This Cube is a work in progress.

There are a few quirks compared to your typical Cube. One is the “draft matters” cards that were the initial inspiration; breaking singleton for these so I can focus on the ones that are interesting and playable, still tweaking the numbers to decide what feels right.

Also, blue is a more aggressive tempo-based color that your typical control behemoth, reminiscent of some of my favorite retail draft archetypes. Things being more combat-based and board-state based here than is (traditionally) typical of Cube, black plays more of a control role with removal and board wipes and creatures that are difficult to attack through.

At least that’s the goal. I’ve been trying a lot of different things and am still acclimating myself to cards I missed over the last few years; at the moment my focus is on fixing curves and cutting chaff so decks function at a higher average power level than is currently showing up. If we’re using the Strix Scale, I’m going for a 6(N) leaning more towards synergy than goodstuff. All of that can change based on what my eventual playgroup likes; my last group liked long grindy games but that group fell apart due to people moving out of town and then I took a break when my daughter was born and then there was a pandemic. So the upside of that is there’s a lot of flexibility to tinker around and goldfish decks against each other and see if I like them while I’m waiting for things to get back to normal.

Anyway. Advice is welcome, with the caveats that don’t want to spend a fortune and I want to avoid DFCs because of logistical problems with actually physically drafting them.

Rough two-color archetypes:

W/U - flicker
W/B - aristocrats
W/R - go-wide
W/G - toolbox (chord/coco effects and utility creatures)
U/B - mill
U/R - spells matter aggro
U/G - hardened scales
B/R - pox/stax
B/G - dredge
R/G - cheating fatties