Drafts like John Locke (tabula rasa). Games like Thomas Hobbes (nasty, brutish, and short).

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Cube Goals

This is a powerful Eternal cube meant as a on-ramp for my city's highly invested Magic players, whom I've often found to be hesitant to draft outside their established heuristics (if they draft at all!).

I therefore emphasize well-known cards with deep Constructed pedigrees. I include many duplicate effects (distinguished by "art singleton") to promote instant familiarity:

I try to exclude cards with campy aesthetics, blatant power creep, or inelegant multiplayer templating.

The gameplay itself is characterized by powerful, low-curve exchanges of resources. Decks are fundamentally combat-centric, midrange (i.e. both pro- and re-active), and multicolor. The metagame is like a combo-light Timeless format. Combined with my card-choice preferences, I might describe The Ship of Theseus as "Constructed-style gameplay -- but less ugly."

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Check out this cube on Lucky Paper Radio and the Riptide Lab podcast, or read my long-form blog updates and game design theory on Riptide Lab fora.

PEACE, LOVE, CUBE