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Welcome to the Jank Diver Unrestricted Cube! Jank Diver Gaming is a Discord community focused on drafting our Peasant and Unrestricted Historic cubes for Arena play, allowing us to cube with a growing group of friends from all over the Americas and Europe. Our talented admins maintain a central data sheet that imports deck lists, win rates, pick orders and more, providing analysis of colors, color combinations and even individual cards. This “dive” into the draft and play data provides a great deal of insight into performance and balance, leading to an ever-evolving environment that takes both design goals AND volumes of hard data into account. Our Discord community and Historic cube podcast, The Deep Dive, can be found here:

The Unrestricted Cube is a 360 card cube designed to provide the maximum power that the Historic card pool can provide. Exceptions are made for cards that have a negative impact on the play experience (looking at you Oko, Thief of Crowns) but by-and-large design is focused on providing the strongest cards and archetypes available. There are some major differences relative to a standard-issue Legacy cube. This environment is devoid of combo, densities of artifact ramp and degenerate single-card archetypes. The result is a more nuts-and-bolts approach to Magic in line with the last 5 years of design.

The lack of combo leads to a slower environment, which allows a variety of midrange archetypes to flourish that are not normally fast or controlling enough to succeed in Legacy cube. We see this as a feature rather than a bug, expanding the diversity of truly viable archetypes and reigning in the dominant power of blue. If you end up in the GW seat in a draft, you are not saddled with the knowledge that you’re piloting an inherently inferior product. Midrange decks occupy the portion of the ecosystem usually inhabited by combo, with sufficient strategic variety among them to offer a range of interesting options.

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This section explores the archetypes and themes available by color. Archetypes and themes listed in a color (i.e. white aggro) can, and often will, go into additional colors. The descriptions provided here assume that the archetype or theme in question forms the core of your deck. Any of these cores can benefit from including other colors for additional utility but the discussion is focused on the flavor/direction of the base color. Multicolor themes spread evenly across 2 or more colors are discussed after base-color archetypes.

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White aggro (affectionately known as white weenie) is a creature based aggro deck that applies early pressure followed by "pump" effects, mana disruption, and rock-solid 4-drops. White also provides planeswalkers that dodge board wipes, indestructible creatures and removal for any permanent type. The deck is slightly slower than Red Deck Wins and has less “reach” (ability to finish the opponent after they have set up a defense) but is more resilient and puts more bodies on board.

White midrange decks play value creatures, universal removal and highly efficient bombs. White is a premier creature color and the best top end cards for the white weenie deck double as mid-curve threats for midrange decks. White midrange cards pair well with interaction from the Grixis spectrum and additional beaters in green.

Blue is the only color that fully supports a controlling strategy but the color lacks interaction on its own. White offers efficient mass removal, universal single-target interaction and powerful finishers to the mix.

White offers a range of effects that create multiple bodies and wide boards. The color natively offers ways to capitalize on this with anthem effects and +1/+1 counter distribution. Other colors can leverage of white's "army in a can" theme, especially black sacrifice and green beat-down decks.

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Blue control decks win games by answering all of their opponent’s threats before resolving something that inevitably wins the game. It accomplishes this task with counterspells and card draw, running the opponent out of cards before taking control of the game. It is generally important for blue control decks to add a secondary color for board clearing effects, removal, non-blue disruption and game-enders.

“Tempo” is a term that is difficult to define, but as the saying goes: “I know it when I see it”. We define it as blue-based proactive decks that that consistently add presence to the board while simultaneously disrupting the opponent. A tempo classic is the Man-o-War style of creature that enters the battlefield and bounces an opponent’s creature back to their hand. This increases the size of your board with a 2/2 creature while removing a blocker on the opposing side. Tempo decks also like playing creatures that enter the battle at instant speed, as you can wait to see what your opponent does before deciding to counter their play or commit a threat to the board.

"Spells matter" refers to strategies generating incidental value by casting instant and sorcery spells. Blue is a natural fit for spells matter payoff cards due to the high volume of cheap interaction and cantrips native to the color. These cards perform well in most general blue decks and can become extremely potent when built around/maximized. The spells matter theme has applications in control and tempo decks alike. Crossing into red for cheap burn and additional payoffs forms the classic "izzet spells" deck.

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Black's unique aggro characteristics are recursive creatures, payoffs for creatures dying and cheap removal. The deck is generally the slowest of the aggro strategies but has the ability to "grind" opponents out of answers and persist into the late game. Black also has access to truly horrifying finishers at 3 and 4 mana that many decks will struggle to answer.

Black sacrifice is a distinct style of midrange deck centered around sacrificing disposable or recursive creatures for value. The core pieces fall into 3 categories: cards that sacrifice creatures, cards that produce sacrifice "fodder" and cards that generate value when creatures die. Assembling some combination of these pieces can produce powerful engines and combos that are leveraged to win the game.

