A cube made of some of the weakest cards WotC has ever printed,
with draft archetypes based on some of the weakest mechanical themes!
Decks should be slow but consistent, enabling player/drafter skill to shine. Winning games should not simply depend on the luck of getting the least-bad cards.
This cube does not include cards with such a narrow purpose that they're completely useless in most games, such as the Lace cycle; nor cards that are so weak you would never put them in a deck over a basic land, such as Sorrow's Path. It also doesn't have effects like Landwalk that can be either useless or actually quite strong depending on your opponent's deck; nor effects like Banding that are bad in the sense of badly designed because they expect the player to understand how Banding works.
The goal is to make extremely low-power cards viable, without sacrificing functionality. Like most cubes, the "power delta" (difference between the best and worst cards) is intended to be small. That said, there are some "strictly better" cards in here, in order to have value picks for pushing draft archetypes. While it is a singleton cube, you can (for example) think of a 1-mana 1/1 with no abilities as a Common, and a 1-mana 1/1 that lets you sacrifice a land for a temporary power boost as an Uncommon.
See the table below for the list of draft archetypes. Each pair of colors gets 3 multicolor cards (2 signposts and 1 that's just plain bad) as well as a hybrid-mana card and a monocolor card with an optional second-color cost.
Colors | Theme | Example card |
---|---|---|
![]() ![]() ![]() | The Big Freeze (Tapping Matters) | Palliation Accord |
![]() ![]() ![]() | Carrion Feast (Spend the Graveyard) | Skywarp Skaab |
![]() ![]() ![]() | Reckless Demolition (Land Sacrifice) | Army Ants |
![]() ![]() ![]() | Hired Goons (Stompy Upkeep) | Darba |
![]() ![]() ![]() | Just Don't Die (Life-Gain) | Fortifying Draught |
![]() ![]() ![]() | Reap but Mostly Sow (Threshold & co.) | Battlewise Aven |
![]() ![]() ![]() | Trash Sorting (Self-Discard) | Shattered Perception |
![]() ![]() ![]() | Headstone Count (Undergrowth & co.) | Drown in Filth |
![]() ![]() ![]() | Build-a-Bomb (Auras Matter) | Hero of the Nyxborn |
![]() ![]() ![]() | Retirement Plan (Cast Expensive Spells) | Elemental Resonance |
Fixing & Splashing: This cube is primarily a two-color draft, but has incentives to consider splashing a third. For example, Boros
has the most Auras, but all colors have some, because Auras are bad. It's even possible to make a five-color artifact/converge/domain/sunburst pile. A smattering of nonbasic lands and mana rocks can help stabilize this plan. Of course, they're all terrible at it, so you might decide you're better off with just basics and prayers.
Morph: This cube has Morph in it! So you always have access to a 2/2 creature for 3 mana. This unfortunately edges out worse-than-vanilla 3-drop 2/2s like Mindless Null, but I think it's worth it because Morph is fun. There are 4 morph cards per color (1 defensive creature, 1 flyer/reacher, & 2 archetype support cards) plus 1 artifact and a single multicolor Manifest card. Each color also gets 1 non-morpher that interacts with the opponent's morphs. This cube adheres to the same cost guideline as Khans of Tarkir: It takes at least five (5) mana to turn face-up, eat a face-down creature in combat, and survive the fight. So if your opponent only has 4 lands up, don't worry about it, their morpher couldn't possibly be something dangerous... right?