Monarch Multiplayer Cube
460 Card Multiplayer Vintage Cube
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Designed by phaderlein • RSS • QR Code
Summary
Inspired by Conspiracy 1 & 2, this cube is designed and balanced for 4-player free-for-all games. An emphasis is placed on cards that offer interesting interaction opportunities and decision trees in a multiplayer environment.
Players start at 20 Life and all players draw on their first turn.
Table talk, alliances, and politics are encouraged; take the throne!
Power Level & Speed
"Kitchen Table Casual" or "Commander-Lite": the cube offers no infinite combos and is almost always won via combat damage. Wrath effects are limited to 1-2 per color. By design, a good portion of removal spells offer something consolatory to the opponent (like a card, land, or treasure). x Myriad is the "Aggro" deck and most decks thrive with a midrange curve.
Mechanics
Keywords and mechanics are not isolated to particular color pairs but do appear more heavily in certain combinations, which the two-color gold cards help to signpost.
Subthemes include:
Tokens
Myriad/Melee
+1/+1 Counters
Morphs
There are 14 morphs in the Cube and two others that "Cloak" a card face-down. It's not always Willbender!
Landfall
Spellslinger
Reanimator
Monarch
Goad
"Let's Make a Deal"
Each color also has at least one card that introduces The Initiative mechanic to the table. I still need to test this more to gauge the relative power level but I like how it encourages breaking board stalls much the way The Monarch does.
It's possible to Mill the table out but I've yet to see it happen.
Tricolor Wedges
Like Shards of Alara or Khans of Tarkir, the cube is built around drafting 3-color decks to take advantage of the large number of gold cards. As such, color fixing is plentiful, with all 10 signets and all 10 triomes included. Each tricolor wedge also offers two three-color cards that exemplify one of the cube's themes or major mechanics.
Flavor
Thematically, the Cube leans heavily on the "Monarch" aesthetic, with as many legendary Kings and Queens as possible.
Special Rules and Variants
The Cube functions just fine under retail Limited 40 Card minimum deck lists, but after dozens of play sessions and iteration over multiple years I find it most enjoyable to draft this Cube with four packs of 12 cards per player (which minimizes wheeling the same cards over and over) with all players building 50-card decks (around 30 spells and 20 lands) which can offer greater variance if we play multiple games.
Mainboard Changelist+1, -1
Crystalline Giant is fun but...cumbersome. I actually have a sepearate bag of laser-etched ability counters from which to pull its new random keyword every turn. I think a card with literally less component baggage will make the cube easier to bring around.
Scroll of Fate gives the face-down creature deck another tool, but I think it could also be serviceable as an option for grinding out sacrifice fodder in BR or more bears for GW. Looking forward to trying it