Redefining the notion of power

 I wanted to write this for a really long time. Just by looking at this blog, you might recognise that I heavily struggle to write stuff down consistently. However, something has to be discussed and it cannot wait any longer. It has to do with a term we cubers are all familiar with: "Powered Cube" and "POWER". This term, which is used very often, seems to be obvious as first glance. A Powered Cube includes POWER. But what is POWER? Normally, one means the Power 9 (P9), but one eventually runs into problems because Time Twister is in the P9 but Sol Ring, among the absolute best cards in Magic, is not. What about Mana Crypt? What about Oko? What about Channel, Tinker, etc.? What cards imply that my cube is powered? I want to define more elaborately what POWER means. I will not do this for a general case. I will talk about the only definition of POWER that matters to me, namely in the context of my cube. I will talk about which cards I consider to be POWER in my cube. To make this educational for not only me, but also you, I will talk about certain cards and archetypes and about cube environments in general. In particular, I want to counteract this notion that POWER is always related to the cards that are very good in the MTG Vintage cube and that its environment makes cards powerful, which aren't in other cubes like mine. In addition, to add some spice, I will state a few hot takes, which should redefine the notion of "Power" in the highest power environments. So hot that it caused one of our recent drafts to spiral into a huge discussion.

For you all to get the full scope, I have to quickly mention my cube history. My cube was almost always an "unpowered" Legacy cube. I didn't want the most powerful cards of all Magic in my cube. From my perspective, this obviously included most of the P9 and also "dumb stuff" like combo decks, individual powerful cards (Tinker, Channel) or two-card combos (Twin, W&6 + Strip Mine, etc.). I always felt that these type of powerful cards are stealing games. However, I still wanted to play powerful Magic. Besides this power and dumb stuff, I was constantly looking for strong cards and strong archetypes, while some of my archetypes during these years weren't optimal at all (because I love jank). I was very happy with my cube and you can actually see a lot of awesome decks that were drafted from my cube on this blog. However, all changed when Modern Horizons 2 came out. I wanted to cube with these powerful cards for sure. I loved the invoke elementals, I loved the two awesome red 1 drops we got (Ragavan and Dragon's Rage Channeler) and many other cards when they were released. So I slotted these cards into my cube and played some games. Unfortunately, I recognised that I didn't like the gameplay that my cube provided anymore. My first thought was: These busted MH2 cards are the problem, I should obviously cut them. However, actually thinking about the games, I liked these powerful MH2 cards a lot. In particular, I remember playing a Selesyna deck with Knight of the Reliquary and Urza's Saga. Still one of my favourite decks in cube to play because it makes Knight of the Reliquary very strong and tied the lands deck nicely together.

But what was the problem then? I had decent success with my decks, I liked my decks, but why was I so unsatisfied with my cube? Thinking more about it, I realised that a lot of cards in my cube, especially higher CMC cards, didn't make the cut anymore. And this lead to a lot of boring games when people picked up a lot of these "allstars" but were crushed by more streamlined decks. This put me into a huge dilemma. What should I do? I don't know what to change in my cube to make it better. I still want to play with those new MH2 cards, but should I really cut these other cards, that are close to "cube staples"? This eventually lead to me being very disjoined from Magic for a pretty long time. The constant release of new product, some personal stuff and covid were certainly also a reason for the long break I took. This resulted in The Cube Showdown not being continued. I couldn't bring myself to write it up until yesterday, so after one year: Here are the results!

(I think that I made myself clear with how I wrote this. This doesn't mean that you should try everything in your power to include MH2 cards in your cube. It is about my personal preference. However, when you have the feeling that your cube doesn't spark that much joy for you anymore, do your thing! Don't be afraid to change stuff, you can always change it back.)

Nonetheless, someday, something changed. Namely, I discovered the podcast Lucky Paper Radio. Firstly, if you somehow don't know this podcast you should definitely check it out. Their content is awesome. In particular, I firstly encountered the Bun Magic Cube of Andy and was shocked. Where are the high-costed creatures? Why is there so much removal in this cube? I kinda thought that this isn't the way to cube for me. However, this kinda-different cube mentality got stuck in my head for a long time, especially because I am mainly a constructed player and a lower-curve environment intrigued me. I am not the biggest commander fan and I don't like slower paced formats like standard. I love Legacy and enjoy Modern (also Vintage sometimes). I have the feeling that this notion of a "typical Legacy cube" prevented me from experimenting with my cube. I didn't want to differ too much from the norm, which is why I didn't think about actually catering the cube to what I like. After all, I will be the person to play most with my cube. Surely, my drafters should also like the cube (luckily they do).

