This is intended to be the first in a series of articles where I will walk through creating a cube following each set’s release by utilizing cards from the newest set.
TL;DR
~450: https://cubecobra.com/cube/list/eldraziwinter
~360: https://cubecobra.com/cube/list/eldraziwinter360
Eldrazi Winter
If you’re familiar with the Modern format, you may have heard of Eldrazi Winter. Fresh off the banning of Splinter Twin and Summer Bloom, the format was looking for a new king. The low mana cost Eldrazi from the Battle for Zendikar block arrived to claim the throne.
While Eye of Ugin had existed in the format for a long time, it never had the opportunity to power out multiple Eldrazi per turn like it did now. An aggressive and disruptive combination of Endless Ones, Eldrazi Mimicss, Matter Reshapers, Thought-Knot Seers, and Reality Smashers were hitting the battlefield too early, too often.
Needless to say, the deck’s eight Ancient Tombs allowed it to dominate the format. That April, Wizards banned Eye of Ugin. The banning didn’t destroy Eldrazi-based decks, but it brought an end to the deck’s reign.
The Eldrazi Winter Cube
With access to more snow cards than ever and a cute name, we will be building The Eldrazi Winter Cube. Many of the snow cards are a little bit clunky, which should give us enough time to hardcast some titans.
Kaldheim Honorable Mentions
Kaldheim brought us our first heavy snow set since 2006’s Coldsnap. Modern Horizons 1 had a bit of a snow theme, but I wouldn’t call it a snow set. Either way, we don’t get snow often. There were a few cards or themes that could've become an article, so let’s go ahead and address those briefly here.
5C World Tree
Formats with five color incentives are always fun to balance. You want the five color deck to exist, but you don’t want everyone to shove every color into their deck. The World Tree is interesting, but I ultimately decided that the power of these 4 cards was significantly lower than the average power of the Gods you’d need to run to support them.
Tribal Themes
Wizards gives us more tribal cards every set lately. I’m going to give in one of these days. Just not yet.
Foretell, the Sagas, and the Gods were also cool, but don’t feel like the kinds of things you’d base a cube around.
On to the build...
Mana Base
The mana base is going to need a lot of snow in it, so we’ll be breaking singleton here. Some people may not like this, but lands aren’t that interesting either way. Hopefully singleton purists can forgive me.
It’s possible that it’s better to run either filters or pain lands over a snow land if colorless mana for the Eldrazi becomes an issue. You could replace the fetches for more snow lands if budget is a concern. Repeat this set of lands 10 times for the other two-color combinations and that’s most of the mana base.
Another option is to have all your basics be snow lands, but some of the snow spells are powerful incentives to acquire snow mana. I want that to be a part of the draft experience.
This will be a 450 card cube. I like to design those with 50 lands, so we’ll need 10 more lands. Those can be any lands that you want, but I’d recommend the three pictured as a start.
In addition to the 50 lands, we’ll be using as many spell-lands as possible to keep land drops coming and smooth out player’s draws.
Eldrazi
Obviously, we need some massive Eldrazi. These are the four legendary titans I went with. I opted to not run Emrakul, the Aeons Torn due to 15 mana being unreasonable. I never want to see Ulamog, the Ceaseless Hunger hit the board early off a reanimation spell, so that’s out, too.
Unfortunately, as of writing, the four pictured cards will run you just over $150. It may not be as thematically awesome, but feel free to replace them with other big colorless threats like Maelstrom Colossus or Sundering Titan.
Eldrazi Support
These Eldrazi cost a ton of mana and we want them getting hardcast. We’re going to have to slow down our format to enable that to happen. We’re also going to want to provide sufficient tools for ramping.
The obvious first place to look is Spawns and Scions. These four are a few examples of many that make it into the final list. Not only do they allow a player to ramp, but their blocking ability will slow the game down a bit. Testing will show if the board gets stalled due to having too many tokens.
Our ramp package will primarily give access to snow and/or colorless mana to support our themes.
