Context

This EDH Cube is designed for my local playgroup of 4 to 6 players (all well experienced in MtG and EDH, and passionate about limited as well), and aims to support a variety of our favorite strategies while encouraging the players to mix and march different archetypes to make for always different matchups and interactions, with a global focus on combat and politics.

Anticipating some details that will be well discussed below:

• players will pick two cards per pack (3 packs of 25 cards each),
• they will be able to use two commanders as partners (with a key restriction)
• they will be able to pick commanders both from a pre-draft dedicated pack and among the regular draft packs.

Restrictions

We proxy the whole cube, so availability isn't a factor in wether to include a card or not, but we still try to keep the power level not too high in order to enable the most janky stuff across the various archetypes the cube features. For example, I tried to discourage 4-color good-stuff and bring players more towards 2-color thematic decks, sometimes 3-color decks that include two different yet synergistic archetypes.

For these reasons we avoided signets, and went with slower, monocolor ramp at 2 cmc, or straight up 3 cmc mana rocks.

Power

We wanted to avoid any fast mana or crazy efficient interaction, as well as easy infinite combos in order to keep the games balanced and fun.

Some exclusions:

Gameplay

The gameplay itself should be casual and fun, mostly focused around combat and politics via a lot of monarch cards and cards that care about attacking.

The cube has a total of 100 commanders. 6 for each monocolor, 5 for each guild, and 2 for each shard/wedge. Out of all these, 60 are dedicated to the 11 archetypes supported by the cube, and 40 are more generic.

Partner Mechanic

During deckbuilding, players will be able to use any 2 of their commanders as partners, with a key restriction: the 2 partner commanders CAN'T add more than one color to each other. So the only way to get a 4-color deck is by having two 3-colored partners that share two of their colors.

2 monocolored commanders can make for a nice deck well suited for that guild's archetype

A couple of two-colored commanders can make for a main theme with a secondary splashed theme in a third color

Pre-Draft pool

40 Commanders (24 of the generic ones, and 16 of the thematic ones, in particular the less broken but still indicative of their theme) are NOT drafted along the regular cards, but they form a pool from which we draft a pack of 6 cards per player before the real draft.

This way, players will be able to have a bunch of available commanders to start with and will likely be able to go into any color from the very beginning of the real draft, as well as having a taste of some archetypes from the pre-drafted commanders to orient their drafting.

Some Pre-Draft commanders as an example

Regularly drafted commanders

The 60 Commanders included in the regular 540 cards cube are 44 of the more powerful archetype-oriented ones (exactly 4 for each archetype) and 16 of the most generic but still really powerful commanders.

Some commanders you can pick in the regular draft packs

While drafting, it is almost impossible to end up without an available commander for the colors you end up in.

Starting Kit

To balance the resulting decks and streamline the drafting process a bit, every player will also be provided with a basic starting kit, including the following cards:

Fixing lands and mana rocks will still be drafted, but by going this way we can ensure no one is left with nothing and leave some more space in the drafted cube itself for interaction and nice thematic cards.

The Archetypes

Each guild has a preferred theme in its 2 colors, and there is an 11th general theme scattered across all colors so that you can add it into almost any deck or make a dedicated deck for.

Mainly in red, with two of the 6 dedicated commanders as monocolor

But everyone can have their fun with goading stuff and exploiting attacks here and there!