OVERVIEW

This is a moderately powerful, fair, creature-heavy cube which supports healthy aggro, midrange, and control decks. The cube is unpowered and seeks to avoid "feel bad" mechanics like excessive land destruction and player lockdown. Enter-the-battlefield effects abound and removal is plentiful to ensure there are enough answers for the vast amounts of threats.

 

CUBE GOALS

Remain True to the Colors
The archetypes and decks from each color and pairing should not be surprising. These decks reflect the typical play patterns of their colors.

No Solitaire
I want players actually taking turns, not waiting on math or tracking overly complex game states. Example exclusions are storm and day/night cycles.

Lose with 0 Life
99% of wins should come from reducing your opponent to 0 life. There are only a handful of intentional combo pieces, and alternate win conditions are mainly in blue decks.

Reduce Keywords
While this is by no means a simple environment, I avoid adding a new mechanic unless it fits well or is supported by multiple cards.

Singleton, Except Lands
The entire cube is singleton except I run duplicates of powerful (and fair) fixing lands. All fixing comes at some cost to enter untapped.

 

EXCLUSIONS

1. Power 9
2. "Fastest" mana (Sol Ring, Mana Vault, Mana Crypt, etc.)
3. Mass land destruction (Wildfire, Armageddon)
4. Extra turns / controlling an opponent's turn
5. Kiki combo
6. Storm
7. Dual-faced cards
8. Bribery, Channel, Tinker, Mind Twist, Oko, Balance, Mana Drain
9. Original dual lands

 

ART DIRECTION

I am very intentional on card versions for the cube. I enjoy foils, which must stem from my late 90’s Pokemon pack-cracking dopamine hits. Given that, I try to foil the majority of cards besides ones with high cost or ones that cannot be foiled. Here is my general order of priority when selecting art and finish:

1. Full or alternate art foils that I enjoy
2. Regular art foils
3. Extended art if it includes reminder text (typically Commander products)
4. Regular art

 

HISTORY

I played Magic: The Gathering in 2003 and was very proud of my Feral Throwback / Canopy Crawler / Krosan Warchief beast deck which rarely won. I dabbled with MTG a bit over the years until my friend pulled me into my first ever limited draft in November 2019, and I was hooked. I enjoyed a blissful three months of local events and excitedly built my own cube, even hosting a handful of cube drafts until February 2020 when COVID brought that all to a grinding halt. Since then, I've increased the power level of the cube and selected cards from each new set to support certain archetypes and bring overall "good" stuff to the cube. It has been exciting and entertaining to discover cards from Magic's history and how they synergize with cards from newer sets. I hope you enjoy the cube, and I welcome any feedback!