Talking About Cube Staples | #95

In this episode of Powerful Nothing, Dan and James discuss the key role that cube staples have in both building and playing a cube, then go through what are the key cards that can see play in every cube

Card Gallery: https://moxfield.com/decks/bD25IZrI6k-6XxpTTqM7RQ

Timecodes:
5:38 - White Interaction
17:27 - Blue Cantrips/Card Draw
27:08 - Blue Counterspells
35:36 - Black Interaction
38:59 - Black Hand Attack
46:37 - Red Interaction
52:20 - Red Rummaging
54:55 - Green Ramp
1:01:53 = Colourless Ramp
1:08:46 - Colourless Filtering
1:12:22 - Cards & Types We Didn't Include

Video Version: https://youtu.be/6TSJre_P8zY

Cube Skeleton Episode: https://youtu.be/92aS4ZU_nd8

My Cube: https://cubecobra.com/cube/list/sweet
The Treat Yourself Cube: https://cubecobra.com/cube/overview/treatyourself
James Cube: https://cubecobra.com/cube/list/ba642a54-a6c7-4587-b97e-1d95429c59b5
MTGO Vintage Cube: https://cubecobra.com/cube/list/modovintage

Social Links: https://linktr.ee/toosweetmtg

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Creative Commons / Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported (CC BY-SA 3.0)
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/deed.en_US

Transcript

0:03

Hello everyone. Welcome back to Powerful Nothing and Magic The Gathering Q podcast. I'm your host, Dan, and as always, I'm joined by James. James. How are you doing this week? Yeah, I'm doing pretty well. And say, well how are you? I'm doing alright. Thanks. It's cool down in the UK. For those keeping track from a brief complaint about the weather last year, we are British after all. Today we have another fantastic topic. Today we're going to be talking about some cube staples. These are the key cards that can go in basically any cube. Before we get into that main topic, as always, there will be time codes and a card gallery down in the show notes below. If you want to see the cards we're talking about, today, while you're down there, please consider giving the podcast a five star review. Thumbs up and tell a Friend greatly helps us out. All that good stuff. All right, so with that out of the way, let's go on to our main topic today and let's talk about some staples. So the goal of today is to go over a number of cards and card types that we would consider cube staples. These are cards that you can basically run in any cube. This episode is sort of a companion piece to a recent episode we did on, The Cube Skeleton. In that episode, we broke down the number of different types of cards you need to run in a certain cube. But in the episode, we also highlighted room for staples like we highlighted in each different size of cube, how many bits of white interaction you need to run or black hand attack, that kind of thing. In this episode, we're actually going to be giving examples of those cards. And what's important about these staples is that basically these are cards that can go in effectively any cube. These are cards that if you saw them in the highest power level cube, you would be like, cool. Yeah, I get why that's there. But also these are cards that if you saw in like a peasant, a pauper, or like a budget cube, you'd also say, yes, these belong here. That make sense. These really are like the building blocks of any cube. And as we go through the episode, it will be important to remember that we are giving staples for every cube. Like a card like Black Lotus is a staple in a powered cube, but it's not a staple anywhere else. A card like lightning Bolt, however, we'll see play in every cube that could possibly run it. Those are the staples that we're talking about today. And what's nice about these staples is that the majority of them are actually pretty cheap. We will highlight the 1 or 2 cards that kind of go above the $10 mark. But these staples aren't just staples in cube. These are often staples in a bunch of other formats where they've been printed a lot of times, but in the odd case where the card is more expensive, we will highlight that as well. Yeah, we have a nice thing. If you are working on a budget with these, is that, most of these cards are pretty interchangeable in reality, not necessarily from a power level point of view. Like obviously in each of these categories. Can it be some that are more powerful than others? Right. But the few that are a bit expensive here. Like for example, if we're looking at green Mana, dark save as noble hierarchy is one of the ones you see all the time that I think by $2,025. And what that, It's really easy to cut that for a $1 card and not notice that much difference. Like you can put in other sins, Pilgrim. And yes, it's a it's a weaker card. But in terms of the role this is trying to play in your queue, but is filling the same bottle and that just isn't. And that isn't true with a lot of the stuff you look for outside of the staples. Right. For more of, the not edge and even more synergistic cards are often more unique by like if you want to put the one thing in your cube, there is no budget alternative for that. Like it's, there's nothing else that approximates civil one thing. Whereas if you wanted in a noble hierarchy and you have an Amazon's Pilgrim, it's less that it doesn't act, but not in a way that actually change how your cube plays very much. So I think generally with ease, but it is not a thing you need to worry about. And just bear in mind, as we're going through the list like it is fine to pick and choose. You don't have to have the most powerful versions in each category. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. For each of the sections and each of the categories, we're going to be going over a bunch of cards and kind of like you can pick the ones that you like. There will be some that aren't technically the most powerful, but if you don't like them or if they're more expensive or if they don't fit your power level of cube, that is fine. That the point is, is that you have these effects. It doesn't have to be specifically these cards. Yeah, for sure. And tweaking your, you also have nuts and bolts staples. Slots can also be a thing you do for sanity reasons. These are not generally cards. We're thinking about a synergy, cause these are the nuts and bolts enablers. If you feel cube for go in every deck, but you can make 12 little micro adjustments between two cards that do roughly the same thing where one of them, for whatever reason, just synergize a slightly better with a theme you have going on. Yeah, exactly. Like I talk about this a bunch, like a lot on this podcast, but kind of like we had changes. Definitely. Right. You you really can tune these as you want. Kind of the the cards we're going to be going over today are theory the more optimal versions. But if you have a reason to not run an optimal version, that's fine. But like like the classic one that I bring up all the time on this podcast is like, running. Like for my red interaction, I'll run something like a tar fire because it makes my timer goes bigger. It's an effect that I want, but it has some additional synergy. It's okay to do that in spots. I wouldn't recommend doing every card being synergy because then you do lose that top end power. But I think, I think it's best if we just kind of kick off and get the ball rolling with this. Let's start off. Let's go to this in the end. Rubio James, let's start off with white interaction. Why interaction we see in basically every cube? Because it's one of the things that white does best like James why do we want it and why is white interaction good. Yeah. So I mean every color needs interaction. But the the thing about for white removal specifically is that it's, it's for most flexible cards you have in white, white has a really big range of stuff that it's looking to do in ice cubes, that which have white back in. You might be in blue light control. You might be in super fast red white aggro. They're both going to want cheap and easy removal spells. Over, over most things, the premium options here are going to be some of your strongest cards. And that makes some really powerful first picks. Just it leaves you so open, for where you can go. And you've got some really, really premium options like source Plowshares down through a bunch of filler stuff. But, it's a very deep bench for white removal. There's good options, instant speed, there's good options, sorcery, speed. And it's also it has nice upsides in the I often exiles, which has a lot of contextual advantages and and lots of cubes. Yeah. Yeah. The ones you touched on like Source to Plowshares and like Path to Exile are probably the tippy top in terms of removal and interaction in a cube, because, yeah, as you said, they exiled. They get rid of the threat. It means what you've got rid of is not coming back. And it's one manner as well, like I'm going to I'm going to fishery from from an efficiency point of view, it's kind of hard to do better. But but like let's break this down into into the different kind of sections within like interaction for instance speed. We have classics like, yeah, as you mentioned, sort of Plowshares and Path to Exile. We have some newer cards like a road is, I think, the most recent set at time of recording, which is nice. We also have cause like get lost, fateful absence and unexpectedly absent. What we generally see with these is they are cheap. They are efficient. They will you will generally be up on manor with what you are interacting with, but then your opponent does get something to kind of compensate for that. With swords to Plowshares. It's some life weird path to exalt. It's a land where some of the other ones it's a clue or or a treasure. Something like that. Like like you're not your opponent is getting a little benefit, but like if you need to answer something, these are just great because most of the time, like you'll find like like if you need