As I haven't cubed in a pretty long time, I thought: You know fuck it, let's completely change it. I basically cut my cube from 650ish cards to 200. I kept only the cards that really sparked joy for me. To have a core of what I want my cube to be about, my and my drafter's favourite cards. That included many powerful staples, like the MH2 cards, but also favourites of mine like Life from the Loam, Wilderness Reclamation, Approach of the Second Sun, and others. However, I heavily oriented myself on Andy's philosophy of reducing the curve and increasing the amount of interaction and mana fixing. In the end, I came up with a cube that was different but similar in spirit. We put it to the test and the gameplay really resonated with me. The games felt much more interactive and the MH2 cards didn't feel as out of place anymore. In contrast, this new environment exactly fit to everything I liked about the MH2 cards, namely powerful but still very interactive Magic.

One of my closest friends loves Reanimator. He begged my to include it into the reincarnation of my cube, so I did. I initially hesitated because I thought that such a strategy wouldn't fit into this environment. However, thinking about the this exact environment more, it actually felt really safe to put reanimator in it. The curve is so low that people will have played lots of cards before someone can put all of the reanimator pieces together. I realised that the powerful aspect of Reanimator comes from other decks not being streamlined enough. If I have lots of 4 and 5 drops in my deck, Reanimator will always be favoured against me because these medium CMC creatures can't compete against 8+ drops that are cheated into play. However, if my highest CMC creature (or planeswalker) is only 3 mana and the rest of my deck is interaction and card selection, I can deal with these big creatures much more efficiently and regularly. Especially looking at the removal in my cube now,  reanimation targets seem much fairer. White is just absolutely absurd and can easily remove even indestructible targets for only 1 mana. Black always had a ton of ways to remove creatures efficiently and even got more versatile removal in recent sets. Blue never had a problem with anything because of its counterspells and you can now run much more cantrips to get your counterspells when you really need them. Red can just kill you before you can put together your pieces and pure Green will always struggle against Reanimator. 

So let us try how dumb Reanimator is! And I can say that Reanimator is good. Not broken, not bad. It is just a draftable deck among all the draftable decks in my cube. Is it powerful? Yes. Is it POWER? Of course not. For the first time in my life, I actually saw my friend pulling off a good and consistent reanimator deck. And not just a wacky pure combo deck that just banks on having Entomb + Reanimate. It was rather a real control deck with reanimator as its wincondition. I like to call them combo'esque decks. Seeing that deck felt great. And it also wasn't oppressive, exactly as I anticipated. You got a turn 2 Archon of Cruelty? Yes, that is very bad for me, but I have the option to just remove it for 2 mana. Sure, if you don't have a removal spell or an answer, you are dead really quick. It might feel very "dumb" but it is actually just a highroll, like any deck is capable of. Some people surely don't like this highroll potential, but as a Legacy fan, these highrolls are natural to me. I think that most people feel cheated when a highroll occurs. And the more mana was cheated, the more they feel cheated. However, this "unfairness" of Reanimator really didn't feel as unfair anymore. Because you had a chance in theory. I think that this is really important. I have a chance. I am not completely helpless every time my opponent high rolls. And having a very streamlined deck helps you achieving that. In that sense, the highroll of Reanimator is not that different to other types of highrolls. Aggro can also highroll without cheating any mana, when you simply have the nuts. Even a Midrange deck can nowadays "steal games" by having a perfect curve of turn 1 disruption, into threat after threat. All in all, the experience was just great and Reanimator didn't feel out-of-place at all although it was a completely new way to approach a game of Magic in this environment. Seeing this perfectly fitting reanimator deck, I wanted more. I wanted more dumb stuff! I wanted POWER!

I admit it, I was always a fan of dumb stuff. However, I only like these playstyles if there is actually counterplay to it. I love Legacy. Legacy is not only balanced because of Force of Will, like most people claim. There are other decks that can counteract these dumb decks by having fast mana, unique interaction or other interesting gameplans. We can't have a playset of Force of Will in every deck, and we also can't have a playset of our "dumb-stuff" combo pieces. With the highly interactive environment and seeing that Reanimator was a finely balanced deck, I figured that I will just try a package of all sorts of cards that includes the likes of Storm support (High Tide, Time Spiral, etc.), Faster Mana (Grim Monolith, Tinker, Mox Diamond, Chrome Mox), Channel, Sneak & Show support (Show and Tell, Sneak Attack, Eldrazi stuff) and Land stuff (Fastbond, Strip Mine, etc.). Basically a collection of cards, that some drafters avoid due to being very powerful. Long story short, we drafted and it seemed to work exactly the way I wanted. These decks were playable (besides Storm because Storm is bad) but not oppressive. Sure, Sneak Attack is a strong Magic card, but if the average CMC of your deck is 2.x and your opponent has a full board and is pressuring you starting on turn one, having to wait for your actual gameplan to work until turn four to five is rough. You need an alternative gameplan. Sure, there are games where your fast mana alines perfectly and you have the enabler and payoff on turn 2-3. But that happens very rarely. And if you bank on having this high-roll deck, you eventually lose out on win percentage as your opponent just needs to have the one silverbullet to your glasscannon. Your opponent is not entirely helpless if you highroll on turn 2, and usually you lose the game if your opponent has the perfect answer as your deck only banks on having the combo. This makes playing these full on combo decks pretty difficult and skill testing (especially during the draft). You have to balance the amount of fast mana, interaction and combo-enablers. The most successful decks are actually leaning into control with Sneak Attack + <Insert Fatty> being its wincondition. One card that really surprised me was Channel. The card felt oddly fine. There aren't a lot of high CMC cards in my cube and not a ton of colorless bombs. I didn't include every single Eldrazi titan with Annihilator in my cube because these cards are only playable in one deck. These strategies get the Twin-treatment: You get the best enablers, but I will not include five 10+ drops just so the "Channel-Sneak Attack-Show-Deck" is enabled every single draft for free. I will go more into detail on this later. All in all, these cards seemed like fun additions to my cube and opened up a whole different playstyle, namely combo'esque decks, which our group likes a lot. It also obviously made the format more swingy and explosive and forced people do plan for these decks. Every drafter began being very conscious of their interaction and what they can actually answer.

