Usman's Deep Dive on Murders at Karlov Manor

Hi everyone, I’m Usman and I’ve been making cube content for approximately forever (since 2010). A big part of all of my writing and podcasting is knowing which new cards to test, and in which cube. For my own cube, I used early playtest results and my prior experience to find cards from the new Murders at Karlov Manor and its ancillary products. Here’s a look into my cube update process, starting with my submission to Lucky Paper’s Community Set Survey:

Thraben Inspector’s a card that has stuck around in a lot of cubes even though it’s not an efficiency all-star, but it does a lot of things effectively - a roadblock, a cheap body whose 2 toughness isn’t irrelevant, something that makes an artifact and can be a fine topdeck if flooding out and generally has more homes in decks than the average Savannah Lions, even if it’s worse at beating down, because it’s so flexible. Because of this, Novice Inspector’s a nice addition - it isn’t something that’s required to fill a critical mass of cheap creatures, but it’s a lot like something like Firebolt - an innocuous card that does positively contributes to winning decks, even if it’s never the star player in a cube deck.

Detective is a worse type than Soldier, but for the most part, it’s the same as the old Inspector and if you want one, you want two.

This played nicely as one of the cheapest varieties of this kind of “play creatures off the top” of your deck that usually manifest in Green, rather than White, even if this is only limited to being able to play small creatures off the top. No immediate impact is pretty annoying, but only being 2 mana helped make that initial mana cost not feel as bad - I usually found that getting a creature was worth it due to the information provided (to be able to influence future plays like if you have gas/land coming, if you have ways to shuffle your top card of the deck, etc.) two or more hits usually more than made up for the mana cost as a weird draw two a la Chart a Course, and decks with a lot of small creatures were usually able to do that.

My concern is that non-creature slots in decks with a lot of creatures tend to be pretty stressed as is - some card types like Planeswalkers or other types that generate creature tokens tend to do double duty by performing roles other than just being a warm body, but it performed decently enough to make me cautiously optimistic about it.

A riff on things like Kabira Takedown which takes down a creature if you have a board state, that later turns into an Orcish Oriflamme. One could argue that it’s win-more since it doesn’t do anything if you have no board (making it awful if you’re behind) but I found that it had worked well for the mono-White aggro player who drafted it since it almost always killed something, even if it was usually small.

I didn’t see this combined with things like lifelink/deathtouch but if you do, it’s a nice upside over a vanilla “deal damage = creatures you control” type of thing.

Cards like Panharmonicon suffer by not having any immediate impact, being reliant on getting your mana’s worth by having a critical mass of creatures to double ETB triggers on. Delney being a creature helps, even if it’s just as a Gray Ogre body with kinda-skulk. A lot of the Mulldrifters tend to be ones with 2 or less power that trigger this (this set’s Inspector being a good example, amongst many others) - in a recent draft, I saw this and Blade Splicer result in a massive amount of value for

I don’t think it’s incredibly powerful, but it’s a nice build-around if your cube’s metagame allows for getting massive value out of Delney.

Her Collect Evidence cost makes it difficult to power up on-curve and I usually found that it was a prohibitively high cost in the early game, making it a 2/3 for too long - being a 2/3 helps with at least being a roadblock in the early game, at least, if the opponent’s on 2/2s. In theory, it’d be ok if the bodies that Tenth District Hero changed to were worth the mana and graveyard costs, but found that it wasn’t the case - at least in aggro, although that may be different for more midrangey flavors of White. Because of that, I’m not dogging it as much, but I’m still cautious because of how mediocre of a two-drop it is for aggro.

