"Unpowered, Fairly Powerful, and Sometimes Unfair"

Welcome to Lucky 7's (The Buddy Cube --Revamped--). Our vision for this version is to boost card quality while preserving the large-cube feel, downsizing from 850 to 777. Why 777? It's a gimmick... and it provides nice 1:1 ratios between our categories for analyzing packs (111 cards in each section -WUBRG, colorless, multi - gives us approximately 2 cards of each section per pack of 15).

----------------------------------------The Cube Specs---------------------------------------

legacy+ environment; 7.77 on the Strix scale (I think?); snow friendly; sparing use of multiples to allow black aggro and lands-matter; un-cards and conspiracies permitted but limited; stocked with low cmc/interactive/modal/vindicate-approved cards; healthy, happy aggro; heavy archetype cross-pollination; guild/multi/WUBRG/colorless balanced; 27 "colorless" mana rocks; the cardboard lovechild.

Notable Omissions

Kiki/Twin (cube is too large), ABU Duals / Moat / Tolarian Academy (too expensive), True-name / Serra (too hard to interact with), Mind Twist / Mana Drain / Mox Diamond / Grim Monolith (too powerful for environment).

Why do we exclude some cards for power, but not other obvious offenders (Reanimate Spells, Eldrazi, Tinker, Sneak Attack, Natural Order, Balance, Chrome Mox, Karakas, Gaea's Cradle!?!?!)

So here's the deal... we only own one cube and we like our toys. Some cards are so inextricably linked to High Power cube, it wouldn't feel right to cut them out. That being said, we used to be far more liberal with our inclusions, but we've made some adjustments to reduce low-interaction cards and zero-downside, first-pick-no-matter-what cards. For us, it's about extending the delineation of Powered and Unpowered, while preserving the Only-in-Cube feeling. So why do the aforementioned cards make the cut? Reanimate spells are so ubiquitously useful that most black decks will compete for them, while cheat decks will also value the reanimator targets. Eldrazi are fairly parasitic in that they only work in some cheat-shells (not reanimator) and they are very difficult to hardcast. On the other hand, they inspire drafters to do desperate and cool things to bring them into play, they create awesome stories, and the low density of enablers at 777 make them more of a novelty than a powerlevel outlier. Tinker is perhaps the most suspect card in our cube, but it requires enough effort in drafting (cheap artifact, +tinker, +high cmc artifact) that we're OK running the risk of unfair games. Sneak Attack fits the same profile as Tinker but is perhaps easier to assemble. On the other hand, the minimum cost of a single activation is 5 mana, which is high enough for aggro, midrange, and control to prevent or race that turn. Natural Order is constrained by the fact it can only fetch green creatures. Balance is a tremendously powerful spell and effect, but it is one that requires build-around and is a lynchpin of the Lands archetype. Chome Mox is less insidious than Mox Diamond, since it costs a card to activate and only produces mana of the exiled card's color identity. Karakas can be a problem, but its potential applications as an engine for bouncing your own creatures outweigh the "unfairness." Finally, Gaea's Cradle requires enough build around to justify its strength, and there are far more midrange threats than ramp top-end in our cube.

Why do we play these specific duplicates / multiples?