So, what did I learn so far? The unfair cards actually felt much fairer in an environment that is inherently optimised when subtracting the dumb stuff. What do I mean by that? The cube started as a cube that mainly supports Aggro, Midrange and Control (with tempo and other strategies close to the usual three). The initial environment is constructed in a way that most decks are extremely streamlined. Because there is no dumb-stuff and POWER, there are mostly no high CMC bricks and also not a lot of cards above 4 mana in general. Now, if you introduce dumb stuff into this environment, you actually notice that these dumb cards aren't actually that dumb. They are only dumb because people do everything in their power to make these cards dumb while totally neglecting the non-dumb-stuff decks. The best example is the old MTGO Vintage Cube (the new one is slightly better) where you have like ten targets for a Sneak Attack deck but barely any support for low-to-the-ground midrange and aggro decks. Of course, the Tinker deck will be busted if you include five 7+ CMC bricks into your cube and your opponent is sitting on two 5 drops in hand. The funny thing is that not catering your whole cube to these dumb strategies, makes these strategies much more interesting. Tinker is a fine roleplayer in any artifact deck. You don't need to have Blightsteel Colossus in your deck to make Tinker good. And by not catering your cube to these specific cards, you actually make people think twice before picking them. Now you might say: Wait, you are just including traps in your cube. To that I would say jein (german for "yes and no") because it depends on the drafters. All my drafters know my cube and they also know that my cube is not the old MTGO Vintage cube. I simply don't want to run Myr Battlesphere and Sundering Titan in my cube, because I consider these cards to be not good enough powerlevel wise. Are these cards good with Tinker? Absolutely. Are they good just because of Tinker? Absolutely. But I want my Tinker decks to either not play Tinker, play it as a toolbox card or to get the highest ceiling and getting a Blightsteel Colossus or a Wurmcoil Engine against Aggro.

Another things that I learned is how mana can decontextualise the power of cards. This seems like an obvious fact at first glance. For example, 4c Omnath is better in a cube with a lot of fixing. However, it goes much further than that. Mainly, my cube included two cycles of shocklands, one of duals, one of triomes and double fetches plus horizon lands. This makes 3+ colored decks very easy to play (which is a problem I will address some other day). You quickly notice, that the most powerful cards in such a fixing-rich cube are mostly the gold cards and because the cube is heavily curve-optimized, these gold cards cost mostly 2-4 but mostly 3 mana. This leads to a card like Channel being kinda meh in the average deck. Namely, you firstly have to generate double G which isn't trivial because you basically reduce your consistently to go for 3-5 colors and you can actually not do a lot with colorless mana. The best cards in the cube have like one to two colorless mana pip/s. Your colorless mana is pretty useless for most decks. This also affected cards like Ancient Tomb and City of Traitors. And this is one of my first hottakes: These cards aren't actually that good in a power optimised setting like mine for the same reason as Channel. These cards are not optimal in 3c decks. Sure, ramping out a turn 2 threat with Ancient Tomb is nice. However, what is that Ancient Tomb doing for your for the rest of the game? Your gold 3 drop won't benefit from you having ancient tomb. What about your interaction which mostly costs one colored mana? And here, I of course have to mention the famous turn 2 Channel into Eldrazi Titan. Yes, that is really powerful. Yes, that wins games. Yes, that deck usually doesn't win the draft because it is really inconsistent when blindly put into some random deck. The funny thing is, that these cards not being that playable in most 3c decks, opened up an entirely new avenue of play. Namely, I recognised that these colorless mana producers were mostly supporting mono coloured decks, in particular Red and Green (but sometimes also Blue and White). For Red, it is a no-brainer: Turn 1 Mountain, Turn 2 Ancient Tomb, Rabblemaster, go. For Green, it is mostly about the still remaining powerful 4 and 5 drops which can be played much faster. I noticed that a new deck emerged which was kinda reminiscent of Modern or Legacy-style prison decks, in the sense that these decks weren't really aggressive by playing 1 and 2 drops but by playing medium stuff early. Something I really like because Mono Red prison is a personal favourite. In addition, Channel got a place, not as a allrounder dumb-stuff card, but as a support piece for Mono G "Tron-style" decks that played lots of mana rocks and colorless threats. So, these cards are powerful but for entirely different reasons. Most people consider Ancient Tomb and Channel to be very powerful cards, in every environment. That is simply (and obviously) not true. But I not only want to say that Channel is not good in every cube, I say that in the most powerful environments, the powerlevel of these cards has to be reevaluated very carefully. Channel is not generally Vintage-cube POWER. Channel isn't even close to POWER in my environment, which I consider to be a more powerful environment than the one of the current MTGO Vintage cube. 

