If you're looking for a different type of battlebox experience, you've come to the right place!

A traditional battlebox tends to focus on having the most balanced gameplay possible: Lower-powered, a narrow power-band, and nothing that can ultimately run away with the game by itself. These types of battleboxes are great. Ultimately though, I wanted 1) an excuse to play with a lot of my favorite cards, 2) a cube that could be shuffled up and played right away, and 3) a multiplayer experience.

So here we are!

My main design goal is to provide a fun, powerful, and nostalgic experience. As such, I lean into artifact ramp (mostly treasure), card draw, scaling threats, combo cards (some), stax pieces, storm(!), and a whole host of other shenanigans. It's also intended to be played multiplayer, so that helps to balance out some of the stronger cards.

To accommodate my goals, the rules of this box are a bit different:

1. The land pool is still 10 cards (per player), except the duals are the DMU typed ones. Effect: All players are much more likely to control a land with a specific basic land type. This also makes Domain cards much more functional.

2. Players have their own library of 40 cards instead of using a shared library. If you run out of cards, you lose just like in a normal game. Effect: Some cards just work better with your own library. Additionally, multiplayer games can sometimes go long, and running out of cards is a natural stopping point.

3. A player can (on their turn, as a sorcery, without using the stack) exile a card (or cards) from their hand and replace them with an equal number of lands from their pool. Each player starts with a normal 7-card hand. Effect: Lands are not free, so resource management is critical. Deciding what to exile is an extra layer and can often be complicated. The box is allowed some more narrow cards because they can always be turned into a land.

4. Once a land is moved into your hand from your pool, it functions just like a regular card. It goes to the appropriate zone if bounced or destroyed. Effect: Using normal land dynamics makes certain cards work as intended and eases some edge case rules situations.

UPDATE!
I find myself leaning into the "a cube that could be shuffled up and played right away" point more and more. As such, I made (and will continue to make) updates along the way to reduce bloat & complexity as much as possible without cutting too far into the other design goals. I don't want to call this a bar cube because it's definitely not, but the design of a bar cube speaks to me.

Here are the current rules and design parameters I am using:

No Tutors: They are annoying to resolve, and will often slow the game way down. It's also in an awkward space because you don't even know what's in your own deck.

No Transform: Reduction in complexity because you don't need to memorize the back side of a card. Players should not have to unsleeve a card for any reason.

No Trinket Text: This is a personal choice of mine, but depending on the card there could be some legitimate confusion for some players. Examples: Solemn Simulacrum (no land in your deck to search for), companion, anything that references commander, the command zone, partner, creature types that aren't in the box, etc.

Reminder Text: If there's a 1-off mechanic I generally have no issue including a card with that mechanic if it has reminder text. If it doesn't, then the chances I include the card is much smaller unless the mechanic is particularly intuitive.

No Outside The Game Cards: I'm not sure how to describe this exactly, but any mechanic that needs a complicated outside-the-game piece or reminder card has been removed. This includes: Initiative, Dungeons, The Ring Tempts You, Monarch, Radiation, etc.

No Universes Beyond: I don't have anything against UB in general, but I'm trying to lean into a more uniform aesthetic and nostalgic Magic experience (for me). Another big reason is that I don't need to update the battlebox nearly as much compared to if I allowed every single product release.

Reduce Token Bloat: No tokens are allowed to have any abilities except evergreen ones (mostly flying). Each color gets two unique tokens, ignoring creatures types. Example: Green can have a 3/3 elephant and a 3/3 ape and that would be considered one "token type." In this way I significantly limit both the number of tokens I need to own, and more importantly, there's a lot less chance the board gets clogged up with a bunch of random tokens that do different things.

Creature Types Don't Matter: Nothing at all in the cube cares about creature types (sorry Siege-Gang Commander) but this decision significantly reduces token complexity (the only reason I can get away with "combining" token types, see above) and board state complexity.

Counters: I have cut most cards that add unique counters to other permanents. By unique I mean not one of the common types: +1/+1, -1/-1, charge, etc. If it's self contained then it's on a case-by-case basis, but if it can start propagating then it just becomes annoying (ex. Luminous Broodmoth). In the same light, even cards that can add +1/+1 counters to your whole team at once were mostly cut because they're tedious to resolve, especially with some tokens out. I much prefer anthems in this slot.

Price: I own this battlebox in paper, so some cards didn't make the cut due to price and I didn't already own one. (ex. Gilded Drake).