After a three-week run, it’s time to say goodbye to the Magic Online (MTGO) Modern Cube. This run of the Modern Cube saw a pretty significant overhaul with the removal of Signets, which I believe was a great first step to differentiating it from Legacy and Vintage Cube. I wrote my initial thoughts on the updates when they launched, and today I’ll be going over how this run went and what I would like to see from the Modern Cube in the future.
The Modern Cube definitely feels relevantly different from the other MTGO Cubes. There are tons of examples of cards that play very differently in Modern Cube from how they do in Vintage or Legacy Cube. That said, the experience doesn’t feel fully unique. I’m a lot more excited about Hero of Bladehold in Modern Cube than in Vintage Cube, but what I would really like to see is more strongly supported themes in Modern Cube that build on its own identity.
Modern Cube is generally more about planeswalkers than other Cubes, and I believe there are some cool ways to lean further into this. The Gatewatch Oath cycle – Oath of Gideon et al. – seems right at home in Modern Cube to me, and Sarkhan the Masterless struck me as an odd cut for this update. Modern Cube struggles with providing identities for the decks you can draft and an explicit planeswalkers-matter theme would go a long way.
The other theme that I would like to see ramped up in the Cube is tokens. There are a handful of great token generators in the Cube and cards that play well with tokens, but the support runs dry in a lot of spots where I believe ramping up the support would result in a more fun and coherent experience. This position will become more fleshed out as I break down the changes I would make to every color.
White
I was pretty happy with Azorius Control decks in this run of the Cube, though I would more commonly skew Bant for these archetypes. Ultimately my belief that green was the most powerful color in the Cube proved true to me in practice, but we’ll get back to that.
White has a lot of powerful planeswalkers and some solid removal spells, including the often backbreaking Quarantine Field. I had more success with the white aggressive decks than I thought I would, but I would credit a lot of that to Sword of Body and Mind, which I can’t say is the most satisfying play experience (though that’s another thing that I’ll circle back to later).
The white decks generate interesting battlefields and combat steps, and the changes that I would make to the color would largely be cutting cards that fell flat for cards that support the two themes that I believe the Cube would do well to lean into.
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Heliod, Sun-Crowned has only a small amount of lifegain support and combos with Walking Ballista, and none of that is worth preserving. There’s a good amount of Disenchant-like effects in the Cube and nowhere near the number of effects to maindeck Disenchant proper. Monastery Mentor really doesn’t fit the white decks big or small, Condemn is boring and weak, and Timely Reinforcements is really just worse than Omen of the Sun anyway.
The cards I’m advocating for adding here all facilitate a token and/or planeswalker theme, which I believe play very well in this environment and are resonant. I’m willing to allow Elspeth, Sun’s Nemesis to continue to exist in the Cube, but I’m personally offended anytime Elspeth, Knight-Errant is cut.
Blue
If green is the best color in Modern Cube, then blue plays a strong second chair. Any changes that I would make to blue have to do with a couple of odd cards that seem to have intended synergies that didn’t really land or to cut back the color’s power level. There are two elephants in the room in terms of blue’s power level in the Cube:
Mass Manipulation is incredibly good at ending the game on the spot, though I mostly believe that if you’re going to generate quad blue and eight mana you’re probably due that sort of impact. I will also say that a number of Mass Manipulations did rot in my hand in games that I lost. Sublime Epiphany, on the other hand, felt like cheating. It never happened to me, so I just have to imagine that many other things are going very wrong if you’re resolving Sublime Epiphany in Modern Cube and losing. For now, I strongly advocated the removal of Sublime Epiphany, whereas Mass Manipulation is something that I would keep in and watch as the Cube evolves.
Cryptic Command is also really powerful relative to the format, but I think cutting it is a more drastic measure that I wouldn’t take at this time. Rather, the other changes I would make would involve cutting some gimmicky cards and tightening blue’s identity. Delver of Secrets and Sea-Dasher Octopus really felt like they were completely without a home, and Thassa, Deep-Dwelling loudly invited you to draft themes that weren’t very good. I’m just now learning that Emry, Lurker of the Loch was even in the Cube and I never saw Thassa’s Oracle do anything with or without Inverter of Truth.
I like cutting Delver, Emry, four-mana Thassa, and her Oracle, but I think that a tempo theme to support the Octopus and a reintroduction of Thassa, God of the Sea would make a much more appealing blue devotion deck.
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Tamiyo, the Moon Sage is both a nice card to reintroduce if there’s going to be a strong token theme and just a good planeswalker. This suggestion doesn’t add a ton to reinforce a blue tempo deck, but I do believe that Thassa, God of the Sea is the best individual card to add and this update would be a good starting point to see where those decks end up.
Black
In my initial Modern Cube article, I noted that black devotion looked like a solid archetype, but I never drafted a seat that made it seem viable nor played against such a deck this time around. There are just too many cards in the Cube that either interact favorably against a Phyrexian Obliterator or go over the top of one to seriously consider going in on the card, and while Gray Merchant of Asphodel is a nice payoff, I just don’t see anything but the very best build of mono-black working out.
