This is the live, up-to-date version of the cube.
If you're looking for the version of the cube that was featured at CubeCon 2023 click here.
If you're looking for the version of the cube that appeared at Cube Corner at MagicCon Amsterdam click here
There's also the Pointless Cube which is my experimental playground for the Spikeless Cube where I work on upcoming iterations.

Introduction

• The Spikeless Cube is a singleton, eternal cube.
• The environment is unpowered and contains no two-card combos.
• This cube is designed to explore the power of less-commonly cubed cards by restricting each card to a budget of $0.79 and excluding non-land cards played in more than 8% of cubes or which have ever appeared in the MTGO Vintage Cube.
• As a result there is a medium power differential between the strongest and weakest cards in the cube. However, bombs in the environment tend to be build-arounds.
• This cube caters to players of a variety of skill levels so the average deck will contain 2-3 colors typically built around one of the 10 two-color archetypes.
• This cube is medium size. As such, no more than 2/3 of the cube will ever be drafted by one pod so the variance is fairly high.

Table of Contents

1. Contents for Drafters
   1.1. Gameplay Overview
   1.2. Tap Tempo
   1.3. Ninja Tempo
   1.4. Discard for Value
   1.5. Big Mana Stompy
   1.6. "Cookie Cutter"
   1.7. Token Aristocrats
   1.8. Fair Storm
   1.9. Graveyard Midrange
   1.10. Historic Aggro
   1.11. Flash
2. Contents for Cube Curators
   2.1. Context
   2.2. Restrictions

Gameplay Overview

The gameplay of The Spikeless Cube was inspired, in large part, by Modern Horizons 2. While the cards in the cube have been chosen to support the 10 two-color archetypes in the environment, drafting is by no means limited to those 10 two-color decks.

Fixing in the environment is plentiful and the archetypes were chosen to facilitate cross-pollination. Drafters are encouraged to experiment. Successful decks have been created from mono-colored all the way up to five-color piles.

However, for less experienced drafters, the gold cards have been selected to be clear and informative signposts. Drafting from among the 10 two-color archetypes will almost always produce a fun, powerful list.

Tap Tempo

Inspired by the Wilds of Eldraine limited deck of the same color pair, the azorius player can pursue a tempo-based game plan where they seek to create a resource disparity by combining tappers to control combat, tap-matters payoffs, and evasive creatures with powerful attack or combat damage triggers. Their list is supplmented by protection effects, ward and other tax effects, and repeatable card draw to maintain advantage over their opponent if the game runs long.

Ninja Tempo

The dimir player may want to wish to explore an aggro control list that uses cheap, evasive creatures with valuable ETB effects in conjunction with ninjas and other bounce effects to outvalue their opponent. This player will find that their deck can put power on the board and pressure slower opponents when it needs to but can also leverage hand attack, cheap removal, and explosive theft effects to overpower their opponents in long games.

Discard for Value

The rakdos player can assemble a midrange gameplan around discarding cards for value. By leveraging cards that can be reused from the graveyard with effects like unearth, flashback, jump-start, and escape, the rakdos player can take full advantage of discard-matters cards without losing out on card advantage. Additionally, between the card draw effects of black and the impulsive draw of red, the rakdos player can freely fill their yard and take advantage of discard outlets without risking running out of gas.

Big Mana Stompy

As the gruul player drafts they will find a variety of treasure, eldrazi spawn, and eldrazi scion producers as well as other fast acceleration effects to help them outpace their opponent by putting big threats into play ahead of schedule. Alternatively the gruul player may generate value from these mana producers through instant-speed morbid and revolt triggers, or assemble a go-wide board by leaning on anthems and overruns to pump up their board of tiny mana producers.

"Cookie Cutter"

The selesnya player seeks to pursue a midrange strategy around reanimating small creatures and taking advantage of trinket artifacts like food, clues, and maps, to continuously generate value. Additionally, there's a small suite of lifegain-matters cards to synergize with the food.

