Art by Edward P. Beard, Jr.This is predominantly an ALICE format cube (Alliances and Ice Age) that includes a handful of cards from Fallen Empires and Homelands.
I’m aiming at something between a set cube and a traditional singleton cube.
Cube Rules:
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Played with era-appropriate game rules! Mostly this means that mana burn still happens, Interrupts use their original timing, tapped artifacts are turned off, and tapped blockers deal no damage. I've got Ice Age rulebooks to distribute to make this easier for folks to digest.
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All basic lands are considered Snow-Covered Lands. There are only a couple of cards that actually care about Snow, and this is easier than incorporating snow basics into the draft.
Special Draft Rules:
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I recommend drafting four 12 card packs per player.
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When you draft a Circle of Protection, you may grab copies of any of the five circles.
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Notes on Gameplay:
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Fixing is rough, hard removal is scarce, and lands get destroyed. Expect complex boardstates and long, grindy games.
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This cube is primarily focused on five allied-color archetypes. These aren't the only way to play the color combinations, but I've done my best to hone in on the loose strategies built into Ice Age and Alliances. The five primary archetypes are:
: Hard Control (CounterPost, Browse Digger)
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: Combat Math (Banding tribal)
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: Attrition-based Control (...with occasional Reanimation)
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: Burn, Sacrifice, and Recursion (Pox is solid here)
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: Good ol' Stompy Midrange (BugBind)
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There are a handful of enemy-color decks that have been pretty successful as well:
: Goylehaups
: Zur's Weirding
: Proto-Rock
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Ongoing House Rule Experiments: ((Feel free to ignore these if you want the most authentic play experience.))
- Kjeldoran Knight is a 2/1.
- Kjeldoran Guard loses all text after "end of turn."
- Soraya the Falconer beefs up Skyknights, too.
- Icatian Skirmishers costs
. - Orcish Conscripts only needs one buddy to attack or block.
- Varchild’s Crusader costs .
- Balduvian War-Makers costs
. - Gorilla Berserkers cost .
After a bunch of drafts and test games I decided to give aggressive decks in white and/or red a bit more teeth. I'm hoping these few small tweaks will help the W/x weenie decks check the slower, value-based decks.
Huge thanks to @dsbcubes for the rad photoshop alters.
I admit I'm idly tweaking some assorted cards across the cube. I haven't had much playtesting since the last time I moved things around, but I'm going to get some more games in soon and I want to stack the draft and see how these additions fare.
I'm going to cost Gorilla Berserkers at and see how they feel. My gut says Gorilla Chieftain is still better. Hungry Mist is a rad card and a solid beatstick, but I just really like the flavor of the Berserkers. The Mist is better in a band, but Deadly Insect and Elvish Ranger still occupy that space. The Berserkers can wail on slower decks that rely on walls or a single Blinking Spirit/Seraph to hold off attackers.
The War-Makers are both goofy and charming and I'm happy to find a way to squeeze them into the cube. I'm dropping their cost to , and I think they'll make a great Tor Giant analog (which is already pretty good in this environment) and lend more beef to R/X midrange decks.
The Rampage ability is pretty good against opposing bands, so that's kind of a nice tradeoff as well.
I don't want folks to get "house rules" fatigue, so hopefully these additions won't be a bummer.
I decided that I probably don't need three Stone Rains in the cube, and while Panic is solid it isn't quite universal enough to warrant three copies. I dropped Heal down to two as well, even though it's the best non-blue cantrip.
I scaled the best removal back down to where it was before my last significant update. I still can't decide if there's too little or not enough. I like that control decks have to dip into or to get more removal. I don't want to hamstring them, but I want Walls and clumsy conditional removal like Torture and Essence Flare to have more weight.
I added a second Circle of Protection to the cube because it makes for an interesting piece of conditional removal and it feels like an important control card. In some ways I feel like it's even more ruthless than a second Swords to Plowshares or Exile.
Soul Kiss has been in and out of the cube a few times, but I'm bringing it back after some positive discussion on the ALICE Discord. I don't know how impactful a single copy will be, but it seems to mana-intensive to play multiples outside of a heavy black deck.
We'll see how it goes!