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This Cube creates interesting and accessible draft experiences for 4-8 players, supporting ~20 distinct archetypes across numerous viable colour pairings and providing fair, synergy-based gameplay.

/JTM

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Archetypes

Click to jump to a section.

• : Aggro
• : Flicker
• : +1/+1 Counters
• : Lifegain
• : Lands Matter
• : Tempo Spellslinger
• : Big Spells
• : Discarding
• : Zombie apocalypse
• : Flash
• : Gravedigging
• : Sacrifice
• ///: Going wide
• : Ramp
• : Shrines!
• and : Alternative win conditions
• /////: A pile of good stuff

Patch Notes

• Patch 5.0, April 2024
• Patch 4.0, August 2023
• Patch 3.0, May 2023
• Patch 2.0, April 2023
• Patch 1.0

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... you like winning by turn 5 when you hit the perfect mana curve, and don't mind losing at the first sight of a big fat creature that you can't remove.

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... you like squeezing the maximal amount of value of a small number of cards when the combo really works.

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... you're really good at counting counters.

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... you want to win a game while at 40 life points.

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... you're into geography.

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... you never listen to the advice of "max 6-7 non-creature spells in your deck."

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... you live for the dream of One Big Turn.

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... you really want to say the sentence "So, I pay 5 mana to discard my whole hand... And this is bad news for you."

... you always rooted for the Zombies in Plants vs Zombies.

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... You prefer not playing anything during your own turn.

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... you like the idea bringing back powerful creatures from your graveyard – especially ones that you put there on purpose.

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... you like the cards available in and want to combine them with almost any other colour.

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... you have a lot of small things available to use as creature tokens.

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... you love playing big creatures way earlier than should be legally allowed.

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... you have the ambition of playing a 5-colour deck.

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... you want to win but refuse to damage your opponent, "because they're my friend!"

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... you think synergies are overrated.

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Patch 5.0 (April 2024)

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Simplified the Cube for greater accessibility

To make drafting less overwhelming, I got rid of card types that were especially hard to track and understand, including all double-faced cards (Concealing Curtains), sagas (The Modern Age), and adventures (Murderous Rider), as well as some generally complicated cards Savior of Ollenbock. The most emblematic change is replacing The Kami War (which reads like a Dostoyevsky novel) with Two-Headed Hellkite (which does what it says on the tin).

My hope is that we can have gameplay that is equally rich and strategic decisions that are equally complex, without the cognitive overload of managing 400 completely unique and confusing cards in your head.

Goodbye Werewolves, hello Lands Matter

Since I dropped double-faced cards, this means that Werewolves are out – no one played the archetype anyway, and the Daybound/Nightbound is exactly the kind of annoying mechanic I wanted to avoid.

In its place, we have a hopefully exciting new Lands Matter theme in ! I'm unsure how strong it will be, but am excited to see it play out.

Brand new cards from Outlaws of Thunder Junction

Welcome to Stoic Sphinx, Bristlebud Farmer, and Bristly Bill, Spine Sower!

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Patch 4.0 (August 2023)

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More support for self-mill

I hadn't really seen this archetype come together yet, these additions will hopefully help:

More token generation for aggro and sacrifice

Launch those goblins!

Creature removal for

Green hasn't previously had any direct removal, but I've now added a couple of 'punch' and 'fight' spells:

Other notable additions

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Patch 3.0 (May 2023)

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About 36 new cards

Full changelist here.

Notably, the list now includes more than 360 cards – the idea is that even if we're 8 players, there will be a few cards that aren't opened during each draft, creating more variance and slightly less predictability, which I hope will keep the cube fresh for a longer time.

New archetype: Flash!

Hold up mana during your opponent's term to counter their best cards with Disdainful Stroke and Supreme Will, and, if they don't cast anything worth countering, flash in creatures with the help of Prophet of Kruphix and Yeva, Nature's Herald or draw cards with Dig Through Time and Spectral Sailor. Hollowhenge Overlord and Nightpack Ambusher reveal a neat synergy with werewolves (which also want you not to cast spells during your turn).

Boost for

Green has been the least-drafted colour for a few sessions now, so I've given the colour a few tools, including Ozolith, the Shattered Spire to boost the '+1/+1 counters' archetype that no one has tried yet, Tyvar's Stand to protect key creatures, Fertile Ground for mana-ramp that avoids creature-removal, and Garruk, Primal Hunter to encourage green-heavy decks.

Even more tools against aggro.

Evacuation, Drown in Sorrow, By Invitation Only, and even Tasseled Dromedary will probably slow down the cube as they provide new tools against aggro. Hopefully, additions like Hazoret the Fervent and Urabrask's Forge keep the aggressive archetypes viable, but I'll keep an eye on this going forward.

