Aerith, Last Ancient offers a lifegain payoff you will almost never pull off in an actual game because aside from Sephiroth, Fallen Hero or Wrecking Ball Arm there's no other way to reliably get her to 7 power and very little lifegain in the deck otherwise
Yes, it is possible to exit play mode on the first or second packet selection screen without losing the 1000 gp
For our purposes, well target a popular community benchmark of $50 decks
Magecraft should help you to attack your opponent with some protection and deception from this Izzet card
Ultimately, it wont be worth doing so if your deck doesnt have some manner of sacrifice theme and ways to use the extra mana, but Magic has been incredibly long on both of those things for years now, and sacrifice decks show up in more and more Cubes all the time
White was easy enough to sort out with already having the two best one mana removal cards and having an acceptable array of other options