Friendly Fire: Balanced Unpowered Vintage Cube
An unpowered 550-card vintage "Good Stuff" cube.
The Friendly Fire cube is designed with new players and long-time cube enthusiasts in mind and is drafted weekly with group sizes from 6-8 people. We have balanced the experience to be competitive and full of powerful cards from the history of Magic while avoiding mechanics that lead to frustrating game states. Aggressive, Control, and Combo strategies are all supported in the 550 cards we have selected.
Every month, the player with the best record from our weekly drafts gets to pick a card from the cube to be gilded, commissioned custom art for that chosen card, and have their name with the month they won placed on it for all to see in future drafts. Check out the custom art cards tagged with "Cube Champ."
Average Player Count
6-8 people
Supported Archetypes:
Color | Identity |
---|---|
White is a Jack of all trades with some of the best removal options in the cube. | |
Control and tempo with countermagic are Blue's assets, along with artifact support. | |
Black is known for graveyard synergies and removal. | |
Red is known for its fast-paced damage or mid to late-game threats. | |
Mana fixing and ramping up to massive threats early is Green's best feature. |
Supported Dual Color Archetypes:
Dual Color | Archetypes |
---|---|
Control, Tempo | |
Tempo, Reanimate, Control | |
Aggro, Sacrifice, Reanimate | |
Mid-Range, Aggro | |
Mid-Range, High-End Threats | |
Aggro, Sacrifice, Reanimate | |
Spells Matter, Tempo, Control | |
Mid-range, High-End Threats, Reanimate | |
Aggro, Creature Tokens | |
Tempo, Mid-Range |
Some Tweaks to Cards
Snow Lands Matter
We have edited some "Snow lands matter" cards such as Arcum's Astrolabe and On thin ice to "Basic lands matter" cards. Less confusion on mana bases for new drafters and saves us from supplying snow lands for a few strong cards.
Flip or Transform Cards
Cards like Fable of the Mirror-Breaker or Ajani, Nacatl Pariah have been custom-edited one-sided cards. Making dual-sided cards all on one side makes the drafting experience smoother for players who forget or do not know what the entire card does. Instead of removing a card from its sleeve or having a second one on hand to explain these cards, the player can rotate the card to read both sides. Check out our custom images in our list to see!
Combo List
Sneak Attack or Through the Breach
(or other creature threats)
Reanimate
(or other creature threats)
Tinker
(or other artifact threats)
Show and Tell
(or other artifact, creature, enchantment, or land threats)
Natural Order
(or other green creature threats)
One-Sided Time Twister
Ban List
No Playtest Cards, Custom Cards, Silver Boarder Cards, or Cards Adapted from MTGA
We Have tried all these, and our player base has decided to step away from cards not tested and curated for paper magic by Wizards of the Coast. Some cards felt unbalanced or too wild of a concept to enjoy for their liking.
Banned Mechanics:
Mill (i.e., Jace, Memory Adept)
due to a lack of counter-playability and stagnant gameplay. Mill cards are too parasitic for our liking.
Day Bound/ Night & Day Cards (i.e., Graveyard Trespasser): This mechanic is too complex to keep track of. As soon as this mechanic is triggered, it needs to be tracked for the rest of the game and is tedious to micro-manage.
Enter the Dungeon/ Initiative (i.e., White Plume Adventurer): This mechanic is overly complex and needs text-filled tokens to explain the variety of options players have when playing these spells. The mechanic was hard to keep track of, confusing to pick up, and overall overly powered.
Banned Cards:
Power 9 (Except Timetwister): The Power Nine are obviously powerful and iconic cards, but they are must-pick cards over any cards in a pack making the draft experience less about the strategy you build with your draft pool, but how many of the power nine can you cram into it a deck. Also, the Power Nine can lead to non-game situations. The speed at which the power nine can put you ahead on turn one doesn't often lead to your opponents getting to play out their deck's strategies or counterplay before things get out of hand. Players who did not get Power in the draft are also at a disadvantage against a player who did draft power, leading to unsatisfying games.
True-Name Nemesis, Guardian of the Guildpact: These creatures are frustrating to deal with and have barely any counterplay besides "wrath it" or "counter it." Just try explaining to a new player in your draft, "Hey, that creature they just resolved for 3-4 mana, you can't do anything about it now. You can't block it, you can't target it, and you can't damage it... Good luck!" and see how they feel about it.
Moat: This card hoses agro to the point where if they can't remove Moat, they might as well concede (Not fun), or it does nothing because you are against an opponent who is playing barely any creatures anyway.
Ravages of War, Armageddon: No player enjoys having all of their lands blown up and not being able to react to a thing. It's a very one-sided "feels bad" card to play against.
Karakas: We played Karakas for a period and quickly found that it did not matter what deck you were drafting when using this card. Karakas was a no-brainer to slot into any deck. It was either backbreaking to play against and gimped some strategies like reanimating so hard with no downside or sat on the field and did nothing.
Testing Again* Mana Drain: When your opponent casts Mana Drain on your mana spell on turn three, it not only feels bad, but it can also turn a game into a no-contest. Your opponent practically made you skip your turn three and then turned around to play a costing spell on their turn three with that extra mana they gained with Mana Drain. Not many spells can compete.
Testing Again* Mind Twist: When this card resolves it usually leads to toxic gameplay patterns. Coming back from your hand being discarded or even half of it at random removals most chance of strategy playing out, and is generally not fun to play against.
Clocknapper: Clocknapper was once loved by the few who played it in our cube and realized its potential, but the majority of players quickly found this card to be very non-interactive to play against and generally "not fun." Clocknapper can too easily pair with other cards that blink or abuse it (albeit fragile and easy-to-solve combos) to the point where players are sick of seeing it. Also, it did not help that this card is a silver border card. Our player base does not enjoy custom or unplayable cards for tested constructed play.
Sol Ring, Mana Crypt, Grim Monolith, Ancient Tomb, Gaea's Cradle, Tolarian Academy, Channel, Mishra's Workshop, City of Traitors, Mana Vault: Extremely high end Fast mana leads to similar issues as the power nine. Games tend to be extremely one-sided for the players lucky enough to have drafted these cards or get them in their starting hands, or the opposite for players who have not.