These were the first Patch Notes I wrote for Yellow Box, before this website existed on the cube's Cube Cobra page. I figured it was still worth archiving here so I've copied everything over, but if you're wondering why I complain about a character limit, that's why!
This round of changes is aimed at cutting cards that felt out of place or underpowered, broadening the diversity of Aggro decks, giving some support to underperforming archetypes (Aristocrats, Tokens) and hopefully making Boros not so far and away the best deck.
Osseous Exhale felt a bit out of place in White. The color only had one Dragon of its own, and most decks paired up with Red or Green (the colors with the most Dragons) were focused on Tokens or Equipment and weren't really interested in playing more than maybe one Dragon. The payoff for Beholding was also pretty unimpactful, and it made the situations where the 5 damage couldn't take out a threat a lot harder to swallow.
All-Fates Stalker is a card that can be cast in a ton of different ways, and I think will lead to some really cool plays with all of the ETB effects running around in addition to acting as a normal Fiend Hunter type removal creature. Obviously it's vulnerable to removal itself, and 3 toughness is an important threshold in this enviornment, but that leads to some interesting gameplay decisions in its own way.
There are two Assassins in this cube that it can't exile (three counting Masked Vandal), but that's kind of very funny so I'm not that concerned about it though. This does make Arbaaz Mir even better though.
good lord the redcoats are here
Search Party Captain never really felt good, even in decks that went wide enough to theoretically enable it. Tokens strategies didn't often want to push damage early, the deck more wanted to play the long game and stall the board before using a dedicated finisher, which made getting a discount of more than 1 on the Captain pretty awkward. Its best spot was probably in Boros, but even there you were casting it for full price way more often than you wanted to.
Spider-UK gives the Tokens strategies a much more compelling form of passive card advantage, in addition to Web-slinging letting you do some cool players with ETB creatures. It's great with both Selesnya Evangel type incremental effects as well as the normal Scatter the Seeds type token spells, and even works great in Essence Reliquary decks. I've been very happy with how Spider-Man, Brooklyn Visionary has played here and I'm excited to try another Web-slinger.
First-Sphere Gargantua has actually performed pretty well in slower Black decks, but it isn't especially synergistic with much any more. The card is a bit of a holdover from an old Reanimator archetype I was trying to make work but couldn't really get right, and I've decided to repurpose this slot to help out Sacrifice decks instead.
Deathreap Ritual is a crucial card for Sacrfice decks, as it lets them turn their engines into actual card advantage to snowball in the late-game. The Titan is arguably more replacing Wardens of the Cycle than anything, as it's redundancy for that effect while also being on a body. While it's not cheap and is vulnerable to artifact removal, the Titan is also great in Oni-Cult Anvil Artifact-based decks due to working on Artifact tokens, and can even put in some solid work in general removal-heavy Control strategies like BR Wizards. More than any of that though, Voidforged Titan is just a big body you can rumble with, which I really wanted to make sure I maintained when replacing the Gargantua's slot, and which Wardens of the Cycle always felt just short of due to not being able to break through the crucial 4-toughness threshold.
Another one of the last holdovers from the Reanimator archetype, I thought Spectral Snatcher might be able to still fin a home as a win condition that doubles as smoothing thanks to landcycling. However, the more I've seen players draft the Dragons deck the more I've seen them dip into Black as a third color thanks to the support of its great removal and defensive creatures that can support the Ramp plan. This development has made it even more awkward that only one of Black's three expensive creatures is a Dragon, and especially since Green is losing one of its topend Dragon creatures in this update, I've decided to add another Black Dragon: Black Dragon. This ETB also reinforces the importance of the 3/4 toughness line, which is a texture of the format I've enjoyed.
Oh also, while looking at stuff for this update I realized how weirdly similar Black Dragon and Nebula Dragon are. That's weird right.
