>>> ### Welcome to my Variant Cube! <<< If you want to see some more of my thoughts about my changes along with draft reports check out my [Thread on Riptide Lab](https://riptidelab.com/forum/threads/brirros-variant-cube.3608/) --- >>>#### Cube Philosophy<<< I am interested in building a cube that allows for High Player Agency, during both the draft and gameplay, while also including some weird and cool magic cards. >>> <<[[!Astral Drift]][[!Drake Haven]][[!Inverter of Truth]]>> <<[[!Problematic Volcano]][[!Ulvenwald Tracker]]>> <<< >>> ##### Low Curving <<< Ever since I listened to the [170th episode of lucky paper](https://luckypaper.co/podcast/170/), about lowering your cubes curve, I've been working on making my cubes curve lower, and it has been working out great! Recently, I have become very interested in cards that are useable at multiple points of the game, and the cards that really made me interested in this was >>>[[!Into The Roil]]<<< It's a pretty solid tempo "removal" spell, that also has the ability to cantrip later on in the game. Mechanics that I like include, [[Adventures|Horned Loch-Whale]], [[Evoke|Shriekmaw]], [[X Spells|Occult Epiphany]], [[Cycling|Lórien Revealed]], [[Embalm|Adorned Pouncer]], [[Spree|Phantom Interference]] and [[Kicker|Wolfbriar Elemental]], but there's probably more for me to find as well. I've started by adding a few of these modal cards, and if the test with them goes well, I'm planning on adding quiet a few more. >>> ##### Power level <<< Currently I'm slowly working on lowering my power level so some of my favorite magic cards will be higher picks during the draft. >>> <<[[!Wing Splicer]][[!Master Splicer]]>> <<[[!Skaab Ruinator]][[!Putrid Imp]][[!Reckless Wurm]]>> <<< However, I tend to find it hard to cut the good cards, because I really like a lot of them, so its slow going, but its working its way there. --- As for archetypes, I originally had 10 very rigid archetypes, but over time my archetypes have slowly shifted, changed, merged, and outright disappeared to get to what I currently have. I would not call these archetypes per se, but are kind of a [[weird amalgam|dbbcd63d-6c25-47a6-a76c-ac53bf12949c]] of archetypes and themes. {B}{G}{R}{U} - Graveyard {R}{W}{B}{G} - Aggro {W}{U}{G} - Flicker/ETB Value {W}{G}{B} - Lands {W}{U}{R} - Prowess I'm also interested in adding more support for the lands package in red with cards like [[Molten Vortex]], and potentially in blue for cards like [[Slogurk, the Overslime]] --- >>> ##### History/Origins of my Cube <<< I've been working on this cube for a little over Two and a half years, and what I have wanted to do with it has changed a lot over that period of time. I love building weird magic decks, [[Mishra, Artificer Prodigy]] is my favorite commander deck, so when I first learned about cube, I was drawn toward the gimmick cubes. I loved the idea of desert cubes, where you have to draft your mana, along with many others. The first cube I designed was designed around Snow Lands and used the set cube structure (3 commons, 2 uncommons, 1 rare/mythic), but I ended up scrapping it because the cards from Kaldheim don't mesh super well with cards from Coldsnap. While looking around on Scryfall I stumbled across [Vanguards](https://scryfall.com/search?q=type%3Avanguard+game%3Apaper), which are cards that are not useable in any format, so I decided to base my cube off of including these in the draft. Vanguards were not all though, I fell in love with the oversized cards and wanted to design the cube around the Archenemy Schemes, and Planechase as well. I ended up using the Vanguards in a single draft, where everyone just forgot about them, and since then I haven't even though about trying to incorporate them again. I still love the cards, they seem super cool, but I think I was trying to squeeze too much stuff into one 360-card cube. (Along with the Vanguards being horribly balanced) I've frequently pivoted back and forth on how many [[weird|Booster Tutor]] cards to include in the cube, and I'm currently pretty light on weird cards, but I also really like them. I try to reduce the number of cards in my cube that can be seen as "traps", which a lot of the time these cards are totally traps, I also aim for a lower curving cube, and a lot of the [[cool|Form of the Mulldrifter]] [[weird|animate graveyard]] [[cards|yet another aether vortex]], cost 5-6 mana, which is a lot.