Art by Steven BelledinI love Magic. I’ve played it since I was a kid; my first deck being the Portal: Second Age starter kit, and my first sealed event being for the set Planeshift. I’ve been around for the majority of Magic’s history, playing on-and-off throughout the majority of the worlds its visited in all but the most early iterations, and I have a fondness for the beauty and breadth of the cards that make up this game.
I’ve created the Mana Clash cube (named in honor of what Magic was almost called when they thought they couldn’t copyright a name as simple as ‘Magic’) as a means of capturing all I love about the game, and including pet cards and archetypes I and my friends have played over and over again. It’s meant above all to play fairly. Yes, you can do some combo-y things, but they’re few and far between for the spikiest of you to seek out. For the most part, this is a cube of lands and spells promoting interaction and fun interplay. So what's the criteria for inclusion? Cards that are cool and flexible. Ones I or my friends enjoy playing with. Cards that are clean and elegent, and are 2-color, mono color, and enable light splashes.
Fixing in the cube is fairly straightforward: you have one of each shock land for fast mana, you have one of each Zen man-land for slower mana but midrange/control payoff, and one of each check land. There are a few 5-color lands such as City of Brass and Evolving Wilds-style fetches for more complex mana bases. Artifacts also help fix, with the signets providing good filtering and ramp. Green, of course, has the best ramp and color fixing.
Removal in the cube is premium for the color, and varies as much as possible. This means you’ll see temporary removal, bounce, artifact/enchantment hate, spot removal, and board wipes wherever they make sense.
White has the premium package of “fair” removal that can either be undone (enchantment-based-exile) or gives you something for your trouble, and has the majority of board wipes.
Being the color of countermagic, blue has very, very few ways to deal with things on the field. Because of this, they have some bounce, tap, and instant-speed transmogrify, but nothing premium. Their mind control effects could be considered removal, which blue monopolizes.
If it’s a creature, black can kill it, and has a slew of options as to how. Black gets some -X/-X effects, has various 2cmc removal spells, and has access to edict/sacrifice effects as well. It also gets planeswalker spot removal and has a large number of creatures that have removal attached. Black has a few board wipes, though they’re limited in scope.
Red removal has always been in the form of burn, with Pyroclasm-esque effects at various sizes, including Earthquake at X. It has a few ETB burn spells as well, such as the classic Flametongue Kavu.
Green has a suite better than any to handle artifacts and enchantments. Most of its removal is stapled to creatures in some way or another, and it has Beast Within as the main color-pie break. It has limited fight, mostly relying on attacking for trades to happen.
Colorless gets a few colorless sweepers, while most color pairings get a premium removal spell that is both powerful and a good cross-section of the two color’s primary removal abilities.
Broadly speaking, Magic decks can be classified based on their play style and path to victory. Most classifications begin from one of the four major "theatres" of play: Aggro, Control, Midrange, and Combo. This cube does its best to support a player in building into any of the four.
Aggro decks attempt to reduce their opponents from 20 life to 0 as fast as possible. They rely on curving out and don't play to the late game.
Control decks avoid racing and attempt to slow the game down by executing a war of attrition. As the game goes on, they take advantage of their slower, more powerful cards and card advantage.
Midrange decks have an early game plan that relies on stabilizing their board and using ramp to pull ahead on resources. When they are safe from their opponent's immediate game plan, they begin to play threats.
Combo is a deck that has a single, streamlined gameplan to combine 2 or 3 cards that win the game outright. They ignore most of the game interaction to prioritize drawing/tutoring for the pieces they need to win.
Tempo is a hybrid archetypel that contains elements of control and aggro. It relies on timing to push for quick advantages and punish opponents when they stumble.
Description: A cross-over between the functionality of the tokens deck and Rec/Pod, the Aristocrats deck capitalizes on death triggers and sacrificing masses of cheap tokens for big effects. The deck uses token creatures as a resource, clogging the board and attacking in for chip shots while getting incremental value from trades and sacrifice effects. RB has a great removal package as well, making it more likely that tokens can carry the day if they face hate cards.
