Art by Titus LunterMidwinter is a snow desert cube that expands upon many gameplay and aesthetic themes present in the Kaldheim, and to a lesser extent, the Arthurian themes of Eldraine. The overall Viking/Arthurian aesthetic is central to the cube, and is rarely broken.
The power level is designed to be around a masters limited set and the play experience should evoke kitchen table magic decks which are based around cards from these sets. The desert component to the cube furthers the scrappy kitchen table magic vibe and creates a home for utility lands which are hard to find homes for in other cubes.
Design Goals & Guidelines
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There are singleton breaks throughout the cube to support the themes present.
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There are foretell cards in all colors within the cube, all with different quantities. Having only a single copy of cards like Saw it Coming would remove a lot of the fun tension from the mechanic. My hope is that it would be very hard to remember the number of each effect to maintain that tension.
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The cards that bend the aesthetic of the cube must be doing something truly amazing from a mechanical perspective.
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This should not be a cube where players reliably have plays on turn one. It is supposed to feel slower, and more like Kitchen Table Magic in that regard. There are plenty of one drops, but no deck should feel they are too behind for missing their turn 1 play.
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All basics are snow basics, and there are many in each color. This is not a cube where basics are a rare resource, and this makes the cards that care about snow permanents an exciting highlight of the cube.
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The power band is not supposed to be flat across the cube, but the most powerful cards from KHM limited, such as those below, are intentionally avoided here.
Draft Rules:
This cube contains a four player, 240 card version and an eight player 432 card version. To see the four player version filter by tag "twobert". The larger number of cards/player in the four player version is designed to offset the disadvantages inherent to four player drafting.
- For 8 players, draft 3 packs of 18.
- For 4 players draft 4 packs of 15.
- There is no basic land box in either draft. Players must draft all of their lands.
Origins of Midwinter
My local group loves Kaldheim and the cards in the set from our Kitchen Table Magic days. Some of the themes such as Snow and Foretell are hard to use in cubes which are only interested in a small number of cards with the mechanic. Foretell certainly works with a small number of cards, but you lose out on the unknown aspect of it very quickly. Including Snow cards in a cube typically involves house ruling the basic lands to all be Snow or giving players access to both Snow and Non-Snow basics after the draft.
Midwinter started as a mashup of Kaldheim and Dominaria United that I put together as a place to play with cards we missed from Kaldheim, supplemented by the themes in DMU. My group enjoyed this list, but the hard restriction of only two sets as well as the very efficient snow manabases left something to be desired.
Midwinter became a desert cube to fix the latter of those problems. Drafters needing to draft all of their lands presents an elegant solution to the implementation of Snow Lands in cube and allows the power level of cards like Blizzard Brawl to be tuned appropriately. It also created a place to play lots of interesting utility lands which do not tend to be worth a slot in other cubes.
The transition to the more broad Athurian theme enabled me to add cards such as Syr Konrad, the Grim which I did not have a home for and broadly fit the aesthetic vision of the cube. This move is a great example of using a restriction to get the cube started then loosening it once the foundation is in place.
Design Discussion
Here are my thoughts on some of the design choices I have made for Midwinter. These are not hard rules, just my current state of thinking on these topics.
Singleton Breaks
I intentionally run varying amounts of these cards so that it is very hard for players to keep track of how many of each they saw in the draft and have in their deck. If someone knows exactly how many Saw it Coming’s are in their opponent’s deck that is much less cool to me.
Singleton breaks worked so well for the Foretell cards that I quickly started to use them for more effects as well. Duplicates of generic effects such as removal and card draw reduce mental overhead for players which they can spend on the wordy cards from Kaldheim. MDFCs are inherently complex, so I like the use of Singleton breaks to reduce the complexity in other aspects of the cube.
Singleton breaks are also used in Midwinter to support archetypes which simply do not have enough cards at this power level which are on theme. Faerie Vandal is a card I love and at the time of making Midwinter, there were no similar cards that fit the role it plays in the cube. Scrounging Skyray now exists and is mechanically similar, but would be a flavor disaster here. I like the texture of having many different cards in cubes, so I try to keep the breaks to instances where there is not enough support without them.
Density of Snowlands
My goal with the density of Snow basics and duals is for drafters to decide how much of a snow theme they want in their deck. It is unlikely that drafters will run no basics, but I want the tradeoff between empowering Snow cards and gaining access to powerful utility lands to be present in their minds.
The choice to only have a single cycle of snow duals is to prevent the overabundance of multicolor snow piles. In early iterations of Midwinter there were two cycles and this enabled 5c snow decks to run away with many games. Tapped lands are not as big a deal here as they are in Eternal Cubes, but they still are more useful to slower decks than they are to proactive decks.
The density of snow lands is such that turning on cards such as Blizzard Brawl and Frost Bite is less challenging than in KHM retail limited. These cards being great is a defining feature of this format and is not something I’m looking to make hard to do.
Power Outliers
The power outliers in Midwinter stand out more than I allow them to in other cubes that I curate. This is a cube where cards such as Immersturm Predator, Dragonlord Ojutai, and Battle Mammoth are dominant forces that have to be played around. There are tools to defeat these cards, but it is a feature that they stand out so much. Having these cool, splashy power outliers is great for less enfranchised players in terms of their direction in draft and winrate. Most importantly, they create fantastic stories to tell after the draft.
