Art by Rebecca GuayThis is an archival version of The Penrose Cube, representing the list that was featured at Capitol Cube Championship 2024.
The Penrose Cube will be featured at the inaugural Capitol Cube Championship in Arlington, VA, and at CubeCon 2024 in Madison, WI.
The land knows no difference between the graves of commoners and nobles.
- Draft: 3 packs of 15
- Non-singleton: Singleton is broken for some lands and key payoffs (e.g., Razortide Bridge, Basking Rootwalla). In all cases of singleton breaks, there are 2 copies in the cube.
- Color imbalance: Black
is most heavily represented, followed by red 
and blue 
. - Use the graveyard: Graveyard synergies are highly prevalent and key to value generation for most decks in this cube. Graveyard hate tools like Scrabbling Claws may be more valuable than you would expect.
- Synergistic: While it may be possible to draft a "good stuff" deck, this should not be the optimal way to play if winning is the goal.
The Penrose Cube was designed with the following guiding principles and inspirations:
- Budget-friendly: Total cost less than $200.
- Synergistic: While it may be possible to draft a "good stuff" deck, this should not be the optimal way to play if winning is the goal. (To enable this, the cube breaks singleton for a number of key payoffs or enablers. In each of these cases, two copies of a card are included in the cube. Moreover, the majority of the cards in the cube synergize well with 2 or more defined archetypes.)
- Make the graveyard great: Lots of graveyard synergies (Inspired in part by @Zennith's UMA-Inspired Cube and @enderwiggin77's The Graveyard Cube). If you are new to this environment, think carefully before passing that Scrabbling Claws!
- Playable on the go: Just 360 cards, no counters, no dice, no tokens (Inspired by @Gallently's Bar Cube)
It aims to incentivize highly synergistic deckbuilding, reading signals during draft, and complex play lines.
The following archetypes are strongly supported in the Penrose Cube:
- Aristocrats - , tertiary in
- Artifacts -
- Domain -
, tertiary in - Flicker -
- Graveyard - , secondary in , tertiary in
- Madness - , secondary in
This archetype, centered in black and red , is focused on generating value from creatures (or, to a lesser extent, artifacts) dying. In some cases, this may be through sacrifice outlets like Village Rites while in others it may be more incidental. Aggro builds, centered on on cards like Judith, the Scourge Diva, tend to be stronger in a vacuum, but anecdotally are also more heavily drafted. Grindier builds centered on value loops are also viable.
This archetype, centered in white , red , blue , and black , is focused on generating value from playing or controlling artifacts. Aggressive builds can go a variety of directions, focusing on cards with a low cost to power/toughness ratio (e.g., Court Homunculus and Goblin Tomb Raider, repeated artifact ETB effects (Mandible Justiciar), anthem effects (e.g., Skorpekh Lord or Master of Etherium), or affinity (Sojourner's Companion). More controlling builds can look to generate value through recursion using cards like Queen Kayla bin-Kroog , Myr Retriever, or Leonin Squire.
This archetype, centered in green , red , and white , is primarily a highly aggressive deck that relies on cards that are above-rate when you have a high domain count (like Nishoba Brawler, Loam Lion, or Tribal Flames). The deck is enabled by typed dual lands like Sunlit Marsh. Value builds that pull on the best cards from all five colors may be possible, but have generally not performed as well as aggressive domain decks in the environment.
This archetype, centered in blue and white , generates value by playing lots of cards with ETB effects and then using "flicker" or "blink" effects like Turn to Mist or self-bounce effects like Stonecloaker to generate incremental value. The deck also tends to run a high density of fliers, as many of the best flicker targets are cards like Inspiring Overseer.
This archetype, centered in black and green , focuses on deliberately filling its graveyard to enable abilities like Delirium (Gnarlwood Dryad), Descend (Join the Dead), or other abilities that are enhanced by having cards in the graveyard (like Specter of Mortality or Tenacious Underdog). The deck tends to be extremly grindy, and carefully balancing enablers (Greater Mossdog) and payoffs (Gurmag Angler) is critical (and helped by cards that do both, like Urborg Lhurgoyf).
