Table of Contents

1. Overview and Goals
2. Archetypes
3. Other Information

Overview

The goal of this cube is to provide a drafting experience that achieves the following outcomes:

• It should be fun to draft and fun to play.
• Someone who is experienced with retail limited but has not drafted a cube before should be able to draft a competitive deck.
• Every deck should care about the board. Combos are fine, but they should be disruptable without needing stack interaction.
• The combat step should (generally) matter. It's OK for there to be games that are individual exceptions, but decks should either win thanks to a lot of combat damage in a good percentage of games; or, if they are a combo deck, their average combo speed should be slower than a "fair deck" if the fair deck is uninteracted with (e.g. games where one deck does nothing all game and then suddenly combos off should be rare).
• Individual cards are powerful, but not completely broken on their own (avoid fast mana, power, hyper-efficient tutors, and otherwise warping cards), and should avoid extreme outliers (the vast majority of pack 1 pick 1s should have at least 3 "good" choices).
• A "Johnny" should still be able to draft a deck they enjoy (as long as it's open).
• The gameplay should lend itself to memorable moments and stories.
• People should be able to draft decks that I as the cube designer did not anticipate (and that are capable of winning games).
• Assuming it's open, it should be possible to build a successful deck that is any combination of 1, 2, or 3 colors. It should also be possible to draft a successful 4 or 5 color deck, but only if you take fixing more highly than the rest of the pod.
• Aggro, Combo, Midrange, and Control can all be built.
• Players should get the opportunity to play with cards they might not get to play with very often, or in a context they don't usually get to see that card in (for example, someone who mainly plays commander wouldn't normally get to play with Recurring Nightmare).
• Where cards with a very high ceiling are included, they should be kept to a "fair" power level (e.g. Tinker is in the cube, but there is no Blightsteel Colossus, so most casts of tinker will be in "fair" applications).

Archetypes

This is not an exhaustive list of archetypes, but instead lists some of the most visible archetypes. It's entirely possible to build a deck in the given color(s) that does not match the archetype described below as well, these are just some decks that are intended to (and historically have) come together consistently if they are open.

Mono Aggro

Disrupt your opponent's game plan enough for them to be unable to fend off your armies.

Based Artifacts

Power out huge haymakers ahead of the curve, or bury your opponent in swarms of cheap artifact creatures.

Tempo

Use counterspells and other disruption to force 1 or 2 high quality threats through.

Stubborn Aggro

Quickly kill your slower opponents with a set of aggressive creatures, coupled with enough recursion to out-grind other aggro decks.

Based Reanimator

Put huge threats in the graveyard and reanimate them way ahead of the curve.

Mono Aggro

Flood the board with efficient threats, and use burn spells to either clear the way or for a last bit of extra reach.

Welder

Often coupled with , cheat out a massive artifact way ahead of normal.

Mono Ramp

Use mana dorks to ramp up to large threats.

Blink

Draft creatures with good enter-the-battlefield effects and couple them with ways of repeating them for value.

Saboteurs

Use 's natural evasion and 's removal to push through creatures to get tons of on-hit value.

Disruptive Aggro

Combine hand attack and removal with efficient, resilient haymakers to quickly kill your opponents.

Monsters

Crush your opponents with undercosted monsters, potentially after ramping them out a few turns early.

Creature Combo

Attack your opponent with a midrange deck that can pivot into an infinite combo once they let their shields down.

Aristocrats

Make combat and removal miserable for your opponents by drafting a deck that wants your creatures to die.

Spells

Couple powerful and versatile instants and sorceries with cards that reward you for casting them.

Twin

Foil your opponent's plans while digging for your combo.

Graveyard Matters

Fill up your graveyard quickly and then effectively use it as a second hand.

Go Wide

Overwhelm your opponent with "armies in a can", using anthems as force multipliers.

Growth Spiral

Use value creatures to get ahead on cards and mana and leverage the extra land drops for value.

Other Information Draft Matters Cards

There are currently 2 cards in the cube that modify the actual act of drafting:

It makes sense to pay particular attention to Lore Seeker for two reasons:

• It presents issues to drafting in that it's harder to correct issues where packs are picked in the wrong order.
• The cube cares about certain 2-card comboes + synergies a lot, and it can be frustrating to pick one half and have the other buried in the last extra pack if that pack also happens to contain the Lore Seeker. You can prevent this from happening by ensuring that the Lore Seeker is not in that last pack.

Double-Faced Cards

I know it can be difficult to draft a cube with double faced cards in it and not know what the backside does. If you'd like to brush up on all the DFCs ahead of time (or use this as a handy reference) - they are: