Set Prospective
Streets of New Capenna
This article is one of our set prospectives, a series in which we survey the Cube community about the cards they intend to play in their cubes from a particular set. Our survey is conducted between the set’s full-spoiler and official release and is meant to measure and document Cube designers’ first impressions of new cards.
Everybody call your godfather and assemble the crime family — Streets of New Capenna is bribing its way into cubes near you! We collected surveys from 255 cubes designed by 230 individuals to get the Cube community’s impressions of Magic’s latest set. When the respondents curate environments as diverse as a mono green cubes, Peasant EDH cubes, and even Infinite Mana Cubes, there’s sure to be something for everyone.
Cube curators are somewhat ambivalent towards New Capenna as a whole, but many respondents nonetheless found individual cards worth their excitement. The median respondent is testing 9 cards from SNC and gave 3 cards a strong rating above 2.5, a distribution that closely hews to the lackluster reception of past sets like Crimson Vow and Adventures in the Forgotten Realms. Roughly 43% of our respondents were retained from the contentious-yet-popular Kamigawa: Neon Dynasty, which is about on par with our 48% retention from MID to NEO and the 45% retention from MH2 to MID, so we can safely ascribe the mixed results for New Capenna to a a difference in our respondents’ attitudes, rather than a change in who’s responding.
View our respondents on the Cube Map.
| Card | Testers▼ | Rank |
|---|---|---|
| Tenacious Underdog | 43.7% | 2.2 |
| Ziatora's Proving Ground | 35.3% | 2.7 |
| Raffine's Tower | 35.3% | 2.7 |
| Xander's Lounge | 34.9% | 2.7 |
| Spara's Headquarters | 34.9% | 2.7 |
| Jetmir's Garden | 33.7% | 2.7 |
| Inspiring Overseer | 31.0% | 2.5 |
| Ob Nixilis, the Adversary | 29.0% | 2.3 |
| Titan of Industry | 23.8% | 2.2 |
| Goldhound | 23.4% | 1.9 |
| Jewel Thief | 21.8% | 2.3 |
| Sticky Fingers | 17.1% | 1.9 |
| Jinnie Fay, Jetmir's Second | 17.1% | 2.2 |
| Scheming Fence | 16.3% | 2.2 |
| Gala Greeters | 16.3% | 1.9 |
| Professional Face-Breaker | 15.9% | 2.0 |
| Ledger Shredder | 15.1% | 2.0 |
| Witness Protection | 14.7% | 2.0 |
| Unlicensed Hearse | 14.3% | 2.1 |
| Citizen's Crowbar | 13.9% | 2.0 |
| Raffine's Informant | 13.5% | 2.0 |
| Strangle | 13.1% | 2.1 |
| Unlucky Witness | 12.7% | 1.8 |
| Mage's Attendant | 12.3% | 2.2 |
| Workshop Warchief | 11.9% | 2.2 |
| Tainted Indulgence | 11.1% | 2.0 |
| Make Disappear | 11.1% | 2.0 |
| Patch Up | 9.5% | 2.1 |
| Jaxis, the Troublemaker | 9.1% | 1.8 |
| Rumor Gatherer | 9.1% | 1.9 |
| Big Score | 8.7% | 2.1 |
| Sanctuary Warden | 8.3% | 1.9 |
| A Little Chat | 8.3% | 1.8 |
| Extraction Specialist | 7.9% | 1.8 |
| All-Seeing Arbiter | 7.5% | 1.9 |
| Shakedown Heavy | 7.5% | 1.9 |
| Illuminator Virtuoso | 7.5% | 2.0 |
| Depopulate | 7.5% | 2.0 |
| Rob the Archives | 7.1% | 2.0 |
| An Offer You Can't Refuse | 7.1% | 2.1 |
| Luxior, Giada's Gift | 6.7% | 2.0 |
| Witty Roastmaster | 6.7% | 2.0 |
| Giada, Font of Hope | 6.3% | 1.8 |
| Body Launderer | 6.3% | 1.8 |
| Vivien on the Hunt | 6.3% | 1.8 |
| Riveteers Requisitioner | 6.0% | 1.9 |
| Body Dropper | 6.0% | 2.3 |
| Mayhem Patrol | 6.0% | 2.1 |
| Riveteers Charm | 5.6% | 2.1 |
| Night Clubber | 5.6% | 2.0 |
| Raffine, Scheming Seer | 5.6% | 1.9 |
| Waterfront District | 5.2% | 2.6 |
| Tramway Station | 5.2% | 2.6 |
| Racers' Ring | 5.2% | 2.5 |
| Rocco, Cabaretti Caterer | 5.2% | 2.0 |
| Park Heights Pegasus | 5.2% | 1.9 |
| Void Rend | 5.2% | 1.9 |
| Toluz, Clever Conductor | 5.2% | 1.9 |
| Slip Out the Back | 5.2% | 2.2 |
| Hypnotic Grifter | 5.2% | 1.8 |
