Possibility Cube
(540 Card Cube)
Possibility Cube
Art by Jason FelixArt by Jason Felix
540 Card Unpowered Vintage Cube96 followersDesigned by OzkanTheFlipRSSQR CodeView in Cube Map
Owned
$3,791
Buy
$2,923

This is my real life cube!

Here are some of the design goals I had when making this cube:

  • The cube will be singleton and will use the classic draft format of 8 players with 3 packs of 15 each.
  • Their will be no proxies, I think real cards are cool.
  • This cube will be limited to 540 cards.
  • The players should feel like they're playing powerful Magic, letting them play with cards such as Mind Twist and Tinker in a powerful format.
  • Cards should evoke an emotional response when opened. e.g. "Wow... this pack is powerful" or "That's in the cube!"
  • All 4 of magic's main archetypes along with hybrids of them will be supported. Those archetypes being Aggro, Midrange, Control and Combo.
  • The cube will be limited to 5 dual lands for each color pair.
  • Cards will be included to push powerful gameplay within the constraints of my environment.
  • The cube will focus on interactive games that award tight gameplay, but still leave room for amazing story moments.
  • The cube will award drafting with a plan.
  • I want to avoid pure sideboard cards, I find these offer little interesting decisions in the draft and instead reward luck by randomly entering your draft pool as the 15th pick.
  • All multi-use fast mana is auto-banned to power.
  • Every vintage legal card outside my banned to power list is on the table as a possible include.
  • If a card not on the banned to power list is not included the reasons could be any of the following:
    • I don't think it's good enough. e.g. Dragonkin Berserker
    • Yes it's powerful but it or its support is too narrow. e.g. Tendrils of Agony
    • It's only as good as anything else in the cube and I'd rather run other stuff. e.g. Bribery
    • It's as good or slightly worse than other cards I'm running in its spot and I don't need another copy. e.g. Agonizing Remorse
    • It very rarely makes the mainboard in this cube and/or constantly goes 15th pick. e.g. Nature's Claim
    • I can't afford purchasing it at this time. e.g. Wheel of Fortune

Here are some things I am not concerned with in terms of design:

  • Signposting. I'm more concerned with keeping my archetypes supported than signposting their existence.
  • Giving my players unlimited, high quality mana fixing such as upping the land count, allowing non-basics in the deck construction land pool, or breaking singleton on fetches. While you could argue this would provide a more powerful format, I argue it hurts what the limited environment is to me. With my current lands you are perfectly able to draft powerful manabases and better drafters will do just that. While I love powerful constructed magic, this cube is here to play powerful limited magic and thus it is important to not lose what makes limited limited.
  • Spreadsheet balancing. I don't care about the aesthetic a symmetrical list provides and find it a lot easier to support my archetypes without worrying about it, you really need to cheat to maintain it anyway with split cards, hybrid costs, etc. I do however use an even amount of fixing throughout the 10 color pairs to give my drafters the chance to draft whatever archetype they personally can dream of, not just the ones I know of.
  • Eliminating variance in the draft or games. Despite what some will say it is entirely possible to have decision heavy, skill based gameplay in a high variance environment. Variance is not only a large source of fun, but actively promotes skilled decision making. The cubes I've played that aim to eliminate variance and prioritize consistency in a narrow power-band have been, in my opinion, simply boring.
  • Omitting cards because of too much text, random one-off mechanics, etc. As an enfranchised player I'm not very concerned with card complexity and I'm generally going to want to play with any card that will be powerful in my environment. I have also found it doesn't really matter to non-enfranchised players. My cube is mostly drafted by players new to magic or players that don't play very often and because of the casual environment full of table talk it's fine to just ask the table how a card works.

Banned to power:

Black Lotus
Ancestral Recall
Time Walk
Mox Pearl, Sapphire, Jet, Ruby, & Emerald
Sol Ring
Mana Crypt
Mana Vault
Chrome Mox
Mox Diamond
Grim Monolith
Ancient Tomb
Gaea's Cradle
Library of Alexandria
Mishra's Workshop
Tolarian Academy
Time Vault

I also have a blog where I write about cards I'm considering for this cube for every new set! Check out my popular year in review posts here:
Possibility Cube Cards From 2021
Possibility Cube Cards From 2022

Mainboard Changelist+194, -194

So about 6 months ago I decided to do a "no card is safe" overhaul to my cube list as I hadn't updated this in awhile on account of my new job. That process has taken a lot longer than I thought as life, work, and set releases kept getting in the way. I wasn't updating my list until the overhaul was complete but know a lot of these cards I've already been playing with in my cube for awhile. Looking forward to updating this list more frequently!

View All Blog Posts