Big Hand Small Hand Cube Primer

This cube is intended to focus on encouraging unusual play patterns with a strong focus on the Hand Size as the key contested resource. It hopefully also provides a fun place to play a lot of very sweet but ultimately not great cards from Magic's history mostly from the beginning of the modern era. Many of the strategies are remixes of fringe constructed decks from different formats.

Archetypes

The colors listed beside each archetype indicate which colors have the most on-theme cards. The ones listed below represent theoretical strategies with examples of cards that describe the deck. No Archetype is strictly limited to the listed colors and themes are more important than color.

Wisdom

Wisdom focuses on card advantage payoff effects that scale off of hand size. Decks tend to range from mid-range to control with the strategy varying from fatties to burn.
- Fatties with access to the most / creatures, Maro/Aeon Chronicler/Overbeing of Myth/Tishana Voice of Thunder, and the biggest card advantage pieces Life's Legacy/Stroke of Genius. This is the most supported variety of Wisdom decks and can easily support multiple drafters.
- Big Spells uses effects like splice onto arcane to maintain hand size until you can burn the opponent with cards like conflagrate and Fateful showdown
/ - Traditional control using the classic combination of removal, Nightmarish End/Wrath of God, draw effects, Deep Analysis/Fact or Fiction, and finishers, Commence the Endgame/Promise of Power

Hellbent

Hellbent plans to empty its hand for value and tempo using effects like madness. Its tends to play in the aggro or mid-range space depending on what you prioritize in the draft.
- The most supported color pair in the archetype which can support multiple drafters. Aggro versions feature threats such as Avatar of Discord and Hollow One while the midrange decks rely more on value engines Bone Miser or Containment Construct.
- Relies on Dirty Wererat's and Lotleth Troll's to power graveyard based synergies with Uurg, Spawn of Turg and Centaur Chieftain.
- Reanimator pitch cards through cycling or discard and use Breath of Life/Miraculous Recovery etc. to return Scion of Darkness/Angel of Despair.

Racks

Inspired by 8-rack decks throughout different formats the core gameplan remains intact. Limit your opponents resources with various discard cards Raven's Crime, Wrench Mind, Hymn to Tourach, etc. while different racks, Shrieking Affliction, Liliana's Caress, Wheel of Torture erode their life totals. Base black decks pair up with any other color.
- invokes a Death and Taxes feel, featuring classics like Smallpox and Sin Collector.
- can use combo bounce spells and discard together, turning Boomerangs into stone rains.
- can use red burn spells like Rekindled Flame to give itself extra reach.

Vises

Vises is a rather counter intuitive strategy based on filling your opponents hands. The cards are inherently card disadvantage and its probably the weakest strategy on face value.
- Stall opponents with Swans of Bryn Argoll while bounce spells and Eidolon of Rhetoric effect keeps opponents off-board.
- Use removal to stay alive while Underworld Dreams or Fevered Visions provides inevitability and finish with Peer into the Abyss.
- Uses spells like Gaze of Adamaro or Runeflare Trap to burn off huge increments of the opponents life total.

Fringe Strategies

These have varying amounts of support but fall outside of the main hand size based archetypes.

White Weenies and Selesnya Weenies

A classic strategy based off going wide and pumping the team. Can also dip into the reanimator effects. Can be played mono white while the Selesnya version is more tokens based.

Spiritcraft

While spiritcraft cards are present in all colors there isn't a really cohesive strategy other than generating value through spiritcraft creatures and the pseudo advantage from splice cards. You can find various synergies in the different color combinations like

Battle Rage

Win out of nowhere with combos inspired by one of the original modern strategies. There isn't a reasonable two card combo that can kill from 20 so the deck does have to put in some legwork before hand. This deck can also fit in the Tireless Tribe Strange Inversion combo.

Notes

This is currently version 1.0 I intend to complete this in paper eventually after it's received some testing.
Current "Features not Bugs":
The cube is currently color-imbalanced with & overrepresented in the cube since they underpin the major archetypes the cube is centered around. I'm open to both widening or closing the gap depending on what will improve the format.
The nature of the weaker card pool might make multicolor piles too free so the current fixing suite is intended to trade speed for the ability to splash for the stronger gold cards in 4/5 color decks. The Total number of duals is lower than many higher powered cubes but between the fetches and land cyclers multicolor decks should have to worry about getting screwed on colors just that the won't be able to curve out.