Black Cube

An experimental, novelty all-black Cube.

This cube was the focus of Lucky Paper Radio: Epsiode 2, and comes up from time to time in other episodes.

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This is largely an experiment to explore a cube environment without color, and how dynamic a draft experience can be created without color. The intention is to create push synergistic decks as much as possible, including aggro, midrange, and control strategies as well as themes including zombies and vampires.

The color restriction is a way to create a 'colorless' environment without any rules changes. Black was chosen because it can clearly support a range of speeds and types of interaction, but any color could have worked. Within this restriction I've taken the opportunity to explore mono black themes. Removal is powerful and plentiful, graveyards matter, and everything is a resource. The lack of artifact removal and counter spells is not format warping, but it is noticeable.

Design

The goal of the list is to create diverse gameplay while leaning into the color black, but not necessarily recreate the color pie. Notably counterspells and artifact removal are missing. Dash Hopes and Gate to Phyrexia are odd breaks to the color pie and not included.

Digging 5 times deeper into a color than in a normal cube of the same size trying to optimize power means the average power is considerably lower than the powerful cards of all 5 colors. A few iconic cards have been excluded for being wide outliers including Phyrexian Obliterator and Grave Titan.

While not the focus of the Cube, a handful of cards that play meaningfully differently have been included. Dark Betrayal and Specter's Shriek, among a few others, are made extremely powerful. Including them is more of a novelty, but it is fun to have a few cards that play totally different when the context is changed so drastically.

Coloress, artifact, and hybrid cards are allowed since they don't break from the goal of removing colors from the resource system.

Postmortem

I had this Cube in paper for about two years in 2020-2022. It's since been taken apart and wont be updated.

Overall, I think of the Cube as a mixed success. I think the answer to the question, can Magic be fun without the color pie, was a pretty clear yes. The draft and gameplay 'worked' and was overall pretty fun. But it was also clear this list didn't push things quite far enough. Aggro still strugged to be viable, or at least appealing to the local group, so the overall gameplay did fall into favoring slower, value oriented cards and strategies.