to answer their game winning threat, you're fine with them getting a land out of their deck or something like that. James, would you agree with that? Yeah, for sure. For sure. Every dark one's cheap from evil. Pretty much, keeps the same feature. Focus now for these, these are going to be premium cards. And then when we move on to our sorcery speed effects, we have, we have sorceries, things like prismatic ending, things like oust, things like winds of abandoned which can also double up as a board, which is quite nice. But then kind of we also include things like portable hole, planar disruption and like oblivion. Ring effects like these aren't specifically on sorceries, but their sorcery speed, if that makes sense. Kind of like when I'm breaking down my interaction sections. I might. My instant speed ones are not are not interchangeable, but my sorcery speed ones kind of are. Like the Oblivion ring is similar to a wings of abandoned in terms of when I can interact with my opponent. So kind of like for me those are a bit more interchangeable, especially. And this is where you can interchange more, especially if you're like, say you're doing an artifact deck, something like Portable Holo, which is an artifact that answers a small creature that goes up in value over something like oust. Whereas if you're doing like a spell, something, a deck, maybe that's where you want the sorcery effect. If you're doing enchantments, then more oblivion ring effects get more important. That's kind of where you can customize it to suit what your cube is doing. A little bit more. Yep, Sean, the nice thing as well about a lot of the but because these break down for the into sort of spells and permanence. Yeah. For sorceries that answer something many of the artifacts enchantments and the nice thing about the artifacts enchantments as well is that they often hit non creatures as well. And that just makes me even more flexible, right? It means that in the few matchups you might run into where your opponent's game plan isn't based around creatures, then these cards are still going to have text in the way that, a creature, a middle spell wouldn't know exactly. And then the last way that white can interact with our opponents. And it is one of the stronger things that white has in his arsenal is board White's. It has to some of the most efficient board wipes out there with cause like wrath of God with guys like dam which technically a black spell, but you can include it in your white section if you want to. If you need a white for drop, we also have cause like sun fall, which is probably for me the the best five mana board wipe. Because you get a good upside, it gives you a X incubate blacks is how many creatures you killed. Exactly. So it's it's so it's breaking the symmetry of a board that's worth going up for extra mana. And then we have day of judgment, which in most cases is is the same as is the same as wrath of God. This is something that white really excels at. Most colors like don't get this efficiency of board wipes. Like black has, has a couple, but they're generally just not as good. Or they'll have some kind of downside, like, toxic deluge, phenomenally efficient. It's only three mana, but you do have to play a bunch of life with it. Wrath of God doesn't ask you anything. Just pay the full amount of answer. The board hope. Hopefully they won't have to have an interactable creature. It'll all be fine. Yeah, if the white board wipes are great. You don't want tons of them in your tank. And sometimes they can be a little bit slow. Not as in your opponents always killing you when. When? Before you get to them. But as in, often the creatures now are so impactful, specifically at the high power level cubes that you kind of can't wait for them to play multiple creatures all the time. Like some sometimes, often the creatures are so good when they play the creature, you just have to kill it right away. And if that means that thing when they only have one creature in play, then you're. That was kind of just an expensive removal spell. But there are matchups where they really struggle to beat people. Types like you play against the Green Elf stack, and I can have a really bad time against fees because when you cast Wrath of God, you're not only killing their fat, you're also killing their mana. Yeah, but these are really powerful. We've, thought why you could put in this in this category and is arguably the most powerful of them is balance. But I guess, you could sort of have a debate about whether that's a staple or not, because there are a lot of cheats like you wouldn't want to include balanced sort of power level reasons. And I mean, I mean, it is a synergy card in that there's lots of things that work well with balance and ways that you can maximize that. Things like playing non creature artifacts, mana rocks, some plains walkers as well, but it's also kind of just really powerful if you put it in any control deck. No, I agree I think I personally wouldn't call balance a staple just because it's just really, really powerful, if that makes sense. Like like like the the other board wipes, if you saw them in like any power level of cube, what's nice about them is they kind of scale to meet the answers. Whereas balance takes over a game. So like like definitely worth mentioning very, very strong board. Right. But I think it's one that maybe it's just like there's almost a tier list, like it's a staple for a powered cube, as it were. That makes sense. Or, or a more powerful, faster environment. Yeah, I think it's powerful in a way which can win the game kind of on its own. Whereas we have a lot of other super powerful cards in this list, which I think are staples, things like salsa, plowshares, fight. That's all the similarly high pick when if you look at the cubes that both of them exist, but it is still ultimately just to one form. So it when you play it in a slightly lower powered cube. Yes, it's very good, but it doesn't feel unfair in quite the same way as bounties does. Yeah, yeah, I think that's a good way of for it. Yeah, well, there's a couple of other ones on this list. We will highlight where they're possibly unfair. I think this might be a good point to mention actually kind of specifically with the white interaction section. This will also kind of apply to black removal and red interaction as well. But worth mentioning here actually is in terms of like, a lot of time. Yeah, it can feel like maybe in a lower power level cube that maybe sort of plowshares might be like, like there's a world where you think, oh, a one man, that's too efficient. That's too good. Like, if if I'm, if I'm in a more budget environment, from my experience, anyway, it's more the number of interactions that you run can stop deck existing or can stop aggro existing rather than running the most efficient ones, if that kind of makes sense. Kind of like. But basically what I'm saying is if you run a good number of board wipes. So this is actually broken down in the set skeleton. Again, a link to that will be down in the show notes below. If you run the correct number of board wipes, you will be okay if you kind of run more of them. If you if you go over the interact like if you run every bit of interaction on this list, that's when you'll find decks of struggling not from the power outlier of something like swords or Path, because they still have to be open, they still have to be played and drafted. And cube is quite good at it. It has that variance built in for the power level I generally find. Yeah, I think it's fine for them, the men in lower power level cubes that you do just need to be aware that all the really cheap interactive pieces you put in, is putting extra pressure on people's mana curves of if that's that applying and it puts pressure on them, just play cheaper, cheaper, cheaper cards. And if you're finding in your kids that, they're cool five and six fan, creatures, you never see any play. And one of the levers you can use to address that is to the move some of the most efficient removal, like you could cut size of plowshares for oblivion wing and it makes it a little bit more forgiving of the knife. More expensive creature. No, definitely. It's definitely something to consider as well. Yeah, yeah. If your cube has a higher curve, like this was a big thing I had to think about. Had, had to work on with my treat yourself keep where the average CMC is like two higher than a regular cube, but the average CMC in that cube is for the average CMC. And like the government to tube is like two like so it's two in that cube. I suppose to plowshares is extra efficient because it's catching you up so much more on mana on average. Like the things it's hitting, bigger. Therefore you're coming out ahead on mana more efficiently in that cube. I have not got tools to Plowshares and Path to Exile because they're just too good and efficient. I've gone for the three mana version of that effect, because that's more on curve, where my cube is. Yeah for sure. Just if if part of the goal of your cube. This got people's flavor cool, expensive stuff. And be mindful of ways to interact with no 100%. All right. Let's keep it going. Let's move on to our next real, staple section. And that is blue cantrip slash card draw. This is another great section that we see in every cube, because it's one of the best things like that blue can do. You'll generally see this as we go through all the staples. We're just trying to highlight what the colors do best. James why does blue want card draw? Why is it good? Well, why do you want to play blue? Yes. These are kind of two two obviously related but quite distinct things I think for cam chips in the cards for us. So, but for cam chips, the goal is to make your deck more efficient. And more consistent. So we've, we've talked for about cards like, the tax info and, mixtures