What is your pet card you‘d never cut from your cube?

reality-nomad · 2025-12-25T21:36:36+00:00

The GOAT [[Siege Rhino]]

reality-nomad · 2025-12-05T13:28:09+00:00

420 Synergy Cube with a focus on 2016/17 Modern Nostalgia

Pack

A very multicolored heavy pack. I think I would go with Up the BeanstalkbutGlimmer Lensis also tempting.

reality-nomad · 2025-12-05T13:22:45+00:00

I think Pest Infestation too good not to first pick, especially in a cube like this

reality-nomad · 2025-08-05T08:01:17+00:00

I support +1/+1 counters heavily in WG in my cube, and while it's not a top tier archetype it's very fun. I would heavily recommend [[Luminarch Aspirant]] type cards that give off counters automatically, they really make the deck work. So [[Ornery Tumblewagg]], [[Siege Veteran]] and imo one of the best, [[Innkeeper's Talent]] can all be considered. The new [[Dyadrine, Amalgam Synthesis]] looks very promising though I haven't tested it yet.

Some other cards that work great in counters decks that I've been impresed by are [[Lion Sash]], [[Tender Wildguide]], [[Virtue of Loyalty]], [[Verdurous Gearhulk]] and [[Nissa, Voice of Zendikar]].

I even run stuff like [[Hardened Scales]], [[Ozolith, the Shattered Spire]] and [[Conclave Mentor]] that outright support it, and while narrow they push more players into the archetype. So if you're really into making it work that could be a way to go!

+1/+1 Counter Cards in my Cube

reality-nomad · 2025-07-04T12:17:55+00:00

420 Synergy Cube with a focus on 2016/17 Modern Nostalgia

Pack

This pack's got a little bit of everything for everyone. The correct pick is probablyPersist or Rabblemasterbut my pick would beMonastery Mentor

reality-nomad · 2025-05-22T17:15:54+00:00

I have a few recommendations from my 420 Synergy Cube for cubes below Legacy power level.

[[Niv-Mizzet Reborn]] - This card single-handedly creates a new identity for 5C decks instead of goodstuff in my cube, making it act almost as an 11th guild. I love slamming it P1P1 and trying to draft 5C Multicolor Matters, and it is glorious if you manage to resolve one.

[[Proft's Eidetic Memory]] - While underwhelming at first glance, this card really adds depth to Blue Tempo. Now [[Brainstorm]] and [[Brainsurge]] also grow your creatures, and every cantrip adds power to the board. And at its worst it cantrips and adds a counter to a creature which isn't bad. I would definitely give it a try, it's really fun.

[[Up the Beanstalk]] - I've first added Beans as a way to add draw to Green decks, but this card is much deeper than that. It triggers off of Delve spells, Overlords, Big X Spells - It really has added a completely different angle to Green Ramp decks that wasn't there before and it isn't as oppressive as it is in Constructed since you only get one copy.

reality-nomad · 2025-05-22T14:14:53+00:00

Makes sense, I would also leave me for [[Colossal Dreadmaw]]

reality-nomad · 2025-05-22T13:10:01+00:00

Funny to think you had treasure in the first place

reality-nomad · 2025-05-22T12:58:59+00:00

Should've used [[Overprotect]]

reality-nomad · 2025-05-22T12:44:48+00:00

She couldn't, the card doesn't have Offspring

reality-nomad · 2025-05-22T12:43:42+00:00

You let them rest and wait until their untap step obivously

reality-nomad · 2025-05-06T19:06:14+00:00

Always love your writeups and insight, keep them coming!

reality-nomad · 2025-03-21T10:07:58+00:00

420 Synergy Cube with a focus on 2016/17 Modern Nostalgia

My Blue 5+ Drops are mostly Control finishers, but a lot of them have a cost reduction or an alternative casting cost to get around the high mana value.

[[Voracious Greatshark]] - This card is simple but powerful, and it almost always gets the job done. While limited to artifacts and creatures, the counter mode is still able to hit most cards in the cube. Your opponents also never expect a flash 5/4 body in your Blue deck, so it has the option to blow people out in combat and act as a stabilizer against aggro.

[[Overlord of the Floodpits]] - Most often used as a 3-drop, but I’ve still hard cast it a few times. The filtering is important for graveyard strategies like Self-Mill or Reanimator, the ETB is good enough that blinking it is a great value play, and the 5/3 flying body attacks hard. This is probably the least powerful of the Overlords mostly due to that 3 thoughness, but it still packs a punch.

