Forked from The Oinkinator's Bauble Synergy Cube
The Cinnamon Cube is a 450-card eternal cube that prioritizes:
To enable this, Cinnamon Cube has:
Furthermore, these goals mean that Cinnamon Cube excludes:
Excluded!
Instead, power outliers should require intentional deckbuilding to take advantage of.
Encouraged!
Breaking Singleton
I break singleton in the cube for fixing. For fixing breaks I run:
The following archetypes are known to exist and be well supported in the cube. Each section gives a short summary of the archetype and lists example cards that can fit into that archetype.
If you're new to drafting the cube, these suggestions can provide a good starting point to ensure you end up with a solid deck. However, this list is not exhaustive, and clever drafting and deckbuilding should be able to assemble something new, unexpected, and powerful.
This archetype looks to play permanents with strong enter the battlefield abilities, and then repeatably bounce (return to hand) or flicker (exile and return to the battlefield) those permanents to get incredible value.
Enablers
Payoffs
A classic archetype, Azorius Control is well supported in Cinnamon. Control decks aim to trade resources one-for-one, until they can accrue enough card advantage to overwhelm their opponent and win through some inevitable win condition.
Potential Cards
Dimir Control is also supported in Cinnamon, but differs from Azorius in that it can proactively interact with its opponents's cards by removing them from their hand.
Potential Cards
Rakdos Sacrifice aims to accrue value by assembling an engine that repeatably causes damage by sacrificing creatures or artifacts that are cheap or easy to recur.
Enablers
Payoffs
Gruul Midrange prioritizes high individual card quality and 2-for-1s to try and win the game with creatures in the midgame. The deck should have a high number of creatures that have meaningful abilities to accrue card advantage.
Potential Cards
Lands Matter builds around cards that trigger whenever lands between the zones of the game (hands, libraries, graveyards.) Typically the payoffs generate creature tokens or buff creatures to build a board that can close out the game.
Potential Cards
Similar to Gruul Midrange, Orzhov Midrange accrues incremental card advantage through individual card quality. However, the Orzhov version of the deck leans more towards control than aggro.
Potential Cards
The Izzet Spells Matter archetype wants you to cast as many instants and sorceries as possible. Cantrips are the name of the game here, and should be prioritized highly as they fit into many different decks. Payoffs can come in the form of token generators, prowess creatures, or delve bombs. Notably, Cinnamon does not include any cards with Storm.
Enablers
Payoffs
The Graveyard Matters strategy aims to assemble a combo-oriented midrange deck that can trade up on resources and use the cards in its graveyard as a form of card advantage. It requires having both a way to fill your own graveyard and a payoff for doing so.
Enablers
Payoffs
Play creatures. Smash face. Simple as. (You should also probably pick up a burn spell or two for closing out games.)
Potential Cards
Lands Matter can also be built as Simic. This build focuses more on ramp and should prioritize fetchlands and channel lands very highly.
Potential Cards
The following notes were written by @TheOinkinator and included in the Cube overview whenever I forked it to build the Cinnamon Cube. They are still relevant and are the design pillars I attempt to uphold while customizing the cube for play with my local group.
The primary goal of the cube is to provide an environment with strong synergies and even color balance including viable decks in most combination of colors. In pursuit of this I try to seed every color with many glue cards to fully enable the various payoffs and strategies.
I try to promote player agency during the draft, in particular, trying to avoid the higher synergy decks from becoming "On Rails" for as long as possible in the draft. I follow a few philosophies to achieve this:
This cube has ~100 non-basic lands making up about 20% of the cube. Importantly, a large portion of these lands are either mono-color or colorless meaning they can be played by a larger number of decks than your standard dual land. If you include the Horizon Canopy lands as a viable mono-color land cycle, any two color deck has access to:
for a total of about 30 viable lands even as a two color drafter. This means that lands (which often follow a rule of: take over most cards when on color and otherwise ignore) become a much more fluid part of the draft. Even mono color decks have access to many viable lands which reduces that "On Rails" experience that is particularly pronounced with mono color drafts.
By far the best way to create options is including as many cheap spells, specifically spells under 3 mana value, as possible. At the time of writing this the very well know MTGO cube has 197 cards (excluding lands) under mana value 3, roughly 36% of the cube. By comparison this cube has roughly 50% of the cards with way fewer cards at 4 or above.
Similar to having more lands, a large number of cheap spells in the environment open up possibilities, unlike expensive spells and creatures, which are basically unpickable for most decks.
Even though it may not be the most powerful card in every deck, Thraben Inspector is viable in almost any deck that plays white, due to its efficiency. Put ten similarly efficient and versatile cards in each color and players will can focus on their decks meta strategy rather than trying to scrape enough payables out of the draft.
The final design consideration to note, I avoid including most cards that are color parasitic. I.E. cards that require players to be mono colored or close to it. Because of this:
These rules keep colors from being overly parasitic with themselves and also allow for more flexibility in the draft as archetype considerations will be the only limiting factor on taking cards in your color.
Student of Warfare -> Guardian of the Great Door
Reasoning: Student of Warfare is usually too slow for this cube, and there isn't enough proliferate to justify leveling being included. Guardian, on the other hand, plays nicely with all the artifact tokens being generated as well as the low mana value reanimation spells.
Sylvan Library -> Smuggler's Surprise
Reasoning: Sylvan always takes so long to resolve, feels like a color pie break, and only plays in the space of "card draw matters." Smuggler's Surprise on the other hand: gives green game against countermagic and removal and also plays into the graveyard synergies.
Quest for the Necropolis -> Unearth
Reasoning: Quest is way too slow, and can be destroyed without allowing an instant speed activation.
Psychic Frog -> Scuttling Sentinel
Reasoning: Psychic Frog warps games around itself, and dominates the entire game. While it does play well with other synergies in the cube, that's not how it sees the most success. Scuttling Sentinel provides some more protection for creature-heavy decks against the really efficient removal here and fits into the flicker archetype.
Other Addition ExplanationsReasoning: Board stalls are a problem in the cube right now. My hope is that increasing the density of wraths makes control more viable and increases the likelihood that at least one wrath is seen in every draft.
Reasoning: Another nice target for both Urza's Saga and Stoneforge Mystic.
Reasoning: Coco is probably too good here, because everything is so low on the curve. However, it is another way for green to play at instant speed, and it applies some nice deckbuilding restrictions when drafted.
Reasoning: I am forever on a quest to make "spells matter" viable. This increases the likelihood that at least one of Bedlam Reveler and Murktide Regent are available in any given draft.
Other Removal ExplanationsReasoning: This always felt like bait in the cube. Cards are generally low curving, lands are already painful, and splashing lots of colors is encouraged.
Other Changes