Art by Dominik Mayer
Welcome to The Shock Cube, a 2-4 player Jeskai micro cube with one important change... YOU START AT 2 LIFE! The Shock Cube has fascinating interactions, intricate games, and deep replayability. It is designed primarily for heads-up 2-player drafts however it contains enough cards for 2 pairs to draft and then play round robin. There are a few rule changes to note and a specialized draft format detailed below.
- Player's starting life total is 2.
- The minimum deck size is 25.
- Any action a player takes that would cause the game to draw instead causes them to lose.
- Players must reveal hidden agendas and announce the chosen card at the start of the draft.
The Shock Cube is a heads-up 2-player draft experience. To achieve this there are special rules for the draft. Players each receive 5 packs of 10 cards. Each pack is drafted as such:
- Pick 1 card
- Burn 1 card
- Pass the pack to your opponent
- Pick 2 cards
- Burn 1 card
- Pass the pack to your opponent
- Pick 3 cards
- Burn the last 2 cards
Players then build decks with a minimum of 25 cards and play a best of 3 match.
The minimum deck size is 25, however, with Advantageous Proclamation, decks may be as small as 20. As deck building is a little unusual here are some helpful tips:
- For 25 card decks 7-9 lands are recommended.
- For 20 card decks 6-7 lands are recommended.
- For single-pipped cards you want at least 3 sources of that color
- For double-pipped cards you want at least 5 sources of that color
- Milling out is a concern! Make sure you have a game plan. All interaction and no win conditions is risky business.
When you hear about a 2-life cube you expect it to be a complete unbalanced joke. Though there are games where players get early kills, it is never simple. The cube is balanced so that anything that kills quickly needs at at least 2 cards. Examples of what early kills require:
1 land on board: Rite of Flame>Flame Rift>Intervention Pact
2 lands on board: Pact of the Titan>Pact of Negation(Targeting Titan)>An Offer You Can't Refuse(Targeting Negation)>Kazuul's Fury
As you can see games are not won so easily. These are the broad design choices that keep the cube balanced:
- Basically any creature that could pose a threat has to meet either casting or state-based conditions to do so.
- Many of the threats and interaction peices are attached to artifacts and enchantments which means that White and Red's disenchant effects functionally can be considered a form of counter magic. The game is about jockeying for board presence with all kinds of permanents as opposed to just creatures.
- There are a plethora of miniature build arounds. Almost no threats are generically good, which means players will have to think about how they build their decks.
The other important design choices are the omissions. Below are a list commonly considered week/low power cards in regular limited that are banned for how overpowered they are in this cube. This is a small list as a majority of cards in magic are too strong for this cube, but this highlights the kind of balance that goes into this design.
- Shock
- Revitalize
- Devastating Summons
- Cathedral Sanctifier
- Ensoul Artifact
- Golden Urn
- Cloudshredder Sliver