“From a sea of infinite possibilities, our choices create the future.”
—Mu Yanling
Atomic Cube is the place where I aim to cultivate the type of Magic I love most: High in player agency, and rewarding of skillful decisionmaking across draft, deckbuilding, and gameplay.
First and foremost, I intend for this cube to be about fundamental Magic strategy. Concepts such as card advantage, combat math, and "the beatdown" are core to gameplay in this cube, and, in order to accentuate them, I have excluded many cube mainstays that circumvent them, such as reanimator, infinite combos, or similar strategies. I also strive to accentuate the mana system and reward mana efficiency, so you will find essentially no way of affecting the board for zero mana, such as pitch spells or free/mana positive ramp spells.
In bringing the basics to the forefront, strategic decisions are plentiful while also being meaningful towards the outcome of the game. A few more granular ways I create this type of gameplay are through a low curve (making sequencing decisions more relevant), the inclusion of cards that inherently come with decisions (hence the inclusion of shocklands and surveil lands over duals), the exclusion of cards that create game states where players don't have much control over the direction of the game (hexproof threats, stax pieces, etc), and a high density of interactive spells.
With this in mind, gameplay shakes out to be pretty similar to retail limited, while still featuring many of the high-impact cards that see play in formats like Modern and Legacy.
My love for interesting decisions naturally extends to the draft portion. To that end, one of the things I avoid most strongly in this cube are cards that are clear picks over essentially any other card, since I believe they can rob players of agency. Therefore, I have tried to generally scale the power level of cards with how narrow they are, be that in terms of color or in terms of viability across decks, in order to create tradeoff decisions between power and openness in the first few picks. I also seek to increase the density of effects that traditional wisdom tells us are high picks in retail limited (such as fixing and removal) in order to make the choice between various types of effects more meaningful. Additionally, the high fixing density in the form of, generally, lands that deal damage to you, in conjunction with the low curve and high speed of the cube, makes deciding how many colors to play meaningful. Finally, the card inclusions are such that most color combinations are able to play a wide variety of deck speeds.
All these factors come together to create a very high degree of mobility during the draft, allowing players to draft successfully across a wide spectrum of color combinations and deck speeds and making each pick impactful.
This cube began as a clone of @andymangold's Bun Magic Cube, and I owe a great deal of my expertise in cube design to him and to @anthonymattox through their podcast, Lucky Paper Radio.
Hi everyone! I've got a bunch of Tarkir cards I'm excited to test, and, additionally, I will not be including Universes Beyond cards in my cubes going forward, so I have a few extra slots to work with on that front as well.
First, the CUTS:
Orcish Bowmasters, Mawloc, and Lictor: Banned for UB crimes.
Voyager Glidecar, Urborg Scavengers, Gorex, and Marauding Mako: These cards are all a little weak and not exciting enough to justify the power gap. Gorex is my favorite of the bunch, but he now has a happy home in The Drownyard. Problem solved!
Vines of Vastwood and Wild Shape: Shaving down on the density of the hexproof tricks a little bit, and these two are my least favorite.
Psychic Frog: I'm still not sure this card was actually too good for the cube, but the play patterns were getting old pretty fast. Little bit of a bummer based on how excited I was for this one when it was spoiled, but it's not out of the question for it to come back one day.
Barren Moor: I'm cutting all four of the cycling lands I added recently, as they haven't really been seeing play. I swapped the others for MDFCs, which I think will play a similar role, but I'm already on Fell the Profane and don't really want to play Boggart Trawler, so this one doesn't get a swap for now.
SWAPS:
Secluded Steppe -> Razorgrass Ambush,
Forgotten Cave -> Pinnacle Monk,
Tranquil Thicket -> Bridgeworks Battle: As explained above.
Embercleave -> Cori-Steel Cutter: I have not looked back for a second after cutting Death-Greeter's Champion, and this incredibly sick new red equipment is a great excuse to continue the trend and ditch Embercleave.
Village Rites -> Desperate Measures: Village Rites out for modal Village Rites that's also a removal spell. Sweet.
Ox of Agonas -> Bedlam Reveler: Ox has long been one of the weakest cards in the cube, to my disappointment. Hopefully the return of Reveler can bring a slightly different graveyard angle to decks with lots of spells.
ADDS:
Cloudshift: Another neat little trick-with-upside/secret modal spell that feels pretty in line with what this cube is doing.
Glyph Elemental: This card is just kinda cracked? I haven't gotten around to pulling it off the maybeboard since it released but I have no doubt it will be fairly good here, alongside two sets of fetches.
Caustic Bronco, District Mascot: I wanted to test Bronco on release, but didn't love the idea of having a one-off Mount in a cube that already has a fair number of Vehicles. Not really sure why two is so much more palatable than one, but in either case shoutout to @beeks for putting me on Mascot and giving me the excuse to try Bronco.
Tersa Lightshatter: Kiora has been neat, and this card is fairly similar. Worth a try for sure.
Scavenger Regent, Disruptive Stormbrood, Runescale Stormbrood, Sagu Wildling: Omen is really neat, but I'm a little worried it's going to get confusing with Adventures also in the cube. Hopefully testing a bunch of them at once will alleviate this problem. I'm especially interested to find out what kinds of decks might open up as a result of Scavenger Regent, an extremely defensible midrange threat with a weird board wipe stapled to it.
Channeled Dragonfire: One day I will find that there are too many shock variants in this cube, but today is not that day.
Kishla Skimmer: Good rate, cool synergy piece, and a build-around in a way that still fits the vibes of the cube.