Marvel Super Heroes Cube Review Part 2: Individual Cards for Cube

Ryan Overturf concludes his first impressions Cube review of Marvel Super Heroes, going over individual appealing cards for Cube! 

Transcript

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What's up gamers? Welcome back to 180 MTG. My name is Ryan Overturf, and this week is part two of my Marvel Superheroes Early Impressions Cube review. Last week I went over the mechanics and themes of the set, as well as kind of outlining all the different product lines. There's a lot of them and a ton of new cards with Marvel Superheroes. And this week I'm going to be looking at a lot of individual cards and where they might fall into the world of Cube. Reminder that any cards that I talk about in part one, I do not really go over in part two, just to save time so I don't go on forever, but there certainly are some relevant cards for Cube. I kind of broke down the different product lines, and I did really talk about all the cards that I want to talk about from like the welcome decks and the beginner box. So this week I'm looking at cards just that stand on their own merits that do jump off the page, appeal to me as potential cubable cards. And I'm going to be talking about cards that come from the main set, from the four commander decks, and from jumpstart. This set also has a jumpstart release. And something that's kind of weird about Marvel Superheroes is that the commander decks and the jumpstart product use the same set symbol and the same set code. So I will be specifically saying if a card comes from jumpstart and if a card comes from the commander decks, which commander deck they come from, just so you know where to get these cards. I know that the there's some product delays with Marvel Superheroes. Pre-release was last weekend. So like the regular booster packs, those are all out. The commander decks and jumpstart are delayed. With commander decks and jumpstart, this is something that that's useful to know when it comes to buying singles. Because with commander decks, if cards are sought after, people tend to just crack the deck. It's just a static list. You get what is in the deck list, and so prices tend to be driven down pretty quickly if the deck is expensive because people are buying the deck and cracking it. Whereas jumpstart, these cards trickle out quite a bit slower than regular booster releases. So the prices for sought after cards from a jumpstart product they behave differently than from regular booster releases and from those commander decks. So just something to keep in mind as we dive in here. But let's go ahead and get to it. The first card I want to talk about, again on these set reviews like to go in Wuberg order, just kind of the classic color order for any kind of breakdown of anything in magic. Starting with white, we have Captain Marvel shooting star. This one is from the Jumpstart release. Five white white for a 6-6 legendary human Kree Hero with flying. Whenever Captain Marvel enters or attacks, exile up to one target creature. That creature's controller gains life equal to its power. And whenever a creature other than Captain Marvel is exiled from the battlefield, you gain life equal to its power. So it's kind of sorts to plow shares, but then also you get to gain the life because of that second clause there. And if you're exiling creatures for any other reason, you could be blinking them, whatever, you do gain some life. For the most part, here though, Captain Marvel Shooting Star, this is just a big hitter. Technically castable at seven mana. Eventually, is if the games go long in a controlling deck, you can just cast this card for its mana value. But then this is also at the level of impact, where Captain Marvel Shooting Star is a very reasonable and powerful card to reanimate. Obvious comparisons can be drawn to cards like Elish Norn, Grand and Cenobite, and Sarah Emissary, which are two seven mana white creatures that have really game-breaking effects that fall into the same category of castable but strong to reanimate threats. And those two cards, uh Elish Norn and Sarah Emissary, what they do is they really invalidate a lot of your opponent's cards and make it so the game is about a very specific thing, you have to answer them, or you will just lose in a lot of situations. Or with Elish Norn, you have to like not care about controlling creatures, really is what that one comes down to. Whereas Captain Marvel is a little bit more about being able to control this creature over multiple combat steps, get multiple uh hits in, and get that attack trigger going. You know, getting the one Swords of Plows Here is for entering, that is nice, but you do generally have to attack with Captain Marvel for it to be a game winner on like those other two cards that can just kind of take care of the game on their own. So in that way, I think that Captain Marvel, I like the play patterns here a little bit better. This is the kind of card I'm interested for grabbing for like the omniscient stack. And if you have kind of a reanimator thing going on, but you're not super into those games where you reanimate a card like Iona, the Shield of Amiria, and the game is just over, Captain Marvel does generally involve you continuing to attack for a couple turns before the game is just over. So I do like the texture of Captain Marvel Shooting Star. Seems like a cool one for kind of a fairer but also high power level cube. Next up is Night Nurse Healer of Heroes, this one from the main set. One in a white for a 2-1 legendary human Doctor Hero with Flash and Life Link. When Night Nurse enters, choose target permanent card in your graveyard that was put there from anywhere this turn, return it to your hand. So most of this text box is the same as the card Samwise the Stouthearted from Lord of the Rings. That's one that did show up in the digital powered cubes. Uh it's been in and out, I think, a little bit. Um, some differences, Night Nurse does not have the ring tempts you, which is the biggest blight on Samwise, having to know what that stupid ring emblem does, stuff that's just not on the card at all. Night Nurse trades that for lifelink, which is a much more appealing thing to staple onto this creature, both because now the body matters a lot more in a damage race, and you don't have to care about the ring. And then also this ability, Night Nurse can get a permanent back that was put into your graveyard from anywhere, whereas Sam wise it has to be from the battlefield. So you still have that wasteland, strip mine, rebuy that, get it back right away. You can still get back any creature that traded in combat or something like a solitude that you evoked and had to sacrifice. But then Night Nurse can get something back if you had to discard it, if it was milled by some effect. In an example there, you like crack a fetch land, get a surveil land, put a creature into your graveyard that was maybe empty before, then Night Nurse can get back either that fetch land that you sacrificed away or the permanent card that you surveilled with your surveil land. So some pretty cool things you can do with Night Nurse Healer of Heroes. I like this design quite a bit. Sam Wise was already a pretty appealing cube card. I just can't get over that the ring temps you thing. That's such a turnoff for me. And Night Nurse Healer of Heroes is just a much more approachable version of this effect. Next up is Royal Talon Fighter Jet, this one from the Wakanda Forever Commander deck. White white X for a 1-1 vehicle with flying. This vehicle enters with X plus 1 plus 1 counters on it. Whenever this vehicle enters or attacks, create a number of 1-1 white soldier creature tokens equal to the number of plus one plus one counters on it, and crew two. So Royal Talon Fighter Jet is a vehicle that once you spend at least two mana on X, so a four mana vehicle, it'll make enough tokens when it enters to crew itself. That's a big deal. People have been talking about this card, kind of comparing it to Asika's chariot for four mana. You are getting more up front for the Asika's chariot. The chariot is more splashable for being three in a green. But the big difference here is that the Royal Talon Fighter Jet, you can scale it, you can cast it for five, six, more mana, however much mana you have, and so it plays a little bit more into big mana decks. Turn two, grim monolith, turn three, royal talon fighter jet is a huge deal. And then you just also scale the number of tokens when it attacks, and that attack trigger, you can do different things with a sequence chariot, like copy any kind of token, but the Royal Talon Fighter Jet makes a bunch of 1-1s regardless of what's happening on the battlefield. That can be one of the more punishing things when you have a sequence chariot and then all your tokens are destroyed. Then it's not really worth a ton, it's just a 4-4, but the Royal Talon Fighter Jet continues to make these 1-1s every time it attacks. And it's really less important to compare these cards directly. For the most part, I just want to talk about Royal Talon Fighter Jet being a strong vehicle that has the ability to crew itself. It has evasion, it has that flying, makes tokens when it enters, makes tokens when it attacks. This is something that just demands an answer from your opponent because it just keeps generating value, generates value when it enters, generates value when it attacks. So that is a big deal. Very threatening card. It does cost a good amount of mana, so it's not really going to be a breakout card for like vintage cube, though it can play there. You know, it is an artifact, and white creatures that attack does still tend to be a lot of what happens even at the highest power levels. I would say that this is too strong for a lower power level cube, so a royal talent fighter jet, something kind of in the mid-high power tier, I would say. Moving on to blue, our first blue card is Secret Invasion. It's a pretty modest card, but I think it's a cool design. One