Premodern Cube

Cube ID
Art by Mark RomanoskiArt by Mark Romanoski

360 Card Premodern Cube

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Designed by FabrakhRSSQR Code

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PREMODERN CUBE

Introduction

A 360-cards cube, only containing cards up until Scourge. The gameplay of the cube comes closest to the Premodern format. The cube has some additions which are not part or banned in Premodern. These changes mostly relate to this cube being a singleton format. Most types of playstyles are viable, including Aggro, Control, Midrange, Tempo with a range of combos and synergies in most colors.

NOTE: After having played the Premodern Cube for many years with smaller adjustments along the way, it went through a major revision in 2024 based on all gameplay experience (more details on this below under Background & Considerations).

Suggested Archetypes

uw Draw & Go Replenish

Play the typical control game. Get card advantage with Standstill and wraths, and end the game with a finisher or by looting game winning enchantments like Form of the Dragon into your graveyard to recur with Replenish.

ug Bounce

Play more of a tempo game by casting green beaters while simultaneously keeping up counterspells enabled by Seedborn Muse and Peregrine Drake, and through bouncing your opponents stuff or your own Mystic Snake with Equilibrium for value.

ub Reanimation

Classic reanimation - Use cards like Careful Study and Vampiric Tutor to loot and tutor for the right pieces, to quickly Reanimate a beater like Akroma, Angel of Wrath into play, while interacting with your opponent

ru Artifact Toolbox

Use Tinker and Transmute Artifact to tutor for artifacts that either lockdown your opponent with Winter Orb and Mishra's Helix, or directly into a combo win with Phyrexian Devourer and Altar of Dementia.

rb Discard

Play an all-in discard The Rack deck including Lavaborn Muse and Storm World, and take apart your opponents strategy through a variety of discard spells including Ravenous Rats and Mindslicer. An alternative route focuses more heavily on sacrificing your creatures with Goblin Bombardment, Reckless Abandon or [[Braids, Cabal Minion], and recurring them with Living Death to do it all over again.

rg Landdestruction

Load up on landdestruction spells, supported by ramp and big beaters, and close out the game through a Sneak Attack or Natural Order into a large finisher like Penumbra Wurm.

gb Recurring Value

Bury your opponent in value by keeping recurring creatures like Phyrexian Rager, Multani's Acolyte or Deranged Hermit through Genesis or the infamous Recurring Nightmare and Survival of the Fittest engine.

bw Dead Guy Ale

BW provides a large number of cheap both evasive and disruptive creatures such as Fledgling Djinn, Soltari Trooper and Hypnotic Specter to decrease your opponents life total, backed by the most effective distruption including Snuff Out, Swords to Plowshares, Vindicate and discard. An alternative direction is to build more of a control/combo deck with Academy Rector, Yawgmoth's Bargain, Enduring Renewal and sacrifice effects including cards like Priest of Gix.

rw Aggro

The typical aggro deck. Win quickly through loads of low costed creatures such as Jackal Pup and Savannah Lions, pump them with Soltari Champion, and finish the game through burn or blow out spells such as Armageddon.

gw Enchantress

Draw loads of cards with Argothian Enchantress and Enchantress's Presence to either put auras on evasive and protected threats like
Soltari Monk or lockout your opponent with Solitary Confinement.

Of course also mono colored decks and all type of mixed colored decks can be drafted, enabling even more synergies or just good stuff decks. Some examples are:

rbw

With good fixing this combination opens up for going aggro with Fervent Charge or sacrifice combo.

bgr or bgu

It can be worth to splash r or u in the bg value deck to get access to a bit more unfair stuff through Sneak Attack or looting.

uwr

A combination that includes several combos and good control spells.

