Pioneer Cube

Cube ID
Art by Mark TedinArt by Mark Tedin

367 Card Pioneer Cube

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Designed by UhBigNerdRSSQR Code

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Owned
$1,285
Buy
$999

A cube that I maintain in paper to play with my smaller playgroup.

The design goals of this cube are to make decks with archetypes and cards familiar to those who played a lot during the sets that are legal in Pioneer. It doesn't run some Pioneer staples as my playgroup does not like some of the play patterns of new, powerful staples. The cube is meant to be archetype driven, so most color pairs have a synergy-based archetype rather than focusing on marco-archetypes like control an aggro.

The cube does ignore the banlist as many of these cards are ones my group has fond memories of. Currently, that includes fetchlands, though that is something I am experimenting with in my cube to see how it affects balance.

wu: Flicker
Use a a combination of one-shot and repeatable flicker effects to squeeze extra value out of your creatures, to either make a powerful tempo deck or value-driven control deck.
ub: Artifacts
Assemble an array of artifacts and use blue and black's control tools to slow the game down and gain the advantage in the late game.
br: Sacrifice
Attack your opponent with cheap threats, and use a variety of sacrifice tools to close out the game when your small creatures get locked down on the board.
rg: Ramp / Stompy
Make use of the two colors with some of the best creature statlines, either overwhelming your opponent with powerful creatures in the midgame or ramping out massive creatures later on.
wg: Tokens
Create a legion of tokens to gum up the board, attacking when favorable. Hold out until you find a way to make your attack decisive, then swing in for the win.
wb: Attrition
Use white and black's token making and sticky threats to make attacks difficult for your opponent, then slowly drain them to death with repeated value effects.
ur: Spells
Classic blue red strategy of mixing small synergistic creatures and a variety of cheap spells to overwhelm your opponent with a flurry of cards.
bg: Graveyard
Gain value from cards in your graveyard, with multiple self-mill effects and a variety of payoffs for having a stacked graveyard.
rw: Mass Attack
Make sure you're always getting in damage with wide board attacks. Just when your opponent thinks they've stabilized, slam one of white or red's many powerful cards that become unstoppable with a wide board for the win.
ug: +1/+1 Counters
Make your creatures count! Land some threats with counters on them, then use those counters to grow your creatures or get other value effects. Put these counters on one of green's hexproof creatures or one of blue's evasive creatures for a powerful win condition.

Just a few minor tweaks. Teleportation Circle has a few extra synergies with artifacts, and plays well in some WU or WUB based control decks. Having two repeatable flicker effects is cumbersome, and many of blue's archetypes need more specific enablers / payoffs, so the repeatable flicker enabler was moved to white.