I remember when Exalted Angel was in cubes - usually with a cycle of friends (although red usually had the short end of the stick, even counting Gathan Raiders in the mix) before they got power crept out. Even with Dragons of Tarkir’s Megamorphs, they generally had a hard sell in cubes because of their atrocious starting rate of being a three mana 2/2. Ward

Some, like Willbender, stayed mostly as a

Contextually, morphs, manifests and megamorphs were fine in an era where their creature competition was much lower - it was fine spending

This reminds me of Angel of Serenity, where its graveyard targeting ability was a nice way to subtly push people to playing it if you had a bunch of dead things, and every once in a while as the world’s worst Coffin Purge.

As this doesn’t have an ETB trigger, this can’t be a cheat target to act as a kinda-Plague Wind, unsurprisingly, it was too slow for the mono White aggro deck since it wasn’t very mana efficient, but this may just be another card like Tenth District Hero where it plays so well in midrange that it makes up for that weakness.

Similar to the old guard of Hidden Dragonslayer by being a cheap creature and having some of the best stats of that type by being a 3/2 for two. Its disguise cost is just so high to blink/downgrade a threat, but that may just be focusing too much on its relatively inefficient backside, rather than it being “kicker” on a 3/2 for two. That’s at least my best hope for it and one that I’m admittedly overly optimistic on.

Initially, my mind went to True-Name Nemesis as a point of comparison by being a 3-power three-drop that has protection but since this is mediocre at blocking, it played more similarly to Batterskull with a much more reasonable way to recur it - you can’t equip it since it doesn’t have an equip cost but I never found myself using Batterskull’s equip all that often.

But the Ward

I hardly ever saw it cloak a creature, but that makes sense since Blue tends to creature-lighter than other colors, and a lot are Mulldrifters that don’t get their ETB triggers when flipped face up, but a nice upside to potentially bluff a combat trick in pairs like Simic - even if the trick was an expensive one.

It may be my bias towards Equipment showing, but I’ve liked this so far as a value three-drop. It never took over a game or anything, but it was a nice way to make a creature with a bonus.

While the Phantom can’t make other creatures ambush things in combat, Flash is one of those keywords that adds so much to a card. Teferi, Mage of Zhalfir hasn’t been playable in cube for at least a decade, but Flash made that card playable in high-power cubes for the decade before that.

There’s some feel-bads that come with the phantom’s end-of-turn restriction, like being unable to ambush creatures or use Planeswalker loyalty abilities, but it does allow the Blue deck to deploy proactive cards at a reactive rate for the opponent to deal with as “Blue’s Haste”.

Admittedly, I’m really biased towards loving cards with Flash, but I’ve been a fan of how this played out since instants tend to work better the more instants/Flash cards you have, and this turning even innocuous cards like Ponder or Portent into things you can do during the end step is nice, because it lets you use the increased information to optimize your cantrips/sorceries.

A nearly-decade old video about Modern Twin and Izzet Control, of all things, made me realize how powerful Flash and instant speed are in matches were tapping low/out can be a detriment (how much differently Lee Shih Tian’s Batterskull-sized threat would have played if it had Flash in that match.) As can be expected, this doesn’t do as much work against lower-to-the-ground decks where the weakness of having a 1/4 body is most apparent, but it’s still not the absolute worst in that matchup as a blocker.

Think Twice for 2024, as it’s cheaper to get your second draw and makes an artifact for decks that care about it. There aren’t a lot of cubable cards that make artifacts at instant speed, so being able to make Metalcraft or to be able to get use out of cards that have triggers on artifacts entering is a nice benefit for cubes where that’s a benefit. That said, this ended up playing out as a Think Twice when I tried it out - with the exception of the one time that it enabled metalcraft on Galvanic Blast. This is one of the better two-mana cantrips since its “flashback” is so cheap, as one of the strengths of Think Twice was being able to represent action while holding up counters/other instant speed interaction.

I’m unsure how many cubes are in need of another cantrip but I ironically think this is better than the new FoF.

These days, Fact or Fiction has a harder and harder time justifying cube inclusion with things like Memory Deluge being more effective, and FoF not being so far ahead of class with card draw that running it is worth it (generally.)

