Welcome to the Shadow Cube! This is a unique cube built around the card Death's Shadow.

Each player will draft as normal (I prefer 3 packs of 14 for a normal 8-player pod) and then add up to 3 copies of Death's Shadow to their pool to make their deck. You aren't required to play your Shadows, and it can be a successful strategy to both play and not play them.

Why a Shadow Cube?

Back in the days of Grixis Shadow and other versions of Death's Shadow being popular decks in modern, my group of friends and I loved playing the mirror or any version of a matchup where both players were interested in casting Death's Shadow. The nature of the namesake card but also the nature of cards like Thoughtseize common to those decks are to restrict the resources of both players. This leads to these really compressed, swingy games. Players often exchange resources for a few turns in the early game, and then take turns playing and answering threats that can each end the game in an attack or two. In contrast to a lot of modern magic with its sprawling complicated board states, shadow mirrors often have small boards where every permanent is immensely important. One night a friend, likely tired of hearing how amazing these mirrors were, asked "if you love the mirror so much, why don't you build a Death's Shadow cube?." I started building this cube immediately and haven't looked back. I love the nail biting games it engenders, I love the draft challenge of figuring out how to put my favorite 13/13 into play, and I think others have really enjoyed it too.

There are more black cards than any other color in the cube, and players are presumed to all be playing black. There are a couple macroarchetypes that they can lean into, and a fair number of 2-3 card combinations to assemble, but most decks will fall into being some sort of midrange deck.

The question drafters will have to ask themselves is: have I successfully enabled my Death's Shadows?

Enabling Your Shadows

Players can do this a few ways! They will certainly want to be able to drop their life total to below 13 without relying on the opponent if they are intending to play their Death's Shadows.

The simplest way to pay life is often in the manabase. Multiple copies of fetchlands and shocklands, as well as some other options, will allow a drafter to drop their life total.

Other spells and effects will let you pay life instead of mana to cast them. These are all even more powerful in this cube, as they do the double duty of making your free build-around cards better.

Historically paying life for card advantage is very powerful in magic, and this cube is no exception.

Some cards in the cube let players even pay as much life as they want! These are very powerful and can lead to some explosive starts, but be careful!

Enabling the shadows is also about making sure you can consistently find and cast them:

And keep them in play once you've done so:

Color Identity

Since every player is considered to be playing black, color identity is a bit skewed in this cube. For the purpose of cube construction, black counts as colorless - a WB card is really just a W card. Similarly phyrexian mana is ignored for color identity - players are assumed to want to pay life.

Because many the black cards are role players that all drafters are likely to want a chance at, this cube allows duplicates in black and colorless. To keep the rest of your decks unique, however, there are no duplicates in any combination of WURG. Here are a few of the cards you might see duplicates of:

The gold cards of this cube are the ones that are in either a non-black color pair or in a shard or wedge containing black. There are no non-black three color cards.

Lands and Land Count

I have seen winning decks in this cube play any number of lands from 12 to 18. In this cube more than most, a land count is like that of a constructed deck in that drafters play the amount that fits with your gameplan. Cantrip effects, cheap or free spells, cycling effects, and other factors may have them want to cut lands, but synergies with lands one can find might make a player want to add more. Some lands like Wasteland and Strip Mine will count closer to spells than lands in the cube. There are some lands and other effects that will act as mana sinks as well, but they are few.

Archetypes

There are no archetypes that define color pairs in this cube. Shadow is enough of an archetype in itself that I would prefer to let players draft small pockets of synergy over putting them on rails in their color pair. I won't tell you how to draft the cube past saying to look for cards that work well together!

This being said, there are two loose themes in this cube across either a few or all colors.

Drafters can put a focus on lands matter cards in some of their decks:

And there is a large theme of madness cards in all colors but white, and there are even white enablers for those cards:

Thanks for checking my cube out! I hope you enjoyed the read :)