Jake’s Real Cube
Broad deck archetypes are supported in color shards with some narrower synergies supported in each shard’s enemy color pair and most-clockwise allied color pair.

Esper Control
WB: Life drain
UB: Classic control

Grixis Synergy
UR: Spellslinger
BR: Artifact sacrifice

Jund Midrange
BG: Classic Midrange
RG: Ramp, Big Dumb Idiots

Naya Aggro
RW: Classic Aggro
GW: +1/+1 Counters

Bant Tempo
GU: Flash
WU: Flyers

1. Context
   This cube’s play group is relatively inexperienced. Most players have drafted a handful of times at most, and only a handful of players have ever taken part in a sanctioned MTG event. It will be uncommon for the cube to be played with a full 8 player pod. Most often it will be played with 5-6 players. At 5 players it will be drafted with 4 packs per player. The list is kept at 360 cards for these reasons. Fewer cards to become acquainted with, some variance between drafts as not all cards will be drafted each time, etc.

2. Restrictions
   The list consists only of cards I already own, mostly from prereleases, some singles I’ve bought, and some preconstructed products. The list is singleton. Some cards included are not good or optimal, but are included because some of the players enjoy them (Hydra’s Growth). There are no legality or rarity restrictions as this list is meant to be an opportunity for me and my play group to enjoy powerful cards I own (e.g. Nicol Bolas, Dragon God) that have no home in constructed decks I own. That said, classic power cards like Sol Ring are excluded. I prefer avoiding proxies, so rather than a Fetch/Dual/Shock mana base, sets of Vivid (x4) and Thriving Lands (x3) are included. These are the only exceptions to the singleton rule and the only cards I will buy for this cube.

3. Power
   The list has a wide power band. Path to Exile is the most powerful removal spell in the list without any near seconds. There are a handful of Talismans in some color pairs, other color pairs have no mana rocks. This play group greatly enjoyed Mystery Booster draft and did not find the wide power band offensive there. Individual cards may be more less powerful than others, though the list is intended for all deck archetypes to be of roughly equal power, even if they are not of equal difficulty to draft or play. Less experienced players drafting a WU Flyers or BG Midrange deck should have a reasonable chance against a more experienced player who drafted BR Artifact Sacrifice.

4. Gameplay
   Ideally, 50 minutes per round is sufficient to play 2-3 games, rather than the first game of round lasting 40 minutes and then the second game timing out.

The list is kept at 360 cards in case there is ever a time where I have 8 players but playing with fewer players means there will be some variance between drafts even at 360 cards.

If a player wants to draft an archetype they should be able to draft a reasonable deck in just two colors and have some of the above listed synergies and not have mana problems. Two color decks should reliably perform their broad strategy (aggro, control, etc) and have the flavor of their respective synergies (ramp, life drain, etc), but drafting on rails or “unshuffling” the cube is not desirable.

Mana screw is hopefully minimized with 3 sets of Vivid Lands and Thriving Lands. There are hopefully enough untapped dual lands to support the aggro archetypes, at least until they draw into their third or fourth land. All these lands being essentially 5 colors means that players can at least patch up holes in their mana base with an off color Thriving Land or get by for a couple turns on an off color Vivid land if they didn’t prioritize fixing.

A side effect of this is greater support for 3+ color decks. Room for a player to be creative is desirable and breaking out of the prescribed color pair strategies is encouraged. Splashing is fun. It is exciting to see a player try to draft a Mardu deck built around Revel in Riches, using Red and Black to amass treasures and bringing in White for boardwipes. If the table is not picking lands highly enough and a player wants to take advantage of this to build a 5 color good stuff deck, that’s great too and hopefully players learn to pick more lands next time.

The Grixis shard being the Synergy colors seems the most difficult to curate. There are only a handful of narrow tutor effects (Lim-Dul’s Vault, Ranger-Captain of Eos) and the combos themselves are somewhat slow, fragile, not exactly game-winning, and lack redundancy. Rather than playing like true combo decks, decks in this shard probably end up playing like a control or midrange deck that either has some alternate win condition or has focus on some other axis like spellsmatter, artifacts matter, or sacrifice synergies. Some card selection is included for someone who wants to go all in on their combo. These decks are probably most enjoyed by Jenny/Johnny identified players who are fine with their plan not going off every game but find it so so sweet when it works. Ideally these can become supported enough to be more reliable strategies, but as it stands they are likely underpowered.

UR probably does not have the support necessary to be played as a true Storm deck, but the feeling of casting a lot of spells and then getting some pay off (Rise From the Tides, Young Pyromancer, Teferi’s Tutelage, or even just Mistral Singer) should satisfy the urge. BR is even more difficult to balance. The combos in BR involve amassing artifacts such as Treasures, and sacrificing them to something like Bolas’ Citadel or Atog/Fling/Temur Battle Rage. Black is also home to the Thoughtpicker Witch/Reassembling Skeleton lock. Blue is home to Zur's Weirding and Narset, Parter of Veils. There are some not-perfectly-fitting cards in this shard because it is made with the philosophy that if I fully understand it then there is not enough room for the player to be creative.