The Snowy Adventure Cube
(270 Card Cube)
Blog Posts (20+)
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So I'm changing things up a little bit with Wilds of Eldraine. Firstly, I'm culling some of the mechanics I didn't care for from the OG cube. I removed landfall from Gruul, which now lands squarely in the "Color pair meant for splashing" category. I'll do a few updates to the main list for what the color archetypes have changed to once I'm done with all the changes for WOE but a few notable pivots here:
I think there's simply too much fixing (even for a wedge cube) given the size of the cube. There are now NO fixing lands in the allied color pairs, (hopefully) pushing people into an enemy pair with a splash. I have also replaced the fixing lands in the enemy colors with the new Man Lands from WOE as they're more flavorful. The artifacts added indicate (correctly) that I'm going to focus more on food and value-based artifacts. I'm a little bit worried about grindy gum-up-the-board games, but we'll see how it pans out.
Also I cut den of the bugbear for terramorphic so, sorry red.

So a lot has changed since I last updated this cube, but I wanted to come back to it for two reasons:

  1. It is my favorite and probably most intentional cube
  2. With Wilds of Eldraine releasing later in the week (as of writing), I thought I'd add some rad new cards

That being said, the overview feels a little... outdated. I'm going to be reworking the overview, the scale of the unfinished parts of this cube (re: the Archenemy and board game-y parts of this cube). With that in mind I am pasting the original Overview as it stood for a year and a half here so I may refer back to it, and so that others can see where we started:

"This is an Aesthetic Wedge Cube built around a few key ideas: Snow Lands, Adventure, and sheer wonder. This cube is meant to be played with all snow basics, but can otherwise be drafted like any other cube (albeit with a 6-player maximum). This is however, not quite the intended experience, but I'll get more into that in a moment.

The Mono colors loosely follow the archetypes as follows:
White - Go Wide
Blue - Tempo
Black - Sacrifice
Red - Burn
Green - Ramp

From these humble beginning spawn the following Wedge Archetypes:
Abzan - Adventure/Venture
Jeskai - Enchantments/Artifacts Matter
Sultai - Snow Permanents
Mardu - Knights/Equipment
Temur - Landfall

There is one slight change to the functionality of the cube, or at least, there is one planned. I plan to make three or four custom dungeons for the "Venture Into the Dungeon" mechanic in this cube. These dungeons are not made yet, but I will link them here when they are done.

Now if you've gotten this far and are interested in something a little different, while drafting this cube normally is perfectly acceptable, there is another way: this cube is additionally designed to support Archenemy in a somewhat unique way, and this is intended to be done with 4 players.

With 4 players, everyone drafts the cube, but one player is pre-selected as the archenemy. That player, rather than drafting a deck, drafts a "Reward Deck". The goal for the archenemy in this phase of the game is to select cards that they think will be beneficial to the other players in the future, and reduce the power level of the other players' decks, understanding that any cards they take now will be used as rewards for future success.

In addition to those reward cards, the remaining packs (there should be 6) can be individually rotisserie drafted by the three allied players as a reward for defeating a strong enemy. Finally, there will be a "Group hug" rewards deck, that can be given for defeating enemies, providing a further variety for players to access cards they otherwise wouldn't to assist their fellow players.

That Group Hug Rewards Deck in moxfield: (To be linked here when it's done)

The Archenemy format for this cube has a few special rules, to keep things balanced, and they are as follows:

The Archenemy starts at 40 Life. Every other player starts at 20 Life.
The Archenemy has a starting board state. This is defined by the specific Archenemy deck (in the primer), but it essentially means that the Archenemy will start with a number of permanents in play (as defined in the Sideboard in Moxfield).
The Archenemy has a "Quest" face card. This is usually a creature, but can be a land, artifact, or multiple cards, depending on the specifics of the Archenemy Deck (as defined in the primer on Moxfield). These exist in the Command Zone, and may be cast by the Archenemy Player with normal casting rules.
The Archenemy has a Scheme deck made of 20 cards (as defined in the "Considering" category in Moxfield). The Archenemy reveals one card from their scheme deck immediately after their precombat main phase. They may cast that card for free and ignore timing rules. If they don't or the card would be put in the graveyard, exile it instead.
Like normal Archenemy, the players other than the archenemy are considered a "team" by the rules of magic, and take their turns as one, attacking, drawing, and playing at the same time (see rule 805 for reference).
The Archenemy Quest decks are Organized into three categories: Side Quests, Main Quests, and Grand Quests. These are vague indications of difficulty, but also a form of allied player agency. After the draft, the archenemy player selects three Side Quests, two Main Quests, and one Grand Quest. The allied players choose one, and face that challenge or enemy. If that Quest is completed (The allied players win) then rewards are given by the archenemy to the allied players according to the primer of that deck on moxfield, and the archenemy selects one or two more quests from any difficulty (either randomly or deliberately) to present to the players.

The pre-made Archenemy decks (Quests) in Moxfield are linked here:
Side Quests:

White:
Blue: https://www.moxfield.com/decks/Jr4mDN5RtEWnwP0xPu9Flw
Black:
Red:
Green:
Main Quests:

Grand Quests:"

I am going to modify this in the coming days/weeks, given I have some free time.

This update is a bit dicey but we'll see how it goes. With 5 months of distance, I was able to let go of some pet cards like Price of Progress and Temur sabretooth in favor of more flavorful adventure and equipment cards, which take up nearly all of the cards added.