That said, this follows the Sauron's Ransom/Fortune's Favor method by making you split first, so it doesn’t put the majority of the onus on the opponent - although they can screw it up.

Although this appears like a Fact or Fiction, I found that this was usually more of a Mulldrifter with flash, especially when the split was two “value piles” of 2-3 where one pile wasn’t head and shoulders over the other. I did make a 5/5 with it once when the five revealed cards were pretty lackluster - which is a nice benefit of ”Thopt or Fiction“.

4-1 splits were usually unusual and where this was generally at its worst, since it didn’t just let you Impulse for the “good card,” and giving the opponent a 1/1 thopter in addition to the 4 “not good cards” wasn’t that much of a drawback.

But, it’s at least a form of board presence, which was one of my main gripes with the original Fact or Fiction - one that became more apparent with time, that it didn’t impact the board and could potentially take a while for your mana investment to come to fruition.

However, I’m unsure if cubes need yet another “big Blue” play, but this one’s at least an instant, so you’re not just tapping low to do something - I’ve at least liked it more than some of the middling Blue planeswalkers due to being an instant + board presence.

This one’s mostly contextual as it’s reliant on things like discard outlets and things like Survival of the Fittest, mill and other things to proactively get something big into the graveyard to cheat into play. It isn’t something I’m actively looking to support at this time, but the ceiling on it is nice as you can reanimate anything at instant speed, in Blue. I’m bearish on this since most of the time, you just want to cheat a creature into play and the best reanimation costs between one to three mana.

This shouldn’t just replace Eliminate, even if it strictly upgrades it, since both have a big list of targets in many cubes, and usually these kinds of “easy swaps” are ones where there’s a harder-to-find and better replacement. Arguably the best card of the set, even if it’s “boring.”

This played pretty well as a 2/1 with suspect - I’ve played with a lot of 2/X doofuses for two that had a death trigger, and too often, their anemic-by-2024-rates sizes (cards like Carrier Thrall, Loyal Cathar) meant that they could be safely ignored in decks that didn’t have a way to actively sacrifice the body.

Case’s Skeleton’s menace helped to make it slightly harder to ignore as a clock and having the failsafe of a Demonic Tutor if it dies is another nice upside to make the opponent not want to kill it - even if it’s usually in their control, but having the ability to search for something after being wrathed to break serve was nice. Comparing this to being a Diabolic Tutor wasn’t that accurate, since you got a decent threat up-front, and then “kicked it” for a Demonic Tutor later on - the Diabolic Tutor comparison would be more apt if the Skeleton didn’t have suspect. Relentless Dead is a good analogy, which played surprisingly well without typal support via its Raise Dead ability - being an enchantment is also nice for decks that care about card pieces, but probably won’t matter too often (but it’s nice if your cube decks care about that.)

This 3-0 mono-Black deck is an example of a deck that wasn’t deep on sacrifice synergies that used Case of the Stashed Skeleton pretty well:

She’s absurd if it lives and causes creature combat to end in card advantage, and even turns chump attacks (which is especially nice with recursive creatures) into ways to permanently scar opposing creatures. As can be expected, she tended to play well in creature matchups where trades are expected to occur via combat - in those, she usually drew at least a card, if not several.

It’s true that she doesn’t have an immediate impact, but she at least impacts combat immediately, since she doesn’t have to swing in the red zone to do her thing. She was a lightning rod for removal as a must-kill, so the amount and cost of removal may determine whether she has a home in your cube.

These kinds of cards that draw from the opponent’s deck as opposed to yours aren’t strictly worse than drawing from your own deck, but the draws can generally be worse - since you built your deck to be at its most synergistic, but sometimes drawing from an opponent’s deck can help make up for some weaknesses in your own deck and can mess with opposing tutors and fetchlands if their fetchland web of support is weak. But, in some matchups, it’s just useless, where drawing from an aggro player’s deck and getting you a bunch of 2/2s in the later stages of the game isn’t great - but they’re at least chump blockers and Outrageous Robbery is something you can always just sideboard out anyway.

