>>># **Overview**<<< I often want to play limited with friends, but its hard to wrangle 8 people so I made this tiny budget cube that can support a 4 player pod, or a winston draft! This cube also doubles as a home for all the pet cards that I can’t find a home for in any other format but want to play. • **Winston:** If you are winston drafting, no special rules required. The color pair archetypes are broad enough that you can have some crazy interesting synergies across all colors. Have fun! • **Pod of 4:** If you are drafting with a four person pod, use 5 packs of 9 cards. Each card in the cube has a perfect 75% chance of being opened, allowing for *some* variation between drafts. Consider consulting the draft archetype list: >>>### **Draft Archetypes**<<< ### {W/U} — Déjà Vu <<[[!Archaeomancer]][[!Ephemerate]][[!Time Wipe]][[!Ethereal Forager]]>> Use cards like [[Ghostly Flicker]], [[Displace]], [[Ephemerate]], and bounce spells to repeat the enter-the-battlefield abilities of your creatures. Take special care to note that you can use these two-for-one flicker spells on [[Mnemonic Wall]], [[Archaeomancer]], and [[Shipwreck Dowser]] to retrieve them in addition to flickering a second target, creating a repeatable value engine. [[Time Wipe]] can be used to stall the game while setting up one of your creatures to be replayed. It also can be played turn, after turn, after turn, with the aforementioned creatures or [[Ethereal Forager]]; simply return them to your hand when you cast the spell and then use them to return the wipe. _{R} Splash —_ [[Pinnacle Monk]] can be used to loop any double flicker spell. _{G} Splash —_ [[Eternal Witness]] can be used to loop any double flicker spell. ### {U/B} — Reanimate <<[[!Merfolk Looter]][[!Indulgent Tormentor]][[!Obsessive Stitcher]][[!Persist]]>> Use discard outlets like [[Bone Shards]], [[Bitter Triumph]], or looters to drop hard-to-cast creatures into the graveyard in order to put them into play more efficiently with [[Obsessive Stitcher]], [[Exhume]], and [[Persist]]. _{U/B} Subtheme: Control —_ This color pair is loaded with creature removal and counterspells. Use them to stall out the game so you can chip your opponent down with a demon or some other evasive threat over a few turns. ### {B/R} — Treasure Tempo <<[[!Kalain, Reclusive Painter]][[!Captain Lannery Storm]][[!Goblin Blast-Runner]][[!Deadly Dispute]]>> Accelerate yourself with treasure and sacrifice artifact tokens for tempo with cards like [[Mayhem Devil]], [[Gleeful Demolition]], and [[Marionette Apprentice]]. _{W}/{G} Splash—_ Both white and green both have ways of creating Clue tokens, and white has a few cheap high-tempo artifacts that have nice synergies with this archetype. ### {R/G} — Landfall Beatdown <<[[!Embodiment of Fury]][[!Grove Rumbler]][[!Lotus Cobra]][[!Terramorphic Expanse]]>> Use extra land drops and fetches to get tempo with landfall triggers, all while accelerating yourself to make big plays earlier than your opponent can. ### {W/G} — +1/+1 Counters <<[[!Good-Fortune Unicorn]][[!Ranger Class]][[!Luminarch Aspirant]][[!Dusk Legion Duelist]]>> Efficient Selesnya creatures that grow even stronger with counters. The cube also turns counters into value with [[Evolution Witness]], [[Scurry Oak]], [[Pridemalkin]], and [[Dusk Legion Duelist]]. _{W/G} Subtheme: Artifacts Tokens—_ Based entirely off the back of Clues, servos, and the two cards [[Tough Cookie]] and [[Yotian Dissident]] you can have a very capable artifact aggro deck. _{B} Splash —_ [[Fain, the Broker]], [[Thran Vigil]], and [[Fetid Gargantua]] are other payoffs and enablers for a +1/+1 counters strategy that are worth a splash if you can manage it. ### {B/W} — Aristocrats <<[[!Fiend Hunter]][[!Ruthless Lawbringer]][[!Goremand]][[!Blood Artist]]>> Sacrifice creatures for value and tempo. A timeless strategy for Orzhov. _{R} Splash—_ Many red cards in