I’m Usman, and I’m a cube writer who’s been writing about cube for 15 years. I previously wrote about cube for Hipsters of the Coast and I’m back to give a brief overview of the “hits” of Edge of Eternities for cube, as a follow-up with my initial thoughts on Edge of Eternities for cube that I posted on my Substack.
“Boring” role-fillers!
Consult the Star Charts
When I wrote my initial review of EoE, I noted it as one of the top cards of the set and I now think it’s the best cube card of the set.
Since Consult hasn’t broken through in Standard yet, a lot of the discourse that I’ve seen about this has been around comparing this to Stock Up, when comparing it to something like an Impulse or Hieroglyphic Illumination were better comparisons. Cards like Impulse are never the all-stars in a cube deck, but they’re good cards that tie the room together, by representing something to do when holding up counterspell magic.
Some points of comparison were that “it’s a bad Impulse” because it doesn’t dig very far in the early stage of the game, evaluation tends to be focused on how cards play when on-curve, ignoring how it scales later in the game because it’s not a common axis of evaluation, but I found that it played remarkably well on turns 5+ (like this, in Historic) and was still fine when cast on 2 mana. In general, I found that the unkicked mode was its primary mode and found that the kicker mode was upside, making it closer to something like Burst Lightning, where its primary mode was fine and had a pretty good kicker mode.
My initial thought was that it’s slightly worse than Stock Up, but I’d say they’re close. It’s certainly the best Impulse variant and that the correct play is likely to just run both. Adjust expectations accordingly and you’ll see why the card is good.
Lightstall Inquisitor
There’s fears that this can be bad if it tucks away a tapland, but the whole “death and taxes” archetype has always historically been about throwing enough pocket sand at an opponent to disrupt them, and this has an actual clock.
Even though it’s more a Ravenous Rat than an Elite Spellbinder, due to the opponent having a choice, the body is still fine for the rate and works surprisingly well with all of the blink that’s in white, since there aren’t many good 1-drops that are blink targets. Flickering this isn’t worth a whole card, but it’s still something nice to blink with a Phelia, Exuberant Shepard or Flickerwisp if need be. I never saw vigilance being super relevant unless it becomes buffed, but if the spacecraft are better than I think, it’s a nice bonus for that as well.
Edge Rover
It’s a 2/2 for 1 in green, with a death trigger that arguably isn’t even a drawback, especially if including landfall payoffs. Explicitly supporting green aggressive decks isn’t done as much these days, but it does tend to fare better than mega-ramp in the face of spot removal in the modern age. That said, green often manifests in strategies that go bigger than the opponent, which makes me unsure on how well it’ll play with most green decks’ game plans in cube.
But as a pure beater, it’s very good with reach not being flavor text either.
Seam Rip
It’s another Portable Hole and plays similarly as a card that hits more than you’d think, but one that’s slightly less good because there aren’t that many synergies that it works with in cube like Trinket Mage and the new Tezzeret. The enchantment payoffs in a cube world, for the most part, aren’t great but this does dodge artifact hate, which is something.
If you’re playing Portable Hole and on singleton inclusions, you’re likely in the market for this one too.
Kavaron Harrier
When looking at cube cards, a lot of cube designers would get super excited about the 1-drops for aggressive decks. I was one of them, since I really wanted to make sure that there were enough 1-drops for the aggro decks, but we have plenty these days to where they’re no longer the de facto “best cube card” in the set.
Over the years, I’ve dabbled with cards that care about artifacts and some of the cards that do heavy lifting for artifact decks are those that naturally add high artifact counts to the board for decks that care about that, but are also solid cards for decks that don’t care about artifact counts.
This emulates a Usher of the Fallen riff, but since the robot isn’t permanent, its activated ability is mostly there for the later stages of the game to extract value out your early game threats into the late game and get an artifact out there if needed. It’s definitely better with cards that can utilize a temporary body, like cards with void, Sephiroth, Fabled SOLDIER, Goblin Bombardment, etc.
Exciting things!
Tezzeret, Cruel Captain
I’d be remiss if I didn’t talk about Tezzeret, although in all honesty it never really did that much for me, although my cube doesn’t have fast mana (which is likely part, but not all of the reason why.)
The reason was that it mainly played as an expensive tutor that got a cheap artifact and didn’t do much else, since his + ability usually was just used to keep him alive. It could be one of those cards that’s mainly for cubes that run the moxen, Sol Ring, etc, since it can more reliably be used to get use out of his +1 ability. Played fairly, though, meh.