I'm going to modify the overview to reflect some changes and I think my next task is to add some group hug cards as "rewards". As stated before, as I move towards an archenemy, legacy draft (boardgame style) format, things are likely to become slightly less "normal Draft"-y.

These are tide-me-over cuts for the much larger changes yet to come, but I thought it wise to remove the art of Seb McKinnon from my cube, as I do with Noah Bradley and Terese Nielsen.

I plan to add more Adventure cards from Baldur's gate, and see what will come of that.

It has been several months since I last updated this cube. According to Cube Cobra, It has been five. At last I return to this project I lovingly half finished, and I discover that, all things considered, I'm very happy with this cube. However, with the release of New Capenna and Commander Legends: Baldur's Gate, a collection of staples I'd like to at least look at have arisen. Additionally, I'm considering making this cube a legacy draft (in the board game sense); with the idea being "Players going on missions and completing quests". This might include having procedural archenemy decks that I update the cube with, or special reward cards for completing quests.

First and foremost, I think I want to make this cube a little more interesting with new cards and maybe up it to 300 cards? Not sure. additionally, I'd like to make the archetypes a bit nicer and better-defined.

Replaced some extra (financially) expensive fixing with cheaper mono-color cards that were cut from the cube in previous updates. I was deciding between the triomes and the enemy horizon lands, and I decided the horizon lands because they don't really fit the visual theme, and moreover, push players into multicolor soup, because I think there's too much fixing currently.

Okay I had some trouble cutting white because so many of these cards are my favorites but I managed. I think the cube will be better as a 6-player draft experience, and will be tighter without the extra 90 cards that clearly weren't super hard to cut.

I didn't even really have to sacrifice anything neat to keep the cube a 270 instead of a 360.

Cutting blue down proved that the blue was already in a pretty good spot, just needed some errant hedron crabs removed for balance purposes. The mill strategy is out and so are a few powerhouses like Brazen Borrower.

Cutting a few of the errant black themes with this round, I'm removing a lot of the graveyard/recursion elements, because I think they take away from the rest of the cube.

So with that in mind, Glowspore Shaman is out and Blex lives once more.

Red was much easier than green. I went a little crazy on both ends with red, the powerful's Balefire Dragon and the weak is Ingot Chewer. I mean really.

I Cut about 65% Strong Stuff 35% Boring stuff to keep the cube fun.

Only 45 cards left to cut!

Next on my list of cuts are 15 Green cards. I Don't honestly think green is much of a problem color, so I cut a few outliers in power level (Ulvenwald Hydra, Looking at you) in order to balance things out. Then I took a look at some of the things I think green is currently overstepping to try and do, namely, the weird saproling thing, and a few duplicates in effects.

This brings the total down to 329, and a reminder that my goal is a 6-player 270 count cube.

Okay, so I'm cutting this down in chunks. I'm starting with the artifacts, Multicolor cards, and fixing that don't make the cut.

The Snow duals, while fetchable, are too much fixing for this cube, and I like the other lands aesthetically more.

The 3-color cards are out on account of being unpickable in draft and the artifact Runed Servitor is out, as it outclasses an existing, more type-enforcing card in Jousting Dummy, and Blackblade Reforged is too expensive to really see play.

Okay so this is the first of a series of updates in an effort to make this cube more playable. Early goldfishing indicated that the gulf between the high and low power cards was too great.

So the first thing I'm doing to rectify this is adding a new mechanic? Well not exactly. I plan to make custom dungeons for this cube that will hopefully push the venture mechanic a little more, and then in my next update, I'm probably going to downsize to a 270 card 6 player cube and see if I can get that to be more viable.

This Adventure cube will undergo countless updates, but at the very least it is, for the time being, draftable.

I was definitely stretching in red and black for this last batch of cards and there are some that I genuinely don't think hit the mark on either form or function, and were added because they were in the right power level and filled card slots. We'll see how this all pans out.

Also Jeskai is the only trio to not get a top end bomb in 3 colors. We'll see if it's needed but there wasn't anything that super fit so I thought it best to just leave it out for now and come back and assess later.

If I don't sound optimistic, it's because I'm worried about the functionailty of this cube, but who knows? Maybe it's brilliant already.

Mainboard Changelist+0, -1

Oops. Added one too many.

Cutting Prophetic Prism because who'd take it over Astrolabe anyway?

Still searching for essentially cards to fill for the next 60 that fit the theme.

I'm starting to worry about Abzan and jeskai as they have loose themes that aren't /super/ supported beyond the cards I added early.

There might also be officially too much equipment in this cube. Paladin's Shield is my first cut.

Added some more cards of every color, particularly adding to red and colorless.

Ruin Grinder, Faithless Salvaging, and Blessed respite might all be too weak to see play, but I like the cards so in they go for now. We'll see.

I added Icehide Golem back in. If it's a problem or if whims declare it, I'll take it out later, but for now, because of the golem (purely visual) subtheme in colorless, he's here to stay. I also think it's a good addition to snow decks as well as aggressive red, white, and probably jeskai shells, so it's definitely on the verge of too good, but hey, so is Arcum's Astrolabe.

Added a variety of cards, some of which, like Vendilion Clique and Sedgemoor Witch, will be cards to watch later on. This is mostly to fill in the cube at this point, so I'm digging deep for the right cards for the cube.

Added the Castles and a den of the bugbear because castle embereth sucks (it's on the chopping block).

This also evens it to 40 lands in the cube which might be officially too many, but I'm not sure.

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