Token Aristocrats

The orzhov player cares about flooding the board via cheap, repeatable token generators. They can then overwhelm their opponent with this go-wide strategy by using anthem effects or aristocrats payoffs.

Fair Storm

The izzet player seeks to win with a slower, more controlling, spellslinger gameplan. By using the burn spells of red and the countermagic of blue, the izzet player can play a slower game where they use cantrips, looters, and rummagers to sculpt a hand of cheap spells and cost reducers in order to benefit from cards that care about multispelling including storm spells.

Graveyard Midrange

The golgari player seeks to pursue a midrange gameplan by quickly filling their graveyard through mill effects and then using a combination of recursion effects and self-recurring creatures as well as spells and effects that care about the graveyard being full like delirium to continuously apply pressure and eventually win through attrition.

Historic Aggro

The boros player seeks to establish a quick, powerful board presence using artifact creatures and spells and effects that care about artifacts. By leveraging effects that care about artifacts to continue to draw cards the boros player can maintain card advantage while continuously deploying aggressive threats and pushing through damage. The boros player can explore some additional synergies with cheap aggressive legendary creatures and sagas through historic-matters cards.

Flash

The simic player may want to assemble a controlling "draw-go" deck that leverages the the threats of green that either scale with the size of the game or generate continuous board presence and the instant-speed interaction of blue and always be able to hold up interaction to defend their worthy threats against their opponent's interaction. This player wants to fill their deck with a variety of flexible, instant-speed mana sinks so that no matter what their opponent does they can always make full use of their mana.

Context

The Spikeless Cube is the go-to cube for Cube Night at my LGS. Growing the cube community at my local game store is still an ongoing process so, for the time being, the Spikeless Cube rarely fires with full pods of 8. Theoretically the cube is capable of supporting as many as two pods of 6 but that has never happened.

Usually the Spikeless Cube is drafted as a

• 2 player grid draft: 9x18 = 162 Cards Seen
• 3 player grid draft: (3+9)x18 = 216 Cards Seen
• 3 player fortune's favor draft: 3x60 = 180 Cards Seen
• 4 player housman draft: (4x5+9)x9 = 261 Cards Seen
• 4 player booster draft 4x9x5 = 180 Cards Seen
• 5 player housman draft: (5x5+9)x9 = 306 Cards Seen
• 6 player booster draft: 6x11x4 = 264 Cards Seen
• 8 player booster draft: 5x15x3 = 360 Cards Seen

No matter what the cube is very high variance as no more than 2/3 of the cube will ever be seen by one pod.

Restrictions

The design philosophy behind the Spikeless Cube is to showcase the power of less-commonly cubed cards and to explore novel synergies between cards that might otherwise never be played together. The budget criterion of the environment certainly helps the gameplay trend in this direction but there are also types of cards and effects that I intentionally exclude.

Why "Spikeless"?

When I first developed the cube there were two hard restrictions on the environment. One was that all of the cards had to have a basic version valued at $0.79 or less at the time that I acquired them but the other was that no card in the format was ever banned from a constructed format (is:spikey on Scryfall). Over time I slackened on this restriction because I realized that what was ban-worthy in 60-card, 4-of magic wasn't necessarily ban-worthy in 40-card singleton. Instead I focused on a philosophical approach to "un-spikey" magic.

I don't pretend to have an un-spike-able format but I try to make card choices that reward players for striving for big splashy plays (Timmy/Tammy) or reward players for seeing interesting card interactions and building "cute" value engines (Johnny/Jenny) while shying away from cards that require players to have explicit cube/draft knowledge. I think this has the effect of levelling the playing field somewhat. By avoiding less-commonly cubed cards it avoids situations where there are snap P1P1s that are obvious to more enfranchised drafters and cubers that less experienced magic players might miss.

Why $0.79?

