Ryan Saxe's Classic Cube
405 Card Unpowered Legacy+ Cube
229 followers
Designed by RyanSaxe • RSS • QR Code
The one-line description of this cube is: vintage cube, but where the fast mana comes at a cost.
Unlike Moxen, the fast mana in this cube puts you down on resources. City of Traitors. Lotus Petal. Dark Ritual. Crystal Vein. Because I want this cube to feel like vintage cube, the most broken combos like Channel, Tinker, Reanimator, and more are all well supported. However, because the fast mana comes at a cost, it is riskier to build these decks like glass cannons. There is more pressure to interact, and place strong threats on the board. And aggro is well supported to help make games brisk, and on board.
My goal as a cube designer is to maximize archetypal diversity and cultivate a complex draft environment that is both competitive and fosters creativity, while maintaining a cube that feels like the crazy powerful vintage cube. I include more narrow cards, such as Nexus of Fate, in an attempt incentivize thinking about your deck differently. This spawns unique permutations of archetypes and creates a draft experience that never gets stale by providing many avenues to leverage novel and complex interactions between cards in the environment.
Ban List
- Black Lotus
- Sol Ring
- Mox Pearl
- Mox Sapphire
- Mox Jet
- Mox Ruby
- Mox Emerald
- Ancestral Recall
- Time Walk
- Time Vault
- Mana Crypt
- Mana Vault
- Library of Alexandria
Note that because this cube is designed to feel like powered cube, you could easily convert it to a powered cube by adding the banned cards. If you decide to, I would recommend the following:
- Increase the cube size to 450-540 in order to add some variation in the power that is distributed in the draft.
- Add cards that combo with the power that is left out (e.g. Soulfire Grandmaster to go with Time Walk, or ways to untap permanents to pair with Time Vault, like Voltaic Key or Kiora, Behemoth Beckoner).
- Increase the density of shatter effects.
TwoBert
A subset of this cube is designed as a TwoBert: a 180 card cube meant to be drafted with 2-4 people. The cards highlighted in purple in the list view are the cards for the TwoBert.
This TwoBert is much more midrange focused than the main cube, because with such a small card pool it is important for cards to be individually good. Think of my design for this 180 card cube to be reminiscent of legacy, but without supporting any glass cannon combo decks as an option. Every single deck wins by playing to the board directly.
Note that I am still experimenting with the power level of the TwoBert. It's entirely possible cards like Oko, Thief of Crows and Minsc & Boo, Timeless Heroes are too good and need to be excluded.
FAQ
Is this the Classic Cube that was on MTGO?
Yes. You can read the spotlight article about it here. You can view a list similar to what was on MTGO here
Why is this called "Classic Cube"?
"Classic" is an old format on MTGO that was vintage, but without power (yes my cube has Timetwister, but I really don't think that counts as power in cube). I originally titled this cube "Busted Cube", as it's meant to be "Busted" like powered cube, but unpowered. However, WotC wanted to rename it to "Classic Cube" as an homage to that format.
What is the coolest thing that has happened in your cube?
While none of these cards are in it anymore, I watched somebody cascade Bituminous Blast -> Bloodbraid Elf -> Shardless Agent -> Two-Drop.
What is your favorite deck in the cube?
Probably decks with creative ways to win with Nexus of Fate. One of the most interesting of this I have seen is Azorius Control with no creatures, splashing Oath of Druids to mill the entire deck and take infinite turns with Nexus of Fate.
Mainboard Changelist+2, -2
There are a bunch of maybe phyrexia cards. Dinosaur, Nissa, Defectormite, Conduit of Worlds, etc.
I think all of those would make the cut if my cube was back at 540, but at 360-405 they just aren't needed.