Old Frame Cube

Cube ID
Art by Darrell RicheArt by Darrell Riche

460 Card Unpowered Vintage Cube

48 followers
Designed by ChampBlankmanRSSQR Code

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Owned
$4,820
Buy
$1,371

Nostalgia fuels me, and this cube is no exception.

I wanted to capture the feeling of Magic in the early 2000's and WotC decided that 2021 was the year to print dozens of cards in the old frame so I decided to finally build the cube I've been thinking about for a few years.

There's no power, no honorary power (looking at you, Sol Ring and LoA), and only a few combo options. It really leans in to the things that each of the colors used to do well.

Common decks that can exist include Enchantress, Rec/Sur, PandeBurst, Reanimator, White Aggro, Mono Red, Burn, UW Fliers, UW Control, Blue Control, Stompy, Worldgorger Combo, and RG Aggro, just to name a few.

Increased from 405 to 460 with the goal to begin to target underperforming or overperforming cards and have their replacements already exist. My eventual goal was to cut back down to 450 and stay there, but the more I look around at it the more I think being able to support 10 and not ever using the whole Cube is the kind of thing I want.

Now I'm just waiting for the next time WoTC decides that they are going to drop a bunch of cards into the format.

On May 1st 2023 the final proxy for this cube was removed.

A note about the "Premium" level of the cube and moving forward in that space:
Since the list now is proxy-free, the work shifts toward achieving the "Final Form (tm)". A large percentage of the cube is already there or mostly there, but there is still much work to be done.

My philosophy for bling is as follows, in order:

  1. Does the individual physical card have important sentimental value? - This supersedes all other forms of bling. There are three cards in the cube that currently meet this criterion. The Demonic Tutor came in a collection I bought from my dear friend Tim who signed and tatted it up for me upon its inclusion in the cube. He purchased the card in the early 2000s with credit he received for having an article published on Brainburst. The second and third are Skizzik and Reya Dawnbringer. These cards were two of the first rares I opened in my first "Expert Level" tournament pack when I decided I was "experienced" enough with Magic to make the jump to "Expert Level" products since I'd been playing for a few years already.

  2. Did I bling the card out before acquiring the most desirable version otherwise? Sometimes you get to bling out what's on-hand in a situation. Cards that fit this bill are the World Championship Birds of Paradise that I had with me when I met Philadelphia Eagles Center Jason Kelce. Meet a bird, get a Bird signed. Go, Birds! Also the World Championship Recurring Nightmare that is signed by the artist and by Brian Seldon, whose World Champion winning deck the card came from. Finally this category includes alters and signatures that are essentially unable to be replicated on a "more bling" version of the card.

  3. Original Artist Alters - Foil takes priority if available

  4. Original Artist Signatures - Foil takes priority if available

  5. Reprint Artist Alters - Foil takes priority if available

  6. Reprint Artist Signatures - Foil takes priority if available

  7. Community Alters

  8. Event or Community Signatures

  9. Original Art Foil

  10. Reprint Foil

  11. Black Border Original Art if not available in foil.

  12. White Border if not available in Black Border.

Misprints and miscuts have a home in there somewhere, too, but I take those on a case-by-case basis since there is so much variety.

With that philosophy outlined, my next goal is the removal of all non-bling World Championship and White Border cards from the cube. There are 21 white border and 12 Gold Border cards left as of this writing. Then the real bling fun begins.

This may be the biggest ever single change to the cube. It's been a year since the last time cards came in or out, and I drafted with a ton of new people in that time which gave me a lot of perspective on what was and wasn't working the way I had hoped it would.

Then Wizards released more cards in retro frame treatments, including Shock Lands. I've maintained for a long time that the ABUR duals are more powerful than I want, but something like the shocks wouldn't be. Time to test that theory. Some of the artifacts that got cut are in service of keeping the overall amount and difficulty of fixing somewhat similar. Still don't want it to be too easy. Sundering Titan comes in for the same reason.

Another set of removed cards come from cards with new keywords and no reminder text and cards that mention Planeswalkers. It was mentioned to me that having the word "Planeswalker" on a card doesn't feel era appropriate and I couldn't agree more.

The rest of the changes are very much on vibes. We'll see how many things stay in forever and how many get relegated to the sidelines.

Specific card notes I can provide if someone wants them.