Peasant Cube with strong color pair archetypes and tribes, plus minor sub-themes.

Design Philosophy

I built this cube with the idea to shield my enjoyment of playing Magic: the Gathering from Hasbro's greed. I've been playing MtG since 1995 so I can appreciate the creativity of WotC designers and the special care they put to create great draft experiences, especially in recent years. However, sometimes the capitalistic urge to sell new product will interfere with those nobler goals.

Typical booster drafts will suffer because of variance among the packs. Overly powerful and hard-to-interact Rares and Mythics (aka bombs in draft parlance) tend to ruin the fun for at least the player on the receiving end, if not both.

Also, a tendency witnessed in recent years is breaking the color pie. It seems to be WotC's way to cater the needs of the Commander format which is increasingly popular. Somehow every color is expected to be able to deal with every possible threat. Meh. In my view, constraints are a good thing as they force you to make tradeoffs and use your creativity. When I gave my son an electronic toy car with all the bells and whistles, playing with the packaging seemed more interesting to him somehow.

No unbeatable bombs. Each color stays within lane. A Peasant cube is the way I found to play the MtG I enjoy over and over, while keeping costs down. MtG doesn't have to be an expensive hobby, unless you let it become so.

Color identities in this cube

• White is best at combat, both offensively (aggro) and defensively (control/ambush). White is notoriously bad with card draw/selection but tries to make it up with board advantage in the form of token generation.
• Blue has a distinct monopoly over permission spells, and is the best color for card draw/filtering. Blue lacks hard removal and relies on temporary tap/bounce, blocking or theft. Its creatures are also generally weaker, but evasive.
• Black is the best at creature removal, hand disruption and graveyard shenanigans. Card drawing will usually require a sacrifice (and no, I don't consider losing 1 life a sufficient sacrifice). Black's blind spot is artifact and enchantment removal.
• Red is the King of Burn. It also excels at combat, albeit offensively. Its threats range from tiny token swarms to bigger midrange fatties. Good at card filtering, most often at parity but sometimes at card disadvantage. Red is weak at blocking and dealing with enchantments.
• Green has the monopoly over ramping. Its creature stats are generally efficiently costed. Card draw doesn't abound and is often conditional. Green excels at feeding off the graveyard, but needs help filling it. Lacking flyers and creature removal, green relies on combat damage and combat tricks to get rid of problems.
• Colorless can do almost anything, albeit often inefficiently-costed. Equipments and bigger finisher-type creatures are purposely colorless, in order to draw interest of multiple drafters at the table, since they crossover many archetypes.

Cards that won't make the cut

• Cards never once legal in Standard (aka Type II). WotC seems to have opened the valves on sets designed to directly impact eternal formats: Modern Horizons, Conspiracy, Commander, etc. Although I understand power creep drives sales, I want to shield my cube from that trend.
• Broken cards. I don't mind powerful cards, as long as they require deck building synergy. Cards that win the game by themselves will be trimmed aggressively. For that reason I had to cut Fire Covenant. Three mana instant-speed one-sided board wipe? Come on...
• Three+ color casting costs. I have nothing against 3- or 4-color decks, quite the contrary! But I strive to make each card in the cube relevant for a few archetypes, so drafters need to compete for them. Too often these cards would wheel and that'd make me sad.
• Double-pip monocolored removal. Any experienced drafter knows that good removal (especially creature removal) is usually a high pick. I want most creature removal to be highly contested around the table, so staying away from double-pip mana symbols seems the best way to make sure it is splashable by at least a few drafters.
• Errata cards. I want new and casual players to be able to pick up the cards and play. Therefore if a card's printed text is significantly different than its Oracle text, I will usually wait for a reprint to include it. For instance, unless all burn spells get reprinted with the "any target" wording, I will refrain to include planeswalkers as a result.

Cards that could make the cut

• Rarity downshifted cards appearing in a draftable master set of some kind, as long as the card was once in Standard as per above rule. I understand that downshifting is a form of power creep in and of itself, but I had to draw the line somewhere. Also, I have to give credit to WotC for making sets that are much more balanced and fun to draft nowadays, compared to say a decade+ ago. When they downshift a card to uncommon it's usually not a broken card but more of a bread-and-butter type of card, or a signpost for an archetype, hence amply justified.
• A few build-around/signpost cards that can propel an otherwise meh deck into high gear. I enjoy diversity of archetypes so drafting doesn't feel repetitive. Once in a while you just feel like first picking Mesa Enchantress and go all-in. These cards are thus an exception to my general principle of making sure each card fits in at least 2+ archetypes. The deck they go in would otherwise just not exist, period. The least I can do is make sure the card wheels for the single interested drafter.

