Cloned from The Pockets Cube (Arena)

The Pockets Cube is an arena legal, 360(ish) card cube with the goal of creating a deeply synergistic environment where decks contain multiple ‘pockets’ of synergy. Drafters are encouraged to support multiple themes and sub-themes in their decks, leaning into each as much or as little as they want. You should be actively looking for niche 2 card interaction to outplay your opponent. As such, the cube’s archetypes flow from each colour to another without being restricted to 2 colour pairs.

(Some cards in the overview may no longer be the in the cube but the themes they show off still are here.)

Arifacts

Probably the loudest theme, artifacts spans all 5 colours but is centred in the Jeskai wedge. Affinity is supported through cards like Michiko's Reign of Truth, Rise and Shine and Steel Overseer. Affinity is restricted somewhat as the very nature is ‘anti-pocket’ – you’re looking to obtain as many artifacts as possible.

Other artifact pockets include sacrifice, supported from cards like the ones below.

Sacrifice is not just restricted to artifacts but also encompasses all permanent types, leading us to my favourite pocket: The Demonic Pact and (Friends) Pocket.

Demonic Pact

I’ve seen this card in many cubes where its often under supported however it seems perfect here. Other similar cards in the cube include Hatching Plans, The Princess Takes Flight and Treacherous Blessing. The main goal with these cards is to either sacrifice the enchantments or, in some cases, bounce them with cards like Kor Skyfisher and Johann's Stopgap – Stopgap actually does double duty being both a sac outlet and a bounce effect. There’s now plenty of ways to sac these types of permanents now thanks to WOE bringing Bargain. Often the best home for this deck is BW occasionally splashing U. You get easy access to cards like Doom Foretold and Spirit-Sister's Call to help grind out your opponent.

Madness and Graveyard Pockets

Situated primarily in the Grixis colours, madness has many excellent payoffs in Drake Haven, Archfiend of Ifnir and others. There is also a zombie sub theme that exists within the UB version of the pocket, supported through the 3 cards of Lazotep Chancellor, Cryptbreaker and Dying to Serve that bridge the pockets together. This allows players to build zombie decks with a madness pocket or vice versa.

With all these discard outlets, its very easy to include mechanics like flashback, unearth and other graveyard mechanics. As such, there’s plenty of ways to use your graveyard and in my opinion most decks should be utilising this pocket. Outside of discarding these types of cards, there’s plenty of self-mill to ‘draw’ into these cards.

Tokens

With recent sets designing more and more tokens, specifically artifact tokens, the cube can include a few cards for token payoffs. Cards like Rosie Cotton of South Lane are great in this cube and don’t require many changes to deck building. One of the most prevalent tokens is food, with the specific payoffs of Trail of Crumbs and Silversmote Ghoul to enable a niche sub theme.

Other Pockets

To end this section there’s a few more small pockets to go through. Is one of my favourite archetypes in cube, UG flash involving Wilderness Reclamation and Nightpack Ambusher. This archetype also has some cross synergy with the red madness cards as they can be cast at instant speed.

There’s one more artifact centric synergy I want to talk about. There’s plenty of equipment running around, whether that’s reconfigure creatures or equipment that make tokens on ETB like For Mirrodin! Makes it easy to include cards like Kellan, the Fae-Blooded for a nice pocket synergy in your RW artifact deck.

This isn’t an extensive list of all the pockets, there’s plenty more niche synergies and interactions!