More of the Same

Now that the cube feels fairly tight, plays well, and has accrued some use I can focus on finer points with more clarity than before. The first thing I've done is cut the allied color gold card count by one.

Cuts:
Vedalken Outlander, Etherium Abomination, Singe-Mind Ogre, Nacatl Outlander, Sigil of the Nayan Gods

These are all fair cut in terms of either lack of support (Sigil), redundancy (Outlanders), or inefficiency (Abomination and Ogre). This gave me room to add in more monocolored cards:

White: Cage of Hands - reusable removal is good, buffs control
Blue: Impulse - card filtering that should never have been cut to begin with
Black: Tortured Existence - recycling creatures is always good
Red: Martyr of Ashes - pseudo board sweeper in a cube that needs board sweepers
Green: Phantom Tiger - hard to kill critter

I've also tightened and adjusted in other ways:

Red-Green:
Rip-Clan Crasher, Exploding Borders - OUT
Deadshot Minotaur, Branching Bolt - IN

Switching up to include more cards that can generate a two-for-one card advantage, especially against fliers in the two colors lacking them.

Blue:
Confound - OUT
Arcane Denial - IN

There was a great discussion about Arcane Denial and, realizing that it is a common, decided to give it a try. We'll see if giving your opponent "Draw two cards." isn't as bas as it seems at first glance.

I'm looking forward to Zendikar for more opportunities to expand high quality cards into the cube. There's a white card that was revealed at GenCon that looks to be an auto-include for most cubes. I won't spoiler it here but you can read up on all of the previewed and spoiled Zendikar cards that may be cube-worthy in the 'Zendikar Cube Discussion' thread here.

Outside of the new fall release, there are other cards that feel like a great fit:

White: Soltari Visionary - evasive beater that is a Demystify on a stick
Blue: Carnivorous Death-Parrot - a 2/2 flying for two without a "drawback"
Black: Gravedigger - mmmm... brains (and card advantage) are good
Red: Vithian Stinger - pingers are really good in this cube
Green: Nantuko Vigilante - morph + Naturalize effect is good

I'm also going to retool each of the multicolor sections, individually, looking to improve overall quality to maintain as high counts as possible. It just wouldn't be the PMC without the 'M'!