Now, it gets interesting. I thought: If Ancient Tomb isn't actually that good in my cube, then how good is a Grim Monolith? It turns out that Grim Monolith is a really mediocre card if there are barely and 6+ drops in your cube (which is why that card is now mostly a "Tron-deck" enabler in my cube). This shocked me as Grim Monolith was always one of the cards in the MTGO vintage cube that was picked fairly highly to ramp out Hornet Queens, Consecrated Spinxes, Titans etc. all cards which weren't in my cube anymore. Okay, if Grim Monolith is an archetype-supporting cards now, what about Mana Vault? That card is surely still busted, right? No, not really. Surely, it is a really strong card but you need the right deck for it. The card is obviously not really playable in a dedicated aggro deck because all your cards cost 1-3 mana and you don't have a lot of colorless pips. Even in midrange'y decks like Jund or Abzan, you will not play it often. Your curve is very low and you will certainly have a lot of multicolored cards. The card is not good in 3-5c decks because, again, you don't have a lot of colorless pips in my cube. The card is really good in decks that are mana hungry and two-colored (or 2c splashing a third). It is also a really good payoff for these Tron-style decks. So, Mana Vault is fine. What is the next step? Mana Crypt. A huge jump in powerlevel. And this is the exact point where the debate started in our last cube session. Namely I was playing this Jund deck (which went 3-0 and won the draft):

And I was like: I would never play Mana Crypt in this deck. And some of my friends went crazy: "That would be very stupid", they said. "You can play your 4 drops on turn 2 or even on turn 1!" 

My reasoning is: Why would I want a card in my deck that only helps 10% of my starting hands? I know that I can have insane highrolls with the card. Most of the time, Mana Crypt will let me play two spells probably (if I have the right cards in hand) and then I will die slowly because of the exact Mana Crypt I played, because I can't kill my opponent fast enough (unless I draw Minsc & Boo, but that is PSEUDO-POWER anyway). We couldn't agree at all on this matter. What is your opinion? Is a Mana Crypt still a no-brainer in this deck or not? Nonetheless, I wouldn't be surprised to find out that running Mana Crypt would actually increase the win percentage of this deck if you could actually measure the all-encompassing win percentage of this deck (with a time-travelling supercomputer). However, I don't think that it would be increased dramatically. Also, I wouldn't be surprised if the win percentage would drop when including Mana Crypt because most of my starting hands didn't want Mana Crypt. Mana Crypt would certainly increase the variance of my deck by a lot because it is really strong in a lot of hands and really bad in others.

Now, let's not think about whether it is right or wrong to play Mana Crypt, let's us just assume that it is wrong to play the Mana Crypt (this is a Gedankenexperiment). What does that say about the power of an off-color Mox? A Mox, which is obviously POWER, but doesn't produce mana you need for your colored pips? For example a Mox Pearl in a Jund deck. Is that an obvious auto-include in the deck? Or not? My answer is no (which is of course debatable, but I am here to say NO). I don't think that an off-color Mox is still really strong in my cube. I wouldn't play an off-color Mox in the above Jund deck and I am pretty certain about that evaluation. Now, everything changes based on context. What about a Mox Ruby in an Azorius control deck? Sure, the Mox can enable you to also fix mana, but mana fixing is also more easily done in my cube with triomes. It can help you cast a counterspell turn 1, if you don't have actual counterspell. But it doesn't let you cast your 1 mana cantrips and 1 mana interaction. Most people say that a Moxen can always replace a land, but I would never play a colorless land in my Azorius control decks because of the heavy colour requirements. A Mox is an additional free land, but is it worth it, if it just produces effectively colorless mana? I don't think the answer it is obvious anymore in my cube. What about a Mono White deck? There I can ramp out most 2 drops on turn 1 with a colorless Mox. But what if my curve is insanely low and I mostly have 1 drops. How good is a Mox Jet then?

And I think the reason for this is the way my cube was constructed: If we start from a curve-optimized cube, we won't encounter a lot of 4 CMC creatures and spells. Therefore, including fast mana, especially colorless fast mana becomes worse as there are simply not that many colorless pips to support. However, I think that the curve-optimized "non-powered" cube has more powerful decks than a power-optimized "powered" cube, a cube that is build to make fast mana broken in a cube environment by including higher CMC cards. 5 and 6 drops become absolutely disgusting with fastmana in such a cube if the average CMC cost of cards is increased. 

