General [Contest] 72-card Nanocube

Ugh, I just had an idea that's so much cooler than my current entry. Back to the drawing board.

On an unrelated note, I dare someone to make this an archetype in your entry:

 
72 cards is more than you think: drafting 18 cards for 15 card decks is comparable to drafting 45 cards for 40 card decks. And as @LadyMapi mentioned, you need less lands to meet your fixing needs.
Sorry if I was unclear, I was just asking if I had to use basics or not. The two ideas I've been exploring the most have been Cubes where the majority of the cards are from one color. In one case, it was a "100 Ornithopters" kind of thing where there were a boatload of copies of a single card and then some ancillary spells to fill out the list. The other was a "constructed mirror" Cube about drafting different variations of one of my favorite Legacy decks, which has versions using all 5 colors but is always heavily based in one color. In the case of the first Cube, I thought it would be cool to use only the on-color basic and Mana Confluence in the basic land box, while for the other Cube, I was going to use the primary basic and either Pain Lands or ABU Dual Lands in the land box. In both cases, the point of doing this is to allow players to focus on drafting the spells and/or utility lands that shape the intended play experience.
 
In both cases, the point of doing this is to allow players to focus on drafting the spells and/or utility lands that shape the intended play experience.
If you want to change you basic land box, that's fine. I do want to press how easy it is to have a consistent mana base for 15-card decks though. Both examples you included will make 5-color decks trivial. If that's your intend, cool! Otherwise I'd advise you to do some test-runs to see if just playing basic really isn't good enough. You can run 3-color decks without fixing (depending on the cube's speed and color pip density of course).
 
Yeah, I feel like an important thing to keep in mind about a 15-card format is that after you draw your starting hand your remaining deck is roughly a fourth of the size of a 40-card deck (8 remaining cards vs. 33 remaining cards).

That said, I think a cube trying to emulate constructed might still need better fixing, since those decks thrive off of effectively completely changing their colors at each step of their curve. Something to test, I guess.
 
Here is my submission, Nanonox's Blue Nanocube: https://www.cubecobra.com/cube/list/NanoBlue

Suggested draft format: 2 player grid draft of 8 packs
Rules: 15 card minimum decks as per contest rules and no loss because of decking.

Since the cube is so small, I wanted to maximize the possible synergies. I chose to have the cube be mono-colored so that all the cards have the potential to interact with each other.

Archetypes

Even with a small size, I wanted a synergy driven cube where there is competition for cards. I wanted the cube to feel Blue so I chose some classic archetypes which are

- Wizards
- Faeries
- Discard
- Artifacts
- Prowess
- Counters

The cube is built around small packages that tie multiple themes together. I chose 5 cards that represent a lot of what the cube is all about and you can see how these themes overlap with each other.



Interaction

Countermagic and bounce are usually what Blue is best known for when it comes to removal. For more permanent removal, I chose to include a bunch of colorless cards to help. Penny Pincher enjoyers will recognize a classic duo



When card availability is limited to 9 non land slots per deck, having reusable removal becomes key to building a more controlling shell. The other removal pieces also benefit from Proliferating which is present in the cube (shout out to Stun counters + Proliferate!). Academy Ruins and Nevynirral's Disk is another avenue you can take to take over the game, but it is very mana intensive!

End game

Having never played 15 card decks, I am afraid of board stalls that lead to draws. To circumvent these situations, recursion is key so that you don't run out of things to do. Mana sinks such as Stormchaser's Talent do good work here too.



Given enough time, you can burn them out.



Another slow way to get the last 10 points of damage in.



Sometimes you need an engine to get there.



And sometimes, you need your whole deck!

Ramp?

I wanted some way to make big mana and decided to add 4 Cloudpost. Since the cube is mono Blue, no fixing is required and these colorless lands can help you chain some big turns (like the wildly improbable engine I posted above). Since the draft format is Grid drafting, all picks are face up. So there is some counterplay if you see your opponent getting greedy with Cloudposts as you can hate draft them.

Spells control











Artifact counters











Artifact wizard discard counters?!











Faeries










This was a fun challenge, thanks ellogeyen! Might try my hand at making the rest of the colors too.
 
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