The Spell Cube is a 90 card creature-less, planeswalker-less cube meant to be drafted with 5 packs of 9 between 2 players.

 

General Design

• Players will most likely be playing multiple colors, if not all five
• Drafting decisions between powerful spells vs. permanents that accrue value over time
• Gameplay generally consists of building up select permanents that then allow for repeatable free spells/effects and explosive plays with Storm or X-spells
• Very small size allows for density of rare effects that would be impossible at larger sizes
• Includes a Wishboard for Burning Wish

 

Storm

Storm is supported in a more fair way than is seen in constructed play. Similar to how it was implemented in Time Spiral Block, this version of Storm relies less on rituals and more on Suspend, Rebound, and Cascade effects to build storm count. Rituals are still included in a way, but are more broadcasted with cards like Mox Tantalite and Sol Talisman.

Plan ahead for your storm turn with a suspended Mindstab or Search for Tomorrow, or create more opportunities with the recurring Reality Strobe and Arc Blade. When they are about to cast, drop a Staggershock or Terramorph before your storm spell next turn. Or if you haven't drawn Tendrils of Agony naturally, search it out and cast on the same turn with Profane Tutor or Bring to Light, or chain the two together for even more fun.

Take advantage of your opponent's storm count with Reinterpret. Throw in As Foretold, Double Vision, Pyromancer's Assault, or Maelstrom Nexus at any point for extra value. Spelltwine flashing spells back with a built in storm count of 2 is also great.

 

Time Manipulation

Time is central to this cube and both Time Warp and As Foretold are fantastic at manipulating it to your advantage. Use them to speed up Suspend spells for quicker tempo or add extra upkeep triggers for increased card advantage/damage over time output from permanents like Onyx Goblet, Curse of the Pierced Heart, and Staff of Nin.

 

Top of Library

Top of the library play is another short but sweet mini-theme that uses repeatable effects to stack the top of the deck to set up the Cascade spells Forceful Denial, Natural Reclamation, and Maelstrom Nexus.

 

Free Spells

Free and virtually free spells and effects are generated frequently as well. Cast Time Warp for free with As Foretold and Double Vision in play and get another one.. for free! Too specific?

 

Discard

Being a slower environment in general, the natural draw per turn does a sufficient job of keeping hands full all by itself. Free spells and effects then supplement this to provide a substantial amount of virtual card advantage, allowing players to keep mana up for counters and continue to build real cards in hand.

To balance this, there is more emphasis on discard rather than raw card draw. Go Blank, Mindstab, Extract Brain, Blightning all contribute, with each adding some flavor of their own. Balance is an extremely powerful way to either recover from an early Mindstab, or to be used aggressively after dumping a hand full of other suspends. Skullcage can also be used to great effect with discard keeping opponents' hands in the danger zone.

Bag of Holding provides counterplay to this strategy while also having proactive synergies with Curse of Fool's Wisdom and Balance.

 

Effect Dense Cards

The small cube size paired with everything it wants to do means that every card choice is that much more important. So, in order to get more effects, each card must be as effect dense as possible. Any card that can fill multiple roles at once for a single mana cost is highly desired. Cards like Invoke the Divine, Go Blank, and Natural Reclamation all provide secondary effects that can often be even more relevant than their primary ones.

 

Conclusion

As you can probably tell from the above wall of cards and text, I have loved every minute of working on this cube. It includes numerous cards, keywords, and effects that I have always liked for some reason or another but could never find the right setting to play them all together. That, and the flavor they add up to of two mages slinging spells (without all those pesky creatures and planeswalkers getting in the way) feels really cool.