This is my first cube, so the idea was to limit my card pool and focus my attention in a way that made the cube easier to build. Each guild is modelled around it's hybrid uncommon planeswalker from War of the Spark. For a lot of the planeswalkers this made the overlap of colors very easy, but for others it ended up being a struggle.

Samut was the easiest to build around. There is a focus on hitting fast and getting damage through by any means necessary. Gruul cards focus on fast and direct damage to the opponent. You'll also see a dinosaur sub-theme come from these colors.

Huatli was also fairly easy to find cards for: toughness matters. There are sub-themes of both vigilance and single attacker strategies. It does struggle with having a few weaker cards that focus around needing specific cards to really shine. As such, a lot of green and white cards end up as support for a midrange strategy, building a wall to defend and outlasting your opponent's removal. The dinosaur sub-theme continues here, as well as support for +1/+1 counter strategies.

Kiora's colors are split into powerful green creatures, and tapping based control strategies. Simic cards want to control the board and want every attack step to be in their favor. There is also a sub-theme of growth, with +1/+1 counters allowing for more powerful creatures, while also benefitting from Selesnya's single attacker theme.

Vraska focuses on death, both causing it and benefitting from it. Aristocrats as a strategy is more the focus of Rakdos and Orzhov, but Golgari is able to have a strong enough board presence to also be a threat during combat. Vraska stresses versatility and wants to be able to handle both the early and late game. She also continues the sub-theme of +1/+1 counters and shares a sub-theme of creature sacrifice, both your own and your opponent's.

Nahiri wants to win every combat. Her focus is on coming out ahead in combat. Nahiri originally had a greater focus on equipments, but through playtesting it was found that the archetype was too luck driven on the draw and couldn't hold it's own, so it needed to refocus. Now it focuses on coming out ahead in combat through tricks and board control. Boros here also benefits from the single attacker sub-theme, as well as giving benefits to both Izzit noncreature spells and Gruul direct damage.

Saheeli moves us away from creatures and combat to focus on artifacts and noncreature spells. Cards that create artifact tokens and creatures with prowess all benefit from the spellslinger deck. Red cards that create treasures and deal noncombat damage and blue cards that create clues and creature tokens allow Saheeli to play a game of attrition against her opponents.

Angrath, Magic's best father, captains the Rakdos aristocrats strategy. I did not want to focus too much on Amass as an ability, and instead we see many cards that create expendable token creatures, while the permanent ones benefit from evasion in the form of menace. Rakdos is easily the most versatile color pair in the set, benefiting greatly from the strategies of Dimir, Orzhov, and Gruul, there are many options when drafting Rakdos.

Dovin was not easy to design around. There are not a lot of stax peices at peasant levels, and in the end there simply needed to be a theme of control. There is also a strong artifact theme in Azorius that works well with Izzet and Selesnya. Azorius is about preventing your opponent from making big plays while being able to bounce back from the setbacks that get through.

Kaya was easily the most difficult to theme into the set. Cards that exile, cards that remove protection, what can I do with that? I didn't want Swords or Path in this set as I find both of them too strong. So the final idea that I settled on was removing your opponent's protection by simply damaging them through triggered abilities. This is how Orzhov got its aristocrats theme and small creature strategy.

Ashiok finishes us off with the easy strategy of mill. But mill alone is either too strong in a set, or simply not viable. So I have tried to keep mill as a side-benefit of other effects. When searching for cards I also noticed a theme of "Rogues that Mill" and stuck with that. There was surprisingly a lot of support for it. In the end, Dimir tries to remove the opponent's threats before they have the chance to use them.