Last of the Renimator vestiges I'm removing here, Live or Die being 5 mana made it really hard to justify outside of exactly Jund Dragons. While reanimating a blocker at instant speed was hype, I wanted this slot to be a more general removal spell, and adding another Treasure token producer to help encourage more Black Artifact decks kills two birds with one stone. The card also of course is still something Jund Dragons is interested in thanks to the ramp and fixing from the Treasure, which keeps that little bit of draft texture.
A piece of feedback I received from a couple people after the Rotodraft was that they wanted another small-toughness sweeper to deal with tokens. Fang Dragon works out nicely for this slot, being also a Dragon and a cheap Noncreature spell. I also enjoy this statline, being huge enough to end a game on its own quickly while also being vulnerable to 3-toughness removal. Fallaji Dragon Engine (which was also a bit of a Reanimator targeted card, lol) underperformed the most out of Red's suite of Dragons, so was the natural cut.
Explosive Derailment is a bit of a blowout, and not in the way I found fun. With so many powerful artifacts running around, it's incredibly easy to get a brutal 2-for-1 out of this spell and, compared to Overwhelming Surge, it can not only take out 2 creatures at once but also kill 4-toughness creatures that are normally a lot more resistant to Red's removal suite. Orbital Plunge still gives Red another way to answer big creatures, and can still give it a 2-for-1's worth of value in the right deck, but is much less likely to decide a game on its own. It also adds another way for Red to make Artifact tokens for Oni-Cult Anvil type decks.
Truth be told, I wish I didn't have to make this swap. I've really liked how Dragon Sniper has played. However, if I'm adding a second Web-slinging creature, I really wanted to minimize how may Vigilance creatures were running around in Green and White, especially a one drop with pseudo-evasion, which is normally the exact kind of card you'd want to Web-sling with. Narnam Renegade has some cool synergies (including with Web-slinging itself) and while it doesn't stop flying creatures, it does stop 1/1s (or even 2/2s with Revolt).
Despite being the name of one of the two Rotodraft divisions, Skullmulcher was never really where you wanted to be even in Sacrifice decks. Its floor was abysmal, and while the ceiling of cashing in worthless tokens for a full grip of cards and a big creature was aspirational, it required way too much setup to be worth it.
Galactic Wayfarer is here primarily as an experimental change to support general Gruul "Stompy" type aggro decks, where you focus on curving out with solid creatures and some Dragons on the topend, rather than being a dedicated Ramp deck. This gives the format another deck that's really interested in taking away aggressive Red cards like Rimrock Knight, Barret Wallace, and Turn Inside Out and I'm hoping will serve as a bit of an indirect nerf to Boros.
Emerald Dragon was competing with Myr Sire for the title of the weakest card in the cube. While it could win games just by virtue of being a 4/4 Flample, it was so much worse at it than all of its Dragon contemporaries, and the Adventure was really just additive distraction: It's so inefficient and so rarely accomplishes anything worthwhile that you should never really be holding up mana for it rather than tapping out for something else or just playing the creature mode from your hand.
Glacier Godmaw is not only an absolute haymaker of a win condition for big Green decks, it's also a bit of a go-wide payoff which makes it even more appealing to boardstall-y Selesnya Tokens decks.
Okay I'm almost out of room so lightning round:
Myr Sire sucks and Ornithopter of Paradise is good with Web-slinging
Pillory of the Sleepless is bad in a format with this much sac and bounce,
Tolls of War is an exciting engine for Sac decks that replaces itself
Weapons Trainer was way too good, Warleader's Helix is a card other decks
might want to splash for
Draconic Disciple was really slow, Jolene, Plundering Pugilist is good for
Dragons bc of Treasures in black and Stompy by being big and liking other
big things
Drooling Groodion sucks ass so I replaced it with Honest Rutstein who I'm
cutting for Old Man Willow because saccing artifact tokens to it is
cool
See Voidforged Titan for Wardens of the Cycle, Skyfisher Spider is another
Undercity Eliminator that plugs the Reach hole left by cutting Dragon
Sniper.