bauble they which just cycle basically for no mana. And what these cards do is basically make your deck smaller. Right. They and it makes it easy. And it's like essentially if you have a taxing failure in your deck, it just flips into the next card in your deck. And essentially means you guys run a 39 card deck. So you see your best castle by mob. A lot of the blue chips are also adding more selection into that. Say something like preordained. We got scry two and four cards for one mana. We get to look at the top three cards, but not actually going up cards, but where, we're adding a bunch of consistency to our deck means we're going to find our pieces way more. This is super important for, if you want to get any sort of combo deck going, you're going to need really good card selection. Nicely with combo deck, so you don't have that much redundancy for all the parts of your combo. That's just not that realistic in most cubes. But what you can have is a bunch of ways to find it. So that can be tutors, but it can also just be have a ton of selection. So you can find the cards you need, but it also just means you're going to get mana screwed less often. You're going to get flooded less often. You're going to see the white cards for the match up more often. So this is often why it's very powerful to have a lot of good selection in a control deck, because when you build a control deck, you're not building it for the opponent you're playing against right now. If you're building it for any opponent, you could face in that cube so you could fit into a combo deck, you could run into an aggro deck. If you draw all your, feature removal on board wipes against the combo deck, then you're going to be in trouble. And if you don't see the permission, then you're going to be in trouble. So you can, but you will for cantrip in the selection that you do is fine for and faction for the right up. The card for does that as well. Most of it comes with selection, but it's also getting you ahead on resources. So for control for actually chose multiple cards, it's going to combine very well with any sort of interaction. Because whenever you want one with your opponent, whether that be for the removal spell or a counterspell or a hand attack spell, essentially putting both players down versus this fight. But for that matter, you kind of have to run your opponent and stuff to do, and you still have stuff to do. So if we can go can see your fang, kill your fang when you out of stuff. And then my last card draws three more cards. Now I'm in a phenomenal position because you have nothing left to fight back with. I have my own faction to control the game, and now I can look to start and stop progressing my own. When conditions. No. Nice. Yeah. And some good examples of these. So cantrip so effectively they're their selection and they're replacing themselves. The James mentioned preordained. But we also have cards like consider a thought scour and ponder then for card draw some great staples. For newly printed flow state. Everyone's been very impressed by that card. We have the, we have stock up, which I famously said was a bad card, and now I'm including it in my staples list. So that shows I'm not stubborn. I will listen, but then you have like, classics like Fact or Fiction, and then you have some very powerful cards or spells that, with delve in Treasure Cruise and dig through time. And there's a bunch more out there. But I think these are a very good base. Like, I think if you saw these in the cube, you would not question them at all. Like there's some like the boomer part of me wants to add like deep analysis to this list. But I will admit that blows out and stock up might be a touch more efficient nowadays. But yeah, I think these are all very, very solid and a great place to start. And if you saw these in any cube, they do what the blue deck ones as, as, as James has said. But on top of that, they also trigger things like spell slinging strategies. There's a bunch of archetypes being printed nowadays where where they care about like like your second card being drawn in a turn. These will all trigger those. These are just great. They are bread and butter and any blue deck needs these cards. Yeah for sure. It's a great point. There. So so many cards now. But just care about instance and sorceries as a thing, whether against casting them or having them in your graveyard or whatever. And the cantrip and the card for actually do more to enable that than just having a bunch of counterspell and removal spells, because even if your deck has like 15, and since the first few say that if I will just removal and interaction. Then you will at some point for now sort of gas. Right. Whereas the if you have a bunch of cards for max in there, then you get to keep casting spells throughout the game because you're restocking. Yeah. Completely agree. One card that some people might say is missing from this list, but it was by design is I do not consider brainstorm to be a staple, and I don't, and I wouldn't consider putting it on this list. But this this actually came up in a live stream I was doing recently, which are part three of me, but I me building a bucket will come soon. Dear listener. Apologies for the delay on that, but brainstorm. I don't consider a staple because brainstorm is good if you have thatch lands and a lot of thatch lands, or if you care about the top of your library. Cube isn't legacy. We don't have 16 fetch lands to do the. I'm going to look at the top three cards. I'm going to put two cards in my hand and I'm going to shuffle them away in cube, where we don't have access to that. I'm going out on a limb here and I'm gonna say like, consider is better in a general cube deck than brainstorm. Like if you just have brainstorm in your deck without any way of shuffling your library, you will very quickly learn what brainstorm. Locking yourself is. James, would you go along with that or do you think I'm barking up the wrong tree? There? I think the essence of your point is correct. I also think that in most cubes where both of them appear, I would rather start with a brainstorm than, consider, because there are just enough ways to shuffle your deck. And most decks right where, you don't need tons is the thing. Think it just doesn't cost you very much. And when it does work, it's so powerful compared to kite, compared to the upside of a consider, I think it's worse than like a ponder or preordained or something it's giving you like actually good selection. But I think if I had like two ways to shuffle in my deck, okay, I would rather have a brainstorm than the consider and I think that's a very high bar. It's not just by chance. Like it's also things like milling yourself counts, right? That's clears your top of your brainstorm of anything to manipulate those top cards. Really. So I do quite like throwing some. They also just like it because, I think cube is more interesting when how good your card solve is context dependent. Which it is with brainstorm much more than the other ones. And I think it like it keeps the mind fessing when there's that little bit of texture right where there's your cards. Need a little bit of work and all this. Get them to be at their best and brainstorms in that very nice spot where it's always completely fine. It's never a bad card, it's cycling it for the worst. Right. And, but but you can make it an excellent card. No, I, I do agree, I and I'm not here to sit here and say that, brainstorm is a bad magic card. Yeah, I think maybe just look at your cube and see how many shuffle effects there are. Like, I've just looked at two of mine, and I've got about 50, and I'm wondering if that's potentially enough. I don't know, like, like, for me, I guess because I'm more of, like for me, I like the design and I, I like thinking of for me consider helps power my graveyard deck. Whereas like, like I, I guess a me I want cards to have that, that to have some kind of synergy. So so that's why I was a bit higher on brainstorm. If you have top of the deck matter stuff like, if you like, there's a bunch of like, like there are some combos with our top of the deck matter stuff. For you, James, I would that brainstorm to the list. Lovely stuff. Gotta get it. Gotta save for small victories, you know. Oh, okay. All right, let's keep it going. Because blue has another type of card that it's fair to say is a staple. And that is blue counter spells. We've touched on. We've touched on them a bit already. But while we're talking about interaction, but this is kind of one of the like when you think of blue drawing cards is one thing. It does. Interacting on the stack is the other one. James, you've touched on it already, but kind of to you, why is it important that that counter spells exist in the average cube? So the unique thing about counter spells is a form of interaction, right? Is very can interact with pretty much everything. The if you look at the other main ways we interact in magic, it's it's the moving permanents from play that obviously only applies to permanence. You can't it doesn't work. And since since the sorcerer is very often 90 of a B certain types of permanence, you can still get into the battle field effects. Or we can interact with things like, discard spells from black. But then you're very open to your opponent. Just stop taking a good cards and and to discard spell cons, interact with that. Whereas blue permission allows you to control the game in a much more deterministic way. Right. It's challenging. Sketchfab. If you're in the state where you're, you know, there's nothing threatening you on the board and you have permission spells in your hand, but by the level of security and installation that the the other forms of interaction just don't get for you, right. So it's very powerful. It's, it obviously has its limitations in terms of it can't interact