| Prizefight | 4.8% | 1.9 |
| Skybridge Towers | 4.8% | 2.6 |
| Botanical Plaza | 4.8% | 2.6 |
| Dusk Mangler | 4.8% | 2.0 |
| Reservoir Kraken | 4.4% | 1.7 |
| Fight Rigging | 4.4% | 1.9 |
| Endless Detour | 4.4% | 2.4 |
| Boon of Safety | 4.4% | 2.0 |
| Glittering Stockpile | 4.0% | 1.8 |
| Elspeth Resplendent | 4.0% | 1.7 |
| Devilish Valet | 4.0% | 1.8 |
| Brokers Ascendancy | 4.0% | 2.0 |
| Quick-Draw Dagger | 4.0% | 1.6 |
| Obscura Charm | 4.0% | 2.2 |
These supremely flexible and fetchable lands complete a cycle begun in Ikoria and constitute the most highly-rated cards from New Capenna. Indeed, even relative to the Triomes of Ikoria, the New Capenna lands were rated 10% higher on average, from 2.4 all the way to 2.7. We’ve observed that Constructed play and well-known comparison points are a sure-fire sign of survey success.
“This set is great, but not very many cards are going to make it into Cubes because many options are 3 colors.”
Even so, as top-rated cards in these surveys go, the Triomes’ 35% share of respondents is far from record-setting. The top-rated Consider from Innistrad: Midnight Hunt achieved a similar rating but was tested by 70% of those respondents! It’s likely that the subset of designers who are testing the Triomes already know that the tri-lands fit their goals, as a highly-contested element of a Cube draft phase and/or enablers for certain archetypes and effects, and as a known quantity are added with the expectation of keeping them around.
The most-tested card of New Capenna is the Tenacious Underdog. Not only is its art a delightful reference to American Gilded Age paintings like George Bellows’ Dempsey and Firpo, but the Underdog’s Blitz ability emulates popular recursive aggro threats in the Black sections of many cubes, and implicitly enables popular synergies like Aristocrats. However, its 48% test-rate still falls well short of top most popular cards from the recent past.
“New Capenna feels more combat/creature focused than recent sets. Even Casualty is tied directly to creatures, which makes it very interesting.”
Ob Nixilis, the Adversary (already better-known by the sobriquet “Mob Nixilis”) offers a novel combination of planeswalker mechanics for the low price of 
, echoing the powerful planeswalking mainstays of many a Cube. Again, we see Nixilis fall short of truly universal appeal, both by its middling popularity of 33% and its average rating of 2.3, but 3-mana planeswalkers walk such a razor-thin line between mediocrity and dominance that The Adversary will be one to watch.
Like John Rockefeller and Andrew Carnegie before it, Titan of Industry is not someone you want as your enemy. (But instead of forming monopolies and busting unions, this Titan just busts up battlefield stalemates.) The modality and rate on the Titan is remarkable, and its reasonable mana value means it can flex between the role of cheat target or ramp payoff in cubes that support both strategies.
Rounding out the most-tested rares of New Capenna is Jinnie Fay, Jetmir's Second, whose flapper gown is more fabulous than anything, save her Divine Visitation-adjacent rules text. Jinnie's eminently flexible hybrid-mana cost and novel rules text is a recipe for spicing up the stale synergies of 16.3% of our respondents’ cubes.
Neck-and-neck with the rares and mythics of the prior section is a surprising quartet of common roleplayers. Beating out Mob Nixilis at a 31% test-rate is Inspiring Overseer, whose color-shifted ability appeals to Cube curators who support flicker strategies, as well as rarity-restricted curators. Its dominance in the early weeks of New Capenna Limited no doubt contributes to its notoriety.
