Art by Raymond SwanlandThe original Idea came from the 2019 Khans Expanded Cube which was featured on MTGO and designed by Elliot Raff. But as of Aug 2023 I've given it a major overhaul to increase its power and depth of play while still staying true to the original Khans Block archetypes and including as many Khans Block / Khans associated cards as possible.
Archetypes-
Abzan(WBG): +1/+1 counters
Mardu(RWB): Dash / Attacking
Temur(GUR): Ferocious
Jeskai(URW): Prowess
Sultai(BGU): Delve/Self-Mill
Additional mini archetypes-
Morph (all colors, primarily in UG)
Warriors (nonblue)
Dragons (based in UR)
Cube Restrictions-
Fetches:
With the addition of the Triomes it felt too easy to splash for a 4th or 5th color outside of a player's wedge. To attempt to cut back on this I've removed fetches for now and replaced them with a greater quantity of duals. The Cube is currently ~15% lands which should make them more visible within drafts and help players get a strong 3-color mana base.
Planeswalkers:
There are quite a few walkers that would fit the theme and design space of Khans Block, but I've decided to omit them on personal preference. In constructed I love planeswalkers but in a non-powered cube, they tend to take over the game and make it revolve around getting rid of the planeswalker on the enemy's side of losing the game from how much incidental value they can occur.
I still have quite a few in the maybeboard, but no plans to add them for now.
In the original version Repeating Barrage was a great inevitability, but now that all archetypes are stronger it seems difficult to picture many board states where a Jeskai, Temur, or Mardu player would want to spend 5 mana to return a very expensive bolt.