Spooky Black Halloween Graveyard is a color-imbalanced graveyard synergy cube. Because graveyard mechanics are simply better supported in black than in other colors, this cube takes a similar approach to Torment, with black cards actually being more common than cards of the other colors- in particular, black has nearly 3 times as many monocolor cards as the other colors. The gold cards and fixing lands are similarly heavily skewed, with nearly twice as much of each in color combinations that contain black.

In a typical 8-person pod, the expectation is that roughly 6 to 7 drafters will be playing some amount of black mana, so hybrid mana, additional/alternate costs, and activated abilities tend to treat black mana as both the default and as "free." Drafters are encouraged to think of black cards almost like they do artifacts in other sets in terms of being castable in any deck whose strategy they support. For example, almost any white deck playing Lingering Souls is likely to be able to splash the flashback cost for free.

Overall, this creates an environment that heavily supports a number of overlapping graveyard themes and dramatically changes the way drafters evaluate pick priority: for example, hate against black cards and graveyard mechanics are worth picking early, black cards and fixing that play in multiple archetypes are premium, and nonblack cards are much riskier to draft early.

Archetypes are somewhat loose and interconnected, and each major archetype intersects black:

: Reanimator

Put powerful creatures into your graveyard, then return them to play. Black has some cards that put cards directly into the bin such as Entomb, but usually red or blue cards like Faithless Looting or Frantic Search are needed for consistency. Some threats can put themselves in the graveyard, as well. Black and white have effects like Priest of Fell Rites, Late for Dinner, and Reanimate, but there are other ways to cheat powerful creatures into play as well. As the archetype is extremely well-supported by the cube infrastructure, targets are chosen to be impactful but beatable, e.g. Grave Titan, Massacre Wurm, and Sheoldred, Whispering One.

: Self-Mill

Milling yourself allows you to find targets for recursion effects like Eternal Witness or Undead Butler and enables powerful creatures like Tarmogoyf and Gurmag Angler that overperform for the amount of mana spent to cast them. Dredge cards like Golgari Grave-Troll allow players to mill themselves quickly and reuse recursive threats like Bloodghast and Vengevine, or to eventually win the game with Thassa's Oracle or Jace, Wielder of Mysteries.

: Sacrifice/Aristocrats

This archetype pairs cards like Yawgmoth, Thran Physician and Carrion Feeder that sacrifice creatures for value with bodies like Lingering Souls, Doomed Traveler, and Squee, Dubious Monarch. Other effects benefit from your own creatures dying like Blood Artist or Liliana, Heretical Healer.

: Lands

This archetype synergizes with lands in many ways, giving you value from merely playing them with cards like Tireless Tracker or by incentivizing you to put them in the graveyard- e.g. Crucible of Worlds, Deeproot Wayfinder, Titania, Protector of Argoth, and Turntimber Sower.

: Creature combo

This color combination includes a number of recursive and synergistic creatures. In addition to fair magic, though, these colors enable a number of powerful recursive combos like [[Reveillark] and Karmic Guide, Saffi Eriksdotter and Renegade Rallier, or persist creatures like Kitchen Finks and ways to prevent -1/-1 counters like Anafenza, Kin-Tree Spirit. Free sacrifice outlets like Carrion Feeder and Yawgmoth, Thran Physician are incredibly important for enabling these synergies.

: Madness/Discard

This archetype rewards discard and looting effects. Cheap outlets like Faithless Looting, Lightning Axe, and Looter Il-Kor preserve mana to cast powerful spells like Hollow One, Asmoranomardicadaistinaculdacar, or Fiery Temper or activate effects like Lazotep Chancellor. Some effects synergize with both your and your opponent's discards, such as The Raven Man.

(): Spells

This archetype rewards casting cheap spells. Threats like Pteramander, Haughty Djinn, and Tolarian Teror incentivize you to fill your graveyard with spells, as do delve spells. In addition, engines like Young Pyromancer and Third Path Iconoclast reward spellcasting with tokens for board presence or sacrifice fodder.

: Recursive Creatures

This is a tempo/midrange shell that uses cheap looting, discard, and mill to set up recursive graveyard creatures like Bloodghast or Nether Traitor or targets for cards like Sevinne's Reclamation and Unearth. Breathless Knight, Archfiend's Vessel, and River Kelpie all reward you for doing so.

While most decks will primarily focus on one of these strategies, they overlap enough that most decks will also intersect most of them a little bit. For example, a madness shell might play some recursive creatures like Bloodghast that lend themselves to playing some sacrifice synergies and/or some cheap reanimation spells that pair with their ample discard outlets.

In addition, there are a number of smaller synergy packages, including (but not limited to):

Mizzix's Mastery/Scholar of the Lost Trove+Magma Opus

Sharuum the Hegemon+Phyrexian Metamorph

Goblin Welder/other ways to reanimate artifacts + large artifacts

God-Pharaoh's Gift+Gate to the Afterlife

Finally, exile removal and graveyard exile effects are priced relatively premium- any effect that exiles the entire graveyard either 1) happens at sorcery speed, 2) is telegraphed and is worth a card, and/or 3) costs mana to use.

Drafts are typical 3 packs of 15, fully randomized.

This is the fourth iteration of the Spooky Black Halloween Graveyard cube which I have put together for October of 2019, 2021, and 2022; previous lists have taken different approaches to color distribution, power level, and combo prevalence. The current iteration supports some slower and more interactible combo archetypes and raises the power level, while restricting graveyard hate for more incentives to play a graveyard-based game. It also marks the cutting of a number of "sacred cows" like Spider Spawning which have consistently underperformed or been cut from maindecks in previous years.