2021 was a great year for cube, giving us access to new cards across 5 standard sets, a handful of commander decks, and of course Modern Horizons 2. To my main cube Possibility Cube, this year was quite transformative.
It was a year of efficient removal.
It was a year of high quality roleplayers.
It was a year of power.
In this post I will be writing about all the cards from 2021 that are currently in my unpowered vintage cube, Possibility Cube, and my experiences playing with them. Like I said it was a good year and so there is a lot to cover. Of course my cube can't contain every card that is worthy of cube and so I will be shouting out some honorable mentions that, while not in my cube, you may want to check out. If you have any questions regarding why I've chosen not to include these cards, please ask! I certainly have my thoughts on them and will be happy to share if you want to know. Now, lets get started.
Best to start from the beginning, Kaldheim kicked us off this year with a fairly average showing for cube.
Reidane, God of the Worthy // Valkmira, Protector's Shield
Reidane has been completely decent since being added to my cube. While not the most aggressive body, the 2 mana tax on your opponent's cards has been very relevant and is good disruption. I wouldn't be surprised if Reidane leaves my cube at some point for a more aggressive card, but right now she's been playing good. The backside has not seen a lot of play in my cube, it can be very powerful in the right moment, but that moment rarely comes up.
Usher of the Fallen
I was most excited about this card during spoiler season. I'm a big fan of white aggro and this is everything I want in my Savannah Lions. There are a lot of games where it's just a 2/1 for 1, also a good amount of games where you activate it once on your 2nd turn, and then there are just sometimes games where this little 1-drop gets you 1/1 after 1/1 and the value is unreal. Big fan of Usher and I imagine it will stay in my cube for a long time.
Birgi, God of Storytelling // Harnfel, Horn of Bounty
This card has exceeded my expectations as a red card. A 3/3 for 3 is honestly a fine base for an aggressive deck and her ability ends up ramping you into a double or even triple spell turn very fast. Harnfel on the back also sees a decent amount of play if the game ends up going late, when you just need to find your burn spell to finish off your opponent it allows you 3 topdeck chances instead of 1. This card has been performing very well for me and it's been a pleasant surprise.
Esika's Chariot
Cat car has been a sweet addition to my cube and I love playing with it. It often feels like a Grave Titan for 4 mana and every once in awhile you get to copy something a little better than a 2/2. Big fan of this card and I expect to keep it in my cube for a long time.
Showdown of the Skalds
Boros is still in a weird state in cube. Aggro is both Red and White's thing they do best but they do it so much better alone than with eachother. Showdown of the Skalds has performed well when it sees play but only sees play in 3+ color midrange shells that have red and white in them. Needless to say I have not seen it played very much. I really like this card and it has been my favorite Boros card I've ever ran, I just hope the section increases in size as the only other one I'm running is essentially a monocolored card in Figure of Destiny.
The Pathways
Kaldheim completed the cycle of Pathway lands that we saw in the latest Zendikar set. I think these lands are very good and I've been having a great time playing with them in my cube. I highly recommend them as one of my favorite lands for cube.
Shoutouts: Clarion Spirit • Starnheim Unleashed • Bind the Monster • Valki, God of Lies • Goldspan Dragon • Magda, Brazen Outlaw • Vorinclex, Monstrous Raider
Time for Strixhaven and Commander 2021. This year all the standard sets have accompanying commander precons, however Commander 2021 was the only one I found to have much in the way of playable cube cards. One quick shoutout to the beautiful Mystical Archive cards of Strixhaven, giving us gorgeous new art for classic Instants and Sorceries to bling out our cubes.
Elite Spellbinder
This card was easily the card from Strixhaven I most wanted to play with during spoiler season and it did not disappoint. BW disruption aggro is one of my favorite decks to draft and play and this card fits right in. I'm a big fan of Mesmeric Fiend/Tidehollow Sculler cards, adding a body to the board, seeing what cards your opponent is working with, and taking the most problematic one is just everything you want to be doing. Elite Spellbinder takes those cards and gives them an aggressive and evasive body. While your opponent does still have access to the card, the tempo loss of playing an overcosted card is generally too much to bother and unlike the Tidehollow variants, killing Elite Spellbinder doesn't give the card back. This card has played great for me and I imagine it will stay in my cube a long time.
