Intro

Welcome to my 540 card Vintage Cube. I adopted my core list from Caleb Gannon's Vintage Cube (https://cubecobra.com/cube/list/5fab13510efe0d1071b87fae)

LSV's Guide

Below you will find my brief description of my Vintage Cube. Luis Scott-Vargas has already written the more articulate, complete guide to drafting vintage cube, it can be found here: https://strategy.channelfireball.com/all-strategy/mtg/the-ultimate-guide-to-cube-part-1-the-cards/
As well as an outline of the archetypes in MTGO Vintage Cube.
Part 1: https://strategy.channelfireball.com/all-strategy/mtg/the-ultimate-guide-to-cube-part-2-the-archetypes/
Part 2: https://strategy.channelfireball.com/all-strategy/mtg/the-ultimate-guide-to-cube-pt-3-archetypes-continued/
Part 3: https://strategy.channelfireball.com/all-strategy/mtg/the-ultimate-cube-guide-part-4-aggro/

Power

Powerful cards are what makes a Vintage Cube what it is. Below are a list of some of the most powerful cards and the decks they should be included.

Sol Ring, Black Lotus, Moxen

Fighting for, arguably, the two best cards slots in the cube are Sol Ring and Black Lotus, each having their merits. Black Lotus plus a land can belch out 4cmc bombs on turn 1, although once used it is gone, unless of course Lurrus of the Dream-Den or Goblin Welder are in your future. On the other hand Sol Ring is slower but can produce x2 mana each turn, which will accumulate quickly, a turn 1 Sol Ring into a signet is one of the fastest starts you can get in Vintage Cube.

The Moxen are among the best cards you can pull, even an off color mox gives you the ability to play two mana sources on turn one.

Blue has a serious advantage in Vintage Cube.

Time Walk: the best extra turns spell ever printed. It may seem like you would want to fire this off asap but if used on turn two with no board presence or a follow up play, it turns it into an Explore. It is usually more correct to wait for a moment when this will be backbreaking or when it can be flashed back with Snapcaster Mage copied with Sea Gate Stormcaller or copied multiple times with Thousand-Year Storm.

Ancestral Recall: Drawing 3 for one Mana is obviously valuable, but there are many ways to apply this card to the archetype you are drafting: A line of play often used by Reanimator is to ancestral yourself mainphase and then discard to handsize at end of turn, binning your Griselbrand, Ashen Rider, or Terastodon.

Timetwister: this is a Storm all star. When paired with rituals like Dark Ritual, Jeska's Will or High Tide drawing 7 after filling your mana pool is the ticket to a lethal Brain Freeze, Empty the Warrens, or Tendrils of Agony.

:Exile target black spell from cube
Contract from Below has been cut for power level reasons as well as ante obscurity in cube setting.
Contract from Below is the single best card in the cube. : discard your hand, ante the top card of your library then draw 7 is strong in any deck it is included.

Ante: To ante a card, exile that card and place it into an 'ante zone'. The winner of the game receives permanent ownership of all the cards in that zone.

In cube if you ante a card and lose the game, your opponent will get that card into their draft pool and can put it into either their main deck or their sideboard for the rest of the tournament.

Drawbacks to ante: If you are playing storm or reanimator, that have few win conditions, and you ante one of them you may no longer be able to win a game. Another detrimental situation might arise if you are splashing a color in your deck and you ante the card with color fixing. Because of this implication if you draft contract from below you are not allowed to have basic lands in your sideboard and you cannot add them later.

Why add Contract from Below at all? has historically been the strongest color in vintage cube, with all non-artifact power cards being blue. is the fastest aggro deck. has the most consistent ramp and ramp pay-offs. aggro is nearly as fast as but has better interruption and / is the best control colors. used to lend itself only to reanimator, which can be a dicy archetype if you don't get all the necessary pieces. By adding contract and changing the direction of a little, I'm hoping to create more power equity among the color pie.

But as Obi-Wan proclaimed, "With great power comes great responsibility" the obscene power level of Contract from Below creates a low threshold for it to be cut from my cube list.

Archetypes

Landfall

/ Landfall is a new archetype to vintage cube that incorporates many established tools. The Gitrog Monster is by far the best card draw engine available. Exploration, Dryad of the Ilysian Grove, and Oracle of Mul Daya will let you make multiple land drops per turn. Payoffs for landfall decks are abundant: Field of the Dead, Scute Swarm, Titania, Protector of Argoth.

Splashing will provide additional tools such as Valakut Exploration, Escape to the Wilds.

If preferring to splash you gain access to utility lands such as Karakas and Maverick all-star Knight of the Reliquary.

Lands matter! Some of the best lands in vintage cube are ones that double as spells such as Rishadan Port, Strip Mine, and Shelldock Isle. MDFCs as well as Channel lands such as Boseiju, who Endures provide flexibility with deck building.

Aggro

White :1-3cmc aggressive creatures + disruption

Red :1-4cmc aggressive creatures + burn spells

Big Mana

Green : Ramp + Payoff

Colorless / Artifacts : Ramp + payoff. Because artifact ramp has no casting color restrictions these can be used in various archetypes, below I will outline some that are good in artifact heavy builds.

RDW: Red Deck Wins / Big Red : Burn but a little bigger

Combo

Free Twin!

Reanimator
+ and/or :

Flicker
+ :

+

Storm
Mono
+ and/or :

Sneak and Show
. Splash if you are brave and can actually read what Oath of Druids does.

Channel
:

This is a one card combo with a large colorless payoff.