The Historic Companion Cube is a cube built around the Historic and Companion mechanics. It is designed to promote synergistic and strategic gameplay, and to enable interesting card interactions.

My favorite decks can be described as 'a perfect machine, built from imperfect parts'. I believe that building a deck around a card that others have dismissed and making it shine is vastly more interesting than building a deck full of generically good cards. Players should not ask 'is this card good?', but 'can I make this card good?'

The cube is inspired by formats like Dominaria and Kamigawa: Neon Dynasty, plus a pinch of Commander. It is designed to promote creative, synergy-based gameplay - pretty much every card can be used multiple ways, and games will favor whichever player is able to get the most from their cards. Players should have multiple paths available to them at all times - during drafting, deckbuilding, and gameplay. The cube is also intended to shine a spotlight on cool cards that don't see play elsewhere.

The Historic Companion Cube is built around two key mechanics:

• The Historic mechanic from Dominaria, which refers to cards which are legendary, artifacts, or sagas.
• The Companion mechanic from Ikoria, which allows players to start the game with access to whichever creature they have chosen as a companion.

This cube has one special rule: all legendary creatures have Companion. Prior to each game, players may choose a single legendary creature card from their sideboard and declare it their companion. They may pay during their turn to put it into their hand.

Cards like Gyruda, Doom of Depths that naturally have Companion have their tax waived if their condition is met.

There are a few design tenets I have held to while choosing cards for this cube.

• Maximize lenticularness - Lenticular cards are ones which may be viewed through multiple lenses. Cards like Thraben Inspector can be approached differently by different decks depending on whether they care about cheap creatures, flickering, artifacts, tokens, or sacrificing permanents. In general, I favor cards that can be used in multiple ways by multiple decks.
• Flat power curve - cards that are too strong or too weak are removed from the cube. Packs should rarely have an obvious 'best card', and there should be many viable choices while drafting.
• Strong fixing - games are more interesting when both players are able to cast their spells. There are two full cycles of untapped fetchlands and untapped fetchable duals in the cube - cards like Bad River and Glacial Floodplain have been errataed to enter untapped, plus there is additional fixing. Most decks will be two or three colors, but more colors are possible.
• Limit standalone strong cards - on the flip side, most cards should require some amount of support to shine. It is possible to splash off-color cards, but cards will usually work best with other cards in their colors.
• Limit cheap snowballing threats - players should not feel pressured to pack a bunch of cheap removal for early threats. It should be possible to recover from a slow start, and it should be viable to skip turn 2 to put your companion into hand. There are also no Planeswalkers in the cube, which tend to be snowbally.
• Promote back-and-forth gameplay - cards should not immediately end the game when played, and there should be answers and counterplay available for whatever your opponent does. There should be tension when splashy cards are played - both for the opponent hoping they have an answer, and for the player hoping their threat sticks.
• Maximize replayability - there are 75+ legendary creatures that can be chosen as a companion and built around, plus plenty of other sweet cards to try to make work. There should be multiple ways to approach each color combination.

Jeskai - Artifacts and Noncreature Spells

Sultai - Graveyard

Mardu - Legends

Temur - Lands and Ramp

Abzan - Enchantments

Azorius - Blink

Dimir - Graveyard Value

Rakdos - Sacrifice

Gruul - Haste and Combat Triggers

Selesnya - Tokens and Going Wide

Orzhov - Reanimator

Izzet - Spellslinger

Golgari - Creatures in Graveyard

Boros - Voltron and Going Tall

Simic - Flash