Baleful Mastery
To think this was merely the first time in the year 2021 where I think to myself we've gotten black's unrestricted kill spell at 2 mana. More and more planeswalkers have been entering my environment and the need for cheap removal for them made Baleful Mastery a wonderful addition, the likes of Hero's Downfall just wasn't doing it anymore. While not nearly as good as Path to Exile, in the same vein Baleful Mastery trades a bit of card advantage to permanently get rid of any threat from your opponent on the cheap and that's a very nice thing to have access to. While perfectly suitable to maindeck, in my cube I often see the card being reserved in the sideboard for opponents with early walkers or some Indestructible threat. Overall I'm quite happy to have access to this card.
Sedgemoor Witch
So this card has actually outperformed Monastery Mentor in my cube this year. This is likely a result of the fact that Sedgemoor Witch, who suffers from the same problem as Mentor, simply suffers it to a less extent. The problem, of course, is the card not being one of the spellslinger colors Blue or Red. So the card simply doesn't see a lot of play in my cube, there are better ways for the aristocrats deck to generate tokens and it competes with some very good 3-drops in the WB disruption aggro deck. However I absolutely love playing with this card and when it is played, usually in some Grixis deck, it often completely takes over the game with value.
Expressive Iteration
Admittedly, I was a bit late to the party on this one. It's not that I wasn't high on it, when it was spoiled I saw a card that I would be happy to maindeck in just about any UR deck I was drafting, I simply didn't think it was anything special. Turns out this card was Night's Whisper with selection more often than not and that is a great card. It actually just got added to my cube but has already been performing well, I'm happy to have it!
Vanishing Verse
This set had a couple of 2-mana multicolored removal spells but this is the one that made it into my cube and it has been performing very well. It's a simple roleplayer for WBx decks and while the monocolored restriction isn't nothing, you generally can hit the threat you want.
Laelia, the Blade Reforged
This card is nuts. Commander 2021 gave me 3 great cards for my cube and this one is one of the best cards of the entire year. A 3-mana 3/3 haste is just a great base for a red creature and this card is so much more. The fact that this card draws you a card every turn and continually grows in size is insane to me and it snowballs you to a victory very fast. The card also just randomly combos with good cards you're already playing like Grim Lavamancer and Bomat Courier or even Scavenging Ooze in a RG deck. When I said this was a year of power, this is one of the cards that made it so.
Pest Infestation
This card is an amazing roleplayer. Reclamation Sage is a good card and dividing the 2 powered body into 2 1/1s is arguably better than the ability to blink it. But that's just where it begins, this card scales in both removal and threat. Later in the game when there are multiple high priority artifacts you can destroy them all and flood the field in pests. Importantly the card says "Up to X targets" which means you can dump as much mana you want into it to make tokens.
Triplicate Titan
This card is here as a Tinker, Flash, Sneak Attack, and Reanimate target and it's one of the best performing ones. A 9/9 with Flying and Trample will kill your opponent very fast and the 3/3s it leaves behind are quite beefy too.
Shoutouts: Multiple Choice • Prismari Command • Rip Apart • Witherbloom Command
Now onto the titan for cube that is Modern Horizons 2. The first Modern Horizons was one of my all time favorite sets and its sequel set did not disappoint. This set was powerful, synergistic, low to the ground, and just full of cards I want for all sorts of cubes.
Prismatic Ending
This little spell has become the premium removal spell in Modern and with my cube's curve getting lower it's been performing quite well for me. Cheap threats and cheap removal go hand in hand and MH2 provided plenty of each. I imagine this card to stay in my cube for a long time.
Solitude
Modern Horizons 2 gave us another free spell cycle and this one is arguably the best of the bunch. The thing to note about this card is that it's a 5-drop before a 0-drop. A 3/2 Flash with Lifelink that exiles your opponents best creature is more than enough value for 5 mana, slap on an emergency mode to cast the card for free and you can see just how busted Solitude is. This card is a blast to play with and will be a staple in my cube for a long time.
Lose Focus
I'm a big fan of Miscalculation and this card has performed similarly well. While not as consistently good as Mana Leak or Miscalc, there have been instances where I was glad to have access to Replicate to counter a spell Mana Leak and Miscalc couldn't have. It's probably the first 2-mana counterspell I'd cut, but they're going to have to print a better one before that happens.
Archon of Cruelty
This card was made for cube, it's the absolute nuts for big creature combo decks. Griselbrand is still the best Reanimate target but this is close enough behind that I wasn't sure that would be the case. But forget reanimator for a second, it is so amazingly fun to Sneak Attack or Through the Breach this card out and you are most likely winning if you do. Big fan of this card and I'll keep it in my cube as a premium combo payoff for as long as I can.