Ouroboroid
I decided to try this out on a whim and it performed much better than I expected, given the relative lack of attention that it’s received. It looked like it would be useless, but I found that even with a small board state, it can get out of hand quickly and even on its own, it doesn’t take long for it to become a solid beatstick, as it initially blocks as a 2/4, attacks as a 4/6 – which doesn’t even count other creatures which also just get huge. Buffing this with something like equipment or a planeswalker buff is nice, but I didn’t see that happen, mainly just being a self-contained threat. It is annoying if it dies to a removal spell, but like with a lot of things, usually I found that to be an exaggerated concern.
Density of removal can make this worse, since it does need to survive to a combat step to do anything, but I’ve been finding it to be a solid performer thus far. I’ve heard some call it the “green Shelly (Sheoldred, the Apocalypse)” for formats like Standard and Modern and it’s not a perfect analog since Ouroboroid can’t just solo people like Shelly can, and is worse against bolts but it does highlight something: letting this live for a turn or two can make life rough, even on its own.
Cosmogrand Zenith
Like with Monastery Mentor and friends, this gets better with a bunch of cheap stuff so that this can consistently make bodies. Being a creature means that it has some vulnerabilities that Cori-Steel Cutter doesn’t have (Cutter doesn’t die to Doom Blade) but the token making mode creating 2 bodies makes it if you get it to Raise the Alarm once, it’s fine if it gets Doom Bladed, and if it you get it to trigger twice, it’s on the better side of cubable 3-drops (even with the high competition there.) There was a minor theme in Kaldheim with the “cast 2” cards with cards like Clarion Spirit, Codespell Cleric and Bloodsky Berserker had such bad floors that only Clarion Spirit got played in cubes, and even then, not that often.
Thankfully, the floor on this, as well as Sage of the Skies are better. One thing I didn’t notice was how well this played with cards with plot, which is something that’s been a thing in Standard.
Quantum Riddler and Possibility Technician
I’m putting these together since they play a similar role, as cards that virtually draw a card if warped, especially in low-curving decks that can look to reliably cast the card from Possibility Technician/draw 2 with Quantum Riddler and something that can just get cast later.
The warp mode is mostly for the decks with low curves a la Amped Raptor and Summon: Brynhildr, as the payoff with this is getting a Elkin Bottle-style draw and then getting it for free on top of a 3/3 later on but it’s great how well Warp lets you get the best of both worlds with Evoke (you don’t give up the creature.) The “3-for-1” fits this much better than Starfield Shepherd, since you’re getting draws out of this, even if they may just be temporary. Like with Quantum Riddlerssssssss, it’s a card that you really want low mana curves for, to be able to reliably get a card’s worth out of it and the hardcast mode of 3 isn’t bad either if it draws a card.
Red skews low enough to where I have its power level average as higher than with the riddler; since there aren’t many Kavu. it’s mostly just idealized evaluation, and should be considered as just a standalone thing, but fun when it happens.
Of course, they’re both very good with blink cards a la Ephemerate, which has been a combo showing up in Modern so far.
Tannuk, Steadfast Second
Although the artifact text looks like flavor text, some things like Portal to Phyrexia and Coveted Jewel play remarkably well with it, alongside the usual types of “big creatures that do things” threats, which stick around in the exile zone to be hardcast later, if need be.
Other creatures having haste isn’t useless either, since it does help midrange threats swing if you have the mana to hardcast them instead of warping them into play.
Overall, I’m thinking that this will be a pretty good card for midrange decks, but one where its power may be curtailed by removal.
Pinnacle Emissary
Pinnacle Emissary’s Warp is a great example of how it can be used early to burst out a bunch of cards if you have the potential for it, but also to just be played on turn 3 if you want. It’s a card that’s very reliant on hitting a critical mass of artifacts to get your mana’s worth out of it – I’d say getting 2 drones out of this is where it starts to feel like a good card. Played as a standalone card, it’s not very good but the ability to represent a lot of threats without additional mana investment makes me think that this has a very high ceiling. Given the “generic value spells” that Izzet has had in years past, I’m glad to see these kinds of high-value cards in the color pair.
Cryogen Relic
Like Ichor Wellspring meets Think Twice/Deduce, it’s a way to effectively cantrip for 2 and to potentially another by cashing it out or sacrificing it for free, the latter of which we have seen with cards like Umbral Collar Zealot. It’s another type of card that I don’t think gets there in a lot of metas if played fairly, but gets so much better if you can reliably sacrifice it, since locking something down if it’s tapped isn’t useless but… isn’t great either. It’s at least something that can be done at instant speed and it’s been performing well enough in Limited that my interest remains that it’ll be a decent role-player.
Usman Jamil (he/him) has been creating Cube content since 2009 and created the first and longest running Cube podcast, The Third Power. He is a member of the Pauper Cube Committee and created the Ravnica Cube on Magic Online. His linktree is: https://linktr.ee/Usmantherad