The Solitaire Cube is a solitaire draft puzzle based on the DC10 Magic format!

Overview Contents
1. Setup
2. The rules
3. The strategy
4. Other ways to play

Setup

To play on Cube Cobra, I’ve set up a custom draft format that picks a random card from each color to form a pack of six. You’ll draft one card out of each of nine packs with the goal of forming 3x three card decks. A card may appear in multiple packs, even if you’ve already drafted a copy of it. For an extra challenge, use consecutive picks to form the decks (picks 1-3 form deck 1, 4-6 forms deck 2, 7-9 forms deck 3)

Rules

• Start at 20 life.
• Infinite mana: In every game, all players have access to an unlimited amount of mana in any combination of colors. Traditionally, DC10 is also played with a one spell per turn limit, however that leads to too many draws in this format.
• No decking: You can’t lose to decking but you'll find some cards that shuffle your graveyard into your library to replay them.
• Optimal Play: To determine the winner of each game, determine the optimal plays for each player as in Three Card Blind. Players know the full contents of each other’s hand and play cards with the goal of not losing the game. If neither player can do anything without losing, the game is considered a draw. In situations where randomness is involved (like shuffling multiple cards into a library), you choose the result.
• 4 games with 3-card opening hands: You play 4 consecutive, separate games of Magic. In game 1, you’ll play first against the first opposing deck. In game 2, the first opposing deck will go first. In game 3, you’ll play first against the second opposing deck. In game 4, the first opposing deck will go first.
• Avoid decks that cause draws! Decks that are heavy on answers can defeat even the most resilient threats, however it’s also very possible to create decks that either win on the play a mmm
• Victory: Once you’ve figured out a configuration of decks that meets the goal, congratulations! Not every possible roll has a viable solution, but I believe most do.

The Strategy

When building your initial deck, focus on a strategy that’s strong, but has a significant weakness to a strategies that are likely to come up in the cube. For example, Sower of Temptation, Karmic Guide, Hexdrinker is going to be very good against a deck with opposing creatures, however it will have a real weakness to decks that don’t play many creatures. However, a deck like Time Warp, Reito Lantern, Draining Whelk is so good that it becomes very hard to find decks where it can’t cause a draw to avoid a loss.

Other Ways To play

If you’d like to make the puzzle a bit easier to start, I’d recommend not “locking in” your initial deck selection. That way you can change “your deck” based on what you roll for the opposing decks.

You can certainly try this against a human opponent as well! One option would be to have players roll in secret and then reveal their rolls as they play the cards against each other. Another option would be to keep the solitare rules and see who can figure out a winning combination the fastest based on the same initial dice rolls.

You can also try this puzzle with more traditional Booster Blitz Rules using this cube here: https://cubecobra.com/cube/list/die
If you find yourself relying on the same handful of cards to win consistently, consider making a fork of this cube! Just let me know about it so I can give it a try!

Roll a D20 three times. For each roll, select a card from that row of the cube to build “your deck”. Then do the same process to create two opposing decks. The first opposing deck should be built with the intention to lose to your deck when it goes first or second. The second opposing deck should be built with the intention to beat your deck when it goes first or second.