I mostly only saw black show up as a splash color during this run, and a lot of that has to do with many of black’s themes being underdeveloped. I played against a couple of Cryptbreakers, but my opponent never drew a card with one or utilized the card they were discarding. Some of my opponents had Yawgmoth, Thran Physician in their decks, but I didn’t see a single good Yawgmoth deck. Beyond that, I have never played so many consecutive games of a Cube with Griselbrand in it without seeing one on the battlefield once. I’m on board with leaving in Gifts Ungiven and the Unburial Rites for Griselbrand package, but I think at least one more way to reanimate a creature seems necessary to me to fully sell it.
So my wishlist for black is to see more Zombies to make the synergistic Zombie cards work, more tokens and/or sticky creatures to get Yawgmoth online, and another reasonable reanimating card.
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Stop trying to make Ink-Eyes, Servant of Oni happen. It isn’t going to happen.
Red
I’m trying to remember a single red deck that I drafted during this run, and I’m coming up blank. I do know that I lost a match to one because they had Sword of Body and Mind in two of the games. I don’t think red is far off, but it does have some duds that could use cleaning up, and I’d like to turn some of the less-powerful/useful cards in the spread into cards that support planeswalker and beatdown decks.
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I’ve gotta say, having Anax, Hardened in the Forge in the Cube without Embercleave was a huge miss for me, and that’s a big one I’d like to see rectified one way or the other. The Arclight Phoenix stuff just doesn’t really work here, Ancient Grudge seems mostly like it was missed with the Signet update, and I think Pyrite Spellbomb is supposed to be a cute Lurrus of the Dream-Den trick but it’s just… not good.
There aren’t really great tokens cards for red that aren’t currently in the Cube given that Goblin Bombardment isn’t legal in Modern, but a couple more cheap creatures and some good planeswalker stuff would greatly increase my interest in the color.
Green
Green was, as I expected it would be, plainly the most powerful color in this run. I found it difficult to justify taking nongreen cards in a lot of Pack 1, Pick 1 scenarios, and most of my losses came at the hands of opponents who were playing green mana acceleration.
Mana acceleration is ultimately just a big part of green’s color identity, and if you move too far off it, then you risk the color being unplayable. Minimally I think that Utopia Sprawl is too powerful in this environment, and I’d make the argument that given Joraga Treespeaker’s pedigree in Vintage Cube that it could probably stand to be cut as well.
There are a couple of green cards that I don’t think are good enough for the Cube as well, but for now I’m more interested in bringing the color down to the level of the others.
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Multicolor
I didn’t see a single companion used as a companion this run, and the lone Yorion, Sky Nomad that an opponent had in their deck wasn’t exactly impressive. I think that the gold slots in the Cube are generally pretty well spent, but I’d pull all three companions right back out, and also remove two of the most obnoxious cards in the Cube in Ashiok, Nightmare Weaver and Uro, Titan of Nature’s Wrath while I’m here.
Ashiok just isn’t ever good unless it wins the game on its own, and is comparably miserable to Jace, Memory Adept in Cube — a card that is correctly eschewed from every MTGO Cube. You can allow this sort of thing in a Cube where your opponent is somewhat likely to win the game on Turn 4 or 5, but in Modern Cube Ashiok tends to either get Oblivion Ringed or run away with the whole game.
I’m just completely off Uro in most environments. Blue and green are the best colors in Modern Cube as it is in this Cube and the draft where I had Uro was a pretty easy and unfun 3-0.
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Out with the junk, in with the planeswalker support. Mayhem Devil strikes me as a nice card to drop in to work with the Carrion Feeder and token generators being added. I don’t think there’s really a Winota, Joiner of Forces deck in the Cube, so that cut is almost as easy as getting rid of the Nicol Bolas, Dragon-God that is far too difficult to cast to justify its inclusion. My compromise is that you can keep a Nicol Bolas but it has to be one that I actually want to put in decks.
Artifacts
Much like the green mana acceleration, the remaining artifact mana proved to be among the best cards still in the Modern Cube after the Signets were cut. A lot of the changes that I’ve suggested involve more low-to-the-ground decks getting a lot of help, and with those changes in mind I think leaving Mind Stone and Everflowing Chalice in is reasonable, though I think that Coalition Relic is a little too obvious of a first pick given how many games seem to revolve around six-mana spells.
I’ve mentioned Sword of Body and Mind a few times at this point, so it shouldn’t be surprising to read me advocating for cutting it here. It’s just a little too easy to connect once and win the game. It’s interesting and kind of nice that it works to balance out the best two colors in the Cube, but I think ramping up the other colors and maintaining Sword of Feast and Famine and Sword of Fire and Ice for the relevant protections still offers plenty to the aggressive decks.
I found Engineered Explosives to be lackluster in the environment, though adding a bunch of token generators actually leads me to want to leave the card in and see how it would do with those themes.
I generally like the contrast of how good swords are in Modern Cube as compared to Vintage and Legacy Cube, and as such I’d be interested in the following substitutions:
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I imagine that these swords were left out because of asymmetry, but I’m already arguing for breaking up the cycle so let’s just go all-in here. I think both of the Modern Horizons Swords would play great in Modern Cube and would like to see them added.
The recent run of the MTGO Modern Cube was in my mind its best run to date, and I have to believe that cutting Signets played a huge part in this. There are still some themes that I don’t believe are adequately supported, and I’d like to either see these themes turned up a notch or abandoned to provide a more coherent Draft experience. Personally I believe that a heavier focus on planeswalkers and tokens is the path of least resistance, and I look forward to seeing how the Modern Cube evolves the next time that we see it.
