This cube was designed as the evolution of my AFR cube. My children love to cube but are fairly new so the power level and complexity are lower than most cubes. This manifests as a creature-heavy cube with few combat tricks and zero countermagic. The emphasis is on drafting a cohesive and synergetic strategy.

The themes are what you want from a D&D cube: Dungeons, Dragons, Party, and artifacts--whether treasure or equipment. Dungeons will play best as WG, but anything other than Red will work fine. Dragons are centered in RG, but blue also works and WB will contribute for the Tiamat decks. Party decks can be any Esper colors but the payoffs are WB. Treasure is best in RB while equipment is best in WR, but blue has an artifact subtheme (finally putting Mordenkainen's Staff to use).

Other minor themes include Adventure spells and sacrifice effects. I also included some fun "build around" cards like Tiamat and the Vecna cards to allow for a more challenging draft experience when I'm playing against my kids. The draft experience is actually pretty deep if you are willing to forgo the obvious archetypes and look for interesting or fun play patterns (Teleportation Circle, anyone?).

The cube is nearly entirely comprised of cards with the AFR and CLB icons (including some commander cards that are reprints from other sets), but I deviated for three cards. Galazeth Prismari is a dragon and provides a UR legend when otherwise the UR legend options are pretty limited in AFR and CLB. He also adds to the treasure theme. I believe Lozhan, the CLB UR creature, is too powerful for this cube (and Farideh from AFR is unplayable in a reasonable deck). In my experience the dragon theme would need to be dialed way down for Lozhan to be acceptable, and I would rather just cut Lozhan from the cube. Lastly, Deadly Alliance and Coveted Prize are necessary to support the Party theme and provide some minor payoffs. Deadly Alliance is obvious but Coveted Prize is important to supporting the various subthemes (specifically the Venca package).

The power level is relatively low. This is by design as I wanted to create an environment where the fun cards from AFR and CLB can shine. In other words, to paraphrase Ryan Overturf, the cool thing is the good thing.

Update - August 2023: Changed 11 cards. The party theme was too strong so I kept the support but removed arguably the best payoff card--the Harper Recruiter. I kept Nalia because she was in the original BG2 computer game so I'm partial to her, and besides which I think she is relatively powerful but reasonable for a draft environment. I cut the power slightly on B and R with downgrades in card quality. I added Tasha because my kids like planeswalkers, but the monocolored PWs are too easy to play. Another blue PW seems okay as this at least provides another reason to play blue. Lastly, I pushed the Dungeon theme up because venturing into the dungeon should really be at the heart of a cube like this.