Removal
We don’t want anyone’s 12 mana titan to get removed for one mana. That just doesn’t feel right. We also don’t want all of our removal to be overpriced. We need to find strong removal that won’t easily ruin our titan’s day.
The removal listed is quite efficient overall, but gives the big guys a chance to shine.
There’s also a slight emphasis on dealing 1 damage to handle the Spawns and Scions.
Snow Support
We covered the Eldrazi section. What about Winter? Our mana base is almost all snow and a lot of our ramp is trying to get snow as well. What are the payoffs?
There’s tons of snow goodies in the list, so here’s a few. It’s noteworthy that Search for Glory can grab a titan or a snow card and Tundra Fumarole produces both colorless and snow mana. Check the final list for the snow cards that make it in.
Emerge
As I looked at the possible Eldrazi to run, quite a few had the Emerge mechanic. I knew we’d want to run a few, but they need some support to be worthwhile.
Emerge cards get better when they can sacrifice something that already generated value. This also works well with a lot of the Spawn and Scion producers. As a designer, I dislike modern ETB (enter the battlefield) spam for value, but a few neutered variants weren’t hard to find. The ETBs encouraged a blink theme, as well.
Multicolor Sections
Speaking of a blink theme, that’s what some of our Azorius multicolor cards are supporting. Niambi returning something to hand is a very mild form of blink, but caring about CMC and legendary cards are both relevant here. Revelation is one of my favorite WU cards, as it single-handedly signals WU control with only 8 words of text. Expect to see it often in future lists.
Dimir is playing along with Battle for Zendikar’s ‘processor’ mechanic a bit. Exile your opponent’s cards, then put them back for value. Nullfier and kin can also move an Adventure, Foretold card, or other beneficially exiled card into the opponent’s graveyard, so be on the lookout for that. King Narfi’s Betrayal was also considered as an exiler that doubles as a weird Divination, but I don’t personally like to mix my opponent’s cards with my own because it can get forgotten so easily. Oblivion Sower was left out for the same reason.
Forerunner is a 3/2 for 2 or a 3/2 haste for 3, both of which will play well in aggressive Rakdos decks. It can also speed up other colorless threats. Blightning stays true to Rakdos aggression but could potentially bin a high CMC threat in the late game when hands are dwindling. The same can be said about Return except that it’s way scarier and can clear hands. Kardur will not only goad their Spawns and Scions to their death, but you can attack with and then sacrifice your own tokens for a major life swing.
Rhythm of the Wild making these titans uncounterable and hasty is so powerful. Svella may fall a bit short, but he’s a decent looking snow card that I feel we’re thematically obligated to try. Mina and Denn is a well-statted ramper. Frenzied Tilling is a bit of a pet card that will accelerate you and decelerate them, so this seems like the place to try it. Nikya of the Old Ways or Radha, Heart of Keld look like good replacement candidates, with Nikya potentially being problematically fast.
Sisay headlines the GW Legends deck. Titans are intended to be the primary targets, but there’s others to grab as well. Saffi and Escort will solidify your board and protect the titans. Yasharn puts much needed lands into your hand and prevents the usage of opposing Spawns and Scions.
Orzhov is almost always a problematic pairing. I took a page out of Ikoria: Lair of Behemoth’s book here, as we’re running behemoths of our own. A Human deck with efficient removal. I opted out of Champion of the Parish, as it’s so aggressive, but it might be what the format needs if aggro struggles.
Golgari is running the classic BG Sac deck. Sifter and other token producers will provide fodder. Deathsprout is a no limits kill spell that also ramps. Back for More may prove over costed, but the ability to reanimate Ulamog or Kozilek in response to their shuffle trigger is at least interesting. Flashing in a fatty, fighting, then blocking seems like big game. Deathreap Ritual was also strongly considered.
Simic is another common problem pair and, oh boy, have I got a snooze-fest for you. In our snow based format, Simic’s theme is snow. Ice-Fang and Abom match up well against basically any other creature if you’re snowed up. Lashweed is on theme and Verazol is there to support the already high Kicker count.