blue blue for an aura, enchant creature you control. When this aura enters, exile up to one target creature other than enchanted creature until this aura leaves the battlefield. Enchanted creature becomes a copy of that creature, that is the creature that you exiled until this aura leaves the battlefield, and enchanted creature has ward 2. So control magic and just various control magic effects is a historically powerful and back-breaking thing to do in cube. These kind of cards tend to fundamentally be two for ones, where you just get card advantage over your opponent and you take their best thing. That can be too much to come back from in a lot of cube games, and for that reason, I just generally don't cube with very many control magic effects in my cubes. Secret Invasion maybe swings this a little bit too much in the other way, where it's a control magic-ish effect, but you have to have your own creature to exile, and then your opponent just gets their thing back when that creature dies, so you actually open yourself up to getting two for ones. So it's kind of the inverse of that, but it's still an answer for their best thing. And giving your creature ward 2, that's not nothing that makes it a little bit harder for them to execute on that two for one. Admittedly, this is quite a lot weaker against sweepers than control magic effects are. I did just want to shout out Secret Invasion as kind of a cool riff on a control magic effect. It does mean that you have to control creatures to engage with this kind of blue answer to your best thing. It does open you up to the potential of getting two for one on the way back, but if you want to give blue just kind of a catch-all answer to a creature without it being a busted two for one, there's just something I find pretty charming about Secret Invasion, even if it is generally a weaker card than sheltered by ghosts, and for that reason I would like to see a higher ward cost, but it's still a cool design, some space I would like to see explored more in the future. Next up is Shuri Wakanda Inventor from the main set. One in a blue for a 2-1 legendary human artificer hero. Artifact spells you cost one less to cast, and for one you can tap Shuri to make target artifact, you control a copy of a second target artifact you control until the turn, except it isn't legendary, activate only as a sorcery. So these are things we've seen before, making an artifact a copy of a different one. The the hybrid mana Saheli does this, reducing artifact cost by one. There's a handful of different cards that do this. Having those on the same card means it's a little bit cheaper to cast a big artifact, and then you can copy it, maybe you can turn something like a treasure token into a worm coil engine. Some neat stuff going on there. Largely I'm shouting this card out because you guessed it, there's a new way to combo with Time Vault, which does not matter for the overwhelming majority of Cube Curators. Kind of a funny thing is that Shuri also then fits into the Mystic Forge Sensei's divining top space, so that makes sense. So for zero mana, if you have all three of those cards, you can draw your entire deck, or as much as your deck as you want to. So this could fit into like a very high power vintage cube. There's some interesting stuff going on for lower power artifact cubes there as well, with Shiri Wakanda Inventor. And while we're on the topic of Time Vault combos, something about new cards comboing with Time Vault is just funny to me. And something something about that card just having such a deep history and how it's changed. I like pointing out new cards that combo with Time Vault. So let's talk about Impossible Man real quick from Jumpstart. Two and a blue, one forward legendary alien shapeshifter with flying. For two and a blue, impossible man becomes a copy of another target permanent until end of turn, except his name is Impossible Man. So Impossible Man combos with Time Vault, also combos with dark depths because it's just another target permanent. So something that is a little bit inefficient, not very good on its own, but Impossible Man does combo with those things. Next up is Victor Timely, Wily Tycoon. For four and a blue, you get a legendary human artificer villain. It's a 3-4. And when Victor Timely enters, you may cast target artifact, instant, or sorcery card with mana value four or less from your graveyard without paying its mana cost. If that spell will be put into your graveyard, exile it instead. So Victor Timely is an on-common from Jumpstart. This is very similar to a card like Goblin Dark Dwellers. That's a card that was kind of a big deal when it was first printed in Oath of the Gate Watch, showed up a good amount in some constructed formats, and then also was a pretty appealing cube card, even showing up all the way up in Vintage Cube. Victor Timely, I don't really expect to have a Vintage Cube pedigree, but like a lot of blue cards, it can play, it is fine. It will be able to cast the one ring from your graveyard. I think more often you'll see Victor Timely show up in something like a peasant cube. Being able to cast fact or fiction from your graveyard is quite appealing. But even at that, there's just a really good spread. Once you get up to four mana, instant sorcery artifact, just a large range of what Victor Timely can rebuy for you, casting like a cryptic man for your graveyard. Even at instant speed, it's still bounce plus draw. This is just a solid rate card. The body is less appealing than Goblin Dark Dwellers, but it's a blue card, so that makes sense. And you go up to flashing back a mana value 4 card and selecting artifacts, which are both improvements over Goblin Dark Dwellers. It's been a lot of years since Goblin Dark Dwellers was a very appealing cube card, but the lower rarity and the kind of higher range of things you can do with Victor Timely does make it appealing for Cube even today. Moving on to Black, the first Black card I want to talk about is Black Widow Super Spy, a mythic rare from the main set. For one and a black, you get a 2-1 legendary human spy hero with menace. Whenever Black Widow deals combat damage to a player, that player exiles cards from the top of their library until the exile a non-land card. You may put a plus one plus one counter on Black Widow, but if you don't, you may cast the exiled non-land card until end of turn, and mana of any type can be spent to cast this spell. So clearly some textural similarities to Regavan, a little bit in the gaunty Lord of Luxury space here. 2 mana, 2-1 with vent menace, it's likely you'll be able to get your first hit in with Black Widow. And then I like the way this ability will skip over land. So you always exile a non-land card with Black Widow. And if you have enough mana, you can cast it because of that cheaty ability to use mana of any color and type. And if it's not appealing or you can't cast it, you put a plus one plus one counter on Black Widow. So Black Widow does scale, has some evasion. Two mana is twice as much as Ragaband. You have no haste, no ability to dash. So I think Black Widow in a lot of ways is just a weaker card. I understand why you would make the comparison. And it is nice that you do always get to hit a spell, but if you're not hitting spells, you know, you get value, I guess, no matter what, but putting that first plus one plus one counter doesn't really do a lot because you already have to double block Black Widow. Most double blocks are going to be able to answer a two toughness creature. So that first plus one plus one counter doesn't really do a lot. The first spell you cast does mean you have replaced the card in terms of card economy. So if you can get your first card, Black Widow Super Spy will be strong. That said, I think that this card is not that powerful. I think that I would rather just be casting Dark Confidant, getting a guaranteed card every turn. But I do see why you would want to play with a card like Black Widow Super Spy, and I know that a lot of players love stealing their opponents' cards, whereas for me, I like drawing the cards that I put into my deck to intentionally cast. But your mileage, your fun may vary, your cube, your rules. Black Widow Super Spy is by no means a weak card, and I do see the appeal. Moving on to Dark Deed, also from the main set. Dark Deed is one in a black for an instant that says target creature gets minus four, minus four until end of turn. So we have completely outmodd last gasp. Notably, Dark Deed is an uncommon, last gasp is a common, that gives a creature minus three, minus three for the same casting cost. Worth knowing about anytime they have kind of an upgrade in the sort of category. It doesn't destroy any creature, but Dark Deed will kill almost anything that exists on the battlefield on the second turn. Generically powerful kill spell, and even against larger creatures of minus four, minus four, it will allow you to engage in combat or double up and use two removal spells that uh care about toughness thresholds to answer a larger creature. So Dark Deed certainly worth knowing about in the world of Cube. And that brings us to Doctor Doom. Let's talk about the mythic rare from the main set here. Doctor Doom is a 6 mana 3-3 for 4 black black, a legendary human scientist villain. When Doctor Doom enters, you create two 3-3 colorless robot villain artifact creature tokens named Doombot. As long as you control an artifact creature or a plan, Doctor Doom has indestructible, and at the beginning of your end step, you draw a card and lose one life. So Doctor Doom is sort of a strictly different Grave Titan. Doctor Doom is smaller than Grave Titan, 3-3 to 6-6, makes larger tokens, 3 3s versus 2-2s, but does not make tokens when you attack. You do get to draw an extra card on your end step, so the turn that it enters, generally Doctor Doom will be more value than Grave Titan. Doctor Doom also is going to be more resilient to sweepers. You have to answer those artifact creatures before you can destroy Doctor Doom. The difference between these two cards is largely a matter of environments, and then also aesthetic preferences. I will be continuing to feature Grave Titan as the sixth drop in the original recipe tubert, largely because of those aesthetic preferences. But Doctor Doom is going to be a really cool card for a lot of Marvel fans to see. And you can absolutely sell me on Doctor Doom being a stronger sixth drop than Grave Titan in certain environments, really just strictly different comparison here. You will not have a difficult time selling me on drawing extra cards or controlling indestructible creatures. So Doctor Doom, absolutely a very appealing six drop in black. And now let's talk about the other Doctor Doom, or I guess a different Doctor Doom, Doctor Doom on Rivald. Two black black for a 4-4 legendary human sorcerer villain with lifelink that has tap, you draw a card and lose one life. Then if your library has no cards in it, you win the game. So Doctor Doom Unrivaled, this one comes from Jumpstart. 