Art by Kaja FoglioCloned from Ye Old Vintage Cube
This is an Old Frame Vintage Cube that utilizes a variety of pre-Modern and retro-frame cards. It aims to recreate "vintage" power within an old frame format and spark nostalgia for the Golden Days of MtG. It leans more into silly nonsense than competitive archetypes. It is filled with many classic cards of varying degrees of infamy - Ahem, Shahrazad - that rarely see play any more. The goal is to bring new life to old cards by placing them in an environment with some frame-shifted cards of the Modern era that serve to add a little extra glue and/or “oomph” to the decks. Creativity is encouraged and I'm more interested in seeing wild interactions than seeing a cohesive and streamlined deck.
POWER - This is a powerful cube - with very powerful cards. It runs a full set of the Power 9, all the Fast Mana Rocks, and includes some of the most busted cards to ever grace the battlefield.
MODERN CARDS - I include some Modern cards that have been printed with retro-frames. Though there are some available, this cube does not run Planeswalkers and Equipment. My goal is to recreate the Pre-Modern vibe, as it was when I was a kid. Due to this, I'm not running card types that didn't exist when I was a kid.
LIMITATIONS - This is a powerful cube, but I work hard to balance the power. There are many insanely powerful cards now available in retro frames that I am not running: Urza, Yawgmoth, Titania, Wurmcoil Engine, and many more. These cards stick out like a sore thumb in this retro format. They’re simply too powerful on their own and warp drafts around them. I want older cards to continue to shine, so the newer cards I do include are intended to be support cards that aid archetypes and don’t just win the game on their own.
MANA - The land options available within the pre-Modern frame are very limited. In pre-Modern printings, ally colors have many more options. In an effort to provide adequate fixing and keeping the lands balanced across all color pairs, I've decided to run 4 of each dual land (plus one of each pain land) and 2 of each fetch. I would prefer a cube that is entirely singleton, but that simply isn't possible given the lands available in retro frame.
Land Station - The land station for this cube is also singleton. The goal is to have all unique arts for the lands. (All retro-frame, of course.) This is currently a work in progress, but I have managed to acquire some of the "fancier" lands already, including Beta lands, lands from the Global Land Program, and a Holy Grail.
Green, Red, and White all feed into aggro in the area of low-CMC creatures. Many creatures within the pre-Modern design space are rather sparse in abilities. Many of them serve just one simple purpose: to beat down fast. You will find yourself playing cards like Goblin Raider and Ironclaw Orcs in your decks; pseudo-vanilla bears that wouldn’t see play in even a standard deck today. Anthem effects in white pump your creatures. Some cards like Battle Screech also help a go-wide strategy. Fun tip: Boros aggro is a place where Shahrazad really shines. Aggro is an archetype that can really take advantage of this card that is otherwise banned everywhere. Cheap, fast critters let you win the sub game fast.
The Lands deck is spread across White, Green, and Black, and some of these cards can even serve other “cards get put in graves” decks like Stax. Land Destruction is an almost forgotten pastime of Magic, but I aim to embrace all the old styles of play from when I was a kid. We have the typical cards like Strip Mine that can be recurred with Crucible of Worlds. A timely Armageddon can allow you to swing in with a huge Terravore. You can feed the terravore and gain life with Zuran Orb, and then refill your hand with Land Tax. There are also ways to cheat extra lands into play in the form of Exploration and Fastbond, the latter of which lets you loop Strip Mines if you have Crucible in play. Have fun!
Stax is a notorious archetype, but its style of play was pretty prevalent in old Magic design. It’s also a hard deck to build if you’re trying to break parity and actually take advantage of the Stax engines. This is where a card like Enduring Renewal comes in. You can pair it with 0-cost creatures like Ornithopter to continually get creatures to sac. Black and White serve this archetype well, but I think there’s also potential in making a Black and Green Stax deck, but this latter deck might actually just be a unique form of…
This is one of my favorite archetypes (I play a Bant Enchantress deck in EDH). It’s mostly available in White and Green, but I think Blue and Black can also support it when paired with Green. There are four enchantress effects in the cube, and a card like Flickering Ward can be abused to draw you many cards. Sacred Mesa is a possible win con, and you can generate plenty of mana for it off of Serra’s Sanctum. There are some zany combos, like Opalescence plus Parallax Wave; and Academy Rector and Enlightened Tutor can help you find the pieces you need.
Storm is available across Grixis (Black, Red, and Blue). It is probably the one archetype in the cube that looks the most similar to its equivalent decks in other cubes with more Modern cards. The win conditions are mostly the same. I don’t think this archetype needs too much explanation.
Control is best when you pair Blue with White or Black, but there is also a White and Black control deck available somewhere in the cube, no doubt. This is just about grinding out your opponent and then winning with classic finishers like Morphling, Eternal Dragon, and Decree of Justice.
Reanimator is another one of my favorite archetypes. In this cube It’s primarily a Black deck that can be aided by Blue and Green. Blue helps get cards in the graveyard with cards like Intuition and Green provides some other fatties to reanimate, like Thorn Elemental. Reanimator can also be paired with a Sneak and Show plan, as those cards provide just another avenue of attack. And there is bound to be a bit of structural overlap between Reanimator and…
This is a loosely-defined archetype, but it’s served by so many cards. It’s just a means of taking advantage of the graveyard as an ongoing and active resource. It’s an archetype that can be found across Blue, Green, and Black. For some people, it will help them relive their glory days of playing Psychatog and Wild Mongrel in Odyssea Block standard. It’s also a way to abuse sacrifice effects, and gain incremental advantage with a frame-shifted card like Zulaport Cutthroat
Blue and Red serve the artifact decks. It’s certainly not as overpowered as the deck can be in a more traditional Vintage Cube with a deeper pool of cards. Tinker in this deck can let you cheat in a Colossus (or snag a Citadel in a storm deck) but it’s not grabbing truly game-ending cards. In this regard it’s more of a tutor effect than a win condition. The artifact decks function a lot like Stax decks, so in this way they hark back to the days of MUD in Standard. Though it’s often considered its own archetype, Wildfire decks often function like MUD decks with a touch of red, since you’re looking for a density of mana rocks to break parity.
Whew! That was a lot! I probably haven’t even touched on every possible Archetype that you can find. But it’s like I said, this cube is more concerned about interactions than streamlined archetypes. There are so many silly combos that are still waiting to be discovered and don’t necessarily fit an obvious deck. Do you want to use Living Plane and Goblin Sharpshooter for a one-sided Armageddon? Or how about looping Shrieking Drake with Aluren to generate an infinite storm count? And don’t worry, I did make sure there is a way you can go infinite with Kiki-Jiki! The cube is your oyster! Feel free to explore!
- Win with a Worldgorger Dragon Combo
- Win with 20 or more life
- Reach Storm Count of 20 or more
- Win via Decking (Yourself or Opponent)
- Have No Lands Left in Your Deck
- Win with Channel / Fireball Combo
- Connect with Nicol Bolas
- Reanimate a Fatty on Turn 2
- Pull off Mogg Maniac / Fire Covenant Combo
- Fork Shahrazad to Play 2 Subgames in a Row
- Win a Game Without Casting a Creature
- Take 3 or More Turns in a Row
- Win a Game Without Dealing Combat Damage
- Game Ends With a Player Having No Permanents in Play
- A Creature Swings with 20 or More Power
- Awaken Marit Lage
- Use all 6 abilities of Garth One-Eye.