Art by Campbell WhiteDo you enjoy that sweet feeling when you build some janky value engine and start burying your opponent in card advantage? Do you like long back and forth games with ton of decisions? Engine cube is here for you!
Main Goal: Maximize Player Agency! Less luck, more skill- No aggro decks that either kill you on turn 4 or just flood out and die
- Don't get screwed or flooded thanks to cantrips, cycling lands and ton of mana sinks
- Great fixing, if you pick it up
- No unbeatable bombs and instawin combos
- Ton of removal
- Fewer creatures (only 1/3 of the cube), and all are generally engine pieces
There are no set in stone archetypes for you to just follow. You will have to make hard decisions each pick in order to create your unique pile of fixing, interaction and engines!
ThemesYou won't build any good stuff piles in this cube: there are no easy card advantage spells like Mulldrifter or Kolaghan's Command. In order to get some card advantage, you'll have to exploit the synergies in the following themes:
Lands
All of these themes can be mixed and matched for maximum value, for example:
- Pickup and discard your Khalni Garden with Trade Routes, replay it with Crucible of Worlds and then sacrifice the plant to Goblin Bombardment
- Discard Ovalchase Daredevil to The Underworld Cookbook (which picks it back up from the graveyard) and then sacrifice the food to create a griffin with Griffin Aerie
- Tap Noble's Purse with Rosie Cotton of South Lane and Academy Manufactorer in play for some value
In lands, you'll find full cycles of fetches, triomes, cycle lands, thriving lands, vivid lands, bouncelands, shocklands and canopy lands.
In spells, you have green stuff, talismans, signets, single-use fixers and plenty of treasure makers.
You can definitely play a three color deck with a splash for fourth, just don't forget to pick up the fixing during the draft!
RemovalYour opponent will also be trying to build some value engines, so pick up some answers: