Design Philosophy:

The Bodleian(Bod-Lee-Inn) Cube showcases iconic and powerful cards with an emphasis on strategies that combine cards to be more than the sum of their parts. The power level is designed to allow these iconic cards to shine within and alongside archetypes which often suffocate in cubes designed to maximize individual card power. The strategies within the cube are set up to combine and cross pollinate to encourage emergent deckbuilding and present drafters with many possible directions throughout the draft. Each drafter begins with a Cogwork Librarian to enable them to speculate more effectively on many buildarounds within the cube.

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Travel Log & Events

These events will feature or have featured Bodleian Cube in the main event.

• Boston Cube Party 2025
• Vertex Philidelphia
• Cubecon 2024
• Boston Cube Party 2024
• California Cube Championships 2024

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Design Goals & Guidelines:

• Cultivate an environment with exciting synergistic plays where card combinations are greater than the sum of their parts.

• Maintain a high density of efficient threats and answers within the cube while omitting cards which are so powerful that they make synergy irrelevant.

• Ensure that games are fun to lose as well as win. People lose in every game of Magic and there’s a notable difference between a fun and unfun loss.

• The aggro, midrange, control combat triangle is a core part of this cube. Combo decks are intentionally excluded.

• Archetypes are not typically tied to one specific color pair. This encourages emergent decks and prevents on-rails drafting.

• The narrowest cards in the cube should be among the most desired in the decks they’re desired by.

• Generic removal spells are typically kept out of gold sections to encourage cross pollination of archetypes and discourage five color good stuff.

• Cards with hexproof, shroud, and protection are minimized to enable more interactive gameplay.

• Game state agnostically powerful blue instants are restricted to encourage blue decks to engage in combat.

• There is main-deckable removal for planeswalkers, enchantments, and artifacts to ensure that these card types are still interactive. As a result, there is no cap on any specific card type.

• Bodleian Cube is Baltimore Singleton (There are duplicates of fixing lands). There is great fixing in the cube to support all decks. Five color good stuff piles are kept in check by the speed of the fastest decks in the format.

• There is no fast mana in the cube.

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Draft Rules:

1. Every player starts with a copy of Cogwork Librarian as the draft begins.
2. For 8 players, draft 3 packs of 15.
3. For 4 players, draft 4 packs of 15, burn the last 4 cards in every pack.
4. For <4 players, Housman Draft with 9 packs of 10.

These draft rules enable the highly synergistic decks to come together, even without the entire cube being drafted.

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The Origin of the Name

This cube is named after the Bodleian Library in Oxford, England. It shares two key similarities with this famous library.The Bodleian Library was among the first to popularize an elaborate registry of donors to showcase their generosity. In Bodleian Cube, the winner of each draft signs a basic land, showcasing their skill to all drafters to come. In addition, a helpful Cogwork Librarian will find players what their deck needs during the draft.

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Gameplay

The decks in the Bodleian Cube all complete on the tempo vs attrition axis and the proactive vs reactive axis. There are no combo decks in the cube and nearly all decks must play to the board in order to win. The well positioned decks in any given draft have a good idea of where they fall on both of these axes. There are many archetypes within the cube, but a “Spellslinger” deck is still going to fundamentally have a gameplan such as Midrange, Control, or Aggro. Decks which do not have a cohesive identity on these two axes will struggle.

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Archetypes

This is not a cube where each color pair has a given archetype. This design approach is often an oversimplification which can lead to on rails drafting and lack of emergent decks in the format. Instead, the Bodleian Cube focuses on having a diverse selection of archetypes that cross pollinate well with each other and encourage emergent deckbuilding. This rewards creative drafters and enables them to find unique decks that can change multiple times in a given draft based on the cards they choose to add.

Below are descriptions of many of the high level archetypes within the Bodleian Cube. There are far too many combinations to list all of them, but this list is a great starting point for anyone trying to draft the cube or learn about its design. Each archetype has colors listed next to it which are in the format of Primary Color(s) / Secondary Color(s). For example, an archetype listed as / is primarily in white and red and secondarily in black. As a final note, this list is not going to cover the generic two color midrange decks that are achievable in all color pairs. One can absolutely combine the bread and butter cards in two color pairs to make a coherent deck, but these are not explicitly designed around. The Bodleian Cube is designed to reward drafters for synergy in their decks.

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Aggro /

The aggro archetype use efficient, low cost threats to get the opponent's life total to zero as quickly as possible. This deck wins by killing the opponent before they can get their bigger threats into play and stabilize. The mana base of Bodleian Cube tends to enable two color aggro decks more readily than monocolor ones.

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Red Deck Wins

Rx aggro decks are the fastest in the format due to their hasty threats and burn spells which can kill the opponent if they stabilize on board.

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White Weenie

Wx aggro decks lack the burn of their Red counterpart but make up for it with access to stronger removal and disruption. This clears the way for highly efficient creatures and planeswalkers to kill the opponent quickly.

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Aristocrats /

The aristocrats archetype attacks opponents on a different axis by gaining value from its own creatures dying. By combining sacrifice outlets, sacrifice fodder, and sacrifice payoffs this deck can grind the opponent out or kill them outright. These decks can play very fast, or opt to grind out the game with a slower plan.

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Crime

Yawgmoth, Blood Artist, Goblin Bombardment, and many other cards commit a crime every time a creature dies. This can loop Miner for or make two Gisa tokens every single turn. When this engine comes together it wins the game quickly, and comes about as close to combo as one can get in this cube.