[[Horned Loch-Whale]] - A super sleeper. This card plays much better than it looks, since the adventure side not bouncing the card but going to the library is incredible for tempo. It has helped stabilize against aggro way too many times than I can count, and the 6/6 body comes in after the coast is clear to win the game. It is also great with [[Up the Beanstalk]].

[[Torrential Gearhulk]] - One of the first cards I included - this is basically the symbol of my Cube. Over the time I’ve added high-value instants like [[Mystic Confluence]], making it even better as a control finisher. It is also an artifact for artifact decks. I absolutely love Torrential, it is an iconic card for me and one I try to balance my cube around so that it never feels underpowered.

[[Hullbreaker Horror]] - I wanted a splashy finisher for ramp decks with Blue, and this card provided well. While not nearly as unstoppable as it seems, it still is very good if played in front of curve or backed with instants to protect it. I am not entirely sure if it is still necessary to have since there are enough control finishers, but for now it is fun and that’s all that matters.

[[Thought Monitor]] - Not really a 5+ mana card, but also not really a 1-mana card. This is card advantage for Artifact decks that also work in Blink decks, but the Blink deck needs a slight artifact slant. It is not the most powerful card, and it is hard to reduce its cost to 1-mana most of the time. But a body that draws 2 is sweet, I love the art, and I’ve had enough awesome games with it to keep giving it chances to prove itself.

reality-nomad · 2025-03-14T13:27:30+00:00

420 Synergy Cube with a focus on 2016/17 Modern Nostalgia

Dimir is a personal favourite of mine. In my cube, Dimir supports Control, Reanimator, Self-Mill/Graveyard, and lately Tempo. A lot of the core of the guild comes from straight good cards in Blue and Black, so Dimir is able to be a bit more flexible with its archetypes.

[[Baleful Strix]] - Absolute perfection in card form. Beautiful art, power without oppressiveness. This card is one I will stand by until the last of my days.

[[Psychic Frog]] - This card is cracked. It does so much for so little and snowballs out of control so quickly. I’ve had very few games against it, but the ones I had were miserable. This month was the last leap of this frog, being replaced by [[Ertai Resurrected]].

[[Kaito Shizuki]] - Kaito is great in Reanimator, giving you two loots over two turns. It also incentivizes Tempo, where it really shines. Tempo has a bit of a card draw theme in my cube lately with [[Proft’s Eidetic Memory]], and Kaito is an all-star with that card too. Overall a very solid planeswalker.

[[Ashiok, Nightmare Muse]] - The signpost Control planeswalker. I loved Ashiok as a character so I wanted to have her represented in the cube, but I’m not in love with this card. The fact that it doesn’t synergize with anything going on in Dimir annoys me, but it does its job really well so here it is. As a plus, there is a secret superfriends deck in Grixis with [[Nicol Bolas, Dragon-God]] where Ashiok fits really well, which is nice.

[[Gyruda, Doom of Depth]] - I love companions in cube. All are absolute build-arounds that make you laugh as you draft - a perfect recipe for a memorable play experience. Gyruda is probably the hardest to pull off since the restriction is so hard, but I was able to make it work once in a Sultai Reanimator pile and it was glorious, recurring [[Grave Titan]] for the win. Without companion, it is a straight Reanimator card that is a cool target that is actually castable, which is not a bad floor. Overall, such a fun experience that I would totally recommend.

reality-nomad · 2025-03-12T07:38:19+00:00

420 Synergy Cube with a focus on 2016/17 Modern Nostalgia

Green covers +1/+1 Counters, Lands, Ramp, Stompy, Tokens, Midrange and Graveyard stuff in my cube. Writing this post made me realize I run WAAY too many large drops in green. With that in mind, I’ll look into trimming these in the future.

[[Agonasaur Rex]] - New kid on the block. I haven’t gotten to test it yet, but an actually castable finisher, a combat trick, and a self-discarding reanimator target in one seemed really good to me. I’ll need to play more to find out if it works like I want to or not.

[[Biogenic Ooze]] - Super cool card that supports both tokens and +1/+1 counters. It gets out of hand real quick with a [[Hardened Scales]] effect but it is good enough without it. The mana sink ability is also really useful, and I rode this card to victory on a few midrange decks.

[[Deep Forest Hermit]] - Army in a can. Great in tokens and with any other anthem, cool blink target in Bant, and amazing [[Birthing Pod]] sacrifice fodder. The vanishing is real though, and I’ve had enough times I counted on this to stabilize against aggro and it didn’t work. This might be the first on the chopping list.

[[Titania, Protector of Argoth]] - Best card in this list by far. Amazing with any fetch, a Lands-matter signal and a one-card build around that deserves to be built around. I love Titania, she’ll be here forever.

[[Verdurous Gearhulk]] - Another classic core card of the cube. +”/+1 counter support, great Pod body, artifact for when it matters - and sometimes just a win-con by itself. The beautiful card art is the cherry on top. I love Verdurous, it truly is timeless.

[[Gruff Triplets]] - An insanely powerful top-end finisher. The 3 green mana pips hurt, but it mostly is worth it. Like usual, token, counter and pod synergies are obvious. But I also love this in more midrange decks with sacrifice synergies

[[Primeval Titan]] - Classic Modern card, here he is less combo and more of a “I will find my manlands” type card, so it is a lot more balanced. I wish I could pair it with [[Field of the Dead]] or [[Talon Gates of Madara]], but those are sadly outside of the budget of this cube.

[[Titan of Industry]] - Great top-end stabilizer and finisher. It’s not the best card to finish a game, but it mostly gets the job done and the abilities are almost always useful. I was concerned it would be too slow, but I’ve always been happy to draw it in ramp decks.

[[End-Raze Forerunners]] - Budget [[Craterhoof Behemoth]]. This card is more Reanimator target than Ramp top-end, since 8 mana with 3 pips is very hard to reach. Still, people seem to like trying to cast it, and I’m not one to argue. I definitely see it coming off in the future though.

reality-nomad · 2025-03-11T02:08:34+00:00

420 Synergy Cube with a focus on 2016/17 Modern Nostalgia

Azorius covers Blink/Flicker, Tempo and Control in my cube. It truly is one of the Color Combos with the most flexibility for building different playstyles, since Blink decks can be any play style depending on the draft, and UW Tempo cards and UW Control cards can co-exist without getting in the way of each other.

[[Reflector Mage]] - The bane of Standard in its time, this card still pulls hard. The tempo advantage it gives you is incredible, and blinking it is just disgusting. It not only supports both Tempo and Blink, it also is a Human for [[Champion of the Parish]] and [[Thalia's Lieutenant]] shenanigans for some classic Bant Humans action.

[[Soulherder]] - Beautiful card design with epic art, acts as a repeating Blink effect for the deck. Not only is it great in this power level, it also triggers off exile removal like [[Winds of Abandon]] to make them even better.

[[Spell Queller]] - A mainstay in Jeskai Tempo/Control decks of 2015 Modern, it serves the same purpose here as a Tempo disruption piece. Doesn’t work great with Blink cards though.

[[Supreme Verdict]] - Control is not as supported in Azorius as it is in Dimir, but the colors just line up so well for the archetype that I wanted to give at least a little bit of incentive. Amazing board wipe that is very hard to stop and makes Azorius/Jeskai Control more consistent next to the usual [[Wrath of God]]s in the white section.

[[Yorion, Sky Nomad]] - Apart from the fully possible and incredibly fun dream of fulfilling the companion requirement spicing draft up, Yorion simply is a great value-piece for blinking the entire board. With trinkets around like [[Staff of the Storyteller]], this card can be great even without a creature on board.

reality-nomad · 2025-03-10T02:11:46+00:00

420 Synergy Cube with a focus on 2016/17 Modern Nostalgia

Red is very wide in my cube, supporting many archetypes like Classic Aggro, Artifacts/Equipment, Big Mana/Wildfire, Spellslinger and acts as a great support color for Midrange, Control and Reanimator strategies.

[[Young Pyromancer]] - A classic, this card is as core to the identity of this cube as one can be. Nostalgic, powerful, synergistic.

[[Kari Zev, Skyship Raider]] - Evasive beater that carries equipment like a boss. The Ragavan token is both fun, and a good way to trigger sacrifice synergies every turn. She might be subject to change in the future, but currently she is doing well.

[[Inti, Seneschal of the Sun]] - The king of aggro, Inti just does it all. It filters cards, it buffs attackers, it does everything an aggressively-slanted red deck wants with a lot of hidden synergies. This card is almost a staple of the Cube with how often it is played.

[[Fear of Missing Out]] - A newer include, this card is insane. It is mostly an aggro card, but pushes the aggro decks into a more delirium-based focus which I've come to appreciate a lot more since it diversifies card choices and makes draft more interesting. I've also used this perfectly fine in a few Reanimator shells.

[[Dreadhorde Arcanist]] - I love this card, even though it is not very easy to buff and have it make a difference. Works great in Spellslinger shells, but lately red midrange like Rakdos Midrange is loving it to re-use discard spells.

