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Welcome to the Jank Diver Gaming Cube! Jank Diver Gaming is a Discord community focused on drafting our Peasant and Unrestricted Historic cubes for Arena play, allowing us to cube with a growing group of friends from all over the Americas and Europe. Our Discord community can be found here:

The Jank Diver Gaming Cube is a 360 card design intended to provide a high-power environment in the Historic card pool, with concessions made to gameplay balance. There are some major differences relative to a standard-issue Legacy cube. This environment is devoid of combo, densities of artifact ramp and degenerate single-card archetypes. The result is a more nuts-and-bolts approach to Magic in line with the last 10 years of design, and is similar in archetypal composition to a Modern cube.

The lack of combo allows a variety of midrange archetypes to flourish that are not normally fast or controlling enough to consistently succeed in Legacy cube. We see this as a feature rather than a bug, expanding the diversity of truly viable strategies. If you end up in the GW seat in a draft, you are not saddled with the knowledge that you’re piloting an inferior deck. Midrange decks occupy the portion of the ecosystem usually inhabited by combo while offering a deep variety of themes and strategies.

The cube uses the paper-printed version of all included cards, not altered/rebalanced/Alchemy versions. Most Alchemy-exclusive prints have also been cut for being busted, shattering the color pie, or both. Retained Alchemy cards 1) provide otherwise unavailable effects in the card pool, 2) are not insanely pushed, or 3) bolster an archetype that needs it.

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The following cards are banned to power or obnoxious play patterns.

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The following cards are not perma-banned. They are currently benched for being serious power outliers in the cube's present state or having highly polar matchups against specific archetypes.

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This section explores the archetypes and themes available by color. Archetypes and themes listed in a color (i.e. white aggro) can, and often will, go into additional colors. The descriptions provided here assume that the archetype or theme in question forms the core of your deck. Any of these cores can benefit from including other colors for additional utility but this discussion is focused on the flavor/direction of the base color. Multicolor themes spread across two or more colors are discussed after base-color archetypes.

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White aggro (affectionately known as white weenie) is a creature based aggro deck that applies early pressure followed by "pump" effects, mana disruption, and rock-solid 4-drops. White also provides planeswalkers that dodge board wipes, indestructible creatures and removal for any permanent type. The deck is slightly slower than Red Deck Wins and has less “reach” (ability to finish the opponent after they have set up a defense) but is more resilient and puts more bodies on board.

White midrange decks play value creatures, universal removal and highly efficient bombs. White is a premier creature color and the best top end cards for the white weenie deck double as mid-curve threats for midrange decks. White midrange cards pair well with interaction from the Grixis spectrum and additional beaters in Green.

Blue is the only color that fully supports a controlling strategy but the color lacks interaction on its own. White offers efficient mass removal, universal single-target interaction and powerful finishers to the mix.

White offers a range of effects that create multiple bodies and wide boards. The color natively offers ways to capitalize on this with anthem effects and +1/+1 counter distribution. Other colors can leverage White's "army in a can" theme, especially Black sacrifice and Green beat-down decks.

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Blue control decks win games by answering all of their opponent’s threats before resolving something that inevitably wins the game. It accomplishes this task with counter magic and card draw, running the opponent out of cards before taking control of the game. It is generally important for Blue control decks to add a secondary color for board clearing effects, removal, non-Blue disruption and game-enders.

Aggro-control is an archetype combining cheap interaction with primarily flash-speed creatures. This allows the pilot to react to the opponent's plays with threat development OR disruption. Aggro-control wins by denying the opponent's most impactful cards while deploying evasive threats at opportune times.

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Black's unique aggro characteristics are recursive creatures, payoffs for creatures dying and cheap removal. The deck is generally the slowest of the aggro strategies but has the ability to "grind" opponents out of answers and persist into the late game. Black also has access to truly horrifying finishers at 3 and 4 mana that many decks will struggle to answer.

Black midrange leverages a large removal suite to manage the board while playing threats that grind tremendous value or take over the game on their own. The core of this deck pairs best with Green (for ramp and more midrange threats) and Red (more removal, good midrange threats and graveyard shenanigans).

