Reality Fracture Cube Set Review - Part One | #108

In this episode of Powerful Nothing, we're back in the world of Magic with part one of our cube set review for Reality Fracture, where we cover all the goodness in White, Blue and Black.

Card Gallery: https://moxfield.com/decks/AHvmZQYgBUWQGZS7MI_vsw

Timecodes:
3:53 - White
27:01 - Blue
58:54 - Black

Video Version: https://youtu.be/zBw-fJ9J0pQ

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

My Cube: https://cubecobra.com/cube/list/2sweet
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

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Transcript

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Hello everyone, and welcome back to Powerful Nothing in Magic The Other in Q podcast. I'm your host, Don, and as always, I'm joined by James James. Do you love Jace? I do, I do now, I do now. Good. That is the correct answer because boy, do we have a lot of Jace for everyone today. Because today is part one of our set review for Reality Fracture. We're back in the world of magic, but not entirely as we know it. And yeah, the set has a lot of cool throwbacks to old cards, and it generally looks a lot of fun. We haven't got our hands on it yet. James. Prerelease is a few days away at time of recording, but yeah. Are you looking forward to the set? Yeah, this one actually looks really cool, to be honest. I'm quite excited for it. I feel like we've had a bit of a thing in recent years where we've had a lot of sets where it felt like Wizards played it quite safe, but there were a lot of mechanics where even if it was a rehash of an old mechanic or it was just a slight variation on something we'd had previously, right? Like connive became whatever the new connive was called in The Hobbit for making a token. They weren't really pushing the boat out for a while. It feels like. Whereas this set, they're actually trying some stuff are they're taking some shots. Who knows, maybe I'll be terrible, maybe I'll be great. But it's cool that they're trying things, I think. Yeah, there's so much stuff in this at the latest. Looks really interesting. Yeah. This is, I guess, the end of their current story arc. So this is like the end game, if you will. The last big one was, I was going to say as much. The machine's more of a spark, maybe. Was it worth a spark? I thought we we killed off by less. I think March the machines might have been the I think that was one in the middle between that. It's kind of like how no one really remembers what happens in, like, Avengers two. It's kind of okay, okay, let's go with that. Let's go with your comments. Please do. Please do it. All right. But let's talk about some cube car. James, as always with these episodes, basically what me and James are going to be going over is the cars that we like from this set, and we're going to be evaluating them depending on what cubes we think they could go into. Importantly, when we are doing this, it's important to remember that this isn't standard, this isn't modern, this is cube. Our pool of cards is every card ever printed. Our band lists are self enforced. When we do evaluate cards with generally trying to describe the type of cube that that card could go in. And generally with that we have three rough buckets that we tend to talk about. We have our high powered cubes which are looking to run the best of the best, like think the MC go Vintage Cube and the arena powered cube here. I probably the best examples that people might know, and I will also include cubes that aren't actually running the power nine, such as my main cube. It doesn't have power or cause like Minsky boolean for telling us, but it's still looking for super efficient cards. So if we're talking about high powered cards or supervision cards, that's kind of that ballpark they will go into. You then have your more mid powered cubes. This is, I would say is likely the type of cubes that most people will have here. You probably are still running some efficient cards, things like lightning Bolt and Counterspell, but you have more cards for things that you like and cars that you own. You then have your lower powered and budget cubes. These are often where people start out. You're less like to see staples from formats, and you might see cards that have gone through standard that people might have opened at, prerelease, that kind of thing. So if you have a cube, try and think roughly what category yours falls into, and that will help you work out. If a card we're talking about is right for you. And then also we will try and touch on peasant and pauper cubes, which are made up of commons and uncommon commons if we think there are any relevant cards for them. And then one last thing before we get into the episode itself, as a reminder, there will be time codes down in the show notes below. If you want to jump around straight to the different colors, there will also be a link to a card gallery where you can see the cards that we're talking about today, and any cards that we reference, and also a link to the YouTube version. If you want to see the pretty pictures and move around the screen. All right, James, with that preamble out the way you want to take it away with our first card of the day, we're starting with white. Take it away with enlightened confident. Yeah for sure. So enlightened confident is one. The white for a two long creature called cleric. It has lifelink and a beginning for your end step. If you gained light like this turn, you surveil one. If you put a card with mana value less than or equal to the amount of life you gained, this turn into your graveyard. This way. Put that card into your hand instead. So this is interesting. It's a sort of this is the idea is a sort of color color shift at dark confident. But I think this is actually going to play fairly well. So the fact that the ability always lets you do a landscape of silent and mana value zero mean you don't need to gain lots of life with this. You just want to be triggering it somehow every turn. Theoretically enables itself. It has lifelink, but in reality it's two mana, two one. Your goblin pickers don't tend to have good attacks unless your opponent is shooting straight up nothing your opponent will block. Yeah, for sure, for sure. And this is not a body that survives combat. So I think realistically, to be interested in this, we need a way to be gaining life outside of combat and outside of this card. But if we have that, I think it's a pretty reasonable value engine. But I only really be interested in this if you have an actual life game theme going on in your cube. I think, how do you feel about it in higher powered cubes, James? Where there's more, more zero drop like artifacts. Because like, this will draw you like a bauble or a walking ballista, that kind of stuff. Like, I do agree, this gets better in cubes, where you're not relying on the lifelink of this to make this better. But like, is there a world where like, they test this in the mic, go vintage Cube because it will, in theory draw you your mocks? I mean will test any old nonsense in the mic. Go vintage cube one that's fresh and won't buy. I can't imagine sticking around in those cubes. And the reason is it's not so much for the curves. And what proportion of the time do you get to put the cards into your hand, like you always get to put lands into your hands? So that's like going on. That's a pretty good chunk of your deck to start off with. And you're getting the selection either way, right. I think the issue is more just how reliably can you trigger this? And there just aren't enough ways to do that in that cube most of the time. Like, sure, sometimes you have a guide of souls going and it'll be dope, but, most of the time, if this doesn't have an attack, you're not getting that trigger. Yeah, I agree, I like Lifelink life gain is definitely quite a big theme in this set, especially for white. As an archetype is generally something we see more in lower powered cubes, like, as, as full archetypes that are being supported, like it's kind of blue white fliers, black white light gain. It's like a classic core mechanic staple type thing. So yeah, hopefully this card isn't too expensive because yeah, I think in cubes that are running, running things like like I might just I think this is a very solid card. But yeah, yeah, if I do kind of agree that kind of it's a bit rough by itself because, it will just die in combat. Your opponent will stop you getting the card advantage. And like I, I think this needs like three toughness before I'm kind of like super happy with it, I guess, if that makes sense. Like a 2 or 3 would survive combat, but like A21 dies to a stiff breeze. But yeah. So the card, it will find a place, but maybe just not in the in the most powerful cubes that just need efficient cards. All right, let's keep it going. Next up we have Flickering Hound. This is three in a white ray two creature dog with. Whenever you cast a quick spell, exit up to one other target creature you control. Then return that card to the battlefield under its owner's control. So in general, having a repeatable way of flickering a creature is nice. There are a lot of good ATVs in cube like in white alone. We have things like we have things like Thoroughbred Inspector, palace jailer, and solitude. These are all really cool, cool things that like, we want to trigger again and again if we can, the trigger of this being on creatures being cast, I think will be okay for a lot of decks like expect like this is a white card. White decks are often creature heavy. Will be able to have things in our deck in order to flicker. So I think that will be okay. The obvious comparison for this is like, this is actually, this is a standard powered take on displace a kitten. Displace again, is a messed up magic card. Like this is worse than the kitten because that triggers off of non creature spells. But it lets you blink any non land permanent. So we're displaced again. You can reset things like planes walkers that kind of stuff. Like there's just more utility that this just does creatures. So this feels more just like a fair value card. Whereas with things like, yeah, with a kitten, you can like you reset your planeswalker, you can also reset like the One ring. This is more fair. This is just going to be more for value. So because of that, my gut is more slower, more mid powered cubes. Like I can see myself running it in like my treat yourself keep where you have time to play a four manner to two, and then play something else afterwards to get some more volume, to get some more value out to your earlier plays. But if accruing value is a thing you're doing in your cube, then I think this has a place. If you're just trying to be efficient, then I think it might struggle. Yeah, for sure, for sure. I think I would not view this as a comfortable card to display sickness and display sickness, and tends to be a card where your your goal is really to play disco circus. And then when that turn that that's not what is going on here. This is more