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Theatre(s): Midrange
Description: The Artifacts archetype makes use of artifacts; using them as both flexibility in the mana base, alleviating cost, and using them to power out powerful cards ahead of curve. It uses mana rocks to ramp and uses things like planeswalkers to create card advantage. A big reason behind its power is that often times, the artifacts are cards you’d want to play anyway, and their (usually) colorless nature makes them easy to pick-up without investing in the deck early in the draft.
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Theatre(s): Control, Combo
Description: A classic archetype, and often one of the first players are introduced to, Burn is a classic aggro strategy. Players seek to drop an opponent to 0 life as fast as possible with a deck made up of mostly direct-damage and hastey, evasive creatures. Spells are first used to clear away blockers for their own creatures to attack, and then later aim them “at the face” to end the game. This deck has a very low mana curve, running minimal lands, and will usually empty its hand by the end of the fourth turn. It should prioritize 1-drops whenever possible, and many cards will go around the table and make for great late picks for the deck.
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Theatre(s): Aggro
Description: Carnage functions as the crossover where red aggro meets black removal, becoming a very aggressive deck that has the means to push into the long game and play control if need be. Many black 1-drops work well with the classic red aggro package, and the recursion offered to a deck that normally runs out of gas means you can attack, attack, attack and eventually run your opponent down to nothing. This deck spots some of the best 2-for-1 and spot removal, along with threats that keep coming back for more.
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Theatre(s): Control, Midrange, Aggro
Description: A hard-combo archetype, Cheatyface is less a total deck design and more a game plan that multiple other decks can adopt. Cards in blue, red, green, and colorless all support the cheating in of massive threats for a payoff of either time or usage, though often times one swing with a giant Eldrazi is all it takes to end a game. Similar to Reanimator, Cheatyface seeks to do one thing: play gigantic creatures without paying for them. There are a number of cards that allow players to cheat in overly-large creatures, and put together into a resilient shell that allows them to stick ends games relatively quickly.
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Theatre(s): Combo
Description: Although not a strongly supported as an archetype, +1/+1 counters are a great mechanic in that they overlap with the majority of the midrange strategies found within the Bant shard. Synergies with negating -1/-1 counters, as well as payoffs in Rishkar means you can generally draft a good deck and then pick up counters for extra fun and profit. Various colorless payoffs, such as Walking Ballista are already strong on their own.
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Theatre(s): Midrange
Description: TBD
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Theatre(s): Midrange, Combo
Description: One of the earliest “combos” in Magic was that of a turn one Dark Ritual followed up with a Hypnotic Specter, then a turn 2 smack from Hymn to Tourach that left an opponent with maybe one card left. Triple randomized discard was usually enough to end a game before it began, and leave a player to chip away at their opponent’s life total as they were unable to play anything. This is the ultimate control shell in a lot of ways; matching the best discard in the game with efficient tempo plays and counterspells to protect your mini-creatures that also act as discard. If the opponent does ever manage to land a threat, this deck often packs enough mind control effects to grab it and make the opponent regret playing it in the first place.
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Theatre(s): Control
Description: Iconic for blue, the archetype of draw-go is one of the most skill-intensive ways to play the game. The core of the deck is to draft as many instant-speed spells as possible, usually with a critical mass of them that generate card advantage. The combination of the flexibility of instant speed reactions and card selection give the deck unprecedented ways to pivot in response to your opponent. Draw-Go usually closes games with flyers or other evasive threats after having exhausted an opponent’s resources.
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Theatre(s): Control
Description: Named for the Onslaught-Mirrodin era standard deck, Elf-Ball is a loose tribal archetype that isn’t really tribal. Instead it capitalizes on the fact that it mostly runs three things: 1) elves 2) mana dorks & 3) very large spells. It uses a base of small, mana-generating creatures to ramp into large spells very quickly that usually overwhelm the opponent the moment they hit the board. In addition to creating massive amounts of mana, they also have some light elvish synergies that pay off, giving the deck a second route to victory.
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Theatre(s): Midrange
Description: Named for the Invasion-era “Fires of Yavimaya, the Fires archetype is a simple one: play creatures that are above curve, then turn them sideways. Unlike decks like Burn, Fires doesn’t care as much about going for the face with lightning bolt as it does casting a 6/6 for 4 mana and giving it haste; and using cards with attack triggers (such as the Titans, Kalonian Hydra, etc) adds to the value. This deck wants to hit hard, and hit fast.