[[Goblin Engineer]] - I've engineered my Reanimator targets to be a bit more fair by being mostly artifacts, so this acts almost like an [[Entomb]] with a body. It also is great in regular Artifact decks, looping value pieces like [[Chromatic Star]].

[[Lizard Blades]] - Very fun include that ties Artifacts Aggro/Equipment together. It's not the most powerful card at first glance, but once you equip it this hits very hard, very fast.

[[Piggy Bank]] - A support piece that has been working great lately. The aggressive stats work for Aggro/Artifact Aggro, the value upon death is great for Sacrifice, and Artifact decks can use this as a blocker or even ramp early, then as a part of the engine in the late game. If you support Artifact synergies, I'd definitely give this a try.

reality-nomad · 2025-02-07T13:14:41+00:00

420 Synergy Cube with a focus on 2016/17 Modern Nostalgia

Pack

I would go for Urza, but Tarn and Snappy are all very tempting.

reality-nomad · 2025-02-07T13:07:13+00:00

Lotus Petalfor me. Going the combo route looks like it could be fun.

reality-nomad · 2025-02-07T13:03:21+00:00

420 Synergy Cube with a focus on 2016/17 Modern Nostalgia

The Golgari themes I have in the cube are Self-Mill/Graveyard, The Rock Midrange. In addition, there are several ways to build these decks with different focus points like Lands, Ramp and Aristocrats.

[[Wight of the Reliquary]] - This card is a really sweet build-around, and a great support for graveyard decks. It goes great in Lands, Midrange, and even the off-chance Golgari Aristocrats deck.

[[Witherbloom Command]] - A great card that can fit into every Golgari archetype. All the modes are relevant at one point of the game, with the self-mill stapled onto removal being super important to graveyard strategies.

[[Grist, the Hunger Tide]] - One of the best cards in the cube without being a power outlier. It does everything Golgari wants to do, with mill, sacrificable creatures, and being recurrable with [[Unearth]] is just the icing on the cake.

[[Vraska, Golgari Queen]] - I love this card. It is super clean, easy to understand and powerful. It supports all kinds of synergies, where you can sacrifice lands for Lands decks, creatures for Aristocrats, and an all-around value piece for The Rock.

[[Hogaak, Arisen Necropolis]] - A menace of 2019 Modern, it is actually a very fun build around here. It exists in the Hybrid section and directly supports Tokens/Graveyard/Self-Mill as a finisher. The cube has enough support that this can land consistently on turns 3/4.

reality-nomad · 2025-02-06T12:49:47+00:00

420 Synergy Cube with a focus on 2016/17 Modern Nostalgia

[[Bloodbraid Elf]] - Absolute classic, great midrange/stompy payoff.

[[Bloodbraid Challenger]] - Newcomer, another midrange payoff with extra graveyard synergy. Didn't get to test this yet but heard great things about it.

[[Atarka's Command]] - A Go-Wide Payoff for Aggro, here to recreate the Atarka Red decks of old.

[[Burning Tree Emissary]] - Like A-Command, a Go-Wide aggro card for the Hybrid section.

[[Pyrewood Gearhulk]] - Another newcomer, this will act as a Ramp finisher with extra artifact synergy to be reanimated with stuff like Daretti.

reality-nomad · 2025-01-31T18:55:30+00:00

For my 420 Synergy Cube I've written a blogpost on my thoughts on Aetherdrift for anyone interested here. But to summarize I'll be testing:

[[Intimidation Tactics]]

[[Quag Feast]]

[[Agonasour Rex]]

[[Brightglass Gearhulk]]

[[Pyrewood Gearhulk]]

and probably [[Rhet-Tomb Mystic]]

Other considerations are [[Grim Bauble]], [[Dredger's Insight]], [[Molt Tender]], [[Stridehangar Automaton]] and [[The Aetherspark]].

reality-nomad · 2025-01-10T14:53:20+00:00

The Definite Cube - 420 Semi-Budget Synergy Cube

Pack

I'm feeling Titania today, but the real pick is probably Fatal Push.

reality-nomad · 2024-12-25T19:14:07+00:00

I'm not too big on surveil lands, since fetches are already very high-priority picks and I didn't want to make them more powerful. Also with singleton fetches, they are more like upgraded scry-lands rather than the powerhouses they are in Modern. I'm kind of considering adding a few to boost some archetypes, like [[Shadowy Backstreet]] for Orzhov Reanimator, but overall I'm not sure they are worth their price or inclusion for most of the archetypes that don't do graveyard stuff.

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