Combos/Synergies

More or less game winning. Some can win on the spot, while many "just" provide an often remarkable advantage.

u

Iridescent Drake + Mythic Proportions + looting

Squee, Goblin Nabob + looting

Gilded Drake + bounce

w

Land Tax + Scroll Rack/looting

Monk Idealist + Parallax Wave

Pariah + Mother of Runes/Flickering Ward/protection

Academy Rector + Form of the Dragon/Yawgmoth's Bargain

u or colorless

Upheaval/Mishra's Helix/Winter Orb + mana rocks

Goblin Welder + Triskelion + artifact

b or br

Corpse Dance/Sneak Attack + Nicol Bolas/Penumbra Wurm/Symbiotic Wurm

c or r

Phyrexian Devourer + Altar of Dementia/Fling/Bloodshot Cyclops

ur

Palinchron + Sneak Attack

ub

Palinchron + Recurring Nightmare

ub or ur

Peregrine Drake/Palinchron + Corpse Dance + sacrifice outlet (Goblin Bombardment/Carrion Feeder/Phyrexian Plaguelord/Phyrexian Ghoul/Altar of Dementia)

ub/r

Iridescent Drake + Abduction + sacrifice outlet (Goblin Bombardment/Carrion Feeder/Phyrexian Plaguelord/Phyrexian Ghoul/Altar of Dementia)

w or wg

Solitary Confinement + Squee, Goblin Nabob/Eternal Dragon/Genesis

wb or wr or wbr

Enduring Renewal + Priest of Gix/Cathodion/Su-Chi/Peregrine Drake/Palinchron + sacrifice outlet (Goblin Bombardment/Carrion Feeder/Phyrexian Plaguelord/Phyrexian Ghoul/Altar of Dementia)

Enduring Renewal + Skirk Prospector/Blood Pet + Goblin Sharpshooter/Soul Warden

No Rest For The Wicked + Monk Idealist

wu

Replenish + Form of the Dragon/Yawgmoth's Bargain + looting

rw

Land Tax/Weathered Wayfarer + Goblin Trenches

bg

Recurring Nightmare/Squee, Goblin Nabob + Survival of the Fittest

Background & Considerations

Aggro

When trying to balance a broad variety of playstyles, a main challenge has been to enable a viable creature based/aggro strategy within this era of much stronger non-creature spells. While a constructed format such as Premodern can get around this issue by playing 4-offs of the most powerful creatures, in a singleton cube, finding a high enough density of aggro creatures becomes harder. A strategy has therefore been to tone down other strategies. For example by removing cards that showed themselves to be too oppresive like Earthcraft, Opposition or Masticore. Another strategy was to select worse variants of creature interaction, by having them be more situational or expensive (e.g. Rout instead of Wrath of Good, more expensive counterspells).

Further, when building the base for an aggro deck around white weenies for example. The strengths are mostly not as much in efficient P/T stats, as they are in evasion (Shadow) and protection, which there is plenty off. This is then supported by strong land disruption in the form of Armageddon or Winter Orb and good reach in the form of burn spells including things like Sulfuric Vortex.

Fixing

Another challenge is the limited selection of land fixing which is heavilty skewed towards the Ally pair. The solution for balancing this has been the inclusion of the original duallands, only in the Enemy pairs in combination with Ally Fetchlands. Untapped mana fixing is in turn especially necessary to enable more aggressive strategies. Most available goldlands are therefore also included.

Combo

Combo decks are an essential part of the Premodern era. They enable a nice puzzle during drafting and can prevent just having drawn out midrange matches. Tutors are included in most colors to support the viability of combo decks and not just making them randomly happen.

While there are efficient reanimation spells and cards like Tinker, Natural Order and Sneak Attack that could be described as quite unfair, they often lack the game ending payoffs. There are also a range of combos in the cube, however, only few are 2-card combos and the majority require several pieces and build around. The payoffs are either slower or can be interacted with. There are on the other hand a lot of 2-card synergies that don't outright win, but generate a major advantage (e.g. Scroll Rack and Land Tax, Recurring Nightmare + Survival of the Fittest, Gilded Drake and bounce, Academy Rector and Form of the Dragon, Solitary Confinement and Squee).

Most combos are enchantment or artifact based which makes enchantment removal a good way of interacting for decks thatn don't have access to counterspells.

Huge Cube update
Fabrakh posted to Premodern Cube -
Mainboard Changelist
+360, -360
Maybeboard Changelist
+553, -422

Main changes include:

Goblin (RB) and Cleric archetype (BW) removed = Too streamlined draft experience.

Improved fixing (especially for enemy pairs) = Addition of OG duals (enemy) and Mox Diamond. Quick fixing is crucial for making aggressive decks, such as RW and BW, being able to compete with slower ones.

All looting/direct-into-GY outlets removed outside of U = Helps UB, RB and GB with color identity, where UB facilitates combo reanimation, while RB and GB mostly facilitate value reanimation.