Welcome to the party!

No not that kind of party, put the drinks down.

When the Party mechanic was previewed for Zendikar Rising I felt it was interesting but didn't think many of the cards with the mechanic would make my main cube, the density of the creature types was surprisingly low. For those who don't know, the Party mechanic is a batching mechanic that counts creatures with types Wizards, Warriors, Rogues and Clerics. Each creature can only count once, so a changeling doesn't cover all 4. The number of creatures in the party is used for numeric values on the cards featuring it, ranging from cost reduction for the number of party members to setting damage or power based on the number.

For example Spoils of Adventure, if you have a full party for you can gain 3 life and draw 3 cards. That is two of the boon cycle in one card - Healing Salve and Ancestral Recall! The value!

In one of the cube discussion forums I saw someone throw out a suggestion of building a "party cube" and the idea stuck in my head. Could the party mechanic be good if the only creature types in the cube were those in the party? It seemed like a fun thought experiment to keep me busy in between Path of Exile leagues.

I went into this with these design restrictions -

• Only creature types allowed are Wizards, Warriors, Rogues and Clerics. Try to include tokens in this as well. Secondary types are allowed, but creature must have one of those.
• Minimize references to other classes if possible
• Include as many, if not all, party mechanic cards as possible
• Follow the class alignments of ZNR (see Maro's article referenced below)
• Include changelings as extra glue across archetypes and to activate party
• Shooting for slightly higher than retail limited power level.

Exceptions -

• Docent of Perfection is included even though he isn't specifically a wizard but is a good wizard payoff
• Rite of Belzenlok makes a demon, but also makes clerics
• Ajani Goldmane makes an avatar, but is on the ult and supports life gain
• Kessig Cagebreakers makes wolves, but green needs all the help it can get

Due to ZNR's recency and the party support in it, the archetypes I landed on skew towards the archetypes in that format. Also this seemed like a perfect environment to go a bit heavy on the MDFCs from ZNR, so most of them are also included.
Green not having a core class leaves green without a strong identity especially since there are almost no mana dorks in the party classes. Green plays a support role here offering some glue for other archetypes.

- Tempo or mill control
- Mill Rogues!
- Aggro rogues/warriors also lightly supports equipment, menace and hand disruption
- Warrior/mid-range, a little light land support with the DFC lands
- +1/+1 counters and life gain
- Life gain matters and Clerics
- Graveyard
- +1/+1 counters
- Wizard tempo
- Equipment Aggro and Warriors

Notes -

• If you draft Legion Angel or Growth-Chamber Guardian you would get an extra copy.
• If you draft Dark Supplicant you automatically get Scion of Darkness

Initial concerns/thoughts -

• Some of the party payoffs are weak. Compare Drana's Silencer to Blight-Breath Catoblepas very similar cards, but Blight is at least always -2/-2 on an empty board and the double pips isn't as concerning on a 6 drop
• The top end of a lot of colors feels weak, might be because I am used to high power level 5/6 drops
• I may have gone overboard on mill, but with Jace, and Thassa self mill control win is possible
• Included a planeswalker for each color, but Davriel, Rogue Shadowmage and Jaya, Venerated Firemage are weaker than the other three. Davriel is a "Rogue" though!
• Hollow Warrior and Rampaging Monument are probably trash
• Counterspells are on the weaker side, might need to work in some cheaper ones for the tempo decks to shine

With the next sets looking to be heavily favoring new cards for this mechanic or set of tribes I am excited to see how this list might evolve over the year.

Other links -
Maro's article on party - https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/making-magic/zendikar-rising-challenge-part-1-2020-09-01