4 mana, 4-4 lifelink, really gets into combat and swings damage races in a big way. If you are hanging back on blocks, you can tap Dr. Doom to draw cards every turn. And then this does have the ability to win the game if you are trying to draw from an empty library. So that kind of laboratory maniac text box, clearly much weaker than Thossa's Oracle. And it's stronger as a card just playing in normal games than Laboratory Maniac, but you do only win the game drawing from an empty library with Doctor Doom's ability as opposed to a static ability, which means disruption and interaction and having extra ways to draw cards. Don't really play with Doctor Doom. You do have to resolve that ability and win the game that way, which is textually different, but the card itself is stronger. That said, it's only stronger in regular games when what you're trying to do is cheat and get to a combo finish. So Doctor Doom Unrivaled, I think, is actually a really modest card on power level, but it's a very cool design. I think that you can take it or leave it, even if you are doing the Doomsday Thasa's Oracle thing. It's another card that plays in that space. And if combat in a cube like that that features that kind of combo involves being able to just cast four mana creatures and having a 4-4 lifelink matter, which is true on most cubes that feature very many cheap creatures, then there's a reason to play with Doctor Doom, but it is not the strongest thing at doing what it's doing. I think mostly it's just a really cool design. It's a text box that you read and you think, hell yeah. So I like Doctor Doom Unrivaled, but the power level here is actually pretty modest. I think it has a lot more to do with games about attacking and blocking and deterring your opponent from attacking and drawing extra cards. Really a lot more of a fair card playing on the battlefield than a combo card. And to be fair, this is a rate that does speak to the times. This is a stronger body than you would see on most historic black creatures. Next up is Electra, Daughter of the Hand, this one from the main set. For two black black, you get a 3 3 legendary human. Ninja Villain. Electra has Sneak, which is that new ninjutsu analog for one black black. You can cast Electra while also returning an unblocked attacker you control to your hand only during the declare blocker step, and then Electra will enter tapped and attacking. And when Electra enters, destroy target creature an opponent controls with power three or less. So just as a baseline, you have a four mana three, three creature that's kind of a Necrotol. It destroys a creature that has power three or less. I think power three or less is usually stronger than mana value three or less, though there tends to be a lot of overlap in these Venn diagrams. But the sneak cost here is actually what makes Electra really appealing, especially if you're combining Electra with a lot of some combination of unblockable creatures and creatures with enters abilities. That's going to make it easy to facilitate sneak with unblockable creatures or just a wide battlefield. And then if you have some smaller creatures, this enters ability when you pay that sneak cost. This is a really good rate for three mana, especially if you rebuy something that does something when it enters. But then your opponent, like the thing about setting up sneak, is it often will mean maybe you're attacking with multiple creatures that your opponent has some good blocks on. Then Electra can enter and break up those blocks, be it saving a creature from one blocker or blowing out an opponent that makes a double block on a creature trying to kill it that way. So I like the texture of Electra Daughter of the Hand. Kind of modest in the ravenous Chupacabra space, but the texture of playing and designing around Electra is a lot more interesting. There's less generic power, but more synergies to explore with Electra Daughter of the Hand. So I think this is a very cool design. Next up is Hammerhead Maggia Boss, one and a black for a 2-1 legendary human rogue villain. This one's from Jumpstart. Sacrifice another creature or artifact. Put a plus one plus one counter on Hammerhead. So being able to sacrifice artifacts or creatures, this is the same card as Bartolome, uh, though this is one and a black instead of white black, so just a mono black creature and the plus one plus one counters, this is a big deal. Uh Carrion Feeder really stands out as an all-time sacrifice outlet for black sacrifice decks, especially because you can stick into mono black or move into any second color you want, not being shoehorned into black-white like Bartolome. And I do like this as a mono black card. I think this is a good development. This card isn't doing anything that a mono black card can't do. So I think Hammerhead, Maggie Abbas expands the space quite a bit. You know, a lot of the strong sacrifice outlets in black, they're things that are once per turn, or they go up to three or more mana. So Hammerhead, Maggia Boss, especially, you know, being a human and a rogue, those are real creature types. Of course, villain plays in the Marvel sets as well. A lot going on here for sacrifice decks, really appealing cube card, Hammerhead, Magia Boss, a card that I expect to find a home in a lot of cubes. And that brings us to Modoc. M period O period D period O period K period. It's an acronym for something. I don't actually know. This is from the main set. Three black black for a 2-2, a legendary artifact creature, a villain with flying and lifelink. You can pay three life to make Modok connive, but you can only activate that ability during your turn, and creatures your opponents control get minus one, minus one. So Modok starts as a 2-2, but then just for life, you are able to connive. Anytime you connive and discard a non-LAN card, Modok will grow a lifelinker with flying, so it has some evasion with the ability to grow. That can really be significant. And also giving all your creatures minus one, minus one, a lot to like about Modok in a damage race. That pay three life on the connive, that's a significant amount of life. You can't just do this infinitely. I do like that you can only do it on your turn, so there's more investment in the play pattern. You can't just wait to see what your opponent's gonna do and then say, alright, at your end step, I'll pay nine. You have to think about it now, which means you're more likely to wait until you can attack with Modok before you do any conniving. Maybe you do it once or twice a turn you cast it because you know you're gonna need these draws to actually sculpt your hand. And I like that texture a lot. I don't think that Modok is an incredibly powerful card, but I do think that this design is really awesome. And having that all your opponent's creatures get minus one, minus one, this is an ability we've seen on a few enchantments over the years. Knight of Souls to betrayal, curse of deaths hold, and those cards play awful because they're just so hard to answer. Whereas Modok is this kind of fragile creature, but it can grow, but growing it costs life, but then it has lifelink. There's just so much going on here with play and counterplay. I think Modok is an awesome design. I don't have it slotted to go into any of my cubes at this time, but I do like this card a lot. I'd be very happy to cube with it in the future. And that brings us to red, starting with Batrock the Leaper. This one coming from the Doom of Prevails Commander deck. Batrock the Leaper is a 2-2 for one in a red, a legendary human villain with multi-kicker 2, so you can pay 2 any number of additional times as you cast Batrock. Batrock enters with a plus one plus one counter on him for each time he was kicked, and when Batrock enters, he deals damage equal to his power to each of up to X targets, where X is the number of times he was kicked. So two mana, two, two, nothing to write home about. Once you kick it once, Batrock will enter as a 3-3, and you get to deal three damage to any target. So once you get up to four mana, very comparable to Flametongue Kavu. Notably, it does not have to only hit creatures, can hit planeswalkers. You know, this is any target, so mostly compares favorably to flamethongue Kavu outside of specifically needing to answer a four toughness creature. And then once you kick Batrock twice, then you hit multiple targets, it enters as a 4-4. That scalability that's going to be an upgrade over Flametongue Kavu. So if you're just looking at power level, I think Batrock is convincingly a stronger card. That said, you know, being able to cast it as a two-minute 2-2, that doesn't really do anything. Like if you're looking for a stronger card than Flametongue Kavu, the ability to cast it as Grizzly Bears is pretty forgettable. It is that scalability until a late game, and it has to be X different targets, notably. So you can't just kick Batrock multiple times and then just send them all upstairs to hit your opponent. But odds are