Primary goal: Walk a fine line between a powered environment and a narrow power band.

Ethos: Prioritize interactive matchups and don't allow for blatantly unfair one-turn wins.

Waxing poetic: This cube is a lifelong love letter to the era of Legacy that I played. It aims to replicate a lot of the most fun and exciting interactions from the format, with some Vintage nonsense thrown in to feel super powerful as well as some Modern vibes with newer cards to show off the best of what current sets offer.

Intentional card omissions:

• Black Lotus - There is simply no way to balance this card when you consider the amount of variance that can happen in a pod draft.
• Ancestral Recall - Similar to Black Lotus, but with the additional downside of making Blue even more juiced than it already is.
• Entomb - Reanimator in this cube is balanced around making it non-trivial to get cards into the graveyard, easy to reanimate, and access strong but not game-breaking creature targets. Entomb breaks the first part.
• Strip Mine - Wasteland and Strip Mine cannot reasonably co-exist in the same format. I think Wasteland is very balanced for what I'm trying to achieve but Strip Mine is egregious.
• Fastbond - Similar to Strip Mine, there is no format where Explore and Fastbond can exist together. I find Explore to be much more fair and interesting.
• Balance - A little too efficient and not fun to have to mentally play around for the entire game, for both players.
• Karakas - I avoid cards that accidentally win an entire matchup with almost no downside. Karakas is a cute, free tool for white decks that can accidentally blow up a game by targeting a randomly important Legendary your opponent controls.
• Mishra's Workshop - Similar to Black Lotus but much more famine than feast.
• Sword of X and Y Cycle - I find all of the swords to be clunky, hard to balance from a random blow-out perspective, and relatively unexciting.

Intentional mechanic omissions:

• Storm - I've never played the archetype at a high level so I lack the ability to design an environment around it well. I also dislike how many of the needed cards are cannibalistic(?)/narrow.
• Tutors - By and large, only lands and artifacts can be tutored in this cube. Blue finding spells, black finding anything, green playing toolbox strategies are all layers of strength and complexity that I am looking to avoid.
• Venture - Not worth the added complexity/token.
• Monarch - Too hard to balance in 1v1 formats, warps games in a way that doesn't feel right.
• The Ring Taunts You - Not worth the added complexity/token.
• Energy - Not worth the added complexity/token.
• Daybound/Nightbound - Requires tracking "just in case", even when the card isn't present.
• Snow - Not enough cards to support it and I don't want to errata my basics.

Emoji tags:
🪦 - Discard outlet
🔍 - Card draw
🔨 - Disenchant/shatter
🔪 - Creature removal
💣 - Board wipes
🌳 - Mana ramp
🎯 - Hate vs specific color(s)

Highlights:
🟧 - Card 'package'
🟪 - Creature spell

Land fixing:
3x of each Fetchland
2x of each Shock
1x of each Dual

Usually drafted 4x14 with 8 people