of a, a value engine, that is going to accrue value over multiple fans. But it is pretty good at that. There's lots of great, great creatures you can be blinking in. Why? As you said, I think one thing that has really nicely with this is the pitch elementals for Modern Horizon. So it kind of works both ways, right? That those amazing things to flicker that I have also zero mana creatures. So you can cast this and cast all of those and get value right away. Also for flash ones, I mean, you could maybe even use this to protect the creature, right? Which is quite cool. In terms of the home space, I think. Yeah, it's more mid power level cubes. If, if you're in a mid power level cube and one of your archetypes is like blue white blink or band blink, something like that. I view this as a card, but is you know, I think people often run something like teleportation circle the form of enchantment that flickers something on and stop, come back. A vest of that card versus the upside is higher, right? Because you can get multiple stickers in a 10th of it is far, far, far more vulnerable to removal. So that's, that's a balance. You have to, you have to make. But, I think the circle card, I think it's an interesting card. It's it's not a combo card in the same way as display success and is the the only really selfish thing I could think of to do with this is, features that discover when they ECP a kind of interesting, several. One that sees most players via the trumpeting console. Yeah. Oh my. Yeah. And discovers the mechanic where it's a that's similar to Cascade, if that makes sense. It's a, it's like an ATB cascade. Exactly, exactly. And the interesting thing about discover is actually cast the card. Right. So let's say you have a trumpeting console. And since the battlefields you discover, if you discover into a creek, into a creature, you cast a creature, a flick of a canister, again, that's pretty hot. Okay. And then you can just keep going until you hit a on creature. So hypothetically, if every card in your if every spell in your deck was a creature, you could cast it. You could play every spell in your deck on the stack, which is kind of cool. That's pretty hot, actually. Yeah. Obviously in the real world, it's hard for every spell on your creature and you need to play like a full man like creature and the six mana creature. But, you know, maybe there's something that there's some other cards with. Discover that we could fly. So, maybe that's something. But mostly this is a fair value card, I think. Whoo! Trumpeting cancer's already in my treat yourself kupo. Okay. Let's go. That sounds. That sounds right. But, yeah, you've heard it here first. James has confirmed that cats are better than dogs. Marvelous. Thank you all. No one needed to know this. This is. This is a fun. All right, let's keep it going. James. James, you're up next with Gideon's memorial. What do you think of this card? Yeah, this is an interesting one. So this is one. The why? For a legendary artifact, it says creature tokens you control get plus one plus zero and have vigilance. You can tap it throughout one manner of any color, but you spend this mana only to cast a planeswalker spell. And finally, you can pay one twice and discard this card. Have it deal for damage to target, attacking or blocking creature. I instinctively don't like this card because the design just feels so disjointed to me. You know what I mean? It's pushing you in so many different directions. It's asking me to have creature tokens. It's asking me to have plain to walk. As it's saying, please walk us. Make creatures they can do. They certainly can do. The anthem is like pretty mediocre, from my plus one plus. So. But, it's not nothing. I obviously Vera curves where this card is good for you. If you play this card on turn two, you play Gideon lives and the count and three of Ellie cooking. How many decks do you actually benefit? Enough from this card. And it's kind of tough, like, because even in cubes that include a bunch of planes, walkers don't get you unless, like, you're reliably going to have more than two, maybe max three planes walkers in your deck most of the time, at most. I have three planes walkers in each color in any of my cubes. So like realistically, when you're playing two mana for a bad anthem, I would disagree a little bit. So like, Intangible Virtue is a card that has been run up like and and and it will still see play in mid, mid and low about cubes. That's one of the white creature tokens you can get plus one plus one and have vigilance, but that's all it does. So this you do get the three Gideon's reproach attached to it. And for me basically that's what I see this as is like the planeswalker one is whatever. If one is like, I don't think you'll basically ignore the planeswalker line of text of this card. Basically, for me, this is more a is a slight, is a slight power creep to intangible virtue because it can also be a removal spell, which it's like I uncountable removal spell as well, because it is, the discard, it's an activated ability. It's not a you're not casting the spell, with the discard. So in my head so in my head, if you're supporting a tokens deck, that's where this gets in. Effectively you are just swapping out intangible virtue. This is a pocket version of that card. That card will still see some play. I think this basically you are losing a point of toughness on your tokens, which you don't really care about as much, and you're getting the potential of a removal spell, I guess. I actually, I don't know that you don't care at all about the point of softness and my concern of the attacking and blocking damage removal spells always to just play. Quite frankly, I find, because especially if you have a boatload of features by your opponent, it's, it's hard to know exactly which turn your opponent is going to attack into when you need to leave this up. It feels like you often waste your mana when you leave this up because, your opponent doesn't attack when you expect them to, and you can't use it proactively to get a blocker out of the way. Right? You have to let them block. So I'm, I mean, listen, obviously it's it's, you know, it's much better to have that ability to not. And it means that when your opponent has a fast stop, is this better than moving an attacker is really good. So yeah, I could see this being that of an intangible virtue, but, I guess I kind of don't think intangible virtue is very good. You know? No, I get that it is 20, 26. I will agree with that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's it. Yeah. You have to have a lot of tokens for this to work, basically. Like so I think if you're listening to this, you'll know if you want it, if you are really going hard with the tokens, let's keep it going. We have a lot of, cool cards get through today. We have a few more in white. Next up we have Liliana the Faultless. She is a single white free one, one legendary creature, a human cleric with whenever another creature or planeswalker you control enters, you gain one life and also has pay one and tap it to discard a card. Another target creature or planeswalker you control gains hex both until end of turn. So we've seen a bunch of cards like this before. Like they generally call it the Soul sister cards. One thing that that is important to note just off the bat with this is this is like, unlike a lot of the other Soul warden effects, this only triggers of of your creatures entering, not your opponents. So if you're just looking for that role, here is a Soul Warden effect that gains me some life. That is technically a downside, but the plus side with this is obviously the protection. Now that is quite a nice ability. It will be a threat of activation. Most of the time. You won't really know how good it is until after the match, until your opponent may show you that hand of removal spells that they haven't been able to get around because you've never touched your Liliana. The faultless. Basically, this effect is quite unique because we don't really get mother of Runes power level cards anymore. Like, they given us one in a modern horizons. Like the. The closest we've got to another one is scrolls. And this is kind of in a similar thing of like, it's a cheap white creature with the ability to tap and protect a creature in your cube. But the reason you would consider running this is similar to, enlightened confident is that this is a card that wants to go in a deck that cares about life. Game. This card is. This card is for those decks that are just looking for cheap ways of gaining life. Like there's a bunch of good cards, kind of like enlightened components that reward us whenever we gained life. And they wanted lots of incidental bits of like and like. The classic is like a Johnny's Pride mate as a two man, a two to that, that whenever we gain, like we put a counter on it, there are definitely better versions of that card nowadays, but like, that's the classic effect. We're looking for lots of little ways of gaining life to reward us in other effects. The issue with running cards like Soul Wardens is that they're fantastic in those decks. They give you that all those incidental bit of life gain that we're after, but they just really narrow. They they're really limited cause. And no one else apart from the life game deck wants them, because just gaining life in magic is kind of pointless. Like there's a reason why healing salve is not talked about at the same gravitas as an as Ancestral Recall. Just gaining life isn't good. You need to be doing something with it. So the soul wardens kind of struggle to get into cubes, even the ones that are doing life game because they just don't really do much else to anyone else. This at least has the ability to be an interesting card to protect some of our creatures. So so so again, if you're doing the life game archetype in your cube, this has a bit of play in decks aren't just doing the life game is what I'm trying to get across. And it's it's only going in those cubes. Like the bar for this to get in is you are doing life gain, but once you are doing it, I think this becomes an interesting card because it does. It does the life game bit, but then has a bit more play and is a bit more interesting than just like gain life whenever someone plays a creature. What do you think of Lily on the flowers? James yeah, I think I mostly agree. I think if you're already burning soul attendants or whatever that card's called, this is probably better. I think this protection ability is is probably more than makes up for not gaining life of your opponent's creatures. But this is not most of the runes. It's not even kind of a bit like most of their friends in VRC. The fact you have to leave the manor up to get the gap for protection is huge. Because the thing is, once you leave the manor, it's almost like you're committing to leaving that manor up for the rest of the game, right? Yes. You have. You've sort of waste landed yourself. Exactly, exactly. Because as soon as you tap out from it, you have, I