However, the absence of these otherwise not playable 4+ CMC creatures actually balances the environment and makes the draftable decks better on average in my opinion. These 5 and 6 drops are only good if you have the fast mana for them. Including these cards in a close-to-maximal power environment means that you lose out on consistency in other decks. I should also note that my cube and the MTGO Vintage cube are obviously VERY FAR away from "the most powerful cube". I don't even know where I would start constructing "the most powerful" cube. I am mostly talking about a cube that is still close in spirit to the initial idea of a Vintage cube. A cube, that includes the most powerful cards from each set and support all axis to play Magic, namely Aggro, Midrange, Combo, Contro, Tempo, Value and all the others. So to summarise all in a second hottake: Taking away support for your dumb stuff archetypes makes the decks in your cube more powerful, even the dumbstuff decks.

Eventually, I put Moxen in my cube too. And for these I have to say that they are really strong but not nearly as polarising in my cube than in non-curve-optimized cubes. You can surely play stuff quicker, but as the environment is so interactive, you actually have fair game to interact with otherwise polarising starts. Are Moxen the best cards in my cube? Surely. Will I (almost) always P1P1 them? Yeah. Will I always P2P1 them? I am not sure because again: How good is an off-color Mox? Is Pack 2 so soon that I should try everything in my power to go into this second Mox color? Is that right? What I took away from my latest experiences is that most cards which are entitled to the notion of POWER aren't that far away from other cards that a lot of players draft with. And these cards never get the label POWER sticked onto them. Heck, most people I see consider these dumb stuff strategies to indicate whether your cube is POWERED sometimes. Channel and Mind Twist? Yeah, that cube must be powered without P9. I want to get away from this mentality of sticking the "this is powerful" label onto every card without actually thinking about the context. Cube is not a theory. A cube is not a list of cards, it is a gameplay experience. Just by looking at a cube, nobody can evaluate every card in that cube correctly. You had to be there to understand. So, everything I am saying is my experience for my cube. But just because it is my cube doesn't mean that it doesn't matter to you. I hope that some of the things I talked about here actually spark some ideas in other cubers.

In summary, I think that the notion of POWEr has to be reformulated. We are still in this mindset of the MTGO vintage cube determining everything. "Of course, Channel is too good for your cube." "Of course, Mana Crypt is absolutely busted and always playable." "Skullclamp is too good for your cube." I am sick of these comment. I want to counteract these notions. I don't think that Moxen are thaaaaaaat busted like everybody says. They are the best cards in Magic but they are not 100 Million miles away from everything else. You don't win the draft if you have two Moxen. You need more to win.

To finalise this blog, I put together a list of cards that are in my cube (!), ranked on powerlevel. Why the list? First, to spark controversy and secondly because it is fun to rank stuff (Source: Youtube Tier Zoo and others). I want to stress that the cards in the respective sections are actually sorted. How do I define powerlevel in this case? It is a combination of "how good is this card, when it is played", "how good is this card if I P1P1 it" and other criteria. It is really just my intuition and I haven't thought too much about my definition of powerlevel. It is really just the answer to the question "What is POWER in your cube?" for the first tier. "What is really close to POWER" for the second tier and "What are the best cards in your Cube except for POWER?" for the third tier. They are simply the most POWERful cards in my cube. Mostly, it boils down to what I think increases my win percentage the most, when I pick it in draft.

POWER (The best cards in the cube and almost always your P1P1. These cards stand above everything else. They are characterized by providing insane mana advantage, being the best win condition or providing insane utility and combo potential)

Oko, Thief of Crowns (In my opinion, Oko is still the best card in my cube, that can win the game on its own. Yes, I would pick it over every other card on this list. When I P1P1 a Mox, I need to find another way to win the game. Of course, my cube has lots of cards that can win the game. However, Oko beats most other cards that can win a game of Magic easily. I don't care if it is right or wrong to rank Oko above everything else, but I will never not pick Oko, because one of my opponents will have it then),

Mox Sapphire (Mox Sapphire is the best Mox simply because Blue is the best color in my cube and because Blue supports the most artifact synergies),

Black Lotus (Black Lotus provides insane Mana advantage that is however not as easy to use in my cube because there is not a lot to ramp out. Sometimes, you really can't ramp out anything early to get a huge advantage. However, Black Lotus still provides the most swing potential out of any card and more importantly can be played in any deck. Also, it makes the difference between a good Storm deck and a normal (bad) Storm deck),

Mox Ruby (I am probably biased because I have casted so mana turn 2 (or even turn 1) Rabblemasters. Red has by far the best 3 drops in my cube and there is a dedicated prison-style Red deck in my cube. And playing a turn 1 Rabblemaster variant will always be very nice. Of course, Mox Ruby is also great as it provides fast mana for aggressive decks and Red tends to be played mono-colored fairly often),

Strip Mine (Hottake: I think Strip Mine is better than most Moxen in my cube. In a similar vein to Oko being better than a Mox, I prefer cards that can win games by their own and my opponents not having them. Strip Mine is so to say the Anti-Mox. In addition, Strip Mine is also a combo piece in my cube with a lot of very powerful payoffs like Wren and Six, Crucible, etc. The floor is obviously lower than for any Mox, but the ceiling is certainly among the highest for any card in my cube),

Mox Pearl (White will always be underdrafted. Having Mox Pearl surely sets you up for a White Weenie deck which is among the best and most consistent decks in my cube. In addition, White has the highest density of 1 and 2 drops in my cube, which makes a turn 1 Mox Pearl extremely potent to play a 2-drop or two 1-drops on turn one),

Mox Jet (Black is not playable in my cube as a mono-colored deck. Therefore, picking Mox Jet doesn't say that much as you will certainly land in some multicolored deck with Black. However, Black cards have a lot of Black colorpips which makes Mox Jet really strong in these multi-color decks).

