Kaladesh Cube Preview Part 3/3
Here in this final look at the interesting cube cards from Kaladesh we will focus on the weird and wonderful. The cards here are all ,I feel, too narrow to go into a drafting cube, yet there is potential in all of them to perform well. Perhaps the cards they need to shine are also narrow, perhaps they have not yet seen print. These cards will be mainstays in the exotic and unusual decks but will struggle to find homes in conventional cube archetypes. The cards from the second part of this Kaladesh preview typically end up performing well in standard even if they don’t make the cube. The cards on this list are generally more likely to make it in formats like modern and even the eternal ones! Most of the cards on this list do already have a use in cube, but it is a specific one that for whatever reason is not an option in the drafting cube. When I do open rotisseries and other similar events these kinds of cards start to see some play. This list is in no particular order and is simply just all the cards I plan to get but also don’t plan to actually put into my drafting cube, yet.
Far from a bomb card but as a land it is incredibly useful. Whenever you can use a playable land that also has a spell effect you want for something you are onto a winner. This is a fine colourless land that turns into a Fabricate later in the game. It also has a chance to trickle feed you some life. This is exactly the sort of card that artifact combo decks will want to run. It is like a proactive Academy Ruins. This could even see play in cube affinity decks although I suspect it is too slow and wishful for constructed affinity lists.
While this looks worse than the Inventor’s Fair at a glance this does have some perks over it. Not only does this dig a bit into your library it can also get things back from the graveyard giving you a bit more scope on what you can get at any given time. It fuels other graveyard synergies potentially and can also be combined with top of library effects. I can see this getting used with Combustible Gearhulk, Erratic Explosion and other such top of library triggers to good effect.
This is a complete build around card for cube or constructed. Either you need a lot of sacrifice mechanisms such as Krark-Clan Ironworks or Zuran Orb to power this up as soon as possible or you need a fair selection of other energy suppliers. There are a couple of viable ones you can use such as the blue and green Puzzleknots but given this is only viable in a dedicated deck you probably go with both sacrifice and synergy options. You also need tutor effects, things that manipulate the top of your library ideally and then some Eldrazi to round it all off. Overall that sounds a lot weaker than other ways to cheat things in for the cube but it also sounds like a lot of fun! In other constructed formats like modern and standard this will be relatively more powerful and much more consistent.
Cost reduction cards are always potentially dangerous. Ones that reduce the cost of artifacts in particular are strong as they can reduce things to that magical zero mana. This is a little too high up the curve for affinity decks to have much interest and seems like more of a storm artifact card. In that role being a 3/2 will be a drawback compared to just being an artifact more often than not. Perhaps we will have some crazy new modern combo using Foundry Inspector with Etherium Sculptor to power out loads of free Talisman style cards into a massive Paradoxical Outcome!
Recursive creatures are getting better and better. This one is fairly well adorned with stats considering. Not being able to block makes this fairly aggressive but that isn’t really a problem for most of the ways you would want to use this. It is hard to abuse the recursion for tempo as you still have to pay two mana to get it into play but it does give you a lot more gas to carry on applying pressure into the late game. It is also a reasonable tempo play just for being a 2 drop with 3 power. In a deck with suitable synergies this is a strong little card. If for example there is an aggressive deck in standard that has access to black mana then there is a very good chance this will be a four of in that deck. To compete in with the cube power level however this needs to abuse artifact and graveyard synergies simultaneously which makes it far narrower.
This is an incredibly powerful little card but one that needs just the right home. You need an aggressive deck that contains lots of artifacts for this to work. This has obvious synergy with Brazen Scourge for standard. Syndicate Trafficker is very hard to remove and becomes increasingly dangerous as the game progresses. It feels somewhere between an Arcbound Ravager and a Falkenrath Aristocrat, with perhaps a dash of Scavenging Ooze about it too. Despite being very powerful this is not a constructed affinity card as it isn’t itself an artifact and thus offers no return synergy. It is probably a bit mana intense all round to be that exciting for cube affinity lists either. I see it much more as a standard card for now but it certainly has a high enough power threshold to be cube worthy even if no real archetype currently exists for it.