With a cube of this size, it becomes difficult to tailor the experience and control the power band. In our experience, the best method is to fortify less-supported archetypes with more copies of the best payoff cards, ones that do not exist at the power-level or as functional reprints. White weenies needs to see Armageddon, which is incidentally good in the LD deck. Black aggro / aristocrats needs to see black 1 drops, so we're running 2 carrion feeder and 2 grave crawlers as a nice combo (credit to the fine fellows at Riptide for the tech, and also more generally for the promotion of breaking singleton!). The Wildfire deck has a hard time existing in the 450+ cube size; the double Wildfires and Armageddons help with that. The lands deck is one of the most modular and fun archetypes in the cube, but it lacks proper incentives and a critical density of enablers (crucible effects especially). We're running 2 life from the loams because it anchors the archetype in green and provides interesting option for your build (do you play a self-discard aggressive Naya deck with pitch land - burn, armageddons and LD, or do you play a Junk/Jund deck with a focus on grindy value, utilizing Gitrog, Knight of the Reliquary, and Elvish Reclaimer. What makes life a valued pick? Double fetches, 4x Evolving wilds, 4x Wasteland, cycling lands, and horizon lands. More importantly, these lands benefit every deck... but they have to be used strategically. We've decided to run ONLY SHOCKS and four City of Brass. There's a very important reason for this: painful mana bases and good anti-control hate keeps in check the greedy chroma piles. If chroma piles want to run the full shock-dual setup, they'll be taking 3 for untapped duals, speeding up the format. If they're scraping the barrel for fixing, they'll rely on Evolving Wilds as an unexciting yet sometimes necessary option that slows down their plan. Aggro decks have the advantage of conserving life and leveraging better mana in one or two colors. All of this is meant to keep a balance between the broken stuff in cube and the "fringe archetypes," or rather the archetypes that aren't heavily drafted in conventional cube or that can't usually hang with Cheat / Control / Greed Midrange. Good fixing is awesome, b/c it ensures that players use more of their non-land picks and design a deck that can cast its spells. We hope to promote fun magic, whatever that may be in the eyes of the player, but we understand that proper format management is needed to keep the bad guys in check for the High-Powered Unpowered experience.

Guild Archetypes

UG: Flash / Tempo-Ramp:

Utilize flash-enablers like Yeva and Vivien, Champ of the Wilds alongside green and blue utility creatures, U-flash creatures and counterspells, and werewolves that incentive casting spells on Opp's turn. As a tempo deck, you are aiming to grind players out with card advantage, shift roles from control to aggro depending on the board state, and gain momentum through playing 2-for-1 creatures, especially ones that clear opposing permanents (like Man-o-Wars and Rec Sages).

UW: Counter-Wipe Control

This is your classic UW control deck that leverages timely board wipes to create vast swings in card economy, spot removal to clean up leftover creatures or troublesome permanents, planeswalkers or evasive creatures as finishers, counterspells for stack control, and repeatable sources of card advantage (or engines) to stay ahead.

UR: Tempo Loot / Spells Matter

This deck is a new spin on the classic UR spells archetype. It combines the best UR spells cards (young pyromancer, snap caster, saheeli, grim lavamancer, cheap burn, counterspells, and cantrips) with cards that enable and/or incentive self-discard and looting (drake haven, rielle, curator of mysteries, and a myriad of discard effects).

UB: Counter-Strike Control / Tempo

This deck is more controlling than UG tempo, less controlling than UW control, and less aggressive than UR. Instead of relying on board wipes, it uses 2-for-1 creatures such as kitesail freebooter and ravenous chupacabra to clear the way for U evasive creatures and B recursive threats. This deck makes up for its lack of speed with a high degree of resilience and plenty of cheap-costing discard, removal, and counter spells that allow double spell turns for huge tempo swings.

GW: Token Ramp / Superfriends:

This deck is fairly straightforward: it combines ramp spells, X-cost token spells, 4-6 cmc creatures and planeswalkers, and plenty of removal and control options to fend off aggro. For this deck, anthems are less important than the aforementioned elements. Planeswalkers are the meat and potatoes of this archetype as good token generators and sources of card advantage.

GR: Monsters / Stompy:

This deck wants to fill its curve from 1 to 5 cmc with plenty of sturdy creatures (creatures with respectable P/T), burn, and sources of card advantage. This deck is aggressive, yet also capable of playing a long-game and going over the top of other aggro decks. Start your curve with Mana dorks, reserve the 2 cmc slot for high-value creatures and burn spells, put the bulk of your creatures at 3-4 cmc, and reserve the 5 slot for solid finishers (preferably dragons like glorybringer) and G-walkers.