with things that are already on the board. I think account spells in cube specifically, very powerful. You want to be mindful of how push for council as you're pushing into because, because they're so powerful at breaking up synergies and they're very powerful in terms of trading up on mana very quickly. I think it can be very tempting when you build like a pole for cube or a peasant cube. You know, you you look at your list of good common some comments, like, oh, counterspell another leak. And these are all comments. We should put them all in. And you definitely can. But it it does. It does have a very big impact on the cube. When you have all these fairly efficient counters, it really pushes your opponent to try and play very, very efficient cards. Over like more expensive, more high impact cards because it the, the time counters are really powerful. That is that the two mana counters like sure. Countering that thing on turn two is good. But what's amazing is when it's like turn 5 or 6 and you like, play my three top ups and then pay my last two manner to counter your five top like, that's a game winning swing. So and that's why you just end up pushing people towards playing cheaper and cheaper spells. But you do need some amounts of them because, otherwise, like the most over the top thing, it's just like deterministically get a win for a game. And it gives, it gives you a fraction of the control decks, a natural way to fight against that stuff, which is very important. Yeah, definitely. I agree with that. For me, the one I want to flag is, I think especially these are in terms of like choosing your counter spells and the power levels of them. I could see it being like, like especially egregious in, in a more budget cube because something like, like I call it like counter spell, relatively cheap, but it's just going to answer like like, but but you're not going to have the as efficient two and three drop threats if that makes sense. The budget ones are going to be slightly more mana. So so that's specifically a place where yeah, yeah, I completely agree with James. And one of my like that is, yeah, I would definitely focus there on maybe don't run the most efficient ones in those. But in terms of those most efficient ones, let let's actually touch on them. Top of the list I've got man. Alec we'll discuss that was mad that you made a list of counter spells and didn't poke out like on staple counter spells and didn't put counter spell on top. I knew I was talking to you, James. I know you would take man Alec over account as well. I do, I, I, I do I actually think you're correct. I think I've got people I get to be mad of. Okay. Again, I have put them in a list of it. This isn't a tier list. It is the list that is effectively a conscious train of thought as they came to me. But we have, man, Alec, we have counterspell. We have lose focus, which I think is a really strong one. I think it's great. We have Raymond, we have memory lapse and we have miscalculation. These are cards that I feel like I think they are great. They are fantastic counter spells. They do generally fall into two categories. We have soft counters, which are things like monolithic lose focus and miscalculation. They are so they're soft counters in that your opponent has opportunity to pay manner for them. Like if you're like if they don't have the three mana to pay for monolithic, then effectively it becomes a hard counter. But if they do, then it's kind of been turned off. That's what I mean by soft counter. I Counterspell Raymond and memory lapse. They are hard counters. They will stop the spell that you are trying to stop. I guess with cards like Raymond and Memory lapse, there's the chance that they're going to just cost again next time. But they will stop that when you need to stop it. And that's kind of a big, differentiating point between the two types of counter spells that you often see. Don't that exist? Yeah, for sure. I like this list. I, I agree with you about lose focus. I think it's really good. I think, hot take incoming here. I think miscount is really overrated. It is showing its age. I, like, it's showing its age, but I think it's one of these ones where I think in I still think in a large portion of cubes. It is fine. And like, I think in the most powerful cubes, I think you just need a number of the number of these effects and it does cycle. And then in like mid to lower power level cubes, I think it will still do the thing you needed to do specifically in like high powered but not the highest, where you don't need to counter the gut, otherwise you lose. I think there is probably its weakest point, actually. So specifically in my unpowered vintage cube, I think miscalculation is is at its worst. But other places I think it's still personally, I think it has a place. Yeah, yeah. I mean, these are all like if you put them in your cubes, people are going to play them. Because especially two mana permission is just really powerful and very important. I think comparing, say Miss Calyx to lose focus people thing that people always say about this card because like, oh, when it's dead in just like a way, but it's like, would you rather cycle it away? Or would you rather be able to pay an extra manager to make it basically a hard counter? You know, I like, but yeah, there's plenty of is that a good, sensor is enough one I quite like, because that's, that's the counter. Unless you pay one that you can cycle it for just a single bloom, because that's cycles for so cheap. It's actually kind of a valid cantrip. You know? But yeah, I think these are all great. However many you put in the queue, people will play them as obviously you can go up to more expensive ones where you're getting upside on top of the, the counterspell, something like Cryptic Command or Mystic Confluence. Also very powerful for mission spells, but I think maybe a little bit too bad faking them. Only appear in more specific cubes, I guess. And maybe one quite class. Miss Staples. Yeah, that's kind of more where I was going with it. I think for me, when I in terms of staple counter spells, we are looking at around the 2 to 3 mana mark. Let's keep it going. We've got a number to get through. We're moving on to black. Now. What do we think of when we think of black doom blades? Doom by itself not appearing on this list, but killing things and interacting with our opponent's creatures is one of the best things that black can do. Similarly to white, just being able to cheap and efficiently interact with our opponent's threats is going to be fantastic. Just and like with the counter spells, as as as I was just talking about often we can be up in mana on these exchanges. So our 1 or 2 mana spell can kill a 5 or 6 mana investment that our opponents put in. That is why these cards are great. It's kind of like, James, what do you think of this list in terms of just like black has a large portion of these, you don't need all of them, but you do need some of them. So like we have cheap, efficient ones, things like cut down, things like fatal push. We have cause like bitter triumph, infernal grasp. We have some powerful sorceries like blood chiefs, thirst and bone shards, which have some nice additional utility. The blood chief thirst can also target a planeswalker. Bone shards can discard a card, which isn't always a downside. I'm a fiend for, venge. Vine or root waller. And then we kind of have some less efficient, but still very, very solid options with cards like power, word, kill, go for the throat, ultimate price and cuts down. Generally, what we see with these is kind of like, I think generally bitter triumph is probably the top of the pick, because that has the only downside of we lose to life. All of the rest of them. Kind of like they'll either only target a small creature or they won't kill a legendary, or they won't kill like a multiple creature. Like, like, but generally, what we're talking 1 or 2 mana to answer an opponent's creature. James, what do you think this looks like? Do you like the cards? You say like these all are very playable in my opinion. Yeah for sure. Like the black removal spells I think are very much a renewable resource, you know, like there are a couple which are a little bit higher power versus like fatal push I think is is a really premium bomb. Because that can trade up in mana very, very significantly. And is way better than the next best one. Mana ones. Like cut downs pretty good. And when you're down to like the disc figures and whatnot. The two mana. While I agree, I think Best of Triumph is probably the best, but honestly, you could kind of pick 3 or 4 two man of black removal spells at random, and you probably won't go that far on, like it's nice to have the discard out. Less of a best triumph. If if you've had the power to kill, an ultimate face or a cast down instead, that's fine. You know, you do need you do need quite a few of these, though, because it's it tends to be pretty important to the black deck strategies. The way black is positioned in most Q because black tends not to have the best creatures, suddenly it never has the biggest creatures fight. It tends to play a bit more of an attrition strategy, or it can be doing some combo stuff, but either way, it's probably not going to be the quickest deck in the room. So it really needs to be able to kill its opponents fats. And fortunately, it has a lot of tools to do that now 100%. Let's move on to the next thing. The black is really good at. And this is hand attack. But these are effects that let us see what our opponent is doing and lets us take a key card from their hand and throw it away. There's less of these, like a cube doesn't need as many of these effects as black interaction, but the ones it does run, I think are very important. James, talk to us about why we want and attack in a cube and like like why it's a