This archetype, centered in red , green , black , and blue , focuses on discarding cards for fun and profit, typically by casting them for their madness cost (Arrogant Wurm), pumping a creature (Furyblade Vampire), or to otherwise generate value (Rielle, the Everwise). This deck has a lot of moving pieces and a variety of ways to be built across the 4 colors it's present in, but generally speaking performs best as either an aggro deck with some minimal madness value (like Basking Rootwalla plus Noose Constrictor) or a more grindy deck that incrementally generates value through repeated discard and recursion with cards like Radical Idea and Grave Scrabbler. WORD OF WARNING: Anecdotally, this deck is often heavily drafted and it can be very easy to end up with an unfocused pile if the madness lane is not open.
Beyond the well-defined archetype enablers and payoffs outlined above, many cards in the Penrose Cube are included because they play a variety of roles or enable more than one archetype. For example:
- Goblin Engineer tutors up artifacts, lets you loop sacrificed (artifact) creatures, fills the graveyard, and is a great flicker target.
- Piracy Charm at instant speed removes an X/1 creature (of which there are a lot in this environment), enables you to cast a card for its Madness cost, or puts the last card in the yard needed to achieve Threshold or Delirium.
- Psychatog enables madness, fills your graveyard, and gets buffed by your graveyard.
- Harrow ramps, fixes mana, and enables Delirium, Threshold, and Domain.
- Syr Konrad, the Grim fills your graveyard and damages your opponent when you mill, sacrifice a permanent, discard a card, or recur or reanimate a card from the graveyard.
- Wizard's Rockets fixes your mana, fills your graveyard, cycles, and enables effects requiring or benefiting from a cheap artifact on the battlefield or in the graveyard.
- Fa'adiyah Seer draws cards, enables Madness, and fills the graveyard.
- Reinforced Ronin is an aggressive beater that increases your affinity count or puts two card types in your yard to help reach Delirium.
- Thought Monitor is an artifact, has affinity for artifacts, and is a great flicker target.
The following game elements are primarily found in the following colors:
- Fliers -
- Creature removal -
- Large creatures - , and to a lesser extent and . There are no creatures with greater than 3 power in or
- Artifact removal -
- Enchantment removal -
The more I have tinkered with this environment, the more I have realized that there is an emergent philosophy at play in the Penrose Cube. While I never intended it to be such, this cube can be thought of as a Torment Remastered cube. While Torment isn't even the most heavily represented set in the cube (I haven't actually counted, but I suspect that honor goes to Lost Caverns of Ixalan), the cube fundamentally embodies the central Torment design conceit: what would a world where Black is the dominant color of mana look like? Black would be overrepresented and most powerful, obviously, but how would the other colors react? Would the rebel? Try to blend in by adopting the traits of Black? Which of their own attributes would wax and which would wane? Entirely by accident, this cube began to explore these questions; and while it wasn't an explicit design conceit from the start, once I made this realization it has been difficult to not take it into account when deciding future adds and cuts.
This cube would not exist without CubeCon! For a long time, I had considered Ultimate Masters to be one of the most fun draft environments WotC had ever created, and had been bouncing around the idea of creating a cube that captured some of the synergies and feel of that limited environment. Bored on my flight to Madison in 2022, I started pulling together a list of cards that might be fun to include in the cube to achieve that vibe.
I was pleasantly surprised upon arriving at CubeCon to learn that there was actually a cube with this exact concept there: @Zennith's UMA-Inspired Cube. I had the pleasure of getting to play the cube (even getting to play against a really nicely tuned Thermo-Alchemist deck assembled by @Zennith in round 3) on the second day of CubeCon 2022, and walked away absolutely convinced I had to put together my own UMA-inspired cube.
Upon returning home, while tinkering around with the concept, I came across @Gallently's Bar Cube (in a tweet perhaps? And since expanded on in a presentation on YouTube.) and really liked the idea of making a cube specifically designed to be easy to play in a bar. In other words, on the small side, no tokens, no counters, no cards you care about getting damaged or stolen. While I wanted to maintain some more traditional cube elements (such as being able to draft with 8 players) and didn't like proposed restrictions (I hate shuffling without sleeves), I took a lot of inspiration from this cube in putting together my now only partially UMA-inspired cube.
Ultimately, I ended up with a design that I am really proud of, and which I think occupies a very unique place in the cube ecosystem.
The Penrose Cube is named after my neighborhood in Arlington, VA.
The Penrose Cube has been featured in the following cube events; archival versions of the cube from the event are linked.