Lands Cube

Cube size: 450 (+100)

Power Level: Strix 5/6

Cube type: Archetype-based

Powered?: Not in the traditional sense

Ideal play experience:

Player feels like they’ve built the best traditional draft deck ever. Nothing completely broken,
but like their limited deck came together in every way- their colors were open, the effects they wanted are in the deck, and the deck will play like an A+ version of their deck archetype. Every advantage they hoped their draft deck could ever have (great mana, excellent enablers, solid options along the curve, those nice-to-have lands) show up and it gives them peak [insert archetype here] experience.

Basic cube description:

This cube is designed to simulate a high power traditional limited format. These decks will
feel like limited decks (not loose constructed decks, like traditional cubes), but limited decks with access to very high quality versions of critical cards. To promote this, the cube is driven by archetypes, with each two-color pair having a major theme and a minor theme, and each shard having one macro theme. The cube is not intended to support five color decks (though the fixing is good, with two full sets of fetches, ABU duals, Ravnica shocks, and more) and rewards drafters able to determine when an entire shard is open as opposed to the guild color pair.

The cube relies more on synergy than most traditional cube environments, but maintains decent average card quality. While there are certainly very powerful cards (Natural Order, Goblin Welder, Snapcaster Mage, Swords of Plowshares, Thoughtseize, Karn Liberated, etc.), they lack the support cards to make them truly oppressive.

Green decks lack the typical game-ending top-end threats to cheat into play or ramp out, artifact decks are looping for value (not playing turn 2 Sundering Titans), and reanimator decks do not have access to single game-ending threats, instead focusing on generating value from the graveyard. The goal is to acknowledge the existence of ‘bombs’, but not allow them to rule the play experience. This cube’s idea of combo is much more synergistic, rather than storm combo or dropping a Craterhoof Behemoth with some mana elves in play. It should be possible to come back from pretty much anything in this cube, with the goal of making the games exciting for Timmy’s, Spike’s, and Vorthos’s.