I’ve not seen Villainous Wealth that often in cubes these days, but being an instant is a huge upgrade, letting this act as a weird Stroke of Genius more than a clunky draw spell, since this can also be a miser’s win condition, but casting this doesn’t “lock you in” to that plan of trying to win on that axis.

But, it’s still pretty slow and doesn’t start to feel like you got your mana’s worth until you get to

This is another Grafted Skullcap type thing that rewards you for going hellbent and giving you a big boost afterwards - something also seen with Carnage Interpreter, although via its ETB trigger, this at least does something when cast.

Being an upkeep trigger means you’re not locked out of casting instants on an opponent’s turn and drawing two per turn is an absurd rate if you’re able to consistently use them by your next upkeep. However, the question that always comes up with cards like Light Up the Stage, Experimental Frenzy and cards like that don’t actively downtick the opponent’s life - is this better than the average

I don’t think cubes are in need of more curve-topping 4s with cards like this, as cards like Blade Historian, Hellrider, Hazoret the Fervent - precious Red staples, riding the pine and ones like Fireflux Squad, Emberwilde Captain, Court of Embereth not really being “staples” either.

Ironically, her trigger is better in an era when more decks are playing to the board - as Wake Up Gaming’s review put it, her ETB trigger acts like a Hellrider trigger where your creatures are guaranteed to ping the opponent with all of their damage, not just one on the turn that she enters. After that, she’s arguably worse than Hellrider since she’s drawing cards Elkin Bottle style - so she can deal damage, if you topdeck burn, but honestly, most of the role of these 4-drops is to have a big impact on the turn that they enter the battlefield. Her ETB trigger can be middling if the opponent doesn’t have as many creatures, but arguably the decks that want a 4-drop curve topper aren’t as concerned about those matchups and can just side Scarlett out in those matchups.

But I think that’s just the thing, I think she’s relatively replaceable with the cadre of curve-topper fours that we’re awash with these days, but I think she’s at least in good company in the higher (but not S-tier) of these finishers. I’m going to give her a whirl but I don’t think she’s going to survive 2024 in my cube.

This makes me think of Phoenix Chick as yet another 1/1 for one with evasion but that may just be thinking of Standard. Being able to throw suspect onto other things like hasters and saboteurs can be great for making the opponent second guess how many blockers they need. Hardly a staple, and these days, Red aggro sections have a lot of options to choose from for good 1-drops. My gut says this is better than Falkenrath Gorger and potentially Falkenrath Pit Fighter, which is nice.

Being a 2/1 with haste as a floor really helps, and prowess isn’t flavor text for a card that looks to work with a lot of instants and sorceries (ie a lot of burn to clear a path) although you’ll have to at least pay the three-mana disguise cost to get access to its disguise trigger. Cost reduction with other instants and sorceries should help and, like with other cards that encourage hellbent/heckbent, if you’re able to cash this in for

This Phoenix is mainly on my radar, despite it being yet another phoenix, because if you have the evidence, it doesn’t require mana to bring back to play, whereas most phoenixes historically either had some combination of requiring mana or going back to the hand.

Entering tapped is a bit annoying on defense, and not having haste points this to being more defensive-oriented - but, its main role is just to attack, even if it haste to wait a turn to do so. Cautiously optimistic based on potentially free recursion but wouldn’t be surprised if it doesn’t get there.

This played about as expected as yet another Thrill of Possibility with another way to cast it; although I never saw this cast with an artifact instead of a card in hand, that doesn’t mean it never will, it’s just in the minority of cases, but Thrill isn’t so powerful a card that a marginally better one is a cube staple, but not a bad role-filler.