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Patch 2.0 (April 2023)

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About 40 new cards

Full changelist here

White got the biggest upgrade

White probably got the biggest boost with Boon-Bringer Valkyrie, Basri Ket, Elesh Norn, Mother of Machines, and Adeline, Resplendent Cathar.

Mostly removed the Artifacts archetype

Tinker remains and can still be paired with things like Myr Battlesphere but there's a much lower density of cheap artifact creatures to sacrifice, and things like Foundry Inspector and Chief of the Foundry are out. The main reason is that these cards mostly just fit in a single deck and would always go undrafted no one is playing that deck.

Mostly removed the Humans sub-theme

... though Thalia's Lieutenant remains for incidental synergies.

Cut un-fun cards

Removed Simic Sky Swallower and Dreadfeast Demon because they're incredibly difficult to do anything about for the opponent.

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Patch 1.0

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Since our first draft of this cube, I've made some changes to improve the balance and fun-factor of the cube. Below are some of the themes in these changes.

No nerfs

In general, I have avoided removing cards to weaken any particular colour or archetype. There's one exception, though...

Hasta la vista, Wargear – Welcome, new equipments

I'm sorry, but Grafted Wargear has got to go. The problem isn't that it's too good, it's that it's too unconditionally good. This is a game-winning threat in any deck, requiring zero effort to build around it. I do want equipments to be relevant, so I've added a few others that should be pretty strong but require a bit more planning to use.

Options against aggro

The strong performance of red-white aggro in our first draft was on my mind when trying to balance the cube further. Since I didn't want to make aggro weaker – I think it's really important to have fun and well-supported aggro options in the cube – I instead opted to provide more potential answers to aggro in the card pool. In green, black, and colourless I added cheap walls, in red and white I added mass removal. This way, aggro remains viable and those drafting slower decks will actively have to pick up some of these answers to guard themselves against it.

Boosting non-black colours

Mono-black (with a splash of red) also performed very well, and while this may have been because the colour was wide open, it's also clear that cards like Ophiomancer, Abyssal Persecutor, and Dreadfeast Demon are going to be all-stars every time you draft them. Again, I didn't want to take away anything from black, so I've instead focused on adding more exciting options for the other colours.

Beefing up green

I added some better options for early mana-ramp and replaced some of the late-game creatures.

Late-game spells for blue

Since blue has the fewest creatures and it can be hard to fit costly noncreature spells in a deck, I want the colour to have some really exciting options in that slot.

A couple of new creatures for white and red

The addition of new board wipes are the most important buffs for red and white, but I did also add two other new exciting creatures.

Removing unplayed or vanilla cards.

To make room for additions, I removed various cards that I don't anticipate would see much future play (Evra, Halcyon Witness, Mardu Ascendancy, Explosive Vegetation), or that didn't have a particularly unique or interesting role in the cube (Virus Beetle, Sleep with the Fishes).

On the watchlist.

There are a couple of cards that I'm considering cutting, but which will stay for now:

• Dreadfeast Demon and Simic Sky Swallower because they have the common feature that most decks will be able to do ~nothing about them once they're in play. For now, they get to stay since playing a 7-mana creature is supposed to be a big deal. (On that note, Rekindling Phoenix and Glyph Keeper have the same feature of being ~unremoveable, but they are at least a bit easier to interact with.)
• Awakening Zone, Howling Moon, Maestros Ascendancy and other janky cards that will only be good in very specific situations.

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Old archetypes

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Build out a board of synergistic artifact creatures like Foundry Inspector, Lodestone Golem, Chief of the Foundry, and Merchant's Dockhand, to benefit from things like Quicksmith Rebel, Saheeli's Artistry, and Daretti, Scrap Savant.

There are also some wild possibilities of using Tinker or Saheeli Rai to cheat in expensive game-winners like Walking Skryscraper, Myr Battlesphere, Bosh, Iron Golem, or Combustible Gearhulk.

You could splash and for Oni-Cult Anvil or Dovin, Grand Arbiter to enable reliable artifact creation, but and are definitely the primary colours for artifact decks.

... you live for the dream of playing Perilous Myr on turn 2 followed by Tinker to deploy Walking Skyscraper on turn 3, into Saheeli Rai to attack with two 8/8 tramplers on turn 4.

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Humans are the most abundant creature type in every colour except . There aren't enough synergy cards to enable a proper 'humans archetype', but if you notice that you already have a handful of them (or especially Stensia Uprising), it'll be a nice bonus to pick up one of the few cards that do give you a payoff for playing humans.

... you're so concerned about humanity that you can't help but draft 'em.

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