Another common question I get asked is, "why is the budget cut-off specifically $0.79? Why not $0.50 or $1?" When I first tried coming up for an idea for a cube one of my best friends, who also first got me into magic, said that my cube had to have some identifying theme that made it uniquely my cube--otherwise what was the point? Originally I tried designing a cube based on a world--this became the FF6 Cube which I gave up on but have since revisited. While working on that I was disheartened by how difficult it was to construct the themes I wanted to play without including expensive cards.

At the same time I was watching QUEST FOR THE JANKLORD, a budget EDH gameplay channel where they often restrict the cards they play with to no more than $0.79 per card. I was inspired by how powerful and compelling of gameplay they were capable of using such cheap cards. Perhaps relatedly, Card Kingdom seems to have a cutoff in their singles pricing where $0.79 is the highest sub-$1 price that any card will ever have. Because of these factors, when I started playing EDH and building budget EDH decks as gifts for my friends I built them using cards that were available on Card Kingdom for $0.79 or less. As a result of these factors, I elected to have $0.79 be the cutoff for singles for this environment in order to push me to try to make evocative, powerful gameplay using cards that often end up relegated to the chaff piles of history.

The 1000% Rule

In general, I allow cards which were $0.79 or less at the time that I acquired them to stay in the cube regardless of fluctuations in their price. However, in order to keep the power delta relatively narrow, I have implemented a rule that any card whose cheapest version rises to above 1000% of my cutoff threshold ($7.90 or more) gets sold to my LGS and is effectively banned from the cube until such a time as it drops below the threshold again. The banned cards are Fable of the Mirror-Breaker, Maddening Hex, White Plume Adventurer, Seasoned Dungeoneer, Wedding Announcement, and Staff of the Storyteller.

Unitaskers

There are obviously cards out there that are very good for particular archetypes in my environment. However, if cards in the environment are only good in one deck and not good in any others it has the negative effect of decreasing the overall number playables in the environment and making drafting the cube more on-rails. I exclude some cards like Losheel, Clockwork Scholar and Goblin Lore even though they are powerful, in-budget cards for particular archetypes though I do sprinkle in a few as lures for players to draft in a particular direction.

Matchup-Dependent Cards

Obviously some cards are going to be better in certain matchups than others but I don't like silver-bullet sideboard cards and cards that are good/bad against certain matchup for reasons that don't pertain to the play patterns/archetypes of the decks. This is why, even if a card might be good in the environment for other reasons, I usually avoid explicit color hate effects like Shifting Ceratops or Jaya Ballard, Task Mage. Likewise I don't include Shriekmaw or Sunlance because they're arbitrarily worse in mirror matches. In order to encourage and make graveyard-decks fun I've chosen to include very few explicit grave-hate effects. Instead, I opt for a strategy of including internally competitive gy-matters mechanics like Delve and Delirium or Undergrowth and Escape.

Low-Commitment Cards

I don't think it's practical nor desirable to have a perfectly flat power delta. Where possible, however, I like the power outliers in my environment to require more investment from the drafter whether that be commitment of draft picks or commitment of game resources. There have been several cards that I've cut from the top, not because they were too strong, but because they were too strong generically. There's a very real case to be made that, given that I curate an unrestricted imprisonment, I might as well run Infernius Spawnington III, Esq. over Devouring Strossus because as a card that you're basically always going to either reanimate or cheat into play Infenius is just better but I don't like the fact that the Infernal Spawn of Evil family of cards are just really good with no drawback and would rather run a card like Devouring Strossus that requires you to have the board state to support it.

False Signals

For clarity's sake I've tried to avoid cards with distracting trinket text. This includes cards with commander-specific text like Tormod, the Desecrator and unset-specific text like Jackknight as well as text about tribes I don't support such as that of Magda, Brazen Outlaw or Blade Splicer. Furthermore, I avoid cards with extraneous text that makes their intended use unclear in the environment such as Finale of Eternity. In the past I've made an effort to exclude cards that are parts of know A+B combos but since the environment being combo-free is part of the preamble I've felt that this is less and less necessary as time goes on. I am conscious of this, however, when it comes to cards that have in-budget, powerful, non-combo play patterns that aren't in the environment.