Archetypes

Aggro , ,
Pillow Fort
Tempo
Blink
Flyers
Control ,
Spellslinger
Pingers
Burn
Midrange
Landfall
Reanimator
Sacrifice
Defenders
Ramp
Bogles
Tokens , ,
Lifegain
+1/+1 Counters ,
Steal & Sac

Supported Tribes

Goblins
Elves
Zombies
Vampires
Soldiers
Warriors
Wizards

Sub-themes

Enchantments
Equipments
Mill
Draw Matters
Discard Matters

Combos

Here are the few combos the cube supports. If you come across other ones I may have missed, feel free to let me know !

Repeatable Removal

• Ghostly Flicker + Any of Eternal Witness/Mnemonic Wall/Archaeomancer/Shipwreck Dowser/Possessed Skaab + Any of Acidic Slime/Nekrataal/Shriekmaw/Skinrender/Bone Shredder/Spitebellows/Flametongue Kavu
• Viridian Longbow + Deathtouch creature
• Fiend Hunter + Temur Sabertooth (permanently exiles!)
• Haunted Crossroads + legged-removal-that-goes-to-graveyard (Shriekmaw/Bone Shredder/Crypt Rats/Infected Vermin/Heartfire Immolator/Stingmoggies/Spitebellows)
• Koll, the Forgemaster + Mortarpod + Any creature card (repeatable ETB!)

One-sided Board Wipe

• Lashknife Barrier + Any of Pestilence/Crypt Rats/Infected Vermin

Repeatable Life Drain

• Ghostly Flicker + Any of Eternal Witness/Mnemonic Wall/Archaeomancer/Shipwreck Dowser/Possessed Skaab + Gray Merchant of Asphodel

Draw Engine

• Eternal Witness/Mnemonic Wall/Archaeomancer/Shipwreck Dowser/Possessed Skaab + Repeal/Into the Roil/Repulse

Persist abuse

• Kitchen Finks/Murderous Redcap + Sac Outlet + Renata, Called to the Hunt/Rhythm of the Wild

Other synergies

• Untappers (Vizier of Tumbling Sands, Kiora, Behemoth Beckoner, Arbor Elf) + Green land Auras or Bounce lands = Ramp
• Untappers + Tappers (Gideon's Lawkeeper,Goldmeadow Harrier)
• Untappers + Pigners (Sparksmith/Cunning Sparkmage/Spikeshot Goblin/Gelectrode) or Isochron Scepter
• Non-targeting self-bounce (Kor Skyfisher, Quickling, Emancipation Angel, Stonecloaker) + Vanishing Shroud (Calciderm, Blastoderm)
• Snapping Sailback or Ancient Silverback + Pestilence-effect = King of the Hill

Ramp

Although green is the primary ramp color, there are a couple of different ramp strategies supported in the cube : mana elves, mana defenders, mana rocks, land auras (Utopia Sprawl, etc.), land fetchers (Cultivate, etc.)

Black pairs better with mana elves, being adequate sacrifice targets and enabling card like Shaman of the Pack.

White also supports the go-wide plan with mana dorks like Avacyn's Pilgrim.

Red pairs better with landfall strategy, benefiting from lands entering the battlefield, or caring about the number of lands in play. Bounce lands = more landfall triggers!

Blue provides untappers like Kiora, Behemoth Beckoner and Vizier of Tumbling Sands which synergize with land auras or mana rocks. Blue also has a good density of defenders, enabling cards like Overgrown Battlement and Axebane Guardian.

Shuffle effects

Green provides a lot of incidental shuffling effects (Cultivate, Fierce Empath, etc.), which bolster card selection when used in conjunction with Sylvan Library, Sensei's Divining Top or mutated Auspicious Starrix.

High CMC creatures

Generally, I try to prefer high mana cost finishers that are colorless or green-based. This way, they can be cheated into play with reanimator strategies, or ramped into with Gx ramp, which means there is more overlap in use cases and more competition to draft them.