Art by Christopher MoellerInspired by the original 'The Pauper Cube' by Adam Styborski.
This cube features some of the most powerful cards printed in Pauper history. The cube is designed to have small synergies with soft archetype support, meaning archetypes are suggested and not forced on the player. You will find in this cube plenty of deck archetypes that could be pivoted into within the same colour pairings, giving players a multitude of angles to play the game. Every set release adds to the format something new and interesting to the list to try out.
Archetype SupportThis list uses commander labelling for colour pairs. Cards in colour pairs are distributed evenly to try balance the support they receive.
Azorius:
Tempo/Flicker/Self-bounce (ETB value)
Dimir:
Tempo/Control
Rakdos:
Fling/Aristocrats/Tokens
Gruul:
Stompy/Monsters/Ramp
Selesnya:
Tokens/+1/+1 Counters/Midrange
Orzhov:
Sacrifice/Aristocrats/Tokens
Golgari:
Recursion/Aristocrats/Tokens/Morbid
Izzet:
Spellfist/Big Spells/Control/Tempo
Boros:
Pump Anthem Aggro/Voltron
Black:
Sacrifice, Destruction, Creature Recursion
Black contains all the clean removal spells and offers support in sacrifice outlets/engines.
White:
Enchantments, Tokens, Anthems, Protection
White contains a lot of the token generation spells and anthem effects. Most removal effects are enchantment based.
Red:
Direct Damage, Speed
Red is very direct and straight forward. Instead of being shoehorned into the strictly aggressive colour, red has been given access to tools to help navigate some of it's traditional shortcomings like impulsive card draw.
Green:
Ramp, Fight, Colour Fixing, Larger Creatures
Green is the colour that cares about developing it's mana. It shares similarities with black and white, in that it too can go wide and generate tokens and also has access to sacrifice strategies.
Blue:
Tempo, Bounce, Reactive
Blue has a lot of draw spells and interactive spells that deal with things on the stack or on the board. Contains a lot of ETB effects that delay your opponents game plan.
Each new set brings in newer more powerful cards, replacing older cards that are functionally the same but were weaker versions. The maybeboard consists of these removed cards as well as a plethora of cards that were deemed noteworthy to try out or cards deemed too powerful and warped the format. There are also cards that could be introduced or removed depending on the level of support an archetypes needs.
This covers cards from the following sets:
Bloomburrow, Duskmourn, Foundations, Innistrad Remastered, Aetherdrift
| In | Out | Comments |
|---|---|---|
| Clockwork Percussionist | Frenzied Goblin | 1MV 1/1's are getting better and this having the Artifact super type helps enable many strategies. |
| Galvanic Blast | Fire Prophecy | In this update there is a large uptick in incidental artifacts in the cube that it doesn't take a seer to see that turning metalcraft on is very easy. Since Volcanic Spite already exists in the cube, Fire Prophecy was the easy choice to cut. |
| Kuldotha Rebirth | Glimpse the Impossible | This card is a pauper staple and is only being added in due to the critical mass of artifacts in the cube. This replaces Glimpse the Unthinkable as most often times you'll be making tokens with this card rather than casting those spells the turn it is played. |
| Unholy Heat | Borderland Marauder | This joins a cast of cards that were on the cusp of being added in due to the difficulty of enabling it's pay off was too difficult for its effect. The power of the cube has pushed an aggressive 3/2 out. |
| Gnawing Crescendo | Dynacharge | Most often you're overloading to get a trumpet effect. This has a built in contingency plan where any surprises during the turn you're attempting to finish doesn't jsut leave you with an empty. |
| Heaped Harvest | Cloakwood Swarmkeeper | A lot of value can be reaped from this card alone. It is easily splashable and enables many archetypes. This replaces Swarmkeeper as there's been a culling in token generation. |
| Monstrous Emergence | Struggle for Skemfar | This allows you to navigate around the biggest weakness of fight-based removal spells. No longer will you struggle to be open to two-for-one when your opponent removes your creature in response. |
| Avenging Hunter | Stampeding Elk Herd | Initiative is just too powerful. |
| Bushwhack | - |