GB: Graveyard Midrange, "Rock"

This deck combines hard-to-deal-with black and green creatures with discard, removal, and card advantage. Like other midrange decks, it is looking for planeswalkers to do some heavy lifting, but it may be more interested in 5cmc+ creatures with access to reanimator spells. If discard outlets and reanimation seems unavailable in the draft, a more low-to-the-ground version is perfectly serviceable, and may look similar to classic Modern Rock decks like Jund and Abzan. Through elements like survival of the fittest, fauna shaman, recurring nightmare, living death, and the abundance of ETB creatures in these colors, a combo-reanimation version of the deck can be assembled.

WR: Go-Wide Aggro

This deck wants as many 1 cmc creatures as it can draft, anthems, burn, and 2-3 cmc token generators. There are other variants of the deck in these colors, but the primary version follows this script.

WB: Disruptive Aggro:

This deck has cross-over with BR as existing within the Aristocrats wedge, but it is more concerned with disruptive elements (discard, removal, hate bears) than aggro (the major slant of R decks). It can still win through indirect damage via blood artist, zulaport, or cruel celebrant + sac outlets, but it may prefer equipment and evasive creatures to finish the job.

BR: Graveyard Aggro:

This deck is far more aggressive than WB, with plenty of 1 cmc creatures, burn spells, and the bulk of the aristocrat effects (judith, falkenrath aristocrat, goblin bombardment). When picking 1-2 drops, this deck cares about black aggro threats more than red aggro threats, while it wants to prioritize drafting the 3 cmc red rabblemasters.

3+ Color Sub-Archetypes

Base-U: Artifacts Matter:

Usually manifests as a land destruction deck with signets, a reanimator deck with daretti / tinkerer, or some sort of combo and utility deck that spams sac-able artifacts and wins through mind slaver. On the other hand, it can be a base UW aggro deck that plays lots of equipment, evasive creatures, and a few good artifact payoffs like The Antiquities War and Urza. Artifacts are often best thought of as a sub-archetype or package to incorporate into a major archetype.

Junk: Persist Combo:

Combine a persist creature with an effect that negates or replaces the placement of the -1/-1 counter alongside a sacrifice outlet. Usually fits into a creature / utility midrange shell with plenty of tutors or an aristocrats deck. Karmic Guide, Reveillark, Sun Titan, Fiend Hunter, the reanimator enchantments, and leonin relic-warder provide additional resources for the combo when paired with sacrifice outlets. We are not running all of the persist enablers in this iteration, as we don't want this to be a major focal point of the cube.

Jund: Jund:

Jund.

Naya: Lands Matter (sometimes splashing black or blue):

Combine Wildfires, Armageddon, creatures that care about lands ETBing or going to the grave, creatures that let you play additional lands or bring them back from the graveyard, and sacrificial lands like strip mine, fetch lands, and horizon lands. This deck is bolstered by two copies of life from the loam to ensure its viability. Like the artifacts deck, it often works best as a package within a major archetype.

Mardu: Aristocrats / Stax:

This deck combines the best of both worlds from BR and WB to drain the opponent and make symmetrical sacrifice feel asymmetric.

Jeskai: Mana Denial (Upheaval / Wildfire/ Armageddon)

This is similar to the lands-matter deck with plenty of overlapping pieces, except it relies heavily on talismans, signets, and other rocks instead of extra land drops or mana dorks. It is essentially a close-to-creatureless control deck that packs lots of board wipes, acceleration (unaffected by LD), card advantage and card quality spells, counters and removal, and threats that survive wildfire, i.e. 5+ toughness creatures and planeswalkers.

Grixis: Discard Matters / Reanimator

This deck combines the discard-matters UR stuff with the potent self-discard spells, recursive creatures, and reanimator of B. It can be a more creature-centric and aggressive version of UR, or a more controlling classic reanimator deck if it finds the right density of targets, discard spells, and control elements.

