This is a clown shoes cube! It was originally inspired by the 100 Ornithopters Cube of Lucky Paper fame, and has since devolved in an unholy concoction of strange synergies and weird combos.

This cube is not new player friendly and will probably hurt your brain if it doesn't just leave you giggling at how stupid it is.

The core identity of the cube is the premise that the only creatures in the cube are 50 copies of Blazing Rootwalla and 50 copies of Basking Rootwalla. That's it. There are no other creatures cards, and no creature tokens, unless those tokens are copies of the titular rootwallas.

Why these rootwallas and why 100 of them?

Because it's funny and I love them. Next question.

Why 50 of each rather than 100 of either?

One of the hardest parts about designing this cube was deciding how to handle the color balance of the list, particularly in regards to the fixing lands. I considered selecting one of the rootwallas to focus on and making the list a desert cube, but I decided that I wanted both my favorite green and favorite red one drops to get equal love.

To be honest, if I had selected just one, there is a very real chance I would have made a cube for each of them anyways and one cube is much cheaper than two, even for a bizarre list like this.

After dozens, if not hundreds, of hours searching Scryfall very carefully, I have come to the realization that this may be the most versatile/modular cube list I have ever curated, even with it's strange design restriction(s). Thanks to Madness: on the Rootwallas, there is a shocking amount of options for card choices in basically every color. Because of this and the low monetary cost of the rootwallas themselves, it is surprisingly easy to curate a version of that list at extremely low cost, but it is similarly easy to curate a version that is far more expensive than it has any reason to be. Because of this, I plan to include links to several different versions of this list once I've had more time to think on and test each variation of the list.

The list and what is included is extremely versatile, especially if you and your drafters are willing and able to think outside the box. I include the phrase "if able" not to be disparaging but because I believe that color pip blindness is a real thing in draft.

Enter my soap box

Many players make their first few picks in a draft and decide those are the colors they are playing. When this happens, they often stop closely (or at all) reading the cards that are "outside" of "their colors." This is not necessarily a bad thing, in fact, for many beginning players, this is a good way for players to remove complexity points from the draft and save their mental energy for later. For newer or less experienced players playing in new environments, turning their brains off to cards that aren't in their colors in probably a net-good, since it will generally lead to an overall draft experience that is less draining/mentally taxing than it would be if they carefully read and considered every single card.

The problem is that in some draft environments, if you aren't closely watching your lands or block out "off-color" picks, you may end up with a deck that is significantly worse than it can, or should, be.

This is especially likely in this environment, but in more ways than normal since the only (reasonable) wincons in this environment are red and/or green cards. If players skip out on rootwallas because they are in dimir, their is a high chance their deck will not be functional, since the dimir archetype typically wins by discarding, bouncing and otherwise recurring rootwallas over and over again. This means the dimir deck does not necessarily need any red or green lands, but it does mean that the dimir deck will likely want to have 7-9 red/green cards via the rootwallas.

It's a feature of this format that players may have many "off-color" cards in their decks without the means to cast them. Players of this cube should be very mindful of color pip blindness and how their specific deck and/or strategy works with or around off-color cards. Players will benefit immensely from planning ahead during their draft phase and thinking about how their colors interact with the core mechanics of the cube and whether or not they need "off-color" cards and/or fixing for their deck to function.

Exit Soap box stage left

In an effort to fight against color pip blindness, I've included about 30 fixing lands in this list that are at least red or green to help make sure that drafters can have a way to cast their rootwallas and lands that tap for the colors they need without too much extra work. This is primarily to help players who are worried they about having cards in their decks that could end up stranded in hand if they top deck them without a discard outlet available.

While the obvious non-land includes for this cube would appear to be madness cards, discard outlets, and anthems, the individual cards chosen for every color open up options that may not be obvious considerations from the start. Such options include Mill, Storm, Aristocrats, 'Card Name Matters', and even Aetherflux Reservoir decks. My 'Maybeboard' for this cube is very long and every single time I go looking I somehow manage to find cards I hadn't even considered for the list previously.

While I tend to prefer emergent and descriptive archetypes in cube over prescribed ones, I think think cube in particular requires some level of careful curation and prescription for archetypes otherwise the risk of train-wrecking a draft is much higher than it is in a more normal draft environment.

Every color in this cube has at least one 1 mana: "discard your hand" type of effect. These are unlikely to be the best pack 1 pick 1 cards in the cube, but they should be funny and/or strong enough that using them to help pitch and explain the cube to newer players, may be very helpful, since Turn 1 Swamp cast One with Nothing to discard and then cast 5 Rootwallas is--at the very least--an extremely novel turn one play compared to basically every other deck in basically every other format where discarding your hand, especially early on, is almost always a negative.

Similarly hand hate, wheel, and other discard effects are also very carefully selected for this list, as a turn 1 Mind Twist for X=2 or 3 in this cube is just as likely to give your opponent 1-2 1/1s on board and actually put you behind as it is to hit their key cards and hurt their ability to play/win. Similar considerations should be made when considering cards like Wheel of Fortune or Windfall for the list.

The white section of the cube

The blue section

The black section

The red section

The green section

Multicolor piles and archetypes

Conspiracy Cards