Background and Cube Restrictions:

This is a Legacy-Banlist adherent restriction-based cube in which every card is costed at 1 mana. It's more fun than it sounds like.

Although I technically allow for 0 mana cards, the Pacts have been cut since you do still have to pay for them and it felt like they broke the spirit of the cube. Speaking of breaking the spirit of the cube, I know X spells are technically 1 CMC, but they are so rarely cast as a 1-drop that I exclude them entirely. I do, however, allow and support kicker mechanics as they provide a meaningful card function as a mana sink while still being able to be played for 1 mana.

Personal Bans Based on Power:

Hexdrinker - This guy leads to non-interactive games and non-decisions when you're already in green.
Bloodforged Battle-Axe - This single card warped games around it so much that it was near impossible to win through without immediate artifact removal.
Retrofitter Foundry - A very fun and strong artifact, this unfortunately could run away with the game and felt too fast to keep up with. This also led to non-decisions by going in any and every deck.
Molten Vortex - This unassuming card just meant every land drawn was actually a removal spell. It became nearly impossible to win through.

Magic at One Mana:

As you can imagine, the game becomes fundamentally different when there is such a low CMC. For starters, the number of lands you should play in a 40 card limited deck differs from the norm of 17. I have yet to determine the "optimal" number of lands but I've settled around 14-16. This is very dependent on the number of mana sinks or fetchlands in your pool but this number still allows for around a 70% chance to hit 3 lands by turn 3 and a much lower chance of getting flooded. This lower in-deck land count necessitates a higher playable non-land count. I've chosen to address this by increasing pack size by 1. With a pack size of 16 we ensure that players will have a healthy proportioned card pool size to build from.

Let’s talk lands. My land base is specifically chosen to do damage to the user. I need players to effectively start at a lower life total since most of the creatures in the cube have less than 3 power. I am thinking VERY hard about proxying the last few horizon lands to complete the cycle and also include the painlands. This fetch/shock/pain/canopy land base has the added upside of supporting Death's Shadow, a fan favorite.

Major Themes

Due to the limitations this cube has it is difficult to have true archetypes and instead each color has major themes and sometimes tribes that can matter and there are many small "packages" of synergies scattered throughout the cube, a few of which will be shown below, but there are plenty more to be discovered.
- Artifacts & Aggro (Toolcraft Exemplar, Launch the Fleet)
- Evasion & Mill (Siren Stormtamer, Hedron Crab)
- Zombies & Sacrifice (Gravecrawler, Carrion Feeder)
- Goblins & Aggro (Warbreak Trumpeter, Dynacharge)
- Elves & +1/+1 counters (Allosaurus Shepherd, Hardened Scales)

Package Examples

- Heroic

- Saboteurs

- Sacrifice

- Counters

- Kicker