Temur: Mana Cheats (Sneak / Breach / Natural Order / Oath of druids)

Doesn't require explanation... just build around these cards with Fatties, cheats, card selection, and counter spell protection.

Sultai: value.

It's jund, but U is better than R.

Bant: Blink / ETBs / Creatures Matter:

Soul herder, Ephemerate, Thassa and company combine with the best ETB creatures to form a value-based, grindy deck. Because it is creature-centric, this deck often utilizes the Flash enablers of UG and birthing pod from GB to climb its curve (works especially well with karmic guide, rev, and sun titan as top-end).

Esper+: Classic Control:

This is the greedier version of UW that fills gaps in its game-plan with black board wipes and spot removal. This version may also want to incorporate an artifact-recursion or cheat theme through picking up an early tinker, some talismans, or Emry/Academy ruins + Engineered Explosives. It could be more accurately described as Chroma control, since it can branch into any number of colors depending on the quality of fixing.

-------------------------------Hello fellow cube enthusiasts!--------------------------------

This cube started as a pile of draft chaff thrown together by two friends and a sibling relatively new to magic but already weary of retail limited (for the repeated cost-to-play and low powered environment). Circa RTR, we had transitioned from FNM standard and 60 card casual into EDH. While we thoroughly enjoyed the singleton experience, our first love was old-fashioned 20 life, 1v1 draft magic and multiplayer left something to be desired (like 3/4 of our collections...). We started by plugging a bunch of rotated standard cards into a curve, balancing our colors with bulk filler, and ordering a few Magic: hall of fame cards (channel, recurring nightmare, opposition, wildfire) based on the suggestions of MTG salvation cubers and stock lists. As you can imagine, the result was a horribly unbalanced - albeit really fun - mess.

Over the past 7 years, we have tuned, overhauled, added, and replaced cards, moving from 450 to 720 to 720 nonlands + a land cube to this version, hopefully the final schematic. Why larger than 720? We like to collect cards, we like magic history, and we like to tinker with the list as a hobby. We also see a larger list as a long term project; magic continues to print efficient and busted cards at an alarming rate, and it's nice having flex slots. Not to stir controversy, but the difference between the worst and
best card at 720 is much closer to that difference at 360 than it once was; sacrificing power is less of a concern when moving to this cube-size. 777 provides variety between 360 drafts if two pods of 8 are running or for consecutive no-overlap drafts, as rarely as that happens. Above all else, having a large cube ensures that we stay engaged with this project over the years, set by set, as
our other involvement in Magic wanes.

A list of this size presents three major challenges. Posed in one question, how do we shorten the leash on the cheat decks, make aggro and archetype decks competitive, and give control and midrange decks their own distinct flavor without devolving into 4-5c goodstuff?

First, its worth noting that we do not want to cut reanimator/welder, sneak attack/breach, channel/natural order, oath/defense, and the wildfire/upheaval ramp deck. These decks can be incredibly polarizing and unfair, and they occupy a large slice of cube real estate, but they are part of the cube's core identity and wackiness. These cards excite players and reward a good draft and
counter-draft strategy, and it is our job to create obvious and subtle checks on their power while ensuring their viability. This is accomplished through healthy aggro, silver bullet answers, lots of artifact/enchantment removal, painful fixing (3 shocks per guild, no OG duals), nearly all playable discard in black, tax effects in white, and lots of cheap counters in blue.

Next addressing aggro, we support large fractions of 1 and 2 cmc creatures in the mardu wedge, with decent splash options in green (zoo or aggressive midrange) and blue (tempo). In order to balance our colors, blue and green also have plenty of turn 1-2 plays, and can easily impact the board, ramp, or cantrip during these turns. Each aggro color has its own inherent identity, buttressed by splashes. White aims to curve out while forcing the opponent to play at a slower rate. Black uses information and hand control, and relies on resilient, recursive threats for card advantage and to offset symmetrical discard. Red wins through blunt force and haste, as well as flexible burn spells that provide reach. In our colorless section, we try to maintain a roughly 50/50 split between rocks and utility (suited more for midrange and control) and equipment, vehicles, stax, and aggro creatures (playable in any aggro build).