think then you saw that removal spells and it's. And if your opponent does have to cast your removal spell into it, it's not even that bad for them because either a they could just kill this first it's and protect herself or be even if you do use it to protect something, you have to discard a card so it's not even life it down a card. And they can respond to it I guess, as well with a second remove as well. If it's something that really needs to die. Yeah, they certainly can. So yeah, I think, I think if you're already running the Soul Sisters, then the placing one of them with this is probably fine, but I wouldn't. View it as an as anything else a suffer than a slight upgrade for that. Also, personally, whenever I have souls standing in my deck, always forget the triggers on my opponents. And so, if so, it's an upgrade. It's a so it makes you feel better, as I said. Okay, now, I'll go along with that. All right. James, we are coming up to five cards into, Chase matters set, and I've not had a Jace yet. James, can you can you help me out? Talk to me about repurposed enforcer. Yeah. For sure. This is this is kind of a spicy one. So v pepsin for enforcer is one white for A32 creature human Sergeant says whenever this creature attacks you, empower chase X, where X is the number of creatures you control. What the hell does that mean? Well, yeah. What does that to empower? Chase says you put that many loyalty counters on a Chase token. You control. If you don't control one. First create a blue Jace Planeswalker token with a loyalty abilities minus one to surveil one and minus three to draw a card. Yeah, so we're just creating Plains Wall to take tokens at this point, which is kind of dope actually. Like I was reading the comments and uncomment. They're just like the two mana combat fic comes with a planeswalker now, like, how about is that? This is an it's kind of like a mass plains walker's in a lot of ways. It's an interesting take. I guess the key thing to say is. When the Plains walker just has these loyalty abilities, obviously there is no plus here. There's no zero. So this is not the repeatable value engine that you associate with Plains Walker's fate. If you just have a token on three loyalty, that is, you can tell it to draw a card or you can say a couple of times to surveil. It's not that sort of never ending stream of value that you associate with Plains Walker. This way you can just keep placing every single turn. Yeah, the tokens don't have a plus and they don't really have like an ultimate. The ultimate is drawing a card here which which we do love as magic players, let's be honest. But it is a big game in this big game. I do I think this mechanic is really cool for them. It's actually they've done it. There's a lot of stuff they're doing with it that's like cards which grants your plains. Well, because of a loyalty abilities and things like that. Other mechanics to get extra, extra loyalty on them. Synergies we have having plains walkers that comment that stuff. So really cool. But we're playing cube. We've mostly don't have that unless you're building a set cube for this set, realistically, you're going to have 1 or 2 and power chase cards in your cube. So we have to judge them on their own merits, not on how they might synergize with the cards. In this set. And on that basis, I think this card is fine. Basically, you can shortcut if you empower Chase three. That's basically to our card. If you empower Chase less than three, you can minus one to surveil. Or you can maybe keep it around and try and get a bit more loyalty on the second attack to, to draw a card. That being said, it's a two top with perfectly reasonable stats. It's two out of three. Two. It's nice that it doesn't count attacking creatures. It just counts all creatures for Vex, so it might not look that threatening when you cast on an empty board. So I'll be like, oh, it's fine, I can let them attack, though. And power chase while Knight and Cam and you go, creature, creature attack and power J to our cart. That's quite strong. I kind of compare this to, glimmer Lens is is one that sees loads of flame powered cube and is quite strong. This, I suspect, is slightly worse. The glimmer lens needs to attack with one other creature to get the card. Which is a slightly less onerous requirement, I say, than having three creatures so small. But Glimmer lens is only, a two to. This is a three. Two? I think they're comfortable cards. I, I guess maybe the glimmer lens edges it, but I think this would be a perfectly reasonable test in that spot. In that slot. Yeah, I think that's, I think the other thing to say is with with Glimmer Lens, you have to run cards with full meridan on them, and that's kind of annoying. So, Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Generally, I would completely agree with that. Yeah. Yeah, I think generally this is one for like full metal budget cubes, if I'm honest with you. Like like generally I think this is drawing you a card when you attack because if you're just if you just curve out one drop this three drop when you attack on turn three with this, you're going to be getting a drawcard. That's just a nice base level for your two man and aggressive creature. Yeah, I think this is pretty solid. And obviously, yeah, if you have if you're just going away with tokens and stuff, you could just make a bit of an engine with this. Like say you have like say it's really late in the game. Like there's like a board store, you play this, it's not going to break the bonds, but it could draw you into the stuff that's, that could break the board. So. So I'm a good aggressive creature early, which has play later in the game I think is interesting. So yeah, I can see it being tested. I think repurposed enforcer is a pretty solid card. Yeah, sure. There might be spots late where even if it doesn't have a good attack, you just throw it away because you want to empower Chase like eight. Exactly. That's multiple cards. Yeah, I think that's definitely like a very solid like again. Yeah. In a ball style. I think that's going to be a I quite a solid use case for this card. All right. Marvelous. All right. We're moving on to blue now. That have been blue we have divining duelist. This is two in a blue for A32 creature. Merfolk Wizard with flash. When this creature enters, you choose one. You can either tap target creature. You can untap target creature, or you can draw a card. Then discard a card. So realistically, while we while. Why we are talking about this is because this is another, potential card. If you're running against better twin, if you have a kick, you can play on this or you put a spin spin on this, you get infinite tokens. That's generally how that works. Not being able to twiddle any permanent is a downside. I know, James, you've enjoyed estimating your own time vault and about cube. So that really does mean that you're only putting this in as a card to go in a deck with your spent a twin. What's nice about this over. Maybe because, like, Pester My Odyssey, for example, those are kind of the classics, as it were, is that this also draws you a card. So if you need to find an answer or if you need to find your combo, this can help a little. My gut is that full is that this is mainly for larger cubes that want some redundancy on the on tap side of the combo, there isn't really a shortage, but like compared to the other ones that we've got, I think this might be like my third favorite untap after just after zebras, after after this deceiver and person might because of that card draw. I think that's actually quite a reasonable upside in those. This all comes under the big caveat of minis twin doesn't go in the most power cubes anymore. It hasn't for a while, but it is a bit of a fan favorite, so definitely a Todd worth talking about today. James, would you go along with that or is there other kind of lines and plays you can think of for Divining duelist? Yeah. No, this is this is a twin piece. It's fine. It I think you can make an argument for it being better than pass to me because, because of that looting effects. So you don't actually care about the evasion on pass to make it very much. Right? Because it's not like actually a good tempo creature. It's a bad when in fact, if you're using it like that. And so maybe you'd rather just get a bit of card selection on the way in, to either take for combo or take for interaction, whatever that might be. Sure, you can't have a land that's annoying. I think that's a kind of a close trade off. Which one you prefer? I think it is def I in my mind, it's definitely worse than Zork. I think Chuck is the best one, because that fall for toughness just makes it so movable. Yeah. It's fine. It's another twin piece. It doesn't solve the problems that Twin Hearts, though. No, the problems the twins have twin has is probably that we need, like, a 2 or 3 man, twin piece. And realistically, the actual answer is now do less. That's a topic for another day. But James, we have another fan favorite. Next. Talk to me about fable Fit Impossibly Lost. Yeah, I think it's kind of unfair. We're talking about this one because the green version of Civil Fifth has found the right way. And we've we've we've not we've not mentioned that we've portrayed him as purely lost. James. We haven't got to green. It should be that he could be hiding out in our in our green section. Well, it doesn't deserve to be on power level, but maybe we need to. Unlike some of narrative reasons. If it'll fit, you have to tune in next week to see if he is that. Yeah, right. Okay. Civil fit, impossibly lost is one the blue for A11 like legendary creature Nautilus. And it says when one or more of your opponents are dealt combat damage during your turn, draw two cards. If your library has no cards in it, you win the game and fiddle fits. Oh no. Shuffles it in to that library. I'm not very into this space on the stand. I think this is bad in every way. It's basically it's aspiring to be able to manage your two. But, in order to achieve that, it's. But we need to be attacking and there's better ways of doing that. We have like like charts course, for example, in my mind is just better than this card. Because it, it gets as our draw to it does the same thing when we had a clean attack. But, but when we didn't have a clean attack, it's draw two, discard one. That's fine. When we don't have a clean attack with fireball fifth, it does straight up nothing. It's just a two man, one one for winning the game pass for an empty library, I don't think is very relevant because what deck can empty is library and reliably has creatures that can attack. You know I'm not playing. You know when in my doomsday pile. It's not happening, I'm afraid. So I don't see I already see a home for this. James, let me talk to you about flying men. Decks that, running blue evasive creatures. They're normally like one ones for one manor. And things like coastal piracy affects things that deal damage or things that draw you a card. Whenever you do combat damage to a player. That