The Giver told him that it would be a very long time before he had the colors to keep.
"But I want them!" Jonas said angrily. "It isn't fair that nothing has color!"
"Not fair?" The Giver looked at Jonas curiously. "Explain what you mean."
"Well..." Jonas had to stop and think it through. "If everything's the same, then there aren't any choices! I want to wake up in the morning and decide things! A blue tunic, or a red one?"
He looked down at himself, at the colorless fabric of his clothing. "But it's all the same, always."
Then he laughed a little. "I know it's not important, what you wear. It doesn't matter. But-"
"It's the choosing that's important, isn't it?" The Giver asked him.
- Lois Lowry, 1993, The Giver
Welcome to Giver Cube. A harsh environment where colored mana, something you typically take for granted, is a scarce resource. You must formulate a plan to find your mana fixing, cast your spells, and craft a game plan to vie for victory.
The rules of the cube are quite simple:
The defining feature of The Giver Cube is a scarcity of lands that easily produce colored mana.
Of the nearly 120 lands, almost three quarters produce no colored mana at all! Most that do require some additional cost or only work by fetching basic lands. To account for the lack of colored sources, there is a large numbers of artifact creatures, colorless and Phyrexian mana spells, and one-shot fixing effects like treasures:
Singleton is broken on some colorless removal and fixing. There are:
You will need to use this core of colorless spells as the backbone of your deck while determining what colors and strategies you want to push for.
Basics are rare! There are three regular and one Snow-Covered per color. However, there are many effects that fetch basic lands meaning that basics are incredibly high picks and crucial to your fixing game plan.
The raw power in the cube is found in spells that have many colored pips. The more pips required to cast a card the better it will be and cards that are light on color pips will be expensive to cast, require some building around, or have additional costs.
Your task is to figure out how to capitalize best on your colored sources with these hard to cast power outliers. Alternatively, you can find ways to completely get around the colored cost of the spells! Keep an eye out for was to ignore the color cost all together...
While drafting, try to establish synergies in your land base, with your off colored activations, and with you additional costs.
This cube will make you rethink the approach to deck building and colors. How much of a card are you willing to give up for color fixing? Can you get there with colorless 2/1s? What resources are worth fighting over and how can you maximize your land base? Good luck!
Note: second found footage should be a Threats Around Every Corner