What this cube is
This is a cube built for players who know Magic but have barely drafted. So the goal isn't power or complexity, it's legibility: you should be able to look at a pack, spot a card, and understand what deck it's asking you to build. Every archetype is meant to be recognisable from the cards themselves, without a cheat sheet.
It's also entirely in-universe. No Universes Beyond — no crossover sets, no guest franchises. Every card and every art comes from Magic's own worlds. That's a personal preference more than a design argument: it keeps the table feeling like one game, and when you're already learning to draft, one fewer thing to parse is worth something.
This is a first cube. It will have rough spots, and it will change once it gets played.
Midrange and combat
The cube is built around creatures and combat. About 69% of the non-land cards are creatures, and the average mana value sits at 3.18 — so most games are decided on the battlefield rather than by a single spell.
Removal exists to keep combat interesting, not to make boards disappear. There are four sweepers in the whole cube and none of them wipes a board cleanly: Massacre Wurm only shrinks the opponent's side, Gix's Command kills power 2 or less as one of two modes, Thundermaw Hellkite hits fliers for 1, and Dragonback Assault deals 3 to everything but then keeps making Dragons. There are five counterspells, all cheap and all conditional.
Two archetypes are genuinely aggressive (Boros, Rakdos) and two go big (Gruul, Simic). The other six sit in the middle and win by trading well. Nothing is meant to go over the top of the whole table on turn four.
Each guild has exactly four two-colour cards, and all four are signposts — cards that tell you what the deck is trying to do. Powerful gold cards that don't signal anything were left out on purpose; the mono-colour slots are where general card quality lives.
The ten archetypes
{W}{U} Azorius Blink
Your creatures do something when they arrive. Make them leave and come back so they do it again.
This isn't a fast deck — it accumulates card advantage and wins late. Take creatures that draw or gain life on arrival, then a few effects that exile and return them. Ephemerate has rebound, so it blinks twice for one mana.
{W}{B} Orzhov Recursion
You buy back your cheap permanents over and over.
It's a grinding deck rather than a reanimator deck. Most payoffs care about mana value 3 or less, so you want small bodies that do something when they enter or die, plus the effects that keep bringing them back. You win by attrition, not with one big turn.
{U}{B} Dimir Attrition
Answer threats one for one, out-card them, then close with a few evasive bodies.
With only five counterspells and four sweepers in the cube, there's no draw-go control deck here. You trade, you draw, and you attack with creatures that draw you even more. The four signposts all steal something — from the library, the graveyard, or the battlefield.
{U}{R} Izzet artifacts
You count artifacts, and you get paid when they arrive.
The 21 colourless cards are effectively your deck — take them early, since nobody else needs them as much. Red's Treasure tokens pull double duty: every Treasure is an artifact, and it's also sacrifice fodder.
{B}{R} Rakdos Sacrifice
Your creatures are worth more dead than alive.
You need both halves: cheap bodies, and outlets that turn them into damage. Don't hold creatures back. All four signposts cost two or three mana, which matches how low the deck's curve wants to be.
{R}{W} Boros Attack-matters
Your cards pay you when you declare attackers.
Attack every turn, even into bad trades — the triggers are usually worth more than the creature. This is the deck that punishes a slow opponent, and the one that gets punished for being slow itself.
{G}{W} Selesnya Tokens & Counters
Make a lot of small creatures, then make them all bigger at once.
Quantity first, anthems and counters second. You want a wider board than your opponent by turn five, and then a single global effect closes it out. Tokens don't really appear anywhere else in the cube, so this lane is rarely contested.
{R}{G} Gruul Power 4+
Your payoffs check whether you control a creature with power 4 or greater.
Ramp on two, land something big on three, and the rest of your hand switches on. The threshold is power 4, not 5 — a plain 4/4 counts, and a pump spell can turn a 3/3 into a payoff mid-combat.
{B}{G} Golgari Graveyard
Your cards count the creatures in your graveyard, so filling it is part of the plan.
You need three pieces, not two: self-mill to fill, payoffs to count, and recursion to get things back. Your graveyard works as a second hand. Where Dimir steals from other people's graveyards, Golgari grows its own.
{G}{U} Simic Landfall
Every land that enters gives you something.
Play more lands than usual — 18 rather than 17 — and take every extra-land-drop effect. Worth knowing: a fetchland triggers landfall twice, once when it enters and once when it finds a land. Ten of the forty-seven land slots already help you.
The colourless cards
The 21 colourless cards aren't filler. They're equipment for Boros, artifacts and artifact payoffs for Izzet, and a handful of cards any deck is happy to play — Hangarback Walker, Solemn Simulacrum, Walking Ballista. If you're the only Izzet drafter at the table, this pile is largely yours.
Three colours: a reward for splashing
The manabase includes ten Triomes, one per three-colour combination, so the cube has ten three-colour cards — one per Triome.
They exist to reward players who take the risk of splashing a third colour. Each one tries to be useful to as many of its three guilds as possible, though the card pool doesn't always allow all three. They also sit higher on the curve than the signposts do, since you need the Triome to have been down for a few turns before you can cast them.
Alesha is a good example of what these cards are aiming for: she costs {2}{R}, so any red deck can cast her, and her ability costs {W/B}{W/B}, so Boros pays with white, Rakdos with black, and Orzhov with either.
Five colors if you take the risk
Golos, Tireless Pilgrim is an eleventh card in this slot that belongs to no combination at all.
It costs {5} and is colourless to cast, so any deck can play her, and it fetches a land when it enters. Its ability costs {2}{W}{U}{B}{R}{G} — exile the top three cards of your library and play them all this turn.
It's here for anyone who wants to go completely overboard on their manabase. With ten Triomes, ten shocklands and ten fetchlands, it's just about possible. Mostly It'll fetch a land and be a 3/5. Occasionally someone will get there, and that's the point.