Introduction

Welcome, friend, to my cube! The intention for my draft environment is to enable highly synergistic strategies, while still leaving space for some straightforward aggro, midrange, and control decks. The cube is roughly an 8 on The Strix Scale. This means that you will see a ton of strong and exciting cards, while stuff like the Power 9 and a few other Vintage-level power outliers are purposefully left out.

This cube is inspired by a long line of other cubes, too many to name them all. The most notable influence is probably Caleb Gannon's Powered Synergy Cube, from which I stole entire archetypes (specifically the artifact, discard, and elves decks), and which really embodies the idea of synergy over individual card power. From Ryan Saxe's Classic Cube comes the idea of making fast mana available only if it comes at the cost of card disadvantage (think Mox Diamond or Dark Ritual). Lastly, the Modo Vintage Cube serves as a continuous source of inspiration.

Archetypes

The following are some of the archetypes that are supported with relatively many cards, roughly ordered from less to more complicated. On top of these, however, there are lots of build-around cards that enable entire archetypes just by themselves. I leave it to you to find them, and to demonstrate to the world and to yours truly what a heinous mistake it was to include them.

Aggro

The aggro decks tend to be mono-colored, though cards like Lurrus or Winnota may be reasons to splash. There are some minor tribal sub-themes: humans in white, zombies in black. There is also a colorless artifact aggro deck that will use mostly white as the support color.

Elves

Green archetypes in this cube rely on elves even more than in other cubes. This can mean a tribal strategy, in which you flood the board with cheap elves and rely on lords and other payoffs to beat down. You can combine this with a glimpse effect for extra speed. The pure combo version of the glimpse deck includes Aluren and bouncy creatures to draw your deck.

Control

Do you think casting creatures is for noobs? Do you always have to have the last word? Do you hate fun? This one is for you. Play counterspells, removal, and hand interaction.

Flicker

Play creatures with enter-the-battlefield effects, then flicker them with cards like Soulherder or Ephemerate.

Reanimator

A successful necromancer needs three things: (1) ways to get a fatty into the graveyard, (2) ways to reanimate a fatty, and (3) a fatty. This deck pairs well with the cheatyface package, as well as with the big artifacts archetype. You get style points if you manage to reanimate Emrakul.

Big artifacts

This deck works somewhat similar to reanimator, but uses Welder and Daretti as enablers.

Aristocrats

This is a midrange deck that also casually pings your opponent down by sacrificing your own stuff. Think Cat/Oven, Mayhem Devil, and Korvold.

Persist Combo

This is similar to the aristocrats deck, but it is all in on assembling the combo of a persist creature, a sacrifice outlet, and an enabler to go infinite.

Discard

Which card?

Lands

Get value from playing, discarding, sacrificing, and recurring your lands. Classic elements include Field of the Dead, Wrenn and Six, Dark Depths, and Titania.

Storm

Play lots of spells, then win with one of the storm cards. If you fail to draft a full-on storm deck, you can always pivot into a neighboring archetype, such as spellslinger, tempo, or control.

Artifact Shenanigans

Sacrifice your artifacts with KCI, just to get them back with Scraptrawler, Myr Retriever, and Teshar. This won't win you the game, but you have to admit, it is pretty cool. If you must win (boring), consider putting a Blood Artist effect in your deck. This may also be one of the better shells to do the Heliod-Ballista thing, or the Urza-Thopter-Sword thing, or Arcbound Ravager stuff.

Draft suggestions

At its current size of 600 cards, I suggest the following draft structure to enable the more synergistic decks:
For 4-6 players: 6 packs of 15 and burning a card with every pick
For 8 players: 3 packs of 16-18 cards
For more than 8 players: 3 packs of 15 cards
Variant: Each player starts with a Cogwork Librarian to make decks even more streamlined.

New to Cube?

Check out the Manual to M0rty's Cube (may be a tiny bit outdated)