An A(rche)typical Cube
Based on the cube by Simonot Timothee when I played it on MTGO. This build has evolved to prioritize interesting archetypes, many of which are unusual for the color combinations. I try to include unusual cards and try to encourage unusual gameplay.
House Rules
All basic lands are snow super-type.
Main Archetypes Overview
Aggro support is primarily in and with heavy tempo support in
Control support is mostly centered around and
Table of Contents:
- Aura Tempo
- Lifegain
- Control
- Enchantress
- Value Midrange
- Artifacts
- Tempo
- Aristocrats
- Dredge
- Go Wide
- Challenge Mode
Build up an early threat and beat down your opponent. Many white early drops get buffed by Bonds of Faith, which doubles as a removal spell. Use other cards like Curious Obsession, Unstable Mutation and Ensoul Artifact to make big evasive creatures. Blue provides a bunch of ways to protect your beaters. Enchantresses like Sram, senior edificer and Kor Spiritdancer help keep your hand full of tricks.
This archetype can skew aggressive or midrange depending on your choices. You can drop an early lifelinker and follow up with cheap payoffs. Wordmail is particularly aggressive in this archetype.
Auras and equipment can boost the lifelinker's power to meet the threshold of the better payoffs. Alternatively, passive life boosters such as Soul Warden and Daxos, Blessed by the Sun help you build up a board that benefits from later game threats such as Bola's Citadel and Aetherflux Reservoir. You can aim to combo with pieces such as Walking Ballista, Heliod, Sun-Crowned, Kitchen Finks or even use The Book of Exalted Deeds on Mutavault
Remove things, control the board, play a finisher. Red has a few treasure card that allow for splashing good cards from other colors. Refurbish and Trash for Treasure combined with some discard outlets allows you reanimate game enders. For extra fun, mill/discard Eldrazi Conscription or Overwhelming Splendor and reanimate them with Open the Vaults or Replenish.
Get loads of value from playing enchantments. Beat down quickly with cards that benefit from being buffed like Esper Sentinel or Den Protector and use Halvar, God of Battle or Nettlecyst as finishers. Alternatively, protect yourself with Sphere of Safety and Island Sanctuary and animate your enchantments with Opalescence and Starfield of Nyx. Or just remove everything they have with the turn-Parallax Wave-into-a-creature combo. If you can get your graveyard full of enchantments, reanimate Nylea's Colossus and other enchantments with Open the Vaults or Replenish and get a giant attacker.
Get cards and use and re-use them, mostly by bouncing them back to your hand with Vedalken Mastermind or Crystal Shard or by using ninjitsu. Reusing Clocknapper or Arcane Savant easily ends the game. Shriekmaw, Boneshredder and Ravenous Chupacabra become reusable removal while Faerie Seer, Watcher for Tomorrow, and Gonti, Lord of Luxury provide card advantage.
This can be an aggro build, growing small artifacts like Darksteel Axe, Strike it Rich, Hard Evidence or Pyrite Spellbomb with Ensoul Artifact or Skilled Animator or Rise and Shine or Resculpt. Animating artifacts is particularly good with vehicles like Smuggler's Copter or Silent Submersible. In slower builds you can use Hangarback Walker and Saheeli, Sublime Artificer to fill up your board, and then use Saheeli, the Gifted or Inspiring Statuary or splash for Tezzeret, Master of the Bridge to get big discounts on big spells. Get value card draw reusing artifacts with Goblin Welder, Goblin Engineer and Emry, Lurker of the Loch or reanimate a big artifact with Argivian Restoration and Daretti, Scrap Savant. Or just animate all your artifacts with Rise and Shine and beat down.
Tempo deck that aims to finish the game quickly. Many cards in blue that delay the opponent's plays, and many flash creatures in both colors to use your mana at the end of your opponent's turn. You can grow your creatures with some Auras to end the game even faster, and green provides some very big beaters to put pressure on the opponent.
Get some sacrifice outlets such as Mons's Goblin Waiters or Viscera Seer, get lots of tokens or recurring creatures like Bloodghast, Bloodsoaked Champion, and Gutterbones, and sacrifice them for value from cards like Blood Artist and Goblin Bombardment. With Mayhem Devil out, keep in mind that cards like Mons's Goblin Waiters and Greater Gargadon can possibly end the game by sacrificing all your creatures and lands - high risk play for high reward! Build up lots of mana with Ashnod's Altar and Pawn of Ulamog to play big threats or get a bunch of sacrificed creatures back with Agadeem's Awakening.
Fill up your graveyard and use it like its your hand. Cards like Commune with the Gods, Glacial Revelation, and Discerning Taste fill up your graveyard. Recurring creatures like bloodghast and scrapheap scrounger, along with flashbacking tokens with acorn harvest can help cast Scourge of Nel Toth or Dread Return. Life from the loam and worm harvest combine quite nicely. Deathrite Shaman and Corrupted Grafstone help splash into other colors, Wonder makes all your creatures fly and Uro, Titan of Nature's Wrath can be quite strong. Mill some more and you can win with Thassa's Oracle.
Make a very wide board full of tokens and prosper. Use for mana with Ashnod's Altar or Battle Hymn or Growing Rites of Itlimoc or Transmogrify them into giant threats like Emrakul, the Aeons Torn. Grow a Bloodspore Thrinax with them and make even bigger threats, or combo with Murderous Redcap and a sacrifice outlet like Goblin Bombardment (which is great with all these tokens). Or just grow them with You see a pair of goblins or buying back/storming haze of rage and swing at your opponent.
Buildarounds exist for those looking for a challenge. Build a super friends deck, or do amazing things with a 60 card Yorion deck, or figure out storm, among other challenges.