staple effect. Yeah, this is really important for black strategies, especially if you're looking to play a black midrange or controlling strategy. These are really essential actually. And often it's kind of a pain points for those stacks that they're just, that any good ones, the problem is if you're buffing these enabled you to is they enable you to play a slow, interactive deck that isn't blue, because they let you interact with in a way that isn't just killing permanents. Basically, the ways we interact in Magic is Blue gets to counter spells, black gets to attack your hand, and Mason for acid attack. Basically everything else is just killing stuff in play, right? And killing stuff in play is good against a bunch of attacks that I will say, a bunch of decks that can just go over top of that. Right. And that doesn't necessarily mean they they just don't have any creatures. That means that their creatures do such powerful things when they cast film, when they enter the battlefield, or they have such a synergistic engine that actually just pointing removal spells of their stuff isn't good enough. I think the pointing reveals foul strategy is fine as a way to slow your opponent down in order for you to do your own powerful, proactive thing. But if you want, if you're actually planning to play a longer game where you stay alive, then you kind of need another way to interact. And the Black Hand attack spells. So I kind of unique outside of a blue for the blue group mission, that they let you do that in a way that that interacts with your opponent's engine, not on the board. But to say that there aren't a ton of good ones and it is a bit of, it can be a bit of a pain point for, for black interactive tactics. You've got, one mana ones to spawn is very where you want their stuff right before they get out of, that ship she plays. Now you've got forces is obviously best in class by a by a long way, and you've got inquisition a lot worse. Stews again, much weaker than falsies. But still very important. And you should run in basically all of your high powerful cubes. And then you've got a bunch of two, two mana ones. Lot love my creatures. Which is somewhat of a more temporary solution, right? The, deep cavern parts type cards where you you exile the card until they remove it from play. But it does do that thing of, it disrupts your opponent's synergies, which is very important. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. The other ones to touch on actually mount a card like Brain Mag. I quite like, and then a sorcery and collected brutality. Also, there's no instant speed version of these effects. Like, like they just don't print instant speed hand attack because they've decided, probably quite rightly, that that's just miserable anyway. Yeah, apparently. But seizing your opponent, showing that your staff isn't isn't allowed for some reason. Blue gets fiendishly and click. What is this? Yeah. These are such important cards. Like it's basically in my cube. I don't think I've won. I've not gone three zero with a black deck that hasn't had a thought, sees in it or a duress in it, because you need game like it's all fantastic. You have all you have 12 X removals. But what do you do against the doomsday player? What do you do against the, combo player? You need a way of interacting with them. And this is how you do that. That's why these cards are important and worth mentioning. Some power outliers, him to talk and mine twist. Mind twist especially is generally reserved for the much more higher cubes because my twist is kind of miserable. Mine twist is X and a black for a sorcery. Target player discards X cards at random. The random part there is incredibly miserable. Most of the other effects let you take either a creature or a non creature, or an online permanent. For that kind of stuff. There is a restriction in what you can take mind twist. Just being random is obscene and same with him to to attract just tracking them on turn to like you could hit their lands and then kind of the game is sort of over like like in the Torah, like famously a common bound in pauper. I run into Tarek in my, in my unpowered vintage cube. It's kind of that kind of power level. I personally wouldn't run it in a a cube where which is following the banned list, basically. That's for it depends on just for the gameplay experience you want from your cube. I guess because we have a thing to talk can do is where it leads to the kind of non games where you just send the non turn to and happens hit that two lands and if I don't yeah, I cannot. There's a reason that Fox says non land. But I think it's fine. I mean it is, it is also like it's never the best cards. And for cube it is also just really hard to cast. And you have to cast it early in order for it to be good. But yeah, it's a very powerful card. Same thing with mine. Twist if you want, a lower powered mind quest. I really like Arcane Omens for the last SAS is a lot of fun. That's for, the converge card. It's for an a black target player. Discard cards equal to the number of colors of mana spent on arcane. Okay. Yeah. Which is quite fun. Yet this. Yeah, that does seem good. Like, I like we do get mind drops in most sets nowadays is a card like print, but like specifically these like it's very rare that like a one man one comes along because they just they would get like I think it's fair to say every time thought CS has been in standard, it has been played in standard. Because it's just good. Yes. I mean, these cards see a lot of play and over comes from that's right for you to to legacy vibe. What one one card I'd like to add to your list. I think Mesmeric Fiend is more fun than brain mascots, because it has the olds templating, and you get to do the, the cool trick where you flicker it. Yeah. Is it flicker, right? Or is it second or is it it does the thing where you can respond to the trigger and then the card goes away, but you can. Yeah. Really nice. And aristocrats as well. Right. You have, you have like your muffin play, you cast your mesmeric fiend trick, it goes on the stack to exile the card from the hand in response to that trigger. You suck the feed into your mouth. You draw your card to kill that guy, and, the new trick, it goes on. The sacks return a card to their hand, but you haven't taken a card from their hand yet. Then you take the card for hand that's just gone forever. Very nice. Yeah, definitely. Yeah, yeah, I kind of, like. Very important. I'm moving over to Red now, and we have the starting point for this is red interaction. So this is cheap instant and sorcery effects that interact with our opponents creatures and sometimes their faces. James similar to black and white, red has some very good cheap interaction. But what's different about the red interaction specifically? Yeah. So the fact that for that interaction is, is in the form of dealing damage rather than to creatures or your opponent, rather than just destroying creatures. But he does dictates a lot. I think about how that plays as a coloring cube. Because it's inherently limited, right, in terms of its ability to deal with the big late game fats. And it's a lot of why, that tends to be geared towards not playing long games and a lot of cubes, or certainly not playing long games with a plan of, of removing all your opponents fats would feel that removal anyway. Because it is just more limited than the, for black removal of a white removal, for example, and blues interaction as well, in the form of permission. That being said, it it gives it more tools to end the game quickly because it often interacts with your pens life social as well as their creatures and that is very powerful. Yeah, definitely. I like the the red interaction we have here. It's kind of split into ones that can target anything, including your opponent's face and ones that can only target creatures. Generally I think you want a bit of a mix, but like about ten years ago when red decks were more about the band, you would only run the ones that could also go face as because that change is talking about they are your like game. The the joke with what I read for a long time was get them to three and then wait to draw a lightning bolt. We're not kind of in that point anymore, but still, having that late game reach is very important. So kind of like the classics, cars like lightning bolt burst, lightning, chain lightning. These can go to any target. You also in that vein, you had the two minor ones with Searing Spear and Lightning Strike, which are basically the same card when you kind of get onto the ones that can only go to creatures. You have a card like Flame Slash one manor to deal four damage to a creature. Very efficient. You also have new cars like Unholy Heat. Similar thing, but it also counts. Delirium if you have delirium it gets a bit bigger, but then some slight. I was about to say newer until I remember a bride was probably mentioned a decade ago, but like Cars Like a Bride and suplex are both burn effects. Well, the they're both damage dealing effects, but also they have some added utility, so a braid and suplex can also answer artifacts so you actually get a flavor of utility. Kind of like, James, what do you think of these, like as a list? Do you think this is a pretty, good spread and kind of like, which ones stick out to you as being stronger and which ones are a little bit less optimal? Would you say? Yeah, sure. I mean, obviously like Lightning Bolt has its best in class. I don't think that's going to change. But there's, things like flames superimpose on it, straight up on mana. So. Well, you know, flames flash when you get to flame slash opponents for mana creatures. It's so powerful. And like shadows, very rarely to multiple turns. Having the shatters tagged on your removal with stuff like a blade and suplex is really very powerful. Gives you a lot of game against