The biggest goal of this round of patch notes is removing adverse play patterns more than power outliers. With that said, there's also certainly some power outliers on both ends being clamped in. There's also some fun new cards I'm excited to try out, alongside some of what are basically QOL upgrades.
I'm adding Kongming because such a lord as this—all virtues' height—Had never been, nor ever was again.
Okay but actually, Intangible Virtue was a double whammy of being hard to interact with. It's an enchantment, which limits how you can remove it, and it gives your whole team Vigilance, making it pretty impossible to race it. So many of white's creatures are tokens that it makes it incredibly free to run even outside of dedicated tokens strategies, which was supposed to be the main balancing factor of the card. I still want to have an anthem effect, so I'm swapping it out for Kongming. In addition to just being really funny, he's much easier to interact with, especially being vulnerable to creature removal, while still having a high ceiling.
Excavation did not pan out at all. Card stinks. At the end of the day, what I'm realized is that having a repeatable version of this effect isn't really as important as just having redunancy for the one-shot effects. After some deliberation as to which version of the effect I should run, at the end of the day I went with one of the lower power options: In the past I think I've overshot the power level of the cube with some inclusions and I want to be mindful of maintaining the ideal gameplay I'm shooting for. Stockpiling Celebrant is a bread and butter card for the archetype that I expect to be a late pick in formats like Rotodraft, but one that can still do good work. Also it's a Dwarf so it works with Giott and that's kind of funny.
Yeah, the other anthem is gone too, but for a different reason. Case of the Gateway Express being such efficient removal to recur with bounce effects was incredibly oppressive, even with something as simple as a one-off Shepherd of the Flock. Adding the anthem mode on top of that just made a card that did everything in a way that I didn't like. This is ultimately more a removal slot than anything, so I'm swapping it out for the simple but effective Sudden Strike. This card also incentivizes more defensive white decks, which I think the color could use some more support for.
A Modern Horizons 3 card being too efficient in its slot? Say it isn't so! Mandicular Kite just had too high of a floor on both of its modes than was healthy, especially with hitting basically every point of synergy in White. I'm taking this opportunity to shift one slot around in the color and adding another piece of removal in Valorous Stance. This serves as another way to unconditionally take out a big creature, while also having some interesting play as a combat trick or defensive spell. Modal cards like this are always fun and skill testing, and peep that gorgeous Anato Finnstark artwork.
Cast Down really didn't pan out like I hoped, it was never really an interesting decision when to pick it or not since it was just best in class removal anyways. Especially with more removal magnet legends being added in this update, I think cutting it is for the best. So I decided hey, why overcomplicate this, let's just add Fell. Bread and butter kill spell if ever there was one.
Ichor Shade wasn't the worst card in the world, but it being so directly comparable to other, stronger cards made it feel like it wound up in a weird place. Michelangelo in particular is almost a strict upgrade to it, just in a different color, and Cackling Prowler and Judge Magister Gabranth are quite similar as well. I think this slot is much better served by Graveshifter: Another Changeling is always fun for lots of different typal payoffs: It's particularly fun with Radioactive Spider, kind of doing the world's weirdest Ephemerate Spellseeker impression. Our last black card is also especially happy to see another Changeling.
Nameless Inversion just kind of stunk compared to every other option in black, and the Changeling text basically never mattered. Dragonstorm might be busted or it might be unplayable, I genuinely don't know! But I think this card has a lot of play to it across a shocking amount of decks: Obviously it's great with Dragons, but it's fantastic as a bounce target too, and even Wizards appreciates a burn-based noncreature spell like this and will generally be running at least one or two Dragons since it's in Red. (Especially considering another Red card I'm adding in this patch.) I'm excited to try this card out, I think there's a lot of exciting possibilities here for a card that looks so unassuming. Tiny interactable game pieces like this are the heart and soul of Yellow Box.
Mica is certainly the strongest card I'm adding in this patch, and I'm fully prepared for him to be too strong. This card has an excellent body, removal resistance, and a pretty powerful engine ability... but it's just so exciting! People have often said that Red lacks in some of the "power picks" that colors like Green and White enjoy, so I'm interested in trying out a card like this that's a cut above the average cube card, even when I wouldn't be otherwise. There's a chance this card is immediately cut in the next version, but I think it's worth a shot. Mouser Foundry played fine, and would obviously be great with Mica himself, but the Artifacts deck generally hasn't needed it, so I'm fine with cutting down on the density of trinkety Artifacts by one in this patch.
I held onto Wizard's Lightning for far too long. It seems like a cool pull for synergy with the Black Mages on paper, but in practice 3 damage just really doesn't cut it a lot of the time and the mana discount isn't really worth it being a dead card to pretty much every non-Wizards deck. While having burn that could go face was nice, Corroding Dragonstorm can now also do a similar thing while also having play in lots of other decks. Even more than that though, this is the last Wizard typal card in the cube cut, which means I no longer feel conflicted about adding a Wizard that's also a Dragon and cares about Dragons and is also a cheap evasive creature. Firespitter Whelp is genuinely the perfect Yellow Box card and honestly I was silly to not have it in here beforehand. Play with Young Red Dragon's Adventure and Corroding Dragonstorm in a Wizards deck for some particularly juicy synergy!
The idea behind Overwhelming Surge was to have one card that could cleanly answer both halves of a Living Weapon. It accomplished that, but it was more pressingly incredibly easy to make this card a 2 for 1 in a lot of matchups, a 3 mana spell to gain that much card and mana advantage isn't really where I want this cube to be. Conveniently, though, Marvel added a new, similar card that requires you to put in a bit more work, while also being more appealing in matchups where you don't care about the artifact mode. I think HULK SMASH! will find a pretty healthy home in this cube, and geting blown out by it won't feel quite as unearned.
Demand Answers is another card that was just in an overcrowded slot. Light Up the Stage, Melded Moxite, and Experimental Synthesizer is certainly enough red card flow noncreatures for one cube. The main goal of Artistic Process is to have another card to kill wide boards, which has been a common request of drafters. Process is pretty versatile, but the spot removal mode and creature modes are fairly inefficient. Like I said for Stance, I think the correct way to use this card in a given game will be fairly skill testing.
The 5 mana Dragons have been the subject of a lot of debate within the Yellow Box community. Ultimately, I've landed on cutting the Dragon that more players were lower on and leaving Rapacious Dragon in the cube for now. Nebula Dragon, aside from just being the coolest shit ever, serves as an additional incentive to go big on mana, or as a stallbreaker topend for red decks that's more exciting and less archetype specifics than the options that exist currently. It is a one card two for one, but on a point in the curve where that's a lot more acceptable. Artistic Process fills the point in the curve Predator formerly held, which opened up this more expensive slot nicely.
Kappa Tech-Wrecker was just a little bit too good at gumming up the board as a 3 toughness creature with Deathtouch. This cube doesn't need any help gumming up its boards! It also lacks reminder text for Ninjutsu, which I'm trying to avoid in this cube and is especially noticable with a Sneak card also being in it. This does remove one way for green to interact with artifacts and enchantments, but I think the density of those effects has been healthy enough that I'm okay with that. Slimy Piper, on the other hand, is pretty effective at breaking through boardstalls, always being better on offense but helping even more once you've got a big board. Not a splashy card, but one that I think will play well. Also its name is funny.
Up the Beanstalk had no place in this cube, I don't really know what I was thinking in hindsight. Card is busted, everyone pretty much knows that. Sarinth Steelseeker is a bit of an experimental inclusion. It's a powerful effect but not in the perfect color to take advantage of it, so I'm curious if it will make artifact decks want to dip more into Green. There's other interesting synergies that opens up as well. To help facilitate it there's two new green Treasure token creators in this patch as well.
Dread Linnorm was an absolute beating, while the 4 mana seems hard to leave up, I think in practive it was much easier to make this card into a 2-for-1 than it seems, and the size and evasion on the backside ended games so quickly. It was never a card I was fully happy with, but Green didn't have a better option for a Dragon in this slot, so I tolerated it. No longer! Pet Avengers is another 4 drop that can also be a 7 drop that's also a Dragon, but one with a much more traditional play pattern that I think fits perfectly into the cube. It even helps out with the more aggressive Gruul type decks by being an on-curve creature for its 4 mana mode. My only real concern is that the Dragon subtype kind of gets buried in the giant wall of creature types, so I'm hoping that's not an issue. It being the first one in the list certainly helps.
The Dragons deck didn't really need a card as all-in as Encroaching Dragonstorm, even when you were playing Green and had plenty of Dragons it often got cut just for not doing enough. Professional Wrestler also provides ramp and mana fixing via Treasure while being a much more normal card in other respects: This is another 4 drop creature being added to Green, which is an intentional decision to give it a curve more receptive to curving out with creatures like this that just want to rumble and dominate the boardstate in the midgame. It's also an artifact producer to help with Sarinth Steelseeker and other cards.
