Featured at Bar-B-Cube 2024 Origins

My Esper Cube originates with my experience playing Tyler Pugliese's Jund Cube at CubeCon 2023, the epitome of midrange. Despite my status as a blue gamer, I found the experience fantastic, and a great expression of all those three colors had to offer.

My earliest memories in Magic are of casting Lingering Souls, Liliana of the Veil, Augur of Bolas, and other Esper cards in standard. I hope to recreate what Esper means to me and other Magic players, especially highlighting what was possible in constructed in Blue, White, and Black.

Cube Objectives

The goals of this cube, in priority order, are as follows.

I. Feature the iconic Esper cards from Magic's constructed history, especially those that do not appear in today's powered cubes.
II. Have decks that can 3-0 a draft across all of Magic's macroarchetypes (Aggro, Control, Combo, Midrange).
III. All decks need the option to do "unfair things". It wouldn't be Esper without combo, but it should all be disrupt-able.

Notable Exclusions

• Power (Moxen, Lotus, Ancestral Recall, Time Walk)
• Other Fast Mana- Sol Ring, Mana Vault, Mana Crypt, Grim Monolith, etc.
• Mana Drain
• Initiative/Monarch/The Ring Tempts You

Broad Themes

While the cube does not have defined archetypes for each color pair, there are broad themes to be looked-out-for.
-Artifacts (both aggro and value-oriented versions)
-Blink
-Reanimator
-Dark Depths Combo
-Hard Control
-NinjaFaeries
-Spells Matter
-Doomsday

The cube has lots of microarchetypes enabled by single cards, so pay close attention to the list.