is kind of perfect for this. And I am not saying that that is what is in a large amount of cubes. But like having more of these effects, even if it is not as good as something like Lab Man, it's definitely not. It's not as good as, what's the good one? James has this article. But wait, so you're talking about the flying men. But how are we emptying our library and flying men which withdraw? We have a bunch of flying men. We attack with a coastal piracy effect, and we draw a bunch of cards. Okay, so in your mind, you have, like, ten flies? Yes. You're attacking with all of them. You're going to start ten coastal piracy triggers. And then the last check your stats. Yes. Your is your division. Yes. Good. Okay. How is an opponent that already. The thing is the 22 damage in iron. Yes. Yeah. No. So so yes you are you are very correct in that. I do think there is. I think there is a home for this card like like these kind of like we don't have many effects that, that reward us in lower power for having no cards in library. Like, yeah, it's only really lab man and living conundrum. That's the five manor two five that becomes a 1010 with, flying invasions. If we have no cars left in our library, like. Yes. I do not think this card is very efficient. I do not think this card like like as just a value card. I don't think it's very good. Like you. Just rather a card that just says to manage your two cards. I. But this has more possibilities for more interesting things. That's kind of why I want to talk about it. Like I want to. There's a slam dunk in my mono blue desert cube, where we have flying Matt James. But, yeah, I, I will concede that this that I might be too lost in the sauce with this one. I would never presume to tell you what cards do and do not carry and manipulate. As a further, I think in most other cubes, this card does not have a home. That's just feels to me like the empty library wing condition already needs you to do so much work. And, the things that play well with that generally don't involve attacking your opponent. Right? So asking you to empty the library, then have an attacker, then play. This just feels so much more difficult than something like that. Man. Okay. We're also milling ourselves some way, I think. Right. Let's move on. I think I have I'm going down a rabbit hole with this card. Let's talk about some cards that could see play and a wide variety of groups, potentially our next one. Next up we have Geist of Saint Thalia. It is one and a blue Frey one two legendary creature spirit cleric with flying and non creature spells. You cast cost one less to cast. So these kind of cost reduction spells are always very tempting and cube like. You have things like spell slinger, dex and the want to cast a lot of incense and sorceries. You have storm decks, which really like these effects when you're casting multiple spells in a turn. Making your spells cheaper is always tempting. The main thing that stops these getting into high powered cubes is kind of because in high powered cubes, we can run all the best spells. We run spells like ponder, like preordained, like lightning bolt and swords to plowshares where this does nothing with those because all those are really good at what they do. And they are one manner. It's kind of like to get the most out of guys. In Saint Thalia, we need to be casting a bunch of non creature spells that are two mana because making because like having it is great. Having the mana value of a spell is great. And that's not where cube generally is. Like like look at the curve on your cube if you have one, or look at the curve of the vintage you like most of the really busted spells. One manner, the other place that this obviously cause plate is like, if we're trying to make our fireball cost cheaper, but if we're copying it with another effect, like that's maybe where this gets more interesting. Like there's a potential world where if you're doing big spells, just this being a way of casting them slightly earlier or going slightly bigger could be nice. And then lastly, this could oddly be a artifact matters cards. Like there's a world where it's a nice overlap between a spell slinger deck. If you have that, that and it's Loki where you are going to run more two and three mana instant sorceries and an artifact deck, because this does say non creature spells. So it will do plains walkers as well. But artifacts are generally where I'm kind of a bit more interested because like and I'm making my bone splitter cost zero is kind of interesting. Like, like it, it is not an artifact itself, but there's plenty of decent, like cheap artifacts that you could potentially run this in or that you can actually run afterwards. And like maybe the overlap between those two decks is enough for this AC test. And like a peasant cube or a lower power cube. What do you think of Gustafson Farley? James? I'm very suspicious of it. I'm very suspicious of it. I think for me, I'm sort of putting this in the same category as the Goblin. Like Sherman says, the vials of this world, which people love to advise cause they're cute. I think because they do cool things in construct sets, mostly. And in my experience, they almost never work, I think is there's two sorts of decks where people are tempted to play them. And I think they're actually bad, and both of them set. I think people like put them in in storm decks, and I like to put them in power stacks. The problem in storm decks is that you'll Storm Deck doesn't run any other creatures, so your opponent has nothing to do with having movable spells. And then eventually I'm like ten four. When you start going, when you want to start going off, you'll cast your humanity to and they'll go off. Thank God I have something to do with this. Facial personnel die immediately. So I know good, fair in process. You are taxing your opponents. And also, it's better in that sense. But in your power stack, you're. Oh, you want so many of your spells to be non feature spells which trigger your power creatures, but you need all the other slots to be frets. You don't have slots for something like this. So I don't think it's good forever. The artifact deck, I mean, sure, but we have something like a fairy, sculptor already, which is better because it is an artifact itself. And it's not like that card sees much play an artifact ax and cubes, like, because there's just better engines you can build around artifacts. There's better ways of making mana, generally. So, I'm, I'm skeptical on this one, but I'm happy to be proven wrong. No, I think we're kind of in a similar in a similar vein. And I said, I'll get to that thought. Like, it's definitely one that I know. Like when I've built spells like a Dex and like when I built, like artifact decks in commander and stuff like, like there's always basically there's always this it's kind of like this category of like support card. There's always like, oh, I'd be really great if I can get this in, but then I'm just diluting what my deck is actually doing by putting it in. And that's kind of where I think ghosts guys have, since Hollywood generally will generally fall. But our next card, James, I think people are a bit higher on what do you think of seasoned career, man. So yeah, this one looks cool. Oh that's cool. I'd hate it if my career man was bland. You know? Salt, baby. Like good stuff. It's very good. It's a seasoned crime. Answer is one blue blue for a 2 to 3 trash human, wizard and mythic. That it says when this creature enters, draw two cards, then discard two cards. Little fat, little careful study action. And when you discard one or more non land cards this way, tap up to that many target creatures and put a stun counter on each of them. And finally you can pay three blue blue so five mana total to exile this card from your graveyard and draw two cards. I think this is a really solid, low value creature, actually. And this does a lot for you. It gives you some selection up front and then you're happy with that. You can you can trade it off, you can block in combat, whatever. It doesn't matter. You can use this. And I spell that pumpkin opponent and then it gets you a bunch of like game value with the, with the exile effects. Realistically, you're not you know, you're not using that on like ten five, right? Then I have better things to do on turn five. You activate that ability when you've run out of other stuff to do. But it's nice to have it there sitting in your graveyard as some, some value for later on. I don't think we want to play this in just every blue deck, but, if you're in a blue deck for cares about stocking its graveyard from, this is going to be by you a ton of time with the just being a disposable body and tapping down some of your opponent's creatures and putting the stun counters on them. And this is a nice thing, is, if you care about stocking your graveyard, you have other ways to soak your grave out. If you just mill this over or you discard it to another effect and that's just free value later on, right? You never had to cast the creature. You're just getting this nice cardboard out of your graveyard that you didn't have to invest any other resources in. So I think this is really nice. If you care about your credit yard, I wouldn't. I think if you put it in just like a generic blue value, you'll just guide good card stock. I think it will be fine though I don't think. I think it, I don't think it's exceptional there, but, I think if you care about the graveyard in any way, then it's going to be very good. Yeah, I'd agree with that. I think the other place I like it is. Yeah, is more of like a classic blue tempo deck. Like like this maybe with, like, stuff like ninjas could be interesting because like, that is an ETB effect. So if you, if you can flicker it or retrigger it with ninjas, that could be, that could be something quite interesting because in theory as well, they're kind of like, you can use this to like tap down your opponent's bits so that this can get through. Next, turn the damage maybe, and then you can ninjutsu, something like that. Basically, this is a cool card, and there's some cool lines of play that this kind of opens up for you. I don't think it gets into the into the high power level cubes, just from an efficiency point of view. But it is a cool card. And yeah, I think if you're doing like a mid-range cube, or if you're supporting blue tempo in any way, then. But yeah, I think a very solid card. Yeah, yeah, I think, I think I could see a lot of play in a lot of people's cubes. Yeah. So is this the best first links we've ever seen? But then you're making me say, James, that that human wizard better than Cat and I. Yeah, I don't think I. Yeah, okay. That's too much. If you've had enough. I frost links are good but yes that will. Good. All right. Let's keep it going James. We have a couple more blue cards. Let's talk about Sphinx of false conclusions. This is two blue. Blue three for two creature Sphinx illusion. It has flash. It has flying. It has. Whenever this creature attacks, draw