Come back with me to a simpler time...
One Box,
Draft your lands,
No Shuffling
No tokens,
No counters,
No white cards,
and NO SLEEVES!
Ok, so there have always been white cards... but when I set out to make a cube based on my awesome experiences playing with some old World Championship decks from 2000-2003, I kept running into the problem that the white section made me sad. So, it's gone!
This cube is the result of several different ideas coagulating together. As I said, it started with trying to build a list roughly based around cards from 2000 to about 2007ish, as we used the Lorwyn block (and it's introduction of planeswalkers) to denote a new era of design.
-I was interested in creating a Bar Cube, after my wonderful experience at CubeCon in October. My friend Dan hosted a night where many different people brought cubes united under a common theme-- play the cube unsleeved, with no additional materials (tokens, dice)
-I was interested in creating a Desert Cube. This is also fueled by the generally rave reviews of Desert cubes at Cubecon, including 2 years of great word spreading about the Amonkar Desert Cube by Bones.
Now hang on... If we smashed these two ideas together... No tokens, No Counters, No LAND STATION?! it would be one box, all you would need to do is shuffle the cube and play it.
Speaking of shuffling, though, who has time for that? Here, I'll give credit to D.S.B's Medium Ancient Times cube, which (let me know if you've heard this one before,) I got to play while at Cubecon! That list was an ode to it's creator's earliest preferences within the game of magic-- No shuffling, No Life Gain, No Hand Hate, No Land Destruction. The first of these points resonated with me. Every other cube I design ends up with me being tempted into a second set of fetchlands. No More! as D.S.B put it so eloquently, "Once you put the deck down, you aren't going to pick it up again."
(As it happens, the list I ended up on has essentially no Life Gain, either, except for a lone Ravenous Baloth. I guess that's what happens when you exclude white cards.)
All of these ideas about a Bar/Desert cube swirling in my head were sparked, metaphorically, (and in this case, literally, by the half bowl I had smoked just before having the idea,) when the common theme stuck out-- the nostalgia for the simplicity of these gameplay elements perfectly matched the goal that The Aughts Cube had set out for about a year ago.
So that's my story. And that's how we ended up HERE, with the appropriately mish-mash-named 4 Color, Aughts, Desert, Bar, Cube (Commas Pending).
It's designed for 4 players, whod raft 6 packs of 9 cards
All of the hits from the era are here-- so long as they don't cost enough for me to care about sleeving them (at least, compared to the fun I'll be having), and as long as they don't make tokens, or require any dice... and as long as they aren't good fixing lands.... and as long as they aren't white cards.
Oh, and one last thing. I love the concept of the gameplay of the ravnica bouncelands, but I'm pretty confident they'd easily be the best cards in the cube. Instead, I'm planning to errata the original Karoo lands to be able to pick up ANY untapped land, rather than just their particular type. (Of course, not actual Karoo, though, because who has time for that?)
A few preliminary decks (and yes, I needed a couple drafts to weed out a couple of the last dice-requiring cards I missed out on the first time. I'm pretty sure they're all gone now!
Rakdos Midrange
RUG graveyard tempo
Izzet Wildfire
Sultai Control
Let me know your thoughts! I've never actually Played a desert cube, so I might be making some blunders, which I would love to get feedback 0n!
Also, while I designed it for 4, I often cube with 2. What do you think the best way to draft a desert cube with 2 would be? Is there a "Canonical" way of doing it? Ones you've tried? Ones you haven't tried, but think would work?
In designing this, I've given only partial consideration for the aspects of gameplay influenced by the desert-ness of the list. If anyone has thoughts about cards/strategies that work particularly well in that sort of environment, I'd love to hear it! I haven't been on riptide in a while, so I'm going to start scouring the forums for people's thoughts on desert cubes shortly.
Lastly, there are a few slightly pricey cards in the list. For the most part, these are things I just happen to have extra copies of that I no longer care about getting beat up. The most expensive card here is Dark Confidant, which unfortunately I will need to buy a copy of before subjecting it to the bare concrete unsleeved...
