Rocky Mountain Yeti Premodern Pauper Cube
INTRO: BORN FROM A CHALLENGE
Welcome to the Rocky Mountain Yeti Premodern Pauper Cube. The concept for this cube was born from a challenge:
"Unless you willfully put a very low power level in the non-creature spells, you won't find enough good creatures for an entire cube. Common creatures were much less powerful back then. Either go non singleton or drop the old border clause. Otherwise it's bound to be a bad cube."
Challenge accepted. This cube was constructed from scratch by going through the entire list (1,800+ cards) of premodern commons.
The PMP cube is a singleton project and is designed to be drafted for one on one play. The environment varies in speed but with a large concentration of the card pool coming from the Rath Cycle forward, the pace of play will be on the faster side within a premodern context.
This is a pauper cube that has been built around modified color identities given the pauper restriction but are inline with the overall themes of the time period. It combines the power of classic non-creature spells with the speed of the premodern creatures and effects. There are a great many quality creatures with unique abilities that force opponents to make hard choices about how they use their removal. Mana burn is also in effect.
Given that this is a pauper cube, the power level is relatively low. It has kitchen table flavor and is meant for those that enjoy the premodern format and want to explore more of the card pool that often do not make the cut into constructed decks or more powerful cubes.
Decks are typically drafted with two to three colors and the inclusion of improved fixing lands, that break the pauper and singleton restriction, allows players to push the limits of what can be drafted. Fixing was traditionally bad at all rarities in the premodern meta and the inclusion of these cards greatly improves the efficiency of gameplay within the cube.
The cube is 360 cards and offers little variance when drafted with a full pod. It has also been drafted with smaller pods, including grid drafting with as little as two to three people.
The color identities have been built with multiple themes that synergize with one another and in some cases overlap to stabilize drafting themes. The gold cards are not signposts as much as they are low cost support that helps identify strong color pairings during the draft.
WHITE :
White is focused on soldiers, knights and supported with a flying presence that is low costed to support aggro and low end midrange curves. It also has strong removal and combat tricks to keep opponents off kilter if there are any cards in hand.
BLUE :
Blue is focused on flyers, counter magic and control. Counter magic is relatively low cost in pauper and there are fun combo pieces as well as combat tricks that overlap well with other colors.
BLACK :
Black thrives on graveyard shenanigans, shadow and zombies and creature bonuses. Black has secondary archetypes around direct damage (at a cost) and hand disruption. It is a slower color but synergizes well with white and red.
RED :
Red manifests burn in both its creatures and spells. Creates have weaker stats but possess both the ability to deal damage as well as combat tricks like haste and provoke. The goal of red aggro decks is to use burn to clear a path and put a dent in your opponent's life total while you chip away with lower power creatures that may or may not see combat.
GREEN :
Green is right at home with ramp and stompy. Although fixing has been improved with pain lands, Green provides ramp through traditional elves to get into bigger beaters coming onto the table. Green also has graveyard recursion and the ability to search lands into play.
ARTIFACTS:
There are so few common artifacts in premodern. They provide mediocre creature threats that are counter themed and the primary purpose of the artifact section is to improve fixing.
There is an additional cross color archetype in slivers. To support this, if a player drafts a sliver, they get a second copy of it for free at the end of the draft.
“Here's to those who wish us well, and those who don't can go to hell.”
Enjoy the premodern pauper experience!