your opponent's gonna have some creatures, gonna have some planeswalkers in any kind of environment where you would play Batrock the Leaper. This is largely an upgrade over Flametongue Kavu for higher power formats, but it's not one that really is notable for like a powered cube. Also, there is a difference there between these two cards. It's worth pointing out that Flametongue Kavu can be blinked with Ephemerate, whatever, it's just an enters ability, whereas Batroc's ability only deals damage if he was kicked. So Ephemerate plus Batroc doesn't really do anything, just comes back as a 2-2. So there's a little bit of give and take, but as a pound for pound card, it's stronger. I don't have any plans to cube with Batroc the Leaper, but I certainly see the appeal here. It can really break open a creature mirror as the game goes along. Next up is Daredevil Fearless Fighter from Jumpstart. Daredevil Fearless Fighter is a 3-3 for 2 in a red, a legendary human hero that says whenever a source you control deals damage to you, Daredevil deals that much damage to target opponent, and whenever Daredevil attacks, exile the top card of your library, Daredevil deals damage to you equal to that card's mana value, you may play it this turn. So you have this attack trigger that nets extra cards. Similar to Dark Confidant, you're gonna take damage equal to the mana value, but then because of Daredevil's other static ability, your opponent is also going to take that damage. So some neat card advantage happening here. 3 mana 3-3, this is just kind of an accepted rate at this point in time. You're not really breaking the game open that way. There's certainly stronger options just in terms of generic cards for 3 mana red creatures, but there is something really cool and unique happening here. When any source damages you, Daredevil will damage your opponent, which opens this up as kind of a neat build around. Cards like Fetch Lands, cards like Barbarian Ring, you know, lands that damage you every time they use them, cards like Char, which is a burn spell that damages you on resolution, Sulfuric Vortex, suddenly if you have Daredevil plus the Vortex, you're taking two every turn cycle, your opponent's taking four. There's some really interesting ways to take advantage of cards that historically have drawbacks where Daredevil can turn those into extra damage for you. Flame Rift, you take four, your opponent takes eight. With only 20 life to play with, you can't do a ton of this stuff, and a lot of these cards wouldn't be very appealing for multiple players at a draft table, but I think it's really cool to think about the cards that Daredevil Fearless Fighter can play with. And it is a card that I do think is pretty appealing. It's a card that I would have fun designing and drafting around in Cube. Our next card is more boring, it's just a pile of stats. It's Hawkeye Master Marksman from the main set. It's pretty fitting that Hawkeye will be a boring card if you're a fan of the MCU. Hawkeye Master Marksman is one in a red for a 2-2 legendary human archer hero with first strike and reach. And whenever Hawkeye becomes tapped, you may pay one up to three times. When you do choose up to that many of the following abilities. You can cast a net, which means target creature can't block this turn. You can launch an explosive, which means Hawkeye deals two damage to target player, or you can use a boomerang, which is discard a card and then draw a card. So two mana, two two, first strike reach, just good stats on a two-drop, and then you can pay mana to mess up your opponent's ability to block, to deal damage to your opponent directly, or to do some rummaging to clean up your hand. As a human, this is one that really makes a lot of sense in the spooky cube that has some madness going on as a theme. This is just a strong card in terms of a reasonable red two drop for any red aggressive deck. It's going to play well with those discard synergies for madness as an archetype, and this card does just push extra damage. It's not hard to sell me on Hawkeye Master Marksman being playable in almost any red aggressive deck. And that brings us to a much more specific and narrow card in Hawkeye's bow, a one red mana equipment that says equipped creature gets plus one plus oh and has reach, and whenever equipped creature becomes tapped, it deals one damage to each opponent and it equips for one. Now, plus one plus oh reach, not very remarkable. Damaging your opponent when equipped creature becomes tapped, that's not a lot of damage output. So why am I talking about this card? Well, because this card is getting buzzed because it opens up an infinite combo in Popper Constructed. Specifically, people are talking about it with the card Seeker of Skybreak, one in a green to one elf that can tap to untap target creature, which includes itself because it's from Tempest, and they didn't really think about that kind of thing all the time. And so Seeker of Skybreak can continuously tap itself to untap itself. If it's equipped with Hawkeye's bow, it'll deal damage to an opponent every time that you do this. So you just get infinite damage upstairs as soon as you can activate the Seeker of Skybreak. There's some other cards that do this in Magic's history. Um there is Tidewater Elemental, which is a five-mana blue card, which is a 4-4 with defender. It's pretty bad, but it can untap itself. It works with the bow, and that's a common, so it also plays in the popper space. A Feto Alchemist is an uncommon, so it's more of a peasant thing. So you can put this infinite combo into cubes. Like you could put both of these cards, Hawkeye's Bow and Secret of Skybreak, into a popper cube if you're trying to have something that is referential to popper constructed. Don't know how strong that deck will be, but it's getting enough buzz, and it is a two-card infinite combo, which does not come up a lot when you're playing with only commons. Gavin Verhey has already addressed the combo. It's going to be allowed to exist at least for a time. I think that it's fragile enough that it probably can be a part of the format, but because it's so easy to assemble two cards, or at least it costs so few resources, it's something that might require action in that constructed format. And as somebody who likes strong popper cubes, if I want to play popper, Hawkeye's bow is one that I would think about maybe putting in a secro skybreak and just seeing if there's other things you can do with these cards, though admittedly, Hawkeye's bow is not very appealing as an individual card. And now for another hit from the Doom Prevails Commander deck, Living Laser is four and red for a 4-4 legendary elemental villain with haste. Whenever Living Laser attacks, for each card you've discarded this turn, create a token that's a copy of Living Laser, except the token isn't legendary. The tokens enter tapped and attacking, and then you exile the tokens at the beginning of the next end step. 5 mana, 4-4 haste. Yeah, you put this in a commander deck, you can make a bunch of copies, you have a ton of damage to do. You can definitely play multiple turns with Living Laser being part of the equation. Now, when we are talking about 40 card two-player games, Living Laser suddenly becomes much more powerful. This is one that I think would be too strong if I were to slot into Spooky Cube because there's so many cards that have ungated discard outlets, cards like Wild Mongrel that for zero mana you can just discard cards whenever you want. It's really easy to cast Living Laser and then immediately make like four tokens and just kill your opponent very easily. And any looter effect, Merfolk Leader, Jace French Prodigy, gonna combine really well to deal a ton of damage out of nowhere with Living Laser. The play patterns on this one are kind of undesirable for me. This is something that plays really well, combines with a lot of cards in Spooky Cube, but because there's just not that much game left to play, and there's just so many combinations that can easily just deal your opponent 20 points out of nowhere with Living Laser, it's one I'm going to shy away from in that environment. But if I was going for a more power maxing madness, just a really high powerful discard matters archetype, Living Laser does have a home in those cubes and does look like a really powerful option for that kind of environment. Next up is Thor God of Thunder, a mythic rare from the main set. For three red red, you get a 5-5 legendary god warrior hero with flying. When Thor enters, exile target equipment, instant or sorcery card from your graveyard, until the end of your next turn, you may play that card. Notably, you will have to pay the cost you are actually playing it, not casting it without paying its casting cost. And then whenever you cast a non-creature spell, Thor deals damage equal to that spell's mana value to any target. I did play a pre-release over the weekend. I had Thor in my seal pool. Would you believe that I won the only game that I drew it very easily? Uh, when it comes to my five mana red five-five flyers, I like them to have haste, but it is worth pointing out that that ability, you exile an equipment instant or sorcery from your graveyard until your next turn, you may play that. That's not contingent on you still controlling Thor. That's just a trigger. So you can cast that spell through your next turn one way or the other. If you do still control Thor, then that card is going to trigger the other ability. Thor will be able to deal the damage to any target, which means you either are really able to destroy all your opponent's creatures just pointing damage this way and that way, or put a bunch of damage upstairs very quickly. So while Thor does not have haste, Thor does generate some real value as long as you have an equipment instant or sorcery in your graveyard, you'll be able to get some card advantage that way with Thor. And then if you do on tap with Thor, you have access to a ton of damage and realistically card