This is a conspiracy vintage cube with some silver-bordered cards that cares a lot about synergy, unique interactions, and resource denial.

Things to Know

• At the beginning of each draft, each player will have a Cogwork Librarian. This is meant to encourage players to draft synergy pieces and improve archetype consistency.
• There is no companion cost in this cube.
• Backup Plan is the best card in the cube. Yes, even better than Time Walk or Black Lotus.

The rest of this writeup will contain a quick overview of the colors, archetypes, and combos within the cube.

By color we have:

White seeks to deny the enemy resources or actions while simultaneously gaining resources and board presence. It is purposefully the only color with access to initiative and monarchy cards, which it uses in conjunction with stax pieces and efficient removal to take over games.

By the nature of being a vintage cube, Blue has some of the most powerful cards combined with some of the best interaction in counter magic. Blue also has access to Tolarian Academy/Artifact synergies and is the primary color of the Wheels Archetype.

Black is often viewed as the color of ambition, opportunism, and cruelty, values you will have to take on to successfully use Black in the cube. Black wins games through powerful reanimation , efficient creatures, or through emptying their opponent's hand with discard spells.

Red is a color all about aggression, boasting some of the cheapest and most efficient creatures around. Red decks often try to win by trying to kill their opponents as quickly as possible, but its powerful spells can also be quite complementary to other colors

Green is all about creatures, and in this cube it's about one type of creature in particular: Elves. Elves synergize with each other to result in massive card draw and mana production, seeking to kill their opponents in one massive hit. Green also plays host to a powerful lands theme which seeks to replay lands from the graveyard for a variety of effects.

There are a myriad of decks that you can build in vintage cube, many which do not neatly fit under any specific label or mold. However, I still believe there are some archetypes that you should know about before drafting.

Self-explanatory. Some of the most efficient removal paired with some of the most aggressive creatures. The goal is to close out games as quickly as possible and give your opponent as little room as possible to breathe. There are many creatures that synergize together, such as Thraben Inspector/Novice Inspector with either of Gut, True Soul Zealot/Broadside Bombadiers, so be on the lookout!

This deck consists of trying to play cards that effect extra draws, such as Hullbreacher, Sheoldred, or Alms Collector, with variety of "Wheel" effects such as Wheel of Fortune, Time Spiral, or Winds of Change. There are a variety of interactions with wheels in this cube in almost every color, so the archetype can take on a lot of variations and use a lot of different payoffs.

This deck has been a consistent mainstay of the cube since its beginning and the strategy is simple. Dump big creatures (such as Archon of Cruelty or Atraxa, Grand Unifier) into your graveyard and reanimate them with cheap reanimation spells (such as Reanimate or Animate Dead to win the game.

This archetype has a good amount in common with reanimator and oftentimes the decks that run one archetype have no issue running the other. The primary difference between this and reanimator is that instead of getting creatures out of the graveyard, you get creatures directly out of your hand using effects like Through The Breach, Eureka, or Show and Tell.

Play cheap artifacts for fast mana generation with the Academy. Pour the mana into Urza, Lord High Artificer, or even use it as a fuel to push out your choice of your choice of big spells, with which it can make for an absolutely nasty wheels deck. Be on the lookout for artifact producers, such as Third Path Iconoclast or Forensic Gadgeteer. (Especially if you can get a Basalt Monolith to combo with it.)

Lands is a relatively simple archetype relying on a simple formula. One card that lets lands be played from the graveyard (such as Crucible of Worlds or Ramunap Excavator) plus some form of self sacrificing lands (such as Strip Mine, Wasteland, or any fetch land). The value gained by this can then be multiplied by using extra land effects such as Fastbond,Exploration or Azusa, Lost but Seeking.

Elves are a complex deck that honestly could even be put into the combo section, hence why they head the border in between archetypes and combos. The end goal is combining both card draw (such as Glimpse of Nature or Ineffable Blessing) with mana production (Such as Heritage Druid, Priest of Titania or Elvish Archdruid) in order to play through your deck and kill your opponent with cards such as Allosaurus Shepherd, Ezuri, Renegade Leader, or Craterhoof Behemoth

Pay three mana to prevent your opponent from casting spells or attacking every single one of their turns. You can also use Fire // Ice for a nice value engine backup with Scepter.

A convoluted combo that relies on milling yourself with Brain Freeze in order to escape it again, using Lotus Petal to both create mana and increase your storm count to mill out your opponent and win on the spot. Gets blown out by Emrakul, the Aeons Torn.

7 Mana, two cards --since one is always companioned-- 18 damage. Doesn't hurt that all three of these cards are pretty good on their own. Don't know how common this line will be, but it will win games when it is played.

Combine one of the first two with one of the second two and you win the game on the spot by making infinite copies of the resetting creature. A combo often talked about, but rarely accomplished. Good Luck!