Art by Fiona Hsieh
Introduction
"Regardless of the century, plane, or species, developing curators never fail to invent the cube."
Welcome to the Epyllion Cube, where cheap yet powerful spells combine into something greater than the sum of their parts. As you draft cards, build a deck, and face opponents, this environment will repeatedly ask you to make decisions fundamental to limited Magic. Card advantage, "Who's The Beatdown?" and combat math are evergreen concepts here; strategies which do not play to the board or upheave the gradual escalation of power dictated by the game's mana system (such as fast mana, infinite combos, or cheap reanimator strategies) are eschewed.
Design Goals
- Create fun and interactive games
- Limit fundamentally uninteractive mechanics such as shroud, hexproof, and protection.
- Limit fundamentally game-prolonging mechanics such as lifelink.
- Eschew fast mana and free spells
- More TBD
These design goals are not hard rules: Swords to Plowshares, for example technically gains life but will likely never be removed from the Epyllion Cube.
Due to the abundance of conditional mana fixing (two cycles of fetchlands, two cycles of shocklands, a cycle of surveil-lands, and then some), many decks will consist of two or three colors. Mono-colored decks and 4/5 color decks might also come together on occasion.
As of now, there are no clearly signposted archetypes; decks will commonly persue one of Magic's macro-strategies (Aggro, Control, Midrange, or Tempo).
- More TBD
Cube Philosophy, Or: What's An Epyllion?
If you're only here for Magic: The Gathering, feel free to stop here.
As classics students will tell you, the word epyllion (Ancient Greek: ἐπύλλιον, literally "little epic") refers to a relatively short narrative poem. My first exposure to this genre was the Roman poet Gaius Valerius Catullus (1st century BC) and his portrayal of the wedding between Peleus and Thetis, commonly known as Catullus 64. The Epyllion Cube's (eventual!) size of 364 cards pays homage to the self-proclaimed worst poet of all and his little wedding epic.
Although there exists no exact blueprint for the archetypal epyllion, you will find that brevity and a cast of mythical or iconic characters are common and sensible features. When I conceptualized this cube and scoured my collection for beloved cards, I soon realized my Platonic ideal of Magic resembled these conventions. A comparison between cube and oral poetry seems especially apt because a cube – much like an epic – changes over time and is repeatedly iterated upon. In other words, most cubes resemble the famous Ship of Theseus, a thought experiment certainly known to cube curators.
Thus, the Epyllion Cube seeks to translate this poetic form into the game we all know and love: It seeks to be an ever-changing collection of iconic cards repeatedly creating brief, balanced, and memorable drafts and games characterized by high player agency.
Acknowledgements
This cube began as an amalgamation of @andymangold's Bun Magic Cube, @dinrovahorror's Atomic Cube, and @Deinonychus' Bodleian Cube. I owe most of my knowledge of cube design to Lucky Paper Radio and the ever-fruitful discussions over at the MTG Cube Talk Discord.