advantage, destroying your opponent's creatures, especially clearing out their flying blockers. So while I'm usually more of a fan of cards like Thunderball Hellkite than cards like Bone Horde Dracosaur, I like that Thor gives you kind of card advantage no matter what, and then also has a massive upside to untapping with Thor and being able to cast some spells. So I like this design quite a bit. I don't have plans for putting Thor God of Thunder into any of my cubes, but it's a very cool card and that could change. This could hang all the way up to something like a vintage cube. It's going to be only for high power level environments. It is a good fit for high-powered environments. And because I talked about Thor, I do want to talk about Mjolner. This is a mythic rare from the main set. Mjolnur Hammer of Thor is three and a red for a legendary artifact equipment. When Mjolnur enters, it deals four damage to up to one target creature. Double all damage the equip creature would deal. Equip worthy. You can only equip Mjolner to worthy creatures. A creature is worthy. It is a legendary non-villain that's red and or white. So Thor checks those boxes. And then for two and a red, you can discard Mjolner. It deals two damage to each creature. So you have a triggered ability that's a pyroclasm there that happens at instant speed. That does involve discarding and equipment to your graveyard. So this naturally synergizes with Thor. Certainly going to be some Marvel fans looking to take advantage of having these two cards in a cube. Mjolner is a little bit inefficient as entering and dealing four damage to a creature, but then that equipability, as long as you are long on legendary non-villain red and or white creatures, you double the damage of equip creature. Solid removal spell here in terms of that sweeper. There's stuff going on here. I think mostly I would want to cube with Mjolner if I was also cubing with Thor. And those are going to be kind of the recipe for a pretty strong red controlling deck that finishes very quickly when it gets itself going. So unsurprisingly, Mjolner Hammer of Thor plays really well with Thor God of Thunder. Nice flavorful little package there for Marvel fans. Moving on to green, we first have Mole Man Moloid Master from the main set. Two and a green for a 1-1 legendary human villain. You may play land cards from your graveyard, and whenever a land you control enters, create a 1-1 green minion creature token named Moloid. With whenever this token attacks, you may mill a card. So a little bit of token generation, a little bit of self-mill here, and the ability to play lands from your graveyard. Slightly reminiscent of Ice Till Explorer from Edge of Eternities for having some play lands in your graveyard, some self-mill attached, though Mole Man, a much more modest rate than Ice Till Explorer. That one also giving you the ability to play additional lands every turn. So Mole Man is one that is quite fragile, 3 mana 1-1, but gonna play really well with Fetch Lands, let you play lands from your graveyard, gives you 1-1s on landfall, and then it has these Mei triggers when you attack with the minions to do some self-mill. Be that to find some more lands that are appealing to play from your graveyard, whatever you're trying to set up there, or just to set up your graveyard for a lot of stuff that Green does with the graveyard, returnal witnesses. I'm a huge fan of spider spawning, mole man, molloid master is a slam dunk for spooky cube, and one that I expect to find its home into a lot of cubes with anything going on with landfall and or graveyard themes. And that brings us to Sauron Dino Devotee. This is a mythic rare from Jumpstart. 3 green green for a 4-4 legendary dinosaur vampire villain with flying. When Sauron enters or attacks, choose one. You can cure cancer, which means you gain three life, or you can turn people into dinosaurs. Put a Sauron counter on another target creature. It's a green dinosaur with base power and toughness 5-5 for as long as it has a Sauron counter on it. Notably, turning people into dinosaurs is dramatically more powerful than curing cancer, which is a very flavorful thing considering that Sauron doesn't want to cure cancer. He wants to turn people into dinosaurs, a comic book art that has become a very well-known and hilarious meme. A huge fan of Cure Cancer just being in the card Healing Solve, also just famously the weakest card in the original Boon Cycle and Alpha, just making it very clear that Sauron would never cure cancer so long as there are people to turn into dinosaurs. This is just some really good stats. 5 mana 4-4 flyer and green, and green doesn't get a ton of flyers, certainly not at cheaper rates. Like 5 is very castable for an efficient flyer and green, and then just turning other things into 5-5s when it enters or attacks. You will often be curving out with Lana War Elves and that kind of thing, and turning your mana dorks into 5-5s is powerful. Sauron Dino Devotee is one of those cards where this is just strong. Really strong rate card for high-ish powered formats. Not I mean you could definitely play this in like a vintage cube. I could see this being able to hang in a 540-card vintage cube. Realistically, I see this being strong in like the Magic Online or Magic Arena powered cubes. And I do think turning all your cheap creatures into 5-5s is something that is just too strong for an environment like the original recipe tubert, so Sauron is maybe most at home in these very high powered cubes. So if you want to make a high powered cube about creatures, Sauron Dino Devotee is a good way to do it. And then one more green card from the main set a rare in World War Hulk, a 5 mana saga for 3 green green. Chapter 1, the next red or green creature spell you cast this turn, can be cast without. Paying its mana cost. Chapter 2, put three plus one plus one counters on target creature you control. And chapter three, choose target creature you control until end of turn, double its power and toughness, and it gains trample. So just something that plays in the creature cheat space. You will not be able to put in an amorcool for free, but any giant red or cream creature, something like a Tali, you can just cast for free with World War Hulk. You can cast Crater Hoof Behemoth for free. I mean, I say free, it's the first chapter on your five mana saga, but you're just trying to cheat mana that way, which is not a new ability. We have that on some cards that really don't see play, like dramatic interest, where that's all that it does. But then the ability for this to keep doing something if the game goes longer, growing something with chapter two, and then potentially setting up a really big hit with double stra double power, not double strike, uh, and trample on that third chapter. World War Hulk can definitely play in this space. I think that this is mostly gonna be for like larger cubes at a high-ish power level with those creature cheat strategies, something like a 540-card cube. Pretty replaceable in an environment like Vintage Cube, but it can hang. I can see why you would cast it, cheating in stuff like World Spine Worm, that kind of thing. So there's uses for this card. Not one I intend to cube with, not one I would really surprise either way if it was in the Magic Online Vintage Cube or not. And that brings us into gold, starting with Absorbing Man, one green blue for a 4-4 legendary human villain. This is a rare from the main set with vigilance, and at the beginning of your first main phase, until your next turn, absorbing man becomes a copy of up to one target artifact, non-aura enchantment or land, except his name is Absorbing Man. He's a legendary 4-4 human villain creature in addition to his other types, and he has vigilance. So 3 mana 4-4 vigilance, decent stats here on your simic card, and then you can copy an artifact, non-aura enchantment, or land every turn, which means that this is another combo with time vault. Turn absorbing mana into your time vault, tap into tag sector turns, turn hit me into your dark depths. Use a dark types with no counters, make a merit token. So another card that comes with those two cards. And just three mana, four, four vigilance, reasonable to cast. Being able to copy artifacts, enchantments, and lands, pretty unique to be able to bounce that around every turn. And just kind of as a floor, you can turn absorbing man and just into a mana producing land with vigilance, means that absorbing man can attack for four, and then in your second main phase, you can use him to generate some mana. Pretty cool card. I think that this one is going to be able to hang in high powered cube, you know, especially if you're going into that dark depths, time vault kind of thing. You open up that combo space, but just being able to copy, you can surely generate some really weird game stakes with absorbing man, and three mana four, four vigilance as a baseline. That is just a pretty appealing stat line. Next up is Arch Nemesis from the Doom Prevails Commander deck. This is one blue black for an aura. Enchants opponent. Whenever you attack enchanted player, that player loses two life. You draw a card and gain two life. Whenever a player attacks you, you may attach this aura to that player. So that last line, not going to matter in two-player games, but it is a fun thing for multiplayer environments. I don't really talk about commander cubes much on the show here, but this is certainly a fun card that can move around and play the political game that way. But in a two-player cube, this is a really good one for facilitating any kind of demire tempo aggressively slanted deck. If you're trying to do ninjas, Arch Nemesis plays with a lot of the creatures that you would put in a ninja deck. It's sort of a Phyrexian arena, but it's contingent on you controlling creatures. I'm often saying how games are fun and engaging when they revolve around creatures. That is just the most common recipe for fun and engaging gameplay. So it's where a lot of