THE CHEAP CUBE

The Cheap Cube is a 360 card eternal cube inspired by cube products such as the Star City Games Starter Cube (no longer sold, sadly). I've set out to build the best trade-off of (in order):

1. Cheapest
2. "Traditional Cube"-feeling draft and play experience
3. Longest-term value vs. starting point (i.e. the cost invested in this cube will have long-term playability for someone who buys it)
4. Highest-power overall power-level without insane outliers (insane outliers are in the Broken module, see below).

My personal inspirations for creating and maintaining this cube are:

1. My desire to make an accessible starter cube for folks who probably have some collection, but maybe not a super deep one
2. My realization as to how much a subset of really fun and really good Magic cards have been reprinted (often multiple times) in commander and supplemental products to the point where their prices are very low.

The overall cost of "The Cheap Cube" (Core + Swap) currently sits at $125 (post TDM Release).

BROKEN MODULE EXPANSION
The Broken Module expansion is an additional 90 cards that can be played with or swapped into the Cheap Cube that seeks to maximize power within a modest budget. The Broken Module adds many of the highest power Magic cards of all time that currently have budget(ish) price tags.

With the Broken Module expansion, the cube can be played 3 ways:

1. The Cheap Cube - the Core and Swap cube modules.
2. The Broken Cheap Cube - the Core and Broken modules
3. A regular 450 card cube, with a healthy amount of power outliers.

This module was inspired by @R3idMore's Low Budget-High Power Cube which was designed as the most broken cube he could build at a total budget of $360 (i.e. an average of $1 per card). I liked this as a clean budget restriction, and kept it as the guideline for this module.

In analyzing both my Cheap Cube list, the MTGO Vintage Cube, and Reid's list, I realized that

1. A subset of really powerful Magic cards have been reprinted (or banned) to the point where their prices are very low.
2. There was a ~220 card overlap between my Cheap Cube and these popular, higher power environments, which was close enough to 270 cards that I felt I could strip down the 140 card high-power card set to a 90 card module.

Lastly, this module is NOT being optimized for gameplay experience, it's being optimized for power. There will be plenty of non-games based around powerful spells and permanents that will warp the game. It will also lead to a higher-power draft experience, which could be more fun.