Switching gears to midrange and control, these archetypes utilize roughly the same card pool but with different proportions of effects. Midrange seeks to gain value while impacting the board, deploying roadblocks, creatures that pass the vindicate test, and gathering effects like discard, removal, and counterspells to maintain or regain the upper hand. Control stalls the game and sculpts its hand until it can find a board wipe, or other X-for-1, to gain a huge tempo and card advantage, at which point it
leverages its cards and mana until it can close the game on its own terms. These archetypes often feature the best-ofs for each color, but they are constrained by a painful land-base and the limited availability of planeswalkers (around 5%). Generally speaking, the cube has a rather low average CMC of 2.85, intentionally moving the needle away from durdley decks.

While we do support individual archetypes, many signalled by gold cards, we value flexible and inexpensive effects and 2-for-1s above parasitic role-players. Modal spells, X-costs, cycling, hybrid mana, levelers, flashback, and adventures are the shining examples of this, as they smooth out curves, add utility, and generate lots of in-game decision points. If you're curious about archetypes for the sake of building your own cube or drafting ours, you can refer to the guide below. Feel free to reach out with any question regarding cube design, for help with your own cube, or just to discuss this awesome format!

Thanks for stopping by and happy cubing!

-------------------------Our Guiding Principles of Cube Design-----------------------------

Generically good cards, i.e. always mainboard regardless of archetype, have first priority.

BUT, effects that are nearly impossible to interact with don't belong in our cube (True-name, Serra's emblem).

Creatures should pass the vindicate test (if 4cmc or greater, provide immediate value or in some way dodge removal). Exception: archetype defining cards and linchpins.

On the topic of flexibility...

First, cards with alternate casting costs, such as overload, cycling, and kicker, or modal spells, such as charms and commands, win slots over cards that are slightly better at one casting cost or mode, but lack the versatility.
Second, we highly value hybrid mana and jack-of-all-trades colorless cards, as they naturally fit more decks. The higher the ratio of colorless mana / colored mana, the better.
Third, we hope to limit the number of parasitic cards belonging to a single archetype by either eschewing all but the most powerful role-players, or finding cards that bridge the gaps between archetypes.
And fourth, we've decided to cut the 3+ color cards; they usually trap and limit the flexibility of drafting or end up in the sideboard as last picks.

When evaluating new cards, assign a value to the card based on its expected draft value and its value in gameplay. Draft value is based on flexibility, as discussed above. Hybrid > Mono >> Multi. As a modal spell, will this card cover more bases and help in multiple match-ups? Is this card an effect that benefits any strategy? Does this card keep me open while drafting? Gameplay value is based on raw power, economy, and flexibility in casting cost. Raw power is fairly obvious, but it often boils down to cheating mana costs, accelerating mana, unique and game warping effects, and/or above average efficiency at performing a task, e.g. thoughtsieze, swords to plowshares, high P/T in relation to mana cost. Flexibility includes, but is not limited to, X-costs, cycling, overload, madness, and levelers. Economy is based on card advantage.... does this spells replace itself or net me cards,
and does this creature provide real or virtual value beyond its own body? We rate cheap 2-for-1s very highly in our cube.

Make midrange more aggressive, control more like midrange, and aggro fast but with an end-game plan. Make cube gameplay feel like standard being played with legacy cards. Limit cards on the tail-end of the curve, 5-8cmc, in favor of multi-purpose 3-4cmc cards that serve all archetypes; include a 50/50 split of aggro-specific and midrange/control options at 0-2cmc; and sprinkle in some, but not many, expensive cards (6+ cmc) as ramp payoff, control finishers, and cheat targets, ideally overlapping in these roles. In doing so, we hint to drafters that midrange should limit its 6cmc and higher threats, and control needs roadblock creatures that impact the board early if it hopes to beat fast aggro and combo.