Goldhound is the latest in a long line of synergistic "glue" commons, whose textbox is so densely synergistic that it can’t help but interact with a wide variety of other cards — put simply, Goldhound will synergize with a ham sandwich. Though its rate may fall short of Red’s premier one-drops, 24% of our respondents are testing the Goldhound, at least partly due to this opportunity to create novel interactions.
Jewel Thief offers a funky spin on a Watchwolf-with-upside threat, where immediacy is traded for a powerful ability suite and a slight rebate on mana. The additional lines of text relative to Watchwolf create additional opportunities for synergy, which combined with the strong rate is enough to recommend the Thief for testing in nearly a quarter of respondents’ cubes.
Finally, the success of Sticky Fingers in our survey cannot possibly be because of its novel rules text combined with an intriguingly high ceiling. No, it can only be due to one thing: Andy Mangold has suddenly manifested “the SaffronOlive effect” of boosting the popularity of any card he endorses on air. While it’s endlessly reassuring to know our respondents are faithful listeners of Lucky Paper Radio, they should remember that Andy has 0 Pro Tour wins under his belt, and all his podcast statements are only statements of opinion. Consult a registered Pro Tour competitor before making any financial decisions concerning New Capenna bulk commons.
The Streets of New Capenna might be as dirty and mean as the Gilded Age from which they take inspiration, but the set offers a smorgasboard of options for Cube curators. While no card garnered a majority endorsement this time around, the high ratings and low test rates signify that the card file is stuffed to the margins with hidden gems. Dig deep, and you’re sure to find a diamond in the rough.
My own thoughts:
Gold sections don’t have to be a pain point in Cube design. Following in the footsteps of recent multicolor sets like Strixhaven, New Capenna offers a huge array of pushed multicolor rates, from flexible removal to rate monsters — but relatively few people are testing these cards, fearing that they won’t be worth the slot, or will clog up drafts, or won’t be very castable.
“It’s nice to have so many multicolored options available in the set - the gold cards will have a hard time finding open slots, but, I don’t think the ones I pick up here will be dethroned any time soon.”
These concerns are valid, but plenty of workarounds exist for designers disappointed to be missing out on New Capenna’s most prominent feature. For example, when I recently cut Uro, Titan of Nature's Wrath from my cube, I didn’t think of it as an irreversible cut; instead, I channeled my inner football coach who benches their starters throughout a match. Knowing that Uro isn’t gone forever allows me to experiment freely with other options. Similarly, prior versions of my cube have had 2 “tri-color flex slots” so I could shuffle in whatever cards I liked, without taking too many slots away from my cube’s consistency. You could even go more radical with some “wild card” vouchers during draft that can be exchanged for the drafter’s choice of 3-color cards.
Uhh, where’s Ledger Shredder, people? If the Vintage playsets and $8 price tag are anything to go by, the power-motivated segment of our respondents missed by a lot on this Bird Advisor. There are a few actionable insights here: one, preview season card evaluation is tough and nobody bats a thousand; two, New Capenna’s apparent lack of strong consensus in our results says more about its (lack of) Constructed hype than it does about the actual viability of its card file for Cube; and three, if Constructed-style card evals apply to your format, you’ll probably test fewer duds if you wait until the first tournament results roll in before filling up your shopping cart.
“Tenacious Underdog is super hot 😱. That is my only comment.”
The art of New Capenna heralds an aesthetic sea change. It’s hard to top the sheer variety of Magic art, given the non-representational abstract pieces, winking artistic references, and real-world craftsmanship we’ve seen before. But New Capenna is the first time a Magic set’s aesthetic widely emulates identifiable styles of Western art history: there’s post-Impressionist flattening of 3-D perspectives, like the still-life paintings of Paul Cézanne; there’s the distorted humanoid forms of the war-time Expressionism of Otto Dix’s The Skat Players; and there’s even a little bit of a Paul Klee in the whimsy of Ognis, the Dragon’s Lash. Coming right after NEO, whose art embodied many themes of Eastern artistic tradition, it’s clear Magic’s creative team is at the top of their game. The talent, daring, and craft of Magic’s artists is a privilege and a joy to witness.
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