A medium powered cube focused on the drafting & deckbuilding experience that allows players to express themselves in thematic and memorable decks.
- Thematic decks: Drafted decks should have their own identity and feel thematic. The decks should feel like small constructed decks, where the pieces synergize and create a well oiled machine with a dedicated plan.
As a rough goal a deck feels thematic if ~50% of its cards match the theme (according to Game Knights).
- Deep deck pool: While some archetypes are explicitly supported, the cross pollination should be so strong that the draft doesn't feel on rails. The powerlevel is kept in check so that thematic but slow decks have room to breathe. I try to put as many decks into the cube as possible in 360 cards. One way to do this is to add cards that create their own deck but ask for little support, e.g. Sphinx's Tutelage + some card draw or Demonic Pact or Polymorph and friends. Probably not all decks will have the same powerlevel and be competitive enough to go 3-0, but if you assembled Lantern of Insight control and won some matches that is memorable as well.
- Synergistic aggro: Aggro decks should not be "Select a color, draft as many 1 drops as possible, attack with all creatures every combat step". They should feel thematic as well and different from each other. E.g.
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Battalion compared to
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+1/+1 counters or
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Berserk Madness. This makes aggro decks slower and to compensate Control is kept in check by having wraths be 5-cmc and using Talismans and Painlands so that mutlicolor Control comes with a price. So that the lifeloss from mana fixing remains meaningful I try to avoid creatures with lifelink. Also the Fixing situation weakens Control a bit.
- No strictly worse cards: Every card in the pack should be worth consideration. So no Lightning Strike vs. Lightning Bolt should occur in one pack.
- No strong tutors: This is done to keep the combo decks in check. So no Demonic Tutor / Vampiric Tutor / Enlightened Tutor. Land tutors and conditional tutors like Trinket Mage, Goblin Engineer, Gather the Pack are cool though. Cards like Tinker, Doomsday, Gifts Ungiven have such a strong identity that they are their own decks. So they are cool aswell.
- No planeswalkers: Just don't like how they're done. I'll maybe run 5 or 6 that are designed like they were in WAR. But for now I don't miss them at all.
- Keep it cheap: Orignal budget was 1€ max. Now that the synergies are so tightly knit its getting harder to keep cards in that budget so the occasional 2€-3€ card snuck in. No proxies as I don't want to open Pandora's box. If I open more expensive cards they are fair game as well.
- Cube structure: Singleton. Each color (as well as
) gets 50 cards and there are 50 Multicolor cards (5 per Guild) + 10 slots for Utility Lands/Tri-color/5-color
. The Multicolor sections include fixing (e.g. lands/talismans) for the respective guild. The cube is limited to 360 cards so that if you've drafted the cube multiple times you can decide to force specific decks and you are at least guaranteed that key cards are available in an 8 man pod. The cube is mostly drafted with 2 players or 4 players though and here the 360 size offers some variety, while no guranatees for all cards being available.
- Fixing: Due to the cube structure there is little space for fixing (at least compared to other cubes). To compensate the non-guild lands are rainbow lands that go in any deck. As my playgroup does not like to draft lands at all, having less lands available is not a big problem.
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(C) Blink 1
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(C) Sacrifice / Recur 1 2 3
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(A) Battalion / Stubborn Aggro 1 2
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(A) Humans / Landfall Aggro / +1/+1Counters 1 2 3 4
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(C) Draw & Discard 1
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(A) Spell Velocity 1 2 3
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(C) Big Landfall Ramp 1
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(A) Suicide Aggro (Sac / Hellbent?) 1 2
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(C) Graveyard Value 1
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(A) Madness / Lands to the Face 1 2 3
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(C) Golos, Tireless Pilgrim, Etched Monstrosity, Chromanticore 1
(C) = Control
(A) = Aggro
Note: This is only the initial list of archetypes I had in mind when starting the cube, but there are many more decks available to be drafted, e.g.:


Artifact Storm 1 2


Sidisi Self-Mill

Doomsday Lantern Control


Sultai 5 Color Control

Mill Storm Servos

Polymorph 1 2

Tinker Control

Chromantiflayer
My favorite drafted decks by people that are not me


Grixis Artifact Aristocrats by @PepperMyr


Bant Landsplicer by @Zubat


Sidisi's Mesmeric Orb by @Minox