While the top tier planeswalkers battled Nicol Bolas, the benchwarmers got bored. "What if we traveled back to the 1990s?" one suggested.

Waves of nostalgia overcame them as they viewed the underpowered creatures, loose color pie, and cumbersome text boxes. "This was a great idea," they agreed with reverence.

 

Design Principles

• Only cards printed in the game's first 6 years (with five special exceptions).
• Balanced power level. This generally means using those years' most powerful creatures and omitting the most powerful spells. (No Mana Drain, Swords to Plowshares, Control Magic, etc.—I don't want to discourage people from playing Shivan Dragon.)
• Aggro is supported in white and black only (not red).
• Many synergies between cards, but no win-at-once combos.
• Includes some cards that are normally broken, but without the support to make them broken. (ex: Bazaar of Baghdad with no Reanimate, Timetwister with no Hullbreacher, Corpse Dance with no Eldrazi, High Tide with no Time Spiral.) This causes us to play them for regular value, and get new uses out of old cards.
• Ample enabling of multicolor decks and splashing. (Doubly useful since in these old sets, synergies were often accidental and happened across colors more than within.)

 

Synergies & Archetypes

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Wait, why are there planeswalkers?

Short answer: It's an experiment I may undo after more playtesting.

Long answer: I've played and enjoyed a lot of different cubes. But I often found myself wondering, "Why does every cube the same planeswalkers over and over? Can't we try some of the lesser powered ones?" I decided if I ever made a cube, I would do just that. And this might be the only cube I ever design, so in they went.

That said, I carefully selected the five, and I believe these are a good fit for the environment. Red was short on playables since I didn't enable aggro and it didn't do much else in the early years. (Plus a lot of defensive cards I wanted to include, like Blazing Effigy and various walls, don't currently exist on MtGO.) They also allowed me to fill in some gameplay holes: red back then didn't have any card draw or looting effects, or many ways to get cards out of the graveyard (Anarchist was about it), or ways to ramp mana! (There was Sisters of the Flame, but again: not yet on MtGO.)

Also I kind of like the odd dynamic of having a format where planeswalkers exist but aren't autopicks. The ones I chose truly are low on power and don't fit into every archetype. In this cube, they will usually function more like sorceries than planeswalkers.

I realize the flavor is a bit jarring in a set of only nostalgic '90s cards, but that was the point. Planeswalkers can travel anywhere, even to the past.

ALL THAT SAID, if I playtest the cube and think it's TOO jarring or that I underestimated their power, I'll take them right out. They were meant to be a fun exploration, not their usual dominating force.