As a Cube diehard, it’s not strange that I find draft to be the ideal way to experience the game of Magic, so when non-draftable sets are released, I typically experience a slight pang of “what could have been”. This feeling is particularly cogent in the trio of commander-only releases as part of Universes Beyond: Warhammer 40k, Doctor Who, and Fallout, each of which has delivered compelling new strategies and themes to the game.

The most recent of these, Fallout, with multifaceted deck themes, felt the closest to being able to be twisted into a draft without much additional work, and provided the most cards of the three for my main Cube — an impressive 15! One of those 15 cards is the generally unassuming Mister Gutsy, a card only featured in 118 Cubes not designed by me.

I love Mister Gutsy. In my main Cube, he’s a bit below the typical power level of the list, but there’s a dream to be lived with him, and even getting a single Junk token off him when he dies helps to ease the pain of losing a card you likely invested into. In a Cube built around him, he’s a menace. While this Cube is in no way a “Fallout” Cube, the prevalence of one of the franchises’ most memorable modern icons/sidekicks does help me live part of the dream of drafting Fallout…without having to use the $60 collector booster packs, which are more than I’d like even for a slot in a Chaos draft.

As a colorless 2-drop that benefits from most cards you play in, you’re able to draft a dozen of them without feeling bad. Like too many modern cards, Mister Gutsy has a lot of text, but it’s pretty straightforward. It loves it when you play auras and equipment, and it poops out a bunch of Junk tokens when its dies — so you can exile draw even more Gutsys and tools for him!

To support different ways of exploiting Mister Gutsy, I built out the following archetypes:

• Gruul: Modified matters
• Selesnya: Enchantments
• Boros: Equipment / Artifact Creatures
• Golgari: +1/+1 Counters
• Orzhov: Recursive Gutsy
• Rakdos: Artifacts / Artifact Sacrifice

The draft archetypes are all fairly linear, but they overlap quite a lot, and in my practice drafts, I found that they don't feel as "on rails" as their descriptions might otherwise suggest.

With only 150 cards available to fill (with to the 30 taken up by Mister Gutsy), land fixing is a bit light, something helped by the fact that Gutsy is colorless himself. Combos would take up too much space, and this list couldn’t afford dead cards. Lastly, instead of the aggro/midrange/control triangle I’d normally try to support, I realized that the best way to make this Cube function with a small card pool was to make it a midrange mashup. It’s all about optimization, since things like mass removal or going under a wall of Gutsys are quite rare.

As I began to make notes for this Cube, I realized I wanted to build it myself in paper. This also happened as I realized I had far too many interesting cards than I could feasibly include in a 180 card list. As a result, this list is a pared down clone of the 360 version, which you can find here. The 360 version is still a work-in-process, but so far, I enjoy how it’s a bit more varied in how you can make your build comparatively, and I'm excited to try it out with friends in the coming weeks.

To make a playable Cube with only 180 cards for the purposes of this contest, I knew I would have to remove a color to have reasonable archetypes, so I cut Blue. Part of me thinks I should have cut Black instead because of how much fun Jason Bright, Glowing Prophet and Nick Valentine, Private Eye were, as well as how silly it was to get +1/+1 counters on all your Gutsys when you stole an opponent’s blocker with an aura, but in the end, the black themes around artifacts and +1/+1 counters were more compelling than the overly broad “control” and “proliferate” angles that Blue was mostly supporting.

This is an incredibly low-curve Cube. Pair that with the fact that nearly every Gutsy’s death will allow its controller to dig deep for their next threat with Junk tokens means battles will be big punches back-and-forth by each player, constantly reloading their arsenals with cheap robots and equipment whenever their attacker takes one for the team. This is what ideal midrange “creating against each other with the hopes of incremental advantage” environment looks like, as far as I’m concerned.

NO GUTS(Y) NO GLORY is really the ethos of drafting this list. You have to take risks by stacking up value onto creatures that can be blown out at a moment’s notice if you want to have any chance to win. There are other creatures, but most games will be won off of the famous Fallout robot. And if you do, there is certainly glory in it for both of you.