Ethos

As of today there are seven draft sets from the plane of Innistrad; 3 from the original ISD block, plus 2 from the SOI block, plus 2021's MID and VOW. This gothic horror (not cosmic horror) themed cube is made of a super majority of cards from those sets. The rest of the list are cards that are functional and flavor wins on the plane, or are one off Innistrad setting cards from core and supplemental sets.

Beginner strategies meet cube all-stars. DEEP support for the five two color Innistrad tribes; Humans , Spirits , Zombies , Vampires , and (Were)wolves . Each color pair has ≥40 creatures of that type, with an extra spattering of human prey. You'll find no elves, goblins, eldrazi, merfolk, or plansewalkers here (even in almost all art or flavor text). There is a cube wide errata of all werewolves to the original transform mechanic "oldbound". This means each permenant will have a triggered ability that checks how many spells were cast last turn.

• Comprehensive tagging: each card is tagged as setup/payoff for any relevant secondary strategies
• Table grouped by tags https://cubecobra.com/cube/list/ssi?s1=Tags&s2=Color+Category
  • For example: Midnight Haunting has tags "secondary", "tokens", and "setup" because it is aligned with the secondary strategy and "sets up" the board for synergy with eventual payoffs
  • Keywords are split so grouping can be done at any level of intersection

This cube has gone through 5 years of 8-10 person drafts, including overhauls based on the Innistrad cube by @TheJesguy and the mtga SOI-remastered set wizards created. It all started with the mtgo-redemption SOI complete set in March 2019, and the pool has arrived at a comfortable and consistent draft.

Pack Collation

• Take 5 cards from each of WUBRG categories and 5 cards from the misc gold/colorless/land totaling 30 cards. Shuffle together and then split into two packs of 15.
• Attempt to randomize where the paired packs of 15 end up at the table.
• This makes each color identy appear on 2/3 cards per pack more often than constructing fully uniformly random packs from the 540 pool. This also makes more packs where you'll be presented with a choice of dual-lands.

Archetypes and Play

Each ally color has a secondary strategy: Tokens , Creature Control , Self-Mill , Madness , and Transform .

• In addition, all colors have delirium setup and payoff. The enemy pair is entirely focused on delirium, with extra color-fixing from green permanents.
• Spell-Slinger for .
• is designed to be a "mono/lonely color". It has powerful toolbox cards but are white mana symbol intensive.
• This means that in total, each color participates in only three archetypes as opposed to the usual four. The hope is draft signals will be cleaner.

• For those seeking a challenge, I've intentionally added some number of infinite combos. They each require engine pieces across 3 colors, but do have some number of interchangeable parts.

Secondary Strategy: Tokens
Setup

Payoff

Secondary Strategy: Creature Control
Setup

Payoff

Secondary Strategy: Self-Mill plus Reanimation
Setup

Payoff

Secondary Strategy: Madness
Setup

Payoff

Secondary Strategy: Transform
Setup

Payoff

Tertiary Strategy: Delirium
Setup

Payoff

Tertiary Strategy: Spell-Slinger
Setup

Payoff

Tertiary Strategy: White-Toolbox

Tertiary Strategy: Infinite Combo (Engine Pieces Hints)

**Custom Cards: **

• Any card called Customs Depot is a fully printed custom card.
• There is one cycle of basic land cyclers that also act as auras that remove abilities/change power and toughness.
• Additionaly, I illustraded an "Innistrad Charm" from the Un-known Event playtest cards and include it.

Balance

• Each curve is (color, creature) and (color, non-creature) is aligned with the tempo of that color.
• power < toughness: 57 creatures (21% of creatures)