my cubes end up. And then this life swing, they lose two life, you draw a card and gain two life just when you attack. That's a big swing every turn. Really good payoff for a gold card, and it puts you into an aggressive space and a color pair that often is going to be more of a tap out control thing. So it can lead to play patterns that feel a little bit unique relative to a lot of other demure decks for different play environments. So I like the design on Arch Nemesis a lot. I don't currently have plans to be cubing with this one. I think that the rate here is really strong, but I think it's a strong card that incentivizes the right things. It makes you care about attacking, playing to the battlefield. It's really cool to push Demure decks to do these things. And I think that Arch Nemesis is just a really fun design. Next up is Captain America Living Legend from the main set. One white blue for a 3-4 legendary human soldier hero with vigilance. Whenever a creature you control becomes tapped during your turn, if it's the first time that creature has become tapped this turn, untap it. So the surface level reading here is that Captain America gives all your creatures vigilance. When they attack, that's the first time they'll become tapped during your turn, so you untap them. That ain't bad. But then you open up synergies, cards that tap cards with some effect. Creatures that tap to use their own abilities. When you control Captain America, you can use Mother of Runes. You can use it to make something unblockable, giving a protection from a color or whatever, or maybe make blockers weird, and then also untap your mother of runes, use it on another creature that's getting multiple activations. Though, you know, often it's incorrect to use mother of runes proactively, but it's just an example. It tends to be the white card that comes to mind when I think about tapping a card for an effect. This is a blue white card, so your Merfolk looter, your J S Ren's Prodigy. Anything that taps do draw a card in any capacity. Captain America will let that untap and do it again so long as the first time is during your own turn. Notably, this does not trigger on your opponent's turn. So Captain America gets some neat little synergies, gives your creatures vigilance. It's gonna play well in a deck full of creatures that care about combat, and some of them have some abilities to tap to do anything. Not the most exciting card, but Captain America Living Legend is a somewhat appealing creature. It's a human that matters, as a soldier that matters. Hero matters in the Marvel sets, and the texture of this card for a combat focused cube. I think that there are some things worth noting here. And that brings us to Cloak and Dagger entwined, a rare from the main set, one white black for a 2-2 legendary human hero with death touch and lifelink. When cloak and dagger enter, choose target opponent and up to one target creature they control, they reveal their hand. You may exile a non-land card from their hand or the chosen creature until Cloak and Dagger leave the battlefield. I think this design is awesome. You have this Banisher Priests type effect that also could just be a deep cavern bad. You get to choose do I want to answer this creature, or do you have something in your hand that I would rather answer? And you get the information to make that decision. For three mana, you do pay for what you get. It's cool that cloak and dagger has death touch. It's generally going to be able to be exchanged for a card that you care about trading with, or in unfortunate circumstances, it only has two toughness, so it'll trade with uh firebolt, whatever your opponent can answer this with basically anything. But just in terms of getting the information, having these two effects, and being able to choose do you want the mesmeric fiend? Do you want the banisher priest answering a creature or a card in the hand and getting all the information to make that decision? I think cloak and dagger entwined is a really cool design. It's a card that I'm going to be putting in at least one cube, possibly multiples. We'll see how it plays. Because for three, it is pretty inefficient, certainly by today's standard, but just texturally, I think this ability is just really cool design space. Great execution of a black, white, gold card. I love the design of Cloak and Dagger Entwined. And now for a card that I like less, but is certainly strong enough to talk about Storm Wind Rider. That's from the main set. One green white-white for a 4-4 legendary mutant hero with flying. Creatures with flying can't attack you or block creatures you control. Whenever you cast a spell that targets one or more creatures, those creatures gain flying until end of turn. So kind of a reversed moat. This will stop flyers from attacking you and also stop flyers from blocking you. And then that separate clause that allows you to give creatures flying if you can cast spells that target them. So that can be funny. You can actually give your own things flying there, which will make it so your opponent can't block them at all, even with their flyers. So you can use a giant growth to pump your own thing, and it'll be flying, and then it'll be unblockable because it's flying. Or sometimes you might like giant growth your opponent's thing, so that it'll have flying and can't block or attack you. And all these are just play patterns that say your opponent can't play the game, which is why I don't really love the design on Storm Wind Rider. Really strong card, you'll be happy to have it in your booster draft deck for sure. And I do at least like it as compared to Moat for two reasons, actually. I think that turning off flyers is a better design than turning off non-flyers, just because non-flyers are categorically weaker and there's just more of them. Flying matters because it's something that's not on that many creatures. If an environment is really long on flying, it kind of may as well not have flying. So usually there's like a smaller percentage of creatures have flying. So that's a reason that's a better thing to target. And then a creature that is just easier to answer than an enchantment. That means that Storm, for multiple reasons, does play better than moat, but it's still in that moat kind of space. I mean, it's cool to make like your spells do something interesting in a green and white deck. It does change the texture of combat tricks, kind of how I was describing, because giving things flying is just different texturally when you control Storm, and Storm gives you the ability to do that. But on balance, I just don't like the idea of playing a game where Storm Wind Rider is involved. The stats here are just really high, and the play patterns are generally unappealing, even if there's kind of a cool thing happening. Next up is another rare from the main set, the Astonishing Ant-Man. A legendary human scientist hero. Whenever you draw a card, put a plus one plus one counter on the Astonishing Ant-Man, and then for two and a green, you can tap and remove any number of plus one plus one counters from the Astonishing Ant-Man and create that many one-one green insect creature tokens. This is something we used to see kind of a lot of cards in this space in green and or blue, where you get a small creature that grows every time you draw a card. Having this on a two drop means that this creature comes down very early and scales very quickly. This is not just extra cards, even your card return is going to grow the Astonishing Ant-Man. And then it's not just a creature that gets large that is going to be vulnerable or not vulnerable, but at least a little bit weak against chump blockers. You have that ability to remove counters from the Astonishing Ant-Man and make a bunch of one-ones, go wide that way. So some strong things you can do with the Astonishing Ant-Man. The rate here is really nice coming down on turn two. Not a great top deck, but how many two drops really are? This is a card that is going to be finding a home in Spooky Cube for sure, you know, making a bunch of insect tokens gonna play there for the sacrifice decks. The discard matter strategies draw extra cards, so there's gonna be some synergy there. And then of course it's just a human which matters in that environment. So the Astonishing Ant-Man doesn't necessarily do anything that puts it on the radar of the highest power level cube environments, but it does synergize with Skull Clamp. So if you needed a reason to play Skull Clamp, there you go, combo with the Astonishing Ant Man. Just a cool card though, one that I expect is pretty appealing for a lot of cubes. Just definitely a blue-green creature that is going to matter for games about creature combat. Next up is the Kingpin of Crime, one white black for a 1-5 legendary human villain with extort. And whenever you attack, you may pay two life. If you do until end of turn, creatures you control with toughness greater than their power assign combat damage equal to their toughness rather than their power. So the extort there, uh reminder, this one doesn't come up uh too often these days. Whenever you cast a spell, you may pay a white or black hybrid mana. If you do, each opponent loses one life and you gain that much life, so you get some life gain off of casting your spells if you're willing to pay a little bit more mana for them, and this ability to pay some life to make your creatures hit with uh damage equal to their toughness. Uh notably a departure from some cards in this space historically. And when we first saw this ability was on Doran the Siege Tower, it just said creatures deal damage equal to their toughness. The kingpin of crime will only make it so the ones with toughness greater than their power do that. So you don't lose anything, just your stuff hits higher harder. The kingpin of crime will itself be able to hit for five damage, you pay that two life, and anything with greater toughness will now deal more damage. So flavorful design there with the uh Kingpin of