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The Legacy Cube Just Keeps Getting Worse and Worse

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I've been basically pretty supportive of the Legacy Cube. I didn't necessarily like the removal of the Swords of X & Y, but I understood the reason behind the change. Some of the additions were pretty sweet indeed.

Yesterday, MTGOnline.com published  a piece indicating new updates to the Legacy Cube. In short, we'll just say these updates leave much to be desired. To get a little more into it:

card_umezawas_jitte card_grim_monolith

Umezawa's Jitte and Grim Monolith were removed. This makes sense to the extent that swords and signets are not included in the list, and these two cards are as good or better than those. But as far as someone who likes to play with awesome cards, this is a feel-bad. I like seeing these cards in my pack when I'm drafting, and I don't feel like they're absolutely impossible to beat (difficult, to be sure, but not impossible). Having these cards in the format didn't make it feel degenerate or unfair. They didn't ruin my experience, but still, they're being cut for power level. In Cube.

There are better changes: the self-mill reanimation theme was just bad, and they're getting rid of Mulch, Grisly Salvange, and similar cards that never really got drafted. Did any of you ever see this deck run by anyone? I didn't.

But then Buehler moved on to hurt one of my favorite weapons: mono red. These are some the cards that have been taken out of the format: Fireblast, Firedrinker Satyr, Searing Blaze, Searing Blood, Rakdos Cackler, Figure of Destiny, Shrine of Burning Rage, and Sulfuric Vortex. So basically, many of the coolest reasons to play mono-red. They took out Satyr but left in Jackal Pup? I realize the point is to weaken a deck that was a little too strong, but this seems like a little much. They removed some of red's absolute best cards and replaced them with crap.

sulfuricvortex

All of that pales in comparison to what they did to black. Black was indisputably pretty bad. Honestly, it was really, really bad. Instead of making it better, though, they made it worse, by including a vampire theme. Now we get great* cards like Vampire Interloper. I just can't get on board with Buehler's contention that this is more interesting in the format than Diregraf Ghoul, and really, so many of these additions seem bad. Vampire Nocturnus is just plain unexciting, but there are even worse inclusions: Necropolis Regent?! Ascendant Evincar?! (Interrobangs are intended and oh so appropriate here.)

*Not actually great

I hope I'm wrong about black being worse, because the last thing we need is for the Legacy Cube to become even more unbalanced. These changes were ostensibly tested and found to be reasonable. But damn. If you thought black was unexciting before, just wait.

All in all, while there are plenty of changes that make a whole lot of sense, they're also removing a good number of cards that should not be removed from cubes. This is especially true given some of the truly awful replacements.

Cards Removed from Legacy Cube

Savannah Lions

Lifebane Zombie

Phyrexian Obliterator

Fireblast

Firedrinker Satyr

Inferno Titan

Searing Blaze

Searing Blood

Sulfuric Vortex

Awakening Zone

Plow Under

Figure of Destiny

Rakdos Cackler

Grim Monolith

Shrine of Burning Rage

Umezawa's Jitte

Wasteland

Those are cards that need to be heavily justified to be removed from any cube list. Making it worse, besides new cards like Monastery Mentor and Crux of Fate, the cards being added are downright questionable. There's very little exciting here, and there's a few things that seem impossible to justify in what we would hope would be a cube made up cards that are actually good.

WTF Cards Being Added to Legacy Cube

Dissipate

Anowon, the Ruin Sage

Ascendant Evincar

Bloodlord of Vasgoth

Captivating Vampire

Dark Imposter

Malakir Bloodwitch

Sangromancer

Vampire Interloper

Vampire Nocturnus

Bloodcrazed Neonate

Chandra Nalaar

Form of the Dragon

Rakish Heir

Fertile Ground

Nature's Lore

Scapeshift

Utopia Sprawl

Voyaging Satyr

Stromkirk Captain

Blade of the Bloodchief

Chromatic Lantern

Elixir of Immortality

Some of those deserve more emphasis than others, but seriously, some of these cards weren't even good in their actual Limited formats, much less in Cube. Some of these additions are downright insulting to those of us who view Cube as a format that should be continually increasing in power, not decreasing.

