Edit: Some cards referenced here are no longer in the cube, but the song remains the same. Updated overview on Modern Vintage Horizons.

Modern Vintage is a cube that creates highly interactive and powerful gameplay that marries synergy and power and greatly rewards situational awareness and technical play. Growing out of the classic Vintage Cube concept, this cube incorporates technical innovations of the contemporary age of Magic into an environment with the strongest and most iconic cards ever printed to foster games that are simultaneously explosive and drawn out, with meaningful plays and tempo swings occurring from turn one to turn ten.

If you’re a Vintage Cube fanatic, many familiar faces are here (sorry Storm Mages, we tried, but it just didn’t work out) so you should be able to jump in and draft right away, but you’ll quickly notice some differences. This cube heavily leverages card type to offer a wide variety of options in both deckbuilding and gameplay. Additionally, discarding card and the graveyard are relevant to far more decks than reanimator. As result of this, many archetypes bleed together in a way that allows for unique decks from draft to draft.

While this cube is not truly focused on archetypes and rigid synergies or decks, there are themes that run throughout color groupings that will make decks greater than the sum of their parts.

As a drafter, being aware of these themes will allow you to pack more value into your draft pool. A great deck will likely be strong on three axes - it is cube drafting after all - a classic midrange curve of threats, removal, and card advantage, and two interweaving synergy areas.

The basic geography of the cube is as follows.

Jeskai Artifacts - The artifact card type plays a prominent role in this cube, particularly through the presence of the variety of artifact tokens. As such, Tolarian Academy is MUCH stronger in this cube than the traditional MTGO vintage cube. White, Red, and Blue will provide drafters with tools to maximize the power of artifacts. Each color contains strong value engines in this theme, such as Digsite Engineer, Sai, Master Thopterist, and Breya’s Apprentice. White largely uses artifacts to supplement its aggressive gameplan and in conjunction with Red had a minor equipment subtheme. Blue seeks to use artifacts to enable powerful combos, such as Tinkering Cyberdrive Awakener into play for a surprise kill, locking its opponent out with servo tokens and opposition, or simply generating large amounts of mana with Urza to take over the game. Finally Red aims to sacrifice artifacts for profit and strongly leverages Treasure tokens. Goblin Welder and his descendents are all strongly supported in this setting and are powerful cards worth building around.

Abzan Enchantments – A fan favorite archetype, enchantment themed gameplay received significant improvements in the world of cube with the Saga card type, particularly the sagas from Kamigawa: Neon Dynasty. While each color has more than the average number of enchantments in this cube, White, Green, and to a lesser extent Black are the centers of power for enchantments. Many of White’s token generation and removal options are represented here by enchantments rather than instants or sorceries. White also has threats that scale with enchantments, like Archon of Sun’s Grace and Katilda, Dawnheart Martyr, allowing it to gain additional value from its interactive options. While Green does have access to the iconic Argothian Enchantress, it primarily uses enchantments to accelerate to end-game mana levels, whether through additional land plays with Fastbond and Exploration, or with enchant-land based ramp and land untapping with Arbor Elf or Garruk, Wildspeaker. Green also has access to Earthcraft and Squirrel Nest for an infinite combo kill. Though Black doesn’t directly gain additional power through the enchantment card type, its high quantity of enchantments means it pairs naturally well with the White and Green cards looking for other enchantments.

Sultai Self-Mill/Graveyard - Blue, Black, and Green all have access to abilities that leverage the graveyard and milling oneself, including escape, eternalize, and delve. Black’s general reanimation suite remains the central reason to fill the graveyard, though the number of dedicated reanimator targets is much lower than in traditional vintage cubes, primarily consisting of Archon of Cruelty, Griselbrand, and a few large artifact creatures. Blue has both Thassa’s Oracle and Jace, Wielder of Mysteries - which are enabled by both Doomsday and Inverter of Truths - to provide more combo-kill options for Blue. Green pairs together with both of these colors to offer powerful self-mill cards as well as payoffs such as Hogaak and Uro, Titan of Nature’s Wrath.

Mardu Sacrifice - While Mardu ultimately focuses on the interactive trinity of Swords to Plowshares, Thoughtseize, and Lightning Bolt, there is a minor sacrifice theme that builds on the natural tendencies of these colors to either create tokens or sacrifice permanents for value. Yawgmoth, Thran Physician, Mayhem Devil, Goblin Bombardment, and Promise of Bunrei are among the key players in this archetype. Expect this theme to be the secret sauce in your deck rather than the main course (this is good advice for drafting this cube in general) as a lot of the lower power enablers found in other cubes for this archetype didn’t make the cut here due to raw power considerations.

Simic Landfall/Draw Sevens - In order to provide another combo option for Green, Fastbond (and Exploration to a lesser extent) have much more robust support in this cube. With the inclusion of the four green Ravnica bouncelands, Fastbond decks have access to as many landfall triggers as they’re willing to pay life for. At its most powerful, this can set up a turn one kill with Hedron Crab, but it also works with Tireless Tracker, Tireless Provisioner, and Kazandu Mammoth to enable explosive turns. The suite of draw sevens is present here, allowing the more traditional approach to playing Fastbond, but also pairing together with the draw limiters of Hullbreacher and Narset, Parter of Veils to create game-ending card advantage situations.

Orzhov Lifegain - Cards like Heliod, Sun-Crowned, Archangel of Thune, and Witch of the Moors all allow you to maximize black and white’s natural ability to gain life. Walking Ballista provided an A/B combo counterpart to Heliod, though there are other more convoluted ways to go infinite with both Heliod and Archangel of Thune.

Naya Domain - The release of Dominaria United, along with the completion of the triome cycle in Streets of New Capenna, allowed for domain synergies to be much more easily achieved in cube. This theme is a relatively small one comprised of just a few creatures, but Wild Nacatl and Nishoba Brawler both go a long way in reinforcing Green’s early beatdown potential, allowing for more aggressive green decks. Don’t be afraid to cast Gaea’s Might either: it’s still 5 damage for 1 mana.