Black is an extremely effective support color for controlling decks. Black's suite of single target removal, sweepers and hand disruption compensate well for blue's natural weaknesses. Black also brings a small selection of high-quality finishers for controlling and midrange strategies.

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Good ol’ Red Deck Wins. Red aggro is a cube stable and no environment is complete without it. This deck focuses on cheap, aggressive creatures followed by burn and the very best aggro finishers in Magic. Red aggro is slightly more creature-oriented in this environment relative to other cubes due to the lower availability of high damage, universal burn in Historic (i.e. Lightning Bolt). Red aggro is the fastest and most linear of the aggro decks.

Red functions well as a support color for decks needing cheap removal, fast late-game clocks, or both. Blue control decks will happily play large volumes of burn to keep the board clear of creatures, while green midrange decks can leverage the same cards to push damage and kill the opponent. Red also offers a small suite of high-quality finishers at 5 and 6 mana.

Red offers a number of cards that synergize well with large quantities of instants and sorceries. The color's extensive suite of cheap burn spells make these cards playable in the average red deck, with the potential to be extremely powerful when built around. Crossing into blue for more payoffs and cheap cantrips forms the classic "izzet spells" deck. The deck can also go into black for cheap interaction and Sedgemoor Witch.

While there are few actual Madness cards in the cube, red has a variety of cards that can be discarded for value or filtering. Literal payoffs are not present but there are a variety of powerful ways to generate virtual card advantage while advancing your board state. The theme can show up as a card advantage tool for hyper aggressive decks or as a way to grind in controlling/midrange decks. Conspiracy Theorist is the star of the show for this theme.

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Green ramp decks are midrange decks that heavily emphasize mana acceleration before transitioning into game-ending threats and powerful effects ahead of schedule. Ramp is firmly based in green and mana-producing creatures are premium cards for these decks. The Historic card pool lacks most 1-cmc dorks and acceleration begins on turn 2, with the exception of Llanowar Elves and Gilded Goose. Green ramp can easily splash into other colors for removal, card draw, planeswalkers and other desirable non-green effects due to the color's access to mana fixing.

Green midrange decks are characterized by powerful mid-sized creatures that kill your opponent if left unchecked, or generate tremendous value that overwhelms the opponent. These decks are less dependent on a critical density of mana-generating creatures than dedicated ramp decks, often playing a mix of "mana dorks" and early threats like Scavenging Ooze and Thorn Lieutenant. However, green midrange is still interested in playing mana accelerants, as a turn 2 mana creature followed by an efficient 4-drop threat is one of green’s stronger play patterns.

Green is not a primary aggro color and a heavily green deck will not support an aggressive plan. Green does have a number of tools that slot into aggressive and aggressive-leaning midrange decks, while retaining some utility for ramp strategies. A drafter in a primary aggressive color can touch green for powerful cards like Toski, Bearer of Secrets and Esika's Chariot if the color is open.

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Sacrifice decks are always based in black but the theme is supported across the Mardu spectrum. White provides token generation for sacrifice outlets, interaction and synergistic gold cards. Red sacrifice decks tend to skew more aggressive and provide burn and cheap, disposable attackers.

Red and blue have the highest density of instants and sorceries of any color combination. UR decks can capitalize on this density with cards that generate value when instants and sorceries are cast. The theme plays well in a tempo OR control deck as UR can support either of these archetypes with counters, burn and card draw. Either archetype can benefit from additional value generated simply by enacting its core game plan.

Modelled after Chris' pet Historic deck. The red "madness" package is enhanced by the inclusion of Dreadhorde Arcanist, a glut of 1 mana spells and associated payoffs. Kroxa benefits from the expenditure of tons of small spells while the Arcanist generates value from the yard. Cross-pollinates well with red's "spells matter" as well.

Blink is a theme that combines creatures featuring valuable enter-the-battlefield effects with cards that "blink" or "flicker" them cheaply to get repeated triggers. A small number of cards do this efficiently and slot well into Azorious tempo decks with value creatures like Man o' War, Angel of Invention and Charming Prince. The target creatures are good on their own but increase in value with the addition of a few blink cards.

Potent cards span all colors and drafting a variety of multicolor lands opens up the full spectrum of Magic's power. This deck is generally based in green and has a handful of payoff cards that stitch it all together. Field of the Dead rewards playing the many distinct lands required to make the strategy work. Golos, Tireless Pilgrim generates overwhelming value with access to every color and can enable itself by fetching The World Tree. Omnath, Locus of Creation enables combo-esque power when combined with effects that fetch multiple lands, which are already desirable in a deck with demanding mana-requirements. 5-color is a complex deck to draft but rewards success with some of the most broken interactions in the environment.

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We hope that you enjoyed this introduction to our environment. We draft Peasant every Sunday and Unrestricted every Wednesday, in addition to rotating Rotisserie and Winston drafts organized by our active community members. There’s always something to do or discuss at Jank Diver Gaming, so come see what we’re all about and start divin’!