We're losing Savannah Lions and getting Steppe Lynx. We're losing Lifebane Zombie and getting freaking Dark Imposter in its place, to support some benign vampire theme that doesn't even appear to be good. We're losing Inferno Titan to Bogardan Hellkite, Plow Under (a premium disruption card for mono-green decks) to Scapeshift (why? Do they really think Valakut, the Molten Pinnacle will be a thing in a 40-card format? That's pure craziness), and Figure of Destiny to Assemble the Legion. Form of the Dragon will never be cast by anyone, WOTC! What are you doing?! These changes are among the worst I've seen since Cube came to MTGO. If development on the Legacy Cube is just going to be mailed in like this, the playerbase is going to lose its interest in playing it. As we power down the Legacy Cube, it becomes closer and closer to a Limited format, and that is not why people like or play the format. 

I've been seriously ready for Cube to makes its reappearance on MTGO, but all my excitement over the announced March 14 return has been completely deflated by these updates. Here's the fundamental problem with what WOTC has done: they've decided to power down certain decks to even out the metagame. What would have been better, you ask? How about powering up the other decks so they could compete? Nobody wants to play with worse cards, and though we'll never actually get this information, my guess would be this will be least played (and thus least profitable) Cube iteration since the formats's introduction to Magic Online. At least I hope that's the case. If updates continue heading in the "make cards worse" direction, I don't know how much longer I will remain an MTGO Cube Addict™. Cube is the only thing that gets me to sign in to my MTGO account. It's bad that this announcement hasn't gotten me excited to log on.

What do you think? Am I way off base or are these changes just ridiculous? Sound off below.

One thought on “The Legacy Cube Just Keeps Getting Worse and Worse

  1. I mean, let’s be real, mono black was not “bad” it was unplayable. The vampires strat is probably mildly better than straight up awfulness. Having a bunch of black cards with synergy means that contrary to the previous black cards in the cube, which could be picked by more than just mono black, if vampires is open, you can go vampires and have it go uncontested. You’re right in saying these cards are “unexciting” because they are mostly only good if you have all the other vampires, which means that the strategy will either be open, or not. The actual problem with mono black in the previous cube itteration is that, obviously all of the big mono black cards like messanger, gatkeeper, obliterator etc, that are too demanding on black mana will probably go uncontested late, but the core parts of your deck, like ultimate price, lilliana, your 2 mana removal, your 1 mana hand disruption, would always get contested regardless.

    At least with this itteration there is less motivation to splash or contest a lot of the cards that were added. In the cards that were taken out (in black) let’s look at all the just awful cards that were replaced with nieche strategy cards that c ould go into some vampire deck.

    Bad moon. Bloodsoaked Champion (good card just not in this cube there is no mono black aggro or red / black aggro deck really) Corrupt, Darkblast, Knight of Infamy, reasonable in a w/b aggro I suppose. Nantuko Shade, Stinkweed Imp, Master of the Feast, Nighthowler (in a 40 card format lol… ok) Obliterator, bad card in a cube format, only good with the perfect draft, Sarcomancy (last pick like 99% of the time), Spiteful Returned (Again, it’s like a mono black aggro card but there is no mono black aggro strategy), Tendrils of Corruption.

    That’s just the BAD cards that were removed from black. Now let’s look at the ones that motivated other people to take in different strategies. Black Sun’s Zenith, Brain maggot, Mesmiric Fiend. Not too many of those, but still they are really relevant cards for a deck that may just be going for example U/W/X control and splash for a few cards. I know often times if I got a great mono white weenies draft I usually looked for either a black or blue splash to maintain control with a superior board state.

    I think you’re a little bit too mad for them removing a ton of unplayable black cards for some more usually bad, but occasionally fantastic black cards.

    Red i’ll agree with you, I didn’t like drafting the red deck, I personally favored drafting durdle control 24/7. I don’t even thing a great mono red draft was too powerful or anything. It does kind of seem like they are trying to make mono red aggro bad, or position it into more of a midrange / burn type thing I suppose. Which does feel bad. I’m not going to lie, hurting mono red aggro is great for me because I don’t like playing it but I love playing decks that lose to it. But I’d agree there should be a viable burn archetype, and removing searing blaze + Searing blood alone is PRETTY huge. FOrget vortex, one of the scariest things to play against in cube is just knowing that against a mono red opponent, those RR costing cards probably went to your opponent, and a lot of the tough decisions in the match are “If I play this creature and it doesn’t get searing blazed, I win. If it does, I lose. Taking that fear completely out seems like a bad decision.

    Losing vortex just sucks.

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