a card, then discard a card. It also has when this creature dies. If it isn't a token, wait a token. There's a copy of it. I think this is a pretty cool creature. Like is great on cards like this. Obviously means you can keep up the counter magic if your phone doesn't cast something that you want to counter or something good, you can just flash this in and then you get a looting flier that they have to deal with twice. That's quite nice. Like for power will end games of magic like for especially on an evasive body that they don't always see coming. That's quite nice. The other line of play with this is you kind of treat it like a blue doom blade for power will trade off with quite a lot of things. The opponent makes it. If it makes an attack, you flash it in block and remove their best creature, and then you still have this four powered flier available to you. I think that's quite good. And I think that's quite a lot of value, like power level wise. Again, I don't we're not getting into higher highest power level cubes where like basically I think I've discovered like a new power level of, of like card games. A way of describing it like this is a great card in a cube that's not running modern horizons cards. Yes. I think that's a very good dividing line. Yeah, yeah. If you have if you have hieroglyphs, you shouldn't have this card. Yeah. But yeah, yeah, I would agree. But yeah. What do you think of this rings James out of interest? Yeah, I think this is cool. It kind of reminds me of, a stoic sphinx came out a couple of years ago. We were quite high on this card. I think at the time. That's the two. Blue, blue, five, three. Fast flying has hex proof. If you didn't cast a spell this time. The one from outlaws. Yes. Outlaws is a notion. Yeah, yeah. And that calls like it is strong. I'm not saying it's a bad card, but for the one issue it always had is it's not that good when you're behind because it doesn't block damage. So I like it. It's just a free toughness blocker. And if I have something where feel more power then and you have to block it, then you didn't get any value out of that exchange. Right. And that's no good for for mana. Whereas this show isn't as resilient to removal as that card, but it is still resilience removal because because of the death clause. But if I don't have removals for you campus in block their best thing trade off and you're left with something behind your left of a good fight. It's a full power flier that leads on attack that's very strong, and that demands an answer from your opponent. Listen, it is. It is only if a creature dies. If they have something like exile removal, then yeah, you are out of luck. But, I think there's a lot of upside to this card. I think it plays well in a lot of different scenarios, which is something I really value. I think this is certainly worth a test. And a lot of cubes, chop probably not powered cube, but and in most other spots, I think this is a perfectly reasonable card to try out. Yeah, I like this card, and I just think I like the type of cubes that, that this will go into. I think it's going to be pretty good. All right, James, we finally got to our Jace. Talk to us about the theorist Jace Balaram. Yeah. This is some sort of more Bell CS fan. Jace planeswalker, token. So the fairest Jace Bellerin is two blue blue for a free loyalty. Legendary planeswalker chase. It's a static ability. Says at the beginning of each opponent's draw step, you draw a card. For plus one loyalty, you can create A11 blue illusion creature token, a minus two has for each opponent. Return up to one target, a factor creature that player controls so in his hand, and for minus six for three cards. Then for X plus one plus one counters on each creature you control what x is the number of cards in your hand, so you almost always going to get one activation and then very likely one card on that. First your step right. Even if they can then kill out on their turn. I think that makes this quite strong. It's very, very like about it is that normally for four mana planeswalker, you either affect the board or you draw cards, whereas with this you can do both. And that's quite strong. Like I think you can kind of evaluate this if you just tax draw a card on to each of these abilities. It's a little bit worse than that, right? Because you get the card on a slight delay, but it's not very much worse in that, I think that makes this really strong, actually. Like the obvious point of comparison to this fight is we already have a two blue blue planeswalker chase in a our cubes chase from Minecraft. It's really good. It's like the most iconic Saints walker. I mean, it's not as good as it used to be, but it's still good ish. It's not obvious to me that this is worse than Chase the mind sculptor really put it this way about like, okay, so if this comes in a new minor set, it is strictly better than chase man sculpture, right? Like if you because if you have to play just mind sculpture minor set and you bounce something and you get nothing else with this, you bounce something and you get a card back. That's such a big difference. Chase the mind sculptor can win you the game though, James. Give it. It never does. Like you don't use the minus five. No one uses -12. You just sit there and brainstorm, which is great. You know, I have no objections sitting there. I'm fine storming. I will happily do that all day, but, I know the plus, like, make a woman. You got your card back from an NXT turn like that. That's not bad. Like, I think this does dig less efficiently than just man sculptures. Mind sculpture sees you a lot of cards right now, whereas this it is actually netting the same amount of cards you're going up on card each ten, but you don't have a selection and you're not thinking nearly as quickly. But with this, like, this is so much more survivable than just mind sculptor like because it comes in, goes up loyalty and makes a blocker. Jason, mind sculptor doesn't do that. Jason. Mind sculpture does not affect the board in a very efficient way. Like if you have two minus two because you have to balance the creature, then you get nothing else out of this. You got a card? I'm not saying is that it's like is better, but I don't think it's miles worse. So I would agree. I think this will live longer than Jay's the mind sculptor on a board. But that's because I think people won't kill this because it's like so I, I think the truth is somewhere between where you are, James, and where I am, because my notes on this, I like the I think this is just so powerfully just fair. Like in my notes, I've got it feels like a planeswalker from battle for Zendikar like this feels like a like of Nexus reignited. Like it is just a it comes in like it does affect the board, but A11 is like such the weakest way of it makes an elegant stationary for it. Plus ones to make an elvish visionary. That's great. Yeah. Like like like it it does. Yeah. The drawing, like the always drawing a card is very nice and like. Yeah, when you said, imagine adding a draw card onto all these, that does make it better. But for mana for this in 2026, like, how am I personally and I admit I am not the best blue player in the world. I don't see a world where I want to play this on turn four like it's it doesn't. I don't feel like I'm doing anything like it's a slow value engine. Yeah, I'm drawing a card so I want more G1. I'll draw a card on that. Yeah I know, yeah I, yeah I, my gut is that. Yeah. The true power of this card is somewhere between you saying it's above Jason mind sculptor and me saying it's worse than a card from like 15 years ago or ten years. I didn't say it was up somewhere in sculpture. I said it was, No, let's run the tape. It said it was not obvious that it was where I'm. Jason, I believe you said that I will die on this hill, that this is a better card than just the mind sculptor, Jason. Myself, I believe. I'm pretty sure those were your exact words. Okay, that's interesting. It's not divisive. It's an I summary. I can confirm this. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, cool. Well, yeah. Yeah, I'm open to this card being better than I think it is, but I, I struggle to it in my head. I struggle to see this card being stronger than guys that Jason Scott because Jason mind sculpture has that potential of just taking over the game. Whereas this I feel the ceiling is so much lower. I am open to to the floor being higher, but I think the potential is much lower. And also and like Jace, the mind sculptor has like more options and like top of the deck matters, Dex and like that kind of stuff, which I think there's more cool stuff you can do with it. I think this is I think it's very fair, and that's kind of where I keep coming back to. Yeah. I mean, it's also probably worth saying that Jason's mind sculpture isn't that good anymore. Like, it's, you know, not looking, like, actively looking to cut out from cubes, but it's fine is all it is in ice cubes. It's not like it's not for the shadow of a planeswalker. It was when I came out. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. There are some more hamster base planeswalker that are a bit better nowadays. Yeah, for sure, but like, yeah, this does win the game. I like the minus six will win the game. Yeah I it does make the tokens to fade into itself. What's that you'll have what's the likely it. So plus plus plus ultimate you'll have three four power creatures. Flip out creatures maybe. Yeah. She. I can't find cards. I've, Yeah, I've drawing three cars when I'm. If I can have, like, plus eight plus eight, I see. You know what? This is great flying mammal. You see, to, like, get a wonder in your graveyard or something. So very tough flying. And there we go. Now we're talking. Yeah. So I, I think that I think, let's move on. But like, definitely one I think that, that we should test and come back and talk about it in the future, I think. All right, let's keep going. We have one more blue card before we move on to black. We have variable chaser. This is two and a blue for A23 creature human wizard with flying prowess. And this creature enters. Prepared. We saw. Prepared. Secrets of strict seven. Thank you. We saw providing races at six six to have an effect. Yeah. Effectively, when this comes in, we can then cast. There is a spell. There is a sorcery attached to this, to this creature we can cast, when this feature is prepared, the sorcery is Ark of Fortune. That is two and a blue for a sorcery which reads. Each player may discard the hand and draw seven cards. So let's talk about the creature first. So creature wise, this is a solid static body for a blue tempo deck like evasion and prowess is always a nice combination. Hey, let's do it! That just means you can threaten a decent amount of damage. Also, with any of these cards that do anything with prepared them, just entering prepared is so much better than the ones that you have to do any kind of work for. We just know that we play this. We then have access to the effect straight away. Talking about the