Hello and welcome back to the Magic Super Cube!

This is where We go through the history of cards and sets that were Standard legal or would have been Standard legal had the format existed and pick cards from those sets so that we can have a massive Cube of every single one of those cards.

Today we are going to be finishing up Onslaught block by taking a look at Scourge, a set that was advertised as “the Dragon set” but didn’t have too many Dragon payoffs that one would have expected for a set with that title. There was something powerful that did emerge from Scourge, and that was the debut of one of Magic’s most infamous mechanics, Storm.

This is a smaller set of 143 cards, a bit smaller than Legions, but this set does have a small number of artifacts, multicolor spells, and a single land, which means that each color will have a good number of picks.

Let’s get started!

White

A pattern that will be made very clear was that even though there is one cycle that will be maintained through all of the colors, each color was actually pretty hard to pick cards from.

White was especially difficult with its noncreature spells, because while there were several interesting choices and narrowing them down was tough. In the end I decided on a card that is part of a cycle but I didn’t put all members of that cycle in each color, and the other is a defensive Storm card, which makes use of your opponents playing a lot of spells to gain value from it.

The creatures were also a bit tough, but not as much as the noncreature spells. With one of the choices already picked because of it being part of a cycle, the other two creature picks I made was a creature that was a surprise defensive creature and a solid two drop creature that had some in build protection of its own.

My picks for white are Aven Liberator, Daru Warchief, Decree of Justice, Silver Knight, and Wing Shards.

Blue

Blue was a little less difficult overall, though I wouldn’t say that it was the easiest of the five colors.

The creatures were a bit easier to pick from, with one of them being a part of that previously mentioned creature cycle, with the other one being a little more challenging to pick from. I decided to pick a creature that had a bit of sneaky utility because of Morph being a major mechanic, and one that could be devastating if used correctly.

The noncreature spells were a bit trickier. One of them was a sure fire entry because of how ubiquitous it was a Storm card, but there were several other great options that I had to choose from. In the end I went with a variant of a counter spell that is very powerful and a second very powerful Storm payoff, though a bit tricky to pull off in my opinion.

My picks for blue are Brain Freeze, Mind’s Desire, Mistform Warchief, Raven Guild Master, and Stifle.

Black

Of the five colors, I would say that black was the easiest to pick from, and that is very much impressive considering how difficult some of the other colors were to make picks from.

Most of that came from the creature spells, where again one is part of that cycle of cards but the other creatures included a very strong sacrifice outlet that could definitely be useful for that strategy and the other is a creature that has an interesting Morph cost but also helps by being a cheap way to get a potentially expensive to cast typal creature into play.

The noncreature spells were also pretty easy, with one being another very popular Storm payoff and the other being a lesser used Storm card, but one that can still provide some interesting potential when used in the right deck, at least in my opinion.

My picks for black are Carrion Feeder, Putrid Raptor, Reaping the Graves, Tendrils of Agony, and Undead Warchief.

Red

I would say that red was the most difficult of the five colors to choose from, mostly because there was so much variety of cards to pick from that narrowing down to the appropriate number of choices was hard.

This mostly came in the form of the noncreature choices, where I knew I wanted one particular Storm card to represent itself as a massive typal payoff, but the others were a little more difficult. After a lot of thought, I ended up choosing a Storm based way to get rid of creatures and a chaos type of card that could either really help you or potentially make things worse for you.

The creature spells were a bit easier, but still had a bit of trouble. Other than the obvious cycle representative, I decided that the Cube could also use a bit more representation on a typal strategy that focuses on a larger typal creature, so the other creature choice helps facilitate that strategy.

My picks for red are Dragonspeaker Shaman, Dragonstorm, Goblin Warchief, Grip of Chaos, and Scattershot.

Green

Green was solidly in the middle in terms of how difficult it was to pick cards, though there was still some difficult concessions to be made.

This mostly came in the form of noncreature spells, in which the difficulty was very much like red’s where there were a lot of solid choices and I had to narrow down the options. I finally decided to pick a big splashy Storm card, a member of a cycle that has one other representative in this Cube, and a way to gain card advantage in a creature heavy deck at a big of a downside.

The creatures were much easier to choose from, not just because one of them is the cycle representative of this set, but because there is also a card here that has an interesting historical significance being the first winner of a well known Magic promotion.

My picks for green are Decree of Savagery, Forgotten Ancient, Hunting Pack, Krosan Warchief, and Primitive Etchings.

Multicolor, Artifact, and Land

While there were options from multicolored, artifact, and a single land option, there were so few options that they don’t warrant their own section really.

This is evident that in the land and artifact slots I ended up choosing one of each. There was only one choice in land and it is a land that does still see print to this day in Commander decks, and the one artifact I chose was because it could be used as an interesting card to help fill out typal strategies in the future.

The multicolored cards are where a tough choice was made. There were two five color options that I chose immediately, one because it is one of my favorite creature types and the other is because of it being an interesting take on a typal Commander with a potentially massive downside. The difficult choice was that I had to pick between two option in terms of typal strategies, and I chose one that is splashier and will definitely get more representation as the Cube progresses.

My picks for multicolored are Bladewing the Risen, Karona, False God, and Sliver Overlord, my artifact pick is Proteus Machine, and my land pick is Temple of the False God.

In Conclusion

Scourge was a lot harder to pick cards from than I initially intended, but I managed to get through.

When we next return to the Magic Super Cube we are going back to the Core Sets by taking a look at Eighth Edition, a set that one could say literally changed the face of Magic, and is the first set of what would become the Modern format.

As usual, here is the Moxfield link to keep up with all the cards in the Cube and here is the second part of it Moxfield II! I do need to move the Legions picks into the second part because I hit the 1000 card limit on the first one.

See you next time!

Peace,

From, J.M. Casual

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