phase artifact decks and in a way that you can main deck, right? It doesn't skew to put sideboard cards in your cube. You like that? Unholy heat. Really nice. Specifically, it gives you a way to at least tap out to answer those big creatures that that often struggles with. I guess fiery confluences. We only have one this and this is an outlier. It's kind of filling a different vowel. Have I in like a four mana play where, sure, it's into action, but really it's about killing your opponents of, Oh, absolutely. Nuking the back deck. Other things I think we could add to that list if we're looking into the Or big for mana plays. V that does do a good line in features that kill creatures as well. Things like like flame from Card View is a card. I think that has really stood the test of time, actually. Compared to, you know, a lot of similar cards in that vein have been kind of craps out. But because cube has got. So are you talking about like, Neck Hotel or something next to that for victory in Cloud scapes no longer winners that, because cube is got so creature centric for the flame tongue's actually really good for saying it kills creature and then traits for another creature. And obviously if you want a much more powerful version of that though is petroglyph that I'm into flame twin off of vibes. Yeah I I'll that I'm okay adding brainstorm to the staples list, but I feel I need to draw the line at petroglyph. As much as I love Paraguay's sick card, but I can't, call that a staple yet. Yeah. Yeah. In general, we know what Red is doing and like, but in general, these effects are essential in red. This is how red has reach and it's how it interacts. And yeah, I think I think these are, these are some fantastic examples. There's similarly to black though. There's one additional thing that I think red needs being a cube. And that's red rummaging effects. These are effects that in some way we have to pick some cards to draw some cards. But I think these cards are really important in cube. Just because they let Red keep its deck going, it gives it. It's another way of giving it some some additional reach. You can pitch some lands to get some additional filtering, but also they just grow into so many other decks that red is kind of doing nowadays, like things like spell slinger in is it things like, delirium in like D style of environments. These, these decks help these cards help all of those. And they're just really good at kind of like filtering things out. And I'm like, James, do you like, are you a fan of a red rummaging effect? Yeah. These can fill some important roles. They can enable a lot of synergies. I think we could also add some creatures in this list. Something like Inti is is a powerful creature that meets this needs as well. But even if you want something that's cheaper and more reliable, like Avatar and Epicure, this just quite nicely here, whilst enabling a lot of of a synergies as well. No, exactly. And yeah, I just some other the instant sorcery ones as we mentioned faces lifting. We also have a card like cathartic pyre which is also interaction. We like that one highway robbery and demand answers are nice rummaging effects. We discard a card to draw some cards, and then you have a bit of reunion, which I'm a big fan of. That's actually an enchantment. But as we've kind of gone over with our white sorcery speed effects, it's a sorcery speed effect that is on a permanent. But then it comes in. It does the rummaging thing, but then we can also pay, one and socket to give all I could just haste, which, if you're in red, can be quite helpful. Yeah, that one's fairly sick. And, in black Re-Animator. Right where you, It puts your giant thing in the graveyard for next gen movie animates it and give it haste with better reunion. Yeah. And similarly to Black Hand, the type, this isn't the deeper section. Like, there's so many of these effects, but there's there's definitely a line in terms of playable ones and the ones I think we've gone over. I'm happy running like the desperate ravings, that kind of stuff. Like, I mean, if shut down for tormenting vice variants, there are there are a lot of folks. Yeah, but I think it's in that bit of a set out they do. But I think the ones I think these are the, the core ones to look at, let's keep it going. Let's move on to green. When we think of green, we think of ramp. And ramp is such an integral part to Green's identity. It's one of the things that it does best. James, talk to us about ramp. Why does a green deck naturally want ramp? What is it good for? Yeah, this is, this is the thing that green does better than any of a color. It's kind of a defining characteristic of green. And I think in most, in a lot of cubes, just enabling you to play your extensive spells ahead of schedule if you have, you know, the most staple of green cards, right, is like elvish mystic saying single green mana. So one one taps for green, a a game that starts with an Elvish mystic is. I mean, it's not the same as a Mox, but. It feels not that far off when it all works out, you know? Just the the game where you go turn one elvish mystic, then you play a free drop on turn two in a follow up on turn three. There's such a huge difference to, to to just casting those cards on schedule. It can be a case, but this is the whole thing your deck is doing, and you're trying to do something giant and play an eight mana spell. But it can also just be I have good free drops, good for drops. And I would like to cast from early in the game and kill you with them. No, I, I agree with most of that. I believe you. Do you, you went to Elvish mystic, first of all, and wild Place is the most generic one, you know, it's like it's the core unit. Yes. That's it. Yeah. Green ram. No, I agree, and like, Yeah. I didn't touch on. There's so many of these like, I think the best case I'm going to say is Birds of Paradise. Yeah, there's a single green mana and it fixes you for all of your colors. Then I like personally the hierarchy. So, ignoble hierarchy is that one. The taps were a giant and has exalted. That one's really cheap because there's a bunch of command sets. Noble hierarchy. I would also consider a stable, but it is a bound, I think, 12 to $15. And as James mentioned at the start, it could be replaced with like these can be replaced with other like just go down the list basically you don't if you if you're building I keep on a budget, just go down the list. It's fine. That definitely counts for the effort. I like to halfling. I think you're going fully optimal like halfling gets in, but it's $25 at the moment. We can just run the ladder or else we can run the Elvish mystic. I quite like Arbor Elf, Arbroath if I want that. That's the one that comes in and, on top of forest, but also in my ramp section, when I'm looking at ramp in a cube, I don't want them to all be on creatures. Because as you may have noticed in this episode, we've gone over a bunch of staple cards that kill creatures. I think it's important to have like at least, a ramp and growth effect in there. Something that goes, get going, get some land from your deck, put it into play, or even a wild growth effect like a enchantment that sits on a land and makes it double for manner. Things are important because these don't die to doom blade effects or they don't get burnt out like like the bolt. The bird thing is very real. But if you world gross your land, that means it's going to survive a bit longer. It's not as efficient as Birds of Paradise, but it could. But having that variety cube I think is important, spreading it out a little bit. So. So it's not just all creatures. You don't want all the same thing all the time. Variety is good, similar to how we kind of talked about that in terms of like white interaction. Having it on enchantment can be important. Having it on an artifact can be important. It's the same thing here with green ramp. I like a bit of variety. Yeah for sure. I think the, the it can also lead to very different decks. Right. The non creature ones actually enable you to build better multicolor decks with them as well because even though a lot of the creatures do fix you like, like best Paradise fixes you, noble havoc fixes you. You still can't really count them as sources of your other colors because they are just vulnerable. Like. Like I can't be like, I'm going to play all these white cards in my bluegreen deck. And it's fine. I don't need that many lands because I've got a Birds of Paradise and a noble hierarchy. And, another dog for fixed set. Because if you kill my dog, then I'm going to have, like, flossing in my hand. Whereas if I have vampiric life in my deck, I get to just go and get my planes, and I can be pretty confident that I have access to white panache for the rest of the game by, but as for the creatures tend to be a bit more efficient, like five. I saw on slide one. And for, I enable you to have those curvatures for a little bit better so that the creature centiliter sort of more assertive facts, whereas the non creature stuff tends to like slightly bigger vamp and leading to better multicolor decks. They can combine as well via if you're running off of elf, which you mentioned, I quite like having something like utopias fall in back because that's quite a nice little combo. The orb valve is one that untap the forest and utopias for all you can. Enchanted forest make it tap an additional mana so it can be very explosive, like you go turn one off valve, turn to plane of a forest, tap it. Oh that's vice. Now tap for two mana, then untap it with our valve shot for mana two. That's very, very powerful. But yeah, if I can't have any of ones call out is, Sylvan Caryatid, which is a creature which fixes you a that actually doesn't really fall into that creature category because it has hex proof. It's, it dodges all those remedial spells. So it it goes in all