### A low-to-the-ground, disruption-heavy Eternal environment The Not Quite Vintage Cube Cube is an unpowered Eternal cube designed to encourage tight games, efficient plays, and interactive decision-making. While it contains many powerful cards from across Magic’s history, it avoids the extremes of high-powered staples like the Power Nine, fast-mana artifacts, and overly efficient threats. This environment emphasizes small board states, resource trade-offs, and precise timing. Archetypes lean toward low curves, with control and combo-control strategies made more viable through deliberate curation. Combo decks are supported through guaranteed availability of key pieces, while aggressive decks exist in a more restrained form, creating space for tempo and reactive strategies to thrive. Planeswalkers are restricted to Esper colors to support control, and removal is tuned so that efficient interaction like Lightning Bolt and Languish remain relevant throughout the game. Draft structure and rarity pools further support both consistency and variety. ## Core Design Principles: ### Low-Curving, High-Stakes Most creatures in the cube die to Languish or get zapped by Lightning Bolt—on purpose. Even midrange threats must earn their keep. High-cost cards are rare and surgical, keeping the pressure on players to make smart, efficient plays early. ### Small Games, Big Decisions This cube avoids mechanics that tend to balloon board states: no +1/+1 counters, no tokens, and no artifact themes (sorry, LSV). Inspired by this article on small games vs. card advantage, the goal is to create lean, focused matches where every piece of cardboard matters. ### Combo-Ready Drafting Every combo piece is guaranteed to show up—yes, literally every time. The draft pool is built to ensure that archetypes like Doomsday, Twin, or Reanimator are always available, even if they aren’t always good. If you know the lines, you can find the lane. ### Disruption Over Dominance Whether you're denying key spells, sniping creatures, or strangling development, this cube rewards the player who keeps their opponent off balance. Disruption is everywhere—cheap, flexible, and often brutal. ### A Step Slower, A Turn Smarter While aggro decks exist, the cube purposefully avoids some of the most pushed aggressive threats, allowing more breathing room for other archetypes to shine. You won’t find Broadside Bombardiers or Gut, True Zealot here—there's enough pressure without them. ## Draft Mechanics: The Not Quite Vintage Cube Cube uses a tightly controlled draft structure to ensure consistency, replayability, and support for niche archetypes—especially combo. Each draft is built from: - A 448-card main cube pool that includes every combo piece required to support all featured archetypes. - A Rare Pool of 96 cards, from which 32 cards are randomly added to the draft pool each session. These rares are powerful but non-essential—think of them as high-impact spice, not archetype-defining staples. For an 8-player draft: - Each player receives 4 packs of 15 cards. - In each pack, 3 cards are burned (removed face-down after drafting the first 12), increasing variance and tension while keeping signal reading intact. This structure ensures that even complex strategies like Doomsday or Storm are always theoretically available, while the rare injections keep the draft experience fresh from session to session. The default draft here on cube cobra is set to this format. ## Combos ### Reanimator Classic and powerful, Reanimator uses cheap discard or self-mill to cheat expensive creatures into play early. With Entomb, Reanimate, and friends in the mix, this deck can create early threats that demand immediate answers—but the disruption-heavy environment keeps it from running unchecked. <<[[!Reanimate]][[!Archon of Cruelty]][[!Faithless Looting]]>> ### Self Mill More than just fuel for Reanimator, self-mill serves as a standalone archetype with multiple payoff paths. It can enable Hogaak, Arisen Necropolis as a fast and resilient threat, or function as an alternate win condition via Thassa’s Oracle or Jace, Wielder of Mysteries. Whether you're building toward value recursion, combo setups, or a surprise mill win, the graveyard offers flexibility—assuming you can keep it safe. <<[[!Hermit Druid]][[!Golgari Grave-Troll ]][[!Hogaak, Arisen Necropolis ]]>> ### Chain of Smog The Chain of Smog + Witherbloom Apprentice (or similar effects) combo exists as a potential one-turn kill that hides in plain sight. Easy to assemble but vulnerable to disruption, it rewards players who can sculpt the perfect hand—or who can bluff just well enough to protect the combo. <<[[!Chain of Smog]][[!Sedgemoor Witch ]][[!Witherbloom Apprentice ]]>> ### Twiddle Storm Powered by the custom card Mystic Rhythm—a one-mana tap/untap spell with buyback—this archetype creates a repeatable engine around cards like Lotus Field or High Tide. With the right setup, Mystic Rhythm can generate infinite mana or a high storm count, ending the game with payoffs like Tendrils of Agony or Brain Freeze. While more linear than classic storm, this combo rewards careful assembly and tight play, with just enough room for creativity in execution. <<[[!Lotus Field]][[!High Tide ]][[!Frantic Search ]]>> ### Storm Storm in this cube revolves around a consistent graveyard-based combo: Underworld Breach, Lion’s Eye Diamond, and Brain Freeze. Once assembled, this three-card engine can loop itself for a deterministic kill. Past in Flames serves as a slower but resilient backup plan, enabling similar lines through flashbacked rituals and cantrips. The archetype is streamlined but fragile—graveyard hate or timely discard can shut it down. Success demands precision and careful timing. <<[[!Brain Freeze ]][[!Underworld Breach ]][[!Lion's Eye Diamond ]]>> ### Splinter Twin Combo-control at its finest. This archetype can play a fair tempo game while threatening an instant-speed win with Splinter Twin or Kiki-Jiki and a handful of key creatures like Pestermite, or Deceiver Exarch. One of the cube's cleanest two-card combos. <<[[!Pestermite]][[!Deceiver Exarch ]][[!Splinter Twin ]]>> ### Doomsday Doomsday invites players to build around the most intricate combo engine in the game. With the guarantee that key pieces are present in every draft, Doomsday serves as both a deckbuilding puzzle and a high-risk, high-reward win condition. It can be paired with Thassa’s Oracle, Laboratory Maniac, or more convoluted lines—assuming you can survive long enough to execute. <<[[!Doomsday ]][[!Jace, Wielder of Mysteries ]][[!Thassa's Oracle ]]>> ## TODOS Since this is my first cube project and this is the first presentable draft I have some things I definitely want to improve and would appreciate feedback on: - [ ] evaulate rares. Alltough I like the idea of the rares, I probably have to revisit them and define which cards actually belong in there. - [ ] lower curve. I think that I want to further go down on the mana value, but am not sure yet. - [ ] give green an identity. I am not happy with the state of green, but am not sure where things are going. I think I want to add a midrange toolbox theme, with GSZ etc.