Deathreap Ritual is a really cool card but one that varies wildly in its utility: Some games it's worthless, others it takes over the game and wins pretty much on its own. I think swapping it out for a similar, more even effect will lead to more interesting games on both sides. Something else I like about Scholar is not just that it brings more token-creation density in Green, but its mana cost encouraging two-color decks. Sacrifice tends to pretty much always wind up in Abzan, and I think this card being much easier to hit on curve in Golgari (while certainly not being bad in an Abzan deck either) will lead to some subtly different builds of the deck, a Golgari one that wants to curve out and rumble more, versus a grindier Abzan version.
Speaking of Golglari decks that can rumble, that was the primary motivator behind swapping out the defensive Spider for the beatstick Killmonger. He might actually be a little bit too good if anything, 5/4 is a scary statline for how good the ETB is. But I want to try it to see how the more aggressive version of the sacrifice deck winds up playing out, if it does exist. The decrease in Reach density is handled by Pet Avengers, by the way.
As cool as she looks on paper, Jolene has recieved generally negative reviews. 4 power isn't particularly common in the cube, and 2 toughness makes it hard to enable her ability on her own. While the ping ability is great in some matchups, its utility varies pretty wildly in a way that was unappealing for a multicolored incentive card. Kraven I think fits much better as a reason to be playing Gruul: It rumbles in the midgame and gets even better if you ramp out big topend: Perfect for what that deck wants to be doing.
This is actually a pretty subtle textural change: Both cards are 2RG 4/4 Beasts with Trample with an extra two-mana mode from the hand. There was some dissatisfaction with Thrash/Threat's place in the cube, and at least one player suggested the Rampager could fit better, and you don't have to do much to talk me into adding another combat trick to a cube of mine. Part of me wishes this counted as a noncreature spell for those synergies in red, but in practice I don't think that really matters much.
I always had an interest in adding some hybrid cards to Yellow Box, as I think they play particularly well in Grid Draft. My problem was always color symmetry, as I was worried with a cube this small that any color imbalance will be felt a lot more than in a larger cube. With Marvel adding an Orzhov (leaning white) card though, I think I've found a configuration of hybrid cards that will work well in the cube without disrupting anything in terms of card count.
John Walker is a Living Weapon in reverse, and helps plug the hole in Equipment density left by cutting Mandibular Kite alongside being great to bounce to get more Shields. Whiel he can fit in well with some of the color's artifact synergies, he's certainly much more appealing in White than in Black, which is why Black is not getting a card cut to compensate for the new Hybrid cards. (Neither of the other cards are Black.) Omen of the Sun has been replacement level to bad, and there's no shortage of good bounce targets or token creators in the cube, so it felt reasonable to cut.
Speaking of good bounce targets and token creators, Mechanized Ninja Cavalry kind of does it all in this cube. It's two bodies that are both artifacts on an ETB ability, what more can you want? It fits great into lots of Red and White archetypes. General Traag is another card I'm cutting for the sake of cutting down on easy 2-for-1s. Especially with Mica being such a scary test for the artifact sacrifice deck, I didn't want another similar effect that was this impactful. If Mica tests poorly, he's likely to return in his place.
As much as I love Malevolent Rumble, this was not the cube for it. It did everything you could want and grossly efficiently. This is a power outlier I'm glad to be rid of, even if I'll miss playing a turn 3 5/4 Cackling Prowler that didn't even cost a card. Noggle Robber is pretty bread and butter but it's quite efficient at its job and fits into what these colors want to be doing, including being another green Treasure card for Steelseeker. It's slightly harder to cast that the other hybrid cards, which might be an issue, we'll see. I also just like Noggles.
The Filterlands were always something I begrudgingly tolerated for the sake of having untapped lands. It's so easy to tap your mana wrong while playing them and it puts unnecessary mental stack in a part of the game that ideally shouldn't have any. (The lands you already have in play.) Now that there's enough printings of the Checklands that they're widely cheap and available, I'm happy to swap them out. This also further encourages fast 2 color decks and slower 3+ color ones, which to me is ideal for any limited format. If you're a 2 color deck, your checkland is always going to be untapped and let you curve out nicely, while in a 3 color deck they'll often enter tapped in exchange for providing their mana fixing.