Bone Shards
Two simple little changes to Bone Splinters couldn't have had a larger impact on playability. This card is in every sense of the word a roleplayer. As I've said before cheap removal for planeswalkers is getting more and more important and this card is a great at doing just that, especially considering I support an aristocrats deck. More than aristocrats though, this card has become the premiere removal spell for reanimator in my cube, cheap interaction that doubles as a discard outlet is everything you want for the deck and is the same reason Collective Brutality is such a high pick for it.
Damn
I wasn't sure this card was real when I first saw it. Cards like this is why I love the Modern Horizon sets, it calls out the iconic Wrath of God and Damnation spells in a unique use of the Overload mechanic and I absolutely love it. When it comes to play it is truthfully a little more boring. The short of it is that this is your 2nd Wrath of God and decks don't really use it for single-target removal. Of course Wrath of God is a great card and when you are in a WB deck that wants a wrath, the extra option is nice to have. Also, seeing this card, without fail, causes the drafter to say the name out loud and I find that hilarious.
Dauthi Voidwalker
To be honest, in my experience this card has been simply alright, however it is extremely fun to play with. The mono black deck doesn't come together very often in my cube and this card's BB casting cost usually sends him to the sideboard to bring in against graveyard decks. Of course Thoughtseizing your opponents bomb and casting it for free is the dream with this card and I'm happy to say it does happen. It's a very playable card and gives a great thing for the players to aspire to. Watching one of my players turn 1 Dark Ritual, Voidwalker, Thoughtseize was one of the best things I've ever seen.
Unmarked Grave
Another amazing roleplayer for the reanimator deck. It turns out Entomb is a busted card and still quite good at 2 mana and sorcery speed. Unlike Persist the nonlegendary restriction is very negligible as it will never be a dead card in your hand, you'll just have to be satisfied grabbing Archon of Cruelty instead of Griselbrand. This card and Bone Shards have made my reanimator package very consistent and very powerful.
Blazing Rootwalla
This card has been great for me and I think a lot of people missed it for being overshadowed by a couple of other red 1-drops from this set. You don't really think about something like Shock being that great because we're spoiled with Lightning Bolt, but 2 damage for 1 mana is actually an insane rate and this card has access to it every turn. Playing with Blazing Rootwalla has simply been solid. Your opponents tank of their blocks and if they let it through, using a spare mana to shock your opponents face is a lot of value. The Madness cost truthfully comes up quite often too, with cards like Faithless Looting and Smuggler's Copter you get this freebie more often than you'd think.
Flametongue Yearling
I'm a red player at heart and Flametongue Kavu holds a special place in my heart, the call out that is this very playable card makes me happy. This card has been another solid roleplayer for me, most often coming down on turn 2 to kill that pesky mana dork. The scalability on the card just makes it that much better and is very relevant from game to game. I'm a big fan of this card and am glad it's in my cube.
Fury
As with Solitude, this card is bonkers. The ceiling on this card is crazy high and often mitigates the card disadvantage present in all the cards in this cycle. FTK certainly is showing its age now. It's a great card but for 1 more mana you just get so much more, a faster clock, a larger body, and the ability to divide the damage across multiple targets. Fury has been doing work in my cube and I expect it to do so for awhile.
Ragavan, Nimble Pilferer
There he is, the monkey rampaging through every format he's playable in. I love this card, I know people have their issues with him but I love powerful cards and boy is he powerful. This is hands down the best Jackal Pup they've ever printed and you should draft it in more than just your mono-red deck. To put the breaks on a little bit, I don't think this card is as egregious as some make it out to be, especially in cube. I can't count the number of times I turn 1 Ragavan just to have myself wishing I played Bomat Courier instead because my opponent just played a creature. I'm glad I opened this little monkey in a pack because he's found a great home in my cube.
Abundant Harvest
So this card actually saw play in my cube before any other MH2 card due to it being featured in Strixhaven's Mystical Archives. This card is a great roleplayer and it does what you need it to every time. Green has a few of these types of cards and this is by far the best.
Ignoble Hierarch
Not much to say about this one considering it is pretty much just Noble Hierarch 2, but I'm very happy to have it. The Exalted ability is such a fun and valuable thing to have stapled onto a mana dork.
Dakkon, Shadow Slayer
I'm honestly surprised this card has stood the test of time so far. 3-colored cards are hard to justify in my cube but this one has been very solid in the Esper control deck. It's a cheap planeswalker that you cast on turn 5+ with your counter magic up. It's nothing special but for 3 mana you can exile an opponent's threat and leave behind a planeswalker that generates value every turn. I'm very happy playing with this card and I'd like to see it stay.
