Cloned from Precon Cube 2.1 “Rathi Overlay”

The inspiration for this project was to try to combine the ideas and strategies of some of the old preconstructed theme decks I like into a cube environment. After some experimentation and finding overlap between different decks I’ve also ended up with a supplemental “Rathi Overlap” theme giving the cube an extra storytelling element. Broadly, the blue and black cards are skewed towards Tempest block, while the Invasion cards are centred on green.

In the previous version of the cube — v2.1 — I tried to move away from the “set cube” vibes by removing a lot of 2nd and 3rd copies of particular cards. Not going fully singleton: various staples which had been in multiple theme deck lists were still doubled, or even tripled up. I also added extra red/white cards from Nemesis’s Eruption and black cards from Urza’s Destiny’s Assassin — Rath was the setting for both — to fill some holes.

For this version — v2.2 — I have gone fully singleton for the non-lands. To achieve this I added the remaining unique cards from all the remaining Tempest and Invasion block precons, as well the other three decks from Destiny and Nemesis. Thanks to “The Swarm” and “Comeback” I realised that a cheeky Aluren combo deck might just be possible so have naughtily added in a card not found in any theme deck: Soul Warden.

I suspect my fixing would be considered pretty weak for cube standards. But as I’m using a Tempest to Apocalypse card pool, and am taking inspiration from theme decks (which often exclusively used basics) this felt appropriate. The nonbasics are a mix of Invasion taplands and Planeshift lairs, weighted towards UB and RG/WG/RGW to match the narrative.

Cards like Kindle, Accumulated Knowledge, Welkin Hawk, and Howling Wolf will be "Draft one, get a playset", and I think that the Slivers (which are only in UB) could also be treated the same.

...................

Update: 30/12/2024

Have been tinkering with other structures to combine theme decks into a cube but keep coming back to this one. I've removed the slivers - as much as I appreciate the Tempest Deck I don't think they were needed. I've also added a few cards extra that weren't in any theme deck to help support themes.

I think I'm at the point were I consider actually trying to assemble this and make further adjustments off real life testing. Though first I'm going to make a clone and upscale it to 450 cards, largely by adding back in second copies of specific cards. Hopefully this will add some variation while maintaining consistancy, and allow people to better build certain decks. That second Bottomless Pit for discard decks, the domain payoffs, an extra man-o-war for that P1P1 Aluren etc...