Scenic Cube
(360 Card Cube)
Scenic Cube
Cube ID
Art by Jerry TiritilliArt by Jerry Tiritilli
360 Card Unpowered Legacy+ Cube20 followers
Designed by ScenicStump
Owned
$14,811
Buy
$5,965
Purchase
Mana Pool$9079.64
Scenic Cube Overview

"Fast, Fair, Foiled"

The Scenic Cube is an eternal, unpowered cube designed to highlight some of the most powerful and iconic Magic cards of all time, while maintaining a fast, fair, and interactive play environment. All decks aim to operate on the same tempo/value axis (meaning no dedicated cheat strategies), and aggro, midrange, and control are all pushed to their limit. You can equally expect to see all-in aggro and near-creatureless control, alongside everything in between.

Context

The Scenic Cube is designed to, ideally, be traditionally drafted weekly with my local playgroup at a brewery in a 6-8 player pod. Players in this group are of of varying skill levels, and we sometimes play with very new players. It also occasionally sees play in 2-player draft formats like Grid Draft and Sealed, so I don't include traditional-draft-only cards like Cogwork Librarian.

Restrictions

Just about any card is fair-game for inclusion in this cube, as long as it promotes play patterns that I like. Since I often draft with newer Magic players, I don't run cards without (or with obscured) rules text. I have no budget restriction, and prefer to play with cards that have foil printings. I intentionally limit universes beyond cards due to my personal taste.

Power

In order to play iconic cards like Lightning Bolt and Counterspell, I keep the environment's power just about as high as it can go, without introducing the power 9 and combo strategies. I believe that cube is inherently self-balancing, and as such am normally not worried about individual cards or strategies being too powerful for the cube (see Umezawa's Jitte). Certain power outliers or otherwise out-of-place cards are included because they're iconic, exciting, or because I wanted to collect them and have somewhere to play them (see Chaos Orb, Library of Alexandria, and Mox Diamond).

The cards that I choose to exclude are excluded for having unfun play patterns or non-interactive strategies (i.e. Oko, thief of Crowns). I don't want to include any cards that you should "always" take in the draft, or cards that take interesting decisions out of the gameplay. I try not to include too many made-for-multiplayer power outliers since I believe they warp the environment and overshadow iconic constructed staples.

The effects of the cards in this cube should be the cream-of-the-crop, and if a strictly-worse version of a card exists, I try to avoid running it. I don't want games to be decided by poor mana, so I run abundant fixing, with a set of true duals, one of each shockland, one of each surveil land, and 2 of each fetchland.

Gameplay
  • Games should generally be very quick and interactive. I want players to make multiple game decisions each turn, and I want each of those decisions to matter. Cheap removal is abundant, as are cheap threats and cards that can run away with the game if left unanswered. Games should feel like fair legacy matchups.

  • Players should feel like their deck "comes together" every draft, not necessarily because of on-rails synergies, but because of the intrinsic power and modality of each card included in the cube.

  • Ideally, at the end of each round, both players can point out the decisions they made that led to the game's outcome, and feel that the outcome was determined by their skill as a drafter and choices in game, rather that variance or power imbalance.

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Glamour Shot!

Storage box crafted by the incredibly talented Aaron Cain!


Cube description derived from The First Four Questions Cube Designers Should Ask.
List inspired by The Bun Magic Cube

Gotta try this sick new card. Remove Rabbit Battery for being similar and too many of my drafters hating it.

Also add in a pretty Memory Deluge I picked up - Torrential Gearhulk getting removed here for being a nonbo. Unsure of how I fully feel about this change, but I like it for now.

Eshki Dragonclaw was a gift, and I think it plays in a really fun way. I don't like having 2 Temur cards, but Soncrafter Mage stays in for now. Might have to address this in the future.

Renegate Rallier coming out for now since I feel like I've seen it as a last pick in pack for like 3 drafts running.

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