Grist, the Hunger Tide
This card is awesome, it immediately reminded me of Daretti, Ingenious Iconoclast and so far it has played just as well. However the real fun part of this card comes from its passive. The ability to reanimate Grist from your graveyard or tutor it with Green Sun's Zenith is really awesome and relevant value. This card is just really cool and I'm glad it's good.
Kaldra Compleat
Stoneforge Mystic is in my cube and this has been a great thing to cheat into play with it. It's flavorful and flashy and a blast to play with. It's a less than optimal ramp and Tinker payoff but will sometimes make it in those decks. I'll also say the ability to equip to creatures later on has been relevant in games that go long.
Urza's Saga
Wow what a card, truly a great showcase of what Modern Horizons 2 was. This card is powerful, even in an unpowered cube where the tutor options are limited. The thing is the opportunity cost of this card is so low and I play it in plenty of decks without any hits for its third mode. Artifacts are abundant in cube and the constructs this land makes can be quite the threat. This card performs every time it's played and is one of the more powerful cards in my cube. I personally love the design of the card as well. The name, the flavor, the typeline, it all makes for a beautiful card and is certainly the one I think of when I think of Modern Horizons 2.
Shoutouts: Esper Sentinel • Timeless Dragon • Hard Evidence • Murktide Regent • Grief • Persist • Dragon's Rage Channeler • Mine Collapse • Unholy Heat • Endurance • Rift Sower
Time to slow it down and lower the power level a bit after MH2 shook the world of Magic. Adventures in the Forgotten Realms was disappointing to a lot of cubers and I certainly wasn't very excited about it after spoiler season. However to my surprise, the set provided a number of cards I'm quite happy to have in my cube. And to honest it was a good break on my wallet after buying my MH2 boxes.
Dancing Sword
I make it a point to at least consider Equipment that add power to the creature and have an Equip cost of 1. To my delight this one has played quite good and the play patterns are fun and interesting. While it's no Bonesplitter at double the cost, when it's on the field +2/+1 for 1 mana is very efficient. The ability to make a 2/1 evasive body with protection if it was equipped to your last creature has come up and is a great option to have. I think this is a great option for lower powered cubes, however I don't see it remaining in mine for much longer. Costing 3 mana total mana to get it equipped to the first creature is just a bit much.
Portable Hole
With my curve getting lower this card is only going to get better. This card isn't an all star but so far I've been happy playing with it. There are a lot of high priority targets at 2 or less mana and while this isn't the best topdeck, it's generally been a great tempo swing early on.
Power Word Kill
And here we have the standout card of this set, once again making me wonder if this is as close to the unrestricted kill spell as we're going to get. This card has very few misses in my cube at exactly 8 creatures. This card is a great roleplayer and is quite often that unrestricted 2-mana destroy target creature with no downside you want, however there are going to be times it misses on high priority threats and it feels very bad when it does.
Shoutouts: Iymrith, Desert Doom • Ebondeath, Dracolich • Lolth, Spider Queen • Inferno of the Star Mounts • Circle of Dreams Druid
With AFR behind us everyone was wondering if it marked a slowing down in the printing of great cube cards this year and we wondered what Midnight Hunt would bring. For my cube at least, it was the complete opposite. Midnight Hunt was a great set for cube and brought many good and exciting additions.
Adeline, Resplendent Cathar
What a pleasant upgrade this card has been. Brimaz was seeing no play and this card was the perfect replacement. The attacking 1/1 the turn it comes down has made this card play more like Goblin Rabblemaster than Brimaz has thus been becoming a higher and higher pick for my white wheenie players. This card has been great so far and I expect it to continue to be for quite some time.
Cathar Commando
Just an all around solid card. It plays well as an early threat with Flash giving it pseudo-haste that also gives you the option for a 1 mana Disenchant later in the game. Qasali Pridemage type cards have been making their way out of my cube but this one is solid enough to stay. The card also simply doubles as a 3-mana disenchant. This card's not a powerhouse but it's been performing well and I'm happy to have it.
Fateful Absence
At this point I have been blown away at the removal we have gotten this year for cube. I replaced Declaration in Stone with this card and I haven't looked back. This card has been great, where Declaration's ability to wipe tokens rarely came up, this card being instant speed and hitting planeswalkers is relevant every game.
Sungold Sentinel
Another solid agressive 2-drop for white. The titan-esque graveyard hate is a welcome thing to have on a good creature and Sungold's activated ability has been online and relevant far more than I anticipated. I like the card quite a bit.
