Artifact Cube Overview

The Artifact Cube is a cube designed to highlight the power and synergies of artifacts and artifact-related strategies throughout Magic's history.

The main design philosophies of the cube are:

• A focus on synergy, and engine-building in particular. Artifacts as a card type are known for their synergies, and the spirit of this cube reflects that. The goal is to feel like you’re “doing it” regardless of what kind of deck you draft—you won’t find yourself in a deck that just curves out and turns sideways.
• Gameplay and strategic diversity. Combo, control, aggro, and midrange are all supported in the cube, and decks will often be a mix of these. Games should feel different from matchup to matchup and draft to draft.
• Discovery in the drafting process. Because of the density of overlapping themes in the cube, many of the cards work in synergy with many others, often in ways that players probably won’t have experienced before. Discovering and building around new synergies and combos is an important part of the Artifact Cube experience.

Themes

The cube has a number of supported themes and subthemes, most of which span 2-4 colors. However, this is not an exhaustive list of strategies. Most of the cards work well with each other in some way, so if you just take some good cards early and figure it out, you’ll be just fine.

White-Based Aggro

This theme encompasses a few different kinds of decks, mainly:

• Affinity-style aggro with cards like Tempered Steel and Master of Etherium
• Equipment with cards like Stoneforge Mystic and Astor, Bearer of Blades

There’s also the less aggressive token deck, with Yawgmoth, Thran Physician, Myrsmith, etc.

+Proliferate

There are a lot of directions you can take this theme, but the main two are:

• +1/+1 Counters: Put together Arcbound Ravager/Walking Ballista combos or just go big beatdown with counters and Grateful Apparition or Evolution Sage.
• Energy: This deck can either be a whole plan or a subtheme, and can be midrangey or aggressive. The headliner here is Vault 112: Sadistic Simulation.

These decks can also fiddle around with things like Pentad Prism, Jeweled Amulet, and Astral Cornucopia.

Noncreature Tokens

This is probably the broadest theme in the cube, and can support several drafters. A lot of the cards and subthemes here work together, but here’s the gist of some of the main plans:

• Sacrifice: Probably the most supported of the token subthemes. There are a lot of ways to generate treasure, which you can use for cards like Powerstone Fracture or Professional Face-Breaker or just kill them with Marionette Master and Disciple of the Vault.
• Food: This one is more of a sub-plan. Basically just jam all the cards that care about food. Peregrin Took, Pippin, Warden of Isengard, Greta, Sweettooth Scourge. The cube also has The Underworld Cookbook and Asmoranomardicadaistinaculdacar.
• Treasure: Make a bunch of treasure with cards like Jolene, the Plunder Queen and Black Market Tycoon. There are tons of payoffs, like Havoc Jester, or you can just splash bombs. This deck can be midrange/combo-y or fairly aggressive.
• Some cards are whole plans by themselves, like Junk Winder or Brudiclad, Telchor Engineer.

Reanimator

This one’s fairly self-explanatory. There are a number of larger artifacts, ways to discard them, and ways to reanimate them. There’s also a small discard subtheme with Currency Converter and Containment Construct.

Blue-Based Combo

Blue has a lot of cards dedicated to enabling combos, particularly in the form of tutors and card selection. Some headliner combos:

• Bomberman (Lion’s Eye Diamond plus Auriok Salvagers)

• Thopter Foundry and Sword of the Meek

• Kinnan, Bonder Prodigy and Basalt Monolith

• Krark-Clan Ironworks (if you know, you know)

• The Enigma Jewel with a lot of things, probably

…and a lot more multi-card combos and general engines.

A Note On Fixing

The mana in the cube is pretty good. The cube includes Bridges, fetches, shocks, and Triomes, plus Talismans and a number of other ways to fix if you’re looking for it (including, importantly, treasure.) Most decks that are trying to put together an engine of some kind will at least be splashing a third color, possibly more.

That’s just about it. Happy tinkering! (Though no Tinkering—it was too broken.)