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Theatre(s): Aggro
Description: The Flicker archetype is also known as “enter the battlefield matters” because the core of the strategy is to play creatures that have enter-the-battlefield effects and take advantage of them. Fairly broad and active to play, Flicker seeks to bounce or re-play permanents as a means of having them dodge removal, as well as generating additional value from their effects. Due to the prevalence of ETB effects, this archetype often finds its way into other decks, with a fully dedicated deck requiring multiple colors and repeatable payoff cards.
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Theatre(s): Midrange, Control
Description: Isn’t cutting the fun-but-off-color cards during deckbuilding the worst? Isn’t devoting yourself to a color pairing while drafting so limiting? With 5-color Prismatic, instead just use mana fixing to play the best cards you draft in all 5 colors and go bonkers! This isn’t a deck with an obvious payoff; instead you’re prioritizing taking green-centered spells and artifacts that fix or ramp your mana, and, when able, nabbing key bombs and exceptional cards to craft something creative and unique.
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Theatre(s): Midrange
Description: The reanimator archetype is one of the most flexible, and most powerful, archetypes, but also the most fragile to hate. Essentially the goal of any reanimator deck is to dump large threats into the graveyard only to ‘reanimate’ them with spells as a way to shortcut the usually gigantic costs. Generally, looting effects act as discard outlets while digging for whatever the combo is missing, and the decks can play off-color bombs since they don’t plan on actually casting them anyway.
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Theatre(s): Control, Combo
Description: If the Carnage archetype capitalized on death, then Rec/Pod made it into an art form. A toolbox deck at heart, it works to generate value from your green creatures like Sakura-Tribe Elder in order to trigger black cards like Malicious Affliction and using Natural Order, Eldritch Evolution, and Recurring Nightmare to create an ETB-engine for cards like Ravenous Chupacabra. This deck packs the great removal package of black and often runs creatures that act as removal first and sacrifice fodder second, allowing the drawing out better threats or their recursion and re-enabling of their ETB.
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Theatre(s): Midrange
Description: Spellslinger is a skill-testing but incredibly fun archetype to build. With payoff cards that reward you for doing what you already want to do (play spells), the deck is free to be built in a number of different ways. Anything from counter-burn to hard control work in the archetype designed to eke out incremental value and constantly re-use and fork your spells over and over again. The key to the deck is taking the good but unassuming cards early that do what you already want to be doing (looting or drawing cards, burning face, etc.) and then nabbing the payoff cards later.
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Theatre(s): Control, Midrange
Description: TBD
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Theatre(s): Control
Description: Probably one of the most classic Magic archetypes in history, White Weenie is as simple as they come. Play small, high-power creatures, then attack with them while your opponent is setting up. Then, if your opponent finally looks like they’re about to stabilize, blow all of the lands up or drop an anthem to beat them down. This deck functions at a very, very low curve, and looks to run 16 lands or less, instead opting for maximum live draws of creatures.
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Theatre(s): Aggro
Description: For those who don’t want their opponents to have any fun, Wildfires is here for you! Using the land destruction cards like Wildfire and Armageddon while using a surplus of mana rocks, your “symmetrical” board resets are no longer symmetrical, letting you run away with the game. This deck needs to have a lot of board wipes and enough threats in the 3-4 drop slot to allow them to reliably play out after a board wipe takes down both sides. The additional way to play is to drop a 5 or 6 toughness creature that can end games such as Infero Titan, then play Wildfire.
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Theatre(s): Control, Midrange
Dark Depths
A combo so good it’s played in Legacy Lands, this is a colorless, two-card combo that ends with you owning a 15/15 flying, indestructible beast. The card Dark Depths creates a Marit Lage token when it has no ice counters on it, so there are two simple ways to get around paying the 30(!?) mana it normally asks of you. The first is to sacrifice a Vampire Hexmage, and the second is to turn Thespian’s Stage into a copy of Dark Depths. If you do the latter, the stage has no counters on it as it isn’t entering the battlefield, and the sacrifice ability will immediately trigger.