames. Over 100 cards are getting their first white-border printings with this release, and over 100 different cards are showing up for the first time in the Future Sight frame as well. There’s a lot to work with if you want to design an all white-border Cube, and while there is comparatively much less to work with when it comes to the Future Sight frame, I’m sure that there is some aesthetic appeal to those printings for a fraction of the player base as well.
Digital to Paper Printings
Another really cool thing happening with Mystery Booster 2 is the first paper printing of a handful of cards previously only released in digital forms. There’s even a Shandalar card in the spread for old heads! The paper printings of seven Alchemy originals are much more appealing from my perspective.
Some of these cards are among the most powerful cards in the Arena Cube, and fans of that experience, as well as players just generally intrigued by these designs, will surely be happy to see these physical printings. There is some logistical weirdness with playing conjure in paper, given that you generate tokens that are treated as real cards, but I can’t deny that these cards have the potential to be very fun!
It’s probably a bit tedious to keep up with a player repeatedly blinking or cloning Oracle of the Alpha, but the other conjure cards are comparatively easy to keep up with. Tenacious Pup and Forsaken Crossroads mostly just read like they should exist in paper, and they’re great choices for this release. They don’t really ask any unique questions, and I will be happy to see them in paper Cubes.
Until last week I had included a copy of Nearby Planet in my Eldrazi Twobert, which as an acorn-stamped card from Unfinity occupies very similar space to these Alchemy cards. The card played fine and blended in perfectly with the Cube of otherwise tournament-legal cards, with the decision to cut it ultimately coming down to the fact that Tron was just too strong in the Cube and that there was no need to prop it up with a non-tournament-legal release!
I expect that these Alchemy cards will fit into the broad world of Cube in much the same way. They’re fun and quirky, and they’ll only really raise eyebrows if they’re not at an appropriate power level for your Cube.
Playtest Cards
This next stretch of cards, on the other hand, is both aesthetically jarring and is generally explicitly stuff that hasn’t been greenlit for any kind of competitive play, not to mention that most players won’t have much knowledge of every playtest card printed in a Mystery Booster release. I find a lot of these designs to be quite fun, but they do require sort of a “rule zero” conversation about their inclusions in your Cube, just so nobody inadvertently walks into a style of Magic that is wholly unfamiliar to them.
Normally I would break down my picks for the Top 10 most Cubeable cards from a release, but given that these cards are so obscure, I don’t see a reason to break down what would make one more Cubeable than another, nor to limit myself to just ten cards! You’re either into allowing playtest cards in your environment or you’re not. Today I’m just going to highlight all of the playtest cards that I think are neat for Cube, and what I like about them. Maybe you’ll find some that tickle your fancy in my list, too!
Heart of a Duelist
I love the Yu-Gi-Oh! reference here, and the ability to just draw from the middle of your deck is very funny. By replacing itself with the draw a card ability when Heart of a Duelist enters, this is just a fun and not especially useful card to put into any deck. I actually think the fun here breaks down a lot as you add ways to synergize with the card, and in that way, I maybe like this more as an art piece than a game piece, but it is very cool all the same.
No-Regrets Egret
Impatient Iguana was one of my favorite playtest cards from the original Mystery Booster, and a generally simple card with a funky ability in your opening hand adds very little complexity to a game of Magic. How often have you wished you could take a peek at the top of your deck to see if you were going to draw a land before keeping a hand? As somebody who always looks at the top of my deck after I mulligan to see how things would have gone, I adore this design.
Snap Judgment
Snap Judgment is quite weak, and giving it cycling makes it easier for absolute cowards to play the card, but I love this effect. At five mana, it’s pretty difficult to leverage this card in a way where it won’t be clear to your opponent if they should concede in response, and in that way, this is maybe more of an homage to MARVEL SNAP than a game piece, but it is very cool.
Naturalize 2
People who love to whine that you can’t interact with emblems finally got their wish! Kind of! There’s a non-zero chance that I add this card to my Vintage Cube as a generally playable card that can answer the initiative, and it’s also not a non-starter in any Cube that is just generally interested in a Naturalize.
Wrenn and One
Wrenn and One is weird and busted, and I wish it were real. I would absolutely put this in my Vintage Cube if it were a tournament-legal card, and I’m sure I’ll still think about it often as things are. If you’re open to playtest cards in your high-power environment, then this card looks really fun to play with.
Don’t Worry About It
Either as a way to add another playable Aura to your Cube or just a wonky way to copy spells, Don’t Worry About It is a fun and powerful way to copy your cards. If you’re trying to break it, then it’s clearly nonsense with extra-turn effects while also just being generally useful, though I kind of just like this in any Cube where doing wacky and fun stuff is your goal more than presenting a balanced play environment.
Jund ‘Em Out
Minor gripes about the list of potential cards that Jund ‘Em Out copies aside, this card is both fun and properly evocative of playing a Constructed Bloodbraid Elf deck. The controlled chaos here is delightful.
Wrath of Leknif and Wisedrafter’s Will
Wrath of God itself is pretty unfun in lower-powered Cubes, but it is fun to think about this design that Jon Finkel famously submitted as the card he would want printed if he won the Magic Invitational. This is another card that you could put in your Vintage Cube or generally higher-power format that is a nice nod to the history of the game. I think Wisedrafter’s Will is much less fun and I hate that it has the “draw a card” out for when you’re not interested in the other unfun and busted half of the card, but it does deserve a shout-out as Kai Budde’s submission.
Mox Poison
Yet another card that I would really only recommend for a Vintage or I suppose Commander Cube, Mox Poison is a funny and powerful “fixed” version of a Mox. If I opened the floodgates for non-tournament-legal cards in my Vintage Cube, this would absolutely be among the cards that made the cut.
Lands
Finally, there are many lands in Mystery Booster 2 that just do cool and mostly normal things. My biggest issue with most of the multicolor lands is that they’re one-ofs, which can make your land column a little weird, but I do believe that most of these designs would be very fun to play with.
Gobland specifically could easily just be a real card, given the existence of Dryad Arbor, and probably its biggest offense in that regard is that it can tap for mana. Playing Gobland as the 17th land in a low-to-the-ground aggressive deck sounds awesome!
Mystery Booster sets tend to be more sought after for their standalone draft experience and reprint equity, but there are some appealing designs in the playtest cards to consider for more off-the-wall Cubes, or even for just a light peppering of nonsense in your more ordinary Cube. I haven’t committed to adding any Mystery Booster 2 cards to my Cubes just yet, but I know that, at the very least, Oracle of the Alpha is getting a lot of buzz. I know that I love it when I see these cards in other people’s Cubes!
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