Being an instant also lets you leverage the ability by holding up countermagic, card draw, or bouncing your opponents board states to remove all blockers before your turn
Looking at my cube, there is critical mass for: Goblins (R) Humans (all) Warriors (WBR) And, with some effort, other tribes could get critical mass running only cards that are cubeable by themselves, keeping the Poison effect to a minimum: Soldiers (W) Wizards (U) Shamans (RG) Vampires (B) I'm fine with dedicating 2-3 slots per color so each of these tribes have a Lord or some other linear effect as a nod to play them (Goblin Chieftain, Champion of the Parish, Chief of the Edge) but I don't want this cube to be mainly tribal, just have an extra layer of synergy that cares about the creature type line at a low opportunity cost
Zhao, Ruthless Admiral is a flexible creature that can go into the red-black deck, and is especially synergistic alongside permanents that can sacrifice themselves like Clue tokens
It can be used both offensively and defensively (though a defensive Rift with no follow-up remains a bugbear for players everywhere)
Among the best Angel commanders in MTG , she excels at closing games through inevitable resource pressure rather than raw combat speed
This was the most popular of the four decks by far, and face Commander Ulalek was a big part of that