Art by Svetlin Velinov- Overview
- Duplicates
- Archetypes
- Utility Land Draft - 45
- Booster Sizes for fewer players
- Color-coded Stickers
"Limited-style gameplay, constructed synergy, legacy power."
This is a synergy cube with legacy format legality (since 2008!) with no fast mana (Sol Ring, Moxen; Chrome Mox, Mox Diamond included, Black Lotus), no absurd card advantage (Library of Alexandria, Ancestral Recall), no insanely powerful cards like Time Walk.
Also, there will be no non-interactive cards (True-Name Nemesis, Jace, Memory Adept or Milling as a core strategy) and limit the color-hosing (anything with Protection from <color> will be fully vetted). No essentiall auto-win cards that require a "removal check", like Kalonian Hydra.
Combos require some work to be assembled (Reanimator, Welder, Tinker). Cheat-into-play strategies are kept in strict check; no cheat-into-play cards (Oath of Druids, Through the Breach, Sneak Attack, Eureka, Natural Order, Show and Tell), and there are no "free" cards either (Daze, Force of Will, Snuff Out), so mana is important.
No signets or talismans, but there are plenty of 2-cmc mana rocks to make up for it. I feel signets make the cube too multi-colored, I'm trying to promote 2-color decks, with the occasional 3-color if the drafter prioritizes mana fixing. Life gain is kept to a minimum as it helps the aggro decks. Each color pair contains multiple archetypes, so decks usually consist of combining some factors of one with the other, but astute drafters who read the lanes are rewarded (synergy!).
There are no planeswalkers limits, but I do watch their numbers. I do believe there is a point where there are too much of them. With the few I do run, I like to have a variety of them to hit either a common macro-theater (aggro Elspeth, Knight-Errant, midrange Garruk Wildspeaker, control Jace, the Mind Sculptor) or act as a build-around (Daretti, Scrap Savant, Saheeli, Sublime Artificer etc). Game play has significantly increased with the lower amount of planeswalkers in the cube (less than 5%).
No proxies, no foil cards, no foreign cards, and no un-sets. Supplemental sets can be included (like conspiracy and commander) as long as there aren't any major rule changes (no monarch cards or draft-matters cards). Most vintage level power cards aren't included either (Balance, Treachery, Umezawa's Jitte, Skullclamp). The Swords aren't included either because of the protections. No tutors either (Demonic Tutor, Vampiric Tutor, Enlightened Tutor), except some in green to promote a toolbox style deck (Green Sun's Zenith, Birthing Pod, Once Upon a Time), and one in blue (Mystical Tutor) for spell-based archetype decks. Also there are no companions because despite the power-level and rule change, I would just like to avoid that mess altogether.
This cube promotes interactivity with deep strategic decisions. It contains synergistic and powerful cards meant to be drafted in a limited environment. Decisions during the draft is as important as decisions during game play. This cube has long moved away from the max-power traditional cube paradigm and a great effort has been made to reduce the oppressive, repetitive, or game-warping cards. There should always be a way to outplay your opponent, so there are few-to-none of the hard-to-deal-with cards (indestructible, hexproof, shroud, undying, persist; not that there is anything wrong with these inherently). There are plenty of avenues for the Timmy, Johnny, and Spike player, albeit all decks still fall within the more traditional deck-building trappings (this is not a purely Johnny-cube).
Mainly, this cube provides a way of showing off a creative draft deck or a highly efficient draft deck. I want high-variance in the draft decks, but low-variance gameplay with multiple branching decision trees.
There are signpost cards for most archetypes in the guilds. The cube is mostly singleton except for the double Fetchlands, double enemy Shocklands, and triple Wastelands in the Utility Land Draft.
The cards below are drafted using a voucher system, courtesy of user @Shamim. All those cards benefit the decks they are played in by having more copies in the deck without becoming oppressive, thus defining deck archetypes themselves. The voucher is only used to provide a second copy of a card, so you will need to draft both the card and the voucher. There can be up to 4 copies of the voucher in the draft.
Roughly, as of this writing, the archetypes:
: Blink, Control
: Reanimator, Control, Tempo, Tinker, Living Death
: Artifact Sacrifice, Stax, Artifact Control
: Ramp, Lands-Matter, Wildfire, Midrange
: Humans, +1/+1 Counters-matter, Pod, Coco, Lands-matter, Landfall
: Human Aggro, Control, Aristocrats, Stax, Death and Taxes
: Graveyard-Matters, Reanimator, Midrange, Control
: Self-Mill, Ramp, Tempo
: Spells-Matter, Counter Burn, UR artifacts, Wildfire decks
: Tokens, Aggro, Artifact Aggro, Tax and Burn
The Utility Lands are drafted rotisserie style, 4 picks per player. So in a 6-player draft, 24 cards are chosen, and in an 8-player, 32 cards are selected.
The main design goal of the Utility Land Draft is to provide archetypes with lands to strengthen their deck. The ULD is not to be used for fixing as those lands need to be drafted with the rest of the cube (I love that tension). Lands are arguably the most important part of Magic: The Gathering and it's a shame that most drafting environments the lands are not a significant factor. I get it, there are other, larger, design considerations for each retail set, but cube is not such a place. Here, with the ULD, we can celebrate all the wonderful land and associated synergies within the context of draftable archetypes, all without diluting the cube draft pool.
Mono-coloredBooster sizes for fewer players:
To mitigate archetype dilution and keep them roughly with the same power with fewer than 8 players, the booster setup depends on number of players:
8 players: 3 packs of 15 cards (360 used, 45 picks, 360 impressions, 276 readings)
7 players: 3 packs of 16 cards (336 used, 48 picks, 408 impressions, 273 readings)
6 players: 4 packs of 13 cards (312 used, 52 picks, 364 impressions, 252 readings)
6 players: 4 packs of 12 cards (288 used, 48 picks, 312 impressions, 228 readings)
5 players: 5 packs of 11 cards (275 used, 55 picks, 330 impressions, 225 readings)
4 players: 6 packs of 9 cards (216 used, 54 picks, 180 impressions, )
- "Used" is the number of cards from the cube included in the draft.
- "Picks" is the number of cards picked by each player.
- "Impressions" is the number of cards seen by each player, counting repetitions.
- "Readings" is the number of cards seen by each player, excluding repetitions.
Color-coded Stickers
Yellow - Utility Land Draft
Purple - Original Copy (can be duplicated with a voucher)
Orange - Duplicate Copy of a card