Milk Bar
(360 Card Cube)
Art by IzzyArt by Izzy
360 Card Cube3 followers
Designed by KingDragonite
Owned
$277
Buy
$116
Purchase
Mana Pool$214.40

This is my first cube design. I've built it to reflect the type of Magic that I most enjoy, and as such it's built with the following principles:

  • This is a 'bar cube.' That means no tokens, no counters, and no double-faced cards.
  • There are no green cards in here. There was originally to be no white cards, but I found it overly difficult to flesh out green and its pairs identity under the bar cube restrictions.
  • Card availability is a must, not a premium. A well-drafted deck should see the cards it wants to see in almost every game. To this end, there's a lot of cards that cantrip on cast or ETB, or that have Cycling.
  • I've designed to a medium power level, by cube standards. Definitely more powerful than a Standard-legal draft set, but at or around what you'd get in a Masters pack. There are many more commons than there are uncommons, and many more uncommons than rares.
  • There's enough fixing for the 3-color decks to thrive, given that lands are taken highly enough. There should be one dual land per pack, on average.

The color pairs are built around these archetypes:

wu Artifacts uw

Take as many artifacts as you can, then manufacture a big creature or recur your trinkets.
ub Control/Reanimator bu
Dump a big creature and fish it out at a discount, or stop your opponent's threats, or both!
br Madness br
Looting and rummaging is great, but what if you could play those discarded cards, too?
wb Aristocrats bw
Play some creatures that generate value, and use them to bleed your opponent dry.
ur Prowess ru
Bring out a couple creatures early, then cast a flurry of spells to make them unstoppable.
rw Equipment Aggro wr
Hit hard, hit fast, and just when they think they've stabilized, suit up and go in for the final blow.

A bit of a refresh, adding some cards from the new sets & older cards alike to hopefully rebalance some themes and make play more interesting.

  • The scry 1 you get with the Temples isn't that compelling here, and having another cycle of untapped duals in the checklands should make splashing or multicolor decks better.
  • The foretell cards are all knowledge checks for effects that are fairly replaceable. Their replacements have some more play to them and are more varied effects.
  • Floodwaters & Edgar's Awakening for Baral's Expertise & Languish: Yeah, it turns out having a few board wipes makes overzealous play less of a factor. I liked how Cleansing Nova and Languish played in the Simple Cube, but wanted a blue wipe as well (I think bouncing 3 should function as that without tokens).
  • The body you get on Syr Alin and Valiant Changeling should be more appealing for the white decks than the cards they're replacing.
  • Forsake the Worldly and Knife are pretty narrow even when they should be good. I like the scaling effect the Marchs have, so I'm putting in a couple.
  • I've never really liked how Maul of the Skyclaves makes every creature into a game-ending threat, and the first strike is a big part of that. Celestial Armor doesn't have that, and the protection effect is nice on top.
  • Augury Owl, Faerie Seer, and Cunning Survivor are all pretty mediocre. Their replacements should all be better in terms of card selection and/or defensive ability.
  • Wall of Frost is a brick wall, but not much else, and I've never liked it much. Rune-Sealed Wall is an artifact, and gets you cards in the yard if you want that.
  • In the (admittedly small) sample size of drafts of this cube, the UR decks have performed the best, and Stormwing Entity is easily one of the best cards in that deck. I really like Micromancer so it gets the spot instead.
  • Basilica Screecher is... really slow. And Bloodghast is extremely cheap thanks to its reprint, so now seems a good time to get it in.
  • Bushmeat Poacher and Gravelighter's effects are more flexible than what they're replacing, and I like what they can bring.
  • I don't want the Orzhov decks to just be as many Blood Artist effects as possible. Falkenrath Noble is the weakest of the bunch, so it's getting taken out for Demon of Catastrophes as another thing to do with small value creatures.
  • Woebearer is another extremely slow card. Rankle's Prank has a ton of flexibility for any deck, so it should be a cool include.
  • I just haven't seen people play Sphinx's Revelation. Voyage Home is better rate once you have two artifacts, and gets even better beyond that point.
  • Kellan, the Fae-Blooded should be a good bridge between RW go-wide and RW equips, and hopefully strong but not OP in general.
  • Night Market is yet another land with cycling so it gets in on that. (please finish the bikeland cycle WotC)
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