Themes and Archetypes
The themes and archetypes within Midwinter spread out over a differing number of colors and vary a lot in size. Themes such as Snow and Foretell are cornerstones of the list, while themes like casting your second spell in a turn are limited to just a few cards. The result is a set of packages that can be combined together into far too many combinations to write about here.
The below list of archetypes is not exhaustive, but it should give a cube designer or prospective drafter good insight into what decks exist in this format.
Counters
Make your creatures the biggest on the board and overwhelm your opponent. The counters decks in Midwinter protect their creatures and make them too big to stop. There are also creatures which care about having modified power which lean into this archetype.
Draw Two
The second card you draw every turn packs an extra punch! There is not an entire draw 2 deck, but these cards fit into many other archetypes within the cube to give a deck an additional theme.
Equipment
Suit up your creatures with arms and armor to improve their stats or gain value in other ways. Aggro your opponents out of the game, out value them, or even combine Colossus Hammer with a card to snap it on to get into the Jank Hammtertime deck.
Foretell
Foretell the doom of your enemies with a variety of cards you can exile from hand and cast later for great effect. Much of the removal and card draw options in the format use this mechanic, and powerful bombs exist as well. Beyond the offerings for any deck, add in some cards which gain value from the foretelling to grind out opponents or control your opponent and win with inevitability.
Graveyard
Why limit yourself to only one hand? In these decks you get value from cards in the graveyard. That can take the form of recursion, reanimation, delirium and so much more.
Historic
The cards with Historic are great payoffs in artifact, saga, or legends decks, which gives them fantastic slot equity and openness in the draft. They also can serve as a bridge for these different archetypes to create emergent decks.
Lands
Take further advantage of the lands you must draft to generate value. Lands decks in Midwinter range from ramp decks which get to play extra lands to beatdown decks using Llanowar Loamspeaker to animate Restless Lands. There are so many interesting utility lands to take advantage of by virtue of Midwinter being a desert cube
Legends
Crush your opponents with legendary creatures and cards which empower them. There are many legendary creatures in Midwinter which support a large variety of archetypes. Legends can blend into these existing archetypes such as graveyard, recursion/sacrifice, or equipment via these cards. There is also a 5c legends deck which has some support off the back of cards like Esika and Plaza of Heroes.
Ramp
Green decks in Midwinter are good at breaking serve by playing ahead of curve with respect to mana. Ramp decks cast big threats and then run the opponent over before they can stabilize. Snow and Lands decks have a lot of overlap with this category.
Runes
Runes are a small archetype which give decks access to these cantripping enchantments with upside. Champion is an explicit payoff for drafting these, but they also cross pollinate well with other themes such as equipment, draw 2, and aggro. They can even be sacrificed and recurred.
Sacrifice
Gain value through loss and bury your opponents in value. Sacrifice decks take forms such as traditional aristocrats, steal and sac, and enchantment sacrifice.
Sagas
Sagas are a cornerstone of Midwinter and many cards let you take advantage of them beyond just their abilities. With great mana, Sigurd, Jarl of Ravensthorpe will let you manipulate the number of lore counters to devastating effect. Do not pass him lightly. You can also recur sagas for value with cards like Tameshi or Shepherd of the Flock and even sacrifice them for value with cards like Braids, Arisen Nightmare or Agatha’s Champion. This is particularly effective with sagas such as The Princess Takes Flight that have a final chapter you may not want to resolve, or Binding the Old Gods where the first two chapters contain the vast majority of the value.
Snow
Snow is one of the most supported archetypes in Midwinter. All of the draftable basic lands are snow basics and every deck has to decide whether to lean into snow cards and basics or utility lands and the value those provide. Snow powers all kinds of bread and butter effects from cheap interaction to card advantage to ramp. As in Kaldheim Limited, snow decks do have the potential to lean into many colors as a ramping or controlling deck.
Spellslingers
Cast lots of spells and get additional value from doing so. Spellslingers decks lean into prowess style aggressive strategies as well as more grindy and controlling strategies. They can also take advantage of more specific requirements such as double spelling or casting spells from the graveyard.
Tokens
Go wider than your opponents so that they simply cannot stop you. Many cards in Midwinter produce tokens. These decks take advantage of them by [pumping them, protecting them, copying them, and even letting them die.
Typal Themes
There are a variety of typal themes in Midwinter of vastly varying sizes. These are not intended to be entire decks, but are instead set up to provide different texture to decks during draft and gameplay. A 
deck can certainly have a Giants theme, but it is not going to have a critical mass of giants in the way a constructed typal deck would. The typal themes are setup to go alongside some of the above archetypes such that drafters are encouraged to cross pollinate them. For example the 
zombies theme has a lot of cards that play into graveyard recursion and sacrifice strategies which are also present in . The below list captures the creature types which have some amount of support.
- Angels
- Dwarves
- Elves
- Giants
- Goblins
- Gods
- Wizards
- Zombies