Crime having extort a criminal extorting that just a really big flavor win there, and something that is strong in that Duran, the Siege Tower space. Something that is a little bit funny about these cards that cause creatures to deal damage equal to their toughness is whenever they make new ones, and they've been through this a few times. The newer version, there's just ways where these are just stronger than the older cards, which makes it harder to play with a combination of these cards in the same environment. Like the Kingpin of Crime is just a stronger card than Doran the Siege Tower. And Doran is a three-color card, it costs abs and mana. So you could put them in the same cube, but then it's just like a little bit weird to stretch your mana to play the Doran when you just have access to the Kingpin. And it is two three drops that attack for five. You can certainly put them in the same deck, but they do look a little bit strange next to each other. They do the same things, they're going to be playable in the same kind of archetypes, but the incentives around what the mana fixing needs to look like to make these cards work and whether you want to go into three colors for this kind of effect. Um, there's there's some stuff there that can look a little bit messy on paper. All the same though, the Kingpin of Crime, it's a strong card. I like what it does, I like the flavorful design. Which brings us to Ultron Unlimited, this one from Jumpstart. One blue black for a 2-2 legendary artifact creature robot villain with flying. Whenever Ultron attacks, he connives. And whenever a creature you control connives, you may pay one. If you do, create a 2-2 colorless robot, villain artifact, creature token. Suppose I should have talked about this one last week, just talking about connive, the relevant mechanic. This is a card that triggers every time you connive. Missed it last week, so I'm talking about it this week. This is sort of an army in a can kind of card, as he will trigger himself whenever he attacks, he connives. Whenever you connive, you can pay one to make a 2-2. So this is a creature that just will allow you to loot every turn. If you have a mana to spare, you can also make a 2-2 when you do that. And if you're discarding non-lands, Ultron will grow larger. So it's a threat that can just win the game on its own, applying pressure, making blockers, or additional attackers if you're just ahead in that way. Another demure card that makes demure decks care about attacking, care about engaging in combat with creatures. I like all of that. Ultron Limited is going to be going into a couple of my cubes, being an artifact, that's a thing. Uh demure artifact cards, there are a lot of them, but the rates are kind of varied there. So this is just relatively cheap and effective in terms of demure artifacts. And it is a cool discard matters card, being able to connive every turn where he attacks, and especially if you have multiple things that connive, you can start to build a deck around conniving. So another reason I should have talked about Ultron Unlimited last week, but it does stand out as a pretty appealing cube card from this release. Which brings us to Wolverine Fierce Fighter, this one from the main set, a four mana 3-5 for 2 red-green, a legendary mutant berserker hero with haste. When Wolverine enters, he fights up to one target other creature, and if damage would be dealt to Wolverine instead, you deal that damage, but all other damage already dealt to him is healed. So you can only deal all of the damage to Wolverine at one time if you want to deal lethal damage to Wolverine. He won't heal things like minus X, minus X effects, but that fight, you fight something when Wolverine enters, you attack, your opponent blocks, that combat damage will be dealt, but the fight damage will be healed. So you have to deal five all at once if you want to kill Wolverine with damage. The stats here are good. 4 mana 3-5, haste is out is good. This is another card in that flamethrower kavu space, can answer creatures with uh up to 3 toughness, so it won't kill a 4 toughness creature like the flamethrough will, but this one, unlike Batrock the Leaper, this is just a straight up enter ability, so Wolverine Fierce Fighter does play with blink cards. Some appealing stuff happening there. I don't have plans to put Wolverine Fierce Fighter into any of my cubes. There's two reasons for that. The environment where a card like this would most fit of mine would usually be Spooky Cube, but the mutants are not humans, so there's no human synergies there. And then four mana for a gruel card is a really crowded space. There's a lot of really appealing, iconic, and fun cards for this exact mana cost. I think that this card is strong. It makes sense to me why you want to cube it in even pretty high powered environments, as long as small creatures are part of the play patterns. Wolverine is going to be strong there. It just doesn't really fit into any of my environments, and with how many cards with the exact same mana cost, either are stronger when you get to cards like Minskin Boo or have nostalgic attachments like Bloodbraid Elf, like Hunt Master of the Fells. It does make it difficult for Wolverine Fierce Fighter to make it into Cube, though it is a card that I would not be surprised to see in cubes and think is pretty strong. Which brings us to Colorless, starting with Cosmic Cube. Gotta talk about the Cosmic Cube. This is a mythic rear from the main set, a 5 mana artifact with Ward 2. And whenever you attack, look at the top 6 cards of your library. You may cast a spell from among them with mana value less than or equal to the greatest power among attacking creatures you control without paying its mana cost. Put the rest on the bottom of your library in a random order. So this is a card that gives you some extra cards to cast for fruity, but it's contingent first on you casting this five mana artifact, and second on attacking with a creature with enough power to cast something with mana value less than or equal to that power among the top six cards of your library. Cube decks only being 40 cards means that six cards is a lot of looks, but this is still a card advantage engine that does kind of tie you to attacking. Checking the greatest power of attacking creatures as opposed to the number of attacking creatures does change the cards that Cosmic Cube really works with, being better with just individual creatures than token makers, and you want to be attacking with a creature that has a good amount of power so you can cast a wider range of spells. Means that Cosmic Cube is often just strong if you're already in something of a winning position. But it's a neat card, has the right incentives, and I say I will say that this is a card that I really like the implementation of Ward on because you do need to be attacking, it cares about having strong creatures, not just going wide with tokens, and so the card is a little bit low power level, and ward makes it so at least it's hard to destroy. So neat design, got cube in the name. Cosmic Cube is one that I won't be putting into any of my cubes, but it's a cool card, and I'd be happy to see in some other people's cubes. Next up is Galactus Devourer of Worlds from the Fantastic Four Commander deck, a 10 mana 1212, a legendary elder alien with flying trample and indestructible. When Galactus enters, exile target permanent, and then it has to attack every turn. There's some commandery at texture to that, and it doesn't have to attack if you control Silver Surfer Galactus's Herald, which is a 5 mana colorless creature, then it's a 4-5 flyer, and you tutor for Galactics when Silver Server enters, but it's just more funny than anything to have a 5-drop that tutors for a 10-drop. If there's a very aesthetically slanted, like Marvel-themed cube, I could see people cubing with Silver Surfer. For the most part, Galactus is a card you're looking at for a potential reanimate package in high-powered cubes, very similar to Ulamog the Ceaseless Hunger, though it's a big deal that Galactus's enter ability exiles a permanent, whereas Ulamog is a cast trigger. So it's a little bit stronger to reanimate there. It's not an artifact, so you lose out in artifact synergies, it's just a big colorless creature. So similarity to Eldrazi there. Pretty irreplaceable, it's just a lot of big stuff you could do in terms of big things to reanimate, but one that does also play with channel when you get into high-powered cubes, when you have a lot of different nonsense ways to cheat big creatures into play. Galactus certainly ranks among the top most appealing options of all time. Which brings us to Molecule Man from the Doom Prevails Commander deck, a 6 mana 5-5 legendary human villain that says non land cards in your hand have miracle zero. So the first card you draw every turn, you can reveal it as you draw it, and if you do, you can cast it for free, and you ignore timing restrictions with miracle zero. Miracle. This is a card that's getting a lot of buzz, mostly among commander players, and it's kind of a funny thing to observe on social media. Some people say this card is terrible, some people say this card is broken. I'm gonna repeat a joke that I often make to my brother. He's mostly a commander player, he'll periodically ask me, What do you think about this card? How does this card play? And I'll tell him because he primarily plays commander in your format. It doesn't matter what your cards do or how much they cost. Giving all your non-LAN cards in your hand Miracle Zero is kind of appealing. It's the kind of thing that's kind of synergize with cards that can manipulate the top of your library, sensei's divining top, brainstorm. The thing is, all these cards are both some combination of fundamentally powerful and already have a very long list of ways to abuse them. A 6 mana 5-5, it's a lot of mana to cast, it's not exciting to cheat and to play with reanimate, and it will just die to any kind of removal spell. You