Art by David O'ConnorThe goal of this cube is to be an all-in-one location to teach Magic the Gathering to a player who has never seen or played the game before. As such, the cube is designed using Ryan Overdrive's Twobert design philosophy, where each color starts as an individually playable 23 card deck. The intent of each individual deck is to showcase most of the color's primary 'evergreen' mechanics in order to give a basic feel of what that color represents. I mostly attempted to follow the most recent Mechanical Color Pie article by Mark Rosewater. After a few constructed games, the card pool is meant to be shuffled and played as a sealed format, and eventually a fully-fledged 4 player drafting experience.
For card selection, I chose to stick to cards where the comprehension complexity is low. Cards were selected to have no more than two keywords and one ability in order to keep a first-time drafter from getting overwhelmed when attempting to evaluate the best pick for their needs. Where possible, I selected cards which included the rules text in parentheses.
Color Overview: White
| Keyword | Description |
|---|---|
| +1/+1 counters | Place a counter on specified target creature to permanently increase its power and toughness |
| Destroy target attacking/blocking/tapped creature | Put target specified creature into its owner's graveyard from the battlefield so long as the condition is met |
| +N/+N until end of turn | Increase or decrease target creature's power and toughness until end of turn, or specified duration |
| Defender | During the combat phase, this creature cannot attack, and thus can only be declared as a blocker during the opponents turn |
| Enchantment Destruction | Target an enchantment to send it to the owner's graveyard |
| First Strike | During the damage step of the combat phase, a creature with first strike deals damage before receiving any, which can prevent it from taking damage if it deals lethal damage to the blocker |
| Flying | A creature with flying will attack in the air, and can only be blocked by other creatures with flying or creatures that have 'Reach' |
| Life Gain | Add the specified amount of life to your total life points, which can go over 20 |
| Lifelink | For however much combat damage is dealt by a creature with Lifelink, that amount of health is added to the controlling player's total life points |
| Pacifism | A pacifism effect will prevent a creature from attacking or blocking |
| Protection | A protected card cannot be targeted, dealt damage, enchanted, equipped, fortified, or blocked by any source that matches a specified condition |
| Token Generation | Create a permanent card on the battlefield that operates the same way as a normal card, but was not cast using mana |
| Vigilance | A creature with Vigilance does not tap when it is declared as an attacker, and can then be used to block during an opponents combat phase |
Artifact Destruction
Flash
Increasing Counters/Tokens
Rewards for death
Blue
| Keyword | Description |
|---|---|
| Card Draw | Gain an advantage of playable cards by additional draws |
| Card Filtering | Look at extra cards from the top of your library to filter to the proper threats that will give you an advantage |
| Copying Permanents | Create a copy of a permanent card already on the battlefield |
| Counterspell | Deny an opponent from playing their cards and wasting resources |
| Flash | Play a creature spell on an opponent's turn or in a phase where you normally would not be able to play it |
| Flying | A creature with flying will attack in the air, and can only be blocked by other creatures with flying or creatures that have 'Reach' |
| Freeze | Prevent a creature from untapping during its controller's untap step |
| Looting | Draw cards at a cost of having to discard a card to the graveyard |
| Return to hand | "Bounce" a card from the battlefield back to its owner's hand |
| Scry | Look at the top X cards of your library, and then either put them back on top in an order of your choosing, or put them in the bottom of your library |
Tapping Creatures
