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The Cursed Apple Commander Cube

The Cursed Apple Commander Cube is a 640-card commander cube based on Valve's Deadlock. It's mostly singleton, with a few custom cards doubled up to support...

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Last updated 14 days ago

The Cursed Apple Commander Cube

Overview

  • Size: 640 cards, mostly singleton. There are 605 different cards. 23 custom cards have a second copy, Bebop’s Bomb and Dust Devil have four copies each, and Astral Gate has seven, to support archetypes built on custom mechanics, such as toxin, scarabs, barrels, turrets, blood and Astral Gates.
  • Players: 2–8
  • Draft: 5 packs of 16 cards per player, pick 2 (take two cards each pick), passing left, then right, then left. Each player ends with 80 cards.
  • Commanders: Deadlock heroes only, with every hero having Lane Partner.
  • Contents: about 270 custom Deadlock cards (heroes, items, abilities and New York districts) plus Magic commander staples.

Drafting

  1. Shuffle the cube and make 5 packs of 16 for each player. Cards not used stay out of the draft.
  2. Take 2 cards from your pack and pass the rest. Pass left for packs 1, 3 and 5, and right for packs 2 and 4.

Deckbuilding

  • Deck size: 60 cards, including your commander or commanders.
  • Copies: you can play every copy of a card you drafted.
  • Basic lands: take as many as you need. They don't count as draft picks.
  • Sideboard: cards you drafted but didn't play. (Optional: you may swap cards between games.)

Commander rules

Only Deadlock heroes can be your commander

Your commander must be a legendary creature card representing a playable Deadlock hero. Other legendary creatures in the cube can't be commanders. That includes Magic cards and Deadlock NPCs such as The Doorman, Rohan, Maximilian Fairfax and The Thing Under Bow Bridge.

Full hero list: Deadlock Wiki: Heroes

Lane Partner

Every Deadlock hero in the cube has Lane Partner, even though it isn't printed on the card.

Lane Partner (You can have two commanders if both have Lane Partner.)

  • Lane Partner only works with another Lane Partner commander, which means another Deadlock hero.
  • It doesn't combine with Magic's Partner, Partner with, Friends forever, Choose a Background or Doctor's companion.

Colour identity for the cards in your deck

The cards in your deck follow these rules:

  1. Only the mana cost counts. Mana symbols in rules text are ignored when deckbuilding.
    Example: Chatterfang ({3}{G}) can go in a green deck that has no black.
    This only applies to cards in your deck, not to your commanders.
  2. Hybrid mana is your choice. Treat a hybrid symbol as whichever of its colours you want while building your deck.
    Example: Deathrite Shaman ({B/G}) can go in a black-green deck, a mono-black deck or a mono-green deck.
  3. Double-faced cards use only the mana cost on the front face.
  4. Exception, Rat King's Rulebreaker: if Rat King is one of your commanders, you can include Rat cards of any colour and basic lands of any type.

Game rules

All other rules follow standard Commander, including 40 starting life.

Custom mechanics

Most custom cards explain themselves in their rules or reminder text. The cube also uses:

  • Player counters (toxin and scarab): some cards give players toxin or scarab counters. These aren't poison counters and do nothing by themselves; the cards that use them, such as Vyper and Mirage, say what happens. "Ward—Get two toxin counters" means whoever targets that permanent gets two toxin counters.
  • Afterburn counters (Infernus and others): creatures with afterburn counters must attack and take damage over time. See the card.
  • Custom tokens: Remlings, Turrets, Barrels, Hallway Doors, the Gravestone, Stagehands and others. Their rules are on the token cards in the maybeboard.

Maybeboard

Every card in the maybeboard is either a back face of a double-faced card or a non-Magic token the cube uses. They aren't draftable. Lay them out on the table, or keep them handy for online play, so the tokens and back faces are there when you need them. For standard Magic tokens (Treasure, Food, Blood, Clue and so on), use normal tokens.

Archetypes to try

  • Blue-red spells and stun (Violet, Vindicta, Celeste, Abrams)
  • Green landfall and ramp (Jacob Lash, Mo & Krill, Viscous)
  • Black-green sacrifice and Food (Pocket, Baba, Mirage)
  • Rats (Rat King)
  • Blood and lifegain (Mina, The Drifter, Lady Geist, Venator)
  • Tokens and go-wide (Rem, Graves, Sinclair)
  • Treasure and artifacts (Paradox, McGinnis, Holliday)
  • Equipment and voltron (Billy, Warden, Shiv)
  • Books (Paige)
  • Birds (Grey Talon)
  • Group hug (Kelvin, Haze, The Doorman)

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