This just screams combo. Four mana to get this out stands to make it a fair combo at best. The card also screams fun! In reality this will see most of its play in commander/EDH formats. This does do a lot of very powerful things for you and interacts well with a lot of other very powerful cards. There are plenty of cubes that are slow enough that you could get away with casting this and have it be very rewarding. My cube is a bit too low to the ground for it but I am very glad this card exists.
While a little at odds with itself as a constructed card this is a really useful tool in cube. When you have some of the most powerful cards in the game yet only 40 card decks you find that some strategies have a short window to win in before they deck themselves. This is especially the case for decks with heavy graveyard synergy that want to self mill as much as possible. Often those decks have to run clunky cards with little synergy like Primal Command to protect against decking themselves. This is a decent self mill effect with a built in protection mechanism against decking yourself or milling key cards away. This reminds me most of Elixir of Immortality, one of the few cards that has no effect on the board yet still gets a decent amount of play.
Shattered Perception meets Spiraling Embers. This is one of these dual effect cards where really you need to have ways to milk all aspects of it before you are keen to run it in a cube deck. For Fateful Showdown this means a desire to discard cards in a big way combined with effects that ensure your hand size can be easily increased. As a source of damage this really wants to do at least 5 before it is exciting in that capacity. The issue with cube card that need several different synergies fulfilling is that with just a single copy of the card you are powering up you often find you lack the consistency to actually be worth doing. This is an incredibly powerful effect for the mana but, as it is hard to use well, it seems like it will be more of a constructed tool than a cube one.
A direct upgrade on Tendo Ice Bridge. This is a very convenient little fixer. It comes in untapped and can tap for mana of any colour once. In a cube that has a low land count cards like this are a great way to increase consistency without taking up loads of space for a whole dual land cycle. In constructed this will see plenty of play as a one or two of in decks with loads of colours. It will also likely see play in any decks that have an a energy theme. When you don’t need the fixing a free energy is always nice from your land drop.
For any deck trying to produce a lot of mana from artifacts or potentially even creatures this card can do a lot of work. Mostly I see this as a Turnabout for artifact mana storm decks. This makes it quite a narrow card but it is super powerful in that specific role. I guess this can also be a combat trick but that is not how this will get used in the cube or eternal formats I can assure you!
Another narrow card that is only playable in a deck built around some kind of mill strategy. That aside this is one of the best mill cards ever produced in terms of mill per mana. Hedron Crab is the king of the one drops in that regard but this has some perks over the Crab. Once out of energy this is a more useful body and this still works when you are out of lands. Mill decks are actually over powered in cube relative to other formats. This might see play outside of cube but I suspect it is best within one.
Here we have a card that sits somewhere between Reanimate, Oath of Druids and Tinker. While in the cube this is a little overshadowed and hard to make work it is another story for constructed. In modern there is no access to the powerful cheat in creatures cards that I mentioned. It is entirely possible in modern to use this and get a turn two, even turn one Blightsteel Colossus, Inkwell Leviathan or Sphinx of the Steel Wind. Awkwardly you don’t get to chose which and you might kill yourself in the process but it is still a game breaking effect that is not too hard to abuse. There are ways you can easily put things on the top of your library which makes this a lot more reliable and a lot less painful but that would take all the speed away from it in modern. In cube this may get used to supplement other better cheat in cards. In modern it could just be a deck in its own right.
This is a fantastic tempo card and comes with scry one. It has far far less utility and reliability than Unsummon but rather makes up for this with the scry. You cannot easily use this as an aggressive card as it does not shift blockers but as a defensive tool this has some application.
This seems like a fantastic modern card. Being able to hard counter most artifacts and Eldrazi is a big deal. There will be lots of Ceremonius Rejections filling up sideboard slots in modern decks. In cube this has it’s uses but there are too few targets. Annul is more viable as it hits enchantments and coloured artifacts of which there are way more total than Eldrazi and colourless artiafcts.
This is another potent sideboard card. This is a great counter to haste creatures and a fairly good card in an aggressive mirror. You can remove the option on blocking with their guys while gaining life so as to be favoured in the race you can force. Despite its cost the fact that it isn’t itself a threat and has limited use against creature light decks I can ever see this being a sensible main deck option.