Aegar should be useful in a format where 0/1 and 1/1 tokens are frequent blockers. Other Wizards and burn spells are easily injected into the rest of the cube. Gelectrode can shoot down multiple of the aforementioned 1 toughness tokens per turn. Brutal is a solid on-theme removal spell.
Sky Terror is going to carry an equipment incredibly well and will avoid most of the Eldrazi hanging out on the ground. Akiri bolsters the potential RW Equip deck. Basandra may not be correct, but being in the air is very strong here, as mentioned, and she can force tokens into fruitless attacks. Reyav, Master Smith was also considered.
Final Touches
That’s the main structure of the list. From here, we’re going to need a nice mix of cards to support those themes, which you can view in the final list.
This list is by no means perfect. Feel free to adjust based on budget and other factors, but this should be a good starting place. It’s possible that I’ve missed some cards. Let me know what you think could be added or cut!
Speaking of what could be added, I opted not to run any Planeswalkers. I’m not a huge walker fan and the Spawns and Scions might guard one too easily. If you want to add them, go for it. The Chandras can shoot tokens really well and you can generate some mana with the green walkers. I also dislike the physical manipulation required to use two-faced cards, so many of those were excluded. The exceptions are Kessig Prowler because it's thematic and aggressive and the spell-lands because the backs are easier to remember.
A big downside to this cube, if you like to design, is that we aren’t really going to see as many cards per set to make changes with. New snow or Eldrazi cards will be incredibly infrequent.
Conclusion
Hopefully any new players reading this have a better idea of what the cube building process can look like. Hopefully all my riptidelab veterans enjoyed joining me for the design ride.
Shout out to Jason Waddell. Your article on Eldrazi Domain is what got me out of powermax cubing and into a really poorly designed Eldrazi theme cube when I came back to the game during BFZ. It’s also what got me here on RTL. For reference: Eldrazi Domain
I left a few extra cards in the list. I should also note that, as I was drafting the list, it seemed like it may work better at 405 or 360 to make the themes more prevalent. So I went ahead and made a 360 list as well, which feels much snowier.
~450: https://cubecobra.com/cube/list/eldraziwinter
~360: https://cubecobra.com/cube/list/eldraziwinter360
TL;DR
~450: https://cubecobra.com/cube/list/eldraziwinter
~360: https://cubecobra.com/cube/list/eldraziwinter360
Eldrazi Winter
If you’re familiar with the Modern format, you may have heard of Eldrazi Winter. Fresh off the banning of Splinter Twin and Summer Bloom, the format was looking for a new king. The low mana cost Eldrazi from the Battle for Zendikar block arrived to claim the throne.
While Eye of Ugin had existed in the format for a long time, it never had the opportunity to power out multiple Eldrazi per turn like it did now. An aggressive and disruptive combination of Endless Ones, Eldrazi Mimicss, Matter Reshapers, Thought-Knot Seers, and Reality Smashers were hitting the battlefield too early, too often.
Needless to say, the deck’s eight Ancient Tombs allowed it to dominate the format. That April, Wizards banned Eye of Ugin. The banning didn’t destroy Eldrazi-based decks, but it brought an end to the deck’s reign.
The Eldrazi Winter Cube
With access to more snow cards than ever and a cute name, we will be building The Eldrazi Winter Cube. Many of the snow cards are a little bit clunky, which should give us enough time to hardcast some titans.
Kaldheim Honorable Mentions
Kaldheim brought us our first heavy snow set since 2006’s Coldsnap. Modern Horizons 1 had a bit of a snow theme, but I wouldn’t call it a snow set. Either way, we don’t get snow often. There were a few cards or themes that could've become an article, so let’s go ahead and address those briefly here.
5C World Tree
Formats with five color incentives are always fun to balance. You want the five color deck to exist, but you don’t want everyone to shove every color into their deck. The World Tree is interesting, but I ultimately decided that the power of these 4 cards was significantly lower than the average power of the Gods you’d need to run to support them.
Tribal Themes
Wizards gives us more tribal cards every set lately. I’m going to give in one of these days. Just not yet.
Foretell, the Sagas, and the Gods were also cool, but don’t feel like the kinds of things you’d base a cube around.