Consider
What a perfect cantrip for cube. I have always wished Opt was something just a little bit more for my cube and the change from Scry to Surveil is like night and day. It's a very simple card and thus there's not much to say, but so far I have loved having this as one of my blue cantrips. There is an abundance of graveyard synergies in cube and binning a card into it is way better than sending that card to the bottom of your library.
Suspicious Stowaway // Seafaring Werewolf
I am a big supporter of Looter il-Kor and having access to a 2nd is great. It by no means needs to flip but when it does it really does a lot of work. I will say though my fear for Daybound/Nightbound cards is quite the reality. When this creature dies the tracking of Day and Night dies with it, even when there are ways to recur it or there's another werewolf in the deck.
Infernal Grasp
And here it is at last. I think this is the exact card I would want to exist, it does exactly what you want at a very black cost of 2 life. 2021 has brought great removal for cube and rounding it out with Infernal Grasp was perfect.
Falkenrath Pit Fighter
Truthfully I haven't seen this guy in action yet, it just hasn't shown up in the drafts yet. However, I'm fairly confident this is exactly the kind of 1-drop you want for the red deck. I'm very happy to be done with the days of vanilla/downside Jackal Pups in my cube!
Primal Adversary
This is, likely controversially, the only creature in the Adversary cycle currently in my cube. This card has just been such a beating for your opponent. Baseline, a 4/3 trampler for 3 that is usually coming down turn 2 is pretty good. The "multikicker" on this card is the most value for my money out of all the creatures in this cycle. For every 2 mana spent you are getting 4 additional power and toughness added to the board, that just isn't rate you see. Some people have gotten blindsided by the word Haste and dislike that the lands don't untap. In reality that would be completely busted, the only reason Haste is there is because WOTC has learned since Koth how much it feels bad to not attack with an untapped land you just made a creature. I will say that as always, turning your lands into creatures has its risks, I have been Wrathed after kicking this card and it didn't feel good, well I'm sure it did for my opponent.
Tovolar's Huntmaser // Tovolar's Packleader
I expected this to be the long awaited green Grave Titan and so far it has been. This card has been playing great and I expect it to remain as one of my green 6-drops for awhile. The card encourages you to flip it as you don't need anything else to close out the game and even throws in an activated ability to spend your mana on during your opponents turn.
Shoutouts: Brutal Cathar • Intrepid Adversary • Memory Deluge • Poppet Stitcher • Spectral Adversary • Bloodthirsty Adversary • Cathartic Pyre • Augur of Autumn • Arlinn, the Pack's Hope
Now to round out the year with Crimson Vow. This set did not have the slam dunks that Midnight Hunt had, but I am testing some cards with high hopes. Unlike the other cards, Crimson Vow has only been out for about a month and so I don't have the testing or play experience I have with the other cards from this year. Thus the Crimson Vow cards currently in my cube are a little more speculative. I'll also say that not all the cards I plan to test from this set are in the cube yet.
Wedding Announcement // Wedding Festivity
I'm quite excited to get some games in with this card, it reads to me like a 3-mana planeswalker that you have to ultimate for a Gideon emblem after the 3rd turn. What I like about it the most is that you draw a card when you already have a boardstate good enough to attack and you strengthen your boardstate when you don't.
Scattered Thoughts
This card right here is why Memory Deluge does not appear in this blog post. I've cast this card from my cube once so far and I am convinced I was correct in my assessment that it is a sidegrade to Fact or Fiction. It was also in a deck where I was quite happy it wasn't the double U that comes with Memory Deluge.
Thirst for Discovery
I'm a big fan of Compulsive Research in my cube and this has simply replaced it. I haven't gotten any reps in with it yet but I'm confident the basic land restriction will be negligible.
Henriki Domnathi // Henrika, Infernal Seer
This card didn't show up in the one draft I've done since it was added to my cube, but I'm curious to see if it will be the 4-mana 3/4 flier that replaces itself that I want it to be.
Shoutouts: Hopeful Initiate • Welcoming Vampire • Dreamshackle Geist • Hullbreaker Horror • Dread Fugue • Sorin the Mirthless • Chandra, Dressed to Kill • Reckless Impulse • Volatile Arsonist • Avabruck Caretaker • Howlpack Piper • Ulvenwald Oddity
And that was 2021 for my cube! Cube has been my favorite hobby for some time now and this past year has been an absolute blast to be a cuber. If you've made it this far, thank you for reading and I hope you have a happy new year!
Bonus Picture of my Christmas Draft Deck
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