Welcome to June, gamers, and welcome to four full weeks of Vintage Cube on Magic Online (MTGO)! The weather has been lovely in Minnesota, which has gotten me outside, but I’m still not interested in going all that far beyond my doorstep. This return to Magic’s most popular Cube is most welcome.
I don’t have a good idea of how many players are trying Vintage Cube for the first time on a given run, or what subset of those players are looking to my articles for advice on approaching the format, but for those of you who fit into this category, you might find my breakdown of the Cube from 2020 to be a useful starting point. Since writing that article I’ve done a breakdown of the ins and outs of every update between then and now, though those pieces will be more selectively useful and arduous to filter through.
I’ve updated my Cube Cobra page to reflect the current list. Let’s take a look at the changelog for this update by color, and talk about the impact this will have on drafting the Cube!
White
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In:
I think that I like Extraction Specialist in Cubes where it’s rebuying Thalia’s Lieutenant. This isn’t one of those Cubes, and here it enters near the bottom of a long list of white three-mana threats. The Restoration of Eiganjo wasn’t remarkable either, and basically nothing leaving the Cube is of significant note here either. Elspeth Conquers Death is the only unique effect that’s leaving that I would bother to make a case for, but at five mana it’s not a big deal in either direction.
Similarly, I have no strong thoughts to share on Elspeth Resplendent. I think you’ll do just fine in this run without ever having to read the card. The two cards entering that are worth noting are Swift Reconfiguration and the return of Winds of Abandon. Winds of Abandon is a great catch-all removal spell that overloads into Plague Wind when the situation calls for it, and Swift Reconfiguration is a decent removal spell that can generate infinite green mana in tandem with Devoted Druid. Both are welcome improvements over Condemn.
This update doesn’t impact white’s relevative strengths in the Cube much, and both Mono-White Aggro and Azorius-based control decks still look stellar.
Blue
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In:
I’m happy to see Carmen Handy correcting the mistake of removing Cube all-timer Riftwing Cloudskate in a previous update. It’s a rare draft where I have that card in my pool and don’t start it. On the other side of things, casting Gush correlates to losing more often than it correlates to winning in this Cube. You can justify it in some decks, mostly those of the Storm variety, but the card has incredibly little value over replacement outside of combining specifically with Fastbond.
Jin-Gitaxias, Progress Tyrant was largely whatever at seven mana as a decent Reanimator target, with The Reality Chip likely being much stronger in the average case. A lot of blue decks end up light on creatures, but I could see any Simic deck being interested in the “cheap” Future Sight effect, and I imagine there are other reasonable homes as well.
This update marks another minor upgrade for blue, leaving it as firmly the most powerful color in the Cube by a wide margin.
Black
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In:
The years haven’t been kind of Yawgmoth’s Bargain. I would still make the case for including the card in a 540-card Cube, but I’m in an ever-shrinking minority in that regard. It’s much weaker than Bolas’s Citadel, and the cards sure are similar.
I’m loving the addition of Carrion Feeder, which comes with Lingering Souls making a return to the Cube in the gold section. Black is still very light on one-mana creatures, but the bones for strong Sacrifice decks got quite a bit stronger with this update. Now that we have a few good one-mana Zombies, I would like to see Gravecrawler enter the fray. Maybe next time.
Custodi Lich significantly overperformed my expectations in the last run of the Cube, and I think black might be in the best position it ever has been in in the MTGO Vintage Cube. I’m still looking for a little more for the Sacrifice decks, but for now things are solid.
Red
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In:
I’ve seen Dockside Extortionist make zero Treasures more than once in digital Cubes lately, and I’ve never had Wheel of Misfortune cast against me. At this point, I’m willing to count both as failures for the digital Cubes. Destructive Force was never going to succeed, but I am happy Jokulhaups made it in and is being kept around as an actually powerful version of Wildfire.