On to the build...
Mana Base
The mana base is going to need a lot of snow in it, so we’ll be breaking singleton here. Some people may not like this, but lands aren’t that interesting either way. Hopefully singleton purists can forgive me.
It’s possible that it’s better to run either filters or pain lands over a snow land if colorless mana for the Eldrazi becomes an issue. You could replace the fetches for more snow lands if budget is a concern. Repeat this set of lands 10 times for the other two-color combinations and that’s most of the mana base.
Another option is to have all your basics be snow lands, but some of the snow spells are powerful incentives to acquire snow mana. I want that to be a part of the draft experience.
This will be a 450 card cube. I like to design those with 50 lands, so we’ll need 10 more lands. Those can be any lands that you want, but I’d recommend the three pictured as a start.
In addition to the 50 lands, we’ll be using as many spell-lands as possible to keep land drops coming and smooth out player’s draws.
Eldrazi
Obviously, we need some massive Eldrazi. These are the four legendary titans I went with. I opted to not run Emrakul, the Aeons Torn due to 15 mana being unreasonable. I never want to see Ulamog, the Ceaseless Hunger hit the board early off a reanimation spell, so that’s out, too.
Unfortunately, as of writing, the four pictured cards will run you just over $150. It may not be as thematically awesome, but feel free to replace them with other big colorless threats like Maelstrom Colossus or Sundering Titan.
Eldrazi Support
These Eldrazi cost a ton of mana and we want them getting hardcast. We’re going to have to slow down our format to enable that to happen. We’re also going to want to provide sufficient tools for ramping.
The obvious first place to look is Spawns and Scions. These four are a few examples of many that make it into the final list. Not only do they allow a player to ramp, but their blocking ability will slow the game down a bit. Testing will show if the board gets stalled due to having too many tokens.
Our ramp package will primarily give access to snow and/or colorless mana to support our themes.
Removal
We don’t want anyone’s 12 mana titan to get removed for one mana. That just doesn’t feel right. We also don’t want all of our removal to be overpriced. We need to find strong removal that won’t easily ruin our titan’s day.
The removal listed is quite efficient overall, but gives the big guys a chance to shine.
There’s also a slight emphasis on dealing 1 damage to handle the Spawns and Scions.
Snow Support
We covered the Eldrazi section. What about Winter? Our mana base is almost all snow and a lot of our ramp is trying to get snow as well. What are the payoffs?
There’s tons of snow goodies in the list, so here’s a few. It’s noteworthy that Search for Glory can grab a titan or a snow card and Tundra Fumarole produces both colorless and snow mana. Check the final list for the snow cards that make it in.
Emerge
As I looked at the possible Eldrazi to run, quite a few had the Emerge mechanic. I knew we’d want to run a few, but they need some support to be worthwhile.
Emerge cards get better when they can sacrifice something that already generated value. This also works well with a lot of the Spawn and Scion producers. As a designer, I dislike modern ETB (enter the battlefield) spam for value, but a few neutered variants weren’t hard to find. The ETBs encouraged a blink theme, as well.
Multicolor Sections
Speaking of a blink theme, that’s what some of our Azorius multicolor cards are supporting. Niambi returning something to hand is a very mild form of blink, but caring about CMC and legendary cards are both relevant here. Revelation is one of my favorite WU cards, as it single-handedly signals WU control with only 8 words of text. Expect to see it often in future lists.
Dimir is playing along with Battle for Zendikar’s ‘processor’ mechanic a bit. Exile your opponent’s cards, then put them back for value. Nullfier and kin can also move an Adventure, Foretold card, or other beneficially exiled card into the opponent’s graveyard, so be on the lookout for that. King Narfi’s Betrayal was also considered as an exiler that doubles as a weird Divination, but I don’t personally like to mix my opponent’s cards with my own because it can get forgotten so easily. Oblivion Sower was left out for the same reason.
