Art by Chris SeamanDesign Goals
The Breakfast Cube is a synthesis of some of the old breakfast-theme named combo decks from the Extended format era of mtg (1997-2013). I've put lots of more recent pieces in here as well to flesh out the core ideas of these decks, in hopes that some novel combinations will reveal really fun lists. I'm planning to add some 'fair' decks in here too, alongside some breakfast-related fun stuff. It's my attempt at "emergent design" for a combo cube that has a thematic element.
ErrataMuch of this environment is firmly rooted in 90s mtg and includes a number of important cards which care about graveyard order. Thus, in every game you play with this cube, graveyard order matters for both players. Please keep track of and respect it.
Additionally, in order to facilitate the combo-focus in draft, each player will start with a copy of Cogwork Librarian already in their pool.
The Combo Decks
Fruity Pebbles and Cocoa Pebbles
Fruity Pebbles is the oldest deck on this list and as far as I can tell its name is still a mystery. The deck pushes out Shield Spheres to survive the early turns, then uses Enduring Renewal and Goblin Bombardment to set up an infinite damage loop with the Spheres. The version that splashed black to access Necropotence and Demonic Consultation started calling itself Cocoa Pebbles.
From roughly the same era, Trix is named after the bunny rabbit in the art for Illusions of Grandeur. The point of the deck was to Donate Illusions to your opponent after casting it and then wait for them to fail to pay the upkeep cost. The deck was able to abuse Necropotence to great effect due to the initial 20 life gained from Illusions. Many mtg veterans consider this one of the greatest decks in the history of the game.
Perhaps the most sensible cereal name on this list, the combo at the heart of Life often involves, as you might have guessed it, infinite life gain. The deck uses Nomads en-Kor to target Daru Spiritualist infinite times and then win with Starlit Sanctum. There are a few other pieces printed more recently like Shuko and Devour Flesh that make this deck a budget option in Legacy and even Pauper.
Popularized in the early 2000s, Cephalid Breakfast took most of its inspiration from Life. Nomads en-Kor found an arguably better target in Cephalid Illusionist, and the resulting loop lets you mill your entire library. More recent reanimate enablers and dredge targets, along with equipment like Lightning Greaves have helped make this deck a bigger mainstay in Legacy than its predecessor.
Many experienced mtg players will already be familiar with the idea of the Cheerios deck, a build that burns through a whole stack of 0-drops in order to storm off. Since many other decks in this environment can benefit from a good Cheerio whether they are dedicated to this build or not, this cube has a ton of them, with only the power pieces de facto excluded. I was not able to find the OG Cheerios list, but the genre is very permutable and has lots of new enablers straddling all five colors.
Most people nowadays just call this deck Aluren after the card in it that does most of the work. Maybe few appreciate how convoluted the combo used to be: play Spike Feeder, activate its ability to gain 2 life, play Man-O'-War to bounce feeder, play Cavern Harpy to bounce Man-O'-War, then activate Harpy's ability by paying 1 life. Repeat ad infinitum. Newer pieces have streamlined the combo to just the Harpy bouncing itself and a Soul Warden or Auriok Champion, then using Maggot Carrier to kill. I have no idea why this would be called Raisin Bran except wanting to be in on the cereal combos joke. At least I'm hoping it's that instead of something to do with the art on Spike Feeder. . . .
Paul Barclay gave his deck centered around Volrath's Shapeshifter this name in order to mog all the other breakfast decks at PTQ Tokyo in 2001. The main deck loop involves Survival of the Fittest to make sure your graveyard is always stocked with the best possible creature. Since they won't be entering the battlefield, cards like Phyrexian Dreadnought are a great choice. Pro-tip from Paul: you can pump Shapeshifter with a fire-breathing effect like on Flowstone Hellion, then use Shapeshifter's ability to discard something bigger before damage to pile on.
Eggs, nowadays frequently called Second Breakfast, had its debut in Extended at Worlds in 2006. The deck is named after the cycle from Odyssey that started with Skycloud Egg, and the goal is similar to that of Cheerios - play through your whole deck, this time on low-cost 'cantrip' artifacts instead of 0-drops. Typically Eggs wins by recursion, looping Second Sunrise and Conjurer's Bauble to play Pyrite Spellbomb infinite times. The deck was fairly popular in the early days of Modern as well.
Golden Grahams, also known as Salvager Game, usually tries to win in much the same way as Eggs, but uses Auriok Salvagers and Lion's Eye Diamond to get infinite mana. Then, as long as you have an Eggs piece in your graveyard like Conjurer's Bauble or Chromatic Star, you can draw the rest of your deck to find your wincon. The deck runs Gamekeeper as the only other creature in order to find Salvagers faster.
There's a Legacy deck from the early 2010s called Breakfast Burrito that I will not be including. It's entirely landless, as the main combo line is to play Balustrade Spy targeting yourself to mill everything, then playing Dread Return off three Narcomoebas you hit to get back Lab Man. . . it doesn't really fit with my vision for the cube or the rest of the family tree. There may be a few decks I'm still missing just because people randomly named them after cereals to be in on the meme, but I'm hoping the ones listed here provide a pool with enough overlap to make a draft environment out of.
Fair Decks, Thematic Inclusions, and Breakfast Alternatives
Just Add Milk
These two Secret Lair Drops were designed like cereal boxes. They fit very nicely into our breakfast theme, they add a good suite of finisher creatures for both the fair decks and the combo decks, and most importantly I just think they're neat!
Cousin to the weird breakfast deck names in Legacy is another enigmatic name: Nic Fit. Apparently the "'nice fit' misspelled" origin of the name popularized by a WOTC article is apocryphal and the deck was simply named for the song its designer was listening to when he came up with it. Something of a punk rock standard, the 'Nic' in the song title stands for nicotine; so if you prefer to just have a cigarette in the morning instead of eating, you can try to take this anti-meta midrange BG deck for a spin. Even apart, most of its pieces should help keep the other more indulgent stuff in the environment healthy (or maybe "Fit"?).