A planeswalker hurtles through the blind eternities, her spark the only thing between her and oblivion. A long-dead dragon shudders to life, coaxed by the twisted tongue of a powerful necromancer. A wizard stalls in the heat of battle, scanning frantically through possible pasts and futures before snagging one and reeling the moment in like a fish. Travelers, all of them, slipping between the barriers of reality. They hold the contradictions of their being—corporeal and incorporeal; living and dead; past and future—close to them, letting it fuel their magic.

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Welcome to Paradox Cube!

Paradox Cube takes the theme of casting spells from anywhere other than your hand and pushes it to the limits of power level, within “fair” boundaries. It plays fast, with low-to-the-ground threats and answers that emphasize highly interactive games.

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Paradoxical Powers

Paradox Cube is all about casting spells from different zones. Cards that ask you to cast spells from exile, graveyards, or from anywhere other than your hand are easier to enable and have a higher ceiling than they would in the average cube. Enablers for these cards are plentiful, so payoffs and cards with raw individual power are more coveted during the draft.

Besides the headliner mechanical identity of the cube, there are some mechanical themes concentrated in specific color pairs, like madness and adventure. Think of these less as archetypes and more as synergistic packages that pull you in a general direction, but aren’t present in a high enough density to be the entirety of what your deck is about.

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Veilrippers

The most powerful individual cards will be familiar faces to Vintage cubers and enjoyers of eternal constructed formats. With each iteration of this cube, the power differential between the best and worst cards in the set has narrowed. Expect for your opponents to be throwing haymakers as well.

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Weapons & Wards

In Paradox Cube, players’ hands are artificially larger than normal because they include cards in exile, graveyards, and the tops of libraries. This makes it difficult to enter into a favorable exchange going one-for-one with an opponent’s threat and your removal spell. In order for removal to be good, it has to be efficient or accrue some kind of additional value. Efficient removal is relatively plentiful in the non-green colors.

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Clockspinning

This is a very low-curving environment. Aggro decks can put on a fast clock, making one and two mana plays important to decks that want to win in the late game. Decks that want to turn the corner in the late-game will find some powerful finishers at higher mana-values, but these expensive cards are scarcer than you might expect.

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Go Forth

Step through that portal and get to moving cards between zones!