---

---

TLDR

• No hand disruption.
• No land destruction.
• No tribal rails.
• No phasing, storm, banding.
• No gold cards at all.
• No tutors.
• No searching your library for anything.
• No life gain.

Just creatures, combos, and crazy board states.

---

---

CUBE DESIGN : RULES of THUMB

• Swiss army knives are better than razor blades
• ‘Yes, and…’ is better than ‘no’
• Chess is better than Poker
• Boxing is better than Wrestling
• Close games are fun games

GOALS
The goal of this cube is to create puzzles. I enjoy the puzzle of Chess and Go. Everything is laid out for everyone to see, and the player who can rationalize through the trade-offs of board states is advantaged.

To these ends creatures are prioritized, as the pieces of the puzzle. Spells that can be replaced by a creature equivalent, are. Enchantments try to utilize board elements. Etc. 'Keep it on the board' is a background thought to every choice.

On first glance it looks like a Timmy cube, but on closer inspection the combo potential is ripe for Spike or Johnny.

SPECIFIC CUTS

• Life gain effects have been removed to heighten the pressure and value of life totals. This puts a nice ticking clock feel to games, and gives red a slight advantage (which it needs). It has been replaced by control pieces in white and ramp in green.
• Hand disruption effects (meaning forcing an opponent to discard) have been removed to conserve strategic thinking and planning of players. Discard is such a feel bad mechanic, and I hate playing against it, so I just cut it completely. Since discard was a corner stone of black, I focused black almost entirely on reanimate (which is absurdly over powered, so black doesn't really miss the aggressive discard).
• Land destruction is out. Another mechanic that looses friends. I want land to feel safe and players to love their duals and special lands. This nerfs red a bit, and I've tried super hard to give red back some tools in its absence. Hopefully all the direct damage spells/creatures do the trick.
• Gold cards were taken out to try and loosen any rails that players felt while drafting. This isn't a friendly move for new drafters to the cube, but they'll learn. The cube has a 'good stuff' vibe and you can almost accidentally draft a 5-color good stuff deck, so newbies should be fine. However, I know there are a lot of good golds out there, so I'm willing to take suggestions.
• Tutors are out. Takes too much time and felt unfair. You get what you get. There is 1 exceptions to this rule, in black (sort of).

ARCHETYPES & THEMES

• White : protection, redirection, tokens, aggro
• Blue : card draw, stealing, bouncing, tempo
• Black : reanimate, sac value, midrange
• Red : pingers, flingers, flyers, control
• Green : ramp, stamp, tokens, tempo

ALTERNATE ART
I want Ancient Times to evoke the terrible fears, ideal hopes and dreams, and sobering but unreal reality of the current state of the world. I've picked three artists to hold down the main aesthetics, but I'm still fine with a few others if the vibe stays true.

Wayne Barlowe is selected to manifest the fears.
James Gurney is selected to manifest the hopes.
Simon Stalenhag is selected to manifest the reality.

You can see all the custom art on my Imgur here

Also, I'm rocking a few alts by @Pringlesman from their cube https://cubecobra.com/cube/list/vtm
(Their whole cube is a work of art, check it out)

Extremely Old News : Ancient Time was featured on Cube Outside The Box with co-host John Terrill of Cultic Cube . Which is basically my dream come true. These two are my goto sources for great cube content and theory, so to have Ancient Times reviewed by both was really a peak moment for me. Check. it. out. : ( https://youtu.be/o1cXdhIpnu8 )

Lastly, I love comments and suggestions. Have at anything you see in here, let's talk trash.