The Creatureless Cube

For those who love to build engines (and those who love to disrupt them)

Design Goals

The original question posed by this cube was "what would Magic look like with no creatures on the battlefield?" The answer (it would be pretty boring) was found rather quickly, and this cube is the result of my unwillingness to throw away that idea entirely. While you will not cast any creature spells, there will be plenty of creatures on the battlefield, and many games will be won via combat. Most decks will aim to assemble synergy pieces and win from there.

Format Speed and Removal

The Creatureless Cube aims to have a gameplay experience at a speed that lets most decks to do the thing they want to do. While you won't see too many curve-out aggro decks, decks with an assertive game plan will get under durdly decks that don't have board presence. There is a good amount of instant speed interaction for noncreature permanents. The removal for creatures is generally more expensive and/or sorcery speed. Despite the amount of answers, you will have a hard time winning without developing a game plan.

A Warning to the Uninitiated

Because of the unique design constraint of this environment, you may be unfamiliar with many of these cards. While I did cut some cards for wordiness, be prepared to read. Notably, many cards in this cube play better or just differently than they would elsewhere. For this reason, you should be prepared to re-evaluate cards within the context of the cube.

Mana Fixing

The mana fixing is fairly good (MH2 bridges, double shocks, triomes, artifacts, a mish-mash of 10 of the two-colored creature lands that I think play the best here), but there are no fetches or original duals. The entire cube is singleton except for shocks. Depending on how highly you draft lands, you will likely end up in ~3 colors. There are no payoffs for going five color or for having basics of different types. You want to draft fixing to be able to play your spells (or because you drafted Field of the Dead), not to play 5 color good stuff, because raw power will likely not get you wins against a tuned synergy deck.

Archetypes

As I've grown more confident with my ability to curate an enjoyable experience with this cube, I have begun to step away from the original design of archetypes by shard. You will see themes emerge as you draft, and I encourage you to try to navigate the space between archetypes, but here are some packages you can expect to see:

Attrition, discard, lands, control, artifact aggro, artifact go-wide, enchantment flicker, enchantment reanimator, artifact ramp, go-wide aggro, big boys, lifegain, aristocrats, big mana, etc.

I highly encourage you to find something interesting and build around it rather than decide you're in certain colors and draft those cards. Most of all, have fun with it!