This little card has a lot of synergies and interactions for a very low price tag. While it is hard to have sufficient synergy for it to be playable there are also ways to abuse it. I think it represents too much of a long term value card for modern affinity lists to be too interested in it despite being a pretty good fit. I see it more as a combo piece, perhaps just some redundancy for a Thopter Foundry style combo. Anything this cheap that does this much will find a home somewhere eventually!
This is another potentially big combo card. Where you have access to Mox and Mana Vault style cards this will not only be one of the best draw engines in the game but also one of the best mana producers in the game. While all the most abusive things that you can do with this card are in the eternal formats it is not inconceivable that a modern deck working on the same principle but resorting to Talisman’s instead could be viable.
This is a very poor life gain tool and a pretty poor win condition in a life gaining deck. Where this has application is as a storm win condition. You only need ten spells to guarantee an activation of the Reservoir and you might need eight assuming you have taken little damage. There are some merits as well as some issues to having a win condition you play before you go off in a storm deck. In cube having access to this on top of Tendrils of Agony and/or Brain Freeze will be handy. In modern it likely is the best storm win condition option.
This card does several things all at once. It is a powerful discard outlet, it provides evasion, and it can offer card quality. This may even have some infinite combos you can do with it but that seems rather far fetched and weaker than the more obvious combo cards in the set. In a deck that wants all of those things then this is absolutely fantastic. Most decks will not really care about a couple of the effects making this likely too narrow for a drafting cube. An aggressive deck heavily utilising the graveyard seems the perfect fit for this. While such things are decent in cube they are not good or easy to draft and this won’t help them out enough. I see this as a standard, even modern, tool to help out those kinds of deck.
A potential sleeper card in the set. It is not at all hard to power these out super quickly. While building around a single card like this isn’t often worth it in cube it may well be worth it in constructed formats where you have four copies. Being able to reliably drop 10/10s into play from the turn four mark is a pretty big deal even if they do lack trample! The best use I see for this in cube is being a great thing to sacrifice to Bosh, Iron Golem! It fits pretty well in most artifact ramp decks and although not a quick or reliable win condition it does fulfill the role of a Tarmogoyf pretty well.
Good aggressive one drop creatures are rarely to be ignored! This is a new take on Kird Ape. It is mildly tougher when you don’t activate it but you shouldn’t be playing this if you can’t reliably turn it on. Needing to activate it with an artifact makes it incredibly narrow. There are not really any tier one archetypes that you can do in the cube where this would be something you would want. That isn’t to say there isn’t one now or that the ever will be one. Inventor’s Apprentice seem most like a card for standard where affinity isn’t setting the tone for what kind of power level to expect in return.
This is a more polarised version of the Inventor’s Apprentice. It offers more power when you turn it on and can use it aggressively but does little to nothing otherwise. These kinds of highly polarised cards are a little more appealing to create synergy for. It has all the same drawbacks is the Inventor’s Apprentice and as such is a narrow card but it is slightly more worthwhile exploiting it. If either of these is good in standard I suspect both will be. If you build an exotic cube deck with one of these in it then there is also a decent chance you will consider the other too.
That concludes my list of cards that have application in the various cube formats. Although it does not highlight all the cards that might see standard play it should have covered all the things that will see modern and eternal play. It should also have highlighted all the more interesting cards to entered standard that may have decks built around them.
I have not really discussed many of the energy support cards as that does not as yet look like something you can do well even in a constructed cube event. Despite not seeming all that for cube Aether Revolt may change things and mean I do want to have things like the Puzzleknot’s available in my cube. Unlikely but possible. What I will say is that a lot of the energy cards look like they will perform very well in standard. Cards like Longtusk Cub and Harnessed Lightning are well poised to be standard staples despite having far too little support to work well in the cube.
Kaladesh reminds me a lot of the original Mirrodin block in feel and flavour. Certainly both have lots of artifacts but it is more down to the huge number of interesting cards in both sets. Lots more Kaladesh cards look like they have potential than other sets manage. I would wager it is a set full of sleeper cards that may not feature in anything for many years to come. Kaladesh is a brewer’s paradise. If you think I have missed any cube cards or that I am rating something too high or low I would love to hear about it in the comments section below.
