Art by Chris RallisHey all, and welcome to my second cube! This is a low-powered peasant cube designed using draft chaff and a bunch of bulk I had lying around.
The goal for this cube is to spend mana efficiently each turn on activated abilities, card filtering/draw, or spells to win the game. Mana should never be unspent.
Games should be medium-long, hopefully ending around turn 9.
This cube is designed with low complexity in mind. I omitted using mechanics such as double-faced cards, sagas, initiative, Ring bearing, monarch, etc. due to them being hard to parse and slowing games down.
There's a focus on alternative casting (i.e. landcycling, cycling, kicker, flashback, etc.) to help keep players active.
I also added a small Learn // Lesson package to incentivize sideboarding. Learn is also a solid mechanic for getting some discard/draw going, so it stands alone by itself as something to play with.
This is also where you'll see that I break one of the most significant rules of cube, keeping it singleton. I am now including 2 copies of each colorless Lesson sorcery in the cube.
These include:
Fixing is naturally going to be high with these mechanics in mind. Being able to discard/draw for cheap using blood tokens, learning, and cycling will help naturally fill up graveyards while allowing people to draw until they find what they need. With this in mind, I have included themes such as delirium, graveyard matters, and flashback costs to allow players to gain value off their discards.
My biggest concern is the power level and viability of each individual card and archetype support. Is UB Cascade a good direction to go in? Is RW Equipment too strong? Should shrines even be in consideration? Only time (and lots of playtesting) will tell, but with that in mind, let's go ahead and go over the themes:
ARCHETYPES
: Equipment / Aggro Play an aggressive and fast game with creatures that like to turn sideways. Use For Mirrodin! to get equipped creatures out on the board, and look for direct damage cards to help bring your opponents down to 0.
: Reanimator / Midrange Self-Mill and throw away the cards you don't need so you can bring them back from the graveyard. Cast huge threats until and bring your foes to their knees.
: +1/+1 Counters / Midrange Create an army of tokens and buff them up to overwhelm the board. Use +1/+1 counters to keep them healthy and strong until the battle is won.
: Delirium / Control This deck cares about having four different card types in the graveyard to gain value and make your spells stronger. Use filtering to craft the perfect hand and finish your opponents in the resource game.
: Lifegain Benefits / Midrange Gain life and reap the benefits! Use vampires and sacrifice outlets to help ward off aggressive opponents until you drain them dry!
: Fliers / Aggro Get some flying birds and hit people with them! Evasion is the name of the game with this archetype. Soar through the skies and *counter spells to stop opponents dead in their tracks.
: Domain / Tempo Get greedy! Play all 5 of the land types to get access to the strongest cards in the cube. A good manabase will help you cast spells from all across the color pie, with variety being the bane of other's plans.
: Discard / Control Your opponent can't win if they can't play the game. Interaction is a must in these colors. Make sure to never let your opponents take the upper hand, and win when they're out of options.
: Cascade Value / Midrange Make your deck a 2-for-1 special using Cascade! Have explosive turns that overwhelm and destroy, as your massive board manages to break parity and swing for the win.
: Artifact Sac / Aggro Create cheap creatures and artifacts to eventually sacrifice them for value! A death by a thousand cuts is the main goal here, and your rivals will be powerless to stop the constant barrage.
: Shrines / Jank For the jank enthusiasts out there! There are ten total shrines in the cube, and your goal is to get enough of them on the battlefield to gain enough value to destroy your opponents. Is this deck viable? Good? Who knows? Just have fun with it.
As always, feedback and comments are always appreciated. Feel free to let me know your thoughts if you can.
"I was gonna name this the Peasant-ly Suprised Cube, but someone already beat me to it."
-Patrick, Saddened Designer
Questions? Comments? Want to do a friendly Grid draft or discuss why Mulldrifter deserves to be in every cube until the end of time?
Twitter: @infernoguy13
E-mail: patrickvillegas1313@gmail.com