All spells in this set can be cast for just 1 MANA!

Inspired by a cube (https://articles.starcitygames.com/articles/one-drops-in-three-dimensions/) where Sol Ring isn’t one of the most busted cards (due to most of the cards costing exclusively colored mana) I'm trying to see if this idea also works as a set with rarities and with regular 40 card decks.

There are no X-Spells and no Kicker in the set (besides the adorably useless Bloodchief's Thirst kicker). There’s still a few cards with alternate casting methods available and of course some mana sinks for the later game.

I've tried to pick commons and uncommons that hopefully don't stall the board too much, but also not snowball too hard. There's also a ton of pump and evasive abilities available in all colors to get around some of the more annoying blockers (or just a wall of creatures).

So far, the games didn't feel like they were dragging and since everything costs 1 mana, both players usually can empty (most) of their hands in a game.

The Color strengths:

White Has of course good aggressive tools available, a big enchantment theme and also its fair share of defensively slanted cards and Ascend can get turned on quite fast.

Blue has a ton of evasive threats and also a very good lategame plan with many blue commons gaining more utility the more mana you have available. You also have some nice defensive creatures available to help you get there.

Black offers a lot of creatures that gain you additional value on death, making them great for the colors main theme, Sacrifice. You also got some recursion and excellent removal available if you want to use the color to out-grind your opponents.


Red is shockingly the most aggressively slanted color and utilizes ideally augmented creatures and some amazing removal to overwhelm the opponent. There’s also mana sinks for the lategame too, so you don't run out of steam.

Green has some beefy creatures available to push damage through and also a lot of fixing and some great manasinks. It utilizes a lot of +1/+1 counters, giving Thirsting Roots some potential lategame value as the only proliferation in the set. 


Colorless - Colorless fixing is important and the equipment in this set felt very strong so far, since the creatures are small and very similarly sized. Pretty much all Equips seem like high pickups for most decks and I can only recommend picking up a few pieces of artifact removal.

Multicolored - I did try to find a sort of double-colored card for each color combination, but some of them aren’t really too representative of their respective color combinations and are more build-arounds themselves.

Overall the colors felt pretty balanced so far (after I neutered the Sac synergies into Oblivion).

Here’s a basic description of the major themes of each color pair, but theres usually a goodstuff variant of each deck available and some more specific buildarounds.

WU - Evasive Control / Aggro
WB - Enchantments
WR - Heroic / Equipments
WG - +1 Counters / Go Wide
UB - Control / Evasive Aggro
UR - Spells / Evasive Aggro
UG - Mana Sinks
BR - Sacrifice
BG - GY Value / Sacrifice
GR - "Big" Creatures

Format Overview:

By now I am a firm believer in most decks wanting 14+ lands (and a lot can also play additional sources/fixing. Getting to 2 and ideally 3 mana is so important since you fall behind really fast if you are stuck casting single spells while your opponent is double- or triple-spelling.

Most of the games got into topdeckmode but didnt durdle too long afterwards, it is of course quite a lot easier to empty your hand if everything costs just 1.

Removal is strong and most often unconditional due to everything being so small, but there are a lot of creatures that gain additional value from the GY or dying and some creatures can get quite large.

Since the creatures have such similar size and aren't too fast clocks by themselves, evasion and equipment (or other repeatable pump) are very strong in this environment.

You also want to have a few more expensive things to do in the mid- to lategame in almost every deck. Its tough to get „under“ your opponent if you don’t have removal lined up alongside your bodies since your clock is usually not that fast if your creatures trade off along the way and your opponent can pretty much always do something (if they aren’t color screwed).

Speaking of which: Don’t get color screwed, if possible! Duh

• You need your 2nd color as soon as possible, ideally in your opener.
• Going more heavily (or fully) into one color is a pretty good way of making things easier for yourself, especially in those critical first few turns.
• There are also fixing lands in the landslot (in about 2/3rds of packs) which you should pick very highly if you are in the colors.
• There’s also green 5-color fixing and colorless 5-color fixing - also high picks. Even so, I would try to be 1-2 colors plus a splash at most, as its tough to find a one drop thats really worth the risk that comes with splashing.

We are also using the new Smoothed London Mulligan (which picks the more balanced hand out of two) to reduce the amount of 0-lander opening hands.


And thats about it! 
There’s still a ton of stuff left unexplored, so hope you have fun diving in!