Forerunner is a 3/2 for 2 or a 3/2 haste for 3, both of which will play well in aggressive Rakdos decks. It can also speed up other colorless threats. Blightning stays true to Rakdos aggression but could potentially bin a high CMC threat in the late game when hands are dwindling. The same can be said about Return except that it’s way scarier and can clear hands. Kardur will not only goad their Spawns and Scions to their death, but you can attack with and then sacrifice your own tokens for a major life swing.
Rhythm of the Wild making these titans uncounterable and hasty is so powerful. Svella may fall a bit short, but he’s a decent looking snow card that I feel we’re thematically obligated to try. Mina and Denn is a well-statted ramper. Frenzied Tilling is a bit of a pet card that will accelerate you and decelerate them, so this seems like the place to try it. Nikya of the Old Ways or Radha, Heart of Keld look like good replacement candidates, with Nikya potentially being problematically fast.
Sisay headlines the GW Legends deck. Titans are intended to be the primary targets, but there’s others to grab as well. Saffi and Escort will solidify your board and protect the titans. Yasharn puts much needed lands into your hand and prevents the usage of opposing Spawns and Scions.
Orzhov is almost always a problematic pairing. I took a page out of Ikoria: Lair of Behemoth’s book here, as we’re running behemoths of our own. A Human deck with efficient removal. I opted out of Champion of the Parish, as it’s so aggressive, but it might be what the format needs if aggro struggles.
Golgari is running the classic BG Sac deck. Sifter and other token producers will provide fodder. Deathsprout is a no limits kill spell that also ramps. Back for More may prove over costed, but the ability to reanimate Ulamog or Kozilek in response to their shuffle trigger is at least interesting. Flashing in a fatty, fighting, then blocking seems like big game. Deathreap Ritual was also strongly considered.
Simic is another common problem pair and, oh boy, have I got a snooze-fest for you. In our snow based format, Simic’s theme is snow. Ice-Fang and Abom match up well against basically any other creature if you’re snowed up. Lashweed is on theme and Verazol is there to support the already high Kicker count.
Aegar should be useful in a format where 0/1 and 1/1 tokens are frequent blockers. Other Wizards and burn spells are easily injected into the rest of the cube. Gelectrode can shoot down multiple of the aforementioned 1 toughness tokens per turn. Brutal is a solid on-theme removal spell.
Sky Terror is going to carry an equipment incredibly well and will avoid most of the Eldrazi hanging out on the ground. Akiri bolsters the potential RW Equip deck. Basandra may not be correct, but being in the air is very strong here, as mentioned, and she can force tokens into fruitless attacks. Reyav, Master Smith was also considered.
Final Touches
That’s the main structure of the list. From here, we’re going to need a nice mix of cards to support those themes, which you can view in the final list.
This list is by no means perfect. Feel free to adjust based on budget and other factors, but this should be a good starting place. It’s possible that I’ve missed some cards. Let me know what you think could be added or cut!
Speaking of what could be added, I opted not to run any Planeswalkers. I’m not a huge walker fan and the Spawns and Scions might guard one too easily. If you want to add them, go for it. The Chandras can shoot tokens really well and you can generate some mana with the green walkers. I also dislike the physical manipulation required to use two-faced cards, so many of those were excluded. The exceptions are Kessig Prowler because it's thematic and aggressive and the spell-lands because the backs are easier to remember.
A big downside to this cube, if you like to design, is that we aren’t really going to see as many cards per set to make changes with. New snow or Eldrazi cards will be incredibly infrequent.
Conclusion
Hopefully any new players reading this have a better idea of what the cube building process can look like. Hopefully all my riptidelab veterans enjoyed joining me for the design ride.
Shout out to Jason Waddell. Your article on Eldrazi Domain is what got me out of powermax cubing and into a really poorly designed Eldrazi theme cube when I came back to the game during BFZ. It’s also what got me here on RTL. For reference: Eldrazi Domain
I left a few extra cards in the list. I should also note that, as I was drafting the list, it seemed like it may work better at 405 or 360 to make the themes more prevalent. So I went ahead and made a 360 list as well, which feels much snowier.
~450: https://cubecobra.com/cube/list/eldraziwinter
~360: https://cubecobra.com/cube/list/eldraziwinter360