Ignite Memories over Empty the Warrens is a little weird, as they are both low-priority Storm payoffs. Beyond that, I imagine that most decks that would maindeck one would also maindeck the other and would be worse off for only having one of the two cards. At the very least, this is true in my Powered Grixis Twobert. I’m not optimistic about Ignite Memories in this Cube, and would expect Empty the Warrens to make it back in at some point, either to try the cards together or as a reversal of this swap.
The Cube is still long on red fives, but Glorybringer is a great one. I’m also glad to see Mizzium Mortars return, giving red greater access to answers to large blockers. I’m quite cold on Magda, Brazen Outlaw, but the card is fine, and certainly better in the average case than Dockside Extortionist.
I’d say that this update is a minor improvement for red, but an improvement all the same. Much the same as with black, I’d actually argue in a roundabout way that the return of Lingering Souls is among the bigger deals for red due to the power the card lends to Sacrifice strategies. I’d expect to see more Goblin Bombardments on the battlefield this time around.
Green
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In:
Fauna Shaman has long overstayed its welcome in this Cube. It’s one of the first cards that I cut from even my mono-green decks for being so inefficient, clunky, and fragile. I’m not huge on Exploration or Dryad of the Ilysian Grove, but they’re good to have around to increase the number of interactions with cards like Courser of Kruphix and Crucible of Worlds.
That’s the big thing to keep in mind with these extra land drop effects: they’re combo cards. Do not under any circumstance maindeck an Exploration or Fastbond with the intention of playing one extra land before your opponent without casting any extra spells. The more efficient way to establish this position is to mulligan.
The changes to green are minor, and I expect them to have fairly minor effects on green’s position. You’ll see some more fetchland-Crucible of Worlds interactions, but you’ll also see more opponents leading on Exploration and doing nothing of consequence with the card.
Gold
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In:
Stop me if you’ve heard this one before, but the return of Lingering Souls is the big get here. It’s amusing that the update to include Ob Nixilis, the Adversary is coming long enough after the initial overhyping of the card that it’s generally unexciting. As I predicted, the card is fine, and at its worst against aggressive and combo decks. A medium at best Vintage Cube card if I ever saw one.
Kaito Shizuki is dramatically less powerful than Fallen Shinobi, but doesn’t require any setup and is still pretty damn good. I consider the card to be much more fun to play against, and the only reason I’d argue playing with the Shinobi can be more fun is that sometimes it’s fun to randomly completely hose your opponent. This swap is great in terms of gameplay, and I intend to draft Kaito highly and play the card often.
I find Witherbloom Command to be underwhelming on rate, and General Ferrous Rokiric to be inconsistently supported in an environment with so many mono-color and colorless cards. We’ll see if the Niv-Mizzet Reborn lobby celebrates this one or not.
I lost badly to Archon of Valor’s Reach at least once in the last run, and I don’t expect to have any such trouble against Aura Shards. The play patterns of the Archon are quite bad, so I like the change there, but this does hurt Selesnya on power level. We all know they could use the help.
Artifacts
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In:
I don’t consider either of these cards to be very good in Vintage Cube, and realistically this is a power downgrade unless we’re talking about sideboard cards against Reanimator decks. Or sideboard cards against certain Storm decks. I’d be very disappointed to open a pack where Unlicensed Hearse wasn’t the last pick.
Lands
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In:
This swap is a serious upgrade on power level, though I will personally end up playing fewer Triomes than I did slowlands based on my drafting preferences. I keep things to one to three colors in most of my Vintage Cube drafts, and I will miss being able to reliably wheel slowlands. That said, I expect to benefit a lot from drafting the power spells that other players draft the Triomes over.
This change is absolutely a win for the Niv-Mizzet lobby, though I will personally be watching Omnath, Locus of Creation and Golos, Tireless Pilgrim more closely. I’ve had “trophy with Omnath Storm” on my Cube bucket list long enough to 2-1 with three different attempts, and I’m hoping that this run will be the one.
On balance, I like the nuts and bolts elements of this update more than any of the flashier cards. All the same, it’s another great update from Carmen, and one that I’m excited to draft. I’ll see you in the queues.