wheel. So the wheel being a may is important. Like it means that it will probably stop it from going in the most highest powered cubes where you're trying to combine it with a card like Shield Road, which with a regular wheel effect where you have a force that where you're forcing them through all the cards, deals them 14 damage. But if we're supporting wheels in lower powered cubes where you're running cars, stop your opponent's drawing the cards on wheels, then this is where then this is where I like this because three mana, you draw seven cards and your opponent doesn't. That's good. Like, basically we're running cards like Notion Thief or Leo old that stop my opponent's drawing the cards rather than the kind of win Carney like, shielded deal damage, style effects. So yeah, for me, this is more, wheels card for a lower powered or more budget. Cool. Because we wheel decks are awesome, and just having wheels in cubes is awesome because it just opens up possibilities for doing cool and interesting things. But there is a kind of like we have enough of a gap between the most powerful and like, budget cubes nowadays. Also I do actually, I mentioned ninjas earlier. I do actually really like, really like this in a, in a ninja deck because it, it being a flying evasive creature that is prepared with a wheel attached to it means that we can play this wheel, attack ninjutsu it back to our hand, and do it again. That seems quite tempting to me, like, especially if you are supporting the ninja deck. But, what do you think of the chase? James? Yeah, I think the issue I'm having with it is if I'm not viewing it as a three man, a wheel, I'm viewing as six manner wheel. That's fair. Yeah, yeah. That's fair. Like, if if what I'm here for is for wheel, I don't want to cast my two three mana, two free, pass the turn and hope it survives so I can wheel. Yeah. No, that doesn't sound like a good strategy to me. No, I think that's fair. So I'm not planning to, if I'm putting this on my deck is probably not severely built around the wheel is probably just because I want a power strap that can if I on top of it, and I make my hand quickly, then I can use it to restock, you know, and that's fine. But, but you need to have quite a low curve to make that effective. And the power stacks tend to really want their frets to be the on the cheaper side, when Bitsy mano is a little feisty, I'm that firm. Yeah, I, I'm just viewing it as a bit too fragile to use as a wheel to really build around and combine with effects that, like wheels. No, I think that's very fair. I think, yeah, I definitely want, I think for lower powered people of the lower powered cubes who are kind of trying to dip their toe in the wheels deck like we also had neck cinnamon or Nectar Moon Lore spinner from Siegel District seven, which is like the a Wheel of Fortune, but kind of like it's a Wheel of Fortune on a prepared creature, like the added hope of them being prepared and the additional mana value that additional cost of this means that, yeah, it is for the cubes. It is for cubes up getting to six before you're kind of doing your thing. That does make a bunch of sense to me. All right, Magnus, but we're moving on to black now. James, talk to us about bloodline. Re collector. Another prepared card with quite a spicy ability. James. Yeah, that's a cool one. So Bloodline Collector is one a black for A22 creature vampire Warlock? It says at the beginning of each end step, it's three or more creatures died. This ten. This creature becomes footpad. So it doesn't enter prepared. You have to, you have to jump through some hoops. SAP. But, Vance, Papa's spell is very strong. It is single black mana for an instant called ancestral saving. Says target player draws three cards and losers free life. So obviously, if you can prepare this for turn you player, it's kind of busted right to that point. You spent three mana for two to advance you three cards and loses three life. That's that's insane. Yeah, that's pretty good. So the question is, how often can you achieve that? Listen, clearly there's quite a situational component to this cause you need some things to line up for this to work. But it does some fun things going for it here. Firstly, I really like for adventurers an instant that means for I don't. My opponent can't stop me guessing my cards if they have for me for one baton, you know it goes to my end step and prepares. And if I have a black man available, I can cast Vincent Van or in my opponent's upkeep or in response to their removal spell. They can't disrupt that less marvel. That's really important. It's also really nice that it doesn't have to be on the battlefield when the creatures died. Yes, that's really cool. The fact that you can the creatures can die, and then you can cast it. Exactly. And your opponent, crucially, doesn't know that it's coming. Right? So you can just make some attacks. They do some trades in combat. It sees your opponent's creatures as well as your creatures dying. And then second main, I just go, okay, play this. We just had some features die in combat. So I go to my step. It instantly becomes bad I trophy cards. That's quite nice. Yeah I agree or even if just two creatures trade off in combat, I could go, like, play this player removal spell. Kill your last creature. Now with the creatures in it as, So that's pretty good. Having said that, there's still a lot to have line up. So you need some ways to make this happen, folks. If the. I think you can just rely on combat to sort this out for you, it's hard to cast, like, a bunch of removal spells and cast this in a turn. And see, this is, though, itself quite vulnerable to removal, so probably to make this an actual, reliable way to draw cards, you'd need to be in a deck with some sacrifice synergies. Especially free ones are obviously going to be going to be the best here. But, I think if you're in that space, this can be quite strong. Three cards is a lot. It's also, by the way, target player. So you, you know, face decks can be good. Can be could are draining your opponent out. And this is for your damage. But yeah, I think in the right deck with the right, synergies, I think this can be powerful, but, it's certainly not one you can just put in any cube. No, I agree, yeah. I think finding the right home for this is definitely going to be key to it. Getting that's key to getting the most out of it. And I'd like for me, I, I think for me the best place is actually a well where I can say it. Doing work is a control deck which has the removal. It has the likelihood of kind of like trading off creatures early in the game. Oh, and also board wipes like casting a board wipe later in the game, and then casting this and refilling your hand seems pretty tempting to me. What are you talking about? Actually, that's. I think I agree with it to an extent, but I don't think just like a full aristocrat deck work, like like I don't. I'm not sure why I like the game plan of just, like, just sacking three creatures or like a bit of combat value to get this off. I think it's more kind of like. Like what? There's there's massive creatures that kind of like, with like, edicts attached to them. So they come in, each player sacrifices a creature, so you sack your creature, they sack theirs. That's two of the two of the three out of the way. I think that's kind of where I like the sacrifice style of synergy with this because, like, in, like a straight aristocrat deck, I think like something like skull clamps is going to be more efficient and less whoops. But like, I think this is a powerful card. Like like effectively if you can make this work consistently and then what is nice is that this will you can do this again. Again, it's not like you only get one. I like one shot prepared. If you can do it multiple times over the over the game, you can cast the black ancestral vehicle multiple times and that is quite tempting. That is like the cool thing with this card. Because you do it multiple times. Yeah. Yeah, it's just finding that home for it, I think. Basically. Yeah. For sure. Yeah. I don't think you want to be sacking creatures for like, no other value, just to enable this, but, yeah, if you have some of, some other reasons to want creatures to die, then this is a lot of value to guess on top of that. Also worth noting, if you're planning to try and do this multiple times, you probably want some life gain in your deck because three damage is a lot of damage, especially if you're sacking creatures for your losing board. Pheasants, you're maybe giving your opponent the opportunity to damage you as well. No, I think that's very fair. I, I just have a horrible feeling this guy's going to be very expensive because it seems very good in Commander other things. But commander yeah, I know, but like, this is like and this is, this is an ancestral vehicle for, for common because it's because it's beginning of each end step that you're doing stuff on your opponent's decks, like, like if you're if you're doing like dictator variable stuff, you can really go hand with this. Cool card. Yeah. I just hope to open one up so I can try to nephew cubes. All right, let's keep it going. We have a we have a lot of black goodness to get through. Next up we have dark like Phoenix. This is three in a black for A32 creature Phoenix with flying haste. And they're getting a combat on your turn. If two or more creatures died this turn. Turn this card from your graveyard to the battlefield. So I really like this card. I think this card is awesome. It's vibey as hell. It makes me want to put a card in a cube, but I'm not sure how good it is. The timing restrictions on this are so tricky. Like before, combat is the worst place for things to die. Having to get two of them like vibes. Ten out of ten playability. I'm really struggling to see where this is played because I, I yeah, I really like this card, but I have a feeling most I'm just going to it's just going to be a four man, A32 flag haste. It's just the stats like why? Like this is obviously like core back to art. Like Phoenix, which was a great card in like standard and pioneer I think because like, I'm because emotionally you could put four of them in your bin. And then when you go through the hoops to get it into play, you're then getting four of them back. The arc, like Phoenix, I think is better than this. And that struggled in cubes where we only had one. This is harder because of the timing restrictions. I'd like because like think like when do things normally die combat this is before combat. So we have such a little window of doing it. The hoops are harder and we still only have one. So I think this is really going to struggle. I really want to try it like the cube where this is good, I'm going to love, but I just it's not a cube I currently own. It may not be a cube for currently exists in Vegas, and that's just snap. So it's good, you know, nothing wrong with a good healthy snap after. But yeah, I think this is a bit tough. It's this is the sort of card that is great in construct sets. When