Compares to Traverse the Ulvenwald, found that it was generally easier to enable Collect Evidence by playing mid-cost cards and “just by playing magic” although cards like Generous Ent and friends can help to speed up collecting evidence - although this may be different in cubes that have a lot of things that incidentally help delirium - baubles, artifacts that sacrifice, etc. I found that Analyze the Pollen usually got a land if played early, but in the mid-stages, it was generally a creature tutor which plays well into Green value decks, so it’ll probably stick around for a while.

Having Evolve+ is nice on an on-curve body, and being able to investigate lets it have some lasting impact if it eats a bolt after evolving. When trying it out, I found that it, about half of the time, evolved into a 3/3 and made a clue (not always on turn three, but often enough) which was good enough value to stick around. Usually, the first evolve is the easiest in decks that can spit out 3/3s via Beast generators, but the second “evolve” takes more work, but results in a great rate if it happens - but it isn’t necessary and usually accrued a good amount for value for its low initial investment.

It’s somewhat similar to Archmage's Charm and Flame of Anor by having nice spread across matchups. None of the modes are really bad either - potentially the land tutor half of the first ability, since I didn’t see that mode used very much (usually it was just Eladamri's Call on that mode,) but instant speed ramp/fixing is hard to dismiss outright if you want to represent casting a five-drop on your next turn - this can also get utility lands like Field of the Dead as well, if that’s a feature of your cube meta.

It’s easier to maindeck than something like Pick Your Poison (rating: 4) which is one of the best Naturalizes ever - the main concern with Archdruid's Charm is its godawful mana cost, although Green’s one of the best colors to swing a

A delayed Crucible of Worlds but one that ramps, at least - but if you’re playing Crucible on turn three, you’re likely not using the land recur as your land drop either. This does require something in the grave to be able to get immediate value (can’t crack in response to the trigger, since it requires a target) which can make it slow if you don’t have a fetchland or some other incidental mill by turn 3.

I played as part of a transformational sideboard and had Misty Rainforest, Polluted Delta and a Waterlogged Grove and found it was surprisingly not hard to Voltron together two fetches to get something every turn. It gets much easier with non-singleton lands (which I run, but I tend to take fetchlands very highly) to hit critical mass - if the “Horizon Canopy” cycle gets finished in a future set, it’ll be even easier to hit critical mass (and honestly, recurring those lands may be the best part of Undergrowth Recon, rather than recurring fetchlands, and recurring the Horizon Canopy lands with Crucible was only really doable in the late game.)

Overall, I liked this more than Crucible of Worlds, which I find harder and harder to justify these days in cube decks since it can be slow, and using it in conjunction with cards like Smokestack is just so slow for cubes these days when decks are much better at playing to the board.

Yet another take on the four-mana 4/4s with Haste and keywords that the Modern Vintage Cubing discord have been a fan of for Green decks. The drafter who drafted it a few times described the Collect Evidence tax as heaven-or-hell, as in the early stages of the game and if the opponent’s using their graveyard as a resource, it can be difficult to kill - but its life expectancy drops because of the same reason that Analyze the Pollen gets better - by virtue of playing Magic, things just incidentally hit the graveyard, especially in interactive-heavy matchups. Still, I like the baseline as a hasty deathtoucher.

A riff on Collected Company by looking at the top of your library and at least having the floor of always getting a pair of 2/2s, as I’ve seen my fair share of Collected Companies hit the stack, reveal a mana elf (or nothing) but generally those decks didn’t have a lot of creatures to reveal, and this at least doesn’t whiff if it hits a giant creature - if anything, it’s slightly better.

But is this what you want for four at orcery speed? It at least gets around spot removal and being able to represent, potentially, a bigger creature at instant speed, but I just don’t think this does enough on a base rate level.

This review by Masonzero pointed out that this is effectively Splendid Reclamation on a Maritime Guard, which can help make sure that Splendid Reclamationing has some fuel. I’m unsure if there’s a “lands deck” in most cubes but if so, a cube would likely want both - although this does point to some other synergies like being able to get graveyard value. Still, I’m just eh on it as a “general” card.

