Hey, thanks for responding.

P1P4: T1 hippie is actually going to be huge precisely because there aren't that many early answers, and on average half of them are missing because they aren't in the packs. The singleton nature of the cube makes this more devastating than in constructed. I would speculate that in cube, turn 1 hippie just wins the game > 25% of the time, meaning you mana or color screw them or deprive them of any meaningful plays and hippie literally wins the game by itself.

There are less than a dozen cards in the cube that your opponent can have to answer a turn 1 hippie without losing a card. Remember that only half the cards show up in any given draft, you'll have some of them, and so there are roughly 4 cards spread between the other 7 drafters (on average). Assume they're all maindecked, so there's about a 40% chance your opponent even has one of them at all. Assume again they have the right land to play it, then there's about a 20% chance they have it in their opening hand. So there's somewhere between a 5-10% chance that you get 2-for-1ed with early removal. If you don't get 2-for-1ed the odds are massively in your favor and get better every time hippie hits. Getting 2-for-1ed in this case is just a mulligan, so you the rest of your deck has a shot. This isn't Channel-Fireball into FoW risk.

P1P12: You're not reanimating and you're not flickering, so the kicker drawback is moot in this case. At any rate, I think you are seriously undervaluing this guy. Calling it situational removal is disingenuous--everything but Vindicate (and Vindicate on a stick) is situational removal in some way. Several commentators have mentioned that Planeswalkers are the most powerful card type in this format, and I agree. There just aren't many cards that outright destroy them and a lot are super expensive or multi-color. Given that you can also hit swords, control magic, animate dead, man lands, etc this is one of the premier answer cards in the format. You can even play it as just a 3/3 if there are no targets, so it's never a dead card, unlike cards I would consider truly situational like say Celestial Purge. Also, I wanted to clarify, I don't necessarily think hippie is better than Visara; I just felt picking Visara over hippie was inconsistent with passing Sheoldred.

P3P2: Again, like with Mold Shambler, I look it like this--how many games will I win that I would otherwise lose if I have land tax over any other card? Finks over any other card? The games where you need Land Tax you *really* need Land Tax, it turns a lots of losing hands into winning hands, and it's the best at what it does by a country mile. Land Tax will also just win games when you have it T1 on the draw. Kitchen finks is good at what it does, but there's lots of alternatives; most situations where Kitchen Finks turns a losing situation into a winning situation would also be won by many other cards.

Finally Land Tax will be *amazing* in a ramp deck like yours. You didn't have Rampant Growth and Cultivate style ramp, you had mana dorks and artifact mana. Having dorks and artifacts forces your opponent to play out more lands to keep up, triggering the tax. Also, you can decline to play lands and just play dorks to keep triggering tax to thin your deck.

P3P4: Obviously, there is a trend here. I like answers. Most people like Acidic Slime and don't like Leatherback Baloth. I guess I feel like you lose to Jitte and Swords more than you win with Student or Mikaeus. Also, with Porcelain Legionnaire, Baneslayer Angel, Admonition Angel and Kitchen Finks, you are well set up to take advantage of Exalted. Ranger is better than mediocre, though, you're right.

P3P7: You have no removal except olivia, which you're not playing. You could easily splash if you wanted to. Not saying it's the pick, just that I think it's in the mix, possibly as a SB card for Sower of Temptations and the like.

P3P8: This card is where we disagree the most. You call it unplayable, I think it would have been one of the 5 best cards in your deck. I really don't understand your point of view. It would have been a good to great card in every single game you posted. Seems like you're expecting 70% aggro matchups, where from what I've seen it's more like 25-30% overall, and in the matches you posted, 0%. You had the early drops and fliers to make it work--a couple of tappers, Emeria Angel, Wall of Omens, Kitchen Finks, Porcelain Legionnaire early, and later, get it behind a Garruk or Baneslayer and ride it home. It breaks all stalemates. Blue/Black style control decks don't tend to have much to deal with enchantments. If you had Mold Shambler and Qasali Pridemage from earlier, this would be a better pick still, with fewer answers out against you. This card still demands an answer and punishes mulligans, bad keeps, missing land drops and slow starts, of which you saw several.

Thanks again and looking forward to more cube drafts in the future!