Art by Jerry TiritilliThis cube gathers together some of the most powerful cards from all of Magic's history. I love eternal formats and my goal with this cube was to include a lot of classic combos and cards from all of them. Aggro, midrange, control, and combo decks are all supported and viable. I wanted players to have a lot of options when drafting and to have many fun decks and archetypes that they can build-around. Although this cube is designed with 8 player drafts in mind, it is still very fun to play with lower player counts. In fact, I consistently pancake or glimpse draft this cube with 2-4 players a lot of the time. The power level of this cube is Unpowered Strix 8F. It is a pretty classic unpowered Legacy cube with some Vintage spice. Most of the popular Legacy cube combo cards (and a few Vintage ones) are here and included.
Themes Within Colors
: Aggressive Creatures, Tokens, Exile Removal, Wraths
: Disruptive Creatures, Counterspells, Card Draw, Bounce, Combo Build-Arounds
: Disruptive Creatures, Midrange Creatures, Discard, Removal, Reanimation, Wraths
: Aggressive Creatures, Burn, Combo Build-Arounds
: Mana Dorks, Ramp, Fatties, Tokens, Creature Tutors
- The Power Nine (except for Timetwister)
- Premium fast mana such as Sol Ring, Mana Crypt, Mox Diamond, Mana Vault, and Grim Monolith
- Storm Combo
- Cards that are very hard to interact with such as Channel, Library of Alexandria, True-Name Nemesis, and Moat
My cube provides many different strategies for players to explore. While there are a lot of possible ways to draft this cube, this primer will briefly go over the archetypes that this cube was designed around.
Aggro Strategies White Aggro
This is a classic aggro deck where you want to curve out with aggressive creatures every turn and potentially finish off your opponent with a card like Armageddon. Aggressively slanted value cards like Stoneforge Mystic and Restoration Angel can also fit into these decks.
Ux Tempo
Cantrips, cheap counterspells, and disruptive creatures that put a clock on the game are great here. This deck often wants to splash a second color to have some additional threats, removal, and closing power.
Red Aggro
Another classic aggro deck where you curve out with aggressive creatures and finish your opponent off with burn spells.
Midrange and Ramp Strategies
Green Ramp
This deck wants to use mana dorks to ramp into big creatures. Gaea's Cradle and Rofellos, Llanowar Emissary are the best ramp cards for the deck. Natural Order combined with a fatty like Craterhoof Behemoth also allows for a combo-like finish.
WUx Blink
This deck wants to blink creatures with good enter the battlefield effects like Blade Splicer. There is also some combo potential with blinking a card like Clocknapper or Arcane Savant.
Ux Midrange
This archetype can look very different depending on what cards you open and have the ability to play. Generally it wants to play the best cards in the cube like Oko, Thief of Crowns and Fractured Identity in addition to counterspells, premium removal, and mana rocks to ramp into various threats.
Non-Blue Midrange
This deck is generally going to be a classic "Jund" style deck that has creatures with value, removal, and hand disruption to play a grindy midrange game.
5 Color
This deck is generally going to be base green for mana dorks and ramp cards. It uses a fetch-dual manabase to play all of the colors to and the best multicolored cards. Ideally you want the 5 color payoffs such as Golos, Niv-Mizzet, and Omnath.
Control Strategies
Ux Control
Counterspells, premium removal, and board wipes are the core of Ux Control. Once you have control of the game, you want to end it with a card like Teferi or Jace.
Combo Build-Arounds
Twin
Make infinite creatures and attack for infinite damage. The twin combo slots well into blue-red tempo and control builds.
Reanimator
Reanimator wants to put a big creature onto the battlefield as quickly as possible. To do this you need a discard outlet, a big creature, and a reanimation spell. Entomb turns this into a two card combo with any reanimation spell.
Fatty Cheat
This combo allows you to "cheat" a huge creature into play early in the game and usually win off of it. Blue-based decks are usually good to slot this kind of combo into.
Wheels
Use wheels combined with a card that doesn't allow your opponent to draw extra cards to have both players discard their hands but you draw 7 cards while your opponent draws 1.
Artifacts
Use mana rocks to ramp into big threats or use a combo card like Upheaval to gain a huge advantage.
Opposition
Use token makers combined with Opposition to tap down all of your opponent's lands and creatures so they can't play the game.
Recurring Survival
Use Survival of the Fittest to discard and find creatures with powerful enter the battlefield or death triggers and Recurring Nightmare to loop them in and out of your graveyard.
Lands
Strip Mine or Wasteland with the ability to recur it from your graveyard can destroy your opponent's mana base. Fastbond makes this combo even better. You can also assemble the Dark Depths combo.
Occasionally, my group wants to play a fully powered version of this cube, so I have a module of 19 Vintage cards that I can add in. The cards are: True-Name Nemesis, Ancestral Recall, Mana Drain, Time Walk, Tinker, Channel, Black Lotus, Chrome Mox, Mana Crypt, Mox Diamond, Mox Emerald, Mox Jet, Mox Pearl, Mox Ruby, Mox Sapphire, Mana Vault, Sol Ring, Grim Monolith, and Library of Alexandria.