Last Update: Modern Horizons 3

This is a "pauper" cube with 540 singleton cards. Even thou it can suport up to 12-players, the choice for 540 is mostly to bring more replayability inside a 8-players playgroup. The paper version of this cube use only cards in the Portuguese language. Sadly, it means that no cards printed after MH3 will be added to it due to WotC decision to stop printing cards in Portuguese.

It's possible to notice by looking at the list that it avoids forcing players into specific archetypes. There is, of course, some signpost cards (ex.: Ghostly Flicker, Kiln Fiend), but it was designed to make the draft part of the experience more enjoyable, reducing the experience of getting a pivotal card and feeling forced to pick every other card to suport that strategy, creating some kind of "tunnel vision". For this reason there will be no explicity archetype guide in this part, but bear in mind that ever color or color combination can be built either in a more aggressive or controlish side of the spectrum. With that said, there is some combo elements, just to add that little "razzle dazzle" to the list.

Even thou the cube only uses cards with Common versions, it doesn't mean that it uses the Pauper Ban List. The choice for adding "banned" cards from this format was deliberate, and justified by the fact that those cards loses a lot of its "brokeness" in a non constructed environment.

About the way to construct the booster packs to draft, this cube has the easiest possible way! Just shuffle everything up, pick 15 random cards per pack, makes 3 of each per player and draft on! For smaller pods you can also choose to make 5 9-cards boosters per player, wich also works fine.

Well, if reach this point then you are either curious about more details of this cube or just bored and have nothing more to do. Anyway, I'll take this place to comment about the chosen name. In portuguese the term "Vacas Magras" means "Lean Cows", and is a reference to the start of Magic in our playgroud. At the time (around 2002) we used to play only with the cheap commons that we could put our hands on. Long years have passed, we've migrated into Legacy, but we fondly kept the memory of the decks and cards played in "The age of the Lean Cows". And there is it, the choice of only commons and the reason for the name.

Notable Omissions:

• Monarch and Initiative: Avoided due the "snowball effect" that those mechanics tends to create in a game, where seeing a opponent starts the Monarchy or the Initiative, even when you are just a little behind, almost means that you've lost that game.

• Double-Faced Cards: Even thou there are some great DFCs that could nicely fit this cube, the decision to keep them out was made with the intent to keep the draft portion simple. This cube was created for paper mainly, and DFCs usually brings a little bit of logistical demands in this case.

• Tribal Sinergies: For the most part, tribal and "type matters" cards was kept out from the cube with the intent to avoid the before mentioned "tunnel vision" effect in the draft portion.

• Continuous Hexproof, Shroud or Protection: Not included due to the "feels bad" potential that a almost uninteractive permanent usually generates. One shot effects or the ones that ends at the end of turn are still in.

• Morph, Disguise and Foretell: Even thou these kind of hidden cards can be really fun it falls short in a cube enviroment. Since the numbers of these effects tend to be low it gets easy to deduce what are the card in question, reducing the fun element of it.

• Pestilence: Not included due to power level issues.

• Sprout Swarm, Capsize, Evincar's Justice: Those cards are delightfull to play with, but miserable to play against. Besides having power level issues, these cards share the Buyback mechanic, wich not only is hard to interact, also leads to repetitive gameplay.