Mox Emerald (The worst of the best. Mono G can be a deck in my cube, but it will struggle. My cube plays no manadorks, so the mono G deck is more of a Tron deck. Same as for Mox Jet, you will have to pick up another color with Mox Emeral. As G is also the base of multi-colored deck in my cube, Green mana is not needed that much in my G decks. Nonetheless, Moxen are good I heard.)

PSEUDO-POWER (The category right after power. These cards are very close to actual POWER, why our group namely calls them PSEUDO-POWER. These cards are characterized in a multitude of ways: 1) They provide insane mana advantage with little downside. 2) They win games consistently. 3) They are insane bread and butter which won't shine as much as 1) and 2), but surely increase your win percentage dramatically).

Minsc & Boo, Timeless Heroes (This card is busted. I nearly put it into the POWER, but I haven't played as much with it as with Oko. The card is a Bitterblossom on fucking steroids. Really really powerful and probably the best 4 drop in all of Magic. For the same reason as Oko, it is a card that singlehandedly wins the game without any setup, which not a lot of cards can. The second best planeswalker in my cube and probably of all time until we get Frodo as a 1 mana planeswalker next year),

Urza's Saga (Talking about a card that fits all the categories I listed. Urza's Saga does everything. It is utility and can kill people. The card offers so much synergy and options and flexibility, that I almost always P1P1 it if there is no POWER. There is pretty much not more to say. Ah, it also helps that it can search up most of POWER),

Ux Fetchlands (We always talk about fetched but we never talk about the exact powerlevel of fetches, do we? Fetches are busted and I know that you have picked a fetch P1P1 often in your life. Surely, a partly Blue fetchland is stronger than a Selesyna fetch as Blue is still the strongest color with the highest ceiling. A Ux fetchland sets you up to go into nearly any direction you want. You can also play it in a non-blue deck but it helps having the option. Fetchlands are the reason why we can have very nice manabases in cube, why Brainstorm is good and why we take forever in our matches. Also note that I am running two full cycles of fetches. I rate them exactly this highly still),

Mana Crypt (We went through this card in detail in the blog. Mana Crypt is still very strong, but not as strong as other people would think it is in my cube. You need the right environment of higher CMC overall for this card to be good. However, in dedicated decks that bank on this card, Mana Crypt provides insane mana advantage. It is the enabler for most of my aggressive big dude decks, like Mono Red or Gruul. However, it also sees play in combo'esque decks, when drafters go all-in on high-variance strategies),

Tinker (*assuming that you have a Blightsteel Colossus or similar in your deck. With this entry I cheated a bit as it is technically two cards. However, in contrast to every other "cheat-into-play" card, Tinker searches from the deck, meaning that you really only need Tinker and not another piece in your hand. Sure, you technically need one artifact on the board but that is merely a restriction in my cube. This is what prevents Channel, Reanimate and the likes to be in this tier, you need much more setup which makes these cards slower and not that consistent. Surely, if you don't have a good target for Tinker in your deck, Tinker isn't in this tier, however if you do, it is a 1-card wincondition),

VERY GOOD (These are the best cards in my cube. You will often P1P1 them if you don't get any (PSEUDO-) POWER. These cards can set you up to win games very early or late (Mother of Runes, Ragavan, Fractured Identity, etc.), provide advantage that is unparalleled and unmatched by any other card (Thoughtseize, Force of Will, Karakas, etc.), or provide good mana advantage (Chrome Mox, Mana Vault, etc.).

(here the cards are sorted among the different colors)

W

The Wandering Emperor (The best PW in cube that isn't POWER. The Wandering Emperor has the best floor of any PW in cube because it can almost always activate twice. It can win games on its own when not answered and it can ambush "unfair" threats. This card overperforms the more I play with it and is the White card I will P1P1 over any other white card in my cube),

Mother of Runes (A turn 1 Mother of Runes that isn't removed right away is a pain in the neck for most decks. The card is probably the best creature in cube, because it will always die before any other creature, no matter what is on the board. It is another perfect starting pick, to play White Weenie or any other Wx creature deck),