know, it's a 6 mana 5-5, it won't die to red removal generally, but it costs enough mana where your life total might have already hit zero against a red deck, so that doesn't especially matter. Molecule Man is really cool. I like the fact that some people read it and go, whoa, this card's broken, and other people are like, yeah, this card kind of sucks. And you know, whatever you feel about it, again, this is for commander players. If commander players are excited, then the commander deck hit its mark with molecule man. But now for the one card in the entire release that I really do just feel like is a design mistake, that this is the Fantastic Car from the Fantastic Four Commander deck, 3 mana 4-4 legendary vehicle with flying. It doesn't have a normal crew ability. It just says whenever you cast a non-creature spell, you may have the Fantastic Car become an artifact creature on time to turn. And then whenever you cast your fourth non-creature spell each turn, you may sacrifice the Fantastic Car. If you do create four, four-four colorless construct artifact creature tokens with flying and haste. So that's 16 flying haste power if you can cast four non-creature spells in a turn. And the Fantastic Car will count itself among that if you cast it and it's not the four spell you cast. If it's already in play, when you cast your fourth non-creature, even if the fantastic car was one of those first three, it will trigger and you'll get four four four flying haste creatures. Now, kind of the biggest thing going on here is that it's really weird that this card costs three and not four. Its whole thing is being aesthetically built around the number four. It's the Fantastic Fours car. So why does it cost three? I really don't know. An argument that I heard that made sense to me is that at four, maybe in the pre-con deck itself, it was a little bit too hard to consistently cast four non-creature spells. Shaving a mana off made it more likely to happen more often in that deck. That deck's also built a lot more around that first clause, casting one and non-creature spell every turn. And four four fours is not that big of a deal in Commander where you have three opponents. So maybe there was an argument just looking at this deck in isolation, shave a mana off of that. And that is where you run into problems where this card in Vintage Constructed is just clearly very strong with Mishra's workshop that just cast it outright. A lot of zero mana stuff really defines Vintage Constructed. This is a card that is really the most powerful storm card they've printed in a really long time. With your dark rituals, anything mana positive, anything that's zero mana. I'm not here to say the sky is falling. I think this card is going to see play in vintage and legacy. It's unclear whether it's ever going to eat a restriction or a ban. I think it's more likely angling for that vintage restriction than a legacy ban, but time will tell on both fronts. But really, the fact that there's a conversation around this card being really busted and the math in a two-player game is just really messed up. If you're able to execute on that fourth non-creature spell, getting 16 flying haste power that closes the game really easily in two turns. And then four four fours is just like fine in commander. Everyone's got four fours in commander. Yeah, I'm coming back to that joke. That's actually why I made a point to say it on the podcast today. In Commander, it doesn't matter what your cards do or what they cost. So reducing the cost on this to make the pre-con better, to make this card maybe a little bit more appealing, Commander. You know, vintage and legacy are not formats that a lot of people think about most of the time. But I think that making this card potentially ruinous in those formats to make it still just whatever, whether it costs three or four in commander. You know, I don't know the full story here. I'm just kind of trying to try to take in and piece together what the story could be. And this card is just really pushed in a way that is dissonant with the rest of this release. I think there's a lot of really cool designs. They are rated in a way that just kind of makes sense for the sensibility of magic today. There's not a lot that's going to break through in big ways. And the Fantastic Car is just like potentially broken and in a way where it's powerful that breaks the immersion of the aesthetic that costing 3.04. So this design really roughs me the wrong way. But anyway, this is a cube podcast. Let's talk about the Fantastic Car and Cube. When it comes to high-powered cubes that feature storm combo decks, I think the Fantastic Car is right at home. When it comes to the digital powered cubes, I could see them choosing to include the Fantastic Car or not. I think given how much attention the Fantastic Car is getting regarding vintage and legacy, they'll probably try this out in the digital cubes. And at 540 cards, it's the case that you know Black Lotus isn't in every draft. The power or significance of Dark Ritual in these cubes diminishes some over time. We're kind of in this era where Storm is largely just a three-card package, breach, lion's eye diamond, and brain freeze. But the Fantastic Card can open up that space quite a bit. And you know, once you are playing the Fantastic Card, trying to trigger it every turn, you don't you don't have to do it on turn one. And in Cube, certainly compared to formats like Legacy and Vintage, you're you're fine taking a little bit more time setting up and then using cards like Ponder, Preordain. And then if I have a combo deck that's trying to play the Fantastic R, I start looking at any zero cards like Xuron's Orb can even play here. And it is worth noting that because this card in just regular games, the fact that it doesn't have a tap a creature, that traditional crew ability, just casting non-creature spells, lets you attack for four. You can actually play kind of a normal game with the floor of this if your deck is just full of cantrips and rituals. Just cast the Fantasticar, play some cantrips over some turns, and just attack with a 4-4 flyer. I do think that this is a strong cube card in very high power cube environments. You could maybe play it in a lower powered cube, but I think that the ceiling really makes it undesirable for lower power formats. I mean, the core conceit here is the Fantastic Car is saying, what if Storm Combo had to count to four instead of 10? I mean, 16 power of flying haste, it just closes the game fairly comparably effectively to a full Tendrils of Agony. The Fantasticar is my pick from the entire release for the Vintage Cube only card from these sets. And while it does remain to be seen what will happen in Vintage and Legacy constructed with the Fantasticar, once the dust settles, my suspicion is that the Phantasticar will be remembered as a design mistake. And that just leaves lands. There is a cycle of allied lands in the main set that I think are pretty appealing. What they do is they tap for a colorless mana, or they can tap for one of a two allied colors, but you can only activate that ability if the land entered this turn, or if you controlled a basic land. So Dark Fortress is our Rakdos entry, Gathering Place is Celestnia, Gleaming Bastion is Azorius, Hidden Layer is Demir, Training Compound is Gruel. So Training Compound taps for colorless, can tap for red or green if it enters this turn, or if you control the basic land. I think that these are really texturally similar to Verges, but a big thing that they do that I really like is on turn one, they can make either color. So you can cast a one drop in either color if you play these on the first turn. I like that they care about controlling a basic land. That means that they're going to be most effective in two colored decks. They'll still play in a lot of three-colored decks, but the more non-basics you get, the more you start looking at cutting these cards from their deck. They always at least make colorless, but they're just not going to fix your mana unless you have enough density of basic lands to turn them on. So mana fixing that plays best in two color decks. I'm always a fan of that. I do wonder if or when we will see a completion of this cycle, seeing the enemy colors with the aesthetics of these. I wouldn't be surprised if this is something that they roll out in the next Malva release, but we'll find out. I think that these play really well. There's only allied color entries right now, but they're cool lands that play best in two-colored decks, which is something that I always appreciate in a mana fixing land. And that is a wrap on my early impressions cube review here for Marvel Superheroes with the commander decks, the main set, jumpstart, and then some mechanically unique cards and some other products. The set is absolutely massive, so it took some time to read through everything, and I certainly didn't talk about every card potentially appealing for cube. I mean that's just too tall of a task for any set, and it would take me months to talk over every card in this set, so I'm not gonna do that either. But I am trying to talk about more cards on these cube reviews, paint with a wider brush. Cube is just a customizable thing, there's so many different ways to do it, so I want to try to talk about more cards, just touch on more things, especially the cards that I'm not cubing with myself, just to acknowledge more of the range of what cube can be. With the size of Marvel Superheroes, that's not only possible but likely. I didn't talk about some cards that could appeal to you. But with Cube, I always encourage you to go out and make it your own. Play with the cards that you want to play with, and hopefully I offered some food for thought for those of you who took the time to listen. So thank you as always for doing so, for listening, taking the time to like, comment, share, review, subscribe, everything you do to support the podcast. And I will be back next week talking more cube. Later, gamers.