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Artifacts /

The artifacts archetype is somewhat self explanatory. Build around the engines which care about artifacts and include artifacts and card that create them in your deck

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Stoneforge

Stoneforge decks are powerful in Bodleian Cube, but play much more fairly than in cubes where Kaldra Compleat is an option. Do not let that trick you into thinking the card is not worth including in your deck. Looping Cryptic Coat or dropping a snap on equipment like Maul mid combat are powerful lines that win games.

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Control /

The control archetype is all about disrupting the opponents plan and winning with inevitability. In this cube, you are unlikely to stick to pure draw-go or tap-out style control. The best control decks here blend the two styles and know what cards are worth tapping out for. Winning the game quickly once the corner is turned is also key.

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Counters /

There is not a hardened scales deck in this cube, but there are plenty of good cards that put counters on creatures and several creatures that get significantly more powerful when extra counters are put on them. When both kinds of cards are added to a deck the player gains access to some explosive lines of play.

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Delirium

Delirium decks seek to accumulate many card types within the graveyard. They can cover the entire range from proactive to reactive, but all of them need to be careful about how many cards they include which need to consume cards from the graveyard in order to function.

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Flicker /

The flicker archetype is all about gaining value by repeating ETB triggers with flicker effects. It can play a variety of speeds based on what creatures are put into the shell

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Lands /

The lands matter archetype is all about getting additional value from playing lands. Fetch lands and ways to play lands from the graveyard are key to powering up the payoffs such as Tireless Tracker and Titania, Protector of Argoth.

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Land Recursion

Ramp out your payoffs early then use crucible effects to repeatedly play lands from the graveyard to gain value.

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Field of the Dead

Field of the Dead uses its namesake card as a value engine in games that go late. This tends to come together as a ramp deck that can play multiple lands per turn and uses Field as a win condition. Tutors for lands as well as extra payoffs for those tutors both help the deck succeed.

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Legends

The legends deck rewards the drafter for using legendary creatures or permanants.These payoffs give a different texture to a aggro or midrange shell and are significant threats when built around.

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Lurrus /

The Lurrus deck is dependent on an early Lurrus open, but is one of the strongest in the cube when it comes together. Recurring the best one and two drops gives the deck a shocking amount of inevitability without sacrificing the ability to win early against unsuspecting opponents.

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Ninjas

Properly speaking, the ninjas deck is a tempo deck in UB colors that uses ninja cards as threats. This deck’s goal is to play creatures which are hard to block, then ninjutsu in one of the haymakers which can be protected with counterspells and spot removal while it generates advantage to win the game.

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Ramp /

The ramp archetype uses mana acceleration to play large threats ahead of curve. Mana dorks as well as muti-mana ramp spells are key to getting ahead enough of the typical mana curve to have high impact.

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Reanimator /

Dedicated cheat decks are not supported in the Bodleian Cube. There are several flavors of reanimator here, but they are all making value plays. There are no entomb + reanimate style combo decks

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Tiny Reanimator

There are a number of cards across black and white that can return creatures or permanents with mana value 3 or less from the graveyard to the battlefield. Tiny Reanimator decks grind the opponent out with an army of these smaller creatures.

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Value Reanimator

This is the version of this deck that brings back large creatures with cards like Virtue or Liliana and tends to come in the form of a Ramp/Rock deck, or a Control deck. Virtue in particular can be a one card, value reanimator engine.

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Rock

Rock decks use green’s mana acceleration to get premier threats out early. They use removal and recursion to grind the opponent out of the game.

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Self Mill

Self mill decks specialize in filling up their graveyard very quickly. This can provide pure card advantage via threats like Uro, options for engines like Six, and even can be used to win the game with Nexus of Fate.

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Soul Cauldron

Soul Cauldron is a card which changes a deck all on its own. The floor on the card is reasonable grave hate that can buff creatures. The ceiling is an army of Grists that create an insect every turn and take over the game. There are lots of great activated abilities to make use of with Cauldron, and your opponent’s cards ensure that every matchup provides unique lines to find.

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Spellslingers /

The spells matter archetype plays lots of instants and sorceries as well as cards that care about casting them. They can play a faster flash style of tempo strategy or a slower grindy strategy quite comfortably. It is worth noting that a true “protect the queen” style of delver deck is unlikely to come together in a cube with such high value curve topping plays.

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Stompy /

The stompy archetype is about using manadorks to cast midrange threats ahead of curve to take over the game. They differ from a traditional ramp deck in that they are more about playing three, four, and five drops faster than normal rather than the larger creatures ramp decks want to cast.

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Tempo /

There are Ux tempo decks which don’t lean into any of the other archetypes in the format. These all aspire to play enough threats and use answers to disrupt the opponent just long enough to win.

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Tokens

The tokens archetype is the quintessential go-wide strategy in this cube. Overwhelm the opponent with too many attackers to block, or pump the entire board to go for the kill. This deck is one of the most flexible when it comes to speed. Aggro decks love to go wide with tokens, and even ramp decks can make use of their potential to great effect.

Drain Tokens

The drain based tokens deck leverages death triggers in black to force a no win situation by attacking with tokens to force damage through and kill the opponent.

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Esika’s Chariot

Chariot is such a cool card that it is worth highlighting a couple unique tokens it can copy. Esika’s Chariot + Ob Nixilis, the Adversary feels like cheating the first time it happens, but the X value for the token is copied, resulting in an army of Mob Nixilis tokens. Vaultborn and Gruff Triplets are more straightforward, but explosive to pull off.

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Turns /

Taking multiple turns at once is a very powerful strategy. There are only a couple of turns spells in the cube, but there are many ways to copy them and get them back from the graveyard to build a deck around the strategy.

Winota /

The Winota archetype centers all around the namesake card. She requires a deck that’s split between human and non-human creatures to overwhelm the opponent with a tide of humans from the deck. Prioritize larger humans and lower MV non-humans to maximize her potential.

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