My favorite multicolor card in the set as a weird take on Seasoned Pyromancer, but with less play since you can’t sculpt your hand with it, you just lose it. That said, it’s very mana efficient on rate as a 5/5 Menace for three (easier to hit heckbent in Red, although not out of the question in Red) and creating a ton of clues. I found that the clues tended to help with longevity when a 5/5 menacer wasn’t doing the job, even if the clues took mana to crack and it was a nice card for decks that were able to deploy a bunch of cheap cards and get their hand close to empty - as the drawback wasn’t too bad in decks that were in the market for it. The flexibility of it being hybrid also should help it have a longer shelf-life (since hybrid is a benefit, not a drawback like regular multicolor.)

This is a classic example of a “boring”

A virtual 2/2 flash for two usually has my interest piqued, and it gets absurd if something dies. Morbid cards generally play worse than they look, since although it’s easy to think of game states where “morbid” happens, they’re usually either the stars aligning in combat or proactively making it happen via spot removal; the consistency of “morbid” was helped in decks that were base Black that had a lot of removal. I’m still cautiously optimistic since its floor is fine and the ceiling of getting a clue and a ton of value is amazing, and it happened much more often than with cards like Tragic Slip, back in the day.

A deviation from the trend of infinite spot removal in Izzet by being a somewhat customizable wrath effect to kill small things. It can be the world’s worst draw effect, but for the most part, this just sculpts your hand and wipes the board, which is nice if, in some matchups, you want to jettison something that’s not doing its job. Depending on the matchup, I think this gets there for Izzet sections as a role-player tier card.

The question from earlier of “is this better than a burn spell” comes back, doubly so because this isn’t that mana efficient of a way to pump things - there’s a world of difference between a mass pump effect at two mana vs three. This mainly is good for token decks as a way to get your mana’s worth on damage and that may ultimately be the deciding factor on whether this gets there in your cube - explicit token support does help a lot, and token generators like the many Goblin Rabblemaster variants and White planeswalkers help this a lot.

In previous articles, I’ve talked about how adventure cards generally need to have a good “base rate” to perform a function that cube decks want - ones like Bonecrusher Giant and Murderous Rider deal with creatures, even if at not the most efficient rate, but they get the job done. Ones like Questing Druid have a mediocre creature side by 2024 creature standards, but that doesn’t really matter when it’s effectively gravy on top of a solid adventure.

There are some exceptions like Kellan, Daring Traveler and Cheeky House-Mouse, whose adventure side isn’t great, but have a good enough frontside for that to not matter very much.

The Simic Kellan could fall into the first category, since it’s a bad Explore, but those kinds of decks may care less about the draw being delayed if it means you get to ramp that turn. In that vein, you’re essentially getting a slightly chonkier Trygon Predator that only hits artifacts (but let’s be honest, that’s what it was usually doing anyway.) Or, in theory, depending on how your cube’s removal lines up, it could fall into the third if a 3/4 flier with Vigilance (which usually doesn’t push something over the top, but also never hurts) as a “good enough” threat.

These dual lands that enter tapped at least do something when they enter tapped so they work pretty well with fetchlands - similarly to cards like Mystic Sanctuary, that give a utility boost to fetchlands, but those should be high enough of a pick in cube anyway. Entering tapped tends to be a big strike against them in cube, which is why I’ve rated them so low compared to the community average, although in general, I find cubes could use more fixing than they do. These make me think of the “bad fetchland” cycle of Bad River and friends may be worth it these days, but I don’t think so.

Many many thanks to Zolthux who gave the article an initial round of feedback. And thanks to you, too, for reading! You can find more of my Cube thoughts on Linktree, along with a ko-fi link if you want to buy some treats for my cats.

What cards have you most excited for Cube from MKM? Let me know!