Cube Goals:
This is an "old frame" Magic:The Gathering cube. There a number of modern cards in the cube that have been printed post-Scourge, but all of these inclusions have old border printings (now we're just waiting for that Gravecrawler treatment...). Ideally, these new additions shore up the themes of the colors and feel like they "fit in" with the rest of the card pool.

The main goal of this cube is to relive the early days of Magic from my middle and high school experience (circa 1994-2001), both in terms of individual nostalgic cards and gameplay. This was a time when planeswalkers did not exist, mana fixing was rare and nowhere close to perfect (no fetch lands here), cards varied in power level significantly, and spells were generally more powerful than creatures. In general, games were substantially slower and less snow-bally than in modern day magic.

A secondary goal of this is to introduce newer players (specifically my son) to old-school Magic gameplay as described above.

Aggro, Midrange, Control, and Prison/Stax style strategies co-exist in this environment, but this cube definitely skews more towards the mid-range. 4-5 color piles are possible, but the majority of decks will be 2 colors or 2 colors with a small splash. Mono color decks are possible, and generally the best aggro decks will be a single color (generally mono red or white).

There are some "combos" in this cube, but most are about generating value over time, rather than winning on the spot. Reanimator and other big creature cheating strategies are viable, but take time to win. Right now, Palinchron is the lynchpin enabler for "infinite" combos with access to a mana producer (ex: Sneak attack, mana flare effect, etc), but requires one other card to win outright (generally an X spell). The only 2 card win the game combo I see in here right now is Pandemonium/Saproling Burst. More power to the players that pull this off.

The themes for the colors in this cube are as follows:
White: Teamwork and the Wrath of God - Generate, protect, and pump the team. Or just kill it all.
Blue: Trickery - Counter spells, steal critters, and draw cards.
Black: Lord of the Grave - Cheat death, interact with the graveyard, kill creatures (that aren't black of course), zombie sub-theme.
Red: Watch the World Burn - Direct damage and sweeping board effects, goblin sub-theme.
Green: Secret Force - Ramp (offering off-color mana) and fix into giant monsters
Artifact: Robots - Generate large amounts of mana to play big dudes and create game changing effects.

Drafting:
This cube is designed for 6-8 person play with 3 packs of 15 cards each. It is grid-drafted as well pretty frequently, but I'm not designing for that purpose.

Purposeful exclusions/considerations for this cube at the moment:

• Limited shuffling - I'm not eschewing all shuffling, but making it much less pronounced than current magic.
• Limited fixing - No fetches for this reason and the shuffling.
• Limited tribal support so drafts don’t feel on rails - Tribal cards should work on their own, but benefit from being built around.
• There are a lot of individually powerful cards that require being built around. Although many of these cards may be last-picked 75% of the time, they open up deck building options if picked early. This is intended. Examples - Form of the Dragon, Oath of Druids, Academy Rector, etc.
• Gaea's Cradle and Tolarian Academy are purposeful exclusions based on how they warped the initial games when they were originally included in the cube.
• Storm, Draw 7s, and other combo enablers like High Tide, Yawgmoth's Will, Necropotence, and Yawgmoth's Bargain didn't provide enough interesting drafting and gameplay decisions for the space they took up when they were initially included.