you can maximize the consistency of your deck to an extent that you never can in cubes. The problem is, it's not just that you need creatures to die because, like, casting this for four mana, hoping they kill it, and then you get to bring it back, like, that's not a good strategy. To really feel like you got away with something with this card, you need to be proactively putting it into your graveyard and then having creatures die and then bringing it back. And that's just so many hoops for the payoff to be a free to fly, it's kind of just not worth it, unfortunately. Cool card. I hope someone does something with it and constructed it. Looks dope. I don't think it's for us. Unfortunately, no, I know, I just want to rumble with this and some venge vines, but I don't think they kind of. Yeah, it's it. It's just going to be too tricky. But yeah, very cool card. All right, James, what do you think about our next black card? What do you think about dark matter manipulator. Yeah, that's an interesting one. A single black mana for A12 creature human. Warlock says when this creature enters male three cards, one of them could be a dark like Phoenix. We can't say, oh, my God, we've done it. Exactly. And this creature gets plus two plus. So for every seven cards in your graveyard. So I think for a self milk deck, I would view this more as an enabler than a payoff. Because the payoff, you know, at some point it's going to be a free two and that's fine. But by the time it's a free two, it's not going to have good attacks anyway. So realistically, I think the ceiling for this card is you play it, you melee the free cards, you get some benefit from that, and then you get to trade it off and come back. That's okay. It's a perfectly possible enabler, but it's, I'd say significantly weaker than something like stitches supplier. And it's not like we need that many of that effects. No, I agree I know that you're not the biggest fan of stitches following cube. Effectively you are putting this in a queue because of. Yeah, because of that enablement. I, I think it is interesting like, like the super threshold means that this could be like late game a one mana six to or one mana nine two. But, yeah, I it's basically going in either as a replacement to a card like statue supplier or in a cube that's larger where you need additional effects. I agree that it's not a pay off for that deck, like, like a, like, those decks aren't really after cheap betas a lot of the time, but it is a nice backup. It is a nice backup. The kind of like late game. I can be manner efficient and like that as well. Then maybe it's not the best top deck. You'd rather have something more impactful than like, like a one minus three two is at least is at least efficient later on in the game in terms of your mana. But it might just be. It might not be impactful enough. Maybe, maybe if you were trying to go the more aggressive version, that's kind of bringing back, the cheap black recursive creatures like, like things like blood gas, that kind of stuff. Maybe that's where this gets a bit more interesting, because then it can be that the enabler and the game plan as well. But that is a bit more of a nature archetype. Interesting card. Yeah, for sure. It'd be cool if it was a zombie for grateful. You know. Oh, that would be bad. Yes. Yeah, nevermind. I go, all right, let's keep going. We have a returning character next with Gideon. The Oculus. He's back and he's bad at is two and a black three, three three legendary creature, human mercenary with Ward. Discard a card whenever a creature, an opponent controls enters. Gideon deals one damage to that player, and whenever an opponent activates a loyalty ability, Gideon deals one damage to that player. This is all right. The only the best card I can compare this to is his memorial that we saw earlier. Because this card kind of feels all over the place. The body is fine. Three mana three three war. Ward discard card is annoying, but honestly, the creature isn't strong enough in most games to warrant a removal spell. Is the weird thing with this. Like the suture priest effect that drains our opponent whenever they play. A creature is solid, but also can be very hit and miss, like if your body is doing aggro or tokens. Great! We're going to muck up their game plan and drain them out against control. Not so good, but maybe that's where the ward becomes more relevant. I don't know, but the planeswalker hate is so niche. Like in this set where we have all the Planeswalker Jace tokens running around going to going to be a solid card in limited, but in cube where my main cube has maybe less than ten, maybe 12. Planeswalker. It's it's just that is not going to come up. So realistically, where this kind of comes in is it's effectively kind of like a hate Bears card. We kind of it's annoying this creature. That's kind of my niggling our opponents whenever they do something, whenever they play a creature. Yeah, it feels quite sideboard. It's a card that's kind of like generally a bit mid, but occasionally quite good if you do get drawn against the token deck. So yeah, I'm not good to see. Good to see Gideon back. But but not the most powerful Gideon I think we've seen. What do you think of of this, Gideon. James. Yeah. The card it reminded me of was graveyard trespasser. A face, was discard a card, but I don't need to target it because it doesn't do anything, you know? Yeah. People love throwing that card in my cube, so I've never quite understood why. Yeah. I don't think this card matters in most games. Even against, like, a token stack. Right? It's only good against the token stack if you've dealt them other damage. Because, you know. Sure, all their tokens deal one for the month away in that they're going to attack you with all of those takings. And I can deal more damage to you than they did to that controller. You know. So I yeah, I don't I don't really see the value here. I think we can just do better for free banner than this card. Now, I think that's fair, but I think I think from a storyline point of view, good to at least acknowledge. Acknowledge. Gideon. He's back. He's not looking his best. Five I would say no. He's he's looking quite peaking. I'll be honest with you. He's he's not had a good time. I think Hex Haven agrees with Gideon too much. Because that's actually what it's called. I believe so, yeah. Okay, cool, I love that. Fortunately, this is not a law podcast. It's a good book. Anyway. Really loose Lore podcast. Okay, I like that. All right, let's keep it going. James, you have a few more. We'll get out. Before we finish up for today, talk to us about Lynch's relic. Yeah, is a cool one. So this is a single black man for an equipment. Says when this equipment enters, you may pay two generic manner. If you do for each opponent, destroy up to one target creature or planeswalker. That player controls as equipped creature gets plus two plus one, and it has equip two. It's really funny to me how similar this card is to crude bent blade from the last set, which was just somehow the best common we've had in years. It was reviving for less of The Hobbit. But this is this is kind of their version that that card editor said this this this destroys or targets creature. Planeswalker. Yeah. And yeah, a three man like an easier to cast heroes downfall that leaves behind a pretty reasonable equipment is a nice place to be like this. You know it. Sure. It's not a super efficient equipment that you'd play on its own, but two to equip plus two plus one that masses like. If you have cheap bodies lying around, this will make them into fail fat. It's also just an artifact that comes with your a movable spell. That's quite nice. I think. Kind of one place I could see this is maybe you've listened to so much of this podcast, but and Dan speaking that skill you going to mention is just are you going to mention it. Yeah. It's just manifested itself incalculable names and you for a given. But it's there. I may as well build to build a black artifact that goes back around there. And, this is a way to just get enough of artifacts in the cube in a removal slot. Right. Which is quite nice. Yeah. No bad things to say about this. Like it's sure you know, it's sorcery. Speed is free mana removal. It's not the most efficient thing in the world. If you care about the artifact, I think it's fine. Yeah, I completely agree. Like this effectively is. It's another removal spell for the artifact deck. Like, effectively, like this is going in my cube. What I'm going to do is find a sorcery speed removal spell and swap it out for this, because it lets me add that extra density of artifacts to my cube while putting in a serviceable removal spell. Like, I know it's three mana to that sorcery speed by it destroying a creature or a planeswalker. I know I've mentioned I'm not. I don't have that many things. Orchids in my cube, but still having answers for them is good. Like some of them are plugins and that kind of stuff, but they're very big. So yeah, yeah, very solid card. I don't have too much more to say. I think. I think it is one where you need the artifact deck for it to get in. Like, this isn't just something you're just putting in a cube because you want a answer to planes, orchids and creatures because there's it's the speed versions of that. But if you're doing the artifact deck, then I think this is a very solid card. Yeah. For sure. I got the card. People often playing that slot for a moment is executioner's capsule. That's a single black man of artifacts. You can play one the black to socket and destroy target. Non-Black creature. I think you can make a pretty good argument for this. Is better than that card. I would say it's better. Yeah. The upside of that card is you can do instant speeds. You can sacrifice it in speed. Obviously, after place is all three speed. But this leaves you a very viable game piece behind, you know, so I think that might be quite a nice switch in some cubes. Execution is capsule for this. Yeah, I would agree. And I again, it's modern magic. There's so many like we we can't really run too many of the destroy target non-black creature cards. Like there's more multicolored cards. Now you just need to be able to answer things like, you can't just have a fifth of your removal, just be turned off. But yeah. Yeah, very cool card, I think. I think Lich is relic going to be a solid one, but we have another removal spell next. We have multiply by zero. This is one the black for an instant target creature has base power toughness zero zero until end of turn. So this is a really interesting removal spell. Basically how it works is it kills any creature that doesn't have either like a counter on it or like a Lord effect in play. There's like buffing. It's toughness. But importantly, that also includes witches that are indestructible. And that's why this is quite interesting. So like this is compared a lot. This has been compared to a card like heartless act. That's the one. Same amount of cost, that destroys target creature with no counters