Solitude & Sword to Plowshares (The best removal spells in cube. These cards are to removal spells what Force of Will is to counterspells. You will probably not lose a game, if you have either of these cards in your hand (*with another white card for Solitude). Solitude would still be busted if the 5 mana mode just exiled a card, but no, you also get a 3/2 with lifelink. Swords is however still on par because 1 mana is very cheap and because it isn't card disadvantage. Picking these cards can set you up nicely for any Wx deck that tends to the controlling or midrange'y side. Note that the presence of dumb stuff in my cube makes these cards very popular and they are picked very highly),

U

Preordain & Ponder (Which one is better? A debate for another day. If you have lots of fetches, Ponder takes the lead in my opinion. If not, Preordain takes the lead. Anyway, both of these cards are so pushed that any Blue deck running these will see their winrate increasing. These two cards are never bad and you will always gladly play them in any Blue deck. If I want to play Blue, I P1P1 these if the pack doesn't include another very strong Blue card and I am often very happy about that),

Force of Will (Already mentioned with Solitude & Swords, Force of Will is a classic. The ability to be safe from anything and having this "no"-button is just insanely powerful. Surely, the lower the manacurve, the more it hurts to counter a 1,2 or 3 drops, however FoW is still the best counterspell because it counters everything and cost 0 mana),

B

Thoughtseize (And we come to black where we have the best discard spell in Thoughtseize. Thoughtseize can take every nonland and no other discard spell can do this. I don't have to say that much about Thoughtseize as you will play this card in any Black deck and will help you against a lot of combo'esque decks. People might not always draft Thoughtseize that early because there are much more exciting cards like Recurring Nightmare and Mind Twist, but picking Thoughtseize is the right move if you want to win the draft),

Toxic Deluge (And we come to the best board wipe in cube. Toxic Deluge not only costs less than any other common boardwipe, it also kills everything you want provided you have enough life. This card is probably the reason why I don't play that many green manadorks anymore in my cube. This card can easily win games against board-based decks, which is still the most common deck in my cube and can also kill the "unkillable" stuff and therefore is among the best cards in my cube),

R

Laelia, the Blade Reforged (The best 3 drop creature in cube. This card is really close to PSEUDO-POWER. However, the fact that it can still be killed by removal spells puts it into this tier. However, if left unchecked, this is an insanely busted card that draws an additional card each turn and becomes stronger each turn. Laelia also benefits a lot from the fast mana in my cube and especially because Ancient Tomb and City of Traitors are not that sought after. I want to stress: Really close to PSEUDO-POWER),

Ragavan (The best 1 drop creature in cube behind Mother of Runes. However, Ragavan can be killed and he can be blocked. However, Ragavan provides insane advantage when it hits and the Dash ability makes it playable in most Red decks from combo to control. It is also the perfect starting pick for any Rx aggressive deck. The ability for this 1 drop to win games makes it tier 3),

Price of Progress (This card, unlike a lot of other cards in this tier, is only really playable in one deck, namely Burn. However, as the fixing percentage in my cube is so high, this card basically deals 2 damage for every land your opponent controls which is probably 10 damage or something. This card decides if your burn deck can easily go 3-0 or not),

Lightning Bolt (In this tier, there are the "best of X" cards. Bolt is the best burnspell and is a very good P1P1 that you will play in any Red deck. It can win games, but doesn't win games directly often. However, having this card in your deck will increase your win percentage always. Some people might not pick Bolt that highly but as 1-mana burnspells are generally underrated, you should get your bread & butter while you can and pick the Bolt if you don't see anything in tier 1 or 2),

G

Pest Infestation (This card is underrated although everyone knows that it is very good. This card is busted in most high-power environments. It kills the best cards in my cube and is scalable. This card is strong at 3 mana, insanely strong at 5 mana and the more mana you have, the better it gets. This card wins games. This card prevents your opponent from winning the game. This card is splash-able. Hottake: This card is the best Green card in my cube and the only card in this tier because I think that no other G card is on the same powerlevel as the cards I listed here. Also very close to PSEUDO-POWER),

Multicolored

Fractured Identity (Another card that can singlehandely win the game, because your opponent has to play something at some point that can win the game. This card is definitely situational, however it is the answer against a lot of POWER that wins games. And if you successfully cast Fractured Identity, you will eventually win the game and your opponent will lose the game),

Wrenn and Six (This is in the vein of bread&butter. Wren and Six will not win games on its own (although it actually can sometimes). This card is a value and interaction machine. It is good against aggro by pinging 1 drops and it is really good against any slower decks because of Fetchlands. In addition, it has a really high ceiling with Strip Mine and Wasteland. This card is the posterchild of this section. It is just among the best cards, but not quite the very best although it is very close to PSEUO-POWER too),

4c Omnath (Arguably the best build around that one can pick in my cube. It is a bit of a risk because you may not have the necessary manabase but it usually works out. And normally, Omnath wins the game if it isn't checked and makes it really hard for your opponent to win. Even if it is killed, you are still winning as you drew a card at least. Omnath is really a 5 drop and you want to keep a fetchland to get the insane mana advantage. The best 3+ colored card in my cube),