of your green decks for interesting mapping, which is very nice. Yeah, that's a very good point. So I haven't added so I've added all the one manor ones to the list in terms of staples. In terms of the two minor ones I generally find them like Sylvan Caryatid I think is the most it goes in any deck. There's a bunch that are kind of a bit more you can customize to what your deck is doing, or alter what your cube is doing. So like there's a guide like Lotus Cobra, which is great for doing like a Lans thing. There's called like bio Vegas, which I think I'm, I'm quite high on. It's the what is the Warhammer one that that puts counters on creatures. It's good if you're doing a counter deck. There's like fanatic of roller switch as eternally. So it's kind of like a good back up in like a, graveyard type of deck. Like like when you get two mana, you can customize what you're doing a bit more with them, if that makes sense. But yeah, yeah. Sylvan Caryatid, I think it's just it's it's always a safe bet. Basically. It's always going to do the phase. It's always going to ramp you. And that's very nice. Yeah. Running ramp in green is very important. But Segway so is it in colorless? I think there is a most up. I think there is room for ramp in colorless in cube. I would consider it a staple effect is something that green has access to, but by having it in colorless it allows other decks access to some ramp. So it's kind of like it's it's same as like in commander. It's not really fair that you're kind of just green, just gets all the rapid growth of X, just runs people over by going bigger. You need that kind of you. Other decks want these effects to The first place I want to start with is Signet. Some talismans. There was a long period of time where I'm going to say it was a staple thing to run a full cycle of signet in a cube, then the full cycle of talismans got printed, and then it became staple for a full set of talismans to be run instead. I don't think we're there anymore. I think we're past that. Like personally, I would only run a talisman or a signet in a deck or in a color pair that wanted it, but it lets us are like, in my cube. Both the mirror and is it are doing artifacts. Therefore I've run a talisman in there to help us decks out. Do you know, I don't want this to become a full, full topic on Signet. So talismans and where we are, we're kind of like, would you. I agree with that. Specifically on the Cygnus and talismans. We're not at the full cycle set anymore or in or in lower power level. Q would you like a full cycle to exist there? I think it totally depends on the cube. It's not so much about power level. I think just as what you expect for Mana curve, most stats will look like, so for a reason they got a lot less powerful in high power level cubes. So when we did for, episode a few months ago, where we looked back at Vintage Cube from like 2016 or whatever, it was, right? And that was like peak Signet Vintage Cube. It was the whole cube is about resolving were really good fun. Five and six mana plays. And if you're about that, then, the talismans are phenomenal for Signet. So phenomenal. The game 6 to 10 to Signet. And then you play a follow up on two and three and the thing with the the artifact, similar to be long for each of them. But we discussed in and then most games people aren't blowing them up. Obviously there is plenty of artifact removal in these cubes, but it's not nearly as abundant as creature removal. So generally it's just like a reliable source of mana of the rest of the game. A Signet's thousand give you access to two different colors. But in the right tack, you might even run a completely off color one because you just want to get ahead of mana. That being said, now for a reason, we don't see them so much. They're super powerful cubes. Just for cards that matter are lower on the curve. Like, if you're about casting the busted free drops instead of a busted five flops, then you just don't need to do that right. The Signet doesn't help you cast a free drop at all. It's still going to come in on time. Free. And people are just affecting the board sufficiently for them for much value of the game. So I think the question to ask yourself is, what do you expect for curves to look like in most of these decks? As much as about the power level. Obviously, yes. If you have artifact synergies in certain color paths, that is a reason to put in the talismans of a signet, some phase color paths. I don't think it's essential. I think it's, it's mostly just about the the curves one to mana. Magnavox or not? No, I think that's fair. Yes. So if you do want them, some other good, mana ramp and colors that that I think can go in any cube. I was like, overflowing chalice and mind stone are just solid. They can appear anywhere. They will do that thing of they'll come on to. They will ramp you to for all the quicker. I quite like on a top to a Paradise, if I'm honest with you. I know it's not as fast. But it does that amount of any color, and I think that is. That is solid. That is nice. There's a bunch of other colors ramp in like that, but that's available to us, and it's hard to kind of describe them as staples because they vary so wildly in power level. Like we have things like technically like mocks, and so ring and Green Monolith are all technically colorless ramp. It's hard to it's hard to count them as staples because they are so broken. Then you also have cause like, Gilded lotus. You have kind of like like, like like the big, like five minor ones. Like, like, I think it's hard to it's hard to it's I'll just describe any of them as staples, but, but I do think they are important. Yeah. Give me a one power stone any day, and I, I love a warm power stone as a proper magic wand. That's that's the the worst solving basically, isn't it? Three mana comes in tap and taps for two. I love a warm power stone, but it's like. It's like this. The ramp section I is a section that I want in any cube that I'm building, but it is more power level dependent. Basically. Like if we're a power cube, then yeah, we're running Moxon. If we're a pull up a cube, then that's where things like I want to up to Paradise come in if that kind of makes sense, like it's a, it's like we've only listed like five, we've listed two cycles of cards and three other staples because this is more power level dependent. Basically, I think it's I think is a nice way of putting it. Yes, I agree with most of that. I do think on a Foxworth Paradise is a decent amount less than like talismans and segments and stuff. But so for what it's worth, just because the deal I'm making when I put these vamp cards in my deck is, I'm including a card, which is bad for an try for later on. And that doesn't affect the board because I know my my, my early game is gonna be so much better when I have it on turn two. And if I'm making that deal, I want it to live most of the time when I cast it on turn to VI and on a Fox, it just leaves a lot less than an a talisman does. I mean, it's certainly good for our lives, right? So it's every color, but it's, but it's just a lot more vulnerable from those cards. No, I'd agree. I would agree with that one being further down the list. But there is one other colorless section that I think is important for every cube to have. I added one card to this as James was talking earlier. Let's see. Let's know if you can work out which one it was. But this is colorless. Colorless filtering. As soon as I started putting these in my cube decks, I realized I wanted them in every cube deck. Because what these do is these are cheap, efficient effects that help help you filter through your deck. And because they're colorless, they can go in any deck. And what these really do is these let you run 16 lines, these let you be that little bit more efficient for they just smooth things out. So cards here call cause like get axiom probe. That's the one that I added earlier. Because like Misha's bauble energies bauble, these are cheap. These are zero manner artifacts that help you filter to your deck, but you also have cause like chromatic sphere, enigmatic Star. And then I've included this one. This might one. James might similarly to on on top to power. This might talk me off a little bit, but I put Smuggler's Copter on here because it can it kind of can go in in basically any cube and will do a good job at filtering you. I'm more confident on the first half than on the first bunch that this is microscopic. But like James, I know you're a fan of these, but like, why is all this filtering so important or so universally good? Basically. Yeah. So the big thing that these cards are doing, they is, improving your consistency because so, so similar to I have a new cantrip suite. They're reducing the size of your attack in effect. Right. And slaying you for very low cost cycle by your card. And that means just going to find your good card a little bit easier. These are also often enabling synergies in a really positive way. So some of the best ways to enable you artifact synergies, some of the best ways to enable the cast multiple spells that are ten synergies, they just cost you so little to put in your deck and you can take them early and, and just know they're going to improve your deck because they go in any color. Yeah, I really like these. Every cube and I sort of progressively they make their way up enough for my pick order. I've also you did miss out the best one that what's the best one? You just put a picture of sensei's divining top in our dock. I'm. No, I, I I'm not including a staple. I can't include as a staple a card. I, I, I miss play so much. I yeah, and a card that will just add 45 minutes to the average, cube draft. Just it being in the cube. Yeah, I can see an argument for certain player groups. Can't be trusted with a sensei's dividing top. That that's reasonable. It. I