Happy Wednesday, gamers! I hope you like digital Cubes, because they’ll be popping off for the next five weeks. This week we’ll be experiencing the third run of Carmen Handy’s Proliferate Cube, and I’m delighted to see its return.

It’s been a little over a year since we last saw Proliferate Cube (where does the time go?) and I imagine some players will be drafting the Cube for the first time this week. As the name suggests, this Cube is all about putting counters on things, often with the intention of then putting even more counters on those things. There are themes beyond just those based on counters, and not every counter is the sort that you’ll care to or be able to increment, but most of the decks and games with Proliferate Cube involve doing so.

For a deeper look at the history of the Cube, I’d recommend my article on the Cube’s debut and subsequent article on the Cube’s second run. You can find the current list on Cube Cobra here.

The last run of Proliferate Cube was before Modern Horizons 2, and that set in addition to a full year of Magic releases otherwise makes today’s update quite substantial. I’ve typed out the entire change log, though the impact of the individual card changes vary significantly. The broad notes are that the blink theme has been toned down some with the removal of disruptive creatures like Man-o’-War, creature-based artifact decks have gotten a huge boost, and that the Cube has shifted slightly to support more three- or more-color decks.

With those broad notes in mind, let’s take a look at the Cube by color, and talk about the most significant additions for the purpose of drafting successful decks.

White

Out:

In:

White has performed very well in Proliferate Cube to this point, and shows no sign of stopping with this update. We see both additional support for artifact decks in white and a handful of generically powerful cards. Intrepid Adversary and Lion Sash are plainly Cube staples, and I see no reason that they won’t be powerful picks here. Elspeth, Resplendent is a little expensive for most Cubes, but Proliferate Cube tends to generate games with pretty bogged down battlefields, and a five-mana planeswalker that helps your creatures win in combat is quite significant in that sort of situation.

I’m pretty big on the artifact aggro deck with this update, and while Esper Sentinel is kind of whatever beyond having the text “is artifact” in this Cube, I fully expect Michiko’s Reign of Truth to deliver serious beatdowns. Oswald Fiddlebender is more of an oddball, and not one that I would pick nearly as highly. Oswald will be powerful alongside a handful of creatures with modular, but is a pretty slow card that doesn’t hit very hard compared to other artifact support cards.

Prismatic Ending is the other individual card that I believe is worth calling out. Proliferate Cube has a lot of powerful permanents, many of them have low mana values, and not all of them are creatures. Being able to hit cards like The Ozolith is a significant upside to have on your answer to Student of Warfare.

Blue

Out:

In:

Blue got a serious facelift with the previous update to fully add the blink theme, and in this update that theme is being dialed back. Bounce effects are pretty brutal when you spend turns putting counters on your creatures, so I like this shift away from these effects in the interest of making the cool thing the good thing.

In terms of abstractly powerful individual cards, we see newly minted Ledger Shredder and The Reality Chip entering the fray. Normally I’d include Murktide Regent in this list, though I’m colder on the card here than I normally am. Proliferate Cube just doesn’t have the support in the “generically powerful instant and sorcery” department that you’d want for that sort of card. As a rule, I like the artifacts-matter cards in blue quite a lot better than Murktide Regent here.

I’m most excited to see Kappa Cannoneer make its digital Cube debut. Thought Monitor will also be a high pick for artifact decks, and any way to draw extra cards or to generate more artifacts over time will make closing games with Kappa Cannoneer trivial. I’m keeping a close eye on Animation Module for this run.