Black is an extremely effective support color for controlling decks. Black's suite of single target removal, sweepers and hand disruption compensate well for Blue's natural weaknesses. Black also brings a small selection of high-quality finishers.

Black sacrifice is a distinct style of midrange deck centered around sacrificing disposable or recursive creatures for value. The core pieces fall into 3 categories: cards that sacrifice creatures, cards that produce sacrifice "fodder" and cards that generate value when creatures die. Assembling some combination of these pieces can produce powerful engines and combos that are leveraged to win the game.

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Good ol’ Red Deck Wins. Red aggro is a cube stable and no environment is complete without it. This deck focuses on cheap, aggressive creatures followed by burn and the very best aggro finishers in Magic. The deck is slightly more creature-oriented in this environment relative to other cubes due to the lower availability of high damage, universal burn in Historic (i.e. Lightning Bolt). It is the fastest and most linear of the aggro decks.

Red functions well as a support color for decks needing cheap removal, fast late-game clocks, or both. Blue control decks will happily play large volumes of burn to keep the board clear of creatures, while Green midrange decks can leverage the same cards to push damage and kill the opponent. Red also offers a small suite of high-quality finishers at 5.

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Green ramp decks are midrange decks that heavily emphasize mana acceleration before transitioning into game-ending threats and powerful effects ahead of schedule. Ramp is firmly based in Green and mana-producing creatures are premium cards for these decks. Green ramp can easily splash into other colors for removal, card draw, planeswalkers and other desirable non-Green effects due to the color's access to mana fixing.

Green midrange decks are characterized by powerful mid-sized creatures that kill your opponent if left unchecked, or generate tremendous value that overwhelms the opponent. These decks are less dependent on a critical density of mana-generating creatures than dedicated ramp decks, often playing a mix of "mana dorks" and early threats like Scavenging Ooze and Quirion Beastcaller. However, green midrange is still interested in playing mana accelerants, as a turn 2 mana creature followed by an efficient 4-drop threat is one of Green’s stronger play patterns.

Green is not an aggro color and a heavily Green deck will not support an aggressive plan. Green does have a number of tools that slot into aggressive and aggressive-leaning midrange decks, while retaining some utility for ramp strategies.

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The Selesnya gold section offers token-makers and anthems that perfectly support the go-wide theme based principally in White. Several supporting cards in Green also contribute to this plan without being highly parasitic to their own color.

Sacrifice decks are always based in Black but the theme is supported across the Mardu spectrum. White provides token generation for sacrifice outlets, interaction and synergistic gold cards. Red sacrifice decks tend to skew more aggressive and provide burn and cheap, disposable attackers.

Red and Blue have the highest density of instants and sorceries of any color combination. UR decks can capitalize on this density with cards that generate value when instants and sorceries are cast. The theme plays well in a tempo OR control deck as UR can support either of these archetypes with counters, burn and card draw. Either archetype can benefit from additional value generated simply by enacting its core game plan. UR spells decks can easily splash some Black for removal and other goodies like Sedgemoor Witch.

Blink is a theme that combines creatures featuring valuable enter-the-battlefield effects with cards that "blink" or "flicker" them cheaply to get repeated triggers. A small number of cards do this efficiently and slot well into Azorious tempo decks with value creatures like Aether Channeler and Charming Prince. The target creatures are good on their own but increase in value with the addition of a few blink cards.

Potent cards span all colors and drafting a variety of multicolor lands opens up the full spectrum of Magic's power. This deck is generally based in Green and has a handful of payoff cards that stitch it all together.
Golos generates overwhelming value with access to every color and can enable itself by fetching triomes. Omnath enables combo-esque power when combined with effects that fetch multiple lands, which are already desirable in a deck with demanding mana-requirements. 5-color is a complex deck to draft but rewards success with some of the most broken interactions in the environment.

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We hope that you enjoyed this introduction to our environment. We draft Peasant (or alternative community cubes) every Wednesday and Unrestricted every Saturday, in addition to rotating Rotisserie and Winston drafts organized by our active community members. Drafts fire at 19:30 EST.

There’s always something to do or discuss at Jank Diver Gaming, so come see what we’re all about and start divin’!