Non-Blue Fetchlands (Not having Blue in a Fetchland makes it worse, but still very good. Non-blue fetches are still really strong and I would pick them up exactly after picking up my W&6 or 4c Omnath),

Expressive Iteration (Another card that is vastly underrated among cubers. Expressive Iteration is a busted Magic card. Sure, you have to play Izzet to play it, but it is the closest card to actual Ancestral Recall we have ever gotten. And a worse Ancestral is still among the best card-selection spells ever. I don't think that most cubers would consider P1P1 this, but you should if you want to win the draft in my cube),

Colorless

Wasteland (A strictly worse Strip Mine is still among the best cards in my cube. Not being able to hit basic lands is really rough sometimes.  A lot of decks in my cube will play multicolor, but there are always decks that either are mono-colored or even multi-colored decks that simplify didn't prioritise their mana. This makes it such that you can't as easily lock people out of the game with Wasteland. However, it is still the best land that isn't PSEUDO-POWER or POWER),

Chrome Mox & Mox Diamond (The one for Xerox'y decks the other for slower decks. These cards are significantly worse than Moxen, but still among the best cards in cube. Mox Diamond shines in my cube because of the ability to fix for any colored mana. Chrome Mox shines, because it is really strong in Xerox'y decks. Both enable, what Moxen can, but at a cost. Still these cards are nice because they can counteract Mox-openings by providing the same mana advantage and can occasionally be picked up rather late),

Notable cards not in the top 3 tiers (not sorted)

Karakas (A card, that barely didn't make it into tier 3. However, I seem to be the only person on earth that often P1P1s Karakas. With more and more Legendary creatures printed, especially the ones that win games, this card could just say "T: Return target creature to its owners hand". Karakas is the best colored land in cube imo and no other card can do what Karakas can. In addition, Karakas is an important piece in the Land-matters decks in my cube which is a really strong deck),

Balance (I am not high on balance. The card is obviously good with powerful manarocks, but having to splash White, having something to ramp out and having power usually results in a deck being unfocused and therefore being a bit on the worse side. This card is good with planeswalkers but nobody mentions that it is also very bad against planeswalkers. And planeswalkers are not cards that you simply get for free because they are really good. This card is mostly good in decks that already have good cards and bad in decks which don't have the most powerful Moxen and planeswalkers which makes it a fine card in my book but not tier 3),

Mind Twist (Mind Twist suffers from the fact that Black can't be really combined with big mana decks in my cube. Usually, Black support very low-curving decks that are multicolored. In multicolored decks, you can't play too much of the good fast mana. Hence, Mind Twist doesn't see that much play. However, Mind Twist is a nice splash in control decks that got the Mana Vault or Grim Monolith. I also see soem players build around with Dark Ritual, Cabal Ritual and others. I even saw a Mono Black prison deck once. I should really consider adding Urborg and Cabal Coffers someday...),

Demonic Tutor (Demonic Tutor was also really close to the top but the card is kinda expensive at 2 mana. I stopped playing Demonic Tutor in my non-combo decks some time ago. That way, I can't put Demonic Tutor that high on the list, it is close to tier 3 though),

Reanimate (Surely, Reanimate + Entomb is PSEUDO-POWER, but a lot of two-card combinations are. That is a story for another day. Reanimate is a good card even in non-reanimator decks, but it is not on the same power than Thoughtseize and Toxic Deluge in my book),

Sneak Attack (This card was arguably the closest to tier 3 because it is easily splashable and grants a reliable winconditions in control decks that play red. Cheating in multiple threats per turn, while not happening that often, is also very hard to deal with. Just a good build around that finds a place in multiple Rx decks),

Channel (As mentioned a lot in my article, Channel isn't that good in my cube. It is THE card for the Mono G Tron style deck which is usually very strong. However, you wouldn't want to pick Channel too highly for that deck, as you rather want to look out for the payoffs first. I never P1P1 Channel in my cube whereas I often P1P1 Pest Infestation. Channel doesn't make tier 3 in my cube),

Oath of Druids (Rather a meme than an actual threat. Planeswalker have made Oath of Druids much weaker because your opponent doesn't have to play into your board. Surely it can cripple some aggro decks, like any cheat'y deck can, but all the new methods to destroy low CMC enchantments also hurt Oath. Cool card, but not among the best),

Ancient Tomb (In the same vein as the other colorless cards, this cards supports the mono-colored medium sized decks. It is a good card in that deck, but usually also can be picked up a bit later),

Mana Vault (The best colorless manarock for slower, manahungry decks. This card can enable "Big" strategies on its own. It is one of the corner stones of Mono Red, Blue and Green in my cube and makes "Tron" playable. It is worse than the two tier 3 Moxen above, simply because it doesn't support as many decks, but it supports the decks the other two do not support).

_____________________________

All in all, writing this up, was a lot of fun. Especially the tier list. I learned a lot about myself and my cube and I could really sit down and ask myself the question: "What is POWER in my cube?" and "What are the other most powerful cards in my cube?" I would encourage you to do the same. It is a lot of fun and helps you to understand your cube.

Thank you for reading!