But Any Cost, amirite?
One Box,
Draft your lands,
No Shuffling
No tokens,
No counters,
No white cards,
and NO SLEEVES!
Ok, so there have always been white cards... but when I set out to make a cube based on my awesome experiences playing with some old World Championship decks from 2000-2003, I kept running into the problem that the white section made me sad. So, it's gone!
This cube is the result of several different ideas coagulating together. As I said, it started with trying to build a list roughly based around cards from 2000 to about 2007ish, as we used the Lorwyn block (and it's introduction of planeswalkers) to denote a new era of design.
-I was interested in creating a Bar Cube, after my wonderful experience at CubeCon in October. My friend Dan hosted a night where many different people brought cubes united under a common theme-- play the cube unsleeved, with no additional materials (tokens, dice)
-I was interested in creating a Desert Cube. This is also fueled by the generally rave reviews of Desert cubes at Cubecon, including 2 years of great word spreading about the Amonkar Desert Cube by Bones.
Now hang on... If we smashed these two ideas together... No tokens, No Counters, No LAND STATION?! it would be one box, all you would need to do is shuffle the cube and play it.
Speaking of shuffling, though, who has time for that? Here, I'll give credit to D.S.B's Medium Ancient Times cube, which (let me know if you've heard this one before,) I got to play while at Cubecon! That list was an ode to it's creator's earliest preferences within the game of magic-- No shuffling, No Life Gain, No Hand Hate, No Land Destruction. The first of these points resonated with me. Every other cube I design ends up with me being tempted into a second set of fetchlands. No More! as D.S.B put it so eloquently, "Once you put the deck down, you aren't going to pick it up again."
(As it happens, the list I ended up on has essentially no Life Gain, either, except for a lone Ravenous Baloth. I guess that's what happens when you exclude white cards.)
All of these ideas about a Bar/Desert cube swirling in my head were sparked, metaphorically, (and in this case, literally, by the half bowl I had smoked just before having the idea,) when the common theme stuck out-- the nostalgia for the simplicity of these gameplay elements perfectly matched the goal that The Aughts Cube had set out for about a year ago.
So that's my story. And that's how we ended up HERE, with the appropriately mish-mash-named 4 Color, Aughts, Desert, Bar, Cube (Commas Pending).
It's designed for 4 players, whod raft 6 packs of 9 cards
All of the hits from the era are here-- so long as they don't cost enough for me to care about sleeving them (at least, compared to the fun I'll be having), and as long as they don't make tokens, or require any dice... and as long as they aren't good fixing lands.... and as long as they aren't white cards.
Oh, and one last thing. I love the concept of the gameplay of the ravnica bouncelands, but I'm pretty confident they'd easily be the best cards in the cube. Instead, I'm planning to errata the original Karoo lands to be able to pick up ANY untapped land, rather than just their particular type. (Of course, not actual Karoo, though, because who has time for that?)
A few preliminary decks (and yes, I needed a couple drafts to weed out a couple of the last dice-requiring cards I missed out on the first time. I'm pretty sure they're all gone now!
Rakdos Midrange
RUG graveyard tempo
Izzet Wildfire
Sultai Control
Let me know your thoughts! I've never actually Played a desert cube, so I might be making some blunders, which I would love to get feedback 0n!
Also, while I designed it for 4, I often cube with 2. What do you think the best way to draft a desert cube with 2 would be? Is there a "Canonical" way of doing it? Ones you've tried? Ones you haven't tried, but think would work?
In designing this, I've given only partial consideration for the aspects of gameplay influenced by the desert-ness of the list. If anyone has thoughts about cards/strategies that work particularly well in that sort of environment, I'd love to hear it! I haven't been on riptide in a while, so I'm going to start scouring the forums for people's thoughts on desert cubes shortly.
Lastly, there are a few slightly pricey cards in the list. For the most part, these are things I just happen to have extra copies of that I no longer care about getting beat up. The most expensive card here is Dark Confidant, which unfortunately I will need to buy a copy of before subjecting it to the bare concrete unsleeved...
But Any Cost, amirite?