An Old-Border take on one of my favorite types of cube, desert! For those unfamiliar, this means that players are not allowed to add any lands after the draft, and will have to rely on the lands they've drafted to cast their spells. This environment is meant to be drafted in 3 packs of 18 cards, and contains originally old-border cards as well as new cards which have been reprinted into the old border. It seeks to play up a few typal themes from Onslaught block, and much of the graveyard themes of Odyssey block. Cycling, Flashback, Threshold, and Madness appear in large densities across colors.
This cube was at Cube For A Cause in Brooklyn, and received lots of nice feedback! Some of the feedback included that Restoration Angel and Spell Queller felt too strong. This is a balance I have to walk when blending old cards with new cards, as new creatures are almost universally stronger. I think Restoration Angel was correctly identified as being too individually powerful, but I think Spell Queller is possibly safe to keep. I want to keep testing it, but I do think that fellow WU card Soulherder is too powerful. If you don't get it off the board right away, it begins accruing value that can quickly overwhelm the opponent before ultimately becoming a win-condition of its own.
To that end, I want to try Silver Drake as a value-generator that pulls back something like Faerie Seer or Thraben Inspector and then can be a threatening flier. And in place of the Angel, I think Solitary Confinement can be an interesting Fair card that makes a combo deck have to wait a few turns to kill you, OR if you can find a way to draw cards outside the draw step (like with Curiosity on Zur for example) you can keep it out indefinitely.