Open the Drawer

Welcome to the Junk Drawer- a 540 card singleton Peasant Cube for the Magic players who want to fidget with 1,000 pieces of cardboard at an unreasonably affordable price.

Every card cube both IS junk (peasant) and MAKES junk (tokens)- get out the Infini-tokens, or come prepared with the best sorted token box of all time, because every deck's going to need it!

Themes

Every deck in the format is somehow going to care about Tokens- fortunately, Magic R&D has heavily leaned into all kinds of unique tokens over the years, allowing them to support a wide range of play styles and archetypes across all ten color pairs and beyond.

The multicolored cards in each color pair are open to various build directions with the base colors each supporting all the themes across the cube.

A draft pod could support two Golgari drafters who go on in different multi-colored options out the gate if one dives deep into Food, artifact, and life gain synergies while the other delves into Graveyard and self-mill strategies.

White/Blue

Azorius aggressive decks look to stick threats in the air and peck in for damage while keeping the opponent off balance with instant speed interaction.

Slower Azorius decks want grindy value plays with bigger late-game threats. Early countermagic and interaction keep you alive long enough to stick and protect powerful threat or value engines.

Blue/Black

Dimir is up to its usual tricks and will likely be one of the naturally slower color pairs of the cube. These decks tend to play controlling games with value coming out of the graveyard.

It also cares a bit more about creature types than normal as the Amass Zombie cards in its pair empower all zombie tokens and Ramirez DePietro, Pillager asks you to connect with some evasive pirates for value.

Black/Red

Rakdos decks can look the most varied from each other out of any color pairs in the cube. At Knife Point hard control crime decks will play an attrition-based game plan looking to grind an opponent to dust, while a Cranial Ram artifact all-in kind of deck wants Voldaren Epicure, cheap incbutars like Furnace Gremlin and ways to push aggressively.

Between these two extremes are where most Rakdos decks will fall with aristocrat payoffs rewarding throwing creatures into combat and sacrificing them for cards or death triggers.

Red/Green

Gruul has the most linear signposts- almost all of them just generate extra mana in some way shape or form.

This lends to it being a great core for multi-color decks splashing power, removal, or other synergy pieces. On its own, though, its looking to keep gas flowing as you stack up more and more mana, with Skyline Despot being one of the big top-end creatures you'll want to see.

White/Green

Selesnya decks will usually care either about auras or creature tokens- in the case of Pollenbright Wings, both.

Within the creature token decks, some will want you to make one kind of big token and duplicate it with Populate effects, while other versions can reward going wide with payoffs like Rosie Cotton of South Lane and Queen Allenal of Ruadach each rewarding you with something extra when you make a creature token.

Black/White

Orzhov tends to value having your creatures die for value.

Regal Bloodlord pays off life gain themes powered by Food producers and Restless Bloodseeker and Griffin Aerie as more example payoffs.

Beyond these two themes, the color pair is one of the best at going wide with lots of small evasive spirits, and can go easily into its typically value-based aristocrats.

Red/Blue

Izzet above all else will care about non-creatures, usually in the form of artifacts or instants and sorceries.

Drafting red/blue decks will usually ask you to look at total quantity of a specific kind of card, and keep an eye out for payoffs for either like Third Path Iconoclast that can smooth out your draft, or Instants/Sorceries that produce artifact tokens that easily go in both versions of the deck.

Black/Green

Golgari has some of the clearest draft directions- it wants a high density of Food to fuel food payoffs like Provisions Merchant and Experimental Confectioner, or graveyard set up tools and payoffs for getting a big graveyard.

It also can play as the classic "the rock" Golgari midrange with decent threats and decent removal.

White/Red

Boros will tend to be more agressive than a lot of the other color pairings with payoffs for going wide and good tricks to help push damage. It also best supports Equipment subthemes peppered in White, Red, and Green.

It's not forced into aggression- Embalm and Flashback play incredibly well with Quintorius, Field Historian, and Form a Posse can act as a late game win condition that turns any 1/1 fliers laying around into huge problems.

Blue/Green

Simic gets its fingers into a ton of different archetypes across the color pairs, playing well as a base for multi-colored green decks.

The multi-colored uncommons tend to reward longer-game plans with ample value attached to different conditions.

Other Themes

Across the cube are some additional major themes worth touching on in this primer that can be drafted around.

Splicers

Bant can produce Golem tokens and has payoffs for those tokens across multiple cards. White has tools to flicker these powerful ETB creatures and the cube has a handful of Golems and Changelings that bring this kind of deck together.

Amass

Grixis has all the hits from War of the Spark and Tales of Middle Earth that can raise a terrifying zombie-orc army! Getting a large density of amass isn't guaranteed, but some drafts can support a full-out Grixis amass deck that will be a force to be reckoned with as the army grows stronger turn by turn.

Aura/Equipment

Across the non-black colors are various payoffs for having creatures either equipped and/or enchanted- all the colors come with ways to make auras or equipment and can come together to assemble some spicy brews based around them.

Fixing

For the Junk Drawer to be truely singleton, the mana bases had to suffer a bit. The only cycle of lands that qualify are the Clue lands. One of each dual land isn't a ton of fixing, meaning if you're going to want to dip into more than two colors comfortably, you'll probably need to rely on the treasure producers or get the land-based fixing Green tends to offer.