Work in progress! June 11th, 2021

-Card pool isn't restricted to 4th Edition to Scourge
-Heavy focus on Pre-Modern archetypes
-Mana burn
-"Legend" is a creature type
-Damage resolves at the end of the stack

Helpful article: https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/feature/damage-stack-2002-12-11

Archetypes:

WU - Landstill Rebellion
https://youtu.be/_s-bYmzbKoo
WB - Deadguy Ale
https://youtu.be/9bC4d9v2zT4
WR - Astral Rift
WG - Mirari's Flashing Wake
UB - Psychatog
https://youtu.be/WFHCO9UQypk
UR - The Solution? https://youtu.be/nLyuApekT10
UG - Mongrel Madness
https://youtu.be/gTfveGVJ9-A
BR - Machinehead
BG - The Rock
https://youtu.be/unnZyzjz_SY
GR - Fires of Kavumaya
https://youtu.be/sZCxDkKkluE
WUBRG - Weatherlight's Domain

Loose tribal themes:

W - Rebels/Soldiers
https://youtu.be/P7gC7a-qfQo
U - Wizards/Merfolk
https://youtu.be/LMPvNDCoIg4
B - Zombies/Clerics
https://youtu.be/WNEOMwbNX5o
R - Goblins
https://youtu.be/Zbcc7pzdtiM
G - Elves
WUBRG - Legends

Other notable archetypes
Stasis
https://youtu.be/bMPRJskNWPE
Stiflenought
https://youtu.be/Xwfw6MkbvFE

Designer Philosophies:
-I love high variance, hence the goal for this to be a 720 list.
-I cater my cubes to the 1st playthrough more than the 101st playthrough
-I'm a sucker for novelty
-I'm not a fan of overly wordy or complex cards

This Cube's Goals and Philosophies:
-Heavy novelty and celebration of premodern archetypes
-Heavy aesthetics; at least 67% old border
-Heavy reliance on creature combat and lots of ways to exploit the "stacked damage" interactions
-No new modern card-types (planeswalkers, equipment, vehicles, MDFC, etc)

Pet Cards and Lessons from Testing:
-Kavu. They suck. They are EXTREMELY outclassed by powercreep. And I HAVE to include them in this cube as a tribe. I have lowered the average power and toughness of the entire cube to make their butts a little stronger than normal. Removing them from the cube is not negotiable. I'm open to suggestions on things that will make this tribe stronger!

-Weatherlight Crew. Nostalgia is heavy and some of these cards don't fit too well. I decided to include the old rule of "Legend is a creature type" in order to up the power of these creatures a notch and also to give them some sort of glue to hold their archetype together. Karn is struggling the most and I'm currently working on finding some higher CMC artifacts for the cube to beef up his potential a bit, please let me know if you have any suggestions!

-Changelings. So yeah I get it, these guys are NOT nostalgic, but they are the perfect glue for keeping the cube from the parasitic/narrow drafting experiences that this cube was in its early days. Tribal cubes are tough, because they promote an "On Rails" environment, but the amount of these softens everything up to be a lot more creative than first blush. They also let you include multiple tribal payoff cards into the same deck, like Goblin King and Elvish Champion. What is the cheap, clear goop you mix into acrylic paints to stretch out your intended colors? That's what the changelings are here, they're supposed to be like co-stars to help let other creatures take the spotlight

-Tapped Artifacts. Early versions of this cube had a unique rule that artifacts "turned off" then they became tapped. It wasn't fun and made more nombos than anything else. In the same light, I tried a rule where tapped blockers didn't deal damage (a la 6th edition rules). This also was unintuitive and not fun.

-First Sketches. In order to build my base for the cube, I went through hundreds of premodern decks and all of the gold-bordered world champion decks and basically put one of every card into the pot to try things out. I knew I wanted UB to be Psychatog, UG to be Wild Mongrel, and WR to be cycling, but was pretty uncertain where the rest of the archetypes would line up. Lots of combo pieces get cut when there is little crossover, but I still feel like not enough of the cube has been appropriately challenged. If you see anything that makes you say "Why is this in here?" please leave a comment or let me know somehow so I can look at it through a critical eye.

Story/Origin:
My original goal for this cube was to make an environment where Psychatog was good again. When i got back into the game in 2017, Amonkhet was new and I built this sweet Psychatog deck that had stuff like Drake Haven & Archfiend of Ifnir, and madness cards from Shadows Over Innistrad & Eldritch Moon. I was so stoked, thinking "These dummies at WOTC have no idea what they have unleashed on Planet Psychatog." My king had all these new cards that would've made 2001 heads explode. I started looking into what format my deck fell into, which was... Legacy. Thankfully, I was smart enough to not endure the embarrassment of bringing this kitchen table deck to a Legacy event. Also, I was bummed out to learn what "kitchen table" meant, and also that nobody in 2017 played this way anymore; even though it was THEE MAIN way to play the game back in my day, the idea of playing "kitchen table" was laughed at.

Cycling was the same. Astral Slide and Lightning Rift were off the power level charts now that we didn't HAVE to resort to playing 4x Spark Sprays and 4x Eternal Dragons. I thought "Wow, Amonkhet is a dream come true. These designers love 2001/2002 Type 2!" But where am I going to play my new cycling kitchen table deck?

I found out about PreModern a while later. Boom. Mindblow. Yes, embrace my glory days! Yes, embrace my nostalgia! But I still can't play these new cards that supercharged my favorites from two decades ago. So rather than scrap the kitchen table decks and the dreams, I put a ring on it.

Since then, the cube has shifted to embrace the cards of yesteryear with a lemon twist of some recent cards. I want the focus to be on the PreModern cornerstones which is why there's 2x copies of those (maybe more in the future). The 720 build for the cube let's me add dynamite "Retro Border" bombs like Urza and Yawgmoth w/o distorting the environment too much. In the same mindset, if you told someone in November of 2002 that they made an Urza card, you would expect it to be able to go toe-to-toe w/ a Spirit Monger, right?

An experiment with this cube is the inclusion of some old rules (stacked damage, creature type 'Legend,' etc). I always thought it would be fun to relive some of them, and the nostalgic nature of this cube seems like the perfect excuse. What I'm really hoping to stumble into is "new" cards that play in an excitingly different manner under old rules. I can't get too dedicated to them though, as old rules were made "old" for a reason...

This is still a major work in progress, but if anybody knows how to make Kavus better, can you please let me know? Cheers