think. For certain play groups, you might need, maybe you have to have after it to say you could only spin top one. Since I know something. If you have the the words in response, I spin top I use to offset that can get frustrating. But the card is cool, I like it, no I and it does fill the though. It does fill the requirement of being a colorless thing that helps us filter through our deck. So yeah. Yeah. Very very yeah, very very true. I'll add it to the list. Cool. So that's our staples. Before we get you out of here, I think it's worth us touching on some, some things that we purposely missed out. I put this at the end just to really drive that engagement. James. I think it's going to do really well, but, let's start off with, like, types of cards that, that, that we purposely missed out. Like I've purposely missed out from this list, like, white and red aggro cards. Most cubes will have white and red aggro cards because they are generally what those colors do best. I've not and give an examples because to an extent they are an archetype. They're a deck. But everything else on here is not a like a not like a staple is not a deck. A staple is an effect that can go in basically a lot. The largest number of decks or that like that, a large number of decks will want only one deck wants a goblin guide, if that makes sense. Like like you are likely to see those type of effects in every cube and in our, skeleton, there is a lot of that. There is plenty of room for these effects, but what you pick here, similarly to kind of like as we were talking about Colorless Ramp, is where I kind of really like I definitely found it came up a bit there. It's basically it's there is room for white and red aggro in basically every cube or in every cube trying to follow. There is room for whitening and red aggro in the vast majority of cubes, but what you pick will be dependent on the power level, your budget, your stipulation, that kind of stuff. Which you kind of agree with that. James. Yeah, for sure. I have agree. By the way, if you've already written an angry comment, said saying why we're idiots because we miss some of this stuff. Please don't delete. It is very, very informative, I think. Please please don't. Yeah yeah yeah. And we appreciate you can still write one. That was fun. And we do appreciate you just know that we do appreciate. Yeah. Thank you. Delicious for sure. Yeah. No I'd buy this. Very often the categories we've discussed. Right. For vamp for cat can ships for interaction be tend to be pretty common across cubes of actually very different power levels. The aggro fats on the other hand, very much not. You don't put Bhagavan in your, low power level cubes for good reason. For failing us. Staple of, powers key, but, not certainly not transferable. And, yeah, really only go in a narrower range of often. Exactly. And then in terms of another big one that we've kind of missed out, is Re-Animator. I don't think I've built a cube where a version of Re-Animator is not there. It's been like at some point, whenever building any cube, I have gone to myself. What is the Re-Animator deck here? But that is not. But that the key word there was dead. It is a package. It's an archetype. It's not a staple like, I like like we can't give the recommendation that, like, Entomb reanimate are staples, because for the vast majority of cubes, they will not be if you're, well, if you're building a peasant cube, kind of impossible. But if, the like an a lower power level cube, those would just be too efficient and, like fire power level cubes. Yeah, sure, they will be staples there. But then a staple in, in like the Mega Vintage cube is just like, what is the best 540 cards? Bailey that's a bit facetious, but like, you know what I mean? Like that kind of more where we are with that. But like James, would you agree leaving Re-Animator off of a staple list is is fair. Yeah, I buy that. I think it's really important for this all cubes to have ways to access your graveyard. But that doesn't have to be a super efficient stuff to play things. It can be very. It can be very sad. And certainly it's going to vary a lot depending on the type of keep your building what those effects look like. Yeah. And as you said at the start, this is specifically for staple for staple cards that go in every cube and reanimate like, yes, yeah, I think Re-Animator is a choice to put that deck in. It is not a or to include if that makes sense. Whereas with something like a Lana elves way more easy to go just slide into every cube because that's what green does best. Yeah for sure. V v cube skeleton, right? Would not say Titan's six. The animation spells. And then the other thing we want to touch on before we finish out is specifically cards that we purposely missed out like this. This this is actually where I think where we would be would be likely to get the most comments and stuff, because we've left out a lot of very powerful cards, but the ones that we've left out have all been free spells. So for what interaction? We didn't mention solitude for countless spells. We didn't mention force of will, force of negation, or days for black interaction. We didn't mention snuff out for red interaction. We didn't mention fire, blast, mind collapse and fury and the like. And for green, we didn't mention a card like land grant. The reason, again is that these are not staples that can go in every cube. The free spells, in my opinion, are a power outlier. You are making a choice to add them when you add them to a cube. I think there is a power level difference in terms of cubes that have free spells and ones that don't, because. But a cube where a cube with days just just having one days in your cube makes the blue deck play differently because the opponent has to think what if? But like there's a massive difference in terms of their tapped out. I'm free to do what I want and they're tapped out, but they might have X. For me, that is a big enough difference that that's kind of like, that's a question. Like it's almost a question when you're building a cube in terms of like, what size is it? What power level is it? But to me, there's a conversation in terms of, free spells in it. So for me, that's why I chose to leave them off of the staple list. But they are very strong cards for you. They're staples. You add them to your cube. But to me, they don't exist in that space because of that choice that you make when you choose to include them. Yeah. I think I agree with leaving most of these off for staples, less some the fans for that. Very powerful. They, are often pretty expensive in dollar terms as well. Things like for pet elementals, force of, well, force of negation. I'm not sure I agree for free spells are inherently power outliers. Like you know, would you rather have a sniff power source plowshares fight? True. But would you rather have a snuff out or like a black or a black interactions? Although I would put snuff out very highly on my list of black interaction. Sure. But I don't think it's a power out. Like I'm not like, I, I, I think snuff out versus, fatal push is like a conversation you could have, you know, it's a pack. I think, it's fine if you want to have a rule of, like, I'm not playing for interaction in this cube, I think, you know, you know, you're moving a little bit of sort of mental load from your players, right? When, it means that when their opponent is tapped out, very rarely taps out, and they're not going to do anything. And yeah, certainly the thing of if DayZ in the fall, in that vein, you always have to think about it is, is very real. I got, I got days off, a bonus sheet and a very simply high stakes sales event quite recently, and I'm not completely over it. That's sucks. That's, But I don't think. Yeah, I think it's fine if you want to have that level, but, I don't really abstracts of playing a few spells in a mid power level cube if they are appropriately pitched, like if a white ones like mine collapse is a pretty filler card if you look at the power level of that. Right. Yeah, I like, I like I think swiftly with, with so the red ones and so not fury, not Fury, but like fire blast and mine collapse. I think I kind of okay. But it's more like once you add one you start adding a bunch if that kind of makes sense. And then it's when, like if your red section has like 3 or 4, three, three inverted like quotation marks battles, that's when that's not that. That's when it starts reaping, if that makes sense. Like like I like I'm fine with a fire blast in any cube that can run it personally. But like, I think once you start opening the door, you start more creeping in, if that makes sense. Saying it's a slippery slope. Yeah, you start off with a, you start off with a mine collapse and before you know it, you have your your opening hand them as a force as well, staring back at you. Yeah, yeah. Why not? Yeah, that's a slippery slope, James. You got to be careful. And that's what we are here to warn our listeners about. We're here to give the best advice that we can think is the best way to put it. Fairest of all. All right. But I think with that, that is a good place to end it. I know you've had, yeah. Yeah, we've had a good chat today about a bunch of cool cards. Let us know down in the comments if there's any cards that you think are missing. From my end, I think this is a pretty good list, but I'm always open to hear from the audience. To hear what people think, let us know. James. Pleasure, man. Thank you for that. Yeah, very good chat today. Yeah, it was a pleasure. Nice one. And it just leaves me to thank you all very much for listening. Do make sure you like, share, subscribe, tell a friend. Whatever you can do greatly helps us out, grow the podcast and do more cool and interesting things. Until next time, it's goodbye from me. And if you buy from James and we'll see you all soon. Goodbye.