on it or removes three counters from that creature. They probably play pretty similar in cubes, if I'm honest with you. The upside of destroying instructive creatures is really nice. Like that is a cool ability. The the thing, though, is it does depend how many interactable creatures are in your cube. Like in my cube right now, there is one creature naturally within destructible. There's a few creatures that give a destructible, but it's not something I'm super worried about. The Mego Vintage Cube has three creatures with indestructible in it. There are some more ways of getting it. Things like spirit. I'm not counting those because those are things that additional ways. But like, yeah, there's a world where kind of like that part isn't there when you're evaluating this card, it's effectively just another removal spell. I wouldn't get to two hooked up on it being an answer for indestructible creatures. Like we're more comparing it to the cards like Bitter Triumph or like Infernal Glass. I can just remove anything. And in that vein, I think it's okay. I don't think it's good as those ones I've just mentioned, but I think it's fine. James thoughts on Multiply by Zero? Yeah, I don't really like it. I think we have lots of good options for two mana black removal now. Bitter time triumph is great. Infernal grasp is fine. Go for first is fine. Shielded cortex is fine. I think they're all better than this card. Like, sure. Kill some indestructible stuff that you have more indestructible things in your cube, or more things that have some boost to their power and toughness, you know? Yeah, that's a very good point. There's just so much stuff. It gives counters, boost power and toughness in some of way of have some ability that makes the power toughness bigger. Yeah. I think this just misses too much. So I would I feel like you have better options. It's not like there's upside there, you know, it's it's aspiring to be two mana kill something. And there are just more reliable ways of two mana kill something. No, no, no, but if that makes sense. So James is quite a bit different from anything that we've seen before. It's a very unique effect. Talk to us about Sanctum Lurker. Yeah, this card is weird for us. It's also quite creepy. Nightmarish, James. Nightmarish really is. Yeah. Sanctum lurker is a two and a black for a free two creature horror. It has certain in fact, creature type a sense when this creature enters in power. Jace one that's like creating that Jace Planeswalker token with one loyalty on it. It says planeswalker as you control and put into their own owners graveyards for having zero loyalty, which is a very old line of text. It also says planeswalker. So you control have plus two. Remember the Jace so normally can just minus. So giving it a plus ability plus two. This planeswalker deals one damage to each opponent and you gain one life. This is a super weird card. I'm not that confident on how good it is. But it doesn't seem terrible to me, so we can kind of. Things. If a planeswalker ends up with zero or less loyalty, it will die. When this dies. Fine. It's just that stuff like keeping it alive. So I think one way you can kind of view this card is just, around three, two and getting a of your upkeep at pengassan. But that's kind of a baseline thing. But if it sticks around for a bit, then at some point you'll be able to minus maybe and get your card back. That's quite nice because you're going plus some of you play this, you go, plus I'm the first one. It's up to three loyalty you've dealt from the damage. And next ten you can minus your Jace and your Jace doesn't die because of that ability. That's quite good. I'm not convinced that this all adds up to a creature I'm putting in, like, a super efficient, powerful cube. But it certainly does some weird stuff, and it's kind of cool, and I'd be interested in it in a more like, low to mid power level cube. It's also worth noting it does interesting things with other plains walkers, potentially. I'm not sure how often these two cards are going to be in the same set, but in the same deck, but with something like North at Pasture Fails, which is a Plains Walk which has a very female Plains work, a very powerful minus ability, but no natural. Plus this actually makes that into a repeatable value engine, right? Because you're not that can go. It's on one loyalty deficit twice. You play this you plus out of three loyalty because you have this ability. And then you can minus it again the next turn. That's quite good. Even something like the free Mana Safari, which normally just goes plus one for often pretty low impact ability. This means it goes plus two instead, so you can get the powerful minus again. So it does have some other useful. So you have other plains walkers. It's also kind of nice for other plains walkers. Yeah. If it's if you have a plains walkers on three loyalty and you want to use the minus three, you guys keep it around. That's quite nice. So yeah, there's interesting stuff going on with this card. I don't think it's super powerful, but I think it's a will accrue value and is a creature they will have to kill at some point. Quick rules. Question for you, James. Does this mean that you're plains always don't die to combat damage? Yes, I believe so. Okay, that's kind of tight. Like it's. This is a super weird card and I don't know what the home is for it yet, if I'm honest with you. Because, like, Plains Walker matters, I think that's more of like a band. I'm going to say currently. Strategy. Like there is a four color Plains walker. Deck it from this set. That is, full color, no green. I don't know, Plains. All that matters isn't something that we've really kind of nailed down here. Like there has been settler support it like, war. The spot we mentioned earlier, that is a settlement full of plains walkers where a bunch of the plains we've talked about have come from. This is a very cool card. If you have a bunch of plains walkers, we just don't have a bunch of plains walkers that we're running in cubes yet. There are some other, other things like this. Like there's like the oath cycle that are, other, other ways of getting plains walkers abilities. I don't know, I just, I like what this card can do. I just don't know what I'm doing with it in Cubii. Does that make sense? Like, yeah, like like the base level. As you mentioned, James is just a three man creature that pings them once, that pings them every time. It kind of has them once, and then it tells you a card, right, is kind of a pattern. Yeah. Okay. That makes it. Yeah. So so so so so effectively if we're like we kind of the best way to do this card is we're sorry. It's in a vacuum. Like there are some cool stuff you can do with the Plains. What goes with it. But realistically we do need to evaluate and evaluate it in a in a vacuum. So the cube that this goes into is a cube where you are playing this what kind of like a for action arena. Yeah kind of affection arena stealing them damage. And the is like some broad fastens right. It's not an amazing body but it's A32. It's it's out of a nothing. And making your opponent make you a plains orc is not that to combat damage is is not nothing, right? Yeah. There's probably some fun stuff we could do with, like, the Gideon's, actually, because they can come creatures that I don't. I mean, I'm there's there's a lot of different lines that you can go down with this card, but yeah, I think we've kind of I think we've nailed it for the time being. Maybe, we've done Legends matters and have on that in the past. Maybe we'll look at Planeswalker Matters sometime in the future. Right. But but we have one more card before we get you all out of here today. Our last black card is another removal spell. It is Vasquez. Final mercy. It is black. Black for a sorcery. Choose one. You lose two life to your target creature or planeswalker, or you lose two life and power. Jace six. So that's a very big Jace token. So this is some nice flexibility. It's a removal spell that can also draw us two cards. It's probably not efficient enough for highest powered cubes, but just having that flexibility of the black black is black back sorcery. Speed is a real cost, but being able to effectively draw two cards with our Jace Planeswalker token is quite nice. Or just setting up our turns like, oh yeah, this is my obligatory reference or question of maybe doomsday. Maybe that's that's where we all like that deck can certainly cast the spell, which I love for it. It being a removal spell, that deck can run or potentially, make the planes work up beforehand before we doomsday off potentially. Maybe that's a way of drawing into our pile. That's interesting. At least. But then maybe the losing to life is also a bit rough there. I don't know, like, we've touched on a lot of removal spells in the last four cards, James, but, what do you think of this one? Do you do you like the flexibility of being able to draw some cards on your removal spell? Is that kinda something you're after? I think this one is so close to being really, really good. If it was one for black, I'd be valiant for this card because the split card of like a Doom Blade Doom Blade plus Knights Whisper is something that sounds amazing. Like that is flexibility that black really, really wants. And needs. But a lot of what two mana draw two does for you is helps you hit your landmarks early in the game, and that black black is just not doing that reliably, and they're just not that often going to be able to cast this on turn to, if you're in mono black or close to it. I think this card's awesome. I think it's a very, very powerful card. And, you know, if you have something like a nine, nine, nine, ten mana base, just not casting this card. And then to a lot of the time, so I think realistically for most cubes, there's that, that means we're going to be passing on this, But maybe if you're, you know, some cubes do try and push for like a mono color decks as a thing. And if you're trying to do that, then this could be a really cool. Yeah. I'd agree. Like, it's there's a lot to like, but just the reality is it's going to be a bit tricky. Maybe one for the mono black desert when I get around to building that, Cool, right. I think that's where we're going to leave it for today. Do make sure you give the podcast. If either of you thumbs up, tell a friend all that good stuff. This has been part one of our reality fracture. Set review. Next week we'll be back with red, green, multicolored, colorless, and all the goodness that we haven't touched on today. James. Pleasure. Man, that was a lot of fun. A lot of cool cards. From the set. Yeah. For sure. I'm excited for this one. Yeah, I'm really looking forward to preorders, actually. I guess by the time we record next, we will. We're both done prerelease. So yeah, that should be a lot of fun. I'm looking forward to the weekend. All right. Just let me to thank you all very much for listening. Until next week, it's goodbye from me and I say bye from James and we'll see you all soon. Goodbye.