Old Border Foil Cube

Cube ID
Art by Edward P. Beard, Jr.Art by Edward P. Beard, Jr.

361 Card Cube

132 followers
Designed by Jeff1060RSSQR Code

View in Cube Map

Owned
$29,934
Buy
$3,092

Welcome to the Old Border Foil Cube, where you can recreate some of the top decks of the Premodern era and do so in style! With few exceptions, the only cards here are foil AND have the beloved old border (retro frame). Play 1995-2003 classics such as Psychatog, Replenish, Fires of Yavimaya, Necro, Sligh, The Rock, Opposition and more, all while fawning over the gorgeous cards!

AESTHETICS

Old border foils (OBFs) are among the most beautiful Magic cards, made distinct by their rich, saturated colors and shooting stars. They debuted with Urza's Legacy in 1999 and phased out - until recently - in 2003 with Scourge, before the advent of the modern frame. Most of this 361-card cube comes from the Urza's, Masques, Invasion, Odyssey and Onslaught blocks plus 7th Edition. I've made a few exceptions to the OBF rule: the 10 original dual lands, for better mana, and Morphling (c'mon, how can you not play Morphling!?). Also, due to the quite limited card pool, I've embraced Wizards' revival of the retro frame by running select cards from Time Spiral, Time Spiral: Remastered, Modern Horizons 2, The Brothers' War Retro Artifacts, Dominaria Remastered and various promotional series. But I've worked hard to maintain the Premodern feel, nostalgia and power level with the inclusion of any newer printed cards that were given the old border foil treatment.

DESIGN

The cube's primary archetypes are:

wu - Draw-Go Control, Replenish / Enchantment Combo
wb - Midrange, Fair Necro
wgu - Enchantress, Oath of Druids, Mirari's Wake Control
wr - Goblins, Control
ug - Tempo / madness Opposition, Ramp
ub - Control, Reanimator
ur - Counter-Burn
bg - The Rock
br - Midrange
rg - Fires aggro
bx - Necro
rx - Goblins, Sligh
ux - High Tide Storm
3-5c - Control, Ramp, Midrange

I've chosen to break with the commonly adhered-to singleton design standard for the dual lands and one other card: Gaea's Blessing. I am currently experimenting with playing 2 to enable Creature-less Control as a strategy. They come as a package deal: when you draft one, you get 2 copies.

HISTORY / EVOLUTION

The genesis of this cube begins with the covid-19 pandemic in March of 2020. Close friend Matt Marmorato and I were embracing the new social distancing Zoom life, loving Invasion block flashback drafts on Magic Online. And we got to thinking: what if we just built all-foil Invasion cubes and drafted the format whenever we wanted? We each spent the next 6 months acquiring all the cards, most of which were pretty cheap at the time. With that project completed, I started to tinker around with the idea of tossing random beloved old foils from Odyssey into the Invasion cube's rare pool, cards like Shadowmage Infiltrator and my favorite, Mystic Enforcer. It didn't take long after that to start designing a whole separate project that became the Old Border Foil Cube.

The timing could not have been better. I picked up most of the expensive foils just before the collectibles boom of 2021, and suddenly WoTC gave me a whole bunch of new toys in Time Spiral: Remastered and Modern Horizons 2. I was most excited by the enemy fetchlands and solid bridge cards and roleplayers that gave white a much needed boost. Fetching Mirror Entity seemed like a good enough payoff to make rebels at least playable.

The cube rose to "fame" at the first inaugural CubeCon in Madison in October 2022. I was pleased by its warm reception by so many that weekend: it was drafted 7 out of 7 possible times and one of the cubes featured on stream with excellent commentary by Justin Parnell and Dan Schneider. See the coverage here!

I'm excited to run it back at CubeCon 2023 with even more new tools and old ones I've been able to re-imagine. Thank you for all the love and see you there!

For all your many hours of design and play assistance, thank you:

Phil Dituri
Dave Schumm
Sam Black
QED2
Matt Marmorato
Sam Burwell

ABOUT THE DESIGNER

NAME - Jeff Green 
HOMETOWN - Beloit, WI, USA
AGE - 36
OCCUPATION - Owner, The Mana Vault
FIRST SET - Mercadian Masques
FAVORITE CARD - Mystic Enforcer 
EARLY FORMATS - I grew up playing standard and extended on alternating Saturdays at AK Comics, my LGS in Beloit, Wisconsin, peppering in games of 250-card 5-color between rounds. From 2001-2004, my friends and I played with or against almost all the decks featured in this cube. I spent the most time with Oath of Druids, rb Reanimator, Mirari's Wake, Psychatog and Astral Rift (a deck I sadly felt I couldn't support in this cube).
EMAIL: jagreen18@gmail.com
TWITTER: @GLHF_Games