the cube care broadly about sacrificing any permanent, not just artifacts. The color also provides more creature token generation to feed to your sacrifice effects. ### {U/R} — Prowess <<[[!Mistral Singer]][[!Stormchaser Mage]][[!Heartfire Immolator]][[!Ghitu Amplifier]]>> Kill your opponent quickly with creatures that grow with your burn spells and cantrips while disrupting their plans with counterspells and bounce effects. ### {B/G} — Déjà Vu <<[[!Urborg Repossession]][[!Evolution Witness]][[!Thran Vigil]][[!Dead Weight]]>> Loop permanent-only [[Regrowth]] effects to replay the same cards from your graveyard to grind your opponent out of the game (as opposed to {w/u} looping instant spells, sorcery spells, and creature etbs). _{W} Splash—_ Not only does it make [[Lurrus of the Dream-Den]] easier to play, but it gives you access to a lot more small permanents you can loop as well. ### {R/W} — Go-wide Aggro <<[[!Fallaji Vanguard]][[!Neighborhood Guardian]][[!Release the Dogs]][[!Mogg War Marshal]]>> Develop a wide board and buff them, or develop threats like [[Griffin Protector]] and use the tokens entering afterward to buff them. Either way, your opponent dies. _{B} Splash—_ Sacrificing your tokens for value when the game stalls out is a good way to break parity when attacking is disadvantageous. ### {G/U} — Card-draw Midrange <<[[!River Hoopoe]][[!Jolrael, Mwonvuli Recluse]][[!Gnarled Sage]][[!Eyekite]]>> Use creatures that grow when you draw cards and effects that allow you to draw cards reliably or in great quantity to overrun your opponent. If you can’t kill them quick, at least you can try to outgas them late. >>>### **Designer's Note**<<< You may have noticed the strategic choices made for the themes and overlaps of each color pair. This was to maximize the Winston drafting experience with the cube where you often will have 3-4 color decks made up of the best cards you see during that draft. • {w/u}— I chose a flicker theme because creature cards have enter-the-battlefield effects in all colors. You can also use the flickering to reset evolve cards to evolve them again. Since the flicker cards themselves are all either blue OR white, you have a lot of freedom to play them in any color combination when you Winston draft even if you only get one half of the color pair. • {u/b}— A blue black reanimator theme is pretty normal to see, but I couldn't pass up how well those high-mv demon reanimation targets work alongside the red/green ramp package and the red/black treasure package. • {r/b}— A treasure theme gives both black and red some access to color fixing when generally those colors struggle with it without true fetchlands (which i wanted to avoid adding to my cube, both to keep the list budget and because I find them boring because they immediately warp a low power cube around them). So now in a Winston draft you don't have to lean on green as much to get your colors under you if you pick up a few treasure generators. This isn't even mentioning the synergy with the {w/g} subtheme of artifact aggro, which means you can build Abzan or Naya artifact aggro with great success. • {R/G}— Landfall was a great theme because the list has a ton of budget fetches to fix mana during a draft which this archetype can use to great effect. Also, [[Reckless Pyrosurfer]] and [[Embodiment of Fury]] played into the {r/w} theme of go-wide token aggro nicely and [[Tireless Tracker]] played into the {g/w} subtheme of artifact tokens and +1/+1 counters as well as the {u/g} theme of "draw extra cards". • {b/w}— Aristocrats was chosen as a theme since a lot of the artifact aristocrat cards double as creature aristocrat cards which makes them of overlapping interest to drafters in the Mardu wedge. Also, the {b/g} theme of graveyard value could poach a few of the black cards from this archetype as well creating some good tension in a drafting environment.